Ginger ale and pear tea brought you to me.

It's been almost 8.5 years since I had started 'Dream Box.' I have tried many times to install my own custom blogging software, and have always returned this outdated Pitas.com. Throughout this time, I've watched with curious interest at the fast-paced revolutions in the internet blogging world.

This blog has seen me through some of the most tumultuous periods of my life. Some too personal to share. It has also been my secret haven for anonymous thought-sharings, where I could purge onto a faceless audience my most sinister and heinous thoughts I would never have the courage to publish in the real world. (i.e. My desire in supporting a certain form of genocide!)

Also in real life, I am a soft-spoken graduate student who tries not to look too awkward at parties. Dream Box, my secret blog, would be one tiny web page where I could escape this image. My real life did not imitate itself on this page. Not to say this blog was meant to be an escape, but a "shelter" from where I held no creative restrictions, and where the forces of my social relationships, my reputation, my identity of my non-virtual self had no power. I can blog about shit, and no one I knew would read it. It is disgustingly unlimitedly freeing.

Life changes, unfortunately. Responsibilities are cumulative. Forces beyond my control take up most of my time, where I try very absurdly to control them. Absurdly. Then, I've come to realize I no longer need this shelter. Absurd or not, I can still "stick up my middle finger" and say "fuck you" to these forces. Regardless of how much they don't care, or how much hostility and judgement they may have, I am here.

I will not use this blog as often, but this is not saying I am "saying goodbye to the internet," or something silly like that. Instead of completely abandoning this blog that gave much meaning to what are my meaningless thoughts, I depart with it with a generous "thank you." You have done so much. You are not merely a "web page," but a whole box of wonderful ideas, and a documentation of my precious life-moments.

That said, I hope to see you again.

I am slowly going insane.

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/27086814.html#cutid1

LOL Joon Park from G.O.D. is Yamcha.

I hate boys. Especially those idiots who you thought you liked but later turned out to be soul-lacking robots who get bored with you but don't say anything. Then leave without another word. Little do they know they are also boring as fuck.

Fuck all boring boys to hell.

lolllllll

How do you charm a boy?

COWBOY BEBOP GOES LIVE ACTION

Exclusive: LIVE-ACTION 'COWBOY BEBOP' MOVIE IS IN THE WORKS

Producer Erwin Stoff reveals that he is developing a live-action adaptation of the iconic anime for Fox

By CHARLENE CHENG, News Editor
Published 7/22/2008

LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA

THE SKINNY: If anybody is in the mood for some exhilarating, long-anticipated, previously-unannounced breaking news about anime series COWBOY BEBOP, iF Magazine has the exclusive scoop for you.

We caught up with producer-extraordinaire Erwin Stoff at the NBC TCAs where he was promoting his upcoming updated-David-and-Goliath-based show KINGS. When asked about other projects he is currently working on, Stoff, let slip some very juicy news about a very beloved anime franchise.

“I’m developing COWBOY BEBOP for Fox, but doing it as a live-action film, so I’m working on that at the moment,” Stoff tells iF. “I’m really excited to be working on it, and it’s in the really early stages. We just signed it the other day.”

Before any of you BEBOP fanboys/fangirls get your skivvies in a twist about yet another questionable anime-to-human adaptation (see: DRAGONBALL), iF made sure to get an oath of fidelity to the original material from Stoff.

“I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth,” he says. “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A SCANNER DARKLY, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.”

For those skeptical about the casting possibilities, Stoff has the following to say: “Flak about choices is meaningless until people see the movie," he notes. "When people see the movie, then criticism has a place in it.”

Does Stoff think that American audiences that aren’t familiar with the anime will have trouble getting aboard?

“No, I really don’t think they will,” says Scoff. “I think they haven’t [gotten aboard] with the anime because it’s had limited exposure - it’s just been on Adult Swim, and so on. I think the ability to tell this larger frame - the ability to build a world that’s iconically American in its Western nature - I don’t think so at all.”

http://ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=6571

I fucking loved this series, and now "they" are going to beat it down into digestible fragments of American pop culture cheese, massacred and flattened out like every godawful "movie version" in existence.

DEAR SADISTIC MOTHERFUCKING MOVIE PRODUCERS: STOP FUCKING MAKING SHITTY ANIME SPIN OFF MOVIES. I HATE YOU, HOLLYWOOD. CAN'T YOU JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY.

