sonicare

sonicare

go figure. i spend most of my petty cash on items which either plug in or use batteries. i’m the guy at work who brings in his own super doper optical wireless fancy shmancy mouse and keyboard instead of the company issue garbage on a cord.

i read blogs about phones and computers, digital music players and ipod accessories. i even go as far as to sit down and read cover to cover every manual that comes with each device i purchase. there have been times where i read through the english portion entirely, and then start reading it over again in spanish –just to see if i can understand the same content in a different language.

you would think that someone such as the person i described would have taken the plunge long long ago. but it wasn’t until last week that i finally made the call and bought an electric toothbrush!

a shiny phillips sonicare e5300 now sits in my bathroom readily awaiting my return!

brushing teeth has never been so fun! the old twizzler’s slogan should be stolen and used for sonicare instead: “sonicare makes mouths happy”!

there are many electric tooth brushes on the market today. some looke like winne the pooh and are as inexpensive as 4.99 running on 2 aa batteries. then there’s the $150.00 sonicare 9000 series brush that has toothpaste inside the handle that squirts through the bristles and timers than ring at 30 second intervals reminding you to move from one region of your mouth to the other.

i chose the e5300 sonicare (middle of the road), it proved to be the best value for the given features and technology. thanks to amazon.com i got my 5300 delivered for $68.

there’s a 28 day period where phillips guarantees teeth to be whiter healthier and happier. they back the guarantee with a full monetary refund before the 28 day period’s end. i was thinking to brush for 27 days, send it back and spend my $68 smackers on something else. but parting with my new tooth god send will most likely never happen.

teeth, meet technology. technology meet teeth.

gwow whore tits

if you've ever immed someone, you know what i mean. typos in emails are unacceptable, but typos in instant message conversations are inevitable. sometimes these typos are simple like “teh” or the “you’re” will replace “your” and vice versa.

but sometimes these typos can cause a bit more than a quick grin from the receiving party. one example that happens far too often is the typo of “got it”. this typo normally comes out looking like “go tit”. this can be a rather confusing mistake for many.

an even worse one involves the words “who are”. i was talking about a camping trip to someone over a.i.m. she asked me “whore going?” “wth? who are you talking about???” i thought she was talking about someone she didn’t like that would possibly be going camping with me. until it dawned on me that no such person existed. she promptly responded “who are going? –sorry” i could only “lol” and keep going*

sometimes typos bring us new and exciting lexicon. for example, talking to a friend about some shocking story (of course i don’t know what the story was) he replied “gwow”. i mockingly replied that i agree with his “gwow”. my shocking story was so shocking that “wow” didn’t quite convey the shock factor of my shocking story.

from that conversation on i have used “gwow” whenever talking to this certain friend and my shock value is >100% of the generally used “wow”. now it wasn’t until recently that i’ve found myself using “gwow” with people who have never even heard of this typo-turned-slang. heck, if pwned can become popular (due to a programmer typing the word “owned” incorrectly) then “gwow” is next in line. gwow.

*note: since “lol” isn’t in my daily vocab, i never use it in conversation. i really did laugh out loud because frankly, this was a funny typo! i do use “wtf” and “wth” or “tmi” in my online conversations, because i also say them in verbal conversations. am i wrong? (to hunger).


just in!!!! while composing this blog post i’m talking to a friend online. we found out that we both ate spider rolls for dinner tonight.
her: if you ever visit, we have to go to that place with the good spider rolls then!
me: yes
me: most definitely yes and yes
her: i like it cause the crap is fried perfectly
her: crab

sideways

that scene




i’m not looking for sympathy here, but i’ve come across a scene which makes a perfect metaphor of my current life state. it’s from the movie sideways. miles, the main character has gone on the most memorable vacation of his pathetic life with his soon-to-be married friend. he then went to his friend’s wedding only to encounter his pregnant ex-wife and her happy hubby. on top of that, during the vacation, miles completely messed up what would have been a beautiful relationship with an even more beautiful woman. so miles ditches the wedding reception and goes home. he digs out of his closet a 1961 french wine that is currently ‘peaking’. the gem of his collection.

the scene is miles sitting in a mom and pop burger joint, wine bottle stuffed in the corner of the booth, yes his most prized 1961 vintage. his emotions are on a teeter totter. he’s sad due to the uncontrollable snowball of misfortune that has bowled him over. he’s in momentary bliss because his 1961 wine makes a generic burger joint feel like a 5 star meal. i’m trying to convey that feeling he’s got written on his face. those feelings.



my life is that face. there are goods and bads, ups and downs, i’m happy and sad all at the same time. thru the whole movie miles pouts about bad luck and regretted decisions, but at this point he realizes that his attitude is the only thing he needs to change in order to turn his frown upside down (one more cliché in that sentence and i would have had a hattrick).

