Ode to Saturday

It is Saturday, approaching 2PM. Which means in three hours, I will be freed. It's been a long two weeks since I got back from DC, I can't believe it has been so long! I've been recuperating, but obviously, not doing a very good job. Plunging into school the very day I got back from DC meant that I had little time for things other than the necessary. I had to schedule in my laundry to be done past 9PM because that was the only time I could fit it in. I still have work, and 6 classes, which actually keeps me running like a well-oiled machine.

Until today. Until this morning.

Last night I had the obscene idea that since I had been rising at 6:30 AM every morning since my return without much problems, I'd be able to do it today. I mean, not without alarm clocks of course. But a little voice inside me yelped that I didn't have to get up so early on Saturday, because work isn't until 10AM and I don't have a 8AM morning class or anything. I ignored the voice and proceeded to set all of my alarm clocks, 5 minutes a part as usual (6:30AM to 7AM).

I have a SpongeBob Squarepants™ alarm clock, a Sony radio alarm clock, two old Nokia phones I have around just to be used as alarm clocks, and my new Samsung D415 which has a function for three different alarms. So this way, each time an alarm rings, I'd get up, fetch the darned thing and turn it off and even if I go back to bed, another one goes off in 5 minutes. Repeat as necessary, and I should be up before 7AM. Well, this morning, I managed to jump up from bed, turn off all alarms in succession and slept in until 9:15AM. Yikes.

My fail-proof method of getting my ass out of bed failed miserably. Needless to say that I was late for work. I need a rest. I do. I know Christopher has called me a superwoman, because of all the crap I do. And I do think that I am capable of doing many things into my schedule, but these last few days, my schedule has been dragging my carcass behind it, and my schedule has been running tirelessly. Oy oh Boy I'm tired.

Today is one of the biggest days in Koreatown. The annual Korean Festival is here, and although it's been going on since Thursday, today is the major day. I've participated once, but it was enough for me. It is impossible to find parking! Basically it is a hodge podge of businesses, food vendors, and sometimes rides, with a slight carnivally feel. Sometimes major Korean celebrities fly out here to grace the stage -- I had the honor of seeing Kim Won-Jun (When he was famous) about three years ago, along with several other stars.

As a blogger, I should go and take photos with my fab camera and fab camera-phone, but I will skip it again this year, because it's just crazy. You can't hoard in half of Koreatown on a tiny block that is a makeshift park (originally Ardmore park, I believe, which is now called Koreatown park or something like that). I'm going home at 5PM, pet my kitty, and get in bed and read some textbooks until they lull me to sleep. Yep, that's the good life.

Deterioration of Grammar Skills

My grammatical skills have deteriorated. However, my annoyance factor with grammatical errors have enhanced exponentially, so that I am still keenly pained by the amount of gross errors I see elsewhere, but I am incapable of utilizing correct usage in my own writing.

Came across a very nice website today. I'd like to share it with y'all, so here it is: Crunchable.net. This actually leads you to an article I was reading regarding hyphens. I know, it's a dry subject. Who really wants to read about correct usage of hyphens anyway? But you know that the writer is a damned good one if he/she can make hyphens exciting as hell. So go read it. It'll help you understand the little "-" just a bit more.

I recently got a chance to check up on my blog at statcounter.com, just to check numbers and etc. I haven't had much time or the energy since I got back to do a thorough check, but I did today. So I did. And I always love looking at the list of search words entered through search engines like Google and Yahoo, that people have used to get to me here at my blog. One of the search words I found in this episode was "unfornately taco."

This same phrase was run through both Yahoo and Google (the one through Yahoo leads you to an MSN thing for some reason). Why on earth is somebody looking for "unfornately taco?" I mean, even if it was spelled correctly, "unfortunately taco" doesn't really make sense. I mean, can tacos even be unfortunate? And as we all know, the -ly attached at the end of the word "unfortunate" indicates that it is an adverb, and hence, modifies a verb or another adjective. Taco, a noun, cannot be modified by an adverb such as unfortunately.

