Happy Fun Time

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Murakami - More Japanese Pop Art

Revolutionizing the Japanese Pop Culture/Art scene.. Takashi Murakami is very well known in Japan, and has made his way over to the rest of the world through Louis Vuitton in his collaboration with Marc Jacobs in the Multicolore Murakami Collection (that rainbow colored crap you see in the stores or on the arms of spoiled blondes).





His work in Japan however, is very questionable. He was known more for cutesy "Sanrio" type stuff... until recently.. when he started to produce pieces more similarly to "Mari-Chan"... ie: anime/manga in a ... well.. adult-fashion.



That's just lovely. More of his work can be seen here.

Just....Wow


More than 500,000 rally in downtown LA against new immigration legislation

Excerpt from the LA Times article:

Joining what some are calling the nation's largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting "Si se puede!" (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.


Click here to read the rest of the article

Mari-chan

I saw this on a friend of a friend's blog.



Marichan.com. Something about exploring and parodying Japanese cute culture. It's kinda bizarre to see a cutesy girl flying around with her pubes showing, lol.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Tommy Pastrami

This is my first whole-hearted attempt to write a food review. I wanted to supplement my post with pictures, but I wasn't thinking about reviewing this place before I went there. Otherwise, I would've taken my camera.

It's hard to find a decent pastrami sandwich in Orange County. The Hat, in Brea and Lake Forest, is a popular pastrami joint that seems to be the current de facto place for pastrami. However, I never really accepted The Hat's pastrami. The meat was pale and shaved, and it never had that dark, beefy, peppery bite that real pastrami has.

I went to Tommy Pastrami near the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa border on Harbor Blvd. Self-described as a "New York Delicatessen," it's in the middle of a business park. Because of that, it's only open during normal office hours--Monday to Friday, 6AM to 4PM; Saturday, 11AM to 2PM (the website shows longer Saturday hours, but I think it's outdated).

Inside, it looks nothing like what a New York deli would look like (I'm imagining Rupert's "Hello Deli" on Letterman's Late Show). Instead, it looks like a plain, urban business park interior. Very clean, not too large. I went during the lunch hour and it was busy, but not packed to the extreme. There were sturdy plastic tables and chairs outside--no cheap white plastic tables that can barely fit one tray.

The menu (see .pdf menu) is large and it has your basic deli sandwiches. The deli also has something that seemed less New York like, but more Californian: an expresso cafe. It makes sense though, since it's serving to the office working crowd.

Standing inside, I saw people picking up their whole pastrami sandwiches. They were huge and stacked high with pastrami (probably 4 inches high). I decided to get the half sandwich because I wasn't that hungry, but hungry enough to scarf down that delicious pastrami in about 90 seconds.

You had your choice of rye or French roll. Of course, I chose the classic rye. I paid $7.25, which is pretty steep for only a half-sandwich. Yes, there's plenty of meat on the sandwich, but $7 worth of meat? I doubt it. I got my food in about 30 seconds and went outside to eat.

Surprisingly, the sandwich didn't automatically come with mustard, which I thought was standard on any pastrami sandwich. I picked up a bottle of mustard and squirted it on my plate. Fortunately, it wasn't the plain yellow mustard, but a mild, but more flavorful brown deli mustard.

I dipped my half sandwich into the mustard and took only a small bite since the sandwich is too big for a real bite. The warm thin-sliced pastrami was fatty, beefy, and peppery. The rye bread was soft and aromatic. This was simply the best pastrami I've ever had. I managed to keep on eating without ever dropping the sandwich on the plate. Bits of pastrami were falling out only later to be eaten afterwards.

The only complaint I have is the half-sliced pickle they gave me with my sandwich. Half soft, half crispy, it was somewhat room temperature and it tasted like an old shoe. Personally, I enjoy a cold, crispy mild pickle. This pickle was pickled to the core and the flavor was--how should I say--to the extreme?

Tommy Pastrami is definitely an awesome pastrami place. The price is a little too much though, but I guess it's worth it considering your other alternative places for pastrami (Quizno's and Subway). Maybe if we get some more real pastrami places up, some good ol' capitalism will drive these prices down.

