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Wednesday, December 28geeks, nerds, and dorks. the dictionary definition for these three terms all center around words like “foolish, inept, stupid, unattractive, socially stunted.” while these descriptions may have been all true at one time or another, these terms need to be updated for the twenty first century.a geek is someone who is really into technology, gadgets, and computers – including videogames, but real geek videogames, not sports or halo or popular stuff like that. geeks know not only what your device does, but also how it works. geeks might have once been the laughingstock of society, but we all know that geeks now beat out hunks any day of the week. now that thick black eyeglasses have come (and gone) into fashion, now that every third grader walks around with an ipod and a pda, “geeks” as we once defined them are nearly extinct. if you are hip with technology, you are a geek. and that’s not a bad thing. in fact, if you are man enough to set up the dvr or the tivo, that can make a girl swoon and lust for you, albeit momentarily. geeks nowadays are on equal footing with jocks -- well, once they get out of high school. geeks rule the planet and they have assimilated the rest of humankind through the cunning implementation of electronic things we can’t live without. an alternative definition for the new geek is someone who is really into one particular subject, not just something technology related. you can be a guitar geek, a photography geek, a chess geek. geek is the new term for someone who is really really into something.of course, the new classification of “uber-geek,” the ones who can’t talk to anything non-digital or non-glowing, are still shunned by all. they might be the brains behind our appliances and our spaceship dreams but damn it all to hell if we’re gonna have to hang out with them while they’re doing it. hire a geek for your company, just forget to invite him to the company parties. a nerd is someone who is typically bookish, socially awkward, and did well in school. nerds are long on the brains, but light in the social calendar. classic nerds banded together to do weird things like study and play two person board games while the normal kids went out to get fake drunk on strawberry wine cooler and play “just the tip.” nerds are also a dying breed as people are realizing that it’s cool to be both smart and drunk simultaneously. the true nerd is rarely seen these days as all “smart” people tend to overcompensate by making asses out of themselves at your local bar; proving that yes, brains really don’t matter. it’s getting increasingly harder these days to tell between the dumb drunks and the smart drunks, if such a difference ever truly existed. is it even a shock anymore to find out that the idiot who was slurring his words and pissing on himself last night was voted “most likely to succeed” by his law school classmates? no, not really. the nerd population is in steep decline as society continues to push even the most studious of people to get out once in awhile. i've heard rumors that even ivy leaguers indulge in the occassional zima or two. caring about your grades and your alcohol tolerance are no longer mutually exclusive. it’s almost obsolete to call someone a nerd when terms such as “homebody,” “boring,” and “weird” are so much more descriptive – and appropriate. i feel like the genocide of classic geeks and classic nerds has really been pushed along by the invention of the internet, and more specifically, aim. even the nerdiest of nerds and the geekiest of geeks can have a social life on the internet right? if you can’t be social on aim you pretty much should just give up and lose the will to live. if you can’t type and pretend to carry on a conversation for five minutes, you are truly a lost cause. you have the entire world wide web at your disposal to come up with something to say, and you still can’t do it? dork. keep in mind who invented the internet in the first place. that's right, some combination of nerds and geeks, all of whom were obviously looking for a way to break out of their social shells. before the internet, geeks and nerds couldn't learn the nuances of being social unless they actually tried it or watched lots of tv. now they can google for what the "right thing to say/do" is before they field test it. "geeks + nerds = internet = aim = social life for everyone." check the math. who had more to gain from the invention of the internet? geeks/nerds or the (relatively) normal people who now use it to haunt myspace? exactly. dork still pretty much means the same thing it always did. a dork is a loser. nobody wants to hang out with a dork. the dork brings no technology or brainy skills to the table. getting labeled (correctly) as a dork is pretty much irrefutable evidence that you have no chance at a normal social life. dorks don’t even band together to do things with each other. when was the last time you looked at a group of people and said “oh, look at those dorks over there, look at them doing those dorky things dorks do.” dorks don’t really do anything, they’re just dorks. geeks and nerds band together for (faux) acceptance and safety, dorks just hang around and try not to get run over by the tonka trucks of life. realize that the way “dork” is often used in our vernacular is not an accurate description of what a dork actually is. you probably call your friends and siblings dorks, but i doubt they are really dorks. a true dork wouldn’t even warrant you calling them anything to their face. a dork is just…i dunno, a dork. these are not the end all be all of the definitions for these three terms. i’ve only given these new definitions a night’s thought so maybe with the light of dawn i’ll realize that i’m terribly mistaken. however, i think what i’ve suggested here should be a good guideline for accurately defining the people around us/you. [ pen name | 6:27 AM | ]
