I saw this license plate on my way to work, and it tickled the twelve year old inside of me. (and I mean that in the least creepy way possible)
I don’t know if 154 is the goal, or a total up to a certain point, or what it took to earn the car… I’m going to try not to think about it too much.
Hey everybody! Some of you know, and some of you do not know, that I am about to head out on a big cross-country road trip! As a matter of fact, I’m less than 24 hours away from heading out.
Now, don’t worry–there will still be more Catty Wampus animation and puppet talk while I’m gone (as well as more stop signs, of course!)… Some people have been asking if I’ll be blogging about the trip. I’ve decided to keep a separate blog for my trip adventures, and if you’re interested in following along you’re more than welcome to check me out at:
See you on the road!
- Eric
It’s been too long since Uncle Eric dropped on by to spread some wisdom around. But I was thinking about something recently, something that has helped me through times of struggle and I thought it would be good to share. It’s three simple words to help you achieve your goals:
Are You Serious?
Imagine this scenario:
You decided to lose some weight. You’ve recognized that you eat more than you should, and you could cut back on a lot of junk food. Now, even if you stop bringing bags of Doritos and Chips Ahoy into your home, junk food is still likely to find its way around you. Someone at the office will bring in Snickers bars for everyone, or it will be dinner time and it’s so much easier to pop a couple of Hot Pockets in the microwave than to actually cook a meal.
This is the perfect opportunity for you to ask yourself “Are you serious?”
Which is to say “You said you were going to cut junk food out of your life. Are you serious about that decision or not?”
Now you’re faced with answering the question in one of two ways:
1) Yes, I am serious. I don’t want junk food.
or
2) No, I guess I’m not serious. Give me that Snickers bar.
Now, I know… this is basically guilting yourself into doing the right thing. But it works, and I promise it feels so good to realize you have the willpower to say “Yes, I am serious!”
This works with everything:
Any area of your life you want to improve, I promise that you already know it can be done. All you need to do is ask yourself “Are you serious?”
Just another tip from your Uncle Eric.
See you next time, kiddies!
According to Wikipedia:
[Smurfette] was magically created from clay by the Smurfs’ enemy, Gargamel, so that she would use her charms to cause jealousy and competition among the Smurfs in order to cause their fall.
Until this point in Smurf history there had been no female smurfs; it had been an community composed entirely of men. And so that leads me to wonder this very large and looming question:
What made Gargamel think that a woman would stir up any kind of sexual feelings in a village of men who have clearly been getting along fine among themselves? I mean, I’m not saying that the smurfs were all homosmurfuals but… well, yes I guess that’s what I’m saying. At the very least, their sexual desires and needs were presumably being met among all of the other men around. So I ask again, how exactly was a female smurf supposed to cause dissention?
I don’t know if the upcoming Smurf Movie intends to address this issue, but I sure hope there’s some kind of explanation.
I’m not going to get my soapbox out–but make of that what you will.
I don’t usually get political here on the blog. Mostly because I don’t follow politics enough to speak intelligently on the subject. But I had a thought the other day that I wanted to share, and hopefully things won’t get too incendiary.
This actually isn’t about anyone’s politicals, or an endorsement of anyone. For all you know, I like McCain, or Clinton, or Obama, or none of them or all of them. This is about a cultural thing.
See, I was thinking about Golda Meir. Golda Meir was the Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. And then I thought about Indira Gandhi, who was the Prime Minister of India from 1966 until 1977. Oh, and then she was elected as Prime Minister again in 1980 until 1984.
So I did a little research. (admittedly, very little research–but it didn’t take much) And I found that in the past twenty years, the following countries have had Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Chancellors who just happened to be women:
England
Pakistan
Norway
Yugoslavia
Sri Lanka
Poland
Senegal
South Korea
Iceland
Malta
Panama
Indonesia
Nicaragua
Guyana
Latvia
Central African Republic
That’s not to mention the women who are currently in power in:
Ireland
New Zealand
Finland
The Phillipines
Mozambique
Germany
Liberia
Chile
Switzerland
India
And I looked into my crystal ball, imagining President Hilary Clinton seated in the Oval Office. In those first few months of 2009, and maybe even extending into later in the year, I imagine there will be no end of self-congratulatory back-patting from newspapers, television shows, magazines, and the general public that goes like this:
“We have elected a woman into the highest power in our land! Look how progressive The United States is! Look how free-thinking and open-minded we are!”
