unwritten

I went shopping at Target again today. There's something soothing about shopping at a relaxing, quiet department store without hoards of harried mothers with three kids screaming at the top of their lungs that they want more candy (don't give them anymore sugar you goddamn idiot) . Or shopping at a store where the products, despite being half the price of Target's, is of dubious quality. Here's looking at you Wal-Mart.

Anyway, I wandered around the store a bit looking at the Transformer toys and contemplating buying one to make up for my pathetic lack of Transformer toys during my childhood. I do this everytime I go to Target but I have yet to find one that I truly like.

Then I wandered into the book department hoping to find a good Terry Pratchett book I don't own yet but sadly, Target's book department is about three aisle of contemporary fiction targetted at old retirees or young trophy wives. However, I did find some good books that promised to be good reading but decided that I didn't really want to read about the life story of a gay man growing up. It was quite surreal, out of the three aisle there, one of them were children's books, another one was popular trash novels like Grisham, Archer, and the sopping lot of them, and the last one was rather bohemian writing of authors such as Marian Keyes and other womenly novels. I quick glance confirmed that about 80% of that shelf was written by women. I picked up a book written by one of the men (David something or another) and a quick read confirmed that the author was gay. Now this is simply an observation but I can't help but think that perhaps Target is not the best place to go for good books.

Finally as I was about to leave, I found myself passing the CD section -- and for some inexplicable reason, I walked out of the store carrying Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten and a box of tissue paper.

This post has absolutely no point to it. I walked into a store. I bought a CD. I walked out. And I wasted my time writing a post about it. And now you have wasted your time reading it. Sucker.

righteous indignation

My stupid friend spends her time making off the cuffs remarks in my replies. But she hasn't found it fit to tell me how she liked the books I recommended to her.

Now, Lily's generally a good sport and will read whatever I put in her hands, eventually. But I'm curious, the same way a chef prepares an excellent meal and anxiously awaits the compliments of his customers. Or the same way a vinter prepares the first glass of this summer's wine.

She has not seen it fit to tell me how excellent my selection is and how she's been living in a literary shadow all her life. I am indignant. Does Wolfgang Puck not deserve compliments (I don't know, someone treat me to this Puck's food please!)? Has Robert Mondavi not deserved his accolades?

Of course, I didn't write the books, but maybe the waiters deserve recognition too!

Jerk.



ps. I recommended Neil Gaiman, George R R Martin and Terry Pratchett to her. Though she's not read any of Pratchett yet. If she continues to be an ungrateful wretch I shall have to recommend books like Robert Jordan to her. Hahahaaaaa....

dark side of cacao

I just bought some 72% cacao and 86% cacao chocolate (thanks random flickr person!). I read somewhere that these chocolate are amazing it should be worth noting that all the chocolate that is sold in local stores are mostly tiny bits of chocolate with huge amount of milk.

The 72% cacao chocolate tastes like a normal bittersweet choc but the 86% cacao chocolate tastes amazingly bitter and frankly, like a little piece of shit. No I haven't tried shit. But if I ever ate a brown substance that I wanted to spit out, this would be it.

But now, I am sooo mellow. Sooo mellow.

According to the post there is a 99% cacao chocolate somewhere. I want to see if I can get that

breaking news

I made a big change in the way I view life today. I removed Latest News from my Google Personalized Page.

I think the best way to explain this is with a story. I had a manager who always bought the news paper. When he brought it into work, he would pick out the sports and funnies and leave the rest in the lobby. Every day he would ritually removed all the important news, business and leave it unread. I thought it was pretty naive of him to ignore affairs and one day I asked him why did he not read all the news.

He looked me in the eyes.

"All the news in the papers is usually bad news. Someone died. Someone in trouble. Someone bombing someone. I will find out eventually but I don't think I want to be one of the first to know. So I read the funnies and sports. In sports there are always winners, maybe my team will win, maybe another team will win -- but someone always does."

I think I feel the same way now. I'll find out eventually, but I don't think I want to be the first to know anymore. But I will still keep reading the funnies.

actuary

Boys and girls, today's word of the day is Actuary. They are people who, basically, decide how risky you are to insure, and if you have to pay dingleberries or the kahoonas for your insurance policy.

I bring this up because I went out on a date with an actuary once. She was a petite little character who was preppy and mischievous. I was a nervous wreck driving a car with an out of state license. The location was the Lion King musical in San Francisco. It was great. The performance, not the date.

The performance was pretty much on the spot. Simba danced and played. Timone and Pummba did their little trickseys thing. The evil uncle tried to steal the throne. Simba grows up and reclaims it. I loved it.

As we walked back to the parking lot where my car was, I found a huge gaping hole with glass shards where my driver window was. Great!

What could I do? I drove her home. We sat in the car in front of her house, a cold breeze blowing through my shattered window. I looked at her and she said, "I'm sorry about your window". I replied, "I am sorry it happened". She got out of the car and said, "Keep in touch". I replied, "I will".

I never called. I didn't know what to say.

So whoever broke into my car, you ruined my date. Asshole.

taurine

I finished my 2 weeks worth of antiobiotic program. Hopefully there will be no more icky tricky stomach ulcers for me (caused by bacteria) ever again! All things considered better late than never.

But this post is about taurine, the little known stimulant compound in Red Bull. I found a can lying around the fridge yesterday that I bought about a month ago on my stimulant binge. So I drank it. Zip zip zip!

the world is behind you

My stupid friend recently wrote about her little apartment in Oakland. She has a lakeside view of Lake Meritt and a gorgeous far off view of the city. She has an organic grocery store where she buys organic chocolate. And its cozy and quaint.

This is good. Except for one thing. Its ten miles from ground level. Which in itself is not too bad, except the windows start at your knees and end near the ceiling. So its perfect, if you're trying to kill yourself.

Now I don't want to sound negative or anything, but it seems that all the windows are like this. So if you're looking out, enjoying the cool breeze after a hot summer's day; or if you're staring off into the distance and looking at San Francisco under a pale moonlight; you will be occasionally interrupted by a falling person.

Now this falling person may or may not have been pushed. All I am saying is that it is very easy to trip over the window. And they may have accidently leaned too far. And someone may have been behind them. This someone may or may not have been a jealous spouse who just found out that the person has been sleeping with another man/woman/man and woman/man, woman, donkey and a midget (see, I am progressive in my thinking).

Also, one of the inherent drawbacks of being 10 miles up in the air, is that when something bad happens, is that you're ten miles away from the ground. Which is bad. And last I checked, the Bay Area was prone to earthquakes. Just a tiny bit. And for your information, Oakland also once burned to the ground. So, my friend, is living life a bit riskier than she knows. Personally, if I wanted to live like that, I'd go to the Raiders game and scream "GOOOO NINERS". And that would have been preferable.


Oh another thing, she says she hates the drab gray of urban rooftops. Strangely enough, I find that the drap urban rooftops are particularly fascinating. Why? Because we live in a world with a bajillion other people. There's roofs over our head to block out the sun. There's offices with cubicles. Everywhere we go we see faces of people we don't know.

Being alone on a rooftop changes it all. On the roof you're far from the prying eyes of the public. On the roof, you are alone with the sky, the moon and the stars. Lying on a rooftop, the world is behind you -- and in front of you, the infinite possibilities of the universe.