Following in the footsteps of One Piece and Studio Ghibli food art, some more culinary epicness for Mawaru Penguindrum via @aicnanime:
![Mawaru Penguindrum Onigiri](<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/aicnanime/statuses/142770305667043329"><img src="http://note.pixel-ellipsis.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/mawaru-penguindrum-bento-350x421.jpg" alt="Mawaru Penguindrum Bento" title="Mawaru Penguindrum Bento" width="350" height="421" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2139" /></a> "Mawaru Penguindrum Onigiri")
Approved.
…placeholder for something profound
Archives for category: Random
Found this alpaca video through Ayako Ito:
…I then proceeded to waste another hour+ of my life watching random/cute YouTube videos of small fuzzy animals.
DAMN YOU ALPACAS AND YOUR CUTENESS RAWRAWR
Came across these awesome One Piece bento pics on matome.naver.jp:
…and wanted to see if any enterprising chefs had decided to make similar bento based off Studio Ghibli’s films. So I did a quick google and found the delightful blog of Anna The Red, which not only featured beautifully crafted Ghibli bento, but also Ghibli-inspired snacks and “feasts.” Here are some of my favorites!
Gotta love creative bookmarks that turn (note)books into delectable looking sandwiches! From Spoon & Tamago:
Talk about delicious bookmarks! Sandwich Tag is the latest work of Japanese design trio Yuse Design. The sandwich ingredients, which function as bookmarks or post-its, come in a variety of “flavors” including the standard B.L.T., or the veggie version. But, you are also given the awesome option of loading up on just bacon. The more notes you take, the more appetizing your book becomes!
Things have been pretty quiet around here, mostly because I went on a month-long vacation, came back for about two weeks, and will be off traveling again tomorrow for a week 
Can’t complain, for sure, but all this fun has killed off most of my motivation to wall. Anyways! Pixel Ellipsis will be down for a brief period of time after July 10th. Hopefully it won’t be longer than a day at most, but I’m not exactly sure how long it will be. The reason for this downtime is really silly – my hosting provider assigns “free domain credits” on a yearly basis, and for some reason they can’t give me the new credit for the next year until the day AFTER the domain expiration date… I don’t know why they can’t just give me credit for the whole 3 years if I’ve signed up for a 3 year hosting package, but anyways, that’s that. I’ll be back from my trip on July 10th so I do plan to monitor the situation closely.
On a more cheerful note: Miyazaki Lego awesomeness by Ochre Jelly
And “Steampunk Raku Howl’s Moving Castle” by lizzomarek
Yay for epic Ghibli-inspired works! More photos and behind-the-scenes notes available via the original source links, so definitely give those a look!
More fruits of Flickr browsing! I’m not a cosplayer so I might be spouting nonsense, but I’m guessing that Ghibli characters are hard to cosplay well, especially the ones with relatively simple designs (think Kiki, Ponyo, or Chihiro). Cosplay photos of the more elaborate Ghibli characters like Princess Mononoke or Howl can be a lot more visually impressive, especially with regards to the costuming. But at the same time, I’m equally (if not a tad more) impressed by cosplayers who can pull off the “simpler” Ghibli characters.
Seeing this awesome image in the Boing Boing article “Spreading the Word About New Anime Through Cosplay“:
…made me want to check how many other cool cosplay pics there are out there for Durarara!! So I did. And Flickr, as always, delivers It’s really nice to see that Drrr!! was well-represented at this year’s cons!
According to Spoon & Tamago, peace signs (or “the peesu” ) is going out of fashion in Japan and photographees are starting to favor a generic thumbs up instead.
…Definitely a bit of a bummer if that’s true, but I’d imagine that it would take quite a loooong while for the rest of Asia to phase out the infamous peesu.
Reading the Spoon & Tamago post definitely raised a more interesting question though: WHY do Asians like peacing out in photos so much? A bit of googling yielded this post from Stuff Asian People Like on the peace sign:
To show that they are indeed happy, asians outline their grinning chins with a “V” sign to draw attention away from their non-existant eyes. They also wouldn’t ever want to yell something while taking a picture because it would draw more attention to them. However, Asians are always stoked when a photo opp arises. In these situations, asians, instead of using America’s ludicrously awkward phrase, “Cheese,” will use the peace sign to show that they are indeed present in the photograph.
Not at all sure if I agree with that as an Asian, but since I don’t have any better explanations for this mysterious phenomenon, I shall leave the peesu to future ponderings…
Sadly I haven’t been keeping up with the World Cup, mostly because it’s not showing on cable in our apartment. Uber lame, I know. But I still got a huge kick out of Paul the (Oracle) Octopus, who has been splashing across major news sites like BBC News, Boston Globe, and Forbes for his 100% prediction rate for Germany so far.
And here’s a video of the actual moment of prophecy haha -
Does anyone else get a kick out of the idea of a mollusk prophet who can commune with the soccer gods?
P.S. ZOMG Germany beat England 4-1! AM SRSLY IN LOVE WITH THE OCTOPUS NOW YES I AM
Because Twitter’s iconic Fail Whale is love, this comic strip by aksrnk is a terrific addition to the trove of Fail Whale tributes!
From Gigazine: “Missed You…Twitter’s Fail Whale Welcomes Home Hayabusa Asteroid Explorer“