stupid is as stupid does

eight deadly sins of the stupid smart person
1. impulsiveness (doing something rash)
2. neglect (ignoring something important)
3. procrastination (actively avoiding something important)
4. vacillation (dithering)
5. backsliding (capitulating to habit)
6. indulgence (allowing oneself to fall into excess)
7. overdoing (like indulgence, but with positive things)
8. walking the edge (tempting fate).
-robert sternberg, "why smart people can be so stupid"-

show and tell

"normalcy is ok to a point -- but what do you get for it? nothing. you've lived your life in a normal way. and then, you've got a problem. because what have we been seeking this whole time? anonymity and normalcy? i mean, you're dead and you're glad that you were so normal?"

(1) dave eggers: here's an eggers interview from way back, right when his first book "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius" was hotter than hell. his various ventures -- from his tutoring centers, his lit mag "the believer," on to mcsweeney's, to the books that mcsweeney's publishes -- are all incredible exploits and he's been a star and a cult figure for quite awhile.

"you define a genius as someone who almost never has to second-guess what their instincts say, who knows things without ever having to be told them."

(2) aaron cometbus: every time i roll into a non-chain book store i keep an eye out for anything cometbus. if i see something, i buy it immediately. cometbus is a long running zine originally about punk bands but expanded to cover anything cometbus was interested in. the zine ran for over twenty years and is the defining work of the genre. it's tough to even call cometbus "sleeper great" because he really shouldn't be slept on. a 600+ page collection of some of his works are now available. i'm getting this guy, asap.

"summer is the season when all of new york hates all of new york. and no wonder -- the place is a fucking pit. a festering, sweltering piece of shit. you step out on the street and start pushing people out of the way. it's not just the isolated bad mood or a case of not enough cofee in the morning. no, every single person who hasn't escaped for the summer is feeling that same way. eight million matches crammed into a powder keg and ready to blow."

(3) hipstomp: leslie showed me this guy's blog last week and since then i've read as much of it as humanly -- and work permitted -- possible. leslie's roommate has been cast in his upcoming internet movie; sounds like it should be exciting. all of the stuff on his site is great actually. keep doing the good works.

"the bar's crowded, so after deploying shady to get the first round, the four of us split up and circulate. shady and jerry are both single, but mike and i have girlfriends, so for us two, talking to strange women is essentially an academic experience."

(4) conquer club: we've been playing risk, the classic conquering board game, online for a few weeks. it's free, it's not that time consuming, it's addictive. if you want to join our games, email me and off we'll go. seriously, this is the best thing to come along in awhile. work productivity guaranteed to decrease.

(5) this isn't showing or telling, more hiding and seeking. i've lost, misplaced, or had stolen my "my so called life" dvd set. i originally purchased the set when it came out years ago, for an astronomical price -- it included a collector's lunchbox, in my defense. now the damn thing is missing. i got careless with it because i figured that the set was widely available -- i saw it in best buys and fry's everywhere -- but then the supply suddenly dried up. full original sets of the dvds are going on ebay for upwards of $150. whoever i lent it to, i'd like my set back, thanks. there's only a handful of people who'd even want to borrow this thing, but i was convinced by fellow investigators that a worldwide a.p.b. would be the way to go.

i won't say i'm in a panic here, but yes, i'm in a mild panic. "angela, krakow is looking for you, repeat, krakow is looking for you."

beautiful, i just want you to know

my (new) favorite show has been, for quite some time, miami ink. okay, three weeks ago i had a flirtation and dalliance with beauty and the geek but hey, i'm easily distracted. the real object of my tv affection is this tlc show about a tattoo studio.

there's a whole slew of "reality" shows about tattoo shops. lots of imitators, lots of half assed shows that are poorly edited, or the proprietors aren't interesting, or the tattoos suck. as the original show about tattooists, miami ink rules the roost.

what makes it such a winner? for one, all the guys (and a gal) in the shop are personable, intriguing, and true artists. they care about their work on an artistic level and when you see the finished products, the work leaves your jaw agape. the design, shading, and overall execution of some of the pieces are breathtaking.

each episode is loosely based around a theme -- be it family, redemption, whatever -- but for the most part it's just customers walking in and the guys inking people up. after awhile, all the motivations get to sound pretty much the same. the show makes you realize how stupid people sound trying to justify their tattoos.

i mean, tattoos have meaning -- not to mention permanence -- and i'm all about that, but for the most part the reasons for getting a tattoo are: (1) i want to remember somebody/thing (2) i'm embarking on a change and want to commemorate it (3) it represents me or my passions (4) it looks cool. that's about it. the top reasons to get tattoos.

the show provides you insight not into the why of a tattoo but rather the how. it's like watching a-team or macgyver -- but only the good parts when they're building shit. you see the collaboration between the artist and the customer to come up with an original and inspired design.

i'd love to walk in and just leave it up to these professionals and say "ink me up." i'd always approached tattooing from the standpoint that i'd want to design it, that i'd want to have just my vision on there. but then, watching the show makes you realize how special -- and important -- it is to have a collaboration. it's like getting a van gogh on your body; the tattoo is on and for you of course, but there's something great about the idea that your body is just a canvas for an artist.

another reason the show succeeds is that we never venture too far into any of the tattoers lives and the show's attention remains squarely on the shop. the downside is that in order to really find out about the stars of the show, you have to internet stalk them; like i have.

the cast is an ensemble of guys you'd love to hang out with. ami epitomizes the "gruff but sweet" persona; he's literally always got a twinkle in his eye. garver, nunez, and darren are all spectacular artists and take a bit of a backseat to most of the action but their work speaks for them. yoji is a former musician turned family man and the apprentice in the shop. kat von d was a substitute for season one but is now a regular.

i'm in love with kat von d, i think she's the coolest person ever and her ability to execute her specialty (black and white portraits) is amazing. she's got quite the fan base and it's got nothing to do with her looks; her tattooing skills are arguably the best in the shop.

where people get the money to throw thousands of dollars on permanent ink i'll never know, but i can't wait to do the same. for the forseeable frugal future however, i'll just continue to live vicariously.

"people i consider for friends have a quality that i can only call seriousness, adding that this seriousness does not preclude great good humor, whimsy, even clownishness. seriousness has, though, to do with recognizing, if rarely enunciating, that the human drama is about trying to determine what is and is not significant in a finite life. seriousness has to do with attempting to make sense of one's experiences, not least one's sufferings and setbacks. seriousness lends gravity to a man or woman, gravity that, if this not be a physical contradiction, does not weigh them down.

...

i mention this because i sometimes think i no longer have the makings of a best friend. i am, i think, a decent listener, but not much of a confessor. i have a natural sense of reticence, at least when it comes to spilling my own beans... i hold with the novelist cesare pavese that 'one stops being a child when on realizes that telling one's troubles does not make things better.'"
-joseph epstein, friendship: an expose-

se7en jeans, true religion

jeans have played an important role in mankind's history -- both socially and personally. i was never one of those people. i didn't start wearing jeans until i was forced to; when i moved to michigan and encountered cold weather. for the entire span of my childhood, middle and high school years in san diego, i probably wore jeans once or twice. i hated the feel of the scratchy material against my legs and since i ran around a lot, there was no wardrobe hell worse than the feeling of hot sweaty legs trapped between funnels of denim fire -- actually, the feeling of bare legs against frozen stiff jeans is worse, but i didn't know that at the time. i was a boy who ran around in shorts all day long.

nowadays, i've not only become accustomed to jeans, but i've noticed that no more supposed "universal and basic item" can be so divisive and full of nuance. the color, length, style, and brand of jean can say so much about a person.

knee deep
my jeans history. my first two pairs of jeans were purchased together at the local abercrombie in michigan. this represents a huge buy. i was introduced to jeans and abercrombie at the exact same time. while my relationship with that putrid place stopped there, it was just the beginning of my jean journey. this initial foray into the jean world was a dismal failure. the jeans were a nice color but totally tapered. not 80s style tapered but tapered nonetheless -- i had no idea what the hell cuffing was, i didn't miss out on much apparently. i didn't even know that tapered jeans weren't cool by any, and every, standard, i just wore them when it got chilly. that first year, i tried to wear shorts until the last possible moment -- thanksgiving -- but eventually had to give them up.

babbs also has a great story about moving to michigan with tapered jeans. apparently us san diego transplants were all lost in jeans fashion together. hell, hong's jeans are still highly suspect.

bigger is better
luckily, i met a few friends from new york and they quickly introduced me to jnco's. you remember jnco's don't you? i don't think they were ever that hot in southern california, but apparently in new york (and the bay area) they were the jean of choice. at this time, i was also introduced to the idea of "leg openings." jeans were now three dimensional -- waist size, length, leg opening width.

the trend toward bigger and wider pipe leg jeans was just starting to pick up and jeans were advertised with "26-inches" on the sale ticket, as if buying bigger would compensate for smaller. just like exhaust or rims for a muscle car. prevailing to a man's insecurities sure worked because i immediately bought a pair -- for $50, a true fortune and a big ticket item in those days. hell, who am i kidding, $50 is a big ticket item for me still, ten years later.

