I'm generally optimistic, but nothing beats my sister and her essay contests. Every month or so, she'll participate in some national writing contest and she'll spend a solid ten minutes writing an essay. I figure she just doesn't really care, but then three weeks later, when the results are due, she takes an extra three shifts at the mailbox, waiting for a letter of congratulations.
I finally had a lucid dream today! It lasted all of 2 seconds, but it was unmistakable. The interesting part was how I got to lucidity. In order to become lucid, you have to realize that you're dreaming while in the dream. If you do reality checks all day every day, then you usually become lucid through that - performing one inside a dream. In my case, it was predictably much more roundabout.
In my dream, I'm at this big family gathering in our backyard. There's tons of food and even more relatives, which should already tip me off since we rarely even invite ourselves over for dinner. So there's all this food, but for some reason I don't pounce on it. Instead, I go out to the car and drive away somewhere. I forget where I drove and I don't think I even really knew in the dream, but I drove for a while, making illegal U-turns and getting nowhere.
Suddenly I get suspicious. Why the hell am I driving around aimlessly when there's so much food to be eaten at home? "I must be dreaming," I think. "How do I check?...Aha!" I whip out my cell phone and call home. Mom picks up.
Mark: Mom, where am I right now?
Mom: you're sitting at the table eating.
Mark (hangs up): I'm dreaming!
The instant I become sure of it, it's like fifteen layers of fog suddenly lift and the world is suddenly real and colorful. It's amazing how I didn't notice its dreariness before. But no matter, I'm lucid dreaming now! I'm about to take off (flying) and then...I wake up.
Another one bites the dust.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Local Apocalypse
Monday, life is coming to an end in this house. It's supposed to be that part of the 30-day no-sugar-added trial where all other impulses are abandoned as well, but we haven't decided quite what this means yet. Some ideas presented to the board were:
1. Do the opposite of every impulse, a la Seinfeld, where George does it to great effect on a first date: "I'm unemployed and I live with my parents." Best pick-up line ever. Actually, the only thing separating me from George-hood right now is a Herculean body, bountiful hair, fantastic talents, 20/20 vision, intense self-appreciation, and easy-goingness. Otherwise, I'm pretty much channeling the lifestyle.
2. Meditate 12 hours a day. This is the most realistic one of course. Unfortunately, in a different reality.
3. Become more aware of each moment by doing everything differently, i.e. only getting around by hopping, only chewing using incisors, only going to the bathroom in August, etc.
4. Get rid of impulses through overindulgement: watch 10 movies a day while sitting in a bathtub filled with chocolate and masturbating continuously. Appealing, but I don't think we have enough movies. Nor is any one of us physically fit enough for the third leg of this simul-triathalon.
5. Fasting. Ha!
6. Just give up! I've had great success with this strategy in the past and I don't know if this is the right time to break in a new one. It's "the easy way out" of course, but the easy way out's bad rap is undeserved. I already have the conversation planned out for when...whoa there, almost let that one get by!...IF I have a son:
Son: Daddy, I took the easy way out today, just like you taught me.
Mark: I'm proud of you son!
Son: And I'm never getting a job.
Mark: That's my boy! And don't you worry, Mama'll support us.
Funny:
(to Pei)
Mark: ur like the soviet union
Mark: has anyone ever told u that?
Mark: I'm only a 100% sure
Gene: well we should check the other 100% just in case
Michelle: he's so cute! He's so cute! He's so cute!
Mark: who's cute?
Michelle: the guy who got skin cancer.
(deciding whether to watch Get Smart or Secret Life of Bees)
Mark (minus brain): ok, let's flip a coin. Tails is Bees because bees have tails.
1. Do the opposite of every impulse, a la Seinfeld, where George does it to great effect on a first date: "I'm unemployed and I live with my parents." Best pick-up line ever. Actually, the only thing separating me from George-hood right now is a Herculean body, bountiful hair, fantastic talents, 20/20 vision, intense self-appreciation, and easy-goingness. Otherwise, I'm pretty much channeling the lifestyle.
2. Meditate 12 hours a day. This is the most realistic one of course. Unfortunately, in a different reality.
3. Become more aware of each moment by doing everything differently, i.e. only getting around by hopping, only chewing using incisors, only going to the bathroom in August, etc.
4. Get rid of impulses through overindulgement: watch 10 movies a day while sitting in a bathtub filled with chocolate and masturbating continuously. Appealing, but I don't think we have enough movies. Nor is any one of us physically fit enough for the third leg of this simul-triathalon.
5. Fasting. Ha!
6. Just give up! I've had great success with this strategy in the past and I don't know if this is the right time to break in a new one. It's "the easy way out" of course, but the easy way out's bad rap is undeserved. I already have the conversation planned out for when...whoa there, almost let that one get by!...IF I have a son:
Son: Daddy, I took the easy way out today, just like you taught me.
Mark: I'm proud of you son!
Son: And I'm never getting a job.
Mark: That's my boy! And don't you worry, Mama'll support us.
Funny:
(to Pei)
Mark: ur like the soviet union
Mark: has anyone ever told u that?
Mark: I'm only a 100% sure
Gene: well we should check the other 100% just in case
Michelle: he's so cute! He's so cute! He's so cute!
Mark: who's cute?
Michelle: the guy who got skin cancer.
(deciding whether to watch Get Smart or Secret Life of Bees)
Mark (minus brain): ok, let's flip a coin. Tails is Bees because bees have tails.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sniping The Toilet
Yesterday another lucky tooth graduated from death row to tooth heaven. I went to the dentist and got that long due root canal. My other teeth are jealous, but I promised them the same fate shortly.
My dentist hates doing root canals so he had a stunt double do mine. Of course I wasn't fooled. Not only did she look nothing like him, the way she operated couldn't be more different. There's an expression: "measure twice, cut once." Actually, in Russian, the expression is "measure seven times, cut once." Well my dentist is to the Russian version as the Russian version is to the American one. He can measure all day, muttering little rhymes and anecdotes into his beard, and then cut sometime next month and in a different mouth altogether. He's slow, methodical, slow, and really really slow. However, he's supposedly good at what he does and I'm definitely good at providing him with a constant inflow of work material, so we're loyal to one another.
His replacement was the exact opposite. If my dentist is more like a lizard who can wait all day to strike at that unsuspecting fly, she was more like a wasp - flying right into that bee colony and snapping off all their heads, or in my case - flying in from all directions and never letting the drill's buzz reverberations inside my mouth die out.
Nevertheless, I ended up sitting there with my mouth open for two hours and forty-five minutes. The problem was that this was a molar tooth and they have more canals than Mars ever did. Each canal has to be cleaned out separately. At least one made-up statistic says: 75% of molars have 3 canals, 24.99% have 4 canals, but then there's that nasty 0.01% that have 173. Luckily I fell in the 24.99%, otherwise I'd still be sitting in that chair.
She also used some interesting aids that my dentist never used. She put what amounted to a hand-made elastic funnel into my mouth in order to isolate the tooth from the rest of me. You can perform oral sex with that thing in your mouth and the tooth will be innocent of the whole affair. I kept wondering the whole time what it looked like from her point of view, so eventually I asked her for a bathroom break and went to take a look. The dentist's aide passed me in the hall and nearly died laughing. When I reached the bathroom I understood why. It looked pretty ridiculous. The closest I can find on the Internet is this:
which unfortunately looks nothing like it. This looks even less like it:
and this:
is completely unrelated.
Unfortunately, as soon as I entered the bathroom, I felt an irresistable urge to pee. I got in position and suddenly realized that there was absolutely no way I could see where to aim, with this all-but-Japanese-invention protruding from my face. I had to orient myself by sound. Does that sound like it's hitting water? No, that must be a magazine or something. Toilet paper...floor...wall...."hey! Quit that!"...window...trash bin...aha! Found it!
You know how when you wake up in the morning, you're like two feet taller till your spine snaps back to its normal length? I think there's a similar rule for jaws. When I closed my jaw after three hours of holding it open, I couldn't quite fit the two halves together. It took a few hours for everything to get back in their right places. If this is a trend for other parts of our body, I don't understand how astronauts deal with it. Seems like they'd just explode in slow motion.
My dentist hates doing root canals so he had a stunt double do mine. Of course I wasn't fooled. Not only did she look nothing like him, the way she operated couldn't be more different. There's an expression: "measure twice, cut once." Actually, in Russian, the expression is "measure seven times, cut once." Well my dentist is to the Russian version as the Russian version is to the American one. He can measure all day, muttering little rhymes and anecdotes into his beard, and then cut sometime next month and in a different mouth altogether. He's slow, methodical, slow, and really really slow. However, he's supposedly good at what he does and I'm definitely good at providing him with a constant inflow of work material, so we're loyal to one another.
