POSTS FROM June 2002

If you've ever been to China, you'll know that people there love to spit. Men, women, children, diplomats, cashiers — everybody spits everywhere, and it's quite disgusting. Snot rockets are also a national pastime. It's so pervasive, in fact, that a first time flier tried to open the plane door during a flight so he could spit. Words fail to capture the idiocy of this situation — should I be appalled that the guy couldn't hold in his spit for the duration of the flight, or should I be shocked that this guy was so clueless as to open the cabin door while in the air?

Sony has announced a 1.3 megapixel pocket camera.

I'm listening to this country song that goes, “I wish I was a lesbian and not a hetero!” Only on KFOG.

More evidence that Texas is becoming a slaughterhouse of truth and free speech: Corporate interests are literally re-writing history textbooks for Texas schools. It would be one thing if this type of corporate interest ass-kissing was limited to the perverse state of Texas, but Texas is the second largest textbook market after California and so publishers who supply the entire nation are changing all their textbooks to please the conservative hard-ons from Dubya Land. Topics such as prostitution in the West during the 1800s, rainforest destruction, sexuality, and pollution levels in American cities are being censored by all sorts of industry groups and religious pundits.

Among other things, those books were criticized as "anti-technology," "anti-Christian" and "anti-American," and for saying there was scientific consensus that global warming was changing the earth's climate...

"I don't mean that we should sweep things under the rug," Ms. Venable said. "But the children should see the hope and the good things about America."

Let's see: state-sponsored religion, coerced patriotism, concelament of wrongdoing — sounds like all the necessary ingredients for a communist regime.

To its credit, Texas did pass legislation in 1995 to counter these kinds of censorship by limiting textbook changes to physically defects or “factual inaccuracy”, but true to form, the conservatives have been able to distort the law and allow all sorts things to be considered as factual inaccuracy.

A reference to Farenheit 451 would be appropriate at this time.

Women, apparently, are doing much better in college than men — so much that they're kickin' ass and taking names. The Washington Post reports that college women are doing better than men in basically everything. Fifty-seven percent of US college graduates are women, and that number increases in minority groups. The consensus is that this will create a huge social disorder because the number of marrigeable men will decrease, thus leaving a population of women who truly are too good for most guys. And it can't be corrected because “You don't create these marriageable men out of the blue at age 30 or 35” (at least according to Mr. senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.)

Frankly, I'm not surprised. There are still plenty of people who still think that the sun revolves around the earth. Pop culture idols have resorted to names that a monkey could remember: J-Lo, Jay-Z, Ja-Rule. Maybe I should change my name to Ja-Vay so as not to confuse the order taker at In-'n-Out. As far as I can tell, it's cool for guys to be idiots. But why?

I think it's a conspiracy. Everybody knows that the world is actually run by beautiful women, and technology has advanced far enough that guys are no longer a necessity for our species to continue. Therefore, women have simply decided to stop stringing us along and have opted to just let us fall by the wayside. I think I should go become a contruction worker now.

What

Often in my dreams, I am fully aware that I am dreaming, and consequently am just waiting for the dream to end, while I

My esteemed alma mater released a study on what city-women want: guys with money. In fact, San Francisco was found to have the highest number of golddiggers out of 23 American cities. I'm not surprised at all.

I love people watching around the Bay Area, mainly because other people's lives and conversations can often be very entertaining. Of course, people watching requires that one make the effort to leave the house and go somewhere, so leave it to the Internet to bring the fun to my screen. In Passing is a compilation site of random overheard conversations (many from the Bay Area) that people submit.

“Well, they used to be real pants. They were this morning.”
— A girl talking to several other girls, on the bus

I think I should register the domain, www.PeopleWatchingInMyUnderwear.com.

A Canadian math teacher gets suspended for giving a quiz with problems involving pimps and hos.

Rufus is a pimp for three girls. If the price is $65 per trick, how many tricks per day must each girl turn to support Rufus' $800 per day crack habit?

My problem really isn't with the content of the questions — pimping economics are a real world problem. The issue is that the teacher was so lazy that he went to the internet to find math problems (and from a joke site, of all places.)

For every bad thing that Microsoft is responsible for, there are just as many — if not more — substantial features that they have brought to the PC. For instance, have you ever seriously used Microsoft Word, or Excel for complex documents? They rock. Windows 2000 was truly a milestone where PC computing finally become easy to use, bringing to light Microsoft

So the Beijing newspaper that mistook the Onion story about the relocation of the Capitol as true, has finally admitted that they published false information. However, instead of putting the blame on their own sources, they are chastising The Onion for being, “a publication that never ceases making up false reports.” Yes I am shocked — shocked and outraged by the editorial temerity of this paper that calls itself, “America's Finest Newsource.”

