Rumble, young man, rumble

Iowa Caucus Results

2008-01-04T01:40:00.000-08:00

So, the Iowa Caucus happened. Obama and Huckabee take an early lead for the race to the Oval in '08.

First of all, I'm happy for Obama's success. I hope he gets more success. He's certainly a viable candidate now. Hillary's in more trouble than Giuliani. Giuliani's numbers in Iowa are surprisingly low but, then again, he wasn't campaigning there either. What that means is that the Iowa result's spin-able. Clinton, on the other hand, doesn't have the same excuse. However, she is very much in the race. Unfortunately for her, she's going to look like a weak bet because she was the presumptive favorite going in.

So, if Obama keeps his momentum we're looking at an interesting time in New Hampshire. He's showing real legs and on-the-fence Democrats are going to be jumping on his bandwagon. This is, however, when Clinton's going to be pulling out the big guns. New Hampshire's going to be a high-ground/dirty fight. Obama's the heart but the mind's still on Clinton. Edwards, on the other hand, is in an interesting place. Yes, he showed second in Iowa but he's not polling as well in New Hampshire. His campaign, thus far, has been built on the presumption that Clinton was the favorite. Iowa's shown otherwise (perception-wise). So, if Edwards has been building his public image as "I'm not Hillary," then he's got... pretty much bupkis. Obama's got a stronger appeal factor and Hillary's got a bigger bulldog-aggression image. Edwards is the face of the middle ground and I think with Obama's win, Dems are no longer looking for middle ground compromise.

But, Edwards isn't gone yet. The way I see it, if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he's going to need a strong vanilla VP candidate. I'm thinking Edwards. Yes, he's got the stain of '04 on him but we're talking veep. People will either choose or not choose because of the top of the ticket, not the next name down. Edwards gives the subconscious assurance that the next in succession is a white Protestant male. Obama as presidential nominee will be a choice of heart and the ticket will be a fantasy card. Hillary can't cut the mustard in the situation because she already leaves a bad taste in the mouths of moderate Dems. They find her untrustworthy and her name value's sullied. Hardcore Dems want her bad but they'll vote anybody who's got a (D) next to their name so there's no need to court them. Record Iowa Dem numbers show that.

On the other hand, if Hillary pulls the upset in New Hampshire and then again in the primary then she's going to need someone sweeter on the veep ticket and I think Obama's that sugar. It's a subtle reassurance that there's heart and soul in the vapidness of her nomination (at least that's how it'll look to moderates). Unfortunately, we're looking at not one but two minority characteristics to overcome and that's not a price paid lightly. America's probably not read to put both a Black man and a white Woman in the White House... not yet.

On the other side of the ticket, we've got Mike Huckabee. His big appeal is that he's the Republican that Democrats will vote for. Like a younger John McCain. Obviously he's missing some of McCain's... liberalism but he's got the "nice guy" quality that's so rare to see this late in the game. He's the Obama of the GOP. I'm not going to go into depth on that side of the fence (because I don't care as much) but it'll probably be some sort of variation on the Huckabee/Romney or Romney/Huckabee ticket with a sprinkle of Giuliani if he makes a strong showing in NH.

So, how are the face-offs? Here are my opinions:

Hillary/Obama vs. Huckabee/Romney - That one goes to Huckabee. White Midwest America who don't want a black man or white woman in the Oval will happily vote Huckabee. He's got the "right" opinions on gun control (against), abortion (against), and gay marriage (against) that will appeal to that audience. The same people who voted in Bush will vote in Huckabee. Hillary, on the other hand, will scare away moderates.

Obama/Edwards vs. Huckabee/Romney - This one will be a close fight. If it goes the distance, Huckabee will probably eke out a slight victory. This will also be the cleanest fight with no blatantly negative attack ads or vicious behind the back attacks. This is a "nice guy" versus "nice guy" fight. The brutality and teeth will probably show in the VP vs. VP debate and I think Edwards is hungrier and better trained than Romney for that one. Both Obama and Huckabee also have a good sensibility about courting the popular vote through pop culture (late night shows, websites, MTV votes, etc.) without seeming disingenuous (a problem with Hillary and Rudy).

Edwards/Obama vs. Huckabee/Romney - This one will probably be Huckabee's victory. He's got better presence than Edwards and he's got a bigger fan base than Edwards. He seems more knowledgeable and "folksy"-er than Edwards and will be better at courting the press than Edwards. This will probably also lead to much regret on the Democratic end and will probably result in Obama running again in 2012.

Obama/Edwards vs. Romney/Huckabee - This one will be a vicious battle. Romney's hope is to get himself to be seen as the second coming of JFK (I know he's a Dem and Romney's a Rep but go with me on this one). He'll have to make religion a non-issue and focus on Obama being black. If they can stay on target, they'll make a strong showing. This election is won or loss on which candidate can make themselves seem more "presidential" faster. Obama's focus will probably be trumped by Romney's focus but if Obama can court Midwest blacks, he's got this one won. I'm going to say that with the Oprah power behind them, Obama and Edwards win this one.

Clinton/Obama vs. Romney/Huckabee - This one will probably be a Clinton victory. I'm just going to say that because I believe they'll both be playing dirty but Clinton's better at the game than Romney and she's got Bill in her corner... nobody's better at playing dirty than Bill (except for Karl Rove but if Romney's the nominee, I'm going to put Rove in the non-factor column until proven otherwise. It's just a gut feeling).

Obama/Edwards vs. Giuliani/Huckabee - This one's tough. A Giuliani/Huckabee ticket seems to be the perfect Republican ticket (assuming Giuliani has any sort of strong showing in NH) because they balance each other rather perfectly. Obama/Edwards has the perception of being a bad fit, although they'd look better in the press as two younger and happier men. Giuliani's strength in this one, however, is latent 9/11 memories. If this unlikely battle appears after the primaries, expect the Republicans to use "National Security" and "Ending the War on Terror" as their big guns. I'd still give the edge to Obama, however. He'd probably win this one... barely.

Clinton/Obama vs. Giuliani/Huckabee - This one's also tough. If Giuliani's as strong as possible going into this battle, we're looking at a dirty dirty fight. This one will probably be the one where the skeletons in the closet come out to play. Expect huge fireworks during the presidential debates. Lots of finger pointing and blame being thrown back and forth. This one's won or loss on Iraq and the way the political winds are blowing right now, they're not favoring Rudy. I'm giving this one to Hillary.

Well, that was fun. It's like trying to pick Oscars. In the end, and my final thoughts on the matter right now, I'm happy for Barack Obama. Like many Dems, my heart's rooting for him. However, I don't think America's ready for a Black man as president and if he's going up against Huckabee after NH, he probably won't win. It's a shame but these are the times we live in. If Edwards gets the Oval because we're too scared to run a Black man or white Woman, I'll be disappointed but I'll live. If that happens, however, I'm also prepared to look at John Edwards as probably the most ineffectual president since Carter because Dems will forever see him as the "guy we settled for because the guy we wanted wasn't a possibility." His presidency will be a one-term one (unless they step up their game and give us something to root for).

UPDATE:
I just re-read my post and realized that in every scenario where Huckabee is the nominee, I gave him the victory. I guess I like Huckabee more than I thought. Oh well, it's a good thing Republicans are already starting to cut him down.

My life is dull and uninteresting

2007-11-06T15:23:00.000-08:00

Yep.

Ok, I'll write a little more. Just bear in mind that the interesting part's already passed. It was somewhere up there ^ a little.

Anyway, lately, my life's been fairly mundane. I haven't done anything extraordinary beyond... you know... work and sleep.

I've started moving into a place in Santa Cruz. To use a Chinese idiom, I've been "moving like a rat." That is to say, I've been moving at a snail''s pace. I've moved some really big items, like TV and BED, but I've mostly just been moving things one duffel bag at a time. Literally. Every morning, I'll fill a duffel bag full of DVDs and other random things and everyday after work, I'll drop by my condo and unload the duffel bag, sit down for a little, clean something, and head back to San Jose.

I have, however, accomplished stuff like transferring the power to my name (yay PG&E!) and scheduled phone/Internet installation (yay AT&T! [Comcast sucks!]). I was going to schedule DirecTV to come by but I think I need to go to the Home Owners Association in the complex and ask them if I can install a dish on my balcony, then schedule a DirecTV guy to come out and look at the balcony to make sure it can, in fact, support a dish. All in all, a complicated process.

The bed looks nice tho. New sheets. Yay!

In the meantime, I haven't been doing much else. So, there's not much to blog about.

The WGA (Writer's Guild of America) is on strike. I support their position but I hope that they come to an agreement because I'm going to be highly disappointed if my TV shows end early. Still, I support the WGA and if the TV shows end early, I'll just play video games instead. Because my life is... nerdy.

Go Lakers!! Woot!

That's all for now. Back to work, I suppose.

Rampant Technology

2007-11-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

Masi Oka, star of Heroes (I know it's an ensemble show but seriously now, isn't Hiro the best character on Heroes??), has signed up to be the spokesperson for the OLPC project!!

I'm way excited.

In case you don't know, OLPC stands for One Laptop Per Child. It's an ongoing project that's been going on for awhile now. The project is basically to try and build a cheap laptop which would be affordable and easy to use. They would then sell these laptops en masse to developing nations to try and get them in the hands of children worldwide.

The OLPC program is a really worthwhile cause and their laptops are pretty nifty. For 2 weeks on Nov. 12, OLPC is having a promotion where they'll offer their laptops to the general public. The catch is that you pay twice as much for one ($400 instead of $200) and they'll use the money to donate a OLPC to a needy child.

Anyway, having Masi Oka spokesman for the OLPC program is an excellent choice and I think it'll really start taking off in terms of ideas.

OLPC's not really available to the general public (outside of that promotion) so if you want a cheap laptop, you'll have to look elsewhere. The ultra portable laptop that's caught my eye is the Asus EEE PC. It's only $399 and is apparently more bang for its buck than most other laptops... anywhere!

Here are some video reviews of the Asus EEE.

I hope this starts a trend for ultra-affordable, back-to-basics technology. I'm probably going to get an Asus EEE when I can find one because I really do want a computer that's as portable and convenient as the Asus EEE looks. Frankly, I want the ability to use a word processor no matter where I am and the EEE looks like the perfect thing for that. This kicks the iPhone's butt, in my opinion (altho... the EEE doesn't have a phone.... and has LESS memory space!! ... ok, maybe it doesn't quite kick the iPhone's butt... but I think it's a better deal).

Anyway, just wanted to tout what was on my mind...

Ok, a longer post.

2007-10-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

So, I guess the last month or so have been both eventful and a lot of the same.

I've settled into somewhat of a routine here these past 2 months. I wake up at a decent hour (but not unreasonable), drive an hour to Santa Cruz, work all day, go home, go to bed, repeat. It's slightly monotonous in terms of a schedule but it's what happens when you get into the "real world."

My days here, however, at work are more eventful than just putting in 8 hours. I'm still trying to get a solid footing in terms of what I'm doing, what I'm accomplishing, and general tasks. I'm still getting to know all the personalities and quirks of the college, something that changes pretty frequently. I actually have student workers, which is fun. Heck, I'm an advisor!

Keeping me busy, though, are a bunch of programs we have. All the time. Seemingly ad infinitum. I bought a planner which works like you'd expect a planner to work. It has a calendar on the front of each month and then all the weeks are broken down on separate pages in each month. However, I like being able to see the whole month at a glance so I just use the month calendar and write everything in each square. As a result, my days look very full and complicated. In reality... well, in reality, some days are very full and complicated.

Anyway, my calendar's filling up a lot faster than I wanted it to. I have several things already listed for November and even something for January! (That's not including repetitive items like "KMEC meeting every Wed.") It's gotten to the point where if I see an empty day, I get very concerned; like I've forgotten about something. I have to double-check with my boss to make sure I didn't forget something huge. I don't like being organized. Well, I like being organized but I don't like being THIS organized. It's... disconcerting.

In the meantime, getting a place in Santa Cruz is going along well. We're very nearly there. In fact, I should get keys by the end of the week and I can start moving in this next weekend. It's very close to work. Much much much closer than... you know... San Jose.

According to Google: my current trip right now is 43.3 miles and takes 1 hr and 0 min. Which is pretty accurate. (Usually the trip takes around... 50 min. to 1 hr.) According to Google: my new trip will be 3.5 miles and take 9 min. Which is, again, pretty accurate. That's like a 40 mile decrease! Twice a day! That's 80 miles a day!! 400 miles a week!! (whoa... was I really driving that far? That's like a weekly trip to LA.) That's not even counting weekends! (I came to Santa Cruz last Saturday and Sunday and the Sunday before that for events.)

So, that's good.

Let's see, what else is new?

I bought an Xbox 360. Because of Halo 3 (naturally). In fact, I got the Halo 3 special edition Xbox. It's all olive green with gold trim, looking very "future military"-esque on my floor. Halo 3, as expected, is a fun fun game. Master Chief dies in my hands a lot though. Mostly cuz I suck. But the physics are such that when he dies, it's always very amusing to watch. Lotsa random bouncing around off walls and stuff. And you always get that minute of watching all the carnage around the dead body too. That can sometimes lead to amusement as well, such as when you die and drop all your grenades and someone else throws a grenade on your dead body, creating a massive explosion.

I also bought The Bigs. It's a baseball game but it focuses more on arcade action and less on realistic simulation. As a result, Visual Concepts has made The Bigs a really really fun and addicting baseball game. It's very easy and is pretty much a pick-up-and-play game. Games go by quick and you only need a modicum of skill to become fairly good at the game. Visual Concepts has somehow managed to keep baseball strategy a factor in this simple game as well. You don't need to know anything about baseball to play the game but if you know stuff like which base to throw the ball to or when to steal a base or how to execute double plays, then you'll be better than the person who doesn't. Which is good too. I hope VC continues this game and turns it into a franchise because it really is a lot of fun.

Nothing much else to report. I finally saw Transformers (you know, on DVD). I thought it was really good. I enjoyed most of the humor (some of it was reaching and some of it was corny but mostly amusing) and I enjoyed most of the cool transforming robots. It's not as good as the old 80's cartoon movie but that movie was phenomenal so I can't fault this one for not being phenomenal. It's, again, one of those movies where I think the sequel will be better so I'm hoping that the sequel gets made soon.

Ok, I have to now do actual work. I'll make an effort to blog more.

Boston Domination!

2007-10-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

So, after leaving Boston, I turn my head and suddenly Boston's at the top of the heap of sports.

The Red Sox are in the World Series (and are the favorites... at least in my opinion), The Patriots are having an outrageously good season thus far with a 7-0 record and nothing but green fields in front of them. The Celtics are the buzz of the NBA off-season having acquired Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, making them contenders for the first time in a long time. Hell, even Boston College is leading the NCAA football standings right now.

Crazy.

It must be fun in Boston right now.

I will post more often. I hope.

2007-10-23T12:10:00.000-07:00

I will post more often.

I hope.

The best endorsement for UCSC ever

2007-09-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I blogged. That's mostly because the stuff I've had to do in the past few weeks have grown exponentially as we've gotten closer and closer to the move-in date.

I don't have too much time to blog right now but I took a short break from the things I need to do to post a link for this article:

FrontPage Magazine: "The Worst School in America"

FrontPage Magazine is a online conservative website. Of course, to call it "conservative" is akin to calling shuttle launches "noisy." FrontPage Magazine is very much what I'd deem "ultra-conservative." I don't endorse the magazine.

However, I very much endorse this article. It's meant to be serious and condemning. It's meant to be a piece of journalism to make you think that UCSC should be shut down. It's meant to make people rise uproariously out of their seats, put on white hoods, and burn the campus to the ground.

Why am I recommending the article if it's meant to condemn the school I love and work at? Mostly because everyone of their "negative" points is precisely a reason why most students/staff/faculty here (me included) love the school.

How dare we endorse radical thinking! How dare we challenge conventional thought! How dare we have feminist teachers! How dare we have lesbian teachers! How dare people believe that American culture might possibly be racist! Sexist!?! Homophobic?!?!

Try as it might, I don't think this is a negative article. This article should be put on our recruitment publications.

I want a webpage

2007-08-09T11:59:00.001-07:00

I want a webpage. Like a real webpage. One that has a personal URL and that I pay for (that's to make me feel like an adult).

Also, I think the funnest job in the world and new dream job would be a satirical writer on the Colbert Report or for the Onion. That'd be really fun.

Perhaps I will combine these 2 dreams and make my own website with a section on making fun of news! Ooooo... a goal.

Blog blog blog

2007-08-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

So I started my new job in UCSC. (I've successfully moved back to California. Whee~!) How is it so far? Well, there are no students yet (because... it's still summer) and I'm still "settling in" to my job right now. This first... like... 2 week period (whew, that's a long time) is pretty much dead space while I wait for more things to be finalized and things get advanced along far enough where I can help out (since I'm new, they don't trust me to help PLAN things... only IMPLEMENT things... not that that was said directly but I think that's the implication). So, my tasks for the past WEEK (I started last Thursday) have included the following:
1.) Work on the t-shirt design for Kresge College for next year
2.) Get familiar with the computer
3.) ...... That's it.
Yes folks, that's TWO whole tasks! For a TWO WEEK PERIOD! Thus far? I've finished the t-shirt design [for now. It's still pending approval. Which we won't even send it off to get until next Monday so... that's on the back burner] and I'm already plenty familiar with this computer [which is a gorgeous iMac, probably 2 years old. It's pretty...] so... what do I do now?

How about blog?

So... what's been going on? Well, Bonds hit 756. Despite all that talk about steroids and tainting records and such, it's still a big deal (perhaps a big deal because I'm in the Bay Area now). That's cool.

That's kind of all that's on the forefront of the news. San Jose's kind of a slow news city. Very little happens here that's BIG and SPLASHY. I'm still living at home. The commute from San Jose to Santa Cruz is kind of a bitch but I'm going in the opposite direction as traffic so it's actually not congested or bumper-to-bumper. It's just a far drive.

I'll think about more to blog about. I'm sure there's plenty going on in the world. I just need to catch up.

Impending Departure

2007-07-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

So... I bought my plane ticket outta Beantown. It's a one-way plane ticket on JetBlue that leaves Thursday afternoon at 4:40 pm.

This is it. I know that I'm excited about leaving but I can't help feeling some feelings in the neighborhood of... regret?

Part of the reason why I wanted to move out here in the first place was that it was an opportunity for a fresh start. Not that I was ... say... wanted by the mafia or put on a government hit list. I just wanted a chance to do something or go somewhere that I wouldn't have done before. Perhaps Mike was right... maybe I'm too cinematic.

I'm not sure what I was looking for exactly. A new job? For sure. A new city? Definitely. But beyond that, I'm not sure. I do know that there was an appeal of going somewhere and being able to redefine my life parameters. It's still appealing. All those mistakes you make? The ones you feel you can't live down? You can actually run away from all that. But, as we've all felt, experiences build the person. It's a cliche but it's a cliche for a reason. We are the sum total of our mistakes.

So I'm sitting here... nearly 1 year and 4 months after first moving out here and, upon reflection, this was both a success and a failure.

It was a success because I did manage to find more things about myself, my life, and my ambitions. I was able to find skills and abilities that I wouldn't have found if I hadn't needed to find a new job. I was able to find new friends who I definitely wouldn't have met if I hadn't come out here. I survived in a new city and thrived in some respects. I got to know this city a lot quicker than I have any other place that I've lived. I even went to a bunch of games in Fenway and learned that baseball's actually pretty interesting... especially when you're freakin' surrounded by it.

It was a failure, however, because I didn't manage to succeed in building a brand new life. More accurately, I wasn't able to leave my old life behind. This past year's been difficult because I'm inclined to think in terms of San Jose life. It's like when you learn a new language: in your head, you still have to process thoughts in the language you spoke before. And, the more time I spent thinking about San Jose, the more I found myself wishing I was back there.

I realize that I am making a rather hasty judgment in this sense. I've been told that I need to spend 2 years in a place to grow comfortable there. I can understand this sentiment and I feel that if I were to spend another year here, I could probably feel fairly comfortable. However, like I mentioned before, I wanted to be closer to family. Also, right now, calendar-wise, the new school year's approaching and now was the time to find a job that I really wanted. If you've ever played poker with me you'd know that, with some exceptions, I'm generally a hasty decision maker. I tend to make decisions about myself and my life in a fairly quick manner. (This is also why I'm susceptible to impulse purchases.)

So, here I am... pros and cons for staying and leaving. I figured, in the end, if there was a way on the scale I WANTED to error, it'd be toward the leaving side of the scale. After all, I think my support system is better in California (which would make sense, considering that I lived in California for 23 years and in Boston for 1.3 years). It may be the simple answer. It may be the quick answer. But, ultimately, I want comfort and familiarity. In my time here, I've realized that I enjoyed my life there. So... that's that.

I don't know what the point of this post was. Catharsis, I suppose. Some weird denouement for
my East Coast time. There are things I'll miss here, however. A couple people I'm going to miss a lot. I'm going to miss my job to some extent. I'm going to miss the public transportation system (but I'm NOT going to miss NOT having a car. Jeez, having a car makes life so much easier). I'm going to miss Yawkey Way and Fenway Franks. I'm going to miss the Johnny's Fresh Market right around the corner. But... it's for the better, I think. My little Boston tangent is coming to an end and I'm ready for the next chapter in my life (and I think I just mixed a metaphor there... subtly).

Anyway, I'm now sitting here, 5 days away from my plane ticket out, listening to Jason Robert Brown, and reminiscing. To be honest, I should be packing more stuff but I think I'll probably end up watching a movie and going to bed early. My brain hurts...

So it's been awhile.... again

2007-07-20T00:49:00.000-07:00

So it's been a little while since I've blogged. Probably about a month or nearly. I guess I should just jump right in because I've had a bevy of stuff to put up here.

First off, yes, I've found a job in Santa Cruz. In UC Santa Cruz, to be exact. It's the position of ACPC (Assistant College Programs Coordinator). I've been given a formal offer, which I've accepted (for those of you curious... that'd be Kali and probably only Kali, I didn't get the salary increase I was negotiating for... I suck at negotiations but at least I tried this time. Next time will work better... I hope). I suppose since I haven't signed on any dotted lines yet there's always some chance that the job offer will be revoked but it's a slim chance.

Since I've found a job at UCSC that means that I'm going to be moving back to California. It'll probably be sometime in the middle of next week. I still need to pack hardcore and I need to ship things hardcore so it's not like I can just waltz on a plane. That being said, I don't anticipate any real hardships... just the mailing of my stuff back to California. Which will suck. But it's alright.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to go back to California is because of my family. I think that there are members of my family who are getting to certain health and age ranges that make them more susceptible to sudden and unexpected hospital trips... or worse... so I think it'd be better if I were geographically closer to my family. Last November, my dad was admitted to the ER. It turned out to be nothing serious but it was a scary moment when I got a phone call from my cousin telling me my dad had been sent to the ER from work. I realized I needed to be geographically closer to home because 3000+ miles is just too far. I realize I'm probably alone in this but I like being closer to my family.

So, moving back to California. That's big news, I suppose. For me anyway. Because it's a pain in the tuchas to move this shit.

Last weekend, however, I got a bit of a headstart by attending Sara's wedding. I took the opportunity to move 100+ pounds of stuff back to California through checked luggage and carry-on luggage. The only real stuff I took that I took back were my laptop and my clothes. I left probably over 80 pounds of DVDs, comic books, books, papers, etc. And I haven't even really made a dent.

The important part in that last paragraph, however, was Sara's wedding. I can't believe I attended a wedding of someone in my close friend circle. I mean, seriously now. I feel... old and very immature for my age. It was a beautiful wedding tho. I'm not going to detail it out like I did my cousin's last month mainly because I detailed his wedding out because 1.) nobody who reads this blog attended his wedding and 2.) it was a longer and more expansive story what with the airplane delays and junk. Sara's wedding was not problematic (altho the driving was a little ridiculous. Honestly now, that was a very far way to go for a wedding and a reception) and was fun. It was nice and romantic and sweet and exactly how I thought Sara's wedding would be (which was nice, romantic, and sweet). Oh, and she looked lovely in her dress. (I think all brides do. It's a requirement for a wedding.)

I'm finishing up stuff at work. Tomorrow's my last day. Although it's my last physical day in work as an employee, I am working on a couple of projects for them that obviously won't be finished by tomorrow's end of day. So, I'm going to freelance for them from California, including work on the catering menu (which is what I spent pretty much the whole of today working on). I'm going to miss working here because it was mostly fun. It was loose and non-restrictive and generally free-flowing in what you could do and what you could have fun with. Sometimes we'd drink at work. We'd always listen to loud and fun (and obnoxious) music. We'd always be dancing or singing or whatever. It was mostly fun.

Tomorrow also won't be my last day in work. I pre-ordered Harry Potter 7 (the Deathly Hallows... oooo...) like 2 or 3 months ago (Harry Potter I can pre-order but a plane ticket bought more than a week early I can't? Obviously I have my priorities skewed) and I used my work address because I'm very wary of my Boston home address's ability to receive mail (I don't get my newsletter regularly, which I pay for and which is sent regularly). However I discovered that we don't get Saturday delivery at Zigo so I have to go back Monday to get the stupid package (I'd have canceled the order but I ordered the limited edition one with the prints and prettiness so I'd rather have that 2 days later than the normal one day-of). Plus, I figure I'm going to have to do hardcore serious brow-furrowing packing this weekend and if I have the new Harry Potter in my hands, that's totally not going to happen. So, this weekend, instead of reading Harry Potter 7, I'm going to be... packing.

What else? Yesterday, I saw Sicko, the new Michael Moore documentary. It was really good but, like all Michael Moore documentaries, it so blatantly exploits your emotions (and does a good job at it) that you sit there wondering how many things were glossed over and fudged around to make the point he's making in any one scene. Still, I'd recommend going to see it if, for no other reason, than to see the part about Nixon and the part about Cuba. Those two parts were exceptional film-making and it proves why Michael Moore is able to raise the ire of so many people, whether for good or evil. Because Michael Moore, if nothing else, is skilled at what he does.

Another thing that's been on my mind when I started this blog is that the front page of the NYTimes.com website right now has an article about Hillary Clinton and how she's polling right now. I think Hillary Clinton actually does have a fairly decent chance of winning. I think that if she does win, she would accomplish some ultimately beneficial things. I think she would be able to introduce a national health care plan. I think she'd be able to find a way out of Iraq (not fix Iraq. Just find a way out). I think she'd be able to reconcile some of the polarization that Bush's presidency's created by being bipartisan. I also think that she's going to be battling an almost completely vertical uphill battle.

I think, first and foremost, she needs to solidify her base constituents. One of the ways that Hillary has to establish herself as a credible candidate is to demonstrate that she has very solid and identifiable morals; even moreso than male candidates because she's such a high-profile female candidate. She needs to appeal to Democratic standards and one of the easiest ways to do that is to subtly have Bill by her side more. It doesn't need to apparent and it certainly doesn't need to be 24/7 but once in awhile, it would help. To remind Democrats that "Hey, I'm married to the most popular Democrat to have been around in the last 20 years, not mention one of the smartest political minds in the last 20 years." Perhaps one way to do this would be to have an agenda for Bill Clinton as the First Husband. Announce, at some point during a slow news cycle, that as First Husband, Bill Clinton will be working 100% toward... say... cleaning up the environment and fight back global warming. Give him an agenda and then you'll have a legitimate reason to say his name in debates.

(If using Bill is going to be part of her strategy, and I think it should be, they first need to address the default response which is "you're riding on your husband's coattails." The kindergarten response would be "Bush rode on his father's coattails and it got him re-elected. Obviously America doesn't have a problem with coattails." But that's very obviously a bad bad bad response.)

Hillary also needs to address some issues head on. I understand the strategy to stay away from foreign affairs but perhaps she needs to attack something head-on as not a "woman's point of view" but a "new point of view." Definitely never say the word "woman" unless she's being directly challenged on it but always use rhetoric like "new point of view" or "fresh way of thinking." Something like:
"We've followed Bush [don't refer to him as "president." Ever.] and he's failed at his agenda for Iraq. (# of people) have been killed. (# of people) are living in squalor and shame. (# of soldiers) have been killed. Enough is enough. It's time for a new point of view. It's time for a change."

[where did I steal "squalor and shame"? it feels like a quote from a Disney song or something.]

At this point, I actually hope that Hillary gets the Democratic nomination because the debates are going to be unbelievably interesting. This is one campaign I'd follow closely.

Anyway, aside from all that, nothing else has been on my mind. Except that packing's going to suck. Suck a lot. Hopefully I'll poke my head up outta my mess of a room this weekend and do some more virtual interactions. Until then, however, see ya!

I may be a little behind in Batman news

2007-06-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to Meredith Viera riding the new Batpod (stupid name. It's a Bat-Cycle. Ok, that's a stupid name too. Stupid naming convention)

http://video.msn.com/v/us/fv/fv.htm??g=13f4067e-e33c-4d98-96b1-51bafdd4f35e&t=m17&f=06/64&p=source_today%20show&fg=&gt1=100

Trying to catch up to real time on the blog

2007-06-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I finished four massive posts about my cousin's wedding last weekend. I'm now moving on to this past weekend (Father's Day weekend) and then I'll be all caught up! Whee~!

So, this weekend wasn't nearly as eventful as last weekend, which is really good because I would've passed out if I had to spend so much time traveling again. So uneventful that I can't even remember what happened Friday or Saturday. Thursday was trivia night at T's Pub, which was fun. We never win but it's always fun. Plus, I get to pull random facts outta my ass, which is really the whole point of going to trivia nights.

Friday was a nothing day, I think. I went to work and came back home. My boss decided that I needed to go watch the Sox this weekend because they were playing a three game series against the Giants. So, he kind of went looking for tickets without my being aware of it. He did ask if I wanted to go to the game but I told him "Sure, but I dunno how expensive it would be." which he apparently interpreted as meaning "Find tickets and pay for part of them for me and I'll go." because that's kind of what he did. On Thursday, he told me that his friend (he has a ton of friends all over the place who hook him up with tickets. In fact, he used to work for TicketStub here in Massachusetts back when it first got started) had Sox tickets for Sunday and that he put them in the mail and mailed it to the store. Unfortunately, they weren't here yet by Thursday and we don't have weekend delivery so there was a slight chance they wouldn't get here at all. On top of it, he got me 2 tickets and he said that they probably wouldn't be next to each other. It sounded... shady, to say the least.

