I don’t have insomnia. I have LOVE IN MY SOUL!

Life ______ sweeter when ___ like ________. :) HA! :D I won’t indulge any further. READ ON ANYWAY!

I had a [BS] self-portrait assignment for my lighting class and this is what I submitted. I hate taking self-portraits and I know that if I had told my teacher that, he’d make up something from the bottom of his heart and say that taking self-portraits is just another step in becoming a better photographer. Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, this was fun to do becuase I used the ring flash for the first time. It adds a nice little depth shadow all around the entire subject. Neat, eh?

My cousins have this really cool ice scream scoop that’s entirely one piece and made of steel (or some kind of metal). All the ice cream scoops we always get suck and never scoop very well, but that solid piece ice cream scoop my cousins have is awesome. I never see them on sale anywhere, so I did a search and found out that several companies make ice cream scoops like that (not to mention also that eBay has a good collection of them on sale…but new is always better).
By the way, Amazon.com had a few ice cream scoops too, but some of them were just too weird to consider purchasing. But the Zeroll company scoops look promising and plain. :)

The New York Times has a fascinated article shedding a bit of light on the apparent rise in female criminals and the justice system.

If Ariel had committed the same act 15 years ago, the chances are better that the police would have directed the brunt of their questions at her boyfriend. That approach has changed. According to a study last year by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, girls no longer appear to be getting the free ride in the city’s juvenile justice system that they once did.

In 2005, girls like Ariel accounted for 20 percent of all youths entering the city’s detention centers, compared with just 11.3 percent in 1990. With this rise — to a total of 1,037 girls in 2005 — has come a jump in the number of girls dispatched from detention centers to longer-term juvenile facilities, like the Lansing Residential Center, an institution near Ithaca where Ariel spent 18 months.

Experts attribute the increase to a variety of factors, including quality-of-life crackdowns, zero-tolerance policies in schools and bad-girl images in the media. While some people suggest that female delinquency is on the rise, most experts say it is simply that such behavior is finally getting noticed.

“The assumption in the old days was, especially if girls committed masculine-type offenses, that they really couldn’t have done these things — so we kind of let them go,” said Meda Chesney-Lind, a co-author of “Girls, Delinquency, and Juvenile Justice” (Wadsworth Publishing, 2003) and a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “We didn’t ever build the juvenile justice system for girls.”

I wonder what it’ll be like to raise kids in NYC. I mean, I was raised in NYC, but I was also partially raised in Miami, so that’s not 100% here. Anyway, can’t wait to have a kid so I can experiment with that. Haha, JUST KIDDING. Just kidding…

Speaking of Miami, Mayor Bloomberg was apparently down in Miami last week trying to see how he can implement Miami’s bus-only lane for NYC. I lived in Miami when they built those bus-only lanes and I still think they’re a good idea gone stupid. Plus, where in NYC are you gonna make space for a bus-only lane?

Oh wow, is Rachel Ray really going to be the new face of Dunkin Donuts? That’s kinda cool. I like her. More here.

Random #1: Oh wow! Creative made a very pretty iPod boombox.

Random #2: Zooey Deschanel is pretty.

Sometimes I wonder if each week’s latest secrets are too outrageous to be true…

So I hung out with Ann this weekend and she brought over this new little toy called a Meizu M6 mini player. Forgetting the fact that it looks exactly like an iPod, the device is actually quite nice (that’s a dumb sentence). In fact, I came to liking it so much that I started saying to myself (and to Ann) that if I didn’t already own an iPod, I would probably go and buy one of these. Music management on this player is so much easier too — it’s simply USB plug-n-play (no software needed). Anything But iPod has a pretty good review of it up on their site.
Man, now I really want to see what the Meizu M8 is like!

If you’re looking for an eclectic little toy to get a loved one, take a look at some of the products offered by friendswithyou. These would make good desk decorations. I should get one. :P

I want one of these. And one of these. Also, these gallon jugs of Tabasco sauce look nice, but who the hell needs a gallon of this stuff?!

Norman gave me his ticket to Mute Math this coming Tuesday, so I’m going all of a sudden. I wasn’t originally planning on going, but if there’s a ticket around, I might as well use it. Tickets are currently sold out. I’m gonna see if I can get another photo pass to this show.

What a clever way to make a political statement. Here’s the “iRack”.

YAY! Another Paper Mario gameplay video! (If you’re reading this through an RSS feed, the video might not show).

Finally, this coming Thursday, Starbucks will be giving away a free “tall” sized coffee from 10AM to 12 noon. Be prepared for long lines.

PEEZ!