Chapter XCVIII: Cubed

Image of the Day: My Roommate's a Loser

A couple of days before Winter Break, my roommate bought a Rubik's Cube from K-Mart. The little fucker was extraordinarily difficult to come by, being sold out at Wal-Mart and costing upwards of eleven bucks. Darron and I naturally refused to look at the accompanying instructions and attempted to replicate, in our living room, fifty years of research by mathematicians and Asian child prodigies.

This didn't really pan out (who woulda guessed?), and inspired the Image of the Day. Conceding defeat, we read the printed instructions, which turned out to be quite useless. They tell you how to solve the Cube, but only after you've already gotten it into a specific configuration which they call "The Green Cross." The explanation for how to reach this beginning step is: You will have to figure this out for yourself. Gee, thanks for nothing, Mr. Rubik.

So I went online and found a java applet where you can enter the configuration of your Cube and it'll tell you all the steps you need to solve it. I placed the completed Cube on the living room table, and the next morning Darron thought I was Rubik's Cube Jesus!

Interesting Rubik's Cube Facts:
1. Erno Rubik, the inventor of the cube, was a professor of Architecture.
2. There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 Rubik's Cube configurations.
3. None of these is more than twenty moves away from being solved.
4. The official world record for speed cubing is held by Minh Thai (22.95 seconds).

I also found is the following YouTube video of a Canadian kid solving the Cube in a minute or so. He has a cute smile when he finishes.


He also plays with his cat.

Chapter XIX: The Miracle of Life [Continued]

I had lunch with the family and saw my cousin's eight month old daughter named Riley yesterday. The high-tech contraption holding her was placed on top of the table so her left foot was about ten inches away from my face for the duration of lunch.

But what an exquisite foot it was! Never before had I seen such exquisitude, except perhaps in the facade of the Burj al-Arab hotel. Surely, baby toes are the most delightfully cute things in the world, so round and pink and topped with perfectly formed toenails. If I were living in the 18th century, I would have said to myself, only by the glory of God could something so wonderful come about, and baby toes certainly prove His existence!

Instead, I started thinking about how I would probably make a terrible parent, since organisms entrusted to my care have a penchant for dying rather quickly.

Many years ago, I had a little cactus whose selling point was that it did not require a copious amount of attention. In fact, the information card said that watering once a month would be sufficient for it to live long, and perhaps, just perhaps, even prosper. I put the cactus on top of the toilet and promptly forgot about it for half a year. One morning I was peeing and wondered what that thing on the water tank was. It looked like a geezer's shriveled penis...that had turned green. And grew spines.

"Egads," I said, after realizing it was not a geezer penis at all, but my cactus. I immediately watered it, but it was already too late. The unfortunate plant perished shortly thereafter. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

A few years later, my family acquired a parakeet and a cockatiel under mysterious circumstances. Jennifer named the parakeet 'Tequila' and the cockatiel's name has since faded into the mists of time. In any case, they both died quickly.

Last year, I purchased some Venus flytraps...that died. So there you have it, I suck at keeping things alive.

In other news, I have not heard anything from the Finnish lawyer since I gave him my bank account information. What could possibly be wrong?

Chapter XVIII: The Miracle of Life

I am pleased to announce that I have just quite suddenly become wealthier, to the tune of $22 million! From whence does this unexpected largesse originate, you might well ask. It all started this afternoon, when I checked my inbox, and within it was an email from a Finnish probate attorney!

Unbeknown to me, I had a 5th cousin residing in the United Kingdom who possessed a very well-endowed bank account (Many websites offer cheap bank account enlargement pills, but don't trust them! All natural is the way to go). Tragically, he and his entire family perished in a car crash--or motor accident as the British so quaintly put it--which left his estate in a state of limbo until the astute Finnish barrister found me, after three years of scouring the globe for a next of kin. Incidentally, the dead relative is 'Harvishard Fan' which, according to sources, is "an awesome name.

As instructed, I handed over my confidential financial details to the helpful Finn and he promised to initiate the transfer of assets from the Nigerian central bank to my bank account as soon as some paperwork processed. Yay!

It is ironic to think that I almost died earlier today and might not have been able to avail myself of this stupendous opportunity.

My octegenarian grandmother has a helper Sheila, whose job description consists of "carry Grandma's purse, and open doors for her." To these, add one: "provide harrowing near death experiences for Grandma's offspring's offspring." Sheila was driving Grandma home today, and I had the fortune of being in the car also. The problem arose when Sheila thought she was on the wrong freeway and had what looked to me like a nervous breakdown. She slowed to 35 mph (everyone else still at 75) and was driving in two lanes simultaneously.

