December 2011
1 post
August 2011
1 post
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All right, already...
I found myself in an absurdly long-winded, pedantic debate via exchange of emails over the course of a week or so with a favorite English professor (and personal friend & mentor of sorts) of mine over the use of ‘alright’ vs. ‘all right.’ I wrote a letter to him in which I used my preferred ‘alright’ variation, resulting in the response: “It’s...
July 2011
3 posts
“Into Vapour” (2011) An...
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Perpetuating Stereotypes in Fighting Games.
A classic geography lesson provided by Street Fighter II; likely where most American kids in the ’90s learned where other countries were. As with most middle class kids growing up in America in the ’90s, I was raised on videogames. Atari, Coleco, Nintendo, Sega, Sony PlayStation…these were staples of my childhood as important as many albums, movies and books were. Fighting...
June 2011
2 posts
I record several gigabytes of music each year, but...
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My new (old) netbook and overview of Jolicloud.
Acer Aspire One model 751h with 11.6” widescreen (1366x768 resolution), Intel Atom 1.33GHz processor, 1GB memory (expandable), and 160GB hard drive.
A friend of mine owned this netbook and through careless downloading had infected it with so many viruses that it was rendered unusable. I tried reinstalling the stock Windows XP operating system from the restore partition; this failed...
May 2011
4 posts
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mayannee asked: What was the strangest thing you had in YOUR bag today? haha... (spreading this question around tumblr like nobody's business)
April 2011
8 posts
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The Other Side Of Paradise
I took this photograph at Crane Park in the Kaimuki-Kapahulu district where I grew up. The conditions here have greatly worsened since I was a child (thanks largely to errors of the previous administration) - the facilities are unkempt and in decay and the amount of people setting up residence here has increased tenfold. Poverty and homelessness are still largely ignored problems in this...
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On the unknown whereabouts of a childhood journal.
A friend and I were recently having a conversation about keeping diaries/journals and he asked me whether I’d be more unsettled by my stories and unfinished ideas or my personal entries in the hands of a stranger. I didn’t have to think at all about an answer – when I was thirteen, I moved and misplaced one of the earliest journals I kept. It was a plain wide-ruled Mead composition...
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An old entry from my ongoing dream journal...
“The bird turns to me, barely a silhouette. Its eyes are the only thing I can see. Bright red eyes, so intense, seemingly on fire. ‘It was dark. You were cold,’ it says to me. I shiver. It does this dainty shuffle and asks if I want to chug a forty-ounce and smoke some PCP. I decline, and it spontaneously combusts. Its ashes blow in my face. I am alone now.”
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My favorite albums, part three.
Nirvana – Nevermind [1991]
(in honor of the 17th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death)
As I stated in my previous installment in this series, My Bloody Valentine was one of the first bands to inspire me to be creative with making music – they appealed to me primarily on an intellectual, artistic level. The band that got me into making music in the first place was Nirvana (and, more ...
March 2011
2 posts
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Proust Questionnaire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proust_Questionnaire
Your favorite virtue Not necessarily the ability but the desire to maintain a positive outlook in the face of adversity and to carry on after experiencing profound pain and loss.
Your favorite qualities in a man Introversion, humility (to the point of self-deprecation), old fashioned chivalry with a twist of bad assery, a good balance of...
February 2011
2 posts
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My favorite albums, part two.
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless [1991]
There was a clear demarcation point in my maturity as a musician and music listener where I suddenly became very aware of the individual parts that made up a piece of music and how they were put together. I studied how sounds were created and captured, how songs were crafted, and generally how everything on a track ‘worked’. My ears grew...
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My favorite albums, part one.
I decided to pick the ten (or fifteen or twenty if I wasn’t able to pare it down to only ten) most cherished & influential albums in my life and describe their impact on me personally and musically as well as write about specific memories I associate with them. I sat down and began writing about my first choice when I realised that this is not something I’d be able to do in...
