Tuesday, June 29
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A few quick thoughts
[journal] I was watching cops the other day, and they tricked prostitutes by offering them money for sex. I always thought entrapment was illegal? Then I thought why is making a porno legal but prostitution (or solicitation) illegal? Aren't both making money from sex from strangers? Because money and the stranger aspect was the point of them arresting the prostitutes. They asked, "Did he offer you money?" and "Have you ever met this guy before?" After they got two yes then they made the arrest.
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Sunday, June 27
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Retirement
[journal]This will be my last post for awhile. I'm going into video game hibernation. I finally got into the world of warcraft beta, so my life will be devoted to that game and also catching up with lost relationships because of the masters program.
The last tidbit about myself is that I'm going to shave off my goatee tommorrow. My sister said it really sucked, and my dad said I looked like the guy from scooby-doo. I have no choice but to clip off the few hairs I have on my chin. I really wanted to look older too!
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Wednesday, June 23
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Buffalo Wings
[journal] I left for Buffalo to experience their famous Buffalo wings with my sister Karen and friend Tommy.
On the way we passed the polluted industrial section of Hamilton. Karen shouted how all the stacks were on fire:
I was afraid to cross the border because Tommy is well known for his trouble at the border. He was born in Indonesia and that somehow profiles him as a high risk terrorist. Last time, after he told them where he was born, they told him and Kevin to step out of the car, take off their shoes, and then park their car to the side while they did a 20 minute search, all the while they were forbidden to speak. We got through fine this time.
After, when we got near my school we saw a wonderful man in an empty parking lot during mid day batoning. He was so focused and oblvious to everything else that I'm convinced perhaps, maybe, quite possibly he was training for the olympics:
We were about to drive to The Anchor Bar, the actual home of the original Buffalo wings, when we got inside information from a Buffalo resident informing us how although they do have good wings and they are the home of the original, they have lost their title of best wings to Gabriel's Gate. I already had eaten at Anchor bar so I decided to try Gabriel's Gate. Along the way we saw a man on a motorized wheelchair weaving to and fro in the middle of the road. I tried very carefully to avoid hitting him. He, on the other hand, didn't seem like he minded either way:
When we got to Gabriel's I was quite impressed. The decor had an authentic woodsy feel to it, and it looked well kept. The Anchor Bar on the other hand was in a sketchy part of town, so sketchy in fact that their surrounding fence had 3 layers of barbed wire. The one scary thing about Gabriel's was how they had stuffed animal heads everywhere. Their masterpiece was a giant buffalo head:
Tommy started pigging out:
The wings were very good but in a different way than Anchor Bar. I thought the size and sauce for both were equal, but Anchor Bar had better tasting skin (more crunchy and bbq smoked tasting) and Gabriel's had better tasting meat (more tender and fresh tasting). They both were the best wings I had tasted and it really depended on what whether you value skin or meat more. I would suggest Anchor Bar if you could only go once to Buffalo because then you could say you ate at the original source.
After eating so much Tommy fell asleep and broke his neck:
Haha just kidding. He just likes to get real comfortable with his legs up and all and we like to take advantage by taking pictures:
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Monday, June 21
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Sick
[journal]I've been sick and still am sick. Pretty much everything you can think of I've had. Last night was the worst. Last night my head was pounding. I couldn't breath out my nose. My teeth ached. I was sweating profusely, like my tshirt was damp. I also nearly coughed my organs out and my nose dripped snot. Today All of that is still here except at a much lower, more bearable level. I got worse in other ways today, however. I have a stomach ache and I have diarrhea. Sounds pretty nice eh?
For fun I went to a site where I could swap my gmail invites for things and I gave out 3 gmail invites. In return I have the possibility of a school in Calironia named after me, a full numerology reading of my entire name done by an expert, and a fake picture of a girl claiming it is really her and not a porn star. Here is the site: gmailswap
ps I was so close to owning someone's soul when the moderators took it off the board! |
Wednesday, June 16
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Another year
[journal]
I'm 25. I know this is sort of old, but I'm ambivalent. 25 seems like such an important number so I'd thought I'd write something about it, yet nothing comes to mind. Well, good thing I have a sister, because she wanted to write something to me. PS The pictures are of her taking me out to eat at the Keg mansion. It was pretty cool because we actually ate in someone's house at one time. A very large house, or in other words, a mansion.