When coughing, one generally tries to be productive and get whatever is caught in your throat out of your throat. I’m not sure if this guy next to me is aware of this. I may be mistaken, but he seems to believe that coughing is merely an excuse to produce some very loud and unnerving moaning noises that are strikingly similar to something like a goat’s bleat. Maybe he really likes to hear his own voice, but doesn’t yet have the courage to talk to himself in a very loud voice. Maybe he has repressed childhood memories of him being neglected when he needed to be burped, so this incessant pseudo-cough is a desperate attempt for someone to go over and smack him repeatedly on the back.

But, enough about the bleater. Let’s transition into a rant about stupid California vanity plates, primarily being that some car owners, a) tend to forget what kind of car they drive, or b) want to make sure other drivers know their name.

The category a drivers like to use vanity plates such as “BMW525I”, “YELO Z06”, or “ML320” which don’t make any sense. I can clearly see from the original car tags that the vehicle in front of me is, in fact, a BMW 525i or a Mercedes ML320 – does the driver feel that we’re so stupid that we need 2 labels instead of 1 to recognize the make of the car? As for the yellow Z06, anyone who would know what a Corvette Z06 even is, certainly would be able to spot it on the road. People who don’t, have no idea what the Z06 is in reference to, so that plate is also useless. Maybe the plate is to remind the driver that his car is not blue, but yellow.

Category b drivers like the idea of sticking their name on the vanity plate, as if to suggest that we actually care what the person’s name is. How pretentious. I wouldn’t be surprised if the owner of “ROBS BXR” has one of those labeling machines and labels his stapler, “ROBS STPLR”, at work.

It is truly a great thing when your internet bandwidth is limited only by your local 10Base-T connection; it's akin to being able to eat as much cheesecake as you want, only to be limited by the number cheesecakes you can fit into your kitchen.

The Onion manages to dupe The Beijing Evening News into thinking that the US is moving the Capitol Building.

I was pulling into the 76 station when I saw a couple teenagers playing some serious tonsil hockey in front of an empty pump. My first reaction was: Get the hell out of the way and let me get some gas, already! I mean, I don't think I would ever be so obsessed with someone such that I wouldn't be able to keep to myself during the 4 minutes it takes fill up my tank. Besides, excessive PDA is just plain nasty. But then, my second thought was that these two were comfortable enough with each other that they didn't care about their surroundings while making out, which was probably very sweet. However, I snapped out of this tangential thought process and concluded that these two were creeping me out and wished that they would go away. Quickly.

Women drivers.

Day 2 of the latest heat hoodo here in Sacramento: it's friggin' hot. And no, I'm not whining or anything. I've definitely become very accustomed to living by the coast because if the more stable year-round temperatures. Living inland, away from large bodies of water, is in no way appealing to me — not to mention that it's eerily flat.

I don't like shopping. I don't like the walking, the browsing, the indecision, or the rapid departure of my money. There have been countless times where I'm in a store (usually a clothing store) and I become so flustered that I simply leave without buying anything and, instead, end up at the bookstore flipping through the latest issue of A Magazine (you know, that purported asian-american culture publication).

However, I've become quite fond of stores like Banana Republic and J. Crew because they are the penultimate in shopping convenience (the ultimate being a personal wardrobe staff). Yeah, yeah, I know you're thinking, “Oh, those asians and their designer clothes”, but I that's not my motivation, i.e. I don't carry my lunch in a BR shopping bag (as I was observing on the N-Judah the other day). Rather, it's the accepted ubiquity of these clothes that make shopping there so easy. With a minimal amount of thought, I can buy anything from those stores and be well dressed for work the next day without looking like a freak. If you feel that your attire is a big part of your self-expression and you wouldn't be caught dead in a J. Crew store, more power to you. I, on the other hand, don't have the energy to spend more than 2 minutes figuring out what to wear. So I like to think of this, not as preppy clothing, but as lazy clothing.

I'm in Sacramento for a couple days, and not a moment too soon to relish this fabulous heat wave with temperatures today reaching 104 degrees (along with the air quality index heading into the “unhealthly” range). This heat, combined with my raging headache from a bout with a stomach virus yesterday, makes Johnvey very groggy.

Of course, not groggy enough to willingly set myself on fire like a jackass.

As a long-time computer dork, I am not an expert on common social constructs such as flirting (let alone setting criteria on how far someone can be for me to ask them out), so my interest was peaked when I came across a psuedo-scientific analysis on effective ways of flirting. But as usual, you can't teach someone how to be social, as this paper craps out by presenting many hokey and useless insights such as:

Warning: some of the non-verbal flirting techniques outlined in this section are very powerful signals, and should be used with caution. Women should be particularly careful when using signals of interest and attraction. Men already tend to mistake friendliness for flirting; if your signals of interest are too direct and obvious, they will mistake them for sexual availability.

Duh!

If you receive a positive response at 4ft, move in to 'arm's length' (about 2ft 6in). If you try to approach much closer than this, particularly if you try to cross the 18in 'personal zone/intimate zone' border, your target may feel uncomfortable.

What? I want a calzone!

When flirting, you should therefore watch out for signs of this 'non-verbal leakage' in your partner's posture...

Another duh! You should watch for any kind of leakage from your partner.