Refried.... rice?

Earlier this week, my cousin Cindy and I were having a discussion about burial versus cremation. Neither of us seemed to have very strong objections towards cremation. There seems to be a sort of Christian stigma against it, but we weren't really sure what it was based on. We asked our aunt, who was driving, what she thought about cremation. She said something like, "I guess I can't give you a good explanation why, but I just don't like cremation." She paused a moment, and then she added, "This is just a joke... I don't want to burn twice!"

Isn't there another word for that?

Yesterday I went to the A's game (thanks, Johnny) w/ the girl. Our seats were half in the shade, and half in the sun, so I got these fiery patches of sunburn on my knees. They were giving out these backpacks to the kids that day, and I guess it was sponsored by Arrowhead, who was promoting this new drink, called Aquapod. They had a picture of Eric Chavez on the backpack, and a picture of the new drink. I guess it's just regular arrowhead water, but it's in a fun-shaped bottle so that kids will drink it. The best part about it was that they write out the brand name in all caps, so I thought it said AQUAPOO. Something tells me it won't be around for a long time.

a lot of clicking

I noticed today that my email inbox had over 700 messages in it. I know I'm not really that popular, so I went through and I deleted a lot of junk. And now I'm down to 199. It was quite a workout for my right index finger.

Yes, that's a light bulb

Had some fun with this today, so I'm putting it up here.
Hit the comment link and post up your own caption for the picture below. If you don't use blogger, choose "other" and put in your name, so that Anonymous doesn't steal your thunder. click here for the whole story. (in case the link doesn't work: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060629/od_nm/pakistan_bulb_dc_1)



Here's a few to get you started:

"Not what God intended when he said "Let There Be Light!" - Mike

"i think i see the light at the end of the tunnel" - Ben

"i tried yanking the chain and twisting the knobs but the light wouldn't turn on" - Ben

"Dr. Aftab Ahmed wonders how many inmates it took to change his lightbulb" - John

Doctor tells the patient, "Hey, you've got a lightbulb stuck up your ass."
Patient says, "that's nothing. Wait till you see what I've got stuck down my throat." - Johnny

"THERE'S A LIGHTBULB UP MY ASS!" - Jason

"i guess it wasn't such a bright idea afterall" - Ben

"I said, 'Give me a Bud Light, not a Butt Light!'" - Jim

words of wisdom

Never wrestle with a pig. You both get all dirty, and the pig likes it.
Never try to teach a pig to sing. You'll frustrate yourself and annoy the pig.

elated

i LOOOOOVE long weekends!!! so happy it's finally here... have a good weekend, y'all!

My worst fears confirmed

I read on someone's blog about this website called myheritage.com, where you can upload a picture of yourself, and their software will analyze your face and tell you which celebrities you look most like. The technology still seems a bit rough, and not without a sense of humor.
When I gave it the picture below, it found my huge face in the foreground, but it also picked out a small, shadowed face in the background, and it said I looked like Jason Biggs, (also funny because he plays the title character in a movie called Loser. (el perdedor)) while my friend looked like Brad Pitt!!!
What the..??? Son of a...!!!
If myheritage.com were a real person I'd say he deserved a swift kick to the butt right then.

He must have lost a bet

Check out A-Rod in this video...

