street vendor: hey, hey, hey man, jewelry blow out special. everything a dollar. buy something nice for your wife for the holidays. one dollar!

businessman: a dollar? i'm not gonna buy my wife jewelry for a dollar.

street vendor: it's the thought that counts.

-overheard in new york, 57th and 8th-

"sure it sounds trite and foolish but if you really take a deep down look, isn't that what love really is all about? sacrificing rationality to show how much someone means to you? like in example, the engagement ring? diamonds aren't rare you idiot! if it cost $5 trillion dollars she'd flaunt the hell out of a cheerio with a marshmallow glued to the top! love is like that. it is truly the parade of the insane."

-yelofngr-

people are going to want something more when it seems harder to obtain. referencing the post of a few days ago, a friend pointed out something. if the intent is to warn both sides, or one side, of the potential mishaps that could result from a romantic connection, it's sometimes best to say nothing. why? because nothing brings two people together more than adversity. the best way to arouse curiosity is to say "stay away." the easiest way to get two people on one side is to try to keep them apart. parents probably know this. romeo and juliet's parents probably realized this too late.



and also, people are going to do whatever they want to do anyway, so why fight attraction? short of one person being an axe murderer, why not just let things be? que sera sera. all you do by telling two people to watch out for each other is to pique their interest. "hum, why is jon telling me to stay away? there must be an interesting reason. i must find out." so maybe it's best to not say anything at all when two friends are interested in each other. the only productive thing to do is just bet the over/under and create a pool for how long the "relationship" will last, and then hope that your horse comes in.

great expectations. how much would you pay for the best cupcakes on earth? okay, not even the best, how about the most popular? people pay outrageous sums for a morsel of the rarest caviar, the tenderest steak, the freshest filet-o-fish. what would you pay for a famous cupcake? apparently i'm willing to pay a buck fifty plus an hour of my time. and if my time is invaluable, i just paid infinity plus one fifty for a cupcake that'll probably cause me a hundred fifty in dentist bills.



of course i'm talking about magnolia bakery. magnolia's cupcakes were already a coveted item in new york before they exploded onto the small screen via sex and the city. once magnolia went cable tv, they got huge. no longer were they "magnolia, famous for their cupcakes." now they were "magnolia, the place that carrie and co went to get cupcakes." everyone had to have one after that. and apparently, everyone was there last saturday, waiting to get their hands on a creamy cupcake.



it's amazing, you make a long line of of people out the door and people want something even more. normally i would pass up this sort of event. nothing is worth an hour's wait in the winter (although it wasn't particularly cold). but this was more or less a once in a 2004 opportunity. i was thinking the holiday spirit would make people happy and cheery but really, most of the people standing there were questioning the sanity of standing in line. yet nobody made a move to leave. busy manhattaners walking by would look at the line, turn to their friends, make a snide comment about "those people are crazy...and dumb!" and then scuttle along. i would have, should have, been one of those people. but that night, for the sake of cupcakes, i was one of the crazy and dumb ones.



the question inevitably comes down to, "were the cupcakes really that good? was it worth it?" the answer is no. and yes. the cupcakes aren't that mind blowingly good. in fact, i prefer the soft mushiness that is the local vons cupcake. the signature frosting on the magnolia cupcake is pretty good, but the huge smear of it they put on top is too much. no adult over the age of twenty can seriously eat this cupcake without being overwhelmed by sugar. i have a super sweet tooth and even i was unable to fall in love with the frosting. and the actual cupcake itself was so disappointing. lumpy and hard, and almost crispy. leslie warned us beforehand that most homemade cupcakes were better, and she was spot on in her evaluation.



but the cupcakes were worth an hour and a dollar fifty out of my life. why? because it's the experience. where else would you be able to stand in line and look longingly at overpriced baked goods? where else would you get riled up by some lady repeatedly going back to raid the cupcake tray? where else could you sit in a park and toast your friends with the cupcakes that you just bought? nowhere, only magnolia.



the weirdest thing about magnolia was the personnel behind the magic. it was all art school rejects. no grandma types in sight. where's the token old lady? i'm not sure i can trust a bakery that hires only art school types. i need a grandmotherly type running the show. plus, the bouncer at the door was intimidating. i thought we would have to flash id to get into magnolia.



the wisdom i have to impart about magnolia cupcakes is this: try the cupcakes, just so you can say you've tried them. but get the banana pudding. that shit was worth waiting in line for. and i don't even like banana pudding.

clear and present danger. let's say you've got two friends. one of them is interested in the other. the one you're closer with is a great person, actually, they're both great people, but you see a potential mismatch. you see where they vibe, you see where they might really have a chance to make something, but you know things that one or the other doesn't know. should you warn one of the parties? let's say billy likes tricia. you're really close with billy -- you know him inside and out -- for good and for bad. you're not nearly as close to tricia but you're still good friends. if billy and tricia start to express interest in each other, is it right for you to potentially nip something in the bud by telling tricia about some less than savory traits that billy possesses?



is it your duty to say nothing since you're closer to billy? even if you think tricia stands to get hurt here? should you remove yourself from the situation, just become a bystander, and not get involved? what if you're the one who introduced billy and tricia. if all shit goes to hell (for reasons you could have anticipated), would tricia be right to be mad at you for not warning her? would you be ratting out your boy billy by not keeping your mouth shut?



most people would take the middle road on this one. warn tricia, tell billy you told her some things, then take a step back and watch it all unfold. that way, you did your part and any future guilt could be absolved, and you wouldn't have really rat out your boy totally. this is the path of least resistance. that's not what i would do.



i would choose to not say anything to tricia, despite knowing things that might be useful. i wouldn't want to taint her initial high opinion of billy with cautionary tales. i'd just talk to billy about being very very careful. i say you attack from the source of the trouble, and you talk to whichever one you're closer with. and if that doesn't work then, oh well, you never should have introduced them in the first place.



i think if you're gonna introduce people, you gotta give'em a fair shot right? because anything negative you say will unduly influence someone, just because your "insider" knowledge will probably carry some weight. and the slightest defensive posture, or cautious mindset from tricia, can eventually ruin it all for their budding relationship. mum's the word.



but really, how many of your friends would you recommend for a relationship, without some sort of side comment or caveat? like none right? it's like recommending a movie. you've seen it a few times before, you know if it's good or not, you know which parts they'll probably like, which parts they'll hate. you don't just keep quiet right? how can you just pass on a (movie or other) recommendation without some personal comments? and usually the comments are of the "the boy is good but the commitment sucks" or "she's cute but not so much in the morning" variety. if your ass is gonna be on the line for recommending/introducing something, you gotta hedge your bets right?



cupid's arrow isn't pointy for nothing.

left right left. you know what they say about left handed people. well actually, what do they say about left handed people? "left handers do it right." plus they're supposedly more intelligent, more balanced and more creative. i'll argue the first two, maybe give a bit on the last one. there definitely is something to left handed people being "special." i think every left hander i know is pretty damn well rounded. some are super funny, some are super talented, some are just super. and i can't think of any left handers i know who aren't. off the top of my head anyway.



is it kind of shallow to have a positive bias towards left handed people? i mean, i can't help it, i like left handed people okay? however, there is one thing about lefties that's always bothered me. their handwriting. sure, some lefties have great handwriting -- an ex-girlfriend had the craziest handwriting i'd ever seen, all letters spaced exactly evenly apart, all the same height, all slanted to the right -- but for the most part, lefty handwriting is the pits. or laughable. or comedic. or smudgy. i saw one friend's handwriting, which looked exactly like a kindergartener's and i almost died laughing. beautiful stuff, but just hilarious.



and then there are the people whom i assume are left handed in my mind. or i think of them as left handed even if they're not. one friend is so outrageously artistic and overall talented that i can't believe they're not left handed. if only i had been born lefty so that i could be genetically superior, or at least know how to draw.

the p---s for food program. a lifetime supply of food. room and board for free. books forever. the ability to play any instrument. a super power. i would trade my penis in for all of these things. really, if you think about it, what has sexual organs ever done for anyone not interested in procreation? if you were to lose a limb, would you rather lose an arm, your left leg or your third leg? rationally speaking, you lop off the leg that's not crucial to transportation. and even at your wilt chamberlain-esque best, how much are you really using your penis anyway? as far as i'm concerned, lorena did john wayne a favor. what has the sexual organ (male or female) ever done except cause excessive trouble? what would it be like if people were less focused on getting some and more focused on doing something.