those jnco's lasted me for years. even when i was too old to wear them, even when they were way past their prime (the style as well as the physical condition of the pants), i stuck to them. they were too light colored in retrospect but i didn't know any better.

the main reason i loved those jeans was not for the soon to be "raver look" but because those jeans allowed me to wear really thick sweats tucked underneath them. see, i hated skin on jean during the winter. my solution was to wear sweat pants (usually a really ugly green pair) underneath my pants at all times. only big jeans or snowpants were conducive to this effort. the main problem with those jnco's was that once it got snowy or rainy, they swept up everything as i walked. leaves, grass, dirt, water, squirrels, probably an underclassman or two were all stuck into and soaked into my jeans. disgusting. on the plus side, my jeans were good shelter in case of housing emergencies.

azure blue
near the tail end of college and post-jnco's, i went through a non-jean phase. yes, i experimented, but i did not inhale. i tried khakis, i tried cargos, i tried pinstripse and polyester. i tried those pants that could zip off into shorts. i tried it all in an effort to escape the jean. blue pants, black pants, green pants, charcoal pants, light colored pants. all of them failed me. cargo pants worked for awhile, but tell me when was the last time you saw somebody wear cargo pants successfully? exactly.

i returned to the jean. 32x30, purchased (always) at anchor blue. this was my secret source of jeans for many years. for under $30, you could purchase a nice jean in a variety of colors and styles -- mine was "beyond baggy." the black and dark denim versions became my nice jeans; the lighter and faded versions were designated casual wear. i experimented with smaller leg openings but decided that anything smaller than 20-inches just made me look funny. i had found my wardrobe home and along with my commitment to camo shorts and white shirts, i added the anchor blue jean for winter wear.

clear skies
recently, i discovered that i'd committed too soon. my jean was not 32x30 and beyond baggy. my jeans never hung correctly on me (lack of an ass will do that) and the bottoms still tended to be a tad wide and sweep the back of my heel as i walk. this resulted in my jeans acquired fraying at the bottoms. i couldn't figure out what was wrong. i figured that was just my style, but i knew, deep down, that i was missing something about the wearing of jeans.

i figured out what that was. after much pondering and analysis of other people's jeans -- i may have stared at male posterior views once or twice or a billion times -- i've discovered that i wear my jeans too short and too wide. too short because i was always concerned about fraying my jeans. too wide because well, i'm not that big. so i'm on the hunt again for my jeans, my ideal jeans.

the real key here is to wear big enough shoes so that despite your jeans being too long for your frame, they sit and sag nicely on the shoe. this i discovered once i started my collection (some say uniform) of jeans and converse shell toes. this is why skate shoes are so damn chunky. i'd always preferred the slim profile of chuck taylors but with heftier shoes, the sag and collection of the jean can be made above the shoe line, instead of dragging around on the ground. get it?

so in summation, the five factors of jean shopping are: length, cut(style), pipe dimension, color, and price.

for the record, james and lilly's friend punny once engaged in a "jean off." take turns naming brands of jeans. james was pretty damn good for a guy. then again, do we revoke his guy status for knowing a few too many brands? very impressive indeed mr(s) wang.

scrooge of all seasons

"we all know that bad gifts inflict a cost -- just think of the rigid smiles that greet an unwanted floral tie -- but it's surprising how big that cost can be. ...in general, people spend a lot more on presents than they're worth to those who receive them, a phenomenon that he calls 'the deadweight loss of christmas.' a deadweight loss is created when you spend eighty dollars to give me a sweater that i would spend only sixty-five dollars to buy myself. why aren't we better at gift giving?"
-the gift right out-

i'm like a bird, i just evaluate

for some reason, every girlfriend i've had during my blog era has consciously decided to avoid my blog(s). some of them -- just three total, so "some" could wrongly imply a much larger number here -- begin by persuing it a bit, they want to know what it's all about, they get into it a little bit and they read avidly for a month or so. but in an inverse correlation, the further we go into the relationship, the less they like the blog. they're not always anti-blog, they're just anti personally reading it.

i've always been slightly confused by this. the reasons i've been given, or have figured out post relationship, is that this here blog always causes us to fight. invariably, something i'll say in it will set off a minor (and then major) argument. this two-act play is acted out to varying degrees depending on the girlfriend in question. i hardly say anything controversial here, much less incendiary and fight worthy. i've never fought with anyone else about anything on here, that's for sure.

i understand that nobody would want to read someone else's blog all the live long day. that would not only be time consuming but absolutely boring. we all have our own lives to lead, we only indulge in other people's when we have the time. or when we're at work.

so i'd never begrudge a girlfriend for not wanting to read anything i've got up and around. i mean, to be quite honest, most of it has nothing to do with us and if there's a chance that an entry could lead to a potential misunderstanding or argument, i'm fine with them avoiding the blog out of principle and goodwill. i do go out of my way to keep my specific relationship gripes, concerns, joys, etc out of this blog. many times i've wanted to just vent with details and situations, but i avoid it out of respect for them.

i'll transpose a version of myself (or other people's situations) on here when i talk about relationships, and generally the thoughts i express on the topic are hardly the stuff dream boyfriends are made of, but i'd hope that there's an understanding that it's not exactly me talking. i mean, it's me, but it's not me. the blog represents a side of me, and i'd like to think, a very one or two-sided dimension. i'm much more considerate (and funner) in person, really. cough.

still, this blog's been around forever. i'd conservatively say that 25% of my life is wrapped around something related to blogs. be it reading, writing, following, updating, pushing, pimping. and given that it's a pretty big part of my life, it seems totally weird to me that a signifcant other would choose to totally ignore it. and i'm not talking about just this. i mean, like everything. public blogs, private blogs, journal blogs, fun blogs, stupid blogs, faux blogs, o.p.b. (other people's blogs). i find that weird. it's like by association, all blogs have been sullied by my dirty name.

it's nice to have a space to myself, and i mostly could care less if a specific person (girlfriend or friend) reads this or anything else, but say i had a significant other who was voluntarily immersed in something that took up twenty-five percent of their mind and time power; wouldn't that sort of pique the interest once in awhile?

i've been told that maybe it's just too hard to keep up. i'm all over the place (not in a good way) in conversations, in emails, in blogs, in life. so maybe it's just too hard to bother keeping up with it all. which is fine, no problem. i'm the last person to complain about being the victim of an attention deficit relationship. but when complaints are lodged about my lack of talking and revealing and sharing, i stand there and think "what're you talking about? all my shit is public (or if it's private, they have it). what do you mean by i'm not sharing?"

i, like many of the bloggers i love to read, have had a blog for years. it's outlasted friends, jobs, cities, countries, relationships, clothes, hairstyles, everything. it's a written record, a time capsule, of those times. it's not rah-rah exciting, particularly relevant, or a pre-requisite for dating me, but when engaged in a relationship, wouldn't this qualify as a treasure trove of (skewed) insight and information? maybe that's just too much information though; some people prefer starting with a blank slate.

anyway, i have quite a few theories about why this happens; or seems to always happen. i'll have to expound on them at another time. for now, i'm just wondering for those people out there who blog a lot, do your signifcant others regularly tune in? or they leave this blog space as your sovereign territory? and heck, which would be better?

maybe it's too much of a shortcut to just send everything onto public or private blogs. perhaps signifcant others prefer that they can have ownership of things, thus they'd rather not be aware of the things that are constantly made public? what you share you do not have; which can be disconcerting when it seems like that might leave you with nothing? i don't know.

hey, that's one theory right there.

plop

i'm a sucker for time travel. faster than light, super string theory, quantum physics, anything that gets me there. everyone knows what the fourth dimension is, but what about beyond that? check out this video describing the tenth dimension and just nod along like i did. "yup yup, i knew this, surely, yes, yes." cue laugh track.

a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court

it's strange, to read someone's thoughts and to get caught up in their emotions and then realize that it's from three or four years ago. that's the problem with blogs (and journals) -- if you can call it a problem. everything spools out all at once and if you read straight through someone's writings, it feels like you're getting immediate open bar access to their mind and their heart.

the line breaks between posts don't give enough of an indication of the time span between when entries were actually made. that can mislead you into believing that this is the prevailing issue with the blog author in question. that's often not the case.

many people blog during (emotional) highs or lows. they're venting, releasing, updating, reliving, reconfiguring, resolving. all of those peaks and valleys don't always happen on a daily basis. having two bad days a month for twelve months -- equating to twenty four straight entries -- can make one seem to be in a constant state of melancholy; especially when that blog unfurls itself all at once.

only when you stop to really put into context the dates of the entries do things begin to separate from each other -- gaining distance and breathing room. but the feeling is still there, the feeling that all you've consumed in the past hour is reverbrating in the present or in the recent past. instead, it could be that these entries (and the accompanying life states and thoughts) were -- effectively -- from an entirely different person. a blog/journal doesn't chart progress or a sequential advance of time, it's just a series of (very brief) snapshots.

it's kind of a scary thing. but also rad i guess. i can only use "rad" here because for some reason no other word seems to fit. so, it's rad.

