This entry was originally posted with the title "What Happens When Jotsio, Jotsio's Better Half, and BCii Get Together."

I invited my cousin (a glowing mother-to-be, yay!) and her husband "Jotsio" over for tea this evening. One can always count on a stimulating, wide-ranging, intellectual conversation when this talented young couple is involved. This time was no exception. Check out this selective, approximate list of subjects we covered over a two-hour period:

-

Handel

's

Messiah

;

- Earth Hour and light pollution;

- goat dairy vs. cow dairy;

- the documentary series

Going Tribal

;

- the pros and cons of the growth-based economic model;

- free trade vs. agricultural subsidies;

- the different faces of racism (the "official line" in the media vs. institutional, interpersonal, and cultural realities);

-

Pharaoh Akhenaton

and

Barack Obama

, the look-alike leaders;

- stages in the mainstream Western awareness of global economic disparity;

- intuition, specifically premonitions and personal first impressions;

- the trend among some companies (LEGO as a prime example) toward more open dialogue and synergistic collaboration with fans and users;

- analyses and comparisons of thematic and storyline elements of Transformers, Masters of the Universe, X-Men, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Daredevil, [Heck]boy, Spawn, Twilight, Dracula,

H.P. Lovecraft

, and BIONICLE. (I may have missed a couple of universes here and there.) This composed rather the bulk of the conversation. BIONICLE was a recurring subject, thanks to me.

Jotsio's knowledge base more or less trumped mine in most of the others except Twilight, where they were both equally superficial, lol.

My cousin and her husband are both as warm-hearted as they are intelligent. I consider myself very lucky indeed to have them as my friends.

However, due to off-topic comments (no less welcome for all that, I assure you -- if anyone is to blame, it is I), this is now also the place where you can comment on the new sidebar art.

Just in case anyone's curious, here's a brief rundown of the elements of the design.

The border uses a bluish "random noise" gradient circling the center of the fractal, which I generated myself in a program called Xaos using a Julia set of the Phoenix algorithm. I converted the fractal image into a custom brush, which I then dabbed three times in three different sizes over the background, a self-portrait of me in the guest room of my grandparents' home. That was the seventeenth take, XD. I cleverly extended the wall upwards using Invisible Photoshop Majiks. The Northwest Coast tribal dreamcatcher is Granny's, but I have a similar one at home.

The text uses the same gradient as the border. I -kinda- stole the idea from EW's sig. [/~credit] The font is Vinque. Finished with perspective and blurring tools. The foliage is done partly with stock Photoshop Elements 2.0 brushes (fuzzball, grass, maple leaf, round leaf) and the rest with a custom brush set by Stephanie Shimerdla. [/credit!]