it could be argued that we would lose some art and some music and some beautiful emotions that fuel creativity. but c'mon now, we can find creative inspiration from sources other than love and lust. can't we? if all that makes great art is the burning in our loins, then we're kind of missing the point right? if ninety percent of a man's time is spent figuring out how to get into a woman's pants, aren't we losing some valuable thoughts and experiences? hormones make the world go round but i propose a snip and tuck for men around the world. no rape, no stalking, no animalistic urges. no flowers, no chocolates, no bitches (and not talking about the female kind). the world would be a wonderful place don't you think?

mighty mouse. interesting enough, humility is defined as being either meek or modest. humility was always a "good" trait in my book. i gotta stop quotations around stuff like "good, bad, best..." it's just so pretentious. anyway. all the dictionary definitions of humble seem to be bad. "showing deferential or submissive respect; low in rank, quality or station." it sounds pretty bad to be humble. is that something someone would even want to be?



i think humility is really just knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and being open with what you're capable of. and then not taking it too far to being cocky or annoyingly unable to accept a compliment. i hate those people. people who can barely accept a compliment. look, you know you're good, i know you're good, just say a quick thanks and acknowledge that you're good. don't pull the "oh no, i'm not that good thing." you are that good. no need to rub it in my face or anything but it's okay for you to acknowledge how good you are at something.



humility is, i think, most of all, about being realistic. but even when you're humble and realistic, you gotta try. often times, once you think you know your limitations you stop trying. i think i do that. but if you try once in awhile you'll suprise yourself.



this inspirational message has been brought to you by the happy hands club.

trust a try. you ever notice that once your opinion of someone is made, for better or worse, it seeps into all aspects of them? so even if a guy is a brilliant money market investor, you might be prone to ignoring his advice simply because he's terrible at risk. and the same thing the other way around. a person could have the worst real life business sense but if he's good at monopoly, i'm in. it's all about perception. once you're seen as incapable and dishonest, you're usually gonna be stuck with that label. i mean, sure a guy could be a stand up salesman but if you know that he likes to cut corners and be lazy, would you trust him? probably not.



this is probably why it's best not to work with friends. you simply know too much about them. you know that they're never on time, that they're never responsible, you know that having a woman tends to turn their focus away from your money to their loins. that kind of thing. it's probably better to assume that your accountant is great at what they do, as opposed to knowing how many times they crack themselves out weekly.

i b(r)ought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a flannel for my face. ...pajamas, a hairbrush, new shoes and a case. i'm an overpacker. i admit it. i try to pretend that i'm not but even for a one night trip to LA i'm throwing three different version of clothes into my trunk. in my defense, sometimes you have to have space for all the clothes you need, even if it's just for a twenty four hour period. for example, going to LA for one night of going out entails packing whatever you're wearing that night (including shoes, belt, black socks) and whatever you need for the next day. plus sleeping clothes. all that for just one night in LA.



so packing to go somewhere for four days or more just increases the amount of stuff i think i'll potentially need. i'm incredibly anal about packing. not the actual packing part -- which is more just throwing stuff around to see what fits -- but just the process of packing. i make two lists. one of stuff to do (shower, groom, electronics to charge, emails to send) and one of things not to forget (money, license, clothes, electronics, contacts, glasses). then i make a mock up list of what i might wear each day, and try to stick to that. never works out of course. i always end up over packing. it's a gift. some may call it girly, i just call it "being prepared." i finish off with a flourish by thinking of everything i must do the next day to be prepared, right before i go to sleep. i try to harness my unconscious to help me remember what to bring. while this method works, i seem to forget everything else that's important, like waking up on time.



does anyone not know that rolling up stuff is the most efficient way to pack? if not, you should know that by now. by rolling your clothes, you save room and minimize wrinkles. just a word to the wise.



you know who is an amazing packer? amit. i remember him visiting us once and me going "is that all?" he had a little duffel bag and that was it. yet he was able to remain fashionably dressed at all times (as always). how does he do it? has he found the secret of packing light? share share. i'm also very impressed with girls who can pack light. somebody once went with us to new york with the tiniest little bag i'd ever seen. and out of this tiny bag came five days worth of clothes. incredible. girls who pack light, plus. guys who overpack, minus.



i'm off to new york. pray for my wicked dreams to be fulfilled via the ticket lottery.

the soloist, the soul controller. you gotta love rakim. if you love hip hop and you love lyrics, rakim's the guy, the legend, the god. in any ranking of best lyricist and mc, rakim is usually the unparalled number one. for me, i first heard him on an nba basketball video. that song was "don't sweat the technique" and while it was the string bass that initially attracted me to the song, rakim's smooth delivery and lyrics soon had me replaying the song over and over. and then i found his other stuff, and i was smitten.



what makes his lyrics so good? it's a number of things -- in fact, everything. his quiet voice, his delivery, his rhythm, his flow, his lyrics, his depth and his use of poetic devices. i'm not expert on poetry but what rakim brought to the hip hop world was new rhyme styles. back in the beginning, rappers were doing "cat, hat, bat" stuff, rhyming the last word of each line. this was effective but it wasn't exactly groundbreaking. rakim did so much but i'm just here to highlight one thing that i've noticed about his lines. they always rhyme the last few syllables, the last few "notes" are always the same. this may not seem all that impressive -- who can't rhyme three syllables right? -- but for rap, this was breaking new ground. you may not be amazed but if you listen to rakim, then you will be amazed to see how much of a difference this one little change makes. everyone does this nowadays so it may not seem fresh or new, but think about when rakim was doing this, this is like technicolor in 1939 wizard of oz stuff.



there's a million reasons i love rakim, this is just one.

i ain't no joke, i used to let the mic smoke

now i slam it when i'm done and make sure it's broke



when i'm gone no one gets on cuz i won't let

nobody press up and mess up the scene i set



i like to stand in a crowd and watch the people won-der damn

but think about it then you'll un-der-stand



i'm just an addict addicted to mu-sic

maybe it's a habit, i gotta use it



even if it's jazz or the qui-et storm

i hook a beat up convert it in a hip-hop form



write a rhyme in graffiti in, every show you see me in

deep concentration cuz i'm no com-e-dian

-eric b and rakim, i ain't no joke-

turn the radio up for that sweet sound. i specialize in three types of music. actually no, just two. i appreciate three, i specialize in two. i have middle of the road classic hip hop -- not mainstream but not underground either -- and car game. the catch all category of car game includes anything and eveything you can sing in your car. selections range from cheezy eighties ballads (make me lose control, lean on me), alternative standards (under the bridge), pm dawn and other sing-a-long r&b stuff and admittedly, some boy bands -- they're good okay? hack cough cough. that's it, that's all i got. i got the hip hop for listening to during the day and soft sappy karaoke stuff to listen to at night. you've been forewarned. ride with me at your own risk.



i'm also a very demanding car dj. first, i need music on at all times in a moving vehicle. second, i refuse to listen to your music unless i'm already inclined to like it. i bring my cd books into other people's cars and expect them to allow me to stage a musical coup. it's like bringing your own food when you've been invited over for dinner. oh well. it's rude but you gotta do it.



by the way. the key to successful car game is to have random ass songs that everyone secretly, or not so secretly, loves. car game should consist of songs that people know all the words to but somehow haven't heard in five years or more. bam. bust it and that's car game material. you know a true car game winner when everyone is singing along and no one is willing to open the window so that outside people can hear. the window must stay up, or you run the risk of getting caught singing along to sophie b hawkins as the four dudes with gangsta rap pull up at the light. not that that's ever happened to me or anything.

library records - you live and you learn. luckily the library came and saved my life. the dormitory library that is. stocked with a decent collection of music, i was finally able to make my musical choices according to what other people had already chosen. freedom at last, limited only by the narrow scopes of the underpaid student librarian staff. deciding then that i needed to know what music i liked, if only to define myself to others, i would borrow cds from the dorm library and run downstairs to copy them onto tape (my tape deck lasted me all four years of college and beyond), and then return the cds upstairs immediately, in exchange for another grab bag.



