Well, not much has happened in the way of my desperate search for furniture.  Now I’m just worried about whether or not I can actually manage to bring my stuff back to California!  Last time, Hawaiian Airlines fined me $25 b/c my bag was like 20 lbs over the weight limit. 

 

Speaking of weight, yesterday, I saw a program about obesity in America on the Discovery Channel.  As someone who was once overweight, and who is still is fighting the battle of the bulge, I watched the program with unwavering interest. 

 

The program taught me how to determine whether I am normal, overweight, or obese by using the BMI (Body Mass Index) test.  Come on guys!  Let’s find out if you are in the healthy zone!  (Note:  You will need a calculator). 

 

First, do the equation…

 

Weight/(Height^2 [in inches]) * 703

 

Example:  Let’s say you weigh 250 lbs, and are 6’2” tall.  Your equation would be…

 

250/(74^2) * 703 = 32.094595

 

Then use these conversions…

 

20-25 = NORMAL

25-30 = OVERWEIGHT

30+ = OBESE

 

Therefore, if your BMI is like the example of 32.094595 you are obese. 

 

This test doesn't take into account muscle mass, so I don't know how it can be totally accurate.  But hey, the Discovery Channel wouldn't lie to me...would it? 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL (aka DAN-YO) AND RICHARD (aka THE DOC-TAH)!!!

Thanks for those forms Tiff!  I assume your dad wrote the note about the fax, seeing as he sent it, but he signed his name as “Tiffi” which I found very funny b/c it was, in truth, your dad, and I’ve never seen you sign your name as “Tiffi.”  It isn’t as funny if it really was you that sent it to me, but then I start laughing again when I think about the Elaine-dance-finger-pointing-dance-morphing-into-the-cardboard-dance.   My god, we’re talented! 

 

So for those of you who care, which is probably no one (except for maybe Tiffanie and a handful of other people who have nothing better to care about…where are your families?...MURDERERS!) Tiff and my desperate search to make our apartment livable has been full of both great successes and suicide-inducing failures. 

 

Our successes include, managing to find basic furniture (e.g. desks, sofas, chairs), finding a way to get DSL (both thanks to Tiff!), and finding out that the bathrooms have shower doors and therefore don’t need curtains, saving me an estimated $14.95. 

 

Our main failure is the fact that Tiff and I cannot get a freakin’ bunk bed!  I called Cort furniture and they don’t rent bunk beds (damn them!), and the only other place that I found that rented bunk beds was Rent-A-Center who so magnanimously offered to rent us a bunk (with delivery/setup/pickup and mattresses included) for a low, low, BARGAIN BASEMENT PRICE of $20 A WEEK.  Considering that Tiff and I will be needing this stuff for about 10 months, all we’ll be paying is $800!  Hello?  Am I missing something here?  I refuse to pay $400 to rent a bunk bed! 

 

So the only thing left to do is find another rental company (if such a company exists) or buy the bunk ourselves.  I’m all for buying b/c we’d actually save about $200 each but if you haven’t noticed, Tiff and I aren’t exactly the strongest girls on the block, and we have NO WAY of getting the bed and mattresses to our apartment, and knowing us, we’ll probably have a few “minor mishaps” when we assemble the bed.  Think Homer Simpson trying to assemble that outdoor BBQ grill…My sister said that we’ll probably be able to sell the furniture at the end of the year to other desperate USC students. 

 

Let’s hope that it all turns out well. 

Hello my Strawberry friend (Tiffanie), If you haven’t read your email lately, I sent you one, but here’s the gist of it:

 

I need those City Park forms.  Could you please scan and send them to me at my USC email?

 

Need them ASAP.  Will die w/o them.  Please, save my innocent (cough cough) Strawberry life!    

It’s hard to admit it, and part of me is still denying it, but I think I’m drifting away.  I can feel that a rift has formed between me and the group.  At first I thought that it was just some vague insecurity I had, something that would just go away if I could just see everyone more.  But now, I’m not so sure.  I can see that no matter what happens there are still divisions between me and “the others.”   I don’t feel as accepted within the group as everyone else probably does.  But then again, I’ve always been the outsider who never really understood why the two groups couldn’t coexist as one, b/c I wasn’t there.  I will never have that special bond that the rest of them now share from those hardships.  Not that I haven’t been through my share of troubles within the condensed version of “the group,” as if I could forget.  But as I watched these people laugh and talk yesterday, it began to dawn on me that I’m nothing like any of them. 

 

I got a lot of bad vibes from certain people yesterday, and even though I don’t really know them, and I don’t particularly care for them myself, I know they were insulting me and laughing at me.  How could I not know?  I was never more than 5 feet away from them.  Why did they have to ruin my night?  Where do they get off doing stuff like that?  Were they blind?  I was RIGHT THERE and they were talking PRETTY LOUD.  I’m hurt, yes, but overpowering my sadness and the personal shame, I’m angry.  I refuse to be around the individuals who blatantly found pleasure in insulting me.  It’s so much easier to be ignorant of it, and not be there. 

