Monday, June 30, 2008

513

513...

513...

513!

I like the way it sounds. Five-thirteen. :) That's my class this year, which amazingly has NO JERKS in it (only a weirdo who was with me last year, too). Well, not any that I know of.

I've decided that this year I'm going to tutor people in English (sinse mee specks itt realli goodli, sinse I's Canadyanne and awl). This is due to my profound desire to help others and give back to society. I truly feel in debt to the school, and I would like to do anything and everything that I possibly can to help anybody struggling along; give them an extra nudge in the right direction, as well as make sure that they thoroughly enjoy their new experience as a student of the UNAM. You see, the UNAM not only offers a wonderful educative experience, it is a whole community of people- people who, I believe, should look out for each other and stand united. To be able to do this, however, we need to understand each other. We need to have complete trust in every single member of our University's society! We need solidarity!

I also need their money to buy clothes.

Oh, and if you need an inspirational paragraph, feel free to steal the one above and make the necessary modifications. I really just jotted it off in five minutes.

Hm~~~

I was watching America's Next Top Model on YouTube, and sheesh! Every single girl is convinced that they're special and there's no point in dong the whole contest because it's totally obvious that, like, they're going to win. Of course, there's two exceptions per season, but other than them, it's "me, me, me, me"

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Wish me luck!

Well, this is it. Tomorrow morning I'm going to school to see what group I'll be in next year (i.e., August).

I just hope I get one with good teachers... looking back, I think last year I had a good balance: for example, the old Geography man, who dedicated between five and fifteen minutes to us a week, paired with The Physics Teacher, who made several people cry (personally I think she's nice, just not to her students). Or our Math teacher, who was nice and enjoyed teaching, the Spanish teacher, who was good (and liked me :D)...

Anyway, I really want to get good teachers, a good schedule and classmates who aren't jerks (I'm asking for way too much, I know)

Monday, June 23, 2008

Panda~~~

I was watching television this morning (did you know that in Japanese "television" is "terebi"? As in TV), a show called "En Busca de Bichos". It's a biologist that goes around the country and picks up animals and bugs and talks about them.

Anyway, it was funny, because at one point he wanted to catch a basilisk that was lying on a tree in a swamp, and he sprang at it out of nowhere and went "Aaarghh!", falling into the swamp while the cameraman laughed. The basilisk didn't get hurt, though, because he held it above his head.

-cut to something more interesting (to me, anyway)-

I went shopping yesterday and I bought the most adorable T-shirt ever! Behold the panda face!


Isn't it CUTE? It's a PANDA!! A PANDA FACE!!! ON A T-SHIRT!!!!

Ahem.

I got other stuff, too, but nobody wants to be a camera whore (supposedly).

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Question!

(not the System Of A Down song, it's an actual question)

I was watching television yesterday with one of my sisters when she pointed out "the Chinese guy in the back".

I told her she shouldn't generalize like that- he could be Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Malaysian, Indonesian and so on for all we could tell. Wouldn't you, I said, be offended (or at least annoyed) is somebody called you Puerto Rican or something like that without thinking? (I would...)

She responded saying she wouldn't, because whatever nationality we are and whatever we look like, we are all on the same level: "It's not like I think that anybody from Puerto Rico is beneath me".

That may be true, but I still don't think that's a reason to designate people the first nationality that pops into your head when you see them.

So my question is: Who (if anyone) is right? What do you think about this?

Also, I just thought I'd mention this, I knew somebody who would go to unnecessary lengths to avoid mentioning somebody's race. Like, if there was somebody they wanted to point out, for example the only black woman in a crowd of people, instead of saying "the black woman" they'd say "the short woman in the red shirt, brown coat and black pants that's standing next to the tall man with glasses, drinking a beer" and I remember distinctly on one occasion they added "and... er, I won't say the other thing..." like it was a bad thing or something.

I mean, you can't help the color of your skin or, say, the shape of your eyes any more than you can help having big ears. And while it is not widely considered in the best of taste to refer to (address, point out...) someone by their race when you can do it by something else, I do think it's rude to avoid mentioning it at all costs, like it's some horrible disease that you generally don't want to think about.

My head hurts now :(

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

TRUE! story

Today I am going to relate to you a tale of ... of how awesome some people can be.

Once upon a time, almost two decades ago, there was a woman walking along the street. This woman in particular happened to be pregnant with a kid who was going to grow up and eventually be my sister's loving boyfriend (at the time, my sister was also a fetus), and that's why I'm telling you this. I wouldn't know this story otherwise.

So anyway, she was walking along and hailed a taxi, which promptly stopped and opened the door for her to get in. Before she could, however, a young woman zipped past her out of nowhere and into the cab, where she sat down, gave our main character a satisfied smirk, and them motioned for her boyfriend to join her in the taxi. This, of course, is something only a jerk would do.

At this point, said young woman is about to learn a very important lesson, which goes like this: never EVER do that again. Because our heroine pulled her out by the collar of her shirt, punched her in the face with such sheer force that the little creep actually fell down, and then got into the taxi, sat down, and told the driver to take her home.

