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| Saturday, November 30, 2002 A quick music rant before I sleep. For all you couples out there, it's the Christmas season, so it must mean that it's the season of love, right? (read my Jue 25th entry for a little background on this "season of love"). But anyways, for the couples, if you ever feel like making love to a Christmas carol, listen to Kenny G's version of "What Child is This." It's a beautifully sequenced instrumental version of that song. But I dunno, when I first heard it, for some reason, the Kenny G "mystique" in this song made me think dude, this has "make-out song" written all over it. Speaking of Kenny G, I happened to flip on to "The Other Half" and he was the guest. Supposedly, some magazine did a poll on whose music couples listen to the most while they are in bed, and the #1 on that list was Kenny G. I kind of had a funny thought putting all this together in my brain. So let's say some dude and his girlfriend makes out to Kenny G's version of "What Child is This." Basically, he would be playing that song when they were making out because if he gets her pregnant, his first reaction will be "umm.. what child is this? It sure ain't mine." Hahahah. Quote of the Day: -Drive back to Gardena from the Grove- Grace(to Young, who is driving): Shouldn't we be on the 110? Why are we taking the local? Mike: Hmm.. I think he's going "loco." Friday, November 29, 2002 My apologies for the lack of updates, I've been so occupied with watching Korean dramas and playing Metroid Prime. Man, Metroid Prime is perhaps one of the best action games I have ever played. I didn't like it too much at first because it took some time to get used to the controls and the whole first-person shooter thing. But after I got used to everything and got into the game more, I'm totally hooked. I was never really into first-person shooters like Counterstrike and Doom, but Metroid is something totally out of this world. Metroid Prime you say?? Does that mean Mike got a Gamecube? Yes. Does Mike have that much money? No, but he does have a credit card he could use. Haha... well, like all my other horrendous purchases, this one is perfectly justified too because it's Metroid and I've been waiting for some time for this game to come out. And I was eventually going to buy a Gamecube anyways so it was only a matter of time. Everything I buy is for a good cause. I've never made a foolish and unjustifiable perchase in my life hahahah. Hmm.. let's see, what else did I buy this week. A camcorder microphone and a boom pole to hold up the microphone for our video productions. Now the actors in our productions won't have to scream their lines during the recordings. But I won't disclose the amount of money it cost... I don't want my younger readers to think that it's okay to just freely spend however much money you want on expensive items. I'm willing to bear the responsibilities that come with being in debt. I have a 1-2 year plan made out to totally be free of credit card debts within that time frame. Quote of the Day: -Church chat- Sam: You know, once there was a dead frog in my laundry detergent box. It was so weird. Girls: Ewww! Mike: Really? I guess it got caught up in the Tide. Tuesday, November 26, 2002 You know, something that I really appreciated about living with my roommates was that we never forgot our responsibilities as students. On the outside, me, Dan, and John looked like a bunch of Korean dudes having fun all the time, but when it came to the subject of our school responsibilities, we did what we had to do and took care of business. Yes we slacked off too, but when we did, we made sure that we crammed like we never crammed before to save ourselves from the embarrassment of receiving an unsatisfactory grade. When it was time to play, we played hard. When it was time to study, we studied hard. And when it was time to serve at church or KCM, we served to the best of our strength and abilities. I think a lot of youngster Christians fall into the trap of misprioritizing their school and life responsibilities from their church responsibilities. I mean, I think it's cool that they want to do all they can to serve God and all, but dude, a LOT of them really need to get their act together with their school work and really take strides for their college goals, not just THINK or STRESS about it. I'll be the first to admit that I really thought about and stressed out big time about college when I was in high school, but stressing about it didn't change anything. If you serve at church, you're gonna be sacrificing a lot of your weekend time so you have to make the most out of your free time to study hard and play hard. My philosophy has always been that if you stress out about something, you don't