Backwards

Look what my cousin got for me to piss me off -------->

Sarah Palin bumper stickers! horray. I don't know what to do with them. Perhaps mail them to Hillary Clinton or NOW, 'cause that would be funny.

Lauren Conrad values my opinion

I Google myself sometimes--it's what I do to entertain myself at 3:30 a.m. when I cannot sleep. Well, ahem-ahem, of the first three search page results, there are two Lorraine Chows (and a sub link!) that are actually me. I will let you guess which ones. Oh, and sorry, only close friends were invited to the wedding.

On page four, this search result caught my attention. It's a really bad article about Lauren Conrad's new fashion collection. Ugh. Anyway, this quotation caught my eye:

"The clothes were really, really cute," said Lorraine Chow, 19, of Irvine. "I thought it was really cool that Lauren Conrad would do a show out here and not just in Hollywood."

I mean, who could deny the fashion ferocity of one such femme fatale from The Hills? But sadly, the opine from name-twin is hers alone. I'm not 19, I'm not from Irvine, and I would never say anything so asinine.

But as I read on, the following quotation tickled my sleep deprived knotty dendrites. It reads thusly:

Chow's friend, Vy Tran, agreed. "I would buy all of the clothes if I could afford it," said Tran, 19, of Irvine. "Especially the blue, one-shouldered dress."

Wait, WHAT?? I went to high school with a girl named Vy Tran.

Coincidence? What are the chances? How many Lorraine Chow and Vy Tran combos can there possibly BE in this dimension? Let alone two in relatively close proximity, who are the same age, and reside in mostly Asian cities?

Or MAYBE (and this is just some liberal speculation) LC's clothing line is bad enough to warrant at least TWO source fabrications.

Zounds. I'm leaning towards the latter. Made up, fo' sho. No one likes Lauren Conrad or her clothing.

So here's to you, Conrad. Go ahead, smear my name to further your opportunism. I don't care because I have faith in fact-based, ethical journalism, and I know my supporters will see through your truth-stretching and slanderous intentions and I will rise victoriously. It would be futile for me to stop it because some people will believe anything the media tells them these days, even if it's made up. Ask McCain supporters; I'm sure they all agree your fashion line was really, really cute.

It is now 4:26 a.m. I will now Google images of fuzzy ducklings.

Ode to Free Credit Report Dot Com guy

Actually, it's not so much an ode but a confession:

I think I love this guy ---->

If you don't recognize this mildly attractive face from those awful freecreditreport.com commercials perhaps this little ditty might tingle your Spidey senses (or make you want to jump into on-coming traffic):

 "F-R-E-E that spells free credit report dot com, baby." 

Still don't?? Well, here's a whole page to refresh your memory! 

I really can't explain why. His voice is more bland than J. Lo's, raps worse than my first generation Asian American mother, needs a haircut and a shave, his friends look like they belong to a third rate Nirvana revival cover band, AND he has already married his dream girl and share blissful matrimony in the basement of her mom and dad's. What a winner. 

Hell, this schmuck has had bad credit for FIVE commercials now. I mean, yeah this fool had his identity stolen and all, but Boy, if you no longer want to serve chowder and ice tea in a pirate costume maybe you should get your credit checked or something...I wonder if there's some kind of Web site that does it for you...for free...

I digress. So yeah, I love Free Credit Report Dot Com guy. My heart doth flutter like an idiot when I see his stupid face on TV. I love how he's always smiling through the adversity of the times and bad credit, singing like his life is a Rogers & Hammerstein musical, and moving forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. I like him for the same reason why my favorite actor is John Cusack. He's got this regular dude quality who doesn't care if his shoes match his belt and would write and sing really bad songs for me. 

I bet he's deep.  

But whatever, I'm going to marry a senator. 

The New Facebook

Don't Like:

1. Lumping of friends in all networks. I can't easily tell if I have more or fewer friends than you at LMU. And now I realize I have fewer combined friends than some of my friends and that makes me slightly annoyed. 

2. Lumping of tagged and self-tagged photos. You can't easily tell that I had hundreds upon hundreds more pictures other people tagged of me than I had tagged of myself. Now I can't tell if you're a picture whore or not, now you can't tell that I'm not. 

3. Combining the news feed with the wall means I can't easily tell how many wall posts you've gotten. Vice versa. You're only cool if you have over one-thousand wall posts..obvi. 

4. That people (myself included) are actually taking the time to debate the new Facebook in the first place. I've got an actual assignment to write for work. And the amount of effort from the millions of new Facebook haters probably would be better served solving, I don't know, the crises in Sudan, Darfur, Zimbabwe, domestic economic troubles, curing cancer and AIDs, the slowly disappearing bees, climate change, world hunger and poverty, the idiocy of creationism possibly being taught in school, that somehow aborting a fetus is not as touchy as sending people to fight, hurt and kill others, and possibly die in useless WARS, or whether my new hair color suits me better than my old one. Actually I rather like my new hair color, scratch that. 

Like:

1. Info+Applications are on separate tabs. This means I don't have to scroll through anyone's favorite movies and work history just to write "Happy Birthday" on the wall. Also, if I want to see which Disney Princess you are, that you slapped someone with a sheep, or managed to save a .06 pounds of carbon offset, all I need to do is click once on a separate tab! It's so easy! THANKS, NEW FACEBOOK!!

2. Photos. The pictures are bigger! And scrolling through them is easier. Oh, the sliding-through-various-pages feature is neat. 

3. It's cleaner and has more white space. Bumper stickers, although cute and gosh-darn funny and sooo represents whatever one can possibly say better than words, took forever to load on the old Facebook profile page and inspired a rage inside of me that caused me to like my some of my Facebook friends less because of them. 