Word of the day: Misogynistic

I didn't know what misogynistic meant, but I've always liked learning new words. I learned that context is a good way to figure out what a word means, and so I thought well, the context is me! so it must mean something like awesome or clever or awesomest. But then obviously Anonymous must know what misogynist means because she used it in a sentence, which is what you do when you know what a word means, and she used it in context with creep, which in my opinion is not very awesome so I guess context was not the way to go here.
Sometimes you can figure out what a big word means by looking for smaller words inside it that you recognize. Miso-, well that's fermented bean paste, actually the japanese kind, you probably had miso soup before. The japanese miso is pretty tame, I think. The korean kind is called dwenjang, and it's pretty rank. If you're not korean and you like dwenjang jjigae, that's pretty impressive, because that's not your usual bibimbap or bbq meat that americans might eat when they feel like being exotic. (don't get me wrong tho, I love bibimbap and kalbi.)
-gynistic... this part kinda look like gynecologist... which I know is a .... ahem... a lady's hoo-ha doctor. So then if you put the two together, you get japanese lady's fermented bean paste hoo-ha. WTF??!! Ok, so I guess figuring out what the word means by looking at the root words won't work here, either. (although you might find it interesting that sushi, another japanese food, has a funny slang definition given the context of this blog post. I go to urbandictionary.com when I can't figure out what the heazy kids are saying these days)
So I just looked it up in a dictionary. (m-w.com, not urbandictionary) and I found
misogyny: a hatred of women
What?!! Noooo.... I don't hate women... I found out in middle school (hehe, good times) actually that I really like women. Maybe even a little too much. I'd probably go so far as to even say I looooove women. Maybe even more than I love tacos. Mmm... taaaaaaacos....

Everyone loves free!

Alright ladies, take a good look at this guy. If he were to knock on your door and offer you a free breast exam, would you accept? This is the type of farce news story you'd expect to see on a show like, Conan O'Brien, but it was actually a real story on Reuters! Almost every line in this story cracked me up. But I guess it was the picture that really made the story.

Alright ladies, now take a good look at the awesome looking guy in the green box over to the right. He's not sleazy enough (yet) to go door-to-door offering breast exams, but as of today he will be accepting appointments for you to come in and get your breasts groped and fondled to uh... check for tumors. Call today and we'll schedule you for a free session, and possibly make arrangements for regular uh... weekly checkups. Please note that he reserves the right to refuse service if you're ugly.

sit ups vs. sit downs

I remember when I did PE in grade school I could do close to 50 sit-ups in one minute. Some kids could do over 60! Sit-ups back then were so easy! Like taking a stride when running...
So how come now they're so hard??! Funny how they call them "sit"-ups, because even though now all I do all day is "sit", but it hurts even to do 10 of them, while back then sit-ups were so easy and we hated sitting. I guess that's where the "up" part comes in... Maybe the thick skin that's been building up in the area that hurts when I do sit-ups has something to do with it. I've asked it many times to go away. Oh how stubborn it is.

Ah-deek-ted-duh

I've become addicted to korean dramas. I feel like "drama" is a bad name for them, though. Because they're really funny. I think they're kinda like japanese anime, but using real actors instead of cartoon characters.
I watched some time ago "My Name is Kim Sam Soon", recently finished "Delightful Girl, Choon Hyang", and currently I'm in the middle of "Prince's First Love". Next up I think I'll watch "Which Star Are You From?" (Actually I already watched the first episode, hehe) I feel a little guilty for wasting so much time watching these silly series... each one is about 15 or so one hour episodes.
Don't try to use this as a point of contention regarding my masculinity; I have a good excuse. I'm watching them to try to improve my korean skillz. Hahahaha....

Till 6 in the morning

They're throwin' a wild party over in Washington tonight. They're bumpin' loud dance music, gettin' down, and you can bet the booze is flowin'. At some point in the evening they'll raise their drinks in a toast, to all the stupid taxpayers like me who pay taxes out the nose because they're too dumb or lazy to do smart things with their money.

mountaintop guru

A friend once told me you can find the answer to anything on the internet. I remember he had a job as a system administrator at turbo linux, and when I found that out about him, I was really surprised, because I didn't think he was the type that would know so much about computers. He said he didn't know anything, and basically found out everything he had to for his job on google groups, and that you could find the answer to any question you've ever had on there. I asked him, "can I find the answer to what's the meaning of life on google groups?" He said, "Probably."
Sometimes I'm really surprised by what I can find on the internet.
Anyway, urbandictionary.com is a pretty good place to look up meanings for slang.