The taxi driver exclaimed excitedly (and this is a direct quote): "¡A huevo, señora!" . I'm very sorry, but I can't translate that. The meaning is something along the lines of "Wow. You are a very cool woman and I admire you for what you just did. You rock!"

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

111,120 Kilometers Under the Sea

I started reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this morning and after five pages I was ready to chuck it at Jules Verne's head, due to the fact that I had to stop every 30 seconds to convert feet to meters in my head, in the part at the very beginning when it mentions a bunch of different estimates of the sea monster's length and width, and how high it can squirt water and how big all the ships are and so on.

Has anybody published a metric version of that book? Because if not, I have absolutely no intention of reading it.

I found this while searching for a metric version of the book (I didn't find any, it's probably considered butchering a classic or something). Read that, it's good. Yes, metric isn't as poetic, but don't you think "foot" is a bit of an ugly name? Or "inch". It sounds like bug, except no one ever thinks about it because they're so used to hearing it. What about "pound"? It has a nice ring to it, but overall it's kind of weird as well. Pound. Poooound. Powwwwnd.

Aside from these exceptions, especially "foot" and inch", imperial sounds nicer: ounce, mile, pint. Yard. League.

Oh, another one I don't like is "stone". It makes me think of a bunch of cavemen lugging around a great big rock.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Help, I'm dying of boredom!

Quick, call the post office and tell them to hold my mail!

No, I'm kidding (and I stole that line from Scott Adams. Go buy yourself a copy of The Joy of Work, by aforementioned Scott. Then buy another and send it to me so I can resell it on eBay)

No, what I really need is a big box (not a bag, those aren't any fun) of Belgian chocolates shaped as seashells. Honestly, I tried to think of something else I want, but I couldn't. All I feel like doing is lying on my bed with my iPod, the book I started this morning and a big box of chocolates. Maybe also somebody to feed me the chocolate, because I need one hand for holding the book open and the other one to rest my weary head on. I had the third arm surgically removed, although I've been regretting that more and more recently, especially because I spent all my money on the surgery and now I have to resell books on eBay or a living.

Oh, yeah, my sister gave me a pacifier two days ago and I'm addicted to it now.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Holiday Goals - progress report #2

Progress on goal No. 1:

"Cook food. Actual food, not just brownies and cookies and so on. I want to try making dumplings, at least, because it's been ages since I had any and they're supposed to be really easy."

I'm lazy, and my sister wrote it for me, so here. I made bentos! Whee!
So they're not dumplings, but this is much better. The first one, anyway, because the second one (with the onigiris) isn't as nice because I was sleepy and I was watching Numb3rs at the same time = bento quality decreased.

So goal No. 1, I believe, has been achieved.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Three things

...that I would like to say. Count 'em:

This week I went to Cuemanco and saw a funny animal, sort of a cross between a ferret and a fox, about 20cm long. It was a sort of reddish color, with black and white rings around its face and a tail, about 5 or 7 cm longs, with a puffy little white tip. It was also the MOST ADORABLE FURRY CREATURE I EVER SAW and I have absolutely no idea what it was.

My sister agreed to give me the most awesome cellphone charm ever in exchange for the two that I had- a Hello Kitty in a brown dress and high heels (awesomely detailed: she has roses in her hat and is holding a book with some kanji on it, has a little necklace and so on) and a Hello Kitty cross-dressing as an old man (don't ask- I don't know) for...

...Hello Kitty dressed as Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. When I first saw it, two thouhgts crossed my mind at lighting speed: the first was "WTF?" and it was instantly replaced by "Cute. Weird. Want. WANT."

Lastly, I would like to share something with you. I rarely (um, never) do things like this, but these guys deserve the honorable(ish?) mention. It's a piece of the lyrics of "I Think I Can" by The Pillows, a JRock band:

"in the black forest without
day or night
the brave chameleon was
glaring at the discarded
compass"

The Pillows are some awesome dudes who, as far as I am concerned, exist for the sole reason of making my bestest friend happy (ah, I owe her so much).

Translation by Animelyrics.com

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Rocky, Maxie & Dave

There's a Rocky movie marathon on TV right now, so I sat down and watched a few minutes of the beginning of one of them. My first (and basically only) reaction was, does Rocky always talk like that? Like, he was giving a press conference and a reporter said something like,

"There are rumors that after the fight you had some medical complications. Is this true?"

And Rocky was all, "Com-pluh-cashunnns?"

And his wife or something had to step in and go, "No." Because he couldn't speak.

Look, she's my doggie. Isn't she cute? Wook at the widdle dogsie wogsie. Who's my widdle darling poochy?

(Photo courtesy of what Dave Barry calls the CrapCam)

Speaking of Dave Barry, I watched Big Trouble before I ever read it. So when I picked up the book and failed to make a relation between it and the movie, it was freaky because I kept on feeling that I already knew the story vaguely, except that I was absolutely sure I'd never read it before. And not only that, but I kept on getting very clear mental images of a bunch of the scenes. With very real-looking people.