inside the wonderful world of vee

snoop dogg’s television show is pretty much the best thing ever. “snoop dogg’s father hood”… amazing. why didn’t i know about this before???????????????????????

i’m watching… machuca (spanish film).

it’s funny when you live somewhere for too long — you seem to think it’s not important. that it’s the same as everywhere else. i never really paid much attention to san francisco because well, i figured, i lived there. i live in pleasanton. pleasanton sucks balls. therefore, san francisco probably sucks balls as well, even if it sucks less balls. well… truth of the matter is, san francisco has some rather cool qualities. by the way, i notice this in lenny too, because he thinks seattle is so ugly and boring compared to everywhere else… that nature is so far away when in fact that’s the thing i like best about seattle — that nature is so close. but seeing as he grew up here and has not been to too many places outside of here, he thinks seattle is ugly… when the first time i saw seattle from the airplane, i thought it was absolutely gorgeous. one of the most gorgeous places i could remember ever being at that point in time.

anyway, lenny and i went back to san francisco bay area for the first time i’ve been there in about a year. weeee. excursions. i felt this huge need to show him as many things as possible because well, technically it’s my home. so… i should?!!

friday, january 18th, 2008.
arrival in oak-town. oakland definitely in the house!

saturday, january 19th, 2008.
san francisco, bright and early. wake at 7:30, leave, leave, leave!!! pretty much this was the schedule this entire weekend — sleep @ 12am, wake at 7:30am. HARDCORE! EXTREME!!!!

started off by going to alcatraz cruise area at pier 33, but it was SOLD OUT!! sold out all the way until the next day, which we already had plans for! craziness. anyway, so we decided to walk up to fisherman’s wharf and do whatever. bummed around, saw the seals, saw lots of tourists… ate some crabcakes that were kind of subpar… hmmm yeah yeah yeah. fisherman’s wharf was fine fine fine!

* musee mecanique *
this is a museum on fisherman’s wharf that features old penny, nickel, dime, quarter machines of all kinds. very interesting. not limited to arcade games, and you will soon see! i love love LOVE this museum!!!

this is a little boxing game. lenny was on the left and i was on the right. his guy wouldn’t stand up! ARRR!! waste of money T__T

did you know rosie the riveter was this buff? I SURE DI’INT.

as we were leaving fisherman’s wharf, we saw that holy shit! there was a pro-life parade. SUCK. they had these signs saying “women deserve better than abortion.” i didn’t know it was a pro-life parade initially since there were pro-choice people mixed in there as well, so i was like, “what does your sign mean? can someone please explain to me? what does your sign mean?!” and no one said shit. they just stared at me. half those people were like, under 16. ghetto as fuck. they are not even old enough to decide what they would want to do in such a situation. way too young. give them a couple years and they’ll be whoring it up, i bet. anyway. i took a lotta pics.

unfortunately for the pro-choicers, the number of pro-choicers that showed up was merely a handful, and naturally, it was the more militant types of people, since more passive people would not bother to show up and protest in a pro-life rally. so… therefore, all the pro-choice people at this rally were either butch dykes, crossdressing men, or just women who were shouting really angrily and loudly… while the pro-life people were, i hate to say it, calm and relatively normal. but i attribute that to the sheer number. unfortunately, i think that perhaps the media would not attribute that to sheer numbers, although i didn’t really get a chance to see coverage of that parade or anything. but yeah, a lot of them were representing some catholic station, 1610 am, and soon i discovered that fucking station had billboards EVERYWHERE in san francisco. it was fucking ridonkulous. +__+

* chinatown *
chinatown was a bitch. i hadn’t really been there and i regret wasting time going there, because it was thoroughly unexciting. T__T there were soooo many people. i had a map with bike parking lots on it, but i forgot to consult it before we got into chinatown. by the time we got into chinatown, though, it was ridiculously crowded and navigating around was much too difficult. >__> it was difficult while riding a bike, but just as difficult when we got off and WALKED with our bikes. it was truly “ren shan ren hai” — truly ridiculous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and as far as excitement goes, there really wasn’t much exciting, other than well, live chickens that they would slaughter for you. poor little chickens, they were completely cooped up in their cages.

