Category: General

Now that we’ve whacked the weeds and separated the sheep from the goats, Vonzell will be next to go, unfortunately.

Huey had asked me to be the main photographer for their wedding reception.  At first I hesitated because I had no experience in this department and didn’t want to end up with a picture resembling two red-eyed monsters butchering the wedding cake.  But when Huey insisted, I relented.  So to avert a fiasco, I decided to pick up a book on wedding photography, the book “Digital Wedding Photography” by Paul Gero.

As I stepped into Borders at Bellevue Square to buy the book, Karen equipped me with a 10% off coupon that she was award for being added on Border’s spam list.  After handing the book and the coupon to the cashier, she incessantly tried to scan the coupon on a scratched up bar-code scanner, in futility of course.  Finally, exasperated, she turned to me and asked, “Do you work out?”  I was dumbstruck by this question.  Is my physique showing signs of… neglect?  Before I had a chance to respond, she continued, “Sure you do.” and scanned another coupon…

20% off for “Fitness Enthusiasts”!  This brought up a good question… why didn’t she just scan the 20% coupon in the first place, especially when these coupons are just laying out there?!?  How rude!

Anyway, on my way home, I noticed on the receipt that I got both the 20% and the 10%!  Hey, what a deal!

While I’m at describing some of my lifestyle, I’ll give you a glimpse at my morning.  First of all, except for dire situation, I believe in the mental alarm in my biological clock.  When I wake, I get up.  Occasionally the alarm misfires and rings at 6:30am in the morning, but that’s when I hit snooze.  Sure, there are days when I need to hit snooze twenty times before I wake up, but look on the bright side.  I don’t need to wake to a heart-pounding, terrifying, artificial buzz that drains the energy out of me!

Then after taking my shower, I’ll run downstairs for some hearty cereal.  This is where I need to introduce you to my favorite cereals:

First of all, no self-respecting man should have less than two cereal.  In the morning I alternate between Great Grains, which Karen bought by accident once, and the Honey Bunches of Oaks.  By the way, Target sells Great Grains for a dollar cheaper than everywhere else.  Nothing like a good dose of fiber in the morning for softening your bowel movement.  Now Cocoa Pebbles, which is much better than Cocoa Krispies, is for when I have no dessert at night and I need something sweet.  You start eating cereal but end up drinking chocolate milk!   Excellent.  This type of indulgence has got to be illegal in some states…

Then I pop up my laptop and do my devotions with the Daily Bread.  It’s different than the free booklet that resembles junk mail.  You actually get more than one verse to read with the online version, and then you get a story and a one-line application to reflect on for the rest of the day.  After all these years, I’ve found the key to having devotions regularly in the morning, and this is it.  Having Post Cereal with the Bread of Life.

Woke up at 7am this morning.  Five hours of sleep.  Every Sunday morning I defy the law of my 10am wake up time and get my butt up in preparation for our English congregation at EKC.  It was quite silly that the worship set I initially picked was about servanthood and not mother.  It wouldn’t have been good to be singing about servants on Mother’s day, would it?  So I had to change the set after we already practiced with the band.  It’s one of the weeks I feel less comfortable with the worship set I picked, so I needed God’s help this week.  Praise God everything went smoothly.  Now a new “mandate” (that I offered a dissent opinion on) was that we need to incorporate a hymn in our set.  So I picked “I Love You Lord”.  Any song written before 1980 qualifies as a hymn, doesn’t it?

After the service, Karen’s sister Carol called from Hawaii.  It was 8:35am and she needed a church to attend.  The thought of sending her to a black church where she can worship in energy and style did briefly cross my mind, but I quickly dismissed it.  We were in the car and didn’t have access to the internet, and my phone was low on battery.  Which slacker could we call that won’t be at church on Sunday morning?  Hmm…  So we called Jimmy, but he wasn’t home.  Praise God.  Then we realized someone we can count on who definitely will be at home–Allen or Justine.  Justine was able to give us some options, and after eliminating two Church of Christ entries, we were able to find two options for Carol, Chinese Baptist Church and a Chinese Alliance Church in Honolulu.

Then Stella, Carol, Eddie, Karen and I dined at the Malay Satay Hut.  Shueli, our real estate agent and sister at church, came in and was in a hurry.  She grabbed a chair, chatted with us a little, then decided she wouldn’t have time to eat if she sat with us.  She changed tables, sat by herself so she can actually finish her lunch, then came back and chatted a little more and ended up paying for our bill!  Guess we should eat at Malay Satay Hut more often.  I can’t say that Carol and Eddie deserved it, thought, considering they didn’t even know who Shueli was!  😛  Eddie was really excited to order some Bonga Cha Cha desert, which turned out to be some purple goo with yellow sweet potatoes.  After clearing up the confusion, the waitress was nice enough to replace it with what Eddie really wanted, which was some black goo that looked like tar.  Then after a gust of durian wind blew gently toward our direction, we knew it was time to go.

