Hi all.

I bring in some news about things happening with me lately, but I can’t say if you would care to not like it, or don’t care at all. Looks like I’ve been having doubts about friendly loyalty lately, but that’s another matter.

Anyhow, a lot of you may be wondering why I haven’t uploaded any piece of art in a really long while. Well, I do have some good and a relevant number of art pieces which are kinda ready at my disposal… or should I say WERE ready!

Okay, for those of you who haven’t learnt about it yet, I was (and still am) passing through times of really sudden and unexpected events, and they’re not even good. On a national scale, we’ve been having a war-like conflict in places very near my University. In fact, sometimes on occasion, even dangerously near! It forced us to change a lot in my timing and schedules, and I was later busy trying to work this mess off with the rest of my classmates! This happened due to new security reasons which forced the admins of the school to cancel a lot of things, and shorten class times to avoid being responsible of keeping students in the evening when it’s most dangerous! If you like to know more about the current events, click here.

On a personal scale, I already mentioned the mess I’m having with school work, especially now I’m in my final years of my BFA, and my courses had to be taken a lot more strictly! Unfortunately, due to another sudden event, it limited me even further! Two months ago, the Acer laptop of mine, which was at my service for its fourth year of its busy life with yours truly, had “died!” MOST OF MY STINKING PERSONAL DATA IS ON MY LAPTOP!! You may be wondering if I had ever made backups? I never really bothered to, as it’s such a waste of time and money with how much my info is continuously updated! If someone had bought be an external hard-drive, I would’ve been a lot more attentive to backing up anyhow, but as usual nobody listens to me! I guess you know what this means? Yep… even if I could manage to get hands-on a temporary alternative, I wouldn’t have the solid means of finalising my stuff quickly enough. To return solidity, I’ll have to wait until I actually get my old laptop fixed, or, MORE LIKELY, get a new one, which in this case I have to wait FOREVER to get one, as my parents trying to decrease their financial support in favour of only necessities due to their own problems, but that’s yet another story! (Man! I’m stuck in so many story branches!)
I’ll as much as I can to actually do with whatever I got for now.

This is pretty much the horror of a bad news until maybe something bigger happens? Oh well… what could my fate be now?

So… next thing I wanna say. Even if I’m still as active as I usually am, there was a surprising, but not unique, problem occurred with the last Kiriban offer. Apparently, looks like due to deviantART’s technical glitches on milestone pageviews, especially ever 10,000 pageviews beginning from view one per account, two people managed to acquire the 10,000th view on my page! They both had proofs too! They are ~MythTrainerInfinity and ~JordanRinehart.
The problem with this is that there could be only one winner, as per my policies (which is ironic, because the prize for getting the Kiriban is a free request made with my best effort, and ALL POLICIES get cancelled so requesting is totally open). At least, I’m thinking of trying to give a Grand Prize to the winner, and the other can have a consolation or something, since I’m a fairly nice guy. So… to resolve this problem I thought of giving the first one who commented his Kiriban claim the Grand Prize, however, this is a bad idea, because logically, and who knows, the first commenter is not necessarily the first person who acquired the Kiriban, especially with the timing differences between each comment. No… like that it cannot be done.
So… I thought, why not accept both equally? Oh, no worries, only one will get the Grand Prize, but I won’t be the one responsible for the decision. Therefore, I decided to open a new poll, and let the majority of the voters decide who gets the Grand Prize. If you know one of them, vote for him. If you know both of them, vote for the one you like better! (Votes will be anonymous) If you know neither of them, I say check their galleries, judge their art and compare, and then vote for the guy who you believe deserves the Grand Prize more! If you’re one of those two guys, then vote for yourself! Heh…

So, now that I explained it, you can post your vote here.

VS.

The poll will close by the end of October this year, so you’ll have loads of time to cast your vote, and it’ll insure I get as many votes as possible.

Now, that’s explained, here’s the last thing I wanna mention… or should I say, do!

~LinKueiGrandmaster had tagged me to do this following meme, so I guess I have to do it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all those who want to play a line-in-game just check this out:

Tagged by :

The rules:
"The 1st player of this "game" starts with the topic "6 weird habits/things/hates" and people who get tagged MUST write a journal about their 6 weird habits/things/hates as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" in their devpage comments and tell them to read yours..."

Things I hate:
1.Eggplants
2.Being sexually crazed & deviously oriented
3.Moronity
4.Sony products
5.Promise breaking and cheating
6.Terrorism

I personally tag these six people:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

This is just for fun ^^

Ah! I notice that I'm nearing my 10,000th pageview now!

