thank you east county SUV on hwy 52

besides being nearly inconsolable about the death of jake, the 9/11 and katrina rescue dog, how is everyone otherwise?

i'd like to thank the white SUV in front of me this morning as i crawled at 2 miles per hour on the 52 for having a large and anatomically correct penis drawn in sharp relief in the dust on it's rear windshield. thank you east county.

do we have any peter bjorn and john fans? i need to know if they are worth seeing live.

Harry Potter 7

Yes I have finished the book. And it was fantastic. and Yes, you may email me if you want to discuss or want spoilers.

heavy metal and colonoscopy

so the breaking news on MSNBC is that G-dubya Bush is getting a colonoscopy. now, if someone had bribed the doc to take a wrong turn and do some damage, i might care. as it is, the last thing i want to know about is his colonoscopy. for 2 hours dick "laws are for the poor" cheney will be the commander in chief. maybe he will change laws on gay marriage for his daughter.

so i think my transformation into a taiwanese teenage girl with lots of latent anger and a cheesy soft spot is complete. why? because i find myself listening over and over to the new linkin park songs i downloaded--of which, Bleed it Out is the best and i listen to it at least 5 times in row-- and because my recent downloading obsessions have been rage against the machine, renegades of funk, and system of a down, Hypnotize ("i'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my giiiiirrrrrllll", and finally because the anticipation of the new harry potter book has got me totally distracted this morning when i need to be very seriously focusing on my adult job.

The Fray Concert, Gomez, and CCT

Today's Crazy China Today submission comes from one Mrs. Linda Way Chang. Click here to see how China is ensuring perfect weather for the 2008 olympics. Because even if it means that millions of northern chinese people will either starve to death because of famine or die from bizarre chemical complications from *altering the weather=playing God* at least they will have saved face during the 2008 olympics. good to know that we havent matured or learned anything from our past, china. shut up, japan, you suck too. for that matter, and particularly as it concerns us firebombing all of japan during wwII, we also suck. we may suck, but as far as i know we don't fire rockets into the clouds to dry them up just so we can have a nice olympics. no one would blame them for a rainstorm. no one thinks rain reflects poorly on the nation. sometimes i feel like i am taking crazy pills. but then i realize, it's just china.

so i went to the Fray concert with one of my coworkers the other day and they put on a great show, actually--chiller than i expected. oh, but they did a hysterical rendition of shakira's "hips don't lie" in which their drummer (whose bizarre facial expressions during the whole concert were funny, disconcerting, worrisome, and reminiscent of the No Doubt drummer all at the same time) stoically recited the lyrics as shakira. they also inserted a bridge from oasis' wonderwall into their last encore song. their own songs were good too, of course. we were in the pit and it was highly worthwhile--like the equivalent of 8 rows back. the whole band was super cute. we found out the lead singer had spent the whole day reading harry potter at seaport village (one ofmy favorite locales, and somewhere i take visitors) . he intro'd How to Save a Life by saying "this is a song for everyone who thinks harry is going to die" speaking of which, he better not die, and yes i am getting the book saturday.

Gomez and Eisley were the two opening acts--Eisley sounded good but we didnt really get to see them, just heard from outside in line. Gomez, for their part, rotated lead singers, put on a fully entertaining, musically coherent and solid show, seemed amused and yet perplexed at the apathy of the Socal crowd, and were generally hilarious. they have a cute, chubby, long haired leader who kept saying "for those of you who've just arrived, we are gomez" before each song. apparently they have one hit song that should get them laid for the whole of the decade and so when they played that at the end of their set everyone in the crowd seemed to go "oooh, that's who these guys are." maybe they should have played it at the beginning, middle, and end just for effect. brie and i determined that they probably have a more mature, thoughtful(intelligent) and loyal(smaller) following. we only determined this, however, because they seemed intelligent and because there were two ladies in their 30s singing all the words. not a scientific conclusion, per se.

whenever i can get my tookus out of work in a timely before dark manner and when i don't have anything to rush off to, i always go to the beach and walk and watch the sunset. and may i say that few people are as smug and mutually congratulatory as we who go to the beach to be active and watch the sunset. it's like some quality of life club.

in random news: my fingernails are really strong. thank you, omega 3.

CCT and various addictions

CCt-Crazy China Today
i'd like to thank Julia for her contribution to my new blog feature "crazy china today" in the form of this link to an article about some chinese vendors using cardboard *picked up off the ground*--not even fresh cardboard, are you kidding me?-- in their baozi, which are big juicy buns filled with fatty meat... and cardboard. this is frickin aaaaawwwweeesoooommmeee.

new musical finds for the week: Peter Bjorn & John--especially the songs "young folks" and "objects of my affection" ; the Cold War Kids with their songs "hospital beds" and "pass around the hat" (couldn't find a youtube link).

