Chubbers Cubby

Basketball 10/8

2010-10-08T22:07:00.001-07:00

Played with Akshay Rao
People passed me the ball 4 times in 2 games
Felt like I was running instead of playing basketball
It was fun

Basketball 9/21

2010-09-21T22:04:00.001-07:00

I got burned several times by someone wearing a ‘Got Ginobili?’ shirt.
I made zero shots.
My brother and I ran into each other. He was either setting me a screen, hoping I would set a screen, or wondering why I was in the way.
My best play was a monster block (by me) that led to an easy fast break layup (by me), only to find out that someone had been fouled before the block.
Also, this conversation with my mom

Role Models

2010-09-19T01:51:00.001-07:00

Everyone feels down about themselves at one point or another. At times like that, one needs a role model. I have mainly focused on two people for inspiration throughout my life. For me, Kobe Bryant’s stern, unwavering, ice cold demeanor in the storm of trouble is a beacon of light for emulation. Eminem’s brilliant ability to shrug off negativity and recover from drug addiction is straight up dope. If you were like me and chose these two people as role models, I’m here to tell you that you chose the wrong people.

Look at what Eminem looks like now.

Scary.

And look at Kobe Bryant’s victory cheer.

He looks more like the village idiot trying to attack the basketball with imaginary axes than a basketball player.

How the mighty have fallen. Any suggestions for new role models?

LOTR All-Star Basketball Team

2010-06-01T13:19:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately it has been a few years since I’ve read the books or watched the movies so I don’t remember all the characters. If I had to make a 12 man team from the “good guys”, here would be my all-star team.

Starters

Gandalf (Center) – He has the mentality of a center. Will protect the paint at all costs. “You. Shall. Not. Pass.”

Legolas (Shooting guard) – A great long distance shooter. Never misses.

Aragon and Bormoir (Small/Power Foward) – Generic white players. Probably not good at jumping but good at shooting and fundamentals.

Gimli (Point Guard) - Overweight Boykins, can set a few screens with his ‘heft’. Or something.

Bench

Hobbits (4) - Frodo would be a bad pg because he doesn’t share, and they’re all like 3 feet tall anyway.

Ents – Slow and useless, but I need more players so they will have to do. Maybe put them in to commit some hard, bone crushing fouls.

Eagle – Yeah… I don’t even know anymore.

Green ghost dude – Is a ghost so will not experience fatigue.

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I just realized that the main company accompanying Frodo and the ring to Mordor consisted of nine people. Nine. It’d be seven if you count hobbits as half. And it’d be something like 13 if you measured how much food hobbits eat. They seriously chose a horrible group of people too.

Hobbits(4) – All useless. Frodo is slightly less useless because he has the ring.

Aragon – Has a broken sword.

Bromoir – Only reason he wasn’t branded a traitor was because his attempt at stealing the ring failed so miserably that it resulted in his death.

Legolas – Hates dwarves.

Gimli – Hates elves. (Good team chemistry)

Gandalf – Only person who can do anything, but had to sacrifice himself 10 minutes into the journey to save everyone else’s incompetent butts.

Bret Harte All Stars

2010-05-31T01:22:00.001-07:00

Inspired by Jeffrey Ho’s 2009 Bret Harte All-Stars post, I decided to create a more updated version. (Don’t worry, despite the shady looking url, the link is quite safe.) I was so impressed by the level of everyone’s improvement that I decided to cut down on the humor, and just heap on the praise.

I present to you the 2010 Bret Harte ‘Early Summer League’ All-Stars:

Name: Daniel Wu
Skill Set: Impossible shots
Scouting Report: While already near unstoppable with his ability to unleash a barrage of 3 pointers and running leaning two pointers over multiple defenders, Daniel still has that extra gear of tough defense that he reserves for matchups against Allen.

Name: Allen Yeh
Skill Set: Dream Shake
Scouting Report: Once saddled with the unflattering, but accurate, nickname of ‘Pump Faking Faggot’, Allen has evolved his offensive game to a whole new level. The pump fakes from 18 feet out that fooled no one have been replaced with pump fakes from 3 feet out that fool everyone.

Name: Jeffrey Ho
Skill Set: Rebounding Monster
Scouting Report: Won the ‘Most Improved Player’ award. Came back to Bret Harte and impressed everyone by showing off an extended shooting range out to 20 feet. Still gets rebounds like a hungry hungry hippo gets marbles.

Name: Mikey Liu
Skill Set: Everything
Scouting Report: Mikey has traded in his crazy shots for a steadying presence at the point. Cuts through defenses like a chainsaw on butter. Still can fly and hit outside jumpers. The Asian American Astronaut. (Credit to Allen for the nickname)

Name: Theo Chao
Skill Set: Inside game, being tall(ish)
Scouting Report: Being the tallest of a group of short people, Theo is often forced to defend the opposing teams’ 7 footers. He responds well and does not back down, even when the opponent throws elbows like Dwight Howard. When motivated, Theo is capable of going nova on offense.

Name: Katherine Pan
Skill Set: Quick Trigger
Scouting Report: The Asian Ray Allen, Katherine is a certified sharpshooter who claimed to be ‘rusty’… while dropping bombs on everyone. If Katherine is not allowed to touch a basketball for a whole year, she would probably become the best basketball player ever due to ‘rust’.

Name: Andy Liang
Skill Set: Handles the ball like it’s a 3rd arm, and I don’t mean in a deformed way
Scouting Report: Not wanting to be selfish and steal all the glory with death defying reverse layups coupled with blazing hot foot-on-the-line outside shooting, Andy has been looking to create for others.

Name: Spencer Eng
Skill Set: Not hanging out with the Bret Harte All Stars
Scouting Report: Had to “study” ‘Financial Economics’, and then bolted for LA when we wanted to play with him

Name: Jeffrey Poon
Skill Set: Showing up at the wrong time
Scouting Report: Arrived on the Sunday that everyone left

Spring Break: Day 4

2010-03-23T20:23:00.001-07:00

A slow day today. Played the PIG equivalent of HORSE with my brother. It started out well. We went back and forth on a variety of different shots, including a few turnaround jumpers. My brother had read my blog and knew about my weakness concerning free throws so he exploited that to get me my first letter. I eventually lost P-I-G to nothing, but I am satisfied.

Spring Break: Day 2

2010-03-21T21:55:00.001-07:00

Today I ventured once more to the harsh, unforgiving courts of my local middle school. Today was about redemption. Records, not one’s will, are meant to be broken. However, the twist in this story appears quite early. While I was still doing my usual warmup, someone came up to me and introduced himself. I shall call him Charlie from UC Davis, or just Charlie for short.

Charlie seems like a cool guy. Charlie is also quite fearless. There was a group of 10 mini-Hulks playing basketball. They were all about 6 feet tall, and had arms the size of my head. They reminded me of Michael Jordan’s opponents in the movie Space Jam. Charlie from UC Davis asked if I wanted to try to get in on a game with them. He said it would just be for fun, but I do not see the fun in having the ball ricochet from someone’s hand and into my face. I was very hesitant but I said yes. I still do not know why I said yes. Perhaps I was feeling reckless with my life. Fortunately for my livelihood, the mini-Hulks were playing their last game. I know that they were not lying to spare our feelings because they left soon afterwards.

Me and Charlie decided to play with some other people instead. They were two years younger than me, and they annoyed me because they were all better than I was. We first played 3’s, which was alright. Then, more of their friends came and we decided to play fours, to 21.

My team lost, and I feel I am partially to blame. I usually like to exaggerate because it makes things more amazing but what I say next is not an exaggeration. I played horribly. I had about 10 layup attempts, and one of them went in. I shot 3 baseline jumpers, and two of them were airballs and one of them was blocked. I had about 10 turnovers. They started calling me Ben Wallace, but that is not accurate because Ben Wallace can make layups sometimes. Once I got the ball and was wide open to take a 3 pointer. Two of my teammates frantically bellowed at me to take the 3. I usually do not take 3 pointers because I am very bad at them, but that time I succumbed to peer pressure. It hit the backboard and then hit someone’s head.

At least it was fun because I knew one person there, even though I had only known Charlie from UC Davis for about an hour and I will probably never see him again.

Spring Break: Day 1

2010-03-20T21:04:00.001-07:00

Everyone laughs at Shaquille O’Neal for being so bad at shooting free throws. I sometimes feel sorry for him, but then I remember that he was born huge and gets paid millions to be huge so I stop feeling sorry for him and start feeling sorry for myself. I then join in the derision of his free throw shooting. But is it really fair of me to laugh at him? Can I shoot better than Shaq? I set out to find out.

I went out to the local middle school to begin my challenge. I started warming up like I always do, with a free throw. It was an airball. This one was not to count in my overall percentage. I then took an assortment of jumpers, many of which did not go in. There were many people around, both young and old. I could feel their laughter, even though it was silent. I yelled back, silently.

After my warmup, I began my lengthy trial. The setup was simple enough. Shoot 100 free throws. Shaq is shooting 49.6% this season. I was actually not aware of his season average until I started writing this so I was gunning for his career average. 52.7% for his career. 53 free throws and I get bragging rights, as minimal as they may be.

Things started out alright. I am not the best free throw shooter ever. I am not even second best. I would place myself somewhere between ‘not that good’, and ‘better than someone who has never touched a basketball’. After 30 heaves toward the rim, I had gotten 15 shots in. On one hand, I was pleased that I had made 15 more than I had anticipated, but ultimately 50% is not a great number. I decided to, as they say, ‘flip the switch’.

The switch either was not flipped or was utterly useless, even as a placebo. After 10 more shots, for a total of 40, I had made 20. Same percentage as before, but still within striking distance of my goal.

Many shots later, the landscape had not changed. I stood at a 40 for 80 mark. Not great, but once again, the target was still reachable. Shaq always says he makes them when it counts (he doesn’t), and I had to do the same. I needed to shoot 65% the rest of the way. This is where this changes from an inspiring, uplifting story, to a tale of despair and sadness.

Bottom line? I shot 5 for 20 the rest of the way. 45 for 100 overall.

But all is not lost. Here is a list of a few of the more notable NBA players that have a lower free throw percentage than I do.

Andris Biedrins (4-25, 16%), Kwame Brown (29-81, 35.8%), DeAndre Jordan (38-102, 37.3%), Ben Wallace (55-141, 39%)

While I may have failed today, I can’t overreact to this. Today I may be a 45% free throw shooter, but tomorrow I may be shooting 25% on 3 pointers instead. You just never know with these things.

Twitter Uses

2010-03-01T09:43:00.001-08:00

I can imagine many good uses for Twitter. Pretend that Jack Bauer from the show 24 is hiding from baddies and needs to get help. Well, he can’t just whip out his cell phone and call for help because people will hear him. He can whip out his cell phone and send out a tweet though. “Hlp, hiding in dumpster, send backup" This is better than a text message because one simple tweet could reach multiple people.

I can also imagine many silly ways to use Twitter. Unfortunately for everyone, some of these silly uses have already been imagined and used.

That’s right — both Geoff Johns and Jim Lee will be reading FIRST WAVE #1 on Wednesday, and you can share the experience with them on Twitter, where you can tweet your thoughts and comments to the superstar creators and hear what they think as they flip from page to page.

First Wave is the name of a new comic book series. Imagine the fun you’ll have when you read what these other people have to say about reading! Perhaps these two writers have some valuable insight, but I find it doubtful. Here are some sample tweets that I came up with.

Wow. Cool pictures
I flipped a page
I could have wrote that dialogue better
I get paid to do this. Don’t you wish you were me
Flipped a page

Opposite Day

2010-03-01T09:21:00.001-08:00

“Can I borrow a dollar?”

“Yes. But it’s opposite day, so HAHAHA”

Everyone knows about opposite day, the day that exists whenever someone feels like being annoying and unfunny. The idea of opposite day is simple: yes means no and no means yes. And yet, it’s not truly that simple.

Let’s start with the sentence “We declared war.”

The simple translation would be “We declared peace.”

Let’s go a few steps deeper though.

Declare means to announce officially.

So, “We unofficially announce war.”

Or, “We officially keep secret our intentions of war.”

Or, “We keep secret our unofficial intentions of war.”