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Monday, December 26hungry hungry hippos. what would you say to me if i offered to take you out to lunch at a place that had these qualities: (1) unreliable service (2) an extremely noisy ambiance (3) 80% of the dishes are based on one ingredient (4) you might end up leaving the restaurant unsatiated. what would you say? you would say “fuck that, take me to mcdonalds and super size my happy meal” right? well, what if i said i was taking you to dim sum? would that make your perception of the upcoming meal change?it’s a well known fact that i am not dim sum’s number one fan. i don’t get all the fuss over it. inevitably, whenever dim sum is suggested as a weekend destination, positive oohs and aahs immediately follow. “dim sum, let’s do that, i love dim sum!” love dim sum? what’s to love? here are my “issues” with dim sum. one, it’s crowded, two it’s noisy. fine whatever, you’re heading to the local china town, these two issues are taken for granted. plus you toss all sanitary concerns out the window. you might turn your nose up at a b-rated hamburger restaurant but suddenly a d-rated chinese establishment seems delicious? take a close look at the aprons of the cart pushers around you next time. count how many stains and food particles are freshly ingrained on those pearly whites. whatever, the best chinese food is dirty, i’ll let this one slide. how about the actual dim sum food itself? eighty percent of dim sum is pretty much shrimp enveloped by something fried or slippery; all blasted with soy sauce. i mean, unless you really like shrimp, does this sound all that appetizing to you? what’s the difference between shrimp fest at sizzler and dim sum? not much right? but i guess the food at dim sum must be good enough for most, so again, i'll let this complaint slide. let’s turn the focus onto how dim sum actually works. little carts full of random food wander from table to table, oftentimes skipping your area entirely. half of your dim sum experience is spent looking around hoping that the lady with the shu mai will come around soon. and when she doesn’t show up, it’s perfectly acceptable. you’ll just keep on looking around the room and staring into little stacks of pots. does this sound like fun? do you sit around at regular restaurants and hope/pray that your waiter will arrive with the dish you wanted? i doubt it. but somehow this is okay. the first few times you go to dim sum, the excitement of seeing what new foodstuffs are coming your way can be titilatting i guess. it's a bazarre for all five senses i'm sure. but after a lifetime spent looking for little ladies pushing that one special shu mai cart, it can get a little annoying. by the time carts actually make it to your table and you’ve ordered all the food that you wanted, it’s been an hour and a half and you’ve eaten eight pieces of shrimp. yummy. dim sum is built around an entirely inefficient system of food distribution. there’s a reason menus and dedicated waiters are the norm at most restaurants. it works, it’s (ideally) efficient. and if it’s not efficient, you bitch at the manager or skimp on the tip like a college person. for some reason, there is no real outrage at the level of service you receive, or don’t receive, at dim sum. i blame this casual acceptance of the inefficiency of dim sum on the “oriental factor.” dim sum is seen as a cultural experience first and foremost. one would have to be a bigoted racist to even ask “hey, why the hell is the food coming around so damn slow?” if i were a non-chinese person going to dim sum, i’d keep my damn mouth shut because i wouldn’t want to be seen as a defiler of centuries of chinese tradition. i’d be confused as to why i’m not getting any food, not to mention hungry, but i wouldn’t say a word. it’s gonna take a chinese person to speak up about dim sum, and luckily, i am that chinese person. you think if denny’s started serving coffee and eggs in a dim sum manner that there wouldn’t be an uproar? but somehow a semi-mysterious and exotic culturally enriching experience is suddenly replacement for being fed on the regular? why is this? people get offended when they don’t get service within three minutes anywhere else but at dim sum it’s fine? blame it on orientalism i say. beyond the gross inefficiencies that dim sum perpetrates, there are a few other things that upset me about the entire experience. like the “one piece that always sticks around” thing. because dim sum is served in tiny portions of three to four pieces, nobody wants to be the asshole who snags the last piece on a platter. so everyone just sort of lets that last piece sit around...and around...and around. if you study your party’s faces, you can figure out who’s been eyeing what for the last thirty minutes. i personally prefer to be able to eat, and taste, what i want when i want it. i don’t want to have to wait until ten minutes before the end of the meal before people start divvying up the last pork ball or the last shrimp thingy. i want to just reach over and grab it when i want it. but i can’t. because that would be rude. and if you mistakenly grab the last whatever before you give sufficient time for someone else to grab it, you can’t even get more of that dish immediately because who knows when that particular item will come around again. you’re both rude and unthoughtful. it’s really a snowball effect, this inefficiency thing. it really fucks up the entire eating process. basically, i’m saying that eating dim sum regresses us to a pack of hunters following fast moving animals hoping to get a kill. there’s a reason humans advanced towards farming and herding; so that we can get food when we want it instead of chasing stupid little carts