mcboing_boing

As one of my readers pointed out the other day, Up is not the first Pixar movie to receive the happy-face treatment.  Here we see the original Toy Story poster on the left, and the DVD cover on the right.  In the first, Woody looks frightened and mistrustful of the cocky, headstrong Buzz -- rightfully so, as their relationship is the central drama of the narrative.  But in the second image, Woody looks like the secrets of the universe are being revealed to him.  He's not just happy to be carried off by Buzz, he's positively ecstatic.  Woody apparently has no problems at all in the DVD version of this movie.  (The army men have also been included in the fun.)


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Old-timers like me can remember back to the dark ages of 1990, when Ivan Reitman's Kindergarten Cop came out.  The posters for Kindergarten Cop featured star Arnold Schwarzenegger enduring the enthusiastic attention of a bunch of five-year-olds.  The joke was clear: the Terminator can travel through time and walk through explosions, but a bunch of five-year-olds is a little too much for him.

Then something strange happened: a few weeks into the run of Kindergarten Cop, the posters suddenly changed -- the "overwhelmed" Arnold became the "beaming" Arnold.  I remember clearly, I was living in New York, and all through the subways the Kindergarten Cop posters suddenly went from funny to not-funny.  Arnold overwhelmed by children is funny, Arnold proudly hoisting kids is not.

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renaissance2010
Turning to photography as a creative outlet during a valiant fight with breast cancer at age 34, renaissance10 survived and set up a photo contest to help raise funds for the Lavender Trust, a nonprofit that provides information and support to younger women with breast cancer. In the first two years, the competition brought in over £65,000 (that's $107,260.73 U.S.!), with entries from 130 countries last year. Renaissance10 recently joined LiveJournal to meet other passionate photographers and find supportive friends.

curiouscupcakes
Holy buttercream frosting! If you have a sweet tooth for sugary goodness or a wandering eye for whimsical confection, this is pure ecstasy iced in deliciousness. Hailing the beloved cupcake as the artisinal canvas of choice, you'll enjoy recipes, photos, and bountiful tips to bake up a batch, whether your taste leans toward French classics or funky and flavorful.

mission101
With New Years in the offing, it's an ideal time to reflect on past accomplishments, make peace with disappointments, and refocus the lens on future goals. This community welcomes you to create a bucket list of 101 things you plan to accomplish in the next 1,001 days. Offering support, guidance, and inspiration, this is a great way to jumpstart those pesky resolutions.

(sorry for the slight mumbo-jumbo. had trouble posting this Poll in my previous entry...)

~ 'Yuuwaku'
~ 'Migwawari'
~ 'Meisai'
~ 'Hyakki Yakou'
~ 'Mezameru Maeni'

Poll #1503836
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 933

Which image would you like to see as the next Time Limited Print Sale?

It is time for the 3rd Time Limited Print Sale!!!
(the first was back in 07' for 'Mizuame'.)
(and the second one in 08' for 'Two Sisters'.)

This is a type of sale where the print will be available for exactly one hour,
and ANYONE who clicks the button during that time will be guaranteed a print.
(the edition size will be much larger than usual of course.)

The sale will most likely happen in mid-January.

i cant seem to post the POLL on to this entry.
so please see the newest entry to vote in the poll.

unfortunately if you do not have a Live Journal account, it doesn't let you click,
but feel free to leave a comment and will count those in.
Thankyou so much!!!

~ 'Yuuwaku'
~ 'Migwawari'
~ 'Meisai'
~ 'Hyakki Yakou'
~ 'Mezameru Maeni'

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Merry Christmas everyone!

Peace on Earth, good will to humanity.

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Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

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So, the hits just keep on coming this December. During Saturday's snowstorm an NYC Sanitation Truck smacked a utility pole across the street from our house, yanking out our power line. Miraculously, our power remained on, unfortunately, this happened at 2 am and kept us up until after 6 am, with cameos from the Fire Department, Con Ed, a Sanitation Dept Supervisor, and an earth mover to clear snow so the Con Ed truck could manage the hill and get the power line repaired. One idiot in a truck managed to hit the power line, ignoring the truck guarding it (also, stuck in the ice). I found myself clearing our steps at 5 am with a gardening shovel, because, oh ha ha, we had no shovel, stupid me forgot pours broke last year and we hadn't replaced it. I didn't want the Con Ed worker falling down the steps as the firemen and I had (I hit my head on the downed power line retaining box twice, but didn't get any electrical super powers. No luck, I tell you). So, fun up the ass, there, just as Sarah's root canal pain died down and a few family-spawned nightmares developed.

Further fun -- I couldn't get out of here on Sunday because of the snow, and had to make do with the gardening shovel to clear our walk. My back is now spasming like a worm orgy on a white-hot skillet as a result of the weekend, and my arms feel like someone played Stretch Armstrong with them, forgetting they aren't rubber. You know those cartoonists who hit the wights and are in great shape? All dozen or three of them? I'm not one of them. As it pained me to realize, yet again. Fucking ouch, man. Fucking ouch.

And yesterday - some scumbag parks his car in front of our cleared garage and goes to work, leaving the car for at least ten hours. So, we couldn't get our car out of the garage. And if you're familiar with Satan Island (my sympathies), you need your car if you have plans. Called 311, no help. I did get to shovel some more with the glorified two-handed spade. Why didn't I write a note last year: "Shovel broken. You live in NYC. Might need another one. Seriously, consider buying a new shovel."?

And today -- well, we found out we're writing a good-sized check tomorrow,  to an electrician, to fix the damage to the house and power lines. And we're putting in a claim for the damage with the city. But even if we get the money quickly (ha ha), this is a seriously big swift kick in the teeth, after several swift shots to the head and kidneys this year. We simply cannot catch a fucking break. I was going to say at least we have our health, but...that's kind of debatable. At least our daughter has her health. There. Good.

In other news:

I'll be on SLG Radio tomorrow, Wednesday, at 5 pm EST instead of Thursday. Dan Vado and I will yell at one another for an hour about whatever the hell crops up. Maybe I'll throw myself off a building during the podcast, that might actually get a few listeners to the archives.

Beasts of Burden #4 ships tomorrow to various comic shops. And then we're done, at least for now. My thanks to everyone out there who picked up the series, gave it a try, gave it some ink or helped spread the word online. It's all been appreciated. This really has been a pet project of mine (sorry), and the response from the readers has been incredibly gratifying. If all goes well, we hope to have some good news on further material sometime next year, fingers crossed. And we'll definitely have a collection of the first 8 stories out mid-2010. I think Jill and I made some good comics, I really do. I hope we get to make some more. Hope #4 works okay for you folks who will be picking it up, thanks again.

This decade can't end soon enough. Honestly.

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Here's an hour-long, enjoyably digressive podcast I did with Ken Plume.