This is essentially the opposite of Space Mountain at Disneyland. In Space Mountain, you are in a vehicle zooming towards an object at 40 mph and you swerve out of the way at the last moment. By contrast, in the Sheila Ride, other objects speed toward you at 40 mph and swerve out of the way at the last moment. What fun! The Sheila Ride is not recommended for people with heart conditions or a desire to live. In light of that, you may think this post can more appropriately be titled "It's a Miracle I Lived!" But you would be wrong.

Actually, you would be right, because this post is about to runneth over and the part that would make you wrong will be posted tomorrow instead.

In other news, a straight still beats three-of-a-kind.

Chapter XVII: Introspection

update: this post sucks. don't read it

Questions I have asked myself about this blog, in no particular order:
1. How often should I post something?
2. Who am I writing to?
3. What should I write about?
4. How long should each post be?
5. How formal should my diction/syntax?
6. Should I try to be funny?
7. Why am I blogging at all?

It is because of these questions that I haven't posted anything for over a month. In fact, I still don't know what the answers are. But I figured the answers would make a semi-decent blog entry, so here I go.

1. How often should I post something? Making a significant post at least once a week seems like a reasonable goal. Anything beyond that is gravy (the good kind, not the fucking shit Light House used to serve).

4. How long should each post be? However long the topic at hand lends itself to. 300-500 words is a framework to aim for.

2. Who am I writing to? Myself, the conglomerate mass of people I know, the faceless Internet, and any aliens that are monitoring me.

5. How formal should my diction/syntax? Capitalization, punctuation, and spelling can be manipulated for effect. This is to say, any misspellings should be considered jokkes, and not typographical errors. In general though, standard English will be adhered to. Profanity will be used where appropriate (i.e. every post).

[Things happen and it is about 10 hours before I return to the computer]

6. Should I try to be funny? Sure, why the fuck not. Blogging is a joke anyway. People spend so much energy writing crap, trying to make themselves look cool, or trying to convince themselves that they're cool, when it's all just...something. Nothing. Anything. Whatever. No more whining, only happy thoughts. Wee.

7. Why am I blogging at all? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Chapter XVI: Party Pooper

As the world's most active poker site, PartyPoker.com has about 20,000 players online, from all over the world, at any given moment. This humongous player base contains a large number of college students, who are not the most polite demographic on the internet. Furthermore, poker itself predictably gives rise to situations where a certain amount of vituperation occurs. All this is to say that you get a bunch of people cussing at each other.

To deal with this, PartyPoker, like many online entities, implements a profanity filter. Thus, on PartyPoker, suppose someone hits a two-outer on the river and, upset, you say to him, "GO MASTURBATE A GOAT YOU FUCKING WHORE!" This will appear in the chatbox as "GO XXXXXXXXXX A GOAT YOU XXXXING XXXXX!" You get the idea. There are, however, a few interesting things about PartyPoker's filter that I have noticed and shall now impart to you.

The first is that the word 'ass' is not filtered, whereas 'asshole' is. This, I surmise, is because many innocuous words contain the string 'ass', such as 'morass,' 'neoclassicism, and 'lassitude.' and Censoring 'ass' would render these non-profane words unintelligible. It is rarer for the string 'asshole' to occur in a context other than swearing and thus it can legitimately be filtered.

Unfortunately, similar consideration was not given when the decision was made to filter the string 'spic', which I only realized was on the blacklist when I used the word 'inauspicious' which appears as 'inauXXXXious.'

And finally, PartyPoker filters the word 'prophecy.' Why, you may well ask, is this so? 'Prophecy' is not generally considered to be profanity--it is not a racial epithet, nor does not seem to be insulting in any way. In fact, it isn't. In a disturbing move, PartyPoker censors 'prophecy' for its own profit-driven purposes. Those unfamiliar with internet poker will never have heard of pokerprophecy.com, a site which runs several large computers that track the performance of tournament players on PartyPoker. This information is then sold to other players. In essence, you can sit down at a table, click a button, and be presented with a chart showing the relative skill of all the other players at the table. pokerprophecy.com is also useful in tracking your own performance over time. The problem, though, is that pokerprophecy.com is not affiliated with PartyPoker and is apparently percieved as a threat. Thus the word 'prophecy' is censored to make talking about it more difficult.

All in all, the profanity filter is utterly ineffective. Anyone who really wants to swear can easily bypass it by simply interposing another character between the first and second letter of the the filtered word (i.e. 'F.UCK'). One can only hope that the apparent use of the profanity filter to attack other businesses is an isolated incident.

In other news, there is still no other news.

