Let It Snow, You Fucking Lawyers!

It has been two and a half years since I've witnessed this marvel.

Snow. Lovely snow. Being in Miami for so long really made me miss it, miss it like a desert would miss rain. Just as the fog masks the rest of the world from your eyes, the snow mutes the rest of the world from your ears. This remarkable property enshrouds our inner sanctums in a silence that cannot be found anywhere else in the world, especially not in any tropical domains. A silence that is eerie yet beautiful. The silence of peace. The silence of death. Are they one and the same?

Either way, I still have to shovel the shit from my driveway.

I also have to take extra care in clearing out the segment of sidewalk in front of my house, lest some pedestrian slips and sues my family for all we've got. So while I'm carefully clearing my sidewalk of snow and silently cursing lawyers for making this country so litigious, I thought up a couple of nice and deeply philosophical Haikus. Unfortunately, I won't publish them here because I don't like people stealing my ideas, ideas which I will someday publish in a book to buy quality cardboard boxes to build my house if I don't find a job soon. The Haikus are good. Just take my word for it.

You don't have to take my word for it if you still don't think lawyers are the scum of humanity though, just read this story. This is why my favorite section of the newspapers is the Comics. In a nutshell, this guy gets acquitted of rape because he pleads "sexsomnia" - he raped his victim in his sleep and therefore is not accountable for his actions. The judge just sends the bastard off with the recommendation that he takes medication!

I live in a culture that has named more diseases than any other; Attention Deficit Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive Conpulsive Disorder, ____phobia, et cetera ad infinitum - but this has gone too far. Now there's one more plea you can add to your toolbox of pleas, in the compartment next to "insanity", for getting off scot-free on any crime. The courts in Toronto have sent a clear message to all evildoers: It's perfectly okay to rape a woman provided you plead "sexsomnia". I, for one, would have no problem with such a plea - provided that the prescribed treatment is castration.

I'm so pissed, I should've just laid down on the driveway and melted the snow off.

No More Wax On Wax Off

The world of karate has lost a good master, and the world of auto maintenance has lost a good waxing coach.

Pat Morita, best known as chopstick-fly-catching Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid series of movies, died apparently of natural causes in Las Vegas, at the ripe young age of 73, on Thursday (Full Story). Perhaps the earliest role that I know him in was the TV show Happy Days. When I saw that episode (as a rerun!), I remember saying to myself, "Holy shit! Is that Mr. Miyagi!? Damn, he hasn't changed!!" I'm glad I wasn't in church when I said that.

Then, several years after The Next Karate Kid was out, I remember not being able to believe seeing a poster for his stand-up comedy show at some casino on the freeway to Las Vegas. I though it was quite an about-face for a movie career, until I learned that that's how he tried to start show business.

It would be cool if his memorial has a statue of a guy in the Crane Stance, with the epitaph:

Gone to show Jesus how to wax his '84 Buick LeSabre.

Kung Fu Felt Markers

For the longest time, special effects on Chinese shows sucked.

The particular genre that comes to mind is kung fu shows, especially the ones with a fantasy theme. In fact, until the end of the 20th century, the special effects have not changed since the 70's. For example, in the case of a kung fu master conjuring up his "inner qi" for a devastating special attack, the energy is depicted by some low-paid guy drawing over the film with a marker, and emits a noise not unlike the bloops, bleeps, and squeeps heard in the old Atari game systems. As time went on, the only marked improvement that these "special" effects underwent was that the 8-piece marker set has now been upgraded to a 12-piece marker set, so "energy" now comes in a wider assortment of colors.

To me, the first real breakthrough in Chinese special effects was the movie The Stormriders, based on a popular Chinese manga. Not only did the sound effects got better than 8-bit video game systems, but it seemed that HK filmmakers had a better mastery of computer graphics. The costumes, story, and music were a plus as well.

Unfortunately, without the big budgets, and potentially big profits of movies, HK TV shows lagged fairly in adopting the technology for improved special effects. It wasn't until I saw the TV version of the legendary story Journy to the West, that they really started to use CG, albeit it was fairly crude. As in fresh-from-adult-continuing-education-graphics-school crude.