We can even opposite day the first word too.

“You people declare war.”

Or, “I declare war.”

Or, “Everyone but us declares war.”

Put it all together and you could get something like “Everyone but us is keeping secret their unofficial intentions of peace.”

If you said that to someone and they were to un-opposite it in a simple way, they might come up with “Everyone declared war on us.” Uh oh.

Text Message Templates

2010-01-17T22:34:00.001-08:00

I only blog when I have something to procrastinate about. Right now that thing is unpacking my clothes.
I don’t text message a lot because I don’t have a texting plan and I don’t like being swiped two dimes every time I want to send a few misspelled words. I just found that there are text message templates for me to use. While they’re a good idea, I thought I’d alter them a bit to better suit my needs. The originals are in bold, my new ones are in italics.
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Call me when you get this message.
I KNOW YOU’RE THERE. ANSWER THE PHONE
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I’m in a meeting. I’ll call you back.
I’m doing something more interesting than talking to you. I’ll call you back when I’m bored.
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I am here.
I am lost. Help.
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Where are you?
Are you lost? I am.
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I love you.
When are you going to let me tap that?
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When can we meet?
Bball, bh, 3?
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Where is the meeting?
Why don’t you ever tell me anything. Where’s the meeting??? Is it over already? Hate you.
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Talk to you soon
word word balls up

Christmas

2009-12-25T22:52:00.001-08:00

I wish I was able to give everyone I know a gift for Christmas. I really do. It is nice to receive gifts too. Giving may be better than receiving but giving *and* receiving is even better.

When I give a gift to someone, I feel good about it. I spent time and brain power in choosing out a gift. It is good to see that effort pay off. More importantly though, they now owe me. If you didn’t give me a gift, they owe me even more. I don’t know what it’ll turn into but I hear if I accumulate enough favors, then I’ll get an extra life. Or maybe that was gold coins. The only time I don’t feel good about giving gifts is when the other person doesn’t seem to like it at all. This usually isn’t a problem though because most people are nice enough to at least fake it. (Wowzers! Shoelaces! Exactly what I wanted…!”)

If I ever am lucky enough to have kids, things will get even better. I’ll be able to boss them around and threaten them with the absence of presents to make them do things. And they’ll have to listen or there will be no more Christmas.

So here I am talking about how much I like to give gifts, which might lead you to wonder why you didn’t get a gift from me. Well, the short answer is that I don’t like you. The real answer is that I don’t know what people would like. I have found that I usually miss and get people junk (shoelaces). I suck at choosing gifts. I feel awkward giving sucky gifts to people.

While I still haven’t gotten my bazooka or flamethrower, I got a lot of gifts this year. Every one of my friends has given me the gift of friendship. A bazooka would still be better but I’m not complaining.

Putting things off

2009-12-24T18:25:00.001-08:00

Whenever you want to put something off, you need to justify a reason to yourself. Anything will work as long as you have low standards. Here are some examples you can use.

Eh, tomorrow is a new day.
Eh, it’s Christmas Eve.
Eh… eh.

I am using all 3 of those to justify not really making a post today.

Grinch

2009-12-23T23:53:00.001-08:00

The Grinch is a fool. He stole all the presents right? And then what does he do? HE GIVES IT BACK? Are you kidding me? If he was able to pull of this kind of job all alone, he could be doing this to like 5-6 big cities in a week. Think of all the presents he’d be getting. Think of all the money he could make. Money may not buy happiness, but money does buy cars and bling bling. And we’re probably not even getting the full story. Once he returned the presents, what happened? Sure they were all happy together for a bit. But come New Years, who wants a green furry guy walking around in their town? People are way racist and they probably chained him up and threw him in some hole.

Man. The grinch. What. A. Fool.

Persuasion

2009-12-22T21:26:00.001-08:00

I am moderately skilled in the art of subtle persuasion. I thought I’d put it to the test by trying to get someone to invite me over to play their PS3. Here’s how it went over AIM.

Me: hey
Not Me: hey
Me: how's your ps3
Not Me: rsting :D
Me: you know, i've always wanted to play a ps3
Me: i bet it's rly fun huh
Me: man
Not Me: LOL
Me: i wonder what it's like
Me: hey, we actually live kinda close dont' we
Not Me: lolol
Not Me: yea cept u forgot
Not Me: i look like a deformed chipmunk still

At this point, I just gave up due to uncontrollable laughter. If I continued though, there’s a chance that I would have succeeded. And you know what they say, no chance is worse than some chance.

How To Make An Interesting Blog Post

2009-12-21T19:34:00.001-08:00

A lot of people have extremely boring blogs. Here’s an example. Why be boring? It is really easy to talk about something interesting. Here’s how.

The easiest thing to do is just talk about your day. I’ll take you through the process. Here is a bare bones version of my day.

I got a haircut today. I then played basketball.

This is not very interesting. What we have to do next is add a few interesting details. Keyword: Interesting.

I got a very interesting haircut today. Interestingly enough, I then played basketball.

No, not like that!

I got a haircut today. It is too short now. I then played basketball in the dark and rain.

Now that is a bit better, but we need to make the story have some bang. Throw in some stories, make things up if you have to. Just try not to go overboard with the lies or people will stop paying attention, just like the kid who cried wolf.

I got a haircut today. I went to a new place in town. The barber’s name was Sweeney Todd, which I found to be quite an uncommon name. He cut my hair very short. I have been told that I look like Joey Li, which I think may be a bad thing.

I then went to play basketball with a few friends. It started raining but we kept at it. We saw Lebron James and he asked to play a game with us. We politely declined. He then said ‘Do you know who I am?’. We threw several responses to him, including ‘LeBrick’, ‘King Crab Dribble’, ‘The Chubby One’, and ‘No I don’t’. We then ignored him. It then started getting dark so we coudln’t see him anymore and continued playing.

And there you have it. An interesting story that’s based on my day. Simple as pie.

Laugh Now

2009-12-20T19:48:00.001-08:00

What’s the point of a laugh track? Sure, they’re good for the show, but do they really do anything for the viewers? Having a laugh track in a show means two things. The jokes aren’t good enough so they need to feed you simulated laughter. Of course this can’t be the real reason because that would mean the writers are the one who wrote the jokes, and it is never their fault. So the next possible reason is that they think you are too dumb and do not know when to laugh. If they could, they would have you buy a neon sign attachment for your television that would light up every time they wanted you to laugh.

But why are there only laugh tracks? How about something new, like a cry track? When an especially sad scene comes on, you hear multiple people sobbing their hearts out. Or a shock track? When something disgusting, like 2 girls 1 cup, is being shown you hear people yelling out in disgust. Maybe even have one or two sounds of people barfing.

I did manage to come up with something good about laugh tracks. If you’re watching a show alone, it might be nice to get that feeling you’re watching with other people. However, if this actually affects you like this, you’re probably super lonely.

Now all I need is a comment track that makes people comment.

The Beginning of an Epic

2009-12-19T07:10:00.001-08:00

The title of this post is misleading. I wanted to grab your attention, but now I follow up by making it clear that is false advertising.

I plan on making one post a day, throughout this winter break. Probability of it happening? Low. Probability that the posts will degenerate into mindless blabbering? High.

Here’s a quick little something to start off the morning. I saw a “fan page” (is that what you call it?) on facebook titled “I didn’t trip, I was testing gravity, it still works.” Pretty hilarious right? I tried changing it up a bit and this is what I came up with.

“I didn’t fail my class, I was testing for grade inflation, it still doesn’t exist.”

The Ugly Duckling

2009-11-20T15:41:00.001-08:00

For no good (or bad) reason, I was thinking about the ugly duckling story. Now the question is, would you rather be the ugly duckling(aka swan), or one of the normal ducklings. On the surface it seems that this question can be simplified. Would you rather fit in right away, or endure some hardships and later become something grand and amazing.

Here’s what I think. Don’t be a swan. There’s just too many uncertainties. Why was the ugly duckling abandoned by its parents? Was it crippled? Also, without swan parents, the ugly duckling will not learn the essentials of being a swan. It will instead partake in duck-like actions, which may or may not be beneficial to a swan. Example. Ducks like to quack and walk around relatively close to humans. If a swan did this, they would be picked up by a hungry fellow and cooked for dinner.

And what about the psychological effect? The ugly duckling may be mentally scarred by the time it attains it’s swan status. It’s almost similar to thinking you’re a girl for your whole life and then finding out you’re a boy. The mental damage from being teased and bullied during childhood can’t be ignored either. The ugly duckling may very well not even make it to adulthood.

Even if the ugly ducking does get to the point where it is a majestic swan, what’s next? It has no friends, unless you consider the now inferior ducks friends. And even if it considers the duck enemies, it’s not exactly well equipped to take on a whole swarm of ducks in a fight to the death.

There are just too many known unknowns in addition to the unknown unknowns to be a ugly duckling.

An Engineer's Guide to Dressing Awesome

2009-09-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

As an EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) major, it comes at no surprise when I say that not many of my colleagues dress as handsome as I do. If you've read my last post you'll have learned how to actually meet a girl. After this initial step, you'll probably want to clean yourself up, especially if you fall into the category of "engineer" or "nerd" or even "Asian."

Although I enjoy being the "hottest" of all my friends, since I'm a good guy I will help you out. The one main thing you have to remember is - wear tighter clothes. This applies to shirts, jackets, pants, socks, shoes, underwear... as long as your body shape is not like a potato or a noodle. Now I know what you're thinking. If you dress too well people might make the wrong assumptions about your sexual orientation. But don't worry, there's a delicate balance that I have already discovered for you.

How to wear tight pants -

Too loose --> Hot (I pretty much look like this) --> Gay

And with hoodies -

Oversized --> Perfect fit --> Gay

Are you beginning to see the pattern?

Too big --> Yummy --> Checkerboard (gay)
(notice how the gay one always has some non-neutral color, like red/pink/orange/blue/green/yellow)

If it's too hard for you to tell what constitutes "tight", you can always go down a size. For example, if you're normally a M, get a S. If you're a L, get a M. If you're a XL, go work out until you can fit into a M.

After you start dressing awesome your jealous friends might be like "Hey bro why are you wearing girl's clothes?" If this happens, just make up an expression you can use that will make them feel fat. After you give them that face, tell them you're not wearing tight clothes, they're "fitted" clothes. Another good idea is to practice some stances where the sunlight hits you at all the right places and makes you so attractive they have nothing to say (I've used this perhaps one or twelve times... it always works).

But of course, who cares what they say! Fashion is for you to express your individuality (or to get girls). Now that you've mastered the basics, you can also add in a few accessories:

Cardigan --> Blazer --> Man-purse
(btw these are all good poses to practice too)

This was actually a post by Coni, posing as Chubbers. Check out her blog and my corresponding post here

How To Meet Girls

2009-08-23T21:54:00.001-07:00

This is a post to guys, but girls are welcome to read it too and talk about how wrong, incorrect, and handsome I am.

On any given day, you may see a girl that just catches your eye. Within a nanosecond of registering her presence, crazy thoughts start to run through your head. You go, “Hot diggity, that girl looks hawt”, or “Pee diddly doo, what a qt”, or if we want to kid ourselves here, “Wowzers, that girl looks like she has a great personality.” The next step requires you to actually go over and meet them to get the ball rolling to your one night stand, two night stand, marriage and divorce, or whatever else suits you.

If you want to get her attention, but you don’t want to do any work, the easiest thing to do is just stare. Staring works better than you might think. Even in a large room with many people, there’s a good chance she’ll eventually see your large, unwavering, piercing eyes. To put it simply, this is because she is a girl. A girl looks around every 5 seconds to find out A) if there any hot guys around, and B) if anybody has noticed her yet. While this staring method is extremely easy to do, the results are sort of hit and miss. Many will feel threatened by your calm demeanor and aura of coolness and try to leave in a hurry. If that happens, just move on to your next target.

If you see this wonderful girl while she is sitting down somewhere, you also have the option of being random and sitting down next to her. If you have a high enough charisma level, you can avoid the awkward initial conversation of “Who the eff are you?” and move on to the good stuff. However, if she’s saving that seat for someone else, even a high charisma skill level won’t save you there. This move takes some guts but it’s not guaranteed either.

