powertothepenguins's Xanga

I just shit my brain all over this text box.

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:25:33 GMT

I once woke up to a profound epiphany about the differences between how I enjoy British literature and American literature. Something about the coldly polished refinement of the British man's tragedy set against the alcoholic, self-wallowing raggedness of the American man's tragedy. (I use 'man' here quite purposefully -- going to an all-male school run by Jesuits doesn't do much for your understanding of literature outside the traditional canon of embarrassingly self-aware white male posturing.) I may have written some brief notes on the subject before taking off for some more flighty pursuit, like organizing photos on Facebook so that I could have a seamless visual hyperreality of my life. Or something.

The point I was attempting to make here is that 'something' is the sort of thing I no longer come up, instead ending up in bed with its distant but fondly remembered cousin, 'nothing'.

That sentence is a perfectly wonderful example of the sort of literary diarrhea that bubbles up from the recesses of my mind these days.

I still feel a compulsion to write, but no longer to write here. It's not really an escape from a past identity, as so many other Internet denizens conceive of their site relocations, but rather just the sad consequences of the expiration of an environment. When I began writing here, it was a primary outlet for silly rants, random thoughts, and musings of existential angst, while also granting me the pleasure of entertaining an easily amused audience. Now I have actual conversations with friends for that sort of thing, and any leftover friends have matured too much to tolerate such nonsense in written form.

More than anything, I interpret my reluctance to write here as a sort of fear -- a fear that I have accumulated an audience here that has come to expect a certain style, a certain tone, a certain purpose out of me that I can no longer fulfill, both because I have changed and because they have changed. (More the latter, really, but cut me some slack here, I count as having undergone at least minimal maturation too, okay?) And so I don't develop and write out what ideas I have, because they're so removed from what I've come to expect people enjoying, as well as from what I myself have come to expect as the bread and butter of my writing style.

Don't criticize me on proverbially 'selling out' or anything either. I see writing as a project that requires interacting with others, capturing their attention, manipulating their moods, pushing them into a new realization or a new perspective or at least a chuckle. Sure, writing can provide catharisis, but that kind of writing is the stuff you see in therapists' offices and goth-skinned Livejournals.

If I relocate the Internet presence of my mind's flushings, I will most likely post the new URL here, of course, which ironically implies that I will still be trapped with the same audience and thus the same problems as before. But there is a psychological association of audience with location that I can escape when I move to a new site. And to start anew is to effectually announce a new purpose to writing -- expectations are wiped away, leaving hesitant curiosity and greater eagerness to accept. It doesn't hurt that Xanga's layout and community seem to be made for the sort of tone I used to write with. The long list of subscriptions with retarded user names, the badly formatted 'look and feel', the half-heartedly implemented new post navigation system -- it all adds up to an amateur environment for amateur prose, and this is what I mean when I say that I need to find a new host.

My God, this entire thing reads like some sort of hackneyed mixture of subpar submissions to pretentious publications and teenybopper Internet-speak. When will we find a way to insert technical terminology into stories without sounding like asses? Think about some Faulknerian passage where a stream of consciousness describes the actions of a more contemporary protagonist -- and then, there, smack-dab in the middle of all this amazing prose, is the word "URL." It's like erotic literature that actually flows along quite nicely for a while, with some real displays of writing talent, until suddenly everything is spoiled by the random appearance of words like "cock" and "pussy". Perhaps the only way to escape the clunkiness of technology in literature is by obscuring it with metaphors, much like authors do with sex. Perhaps this is the entire enterprise of literature -- to metaphorize ourselves out of our mundane existences and shower meaning upon our lives with flourishes of wordcraft and dainty clause arrangements.

Now I'm going to say some sort of self-aware discounting mocking statement, like, "Boy, wasn't that a thrilling venture into deep waters?" Now I'm going to say some other self-aware not-very-funny statement like, "Oh wait, I just did." This is the sort of meta-literary trickery that entertains no one past the age of 17.

This is the part where I usually panic because I have no witty ending to pull out of my back pocket. Luckily for me, today, I don't need that, because all I'm saying is that I can't really write anything good here anymore and that I'm going to get a new place to write soon. Ending wittily would merely contradict all that effort I just put in to making absolute sure that you know how much I suck. So, you know, don't look too hard for that abrupt, inelegant ending, because
it's
right

HERE.

Late night picture finds.

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:48:23 GMT

Meaningless posts for meaningless times.

[via xanga.com/davidngo, who in turn took it from this person]

[via some horrible myspace page that I won't link you to for fear of crashing your browser; here is the artist's deviantART page]

I'm telling you, seizure-dancing is so hot right now.

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:41:18 GMT

First, some background: In case you don't know, Bai Ling is a cinematic slut, i.e. someone who appears in movies but is mostly just there for visual appeal rather than any actual value as a thespian. It's kind of confusing how Bai manages to even attain that level, given that she has one of the creepiest faces I've ever seen. I'm guessing she's just there to fulfill quotas for Asian femme fatales with slinky figures and chinky eyes.