I was supposed to offer U-Haul services with my trusty CRV to Karen’s sister Carol in Hawaii, but apparently neither the source of the merchandise (Esther) nor the delivery destination (Karen’s little sister Keri) knew of this arrangement.  We needed to reschedule my professional moving services to another day.

So with a few hours open, we decided to work on our fence a little bit more.  After just doing a sub-par job yesterday on a section that now flaps like a flag, I decided to exercise more due diligence this time around.  We were able to finish one section before a drop of rain hit my lazy bone, when I called it quits.

That’s also when I realized my atomic clock was slow (no really!), and I was late for a quartet practice for Phoebe’s wedding.  I arrived at Gabe’s, emptied my violin case of its moths, picked up my violin, and produced some sounds that no human being should ever be subjected to.  Clearly I overestimated my 7 years of violin experience.  I guess I should have given weight on the 12 years of inexperience between those 7 years and the present.  I hope Phoebe’s not reading this blog.

Then Karen and I went to Sushi Land for some dinner, where we saw Felicia and someone who she just picked up from the airport.  I put up a smile, said hi, shook hands, then in the next .57 seconds completely forgot her friend’s name.  Oh wait, or was it her relative?  Okay, am I getting old, or just not caring as much?  Clearly I need to work on this.

After going home and calling my mom and grandma to wish them a happy Mother’s Day, we watched some TV.  Karen enjoyed her one episode of Full House, and then we saw a couple of episodes of Project Greenlight.  It’s a reality show that chooses a director and script and shows the process of the movie being made, to be released by Dimension Films.  The director may be brilliant, but he seriously has communication problems.  I seriously wonder if he has ever made contact with humans.  And when he wanted to cast only his family and friends and just rejected everyone else, it made me roll my eyes more times than my wheels rolling on the freeway.  Seeing his struggles with the entire crew made me realize the importance of getting your team on your side in order to get things done.

Anyway, that’s about it.  There’s work tomorrow, and I’m late for my sleep!

I read an interesting article on the lottery and offer an interesting perspective on this subject.  Have you imagined what it would be like to win the lottery?  Regardless of whether you’re the type who would go get yourself a Batmobile or give millions of dollars to charity, there’s another picture that you should consider.

There’s nothing wrong with having an abundance of money, as money is just a means to accomplish things.  When it comes to Lotto, though, we’re talking about a whole different beast.  Some people have problems dealing with instant financial success, so they end up may end up blowing their money by purchasing thousands of beanie babies from ebay or buying a house next to Bill Gates without considering the tax and mortgage. This is, as we will see, the least of our worries.

Once you win the Lotto, a picture of you with your big white teeth will be featured in the local paper along with an association with millions of money.  Your phone may ring more than usual as people try to get closer to you, and some friends may push you away because you’re out of their league.  Some may eye you like a materialistic pig even if it isn’t true.  This one guy who won the lottery had friends who borrow $50,000 and not return it, thinking what’s $50K to a multi-millionaire.  One lotto winner was so fed up that he ended up living in a trailer, living a life of solitude.  “I just want to be happy,” he says, “but it’s not goinna happen.  I can’t trust anybody”.  Basically you have to start filtering your friends to find out who’s genuine and who’s putting up a front, but the truth is, you may never know.

But the biggest concern you should have is dealing with the evil in this world.  constantly carried cash with him, went to a bar, got drugged, and then mugged.  Another one, Billie Bob Harrell, was found naked and dead in his master bedroom from a gunshot blast to the chest.  There were three suicide notes, but who knows?  Even if you’re not concerned about your own life, what about your family members?  For one lotto winner, Andrew Jackson Whittaker, his granddaughter was murdered shortly after he won.  No amount of money can bring her back to life.  Living your life in constant fear that one of your family members may be kidnapped for ransom can be pretty intense.

While most people think about what they can accomplish when winning the lotto, they don’t consider the consequences.  Over time, life becomes composed of distrust, seclusion, and fear.  Maybe that’s why one of the lotto winners actually said that he wish he had torned up the ticket the day he won, because it was “the worst thing that ever happened to him”.

Would you still like to win the lotto?