beta means bad

yeah, the switch to beta-blogger kicked my ass. in my rush to convert some of my blogs to beta (in order to get labels, instant publishing, some other fun things), i forgot to follow the first law of blogging. "there is always try before do." i dove into beta before i made sure that my blog could FTP correctly to my server.

guess what? the conversion didn't work. there i sat, screwed, unable to update, and dreadfully panicked. it brought me back to the good old days of blogger when things would constantly be in a state of chaos. it occured to me mid-panic that nobody would miss my five minutes of not updating, but i still felt the pressure to at least be able to post. just in case.

despite my seemingly solid grasp on all things computer-related, i have no idea how to really make anything work. there's a reason i didn't start to get into web pages and blogging until user-friendly interfaces were widely available. i'm not really a computer/tech geek, i just play one on aim. so, i exhausted all of my usual tech help channels and had to just pray that blogger would fix itself.

this is how faith works i guess. you jump, you panic, you wait for relief and cling to the hope that things will work out in the end. a few days later, here i am, blogging again. disaster averted; lucky stars and garters thanked. i guess at the base of things, i am religious.

a text text world

i have to rant here, because it bothers me so much. cell phones used as major plot devices in movies; totally ridiculous. in collateral, one of the (many) reasons i hated it so much was that at the climax of the film, jamie foxx is in a bad situation because his cell phone has no reception. his "bars are low." wait, you're telling me that the drama from this scene hinges on whether or not jamie can get reception? wow, exciting.

also, in the departed, texting plays a major part in the script. in the latest example that irks me so, casino royale, we see more shots of text messages than we do of the villain in question.

now, i love text messaging as much as the next guy -- i have unlimited texting, which is a godsend -- but i do not love the way text messaging and cell phones are incorporated into movies. i understand how difficult it can be to plot movies given our ultra-convenient and near-instant communication nowadays; many of our best dramatic moments -- in film, literature, real life -- are due to not being able to find somebody when we need them.

however, it's just lazy to use texts to convey critical plot points. would major drug dealers really rely on text messaging to confirm details and to provide security passwords? text messaging is a totally insecure method of communication and it's wholly unreliable. how many of you would trust your service provider with your once in a lifetime drug deal? not me.

the caveat here is that if drug dealers and criminals really did rely on text messaging and rock-steady reception to conduct their business, then i'd switch over to whatever service provider they relied on. "verizon: trusted by careerr criminals everywhere." sold.

if movie writers are going to use cell phones as an exposition crutch, then why not just give assume telepathy so we don't have to waste screen time showing cell phones ringing and texts being checked? telepathy is just as believable as consistent worldwide coverage isn't it?

it gets even worse when a character has been relying on his mobile phone the entire film and then suddenly the writers realize that having a phone would eliminate their "cool" dilemma. then we're forced to believe some inane reason for why the cell phone doesn't work -- or even worse, they forgot the phone at home. i can count on one hand the number of times i've left my sidekick at home, and i'm not a super hero, movie villain, financial hotshot, or drug dealer.

cell phones in movies, what do to, what to do?

crouching cousins, hidden family

we've never been a family orientated family. at least, a family holiday orientated type of family. sure we had a few thanksgiving, christmas, and new year's gatherings, but those usually involved other families or big ski trips. so this thanksgiving, when we got together with the northern california portion of our family, we got to talking about what else? family.

as it turns out, not only am i not the last male yang (capable of child birth), i'm not even close to the end of the line. i have male cousins in china, who are the sons of my father's older brother and sister. wait, i thought i was the first son of the first son of the first son. no?

my father has always been the oldest in his family among his generation of siblings and cousins -- the ones that escaped to taiwan when the communists took over china. we were raised with the perception that he was the oldest male of his generation. not true apparently. my dad has an older brother and sister who were left behind in china. that older brother is actually only a step-brother, but that's just a minor detail. the fact of the matter is that my dad isn't the oldest male of his generation and subsequently, neither am i. wow.

in more shocking revelation news, my grandfather also had another brother (we already knew about his younger brother, a grand-uncle we grew up with). that missing grand-uncle was given away at a young age to be taken care of by strangers so he was never considered to be part of the family and was also left behind.

and some more news: my grandmother was my grandfather's second wife. who knew? i surely didn't. this changes everything. for those of you who are well versed on your family's history and lineage, this may not sound so exciting, but imagine and me and george's surprise at hearing all of this.

on top it all, my father's older siblings didn't even know that he owned a factory in china, or that he had passed away (at least at the time). i have no idea what they know now or don't know. the old homestead -- where my father was born -- is decorated with many pictures of george and i however, as the exalted twins of the family. they want george to write something to say at my grandfather's funeral dedication service -- they're moving his resting place from taiwan to china this year.

when my grand-uncle passed away recently, two of my aunts went back to attend the funeral. they brought back with them pictures of our family in china. shocking stuff. here was photographical proof that we have a huge extended family! here was proof that our regal line continues to thrive in the motherland!

there were some talks -- jokes really -- of a trip out there to meet up with our chinese cousins. how crazy would that be? here we are! the missing yangs! or i guess, not exactly missing, but definitely here. or there?

there's no place like home... what would we do during the holidays without television marathons? families certainly don't hang out with each other do they? i mean, isn't that what football games, classic movies, and tryptophan is for: to avoid having to hang out with family for too long? family bonding occurs around the television, i'm sure of it.

so what recent marathon have i been watching? "beauty and the geek." wow, how did i miss this show the first (and second) time around. it's a great show. it sounds super gimmicky, but after watching all six or seven episodes in one shot, it turned out to be great in execution as well as concept. despite a very basic premise, the show works because it actually seems like the show changes its participants. it gives people room to open themselves up; it's not over-sexed (hello umpteenth real world), it truly transforms the participants (sorry makeover shows), and it has a cast of characters who actually grow on you and make you want to cheer -- as opposed to gag.

the show also doesn't focus on melodrama and instead points the spotlight on how the beauties and the geeks are getting along. it's a positive show. it makes you really want to see how these people turn out in the end. it seems genuine, it seems unscripted, and it's easily one of my favorite reality shows.

the biggest thing that jumps out while watching the show is how non-catty the girls are. maybe because there's really no guy prize to be won or maybe because these girls are just genuine or happen to be nice but they are great with each other and more importantly, amazing in their interactions with the geeks.

the only drawback to the show is that not all the geeks seem like real "geeks" but they were definitely not alpha males; which makes for a refreshing change. so the show mixes up some non-catty beautiful girls, some shy awkward guys and it turns into gripping television.

the lesson learned is, of course, "don't judge a book by its cover." the other lesson is that it's hard for guys to talk to girls. it doesn't matter how geeky or non-geeky you are. it's hard. the smoothest guy in the world can still be knocked on his ass by some girl who walks in the door. fumbling idiocy is in no way restricted to the geeks of the world. but you just have to go for it. talk to people; talk to the hot chick; talk to the super dork, see what they're about and then judge them.

so in the end, the guys get courage, the girls get brains, and reality television gets some heart.

the slaves must be crazy. for some, ahem, illogical reason, black slaves had the strange habit of attempting to run to freedom. their slave owners were mystified by this action -- since slaves were provided with everything they needed, so why run? -- and had a doctor look into it. in a diagnosis appearing in a louisiania medical journal (1851), a physician created a psychiatric diagnosis to explain a slave's tendency to flee from captivitiy. he said that these slaves were mentally ill and diagnosed them with "drapetomania." with the proper medical advice, this running away thing could be cured/prevented. the prescribed medicine? copious amounts of whipping. and if that didn't work, amputation of the toes. and you thought getting a flu shot was bad.

this brilliant doctor also came up with the term "dysaethesia aethiopica," to explain the lack of motivation exhibited by some slaves. the cure for that was also, you guessed it, whipping.

if you're smart and you know it, clap your hand

you know when you go to frye's or a mailing store and see those laminated pages that give you the 101 on a particular subject? it's like i want to buy every single one. for five dollars, i could become well-versed in any topic at hand. it's literally knowledge at your fingertips as you wait for the cashier. i wonder why they choose an electronics giant and mailing stores to prominently display these things. bookstores, sure, that's logical. but where's the obvious logic in placing a rack of them in mailbox etc? it's not a gift item, that's for sure. "thought you needed some brushing up on meiosis and mitosis, and here's the mix cd i promised you. love, jon."

if the baseline logic is that people in these stores would be enticed into an easy education, why not put them in fast food joints? who needs it more? the guy waiting in line with a $300 hard drive, or a guy eating $1 sandwiches every day? do you think your experience at mcdonald's could be enhanced with a few sparkcharts doubling as placemats? hell yes.

put the damn charts where the common folk go. cheap restaurants, grocery stores, starbucks, jamba juice, the gap. i don't need to see tabloids as i check out, i need to learn something about european history. actually, they should just cut to the chase and give the charts out as book covers for schools; but that would be too obvious a statement and ruin the whole idea that schooling leads to knowledge.

