An honest to God beaver shot on every page!
| 2003/05/22 | |
| 21:48 | Link |
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For those man enough to wear a dress Scottish Spring soap. Courtesy of Galgeron. | |
| 15:33 | Link |
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Destroying your childhood piece by piece WARNING: Neither of the following links are work safe. The first is out because of an excessive amount of flesh (albeit male), and the second is out due to lewd language and graphics. I first heard of Albino Black Sheep when my sister sent me the link for Yatta! (Happatai, the Greenleaves guys). Now, there's another sample to be enjoyed. It's rude, it's lewd, it features everyone's favourite blue, three-apple-tall, wood sprites, and copious references to tongues and asses. | |
| 2003/05/21 | |
| 08:34 | Link |
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Amber Forever This has nothing to do with the roleplaying game. It's got everything to do with a fictitious fourteen year-old girl in California and her online misadventures. Textually not work-safe. Graphically, it's fine. | |
| 07:58 | Link |
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Fries don't burn people. People burn people. I'm really not sure what to say about this, yet, but someone that chases and attacks a four year-old boy with french fries is not in her right mind. If it's the only mind she has, it shouldn't be allowed to continue loose in the wild. | |
| 07:56 | Link |
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Glad I don't have kids... Everything you need to dress your kids up as a pimp daddy and his hos. Funny how the pimp daddy suit makes me think of Steven Tyler... | |
| 2003/05/14 | |
| 17:47 | Link |
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Myopic Ignorant Fools This sounds like a perfectly reasonably written article, doesn't it? Well, subject matter being that of a gossip column aside: Kiddies, did mother not tell you last week that Divine Miss M just signed to do "The Stepford Wives" with Nicole Kidman and Glenn Close which Frank Oz is directing?It's really too bad that what was actually printed in the New York Post on Monday, 12 May, 2003, was the following: Kiddies, did mother not tell you last week that Divine Miss M just signed to do "The Stepford Wives" with Nicole Kidman and Glenn Close which Frank Oz is directing?Emphasis is mine. Years ago, in college, I had two buckets representing the reasonable and rational people in the US in one and the ignorant, close-minded, and incorrigible in the other. Most of the time, I like to think that the first bucket is fuller by far, but in the years since, I keep wondering if I shouldn't be moving more of the pieces from the first bucket and dropping them into the second. And if nothing else fails, I'll lambast Cindy Adams for her lack of journalistic professionalism. Even if it is just a gossip column. | |
| 2003/05/12 | |
| 12:20 | Link |
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You're In Control Coming soon to a bar near you, a new game called You're In Control. Alas, the ladies may be a little out of luck on this one, if they want to play. You see... the game interface is a urinal. Courtesy of #!/usr/bin/girl. | |
| 11:38 | Link |
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The Waiting Game The worst part about knowing that you'll hear about a decision "by the end of the day" is that you have to somehow find a way to pass the time without obsessing about the result or when you will hear of it. Went for a third round interview today; it's the same job that I've been interviewing for these past two weeks. Field has been narrowed down to two. This is my personal American Idol final. I want this job. In other news, Ottawa beat New Jersey in the Eastern Conference finals over the weekend. Kickass. Three more wins to go. Oh, and for all you right wing ice cream fans: Star Spangled Ice Cream. | |
| 2003/05/09 | |
| 09:57 | Link |
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Ye Olde Hokey Pokey It's not exactly in sonnet format, but it's pretty close and pretty funny. Courtesy of William Gibson. | |
| 2003/05/06 | |
| 22:30 | Link |
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Bowling for Soup It's like a bad movie. She is looking through me. If you were me, then you'd be Screaming, "Someone shoot me!" As I fail miserably Trying to get the girl all the bad guys want. | |
| 14:18 | Link |
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Bon Voyage The TIE Book, she's gone to Houston. In English, I took my laptop in to the shop again today, with the full expectation that it would be shipped to "depot" (Apple service center) where it would be fixed. The problem? My screen if hosed. Well, it's not severely hosed, but it has a persistent vertical line on the right side and an intermittent vertical line on the left side. Fortunately, my laptop is still covered by the 90-day warranty from the last time it was sent away, when it was shipped to and from "depot" three times and had its motherboard replaced thrice, processor once, hard drive once, and had its memory ripped out. Sometimes I wonder how much of her original soul is still left. In the meantime, I'll have to fire up the old W98 PC again and transplant my life to it until the laptop comes back. Talk about loving the one you're with... In other news, I did a second round interview for a Network Engineer position today and I thought it went well. They said they'd be ruminating over the candidates tomorrow--there are two, aside from myself--and render a decision by the end of the week. Good vibes, prayers, or other positive action of your choice on my behalf is appreciated. Now, I think I'm going to settle my nerves with some sushi. Mmmm... raw fish... | |
