Shoutout to Blackberry

Hello world,

I guess this post is really just a reminder of how fast time flies by. I wanted to write something thought-provoking, but it's really difficult to come up with something on the spot. I don't usually talk about my life on the blog because it usually doesn't stimulate any of the more complicated thought processes. But I will talk about my new friend: Mr. Blackberry. There's a long history between me and my phone. For longer than I can remember, the weapon of choice was the Nokia 3390. I had other phones but they never quite compared to that particular champion phone for high school students. The other phones were either too slow, had bad picture quality, needed to be flipped in order to answer a call (which sucks btw), or the ringtones weren't dope enough. The 3390 was just so good at the basics: fast calls, intuitive text messages, and composer to make your own ringtones. Popular ones included Differences by Ginuwine, Wanksta by 50 Cent, and So Fresh So Clean by Outkast. When camera phones came out, I scoffed at the excess and the poor performance of the simplest functions. But now I realized I've been ignorant to the potential of the best phones out there. I'm not going to plug Blackberry but if you google chat me, aim me, send me an e-mail, text me, call me, or facebook message me, I will receive it in real time. Today's a new day for the technological era. Although the 3390 might be outdated, I gotta pay homage to it because it is a phone that made the Blackberry what it is. Come to think of it, the landline telephone, the telegraph, and the tin cans tied together with string all deserve some love.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Phone test

Phone test phone test 1...2 amazing
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Phone test

Phone test phone test 1...2 amazing
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Earl in Miami

below: you go to the naked beach yet?!?!!?
abon: LOL
abon: nah not yet
abon: but i did see someone who was "bottomless"
abon: u heard of "topless"
abon: but oh shit, bottomless

Success Sucks

This is a shame.

Fans boo and walk out after Amy Winehouse gives atrocious performance

It's a shame because she is one of the brighter stars worth turning your neck for in our age. But really, these are the stories that make up most of today's headlines. People often say that success can take you far. But "sky is the limit" is not always the case for today's type of success. It is more like "how deep is the pit." It sucks because there are no warning signs for success the way there is D.A.R.E. for drugs. We are taught to be become successful, no matter how many times we fail. However, there are no lessons for when you are at the top. There is no enemy to conquer on the mountain except yourself, and how do you win against yourself? It is not a clear-cut two-sided battle between right and wrong. For celebrities, it could mean to keep on chasing what you've been chasing your whole life at the cost of self-destruction or it could mean disappearing into mediocrity and obscurity, conditions of which the psychological effects should not be under-exaggerated, but hopefully gaining a peace of mind in the process. If you do happen to find yourself in one of those self-destructive type of positions of success, how are you supposed to get out? Think about it. That's like a crackhead who shoots up and they pay him for it and give him an exorbitant amount of fame and attention. For some people, that's their life. There will always be rehab for drugs and alcohol, but there is no rehab for success. The only rehab for success is failure. And from personal experience, looking in the mirror after any failure, especially the large ones, is the hardest thing to do.

Oh sh*t

Oh sh*t

Ballet Class Crank

What do you look for in a significant other?

Sheng Wang Joke of the Day:

I took a shit in a toilet with no water. I told my friends that I had to drop the kids off at the skate park.

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So we asked all around what they look for in a significant other.

Marius said that the girl should be funny.

Nolan said the girl's gotta be someone who he can talk to.

I said that I look for standards, moral principles.

Christine said the guy should be kind and someone who could make her laugh.

She seemed to put an emphasis on kind, and that's what's been tripping be me out. Kind isn't really the same thing as nice, friendly, compassionate or having manners. Kind means something else. In the word kind, there is an inherent vulnerability. And there seems to be no room for something like that in a man's world. Kind is a *large* type of vulnerability. It means turning the other cheek or letting someone screw you over. For men, being kind seems to contradict the tenets of manhood of being strong, courageous, assertive, or sometimes, being honest. I asked her to name someone kind, and she did. But I know the person to have a mean side, and not the type of malicious mean side. It is the type of mean that can make us laugh at the jokes on MAD TV. By implication, one cannot enjoy the offensive jokes on MAD TV and the ones that are pretty much standard in American society if you are ALL-OUT kind, which means being kind is boring in some situations. Where I went to high school, you could not really be afford to be kind unless you could tolerate having a low self-esteem. Everyone else was unkind to battle everyone being unkind, but it was really just teenagers who weren't sure of themselves.

Then I asked, "How do you expect to find kind?"

She said, "You just either are or aren't." (which kinda sucks if you're a guy trying to prove yourself and you are innately NOT kind)

But that phrase can go all ways: "You're either funny or you're not." "You either have standards or you don't" "You either are able to talk to Nolan or you aren't."

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Kanye West's Mom Died :(

I give the woman a lot of respect for raising a son who was THAT creative and believed in himself THAT much. No one talks about how difficult it is to raise a child to believe in himself/herself. Everyday you're self-esteem is being tested by the outside world. The kids at school tell you you're not good enough. The commercials tell you that you're not cool if you don't buy this or that. You gotta wear the right clothes. The super competitive people make you feel less-than-competent. Donda West is proof that if you raise someone to be strong, EVERYONE benefits.

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Is it possible to be kind in today's age?

Any words for Donda West?

Comedy Show at Cal

I went to a comedy show yesterday at Cal. Here are the jokes that I remember off the top of my head.

*Host: Now introducing to the stage...Sheng Wang!*
*applause*
*man comes out behind curtain*
*Sheng Wang: Surprise! Sheng Wang is Chinese.*

*Sheng Wang: I'm going bald. I don't like to think of going bald as losing hair, but more like gaining more face. ::rubs the top of his head:: Can you imagine that in a couple years this will be my forehead?*

*Sheng Wang: My roommate is too honest with me sometimes. I don't understand why she has to be so up-front. I brought a lady friend to the apartment and she felt the need to tell me what she thought of her. "She's pretty good...Eh...she's alright...she's okay....you can do better." ::looking around:: I know I can do Better...but BETTER isn't trying to do ME. BETTER is out there trying to fuck BEST. and I'll be doing OKAY. ::smiles and gives the okay sign::*

*Sheng Wang: I can't even justify the use of the term "sex life." That's like, "hyperbole." But it's okay, I'm under the impression that having sex again is like riding a bike......Some people just don't own bikes. ::audience laughter:: Sometimes you gotta walk...or talk a leisurely stroll.*

*Sheng Wang: Me and my roommate just recently got into an argument. She put in one of those glade plug-ins in our bathroom because we got "problems." But the glade plug-in doesn't solve anything. It's just confusing. A guest walks into the bathroom, "Oh it smells like peaches...Oh wait...you're roommate has diarrhea." I mean, you don't put a band-aid on a broken arm. You shouldn't put a strawberry on a pile of shit.*

