happy birthday me.

I'm done. Only 49 hours late. Damn, i couldn't even make the self-imposed two day late deadline. Why do I think this will magically correct itself once I go pro? Because...

"Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M get the money, dolla dolla bill y'all....."

Comic genius Chris Farley reincarnated in a young Korean girl.

This is a masterpiece.

Ondal, India
Teoma will surpass Google as the search engine of choice. You heard it hear first.

Blog Links

--Interesting article in Wired Magazine about blogging. You too can turn a profit. By Andrew Sullivan.
--Former MTV VJ Adam Curry's blog. He got fat. Damn, that takes me back to 1989, back when we used to walk to sook kyung imo's house after school and watch Back to the Future until it was time to go to Tae Kwon Do. Damn they had a lot of movies.
--Just in case you get into a tight jam, here's a diagnostic tool at CurlyFries.com. I will never, ever, need to use this.
--Blog search engine: blogdex

Damn
So it's 5 a.m. There is some curly haired guy crashed on our couch and he stinks of BO. It was worse before but that shit still lingers. My roommate ate all my damn chinese food and all I got are these damn Drake's Pecan Spins. 99 cent special. I bought Mountain Dew Code Red because I wanted to spice up my life a little bit but now I'm just gonna get cancer. My story needs 1000 more words and I have seven hours to do it. Actually, I have -41 hours to do it since it was due on Wednesday but I'm going to use the old amnesia excuse. I feel bad because everyone knows Prof Blum is a pushover, him being a first year professor and all (and esp since he's a writer not an editor, magazine at that), and I am the worst offender. Still, I was given the Greatest Story Idea award during class, too bad I ditched that day. I have to clean my room. I have five days to finish the Korean kyopo murder story from start to finish, we were given two months.

I love New York. Now more than ever.

Drumroll please. .........[slowly builds up].............[louder]..................bah!


Photo courtesy of Susan Kim.

the spot's gettin' hot...it might be time to switch to Harriet Tubman mode...

X - Rearrange the whole game with my rugged sound
X - Won't even say your own name when I come around
X - Stay on top but remain from the underground

So I'm sniffing out this story. Damn, it smells good. Another murder story involving Korean kyopos...it's very complicated.

We had to write a trend story for my Cultural Affairs class. Since I didn't think of a topic until the last minute, the only trend I could think of was blogging. So, I tried to twist it to have an arts angle and this is what came out. Not my best work, but considering I came up with the topic less than 12 hours before deadline and wrote it in about 6 hours, it's not that bad. But it lacks original quotes and is basically a piece of shit. But it has potential. I might fix it and pitch it somewhere, then again, I might not. Whatever.

-------

Britney Spears was drenched in urine. She had been shooting a video near a Los Angeles apartment complex late one night last month when enraged neighbors finally decided they had had enough with her late night crooning and threw a bucketful of their own version of non-carbonated Mountain Dew at the pop princess. Needless to say, Britney didn't come out smelling like roses. Bad jokes aside, the bad joke played on Britney Spears went totally overlooked by mainstream publications. Pop-obsessed fans got their information from a different source, from something called a "blog."

"Fed-up and sleepless, some residents took it on themselves to shower buckets of urine on her hot bod. Their apparent goal was to clue Britney in to the quality of life for me, thereby causing her to lose all hope and ambition," writes 'Plaid' co-operator of a web site called "BlogHop," in a March 12 entry titled "Britney's Golden Showers.' "Well it worked... the teen queen, movie star, and Bob Dole temptress fled the field, giving the residents some peace and quiet. Filming apparently did not resume that morning. The young pop diva was unavailable for comment about what she now understands my life to be."

Ask a random person on the street if they know what "blogging" is and chances are they will either give you a blank look or punch you in your stupid question-asking face. But although blogging may sound like something a winter Olympian might passionately pursue, it's actually a red-hot craze that's changing the way people get their news and swap ideas or opinions. And for Britney Spears, it may change how some of her adoring fans see her.

