eminem is still an annoying ass

but he’s finally produced a work i can genuinely respect, as opposed to reluctantly just acknowledge as demonstrating talent, while not liking the actual end-product. Check out the video, read the damn good disseration written by a dailykos contributor, and vote to see it on TRL on MTV. yeah, i know, mtv. heh.

i’m done

eta: after re-reading this post, i think it’s unfair of me to classify the second person as a part-time asshole. i think that just because we don’t mesh well doesn’t mean that this person is a jerk, so i wanted to clarify that.

there is a web forum that i visit on a daily basis that used to be an enjoyable community, but i’m through with it because it doesn’t have anything for me anymore.

it used to have lots of interesting political discourse, but some of the main contributors have left for various reasons. it used to have quirky conversations about goofy topics, but it’s dwindled quite a bit. it used to have one less asshole, but now the new asshole is pretty vocal.

now, they are joking about how seppo’s coworker must be good at giving head. yes, it does seem like she doesn’t qualify for the obvious requirements. but no, it’s no excuse to malign the professional and sexual life of someone on a public forum. and either everyone thinks it’s ok to trash someone’s reputation without their knowledge or ability to defend themselves, or others are too disgusted to comment. either way, it’s not who i want to hang out with. what if, without my knowledge, someone was saying the same about me? how dare they?

eta: i am linking seppo’s post about the job situation here. for the record, i believe seppo expressed himself entirely appropriately and explained why he was frustrated with the situation and the person in question, and that it’s the aforementioned asshole (and one other part-time asshole one other person that often rubs me the wrong way in his ideologies) that jump on just about any situation to perpetually propagate this particular type of misogynistic bs.

change

i just donated $100 at www.johnkerry.com. please, please, america, don’t let me down.

clickety clack of keys

http://www.dailykos.com/user/katerina – this is a great “diary” on the dailykos site. the user lists a bunch of articles and pics from the presidential race that appear on yahoo and encourages you to rate them. the reason is that the most highly rated articles become highly visible on the website. it is a useful tool to bring to attention positive articles for Kerry. her links are clearly labelled as automatically giving bush-favorable articles the lowest rating, so don’t click them if you want to read the articles first, but go to the website then find the articles. i feel no personal compunctions about clicking on the auto-links for rating bush low, but that is because i feel that his (this includes the RNC) money buys so much visibility that this is ok.

http://thedailywtf.com – this website is a hysterically bad and embarrassing repository of odd code/commenting behavior that people have found in code they have seen. it’s fairly technical, but there are gems that even non-techies will appreciate.

are you kidding me

my former manager ymed me today. he was flown into town by a company where a bunch of my ex-coworkers work, which gave me a job offer before i accept my current job. he and the company’s vp of engineering were discussing a proposal to hire the VN outsource company (which is the same one that our former company had hired) for some of their work. after telling me this, my ex-manager asked me if i would have an interest in going to work for the other company as the local US contact in charge of the outsourced operations. what in the world he was smoking, i have no idea. working primarily with the outsource (and foreign office) teams severely degraded my personal and professional life. i am so happy at my current job. it would take a salary of a greater order of magnitude (i mean this in the strict mathematical sense) for me to even remotely consider to the tiniest amount working like that again, and even then i might turn it down, and would only consider it because it would mean i could retire in a few years. 😀 anyway, i explained that i like that other company (because i sincerely do, and i don’t want to burn any bridges), but that i am quite happy here and reminded him that working with non-local teams was too much for me.

it was a bizarre moment for me, as i had told him about how bad the working environment was countless times before. perhaps i was sticking too closely to my “not being negative at work” rule and painted a somewhat ambiguous picture. eh.

confessions

1. i cheated and started early on my bad novel. i meant to write out some ideas, but instead wrote prose, which is against the rules. i wrote about 2.5 pages last night. i might dump it and write up some other ideas to whittle down to by the end of this month.
   
2. i was in a one-hour meeting that i totally faked understanding. i mean, i understand the higher-level concepts, but the lower-level details were like, “Blah blah is built on blah, but don’t you think there might be an issue if we implement the blah layer on blah because of blabbitygook?”
3. my desk is a mess, but i claim to know where everything is. but i actually think i don’t know.
   

musings

november is National Novel Writing Month, and the muse calls, albeit collect. i’m vaguely thinking about doing it, but november is supposed to be an extremely busy month for my project at work. but the point is not to do it well and not to put it off for when you can do it well, but just to get it done, so perhaps this should not deter me.

the problem is, i don’t know what i know enough about off the top of my head in order not to have to thoroughly research the topic in order to write at the pace required (50,000 words — roughly 175 pages — in 30 days). i’d like to write a quirky little charming love story, because, heck, it may not be a respected genre, but i enjoy reading about people falling in love, and what better to write about than what you like to read about. yes, the previous sentence was poorly structured. i wonder if i’ll be able to make any sort of progress at all because i’ll be obsessed over proper sentence structures. i hope not. anyway, i’m not sure if i’m going to do it yet. it’ll depend on if i can come up with a decent concept by the end of the month before NaNoWriMo begins. there is, of course, the fear that i’ll work hard on it and the best i can come up with is trite, clichéd garbage. i know it’s something that chokes everyone, but i can’t pretend like it doesn’t exist.