After 15 episodes of The Apprentice, it’s down to the final two, Tana and Kendra.  While my enthusiasm for Tana has abated a bit after last week’s bedazzler fiasco, I still find Tana fitting the role of Trump’s VP better than Kendra.  Tana has more polished and professional language than Kendra, who tends to use ambiguous words like “stuff”.  Tana, however, seems a bit lacking in the creative department lately.

In the last assignment, I couldn’t fathom why Kendra wasn’t at the meeting with Best Buy executives, leaving Danny the unfocused goofball in charge.  To her credit, she recovered gracefully.  Her biggest issue right now is the PS2 ballroom, err… I mean basement, so things don’t look rosey.  On Tana’s side, I cringed when she gave executive power to each of the Three Stooges for acting on her behalf.  That’s silly.  Sure, they can make decisions, but the Project Manager needs to oversee these decisions.  Judging from the preview, we should expect a fire drill as Brian takes his newfound anarchy too far and becomes out of control.

Tana’s stock has been dropping while Kendra’s has been rising, but neither candidate has it all.  If we combine the best of Tana, the professionalism, and the best of Kendra, the smarts, only then can we end up with the perfect apprentice…

… Kenna!

Scott’s departure this week from American Idol actually came as a total surprise to me.  Earlier this week I discovered the votefortheworst.com web site (which is currently down), and with the kind of publicity it gets, I assumed many people would vote for him just to throw the show a curveball.  I was at the verge of casting my 1500 for Scott, and it would have made good controversial blog material.  In the end, though, I weighted the emotions of the contestants, their family, their friends, their pets, etc. and just couldn’t pull the trigger.  Playing a practical joke on the producers at the expense of the dreams of these contestants made my moral compass go haywire.

Next elimination? Anthony.

Speaking of American Idol, that brings us to the primetime story on Corey Clark.  How convenient that after three years and shortly before releasing his CD that this story would surface?  During the interview, his parents seemed nonchalant at the whole situation.  Corey tried to play the innocent card, but if you observe the order of events carefully, it was Corey who first hugged and flirted with Paula.  Corey is an opportunistic wanton.  He first manipulates Paula during his competition, then gets booted for lying to the producers, and finally fabricates a story to promote his new CD.

If you even consider buying his CD, you might as well as buy all your music CDs in Hong Kong for 99 cents per burnt CD with poorly photocopied inserts.  Either way, you’re positively reinforcing deception.

Just say no.

Some say that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  They’re wrong.  With the saturation of internet use and everyone rushing online to digest their daily share of random writing (like this one), the paradigm has shifted for the publishing industry.  Advertising revenues are declining for publications such as newspaper and magazines, and they need more subscribers.  By now you’re probably thinking, “That mumbo jumbo’s cool, James, but what do I care?”

Well, this is where you and I come in.  I, for one, am more than happy to aid these poor publication companies in securing their advertisers by subscribing to their magazines–for free.  Skeptical of this? Check out this anonymous quote from… uh… someone… “I’ve had so many free magazines sent to my door in the past year that I’m contemplating about cancelling some just to free up some real estate in my mailbox!”

If you’ve never received anything for free in life except junk mail, it’s time to break that cycle!  Check out techbargains.com’s free magazine section now! Most offers are for obscure magazines that need publicity, though, so patience may be a virtue here.

During tonight’s American Idol elimination, my jaw dropped to the floor as Constantine Maroulis was booted off the show.  I was so appalled that Scott wasn’t in the bottom three that I almost threw Karen’s little brown honey bear at the TV set!  While I must sheepishly admit I did not vote last night, it wouldn’t have made a difference as all 600 of my votes would have gone to Vonzelle.  Nevertheless, it was inconceivable for Constantine to get eliminated while Scott, whose voice has no lower register–or higher as witnessed by that whimpy falsetto today, continues to weazel his way to safety from week to week.  Okay, who voted for him?!!  Stop hiding in the corner of that dusty closet!  Come out and stand still while I slap you silly!

It never ceases to amaze me how much time people have on their hands.  Ever since the first Star Wars film, fans have dusted their trusty handycams and created fan films in their closet, bathroom, gazebo, you name it.

The best so far is Star Wars: Revelations. This is not your typical Star Wars Kid type of fan movie, but forty minutes of special effects virtually indistinguishable from production film.  I tip my hat to these folks that dedicated three years of their lives on this.  Impressive.

But my favorite is Sith Apprentice, a more comedic piece of work.  If you religiously watch The Apprentice, this film will have you rolling around hysterically on the dirty carpet picking up bits of cereal and cracker jacks.

Personally I have a few fan films up my sleeves, including a Nightmare on Carlota Street, where I was an elementary school student running away from Freddy Kreuger around the house.  Maybe I’ll post a video of it later.  😎