slowly my music selection widened, until i had just about everything worth copying in the west quad library -- including the best of snoopy, jazz edition. most of the cds i copied ending up sucking. i didn't like most of the stuff i heard. those tapes were promptly trashed and copied over. the stuff that stuck was mainly hip hop. de la soul, tribe, roots, gangstarr, all the stuff that i'm addicted to now, i probably heard within the first month of raiding the library. master p had a whole section of cds (since no limit released crap fast and furious) but i was wise enough to forego that type of hip hop lifestyle. i was my own man, with my own musical tastes. a new door had been opened and i found myself slowly turning my focus away from yodelers and angry candian women.

musicology 101 - dazed and confused. i have a very narrow range of music i enjoy. i'm not a music snob by any means, i'm just selective about what i listen to. not based on quality, but usually, genre. i pretty much only listen to hip hop and um, nostalgia stuff. for reasons having to do with fob boats and english as a second language, i missed out on most of the i love the 80s. which is, i'm thinking, not an entirely bad thing since i'm not bogged down by a whole extra decade's worth of music to reminisce over. heck, i think i missed most of the early 90s too. so really, we're looking at maybe only the last ten year's worth of music that i genuinely have an appreciation for.



the first songs i can remember really digging were the beach boy's "kocomo" and "toy soldiers" by martika. man those were good songs. i have no idea what i did for music in the periods between middle school and high school. i must have been a very out of it deaf sheep. i gave my mom a judy garland tape once for her birthday. i ended up listening to the damn thing about a thousand times more than she did. between being judy garland's biggest fan and having an intimate working knowledge of the ad&d handbook, i was terribly cool. why didn't anyone else agree?



whenever "10,000 maniacs unplugged" and yanni first hit the scene is when i started to buy my own music. i also had pearl jam's "ten." and i'm sure dr dre's "the chronic" was stuck in there somewhere, teaching me new words and phrases. i never quite figured out what "you never know she could be earnin her man and learnin her man -- and at the same time burnin her man" meant until waaaay later. that snoop, always saying the most confusing things. so, that was probably the extent of my muscial collection until i was of legal smoking age. dr dre, warren g, yanni, the multitude of maniacs, pearl jam, eric clapton and judy garland. i acquired a love for jewel, alanis morrissette and oasis somewhere in there, senior year of high school. for a brief moment in 96, i was in lockstep with current musical tastes. "who will save your soul" was my jam. i was finally listening to what my peers were listening to.



oh nope, two steps forward, one step back. freshman year, the most popular cds in my rotation were still jewel, alanis and another album whose name i'm unwilling to divulge. i didn't even properly hop onto the puff daddy band wagon when the bling revolution came. i was still too busy trying to follow in the hot footsteps of the original lyrical gangsta. to my credit, i never got onto the electric slide train. that electric slide shit was gay and required too much coordination. also, nobody told me to c'mon n ride the (party) train either. clearly i was left for dead at the station.

fairey's posse. andy warhol had a hand in getting mao and che's images elevated to pop icon status. i'm sure those images were already popular by the time warhol got to them but by using his trademark "swatches of ugly color" technique, warhol made mao and che objects of desire -- akin to soup and hollywood starlets. at least that's what i think he was doing. i actually don't know what he was doing at all. if warhol had a non-bullshit method to his technicolor madness, i haven't learned about it yet. i think what he was doing was turning anything and everything into pop culture, so making leaders of communist revolutions (and normal everyday objects) into pop art must have made perfect sense.



there's a guy doing this today. stage left, welcome shepard fairey. who obtained fame and fortune by plastering andre the giant's image all over the place. now he runs a design company that sells simplified stenciled of people and reproduces them "on a vast array of merchandise, such as t-shirts, posters, and baseball caps." sound familiar? instead of hollywood females and campbell's, it seems like shepard fairy sticks pretty closely to hip hoppers, musicians and political figures for his portraits. the thinking behind his choice of images? the obey giant manifesto? read on.

the obey campaign can be explained as an experiement in phenomenology. the first aim of phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environement. the obey campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail.



the medium is the message.

my interest in obey giant is his choice of political figures, many of whom warhol already pop icon-ed. doesn't this sort of go against the "people are not used to seeing" part? we're used to seeing che and mao plastered all over the place. andre the giant was new. biggie and tupac, semi-new. nixon, sid vicious and ozzy, new. mao and lenin? not so new. getting first crack at george w bush and yassar arafat don't count as new, it's just timely. but maybe fairey includes mao and lenin's already pop-ed out icons to establish a link to the past. is shepard fairey warhol's ideological son? sure, why not.



it's also safe to say that fairey has sold out. maybe that was his intent in the first place. to get rich by distributing images that sell, with an audible but thin veneer of provokement. well, he's done a splendid job. now if he would only sell a hitler poster, that would give him back some street cred.

"according to shepard, the work is less about a specific "meaning" and more about the reaction created in the mind of the viewer. he hopes that upon viewing a giant image, people wake up to their surroundings and environment. the russian communist influence in some images reading "obey" or declaring "we want you to join the posse" is merely reverse psychology as people in society already subconsciously obey messages of consumption disseminated by corporations through advertising and billboards. by questioning the absurdity of the giant campaign, people may then be more inclined to question the messages of mass marketing."

is that what we're really doing? or are we just padding his pockets by purchasing his neato designs? i know that's what i'm doing, just buying his stuff because it's fun and cool. for example, i'm about to snatch up fairey's new magazine, swindle, exactly because his aesthetic and messages are commercial and easily accessible, even if subversion was a part of his original goal.



i wonder what i have to do to become pop icon-ed. make an actual impact on people? make a difference? have some influence? can't i just sit here and get icon-ed from my couch? wouldn't that be provoking when you're forced to ask "who is the guy on that ubiquitous poster? who is this 'obey jon' character?"

propaganda is pretty (or) viva ernesto. i walked into a bar once, in glasgow, scotland. this is not a set up for a joke. unless you think me willingly walking into a bar is amusing. this particular bar was adorned with lots of etched red stars, hammer and sickles, images of lenin, trotsky and mao, along with a nice classy manhattan-ish atmosphere. upon closer inspection, as i cue-ed up to order my girly drink, i saw che guevara's image frosted into the glass on the bar's refrigerator door. name of the bar? revolution. duh.



i thought it was so odd that a bar's design theme was revolution and apparently, socialism. is the bar being political? are drinks drunk community style or parceled out equally? i didn't get it. and why was this che character on the refrigerator? i wondered if that had to be specially made or if a company just happens to make che frosted refrigerator doors. so i investigated. first by clarifying exactly who this che character was. at that point, i had no knowledge of anything about che's life or beliefs, aside from that one pervasive image of him.

"in the late 1960s, che became a popular icon for revolution and youthful political ideals in western culture. a dramatic photograph of che taken by photographer alberto korda in 1961 soon became one of the century's most recognizable images, and the portrait was simplified and reproduced on a vast array of merchandise, such as t-shirts, posters, and baseball caps."

but what does that mean? che is a pop icon? great. was the bar reinforcing his icon status by turning a tidy profit serving alchohol to the masses or was it admiring him for his beliefs?

