renegadeRICEcracker

i think i have ADD

it's 2:30 in the morning, but i don't feel like sleeping, so instead i am sitting on the couch, watching the world series poker tournament, playing online poker, and also playing online blackjack (because the poker is too slow for me). i broke from the blackjack to blog, but i'm still in the poker game.

oh, and i took a screening test that said it's likely that i have ADD -- i answered affirmatively to, like, 16 of 21 questions or something like that.

i'm tired. i have to go to sleep soon. ooh, flush draw. g'nite!

merry christmas!

i'm in scottsdale, at my dad's. i don't have anything particularly interesting to talk about, and nothing i've been angry about to rant about. however, my blog emptied out of entries, so i thought i should post an entry.

i have been hanging around, playing online hold 'em and blackjack. last night we went to a chinese family's dream buffet. it had a ton of seafood -- sushi, clams, crab legs, oysters, squid, etc. there was also a ton of non-seafood chinese food, and a rather large array of chinese desserts. i liked that they had bao and dumplings, which most buffets don't usually have, even if there's chinese food. they also had pizza and fried chicken in case the fried rice was too exotic for people. oh, and there was an ice cream bar. it was $12.99 a person. i kind of want to go back.

today we went to my aunt and uncle's house for lunch. my cousin just had a baby (she is so adorably tiny -- alex is such a tank that i forgot how small he was when he was born -- plus, this one was premie, so she's particularly small), so my dad and his wife made a ton of food and took it over there. we all ate until we felt sick (ribs, fried chicken, larb, gangai (a thai red coconut curry with rice noodles), this chinese cold beef dish, sticky rice, salmon in puff pastry, and other stuff), and then watched an extended cousin's little girl open all the presents. not her own presents. everyone's presents. i'm a little worried that one of my cousin's won't know what i got him because i saw the stuff strewn around the couch, and i don't think he was there when it was opened. oh well. i'm sure his mom will tell him.

so that was my exciting christmas day. afterward, we came back and i passed out for a couple hours -- apparently my lack of sleep has caught up with me. i think we are going to eat soon, and then we will just chill for the rest of the night, or maybe go check out some christmas lights.

oh. we are eating now. bye!

i am the "student dyke"

it's too bad i am no longer a student. but i do like sara gilbert.

You scored as The Student Dyke. Your entire life is defined by two things: your intellect and your sexuality; moreover you often merge the two to lure in women. The Student Dyke 60% The Pretty-Boi Dyke 55% The Femme Fatale 45% The Stud 35% The Vaginal-Reference-Making Dyke 35% The Bohemian Dyke 35% The Quasi-Gothic Femme 30% The Sprightly Elfin Femme 30% The Granola Dyke 30% The Little-Boy Dyke 30% The Surprise! Dyke 20% The Magic Earring Ken Dyke 20% The Hipster Dyke 0% What Type of Lesbian Are You? (Inspired by Curve Mag.) created with QuizFarm.com

WOO-HOO!!!

i got an e-mail today from my friendly ticketmaster service to inform me that ticketmaster members could order pre-sale tickets to quidam in long beach, which goes on sale january 8. i bought tickets for march 10, in row e. i am very, very excited.

quidam is the first cirque du soleil show that i ever saw, and i fell in love. completely. quidam remained my favorite through the next few i saw, though i also loved mystere (and really, i love all of them). actually, i am going to see mystere again this weekend. i know, i know, i should see a new one, but actually, i saw it after gambling all day and driving all night (10 minutes of sleep), so against all will power i fell asleep for a few minutes toward the end and was too tired throughout to enjoy it the way i wanted. so i'm still excited.

anyway.

quidam! i have been planning on framing the big bus stop quidam poster that i, er, acquired toward the beginning of college, and hanging it in my office. yay!

memoirs of a what?

oh. not of someone japanese.

yesterday i went to see memoirs of a geisha with my dad, his wife, and my sister.

...

...

yeah.

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i may have a spoiler in here. so if you like to watch movies pure and impressionless, stop reading.

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i have sort of mixed feelings about the movie. i have loved gong li since i was in high school. i also have great respect for michelle yeoh. and, while i didn't necessarily think zhang ziyi was all that in crouching tiger, recently revisiting her visage in 2046 brought to my attention that, indeed, she is pretty hot. so i liked the actresses. i thought they did a pretty good job (of course, i think gong li was the best).

on the other hand, as one friend pointed out, this is based on a book written by a white man about japanese women and culture. that book was then taken and adopted by a white man to be a movie, and then directed by a white man, and then filled with chinese characters. (it's true that the book starts by describing how the author met a japanese geisha and based the book on her life. however, if you dig a little deeper, as that friend did, you will discover that this is made up. the story is entirely fictional.) so, you see, it's not very japanese. i mean, don't get me wrong. i'm not saying a white person could never write a great book/movie about another culture without my finding it vaguely offensive or stereotypical. i'm just saying that this man didn't.