His replacement was the exact opposite. If my dentist is more like a lizard who can wait all day to strike at that unsuspecting fly, she was more like a wasp - flying right into that bee colony and snapping off all their heads, or in my case - flying in from all directions and never letting the drill's buzz reverberations inside my mouth die out.
Nevertheless, I ended up sitting there with my mouth open for two hours and forty-five minutes. The problem was that this was a molar tooth and they have more canals than Mars ever did. Each canal has to be cleaned out separately. At least one made-up statistic says: 75% of molars have 3 canals, 24.99% have 4 canals, but then there's that nasty 0.01% that have 173. Luckily I fell in the 24.99%, otherwise I'd still be sitting in that chair.
She also used some interesting aids that my dentist never used. She put what amounted to a hand-made elastic funnel into my mouth in order to isolate the tooth from the rest of me. You can perform oral sex with that thing in your mouth and the tooth will be innocent of the whole affair. I kept wondering the whole time what it looked like from her point of view, so eventually I asked her for a bathroom break and went to take a look. The dentist's aide passed me in the hall and nearly died laughing. When I reached the bathroom I understood why. It looked pretty ridiculous. The closest I can find on the Internet is this:
which unfortunately looks nothing like it. This looks even less like it:
and this:
is completely unrelated.
Unfortunately, as soon as I entered the bathroom, I felt an irresistable urge to pee. I got in position and suddenly realized that there was absolutely no way I could see where to aim, with this all-but-Japanese-invention protruding from my face. I had to orient myself by sound. Does that sound like it's hitting water? No, that must be a magazine or something. Toilet paper...floor...wall...."hey! Quit that!"...window...trash bin...aha! Found it!
You know how when you wake up in the morning, you're like two feet taller till your spine snaps back to its normal length? I think there's a similar rule for jaws. When I closed my jaw after three hours of holding it open, I couldn't quite fit the two halves together. It took a few hours for everything to get back in their right places. If this is a trend for other parts of our body, I don't understand how astronauts deal with it. Seems like they'd just explode in slow motion.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
I'm Not Taking The Blame For Your Suicide
We (Mark, Gene and Ellen) saw two movies today in the theater for the price of one. We surrendered our morals to Buddha so we felt no compunction in cheating the movie theater out of the price of three extra tickets.
The first movie was I Love You Man. This was a pretty damn funny comedy though with a slightly far-fetched premise: Paul Rudd, sexiest man alive according to some magazine or another I'm sure, has never had a guy friend. Now his wedding/funeral is approaching/looming and he needs to find someone to be his best man. I don't buy it, but given the given, it's a hit.
Gene was saying today how the latest protagonists in movies are anti-heroes. We used to have classic-definition heroes like James Bond - indestructible and irresistable to women, Tom Cruise - pretty boy with that vulnerable touch, Arnold Schwarzenegger - sexiest man alive and all-around badass.
These days we've advanced/regressed to heroes like Seth Rogan from Knocked Up - fat losers with Jew-fros, Jack Black from School of Rock - fat losers with body odor, and Steve Carell - idiots. And it's amazing, but after one of those movies, you actually want to be that fat smelly retarded loser! But what's really crazy is that not only you do, I do too.
The second movie was Sunshine Cleaning. This is about two girls with no skills except remembering their dead mother, who start a crime-scene-cleanup business. It's a pretty good movie, but don't go trusting IMDb that it's a comedy.
Sunshine Cleaning had more (implied) blood and headless torsos than Saving Private Ryan, so it got me thinking a bit about mortality, albeit in a sci-fi direction.
I was thinking:
If human beings were virtually immortal, if the only way they really died was by offing themselves, what do you think the average lifespan would be? I think it might be even lower than it is in our reality. Think about it. Living is a very complicated and hard habit. People are horrible at maintaining hard habits. That's why I do all these 30-day trials, because I know that it's just 30 days, it'll be over soon.
Same thing with life, it's like a long 30-day trial; you feel like an ass if you quit half-way. If there was no half-way point, you wouldn't feel so bad about quitting. When you go on a run and you say "I'm going to run 5 miles," you're going to run waaaaaaay farther than if you say "I'm going to go for a run and see how far I get." I've been saying the second one since the 5th grade and I still haven't left the couch.
Human beings are interesting in that they adhere to both the immortal and mortal states of mind. On one level, everyone acts like they're immortal - the way they live unhealthy lifestyles, the way they plan for the far far future when they might not even survive the day, and especially the way they drive. On the other hand, people know all about their own mortality. You can see this from the fact that they very rarely ask themselves "am I enjoying living?" The subconscious response to that is "whatever, I'm mortal anyway, I'll just go ahead and finish this crapola." They keep living even if they don't enjoy living at all, precisely because they're mortal.
It's kind of like when you order a meal at a restaurant. It's good, but you're full, and you feel sick, but you keep eating because you don't come here very often and today's the only day they're serving Komodo dragon. If you had free all-you-can-eat Komodo dragon ribs every day of the week, you wouldn't bother sticking feathers down your gullet mid-meal to clear up some space for the lonely leftovers on your plate. You'd throw them right down the trash chute. Same with life. If we were all immortal, we'd probably all shoot ourselves in our late twenties.
Ok, that said, don't commit suicide you lazy bastards.
By the way, Tuck Everlasting sucked. Book and movie.
Helpful friends:
Mark: 怎么说 to clean? (how do you say "to clean")
Pei: убирать
The first movie was I Love You Man. This was a pretty damn funny comedy though with a slightly far-fetched premise: Paul Rudd, sexiest man alive according to some magazine or another I'm sure, has never had a guy friend. Now his wedding/funeral is approaching/looming and he needs to find someone to be his best man. I don't buy it, but given the given, it's a hit.
Gene was saying today how the latest protagonists in movies are anti-heroes. We used to have classic-definition heroes like James Bond - indestructible and irresistable to women, Tom Cruise - pretty boy with that vulnerable touch, Arnold Schwarzenegger - sexiest man alive and all-around badass.
These days we've advanced/regressed to heroes like Seth Rogan from Knocked Up - fat losers with Jew-fros, Jack Black from School of Rock - fat losers with body odor, and Steve Carell - idiots. And it's amazing, but after one of those movies, you actually want to be that fat smelly retarded loser! But what's really crazy is that not only you do, I do too.
The second movie was Sunshine Cleaning. This is about two girls with no skills except remembering their dead mother, who start a crime-scene-cleanup business. It's a pretty good movie, but don't go trusting IMDb that it's a comedy.
Sunshine Cleaning had more (implied) blood and headless torsos than Saving Private Ryan, so it got me thinking a bit about mortality, albeit in a sci-fi direction.
I was thinking:
If human beings were virtually immortal, if the only way they really died was by offing themselves, what do you think the average lifespan would be? I think it might be even lower than it is in our reality. Think about it. Living is a very complicated and hard habit. People are horrible at maintaining hard habits. That's why I do all these 30-day trials, because I know that it's just 30 days, it'll be over soon.
Same thing with life, it's like a long 30-day trial; you feel like an ass if you quit half-way. If there was no half-way point, you wouldn't feel so bad about quitting. When you go on a run and you say "I'm going to run 5 miles," you're going to run waaaaaaay farther than if you say "I'm going to go for a run and see how far I get." I've been saying the second one since the 5th grade and I still haven't left the couch.
Human beings are interesting in that they adhere to both the immortal and mortal states of mind. On one level, everyone acts like they're immortal - the way they live unhealthy lifestyles, the way they plan for the far far future when they might not even survive the day, and especially the way they drive. On the other hand, people know all about their own mortality. You can see this from the fact that they very rarely ask themselves "am I enjoying living?" The subconscious response to that is "whatever, I'm mortal anyway, I'll just go ahead and finish this crapola." They keep living even if they don't enjoy living at all, precisely because they're mortal.
It's kind of like when you order a meal at a restaurant. It's good, but you're full, and you feel sick, but you keep eating because you don't come here very often and today's the only day they're serving Komodo dragon. If you had free all-you-can-eat Komodo dragon ribs every day of the week, you wouldn't bother sticking feathers down your gullet mid-meal to clear up some space for the lonely leftovers on your plate. You'd throw them right down the trash chute. Same with life. If we were all immortal, we'd probably all shoot ourselves in our late twenties.
Ok, that said, don't commit suicide you lazy bastards.
By the way, Tuck Everlasting sucked. Book and movie.
Helpful friends:
Mark: 怎么说 to clean? (how do you say "to clean")
Pei: убирать
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Being Japanese For A Day, Almost Always Fatal
Brilliant! : Japanese Soft Drinks, especially
and
Ok, after seeing those, I went on a brilliant-Japanese-inventions binge. Obviously these have all been displayed on various websites before, but here are my personal favorites:
Generally money-saving but could get expensive when you need to hop on a space shuttle to get some sunlight at 9PM.
