Shallow Thoughts

- I am the greatest spreadsheet creator of all time. All other spreadsheet makers must bow before me.

- Last week, I bowled over 200, and still lost. To someone who throws like a granny, sitting down. Ok, so it was Wii bowling, but still.

- I'm always a sucker for every new Real World season. I even wrote an application to MTV for them to cast me once (see here, 12/12/05 entry). There are many lessons I've learned from watching RW from over the years, but maybe the one that stands out the most is, there are a lot of people who are beautiful on the outside but quite ugly on the inside. So sad.

- Dish Network is pretty good, I recommend it. They have a really good HD channel lineup and they've been adding more, without jacking up the price.

- I could probably spend all day watching Food Network in HD. The people on there are so weird, but the food is so mesmerizing. Yesterday, I was watching some special on Vegas buffets. It almost made me cry.

- It seems like everyone and their mother and my sister has a Myspace or Facebook. All I have is a Friendster account somewhere, that I haven't touched in years. People have been telling me I should join Facebook, and it does sound kind of cool actually. But everyone on there has like 200 friends linked to them. If I create a page, I don't want to be the only one with a Facebook that only links to 3 friends.

Carrie

I never watched any season of American Idol, never was much of a fan of country music, and it hurts me to see a car getting keyed and smashed up in a video. But against all odds, I'm finding myself becoming a big fan of this Carrie Underwood woman:



I don't think she even won that season of A.I. that she was in. I only knew of her because I used her name to rip on Cubs pitcher Kerry (under)-Wood. That, and supposedly she was dating Cowboys QB Tony Romo last year. Either way, hopefully her next single/video will be good also.

In other news, I got my first IPod recently. Actually, it's a used IPod, a really old generation from like 3 years ago, with the battery almost dead, which I originally gave my sister for Christmas or her bday or something. Now that she has a Nano and 2 Shuffles, I get the leftovers. She used to be the one to inherit my old stuff, but I guess now I get the hand-me-downs. But that's ok, I'm not complaining. Having my own IPod does make me appreciate the ITunes software a lot more, with how you can organize playlists and then sync up and everything.

I also took the plunge into HDTV (finally). Maybe I will write more on the subject later, if I'm not too busy watching all the random stuff I've been recording on my DVR.

Got sunburned pretty bad last week. The worst thing about sunburns is that it happens so innocently, and then the effects don't kick in right away. You gotta go through each stage slowly - the redness, the itching, the blistering, the peeling. I'd seriously rather just get branded by an iron or something, straight up. At least then you'd know exactly when and how you're getting burned, and you don't have to wait in anticipation for your skin to self destruct. I think I talked about this before in this blog, but anticipating something bad is just as bad (and sometimes even worse) than the bad thing itself.

When I have kids someday, hopefully I'll have a daughter that's as cute as this girl (except she'll probably be more Asian):

Youtubes

Had another busy week, but thought I would share some videos that entertained me:

- Some guy on the French American Idol (Nouvelle Star) with his reeeeeeeemix of Baby One More Time:



- A lovely Rasheed Wallace's sweaty jersey in the face, just for me (my favorite part is how the guy's clipboard goes flying):



- Chinese guys like to be kicked in the balls:



- Why don't our local news teams have investigative reports like this? Ron Magers and Linda Yu suck.



- Silly Canadian lady trying to sing the National Anthem:

Needing A Break

It's been pretty busy lately for me, both at work and outside of work. I feel like I haven't really had a chance to sit down and unwind for about the last week or so, which is not a good thing. I'll try to recap a little bit here, with some help from my phone camera wherever possible.

- Mother's Day, had the parents over at the townhouse for some dinner. My sister cooked a great meal, and I tried to chip in my part by grilling some kalbi on the deck. The food turned out pretty delicious, maybe a little too delicious. I was watching some of the videos we took from that day and realized that I look like kind of a slob when I eat. I know I've been eating a LOT lately (maybe this will have be its own blog entry), but seeing myself eat reminded me of pigs feeding from a trough, to be honest. So if I have offended any of you in the past who have had to watch me eat with no manners, I apologize. I will try to not be as rude in the future.

- Went to a Sox game last week, the one that ended up being postponed due to rain. It wasn't a complete waste, because we got to watch the Bulls game on the big screen (Game 5, where they were hitting all their shots and won) during the delay. Also got to eat some Polish sausages and churros, which are excellent at US Smellular Field. And the White Sox were nice enough to offer an extra make up game and refund the money for parking. I've heard that the White Sox are one of the more professional organizations, corporate wise, around Major League Baseball (certainly better than the greedy, money gouging Tribune company), and from personal experience, I wouldn't dispute that.



- Did some shopping for my sister's b-day gift and card. I noticed that the employees at Dick's Sporting Goods are not very helpful or knowledgeable. It's also much harder to find a green iPod nano than I would have expected.

Another thing was when I was looking for a birthday card, there was a section specifically with b-day cards "For Sister". Browsing through some of those was kind of disturbing actually. I don't know what kind of relationship other people have with their sisters, but I do not see myself getting her a card with a picture of some guy in a speedo, or a joke about buying her breast implants. But hey, that's just me. Different strokes for different folks.

- A few weeks ago, when the first round of the playoffs was just starting, Andy bought tickets for Bulls "Home Game #3" for the second round (since it was hard to get tickets to the other games). When the Bulls fell behind 0-3 to the Pistons, the chances of there being a 3rd home game didn't look too promising. But then they actually won the next two to force a game 6, so his little investment paid off and I got to watch a Bulls playoff game in person for the first time.