I think I have something in mind for this next occasion...

IF YOU MANAGE TO GET MY 10,000TH PAGEVIEW, YOU'LL RECIEVE A FREE OPEN ART REQUEST IN A QUALITY OF AN EXPENSIVE ART COMMISSION!!

When I say "OPEN", I mean I'll omit ALL my policies on accepting requests from people, and the winner will receive ANYTHING he/she desires!!

However, I still will need proof that you managed to capture my 10,000th pageview.
You need to capture a screenshot of the page before you move on.

If you don't know how to capture a screenshot, simply tap the PrintScrn key once (that key is usually located just directly right of the F12 key, but some keyboards may have it somewhere else closeby. Sorry, I don't know if you could even take a screenshot with none-Windows computers, let alone how.) then open any image editing program (say Microsoft Paint) and click on Edit, then Paste from the drop-down menu, and you'll get the screenshot!
Unfortunately, this instruction is for Windows users only. I dunno about the other OSs out there.

I'll be working on a pic to commemorate this occasion as well...

On the side note, the winner of the last Kiriban - ~DaXXe - still has yet to receive his prize! I’m such a lazy bum! However, keep in mind that hardly forget who do I owe pics, and whichever ideas in question as well! ALL pics by me are guaranteed to be eventually finished.

(Entry originally written on September 8th, 2006)

Woof! I was gone for a little while, then I’ve come back now and notice that a lot of you were pretty concerned about yours truly. I guess you can breath now…
So, what was the reason for my absence? Primarily, I was ultimately disconnected from the internet for quite a long while, and you may very likely know the reason why. However, if there is anyone out there who is so simple enough not to know what it is that happened, I’d like to tell you, on the 12th of July, my country had entered into a surprise war! Neighbouring country called Israel had somewhat declared war on my country, Lebanon, because an armed political militia party from our side called Hezbollah – an Islamic Shiite group – went and defied a border line, which the United Nations drawn in 2000 to keep all owned forces on either side. Hezbollah kinda went without any notice from our government, ambushed an Israeli patrols unit on the other side, killed three of them, and captured two. In a rescue attempt to save the two captured units, a further five Israeli soldiers were killed on our side of the border.
In response, the Israeli government decided to retaliate by invading our country with both air and naval blockades!! This was decided because it was NOT the first time Hezbollah attempted such terrorist operations.
Israel originally claimed that they declared war on Hezbollah alone, but in time as their attacks continued, it seems they really declared war on ALL of Lebanon instead!

Before the United Nations finally issued Resolution 1701 for an unconditional cease-fire (and some other stuff), in a mere 33 days Israel managed to ruin Lebanon relatively much more than the former Lebanese civil war ever did! When it all started, we thought Israel wouldn’t really go and attack targets further north than the province of the South, where Hezbollah is mostly based at. However, it turns out that, with the stupid strategy Israel came up with, nowhere turned out to be safe, not even the North, where the former civil war hardly even touched it! (The North was where we thought is the safest haven for my family, especially since we had a place to stay in when we resided there for the time!)

In 33 days, Israel managed to do damages costing up to $15 billion dollars (USD); as if our already poor economy could afford it, and with so much debt no less!! Israel managed to destroy or damage homes, businesses, ALL airports, miles of road and highway, civilian bridges, dams, major ports, water & sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, fuel stations, fuel reserves, schools, TV & radio stations, warehouses, a civil defence centre, and even a UN base, as well as a couple of hospitals and many rescue ambulances!! They invaded so many cities, towns, and villages in all provinces, not just the South, including Tyre, Bint Jbeil, Nabatiyeh, Marjaayoun, Baalbeck, Hasbaiya, Saida, Tripoli, Beirut, and worst of all Qana!! Not mention that, by the time the cease-fire was issued, more than a million people were displaced, 1,187 civilians were martyred (us Arabs declare innocent casualties of war as “martyrs” as a sign of respect, where they be Islamic or not), in which around ⅓ of them were children who haven’t even reached thirteen years of age!!
Israel’s retaliation was supposedly for, first, disarming Hezbollah (as per Resolution 1559), and second, returning their captured soldiers – they achieved NEITHER goal from the retaliation! What sort of scum is this army!?

