Free the random thoughts

You should at least pretend to be genuine

This is a photo of a NT$130 (US$4) tea in a coffee shop, proudly representing the global brand, Lipton Yellow Label Tea. Doesn't that increase the customer experience? It magically brings us back the memories of our beloved office water cooler, as if saying that we can hide but we can never escape.

We're not expecting a homebrewed tea or Wedgwood mug, and certainly most of us cannot tell the difference between teabag and canned tea, but this is too much. It is like hearing the microwave sound right before the meal is going to be served.

In order to justify this teabag, the coffee shop should at least redefine their business model as a rental personal office space for US$4 @ 2hrs with complementary power sockets (they do not), which really is the business model of Starbucks. And they charge less than US$4 for a tea(bag) that has a homebrew brand.

White = holy / Black = evil stereotype

Sometimes movies do teach us something profound but often overlooked. From Malcolm X:

And from Chasing Amy:

Bonus: another eye-opening scene from Malcolm X, this time about the Jesus Christ = Caucasian misinterpretation.

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Hair styles of hairly bands

I grew up in the 80s, listening to hard rock and heavy metal. Yes, the hairly-glam metals. Maybe it is a nice attempt to look into their hair aspects - they are mocked as "hair metals" because they all looked alike, but as in any subculture genre, if you look closer there are real differences worth a Wikipedia entry. Or at least an honorable mention (Good Try) in deletionpedia.

Curly

This is the golden example. It worked for anybody. The most notorious example is, of course Bon Jovi.

Some of the variations worked. Slash (Guns & Roses)

And some did not. Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy)

Straight

Straight hair worked best if they were already good-looking.

Straight blond: Bret Michaels (Poison)

Straight black: Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme)

Short

They were anomalies...trying true to be themselves but almost never had a great result.

Phil Collen (Def Leppard)

Graham Bonnet

(Bonus) baldies

Should be the end of the world for rockers, especially if they are frontmen...no worry, they had a trick. The hat.

Brian Johnson (AC/DC)

Klaus Maine (Scorpions)

Or sometimes baldies decided to remain baldies. Rob Halford (Judas Priest)

To secure our seeds

Why is human male's penis shaped like, as we know? I mean, shaped liked a peninsula or a cobra's head.

The theory says it is to get rid of the residual semen that were left behind the competitors and inject our fresh seeds. Since most of the plugs fit into the sockets without gap (according to statistics, men agree, women disagree), I think what the scholars are trying to describe is this scenario (courtesy of Growforce).

I do not see ANY of the residual fluid pushed out. If I happen to be in the ideal scenario visualized by the scholars, I will be among the many guys waiting for out turn (which looks like a...), but despite the theory, I am just helping the guy that went in there before secure his seed. First in, first served.

I guess the logical behavior to really secure the seed is to follow these steps:

1. Let the female partner stand straight up, possibly with her legs wide open to loosen up her pelvis
2. Shake her torso hard to let all the "leftover" come out of her body
3. Connect the plug/socket together and complete the installation
4. Make her stand again but upside down, and shake her torso to ensure the semen slow into her body.

People who follow the above procedures might exist, in a secret underground club. I am starting to feel that whoever is right, the ideal environment for procreation has been realized by our sex industry.

Procrastination is bad, isn't it?

Recently I had been running late for my school assignment. It was a big one: to create a Google site on a topic I chose (online trainings) in a month. The website was supposed to evolve gradually during that period of time, mellowing nicely.

We all know how it ended. 28 days later I was terrified in guilt, shame, and regret for doing almost nothing. Their cause was shallow but those emotions were deep. It was a much better experience than watching the movie version.

The biggest fear was that (1) I could not create a complicated structure using free Google site and (2) I cannot muster detailed graphical design. Both were true, but my mistake was focusing on the perfect result. Had I visualized a simple website with acceptable graphics and content, I could have saved myself from being frozen.

I finally lifted my wimpy ass and found out (1) Embedding presentation using Google presentation was so easy - they are offered from the same company and thus are designed to work together (unlike offerings from You-know-Who) (2) I wanted to make the site as simple as possible, thus I didn't need any elaborate design after all.

Once these points become clear, I was immediately relaxed. I even started to think about what I can do with all these possibilities. (The "perfect result", again)

Maybe all these cycles has all to do with my personaity: INFP, "dreamer" according to Myers-Briggs personality type indicator.

I dreamed about falling into a pitfall by missing the deadline, and at the same time I dreamed about creating a masterpiece. Both, by the way, occurred without having any concrete sense of how or when the actual website is built. All in my head.

I will be digging more into the personality type aspects later, but Myers-Briggs works. Maybe I am self-fulfilling the given type indicators, but

P.S. The coffee shop I was in started to zing a new song. Great, finally the days of Air Supply are gone! ...And welcome, Luka (Suzanne Vega). Are we going to be eternally trapped in the 80s? Probably for most people under 30, they are "oldies". But for me, It's Too Real, sung by Belinda Carlisle (again, 80s).

P.P.S. This is the 28 Days Later opening scene. It gets worse after the extended opening scene, so if you haven't seen it, watch the first 10 minutes and send the DVD back. You are going to miss most of the movie, but at least you are missing a potential masterpiece.