| 2003/05/03 | |
| 15:33 | Link |
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Nature runs its course No matter how much concrete or reinforcement you put in, eventually, you have to admit that Nature will run its course, even if it means that your State symbol collapses in a heap of rubble. Gone is New Hampshire's "Old Man of the Mountain" that is featured prominently on its quarter. Courtesy of The Ghoul. | |
| 00:42 | Link |
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"Nice chest insignia." Pickup Lines for Superheroes, because you always wanted to be able to say "I like to spend my nights fighting crime. And you being alone is such a crime." | |
| 2003/05/02 | |
| 16:11 | Link |
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Crashing IE <html> <form> <head> </head> <input type crash> </form> </html> | |
| 14:33 | Link |
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"Ian, you made everybody cry." As I write this, I find myself 33,000 feet in the air and tired beyond belief after four consecutive nights of barely any sleep and a couple of early morning airport delivery runs, yet feeling too energized to attain blissful unconsciousness. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind, and even as I say this, it feels like a horrible cliche, but I can't find a better way to describe it. For those of you who didn't know, I've been in Southern California for the past two weeks to attend the wedding of two of my best friends from college, Soo Sun Choe and Henry Lee. Celebrating the many cultures represented by the bride and groom, three ceremonies were held, starting with a private Quaker ceremony in the morning. Unlike the traditional treatments of officiants, brides, grooms, and vows, the Quaker ceremony was a shocking change. with a strong focus was on meditation, sharing, and the participation of all in attendance. The ceremony was held in a bright and sunny room at the Santa Monica Meeting of Friends and it would have been hard indeed to not feel joyful with all the sunlight that graced us. In the tradition of the Quakers, it wasn't the officiant marrying the bride and groom for us, but the bride and groom marrying themselves with the attendees, right down to the guests signing the marriage certificate at the end. Further emphasizing the guests as participants and not mere observers, there was a period of sharing and testimonials following the vows--including a tear-jerking vow from Henry, choked with emotion from a usually stoic demeanor--and exchange of rings. For what was supposed to be half an hour, but felt like it was allowed to run well over the time allotted, guests were invited and encouraged to stand and speak their mind about the bride and groom. Oh, how those stories from family and friends painted a picture! Instead of having your own little window into their lives, you suddenly had the richness of everyone's experience. From that of their parents and relatives, talking about how their youthful thirst for learning had begun such early experiments as the rotting of bananas in relation to temperature, through the college years and on to more recent friends who tell of the impact their activism has had in their lives. It was incredibly touching, to say the least, for it brought me to tears several times. The early afternoon was probably the most typical of any wedding. There were refreshments, mingling, and the requisite photography. This soon moved into the locals' favourite game: Freeway Free-For-All. Traffic is an evil beast and, while the early guests were able to get up to the ranch in slightly less than ideal times of a little over an hour, the beast would rear its ugly head and really bite hard later. The lions arrived late... About an hour late. Let me back up a little and explain. The bride and groom represent three ethnicities. The groom is Chinese. The bride is both Korean and White; I'd guess the White heritage to trace back to English, but that's just a guess on my part. This is significant because the entire day was split into three ceremonies, as mentioned earlier. The second and third ceremonies were tied together, beginning with the Korean and flowing right into the Chinese. Although the Korean elements (a drumming group) were in place relatively on time, the lions for the Chinese portion of the ceremony were caught up in traffic from Monterey Park that made them an hour late in arriving. What should have been a 4:30 start ended up being closer to 5:30. As the joke goes, it's Korean/Chinese Time. Where the Quaker ceremony was remarkable for it's informality and departure from the traditional, the Korean and Chinese ceremonies were definitely traditional in their respective senses, but departures from the norm from a Western perspective. Honestly, I didn't have that much time to appreciate the cultural differences. I was a little busy, you see. For the Korean ceremony, I was asked to carry ducks. When I first heard this, I thought to myself, "Ducks. Okay." I had thought that I would be helping with carry the palanquin--"borrowed" from a restaurant from Koreatown--as I had been asked originally. My friend, Drew, was going to be one of four carrying the palanquin. I thought that would have been fun. It wasn't until the first of two rehearsals that I discovered the significance of being asked to carry ducks. The Korean ceremony was narrated, and in that narration, I discovered that the wooden ducks I carried represented the bride and groom. I would be carrying these symbols of luck with me as I escorted the groom to the base of the aisle, where I would then give him the ducks and say a few words that were analogous to the words of advice a father of the bride would give to the groom in a Western wedding. I'd been elevated to "best man" without knowing it. These