yjblog

Wow. This is beyond common nonsensicality:

Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out [CNN.com]

With thanks to Kirk for the link. Highly amused.

New category again, this time books (and more often, graphic novels) i’ve read with all that ridiculous amount of free time i get thanks to the SAF.

First, to catch up with some books from earlier this year. There’s really no way I’ll be able to remember the two bajillion graphic novels I tore through in half a year, so let’s give up on that for now.

• The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
• Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
• Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams
• The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
• The Big Time, Fritz Leiber
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
• Naomi, Junichiro Tanizaki
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
• Summerland, Michael Chabon
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Mostly recommendations from Jess (Murakami, Vonnegut, Solzhenitsyn) or books I’d bought before going to the US and really never got around to reading. Also, mostly books with “The” in the titles a lot. Especially that Mark Haddon one.

Amusingly, someone from work borrowed a Murakami book (Wild Sheep Chase, I think) and returned it pretty quickly having given up because it was too confusing. Yay for confusion!

Aww, how adorable. Senator John McCain gets a huggy-wuggy from the President.

[Source: New York Times article]

One can only imagine what Bush was saying. “To me, my immensely huggable Republicans!”

So the guard changes, and here comes a corny (but inoffensive) foreign headline:

PM decides it’s time to Goh [The Age, Australia]

Hansen’s response: “The next one will be PM decides it’s time to Lee-ve.”

Anyway, yay for change, I suppose.

These online conversations are under a new category, if you want to filter these out (which I recommend).

(15:05:10) eektertainment: fuk yu that was fast
(15:08:17) popbrained: fast what]
(15:10:35) eektertainment: fast cars and fast bee hoon
(15:11:20) popbrained: fasting?
(15:11:23) popbrained: fast fasting
(15:12:07) eektertainment: that’s too much fast dude
(15:12:46) popbrained: where the hell is bakmal
(15:13:10) eektertainment: he’s busy ordering some sexy private around
(15:13:12) eektertainment: in his underwear
(15:13:21) eektertainment: (the akmal was in his underwear, not the python)
(15:13:25) eektertainment: i mean the private
(15:14:25) popbrained: poor python
(15:14:33) popbrained: anyway he’s on leave this week
(15:14:45) eektertainment: he’s probably ordering his pc around
(15:16:03) popbrained: in his underwear
(15:16:15) eektertainment: the pc?
(15:17:54) popbrained: yeah
(15:17:56) popbrained: poor python
(15:18:28) eektertainment: you and your colin goh references
(15:18:31) eektertainment: will you never stop
(15:18:54) popbrained: uh… in his underwear?
(15:19:08) eektertainment: you’re fired
(15:19:12) eektertainment: get out of my life
(15:19:23) popbrained: do i need to get off your lap
(15:19:32) eektertainment: you’re already off my lap
(15:19:37) eektertainment: you’re so BLS
(15:19:49) popbrained: what’s that
(15:20:08) eektertainment: blur like squid
(15:22:12) popbrained: what the
(15:22:20) popbrained: man, i’m already OYL
(15:22:45) eektertainment: stop with the acryonymns
(15:22:47) eektertainment: you’re so PAP
(15:22:56) eektertainment: oops i misspelled that horribly
(15:24:17) popbrained: you just added a y is all
(15:24:23) popbrained: i do that all the tiyme
(15:24:44) eektertainment: you’re so sylly
(15:24:58) eektertainment: thys is almost lyke olde englysh
(15:25:19) popbrained: iyt iys, iysn’t iyt
(15:26:01) eektertainment: except rather gayy
(15:26:51) popbrained: sadly truoe
(15:26:54) popbrained: oops
(15:27:14) eektertainment: eminem and d12 to make horror movee
(15:28:30) popbrained: about what
(15:28:41) eektertainment: hip hop i guess
(15:28:41) popbrained: they should make a yoshimi vs robots movie
(15:29:21) eektertainment: but that album is so faggy
(15:29:29) popbrained: shaddup she knows kung fu
(15:29:58) eektertainment: stupid lyrics
(15:30:02) eektertainment: they’re no nickelback
(15:30:16) popbrained: argh whiteys again
(15:30:35) eektertainment: oh
(15:30:42) eektertainment: but they’re canadian
(15:32:07) popbrained: are they french or chinese, then
(15:32:28) eektertainment: giggle
(15:32:30) eektertainment: you said french
(15:32:46) popbrained: garh
(15:33:05) eektertainment: hehehehehehehe
(15:33:06) eektertainment: i mean
(15:33:08) eektertainment: kekekekeke
(15:33:36) popbrained: dude, we have the dumbest IM conversations ever
(15:33:51) eektertainment: it’s true, it’s true
(15:33:58) popbrained: i should put them on the web
(15:34:05) eektertainment: durh
(15:34:09) eektertainment: they’re already on the web?
(15:34:12) eektertainment: loser
(15:34:25) popbrained: you didn’t, like, invent the internet did you
(15:34:30) popbrained: so how would you know
(15:35:01) eektertainment: uh, they’re totally like, IM convos, so like, dude, they’re like, uh, totally over the, like ‘net… so like you suck
(15:35:02) eektertainment: like
(15:35:30) popbrained: dude?
(15:35:37) eektertainment: yeah?
(15:35:49) popbrained: you’re supposed to say sweet, moron
(15:37:02) eektertainment: that’s too easy of a joke
(15:37:19) popbrained: oh
(15:37:26) popbrained: fine, reject the easy openings
(15:37:30) eektertainment: ok ok fine
(15:37:33) eektertainment: ’sweet, moron’
(15:37:34) eektertainment: happy?
(15:37:38) popbrained: no!
(15:37:45) popbrained: you’re, like, 7 lines late!
(15:37:49) popbrained: you’re fired
(15:38:08) eektertainment: aw man
(15:38:16) eektertainment: this is the only job i’m good at too
(15:38:51) popbrained: fine, i’ll put this on the web then
(15:39:13) eektertainment: somebody’s talking about me on the web! i’m important!