this is the point he realizes it.

ameer n ama

photoshop it

me and my sister were hanging out at a winery... and couldn't take pics of ourselves. so i took to my photoshop skillz!




my sister (amatece)





and me




both of us!!

good and evil

good? evil?

i read lord of the flies in high school. it’s a book based on the idea that mankind is evil. without defined rules and police men with mustaches and aviator glasses, mankind will turn to violence, deceit, betrayal, murder, and revolt against ‘the man’.

is mankind evil? or is mankind good? if man was completely evil then where did these institutions of ‘good’ come from?

it’s my opinion that mankind is both, life just ain’t that simple yo! mankind is both good an evil. –what a concept.

there are conditions to this hypothesis. man is anonymously evil, and personally good.

before i elaborate, this idea is not as clear cut as one may initially think. the ideas of evil and good are too vague as it is, i’d rather use words like considerate or caring and malicious or immoral. still, i want to throw out a disclaimer that men (and women) are evil and good all at the same time.

the basic idea here is that people can be heartless towards that which they have no connection to. ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s an excuse to do the immoral act and be guilt free. a person hurled a brick thru my friend’s art studio window. he’s a starving artist, and makes money working a crappy part time job that requires he be out of the house at 4:30am. there’s a possibility that he’ll have to pay for the replacement window [$1,000.00]. i’m assuming that the people/person who threw the brick didn’t have it in for my friend, he's a nice guy. most likely it was some kid with idle time and mischief on his mind.

had the mischievous kid known my friend, he wouldn’t have smashed the window. seeing all the pain and stress he put on my friend’s head would haunt his conscience.

simply put, if the bastard brick tosser knew my friend, evil thoughts would have been overridden by good.

thus i’ve concluded that people are anonymously evil yet personally good.

apple clock

idle time

on weekdays i’m busy. i’ll hit up happy hr after work, or go out to dinner with friends or coworkers. it’s not unusual for me to stroll in the front door of my apartment at 11pm on a weekday. weekends are a different story.

i’m different from 99% of the people i know simply because i lack a significant other. since i lack this time consuming entity, my hands sit idle. idle hands normally create mischief, but mine create clocks.

i had some spare sheet metal, a dremel, a broken clock, and a weekend. what to do what to do?



i printed out an apple computers logo, and cut it out. to the right is my broken clock. the mechanism works, but the face was just a piece of paper.



i traced the paper stencil on my sheet metal



then proceeded to cut the shapes out



here it is, all cut out! this took me about 15mins or so.



this is how she’ll look when i’m all done. the mechanism is on the upper right hand corner, and the hands just stick right on to it.



i drilled a hole



then i cut out some plastic packaging material from a saw blade that just happened to be hanging around, and superglued it to the leaf.



and here’s where she sits. all done!

so those couples out there, when you’re wasting time eating bland pasta at olive garden discussing why tom hank’s hair didn’t look that good in da vinci code, rest assure that i’m not doing something similar to you. i’m probably changing the color of the apple logo on my ibook computer, or sanding a wooden chair!

boarders adventure

adventures in borders

as soon as anyone asks me “have you ever read that book….” i immediately reply “no”. i don’t read books, i haven’t read books. in high school and college i’d read every 3rd page of our assigned reading. surprisingly one can attain c’s and b’s from every third page of a book. i wonder if mom will be proud or disappointed when she reads this (note: my mom does read my blog).

with that i’m going to break my personal blog rule number 1, talk about my day. that’s right, i’m regressing to 14 year old high school girl blog style for this entry. hey nobody’s putting a gun to anyone’s head here are they?

i went to the dermatologist today, his office is right near a borders book store. my co-worker, knowing this, gave me a half used gift card to borders. he said there was approx 10 dollars on there, and that i should just finish it up. now let the record show that i have been to borders by myself one single time, and was on a specific mission to find a book that almost didn’t exist for mom’s christmas gift.

i walked in planning to spend 10 smackers on something fun, and then go home and enjoy my friday afternoon. that didn’t happen.

i started out at the music section, when about fourtyeight seconds passed and i realized
a few things:
1. borders has a limited selection of the stuff i’m into: house/electro/dnb (which is lumped into a category called ‘dance’), and an abundance of trance (also labeled dance) which i’m not so into.