Chapter CXXIV: In Which Our Hero Is Gravely Wounded

"This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause birth defects and other reproductive harm." Well, shit. I guess I shouldn't buy this coffee mug. Or this knock-off tupperware. Or this 'sexy nurse' costume. Everything I would ever want from the 99-cent store causes birth defects and/or cancer--according to the State of California, anyway. To be sure, the State of California might be a lying bitch, but even so, I just can't bring myself to eat out of something that has a skull and crossbones sticker on it.

The can openers though, are stickerless and free of danger. Or so I thought. During the summer, I ate approximately three cans of tuna a day, and opened them with a stainless steel can opener that I bought at a supermarket for about $20. It opened cans with the efficiency of a German blitzkreig conquering Poland, and I loved it. Unfortunately, while moving into my new apartment though, this marvel of kitchen engineering took it upon itself to disappear (perhaps escaping to Argentina like numerous Nazi officials.

So, I needed a can opener, and could nary believe my luck upon procuring one for a relative pittance at the 99-cent store. I rushed home with my prize, flung open the cabinet door, and cackled menacingly at the cowering tuna cans. They had grown complacent in the interim. I chose a victim and brought him to the sink, where I proceeded to use my new can opener for the first time.

It was unexpectedly difficult, more like the Russian campaign than the Polish one. I had to reclamp the edge several times to make any progress at all, and eventually reached an impasse--there was this little part of tin that the damn can opener simply refused to cut through! I named that bit Stalingrad. I resorted to trying to pry off the lid (mostly detached) with my fingers. And then it happened.

AAAAaAAaaaaHHH1!!!! OWwwwW!!!!! The fucking can decided to fight back and sliced an inch-long gash into my thumb. I bled all over my tuna--but ate it anyway--and then called the Student Health Services center to make an appointment for a tetanus shot.

The moral of this story is, don't buy ANYTHING for the 99-cent store. Even if it doesn't cause cancer, it'll figure out some way to kill you.

Chapter XIII: Junk Mail Junkie

I used to avoid junk mail like the plague. My spam filter consisted of a five hundred foot wall topped with barbed wire, surrounded a crocodile infested moat. My inbox was so secure that it took me two weeks longer than anyone else to find out I had been accepted to Cal Poly, since my acceptance email had been deflected by my junk mail filter. But hey, it's just like with national security--sacrifices must be made to ensure the integrity of the motherland, or inbox, as the case may be. Behind these impregnable defenses, I revelled and made merry, like Prince Prospero.

Inevitably though, a piece of junk mail was able to infiltrate my castellated abbey and gruesomely kill all my guests, a la Edgar Allan Poe.

That was a couple years ago. Now, I pop into my junk mail folder pretty much whenever I check my email, hoping to find a neat piece of spam. Contrary to popular belief, not all junk mail is created equal. Sure, most of the time it's just some boring fluff where the subject is "enLarGeYour /\/\anhood" from someone named "NOWYOUCAN" but every so often, it's something cool, albeit inadvertently.

There was a period of about a month when I got a slew of emails where in the email text, after the ad for printer ink/penis enlargement/SUPER LOW mortgage rates, there would be a couple weird sentences, like "As Abbie limped across the street "Looks like a storm's comin'" mumbled Uncle Leroy and the Axe fell swiftly on the cat who blew Autumn Mist into the air like butterflies. I love Goats."

This was probably a device to try to get the email through spam filters (it failed), but every so often something almost meaningful emerged from the randomness.

At any rate, last night I got an email from "HIS HIGHNESS Farzand Bin Ali, Emir of the state of Bahrain." It was rather lengthy, but very entertaining. The basic gist was that he got a lot of bribes from American oil companies ($32 million), and he wants me to help him invest it in the Canadian stock market. In return he'll give me $2 million. To make this transfer, he needs all my bank account information. And finally, he looks forward to a "fruitful business relationship."

Quite clever I thought, but there's one minor detail that annoys me. The emir of Bahrain's name is Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, not Farzand Bin Ali. Why would they fuck that up?

Supposedly, spam composes about 95% of all email traffic in the United States. That's fucking awesome.

In other news, my bookstore doesn't stock The Economist anymore, for some reason.

Chapter XII: Honey Bunches of Shit™

I never paid attention to cereal commercials when I was younger. I had no disposable income to speak of, and besides, the cereal that my mom bought--the cereal I would be eating--was determined solely by one factor, which was (of course) the price. For example, my mom once bought 15 boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats (henceforth referred to as HBoO) for a dollar each.

