gift horses


"you don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

i just learned:
looking at a horse's teeth will reveal the horse's age, common knowledge that obviosly isn't so common these horseless days. that's where the saying comes from. all along i was thinking that horses have to eat, thus a free horse means you still have to pay for the horse's food.

Grub Club




my friends in san diego eat at a cheap, fun, large portion restaurant called sushi deli every wednesday. shine or shine, (cause there is no rain in san diego) deli night will happen.

i’ve always been jealous of this reoccurring event. going to eat with friends on weekdays really smoothes out the monotony of a 9-5. so georgette and i decided to start a nor-cal grub club. the founding members: me, george, jon g, gemma, and michelle.

our mission: to eat at a different restaurant each time we meet (biweekly). the location is chosen by one of the members, anyone can attend, and everyone must eat and discuss the cuisine. we rate the restaurant, and take pictures for the blog post. i am the designated scribe, and will document the experience.

grub club #1: burma superstar clement and 4th ave
chooser: georgette
attendants: georgette, me, jon g, gemma, and michelle
best dish: tie between me and michelle (firey chicken and tofu and tower of tofu)
honorable mention: george’s pork curry
geek of the week: gemma with her appetizer
restaurant rating: 7 fingers up (as you can see george and gemma’s pic)
super bonus: ice cream afterwards at toy boat dessert cafe


interesting event: jon g riding the horse

with a bit of time, an old picture with frame (free), and a cool magazine spread, this is what i do to my walls.

disclaimer: i am not a political blogger nor a terrorist, but i do have something to say about this london incident, so read on only if you want my uneducated opinion of this whole ordeal.

let’s recap the events that took place. london was hit by 4 separate bombs, in the morning during rush hour traffic. every bit of media turned its full attention to the bombings and deaths. administrators around the world reacted to the bombings by beefing up their security measures. and everyone went to sleep safe, sound, and ok.

now i’m going to make some assumptions here base off of what i like to refer to as uncommon sense (aka deductive reasoning). most terrorists don’t have down syndrome. using 4 bombs capable of destroying a bus, strategically placed, that only kills 56 people is more than a hopscotch jump further than pathetic. killing people was not their intention. why then?

again, two weeks later what happens? 4 more bombs are detected, or go off in the same city. london goes up in panic, nobody gets hurt. cnn spends all day showing british leaders examining the incidents. george bush tells the americans that we’re not afraid and that we’re going to tighten up and fight for our freedom.

8 bombs, a few killed, and tons of coverage later, where are “the terrorists” at after all of this?

new york subways have tightened security, they got twice as many security guards manning the subways. from a terrorist perspective, new york just showed us it’s weakness, and plans to guard it. but who’s guarding it? does the government have a huge task force of anti-terrorist subway searchers, or do they have doughnut dunking police men who get paid a boatload to work overtime hours. in my opinion, we just exposed our weakness to the “terrorists” and then proved that we can’t even cover them up.

55 deaths in one day is the equivalent of bill gates losing 55 cents in the wash. an organized, covert terrorist group that now knows the weakest points of the main arteries in most 1st world nations is like me getting bill gate’s bank account.

once again, i’m no political person. i watched cnn for, 2 hours at work, during the first bomb fiasco, and then 30 mins of today’s bombing incident. personally, i don’t think that the way we handled this was the right way. if i knew the right way, then i would most likely be a political person, and try to do something about it. instead i think i’ll just post this blog and drink my coffee.

know where i'm comin from

i was playing with a friend's camera, and it had this feature that takes panoramic photos. well, how could i resist? snap snap snap. before you know it, i'm sharing the experience with all. geeking out is fun stuff, i don't care what mtv says. (click on the pic to see my entire desk.)

a week or two ago georgette calls me. she's having itunes technical difficulties. her library is > 4GB thanks to music donations of jon and jon g. her issue is with itunes and her ipod. the ipod can only store 4GB of songs, and the music library on her comptuer is now much larger than that. in this case itunes was designed to pick songs for you, and load the ipod to capacity. she was unsatisfied with the selection itunes had given her. "how do i change it ameer!"

i'm a firm believer in the phrase "give a man a fish, feed him for a day. teach hong to fish, feed your ego for life". taking the easy way out, (just telling her the step by step instructions to turn off the autosync fxn) would have resulted in more service phone calls down the line, hence more tech support for our hero.

i learned her all about playlist syncing, manual updating, ejecting the ipod, managing playlists, drag and drop, sorting, searching, and all the other phenominal features of itunes.

after 20 minutes or so, i had her saying "oh wow, i kinda like this, it's actually pretty easy!"

that's when i told her, and she finally understood: "yea it is hu? now just imagine, every program on your computer working just like this. that's how macs are."

her response, "OH MAAAAAANNN!!! i just bought this compaq~!"

i sat back in my chair and smiled. i love my mac, don't you?