So now I'm watching this new kung fu fantasy show that has just been on, and has really come to par with movie sfx, called Twin of Brothers (those of you in Hong Kong might think this show is old). As in all Hong Kong TV shows, even though the show and the subtitles are entirely in Chinese, for some reason the producers insist on having an English title, or Engrish in this case. The actresses are better looking, which doesn't hurt in maintaining 45 minutes of my attention, even though my parents are somehow compelled to indiscriminately point out how ugly they all are. Nevertheless, when I watch kung fu warriors fight, I'm more sure that they will engage in a battle to test their spectacular fighting arts.

Or they could all still break out into a game of Pong.

Sugus Fury

I said two posts ago that I bitched enough for a few months, and now I lied.

As a kid, I always enjoyed Sugus, or "Swiss Candy" in Chinese, a chewy candy quite similar in texture to Starburst, but slightly creamy. We had to buy them at the Chinese supermarket as an import; it's not sold in North America, but it's huge in almost every other part of the world. For some reason I have yet to figure out, I stopped eating them right about when puberty started. (Those of you who've heard my voice will conclude that I haven't finished puberty, but I digress.)

So imagine my delight when my Mom brought home a bag of these delicious little candies yesterday. Today, in between meals, I decided to open up the bag and indulge in what I had thought to be the endearing sweet taste of nostalgia. Sadly, I was wrong.

In fact, something was wrong.

Not only has some of the flavors changed, but the wrapping colors have been swapped around too. Those of you who know about Sugus candies and have researched it on Google, you'd realize that in fact, flavors and wrapper colors vary with the country that they are sold in, because the color green means "go fuck yourself" in some countries or something, and that just pisses me off even more.

So, to clear things up, I am referring to the Sugus candies that are made for the Hong Kong/China market. To also avoid further confusion, I have summarized how the Sugus candies have changed in the table below, which by no means indicate that I am no longer angry just because I took the time to make a fucking table!!!

Wrapper Color	Flavor When I Was A Kid	Present Flavor
red	cherry	strawberry
orange	orange	orange
yellow	N/A	lemon
green	pineapple	apple
blue	lemon	N/A
purple	N/A	blackcurrant

So as you can see, the only constant was orange. Although I appreciate the increased variety in the addition of strawberry, apple, and blackcurrant flavors, the cherry and pineapple flavors were still going strong and should never have been eliminated. I loved those two flavors dearly, and now I am experiencing a mixture of sadness and anger to see them gone. The replacement of two perfectly good flavors can only mean that the manufacturer enforces a strict "One Wrapper Color, One Flavor Rule".

This is complete and utter bullshit, because the new wrappers now don a silhouette of the fruit in question, which would've eliminated any ambiguity. Or better yet, would it cost them that much to introduce the two new flavors in two new wrappers of a different shade of color!? I can only surmise that this outrageous alteration of my beloved Sugus candies has been the result of a change in ownership of the brand from Kraft to Wrigley.

Bottom line America:

(Pulls up chair à la "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" segment on Late Night With Conan O'Brien)

Wrigley should bring back the cherry and pineapple Sugus flavors, stop fucking with the relationship between candy flavor and wrapper color, and cease their anal and counterproductive practice of alloting only one candy flavor per wrapper color.

Not The Most Sensitive Headline...

This morning, while sifting through Yahoo! News because I'm too cheap to subscribe to any newspaper, I came across this headline:

Danny DeVito to Return to Small Screen

For those of you abroad (or hiding under a rock in North America) who don't know Danny DeVito, he's not exactly known to be the tallest actor in the world at 5ft., or 1.52m. He was popular in the TV show Taxi before going into movies, and now this news story is about his return to starring in TV series.

Jeez, I can't wait for Associated Press to cover a story on how Michael Jackson's music has brought joy to terminally ill children...

Sick Boys Get Down on Michael Jackson

Broadway Sucks

No, make that stupid people suck.

I had to drive to the Certified General Accountants office for an information session, on that 10.5km red wave called Broadway St. Now, I mean "red wave" because of that huge line of cars with their brake lights on, because of the huge line of traffic lights that are red. This reminded me why I usually go through the trouble of waiting three times for the bus to get there. Let the bus driver absorb the stress of going through that gauntlet of death.