Billy the goat

This topic was originally posted in Tomohiro Machiyama's blog (a fantastic collection of movie news and Tarantino-esque cult movie podcasts...only in Japanese)

I secretly take pride in Japan's adult entertainment industry. Whenever someone mentions buzzwords originated from Japan (bukkake and moe to name just a few) I cannot help being amused -- is there any other country which exports cars, digital cameras, Mario, Hello Kitty, and bukkake at the same time? (Of course I have learned to add courteous frowning (still laughing) - part of my effort to blend into local culture.)

But the era of Japanese supremacy (adult entertainment) has come to an end, at least to me. Because of Billy the Goat - and Lovin' Lamb - (NSFW). Holy cow goat, that is so awesome I want to visit Tennessee just to use see them. After 60+ years, we lost. Again.

Mr. Machiyama discovered them in an adult shop in the so-called Bible belt area. Looks like the evangelical church organization did not like it, so they built a gigantic cross to (I guess) counterattack the adult industry by the power of the holy. This is getting interesting.

Profile: Mario brothers 2/2

Mario, the mushroom-addicted jumpy-happy Italian plumber was created (or designed) out of technical limitations.

In the always insightful Iwata Asks series, creator Shigeru Miyamoto reveals how Mario came into life.

First of all, this is the final design (remember, it was the dot-graphics era of early 1980s).

According to Miyamoto, the parts were designed as follows:

• Mustache: was drawn to avoid drawing mouth, which could have consumed extra vertical dots.
• Eyes: were given two vertical dots to make him "cute". 
• Cap: was added to again, avoid drawing hairs which could have become complicated when Mario was in action (all the time) when his hair had to wave. Also the cap reduced the number of vertical dots - we can notice that above his eyes, Mario has only two dot-width. In real life he is literally a brainless person, but here magically no one notices.
• Jumper suit: Miyamoto wanted to highlight Mario's arms when he was moving to add the "running" effect. The logical solution was to separate the color between his arms and his torso. Is there such clothes? Yes - a jumper suit! Wait, the Donkey Kong game is situated in a construction site! A construction worker trying to rescue the princess from the evil gorilla! It works!
• Huge hands (or gloves): again, made bigger to highlight the arm-waving motion when Mario was running or jumping.

...Almost everything about Mario was created out of technical restrictions or gaming specifications. He was given the name Mario only because the result resembled Nintendo US Office's landlord Mario Segale, an Italian American so much. From Wikipedia:

During localization of the game for American audiences, Nintendo's warehouse landlord Mario Segale confronted Nintendo's Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument in which the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, they opted to name the character in the game Mario after him.

Creating a long-lived device out of limited resource and existing technologies is what Nintendo does better than almost anyone in the world, and from Mario we can see it also applies to game characters.

Profile: Mario brothers 1/2

New Super Mario Brothers Wii (be ware of BGM) has come out this Sunday. The latest reincarnation of bread-and-butter revenue source for Nintendo has nearly 30 years of history, if we count Donkey Kong as the beginning.

Who are Mario and Luigi, anyway?

Mario

• The world's most famous plumber
• Made out with a princess and her seven assistants in a single adventure (legend has it that he did it also within a single day)

Luigi

• The world's second most famous plumber
  Pop quiz: name the person who:
  - Landed on the moon
  - Crossed the Atlantic ocean
  - Reached the South pole
  for the second time.
• Still a virgin

...Luigi is even worse than Art Garfunkel, John Oates, or the other Wham!

80s pop stars with staying power

Now that almost 30 years have passed since the year 1980, it is a good time to look back at the 1980s, the lost generation or golden age of pop music. As in Democrat vs Republican, Real Madrid vs F.C. Barcelona, and Freud vs Jung, framing the 80s music is one of those holy wars with no place for the coward's favorite, both. Are you with us, or them.

As someone who grew up during the 80s, I believe it was the golden age. One of the No.1 hit songs says "Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma chameleon" and Madonna sang about feeling like a virgin. She did. Is this a great era or what?

Amazingly, some of them still draws a huge crowd at concerts of carries a long list of devoted fans. Hereby I tried to profile them.

• Invincible: U2, Bon Jovi, Sting, R.E.M.
  Still generates hit songs after all these years. Receding hairlines, bulging bellies, and deepening crow's feet remain almost hidden (Sting's hair has the most staying power of all singers). Ultimately gains self-consciousness and branches into charity. Often ridiculed (especially Bon Jovi), but everybody admits that their songs are catchy.

• Incredible one-hit: Kate Bush, Suzanne Vega, Peter Gabriel
  They are musical genius, visionary, etc. who are much more than a single song. But alas, there is only one or two songs that is still played. Somebody needs to ask them about the number of their nightmares which have the titular song as the BGM (the one for Suzanne Vega starts with Luka, for sure).

• Low-key staying power: ZZ Top, AC/DC, Depeche mode
  Die-hard fans listens to whatever songs they produce. Have an incredibly strong style no one can (or want to) imitate. Everybody knows their name, but no one can sing any of their songs. The movie industry has its own version: John Malcovich.

I will be butchered by the fanboys of the respective artists by putting them into the same group (but threesome with ZZ Top and Depeche Mode and Kate Bush sounds pretty enticing).