This question is, “If you were to put some items in a time capsule, what would you choose and why?”  And here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puPConUaVDo

The point of a time capsule is to open it up later and remember something from that time period, right?  So if it’s just a personal time capsule, I would want to put in things that remind me of myself as I am today.

One thing I always enjoy looking back on are papers I’ve written for school and drawings I’ve done [during class].

My mom has kept a story I wrote in first grade about how an impostor Santa was stealing everyone’s presents and how I had to arrest him.  The teacher told her that everyone else wrote about eating turkey and visiting relatives and opening presents, but my Christmas story was actually a story, and that blew her mind.  So it’s nice to remember I was awesome in every way (except for athletically) even as a child.

And as for drawings, I’ve loved drawing ever since the third grade.  I loved Dragonball Z back then, and a fifth grader at my afterschool daycare showed me how to draw Super Saiyan hair one day.  I thought I was sooo good, and I still do.  For some reason, I’ve got a perpetually huge artistic ego.  But when I look back at stuff I’ve done just a year before, it’s always crap.  I’m always at the top of my game, I guess.  Anyway, it’d be nice to know that the trend is continuing and that I’m still the best at drawing everything, ever, ever.

Just 13 minutes left.  I think I can squeeze one or two more in!

And the question is, “What do you need to do to feel happy before you die?”  Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjarKFTszGM

One thing I mentioned in the previous post is that I have an extreme fear of heights.  In fact, just a few months ago, it worsened.

I was cleaning some really high windows around the Jimmy John’s I work at, standing on top of a tall ladder which was set at the top of a hill leading down to the street.  It was very high.  And while I was on my tiptoes scrubbing the grime off of the highest windows, the ladder tipped over.  For the first time in my adult life, I audibly screamed.  I landed on my feet, but the ladder toppled down the hill.  That could have been me….  Anyway, cleaning high windows is not on my bucket list.

What is on it, though, is conquering my fear of heights.  I want to go skydiving.  In fact, I would be achieving both that item on my list and my death itself, because my ideal way to die is voluntarily not pulling the chute during a skydive.  Don’t ask me why I’m contemplating suicide, but I really feel the poeticism (which is now a word) of conquering my fear at the same instance as my death.  I’d probably chicken out, but yeah, that’s definitely the main thing I want to do before I die.

I would go on, but I’ve already hit 250 words, and I’ve only got 25 minutes left!  On to the next half-blog.

The question is, “What did you really want to do as a child but couldn’t because you weren’t old enough?”  Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3ES5pi9DhE

The answer is, “Ride some of the cooler roller coasters.”

My family is one of late bloomers.  In addition to this, I was born in August, the latest possible month to still get into school when you’re 4 years old, and I skipped a grade, so I was way behind my friends.  I didn’t hit my growth spurt until I was late into my sophomore year of high school.  That meant that whenever I went to Six Flags Over Texas, all of my friends got to go on the cool rides and I was stuck on the baby ones.  We always split up by the end of the day, so unless I was always with my family, I didn’t have a whole lot of fun.

Ironically, now that I’m big and mature enough to go on all of the cool rides, I’ve also gained an intense fear of heights and don’t really want to ride roller coasters anymore.

Okay, throw in some hyperlinks, a picture and… this blog is done!  On to the next.

The Challenge:

Make a painting.

It’s the Valentine’s Day card from my previous blog!  If you want to actually give it to somebody, fold it backwards hamburger style and then fold it again forwards into a working card.

I “painted” the bottom-right picture in about a half-hour and stol- …er, borrowed-without-asking the cover drawing from this guy.  (I found it on Google.)   It’s digital, obviously.  If I had done it by hand, it’d be a lot more detailed.  Feel free to buy me a Cintiq to bridge the gap.

The Blog:

How do I relieve stress?

If you haven’t noticed, I’m a huge nerd, so the answer is “video games” by default.  The biggest stress reliever in my arsenal of games would probably be Counter Strike: Source.  Shooting others in the head always lets off steam and anxiety.  …unless I’m losing, and then I just get angrier.

