Lan D. Ho!

August 09, 2009

Lan,

Do we know each other personally or just through association?

Jeff

---

Hi Jeff,

We met twice (maybe three times) through Matt Oliver. I was a groomsman at his wedding. I remember you distinctly because there was a douchebag named Jeff Byrd who went to my high school, but clearly you're not him.

Lan

June 22, 2009

To consider:

1. Art exists for its own sake.
2. Some people find art restorative.
3. Some people find garden work restorative.

June 21, 2009

"So where exactly is Joe, the coffee shop"

"You go down Christopher and then you turn on Waverly. You just go down Waverly and you can't miss it. It's right after Gay Street."

"Wait--there's a street called Gay Street?"

"Welcome to the West Village, honey."

June 16, 2009

"My feet are as smooth as marbles."

June 15, 2009

"So I was whaling away at her, right? My cock deep inside of her. But the tip, the tip of my cock was smashing up against her cervix. It hurt her, but it hurt me more. Pain? Yeah, I know all about it. How was able to keep going, you ask? Adrenaline," DB said. "Pure adrenaline."

"Wait a minute," I said, "I read that exact phrasing in last month's issue of Boys' Life, except it was in an article about mountain climbing. You're just peppering your sex stories with phrases from that article to inject some much-needed versimilitude and color! None of this actually happened at all!"

June 13, 2009

"But gross improbability is not impossibility, so we should try to not be too surprised at the strange things that happen to us."

June 12, 2009

In many ways, we are all snakes consuming one another's tails.

April 14, 2009

"Do you think that zebras are the result of horses having sex with Siberian tigers?"

"No."

"Yeah, me either."

February 15, 2009

"They were nerdier than Magic players," JF said, scoffing.

January 23, 2009

DH relates some of his wisdom: "That was our policy when we were traveling: if C or I saw a long queue in front of a shop, we would just get in line. 'Get in line first, ask questions later,' we would always say. More often than not, we would be in line for a delicious snack of some sort."

January 01, 2009

From the New York Daily News:

Hoops legend Charles Barkley was busted for suspected drunken driving Wednesday--and made things worse by admitting he was rushing to pick up a woman for a sex act.

"I was going to drive around the corner and get [oral sex]," the basketball Hall of Famer told police in Scottsdale, Ariz., a police report said.

He said the woman had performed the sex act for him last week and "it was the best one he had ever had," the report said.

Barkley, 45, was pulled over around 1:30 a.m. A cop saw him blow through a red light, then pull over to pick up the woman, who wasn't charged....

The police report said Barkley jokingly offered to "tattoo" a cop's name on his rear end if it would get him out of trouble.

December 23, 2008

From AP:

EASTON, Pa. – A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake. Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.

Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.

"We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake that we deem to be inappropriate," Meleta said. "We considered this inappropriate."

The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said Tuesday.

A Wal-Mart spokesman told The Associated Press on Wednesday that in light of the incident, the company would review its guidelines regarding cake decorations and other requests.

"It's clear that in serving this customer, some people were offended," spokesman Greg Rossiter said. "As a result, we're going to review our policies."

Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."

The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.

Campbell said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.

"Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."

He said about 12 people attended the birthday party Sunday, including several children of mixed race.

"That was her first problem," LN said. "You shouldn't have sex in order to make someone like you. You should have sex because it's fun. Or because you need money."

December 17, 2008

"I'm sick of being a muse," said LN ruefully.

December 08, 2008

From The New York Times:

A 23-year-old Malaysian man was killed on Thursday night after reportedly enraging other customers who felt that he "hogged the microphone" at what Malaysia's Star Online described as "a coffeeshop-cum-karaoke outlet" in the town of Sandakan, on the island of Borneo.

The Guardian's Ian MacKinnon adds some regional context:

Karaoke rage is not unheard of in Asia. There have been several reported cases of singers being assaulted, shot or stabbed mid-performance, usually over how songs are sung.

Frank Sinatra's "My Way" has reportedly generated so many outbursts of hostility that some bars in the Philippines now do not offer it on the karaoke menu anymore. In Thailand this year, a gunman shot eight people dead after tiring of their endless renditions of a John Denver tune.

As The Telegraph reported in March, that maddening John Denver tune was "Country Roads."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Malaysia's official Bernama news agency reports that "two men have been arrested in connection with the murder" in Sandakan.

Last year, Bernama reported that Malaysia’s information minister, Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin, had issued a public put-down of karaoke singers by likening them to another group of social misfits: bloggers. Both groups, Mr. Zainuddin said, "take pleasure in their own singing but have no influence."

December 05, 2008

Incomplete notes on distinguishing things that are sincere and cheesy from things that are sincere but not cheesy:

Sincere and cheesy: Boyz II Men; Ghost; sweater with a snowflake on it worn to a family gathering attended by other people wearing sweaters of similar themes

Sincere but not cheesy: 808s and Heartbreaks; Hiroshima mon amour; sweater with a reindeer on it worn to a family or other gathering attended by hipsters and other people wearing sweaters of similar themes

The less you have in this world, the more you are acutely aware of every loss.