If actually making a move seems too risky to your fragile ego, then you could always try to make them come to you. Be mysterious. Do mysterious things. Wear sunglasses indoors. Stare off into space wistfully. Talk to people with your backs to each other, like in anime. Type out smiley faces backwards like (: . You know, just do silly things. It might get her to come over.

If you happen to find out her name, there’s another move you can make. Find out who she knows, and add them on facebook. Once you’ve added enough of her friends (while they all go ‘who is this guy?’), you’ll show up on her list of “People you may know”. Then, you sit and wait. Eventually, when she is really bored and/or lonely, she may just add you.

As a last resort, you could play the pity card. Get hit by a car while in front of her. If she’s any sort of human being, she’ll help you. Even better, get hit by a car that she’s driving. The guilt will help you two bond.

Comments

2009-04-26T18:46:00.001-07:00

There are two parts to every post on this blog. There's the wonderful post by yours truly, and the mediocre comments by you peoples. (Disclaimer: I love comments gimme more.)

I've taken the time to categorize the comments that appear on this blog of mine.

Relation to Self

These comments take a line from my post, and relate it to the commenter’s own life. For example, if I made a post about giraffes and mentioned their blue tongue this would be a potential comment.

“I have a tongue too! Funny story actually… BLAH BLAH BLAH … tongue… BLAH BLAH BLAH”

Looking Smart

Another type of commenter loves to make themselves feel smart, so they’ll try to show off at every possible moment.

“There are actually 365.25 days in a year, not 365.”

“Actually, giraffes have blue tongues because… BLAH BLAH BLAH”

Debates

Some comments found on blogs serve as a launch pad into a discussion/debate about something related to the original post. These are usually the most intelligent comments. These are not found on this blog. There are no intelligent comments here.

Praise

There are comments that heap praise onto my posts. These comments are also called lies. If I don’t think about it too hard though, I believe they are true and then I feel good about myself.

Criticism

You will not find these comments here. I delete all of them right away.

Being Witty

I understand these comments. My posts are witty. You feel inspired to be witty too. You produce a one liner that displays your level of…wit. And yet, this can sometime backfire. This comment is taken from the previous post about giraffes.

The response isn’t pretty. The lesson here? Don’t try to be witty if you’re not. And make sure no one knows who you are if try anyway.

(I’m just kidding frostecstasy! Happy Birthday!)

Giraffes (featuring Henry Ho!!)

2009-02-28T19:44:00.001-08:00

Giraffes. Why talk about giraffes? Well, they are a very underrated species (whatever that means). When you tell someone to think of a giraffe, most people will just imagine some yellow thing with a really long neck. That’s correct of course, but there is much more than meets the eye.

Giraffes are born with many gifts, the most obvious of which is their height. The average giraffe at birth is 6 feet tall. This means that with a few exceptions (runts and midgets) the average baby giraffe is already taller than I am. Do you realize how unfair this is? I have spent many many years consuming nutrients to make my body grow taller, and yet giraffes are instantly taller than I will ever be. The only negative of this is that it’s a tall drop from the butt of a giraffe to the ground, so when the baby is born, it probably receives brain damage from the impact.

Another gift they have is having a blue tongue. Don’t believe me? Take a look yourself.

So what exactly is so good about this, you might ask. And I might give you an example. Let’s say some animal calls an animal meeting because there is animal business to be taken care of. The first important issue is … who ate all the blueberry ice cream. Now do you see? The giraffe can get away with this atrocious crime because it’s tongue is already blue! Genius. If I was the one who ate all the blueberry ice cream, my tongue would be blue, which is an unnatural color for my tongue, and then the other animals in the animal meeting would trample me to death.

Giraffes can also run up to 55km/hr (taken from wikipedia so they use the un-American km… speaking of which, we Americans should have our own unit of time too since we like being different). Usain Bolt had to work hard to run 9.69 m/s. A giraffe can run about 15 m/s. How hard did the giraffe train? Nil. Zilch. The world is so unfair.

Usain Bolt vs Baby Giraffe

It’s already clear that giraffes are very awesome at birth. The fun doesn’t stop there however. They partake in something called necking. For us humans, necking only means kissing, which is cool if you’re into that kind of thing. If you’re into something more testosterone filled, you only have to look at the giraffe version of necking. Get this. Their version of necking involves taking their necks and swinging them at each other’s necks in order to do battle. That beats kissing any day in my book. It’s important to note that necking has a sexual purpose too. Taken from Wikipedia : “Another function of necking is sexual, in which two males caress and court each other, leading up to mounting and climax. Such interactions between males are more frequent than heterosexual coupling.”

I know that I’ve painted a perfect picture for the life of a giraffe, but things aren’t always so dandy. Here’s a narrative from a giraffe (by HENRY HO!!!!!!!!).

Recently being a giraffe is not enough for me. Living everyday, voiced over by Ross, looking weird drinking water, running around day after day as awkward as a stick figure; I feel like a stick figure, existing in two dimensions. Oh, being a giraffe is all that I can be. I hate my existence. Sometimes I would be reaching for a leave high up in the trees just to realize that leaves are all that I can eat because no fruit grows this fricking high. I exist in such a two dimensional world. Oh... what is beyond eating leaves all day. One good thing that happened today: a lion finally got that itch I have not being able to get when she jumped on my back and started chewing on me. Yes, sometimes I think about killing myself, but the lion usually falls off and kills herself in the process of trying to kill me, and my longass neck makes it extremely difficult for me to kill myself. Yay me, I can get the highest leaf in the forest.

Even giraffes can be sad.

Kobe Bryant

2009-02-02T22:06:00.001-08:00

I’m a big fan of Kobe Bryant. When I found this picture of Kobe, Lebron James, and Carmelo Anthony, I set it as my desktop wallpaper.

Now it’s a pretty good picture but it could be improved. For one, if I had to choose the top 3 players from the olympic squad, I’d have to go with Dwayne Wade instead of Carmelo. Also, if I had to go with people who aren’t arrogant pickle faces, I’d take out the ugly dude on the right and replace him with a care bear. So I got a brilliant idea and edited the picture a bit.

3 KOBES!!!!!!!

How To Get A Girl To Like You

2009-01-17T07:46:00.001-08:00

I don’t know. :-(

Eminem Is Better Than Jason Mraz

2008-10-21T01:14:00.001-07:00

Recently, or not so recently depending on how you look at it, Jason Mraz released an album titled “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things”. Eminem’s most recent album is “Eminem Presents the Re-Up”. I thought I’d compare these two albums because they’re both the most recent albums from these two artists and their titles are both needlessly long. They don’t really belong to the same genre of music, so I thought I’d just resort to comparing the album art. Makes my life easier.

Keep in mind that I am 100% unbiased and in no way do I like Eminem 500 times more than Jason Mraz.

Here’s Eminem’s cover.

It’s important to note that this whole cover is hand drawn by Eminem himself, except maybe the parental advisory sticker. He took a month to draw this and I think it turned out pretty darn good. Now, it’s not perfect because Bizarre, the guy on Eminem’s left, should be about 200 pounds heavier than that.

Now, here’s Jason Mraz’s album cover.

Wow. Just wow. Great album cover. Did he draw that? Jason Mraz is a really crappy artist (the drawing kind, not the singing kind). It looks like a 5 year old did it. Or it looks like he forgot to make an album cover and he had 5 minutes to do it so he drew the first thing that came into his head, his face. Maybe he didn’t have a mirror when he drew this, or maybe he really thinks his nose is just two dots. Hopefully he drew this in Microsoft Paint, otherwise it’s even worse. There’s always the possibility that he wasn’t the one who drew it, but then that begs the question… where do I apply to draw album covers for him and get paid? If I saw this album in China, I’d be hesitant to buy it because the cover looks so bad it looks like a fake.

I like both their songs but as you can clearly see, Eminem is better than Jason Mraz.

Being A Pig Sucks

2008-09-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

Pigs have a horrible life. They just sit in mud all day, wondering if they're actually sitting in mud, or something else that's brown and disgusting that probably came from their own bumbum. Pigs have no potential in life. When is the last time you've seen a pig be king or president? The thing is, pigs are supposed to one of the smarter animals in the animal kingdom. Unfortunately for them, perception becomes reality. Everyone thinks pigs are dumb. They look dumb, they can only say one word (oink), and their tails aren't even straight.

When pigs get eaten, they get devoured. There's dishes with pork feet, pork ears, pork blood... I wouldn't be surprised to see pork brains as a menu item. People must really hate pigs because it seems they make sure that every part of a pig gets transformed into food.

Most importantly, pigs are dead last in the Chinese zodiac. (Speaking of which, how did the dragon, which can fly, not win??) The pig was so slow that the dog had to accompany it, just so the pig wouldn't feel bad and try to commit suicide by jumping on a hot rock and turning itself into bacon.

I'm not much of a reader so I'm no expert on reading but I do admit that in Animal Farm, the pigs became the head of the farm. Problem is, that's just a book. The only thing I got out of that is that pigs are evil, scheming, fatties, and that we should eat more of them just to keep their numbers down.

As I've mentioned before, perception is reality. When you think of a horse, you think of a majestic creature with humongous leg muscles, galloping into the sunset. When you think of a lion, you think of a courageous, fierce creature with a glowing aura of danger. When you think of a pig however, you think of ham. The nice little packaged hams you can buy at Safeway.

Now I'm not saying pigs suck. Pigs are delicious. It just sucks to be a pig.

AP Chem Syllabus

2008-08-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

I found my old AP Chemistry syllabus from 2005 (~~sophmore~~ junior year). You might know that my Chem AP class wasn't the best place to actually learn chem. It was a very good place to do math homework and brush up on poker skills though. In case you need more clarification, the teacher's name starts with 'W' and ends with 'oo'. Here's a quick rundown of the syllabus.

What it says: Spending 30-60 minutes each night reading and reviewing text in addition to working on homework and class assignments.

What really happened: We spent 30-60 minutes the night before each test and some of lunch time reading the text for the first time and copied all homework or class assignments.
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What it says: Labs are an important part of the curriculum.

What really happened: We did no labs for 90% of the year. Then someone asked why we did no labs and we started doing a lab every single day. We also were proud that we set off the school fire alarm by burning things we didn't know about.
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What it says: Independent work is an expectation of this course. Study groups are highly recommended.

What really happened: Independent work was rare. Answer copying groups were highly recommended.
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What it says: Minimal extra credit is offered during the year.

What really happened: Extra credit was given if you were a girl and you whined constantly during class, before class, after class, and after school.
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What it it says: Students should consider the serious time commitment required by this class.

What really happened: Students should take this class if they like playing chess and not learning chemistry.

Search Engine Traffic

2008-08-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

The picture above is a short glimpse into the search results from google and yahoo that led to my blog. I got these from Google Analytics, in case you were wondering.

The first search term is "chubber fish". I was curious what that would return so I typed it into Google myself. I got a whole lot of... nothing. I don't think there is a such thing as a chubber fish, and if there is, no one cares about it. I did stumble upon a nice family blog detailing the life of their kid, but the kid wasn't a fishy.

The second term doesn't make much sense to me. Chicks aren't chubby.

The third one is such a good oppurtunity for a fat joke but I've moved on from that. The 3rd person is probably some vegetarian wondering why he/she is still chubby. Time for a new diet I suppose.

Number four is just...weird.

Five and six are whatever. Number 6 might have even been me because I'm very forgetful.

Number 7.... yeah....

Number 8 is whatever again.

I'm just glad that I was able to help out number 9. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, just read the previous post.

Number 10 is fat joke land again. My answer to that would be to close your eyes, and tape your nose, and eat so much hot sauce your taste buds get burned off.

Tips To Not Be Hungry

2008-07-11T02:11:00.000-07:00

I think I'm capable of making a significant contribution to the Mercury News. I really do. Yesterday the front page article was about how hot it's going to get, and it was titled "Playing it cool". Nothing wrong with that on a slow news day, or when the newspaper doesn't feel like doing real work to cover a real story. Anyways, where would I be able to help? Well, there's a nice little box on the front page titled "Tips To Stay Cool", and it gives some pointers on how to stay cool. I'll shorten them a little and type them out here for your reference in case you need ideas on how to stay cool.