it was a very, er, exoticized portrayal of the japanese as this mysterious "other," with over the top dramatics, unnecessarily over-sexualized scenes with the women (in a gross male fantasy way, not a hot way -- at least, not for me). and there was at least one sort of vulgar scene where, in order to determine if one of the women did in fact have a man in her room, the geisha house owner had someone pin down the woman's arms so she could thrust her hand under the accused woman's dress and, er, feel for herself. after pulling out her fingers with a look that said, ah, yes, it feels like there was some activity down there, she slaps the woman. i mean, come on. "ooh, look at the japaneeeese. they sho' is dirrrty."

this all was not helped by the significant problems i had with the plot. a little girl is torn from her family, fails in her one attempt to run away with her sister, finds out her parents died, and when crying over all of this is comforted by a man who buys her a snow cone. at that moment, her life purpose becomes, not to find her sister, who is still living and realistically would almost certainly try to come back and find her, even if years later, but instead to be with this man who bought her a snow cone. yes. that is how a nine-year-old thinks. oh, and as for the man, the appropriate response to seeing a cute nine-year-old for whom you've purchased a snow cone is not to wait until she is old enough so that, many years later, you can sleep with her.

but i still am not entirely unhappy that i saw the movie. i mean, gong li was great. and it was shot pretty well (though i strongly disagree with anyone who says it is beautiful like hero -- it is not). so, i don't know. i think one reviewer put it well when (s)he wrote, "it's like a guilty pleasure. only it's more like a guilty... acquiescence."

unclear on the concept

you know how sometimes, when you're at a counter, and you knock something over the edge, you can keep it from falling all the way to the floor by moving your hip in and catching it between the cabinets and your thigh?

i just did that with the cheeseburger half i was heating up for dinner. yeaahhh... i now have a big grease splotch on my banana republic pants (and a little on my shirt, too). i showed my co-worker and she erupted into a hearty belly laugh for a good minute or two.

i really am trying to eat healthy

but the building management provided breakfast to us today to welcome our office. they had bagels, muffins, potatoes, bacon, hot croissants stuffed with scrambled eggs and bacon, fruit (with blended strawberry sauce, no less), coffee and orange juice.

jesus.

and today i was just snagged to go to a recruiting lunch. we are going to the steakhouse across the street.

oy. i mean, mmm....

let's put the "christ" back in "christmas"

you know, it's really silly of me to have spent so much time thinking about gay marriage, abortion, and the war. we need to bring things back to what's really important: holiday cards. read on, dear friends.

Bushes' 'holiday' cards ring hollow for some
Christian conservatives wage war to put religion back into Christmas

What's missing from the White House Christmas card? Christmas.

This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."

Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break." They celebrated when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas Tree, not a holiday spruce.

'Sent to people of all faiths'
Then along comes a generic season's greeting from the White House, paid for by the Republican National Committee. The cover art is also secular, if not humanist: It shows the presidential pets -- two dogs and a cat -- frolicking on a snowy White House lawn.

"Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas," said Susan Whitson, Laura Bush's press secretary. "Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths."

That is the same rationale offered by major retailers for generic holiday catalogues, and it is accepted by groups such as the National Council of Churches. "I think it's more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards," said the council's general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman.

But the White House's explanation does not satisfy the groups -- which have grown in number in recent years -- that believe there is, in the words of the Heritage Foundation, a "war on Christmas" involving an "ever-stronger push toward a neutered 'holiday' season so that non-Christians won't be even the slightest bit offended."

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is sinister -- it's the purging of Christ from Christmas -- or whether it's just political correctness run amok," he said. "I think in the case of the White House, it's just political correctness."

Retail boycotts
Wildmon does not give retailers the same benefit of the doubt. This year, he has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas. Last year, he aimed a similar boycott at Macy's Inc., which averted a repeat this December by proclaiming "Merry Christmas" in its advertising and in-store displays.

"It bothers me that the White House card leaves off any reference to Jesus, while we've got Ramadan celebrations in the White House," Wildmon said. "What's going on there?"

At the Catholic League, Donohue had just announced a boycott of the Lands' End catalogue when he received his White House holiday card. True, he said, the Bushes included a verse from Psalm 28, but Psalms are in the Old Testament and do not mention Jesus' birth.

"They'd better address this, because they're no better than the retailers who have lost the will to say 'Merry Christmas,' " he said.