December 04, 2008

Please interpret the following statement: "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather."

A. In a world in which abstract concepts can be physically quantified, the weight of duty exceeds that of (most) mountains, whereas the weight of death does not exceed that of (most) feathers.

B. "Duty" is a slang term for a small group of mountains, analogous to a grove of trees. "Death" is the common name for an infectious tick, which commonly weighs less than a feather.

C. As a being with free will, everything can be said to be our duty. And in death, we find nothingness. Hence: Everything is heavier than a mountain, nothing lighter than a feather. So at its essence, the statement is simply a word game: "everything" can be understood as "the sum of all things," but it can also be understood as "each individual thing"; likewise, "nothing" can be understood as "nothingness," but it can also be understood as "no one thing."

D. Dying is easier than doing what you're supposed to do.

E. In granting a people sovereignty through democracy, we must accept whatever decisions get made as a direct consequence of such a beneficial tool--when a wheel is used to commit murder, the wheel is not to blame. We cannot empower a nation with democracy and then demand that that nation carry out our agenda. Such a democracy is a sham: a democracy in name only.

December 03, 2008

Match the following summaries with the correct songs.

1. A man expresses regret for the unpleasant things that he did to his ex, including missing her birthday, and makes empty promises to behave differently in the future.

2. A man discusses the inherent difficulties of being in a serious relationship with musician, whose very livelihood requires that he be constantly on the road, but pledges nevertheless to remain devoted.

3. A man discusses the difficulties of apologizing.

4. A man explains that all his actions, including those he will do in the future, are done for the sake of his love.

5. A man discusses the various things he would do if he ruled the world.

6. Two men discuss ways in which they display their exorbitant wealth and affirm that what seems like large sums of money to ordinary people are in fact negligible sums to them.

7. A man dances next to an attractive woman at a nightclub and becomes sexually aroused, which she notices with mild alarm.

---

A. "If I Ruled the World" by Nas featuring Lauryn Hill

B. "Faithfully" by Journey

C. "Everything I Do (I Do It for You)" by Bryan Adams

D. "Too Close" by Next

E. "Money Ain't a Thang" by Jay-Z featuring Jermaine Dupri

F. "I'll Be There for You" by Bon Jovi

G. "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" by Chicago

---

Correct answers: 1F 2B 3G 4C 5A 6E 7D

November 19, 2008

"I don't know anyone who would christen their kid 'Horsedick,' and I know a lot of irresponsible people."

November 06, 2008

"My friends and I are going to start an exercise group," I said. "It's going to be called 'The Gentlemen's Exercising Concern.' "

"That sounds like a brothel," LN said.

November 05, 2008

Not too long ago I made a "fake" mix CD, which contained hits from Deep Blue Something, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind, Barenaked Ladies, Eagle-Eye Cherry, et al. I kept this CD in my car and would play it whenever I was taking a corny girl out for the first time. I would gauge her reaction and summarily judge her afterward.

Of course, after a while I found myself listening to the CD more and more over time, and soon I could be found on any given afternoon zipping through the city in my Honda, singing along to "Semi-Charmed Life" or "One Week" or "You're Still the One." Those songs, I concluded, rule. Irony and earnestness, like communism and fascism, lie on a circular spectrum, and the proper expression of one is indistinguishable from the proper expression of its antithesis.

November 04, 2008

Good night, old America!

October 08, 2008

"On April 4, 1971, while in England working on Straw Dogs, Peckinpah sent a telegram to President Nixon urging him to press for a full investigation of the My Lai incident. He was afraid, though Calley was on trial for his part in the incident, the full scope of the responsibility for the killings would not be uncovered and those involved would escape prosecution....

"Peckinpah's outrage over My Lai, and the war itself, influenced his reaction to the public outcry over the violence in his films. Peckinpah was struck that some viewers seemed to care more about make-believe movie violence than about what was happening in Southeast Asia. In this respect, the war demonstrated a kind of moral schizophrenia in America." (Stephen Prince, Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies, 35)

September 24, 2008

"JaMarcus Russell will never be a good quarterback until he learns to set his feet in the pocket," MH said.

"Bah," I said, "you're just one of those old-school racists who think that black people shouldn't be quarterbacks or head coaches."

"While that may be true, that doesn't change the fact that JaMarcus Russell needs a ton of work on his mechanics."

September 15, 2008

Here are some questions to consider:

• Can games be art?
• What are the criteria to consider when deciding whether a game is art?
• What are the criteria to consider when deciding whether anything is art?
• Can art have any function beyond the aesthetic?
• Can anything that has a purpose beyond the aesthetic be considered art?

Some things to consider in this context:

• Music is probably the most abstract of all the arts, and the purest music has no true function beyond aestheticism.
• Does anyone consider design to be a subset of art? When anyone considers a work of art, does anyone talk about its being well designed?
• Aestheticism and entertainment are probably not incompatible. But what does this mean with regard to games?

