and we're the uncultured barbarians? F.U.

now you see it, now you don't

perfect for my Jakarta-bound colleagues.

which measures do you prefer?

i really don't know why.

... some people are just plain naive.

yo, jihadists!,

actual terrorism is passe. there are alternatives.

separated at birth

Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt (ZsaZsa Gabor's current husband and media asshole) vs Ross Perot (Texan billionaire and failed Presidential candidate)

downhill

and you think Accenture executives are clean???

a darker night

holy Team Edward crap!

looking forward to it. NOT!

world vs new video game

see, Dirk, there are good choices ...

... when finding a lady. like the sideline reporter interviewing you, for example.

5 for playing: Tears For Fears

blending psychology with pop music, Tears for Fears burst into the music scene categorized under the New Wave banner. international success came easy as hit after hit followed, blowing that category to smithereens as TFF made danceable, thoughtful pop songs that slightly differed from the norm. but their shining moment was coming out after their long break with their third album, The Seeds of Love, where they scrapped their psychology-driven songwriting and just listened to the pulse of the world. a big bonus: the discovery of Oleta Adams (which explains the song on the top of my list here). their overall body of work is respectable, and you're a hypocrite if you say you don't love great pop hooks.

5. Mothers Talk, Songs from the Big Chair (1985)


4. Break It Down Again, Elemental (1993)


3. Change, The Hurting (1983)


2. Head Over Heels, Songs from the Big Chair (1985)


1. Woman in Chains, The Seeds of Love (1989)

so, do we need a revolution?

really, CNN?

somewhere out there, CNN execs are laughing.

no you can't unleash him

hanging it up

bad news for female voyeurs ... i mean, voters.

it's so obvious you're all scared.

look at him! he looks like it!

are some people just really dumb?

almost wish it was true.

wait, ... what -?!

well, the idiots aren't listening anyway.

all for a font.

democracy in the flesh

go, Barney, go!

if you were rich

... U2 can "save the environment and the world", while not really meaning or doing what you say.

yes, this is our life now.

the credit conundrum(s)

if you don't have any credit history yet, and you need to have a credit card to start establishing that history, they reject your application because you don't have sufficient credit history.

if you're jobless, and completely demolished your credit history with unpaid bills, collection claims, and bankruptcy, and your prospective employers pull their offers once they see these red flags via credit checks, then you have no way of repaying your bills and rebuilding your credit history now, do you?

who invented credit ratings and credit history, again?

thank you for your time and efforts

... to discover the good in us. paalam, Tita Cory!

you know what would be awesome?

Kim Jong Il feeds Clinton to the sharks in the tank, then Prez Obama launches a covert attack, sending Team America to kick the kimchi out of the NoKors. woooohooooooooo!!!

the difficulty of putting thoughts down (or not)

damn, haven't blogged in a while. maybe the blog is largely dead.

ever since i started using a PC, my pencraft has completely deteriorated. i used to write prose and poetry with ink and paper. now i've done away with all of them (including the prose and poetry part).

blogging solved the itch to write somewhat, even if i was just doing it for myself (my comic blog has lots of funny gems - well, to me that is). but the volume of that does rival or exceed anything i wrote pre-computer era.

but at the same time, you run into the risk of not being able to put anything interesting (again, primarily to yourself) on your blog, with time considerations, and if it isn't your bread and butter. or you go into a funk and brood with writer's block.

recently, i've found myself reborn in a way with twitter, microblogging as much of my thoughts as i can. i had a great run tweeting inside an ER, and i was wondering if my friends were actually witnessing my death via the internet.

the loss of lengthy exposition, both in reading and writing, is pretty much the sign of the times. nothing much holds our attention span for so long, and we can't even write a decent email at times. i try to compensate by committing thoughts to the web, but even that requires you fire up the computer. in the last holdouts i see, my wife is fond of sending actual cards to family, even with just a few written words meant to connect somehow.