Anyway, on Friday, lo and behold, they came. He gave 'em to me (true enough, they weren't next to each other) and I was like "cool." The original intention was for me to go with my roommate but Mike had a friend coming this weekend and he's trying to study for his qualifying exams on Wednesday. So I asked Jana if she wanted to go. Jana's my roommate's classmate's roommate's classmate. I actually met her like... my second week in Boston a year ago. She was already friends with Mike. Anyway, we've hung out fairly regularly since then. In fact, she's probably one of only like four people from Boston who's in my cell phone. Sad... I need more friends. Anyway, she was happy to go, even tho it was sketchy-ness with the tickets.

So, Sunday was the game. (Oh! I remember what happened Saturday. Actually, I'm going to try and get the stupid shit that started on Saturday settled today. I'll blog about it later.) It seemed kind of ironic that I went to a baseball game on Father's Day when I was 3000 miles away from my dad. Oh well. Fenway was PACKED, which isn't that surprising because since Boston's been leading the division, their home games are always PACKED. Me and Jana (she's from Oregon so she understands the West Coast vs. East Coast mentality from the same perspective as me) were surprised to see a very strong and vocal minority that were fiercely rooting for the Giants. Ultimately, however, it proved futile as the Giants kind of suck this year.

Since the seats we actually had weren't actually next to each other, we spent most of the game wandering around Fenway. We started at one of the food stands on the third floor during the first 2 innings. The game started at 2:05 and neither one of us had lunch prior so I got to have one of my favorite foods: baseball junk food! It's just like theater junk food except tastes slightly better and costs slightly more. In fact, it's very much like circus food or pub food. Except I'd venture to say that baseball food's much tastier. Anyway, during the course of the entire game, I managed to have an Italian sausage, fries, beer, Coke, and ice cream. Which isn't very much now that I think about it because the last time I was at Fenway I managed to have an Italian sausage, fries, beer, Coke, ice cream, pretzels, and more beer. That was too much food.

Anyway, the game itself was really fun to watch. The first inning was pretty crazy with the Sox scoring two runs early and the entire park going nuts. It was a fun way to start the game. I even called Gordon during the game to brag about being in Fenway. He was about to board a plane so he couldn't talk long but his quick text response was "Die in a fire." I don't think he wanted to spend his Father's Day on a plane.

So, at one point in the middle of the game, around the fifth inning, we managed to find seats that had been abandoned by another group of people. We sat down in those seats and discovered that they were really really close (like... next to) the Giants supporters. They were really really loud. It was pretty fun though watching the game with people that chanted "Let's Go Barry" while every other person in the park was booing. It was also while we were next to these people when, in the sixth inning, Barry hit a home run. They went BANANAS! Like cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs-bananas. It was quite a sight to see.

So, the Sox won, which was cool (I'm kind of a fan of the Sox. You can't really help it when you're in Boston. The fandom's infectious) but I got to see a Barry Bonds homerun during his Aaron chase. So, best of both worlds. =)

Anyway, after the game, we went to Border's and ran into Floren, a classmate and friend of Jana's who's Romanian. We all went to Super 88 after that to get groceries, which was kind of fun because I didn't know where the Super 88 nearest to my place was and now I do. Now I can get Chinese groceries, which probably won't really happen all that much but I have access to shrimp chips now, which is always a good thing.

That was Sunday: a fun game. and Monday meant back to work. Aside from the shit on Saturday, I think I'm fairly caught up now. I'll update soon after I find out about the shit from Saturday. Sorry, it'll make sense soon. Oh, I bought Mandy Moore's new album. It's pretty good. and I bought the Traveling Wilburys' anthology pack on iTunes. I've never even heard of the Traveling Wilburys before. It's a supergroup with Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, so... no surprise they're really good, I suppose. So, good music recently. That's always fun. Especially considering the CD I'd been listening to prior to these two was "A Collection of Roxette Hits!" Not that Roxette's not good music also! I love Roxette. It's just... these are better. I think I have weird music tastes...

Anyway, that's enough of how weird I am. Hopefully today turns out to be a good Tuesday. We'll see.

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 4 -- Afterward

2007-06-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, this series of posts is starting to go... long... so I'll try my best to finish up last weekend with this post and get to this weekend in the next post and then I'll be caught up! =)

SO! Part 4. Well, let's start with the day after the wedding from last week (this would be... Sunday). My dad wanted to stay for lunch before we went back to San Jose from South Pas. I think this was probably because Chantel was there. So, since we weren't going to leave South Pas until... like 2 in the afternoon, we wouldn't get back to San Jose until 8 or 9 at night. I wanted to go to Kinko's and print up my resume for Monday so in the morning when they took Chantel to Grandma's grave on Rose Hill, I stayed behind to get some work done.

I looked up Kinko's and Staples and took my aunt's car to print up some resume stuffs and to buy a portfolio, both of which were successful ventures. So, when all was said and done, we ended up meeting for lunch. We ate and then drove 6 hours and ended up in San Jose at 8-ish, whereby we ate McDonald's for dinner and that was Sunday. Uneventful but very productive.

Monday, I donned my suit again that I wore on Saturday (albeit without a tie) and drove out to Santa Cruz. Winding highway 17 was fun but I drove slowly. I think I was still paranoid because it's been so long before I drove 17 (and I had an accident 2 years ago during my last year of school) but it's been three months before I drove I was happy to spend my weekend driving all over the place.

Ok, quick UCSC note: UCSC is a big university that's divided into 10 residential colleges. It's been touted (mostly by UCSC itself) as having a big university's resources but a small college experience. What that amounts to mostly is the idea that you get a small college feel so you're mostly interacting with 400 on-campus students in your college (much easier getting to know 400 students instead of, say, 10,000 students) but you have all the resources that a UC would have (large library, lotsa funding, etc.). Each college has their own offices, their own staff, their own way of dealing with housing and programming and such. Intra-college programming exists but those are big deals and take a lot of effort. For the most part, colleges treat themselves as individuals. The 10 residential colleges are a large part of your UCSC identity, to the point where each college has their own graduation ceremony instead of UCSC having it's own gigantic ceremony. My interview was with Kresge.

I got to Kresge a good half hour ahead of time (better early than late). One parking pass later and I was out and about in Kresge. I had my interview with Pam and the whole Kresge crew. To be honest, I think the interview could've gone better. I had to do a lot of thinking because they did the "Name two instances where..." and I couldn't actually think of examples of these situations. I've since forgotten what the questions actually were. I do remember that I completely made one of the answers up. Just pure fiction. Well, not PURE fiction but I took two different things that happened in real life and threw them together as if they happened concurrently and squished it into the context of the question. Yep. I lied. Oh well.

Other than the lying and the not knowing how to answer questions, the interview went well. In the end, I think I was able to talk without stumbling over my own words and I think I was able to project at least a modicum of quiet confidence. Sigh. I need more practice in interviewing.

Anyway, afterward, Pam took me on a quick tour of Kresge. It hasn't changed too much. Offices got moved around and Humanities moved out of the college (which actually is a big deal because if it wasn't for the fact that Kresge housed the Lit department, I probably would never have gone there) but other than those things, the college is pretty much the same.

On my way out, I stopped by the Barn at the East entrance and found Alex Delgadillo. We had a good conversation. He's doing well and it's fun to see Alex. He was doing his thing in the Barn with parents and pre-frosh, despite not being in the Orientation department anymore. Afterward, I went home. I was probably in Santa Cruz for an hour and a half. It was a fun experience, especially since I hadn't been there for... a year? a year and a half? Something like that.

Back home, I packed, had dinner with my parents, and was dropped off at San Jose airport. (We live like a 10 min. drive away from SJ Mineta airport without using the highway so it was very convenient.) I took the red-eye back out to Boston. I had a quick scare moment when, sitting on the airplane, the Captain came on the PA system and said that there was a short circuit in the air circulation system and they needed to restart the whole electrical system and had a technician look at the plane before we could leave. In my head, I was thinking "NO! NO WAY! I cannot be on another plane from hell again. I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS!!" Of course, the thing only took 10 min. to fix and we were in the air 10 min. later so I was freaking out for nothing.

On the plane back, I had the "fortune" of sitting behind the rudest person I've ever seen on a plane. First off, this fucker was the last one on the plane. I think he was flying standby. They did a couple of announcements asking is so-and-so was on the plane, which is usually what they do when they make sure that somebody no-showed their flight. Then, they invited this fucker onto the plane to take the empty seat in front of me. He was on his cell phone, probably telling somebody in Boston that he as on the plane (he was speaking in one of the numerous languages from India so I have no idea what he was actually saying). The flight attendants were trying to get his ass into the seat so that we could take off while this fucker was content on taking his time. He slowly put his bag away while 2 flight attendants surrounded him and were saying repeatedly "Sir, please turn off your phone. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE." He still refused to turn off his show. This is when I would've hit him and taking him into custody but I was not the air marshal. Instead, they just kept telling him to turn off the phone and he just kept ignoring them.

This fucker was sitting next to an empty seat (he sat in the aisle seat, the middle seat to his right was unoccupied and there was somebody with their puppy dog on the window seat) and he decided that when he was going to sleep, he'd try to lie down. Since his head was in the middle seat and his ass was in the aisle seat, there was nowhere to put his legs. He draped them over the armrest and his feet were in the middle of the aisle. THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE! And when he actually lost consciousness, he put his legs UP! He was resting his bear feet on the arm rest of the woman across the aisle from him!! She looked helpless and disgusted. I wanted to hit this guy with my fist but that probably wouldn't have gone over very well. I wasn't even sure what the real story was because I had my headphones on the whole flight. This might have been some weird medical thing because the flight attendants looked helpless. So, either it was medical or they were just incompetent. The one attendant physically moved the guy's legs several times to no avail and she finally just woke him the fuck up and sat in the empty seat next to him to keep him from falling asleep again. I dunno what the fuck's up with this guy but he was a fucker. It's a good thing they won't let us bring weapons on the plane!

Anyway, I got in at 5 am in Boston and took a cab back to the apartment. I slept a bit and woke up for work in the afternoon. I went to work and the first person I had to ring up was a WACKO! She was probably the craziest person I've had to deal with by myself!! CRAZY WOMAN!!

So, this wacko came into the store, which was empty except for me. She went to the Poland Springs (bottled water) and stared at them. I was like "Hi! How's it going?" which is my equivalent to "Welcome to Walmart." She looked at me and said "Is your water poisoned?"

Now, she spoke with a heavy Eastern Europe accent and was fairly old-ish so she had to repeat everything she said like 3 times before I understood it. Frankly, even if she was speaking in English without an accent, I still would've asked her to repeat this particular question. I was like "WHAT?!?!?" Poisoned water?? ...the fuck? So, of course, I was like "... no." and she was very unconvinced.

She went on this rant about how she had gone to Shaw's and bought a bottle of Poland Springs and it had poisoned her and how she just got back from the Red Cross (the Red Cross is like 2 blocks away from our store) and she held up her arm. There were like hives and bumps on her arms which she proceeded to tell me came from the poisoned Poland Springs water. (Bear in mind, Poland Springs is a really big company. Its head is Nestle [you know, the chocolate] and they serve water all over the country. Poland Springs is their New England brand. Their California brands are Arrowhead and Calistoga.) So, I was like "uh... ok." So she said "So, now I am very thirsty because I've had to walk and so it's either die of dehydration or drink poison. So tell me, is your water poisoned?"

In my head, I was thinking "...... WHAT?!?!?!?" but what I actually said was "WE don't poison the water ourselves, if that's what you're asking." She waved her hand at me and was like "not what I ask." and I was like ".... ok....?" She was like "Is there poison in your water?" and I tried my best to be reasonable after not getting sleep the night before.

"It's a sealed bottle of water. We don't inject poison into the water. We just sell the water." She was very unsatisfied by my response. Her solution for me was to drink the water. "If you drink the water, I will buy water." My head nearly exploded. "... WHAT?!?!"

"It's a sealed bottle of water!! I won't OPEN the water!!" She was unrelenting. "How much water cost? 1.15? If you drink half of the water, I pay 1.15 for the rest of the bottle." I couldn't get over how crazy she was and how crazy this moment was.

Since I was tired and I was losing my mind, I finally agreed to this crazy wacko. I grabbed a coffee cup and showed her it was empty. I opened a bottle, poured some out into the cup, showed her, and drank the water. I showed her the empty cup again and handed her the bottle. She seemed momentarily satisfied and I rung her up. Of course, my mind was going nuts, like firecrackers going off at the Esplanade on July 4th. So, like a fool, I kept talking.

"You realize that we don't bottle our own water. No store does. So, if you buy a Poland Springs in Shaw's and then a Poland Springs here, it'll be the same water in the two bottles because it doesn't make a difference WHERE you buy it. It only matters WHO'S water you buy." She waved her hand at me like I was a fly and was annoying her. "I know I know. Company's fault, not YOUR fault. But YOU should know if you sell poisoned water." I was like "... there hasn't been a recall or anything." She just kept talking about how the country was crazy and that she wanted to move back to her country where people didn't get poisoned by the water.

So, I made change and was in the process of giving her back 4 cents (after tax, the price is 1.21 and she gave me a dollar and a quarter so the change was 4 cents) and since I usually say something when I give back change ("Have a great day") and the last thing out of her mouth was "I'm going to go back to my country." so I said the only thing that came to my head: "Good luck." This is when she gave the punchline: "Luck?!? I don't need 'good luck!!' I need country that isn't trying to poison me!! You keep 4 cents and you give it to person who needs luck!!" And she turned around and walked out of the store, leaving me holding 4 pennies and looked utterly dumb-founded.

So, that was my weekend last weekend. Next up: this weekend!

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 3 -- Wedding Details

2007-06-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

Part 3 (go back and read parts 1 and 2 to get the whole story) is just an embellishment of the wedding. It's more like an addendum, although I don't want to go back and type that into the title so it'll just be "Part 3." So, Judy mentioned that the lack on description for the wedding itself in the last update was slightly disproportionate to the amount of description for everything else so I'll try to embellish the wedding a little for this post.

So, the wedding color was copper (brown-ish. I'm guessing copper. I dunno tho cuz I didn't ask them) so the flowers were light pink (almost a salmon color), Danny's tux had a copper tie and vest, and Jessica's dress was white with a light copper (almost pale gold) trim and designs (little swirly graphics, nothing elaborate or overpowering). She had a train that was white lace with gold designs. It was beautiful.

Upon arriving at the church, we immediately found a place to sit down. We sat with my uncle's side of the family (his mom and sister and brother) while I went in search of somebody I recognized (I think I had a pertinent question although now I can't quite remember what it was). I found Julie (Johnny's wife and the wedding coordinator for Danny's wedding. She had one of those nifty Bluetooth headsets that I always intended to buy but couldn't reasonably justify getting). The first thing out of her mouth was "3 in the morning?" I rolled my eyes and told her how much flying sucked. She was very sympathetic. Eventually, we were ushered to the groom's side. We sat in very uncomfortable pews (well, they're wooden benches. What do you expect?).

The wedding started with Pastor Allan asking us to pray. We did. It was a'ight. There were 2 worship songs sung. I can't remember which songs but there were worship people playing instruments and two girls singing into mics over to the right (left from the perspective of the stage) of the pulpit. One of the girls was really hot, but that seems inappropriate to concentrate on IN A CHURCH during a WORSHIP SONG so I just concentrated on the fact that I didn't know the words, almost nobody from my family knew the words, and almost everybody else did. It was a little disconcerting.

They did the usual vows ("Do you take this man... Do you take this woman...") during the ceremony. Jess's voice sounded kind of wooden but that's mostly because she was trying not to cry (she failed). Johnny gave Danny the rings. Danny's cost 25 dollars (a fact that he was very proud of. I was a little disconcerted but he gave a good reason. Something about it not being important how much it cost and it's not necessary for the guy's ring to be precious metal or whatever... Actually, upon hindsight, I'm still disconcerted. At least he spent a couple hundred dollars on Jessica's ring) and looked like it cost more. At least 50. (*rolls eyes*) Anyway, they did the ring exchange.

Then it was time for the unity candle (maybe the candle happened before the ring exchange. It's all a blur to me now). Unity Candle, if you don't know, is a fairly recent addition to Christian weddings (like... 30 or 40 years ago). It's a large pillar candle flanked by two thin taper candles. The mothers of the bridge and groom light their respective thin candles (this symbolizes the life that they each had before the ceremony, passed down to them from their family). During the ceremony, the bride and groom use the taper candles to light the pillar candle (this symbolizes them starting a new life together and joining each other as the two fires cannot be separated once they've joined together). Anyway, the candles were higher up (behind the pastor and the pulpit) in this church/wedding. So, Danny and Jessica walked up to the top of the stairs and stood together lighting the candles. This is when Danny pulled out a note card from his jacket pocket and read it to Jessica (I'm guessing these were their real vows and were meant to be secret). They cried. It was nice.

Symbolically giving something back to their families, D+J (I'm getting tired of typing it out every time) gave both sets of parents an orchid. Then they continued the ceremony (more praying. Seriously, I'm not going to type out every time we prayed. I think it was like 3 or 4 or something). It ended with the leaving of the bridge and groom hand in hand and the bridesmaids and groomsmen all left hand in hand too. The ring boy and flower girl left together (although the ring boy tripped at the very end and fell over. It was kinda cute but must've sucked for him. The flower girl was crying later because she let her "little brother" fall. That was kind of touching).

Then the wedding party came back into the church and a slide went up on the projector (using a laptop) with an ordered list of guest groups ("Danny's family," "Jessica's family," "Fellowship," "Harvest Berkeley friends," etc.). They wanted to get wedding photos with everybody and it was broken down into these groups for organizational purposes. We went up during our turn ("Danny's family") and took photos with the bride and groom. They looked a little overwhelmed.

Since we were first or second on the photo list and there were hundreds of guests, we were kind of wandering aimlessly for a little bit. My aunt was getting kind of tired and my dad was getting kind of restless so we decided to drive home (6 miles!) and rest for a little bit before the reception (it was a 2 hour break between the end of the ceremony and the beginning of the reception). I drove one car, my mom drove the other and we headed back. Upon arriving home, Chantel and Ariel immediately petitioned me to drive us to Starbucks for coffee. I immediately agreed and we headed out to get frappuccinos.

Of course, since we left after staying in the church for an hour and we drove kind of slowly, plus there was travel time to the restaurant to consider, we only had like 10 min. to get coffee. We were late. It was alright though because we got back just as my aunt and uncle and my parents were heading out the door. We piled into the minivan and I drove us to the restaurant (using the maps my mom downloaded from both Yahoo and Google. She was prepared). I looked for parking but couldn't find any. I finally found a dirt lot down an alley across the street from the restaurant and rushed to join my family.

We went into the restaurant and went up the stairs (except my aunt and my dad who took the elevator because of the wheelchair) to the reception hall. We were half an hour late but they had budgeted an hour of leadtime into the reception so people were still walking around and looking for their seats and there were plenty of people just arriving too. I found Julie and asked her if the dirt lot was an appropriate place to park. She looked at me like I had two heads. "Um... the restaurant has valet service. The wedding party's paying for it." I looked at her like she just explained gravity to me. "D'uh!! Valet!!" I turned around and went back down the stairs 2 by 2. I ran to the car and pulled it up to the restaurant door. The guy gave me a ticket and I ran back up the stairs.

Sitting down next to Ariel, we were placed in the table of Danny's cousins. Me and Ariel from my aunt's side and four other ppl from my uncle's side. They ranged in age from 16 to 25 (ish? I dunno. I frankly didn't ask). They were interesting people. The most interesting was the 16 year old girl who said that for her wedding she wanted a combination of half hiphop and half medieval jousts. I'm pleased there are such weird (in a good way) people in my family tree. =)

So, Danny's 100% Chinese and Jessica's 100% Chinese (I think). Naturally, they served Armenian appetizers. Many a Chinese relative was confused by the hummus. I was very amused by it. It was really good tho. There was hummus, baba ganoush (although with tomatoes I think because it was red and baba ganoush usually isn't red), pita bread, and an herb salad with mint and parsley. There was also a meat platter (sliced meats) and a shrimp platter. It was very tasty (in a Middle Eastern way). Main courses were steak, chicken, or salmon. It was very good, although the restaurant didn't give us steak knives so everybody had to struggle with cutting filets with butter knives. Stupid restaurant.

There were some interesting presentations during the reception as well. The wedding party were all introduced as they came to the wedding party table two by two (one bridesmaid and one groomsman at a time) with introductions that were clearly written by Danny and Jessica. Danny's were all funny (and most included the phrase "And he's single, in case you ladies are interested...") and Jessica's were mostly sweet. There were several toasts throughout the night, including the best man speech and maid of honor speech. Johnny's speech was really touching at the end but really really funny in the middle. See, for Danny's best man speech at Johnny's reception, he had found some of Johnny's old diaries and put some of the entries into his speech. Well, 2 years later, it's payback time. Johnny did the same for Danny and Danny's were equally as funny as Johnny's. Since Jess did her undergrad at Berkeley and Danny did his at UCLA, the presenters did a Cal vs. UCLA competition among some of the wedding party. They did a dance-off, a sing-off, and a kiss-off. It was amusing, especially Johnny's and Jerome's joint rendition of Celine's "My Heart Will Go On." There was also a good slideshow that I missed a part of because I had to take my uncle to the bathroom. Finally, Danny broke out his guitar and sat in front of Jess playing Elton John's "My Song" to her. That was really moving.

The reception ended with cake and dancing. I decided not to participate in the dancing but my uncle really got into it as did Jess's dad, both of whom were out on the dance floor with mid-twenty-year-old ppl dancing to hip hop. It was an amusing sight to say the least. We headed out relatively early because my family's mean age was around 50. Before we left though, I finally managed to talk to Jess as we were leaving. Her first words to me were "3 am?" Oh, jeez. Well, I managed to say the "You look great" and the "It was beautiful" and "Congratulations" without taking too much time up. We left after a fun day and got back in time to hash out how tomorrow would go. Then we all fell asleep.

It was a fun ceremony. I just called Sara today and RSVP'd for her wedding. She told me her mom was freaking out because nobody's RSVP'd yet. So, if you're reading this and you're invited to Sara's wedding: RSVP NOW! Save them some stress. I'm looking forward to the July wedding too because I think no matter what, no matter what goes wrong, weddings are always nice. They're fun and celebrations of joy and love and togetherness. Plus, good food. =) Part 4 to come shortly. Perhaps tomorrow. It's late and I'm tired.

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 2 -- A Lovely Ceremony

2007-06-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

Part 2 (read Part 1 below. I know, I know. Blog postings are arranged reverse chronologically. Blame the genre) of Danny's Wedding Weekend.

So, I get to my aunt's house at almost 4 am Saturday morning. Bear in mind, Danny's wedding starts at 3 pm Saturday afternoon. At least I made it, right? I immediately crash on the mattress set-up (thankfully it's set-up downstairs. I don't think I would've been able to make it up stairs).

Of course, the mattress was in the living room so at around 7 in the morning, I wake up to the sounds of my aunt talking to my uncle (he has Alzheimer's so excuse his constant questions). I listen for about 10 min. as my aunt explains to him how he can't go into the living room because I'm still sleeping and he needs to accompany her, the bride's mom, and our family friend from Taiwan to the hair dresser in the morning so that he can stay out the way of everybody trying to prepare for the wedding. I fall immediately back to sleep...

...for another forty-five minutes before the doorbell rings. It's the housekeeper/cook (my aunt works and is recovering from cancer and my uncle suffers from Alzheimer's. So, they have a housekeeper/cook). I let him in (because my dad CAN'T HEAR THE DOORBELL from the KITCHEN!! PUT IN YOUR HEARING AID!!!) and go back to the bed to put it away (shrug, might as well get up. There's a wedding today!). I sit down to watch TV. Finding nothing of interest on, I switch on the satellite cable (my aunt gets satellite cable with Taiwan programming. 12 channels of Taiwan TV with absolutely no other satellite channels. Thankfully, I'm not picky). I watch a variety show for about 20 min. before my cousin comes downstairs. "Good morning, Danny. Congratulations on the wedding!" "Good morning, Chris. Congratulations on making it into California." He tells me the florist is here. I put on my shoes and go outside with him as we help Moe, the florist, and his assistant unload the carloads of flowers he has and put them all in the garage outside. (Their garage is in their backyard. LA Suburban architecture.) Danny goes back to keep preparing for the wedding while I stay outside and help Moe as best I can for a little bit. My contribution includes filling three large buckets with water. Moe doesn't seem to trust me with anything else. Just as well because I wouldn't either.

I go back inside and sit down again to keep watching the variety show. They're blowing ping pong balls out of a giant glass vase full of flour with their mouths. I'm intrigued... Doorbell again. It's the other guy who's here to help Moe. I lead him to the backyard. Danny tells me that Moe's doing the flowers for free. What a great guy. I smell my shirt and realize that I'm in desperate need of a shower.

Shower done with, I come back downstairs for more TV. My aunt and uncle are back from the hairdresser's. My aunt looks good but she's using a walker. Oh yeah. Danny told me that she fell and had an accident. She'll be in a wheelchair for today's ceremony. That sucks. She's happy to see me tho as am I happy to see her. Aside from the walker, she looks healthy. Our family friend greets me too. Her English name's Chantal. She's a cool person. (She's Grandpa Wong's youngest daughter, for those keeping track.) My mom wakes up too. She changes and is off to pick up my other cousin, Ariel, so she can attend the wedding.

My aunt offers me Chinese breads to eat for breakfast. It's then that I realize that the last time I ate food was Thursday night for dinner (not counting chocolate chip cookies on the plane). Friday lunch was busy and I left at noon. Dinner was non-existent because of the line-waiting and JetBlue doesn't serve meals, just snacks. Wow. Starving and I didn't even realize it. I devour a bread and take a multi-vitamin (I've started taking One-A-Day). I feel much better. Back to watching TV.

I go outside for a little bit too to see how Moe's doing. The flowers are looking really good. It's surprising to see how much effort it takes to make that many bouquets (bouquets for all the bridesmaids and the bride as well as bouquets for all the pews and two gigantic bouquets for the pulpit). I'm absolutely no help. I go back to the TV. The variety show ppl just ate deep-fried shaved ice. I'm intrigued again.

My other cousin, Johnny (Danny's older brother) comes from his apartment (where he lives with his wife, Julie. They got married 2 years apart. They're also 2 years apart in age. I'm 2 years younger than Danny. Uh-oh. I think I'm expected to get married in 2 years) to pick up Danny and bring him to take photos. He jokes with me about getting in at 3 in the morning. Uh oh. I sense this will be the topic of conversation for me all day. Danny and Johnny are both dressed in their tuxes. Nice. On their way out, they give some last minute instructions. "Chris, look after my mom and make sure my dad puts on his tux correctly. It's sitting right here." They're off in Johnny's SUV which is decorated with lace and ribbons and has soap paintings on the windows that say "Just Married" and "J + D!" (Danny's bride's name is Jessica.) Cool.

Hm... probably time to get dressed. I put on my nice new shirt (it's Brandy colored) [This shirt but this color] and my tie (which is a different brand that I picked out all by myself to match the shirt [I bought both in Boston because I've worn the same suit 4 times and I thought I needed a new shirt and tie]. Very proud of myself. I got complimented on the shirt and tie. Yay!) and pants and jacket of course. I'm now dressed. Back to the TV.

Ok, helped my uncle and watched in curious intrigue as Chantel and Ariel made up my mom. Wow. They put WAY more work into her appearance than I did in mine. We live in a sexist society. Oh well. I'm dressed so why should I care? =P

3 o'clock and no problems. Time to go! We load up Moe's flowers, as well as helping Moe load up his car with the rest of the flowers. I ask my mom for the map to the church. It's only 6 miles away! Yay! I drive one car and my mom drives the other car. We arrive at the church with no problems. I wheel my aunt in and we all sit around to look at the chaos. My mom joins the chaos by running around with her camera and video camera. She takes many pictures and takes many minutes of video as well. I'm too tired to care either way about her. The church looks good tho. I say hi to Danny's dad's side of the family (who I've met probably twice?) and Pastor Allan (who also married Johnny and I've met probably a dozen times). Like a good pastor, he remembers me and jokes with me about getting in at 3 in the morning. Apparently information was being disseminated at the rehearsal dinner. I feel bad about taking at least some of the attention away from Danny and Jessica at last night's dinner.

I sit in the front with family. My mom gets the aisle seat and has her video camera aimed at the doorway, adjusting until she got a good shot framed. (We saw the video later and the lighting was all fucked up anyway so you couldn't see anything. Good try tho.) Me and Ariel chat and look at the program. "Worship songs?" Uh oh. This will be a long ceremony...

Oh! The music starts up and it's wedding time! Two bridesmaids make their way down and light the candles that'll be used in the unity candle part. The parents of the groom and bride next. My aunt and uncle have special instructions because of my aunt's wheelchair. Basically, Johnny wheels his mom down the aisle and my uncle's walked down with his sister, who will surrogate for my aunt for the unity candle part. Bridesmaids. The groomsmen and Danny come out together from behind the pulpit. It was a SURPRISE ENTRANCE! The ring boy (who's ... 2, it looks like and is wearing a little tuxedo. Cute) and the flower girl come out together. The ring boy looks really scared. Pastor Allan steps down to lead him up by the hand. The ring boy turns and tries to run away. Wow. That was funny. Now it's Jessica's turn. It's the first time I've seen her in the last couple of months. Wow, she looks really pretty. Looking good is definitely a good thing on your wedding day.

The ceremony's what you expect. Couple of memorable moments include singing 2 worship songs, Pastor Allan accidentally calling Danny "Johnny" and then correcting himself with the whole church laughing uproariously including the wedding party, Danny and Jessica saying vows in private when they were lighting the candle (I assume they were vows. It was private so nobody could hear what they were saying), both Danny and Jessica crying, and several "let us pray" moments. It was a very lovely ceremony.

Part three to be posted later. It's kinda late right now.

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 1 -- the FLIGHT FROM HELL

2007-06-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

So, this weekend was kind of long. It was ultimately fun and meaningful. Just... long. (Ok, I'm going to break this post up in several parts because it's longer than I thought.)

