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TheStuyGuy
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Name: Johnson
Country: United States
State: New York
Birthday: 12/4/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: Anime & Manga related stuffs, art, all sorts of music, and hanging around.
Expertise: Slacking off.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Engineering
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Vamp the Vapid
Member Since:
7/16/2002
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| Apple ZenThere's something oddly satisfying about eating an apple. I can't quite put my finger on it. In my case I'm munching on a Fuji apple. Part of the fun is the pleasant flavor. There's a very subtle tanginess and a slight sweetness that is not overpowering. It's very juicy so I don't need a drink or anything. It leaves an aftertaste but it's not strong. However, I think the funnest part for me is the act of biting into an apple. I like hearing that crunching sound I make with each chunk of the apple I devour. I appreciate how I can hold the apple in one hand and walk around all casual like to observse things. I enjoy how each bite squeezes a bit of the apple's juice out to wet my lips and yet the juice does not run down from my mouth to my chin or from the apple onto my hand. Chewing the chunks is strangely entertaining too. They are hard enough to provide a small workout for my jaw muscles but soft enough that it does not feel like a chore. It makes other foodstuffs feel like baby food. After the apple is down to its core... I find that I am no longer hungry and I'm in a calm state of mind. | | |
| CantoneseI've never noticed this before but trying to learn Cantonese is like... learning how to sing. I'm listening to this audio cd that is breaking down the pronuciasomething (damn, I need to learn how to spell shit right...) and it's mentioning how the pitch jumps with an "ahhhh" sound at the end of questions or how the pitch drops when saying no with a "mmmmm" sound. It really starts to sound like singing when the last word in a question ends in "ahhh" then you have to make the pitch waver like a roller coaster ride.
It sort of explains why Mandarin sounds so weird to me. The tones are more nasal... as supposed to sounding like... silky smooth.
Ugh, I'm not looking forward to matching these sounds with the Chinese written language because that's gonna be a bitch. The character patterns seem so random to me. The only word I remember so far is the character for 'middle'... because the word sort of reminds me of a hand giving me the middle finger.
中
Also, apparently China is 中国 which is supposed to mean something like "middle country". Reminds me of Midgard or Middle-Earth. Strange how each culture thinks that the universe revolves around them. Well, maybe it's not so strange. | | |
| Of mice and men.Okay, so every summer I end up with a nocturnal sleeping schedule. This holds true for this summer as well. I head off to my room at 3AM each night but I'm not tired yet. So what do I do? I pick up a book like the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and read a short story. After it's done I put it away and turn off the lamp and let my head rest on my pillow. Still can't sleep. :(
Instead, I wrestle with my pillow in an effort to get into a comfortable position. It doesn't work though. Then the thoughts begin to resurface. These are the thoughts that I suppress each day by keeping myself busy.
Suddenly, I remember my hate for the way this world is structured. In particular, I despite the concept of money and rewards. We go through this stupid educational system just to get a piece of paper that validates us in the eyes of potential employers. We jump through hoops to receive good grades. Are we much different from the circus animals that are forced to perform tricks in front of cheering crowds? Am I not in a similar predicament as the lab mouse dropped into the maze with a chunk of cheese waiting for me at the end?
Then that image of me in a maze pops into my mind. It's not one of those pretty hedge mazes either. There are white walls in every direction. And for some odd reason I'm in a mouse/rat costume. After I stop feeling up the soft cuddly fur I decide to explore. As I wander the halls so does my mind wander with me. What if I never reach the cheese? What if I keep bumping to dead ends one after another? Man, I am a stupid stupid mouse. The only way to get my cheese is to memorize which ways led to dead ends. But what if other mice are introduced into the maze? Well fuck me... now I have to memorize the paths and do it fast or else there won't be any cheese left for me. Even after the other mice get the cheese, the game isn't over. There are still mice stuck in the maze of life. Some will bump into various dead ends while others might bump into the same dead end time after time. They don't get to have cheese.
You know, the above paragraph sounds very silly until you start replacing 'cheese' with things like love, happiness, and booze.
It boils down to the concept of the winner and the loser. Every time one person wins, there is someone else losing. And I hate that the world revolves around this concept. I hate the persons who thought up the concept of money and making people work for it. Sure, money drives people to work together to achieve great things like erecting buildings and bridges or creating medicines. But money also drives other people with less opportunities to steal and kill. The thugs are the losers where the educated people are the winners. And the dead victims are the losers for the thugs to win their money. The chain is much longer than that but I can't bear to try to see it in its true entirety. Is it possible to have a world in which there are no losers?