So if any of you were thinking of going trekking, or merely vacationing, in Bhutan, one of my friends there has opened up a travel agency called Bhutan Millenium Tours and Treks. i'm pretty sure Lhatru's wife did something like stand in the snow outside the business office for 3 weeks to get it, so I hope they get some business. it's right among the Himalayas, hello K2, hello everest...and the sad thing is that when i entertain the thought of going there the first thing i think of is eating the bhutanese specialty dish that has cheese and hot chilies in it. i should tour the world trying the various cheese dishes of each country. then maybe i could reach my (and my coworker jill's) goal of having people cut me out of my house--we've both been morbidly sucked into the show about the brookhaven obesity hospital. not regularly, of course (she says, backpedaling and justifying herself)

the other day my sweet coworker wajeeh (why the h? i don't think it adds anything, but hey, he's adorable soo he can have as many Hs as he wants) asked me how many cups of coffee i have every day. i lowballed it and said "4-5?" and he looked shocked and, frankly, like he pitied me. i said "i know, but it's just that now that i've started, i don't know how else to go on."

in other george bush veto power news: Hi, I'm George Bush and my heroes are Mussolini and the government in Myanmar.

posh and becks are getting all sexy naked for a W magazine photo shoot. yawn. as if we havent seen people in the last stages of starvation before. soon they won't have the energy to speak and will be apathetic towards flies.

babies, cereal killers, wedding, farm bills and girls' education

I thought i would have nothing to rival last post's gloriousness of an article about chinese people grinding up dino bones, that they actually thought were mystical dragon bones, for medicinal purposes. but then china executed their food and drug chief. they want people to know they are taking corruption and their reputation for craptacular goods seriously. BY KILLING SOMEONE. call me a life, liberty, and justice loving sentimental food, but i don't think that's exactly what the international community was thinking.

so another reason i love being home is that we are all breathlessly awaiting the birth of my best friend/quasi sister jennifer's baby, landon. in taiwan i missed 3 important births. and now, 2 of the 3 are actually pregnant again, and this time i'm here for the play-by-play. this is what home is all about, baby! i know, i know, so cheesy. i couldnt help myself. speaking of which, it's time for my mother's most recent bad joke: referring to lauren's supernatural ability to eat lots of cereal, "that girl, she's just a cereal killer" groan. but in a loving way, of course.

the bad thing about being at home of course is when friends who live far away have special times, like my friend andrea who just got engaged to daniel (who gets the julie inc seal of approval, by the way.) he asked her on his birthday. adooorable!
speaking of engagements, corinne is engaged (if i didnt mention it before) and very excitingly to a guy we and owen love. his name is luke owens. and owen's name is owen lucas. which means that eventually my nephew would be owen lucas owens. owen owens. while we see it as a sign, we also cry for him. anyway, corinne is planning her wedding already, even though they are aiming for 2009, and she has some great ideas. one of them: dresses that have an overlayer revealing a different tulle dress for dancing at the reception. not as cool: she may ask us, the bridal party, to do a choreographed dance. i shudder.

****social justice interlude******
so, now i will provide us all with some information that will help us help others quickly, you know, in case you ever get a sharp pain from feeling overprivileged or lazy about helping others. this is my rx for existential crises. go here http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=CA
to find your senators or here http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml to find your representatives and write them about things like the unfair 2002 farm bill, which you can read about at http://go.sojo.net/campaign/farm_bill From there you can copy the form letter and send it to your various representatives and senators above. in like 5 minutes.

or you could go to http://www.ikat.org/ and read about Three Cups of Tea or to donate money to build schools for girls' education in places like pakistan and afghanistan. i heard the founder speak on a radio program when i was driving down from julia's and i was totaly impressed by him and his passion for educating girls and for building schools and helping them become self-sustaining. the http://www.threecupsoftea.com/Intro.php website is a bit cheesetastic, ie his 9 year old daughter's "hit single" but hey.

****************

i know i'm a flaming christian liberal and everything, so i am predisposed to dislike bush and his administration, but i think even republicans will find this scary: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/ex-surgeon-general-says-he-was-muzzled/20070711111609990001

i find it scary how much time i devote daily to my traffic-fighting routine. how much pleasure i get from choosing the combination of lanes to get me through the golden triangle fastest. how good my math skills have become as i feverishly try to calculate how many miles per gallon i am getting. the high of potentially getting 30, the low of sitting in traffic and watching it dwindle to 24. the sense of failure as i watch cars in other lanes cruise by because i am fated to be in the one mysteriously non-moving lane. office space seems more relevant to my life than ever.

fred doug

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
- Frederick Douglass

startin' off the blog with an inspirational quote that convicts my lazy ass quite deeply.

making me laugh this day after july 4th is this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19606626/?GT1=10150

damn, i love crazy chinese people!