In addition to raids from air and sea, Israel sent ground troops to occupy territories. They had no respect for property, and ransacked the local homes, mosques, and churches! They ruined crops for the local farmers, and destroyed municipality property as well!
Israel also managed to drop so many cluster bombs and non-detonated heads very near civilian areas!! In fact, they managed to drop as many as a million of them during the war, and especially in the last three days before the cease-fire was finally issued!! These bombs are a great threat to the people nearby, and removal of those “duds” is a very risky and dangerous job!! (The removal process started as soon as the cease-fire was issued, and by now fourteen people already got killed from them either coincidentally or during a removal process…)
All that I just mentioned are things that are greatly disallowed by international standards of warfare, and they pretty much constitute as “war crime”! Israel even used bombs that are banned by international basis!!
If Hezbollah haven’t resisted the ground troops, and kept them as far back south of the Great Litani River until the cease-fire, this little country would’ve been so screwed by then!

If you cannot imagine the cruelty of this war, then here’s a link to video I found on YouTube.
It is almost a minute long, and it was taken by a local resident in Beirut on July 16th. The video, and audio, will show you how really horrific are the Israeli air raids! What you will see is a series of bombings in the distance as the Israeli Air Force pound into the southern Dahieh of Beirut in the middle of the night! Such raids tend to last like until the VERY NEXT DAY!! And then, if they want to, they would start all over again by widening the hazard parameter!
Imagine living this horror like I did whenever I was in Beirut!
This footage is an example of something your local Western reporters will NOT tend to show you!!

Click to see the video – not for the faint of heart!

The war officially ended on September 8, when the last of the naval blockade was finally lifted, although I doubt Israel had lost their thirst for more invasion, for they still have quite that grudge with Hezbollah. Same thing can be said about Hezbollah!
In the end, who came out winning this outcome? Neither Israel nor Hezbollah, that’s for sure since neither achieved any goal, and caused so many loses. On unofficial basis, the real winners were the Lebanese people themselves, for despite all the disputes, all the loses, we rather retained our unity, and showed off Israel that they cannot break our souls any more, no matter how many times they invade us!

Read more about the war here.

Where I resided during the war, in our hamlet in the North, and sometimes in my mother’s hamlet on Mt. Lebanon, I did have chances of having some air raid fall over my head, but it is much relatively lower than certain other places. Keep in mind, even though Beirut was being pounded, we kept going back as my brother still has his treatment to take at the cancer centre. Frankly, don’t really think, despite Israel’s cruelty, this war was THAT brutal. Only a portion of Beirut was being kept raided on, which were the southern suburbs – the Dahieh, where it is an Islamic majority and most of Hezbollah’s civil organisations were located in the capital. Being Christian like the rest o’ my family, we tend to avoid such “Islamic-intensive” places. Granted, Israel did attack also the airport, the closest place to where I resided in the capital, and a couple of ports too, but they “tried” their hardest to simply target Hezbollah specific places, and the airport and sea ports were supposedly raided so that Hezbollah wouldn’t renew their supply in weaponry!
Those were civilian facilities, you jerky, dumb-dumb Jews! No offence to any other Jew.

My family could have afforded to leave the country, but with the all four known airports attacked, a naval blockade, and not mention some destroyed roads towards the Syrian border, how could we really get out peacefully? Besides, why should anyone run away from home? It’s dishonourable, dudes…

Actually, you know what? Even if we not get in harms way of the violence, in which fortunately none of my family ever did, you would still have to be concerned! Why? Because it’s war, people! You can still suffer by other means, especially when you live in country like Lebanon! Before the war, our economy was always poor and struggling, and many of the scars from the civil war were still there, even after more than fifteen years later after it ended!!

With Israel having destroyed some power stations, and much of our fuel supplies, we have been seeing the darkness a lot more at night, and many people went into hard rush to refuel their vehicles! With a naval blockade, there was no way we could re-supply, and what was left of our fuel was depleting pretty fast too!
With the blockades, we couldn’t even re-supply our food and medicine stocks. However, it was reported several times that many storage areas had enough food for their consumers to last for many, many weeks to come! Unfortunately, a lot of shopkeepers had been cheating their consumers by increasing prices ridiculously! This case was so huge that the government was forced to step in order to make sure that the people got their food with the same price tags.
Speaking of cheating, with the increase in the number of refugees would come an increase of crime (I heard of a couple of homicidal robberies of shops in our Beirut block neighbourhood once!), and a great gradual decrease in hygiene: Cholera is a pretty common disease during any war!
People can get pretty sensitive and quite mental. Speaking of mental, war can also cause a lot of psychological effects on people, like trauma, depression, and even increase in phobia cases!
Then, with the angry drivers, and destroyed roads and bridges, we find difficulty in going around, increase in traffic, and an increase in auto-accidents!
With Israel discriminatingly attacking rescuers as well, the sick and the wounded may find it a bit harder to receive any form of medicines they require!
War is also one of the greatest methods of destroying the natural environment, especially in the case that Israel managed to bomb a power station in Jiyeh, which resulted in spilling like 10,000 tons of heavy oil into the already-endangered Mediterranean Sea!! It is feared that the polluted spots will take up to ten years to recover. Details

Yep. There is much to be concerned about, even if you might not get to see any blood. However, whoever said I did not see some blood spilt?