—

the presidential race is close. i am hoping the often-touted “incumbent rule” will mean a victory for Kerry. maybe i’ll be able to drown my sorrows in writing if Bush wins this election.

—

sometimes, i think about the contrast between my mother’s life and my life, and marvel at how much easier i have it. it’s a matter of every aspect of life: my career, my relationship, my daily routine, my responsibilities. my parents’ lives were truly about working hard so that the children will have better lives, with very little opportunity to enjoy their own lives. when i hear some parents express sentiments that, to me, sound like they don’t want better for their kids (“This job was good enough for me, and it’ll damn well be good enough for you!”) than they had it, it pains me. how can you not want better for your kids? better doesn’t have to mean more money or a more prestigious career; it can mean leaving a better world for your kids, making sure that your kids don’t grow up selfish, making sure that you can be around more if possible: basically, you can take the lessons you learned in life and make sure that your kids can learn from them too. why would you want to keep them down?

this entire train of thought was originally spawned by how great i think seppo is. just on a day to day level, he’s so caring and supportive and fun and loving. there are some things that i think are minimum standards for what i want in a relationship, but for people of my mom’s generation, they are things so far beyond reach that she can’t really fathom a reality where those things are common and expected (not that they aren’t appreciated, of course). things like assuming that we’ll share household chores (in fact, seppo does more than me, so i’m putting in a lot of effort to try to balance things more), that there are no “women’s work” and “men’s work” in the house, that we pay for things together, that we are equal partners in the relationship… see? don’t they sound really basic?? so yeah, to me, they are just understood, but to my mom, having my dad even get up to pick up the remote controller that is too far away is a huge achievement (he usually calls people over from another room to pick it up for him). well, things are a bit different since my dad is living in korea with my sister, but i’m getting off topic. oh, whatever, what topic?

i sure do love that seppo. it’s been 6 years and 7 months since we first started dating, and he still drives me batty with being cute. i’m sure there are people in this world who will disagree with me, but he’s so charming and cute and funny and smart (but i’m smarter, of course). i love his smile and his laugh, and his voice is just the right tone. he cracks me up everyday. sometimes, i just wanna hug him until he pops. heh. *pop* woops. he’s talking with mobi right now. they are so funny together.

i guess all gushing must come to an end, and this is no different. ended!

booked!

i am buying some books. here they are: to sir phillip, with love by my new favorite romance novelist Julia Quinn, lonely planet paris, and lonely planet london. the other day, i cleared out barnes and noble’s inventory of Julia Quinn books. someone called her the modern Jane Austen, and while i can’t quite agree with the assessment, i can’t quite bring myself to disagree with it either. the situations the characters find themselves in are quite proper on the face of it, yet each scene is imbued with the subtle sly wit for which Jane Austen is known. the more astute reader is rewarded for paying attention because the funny lines are funnier when the subtext is understood. i’d like to flatter myself to think that i’m one of the astute readers. the other two books are to plan for our honeymoon (or some other future trip if we go elsewhere for the big HM).

politics and me

i don’t blog about politics very much, which is weird because i’m obsessed about it. i used to write more politically-oriented things in high school and college, but i think i’m tired of writing. but i am still obsessed though. in the car, we listen to 960 am, the local AirAmerica Radio affliate. at work, i read various news media and blogs and minutely scrutinize the daily polls for tracking the presidential race. i just can’t keep myself from staring at the polls and keeping my fingers crossed.

i am really looking forward to November 2nd. either that, or i’m really dreading it.

shielded

i live in a bubble. i live in a bubble where i can take in sanitized knowledge, feel anger, talk to my peers about the injustice of this war, but not have to feel the immediate pain of loss associated with this war. as i have no family in the military aside from my little cousin, who has returned after being deployed to kuwait, i can remain reasonably sure that i can continue in my bubble and not have to go through the anguish of those losing loved ones. i know people who have family there, and i live in fear on their behalf, but i know that that one degree of separation is a critical degree that allows me to stay safe in my bubble.

i was shocked to discover today the brother of someone i knew in high school was a casualty of this senseless war. i was looking around on www.moveon.org which led me to check out the ad clips on www.realvoices.org, and stumbled upon an ad that turned out to feature yet another brother of that schoolmate, which led me to some old articles, which led me to the salon article. reading the words cannot help but conjure the voice of the schoolmate i had casually known. i can hear the note of anguish in his writing, and i am so saddened by his family’s pain. at the same time, i’m inspired by the words and the conviction behind them.

—

i read my words above and they seem so hollow and devoid of meaning and relevance.