Also, movies.  I love Westerns and those classic black and white samurai movies.  Recommendations: High Plains Drifter, Sanjuro, Netflix.  As for shows, I’m a big fan of Dexter, and I’ve just started getting into Heroes.

And if I’m still not relaxed after all of that, I might take a couple of shots of tequila, enough to loosen up, and go drunk-post on forums and Facebook.

Lots of hyperlinks this post, but that’s all.  See you next time!

In this post, I’ll be making a fake front page of a newspaper, and then answering some rapid-fire questions.  Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4DfW7DGK8c

The Challenge:

Well, I was really told to act as a newscaster and report my own made up current event.  That doesn’t really work as a blog, but hey! the wacky translations are part of the fun of this thing!

So I decided to make the front page of a fictional newspaper.  Here ye go:

The picture is from that old movie The Birds.  I haven’t seen it, but it’s in my Netflix queue.

Honestly, I’m not too happy with what I came up with.  I could have made it look more like a real newspaper, maybe made the article more ridiculous, maybe not misspelled a ton of words, but whatever.  (The best part is the story behind the idea.  A few years ago, in high school, I convinced a pretty gullible girl that seagulls were attacking yellow things.  I told her it was because they were becoming racist against another kind of bird, but that they were too dumb to tell the difference between a bird and a bus.  She believed every word of it.  I used to think I was a really good liar back then, but now I realize that it was just because I was surrounded by lots of  semi-dumb people.  I kind of miss it, though.  In college, it’s much harder to fool someone.)

The Blog:

Rapid-fire questions, GO!

• Favorite food: fried dumplings.
• Color of my room: lightish blue…?
• Have I ever dyed my hair: no, but I was bright blonde until second grade and now I’m light brown.  Go figure.
• Favorite childhood toy: this monster truck that you charged up by pulling a chord on its back, and then you hit a button and it zoomed off.
• Favorite piece of clothing: Corona pajama pants.
• Would I rather be in pics or take them: take them.
• Favorite board game: my group actually made a board game called Zombie Easter Egg Hunt about a month ago for a class, and it’s pretty awesome.
• What is the best season: Fall/Autumn.
• Make up a scat: Scooby Dooby Doo-wop.  ‘S the best I got.

(By the way, I would totally embed them for you, but WordPress makes it turn invisible, then disappear from the post altogether every time I try.  :C )

(Also, I’ve got about 15 more blogs to do in the next week and a half, so expect much more frequent updates!)

The Challenge:

I must drop an egg from the height of a fridge, protecting it only by 15 straws, 10 popsicle sticks, and 1 meter of tape.

Straws are softer than sticks.  So to start, I made a triangular prism cage of straws for the egg.  Then I made an outer cage of popsicle sticks.  Then I ran out of tape and shoved all of the remaining materials into the structure randomly.  Then I dropped it from the fridge.  The egg lived.

Ugh, it was just a huge mess.  I took way too long, and I just gave up on neatness and perfectness by the end of it, as you can see:

TheBlog:

What is your earliest memory?

My earliest memory is from when I was a small child, somewhere around one year old.  I shared a room with my sister, and I slept in a wooden crib.  Well one day, I discovered that I could take off the giant wooden knob at the end of one of the crib posts.  I thought to myself, “This is cool, but I’m going to save it for later,” so I put it back on.

Just a few minutes later (which is a fairly long time to a baby), my sister got into her bed a few feet away, getting ready to go to sleep.  I did the most logical thing the situation presented; I removed the knob and threw it as hard as I could at my sister’s head.  I hit her and she screamed.  I got in trouble and I screamed.

This story may sound horrible, but thinking back, my only wish is that I were conscious enough to have savored that moment.  My sister was wretched to me all the way up to my early teens, so the act was more like pre-vengeance than naughtiness.

In this post, I’ll be making a food from 15 ingredients, and then eating it.  Oh, and having a nice little nerdboy rant at the end, because I haven’t had one of those in a while.  Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lBpsjHdqXw

The Challenge:

Make a food using at least 5 of these 15 ingredients plus one bonus ingredient: eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, beef, pork, chicken, fish, soy substitute, onion, garlic, potato.