Here's your birthday message:
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you..
Happy Bir-th-day dear Jo-ooooe,
Happy Birthday to you....
To one of the best people out there. I'm glad you're my brother cuz I'd go crazy without you. I never quite say it enough, but I love you to death. You're another year older kid, but I still love you even though you're a year closer to death...
-k |
Tuesday, June 15
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Brutus
[journal]
This is Brutus along with his two sidekicks that make life miserable for poor Tim Triangle.
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Monday, June 14
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Mr. Mumzies
[journal]
This is the school's ignorant principal Mr. Mumzies. He awards squares for being squares and never recognizes any achievements made by triangles. He's quite a one-dimensional character that institutionalizes inequity to triangles.
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Sunday, June 13
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Mr. Rivers
[journal]
I've been working on the comic strip like a mad man. My photoshop skills are getting a lot better with every strip I work on. In fact, that strip I put up the other day is now in the trash because it looks so sloppy. Instead of posting up all the strips one by one, I've decided to write about each of the characters in the strip. Today I'm posting about Mr. Rivers.
Mr. Rivers is the English teacher at the school. He is actually a triangle, but is so in the closet that he would rather wear a cut-out box to hide the fact that he's a triangle. In class he avoids talking about the issue of triangles even though Tim is constantly putting up his hand to ask questions. Eventually, I want Rivers to come out of the triangle closet and that will have a profound effect on Tim.
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Friday, June 11
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The Life and Misery of Tim Triangle
[journal]
As I've mentioned, I've been slaving on my Masters and researching about the issues confronting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students in public school. For the past month I've read over 80 research articles and wrote half of my proposal paper, which is at 35 pages so far. The second month of the program includes an activity that makes you produce some sort of social change, an application to the real world. Some people did webpages that act as informational sites; others have done games or curriculum guidelines, pamphlets or picture books. I've decided to do a comic strip. My story is about Tim Triangle, a triangle going to a school full of squares. He has to succeed in an environment that rewards you if you're a square and ignores and demeans you, if you're a triangle. It'll also feature Brutus, the meanest reddest square bully that is often the root of Tim's misery. Then there's the well meaning but ignorant principal, Mr. Mumzies. There's also going to be a Triangle teacher, Mr. Rivers, who tries to look like a square by wearing a cardboard box to look like a square. He's going to represent all the in the closet teachers in the world that could act as possible role models, but hide in shame. What I'll do is when I get a lot finish I'll post the strips up on the site little by little. I'm really excited about this work, and it actually does not feel like work. I intend to put a lot of effort in it, and maybe if it's good enough I'll send it to GLBT organizations like GLSEN to hopefully promote GLBT issues. UPDATE: Here's my first strip! Hopefully with many more to come.  |
Wednesday, June 9
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You Got Viet
[link]My friend Kevin sent me a link to a site that had Vietnamese rap. If you're interested you can go HERE and click on videos. It's the left one called "You Got Beef." The music video portrayed young Vietnamese gangsters proudly exclaiming Vietnamese people are infamously known as killers and drug dealers. Woot! Awesome! Killers and drug dealers. I'm so darn proud of that. I hope my kids grow up to be killers and drug dealers. They all had typical triad orange hair, a slight FOB accent, and Hondas. I started making fun of the video and the people in it when my friend said to me, "Joe, these are you're own people. You shouldn't say that." I don't know what it is about me that causes me to dislike my own kind so much. I often rationalized to myself that I don't hate my own kind. I love my sister and she's Vietnamese. My best friend is also. And it's not like I dislike all vietnamese people, just 98% or so. I dislike a certain type of personality that somehow often shows up as the Vietnamese race. I don't like how they are so stingy (but maybe it's because in Vietnam, money is so hard to come by). I don't like how they are so sneaky (but maybe you had to lie and cheat to survive). I don't like how they are so unfashionable (I would assume fashion is the least of their worries in Vietnam). I don't like how they are so cliquey (maybe they feel more comfortable with someone who speaks their language or has a common culture). Are people products of their environment then? But for the most part, diversity exists everywhere, including between people in the same enivronment. I'm getting better now though. I even find some Vietnamese people attractive (don't get me started on how Vietnamese people are so ugly). But I think it will take a lot of chance meetings with a lot of cool Vietnamese people before I change my mind. |
Saturday, June 5
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World of Embarrassment
[link] If you know me well, you know that I've been waiting for World of Warcraft, a computer game, to come out for a very long time. This past week, Blizzard, the game company, has allowed many contests to come out to be part of their beta testing. I entered a few myself, but do not expect to win. One of the funniest contest was a singing one. There were some pretty awful contributions on par with American Idol calibre of horrible. My three favourites are: KandiGirl (a take on River dance), Brutusford (he does the Orc peon voice), and Asterr (A Monty Python variation).