My weekend started on Friday. So, my cousin, Danny, was getting married on Saturday. Since... you know..., it was Saturday, I had a ticket on Friday; at 2:50 pm, specifically. However, since my bosses were both going on vacation on Friday, there was some work that needed to get done on Friday as well. So I went into work at about 9:30 in the morning with my duffel bag. I did some set-up for the Google lunch on Friday. In the process, however, I managed to put my finger under the steam wand on the espresso machine. So, I managed to give myself second-degree burns (ok, seriously, I'm not sure if it's actually 2nd degree burns. My cousin, who's had first-aid training, says it is but it doesn't hurt or anything. It looks like it's going to scar but I'm fine). I put on some burn cream (thank God Google has a very complete first aid kit) and a couple of bandages so I actually kept working after that.

Anyway, at noon, I left and went to Logan Airport via taxi. I got to Logan at like 12:15 and checked in for my 2:50 flight. So, I was uber-early. Sitting in the terminal, I returned some phone calls, including the Kresge (UCSC) CPC (College Program Coordinator) who I've been playing phone tag with for the last 2 weeks. I managed to get to her and she told me that I was in their top 5 picks for the job of ACPC (Assistant CPC) but they didn't have a travel budget to fly me out for an interview. Since my flight back to Boston was Monday night out of San Jose, I told her that I was actually going to be in town on Monday. So we arranged an interview for Monday at noon.

At 2:30, we started boarding JetBlue flight 1101 from Boston to New York (lay over). Getting on the plane at about... I dunno, 2:40?, I sat down and waited for the flight while watching JetBlue's signature complimentary DirecTV (TV!! Whee~!) At... 3:00? we had a PA announcement about delays in New York's JFK airport. We sat on the tarmac for another 2 hours waiting for "our turn" to take off. Yep. TWO HOURS on the tarmac because apparently we're not allowed to get off the plane once we've boarded the plane. It was everything you could hope it would be. Asses started cramping, people started getting restless, incessant updates from the captain that consisted of basically the words "Still no update from JFK..."

So, at maybe... 5-ish, we finally took off (travel time so far? 3.5 hours). I was a little worried about missing my connecting flight but for some reason I thought "well, the captain said that the delays were at JFK so it's not like the connecting flight took off or anything." 2 errors of thought here: 1. WE had taken off so obviously some traffic was leaving or coming into JFK and 2. if the connecting flight's truly delayed, there's no guarantee it'd be leaving anytime soon anyway, with or without us.

Anyway, an hour later, we arrived at JFK (that sounds wrong but a flight from Boston to NYC actually does 1 hour. I have no earthly idea why it takes an hour but it does). So, we arrive in JFK and the captain gets on the PA and announces "We have 6 passengers transferring to Burbank [including me. My cousin's wedding was in Pasadena] and 11 passengers transferring to San Diego. Please stay seated until they deboard so that they can catch their connections." Of course, once the plane stops, EVERYBODY starts deboarding, including one guy who literally shoved me out of the way. HEY~!!! I WAS ONE OF THOSE THAT NEEDED TO GET ON MY CONNECTING FLIGHT, FUCKER~!!! Regardless, I got off the plane only to discover that the connecting flights weren't being held for us. They had taken off AN HOUR AGO!! We needed to stand IN LINE to try and get tickets for the next available flight. Fantastic.

So, back into an unmoving line. Literally, it took an hour and a half just to get through the line (travel time so far? 6 hours). I met a nice woman who was on the Boston flight and was trying to get to Burbank and another not-as-nice woman who was in the same predicament (she wasn't mean. Just not as nice). We waited in this ridiculous line while I got to experience standing in line in a NEW YORK airport wearing a RED SOX t-shirt. I got some pretty nasty stares from people. FUCK-OFF!! I'm IN AN AIRPORT!!! It's not like I'm AT YANKEE STADIUM!! Anyway, managed to get through the line to get exactly the answer I expected.

-- "We only have stand-by room left on the flight."
-- "But..."
-- "No, there's no other flights for today going to Burbank. If you miss the 7:50 flight, the next flight is tomorrow morning at 6:30 am."
-- "What time will--"
-- "9:30 in the morning, Pacific Time."

So, I get to stand at Gate 12 with my stand-by ticket, like a dork with my new friend next to me, also with a stand-by ticket and also looking like a dork. In front of us, the not-as-nice woman was trying to plead with the ticket counter lady for a seat number because her 12 year old daughter's birthday was on Saturday and she needed to get home because her daughter was freaking out and they had a party all planned with invites and she needed to get home and prepare so the morning ticket wouldn't be in time and she... Anyway, she was crying her eyes out while me and the nice lady were standing about 5 feet behind her, whispering "If she gets on this plane, we should too."

Anyway, we get to about 10 min. before boarding time before nice lady tells me "that's it, I'm asking not-as-nice lady what the counter person told her." So she walks up to the other woman and the other woman basically said that she was told "you probably won't get on this plane." So, nice lady tells me that she's going to go wait in the hour and a half line again (because we need to switch our stand-by tickets to 6:30 am tickets if we miss this flight). She asks me if I would be kind enough to wait by the gate and signal her if we get to board in exchange for letting me cut in line with her if we don't get on the plane. Deal! So, I wait at Gate 12 while she makes her way to the JetBlue Customer Service desk.

So, it's boarding time on JetBlue flight 359 from JFK to Burbank (travel time so far? 7 hours). We wait until all the passengers board, anxiously clutching stand-by tickets. Finally, the counter person gets on the PA and announces 3 names for stand-by boarding. MY NAME's called!! YES! The not-as-nice lady respond extremely positively as well so I assume that her name was called too. Nobody else responds positively, however, so I figure that nice lady's name was the third name (Yes, it was stupid not to get her name before letting her go. Sue me, it was a hellish travel experience). I waved my arms frantically toward the direction of the JetBlue Customer Service desk. Counter Person takes my ID for verification and asks me if I know the other person. I say "Yes, she's waiting at the Customer Service desk. Let me go get her." Counter person says "Don't worry about it" and she repeats the announcement on the airport PA system so that the entire airport can hear it. She asks me if I'm traveling with the woman and I say "Sure" so counter person figures I wasn't just kidding around and she waits around. Sure enough, nice lady comes running from the distance at full-speed. "There she is!!" I tell counter person excitedly. Nice lady thanks us profusely and we get on the plane.

Of course, disaster strikes. We end up... wait for it.... SITTING ON THE TARMAC again. YES! Same rules applied. Once you board the plane, you can't de-board the plane. Seriously exhausting. Seriously. The guys who sat to my left and right (yeah, stand-by seating put me in the center seat. EVEN BETTER!) were friends and they were kinda stereotypical talkative middle-aged white men. It's alright tho because they were entertaining for the most part. They did have a strange obsession with Genesis (the music group) and were way jazzed when two (yes, TWO) Genesis concerts played on the plane on VH1 Classic (yay DirecTV!). Anyway, we were sitting on the tarmac for probably another 3 hours. Yes, it went from DAYLIGHT (well, dusk) to NIGHTTIME while I was sitting in an airplane seat looking at a RUNWAY.

More of the same followed. Cramping asses. Restless passengers. Complaining. Unruly pacing. Plus, constant phone call updates with my parents ("No, we haven't taken off yet. The captain said another 30 min. at least"). They were lucky enough to have made the drive from San Jose to Pasadena ok and were, as I was sitting in an airplane seat ("With more leg room than any other airline!* *Comparisons made based on coach tickets"), at Danny's rehearsal dinner. I really wished I could've been there. Seriously would've paid money to be there. I like my family and I like the bride and have never met her family. Would've given anything to be sitting there in a Chinese restaurant with family eating a big dinner. Instead? Watching stupid History Channel documentaries (because ESPN had the same news from 4 hours ago when I was sitting on Boston's tarmac and CNN was playing the Paris Hilton watch 24/7 on Friday).

Finally, at midnight (give or take), we finally take off (travel time so far? 10.5 hours). Everybody lets out a collective sigh of relief as we see NYC get really small out the window. I sit through another several hours of TV (including a Genesis concert on VH1 Classic and Godfather 2 on Bravo) as well as a free movie (JetBlue charges for movies because... well, they already offer free DirecTV. What are you? Greedy?). I watched The Namesake which was really really good (starring Kal Penn. You know, the Harold and Kumar dude. Go watch the movie. Really good). The other movies were free too but I had no interest in them. We arrive in Burbank airport at 3:08 am Pacific time (total travel time? 15.5 hours from boarding time!! Could've made it to Taiwan in that time).

This is the only story I could find with reference to the Friday delays so far.
*UPDATE: ok, Judy says that the link doesn't work so I'll just copy-paste the first two paragraphs here:

"Flight Snags Are Arriving on Schedule
By Joe Sharkey

Published: June 12, 2007

The nation’s air-travel system fell apart again last Friday night, when the space shuttle Atlantis was just about the only flight that was on time on the East Coast.

It is a bit of an exaggeration, but consider the actual numbers of flight delays that began choking the system on the East Coast Friday morning after an air traffic control computer failed in Atlanta. By early afternoon, delays began piling up, especially in the New York area, where flights were arriving two to three hours late by early evening at Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, and at Boston and Philadelphia."

Part two in next post.

Another month down

2007-06-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

So it looks like I let another month lapse on this blog thingamajigie. Oops.

Quick updates:

Let's see... last weekend, I went to Virginia with my roommate to visit our friend Alex (Kurianowicz [I think that's how it's spelled]) which was cool. It was Memorial Day Weekend so we had an extra day to putz around down there. Alex works in D.C. but lives in Centreville, Virginia: some 10 or 15 minutes away from D.C. We went to the nation's capitol and checked out the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and Mt. Vernon. We also just hung with Alex on a general basis: going bowling and to a barbeque. Overall it was a fun trip except it sucked for my roommate because I can't drive stick so he had to drive the seven hours down and seven hours up by himself. Yeah, I suck on roadtrips. We also got lost in Jersey for about half an hour on the way up looking for a bathroom. Jersey is a hole; don't go there. I'm not kidding.

Work's good. Busy as usual but not as busy last week. It'll get busier this coming up week because we have some projects we're gonna be working on.

Cousin's getting married next weekend so I'll be in Pasadena... in a suit... the same suit I always wear to everything because I only own 1 suit. Still, it'll be fun.

This past weekend was alright. I didn't do anything yesterday (pretty much literally. I stayed in and enjoyed the air conditioning). Today I went up to the Davis Square to visit Pushpinder, our Indian food supplier in Zigo. He just opened up a takeout counter for his kitchen so I went up to wish him good luck. I ended up hanging out there for like 5 hours, cooking with him and talking about random things (mostly about how Chinese and Indian ppl raise their kids and how in 1 generation, we'll take over the world. He's very Indo-centric in his thinking, which isn't that bad and makes for generally funny conversations). I also made Roti bread and helped out with some Aloo Matar and Mango Lassi. Next time I get a chance to go up there, I'm going to try and get there hellza early so I can learn how to make Tikka Masala and hopefully Chicken Saagwala. Pushp's food is the best I've ever had.

Speaking of food: on Friday, we (as in Zigo) went out together to get dinner at Oasis, a Brazilian place. We went Brazilian to celebrate one of our new employees (Raquel) getting her student Visa. [She's Brazilian and so's Saulo, one of our kitchen peeps.] Man, this place was crazy good. The food amounts were gigantic. We all had this one drink that tasted like tequila with sugar and mint. It was hella good. I think I went to two or three glasses of that. I had a 22 oz. steak, which was, as it sounds, gigantic. Mike and Eduardo split a meal that was (supposedly) meant for one person which was 2 cuts of steak, 3 chicken breasts, and a sausage skewered on a giant sword. Ok, the sword was GIANT for a sword. It was probably about four foot tall. It was still amazing and delicious. We ended our meal with a bunch of Mousse de Maracuja (Passionfruit Mousse). Delish. Y'all should go get some Brazilian food RIGHT NOW.

I spent the rest of today watching TV. We had, for about an hour concurrently, the Democratic Candidate debate from New Hampshire and the third game in a series between the Yankees and the Sox so I was channel-hopping between those two. For awhile, the debate was way more interesting because the candidates weren't holding back. Dennis Kucinich (who I didn't even know was in the race until tonight... [actually, now that I really think about it, I think Amanda mentioned something several months ago but it was in passing and I didn't know anything]) came off as a radical left-wing candidate and I lost respect for Chris Dodd for looking like kind of a crazy person. Hilary, the front-runner, looked comfortable but slightly out-of-place. Perhaps it's because I think I'm biased against her. She looked like she was having fun tho and I can see how she'd be the front-runner.

The real winner of the debate, in my opinion, is Barack Obama. Obama showed leadership and confidence as well as an ease and wit that's required for the public office. I don't know how smart he really is or what his position really is but as a candidate, he seems tailor-made for the Presidential Election. My favorite, however, was Mike Gravel. He's old and kind of ramble-y but at one point toward the end of the election, he flat-out said something along the lines of "We have a deficit and all the candidates are talking about creating this program or that program, none of which will happen." So he basically said that everybody was a liar and it made me laugh for a good 30 seconds. I like it when a candidate accuses everybody else in his party of being full of shit.

The game was pretty good too, at least halfway through. Yeah, the Yankees won, but it was a hard-fought victory and I can't say they didn't earn it. It was an edge-of-your-seat game for the last 5 innings and even down to the last pitch, nobody left early and everybody was on their feet at Fenway. Win or lose, those are the best games.

I bought the Maroon 5 cd on iTunes. Can't stop listening to it. So good. Love it. Get it now.

I think that's it for me for now. I'll try to post more regularly in the future, which is something I always intend to try for real but never succeed in. We'll see what happens on this go-around.

Updates all around

2007-05-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

First tho, update on "Jim" from the previous post. So, Jim's girlfriend called Jim's guardian in New Jersey when she got really worried about him. She was told by the guardian that this has actually happened before. Apparently 6 years ago, in Jersey, Jim had a freak-out and took off. They found him a week later when he calmed down enough to call in and tell them he was alright. Turns out he freaked out and drove away... to LOS ANGELES!! Yep, last freak-out caused a 3000 mile exodus. Crazy.

I saw Spider-man 3 last night at the midnight showing at Regal's Fenway Theater. It was pretty sweet. If you're expecting an excellent movie, you won't be disappointed. Bear in mind, however, that Raimi maintains the same feel of the previous two movies. The dialogue dips back and forth from the dramatic to the melodramatic, a few times apparent enough for you to think "hm... that's unsually cheesy." Plus, nobody cheeses it up more than Tobey and Kirsten and they've been doing it for 2 movies now so they're starting to do it more than they probably should. That being said, the story's interesting and Thomas Hayden Church and James Franco are both really good. Topher Grace is pretty good too but his playfulness in the role is akin to Colin Farrell's as Bullseye in the Daredevil movie. It works for the character but you can't actually say it's quality acting. I'd recommend you go see it, especially if you liked the first two movies. If you HATED the first two movies, skip it. It's more of the same.

Hopefully if you watch it in the theater, there isn't an asshole behind you kicking your chair and his two bitch friends who're talking through the whole movie. Fuckers.

Work's busy. Yep. That's it for now, I suppose. I have some cool news but I'm still deciding if I should stick it in my blogosphere (I'd call it THE blogosphere but that'd imply the actual gigantic blogosphere and I don't think I merit a mention in THE blogosphere). ANYhoo, I'll catch ya later.

So a strange thing happened at work today...

2007-05-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't be sharing this in a public forum like this except 2 things: 1.) I don't think anybody on this coast reads this blog and 2.) this is so ludicrous, i can't fathom not sharing it.

I won't use real proper nouns in case this actually does get read by someone.

So, I go into work today and my boss is like "We've got a story to share with you." But first, some exposition:

So we open every weekday morning at 8 am. Since we have a separate kitchen and we make all our sandwiches and most of our salads from scratch everyday, our kitchen staff shows up at the kitchen at 6 in the morning. Then, the person who's the opener shows up at the store at 7 in the morning and opens the store. One of our delivery people makes a delivery from the kitchen to the store at 7 in the morning and the person who opened preps the store so that it can be opened at 8 (brews coffee, labels the food, hangs up the cookies, etc.)

Ok, story time (this all happened before I got into work):

So this morning, our delivery dude (we'll call him... Ned) comes at 7 with his shipment. Ned comes to the store and he sees the opener dude (we'll call him... Jim). According to Ned, Jim was not "dressed for work." (Ned, like most of our kitchen staff, has a language barrier issue. This is the story we got from Ned.) Jim was dressed in a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and looked, according to Ned, like a "bum."

So, the next employee to arrive at the store (we'll call him... Fred) comes at 8 every morning (either 8 or 8:30, I'm not sure. I work night shift so I don't show up until like 2pm). He notices that the store is not open yet. The lights are off and there's no sign of life. He goes and asks the security people in the lobby (our store neighbors the lobby of an MIT building and is, in fact, owned by MIT) if it's a holiday or if they know what happened to the store, namely Jim. They say they have no idea and have been getting questions from people about whether or not we're open.

So Fred, puzzled, goes to the kitchen (it's about a 2 block walk) and finds the kitchen staff. They have no idea why the store's not open yet either. Fred calls the store and nobody picks up so he calls one of our bosses (we'll call him... Owner Sam). Owner Sam drives over while Fred gets the spare keys from the kitchen staff and walks back to open the store. Owner Sam and Fred start to go through the opening the store rituals (brewing coffee, labeling food, hanging up cookies, etc.) when Owner Sam goes to the safe to put money into the registers (we takes them out every night and put money into the safe). He notices that there's no money in the safe. At all. And he sees the receipts and the closing sheets I fill out every night (when I take the money out of the register and put it into the safe) from Friday but there's no actual money.

So, it turns out that Jim stole all the money and took off. Now, just so you know, Jim's the first person to get hired by Owner Sam and his partners (Owner.. Betty and Barney [they're married]). Owners Sam, Betty, and Barney hired Jim from day one so he's been working there for 2 years now. Jim's kind of ADD and OCD [and I think bi-polar] but I never thought he's just flip out and bail.

To make matters worse, Jim's girlfriend is living with him now. She is also an employee of ours (inter-office romance... another bad thing about it?) but she's currently on... (wait for it...) maternity leave. YES! Jim's girlfriend just had Jim's son! Jim's a young-ish man and that's what Owner Betty thinks drove Jim to just realize one day that he's not ready for this and just bail. Jim's girlfriend, who we talked to, said that...

[Sorry, give me a minute. I'm just trying to remember if anybody has a link to this blog from work. If you do, don't share this post just yet... Thanks.]

Anyway, Jim's girlfriend said that she sent Jim out on Sunday afternoon to get something for the baby (I think juice...?). He came back at 1 in the morning (almost 12 hours later) and told her something about getting into a car accident. So, speculate what you want from that all. I have my own suspicions about what happened to Jim but I won't go into it.

Suffice it to say, we're all worried about Jim (more so about his girlfriend). Nothing's actually happened yet in terms of contacting anybody or anything (aside from calling his girlfriend). We're all still in the dark about stuff and we don't really know what's going on yet specifically.

Think about it though. Jim just cashed his chips and got the hell outta Dodge. I mean, he folded his hand and cashed outta the game. This is all relatively new to me. I think I grew up in a somewhat sheltered life in that nobody I knew in high school or college would even consider this sequence of events as a possibility in life. I don't think I can actually fathom the magnitude of just bailing like this. Anyway, just thought I'd share because this was... a wacky day, to say the least.

Studio 60's dying gasp

2007-04-28T00:34:00.000-07:00

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was canceled earlier this year. That sucks. It was a good show and, while it wasn't the best effort by Sorkin yet by far, it was still more worthwhile than some of the crap on the air right now. However, besides being canned (speaking of which, I have a rant somewhere in me about the frequency of which shows get canceled and how TV ratings around currently at an all-time low. Correlation?? You better damn well believe it), Studio 60 still has episodes left that have been filmed but haven't been aired yet. Apparently, they're scheduled to air the rest of the episodes May 24.

So, at least we'll get to watch a couple more episodes before burying the latest Sorkin show. Hopefully he's busy working on a new show or new movie that will prove that he's not washed up yet. I love Aaron Sorkin's work, be it movies like The American President or A Few Good Men; or shows like West Wing and Sports Night, and I think while he does suffer from some tendencies to over-preach, his writing style's crisp and quick and his characters certainly don't suffer from being moronic. If the options are more shows like Jackass or more shows like Studio 60, I vote Sorkin everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.

Dawning of the Golden Age?

2007-04-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, two links:

1.) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6584229.stm

Scientists found a substance with the chemical formula of sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. A Google search (ok, they said "Internet Search." Let's face it. They probably just Google'd it) showed that that particular chemical formula was written on the outside of the museum case prop in the movie Superman Returns for KRYPTONITE.

2.) New York Times story
(Sorry if you can't read the story. It might need a NY Times account. I can't tell because I have an account. [GET ONE! It's free!!])

European astronomers found the most likely candidate yet for a planet that could possibly support life on other planets in the Libra constellation about 20 light years from Earth. It's a planet circling a dim red star named "Gliese 581" that's about 5 times the mass of Earth.

Hm... let's think now. We find KRYPTONITE and now we find a planet that could support life that happens to be DENSER than Earth and orbits a RED SUN. Could this be the beginning of the Golden Age of DC??

(Ok, I'm not stupid enough to actually believe that SUPERMAN is going to just appear. You gotta admit tho: the timing's pretty cool.)

Ideologically, Superman (who's been called the father of superheroes) came about in the 30's from 2 Jewish writers. America was in a state of inner turmoil because of the Depression while Hitler was running wild as a terrorist out of control in Europe. Wait... isn't America currently in a state of inner turmoil (ok, not because of a depression and not as serious as the 30's were) while there are terrorists running wild and out of control in Europe (not to mention everywhere else)? HMMMM... Superman may not be appearing on the horizon anytime soon but that's not to say that the world's not in need of some superheroes right now.

Long time no post

2007-04-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

So. Long time no post. It's been almost a month since my last post. Also, significantly, I came back from Taiwan since my last post. So I've been back in Boston for nearly a month now.

Boston is pretty much how I remember it. I mentioned before that we (me and my roommate Mike) moved. We used to live in the South End (off of Washington Street near the Washington/Mass Ave intersection... for those of you who actually know where that is). Currently we live pretty much amongst the Boston University dorms. (Near Fenway, right next to Audubon Circle.) It's a completely different atmosphere here. For one thing, this is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the BU dorms. I see students here ALL the time. Which is good because it's relatively safe (at least safer than our last place) and there's an air of lightness and youth. We're next to a highway tho (not to mention Comm Ave and Storrow) so there's a lot of traffic noise. The windows are good tho so it's not debilitating.

Around us now is a Taco Bell close by (whee!! I haven't had Taco Bell in so long! I love Taco Bell. Boo on you guys who don't like Taco Bell), as well as a grocery store right next to us. Not to mention Best Buy, Staples, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Star Market also pretty much right next to us (like... 5 min. walk? 10 min. walk? something like that). So overall, this is a pretty nice place.

Work's been good. Busy. MIT's Graduate Math Department just had their Spring Social party thingie (with 200+ ppl!! Plus stragglers...) which we catered. And for them, I made custom-designed special menus. I've been told they're pretty and I'm pretty proud of them myself. (I made an Atlantic Salmon from scratch on Photoshop!!) I also met a cool girl there who we offered a job to at Zigo and I hope she takes it because she's (among other things) a lit major! I miss having lit majors around me...

Red Sox beat the Yankees last weekend. Like BEAT the Yankees. 3-game sweep. It was good stuff. The whole of Boston is caught up in Dice-K fever to the extent that places like Game On and Cask 'n Flagon (two sports bars across the street from Fenway and 2 of the biggest places to catch games on game day. Like SUPER SUPER busy) have signs in Japanese which... welcome Dice-K, I suppose. I dunno what they really say. I can't read Japanese. I wanna get a Dice-K shirt. In fact, I probably will get a Dice-K shirt. I may be a die-hard Lakers fan and a homegrown Giants fan but the Red Sox are the only team that I own shirts for so far. I wonder if that just means I'm bandwagon? Probably

I read a good book recently called "Bento Box in the Heartland" which proclaims itself to be a "food memoir." It's a memoir about the author growing up as the daughter of the only Japanese family in Versailles, Indiana. It's a pretty good book and her writings on the chapters where she goes to Japan with her mom when she's 14 (I think 14. I can't quite remember the age) parallel my feelings about Taiwan. Read it! It's by Linda Furiya. Probably in the Non-Fiction section (or New Release because... well, it's a new release).

I've been watching Dead Like Me on DVD. Good show. Funny. The humor's pretty off-beat sometimes and hard to catch sometimes and the end-of-episode monologues don't always make sense (a la Grey's Anatomy) but it's a pretty worthwhile show to watch.

I've also had a separate thought in my head the last 2 days that I'll blog about in a separate post than this one. Having said that, I think I'm done with this post for now. I'll try to blog more often.

Final Thoughts on Taiwan

2007-03-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

There's an atomosphere of dreadful anticipation hanging about. We're sitting here in my Grandma/Uncle's place and we've all divided up amongst the small apartment doing our own thing, each one fully aware that this is the last day that me and my parents are going to be in Taiwan for this trip. Grandma, in particular, knows that at 90 years old, there aren't going to be very many more visits in her future.

I don't know what it is about Taiwan that I've grown to love so much in the last several years. Perhaps it's the quaintness of my Uncle's apartment. A family of four (with my older younger cousin in America going to school/working) fits into a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, living room, kitchen, and not-much-else apartment filled to the brim with mementos and memories of the past 70 years.

Perhaps it's the proximity to relatives and family friends nearby. Every place we go to seem to be dinner dates and lunch meetings that act as miniature family reunions, talking with people who time seems to have left behind. There's always laughter and usually tears that accompany attempts of instilling stories of youths lost and wars fought into generations to come by parents and grandparents. I sat wide-eyed this last trip listening to story after story from my dad and Grandpa Wong who told of their harrowing escape from Beijing to Taipei.

Perhaps it's the sense of self that's acheived in a land where you have no social pressures. It's ok to sit on the couch and watch TV, it's ok to not be understandable or to not be sociable, and it's ok to just sit and listen to stories because you represent the colonial escapees, off to search for a better life, willing to give you time and energy to come back to the old country. The language is difficult but rewarding and the relationships are unconditional.

Perhaps it's the atomosphere of the city. Shrouded in a blanket of smog, a result of hurried industrial progress, the cramped streets and sidewalks are filled with people. Food stands litter the roadside spaces and street markets are found down alleyways. For less money than it takes to scratch your nose in America, you can eat a three-course breakfast with a bowl of soy bean soup.

Ultimately though, it's probably because all these things provide a sense of safe comfort. Like a knowledge passed down through strands of DNA, my father and mother's old home; my grandmother's old home; my family's old home; Taiwan trips seem the inherent homecoming to a place that seems easier than home. And this time, like the time before this and the time before that, I leave Taiwan with a sense of melancholy acceptance. Home is America but I could live here.

More stuff from Taiwan

2007-03-28T08:45:00.001-07:00

So I thought I'd blog some more from Taiwan, sitting here in the basement at 11:00 pm in the hotel using their wireless Internet to download some podcasts.

(One of the things that's keeping me occupied aurally while I'm walking around and driving around in taxis and when I'm at home on the couch trying to understand Chinese TV is listening to podcasts/radio shows of wrestling news in the US. Wrestlemania is this weekend and it's going to be huge.)

My uncle and his family left this morning to go back to Cali (Goin' back back to Cali Cali). Since it was their "adventurous spirit" that was driving most of the tourist-y stuff, I'm spending more time not going around like a madman trying to see everything Taiwan has to offer, which is good because I think I'm not much of a traveler. I like being comfortable and being in a foreign place for a brief time does not feel the same as being at home. Taiwan is a place that's just in the middle of being foreign and being home. While I have no trouble at all feeling comfortable in my Grandma's place, I do feel uncomfortable with the constant running around being a tourist usually includes. So, when I'm here, I enjoy sitting around, talking to my family members, and spending time with my Grandmother while I can.

That's not to say that I haven't been running around the last few days anyway. Since my uncle and his family (the ppl we came to Taiwan WITH) have not been with us these past few days, me and my parents have chosen these past few days to run around and visit those friends on my father's side of the family that we haven't seen in awhile. So, seeing Grandpa Wong (not actual Grandpa but more of a term of endearment) and his family, namely.

Grandpa Wong's relationship to us was explained to me thusly (I've known him for quite awhile but I was never old enough to realize that I didn't have any clue as to who he was in our family tree/history so I asked and my mom was kind enough to explain it to me). When WWII was going on, my Grandfather (well, both of them really but this is a story about my Dad's side of the family) was fighting for the Chinese. After WWII, he wound up positioned outside of Beijing while Grandpa Wong, who was a friend who was in the same unit as him during WWII, was positioned inside of Beijing. When the Communists and Nationalists were fighting, Grandfather was trapped outside of the city while my Grandmother and her family (my aunt and dad) were inside of Beijing. Since Grandfather wasn't there to take care of them, Grandpa Wong did.

After my dad was born, which was shortly after the city was seized and the Communists won, Grandfather wasn't allowed back into the city because they lost the battle and he was taken prisoner. Grandpa Wong took care of Grandma until my dad was 100 days old and, assumably, old enough to travel. Grandma then went to get a license to bring her children to Taiwan, where she grew up and still had an older sister. The excuse was that since they didn't have Grandpa, they needed to go back and be with family in Taiwan. Grandma got the license and she told them that Grandpa Wong was family also and would be traveling with them. Since Grandpa Wong had a different last name, Grandma said that he was her cousin on her mom's side. They managed to leave Beijing and refugeed themselves to Taiwan. Along the way, they ran into an exiled Grandpa and they all went to Taipei as a family. Until Grandma died 8 years ago, she and Grandpa Wong still called each other "cousin" when referring to each other.