"why do people admire guevara? because they are admiring themselves in depth for something they already have inside, but that they have to exercise. and, unfortunately, nowadays they are told that ideals are not possible. and this is a lie. ideals are possible. how are they going to squeeze out life, saying we cannot be human, we cannot be generous with other human beings?



many of argentina's young regard che as a symbol of hope and freedom for people in need, and that he harks back to an age of higher ideals.



even liberal elements that felt little sympathy with che's communist ideals during his lifetime expressed admiration for his spirit of self-sacrifice. he is singled out from other revolutionaries by many young people in the west because he rejected a comfortable bourgeois background to fight for those who were deprived of political power and economic stability. and when he gained power in cuba, he gave up all the trappings of privilege and power in cuba in order to return to the revolutionary battlefield and ultimately, to die."

this seemed a bit too complex to be reflected in an image, much less on a refrigerator door. and then i found out that revolution was the world's biggest chain of vodka bar. so maybe the theme finally made sense (vodka = potatoes = russia = communism?) even if nothing else did. this led me to wonder if maybe che's image was being exploited for commercial purposes -- i know, inconceivable. i mean, people are walking around with his picture all over the place, but does anyone know what it means? if you're gonna have someone's face on your chest, it's probably better to know what the symbol/icon represents right?



somehow however, this is not the case. i'm sure if people started popping out iconic pictures of jeffrey dahmer -- assuming anyone recognized dahmer's image -- it would be an instant best seller. if only for the shock and cool factor. i'm actually surprised OJ hasn't been made into a t-shirt yet. or has he? maybe it's best if we wait twenty years to paste OJ's mug all over the place so that his role in the naked gun movies can be forever forgotten.



i don't understand how people can plaster themselves with symbols, logos, faces, without knowing anything about what they're wearing. then again, i choose all my clothing based on aesthetic value and solid colors, so who am i to talk? but if i were to emblazon myself, i'd like to at least do some research into who/what i'm weaering.

shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man. like so many epics, the story of the obscure argentine doctor who abandoned his profession and his native land to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth began with a voyage. in 1956, along with fidel castro and a handful of others, he had crossed the caribbean in the rickety yacht granma on the mad mission of invading cuba and overthrowing the dictator fulgencio batista. landing in a hostile swamp, losing most of their contingent, the survivors fought their way to the sierra maestra. a bit over two years later, after a guerrilla campaign in which guevara displayed such outrageous bravery and skill that he was named comandante, the insurgents entered havana and launched what was to become the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the americas.



the images were thereafter invariably gigantic. che the titan standing up to the yanquis, the world's dominant power. che the moral guru proclaiming that a new man, no ego and all ferocious love for the other, had to be forcibly created out of the ruins of the old one. che the romantic mysteriously leaving the revolution to continue, sick though he might be with asthma, the struggle against oppression and tyranny.



his execution in vallegrande at the age of 39 only enhanced guevara's mythical stature. that christ-like figure laid out on a bed of death with his uncanny eyes almost about to open; those fearless last words ("shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man") that somebody invented or reported; the anonymous burial and the hacked-off hands, as if his killers feared him more after he was dead than when he had been alive: all of it is scalded into the mind and memory of those defiant times. he would resurrect, young people shouted in the late '60s; i can remember fervently proclaiming it in the streets of santiago, chile, while similar vows exploded across latin america. "no lo vamos a olvidar!" we won't let him be forgotten.

-time magazine-

wok n roll. on the list of "most unique things i've ever seen in my life," i'd say seeing kenny snare an eight bagger was just about a top five event. isn't it amazing to see someone you know do the most incredible thing? i mean, how often have you seen an eight bagger? in print, on tv, in real life? i'd bet never.



i know a few folk who think they're pretty good bowlers but i doubt they've ever had eight strikes in a row. by the time we started paying attention to kenny's handiwork, he was already five frames and five strikes in. by the time he got up to six strikes, the lanes next to us were clapping and cheering him on. when strike number seven was delivered via a tottering number three pin, the crowd in back (three old guys holding beers and wearing real trucker hats) were toasting him.



i felt like i was a part of muhammad ali's posse. "kenny boma-ye!" in my head i was thinking of what would happen if we saw kenny get a perfect game. would we take pictures? would we get complimentary shoe rentals? would we get cake? would they shut down the other lanes and thrown us an impromptu party? would they rename the thirteenth lane "kenny alley?" my mind raced through emergency scenarios. would we have to sneak kenny out the back because of hordes of autograph seekers? would i have to catch projectile panties?



luckily for us, kenny missed a few pins on frame nine and the 300 dream died. but he still ended up bowling a 262. an unprecedented feat and worthy of a top five life moment i'd say. a two sixty two. are you bleeping serious?!? kenny is a super stud. and his bowling style is very, how you say, unique. just all limbs and snoop dogg laid backness. it's crazy.



on a sidenote, every time we bowl boys against girls, we lose (kenny was a girl for the purposes of this competition). the two highest scores outside of kenny's on friday were both scored by girls. a few years ago, me, greg and louis were beaten badly by winnie, carol and george. that time, all the girls bowled above 150 (winnie had a 200+) and our top "man" had maybe 130? they should really have bowling as an event on real world: battle of the sexes. why haven't they done this?

popular. you're gonna be pop-u-lar. there's this notoriety a guy can get, simply by having friends. not just any friends, but by having a hot friend. or more accurately, the hot friend. say you have a friend who knows the local hot girl, suddenly every guy is wondering two things. one, why is she friends with this loser and not me? two, how can i get to be friends with him so that i can hang out with her?



guys are simple creatures. whomever has the fastest car gets acclaim. the best basketball player comes to be defined by his on-court heroics. the smartest guy in a room full of sub-seventy IQed neanderthals is immediately dubbed "einstein." the guy with the hottest girl friend gets his own special medal. he gets invited to functions simply because there's an outside, teasing, chance that he'll invite her along.



guys don't even try to hide their motivation for asking "friend of hot girl" along. girls will do this. they'll try to couch their desire for a (male) hot friend in language that suggests they actually want YOU to go. "yeah, we're like totally having a jacuzzi party on friday, and you should totally come. and oh yeah, bring tony for sure." or better yet, they go the slightly more direct route of "you should really try (but not too hard) to come to our sleepover... and i think i'll invite tony too, what's his number?"



dudes feel no compulsion to pretend that they're after anything but the hot friend. "listen vincent, you can come to vegas with us if you invite vanessa along. but if she doesn't come, we ain't got no room for you in the car." guys will also put up with almost any nuisance/annoyance, as long as the hot girl comes out. vincent is a blabbering idiot who has a rock bottom social rating? who cares, he knows vanessa. invite him.



there comes a time however, when vincent's utter un-bring-along-ability finally outweighs vanessa's hotness. at this point, a ritual separation of your guys and vincent/vanessa happens. i can tell you from personal experience that this threshold is a lot higher than one might think. it would take an absolute terrible time -- many of them in frequent succession -- with vincent to negate the joy that could be had with vanessa in the party. guys are good at this kind of math, trust me. the best scenario of course, is if you can split vanessa and vincent beforehand. this nifty process is called, "separating the curd from the whey."



note that this also applies equally to all vickys who are friends with vanessas. so if your invite says "vincent/vicky plus one particualr mandatory guest," you know what's up. just give us vanessa and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. thanks.

defying gravity. the best relationship advice i've ever gotten? technically, it wasn't relationship advice but rather pre-relationship advice. the words of wisdom boiled down to "get it over fast, get it over quick, bite the bullet, know where you stand." this having to do with finding out if someone could possibly have requited interest in you. the worst feeling in all the world is not knowing if someone likes you or not. you sit there and wonder, staring at them out of the corner of your eyes, feeling their very prescence from across the room. did that glance and quick smile have more significance than its supposed to? when she said she'll call, will she? this is pre-relationship torture. the not knowing part. so, one of my friends many years ago showed me, by example, how to eradicate this problem.



there was this girl that he probably maybe liked. he had been eyeing her for awhile and the mixed signals he was receiving weren't giving him any clear indication about what her feelings for him were. so, over a quick beer, during a brief interlude at a party, he asked her. "so, how do you feel about me?" paraphrased of course. i'm sure there was a lead in and an intro, a smooth transition from "how's the party" to "so, do you like me?" actually, i know that this particular friend doesn't mince words so he probably did ask exactly as i've reconstructed it.



when he told me what he had done, i was in total shock. wait, you actually just asked her? like right then and there? no preparation? no counsel? no passing notes back and forth between her friends and your friends? that's incredible! that's so mature! that's so taking the bitch by her horns! is that even allowed? his response was that such a swift decisive action can only be positive. either she returns your feelings of affection or she doesn't -- freeing you to cry in your little corner a bit earlier. my friend made the international gesture for wiping his hands clean and left his pre-relationship dilemma at that. and like a little padawan, i learned from his exercise in temerity, vowing to always declare my feelings if ever i felt them.



at which point you decide to ask the person is up to you. if you want to nip the potential like/love/fascination/pain in the bud, before you get flagrantly emotional, do it soon. if you want to wait until you are fully emotionally bound up to ask, then do it later. the only thing to not do is sit there and never ask, never find out, never know if they could or could not like you, out of fear that the answer is "no." or just out of general pussyness. also, don't ask if you're not sure you like them, otherwise you could be opening up an entirely different can of worms. if you just want to take a shot in the dark and see what you hit, this advice is not for you. anyway, that my friends, is the best relationship advice i've ever gotten. go forth and prosper.