* italiantown *
if you can really call it that…

* golden gate *
were going to bike on it, but like, not enough time and stuff. and the roads were confusing.

terrible pic, but you know, whatever.

* japantown *

i bought this hat for roxanne, although i pretty much wanted it really badly.

sunday, january 20th, 2008.
hiking in mt. diablo with xinlei, matt, lenny, and sherry. never really been before!

cool ground ^_^

this tree was a toilet… it had a big hole underneath my ass here.

the view! this was on our way up the waterfalls… hahaha “waterfalls.” but uh january was not the best time to go see the waterfalls, and they were practically just minor trickles. we weren’t the only ones, though… people coming up asked us how the waterfalls were and we gave them an honest answer (”sub-par”).

xinlei had massive problems making it down the hill. more than once ;D i have a video. that’s definitely better.

after this (around 1pm) we went to the new ufert’s center and had dinner with my parents. sherry came too. we had ramen. it was rather good, actually!!! weird having an asian center in dublin, though.

after that, i took lenny to amador. oh, how it has changed!! eeeek. it’s so kind of weird. here are some differences. this is my first time back since i don’t know… 2003?

these things are the same.

these things are different.

last time i came back, this place had run out of $$ on the top floor and was empty or something, lol.

since when did the don look like a crazy mexican!?!!

that night, my godparents came over and we like, had a fucking feast. MMM FOOD. and then i was reminded that i hate family conversations as they are all about money and stocks and bullshit i soooo do nooooot careeeee aboooooooouuuut. so boring. lo lordy.

i pulled out my old videos and had lenny watch some of the er, terrible home videos. i used to be a fucking spaz. nancy [yu] used to be even MORE spazzy but that doesn’t mean i wasn’t. haha. oh man. good videos. and very painful to watch too. i will never be able to live down singing whitney houston’s “greatest love of all.” X__>

monday, january 21st, 2008.

ferry to alcatraz! because it was full the other day.

ahhh so *this* is what agave is!

after that was home time (seattle)… well, my license was expired, so i had to go through special security. it was like i was a criminal! certainly much easier in washington than in california. but yeah. things were fines. but i think this image is interesting as each separate pen mark basically represents a different check.

everyone is promoting new forms of energy as a cause of fixing global warming, but i’m just thinking… how much is that really going to cut down on things if we use a new form of fuel? even if every car became a hybrid, it’d make a difference, but a very minimal difference… what NEEDS to be promoted is less use of things. more planting of trees… producing less, not producing equal but with less consequences. that’s just my opinion, though… perhaps it is too difficult in reality. i truly do not know. i do know though, if the problem is as large as we claim it is, then such little steps won’t really do much in the long run.

i have every desire to go and get a tefl in peru through bridgetefl.com, but everything about it is just rather terrifying. i’ve never been away for such a long time. it seems like you would be missing so much… yet, at the same time, you’d be gaining so much more than everyone else probably is. and it’s really only a month — not like a month is REALLY a long time in the grand scheme of things. yet i am scared. i wish i can commit to a date right now but i just don’t know where i would be financially later in this year (i’d be going probably september to october or october to november in cusco, if i had my way)… so… AAAAAH. it is all very scary and stuff. but what i do know is that there needs to be change lo lordy. things cannot continue this way.

so heath ledger is dead. that sucks. it’s sad. why is “inside edition” like, “HERE’S AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT THE APARTMENT WHERE HEATH LEDGER DIED!” i mean, really. and then there’s this shot of his coffin being put into a hearse and it’s just surrounded by cameras click click clicking away. get a life, people.

money makes everything in life such a tricky situation.