The war had kinda ruined a lot of my original plans I had for the summer, and I even thought that I wouldn’t return to school either. Fortunately, it all passed, and what is done is done, despite how much we ached all about it. We were of the lucky people to survive this invasion, but so many others were not so fortunate for they lost their lives, their loved ones, and/or their homes. I pray things would recover eventually, and all of this becomes nothing but mere memory, but there is absolutely no assurance that it may not happen again. This has been us for the last three decades. This how it has been, and we were patient about it, but now people are starting to get sick of it! How many more must be sacrificed in order to find peace on a permanent basis? How long should we wait? How could we ever be like what we used to be a long time ago? The future only knows that’s for sure. The future – thing that is supposedly belonging to our children, and their children! How the heck can we provide a good future from the present if the past continuously returns to haunt us with different faces?
Before the war began, I had so much in mind. But during the war, we had to restrict ourselves from a lot. In fact, we were forced to! All schools closed as soon as the violence began, and my family stayed away most of the time from places where chances of violence are quite high. We had to sit it out until somebody did something, and that was the United Nations’ approval of new Resolution 1701.
I couldn’t do much myself where I sat it out, though I did what I could do to pass the time, but then I killed time with my thoughts about the future. How concerned I was during that time.
Personally, I’m not afraid of the violence, but for the sake of my family I had to stick around with ‘em…
It wasn’t until the cease-fire had progress in our country slowly, but gradually returned to a near-former state.

I finally returned online, and to University, for the first time after the war on August 28th, but not in a big way though. I was kinda waiting for the right moment so people would finally recognise I’m still around, and breathing as much as ever! It will be quite a while to get to know all of your news that I missed, and not to mention the deviations. I’ll then post some art myself soon enough as well, but the beginning may be a bit different than my usual though. You’ll see what I mean…

Seriously people, don’t get so concerned about me, ‘cause I keep saying that I promise not to die until I’m an old man!

Speaking of being old, I say I kinda now looking forward for my twenty first birthday. It’s on September 17, mind you…

Reference on Historical Info and Stuff

- What is it between Israel and the Arab World? – A story that began ever since Israel’s official foundation in 1948
- First Israeli Invasion in Lebanon: Operation Litani (1978)
- Second Israeli Invasion in Lebanon: Operation Peace of the Galilee (1982) – this one lasted longer in the South until 2000
- Third Israeli Invasion in Lebanon: Operation Accountability (1993)
- Fourth Israeli Invasion in Lebanon: Operation Grapes of Wrath (1996) – cause for the most dramatic raid Israel ever did to Lebanon: The First Invasion of Qana – a sad day I remember so well!
- Fifth Israeli Invasion in Lebanon: Er… sorry. This one is pretty minor than the rest, and it happened in 2000 after Israel finally pulled out. I don’t know its official title, nor do I have a good source for it…
The Sixth Invasion is the latest one that just happened…
- UN Resolution 1559
- UN Resolution 1701

- War on Lebanon
- Lebanon 4 Ever
- WhyLebanon.net (WARNING: Has war photos!!)

Show your Support

- Lebanese Red Cross
- Relief Lebanon
- ICRC Humanitarian aid for Lebanon
- Save Lebanon

deviantART Related Links and Stuff

*deviantLEBANON - Biggest community on deviantART for Lebanon-related art, and a place to where Lebanese deviants can commute and show other national deviants about Lebanon.

~thearabs - A community to unite miscellaneous Arabs on deviantART.

~brothersUnite - A community that is made for deviants who support peace “someday” between Israel and the Arab World.

If subscribed, place :thumb36454229: in your journal to display a stamp to show your support for Lebanon.
If not subscribed, you can still place this stamp in your Webcam.