me (and us) against the world. one of the best ways to ensure good practicable relationship advice is to find someone who thinks just like you do. they have the same theories, they have the same morals, they can see your side in every situation. an ally like this is invaluable. when the chips are down and you're standing on the firing line (saturday nights for me, might be different for you), you can always bust out the "but so-and-so totally agrees with me!" something about having another person agree with your view makes everything seem much less wack. this tactic may not save your relationship for long, but it can be a useful mis-direction move if used properly. the key is to not rely on your ace in the hole in every argument.



chances are, no matter how despicable your action, no matter how tired your excuse, you'll have somebody in your corner. this is known as the "my girls syndrome." if you are a female and happen to have a few ryde or die bitches in your inner circle of girl friends, you know what i'm talking about. even if you just cheated on your boyfriend with his brother, even if you just had his father's baby, your girls will still support you and see your side -- until you turn your back anyway. the only time your girl friends will turn against you is if you cheat on your boyfriend with one of their boyfriends. then nobody will trust you and you're ostrasized. time to make new friends at that point. still, until this happens (37% chance), having this type of team behind you will give you the mental strength necessary to do what you want to do.



relationship advice is too varied and plentiful to have one rule of thumb for all situations. you have to take into account how two people interact, how needs and wants are different from person to person. this is what makes giving/receiving relationship advice almost a waste of time. everyone knows what they should do, because there is definitely a handbook about what to do. but that never seems to apply to most of the population, because each relationship is unique and dare i say it, special. the only relationship advice you really end up giving most of the time is "stay the course," "maybe you should tell him how you feel," or "dump his ass." everything else is just a variation on these three themes.



i've been listening to a lot of dr laura during my drive home and she gives out relationship advice on her show. it's amazing how caustic and acerbic she is. she pulls no punches, cuts callers off, and always just rips them a new one. she tells them to stay, talk, or dump, ten seconds into a phone call. she's really quite amazing. she doesn't take into account any extraneous factors that might go into explaining "why he treats me so bad." as much as i'm unappreciative of dr laura's conceit, i do think she makes a good example for relationship advice givers. you don't need the whole story to say "stay, talk, dump." all you need to hear is what happened, how long it's been happening, and how that action makes someone feel, before suggesting a solution.



but sometimes, with incoming relationship advice, you just want someone to agree with you. you want them to say that "staying with the loser is good, if it makes you happy." you grow to value a person's advice because they keep on yes-manning you. it's easier to be supported in all that you do, instead of being battered by rationality each time you bring up a new situation. which is better? the straight shooter and the voice of reason, or the "girls" who always got your back?

loveline. what makes someone qualified to give love advice? or rather, relationship advice? since we know that giving love advice is merely useless. when someone is in love, all the advice in the world won't make a dent in their thinking. so, relationship advice it is. but who do we turn to? are we more likely to listen to relationship advice from our trusted friends? from people who egg us on to do "whatever makes you happy?" what sets the criteria for good relationship advice?



first of all, it's generally thought of as bad to take advice from people who are either limited in experience or overly experienced. the former doesn't know shit, the latter are stuck in black hole-like ruts. who wants to listen to advice from someone who has had 20 failed relationships in a row? nobody. so, in the relationship advice industry, there is a clear middle ground of experience for who is the "best person" to take advice from.



some people feel like taking advice from people with successful relationships is the best route. "how did you deal with [insert problem]? what should i do to make her less angry? how can i make her feel appreciated while still ignoring her? is attraction really that important?" it's thought that people who are successful in relationships have the answers to these questions. but really, i find that truism to be false.



people who have successful relationships have gotten lucky. lucky in love. sure they've grown and matured and sacrificed for each other, but it's probably more a case of good match making than any relationship skill that "successful relationship-ers" possess. also, keep in mind, people only need to win the relationship lottery once to be set for life (well 50% of the time anyway, according to current divorce rates. but conceivably just once). nobody is consistently having bomb ass relationship after bomb ass relationship. your batting average will usually be 1-for-whatever. and if that one comes early, you look like a relationship genius, a true guru of the heart. me? i attribute that to luck. you took your monster cut at the ball and hit it out of the park. *clap*clap* i'm happy for you. but what do you know about the rollercoaster lifestyle of bad relationship followed by awful relationship?



the people i want to talk to are the ones who have fulfilled these criteria: (1) have had more than three serious relationships. (2) have had more than two different types of relationship issues to deal with. (3) don't have a track record for serial dating. (4) have achieved some sort of lasting happiness in at least one relationship. i want to talk to the people who've had a few strikeouts, had a bunt or two, learned how to stretch a single into a double, and then finally hit a good clean triple. they may not have muscled out a home run yet, but they're working on it. i have no desire to take relationship advice from people who haven't yet stepped up to the plate, or from the power couple who smashed the leather off the ball on one lucky swing.



after all, who makes the best coaches in competitive sports (and relationships are a competitive sport)? the best coaches are the mediocre players who really had to work on their game. generalization, great players don't make great coaches. why? because the game comes too naturally to them. if you're genetically inclined to be a great boy/girlfriend, what can you share about your winning formula? nothing. you need a coach who had to learn everything from the ground up, someone who really had to use their limited abilities to overachieve. that's the kind of guy i want on my relationship bench -- i want the hard cheering twelfth man, not the petulant superstar.

you can do it put your back into it. it's done. all my passwords and secret things have been compiled into a document and i'm now ready to share them. not with you though. and not with george either, even if it is her idea that we should be exchanging passwords/bank accounts/credit card numbers/etc. apparently george and i don't trust each other enough to directly exchange our information just yet. my time served for breaking into her hello kitty diary must not be over. and i can't let go of her nasty habit of using my secrets to get back at me when we're in an argument. so, the thing to do, we decided, was to give all of our information to a third party. which third party? you will have to kill both of us (quickly, compassionately and at the same time) to find out. this was another reason for us to exchange information through a third party. if we happen to go down the cherry blossom lane together, someone else will have access to our secrets -- i mean, our important account information.



i've decided to take the exchanging of passwords one step further. i'm not writing a will, because really, i have nothing to bequeath upon anyone. except my sidekick-2 to ameer, which is his in the instance that i move past this life before he upgrades to the new one. everything else is free game. actually no, scratch that. i will make a will, it's much easier that way. but i think i should also ready a document that will contain my thoughts about everyone and everything. in case i get famous soon and people are interested in what i think, thought. i'm just covering my ass here in case i get gunned down -- hopefully by an unknown assailant, rap star style -- as i accept my pulitzer or something. we're hitting the age when death is starting to be an issue and not just a fun getting to know you, "oh, where are you from?" game.



the age when we start to acquire stuff, that's when we need to think about death. if you have a car, a house, a family, a life, or in my case, important fantasy sports' commissioner duties, you need to think about how other people will access your records when you die. it's actually quite amazing, how far you can get into someone's account just by saying "oh i'm sorry, he's passed away and i don't have the password, can't you just send me his information? weep weep sob sob. thank you oh so much. bless your soul." death is a powerful negotiating tool. if i were into scamming people for their password protected valuables, death would be my number weapon.



but sometimes, even citing a person's death will get you nowhere. so i encourage everyone to write down their passwords, their accounts, their sensitive information, their every itty bitty secret and mental transgression, and pass it along to a trusted friend, ally or family member. this seems like a pretty drastic step for twenty something year olds, but by listening to my words of wisdom, you'll thank me when you're dead. or the people who finally get their hands on your free magazine subscriptions will thank me. whatever.



for my preemptory advice, be sure to leave me something sparkly, electronic or expensive in your will. thanks. my condolences for your eventual death. tell me what kind of flowers you like and i'll be sure to send them at the appropriate time.

smellibacy

a state of involuntary celibacy brought on by bad hygiene.

"i wouldn't swear by it but i think gene's smellibacy is over."



showflake

person who chronically misses every event after committing to it.

"is babbs gonna be here? or is he pulling a showflake again?"



guyatus

a hiatus from guys.