then again, say you knew everything there was to know on these cards, what good would that be? has anyone's life ever been (positively) irrevocably changed by a sparkchart? these "five minutes and you're smart" gimmicks are targeted toward the lazy people who won't actually want to study a subject in detail. the same people who think that a few pages of summaries can make them seem intelligent. no wonder i'm deathly attracted to these things. i'm exactly their target demographic.

my (not so) brilliant idea would be to combine sparkcharts with cigarettes. the packaging, the matches, the actual cigarette would be wrapped in information. then smoking would be destroying your body but enriching your mind. wouldn't that be worth five dollars (and a few less years lived)?

ps - while i'm here. did you know that the word "decimation" is derived from the latin word meaning "removal of a tenth." "it was a form of extreme military discipline used by officers in the roman army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers." read all about it. i hope to use this word correctly in a sentence this week. dude, you totally decimated that turkey!

game over. man, playing video games today isn't quite the nostalgia driven past time we've come to know and love right? it's so violent! and that's not even the games. people are getting robbed, stabbed, and shot at while purchasing the new ps3. that's some serious gaming love. how do you explain to your children, "oh, this gunshot wound? that's from the one time i stood out in front of a wal-mart for 72 hours [you could really end the sentence right here if you wanted to] to purchase a video game system." then again, i admire their dedication. anyone that passionate about an item should be applauded.

the average age of a gamer is twenty nine. 29! that's even older than me! and the stereotype of gamers as all geeks and unable to get girls is totally out the window by now. most -- ok, some -- hardcore gamers i know have perfectly healthy social lives; complete with girlfriends, alchohol, and with that combination, probably sex. the whole gaming industry is driven by middle aged males and their increasingly hot girlfriends who can also play -- or the hot girlfriends gamers want to have, who already play.

isn't it totally wrong that gaming machines have gone over (way over) the $300 mark? i can't get myself to invest in a gaming machine that costs $400-600. you can buy a whole damn computer, with all the trimmings, for that much. the only video game related purchase i'm willing to make is laying down a hundred dollars for the awesome looking gameboy micro famicon version; but even i haven't done that yet because i can't imagine using it often enough to justify the price.

while i think that video games are certainly one of the best forms of entertainment -- and surely worth every penny for the amount of hours you can waste playing it -- it's hard to justify using money on such an item when there are so many other pressing financial needs. i'm sure i would be singing a different tune if $500 was a mere drop in the financial bucket for me. however, until that day, i guess i'm going to be left behind in the era of ps2, gamecube, and the original chinese nintendo. at least i have my loyal starcraft/warcraft cds; like cheap whores those guys. not flashy or pretty, but dependably gets the job done.

having said all that, i'm desperate to play marvel ultimate alliance on one of the new generation consoles. maybe not take a bullet in the chest desperate, but a small one in the leg perhaps. plus, it's absolutely criminal that i still haven't played my own game yet. someone lend me a damn xbox 360 already.

"i live in what is likely the beauty capital of the world [los angeles] and have the enviable fortune to work with some of the most beautiful women in it. with their smooth bodies and supple waists, these women are the very picture of youth and attractiveness. not only are they exemplars of nature's design for detonating desire in men, but they stir yearnings for companionship that date back to ancestral mating dances. still, beauty is driving me nuts, and although i'm a successful red-blooded american male, divorced and available, it is beauty alone that is keeping me single and lonely."
-why i hate beauty-

call me jonathan

i'm still feeling dizzy and seasick; this is twenty four hours after we went whale watching. note that i never get even remotely seasick while actually on a boat. but apparently the rocking feelings stays with you even after you come onto land. so while we sat there eating dinner (sushi of course), we both commented on the constant swaying and dizziness we were both feeling. a more romantic man might have made a crack about it being the feeling of love sickness; tragically, i'm only witty and romantic in retrospect. then i leaned into the mirror later that night to floss my teeth, and almost toppled over. even today i feel as if i'm still standing astride a small dinghy -- karate kid style. it's frightening to imagine what being on a real boat for more than three hours would do to me.

the problem with trying to depict the elemental forces of the ocean on-screen (be it a perfect storm, maelstrom, or otherwise) is that it's totally futile. special graphics, award winning wave algorithms, men being tossed overboard, closed in shots of panic and flailing... none of those scenes can bring justice to the feeling of a wave tearing into your boat. i tried to extrapolate the feeling of us gently gliding over three foot waves to what it must feel like to be in the middle of a storm. it's like pricking your finger to get an idea of how much running a sword through your body might feel like; similar in theory, but totally unrelated.

the ocean is just frightening; it frightens me more than fires or heights (if i really stop to think about it). i love swimming, surfing, boat rides, and marine animals but when you get a chance to really think about the seas/oceans, and get a chance to experience how vast and unpredictable it is, how can it not be the scariest thing in the world? the ocean is power.

this grand setup isn't intended to diminish the awesomeness of what we saw today but to reflect on the idea that the entire concept of whale watching is kind of hilarious. i mean, you go out on a boat "in search of whales." you hope to see the biggest animals on earth in the biggest environment on earth and you want to do all of this within three hours, otherwise you feel somewhat cheated out of your money (in this case, $25). the monterey bay is the "serengeti of the sea" and is one of the best places to go whale watching. yet, when you set off on that little 100-foot schooner (wrong word but i just like to use it), which previously seemed battleship-esque when docked, you realize just how difficult finding a whale could be.

about ninety-five percent of the time a whale watching boat leaves from monterey, they are successful in finding a whale. that seems kind of nuts to me. i couldn't reliably find you a rabbit or squirrel around my house; much less year-round. of course, seeing a whale actually do something besides send up a few puffs of steam is an entirely different story. if you think you'll see whales breaching, rising out of the awesome depths to take a good look at you, or come sidling up to make friendly with humans, you're terribly wrong. most of the time you'll be viewing from a safe distance away as a few whales swim along peacefully.

it's amazing mind you, but if the biologist wasn't telling you what was going on, and if you didn't have preconceived notions of what the other ninety-nine percent of the whale looked like, it would be about as exciting as watching the kettle boil over. so the math here is that 95% of the time, you're guaranteed to see 1% of a whale. not that i'm complaining mind you; nature does not dance to our beats and neither should it.

it's all still pretty astonishing. especially as you become accustomed to the whale's rhythms. when he's going to breathe, when he's going to blast, when he's going to take that one final gulp of air and disappear with the flick of his tail. i mean, i've been to sea world many times, i've been whale watching once already (in fifth grade), but nothing really makes you more excited than to see even a tiny bit of whale. the prospect of seeing one potentially jump out of the water is enough to keep you on pins and needles. and after straining your eyes, looking for any sign of exotic marine life, you are relieved to have some success, any success. i'd compare the high, and the experience, to seeing a bit of exposed nipple, but really, that would be juvenile and immature.

we saw three humpback whales, no blues, no dolphins or porpoise -- and most exciting of all, three orca. the humpbacks were exciting because they vindicated our experience. having no dolphins jump and play in our wake was sort of disappointing, but we've all seen dolphins before in one form or another. the three orca we saw as we were heading home (look for a big black fin cutting through the water like a knife), so it was a huge bonus and the cherry on top.

the hunting trio were in shallow waters and possibly honing in on a sea lion or two. if we had seen a killer whale actually kill something, i would have screamed for joy. instead, due to time contraints, we were forced to leave them after too brief moments. it's strange, in normal life, i childishly insist on calling killer whales "shamu," in the wild, they are nothing less than "orca." it's as if you can't compare the domesticated killer whale with the wild one, even in name -- like "bruce wayne" versus "batman."

never have i paid more to see less. i saw a few flashes of whale, a lot of sea lions, a gaggle of sea gulls, withstood high winds and cold, and am still stumbling around whenever i sit down. but it was so worth it. here are the pictures. don't laugh. animals were closer than they appear, my camera just sucks.