Some weeks prior to this, she had bought a couple boxes of HBoO for the first time as a trial run. Us kids--my brother, sister, and I--ate them and expressed the sentiment that they were passably esculent. This, apparently, was interpreted as validation and taken as a green light to capitalize fully on any deals local supermarkets were offering on HBoO, including 3 boxes for $3 (up to 15 boxes at this price), with your Vons Club card.

You can guess what happened next. The process was slow, but implacable. Breakfast took longer and longer to eat and by box three (five, if you count the two we ate before), what was never really a cheerful time of day to begin with became downright shitty. Sometimes my siblings and I would look up from our bowls of soggy sweetness and sigh. Our eyes would meet silently, since at that point words were no longer necessary--the eyes said everything. They (the eyes) said, "This fucking sucks. I fucking hate HBoO. Why the fuck did she buy 15 fucking boxes?" And whatever variations on that theme one 10 year-old and two 15 year-old (they're fraternal twins) minds could think of.

Furthermore, HBoO turned our cheap nonfat milk blue for some reason. This takes a few minutes, so we hadn't noticed it before when we were still eating the cereal reasonably quickly. Eventually though, this transformation became a fact of daily life. Thus, even after we had finished the cereal, we had to deal with a bowl of bluish milk, not quite cold anymore, with specks of cereal dust floating aimlessly around, like the frozen bodies in Titanic. Not to put too fine a point on it, this phase of the meal was very unappetizing and usually took longer than the main cereal phase.

I don't quite remember when we decided we had had enough. Each one us probably had a slightly different threshold. I'm guessing Charlie lasted the longest. He's like that. In any case, the expiration dates passed, and then passed again and again as the years went by. Everytime we opened the cupboard, they were there to mock us. Row upon row of pristine white unopened boxes (and one opened box). Our mom refused to buy any different cereal until we finished what we had, reasoning that unopened cereal can't expire, but we never ate another bowl. Just the thought of HBoO leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And by sour, I mean sickeningly sweet. Honestly, I can still taste them if I think about it hard enough. They have all sorts of different colors for the insignia on the front now, but I remember distinctly: our boxes were the ones with blue.

Basically I never ate cereal or drank milk for the next several years, not even when I first escaped to college last year. This summer though, I took to eating Honey Nut Cheerios, which I find delectable. That brings me to last night, when the incident occurred that jogged my memory of the tale of woe I just recounted. Last night I had just enough Cheerios left in the box for one last bowl, but the milk had run out the bowl before. Being ever so resourceful, I immediately weighed the options in the refrigerator: water, Gatorade, vodka, or orange juice. I decided to go with orange juice--after all, it's all "part of this complete breakfast" as cereal commercials are so fond of saying at the end, whilst displaying a table loaded with a bowl of cereal, a giant glass of milk, a giant glass of orange juice, two apples, a banana, scrambled eggs, a stack of pancakes, and a head of lettuce.

Bottom line: bad idea. The sweetness of the Cheerios made the mildly tangy orange juice downright sour, and everything got a million times stickier, and the gobs of cereal dust that came out of the bottom of the bag looked plain gross. Orange juice may float Cheerios, but it definitely doesn't float my Cheerio, so to speak.

Darron, one of my roommates, bought more milk today, but now I'm out of Cheerios. If there is a word for the evil version of serendipity, this would be an example of it.

In other news, this is actually the second time I've written this. My computer mysteriously turned off half an hour ago and took draft one with it. Fortunately, Word rescued the philosophy paper I was writing at the same time about Plato's Phaedo and the Theory of Forms. Exciting stuff, I know.

Thank you Microsoft.

Chapter XI: A Glitch in the Matrix

Whenever I make an allusion, either in writing, or aloud, I always fear that the people on the recieving end will be too stupid to understand it, and will, in turn, think I am stupid for saying something seemingly weird (if you don't get the allusion).

Most people are probably smart enough to understand all my allusions, but then I fear that the person I'm talking/writing to will maybe think I made the allusion unintentionally, because he thinks I'm stupid.

In any case, immediately following the allusion with an explication of it remedies both of these situations. On one hand, I'm assured that the person I'm talking to will realize an allusion was made, and on the other, he will be assured I made it on purpose.

For example, the title of this blog used to be "The Light Fan Tastic". And beneath the title, I scribbled something about how it was an allusion to The Glass Menagerie, but also a play on my last name.

I realize I haven''t explicated the new title "My Life is a Refrigerator Full of Condiments But No Real Food" (that was for reference, if I ever change the title again), which is also an allusion, to Fight Club. But I guess I just did.

And so with that introduction, we can proceed.

The title of this chapter is an allusion to something Trinity said in The Matrix, regarding the phenomenon of deja vu. However, this entry is not about The Matrix, nor about deja vu, nor even about allusions.