"i don't think lilly's coming out tonight, she's still on guyatus."



helicopter

a significant other who finds it necessary to hover around his or her mate at all times.

"gawd, i wish james would quit being such a helicopter."



foxymoron

one who is incredibly dumb but incredibly cute, who simultaneously attracts and repels.

"i don't know why des insists on going out with all these foxymorons."



mouse potato

the wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

"xtina's lack of wireless is really holding her back from becoming a full fledged mouse potato."



hobeau

a less-than-hygienic boyfriend.

"better open the window. here comes tabitha and her hobeau."



nontourage

a group of undesirable sycophants.

"the party was fun until victor showed up with his nontourage."



drimming

drunk instant-messaging.

"meggo's my all time favorite drimmer."



NUMP/NUWT

obnoxious party-invite acronyms. "no ugly men, please/no ugly women, thanks."

"hotel pan insists on a strict O(nly)UMP/OUWT policy."



ghag

acronym. girl-hating girl. the one whose only friends are guys.

"isn't it obvious? george(tte)'s a total ghag."



staremaster

gym dandies who constantly check themselves out in the mirror.

"i hate going to the gym with galvez, he's such a staremaster."



biphonal

holding multiple phones to your ears or in front of you at the same time.

"is ameer really that popular? does he really need to go biphonal?



scum

acronym. self-centered undeserving male.

"may says, 'all men are scum.'"



HIT

"homosexual-in-training." he may not know it yet, but everyone else does.

"jimmy sure likes to play gay chicken a lot, is he a HIT-man?"



"i have that t-shirt."

been there, done that.

guy 1: "i totally hooked up with lynn last night."

guy 2: "i have that t-shirt."



e-mauling

stalking someone via e-mail.

"i wish jon g would e-maul me..."



reverse evolution princes (r.e.p.)

men who at first seem to be princes but turn out to be frogs.

"of course i left her at the altar, that's what real men do. i had to maintain our r.e.p. bro!"



beighborhood

area populated by good-looking people.

"she must be visiting, there's no way she lives in this beighborhood."



fifty-footer

someone who looks really attractive from 50 feet away. closer examination reveals...

"i hate e-street, it's filled with fifty-footers."



f.l.a.c.i.d.

support group called "failed lovers against caller id."

don't say you haven't been there. we all have.



blamestorming

a meeting whose sole purpose is to discuss why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.



crappuccino

a poorly made coffee beverage that cost upwards of four dollars.





thanks to je-yi and the hard working folk at daily candy.

special ed. the only semi-pawned off message from the incredibles was: "and when everyone is super, then no one will be." that was the diabolical plan of the technological genius -- a fanboy who chose to turn to the dark side after being shunned as mr incredible's sidekick. buddy, aka syndrome, wasn't out to take over the world or to destroy life as we know it, he just wanted to make everyone super so that super would no longer be special. that's a cool goal for a super villain. it's not cliche, it's not trite, and it opens the door for the patented "message" from the movie.



the question is, if everyone is special (as we're told all of the time), doesn't that really mean that nobody is special? if specialness is a trait and a treat akin to a cookie, then everyone who has a cookie is special, right? no, because according to most people, receiving a cookie is only special if one person or a few people get it. if everyone gets a cookie (or a gold star, or a trophy, or a commendation, or a stamp of approval), then what makes that special? nothing!



in my experience, this is certainly true. try explaining to a friend or worse, a girlfriend, that your giving of a cookie to everyone still means that their particular cookie is special. that's an argument you are destined to lose. "i love talking to you!" but wait, you said before you loved talking to everyone. now that's no longer special. special is "what i get that nobody else gets." if you "love talking to me (and just me)," that's special. if you love talking to everyone plus me, then that's no longer special. i often ask myself, "why can't all cookies just be special?" because it doesn't work that way. special is only special if it's rare.



this is the problem. people inherently want to be different and one of a kind or simply, unique. draw the line at "those who have super powers and those who do not" and you create one half of haves and one half of have nots. the have nots want what they didn't get. the haves see fit to lord over the have nots because they already gotten.



on a tangent, i bet heroes who lack super powers (like punisher, moon knight or night thrasher) must feel infinitely inferior to those gifted with natural abilities (mutants, fantastic four, even green lantern or quasar). along these lines, batman should really be outclassed more often than he is -- at least he would be if he weren't fighting under-powered idiots like penguin, joker and two face. batman's gimmick is that he's super smart and inventive but that can only take you so far in a supers war. unless your technology outfits you like iron man, you aren't really a super hero. you're just a highly trained normal person beating up on untrained normal people. you are a soldier with a skill, but no real powers. try having batman face off against a real super villain and he'll get his ass handed back to him every time. in the hierarchy of super heroes, normal humans equipped with nice toys and superior training rank slightly above the aquamans of the universe.



back to the point. by telling everyone that they're special, we're creating a false sense of equality. we're not all equal, everyone should be treated equally but not everyone is special. i'm special, you're special, but not everyone is special. otherwise that would contradict the definition of "special" now wouldn't it? it's essentially capitalism versus socialism. and in this case, capitalism prevails.

"the incredibles seems to imply that we are all "special" but that some of us are more special than others, and the world is a better, happier place if individuals are free to openly express and pursue excellence rather than repressing these characteristics so as to not offend the sensibilities of the masses in the statistical average."

instead of elevating everyone to special status or dragging some people off of their pedestals, why not let the chips fall where they may? some chips end up special, some don't. there's nothing wrong with that. we can't all be special but we can all get along. right?



then again, if all the x-men have special powers, doesn't that make them not "special powers" anymore? no, because each power is still different. if there were two guys who could both teleport, then maybe it's not that special. but there's only one nightcrawler. just like there's only one of each "special" friend. so, all of my interactions with friends can be special, if not so on the meta level, then at least on the micro level. in this way, you can "love to talk to everyone" while still "loving to talk to just one." at least that's how i see it according to this mixed up reasoning.

mundane. watched the incredibles this weekend. pixar has a track record for making smart witty movies. sadly, the incredibles doesn't measure up. stop reading here if you haven't seen it. because i know many of you are probably inclined to like the incredibles and the power of my movie review might taint your experience. a super hero themed movie by pixar, how could it go so wrong? it's not that the incredibles was bad, it's just that i expected so much more. i wanted more riffing on the state of super heroes gone normal. there weren't enough "wow, that was really funny/smart" moments.



some people have said that maybe this film's failings can be attributed to the fact that pixar is finally tackling an animated movie about real people, instead of a movie about animated creatures/objects. but no, that wasn't the problem for me. the problem was that the incredibles didn't give us a new take on the super hero as normal citizen bit. monsters inc gave us "monsters who are normal people but are paid to scare kids" and ran with it. incredibles gives us no clear message and no really good takes on what it's like to be a super hero at home.



some of the best parts of the movie were the action parts and seeing how the different characters used their powers, which ain't right. the movie seemed to be constructed with the idea that the characters were super heroes first, and then normal people second -- instead of the other way around. the success of the other pixar movies was based on the concept of people as toy/bug/fish/monster and it should have stayed that way for this movie, but it didn't.



