News

There are a lot of worthless "news" out there. Buried in stupid articles about Halo 3 and iPhones, were these two stories that made me sad. It's difficult have faith in a world filled with so many evil and heartless people.

More Deaths in Myanmar, and Defiance (NY Times - 9/28/2007)
There is a picture of a Japanese journalist down on the ground; photo taken immediately after he was shot through the heart by a soldier. It was originally reported as an accidental shooting but there was a video that proved otherwise. He was quite a famous journalist in Japan.

Mistake costs dishwasher $59,000 (CNN.com - 9/28/2007)
An illegal immigrant from Guatemala worked for 11 years as a dishwasher in the US only to have his life savings taken at a way at the airport because he didn't know that he had to declare the cash to customs...

I'm sure people have opinions about these two stories. But guess what, I don't care to hear them so I'm turning off the comment option for this post! My only point is that the frickin' articles made me sad. You can't argue with that.

PBR Nutritional Facts

Quite a few number of people seem to stumble across my blog by doing a Google search for "PBR nutritional facts". So, I feel like I should post the information here.

PBR has 5.0% alcohol, 153 calories, and 12.01 grams of carbs.

There you have it.

Amazon - Book Recommendation

I wonder what I've purchased in the past to get this recommendation!

Now available: "Modern Canonical Quantum General Relativity (Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics)" by Thomas Thiemann on Amazon.com

$140. Pretty hardcore!

My Own Heartbeat

So this is a bit depressing, but oh well. I'll make fun of myself later.

I feel most forlorn in the morning and at night, when I hear my own heartbeat. I hear my neighbors, I hear birds, I hear squirrels, I hear cars. But the sound of my own heartbeat reminds me that I'm all alone.

My Strengths?

I read this book (well, only the required 3 chapters...) titled "Now, Discover Your Strengths" because my boss decided we should read it and talk about it. Basically, it tells you that everyone's got "talent" and you're better off working your "talent" into "strength" rather than improving your weaknesses. It's an interesting idea, and it gave me new ways to look at certain things but I can't say that I bought into the sales pitch.

You take this test called StrengthsFinder after reading the first 3 chapters. They give you a series of paired statements and you have 20 seconds to pick the statement that describe you more accurately. (They want your initial reaction or whatever and don't want to give you time to think.) I had to choose between the two statements, indicating that one or the other ''strongly'' or ''moderately'' describes me. Or I could choose a ''neutral''.

Some sample statements:

• ''Starting conversations is an effort for me'' or ''I get a rush from striking up a conversation with a stranger''
• ''I prefer intellectual discussions'' or ''I prefer to talk about sports''
• "I am a very private person'' or ''My life is an open book''
• ''I push others to succeed'' or ''I make other people happy''

I felt like there were more bizzaro ones in there but I can't remember.

After you go through ass load of these, they spit up my top 5 "themes of talent". (There are 34 of them, BTW). Here are my top five:

1. Analytical (People strong in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation.)
2. Arranger (People strong in the Arranger theme can organize, but they also have a flexibility that complements this ability. They like to figure out how all of the pieces and resources can be arranged for maximum productivity.)
3. Achiever (People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive)
4. Learner (People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.)
5. Developer (People strong in the Developer theme recognize and cultivate the potential in others. They spot the signs of each small improvement and derive satisfaction from these improvements.)

Basically, I am a cold hearted bitch. And I tend to over think things. And a workaholic.

I still think I would make a great prostitute with these traits.

Egg Donation

I've decided to give up on having any sort of meaningful relationship with anyone. I figured NSA fling here and there is probably the best thing for me. Then I was thinking to myself shit, that means I won't have kids. But I want to do something about not letting trash take over the world...
Then I thought to myself, I should donate my egg. Brilliant. Couple of G's in cash won't hurt either.

But dang, apparently I am too old for that already.

So much for that idea. Back to thinking how else I can contribute to this world...

My Friends are Funny

2 Friends.
2 Funny conversations.
1 Night.

-> Dead cell phone battery
-> 2 more lines on my cell phone bill (same 2 numbers on the rest of the bill...)
-> Little closer to hearing loss (thanks NK for the article)
-> 1 blog post

I'll briefly bitch about the first one and I'll write about the fourth item in a bit. Please be patient, or skip the next paragraph if you don't want to hear me whine (again).