Blogs, short for web logs, are a cross between online diaries and independent news services. Led by industry leader (yes, it's an industry) blogger.com, anyone with the ability to use a mouse and stare listlessly at a computer screen will be able to sign up for a free account and within minutes be publishing anything his or her heart desires, with the whole world watching. Well, maybe not the whole world, at least not at first, but so goes the nature of grassroots internet publishing, which falls under what net heads like to refer to as "peer-to-peer" applications, where people share information one person at a time. Sort of like a phone call. But similar to party lines and conference calls, blogs can work the same way. The content of blogs runs the gamut, ranging from emotional and highly personal diary entries to film reviews and Hollywood rumors and gossip to insightful political commentary from the nation's top pundits. Washington Post and New York Times columnist Andrew Sullivan's blog, andrewsullivan.com, draws tens of thousands of devout readers daily. Some blogs, like BlogHop, specialize in providing hundreds of links to other blogs relating to pop culture.

The beauty of the system lies in its limitless connectivity. For example, let's say you love Britney Spears and decide to devote an entire blog to worshipping her and each one of her fabulous hip-hugging outfits. Someone in Brazil can go on any search engine, let's say google.com, and type in "spears hip-hugging outfits." Your site pops up and in a few seconds they are reading your intelligent analysis of the singer's inspirational booty-shaking. Except that you don't say it crudely like that but with a style and grace unique to you. Brazilian Bob reads it and likes what he sees, so he puts up a link to your site on his own Britney-loving blog. Pretty soon, you have a loyal following of readers from Brazil, Australia, and Portugal (yes, even Portugal!), all very eager to read your daily interpretation of the Blonde One. Sometimes they disagree with you ("they're real!"), and they let you know in a little section on your blog designated for comments. Arguments ensue, and the Aussies decide to hack into your site and replace all the sexy pictures with black-and-white photos of Gertrude Stein and her sporty Julius Caesar hairdo. It could happen, hypothetically.

But in reality, you don't need computer hacking skills to become a blogger. This is one of the main appeals of this new medium: anyone can do it. Back in the pre-blog days, guerilla writers and artists often resorted to making photocopied "zines" of their personal work. These projects required a substantial commitment and the fruits of their labors often went unharvested, exposure is often minimal in such ventures. In the mid 90s, electronic zines began surfacing but only those with a mastery of internet programming languages like Java and HTML could participate. In 1998, a handful of web journal sites began cropping up, homemade programs intended to allow people to add little comments to the linked stuff they found online. The programs soon spread and in 1999 in the thick of the dot-com boom, a company called Pitas offered the first free build-your-own-weblog tool. Blogger.com came into the picture not long after and while Pitas was easy to use in comparison to the proto-weblog programs, Blogger was child's play and soon became the industry standard.

"By searching out articles from lesser-known sources, and by providing additional facts, alternative views, and thoughtful commentary, weblog editors participate in the dissemination and interpretation of the news that is fed to us every day," says Rebecca Blood, author of The Weblog Handbook, in her widely-known history of blogging.

People accustomed to following Roger Ebert's reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times or on his TV show will begin to question his ideas with their own, finely-honed personal opinions. While it may take some time the majority of blogs are from young people, the computer generation. But soon it will become mainstream, or rather, there is a possibility there will be no mainstream. Tastes will diversify and genres in film, music, television, and theater will be divided into subgenres and so on at an exponential rate.

But there are problems. Free online journal hosting sites like Blogger face profitability issues, particularly in the wake of the dot-com bust and have been experimenting with upgraded versions for a small fee, which may turn some bloggers away. In addition, corporate advertisers will not release their grip on public opinion. Still it is a fairly safe bet to say that the beginning of a Cultural Revolution looms in the distance.[None of this shit makes sense. I line edited this shit during class and made it sound better, but since i didn't put any of the corrections into the word file, it's shite. I'll fix it later. Ed. ]

At popdirt.com, a blog specializing in celebrity gossip, readers are arguing over the validity of the urine attack on Britney which the site also reported and included two blurry photos lifted from a Swedish tabloid. The first picture showed an unidentifiable liquid cascading down on her, the second showed the pop star moments later, looking rather unsexy, walking gingerly in an undetermined direction.