Greg Costikyan, designer of such critically acclaimed games as Toon and Paranoia, said that many video-game designers consider the medium they work in to be inferior to movies and that many scriptwriters consider that medium to be inferior to novels. Costikyan argues that such a hierarchal view of media is balderdash, that each medium needs to be considered in and of itself and not in relation to other media. Critics often cite the cinematic quality of Grand Theft Auto IV when discussing what makes it a masterpiece; that suggests the subordination that Costikyan discusses. Of course, if cinematic quality is what makes GTAIV so good, then why is Tetris a masterpiece? Or other abstract games that are divorced from any sort of narrative, such as Modern Art or (perhaps most famously) go?

A medium needs to be viewed on its own terms first and foremost; that's why you have to examine generic books, films, etc. in terms of genre before you can examine it in terms of the medium as a whole. But how can you examine works across media? How can you compare Pulp Fiction to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9?

September 13, 2008

I made a life doing the things I love, but God knows I haven't made a living doing so.

September 12, 2008

I had a huge crush on a super-Christian girl when I was younger. In the tenth grade, she asked me whether I would go with her if she asked me to go somewhere with her. "Is she asking me out on a date?" I wondered. I asked her where.

"A comedy show," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll go."

The "comedian" in question turned out to be a traveling evangelist, and the "comedy show" was a sermon at Lakewood Church, the largest megachurch in the United States. During his sermon, the evangelist said that when he hit rock bottom, God physically took him up to heaven. He described it in rather trite details (beauty, light from all directions, an absence of shadows) and one surprising one ("not very many Asians in heaven--Asian children, but not very many Asian adults"). I gripped my seat in anger, my knuckles turning white, but later on when everyone in the audience had to go up to the stage and pray, I found myself immersed in a strange group consciousness, surrounded by people begging for forgiveness and wishing to be better people. A little unsettling.

That Christmas, she gave me a present: a pamphlet entitled "A Letter to a Friend." It began, "Dear ________," (she didn't bother to write my name on the blank) and it went on to describe a world in which millions of people just vanished from the face of the earth without a trace. Cars speeding down the road suddenly without drivers, etc. Apparently, the Rapture had happened, and all of us unsaved ones were left on earth wondering what the hell we're supposed to do. But on the last page, there was a twist ending; it said that God instructed her to give me the letter early so that I can change my ways and be one of the ones that disappear when the Rapture happens as opposed to one of the ones who are left on stupid earth fighting off hyenas and eating food out of trash cans. On the back cover there was a sticker indicating that the pamphlet cost four dollars.

She ended up developing back problems and we drifted apart. I moved to Austin after high school and I never saw her again. Last I heard, she was attending community college when God told her to drop out of school and start a family. So she did. At age 23, a former classmate told me, she had four children. Too bad she wasn't there at our high-school reunion; as is typical of these things (at least where I come from), one of the awards given was "Most Children." The lucky woman who won had four. I'm sure my old crush would have had that woman beaten hands down. It wouldn't have been close.

September 10, 2008

"Do human beings with more than one X chromosome prefer to be called 'skeezers' or 'chickenheads'?"

September 09, 2008

"You're from Texas?! I never would've guessed!"

"Is it my cool demeanor? Or is it my slanty eyes?"

September 05, 2008

"Jesus," NL said, "this car is taking forever." We were stuck behind a Buick in the left-turn lane at an unprotected light.

"Maybe the dude driving is a dwarf," I said.

"What, you mean like he has to make sure that the road is completely clear so that he can jump down onto the gas to make the car go? And that he's so small that he can't see over the dashboard when he's stepping down on the gas"

"Yeah."

"I would wonder why he doesn't have special modifications that allow him to drive normally," NL said.

"I would wonder why the dwarf is free and not locked up in a cage somewhere," Tony said.

August 24, 2008

"Everyone here in Israel thinks I'm a Thai prostitute," said CT. "And this cabdriver tonight insisted that I smoke a cigarette even though I insisted that I don't smoke."

"Did you smoke it?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I think he wanted to complete the image of me as a Thai prostitute. Then he began stroking my hair."

"What? Why did he stroke your hair?"

"Because he's a fucking pervert."

"Wait," I said, "you like me, even though I'm clearly a pervert and a sexual deviant."

"That doesn't mean that I like it when cabdrivers stroke me hair."

"I see. I think I'm beginning to put it all together. So as long as I'm not a cabdriver, I can stroke your hair all I want."

*
"Wait, why did you smoke the cigarette? And why did you let him stroke your hair?"

"I don't know. I was drunk. As soon as I realized what was happening, I told him to pull over and let me out and to never talk to me again."

"Wait--what? He's a cabdriver. When were you going to talk to him again
anyway?"

"It was what made sense at the time. Why are you asking for logic? Does this story sound even remotely logical to you?"

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