-Stay in air-conditioned rooms

-Reduce body temperature by using cold compresses, misting yourself with water, and taking cool showers and baths

-Avoid physical exertion

-Wear lightweight and light-colored clothing

-Drink plenty of fluids. However, if your doctor has told you to limit your fluid intake, ask your doctor how much should drink during the heat

My reaction to this can be summed up in 2 big words and some symbols of emphasis: NO DUH!!!! The first three items are so obvious it hurt my head to even consider the idea that people wouldn't know them, giving a new meaning to painfully obvious. The fourth item is pretty simple too. Don't wear heavy pieces of clothing because they are usually made to keep you warmer. The last one is a joke. Drink lots of water, unless you're told not to drink lots of water.

I was thinking that if they had to have someone make this list, I could make an equally useful list too! Here's mine.

Tips To Not Be Hungry
-Eat food
-Eat food
-Go out to a restaurant and eat food
-Do not NOT eat food
-Eat lots of food. However, if you are not hungry anymore, stop eating food.

I'm really disapointed in the ever-decreasing quality of the local newspaper. Either the Mercury News had to reduce headcount by 50% and accidentally fired the smart 50%, or they decided to change their target audience to 1st graders and polar bears who just moved to America.

My Cell Phone

2008-06-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

My cell phone has a great battery life. In fact, the battery life of my cell phone is amazing. It is mind blowing to the point that if I didn't decide to investigate this mystery of epic proportions, my head would have likely been blown by the sheer knowledge that I don't have the knowledge of why my cell phone's battery lasts so long. So anyways, I took a break from sleeping to investigate this and I came up with some results.

1. I like carrots. But I'm not a rabbit. A very curious matter I must pursue someday.

2.

3. I don't talk on the phone a lot.

After these 3 exciting new observations were made, I had to sift through them to find out which ones were important. Obviously one of them could be thrown out right off the bat. The second one has a pie chart, and statistics can always be manipulated so we're left with the first and last one. After lengthy consideration, I decided to take a closer look at the 3rd one, simply because I don't want to have to find out that I'm really a rabbit.

I went into my call time logs and came up with these numbers.
I've had my phone for 210 days exactly today.
I've sent 897 minutes of calls.
I've received 423 minutes of calls.
This comes out to 6.19 minutes on the phone a day.

Points of Interest To ME:
- I've sent 2 times more minutes of calls than received
- Seconds are counted as seconds, so a 1 second call doesn't get rounded up to 1 minute
- This average is very puzzling to me because I go many days without using the phone. The last time I made/received a call was 4 days ago. Before that, it was 2 days ago. Before that, 2 days. Before that 4 days.
- I also don't recall talking too long on the phone so I'm not sure where 6.19 minutes a day is coming from.

So what does this all mean? I don't know. I kind of lost interest while making the pie chart. But I do know that my phone will be in tip top shape for a long time. I'm sure there are lots of people who have a lower average than me too. Also, the only way I can account for the average time is to assume that there are fairies in this world and they like messing with my phone. Damn fairies.

Being Optimistic Is Easy

2008-06-01T07:55:00.000-07:00

Being happy in life is all about perspective. Little things can make or break your day, depending on how you look at things. Big things can catapult your life onto a road of success or ruin, depending on how you look at things. I'm going to go ahead and use the encompassing word everything, and say that everything in life can be viewed in a positive light. Of course, this is not entirely a good thing because it's also commonly associated with insanity. Today I'm going to teach you, through example, how to be optimistic.

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Scenario: You got a bad grade in a class.

Negative Reaction: You go kill yourself because your life/career is now over.
Positive Reaction: You view this as a good assessment that you need to work harder, or cheat harder. You then go on the have the best cheating semester of your life next year. Or you worked hard if you actually have morals.
Possible Reason Why Positive Reaction Is Not Possible: Your parents locked you in the basement for 10 years to punish you.

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Scenario: You find out that no one likes you. Also, everyone thinks you smell.

Negative Reaction: You cry and mope about it all day, for several days. Then you start making emo blog/xanga/livejournal/myspace/facebook/w/e posts about it and hope that someone leaves a comment saying that they're your friend, or just that you don't smell. When no one comments, then you start asking people over AIM to list out your faults, as if that'll make you feel any better.
Positive Reaction: Obviously you're doing something terribly wrong if no one at all likes you. Take a little time to think about why, but don't over think it. Then go take a shower and use soap and shampoo for the first time in your life.
Possible Reason Why Positive Reaction Is Not Possible: You smell so bad that you get banned from the internet.

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Scenario: A boulder of epic proportions falls on you and crushes both of your weak spindly legs.

Negative Reaction: Cry about it.
Positive Reaction: None.
Possible Reason Why Positive Reaction Is Not Possible: A boulder just fell on you. Did I mention it was of epic proportions, especially in relation to your legs?

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Scenario: Your television gets stuck on a baseball channel and you can't turn the tv or volume off.

Negative Reaction: Whine about how baseball is a dumb sport.
False Positive Reaction: Watch for a few minutes to try and get a better understanding of the sport.
True Positive Reaction: The sport sucks so don't bother watching. It's just a few fat guys standing around getting paid millions. Go outside and play some sports instead of just watching it.
Possible Reason Why Positive Reaction Is Not Possible: You're so lazy you've reached the point where you can't move anymore.

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Scenario: You make a blog post and you wanted to have 5 scenarios, but you're too tired to get more than 4.

Negative Reaction: You consider yourself a massive failure and hang your head in shame. Then you fall asleep and fall out of your chair while a mouse crawls over the useless lump that is your body.
Positive Reaction: Get too tired to care anymore.
Possible Reason Why Positive Reaction Is Not Possible: Yep, don't care anymore.

Why We Should All Be Vegetarian

2008-04-24T02:43:00.000-07:00

I remember one person once told me that more and more people are realizing that meat isn't the greatest thing for your body, and that more and more people are eating fish. Even though fish is kind of like meat anyways, the point probably was that being a fish will suck more than normal because there's a greater chance of being eaten. Here are a few reasons to become a vegetarian. Keep in mind that I myself will completely disregard my own reasons so don't feel any pressure to be swayed by them at all.
1. Eating meat is probably just a fad.

One day, a long time ago, a caveman saw a saber tooth tiger take down and eat a mammoth. Since the caveman was a guy, it seemed pretty awesome so he tried it too to be awesome like the saber tooth tiger. So basically people started eating meat because it was the cool thing to do. Fads pass though.

2. It's not nice to eat other animals.

They have feelings. If you yell at a dog it'll get all sad and its tail will stop wagging. Plants are a different story. Try going out to a carrot patch and start yelling at the carrots. Those pricks won't even respond to you. They were probably ignoring you too. I wouldn't feel sorry for chopping them up and eating them.

3. Mad Cow Disease

If we don't eat cows, we won't get mad cow disease. I'm no expert on mad cow disease but I'm pretty sure it's caused by cows that are angry. Why would they be angry you ask? Because we keep eating them. We should just release them all to the wild. They'd still be eaten by wolves though and we wouldn't have any more milk. So I guess we need cows. But we can't eat them.

To Girls...

2008-04-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is one of those lists that girls send to guys in hopes that the guy will be more like the person described in the list. No one sent me this with the intention of me being that special guy but I happened to come across it so I decided to change the list a little... here's the new and improved list. Funny colored stuff is the original, my additions are in black.

- Stay on the phone with her even if shes not saying anything. ...until you realize that she fell asleep on you an hour ago.

- When she's mad hug her tight and don't let go ...even if you're cutting off her air.

- When she says she's ok don't believe it, talk with her ...until she gets mad at you that you never believe her.

- because 10 yrs later she'll remember you ...as the person she still hates.

- Call her at 12:00am on her birthday to tell her you love her ...only to find out she changed her number.

- Call her before you sleep and after you wake up ...because everybody likes to be bothered at least twice a day.

- Treat her like she's all that matters to you. ...so be sure to keep her locked up somewhere safe.

- Tease her and let her tease you back. ...then punch her and let her punch you back.

- Stay up all night with her when she's sick. ...if you want to get sick too.

- Watch her favorite movie with her or her favorite show even if you think its stupid. ...then shoot yourself for wasting your time.

- Give her the world.... even if that is totally impossible.

- Let her wear your clothes. ... after you run through a patch of poison ivy.

- When she's bored and sad, hang out with her. ...so you can feel better about your own life.

- Let her know she's important. ...but not as important as you.

- Kiss her in the pouring rain. ...then catch a cold and die.

Shoot or Ask Questions?

2008-04-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

For tonights installment of fun, let's have a pretend scenario. Let's say that you're in some sort of country where 95% of the people are bad people. Everyone in this country, including you, is armed with some sort of machine gun so it is a pretty dangerous place. Now let's say that it's nighttime and it's really dark outside. You see someone coming but you can't tell if it is someone friendly or not. The question now is, what do you do? Here's some possible courses of action.

Sidenote: Running isn't an option because I said it's not.

1. Shoot first, ask questions later

95% of the people here are bad guys so the person coming is most likely a bad person. Also, there's the chance that even if it was a friend, you'd only injure them and they would still be alive. Better safe than sorry. Also, if you have really bad aim, you'd want to be the one to start shooting so you have a better chance of hitting them before you get shot.

2. Ask questions first, Shoot later

You, the reader, might be thinking, "Patrick you're so awesome and such but I don't think you're supposed to add 'shoot later' to that." Well, I, the writer, will say that 95% of the people are baddies anyways so you'll most likely have to end up shooting them. This will just make you feel better about having to try and hurt someone else because you confirmed their a bad person. Of course this all hinges on the fact that they are dumb enough to respond before shooting at you, but if you're dumb enough to ask questions first in this situation, maybe everyone else is just like you.

3. Shoot while asking questions

If you have good aim, you probably won't be getting any answers to your questions with this method.

A Conversation

2008-04-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a conversation that went like this.

Person 1: Hi, how are you?
Person 2: Good, how about you?
Person 1: Good.
Person 2: Good.
Person 1: Okay, bye.
Person 2: Bye.

This is why I don't talk to people.

My Perfect World

2008-04-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

There has been countless ideas of what a perfect world would be like, and an equal amount of theories as to why a perfect world can't exist. Unfortunately for anyone who has spent the time to read them, they're all wrong. I'm here to cast the first correct stone into a vast yard full of stones that are incorrect. I'm going to throw a bucket of water into a lake of spit. My words will be a flashlight in the land with no light.

Some people want a perfect world to have no violence, wars, or arguments. They want a Pleasantville, where everyone goes "Gee golly!", "Gee Whiskers!" and "That's swell!". Basically, everyone would be a nerd. Besides the fact that this would be a boring world to live in, it would never happen. We as humans are able to argue about almost anything. I'm not even talking about the big things in life like which country we should bomb next, whose religion is less wrong, or the existence or nonexistence of business ethics. People find the time to argue about white chocolate vs dark chocolate (dark is better), cats or dogs (dogs), and brownies or cookies (they're both chocolate, just take BOTH).

I'd take the time to take a look at a few more theories and explain what's wrong with them but I made a nice simple mathematical formula.

# of ideas not mine that are correct = 0

Remember, it's math and math is always right.

Anyways, here's a quick rundown of my perfect world.

1. Everyone gets a bajillion dollars.

2. Excuse me for the stereotypes but every girl gets one cute animal and every guy gets one cool gun/tank.

3. There is no such thing as the abomination that is white chocolate.

4. My best friend wouldn't be my laptop. It would be my second best friend after my NEW imaginary laptop.

5. Everyone would be nice to me. They can be mean to each other all they want though. They just have to be nice to me.

Next!

2008-02-19T00:19:00.000-08:00

I was recently reminded of the MTV show Next, and I started to imagine myself in that show. I know I wouldn't fit in at all because there seems to be a level 9 shallowness rating and a level 12 douchbagginess rating but I'd bring in my own twist. Here's how my episode of Next would go.

Setting: Mouth of a volcano

(Girl 1 comes out of van)

Girl 1: I like ice cream.

Me: What happened to your face? Next!!!

(I push her into flaming pit of lava. Girl 1 Screams.)