It's about something wierd that happened tonight in the parking lot of the Vons supermarket in San Luis Obispo. Quinn and I had just purchased some stuff with a $25 gift card he had (yes, a gift card for Vons) and we walked to his car, which is one of about only four left in the parking lot. I get to the front passenger side and open the door, and as I am about to get in, he looks over and says, "Um, this isn't my car."

He was right, of course, but that's where the strangeness begins. There were only four cars left in the parking lot, and parked next to Quinn's happened to be one that was nearly identical to his. He has a Volkwagen Jetta; the other car was a Volkwagen Jetta. His car is painted dark green; the other car was the exact same shade of dark green. And of course, there was the mystery as to why he had been able to unlock that car. I mean, how could it not be his car if he unlocked the doors? In fact, the actual owner had, for some reason, left them unlocked.

Either she (we were able to infer the owner's gender based on her vehicle's contents) was very forgetful, or didn't feel anyone would try to steal an ugly green Jetta. And she would have been right of course--the only reason anyone would touch her car is if they mistook it for a different car, which is exactly what happened .

It was a bizarre experience that disoriented me for a moment, not unlike deja vu might do. And that is why I allude to it in the title. See? Everything I say has a purpose, you just have to wait and see.

In an amusing coda, after Quinn parked back at Cal Poly and we had walked about two hundred feet up the hill...he realized he had forgotten to lock the car.

Chapter X: The Quotable Professor

After two days of school, I've had all my classes at least once, and am prepared to offer up the most interesting kernel of wisdom delivered by each professor on the first day of class. Ahem.

Professor Buffa (of Physics): "...What are the laws of physics the ball obeys when you throw it up?" I guffawed uncontrollably for about 1.2 seconds after this rhetorical question, and continued guffawing for several seconds thereafter, albeit controllably. My immediate mental image was of Professor Buffa vomitting a tennis ball into the air, along with his lunch. If anyone else in the class found this funny, they gave no indication.

Professor Choi (of Architectural History): "We will ask you, 'What is this building?' and 'What time period was it constructed in?' and you will fill in the correct bubble...or, I should say, about 70% of you will fill in the correct bubble."

Professor Yip (of Architectural History), regarding the remote control which operates the projector: "It's like a little space ship." This was amusing because the remote control had no resemblence to a space ship at all.

Professor Bomstad (of Philosophy): "Question: How do you get a philosopher off your porch?
Answer: Pay for the pizza."

Professor Freeby (of Architectural Design): "Gofjewol Hbyhfffoeeq." Or something, I can't remember. He mangled someone's name on the roll sheet though.

Professor Howell (of British Literature): "If you squeeze the pig, he'll squeal." This man makes me want to die. He probably spoke as many words in two hours as, say, Professor Bomstad did in twenty minutes. I did not know anyone could talk so slowly, and he doesn't stock his required text at the campus bookstore, and he has this weird touchy feely participation based grading, and he waited until 7:00 PM (the class starts at 6:00) before he turned on the lights in the room, and only because someone asked him to. Personally, I was curious as to how dark he'd let it get before he noticed that we couldn't read our syllabi anymore. And to top it all off, I'm going to have to read Frankenstein again, which was only one of two books I ever threw away because I hated it so much. The other was Treasure Island. I think I'm going to drop this class like a flaming sack of goat feces, but finding something to take instead will be sucky.

In other news, Adbusters arrived in the mail today. Now I can appropriately equip myself to conform to the mainstream of counterculture culture.

Chapter IX: Bad Beats

Esoteric--poker.

The situation: There are six players, arranged thusly:

button, small blind, big blind, player A, Me, player B.

I am dealt Q Q. Player A raises one chip, to 5. I reraise 4 more, to a total of 9. Player B folds, the button calls. The blinds fold. Player A calls.

Three players to the flop, which is J22. Player A bets 10. Putting him on the J, I raise to 40. I have 9 chips left. To my horror, both the button and player A call. I am screwed. One of them must have the 2 (and called the preflop raise for kicks), or a higher pocket pair. The turn is an 8. Player A checks to me, and I resignedly bet my remaining 9 chips. Surprisingly, the button folds, but Player A calls.

Player A did not, in fact, have the 2 or a higher pocket pair. He turns over 8 8, which means I winning when he called my preflop raise (81.5% favorite), I was winning when he called my massive bet on the flop (91.6% favorite), but caught the 8 on the turn for a full house and a 95.6% advantage. This is very very disappointing.

I have a 4.4% chance of hitting a queen on the river. But then, just like in Maverick, it happens. The queen lands, and I have queens full of twos, beating eights full of twos.

