Ponyo, Ponyo, Pumpkin in the Sea

Last year's Best Geek Jack-o-Lantern post is getting a lot of attention this season (why are Stumblers always so late to the party?), and it inspired me to try my hand at pumpkin carving. My muse? My favorite movie of the year...
PONYO! Yes she's a weird superdeformed fish/bug/fairy thing, but she's so freakin cute!

I'm really pleased with how this came out, especially since it's my first attempt at pumpkin carving since grade school. I was nervous about cutting away the background, but it turns out that pumpkin hide is thick enough to anchor the entire design on Ponyo's thin little fish fins.

Here's what it looked like without the negative space backdrop...
Eh, maybe it looked better this way? Shaddup.

Are you carving a pumpkin inspired by a nerd icon this year? Send us a pic! We'll include it in this year's Geek Jack-o-Lantern post, and you too can have your work seen by thousands of people...one year later, on stumbleupon.

Geek Icons: The Eye Scar

Geekanerd has already taught you how to get some of that Mad Scientist style.

Now, we will teach you, the reader, how to look like a total scary badass, ALL THE TIME.

The secret is: EYE SCAR. Get an eye scar. This is a vertical scar that appears above and below the eye socket.


That's right, an Eye Scar. They're not just for Scar anymore. Though he does have a good one.

Eye Scars say to the world, someone tried to stab my eye out, and it just makes me look cooler. Cable knows it.

You can compliment the scar with a dead-eye, if that works for you. It's makes you look more creepy and villainous, but you risk losing sex appeal. Le Chiffre manages to pull it off.


This is probably going overboard, but you can decide the size of your eye scar yourself.

This is just the beginning. Much more after the jump. You know you're interested.



You don't HAVE to be evil if you have an eye scar. John Locke is a badass, but he's still a good guy. OR IS HE? You can never tell, with eye scars.

Hudson from Gargoyles is a good guy, but there's that edge. He also makes the dead eye work for him. "Grizzled" is an adjective you can often apply to people with eye scars.

Eye scars indicate that even if you're a cool customer like Jet, you are not to be messed with.

Eye Scars are also a good indicator of capacity for evil.

If you put an eye scar on an otherwise inoffensive looking person, like Bullworth Academy student Gary Smith, it's a good indicator of insanity.

Eye scars can be messy....

Or clean.



If you want to push yourself into the realm of "freakishly intimidating", you can make the eye scar REALLY messy.

At this point, the eye scar is just a jumping off point. But be careful; as with all forms of plastic surgery, it's easy to go too far. You don't want to end up like....

...THIS...

...or THIS...

...or God forbid, THIS.

As long as you avoid these pitfalls, a good eye scar will inspire intimidation wherever you go. I should know; when I was fifteen, I crashed into a tree and had an eye scar for a good month or so. It was the greatest month of my life, and I was feared and respected by all. It can work for you too!

Nerd Icons Rendered As Bento Boxes

People love eating things that look like things. Anna The Red makes bento boxes that look like nerdy cartoon and video game characters. This Wall-E and EVE is incredible, though I'm very upset about the exclusion of M-O. Look, they've already got the little compacted trash cubes!

More Miyazaki toons than you can shake a chopstick at (sorry), plus Portal and Rabbids, after the jump...

That adorable chubby mouse from Spirited Away, plus his little bird pals and those dust things.

Tootaroo!
No Face and company...this one is particularly perfect.

A box full of Rabbids...okay so this one isn't that pretty, but there are must cuter cookie Rabbids on their Flickr page. DAAAAA!

This is a triumph. Again you can see details on Flickr, as well as Anna's blog. There are several other series represented, and Invader Zim fans will definitely find a lot of stuff to like.

Like this...

Photos: New York Anime Fest 2008 Cosplay

For last year's Anime Fest, I tried really hard to catch up on my anime fandom. I haven't regularly watched anime since high school, so I tried to cram my brain with Bleach and Claymore and all that mess, and I still felt totally lost once I got to the con.