4. Ever wonder which tagged pictures your Facebook friends can or cannot see in your profile because of various friends' album privacy settings? Well, with the new FB now I can see how my profile looks like to any one of my friends! (It's under Settings and it inspires a new stalkerish tendency in me which I adore.) Nifty! Now it's verified that my FB-using younger cousins can see those pictures from 80s-prom and know I'm an irresponsible drunk. Horray!

5. That so many people hate the new Facebook, that I'm willing to like it just to spite them. 

**EDIT** oct. 6

6. PIRATE SETTING. AMAZING. 

It's a bananar!!

BEHOLD:

I don't know why this show was canceled.  

Look at what was #20 on Entertainment Weekly's 20 Dumbest TV Shows Ever. Contestants try to contort their bodies into cutouts in a foam wall or else they're pushed into a pool of water. Canned by Fox (what's new?) faster than, well, any other inane reality show on Fox. Please, please watch this gem of a clip I hyperlinked above. It's the Australian version, but the accents make it all the better. The contestants realize how absolutely fucked their buddy is.     

 

Favorite line: 

"That's not a bananar, that's a T." No shit, Aussie! Thanks for the laugh, indeed. 

 

"I have made myself more complicated than I really am"

"I have read books like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera, and think I've understood them, I think (they're about girls, right?)..." quoth Rob Gordon in High Fidelity.

I think I've understood them too, they ARE about girls. And about dudes too. Tomas, Florentino Ariza, Rob Gordon: I'm convinced they are all the same neurotic guy (in different times and locations), each consumed and plagued by excess of love, in fidelity or infidelity, boohoo, yada-yada, I'm freaking out. I'm so sick of Arcadia.

In other fabulous news...I'm going to continue reading American Psycho, and well, nothing. Miserable contentedness. I think I'll go for some ice cream and return videotapes. 

 

 

 

hard to live in the city

I'm trying to make this connection about human nature, so read this one out. I intern at Student Traveler magazine and I've been assigned to write four country profiles: Argentina, Ireland, India, Holland. Part of the assignment is to ask actual locals from the assigned countries about what are the best places to go and things to see, the point being a local knows way more about their country than someone who has never been there. To do this I created a profile on CouchSurfer.com (BTW, awesome site, check it out, sign up, and can I sleep on yo' couch??) and found and messaged about 40 natives from the respective countries this query: 

Subject: Question

Message: Hi, I'm with Student Traveler and we are doing a write up on your country based on where locals go to see and do in their own country. I know there are probably a ton of things to do in your city and country, but if you have a short list, we will publish them as highlights in our next print issue (out in a few weeks) and mention you. Also if you have any photos of you and/or guests that have stayed with you in your country, can you forward them to me for possible publication. I look forward to your reply. Thanks.

I got about THREE completely useless responses in two days' time. I messaged people who have 100% response rates and seemed perfectly friendly. I even joined groups of the respective countries and posted the same thing with the same dismal responses. Who wouldn't want to be published and their pictures put in a magazine??

Deadline approaching and desperate for some replies, I changed my game plan entirely. So just this morning I sent about 60 other people this message:

Subject: Can you help me?

Message: Hi there! I'm about to go to your country soon, and since you're a local, I was wondering if you could send me a short list of places you like to go, places you like to see in your own country. It can be clubs, places to eat, hidden treasures, anything! Thanks, Lorraine.

I've received 20 thorough and helpful responses in the space of 4 hours. And counting! What's going on here?? I'm the same person asking the same information, minus the fact that I'm using their responses and pictures for my articles. I guess the CouchSurfers would rather help out a newbie traveler than a silly intern sucking their soul of information they don't want shared with the Student Traveler readership. 

THANKS SUCKAAAS.   

People, from Argentina to India, don't like it when their hidden treasures become public knowledge. Like the time I witnessed folks nodding their heads with musical familiarity to "Kids" at a frat party one night and another frat party the night after. A one too many "I love this song!" & "Me too!" combos later, I stopped liking MGMT. I mean, these people routinely praise "Jumper" and that damn Journey song with the same enthusiasm. And imagine the disdain when I learned that Albert Hammond Jr., my latest fascination, can be found on the Gossip Girl soundtrack. What I was doing at said frat parties and why I was going through the Gossip Girl soundtrack shall not be discussed. 

   

i'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me

If all goes to plan, I'll be in Japan by the end of October. Tutoring English to Japanese children. For a year. It frightens me, as any sort of major change would. Somehow I think blogging will keep me sane. Who knows. I give it a month. (Not the tutoring thing, but then again...)

Those who are reading this already know about this far eastern endeavor of mine. So essentially this blog is self-congratulatory and purely vain, but what blog isn't? 

I write the occasional diary entry, but it's always way emo, illegible, and hey, that's private, foo'. I regret not thoroughly recording my life. So many stories forgotten, abbreviated, or exaggerated. I mean, what the hell did I do this past year? I know I had fun. I can certainly say it was the best year of my life even, but all I have are (appropriately) hazy memories. I guess we're all like that. What do you even remember doing today, hmmmmmmmmmm? 

But the regret regards something I didn't care for at the time, so suck it, self. You start this shit now.

Today I passed out things at USC for some fair. I also learned how to use the bus thanks to my co-worker Brett. Or Brent. I think it's Brett. Turns out it's a lot like a subway system. Ironic because I've only used subways outside of SoCal. Then I dropped off my mama and auntie to the airport, came home, sat on my bed for a period of time not worth the embarrassment to mention 'cause it's a Friday night and started a blog. 

There. It's gonna be a good year.