Since my family and I will be in Hawaii for Thanksgiving, my mom decided that she wanted to have an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner tonight. In the span of 3.5 hours, between her coming home from work at 4pm and guests arriving at 7:30, my mom and I had prepared a full Thanksgiving dinner including:

1 Turkey with stuffing and gravy
A full bag worth of mashed potatoes
Cranberry sauce
Sweet potatoes
Brussel sprouts
2 Pumpkin pies (with pumpkins from our garden!)
1 Pecan pie
Whipped cream

And the only things that came from a box were the stuffing and pie crust.

Now I've never really been involved in making Thanksgiving dinner before (except peeling/mashing potatoes and sorting cranberries, the easy stuff :-P), but I think that must be some sort of record.

So the moral of the story here, as is common with food-related stories, is that my mom is an awesome cook - and hopefully (apparently?) some of it has rubbed off on me...at least people seemed to like my pies :-).

So here I was sitting at my computer today, and an old dormmate from first year who I haven't talked to in a while IMs me. So we chatted for a little while, and then he asked me if I watch the show "Newport Harbor" on MTV - you see, the show is (presumably) based on my high school, so this is why he was asking. So I said no, I don't watch the show, but he continued the line of questioning anyway, and asked if I knew this girl from the show named "Chrissy." Now, this is a ridiculous question to be asking me, I graduated from the school 7 years ago so there's no particular reason that I should know anyone who goes there right now, or at least it would be a long shot that I would. But, strangely enough, the name was familiar, so I looked it up online, and it turns out that this "Chrissy" from "Newport Harbor" is the same "Chrissy" that I tutored in SAT math last year. Apparently she's sort of like the main character in the show, the "pretty and popular" one according to the cast list bio. So as it turns out, I happen to know the last name, cellphone number, address and SAT scores (one of these things is not like the others...) of one of the characters on a TV show which has a questionable reason for popularity among the over-18 crowd.

So, let's start the bidding at 400 dollars (I want an iPhone!). Any takers?

So here's a funny story: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22376204-5006022,00.html

Apparently some comics broke into the APEC security summit, past 250 million dollars worth of security, dressed up as osama bin laden and wearing "insecurity badges" and claiming to be Canadian. This is hilarious. Predictably, though, the officials involved didn't see the humor of it all. So I decided to email New South Wales Police Minister David Campbell to explain the humor to him:

______________________

In a story (which you can find here: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22376204-5006022,00.html ) about the breach of APEC security by a number of comedians, one of whom was dressed as Osama Bin Laden, you were quoted as saying "I don't see a funny side to what's happened today. I don't see a funny side at all." I thought I would email you to explain the funny side, because there is indeed one.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives this as it's second definition of "irony":

"A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result : [with clause] the irony is that I thought he could help me."

You see, this is what we would call an ironic situation. You spent 250 million dollars on security so that there wouldn't be any protesters at the summit. However, with much apparent ease, a man dressed as the world's single most wanted "villain" managed to bypass all of that security, and without even spending anywhere near 250 million dollars.

When you spend 250 million dollars, you would expect that all that money would be able to stop the thing that it was spent in order to stop. But, contrary to those expectations (see definition of irony above), the money did no such thing, and was easily defeated by a bunch of comics, who are probably much lower on the "dastardly evil genius" scale than actual, well-funded terrorists.

Allow me to point out some other reasons, in addition to the greater irony of it all, that make this situation funny:

•That the APEC summit has received large amounts of negative press internationally in the past week or two, leaving the whole world watching the event to see what would happen to protesters being locked out of a large portion of their own city at their own great expense (as taxpayers), and yet a small group of comics managed to pass through. This is similar to, and in many ways builds upon, the above point, with the important addition of international press and lots of angry people, thus increasing the scope of the comedy.
•That the intrusion was caught on tape by the intruders for national television, so that all those people worldwide who have been watching this event will be able to see what happened via the internet.
•That the intrusion was approved, prior to the stunt happening, by a group of lawyers, who presumably know about whichever legal issues might come up, but despite this the actors involved were still arrested. (This is another instance of irony)
•That the comics wore "insecurity badges" and pretended to be Canadians, Canada being a very popular punchline for jokes about international peace and security, what with them being one of the prime examples of a peaceful and nonoffensive group of people, and in fact a country from where many great comedians have originated (Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, the "Kids in the Hall" comedy troupe, and so on).
•That the only reason they got caught is because the comics themselves decided to turn around before going what they deemed as "all the way," showing the ineptitude of the security forces assembled for the event in a scene that recalls the classic comedy of the Keystone Cops, or perhaps the more modern Supertroopers.
•Finally, that the officials quoted in the story, without fail, seemed not to understand the comical aspects of the stunt, which adds even more to the "inept security forces" humor mentioned in the point immediately above.