Well, I ran the search myself, and came up with my site. Listed second in the Google search engine. Go see for yourself. I was mortified. Self-proclaimed grammatical perfectionista, and here I was. I wrote a benign post about a taco I had at 3AM. This is a pretty recent thing, because I remember writing about this particular taco. In fact, I can still smell the greasy odor of it. Then, I scrolled below to see where I had written "unfornately." And I did! I spelled the gawdforsaken word wrong! (Errors are still intact, uncorrected, as a reminder to myself of the atrocity I had committed.)

I have a flair for being melodramatic. So I was mortified. I was sad. I was mad. I was in a rage, then calmed down to clinical depression. All this in an hour or so. Then I returned to my normal "ce la vie" state, and realized that I can make errors. And I damn will make errors. Because I am human. To err is human. I make errors, therefore I am. It is, nevertheless, a humbling experience that I will remember for the next few months. It has also reminded me, even though it was a mere spelling error, that I need to hit the English (non-literary, extremely technical kind) books and freshen up on my grammar. There is a Korean saying: Even monkeys fall off of trees. So back on the tree I go.

So thank you, whomever you are, you who had searcheth the insane phrase "unfornately taco!"

Haven't Done This

I haven't done one of them Quizilla quizzes in a goshdarnit long time, so here it is. One that suits me well too.

Congratulations! you are a grammar nazi!
Their, There, and They're are no challenge for you. You've probably corrected the grammar in this already. snot.
you = hitler.

Are you a Grammar Nazi?
brought to you by Quizilla

Tech Support

I think I got the whole CSS/HTML crap down. Not down to a science yet, but I manage. (It's really ironic to say this, when just a few days ago I realized that my blog looks retarded in the Mozilla Firefox browsers -- something about the positioning of the background pic is off and NOBODY told me!) So I'm always looking into moving onto bigger and better things. As y'all know, my budget is skin-tight (I have a problem finding loose change to get my own hosting, but absolutely no problem forking over my credit card number to Netflix for DVD's.) and I'm moving onto bigger and better things, but at an extremely slow, retarded pace.

When I say bigger and better things, I'm talking about something that will allow me to expand my horizon, in the area of the World Wide Web. I am sorta kinda like the webmaster for my work's website, but I didn't make the pages and I just do minimal alterations to the content. I am not quite grasping the concepts of .php and .asp and all those good stuff. I was looking into using MovableType for my blog, but realized that it's A) too difficult, and B) I think it costs something! Yikes. I recently went to WordPress to see if that's something I'd be able to use, since I'm seeing more and more bloggers using WordPress.

With my limited knowledge of the web page making field, I have understood that I will need some sort of host (as though I were a parasite!). And there's some requirements to that, like perl, MySQL (which I keep pronouncing it as "My SQUEAL" because honestly, SQL just looks more like SQUEAL than SEQUEL -- I believe it is supposed to be read as "My Sequel" which doesn't even make sense -- is there a "My Prequel" then? But that's just me, I guess) php and etc.

Rome wasn't built in a day. I know my knowledge of those acronyms will expand, slowly but surely, and I don't expect myself to be endowed with a sudden enlightenment overnight. I know there will be hard work and a whole lotta studying involved. In my recent trip to BN, I looked for html/perl/php/asp/css/photoshop/illustrator related books, but there were just so many. And how do I know where to begin? Can I jump into reading about perl without knowing what MySQL is? Or vice versa? If anyone can recommend a way to go about learning this business, I'd be extremely thankful.