But today, I figured I'd make an exception because I'm only going to be there from around 1-4PM, so everyone would be at work rather than on the road. I was wrong. Wrong about how good this country's economy was, and severely underestimating the unemployment rate, and thus the amount of traffic on the road. (If it ain't a 9-5 job, it ain't a REAL job!)

If you're ever driving on any major road to go anywhere near downtown, you must be on a constant lookout for stupid people. Most of them are in vehicles, such as the asshole who cuts you off, in a big fucking hurry to stop at the red light, or the guy that suddenly peels out of the parking lot known as the right lane. Another bunch of stupid drivers include those in pickup trucks; I have yet to meet one that doesn't drive like a redneck dick because they think they're invincible in those hulking things, even when they pit themselves against a bus or an 18-wheeler. There's also the sterotypical (yet true) elderly that creeps at 20 km/h on a 60 km/h road. The elderly should be respected as people, and be treated as a deadly hazard on the road which should be dealt with likewise.

The only thing worse than driving in Broadway is parking in Broadway, especially when you're forced to drive a chunky SUV like I did. I had to give up an otherwise perfect spot because the back is too wide to parallel park, like a fatass person trying to cut in front of a line-up. Good thing I finally found a 2-hour parking spot in front of a church in the neighborhood. THANK GOD!

So on my way back home, I thought I'd cut through downtown to get home via Hastings St. Unfortunately, not only do stupid people drive vehicles there, but they also walk the streets. In fact, the only thing worse than a stupid pedestrian is a stupid stealth pedestrian, who flies across the road dressed in invisible black at night, like some retarded ninja who thinks it'll benefit the clan to die a meaningless and fruitless death. But this is the daytime, so among the stupid pedestrians are foreigners, such as those on Robson St. God, they think that just because they're tourists or cab drivers from another country, it means that Canadian laws don't apply to them.

So managing to survive all the stupidity on Hastings, I now have to put up with the stupidity on the Barnet Highway. It's not only a highway with pretty scenery because it follows the coast of the Burrard Inlet and its surrounding green mountains, but also because of all the pretty memorial bouquets and wreaths, marking the place of death of all the stupid people who thought they'd get to where they want sooner if they floored it through the curves. This prompted my nickname for the Barnet Highway - "The Drive-Thru Cemetary". Unfortunately, they cleaned up all the markers because too many people got sick of the feeling of driving through a cemetary, so now there is nothing left to remind stupid people to slow down to a speed that is anywhere near the speed limit. In fact, seeing a van or an SUV pull off a two-wheeler isn't that an atypical sight there.

Well, that's enough bitching to last the next few months. I may have to go downtown every now and then, but from now on, there's no way I'm ever going to drive down Broadway if I deem it unneccessary.

It's not like I have a choice, since I can't take my car out until I've peeled off all the foreigners from my front bumper.

Empress Fat Bitch Strikes Back

That fat, vicious, mangy little bitch!

If she was a person, she'd probably be some vengeful Chinese empress dowager who poisoned her way to the throne and had her way with any court officals that disagreed with her before turning them to eunuchs. Or some trailer park ho that slashes your tires and eats your kids because you shone your headlights into her portable abode while she was trying to pass out drunk in her own vomit.

Alright, she's still a cat, but she can do a hell of a lot of damage. So I left a container of kitty treats on top of the kitchen counter, where she's not supposed to be able to go. Not only did she manage to get up ther during her nightly prowl, she also managed to haul the container of kitty treats back to her secret hideout under my dad's desk. As the teeth puncture marks on the container indicate, she tried her very best to open it, and wasn't able to do so. In retribution, she vented her frustration on the nearby phone cables.

Somehow, she knew that an A/C power cable is more difficult and expensive to replace than a phone line cable. Somehow, she knew that the A/C power cable supplies power to the main phone, which is relied upon by the peripheral phone upstairs. Somehow, she knew that if she took out that main phone, she would also take out the phone upstairs, and thus killing two birds with one stone. Somehow, she knew that she'd still manage to emerge unharmed from chewing through a power cable, quite unlike that poor cat in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Or maybe she didn't, in which case, she is now down to eight lives. The cunning bitch has also gained my dad's affection to avoid punishment. She plays politics very well, but I vow to hatch a plot to stop that diabolical cat!