Tommy Pastrami
3751 S. Harbor Blvd., Suite B
Santa Ana, CA 92704
(714) 540-2700
Click here for a Google map

Blow The Bastards Up

I haven't read Chris' stuff completely, but I'm pretty sure I get his message, killing innocent people is wrong, maybe even anything terrorists do is wrong. I would agree with the innocent part. Also, I can't read the comments from here in Red China, so who knows what the discussion there is all about. Also also, there was that book that came out last year, I think, haven't read it yet but want to, called something like The Strategic Logic of Suicide Bombers or something, by some Chicago professor who's catalogued every suicide attack in the past few decades or some similar time frame. I think he says that most terrorism is what I’m saying below, within a country, one minority group versus the ruling majority.

Anyway, here's a recent thought that crossed my mind, especially after going to Sri Lanka. Most terrorism has not been what the USofA is dealing with. It's been intranational, one against one, usually the minority taking on the majority. I don't know all of them, but those that come to mind are the Basque campaign against Spain, IRA against the British, Palestinians against Israel, and my own personal favorite, Tamils in Sri Lanka. According to the aforementioned book, the Tamil organization leads the way in the number of suicide attacks, though these have almost always been at government targets. So most terrorism revolves around a majority-minority nation where the minority feels oppressed by the majority. I say, if the minority is correct in feeling this way, that they truly are oppressed by the majority, go ahead and blow up women and children. Why? Because if the minority is truly oppressed by the majority, then everyone in the majority who does not speak out against the oppression implicitly condones it. Even if they say they feel for the minority, if they continue to elect officials who propagate the oppression, they are just as guilty.

For instance, I know very little of the situation, but I cannot see an enlightened European democracy such as Spain oppressing a minority segment of their population. Maybe under Franco's fascist regime, but that came to an end in the 1970s and Spain's democracy has survived. Both Catalans and Basques are very anti-Madrid, and both have had voices calling for greater autonomy, even independence. But I find it hard to believe that the Basque terrorists' claims are justified by their actions. I also do not know about the IRA in Northern Ireland, although I could see Catholics being severely discriminated against, but enough to plant bombs? The same is true in Sri Lanka. The Tamils claim discrimination, and there were discriminatory laws on the books, don't know if they are still there. But my family hasn't really been hurt, or if they have, they’ve come out of it fine in the end, so how true are the claims? But if any of the claims are true, then I think that these innocent victims are not so innocent because of their implicit acceptance of the way their society functions. If one group is oppressing another, no one in the oppressing group is innocent if they are not pressuring for change. Does that make sense? And I'm not going to get into the actual word terrorist and how loaded it is, but it seems like every country in the world that is having some issue with a segment of the population has decided to brand that segment terrorists. The more I hear it, the more desensitized I become to all this terrorism.

Oh, and why children? I think society dictates how we think more than anything, what we feel is right and wrong, whatever, especially in the societies I've described above. I say blow up the little uns because chances are those little uns are going to grow up into willing participants of the oppressive society. Sure there is a chance one kid might become an activist and fight for the minority, but I have no problem believing most will not.

Unsolved mysteries...

As is tradition with every all-nighter (or close to that) I pull, I was browsing the web and not studying (notice the time of this post), and I came across this:

List of unsolved problems

Quite cool. Especially the stuff about Ball Lightning and other phenomena under physics and many other ones. The unsolved problems for medicine, however, are all pretty widely known unsolved problems.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Ultimate Utopia XXIII

For any person who has ever played a Final Fantasy, well, particularly 6-8.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Ron Burgundy Now Works for Newsweek

On today's MSNBC.com front page...

Let's Lighten Up The Mood

Here is that Beck video I was talking about a few posts ago.




:)

Logical Discussion of the Terrorist Mind

I just wanted to clarify a little about one of my comments on my previous post. I will attempt to explain my argument for these statements more thoroughly in order to answer misgivings in the previous post. I urge you to please PLEASE!! suggest more explanations that what I have listed, for my own benefit.

"How is a sane person persuaded that killing themselves and innocent people is justified?"

