Sunday, August 28, 2005

Crazy going slowly am I

Ever feel like just going crazy? Just because?

I feel like running down the street, greeting people with "Porkchop" and asking them, "Have your fingers ever tasted a cylindrical song that is quite tightly yellow?"

I imagine some people may look at me funny, or try not to look at me at all. While others would ask what is wrong with me.

To which I would reply, "Fish"

Then may then proceed to point at various things that my eye stumbles upon and rename their colours with words like "blellow", "grink", and "foosball".

I imagine that I would be quite fond of the colour, "foosball".

Foosball. Ever say a word so much that it loses meaning? Foosball. Foooooooosball.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Inner Monologue Exposé!

Sometimes people ask me what's on my mind. I usually reply with a "nothing, really" or a "don't worry about it."

Here are a few thoughts that passed through my head this last week:

Watching TV:

I hate Tweety Bird. I hate Tweety Bird with a passion and the only reason I watched Looney Toons as a child was for the small glimmer of a dream that Sylvester would finally get his paws on Tweety and him shut up for good.

On the road:
If I swerve off the road... would that shut him up? No, his bitching would probably just get worse.

Unless it's such a fantastic collision that at least one of us bites it. Then either he won't be able to talk or I won't be able to listen!

Genius!

Wait a minute... what if we both bite it and I end up listening to him for all eternity?

...

Better not risk it.

Over dinner:
I wonder if jamming this chopstick in my ear would be too subtle of a hint.

Over another dinner:
Don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, don't stare at her breasts...

...

Okay, just a quick peek...

Rollerblading the seawall:
If I were a piece of wood, what kind of wood would I be?

Moving day:
[Rocking out to various songs in my head]

Is someone getting the best,
the best, the best, the best of you
(Best of You - Foo Fighters)

Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales
and we stare at the beautiful women
She's looking at you...
Oh no no she looking at me

(Mr Jones - Counting Crows)


Dream on, Dream on, Dream on, Dream on,
Dream on, Dream on, Dream on, AAAHHHHHhhhHhhHHhhHhh!
(Dream On - Aerosmith)


At work:
...
...
...

I'm really not that bright or interesting.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Double Entendres of Ordered Randomness

I'm
missing the point? yeah, that happens.
Something has changed and Not for the better,
maybe
it's Nothing but
you should always read between the lines.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Water balloon mayhem

Control yourself people. I almost ruined a perfectly good pink shirt!

You heard me, PINK!

Float like a butterfly...

On Friday, I attended the free open-air VSO concert at Deer Lake with Najin. Good performance, although being an open-air concert, everything was played through speakers, which really can't compare to hearing an orchestra perform in an acoustically designed hall.

Of note (because these were the only ones I recognized) were their renditions of some Tchaikovsky pieces and a selection from Carmen.

Also, 16 year old Christopher Lee from Korea performed a clarinet solo punctuated by lots of bobbing-shadow-boxing-type movements. Just when you thought he'd stop... he'd bob again. Hehe, "bob". Took a video of it, I'll see if I get around to posting it later. All kidding aside, though, he was really very good.

And as a warning to you all, resist the temptation of "fresh cut french fries". They really aren't as good as they sound. Sure, I finished off one and a half large trays of them... but remember who's talking. That itself doesn't say much.

[Rant] Break a fu.cking leg

You know what annoys me? People who say "good luck" annoy me.

Not only is it cliche and shows no imagination and very little effort on part of the person saying it, but it also implies that if you should succeed or do well then it is a result of chance, not merit.

Whenever I hear, "good luck," I assume the stipend of, "you'll need it". The implication is that your abilities either aren't up to par or your abilities don't matter. With the former, it's just an insult. With the latter, your success or failure is a function of luck or fate and not any thing particular that you did. And as you may know, I am a firm disbeliever in fate.

So what do I suggest as an alternative to "good luck"? How about "go kick some ass".

Have an important game or test coming up? Go kick some ass!

Have an interview tomorrow? Go kick some ass!

Hitting up a girl at the bar? Go kick some ass!

Trying to train a stubborn donkey? Go kick some ass!

Go kick some ass!

Or for something a little more civilized, an "I hope you do well" would suffice. Sure, you can read some implications in that phrase as well (lack of understanding of the person's skills or situation, hope => pray => you need some outside help) but I think it's an improvement over "good luck".

Or how about "You can DO IT!"

That works too.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

You're not "special"!

So I've been using my PocketPC (Dell Axim X3) pretty religiously for the last 4 months, keeping track of appointments, contacts, and whatnot. Well, for the last 4 months minus three days. Three days that my axim lay sitting on top of my desk... not plugged in.

