links

i've got to update those suckers. hedonistica or is it hedonista needs to go up there. and birthdays and other blogs, some are off. and tao, since he changed his fucking blog address again. maybe i can just link to someone's page who keeps all of his or her links current.

happy birthday, mom!

i wished her well this morning at 7:30 am so it's really just me posting it late. and she doesn't read this, so why do i even bother?

cognition and articles

natalie's comment:

haha, you know i research cognition and articles, right? that's, like, a major part of what i work on in the lab. heehee.
whatever, some languages don't even have them, like chinese. you have to ADD a "this" or a "that" to get a "the-like" effect in Chinese. OR actually just use the "ba" structure, which presupposes that the item would be the english equiv of a DEFINITE article....Anyway, that's all pretty boring.

i think i vaguely remember someone mentioning something about that, but i could be making it up. anyways, that was impressive how you managed to say nothing USEFUL. i speak chinese, you bastard. tell me exactly how rohrbach's and my brains are different.

happy birthday, gabi!

way to go, slugger.

holy shit

i know what i just said, but, yeah. you definitely have to see this.

i think i saw swords. katanas, even.

LIGER and THELIGER

the liger is fucking awesome. google it. i don't provide links. this isn't that kind of blog.

i am now a fucking liger expert. afficianado, even. ask me about ligers, tigons, ti-ligers, li-ligers, ti-tigons, or li-tigons. i'm a little more shaky on the leopard hybrids.

my friend jon rohrbach and i started playing D&D Heroes for XBOX. it's like baldur's gate: dark alliance or champions of norrath, in the spirit of the gauntlet arcade games. i like it a lot. the incredible part is that rohrbach and i named our characters THELIGER and LIGER, respectively, without looking at each other's names or anything. i love how it's not quite the same, either; apparently rohrbach thinks with articles and i do not. austin, natalie, does that mean something?

in case anyone is wondering where the fuck all this liger talk came from, watch napoleon dynamite. i found it both funny and not annoying.

bbc

steiner routinely sends me links from work. they're pretty great. the last one, about clubbing seals, i promptly sent to catherine, and then she called me evil. she's so evil...

anyways, click this. you will not be disappointed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4486247.stm

what's the point?

at asia night, this girl sitting right behind me (so fucking ghetto) kept talking on her phone. and LOUDLY. not whispering by any means. people kept calling to ask her how to get there, i think. during the third call, after maybe 2 whole minutes, i finally turned around and asked, "why don't you go out in the hall if you need to have a conversation?" her friend said (in a fucking ghetto accent), "why don't you give her a second, ok? thanks." christ, what a hellish bitch. after i turned back around, the girl said into her phone, "i have to go, ok? people are fucking _yelling_ at me." i had to hold back the laughter. that's me, the asshole with the fucking nerve, the _audacity_, interrupting her important phone call just because some people who practiced for months for their few minutes onstage are performing now and i want to be able to hear them. i am such a jerk.

whenever i have to ask someone to stop talking during a movie (that happened at the magic johnson once or twice), or to get off the phone at a performance, i know going into it that i'm not going to get a reasonable response. if they were decent people, with manners and the like, i wouldn't have to address them in the first place. but it's no big deal. so it goes.

if something bothers me, i do something about it. otherwise, i don't let it bother me. simple. simple simple simple.

otherwise, what's the point?

asia night

apparently, i blog in bursts. when i start writing, i usually think of more to add, is all.

i went to the AASA asia night at UMass last night. the theme was revolution. lots of thoughts about asian americans and being asian american and being proud of my identity, but not taking it to extremes like everyone in that room. and hating all the thugged out ghetto fucking asians. oh, and it was odd being in that huge auditorium and thinking, i am smarter than everyone in here.

there were some sweet performances. hot girls - check. dancing - check. hot girls dancing - check. the japanese (taiko?) drumming and the break dancing were my favorites. too much of the foreign language love songs for my taste, though.

i think it's easier to pretend other people's blogs do not exist. otherwise there's too much to respond to. especially when everyone feels the need to comment on other blogs' contents.

i will say, guys will stare at an attractive woman. guys will stare harder at an attractive woman in provocative clothing. deal with it. it doesn't mean shit. no one can defile someone else with his or her eyes. and if i had to choose, i would much rather be stared at than ignored.

halflife

i read friend's blogs, and i am struck by how disconnected i feel from most of these people. there's a definite lack of jointedness. like i don't even know them, or maybe i never did at all. everything's falling apart.

i have a couple friendships, all from high school, that'll stick no matter what. i could not talk to the guy for years, and then call him up one day and say let's hang out. i feel like most of the friends i made in college decay without active effort on both our parts. i could be wrong though.

comments

should i respond to comments here? or in the actual comment?

pooja - sai was not in this country when i came to visit. you were across central park. not the same.

nat - thanks for the comments. they're nice. when i said something that works on them, i meant in terms of them understanding the lesson, as opposed to keeping them in line. interestingly, if they understand how to do the classwork, they actually do it, and then i don't have to worry about discipline as much. so one follows the other. i wrote out these "cheat sheets" - for example, if you need to find the area of a circle, and you know diameter, you write the diameter in the d column, divide by 2 to get to the r column, multiply it by itself to get to the r squared column, and then multiply by pi to get to the Area column, and you're done. the problem is i'm afraid it's a bigass crutch, because now they know exactly how to get from one clearly marked variable to another, but the word problems or anything remotely fuzzy fuck them up.

austin, they weren't pokemon cards. no one plays that anymore i think, sadly. i still have a shitload of mewtwos. it seems yu-gi-oh is the most popular, for some sad sad reason.

movies i've seen lately

sin city - awesome. it delivered everything i've ever desired in a movie, and then some. i remember falling in love with true romance as soon as christian slater shot the pimp in the nuts. in sin city, i think i'd need more than 2 hands to count the number of men that were either shot, stabbed, slashed, or yanked off, in the crotch. plus, seeing the hot mom from spy kidsstrolling around in a thong was nice.

freeway - awesome. surprisingly awesome. i would never, ever fuck with reese witherspoon after seeing this movie. her character is amazing. she has her own moral code that definitely disagrees with the law at times, but it makes sense.

rules of attraction - don has said multiple times that this movie has absolutely no value in any possible category. it's the most soulless and empty film he's ever seen. that being said, it's based on a novel written by bret easton ellis, and it's about patrick bateman's younger brother at camden college. i figured it was worth the 5.99 for the dvd, compared to renting it. i was wrong. if someone wants this movie, please, take it. i'll pay for the shipping.

end 0f days - i thought it was cool. the completely gratuitous nipple shot of the businessman's wife, and robin tunney taking off her shirt before showering, i appreciated. gabriel byrne was a convincing satan, and it was interesting to see arnold a) act and b) get the shit beaten out of him.

ivy-ism

last night, ivy was demanding a piggy bank ride. i'd say that's pretty high on the cute scale.

name envy

there is a student at my school named "Malachi Slaughter."