More news:

Tigger worker acquitted of fondling teen

Anyway, the article’s not nearly as interesting as this picture:

How low you’ve sunk, Tigger.

after months of “what the hell am i doing at NDP?”, here comes an article to boil the blood about national pride. in an article on apple. what the fuck?

Article on iPods

The article’s fine and almost convincing and all, but here are the last two lines:

Miller, also an accomplished musician, goes on to call Apple “the Singapore of computing.”You know Singapore: autocratic, insular, elegantly engineered, repressively controlled — and destined to never amount to more than a small but interesting dot on the world map.

Ouch.

As Steve (Chan, not Jobs) so cleverly commented, “never amount to what? Conquering Iraq?”

Anyway, I wrote to the dude. Here it is.

Dear Mr Maney,I’m writing in response to your article titled “Apple’s control-freak tendencies could crush iPod,” from USA Today, posted on 8/3/2004.

I found your article, cleverly worded American Pie lyrics and all, from Google News, and was intrigued enough by the subject to click through to read it. As an Apple fan (one of those “cult” followers you mention, perhaps) and PowerBook/iPod owner, I found your argument against the closed nature of the iPod rather convincing — even if it didn’t leave me wanting to get rid of my iPod, I did begin to develop some doubts about Apple’s overprotective nature when it comes to licensing their technology.

However, I felt that the derogatory and sweeping statements you made about Singapore at the end of your article were derogatory, baseless and uncalled for for a technological commentary column such as your own. As a Singaporean who has lived in the United States for the better part of the last five years, I might not be feverishly proud of my country — in fact, I’d be the first to readily admit to its various shortcomings — but, in recent memory, I haven’t heard or read anything quite as offensive as what you wrote to end that column.

In USA Today, no less, a paper in wide circulation both inside and out of the your country.

Please attempt to be considerate to the people of this insular and small (but interesting!) dot on the world map; our lives are repressively controlled enough as it is without having to be told what our country is like by foreign technology writers. It would do nobody any harm to avoid insulting millions of people with two broad and unsupported statements.

Thank you.

With regards,
YJ

Not particularly well-written or anything, but I’m no writer.

So I was browsing through the glowing reviews for Garden State on rottentomatoes.com, where each critic has a one-line excerpt of the review provided on the page for clicking, and I came across:

“What is Method Man doing in Garden State?”

Which actually made me laugh out loud. (The actual review was quite decidedly not as funny at all, unfortunately.)