despite twitter's 140 character limit, i find myself not being hampered by it, and expanding my train of thoughts to several tweets. of course, this may be the issue with text messages, because you're actually paying for it, and thus are constrained to squeeze in as much info as you can in one message. which is crap because so much is lost in the message, you run the risk of being misunderstood, and also not to mention, you perpetuate the devolution of spelling, grammar and punctuation. i try not to fall into that trap with twitter.

perhaps soon we will just be down to communicating with mashed letters, numbers and symbols (u a$$!). the spoken word could devolve into grunting. oh, the irony.

you don't say.

huh. and i thought it was another Palin article.

and we didn't know it that time

look who we saw in Coney Island one sunny June afternoon in Coney Island ...




and look who made the cut in America's Got Talent (NYC auditions) last July 14th.


Hulu clip here; full episode here (starts at 14:20).

Pirate Bay is Officially Dead

Coconut News Ngayon

stupid headlines

what else startles Judge Sotomayor? hyperactive court rulings?? or crickets and cicadas??

what's next?

"Obama feels the joy of NCAA Final Four"

"Prez senses criminal activity! with great powers come great responsibility!"

"Bam perceives the great taste of McDonald's French Fries"

"Obama senses tension between Sarkozy and Bruni over ogling"

ooohhh ... i see dead people. quick, put it on the front page!!

and we leave our money to these assholes??

Safe Fox

Gold, Man Sucks.

can't somebody whip these people into reforming themselves!?

Gizmodo vs. Best Buy

women's lib? what a joke.

and there's the backlash.

Jordan would've dunked right back.

about 11 times. and trash-talked the poor sap to demoralization.

wasn't that obvious right from the start?

soon to be the new monopoly?

who is surprised?

deep in the AIG mess

the man behind it all. [thanks, Bill]

storms are brewin' in your head!

Saraaaaahahahahahahaha!

JC, superstar

moments before the Hurl

congrats again to 3xDog Eating champ, Joey Chesnut.

happy 4th of July, Republicans

something fishy in Alaska - hey, its your former Party savior.

if it fits, you must quit

now, now, Michael Jackson wouldn't like the competition ...

the Republican plane still in a tailspin

throw th' bum out!

does he hate waking up?

really? how does he feel about it? how 'bout his dad?

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-gh!

The Pirate Bay is dead.

diff'rent strokes

would you get married to a woman with her longtime ex in attendance? especially if that ex built his career on squiring a line of women longer than US 20?

ohnono. do not taunt the SAS.

this made me laugh

yeah, around the early '60s, maybe.


there's about a hundred reasons that prove otherwise, so stop saying that.

let's say it again: EFF YOU, Fox News.

5 for playing: Michael Jackson

yes, we do have to make a tribute to the Peter Pan who mesmerized and confounded the world in the last 30 years. i'm sure this is like the eleventieth million blog to do so at this very moment.

let's start with my most-remembered Thriller moment. back in early '83, i was over at our landlord's listening to the seminal album, the coolest thing to have back then, that would go on to become the best-selling album of all time (and maybe will even gallop much further away after this). they had a stereo radio/cassette player (which i didn't). somebody said to rewind the song that just played. Jeremy, the landlord's youngest son, immediately pressed the Rewind button without stopping the song first (anybody who grew up with mp3 players will go "what's the big deal?"). that action ate the tape, and i told Jeremy not to do that and he should press the Stop button first. Jeremy, being a 6 year old prick at that time, snarkily blamed me for not teaching him that before he pressed the Rewind button. prick.

oh, and the 2nd-most remembered Thriller moment: 2nd year high school, group dancing field demonstration, dancing to Thriller, much, much earlier than those Cebu inmates.

here's a fact ... Prince songs outnumbers Jacko's on my iPod 3-to-1. and the reason is obvious. Prince went for long-term, sustained excellence, with highs and lows, for his career. which is why he's still making songs now, and even made a SuperBowl halftime appearance two years ago. Michael Jackson's star, brilliant as it was, peaked with Thriller. therein lies the irony: his best work burdened him and forced every succeeding album to be, unfairly or not, compared against this bar. considering his gifts, he could have been still making records at this time. who knows what might have been if despite his unhappy childhood, the early notoriety and fame, he managed to keep his head straight and just churned out music? i guess musical star celebrities need to go out in a spectacular tragic way (the list is long) - after craving and crawling and climbing their way up that mountain, there's nowhere else to go.

well, fans should just be thankful he wasn't found lifeless along with 10 other dead kids [insert other details here].

in this episode of 5 for Playing, we double the songs, because, well ... he is who he is. no need to embed YouTube vids here.