This one's a double whammy. Hair blocker inside the house, fastest way to get arrested outside.
Just don't confuse it with your Krazy Glue stick.
Brilliant! Attach a stick to anything and it suddenly gains new uses. Abraham Lincoln knew what he was taking about when he told us to shut up and grab a stick. It just took us some time to interpret it right.
For those of us with shoes made of sugar or with feet alergic to water (Japanese people).
Don't use this without a chaperone, it requires inhuman flexibility to undo. This invention armed with starvation has already claimed over 10,000 Japanese lives.
The only part of your better half that you really need anyway. This invention has already halved the marriage rate in Japan.
Modeled after Mel Gibson's lap.
and
Ok, after seeing those, I went on a brilliant-Japanese-inventions binge. Obviously these have all been displayed on various websites before, but here are my personal favorites:
Generally money-saving but could get expensive when you need to hop on a space shuttle to get some sunlight at 9PM.
This one's a double whammy. Hair blocker inside the house, fastest way to get arrested outside.
Just don't confuse it with your Krazy Glue stick.
Brilliant! Attach a stick to anything and it suddenly gains new uses. Abraham Lincoln knew what he was taking about when he told us to shut up and grab a stick. It just took us some time to interpret it right.
For those of us with shoes made of sugar or with feet alergic to water (Japanese people).
Don't use this without a chaperone, it requires inhuman flexibility to undo. This invention armed with starvation has already claimed over 10,000 Japanese lives.
The only part of your better half that you really need anyway. This invention has already halved the marriage rate in Japan.
Modeled after Mel Gibson's lap.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Nightmares
I had a nightmare today for the first time in years. I won't divulge the details for I don't want to be in breach of dreamer-dreamee confidentiality, but there was one funny scene at the end that I'll risk telling.
I'm running out of the dream-setting's house, headed for my car. There's a guy chasing me by the bizzare name of Alek-Alex. This is obviously my subconscious giving me a wonderful clue that I'm in a dream, but I don't perceive it as such. Alek-Alex has two defining characteristics - his ridiculous name, and his temper problem. The dream makes it abundantly clear that you REALLY don't want Alek-Alex to "freak out." Unfortunately, Alek-Alex is about to do just that.
Anyway, I reach my car and it's some kind of mini-car, like the Smart Car but ten thousand times smaller. This doesn't phase me at all of course; there's a psycho named Alek-Alex chasing me! So I get in and I look sort of like this:
...though not quite as dashing as this fine specimen of masculinity.
After some wriggling, wiggling, waggling, writhing, worming, and loads of tongue-on-shoulder panting, around 50% of me has managed to get in the car, but my giant Mr. Olympia legs just won't fit. I feel around, praying for a button or lever that unfolds this "center for ants" into a bus and finally find a button that slides out the front of the car a bit, giving me some more legroom. There's one catch though: as soon as I let go of the button, it snaps right back at four times the speed of light. I play catch and release with the button as I shuffle my legs around, risking all kinds of horrible kneecap-to-eyeball injuries and all with no insurance, but there's absolutely no way I can get either foot to reach the pedals. For some reason the idea to hold the button down while driving doesn't even cross my mind.
At this point Alek-Alex still hasn't emerged from the house, but I'm panicking nonetheless. Alas, then I woke up, fortunately for my dream-safety but unfortunately for the story aspect.
Sometimes I wonder - when I wake up from a dream, maybe the dream me stays there and has to live out the conclusion of the story. He's never led on that this might be true; in every subsequent dream he's as good as new despite all the abuse from hordes of Alek-Alexes, but who knows? For his sake, I should be taking sleeping pills.
I'm running out of the dream-setting's house, headed for my car. There's a guy chasing me by the bizzare name of Alek-Alex. This is obviously my subconscious giving me a wonderful clue that I'm in a dream, but I don't perceive it as such. Alek-Alex has two defining characteristics - his ridiculous name, and his temper problem. The dream makes it abundantly clear that you REALLY don't want Alek-Alex to "freak out." Unfortunately, Alek-Alex is about to do just that.
Anyway, I reach my car and it's some kind of mini-car, like the Smart Car but ten thousand times smaller. This doesn't phase me at all of course; there's a psycho named Alek-Alex chasing me! So I get in and I look sort of like this:
...though not quite as dashing as this fine specimen of masculinity.
After some wriggling, wiggling, waggling, writhing, worming, and loads of tongue-on-shoulder panting, around 50% of me has managed to get in the car, but my giant Mr. Olympia legs just won't fit. I feel around, praying for a button or lever that unfolds this "center for ants" into a bus and finally find a button that slides out the front of the car a bit, giving me some more legroom. There's one catch though: as soon as I let go of the button, it snaps right back at four times the speed of light. I play catch and release with the button as I shuffle my legs around, risking all kinds of horrible kneecap-to-eyeball injuries and all with no insurance, but there's absolutely no way I can get either foot to reach the pedals. For some reason the idea to hold the button down while driving doesn't even cross my mind.
At this point Alek-Alex still hasn't emerged from the house, but I'm panicking nonetheless. Alas, then I woke up, fortunately for my dream-safety but unfortunately for the story aspect.
Sometimes I wonder - when I wake up from a dream, maybe the dream me stays there and has to live out the conclusion of the story. He's never led on that this might be true; in every subsequent dream he's as good as new despite all the abuse from hordes of Alek-Alexes, but who knows? For his sake, I should be taking sleeping pills.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Unquenchable Thirst For Idiocy
I was vacuuming downstairs today, a rare treat bestowed upon me by my loving mother, and I was cleaning out stuff from under the couch to avoid having to perform mouth to mouth on the vacuum cleaner. Couches are magical creatures, kind of like Asian people. There's some as of yet undiscovered law of physics along the lines of: "looking at a blanket strewn across a couch, it's impossible to tell whether or not there's an Asian person sleeping under it." I learned this one by experience - sitting down on innocent-looking couches only to receive a dragon kick to the head.
Anyway, couches also have a magical quality - the amount of space underneath a couch is greater than it appears, usually by a factor of 12. You can probably fit an entire apartment's worth of stuff under most couches. This is why when people want to clear up some space in their apartment, they go out and buy a couch or three.
So I was cleaning out the stuff from under the couch, and it was all Michelle's things that she hasn't used since she was in Mom's uterus. Being a natural born leader, I ordered Michelle to take it all down to the basement. Being a smart little Jewish girl, she negotiated me down to half of the items.
As I set up my vacuuming gear, I watched Michelle follow my orders. Trying to save time and effort in the very humanly unintuitive way, she was building a veritable tower of "STUFF" in her arms, balancing it like she was at a Cirque du Soleil audition. There was absolutely no way she could carry it all down in one trip, but this didn't phase her in the least.
Now, I'm an expert at this method of "saving time and effort." I've written books or at least this one blog entry about it. I sacrificed my first MP3 player to this technique back in 2002. And I'm proud/ashamed to say that I have learned absolutely nothing in terms of not repeating my mistakes. I am incurably optimistic. In her place, I would have been doing the exact same thing except perhaps with less grace. So naturally (I never miss an opportunity to be a hypocrite) I tried my best to make her feel like a complete idiot and unleashed torrents of derision as her leaning tower became a falling tower at every third step. With my encouragement and her innate talent for mulishness, the one-minute task stretched easily to ten.
I was thinking about why we're both such imbeciles in this respect, and I think the main problem here is the "but now I'll never know" factor, as in "but now I'll never know if I could have done it in one trip without smashing anything/everything into a million pieces." When you try and fail and it takes you ten minutes, you know for sure that you would have done it faster had you taken several trips. But when you do it in several trips, when you're done you're still in the dark. You don't know what would have been the best way. So really, it's the thirst for knowledge that's driving this idiocy, not laziness.
Phew, one more charge of laziness skirted.
Anyway, couches also have a magical quality - the amount of space underneath a couch is greater than it appears, usually by a factor of 12. You can probably fit an entire apartment's worth of stuff under most couches. This is why when people want to clear up some space in their apartment, they go out and buy a couch or three.
So I was cleaning out the stuff from under the couch, and it was all Michelle's things that she hasn't used since she was in Mom's uterus. Being a natural born leader, I ordered Michelle to take it all down to the basement. Being a smart little Jewish girl, she negotiated me down to half of the items.
As I set up my vacuuming gear, I watched Michelle follow my orders. Trying to save time and effort in the very humanly unintuitive way, she was building a veritable tower of "STUFF" in her arms, balancing it like she was at a Cirque du Soleil audition. There was absolutely no way she could carry it all down in one trip, but this didn't phase her in the least.
