Fairtex headgear

My ugly face in that.

Cake is a lie

Bulletin board. Bored.

Shins

Ouch

Big Gamefly concerns and problems

I guess I am a little naive, but I bought my brother a 6 month subscription to the Gamefly service for Christmas.

He just got a PS3, and I heard the all the good games would not be coming out for a couple more months. He is an avid PC gamer too, and most of the good PS3 games out now have better PC versions. COD, Orange Box...etc. So I didn't want to get him one of those (he has them.)

The PS3 games are still coming

Such as:

• Resistance 2

• GTA4

• Resident Evil 5
  

• Fallout 3

• Killzone 2

Now, I read the Gamefly has a big problem fulfilling demand for these highly anticipated titles. I wonder if he'll even get to play any of them before his six months is up.

Anyhow, it if works out well, he'll get the same thing next year. If not, I think Gamefly will go the way of Pets.com.

With Netflix, you build your list, and then when the movie finally comes it is like, "Oh yeah, I did want to see that!"

Gamers want their shit NOW!

Obama rally UCI campus

I saw this only.

Tribute to Buckminster Fuller, Starbucks style

Nothing better than a good lie.

Spencer Fern the Great

Yes I am.

Tacky belt

Is this belt tacky? I like it, but I can see some people seeing it as garish.

Frost is the best flavor of Gatorade

All the other ones taste vaguely of alligator rectum.

MMA equipment

I've joined a gym in Irvine. Here is some of my gear, and some of the stuff I've ordered too. Oh, and my first battle wound. The first items was the most important, the NuttyBuddy. Well, I think you can guess the function from the name. Or, if you can't, it protects your testicles.

Then I got headgear and shin pads from Fairtex.


Finally, I got some shorts and rash guards from Cagewalk. I should point out that I'm not even allowed to spar yet, and I can barely make it through the cardio clasees. However, I want to get good stuff, and I'm a little suspicious that buying stuff at the gym has quite a markup.

I will add pictures of my gym on Monday.

Finally, bloggers WYSYWIG editor SUCKS!

Phil Collins vs. Peter Gabriel

Are they the same guy?

Their music is still popular, but...I wasn't aware enough in the eighties. Did they ever appear at the same place at the same time?

I'm not talking some long shot of them on stage from 200 meters away, I need close ups.

Maybe the guys who debunked the moon landing could get on this.

After all, D&D, Art Bell, weeping, and frantic masturbation (to artists renditions of Art Bell) can only fill so many hours.

Surely they have time to look into the Collins/Gabriel duality. The only real question-which is the doppelganger?

Gatsby recycles Diet Coke bottle

Good dog.

Scholarship application

I applied to UC Davis recently. Well, I don't really want to go there, not that I have anything against them. I'm almost entirely ignorant about the school, except I sort of know someone who went there.

Well, their Alumni association sent me an invitation to apply for their "Leadership Scholarship." They requested:

"We are looking for students who have leadership experience through school, work, community or roles in the home. To apply, go to http://www.alumni.ucdavis.edu/scholarship to complete the online application, including a one-page essay on your leadership experience. You don't need to know any UC Davis alumni to be eligible for this award."

This is my essay:

One day, you too, the alumnus of UC Davis, shall be my unknowing and unwilling thralls. As you well know our planet is in a crisis. The collective burden imposed by the homo sapien parasites will soon exhaust the resources on which they depend, much like yeast dieing in a brewery from the toxic alcohols of their own fermentation.

Myriad are the symptoms of this problem. Petroleum shall soon be exhausted, and our fearless (and mindless) leaders propose to ease this burden by further stuffing the air with carbon dioxide. They call this plan, "Ending our dependence on foreign oil." They are such xenophobes. If you ever meet one, introduce yourself as a Canadian, surely he will turn and run, shrieking in terror.

Oh, you say, some of our corpulent drawling demagogues are ahead of that problem. They proposed fabulous solutions, like ethanol! Yes, replace the vanishing petroleum with a product which consumes fresh water and food in its production, which everyone knows we have completely unlimited quantities of. Oh, and it requires fermentation to, how ironic.