10. P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing), Thriller (1982)

9. Billie Jean, Thriller (1982)

8. Beat It, Thriller (1982)

7. Human Nature, Thriller (1982)

6. Rock With You, Off The Wall (1979)

5. One Day in Your Life, Forever, Michael (1975)

4. Thriller, Thriller (1982)

3. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Off The Wall (1979)

2. Smooth Criminal, Bad (1987)

1. Wanna Be Startin' Something, Thriller (1982)

hey, Fox News

here's a guide for you. hint: they're all Republicans.


[via Talking Points Memo]

goodbye, childhood

because Twitter depantsed them?

and the CNN tagline makes it look like Facebook is actually physically trying to beat the crap out of Iran to get it to tell the truth. yep, Facebook cares. and CNN wants to let you know it does. whooopeee.

another Republican bites the dust.

the boxer is done.

lit up for a prison sentence

hey, Dad, happy Father's Day!

sense has left the building.

give 'em some power ...

yeah, these bums even broke the (TSA-approved) lock on my luggage and never replaced it.

summertime is murdertime.

Tweeters will go nuts

huh. what if this was all a big show? you know, the opposition leaders cry foul, people take to the streets, supreme leader says shut up, and its all back to status quo. it was all for the benefit of the Western world.

finally, a movie about janitors!

Boston congratulates LA

at least somebody from this side remembers.

who are you fooling? yourselves?

"sent to the wrong list"? hahaha.

5 for playing: Eurythmics

here we are again, trying to filter 5 (plus 1) songs i can call my favorites, and the band of choice for this post is making it difficult. the Eurythmics do not sound like your regular rock band or pop minstrels, yet they have a body of work that made them the best selling British duo of all time. the distinctive Annie Lennox remains one of my favorite female vocalists, and she can outsing anybody. it is a testament to their creative vibe to stay in the game so long, despite her and partner Dave Stewart's early romantic mis-entanglements. in the interests of keeping it with the name of this post, i have to cut other classics like Sweet Dreams, the Aretha Franklin-jam Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves, and yes, Sex Crime. (sorry, embedding is disabled so clicking the screenshots brings you the YouTube page).

5. tie - Angel, We Too Are One (1989)


Missionary Man, Revenge (1986)


4. Here Comes the Rain Again, Touch (1984)


3. There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart), Be Yourself Tonight (1985)


2. I Need A Man, Savage (1987)


1. You Have Placed a Chill in My Heart, Savage (1987)

washing hands without soap

yes, we allow heads of state like this jackass to live and govern.


"what, me worry about you? pfsh! you are less than dust to me!"

die like weeds. apt.

geekspeak: how you start buying stuff online.

beam me up, Jobs!

total security asses

this will not fix anything if the boots on the ground are idiots.

so it's still a go, then?

$299 32 Gb? with a contract? umm, no.

expect to see this face often

Shaq can say he's rooting for Kobe to win his 4th championship, only because he has 4 himself and they'll be on equal footing. if Kobe has the chance to get a 5th, i don't think Shaq would be as supportive.

blog is dead.

oh holy god

if that's going to be the face of women's professional tennis for the foreseeable future ... we gotta clone Maria Sharapova. or travel back 9 years and bring back the 2000 version of Anna K, when she was still relevant.

never forget

Warren Ellis skewers technology. huzzaaahh!!!

