Knee-Jerk Reflex

Oh wow, there certainly was a lot of shootings around the country lately California (a few miles from us no less!), New York, Philadelphia, Washington... I expected more petty crime/robberies to go up as the economy worsen, I did not expect more shootings.

To start this entry, I would like to clarify my take on owning guns -- I don't get why people need it (nowadays, don't quote me the reason BEHIND it why we have it in the first place) but I am not strongly against it either. And since it's legal AND it is a RIGHT, I am planning on owning one someday.

What baffles me is Americans resilience to giving up their guns? It seems that this is a country based a lot on knee-jerk reflexes -- anything bad happens, people will freak out and call for a ban on this, additional restrictions on that, especially if the incident involve kids. Whenever kids are involved, common sense goes out the window, "Oh, we have to do this, this, and that to prevent that from happening again!" Much like our frivolous law suits, it has gotten way out of hand. Every issue except for guns. Sometimes, really, people should just take a little bit more responsibilities in their actions. All issues except when it comes to guns, that's when logic goes out the window. It's truly an eye-opener. Kids got shot in schools - "It's our constitutional rights to bear arms." Men/women shooting their entire family -- "It's our constitutional rights to own guns." Cops getting shot.... you get the idea.

Like I said, I am not passionate enough in this subject to fight this battle one way or another. I am merely commenting on people's passion on their guns. And can someone please explain to me about one of our latest shootings -- Police say Richard Poplawski, 23, had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

Granted, this person clearly has lost his mind but the fear of gun-banning is part of his motive to shoot at cops? If anything, isn't that an ammunition, so to speak, for the opposite of why people should NOT own gun?

Perhaps I only think that because I grew up where most people have never and will never see a real gun in their lives... I guess Asian peeps used to walk around in swords, and now we can still legally own knives in the comfort of your own home. It's all the same idea, right?

Science v Religion

Here's a good quote from Wired blog:-

Science is about explaining the how of the natural world: how the universe began, how life originated, how the diversity of species occurred. Scientists feel no need for their work to answer why the universe exists, why we are here. For scientists, those are questions better left to philosophy, religion and after-work hours.

Perhaps creationists find theories that only answer how to be completely unsatisfactory. Maybe for creationists, any theory that doesn't answer why contains weaknesses.

...

Even if science could give creationists solutions to some of these issues, evolution is never going to answer their most pressing questions: Why are we here? Why were we given consciousness? What is the meaning of life? Only alternative, supernatural explanations of the natural world, the type espoused by intelligent design, can answer those questions.

Maybe evolutionists and creationists can't find common ground because they really aren't even having the same argument. Scientists are fighting to preserve their ability to answer how unimpeded by why. Creationists are fighting to have answers to why, unthreatened by answers to how.

3 Down, 47 More to Go

If you have not yet heard, gay people can legally get married in Iowa as of Thursday, April 3, 2009!!! Yay!!! 3 down!! 47 more to go!!! It is so sad to see that we, California, even with San Francisco, has just voted for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. The idea of putting discrimination into the constitution is despicable; it's one thing to disagree with an idea, it's another to blatantly discriminate.

Supreme Court Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the unanimous decision, at one point invoked the court’s first-ever decision, in 1839, which struck down slavery laws 17 years before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of a slave owner to treat a person as property.

Iowa’s gay marriage ban “is unconstitutional, because the county has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage,” Cady wrote in the 69-page opinion that seemed to dismiss the concept of civil unions as an option for gay couples.

The ruling, however, also addressed what it called the “religious undercurrent propelling the same-sex marriage debate,” and said judges must remain outside the fray.

Some Iowa religions are strongly opposed to same-sex marriages, the justices noted, while some support the notion.

“Our constitution does not permit any branch of government to resolve these types of religious debates and entrusts to courts the task of ensuring that government avoids them,” the opinion says.

A little research will tell you that Iowa has always been a free state -- slavery was abolished in Iowa 17 (that's SEVENTEEN) years before the US Supreme Court outlawed slavery. Wow, does that mean gays will be able to finally get married freely and legally in this country in another 17 years? I guess that's not that bad for an uphill battle.

Opponent of gay marriage, wake up! How much longer are you going to use religion to justify hatred and discrimination. Then again, why do I think the brain-washed bunch will one day be able to think for themselves?