just talk about it and bask in everyone's pity. Go and do something about it. In my opinion, if your grades are suffering because you're serving at church, then you only have yourself to blame for bad time management. So let me restate that previous sentence. If you're grades are suffering and you are serving at church, it's NOT because you're serving at church. Responsibility as a Christian means that you take care of your responsibilities with everything else that you are, whether it be student, employee, mom, dad, etc. Monday, November 25, 2002 I went to Frys today and some guy almost ended up tripping over his little daughter. Then he gets all worked up and tells her "damn it, you scared the sh*t out of me!" Ummm... okay buddy, that's a really nice way to talk to your 5-year-old daughter. And then once she picks up those wonderful words from you and says it back to you later on, you'll probably get all pissed at her right? What an ignorant piece of crap. Sheesh! Anyways. Imagine if you lived with three really really corny guys. Everyday you would hear conversations like this one, held today online between me and my old roommate, Jonsport: Super0406: omg i can't believe these people... ugh JFRO637: what's up? Super0406: my discover card's limit magically went up by $300 today... grrr! why do they keep doing this to me! JFRO637: well, you gotta give 'em "credit", they know who to target... Super0406: ooooh my... siiiiick! hahaha Jonsport and I are basically the co-authors of the Defense of the Corny document. We've had our share of deep, philosophical conversations about corny humor(hahaha) and I just summarized it in those four main points. The thing is, whenever me, John, and Dan are in the same place, we will put ourselves in corniness denial and sigh and shake our heads whenever one of us says something corny hahaha. It's sort of our way of keeping each other in check haha. I spent most of today eye shopping for a camcorder microphone and experimenting with Final Cut. Our English Ministry is going to be putting on a big time production for our Christmas program. Dude, if everything works out the way we planned it, this is going to be THE biggest thing anyone has ever experienced in KRUMC Christmas program history. Basically I had to mess around with some special effects on Final Cut to make sure some of the more complicated things we talked about was actually possible. And everything worked out a-okay so far. There's a couple more things I have to try out after I do some more research, but looks like we're good to go. It's really exciting even to think about it. And I even solved a minor problem I couldn't figure out on one of the functions on my camcorder, which is going to make things a bit easier. And we're going to be selling the dvd versions of our production to the congregation as a fundraiser for EM. So we're basically killing two birds with one stone. I can't wait! Hahaha. Sunday, November 24, 2002 Brian: Did he get the right vegetables for you? Ellie: Yeah. It was just artichoke. Mike: Oh, well, as long as he didn't "choke" on it, right? In the midst of the sighs and gags, which is the general response I get from my quotes, Ellie actually laughed and geniuinely thought it was funny. The other girls laughed so much at the fact that she found it to be actually funny. It was an interesting moment. She probably has no clue that it totally made my day hahaha. It's not easy living the corny life. You face a lot of persecution for the things you say haha. The big news of the weekend besides our church revival (posted on my QT site) - SHAQ IS BAQ!!! Now I could look at NBA scores without cringing. OMG I was seriously afraid to look at the NBA scores because the Lakers were playing so horrendously except for Kobe. -More church chat- Jane: Wow, we have so much cranberry. Mike: If it's hard to move them all at once, just "cran" it into a container. (cram) Sharon: Hey did you see Harry Potter? Mike: No, but I did see a movie about his brother, Larry Clay. (potter -> clay) Heabin JDSN: Wow, there's so much turkey. Mike: Yeah, we don't have enough tur"locks." (tur"key") Sarah: Do you know anyone from ______ church in Arcadia? Edward: Yeah, I know a few people that go there. Mike: Really? They must play a lot of video games huh? ("Arcade"-ia) Thursday, November 21, 2002 I don't think I will ever understand today's Asian pop culture. Like, if I were to ever disagree or make a mockery out of something that certain people do, most likely the response would be "don't be a hater! And then they would probably go off and talk a bunch of smack about the haters being losers who can't hang or really get mad with the reaction they received. Well, okay.. maybe it's my lack of knowledge about how all this "hater" business works, but