And I do believe that is the first time I've been all-in and won when drawing to two outs on the river. To put it another way, this is the worst beat I've ever given someone.

The worst beat I ever got, of course, was when I flopped a straight and moved all-in. The caller then magically converted middle pair on the flop into three of a kind on the turn, and full house on the river.

In other news, I've found that The Washington Post has become slightly more interesting reading over the past week than The New York Times.

11/02/2005 UPDATE: New bad beat: I have 3h 4h, the flop is 5h 6h 7h...straight flush. Various things happen, all-in by the river, which is 8h. Other guy has 9h. Ow.

Chapter VIII: The Coolest Chapter

I don't know how to preface what I'm about to do, so I won't try. It's pretty self-explanatory.

Normal: tryptofantasmic
Eyes closed: tryptofantasmic
Eyes closed w/ one hand (L): tryoiigabtasnyc
Eyes closed w/ one hand (R): tryptodsbtsdbyc
Toes: trypotkifcAFTRATIC
Nose: tr60-5oqhawstic
Palm: trey;ogtofasnb tsasatiuc
Chin: trflkxcz bntgaswtiux
Elbow: t54ryptgolfvaz n fzsxgtikc
Tongue: tryptofantasmic
CD held between teeth: trypttyofabtrasmnic
Force powers:
Butt: re[[;p'-;['pk,mnb
Butt w/ eyes closed: qaloYHYG

I'm sure you can guess what else I thought of trying, but I would have had to hold the keyboard upside down, which is inconvenient since I use a laptop.

Conclusion: One one hand, losing one's sight is not a major hindrance to a skilled typist. On the other hand, losing one's hands is. Should this happen, your best bet appears to be to resort to the tongue*, followed by a CD held between the teeth.

*Don't try this in public, or on a keyboard that was previously owned by a handless, tongueless, CDless person. He probably used his toes.

Chapter VII: 2103

Milestones are wonderful things. Last week, I got my license to kill...er...drive. And yesterday, I finally pushed my Yahoo! Literati rating above 2100.

Literati is basically yahoo.com's version of Scrabble, with some adjustments to the board layout and letter values so as to avoid being sued for copyright infringement.

The rating system is similar to the ELO system used by the International Chess Federation. Basically, a player of "average" ability (average being used in the statistical sense) is assigned a rating of 1500. Each 100 points above and below 1500 is supposed to be one standard deviation of skill. If this were actually true, my rating of 2103 would be approximately six standard deviations above average, putting me in the top 99.9999998th percentile. Another way to put this is that there are only 12 people on the planet better than I am.

In practice, 2100 in Literati is more like three standard deviations, or the 97.5th percentile. The reason that 2100 is so special is because when you're in a game lobby, your screen name has a little colored square next to it based on what rating range you're in. Green for 0-1199, blue for 1200-1499 purple for 1500-1799, orange for 1800-2099, and red for 2100 and above. So yes, that's what the big deal is: I have a red square now.

This would have been even cooler if it had happened three years ago, when I was communist (the Kremlin is called Red Square). I probably didn't need to add that parenthetical note, but some of you guys are pretty fucking stupid and might not have gotten it. You know who you are. =)

Until next time, do svidaniya.

Chapter VI: Booger King

Something odd happened when I went to Burger King with Kohei last night. It was around 8:00 PM, well within Burger King's operating hours, and there was a sign that said OPEN, yet all the doors were locked. In fact, there were people inside, eating. We were unable to enter though, and took the drive-thru.

I know some convenience stores only use the reinforced window after a certain hour to hamper robbers, but this was a Burger King, at eight o'clock, in suburban Orange County, across the street from a public library --which was still open. Very strange. The only explanation I can think of is they must have closed early to prepare for a Satanic ritual of some kind, probably involving child sacrifice and cannibalism. And maybe incense.

Anyhow, on the subject of fast food, my uncle used to call cheeseburgers "cheese neowgers," to the great merriment of the younger generation. The reason for this was that the "bur" part of burger is phonetically identical to the word "bird" (when spoken in an Oriental accent), and the Chinese word for bird is neow.

Also, the Chinese for McDonald's sounds very similar to the Chinese for "sells cockroaches." This may or may not be a coincidence.

Also, when I was really little, I called Happy Meals "Happy Milks." However, this had nothing to do with being Chinese, and more to do with being four years old.

On the subject of Satanic rituals, I saw someone using a CoinStar at Ralph's yesterday.

Chapter V: Bump Screeech

After all these years, I did it at last. I have a license. I can finally drive. Fine, it's not that exciting, but I often thought it would never happen. In fact, up until the moment the examiner said, "Okay, you passed," I sincerely thought that I had failed...miserably...and indeed, I came within a hair.

