New Tags

Here are my new tags that I made for putting in my tote bags and purses. I used a custom stamp for the back and printable iron-on transfer paper for the front. This is a lot nicer looking and easier to read than the hand-stamped tags I was making. However, I am still using used light colored denim pants for the base material that these tags are printed on. I wonder what else I could stick them on...

A New "True" Home For My Totes

I have totes that I sell at craft fairs and I have totes that I sell at Underground in Smithville. Now some of my t-shirt tote bags will be at True Jersey in Tom's River. Like them on Facebook, or support their store online.

Family Friday: Beyond Batman

With the release of Batman:  The Dark Knight Rises in theaters, retailers have brought DVDs of the Batman shows that I grew up with - namely Batman:  The Animated Series and Batman Beyond - to the forefront. We snatched up Season 1 of both series. While I was watching an episode of Batman Beyond, I felt I had an insight into the tragedy at the midnight showing of  The Dark Knight Rises.

In the episode, "Golem," Willie is a picked-on kid at the high school that Terry - the new Batman - attends. After being picked-on and pushed around by a bully, Willie's frustrated dad demands, "So what are you going to do to the guy who did that to you?" "When someone pushes you, you push back," and "I'm not raisin' no wuss." When Willie asks how he should deal with it his father replies, "Hit 'em where it hurts. You figure it out." Driven over the edge by the pressure of being picked on and the added pressure from his father to do something about it, Willie steals his dad's golem - a twenty-foot tall robot that works with a human controller. Willie uses the golem to destroy the bully's most prized possession - his car. An encounter with Batman during this incident accidentally fuses Willie's mind with the robot's, making it possible for Willie to control the golem without using the remote control. This also means that when the golem gets damaged, Willie feels it. He continues to attack the local bullies and even confronts his father, throwing his taunts back in his dad's face and almost killing him when Batman intervenes. Of course, Batman saves the day and Willie ends up in a juvenile facility, but I want to focus on Willie's relationship with his father and the influence this had on Willie's actions.

 Willie's father was insistent that Willie fight back against his persecutors by any means necessary. I don't think Willie was trying to earn his father's acceptance by stealing the golem; I think he wanted to show his father how destructive he could be while taking his father at his word. So what does this have to do with the Colorado grad student who shot up a theater full of people watching The Dark Knight Rises? It goes to show the sort of familial relationships that can produce a killing mindset. We can't assume that the killer in this instance had this kind of family relationship, or even one like it, but it is worthwhile for us to think about these factors before we blame all of the killer's motivations on the movies. And of course, we must always remember that Batman himself never kills or condones killing.

Family Friday: Kids Movies That Are Actually Good For Your Kids #3 - Hoodwinked and Hoodwinked 2

Shawn got Hoodwinked 2 which caused us to go back and watch Hoodwinked. Although the movies have many similarities to the Shrek movies, I think they stand on their own very well.

In Hoodwinked, the classic story of "Little Red Riding Hood" is re-examined from the viewpoint of each character in turn:  Red, the wolf, Red's grandmother, and the woodcutter. Related to the classic scenario, is the mystery of the "goody theif." It's more fun to watch the narratives unfold by themselves, so I won't spoil that, but the movie admirably shows how, as one character puts it, "If a tree falls in the forest there will be three stories:  yours, mine, and the tree's."

Hoodwinked 2 took on the story of "Hansel and Gretel," mainly from the perspective of our main characters from Hoodwinked as they get involved in the "Hansel and Gretel Story. while Hoodwinked 2 does not look as in-depth into the fairy tale as Hoodwinked, it still produces some very satisfying twists. The main message of  Hoodwinked 2 is summed up when Red's grandmother tells her, "A person can never really fail unless they give up."  The temerity to keep trying even when things are going badly is a character trait that is badly needed among the children of this youngest generation, and even among the young people of my own generation. I have seen too many of them give up at the first sign or hint of failure as though everything should just be handed to them, and despite continuous protestations that their goals are so very important to them. I strongly believe that this tendency to give up is because members of my generation and below get discouraged when our goals aren't as easy to attain as as they seem to be "in the movies." The fact that a movie is addressing this issue is both amusing and heartening.

In addition to many references to other fairy tales, these movies give subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) nods to The Village People, XXX, Kill Bill, Terminator, Lassie, Starsky and Hutch, Don Quixote, Peanuts, Silence of the Lambs, Entrapment, Mission Impossible, Star Wars, and several others that I failed to either recognize or name. Despite this inundation of references, Hoodwinked and Hoodwinked 2 are a great pair of movies which stand well on their own story-telling merit.

Every Day I'm Stumblin'

I have been looking at how people find my posts, and it looks like people just stumble upon my page. Literally. There is a website called stumbleupon.com where you enter categories that you are interested in and the site directs you to a random site that coincides with those categories. It actually seems like a pretty cool idea for those of us looking to find sites you might never be able to find if you weren't looking for them. I wonder if posting about stumbleupon on a blog that is frequently found with stumbleupon will create a causality loop. Hmmm.....

Angry Conversations With God: A Review

I was browsing for books on world religions in my local library when I came across Angry Conversations with God:  A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir. "Well," I thought to myself, "This has got to be good." It is the story of one woman's journey towards a healthier relationship with God. In this book the author lays out her life:  the times she felt God's presence, the times she feared His absence, how she tried to coincide what she felt God wanted with what she wanted, her desperate struggle to find a church she could be comfortable in and a partner she could share her faith with, and all the ups and downs that connect those struggles.

This book resonated with my own struggles with faith and my relationship with Divinity. I smiled at a lot of instances that the author described that reminded me of my own experiences, especially the experience if trying to keep a Christian faith (or indeed any faith) as a high school and college student. Mostly, though, I cried for the author's pains especially her extraordinarily gifted description of her "Dark Night of the Soul." Now, books, movies, and television rarely engage me emotionally to the point where I would cry. Usually these media give me a more objective than subjective approach. The fact that this book touched me on such a level is the reason I would recommend it so highly. I would suggest this book to anyone who has ever felt lost from God, anyone who is looking to find their way back to God after a fallout with the church or their own faith, and anyone who believes that God has a sense of humor.

UPDATE 7/25/12:  There were a couple of thing I forgot to mention but think I should add. First, I felt as much sympathy for God as I did for the author while reading this book. Second, the book's author is Susan E. Issacs. I put that in the tags, but not everyone looks at those (including me) so I figured it should be in the body of the post just in case someone wanted taht information.

Devoted To My Craft

I haven't posted anything in about a week. This is mostly because I had a detailed commission to keep me busy. My friend is going to Otakon, and he had me make his costume. He is going as Jade Curtiss from the game, Tales of the Abyss. I have to say that I am really happy with the outcome, especially since I went from seeing the character for the first time too finished costume in only one week. I don't think I've ever done that before - usually when I make costumes they are of characters I have been familiar with for months or even years. But this turned out better that I had imagined, and he really does look impressive in it. Here's to you, Tom. Have a great time at Otakon!