(Girl 2 comes out of van)

Girl 2: I just want money so I'll act like a slut.

Me: You look like you just want money so you'll act like a slut. Next!!!

(I kick her into flaming pit of lava. Girl 2 screams, but not as loud as Girl 1.)

(Switch to shot of van with the 3 remaining girls inside.)

Girl 3: How come they're not coming back?

Girl 4: I heard screams too!

Girl 5: I'm really pretty.

(Girl 3 comes out.)

Me: Double You Tee Eff, are you a man?? Next!

(Dragon pops out of lava and eats Girl 3. Girl 4 comes out of van)

Girl 4: I li-

(I throw a pie in Girl 4's face, just for laughs. Then I electrocute her, just for fun. Girl 4 runs away crying and falls into lava pit. Girl 5 comes out.)

Girl 5: I'm really pretty.

Me: Yeah but you smell.

(Dragon causes mini earthquake and Girl 5 loses balance because she is an airhead and falls into lava pit.)

The show would end with me riding off into the sunset while the camera men try to flee from the man eating dragon.

The Game of Life

2008-02-05T22:24:00.000-08:00

I'm here to talk about the Game of Life. No, that is not an interesting attention grabber title in which I will lead off with to discuss some aspect of life. No, I am just talking about the board game Life. In case you've never played this timeless classic, I've decided to draw up a review of this board game. Pictures are hard to find online so I only have one to show. I've concluded this is the case due to the fact that the manufacturers of the game don't want to reveal how bad their game really is.

If you're playing Life, you have no life.

I have just decided at this point in the post to forgo any resemblance of a structured review and just talk about whatever I want. If you don't like it, then go read something else. If you do like it, then you most likely have bad taste.

The point of the game is to make a lot of money and get to the end of road of life. Everyone's life is apparently very linear because there is a total of 2 or 3 different paths, and they all merge together quickly anyways. At the end, whoever has the most money wins. Money is obtained by landing on spaces and secretly stealing from the bank. Ok, enough logistics. On to the fun stuff.

At the start of the game, you have the choice of going to college, or getting a job right away. Going to college sets you back a couple grand, and you get one less payday (spaces where you earn money), but you get to choose from more jobs and salaries after you finish college. Anyways, the choice of going to college or not is totally up to you. However, if there was an asian version of this game, it'd be quite different. If you chose to not to go to college, you'd die immediately. There is no life if there is no college... well, at least that's what my parents tell me.

Once you reach a certain point in the path, you get married. The whole process is ridiculous. Everyone's playing piece is a little car, and you have little people sit inside. When you get married, you just pick up a pink/blue colored person and place him/her beside you. As if it was that easy. What if you don't want to get married? What if you haven't found that special someone yet? What if you're butt ugly and no one of the opposite sex will even stand within a 25 foot radius of you for fear of catching the ugly? Thats not how life works.

The career card are a joke too. You get one randomly and that's your job. If you go to college you get 3 cards randomly and you have to choose one. Apparently the game creators thought it would be funny to show every stereotype they could. The male athlete looks like a balloon with his inflated muscles. The policeman has a fat stomach and is chomping on donuts. And don't even get me started on the "cotton picker" job with the smiling black guy on it.

Most of the game is based on luck. You spin a spinner and you move that many spaces. Actually I take back that first statement. This whole game is based on luck. It teaches you that life is all luck and nothing you do will ever affect the end. The only input you have in the game is how hard you spin the spinner, and when you decide to stop wasting your time and quit playing the game.

I think this game could have some more realism added. For instance, you could have some spaces where you catch diseases. "You got malaria. You died." It doesn't even have to be so negative and have you dying, it should just make things more interesting. "You peed in your pants. Lose a turn hiding in the bathroom." "You got scammed by an email from Nigeria. Lose all your money and dignity." They could even throw in some more positive things. "You are guilty of murder. ONLY lose 2 turns instead of 10 years."

In the end of the game, you just total up all your money, which comes from many different sources than just paper cash, but I'm too lazy to explain. Everyone ends up with around 1 million dollars or greater, implying that life is good. Everyone lives in mansions at the end. No one has alzheimer's disease.

Final Verdict: I suppose that if you were stranded on an island with one friend, and you could choose between this board game and a 1x1 battleship game, this would be the better choice. Then again, you might be compelled to drown yourself if you had to play this game too many times, so I suppose this game is dangerous. Last words? Use this game as firewood.

5 Random Thoughts

2008-01-25T22:53:00.000-08:00

1. There's a problem with the Gregorian calendar, the dating system we use now. It gives the impression that we have reached this point in the technology timeline in a simple 2000 years. This leads to absurd comments such as "Where are my FLYING CARS!!!", or "Why can't we control weather yet? I want it to rain cats and dogs so I can get a dog for my daughter", or even "OMG ROFLTOPTER FTW wO0T!!!@#". Okay, the last one doesn't really fit in but its an absurd statement nonetheless.

2. You know when people say "I don't know what you're talking about" in that sly way with a smile that means "I do not know what you're talking about"? When I say it, I usually really have no idea what you're talking about... but I smile anyways because I want to fit in.

3. In middle school and perhaps even high school if one never grew up, at the start of the semester people always proclaim loudly that they have an A+. They all seem really happy and such. I never understood this because I not only had an A+ at the beginning of the semester but for the whole semester.

4. I was eating this really spicy beef with rice one night, and I started sniffing a lot because it was so spicy. After a bit, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and such. On the way there I was still sniffing a lot, and I saw some guy looking at me, with a look on his face that wondered why I was crying. Not wanting to be seen as a wuss, I immediately pointed out that I ate spicy stuff. He was just nodded his head, and gave a look like "Uh huh...right..."

5. I got a new wireless printer. It's pretty sweet because I can put the printer anywhere I want and not be restricted by a usb cable. I could have it in someone else's room if I wanted, and print them pictures of 2girls1cup or something. But this is all hypothetical. In reality, the printer is on the ground, under my bed, less than one foot from where I sit down to work.

Games Stress Me Out

2008-01-19T02:28:00.000-08:00

Recently I found a computer game I never had much time to play before so I decided to give it a little love. Monopoly Tycoon is a game made in 2001, and it's quite simple. Without going into too much detail, you build businesses on blocks and try to earn the most money. The blocks are named after the Monopoly property titles to give it that whole obligatory Monopoly tie-in. It's a pretty simple and fun game, aimed toward younger kids, as such I was in the year 2001. Many guides online stated that the computer was pretty easy, and the real challenge lay in the multiplayer games where you match wits with other little kids.

I discovered a few things after a few days of playing.

1. In a 2001 game, medium level computers can beat me.

2. In a old 2001 game, lowly medium level computers can beat me.

3. In a old 200-freaking-1 game, lowly medium level crap computers can ~~beat~~ crush the orange juice out of me as if I was an orange.

What I'm trying to get across is that I lost a lot on the medium difficulty setting on an "easy" game. This isn't good for my self esteem at all. After enduring those losses, every subsequent game was nerve wracking. Fear and doubt started to creep in. "Should I build here? Or maybe there? Maybe anywhere? I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am." I got so twitchy that I'd try to click on the mouse once, and end up clicking 5 times. People would have thought there was a woodpecker in the house. My hand got so sweaty that the mouse flew right off of it and killed a fly. All of this because one thought kept running through my mind, "In the name of Thor's manly hair, how am I losing?"

The moral of this story? Don't play easy games and lose.

I Have A White Hair

2008-01-13T01:15:00.000-08:00

I was quite saddened by the fact that I had a long strand of white hair on my head. Here's a picture so you know what I am talking about.

A picture of my white hair on a white tablecloth
while white light is shining on it.

I've made a list of my thoughts concerning this disastrous event.

1. Did I get this white hair because of stress? I hope I do not get stressed about this because then that would produce more white hairs and I'd get even more stressed and even more white hairs would appear until I look like a giant snowball.

2. I am glad I found this rebel hair before it started to spread its whiteness ideas to the other hairs.

3. Perhaps the hair was an albino.

4. Perhaps I am growing older 3 to 4 times faster than normal. This would suck because I would die in a few years. It also sucks because that would mean I'm going to start shrinking soon and I'm small enough as it is.

5. If all my hair turned white soon, I could look like an anime character because they all have crazy colored hair that's really big. And big eyes. And big heads sometimes... and big... yeah you get the pattern here.

6. Green is such a cool color. Why can't it be green and not white? Also, it's Connie's birthday today!

I don't think I'd look good with white hair. Here's a simulated picture of what I would look like. Thanks to Lensar for the original photo.

Sexiest White Haired Guy Alive

New Years Resolutions 2008

2007-12-31T19:03:00.000-08:00

I seem to have lost my new years predictions for 2007 so I'll just skip the review of the year and get to next year's resolutions. Also, some people seem to have a problem with the idea that people only decide to better themselves when a new year comes, which is quite an arbitrary date. But I say, who cares? If it helps someone make changes when does it matter when you start? Unless you're part of the 98% of the population that sticks to their resolutions for an average of 3 milliseconds.

Per tradition, I'll have 5 and 5.

1. Adult males are composed of about 60% water. I am not content with being average, so I will aim to be 50% greater than everyone else and be 90% water.

2. Become all powerful, if only so I can blow stuff up with my mind.

3. Find some way to be able to absorb things. Think of the possibilities! If you're hungry, you don't need to spend time chewing. Just let your tummy absorb it. If you have contacts, just have your eyeballs absorb them so you have good vision forever. If you're really big and there's this midget that's bothering you, just absorb them!

4. Grow a moustache that rivals Mario's, and then win the coveted Sexiest 'Stache of the Year award.

5. Release a hit song thats similar to "This is why I'm hot", "Party like a Rockstar", "Crank that", or some other equally retarded song. There's a couple of nice benefits. I'd make a couple million. I'd get to hear my song in clubs and all over the radio. And best of all, when I walk around outside all the stupid girls that like these songs will faint from excitement when they see me. When they faint and crumple to the hard stone floor, they'll hurt themselves. I'm just trying to help out with our population problem.

1. Boost up my self-esteem... or so people tell me.

2. Right now I'm skinny like a twig. I should become something more like a branch.

3. Be a nice person and do nice things for nice people.

4. Learn how to spell.

5. Figure out who I am.

Happy New Years!!

I've Lost The "Funny"

2007-12-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

This is my first post on this blog in over three months. There is a reason for this. It is not because I was kidnapped by fat people, although they would have good reason to try and hurt me because I make fun of fat people so much. It is not because I was overwhelmed by school, because in reality I "owned that shit". It is not because I am lazy, although I really am quite lazy. In fact, if you challenged me to a laziness contest, I would beat you by not even responding to your challenge and just staring off into space. The real reason that I have not posted in a long while is that I have lost the funny. I know that some of you, or even many of you will say in your head "Haha! You were never funny!", but you know what? The people who think that are just haters. They're boring dull haters who can't appreciate the genius that is my blog posts. In fact, when I win the Nobel Peace Prize for amazingness, they'll all see that they were wrong.

I was looking back at my old posts, and I found them to be quite funny. Not everyone will find it funny, and most likely people who don't know me won't find them funny at all, but the most important thing is that I think they are funny. I like making lists, so I have a list of reasons and theories as to why I have lost the funny.

1. Someone stole it.

We live in the twentysomething century. Things are very different now. Everything can be stolen. If someone can steal your identity, and being funny is a subset of your identity, it follows that your funny can be stolen. Well, this may have happened to me. My jokes that normally would have people slapping their knees while rolling on the ground like they're having a seizure now generate weird looks. Now people even outright tell me that I'm weird. The sad thing is that I don't have any retorts except for calling them fat, but that has its limitations. You don't really want to apply the label fat to someone who truly is fat, because then they would squash you like a bug. If you call someone who isn't fat fat, it doesn't really matter. The only time it really works is if you find a really insecure girl who always worries about her weight. Even worse, if you found some girl who is trying to gain weight, the insult would totally backfire. But that kind of girl would just be weird. Getting back on point though, once its stolen, you can't really get it back. It is just like a credit card. Once it is stolen, you can cancel it, but you'll never get it back. Note to self: Make better analogies.