around. some people say that all these issues i have with dim sum would be solved if i went to a “good” dim sum place where all the carts came around like clockwork. and that i should eat dim sum only with friends since they don't care about the rudeness involved in grabbing the last piece(s). but here’s the thing, how many “good” dim sum places are there? i’ve had quite a bit of dim sum and i can’t even remember the last ultra efficient dim sum place i’ve been to. and since i tend to eat slow, and i tend to be around friends who eat fast, i end up just hoping for a burrito to fall out of the sky since clearly there will be no food left. and even if there were to be food left, how will twelve pieces of shrimp spread out over an hour and a half be satisfactory? don’t you realize mcdonalds gives you twenty pieces of chicken nuggets for a mere ten dollars? and you don’t have to go around rounding up the nuggets individually either. this is turning out to be quite the long dim sum rant and for that i apologize. i feel very strongly about this topic and i could go on forever but i’ll spare you the rest of it. my point here is not that dim sum isn’t good, but that it shouldn’t be glorified to the point where people are salivating over it. what we should be glorifying and celebrating is buffets -- the ultimate statement in human food evolution. buffets, those are an efficient method of food distribution. very admirable. however, that’s another story for another time. the main point is, dim sum isn’t nearly as amazing as everyone makes it out to be. my name is jon, i’m authentically chinese, and i’m against dim sum. sorry ancestors, i just couldn't hold it in any more. a thousand apologies. [ pen name | 5:05 AM | ]
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Monday, December 19"christmas can sometimes seem a great shakedown, in which you are coerced into buying presents for people you don't really know. the clerk's perennial question "how much do you want to spend?" forces the christmas shopper into assigning an economic value to every relationship. and it can be very embarassing if the person for whom you have bought a gift turns out to have spent either much more or much less than you."deck the malls with boughs of holly. my favorite christmas tradition? not getting presents for anyone. yes, i love it. it really frees you from the pressures of christmas. while everyone else is fighting crowds or lines, i can sit on the sidelines and snipe at bad holiday decorations and frazzled shoppers. you could say that this is very ungenerous of me, but i think it's quite practical. the grinch wasn't small hearted, he was just practical minded. he wasn't into the spirit of christmas, so what? don't we have enough holidays already? from september until january we're bombarded with holiday spirit. not to mention the one major holiday per month leading up to september. it's too much. it's hard to get all jazzed up about something that comes around so often. i'd settle for bi-annual holidays. keep new year's annual, alternate all the rest. don't you think we just do too much forced celebrating anyway? sure christmas is the celebration of jesus' birthday, but give me a break, he won't mind if we skip every other year. it would be much more meaningful that way. you have to insert some negative space in the holiday calendar to fully appreciate it. there is of course, the economic impact of the holidays (one-third of all retail spending is done during the two months leading up to and after christmas), which we need to keep in mind. but i'm sure we can figure out how to splurge throughout the year so that our award winning american economy will keep on churning. on a sidenote, did you hear this stuff about the religious right threatening to boycott target (and other merchants) because they substitute "holiday" and other generic terms for "merry christmas" in their advertising? the worst part of it is that target decided to back down and use more religion specific phrases. score one for god, i guess -- not to mention money. to be honest, part of the reason i don't indulge in christmas present shopping or exchanging has traditionally been that it's just too expensive. sure, tokens of appreciation were easily bought when you were in high school and you could get people some socks or random knick knacks ("a ceramic blue anteater! thank you!"), but now you know when you're giving junk. and giving junk sucks. as with talking, you realize as you get older (hopefully) that usually it's better to not talk unless you have something to say. i like to apply that principle to giving. why give unless you actually have something worthy? i'm not sure how i feel anymore about the "i like to give things when i see stuff that fits a certain person" line anymore. although i can come up with no rational reasons against it, i just think this expression is used too much. but maybe only because it's valid. one of the things i appreciate about my friends is that we don't indulge in gift giving at all. birthdays, christmas, festivus, whatever. presents are given on a need to give, have stuff to give basis -- which can oftentimes be never but that's awesome too. there's no pressure to give or to reciprocate. of course, i guess if you receive more often than you get, then you'll stop getting because that's how it works. but if you give only to receive, then you're fucked up anyway right? merry christmas everyone. "santa's coming down the chimney derives from the story of saint nicholas, bishop of myra in what is now turkey, who threw bags of gold through the windows (or down the chimney) of a poor family's house so the daughters would not have to become prostitutes." [ pen name | 4:22 PM | ]