5 for playing: Janet Jackson

the other successful Jackson out of Gary, Indiana (sister city of Fuxin, China - not kidding!), Janet stepped out of the family shadow in general, and in her brother Michael's, in particular, and carved out a pretty good musical career for herself. her musical peak in the mid to late '80s was rooted deep in her Minneapolis sound, masterminded by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (that decade's Neptunes, if you will). with a hit song list rivaling her now-white freak brother's, it was difficult narrowing down five (well, i always fudge it with six, hahahaha) i'd always have for my iPod. but here you go. notice that they're all pre-'90s and pre-wardrobe malfunction. just like most pop-slash-rockstars, they never know when to quit and leave with their dignity intact. or i'm just an old-school fart.

5. What Have You Done For Me Lately, Control (1986)


4. tie - Runaway, Design of A Decade (1995)


Love Will Never Do (Without You), Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989)


3. Control, Control (1986)

kinda long: jump to the 3:20 mark.

2. When I Think of You, Control (1986)


1. Miss You Much, Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989)

hey, he's alive!!!!

whodathunk?

the Spaniard is much more manly than the American uber-athlete.


as Russell Peters said, "be a man!"

planned obsolescence. huh.

trying to save his skin. sort of.

literally

when i was still a kid, a classmate once asked me if i knew "Total Eclipse of the Heart". being the moron that i was, i thought it was some scientific discovery about our anatomy. fuck if i knew who Bonnie Tyler was. turns out there's another take on this.

hail to the King

2nd finals ... Not.

even Jordan needed Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Bill Cartwright, Dennis Rodman, Steve Kerr, John Paxson, BJ Armstrong, Ron Harper, Luc Longley ... you get my drift.

apparently, none of his current Cavs come close to any of the aforementioned.



the highlight of the season is obviously this:




so, what say you, BronBron? care to win one in the Big Apple?

(in) Spector Phil

be a man!

we've been watching these clips for weeks now and somehow they never get old.

for those without cable

watch the Magic go to the NBA Finals! or the Cavs live to play another day. either way, go to atdhe.net.

off

... to the City of Brotherly Love. otherwise known as Killadelphia. brb.

he ain't Solozzo ...

but he's still the Turk.




but he ain't the KING.


whoa.

what a finish.

a lot of people probably had a stroke tonight.

we should never be bored

i must be in the minority. i went out to see Wolverine, and i plan to go see Star Trek, but i haven't played any PS3 game in the last month or so. wow - that last sentence just blew me away.

with all the things we can do in this day and age, this generation should never be bored. fine, a lot of them are having their brains rot from sedentary activities (tell that to the gamers!), but my point is how come there are still people who commit crimes or get nutty socially-unproductive ideas out of sheer boredom?

or maybe my point is just trying to make up an excuse to go play video games. because i'm bored.

"walk" is in the name, after all ...

uh, will somebody tell Sony they're at least two years too late?

Jeff Dunham & Achmed the Terrorist

and apologies won't cut it either.

somebody do something about this.

its a kind of magic

... by way of Seattle, and not named Ray Allen. Orlando beats the King, without Superman.

i want it with teeth, dammit!

oh ..... reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally?

now I have to subsidize those delinquents? you must be joking. you can shove these cards up your candy asses!!!

that's it?!

that's your slambang finale?? Tony blinded by revenge, Alan Wilson getting arrested, Olivia handed over to the DOJ and Jack about to die? heck, we didn't even see Renee shoot Wilson in cold blood.

"we know you're still gonna watch next year! suckerzzzzzzzzzzzzz!"

how about we find out Olivia was the true mastermind (naaahhh)? or Ethan Kanin? or the First Gentleman? (now that wouldn't really make sense) i was expecting something really wild and over the top - the "over the top" part was you can actually get the whole season in DVD today as you read this!

word on the street is that next season will involve another Middle Eastern terrorist (Slumdog Millionaire's TV host). surely, Kim Bauer's volunteering for the stem cell fix will allow Jack to miraculously recover just in time to kick bad guy ass once again. they won't be able to prosecute Tony, Olivia, or Wilson (if he is still alive by 2010) because they'll have their hands full with the next crisis. give Kim a gun; she can shoot, right?


i can't imagine this all happened in 24 hours.

hey, Celtics!

