Maybe You Just Like Handmade Things Cause You're A Tool

The other day I overheard some guy say something like "Yeah, I like handmade things, after all, I'm Italian".

It seems like I hear people say things like that a lot, but half the time I don't know what they're talking about. It's one thing if someone says "I'm British, so my teeth are super nasty", or "I don't like swimming, can't you see I'm black". At least those are commonly accepted stereotypes (I think).

But are Italian people really known as a culture that especially appreciates handmade items, more than, say, people from Greece or Switzerland? Or was this guy just saying random things trying to sound cool, but doesn't really make any sense?

If you ask me, I think it's the latter. I mean, you can say just about anything, then explain it by talking about your ethnic background, as long as the other person isn't of the same ethnicity. Even if your claim makes no sense at all, who's going to call you out on it?

Pretty nice system, actually. Sounds so easy, it kind of makes me want to start doing that myself. Next time I see someone I don't like, I'm going to kick him in the nuts. If he asks me why I did that, I'll just be like, "I dunno why, something about kicking people in the nuts just appeals to me. I'm Chinese, if you weren't aware."

Some other possible uses:

"Laguna Beach is the greatest show ever, I watch every episode! I think it has to do with my parents being born in Taiwan."

"I only use 0.7mm lead in my mechanical pencils. No self-respecting Asian would accept that 0.5mm crap."

"I don't need a separate mp3 player, cause my cell phone works fine as a music player for me. Only white people and Hispanics buy IPods."

See, you can use it in just about any situation. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go back and find that Italian guy who likes handmade items, and kick him in the nuts.

MN Trip

I took a road trip with some of the boys this weekend up to Minneapolis, mainly to watch the Bears play the Vikings on Sunday. Here's some pics from our mini vacation along with some of my thoughts thrown in...

We stayed at the Embassy Suites downtown, a nice 2-room suite. This is a pic of the "living room" area:


This is the view from our hotel window:


That's the Metrodome in the top left. I wish I could say there was more to the Minneapolis skyline, but that's honestly pretty much it.

We went to a sushi place called Nami, which was pretty good:


Walking back from dinner, we passed a place called "Gay 90's", so of course a picture needed to be taken in front of it.


Somehow, out of our group of 5, I was the only one who assumed that "Gay 90's" was a gay bar. For some reason, everyone else convinced themselves that it was just called "Gay 90's" but not really gay. Eventually, Piya looked up the place on the internet and confirmed that it was unequivocally a gay bar. But at the time, they had actually had me doubting my own common sense. "It has 'Gay' in the name! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!"

We stopped by the Mall of America for a bit. Not that impressed, basically just seemed like a bigger version of Woodfield, except with some carnival games in the middle. The Lego store was kind of cool though. A few pictures we took:







I like how Anuj looks puzzled as Chras is walking away in the last one. Oh, I almost forgot, I took a picture in front of the best store in the mall:



Saturday night, went out to a couple places. First was The Drink, which was a pretty nice bar, good atmosphere, cheap drinks. Afterwards we hit up a place called Spin, basically your typical club bumping loud dance music. Except someone must have really souped up the subwoofers there, cause I could feel my internal organs vibrating just being near the dance floor. This is the one pic we took there:



Finally, Sunday was the game. We brought a bag of beers (yes, a bag) to the Metrodome and hung out around the stadium for a bit before heading in. The area outside the stadium was actually pretty cool, a big crowd of fans just chilling with beers and mingling. There were a decent number of Bears fans there too, which made for good times and trash talking.



Inside the dome was not as great. The building wasn't designed that well, and is kind of crappy overall. The one thing that you notice is how loud the place gets when the fans start to make noise. I think there have been rumors that the home teams use speakers to amplify the sound, but either way, the Metrodome is definitely one of the loudest sports venue I've been in. Comparable to when I was at Allstate Arena for the Illini-Arizona game a couple years ago, except that time had more to do with the excitement of the game situation.

The game itself was awesome (if you were a Bears fan). For those of you who missed it, they basically went back and forth on field goals for most of the game, then fell behind on a terrible interception return for TD thrown by Rex. We caught a break when the Vikings fumbled in their own territory, then Grossman somewhat redeemed himself with a pretty TD pass to put us ahead for good.

A couple pics of the field (ignore the random guy's big head):





So that was basically the trip. Oh yeah, and we stopped by a couple casinos, but I don't have pictures of those. There were some good times had there too though.

One other thing I thought was funny is that a lot of places have signs that say "We do not allow firearms on the premises". I guess there's no concealed weapon law in Minnesota, so they actually need to specify "no guns allowed" at the Metrodome or at the banks.