Please help me to spread this video to help find Marizela Perez, a UW student that went missing last month.

There is also an event that you can attend to help raise money for the search effort. But even if you can’t go, all you have to do is simply share this video with your friends on Facebook.

Here are the details of the event:

Time: Sunday, May 8 · 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: UW Ethnic Cultural Theater 3931 Brooklyn Ave Seattle, WA

On May 8th, 2011 6:30PM
Family members of missing University of Washington student, Marizela Perez, will be holding a Benefit Open Mic Concert: Magiging Maayos at the Ethnic Cultural Theater in hopes of further funding the search.

Magiging Maayos is tagalog for “be well”, which is part of the tattoo Marizela Perez had on her arm. This concert will not only help fundraise but also spread the idea that regardless of any one person’s situation “all will be well” and we will continue to spread this information in hopes it reaches Marizela Perez and others who might need it.

Marizela Perez went missing Saturday, March 5th, 2011 and was last seen 2-3PM at the Safeway in the University District. It has been well over a month and no news of her disappearance has surfaced. The funds raised in this event will go directly into funding search teams, private investigation, and spreading the news.

The concert will have live music, spoken word, dances, and different speakers from the University of Washington Seattle Campus, but will also be open to the audience if they want to perform or say a few words. There will be a silent auction before and during the event with amazing art created by Marizela herself. Other organizations will be selling different things and a portion of their proceeds while help the Perez family. There will also be a raffle.

Doors will open at 6:30PM
The show will start at 7:00PM

The price is a sliding scale of $5-$10.

On behalf of the Perez family, we hope that you can come to this event and help support in any way possible or by inviting others to attend.

I went to Safeway the other day and bought my weekly set of groceries. As I stood in line, I heard the cashier say the following to the customer in front of me: ”Thank you Ms./Mr. (last name on the receipt). Have a good day” As common courtesy, Safeway employees are usually required to say this to every customer they ring up. As I move to the front of the line, my items are scanned and packed into plastic bags.

“Would you like help out?”

“No, thanks.” I say.

At this point, they usually grab the receipt to look at your last name so they can say, “Thank you Ms./Mr. (last name on the receipt). Have a good day” Usually, I see a look of confusion and fear as they stare at my last name. Then they say one of the following things:

• “Well have a nice day [awkward pause where they were supposed to say my last name]…Bye.”

• Thanks, Mascara.

• Thanks Maccarado.

• Thanks Mascarad.

• Or my personal favorite,the “thanksMs.madskjafsjioefaj”, where the employee mumbles that whole line, hoping I won’t notice that s/he is too nervous to try to attempt my last name.

Those are the usual situations. However, the other day, I had the pleasure of finding a cashier that understood the real meaning of customer service.

“Thank you Ms….Massacardo?”

“Mascardo.” I corrected.

“Mascardo.” he repeated. “Thanks Ms. Mascardo.”

This was probably the only time I have ever heard anyone put some effort into saying my last name.

See, I don’t care if an employee pronounces my last name wrong. That happens all the time, and it’s an understandable thing that happens. What every employee should realize is that it’s not just saying my last name that brings value to Safeway; a robot could do that. But it’s the effort they put into learning my last name and learning to say my name correctly that makes it personal.

I recently stumbled upon a site that has changed my way of searching the web: vark.com. Vark.com is a site where you can ask a question, and someone else will answer it (hopefully).

Sounds simple enough, and no, it isn’t really unique, but because there are a lot of people who use vark.com, there are a lot of people who can potentially answer your question. Also, the user interface is really simple and user-friendly compared to a lot of other sites that are of the “you-ask-someone-answers” type. I use Vark whenever I have a really specific question that I know will take forever to figure out if I search google or bing, I ask it on vark.com.

My first question was:

The downside:

• As mentioned above, sometimes, you are not able to get prompt answers. As you saw above, it took 5 minutes to get the first answer, and an hour before the second answer came in.
• If you don’t like that google is acquiring way too many companies, then you won’t like that Google has acquired vark.com.
• Also, sometimes you get answers like this:

I think John P. is a blah blah blah blah.

Thanks for answering my question when you didn't have an answer.

"Hahaha" is probably not a good way to start when you're answering someone's question.

Thanks, Goo. That was SO rude.

image from You’re Not Special Because  (and she wrote a blog entry on black leggings as well. A lot more descriptive than I could ever be at describing the look.)

First of all, I am NOT talking about girls who wear black tights and have a shirt that is long enough to cover their rear ends and their frontal region. That seems okay with me (notice the lack of hearty agreement).