But pretend we can avoid the vast existential threats (hah!) we can't possibly hope to improve things. At the least, this is the height of our civilization. Here we stand on the shoulders of giants, Einstein, Turing, Pauling, and so on. However, half of those beside us look down and say, "That's not a shoulder, it's a Bible!"

No, for them there is no threat of global crisis, there is only the promise of eternal paradise. Well, at least for those 100,000 Christian virgin males who carefully obeyed the Bible (including the parts which contradict the other parts.) The rest of us will go to hell. But I guess by that time, the average global temperature will not be much lower than hell, so we'll hardly notice a difference.

So, to review, while the third world is racing to match our over-indulgence, the West is becoming old and infirm. Half of the pols are trying to figure out how to continue to pay for health care for the older generations, and the other half are trying to figure out how to pay for health care for young people who don't have it now.

Ultimately, they will be forced to the only possible compromise; no health care for anyone. Then, it is at least fair, you know, e pluribus unum and all that.

I could go on, but soon enough we will all be faced with the simple truth, our feeble, greedy brains are unable to solve these problem. We were foolish enough to think that a problem which was intractable to the efforts of one man could be solved by a great many people. You know, a giraffe is a racehorse that was designed by a committee.

Our brains just aren't up to these challenges. What we need to do, then, is improve our brains. We must invest all available resources in technologies which will allow use to improve our fragile minds. Cognitive science, neuroscience, nanotechnology, etc.

Of course when we finally develop technologies that can improve the capacities of the human mind, they will be phenomenally expensive. And, of course, we must be careful to whom we grant these modifications. You don't want to grant a cybernetic implant that grants a 500 IQ to a person whose only ambition in life is to kill every player in the World of Warcraft.

No, you need someone who is already an exceptional individual. Like myself. I have the body of an Adonis. I am a genius, you probably already recognized that from reading this essay. If you didn't you are probably mouthing the words as you read this. Why don't you hand it to someone else and go play with a ball or something.

I have exceptional leadership experience. At 17 I already managed a team of eight data entry technicians. Well, they all got laid off after a while, and their jobs shipped to Pakistan, but then I did quality assurance for the Pakistanis!

I was the star of my sixth grade play as well. I played Marcus Aurelius, he was a leader. I think things worked out well for him...

Anyhow, I'm not just asking for this silly scholarship, I'm asking you to make me your cyborg transhuman overlord. After that, just leave things to me my pet.

My dog recycles

He is so dedicated to recycling, he will lower himself to carrying a bud light can.

My mother has been a recycler since long before it was cool, and though she can't train him to do anything else, she trained him to pick up bottles and cans when he gets walked.

Animal cruelty

If someone say, "opposing animal cruelty," do they mean cruelty towards animals or cruelty by animals?

I could beat up 9-14 twelve-year-olds by myself

And a greater number of Christian evangelists.

I'm the original

Hellsyeh.

Heaven

"Got to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

Mark Twain

Ideals

Hummus is the perfect food (I don't like it.)
Gray jumpsuits are the perfect clothing (grey is not a word, and I prefer jeans.)
Dreadlocks are the ideal hairstyle (and they are utterly disgusting.)
Stan Smiths are the perfect shoe (but Mihara Yasuhiros are better.)

Net neutrality

Attending a seminar by Scott Jordan of UCI on net neutrality.

Weird dismembered PSPs cover the walls. I ask someone else who is waiting for the seminar what they are about, apparently they are part of some ubiquitous computing experiment...or something. Anyhow there were like thirty of these gutted and screwed to the walls around this building.

This is in Donald Bren Hall at UC Irvine.

Hudson Hawk dream

I've read recently that some neuroscientist has claimed that the main function of dreams is to sort of war game survival situations.

The gist of the study was that rats deprived of REM sleep, but not sleep generally, do not respond normally, or at all to threatening situations. Actually, they respond by grooming themselves.

Reminds me of a Bill Cosby routine where he said his mother's main concern if he got in a car accident was that he be wearing clean underwear. She instructed him to keep a pair in the glove compartment.