Ok, so that was a long story. Anyway, we went to go visit Grandpa Wong and his wife (which would be... Grandma Wong). They were nice and fun to talk to but Grandpa Wong, unfortunately, is showing signs of Alzheimer's. He often got his stories confused and forgot ppl's names, including mine and my dad's real names (when my dad was growing up, Grandpa Wong always referred to him and his sister by their nicknames, even to this day. Him and his family may be the only people left who still call Dad "Xiao An"). But he was still an interesting and charismatic person. Grandma Wong was nice too. She cooked us lunch and we all ate.

Today was lunch with more family friends, altho these ppl I'd met already at Grandma's Birthday lunch. I don't know the complete story about how we know this Grandpa and Grandma (I think it's Grandma and Grandpa Chung?) but I generally know. Grandpa and Grandma lived in the same neighborhood as Grandma and Grandpa Chung in Taiwan as young adults. They were both military families. Since money was tight, their families depended on each other to eat and entertain themselves. My mother and her siblings grew up with Grandpa Chung's kids. Grandpa Chung taught my mom and her siblings how to speak English. Later on, when my mom was going to college and majoring in Math, she taught math to Grandpa Chung's kids (they're younger than my older uncle by 10 years).

Ok, I don't think anybody's interested in reading these random older stories of family friends. They only reason I'm posting these here is to stall for time as I try to remember what the hell else I've been up to. The days are starting to blend together. I do know time here's short. I think I leave in like... 2 days or something like that. 3? Something like that. We're leaving Saturday night at 10-ish Taiwan time and come in Saturday night at 7-ish San Francisco time.

I bought the soundtrack to Dreamgirls two days ago. I loved the movie on the plane but I know that watching it on the plane is the absolute worst way to watch it. I'm going to get the DVD when it comes out (unless it's ALREADY come out, in which case I'll get it when I get back to the States) and watch it on a proper TV at a proper comfort level. Still, the music's fantastic and I want a chance to listen to it over and over again.

I also bought a new watch. My watch here got busted a couple of days ago. Well, not BUSTED. It still works. It's just that the "6" on the watch face came off the face and has been rattling around the watch face. It doesn't bother me except every now and then it'll get itself lodged in between the hour hand and minute hand and jam them so they can't move. When that happens, I have to shake the watch until the 6 gets un-lodged and then reset the time... which is annoying and very un-productive because I have to keep asking what time it really is. My new watch is automatic and works on kinetic energy instead of batteries. Which I find really really cool. I keep staring at the mechanism on the watch face, which is actually kinda bad because it looks like I keep checking my watch for the time because I'm bored. I'm just really enthralled by the mechanism.

Ok, these really really really annoying business men just came in and sat down to work and gossip. They're being loud and obnoxious so I'm going to finish typing and post this and leave.

Taiwan update

2007-03-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

Okie dokie. It's Monday morning here in Taiwan. I'm typing this on Notepad because I actually DON'T have wireless in my room. I'm also watching TV. There's a movie on called "Snowboarding Academy." It stars Corey Haim and Jim Varney. So far... it's odd. The dialogue in this movie is... BAD. REALLY BAD. "I kind of like the idea of you winning. IN A PARALLAL UNIVERSE!"

Anyhoo, the last 2 days have been fun. Between the two big ass family lunches we've had, my cousin's managed to take a gig worth of pics. I'll try to sort through them and find 1 or 2 to exemplify the 2 days.

So, Saturday was Grandma's birthday thingie. It turns out it's a lunch, not a dinner like me and my cousin assumed. I guess the idea was that a meal of this size would take a long time and we didn't want to force ppl into staying and talking until midnight, especially with the older generation.

[Movie note: Jim Varney's yodelling is apparently able to make skiers crash at the very noise and ppl seem to have uncanny accuracy with throwing their ski poles like javelins. I'm... this movie is bad. And somebody speaks like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted's for which they put subtitles and the line "What is he saying? Nobody really knows..."]

Sorry, anyway. The thing was a lunch in a fancy hotel's fancy restaurant for 30+ ppl. So, suffice it to say, it was massive. This picture is a good indication of how the room was:

We managed to fill up that table and the second table on the left too. Unfortunately, having this many ppl on a single table (or 2 in this case) meant isolated conversations but it's cool. We managed to keep ourselves entertained.

A lot of these ppl are ppl I've never met, actually. Well, haven't seen in over 10 or 20 years in some cases, which is pretty much the same as never met. But it was good meeting them, however briefly.

The food was... massive. They had a ridiculous amount of food which was pre-divided for us (because reaching across the table on a lazy susan 5 feet in diameter would probably hurt). The duck was particularly good. In addition to the food, the restaurant gave us cakes. Yes, there's an "s" on that word. They apparently made a deal that they'd give us a free birthday cake for every 10 person table we had. We ended up with 3 birthday cakes. Very rich creamy chocolate cakes. We also brought a bunch of cakes (it's a birthday, after all) so we gave every family a cake (some families more than one) and also a gift bag. This would come back to haunt us the next day.

[Movie note: this movie's so bad, it makes me wanna buy it and watch it repeatedly.]

So, this lunch ended up taking 4+ hours. We got back to my uncle's and we sat down to play... mah-jong. We played 9 HOURS of mah-jong and ended up going back to the hotel at 1:30 (my parents and my cousin's parents were all peaced out already. My cousin and I got a ride back from our uncle). That was the day Saturday: lunch and Mah-jong.

Sunday morning/noon we had a dimsum lunch that we were invited to by family friends. This time it was only a 15 person lunch.

[Movie note: Ok, I don't understand how sabotaging the skiers/snowboarders competition for control of the ski lodge will help the evil Russian wife and her dimwitted boyfriend stop the insurance agent from re-insuring the ski lodge and cost the owner his lodge. BUT, the ski pole/snowball/catfight duel at the end in the pro shop was slightly entertaining.]

Anyway, after lunch we picked up the glasses we ordered on Monday and then headed home for some dinner (lunch ended up being a 3 hour ordeal and then another hour for picking up glasses meant that by the time we got home, it was after 4). We headed to the night market after that...

and then back home for... you guessed it: MAH-JONG! We only played for a couple of hours (not 9, like marathon-night) but this time, my cousin surreptitiously documented most of the games with his camera. I'll post a couple of mah-jong pics because... frankly, because I find them interesting.

This is my "hm... what do I throw" face.

This is my cousin's "I hate jetlag" face. (She lives in L.A. and flew back for Grandma's birthday as well. She's my uncle's [um... uncle who's house we're in in the pic] oldest daughter and went to California for high school and college. She now works as a kindergarten teacher.)

This is my other cousin's "What the hell am I looking at" face. (also, note my other cousin's tiles and the fact that the numbers are upside down.)

I'd show you a pic of my cousin who's taking the pics but, for some reason =P, he didn't take pictures of himself.

Ok, that's it for now. Today's a new day! and hopefully a day of rest. this vacation's very tiring.

Lotsa stuff on Taiwan

2007-03-24T01:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I said that I'd blog about Taiwan so I'll blog about Taiwan. I was too lazy to blog the last couple of days (plus I didn't have a readily accessible computer) but today was an interesting day so I thought I'd blog. However, to get to TODAY, I've got to get through everything before today too so, here we go... (sorry if this is really really long)

(Oh, and a note about the pictures. I have no camera still because I lost my camera in the fire at work in December so all the pictures I'll post in this post are courtesy of my cousin.)

I got into Taiwan (Taipei) on Sunday (evening). It was a long flight and I got a little restless towards the end but it was alright. Wasn't too devestating. =P

The movies they showed (because we were sitting coach and they didn't have personal tv screens in the back of the seats... sadness) were:

Night at the Museum (which was better than I thought it'd be. Ben Stiller is pretty good in it as somebody who's funny but not annoying. Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt was pretty inspired also),

Man of the Year (which wasn't as good as I thought it'd be. Also, I tuned out the middle part so I missed some of the crucial plot points especially with the girl and the whole election rigging thingie. I wasn't really looking forward to a whole "this is how politics should be" ad),

Dreamgirls (which was really really good, altho I think there were probably sex scenes or relationship scenes that were cut out because the beginning felt a little abrupt. Jennifer Hudson definitely deserved "Best Supporting Actress" and they were robbed when they didn't win "Best Song."

Mistress of Spices (click the link if you've never heard of this movie.) It's actually really really good, which doesn't really surprise me because it was set-up as a foreign indie darling film, even tho it costarred Dylan McDermott.

Happy Feet (which I didn't watch at all because by this time, I was overloaded on movies. It was well-animated, tho)

So, the first couple of days in Taiwan were fairly uneventful. We got in Sunday night so we pretty much just said hi to Grandma and then went to sleep in the hotel. Monday, we all went to a glasses store that our entire extended family here has been going to for years and got glasses. Apparently, my mom partially equates "going to Taiwan" to "opportunity to buy new glasses." Since I'm off my parents' healthcare plan in America, I'd have to pay a whole helluva lot of money to get glasses on my own so it's been 4 years since I bought new glasses and I needed new ones because I think my eyes are worse now than 4 years ago. ANYWAY, the point is: I bought new glasses. We're picking them up on Sunday.

After a couple of non-descript days of Taiwan fun, my Uncle (Mom's older brother who lives in America) came with his wife and his youngest son (my cousin, also named Chris, who's 2 years younger than me). He's an adventurous person and so is his family so they are intent on doing a buncha stuff and seeing a buncha stuff. Although this runs against my personal philosophy of doing nothing, I figured "What the Hell" and I'd go along with it. Because of that, I've been pretty much too tired to blog or do much online.

So far, we've been to Taipei 101, National Museum of Taiwan, and Chang Kai-Shiek Memorial Hall. Today, however, was the BIG trip day. We went, by way of High Speed Bullet Train, to Gaoxiong.

(Quick Formosa Geography Lesson: Taipei is in Northern Taiwan. It's not quite at the shore but it's fairly North. Gaoxiong [which I KNOW I'm misspelling but I'm tired] is in Southern Taiwan. It IS on the shore and is the second biggest city in Taiwan, making it the largest Port city in Taiwan.)

[ok, i just looked it up. it's spelled Kaohsiung. Gaoxiong was hanyu pinyin method of spelling it.]

So, we bought bullet train tickets for the first train in the morning and return tickets for the last train at night so it was a whole day trip. The train trip takes 2 hours. We had to get up at the butt-crack of dawn to get to the train station and catch the first train. So butt-crack, in fact, that we didn't get a chance to eat breakfast of any sort so we ended up eating at the 7-11 at the train station. It was pretty good, especially since the equivalent to taquitos and hot dogs at 7-11 here are steamed buns with meat and vegetables.

At the train station, I saw, up until that point, the best sign "all time all my life":

Yes, that sign says: "Take refuge in the recess area and shout for help if you fall onto the track." I laughed my ass off after seeing that. Most places would say "DON'T FALL ONTO THE TRACK, DUMBASS" but here in the HSR station, THEY HAVE A PLAN!!

Anyway, despite being the second largest city in Taiwan, the bullet train stopped just short of Kaohsiung and we had to take a taxi into the actual Kaohsiung city. Immediately getting into the station, we were followed by a taxi driver who kept asking us where we were going and telling us it would be cheaper if he drove us and more convenient. When he discovered we had 6 ppl and needed to use 2 cabs, he immediately grabbed his cohort who also drove a taxi and together they both followed us.

The dude in the jeans and the red-ish shirt is the sketchy taxi driver. He's standing REALLY REALLY close to me and my parents trying to make a phone call. The dude in the white's his cohort. SKETCHY!!!

We decided on taking cabs and outta principle I wouldn't have taken these 2 guys's cabs but my parents and uncle were fine with it so, whatever. It turned out to be alright and we got in fine.

We were dropped off at the tourist-y harbor area where I immediately bought flip flops because 1.) it was hot and 2.) it was a harbor-beach town. These flip flops are the really cheap sort (cost me 5 bucks [U.S.]) but they're pretty comfy all things considered.

Anyway, we ate lunch and walked around the harbor area. Then we took another taxi to a boat called MV Doulos, which we were told was a floating book store. Apparently they sailed around the world and stopped in harbors and sold books. Sounded cool. We went there and paid NT$10 (which is about... 30 cents American) entrance fee to go aboard the ship and shop at their book fair. Turns out, it's a MISSIONARY ship. The first thing we see are section signs that say "Bibles" and "Christian Living" and "Cooking." I dunno about the cooking but if you have 2 separate sections on Bibles and Christian Living, you're a CHRISTIAN BOOKSTORE. We were fooled!! It was still kind of a cool book and definitely a cool concept. I wish there was a secular version tho.

After the Christian book tour debacle, we went (via taxi again) to the British Consulate building. It was the old British Consulate in Taiwan that was built back in the 1800s. It was also the first building built in Taiwan in Western Architecture. Of course, we climbed the massive staircase and the first thing we see is a Buddhist temple and pagoda. After scratching our heads for a few minutes, we realize that they built a temple NEXT to the British Consulate. So, we walked over to the Consulate building and looked around. It looked cool and normal and stuff until me and my cousin saw a sign that said:

Reception ^
Dungeon >
Gift Shop >

We were like "... DUNGEON?!?! Like... A DUNGEON!?!?! WTF!?!?!" So this DEFINITELY warranted an investigation. We grabbed a map and on it was an area marked "The Maze of Jail." We said ".... nooo......" BUT! sure enough, on the basement floor of the building was this sign:

Like... BRITISH JAIL! The Dungeon Maze was a BRITISH JAIL!! We went into the Dungeon Maze and it was seriously the jail for midgets. The thing was like 3 feet tall. We couldn't even go all the way in. We just sat there taking pictures (I'll post more later). It was way crazy. In my opinion, all consulates and embassies should have a DUNGEON MAZE on the basement floor.

After the Dungeon Maze, we eventually went out to get dinner. (After a river tour on a boat. Which actually really sucked.) We walked around looking for a place to eat and after my uncle rejected Outback Steakhouse (much to our sadness), we settled on a beef noodle house. They served... beef noodles. It looked like a local dive and had locals in it eating so we felt like we were set on good food. Literally, the minute we walked in and sat down, there were 5 white people that came in and sat down in the table next to ours. We were like "...HUH!?!?!" Like all the tourists came in at the same time. Turns out they were here for a film festival. Still, we were questioning our food choice but thought whatever. We ordered and started eating when the MAYOR OF KAOHSIUNG came in and ate dinner. My parents and uncle were aghast at the unlikelihood of seeing the mayor. Me and my cousin were like "...??" at who this person was. Being the very polite and decent people we were, during her dinner, we asked the mayor if we could take a picture with her. She very politely agreed, despite our being ridiculously rude tourists.

This was taken by a camera that's not the camera they were posing for... that's why it looks kinda like they're all looking at different cameras.

Anyway, we finally finished everything up and headed home on the High Speed Rail back to Taipei. It's NOW 1:33 am and I'm spent. This was a fun day but some dude just walked into the cafeteria (it's the only room in the hotel that has guaranteed Internet access) and is smoking a cigarette. I'd better get going before I get a headache or something.

Tomorrow's Grandma's birthday bash. Hopefully there'll be some good pictures and I'll blog about it or something tomorrow. =) Until then: BYE!!

Stuff that's happened

2007-03-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

I'm going to just make a quick thought dump in this post.

One of the front page stories on NY Times.com was (it's not longer cover story) the lack of confidence Republicans have in getting another Republican elected as president in 2008. It said something like 40% of Republicans believed that no matter how they voted, a Democrat was going to win the Presidency in 2008. I have no idea what the sample size is in that poll but I do know that I'm not going to consider this a large victory for Democrats by any means. First off, it's still 2007. The election's almost 2 years away. Having this polling information this early in the game means that anybody with half a brain can construct a reasonable platform and reasonable campaign. Knowing that 58% of Republicans believe that someone who voted for the Iraqi war would lose the 2008 election means that whoever's going to run the GOP side of the Presidency race will find someone with a liberal slant. Plus, the GOP has proven time and time again that they're at their best when their backs are against the wall. Republicans proved in 2000 and again in 2004 that they have some of the best political minds working for them. This isn't over by a longshot. Hell, it's barely begun.

I bought some shirts off Glarkware just now. They're having their Television Without Pity leftover shirts sale. I bought a Degrassi shirt and a Star Trek (red-)shirt. Too bad Glarkware takes a long time to deliver their shirts. I'd like to have them in my hands sooner rather than later.

So, leaving for Taiwan on Saturday. I'll be there until April 1-ish. Unfortunately, the deal here in Boston is that our lease is up March 31st. Since Mike (my roommate) doesn't want to live in this neighborhood any longer (he got mugged many many months ago), he's found a new apartment for us to live in. So, we're moving closer to Commonwealth Ave. HOWEVER, since I won't PHYSICALLY be HERE at the end of March, I hafta pack all my shit NOW so that it can get moved 2 weeks from NOW. So, I'm PACKING. This sucks.

Andreas is out here in Boston visiting. For those who don't know, Andreas is a friend from college. He's the same year as Mike and is actually really really close friends with Mike (has been referred to as "hetero-lifemate") so he came out to visit. I was friends with him too but not as close. Still, he's a cool guy. He works for Meebo (his job title is "Javascript Cutie" which is apparently a typo because he wanted to be "Javascript Cutty" as in "cutthroat" but the ppl making his business cards thought he wanted to be a cutie. Web 2.0 companies are... odd) and has uber-stock shares available to him soon. Too bad Meebo isn't trading publicly anytime soon tho so those stock shares are pretty much worthless right now. If they get bought or go IPO, however, Andreas is probably going to jump an entire tax bracket in the blink of an eye. Which is really really crazy to think about considering the fact that I knew this kid when he was 18 and a college freshman. Good thing he's a cool guy and not an asshole like some of his friends were in college (not Mike. Other people).

Bubble wrap is expensive, especially considering how shoddy we treat it when we don't need it.

I bought a book on Taiwanese Literature. It's a Lit theory book so it's really dense and uses a convoluted vocabulary. (Why do Literary experts feel the need to justify their field of study by making the shit they write so ... complex?) Apparently, the field of Taiwanese Literature is a relatively new field that's only recently been opened up for study by Lit circles because of Taiwan's complicated history. The complicated history also serves to make classifying Taiwanese Literature hard. Is it post-colonial? Post-modern? Nationalist? Propaganda? It's really interesting reading but slow-going right now because... well, it's complex writing. Pretentious shits. (I say that with love because I'm one of those "pretentious shits.")

I just noticed a place at the bottom of this post window to put "labels." I'm not falling for that shit. I'm UNCLASSIFIABLE! I defy labels!! EAT ME, Google-Blogger!!

Ok, that was random. I think I had too much caffeine earlier. Or maybe not enough. I seem to have the same reaction to either one.

I made a Get Psyched playlist for my music. It starts with Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" which is blatantly stolen from Barney's Get Psyched mix on How I Met Your Mother. Still, it's a freakin' fantastic song so I don't feel bad at all. I just feel... AWESOME! (The playlist also has a Van Halen song, a David Lee Roth song [anybody who even remotely knows me will know which David Lee Roth song], Scorpions, Billy Idol, and the highlight is Joe Esposito's "You're the Best" from The Karate Kid. It's a LEGENDARY playlist.)

Ok, it's time to put on Billy Idol's Mony Mony and get back to packing. Wish me luck!!

Here she comes now sayin' Mony Mony
Shoot 'em down, turn around, come on Mony
Hey she give me love and I feel all right now
Come on, you gotta toss and turn

Katie Holmes kicked to the curb

2007-03-08T23:47:00.000-08:00

Not by Tom. Which would be kinda funny. Well, to me. Because they're both NUTS. No, Katie Holmes will not be reprising her role as "Rachel Dawes" in the next Batman film. Instead, Rachel Dawes will be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. I'm really excited. I just watched Stranger than Fiction and was reminded just why and how much I loved Maggie Gyllenhaal. She makes me happy ... probably in an unhealthy way. Man, Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Both fantastic. Must be something in the water at that household.

Speaking of TomKat, I just found out that Jason Lee (that actor dude from all them Kevin Smith flicks and from My Name is Earl) is a scientologist. Man, what a let down. =(

A new life for the modern era

2007-03-08T23:20:00.000-08:00

Engadget's article about Parker Brothers' Game of LIFE being updated:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/08/the-game-of-life-follows-monopoly-goes-plastic/

I have mixed feelings about this. I am curious to see what Hasbro/Parker Bros. comes up with in terms of what Life is in this day and age. According to the brief blurb in Engadget, they've replaced the ubiquitous number wheel spinner with a "Twists and Turns" life path thingie that offers 4 different "life paths." Fascinating. I'm not a big fan of the fancy calculator as money (because that's essentially what we use nowadays, what with ATMs and credit cards and such) because I like the feeling of having big stacks of brightly colored bills.

However, the fun of Life wasn't realism. The fun of Life was the way it could accurately depict the absurdity of real life! Where your opponent chooses not to go to college and becomes an artist pulling in 80,000 while you go to college, get debt, pay for books, and wind up as a "scientist" making 30,000. Where you're forced to buy a house only to discover that it serves no purpose other than to be damaged by tornadoes. Where you buy stocks without any earthly idea which number will likely appear next. Where you seemed pressured by ubiquitous forces to buy art you don't want, sports tickets for games you don't want to see, and doctor's bills for surgeries you didn't know you needed. Where, toward the end of your "life," you find yourself thinking "...what the hell am I going to do with a minivan full of children? And when the f--- are they going to move outta my Goddamn good-for-nothing house?"

[<--- note about the post about the Geico cavemen show. Turns out it's a sitcom and the reports that it's a drama were a fake. Who called it? Moi? Oh yeah!--->]

Captain America

2007-03-07T23:47:00.000-08:00

If you're living under a rock, consider this a SPOILER WARNING

If you haven't been living under a rock, you've probably seen some of the news coverage about the fact that on Wednesday (that's today), Captain America #25 came out in comic book stores where Marvel has made the bold, and certainly controversial, decision to kill Captain America.

Take a minute to let that soak in.

Captain America (Steve Rogers), while being taken in custody to the courthouse, has been shot twice and has fallen. Just to understand the magnitude of this, for those of you who are not comic book fans, here are some mainstream media sources covering this: New York Times, CNN, AP Wire

This is a big deal. And, with the modern day mentality of comic book writing, this will be done better and mean more than Superman's death in 1994, if only because in '94 a death of Superman story was done largely for financial reason as opposed to in '07 where a death of Captain America was done largely for storyline reasons.

While Cap's death is not the only way they could've bailed themselves out of the Civil War storyline, Marvel certainly chose one of the biggest ways. Cap's popularity within the Marvel U at this point is probably debatable at best. During Civil War, the story didn't really run the lines of what the common man is thinking about how the story's been playing out. Think about this in terms of being a regular person in the Marvel Universe: superheroes, commonplace in the world of Marvel, the equivalent of spectacular cops and firemen, are all known by name and costume. "Hey, it's Spider-Man." "Hey, it's the Fantastic Four." etc. Suddenly, there's an announcement by the government: first off, there's a new superhero registration act; secondly, half the world's superheroes are considered outlaws and will be arrested. Leading the way? Cap.

So, what else are people supposed to think in the Marvel U other than Cap being the equivalent of a traitor to the government. The living embodiment of the American flag has become the enemy. So, although Cap surrendered at the end of Civil War ("You think this letter on my head stands for FRANCE!" -classic Cap line from Ultimates), his popularity is thumbs in the middle at best. You can imagine, in a real life situation, the propaganda he'd be combating on top of everything else.

Ok ok, so my first impression was "HOW COULD YOU KILL CAP?!?!?!?!?!!!!" After all, Ol' Winghead is my favorite comic book superhero. His story is complex, his character is layered, his personality and relationships are well-established, etc. He's avoided the silliness of the 60's and managed to remain regal and heroic throughout all endeavors. He's consistently stood for the ideals of human rights and civil liberties, been used to comment on infringements of those rights, and has been on the forefront of Marvel's identity for decades now. If Spider-Man's the spokesman of Marvel Comics, Captain America would be the hero Spider-Man looked up to.

Naturally I'd be devastated that my favorite hero has died. Devastated. However, now that I've had a couple of hours to think about it, I've decided that this could ultimately prove to be a good thing. Well, not necessarily a GOOD thing but at least an interesting thing. Where do we go from here? Well, Jeph Loeb's planning a five-book month-long grieving period for the Marvel Universe. It's going to explore the five-stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance (five stages, five books? Definitely not a coincidence). I'm a big fan of Jeph Loeb and he's a premier storyteller of the modern era (in addition to being one of the best comic book writers, he's also co-creator of Smallville, Lost, and Heroes. Am I exaggerating when I say "premier storyteller"? I think not). On top of that, he (tragically) lost his teenage son a year ago so if there's anybody who knows grief, he's one of them.

Furthermore, there is a chance for this to lead to more in the Marvel Universe as a whole. For one thing, fans are speculating like crazy about who the next Captain America will be. I wholeheartedly believe that Marvel should at least broach the subject. Realistically, there will be an attempt to try to duplicate Cap, if not exactly then as close as possible. Since SHIELD has the resources and abilities, and Tony Stark's both head of SHIELD and in possession of Cap's shield (2 shields!) as well as probably feeling slightly guilty about the death of Cap (he's also the lead character in the acceptance book for the grief stages), I suspect Tony's going to take steps to make a new Cap.

Who should be the new Cap? Well, it's probably not the best idea to use a preexisting character because the character should, by all rights, already be busy being a hero. But, for the sake of argument, let's speculate.

If this was DC, the sidekick would be first choice. This isn't DC but, surprisingly, Cap does have a "sidekick." Ok, not a SIDEKICK per se but there exists in the Marvel U a certain character named Patriot who is the teenage Cap equivalent on the Young Avengers (scroll down to "Eli Bradley" in the Wiki article). So, Patriot's a possibility. He's still young, however, and isn't "approved" by Cap officially so he's not too likely.

There's Bucky, the original sidekick, now known as the Winter Soldier. He was thought dead but he's been resurrected by Brubaker in the past few years. He's confused, still young, but contains a wealth of mad assassin skillz. He'd probably be the obvious choice but would probably feel like he's not worthy, considering the fact that he's still trying to atone for his assassin days with Soviet Russia.

There's Danny Rand, better known as Iron Fist. He has the necessary skills and hook-ups but he recently subbed for Daredevil while Matt Murdock was trying to fix his life recently so I doubt anybody wants to retread that path, especially since Danny's penciled in to be part of the New Avengers with common cohort Luke Cage.

There's Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man. Um.... probably not.

There's Taskmaster. Ok, Taskmaster probably isn't a real choice but he's a possibility as one of the trainers for the next Cap. There are precious few people in the Marvel U who can throw a frisbee like Cap and Taskmaster is certainly one of them.

Ok, I think I've made my point. There are a whole plethora of places the story can go from here. How will the Marvel U look without Cap? Who will fill the holes? With the epic underlying storylines that now resonate through Marvel's writing policies, this will definitely continue to live just below the surface of a lot of books. And, with the aftermath of Civil War coming up and the Hulk World War storyline just on the horizon, this will definitely continue.

So, the bottom line is that Cap's dead but it may not be the end of the world yet. There's a world of possibility out there for the character and his influence in comics. So, let's mourn Steve Rogers' passing. He was truly the shining light and epitome of heroism in the Marvel Universe. Beyond that, he was the flagship character for the United States during World War 2, becoming one of the symbols of patriotism and the American spirit. His presence has always been a part of Marvel comics and has been a linchpin, if not catalyst, for a lot of great storylines. Steve Rogers will be missed (for however long he's gone. Let's face it, we're still talking about comics here) but his spirit will persevere. He is, in essence, America.

Thoughts Dump

2007-03-06T23:25:00.000-08:00

So it's been like a week since I posted, so I'd better post something quick before I completely let this blogging thing slip off again.

So, what did I learn this week that I can talk about? Well, for one thing, I'll finish my TV 101 posts soon. I haven't been doing those so far but just because I'm not motivated currently.

Next week (Friday? Saturday? I've kinda forgotten), I'm leaving for Taiwan for 2 weeks. My grandmother's turning 90 and our whole family's going back so I'm really looking forward to that. Should be fun!! I'll post pics or something.

Bought some shoes from Kenneth Cole. Can't wait 'til they come.

I watched the first season of Family Ties last weekend. Yes, it came out on DVD. I loved this show a lot. Michael J. Fox always stole the show but Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney were always good and I loved Justine Bateman... in probably an unhealthy way. So it was really really fun to watch the whole first season. No commentary or behind-the-scenes features but I don't really expect those any more for old TV shows. Let's face it, studios just don't try on those.
At least this had appropriate chapter breaks, like after the theme song.

What would we do, baby, without us?
What would we do, baby, without us?
There ain't no nothing we can't love each other through...
What would we do, baby, without us?
Sha-la-la-la

Ahem... sorry. Love the show. Love.

They're making a show based on the cavemen in the Geico ads. That's just kooky. It's, at best, a one-joke concept. So, it either better be BRILLIANT or it'll fail... REALLY EASILY. (Btw, latest rumors say that the show's going to be a drama, not a sitcom. That'll be a HUGE mistake. I bet it's a joke.)

There was a 7 minute Spider-Man 3 clip on NBC's website today. I'm not sure if it's still there. It was advertised as "one-day-only" but I don't think that's necessarily true. Either way, I'm sure it's somewhere online. It's interesting. It has the usual MJ/Peter romance moment that you'd expect. Then, crazy crazy crazy air-borne battle between Peter (yes, PETER. Not Spidey) and Harry. Way awesome. At the end, it looked like they weren't quite done with the animation stuff yet but it's still really awesome looking.

Bought a bag from Adam's site: www.dyslexicpress.com. He makes some cool shirts and some cool bags. He's also a regular at Zigo and I see him at least twice a day. He's coming out with his Spring line soon, so, check out his stuff.

Pushpinder (our Indian food vendor at Zigo [best chicken tikka masala. EVER. EVER.]) told me he'd teach me how to make the tikka masala before I left Boston, if I leave Boston. So, if all else fails, I will learn how to make kick-ass tikka masala.

Speaking of work, I've been... well, working. I've made a bunch of logos for region-specific foods. Zigo Indian, Zigo Italian, Zigo Sushi, Zigo Comfort Food, etc. They've been pretty ... time-intensive but all fun. I'll post some later or something.