were the words that I gave Henry before he walked up the aisle: "In a few moments, a very special woman will be following you up this aisle. Cherish her, love her, and we'll see if we still fit in these hanboks in fifty years." A hanbok, is a form of Korean formal wear. The rest of the Korean ceremony went by in a flash, complete with lots of traditional drumming, which really lent a surreal atmosphere to the entire affair as it was outside in the late afternoon and the ceremony was such a departure from what most of us with Western upbringings would expect. With the conclusion of the Korean ceremony, which involved the new husband carrying the new bride off on his back, the Korean drummers launched into a celebratory show. This would end in a tradeoff from the Korean drummers to the Chinese drummer that would take over for the Chinese tea ceremony. I didn't see any of this. As the Korean drummers kicked into their routine, Drew and I raced back to the cabana to change, as did Henry and Soo Sun. We all had different costumes to wear for the next ceremony. The Chinese tea ceremony was very subdued and not nearly as elaborate as the Korean ceremony had been. Where there had been all sorts of different drink pourings and tradings in the Korean ceremony, the Chinese ceremony was very simple: a cup of tea is poured for each of the bride and groom and offered to each elder relative and, in turn, the relatives give advice and "lucky money" (those ubiquitous red envelopes). For Henry and Soo Sun, it was about eighteen or twenty cups of tea. Then it was time for the much awaited lions to descend on the newly married couple to bless them with good fortune. The lion dancing troupe that performed at the ceremony was the same that performed in Rush Hour and The Replacement Killers and their leader, Jeff Chang, is a very affable guy whom I had the pleasure to meet earlier in the week during the group's rehearsal in Monterey Park. It is an awesome group and they did not disappoint with two active lions and even one with a little kid that was absolutely adorable. They played with the crowd. They played with the bride and groom. They were a sight to see. In the end, the lions led everyone over to the reception area, where a buffet style dinner was served with open seating, allowing people to easily trade seats and mingle or clump together in their personal groups as they felt comfortable. Not great for intentional attempts at matchmaking on the part of the wedding planners, but who's keeping score? Continuing with the theme of participation from the Quaker ceremony, the evening's festivities had the usual first dance and groom/mom and bride/father dance, but then quickly turned to the different. There were dedications to the new couple from two Korean singing groups comprised of many of their friends, a poetry reading from friends from the Bus Riders Union, and a fabulous slide show made from pictures of the new couple spanning their entire lives. The mike was then made open and, as before, people came up to speak their minds to the new couple and everyone gathered about. It wasn't as intimate as the sharing in the Quaker ceremony, but it was fun to listen from the perspectives of more people. The rest of the night was filled with dancing and reminiscing, until it was time to leave. It's at this point that I like to think of the ending of the wedding day as what followed was a little bit of a trial. On the other hand, I think it's a testament to the bonds of friendship of everyone who pitched in to help when it was discovered that some of the hired help had shirked their duties and left, leaving trash that had to be cleared away before the night was out. Some of us stayed through until 2 a.m. restoring the ranch to a cleanliness, but in the end, it only reinforced how special the day had been. If I had only one moment to remember from this entire experience, I could select it without any hesitation: there was a moment, just after I had delivered my testimony to Soo Sun and Henry in the Quaker wedding, where the only sounds that broke the silence were the sniffles of the guests, when the full force emotion in what I had said truly hit me. And I am eternally grateful that I had the chance to express how I felt about the two wondrous people with their hands clasped together in the spotlight. Long life and prosperity in all your endeavours, Soo Sun and Henry. You are a tremendous blessing to this Earth. | |
| 2003/05/01 | |
| 21:21 | Link |
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Stupid Line I have a feeling I'm going to have to surrender the laptop again for a bit. When I got it back in March, there was an intermittent problem with a pale magenta line one pixel wide that would appear vertically on teh screen about 7/32 of the way from the right edge. It's no longer intermittent. It's no longer consistently pale magenta. It's no longer consistently one pixel wide. Better get this back to the shop before the 90-day warranty on the repair is up. | |
| 20:06 | Link |
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Severely Up and Down Day I'm not going to say much at the moment, but I'm pissed off. Pissed off, because I have to deal with medical insurance. Nothing is consistent. The billed charges aren't consistent. The claims resolutions are consistent. And most of all, the part where I have to pay money in the order of four times what I expected to have to pay is inconsistent. On the flip side, though, I found out that I made the second round of interviews for a position I interviewed for yesterday. Go me. And it looks like Tammy's free for lunch next Monday, so that's cool. (More on Tammy when I finish banging out the post about the wedding this past weekend, but I'm not in the best of moods to do that right now.) | |