"coniferous" rhymes with "ferocious." i'm reading this fabulously interesting book entitled "why big fierce animals are rare." i saw this gem in a used bookstore and just had to get it. a book titled "how to make a million dollars doing nothing" wouldn't have been half as enticing. if i had happened upon a companion volume titled: "pandas: totally useless from a biological perspective?" i could have read both books and died happy.

i'm only into chapter two of this book (no signs of animals yet, big, fierce, or otherwise) and already i'm learning boatloads of new information. for example, ever wonder why certain trees are the way they are? a tree's shape is determined by what it needs to do. remember, nature -- as pretty as it can be -- is always about function over style.

take this assertation: trees lose their leaves in the winter because it gets cold.

sounds logical, sounds about right. yet christmas trees with their pine needles don't lose their leaves ever -- until they're yanked from their roots and planted in our living rooms for two weeks anyway. in contrast, the beautiful oak trees we're all so fond of change colors and lose their leaves in the winter, despite not living in especially cold climates. the answer of "some trees are evergreens, some are not" was always enough to answer my curiousity. but it's oh so much more complex -- and exciting.

the oak tree, decorated with leaves of large surface area, has to go leafless in winter because it loses energy too quickly during the short winter sun and heavy winds that it gets exposed to. those beautiful big leaves are great at sucking in energy but they're also great at releasing it quickly. the pine tree, with narrow needle leaves, can't get as much energy during a sunny day, but they won't lose much energy either. thus, the pine tree can keep their leaves during the winter, even in colder weather. plus those pine needles are located very close to each other, which results in less heat loss overall as the leaves work to warm the air around each other. neat hunh?

now that i'm getting a glimpse of the guiding principle to tree building -- energy expenditure and suckture (not a real word) -- i'm seeing trees in all new ways.

it's confusing living in california, because we tend to take plants from their natural environment and then place them wherever we like -- in the middle of parking lots, alongside freeways, lined up a driveway, etc. you aren't really given a sense of the "natural" plant life around us.

reading books about science and biology always makes me lean toward the nurture side of the nature vs nurture debate. high winds equals a certain type of tree, high [blank] leads to a certain kind person. cause and effect, cause and effect. i think people must be built the same way. we are who we are because of what we've encountered, not what we're genetically programmed to be.

if you can find out the guiding principle to how a person is built, then you can find out all about person, and everything will make sense. right? oh to unravel the mystery of personality. what would we need? certainly words is hardly enough.

memory lane this past saturday was my ten year high school reunion. i won't bore you with exclamations and proclamations about how it doesn't seem like ten years ago, blah blah. i can easily believe that it's been ten years since high school -- i mentally exited out of high school long before that. what i can't wrap my mind around is the fact that i'm already six years out of college. i still have, essentially, the mentality and lifestyle of a college student. no great responsibilities, no family of my own, no pets, no ownership of anything larger than a toaster, the most consistent (and important) bill i pay is my cell phone one.

me and george had talked often of making sure that we attended our high school reunion. first, a bit of background. we were fortunate enough to attend a prestigious (and overpriced) private school that did its part turning us into positive, integral, members of society -- she went to state school and i ended up, more or less, dropping out of college.

george wanted to attend the reunion mainly to catch up on some gossip, create some gossip, that kind of thing. i wanted to go because it might make good fodder for future comparison points -- and my auto-biography. plus, how often do you have high school reunions? i also wanted to see who exactly all these people i spent so many years with were. the school was k-12; we attended from fifth grade on, which translates into roughly seven years together.

our graduating senior class only numbered eighty or so individual names resonate with us through the years, even as the memory of exactly who they are fade. so, we wanted to go to a reunion to see how everyone turned out. and by "see," i mean just that. we didn't really want to "hear" or "talk," just "see." i mean, heaven forbid telling your old high school friends what you do now and how your life has gone.

then again, i can't really call any of these people "friends" since i can't recall any lasting conversations or moments from my high school career. i mean, i must have done something all that time right? sure i had a few good friends but near the back end of high school (right around the time girls popped up into our geeky radar) i stopped hanging around with them. i wonder what i did my junior and senior years. i didn't interact with anyone, or much of anything, that's for sure.

i remember middle school much better than high school. middle school had role playing game lunches, vicious sports played on the lawn, sleepovers on the weekends, and assorted little distractions. high school was a blur. so i wanted to relive high school for just one night, to see if any of these people would recognize me (in the metaphysical, not literal, sense) and to see if maybe i had missed out on hanging out with some incredibly cool people.

so where were we come saturday night? george was at the movies at the new mall in san francisco, i think i was watching the last season of sex and the city. we tried to go, we really did. but i work weekends now, and flying down to san diego to attend a reunion of people i don't really know seemed extravagant. without me, there was no way george was going -- thus, no ten year reunion. i did try, at the last moment, to convince some friends to go to the location and do some spying for us. unfortunately, nobody was up to the task. apparently friends -- high school or otherwise -- are totally undependable.

so i staged a little reunion in my mind, i tried to google everyone's name i could remember. i figured this was more "me," and more efficient and less stressful than trying to talk to someone over a contrived reunion dinner. what exactly were we going toremininsce about anyway? i didn't interact with anyone in high school. i think i was a ghost in the shell. how this happened i'm not sure but i'm sure i had hardly an impact on anyone outside of a handful of friends and teachers. i wonder what anyone in high school thought of me. i guess i'll never know. maybe next reunion?

what did i find out on my grand tour of the internet:

one girl is, i think, some sort of writer or photographer. freelance or gainfully employed by the red cross, i'm not sure. hard to tell, semi-common name.

the grandson of the owner of the chargers is, predictably, working for the chargers. his bio makes him sound like a social and athletic star in high school. my memory isn't terribly clear, but that's not exactly what i recall about him. i could be wrong.

i think one person is dead, from skin cancer. this is hearsay, since i heard it from someone else.

one girl who went on to play basketball averaged 0.1 points and 0.9 rebounds per game in her sophmore year. didn't make the wnba from what i could tell.

one guy, whose ponytail i modeled my own after in sixth grade, is either in jail in israel or a college professor. neither would surprise me.

my crush through most of middle school and into high school. i'd googled this one long ago and discovered among other things that she now works for a company that i used to work for a few summers ago. she's now happily married -- many congrats -- and pictorially documenting much of her life for our viewing pleasure. she's also our (mainly george's) source for high school gossip.

encounters with former high school classmates in the last ten years:

the summer after graduation, i ran into one of the popular girls at the local chiropractor's office. i'm sure we exchanged pleasantries. i never went back to that chiropractor -- unrelated reasons i'm sure.

at the local mall, in a structure store, two classmates looking at men's vests. i turned right around and left.

during my freshman year at umich, i saw in the cafeteria, arguably the most popular girl in our class. she had changed her mind at the last minute and had decided to attend michigan. she said "hi" to me first. i'm not sure what i would have done if i had seen her first. probably grunt. never saw her again. did find her website though recently. she's a real estate agent. go blue.

in the movies just a few short months ago, i sat directly behind two guys who would have recognized me, by name if not by face. i hid and tried to avoid them at all costs. although i would have wanted to know why they were hanging out.

one of the few friends i recall from high school came out with us once for some reason. he had gone from short and high pitched voice to super tall and not high pitched voice. kind of a huge change. his brother -- who we used to play some rpgs with -- is now a world class animator apparently. wow.

and that's it. goodbye high school. hello college? oh wait, college is still right here, lurking.

"one reason an underground brand sounds nonsensical is that countercultures are supposed to oppose the mainstream, and nothing is more mainstream than consumerism. but we no longer live in a world of the mainstream and the counterculture. we live in a world of multiple mainstreams and countless counter-, sub- and counter-sub-cultures.

...this is the quintessence of the postmodern brand rebel, hopscotching the minefield of creativity and commerce, recognizing the categorization, satirizing it, embracing it and commoditizing it all at once."
-the brand underground, new york times-

winning isn't everything, it's nothing. i've been watching a lot of reality competition shows. obviously, if you watch any tv at all, this is sort of unavoidable. in these shows, there's a main goal (eg. win the girl) and then an overarching goal (get good ratings). basically the shows i'm focusing on are the ones where a panel of judges are making the eliminations, not fellow contestants or the audience. examples of shows that fit this description is project runaway, top model, and any of the numerous "cheerleader" competitions available on the nfl and nba channels.

in all of these shows you get a behind the scenes glimpse at how a selection process is made. how one negative comment can turn the tide of favor, how one person can have undue influence in a supposedly democratic environment, and how arbitrary many of the decisions are. "i liked her/him because of this..." it's very rare that the audience seems to agree with the panel of experts. perhaps this is an indicator that those skilled in their profession are looking for entirely different things than the average viewer, but really, can we be so wrong?

but that's not the issue that springs to mind when i watch these shows. the thing i can't stop thinking about is how judgemental these shows are. if real life worked like this, where you're being judged for every action (or inaction), that would be hell right? but then it hit me. wait, we are being judged like this, for everything we do. and not in the spiritual sense either. tupac had it wrong, god's not the only one who can judge us now.

we're judged at every moment by strangers, friends, family, and um, friends. but even aside from that type of judging, when you enter onto the path towards a career (essentially, that starts in kindergarten, if not earlier) you're always in direct competition with someone.

forget selling your soul, you have to sell yourself first. in order to get a job, and then maintain a job, you have to constantly prove that you're better than the next guy. there's no room for complacency. since i'm shallow and ultimately only interested in celebrities and athletes, it pains me to hear about their travails having to prove themselves time and time again. even a spectacularly talented actress such as charlize theron had to go out of the way to gain credibility and respect in her field of work. an athlete is constantly pressured to prove himself to be as good, or better, than yesterday. even when you reach the top of your field, you'll find that you can't escape the rat race. and if you choose to exit the rat race, you're a loser, straight up.

understanding that life is a rat race is no great insight. sometimes i look at the crushing amount of future competitions that stand in the way between here and now and i just get tired. and then i feel bad for these girls on television who are giving it their all, for what? nothing! to enter into another round of competition, this time with more competitors and less press coverage. it all seems like a waste sometimes doesn't it?

