It’s that time of year again. Time to create and start sending those old, stuffy holiday cards to friends and family members.

         But there are ways to spice up those holiday cards and make them less stuffy even though they’ll stuff up everyone’s mailboxes.

        The best way is to customize cards to match your personality so friends and family feel that they’re getting a genuine gift and not a mass letter.

        One of the easiest ways to customize cards is through online card sites, which are faster and more convenient than going to a local photo shop.

        Web sites such as 123Print.com (http://www.123print.com/Christmas-Cards) allow customers to personalize messages, choose different backgrounds and upload photos.

        Lots of options also make it easier to choose the appropriate card, from religious and eloquent to humorous and witty.

        More entertaining holiday cards can also be created by leaving behind the stoic family portrait and choosing a goofier picture instead.

        The unexpected site of mom, dad and the kids making silly faces at the camera will make Aunt Mildred chuckle when she gets the mail.

        Another way to brighten up the holidays is to choose a funky background with fun colors that will brighten up grandma’s refrigerator.

         The best way to customize a holiday card is to write a small, personal note to the person it’s being sent to to let them know you are truly thinking about them.

         Creating the cards online will help because the message can be typed instead of handwritten to each person.

         Holiday cards used to be stuffy and boring, but with new options and avenues of creating them, the opportunities to create a truly unforgettable holiday card are endless.

Gather ’round the fire kids and let me tell you about the space jamaicans versus the bugs and how they went on to produce the possibly worst series of movies ever known by man.

now, i’m not going to tarantino this, so we’ll start at the beginning and set the scene.

my father, god bless his soul, got the great idea that it would be a sweet family activity to see a movie all together, so far so good right? How about if that movie was Alien Versus Predator Requiem. Oh yeah, needless to say Hel and I were not amused.

we went in with no expectations and somehow both of us were still disappointed! Instead of me leaving you hanging like that though, let me fill you in on how such a great achievement is possible:

• Killing not one but TWO pregnant women, one of whom’s uterus explodes with baby aliens while she’s in labor.
• Facehuggers…modeled painstakingly in 3D.
• More blood than in most small town blood-banks
• Carcasses that have been skinned alive, only they don’t cut away while the guys are getting skinned
• Pregnant women die gruesomely. PREGNANT WOMEN.
• when the facehuggers pop out of a chest, they actually move and wiggle…i liked it when they were like alien penises
• Dead babies.
• oh, and just to piss you off the hot blonde love interest gets skewered right at the end WITH NO NUDE SCENE..AAAAAUGH!

Pretty much one of the highlights was sitting in the theatre with Hel and my little brother calling out who dies and survives waaay before it happened. Mystery Science Theater 3k would be proud. So yes there was some kind of story about a spaceship crashing in colorado involving some sort of crappy love subplot, but oh wait, she dies and there’s some sort of flirting going on between the obligatory soldier-women character and the badass maing guy character man but lo, none of that was ever developed in lieu of more gore…and dying pregnant women.

sigh.

so yes. this gets a negative twenty-six on a scale of zero to ten for movies, so that means my recent roll over vehicle crash was more fun by a factor of about six. really though if you ask me it needs more gore. it just wasn’t gory enough.

in case you didn’t get the point that the movie is absolute and total crap, the trailer is after the cut.

if you’re not a fan of the movie amelie then there might just be soemthing wrong with you…I just want to put out there that the sound track is amazing, and it’s really really nice to work to. i’ve noticed that while i’ve been doing design work lately it’s all that i’ve had on…..well that and yael naim…but i’ll let hel introduce her…

…after this video of her! she’s half of a french duo along with a folk drummer, and was born in paris but raised in israel. most of her songs are in hebrew, but they’ve got this french accent that gives it a nice twist. she can be dramatic at times, but i love the cello, violin, piano and folky/jazzy sound. definately worth your listen in my book, but look for the song Pachad, that’s the best.

thanks hel for introducing me to her!