I loved loved loved it. I'm watching it again in IMAX next week. You should too. For you sceptics: yes, it's worth the ridiculous ticket prices, and more (like your undivided attention).

Heath Ledger was both remarkably subtle and gloriously right for the role. I think, other than the orgasmic awesome visuals, he was the best part of the film.

I would go gay for Clemence Poesy.

My dog is much too "angry" with me. After chewing my mattress down into what looks like garbage, I shooed him off the bed and left him to sleep outside in the hallway.

Now, he is refusing to allow me to touch him, refuses to look me in the eye, and ignores all my commands. Then he spends the night moping outside my room door, yelping and gruffing whenever I shoo him into stay in the hallway. He even refuses treats, and except for walks, avoids me like the plague throughout the entire day.

It's like raising a child.

http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/m4w/734867012.html

ODIN WALK BESIDE ME - 38 (ANNEX)
Reply to: pers-734867012@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-06-27, 3:34PM EDT


I am a proud VIKING man whom home and hearth has brought upon my life and skull a forever happiness. My mind is great and my back is strong, for this I am blessed be! Darkness and Chaos falls upon those lyfes of mine enemies and for that I am both greatful and troubled, alas that which is tangled is that which is understood.

PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND IF:

1. You are Italian or Portugese (i am not a rasist. this is just my preference).
2. You are nasty
3. You smoke or 420 or SKI
4. You do not believe in Onin
5. You think you are above Man
6. You do not like Industrial/Rivet/Hard Trancer/Cybertrancer music
7. You do not understand the Jaybird/ nudist lifestyle and have no wish in to participating in such
8. You are CARLA (NOT IMPRESSED)
9. You are Steampunk (LOSERS)
10. You are not down with the clown
11. You have children that are not well behaved
12. You are not HWP (Wiccans excluded if ritualy pure).
13. You are picky about dental hygiene (getting fixed!)
14. You are looking for someone without a great deep thirst for lyfes.

I have a Thor's Hammer tattoo and I would like my lyfes mate to have one to.
I work full time at my hand crafted chain-mail busness and do not have time for MSN AIM chatting.

I am attaching a pic and you should also to show that you are serius.Thanks.

IMPRESS ME!

-Bartholomew

ps. I am a very private person. Serious replies only. Thank you in advance.

Act fast ladies.

Dutch striker Van Nistelrooy is quickly becoming one of my favourite players; next to, of course, Zidane, Pele and Maradonna. The reason? His balls are twice the size of your head. He is too much a star.

The following (and much hilarious) clip shows Van Nistelrooy giving the soccer-version of "fuck you" to his Andorra opponent after scoring a goal. Then a pissed referee gives him the yellow card. This all comes after his opponent cowardly mocks him for missing his first goal. The Dutch won 4-0.

Too talented, Ruud. YOU ARE TOO TALENTED.

Not without meaning.

"i just dont give a fuck."

need to get laid. get laid NOW.

My new life is sweet.

Toronto is bright, upbeat and less stodgier than Montreal. It feels younger. The streets, believe it or not, are somewhat cleaner. Maybe it was because I was living next to a restaurant all the way in the middle of chinatown's smokersville, where hounds of bored French Canadians puff away on a sundry mound of broken glass and crushed cigarette butts.

Montreal was all about grey nights, espressos, Miles Davis, cups of poutine in bakeries and endless jazz bars. Toronto is colour, Crispers Dill Pickle binges at 3 am, sushi, red taxis, happy hipsters and loud dance pop that tear open your ear drums. Odd how a mere 6 hour drive will take you to the opposite ends of two distinct cities.

I'll be officially starting my first post-McGill project next Monday too. In a real research institution, and not a crowded university laboratory with broken chairs. Not only is my new lab is amazing - it also carries brand new equipment, funded with new grants, and new deadlines. I warn myself the words "new" and "excitement" will comprise most of my vocabulary for at least a week. Bear with me, however, I'm still not yet really an adult.

The past few days I've been settling down in my new apartment, slugging down cold coffee and training my dog to stop chewing furniture. He's grown about an inch in the past 4 months, and today I've learned he understands Korean. He already knows commands in French and English. So, I think it's about time we start practicing German. I wonder how many beagles know German.