March 2010
2 posts
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War On Warmth
See Something? SAY SOMETHING! When it comes to safety, we can always use an extra pair of eyes. Look Around. BE AWARE.
If something doesn’t look right, let us know.
(found poetry, banner on the #3 bus to town)
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Thirst capsule review.
Thirst is entertaining and well-executed, but nowhere near the level of quality I’ve come to expect from Park Chan-Wook. Many scenes felt very contrived either in their challenging of traditional Korean values or their attempts to be metaphoric. These fail because they’re excessive and add nothing of importance to the film (the sex scenes) or they confuse the audience and muddle...
February 2010
3 posts
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The Catcher In The Rye capsule review.
I don’t think I’ve ever had such radically mixed feelings about a book. While I enjoyed Salinger’s writing style in The Catcher In The Rye, the narrator annoyed me so much at points that I began feeling detached from his experiences and unable to emotionally connect with much of what I felt I should’ve. I chalk a lot of that up to my reading this now in my mid-twenties...
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Fires On The Plain (野火) capsule review.
It’s a pretty good meditation on the traumatic effects war has on the human psyche (and more specifically, the psyche of a sensitive Japanese man from the mid-20th century - a cultural paradox in itself), but the narrative starts to get redundant about halfway through, and practically of the ancillary characters feel interchangeable (though you could argue this is commentary on how war...
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Ham On Rye capsule review.
It’s a quintessential 20th century American novel. You don’t have to like the narrator - in fact, you likely won’t - but that’s not the point. Henry Chinaski is one of the most finely rendered literary characters I’ve ever read, and his struggle with the conflicts in his personality and frustration with his surroundings is illustrated to great result. Ham On Rye is...
January 2010
13 posts
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A brief insight on cynicism...
Conan O’Brien’s closing speech in his final episode of the Tonight Show in which he implored his audience to “please, don’t be cynical…if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen…,” really struck a chord with me. It got me thinking about how I spent most of my life being a cynic and a pessimist, highly critical of flaws and...
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December 2009
3 posts
I know YouTube comments are just going to...
“loool hte wasnt trying to dance like axl.. or he was ?? lol kurt u suckkkk also ill compare nirvana with Guns N’ Roses!! nirvana equips less of 50k watts Guns n roses 250k of power form england. Nirvana crowd 1000-5000 people GNR 10000-60000 u cant compare =D”
- comment on a Nirvana live performance video
Favorite albums of 2009.
I’m gonna play catch-up with some stuff I didn’t get around to, but here’s a short list of my favorite albums of the last year:
Skyramps - “Days Of Thunder” Blindoldfreak - “1” Emeralds - “What Happened” Steve Hauschildt - “Critique Of The Beautiful” Olafur Arnalds - “Found Songs” Flaming Lips - “Embryonic” Mount Eerie - “White Stag” Magnolia Electric Co. - “Josephine” Neko Case...
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September 2009
4 posts
The dumpling is it.
There is something make you smile. The dumpling is it. There is something make you feel happy. The dumpling is it. There is something make you satisfy. The dumpling is it. There is something make you get off. The dumpling is it. There is something make you feel “Ooops, I crap my pants!”. The dumpling is it.
- from Nobu K.’s Yelp review of Kingdom Of Dumpling in San Francisco.
I was so horrified/amused by this when it popped up on my Amazon front page that I had to submit a review for it. I’m not sure it will get through whoever siphons through those things and decides what gets posted and what doesn’t (what a lousy job that must be, reading Amazon review submissions all day), so I’ll just post it here.
“This lobster costume is so realistic it...
Back on Yelp with a vengeance.
I’ve been Yelping again recently, but instead of just plainly speaking about whatever place I’m reviewing, I decided to use it as prompt to create different characters and speak through their voices. It’s my outlet of choice for doing social commentary right now. At the moment it’s mostly satirical, but I plan on expanding it to include different perspectives of Honolulu...
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“The trouble is we have been separated by being born and given a name and an...”
– George Carlin
August 2009
1 post
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July 2009
2 posts
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