So I started watching Avatar (the first series), which is basically amazing. My favorite thing about it (besides how fun and relaxing it is, how vibrant and detail-laden the animation, character development like whoa) are all the crazy hybrid animals! There's no normal wildlife in the series. Instead there are eel hounds ("Nothing runs faster over land or swims quicker than a giant eel-hound."), dragon hawks, badger moles, and of course the main character's six-legged flying bison. The animals are completely incidental to the plot or the setting - the creators could just as easily have used regular dogs and ponies, maybe a magical animal sidekick or two thrown in there. Instead they choose to populate the backdrop with awesomeness, just because they can and it's fun. That's exactly the attitude that makes this show so great.

Even when I enjoy a show, though, I find that I tend to get super judgmental about what kind of "message" it's sending - especially kid's shows. Sometimes I feel like people (read: me) have these beliefs that they only hold from absorbing them from media and from being being surrounded by people who grew up watching the same shows, consuming the same stories. Sometimes I'll realize that something I think is really unreasonable, and then I'll wonder where I got that from, and I'll blame TV (which is maybe another unreasonable attitude I hold). So I try to think a lot about 1) why I believe the things I believe, and 2) whether I should believe that or not.

( minor spoilers a possibility )

Whenever the Random shirts come up at Shirt.Woot!, I'm always strangely tempted. For background, Shirt.Woot usually supplies a daily interesting shirt of original design ($12 apiece, after the recent price hike), but every so often, to clear out the old warehouses, they put up a blurry question mark and invite you to pay $6.66 to receive some leftover shirt that you don't get to pick.

Somehow, despite having seen each of these shirts the day it went up, and having decided not to buy it even when I could guarantee what I'd be getting, the shirts suddenly look super tempting when I don't get to pick which one they send me. Maybe not being able to select the shirt is part of the appeal - we're all familiar with the paradox of choice. Maybe the risk of getting a bad shirt makes the good shirts look better by comparison. Maybe the mystery, the surprise, makes it seem more like a present instead of a purchase. Either way, I went in for 3.

( I am a very rational human being )

So there's this cartoon I used to watch when I was little (4-5 years old). It's tough to describe because not only is it in Chinese, but a lot of the elements in it are not really things that you encounter in the US. For example, even the title is hard to explain unless you know what a HuLu is.

( also pictures to explain )

Guys. I just cried for a solid 135 minutes. I'm not talking "ah, ahem, it's a little... dusty in here, isn't it," covert brushing away wetness in the eye. The tears were literally pouring down my face most of the way through.

So the movie in question is Aftershock, a Chinese film about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. If you read the description it sounds like some hokey tear-jerker, but it was actually so delicately told. The acting, the storytelling were both so subtle for the most part that when it came to the really dramatic, breast-beating grief, no part of me was able to scoff and resist the urge to cry along with.

( musing on difference between Chinese stories and Western stories )

In other news, I now have a headache from crying so much. Going to go take out my contacts and put them in this contraption.

You may not know this, but I am currently embroiled in a lengthy battle with the DMV. It's called, "I can't even tell what you want from me anymore, ugh, ugh, here is my credit card if that helps." ( all my entries are, like, so whatever these days )