2. I ran out of funny.

Perhaps humor is something that has a quantity. Maybe we all have a certain amount of humor, and our brains usually have a working mechanism that rations one's humor so one's funniness will stay constant throughout life. Maybe I am defective regarding this mechanism, and I was just using all my humor at once, and now it is all gone. Or perhaps when I was instantiated as a baby there was a mistake and I started out a deficient amount of humor. This is all very theoretical so basically I can say this is right and you have no way to prove me wrong.

3. Everyone around me is boring.

I kind of like this one because I get to shift the blame to other people now. It makes me feel much better knowing that it isn't my fault. I draw my ideas and inspiration from what I see in my everyday life, so it is pretty logical to say that if everything around me is dull, then I won't have many interesting things to spit out. So, I blame everyone I know for my downfall. I hope you're happy, because I sure am not. I need to move to somewhere funny, like Canada because Canadians are always funny. Or maybe Africa. Will Smith is pretty funny and he's black right?

4. I've become emo.

Emo people aren't ever funny because they're always too busy thinking about how emo they are and how nice it feels to be emo. Just kidding though. The day I become emo is the day I stop making fun of fat people. The only way I'd become emo is if elephants randomly popped out of the sky and fell on me every 3 minutes, because then life would truly suck.

Conclusion

There's probably a lot more crazy reasons, but by this point the question arises, why post now? Well, if I haven't said this before, I only post when I feel like procrastinating. Before I start to do any sort of work/studying, I run through a procrastination checklist. I ran out of other options so this was a last resort. As a side note, I recommend that everyone have a procrastination checklist in mind, so you'll be able to procrastinate at a much more efficient level. I'll leave you with a thought provoking question.

Why is there no negative equivalent to the absolute value sign? Why are we promoting only positive numbers? What if someone really liked negative numbers?

Positives/Negatives of Instant Noodles

2007-09-03T23:32:00.000-07:00

This is the most honest review of the benefits and UNbenefits of instant noodles you will ever find. There has been a lot of propaganda spread about instant noodles and I hope these facts will set you straight.

Good things about Instant Noodles

- They are good for you. The sheer joy of eating them is bound to turn depressed people into the happiest people on our little planet. I believe that when you call the suicide hotline, instead of talking to you they should just give you instant noodles. Only problem is I would abuse the hotline every time I'm hungry.

-They taste good. I think lettuce tastes good. Lettuce is good for you. Instant noodles also taste good. Therefore, they must be good for you.

-They are quick to make. We live in the internet age, web 2.0, the information superhighwaywormhole time period. Quickness is key.

-They have little vegetables sometimes. Vegetables are good for you.

-They are cheap. Think about it this way, would you rather have ONE steak for sixteen dollars, or around FORTYEIGHT cups of instant noodles. Obviously, quantity is better than quality. That 300 movie was a fluke. They should have died in a couple of seconds.

Bad Things About Instant Noodles

-They MIGHT be bad for you.

Conclusion

Look at how much good stuff I typed compared to the insignificant amount I typed for bad stuff. Obviously, it has at LEAST five times more benefits than UNbenefits based on the number of bullet points. So, eat instant noodles!

Hogwarts Houses

2007-07-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Has anyone ever realized how unfair the 4 houses at Hogwarts are?

If you get put into Slytherin, you are branded as an instant criminal. It is like, you have no chance of being a good person. You are a bad apple. A stinker. A poohead. It doesn't even make sense why there still is a Slytherin house. They're all future death eaters anyways so the whole house should be exterminated.

If you get put into Gryffindor, you are noble, brave, and what not. Kinda boring, we all know enough about Gryffindor so not much to say.

Ravenclaw is a nice alternative to Gryffindor. They sound cool... raven claw!!!

Hufflepuff is the worst house to be in. They sound like some sort of Marshmallow. They are soft. They are beat-up-able and are pushed around. They might as well be named "The Last House". You might as well go home if you get sorted into this house.

A bunch of Hufflepuffs

Harry Potter Endings

2007-07-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

With the release of the last Harry Potter book coming closer and closer, I thought it would be appropriate to shoot out some ideas of how the series should come to an end. Keep in mind that these following ideas have all come from a lot of hard work consisting of me reading the Harry Potter books a few times, sleeping a lot to dream about scenarios, and watching television. Without further ado, some ideas!

Frodo drops the last horcrux into Mount Doom and then Voldemort dies.
I think this is plausible. I know this has been said millions of times before but come on, voldermort is sauron, death eaters are ring wraiths, dumbledore is gandalf, fudge could be saruman, and blah blah. So anyways, in this scenario, Harry gets to do nothing and still live. Needless to say, he'll still take all the credit to try and impress Ginny, which is very dishonest of him.

Ginny is a horcrux
Harry has to make a vital decision... does he choose to save the world by killing Ginny? Of course Harry will not do that though. Harry is not very rational. He will decide to NOT kill Ginny and take on Voldemort anyways. Voldemort will proceed to chop Harry into little bits and then feed Ginny and the rest of the Weaselys to the giants. Harry is dumb so everyone loses, even Voldemort. Now he has to deal with obese giants.

Muggles to the Rescue
Voldemort gets too cocky and he steps onto the "mean streets" of New York and starts blasting random people with his wand. However, the (insert vicious gang here) are around and they won't stand for some random person without a nose "stepping foot" onto their "turf" and they whip out their "nines" and "pop" him. (Apologies if I used any terms wrong, I am not too familiar on how to use them.)

Fistfight
During an epic wand duel, Voldemort and Harry both lose their wands forever. Don't ask why. Then they have to resort to fist fighting. Harry is pretty weak but Voldemort is not much better. They fight for a long time and then Chuck Norris jumps in and round house kicks both of them. The book ends with Chuck Norris riding off into the sunset.

Voldemort turns nice
Voldemort sees the error of his ways and he is about to become a new man. He goes to Harry wandless and wants to make peace but Harry being the idiot he is kills him. Now Voldemort will be evil again and come back to hurt people. Also, the Death Eaters go into a frenzy and kill half the people in England, which probably isn't all that hard to do to be honest. Harry is caught by the Death Eaters because he never Apparates and he is drowned.

Voldemort meets a certain somebody...
Voldemort meets someone... let's just say her name starts with a "V" and ends with "ian". Voldemort dies a painful death at her hands. Details are not yet available.

The Last Battle
Harry and Voldemort meet. Harry proceeds to talk about what Voldemort never had: love. Voldemort shuts him up by using a new curse on him. A cat in the hat starts to bother Harry and when Harry tries to stun it, a pink elephant falls on him. This happens quite a few times before Harry's bones become powder and the elephants finally meander away.

Ron kills Harry!!!!!!

You read it here first!!!

Making Friends At College

2007-06-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

We're going off to college. We have to make friends. New ones. For the people with poor memory, that means forgetting people from high school to make room for the new acquaintances. It is a sad sad thing but it is inevitable. It will be even more drastic of a change for the people who are going far away, such as to the miserable place known as the east coast. Although I myself am not very good at making friends, I have my own opinion on this matter.

There are six categories of people. I would make a chart to show you, but I do not know how to make charts and put them in here. Also, charts are for snobs. There are three types of people in the sense that some people talk a lot to everyone, some people talk a lot to only people they are friends with, and some people don't talk at all. There are two other groups. People who talk about interesting things, and people who talk about things that are not interesting.

1. Interesting/Talkative

These people are fun to be around. They talk a lot to you even if you are a stranger, and they talk about interesting things. They are the life of a party. They are who you want to hang around.

2. Interesting/Talkative to friends

These people are okay too because they are still willing to talk if you just talk to them first and introduce yourself. As long as you don't scare the grape juice out of them upon first sight, you might actually get some conversation going. These people are fun to be around too.

3. Interesting/Not Talkative

These people don't talk. But they are very interesting people because they may be all mysterious and cool looking. These people are the ones who have sunglasses on and just leaning in the corner, slowly observing the world. They are interesting, but unaccessible.

4. Not Interesting/Talkative

You want to either shoot these people, or at least cause some bodily harm to them. These people are easily distinguished by the dead bodies lying around them from people being literally bored to death. If you see them run, you can either be polite, stay, and listen, and eventually die, or you can run for your life.

5. Not Interesting/Talkative to Friends

Sucks to be their friends. That's all I can say. The only good thing that can come out of this is when a lot of not interesting people all band together and talk to each other.

6. Not Interesting/Not Talkative

This is me. Don't be like me. Don't do it.

I hope I don't meet a lot of "Not Interesting/Not Talkative" people at my college. Maybe we could all hang out and upgrade one level to "Not Interesting/Talkative to Friends" one day!

How To Write An Essay

2007-06-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

A lot of people say that the school system is flawed. Let us assume it is. Now since the school system is flawed, I will also declare that the way we teach kids to write essays is also flawed. The first thing I learned about writing essays is to have five paragraphs. The first one is the introduction, the middle three are body points, and the last one is the conclusion. Now, I think that if you really want five paragraphs go ahead. However, the content of each section should be different. In today's post, I will cover in depth the knicks and knacks of the introduction.

The introduction is the first thing people see so you need an attention grabber. Wait no, I take that back. The title is the first thing people see. Wait wait, I take that back too. Since this is about an essay that is turned in, usually the first thing seen is the name of the writer on top of the paper. So, back to that attention grabber that is oh so important. According to my theory, the name is the first thing seen, and therefore it is where the attention grabber should be. There are a lot of different ways that you can grab attention. You can change the color of the name. You can write your name bigger. Or you can just bite the top right of the paper. Leaving teeth marks has to be an attention getter.

If you want to go with the more traditional format, put the attention getter in the first sentence. However, don't make the easy mistake of simply starting out with some form of a question. I have always wondered how teachers could handle reading question after question in the beginning of an essay. Have you ever wanted to climb a tree? Did you know that there are homosexual goats? Is there some you have always wanted but could never get because you are pitiful? Don't you ever get sick of reading questions? I blue gafunkle sinking toaster? Questions at the beginning of an essay are just too played out. They also don't really get anyone's attention. If you really wanted to get attention, the obvious thing to do is make the first 5 words size 72 font and red, while the next 5 words size 4 font and blue. Now, that is a good attention getter. I would give you an example but I don't know how.

The next few lines in the introduction should introduce the reader to what you're going to talk about. There are two ways to do this though. One is to outright state what you are going to say. This informs the reader exactly what you will say, and then they may be wowed by the way it is said. But! This takes out any suspense and if your body paragraphs are bad, then your introduction has ruined any interest in the body. So, what I propose is to confuse the reader with the introduction. Blabber, ramble, go off on tangents. Whatever it takes. Just make sure they do not know what is coming next so when they do get to your body paragraphs, they will still be trying to figure out what is going on, and thus be more interested.

If you implement my tips, you will definitely see an improvement in your writing. Or... your writing will turn out to be like mine, and you will fail all your English classes like I do. And people will also think you are crazy. But be sure to read the next post on body paragraphs!

School Spirit

2007-05-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

At my school, school spirit is a joke. A large portion of the school does not care about it and I don't either. This Friday I presume we are supposed to wear our class colors, seniors being navy blue. We might get things called points, which go toward a class point total. Now I know this all sounds very exciting so far but there's more! At the end of the year, the winner of class points thing wins...nothing! Actually, it's more truthful to say that I don't know what they win, but I assume it's something like pride, which amounts to nothing.

This school spirit thing is really dumb. We wear the same color shirts to school and suddenly we are supposed to bond as a class and feel all united? Maybe if each class had some secret handshake and the senior class's handshake was to throw some freshman into a garbage can more people would have school spirit. Maybe if the losers had to line up in the football field while the winning class got to launch watermelons at them more people would care. But nope! We just wear shirts and some other stuff that I don't care enough about to remember. How cool!

Furthermore, who really cares about school spirit? Since there isn't any really big event tied in with "school spirit" at our school, there is no motivation for me to get into the whole concept of being associated with a bunch of losers. Seriously, our senior class kind of sucks. I know that in any large group of people there are always bound to be losers but does there have to be so many?

But back on topic. Wear navy blue on Friday!

Basketball Bullets

2007-05-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

Just some thoughts on basketball after I played today.