My brother has agreed to get me a scanner for my birthday present. I know my birthday was more than 45 days ago, but leave it to little brothers to be fashionably late with gifts! Well, since he has agreed to get me one, I won't have to dig into my purse for that. But with this scanner, I will need to learn some kind of photoshop-like program that will help me work. I really would like to get to know photoshop. I was dumb. I thought it was free, like the Adobe acrobat reader. Photoshop is expensive. It's so expensive, it makes me rather pensive about it. Perhaps all this is just too expensive of a hobby.

Knowing computer programs, by the time I'm done learning the ropes of photoshop, a new version will have been released, and they probably won't give me a free upgrade, because I'm just unlucky like that. If anyone can send me a copy of Photoshop or Illustrator, I'll give you a lil' sumpin' sumpin' in return. A handwritten thank you card.

I had actually downloaded some sort of trial version of the damned program. It's hard. It's weird. It's NOT user-friendly. But I hear it is capable of doing some magnificent things. I likee magnificent.

Well, so far, all I've done is renewing my Villagephotos.com subscription for the miniscule amount of space to store my photos (ripway service is free, but really cheap, so photos frequently look like lil' boxes with a red "X" in them. As I have said, this whole process will be a continuous one. It will take a while, a long while to learn all of it, and as the web continues to grow, I will always have to update my knowledge. I suppose the first big steps are the most difficult. I just don't know where to start. Somebody help me!

Ivan and Trump

The Southeast is certainly in for frightening ordeals. After two major hurricans pummeled Florida, Ivan has come crashing into Alabama, affecting most of the Southeast. Tornadoes are on a rampage all over, and major rainfall is expected to continue. I can only sympathise with the people whose lives are interrupted and endangered by Mother Nature's forceful wrath.

Speaking of big powers, Donald Trump showed a more than usual force tonight on the Apprentice. I think he is just trying to get more drama in the mix by nixing the unlikely candidate. In addition to his wanna-coin-phrase, "You're fired" (which is more like "yer fired") he also has uttered "shut up" and "you're stupid." I can't imagine ever being on something like the Apprentice, televised or not. All those alpha male/female people crowded under one roof. That's WMD right there. But it does remind me to be a tougher individual and be constantly on the lookout for information and opportunities to re-invent myself.

Bush? Kerry? Ivan? Who's the Most Important?

Just read today's paper. The front page had an article about the rapes that occur in the Darfur region of Sudan. The rebels raid villages and pillage, rape, burn, kill. The worst part is that they rape teenaged girls, and rape is such a big stigma in the society. In the eyes of the people of Sudan, rape makes these women not victims but sinners, and they carry that stigma for life. The children the rebels beget onto them are marked to be ostracized, even before birth.

The act of rape alone is devastating enough -- it breaks my heart to hear that these wretched girls will find no solace even from their family.

As young as 12, 13 year olds are raped, pregnant, shunned, starving, dying -- and it is our fault. It is our fault for not being able to prioritize. We would much rather hear about which governor resigned because he is gay. We would much rather hear what Dick Cheney said about Kerry. We would much rather hear about Mary-Kate's progress through anorexia. We would rather hear about why we should let people by uzi's and AK-47's and (insert name of scary weapon) and whatnot. We would rather hear about the date Martha will start serving her sentence. We would rather hear the superficial news of the surface. Not to discredit any of these issues as not being newsworthy -- but how many times did we hear the same thing about Martha's trial? What she wore to court each day? How many drops of tears she shed? Martha's a media mogul. She's important, no doubt. But we are being negligent of the important things that are happening to so many lives! The HIV/AIDS epidemic is spreading rapidly through India -- it will be the next South Africa. People will suffer and die, ignorant of how they came down with their fatalities; economies will collapse; hundreds of thousands of babies will be orphaned.

In Sudan, these girls will not get an education. They will be made outsiders of their villages, shunned by family and friends. They will not receive the means to support themselves. All the while the rebels are pillaging through the country, sucking life dry and replenishing it with a surplus of fear.