My cell phone only gives me like a 5 second (no joke) warning before the battery dies. I was lazily lying around on my futon when I heard the beep (really quietly too) and by the time I ran (without bruising myself along the way) to the charger in the bedroom, the call had dropped and the stupid phone was dead. I live in an 800 sqft apartment. The distance is pretty short. But as I whine about this minor incident, I'm thinking to myself, DUDE, maybe I should look to see if there is a setting for this? Hmm. I should look. But my phone is in the bedroom and I'm in the living room. I'll forget by the time I get there. Oooh. I just got a text. It'll have to wait.

OK, so this is what I wanted to write about! Because I think they're funny.

Quote from friend 1:
As he was trying to remember what experiment he was going to conduct (on himself):

"Man, it was going to be such a cool experiment too! I was even going to test something."

I've always thought words "experiment" and "test" are synonyms and they kindda mean the same thing in this context... Like don't you test something in any experiment? Why did he think it was so cool that this "experiment" came with a test? Or am I the stupid one here? Anyone? Something = hypothesis???

And my friend 2 told me that he sometimes cries when he watches cheesy STOOPID romantic comedy movies but he wouldn't cry if I died of cancer. But maybe if I was murdered. I was going to ask what if it was suicide but I figured he would just tell me that he'd be pissed so I didn't ask. So what if it was an accident? Like if I get hit by a car or something?

Note to self: Next time, hit "PUBLISH POST" when you're done writing...

New High/Low

I discovered something cool today. Thanks to someone who searched for certain terms on blogsearch, and my awesome post from yesterday.

Search Engine		blogsearch.google.com
Search Words		blogspot masturbation or masturbate -mental -intellec

=> My Hello Kitty post from yesterday!!!

---

I discovered just TODAY that my blog name's misspelled the entire time! Turdette is back.

My fingers hurt from too much typing (I think).

The world is a FUCKED UP place so many unknowns.

Dear Hello Kitty Lovers

If you are not comfortable with words like MASTURBATION, (or if you're related to me...) please stop reading, mao.

Best thing ever. If you like Hello Kitty. And if you like to masturbate and/or those of you who are fortunate enough to be having sex if you enjoy bringing toys into the bedroom. Or wherever you decide to do it. (Side note: only use REAL waterproof ones in the shower).

Go read this from GIZMODO. You have to read the link to the fleshbot site too. Can I just say that I can be that "friend from Japan"???

My people come up with awesome things sometimes.

My New Obsession

Goodbye, craigslist missed connections, hello PostSecret!




I'm so going to submit something...

Horoscopes & Legal Disclaimers

Once again, I'm procrastinating. So I started perusing around Tarot.com (source of my frickin' Google horoscopes that I read everyday). Man. They have a lot of shit services!!! I mean I guess I'm not surprised, but they charge an arm and a leg to feed you bull shit.

I started to wonder what type of disclaimer they have on their website to protect themselves from frivolous law suits.

General Disclaimer:

Even though observing your personal cycles can help you see patterns, stimulate your intuition and make better decisions, information delivered by Tarot.com's products and features should be used with common sense. Tarot.com is not responsible for how you interpret or apply astrological or divinatory information.

Be advised that the accuracy of an astrology or numerology report is dependent on the accuracy of the birth data going in. Tarot.com is not responsible for the accuracy of birth-times as they have been recorded by governments, agencies or ephemerides. On Tarot.com we used the most widely-used interactive resource for determining true GMT -- the Astro Communications Services (ACS) Atlas -- which adjusts entered birth-times and places for time zones, daylight savings time, etc. We do not warranty the absolute accuracy of the ACS Atlas itself, even though it serves as the trusted resource for most computer-generated astrology charts and reports.

Classic!!! Sooooo, if they end up giving you a reading that's totally wrong, it's probably your mistake. Or the government's. Or the hospital.

I just thought it was funny. And deserved a post. Aaaand I really don't want to go back to writing that abstract...

This one is for you, RL

I loves me pandas

So the last post was too serious so I have to link to this video.

Life & Procrastination

Life of a Procrastinator.
Life as a Procrastinator.
Lifelong Procrastinator.
Lifetime of Procrastination.
Procrastinating Life.