Donohue said that Wal-Mart, facing a threatened boycott, added a Christmas page to its Web site and fired a customer relations employee who wrote a letter linking Christmas to "Siberian shamanism." He was not mollified by a letter from Lands' End saying it "adopted the 'holiday' terminology as a way to comply with one of the basic freedoms granted to all Americans: freedom of religion."

"Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas," Donohue said. "Spare me the diversity lecture."

Diversity has been a hallmark of White House greeting cards for some time, according to Mary Evans Seeley of Tampa, Fla., author of "Season's Greetings From the White House." The last presidential Christmas card that mentioned Christmas was in 1992. It was sent by George H.W. and Barbara Bush, parents of the current president.

Seeley said the first president to send out true Christmas cards, as opposed to signed photographs or handwritten letters, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Merry Christmas From the President and Mrs. Roosevelt," said his first annual card, in 1933.

Politicization of a holiday
Like many modern touches, the generic New Year's card was introduced to the White House by John and Jacqueline Kennedy. In 1962, they had Hallmark print 2,000 cards, of which 1,800 cards said "The President and Mrs. Kennedy Wish You a Blessed Christmas" and 200 said "With Best Wishes for a Happy New Year."

Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson continued that tradition for a couple of years, but it required keeping track of Christian and non-Christian recipients. Beginning in 1966, they wished everyone a "Joyous Christmas," and no president has attempted the two-card trick since.

Seeley dates the politicization of the White House Christmas card to Richard M. Nixon, who increased the number of recipients tenfold, to 40,000, in his first year. The numbers since have snowballed, hitting 125,000 under Jimmy Carter, topping 400,000 under Bill Clinton and rising to more than a million under the current Bushes, with each president's political party paying the bill.

The wording, meanwhile, has often flip-flopped. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter put "Merry Christmas" in their 1977 card and then switched to "Holiday Season" for the next three years. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, similarly, began with a "Joyous Christmas" in 1981 and 1982 but doled out generic holiday wishes from 1983 to 1988. The elder President Bush stayed in the "Merry Christmas" spirit all four years, and the Clintons opted for inclusive greetings for all of their eight years.

The current Bush has straddled the divide, offering generic greetings along with an Old Testament verse. To some religious conservatives, that makes all the difference.

"There's a verse from Scripture in it. I don't mind that at all, as long as we don't try to pretend we're not a nation under God," said the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Alan Cooperman
The Washington Post

what i don't like right now

while i am getting used to my new office (and being in a much busier corridor, and thus, working in a much louder environment), and begrudgingly concede that there are better food options over here than where our old building is, i do not like that i get lost every time i try to take a new route to work. i know one basic way to get to our new building from my place. i now know of one basic way to get to work from mimi's (although the one time i tried it, i got lost. and when i say lost, i mean a good 10-15 minutes of driving around downtown, seeing the building, but being unable to get to it because i am unfamiliar with all the one-way streets and the streets that go into mysterious tunnels only to appear blocks past the streets where i wanted to turn. so when i say i know of it, i mean i have looked over and seen where i was supposed to turn while i was driving down somewhere i was not supposed to be). i also tried a different way coming from mimi's, because my coworker said it avoided the 110 traffic, but this had me driving in concentric squares for 15 minutes, as well. this morning, i considered trying another route from my place that is supposed to be faster, but all the getting lost has gotten me gun-shy (seriously, i've gotten lost probably 4-5 of the 8 times i have driven to this building), so instead i just took the one route i now religiously cling to.

this has got to stop.

"best ass below 14th street"

seeing rent the movie completely reignited my obsession with my rent musical soundtrack, which has been playing in my car, at home, or at mimi's since we saw the movie opening weekend. i LOVED the musical, and LOVED the soundtrack, and LOVED the movie. i was a little concerned with how they would make it seem realistic that someone would show up on another's doorstep in new york and ask, "would you light my candle?", but i thought they did a good job. and while it is sad that the original mimi got preggers and couldn't make it, rosario dawson is hot.

oh, and for all the snotty little fucks running around saying that they didn't like it because: 1) wah, the actors are too old now, 2) the 80s are not far away enough yet to be a proper "period" from which to make a musical, or 3) they didn't like how it was adapted -- well, fuck off. i mean, if you saw the movie and just didn't really like it that much, that's fine -- this little slice of hostility is not directed at you. it is directed at all the pretentious snobs who like to crap on things that "the masses" enjoy in order to feel superior and educated, and who have been ALL AROUND ME snidely insulting the movie and ridiculing those who enjoyed it. incidentally, most of these people around me haven't even seen the movie.

it's similar to the people around who have been commenting on how, oh, in the latest harry potter blah blah blah with the action scenes and blah blah blah with the story not being told as much through the actors. i mean, if you're in the industry, and you watch movies for these things, fine. have at it. but i'm not. i go to harry potter movies to be excited and happy in the little harry potter world, and i frankly don't give a shit if you feel more sophisticated because you can point out nuances and tone or whatever that you didn't like.

i understand that it often makes you feel cooler or funnier or smarter if you can be condescending and hard to please. so long as you understand that i often won't give a crap.