Even on the home front, things aren't peachy. Our boys, just shy of the drinking age will get shot or bombed by suicide bombers. Or worse, they will return crippled, decrepit old men, aged well beyond their years, with darkened pupils filled with inexpicable sorrow. And we try to rationalize this very inexplicable sorrow with empty heroes -- what was the phrase? "I am an American soldier too." Something like that. Repeated, over. And over. And over. And over. Until it is etched, engraved deeply in each American's heart, so that not only are we brainwashed, but our hearts are washed out. Oh what a brave girl that private Lynch is. We should send more troops -- go get those bastards! And pretty soon, even Lynch herself will realize that she is forgotten, long forgotten, employed as propaganda, fooled by her brief, all too brief fame that she has done something worth-while. She is already long forgotten, and yet the same war is still in progress. Who are we kidding? We fool only ourselves.

We can afford to fool ourselves. It is our luxury as Americans. We can afford to relax and talk about issues and pretend they matter, because death isn't getting rammed down our throats daily. Because it's not us who went down with the World Trade Centers. It's not us that's being held prisoner of war, without any contact with the outside world. It is not us that we are bombing. It is not us inflicted with disease leaving us as vulnerable as candles in the wind. We are not getting raped, we are not shot in the stomach and left bleeding to die. We don't have to watch our 13-year-old daughter give birth nine months after surviving r a p e. Not our problem.

Not our problem? It is our problem. They may speak different languages. They may have darker or lighter skin, wear different clothing. They have different customs and culture. They don't have a laptop or an iPod. They don't have Taco Bell. But they are our brothers. The rebels. The victims. The patients. The soldiers. Bush. Kerry. They are our brothers and sisters. They are our family, because we as a whole, make up the human race. We make up one species. I am not humankind by myself. I am humankind by being with you and you, and him, and her, and them. I am a human being because they co-exist with me, and breathe the same air that I do. By allowing them to perish -- I am condemning myself with the same curse, the same fate. Only by supporting a life, saving a life, can I save my own; I am their savior, and they are mine. You are their savior, and they are yours.

Finally, DC Photos

This is an aerial shot of the pentagon -- it is hard to see, but it is right under the tip of the plane's wing -- I wasn't supposed to but I had to snag a photo of the pentagon -- because of terrorism, they blocked all the roads and re-routed them away from the Pentagon. But you can't even tell that the Pentagon is indeed a pentagon unless it's from above, so here ya go. It rained the night before I left, so it was cloudy/foggy up in the air.

These bears are ubiquitous. They sit virtually on every corner, and they are decorated/painted in different themes. My cousin told me that they are sponsored by different businesses and therefore are decorated in a theme in accordance with the business. I saw about 10 of these bears on different street corners. This particular one, is in the airport, just outside the terminal.

This is an original painting by Leonardo da Vinci -- the only original work of da Vinci that is in the US. The title is below:

This is the Jefferson Memorial, from across the Potomac (I think) river. These memorials are just monumental. So grand. So awesome. Breath-taking. It is hard to put in words.

Another photo of the Jefferson memorial -- a close up. Very Roman. (I saw Roman, and not Greek, because as a student of art history, I know that the dome is a Roman thing, not a Greek thing, and as this structure contains a dome, it is inherently Roman-like.)

This is the famous Monet that I have actually touched. It is one of my fav paintings of Monet, and you can also see it in my profile (link is on your left, up there somewhere). These paintings are just not the same in real life. There is so much texture that is missed with reproductions and posters and whatnot. The Smithsonian hold so many original artworks. Briliant. I could live there. I could soooo live there.

This is a painting of the Pantheon. I forgot the artist's name, but it is a vivid photo of the Pantheon's interior. I believe it is the Pantheon, but I'm not 100% sure. I'm pretty sure that it is. Pantheon is also built by the Romans.

Here is another photo of the Pentagon. This one is dead center in the photo, but it is hard to see because of the fog/cloud. But if you squint hard enough, you can just about make out the five angles!