There is even a KandiGirl music video already here. Man, people are both nerdy and obsessed! They gave me a much needed belly laugh.
UPDATE: Okay, I guess those ones were only funny if you know about the video game. My sister liked this HERE the most. |
Friday, June 4
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Bears --- oh my!
[journal]
Every month Google compiles all of it's searches and presents a list of its most popular searches around the world. I think it is a poignant look at society, because it illustrates what people are interested in and want to know more about. They call it the Google zeitgeist and can be found HERE. The one thing that interested me a lot was how the number one animal searched was not dog or cat (which got 2nd and third place respectively) but bears. I had no idea that bears were so popular! |
Thursday, June 3
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Buy Love for only $99.99!
[commentary]
I was reading a newspaper article discussing online web matchmaking. People are willing to pay 50 dollars a month for sites eHarmony.com and 25 for match.com. In fact, match.com has over 1 million registered users and at 25 dollars a month that works out to 25 million a month before expenses (and I don't think websites cost very much to run). That got me thinking of how I would solve the world's problem of lonely single people wanting to meet up with others and decided that the two biggest barriers facing single people are knowing who's available and the fear of a rejection. I believe I have come up with a viable solution for only a one time payment of $99.99 that solves both of those problems. With the advancement of technology going at the rate it is, it will only take a few more years for wireless connection to be mainstream affordable. I think this fact makes what I am about to pitch a viable solution to love-searching individuals. It is a handheld device that holds a profile of you. You can either upload your picture and info at the store you buy it from, with the software included, or on the Internet. After that, be prepared to meet some major hunks and honeys. With the wireless connection, when you enter --- let's say --- 300 meters of another user with a similar device, their profile gets beamed to you. You'll see something similar to the picture above. Now all you do is simply click yes, no, or maybe. A maybe will save the other user into your database and effectively allows you to postpone a decision. A no would block that user's profile from ever showing up on your device again. A yes will possibly send a message to the other user. Now, I say possibly because a yes message will only send if both users have selected yes, otherwise, no messages will be sent. This message can be anything from a phone number, to an email address, to a short text message. What this just effectively did was save the user from the embarrassment of a rejection. If the other person put no, they will never receive your yes message. For all they know, you could have put "no" also or "maybe" or never even received their profile at all (you can filter users by their profile; this could be an important tool for those people only looking for people interested in marriage, so they have a marriage filter). Picture yourself at a bar, a social place with many singles, and many people with the device. You'll be bombarded with multiple profiles that you can quickly scroll through clicking yes', no's, or maybes. Every other single in the bar will also be bombarded with the same profiles and they too will get the options. Every yes you put is technically like you asking someone out without a fear of rejection. Suddenly all kinds of people are getting double yes' and being sent a preselected message like "look for me and buy me a drink," or "You like me? You really really like me?" This works for all types of people. Let's say you're good looking, obviously you'll be more selective and maybe put yes for 1-2 people you really like. Chances are, if you're really that hot, they'll have put yes for you too. If you're ugly as a monkey, you'll obviously want to maximize your chances by clicking yes to everyone, you'll most likely get hooked up with another ugly who did the same thing. Wow! This device makes and breaks it on the user base. It may be the greatest thing in the world, but it won't work if there's not enough singles buying it. A possible avenue is to pitch this idea to some company that already has a large user base. For example Nokia cell phone users. You could ask Nokia if they would like to integrate this software program into their phones. Nokia already has a large user base, wireless ability, full colour pictures, and text messaging. It would be a snap if they wanted to integrate this idea. Imagine. Love for only $99.99. Oh --- and batteries are not included, but the machine runs on love! I hope you have alotta love to give. |
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