Typed Voice

I’m new to the literary world. In fact I’m a newborn to this place. I’ve been learning more and more each day that passes. A concept that I’ve noticed lately is the writer’s “voice”. This term voice is an interesting concept to me. The word voice gives me a mental picture of something auditory. I don’t read a voice, I hear it. Maybe I’m not using my imagination as much as I should be. When I read something, I hear a voice in my head say the words. Sometimes the words are being read in a big 300lb man deep voice, and other times by a skinny geek with glasses. I suppose that’s the voice that we are talking about.

This makes me wonder, what is my voice? I read certain blogs that have no pictures of the writer. My intuition to put a gender, age, build, and even hair color to the person writing is instinctual. The person who blogs with sentences such as “then we just like, told them I don’t think so. Cause, like, we don’t even like her and her friends”, is automatically 15 years old and female in my mind.

Some people write the words that they speak. Others write as if they have a dictionary and thesaurus holster on their belt. These authors create a certain feel. Reading their work creates a detailed picture and essence of the person.

I wonder what I look like to other people. I have a voice as a writer, and as I reread this I see/hear myself. But all the voices in your head always sound different to someone else.

I wonder how I sound to the reader? What physical characteristics would I conjure up inside the brains of others?

Leggo My Logo

Everybody is different, How different am I?

Everyone is special, and different, and blah blah blah. However,
there are certain topics where most of the population can be
generalized. I fall into the majority, the majority of the time.
For the 18-34 year old demographic, I am your typical Californian
male. I enjoy music, drinking, food, attractive girls, and most of
all computers.

I love logos. We all do.

Most of my clothing is designed around some company logo. Puma
shirt, Adidas shoes, Volcom belt, Quicksilver Beanie, Kenneth Cole
jacket, Hurley blue jeans, Lucky Brand boxers… a simple Saturday
afternoon outfit. But there’s more to this outfit. The logos!

The leaping puma gives me an urban underground party-goer feel


Brown Superstar Adidas shoes yield a retro-hipsterness vibe.


A red Volcom belt proves I’m down with the new, younger trends –older yet still hip.


That Quicksilver beanie shows my old-skool-ness. I was there during
quicksilver’s hay day.


My Kenneth Cole jacket shows that I can afford to buy stuff at Macy’s.


Acid washed Hurley brand blue jeans displays the fact that I did or
still do skateboard and snowboard.


Lucky Brand boxers, although only people at the Laundromat will ever
see these boxers and I won’t be wearing them when they do, show that
I can afford to spend money on boxers that display the logo of a
‘brand name’ company. (They also have a tag that says “lucky you”
sewn on the inside of the button up fly.)


My clothing displays 7 logos, all of which I wear proudly. I like
the logos; Adidas’s timeless flower, the sleek puma, and Lucky’s
clover all draw me in with their mystery and coolness.
Clothing brands is my example.

What wears who (or vice versa if
you’re of that mindset) is not my focus today.

Instead I’m
dissecting logos in general. Because IMHO (internet chat slang for
In My Humble Opinion) a logo makes or breaks whoever it represents.
To me logos are the physical appearance. People are judged solely on
how they appear, hence my brand name descriptors earlier noted. An
establishment or company doesn’t have a physical appearance, their
logo is their appearance. I judge these places simply by looking at
their logo. Since I fall into the majority, I’m assuming that
everyone else does this as well.

Let’s pull an example for this one. Tacos.
Here are three taco shop logos that I found on the net, without
looking at the menu, restaurant, location, or prices I bet you’ll
judge which place is a sit down, which place is quick and cheap, and
which place I would never be caught dead eating Mexican food in.