Finally, a photos with yours truly. Without this, you may have thought that I have produced these photos from thin air and that I have never been to DC. Well, here's proof that I had been at DC. This is the newly built WW2 memorial -- opened last Spring-ish, I believe. Very clean and very nice. Nice fountain, marble walls etched with various quotes, mostly from dead people such as old presidents, etc. The gal on the left in pink is yours truly, and the much tinier and tanned individual is my cousin, Anne, who is a resident of DC, by way of the windy city of Chicago.

I have tons more photos to share, but I have to crop them down to a suitable size and hike'em up on Ripway.com. As you know, with the free account, I only have a limited space for storage and a limited bandwidth, so I'll have to go though this slowly, a few at a time. But it'll get done. I just love falling into nostalgia with these photos -- I have a poor memory so I have to keep jogging it and run it over and over in my mind so that they are etched more permanently in my brain. I always conjure up images and even the particular smell, and sounds come back to me. Such a lovely place. As I said, I could live in the Smithsonian. What a museum.

The Caliber of Higher Education

As I had been mentioning a week or two back, I had a frustrating time with college applications. The whole on-line deal was just too much for me -- and I'm a person who spends too much time on-line as it is! So what is a girl to do but to e-mail the place and ask? Yes, a sane, reasonable person, would stop and ask and get some directions before going off on tangents. Or so it seemed. Here is what I wrote to the admissions office at a certain California State University in Los Angeles (I hope you got that):

From: Haemi
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 3:49 PM
To: Admission's office@a CSU in LA
Subject: Re: California State University, Los Angeles JC

Hi. I received an e-mail after I had submitted my application on-line saying:

"This e-mail acknowledges that we have received your application to California State University, Los Angeles. You can expect to receive a second communication from us through the mail within the next few weeks."

Is this second communication going to tell me how to send the transcripts? I believe the deadline for applications to the winter semester at CSULA is 9/1/04 -- do I need to submit my transcripts before that time, or wait until the "second communication" arrives?

Thank you for your time.

Haemi

Sure, this wasn't in a top form of an e-mail. It sounded plain and without ruffles. But it was straight-forward, no nonsense, no frills. Just a simple question that depicted my dilemma precisely. The response is what made me nearly pass out. Here it goes:

From: Admission
To: Haemi
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 13:01:54 -0700
Subject: California State University, Los Angeles OA-34

I could send in already your transcripts to us if u have them already.

And folks, that is all it said. It did not say who wrote the damned thing. The only thing that is obviously to me is that someone wasn't doing their job, or that someone was chasing the dragon while writing e-mails to desperate students. What does that sentence mean? Is it really appropriate that one of the largest universities in the state would write to a prospective student with the letter "u" to stand for the word, "you" as though he/she were chatting with a homie (is that the correct spelling of the singular term?) from their 'hood?

If this is what happened to education in California, I want no part of it. I may have to inquire outside the state! Sheesh. That one e-mail dissolved all my faith in public education.

What's in the News Today

I am taking a political science class, and I couldn't have taken it at a better time. The November elections are quickly approaching, of course, I have no say in the matter, and all I can hope for is a leader who is more compassionate in the immigration policies. My political science class concentrates on the role of media in politics. Thankfully, we don't discuss the actual politics that goes on -- my instructor defined politics as the struggle to allocate values in society. We all know that I've got enough struggles to last me a lifetime, without struggling to allovate values in society. I'll leave that to the rest of y'all for now.

I have increasingly grown cynical of the media. It is one of the reasons why I decided not to become a journalist -- I am by nature a non-partisan, neutral, mild-mannered person. But I am very devout in my sense of what is right and what is wrong. I seem to be attracted to professions (as my career) that operate without bias -- journalism, medicine/nursing, teaching, etc.. I liked journalism, because it told it like it was. It doesn't matter if the public doesn't want to hear it, or it outrages the viewer; journalism is not judgmental. It is good and wholesome in that it doesn't take sides or have an agenda. Until I grew up and removed my rose-colored spectacles, that is.