SPOILER. and the ending with the baby was just bad. not because it was obvious -- one expects these things -- but because the super power that was exposed was just terrible. the power made no sense and maybe the effect got a few cheap laughs but i certainly wasn't laughing. make the damn kid have a defined power. don't make him turn into a steel weight and then suddenly transform into a demon. boring. shape shifter my ass.



the highlight of the movie (as professed by all) was super hero costume designer, edna mode. why? because it was a side of super heroes we've never seen before. we've seen super heroes tearing shit up, we've seen them lose their powers or be forced not to use them. but we haven't seen the behind the scenes of the super hero life. seeing a celebrity super hero costume designer was new and fresh. but i wanted more. how does mr invulnerable cut his toenails? does running really fast translate into thinking/talking really fast? show elastigirl grabbing her wedding ring as it drops down the drain. show us behind the scenes, into the theme, which was "super heroes as normal people." it seems like they forgot during the middle part of the movie that they were making a movie contrasting super hero life with domestic life, and when the contrasting elements were brought back in, it was way too late. and that's why the incredibles lost me.



don't get me wrong, the movie is still quality, and the concept is money, but it's just not a typical pixar movie. we expect the impossible from pixar and so far with each successive release, they've met and exceeded our expectations. not so this time. i know a different writer/director worked on this movie, so the shift in paradigm can be attributed to him. but i want the old pixar back. i want the smart, funny, incredible pixar, not more of the incredibles.

open sesame. i've been waiting for gmail to become my primary account for oh so long. the only thing holding me back has been the lack of POP or outside access. for some reason, i just can't use browser based email. it feels so temporary to me. so unsafe. with the click of a wrong button, i could lose my entire email! this used to be the worst thing about telnet. you sit there type typing your life away and then you hit send and you lose the email. or worse, lose your blog after you hit publish (no longer a big problem). so now whenever i write anything, i do it in a word document or something that i can periodically save. call me email anal. but my time is precious and my words worth their weight in silver.



the other reason i need a mail manager is that i've saved 90% of all my emails since college. frequent emailers have their own folders, everything is organized by group, activity or date. it's quite an archived system. my greatest fear is that one day my computer will crash and i'll lose my entire music and email collection. maintaining this email archive takes some work and i must say, i've often wished for a way for everything to be saved automatically. welcome gmail. with one gig of personal space and the ability to quickly and easily search old emails, gmail was tailor made for me.



but i couldn't commit to it, not without POP access. i still wanted to convert all my gmail emails to my desktop, as a backup. what if beta gmail goes crashing down? tragedy. so, i've waited, and waited. until two days ago, when POP access for gmail was finally available. i'm sold, i'm in -- just in time too. gmail will now be my primary email address. and it syncs up perfectly with my sidekick. boo on microsoft, vote yes on google.



in more boo on microsoft news, mozilla's firefox 1.0 has been released. firefox is an alternative to the ubiquitous internet explorer packaged with all microsft products. mozilla is open source and is faster, more secure and has cooler features than ie -- tabbed browsing for example. i won't pretend that i found firefox all by myself, since christina and victor were instrumental in my adoption of it. so far i've downloaded this important extension and this theme. anything that has themes and a customizable look, i'm in. i've been interested in firefox ever since i read articles about its branding strategy but really had no reason to use it. but now with version 1.0 released, it's ready for mass consumption. get your firefox today. the only downside to firefox i can see at this point is that most of my blogs don't come up formatted. adopting firefox as my primary browser could make big waves in my online life.



i'm also addicted to wikipedia. it's a free online encyclopedia that has links to everything it talks about. i started off using it to find out about umberto boccioni and then was taken from there to futurism, to facism and then onto world war two. so pretty much wikipedia has more information that i'll ever know but damn me i'll try to go where the links lead me.



you have no idea how much joy these little things bring to me.

abercrombie: no warm bodies in the brains department, but damn those abs. so, abercrombie is in some shit . surprise. after the various t-shirt fiascoes of the past few years, minorities (and other offended parties) have finally struck back at the white bread retailer.

"a group of hispanic and asian plaintiffs sued abercrombie in june 2003 in san francisco, alleging the retailer hires a disproportionately white sales force, puts minorities in less-visible jobs and cultivates a virtually all-white image in its catalogs and elsewhere."

say what? abercrombie promotes a virtually all-white image? can it be? a clothing company referenced in a trashy yet catchy pop song by a lou pearlman group? i don't even know how abercrombie stays in business having to shell out money for settlements every other quarter. oh i know how. they make billions by promoting an all white image, amazing.



has everyone here been into an abercrombie? how many minorities have you seen in the stores? minus the token minority at the cash register, there's probably only a few in the back doing laundry and shucking peas -- part time. i, for one, have never bought or worn anything from abercrombie. not because i'm offended by their clothing and image but because i'm offended at the prospect of paying a hundred bucks for something that was clearly marked up and will clearly not fit onto my asian frame. well, the male stuff anyway.



i'm also easily intimidated by the gorgeous looking models on the store walls. and those coveted bags. as far as i'm concerned, those bags are emasculation served up in totable form. any self respecting man should always ask for his abercrombie purchase in a brown paper bag. i mean, how can you hope to compete with those adonises on the bag? if only i could somehow just wear the bags, then i could get some attention. so, between the prices and the "i'm way better looking than you" factor, i have had no reason to ever shop at abercrombie. then again, this combination also serves to turn me away from most retail stores. but hey, that's why my wardrobe consists of white t-shirts from costco.



i wonder if people can now sue other stores for failing to hire people who don't conform to their image. mr rags failing to hire computer geeks? lawsuit. gap won't hire your hot topic wearing ass? lawsuit. forever 21 won't give your frumpy look a chance? lawsuit. foot locker won't put your 400-lbs behind the counter? lawsuit. the possibilities are endless.



as much as i think what abercrombie does is terrible, i feel like they should be allowed to promote an all white image. some companies promote an all black, all brown, all yellow, all whatever image. that's their prerogative. if they want to be known as "that white store" or "that black store," that's cool with me. nobody should be forced to hire based on appeasing everyone. "but that's discrimination!" yeah, it probably is. but a certain amount of marketing induced discrimination i'm fine with. marketing is image and why should people be forced to bring on "talent" that goes against their image? if you hate what a certain store or brand represents, boycott it! if you thought that tommy hilfiger didn't like your asian ass (not true) then stop wearing his shit. it's that simple.



discrimination is denying me a chance to work if the color of my skin would have no effect on your company or my effectiveness. discrimination in any quantity is serious but there are some fights i just don't have the time for. getting minorities into high-profile retail positions at abercrombie isn't high on my list of things to start a crusade about. hell, if i walked into an abercrombie staffed entirely by minorities, i'd probably walk right back out since the wait staff clearly doesn't know anything about the true spirit of abercrombie. give me white, give me good looking, give me the real abercrombie.

"nobody is born an intellectual, or with intellectual interests, or even with much in the way of a natural propensity for those things of the mind that most excite people who think themselves intellectuals: ideas, art, and culture. a high intelligence quotient may help, but it isn't an absolute requirement; many people with stratospheric IQs -- among them people doing high-level science -- have little interest in things that absorb the thoughts of intellectuals. intellectual interests have to be learned, acquired, cultivated. they are in some sense artificial, a construct of a sort, and chiefly the work of previous intellectuals



an intellectual is a man or woman for whom ideas have a reality that they do not possess for most people, and these ideas are central to the existence of the intellectual. because of this extraordinary investment in ideas, the intellectual is occasionally admired for a certain purity of motivation, but he or she is just as often thought of as unreal, out of it, often a comical, sometimes a dangerous character. historically, the intellectual has been guilty of all these things.



intellectuality is the quality of being able to talk about ideas -- political, historical, artistic ideas -- in a confident, coherent, or (best of all) dazzling way. if not everyone admires intellectuals, intellectuality tends to garner praise, especially from the social classes that think themselves educated or enlightened, among whom i include most but far from all members of the vast army of PhDs now roaming the universities.



whenever intellectuality is on display, an air of edginess, contention, one-upmanship, put-down, or general nervousness i won't say pervades but usually hovers over the proceedings.

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in intellectual life, everyone begins as a novice. some have the slight advantage of being brought up in bookish homes, although in america, for some reason, the most impressive intellectuals seem to have been brought up in homes where culture played almost no part; perhaps it was the absence of culture that increased their hunger for it. but turning oneself into an intellectual is all on-the-job training. from learning correct pronunciation to acquiring cultural literacy to becoming adept at playing with ideas to discovering which ideas, personages, issues are more important than others -- for all these things there are no schools, no self-help booklets, only one's own mental energies, love of the life of the mind, greed for that loose collection of knowledge that comes under the baggy-pants category known as the cultural.

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in her novel the mind-body problem, rebecca goldstein posits the notion that the further an academic's subject is from the truth, the more snobbish he or she is likely to be. in this amusing scheme, mathematicians and physicists care least about clothes, wine, food, and other such potentially snobbish refinements, while people in english, history, and modern language departments, whose subjects put them so much further from the solid ground of unarguable truths, care a great deal, since their reputation for being cultivated is really all they have going for them. quite nuts, or so it might seem, if lots of evidence didn't support it."

