Category: Thoughts

Miley’s teen party

Saturday, 15 August, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Just saw Miley Cyrus’ performance at the Teen Choice Awards, the one that people are complaining is “too adult.”

Overall I thought it was tame, although you’d never see it on the Disney Channel. I also wished I could move my hips like Miley, I’m jealous!

Mum said it’s just what she’s being told to do and she’s going along with it, but she said the same thing about Britney Spears. O_o How do we really know that this isn’t her idea, this isn’t the real Miley?

I don’t know. Mum and I had a (totally unrelated) conversation recently about perception versus intention, what people intend to do versus how other people perceive the actions. An example was anyone who demanded an apology from Obama because of something he said which got misinterpreted. In other words, people are saying, “I expect an apology from you for what I thought was said.”

Regarding Miley’s show, I thought, hmmm, if 8-year-olds danced like that, it would only be the older people who would be scandalized by it. The little kids aren’t trying to find sex for themselves, they’re just moving their bodies. It’s all the fault of the adults who see sex in it and then molest children, just like it’s the fault of the guy who saw an attractive woman and raped her.

We as a society don’t like to see provocative attire (especially on children), and condone the sexy moves of celebrities as indecent and completely inappropriate for children.

If that’s true though, and we don’t want kids to mimic celebrities in order to protect them, it’s also logical how in Islamic countries women are required by the government to cover themselves so they don’t make men horny. It’s not that they’re nonentities in burqas, women are just protecting themselves and the men who have no sense of control.

Whose fault is it really? The teen-aged singer who wiggled her hips, or the adults who interpreted it as SHE’S SELLING SEX ON THE SEASHORE NOW.

Bush letter

Wednesday, 18 February, 2009 at 9:10 pm

All right, here it is. The long-awaited (ha ha) entry on the letter I got from Bush/the White House.

letter from Bush I came home from work one day last August and found this manila folder in my place at the dining room table—the usual way my mom sorts and doles out our mail—addressed to me, from the White House. For a split second I thought, Oh no, one of the petitions I signed must have pissed off someone and now I’m on the FBI’s list!

Mum and Hidek came up to me ’cause they were wondering what in the world the White House could be sending to me. I told them it must have been a response to some petition that I’d signed online. Opened it up and yup, the letter was about preserving our oceans.

I guess the White House does keep track of e-mails it gets ’cause I couldn’t recall recently signing a petition to Bush about oceans and figured I must have been on some list. Either that or bureaucracy is really really slow and it took many months to send my letter.

I’m inclined to believe the latter because the letter was about something that Bush had done to Save Our Oceans back in June. What was this action that he took to ensure that our oceans would be around for generations to come? Why he declared June 2008 as National Oceans Month! Yes sir, he took action that was not at all proactive and then decided to spend $1.17 telling me about it months later!

See, that’s the real kicker. If I’d received an e-mail from the White House (even months after the fact) I would not be as annoyed as I am right now. (Which honestly isn’t all that much on the annoyed scale. Maybe a little miffed. But I thought this was … unique … and should be commented on.) I’m used to getting “Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message” auto-responses.

But this time, someone(s?) in D.C. thought it was worth $1.17 to inform me of past acts of “preservation” which I am concerned about? The petitions I sign usually get somewhere around 5,000–20,000 signatures, but let’s assume an absolute average of 10,000. If I got a letter, doesn’t that mean that 9,999 other people also got the same letter? The White House wanted to spend $11,700 sending out information when they could have sent out e-mails?

Or even just send it in a regular business envelope. Why spend a whole $1.17 when postage was about $0.43? Just so I get a flat piece of paper that hasn’t been folded? And I’m sure even the feds can get discounts from the post office if they’re sending out enough pieces of mail—$0.27, right? They spent basically three times more so I get a fancy, special letter about Bush tooting his own horn.

How many meals can $11,700 cover? How many doctor visits? I know the U.S. has a budget in the billions, but come on, every little bit helps!—Oh wait, no, we’re now $10 trillion in debt, so a few measly thousand doesn’t count for much there. Thanks, Bush.

all that jazz?

Tuesday, 17 June, 2008 at 12:56 am

I decided to start a new entry [from the “exactly relative sizes” one], since the last one went longer than I expected. (Why do I always do that?!)

Next up … I can’t remember the order. ._. I’ll just go with Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm.

I saw this ad in a Vanity Fair issue (I bought it for a class, but I can’t recall which one) decrying lip balms for using petroleum-based ingredients, and to make sure what you put on your lips is all-natural and not refined rotted dinosaur remains. I don’t remember what product the ad was for. But it definitely hit a mark.