One irate reader posted a comment in reaction to the story.

"That is not piss being trhown (sic) at Britney! In her US video for 'Overprotected' she gets stuck in a rain shower. The picture is that scene." argues Linda Lou. "Morons!"

Two hours later, a comment was left by "Brentwood_Babe" who challenged Lou with, "Then why did she run for cover into her trailer???" Lou did not leave a rebuttal.

It was not completely clear whether Lou was a Britney Spears fan or simply a truth crusader. In the photos, Britney is indeed wet but results are inconclusive. In a perfect world, photos would be scratch-and-sniff. The only other news sources besides Hollywood gossip sites (professional sites not blogs, by the way) to report on the pee incident was Sky News, a Rupert Murdoch-backed news organization in the UK whose credibility is a far cry from The Washington Post. So who do you believe? The bitter blogger, sneering at Britney's misfortune with smug contempt? The conscientious objector? Sky News? Not bloody likely. Then again�
Blogging expert Rebecca Blood's echoes in your mind.

"Their sarcasm and fearless commentary reminds us to question the vested interests of our sources of information and the expertise of individual reporters as they file news stories about subjects they may not fully understand."

Question everything and blog on.

-30-

Peter is on vacation. He will be back later this week.

The Bitch

Damn that bitch was a bitch. I hated her from the moment I laid eyes on her. One of those judgmental fuck-off types that really doesn't have the clout to be acting that way. There we were, chillin at Forte in K-town, me and my brother. He just wanted to hit it, I just wanted to sock her nose.

I hate her type and everything she stands for. One of those non-Korean speaking korean bitches who gets on your nerves with her fucking career and her fucking Fendi bag. Back in the day, I woulda told her straight up to fuck off but that's just not my style no mo. so I played it cool and subtly told her to suck it. Of course, being the dummy that she was, didn't get it and now continues to live in oblivion. me and my brother discussed his game with her and i warned him to be wary, she was a definite My Lalh, or a girl that will make your life a living hell.

In other news, went to Jersey, ate a nice filet mignon. It was good to have a nice dinner for once. Shit, it's crazy to hang out with my cousins and their married asses and their kids and their minivans and shit. But it was fun. They are all so fucking smart and witty and just good people...Including me and my brother and my two cousins and their husbands, there were four B.A.'s, two B.S.'s, two J.D.'s, one P.H.D., one P.H.D. candidate, and four M.A.'s if you count my graduate degree which I'll be getting in a month. I had the bright idea of gettin my niece and nephew presents, julia loved the piyo piyo stuffed animal and little nick showed his appreciation for the pillow thing we got him by throwing a french fry at me and screaming...it was great.



In still other news, I feel like eating some cholymelon. Dont' ask me why. peace.

Hot Damn

So there I was, innocently standing in my bathroom completely naked, plucking nipple hairs. Three hours later, I feel like a shower so I pull back the curtain and what do I see? Another giant cockroach. I was not so shocked this time. Just a simple look of disgust passed across my face. Fuckin cockroach, I muttered. I walked to the living room and grabbed the raid. Sprayed the little dummy.He refused to die. I walked back to the kitchen, my buttocks trembling ever so slightly, and grabbed two plastic cups. I trapped the cock(roach) in between the cups and walked over to my window. I looked down and a fat lady was smoking a cigarette on our stoop. I threw the bug at her and it just missed her giant target of a body. The damn cockroach was still alive and quickly ran under a car. The fat lady listlessly watched it scurry away.

Shit, it's too damn hot here.

The Dummy

Tiger Woods is about to win the Masters for the third time. Damn, why did I bet on Mickelson...stupid left-handed dummy. Okay, the second half of interviews was pretty lame. Detroit Free Press cancelled, there was some kind of emergency there, I think it had something to do with Axel Foley, he always seems to be getting into trouble.