(ps -- i'm fine, and not suffering from any PTSD relating to these movies. mimi is working on her dissertation and i had some time on my hands.)

(pps -- sorry i haven't been blogging lately, i kept waiting until i had a chunk of time so i could blog about maui, but time keeps passing, and i'm starting to think that this will go the way of how i kept intending to blog about china... and then never did. so in the meantime i'll blog about other random items.)

mmm... pizza...

i am nice and full on domino's thin 'n crunchy pizza -- veggiefest + sausage. i am feeling a little guilty because i couldn't finish even half of the medium pizza (they don't make small anymore!), and when i ordered a diet coke, they brought me a 2-liter that i similarly will not finish. so i think i have to waste these and leave them in my hotel room. this makes me sad. but there is nothing i can do. if i'd ordered chinese i would have had leftovers, too.

i suppose i could hole up in here for lunch tomorrow and eat cold leftover pizza. somehow, i don't really see myself doing that. of course, if our lovely hotel doesn't offer lunch, i just may do this after all. we shall see.

anyway. i always think it is interesting that our capitalist culture will encourage vendors to force you to purchase more than you want and waste what you can't eat rather than sell you a portion you want. it really freaks out the chinese in me that almost makes me want to sit here and force all this down my throat so i don't *waste*. aiya.

wtf?

i am in bremerton, washington, for the evening, in order to take a deposition (my first! that i'm taking, anyway) tomorrow morning at the beautiful hampton inn & suites. my law firm's travel agency set up the trip, and chose dollar rent-a-car for my ride -- i had to get a car because i was either driving half an hour to seattle and then taking the ferry over, or driving the long way around the bay, which i was told would take just about 15 minutes longer, if the ferry left right when i got there. i think i would have been able to make the 7:50 ferry (the next one was scheduled at 9:05), except that the overly-friendly dollar rent-a-car girl took quite a while and i didn't get my car until 7:45 (plane touched down at 6:40). thus, i drove around the bay to bremerton.

i was issued a suburu legacy -- this car has leather seats and is quite a bit nicer than i was expecting. however, i noticed as i started the car that the gear-shift looked a little overly-complicated, enough to make me question for a moment if i'd accidentally been given a manual transmission car. but, there was no 1-2-3-etc on there, so i shrugged and went on my way.

as i got on the freeway, i noticed that the transmission was getting louder and louder. i was like, uh, does suburu not have enough power in their car to drive quietly over 25 mph? then i looked at the dash panel and noticed a little red "1" with an arrow pointing up. i looked at my gear shift and saw that, when the stick is shifted to "drive," it can be pushed up or down (it slides in sideways). i pushed it up. the "1" changed to "2," still with an arrow, so i pushed it up again, and the number changed to "3." what the fuck??? apparently i was shifting the gears.

at this point i started to worry that i had been given a manual transmission after all -- i actually swept my foot around the pedal area to make sure there was no clutch there. there wasn't one, so that made me feel a little better -- plus i remembered that i wouldn't have been able to start at all if this was a manual. this, evidently, passed for an automatic. but, i drove the rest of the way changing gears myself. this was not actually a big problem -- i mean, i like to think that i am at least of average intelligence, and i have played video games that involved shifting gears. the only thing is that, having never fully learned how to drive manual, i don't really know when i'm supposed to shift up. do i let the little needle go up to 4 or 5? or do i shift around 3? no idea. i pretty much just did whatever and shifted up if it started to sound loud.

while driving, i did sort of look around to see if there was a switch i could hit to make the car just take over and drive like a normal automatic. no such luck. i did, however, see a curious little panel thing above the rear-view mirror that said "passenger airbag -- off," and that had a little switch next to it. "off"? you can turn it "off"? doesn't that seem like the driver has too much power?

anyway. the drive passed uneventfully enough, though i noticed when i got to bremerton that the car will shift down by itself -- just not up. and, after i checked in and started the car again to head to the parking structure, i noticed that instead of the little red numbers, there was a little green "D." apparently, if you don't hit the gear thingy at all, it just remains like a normal automatic. this would have been fucking useful to know. (upon a little online probing, i have determined that this was probably the "sports-shift" function. i don't know why they have it. presumably it's so that loser boys who don't know how to drive stick shifts but who want to feel manly and sporty can pretend. (there may be some performance-related reason, but for now i'll stick with this one.))

the stupid function is actually kind of fun. but it would have been nice to know about it first.