Graduation Weekend

finals are done and done, thankfully, and most of my grades have come in. i did okay this quarter, which is suprising considering i was slacking a little more than i really should have. >_< at any rate, spring quarter is over (YAY!) and summer is officially here.

graduation was pretty fun. i walked in three ceremonies in all -- for the college of letters and science, history, and anthropology celebrations. i turned my tassel a total of three times. (can you actually do that? heh)

ls grad highlights: got to see chancellor Al Carnesale for probably the second time in my entire UCLA career. the only other time i've seen him in person was on a rooter bus, see him driving his toyota avalon while we were all on our way back from a UCLA football game. I think his license plate said something to the effect of "UCLA AL" or something like that, so we knew it was him. oops, but i'm digressing. the ceremony was all right: the speaker was a little long-winded and soapboxy about health care (totally valid statements, just the wrong place to voice them), the balloons fell at the proper times, and us social sciences folk cheered ever so loudly. :) good times.

history grad: teo ruiz, the history department chair, is an awesome man. he also happens to be a rather inspiring speaker. maybe it's the vague spanish accent, maybe it's the quiet wisdom in the way he phrases his words, or perhaps its just the old wise latin luva luva in him, he has a way of making the most cliched statements sound romantic (not in the lovey dovey sense) and touched with gold. and i got to see some people too!! Jenn made to the early AM ceremony to cheer me on, and i got to see Josh and Ari, two friends of mine i hadn't seen in forever. MKo also graduated, as did Elina, another girl in my History 197 class last quarter. her whole family (including her three daughters) all made it to see her walk!! so sweet!!

anthro grad: best speakers, smallest ceremony. amy, vanessa, and randolf all managed to make it to this grad to see jen and me walk. how awesome is that!!

jen's graduation party afterward was also pretty cool. lots of people showed up: vanessa, amy, kipp, brian, brian's friends, randolf, dennis, chris, allen, a lot of people from dykstra five freshman year, etc etc. good times, good times. :)

I'll post pictures up from the weekend when i have a chance.

funny stuff

talk about divine intervention!!

rules for the bar-goers

reading material

some liberal thinking ahead....

On Bush: Conservatives say "Bush brings character to the table." I think that's a lie.

Bush and the Segway: play by play here, money shot 564.2952962121.jpg" title="oops!" target="_blank">here.

On polling: so the reports came out that 22% of Americans polled believed that iraq really did possess weapons of mass destruction. to put it all in perspective, here's a pretty interesting link.

On Martha and Hilary: i think they're both pretty darned cool. is society ready accept strong women yet?

On A&F's new allegations of racism in hiring: one more reason why being an asian american republican makes no sense to me.

interview with damon albarn

the san francisco bay guardian published a pretty nifty interview with damon albarn last week. read it here.

DONE WITH FINALS!!

just wanted to say i am done with finals. let the graduation celebrations BEGIN! WOOHOO~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:)

it's good to be done.

mm... in-n-out...

In-n-Out Secret Menu

the RIAA did WHAT?

What the hell is this??

RIAA Wrath Hits Teen: Student's Search Engine Software prompts a lawsuit and a settlement for the teen's life savings

before i forget...

In case you haven't heard, BLUR's new cd is AMAZING.

their bassist is pretty damn hot too. here's a pic from coachella (i still need to post those pics.. doh!).

no damon albarn pics to post just yet.. maybe eventually. =)

these entries are all such bummed entries

gosh, i'm such a happy person... why do all these blog entries sound so sad??

so here's a happy story.

wait. i don't have any right now.

I think it's just Finals. Yes. It's finals. wrarghgh.

good luck to everyone on finals. one more week, quarter folks. one more week.

Fallen!