Book-wise, I've finished reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami with little enthusiasm. But Murakami's been occupying more than simply my bookcase. I've got my hands on a copy of Tony Takitani, the movie, which I've seen while wondering if Hard-Boiled will ever be made into a David Lynch film.

I've bought all of Murakami's books (all except After Dark and the rare Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973) yesterday. And I plan to re-read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore next week. They're those books where a single reading doesn't satisfy; the kind where the more you read, the more gaps you fill. The author intends you to do it not as a frustrated reader, but as an unapologetic sleuth.

This summer will be a Murakami summer: I will be injecting mice dendrites with viruses during the day, and following the surreal adventures of confused Japanese loners at night - all the while adjusting to a new city. It's all very Murakami-esque.

Embrace life.

(Not my photo.)

A glorious artery-clogging pile of steaming gold potatoes, smothered with rich mushroom gravy and speckles of gooey cheese curds that melt oh so decadently into one creamy, silky texture. I savoured the taste of a gravy-filled crunch as I bit down into a forkful's starchy innards like it's my first.

I had my last batch ever yesterday. I'm leaving Montreal for three months and I will miss Mamma's vegetarian poutines so so much.

so many crazies and weirdos

some guy just ran up to me while i was hurrying down the street with groceries, and screamed "I'M NOT GOING TO RAPE YOU OKAY" to my ear.

Sometimes, quite unfairly perhaps, I can't help but wonder if Gadamer, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Lyotard, Foucault, Feyerabend and similar other infamously postmodern, great poststructuralist "incredulous-towards-metanarratives" thinkers all just failed grade 9 Biology.

This is the hilarious. For the first few minutes I had absolutely no idea what was going on, until Mr. Hard Gay showed, gyrating his pelvis and wearing latex shorts like there's no tomorrow.

WTF Japan.

Being plagued with deadlines, I am constantly thrown with stress. So I decided to go into temporary remission and sit myself down on a plush couch to read at least a chapter of my latest Tolstoy purchase, in order to pound out the despairing fatigue of my brain (or at least, to inspire it).

The novel, The Death of Ivan Ilych, led me to Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (To Live), which was more or less Kurosawa's interpretation of Tolstoy's Ilych. I've yet to delve more into his works (Rashomon and Seven Samurai I've covered already), but Ikiru is I think one of Kurosawa's most subtle and existentially engaging.

It made me wonder, though, after reading and watching, exactly what sort of thoughts belonging to the two artists passed through their minds on their own deathbeds, as they experienced that very topic they wrote/filmed so much about. (I am talking of course about the process of dying, and not "death.")

All I can interpret for sure from both these artistic works is how a shallow and pathetic nihilism contaminates our modern age, and how odd/ironic that it takes fiction (of all things) to bring to light the ignorance of reality.

I just found one of these under my toilet. Instead of humanely killing it with a squash, blow or scooting it away outside, I sprayed it with concentrated ammonia bleach and prisoned it under a plunger. It's now suffering a slow and painful death.

Later I found out they can't actually bite humans, but eat other creepy crawly bugs which makes them good substitutes for insecticide. In other words, they are mother nature's harmless-but-hideous version of a bug repellent.

Moral of the story: do not kill house centipedes, they make good housecleaners.

Because my brain is going to explode from stress.

What I like in the world:
- Seahorses
- Dodo birds (no longer in the world)
- Avocados
- The Globe and Mail
- Vegan food
- Evo devo
- Murakami novels
- Peonies
- London fogs
- Zach Johnsen
- Continental philosophy
- Angry scientists
- Science philosophers
- Ballet
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Chess
- Quiet people
- Making up new words like "floob"
- Red lipstick
- France

What I dislike in the world:
- rain
- The Montreal Gazette, The National Post, canada.com
- Communists
- Deadlines and due dates
- Celebrities
- 90% of the North American population (that is, superficial idiots)
- Americans
- Censorship
- "Rules"
- The banning of intellectual discussions on racism because it's "controversial"
- Cowards
- Being a coward
- Nationalism
- "Family values" (What the hell are "family values")
- Dogmatism
- Seal hunting on the excuse it preserves Native economic income (it doesn't)
- France

My dream job would consist of getting paid to do nothing except read and write. I think of this every single time I step into the lab.