i work at a very performance based job. you have a goal, a target number, for each day, each week, each month. at first it was a mini-thrill to do well. to prove that you could be good, that you could exceed the norm. but that buzz quickly fades. after all, when faced with another couple hundred days of this, what's the point? promotion? bonuses? please. i don't work in jobs where promotions and bonuses are part of my lexicon. so why compete and win against your co-workers when there seems to be no point to it all?

the long term perspective on this is that there will always be winners and who really cares, or notices, if you're not one of them. the key to job satisfaction is to be happy at being slightly above the norm. no better, no less. of course, this is not the stuff inspirational movies are derived from. and it makes any job sort of boring and makes you unmotivated. extrapolating this feeling out to all aspects of life, the question has to be asked: why win at all?

the only things i actually enjoy winning in are the ones that give me little spurts of pleasure. board games, trivia games, fantasy sports, real sports, some video games, etc. but in those instances, it's not about the winning as much as the playing. but for someone to be fueld by purely winning, that's not "competitive," that's just "winning." so i'd say i'm competitive by nature, but not really a winner (double entendre, i know). and the longer i think about it, the more i'm convinced that i don't really want to win at anything since really, "winning" is just a function of the mind. nobody makes you a winner, you make you a winner! and even when you win, that satisfaction lasts only so long -- the lifespan of winning seems to last about as long as a stick of juicy fruit.

there athletic champions each year, top model winners each cycle, olympic gold medalists every four years, men of the year each year... why win? why compete? it's all pretty pointless don't you think?

arnold and i. yesterday, a basketball legend passed away. i'm not sure how many basketball fans nowadays understand who red auerbach is. to them, he may be a face, a name, a hazy vision of basketball's past. little do they realize that without red auerbach, there would be no nba as we know it today. he led the celtics to sixteen championships -- mainly as a head coach, and later as a general manager -- creating the definitive dynasty in basketball. he regularly produced hall of famers from his roster and the style of play he championed forty-years ago influences the league even today.

i've been a huge celtics fan ever since i was into basketball; despite never really being old enough to enjoy the celtics during their heyday -- i was eight when they last won an nba championship. but i've read all celtic related books, researched their history, watched any video i could get my hands on, and grown up with all of the celtics' legends. and almost all of those stories involve red auerbach.

in 1963, he utilized the first all african-american starting lineup in the nba. he was responsible for creating, and glamorizing, the sixth man position. he traded for the defensive minded bill russell -- the cornerstone of eleven world championships. he drafted larry bird, a year before bird declared himself eligible for the nba. red turned a number one overall pick into kevin mchale and robert parrish. two hall of famers from one pick...

red had an incomparable eye for talent and was able to outmaneuver entire organizations with his acumen and foresight. the only reason the celtics dynasty didn't continue in the post-bird era was the untimely deaths of len bias and reggie lewis. and, of course, when the celtics missed out on tim duncan in 1997 -- even though they, statistically, should have won the first pick that year -- that near miss doomed them to mediocrity. duncan as a celtic pivotman would have been perfect. but bad luck wasn't red's fault. he was a seer and a sage for the entire celtics organization.

i guess it's fitting that red passes on now, right before the celtics debut their new dance team. they are the last nba team to have cheerleaders/dancers and now red will get a chance to turn over in his grave when the "celtics' girls" trot out onto the fabled parquet. the celtics -- and red -- are, were, about tradition and class. half naked cheerleaders probably didn't fit into that equation. but times they are a changing. red was sometimes deemed too anachronistic for the "rah-rah" nba by his critics, but while he may have resisted change, he was by no means a dinosaur. he just had a clear vision of how things were and how they should be.

auerbach was truly the wizard of oz, but unlike that fictional creation, he wasn't a humbug or a charlatan; red was always the real thing. he was personally responsible for the mystique that enshrouded the celtics and his trademark move of lighting up a victory cigar near the end of games symbolized the celtics' winning ways.

the celtics were red auerbach, and red was the celtics, so his death seems like the death of the celtics as the die-hard fans know them. to be quite honest, the celtics had been on life support for quite some time already but this is the last reality check. red's dead and with him goes the old-school celtics.

in additional basketball news, here's the blog for our new fantasy basketball league. if you're so inclined. i do understand that watching someone else play fantasy sports is about as much fun as watching your kid brother play in a little league game, but hey... we also utilized google spreadsheets to keep track of current picks and to share mid-draft analysis. google, how can you not love them?

how now blue cow. my moo cards are here! i was super late to the moo party but once i found out what they were i just had to get my very own. they are mini-business cards printed on nice card stock featuring designs/pictures culled from your flickr collection. you can make one of each, two of each, a hundred of each, whatever. it's $19.99 for a hundred moo cards and i highly recommend them. they are teenie tiny and dare i say it, just cute as all hell. i've been anxiously awaiting mine for about a week now and they finally came today. the packaging is really eye-catching too.

some of the pictures i selected don't work too well in such a small format (plus the resolution on many of my pictures suck), but the ones that did work out are amazing looking. i was hoping to use these as part of my book's business cards, but they may be too small. these are really the perfect gifts or little items to give to friends, to exchange like collector's items, etc. actually, they're so cool i really can't bear to part with even one. that's why i'm gonna need a second set to give out.

some people don't understand why these are so cool. well, if you can't see the coolness here (and the company name is just brilliant), then i probably can't help you.

the science of sleep. if you had to choose between never getting sick and requiring only the minimum amount of sleep, which would it be? i think i'm pretty much immune to most kinds of sickness but i require an unusual amount of sleep, or maybe i've become acclimated to an unusual amount. either way, i sleep a lot. which is a bit of a problem since i now start work at seven in the morning monday through wednesday. and i can't be late.

i have friends who can operate functionally and fully after only four hours of sleep a night. it's an ability i wish i had; especially when i'm finally beginning to realize that time is precious and a three hour nap can quickly translate into a wasted day. on the other hand, being sick all the time -- even if it's allergies or the common cold -- is not fun either. due to me hardly ever getting sick, whenever i do, i immediately reach for relief. i bitch, moan, and complain about even the simplest illnesses and need drugs to make me feel better right away. so really, i'm resistant to disease but in exchange, i'm lazy and a big sissy.

"we lifted off at 6:45 pm after a 30 minute delay, backdropped by a lazy sunset and the mechanical rumble of jet engines screaming into sky. my sister is sleeping beside me, her head on my bony shoulder and i can feel my left scapula digging into her cheek but she looks comfortable enough, there's a lot of good that comes out of the closeness of family, someone to travel with, a fair if somewhat temperamental companion. none of this has sunk in yet and i wonder if this trip is too little, too late. we both could have used an earlier salvation, the slow drive to madness by ill-fitting day jobs had worn our patience thin and suddenly the years yet to pass loomed ahead, dark and massive. sickle shaped. so in the end the idea was formed. bags were packed, dates blocked off. and here we are, taking a good look at our lives from 35,000 feet high, en route to another country, maybe two. no, it hasn't sunk in yet, but we're not alone. there's much more than just passengers riding on this plane: hope, fear, everyone has their reasons. you can tell by the baggage they're carrying."
-black eye sunrise-

karma's a bitch. if bitching about your friends and associates behind closed (or open) doors is not the greatest thing to do, then what is? some people say that gossip and slander is bad but as i've proven before, gossip is the bind that ties. and to be quite honest, there's no healthy way to rid yourself of misgivings, misconceptions, and mis-hates than to bring it all out on the table and discuss. everyone brings a different perspective to the world and when one perspective doesn't jive, it's totally legit to start the roast session and bring all facts and mis-facts to light and smear the individual as a group. hate hate hate.

i mean, isn't that why we watch reality shows? so we can see what they did, then see what the other they's had to say, and then go judge for ourselves who was in the right and who was in the wrong? nothing is more compelling than watching other people trash talk and then creating your own derived trash talk.

one of my greatest dreams would be to throw twenty or so friends together in a mtv-style battle of the [blanks] and see what happens. sure this might ruin friendships and create super conflict but quite honestly, friendships are ruined and conflicts are created anyway, why not re-live the moments via a reality show?

if i had the money i would start a company to document the lives of clients and then edit it all together for an unobjective, highly dramatized view of their lives to share with friends. a custom reality show created just about you -- who wouldn't be interested in this product?

and if i were ever to really decide that my life would be okay devoid of friends, i would create a no holds barred gossip column. isn't that what we esentially do anyway when we get together? just trade information on varoius classified levels? why not just have one central source for this type of thing? i volunteer myself to be the collector and disseminator of this information. i'll even do it for free.