not to pile on or anything. i still love the Big Three, especially KG, and if you had gone to the Finals to face Kobe again, i'd be rooting for you.

but you know why you lost?


it's that little walking chunk of bad luck on the left in the pic above.


why else would KG get injured? because he didn't wanna play with this slimy piece of shit. "Starbury" left him in Minnesota because he was so jealous (of Garnett's contract and the attention), and look where that got him. it was probably only due to the good karma and vibes generated by the Big Three that the Celtics didn't immediately sink right after they signed him.

dump him, and get back to the Finals next year. don't waste Jesus Shuttleworth's legs and sweet shot. you got a two-year window. Rondo will be in his prime then.

bring it!

Superman vs The King, NBA Eastern Finals.


now i'm really torn on this one. for sentimental reasons.

at least the Magic fulfilled did their part; the Rockets choked and allowed Black Mamba in. so for the Western side, i'd be hoping Denver gets to knock them off.

i never thought i'd see the day

... i'd be wearing a Francis M t-shirt.



(thanks, bro!)

5 for playing: The Jets

via Tonga and Minneapolis, the Wolfgramm siblings usurped the name of New York's storied green-garbed football team and turned themselves into a hit machine worthy of teenage adoration and gyration. there exists a state of music called bubblegum pop, where everything is perfect and eternal, and very few pop artists achieve this state, and even fewer stay in it. the Jets (who are still doing performances from time to time to date) encapsulated their careers by being in this zone. if that's not enough, they also have three things going for them: (1) they knew when to throw in the towel; (2) they're no slouches in musical talent and living the Minneapolis funk served them well; and the best part (3) they're not the Jacksons - do you know of any (U.S.-based) musical family that didn't disintegrate into an ego-centric, feuding, mudslinging, little-boy-molesting, drug-sniffing, scandal-ridden, discombobulated mess? case closed.

stop laughing and lower those eyebrows. wait till i unleash my Debbie Gibson post, hala.

5. tie - Anytime, Magic (1987)


Make It Real, Magic (1987)

4. You Got It All, The Jets (1985)


3. Curiosity, The Jets (1985)


2. Crush on You, The Jets (1985)


1. Cross My Broken Heart, Magic (1987) & Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack (1987)

Jets - Cross My Broken Heart
Uploaded by jpdc11 - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

join the fight!

but on the other hand, the Mavs survived a sweep

Dirk, Dirk, you naughty German.

and now a message for the MTA

F** You! you hold us hostage twice - first by crappy service, then the threat of fare hikes. you're gonna raise them anyway, regardless of what we do. what's that? you can't hear me? that's how your P.A. systems work in your stations and your trains, M****ers!!! yes, i'm like Rahm Emanuel!!

wooohoooo! can i have mine written off too? clean slate!

e for expensive

hold up! don't declare it kindling yet. piracy may just save the Kindle, says TechCrunch.

The Kindle DX changes that. Just find the book you want in PDF form, upload it to your Kindle over USB, and you’ve got a perfectly readable and convenient textbook. Sure, students will have to deal with the usability issues I raised above, like slow highlighting. But these books, frustrating as they might be, will be 100% free. That’s $300 per quarter in extra beer money. Most obstacles and morals fade quickly in the face of that much alcohol.

hehe i agree in a way. i know first-hand how expensive books can be for students, and i'm stuck with books here that its much more hassle to resell than to just plunk down at the neighborhood Salvation Army store or leave it at the building stoop for anyone to pick up. most likely, they will still be traveling with me if i ever move into a new place. harking back to my college days, we just used to photocopy book chapters that we needed, due to shortage (of both books and funds), but lugging all those stapled papers can be a pain (literally as well, with the paper cuts). i find myself envious of the Internet Generation because of the wealth of information at their fingertips, and the advent of multiple devices to store such information, which would have been quite an advantage back in the '80s, or really, in any generation.

but back to the pirated books for Kindle: for students to be able to do this, they would need to make that $489 (granted, one-time) investment for the Kindle device. unless they had rich parents (in which case, buying new books is not an issue), they have to somehow find a way to pay for it (off their student loans, perhaps? or maybe sell a few joints here and there - not that i'm advocating!).