Libby's been convicted. That's kind of a big deal. It definitely calls into question the legality of the stuff that Bush's administration has been pulling for the past 7 years. (Although, to be honest, I think Libby's conviction might be the most legal action that'll ever be taken against the administration.) Hopefully, this'll keep the Republicans in power on their toes and under control. At least, to some extent. The morale of the story, kids? THERE ARE REAL CONSEQUENCES TO YOUR ACTIONS, DIPSHITS!!!

Grey's Anatomy episodes have been shown in a Dallas-area theater on the big screen. That's freakin' awesome. I wish people everywhere will start doing this. They're apparently free and the theater makes its money on people buying food and drink. Which I would do, whole-heartedly because this is probably the best idea... EVER. Apparently they're so popular that they have to have 2 showings to accommodate overflow.

The weather turned wicked cold here today. I dunno what happened. Saturday was almost warm! Like... 50/60 in the sun. It started feeling like Spring. Right now? 8 feels like -9!!! F-in' crazy. I mean, I like the cold weather but the wind chill was ridiculous today.

And.. that's it for now, kids. I'll post again soon, definitely post in Taiwan. See ya guys later!!

Lethargic Sunday

2007-02-26T00:53:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday! (Ok, technically it's Monday morning but close enough, right?) I just spent the last 12 hours watching TV. Specifically, I just spent the last 12 hours watching ABC. So, since I did nothing much today, I'll blog about my 12 hours of watching TV.

2 basketball games. I like the Bulls this year. With Big Ben, the team's starting to look really good after the All-Star break. I was surprised that the Heat didn't crash and burn without D-Wade. That's really all I have to say about the 2 games.

Then, it was Oscar watching time. Geez Louise! I watched the Barbara Walters Pre-Oscar show. Then the Pre-show on the red carpet. Then I watched the whole freaking Oscars. This is, I think, the first year that I watched the whole Oscars show. From what I can remember of the first 2 hours, I'll say these things:

Ellen DeGeneres was funny. I like her. Well, I liked her sitcom, loved her HBO special, but I'm not totally in love with her talk show. Still, she was funny tonight.

Also, the team of Bruce Vilanch, Carrie Fisher, and Carol Leifer were back together again tonight after a several year hiatus. Their presence seemed to make the atmosphere funny. I'm pretty sure the Al Gore/Leo skit was a product of those three and that was really funny.

The dancers were wacky. Which I liked. I didn't exactly understand that they were going to be a part of the whole show until their second or third silhouette.

The Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John C. Reilly song was, by far, the funniest thing on the show.

So, about two hours in, I im'd Amanda and we had a running commentary of thoughts on the show so I have an actual documented account of my stream of thought, starting with the Jennifer Hudson win where Amanda was really excited because... I guess because of American Idol and because she'd seen Dreamgirls and really liked the movie. She was also excited that Jennifer Hudson won on a movie that was her debut and wanted to know if that was unprecedented. I looked it up and it's not. Surprising film debut wins? Julie Andrews in Sound of Music and Ben Kingsley in Ghandi (a movie that just recently came out with an anniversary DVD).

An Inconvenient Truth won. Which I predicted (ok, fine, not that hard because they were pushing this one all night). 1 right, so far.

Ennio Morricone's done music for some good films. My favorite are Malena and The Untouchables.

Clint Eastwood speaks Italian. Totally surprising until I remembered that his first few films were with Sergio Leone. Makes sense, just never thought about it until that moment.

Ennio's speech is Italian, Clint's translating, and they cut to a shot of Ken Watanabe looking really really confused. Heh.

I thought Pan's Labyrinth would win for best score. Babel did. 1 right, 1 wrong.

I thought Little Miss Sunshine would win for best adapted screenplay because they don't want to give it a best picture Oscar and the Academy constantly gets criticized for not picking comedies. They did win. 2 right, 1 wrong.

Dreamgirls perfomance. Nice. Beyonce's good.

I thought Love you I do would win for best song. Melissa Ethridge won. Upset victory in my opinion. I noticed that the three Dreamgirls songs that were nominated all had different lyricsts. Amanda didn't care. 2 right, 2 wrong.

Best editing. I thought Children of Men. The Departed won. 2 right, 3 wrong.

Jodie Foster still looks good. She'll forever look good. Montage of those who passed. This is always sad. Don Knotts. Joe Barbera. Jimmy Doohan. Peter Boyle. Mako. Robert Altman. I'm now very sad and on the verge of tears. Wait. No James Brown? He was in one of the other compilations. Strange.

Actress. I'm guessing Helen Mirren but Kate Winslet could still win. Helen Mirren wins. 3 right, 3 wrong. Amanda also guess this one right (but a split second before it's announced. Suspect... =P)

Backstage guys says that NOW it's going to get interesting. THANKS. Means I've wasted the past 3 hours. Stupid.

Actor. I want Forrest Whitaker to win. I loved Good Morning Vietnam (not the only one. Everybody did as well), Jason's Lyric (... might be the only one), and Ghost Dog (dude! watch that movie!). He wins. 4 right, 3 wrong. His speech causes everybody to cry. Damn, he's good.

Director. Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola are presenting. Damn, that's a lot of star power. Announced as the "three amigos." Weren't the three amigos Lucas, Coppola, and Scorsese? This makes me think Scorsese's going to win. He does. 5 right, 3 wrong. Amanda and me comment that he looks like Eugene Levy with Peter Gallagher's eyes and Woody Allen's silhouette. His win's a long time coming. My favorite Scorsese pic is Last Temptation of Christ.

Picture. Jack Nicholson looks younger without hair. He looks like a bigger Michael Chiklis though. Why's Diane Keaton yelling? Jack looks scared. He's standing really far away now. What happened? Prediciton: The Queen. Winner: The Departed. Wow. Scorsese's having a good night. 5 right, 4 wrong.

Ends with a very short line by Ellen thanking people. That's it? Wow, under 4 hours. I'm impressed.

Final tally (for the second half): 5 right, 4 wrong. Eh. Better than 50%. That's not bad. Especially considering the Melissa Ethridge win was completely out of left field.

Other than that, I spent the day doing pretty much nothing. Ok, I wrote another 10 pages in another script. Ironic considering it's Oscar night. Ok, it's almost bedtime. Nite!!

TV 101: Sitcoms pt. 1

2007-02-23T23:36:00.000-08:00

Sitcoms, or situational comedies, are, basically, a television format designed for comedy. They're, generally, not as deep or layered as their counterparts: the hour-long drama. The reason why they're referred to as situational comedies is because the characters remain in a static place with plotlines, generally, resolved by the end of the episodes. In other words, the comedy is derived from the situation of the characters.

(The term "sitcom," I realize can be used to technically describe many shows so I'm going to clarify right here that the term "sitcom" in this post will refer to half-hour comedy shows.)

I've mentioned before that I believe that what makes successful television show concepts is either putting the absurd in the normal or putting the normal into the absurd. Sitcoms are a matter of putting the absurd into the normal.

As an analogy for the absurd/normal relationship, imagine a picture. Just a normal picture. Ok, let's say a digital picture. On your computer. Of... a fisherman standing on a pier next to his boat. Now, zoom in really really close. The picture looks fuzzy, doesn't it? You can't quite make out the fisherman because you're just looking at his blurry arm and the blurry fishing pole. And you wouldn't even know there was a boat there. Now, zoom out really really far. Well, now you know there's a boat and a fisherman but you can't see what the boat's name is. Or if that thing in the fisherman's hand is a pole. Or the color of his hair sticking out underneath his hat.

Ok, so what've we learned? If you look at a picture at just the right distance, you see the intended picture. But, if you zoom way in, you see too much information and if you zoom out, you see the whole picture but it's small and distant. No details. Now, let's make that analogy. If you zoom into characters WAY close, you see details but with no context, which makes people seem absurd. If you zoom out from characters WAY far, you see context but no details, which makes people seem... normal. Boring, but normal.

Now, let's further that analogy so that it pertains to what I'm trying to say about television. If you zoom in really really close on characters in an absurd manner, you get aspects of characters but no context of how they came to be. Ironically, this produces stereotypes (you'd think details defeat stereotypes, but I'm going to try to say the opposite). You get to see that a guy's into sports and working out and is a jock but you only see this one detail and you see no context into how he came to be that way or what else he enjoys. Therefore, jock.

Now, how does this pertain to sitcoms? First off, a necessity in making half-hour television (22 minutes when you minus commercial time) is expediency. When you're dealing in stereotypes, it shortcuts unnecessary exposition immediately. Let's use Friends as a quick example. In the first episode, we see the Nerd in Ross, the Jokester in Chandler, and the Stud in Joey, the Prom Queen in Rachel, and the Ditz in Phoebe. By quickly establishing those characteristics, it became easier to just jump into the stories (and the jokes).

Another part of "zooming in" is that you're able to get away with absurd characterizations (this is where we get to the "absurd" part). Let's use Joey from Friends again as an example. When we first meet Joey, all we really know about him is that he's the "Stud." He flirts constantly and is trying to make it as an actor, not because he can act but because it's the best way to capitalize on his looks. Let's fast forward a couple of years and look at an absolutely absurd moment in Friends. In a flashback in a Thanksgiving episode, we see that Joey once got his head lodged in the turkey Monica was going to cook for Thanksgiving dinner. This is, for lack of a better word, absurd. By all rights, this is something that shouldn't happen to a 20-year old. Ever. No matter what. That makes it absurd. However, in the world of Friends, it does happen and we believe it. Furthermore, it happens to Joey and we believe that it can only happen to Joey.

Why does it make sense for Joey to do something so absurd? Because we can't see the whole "Joey" picture. We only see aspects of him and we make judgments about who he is based on things we've deduced from him. Because Joey was a stereotype to begin with, his absurd behavior makes sense because we don't know that it doesn't. I'll try to clarify a little. We can't see the whole Joey so whatever he does, to a certain length, makes sense.

We can't have free reign, however. We need to ground our absurdities. If a character, or a show, becomes too absurd for too long, there's a disconnect with the show and the audience. If Joey, instead of putting a turkey on his head during Thanksgiving, rides a donkey buck-naked through the Thanksgiving Day Parade, slapping children and juggling sports cars, there is a very obvious level of disconnect. We can't make sense of why Joey's doing that or even what it is that he's doing. In order to make the show good, we need to ground the absurd behavior.

Because you get your absurdity and humor (especially visual humor) from the characters, the settings where the characters live in become your source of normalcy. Friends, in concept, is a normal situation. It's a group of six friends who meet in a coffee shop, live across from each other, and basically hang out all the time. Everybody's lives are encompassed by a certain group of people that they associate with consistently. It may not be as frequent or as isolating as the friends in Friends make it but it's an otherwise normal situation. The trick to making a good sitcom, however, is putting absurd behavior, like Joey's Turkey Incident into an otherwise normal show. The normalcy must be there so that there's something that grounds and connects with viewers.

Wow. This is kind of long. I'll pause here and post more tomorrow. I'll try to focus on a brief history of sitcoms, culminating with the way modern sitcoms are thought of as.

TV 101: Introduction

2007-02-23T21:52:00.000-08:00

(Ok, so I started delving into random thoughts about television in my last post about Grey's Anatomy. Since they were random and jumbled and mixed up and, basically, one long train of thought with no direction, I thought I'd make an effort and condense my thoughts into something coherent.)

The purpose of these next posts are to attempt to deconstruct the basic tenets of television genres. I want to be clear: I'm not an expert on anything. These are just opinions of mine based on what I remember and what I've seen. If I plagiarized something inadvertently, I apologize. I legitimately don't remember reading anything specific that would've led me to these opinions. If I write something you disagree with, please let me know. I'll be happy to consider your opinion (or fact).

So, I'm going to divide my thoughts into two separate sections: sitcoms (or comedies) and hour-long dramas (tragedies). There are several reasons for this. First, and more significantly, is that the field of television shows in general follow this dichotomy already. Secondly, this is the classic division of fiction: comedy and tragedy. It's the way Shakespeare's plays are divided and have been used countless times throughout the history of fiction. (Of course, in Shakespearean literature, comedies ended in marriages and tragedies ended in death so the rules have been changed somewhat in the last 400 years.) Since television tends to lean toward half-hour sitcoms for comedy and hour-long dramas for tragedies, that seems to be the most natural way to discuss these topics. I'll point out why, in my opinion, these are the natural ways to display these two attitudes.

I'll probably have appendices as well at the end to discuss random topics that come up along the way. I had a plan for the first one but it came to me a couple of days ago and I've since forgotten, largely, what I wanted to discuss.

I'm going to attempt to write these in a timely manner. If I completely forget to write the last part, I apologize now. I get distracted easily.

Oh oh! I thought of something to blog about!

2007-02-21T00:54:00.000-08:00

Of course, it's contingent on 2 things:

1. You watch Grey's Anatomy
2. You've seen last week's episode (pt. 2 of the 3 part ferryboat arc)

Ok, who's still with me? Just checking.

So, as we all know (all because those who don't have probably left), the end of the last episode had the "Holy ___ " moment when Meredith woke up in what appears to be the O.R. of the afterlife with Denny and Kyle Chandler sitting next to her

I'm going to go out on a limb here and saw this: Meredith will not be dead at the end of the third episode. It's entirely possible that I'm going to be wrong. After all, the line at the beginning of the episode, "There's more I have to say; so much more. But... I'm disappeared." (Yes, I download episodes so I can play them again when I need to quote them. Ok, that's a lie. I download episodes because I work at night and can't watch anything live) is the pitch-perfect line for the "killing the main character" tease. Certainly a title character's death would not be unprecedented but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened to a show of this size and audience level ever. So, Shondra and her crew would probably go down in the history books if Mer died.

That being said, I don't think that's happening. Certainly the only reason why Mer would be killed would be if Ellen Pompeo wants out of the show because there are so many more stories to be told with the character of Meredith Grey and her presence is invaluable on the show. I don't think she's be frivolously killed for shock value (not that this is frivolous. I mean, 3-episode arc?! That's much more time than other shows spend on stuff like this).

Ok, so I've made the argument that Mer isn't dying. I think it's logical to think that Meredith isn't dying. It's like when you watch a movie and you see the actor who's listed first in the opening credits in the middle of a crowd shot at the beginning. You think "There he is, the hero of the movie." He's going to be the focus of the movie, with all the events of the plot happening around him, as if the eye of a maelstrom. Meredith Grey is the same character. She's not dying and I don't think anybody truly truly believes she will. (Once again, I could be dead wrong. Grey's has done a fantastic job so far in defying expectation.)

So, we think that the boat sinks at the end, that the hero gets the girl, that the villain's killed, that Meredith will be revived. Why is it such a big deal then? I think Grey's has done it right. We can pretty much postulate the ending. But they still manage to have their audience guessing. We're on the edge of our seats in a way that hasn't happened in awhile (except reality TV. Which is, in most other ways, stupid). I think the irony and cynicism of 90's popular television has killed the art of suspense. We think we know it all and shows that appeal to us are the ones that play against those expectations in a post-modern methodology. The counterpoint isn't "You think you know what's going to happen? Bet you never saw THAT coming." The counterpoint becomes "You think you know what's going to happen? Let's ridicule the very notion." Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace didn't have the CLIFFHANGER episodes. They had episodes that dealt either in absurdly expected notions or patently bizarre notions. Hyper-realistic or hyper-absurd episodes deconstructing the very format of the sitcom and sitcom tropes.

Grey's Anatomy, however, ushers a new sensibility of television. The 2000's of television. We're watching shows the relish in drama and suspense. They don't undercut with irony. Rather, they relish in what's expected and only turn on a dime at the end, keeping those who think they know better forever guessing. 24, Alias, Sopranos, Grey's Anatomy, etc. are shows that don't try to be smarmy intellects but rather try to break new ground. Not that there's anything wrong with po-mo deconstruction sensibility. Arrested Development took that whole idea to a whole new level creating the show-within-a-sitcom-within-a-show, look-at-how-smart-we-can-be attitude, making a new sort of hyper-hyper-awareness. Which is a very roundabout way of describing the show. The new wave of drama, however, has been defined by simply indulging.

This might be time to just say that my own personal view on television and television plots is that the most successful ones were the ones that were able to either 1.) inject absurdity into normal situations or 2.) inject normalcy into absurd situations. This may seem obvious but it's difficult to juggle the levels. It's the difference between the hyper-realistic and the hyper-abstract. Friends, for instance, was hyper-realistic. It took a realistic situation, a group of friends, and zoomed in so far that absurd things could happen without affecting the borders of realism. Most sitcoms fall into this category. They usually happen in normal, everyday settings but the settings are zoomed so far in that you don't see the work setting. You simply see the single-dimensioned absurdness of characters. Dramas usually take the opposite approach. They take the absurdly frantic settings in life, settings with mystery and assumptive secrecy (such as hospitals or law offices, where viewers who are not doctors or lawyers have imagined being in those lives and decisions seemingly exist on a world-changing level) and try to zoom far enough out where the framework of the workplace provides analogous interplays with the characters.

I just realized that this somehow turned into my treatise on what television is. I did not expect that. Oh well. Where was I?

Anyway, the reductive nature of sitcoms (coupled with the increasing popularity of sitcoms) in the 90's caused television to become... snarky. (On the dramatic end, shows had to be attitude-driven or "gritty," causing tons of strange NYPD Blue spinoffs.) Shows had to be self-deprecating in order for critics and viewers alike to say that a show was intelligent. While it did serve to allow people to think about television on a new level (some would say, an artistic level), what happened was that television started to treat itself as a lark. And what happens when you think negatively about yourself? Other people start thinking negatively about yourself too. That's how we wound up with reality TV. Self-deprecation to the point where it became cool to parody the intellectual-deprived nature of self-deprecation. (Did that sentence make sense? I'm not actually editing this post because I normally don't. Perhaps I should've.) Modern era shows, 2000 and beyond, have attempted to stem the blood loss caused by all these self-inflicted wounds in the skin of television as an art or literary forum.

The moral of this long, unusually complex worded post is that television is starting to become more and more intelligent. Which I'm grateful for. Watch television. It's good again.

(You know I thought of an exception for all that. Sci-fi. Sci-fi TV has been able to avoid stereotypical ebbs and flows. Perhaps it's because it's a niche market.)

OK, this whole train of thought will need to be worked on more. After all, if all this is true, where does Ally McBeal fit in? X-Files? ER? I'm not willing to rework and revise, however. Not at 12:54 in the morning. So this will probably lead to an amendment post later on. I'll link them.

Happy New Year

2007-02-21T00:08:00.000-08:00

恭喜發財!!
or, I suppose, GongXi FaCai!! It's the year of the pig now. Which is cool. Because it means that I'm turning 25 this year. Which is... old. Wow. Ok, nevermind. Fuck the new year.

Ok, that's kinda harsh. After all, time's a constant and it's not time's fault that I'm... older. Anyway, nothing's really new. Bought a couple books. Reading them now. Ok, the only new thing is that I made a Zigo Logo for the Chinese New Year (which is actually really really pointless because a. - it's passed already and b. - we didn't have a Chinese New Year promotion so there's really... no point) but, regardless, here it is:

The pig's a little blurry but there's nothing I can do about that because I made it on the same layer and shrunk it too far before I realized that I wanted it to be larger. After making it larger, it blurred. I must remake it if I want to get rid of the blurriness, which I'm not going to do because.... there's no point.

Anudder Logo

2007-02-19T00:48:00.000-08:00

So, Alex K. visited this weekend. It was good to see him. Haven't seen him in like forever. So that was fun. He had to leave Sunday tho so I spent Sunday night working on, among other things, a St. Patrick's Day logo for Zigo.

Here it is:

Also, I saw the last ep. of Grey's. Whether or not my speculation comes true has yet to be determined. They did a good job of spending the middle ep. of a three-episode arc not actually resolving much. Or, at least, they resolved everybody's storylines except Meredith so that the last episode of this arc will be solely spent on Meredith and her life and death struggle. (Struggle? Really? Perhaps... The writers have surprised me constantly with this show in terms of what they'll do. Always in a good way too.)

Also, I saw Psych and Class. I have yet to see this week's How I Met Your Mother so that's next. And my iTunes just started playing depressing music. Stupid shuffle feature. ("Depressing music" btw currently is Expose's I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me. Remember that?)

Ok, that's it for now. Except to say I think I fucked up my wrist a little bit by using my computer on the coffee table when I was watching the all-stars game today. Or I'm finally getting carpal tunnel. Or both. Hopefully it'll be better in the morning.

Conversation snippet

2007-02-19T00:41:00.000-08:00

Online Conversation from today:

[00:37] Amanda: when everyone's parents die off, no one will ever come back to sj
[00:37] Amanda: they won't have a reason to
[00:37] Me: .... that was like the most depressing thing i've had to think about all day
[00:37] Me: and i have a cut on my finger that won't stop bleeding
[00:38] Me: you... have talent
[00:38] Amanda: thank you, thank you

President's Day.... soon

2007-02-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

It's President's Day next Monday. I'm really looking forward to it because... [drumroll]... DAY OFF!! W00t!! Yuppers. I get to stay home and... sleep? Oh yeah. SLEEP!

Ok, honestly, I'll probably watch DVDs or something. Actually, Alex K. supposedly coming up this weekend so me and Mike'll probably be kicking it with Alex K. Which is way cool. Because I haven't seen Alex in forever.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I just finished the Zigo Doodle for President's Day for the sign I'm going to make that says "WE'RE FREAKIN' CLOSED! GO BUY FOOD SOMEWHERE ELSE!!" (ok, I might change the wording a bit on that one) and I wanted to post it. Here it is:

Sorry if you don't like it. It was done quick and I'm kinda tired. And... what the fuck? I'm not apologizing for it. FUCK YOU if you don't like it. I like it. THAT'S what's important.

Spoiler/Speculation for Grey's Anatomy

2007-02-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

Uh-oh... I've been hearing rumors all over the place. People are getting themselves into a tizzy about this one... I think--

[Spoiler- is it a spoiler if you're just guessing?]

--I think George is gonna die. TR Knight's apparently really upset about the way that the Isaiah Washington thing went down and gave ultimatums. I'm guessing that Isaiah's job is safe because of Shondra's comments about the whole thing and I've been hearing rumors that the big thing about the ferry-boat accident 3-parter is that a cast member's gonna die. It was (speculation-y) confirmed(-ish) by the writing of the first episode of the 3-parter when Meredith ends up in the drink because the tease is that she's going to be the one that dies [you hear a cast member's gone and then the main character ends the episode in a precarious position... you're supposed to think in that direction] but obviously GREY's anatomy isn't going to kill the "GREY" part of the equation. (second speculation is that Meredith dies but is revived by somebody... which is still possible and in fact might be what happens to deflect speculation about the [what-must-be] shocking death of George. I wonder if this is why they hot-shotted the Callie thing. I've heard rumors about Callie and--

EVEN MORE SPOILERS [speculation]

--I think she's going to find out she's pregnant. Which means that George will be dead and Callie will be a widow/mother and her daughter/son will be a half-orphan. I bet Izze steps up to help her out to make up for the mistreatment she's been giving her so far. With a little push from the Ghost of Denny??!!?!?! (Ok, I dunno about the ghost of Denny. I know the rumor mills have been going nuts when it was confirmed that Denny's coming back for something or another.... ghost, spirit, flashback, mysterious long-lost twin, who knows?!)

It's really bleeding difficult to hide text with color in this background. Hopefully I've made the text really really annoying to read it without highlighting it... that way... it'll remain spoiler-rific. REMEMBER tho, this is all speculation. I have no (or ... vague) support for these thoughts (unless they're.... vague).

Single's Awareness Day

2007-02-14T08:55:00.000-08:00

It's Single's Awareness Day (or Valentine's Day for you... punks out there). It's a strangely ambivalent (meaning of 2 differing thoughts or opinions and unable to decide on one. Not meaning without any opinion or feeling, which is what a lot of people assume) day for people, me included. I'm sad, which is actually the norm for V-Day, but the appreciation for Single's Awareness Day (or Anti-Valentine's for those who are not as clever) is filling me to the brim. I'm always happy to see such a large Anti-Valentine's following. Perhaps one day those who celebrate Single's Awareness Day will overtake those who celebrate Valentine's. I'm both happy and sad.

Ironically, it's snowing on SAD in Boston. Most people would consider that oddly appropriate but, and I think I posted this before, I find the snow very romantic. More ambivalence! Yep. It's really pretty and powder-sugary-white. Very peaceful. Well, very peaceful at 8:55 am.

I had weird pains in my mouth and face last night when I was trying to sleep. Every time I laid down, I had pains but every time I sat up, nothing. I think it must've been psychosomatic (meaning all in my head) so I think I've inadvertently developed strange alarm signals in my brain for when I'm going to sleep. Like I'm subconsciously saying "NO SLEEP! WORK TO BE DONE!" .... I need to stop working for awhile. Starting.... Friday. Because today... there's work to be done.

Happy SAD day everybody! (ok, it's redundant to say "SAD day" but I like the phrase "Happy Sad Day." It reflects my ambivalence about the day.)

SCHWAG!!

2007-02-13T18:33:00.000-08:00

This is the equivalent of Nerd Bling!! I WANT I WANT I WANT!! (Still... WAY EXPENSIVE... esp. for Legos)

Still Alive... Barely

2007-02-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Still alive... still on the wagon... barely. I'm too exhausted from work to make this a proper post. I pulled off a 12 hour shift yesterday and I'm leaving again once I finish typing this for... probably another 11 hours. I blame me. I'm an idiot for saying I could do all this.

We're selling Valentine's cookies. yay (sarcasm). Stupid valentine's. On the hand, we're selling SAD cookies too (Singles Awareness Day). YAY!(real) They say stuff like "Love stinks" and "Be mine or don't." Ok, the last one's kinda stupid but the spirit's there. I made two Zigo v-day logos for the cookies. (Zigo's the name of the store... I don't think I ever mentioned that before.

V-day:

SAD:

Took surprisingly little time.

Ok... back to work. Back to Blog later... I hope.

Evolution? Revolution? Inspiration?

2007-02-10T22:09:00.000-08:00

Life's changing. Sometimes in the imperceptible. But doesn't the verb "change" imply an inevitability? Is Life changing forcibly through conscious decisions or is Life changing regardless?

Some things'll never change
That's just the way it is
Ahh.. but don't you believe them.
- Bruce Hornsby | The Way It Is
(This is the song that's constantly sampled in hip-hop music nowadays, famously in 2Pac's Changes)

Mixed message at best, I'd say.

So, I've been working like a dog these past few days. Yesterday was the harshest. However, I discovered that yesterday was a hard day on everybody at work so I tried my best not to bitch and moan about it because... well, frankly it seemed unfair to compound everybody's problems by bitching more. Anyway, yesterday was harsh and today was kinda harsh in a continuing epic sort of way. I was thinking about it yesterday while I was working at night, after hearing about everybody else's harshness, that each one of those people have someone to go home to at the end of the night. They each live with their significant others. They're going to go home and complain and their significant other's going to listen to them patiently (ok... two of them are each other's significant other so that'll be a little different), nod, smile, reassure them, offer to do something sweet or kind or interesting or calming and life'll begin to look better. (Alright, fine. that's best case scenario. When you're sitting there working like a dog, you tend to think in extremes. Fuckin' sue me.) I just couldn't help but think "Gee, I wish I had someone to go home to." It was one of those errant stray thoughts that people have all the time. "Gee, I wish I had more money." "Gee, I wish I saw that movie." "Gee, I wish I had Japanese food for dinner." But it hung on in the inner-bowels of my head like a fucking barnacle. Just wouldn't let go. Bugged me for a good hour. I dunno why exactly either. Just did.

I may be numberless. / I may be innocent. / I may know many things. / I may be ignorant. / Or I could ride with kings / and conquer many lands. / Or win this world at cards / and let it slip my hands. / I could be cannon food, / destroyed a thousand times. / Reborn as fortune's child, / to judge another's crimes. / Or wear this pilgrim's cloak. / Or be a common thief. / I keep this single faith, / I have but one belief: /
I still love you.
- Sting | A Thousand Years
[sorry. my iTunes is on shuffle and the song changed while I was typing. Seemed oddly appropriate.]

So, I was pondering this today after work (working on Saturday's not normal for me) when my parents called me. My mom told me that at her company, her boss left last week (like.. huge news! As long as I can remember, my mom's had stories about her interactions with her boss. They've been colleagues/boss-subordinate for a crazy long time) and that there's a huge exodus of people leaving Synnex. She mentioned people down the line and I jokingly asked her if she was one of the people (my extended family and me have believed that my parents should retire for a long time now. My mom's been trying to retire and tells us every year she will but hasn't yet. My dad's adamant about not retiring but last year confided in me that the reason why is because he's afraid that without a steady income, the family [immediate and extended] will go broke and that he really does wanna retire) and she jokingly said she would consider it. I think, in all honesty, that this could stick this time. I hope so, anyway. They work themselves to death. My dad's news was that my cousin's engaged. They got engaged last night and called to tell family today. I called my cousin to congratulate him afterward and he told me he's looking at a June or July wedding. Which is ridiculously quick. After I hung up I realized that instantly, the lives of my family probably has changed. My cousin's getting married and my parents (well, probably my mom) are going to retire. I also realized that life's moving. Fast. And I may or may not be a part of life moving.

If miracles are only
A matter of believing
I can't help wondering
Who those miracles are for?
- Bob Carlisle | Somewhere

So, ultimately, what does this mean for me? Where is life headed for me? What am I doing with my life? Do I have an, as yet, undecided purpose? Am I still searching for some kind of meaning, ultimate or otherwise?

So, for probably the fiftieth time in the last week, I find myself wishing I understood life.

Are... are we idiots?

2007-02-08T01:08:00.000-08:00

http://news.com.com/2100-1047_3-6157109.html?tag=nl.e777

Are... are we... is this guy... are human beings... idiotic? Is this... even enforceable? Are... are we PAYING for this... with TAX DOLLARS?!?! We need a dictatorship... NOW! And the dictator needs to be anti-stupidity.

RIAA = IDIOTS

2007-02-07T23:48:00.000-08:00

Update: Ok, so in response to Steve Jobs' letter, the RIAA said this:

Apple’s offer to license Fairplay to other technology companies is a welcome breakthrough and would be a real victory for fans, artists and labels. There have been many services seeking a license to the Apple DRM. This would enable the interoperability that we have been urging for a very long time.

OK, the RIAA once again proves that they're IDIOTS! Jobs did NOT offer to license Fairplay. He, in fact, said the EXACT OPPOSITE:

"Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies."

