Nukaya

Things I have learned in my first week as a model shop assistant at LEGOLAND, CA: Turn signals are a foreign concept in California. So is going the speed limit. It's either five under or at least ten over. WHY IS THIS. The average teenage lifeguard at a LEGOLAND orientation training is very confused by the concept of an adult liking LEGO and will ask if they need to call security if they see an adult without children walking around. Also being one of five people out of the 75 at training who are older than 17-19 will be weird. When you are asked which high school you go to and you respond "...I graduated high school seven years ago?" you will break their teenage minds. The training book has "Weeks and weeks of fun!" as the subtitle, and they mean it. You will spend fifteen minutes staring at the sculpture you replicated trying to find the one plate that you forgot to add and it will be AWFUL. If you accidentally forget your coworker's name during pizza and beer night, he will show up the next day with a gigantic name tag. There are daily Super Smash Bros. games during lunch and sometimes all day tournaments on the weekends, and your boss is super into them. The corners of LEGO bricks will cut the daylights out of your hands if you are not paying attention while prying something apart without a brick separator. POWER TOOLS. Throwing your glued and unglued creations to test durability during training is common. Sometime either at the end of this week or early next week I get to throw a glued sphere I made off the roof and see how it holds up. LEGOLAND is still awesome 11 years later. The Tahu statue isn't red and orange, he's now red and yellow??? The model shop is stuffed full of crazy cool sculptures and it's super AWESOME because you're just constantly surrounded by super amazing creations. ...and a lot of other things that I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about yet, but I will if/when I can. Yeah!!!

A few weeks ago I applied for a model shop assistant job at LEGOLAND, CA. Last week, I got an email from their HR department, which lead to a phone call asking if I would come down for a group interview on that Friday. I said yes, and Pat and I flew down that Thursday night for the group interview the next day. I did really well in the group interview and the building challenges in it, and a few hours later I did an individual interview. This past Monday, I found out that I got the job! We'll be moving to California at the beginning of the year, which is crazy and exciting and !!!

I'm 98% sure it's because no one could consistently pronounce Onepu's name correctly.

Can we add:

This painting is for the charity auction at BrickFair VA! I haven't painted in a while (i.e., 2+ years), so I wanted to see what I could create. The canvas is 16" x 20", and I used acrylic paints. I'm really pleased with it, and if you're at BrickFair VA, you can bid for it in the auction! I imagine that Benny disappears for days on end to use his floating abilities to check out other planets. Here's a detail:

Sooooooooooooooooooooo. This one time my freshman year of college, a bunch of guys in the dorm room across from me (including the Resident Assistant of the dorms who lived with them), decided that because it was the end of finals week, they were going to get as many balloons as they could, inflate them, and fill one of their dorm rooms with them. They spent the better part of a day watching movies while inflating the balloons. This was basically the most fun ever. The static cling was incredible. For clean up the next day, everyone grabbed a push pin and started swinging at the balloons. It didn't take more than an hour to clean up! You can also see that this was a pretty decent sized dorm room. Easy-peasy clean up. Anyway, what if we did this at BrickFair in one of the hotel rooms (and be very quiet about it because I'm not actually sure the legality of it beyond that our Resident Assistant of the dorm was down with it and he was usually not down with most things unless it was watching Will & Grace)? It's not quite a ball pit, but it is insanely fun, and not that expensive if you get balloons on the cheap and several people pitch in. They used at least 1,000, so if even just 10 people each bought a 100 pack, that would be pretty quick to do. 100 packs of balloons seem to run about seven to ten dollars online (here, here, and here) depending on if you get 9,11, or 12 inch balloons. Then, we could hang out in one of the hotel rooms, put on some movies (or continue marathoning our way through the Chima show with Pat), inflate balloons, and then put a "Do not disturb" sign on that particular room door so room service isn't like "what why".

WHO CHANGED MY STAFF TITLE TO SENIOR BALL PIT OVERLORD. DO NOT GIVE ME THIS POWER I WILL DESTROY THINGS. I ALMOST BOUGHT 200 PVC BALL PIT BALLS AT WAL-MART TO FILL THE TUB WITH AND A MINI BALL PIT FOR THE FRONT ROOM. THIS ONE LOOKS EQUALLY COOL. OH WAIT THIS ONE HAS THE PHRASE "DOUBLE SHOT" IN IT AND I FIND THAT FUNNY. LET'S SPEND THE PREMIER MEMBERSHIP MONEY ON ONE OF THESE. GOOD INVESTMENT. EVERYONE TAKE AN EXTRA HOUR IN THE BALL PIT. Ok, new avatar time.

