toastykitten

I finally finished reading A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. I thought her ending was kind of weak. It ends with a poem, and a lament about our apparently directionless generation. I dislike the whole "atheists have no direction" kind of talk, because I think it's kind of disingenuous. I realize that a lot of people need "God", or at least an idea of one, in order to deal with the mess that is the world today, but I don't think atheists are lacking in direction or moral guidance. Maybe some are, but I haven't really met any that need that sort of compass.

I just started The Fifth Book of Peace, by Maxine Hong Kingston. Kingston is one of my favorite Asian American writers; I read Woman Warrior when I was just a kid. I think I got bored and started reading stuff from my sister's college syllabus. I remember her complaining about her Asian American Studies class and how she didn't like how the writers would incorporate Chinese words into the text, forcing her to figure out what they actually meant instead of just using the English words. Reading Woman Warrior was sort of like reading about my family, except a little off. Kingston spoke Say Yup; my family spoke Toi San. Her parents were educated; mine were not. She inherited all the baggage that came with growing up Chinese and female; so did I. She grew up in Stockton; I in Oakland. When she travelled to China she met with scholars and academics; when I went I got a tourist package where a green tea salesman told us watermelons had been infected with AIDS. Not to worry; they caught the guy!

Even now, when I first opened this book, I laughed in recognition when she said that she caused an uproar in her Chinese villages because she neglected giving red envelopes to distant relatives. I would have done the same thing - I never know what I am supposed to do, and the things I do know how to do I always mess up. My mother gave everyone she met in our villages a red envelope. She got upset when an old classmate tried to bypass her; the old classmate claimed that she thought that since my mom was lucky enough to go to America, she was now "too good" for someone like her. My mom talked about it for days. In the villages, I didn't know how to act - to me it was a long procession of people who were supposedly related to us but who didn't know us at all. All over people shouted, "Can they understand us?!" And, "Why aren't you married yet? I want to eat some cookies!"

(When I went to the villages, I finally realized why my mom shouted so much. Nearly everyone in that village seemed to be deaf.)

And I also recognized the places she listed - Rockridge, California College of Arts and Crafts, Skyline. I thought, hey, that's home. But it's a different home than mine. She lived up in the Hills, and I used to live down on the bottom, next to the freeway. So reading Kingston is almost like wrapping myself in an old, comfortable blanket. It's nice.

Other things I have been reading:

Bookworm's home goes up in flames. I am afraid this might happen to me.

Nonjatta - a blog for Japanese single malt whisky.

Crunchy Roll - full length episodes of various Asian (Japanese, Korean, Chinese) TV shows. Some subtitled, some not. Works are streaming; I think you have to donate to download episodes. Also, you have to be a member to actually view. Hmm. DotSub - tool for subtitling stuff.

William Blake archive. Video short (warning: .mov file) based on Blake's The Tyger that is pretty neat. I linked to the .mov instead of the actual site because the way the site is set up pisses me off. I mean, really, did all the arty website designers just forget about the rule about keeping it simple? I know, I know, they don't want anyone to steal their work. Except they are offering shorts for download. *sigh*

My mind keeps blanking out on me when I want to write about anything. So here's a bullet list:

• Work is better. I am still annoyed by some aspects, but overall I think my performance is finally better and I am no longer freaking out.
• Whenever I drive to San Francisco, I think it is trying to kill me. God, with the signs that are blocked by giant SUVs, and the nonsensical city planning, how does anyone get around and find things?
  
• The Internet is so weird. I cannot get enough of Icanhascheezburger.
  
• I cannot figure out how people walk around in heels. I bought some very nice shoes - they're about two and a half inches high, and I wore them out today, and I kept stumbling.
  
• I love KCRW, especially their podcasts. (If you live in Los Angeles and listen to them, I think they have decent giveaways, too.) I like to listen to them while I cook; it's really relaxing. The ones I recommend the most are Good Food and The Treatment. Good Food is about, duh, good food. The Treatment interviews various people in Hollywood. I like that they not only interview mainstream people like Quentin Tarantino and Chris Rock, they also cover indie people and documentary makers, like Rory Kennedy who did Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.

Interview with Kal Penn

Asian-Black romance in indie film. Featuring "Ando" from Heroes.