I interviewed with Rodale and it was a nightmare from start to finish. First of all, it was the human resources coordinator. Some stupid public relations reject that you can't talk shop with...Second of all, she was the type of woman who plays favorites to her fellow female. And I am perfectly all right with this, it happens enough the other way around so why not. Every chick I talked to that talked to this lady said she was cool and that they "bonded" or some shit. I, on the other hand, fucked up all over the place and she wasn't helping. She asked me if I was familar with their magazines and I said that i didn't read Organic Style cuz I wasn't into gardening. She returned with a kind but slightly patronizing rejoinder, "well organic style is not about gardening, it's more about blah blah blah." Like I gave a shit. but it was embarrassing nonetheless. she freakin kept asking me if I had any questions. Of course this is normal but the first time she asked I asked like 5 questions and then 5 minutes later she asked if I had any more questions and I said no. Then 2 minutes later she asked if I had any questions again and I was like, "What's the nightlife in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania? Shit's poppin, huh?" And she was like, Well, it's fun, but not as good as New York City." Thanks for the news flash, dummy.Then 1 minute later she asked if I had any more questions and I was like, No, damn you! And then I got the fuck outtta there.

Went home, kicked it, felt like sleeping but I couldn't. Went to Brooklyn, met up with G-13 Classified, ate, talked, I spent a grip as usual. I told her why I was bringing back the word dummy: I saw this black kid about 17 years old with his little brother about 13, who looked slightly retarded. They had just come back from the market and the retarded kid was laggin. His older brother stopped, looked back and yelled, "Hurry up dummy!" And the retarded kid slowly walked up, he looked scared. Then the older brother shoved the plastic shopping bags at him and yelled, "Take this." The retarded kid wouldnt' take it, just sat there looking scared. "Take it!" He finally did and they walked around the corner, out of sight.

It was an interesting scene. It's not like the older brother was being cruel or anything, the impression that I got was one of frustration. The retarded younger brother was a constant source of shame and a burden on the older brother. And the kid wasn't fully retarded so it wasn't like he was like a baby who needed complete supervision, just a lot. Hence the dummy. It was a scene of a guy who had run out of patience. He loved his brother but was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. At least that was my interpretation.

I'm tired.

Alright. Round 1 is over. I have three hours to kill until my last interview. The morning started with the Wall Street Journal. That went pretty good, I must say. Damn, I was kinda sweaty when I sat down and had to wipe my brow a few times during the interview. Whatever. It was kind of humid in the lecture hall so everyone was kinda sweaty. We went through the basic interview questions, yada yada, and he was pretty impressed with my experience at Wired, especially the part when I told him about coming into work at 7 every morning to write the business briefs. In fact, I think he became aroused. Sexually. And then he loved my story idea about the poker cheaters and he got another boner until I stupidly told him that Rolling Stone rejected it and so he lost it.

I was surprised that he asked me about my extracurriculars, shit about my drama experience and comedy troupe stuff. He asked me the improv process and shit which totally caught me off guard. I mentioned Whose Line is it Anyway like a fucking dummy. And he also asked me about my tutoring and mentoring shit. So I appeased him with a touching story about how I took those cambodian kids under my wing and showed them what geometry was all about. I did my Sean Connery voice and said, "You the man now, dogg!" Bah. But when he started asking me more questions, I kind of blanked out and all I could doo was stare at this little bead of sweat that trickled down from the right side of his forehead to about the level of his nose and just stopped. I was watching it slowly evaporate and I about that one scene in Total Recall when Arnold sees the bead of sweat on that guy and shoots him in the brain. When he said $30,000 I snapped out of it. That's a pretty good salary for entry-level journalism. And also the fact that he mentioned figures was a definite good sign. I talked to some of my friends who interviewed with them later and he didn't mention that shit to them. Anyway, that went well.

People, on the other hand, can lick deez nuts. First of all, I didn't even want to interview with them. I said fuck it and didn't think up story ideas. But right when I sat down, the stupid lady gave me a 10 minute speech about how great it was to have newspaper experience (and how I didnt' have enough). Then she told me to basically fuck off. The nerve of those People. So I punched her in the face (in my mind) and got outta there.