I'm a UDDer! Because of udderly hilarious reasons.

No but seriously send your stuff. Purroblem Sleuth decided to be sassybutt and she demands it.

I was like "when did Ben go to BrickCon", and then I remembered that you slept in our apartment on the floor the day we moved in (because who needs furniture), found a several year old sock in a sleeping bag, and was the first person to use our shower.

Get "THUG LIFE CHOSE ME". NO WAIT MAKE IT "JINZO LIVES".

Get: I don't know what to get engraved on these bricks.

That's going to have to be at least a foot across to get any of the detailing in it, and a very proficient tattoo artist. Looks neat though!

There's always fanfiction.

Will there be farm animals?

Here is my entry! I have the black on white version on my computer, but it's a massive file, so I won't upload it here. BZPower 2014 T-shirt design.

I'm not denying the fact that the stuff you're talking about is vile and repulsive. I completely agree. However, this is the case with everything on the internet and, no, children should not even be using the internet without adult supervision or at the very least some kind of capable filtering software/parental controls. Anyone who thinks otherwise is irrefutably a moron. This also goes hand in hand somewhat with your comment about the convention(s). If a parent is going to bring their young children to a convention they should probably be sure of just what it is they're getting themselves and their children into. Now, granted, even I'll admit that it's not exactly inexcusable for a parent to not consider such given the subject matter. There are, in fact, still a lot of people who've never even heard about this whole brony thing yet. People who frequent the internet, at that. I know this because I've met them personally in my IT courses. I can understand where you're coming from and I don't blame you. When it comes down to it, though, it isn't all that much more polluted than any other given fandom out there. It just stands out more because a) I dare say it is currently one of the largest fandoms out there, b) it's against the societal norm, and c) its bar for "mature content" is set extremely low. This sort of stuff happens just the same with, say, an M-rated video game series. In such a case, though, there's already blood/gore/whathaveyou so it isn't such a large leap to get to the "unsavory interpretations". Takuma Nuva Ok, but here's the thing: the vast majority of fandoms do an extremely good job of keeping things that are NSFW, gore, etc. (things that the MLP target demographic should not be seeing), hidden and hidden well. I just did two google searches with safe search on (of "My Little Pony", "Applejack", and "Pinkie Pie"), and a second search on deviantArt with safe search on, and within seconds I found nudity, gore, and multiple other things that would be considered NSFW and highly inappropriate for a child to see under any circumstances. To check this to see if other things came up with other fandoms on google, I also did searches for "superhero", "Spiderman", "The LEGO Movie", "Ninjago", and "Sesame Street". All things are things that the average 4-8 year old would be interested in/my 3-4 year old students are raving about at the moment. None of those came up with anything that would be even remotely inappropriate for a 4-8 year old to see. The My Little Pony fandom does not do a good job at keeping their inappropriate content away from the target demographic. If a parent takes their child to a convention that is dedicated to a line of children's toys, they should not have to be on the constant lookout for inappropriate content. They should be able to take their children to a safe place where they can enjoy something they love.

Suddenly that giant thing about chocolate you posted in my cake topic makes SO MUCH SENSE.

Here is a quick MOC I made in celebration of the 118th Boston Marathon. Good luck to all of the runners competing! I wanted to combine the winged shoe with a very simplified version of the Boston Marathon start line. I also wanted to see what and how much I could make in a few hours, and I think it turned out pretty well.

Happy Easter! Here is a cute little spring LEGO bunny with a mini basket of eggs. aaaaaaaaaaa I cannot get over how cute this turned out omg bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny.

I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THOSE CRAZY WEIRD DINO COMBO SETS OMG.

Hey! Bowties are cool!NOPE.

IS THIS YOU BUTTLOP. King Buttlop. Tiny crown. Probs friends with Burnie Buns.

HAPPY 4/13 NAK NAK NAK NAK NAK. It's a Nakodile from the webcomic Homestuck. I made it for 4/13, the anniversary of the comic. I really like Nakodiles!!! This one stole Dave's iShades because of reasons.