(on not visiting his mother enough)
"mostly it was sheer laziness on my part, but the laziness engendered guilt, which was never that far from me, anyway, and that in turn folded in to resentment. the origami of repression never ceases to fascinate me, the way in which a few deft pleats will morph one feeling into another, so that you start out with a plain square of fear, perhaps, and end up with an intricate, cornute swan of righteous fury. it happens so quickly."
-seven tattoos, peter trachtenberg-

i used to love h.i.m. i used to love fantasy football. i was one of the first kids i knew who played fantasy sports. my mondays were often spent in the school library perusing the box scores from the night before. that's right, i played fantasy sports before the internet. shocking, i know. i even took the stats of every team in the league by hand. and then i compiled reports for each week. pen and paper baby.

but now, now i've been outfoxed and over-flummoxed by this new era of fantasy sports. i feel like doyle brunson or johnny chan. i know i'm the best fantasy sports guy in my area -- logically and knowledgeably speaking.but somehow people who'd been doing this for just a year or two are kicking my ass. fantasy football has gone the way of texas hold'em poker: any joker can -- and will -- win. it's disgusting.

i like games that have, at most, a smidgen bit of luck involved. chess and go are games of tactics and pure skill. it's hard to "luck" your way into consistently winning at chess. a game with perfect information on both sides and no random element is a great game indeed. that's why chess remains my favorite game.

on the other hand, it's exciting to play games like poker, blackjack, and fantasy football because of the gambling element. you can reduce your risk but there's always some hope that even when the odds are down, you can still pull through in the clutch. eternal hope, that's the way poker, blackjack, and fantasy football reel you in. you can tell that this is the addiction point, when you hear the improbable war stories that participants regale each other with on a daily basis. "one year, i was down forty pts and then sterling sharpe had four touchdowns on monday night and i won by one!"

nowadays, fantasy football is a total crapshoot. it's normal for 50% of the top players from one season to the next fall out of the top ranks, but lately, it's getting ridiculous. there are no superstars anymore. even the old standbys can suck it up big time. when your carefully crafted team is getting beat by a benchful of rookies and waiver wire wonders, it's frustrating. the real nfl is all about parity and apparently that trickle down economy is now affecting me at my place of work. anyone with a computer, an internet connection, and a two sided coin can win at fantasy football. anyone except a true master of the art, apparently.

this is ridiculous. i hate this game.

he faced the galloping hordes, a hundred bad guys with swords. the bachelor is still on tv? what a complete sham this show is. the only thing the bachelor has proven is that even when set free in a candy shop for weeks on end, a bachelor will still remain -- solidy, firmly, resolutely -- a bachelor. there's been no successful marriages from any seasons in the bachelor. they're in season nine by the way. that's zero for eight so far. this year's twist? the bachelor is an actual prince and the heir to a cosmetics company. so he's rich, able to make any little girl he chooses a princess, and yes, he's italian -- albeit, without the accent. did we mention that his company makes cosmetics for pets? what products does that encompass exactly? bare escentuals, watch out!

well, whatever teh show is doing, it's working. currently, at least four females i know are pinned to their tvs watching the 2-hour premiere. this might be the biggest thing since, well, the last bachelor. really, the key to any reality show is to cast enough weird females to make our normal everyday females have to bitch and complain and verbally catscratch their counterparts on tv. that's it. the formula for a successful reality show is mainly just cast enough "love to hate" personalities to capture america's attention.

the problem with having these rich, successful, good looking men on a show like the bachelor is that being confronted with twenty five women (plus this season's wild cards; two italian ladies brought in to cause some international rift) is nothing. the number of women a man can get is exponentially higher the more desireable they are. if you're someone like brad pitt, you're rejecting 1000-2000 women daily. even as a non-celebrity, if you're someone like this prince lorenzo borghese, you can reject twenty five women just by going out to a nice club for a few hours. so why limit yourself?

on the other hand, for normal guys like me and most of the males i know, twenty five might represent the number of women that might be interested in us ever. like over our entire lives. count it out. how many women could you have possibly selected, or dated, during your lifetime so far. i'd bet that number is somewhere around twenty five -- if not lower. what they should be doing is casting normal joe schmo's on these shows if they want a successful marriage. as long as they continue to cast playboys, they'll never get a bachelor to settle down. oh wait, that's not the point of the show.

the reality show i need to see is one where they pit physically ideal guys versus guys who have great personalities but aren't exactly lookers. finally we can determine whether or not personality trumps physicality. all anecdotal evidence points to "yes," but observational data might say otherwise. where is this reality show? or the one where a charming, gallant asian man faces off against a typical dorky white guy for the love of a cadre of multi-ethnic women. which one wins? or perhaps a reality show based on the infamous ladder theory. these are the type of shows that would entice me, the ones that tackle the big questions.

"in baum's book, the wizard speaks wisely to the scarecrow, the tin woodman, and the cowardly lion about the traits they desire and bestows on each of them a symbol that resembles their requests. to the scarecrow he gives sharp pins and needles for brains, to the tin woodman he offers a silk heart for love, and to the cowardly lion he prepares a potion for courage. his acknowledgment and validation of their respective traits allows them to see clearly who they are.

in the movie the wizard's gifts are represented as accolades to acknowledge achievement: a diploma for intelligence, a testimonial for kindness, and a medal for courage. this small change points to a misunderstanding that often arises when striving for particular goals. recognition of success is frequently mistaken as a substitute for what is real. accruing the praise of another individual does not necessarily indicate the presence of particular qualitites. as baum intimates through the wizard's comments to dorothy and her friends, wisdom, compassion, and courage come when inner resources are activated to respond to life's challenges."
-the wisdom of oz-

other people's money. so i've taken a job. the loan consultant one. i've already undergone one week of training, two more to go. no crazy hours yet, just shock at how wholly unprepared some of my potential employees are. out of an initial class of twelve temps, we're already down to seven. keep in mind, they've already done an online skills test and an interview. in fact, the interview experience i had with this company took a little over two hours. some of that was waiting in a small room by myself but most of it was spent talking to three different representatives of the company. the job itself is as entry level as it gets and here they are, spending lots of man power hiring temps.

when they offered basic arithmetic questions (subtracting, adding, multiplication) on the online assessment, i was curious why they needed it. i mean, the test was open book, who can't use a calculator correctly? well, now i know who can't. not to knock anyone's intelligence or general education level but when you can't do basic math and are easily confused by the simplest of addition problems, that's probably not a good sign. keep in mind, we're to advise people on mortgage loans -- usually teh biggest financial commitment in someone's life. on one test my neighbor asked me what i had for my answer. and then she asked "what is that you did there?" um, long division?

nice people though.

let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. once, while we were trying to replace gaga (as the smurfette who hangs out with us guys, not to actually replace as a person), gene brought over these two girls to the hotel. a few minutes after introductional chit chat and sitting around, we listened incredibly as they detailed their lust, desire, and future plans to augment their chests. i kept on waiting for the "haha, just kidding!" but it never came. i was intrigued on one hand about females were so upfront about their want for bigger breasts, and on the other, appalled by what their "getting to know you" conversation consisted of. who the heck starts talking to random guys about this kind of stuff?

as a well regarded, sensitive, pro-natural-female guy, it's almost required that you frown upon breast augmentation. sure you can look at it, but if you desire it, it's a no-no. maybe that's not the case in your social world, but it is in mine. one of the classic girlfriend to boyfriend question is "would you want me to get implants?" the best reply here is always "i like you just the way you are," regardless of what you actually prefer. (see, i'm learning.)

it's amazing, and sad i suppose, that one feature can so shape and define a woman's attraction level. and women know this. so thus they throw out comments like "oh, those are nice, but they're fake." or "ugh, they look so fake." guys will willingly nod along, or if there are no females around, they'll nudge their neighbor and just point. (most) guys are simply attracted to breasts. it's not necessarily biological -- although one could argue that it is -- it's simply societal. we're taught the bigger the better. as we "mature," we learn that bigger is not always better and the many reasons behind that thinking. still, the allure of BIG is always there. it's infantile but it's true.

what i'd like to do is propose an experiment where one could choose to increase (or decrease) the breasts by working out. similar to a bicep, a thigh, or the shoulders, one could go to the gym and with enough effort and dedication, get the size you desire. so, knowing how uniformly attractive bigger breasts (usually) are, how many people would choose to put in the effort to augment theirs? this experiment could be done for males too, with their respective biological parts. or even the more interesting experiment of having the partner have to hit the gym to get the ideal size/shape for their girlfriend's chest. then what would people look like?

if we took biology out of the equation and subsituted effort, would we suddenly all be at the gym? or would our desires to change, and focus on, what is arguably our most defining physical trait suddenly wane?

2 of 15 minutes. tomorrow morning, thursday, i'll be on nbc 11's "bay area news" program at 10am. they do a series every monday highlighting recommendations from independent book sellers in the area, quills. i'll be on the regular news show (around 10:35am) to discuss the book. wish me luck.

update: it's over. i almost arrived at the studio too late and missed my time slot. traffic, always the bane of timeliness. sidenote: i spent an hour last night learning how to tie a newly bought tie. i don't have any of my old roommates around, and i've never tied my own tie before. yes, i'm 28. thank you very much. the nbc studio was a sea of cubicles with various tv stations set up. i wasn't given any preparation questions so i tried to memorize some key words and phrases to insert into the conversation.

i was amazed with how well newscasters read off teleprompters. watching them in action, and off-camera, inaction, is amazing. they are the smoothest humans on the planet. i could barely think, much less put out coherent thoughts with a camera trained on me. i hope i answered the questions okay -- i didn't use any of my previously memorized catch words or phrases. i think i mumbled a bit, got lost a bit, and looked generally a bit lost. however, i tried to remain composed and present an air of confidence and comfortability. yeah right. i just tried not to sound retarded.

the entire affair was over in the span of an eye blink. it was live and it all sped by incredibly fast. the guy asked a few questions, i tried to answer them in short bursts, attempted to smile once in awhile, and that was it. overall a good, if nerve wracking, experience. bring it on, i'm ready for another interview -- well, after some practice speaking in front of an audience and not sounding like an idiot. i should pretend to be foreign so i can have a translator.

i'm working on getting a full audio version for your amusement. for now: picture and a (thankfully) silent movie.

oh, and i got this gig simply because my book's publicist in new york lined it up. nobody came to seek me out specifically or anything...yet.