I decided, since I needed more lip balm, to try a natural one, i.e. Burt’s Bees Beeswax. I saw it at Target, right next to Chapstick. The Burt’s was about a quarter more than the Chapstick, so I was questioning the au naturale ideas in my head, especially since there were three Chapsticks in one package, and only one of the Burt’s — pay less for triple the product? Very tempting. But I decided to not be cheap and try the Burt’s at least once.

I have to say I’m disappointed. The Burt’s gives my lips this cold tingly feeling , which I do not want. (Apparently other customers like it though…)

Hmm … it appears that it was a good thing I waited to write this up, because the info on the Skin Deep: Cosmetics Safety Database changed since I last looked at it. Chapstick lip balm now looks more harmful than Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm. Huh. (And oh hay look, white petrolatum in the Chapstick!!1)

Well, natural lip balms at places like Lush cost too much for me (and I never like having to touch lip balm to apply it — don’t they advise not touching your face because of the bacteria on your hands?), and Chapstick seems out (unless I can find this Chapstick all natural version), so I don’t know what to go for next. But that won’t be for a while. I can count all the lip balms I’ve had in my life on one hand; most of them were freebies.

Next item, 3Musketeers Mint. I saw commercials for this starting Christmas of last year? 3Musketeers is probably my favorite candy bar. It doesn’t mean I absolutely love it, but most of the time I’d accept eating one, which is better than what I can say about other bars. So when I saw the mint, I wanted to try it.

I found it in the checkout line at Albertson’s here, so of course I grabbed it. When I got home, I realized it’s smaller than the normal 3Musketeers bar, and it’s packaged with two bars, half the size of a regular one. Slight disappointment there, but maybe mint costs more or something, I’d forgive them for that.

When I bit into it though, it wasn’t that great. Maybe my expectations were too high. I think I expected something like a York Peppermint Patty. But the 3Musketeers Mint isn’t as sweet. It’s okay. I probably won’t buy it again. But I’d accept it if someone offered it to me. *grin*

The really rad thing about it though, the main reason why I’m talking about it at all, is the packaging. XD First, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping in normal lighting. It’s got that normal metallic look that the 3Musketeers bar has, right? Then, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping while backlit. Whoa! Transparent wrapper! XD It’s not a good quality photo, because in real life the nutrition facts can be read while backlit. mreh.

Now, I read Wil Wheaton’s post about Scarlett Johansson’s album a while ago … whenever it was first posted. I had no idea what type of music she’d done, but I know generally I don’t share Wil’s taste in music. (I’m more pop and mainstream, although I enjoy rock and a bit of indie music.)

Her album really surprised me though. I thought she’d be doing the normal pop album. I never expected the music that I heard. (I’m no music guru, so I have no idea what style or genre it is or anything.) There are a few songs on there I don’t enjoy, but for the most part, I would buy the album if it cost me $10 or so. (Hm, maybe I should buy the mp3s on Amazon.)

It’s got a nice atmosphere to the music. Not something I’d want to listen to every day like The Cardigans, but in the right mood it would be the best music. Like Lily Chou-Chou! *grins*

So I finished reading Garth Nix’s Across the Wall … a long while ago. I loved it! I read someone’s comment that it’s not as good as the Old Kingdom Trilogy. Well of course. The Old Kingdom spans over three books, you really get to get into the world and into the characters and into the stories.

Across the Wall is a collection of short stories. Short stories are, well short. There’s no time for development and evolution. It’s just a quick event that introduces a new idea and makes you (well, me at least) think about the world differently. I thought Garth Nix was incredibly imaginative with these stories. (I love short stories, by the way. Got introduced to them properly by Neil Gaiman. Read some of Roald Dahl’s adult short stories. I need to own them!)

Garth Nix was so good that I want to read The Once and Future King. I never thought I’d pick that up. Daddy owns a copy (an ooold copy). I never was interested in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But Garth Nix has piqued my interest … as any good author should do.

Those are my reviews. The first two were written June 6th; I’m finishing this June 17th.

The remark I made earlier about gas … well the Monday before I saw gas was $4.33. I thought of filling up, but meh I was lazy and as I always do when I’m lazy, I thought I’d wait to see if the price would go down. The next day, Tuesday, I drove by the station again and the price was $4.44. I was so gobsmacked that I didn’t even consider buying gas.

