Beanie Babies

So, as promised in my last blog post, today's post is all about Beanie Babies! Actually I have been planning on writing this for the last few months, because my first project for Design 2 was all about Beanie Babies. Yes, Beanie Babies. I have a very large collection of them.

"Jonathan, you're almost 26. Why do you have a very large collection of Beanie Babies?"

Well, it all started many years ago...
My Aunt Linda gave me and my brothers each a Beanie Baby one year. Mine was a dalmatian named Sparky.

We had never heard of them before, but soon afterwards, Beanie Babies blew up in popularity. They were the "It Thing" to have. Mom started buying them for us for Christmas, other family members bought them for us, and if I saw a Beanie Baby of some animal I really liked, I bought it for myself.

I think this was the first one I ever bought myself. Is anyone really surprised that it's a giraffe? :)

So over the years I amassed a rather large collection, and they all ended up stuffed in a giant plastic tote and put away. Who would have guessed that they would one day resurface to become the focus of the first half of my fourth semester of college?

This project was based on the book "Creature" by Andrew Zuckerman. The assignment was to study an artist and make a work that was a tribute to their style. Mine ended up more of a parody than a tribute, but everyone loved it and my teacher is encouraging me to have the pictures I took made into a book of my own. I won't be able to share all my pictures on my blog, but here are a few, just so you can get an idea of what I did. I may post more to my photography blog at a later date. (No, I haven't abandoned that blog, I've just been too busy to work on it.)

That's all for now, but I promise, this is not the last you have seen of my Beanie Baby collection. :)

Judge Judy Comercial

Most likely you will recall THIS POST where I wrote about how much I loved Judge Judy.
Well, It turns out that Rhett and Link, two of my favorite YouTube stars are just as big, if not bigger fans, and wrote a song for her show, that is actually going to be used in a commercial for an affiliate station. Not all around the country, just in Pittsburgh, but thanks to the internet we can see it too. :)






I love these guys. :D

Final Brave Trailer

The final Brave trailer was released today. I think perhaps I may have to go hyperventilate. :D




I watched it twice in a row, and I may have to watch it a third time. The king's impersonation of his daughter was hilarious! :D I can not wait for this movie! :D

How I Wasted a Bunch of Time

Anybody who is anybody on the internet has heard of the Nyan Cat.



Well, I was inspired yesterday. Don't ask me why. I just was. So behold.

That's all. I just felt like sharing my brilliant artwork.

You can all go do something more important now.
And if you had never heard of the Nyan Cat and you watched that video in its entirety, I truly apologize. It could be worse, someone made a 10 hour version...

Hello World!

Well, I just wanted to let everyone know I haven't died... I just haven't had time for blogging recently. I hope to get back into it soon, but I just have way too much going on with school these days. The activity on my blog has not died in my absence though, strangely enough, I get a steady stream of traffic daily, just not from anyone I know. Here's proof.

This is just the past week, but it is normal for my blog. Every time I check, it looks like this, just with different countries. Part of the reason has to do with with my posts on the Professional Bull Riders competition we went to last year. There is almost always something related to the PBR in the search terms listed that brought traffic to my blog. The biggest reason for the traffic though, is Lindsey Stirling. Since I've written more than one post about her, and she is currently getting more and more famous, those posts get LOTS of hits. Also, and very weirdly, is my post about Latvia. I get lots of hits on that one, and in the list of search terms that brings people to my blog there is almost always something to do with Latvian desserts, or rupjmaize. I suppose that could be why. It is not very likely that many other people are going to be writing about rupjmaize on their blogs. Actually, outside of Latvia, I doubt there are many websites period that are going to feature anything about Latvian rye bread.

Anyway, that's all for now. I hope to make some more posts soon, I have material to write about, and pictures to post, it's just finding time to write and edit that's the trouble. The semester will be over soon though, so hopefully I'll have more time this summer.

Facebook Can Be So Annoying!

Has anyone else noticed that Facebook has seemingly become nothing more than a place to post "Funny" or politically captioned pictures? It's about to the point where I feel like deleting a bunch of "Friends" who do nothing but post this stuff.

I have a lot of friends who still do make legitimate posts, but they don't post every day, so my Facebook wall has become covered with unfunny pictures from a whole bunch of people who I really don't even know. These are mainly friends-of-friends who read something I wrote on a friend's post, liked what I wrote, and asked to be my friend. (Does that happen to anyone else? I thought it was weird the first time it happened, but then it kept happening, so maybe it's more common than I know...)

From "Funny" pictures that aren't really funny, whose "Humor" comes from the swear words in the captions, to extremely preachy political pictures that vilify anyone who disagrees with them. It's really getting old. I'm tired of logging into Facebook and seeing the same content every day, with just a few slight modifications. I'm not saying that all captioned pictures are not funny. There are a few that have made me laugh out loud, but the key words there are "A Few." The vast majority are really getting on my nerves.