After I cuddle that little cutesy wootsy schnookums....

I'm Officially S-M-R-T Smart!

My Mensa membership card finally arrived today.

I took a cue from my brother and joined the US chapter of Mensa because they have far more resources and special interest groups than Canada, so I had to give them my auntie's address in California, and she had to forward it to me. I really didn't take their IQ test to join, but submitted my GMAT score to qualify. I did fairly well in the GMAT, but not being satisfied with the 75% tuition waver I got for my MBA, I decided to milk it some more.

Okay, so I'm really joining the organization through the "backdoor". If I took the IQ test, I'd probably not make the top 2% cut. Stop bitching about unqualified people getting ahead in life. If qualified people could get whatever they deserve, I'd have a job by now. Hell, look at the very country whose Mensa chapter I registered for. They have a monkey for a president, who nominated a non-judge to be a Supreme Court Justice. Not to mention he also got the president of the Arabian Horse Association to bail the country out of national disasters.

Maybe it's not about injustice. Perhaps if you're smart enough to work the system to your advantage, and gain a position for which you're not expected to attain, then you deserve it nonetheless. Or if you're smart enough to know the right people who can get you there.

Speaking of not being smart, I deeply scratched my SUV last week. I was attending a party, and not being used to how bulky SUV's are (I used to drive cars), I underestimated the width of the vehicle at the passenger side, and it got real intimate with a concrete support at the parkade. The side was just wedged against the concrete, so that no matter which way I moved, the scratch will get worse. I felt like I was in that scene in the first Austin Powers movie, where he managed to get a motorcart stuck perfectly sideways in a narrow hallway. How pathetic. Now I have to wait for the touch-up paint that I ordered at the dealership to come in.

At least I didn't scratch the SUV against a pedestrian.

I'm a certified nerd!!!

I Need More Thrust In The Stern, Mr. Sulu!

So last week, George Takei (correctly pronounced "tak-AY", but usually pronounced erroneously as "tak-EYE"), that guy who played Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek series, made public that he's gay. It wasn't really a coming out because he was very open about his homosexuality once it became socially acceptable.

Well, more power to him. I am secure enough about my heterosexuality to have a couple of gay friends without fear of being gay by association. They are among the nicest, politest, and neatly dressed guys I know. It is pleasant company with people who do not have as much of that aggressive and confrontational male tendencies, unless you're hanging out with the leather-and-steel-studded kind of gays, but even then it's all just fun and games. I think heterosexual guys have a lot to learn from them in terms of politeness and fashion sense (i.e Queer Eye).

Fortunately for George, the pretzel-munching-beer-guzzling-football-watching "macho" kind of heterosexual male from Western culture is rather outdated when it comes to Asian males, as the line between masculinity and femininity blurs. This is summed up by that really stupid buzzword "metrosexual". Sadly, mentioning this word does nothing to hasten its demise.

I personally witnessed this during my three years in Japan. They've got a ton of beauty products and salons dedicated to the XY's. Hell, even I still use some of those to keep my face acne and wrinkle-free. I may live to be older than 1000 years, but it doesn't mean I have to look that way. Most prominently, J-pop/rock stars like Gackt (thanks Henrietta for correcting my spelling) and Izam really begin to look like women (with the latter being full-fledged transgender), but not Michael Jackson creepy. Those pretzel-munching-beer-guzzling-football-watching men would be really confused.

From a business perspective, this is a good thing happening. The female beauty product market is totally saturated, meaning that the only way a company like Shiseido can gain market share is to take away somebody else's. It is an extremely competitive business with almost no growth prospects. The male beauty product market, on the other hand, is relatively untapped, so every company is aggressively trying to get first dibs.

There's a great cover article by Time Asia about this phenomenon, so check it out here. Once again, the credit goes to Henrietta for bringing it up on Kenny's Blog. This makes one wonder what it would've been like if homosexuality was as socially acceptable back in the 60's as it is today, so that Mr. Sulu could be more open about his sexual orientation...