Now, I'm an expert at this method of "saving time and effort." I've written books or at least this one blog entry about it. I sacrificed my first MP3 player to this technique back in 2002. And I'm proud/ashamed to say that I have learned absolutely nothing in terms of not repeating my mistakes. I am incurably optimistic. In her place, I would have been doing the exact same thing except perhaps with less grace. So naturally (I never miss an opportunity to be a hypocrite) I tried my best to make her feel like a complete idiot and unleashed torrents of derision as her leaning tower became a falling tower at every third step. With my encouragement and her innate talent for mulishness, the one-minute task stretched easily to ten.
I was thinking about why we're both such imbeciles in this respect, and I think the main problem here is the "but now I'll never know" factor, as in "but now I'll never know if I could have done it in one trip without smashing anything/everything into a million pieces." When you try and fail and it takes you ten minutes, you know for sure that you would have done it faster had you taken several trips. But when you do it in several trips, when you're done you're still in the dark. You don't know what would have been the best way. So really, it's the thirst for knowledge that's driving this idiocy, not laziness.
Phew, one more charge of laziness skirted.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Windows Necromancy
Windows has been reinstalled, my drives have been formatted, I'm back on a clean machine. Took me quite a few hours to reinstall all my software and uninstall all of the prepackaged crapola, but now I'm all ready to download more viruses.
Funny:
Mario: did u like the songs
Mario: i've been listeing to them continuously
Mark: not bad, but they repeat too much
Mario: they dont repeat enough...if it repeated more i wouldnt have to click "replay" so much
Funny:
Mario: did u like the songs
Mario: i've been listeing to them continuously
Mark: not bad, but they repeat too much
Mario: they dont repeat enough...if it repeated more i wouldnt have to click "replay" so much
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Sick
My computer got infected by a virus sometime yesterday, and so far the unwelcome guest is really testing the limits of my hospitality. I was generous at first, giving it the lion's share of the CPU and tolerating its flurry of popups when the browser wasn't even open, but when the screen burst into flames I knew I'd had enough. I opened my Common Sense handbook and started taking what we lawyers call "countermeasures."
First I went online and downloaded some more viruses, hoping they'd somehow fight and cancel each other out, including the one I'm currently hosting. This totally didn't go according to plan. Somehow, they managed to find a common ground and united against me.
Then I downloaded three anti-virus/anti-spyware programs: avast!, AVG, and the fearsomely named Spybot - Search & Destroy.
Ad-Aware was already running on my computer, but the viruses had kidnapped its family so it wasn't to be trusted.
I started up all three at the same time, and once again, expectations were not met. These guys are as individualistic as it gets. Instead of doing their job, all they do is moan about not being compatible with your other anti-virus programs. I ended up having to run them sequentially.
Good news: Spybot Search & Destroy found 8 googolplex viruses, and destroyed them all. Avast! did a boot-time scan, and deleted everything on my computer that sounded suspicious and everything else that sounded a little too unsuspicious.
Bad news: absolutely nothing has changed from a user's perspective. The flurry of popups and the obnoxious CPU usage remain standing strong. Also, AVG failed completely. It just threw up its hands and crashed. Twice. And then it crashed during uninstall.
Good news: as soon as I turn off my Internet connection, my computer starts behaving reasonably sanely.
Bad news: without Internet, I will wither and die in 3 hours.
Ok, time for some more scanning. I'm starting to think I'm dealing with SkyNet or something. There's always the tried and true unplug-computer-then-throw-it-down-onto-an-uncarpeted-floor-and-stomp-on-it method, but I'm willing to wait another 15 minutes and see if these anti-virus/anti-anti-virus clowns can get the job done.
Ok, back from scanning. Results:
Avast! should be renamed to Pure Evil!. First of all, it starts on system startup, something I absolutely hate in a program. Usually, in this scenario, I'll Run msconfig and uncheck it under startup/services, but this didn't fly with avast!. I resorted to my trusted Spybot Search & Destroy to take care of the problem. Spybot is capable of detecting registry changes and asking you for confirmation or denial. Usually this looks something like "A program calling itself SlowPainfulDeathToYourComputer is requesting to add a value to your registry, would you like to allow the change?" Then you click Yes, and are successfully infected. Except this time I was being infected by my own anti-virus.
I did the usual, and went to msconfig. When I removed avast! from the startup queue, Spybot asked me if I was sure. There was no option for Hell Yes, so I settled for Yes. A split-second later, Spyboy tells me avast! tried to reenable avast! to start on system startup, do I want to allow this? I said No of course, and got the same message a split second later. Avast! was playing dirty! The next time the query came up, I said "Remember my decision" and was treated to a veritable battle of anti-virus software. Every second or so, Spybot would report to me about successfully thwarting another attempt by avast!. I watched this for a minute, then uninstalled avast! altogether. I wish it were that simple with viruses.
Ten minutes later, I'm in the same situation with my friendly nearby virus. I managed to track down one of its tentacles in the registry, and deleted the key. A second later, deja-vu:
"value added in registry for yigivoguvu, do you want to allow?"
"No. Remember my decision."
Now I'm enjoying the same "denied change" message flickering on my screen, except this time for "yigivoguvu," a random name picked by my latest malware resident, one apparently called Virtumonde. Hopefully Spybot can live up to its name and destroy it once and for all.
...
Ok, after some more unsuccessful attempts at getting rid of stuff with Spybot and manually, I downloaded 15 more anti-virus utilities, including Kaspersky, Webroot and Norton. Webroot was doing great, finding all these viruses on my computer and even freshening up the air in my room, but then it demanded $40 for the task of deleting all those viruses and I showed it to the door. Currently Kaspersky is doing his thing, we'll see if he's any more charitable. I'm starting to get sick of this though.
Funny:
Mark: lust caution
Mark: no martial arts
Mark: so u should be fine with it
Mario: they are too cautious for fighting?
Mario: lets fight!...woah, wait, we might get hurt
First I went online and downloaded some more viruses, hoping they'd somehow fight and cancel each other out, including the one I'm currently hosting. This totally didn't go according to plan. Somehow, they managed to find a common ground and united against me.
Then I downloaded three anti-virus/anti-spyware programs: avast!, AVG, and the fearsomely named Spybot - Search & Destroy.
Ad-Aware was already running on my computer, but the viruses had kidnapped its family so it wasn't to be trusted.
I started up all three at the same time, and once again, expectations were not met. These guys are as individualistic as it gets. Instead of doing their job, all they do is moan about not being compatible with your other anti-virus programs. I ended up having to run them sequentially.
Good news: Spybot Search & Destroy found 8 googolplex viruses, and destroyed them all. Avast! did a boot-time scan, and deleted everything on my computer that sounded suspicious and everything else that sounded a little too unsuspicious.
Bad news: absolutely nothing has changed from a user's perspective. The flurry of popups and the obnoxious CPU usage remain standing strong. Also, AVG failed completely. It just threw up its hands and crashed. Twice. And then it crashed during uninstall.
Good news: as soon as I turn off my Internet connection, my computer starts behaving reasonably sanely.
Bad news: without Internet, I will wither and die in 3 hours.
Ok, time for some more scanning. I'm starting to think I'm dealing with SkyNet or something. There's always the tried and true unplug-computer-then-throw-it-down-onto-an-uncarpeted-floor-and-stomp-on-it method, but I'm willing to wait another 15 minutes and see if these anti-virus/anti-anti-virus clowns can get the job done.
Ok, back from scanning. Results:
Avast! should be renamed to Pure Evil!. First of all, it starts on system startup, something I absolutely hate in a program. Usually, in this scenario, I'll Run msconfig and uncheck it under startup/services, but this didn't fly with avast!. I resorted to my trusted Spybot Search & Destroy to take care of the problem. Spybot is capable of detecting registry changes and asking you for confirmation or denial. Usually this looks something like "A program calling itself SlowPainfulDeathToYourComputer is requesting to add a value to your registry, would you like to allow the change?" Then you click Yes, and are successfully infected. Except this time I was being infected by my own anti-virus.
I did the usual, and went to msconfig. When I removed avast! from the startup queue, Spybot asked me if I was sure. There was no option for Hell Yes, so I settled for Yes. A split-second later, Spyboy tells me avast! tried to reenable avast! to start on system startup, do I want to allow this? I said No of course, and got the same message a split second later. Avast! was playing dirty! The next time the query came up, I said "Remember my decision" and was treated to a veritable battle of anti-virus software. Every second or so, Spybot would report to me about successfully thwarting another attempt by avast!. I watched this for a minute, then uninstalled avast! altogether. I wish it were that simple with viruses.
Ten minutes later, I'm in the same situation with my friendly nearby virus. I managed to track down one of its tentacles in the registry, and deleted the key. A second later, deja-vu:
"value added in registry for yigivoguvu, do you want to allow?"
"No. Remember my decision."