Hey, I just realized that my beard looks fucked up. Damn, I cut too much on one side, I look like a dummy. bah. anyway, all I got left is Rodale and I will tell them I want to write stories for Men's Health, starting with my male breast reduction story. Damn, you should hear the fucked up stories they talk about on this mailing list I got on. Dudes talking about going to Sears and hitting up the women's lingerie department to get custom-fitted for bras and shit, getting orgasms off rubbing their womanly breasts, being discriminated in the army for having man boobs, horror stories about their breasts flopping up and down during gym class, it's awful. I feel really sorry for these freaks. One guy even has a karyotype of 47, XXY, and says he is not 100 percent male and not female, but member of a 3rd gender, which is called "intersex." Crazy.

Took a run. Feel good. Feel motivated now. One would say that by running, I perhaps "jogged" my memory, hmmm?



Ok, fine. I hate all of you. But what sucks is now I realize I have so much to do and so little time. First and foremost, I have to prepare for the J-school job fair on saturday. My scheduled interviews are with the Wall Street Journal web site, the Detroit Free Press, Rodale publishing, and People. Entertainment Weekly was noticeably absent from the list I was given but I guess the administration figured since I already worked for them I didn't need another interview.

fuck People, by the way. We're supposed to come prepared for the People interview with knowledge of the magazine and a few story ideas. I'm gonna tell them that they took my only idea when they put a fat headline on the cover of an issue last year announcing "CURVES ARE BACK!" Yeah, I talk big now but i bet when I get in the interview i'm gonna go on and on about why Brad Pitt is, indeed, the Sexist Man Alive. I'll kill you People!

DFP sounds alright, too bad it's in Detroit. I still have beef with Eminem. Rodale sounds ok, they put out a bunch of mostly fitness-related titles including Runner's World, Bicycling, Men's Health, Prevention and OG, not a hip hop mag, mind you, but still the dopest gardening publication representing the 610. bah.



They got mad organic style. (Coincidentally, Organic Style is another magazine published by Rodale). I wouldn't mind working for Men's Health, though. I've been meaning to work on my six-pack.


---


At this point I was going to talk about what's happening with ondal's love life but I have decided to discontinue this section after one reader pointed out that certain people might read certain blogs and become shocked, as well as amazed. I will continue to comment on the general female populace but will no longer talk about this particular person. peace.

Here are the answers to the cultural literacy test. I got 25/115. There were about 15 that I knew but drew a blank. Most people got less than me. My friend Rob got a 50 and he got a bunch of hard ones. Prof. Garland said that foreign students always score higher on the test, and basically told us that Americans are uncultured idiots. Ah yes.

I have an assignment: Come up with 15 of my own, creations from the last 100 years. The ones I have so far: Rapper's Delight, ArpaNet, The Godfather, Brave New World, and 1984.

I was sitting at my computer smoking and I put my cigarette in my glass ashtray to type something. In midsentence, I hear the sound of something hitting glass. I look down, and my ashtray has neatly split into two. That's odd.

In other news, I jacked two dexedrine from bill's stash. But damn, I forgot to close his door. When he came home later, i asked him if he preferred coke or pepsi cuz i had jacked all his pepsi the night before. He looked mad when he came out his room and said "it doesn't make a difference." Hmm, does he know? And should I jack more tomorrow? The answer is invariably yes. Anyway, I felt bad about it so I went out and bought us lightbulbs and a new Brita filter. That shit ain't cheap. Damn gillette sensor excel refills aren't cheap either. Neither are sonicare replacement brushes. My rite aid grand total was 70 bucks. Deezam, I could've drank 7 martinis with that money.

We were given back the results to the "cultural literacy test" in my Cultural Affairs class. See how you do. Click here for the answers and to see how well I did.