by you going off and saying "man, f___ the haters!!! blah blah blah," aren't you being a hater yourself? You love to talk all this smack about people who have a problem with what you do and you label it "hating" but then you're guilty of the exactly the same thing by having problems with the other person having a problem with what you're doing, so you have the exact same problem of "hating" by getting mad and "hating" the "haters." Sheesh, go figure. So stop hating the haters, you hater hater! Hahahaha. Last night I made a xanga QT site, inspired by Dae Myung. And NO it's not a xanga cutie site hahaha. It's for my quiet times. I think it's a really good way to keep myself accountable since people will know when I've been slacking on my time with God if I'm not updating it. So yeah, it'd be nice to do something uncontroversial or write about stuff that's not offensive will be a good thing. But this website will keep going as well since I'll still use it to log my general thoughts and stuff that happened during the day. The link is up on the right side. Speaking of last night, Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer from the Simpsons was on Conan. Dude, that was one of the most delightful interviews I've ever seen on TV. They were doing all the voices they play on the show and man, I was totally blown away. Wednesday, November 20, 2002 Okay, I can't come up with like a totally special thing for this entry, but I'm going to mainly go over the history of this blogger and talk about stuff that happened over the period of time while this site was being viewed 2000 times. Hmm.. where to start... Most talked about topic by me: This would most definitely be the topic of feminism. Actually, I prefer to call it anti-males-ism, or feminazism. Because I support women who try hard to live the American dream, but my smack talk only goes out to the feminist man-hating women who love to hold public ralleys to gripe about males and blame them for the evils of the world. I complained a whole lot about school too, but who doesn't complain about school? Most talked about topic by other people regarding this blog: History of KRUMC Youth Group. Haha when I first started writing that entry it was just meant to vent out a few frustrations I had at the time with church, but I never thought it would reach this kind of legendary status as it does now hahaha. Person that comes to mind when I read all the angry entries: Adam Sandler. Hahaha, I don't know, I was just browsing through all the stuff I've written and I was like dude, I sound like Happy Gillmore. A note about the quotes of the day: Emmanuel said his goal was to get on my blog with one of his quotes. Haha, what I told him was that the only time I'll put someone else's quote is if it was something really interesting and it ties in to that day's entry, or if that person said exactly what I would have said before I said it. If I were to put down any kind of corny quote, then it'd be full of my roommates' quotes as well (John and Dan), but the thing is, the three of us all have our different styles of corny humor. So usually we don't think of the stuff that the other person says. The only acknowledgable quote that made it to this blogger came from Theresa Woo. Congrats! Hahaha. Mentioning of stuff I bought: Drum Machine - Yamaha RM1x: $700 iMac Computer: $2000 Digital Camcorder - Sony TRV27: $800 My favorite entry: Actually, I don't really have one absolutely favorite topic, but just for the sake of putting one on the spotlight, one entry that kind of stands out above the rest is the one where I talk about honesty (May 13). I think it's rather obvious that I have very strong opinions about a lot of stuff, but my biggest beef is with the type of people that I mention in that entry. That entry is probably my most genuine one in terms of expressing disgust. Most of the other entries are partly exaggerated to make it more funny (unless I say that I really hate a particular type of individual), but that particular entry, I seriously meant every single word. Okay well I guess that's just about all the stuff I could think of. Thanks everyone for a great 2000 hits. Tuesday, November 19, 2002 Well, well, well. Looks like this blog site reached 2000 hits. I guess it's kind of a special feeling. I wanted to update this tomorrow but my attempt at sleeping early tonight seems to have backfired. I was driving to my tutoring kid's house today and came to the conclusion that Palos Verdes, aside from the beautiful views, is THE most horrendous place to live. A couple weeks ago when it was raining, the fog there was unbelievably dense and literally all I could see were lights from the car in front of me. If there was no car in front of me, it felt like I wasn't on a road and I was driving blindly