*Louis Katz: For the longest time I was having sex with a condom. When I had sex for the first time without a condom, I seriously saw beams of light coming out of the girl's vagina and heard a whole ensemble choir singing. ::does short choir singing hymn:: Having sex without a condom is like putting your penis in God's mouth.*
*Louis Katz: Sex without a condom is too good. I don't even worry about getting STD's anymore. I'm just gonna throw an Airborne in there and hope for the best.*

*Louis Katz: My parents keep telling me, "You gotta find a nice Jewish girl to marry so we can prolong our people, because if you don't, Hitler wins!" How does Hitler win? He's been dead for a long time. I'm just out trying to fuck Christian girls. So, in the end, who wins? ::audience member yells, "YOU DO!":: That's right.*
*Louis Katz: Yeah, I'm a little bit on the hairy side. I have girls all the time tell me, "Have you ever thought about shaving?"......Fuck you. Of course I haven't thought about shaving. Why don't I just get a nose job and a baptism while I'm at it? But I do empathize for these girls. For some reason, the phrase, "Don't worry, that's not a pube," never brought comfort to any girl.*

*Brent Weinbach (doing a right-wing slam poetry): A dick in the butt? And then what?!?!*

In the Lord's House

I don't think that I'm conservative. I wouldn't call myself balls-out liberal either. But probably the most conservative thing about me is my big ego.

I was in the Lord's House last Sunday. I try to take in as much as I can when I'm at mass. I don't go as often as I'd like, but I think the Lord's House as a sort of pure sanctuary. To me, it is where all the beef gets put aside and we're all in the same place trying to repent. But I think I've put too much of an emphasis on pure. I was watching the events of the service transpire. Then I notice the lector of the first reading. The lector of the first reading was the same chick I saw at Santa Barbara who seemed to be majoring in debauchery studies rather than Bible studies. And then as the mass goes on, they needed people to help serve the Body of Christ. Two of the people that were helping give out the Body of Christ were heavy drinkers, proficient shit-talkers, and self-proclaimed bitches. I thought to myself, "Doesn't this somehow defeat the purpose?" I'm hearing God's word from someone who doesn't practice it. I'm receiving the Body of Christ from some of the most shadiest characters. As I tried to convince myself of this pure sanctuary, images of priest-touchin' children emerge. Then I feel bad for judging in the Lord's House. You know how angry conservative mob protesters rally in front of courthouses against gay marriage? And then people like me think, "What do gay marriages have to do with these protesters? In the long run, how does it affect them at all?" I think I got a glimpse of their ignorance. For some reason, it does affect me that the Girls Gone Wild lector is readin' God's Word to the church. For some reason, it does affect me that the some of the shadiest of individuals (and not even the Bible reference, tax-collectors who truly sorry for their sins type of individuals) are serving up the Body of Christ. I can't articulate how it affects me but that type of stuff seems contradictory in the Lord's House. It's probably as contradictory as me judging folks in the Lord's House.

All I can do is try to understand that even I don't always live up to the image of myself. Even I can't meet my standards at times. Maybe those folks ARE trying to become better people. Maybe I'm lying to myself about them but at least I'm trying for them.

But in order to reduce confusion:

Be who you say you are. And say what you is.

This is a good album.



Justice - Cross

I guess I'm being mean

I think girls, in general, are blurring the line between dressing like a slut and being a slut.

I'm sorry that's not that gentlemanly.

But I think sluts need to be more accountable for themselves. And I know the word "slut" is an ugly and demeaning word. It is a shame that we have such words in our language. But I think it's an even bigger shame that there are girls out there who embody such words. It seems very difficult to be a woman these days. Maybe it's always been hard because of the whole childbirth thing. But women don't get any leeway for anything. Guys can dress up like Mr. Rogers and be labeled as classy. Guys can dress up like Kevin Federline and be frequently mislabeled "bad boy." In either case, there is a niche for women to choose from. If women dress up like Rihanna, Beyonce, or Britney Spears, guys do not make any distinction. To them you are that H-O. And it doesn't matter if you are one or not, you get treated the same way. And there is no niche. H-O is the market. The only niche in the market are the good girls, ladies. And ladies are rare, hard to find, and really not as appreciated in society as they should be. H-Os have a hyperinflated stock price.

The problem is that we've centered our culture's perception of women around Beyonce's, Rihanna's and Britney Spears', and not enough around girls like Janelle Monae.



I do advocate that women be treated with as much respect you can give them, regardless of whether they deserve it or not. But when you see an H-O, the mind will call it what it will.

The Power is in the People

I don't have any regrets going here. I realize that life is about constant change that we all learn from eventually. Cliche: I wouldn't change a thing. But sometimes, there are things that I wish didn't change. Before I left home, I had people. I knew people. I was two degrees away from the people I wanted to know or had to know. I had a real-life facebook going on at home. I remember desperately not wanting to leave, but also wanting a change of scenery. At the time, it seemed I could afford this type of break because I had a reputation. I'm not saying that for ego but I've always been aware of my reputation because I'm the one who created it. I felt like my name would still be tossed around if I was gone (and it was) but I knew it wouldn't be the same as it used to be (and it wasn't). After spending four years away, it becomes increasingly apparent to me that I've lost a lot of people.

It is the connections, that real human connection, that I miss the most. And I've become cognizant of this fact as my senior year dwindles down to its final days. These past four years have not been wasted. I've managed to know enough people to say that I had a fulfilling college life. I don't know if I have a reputation. You can't place a kid in a school where all the students were at the top of their class and worry about a reputation. No one's really got a reputation when everyone has their minds on themselves. But after graduation, I have to come back home and deal with the fact that I have no people. I have friends I call every now and then but it won't be of the magnitude it was when I was in high school. I also have to deal with the fact that the industry I will be working in is dependent on the people you got. I've been running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to find people. I'm iming people, posting on facebook walls, approaching strangers, all in an effort to reach as many people here in an environment where it is supposed easy considering there's 30,000 people that go here.

But I'm really just trying to reconcile the fact that once I go back home, I'm powerless.

Santa Barbara

I was over at UC Santa Barbara over the weekend, a school known for it's crazy party ethic. While we were walking, a friend told me about this conversation he overheard from some UCSB students.

"You know what I like about being an engineering major? You're guaranteed a job after college."

The other guy goes, "Yeeeeeaaaaah that's the best part."