God & Suicide

New song that I felt in love with:-

I can live with god and with suicide
the same thing holds if I close my eyes
it's a truth so pure it can kill you dead
a taste of heaven mixed with hell inside of my head

If a three-four cord can ignite a flame
and a girl like you can forget my name
then I'm that far gone in this crooked grave
with a pistol for my creature and a feather for my day

When I do go down in a rain of toil
with a hand in my satchel and my knees in the soil
I can live with god and with suicide
a lover in her calico, a pony stands at her side

I can live with god and with suicide
the same thing holds if I close my eyes
it's a truth so pure it can kill you dead
a taste of heaven mixed with hell inside of my head

You can listen to it here.

Funny thing, when I stuck this song on my iPod, it was filed under the "Indy" category automatically. Does Indy mean the lyrics just doesn't have to make sense? :O I mean, I absolutely love the tunes of the song and even though I understand every single word in it, I have NO idea what it is saying. Like a string of random words strung together grammatically...

Also, I first heard this song on Chuck, the TV show. Much as I love that it had introduced me to the song, I still could not figure out why they played the song during the scene... granted, kind of hard to figure it out what scene the song can possibly go with, if I am clueless what it is about... any suggestions?

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

From the Kiva site I've discovered a group called the Atheists, Agnostics, Free Thinkers, Non-Secular Humanist, and Non-Religious. Further research in the community area led me to the discover of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- a group who "believed" that the ultimate creator is, well, a big blob of spaghetti with two meatballs embedded. =.= Albeit the a bit juvenile approach and slightly phallic choice of their idol, I enjoyed the concept of it. As I have mentioned one of my previous post and surely many more to come, I am getting very fed up with a certain specific religion's persistent effort of shoving their belief down other's throats. Interesting enough, the homepage of Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster also features a "hate mail" section. (Only one with a big heart can feature a "hate mail" section on their homepage, if I may add.)

I feel compelled to quote a couple of them:

ARE YOU [Censored] JOKING??????!!!! A flying Spagetti Monster created this world??? you idiots have way too much time on your hands. I thought i saw it all But YOU guys for sure topped the stupidest list of SHIT ive seen/ OMG please get a life.

This lady has certainly took the meaning of "literally" to a whole different level. No, not every one of us believe in every thing that's spoon fed to us literally.

Here's a quite standard one:

I am at loss for words. Listen, I don’t understand why you people who believe in this “garbage” and at that matter, anyone who does not believe that God is not our savior feel the need to rat christians out for their beliefs. I know a couple of you can respect it, and that’s just fine with me. But many of you just plain rant on us christians, but what have we ever done to you, has god hurt you in any way? God created you, and everything you have, everything you can imagine and you say things like “I hate him” “He’s not real” “That dumb @$$ doesn’t even exist!” Well, could you please respect our opinons. We have done everything possible to reach out to you, and try to invite you to the church of Christ, and you have done nothing but rant us out.

See what I meant? These people are incapable of even contemplating the idea that there are individuals out there who believe differently than them (though not necessarily a flying spaghetti monster, no offense). It was clearly stated in the letter that God (as their religion defines it) is the truth, the only truth and nothing but the truth. :O My favorite part is "has God hurt you in any way?" Hmmmm, allow me to answer a question with a question, -- What have the homosexual individuals ever done to you? Surely the bible may have mentioned that the act of homosexuality is "not natural," -- not sure about the actual wording, I do not proclaim that I have read the entire Bible cover to cover -- but I never did quite figure out how we went from "unnatural" to "God hate homosexuals."

Surely, the act of homosexuality is unnatural. I do not argue that, as two males and two females cannot biologically reproduce. But tell these same group of people that we are just animals whose purpose is to procreate and they will try to stone you to death just as swiftly. If you argue that human beings have conscious, then we must also be given free will, and that will include the choice of the gender of your partner, let it be the same as you or the opposite of you. There are greater meaning to our lives on earth than merely to reproduce.

The very idea that "God" and "hate" being put in the same sentence is baffling. I thought the idea behind a religion (fictitious or otherwise) is to spread love, evidently my view point, learned from an Asian country, is way skewed. Religion is our wonderful U.S. of A seems to focus more on brain washing and manipulating the individual than any thing else. It is very sad to see a religion succumb to this. If there is a God, He must be very disappointed at those who are just trying to control the crowds in His name.