Now I'm enjoying the same "denied change" message flickering on my screen, except this time for "yigivoguvu," a random name picked by my latest malware resident, one apparently called Virtumonde. Hopefully Spybot can live up to its name and destroy it once and for all.
...
Ok, after some more unsuccessful attempts at getting rid of stuff with Spybot and manually, I downloaded 15 more anti-virus utilities, including Kaspersky, Webroot and Norton. Webroot was doing great, finding all these viruses on my computer and even freshening up the air in my room, but then it demanded $40 for the task of deleting all those viruses and I showed it to the door. Currently Kaspersky is doing his thing, we'll see if he's any more charitable. I'm starting to get sick of this though.
Funny:
Mark: lust caution
Mark: no martial arts
Mark: so u should be fine with it
Mario: they are too cautious for fighting?
Mario: lets fight!...woah, wait, we might get hurt
Monday, March 16, 2009
Crime and Punishment
Speaking English in this house is generally a no-no. However, people have been getting away with it for years, especially since Gets-Away-With-It was born. (My sister's maiden name). However, when the prospect of losing the mother tongue becomes apparent, drastic measures are taken. Several years ago, I was commissioned to invent a fun way to punish language offenders. I came up with a silly game consisting of only one rule: If you say an English word and don't immediately correct yourself, you have to come up with five synonyms in Russian, or else meet the dreaded "or else." You also get a point. At the end of the week, the person with the most points gets put up for adoption or crossed out in the will or has to wash dishes or something.
The game was an instant hit, and my sister struggled a bit and got back into the speaking Russian mindset. Then the game was abandoned. (strings come in, melancholy and mysterious)
Well today, a comeback was staged. Seeing as everyone in this house is just full of English words to say, there was really no other choice, if only to give our ears a short respite. The effects were immediate: dinner was highly anomalous. Contrary to custom, it wasn't Michelle's story-telling hour. Instead, we were treated to horror-movie silence, with everyone poised to pounce on each other's throats at the first non-Slavic syllable. I'm now suffering from a mild case of middle-school gossip withdrawal and cat-got-your-tongue disease.
Actually, being a gentleman of outstanding wisdom who thinks before he opens his mouth, I pretty much rock at this game. The other three however, live a life full of adventure. To even things out, they united against me this evening and made me read The Time Traveler's Wife out loud to them till their scores didn't look so pitiful.
My sister's been assigned a project on a most fascinating and fresh topic - why tobacco is bad. She needs the whole shebang - poster, slogan, a pair of fresh crispy-black lungs, and of course an essay. She came to me for ideas, her own being full of blood and guts and oral cancer. After throwing up all over her shoes, I gave her a slightly dangerous suggestion.
I figured that everyone's going to be writing about tobacco staining the back of your head yellow and making your toenails become self-aware and about oral cancer of course; everyone's going to be dragging in their uncle Carl who talks through a harmonica in his throat and the infant corpses of their unborn brother or sisters. Everyone's going to be showing off their collection of family tumors, and in that case there's really just a slim chance that hers is the biggest, especially since we only patronize hard drugs like sugar in this house.
So I told her to write about how it's too expensive a habit to maintain. Now I'm thinking it may backfire. On her. It seemed like a good idea at the time but knowing the conservative audience (her teachers), I'm starting to think I just signed her up for her first mandatory appointment with a psychiastrist. Oh well, too late now, we're not due to talk for another month.
By the way, there's an excellent article on writing that everyone should read before they write anything at all: "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words."
The game was an instant hit, and my sister struggled a bit and got back into the speaking Russian mindset. Then the game was abandoned. (strings come in, melancholy and mysterious)
Well today, a comeback was staged. Seeing as everyone in this house is just full of English words to say, there was really no other choice, if only to give our ears a short respite. The effects were immediate: dinner was highly anomalous. Contrary to custom, it wasn't Michelle's story-telling hour. Instead, we were treated to horror-movie silence, with everyone poised to pounce on each other's throats at the first non-Slavic syllable. I'm now suffering from a mild case of middle-school gossip withdrawal and cat-got-your-tongue disease.
Actually, being a gentleman of outstanding wisdom who thinks before he opens his mouth, I pretty much rock at this game. The other three however, live a life full of adventure. To even things out, they united against me this evening and made me read The Time Traveler's Wife out loud to them till their scores didn't look so pitiful.
My sister's been assigned a project on a most fascinating and fresh topic - why tobacco is bad. She needs the whole shebang - poster, slogan, a pair of fresh crispy-black lungs, and of course an essay. She came to me for ideas, her own being full of blood and guts and oral cancer. After throwing up all over her shoes, I gave her a slightly dangerous suggestion.
I figured that everyone's going to be writing about tobacco staining the back of your head yellow and making your toenails become self-aware and about oral cancer of course; everyone's going to be dragging in their uncle Carl who talks through a harmonica in his throat and the infant corpses of their unborn brother or sisters. Everyone's going to be showing off their collection of family tumors, and in that case there's really just a slim chance that hers is the biggest, especially since we only patronize hard drugs like sugar in this house.
So I told her to write about how it's too expensive a habit to maintain. Now I'm thinking it may backfire. On her. It seemed like a good idea at the time but knowing the conservative audience (her teachers), I'm starting to think I just signed her up for her first mandatory appointment with a psychiastrist. Oh well, too late now, we're not due to talk for another month.
By the way, there's an excellent article on writing that everyone should read before they write anything at all: "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words."
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Nothing Happens Pretty Often
Mom finally listened to my songs. I'm suddenly not sure at all if it was a good idea to let her sensitive ears anywhere near my creations. With her suggestions, seems the album won't be released till 2013 after all. Back to the studio for me.
Ok, just emerged from the home studio.
Good news: album release is being pushed (pulled?) to this year.
Bad news: it's getting pushed up because making it significantly better is a pain in the ass and takes way too much skills and patience. My patience is tied up keeping my pants from falling down, so the album's going to have to suck it up and suck a little more.
The latest developments concerning OCD:
Pei: my roommate was cleaning up the balcony. I was helping her.
Mark: by yelling at her to clean faster?
Pei: she is a monica indeed. I kept telling her, it's ok it's ok...
Pei: but she wouldn't listen. :D
Pei: I don't mind there is trash on the balcony.
Pei: I don't live on the balcony
Mark: hmm, so we have 4 degrees of people
Mark: ur roommate doesn't care if there's trash on the moon
Mark: u don't care if there's trash on the balcony
Mark: i don't care if there's trash in my room
Mark: and mario doesn't care if there's trash in his breakfast cereal
...I feel like we're missing a degree in between the last two. And Franco with his putting-trash-in-the-fridge needs to be in there somewhere.
On Americans:
Pei: americans like turtles
...
Mark: do u think americans have actually been on the moon?
Madelyn: not really...
...
Pei: how slow american clocks run
...
Pei: I blame american everything
...
Pei: I believe americans are weird
...
Pei: yea americans need help
...
Pei: of course I know. and I know the reasons too. I think it's because american faces are too big.
...
Pei: u ignorant american people
...
Mark: i'm an american
Zhang: qu ! (get away from me)
...
Zhang: sorry, forgot u r american
...
Zhang: silly american cannot understand
Oof, Chinese people sure have a lot to say about Americans, especially when looked at out of context.
Today was low on ideas for blog-writing, so Madelyn helped me out:
Madelyn: what about a glass of water
Madelyn: what will you think of when you see a glass of water
Hmm...who knows what I would have thought of before. Now I'm doomed (blessed?) to think of this conversation.
Madelyn: haha
Mark: haha is an idea or just haha-ing?
Inspiration, where are you?
Ok, just emerged from the home studio.
Good news: album release is being pushed (pulled?) to this year.
Bad news: it's getting pushed up because making it significantly better is a pain in the ass and takes way too much skills and patience. My patience is tied up keeping my pants from falling down, so the album's going to have to suck it up and suck a little more.
The latest developments concerning OCD:
Pei: my roommate was cleaning up the balcony. I was helping her.
Mark: by yelling at her to clean faster?
Pei: she is a monica indeed. I kept telling her, it's ok it's ok...
Pei: but she wouldn't listen. :D
Pei: I don't mind there is trash on the balcony.
Pei: I don't live on the balcony
Mark: hmm, so we have 4 degrees of people
Mark: ur roommate doesn't care if there's trash on the moon
Mark: u don't care if there's trash on the balcony
Mark: i don't care if there's trash in my room
Mark: and mario doesn't care if there's trash in his breakfast cereal
...I feel like we're missing a degree in between the last two. And Franco with his putting-trash-in-the-fridge needs to be in there somewhere.
On Americans:
Pei: americans like turtles
...
Mark: do u think americans have actually been on the moon?
Madelyn: not really...
...
Pei: how slow american clocks run
...