This seems to be the fundamental difference between Santa Barbara and Berkeley. They have this large contentedness for life. They are happy with it and they celebrate it. This is really me on the outside looking in. I'm sure the schoolwork gets people down from time to time, but it's nowhere near the cultural depression that Berkeley clouds over its students. Everyone is constantly competing with each other. Everyone is looking over to the next person and trying to set the curve. They try to go as far as they can but there is no purpose, no direction. What's the point of going far if you don't know where you are? You got A's but what else do you have? You got interviews and resumes, but why do you get up in the morning? For SB students, the concern is to be happy. Everything else is secondary. For Berkeley students, the concern is security. Dignity is secondary.

It's the ones at Berkeley looking for happiness that get screwed over at the end.

You Should Watch American Gangster

That is all for today. It just seems all too bad that there does not seem to be any true American Gangsters around anymore.



One very good reason to watch... is Cuba Gooding Jr....as a pimp.

Yes I said it.

So listen...

Wattup world,

I just finished a weekend in Sunny SoCal for Friendship Games weekend. It's the first time I've been home since the day before the first day of school. Long story short, it was good times and a lot of laughs.

But we did run into this while we were down there...

MAD TV Can I have your number?

After laughing hysterically about it for a couple hours after watching it, I decided the story of Darrel is, in essence, the story of every male in terms of how to close on those seven digits. If you think about it, Darrel's method is straight to the point, and if it weren't for the formality of women complicating the situation, all men would probably do what Darrel does.

But here is the mindset of man broken down: If a dude sees an attractive girl and he's single or not, he automatically thinks, "I have to know that girl." The intentions could be varied. He could be looking for a relationship or he could looking to just be friends or he could want sex, but the bottom line is that he is compelled to force fate and meet this girl. After mustering up courage, he tries to think of the best possible way to approach a stranger that he will probably never see again and create some sort of connection. A successful attempt results in a phone number. In his mind, he's probably thinking, "This girl could change my life. If all things go good and well, she could possibly be my (insert label here). If I don't do this now, I will never see again." For those who do nothing, they spend their whole lives contemplating the what-ifs until they see another once-in-a-lifetime girl where they can repeat the process.

The mindset of woman: She is probably not impressed at all by any amount of courage mustered, as if courage was so abundant from where she came from. It doesn't matter what intentions he has. He probably just wants sex. She's been hit on how many times today for the past how many years. How impressive could this man really be if he just approaches strangers and asks for their number. She is not flattered at all or maybe she has low-self esteem too and doesn't know how to take a compliment. She doesn't need a connection. This sort of thing happens to her everyday.

Ladies, guys wish they had your problem!

But to the defense of women, the majority of the male population is nasty and not worth your time, but don't overlook those one or two decent dudes out there.

Profile on David Simon or Why "The Wire" Rocks

The New Yorker just released an article on David Simon, the creator of the Wire. I've been tooting the horn of the Wire for a while now, almost to the extent of a senile old man, but still, no one's really hearing me. The Wire is THE BEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER WRITTEN!!! I put my whole reputation on that. And I'm not talking about Desperate Housewives good or Gossip Girls good (am I really validating this show?). I'm talking about the smartest script ever written for a television screen. I'm talking smarter than any show I've ever watched or talked about including: The Sopranos, Smallville, Heroes, Weeds, 24, Studio 60 or any other show I can think of worth mentioning. It is actually so smart, it often gets overlooked by middle class America. Middle class America doesn't deal in smart. It deals in monotony, sticking to what works, and making sure their shows make a profit, without analyzing the adverse effects of bad television on the minds of its audience. The article is pretty long, and I can't really expect you to read the whole thing, especially without having the context of watching the show. We can't really expect anyone to read anything longer than 5 minutes because that's how big our attention span is these days. But I'll pull out things I like from the article.

“The Wire,” Simon often says, is a show about how contemporary American society—and, particularly, “raw, unencumbered capitalism”—devalues human beings. He told me, “Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did. So, if the first season was about devaluing the cops who knew their beats and the corner boys slinging drugs, then the second was about devaluing the longshoremen and their labor, the third about people who wanted to make changes in the city, and the fourth was about kids who were being prepared, badly, for an economy that no longer really needs them. And the fifth? It’s about the people who are supposed to be monitoring all this and sounding the alarm—the journalists. The newsroom I worked in had four hundred and fifty people. Now it’s got three hundred. Management says, ‘We have to do more with less.’ That’s the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line. You do less with less.”


You ever hear of a show that consciously is blaming the media for the sh*t that's wrong in the world? The most you ever hear is Justin Timberlake decrying for MTV to play more music videos. Even as noble as that effort was, it still got reported on the internet in tabloid fashion, which is contradictory to the actual point he was trying to make.

Viewers of “The Wire” must master a whole argot, though it can take a while, because the words are never defined, just as they wouldn’t be by real people tossing them around. To have “suction” is to have pull with your higher-ups on the police force or in City Hall; a “redball” is a high-profile case with political consequences; to “re-up” is to get more drugs to sell. Drugs are branded with names taken from the latest news cycle: Pandemic, W.M.D., Greenhouse Gas. “The game” is the drug trade, although it emerges during the course of the show as a metaphor for the web of constraints that political and economic institutions impose on the people trapped within them.

That's one of the dopest parts of the show. It forces you to understand the show's vocabulary. It also reinforces the point that speech is something organic. The inner-city urban environment uses a different vocabulary than the rest of middle class America. If we're going to understand their story, we gotta learn their talk, at least. I'm also a fan of slang, it's almost but not quite, like being bilingual.

Because Simon and his primary writing partner, Ed Burns—a former Baltimore homicide detective who was once one of Simon’s sources—are both middle-aged white men, people tend to assume that the dialogue spoken by the drug dealers and ghetto kids is ad-libbed by the black actors on the show.

They're white, and they get it more than some Black people do.

Simon is an authenticity freak. He said, “I’m the kind of person who, when I’m writing, cares above all about whether the people I’m writing about will recognize themselves. I’m not thinking about the general reader. My greatest fear is that the people in the world I’m writing about will read it and say, ‘Nah, there’s nothing there.’ ”

Fuck yeah for authenticity. How much authenticity is in Heroes? Can you really understand the emotional burden of having a superpower? The Wire is about real people.

“ ‘The Wire’ is dissent,” he says. “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.”

Exactly!

Rafael Alvarez, a former Sun reporter whom Simon hired to write for the show, said, “You know how, in a Russian novel, the reader does the work for the first hundred pages, and then it turns and you’re lost in it? With ‘The Wire,’ it might be Episode 6 before it turns and you’re in.” The creators of “The Wire” would never say that their work is as good as that of Tolstoy or Dickens, but they can’t quite resist the comparison, either.