I am also officially broke. I spent my last free $40 on three books: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Kitchen and A Personal Matter, all of which I'll probably read while starving and cold, wearing my last clean t-shirt in -3 degrees Montreal weather since I can no longer afford to do laundry.

To make my life even more of a cliche, I couldn't even afford Kraft Dinner yesterday, and had to buy the no name "mac and cheese" which tasted like bleach sauce on paper.

Have you ever been so broke that you had to eat bleach sauce on paper?

I am willing to take petty cash handouts. Please donate.

In this post, comment on this tag board anonymously anything you want to say (about me, this blog, life, the universe, etc.). IP logging is off with my account at Tag Board, so your tags are anonymous.

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Name URL or Email Messages(smilies)

Guess who.

I don't think I would ever be solely satisfied with "happiness."

I think the term is overrated. I don't understand why most people want it so much. I don't understand why most people sacrifice so many of their years and efforts to obtain it.

Happiness is often described as a state of satisfaction, connected to gratifying a desire one has. But I don't think the two are synonymous. I think it's possible for one to feel satisfied without feeling happy.

As a randomly-chosen example from many, Foucault—whose critical writings have affected over half a dozen teaching disciplines—had acute depression and suffered from AIDs. But if one were to pull him back from death and ask if he was depressed because he was "unsatisfied with his life," I believe the answer he'd give is no. Because Foucault, for one, probably wouldn't give such a predictable, shallow answer. Were you to ask the question if he'd exchange any of his accomplishments for a state of fixed happiness he'd probably throw that out the window too. How could someone even possibly suggest something that superficial? he'd wonder, probably genealogically.

Anyway, I don't understand why people would invest more than half their lives trying to build enough "resources" that are deemed indicators of a person's happiness, like money and a family. Those things aren't some objective indicators of one's happiness, and I don't understand why our culture sees it that way. I think it's poor judgement to think so, because they're not the greatest indicator as our Disneyfied culture so often claims considering family and money are also obvious sources of misery. Not only that, but I think seeking happiness itself is a poor judgement. Surely I can understand from some evolutionary perspective why wanting happiness is selected for in order to achieve useful desires, but how would natural selection explain for those who are technically feeling satisfied but still unhappy? (A mismatch between our modern environment and prehistoric genes, perhaps? A quirk in human evolution? But even so, does this possibility excuse our existential yearning for happiness altogether?) Insatiable drug addicts, in the moment they're indulging in their drug of choice, are surely one of the happiest people you'll ever meet.

Call it a kneejerk conclusion, but happiness, to me, sounds like some grand delusion. More realistically it's a fleeting state of emotion that's all too insufficient compared to more genuine goals of life (which I won't identify here). I think "I want to be happy" is a statement no different than "I just want to feel good." If that's really your aim, then you're no better than a hedonist. The statement, "I want to be fulfilled or satisfied" is a better substitute, though, I should emphasize, it does not mean that one is implying happiness as its euphemism. One is simply meaning one has goals that she wants to fulfill, regardless of the state of emotions she may be feeling when that happens.

The difference between the two is the level of meaningfulness one obtains from feeling satisfied. But given that, even the feeling of plain satisfaction doesn't always equate to a feeling of contentedness. One can be satisfied with the things he's achieved, but overall not be a happy person: I can be pleased with my latest midterm results, for example, but (in the conventional sense of the term happiness) this satisfaction still is not something I'm feeling "happy" about. It's not like I wrote the midterm for the sake of making myself feel happy. My aim wasn't to feel happy, it was to get a good grade for the sake of a good grade. That's all, and the effect of happiness didn't even factor into it. In terms of the aftereffect, I simply felt sufficiently satisfied, in the "okay what's next" kind of way, and not something in which I extracted some joyous pleasure from. Happiness wasn't my aim because aiming for it wouldn't help me produce a good grade, which is a lot more meaningful to me than some feel-good emotion. And I don't understand how such a sense of happiness could be anymore meaningful to a person than the act of having done something more profound; for example, writing the next great novel, going to jail for defending some noble idea, proposing a radical new intellectual theory, etc. Isn't aiming for "happiness" just missing the point? It's aiming for the aftereffect and not looking at the actual processes (i.e. creating, thinking, experiencing) of finding meaning, which to me, is the real deal - the genuine source of possible meaning - in one's life.