So perhaps grooming is an appropriate response to a threat; you know, leave a beautiful corpse.

Anyhow, I watched half of Hudson Hawk on HDNet last night, and during the night I had a dream that involved fighting off a body builder named Butterfingers who was attacking me while I was trapped in a phone booth.

The most absurd element of this dream was that I was in a phone booth. I never go in a phone booth. The only way I would is if I was trapped in a blizzard, and in that case I don't think a body builder would be inclined to attack me. He'd be like, "fuck this, I could be tanning and shooting testabol 250 in my glute."

So...what was I talking about?

Crazy people

El Toro and the 5 freeway is a crazy-people mecca.

This lady was screaming at the demons in her mind as I drove by.

Menus for UCI Student Center restaurants

This is a work in progress, but I can hardly find any information on the web as to what food is available at the students center, so I'm documenting it myself.

uci menus

UCI Starbucks

This place has become like a snake swallowing its own tail. The line wraps all the way around the store, starting at the counter where they serve the drinks, to the front entrance, to the side entrance, to the order counter, and back to the serving counter.

I'm sitting in the middle, and I can see no escape. Tell my family I don't mind them so much.

Edit:
I'd like to add, that the cute barista was curious about my customized Starbucks card.

Mon, Jan 7, 2008

7:52:11 AM
My strategy of sitting in front has failed, it seems this is the last choice for all the students, none of them seen eager to impress.
I was hoping to sit next to the best students, not the last ones to arrive.

9:06:38 AM
I considered attending the other lecture, I'm reasonably pleased with Prof. Minei. Also, I need some coffee, so here I am at starbucks. No really beautiful people here yet, except for myself.

10:40:54 AM
Cafeteria one
Salad-pizza
Some cool case items you could purchase quickly

Cafeteria two
Wendy's
Tortilla Express
Rice garden
Quiznos sub

Anthill pub
Some food items and mainly beer.

12:43:13 PM
Mapping down near University center.

1:29:40 PM
About to watch There Will Be Blood. Oh yeah, earlier I fell asleep to Melvin Bragg discussing the four humours, so I'm a bit of an expert now.

5:51:03 PM
Not to self: when I am king, any man of god who awakens you from a drunken stupor in your own personal bowling alley shall be subject to a beating.

Why build your own bowling alley unless you can use its confines to drink yourself to death uninterrupted?

Emerson

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Devil

Yes, I am the Devil's advocate, but at least I represent him pro bono.

Bandos

I was watching the beginning of the Orange Bowl, and they were showing the cheerleaders and the marching bands.

They held a closeup on the face of a guy playing a tuba or a sousaphone. I couldn't tell which, it was mostly out of frame.

However it could have been completely out of frame, and I would have known it was one of the two. It is like they invented the instrument just for big fat guys.

I picture, somewhere, some time in the distant past, a high school marching band leader looking out over his flock of spindly nerds, lanky dweebs, and skinny geeks, and suddenly realizing that tubby goobers were sorely under-represented.

He probably took his dilemma to a metal worker, who was sympathetic, as they tend to be tubby goobers themselves, and a few weeks later, the marching tuba was born.

EDIT: okay, UC berkeley, you guys win the title

Tired

I think I tend to get a bit of delayed sleep phase syndrome.

My bedtime has progressively gotten later over the holiday, so I'm trying to set it straight.

Last night I took 75mg of diphenhydramine (benadryl) to get myself to bed. It worked and I conked out about 9pm. This morning I tried to get up at 8am, finally dragged myself up at 9am, and made a quadruple espresso.

Well, although the listed half-life of benadryl is 2-8 hours, I'm still a bit groggy over 16 hours later, despite all the caffeine. Biological half-lives are not as reliable as isotope half-lives. I think I've gone through this before, and I didn't quite remember...so maybe if I post it here I won't be so dumb as to try an anti-histamine to help me sleep again.

In fact, I probably forgot how groggy it made me...because it made me so groggy. I think that is why people drink so heavily, sure we all know hangovers are horrible, but I think the lingering effects of alcohol prevent you from really remembering the horribleness in a concrete way.