That's exactly how I felt when I watched it. The first episode was, "WTF is going on? I can't even understand what they're saying." By the 5th episode, I said, "This is getting a whole lot better." By the season finale, I exclaimed, "This is THE BEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER WRITTEN!!!" I mean, some of you must've read Harry Potter and thought the first couple of chapters when he's dillydallying in the real world was pretty boring until he got it on and poppin' in Wizardland.

This final season of the show, Simon told me, will be about “perception versus reality”—in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can’t. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals—stories that have a clean moral. “It’s like, Find the eight-hundred-dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who’s double-billing,” Simon said at one point. “That’s their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems—newspapers are not designed to understand it.”

We actually do need a television show to depict this for us. A lot of us just take in anything on print as truth these days. But maybe Britney isn't really that bad. Who knows?

The Wire is in it's 5th and last season this year. Please watch it. Bittorrent it, netflix it, or call me up, but do what you gotta do and make yourself smarter through watching television.

Oh yeah and he's also trying to write a pilot on a new show in New Orleans. Can't wait.

You Thievin' Mofos

"Gangsters, these are men who embraced who they are and decided to make something out of it. They did not wait for a handout or wait for Teri Hatcher to say the wrong thing, so they can force ABC to pay for 'diversity scholarships.'"

I honestly thought that the "Filipino community" (read: upper middle class interests) would keep the protest at diversity scholarships. And then they pull this sh*t.

Filipinos Sue ABC for $500 Million

I have to ask, "Why would I support this lawsuit?"

Will I see any penny from this $500 million? Will my Filipino mailmen experience any riches beyond belief? How does my secretary mom and construction inspection dad who work for the State get a piece of the action? How about my Tagalog teacher? Will she get $500 million too?

NO!

The money goes to a very small upper middle class demographic of the entire Filipino-American community. You're the mofos who moved out of the city and moved to the suburbs to let your people rot. And what other implications can we expect? Without $500 million dollars, ABC will be forced to make shows of a significantly lesser quality that you will probably end up watching just so you can wait on another white person to say something racist and you can sue them again. Meanwhile, I have to deal with you ig'nants for watching such reality shows and making me look bad. Also, with the upper middle class already cakin', the last thing I need is for you to have $500 million in your pocket so you can give your kids a fixed-up rice rocket and have them act like they're better than Filipinos who actually work for their sh*t and have higher priorities than what you drive. And what about Mychal Bell of the Jena 6 whose family didn't have enough money to post $90,000 bail for being a blatant victim of racism as opposed to what you are going through? Why do you deserve 5555 times more money than him? What else? Oh yeah, did I mention that you haven't earned this $500 million at all?

“What’s important here is that this is sending a message to the other producers, the other stations that if you do this, this is what’s going to happen," said lawyer Rodel Rodis.

Yeah we're sending a message alright, that we're some thievin' motherfuckers.

Janelle Monae and The Cool Kids

I don't like to advertise music that much. In some ways, it is sometimes good that you're the only person who likes the music you like. When it comes to music, for the most part, people can't appreciate sh*t. And I'm sure that's how classical-music-lovers feel about me. But sometimes I like the world to know. I want some people to understand what my arbitrary definition of good is and appreciate it for its objective truth. For the most part, I think I have my audience's musical pulse down.

Well anyways, I got new people to add:



Janelle Monae - Metropolis: Suite I of IV "The Chase"

I know I've covered her before, but she didn't have an album out when I covered her. She just released a concept album called Metropolis, that's divided into 4 parts. Her management team made the decision that people don't listen to whole albums anymore, they just pick the songs they like. Instead of releasing one huge album, she's releasing 4 mini-albums. That way, she doesn't make 20 songs that only capture her at one stage of her life. Instead, she makes 4 albums with 5 songs each and spreads out the release dates. By doing this, she can make more recent music each time she releases and the anticipation bubbles while you wait for each gem. What's good about this album? Have you ever heard of a 5 song album and think it was good? I didn't think I could either until I heard this one. And it works, you get all you need and yet you crave for more. If this particular album art doesn't intrigue you, then it's probably not for you.

The Cool Kids - Totally Flossed Out EP



Their fashion sense is the same as their rapping style: do it to be creative instead of trying to act cool. And you can tell because the music speaks for itself. Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish are the duo that make up The Cool Kids. What's dope is that the name fits. You can tell they have fun when they rap. And it's honest all around. For example, on one of their songs "A Little Bit Cooler" they talk about getting knocked for being the first ones to dress throwback 80's and then everyone started joining the 80's fashion bandwagon when the water was warm enough to jump in. I wouldn't necessarily dress 80's, but goddamn I can appreciate the situation. But they say ascots are coming back this season.

U.S. House of Representatives passes Armenian Genocide Resolution

Bush is pissed.

Well maybe not pissed, but perturbed that no one cares about his "War on Terror." Can anyone say that to themselves in the mirror and take themselves seriously?

"I'm fighting the War on Terror. My enemy is terror."

You can't do it. It's hard. It doesn't even sound as good as the war on drugs. And no one's even fighting back on the war on drugs.

Anyways, the Armenians won a point on this one. If you think about it, it's ridiculous. Germany admitted to the Holocaust and no one really synonymizes Germany with Nazis anymore. They only seem to label people who happen to be Nazis as Nazis. If Turkey admits to this, Armenia will feel better about themselves. Turkey will experience a slight decrease in self-esteem. Overall, almost no one in America will care. In the long run, they're not going to connect Turks with mass murder the same way they don't connect Germans with mass murder. How does anyone take a stance on this issue when the people who went through it are long gone (maybe not entirely true)? It's really just a bunch of stories passed down on both sides to kids who grow up believing what they were told (ok, there are historians out there confirming it, but still). Mass murdering is bad. Trying to pit the blame on a country under a long duration of time that spans generations for mass murder is not worst, but it's also bad, but most likely not as bad as mass murdering.

Bush urges rejection of Armenia genocide resolution

Bush Rejects Armenian Genocide

I know that Filipinos and Armenians have had their share of not-so-nice words here and there. But there's one thing we don't touch, that's the Armenian Genocide. It sucks that it happened. If you don't believe it did, you don't give an opinion about it. But you don't touch it.

That's like telling the Jews that the Germans ain't do no Holocaust. I'm pretty sure that sh*t stings.

What sucks is that Bush is trying to keep up relations to gain a better position in that unpopular war of ours.

Gangster

I'm excited to see American Gangster. I don't think I've been this excited about a movie since Hustle & Flow. People who seek opportunity, entrepreneurs, hustlers, they're all suckers for movies about makin' it. I've said it before: there is something very American about it. America, land of the free to make as many chips as you want.