I've fallen off the face of the earth!! have i disappeared??

i feel like i have... :(

soooo out of the loop.

graduations are coming up this week, and it's a busy time for everyone. at this point, i'm walking in three ceremonies: the huge L&S one, History, and Anthropology. I'm having a hard time deciding how big a deal i want to make this, since i'm not *really* done with classes yet and it doesn't really feel like a *real* graduation to me. so right now, i've only told my family to come down... no one else. i'm not even sure if i should tell anyone. Part of me wants to see my friends there, part of me also doesn't feel like it's a *real* graduation and it's not really worth it. Or maybe part of me is just afraid of inviting people and telling them to come and them not showing up for it. I know people are really busy these days -- working, school, other graduations, etc -- and chances are not good that they can make it down for my graduation... my not-really-real graduation.

I guess it sort of has a bad flavor in my mouth. once again, a graduation with a bad flavor in my mouth. it's a long story, too long to detail here, but graduations and me haven't ever had a happy coexistence.

-- "we were like oil and vinegar.. we just didn't mix." -- harry caray on mother teresa, SNL

i'm sort of excited though, although i don't really feel like it's really going to be my thing. i'm there for jen's grad, or other people's graduations... i don't really feel like i have anything to celebrate for myself just yet.

eventually i'll graduate. i know jer's counting the days. =P

on mixtapes

jer and i were playing tennis today, and our conversation revolved around the topic of Semisonic's last CD, "All About Chemistry." That CD, if you haven't heard it, is a debacle of catastrophic proportions. Gone was the Semisonic of such terrific albums as "The Great Divide" and "Feeling Strangely Fine;" here was a new Semi with a horny Dan Wilson. And you know, horny lead singers aren't a bad thing necessarily, but not when they gross you out. Track by track, Semisonic had gone from "Closing Time" and "Singing in My Sleep" (tracks 1 and 2 on FSF) to "Chemistry" and "Bed" (respectively 1 and 2 on AAC). Chemistry is passable, demonstrating Dan Wilson's knack for melding together the rhythmic lyric and the pop hook, although the words are juuuust a little bit contrived, even for him. It's on "Bed" where he makes the great, and tragic, mistake of taking things too far:

"Well show me a friendship that's pure and chaste/
And I'll show you and engine that's dying to race/
Well the time has come for me to find/
Another way to get my soul fed/
I know we could be the sweetest friends/
But if that's where it ends/
Then I'll find someone else to bed/
Bed/
Find someone else to bed."

so you know, with Dan Wilson's less-than-sexy-man voice, that kind of seductive come-on is not particularly effective.

His voice is much better suited to tracks like "FNT" or "Secret Smile," where his geekiness is sweetness, and becomes a strength rather than a liability. I mean... listen to "Singing in my Sleep" and tell me that his voice works so well with the attitude of the song. That is completely gone in AAC. :( it makes me sad.

Anyway, "Singing in My Sleep" is all about (cue fanfare here) the mixtape. This isn't the only piece of pop art that's done this sort of thing -- High Fidelity, anyone? Anyway, it got me thinking about the mixtapes i've made for people (none, actually, although i'm thinking of putting one together now), those people have made for me, and those people have made for other people.

Mixtapes are possibly the most wrenching way to get to a person's heart. Well, at least they are if you're the kind of person who is aurally inclined, at least, and i suspect many of you are. anyway, i'm one of those people, and i've been lucky enough to be have been the recipient of one of thoooose kinds of mixtapes once and only once. i'm wary of spelling out who this person is -- i know he used to read my blog, but since i think he thinks i'm ignoring him for some reason (i'm not ignoring him) i'm not sure if he stops in at any time. so i'll just leave him anonymous, but i'll say that every once in a while i think back and wonder how it could have been. it's one of those things.

the tracklisting on it was masterful. it included such songs as...
top gun theme
omd - dreaming
yaz - only you
james - sit down
pet shop boys - always on my mind
baltimora - tarzan boy
... and a ton more i can't think of right now.

but i remember it made me weep, and i think a piece of my heart will always go out to that person who made it for me....

it's funny how people manage to burrow their ways into your heart.