This is why the RIAA is so bad and so evil. They don't UNDERSTAND what their purpose is that what the purpose of DRM is purporting to be. They don't understand who they are selling products to nor do they understand who they are supposedly "protecting." They are simply, clinically INSANE! stupid stupid stupid.

(RIAA's response quote taken from LATimes.com)

VINDICATION, bitches!!

2007-02-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

Ok. Two topics leap immediately to mind that I wanna blog about. The first one's a brief tongue-wagging-vindication (nah-nah-na-nah-na) and the second is the greatest that is Steve Jobs.

1.) MIT, for Spring semester 2007, is a offering a Comparative Media Studies course about... American Pro Wrestling. Yes, MIT. That's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the most famous and prestigious schools in the world. And they are doing what? That's right... there're going to offer a course on Pro Wrestling. Is this.. what is this feeling? Could it be... vindication? You mean when other people made fun of my love of pro wrestling and I always claimed there was value in pro wrestling and people laughed at me (literally LAUGHED!), MIT turns around and proves that there is indeed some value in pro wrestling? MIT is now my favorite school.

2.) So, some more thoughts on Steve Jobs. I already posted some thoughts 2 entries ago (scroll down). The letter that Steve Jobs mentions DRM (actually he full-on tackles the subject of DRM) in is posted on the front page of Apple.com (sorry. Should've mentioned that before). In the letter, Mr. Jobs outright expresses how he personally feels, how he thinks the average consumer feels, the initial reasoning behind DRM, and the reasons why its still be employed. Perhaps it's the reality distortion field but he makes a very good point on all fronts. I do think it's slightly absurd to say that Fairplay is kept proprietary in part to prevent people from breaking it but it's also true that Apple was one of the founding pioneers in the field of digital distribution and that deals they made with record companies have to be seen through those eyes.

Steve Jobs has been described on numerous occasions before as wanting to be a rock star. He certainly has the attitude for it. His "Steve-notes" at Macworld are a combination of KISS and PT Barnum. He has flair and charisma and a certain je ne sais quoi that comes off as... rock-star-ish. Frankly, it took a mind/personality such as Steve Jobs to broach the subject of digital distribution. Let's compare him to... say, Bill Gates. Bill Gates, while ambitious, smart, inventive, cunning, ruthless, and, did I say smart? let's use that one twice, is not a rock star. He has never seemed to have had the rock-star-flair. He comes off as reserved, quiet, shy, and... stereotypical nerd. It's only when you realize what he's done and what he's worth that you think "This guy's more than just a nerd." Bill Gates would never have tried digital distribution... at least not with the amount of red tape surrounding it. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, wants to be a rock star. And birds of a feather... So to say he'd try to surround himself with rock stars, to live in the world of rock stars, to bring rock stars to his world, would not be a stretch. So it would have to take someone like Steve Jobs to bring the iTunes music store to the masses.

And what can I say about it? I love iTunes. I've been a fervent user of the iTunes music store for years now. YEARS of buying music almost 100% off iTunes. Since I bought my first iPod (2004?), I've probably bought... 2 dozen music CDs. Total. If even. Frankly I love using iTunes because 1.) I'm not an audiophile and don't care about the quality after a certain bitrate and 2.) I'm too lazy to get off my tuckus to make trips to music stores. And I feel that iTunes has improved my life (musically). I've listened to more genres of music, more artists, more old-school and unheard of new-school because of the ease and accessibility of iTunes. I mean, some of the CDs I've bought off iTunes are CDs that can't be found in regular Targets or Best Buys and need to be found in Rasputins... something I would never have done myself. I'm a converted!

So I say, go Steve Jobs. Good on ya! If anybody can start a real, honest-to-God, fighting-chance campaign to end DRM, it's Steve Jobs. And this letter might just be the opening salvo. FREE THE MUSIC! FREE THE MASSES!

Geeking out

2007-02-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

Fifteen Geek Movies to see before you die

Fun article. In case you don't wanna actually click and read, the list he made is:
Brazil, Matrix, Fifth Element, Star Trek II, Star Trek IV, Serenity, Dark City, 12 Monkeys, Shaun of the Dead, Darkman, Army of Darkness, War Games, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Office Space, Repo Man.

I wanted to post some ideas about the list. I generally agree with it, although I've never seen Brazil (I've been wanting to see it a long time now... but I don't actually rent movies any more because... I guess cuz I'm lazy so I haven't had an opportunity to watch it), 12 Monkeys (Same deal as Brazil), War Games (I KNOW! I've seen part of it. I'll see it, damn it. Shut up.), and Repo Man (I totally missed the bandwagon on this Emilio Estevez film. Maybe it was a 90s thing... like New Kids on the Block) so I probably have some work to do before I die.

Some movies that probably should be in that list too:

Tron - What a great movie. A dude goes INSIDE A COMPUTER!! and has an action-adventure with racing bikes, playing EXTREME DEATH FRISBEE, and breaking the mainframe. What a great movie.

Sneakers - The best hackers movie ever. Which is funny because the whole Sneakers team is over thirty (except River Phoenix) in the film, with Robert Redford pushing mid 50's. Definitely not realistic in that sense. But still a great movie with good acting (SEE? That's what happens when you get skilled older ppl in a hackers movie. GOOD ACTING!) and a good plot with great moments.

Back to the Future - Seriously now. C'mon.

I'd put Lord of the Rings... but I think everybody's seen it. Just for good measure tho: Lord of the Rings.

Same with Star Wars

Goonies - GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!

Ghostbusters - Seriously. C'mon now.

Ok, my mind's empty and I'm tired of this post now... as you can probably see from the lack of enthusiasm from the later movie comments. I click publish and I'm finished with this! Begone! =P

Forced posting... to stay on the wagon

2007-02-07T01:50:00.000-08:00

I don't feel like posting... but I feel like I'd better in order to stay... on the wagon of blogging. Or off the wagon. I'm not sure which one's the expression to stay sober.

Anyway, what's been going on lately? Work. Lotsa work. Most of it's actually forced upon me by... me. If something's fun, I tend to put more effort behind it than I probably should. I've put a lot of efforts into coming up with pictures and menus and signs for the Google/Zigo project because it's, frankly, been more fun than I've had in a long time with something I'm being paid for. So far, the work I've done has been some of the best stuff I think I've ever been able to do before and I'm really proud of what it looks like. However, I'll refrain from posting... in case someone wants to use it for proprietary reasons in this Google/Zigo thing. Just know that it's been the biggest blast coming up with cutesy images and a fake Google doodle.

SO! what else? Royal Rumble was awesome. Oh, and the Superbowl was a good game. I didn't party it up Superbowl style but I did hang out with a friend before the game, which was a lot of fun. It was a good day overall. Oh, I bought gloves (finally). The only problem is that the gloves I enjoy are thin (I don't like the ski glove look...) so they provide a minimum amount of warmth. Still, thin gloves are better than no gloves.

Which segues into the weather. It's cold. I'm actually having a lot of fun in the cold. The only problem is that when it was summer, me and my roommate both installed air conditioning units in our rooms (3 ACs in the apartment!). However, the one in my room isn't installed dead on (the window's not actually meant for an A/C unit) so there's a small almost imperceptible gap on the side. Except now it's winter... with winter wind. So there's this constant bitterly cold breeze that comes into my room. But it's alright because it's not like it's snowing in the room or anything. I just have to wear long sleeves in my room. Which isn't a bad thing. Especially since I got a jacket/wind breaker/track suit jacket thingie that I really like that says "San Jose" on it. which is cool. Because I'm repping San Jose... which is kinda weird but we have more people in SJ than in SF so why not rep it?? Plus, I've gotten comments from visiting Google employees. (We usually have the following exchange: "Your jackets says 'San Jose.'" "Yeah, that's where I'm from." "Really? I work in Mountain View. I'm here visiting." "At the Googleplex?" "Yeah!" [Awkward pause...] "Ok then... have a good day." *Psh. Nerds.*)

Hm... entertainment wise, I missed some DVDs in the past month or 2 that I wanna now buy. They include the Silence of the Lambs special edition, the Silence of Sleep, and Hollywoodland. Oh, I've been listening to musicals a lot lately too. (I don't know why exactly. I just like them...) I finally listened to Wicked. As expected, I loved it. I can't get enough of it. I wasn't aware of how many of the musicals I love had the same really great people. Idina Menzel is fantastic. Sherie Rene Scott is fantastic. Norbert Leo Butz is fantastic. Kristin Chenoweth is fantastic (ok... that one I already knew because of West Wing). Which is only from Wicked and and The Last 5 Years and Rent. It's oddly... connected. I'm also in love with the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Fantastic show. (I know I'm not italicizing everything I should be. I don't know what rules I'm following tonight... just go with me here.) And fantastic songs. (That's also many uses of the word "Fantastic" so I'll start using a different word.) Currently I have Wicked on repeat and [title of show] on repeat. Listen to [title of show]. It's really ... stupendous (<- new word). Stupendous stupendous stupendous. and Now I need to watch some wrestling to get my masculinity back in balance. Wow. For a bullshit post, this is pretty long so far.

Oh. Steve Jobs said, in a letter, that the best option for DRM for consumers is if it disappeared. And he said that if it did disappear, Apple would be down with getting rid of it. Yay! Down with DRM. There's gotta be a better way to keep copyright regulations under control. I wanna pay artists for music (I currently buy all my music on iTunes if possible. If not, I try to buy the CD or... [Heaven forbid] I download occasionally. Usually someone like Metallica who's pissed me off some how) but DRM is so... crippling... I'm not a good person to talk though because I'm fully behind Apple in it's iPod ventures. (I can't help it... they're so pretty.)

(shit... that's another hour of wrestling I have to watch now... I've gotta stop using the word 'pretty.' I think I got it from watching Joss Whedon interviews. Stupid stupid.)

Truth be told, with the negatives of Vista I've heard about, I'm totally in favor of just converting everything in my life to Apple. Apple music, Apple computer, Apple everything. Then DRM wouldn't actually be an issue at all. But I'm against DRM in sort of a solidarity thing because it's not good for other people. So, rock on my DRM-hating brothers and sisters.

Ok... that's enough for a bullshit post. Plus.. I've got some wrestling I need to watch. Go HBK! (Shawn Michaels is doing better these past few months than he has in a long time. He seems to be the old HBK again [I know it's cuz he's trying to fill the void that was left when HHH went down with an injury again but it's still fun to watch.])

Concerning Aqua Teen

2007-02-01T22:29:00.000-08:00

Ok... I wasn't going to post anything about this but I just have one thing to say to this guy:

Fuck you, "Store Owner Jamie Alexander."

Ok. That was harsh. Sorry. Let's tone it down a bit.

Screw you, "Store Owner Jamie Alexander."

Ok. I feel better. To be fair, if I were in any other city, I'd probably have a similar reaction. "What's up with those Boston people?" And, granted, I didn't witness the "blinking devices" with my own eyes. Let me tell you how I first heard about the news yesterday.

"There was a bomb scare on Longfellow Bridge."

A combination of the words "bomb" and "bridge" is a heart-stopping moment. It took me a second to register the word "scare" from that sentence. Don't fucking call us paranoid when our first reaction upon seeing a blinking device with a dude flipping us off was to run while your reaction was "Gee, I have no idea what that electronic blinking device attached to my store with magnets is so I'd better leave it in place for a week." Don't be insulting us when your survival instinct's malfunctioning. And don't worry. If terrorists come, we'll be sure to point them to your store. I'm sure they'll leave many "cool" blinking devices all around the place for your to collect. Jackass.

Ok, feel much better now.

Whahuh?!?!

2007-01-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

http://news.com.com/2061-10789_3-6153487.html
Are... are... are you kidding?? Like... this must ... are you... I mean... WHAT?!
A substitute teacher's convicted because her laptop, while at the school, had a porn pop-up. Defense and experts determined the pop-up was a result of spyware that hopped onto the computer from a non-porn website. She was STILL CONVICTED BY A JURY! and now faces a sentence of 40 years.

I shook my head until it fell off... didn't help.

More random thoughts

2007-01-27T23:38:00.000-08:00

MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS! =)

Ok, so the political race has heated up somewhat during the past week. Which is kind of weird because we're still in 2007!! Yes, we're still MORE THAN A FULL YEAR away from the actual damn election. So I'll clarify my Hillary Clinton point, which is ludicrous because it's still MORE THAN A FULL YEAR away from the election: I don't think Hillary's going to win this election right now. That's not to say that she can't win. With the right marketing, anybody can win the damn presidency (this is the time to make a crude "look at Bush" joke. So, pretend I did that). So, EVEN THOUGH she is ahead in the Democratic pool, I don't think these poll results are valid because we're still MORE THAN A FULL YEAR away from the actual election. Asking somebody if they'll vote for Hillary or Obama in January of 2007 is much like asking somebody if they'd rather buy a flying car built by Honda or Toyota. WE'RE NOWHERE NEAR THE ELECTION!! These poll numbers are meaningless. We still have ACTUAL CAMPAIGNS to look at! I'm still going to say that as of right now, January 2007, if nothing changes, then Hillary and Obama are not winning this next Presidential election. I'm still looking for something significant to happen to change this.

OK, what else? I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel on the impact of the iPod in modern society. The iPod is truly a world-changing device. It wasn't exactly revolutionary in any specific way. There were portable MP3 players beforehand, there were portable information storage devices, there were other software programs to organize and playback MP3s but Apple was able to do these things better and prettier. And it changed aesthetics in modern technological design too. I think that the iPhone will do something similar... at least it has the potential to do just that in 2007 in the same way that the iPod did in 2001. Steve Jobs is going strong and postdating stock options isn't going to stop this freight train.

Currently reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It is an awesome book. The prose reads smoothly and cleverly while still maintaining a sense of excitement and intrigue. I may be overselling the book but I'm a huge fan of it so far (only 100 pages in...). I suggest you all go out and buy it or borrow it from the library and read it. BTW, the writing style is actually quite reminiscent of my own trains of thought and actually reminds me of tangentially things I've written in the past, blog entries included. As such, I've completely fallen in love with Marisha Pessl through her writing (um... and her author's photo/photos I've been able to find on Google of her.. she's very attractive... and 27). I'm totally looking forward to her writing more books and me reading them.

Many months ago (during my blog hiatus) I fell in love with a musical called The Last 5 Years. It's a one-act play that follows the 5-year relationship/marriage between the 2 characters. The music's wonderful and the gimmick is that the dude (Jamie) is moving forward through time so we see his meeting/falling in love/falling out of love journey while, at the same time, the girl (Cathy) is moving backward through time so we see her falling out of love/falling in love/meeting Jamie. Their songs switch off between POVs except for the love song in the middle which is their wedding and sung as a duet. It's the only time they meet and sing together. Throughout the rest, the two actors don't interact with each other as each song's presented as a monologue. Definitely check it out. The music alone's worth it but I found out that YouTube actually has all the songs bootlegged and slapped on from their off-Broadway run. The New York run (it started in Chicago) features Norbert Leo Butz (most famously from Wicked) and Sherie Rene Scott (most famously from Aida).

TANGENT ALERT -> I love Sherie Rene Scott and have ever since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out Of Their Shells tour tape I had as a child. I kid you not, the Ninja Turtles had a short-lived live-action rock/action show that they would go around America performing... like a traveling stunt show/MTV concert that had Sherie Rene Scott as April O'Neal. (Check out Wikipedia) Of course, I was like... 8 at the time so I had no idea who the heck Sherie Rene Scott was. I was just absurdly impressed that the Turtles were dancing/playing instruments/fighting Foot soldiers. Sadly I never actually saw the show or a tape of the show but rather a Behind the Scenes tape. Thankfully for my 8-year-old mind, the tape was done, as wrestling parlance would put it, in kayfabe so the Turtles talked and acted like the Turtles. I even remember them "explaining" that the keys on Donatello's keyboard were wider than a regular electric keyboards to accommodate his larger fingers. It wasn't until years later that I realized that they WEREN'T ACTUALLY PLAYING THE INSTRUMENTS. <-TANGENT ALERT

Speaking of YouTube and bootlegged musicals, check out the Avenue Q/Fiddler on the Roof performance. I think they were pimping at a World AIDS day with this special performance but they changed the characters of Avenue Q into Jewish counterparts (like Kate Monstervitz) and had them meet Tevye and his family when they traveled to Avenue "Jew." They changed the song lyrics for both shows to accommodate a brief plot. I must admit, I'm not terribly familiar with Fiddler on the Roof's music but I found the thing really really amusing. It even has a cameo from the George W. Bush puppet (last seen during Avenue Q's special pre-presidential debate performance) as the Czar of Avenue Jew.

What else? Not much, I suppose. Health care's a big deal next election year so it's good to see both sides of the aisle trying to pimp some kind of major overhaul/reform. It's good to see the Democrats not automatically dismiss privatization of health care (I'm not actually for privatization of Health Care but I'm open to the idea that the best solution may be an amalgamation of privatization and Government help).

Just recently found out about Sarge/Reputation/Elizabeth Elmore. Just proves I'm very much behind in music knowledge. Big fan of Sarge's cover of Time After Time.

Wish I was cooler. Random thought.

Still very behind in comic books. I haven't bought new issues in the past week or two. I think I may have missed the big payout for Civil War. I think the Monitor Duty blog's onto something though with Tony Stark being the person who dies at the end of Civil War. If it hasn't already happened...

Marti Noxon's writing a Grey's Anatomy episode. (Oh, that reminds me. I've been meaning to check out Brothers and Sisters. Marti plus Calista should be a good match) VERY EXCITED. Love Grey's. Love Marti (although probably in a very unhealthy way. She is also a very attractive/creative person who happened to have graduated from UCSC [Kresge College. Not that we'll hold that against her] and co-exec-produced Buffy). Should be a match made in heaven. Um... Marti and Grey's. Not Marti and Me. She's married. That's quite an obstacle. [Oh, while on the topic, Isaiah Washington sickens me with his blatant refusal to stop using offensive language. It's not that I think language is inherently offensive but if his CO-WORKERS! are clearly offended by his language then he should STOP! It's that simple. Say what you want where you want EXCEPT WHEN OTHER PEOPLE TELL YOU TO STOP. Don't be a jackass, Isaiah. It's not cool.]

Trying to keep up with Grey's Anatomy, Rome, Smallville, How I Met Your Mother, The Class, Gilmore Girls, and Studio 60 will probably kill me. Stupid massive amounts of good TV. (Note the exclusion of The Office, Lost, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, etc. That's because I have too many shows I feel obligated with trying to follow. I'll catch up with everything else when they're released on DVD.)

Want to see Catch and Release. And Pan's Labyrinth. And, I suppose, Dreamgirls.

Alrighty... That's probably plenty of random thoughts for now. I'll write more when I have more thoughts. These are enough to occupy myself for now.

Wow. Long time.

2007-01-24T00:34:00.000-08:00

Well... it's been like... forever... since I've blogged. I just felt like blogging tonight tho. After thinking about it for a bit, I've decided that it's because of 2 things:

1.) It snowed yesterday. Let me just say that I'm well-aware that it's not the first time it's snowed this season. I know for a fact that it snowed last month... December... 8th? or sometime thereabouts. I'm not going to count that day because a.) it consisted of very light flurries that only lasted... a couple of hours... and I didn't even get to enjoy those flurries because b.) that was the day we had our fire!! Any other days since then that snowed have been missed by me who was in San Jose for a month. So... yesterday was my first truly fun experience in the snow. It was pretty and white and kinda crunchy when you walked on it. I've always felt that there was something romantic and pure about snowfall. It's peaceful: like a clean slate, erasing past mistakes. Perhaps it was simply because I grew up in the Bay Area where there is no snow. There just always seemed to be a simplicity in snow. A sense of fun, and adventure, and romance; evoking a sense of comfort and exploration all in the same fell swoop. It conjures images of being wrapped in long coats and checkered scarves, playing with snowballs and snowmen juxtaposed with images of hot chocolates and crackling fireplaces, dressed in knit sweaters and sitting for hours staring at flames. And, of course, Christmas: my favorite holiday. I'm just a sucker for snow.

the other reason for posting is:
2.) Tonight was Bush's State of the Union Address. Because of work, I didn't get to see the actual address. I did watch an hour's worth of analysis afterward though and I must say that based on the reactions of both Democrats and Republicans, I'm impressed with what must have been a fervor of aggression from our President. First off, about Bush's decision to send more troops into Iraq (this was made awhile ago... but that was before I started blogging again =P): I don't think that's necessarily the solution. More troops equals more death equals (probably) more frustration. 20,000 troops isn't going to make the difference ultimately.

THAT being said, however, it's good to see Bush make steps toward trying to (finally) reach a resolution in Iraq. I think I remember some pundits stating that this is the first time during Bush's 2 terms that he's conceded that he may be wrong about something. Politically, I thought at the time that it was the smartest thing he could've done. If it works, they can claim a short-term victory. If it doesn't work, the next Republican candidate can come out in opposition of the policy. By taking a strong stance so far from the next election, they're poised to control the effect of the results. Because of the frequency of the word "Iraq" during the speech and the comments made by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Iraq's going to be a major platform during the next election. If Republicans can curb the debate in this area, they're going to be undercutting the Democratic party line, so to speak.

Speaking of, I think the next election's going to be interesting but ultimately not ground-breaking. I don't think America's ready to vote for either a woman or a Black man as President yet. That being said, I personally think that Barack Obama's too young to be President and Hillary's still too inexperienced in politics to be President. Those aren't the only two people in the race (John Edwards, for instance, has entered the race) but they are the current front-runners. However, it's still exceptionally early and anybody is poised to be a dark horse candidate. The Republican I'm really looking at is John McCain. I'm a big fan of his but I think he's got too many Republicans who disagree with him to get the actual nomination. That being said, he's going to be make a strong effort and may end up as the Howard Dean to the Republican party. Having McCain as the head of the RNC is something I would be very much in favor of.

Having candidates this early in the process may ultimately be self-detrimental but there's a phrase in Washington: you're always running for election. It's a sad truth and 2008's election may prove to be one of dire importance. Any number of things could happen between now and November 2008 and, in this era of news at the speed of the Internet, we're going to know about it. We're already changing the face of the election process.

In those terms, I'm glad that the Democrats are making bold, aggressive statements. I saw the Democratic response to the State of Union and I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that the Democrats have learned the lessons of 2000 and 2004: be aggressive. b-e aggressive. This is an opportunity. With a Democratically-controlled Congress, having a Democrat in the Oval Office would be an unbelievable turn-around from where we were 2 years ago. We could do some real good in the next 2 years. I just hope nobody f---s it up.

I had other post ideas during my hiatus from this blog. Hopefully I'll find the intestinal fortitude, so to speak, to put nose to grindstone and churn out some more posts. As for this one... I think this post's long enough. Whee~!

Internet!!!

2006-04-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

Yo. Thought I'd inaugurate newly installed cable with a blog post. Yes, me and Mike officially now have cable TV, cable Internet, and VOIP phone line!! W00t!! (BTW, 857-753-4541 is the number for the landline. And once we buy a phone, I swear to God we'll actually pick up.)

So, Mike's parents left this morning after a weekend-long visit (actually, more like 5 or 6 days). They were really cool. On top of the coolness of his parents, they also (GASP!) bought furniture for the living room!!! Yes, we now have a couch (actually a love seat because the couch that they bought at first didn't make it all the way up the stairs. It was like watching the Friends episode... live.) as well as a dining room table, 4 chairs, a TV stand, and another plant. This place is looking better and better with each passing day.

So I have a couple of pictures that I thought I'd post.

Here's the Welcome to Boston shot from the airport. Whee!! Boston.

And here's Mike showing us how to use the janky elevator at his old janky place. It worked on the first day we were there and then promptly broke. The first floor door never opened again. We moved out with an intricate process of riding the elevator down to the 2nd floor and walking a flight of stairs.

The view of Fenway was amazing tho. This is an actual shot of the view right outside of Mike's old window. Yes, we were literally a stone's throw from Fenway.

Here's Erin posing her supermodel catwalk pose in front of the windows at our new place. We were looking during that week she came and she gave final approval of the place that we ended up getting.

Here's a pic of me and Mike right after we signed the lease for the new place! Excitement!! =P

Here's a creepy shot of Erin standing in a dark, dank hallway watching Mike come at her making a stabbing motion. I have no idea what's up with this shot.

Erin's last picture here. Here she is at the airport right before she boads for San Jose again. *Sniff* we sure do miss her here.

Here's a shot of our messy ass apartment as we were moving in. Boxes everywhere, shit on the floor. Barren floors, etc.

And this is what it looks like now!! Whee!!!

Sorry about picture quality. I'll adjust for size and stuff on future posts. And I'll re-post these on MySpace. So they'll look better. However, I won't be doing that until later today. For now, I gotta go get a wireless router. And comics. Wednesday!

So, until later.

Greetings from Beantown!

2006-04-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

[I posted the same post in MySpace. So if you happen to glance at both, they say the same things. One day, I'll be not-too-lazy enough to make 2 individual posts. Until then, that's the way it is.]

Hi all!!

So it's my first post in Boston. It took awhile to get to this post because of questionable living conditions. However, today I bought a real honest-to-God bed! So that means WAY more comfortable sleeping arrangements.

So, to keep ppl up to date about what's been going on. I've been in Boston for about a week and a half now. It's been a fun week and a half for the most part. I have to say, I didn't believe Mike when I was planning on coming. He told me repeatedly that his apartment was SMALL but I had no idea until me and Erin showed up. Cramming 3 ppl into what was essentially 1 bedroom was ridiculous. So much so that I had to sleep in the makeshift hall that seperated the kitchen space from the bedroom space. (The only good thing about the apartment was that it was literally across the street from Fenway.)

So it's been a week. What's changed? Well, we moved into a 2 bedroom loft out of Kenmore square and into the South End of Boston (not to be confused with South Boston). It's an amazing place with.... yes! My OWN ROOM!!! I'm temporarily working at PSG, a staffing company. Not that I'm working in the staffing company. Rather, I'm working as a temp. I go into one-day or one-week jobs. They're looking for a more permanent position (right now, there's a thing that's being looked at for Emerson College that they're putting my resume into) but for the time being, I have a thing tomorrow to go to for 5 hours.

So that's that, so far. A week and a half and I have a new apartment, a job, and a new bed. All in all, I'm quite proud of how fast this transition's been. Nothing but good things in the near future, I'm sure. =P *knock on wood*

Anyway, I'll post pictures somewhere when I get around to it. (And when the Comcast guy comes next week and we can stop ape-ing off of unsecured networks nearby.) 'Til then, peace!

WOW! 2 Months!! Crazy

2006-03-21T03:38:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't touched this blog in FOREVER! HOWEVER, here I am, at 2:56 in the morning, unable to sleep, watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent (Go Goren Go!) with a sudden desire to dig through people's MySpace pages. Heh. And I don't even like MySpace (altho, I hafta admit, it is growing on me. I'm sure if I were a freshman, it'd be WAY cooler. As it is, as a grad, I feel I'm being creepy-stalking-man). Anyway, it made me remenisce about being way closer to some of these people than I used to be. So I thought I'd make some recent updates on this blog to clear my online cobwebs, so to speak.

So, it's March 21st, 2006. What's new?

Well, I've been chilling in San Jose for the past several weeks/months. No real activity here. Just maintaining the status quo, so to speak. Hanging out with the same people. Reconnecting with some, losing contact with WAY more. Me and Erin got tickets for Boston that leaves next Monday night and comes into Boston Tuesday morning. I'm really looking forward to Boston, for obvious and less obvious reasons. I'm also WAY nervous. It's not a bad nervous. It's the sort of nervous you get when you start college or start a new job. This is my next step in life, however brief or however long it may be. Woo-hoo! Beantown, here I come.

My DVD collection is still on a steady upward incline. 5 seasons of Gilmore Girls, 2 season of Law and Order: CI, new movies like Pride and Prejudice and Unleashed, etc. etc. Lotsa watching of TV on DVDs. This is great. TV shows can find new birth in this medium and it really reflects the value of the show in the light of being watched back to back. It's how I've grown used to watching stuff like Arrested Development and Freaks and Geeks (great shows). Watch TV shows in DVD whenever available! It's worth it.

I was watching The Ten Commandments the other night. It's really one of my favorite movies. It's a great overt movie. Overt symbolism, overt language, overt visual effects. If you've ever been lost in the symbolism of a movie (say from Twin Peaks or something), watch The Ten Commandments. The foreshadowing in the dialogue is WAY obvious and really kinda fun to watch. The shots are deliberate and the acting is over-the-top in a fun way. It's really a true epic and worth watching without the commercials that come on during Easter/Passover weekend. "Moses! Moses!"

Read a couple of good books lately. The Lovely Bones is good. Starting The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Finished Disney War by James Stewart. It's a very interesting account of the rise and fall of Eisner's reign as the head of Disney. It might not all have been objective truth but it's probably more truthful than Eisner's own biography. I still have a backed up reading list full of books that I'm trying to get through. Some of them are borrowed. Hm... better read faster.

Hm... I hit page 40 in the script I was working on. It's not really a script I intend to go anywhere, but it's a fun hobby. Unfortunately, I let Amanda read the only hardcopy I have and I like writing it by hand more than typing. So... I probably should try to get it back.

I was reading up on Scientology online. My interest in it recently stems from listening to the Penn Jillette radio show (2-3 pm on weekdays on 106.9 FM in San Francisco). Penn was talking about the Isaac Hayes/Southpark incident. I'm with Southpark on this. I don't like the show but I downloaded the Scientology episode and it's actually pretty funny. Aside from the Scientology stuff, there's a running joke about Tom Cruise, John Travolta, R. Kelly, and a closet. It's actually really funny. So, admittedly, some of the organized religion stuff is kinda crazy too but Scientology? WAY crazy. I wouldn't give that much money to this cult. It's ridiculous how big this thing is. I mean, to have a "religion" whose basic tenants aren't available for its members until spending years in it and hundreds of thousands of dollars? Pyramid scheme cult. Definitely. This is worse than televangelists. Scams = bad but Scientology? It's a dangerous scam. As a revolt, I'm with Matt and Trey (the Southpark guys). We should start a religion like Satanism for Scientology. After all, Satanists believe in all the principle Christian tenets but they believe that Satan is actually God overthrown. They just root for the bad guy. We should do that for Scientology. Xenu is their Satan equivalent. So, Hail Xenu! =) If you want to read a cool website: http://www.xenu.net
It's pretty funny.