~ryan~

“waaaaaah.”

that’s my cry of pain right there.

cry of pain you say? yes sir, cry of pain. you see, yesterday i shipped my computer back to florida for the big move, so what right? well, i’m pretty sure this is the longest that i’ve gone without having constant, 24/366 (think leap year) access to a computer and the interwebs. also, i shipped my tv back, but really i don’t care about that, haha.

so yes, then if i don’t have a computer then how the hell is this lovely post getting online? well, i could just use my treo, but i’d rather not be out of college by the time EDGE gets around to loading wordpress….sigh. 3G my ass… 

no, no i’m in the computer lab at the university up here in ky and you know what, i’m a douche for ever knocking this place. i’m sitting here typing at a brand new imac and piped into the school’s hi-speed goodness and you know, it’s not half bad.but the good news is that i tracked my mac and it should be arriving in fla sometime tomorrow…props to federal express, especially during the xmas season. 

on another note, last night i took a 3am trip to casa de waffle, and it was oddly enough one of the best times that i’ve had at 3am…and i was sober even!* the background is that i fell asleep waaaay too early and woke up around midnight, and after lying there for a couple of hours unable to fall back asleep i decided that it was time for dinner.being like 2am however, no one was as excited for food as i was sadly so i took the 10 minute walk in the cold rain alone (i actually enjoyed it, don’t fret) and got to listen to Sea Lion Woman by Feist, which by the way is an amazing experience when the two things are combined.

so in the waffle casa i’m sitting at the bar, and i’m surrounded by a bunch of frat and sorority people being all drunk and rowdy…which is oddly enough par for the casa de waffle round these parts. anyways, i happened to strike up a conversation with one of them who happens to be a muslim and ended up having probably one of the most intellectual religious conversations in my life. in a waugh (rhymes with cough) casa with this random frat dude, at 3am, in some bum-fuck town in ky.

craaaaaaaaaaaazy.it. was. amazing. everyone should get to have this experience just once in their life. oh, and i definitely know where i’m going to hang out when i need to pick up a photo story. 

~ryan~*no, i don’t drink ever! i’m underage!

EDIT: edited for PC-ness like a ba-jillion times…btw, the muslim was black, which is cool, it makes him like common.

craaap, so i had this big long post typed up and i lost it…~~~~~~So yes…it’s 3:39am, and i’ve finally gotten this blog to look something like what hel and i* thought a blog should look like, but for the immediate short term expect things to get shuffled around while we settle on a layout we like.anyways!Soooo, yes! Hello!I’m ryan, the other blogger on this blog.i’m a photojournalist**, and i just finished a short stint in kentucky, but now i’m going back to my home state of florida to go back to school for what else but photojournalism. that should give you a good idea of what i’ll be posting, right? at this very moment however, i’m still in kentucky and i don’t fly out until friday (14 Dec), and believe me, i can not wait to get home.so, this blog,”the poet and the papaya” is hel’s and my way of documenting our daily lives as i:

• readjust back to living in florida,
• live with hel for the first time ever
• shoot photos and stories around town

However, it’s mostly for the both of us to showcase interesting/cool fashion, music, shows, and things to do around gainesville, fl.***so yes, this is a hipster blog. however being hipsters doesn’t make us any cooler than you so don’t worry.**** with these things in mind, i’d like to promise the following things:

1. that we’ll try to post regularly if not daily.
2. bearing that in mind, we may disappear and come back occasionally. however we will come back. eventually.
3. drama will be kept to a bare minimum. this isn’t your sister’s livejournal, and we won’t let it degrade to that point.
4. there will be variety. it’s the spice of life, and hel and i are still two different people with different tastes.

so seeing as i’ve typed my fingerprints off and it’s absurdly early or late (depending on your taste) and that i’ve already lost this post once to the bit bucket i’m going to call it a night here before anything else happens to make my night that much longer.~ryan~*yes, hel and i are a unit.** no…i won’t use AP style, but give yourself a gold star if that popped into your head.***yes, we go to that school.**** what’d you think? that we’re going to be a bunch of scene kids with attitudes? pshaw!and finally i just like to say that no, i don’t capitalize when i type. ever.