Amazon Unbox: If you register your TiVo with Amazon's new download service, you get $15 worth of movies free. So from what I've gathered, you can rent or buy the movie you want to watch on your TiVo (or computer). The buy price of movies is totally not worth it - it's the same price as any physical DVD you would buy in a regular store. Are you sure you want to spend $12 on Fearless, with no extra features or commentary or deleted scenes. If you delete it, Amazon will remember that you bought the movie and allow you to re-download the movie as many times as you want. If you rent a movie, you have 30 days to watch it. Once you start watching it, you only have 24 hours to complete the movie. Renting is the better deal, because it only costs $3-5.

California to consider trans fat ban. So stupid.

Been packing mostly. Now we have to decide whether to hire movers for the big stuff or just ask friends to help. I don't know which is preferable.

KCRW Bookworm interview with Dave Eggers

Recipe for brussels sprouts roasted with balsamic vinegar

Kevin Smith's Top 10 films of 2006

KCRW The Treatment interview with Forest Whitaker - mostly about the Last King of Scotland, which, by the way, he was amazing in.

I've been cleaning up my stuff a little (and by a little, I mean very little), and I noticed that I have a bunch of defunct magazines. I have two issues of Kitchen Sink, which stopped publishing last month. I actually liked Kitchen Sink's art more than I liked the writing, which I found kind of clunky. I have the second debut issue of Radar, which is now only online. I liked Radar, but I never thought they were going to last. I have Budget Living - that ended last December, as advertisers decided they didn't like the magazine telling people how to live more cheaply. Not that anything in the issue I had could actually be classified as "budget". Maybe it was budget living if you had a trust fund. Frommer's Smart Shopping is gone, too. I only bought the first issue, and it was full of useful advice, but they picked cheapness over quality too much for my tastes. His other magazine, Budget Travel, is still around. Oh, and I used to read Sassy - I didn't buy it, but my mom used to get all her friend's daughter's old magazines and I loved flipping through them. I wish I still had them. We probably just threw them out in the trash or something.

I have nothing profound to say about this, except maybe I really like magazines that cost too much to make. Anyway, I saw a new magazine today - MissBehave. The editor is an Asian chick, yay! The tone is really hip hop casual and loud, and there's little insecurity. I really like it.

Huh. It's published by Mass Appeal, which explains the hip hop design.

Anyway, I CANNOT subscribe to any more magazines!

Hey, wisdom teeth recovery is coming along fine, and fairly fast, too. My left side is still kind of swollen, but I'm icing it. Been wasting a lot of time on the Internet and watching TV. I cannot seem to find the will to finish Foucault's Pendulum. Oh my god is this Umberto Eco book so boring! I'm on page 300-something and I still know nothing about the Plan except that it is stupid. I think I'm going to give it away on Freecycle or something after I'm done with it.

Some conversations with Mark:

Mark: "Hey, I have to get the new season of 24."
Me: "Why?"
Mark: "Because (random actor from Star Trek) is going to be on it. It's going to be awesome."
Me: "Cool."
Mark: "Oh, and Kumar (Kal Penn) is in it, too."
Me: "Really? Awesome."
Mark: "Yeah, but if he's going to play an Arab terrorist I'm going to be pissed. That's the second time they're having an Indian guy play an Arab."

Later:
Me: "Hey, you remember how you wanted to see the new season of 24?"
Mark: "Yeah?"
Me: "You're going to be pissed."
Mark: "Why?"
Me: "Well, Kumar plays a Muslim terrorist and then he dies."
Mark: "Great."

We finished Rome. Dude, I love HBO and I don't even get it. The production values on Rome really rock, and it's really interesting to see how they spin the historical events that happened - the relationships between Caesar and Brutus, Caesar and Mark Antony, and everybody underestimating Octavian.

Anyway, some interesting links I found:

Journeywoman - International Guide to Dim Sum - the ones I can vouch for on here - China Village in Belmont is only okay. There was something off about the siu mai and as we were walking out I noticed that some of the seafood was already dead, which is not really a good sign. The Empress Pavilion in Los Angeles is excellent, and nicely priced. Ton Kiang on Geary in San Francisco is also very good, but kind of expensive. East Ocean in Alameda is also good, but still kind of expensive for what you get. There's a nice view of the Bay.

I love Dinosaur Comics. I think I have an odd sense of humor.
Search Amazon for deals.
Metafilter post on an American doctor who genitally mutilated a bunch of women without their consent and actually wrote a book about it. I haven't actually read the posts, but I read the thread, which predictably ended up with a bunch of guys going "Circumcision is genital mutilation too!"

We visited Daiso last week. Eh. The Japanese discount stores in LA are so much better. Plus L.A. has Book Off, where you can get fairly new used books for about $2-3 each. Oh, and American CDs for really cheap, too, if you're willing to dig around a bit.