Comic books are blowing up now. Marvel and DC are having HUGE events this Spring, with Infinite Crisis and One Year Later on DC's side and Civil War on Marvel's side. I'm really looking forward to the next few months of comic books. Hopefully I'll get into the pattern of buying them in Boston (thanks to Trisha, I have a book that actually mentions a couple of comic book stores in the Boston area. Whee!).

Ok, I think that's enough of a post for now. I'll try to keep this up-to-date as I go through the transition of California to Massachusettes. Fun fun. and Goodnight for now.

Thoughts on TV

2006-01-27T09:53:00.000-08:00

So I was surfing around the Internet and I found www.tvtropes.org

It's a site that lists on out the various TV tropes and how they're used. Tropes, in case you're not a lit or film major, is when a genre or author or age of writing establishes a common figure of speech for its artform. For example, twin humor was a Shakespearean (and Elizabethean) trope. So was small dog humor, although Shakespeare didn't indulge in any of it. I suppose he thought it was too base (although piss and fart jokes weren't).

Anyway, I was impressed by the sheer magnitude of tropes that were already associated with television. Despite being one of the most overexposed art forms/forums, TV is still one of the newest. It's only been around for fifty some odd years (definitely less that 100), while painting and writing and films have been around for generations now. I suppose it's so wildly used because of its accessibility (how many people watch TV?) but it's still one of the least accessible mediums of art expression (how many people produce TV shows?). I was especially impressed with how many of these tropes were adapted from some of my favorite shows (Good Troi Episode, The Firefly Effect, Spikeification, etc.).

So it got me thinking: is our technology developing fast enough for our artistic notions? I mean, we've developed the tv art form, not to its impetus, but surely to some sort of plateau. I think it's a continuing art forms but the true artists are limited in a consumer driven medium like TV. I mean, Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin, 2 of the best TV writers in the business as far as I'm concerned, can have shows that are at once brilliant and yet cancelled at the drop of a hat (Firefly and Sports Night, respectively). Are we running out of canvases to paint on?

Of course, the left side of my brain piped up at that point and chastised my right brain. We've always pushed technology to its breaking point through artistic expression. Music went so far without electronics that it turned into itself again, RE: Contemporary Piano, before it found more outlets in heavy metal grunge. The born artists of any time were not simply hampered by the artistic mediums available but were forced to express creativity through the given mediums, causing art forms to grow. Can you imagine what Mozart could've done with electronic guitars? Or Leonardo DaVinci with CGI technology? But because they didn't have access to it, the expanded the art forms that were available to them. So that's what I'm waiting for in TV. Despite the fact that we've already doubled back on TV (RE: self-referential satires, such as Soap) we're still waiting for artists to push the envelope.

Anyway, that's what was on my mind.

Sup

2006-01-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

Hi all. Still in Taiwan. Just got back from Hua Lien yesterday. It's kinda in Central Taiwan (Taipei's in Northern Taiwan). My uncle works there. He was transferred there 2 years ago (he works for the government) and has been living there on the weekday (he still comes back to Taipei on the weekends. It's about a 3 hour train ride). Anyway, we went to Hua Lien 2 days ago and spent the night in a hotel there and came back to Taipei last night. It's pretty beautiful in some of the more scenic areas. It's kind of like a little beach town, reminds me a bit of Santa Cruz.

Anyway, we saw the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial today. It's huge. And, thanks to the patriotic propaganda of the memorial and an opera house next door, I've had Les Mis stuck in my head.

"Do you hear the people sing, / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!"

Hm... aside from that, not too much. I'm looking forward to the New Year this weekend. Should be fun. I'll be sure to take pictures and stuff. So, for now, that's it.

Formosa Friday

2006-01-20T17:50:00.000-08:00

So, I just got back from Taipei 101. It's a 101 story building. A 101 story building. It was huge. I have pics. =P Anyway, situated within it's walls was a bookstore called Page One. This was one of the largest bookstores I had ever seen. And it was packing HELLA English books. I was in Taiwan Heaven. It even had a huge section on Literary Theory. It was quite surreal. Here I was, in Taiwan (an island nation!), standing in a bookstore looking at the largest Lit Theory section I'd seen outside of a college bookstore. I normally dislike Lit Theory (usually too complicated for my tastes) but I bought a book from the section that I'd probably have difficulty finding in any Borders or Barnes stateside (it's Wheel of Fire by Wilson Knight, in case you're really curious. It's a Shakespeare analysis book).

Article
So Massachusettes General Hospital has a surgeon who thinks that he's found a viable method of cryogenics. He's tested it about 200 times on pigs (according a Sydney newspaper) and is applying for rights to test on humans. It's actually kind of interesting. He drains the blood and stores it. Then he pumps in a chilled saline solution that cools the body down to 10 degree celsius where it loses heartbeats and eletrical impulses. He operates on the pigs and then warms its blood up and pumps it through the body again. He has a 90% success rate. What concerns me is that when the electrical impulses are lost in the brain, doesn't that mean that the mind's gone? What happens when bodily functions start again? I suppose it's not going to be figured out until human trials start (unless pigs somehow develop telepathetic communication capabilities and tell us what happens post-freezing).

Bryce Howard's been cast as Gwen Stacy for Spider-Man 3. Avi Arad's announced that Gwen survives the movie. I think he's lying. Otherwise, I have no idea why they brought in Gwen Stacy.

Along with reading a bunch of other books, I've been reading 2 Buffy analysis books. There's a book I highly recommend for Buffy-fanatics caled Why Buffy Matters by Rhonda Wilcox. It's really a good read in the analysis of Buffy. Best Buffy Book Ever? Probably.

Taiwan = unseasonably warm. Russia = unseasonably cold. Could this be the effects of global warming? We're totally screwed. It's going to say in our history books: "Human Beings: Extinct. Cause: Challenged Mother Nature and lost."

Wow, Chirac, France's president, has flat out told people that a response to terrorist attacks on French soil is nuclear weaponry. Talk about tough talk. What happens if someone calls his bluff?

Ok, that's it for now. Back to Taiwan goodness. I have a new book to read now. =P Chapter 2? It's on Hamlet. Awesome. (Ok, I'm a dork.)

DVD News

2006-01-18T09:51:00.000-08:00

Feburary 7th - Teen Titans Season 1 comes out on DVD. That's SEASON 1. 13 Episodes in one box. That's more like it. Cartoon Network's been treating their 2 best shows right now like crap, releasing them in installments. It's good to see that they're going to treat their shows with at least some respect, allowing fans to purchase an entire SEASON instead of like 3 episodes at a time.

Feburary 14th - Grey's Anatomy Season 1 comes out on DVD. DEFINITELY getting that. =P

Feburary 21st - Goof Troop season 1. WAIT! did I miss something? Ducktales, Chip n Dale, Goof Troop. WHERE'S Darkwing Duck?! C'mon Disney! You totally missed out on the best Disney Adventures cartoon EVER!

March 21st - Batman Beyond season 1 and Justice League season 1. DEFINITELY DEFINITELY getting those.

March 28th - Quantum Leap season 4 (I'm not getting it but I'll bet I know at least 1 person who will be.)

Ok, that's it for now. Some really quality shows are coming to DVD in the coming 2 months. Including some long awaited quality cartoons. MUST BUY! =P

Whee! Go Clinton!

2006-01-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Still in Taiwan, that's not really a surprise. =P We went shopping yesterday. That was kind of exhausting. 11 floors of department stores later and I was officially pooped. Plus the walking to and from. We also went to Taiwan Storyland. It's like an amusement park that had recreated a neighborhood from Taiwan in the 60's. Old fashioned stores, restaurants, etc. It was quite amusing. Ultimately tho, all I ended up buying was a copy of the newspaper (in English) to read. It was good pre-shopping tho. They have good stuff here and it's kinda interesting how they organize their shopping. It reminds me of a high-end flea market, even in the department stores. It's pretty cool tho because they just go all out for customers and put their entire stock of merchandise on the floor so you see all kinds of cool stuff.

I read about Hillary Clinton's speech on CNN. It was kind really cool. I completely agree with her that Bush's administration will probably go down as one of the worst ever (and so does 60% of CNN, according to their quick poll results). She also compared the administration to an old school plantation, where the voice of the dissenting minority is never heard. Good stuff.

Oh, this story caught me eye in the Taiwan newspaper: 27 year old Yang Hui-ju has "become a role model" according to the headline of the article. Apparently she paid for her tuition with the money she made by winning various Internet quiz games at the University of Queensland in Australia. Upon returning to Taiwan, she couldn't find a job so she sat around reading, including studying credit card policies. She found out that there was a loophole in the China Trust Commercial Bank card. She opened up an account and depositied NT$6 million (about $200,000 USD) and spent it all on "ETtoday gift certificates, which were refundable if they weren't used after one year." She then exchanged all of her bonus points earned through the spending on 20 EVA Airways first-class round-trip tickets to and from the US. She then sold those tickets on Internet auction sites (probably EBay =P) for NT$45,000 (about $1,500 USD) each. China Trust Bank closed her account and her parents' account and decided to sue her for fraud. What punks. What's funny is that her story got out and hella people are coming to her aid, including many consumers, lawyers, and prosecuters who agree with Yang and are offering free legal help. It sucks that they decided to go after her parents too. Her parents are retired vocational high school teachers. They told the newspaper that they trust her judgement and that Yang's told her entire family to just remain calm and it'll be worked out. By the by, the final paragraph in the article says that while studying at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, she chose to actively protest against the government's crackdown on MP3 Music downloads instead of taking part in her graduate school exams. That's one of the reasons why she went to Australia for grad school. Heh. This girl sounds awesome. I'd consider her a role model too.

The Dominatrix Case in Massachusettes just sounds like bad police work. Innocent or guilty, sounds like the police messed up. Plus, no DNA evidence so I think she's probably going to get off.

US had an airstrike in Pakistan? What are we doing? Why are we still in a war? This is ridiculous.

Golden globe winners list looked good. Mary Lousie Parker's one of my favorite actresses so it's good to see her on there. Ang Lee (Taiwan Represent!) and Brokeback Mountain took home some gold, so it's good to see there's staying power in Taiwanese directors and gay cowboy movies =P.

CNN World has an article up right now with this intro paragraph:
"'I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of mass destruction) as very high,' U.S. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Henry Crumpton was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. 'It is simply a question of time.'"
That's kind of freaky.

So, today's plan looks like more shopping. We're going to one of the places that has, according to my mom, food stands all along the street. I've been told multiple times that we can eat from one end of the street to the other. Sounds like it's going to be fun. That's it for now.

Greetings from the Far East

2006-01-17T09:36:00.000-08:00

So, it's Taiwan here and I made it in one piece. It was kind of a hectic trip full of the usual rigamorales of international travel. BTW, a 13 and a half hour plane ride sucks. It just does. Doesn't matter what class of what airline, being forced to spend so much time on a vehicle that 1.) doesn't allow you to stretch, 2.) doesn't allow you to move (outside of walking up and down the aisles), and 3.) by all rights shouldn't be able to stay in the air, sucks.

Anyway, it's my first real day in Taiwan. We (me and my mom) arrived yesterday at 10:30 pm, spent an hour and a half in the airport getting baggage, getting out, finding transportation (if you're going to travel, try not to arrive at 10 pm on Monday night. Nobody really has time in their schedules to accomodate that), and getting back. It was like 1 in the morning by the time before we were even in my uncle's house. Still, it was kind of fun being here and being around everything. The weather here is (as my aunt told me) mysteriously warm. It was winter weather like 2 days ago but then it just bumped into early summer (early NorCal summer) weather. Plus, there's forever a sort of musky (you know that feeling atomospheric feeling like when somebody uses too much cologne or perfume?) humidity that hangs in the air here.

As it stands, we plan on doing a bunch of stuff here so I should probably get off the computer so that we can go out and start doing the shopping thing (I know! First day and we're already shopping). I'll try to blog often these next 2 weeks. If nothing else, it'll be a good record for me to keep track of what I've been doing here. (Oh, and I'm manually setting the time stamps to reflect current Taiwan time. So, don't be surprised when the thing says January 17th, for example.)

Gay Marriage

2006-01-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

Gay Marriage is a touchy subject with some people. That's why I wanted to post this. Plus, it's funny as all heck.

10 reasons Gay Marriage is wrong:

1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

wa-hoo!!!

2006-01-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

Heh. No work. This is awesome. I haven't done ANYTHING productive yet but it's good that I don't have to do anything... not-productive either.

For those of you curious, I spent the first day of freedom out and the second day of freedom in (so far). It's been... a good couple of days. I hope there are a couple of things I do accomplish in the next few days, but I'm not going to be too disappointed if I don't.

So, I'm here relaxing. =) Hope everybody's having a good 2006 so far.

Last Day at Synnex!

2005-12-30T10:06:00.000-08:00

W00T!! Ok, last day at work. Starting tomorrow, I'm officially unemployed. I'm so excited!! =)

Anyway, I might as well make today as productive as possible....

Ok, I'm over that. Hey, check this out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1674705,00.html
That's amazing. A complete vehicle overhaul and redesign. It seems like it could be a very cool idea. I'm not sure if we, as a society, in America is able to comprehend the personal transit sharing system but the car itself is pretty nice. Stackable chassis, wheel robots that take away the need for an engine, wafer-thin displays on the dash, programmable exterior color, etc. etc. If this works, it'll be revolutionary in terms of what's possible in vehicle design and vehicle safety. Unfortunately, it'll be killed by oil companies. So, we'll probably never see this in a practical sense, just as a novelty.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/30/teen.iraq/index.html
This may not have been the smartest of ideas but it seems like the kid was trying to stick to his guns and trying to find answers for himself. This is something I'm always a fan of. Good for him. This are some kind of balls on the kid and if he continues in the journalism field, he may just find some success.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/30/nsa.leak/index.html
....If I'm reading this article correctly, are they investigating the leak instead of the program itself? What kind of BS is that? A potentially illegal and unconstitutional program is launched in the NSA by Bush and when word of this program's existence breaks, instead of investigating the program they investigate the leak? BS! Those are 3's, not Kings. Pick up the pile, Mr. Bush.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/12/29/spy.agency.privacy.ap/index.html
WHAT THE HELL? The NSA is definitely reminding me of the Gestapo.

This administration is really scaring me. I hope this serves a very important lesson to all the people who I talked to in 2004 who told me they were voting for Bush for re-election because they wanted him "clean up his own mess." Thanks to his administration, we could be looking at a complete reversion of Civil Rights.

Hi again

2005-12-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

So, what's in the news? Well, Toronto Canada had a record 52 gun-related deaths this past year. It's nearly double what they had last year. They're blaming America for somehow importing their violence. I agree. We do have a ton of gun-related deaths. Frankly, I'm surprised that Canada survived this long without more gun-related deaths considering they're just a drive away from America. I'm surprised we haven't shot more Canadians. I hope they find an effective way of stemming the violence because I'd hate to think we're actually contagious.

[Ok, that whole paragraph sounded sarcastic. I was actually serious. We are really dangerous and I hope that we don't actually spread. But I wouldn't doubt it if we do.]

CNN's reporting that Bush is reading a book about Teddy Roosevelt's feelings of frustration after he left office. Bush is, apparently, starting to think about life after he leaves the White House. Frankly, I am too. I hope nothing happens these next 3 years in terms of what he's capable of doing while he's still living in the house.

As far as Susan Kennedy joining the Schwarze-whats-his-face's administration as his chief of staff, I'm going to swim against the flow and say good for her. All these Democrats are grumbling aboud Schwarze-blah-de-blah-blah's uber-Conservative agenda and how it's ruining California and etc. etc. Well, do something about it, then. Sheesh. At least Kennedy's trying to do something about it. By having such a prominent Democrat in the position, I think it opens up the door to more bi-partisan actions by this administration. And, if it doesn't, well, at least she tried. How're you ever supposed to change the world if you're not even allowed in the ballgame? Give her a break and let's see if she can bring some semblence of political stability back to California.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/christmas-spirit/dad-replaces-bad-kids-360-with-coal-145033.php
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. that's funny. sucks for the kid. but funny as hell.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/28/teens-get-busted-mmsing-pics-of-marijuana-buy-locations/
Use MMS to sell your pot quick. Use MMS to get arrested quick. I guess that's a fair trade-off.

Happy Holidays!

2005-12-28T10:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, happy holidays. Not merry christmas.

Anyway, I had a good Christmas. It was very relaxing. Didn't do much of anything that day. I hung around at home, watched the Lakers game (sniff... so close to winning...), had Christmas dinner with my family, and went out with friends that night. All in all, it was a good day.

Still, I miss Christmas the way we used to celebrate, back in the day. I mean, nowadays, I look back on it with rose-colored glasses, I realize, but it just seemed like a better time. Back in the day, when my grandmother on my father's side was still alive, we used to go down to my aunt's house every Christmas. We would either drive down Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, depending on where Christmas fell on the calender. More than likely, we'd go down on Christmas Eve. We'd get in and put all the presents for my aunt's family under their tree. It was always in the same place and decorated the same. Heh, I'm just remembering now about how my aunt would even put Christmas cards in the tree but, if you look at them, they were all blank. I think they just bought cards from the supermarket and stuck them into the tree instead of using cards that people sent. Anyway, we'd drop all the presents under the tree and I'd hang out with my cousins. More than likely, we'd watch movies Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, we'd all sleep in. We'd wake up at like 10 or 11, go downstairs, and play video games all day. Then, we'd gather around for dinner and have a huge dinner. After dinner, we'd all go to the living room where the tree was set-up. Grandma would get the chair sitting directly opposite the tree and my family would all crowd around the other couch. My cousins and I would be around the tree, picking out the real presents from the prop presents (who does that? Can someone who does explain to me why you put fake presents under the tree? I don't get it.) Anyway, we'd pass out the presents and open them. And then play with our gifts for the rest of the night. Or go back to video games. It was fun. Sure, not an actual tradition, but it's how I remember Christmas. No snow, no skiing, no hot chocolate, no carols. Just being together and happy.

Anyway, I'm at work now, celebrating the fact that I've got 3 more working days before I'm outta Synnex for good. Then, a month vacation. Hopefully I'll be able to get off my ass and travel around a bit and see friends. And next year, who knows? I suppose it's time to think of New Year's Resolutions. So, here we go.

1. Be more accepting of things in general. - Life's tough and everybody has it tough. Let's not get pissed off at the stupid things in life.

2. Be happier - Life's tough but life, for me right now, is good.

3. Keep in touch - I've gotta try to write more emails and letters and IM people more and call people more (well, maybe calling people is going to be kinda hard. I suck at that.)

4. Write more - Read and sleep and watch TV, I accomplish. Writing, however, I never do as much as I wish I did. Must write more. That's how you get better. Practice practice practice.

5. Find a more permenant job - Ok, it's time to get out there and find a job that I'm more spiritually satisfied with. Hopefully it'll install more purpose to my life and give me more opportunities to make a positive impact.

6. Learn how to cook more - Heh. Probably shouldn't be making this list while I'm kinda hungry. Well, as long as this is here, I hope I can learn how to make more food-stuffs. I've got a bunch of recipes on my computer that I've never tried before because... well, I just never tried. Time to get cracking on that.

That's a good list. That'll keep me busy for a year. There are probably some really important ones that I missed (or chose not to write). So, between these 6 and a couple of unwritten ones, I'm set.

I hope everybody has a good New Year's and a good 2006 (wow, we're getting old).

Merry Christmas!!!

2005-12-25T01:03:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! (etc. etc.) I love this season. I love this holiday! I love the presents, the trees, the singing, the decorations, the traditions, the hot chocolate, everything. It's too bad my family's too lazy to really celebrate it. Hell, I don't think we even have presents for each other. Still, it's Christmas and I'm loving Christmas.

So, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYBODY!!! I HOPE EVERYBODY HAS THE GREATEST HOLIDAY SEASON THIS YEAR!!!!

Topless Sandal follow-up

2005-12-22T09:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, looking at the topless sandal shopping page really quick, I have to admit: this seems very Santa Cruz. I think this is just my UCSC side talking but these are really interesting and I'm probably going to be buy a pair.
Men's Topless Sandals

Other interesting things this morning

2005-12-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

Does anybody else find these sandals amusing?
Topless Sandals - New Launches
I kinda wanna try a pair. For 15 bucks and the guy who made these saying it'll last a year, that seems like a good deal.

This is really freakin' amazing. This is totally where computers are going to be in the next six months to a year.
eHomeUpgrade | Mac mini Kitchen Installation
Someone took apart a Mac mini and modded it into a switchplate so that it could be installed into literally a hole in the wall in the kitchen. Using Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, this computer's hidden and essentially invisible to the naked eye. I'm really impressed someone actually took the time to do this and to do this successfully. It's really kinda crazy what's possible this day and age.

Ok, I'd post more but I actually work to do right now. On the upside, my boss is going to be out tomorrow so tomorrow's gonna be achill day. On the downside, since my boss is going to be out tomorrow and I'm going to be out Monday/Tuesday, I'm going to have to get him all the work I owe him this morning instead of next week. So, back to work.

Snoopy iPod Nano

2005-12-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

This is really cute. I'm kinda hoping that Apple takes this to heart and start coming out with a couple of random engraved iPods.
Akihabara News - Snoopy-styled iPOD Nano
I'm not going to buy a new one or anything but I'd like the option in 4 years when I replace the iPod I have now with the new uber-super-crazy-model of the year that Apple puts out then.

Flock Testing

2005-12-22T09:21:00.000-08:00

Just outta curiosity, I downloaded the Flock browser just to see what it looked like. I'd heard about it for the past couple of months but I didn't wanna d/l it because it's still in developer preview stage. Still, after listening to the Flock broadcast on the Inside The Net podcast, I decided to check it out.

Frankly, I like the clean cut look. It's interesting how when browsers first came out, there was an emphasis of more and more and bigger and brighter and now we consider Google's homepage to be the quintessential design and Apple's iPod to be the goal in product design. Clean, crisp, easy.

So, the Flock browser is a'ite. I like it. It's still in developer preview stage so it crashes every now and then but it's to be expected. I suppose anything's better than IE, right? =P Don't abandon Firefox just yet, tho, because Mozilla's still better. Flock's good tho.

This is a test of the auto blogging feature on the Flock browser. If this works out well, it'll definitely save time blogging. =P

Writely blog 2

2005-12-22T00:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've put my graduation speech online.
http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=bapbn7cps8p4

I'm kind of a fan of writely.com. It's easy and simple and impressive. Yay for innovation! (Bill Gates is in trouble now.)

This may get me back into writing more now. I think I'll put a story I've been working on here. Then, as I write it, y'all can read it and tell me what you think. This is really cool.

Writely.com Fun

2005-12-22T00:52:00.000-08:00

Hi y'all. I'm posting in my blog with www.writely.com, an online word processor. It's actually really cool. I'm enjoying the user interface and the fact that I can save documents online and access them from any computer. What's more is that I can post directly into blogger from it. So, use it and enjoy!

Next up is my attempt to try and share things. I'll make a test and see where it gets me.

Yay! I graduated!

2005-12-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

Yay! I gradu-ma-cated! =D

Ok, to be honest, I'm pretty sure I had graduated already when I woke up on that Saturday morning many months ago, got dressed, put on a polyester gown, walked down with a whole shitload of people to the bleachers, spoke for 7 minutes, listened for 2 hours, walked across the stage, and got that rolled up piece of paper. HOWEVER, I was apprehensive... you know, just in case... But, yesterday, in the mail, I got my diploma. (Took its sweet time getting here. It's DECEMBER! Sheesh. Ok, the reason's probably because we moved and so the post office did some switcheroo with the mailing addresses which takes like an extra month and a half for any of our mail to get to us. Still...)

Yay! *Happy Dance*

I'm quite excited. This diploma thingie is my proof that I actually graduated. (I never checked my grades for the final quarter.) I'm gonna frame this sucker and then frame all those rejection letters I got from other schools and hang them right next to it! (I just found them last week while cleaning out our old house.) Up yours, SJSU!! (Long story but suffice it to say, I got accepted into UCSC but rejected from SJSU. Go figure.) So *glee*.

As an aside, how weird is it that I have Arnold Schwarze-whats-its-face's signature on my diploma? It feels kinda like I went to a Terminator 4 preview, saw him, but didn't have a piece of paper on me so he signed my mail. And, if I take it to Boston, will people laugh when they see his signature on my diploma? The Goven-ator.

As an aside...

2005-12-19T14:41:00.000-08:00

As an aside to all this Bush, the song that definitely exemplifies this administration: For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield.

"I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down."

Ok, I know I'm dwelling...

2005-12-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm dwelling. I admit it. I can't let this one go just yet.

Concerning the wiretaps, Gen. Michael Hayden, head of the NSA, said "I can say unequivocally we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available." President Bush said "To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks." Ok, granted, it probably stopped some attacks. You know what else could probably stop attacks? Internment camps for Arab-Americans. Random security checks for anybody whose name translates into "Son-of-the-Prophet." Banning Mosques in major cities. Deputizing local militia. Training Bush Youth camps for the next generation of NSA/National Guard soldiers. These are civil liberties that are being violated through the unauthorized communication invasion that the NSA has been implementing. Does the president realize this? "It has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our civil liberties." Hm... looks like he doesn't. Maybe he needs a civics lesson.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Spoken by Benjamin Franklin, stolen from The West Wing.

Bush = jackass (Big Shock, I know)

2005-12-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush gets my official Jackass badge of shame!

(Ok, MTV's official Jackass badge of shame. Whatever =P)

And why is our illustrious president a jackass? (Aside from previously stated reasons.) Concerning his recently revealed 2 years of secret surveillance on America citizens:

"'Leaders in the United States Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this program,' Mr. Bush said. 'And it has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our personal liberties. This program has targeted those with known links to Al Qaeda.'

'My personal opinion is, it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war,' Mr. Bush said. 'The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy.'"
-- From the New Yorks Times article

So.... let's see now: it has been revealed (by the New York Times. Yay for journalism!) that Bush secretly authorized unmitigated surveillance on American citizens without a court order, something which is illegal for 99.9% of America but I guess is alright for our commander-in-chief, 3-4 years ago. Then, while being questioned on it at a press briefing, Bush calls it a legal and necessary [HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE]and has announced that it will continue. He has stated that while it's only been used for international communication [HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE], they would not hesitate to [ILLEGALY] eavesdrop on domestic communication. [EXCUSE ME?!?!] Bush then uses the post-9/11 bullshit rhetoric about "anybody who questions this government is a traitor to America" to criticize whoever leaked this story. [DOES IT NOT BOTHER HIM THAT THERE WERE NSA OFFICIALS AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WHO WERE AGAINST THIS FROM THE BEGINNING?!?!!] "Helping the enemy"? Our president-elect [HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE] is a Jackass.

According to the same New York Times article, Bush "with some heat in his voice," shot down a reporter who questioned where he was "trying to assume 'dictatorial powers'" and while he "criticized those senators who have so far blocked renewal of the USA Patriot Act."

Between this and the trying to push through an amendment stating making gay marriage unconstitutional, I'm beginning to wonder if W. knows what the Constitution is for. Or what it says. Or what it is. I'm beginning to wonder if Bush passed 8th grade History/Social Science class.

BTW, while we're on the subject of him, Bush, last night, also talked about the "success" of the Iraq war. He said: "my fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq." That's good to hear. Too bad it's not true.

"I do not expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom." Makes me wonder if he understand why we don't support him or on what issue we don't support him. Also makes me wonder if he knows what "despair" means.

And the most ironic statement award goes to House Speaker Dennis Hastert: "House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois said House Republicans would stand firm against any calls for withdrawal 'despite attempts by some Democrats to play politics with this war and America's national security.'" (From CNN.com)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the jackass who is running our nation. No wonder Canada's looking so nice this time of year.

And now for something completely different

2005-12-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

Who's better, pirates or ninjas?
http://www.freewebs.com/scurvypirates/yarr.htm

I'm quite grateful to actually know now. I was kinda worried there for a bit when I found myself trapped on a dark street with the Pirates gang (arr!) on one side and the Ninja gang (hai!) on the other. Now I know which side to throw my allegiance to.

Holy Crap

2005-12-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

Holy Crap. John Spencer, who plays Leo McGarry on The West Wing, has passed away. He died of a heart attack. He was 58.

I'm pretty shocked. John Spencer truly a great actor on the show. I was always impressed by his acting ability and felt that the show was one of the best TV shows on the air in part because of his portrayal of Chief of Staff Leo McGarry. If, for some reason you read my blog before you read any news outlet sites, be warned that there are major spoilers in every article due to Leo's role in the show this season.

RIP John Spencer.

As long as we're on entertainment news, Tom Cruise is a jackass with his 9/11 medication comments. Yep. Tom Cruise = jackass. And I also feel kinda like a jackass for putting Tom Cruise's name in the same post with John Spencer's name. So, me = jackass. Tom Cruise = bigger jackass.

Scary Story

2005-12-16T13:27:00.000-08:00

If you want to read a scary story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?hp&ex=1134795600&en=c7596fe0d4798785&ei=5094&partner=homepage

So, the government's been spying on us for 3 years now. Now, to be fair, US doesn't mean EVERYBODY. The article states that best guess is a rotating cycle of 500 suspcious citizens. However, the critical aspect of this is that the NSA's been spying on us without Federally issued warrents. In fact, the New York Times article that "there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials." Wow. How's that for unchecked power?

I think the implication of the article is that these powers were given to the NSA by Bush after 9/11. The rampant fear of safety that blew through the country in 2001/2002 allowed the NSA a justifiable base to go fishing for any suspected terrorists. However, I'm concerned more about the implication of this action. Just like with the Iraq war, the checks and balances that are supposed to be in place in our government failed and we took an unregulated, unneccessary amount of action that we probably shouldn't have any right to. "[T]hey said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime." Yet, our NSA feels the unmitigated need to spy on citizens who have a right to privacy. I know that privacy feels more like a myth than a fact in this current age of information but there should still be a certain amount expected. Constitutional issues abound from this stunning revelation. Is this legal? Is this constitutional? There are arguments on both sides of the table and the one I'm most swayed by is the idea that this would constitute an illegal search. After all, email should be treated like mail. Tampering with it should be considered a violation of Federal laws. Yet, the NSA doesn't feel bound by these standards.