 

Sometimes I can’t help thinking that the group is just all wrong for me.  There aren’t too many people I can turn to for real support and real companionship anymore.  Things are too fractured; I just don’t fit in.  I can tell that everyone else has some network of friends that they can always turn to, but I don’t think I do.  Where is my niche?  I always feel like I’m some big, fat, boring, foul-mouthed, nuisance to everyone. 

 

Too bad I refuse to change.  I’m not one for forced change; I’d rather just be alone. 

 

Someone once told me that just because I’ve made new friends in California, it doesn’t mean that I can just leave the ones I have here.  Well, it has NOTHING to do with my California friends.  But I’m still sorry it’s like this.  I don’t feel this way to hurt any of you, nor am I finding this sadistically fun.  Understand that it’s very hard to pick up where we left off ten months ago, and go on like nothing’s changed.  Things have changed.  I’ve changed.  So have many of you.  We hardly spoke while we were apart, so we inevitably drifted.  What do you want from me?  “Things never change, (laugh laugh), let’s all be fake!?”  No, thank you.

 

I know some of you are reading this with a deep sense of confusion, some of you may actually be mad, and maybe some tiny percentage of you may understand what I’m going through.  For those of you who are angry:  go ahead and be angry.  Why don’t you call me up and yell at me?  You’ll be greeted with this, “I don’t hate you, I just don’t know you anymore, and I don’t think you know me either (click beep beep beep).”  I don’t care.  I’m just being honest with myself and all of you.  Go ahead and insult me about my tastes, and my habits, and my personality.  Some of you already have.  And I have insulted many of you too, mentally or otherwise.  Sorry, really. 

 

Like I said, I’m not happy things turned out this way.  If you think about it, we’re really different.  I know you guys already knew this before reading this entry.  Maybe if I spent more time with you, I’d start loving you guys again.  Maybe.  But last time I checked, your ideas of fun, and my ideas are fun, are inexorably dissimilar.

 

Haha.  I’ve felt this way for such a long time.  It’s weird to read back what I wrote, and feel that familiar wave of denial, “Are you stupid?  There’s nothing wrong with you…go have fun with the group!”  Tsk tsk…there you go again, brain.  It’s not like I’m going to walk off into the sunset and leave the group forever (unless it’s what the group wants, and I’m sure at least two of you wouldn’t mind it; yeah, I know who you are…you can just jump off a ravine for all I care ß Ha!  Look what I wrote!  No wonder people hate me!  Heh heh heh). 

 

The last thing I want would be some great backlash of hatred, or even worse, pity.  I don’t want any effort to be made on your part; I have no expectations either way, from me or you.  I just wanted to get a lot of what I’m feeling off my chest.

 

Lor

Alright you guys, here it is, the one thing that will finally impart meaning into all of our lives…

 

JACKIE CHAN IS OPENING A RESTAURANT!

 

 

I don’t know if ya’ll already have a Jackie Chan restaurant on the mainland (No, Foo Chow doesn’t count, but I still want to go there!  Why won’t you take me?!), but OMG, a Jackie Chan restaurant in Ala Moana!!!  I think Jackie’s Kitchen is going to be one of those fusion restaurants, where they blend Chinese and American foods/styles together.  IT IS GOING TO ROCK!  I mean, everything Jackie touches turns into gold…except for maybe that Tuxedo movie…but we all know Jennifer Love Hewitt was the one who ruined it, not Jackie!

 

The sad thing is, when the restaurant actually opens, JC himself will probably be here in Hawaii, but by that time I’ll probably be in SC!  Yes, my life is trash, thanks for pointing that out. 

THINGS THAT HAPPENED ON MY BIRTHDAY…

 

1914: The U.S. House of Representatives approves the Clayton Antitrust Act (Now, why don’t I know what this is?…Oh yeah, b/c I had Al Sabea!  DOWN WITH MONOPOLIES!).

 

1917: Dutch courtesan Mata Hari is executed by the French after being suspected of spying for Germany.

 

1928: The Graf Zeppelin makes the first commercial transatlantic flight.

 

1945: Pierre Laval, prime minister of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, is executed by a firing squad for treason against France.

 

1946: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, the second most powerful leader of Nazi Germany, poisons himself hours before his scheduled execution for war crimes during World War II.

 

1964: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev is deposed.