This is a video of Bai Ling dancing at Club Play during porn star Mary Carey's birthday party. It's pretty funny on its own, but to me, it's mostly sad because this is pretty much exactly how I dance. Except for that part at the end when she's grinding her butt into a midget's face. That midget is pretty incredible, by the way. The way he gyrates his body is so Teletubby-like. And his hair! It's like a huge Carrot Top-fro! The only thing that could make this video better is if he put an afro pick into his hair.

[props to The Superficial for the story and TMZ for the video]

Deciphering classic rock is hard!

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:21:12 GMT

You know, I just realized that The Rolling Stones could just have been called The Wheels. Or The Boulders, depending on whether the stones in question are spherical or cylindrical.

I'm home now, and start work tomorrow. I'll be doing more work for the virtual reality lab at Stanford, which is always good stuff, and I'll also be working on a web start-up building a movie website. I'm also in charge of running the blog for that, so I'll link to that once it's up.

Right now, Mike and I are busy thinking up a name for the music blog that we are starting. So far, we've been through Sonic Lemur, Paranoid Lemur, Damaged Lemur, Noise Revolution, Lemur Mojo, Stupid Bloody Tuesday, Screaming From the Gallery, Lemur Cacophony, Sonic Paranoia, and a bunch of random Talking Heads lyrics that Mike likes. We haven't agreed on anything moniker-wise yet, but we have managed to come to the mutual conclusion that the Beatles are alternately lyrical geniuses and lyrical retards. Seriously, compare "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with "Across the Universe" or "Penny Lane". And it's not like simple can't be brilliant -- "Something" is lyrically one of the best damn songs I've ever heard. Oh, those Beatles. So awesome, and yet still so bad.

Anyway, those names are hard to pick. The start-up is struggling with picking out a name too. I guess this is why it is a bad idea to suggest to The Rolling Stones that they ought to have named themselves The Wheels or The Boulders. What probably went down is that there were two factions, one of which wanted The Wheels and one of which was really gunning for The Boulders, until Mick Jagger finally got fed up and was like, "Fuck this, chaps, we're just going to have to compromise by exploiting our common love for stones that roll." Gosh, I love christenings.

Assist in the pursuit of science!

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:33:18 GMT

Hey everybody, I am currently running a study on recommendation systems, and I need participants for a Fragrance Recommendation Study that I am doing. It's an online survey that takes 4 minutes to complete, so it's very quick and easy. Your help would be much appreciated. Click on the following link to take the survey:

http://www.stanford.edu/~clizzin/survey.html

If I get enough data for some meaty analysis, I'll post the results/conclusions up after all is said and done. Thanks a lot!

For Your Consideration, A Paradox

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:55:07 GMT

This media psychology final I'm taking right now is – pardon my language – shittingly easy. So easy, in fact, that it is the most dangerous exam I have ever taken in my life. I am more likely to fail this test than I have been to fail any other test in my academic career.

Allow me to explain how this works. The exam is a take-home final, posted on a Monday with a hard-copy submission due at 5:00pm on the following Monday, and consists of eight questions, from which we are to select five and write answers in paragraph form, with each answer not to exceed 300 words. Now, come on. A full week to write five 300-word short answers? Are you joking? Did someone throw me back seven years in schooling or something? I've taken exams harder than this in junior high. There is literally no way I could get less than 100% on this exam if I tried.

Ah, but there is the catch – trying. This test is so easy and so useless that I have zero incentive to actually put in any effort. Instead, I sit here reading random articles and essays, occasionally feeling a little bit nervous that I've underestimated by ability to do everything at the last minute. Sometimes, I get nervous enough that I put in some work, but upon rediscovering how easy it is and how boring the questions are, I settle back into my superiority complex and start putting things off again.

I think this has to do with the fact that I approach things from the perspective of fear, where I do things primarily because I am scared I'll fail badly, rather than for happiness derived from achievement of a goal. From that angle, it makes sense that I wouldn't bother investing effort in this exam since there's such a low probability of failure. I probably got this perspective growing up in an environment that threatened dire consequences for academic failures but offered few intrinsic substantive benefits to academic achievement on its own. I think that when I get a 30% on this final, I will blame my childhood. Gosh, my childhood is responsible for so much. One day, when I am rich and powerful, I will give it a medal for being the most influential non-real entity ever.

Amanda Bynes, you are not allowed in my dreams.

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:10:41 GMT

The Superficial had a post today about Amanda Bynes, and in the middle of reading this post, I suddenly realized that about three nights ago, Amanda Bynes was in one of my dreams. I can't really remember what she was doing in my dream, but I do know that (1) it wasn't sexual, and (2) she was wearing a light blue camisole. I also get the distinct feeling that her hair was pulled back, but I am not sure and have no way to verify this, until technology develops to the point where machines can extract my memories of dreams from my brain's neural connections and visually display these dreams on a television screen.