I'm not going to argue that the program doesn't have any validity. It does stand to reason that if we listen in to every phone call we could stop many terrorist threats before they become actual threats. That being said, we're staring down the barrel of the line the divides Totalitarianism and Democracy. Can we persecute people based on their thoughts? Their feelings? Their opinions?

By the way, when one of your own officials says: "Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds," that should be a clue.

What would have happened if they had heard something really important? What if they had heard some sort of crucial clue? Is this evidence admissible? Any lawyer worth his salt can probably argue this one outta the court. Then what? Is this even the best course of action? Did civil liberities get violated for no good reason?

The big questions is: now what? Now that the New York Times have released this story after sitting on it for a year, what are we going to do as a society? Hopefully we learn and grow and try to avoid the same mistakes again and again. Hopefully we tell the NSA that this type of action is wrong. Hopefully we pass laws that strictly regulate illegal searches and Constitutional violations. Hopefully we never have to deal with this blatant disregard for basic human rights again. Then again, if wishes were horses...

RIP Stanley Williams

2005-12-16T00:36:00.000-08:00

This is a post in response to the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. For those of you who don't know, Stanley Williams, along with Raymond "Truck" Washington began the Crips gang in 1969. The Crips. Yes, those Crips. Perhaps you're familiar with the fued they had/have with the Bloods. It's the modern day Hatfields and McCoys. (Or, the Hatfields and the McCoys are the old school version of the Bloods and Crips, in case you're historically challenged.) Anyway, Williams was arrested in connection with four murders (one during a robbery of a 7-11 and 3 in a robbery of a motel). I'm not going to try and argue whether or not Williams is actually innocent of these crimes. He claimed until his dying day that he was convicted after a trial so I suppose that's one of those things that will remains shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. (I also understand that the 3 killed in the motel robbery were Taiwan immigrants, so that hits close to home.)

What I wanted to comment on was the morality of his execution. Is it right that a man is killed in the place of 4 victims? Perhaps. I do believe that the use of the death penalty is, at times, necessary. However, morally it does present a problem. It is still the taking of a life. By deciding that there are those that deserve the death penalty is essentially putting not just a value on a human life but putting a value on a life for the sole purpose of comparing it to the values of other lives. It becomes even harder to determine the just use of the death penalty when it comes to somebody like Williams.

It's hard to deny that Williams was a troubled individual. Murders aside, Williams is known to have committed some questionable acts while in prison, from threatening guards to getting into violent altercations with other inmates to mistreatment of visitors, etc.

However, after a stint in solitary confinement, Williams came out a changed man. While never renouncing his life up until that point, Williams did take many steps in trying to atone for whatever crimes he may have had, both directly and indirectly. He began to speak out against gang violence. He wrote/co-wrote a series of children's books that spoke out for non-violence (I read one for a class and it was actually an interesting read). He apologized for his part in the creation of the Crips gang. He even created the Tookie Protocol for Peace, a shaky truce between the Bloods and the Crips in California and New Jersey. He was commended by George W. Bush (normally I wouldn't consider this necessarily a virtue but it's worth mentioning because W. was the only president that was in office during this period of Williams's life so I'm using him not as a person but as the office of the President of the United States. When you read the last sentance just thinking "Williams receivied a commendation from the President").

So, I question the ethics of the death penalty applied in this situation. Is there not a better candidate for at least a temporary reprieve?

Williams has commented before that starting the Crips was not because he wanted to indulge in gang violence. He mentions that he wanted to put an end to the random outbreaks of violence in his neighborhood when growing up. He hoped that by banding the people in his neighborhood together, it would decrease the amount of violence and death that occured. For many, gang life represents the best option at the time. It provides an identity, a family, a source of income, a source of protection, a source of pride.

Also, it has been pointed out that Williams represented one of the best hopes of a peaceful solution to gang violence. His mere presence inspires a level of respect and interest that other people would be hard-pressed to duplicate. His life represents a life that still provides an immense amount of value and meaning, even after his mortality is so clearly defined. As far as morals go, this is the quintessential example of the value of human life. Williams proved in the past 5 years that his life still had meaning. He made a huge difference and would've continued to make a huge difference had he continued to live. Where are all the pro-life people now? Where are the churches? Is not his fate destined to be decided by heavenly powers, not mortal men? I'm convinced that politics and religion cannot be a good mix and this is good proof of that.

So, Williams was condemned to death by lethal injection. Expecting nothing less, I was pleased to hear that Williams died with dignity. With honor. Williams never renounced his life with the Crips nor did he ever turn in any names of other gang members. Some people use this fodder for saying the Williams had never truly changed and was still the same person as he was when he was convicted. I think this shows an immense amount of honor in Williams. I respect his inner morality, his commitment and loyalty. He never betrayed the ideals he had tried to instill into the group that he helped formed that was eventually be called the Crips. He never renounced his membership because he still believed in the idea of the Crips. I believe that he understood that there is inherent value in a gang structure. Just not in gang violence. I think that there are too many people who get written off. They lead "dead-end" lives. They represent nothing but trouble and hardship. However, Williams proved that there's no such thing as a dead-end life.

Season's Greetings

2005-12-16T00:35:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't really really posted in a long time. It's not really a result of anything in particular. It's more a combination of lack of interest on my part, an increase in workload, and an onset of pseudo-depression as evidenced in my post about work sucking. However, since I have only 9 more (working) days left at Synnex, my recent birthday, the upcoming holiday season, and a whole new future to look forward to, I've moved past this phase and am quite happy with life now. Plus, I'm listening to O-Zone's Dragostea Din Tei song (the Numa Numa song) as I'm typing this which is a great "upper" (this song's WAY too catchy. Even in Romanian (and the CD title the song was in? DiscO-Zone! How great is that!!?!).

My life's hasn't changed very much in the past month. I've watched more movies. I've listened to more songs. I've watched more TV. I've driven further. Other than that tho, no immense changes.

I really enjoyed Rent, Pride and Prejudice, Narnia, and King Kong. I liked the film version of Rent. I thought that the story was translated very effectively onto the big screen. I loved the directorial choices and some of the changes were very smart (like stretching the time frame and events out). I did miss some of the symbolic theatrics that were used on stage (at least when I saw it here, in San Jose) such as the angelic Angel and the "padlock." I also missed Mark's subplot. But these were minor. I just loved watching everything happen.

Pride and Prejudice is a very good movie. Keira Knightly looks as cute as can be in it. She pulls the entire Jane Austin range really well. Plus she has a really great genuine laugh that translates well on screen. I liked the style of the movie. It's more... down to Earth than other versions I've glimpsed. I liked that. It made the story feel a lot more real. Still, even in this "real" world, they made no shortcuts in the dialogue. It's seeped in the Victorian era, from the dancing to the dialogue to the bowing (the incessant bowing).

I really liked Narnia. It completely captured the story again for me. To be fair, I should be calling this movie The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe but that's just freaking too much to type. Anyway, the movie reminded me a lot of the old BBC version. The pacing is very much like it, as well as the character interaction. The children were perfect. Lucy and Edward were the best. Tilda Swinton, as usual, knocked my socks off. I totally think she should be in more movies. She's absolutely great. Liam Neeson as Aslan was dead-on too. He just had such power and grace. Also, the fighting was awesome. WETA did a great job, as expected.

Speaking of WETA, King Kong's a MASTERPIECE. It's so good. It's a great movie to watch at a relaxed pace. Everything about it screams in delight. Naomi Watts, Adrian Brody, and Jack Black were unbelievable. Kong was beyond perfect. There was such emulation, such emotion, such empathy. The scenes between Serkis, as Kong, and Watts, as Darrow, were majestic. Peter Jackson certainly proves his mettle (again) with this film. I think this film's transformed him into the go-to-guy in terms of directors. If anybody were to make a JLA movie, he's who I'd want to direct it.

Movies aside, I'm really happy it's near Christmas. I think it's going to be a good holiday season. I made a list of people I have to do holiday shopping for still. I think I've got a lot of shopping ahead of me. Still, labor of love so it's all good.

This is totally my favorite time of the year. I'm quite content indulging in the merriments of December. And, with that, I'm done with this post. I have another post too that's more somber. How's THAT for emotion swinging??

Thinking about UCSC

2005-12-13T15:00:00.000-08:00

I think one of the things I really missed about college was the school pride. Almost everybody I met at UCSC was really happy to be there for whatever reason. From all walks of life, everybody bonded about stuff and everybody got absorbed by whatever was around them. I've never met so many people so happy to be called banana slugs! =D People usually indulged in some sort of school pride, whether it be pride in their major (Go Lit!), pride in their college (Go Cowell!), or pride in their house (Go Beard! [sorry, Beardian for life]), people were just genuinely happy to be at UCSC. I miss that sense of pride, that camraderie.

Wish I had that pride for where I work. Too bad I don't.

11 days until I quit! Woo-hoo!!

Keeping a story alive

2005-12-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

Just trying to keep a story alive.

http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/priceritephoto-abusive-bait-and-switch.html

Very proud of somebody trying to fight back. I'll make a real post later today.

The Rantings of a Madman. My Life is Pointless.

2005-11-17T15:24:00.000-08:00

Sigh. You know, you go into college and come out of college with such aspirations. I honestly thought I could make a difference. I mean, at UCSC we even fostered this mindset. "The number 1 reason why a student chooses to go to UCSC is because they 'want to change the world and felt this was the best place to do so.'" It's a belief that I always subscribed to. Even when meaningless politics muddied the thinking and idealist standards we all held ourselves to, I was always optimistic. Life could only get better.

Here I am, a temp in a job I hate. Hate with a passion. I'm not even getting paid a decent amount. Well, anything more than zero is a decent amount but compared to what other people get, it's not decent. On top of that, I don't get holiday pay or overtime pay, despite staying until 7, 8, 9 at night. I don't really mind, it's my work ethic, but it's frustrating knowing that as a temp, I'm not really needed. I don't hold any position of value in this company. I always thought that I'd be able to do something worthwhile, that I'd be able to do something important. In UCSC, I spent the last 3 years there doing worthwhile activities. I worked in departments that helped out students. I was able to be an RA and work with students. I was able to be a tour guide and work with prospective students. I was able to do favors for CREs, CPCs, CAOs, Provosts, other RAs, students, friends, some of the people I had the most respect for in the world. I was even allowed to speak at graduation, an honor I treasure and will treasure forever. Now? I honestly think that if I didn't show up for work starting tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. What would change? Honestly? My boss would have to do his own grunt work? Not likely. He'd pass that off. My manhours spares each person probably an hour of extra work a day. They're all already 2 hours behind everyday. Drops in the ocean.

I swear, if I don't get out SOON, I'm going to go mad. I'm going to go completely psychotic. I'm going to go homicidal. I need AN OUT. Mr. Wizard, I need an exit.

Sony MoFo update

2005-11-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are not regular slashdot readers or haven't heard through other means, California's filed a class action against Sony BMG and New York's announced they're following suit. Australia and Italy are investigating Sony BMG for consumer law violations. Sony BMG is going down! Woo-hoo! May they burn and burn and burn.

Ok, that was just me being bitter. I'm sorry. For those of you who don't know what's going on, I direct y'all to Mark's Sysinternals Blog, which broke the story after the dude spent who knows how long reverse engineering the damn virus and finding out what the hell it was in the first place.

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/sony-you-dont-reeeeaaaally-want-to_09.html

That link's actually the last entry. Scroll down for a nifty summary. For the nitty gritty, including a response from First 4 Internet, the company that wrote the rootkit program and a rebuttal to the reponse, I suggest you just read the exploits entry by entry.

For a list of pariah CDs that you should not buy because they contain BMG's bullshit rootkit:
http://slashdot.org/~xtracto/journal/121697
This slashdot journal's got an updated list but it's not as clearly written.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php
This Eff page's got a less-updated list but a brief how-to for identifying bullshit CDs. I warn you now, if you see any of those signs, DO NOT BUY THE CD. Pirate it. You will be better off fending off the RIAA than jumping through Sony BMG's hoops of death trying to get the rootkit off your computer. (Oh, read Mark's Sysinternals entry [the first link] about his analysis of the uninstall program and Sony's continuing bullshitting.)

PIRATE SONY!

Sony Bullshit UPDATED

2005-11-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

Sony's in it now.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/7536/
The first virus has been found that hides itself in Sony's rootkit software. Not malicious, my ass.

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/7540/
Also, a Macintosh rootkit's been discovered. Kill Sony now!

If you want to sign an online petition against Sony:
http://www.petitiononline.com/bcsony/petition.html

Let's stop the madness!!

The Great Bird of the Galaxy lives on!!

2005-11-09T19:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8275
Do I need to explain how cool this is? Star Trek makes yet ANOTHER appearance in real life technology. This puts the flip phone cell phones to shame, however, since the military has now designed PHASRs! (hehe. I'm giddy beyond belief that they tried their damndest to name the thing a phaser.)

Google Risk

2005-11-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

Play World Domination!
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/google-maps/play-risk-with-google-maps-135951.php
Someone programmed a Risk game to run atop a Google World Map API. Now, you can imagine yourself dominating the actual world. I don't know about you, but this is the coolest electronic version of Risk I've ever seen. It's a whole new experience to try to actually CONQUER AMERICA. Fun fun fun. =D BTW: I still don't like to play Risk. This is just marginally better.

Sony bullshit part 3

2005-11-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000210067093/
Sony president Thomas Hesse has said, quoted in NPR, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

Thomas Hesse is officially a jackass.

He gets an official MTV copyrighted JACKASS badge. May his head develop an inoperable tumor.

Also, a lawsuit's brewing in Italy over Sony BMG. If a class action gets underway in the States, I'm all over that shit, you better believe it.

oh, and go vote.

Comic Book recommendations part 1

2005-11-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

I didn't get a chance to post anything today and I'm not going to post anything of significance now so don't look into it.

Ravi mentioned a couple of days ago that he was curious as to what I considered some of my choices for top comic book stories. I thought about it and spat a couple back to him. He suggested I put it into this blog, which is a good idea.

I took a cue from iTunes Artist Essentials and divided this up into 2 sections: The Basics and Deep Cuts. The Basics are my book choices that should be read by anybody who's interested in comic books as a medium. Deep Cuts are stories that take a little more to get into which amounts to either an experimental story or a story deeply rooted in the history of the series. Still, they're both worth checking out. So, without further ado:

The Basics:
The Watchmen -- Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created this classic book during an era where comic books were trying to capture a legitimacy in the medium. This is following the uber-camp of the Adam West Batman. Although Adam West Batman was a huge success and was absolutely crucial to the survival of comics post-Wertham (comics would've died had it not been for the Batman tv show in the 70's. It's as simple as that), it did serve to present comic books as nothing more than kid's fare. Alan Moore changed that with this pivotal work. The ideas and themes used in this 12 part miniseries are still being used in mainstream comic book works today, including ambiguous morality, superheroics as a metaphor for passion and isolation, introduction of real world problems to supplement archvillains, etc. If your mental association of comic books are Archie and Adam West, this book will change that; I guarantee it.

The Dark Knight Returns -- Frank Miller's magnum opus (well, magnum opus until he did Sin City) is by far the definitive Batman book. Following the Adam West camp of the 60's and the social consciousness of Neal Adams's Batman in the 70's, Frank Miller brought Batman back to its roots with this 4 part miniseries. This interpretation of Batman is by far the most complex form of Batman ever. It clearly defined the boundaries of Batman, the capabilities of Batman, the mentality of Batman, and the moral compass of Batman. Beyond that, however, this is just a really good story. If you want to understand why Batman stands as one of the most popular comic book heroes in the world, this book will tell you.

Kingdom Come -- Alex Ross and Mark Waid crafted an epic story with this Kingdom Come 4 part miniseries. In the cynicism of the late 90's, with the advent of the anti-hero in the forms of Wolverine and Spawn, Alex Ross and Mark Waid's Kingdom Come reminded readers just what the appeal of traditional heroism was. Beyond that, it reestablished morality and infused the iconic superheroes of the DC Universe with a sense of belonging. If you think Superman is as outdated as Santa Claus, reading Kingdom Come will tell you just how important he is.

Astonishing X-Men -- The first storyarc is entitled Gifted. This is the current main on-going X-Men title. It's also written by Joss Whedon (yes, the Buffy creator) and drawn by John Cassidy. Joss manages to craft a fantastic X-Men story, pulling the characters away from the black leather world of Bryan Singer's movie X-Men and putting them back into their superhero costumes. The dialogue's spot-on and the Cassidy's artwork is amazing. If you want to read good old fashioned superhero action and adventure, read Astonishing.

Midnight Nation -- J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) ventured into comic books after Babylon 5. One of his first ventures is the graphic novel Midnight Nation. This story is a very elegantly crafted story about a man's struggle to understand the afterlife and regain his soul. It's deep but subtly so. It is extremely emotional and adventurous. In the end, the story just captivates you. It also showcases Straczynski's amazing storywriting ability, with storytelling elements that echo his masterpiece Babylon 5. If you want to read a deep but simple story of discovery, read Midnight Nation.

Bone -- Jeff Smith's epic story Bone is a fantasy story delight. The first thing you'll notice is that the humor and art style is remeniscent of an animated movie. It's no wonder because Jeff Smith's art background includes a stint at Disney as an animator. The complete collection of Bone is available and is what I recommend. However, it clocks in as one of the most expensive book on this Basics list. However, it's well worth it. While starting relatively light, Jeff Smith interweaves classic Fantasy tropes into a classic Tolkien style pastiche while still retaining an extremely unique voice. The end result is an extremely inventive and fun story that will last awhile and become embedded in your imagination. If you want to read a great fantasy setting comic, read Bone.

Sandman -- Neil Gaiman's comic book masterpiece 10-volume work is both amazingly beautiful and amazingly deep. If you read the whole thing (which I recommend) it'll cost you a pretty penny. If you're trying to save money or just want a taste of the writing style, then read the 4th book: Seasons of Mist. I recommend you pop on Wikipedia or find a comic book fanatic friend to explain the first 3 books before you dive into the fourth one. Still, it's an emminently beautiful set of stories that examines every facet of mythological basics as well as humanity. If you want to be amazed, read Sandman.

Deep Cuts:
will be continued tomorrow.

---
ADDENDUM: I totally forgot a book:

Maus -- Art Spiegelman's 2-part magnum opus of a story is one of the most famous comic books works in the country because it transcends comic book as a medium. It's used to help teach both young students and analyzed by older students in classrooms all across the country. This survivalist story about Spiegelman's father in Auschwitz is touching, raw, heartfelt, and representational of what comic books provide more than any other medium: accessibility. Because of the anthropomorphic animals in the role of humans, the story presents a very easy to approach quality. However, once you get into it, you realize that Maus is more than just talking mice. If they didn't make you read it in high school or college, read it now. It's definitely worth it.

Sony Virus UPDATE

2005-11-07T01:14:00.000-08:00

It's 1 in the morning. I was woken up by the sound of my computer starting up (you know, the Windows startup tune). An error report was automatically sent to Microsoft (automatically. I did not touch the keyboard or click the mouse when I got up) and this is the Microsoft response.

Solution found: contact First 4 Internet Ltd to obtain the update

Problem description

Thank you for submitting an error report. The error was likely caused by:

Aurora

Solution

Aurora was created by First 4 Internet Ltd. First 4 Internet Ltd informed Microsoft that they have a solution available for the problem you reported. To learn more about the solution, First 4 Internet Ltd recommends that you visit the following website:

http://updates.xcp-aurora.com

Clicking the link gave me a website that said this:

Service Pack 2

2|Nov|2005, 3.253Mb

This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology component that has been recently discussed in a number of articles published regarding the XCP Technology used on SONY BMG content protected CDs. This component is not malicious and does not compromise security. However to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove this component from their computers.

Download Now

WHAT??? Not malicious? This virus that was installed on my computer by a Sony BMG CD is automatically restarting my computer. AUTOMATICALLY RESTARTING MY COMPUTER. I'm not technologically impaired. I did not run any programs that would restart my computer. My virus checker (Norton's) did not run. I checked the system log. The only thing that could've done this is, ACCORDING TO MICROSOFT, this stupid SONY BMG PIECE OF CRAP VIRUS. (Just in case anybody was wondering, I searched through my system's processes, which was something I didn't do earlier because I didn't think that the Sony BMG bullshit ran without a Sony CD in it. It turns out that son of a bitch program has a background program that runs 24/7 called "Content Verification" or some fucking bullshit like that. Even money says that's the assclown program that restarted my system.)

I hope Sony dies.

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

ADDENDUM: I'm taking the only course of action available (I checked. This is it.) to take this malicious piece of crap off my computer. I went to Sony's website and reported that I need this software taken off. They sent me a form email that said that I would need to install service pack 2 to remove the stealth bullshit that they talked about up when I quoted their website. They have another paragraph on their email:

If you wish to completely uninstall all of our DRM software, visit the form below using the computer where the software is currently installed. After submission you will be emailed a custom uninstall link within 1 business day (M-F).

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form9.html

I clicked the link and got an actual form:

UNINSTALL REQUEST

where they asked for my case ID (provided in the email) and a field for:

Please Describe why you need to make an unistall request

They're making me fill out a REQUEST to uninstall MALICIOUS software that I DON'T WANT ON MY SYSTEM. I've never had this happen to me before. I've never had any adware, spyware, or virus demand a reason before an uninstall could be processed.

I don't normally do this but I URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE URGE you to pirate Sony CDs. DO NOT PURCHASE SONY CDs. THEY ARE MALICIOUS AND HARMFUL AND CANNOT BE EASILY REMOVED. DO NOT PURCHASE SONY. PIRATE THE SHIT OUT OF SONY. PIRATE THE SHIT OUT OF SONY.

Thanks for listening.

Political rants.

2005-11-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

Vote no on Prop 73. It's wrong to force underage people to get parental consent for abortions. This will not increase communication between teenagers and parents. This will encourages teens to lie and forge documentation. This will encourage unsafe abortion techniques and will increase an ignorance about pregnancy and safe sex. It is wrong and unethical to use laws in such a way. This world's going to hell in a handbasket. It's better now to break the law than follow the law. Citizens are being pushed further and further into polarized attitudes and actions. It's becoming more and more beneficial to become an anarchist. We're destroying democracy through so many ways and so many misguided leaders. I know we're in trouble. I can feel it in my bones and smell it in the wind. We're facing the wall soon and we either have to turn around and start moving backwards or we have to throw ourselves against the wall in an effort to break it down. Ok, that was a cyptic metaphor but you get the gist. We're in trouble in so many ways.

In honor of my 100th post, I offer... a hate post

2005-11-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES.

Ok, I guess I should explain myself (but why?). I bought a CD legitimately. It's a Sony Music CD. Because of their copyright bullshit, I needed to install a rootkit on my computer just to listen to it with the computer. I couldn't rip the CD without using their rootkit program, which converted them to copyright protected WMV formats. I can't put these (bear in mind, legitimately bought) files on my iPod or play them through iTunes. I have to either buy the CD again on iTunes Music Store or I have to buy a Sony approved MP3 player in order to play them.

First off, this is WRONG because I DIDN'T PIRATE this CD. Once again, because this is important, I DID NOT pirate this CD. This is a CD I bought in a real store for real money. I did not steal this CD. I picked it off the shelf, walked it to a register, inserted my credit card (at Target they have these keypads with a slot for the credit card), signed the box, and received a receipt. I even have a witness. So, again, I did not break a single law in buying this compact disc. Now, I cannot enjoy this compact disc in the way that I want. Mind you, I have no intention of harming anybody. In fact, I cannot even peripherally harm anybody buy putting this CD on my iPod and through iTunes. I paid for the CD so the artist and the production company will both receive a portion of the sales, as will the store that I bought the CD at. I am throwing away the plastic wrap which means I'm not littering. Perhaps I will be harming the eco-system by throwing the plastic wrap in the landfill (not personally but laterally) but I have no other solution for that problem. However, I'm still not breaking any laws at any point of this process. So, I ask again, why can I not enjoy the CD on my iPod?

Is it necessary to purchase another MP3 player? The CD says it's able to be put on an approved MP3 player. However, I already own an MP3 player. So should I spend 100+ dollars on an MP3 player to play a 15 dollar CD? That seems unbelievably redundant. What's slightly better but no less redundant is the idea of purchasing the CD once in real life and again on iTunes music store. Am I required to buy this CD twice?

So, what could possibly be worse than this?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/01/sony_rootkit_drm/
Yes, that's right! If I attempt to remove the root kit, I will crash my computer and render it completely useless! Sony is now CREATING VIRUSES! This is even worse than a virus because this virus was acquired by following laws. I didn't pirate, I didn't download, I simply bought a CD and wanted to put it on my iPod.

Let me take a little jaunt down a tangent and explain really quickly why I tried to put it on my iPod in the first place. When I buy CDs, I have a tendancy of scratching them up. I keep them in my car and out of the case because it's easier to change CDs while driving by keeping them out of the case. I hardly listen to CDs outside of the car. I didn't buy one of those visor CD holder dealios because if I put the CDs on the outside of the visor--

[Quick comment: I'm watching Grey's Anatomy right now as I type this. A pacemaker just burst into flames during surgery. Does that happen in real life? That's crazy!]

Ok, where was I? Oh yeah. I don't put CDs on visor because I can't change how far against the windshield or how far against the roof of the car the visor rests. So, I keep my CDs in a section under the radio and above the shifter. It's quite convenient but the exposure and lack of a CD case makes it susceptible to scratching. I've actually bought the same CD twice because I accidentally scratched it up beyond recognition. So now I try to put CDs onto my computer so I don't scratch them up.

Ok, that's explained. I feel that's a completely legitimate reason for putting CDs on my computer and iPod. However, this Sony CD does not allow me to do it. What's really stupid is that if I were to pirate the CD, i.e. download it with Limewire or Bittorrent, I would be breaking the law (only mildly) but I wouldn't have any problem and I'd probably be listening to the CD right now instead of typing this rather lengthy rant.

FUCK SONY. FUCK SONY. FUCK SONY.

I am being punished for following the law. I obeyed the copyright law, stupid as they are, by buying the CD legitimately and I'm being punished. I cannot listen to the CD on my iPod (WHICH I BOUGHT LEGITIMATELY TOO) and I cannot listen to the CD on my computer using my audio program of choice. On top of that, I now have a VIRUS (A SONY VIRUS) on my computer which I CANNOT REMOVE. Ok, realistically there is 1 way I can remove it. ONE. Sony released a patch to remove the rootkit but it's a hasty patch that doesn't remove everything. It's incomplete. AND IT SHOULDN'T BE NEEDED IN THE FIRST PLACE! Sony sucks so much ass.

I want to go to Sony headquarters and shoot every single person with "Manager" in their title. I want to find the people that wrote this code and chop off their legs, put leeches in the open wounds, force them to eat their own fingers, burn their hair as it's still attached to their bodies, and slice cuts in their bodies and urinate in the open wounds. I want to tear apart the Sony headquarters building brick by brick. I want to grind each brick into dust and shove it down the throats of their Goddamn board of directors. This is such a bullshit control tactic that goes so far against the principles of Capitalism that it sickens me. They are threatening the future of freedom of expression by literally crippling the computers of the owners of these CDs. I hope that Sony dies. Just dies. I hope they go bankrupt and die. I hope the RIAA chokes on its own vomit. I know that in the future, this period of copyright hysteria will be looked upon the same way as McCarthyism. I hope the RIAA suffers an extreme Wile E. Coyote moment and falls into a canyon. I hope their houses and possessions are repossesed and distributed to the homeless. I hope they're forced in the slave labor and forced to work in 3rd world countries cleaning filth and cooking dinners then they're forced to work in the Gulf coast and must rebuild each house brick by brick. I hope they die.

I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES. I hope Sony DIES.

Positive Story

2005-11-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've written a lot of negative comments about Bush's administration. I thought it was time to write something positive.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/05/bush.ethics/index.html

Bush is required all his senior staff to attend ethics classes. I don't know what's going to stick, but this is by far the best thing I've heard about the Vulcan administration in a long time. For that, Bush gets a:

Super Calvin Effort Badge! Way to go, Bush!

NaNoWriMo fun!!

2005-11-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

I'm working slowly on this "novel." I'm at 779 words. That's hardly anything but it's a start.

The story's called The Adventures of Corporate Bob. Seriously. It's the idea I had for a comic book possibility but I never got started and so I'm working now on it as prose. The biggest problem, however, is that I originally conceived of this work as having no (or as little) dialogue as possible. I was just going to write a one-page summary at the beginning with character bios and setting descriptions. Then just pictures. Unfortunately, a novel can't really allow pictures to speak for themselves. So, I'm just trying to work this out slowly but surely.

I also bought season 4 of Star Trek: Enterprise on DVD. I know, I know, but I heard the show was really starting to turn itself around and that Manny Coto's writing was stellar. I just had to see it for myself. So far, it's actually pretty good.

Ok, that's it for now.

Writing madness!!

2005-11-03T19:24:00.000-08:00

I'm officially a participant in the NaNoWriMo.
Join me for the writing madness!! =D (I'll try to blog my progress. If I have progress...)

BTW, I'm watching Jeopardy right now. I can't believe I didn't remember "gilding the lily" for Final Jeopardy. I suck... =`(```````0 <-- puddle

NaNoWriMo (Sounds like something Flanders would say)

2005-11-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

To all my fellow writers and writer-wannabes:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
It is officially NaNoWriMo! What is NaNoWriMo? It is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to spend the whole of November (from 1st to 30th) to produce a 50,000 word (175 paged) piece of work.

Here's the official who/what/where/when/why page, in case you're too lazy to find it on your own. =P
http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=2

I'm definitely going to sign up! Seriously, this is a good idea. Writing at this speed probably means you'll write a lot of crap. Still, writing's all about taking risks. It's these risks that help break writer's block. If you're going to hit a wall anyway, might as well run fullspeed into it. Sign up! Write 50,000 words! It may be crap but at least it'll be finished crap. See you all on the otherside on Nov. 30!

I'm thinking maybe a mystery-adventure novel for me...