 

Am I the only one who noticed how many bad things happened on my birthday?  Execution…execution…suicide…deposing…(nervous laughter)…

 

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY

 

Sir P.G. Wodehouse, Anglo-American writer (1881)

 

John Kenneth Galbraith, American economist (1908)

 

Lee (Lido) Iacocca, American corporate executive (1924) YEAH BABY!  THIS GUY WAS AWESOME! 

 

Virgil, Roman poet (70 BC)

 

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., U.S. historian (1917)

 

Jim Palmer, American baseball player (1945)

 

MYSTERY BIRTH…SEE IF YOU CAN GUESS WHO IT IS!

 

 WHO AM I?  I was born on this day in 1844. A German philosopher, I was one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century (see bottom of entry for answer!)

 

 

FUN FACT!

 

Pope Gregory XIII dropped ten days from the year in 1582, skipping from October 4th to October 15th. He also instituted the Gregorian calendar, which changed the leap year system by three days every 400 years.

 

HOLIDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS

 

Evacuation Day (Tunisia)

 

Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila (Roman Catholic)

 

Independence Day (Bosnia-Herzegovina)

 

White Cane Safety Day (What the hell is this?!  And what’s up with “Evacuation Day?!”)

 

ANSWER to Mystery Birth:  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche  HAAAAAA!  NIETZSCHE WAS BORN ON THE SAME DAY AS ME!  YESSSS!  DO NOT BE A SLAVE OF CONFORMITY!  LET US RETURN TO THE WAYS OF THE SPARTANS!  “GOD IS DEAD!” 

 

Curious to find out some of the famous people who were executed, deposed, or committed suicide on your birthday (thus forcing you to question whether or not you are a waste of skin)?  Check out this website!  http://encarta.msn.com/features/onThisDay.asp

Let me tell you a story boys and girls.  A story about a girl and a book.  A book she ordered on April 27, 2003, in the hopes that she would receive it on the day of its release AS PROMISED by the website that sold it to her.  She ordered it 2 months in advance, my friends, TWO MONTHS, but did she receive it on-time?  No.  While everyone else in the world was mentally frolicking with a team of wizards and witches, she was wallowing in her own misery.  So if not that day, when?!  The website later claimed they would deliver her book on June 23 (Monday).  But no.  LIES!  LIES!  LIES!  She woke up the next morning, Tuesday, June 24^th, THREE DAYS AFTER THE RELEASE to find the book outside of her bedroom door.  How did it get here?  WELL (!) the story goes a little somethin’ like this...as her father was walking the dog one morning, he discovered that the HARRY POTTER book had been chucked into the yard, nowhere near the mailbox!  That’s right!  THOSE INFIDELS AT UPS HAPHAZARDLY THREW MY PRECIOUS BOOK LIKE SOME COMMON BEAN-FILLED HACKEY-SACK, thus RUINING MY HP EXPERIENCE!  BWAAARRRGH!

 

On a lighter note, I started HP on Tuesday morning, and finished it Wednesday (yesterday) night.  It was a good book, not as action-packed as the fourth one, but what it lost in action, it gained in substance.  Lots of our most pressing HP-related questions were answered.  SO GO OUT AND BUY THE BOOK!  READ THE BOOK!  THROUGH YOUR PATRONAGE YOU CAN MAKE J.K. ROWLING EVEN RICHER THAN SHE ALREADY IS!  And isn’t that reason enough?  You know it is!

 

Alright, I don’t think I want to make my highly-anticipated (shifty eyes) cameo on DoNotDate.  I’ve read some of the recent entries and man (!), some of these people take things too seriously.  Last I checked, DoNotDate was supposed to be a “just for fun” site where we can just roast ourselves (and our friends) and have a good chuckle about it.  But now…it’s all so…Jerry Springer-esque.  Sorry Tiffanie.  At least you were able to capitalize on the whole joke when it still was one! 

 

I cut my hair on Tuesday, which I desperately needed in order to get rid of the “not short, but not long” hairstyle that I’ve had to endure.  Here’s a picture of myself (and no, I do not smile in photos of myself b/c I HATE TAKING PICTURES!  I HATE IT!  I HATE IT!  I HATE IT!  *ahem*).  My hair actually looks the same…but I cut it I tell you!  I CUT IT!!!

 

 

I have big news…actually it may not be big, it may actually be happening everywhere.  I mean, I can’t believe it’s only happening HERE, in Hawaii, where everything of actual purpose or meaning dies and fails miserably…but I don’t know, it may just be an experiment.  You know…try out something new in Hawaii, and if it fails, so what?  Everything that was successful in the mainland always fails once moved to Hawaii.  Luckily (!) we have great weather and beautiful land, to make up for our “entertainment death-trap” status.  But no more talk of this now…I need to take pictures of it to act as precious, precious evidence…and I will…more on this later…

As none of you know, I am one of the biggest (biggest meaning fattest) Jack Handey fans in the world.  For those of you who are remotely curious, Jack Handey is this really clever dude who occasionally shows up on SNL with these irreverent, pointless things to say that I find hilarious and just plain smart.  Well, these aren’t thoughts that will leave you on the floor laughing, more like ones that will make you snort and shake your head, either that or leave you confused and wishing it would end.   