My two ways of explaining this: 1) They believe they are benifiting themselves and their victims 2) They do not believe they hurting the people they kill.

Now when I talk about being persuaded I mean an idea is put in the person's head. If we assume that a person is moral then the idea has to take either of these forms. Either they have to believe what they are doing is moral (i.e. they benifiting their victims and themselves) or they have to believe that they aren't hurting anyone ( so they are still acting morally).

Statement (2) implies that they don't understand they are hurting people which would imply they don't fully grasp reality and therefore are not sane. Thus we can tentatively throw statement (2) out.

We are left with statement (1) which is formulated thusly:
"Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them"

I cannot believe this statement. It would take some reason for me to believe it. If say we were all suffering from some horrible disease, then maybe i'd believe it was true. But just within myself without any outside information or stimulus I must say it is false. Therefore from this we conclude that an outside source is necessary to believe in it.

If this idea were to appear naturally in the human mind then we'd see mass murders by individuals everywhere. Instead we see them focused in one area. You may argue that governments perform mass murder constantly, but remember I am talking about individual minds. I am talking about a suicide bomber or terrorist mind.

So we can deduce that there must be some implanted idea that tells them "Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them." Where did this idea come from? Who taught them this? Who implanted these thoughts in their head?

Possible sources:
(a) Themselves
(b) Their Parents
(c) Media
(d) Government
(e) Religion
(f) Teachers
(g) Life situation

(a) is ruled out because of the argument already stated earlier.

(b) parents could definately instill this idea into their children, but where would they get it from?

(c) Media could be used to promote such ideas. I've heard about anti jew songs and songs glorifying suicide bombing being played on the raidios. Where did the idea come from in the first place? Who told the media to play such things originally?

(d) Government is a likely candidate. What better way to enrage a people towards your own end than to convince them killing themselves is beneficial. What better way to make people into living weapons. The very fact that the bombers are supplied with explosives and weapons means they must have some outside influence from a governing body.

(e) Religion to my knowledge usually tells people hurting others is bad for them. However, It is possible that killing them could be cleansing them of evil...or something like that...if its concievable its possible. As Ron stated there are sections in the Koran that speak of killing infidels...I'll have to look it up myself. I've also heard they are promised 100 virgins in heaven and also a free ticket to heaven for them and their victims. I do not believe greed is a means for changing a persons view of moral reality. Often leaders misconstrue religious texs to accomplish their own agenda.

(f) teachers are very influential on a person's ideas. I could easily see one influential teacher having this idea and spreading it. Their religious community is very tightly knit so spreading such ideas would be fast and effective.

(g) A life situation cannot put an idea in a persons head. It can however make people suceptible to them. Like Tony said to me they've seen their children killed by other countries. They see their families living in poverty. I definately believe that such a situation could aid a person in believing "Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them", but it still wouldn't put the idea in their heads. If you remember the germans after WWI weren't immediately gasing jews. They had to have them made scape goats first to make them no longer human. Once they were no longer human it was an easy jump to trimming off a little of the herd. But notice in that case it was political leaders who influenced the masses to the ends. The people themselves wouldn't have made the jump to building gassing rooms.

So in conclusions I believe government coupled with religious teachers are the influencing factor. Unfortunately the idea is already in many heads and won't go away just by killing every governement official and religious leader.

Solutions? If you want a fire to burn less brightly take away the wood. Kill their media to stop propoganda. Get religious leaders to speak out against the false ideas. Help rebuild their lost lives. Umm play movies of mickey mouse for the children ^^

***Please if you dissagree with one of my points tell me specifically about that point. If you feel you have more points to make or better initial statements, please list them and discuss them. I really want to know exactly what you guys think, and also I want to know if there are better points than the ones I've made. I always look at an argument between bright minds as an opportunity to learn. ***

Monday, March 20, 2006

Japan wins World Baseball Classic

Japan just beat Cuba 10-6 in the WBC. I found it funny that the vast majority of ESPN commentators picked Venezuela, Dominican Republic, or USA to win. Only 1, Peter Gammons, picked the actual winner.