I'm trying to remember if I've always been a procrastinator. Thinking back to my childhood, the earliest memory of my partaking in procrastination goes back to elementary school. Growing up in Japan, we had homework over our 6 week summer vacation. Stuff like keeping a diary everyday, learning kanji characters by writing them over and over and over millions of times (must submit this notebook as proof!), math problems, art projects...

I think I was pretty good about getting the mechanical projects out of the way. Mechanical meaning I would just chuck away at writing same characters over and over and doing similar math problems over and over. I think I even put together a half-assed art project. The problems I had were with projects that I had to think about... Like thinking about what to write about in today's diary entry. I mean we had to even write down the weather for that day and each entry had to be accompanied by a colored drawing. Ummm. Yeah. So I procrastinated. Resulting in my mother going through old newspapers to look up weather information from weeks ago (days before the intertubes!) and me writing entries like "tomorrow is my friend's birthday", "today was my friend's birthday", and finally "yesterday was my friend's birthday". And later years in my elementary school, I remember I had issues with research projects. It could be about anything. I procrastinated because I couldn't decide what I wanted to research.

Middle school and high school pretty much went the same way... I excelled at math or physics or something like that, but sucked at subjects like history or English where I had to think more and interpret, blah blah blah. I liked having right/wrong answers.

So naturally (?) I pursued engineering in college. It went pretty smooth I must say... I'm a procrastinator, but I'm also a hard worker, I guess. I was good at performing mindless tasks. Endless math problems where as long as you had the patience to work through the 1000 iteration you eventually came to a correct answer was something I had no problems doing.

I kind of went to grad school and got a master's degree because I couldn't decide what kind of work I wanted to do and at the time pursuing a master's degree kind of was like an extension of my undergrad.

Then I decided to move to Michigan because there was a job lined up for me and I had a happy life with someone who was moving to Michigan.

But the job was not fulfilling. It was not a good fit. It didn't match my skill sets at all... I was ineffective, and bored. I think this is when I started procrastinating the most. Except it was about important things. Like what do I want to do to earn my living?

Procrastination kind of paid off in that respect... I went with the flow of things and ended up switching jobs, making more money, entered into a brand new field of work (not necessarily a good "career" move but when you don't know where you want your career to go, more money is always a good reason to switch jobs).

Years went by. Got married. Got divorced.

Then, mother of all procrastination. WHAT THE FUCK TO DO WITH MY LIFE??????

So yeah. Currently procrastinating.... life, I guess???

Stupid People

Today, I write about stupid people. Not that I'm smart, but man. Some people are just stooooopid.

This morning, I receive an e-mail at 9:38 AM saying "get me off this list. Your unsubscribe produces and endless loop." I guess it was in response to some sort of spam that this person received . It contained 2 e-mail addresses. I guess I subscribed to one of them. (More accurately, I was a member of some sort of e-mail list that was created that I was not aware that I was a member of...) I ended up receiving 43 messages regarding this spam until it finally ended at 10:33 AM. I guess the administrator of the e-mail group that I was on finally disabled the list.

PEOPLE, why are you so stupid? Half the messages were "please take me off this list" and the other half were "don't reply all". Either way. STOOOPID. I even got one that said "test". WTF? What the hell are you testing? It was like road rage. I could hardly contain myself. I just wanted to write something like "if you reply all to this message, I will find you and hurt you".

I have something else to complain about. It's about this blog post on SciAm. Basically, she got bit by a mosquito where she had a bruise, and the bruise disappeared along with the mosquito bite. But here's the quote that I was annoyed by: "Did the mosquito actually suck the blood out of my bruise? In fact, could it have bitten me there ON PURPOSE?" I say we conduct a study. We'll beat her until she's all bruised up and throw her in a room full of mosquitoes. BTW, the comments were just as retarded. But I still love SciAM.

Damn I'm whiny. And violent.

Typhoon #9

I've been at home (Tokyo) on vacation for about a week and a half now. It's nice to be home. The only thing is that the weather's been miserable... So friggin' hot and humid!

BUT, here comes typhoon #9!!! It's going to be pretty sweet. It is supposed to hit the Tokyo area sometime in the early morning. Here's a satellite image.

Pretty sweet! You can download KML files (Google Earth) from the NII page.

Hopefully we won't lose power though...