In short, pretty much everything about this story is absolutely hilarious.

And in one final note, this waste of money could be described as a "boondoggle" ("work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value"), which is an inherently funny-sounding word, so even if all of the irony of the situation is lost on you, you could at least get a chuckle out of that silly word.

Yours in comedy,
Jamie Dow, B.A. in Sociology and avid improv comedy fan
Newport Beach, California, USA

P.S. As I could not find an email address for the "APEC security boss, Assistant Commissioner Dave Owens" (who was quoted as saying "I enjoy a big laugh, but that isn't funny."), please forward this email to him as well. I would like also to enlighten him as I hopefully have done for you.

So yesterday, I left California to go on a road trip with my dad. We're heading to Tulsa, Oklahoma, of all places, to see the unearthing of a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere. He heard about this event 50 years ago when they buried the car in the first place, and told himself he was going to watch the unearthing of the car, so I decided I might as well go along with. Little did I know, an old car wouldn't be the only thing to be unearthed on this trip of ours.

I'm sure you've all heard the news by now, but in case you haven't, everywhere from the Rockies to the Mississippi the dead are rising from their graves. We're currently in a motel in Adrian, TX, just past the New Mexico/Texas border. I do not feel like I'm putting myself in danger by giving this information, because I'm pretty sure zombies can't read blogs.

I suppose I should start from the beginning. We woke up this morning just before the power went out. Taking a quick look outside, we noticed that there were far more people in the street than there should have been. At first we just thought they must walk a lot out here, but after a double take or two, we noticed that these weren't your typical Texans. The rotting flesh, the stiff posture, the moaning - yes, these were zombies. We were lucky to have a parking spot just in front of our room, as there didn't seem to be many other occupants at the motel last night, so when the zombies weren't looking we dashed into my dad's truck and drove off quickly.

Once we got in the truck, we decided to look around for some supplies. Even though, at the time, we had no way to know whether this was just a local problem or not, better to be safe than sorry. And besides, usually the dead rising from their graves ends up being a little more widespread than anyone would like. I should be thankful for Texas' liberal (or would that be conservative? hmm, that's an interesting use of that word...) gun laws, as it wasn't very difficult to find some shotguns to arm ourselves with. So after one trip down main street, my dad's truck starts to look like something out of Mad Max. And in case you were wondering, the truck bed of an F-250 Super Duty makes for an excellent gun platform, and that diesel engine sure can plow through a whole lot of brainless flesh.

After heading back to the motel and doing a little "cleanup," we discovered the owner's cache of supplies. As it turns out, the owner of this particular motel was apparently quite the disaster preparedness freak, so he's got all sorts of stuff hidden in a room behind the front desk. Canned food, water, a backup generator, everything. So we decided we might as well use the motel as our base of operations, since it will be handy to have these various supplies in case things take a turn for the worse (heh, here I am in a sea of zombies and I'm talking about things taking a turn for the worse, there's some perspective). Also, the area around the motel is fairly secure (at least after a quick drive-through on the F-250 of Doom), has good visibility on account of being near the outskirts of town, and there are only two access points to the second floor balcony, which will help us make better use of the high ground if we have to, yet still give us a possible exit if one of the stairways gets overwhelmed. Of course, the first thing I did once we found the supplies was to get the internet up and running, just had to restore the router to factory settings and I was set. I'm glad we didn't pay that 10 dollars a night the owner was charging for internet, what a ripoff. I guess you could technically say I "hacked" his network, and am "stealing" internet, but you really can't steal internet from a dead guy, so I figure I'm in the clear. A lot of good all that disaster preparedness training did him.

After a little roaming around the internet, I managed to find some other blogs of local citizens here in Adrian. As it turns out, Texans are surprisingly avid bloggers. Apparently this town bills itself as the midpoint of Route 66, which is a cool little piece of trivia. Anyway, I made some comments that we have a safe place here at the motel and the survivors are slowly trickling in. They've turned out to be some pretty nice people, my dad's sharing old road trip stories with some of them right now. It's helped to have a few other people around to put on watch too, constantly having to keep your eyes open for savage brain-eaters gets a little tiring, even after only a few hours.