In short, Go Church of the FSM! I certainly support you guys on principles. :)

9 Quintillion

We had March Madness at work, where people filled out brackets, gathered around, ate, and watched basketball on TV. A year ago, I could not have told you what a bracket is or what the seed number means... So while I was filling out the bracket, my coworker S informed me that I could join the Yahoo bracket too, and that the perfect bracket could win $1 million. I felt for sure that filling out the perfect bracket will be a lot easier than picking the lottery winning number. Just for the fun of it (I'm crazy, okay?), I looked up the odds of filling out the perfect bracket. I was wrong, in fact, not just wrong, I could not possibly be more wrong -- as it turned out, the odds of winning lottery jacket is 1 out 42.5 million and the odds of filling out the perfect bracket is, get this, 9 QUINTILLION. What is a quintillion, you may ask. A quintillion is 18 zeroes...

Check out the calculation at:

http://ask.yahoo.com/20060322.html

For more units that you have never heard of in your life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/quintillion

Kiva.org

Saw the advertisement of Kiva.org while trying to watch celebrity apprentice online. Wow, major advertisement budget. Effectively, I hope, judging by the fact that we went out of donee by Sunday again. [To the Christian lady I mentioned in my previous blog: helping those in need make you a good person. Helping them without flaunting about your achievement make you an even better person.]

Long story short, Kiva.org is a website that allows you to do microfinancing -- making small loans to those who live in poverty, where a little sum can go a long way, help them jump start/maintain their entrepreneurship, get the money back. Years ago I've donated to Grameen Foundation, a similar establishment but Kiva is better in that you get to put a face to your donation (loan), AND you can reasonably expect the recipient of the loan to repay you, then you can choose between loaning your money to another individual/group, donate to Kiva, or pull your fund back out. I truly like the transparency of that. It's been to be able to "see" where the money went, and see it coming back, instead of not knowing how much of my donation really went to helping people and how much is tied up in administrative fees. Scroll down this blog to see the link to Kiva.org.

Pub & Christian Lady

Some "religious" people can somehow, always, manage to find a way to insert their religious belief in a conversation. That was simply incredible, and by incredible, I am being sarcastic, I meant obnoxious and offensive, and a bigot at best. I used to have a coworker who just refused to stop praying for me, despite multiples instances that I had to tell her point blank that I am an atheist and do not believe there is a God. She just wanted to "do her thing." Which is fine, after all, what possible harm could it done to pray to a God, her God, fictitious or otherwise, but why the need to persistently TOLD me that she prayed for me???

So I went with Hubby to see his friend play in a band over the weekend. Mind you, I'm not a bar/pub/club kind of person. I merely went there for the food, and ended up staying. Okay, so the friend was kind of cute, so I wanted to stay to hear him sing, and it appeared that they play music that I somewhat like. Alas, my attention can only last so long, so after a few songs, I broke out my iPod touch and started watching tv shows on it. The lady next to me expresssed strong interest in my little device so I happily took my headphone off and showed her the functionality, briefly mentioned iTunes, just like any other geek would. I explained to her that shows cost money, unless, of course, if she downloads them illegally (I did not encourage her to do so, merely stating a fact that it is do-able) but podcasts are free. Out of no where came this, "I like to Christian podcasts, I do not get sleepy when I am listening to God." Ummmmm. I'm sorry, did I by any chance inquired about your religious belief? Or even the slightest curiosity about WHAT type of content would you be interested in, did I? That was unbelievable that she could managed to sneak her religious belief in that conversation.

Luckily, I've already had my iPod out and earphones in my hand. I rolled my eyes, put my ear piece back in, that conversation was SO over. What's with these people who like to flaunt their religious belief? Ooookay, so you are Christian, yippee. What does that have to do with me? Really, the ONLY message behind that statement is "Being a Christian naturally make me a good person." No lady, being a good person make you a good person, your religious belief by no means tell me what kind of a person you are. Shall we bring up certain priests' fondness toward little boys? Telling a complete stranger within the first ten minutes your religious belief tells me that you are a rude bigot who (1) believe that naturally every one is religious and (2) naturally we all believe in your religious. Please, keep that to yourself. Thank you.