The media has been taken over by evil capitalists. I have no disregard for capitalists -- I commend them in their ability to make money and generate revenue and whatnot. But journalism is a sacred field -- journalists, and that includes newspaper reporters, TV anchors, people in radio, and much more, should not be owned for a specific interest. Everything has come to be "all about the benjamins." Money talks, I suppose.

There was a time that I honestly thought that Monica was at Bill's side all the time at every public outing, and that they hugged every chance they got. Until I looked deeper and realized that it was actually the re-run of the same, single hug they shared on one occasion. The media was not only working to accomodate the ratings -- they were feeding us miscellaneous and misleading information.

Perhaps my brief training doesn't quite give me the rights to critique the mass media. But I can recall at least one incident when I really wanted to pick up the phone and call somebody and tell them a piece of my mind.

Bill Clinton (sorry to be tripping all over this poor man!) had a quadruple bypass not too long ago. It happened on the night before I left DC, in fact. I was watching it on the news. The next morning, I tuned into the news again, before I left for the airport -- many stations were featuring that story. They interviewed Dr. Craig Smith -- the name is so vivid in my mind because I was so appalled and you'll see why -- the top surgeon who worked on Bill's situation. Only, I didn't quite get it.

Dr. Craig Smith looked different on the two stations -- namely CNN and FOX. In fact, Dr. Craig Smith were two different people! One station had a slightly hefty blond man posing as this famous doc, and the other had a slightly emaciated dark-haired man playing him. Now, what is that all about? Most of y'all out in the west coast might have missed that interview, unless they had re-runs of it, or decided to correct the error -- what I saw, was at about 7AM EST, which would have been 4AM PST.

I could not believe that such major news organizations would make such a faux-pas. Bad, bad, bad! I'm sure that one station interviewed the actual doctor (the one on CNN, I believe, was wearing scrubs, while the one on FOX was in a suit) and the other station interviewed the director of the hospital or some other authority. But the little blurb on the bottom of the screen said, "via satellite, Dr. Craig Smith." The anchors didn't specifically address the person as "Dr. Craig Smith" when speaking to these individuals -- I tuned in midway through the interview. But the caption said what I just said that it said, and I saw it with my two wide open eyes.

How can we trust the news? I am constantly trying to be aware while reading the LA Times (which AGAIN was stolen/did not arrive/MIA anyhoot!) of any possible bias. Should I be in constant worry that I might be inflicted with an agenda or invalid information? The news media should do better than this. They need to rise above the push and pull of things; the ratings, the money, the corporations that own them. And we need to turn off the TV and don't feed the ratings for something like a highway chase, Michael Jackson trial, Janet's boobies, and understand how to decifer between the real news and entertainment. Be aware of what information the tube feeds you. It may be force feeding you more than those bags of potato chips you consume on your couch.

Light Thoughts

Those who know me well, know that I am absolutely in love with women's magazines, such as Cosmo, Glamour, Allure, etc. etc. etc. Even though a certain journalism instructor I had way back considered them "smut"! My favorite is Cosmo, although Glamour runs a close second, and I read them, religiously, cover to cover, in one sitting, the minute after I pick them up from my mail box.

As they do every month, they have mini paragraphs sent in by readers about brief testimonials to whatever topic of which the magazine inquires. I read one such anecdote of a man who went to a bookstore to pick up women (because smart people hang out at bookstores, ergo women at bookstores are smart) and came across a beautiful British woman. Then, he proved his theory (that women who hang out at bookstores are smart) wrong by conversing with the woman, and finding out that all she read is British gossip.

The previous anecdote really doesn't have anything to do with my blog entry of the day. Yikes. Off topic already!