Pei: I blame american everything
...
Pei: I believe americans are weird
...
Pei: yea americans need help
...
Pei: of course I know. and I know the reasons too. I think it's because american faces are too big.
...
Pei: u ignorant american people
...
Mark: i'm an american
Zhang: qu ! (get away from me)
...
Zhang: sorry, forgot u r american
...
Zhang: silly american cannot understand
Oof, Chinese people sure have a lot to say about Americans, especially when looked at out of context.
Today was low on ideas for blog-writing, so Madelyn helped me out:
Madelyn: what about a glass of water
Madelyn: what will you think of when you see a glass of water
Hmm...who knows what I would have thought of before. Now I'm doomed (blessed?) to think of this conversation.
Madelyn: haha
Mark: haha is an idea or just haha-ing?
Inspiration, where are you?
Friday, March 13, 2009
Lies
I finally shaved today, mostly hair off of my face, but also about about 10 years worth of appearance. I am now smooth as a freshly flogged bottom, and finally less hairy. I can almost understand why Mario wants to get a Brazilian wax so badly, smooth skin is fun. Unfortunately, other people know it's fun too, and I'm starting to feel a little bit like one of those greasy goats at the petting zoo.
The sugar low is still killing me. I haven't started dreaming about chocolate yet, which means the worst is yet to come, but they sing to me from every cabinet in the kitchen, every bookshelf, every desk drawer, from under every upturned bowl. Yes, this is a very loaded house for a person in my position. My dental floss lies right next to a big jar of Jolly Ranchers that scream "Eat Me!" I almost accidentally strangled myself the last time I flossed.
Still, I lucked out. No sweets is a trifle compared to what could have been. You have to know Gene a bit to understand what I'm talking about.
Gene is a fan of drastic measures. If you say "let's take a vacation" and then pop a Honey Nut Cheerio, before you can crack it open he's already found a buyer for the house. If you suggest a half-hour meditation, you get put in the meditation stocks for three hours. When I naively released "let's not eat sugary foods for a month," just before I decided whether or not it was meant rhetorically, Gene was already pitching his own version: "That's ridiculous! Just give up sweets? That's way too hard. We're not eating at all."
Fortunately I have a mother who still has residual maternal instincts.
More polls below. Can you believe these are people's actual responses? Me neither.
If someone says/does something and you have the urge to feel offended, what do you do?
Mark: impossible situation. I'm always offended to begin with, saves me the trouble.
Ellen: impossible situation. I never leave the house and I screen my calls.
Mario: impossible situation. The urge to get offended? I've definitely never felt that...until now! How dare you accuse me of such a thing!
Gene: oof, that's a tough one. On the one hand, if I get offended, I get to skip today's movie according to the rules of the no-getting-frustrated 30-day trial. On the other hand, if I don't, I'll miss out on the 3 hour meditation to surrender the offended feeling to Buddha. Ah, never mind, impossible situation! I'm on a 30-day trial of not having any urges.
Chun: I keep on writin' that med school essay. It's not going to write itself! Although...maybe the tear stains on the paper will get me some bonus points! You think?
Pei: they will apologize. I will provide dirty looks and the silent treatment as hints.
Lucy: you ever seen Oldboy? I wouldn't do a damn thing differently.
Perry: make up sex usually solves the problem. Sometimes you need a stand-in though. Sometimes both of you do; wouldn't want to exacerbate the situation. God, people are ugly!
Igor: why would Renata say/do something like that?
Madelyn: get offended. Then buy lots and lots of shoes. Then take slow and painful revenge. First I play mind games with them until they beg for mercy, then I shoot them in the back of the head, 1984 style. HAHAHAHA!
Funny:
Mark: when do you want to go? (to the grocery store)
Gene: never
...
Gene: but in 30 minutes is fine
The sugar low is still killing me. I haven't started dreaming about chocolate yet, which means the worst is yet to come, but they sing to me from every cabinet in the kitchen, every bookshelf, every desk drawer, from under every upturned bowl. Yes, this is a very loaded house for a person in my position. My dental floss lies right next to a big jar of Jolly Ranchers that scream "Eat Me!" I almost accidentally strangled myself the last time I flossed.
Still, I lucked out. No sweets is a trifle compared to what could have been. You have to know Gene a bit to understand what I'm talking about.
Gene is a fan of drastic measures. If you say "let's take a vacation" and then pop a Honey Nut Cheerio, before you can crack it open he's already found a buyer for the house. If you suggest a half-hour meditation, you get put in the meditation stocks for three hours. When I naively released "let's not eat sugary foods for a month," just before I decided whether or not it was meant rhetorically, Gene was already pitching his own version: "That's ridiculous! Just give up sweets? That's way too hard. We're not eating at all."
Fortunately I have a mother who still has residual maternal instincts.
More polls below. Can you believe these are people's actual responses? Me neither.
If someone says/does something and you have the urge to feel offended, what do you do?
Mark: impossible situation. I'm always offended to begin with, saves me the trouble.
Ellen: impossible situation. I never leave the house and I screen my calls.
Mario: impossible situation. The urge to get offended? I've definitely never felt that...until now! How dare you accuse me of such a thing!
Gene: oof, that's a tough one. On the one hand, if I get offended, I get to skip today's movie according to the rules of the no-getting-frustrated 30-day trial. On the other hand, if I don't, I'll miss out on the 3 hour meditation to surrender the offended feeling to Buddha. Ah, never mind, impossible situation! I'm on a 30-day trial of not having any urges.
Chun: I keep on writin' that med school essay. It's not going to write itself! Although...maybe the tear stains on the paper will get me some bonus points! You think?
Pei: they will apologize. I will provide dirty looks and the silent treatment as hints.
Lucy: you ever seen Oldboy? I wouldn't do a damn thing differently.
Perry: make up sex usually solves the problem. Sometimes you need a stand-in though. Sometimes both of you do; wouldn't want to exacerbate the situation. God, people are ugly!
Igor: why would Renata say/do something like that?
Madelyn: get offended. Then buy lots and lots of shoes. Then take slow and painful revenge. First I play mind games with them until they beg for mercy, then I shoot them in the back of the head, 1984 style. HAHAHAHA!
Funny:
Mark: when do you want to go? (to the grocery store)
Gene: never
...
Gene: but in 30 minutes is fine
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Coming Soon To Your Friendly Nearby Internet
I've been writing and recording music lately, trying to get enough songs together to get an album up on iTunes. Quantity has finally reached its goal, and I've been sneakily testing quality on various so-called friends and family. The reviews/reactions so far have been pretty mixed. My friends in China generally give me at least one thumb up, partly because their culture doesn't allow them to voice criticism, and partly because of the One-Person-One-Thumb policy in China.
My family is generally supportive, though they express this support in very different ways. The "generally supportive" average is reached primarily thanks to my sister, who lavishes praise with a heavy hand regardless and especially irregardless of quality. (Somewhere Perry is getting very very angry about my word usage. Lucy, do what you can for him). "Mark! You wrote that!?" she shrieks. "It's soo good! You're amazing!" My guess is that up till now she thought I was clinically retarded, because I can literally play one chord and elicit that response.
My mother, the most musically inclined of my subscribers, is eager to listen to my creations but only has time to do so on the 32nd of every month. Never fear, my supreme patience is holding stong.
Gene, who now runs out of the house if you call him "Dad," gives a two-for-one deal: reserved praise and vague criticism. "Hey! That's...pretty good...but something's missing...I don't know what," is his well-rehearsed response. He is as consistent and oblivious to quality as my sister, though in a different slice on the spectrum.
Grandma and Boris never say a single word about the quality of the music. They react, but I haven't decided how to interpret their reaction yet. Usually it goes something like this:
(a three course meal is shoved down Mark's throat to lull him into a false sense of security and a very real sense of nausea)
Grandma: sing us one of your songs! You never sing to us!
Mark: ugh...I only sing to my microphone. But you can hear my computer imitate me. Want to?
Grandma: you didn't eat anything today! Do you want some strawberries? Plums? Chocolate? Herring? Pickles? I know! Let's drink a shot together!
(If you're wondering about the exclamation points, Grandma lives at around 130 decibels)
Mark: no thanks, I only drink with Michelle.
Grandma: well at least have some bread. Nuts. Potatoes. Want me to make you a steak? Pancakes? Why aren't you playing your song to me!?
Mark: uhh...good point. (Turns song on)
Grandma (listens for 5 seconds): BORIS! GET OVER HERE, MARK'S PLAYING US HIS SONGS!
Boris (from the kitchen): meh? You say something?
(They arm themselves with megaphones and yell into each other's earpieces for the next three songs. Boris finally comes over. Mark writhes in pain on the carpet; he is congenitally incapable of habituating to sonic warfare)
Grandma: is that your song playing?