So this year, I just said, sca-rew it, I'm just going to take pictures whether I know who these people are supposed to be or not. And the results were about the same. If any actual anime fans are reading this, feel free to let me know who's who in the comments. And non-anime Gnerd fans will find a lot of videogame costumes as well, so stick around.

Since there are Stormtroopers at every convention anywhere, let's get that out of the way first.

Video game costumes, perv costumes, and so much more, after the jump...


Saw tons of these screw-head guys, this guy wore it pretty well.

Here's the kendo battle area, where participants were assigned random matches. Pretty cool. I wish they did this sort of thing at Star Wars conventions.

This is pretty awesome and expensive looking.

I recognize these guys, but I don't know from where. Someone help me out. UPDATE: Reader arashi points out the cardboard guy is Danbo from Yatsubato.

Monkey from One Piece. Gnerd contributor Bishop told me that.

Very impressive Robot Chicken costume. Despite not being anime-themed, this was a big hit on the floor.

Fantastic 2-D Mr. Game & Watch.

There were tons of Links, but this was the only one from Smash Brothers, as signified by the Player 1.

Team Fortress 2 costumes seem to be a go-to for any convention these days, but I only saw one at Anime Fest - this Blue Solider.

Bishop told me to get a photo of these guys, but I forgot who they are. Can you tell why I'm not the usual gamer correspondent at Gnerd? Shaddup.

I really like costumes that create an outfit based on a character, instead of just a big plush or cardboard suit. This kid has a pretty good look based on Sonic, right down to the red sneaks.

Here's that weird Negaverse Pikachu and um....I want to say Lapras or like, Celadon...I fail at Pokemon. Sorry everyone. Who is it? UPDATE: Reader hermitx kindly points out this is actually Umbreon and Glaceon, the Dark and Ice evolutions of Eevee. Just for the record, I knew that. I did. On the tip of my godddamn tongue.

A very bashful looking Peach, with Luigi and V lurking in the background.

Girl Luigi and Girl Mario, taking a breather.

Hey look, something else from an anime movie! A gigantic No Face!

Uh oh, Pedobear alert. And this brings us to the "perv" section of our photo essay...


Tons of free hugs guys all over the floor, with frequent success.


The most popular event I saw all day wasn't an officially sanctioned con event; it was this studly cosplayer, standing in the middle of a crowd, posing amorously with other people in costume. That's it, all it takes is one slashy photo op to gather a huge crowd for hours on end. I saw this at the beginning of my day on Saturday, and when I came back about three hours later, the crowd was STILL THERE. However, they were right in the midst of a fake(?) blow-job photo op, and security finally broke it up. Good times!

Just when you thought it was safe to ever leave the house...sexy cubone cosplay. Yeah, so this is blurry, but maybe it's for the best. Once you see something, you can never unsee it.

Your Excellency

All at once, Japan is apparently able to engage in PR, government business, possible subtle parody of goverment business, children's toy and entertainment advertising, blog fodder creation, and the warm mainline cultural moment of giving a beloved classy lady her due. Japan has started appointing cartoon characters to its government.

First, there was this:

This robot cat is called Doraemon, and he is happy to have just been appointed Anime Ambassador to the World. He is shaking hands with the Foreign Minister of Japan, Masahiko Komura. Our analog would be Ms. C. Rice*. Seems Masahiko Komura's trying to exchange a knowing look with Nobita, friend of Doraemon, but, from this angle at least, it looks to be unreciprocated.

Then today:


Naturally, Hello Kitty is now the Tourism Ambassador, specializing in China and Hong Kong. According to one article, she will have 11 other goodwill ambassadors to help her do her job, which is probably a good idea. Although of course.... this is a class act whose 2D disembodied head alone has moved millions of units of merchandise in many markets all over the world. I'm kind of surprised she had time to come and collect her certificate. Nice of her to dress traditional though.

*AHR did this mock-up to give an idea of what it would look like if anything like this were to transpire over here in Americaland.

Pobrecita's just happy to have a friend.