The post is really about gangsters. I was going to write about the The Wire's Avon Barksdale and his drug empire, but I'll save that for another post. To be honest, I have a lot of respect for real gangsters. It's the code they live by.

Denzel Washington: "Honesty. Integrity. Family."

Those are all things I live by. Gangsters, these are men who embraced who they are and decided to make something out of it. They did not wait for a handout or wait for Teri Hatcher to say the wrong thing, so they can force ABC to pay for "diversity scholarships." These are people who took the good and bad about themselves and did what they do. Especially the family part, they were only made better by sticking together. I really believe in that stuff. Sometimes, as I peace out some of my friends, I say "family." Some of them understand, some of them don't get it. I mean, how can they get it? If you're so ingrained in the system, how does it make sense to look out for anyone besides number 1? Can you put "honesty, integrity, family" on a resume? No! And for some reason, telling someone in an interview that you're honest and have integrity means that you're not. It has to be proven through some internship where you probably followed the same process of not being honest on your resume or interview in order to get the internship. It's good to have a nice house, nice car, some security, but in the end, we are what we live by.

I don't care

I don't care what anyone says. Even if he does make his beats on a Casio and a lil' kid can come up with his rhymes. He's the only new dude right now that is actively worth getting up and dancing to.

Yooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Where you come from

I often think about being born in San Francisco. I lived in Northern California for the first two years of my life and my dad got a job offer in Los Angeles. As far as I remember, we lived in the Valley ever since, whether it was in North Hollywood or my short stint in Sun Valley. But as I walk the streets of Berkeley, I often think that my story began up here. The U.S. has become very regionalist. Everyone seems to be reppin' their territory, which was a side effect of the East vs. West rivalry of the Tupac-Biggie days. I try not to, but I can't help but criticize these fake Kanye-looking freshmen kids who wear all-print bandanas on their necks, fitted caps cocked to the side, loud T-shirts, kicks that cost upwards of $100, and predictably no money in the bank. And they're all from San Diego. When was San Diego the rallying point for fake hood playful gangster fashion sense? I would take you more seriously if you had the emo eye-patch haircut. But I digress. I've always believed that you owe something to the people and the places that helped shaped you become the person you are today. Even though I was only in the North for the 2 years I would probably remember the least out of my life, I feel like it was important I was there. Who knows? Maybe while I was up there, I got a little bit more oxygen in my brain than I would have gotten if I was born in the Valley. Maybe that's why I had a little bit more sense growing up. And maybe it was good that I left when I did. I could have been part of the hyphy movement. But either way, it's important to remember where you came from. Even though my heart is in the Valley, my presence here in Berkeley is a constant reminder that I owe a huge something to the North.

This Protest Bullsh*t

I'm not going to say too much about all the controversy surrounding this clip. The Filipinos (who I have not included myself in this particular case) are protesting and want to boycott ABC for airing this clip in all its ignorance. I think I've already given too much of my attention to this nonsense.

1.) The clip and the statement was funny. Filipinos, in general, laugh at racial jokes on a regular, but we're not allowed for other people to joke about us? Where was the riot when you heard the countless "I'm not Chinese. I'm Filipino." or "I'm not Japanese. I'm Filipino" jokes were getting tossed around? Where was the 1000-signature petition? Would you not call that racist: the fact that America thinks Filipinos look/are treated just like any other Asian?

2.) The joke was very founded. Check ichiwichi.blogspot.com for solid reasoning.

3.) Filipinos who are trying to petition and boycott ABC are making Filipinos look bad. We're like the brown people who cried wolf because the next time some real oppression goes down, no one's going to take us seriously. We will have been known to react to one-liners and label it as oppression. The Jena 6 is real oppression. If you don't know about the Jena 6, look it up.

4.) Here's my last point. To fellow Filipinos, shame on you for watching Desperate Housewives (sorry to those who actually watch it)! How can you logically protest one line on a TV show that chronicles the lives of 4/5 upper middle class white women, (yes Eva Longoria counts as white) which the producers of the show have decided was more interesting than any of your stories or struggles to put on a screen? The show invalidates your existence in American culture. You should be lucky they decided to sprinkle you on in this vanilla cake party. Yet, you guys decided to protest one funny line on a show that you should have boycotted a long time ago. Shame on you!

Watch WEEDS!

The Way We See Money

I had a conversation with this dude. Two things he said tickled me the wrong way.

1.) "That's why I couldn't be a business major. I wouldn't be able to keep my integrity."
2.) "I don't like how people equate their self-worth with how much money they make."

They tickled me the wrong way because those are two common statements that are basically misconceptions about money and the people who make it.

1.) "That's why I couldn't be a business major. I wouldn't be able to keep my integrity."

Wrong! I'm sorry but if you're not able to keep your integrity while making money, then why would you have any integrity while you're poor? We often forget sometimes that there are very virtuous wealthy people and poverty-stricken assholes in the world too. May I ask what is so unintegritous about making what you are actually worth? It sounds equitable to me. And that may sound harsh, but I gotta say it. Economic mobility is not that common in other countries. If there was any country in the world where you wanted to say, "I'm tired of this life. I want something better for myself." America is THE place to do it. And I'm not trying to get all patriotic here, but there is always going to be (insert social problem #1) or (insert social problem #2) standing in your way. I do try to empathize but let's be honest, there's always going to be something to blame. It is true: a lot of business majors are bankrupt when it comes to the integrity account, but that doesn't mean you have to be one of them. We all deal with questions of integrity. Our most unshining moments are when we either take an interview or turn in a resume. What could be more superficial than turning in a piece of paper trying to impress an H.R. manager by listing qualities that make you right for a job that you don't even want? What is so noble about putting up a fake-ass facade with an interviewer when asked, "So tell me about yourself." especially when your interviewer doesn't really care about yourself and you don't care to tell him/her who you really are, only enough to say things that he/she wants to hear? Almost all of us are complicit in that soul-sucking process. I know I hated it when I did it. That's why I'm never going to do it again. However, there is definitely integrity in being man/woman enough to say what you want and take it.

2.) "I don't like how people equate their self-worth with how much money they make."

Yeah, I don't like it either, but not everyone who makes a ridiculous sum of money does that. It's really about ambition (not the sacrifice-any-sort-of-morality type of ambition). It's about going as far as you can. The dude who said this was Filipino. I'm pretty sure his parents did not come here so he can not take advantage of "chasing-your-dreams" aspect of America. But it happens all the time. The goal is to set the bar high so you can own the sh*t out of that bar. That's where the self-worth comes from. Monetary compensation is only a plus. We often confuse the two.