I was watching Rome is Burning the other day (Jim Rome sports commentary show on ESPN) and he was chastising the WBC and the US, when the US barely made it into the 2nd round.

His words: "I don't want to see a World Baseball Classic that the United States can't get past the second round. The WBC is a failure if the US can't get past the second round, and I don't want to be embarrassed on the world stage."

Now that's just selfish. Why even have a competition?

There's an underdog rooting in all of us, and I liked seeing the multimillionaire United States team field good competition. Not that I'm unpatriotic, but sometimes I like nothing more than seeing cocky people bite their words.

That's why I hate the Yankees.

Good Cinamatrography, Ignorant Message

I wish I were a better writer, but i'll just say it flat out: Munich had very stupid messages. It attempted to gain our empathy by "putting a human face" on the palestinian terrorists. We are supposed to relate to them and feel sad for them. However, I feel they deserved to die. A soldier in battle will on average be killed. Why should we expect any different for a terrorist who kills helpless hostages? The soldiers at least chose to risk their lives.

Terrorists kill civilians for a political message. We shouldn't be praising such sentiment, but trying to abolish it. Killing a soldier servers a purpose. A soldier has a gun a soldier is a threat. A bus full of people is no threat. An engineer doing his job is not a threat. A group of Israeli atheletes is not a threat!!!

Black September killed the Israeli athletes as a message to the israeli people. I feel that their response was completely justified. If they backed down it would have warranted further attacks. You can't show weakness to someone who wants to destroy you. They had to show terrorist groups that they will fight back when provoked.

This is not some sugar gum drop world. People out there want to kill you, and they will if you give them the chance. Don't think they'll see you hugging your cat and think "oh he's just like me, I don't have to kill him after all." If you think that then the streets will run red with hippie blood.

In summary Munich was stupid, Hollywood is preaching anti-war sentiments because it "feels" wrong, and people who kill civilians for a political message are the scum of the world and should be exterminated like vermin.

V Better Than Munich

V for Vendetta topped the box office this weekend and I have a feeling it'll be up there for a while. The movie was successful in combining action and political drama. V, played by Hugo Weaving, is a masked character terrorizing the totalitarian government of future Britain. He is marked as a terrorist by the government and indeed, his actions of consistent with present-day terrorists (blowing up buildings, assassinations). However, the movie leaves the V character ambiguous. Is he a hero? A villain? Or maybe his motives are right, but his methods are immoral. The audience is left to decide.

Steven Spielberg's Munich, released wide in January, asks the same question, but it uses the true story of the Munich Olympic massacre--where several Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists--as a basis for the moral play. Munich was a flawed movie. The movie achieved its purpose, but Spielberg played it out too long and too narrowly. Spielberg focused much of the movie on Eric Bana's character. As a result, after movie had reached its plot climax and spoke its moral message, it continues with an unnecessary epilogue about Bana's character that leaves the audience emotionally drained and wishing for an end.

V, on the other hand, was adequately paced. It's 30 minutes shorter than Munich (Munich has a whopping 2hr 44min playing time), but delivers the same moral play with as much--if not more--impact as Munich. The audience will go back and forth as to whether to support him fully or partially (or not at all, if that suits you). The pacing is consistent with an action flick as the suspense builds-up for a big pyrotechnic display of terrorism (or is it freedom fighting?).

V for Vendetta also beats Munich in terms of packaging a likeable movie for all. V exudes enough action to entice a larger percentage of the movie-going demographic. V will attract teenagers and young/middle-age adults with its comic book based story and characters. Munich, on the other hand, was a emotionally draining drama that will only attract the most politically serious adults. I can see V as something lazy history and English teachers would show to their students about totalitarian governments and allusions to George Orwell's 1984. Munich is just too depressing and violent to watch in a classroom setting.

Even without the contrast and comparing to Munich, V for Vendetta was an excellent movie that brings fun back to the movie theater. It was funny, exciting, and emotionally and politically intriguing. Hollywood is horribly lacking originality and creativity (did anybody see Disney's The Shaggy Dog?) I haven't been to the movies since January. Ironically, the last movie I saw was Munich.