Every time someone small, short, and weak like me (so basically just me) tries to guard Jeffrey Poon, he immediately sees the mismatch. And then he lowers his shoulder and tries to cheat and force his way to the basket. Luckily we had refs so Jeffrey can't do that. Cheater.
I am like Kobe Bryant. I am awesome.
I can't dribble.
I can't shoot.
I'm more like Patrick Chu, who sucks.
Justin is like a train. He moves back, and then charges forward. Anything in his way will be smashed. And he's not bad at rebounding either.
Spencer is the luckiest player ever.
Spencer has the ugliest shot ever.
Spencer is also ugly.
Arthur is Lebron James.
Just kidding, Arthur has a hard time dribbling left.
Then again, no one can really dribble anyways.
Spencer can only dribble to the right for two bounces, then has to turn around to his left hand again. And then he can go back to the right for 2 more bounces, and so on.
Jeffrey Poon keeps telling his teammates to hit people when he's losing.
Jeffrey Ho is a silent assassin.
Andy keeps blocking me with stupid screens.

Some photographs... all courtesy of Henry Ho the Great.

The Perfect Shot

Jeffrey Poon Dominating Justin

Justin Being Cool...and growing a 3rd hand out his head.

Andy staring in amazement at my skills.

My Movie Watching

2007-05-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

Watching movies is a very sad affair for me. I have a few different options when it comes to seeing a movie.

1. I can download the movie when it is released in theaters. All action scenes consist of blurry figures moving around in a blurry fashion. When the battle takes place at night with ninjas fighting black bears, it gets even blurrier. If it is a chick flick, there is not much moving so it is an okay experience. But why would I want to watch a chick flick? I also hear a lot of coughing and sneezing and laughing because it is recorded by a camcorder.

2. I can wait several months, and then download the dvd rip of the movie. The quality of both video and sound is excellent, but there is no one to talk to about the movie anymore because everyone has seen it months ago.

3. I can go to the movie theater. But I always get bullied when I go out to the real world so I like to stay in my room.

4. I can rent/borrow the movie when it comes out on DVD. But I don't.

5. I can just not watch the movie. Just like how I've never seen Titanic. And how I haven't seen 300. And how I'm not going to watch Spiderman 3 until it comes out on DVD.

AP Testing

2007-05-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

I have a problem with my upcoming AP tests. Mainly, I'm not studying, as evidenced by this post. Since the NBA playoffs are going on right now, I thought I would relate my troubles to an NBA team. For my beautiful analogy, I chose to equate myself with the Miami Heat, and mainly Shaquille O'Neal.

So after my past success with AP tests, I have settled into a passive mode for the AP tests this year. It's similar to how the Miami Heat won the NBA championship last year, and got lazy this year. They didn't really try during the regular season.

Haha, you are an AP test, and I will squash you.

That's how I felt at the beginning of the school year. I aced my other weak AP tests, and I'm going to squash the two I'm taking this year too. Physics? No problem. Econ? No problem. I am king!

Study? I don't need to study.

Once the test actually started coming up, I still refused to study. I usually start studying a month before the AP test. This year, I started studying with about 10 days before the AP test. I mean, come on, I don't need to study! I'm awesome. I can take AP tests with my eyes closed and ace them. Now, with about 3 days before my first AP test, I sense trouble. In other words, I'm screwed.

The AP test is the guy in white, and I am the guy in red.

That's what's going to happen to me on Monday when I take Physics. And Thursday too. It's gonna hurt.

That's your AP score, PUNK!

I'm going to get owned.

Decision Making

2007-05-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

I am proud of certain skills and abilities that I have that set me apart from the rest of you clowns. I have the rare skill of being able to make smart decisions on the fly. I know that a lot of you can make good decisions, but it usually takes time. In my case, calculations in my head are instant. Ka-ching! Here's an example of my brain at work.

Here's the situation. It's after 5th period, and it's 1:40. I have two options. Wait until 2:30 for a ride home, or start walking home. It takes me 18 minutes to walk home. If I walk home, I get to get started in my daily routine of slacking off and procrastination about 30 minutes earlier. However, it is very hot. If I choose to wait, I will have to somehow burn 50 minutes waiting. I also have no friends so waiting for 50 minutes is a very long and boring task. I calculated the opportunity costs and graphed the aggregate demand and supply graphs, and found the multiplier effect and crowding out balances. Then I chose to walk home with my good buddy Alex Fu.

As expected, it took 20 minutes. I walk up my steps, a tired blob. I look forward to getting into my house and sipping on some cool milk. And then my fast moving brain hits a wall. I forgot my keys in the house.

So I end up sitting in my backyard for 30 minutes thinking about how great my decision making skills are. I'm awesome.

School Quad Back Under Repairs

2006-11-14T23:49:00.000-08:00

Just recently another fence has been erected around the stage area in the quad. This is much to the surprise of everyone at the school, even the administrators. Someone very close to the principal has said that he overheard the principal mutter "Where the heck did that fence come from...? I wish people would tell me things."

Everyone had thought that the month long construction that was going on in the stage area was already complete. Four very elegant looking poles had been put up, much to the delight of several students. Person A said "Now the quad looks much more elegant with four giant toilet paper rolls sitting there. Oh wait, those are concrete? Never mind then. Our school sucks." At first, speculation was running amok over what the four poles were to be used for. Popular theories included the foundation for an overhang, a big trampoline, and a playground. However, people soon came to the conclusion that they were just going to stay there and hinder people's views during the homecoming skits. "I already have to deal with fat kids. Now I have poles in my way?" complained a midget.

An interview with the construction workers did not lead to any new knowledge. "Uh... I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm actually just from the local prison. They just told me to push these random levers around. It's actually quite fun. [giggle]"

Our school is retarded.

Bored?

2006-09-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

Hey! Ever feel like you have too much time on your hands and you don't know what to do with it? It sucks even more when its a school day right? I mean, just sitting there knowing that you should be doing something, but having no homework to do. Well, I have taken it upon me to help you poor souls out with a hit list of things to do. And don't worry, even if you do have homework to do, you can still follow this list. That is how good of a list it is.

1. Go on AIM
Even though it is labeled as instant messenger, it will easily suck up your time like a vacuum sucks up dust bunnies. For some reason, time just flies when on AIM. It probably has something to do with the fact that there are such intelligent conversations going on, such as debates on religion, the ethics of business, and how to effectively not only poverty and world hunger on Earth, but also on Mars. Actually, the conversations are more on topics such as which fast food restaurant to go to, how to cheat on tests, and laughing at "people of lower intelligence" ( also read as Joey).

2. Facebook
Another great pasttime is going onto facebook and doing... uh... whatever. I actually do not understand how some people can spend so much time on facebook, considering there is not much to do. I suppose you could write on people's walls, and since these walls are for the public eye, try to act witty and smart. Or you could join groups and stuff. But for some reason some people are able to spend hours on there. Obviously I must be missing out on a key feature. Perhaps it is a cool game where you walk around and visit care bears to save rainbows.

3. Get a job
When I say get a job, I mean first find a job. When I say find a job, I mean ask other people for openings. When I say ask other people, I mean ask other people and tangent off into talking about how mean your teachers are. And when I say tangent, I mean take the derivative and find dy/dx. When I say dy/dx, you know I'm a nerd.

4. Eat
Eating only when you're hungry is a thing of the past. Eating a lot will give you cheeks of steel. And then when someone shoots you in the cheek the bullet will bounce off. Also, you could pair this action with just about anything else. Eat and facebook. Eat and myspace. Eat and run. The world is in your hands.

5. Sleep
After doing all of that stuff it is a good idea to take a cat nap every now and then. Now being now, and then being now.

6. Talk about the white plague.
Self explanatory.

7. Play Online Games
Go play online games that are composed of stick figures and which are fun for a maximum of 4.9 seconds. Also, watch flash based animations that are supposed to be funny but only make you chuckle. Lastly, listen to music that totally distracts you. For example, since Eminem music is so widely accepted by everyone, it will not be distracting. Play some System of A Down with your volume turned all the way up.

8. Make a stupid blog post.
This post is an example.

What do you think of my hit list??

0 comments

2006-07-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've gotten to the point where I am so bored that almost anything seems amusing. Such as looking through random blog's in search of something interesting. One thing stands out when I look at these blogs, one very sad thing. I'm sure that no one with a blog likes this type of thing but for some reason these bloggers keep blogging and blogging, even with the terrible curse. What curse am I talking about? It's actually more of a sickness. I like to call it the "0 comments" disease. Others call it the disease of anonymity. Still others simply call it the "NO ONE CARES" syndrome.

I find it amusing to see one person type up multiple paragraphs of their thoughts almost daily, and at the bottom of each post, there is that little thing called 0 comments. Seriously, I go through a months worth of posts, and there are a total of 0 comments. Well, maybe I'm exagerrating. Every once in a blue moon there's a spam bot commenting on the wide spread benefits of buying a bed of rock. And, sometimes there are people like me who respond with a simple, "No one likes you. Just give up" sort of comment.

And then the truly sad part comes into play. The author is stuck with the dilemma of keeping the odd comments, or acting as the all powerful moderator and deleting them. On one side of the fence, assuming there is some sort of metaphorical fence here, the author has finally recieved a comment! Someone, even if it is a spam bot, someone, has finally read his/her blog! Keeping the comment would tell the rest of the world that "yes, people do read my blog. I am popular."

But then again, this kind of oppurtunity doesn't present itself too often. The author finally has a chance to be the all mighty moderator of the blog, and strike down any comments deemed unworthy. Maybe power should be used at this moment to show the wrath of the author.

Still, none of that really matters. The point is, these people have serious problems. Think about it. People who talk to themselves in real life are looked at funny. These bloggers are essentially talking to themselves because no one else is listening. We should treat these people the same way by throwing them in a cage and forcing them to fight lions. But wait you say! Blogs could be like diaries, or journals right? WRONG! Journals aren't put out for everyone else to see, unlike blogs. So you are wrong. Again. Get used to it.

However, this whole lion punishment may seem quite a dangerous thing for me, seeing as I am treading a fine line with this blog too. But see, there is a difference between me and the common blogger with 0 comments. I'm not crazy.

Transitive Property

2006-07-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a life altering question that I think everyone should ask themselves. Would it, or would it, be cool if the transitive property applied to real life? I have taken the effort and time to produce some examples of how cool it would be.

1. Let's say... I am smart. Jinghao is smart. Therefore I am Jinghao! And now I can run around as Jinghao and do weird stuff, such as mass murder people. And then I pop back as Patrick and run off into safety. =) Heck to make it even easier, just say both people are guys. And if the person u want to be is of the opposite gender, just say both are carbon life forms. Unless it is Joey. Joey is an alien.

2. Another userful possibility is when you are in a money jam. Let's say something costs 500 dollars, but you find that you don't have that much. Well, some people would work hard for the extra money but the cool thing to do would be to first state that 500 is an even number. 2 is also even. Therefore, 2 dollars is the same as 500! And voila! You only spent 2 dollars on that expensive useless piece of junk PS3!!

3. Last, but not least, how is this? At night, people usually are sleeping in a dark room, unless you are like me and are up playing a farming game. Anyways, Person A is in a black place. Outer space is a black place. Therefore...dundundun.... Person A is in space!!! ahahahaha die!!!!!!!

So, it is quite a pity that math is not always apparent in the real world. I mean, I could go on about taking the integral of random objects such as a desk, and turning it into what it was before, such as a tree!

Safety Drills

2006-03-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

All this recent hoopala about bomb threats has got me thinking about situations like this. And then I got to thinking about other danger situations such as fires, earthquakes, and even the occasional azn that snaps and decides to shoot people at school. Well, I'm here once again to englighten you as to why the current methods of protecting ourselves from these natural disasters is inadequate, and futile.

First of all, lets take a close look at what we do when there is a fire. We walk out to the GRASS. Isn't grass one of the first things to CATCH ON FIRE? And then we stand there for ages hoping that the flame doesn't spread to the grass because if it does, we're toast. See, my proposal is to make this process more efficient. It seems that the goal of the administration is to have all the students catch flame so they can make a video called America's Funniest Students. Well, instead of waiting on the grass for the fire to come to us, we should just all go to the fire and jump in.