On June 9, deviantART somehow sent me a message to my inbox saying that my piece Fox and Krystal managed to get to its one-thousandth pageview! Then, because of that, deviantART made me an offer by giving me a discount on opening a deviantPrints account, but for a limited time only. I, of course, couldn’t take this offer since I cannot really afford anything on the internet that is pricier than… “free”.
Sigh…

Despite that, I later realised I got other milestones I’ve achieved recently. Of course, there was the 5000th front page pageview which I got a while ago, but a thousand pageviews later, it seems I also managed to make over 10,000 deviation comments, as you can see in my stats!! Dang, do I comment a lot of deviations or what!? I simply cannot believe I’ve looked at more than 10,000 pieces of artwork, and still doing! Part of this number does belong to you guys, of course. I wonder if anyone minds that I tend to comment on every deviation that ever appears on my +devWatchlist.
Heh…
Sorry if this habit o’ mine bothers anyone…

Ah, and I should not forget the fact that I finally have now more than 100 people +devwatching me! I’d like to point out that it was ~ghazayel who made it to be my 100th +watcher! Congrats, man!
I originally intended to make a Kiriban for that who would be my 100th +watcher, but I kinda forgot about it that while for some reason. I guess I’d probably make another Kiriban if anyone gets to be my 500th watcher perhaps?
Oh, and by the way, I have been thinking about this for sometime: I never thought I’d ever grow this popular on deviantART when I first started posting art here waaaay back in early 2004, so I kinda made it policy to +watch anyone who gets to +watch me, no matter what. However, my own +watchlist is currently killing me as it is, especially when I get summer absences from the internet for a long period of time, say like three or four months and so…
So, I’ve decided, after getting my first 100 +watchers, to cancel this policy for good! Does this mean I’ll stop stalking people all together? Not necessarily, as I’ll still acknowledge anyone who puts me on his/her +watchlist, and furthermore if I find your art interesting, you’ll get a greater chance to get +watched by yours truly. Oh, just you don’t worry, I won’t remove anyone from my list whom I’ve +watched in the past. You’ll stay +watched by me as you ever were…

One last milestone, my ever-growing-in-popularity piece, Luigi and Yoshi - CG Edition, has managed to get over 50 favorites [sic] now! I cannot believe how popular that piece is growing albeit it has grown quite old! I mean, seriously, I’m starting to think it sucks now, and yet more people loving it! That’s really weird.
Ah well, I cannot blame any form of mania people might have…

I guess this is all now for the milestone scoop, as I’m still waiting for my first 10,000th pageview. I wonder who’s gonna catch it then…

There are many things I'm supposed to do. Some are stupid, some are useless, some are brilliant, and some are very important.

However, the way I'm now organising myself, I seem to be lost in a sea of chaos, and I can't seem to get my inventories down. In fact, there is much I wish to explain now, but can't seem to do it. I guess I'm lazy?

What is it that I really wish to explain?
Well, about the future of what i'm gonna do with my deviantART, the stuff I'll be uploading soon enough, the current requests, art trades, and even gifts I'm working with (as well as *DaXXe's prize pic), some journal modding with a standard signature of sorts, et cetra...

I mean, for example, how many of you are anticipated to see the full story behind the currently unfinished The Ten Year Journey? I cannot seem to get into focus on finishing that, as there is still much "history" to talk about and type down!

There is also this mind of mine who wants to take his +watch list apart into subs so not to mix up with friends and such. I can't seem to get around doing it either.

Why am I so blaming myself? 'Cause I've been for sometime planning some of my own dA clubs, and how would I do them if I cannot be responsible enough for them?
Oh, and I am planning on getting another account too...

NO! I won't abandon my current ~hope-n-forever account. I just wanna have an extra account, that is all. The reasons for this? At the moment, I cannot really disclose that info, but if I did, I bet some of you would really be excited for it.

I could send in previews of future uploads, but then again I made a personal policy against that, and so you have to wait for the final stuff instead.

Sigh. If only there was a way to organise my life in a very short time. Afterall, I still have thousands of older Deviantions I see did not "read" yet in my Message Box, and most of them are from the summer of 2005! I hate my current online life - it's pressurising me!!

In case any of you are intrested in my real life, I do have a Live Journal which I keep updating very frequently - almost daily to be precise!

Okay. For now you're all informed about my current situation, but I guess it'll take some time before I actually do give you some really "tasty" info about the things that are going on and about.

Unless someone suggests how to organise myself, I guess I be pretty much slacking off here and there...

P.S.: I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, although being an Orthodox, I celebrated Easter Sunday on the 23rd rather than the 16th...