into a vast space of nothingness. Also, if you are driving up the hill in the afternoon, the sun basically shoots itself right into your eyes and you can't see anything even if you have sunglasses on. Putting down the blocker thing doesn't help either. And to top it all, PV is at least 30 minutes away from any freeway. Sheesh, such a huge inconvenience. Well I'm getting tired now so I'll probably post a 2000 hits special entry thing tomorrow or something. Quotes: -Chatroom with John, Dan, and Jeannie- Cho640: hey john, are you gonna be going home for thanksgiving? JFRO637: nope... i have no money. i won't be going home until december.. beanbag80: aww.. JFRO637: yeah, i'm just gonna be alone in my apt eating some KFC for thanksgiving.. haha Super0406: hmm.. don't go to KFC, it's thanksgiving. Super0406: go to KFT. hahahaha (Kentucky Fried Turkey) -Chatting with Jenn- Super0406: how was your day? Yada715: long.. i had a really hard psych test today. Super0406: ooh.. did it psych you out? hahaha jk Sunday, November 17, 2002 Not really much to talk about these days. Well, there's always SOMEthing to talk about, but they are all generally boring topics. My life isn't all that exciting, really. I don't think it ever was. At least, during the weekdays it's not. Weekends I'm at chuch doing one thing or another and there's always something fun going on. I haven't been too random these days. And the quotes aren't really piling up like they used to because I don't get to hang out with people very often. Up to last year there was always something to be corny about since my apartment was the corny people headquarters. Not much going on in the weekdays anymore besides tutoring and the occassional random going out nights. Oh well, but the important thing is that my thoughts are at least somewhat consistently logged in here regardless of the entertainment level. But this week will be quite busy. I'll have to prepare for Saturday's youth revival and I have a DVD to produce as well. Quotes: -Church chat: Grace and I were both wearing vests- Grace: Yeah, Mike and I have the vest thing going today. Mike: Yup. *thumbs up* It's the vest! (best) Emmanuel: The mi-yuk-gook was sooo good today. Mike: Yeah, nothing mi-"yuck" about it at all! Thursday, November 15, 2002 I had a dream that I owned two electric guitars that I really want and I was playing one of them for worship. It even felt real on my fingertips when I was dreaming it. Maybe I dreamt it because I saw the guitarist on Conan O'brien play with it that night. It was the Gibson ES-335 hollowbody guitar, antique natural finish.. *drool* Retail price, $2,750..... T_T Which means I'd have to pay at least around $2400-2500 for it. SIGH... it's the most expensive guitar that's on my list of guitars I want to eventually own. But man, that thing produces the sound of heaven. And the thing with me is that when I buy musical instruments, I don't like to buy used ones, although I could probably get it for way cheaper. Especially a guitar. Dude, it's my guitar that we're talking about here, I'm not going to just take someone else's previously used guitar and make it my own. it's a lot more special than that. The guitar truly is a revolutionary instrument. It has evolved into the definitive instrument of the post modern world. There's not a lot of things that top playing guitar in my list of never-get-bored-of-it enjoyable things to do in life. In my opinion, Jimi Hendrix was one of the biggest revolutionary guitarists ever to set foot on earth. If you listen to his songs, a lot of it doesn't seem all crazy and out of this world like when you compare him to the likes of a lot of the metal bands and guitarists who do a lot of crazy fast fingered stuff. Not taking anything away from Jimi Hendrix, he could all sorts of crazy stuff too, but the thing that makes Jimi Hendrix different from everyone else is that he set THE standard for creative electric guitar riffs. What made him great was that he took simple riffs and used very uniqe note/chord progressions that no one's ever applied before. I'm not saying that the poeple who do the crazy fast stuff isn't good, but the thing is, it takes true musical genius to be able to apply the music in a truly original way. For example, if you listen to the guitar styles of the Edge (from U2) and Dave Matthews, they don't really play in a particularly "crazy" way, but if you listen to what they are playing in coordination with the chords, it's really crazy, for them to come up with that kind of combination of notes or chords that no one has ever used before. They truly are guitar geniuses. Wednesday, November 14, 2002 Grrr! I get so disgusted with my own incompetence sometimes. I can't even burn one cd correctly. I wasted two perfectly good recordable cds because