Like Foucault, surely it's possible to live a fulfilling life and yet not be a happy human being?

According to our Disneyfied culture with its pill-popping solutions to even things like unhappiness, I'm under the impression the answer is no. Happiness is the population norm: the "standard," or a universal state that all humans are expected feel at its base (and at least aim for) in developed countries. Any deviation from it is a medical problem. It's dubbed as depression and slapped around in medical journals as a "modern disease." Cases of unhappiness are considered an exception from a such and such normal distribution.

My problem is not understanding why happiness is supposed to be the common norm. And I wish more people would aim to excel for excelling's-sake, rather than be preoccupied with attaining some great state of happiness which is pretty much a nonexistent idealization. It's a delusional medical fantasy.

J. Stew is my favourite jew.

"STOCKS BEFORE WHORE, EVERYONE'S PO-OR"

Last night, James and I spent the whole night stubbornly cuddled together in his unfriendly Ikea couch, watching foreign films that we knew none of us could probably fully appreciate thanks to our damned anglophone origins.

Well, were we ever wrong. Jeux d'Enfants is one film both of us agreed was worth the extra $2 shellout at Blockbuster when we decided to rent it. Neither of us really enjoy the standard romance love story genre, but we were both blown away by the acerbic dialogue and the coy, dynamic chemistry between the two actors: Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet.

Jeux d'Enfants, as I discovered, is a love story made for those who hate love stories. And a cynical, self-loathing and perverted version at that.

Later we found out the two actors were dating in real life. No wonder.

JE T'AIME GUILLAUME. ♥

I admit, I feel sometimes privileged to be surrounded everyday by smart, kind, level-headed and generous friends and colleagues that I sometimes forget the shallow-minded, dogmatic numbskulls also here at this university.

Everywhere I look, there is always some elitist ignorant idiot that puts down those who don't necessarily agree with their absolutist views. For instance, today I had a 5 minute discussion with a self-described atheist about why faith is ultimately one destructive force, and believed stripping muslim women of their hijab attires in public places is a solution.

As much as I admire the argumentative force of Chris Hitchens and his writings, and lovingly enjoy the snarky anti-theist books of Richard Dawkins, I can't for the life of me figure out why such subversive and engaging minds would subject themselves to the same style of absolutism as that of Christian fundamentalism. The absolutist is ALWAYS too simplified in his perspective. They've blinded themselves in this ideology that one size fits all, that one solution to a complex issue is out there. And this consequently gives way to the superficial labels that's constantly being thrown back and forth about atheists and theists alike.

Why must there be labels, anyway? What is their purpose, other than to dumb down or reduce the real matter at large? Issues like faith can't be reduced to a simple, "get rid of it" solution. Or vice versa, like some theists argue. The truth about the value of faith is something that's more complicated than our pseudo-intellectual discussions will allow. Objectivist theories are ones that carry the onus of proof, and often times, they're not better successful than subjectivists.

Maybe this is all too hypocritical of me, too, because I am dogmatically opposed to dogmatism of any sort. (I admit, it's circular!) However, even so, doesn't my version call also for a sense of self-criticism and open-mindedness that so many of us pathetically lack? That our limited brains could put to good use?

It's fascinating to realize that only 4 days ago I felt wonderful, and today I feel as if a diseased hermaphrodite has taken a shit dump on my face.

"By being a Dasein who's very most possibility of Being is its already being in the world through circumspective understanding which I receieve through nondeliberate nonmentalistic for-the-sake-of-whichs, I am a being-in-the-world who's 'who' is 'the one' more than the 'mine' of myself."

..... kill.

I admit I need more traffic. And by traffic, I mean more external links that link to this site to boost its daily hits.

It's pitiful for my poor blog to get only 10-30 hits per day, when there are blogs on MySpace exhibiting some 14-year-old's obsession for emoscene makeup and wine coolers that get anywhere from 100 to 200 hits per day.