I bolded the ones I used and my bonus ingredient was cheese.  I made an omelet!  Here are some pictures.

First, I buttered a pan.  Then I whipped some eggs with a fork, but I really suck at that so there’s still some of those clear, floaty mucus things in there (eggs are sick).  I dumped it into the pan on very low, and started slicing up some of that cheap sandwich ham into little rectangles.  I scrambled the egg for a while, and put a crapload of grated cheese into it.  When the cheese-egg was almost done, I dropped in the ham and finished her off.  Afterwards, I dropped it on a plate and salted, peppered, and onion-powdered it.

Then I ate it.

It was delightful!  I think if I had chopped up some real onion and used that instead, and maybe added a tiny bit of garlic, it’d have been better.  Also, less cheese.  I really love cheese, but that was still way too much cheese.  Normally, I’m terrible with eggs, always scorching them and ending up with tons of burnt egg skin instead of anything edible.  But this time, I took some advice from a friend and cooked it on the lowest stove setting.  Even though it took like 20 minutes, it worked very well.  But enough of this serious talk!  Let’s get to the blog.

The Blog:

That dude forgot to give a topic.  So Ima make my own!  “What really grinds your gears?  Briefly rant about something.”

What really been grindin’ my gears, you ask?  Aside from the obvious Ungratefulness of Cats, Suckiness of Non-caffeinated Drinks, and Everything Political, it’s got to be people that sell you sh*t that doesn’t work, specifically console-to-PC games.

A year and a half’ish ago, I bought Prototype for the PC.  It was an incredibly fun game, even if the graphics were a bit dated.  But it crashed every 1-5 minutes!  I tried every online solution, updated all of my drivers, made sure my computer was well above the requirements for the game, did everything I could but nothing was fixing the problem.  Finally, I found out that it was because I didn’t have DirectX 10, which you can only get if you have Vista (because Windows 7 wasn’t out yet).  I have XP.  But the requirements said that you could have DirectX 9 on the game!  That really pisses me off, like, really bad.  It was a 50 dollar game.

And now the exact same thing is happening with Fallout 3 GotY edition.  Another 50 dollars of my somewhat-hard earned money down the drain.  I have to buy a new operating system to play games that the vendors told me I could play on what I have.  Crooks, that’s what they are.  Grumble grumble grumble.

Well, that’s it for this one.  I promise I won’t rant again.  There’s plenty of that stuff on the internet as it is, I know. Later!

This one’s challenge is a double.  First, I’ve got to Photoshop two celebrities together to make what their baby would look like.  Then I’ve got to make the perfect Valentine’s Day card.  For the blog, I’ve got to define “love”.  Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6TU8nqm-D8

The Challenge (1):

I’ve got to combine two celebrities’ pictures to make a picture of what their baby would look like.

But I’m going to cheat for this one.  I made this picture a long time ago for a thread on the Lionhead Community Forums.  It’s Peter Molyneux‘s and Yoda’s baby.  I call him Peter Molyoda.

I’ve got a bunch more Petes in that thread, if you want to take a look.  (Here’s the link again.)

The Challenge (2):

Now I’ve got to make the perfect Valentine’s Day card, including a rhyme.  I’m not in a position to physically make a card at the moment, but here’s what it’d be.

On the cover, it’d have a T-rex charging at you.  On the inside, it’d show a T-rex spinning his toes in the dirt shyly with gore hanging from his mouth.  Here’s the text on the inside:

Roses are red,

Livers are blue;

I’m a T-rex,

I want to eat you.

^heart

I’m hoping it’s just ridiculous enough that it travels past the line of tastelessness and into antihumor.

The Blog:

Finally, I’ve got to define love.

I have no idea.  I do know that the Romans had four different words for love.  They went something like family love, friend love, intimate love, and probably something else.  If I were to look it up, that’d feel dishonest.  Also, I’m too lazy.