I am talking to the girl who wears black tights in REPLACEMENT of pants: I have very disturbing news for you.

Jabornix_5 explains:

If you want to see more on this creepy reddit conversation, click on the "explains" link.

Now you know the creepers come out to play when you wear black leggings as pants. Hope that was some food for thought for all of you women that do this.

I have also witnessed a girl wearing black-leggings-as-pants trip. And what do you know, I got to see all of her back-end through the thin fabric. It was not sexy.

If you don’t believe that guys think of girls who wear leggings as pants in this way, please google “girls in yoga pants”. I will not link it here since I don’t want to give the site more traffic via my site (it is almost soft porn. Ew).

Black Leggings = Trendy, but Not Equal to Good Fashion

I understand that what is trendy in fashion changes a lot, but I don’t think this “black leggings as pants” thing is cute at all. I know that most women wear them because they’re easy to put on, slimming, comfortable and it can easily match with almost any top you have on. But I do know that when something is trendy, it becomes thoughtless. “Thoughtless” because everyone does it just to fit in with the trend. No, I am not a someone who dresses really well, or someone who knows fashion very well, but “thoughtless” isn’t exactly what I think of when I think of good fashion.

What do you think?

I totally forgot to introduce my new blog header! It’s Roy Lichtenstein’s “girl with hair ribbon”. Although the title has the originality of a newly named method in accounting (+5 accounting nerd points), I think this was a perfect picture for my blog. There’s nothing more geeky than comic books, and Lichtenstein’s pop art paintings set the standard for comic book art.

Here are some of the other Lichtenstein paintings that thought would work as a blog header:

“Hopeless”

This picture is also known by the title "Wahh wahh wahh!!!"

As much as I like the art, I really didn’t the gloomy atmosphere it creates. “It’s hopeless!” she thinks, as her tears began to fall from her eyes. Sorry, Hopeless, you are out of luck.  You are too gloomy.  “Gloomy” is not the kind of atmosphere I want to evoke to my readers. I was thinking more along the lines of “Insane Clown Posse”, black nail polish, and black eyeliner. (Lots of black eyeliner.)

“Modern Room”

Mao, Mao, Mao. You can never get enough of him.

Lichtenstein’s Room series is my favorite art series. What I love the about the paintings is the simplicity of the objects and colors, and the use of patterns as a texture. Plus, it makes me want a creepy picture of Mao in my room.

“In the Car”

"I don’t give a crap if you run anyone over. Just get me there, because I freakin’ deserve it."

I’m trying to figure out other sophisticated reasons I could give to you, dear reader, on why I picked this painting other than the actual reason I picked it: it reminds me of the scandalous Mrs. Robinson, a character in my favorite movie, The Graduate.  The leopard skin coat and the way she holds herself screams, “I don’t give a crap if you run anyone over. Just get me there, because I freakin’ deserve it.” And that’s the only reason I like this picture. The end. You can leave now.

It has taken me a long time (years) to find a grammar checking tool as advanced and as accurate as After the Deadline. As you all probably know, my grammar isn’t the goodest.

As a side story, I’ve put off the launch of my blog (launched in ’09) in grave fear that I would not be able to recover if my blog writing were to be attacked by a Grammar Nazi. Because it’s such a great tool, After the Deadline has helped me cope with that fear, for the most part.

One really helpful thing about After the Deadline is that it really helps me to recognize and fix the passive voice within my writing as it gives explanations whenever it finds a grammar error.

Here is a quick demo (please note that it is not limited to checking grammar on wordpress.):  

The downside: It doesn’t work in Microsoft Word. But it does work on Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, and pretty much all popular websites where you can write text. (I guess the only way you can get your grammar checked in Microsoft Word is by copying the text from your word document and pasting it into a website text box.)

And, like all grammar tools, it is never 100% accurate at all times. But overall, it has helped me to improve my grammar! Which I think makes it a great grammar tool. Thanks, After the Deadline. You helps me writes gooder. =)

After the Deadline is FREE. And you can download it here.