i’m sad — kucinich is out of the race. not that he had a chance to begin with, but who am i going to vote for now? i rather side with ron paul on a lot of things but a lot of other things i don’t agree with him on at all. but if it’s ron paul vs. clinton or obama, i’d definitely vote paul.

as far as a democratic nominee goes, i think i’d actually vote edwards, but i don’t think that he really has a chance, either. le sigh. nor do i know if he’s honest, but i do know that clinton and obama are bickering little kids.

every night when i’m leaving work these days, i listen to democracynow.org — the war and peace report, with amy goodman!

as much as i love democracynow, it’s highly depressing… today’s show is talking about the first guard who spoke out about the torture @ abu-graib… yesterday’s talked with palestine and israeli journalists about what’s happening on the gaza strip right now, where palestinians are getting OWNED. and the americans are supporting them. and so are all the democratic candidates, with the exception of formerly kucinich and presently paul (and perhaps smaller people, like gravel).

now, what is going on in palestine is practically genocide… so… what about it could POSSIBLY be alright with american politicians?? and they’re not the only one.

israelis are blockading the gaza strip and the palestinians are starving and such. yesterday, about 2,000 palestinians went on their own accord to egypt to get food, diesel, and electricity. initially, the egyptian military shot upon those people — who were generally women and children. but then, as more and more came, they let them in temporarily just so they could purchase food and supplies. they are without electricity, food, and medicine in the gaza strip. but unfortunately, egypt is on the side of the israeli’s, and as of today, they will be closing their borders to palestinians once again.

here is how much land palestinians have lost through the years (click to open bigger). you will see the gaza strip in the leftish portion of the map.

so…
how is this okay?
how is no one concerned?

perhaps they are both to blame but who are we to arm israel? we shouldn’t even be paying attention. we shouldn’t be arbitrarily choosing a winner. the united states’ arming of other countries — iraq, israel — is such a huge cause of all of the world’s turmoil yet we continue to do it. why why why. why.

but the worst thing is… what can we do? people are speaking out about this… people write about it non-stop… but nothing happens. nothing gets done. we are powerless. the issues never end. the injustice never stops. it’s all just so depressing. it really is.

so after mr. ryan pangilinan (hi ryan!) moved out, i now live with his ex-wife becky and kid. the kid’s name is emme. she is… 4? she is quite funny. she likes to come into my room and go off on monologues because she is quite the talker (i can frequently hear her having lengthy conversations with herself and/or dolls in the other room as well). most of the time she has some interesting things to say. so, other than waste these couple months of classic child quotes, i’ve decided to document the ones i think are particularly funny. so here goes.

today she got a flyer of a puppet show in ballard or something. there are four separate shows — one with a troll, one of jack and the beanstalk, one with two mice, and one with some japanese girl and the cherry tree.

as kure pointed out… THAT SHIT IS DEEP, SON.

this site was linked to my website, http://vaginaly.com/2008/01/17/random-sex-thoughts/ and i was wondering why but ah ha! someone got an interesting read out of my second life entry, so YAYYYYY.

oh yeah i forgot to mention this but i had thought it was a big deal so i have to write it down… before but before i left for germany i was driving to lenny’s place and some lady threw this giant sleeping bag-sized macy’s bag out of her window. for starters, that was really fucking weird. people are usually shameless about littering. i mean, most people do it, but most people are not that obvious about it — nor do they do it so carelessly.

but… as if it wasn’t bad enough that she pushed a sleeping bag-sized bag outside of her window, she got OUT of her car and then pulled the bag deeper into the brush. HOW SHADY IS THAT??

i was really quite mad… i couldn’t believe it. i rolled down the window and screamed out, “WHAT THE FUCK?!” but she didn’t hear me because there was another car between us. shady ass biatch. i wrote down her liscense plate number and stuff but never really did anything with it. by now, it’s probably too late. d’oh. :[