************************************
Who wrote, painted, composed, or otherwise created or devised the following?

1. The Republic
2. The Iliad
3. Measure for Measure
4. War and Peace
5. Ulysses (novel)
6. Under Milk Wood
7. The Waste Land
8. A Hard Day's Night
9. A Doll's House
10. Kubla Khan
11. Miss Lonelyhearts
12. The aeneid
13. Catcher in the Rye
14. Lord of the Rings
15. Citizen Kane
16. The Brothers Karamazov
17. Eroica Symphony
18. The Magic Flute
19. La Traviata
20. La Dolce Vita
21. The Night of the Iguana
22. The Return of the Native
23. The Decline of the West
24. The Great Gatsby
25. The Magic Mountain
26. Pride and Prejudice
27. La Mer
28. The Sound and the Fury
29. The Sun Also Rises
30. Sister Carrie
31. The Cherry Orchard
32. Candide
33. The Scarlet Letter
34. Wuthering Heights
35. The Mikado
36. Bartleby, the Scrivener
37. Winesburg, Ohio
38. Leaves of Grass
39. On the Origin of Species
40. Bleak House
41. Of Human Bondage
42. The Turn of the Screw
43. The Stranger
44. To His Coy Mistress
45. Through the Looking Glass
46. Don Quixote
47. Madame Bovary
48. Mona Lisa
49. Guernica
50. Birth of a Nation
51. Mein Kampf
52. U.S.A.
53. Ten Little Indians
54. La Belle Dame sans Merci
55. Catch-22
56. Tom Jones
57. Richard III
58. Lysistrata
59. The Emperor Jones
60. Walden
61. The Model T
62. The Interpretation of Dreams
63. The Education of Henry Adams
64. Die Mestersinger
65. Sonnets from the Portuguese
66. Faust
67. The Gettysburg Address
68. The Faerie Queene
69. Das Kapital
70. The steam engine
71. Swan Lake
72. The Metamorphosis
73. First Epistle to Corinthians
74. Symphonie Fantastique
75. Swann's Way
76. The Shame of the Cities
77. Essay Concerning Human Understanding
78. Germinal
79. The 95 Theses
80. Black Boy
81. The Trout Quintet
82. Nichomachean Ethics
83. The City of God
84. Le Sacre du Printemps
85. Discourse on Method
86. Death in the Afternoon
87. Time Magazine
88. The cotton gin
89. Pygmalion
90. Sons and Lovers
91. Point Counter Point
92. Coming of Age in Samoa
93. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy
94. The Grapes of Wrath
95. The Sermon on the Mount
96. Ivanhoe
97. The Jungle
98. Jane Eyre
99. The Wealth of Nations
100. Fidelio
101. Tao te ching
102. Invisible Man
103. Silent Spring
104. Falling Water
105. The Good Earth
106. One Hundred Years of Solitude
107. The Fire Next Time
108. The Feminine Mystique
109. Rhapsody in Blue
110. Scrapple from the Apple
111. Rashomon
112. Sophisticated Lady
113. Bachianas Brasileiras
114. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
115. A Raisin in the Sun

It's raining and muggy. I'm sweaty. It's the kind of weather when you don't mind when it rains. But I was wearing those pants again, the ones that always drag on the ground. By the time I got to West Broadway, they were soaked up to my calf. Especially the right pant leg. Why does that leg of whatever pair of pants i have always get worn out quicker than the left? I don't walk with a limp, maybe one leg is shorter than the other.

I had just finished having a late supper with some friends, mostly people who know Teri. Karen was in town for the week and she was leaving for Ireland tomorrow. She's an irish lass, her family is from there. She 100 percent cali, though. She went to Carondelet, the catholic girls school opposite De La Salle. There were others. Some guy named Doug that reminded me of that Dell guy. Apparently he had hooked up with Karen when she visited NYC in Sept. Teri told me during a smoke break that he said "Nice to meet you" when the evening began. He has a girlfriend now. I immediately hated him.

We had Thai food. Not authentic Thai, it was shi-shi Thai at Kin Khao on Spring St. and Thompson. I hate SoHo cuz it's so damn far. And so damn gay. Let's see, i had 3 guys check me out on the 4 block walk to the restaurant. But no, really, i'm flattered. Next time I'm gonna make eye contact, stop, and slowly nod my head up and down which I will end by saying in my deepest baritone, "Oh yeah." Then calmly walk away. Hmm, does that count as a gay fantasy? Bah.

Damn, it's hot. And muggy. Spring has begun.