O Canada!

just got back from toronto. i'm tired, but i guess i had a pretty good time. got to see niagara falls for the first time. i guess they're pretty big, but for some reason i thought they'd be even bigger. and i sorta thought they'd be out in the middle of nowhere, like yosemite, but there's like city all around it.
there was an imax theater, too, showing this cheesy movie about niagara falls that was made back in 1987. in the movie, they say there's a legend that there was a native american girl that went over the falls in a canoe because she didn't want to marry this ugly man, and they called her the maid of the mist. i tried searching on the internet to find out who played the maid of the mist in this movie, but i couldn't find it. i wonder if she went on to greater things in her acting career. maybe she went into porn. it seemed like she had two pretty big floatation devices, though her authentic looking native american garb might have made it seem that way more than they really were. anyway...
there was a casino next to niagara falls, and we had dinner at the buffet there, which looked huuuuuge when i walked in. so i was pretty excited about eating there... but once i made my first round i realized it was actually a lot smaller than it had seemed, and the food was pretty mediocre. we had to stay at the casino until 10, so i played some roulette and some coin slot machine. i think that because canadian money looks so much like play money, it's easier to lose. yes, that must have been it.
oh, and i also learned what a "cougar" is. man, canadians sure are funny.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

i borrowed this book from jason. it's a good book because different parts of it will make you laugh out loud, or want to cry, or make you think about some things differently. it's got mystery, comedy, adventure, drama, all rolled up in one. it's a pretty quick read, too. i recommend it. i think you'll enjoy it.





a definition of love:

"...because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means he loves me."

scott adams

if that name looks familiar to you, it should. scott adams is the
creator of dilbert. i put a link to his daily comic strip and also to
his blog in my links section. i understand if you don't think the
comic strip is that funny. i can imagine it's probably pretty hard to
be funny everyday in only 3 squares. but the blog is hilarious. if
you don't already read it daily, i strongly suggest you subscribe at
least to the blog immediately. did you know scott adams owns 2
restaurants in the bay area? they're in dublin and pleasanton, and
they're called stacey's at waterford and stacey's cafe, respectively,
and apparently he visits them once a week, so that probably means he
lives in the bay area, too. he says he's written some books, and so
i'm going to have to add at least one to my ever growing queue of
books to read.

Expert

What makes someone an expert? I think the term "expert" is thrown around pretty loosely at some places. Seems like if you know a smidgen more about something than... oh pretty much 0, then that makes you the expert. I guess, though, that to the person that knows nothing, the person that knows something, as little as it may be, might seem to be an expert. Sorta like how my 7th grade science teacher would say, the unexplainable is magic until you explain it. Then it becomes science.

So do you think that if you do anything for long enough, you'll pretty much become an expert at it? Like if you study a single topic in school for like 7 years, you know it pretty well, right? Well enough to put a PhD after your name and you're an expert. Or if you practice some musical instrument for 10 years, you'll probably get pretty good at it, and you could play it with expertise. Or if you hit golf balls for 15 years, you could probably hit a golf ball straight. So how many of us have been chasing that girl (or boy I guess to be fair) for year after year and no more an expert at getting them today than when we started?

LOST

Do you guys watch Lost? Back in December in Tahoe I watched a bunch of episodes and sorta got into it. I finished the rest of season 1 earlier this week. This show is freaking crazy!!! If you don't watch it, I strongly recommend you get the 1st season on dvd and watch it! The only thing is it makes me so mad at the end of each episode, because of course they always end each episode on a total cliffhanger... something really interesting happens or there's a huge twist in the plot, and then BOOM... episode is over, and you wanna watch the next episode right now, and so it makes you stand up and scream "F-you!" at the screen and stick your middle finger up at it.

Down With Denmark!