The reason I mention this is that for some odd reason, I feel incredibly uncomfortable that Amanda Bynes was in my dreams. I don't want Amanda Bynes in my dreams. This isn't like the way I don't want things like maggots or feces in my dreams. Of course I don't want them in my dreams, but it doesn't freak me out when they appear in my dreams. This serves as a counterpoint to when Amanda Bynes appears in my dreams, which freaks me the fuck out. Why is she in my dreams? What is she doing there? What kind of data is she collecting from my brain? Even if she's a figment of my imagination plucked from the deep recesses of my residual memory, how did she struggle out of the malaise of everything else swimming about in there? Something sinister must surely be afoot. This girl supposedly has everything a young woman could want – celebrity, fame, perfectly tousled dirty-blonde hair. The only motive she could possibly have for being in my brain must be ulterior.

Hear me now, Amanda Bynes, because I am only going to say this once. You are not allowed in my dreams from this point forward. I don't trust you and the childish innocence you project to the world. I do not appreciate your turn at teenage romantic comedies in "What A Girl Wants," and I remain highly suspicious of the motivations behind your unusually long stint at Nickelodeon. The next time you appear in my dreams, I am going to call the Dream Police on you, and they are going to drag you away to the holding cell in which you belong. You have been warned.

KOBAYASHI DETHRONED; JOEY CHESTNUT OF SAN JOSE EATS 59.5 HOT DOGS TO SET NEW WORLD RECORD

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:26:16 GMT

[the news article: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6048231]

I know that most people give me incredulous stares when they find out that I regularly track the professional competitive eating circuit, but this is too important to not inform you all about it. In case you don't know, Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi has been the world hot dog eating champion for the last six years. In 2001, he beat the previous champion Kasutoyo Arai's record of 25 and 1/8 hot dogs by almost 100%, polishing off 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes using his unique 'Solomon method' of slicing the sausage in half, swallowing both halves at once, dipping the bun in water, and then stuffing it into his mouth to jam the sausage further down his throat. Since then, he's continued to improve upon his record, setting a new record of 53 and 3/4 hot dogs just last year.

Let me pause for a second to emphasize that Kobayashi is a godlike figure in the world of competitive eating. He singlehandedly revolutionized the sport with his unique eating style and training methods when he hit the U.S. circuit, and his dedication to his chosen art is nothing short of inspiring. This is why it is a huge fucking deal that he has finally been bested.

The new champion is Joey Chestnut, an eater from San Jose who's been steadily progressing towards the top since he first won the Rookie of the Year award in 2005. His new record of 59 and 1/2 bests Kobayashi's 53 and 1/4 by over 10%, the greatest improvement since Kobayashi's stunning 25-to-50 jump back in 2001. If anyone was to beat Kobayashi, it would be Chestnut, who is now second in the overall world standings, and came extremely close to beating Kobayashi last summer, but it's still simply stunning to see him set a new record, especially when you compare his style to the pure elegance with which Kobayashi operates. It is nice to see a local doing well though, and I am happy to cheer for Chestnut.

We'll see whether the record holds when Kobayashi and Chestnut face off at this year's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, the granddaddy of all eating competitions.

Aluminum Curvaceousness

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:16:40 GMT

I like bikes with curves like these, so when I saw one sitting outside my econ lecture room, I decided to take an artsy-fartsy picture of it. In general, I appreciate curves and organic shapes a lot. I think that's what makes me bad at design and art – too little appreciation for corners and lines, and too unrefined a taste for blobs, waves, and arcs.

This is why we don't like context.

Thu, 31 May 2007 06:54:12 GMT

My new quotation-of-the-whenever-I-find-a-new-one:

"I don't have a face anymore – just a tortilla."
- what a woman said in some advertisement in-between Steven turning on the radio and switching the station

By the way, I know I haven't really been writing lately. This is because I have sunk into the slack-jawed stupor of a typical television addict, with an attention span so miniscule that only a moving picture with frequently flashing colours can capture the momentary fixation of my eyes. That was an awkward sentence. I am starting too many sentences with vague pronouns. Oh God, what has happened to my stylistic prowess? How I yearn for better days, when my acerbic wit and viciously sharp deployment of rhetoric used to bring poets to their knees and sway women into passioned and well-curved swoons.

Just kidding. I was never a great writer, just an amusingly longwinded one. In general, you sound more effusively expressive if you're longwinded and use lots of commas, as if you're just full of such a great many ideas that you can't help but use poor stream-of-consciousness to spit out ill-formed, incoherent fragments of phrases, until comprehensibility is but a lost dream, left shattered in the basin of some distant valley, its shards threateningly jagged and alarmingly vituperative.

Basically, I'm the next Dan Brown. Sad face. Sad face galore.