Mark: ye...e...e...s.
Grandma: Boris, listen! Don't fall asleep, you old goat!
Boris: I'm not sleeping, I'm listening!
(5 seconds pass)
(Mark quietly gets up, negotiates the two blissfully snoring geezers, packs his things and drives himself to the hospital)
(scroll down three days and repeat)
Neither Grandma nor Boris has stayed awake for the duration of a single song, which is 3.5 mins on average. Good? Bad? I don't know but I'm going to be optimistic. At their age, if they don't die of something, it's probably really really really ridiculously good.
Mario is the only one who gives constructive feedback. Unfortunately, by some crazy coincidence, he's the one person whose advice I never listen to. Can't do anything about it, the decision was made a long time ago.
Chun is busy 758 hours a week so she has no time to give feedback. My turn to be the object of her attention was coming up, but then a little thing called Daylight Savings Time stole my spot. Now she's back in her exercise wheel, dancing her way into medical school. Don't stand in her way, she has a mean left pirouette.
And finally, there was one person outside the usual circle who got a taste of this album (that's coming soon to your friendly nearby Internet). That was my aunt. Around Christmas, she demanded I send her a song. Being an obedient little nephew, I obliged...and that was the last I heard from her. I should really go check if she's OK. Hmm...nah, I'll just wait till next Christmas. If she doesn't show up, then I'll know something's wrong. Never too late to call 911.
My family is generally supportive, though they express this support in very different ways. The "generally supportive" average is reached primarily thanks to my sister, who lavishes praise with a heavy hand regardless and especially irregardless of quality. (Somewhere Perry is getting very very angry about my word usage. Lucy, do what you can for him). "Mark! You wrote that!?" she shrieks. "It's soo good! You're amazing!" My guess is that up till now she thought I was clinically retarded, because I can literally play one chord and elicit that response.
My mother, the most musically inclined of my subscribers, is eager to listen to my creations but only has time to do so on the 32nd of every month. Never fear, my supreme patience is holding stong.
Gene, who now runs out of the house if you call him "Dad," gives a two-for-one deal: reserved praise and vague criticism. "Hey! That's...pretty good...but something's missing...I don't know what," is his well-rehearsed response. He is as consistent and oblivious to quality as my sister, though in a different slice on the spectrum.
Grandma and Boris never say a single word about the quality of the music. They react, but I haven't decided how to interpret their reaction yet. Usually it goes something like this:
(a three course meal is shoved down Mark's throat to lull him into a false sense of security and a very real sense of nausea)
Grandma: sing us one of your songs! You never sing to us!
Mark: ugh...I only sing to my microphone. But you can hear my computer imitate me. Want to?
Grandma: you didn't eat anything today! Do you want some strawberries? Plums? Chocolate? Herring? Pickles? I know! Let's drink a shot together!
(If you're wondering about the exclamation points, Grandma lives at around 130 decibels)
Mark: no thanks, I only drink with Michelle.
Grandma: well at least have some bread. Nuts. Potatoes. Want me to make you a steak? Pancakes? Why aren't you playing your song to me!?
Mark: uhh...good point. (Turns song on)
Grandma (listens for 5 seconds): BORIS! GET OVER HERE, MARK'S PLAYING US HIS SONGS!
Boris (from the kitchen): meh? You say something?
(They arm themselves with megaphones and yell into each other's earpieces for the next three songs. Boris finally comes over. Mark writhes in pain on the carpet; he is congenitally incapable of habituating to sonic warfare)
Grandma: is that your song playing?
Mark: ye...e...e...s.
Grandma: Boris, listen! Don't fall asleep, you old goat!
Boris: I'm not sleeping, I'm listening!
(5 seconds pass)
(Mark quietly gets up, negotiates the two blissfully snoring geezers, packs his things and drives himself to the hospital)
(scroll down three days and repeat)
Neither Grandma nor Boris has stayed awake for the duration of a single song, which is 3.5 mins on average. Good? Bad? I don't know but I'm going to be optimistic. At their age, if they don't die of something, it's probably really really really ridiculously good.
Mario is the only one who gives constructive feedback. Unfortunately, by some crazy coincidence, he's the one person whose advice I never listen to. Can't do anything about it, the decision was made a long time ago.
Chun is busy 758 hours a week so she has no time to give feedback. My turn to be the object of her attention was coming up, but then a little thing called Daylight Savings Time stole my spot. Now she's back in her exercise wheel, dancing her way into medical school. Don't stand in her way, she has a mean left pirouette.
And finally, there was one person outside the usual circle who got a taste of this album (that's coming soon to your friendly nearby Internet). That was my aunt. Around Christmas, she demanded I send her a song. Being an obedient little nephew, I obliged...and that was the last I heard from her. I should really go check if she's OK. Hmm...nah, I'll just wait till next Christmas. If she doesn't show up, then I'll know something's wrong. Never too late to call 911.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Rash Decisions And Other Staples
Today is the third day of a really nutty 30 day trial. The rules of the trial are a bit ambiguous, but several items have been agreed upon:
1. No sweets (excluding ones that grow on trees (excluding ones that grow on trees in Johnny Depp's Chocolate Factory (exluding ones that also grow on trees outside the factory))).
We can pretty much stop here because it's already enough for full-scale clinical depression. I'm an extreme sugar fiend. I eat chocolate before and after a meal, floss my teeth with Twizzlers and use a Jawbreaker for a retainer. When I make myself a cup of tea, it doesn't matter in the least what flavor the tea it is because I drown the flavor in copious amounts of miracle powder. In fact, if I can tell what flavor tea I'm having by the time I finish a cup, I make an appointment with my physician; it is extremely aberrant.
So it's day three now, and I can't help but notice that I suddenly have tons of free time. At least three extra hours. Granted, now I spend them prostrate on the floor of my room, suffering from withdrawal, but they're extra nonetheless. If you could have an extra few hours of life every day with no ultimate changes to your lifespan, with the "BUT" (fancy word for "caveat") being that they were full of suffering, would you take them? I would without a second thought, but only if I were on a 30-day trial of taking them.
Generally, I'm feeling more deflated across the board (hmm, can't think of a way to not be redundant in this sentence, oh well). I experienced this before - during my 4th attempt to quit drinking soda. The abrupt disappearance of the sugar high renders life gray and uninteresting. I'm sure glad I'm giving up sugar and not heroin (NEVER giving that one up).
2. No snacking. Only eat when hungry.
Snacking all but disappears when you eliminate sugar from your diet. Now I only have the urge to snack every three minutes as opposed to after every successful swallow. I spend a lot of time in my room upstairs working up my hunger to earn permission to indulge my mouth. "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," is the mantra of the month.
3. Decide what to do for the generalized version of this 30 day trial.
The original plan was to give up all impulses. Obviously this is only feasible for living Buddhas and select igneous rocks, but there's a saying about bars and settings that's popular in this house - something along the lines of "set the bar high for everyone else." After much fruitless discussion, we decided to start off with the obvious sacrifices - #1 and #2 (not the ones you're thinking of...well...definitely not the ones you're thinking of after reading this sentence), and then kick it into high gear the second to last or last week of the trial. I'll let you know how that goes if it goes anywhere.
Went to New York today as a chaperone for Gene on his field trip to the dentist. Gene dropped me off at 80th and Broadway and went off to the torture chamber. I took a slow walk to Barnes and Noble a few blocks away, scaring pidgins and people with my hasn't-seen-the-light-of-day-for-months pale zombie face, and read about three pages in half an hour. I decided I was better at walking and went back out to partake of some pollution.
Later, I came to check up on Gene and he was still being held prisoner. The warden said he was due for release soon, but time passes very differently inside and outside the prison; I ended up waiting for another hour. Anyway, I went outside again, and just then this guy passed me carrying a box. The box read "China" and nothing else. Thank God I'm practicing stifling my impulses, otherwise I would have snuck into that box and prayed it was on an express delivery route to Shanghai...and probably would have ended up as dinner. Still, it's obviously a sign that China's anxious for my arrival.
On the way back from New York, we dropped by the King Fung Food Market - a Chinese grocery store in my town. At checkout, Gene, with his usual lack of sensibility, casually mentioned to the Chinese cashiers that I study Chinese. All of a sudden, there was a blinding tornado of blood and headless torsos, followed by an investigation into my abilities. I came out relatively unscathed, being 38.9% Chinese by the latest estimate, but I fear (and am secretly eager) to return. Sometimes enjoying life as a masochist is so easy it's unfair.
1. No sweets (excluding ones that grow on trees (excluding ones that grow on trees in Johnny Depp's Chocolate Factory (exluding ones that also grow on trees outside the factory))).