And for the third time in a year (you'd think I'd learn) my axim ran out of battery power and I LOST ALL MY DATA!

Running out of battery power I can understand. Designing a device that stores information in volatile RAM when it's a mobile device that most assuredly won't have continual access to an external power supply is one of the most retarded ideas I can think of.

That's right, not "special". Just retarded.

Yes, I have a working, up-to-date backup of my data, but spending the time and effort to roll out the data is more than I'm willing to take. When I was backpacking through Europe, there were a few near scares when I had to sneak quick charges at trainstations for fear of losing my data. Well, no more I can tell you that.

Pen and paper. That's the shit.

(Anybody out there interested in a Dell Axim X3? Despite my glowing review, it's actually pretty cool and useful! Really!)

Thursday, August 11, 2005

The Beautiful Country (Movie Impressions)

'The Beautiful Country' promotional poster
I saw The Beautiful Country yesterday at Tinseltown (which, by the way... on second thought, I'll save this rant for another day).

It follows the story of Binh (Damien Nguyen), child of a Vietnamese mother and an American GI, as he searches for his mother, and then for a life in America. And while some loose threads are unresolved by the end, the final scene is very satisfying.

I did, however, have 2 problems with the movie.

Being Vietnamese myself, I understood most of the Vietnamese dialog and can say with some authority that the subtitling was terrible. If it was only couple lines here and there I would have forgiven it, but for the majority of the first act, Vietnamese was the only language spoken. I understand that translations are inherently difficult, especially going from languages that are completely unrelated. Differing idioms, sentence structure, and wordplay wreak havoc when trying to do a translation true to the original. Often what you end up with is something that is either all too literal to the meanings of individual words, or something that has taken a few liberties to try and maintain the spirit and convey the same meaning of the original work. What we had in The Beautiful Country was neither.

Most all lines were streamlined and simplified to 2 or 3 word sentences. Some lines took a lot of strayed so far from the actual spoken words that I had to scratch my head. And other lines weren't subtitled at all.

I've heard of bad dubbing/translations before, but what I don't understand is how this could happen when the people credited with the writing and directed are all Caucasion.

The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that the writers had some brief notes that were given to a Vietnamese dialog specialist to flesh out, and through miscommunication or time/budgetary concerns, those brief notes ended up being used as the subtitles.

The other problem I had was with a certain plot element. What kind of crazy ship sails from Malasia to New York, fricken New York. Instead of going across the Pacific to some sane destination like Los Angelos, let's take the scenic route below Africa and across the Atlantic. If the writers really wanted to have Binh in New York (although the story didn't really need New York. Any major metropolitan city in America would have sufficed), have the boat land on a Pacific Rim dock and then have the slave trucks drive him over.

Okay, maybe a third problem is that I don't understand people's fascination with China-Doll type women. Don't understand it, probably never will.

Other than these two (and a half) points, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. A friend said it was too slow paced, but I thought the pacing was fine. It's a drama, not a popcorn-action flick. Be glad it wasn't Dragonball Z proportions of epic sucky pacing.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Global W(Arr!)ming...

Recently found a link to hilarious satirical open letter to the kansas school board that advocates teaching the FSM (Flying Spagetti Monster) theory of ID (Intelligent Design) alongside evolution and other ID theories in schools.

Now I'm not going to get into the debate of the merits of ID as a scientific theory to be taught in schools, but rather I'd like to focus on another issue that was touched on in this open letter.

The trend of global warming is inversely related to the number of pirates!



You know what this means, the pirates have been losing ground over hundreds of years to their mortal enemies... the ninja.

For the sake of the world... for the sake of the children, we need more pirates. And we need them now.

Arr, matey!

VS

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Patterns in life

Looking over my SFU transcript, and alarming pattern emerged.

Every year, my marks would peak in the Summer semester before taking a drastic fall in the Fall semester.

Every.
Single.
Year.

I even made a chart to illustrate the point:


Okay, so 2004 doesn't follow the pattern exactly since summer semester isn't the highest that year, but that was the only semester that I only took one course, so let's consider it an anomaly. But the Fall semester is still my worst GPA wise.

Delving back, summer-time is when I had lots of distractions from my school work, and fall semester was always the semester I promised myself that I'd crack down and get serious about school.

So what have I learned from this? Don't try so hard. I do my best when I'm not trying. It's when I try my best that everything goes in the crapper. Best intentions and all that jazz?

In other words, motivated underachievement works!

(or it could be related to taking on a larger workload and more intensive courses during the Fall. Who really knows...)