Friendster

I haven't said very much about Friendster as of yet since i haven't had much time to play on it, but having spent a little time this weekend having my email inbox inundated (and by inundated, i mean getting like, 2 emails!! woohoo!!) with "approve me as your friend!" messages, i got to kind of surf through a few people's friend networks. it's weirdly interesting seeing how you're connected to folks.

i think it'd be neat if someone met someone through something like Friendster. it's possible. hey, the best dating pool a person could have is a good friend's friends, right? 0_o

one down....

one down, two to go!! woohoo~!!

now i can play on friendster! hehe.

muuusic

lots of music in my head.

current winamp playlist:
who da funk - shiny disco ball
fanny pack - cameltoe
missy elliot - gossip folks
50 cent - in da club
beatnuts - watch out now
nas - i can
liz phair - extraordinary
rufus king - just what i need
ben kweller - ice ice baby
crush - jellyhead
yaz - only you
the flaming lips - race for the prize
buddy holly - that'll be the day
cooler kids - all around the world (punk debutante)
darude - feel the beat
daft punk - one more time
di tiesto - touch me
paul oakenfold - southern sun (tiesto remix)

currently spinning:
the bats
the flaming lips
blur
stone temple pilots

non-update update

it's the end of tenth week. next week is finals week. i will not be posting for a little while. aaaaaaaaah!!!

good luck to everyone else going through finals week hell.

computer back online

last week, jer's video card seemed like it went out on him, and, thinking it was a hardware conflict of some sort, he swapped out his Hercules card for my ATI, and swapped his sony flat panel for my hitachi, since the hitachi has dv out and his sony one doesn't. anyway, the monitor-card switch seemed to work for a couple of days. then the hercules/sony combo went out on my machine, and we thought we were S.O.L.

we tried it again tonight, and thankfully, it looks like it might be a cable issue rather than a card issue. the hercules-sony combo is working all right for now; we'll look for a new cable tomorrow to replace this possibly faulty one.

so anyway, i had some stuff i wanted to record from this weekend:

- bumper sticker spotted on a ford explorer: "AMERICAN: NON-HYPHENATED!" complete with an American flag in one corner and a bald eagle in the other. now, there's nothing inherently wrong with the statement, because you could also use it to mean "We're all American, regardless of what color we are." But in this instance, paired with Harley Davidson and NRA stickers, it's clearly intended to reserve non-hyphenated Americanism for the rednecks of this country. I mean.. what's that supposed to mean? as if you're not white, then you'll never be American? There are some fourth generation Japanese people living in this state, longer than some European immigrants who consider themselves "white" and "American." Will these 4th generation immigrants ever not be looked at by skin color and be considered "American" because they look Asian? And who says these European immigrants should lose their ethnic identities and be automatically assumed to be American? It's just not that simple.

- spotted while driving along the 110 freeway: bulletholes in a ford windstar minivan. we're pretty sure they were real. they didn't look like the applique ones you can buy in a store.

... and that's all i can think of for now.

The Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Palladium

we've got confetti everywhere!!!

jer and i went to the flaming lips show last night at the palladium. openers were the starlight mints and liz phair. we missed the starlight mints, but liz phair (whom i was pretty excited to see) was pretty darned cool. i have to say though, her new stuff with The Matrix (Avril Lavigne's producers) is radically different from her old stuff. The song of hers radio stations are playing, "Why Can't I," has a part that really reminds me of "Complicated," and as a whole reminds of of "Complicated"s annoying repetitiveness. I like the other lead off single from her album (song: "Extraordinary," album: "Liz Phair") much better.

The Flaming Lips, as expected, were gloriously quirky. they threw confetti at the crowd, featured audience members in animal costumes and the like dancing on stage, and bounced big giant ballons through the audience. hehe, it was like a birthday party! They even led the crowd in singing "happy birthday" to a few birthday folks in the audience. pretty sweet.

So anyway, jer and i were covered in confetti cuz we were so close to the stage. We left some of it in the car, at Denny's, and a ton all over our apartment. :)

i'll post pictures up from the show soon, as soon as i have my computer back up. (I'm on jer's right now... my video card died.)