If this happens, if these messages start getting spread around and we start feeling really proud of ourselves, I would like us all to keep the above list of countries in mind. I would like us to think critically about ourselves and see that electing a woman into power is nothing new in the world. It would simply be something new for Americans, and perhaps we should acknowledge that we may be behind the world’s curve on the issue of gender equality.
That is all.
This is a little addendum to my recent feed your rss post.
THE PLEASURE REPORT
This is a really promising podcast produced by Dr. Paul Joannides. The focus is sex, but unlike a lot of other sexually-oriented podcasts out there, this one focuses on research and medicine in the field of sexuality. That’s not to say that it’s dry and academic–it decidedly is not! Joannides is a comfortable and folksy host, and the three episodes he’s put out so far are informative and entertaining.
I want to make a special note that what I really like about this podcast is Joannides’s passion for shining the light on sexually-themed headlines that appear in national newspapers and magazines. These headlines generally announce some kind of new research that proves some kind of fundamental difference between men and women, or things like that. And while I’m generally pretty sure that these claims are very far from the actual research that was done, it makes for a better newspaper story and so we never get to hear about the actual research. Joannides fills in that gap.
I particularly remember an announcement last year that some scientists may have found a way to chemically alter human beings to be gay or straight. When I heard this, my first thought was “No way. I’m not buying that.” But I didn’t have the science to back it up–it’s simply something that I intuitively felt had to be wrong, and probably was a gross misinterpretation of whatever research was done.
Well, wouldn’t you know, Paul Joannides addresses this very story in his most recent podcast and sets the record straight (tee hee) about the true purpose and findings of the research and why The New York Times was irresponsible in painting the story the way they did.
I love hearing about things like this because it makes me question what other “news” we get from our usual sources. Not that I’m a skeptic, nor do I think there are vast conspiracies bouncing around. But I do think that it’s easy to want to find an “angle” on a dry story to help sell it to Joe and Jane America–which is to say, you and me.
Anyway if you’re interested in sex and science, check out The Pleasure Report.
Hey y’all,
I just wanted to do a quick post here to let everyone know that there’s a new “music” tag for some of the posts here. I added it in because I seem to have been posting quite a few songs lately, and there are plans for even more coming up.
I also added a neat music player that makes things easier to post here on the blogging end, and should make the pages load faster on the reader’s end.
If you’d like to check out all of the posts tagged with music so far, you can use this link:
Enjoy!
- Eric
With Christmas just a few days away, I wanted to share a song by Dan Bern. You probably don’t know Dan Bern–he hasn’t had many (any?) radio hits–but he’s an incredible songwriter, and highly respected in the indie folk scene. Dan’s music is super smart, and it can also be super satirical, or just plain super funny. He has a great sense of humor, as well as a great sense of humanity. In fact, I almost hesitated sharing this song here lest anyone peg Dan as a novelty songwriter. He’s anything but, believe me.
To find out more about Dan Bern, visit his website here: www.DanBern.com
In the meantime, enjoy his Christmas song I found somewhere on the internet.
Merry Christmas!
Schoolboys since the age of 5 have been drawing penises and testicles on whatever writing surface is available. So it’s not that this bit of graffiti is novel or shocking. But I like the ingenuity the artist approached this one with. Seriously, it takes at least a little effort to compose an image like this. That’s why I took a picture and posted it up here for everyone to enjoy.
Hey everybody! 
I am super excited, and super flattered, and then super excited again to tell you that one of my blog posts has been translated in Italian! No joke!
Maurizio Ramanzin, an animator who I met over at the 11 Second Club forums, asked if he could translate my post entitled Give Yourself Permission to Be a Good Animator into Italian for his own animation-centered blog.
I’m beaming with pride that someone actually wanted to share something I’d written with other animators. Grazie, Mauri!
To check out Mauri’s translation, go here: http://www.malalaca.it
Ciao!