So far, the cast of characters here in the motel - I keep referring to it as "the motel" because the sign out front simply says "MOTEL," without further elaboration - includes (but is not limited to, as I mentioned more survivors are trickling in as time passes):

Biff, the truck driver - Biff was the first other survivor we found, he ditched his cargo and rigged up his tractor unit with some strange combine-like monstrosity. Here we thought we had constructed the ultimate zombie death machine, and along comes Biff and "The Shredder" mutilating zombies at a rate that would make Bruce Campbell blush. It really is quite a sight to see.
Ken, The Bible-thumping preacher - I've mostly tried to keep quiet about religion so far, and luckily Ken has obliged by not bothering to preach too much. You'd think that at times like this, religion would really come to the forefront, but there really hasn't been a lot of time for that. Besides, Ken seems to prefer being on watch, and is racking up quite the death count out there.
Sarah, the farmer's pretty daughter - 'Nuff said.
George, the nearsighted grocery store owner - A kind fellow, and a remarkable cook. He brought a lot of fresh produce along with, and we've been having some fantastic meals all day long.
Merle, the town drunk - Seems Merle went into PTSD mode as soon as the zombies started popping up, and his stint over in Vietnam is probably the main reason he lasted as long as he did out in the streets unarmed. Luckily George was on watch when Merle showed up, so despite being mistaken as a zombie, George is such a bad shot that he just managed to graze Merle's arm before realizing who he was. We all got a good laugh out of it afterwards.
Glenda, the waitress at the diner - And endlessly entertaining character. Just imagine all the depictions you've ever seen of waitresses in small town diners, and put them all together into one person. That's Glenda.


And now to wax philosophic for a moment. Living in Newport Beach, one comes to believe, consciously or not, that they are insulated from these sorts of events. A life of comfort has left me detached from many of the every day problems these folks here in middle America have to handle. But in the end, they're just people like me, and when survival instinct kicks in, there's little question about what must be done. And despite what a lot of people think about human nature, I've found that people are happy to put away their differences and cooperate in times like these. At any other time, I'd probably be referring to everyone in this town as "dumb hicks," and they'd be referring to me as a "queer loving communist," but in the face of murderous hordes of the undead, these differences quickly fall by the wayside. Doing a little target practice on mindless freaks who have no desire other than sucking your brain out through your ears tends to bond people together a bit. And the whisky doesn't hurt, either.

The movies always depict times like these as moments of terror, where nobody feels safe any more, and then someone does something stupid and selfish and gets everyone killed, but I'd like to think I've made a few friends today, and that things are going to turn out alright. Besides, zombies really aren't as scary as the movies make them seem. They're slow, they're stupid, they don't work together, they don't know how to use weapons. There's really not a lot to be afraid of, as long as you're prepared and make sure not to get surrounded. With enough ammunition, it starts to feel more like a game of Duck Hunt than a life-threatening situation, and the Texans have been very impressed that a long-haired hippie freak from the beach is able to pick off zombies so accurately (and Sarah seems particularly impressed, score one for me there). All these years of videogame training have certainly come in handy. We've been keeping tabs on our death counts, and I'm currently in second place - the preacher sure has a steady shooting hand. Go figure - the pacifistic hippie and the "WWJD?" preacher end up being the best with the guns.

I do have to say that there's a certain level of liberal guilt creeping into my mind about this, though. I know these zombies don't have feelings and are just mindlessly trying to kill us, but something in the back of my mind keeps telling me that there must be a solution other than just grabbing all the ammunition we can find and competing to see whose shot produces the most impressive plume of ichor upon impact.

It certainly is fun though. And since I'm in Texas, I guess a little of this sort of behavior is alright. When in Rome...

Alright, gotta go. It's my turn at the post, and Ken's given me some serious catching up to do.

Just sent this email to John Campbell, who is becoming more and more distasteful to me as each day wears by:

I would like to register my extreme discontent with Mr. Campbell's behavior today in the resolution to oppose the escalation of the Iraq War. This war is clearly, to all rational observers, a terrible mistake which must not be validated by offering any more support to the hawks who have advocated for it, against the interest of the troops and the American people, for years. It has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, great injury to our troops and to America's pocketbook. I am ashamed that an economist who defines himself as an advocate for fiscal responsibility can approve of the trillion dollars which have been spent doing nothing but making the world less safe for Americans at home and abroad. There are times that I am proud to live in the 48th district, and this is most certainly not one of them. For shame.