 

DEEP THOUGHTS by JACK HANDEY (from the 1995 one-a-day calendar)

 

You know what would really make a woman mad?  Just run up and kick her in the butt.  (P.S. This also works with men).

 

Children need encouragement.  So if a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess.  That way, he develops a good, lucky feeling. 

 

Here’s a good thing to do if you go to a party and you don’t know anybody:  First, take out the garbage.  Then go around and collect any extra garbage that people might have, like a crumpled-up napkin, and take that out too.  Pretty soon people will want to meet the busy garbage guy. 

 

One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked me if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary line.  I had to laugh and laugh.  Laugh and laugh.  Because I didn’t know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me. 

 

If I come back as an animal in my next lifetime, I hope it’s some type of parasite, because this is the part where I take it EASY!

 

I hope after I die, people will say of me:  “That guy owed me a lot of money.”

 

I guess the hard thing for a lot of people to accept is why God would allow me to go running through their yards, yelling and spinning around. 

 

Whenever someone asks me to define love, I usually think for a minute, then I spin around and pin the guy’s arm behind his back.  NOW who’s asking the questions?!

 

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate.  And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it. 

 

Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset?  And he’s carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he’s carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet.  And also, you’re drunk. 

 

I remember one day I was at Grandpa’s farm and I asked him about sex.  He sort of smiled and said, “Maybe instead of telling you what sex is, why don’t we go out to the horse pasture and I’ll show you.”  So we did, and there on the ground were my parents having sex.

 

You know what would make a good story?  Something about a clown who makes people happy, but inside he’s real sad.  Also, he has severe diarrhea. 

 

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. 

 

Sometimes I think I’d be better off dead.  No, wait.  Not me, you. 

 

Carl would have to be fast to beat the stranger.  Real fast.  “Draw,” said the stranger.  Carl went for his gun, but then “Hey, where did all these angels come from?”

Harry Potter comes out TOMORROW!  SWEET!  MY LIFE NOW HAS MEANING! 

 

On a darker note, I sort of had a nightmare last night.  It was probably a 5 minute dream but it reinforced my hatred of the beach.  In my dream, I was on the beach for a ceremony, and a girl dressed in Hawaiian attire paddles into the water on a little raft, and starts bellowing a Hawaiian chant.  Out of nowhere, a shark fin appears and starts gliding towards her.  People start laughing like it's a joke, and yell to her that a shark is coming.  The fin reaches her raft, and then you find out that it was not a shark at all, but a SALTWATER CROCODILE!  This crocodile is so big that it could easily eat the girl, and the raft, in one bite.  The crocodile's first snap misses.  The girl is now panicking, and she's desperately trying to paddle back to shore.  But at the last moment, the HUGE croc soars out of the water and eats her whole, head-first in fact.  I could hear her screaming as her feet slowly slid down his mouth.  The croc swims away. 

 

I'm never swimming at the beach.  NEVER!                                                    

 

Well, here are some pictures of me and my friends when we had one of our most unorganized potlucks (that sadly turned out to be our best one).  We went to the beach and sat there…arguing.  Actually, all of the pictures were taken after the potluck b/c it was so damn windy at the beach. 

 

 

Marc and Lisa

 

 

Eva who should be looking at the road...hmm...my seat belt was on, but I just didn't feel safe.  When we were driving to the beach, she ran a red light, but tried to justify it by screaming "I'm gonna make it!  I'm gonna make it!"  when the light was CLEARLY already red, and had been red for quite some time. 

 

 

Kat and Pete, our groups one and only couple.  Pete claims to not want to be photographed (thus the hiding) however, he is still LOOKING AT THE CAMERA!  Can we say, "denial?"

 

 

I have a picture of myself...but I have too much shame, so I put this Dilbert comic instead, which I think all of you will find much more entertaining.

 

Alright...I can't keep this terrible secret any longer...I just can't...

 

 

Vallent Lee is Harry Potter.  The photo on the right is one I took of him when he was at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (aka Harvard) a few weeks back, as he was running aimlessly with his wand.  He looks so pissed b/c I drank his last bottle of Pumpkin Juice (aka Pepsi Twist)...greedy bastard....The photo on the left was taken yesterday.  His scar started burning badly when he sensed You Know Who's presence, but it turned out to be a false alarm, I was the one plotting to kill him, not You Know Who!  We laughed really hard at that.  Note:  Photos of Vallent were not changed in any way shape or form...(shifty eyes)...