Warp 5 to Uranus? That's faaaaabulous!!!

Hallowienie

Yesterday was the dullest Halloween I've ever had.

I don't blame it on the shitty weather, which reduced the number of participants. I blame it on my loss of social life here, after a five-year absence. For the first time in my life, I spent a Halloween at home handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. I suppose I could've still spent this Halloween doing some trick-or-treating myself, provided I keep a mask on and tell everyone I have hormone problems

Instead, it wasn't even a night of just lighting fireworks and blowing things up. I rememeber back in the first year when firecrackers were banned because some stupid kid blew his fingers off and decided to turn it into a crusade. Without Mighty Mites, that ended our response to the Treasure Troll fad. You know, those annoying little things with a hole in its butt perfectly wide enough to accomodate the end of your pencil, so you can watch it to the happy dance in the air while you write. But that hole is also perfectly wide enough to accomodate a firecracker, so you can watch it do the death dance in the air while you blow it up to little pieces.

Like guns, they should keep firecrackers legal, but they should make selling them to stupid people illegal. Hell, there are other things out there that are legal, but still shouldn't be sold to stupid people, like that book Sex for Dummies. Should stupid people be allowed to reproduce? Like the titles "legally retarded" and "legally insane", there should be legislation that is able to declare someone "legally stupid". Perhaps the only reason it hasn't been done yet is because every politician in Canada would be wearing that title if they pushed that bill.

So with the ban on firecrackers, we had to rely on our own resourcefulness to make things go boom. I recall these fireworks called Hummeroos (not to be confused with a certain kind of servicing you can obtain from under your desk). They look a bit like flares or really short roman candles, and come in packs of six or a dozen. You're supposed to stick them into the ground, light them, and they will emit this pink flame and a whistling noise. Not very exciting. We even tried lighting one and throwing it into the neighbor's yard and watching the pink streak whistle around from the other side of the fence. We had a good laugh, but it still didn't satisfy the destructive urge to detonate something in a hopefully controlled environment.

But then we learned from a "friend" that when you flatten a Humeroo with a hammer, you pack the gunpowder down, and what is initially a whistling flare essentially becomes a stick of TNT. Or a really big Mighty Mite/M80. These blow up BIG. We watched soda cups fly apart and soda cans bloom into pretty aluminum flowers. Hell, my brother just gets his kicks sticking them into a large unoccupied flower pot and watching the soil splash as if a land mine has been set off. If you plant a "modified" Hummeroo as it was intended, they also make big craters in the lawn, the perfect "trick" for someone who refuses to give out candy despite advertising a lit jack-o-lantern. Or you have the option of helping to correct their miscommunication by blowing up the jack-o-lantern altogether.

Musing upons such fond memories really made this Halloween depressing. This didn't keep me from wearing my costume, which was a bright orange inmate jumpsuit, complete with the words "Department of Corrections" on the back. You know, the kind that gets attention from the police, heheh. I even got the handcuffs stuck to one wrist (no, the handcuffs are strictly for the Halloween costume). Since none of my friends have seen this costume, I think I'll use it again next year.

So a bunch of kids at the door saw my costume and asked me why I went to jail. Suddenly, a smaller version of me dressed as Satan popped up on my right shoulder and urged me to reply, "I'm a child molester," just for the amusement of creeping them out. But then, the little common sense left in me recalled that the title of "child molester" is about as removable as a cattle brand, and the community doesn't treat kindly upon suspected child molesters. Even if I was able to clear things up and obtain full exhoneration, I would then be given the title of "legally stupid". Thus, I nixed Satan Me's suggestion and decided to follow Angel Me on my left shoulder, who promptly appeared to kick Satan Me's ass, by giving the kids the "cute" answer.

"You know those labels on your mattress that says "DO NOT REMOVE"? Well, I removed it."

That was the best answer I could come up with that wouldn't creep out the kids, or the parents with them. Damn, I wish I could be a high-school teenager again. Not only to be able to partake in any of the Halloween activities without criticism, but also to be able to date some of the really cute girls that stopped at my door.

I should be "legally stupid" for spending Halloween like this.

Our neighbors showing off with their decorations.
Without those oversized toys, they've got nothing!