Geek zodiac signs for me and my family

I'm Sky Syndrome at the forum "Ultimate Disney" and someone posted a link to a Geek zodiac in the off-topic section a couple of days ago: http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/funny-graphs-year-of-the-supes.jpg

I'm a wizard, my dad and sister are time travelers, my mom is the undead, and my brother is the Daikaiju. It's funny that that is what my brother is. As a kid, my brother was a fan of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and had toys of the Zords (animal-shaped vehicles) and they attach together to make a Megazord, a humanoid robot. Often the climax of the show's episodes is the Rangers using their gigantic Megazord to fight a gigantic monster.

Spirited Away adoptables

A little while back, I talked about a lady named Lavonia who owned a Whisper the Winged Unicorn fan site with a complete list of the Whisper books. She had other fan sites and none of them are up anymore. One of the sites named "Little Colorful Candies" was a tribute to the anime film Spirited Away. The best part of the site was the adoptable soot sprites (aka Susuwatari), which she drew and colored herself.

Fortunately, I have the whole set of the adoptables.

       

      

      

       

She requested that people adopting a soot ball(s) and placing them on their own websites add this button with a link in it back to the LCC site.

I'm a Toy Dropper!

I've joined The Toy Society and today I dropped my first toy. The Toy Society is a group of toy makers who leave their hand-made toys in public place for strangers to find and keep. A letter containing an explanation of The Toy Society and contact information for the group is included with the toys so strangers finding the toys can send their find stories if they want and the stories will be added to The Toy Society's blog.

A picture of the yarn doll for my first drop on a shelf in my bedroom. I wrapped a piece of cardboard with jungle-themed paper and taped the The Toy Society letter on one side and on the other side I taped a tag stating "Take Me Home, I'm Yours". When I bagged the gift-wrapped cardboard and the toy, the toy would sit right under the tag.

Dropped: Super China Buffet in Waterville, Maine

My mom and I wanted to go to Waterville for lunch at Super China Buffet (a favorite restaurant of ours. Going to Waterville is a rare treat because it's an hour drive from home) and watch Fright Night at the cinema theater a little down the road from it. I thought the Super China Buffet was a great place for my first toy drop. When we came into the restaurant, I decided right away to leave it at the vending machines when it was time to leave. After a wonderful lunch, we stopped at the vending machines to leave the toy and I took pictures of it with my digital camera. We left the restaurant and as we headed toward our car, we saw a little boy with his parents going to the restaurant's doors. In the car, we drove by the doors and the toy was still sitting among the vending machines and the family was gone. I wonder who collected it and if they'll send a message that they found it!

Last Wednesday night, I looked through all the toy drops done in the USA recorded on The Toy Society blog for Maine toy drops, which took several hours (The drops are not divided into state labeled categories. The USA has 990 toy drops today and was about a handful less on Wednesday night) The records go back to November 2008. When I finished looking through the records, I had five Maine toy drops. California and Washington are the states with the most drops (I didn't count what they had but I saw their names for drop locations far more than other states' names). In May two years ago, someone else had made their first toy drop in Waterville and the drop site was a playground.

I'll be keeping records of Maine toy drops on my blog for my interest (and the interest of anyone else who cares).

Drop #323 left at the North Street playground in Waterville on May 21, 2009

http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/2009/05/drop-323.html

Reply from finder: No

2009 Christmas Drop #177 left at a McDonald's in Winslow on December 24, 2009

http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/2009/12/09-christmas-drop-177.html

Reply from finder: Yes (http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/2010/01/found-christmas-drop-177.html)

Drop #1258 left at Buker Community Center playground in Augusta on July 3, 2010

http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/2010/07/drop-1258.html

Reply from finder: No

Drop #1362 left at the Common playground in Gardiner on August 30, 2010

http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/drop-1362.html

Reply from finder: Yes (They replied in the comments section of the toy's drop entry)

Drop #1363 left at the Lou Buker Community Center playground in Augusta on August 30, 2010

http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/drop-1363.html

Reply from finder: No

Wow! Till I made my drop, Maine hadn't seen a toy drop for a year! I can't believe there wasn't a toy drop in Maine for The Toy Society's Christmas Drop 2010 (on the last weekend before Christmas, toy makers drop their toys and hope to break the previous year's record of drops made on the last weekend before Christmas)

Chinese zodiac animals for me and my family

Dad - Horse (1955)

Mom - Dragon (1964)

Me - Ox (1985)

Brother - Horse (1990)

Sister - Goat (1991)

Return to Oz had a theme song?!