It seems like Muslims all over the world sure are getting their panties in a bunch over those dutch cartoons. So while Islam nation is protesting, rioting, and flinging poo at Denmark, I'm gonna take a moment here to get my cheap shots in, too. I don't think it's so much the cartoons that are the problem with the Dutch (have you seen them? I don't think they're even really that offensive, or funny. oh wait. except for the one about the virgins. That one is funny.) or even their utter incapacity to get a single medal yet in the Winter Olympics this year. The reason I hate them today is because they once again ensnared me in their evil, sinister trap: the dutch crunch bread. You may be familiar with this weapon of mass destruction if you've ever had a deli sandwich to order from any place that makes deli sandwiches besides Subway. It's appearance is quite inviting, and even the first few bites in you may think that the Dutch are your friends. It's only until you're maybe halfway through the sandwich that you realize the damage it's done to the roof of your mouth. Ugh! Sonofa...!!! so you try to do all sorts of silly things like chewing tenderly or eating the sandwich upside down, but it's too late. Your palate has been shredded up into a bloody mess and you've been sneak attacked one more time by those conniving Danes!

He must have been proud

Today I walked into the restroom and I saw this guy, let's call him
Pedro, washing his hands at the sink, and he was looking into the
mirror and smiling at himself.
"Hi Pedro."
He glances at me.
"Hey."
I walk past him and go farther into the restroom to take care of my
business, and my nose tells me that Pedro must have made a poopie.
Then I understood what that self-congratulatory smile in the mirror
was all about.

Sunny Side Up

When I was younger (as recent as high school) I hated when eggs were
not cooked all the way through. Sometimes my mom would give me a fried
egg, and the middle part of the yolk would still be a little runny, so
I would always leave that part. It would just always gross me out.
I'd always order eggs scrambled when eating out. Whenever I ordered
bibimbap, I would have to explain that I wanted my egg fully cooked.

Then sometime in college, I got a kimchi bokumbap, and there was an
egg on top, and it was sunny side up. The big shiny glob of uncooked
yolk stared back at me. I knew it wouldn't be possible to excise the
yolk without breaking the thin membrane holding it together and
spilling its runny contents all over my bokumbap. Should I just set
the whole egg aside? But I want egg. And where would I put it anyway?
There wasn't any room on the plate, and I can't just put a whole sunny
side egg on the table. Think about it. I guess I could have just
asked them to cook it for me, but I was hungry now. And a strange
feeling of "ah who cares" came over me. I popped it and mixed the rice
up really good so that I couldn't see any uncooked yolk. Also I think
I was hoping that the rice would somehow cook the egg if I spread it
out enough.

That day, I really enjoyed it. From then on, I made sure the egg on
my bokumbap was sunny side up. It's helped me be more adventurous.
I'll go w/ over-easy when getting those american breakfasts. It's
especially good with tons of ketchup and some sorta potato like
hashbrowns or those country potatoes and some english muffin or
country biscuit all mixed up together. mmm....

Help a Marshallese this weekend

I'm going to do some volunteer work to help out some people who are
building a diabetes clinic in the Marshall Islands. Read on if you
wanna help, too.

Canvasback (http://www.canvasback.org/mission/index.html) is building
a diabetes clinic out in the Marshall Islands. With the integration
of western civilization and the processed sugars and food added to
their diets, over half of the Marshallese over the age 50 have type 2
diabetes. Add that to the poor medical care and there are people
losing the sight and getting their limbs amputated all the time.

So Canvasback is building a diabetes clinic in Majuro, the capital of
the Marshall Islands. The goal is to treat diabetes through a
lifestyle intervention utilizing proper diet and exercise.

How can I help?

Date: February 12 (this coming Sunday)
Location: Benicia, CA (Near Vallejo)
Description: We are loading a 40 foot container with the medical,
office, and exercise equipment that we need to build the diabetes
clinic. This container is scheduled to be loaded on to a freight ship
and sent to the islands next week. So, we are trying to complete the
loading of the container by Sunday. We are looking for a few
volunteers who want to pitch in and help out without having to commit
to a month-long mission trip or a plane ticket or something like that.
It's local, and it's only one day!