I forgot how to use the cd creator program. The fact that I was daydreaming the entire day doesn't help either. My head feels so disorganized right now. I've been writing things on this entry and then I'd lose my strain of thought and end up deleting the whole thing because I don't remember what I wanted to say. And I can't get a hold of one single chain of thought. Earlier today I knew what I wanted to talk about in tonight's entry but it's completely lost somewhere in the depths of my mind. I think it means I need to get some sleep. Monday, November 12, 2002 Just when I thought I had Final Cut Pro 3 figured out at least a little bit, I came crashing down to the reality that I know virtually nothing about it. That program is the devil!!! It took me stinkin three hours to figure out how to fix the compatibility issues between Photoshop and Final Cut while I was trying to put in a background picture file I created for the last video infomercial project. Then there is the whole resolution issue I need to figure out. Among SO MANY OTHER FREAKING COMPLICATED FUNCTIONS this thing has. It's so annoying, but at the same time it is somewhat exciting because of the program's unlimited potential. Once I master everything I could edit videos at a professional level. But for now I'll have to settle for sleepless nights trying to figure out how all the crap works. Argh!! So how about them republicans huh? This is the first time since Teddy Roosevelt where the executive and legislative branch are both controlled by the republican party. Although I'm not too fond of democrats, it's makes me kind of iffy to think how the republicans are free to do pretty much whatever they feel like. Well, at the least, things got a whole lot easier for them to do whatever they want with the country. So the Middle Eastern countries basically have a few more days until Bush exercises his Texas justice wrath on them. That is, unless they follow the demands that the UN put on them, but I highly doubt they will. I wish Calvin and Hobbes never ended. That was truly the greatest American cartoon strip ever to be viewed by the human eye. If the Simpsons is the greatest television show, then Calvin and Hobbes was the greatest comic strip. Both are flawless displays of genius minds. I feel really dry mentally. Probably because I spent all of Saturday night working on the video project. Maybe I'll visit the Torrance botanical garden or something. Looking at the flowers will help stimulate my mind. I could read poetry or listen to music to stimulate my mind too, but for some reason I feel like I need something visual. Ideally I'd like to go to the Getty or Huntington Library but I don't really feel like going anywhere too far away... Thursday, November 7, 2002 While browsing through a number of Tori Amos songs, I discovered that she sang her own version of REM's "Losing My Religion." Losing My Religion was one of the better songs to come out of the 80's and one that brings up a pretty interesting issue. A lot of people even today believe that this song is some kind of blasphemous song that denounces Christianity and religion. I remember seeing a Christian documentary that had an anti-rock and roll theme and someone totally started going off about how this song is part of a huge athiest and Christian bashing movement in music. Umm, BULLCRAP. If that guy would have done any kind of research or looked into the background of this song, he would realize that "losing my religion" is a Southern phrase that means somewhere along the lines of "losing my temper" or "I'm at my wit's end." It's not about religion at all. If he knew anything about REM, he would realize that Michael Stipe, the lead singer of the band, stated in interviews that the song is about an argument - but not with God or a god. Sheesh! How in the world do some of these people come to these types of conclusions without knowing anything at all? Absolutely ridiculous. But back to Tori Amos. Out of the 10 songs I've listened to, I enjoyed about... 3 songs. Which puts her status at "ok." I consider her to be the best at utilizing the piano to its fullest in rock and roll music. It's kind of hard to explain. A lot of the pianists that play for rock bands (or any band, for that matter) play so... piano-y. There's always this pattern that pianos go in slow songs and in fast songs. So many times it's just disgustingly obvious. Tori Amos's piano style... varies from song to song... it's very expressive of the lyrics. She really has a deep understanding the dynamics of the piano... I'd love to learn from her. I like her lyrics, but sometimes her vocal expression didn't really suit to my tastes. I totally respect her as an artist, so I'll keep an eye out for her music. Liking 30% of her songs isn't too bad. But I