There you have it, misconceptions about money and moneymakers unearthed.

The Valley is Home

Here's a good way to start off a Gentlemen's World

Dr. Dre Interview with L.A. Times

It's an interesting read. The most interesting part to me was dude lives in the Valley, with references to San Fernando Valley, Chatsworth, and Sherman Oaks among the number of places where Dr. Dre has chosen to situate himself throughout his career. I've mentioned before my seemingly primitive loyalty to the San Fernando Valley, particularly my home in North Hollywood. Although, I don't think I've ever had the chance to articulate it. Loyalty does not come without the assumption that the subjects that you are loyal to are better than any others. Honestly, no one can ever know or make the associations that you make with home unless you actually lived in the area. I hear rappers talk about Bankhead all the time, but I'll never know what it's like to live over there. I just do their dances. It may not be obvious or may be overly presumptuous, but there are certainly aspects of the SFV that make it an endearing place to live, besides the fact that Dr. Dre lives here.

1. The Valley is a celebrity

I don't know how other people feel when they have the life of their home city depicted. Do New York cats get excited when they hear a story set in New York? I know how I feel when I see a TV show or movie set in Los Angeles. It's not really a big deal because it seems like writers or producers like to play up the superficial side of living in Los Angeles, as if it were only possible to be that superficial in Los Angeles. Do you think that girls don't practice "The Hills"-style drama in those all-white Rustbelt schools? They do. It's just not as interesting. I especially know how I feel when the Valley gets depicted on film. It's an event because you're always going to question if the writers got it right. At the same time, the Valley on film has shown you how much the place has changed since it's an inception. For example, the Brady Bunch house, the Hysteria Lane neighborhood, and the Sandlot are all based on what the Valley used to be, when everything was white and hunky-dory. It is not like that anymore, but Hollywood has still decided that there are some stories that could only be told in this place we call home.

2. The Valley is incredibly diverse, both rich and poor

It started off as a white suburb, but cheap housing opened the floodgates for us Brownies, Blackies, Darkies, Yellowees, and Light-skinndeds. The Valley is basically an amalgamation of ethnic enclaves. The differences are obvious. You can tell which town gets more money, and which ones don't. You can also tell which ethnic group has decided to post up and stake their claim to the Valley. Armenians live in Glendale. Upper-middle class Filipinos are moving to Northridge. Burbank is white and has a lot money. Latinos live in Sun Valley and North Hollywood stays poor. I'm not saying it's a race war. I am saying that it is very diverse. It's this type of diversity that gives a resider a unique, yet common, experience.

3. The celebrities live here

I think a lot of celebrities have at lease one home here. One reason is location: it's only 15 minutes away from Hollywood. Like I mentioned before, because of the concentrated rich/poor status, celebrities get to live it up in the nice areas or scale it down in the poor areas. We got those Jamba Juice/Starbucks areas and those 3-good-taco-stands-on-one-block areas, and they're all pretty good.

4. Everyone is a celebrity

If you live in the Valley, your name gets thrown out there, even when you're gone. I would say it's a curse and a blessing. Everyone has a back story in the Valley. And everyone has a distinctive personality. You ever hear about someone being "quite the character"? Everyone's a character in the Valley. It's a lot different here in Berkeley. Everyone here is pretty much cut from the same mold: "Study hard, get good job, live stable life, and maybe." Ranging from subtle to outrageous, a lot of people from the Valley have decided to go against the grain in terms of personality types. Think about it this way. Would you rather live in a place where almost everyone you meet, has an interesting, whether villainous or heroic, hopeful or depressing, sweetly simplistic or confusingly complicated, story? Or would you live in a place like the O.C. where your own story would just end up drowning in a monotonous sea of white? Having your name tossed around, especially among people you dislike, sucks some times, but it's better than people not knowing who you are at all.

5. Some things can only happen here

I'm pretty sure a lot of intriguing stuff happens everywhere else in the world. If you watch The Wire, you can tell a lot of crazy sh*t goes down in Baltimore, Maryland. But I think that there are experiences here that you can't experience anywhere else. The proximity to L.A., the diverse neighborhoods, the places to eat, the act-way-too-cool attitudes, the celebrity sightings, the personalities, all couldn't be possible in a place unlike the SFV.

If you've ever seen My Block on MTV, they did a special on Chicago and Lupe Fiasco was talking about his hood. He talked about seeing crack dealers outside of his window and yet, he didn't become a dealer. On the other hand, he wouldn't be the man you see today if he didn't see those things. That's my relationship with the Valley. I'm a better man for seeing the things that I saw, taking the opportunities I took, and avoiding the things that should have been avoided. I don't know if I'm coming back. Maybe I'll move to the rich area. But I remember exactly where I came from. There would be no me without the SFV.

"But you graduate when you make it up outta the streets"

Kanye West - Good Morning

We All Got Our Vices

If any of you know me personally, you probably know that I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs. And all though drinking and smoking cigarettes in moderation have been socially accepted, it is still considered a vice in many circles. Everyone indulges in a few bad habits. In someway or another (I wouldn't know, I don't drink or smoke), they feel better for doing it, either experiencing it mentally or physically. They have declared the costs have outweighed the benefits, most likely not taking any or that much moral consideration into account. I'm not knocking anyone who indulges in a vice here and there. I'm here to talk about my vice: I steal.

I went to an open mic comedy night last night and a comedian joked, "I was thinking about buying a gun. I mean, I wouldn't buy any bullets, I'm not trying to kill anyone. It's an investment. Do you know how much a gun costs? You could probably hold a couple people up and then go home and feel good about yourself with all the stuff you took." I was laughing a lil' bit extra because that's how I feel. I do feel good about myself when I take something that would make my life a whole lot better than if I didn't have the objects that I take in my possession. It is not until later that I feel the pulse of a conscience about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from a kleptomaniac. I usually only take things during parties or events. It's usually items that aren't that serious. I take 2-liter bottles of soda as I'm leaving a party. I swipe more than my share of water bottles before I go. It's stuff I can use later that I'm sure none of the hosts will miss or notice is missing. I don't take purses or money, not usually at least.

I don't know why I do it. I guess if I can give a simple analogy, I feel like I'm entitled to the stuff I take. You ever hear of celebrities being given $2,000 gift bags for just attending an awards show? Or when an artist is booked for a show, they demand certain items. I think Usher needs a specific color of M&M's in his trailer. Or they say they need a bottle of Petron in their trailer, which they don't drink but give to relatives as Christmas presents. I'm not a celebrity, but in that same manner, I feel entitled as sh*t. I got up, took a shower, dressed up nicely for the event, and didn't partake in any of the drugs or alcohol. I am going to take something in order to compensate me for my presence at this event. It's only fair. You can call that rationalization if you want.