Better news today: iPhone or Schwarzy boy saying he wants to give health insurance to everyone in CA?

It's a tough decision, but I think I have to vote health insurance.

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!

I sent this email to various UCLA/UCLAPD officials regarding the recent incident of a student being tasered while in the Powell library on campus there. For more information about this you can watch the video here or read the Daily Bruin article here. I'm not that satisfied with this email, it was a little rushed, but I felt like I had to say something, and I thought I'd let everyone here take a gander at what I had to say.

________________

As a recent graduate of the UC system, I am disgusted at the recent footage of a fellow student being assaulted repeatedly by police in a UC library. According to Jeff Young, quoted in the Daily Bruin article on the topic, the policy of only allowing students into the library past 11pm is to promote student safety. What sort of safety involves disrupting library activities by assaulting a student repeatedly, even after he has been incapacitated?

The state is said to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. What happens when the government's use of force is no longer legitimate? The escalation from the use of words to possibly deadly force on an already incapacitated and handcuffed college student is not legitimate.

I won't bother to address the questions of racial/gender profiling, I'm sure those will be covered by the many angry minority students who I'm sure have already contacted you regarding this. As a white male, my encounters with the police have always been peaceful, regardless of whether I took an adversarial or cooperative stance. This may be something to consider, but is not as great a problem as the overriding tragedy of police attacking ANY student in a library.

A promise of "thorough, vigorous and fair" reviews is not enough. Illegal use of force by a police officer is no better, and arguably worse, than illegal use of force by a civilian. The officers responsible for this outrage must not just be suspended, but treated in the same way a common criminal would be treated under the same circumstances. Assaulting not only one student but threatening many others with the use of force is enough to land a normal person in jail, at least for some time.

SIgned,
Jamie Dow
A Concerned UC Graduate

BTW, you all better be voting tomorrow. Polls close at 8PM, if you're in line by then they must allow you to vote no matter how long the line is.

http://smartvoter.org/ has information on all the candidates in your area, with candidate statements and impartial analyses of everything on your ballot. Just put in your address and zip code in the "find my ballot" section and they'll tell you what you need to know. It will also tell you the address of your polling place.

Also, if you have any questions, call me or IM me and I'll answer them as best I can.

I just got sent this link: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

It's to a simple version of Wikipedia. The idea is to provide answers to the sorts of questions you would look up in Wikipedia, but use easy words so that children, non-native speakers, the mentally disabled, and so on can easily understand the content. I think it's a remarkable idea.

So I got pulled over on the way back from Irvine tonight. I always find it funny when I get pulled over, at this point I'm actually considering not fixing the problem which keeps getting me pulled over (broken license plate lights), because it's just so much fun every time.

Basically, this time, I was driving along Campus just past In'n'Out, and a UCI Police car was turning right out of the Student Center Parking Structure, in the opposite direction of me. Upon seeing my car that was doing nothing illegal, they immediately did a little U-Turn (in that little left turn lane to go into In'n'Out, I'm not sure that turn is entirely legal btw), and got caught behind a red light in their pursuit of the dastardly villain (myself). But then I hit the light at Campus & University, and they caught up with me. The next thing they did, which I thought strange at the time, was turn off their lights for a moment, then turn them back on - I later realized this was to check if I had a license plate light. The fact that they had to turn their lights off to check this in the first place shows how ridiculous a reason to pull someone over that is, considering they COULDN'T EVEN TELL THE DIFFERENCE with their lights on - which of course would be their normal mode of operation while driving at night. Then immediately after checking my license plate light, they pulled up next to me, presumably to see if I looked like an upstanding citizen or a deadbeat-type. Since I do in fact look like a deadbeat-type, they proceeded to pull me over in the haunted portion of Campus Dr. down there in the fog. So the cop walks up next to me and asks me the standard questions - where I've been, if I've been drinking or smoking (smoking, hmm, I wonder if the fact that I have long hair had anything to do with this question/the motivation for pulling me over, especially after pulling up next to me to check me out...), etc. I say no, give him my stuff, and he asks if I have anything illegal in the car, and if I'd let him search it. I say I'd rather not because he has no reason to, but eventually since he really wasn't being too much of a jerk about it I just asked how long it would take, then said sure he could. So I get out of the car and the whole search thing happens - plastic gloves, patting me down, making me sit on the curb, asking if I had a weapon and what was in my pockets, everything. It was interesting to be on the other side of that for once, I've only ever seen the people sitting on the curb, not actually been that person. He also asked me if I knew why I had been pulled over, and I admitted knowing about the license plate light thing but I just hadn't gotten around to it. The other cop then asked me if I was on probation, ever been arrested, and I let loose the bombshell that I once *gasp* got a fix-it ticket because I hadn't put on my registration sticker (OMG! What a rebel!). Meanwhile the first cop is searching my car, and looks over at me puzzled holding a small film canister full of something he couldn't quite identify. My heart stops for a moment, I don't know what to say, and.....