Now that it's over, the whole day seems kind of funny, but it wasn't at the time.

Let's rewind to a scene that took place at 7:50 AM this morning, in my mom's black Toyota Avalon:

-----
"Just shut up Mom, you aren't helping. I'm trying to find it."

"WHERE IS IT?! WHY DID YOU LOSE IT! YOU'RE SO STUPID!"

"SHUT UP, MOM! Are you SURE it's not in the glove compartment?"

"NO, IT'S NOT THERE!! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!! YOUR APPOINTMENT IS IN TEN MINUTES!!!! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THIS?! I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"I didn't do it on FUCKING PURPOSE, Mom! I thought they were all together!"

"FUCKING! FUCKING! NO WONDER YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS, YOU TALK LIKE THAT!!"

"JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP, MOM!!!"
-----

Heartwarming, yes? That's not an exact transcription, since everything my mom said was in Chinese--one of the more annoying languages to have screamed at you from two feet away. The case item was a DMV document filled out by my optometrist certifying that I can see well enough to drive (required since I am legally blind in my left eye).

It was never found, and I drove to the DMV without it, to make my 8:00 AM appointment. Rattled by the morning's events, I ran a red light, as well as made a left turn into the wrong lane on the way. This was inauspicious.

Inside the DMV, they just took my permit and never asked for the eye form, since I guess most people don't need it. This was Miracle #1.

After that, it took about half an hour for an examiner to get to me. He was hirsute and could have been mistaken for a homeless drunk, if it were not for the DMV badge hanging around his neck, and the clipboard in his hand.

I thought I was doing fine until he told me to reverse parallel to the curb, which was on a hill. I had never practiced this, and wasn't sure what he meant, but I had read about parking on hills, so I got my back tires to gently touch the curb. He indicated that I should continue reversing, but there wasn't anywhere to go since I was already as far as I could go. This fact was made abundantly clear by the BUMP SCREEECH noise of my back tire grinding into the curb. I had to go into drive and then do it again. I'm pretty sure what I did qualified as "Striking object/curb" which is a "CRITICAL ERROR" and should have resulted in an instant fail. Apparently, it did not. This was Miracle #2.

I heard him sigh, and thought that I had definitely failed, and he was just going to wait until we returned to the DMV to tell me. It was thus with great approbation that I pulled into the parking lot. Oops, I mean apprehension. Anyway, so I parked and he said "Okay, you passed" and left without another word. Here is the top part of my score sheet:



Yep, one more error and I would have failed. This was Miracle #3 (that my examiner was kind and/or not observant).

So yes, I have a license now. So much more freedom, but all I can think about is never having to step foot in the goddamn DMV again.

That's all folks.

Chapter IV: Sk8er What?

Avril Lavigne is fucking hot. Note image on the left. Her eyes gaze out at you with such vulnerability that you wish you could just hold her and whisper everything will be okay, but at the same time her strong chin and highlights bespeak of inner strength and passion (I am small and the world is big/But I'm not afraid of anything - "How Does It Feel"); this interplay is what makes her so compelling to angsty teenagers. Of course, Avril Lavigne's image is every bit as artificial as that of, say, Britney Spears, and both are contrived for the sole purpose of selling records. That discussion, however, is beyond the scope of this article.

I am taking issue with just one song, the eponymous "Sk8er Boi." Catchy though it is, the lyrics of the song defeat the intended message of "be true to yourself". As you know, the song recounts how a skater boy is rejected by a "preppy" girl, and he later goes on to fame and fortune and isn't she oh-so-sorry.

My contention is, the girl shouldn't be sorry, because her situation, as described in the lyrics, isn't all that bad.
1. Five years from now, she sits at home/She's feeding the baby... So she has a home, which is promising, and she has a family, which is a very respectable.
2. She turns on TV, guess who she sees?/Skater boy's rocking up MTV... Not only does she have a home, she has a TV, and what's more, SHE GETS CABLE! I know people who live in single-family, detached housing (suburbia) in Orange County who don't have cable. And the very next lyric...
3. She calls up her friends... Aha! She also has friends and, incidentally, a telephone. What more could someone want from life than a family, a house, consumer electronics to put in the house, and friends?

At the very least, it's not fair to belittle someone who has this kind of stability in her life; and certainly not for a decision she made five years back to forgo a deadend relationship. This decision is supposedly an example of caving in to peer pressure and not pursuing your dreams.

Clearly, Avril (by which I mean her cadre of songwriters) was not thinking clearly. The lines of the song I referenced above would be much more powerful in painting a negative picture of what happens when you don't stand by your convictions if they were slightly adjusted, to say, the following:

One month from now, she sits on the street/She's feeding the rats, they think she's already dead/She closes her eyes, guess who she sees?/No one, because her eyes are fucking closed/She calls up her pimp, he tells her to shut the fuck up and get back to work.