i never fantasized owning an e-reader, due to the lack of free content (when i mean free, i mean uh ... you know what i mean), and at present, the prohibitive cost of one (whether its from Sony or Amazon). now, with rumors of Apple joining the fray, i might just change my mind. a little bit. although i'm sure the business model is to still gouge early adopters, would a price war be eventually beneficial to the masses that they would fork over say, $250 for a nifty, internet-ready-and-everything-else book reader? why not? it happened to the iPod, although stretched thru this decade.

if that's the case, then i wouldn't mind if i had such a gadget and if i could uhm, appropriate and read page-turners like the one i'm currently holding (Jeff Pearlman's Boys Will Be Boys). damn, i can't put this thing down. not really highbrow, but that really shouldn't matter to the e-reader's bottom line, should it?

who?

this season's 24 is unraveling more like a whodunit, with each episode trying to play can-you-top-that in terms of revealing who's pulling the strings. it seems every time we got the mastermind pegged, the rug keeps getting pulled out from under us. as of the Redemption prequel, we all thought it was ultimately His Snakefaceness Jon Voight/Jonas Hodges (the father of the Jonas Brothers). turns out he's just little fish! and the turning of Tony Almeida wasn't really unexpected anymore, especially with the preseason hype on his return from the dead. with few hours left for this season, the teaser line is that there's still gonna be one more big plot twist, one more big reveal, one more unmasking of a traitor in the ranks. who is the final villain who will make us choke on our eggplant parmigiana, spew our Coors Light at the TV set, and scream WTF! and various invectives at nobody in particular (except the 24 writers)? who is ... the Last BOSS????


Tony Almeida ... ehhhhhh
Alan Wilson (Will Patton) ... his face is already there
First Daughter Olivia Taylor ... 1 in 3 (or not)
Philip Bauer ... 1 in 4
ex-Chief of Staff Ethan Kanin ... 1 in 5 (Chiefs of Staff are always sneaky)
Jack Bauer ... 1 in 24 (ok, joke!)
Tim Woods, Secretary of Homeland Security ... 1 in 50 (running around pretty useless seems like a good cover)
Michelle Dessler ... 1 in 55 (hey, they died, they rose again, they divorced, they reunited close enough to get revenge)
James Heller ... 1 in 60 (all a plot to destroy Jack, whom he holds responsible for ruining Audrey)
Morris O'Brian ... 1 in 99 (he wants Chloe to be a full-time mom)
Chloe O'Brian ... 1 in 99 (she wants to quit the show; what better than go out in flames?)
First Gentleman Henry Taylor ... 1 in 100
Mike Doyle ... 1 in 125 (because he still wants to be an ass, plus he's disfigured - pretty good reasons)
Janis Gold ... 1 in 200
Kim Bauer ... 1 in 250
Kim Bauer's psychiatrist ex-boyfriend ... 1 in 251
Jack McCullough ... 1 in 275
Aaron Pierce ... 1 in 300 (only character other than Jack to appear in all seasons - and 24 is synonymous with death)
Cheng Zhi ... 1 in 400
Larry Moss ... 1 in 500 (are you sure he's dead?)
Carl Benton ... 1 in 600 (are you sure he's dead?)
Habib Marwan ... 1 in 700 (are you sure he's dead?)
President Wayne Palmer ... 1 in 800 (are you sure he's alive?)
President David Palmer ... 1 in 900 (are you sure he's dead?)
Edgar Stiles ... 1 in 950 (are you sure he's dead?)
That Hobbit with a junkie sister ... 1 in 975 (are you sure he's dead?)
President Charles Logan ... 1 in 999 (are you sure he's dead?)
President Allison Taylor ... 1 in 1000
Kumar in a brief, evil cameo role ... 1 in 2000 (because he now works in the White House?)
George W. Bush ... 1 in 5000

place your bets!

take that, you terrorist you.

Empire kicks Starfleet ass

or click here. i think that was just a decoy.