2. i’m a computer geekazoid, i could download any album sitting on boarder’s shelf, and if i really put some effort, i’m sure i could download stuff that’s soon to be on border’s shelf! (but that’s morally wrong)

3. i lack the morals necessary to prevent myself from queuing illegal downloads!! (mom, you should have stop reading this post a while ago…)

those three reasons got me out of the music section and on the hunt for a 10.00 purchase. i needed to purchase a real book. paper, glue, cardboard, dust, etc.

i know, journals! i like to write. i could always use a cool nifty journal. i walked over to the journals, but not before buying a nice hot fresh boarders coffee. a lady with blonde hair past her ass wearing a matching pink felt jogging suit with stripes was standing there. 15 years ago she was getting attention from all the boys, but her prime had obviously long since passed… i was apparently the only one informed of this. she quickly asked me which journal was a better buy for a boy. little does she know that i tend to gravitate towards hello kitty when it comes to stationery.

somehow i feel that she got the impression i wasn’t standing there to look at journals, i think, that she thought, i was there checking her out!! so i sipped my coffee, tried to answer her ‘you must be a manly man’ question with a short fragment sentence, and went on checking out journals. and i sipped my coffee, and again. she persisted to ask me questions of which was more manly, and why. with a long sleeve shirt on, a jacket over that, and constant ingestion of hot coffee, i started to sweat. i noticed i was sweating, and didn’t want to give her the impression that i was nervous talking to her, because she wasn’t attractive!

somehow it ended with me spilling a bit of coffee on my hand, pointing to the wooden covered journal held by her left hand –leaving a drip of coffee on the journal. she put the journal back on the shelf, grabbed a coffee drip free journal off the shelf, and quickly scuttled off. i was sweating, had a wet finger, and didn’t want any of those journals.

i meandered over to the reference section, perhaps i was in store to purchase a c++ programming book. what could i do with c++??

“how to make music on the mac” caught my eye, but after a glance-over, i knew that throwing $14.99 into a flushing toilet would teach me more than this black and white book.

borders had dvd’s i remembered! how about purchasing the big lebowski special edition to replace the normal edition i have have at home. why does the transporter 1 cost only $19.99 and the transporter 2 retails at $29.99??? has anyone at borders seen the transporter 2?

i was obviously desperate, so i broke the glass and pulled the alarm. call the person i know who frequents borders the most that is. she didn’t answer!!! what was i to do?!?! i’m at borders, i need to spend this gift card, and i can’t find anything worth the free credit i was given… it was almost like a demented torture.

minutes later lilly called me back, i followed her advice and purchased a comic type book, glad that stressful situation had blown over. i’m going to be much more careful next time i accept free credit, much more careful.

youtube

me tube

youtube is the new black:






i was trying to make a short about me going to home depot, i stopped filming half way due to lack of hands. more to come? (link: my youtube page)

pass it on

pass it on

people don’t want to die. it happens tho, dying that is, and so how do we deal with something that we don’t want to do. in my case, i change my perspective.

in the beginning, my goals were to passing classes, eating junk food, playing video games, and above all having a good time. if mom and dad were happy, i was for sure pretty happy.

after school, my goals changed. get a stable job, and somehow contribute to society. my goal to please mom and dad had not changed, but the things that pleased them did change.

after getting that stable job, and becoming financially independent from mom and dad, i found another change of my goals. happiness. mom and dad wanted me to be happy at a stable job, and financially independent from them. but this time there was a twist, what made them happy was for me to be happy. this was completely new to me. in college they didn’t care what i wanted to do, they cared about classes, i needed to get good grades. in grade school, what i wanted was irrelevant, if grades weren’t good, i wasn’t good. but this time, they wanted what i wanted.

my parents work hard, they have come from families who struggled (so they tell me!!). why did they work so hard to attain what they have now –was it just for them? or were they working hard, for me?

the thing is, they were working for themselves –me.

i am my parents, they are their parents.

---

i recently looked back one generation. my father specifically. he was born in iran, and at 18 moved to the states for school on a scholarship. he spoke no english. he then managed to marry a beautiful blonde (not easy for a foreign man i tell you!!) and then had 3 successful (and very good looking might i add) children. that’s the american dream folks, and now he’s thriving in one of the most sought after cities in the world, america’s finest city, sunny san diego. i see him attaining grandmas goals which were also his.

i never met my father’s father, and have seen his mother all of 2-3 times in my life. but i know that they are proud of him, he’s reached his goals and he’s taken their position.

grandma was probably afraid to go when she did. like i said, people don’t want to die. but she knew that her three children have achieved success, and are now the parents with children on their way to success. grandma mahin (everyone calls her by first name, even me) may have passed away, but she’s not all dead. i’m one of many still around, striving to reach my goal.

me & gene in hs

me & mr. shi

 


year: 1996ish?
here's a foreshadowing picture if i ever saw one. me and gene in high school. like the long hair and mustache? chicks dig it i swear. (btw we didn't drink that coors, it went back in the fridge.)