But I’ve only ever felt family and friend love.  I’ve never loved anyone intimately, and I assume that this is the kind of love – the kind pertaining to Valentine’s Day – that I have been asked to define.  I suppose the best I can do is regurgitate something I’ve heard somewhere else, among the dozens of other cliches.  This one makes the most sense to me: You know you love someone when you can’t imagine your life without them.

Alternatively, Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Ugly.

Challenge:

[Workin' on a magazine ad (aka 'advert').]

Blog:

When I was a kid, my best friend Jordan and I would meet up at the stop sign between our houses and start walking to the “Little Store.”  We’d always take the extremely long and fun way and go through the local ditch instead of by the roads.  When we got there, we’d each buy a Red Fusion and some other candy or chips, and then eat it while we walked back.

Now Red Fusion got discontinued just a few years later, so I couldn’t drink it today to recall those memories, but I can tell that the taste is closely tied to them.  Recently, Dr. Pepper came out with Cherry Dr. Pepper, which is almost like Red Fusion, but not really.  I remember trying to make it one time by pouring the juice from Maraschino Cherries into a Dr. Pepper and ruining it.  I really long for it.  If I had a time machine, a case of it would probably be the second thing I snatched, the first being a lazer gun from the future.

Welcome back to another long-overdue edition of BlogCandy, the blog adaptation of the popular YouTube channel, VlogCandy!  In this blog, the challenge I’ve been tasked with is to make a Rube Goldberg machine.  After that, I’ll be blogging about any ol’ dream I can remember.  Here’s the old video.

The Challenge: Rube Goldberg Machine

A Rube Goldberg Machine is an over-engineered machine that takes many different actions to achieve a very simple goal. (Paraphrased.) Honestly, I just slapped stuff together until it was a machine. In the end, I delivered a dog treat to a dog from four feet away! I know, I know, it’s very impressive. But I discovered afterwards that it would actually have been possible to simply toss it the distance to the dog instead of building any kind of machine. Oh well. It starts with an army man sliding down a thread while carrying a marble. When he stops, the marble falls into a funnel. The funnel delivers the marble on top of an envelope which tips over. The envelope acts as a ramp and rolls a tank over to the treat. The tank knocks the treat into a bag on a string. The bag on a string slowly descends and delivers the treat to the waiting dog. (Or it would if dogs could reach into bags.) Here are some pictures. The whole thing lasted only a few seconds even though it took an hour and a half to build. Pretty disappointing, but I’m still pretty proud of it because I did it myself. Also, it gave me a chance to play with army men, and that’s always a plus in my book.

The Blog: A dream

One dream I remember very well was from when I was about five years old.  I was really into the Batman movies at the time and I was having a lot of trouble with my Kindergarten teacher in school.  Lava was also fascinating (and still is, by the way!).  So throw those ingredients into a pot and you get this weird nightmare!

In this dream, I was in a small classroom, sitting near the front.  There was an old man professor at front of the room lecturing about something, and he had a bucket sitting on a table in front of him.  Catwoman was sitting a few rows behind me and I had a crush on her, so I wasn’t really listening and kept looking back at her.  Well, the professor got mad at me and started yelling at me for not paying attention.  But, in the process, he knocked over the bucket with his arm.  Endless amounts of lava started pouring out of it!

Everyone ran outside, and the classroom’s location was revealed.  We were in a portable about a hundred yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon (with no other buildings in sight)!  Everyone ran left away from the lava, but I went straight to the Canyon’s edge like an idiot.  I was pinned between falling to my death and getting burned by the fast-approaching pool of lava.  So I lept off of the edge!  I fell for a long time down into the Canyon, and just before I hit the ground, I woke up.

So where did all that imagination go?  Now I only dream about car accidents and homework.  Being a grown-up is really lame.

Well, that’s all for this blog, guys.  If you noticed, I skipped Challenge #4.  I’m actually saving that one as I think I’m going to make an omelet or something.  I’m terrible at cooking eggs, so it should be interesting.  Thanks for reading!