-joseph epstein, snobbery-

what kind of a school does your son attend? oh the social power tool that is handed to you when you've attended a top ten university. did you know that at certain ivy league schools, it's de rigeur to exchange SAT scores within five minutes of meeting? "can i get your phone number? oh by the way, what was your SAT score?" there's a certain prestige to going to an ivy league school. how do i know this? if not through empirical magazine rankings, then i would know which schools are better than all the others by listening to parents around the nation -- especially chinese parents.



the asian-american child is pushed to excel at academics. parents invest their lives and their money into making sure that their kids have the best opportunities to get into the best colleges. this is a cultural thing. ever since the tang dynasty, anyone in china could get a government post by passing an examination (the tests mostly had to do with interpreting confucius' writings). so even if you were a poor rice farmer, if your child could pass the standardized test, they could assure themselves of a better life and an official position with the goverment.



this ancient opportunity for advancement has been translated by modern chinese parents into "school or die." i'm sure every ethnicity has pressure from parents to get their kids into a good college and beyond, but since i can only relate to the chinese experience, i'd say that being asian-american, your childhood was most likely very school centered. so the pride that a child feels when (s)he gets into a great college can only be outshined by the smile on their parents' faces.



nothing measures a chinese parent's child rearing skills more than where their child went to college. did your parents feed you only once a week, dress you in the most faddish of neon colors, hug you never, scold and ground you for A-minuses, contribute cosmically to your social stuntedness? hey, who cares? if you got into harvard, the chinese community will give your parents verbal trophies and put them in the pantheon of "super parents." according to conformist chinese thought, a parent must have done something right if their kid went to stanford. nevermind their happiness, happiness can be bought later and enjoyed during an early retirement.



there is this glow, during the tail end of senior year, that accompanies super parents. these parents wander the streets of our fair cities, hanging out at the local 99, chilling late nights with the mah-jong set, attending ubearably chatty dinner parties, all just hoping to be asked "so, where did little henry get into school?" finally the super parent can restrain themselves no more. "harvard, stanford, princeton, upenn, dartmouth, duke and berkeley (as a safety)." all the other parents kowtow to the super parent's superior child raising abilities. then they get on their rotary phones and call their own children -- who are supposedly studying hard at the library, supposedly -- and say "henry got into harvard and stanford! did you get your acceptance letter yet?" february and march are trying months for chinese parents.



the "walk of pride" is the act that a super parent will take with their child when they're both at a dinner party, preferably one filled with childhood acquaintances and many family friends. "hello, this is my son, henry, and he just got into stanford. do you have a suitable daughter? i thought not. come along henry, next table." there is nothing better for a parent than showing the world that their genetic offspring is now headed off to one of the best schools in the country. their entire lives have been validated, nothing could possibly compare to "a child at harvard."



actually, to retract a bit. most super parents don't even bother waiting to be asked where little henry got into school. ask them about anything and the first thing they reply with is "my son is at harvard, i'll have a hot tea and the udon." strangely, this annoying habit is not only forgivable but almost encouraged. it's as if every parent concedes the fact that if it was their child who had gotten into harvard, they would be screaming it from the top of every mountain too. all expectations of chinese humility are set aside when your kid makes the big time.

if you want to be the best, you gotta hang out with the best. so much is made of where we go to college. in high school, the most important thing to aim your studies towards was "a good college." never mind actually learning anything or joining extracurriculars that you enjoy. "what? chess club won't help me get into a stellar institution of higher learning? but i know what en passant is! isn't that invaluable?" there is a formula to getting into the top tier colleges and you have to do your best to cover all of your bases. spectacular grades, citizenship, leadership, superior talents outside the academic arena, community service.



i'm not sure why community service ever made this list. but as a high schooler, i was told that "key club looks great on your transcipt!" why? because it shows that i'm willing to help people if and only if it benefits me? because my weekends are free and available? because ten hours spent scooping soup is training for the ordeals suffered while eating food in college dorms? i don't get it. what does joining key club do for me that joining any other organization wouldn't? it's all about perception, that the student who does community service is a good student indeed.



and so perception is just as important in your choice of college. which college you go to is supposed to be a factor in getting future jobs. attendance (on paper) of a major college can only open doors. the quality of education at a "good" college? questionable. and this isn't just from my own personal experiences. i've talked to lots of people and the consensus about the quality of education and "what i got out of college" seems to be whether or not you engaged in class -- or even went to class. time spent at the local community college can be more valuable than four years at an ivy league school. until, until you actually get around to getting a job. names like stanford, yale and harvard still evoke an educational trust. people only need to hear things to believe them, so the myth that a top ten school is automatically better than one of the bottom feeders, fuels the idea that if you went to a good school, you're better prepared to tackle real life.



this is obviously false. sure, on average, based on grades and standardized testing results, the average freshman class at a harvard will be poised for more success than a comparable class at a cal poly school. but who would you rather hire? the slacker who got Cs at harvard or the dean's list student who went to cal poly? i think the smart money would be on the A student. achievement has a place in this world, and it should be valued more than potential. luckily for me, potential sells. since based on achievement, i've never done anything to deserve anything i've ever gotten. but we gotta hang our hats on something right? even if it's admittance into a top twenty five college?



i've spent some time, in my nomadic college career, in universities of all types. i've been at michigan, i've been at ucsd, i've been at baruch, i've been at community college, i've visited the campus of a few ivy's. and the question i always ask myself is "how does this school compare to my baseline (michigan)?" let's start with the community college. was the competion there less or the classes easier? the answer is, "yes." it's like taking an AP class in high school and then going back to the regular class (which i did with AP physics). everything seemed much simpler and high grades were easy to achieve just by satisfying the base requirements for regurgitation. much of the difference between AP physics and normal phyics could have been attributed to pace. AP physics moved very quickly, and time wasn't spent on building wooden projectile weapons as so called "experiments." i suppose the same is true of "higher end schools." you quickly move over the simple stuff and dive headlong into the harder topics. that's what i've gleaned anyway.



i wonder if this applies to grad school too. does going to a less prestigious law school get you the same education and knowledge of a duke or a columbia? i'm willing to bet it does, but i'm sure that there is some added edcuational value in going to a top tier law school right? i guess i'll never know since i don't have plans (or the qualifications) to attend law school of any type. i've heard that when you go to harvard law school, all you're paying for is the name. is this true? it doesn't seem to be out of the question.



i am sure people have died when they they got wait listed or rejected from their number one choice of school. how terrible it must be to not get into the school of your dreams. of course, i'm able to talk flippantly about this now, eight years removed from my own experience with college anxiety. or more accurately, lack there of. since i chose my school based on "oh i don't like the way ucla feels, i'm off to michigan (sight unseen)!"

relationship theorem #53. i have a theory that the first thing you argue about in your new relationship will also end up being the last. can we get a confirmation on this from anyone? i figure that in a new (wonderful) relationship, you hold off on getting mad at each other until the last possible second, or until something really irks you. so by the time you enter into the first real argument it'll be something that will hang over your relationship for eternity. and when that relationship inevitably ends, that initial argument will be the thing that ends it. for the record, "no, i'm not hanging up, you hang up....don't make me mad! giggle giggle." doesn't count as a real argument. if you go through this dialogue, you should break up immediately. for the good of mankind.



without solid evidence -- or a monetary grant to conduct proper research -- i give this theory an off the cuff accuracy rating of seventy three percent. your anecdotal evidence to support or rebut. go.



this also extends to "first doubts." your first doubt about someone in a relationship will also be the doubt that breaks the relationship's back. i give this corollary theory a sixty one percent success rate. and for those people who say that they've never had a doubt or an argument in any relationship, i maintain that they are either fifteen and in serious puppy love or just covering for somebody. i can't wait till the hammer drops on these people. can. not. wait.

"what has made this more complicated is that snobbery has had to make way for downward mobility, or the prospect, a real one for the first time in american life, that one's children won't do better than one has oneself done.



in 1781, john adams famously wrote to his wife abigail: "i must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. my sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, commerce, and architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."



this probably has to be revised today by many immigrant grandfathers to read, "i must run a dry-cleaning shop so that my sons can go to medical and law school, in order that their sons may study sociology and communications, so that their children can run vintage clothing stores, act in avant-garde theater, and work in cofee shops."

-joseph epstein, snobbery-