Why am I so obsessed with web traffic? For two reasons. The first is personal. I invest all my exhibitionist inclinations on this very website, considering I am the more paranoid and Korean equivalent of Woody Allen's miserable "Jew" persona. I hate Facebook and all similar types of social media. I hate cameras. I hate any form of attention not related to my work or studies. I also hate gossip, and giving in-person interviews, and conveying (or unconcealing) real, tangible information of my "self" to realistic strangers. To this, I provide this blog as my only tolerable medium, and also the only medium that can exactly satisfy my peculiar threshold for self-indulgent exhibitionism. In the least intrusive way possible, to my knowledge. This is considering most of you, to me, are faceless.

Secondly, I enjoy writing. As a writer, I write for an audience. The larger the audience, the more impressionable my words are on a quantifiable scale—the more power I wield as a writer, a blogger, and a procrastinating nerdish soul with a fetish for flamboyant art and mega blog power.

I do note that this makes me one self-conscious, self-loathing, self-loving, self-indulgent human being with delusions of being able to awesomely capture "my cultural perspectives" via my blog's on-and-off ejaculations of words. To that I offer no excuse. I am a walking contradiction. Yet, still a pining writer with a few 'goobalicious' ideas nonetheless.

So, if you are reading this and have a regular updated blog with personality, be so kind to link me. I will link you back.

I'll even dedicate to you a gratifying 300 words of praise in an entry, describing what a smart and wonderful person you must be. Written in the style of a Shakespearian sonnet, swelling with iambic pentameter and all that jazz. Okay?

I love juice boxes. It's my version of candy, liquefied. I drank like four juice boxes in a row earlier this afternoon. That said, I've experienced sugar highs for the most of the day. And what follows sugar highs? The crash. Predictably, I fell asleep (and I've just awoken now), this time on James' new Ikea (aka, shit comfort) couch that gave my tender-slash-nimble vertebrae some serious bruises.

I wouldn't be surprised if my immediate discomfort by the couch irritated the dreaming sequences authored by my brain. In my dream I was somehow a gay boy (yet I looked exactly the same), having imaginary sex with some hybrid human celebrity. Think of it as the lovechild between Daniel Day Lewis and that vampire from Hellsing. And it was imaginary sex, meaning, even in my unconscious imagination I am consciously imagining fictional scenerios.

Then, I give spontaneous birth to a black and white dogcat. By "spontaneous birth," I mean literally pooping out what looked like a furball. Also I've no idea what a dogcat is. It looked similar to the genetic hybrid of a border collie puppy with feline body parts.

Ten billion points goes to the person who explains the psychological significance of this dream to my new adoption of a beagle, Freudian-style. An extra gazillion if you bring to light the Ikea connection.

My head is literally like a gestalt of Freudian treasures.

Link: The Metaphysician Test written by Jaylhomme.

1. Daniel Day Lewis winning Best Actor during the Oscars

2. Mushroom soup and poached figs.

3. Beagle puppies

4. Adopting a beagle puppy

5. Venti london fogs with extra foam and nutmeg

6. Making "happy" lists

Five wonderful things have happened while I am recovering from my wisdom teeth operation:

1. A sympathetic visit from a boycrush / labmate.
2. Dinner and wine, courtesy of boycrush / labmate.
3. Hugs with boycrush / labmate.
4. Cuddling with boycrush / labmate.
5. Labcest ensues. ^_________________^

I'm jumping off my seat as of this moment. I am a ~girl~, afterall.

I admit I only occasionally check my tagboard, but I did today at just the right time to find my old friend PURA has returned to the interwebs?!? If you're reading this Pura, please let me know if you've got a blog up yet! I'd love to find out how you've been!

On another note, I had my wisdom teeth operation today, and my mother took the train all the way to Montreal from London during my recovery to feed me copious amounts of her homemade jook (a Korean rice porridge) with crushed pine nuts and green tea. I have been spoiled this entire day with savoury Korean dishes like my mother's infamous chapchae, spicy rice cakes and brothy bowls of veggie Korean udon.

After living away from home for so long, I forgot how wonderful it feels to have someone nurse and snuggle you until you feel like you're 10 years old again.

The largest beef recall in U.S. history

FEB. 18—The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ordered the recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse, the subject of an animal-abuse investigation, that provided meat to school lunch programs.

http://wcco.com/national/recall.slaughterhouse.2.656343.html

Note this post isn't intended to fuel any vegetarian propaganda, rather, to point out the chronic failures of the U.S. agricultural enterprise.

