Author: Pearl L

what you should do:
1. Go download Trillian.
2. Go download the “Microscopic” skin.
3. The smileys make noisies!! The best ones: (b), (bum), and :?
… as if you needed more ways to waste your time. =) but this is fun! I promise!

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Will Congress tackle pay-for-play?

“Once a hush-hush topic rarely discussed even within the music industry, “pay-for-play,” the costly system by which record companies pay independent promoters to get songs on the radio, has now become a hot-button political issue.

“Some members of Congress are talking about holding hearings and offering legislation in hopes of tearing down the entrenched pay-for-play system. Not only does pay-for-play cost the music industry approximately $150 million each year, it virtually shuts off access to commercial FM radio for artists or record companies who can’t or won’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote a new single. Inside the industry, the veil has also been lifted; an entire panel discussion devoted to indie promotion is being put together for the radio industry’s largest annual convention this fall. Meanwhile, ABC’s “20/20″ ran a prime-time segment on pay-for-play, and even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have introduced the topic to their readers.”

I got my BRASIL world cup jersey yesterday!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!
(… now I need to learn some brazilian cheers and get some face paint. -grins-)

the US is doing all right… man, our goalie rocks!! I saw the second half of the game with us vs. Korea…we’re doing all right. :) we kind of lucked out having the Koreans make so many mistakes… but we’ll take the point!

unbelievable: defending world cup champ france is already out in the first round.

saw a couple of awfully good movies this weekend.

undercover brother. sharp movie about race relations. deftly picks on that funny phenonmenon of how everyone seems to want to be black! this flick did a sweet job skewing black and white stereotypes and their perceptions of each other, but I would have been even more amused if they had skewed some asian ones too. no matter. this worked wonderfully.

the verdict: run run to see this! this is coming home with me on dvd.

the sum of all fears. I went into this movie with some fears of my own: Ben Affleck is the new Jack Ryan? My loyalty to Harrison Ford would remain stalwart, thank you very much. No little upstart would be able to carry off such an action movie the way Indy could! And indeed I was right — Ben played Jack Ryan with the articulate and knowledgeable way that Tom Clancy’s novels have always deserved, and not the thrill-a-minute fests that Air Force One demanded. Sum of All Fears treated a very frightening issue — the threat of nuclear war — in a taut and tense way that brought the reality of the fear home. The relationship between the young Ryan and Morgan Freeman’s character (which was not in the book) was an effective device in pulling the audience in and driving the story along. The way the film was shot out after a bomb goes off gave the movie an eerie feel, starkly portraying the possible in a frightening manner.

the verdict: nuclear war is scary. refer to NBC movie Fail Safe for another illustration. run, RUN to go see this. this is also going into the DVD collection.

so much for moving.

my parents changed their mind on buying the house, but apparently, we’re still selling ours. don’t ask me how this works because I have no idea. my parents don’t make much sense sometimes!

location status: soon to be in transit. perhaps.
romantic status: quite attached
health status: getting whatever illnesses my family has right now
hunger status: well satisfied. just had dinner, thank you. :)
friendship status: M I A
sanity status: more so than in a while it seems
happiness status: amazingly high.
joys of the month: people are graduating, starting new chapters in their lives! good luck to everyone!

if you didn’t notice, the “mothers of the disappeared” entry was truncated. I’ll fill it in in another blog entry some other time.

anyway, I’m at home in fremont for mother’s day. I did the “good daughter” thing and decided I should come home for that at least. it turns out it was a very good decision for me to come home. why? because APPARENTLY we’re selling this house and moving elsewhere. they were going to tell me about their decision eventually (no, it wasn’t one of those, “we’re moving and leaving you behind~! hahaha!), but it all happened very quickly from what i understand.

I don’t want to move! It’s going to be very strange to be still in fremont, but not in the place where i’ve made my memories, you know? the new place is big… it’s a 4 bedroom place just a few blocks away, on a nice plot of land, a big backyard, and a lot of space in the kitchen for entertaining. Incidentally, it’s where former star MSJ wrestler Randy Katz used to live, right smack across the street from my friend Tiffany’s old house. I really like the place, but it just feels too big! too much space! fall into a closet and you’ll never be found again!

[no, it’s not that big. but it’s about 3 times the space of the place we’re living in now. our place right now is pretty small. we moved there for the schools…]

my dad has a sneaking plan for the house to be what keeps my sister and me close by. my mom thinks it would be nice for there to be three generations of us living in the house together. (say it with me now: awww) we’ll see how that works.

wandering around target the other day, I spied a row of electric can openers. I hate electric can openers. I think they’re incredibly wasteful pieces of human technology. Just think about it: How much goes into that little piece of machinery? It takes resources to produce it, from the plastic that makes up the body to the steel that grinds into your tin can. It takes energy to run the machines putting it together. And once your handy-dandy can opener has broken, it takes a hulking huge garbage truck contributing to the rapidly diminishing supplies of fossil fuels to remove it from the premises and transport it to a landfill, where more machines smoosh it up and bury it in a big hole, where it not only takes up space but can also pollute the water supply. So people, PEOPLE! use a freaking hand can opener. You don’t have to use that little machine. Really.

mother’s day is coming up, folks, so it’s time to run to the stores and pick out something lovely for your mum!

… unless you’re like me, who is a terrible daughter and will be lucky to even remember to call. >_ wewewewewe