Just recently, I heard Dane Cook has the same thing I got. He doesn't drink, smoke, or do drugs, but he steals. It make me think that everyone needs an outlet. Everyone needs that bad habit and spontaneity to make them feel like they're living. And I think it's strange that my vice could be considered more atrocious than a night of college partying, even though I commit my vice at college parties. But I don't disrespect the temple. In fact, I could argue that the stuff I take extends my life by a couple more years. I wouldn't have water if I didn't take. If I paid for it, I wouldn't have money for other things, like food. I'm not incredibly rich, but I'd be lying if I said my vice was a survival mechanism. I don't have to take the things I take. But like any vice, if I didn't do it, my life wouldn't be "easier."

"Are you suicidal?"

"Are you suicidal?"
"Only in the mornings." - Ocean's 11

The morning has been slow. It's pretty slow when you wake up, head out the door, and sit in a classroom and have none of the professor's information targeted at you penetrate your cranium. I can't even tell if that's a properly structured sentence. Yet, this is the challenge everyday: to wake up and do the meaningful work of changing the world. That is a very broad description of how your mornings should go. But it's true, life does not have time for you to rest. There's not enough time to think of all stuff that you could be doing with your life. Just do it. I have a lot of trouble following my own advice. It is difficult to be conscious of your actions, trying to keep your integrity intact, and have that "just do it" attitude. "Ricky Bobby isn't a thinker. Ricky Bobby is a driver!" - Taladega Nights. You should still get out of the house as a minimum requirement for living out your life. Go to the gym, go to a meeting, a concert, work, anything. If you are going to stay home, do something productive. Watch "good" television (i.e. The Sopranos or any other HBO or Showtime series), lay out your career goals and formulate a plan, do anything that will make you able to say that you did something that will somehow benefit someone in the future. It doesn't even have to be that serious.

For example, today I enabled pirate talk on Meebo in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Yeah, that's today). By typing in "pirateon" in your IM box, all of your IM conversations get translated in pirate tongue. I had a conversation with myself to see how it worked.

Convo w/ meself

below: pirateon
below: hello
Below: avast
below: hahaha
Below: hahaha
below: my friend
Below: me matey
below: what you doing?
Below: what ye doing?
below: right?
Below: right?
below: savvy?
Below: savvy?
below: how did you do that?
Below: how did ye do that?
below: oh well
Below: oh well
below: keep talking
Below: keep talking
below: see what people say
Below: see what landlubbers say
below: this is like talking to myself
Below: this is like talking t' meself
below: except i'm talking to a pirate
Below: except i'm talking t' a buccaneer
below: have you heard of Jack Sparrow?
Below: have ye heard o' Jack Sparrow?
below: How was your day?
Below: How were bein' yer day?
below: Fuckin' bitches with my peg leg
Below: Fuckin' bitches with me peg leg
below: Haha
Below: Haha
below: so how are the ladies?
Below: so how are th' ladies?
below: they're doing well
Below: they're doing well
below: have i lost my pirate tongue?
Below: have i lost me buccaneer t'ngue?
below: nope still got it
Below: nay still got it

Convo with my sis

ng ulo: aye lubber!
below: HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
below: are you on meebo?
below: did you really just say aye lubber?
ng ulo: what are ye talking about?
below: on meebo, if you type in "pirateon", it translates your ims to pirate talk
ng ulo: eww, arrrr..
ng ulo: i dern't do that

ng ulo: i were bein' suppose t' have work at 9
ng ulo: but that winsome lass gave me th' day off
below: [10:39] ng ulo: i were bein' suppose t' have work at 9
[10:39] ng ulo: but that winsome lass gave me th' day off
below: i'm assuming you said "bitch"
ng ulo: how about i said "s h e"
below: hahahaha

And I'm sure someone out there got a good laugh out of those convos. Meaningful work accomplished.

The Paradox of People

It is in my experience with people that I have discovered that people don't want perfection. Perfection repels and isolates. People don't want to see you on a pedestal. They think the pedestal will fall on them. It is weird how that works. All our lives, we've been taught to be good members of society. But we're expected never to achieve perfection. Perhaps because the thought of perfection on anyone is scary. Instead, we glorify the humanness in all of us. We glorify the ability to make mistakes. Everyone wants someone or something they can relate to. We celebrate that we can "learn" from our own mistakes and other people's mistakes. We crave the fatally flawed. But we don't celebrate achieving the very thing that we strive for - perfection. We celebrate goals being accomplished but we're quick to point out that there are new goals to be undertaken. In fact, those new goals and your lack of accomplishing them tragically overshadow any achievement that you thought you could bask in the glory of. You strive to be better people so that one day you could be the perfect exemplars of all the ideals that your society holds dear. You do this thinking that it will make you one with your people, one with your society. You do this only to find out that they don't appreciate your achieved perfection. They only appreciate your struggle.

The Beauty of Gameday

below: let me tell you about a game day!!!
pretty: ok
pretty: go
below: you wake up in the morning after a night of partying, you don't even have to shower, kuz you're going to the stadium in the sun anyway, you're probably gonna have to shower right after
pretty: you should still shower
below: you put the color shirt on you're supposed to wear, and then you walk out the door
below: and then you walk down the streets and ppl will usually yell, "Woohoo, GO [insert team name here]" and you yell back
below: all the while, you're looking for a decent frat or friend's house who is throwing some sort of pre-game celebration
below: and when they get there, they're usually bbqing
below: and also free beer
pretty: u drink now?
below: no
below: but they do give it to me, which i hand over to my friend
below: my point was, they give you free food!
below: FREE FOOD!!! BREAKFAST!!!
pretty: lol...yea...thats tailgating
below: Gratis! You don't have to pay!
pretty: lol
below: and then you eat to your heart's fill!!! while sorority girls are objectifying themselves/expressing their sexuality in the name of school spirit
below: and after everyone is drunked up and i'm full and have swiped 5 bottles of water, we head to the stadium
below: and at the stadium, you get to irrationally yell and get rowdy for athletes that you probably will never have a real face-to-face personal connection with
below: and then after it's all over, you make plans w/ friends to go eat
below: if i knew that there was free food every other saturday during the first semester in my first 3 years, i would have definitely had a lot more school pride early on
below: it is so delicious (because of the freeness), and if you hit up more than one place, you get more than one meal
below: and that's a game day
pretty: thats a good deal
pretty: haha

Complacent Career Student

"Good morning
Look at the valedictorian scared of the future
While I hop in the Delorean
Scared-to-face-the-world complacent career student
Some people graduate, but we still stupid
They tell you read this, eat this, don't look around
Just peep this, preach us, teach us, Jesus
Okay, look up now, they done stole your streetness
After all of that, you receive this."