You eat and buy this shit, paying for diseased, disgustingly-mishandled meat with your pocketbook. It's also fed to your children.

As consumers, we have choice. Do we not have a responsibility to know exactly what we are purchasing? To know where your dollars and cents are inadvertently going to?

Edit: New (and better) AP video updated, featuring better footage of the animal abuse allegations.

Animals, Catherine Ledner

@4:35 p.m. Ran into my thesis supervisor, lied to him and said my dissertation was going well.

@4:38 p.m. Accidentally choked on hot coffee. Backwash coffee and spit slobbered all over his white sweater.

@4:39 p.m. Labmate/boycrush/most perfect person enters room.

@4:40 p.m. My life ends.

@4:42 p.m. I commit suicide in my imagination.

@4:57 p.m. I officially hate life.

While You Were Sleeping, Su Blackwell

I haven't been as struck like this by a film since I first saw the Seventh Seal. Best film of 2007, hands down!

The 'She's a Lady' crooner insured his pectoral growth for almost $7 million, The Mirror reports.

"Even at the grand old age of 67, the ladies love his hip-thrusting moves and catching a sneaky peak of his famously rugged chest hair," a source says.

"Like a vintage wine, Tom just gets better with age," the same source adds.

Jones is not the first celebrity, nor the last, to protect his features in this manner. Others include supermodel Heidi Klum, who insured her legs for $2 million, and Bruce Springsteen, who insured his voice for $1 million.

http://music.aol.com/news/story/_a/
singers-chest-hair-insured-for-millions/20080206104209990001

This made my night.

#1180, Masao Yamamoto

I am tired, hungry, restless, tired, overworked, overstressed, tired, facing a bout of post-crisis ennui, tired, tired and tired. Why can't one stop being so tired? Perhaps instead of suffocating myself with coffee and nail biting, I should take up a challenging hobby as some sort of outlet to unleash my sleeping raw animal within. Like gardening. In February.

It's already been a month so far in 2008. It feels the year is already going by so fast. I have about 57 things to do by the end of next week, and as always, time is never enough.

Dear my childhood, why do I miss you so?

Sometimes, I wish for the extinction of the human species. Actually, I wish that all the time, but I feel this applies more to some people than others. Mainly radical nihilists and hippies. Radical nihilists because they are radical nihilists (hello?), and hippies because no amount of drugs, sex and peace would ever get them to shut the fuck up or bathe.

I'm thinking of genocide, something in terms of a "painless, friendly" kind applied to all the human race, where someone who looks like a Mother Teresa-esque matron injects you with a special chemical that stimulates the neurochemical pathways mimicking the experience of intense pleasure. Then, you die while sleeping. The injection would be administered for a few decades gradually, until everyone is wiped out except for the last person who injects the second last person. Obviously, this last individual would have to resort to injecting himself.

I think I'll write a novel with this idea.

On that note, I hope people who are reading this would care to read David Benatar's book of doom, gloom, harm and pleasure, entitled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. I've just started it. The premise seems so far to be employing a utilitarian outlook for weighing minimal pain against moderate or maximum pleasure. However, myself being so corrupted heavily by this value-intense period of post-war, post modern, post-generation x's ennui or what-have-you, I've tried to distance myself towards a more objective, mechanical viewpoint, and Benatar's argument has been etching into my brain like a beautiful weed since. Here's an excerpt of the summary on the back:

"David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. ... The author then argues for the 'anti-natal' view—that it is always wrong to have children—and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a 'pro-death' view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct."

You didn't expect me to be pro-genocide, did you? Neither did I. Note, though, my genocide is entirely separate from Benatar's anti-natalism. They are utterly and completely separate concepts, with different moral and practical implications. Regardless, I still would like a pleasurable and friendly version of mass genocide brought on by Mother Teresa lookalikes.

Last night, I had a weird dream where I was a dinosaur hunter who flew a rocketship and my pet was a tamed T-rex named Gorgolo. In my rocketship I fought space aliens and space pirates who tried to kill or steal all the dinosaurs on the planet.

Unfortunately, I couldn't save every dinosaur. The space pirates and aliens formed a massive alliance and they got to every last one before I could. So, the mass extinction of dinosaurs was all my fault.

I need to stop drinking so much coffee.