And with earthquakes, it's much safer to stay inside where stuff can fall on you, or so I've been told. I mean, who knows what could happen outside. The sky might fall on you, and you would end up just like Chicken Little. Based on what we do with a fire (running to the fire), I'm suprised that we aren't instructed to run under the biggest object you can find.

And with a gunman, it's really smart to stay put. Usually, it's some pissed off kid that wants to kill this one person. And this one person is stuck in whatever class they're in. Not very hard to figure out how to kill that person. And stackign a few chairs up against the door will really fool the killer. I mean, how the heck could any one figure out that you just have to push the thing? Genius.

So everyone is well prepared in the event that one of these things happen, which they have not for about 50 gabajillion years. But... what if more then one occurred at once? Lets say there is a fire, and an earthquake. Half the class will be running outside wildy onto the grass and falling through cracks in the ground into the depths of Mordor while the other half wil be burning up under their desks while stuff fall on them anyways. Not a pretty sight.

If there was a fire and random shooters, then that would be horrible. Just get one of those machine guns that have 5000 bullets and shoot around the grass. People won't know whether to run away into the fire or stay and get hit by bullets. Some people like Joey may even be unlucky enough to get shot while running into the fire and burn up.

Earthquake + Shooter. Well, this is good cuz stuff will fall on people and the shooter will be hurt because the sky will fall on him. Or her....no it's a him.

If all of these happened... well... all I can say is there won't be school for awhile.

We need to have an UFO drill where we all run away as fast as possible.

How to Study for the SAT's with one week left.

2006-03-19T22:41:00.000-08:00

It seems that everytime the SAT's come, I find myself having not studied for the test. Luckily for me and you, I have perfected a way to cram in a week and ace it. These study steps are sure to be stolen from me by big publishing companies such as Barrons, Princeton, and (haha) REA. It's actually quite a simple process. If you follow these correctly, I guarantee that you'll get a decent score.

1. Take out all your SAT prep books you have. If you don't have any at all, then you might consider throwing yourself off a bridge while asking yourself what the heck you were doing all this time.

2. First, focus on the math section. This is because math is a bit more concrete then english and will be easier to get a drastic score change. Start by cheating and putting anything you can into your graphing calculator. This well help tremendously. As a side note, be sure to include a good game such as Phoenix in the event that you realize you are screwed on the test. You can just play games for 3 hours instead.

3. In the math section, you should focus on the multiplication table. That is all that is really required on the test. If you want to be ahead of the game, memorize Hero's Formula, because it has a cool name.

4. The writing section should come next. Start by writing some practice essays with the prompts given. Keep in mind that these are random prompts that have no connection with what the actual prompt will look like. For all you know, the real prompt could be something like this.

Blue. Discuss. You have 25 minutes. Time starts 20 minutes ago.

While you are practicing, it is ok to cheat and go over the time limit. It's only practice right? If you feel the need to justify this to yourself, just say that your watch is off or you started the timer too early.

5. In the reading comprehension section, it's all about practice practice practice. With a week to go, the best way to go is to flip pages frantically and hope that your brain absorbs info. Then go on to the vocab section. Pick out 100 words that you know already, and study those. It's a good confidence booster.

And thats all there is to it! Foolproof, and SAT killer. And the day before the test, all books tell you to not study. Well that is just so flawed. I mean, if I followed their philosophy, I should just not study a week before! A month before! Ever! Ha! So my idea is that the day before, you should go find the smart people who are also taking the SAT, and then hot glue gun their doors shut so they can't get out the next day. Better curve for you then.

So spread the word! Tell everyone that I found the way to crack the SAT! And btw, if you are taking the test April, don't be suprised if you find your door glued shut.

Oh, how I hate Instant Messaging

2006-02-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

Instant messaging for social purposes really gets on my nerves nowadays. The reason is quite simple. It's so each to be phony. You don't even have to really care about the other person. A fake enthusiastic response can be made with an exclamation point! Wow! I'm really excited! In reality, I'm bored of you and I wish you would go away.

Instant Messaging doesn't reveal the true relationships between people. In real life, when someone comes up to talk, you either A. show interest B. show some interest or C. show no interest. The other person knows exactly when to stop talking to you or if they should continue. They are not led on with false pretenses that lead them to believe that what they are doing is working, or even right.

The instant messaging world is completely different. All there is is a little box popping up saying something. Easily ignored, and equally easily responded to. It's not hard to type back a response even though you dislike them. Everything is anonymous. And with the popularity of lol, how is one to know if they really are laughing out loud or not.

It's my personal belief that any relationship started online and not immediately supplemented by a face to face conversation or telephone call will not be succesfull. It's all those little things that you see when you actually see the other person that determines what kind of friendship will bloom. Online, one person is exactly like the other: just a bunch of alpha-numeric characters.

Why do I bring this up? Cuz I hate myself.

Cheater Cheater Walnut Eater!!

2006-01-31T16:17:00.001-08:00

This is a couple of weeks old, but I still want to talk about cheating. Our school is so good at curbing cheating that the administration believes people will suddenly stop cheating after taking a paper survey that no one will read. It's obvious that all those papers were meant to do was to induce some form of self guilt that I never felt. To say the obvious, cheating is rampant in Leland. And guess what? That's a good thing.

This isn't just a good thing because my grade goes up up up. Cheating distinguishes a certain type of person from the other type. Some people are willing to cheat for their grade, while others see it as immoral. People who don't cheat are morons. Thats the first step of telling who is smart and who is stupid. Cheating is not as easy as it is made out to be. I can't just walk next to someone smart and copy his or her(usually her because guys are retarded) answers on a test. I can't make someone memorize the whole test and give me all the answers. A succesful cheater has many tools that allow for succesful cheating.

First of all, you need to find someone smart that you can cheat off of. You don't want to go through a lot of hard work avoiding the teacher and sneaking around only to find that all the answers you copied were all wrong. Cheating also requires the knowledge of ninja skills to a certain extent. While some teachers may be tricked by the poorly constructed pillow put into your seat while you sneak around, most are smarter then that. It is essential that you learn that one Naruto technique where you turn into a tree and time stops. Then you make your move and copy.

Even if all of the above is attainable, you still need one big thing. For the person you are copying off of to comply. I remember seeing one guy make a snow illusion so the teacher would run off to make a snowman. He ran over to the smartest girl in the class to copy but she kicked him in the balls and he fell to the floor crying. The snow illusion faded and everyone realized that he had started it. The teacher never returned so he was not caught but the moral of the story is to wear a cup when copying answers.

But seriously now, there needs to be some changes for the way finals are run. Instead of sticking to a block schedule of our normal schedule, we need subject blocks. Mondays would be English and Math, Tuesdays would be History and Science, and so on. Everyone in a certain course would take the test on the same day. Also, the original teacher should not be able to hold the exam. We need other teachers there from different subjects. The test should speak for itself. It angers me when I see the teacher's favorite student go up and ask questions and basically get the answer. Especially when I go up to ask a question and the teacher glares at me and tries to kick me in the balls for being stupid. Luckily, I wear a cup. It's not fair.

So after this blabbering what I really mean is that, I want an A. So give me an A. And no one gets hurt. Not that I could hurt anyone. Ha. I am master of short sentence.

Oh, and leave a comment. It doen'st cost anything.

Resolutions

2006-01-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

I don't believe in resolutions. Actually I do, I'm just pulling your leg. I'll make 6 and 5.

1. Become a fire breathing dragon.
2. Become a better rapper then 50 cent. Oh wait, everyone is.
3. To not miss a single point in any class.
4. To become the most popular guy in the world. By popular i mean most liked. Not the snobby type.
5. To catch all 150 bajillion gajillion or however many there are pokemon.
6. To be able to make these resolutions faster

1. Don't act so bored/lazy/nonchalant all the time. A.K.A show some emotion.
2. Talk more.
3. Stay commited to the run. Or in normal speak, stay commited to doing work.
4. Do well on my SAT
5. Be more considerate of others.

Oh, I just want to add some more now. To be as tall as Jeff Poon, to be as gangster as Nam, to be just like Akshay, to be as smart as Michelle, to be as fast as Michael, to be smarter then Andy, to be as commited as Jerry, to be as natrualy gifted as Jing HAo, to be not racist like Alan, to be lucky like Allen. And finally! to be like the best person on Earth. Me.

I Know How You Feel

2005-12-27T17:55:00.000-08:00

One thing really irks me. Want to know what that is? Well, it concerns the phrase "I know how you feel." I don't really have a problem with this phrase, but the response it recieves. A lot of the time the response comes back as "No, you don't know how I feel."

Everyone wants to think that they are someone special. We all are unique in every aspect of our lives. Only I have my sort of problems. Only I have my sort of succesess. Only I have whatever. Well guess what? With some billion people on Earth, I'm pretty sure that someone else has your problem too. Since when did you become so different from everybody else that no one can understand what you are going through? Other people have your problem too.

However, I guess that no one can always know how you feel. In this case, it's the thought that counts. At least someone is listening to your problems. By talking about your problems, you are inadverdantly placing a small burden on them. Even though you are the one with a problem right now, whoever you are talking to is developing a tiny problem too. There is no need to backlash against them. They are the ones helping you out.

If you don't want to appreciate what is being said for comfort, then don't dump your problems on someone else in the first place. It's always better to talk about your problems, but if it gets to a point that you develop more problems just by talking about old ones, it's time to stop. So stop. And give me 10.

Oh, and I'm not directing this at anybody. I just like to rant.

SATan's Essay

2005-12-24T22:46:00.000-08:00

The essay section of the new SAT is not only inappropriate for a SAT type of test, it is plain lunacy. I'm not going to give you some Leland Chargers Tribune crap about this. I'm going to give you what I believe everyone else should believe.

The SAT is supposed to measure a student's knowledge of basic math and reading. These are areas of knowledge that can be accurately measured. There is only one right answer in math, and generally one best answer on the verbal sections. The essay portion of the test does not fit into the black and white area of right and wrong. There are too many factors that go into determining an essay's score to have this score truly mean anything. A student, such as myself, should not have to suffer because one of these factors went awry.

Essays have to be written in a mere 25 minutes. This is not adequate time for a true essay to be completed. Sure, some people are capable of churning out a 25 minute piece, but with more time, others may be able to write a better essay then the first person. Has speed become so embedded in our every day lives that essays must be scribbled out with minimal thought? Do you see college applications being written in 25 minutes? Or even double that, 50 minutes? A good essay needs time to mature. Time is needed so the essay can be cleaned up, proofread, added to, and finalized.

Collegeboard acknowledges that they are not looking for a finalized essay. They know that with the time given, only a rough draft essay is feasible. Well, here comes the major flaw. Hey! Rough drafts are not supposed to be graded! That’s why they are rough drafts in the first place. Authors are not judged on their preliminary work, so why should students be judged on their rough drafts?

The SAT score is a major part of determining whether or not you get into the college you want. Why should your future be decided on a rough draft? Don't colleges want to know what you are capable of doing, not what you can do in 25 minutes? They aren't expecting you to do all your college work in 25 minutes are they? Or maybe they see a future in people who write fast?

And then comes along the fact that no two graders grade alike. Sure, they have a rubric and are trained on how to grade. And Collegeboard, being smarter than I gave them credit for, has two graders with a third grader coming in if scores differ too much. But! But! But don't tell me that it isn't possible for one grader to give a score of say, 4 and the other grader giving a score of 5. Maybe you really deserved two 4's. Or maybe two 5's. But who knows? Essays are too hard to grade. Since when does a humorous essay earn extra points on an essay? People are fickle. They might hate me just because of my handwriting or superior, but distinct, writing style.

Now I'm not saying that I have a solution to this problem. The only thing I can come up with is to have everyone who takes the SAT to send hate mail to SAT HQ. And make sure that they're all Howlers ( Harry Potter allusion right there, oo i'm learning!). Also, I'm not griping because I received a near 0 score on my essay. I just think it’s wrong. Comma. Oops, I mean period.

Purpose of this Blog

2005-05-29T03:07:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this blog is to share my thoughts. Not the Xanga ones, but my real ones. Anyone can comment without registering, although I don't think many people will. I'll get a real post in later.