Too bad traffic was so horrible that it took over 2 hours to get to the city. Food at the UC is definitely not as good as at Sox games either, so that didn't help. And then the game was almost as miserable to sit through, with missed open shots and stupid turnovers all night long. It was definitely sad and frustrating to watch them get eliminated, but I think there's reason to hope for a better run next year. Especially if they get a little lucky in the draft lottery tonight...

- Weekend was pretty much tied up with activities relating to Brian and Grace's wedding. I wasn't in the wedding, but helped out as an usher. Rehearsal dinner was at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the burbs, House of Emperor of Naperville (I call it "HOE" for short). I love their Peking duck.

The wedding itself was really nice. The church was beautiful, ceremony was really emotional, and I think everyone had a lot of fun at the reception. I'm really happy for them and just want to wish the newly married couple the best, in case they're reading this on their honeymoon (Grace, you will definitely be missed as a housemate, of course).



- Sunday, ate a LOT (big surprise, note that food is a running theme in my life these days). My mom and dad are all about Royal Buffet around Darien, so with my sister's boyfriend in town, they took us there for lunch. Royal gets a lot of hype among the Asian community, and I agree it's a great deal for the price - but I can't say I'm personally a huge fan of that place. It's still a big step below the Vegas buffets if you ask me. I'd rather pay more for a little higher quality food, and a lot classier atmosphere (where I'm the only one eating like a pig).

For dinner, more feasting was had in downtown Naperville at Tango as the CCMC people got together for my sister's bday. It was good food, but I didn't do much to dispel my reputation as a sloppy eater. I have a shirt speckled with pasta sauce stains to prove it. Thanks to Jeni, though, I do have a newfound respect for that Tide to Go marker thing.



- Watched Spiderman 3 on IMAX. I thought it was a pretty good movie, cheesy at parts but that was expected. I wasn't that huge of a fan of the first 2 anyways, I'm a bigger fan of the X-Men series personally.

I think this was the first movie I've watched in IMAX. It was cool, but I kind of thought it would be more spectacular. Maybe I was picturing something more like the OMNIMAX theater at the MSI, which I remember being in awe of when I was a kid going there on field trips. I wonder if they've improved that technology at all since then. Considering it was at least 10-15 years ago when I last went, maybe I should check out OMNIMAX again sometime soon to see if they made it even awesomer. Then again, they probably only use it to show educational crap. What a waste.

- Took my sis to the Sox vs. Oakland game on her real birthday. It was half-price night, and I do think the crowd is noticeably more rowdy and less classy on these discount nights. If I'm not mistaken, it was also a half-price night when those guys ran on the field and attacked the ump a few years ago.



One thing from the game that made me mad is, I heard someone making fun of Oakland fans by changing "Oakland A's" to "Oakland Gays". Not because I care for the well being of opposing fans at our stadium (I don't). I was upset because usually I'm pretty good at thinking of obscene/derogatory nicknames for things, and I completely missed the boat on that one. I can't believe I didn't think of the obvious one (I was personally going with "Jokeland" for most of the night, which is still clever in its own right, but comparatively wack).

My sister, bless her heart, tried to reassure me by suggesting that "Oakland Gays" was too easy for my level of expertise. I'd really like to believe that, because I should really be in the prime of my derogatory nickname career at this point in my life. It's way too early for my skills to be declining already.

I'm Dumb

One of the problems I have is with mistaking the words to a lot of songs. I'm guessing everyone has had done that at one point or another, but I doubt yours are as dumb as mine. Not sure if it's because I'm getting too old to relate to the "hippity hop" that kids listen to these days, or if I need to clean out my ears. Maybe my brain just lacks a "common sense" filter.

Here are a few examples I can think of:

1. "Half a million for the scones" (stones -> stones) - Ludacris, From Fergie's song, "Glamorous"



First of all, I really doubt that Ludacris eats scones on a regular basis. Call me crazy, I just don't see him as a big fan of British pastries for some reason. Secondly, even if he did like scones, who pays half a million dollars for them?

Yet for a long time, I still actually thought that was what he said, until I stopped to think about how little sense it made. Amazing.

2. "Reminiscing on days when I had a mustache" (mustache -> Mustang) - Fergie, from the same song




Ok, so technically, I know she doesn't say she has a mustache in this song. But every time I hear that part, I half expect her to say "mustache". Honestly, out of all the examples I'm listing, this one might be the most realistic. I'm sorry to all the people out there who think Fergie is hot, but I must vehemently disagree. In the words of Austin Powers, "she is rather mannish". I could definitely see her having a mustache at some point in her life.

3. "I got a Ford Focus, man" (I'm full of focus, man) - 50 Cent, In Da Club



Most rappers brag about owning Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bentleys, Mercedes, Lexuses, etc. I actually thought 50 Cent was just trying to be unique by bragging about having a Ford Focus. Who knows, maybe it was really souped up version, or a rare hybrid edition or something. Haha, I'm an idiot.

4. "Addicted to Hello Kitty" (Addicted to how we kick it) - Bow Wow, Shorty Like Mine



Not sure how I rationalized this one. Maybe his girlfriend was a really big Hello Kitty fan, and he really liked that about her.

5. "Ya'll can't deny it, I'm a pumpkin rider" (I'm a f___in', rider) - Nate Dogg, from Fabolous's song, Can't Deny It



This one wasn't my mistake, I think it was actually my sister or one of her friends. But I thought it was hilarious and had to share it here. Plus, I can't believe I actually found a picture of a pumpkin rider.