Do I need to contact someone to inform them I'd like to help?
You can contact me (email, cellphone, or leave a comment), and I'll
relay the message on to my contact at Canvasback. We'll give you info
like exactly where to show up.

What time will it be? and for how long? what about lunch?

We will meet at 11am in Benicia, eat an early lunch (pizza provided)
and then start loading the container. We hope be to done before it
gets dark.

Do I need any special clothes/shoes?

Volunteers should wear work clothes. I would recommend an old
t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes.

I'm interested in other volunteer / mission work for this Marshall
Islands diabetes clinic. What other ways can I help?

There are a number of more commitment-heavy opportunities available,
both health and non-health professionals related. I have more info.
Let me know if you're interested.

It's like some kind of natural law

Like the tendency to move from order to disorder, or for tighter supply to command a higher price, or the number of transistors sqeezed onto a chip doubling every 18 months...

It's like when you see the perfect parking spot, right up close to the front, nearest to where you gotta go, but you can't get it because you were just a little later than the other guy who pulled into the parking lot a second before you... so you drive around until you finally find an open spot, waaaaay on the other side of the parking lot, but then when you walk all the way back to the front, you see another spot near the front has opened up.

It's like when it's almost time to go, so you start wrapping things up and getting ready to go home, and just then your boss comes by and can you just take care of this one last thing, and so you start everything back up do it as fast as you can and then rush down and run to the station and to the platform just in time to see the doors closing and your train leaving, and then you realize you just missed the last direct train and so you won't be getting home for another 2 hours or so and you start thinking about how hungry you are.

It's like when you finally get a chance to wash your car when it's been long overdue, and so you take a little extra time to get it really clean and then it rains the next day.

It's like when you been been holding out on buying that thing you want because it's too expensive and you just keep telling yourself you'll buy it when it goes on sale but it never does, so you finally just buy it and then later that week it goes on sale.

It's like that girl that sits alone you've been wanting to talk to but just not have had enough courage to approach but finally you wake up one day and you feel good and you know you can do it so you get all worked up and you see her that day but you find that some guy has swooped in and he's like totally all over her and she actually seems to be enjoying his attention.

Happens all the time. It's like that's the way the world works, and the sooner you realize it the sooner you'll stop feeling like punching yourself in the face so much.

Don't believe me? Think I'm a pessimist? A fatalist you say? Well, I'm not the only one that's observed this law. I was trying to look up the name of that law about transistors on a chip doubling every 18 months (turns out it's Moore's Law... I was guessing all these names that start with 'M') when I ran into Murphy's Law.

Groundhog Day

So today is Groundhog Day. I remember hearing about Groundhog day
ever since I was little, but think about it, isn't it like one of the
weirdest "holidays"? I didn't even think it made sense... if the
groundhog sees its shadow, doesn't it mean that the weather is nice,
and shouldn't that mean that days will get sunnier? and that if
there's no shadow, then the weather is crappy, so it wouldn't be
surprising if it was crappy for a while longer? It's all backwards!
And what kind of animal is scared of it's own shadow (or even notices
it) anyway? What does it do on all the other sunny days of the year?
So I read a little bit about Groundhog day on wikipedia (type wiki
groundhog day into firefox) and there's some pretty good information
there. Turns out it has pagan and Christian roots, just like
Christmas. I've never heard of Candlemas before, but it sounds like a
pretty ho-hum holiday. I'm not a huge fan of tamales or crepes, which
is what they eat in Mexico and France, respectively, to celebrate
Candlemas, but I do find it more interesting than groundhog, which is
a pretty weird looking animal, by the way. I thought they ate tamales
in Mexico and crepes in France everyday anyway, Groundhog day or
not... when they weren't eating eating burritos or snails, of course.
I like burritos.