Shalhoub Producing Arab American Film -- American East

Poplicks - RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 1: BERKELEY DAZE
Poplicks - RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 2: NOT ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD

Stamps released in China to celebrate the Year of the Pig taste of sweet and sour pork.

Knickers - a lingerie weblog - because I HATE shopping for lingerie on my own.

Tea is good for the heart - but adding milk to it wipes out the benefits, say researchers I knew it!

But I'm not. I'll probably do that after dinner.

Work is going to be excruciatingly quiet next week, as most of the people in my department have taken off for vacation. Mark is in LA - next year we'll have to figure out a better holiday schedule. Both our families make big deals of the holidays, although Chinese New Year is a bigger deal. And then it's about the only time I see my nieces and nephews and hopefully undo a bit of the years of damage they have coming to them.

My sister tells me that she just saw Kaitlin's report card, and she's doing quite well - she's actually caught up with other kids her age. It turns out that she's pretty good at math. My sister got her a workbook so that she can work on learning about negative numbers. You know what's funny? Her English is getting so good she's starting to translate for me with my mom. I hardly even realized she was doing it, until she said to my mom, "What she's trying to say is that..." and I thought Oh my god is my Chinese that awful? Apparently it is.

I just got a letter from my adopted brother's daughter. It's a long story about how he was "adopted", and how the circumstances of his adoption created a lot of drama in my family - I'm not going to go into it. I guess technically she's my niece. Anyway, the name she chose for herself is Crystal. I spent some time with her in the village - she's about 18 and about to take the entrance exam for university. She was a bit shy at first, but Crystal talks. And talks. And talks. In fact, in the three or four days I spent with her, I don't think I said more than ten sentences. Her letter is short, though, and I wonder if she didn't have enough paper or something. She keeps telling me how beautiful I am, which is really unnerving. I think she's probably translating from her Chinese literally to English, which makes her sentences sound very odd. I'll probably write her after dinner. I'm going to have to get my parents to write the address, though.

Some stuff I've been thinking about:

Did you know that some teenagers make money by teaching people how to play Halo? Are you fucking kidding me? They also get paid $25 an hour, which is way too close to my actual salary for comfort. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Not that I'd be any good at this - I suck at video games.

Harold McGee lives close enough to me that he can drive to the Ranch 99 at Milpitas.

I found out that Six Apart's offices are only a couple of blocks up from my work. That is so odd. Current_TV is also in the building next to mine. I walk by sometimes and am so tempted to walk in - you can see the workers, dressed like skater boys watching their stuff. And all I can think is, Are they working or goofing off?

My China photos are slowly coming up. I'm so glad Flickr increased their bandwith limit. I'm up to Hangzhou right now, and will post up pictures of my parents' villages next. If you actually want to see my family, you'll have to add me as a contact first. There are also no pictures of me, unless you want to look at the New Orleans pictures.

Oh hey! New Asian-Am show, called My Life Disoriented. Did they make one of the Asians goth? Or is that just a white guy in heavy makeup? Time to add to the TiVo list.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, etc!

I'm trying to deal with Mark's new laptop. All the critical keys are in a slightly different location than his Toshiba, so I'm often pressing stuff, and nothing happens. *sigh*

Going to the Exploratorium was fun, even if it was a nightmare to actually get there. I swear, San Francisco is out to get us, with its deliberately non-existent signs and streets that end without warning. I mean, I've lived in the area forever and I love everything in San Francisco. If only I could actually get to them.

Kaitlin had fun, too at the Exploratorium, but she didn't really pay attention to the stuff she was actually doing. She just ran around playing with all the different displays. That girl has a freakishly short attention span, and she doesn't listen. It's so frustrating - oh, and she's not doing well in social studies, vocabulary or grammar. I wish I could convince her parents to hire a tutor for her, because I'm not in Oakland enough to kick her in the butt to study. She's doing fine in spelling, though - so I think the biggest problem she has is reading comprehension. I probably can't get them to hire an out-sourced tutor because they don't have an Internet connection.

And apparently she can talk for hours about cartoons.

Of interest:
Sara's Sunday rant, in which she debunks all the myths about Canadian health insurance.
One of Mark's colleagues, Val, got fed up after one of her community sites Linux Chix got digged and outed herself as a MAN.

Steve Irwin pulled a poisonous stingray barb from his chest in his dying moments, his longtime manager said Tuesday, after watching videotape of the attack that killed the popular "Crocodile Hunter."

How insane is that? The stingray barb is serrated, too, so it must have really hurt...