I think back to the mice in the maze. What if all the mice cooperated together in their search for the correct path to the cheese and are willing to split it amongst themselves? Could it work? Or would it fail because one mouse had his little paw fingers crossed and screwed over all the other mice so that he could get all the cheese? I remember another phrase I despise: Survival of the fittest. I can't stand the thought of the fittest creature being one that is greedy and selfish. Screw you Darwin. I ain't playing your game any more. The days of 'survival of the fittest' are long past for humans.
After all this time, I'm still an animal trapped inside its cage. I want to bend the bars and run back to the wild. I want to be able to throw a big bucket of pink paint at those white walls... they are sooo boring. I want to be able to jump around and draw on walls with crayons and chalk. I want to break everything and put it back together in new ways just to see what happens. I want to laugh like a madman because it's the most fun way to laugh. I want to slam a sledgehammer into the walls of this maze and create my own mousy path of destruction. I want to find the cheese and bring it back to the other mice. I want to be able to rest my head on my pillow while knowing everything is right in the world.
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| Salmon Bots.Session Start (Vamp the Vapid:NumericSalmon): Wed Jun 11 17:24:07 2008
[17:24] NumericSalmon: Hi.
[17:24] Vamp the Vapid: hello
[17:24] Vamp the Vapid: who might this be?
[17:24] NumericSalmon: Phil? who might this be?
[17:25] Vamp the Vapid: I'm Johnson
[17:25] NumericSalmon: well hello johnson, can i help you with something?
[17:26] Vamp the Vapid: I have no idea... do I know you or something?
[17:26] NumericSalmon: i don't think so
[17:26] Vamp the Vapid: oh... then do you know me?
[17:27] NumericSalmon: nope, not to my knowledge
[17:27] Vamp the Vapid: odd, how did you come across my screen name?
[17:27] NumericSalmon: i didn't, I got an IM from you
[17:27] NumericSalmon: that just said "hi"
[17:27] Vamp the Vapid: you did?
[17:28] NumericSalmon: yeah
[17:28] Vamp the Vapid: when?
[17:28] NumericSalmon: 6 minutes ago
[17:29] Vamp the Vapid: hmm, I did not message anyone...
[17:30] NumericSalmon: very strange
[17:30] Vamp the Vapid: yup
[17:30] NumericSalmon: well, it's been nice, and strange meeting you, i guess
[17:30] Vamp the Vapid: yup, have a good day
Session Close (NumericSalmon): Wed Jun 11 17:34:41 2008
Okay. That was a strange conversation. I think I handled that quite well. At first, I thought someone managed to get access to my AIM account and message this random person. After I changed my password I started to think. Who the heck would choose such an odd screen name with Salmon in it? I popped it into google and the only result led to some entry/thread on LiveJournal in which someone else was messaged by the salmon.
Some more "google-fu" led me to more information about the salmon on Wikipedia and an entry on DeviantArt. It confused me at first because I thought I had a conversation with a bot. But it's really a relay program that forwards messages and deletes the original screen name. The salmon bot will find my screen name through this Xanga or some other social networking website. It then messages me saying "Hi." It then messages some other screen name with the same message. They reply to each other. Both people will be speaking to BlahBlahSalmon while the bot relays the messages between the two of them.
The result? A conversation between two complete strangers who will never know each others' real screen names. Unless of course, they decide to trade screen names and discover that BlahblahSalmon is not the real name.
It's strange but cool. Oh, and there's a link where people can request a salmon: Project Upstream. Funny... my favorite fish is salmon too.
Edit: It seems that the program also includes chat filters to mess up people who know about the project and who try to explain it to the other receiver. Sheesh.
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| Get on up.General things I need to do:
Get my learner's permit... again. Stupid expiration dates.
Complete lessons and get my driver's license.
Learn to write and speak in Cantonese. Then in Mandarin.
Lose weight and then gain some muscle in my upper body.
Computer stuffs:
Become familiar with Photoshop and ImageReady CS2 again.
Learn to work with three dimensional parts in AutoCAD.
Learn about SolidWorks and the various programs that come with it.
Learn about Blender.
Check out software for creating flash animations.
Research the market to find a decent lightweight laptop.
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