We can pretty much stop here because it's already enough for full-scale clinical depression. I'm an extreme sugar fiend. I eat chocolate before and after a meal, floss my teeth with Twizzlers and use a Jawbreaker for a retainer. When I make myself a cup of tea, it doesn't matter in the least what flavor the tea it is because I drown the flavor in copious amounts of miracle powder. In fact, if I can tell what flavor tea I'm having by the time I finish a cup, I make an appointment with my physician; it is extremely aberrant.
So it's day three now, and I can't help but notice that I suddenly have tons of free time. At least three extra hours. Granted, now I spend them prostrate on the floor of my room, suffering from withdrawal, but they're extra nonetheless. If you could have an extra few hours of life every day with no ultimate changes to your lifespan, with the "BUT" (fancy word for "caveat") being that they were full of suffering, would you take them? I would without a second thought, but only if I were on a 30-day trial of taking them.
Generally, I'm feeling more deflated across the board (hmm, can't think of a way to not be redundant in this sentence, oh well). I experienced this before - during my 4th attempt to quit drinking soda. The abrupt disappearance of the sugar high renders life gray and uninteresting. I'm sure glad I'm giving up sugar and not heroin (NEVER giving that one up).
2. No snacking. Only eat when hungry.
Snacking all but disappears when you eliminate sugar from your diet. Now I only have the urge to snack every three minutes as opposed to after every successful swallow. I spend a lot of time in my room upstairs working up my hunger to earn permission to indulge my mouth. "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," is the mantra of the month.
3. Decide what to do for the generalized version of this 30 day trial.
The original plan was to give up all impulses. Obviously this is only feasible for living Buddhas and select igneous rocks, but there's a saying about bars and settings that's popular in this house - something along the lines of "set the bar high for everyone else." After much fruitless discussion, we decided to start off with the obvious sacrifices - #1 and #2 (not the ones you're thinking of...well...definitely not the ones you're thinking of after reading this sentence), and then kick it into high gear the second to last or last week of the trial. I'll let you know how that goes if it goes anywhere.
Went to New York today as a chaperone for Gene on his field trip to the dentist. Gene dropped me off at 80th and Broadway and went off to the torture chamber. I took a slow walk to Barnes and Noble a few blocks away, scaring pidgins and people with my hasn't-seen-the-light-of-day-for-months pale zombie face, and read about three pages in half an hour. I decided I was better at walking and went back out to partake of some pollution.
Later, I came to check up on Gene and he was still being held prisoner. The warden said he was due for release soon, but time passes very differently inside and outside the prison; I ended up waiting for another hour. Anyway, I went outside again, and just then this guy passed me carrying a box. The box read "China" and nothing else. Thank God I'm practicing stifling my impulses, otherwise I would have snuck into that box and prayed it was on an express delivery route to Shanghai...and probably would have ended up as dinner. Still, it's obviously a sign that China's anxious for my arrival.
On the way back from New York, we dropped by the King Fung Food Market - a Chinese grocery store in my town. At checkout, Gene, with his usual lack of sensibility, casually mentioned to the Chinese cashiers that I study Chinese. All of a sudden, there was a blinding tornado of blood and headless torsos, followed by an investigation into my abilities. I came out relatively unscathed, being 38.9% Chinese by the latest estimate, but I fear (and am secretly eager) to return. Sometimes enjoying life as a masochist is so easy it's unfair.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
For Those Of You Who Call Me Lazy
For the last two weeks, I've been wearing a pair of cargo pants with the important button missing. Actually, the button isn't even missing, it's sitting right in front of me, next to my laptop; I can just reach it if I slide my left pinkie off the keyboard. The fly zipper is fine so I don't have to devote one hand to a full-time task of preventing indecent exposure, but a zipper can only do so much and every thirty seconds of walking results in a need for readjustment. You would think it'd be tempting to just go and sew the button back on, an enterprise that would take all of two minutes, but then you'd be forgetting how manly, patient and just plain hardworking I am. I am so uncompromisingly hardworking and NOT lazy that I am willing to lift my pants up and rezip the zipper ninety-six times a day just to avoid those easy cop-out two minutes of sewing. This little piggy takes the hard road.
I have strong precedents in this direction. When I still had my previous laptop, an ancient pre-Internet dinosaur that ran on ant and squirrel power and majored in freezing, there was one time when the keyboard really tested my patience. A bunch of keys didn't work no matter what gauge finger you hit them with. The offenders included four letters, among them 's' and 't,' the left Shift key, Backspace, and most irritatingly - the Esc key. The problem was obviously the nuts and bagel bites and milk and cereal that slowly accumulated under the keys after weeks of use. The most popular solution is to do some cleaning, but instead of being the typical lazybones and buying a can of air and a straw and a slave to press the button and two more slaves to aim the nozzle, I put in some extra effort. I held the four letters in the clipboard - pasting and deleting the ones I didn't need, I slowly taught my right pinkie to use the right Shift key, I highlighted and used the Del key instead of Backspace, and God knows what I did for the Esc key. Probably just restarted my computer. When you're in that kind of situation and you're in dire need of the Esc key, it's like living in that silly quote from Windows hell "Press any key to quit or any other key to continue." Except none of my keys worked.
Anyway, this went on for two months. Finally, when I felt I had mastered patience, I ordered my dad to clean the keyboard for me. He did (instantly, of course), and I was back to appearing normal.
This strategy applies to most situations in life. People love saying "Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today?" or sometimes the exact opposite, but they never think "Why don't I just suck it up, and stop making things easy for myself? Why don't I not pay these taxes, and see what happens?" When I see a button missing on my pants, I don't think "eh, I'll fix it later," nor do I think "I better go fix this right now." I don't try to save myself work either way. I think "hey, a button's missing. Let me just pull the old pants up a bit and zip up...there we go, that'll hold for another ten seconds."
If we always do things the easy way, by doing them at the right time, we miss out so much invaluable suffering. And the density of life lessons in suffering exceeds that of in joy by far. If I go and fix my pants right now, I'll learn absolutely nothing from this incident, and I'm not one to waste opportunities to learn.
More examples from my wonderful dictionary:
邮件 - mail
警方一直截查我的邮件。
The police had been intercepting my mails.
我打开了邮件，惊讶地发现了一个打碎的花瓶。
I opened my mail and was surprised to see a broken vase.
一起 - together
那个妓女和逃犯一起被杀死了。
The harlot was killed together with the fugitive.
擅长 - to be good at
他擅长绘画。
He excels in painting.
她擅长绘画。
She is clever at painting.
I have strong precedents in this direction. When I still had my previous laptop, an ancient pre-Internet dinosaur that ran on ant and squirrel power and majored in freezing, there was one time when the keyboard really tested my patience. A bunch of keys didn't work no matter what gauge finger you hit them with. The offenders included four letters, among them 's' and 't,' the left Shift key, Backspace, and most irritatingly - the Esc key. The problem was obviously the nuts and bagel bites and milk and cereal that slowly accumulated under the keys after weeks of use. The most popular solution is to do some cleaning, but instead of being the typical lazybones and buying a can of air and a straw and a slave to press the button and two more slaves to aim the nozzle, I put in some extra effort. I held the four letters in the clipboard - pasting and deleting the ones I didn't need, I slowly taught my right pinkie to use the right Shift key, I highlighted and used the Del key instead of Backspace, and God knows what I did for the Esc key. Probably just restarted my computer. When you're in that kind of situation and you're in dire need of the Esc key, it's like living in that silly quote from Windows hell "Press any key to quit or any other key to continue." Except none of my keys worked.
Anyway, this went on for two months. Finally, when I felt I had mastered patience, I ordered my dad to clean the keyboard for me. He did (instantly, of course), and I was back to appearing normal.
This strategy applies to most situations in life. People love saying "Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today?" or sometimes the exact opposite, but they never think "Why don't I just suck it up, and stop making things easy for myself? Why don't I not pay these taxes, and see what happens?" When I see a button missing on my pants, I don't think "eh, I'll fix it later," nor do I think "I better go fix this right now." I don't try to save myself work either way. I think "hey, a button's missing. Let me just pull the old pants up a bit and zip up...there we go, that'll hold for another ten seconds."
If we always do things the easy way, by doing them at the right time, we miss out so much invaluable suffering. And the density of life lessons in suffering exceeds that of in joy by far. If I go and fix my pants right now, I'll learn absolutely nothing from this incident, and I'm not one to waste opportunities to learn.
More examples from my wonderful dictionary:
邮件 - mail
警方一直截查我的邮件。
The police had been intercepting my mails.
我打开了邮件，惊讶地发现了一个打碎的花瓶。
I opened my mail and was surprised to see a broken vase.
一起 - together
那个妓女和逃犯一起被杀死了。
The harlot was killed together with the fugitive.
擅长 - to be good at
他擅长绘画。
He excels in painting.
她擅长绘画。
She is clever at painting.
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