Kanye West - Good Morning

Kanye West said it perfectly. He basically described everyone at Berkeley. Even more so, he probably has captured the attitude of almost every college student entirely. I think West is profoundly misunderstood. He has the clothes, the swag, the rhymes, and everything that makes you look. But when he does interviews and basically says things like "I know you're looking, I'm the sh*t," that's when we get mad at him. That's what I don't understand. He has marketed himself in such a way to appeal to the broadest of masses and he was successful in doing so. It's a feat that is highly commendable and I'd be proud too. But when he starts to brag about how successful he is in capturing your attention, we say stuff like "He's too cocky." It's almost as if we're saying that he's tricking us into liking him. We don't like his conceit but we can't avoid watching. I would say that this "hate" is really love for the dude. He's a guy who became successful by doing it his own way. He dressed his own way, developed his own style, talked the way he wanted to. And before he became successful, he was probably still acting that way amidst everyone telling him that he can't do it, especially if he's not willing to follow the crowd. He refused to follow the crowd and he's living better than everyone else who just joined the bandwagon. He has earned the right to talk his sh*t. I remember talking sh*t when I got into Berkeley even though I wasn't necessarily one of the most popular kids. I came from a private school. I would've definitely talked more sh*t for duping the system if I got into Berkeley through a public school. If I dropped out of school and still was successful like the way Kanye did it, I would talk as much sh*t as Kanye. I mean, it would be nice for a humble moment here and there. I think he does humanize himself in certain songs and interviews. He has tried to be personal with his audience throughout his career.

But let's face it, America doesn't listen to the silent.

The Last Firsts

For the past week, there has been a lot of "last first" moments: last first day of school, last second day of school, last first football game of the year, etc. I haven't had the time to really process these feelings. I could say that I have been enjoying every minute of it. Every night has been devoted to going out. We hardly ever rest, except out of necessity. Even when necessity dictates that we have a rest day after a long string of "partying," we manage to squeeze time at Thalassas, the local pool bar, before it's time to hit the hay. I'm not particularly fond of the word "partying," because it implies proving to everyone else how cool we are, which isn't my steez. As of late though, my nightlife has been very real. And the daylife, it seems, is very real too. I'm talking about waking up in the mid-morning and taking the first best suggestion to go out and do something, anything rather than sit at home and watch TV. It's about being proactive or at least feeling proactive, never being bored, never getting tired. I felt like this is always how I lived my life, but it hasn't always been the case. From time to time, there has been an excuse or two to stay in. However, senior year changes things.

Senior year is the actual beginning of the end. Freshmen year, you try to live it up and you do your best. Sophomore year is fun. You have a better handle of what you're doing, you push it harder. Junior year feels like complacency. You've been there and done that and you can afford to stay in a night or two. Senior year is the slap in the face telling you, "Big mistake!" You're about to be forced out of a relative paradise and your days are numbered.

That's how I feel. My days are numbered. I have never thought of myself as old but graduations feels like the benchmark. Being out there in the real world means that I'm old. It's not going to happen like this in a long time where or ever, where you can spontaneously go out with friends on a whim without having to extensively schedule months in advance for a cup of coffee. Maybe my feelings will change. I have seen myself retire out of the partying scene only to come back once again. But right now, I have no choice but to create memories. It is almost like my existence is being erased as I am pushed into the world of 9-5s.

This time, there is no excuse. There can be no complacency. There will be no "me time" when I sit at home without the company of friends. There is always "me time." It is those moments when you're not around anyone and you only have you and your thoughts. You have "me time" riding an elevator, walking to class, driving and doing errands, and all those other times when no one is listening to you but yourself. But right now (if you're a senior), you cannot let "me time" get in the way of all those possible moments when there happen to be an abundance of people actually willing to listen to what you have to say. Leave your "me time" for when you are old, senile, sad, and alone.

Here's to good times ahead.

A Gentleman's World

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am sorry to pronounce that my former blog is officially dead. I will not try to glorify its death as if it were a great warrior in a tragic war. It was just outdated. One of the main reasons it died was because I just wasn't updating it enough. A blog is like a child. If you don't feed it with enough updated material, it will die on you. I let it die and that was my fault. Another reason is that it lost its meaning along the way. I think that's one of the biggest flaws of an unsuccessful blog. You have to give it meaning. My blogs were very gimmicky. There was big font, a lot of color, esoteric jokes and stories, and a lot of the stuff you see on any other blog. And then it came to a point when I felt like I had an audience that I had to impress and I didn't want to offend. Or I felt like I shouldn't vent and air out my dirty laundry in public. The blog was also very self-centered. There's only so much you could write about yourself without offending your invisible audience (and without being fake.) Basically, it's hard to feel real when you write for the public.

So now I present a totally new blog. I don't know if it will be successful but I will try to make it successful. First, I have to give it meaning. I have to define why I'm writing. There's literally millions of blogs out there and they really only serve as public journals. In this self-centered culture of ours, we've managed to convince a lot of ourselves that our lives are interesting enough to write about and for people to read about. I'll admit that I even fell for a version of that even though I hardly wrote about my outside life. So...the definition of why I write. If I want this to be real, I figure I talk about real life experiences and the lessons I learn from them. All of the best writing are based on the things that people relate to. With my old blog, I guess it was a loud cry for attention to show people that I exist and my piece of the blogosphere is a lot more relevant than most others. I named it "A Gentleman's World." It is not an instructional on how to present yourself. It is the struggle of how difficult it is to be "proper" in this crazy, mixed up world of ours. I say proper as if there was one, definite, appropriate way to act but proper is a frame of mind, the best possible choices we can make amongst complex, innumerable opposition. It is how I handled/wish I would have handled certain situations. It is not really a cry for attention but more like wishful advice to the young ladies and gentleman that care to listen.

I dedicate this blog to myself. I will try to tone down the self-centerism but I feel like I have to make this dedication. The truth is people will let you down. It is probably not on purpose all the time. People will more likely act in self-interest. I've done it before even though I know the stronger truth in my lifetime has been to act in the interests of those I care about. But when people let you down, you cannot count on them to fix it for you. You can only fix your life for yourself. I dedicate this blog to myself because I know I will fix whatever I need to fix. Hopefully, I can help fix up this reality into "A Gentleman's World." I also hope that we can all become inspired by such an undertaking.

Good night and God Bless,

Casanova Ruffin