AllRecipes.com III

Creating my profile on AllRecipes.com reminded me of a statement a friend of mine made many years ago. She commented that I like to cook. I found that statement odd because I never thought of myself as enjoying cooking. I'll be estactic if the right food will just appear in front of me. My "fondness" for cooking stamps from not being able to find any restaurants that can make a dish to my liking... or that I can simply (and easily) make a huge quantity at home. Although I suppose my rediculous collection of kitchenware will argue differently. If it's not for spacing/storage issue, I'd love to also acquire a pressure cooker (on the horizon) and a (turkey) smoker. :)

AllRecipes.com II

Um... so I was trying to create my cook's profile on Allrecipes.com... Evidently they don't let you just freely type in what you want, everything is a check box (for the lazies, I suppose). Under hobby I was not able to find video gaming. :P Is video gaming and cooking just mutually exclusive or is my profile just waaay off of the rest of their members? :O

The Children's Online Privacy Protection

Okay, this one is going down on my I-don't-get-it list. I was signing up for a log in for AllRecipes.com and this disclaimer shows up on the bottom:

I am age 13 or older and therefore may register or submit personal information to Allrecipes, as compliant to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998.

I can't think of ONE reason why you need to be over 13 to post a recipe... I suppose they don't want pedophiles posting inappropriate stuff to their website? :S

That said, you can save your recipes on their site. You should take a look. ;)

Stress

My coworker the other day asked me if I feel stress working at the company. Being a supporting staff, it's about the only time I feel superior over her. "Just a little bit," I told her. Really, I can't complaint, have no grounds or reasons to. I honestly am happy at this point in my life. Have a great husband, two adorable cats, blessed with no accidents (kids) so far, have a job that I don't hate... in fact, quite prefer, love to eat, have enough disposable income to enjoy dining and buying myself inexpensive happiness (video games, mangas, etc.) My biggest problem in life right now?

(1) I'm not sure which characters to use in my party in Star Ocean: Second Evolution:



and this problem is caused by

(2) The Star Ocean 2 Official Guide is BACK ORDERED!!

This one:



I want to say, Great for Bradygames!! In this down economy their products are SOLD out!! Or maybe just some bad coordination job that caused the guide to NOT BE AVAILABLE on it's release date.

Oh yeah, and

(3) Hubby occasionally gripes that I don't update my blog enough.

See? I really don't have a lot of grounds to complain about much in life. :)

Hubby and Tonkatsu*

Hubby likes tonkatsu. My friend A has tonkatsu recipe. Great, right? I got recipe from her, passed it onto Hubby. Hubby was making it one time (note: he had made it very successfully a few times before) and asked me, "How long do I fry these for?" Silly me, forgetting for a moment that he's a MAN, replied, "'til it's golden brown!" Five minutes later, the pork chop came out a few shades darker than "golden brown." Hubby said, "well, there are levels of browness!" "Yes, honey, and golden brown is the level." What was I thinking? Should have just said three mintues! A term that men can understand!

THEN, he poured himself some sauce and started eating without me. Grumbling about him not getting me tonkatsu sauce, I went to get it myself. I opened up the fridge and could not see the tonkatsu sauce in plain sight. You'd think that since Hubby just used it, it'll be the first thing I see. The only thing that remotely resembles tonkatu sauce is honey glazed teriyaki sauce!

"Ummmm, sweetie, are you using teriyaki sauce with your pork chop?"

"OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH, is that what it is? I was just thinking why they don't taste like they do before!" =.=

And the whole time he thought the different taste was because of the OIL!

***

*Tonkatsu is Japanese style fried pork chop.

My Husband, The Alcoholic...?

For those who had seen me declining vehemently when someone offers alcoholic beverages to my husband, they must think he makes a horrible drunk. That can't be farther away from the truth.

Of the seven years we've been together, I've seen him drunk twice... both times he puked miserably into the toilet... And he wonders why I don't want to "experienced being drunk at least once in my life." Real convincing, honey.

Most of the time, he doesn't get to that point. Then why do I react so strongly? Well, he does three things when he has alcohol in him:

(1) Like most people, he became very chatty, and the volume goes up a couple notches.

(2) That filter (of what to say and what not to say) that was barely there before the alcohol simply becomes nonexsistent -- and no amount nudging and kicking could stop him.

(3) (And the most important point) He couldn't stay awake after that!! Yes, the selfish wife, especially when we are on vacation, wants him to stay up to entertain me, instead of being passing out in bed. :P

People always say, "this amount won't get him drunk." Little do they know, him being drunk was the last thing I worry about. ;)

Crack

For my HK friend HL: Crack is a lower grade of cocaine.

***

So my friend A likes to use the word "crack" a lot. A person who's being a moron : he/she is smoking crack.

A dish that's so delicious that we can't stop eating: It has crack inside. :D

***

(More) note to HL: When you say something/someone "cracks me up" = so funny it makes me laugh. :D