I was looking up score for the 1985 film Return to Oz on Youtube and I stumbled on a song used to promote the film in the UK. It sounds pretty cool and makes me feel nostalgic. Return to Oz is an enjoyable movie.

I also found out about a song the Scissor Sisters made using the film as an allegory for crystal meth abuse (weird). Eerie song but I like it. Here's a wonderful music video someone made with the song and video clips from the movie:

Wow! Humans can train themselves to echolocate

I found out about it today and seems most of the world already knew for a while. But I hardly watch TV so I don't catch the shows that highlight special abilities. I found out about it while looking up how bats would react if people mimicked their clicks. I end up discovering blind people can teach themselves echolocation to get around.

Disney is weird about when they want to appease soccer moms

In the 2002 film Lilo & Stitch, there's a scene with Jumba invading Lilo's house to capture Stitch. Jumba throws his open Swiss Army knife at Stitch and it stabs the back door and sticks out the other side and Pleakley who is standing outside the door shrinks his body back from the Swiss Army knife's tools. In a early version of the scene, Jumba's Swiss Army knife has sharp tools and Pleakley shrinks away from a hatchet, a syringe, and a circular saw.

But for the soccer moms, in the final version of the film Jumba's Swiss Army knife has blunt tools and Pleakley shrinks away from a toothbrush, a comb, and a tube of toothpaste.

The 2009 film The Princess and the Frog has a scene with Frog Tiana and Frog Naveen being pursued by three hillybilly men wanting to catch them for food. One man throws two handfuls of knives at Tiana and she arranges her body in a crazy pose against a tree trunk and the knives stab the bark around her and between her appendages but she's unharmed and flees.

It's as though the people scripting the scene decided "To heck with what the soccer moms would think. Let's do our way!" I couldn't help comparing this throwing knives part to the Swiss Army knife part in L&S and wonder why anyone cared to alter it for soccer moms.

Proud Owner of a Female Tauros

I've been a Pokemon fan for 12 years. In July 2009, I learned of and joined a cool website call Global Pokedex Plus, where you adopt and hatch Pokemon eggs to fill up your Pokedex (a database that records information of all the different species you've obtained). My username there is Galactic Anthem. Trying to complete the Pokedex isn't the only thing people like to do on the site. Another thing people like doing is hunt for shiny Pokemon. I have a nice collection of shiny Pokemon there and I'll post about them some other time. Shiny Pokemon have different colors than their species are usually seen with. A horse Pokemon called Ponyta has red flames covering its body but a shiny Ponyta has blue flames. Shiny Pokemon are hard to come by and highly valued. A person decides what Pokemon they want a shiny of then start obtaining and hatching eggs of that Pokemon till they hatch the shiny. The amount of eggs it takes to complete a shiny hunt is random. One person can hatch a shiny Ponyta with the first Ponyta egg and another person can hatch a shiny Ponyta from the 626th Ponyta egg. I've been on a hunt for a shiny Tauros, a bull Pokemon, since October 2009. On the 23rd of last March, I hatched a female Tauros.

(I dressed her up with flowers. ^_^)

Her personal page: http://gpxplus.net/info/fOadd

Tauros is a species that is 100% male, ask any Pokemon fan. What I had was an awesome glitch Pokemon! I kept her, named her Bertha (after Big Bertha, a black chick wearing a red outfit with spikes in the Super Mario Bros. film, who falls in love with Mario), raised her to Level 100 (the highest level a Pokemon can reach), and show her off in my signature on the Global Pokedex Plus forum, Global Trade Station Plus. She has a relaxed nature and because of that, she likes any berries people feed her. While hatched Pokemon are occupying their owner's party (the party can hold up to six Pokemon and all the other hatched Pokemon in the owner's possession are stored in boxes in the PC aka personal computer) they're fed berries by their owners and other people playing on the site to help level them up. Depending on their nature, some Pokemon prefer to be feed a specific berry and some are happy being fed any berry.

When I finally find the shiny Tauros, he's going to be Bertha's mate. I'll place them in the Daycare (a place for breeding Pokemon) and find out if they can be a breeding pair. Boy, if they're able to breed, won't people who adopt their babies be surprised when they check the heritage of the offspring and see its parents are both males and discover one male is actually female.

Want to know what my Chinese zodiac is? The ox/bull. =D