You disagree? That's your prerogative. Certainly, a song is not required to be logical, or make any sense at all (i.e. anything by The Butthole Surfers), but this is something I've been thinking about today. Cheers.

Chapter III: Fuck CoinStar

Yes, fuck CoinStar. Why, you ask? Because CoinStar is fucking YOU. I refer, of course, to the 8.9% service charge. Eight point nine per-fucking-cent. It does NOT take a dime's worth of effort to count up 100 pennies. I timed myself, I takes 53.44 seconds to count out 100 pennies. If I made 8.9 cents every 53.44 seconds, that would be $5.90 per hour.

Okay, maybe that's not that much. But then again, CoinStar counts much faster than I do, and the evil manager at Ralph's told me to CoinStar my half-dollars too! It DEFINITELY does not cost a dime to count out two half-dollar coins.

Sure, you might say, you don't HAVE to use CoinStar. You could buy groceries with coins if you want to. But the fact is, paying with coins has always been surrounded by a miasma of opprobrium. It's like, you don't HAVE to say the Pledge of Allegiance, but everybody looks at you funny if you don't.

People have always preferred bills to coins, and CoinStar is an institutionalization of that. Not only are coins worth less than bills, but according the CoinStar, they are worth 8.9% less.

And...um...that's bad. I forgot where I was going with this. Something about Gresham's Law and CoinStar being responsible for the downfall of America. It's too late anyway (in more ways than one). Nighty-o.

Chapter II: Consumerism, a Personal Perspective

We are what we buy. The following is a list of things I have purchased this summer, their manufacturers, and their prices, as nearly as I can remember.

one year subscription to Adbusters.............$35.00
two Now And Zen t-shirts.......................$15.98
one Victorinox Swiss army knife................$20.23
one American Apparel track jacket*.............$39.06
six Green Squirrel Shirts t-shirts.............$30.55
one Mossimo track jacket.......................$23.99
two Abercrombie & Fitch fleece jackets*........$49.50
one Aeropostale cargo shorts...................$19.99
one American Eagle cargo shorts................$9.99
one AXE bodyspray..............................$0.99
one Simple tennis shoes........................$13.99
one Simple sneakers............................$50.99
two Staedtler Mars kneadable erasers...........$3.98
three Canson drawing paper.....................$6.00
one Strathmore 18x24'' sketchpad...............$4.00
one Interplay computer game....................$3.99
five Clearasil face soap.......................$19.99
one Victorinox Startech 2000 watch.............$80.75
two Aeropostale t-shirts.......................$25.00
four Hanes boxer-briefs........................$8.49
one Tempurpedic pillow.........................$17.99
three Staedtler Mars drawing pencils...........$1.50
five used books................................$3.00
one birthday cake*.............................$7.00
one shitty boardgame*..........................$13.00
one Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.....$17.99
two Pilot pens.................................$2.50
one pack of Jenga blocks.......................$12.50
one Sony clip-on headphones....................$32.00
one year subscription to All In................$22.00
one year subscription to Wired.................$4.99

*not for me

Conclusion: Ironic, is it not, that Adbusters, a magazine devoted to anti-consumerism that urges people not to buy things they don't need, offers subscriptions. Do I really need the magazine?

Chapter I: The Beginning of the End

I know what you're thinking...you are weary of seeing yet another blog link in yet another another AIM profile. "How will this one die?" you cynically wonder to yourself. There are so many ways.

Scenario A: I could be one of those people that writes long detailed recapitulations of my daily activities for about a week, and then suddenly lose interest. The blog will lose its AIM profile link and never be heard from again.

Scenario B: The fade-out will be more gradual. Entries become infrequent and less detailed, although not necessarily shorter as I begin replacing actual content with cut-and-pasted song lyrics. Perhaps after six months, I will simply forget the blog exists.

Scenario C: Miscellaneous (what insurance companies refer to as "an act of God")
Subsection i: The server mysteriously crashes and all data is rendered irretrievable.
Subsection ii: I am abducted by Martians that don't have Internet access.

Scenario D: I never actually stop writing entries, but after a while, they're all pretty much the same and completely devoid of interest. I know nobody reads them, but update out of habit. It's like the blog version of the Flying Dutchman, drifting through time; a ghost of itself.


Which will it be? This thing was created on a whim, so I'm guessing it'll die the same way, but who knows...

A final question: Do all blogs go the heaven?

P.S. Scratch the final question, that was stupid.