"it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." it wasn't until very recently that social status played such a small role in screening out who we could ideally fall in love with. our economic statuses are so fluid now, and can change so abruptly, that money hardly matters (to most people) as a dating consideration. most women have willingly exchanged a fat wallet for "drive" and "ambition." men don't have to bring home the bacon so much as show that they at least tried -- and will keep trying. score one for us.

in the past, the argument for love over money was a losing one indeed. many of our greatest (love) stories spawn from this aladdin-esque princess and street rat dynamic. poor man must make his way in the world in order to win the approval of the rich woman's family and friends -- and thus her hand. classic tales like "the princess bride" echo this theme and if we were to compile a list of romances that fell into this category, we would never get a wink of sleep.

i suppose the modern day "pride & prejudice" (which i just saw) would be "pretty woman" wouldn't it? rich man finds himself falling in love with a woman beneath his station. he does glamorous things -- ie. spend money -- in order to win her love. same thing happens in pride & prejudice. darcy proves himself to have a heart and spends money in order to help out the bennets. elizabeth is flabbergasted by such fine gestures and can't help falling in love with the reticent, but now kindly, darcy. hello, he's still a selfish prick. him spending money on you means nothing.

the whole affair calls into mind the question of romantic philanthropy. is it meaningful that they gave anything at all, or is it less meaningful because they spared what they have in abundance? if i had two million dollars and gave you ten thousand, should that be accounted as more generous than the man who gives a dime when he only has a dollar?

i guess some women are wooed by the objective reality of ten thousand dollars, while others are more charmed by the subjective gift of a dime. which woman would i rather be? it's simple isn't it? i'd take the money and run. if darcy had shown elizabeth his home (the amazing pemberley estate) sooner in the movie, i'm sure she would have been won over quite a bit easier. nothing spells "l-o-v-e" like a fantastic home and a generous "living."

what is comes down to is that no woman wants a poor man, even if he is charming, bodacious, and the spitting image of perfection. in totally unrelated news, i think i'm taking a job, starting next tuesday. off into the world i go to make my fortune.

when it rains it pours. in the span of three days my life went from zero to sixty. i was unemployed and hopeless last friday, then monday through wednesday, things started happening. three job interviews, a possible tv appearance, and um, a birthday i guess. i can't say i've looked "hard" for jobs but i've put forth some effort. luckily, friends in the bay area have been very helpful trying to hook me up with jobs so i keep on applying for things that they recommend to me. i also apply to any job description on craigslist that requires a "blogger." strangely, those are the ones i don't get a response for. i put "i wrote the book on blogging, literally," and still no response. they must think i'm kidding. or an idiot. either way, i really wanted this one craiglist blogging job that requires me to write 250-300 word entries about basketball or football. i pretty much do that for free. sounds like a dream job right? oh well.

in real career hopes, i've hooked up with an employment agency for the first time in my life and they've been more than helpful. after figuring out that i suck at ms word and excel, i've been set up with a few interviews and potential full time jobs.

(1) a loan consultant job. pretty much exactly like what i was doing all summer. the downside is that the hours are kind of retarded. 5am - 7pm or 12pm - 9pm shifts. yeah, like i said, retarded. plus they require weekends for the first few months. the upside is that i'll learn all about loans and mortagages and finances and really be a boon to society.

(2) administartive assistant to a publishing company. sounds nice in theory. it's the only job that has zero commute, it pays the highest, it's got the most regular hours and required tasks. it involves organizing and talking to authors, making sure where their projects are, etc. tragically the publisher does mostly academic books. otherwise i'd jump on this job in a second.

(3) student programs coordinator for an asian-american journalist association. it would serve the dual purpose of allowing me to do something i care about (asians) and give me a possible outlet/connections for that writing career i dream about. the huge downside is that the job is in the city and would require a lengthy commute. still, it would be the most interesting job and might actually lead to bigger and better things.

so far i've interviewed at all three and the only job that's been secured is the loan consultant one. it's crazy how you can have all these balls in the hopper and feel like you have all these life options but at the end of the day, they still have to want you. and since each job is totally different, i feel like i'm making major life decisions here. at the end of the day, i just need to get paid and make a living. which is why i passed on an $8/hour used bookstore job, which i would have been perfectly content with.

things are happening and with such speed that i think it's all fake and at the end of the day, i'll still be sitting here, blogging away.

mr green, with the revolver, in the conservatory. i've maintained, for several years now, that out of all the classic board games we are familiar with, clue is the best one. monopoly may be more iconic, life more pop culture, candyland more cute, and connect four more accessible, but a game of clue -- when properly played -- has no rival. no game transforms itself from a simple card elimination game as a child to a high level rationalization exercize as an adult. clue played by children is entirely different than clue played by adults.

why is this? because as adults we're finally mentally capable of using our powers of deduction to figure out who did what and where. we know how to phrase our queries more effectively, we can use basic logic traps to trick our competitors. we can invent systems to record who has what card and who just asked for colonel mustard yet again. at first you wonder what everyone is possibly writing down when it's not their turn. after awhile, you're chicken scratching at every available opportunity.

clue is just outstanding. and if you've never seen the classic clue movie, get thee to movie rental establishment now. bring on the board games. i've recently discovered saboteur and lost cities too.

an inconvenient truth. i've always had a passing interest in racism. meaning that i've had an academic interest in it when it was convenient and passing on the topic when it wasn't. so when is it not convenient to think about racism (when you're a minority)? well, if you've never been a target of racism most of your life, you don't really have to think about it that much do you? sure there are the little injustices, or some disapproving looks, or the occassional verbal jab, but for the most part, i've faced about as much individual racism as a chair or other piece of inanimate, inoffensive, furniture.

i bring this up because i watched malcolm x today and something like that can't help but get you thinking. what was malcolm x trying to say? what were his contemporaries saying? what were his contemporaries saying about malcolm x? i'd say my previous knowledge about malcolm x was minimal. my passing experience with his life and his beliefs occurred only when he happened to intersect the life of someone i was reading about. dr martin luther king is the respected preacher of non-violence, malcolm x has always been presented as more polarizing and not as easily digestible; and i didn't really know why. and i still don't.

one wonders where figures like dr king and malcolm x have gone. i'm sure people are still carrying on their spirit and their works, but i couldn't tell you who these people are, or what they ally themselves with. louis farrakhan? al sharpton? jessie jackson? almost as foreign to me as yasser arafat or benjamin netanyahu would be. and it's not just because i'm neither black or middle eastern. i could hardly name and identify the main political players and leaders of america, much less china or taiwan. i'm just uninformed.

in collapse, jared diamond tells us that the modern country of which the highest proportion of its citizens belong to environmental organizations is the netherlands. the dutch are thus, from one perspective, the most environmentally conscious people in the world. the reason for that? most of holland is below sea level. should the dikes burst that hold back the ocean, or should the ocean rise above the level of the dikes, holland would be lost. global warming might eventually over take california? it would take holland first. that's why they care.

so is the moral of the story that if you're not in danger, you are less likely to be active and aware? maybe. after all, if i were the victim of constant racism, or if my peers were more in tune with the world at large, i'm sure we'd have more conversations about these things and i'd know more by association. instead i find that we usually go to black people for black history, asian people for asian history, and our textbooks for american history. and anything that falls outside the realm of our personal experience is relegated to the back pages.

history was, by far, my best subject in school. but somehow living history has never captured my attention as much as learning about events of a hundred, fifty, or even twenty years ago. which is weird right? because the america we live in today, the america that we hope to live in tomorrow, should concern us more than anything that has already happened, right?

even with the turbulent middle east and the recent israel - lebanese war, i knew only as much as i could glean from casual readings of magazines and newspapers. in essence, my views were quickly shaped by one or two news sources and maybe one conversation with a concerned friend. it's easy to be lost in an ocean of misconceptions and simplistic bullet points when you know nothing about the shit that's going on all over the world.

so i have to ask, if we're all in deep shit, why aren't we doing anything about it? or rather, why aren't i doing anything about it? if only from an educational perspective? to gain an educated opinion about any of it?

"niggers are scared of revolution
but niggers shouldn't be scared of revolution
because revolution is nothing but change
and all niggers do is change
because niggers are me
and i should only love that which is me
i love to see niggers go through changes
love to see niggers act
love to see niggers make them plays and shoot the shit

but there is one thing about niggers i do not love
niggers are scared of revolution"
-the last poets, niggaz are scared of revolution-