Well, I had to go to Staples/Office Depot/Office supply store to pick up some paper. Staples was the closest at the time, and I dropped in, got the stuff, and jumped out. There happened to be a fabulous BN in the same area as this Staples. And open until 11PM. I had to go in.

I love, absolutely adore bookstores. And I will be open about the fact that I'm not browsing quaint second hand stores where the musky scent of dog-eared books are supposed to be charming. Nay, yours truly will only be found browing the ultimate, state of the art, owned by capitalist multi-billionaire corporation bookstores, which may or may not be attached to a Seattle-based coffee giant Starbucks, but more often than not, it is conjoined at the hips with one.

Oh how I love BN. I can spend hour after hour just strolling up and down the aisles. The smell of freshly printed paperbacks are as sweet as freshly ground coffee.

Having said all that, why are books by the Dalai Lama so darn expensive? You'd think the man is sitting on wads of cash in his exiled home. But even though, I wanted to buy so many books. I was just hungering after them tonight. It's not about wanting to read books that makes me want to go buy them -- it's about ownership and owning things -- because I am still at that emotional stage where a good decent portion of me is defined by the materialistic, physical property I own. But come on, you're reading the blogs of a girl who's in love with Barne's and Noble! It sounds about right, doesn't it?

So many things were on sale -- and those who know me well know that it is with extreme difficulty that I pass up a good bargain -- I faced many of those difficulties tonight during my rendezvous with BN. How can they have so many hardback former bestsellers for under 5 bucks! I glided the tip of my index finger along the edges of the books, outlining their spine, with the same giddy excitement as I did when I touched (slightly) a Monet at the Smithsonian.

It was a sigh of relief, and a sigh of fulfilled satisfaction that I made on my way out of BN. Unfortunately, the realities of the world are much harsher than the bookish world of BN -- I felt the clash first hand when I mistaked the door to be an automatic sliding door, and run smacked into it. Woe is me for being such a klutz. I had been to the same BN for years and not once with this problem, and yet tonight, I managed to walk face on into a metal-lined door. This is with my contact lenses on!

Moving on.

LAX. New show on NBC. Television stations are filled with smart people. These people have decided to make some money by feeding on the public's fear of terrorism. Tonight I watched my first episode of this LAX, starring Heather Locklear and that black dude (no offense, actor dude) who played a sports doctor for the Knicks and also short-term boyfriend to Cynthia Nixon's character, Miranda, on Sex and the City. In an one hour episode, there were three drunk pilots trying to fly a plane to the Serbs, one bomb in a suitcase, a caseful of cocaine in one terminal, and even beyond all that, the characters evidently just had sex and were competing for the job of the airport director. Furthermore, there was some strange dog running around the runway, appearance of the SWAT team who came and went without doing much, some governor's flight was re-directed, and a petite, soft-spoken Filipino woman came to meet her American overweight and ugly lover/fiance. She also passed along her phone number to a TSA crew-member and urged him to call her and winked at him, while making kissy faces -- all while walking away with her new hubby-to-be.

Lovely show. It was amusing at the least, and glad that NBC is scraping a few extra bucks while the nation still trembles in fear of terrorism (it's personal -- the terror warning level thing went up to orange the day before my flight out of DC!). So congrats to NBC, to the LAX, and to Heather and the aforementioned black dude, for portraying realistic superheroes who fail, have raunchy sex, compete, and still manage to walk all over one of the world's largest airports in stilettos. Yay.

Numero Uno

I have had enough with bitching about my estranged bestfriend. I am letting the whole thing go.

As a teenager/young adult, I have always envied people who had chums that went back decades. Friends with whom they hung out as kids. Learned the times table together. Had sleep-overs. Figured out how to precisely apply lip-liner together. Share 21st birthdays by getting shitfaced drunk. Read good books and share them.