I guess I should have though. I ended up buying four gallons on the 13th to make it home to L.A. where gas is guaranteed to be at least five cents cheaper (oh big whoop, five cents…) and had to pay $4.69 per gallon. Augh.

That ends my collection of little reviews and thoughts.

codes

Saturday, 7 June, 2008 at 6:56 pm

I’ve come to find through my life that I like codes.

This thought came to me earlier today when I was reading Broken Days (the book isn’t really important, but meh). I was looking at the chapter titles. (They bug me, because the first letter is so much bigger than the rest of the word. The difference in type size wouldn’t really bug me, except that the ascender of the lowercase H in both Chapter and Thirty don’t reach up as high as the bigger initial letter. Also, the weight of the character looks heavier than the rest of the word, just because it’s bigger. It should all be the same!! [Omigosh, Monk-ism. o_o] But anyway, enough about typography.)

The titles are set in italic, but the typeface’s italic style is subtle, so I was inspecting it to make sure it was italic, and not just oblique.

That made me think about the words italic and italicized. My teacher told us the words are based on the country’s name Italy, where the swooshy letter styles came from. (Versus Germany’s Blackletter, which is angular and straight and strict.)

I’d never, in all my life (from about elementary school, when I learned how to use Word Perfect [I’m so old] and that there was something called italic), thought about the similarities of the words italic and Italy. But I love it! It was like a revealed mystery to me!

And then I thought, it’s like a code! Language is like code, and other languages are like other codes. Sometimes they can translate, sometimes they can’t.

Reminds me of when I was a kid, and loved codes. Like 1 is for A, 2 is for B, and so on. I’d go off of that and make my own codes. They were simple. I’d reverse the numbers (like 26 is for A, and so on), I’d leave out vowels, I’d stick the vowels at the end (like A is 21, E is 22, and so on), other variations. I even came up with my own written language, or code. It’s based on the English alphabet, so it isn’t anything special.

I think it ties together a lot of my interests. Languages (not really the grammar so much though :x), words, coding, binary and hexadecimal. I just find it so fascinating how something can mean something else, how it can be expressed in a different way.

gay comment in ABC Family movie

Monday, 21 April, 2008 at 11:41 pm

I watched ABC Family’s Princess last night. The movie was all right. Nothing spectacular because hey, it was a tv movie, and a family one at that. My favorite part was probably Ithaca’s clothes. XD;

I almost forgot to watch it, even though I’d been planning to watch it since commercials aired in March. Luckily Hidek had to go work in his studio so I made dinner late and caught the movie ten minutes in.

(Spoiler, sort of.) One thing I wonder about, plot-wise, is if Ithaca is 25 and the girl is somewhere in her teens (I assume 15+ but I’m not a good judge of age), then how the heck is that workable? Calliope (the girl) would go through all that training, then in ten years her rule is up, and they need to find the next girl? What? Ithaca was found at 5 … correct? So she had her powers for 20 years. Maybe what’s-his-face (sorry can’t remember his name … William?) was supposed to be searching for those 20 years for the next girl? Or at least 15 or whatever years, however old Calliope is. But then he’s only in his 20s himself, so he would have begun searching at 10? What was that whole thing about seekers being old? (End of spoiler.)

I don’t know, I shouldn’t bother with the little things, it was only a tv movie. *grin*

The big thing I do want to complain about is a comment made by the character William. Remember, I didn’t see the first ten minutes of the movie the first time around, so I watched the rerun at 10 o’clock.

The reporter friend guy gets the invitation to Ithaca’s dinner thing in the mail and his wife says he and William should go, since she’s so very pregnant and can’t fit into any sort of nice evening gown. Then William says (paraphrasing), “Sure, like two guys going to a ball isn’t gay.” What?!

The comment itself isn’t what’s bugging me, it wasn’t that bad (right? I’m not underreacting, am I?). But I do hate that this is a movie airing on ABC Family, so probably kids as young as … 8? could be watching it. I don’t care that William used the word “gay” when kids are watching, but I can’t stand that he used it in that joking, derogatory manner.

Maybe I’m overreacting about this and gays have become so much a part of the norm we can joke about them now…? But it still creates this idea for kids that it’s okay to say things like that! They might say it around other kids, who might or might not be gay, and those kids will feel … however they feel. Marginalized?

:x Sorry, my brain’s shutting down now … this is why I suck at blogging. Argh.

Closing statement … stupid Disney is still furthering a world where gays are seen as bad and can be shot or tortured. Am I going too far there? Oh yeah.