Why can't people come up with their own opinions, and their own humor? Why does absolutely everything some people post have to be from someone else? I'm not trying to say everyone who re-posts these things is an uncreative numbskull, and that you should never post funny pictures, or that you should never post something political that you agree with. I can be just as guilty of this as the next guy. There really is some funny stuff out there, and sometimes you really want someone else to laugh at what you just found. But when that becomes the only things you ever post, (and you post more than five every single day,) that's a problem!

Instead of re-posting something from someone else, why not start thinking about the things you like, and writing about them? Why not start taking pictures and posting them? Why not create your own artwork and post it? There's more to life than Facebook. Get out there and get inspired! Make your own stuff! Write your own thoughts! Then come back and use Facebook to show off what inspires you, not just that picture you liked, that your friend posted, who had gotten it from that page that collects pictures from other websites that re-post pictures they find on all the popular meme websites. I want to know what you think! I want to hear YOUR jokes! I want to see what you create!

I'm speaking to myself as well, I may not have too much free time outside of school and work, but when I do have some, I should be doing something more than just reading a bunch of Facebook jokes. I should be writing, painting, or designing! I should be outside with my camera, then back on my computer making art out of those pictures!

Facebook should be a place to share news, share your own pictures, share... yourself! Not a place to spend three hours looking at lolcats and toilet jokes. Remember how fun Facebook was when you first joined, and it was just you and your closest friends? Let's make it that fun again!

Judge Judy

Ok, this post is an odd one for me. I am writing it to try to sort out my own thoughts about something. Let me back up.

Years ago, I was a HUGE Judge Judy fan. Not sure why I loved her so much, that doesn't seem like a very natural show for a kid to love, but I did. I watched her every day that I could, along with Arthur, Wishbone, Carmen Sandiego, and various other PBS Kids shows, that normal kids watch. As I got older I stopped watching, not because I didn't like her any more, but I grew up, got a job, and her show, being a syndicated daytime show, always conflicted with my work schedule, and I just never had time to watch her any more. These days I don't even watch TV, so up until a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have even known if she was on TV any more. Recently though, I saw a link on YouTube that led me to a virtual treasure trove of years and years worth of Judge Judy cases, and I am now a full on Judge Judy fan once again, and now I know exactly why I love her so much. She is a seeker of truth and justice, and she is 100% for making people responsible for their own actions. Something that is, at least by the headlines that I am reading, disgustingly lacking in today's higher courts. Plus I just loved to see Judge Judy giving a verbal beat-down to the amoral idiots who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in her cross-hairs.

Now for the reason for my post. Earlier today, I watched one of the best, but most confusing cases I have ever seen. I never have any difficulty figuring out what Judge Judy's logic is for her rulings, but I did on this one. I rewatched the end many times over, rewound and watched parts of the beginning and middle a few times, and tried to figure out what on earth happened! Based on the comments below the video, I was not the only one confused. I would really love to know her thought process behind her ruling. I understood her ruling as it stood, I didn't like it, and neither did she, but without proof, she had no choice. The twist at the last second when she did a complete 180 and reversed her ruling in the Plaintiff's favor, seemingly came out of nowhere based on one seemingly in passing answer. Here is the episode in it's entirety so you can see what I mean. Make sure you have time to watch it all, as it is almost 20 minutes, because you need to have seen the whole episode and think about it in order to understand the final seconds, as it is quite complicated.



Now that you have (Hopefully) watched the entire thing, what did you think of it? Did you understand her ruling? Why did she rule in the Plaintiff's favor, based on the Defendant's suing the doctor who was not involved in this case at all?

This is my take on it, and I've been tired all day, so I confess that I am not thinking that fast, it took me quite awhile to work this out. I think her final decision was absolutely just and fair, because even based solely on the body language of the Defendant, there is absolutely no question in my mind of her guilt, and from her facial expressions, I am 99% sure that she is a sociopath who caused those injuries to herself in order to make her story more plausible. But Judge Judy said herself that the Plaintiff had no absolute proof that the Defendant posted the compromising photos on the office website. However, when she heard from the Defendant herself that she was involved in a lawsuit with the doctor she immediately reversed her ruling with no explanation.

The two things I can think of is that Judge Judy had not taken the plaintiff's claim of false accusation of assault into account in her final ruling. She based her final ruling on the photos alone, where she said there was not substantial proof, that the Defendant had posted the compromising photos. But when the Plaintiff began to plead that the defendant had tried using the photos of her injuries in another lawsuit, Judge Judy realized that the Defendant was suing the doctor and had been lying when she said she left the office by choice. If she was suing the doctor, it would have meant that she actually had been fired over the incident because she actually HAD posted the pictures, or she had tried suing based on those injuries and another court had found that the plaintiff was not guilty, giving Judge Judy something upon which she could legally grant the $5000 to the Plaintiff for false accusation. I feel like maybe some of it was edited out for time's sake and just a few seconds of explanation would have been very helpful.

If anyone has any other insight I would LOVE to hear it, because what I wrote is based on my thoughts alone, and another perspective would be greatly appreciated. Anyway, I have spent so much time tonight analyzing this case, more than I have ever thought about any other case ever, and my brain is quite tired, so I'm going to go and give it a rest now. :)