One of the most dramatic and emotional scenes I have ever seen on a video game was watching Aeris die in Final Fantasy VII. I found a well-written wikipedia article on the creators of the game and their thought process regarding her death:

“In early planning stages of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith was to be one of only three protagonists. Before this, Kitase and Nomura decided that one character would have to die, and after creating the three characters, decided on Aerith after a long debate. Nomura stated in a 2005 Electronic Gaming Monthly interview: “Cloud’s the main character, so you can’t really kill him. And Barrett… [sic] well, that’s maybe too obvious”. This was not changed after other protagonists were created.^[12] While designing Final Fantasy VII, Tetsuya Nomura was frustrated with the “perennial cliché where the protagonist loves someone very much and so has to sacrifice himself and die in a dramatic fashion to express that love”. He found that this appeared in both films and video games from North America and Japan. “Is it right to set such an example to people?”^[13]

Kitase concludes:

In the real world things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, ‘If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.’ These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith’s death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood. (Yoshinori Kitase, Edge, May 2003^[13])

 

While reflecting on the game, Tetsuya Nomura claims that “Death should be something sudden and unexpected, and Aerith’s death seemed more natural and realistic”, and “When I reflect on Final Fantasy VII, the fact that fans were so offended by her sudden death probably means that we were successful with her character. If fans had simply accepted her death, that would have meant she wasn’t an effective character.”^[12]

Take a look at some of the holidays for March:

Unfortunately, “Everything You Do Is Right Day” did not fall on one of my Finals.

National Goof Off Day is Everyday for me.

Fat Tuesday? Ash Wednesday! No, this is not something special to this calendar, I just wanted to point out the hilarity of the two “holidays” next to each other.

The King of all holidays on this calendar. Proof that this calendar ran out of ideas for all of the holidays (there are more holidays on the calendar than there are normal non-holiday days) they had “planned” for the year.

My birthday is “National Chocolate Eclair Day”.

Seriously? Seriously.

Best Calendar Ever.

A slideshow of my very first Emerald City Comicon!

I bought a 3-day pass to Comicon for my boyfriend, Nomar, as an early birthday present. When I bought the tickets, I had no idea what to expect, and actually thought that I wouldn’t have a good time. However, I had a BLAST and am still having ECCC withdrawals. Come back…! Come back…! I miss you ECCC.

The highlight was definitely meeting Felicia Day and Amy Okuda on Saturday. It was my first meet and greet, and I was nervous because I had no idea what to say to them.

By the time I got in front of the line, I got so nervous and excited that I totally neglected my boyfriend (Sorry, Nomes!).

What was so great about the meet and greet is that both Amy Okuda and Felicia Day actually wanted to converse with us, which I did not expect. I don’t remember what I said to them, but I do remember Nomar standing in the back awkwardly (since he didn’t pay for the meet and greet) when Felicia Day asked me,

“Uh. Who’s that?”

I responded, “Oh! That’s my boyfriend.”

She said, “Oh, hello boyfriend!” and shook his hand.

Then I also remember her asking us how we met, and we awkwardly responded “eHarmony” at the same time as a total joke, but Amy Okuda and Ms. Day nodded their heads with a smile on their face that really looked like, “Oh that’s…interesting” (which is a look we are used to and receive all the time). After seeing this look on their faces, we quickly tried to deny that we met through eHarmony, and at this point we looked so nervous and awkward that I think that they believed that we actually met through an internet dating site, but were too embarrassed to admit.

At this point, I thought we had to leave the table, when Felicia said,”Oh you know, I actually have a few friends that have met through online dating sites.” I’m not sure if she said it out of pity and totally made it up just to make us feel better.

Overall, they both were very sweet and were absolutely gorgeous. I enjoyed being in their presence for the awkward 3 minutes (on our part) that we were there.

Overall, the total experience was amazing. I had an absolute blast, and am totally kicking myself for not going earlier.

Jane Park, CEO of Julep Nail Parlor, and beauty expert, blogged about her regret about the health of her skin:

“So I am slathering on SPF – more seriously on days I am outside most of the day (55 on days I’m out in the snow in Sun Peaks) and just built-in SPF everyday (15 to 30 everyday even though I live in Seattle). If there’s one thing I wish I had done earlier in my life it’s using SPF. Yes, I didn’t wash my face religiously in my 20s, but that doen’t have a lasting impact. Failure to use sunscreen does.”

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “It’s never sunny here!”,”What about winter! The sun’s never out.”, and “I’m never on a beach. Why would I wear sunscreen all the time?!”

It must mean something if a beauty expert like Jane Park tells us it’s something she wished she had done.

I’ve used Neutrogena’s “Ultra Sheen” for a while, and I really like it so far. Yes, it still kind of feels and smells like sun block, but it’s a lot lighter than other “sunblock lotions” that I’ve tried.

I don’t remember how much it cost to pick one up, but I see on various sites that the 3 oz. bottle is under $10. Pick one up today and protect yourself from the sun.