Prick-me-dainty. A. n. A person who is excessively or affectedly precise or fastidious about dress or personal appearance; a dandy. B. adj. Excessively or affectedly precise in matters of dress or personal appearance; excessively particular or fastidious. (OED)

Haha describes me exactly.

Every once in awhile, I will come across a book that's so striking and mesmerizing, it will become a part of my consciousness for quite some time after reading. Often do writers touch my mind, but my consciousness is another thing. Haruki Murakami is one storyteller extraordinaire who does exactly that.

Kafka on the Shore is one milestone of a surreal, metaphysical journey. Page after page I'm drawn into the interpersonal realm belonging to a runaway fifteen year old with an Oedipial complex, and a quirky old man with the charming ability to talk to cats. From the start I predicted both were "doomed" in the literary sense: like all Murakami novels, his protagonists never really find their own redemption, nor land on some underbelly conclusion which sets readers' minds on fire. However, Kafka on the Shore has its own special, sophisticated twist: it plays and toys around with the elements of its surreality instead of mechanically presenting them, cruelly teasing its readers by putting them at the helm of Murakami's strange, dreamlike and poetic imagination.

If the most compelling and ghostly sonata came into form as a written novel, Kafka on the Shore would certainly be that sonata.

I am so glad it's over.

I feel like a faceless, cloistered audience member of a dramatic play.

I have met too many people these past few months who've accomplished too many amazing feats, and they have inspired me to do the same. For instance, James, my labmate, had recently arrived from doing development work for a NGO in South Africa and told me of his story where he fell in love with his future wife and was mugged then beaten up by her coked-out 14-year-old brother. And this was after his visa was denied and he was threatened to pay nearly $10,000 in Canadian currency to get into the country.

Another is Susan - my former orgo lab partner in sophomore year who used to swear at our hotheaded TA in gibberish French - actually went to France to freelance, and is now signed by a Parisian publisher to start her first book writing about "avant-garde" French food.

When I speak with these people, and they tell me their stories and about their newfound vocations for their futures, I feel like the sheltered child still stuck in grade school while the rest of the world is outside, building towers. Yet, I find little comfort in the fact that my current research is helping to advance our understanding of molecular signaling. (That statement itself is probably giving me too much credit!) What towers can be built when one is sitting inside, trying to figure out antiviral pathways with predendritic cells in a corner cellblock of a closet-sized office? Who else cares other than the few well-meaning professionals, who do only because they are also a part of the industry? Don't get me wrong, I love my research and greatly appreciate the input and help of my labmates and supervisor, but everyone around me is maturing into global citizens, while I am stuck inside being exposed to stories about drunk frosh barfing on the principal's door. The buildings around me are collapsing, and the university's gates look smaller to me everyday.

If anything, professional school would at least have been better, because at least they'll throw you into applied situations where you can witness your very knowledge and learning taken as useful. Although I could never see myself working as some highly stressed physician in the hospital setting, I think I may have greatly underestimated the experience when I declined the offer to UofT's medical program in April.

However, I know this to be sure. After finishing my graduate studies, I think I am going to travel for a year before spearheading any further into my future.

Countries I'm wishing to visit? For now, I've only a few to list. Hopefully, it'll grow. The future is bright.

1. South Africa
2. Russia
3. France
4. Germany
5. Britain
6. Ireland
7. Spain
8. Denmark
9. Greece
10. Czech Republic
11. Israel
12. United Arab Emirates
13. Japan
14. China
15. Australia

A few blocks north of my apartment lived a single immigrant man in his 50s. He lived in a rundown building, painted a bright red to compensate for the filthy grey that dominates the streets of Montreal's chinatown. It is the only such building on my street.

Outside, nailed onto the man's door, is his mailbox with 'HEroLD' scratched onto it.

Whenever I would arrive home past 3 AM half asleep and drained from studying, I would pass by his window en route to my apartment. His kitchen light was always left on, and I would witness him having dinner. He dined while reading yesterday's paper, sitting in front of his giant window in which he left his blinds wide open. Anyone who walked by his building could see everything in that kitchen through that giant window, from his ancient refrigerator to the many boxes of packaged foods and plastic containers, all of which are manifestations of his 3 AM cooking adventures.

One could say, then, that the "culinary portion" of Herold's life was entirely visible - an open book - to the public at the right hours of the night. His kitchen window was literal