It’s a proven fact, that when I’m in a new town searching for food, I
will be drawn towards a cool logo above the door instead of “Taco
Shop” in block red letters.
I’m not limiting this to taco shop logos, all logos. I wanted to
work for Caterpillar because I liked their CAT logo. I don’t like
the Green Bay Packers because I find the green ‘G’ just doesn’t do it
for me. The Rolex crown logo is much more attractive than white
letters that spell casio.


To those who say “looks don’t count” should be blinded, and then
asked that same question. Looks do count, everything counts.

wash your hands?

i was out on friday night. hip-hop, ya don’t stop, dance until the something –op. going out to a hip-hop club is fun, but not that much fun. i like house music better. i’m a self diagnosed closet case music nazi. i really dislike hip hop clubs to be quite frank. but my friends enjoy it, and if they are having fun, so am i.

while visiting this hippity hopping extravaganza i found myself waiting in line to utilize the facilities. i usually drink a few extra drinks at hip hop clubs in order to repress my inner dj critic and enjoy the evening. there was a urinal to the left, sink in the middle, and to the right, a broken door stall with a toilet obviously was missing a sign that said “try not to make it in”.

the guy to the right was finished, did his little shake, zipped up, and left. i took his spot and started my business. the urinal user up and left and was replaced by another hip hopper. i finished, and started washing my hands. the second urinal user left just before i turned around to find that this no-door bathroom lacked means to dry one’s freshly washed hands. no paper towels, and no hot air dryer thingy.

in the time it took me to use the restroom and wash my hands, 4 other guys had used the bathroom and left sans washing their hands. club milk has no doors on the restroom, but in all the other restrooms i’ve been to, they have doors. those doors have handles that everyone touches. in my brief experience where 4 of 5 men didn’t wash their hands, i would have basically grabbed all their germs/diseases/bogusness when opening the door.

i recall a comic sketch, i don’t recall who the comic was, who asked the question: why wash your hands after going to the restroom? his point was that after the shower, his little soilder didn’t see anything but the inside of his tide fresh boxers. whereas his hands were touching shoes, door knobs, car handles, and many other dirty objects. with these unclean hands you go and touch your clean, most unexposed part of your body? and then you are supposed to wash your hands?

his point was pretty funny. but i did a bit of research online and found out that disease can spread due to lack of washing hands. different grody things can happen when people don’t wash their hands, and it isn’t pretty.

i always wash my hands. would i be writing this if i didn’t? i have to confess, it’s not because i’m afraid of dirty hands or spreading disease. i have clammy hands. and washing them every once in a while feels nice. i don’t take special trips to the bathroom just to wash my hands, unless i’m going to eat at a restaurant that has finger foods.

women are way more likely to wash their hands when going to the restroom. if i was a girl i’d feel a dirty gross feeling after visiting a public restroom, and most likely run to the faucet to wash my hands. women have to actually touch the restroom, yet us men don't normally come into contact with the public toilets.

regardless, i’m going to think twice before shaking someone’s hand from now on, especially at club milk.

i wrote this on LIVEdigitally, a site that i've been writing for since early march, it started out for them, then turned into something for high-entropy. and it ended up on both.


‘The music industry’. Enter that string of words into my brain’s thesaurus and I’d spit out: evil, greedy, selfish, money hoarding animals that have made me suffer therefore now it’s their turn.

I fantasized about a driver’s license in 1994, a year before I turned 16, so I would be able to drive to the different Warehouse Music stores in order to browse through the used CD sections. Paying $17.99 for a new CD was near impossible living off of $20.00 per week for lunch and allowance, used CDs were half the price but availability was issue.

The fact that those CDs I poured my high school savings into contained only 2-3 enjoyable tracks bundled in between ‘filler’ songs, often left me with a sour taste in my mouth. The late 90’s was ‘The Music Industry’s’ hay day, funded by suckers such as yours truly. Come to think of it, from the dawn of recorded audio until Napster, was the Music Industry’s hay day.

P2P (peer to peer) file-sharing, pioneered by Napster and followed by a slew of others such as Morphious, Limewire, WinMx, Kazaa, BearShare, etc…, put up a huge middle finger to $17.99 CDs and the record labels who took advantage of me. I downloaded songs day and night, skipping class to find a song that I had only heard once