No, wait, the heart stopping part didn't actually happen. He did indeed look at me puzzled though, and said a single word - "sand?" I then explained - after being a little puzzled myself, not remembering that the sand was there, and attempting to get up and get closer to see what he was looking at, then getting yelled at by both of them to "stay right there!" - that my dad has a sand collection, and we had probably collected that on a trip somewhere a long time ago, and we just forgot to catalog it. The cop had a good laugh about that. And I had a good laugh after the fact, too, because seriously, that would be a perfect place to hide some sort of illicit substance - any one of the myriad illicit substances I have no interest in possessing, anyhow. So basically the end of all this was that the cop said he really had no reason to bother me, and I was fine to go, I should just get the light taken care of.

Anyway, after the whole situation was over, another thing I remembered was that in the center console, which the cop did indeed search, I have all kinds of crap that would probably cause the same sort of reaction as he had to the sand - multiple tools which include knives, a photo of myself covered in foam, a felt banana peel, various bottles of over the counter and prescription medication, and expired cereal bars. It's a veritable treasure trove of WTF in there, but he seems not to have looked very deep into it at all, which is really a shame. I can only imagine what was going through the cop's head during this whole situation, he was sure he had a certain pot bust here and he came away with a warning about a bad license plate light. Of course, I'm sure this happens all the time in crime-ridden Irvine, but still I'm happy I could be a small part of distracting the cops from the real scoundrels of Irvine - you know, the ones who have parties with silent films on the TV and disturbing the neighborhood with their feverish Boggle games.

And of course I forgot to take down their names. The one who searched my car was named J Kelsey or Kelger or something like that, I know the initials were J.K. and the other one was asian and it happened at around 3:50am on Oct 19, 2006 (this portion is mostly for my own records, btw - I should really start taking better note of these things since they seem to be happening often enough lately).

In my third brush with the law, I have once again come out ahead. Out of the 3 times I've been pulled over, I've come out the victor each time. 3-0 bitches.

(edit: btw sorry about the length of this entry, it's late and I didn't have the time to make this a shorter entry)

Spent today with family and friends at the Newport Beach 100th anniversary celebration. It was a really fun day. Bands at both piers and at 15th street, booths and food and celebrations everywhere. Dick Dale played on the lawn next to the Balboa pier (with his 14 year old son on backup guitar and drums), which was quite the event. And there was an awesome fireworks show at the end of everything, coordinated with music on both piers. The comment came up at the end of the night that this is how Newport should treat the 4th of July - rather than approaching the celebration in an adversarial manner, they could turn it into an opportunity to help local businesses and to increase tourism revenue and goodwill towards the city. And it probably wouldn't even cost any more money or time than the stupid safety enhancement zone already costs the city. That way, we wouldn't even need to wait another 100 years for another cool party like today's :-P

In the words of one of the Telemundo commentators: "Que paso, Zizou?"

Just so everyone knows, I will be watching as many world cup games as I can, probably mostly at my house, maybe sometimes at other people's houses/bars/something. If you're interested in watching any games, gimme a ring or leave a comment or something. Here's the schedule: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/schedule.html

They all start between 6am and 12pm local time, we're -9 hours from Germany, so just subtract 9 from the starting times on that page to get the local time the game starts.

I came home from my lesson today, and saw this just inside the front door:

Coby's been fed
I'm going to yoga
Ian is somewhere (Beach)
Jamie tutoring
Jenna taking her last final

Cooked food in the fridge
Also marinated Chicken to BBQ.
Hope your day was great!
EVERYBODY HAPPY?
mom


I thought it was funny. (Jenna = my brother's girlfriend who was here earlier working on an essay or something)

X-Men midnight show at Big Newport. Tonight (Thursday). Be there.

Douglas Noel Adams, March 11, 1952 - May 11, 2001 (5 years ago).

Don't forget your towel.

Don't forget!

http://nopantsday.com/

I'm bored.

An important question:

100 men with hatchets vs. 25 bears. Who wins and why?