Until I arrived at Glendale, I moved frequently. Even after I had arrived at my permanent home of Glendale, I had gone from one group of friends to another, because people changed over summer vacation, and I changed also. I never really had a permanent set of friends that my brother had -- his friends go back to elementary school years -- some as early as the 2nd grade. When I met my bestfriend, I wished that this would be it. She would be the bestfriend that would accompany me through life. I'd be her bridesmaid and she'd be mine, and we even wanted to be roomies someday. I suppose that can be catagorized as a youthful idealism.

While talking to my cousin over wine and sushi, she told me not to confuse quality with quantity. Just because the friendship lasted numerous years does not make it the best. She added with examples of her own experiences -- good friends she made from work, and so on. She also told me that I am still very very young. I'm not too old to start new relationships with many more people, and it will happen.

As you can tell from the apathetic way I am writing, I'm not very excited over this situation. It's not like we fought or even had an argument. She just disappeared. She e-mailed me about two to three weeks ago, but it was all too brief with no explanations.

I am just basically sick and tired, and extremely pained, to provide a one way friendship. I've heard people thank their friends for sticking by them during their times of trouble, such as drug addiction or whatever. You know... "None of this would have been possible without the support of my friend blah blah blah." And I'd love to be that friend. But so far, this isn't the first time I've felt as though all she was concerned about was numero uno. Cynically and realistically speaking, that's the very first thing on their list of priorities, isn't it? I'd be lying if I didn't look out for myself, and that the most important thing in life is to watch my ass. So I don't blame her. I can't blame her if our natural inclination is to be faithful to ourselves first and foremost and rest comes later. That's all she's doing.

Always, in times like this, I retreat into my cave of cynical hermitage. Also known as the crazy old lady who lived in a shoe with her nine cats. It takes months, if not years, for me to be able to invest my love in another human being. I hate that I am so easily inflicted, so easy victimized -- but I suppose vulnerability is an integral part of forming new relationships.

On a completely different topic... When I went to the FDR memorial, I had to run into the small bookstore (gift shop-like bookstore) because it started to rain. There, I saw a large poster of Eleanor Roosevelt, and a quote from her in large letters: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I've had such frequent bouts of inferiority complexes that they were becoming a part of my life. It has been a large chunk of my "mid-twenties" crisis -- feeling inferior because I didn't get to go to a big name university, because I don't have college degrees (yet) while my peers have gone on to bigger and such better things. Because I'm not an American, because I wasn't 110lbs, because I drove a used car, because I felt stupid and ignorant. Because, because, because, of many things, it seems. But Eleanor Roosevelt snapped at my inferiority complex and slapped my sense back to me. I had given consent to be made to feel inferior.

I had always been a confident person -- many peers, especially young women, found it so marvelous that I was never concerned about my outward appearances -- I mean, I was concerned, but never obsessed about it negatively. And I had no qualms about the level of my intelligence or how I appeared to others. I loved myself and was proud of who I had been. But that started to wane, perhaps two to three years ago. Who knows why, but it did. And with it, low self-esteem crept in, and so did the inferiority complex.

Well, that stops now. It's not as though I've suffered from anorexia or was suicidal, or hated myself in any way, yet I can't say that I'll be the headstrong, don't-start-shit-with-me, love-me-as-I-am type of girl tomorrow. But feeling down and unhappy, thinking, "only if I were ___(fill in blank with positive images)" stops now. And I will work on feeling inferior -- I have no doubt that it will take as long, if not longer, to build up my self-love as it did to deconstruct it, but the process starts now. Another quote, a favorite of mine (along with Eleanor's) is, "It is never too late to be what you might have been." Which is from George Eliot. And it's true. I believe it.

I think this is a good way to finish the week, and it leaves me with a good mindset to kick off a good week on Monday. Goodness knows I need mental prepping, especially since some thief of a neighbor decided to take my Sunday paper again! Next Sunday, I will disguise myself with green clothing and hide in the bushes and catch the culprit red-handed -- if I can get up so early. Damn you, paper thief! (Shaking fist in air)