wouldn't consider myself a big fan. Yeah, and like, I'm sure Tori Amos really cares about what I think of her music. Monday, November 4, 2002 Why do I have this feeling that I'm gonna be spending a horrendous amount of money on my car in 2003.... Well, I know for sure that my new year's resolution won't be to spend my money more wisely. Actually, as far as new year's resolutions go, I never really believed in them. And I never really made any kind of new year's resolution before because if I think I need to fix something in myself, then I would make a decision to strive to fix it at the point where I realize I need to fix it. The fact that it's new years doesn't change anything. It's amazing how much the people around you can change you. I never ever had even a remote thought about doing anything to my car until I started hanging out with the guys at church more and more. It seems like the whole corny humor thing is rubbing off on some of them too hahaha. Well as of tonight my Macintosh worries can be put to good rest for at least about a year. I'm completely sold on the Mac now. I totally love it. However, the biggest problem with being a Macintosh owner is that it's virtually impossible to find people who could hook you up with the latest software. Ever since the day when I thought about getting a Mac I was stressing out about how I'm going to get software because Final Cut Pro 3 (the super video editing program that only exists in the Mac world) costs $1000. A thousand bucks for one program!!! Sheesh, you could get a fully loaded super PC with a thousand bucks. But there's a reason why all the big time Hollywood people use Final Cut to do all their stuff. But I finally got in touch with my co-worker from my previous internship and he was able to get it for me. And AIM for OSX recently came out so that was a huge convenience too. And finally, tonight I was able to get MS Office for OSX, completing my software necessities list for my Mac. Now I don't have to switch between the PC and the Mac as much since I now have Office on my Mac. What's even more cool is that all Office documents are compatible with both PC and Mac!! So now I am working on Photoshop and Pagemaker to complete my wish list. But those two programs would just be icing on the cake. Sunday, November 3, 2002 I had a dream last night that I fixed up my car. Hahaha I could never imagine my Toyota Corolla lowered with a cool set of rims and everything else. I don't really see a Corolla as a fix-up kind of car, let alone a Corolla CE. It'd be a waste of money to fix up a Corolla, in my opinion. BUT, thanks to that dream now I want to at least have a nice sound system in my car. Ugh, more money I'm going to be spending. And now that the thought is in my head, I know no matter how expensive it might be, I'm going to get it sooner or later. But not for at least a month or two because I've been spending way too much money these days and I need to save up for Christmas presents. I went to Delirious concert with the youth group kids tonight. I wasn't going to go becaus I was feeling too sick (I was coughing between every line of every song during worship, ugh) but I believe everything happens for a reason, so I told Heabin JDSN that if she told me to go, I would go and she asked me to go. It was an excellent concert. It was in super booney land Hemet, CA and we were THE only Asians there. But hey, as long as we believe in the same God. So it wasn't like the super crazy and crowded atmosphere like their Irvine concert two years ago (where there was a 99% Asian, er.. Korean turnout, btw). It was nice and cozy. A very intimate and more worship-like atmosphere which was what most of us wanted. It was nice to see the youth group kids go crazy in a worship setting. What does it take for me to be interested in a band/singer that I don't normally listen to? A good song. But the song better be pretty damn good. And the song of the week for me would definitely have to be Tori Amos's "A Sorta Fairytale." But the music video was sooo weird. I don't really know much about Tori Amos or that song, but the music is extraordinarily intriguing to me so I'm gonna be looking deeper into her style, lyrics, artistic expression and musical philosophies to determine whether she should be added to my extremely picky list of musicians I consider to be great. Quotes: -At Anne's Halloween party- Brian: Yeah, I think Han wants to transfer out of BYU. Joe: Why, is it because it's Mormon country there? Mike: Yeah, I think he'd much rather prefer to be around "Morwomen." (mormon = mor"men") -On Grace's return from Europe- Mike: Oh no, you don't sound too well, did you get sick? Grace: No, I'm just really tired from the jetlag. Mike: Hmm.. are you sure? After all, you did go to "Germ"any. (germs) |