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Sunday, December 18question: i just got through reading an article about how brad pitt and angelina jolie are getting ready to visit pakistan to see the quake devastation, and i couldn't help but think this has to be one of the biggest cases of sucking up to a girlfriend/wife/significant other gone wrong in recent history. like how when you first start dating a girl, you do everything she asks, like going to crappy chick movies, her grandmother's 95th birthday party, picking her cat up from the vet, or stuff like that, just so she thinks you are actually sensitive and care about her interests, not just trying to get in her pants. except in this instance, instead of going to the crafts store or whatever to pick out yarn for the sweater she is knitting you, you get dragged all over war-torn countries to look at death and devastation, when all you want to do is lie on the couch and watch football. i know it's angelina jolie, but surely it's not worth the rest of your independent life. your thoughts?sports guy: in pitt's defense, i think he's just completely out of his mind -- he probably thinks they're still filming "mr and mrs. smith." give him the benefit of the doubt here. [ pen name | 4:58 PM | ]
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Thursday, December 15the walk of shame. pretty girls and celebrities don't tongue tie me, bank tellers and grocery cashiers do. having to make that small talk while waiting for a transaction to process or gross total to appear is just confusing to me. i start to think anything out of their mouths is directed at me. i'm standing in line, there's a pause while the teller's waiting for my check to cash, she says "i'll be right with you sir." i immediately answer back "oh, okay, no problem."clearly, any intelligent person would reason that she was talking to the guy waiting in line behind me. but when faced with three minute conversation situations, i just sort of freeze up. i figure the interaction between me and them (them and me) is so short that i can pretty much say anything; so i kind of forget to concentrate about saying something. i end up responding to "have a nice day" and "come see us soon" with non-standard unslick outros like "cool, see you later" or "peace." the correct response for normal humans is to say "thank you" and/or "you too." then as you walk away, you feel kinda stupid for not following the standard outro procedures. but at the same time, you kind of already committed yourself to saying stupid things when you declined to concentrate on the task at hand. so really, in those seconds post-idiocy, do you get upset at society for having these meaningless yet brain draining outros? or do you get embarassed for yourself because you suck so bad at them? [ pen name | 5:21 PM | ]
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Wednesday, December 14help me, help you. due to my strange fascination with john f kennedy, i'd always admired anything that he started or was associated with -- for totally irrational reasons and as hindsight has proven, often misplaced loyalty. among the things i admired was the peace corps; established by jfk in 1961 to counter the 'ugly american' and 'yankee imperialism' sentiment in third world countries. basically, the peace corps was started so that america can say "hey look, we're not that bad, we do good things too!" this might be distilling the essence of peace corps down to a very negative statement, but somehow i can't shake that feeling.now, i haven't had a ton of friends go to the peace corps, but i've had maybe two or three. and everybody i know has at least one friend who dedicates two years of their life abroad -- just like we all have that one [insert stereotype] friend, we all have a peace corps friend. so my "experience" with peace corps is very limited and gleaned only from their reactions or from what i've read and surmised. so as a disclaimer, all that i have to say about the peace corps could be totally off base, in which case, oh well. from what i can figure, the peace corps is not so much about helping the people in other countries as it is about helping yourself (and the united states). there's a certain undeniable "i'm a good person" cachet to working in the peace corps. for certain types of individuals, going into the peace corps is pretty much a requirement before they can move onto successful careers in moralizing and doing good deeds. and what i can surmise, most peace corps volunteers don't really end up doing a whole lot. for example. some peace corps volunteers are sent in to help with creating an irrigation system or some such task. what does your typical peace corps volunteer know about irrigation? not a whole lot i'd imagine. but off they go on a few weeks training and a "green thumb 101" handbook. now, i don't know how often farming is actually a peace corps activity, but the idea of sending in college-aged volunteers as so called experts -- often without the necessary skills -- is a bit ludicrous to me. and let's cut to the chase here. going to the peace corps is essentially a big adventure and "finding myself" mission. peace corps volunteers take on the challenge of living in a different country, they deal with bugs, drugs, whatevers and they emerge out the other side as a better, more worldly, person. well, maybe not better, but more worldly for sure. they take pretty pictures, they describe rustic settings, they revel in the breakthroughs they've had in learning to converse with the local baker, that kind of thing. but really, what are they doing? it seems to me that most peace corps volunteers leave our shores seeking something, with only an inkling of an idea that they're helping someone(s). which is fine i guess, as long as they realize what it is they're actually doing. humanitarians? i'd lean on the side of "no." then again, someone's gotta do it, misguided as they are. and if not me, then why not you? "the peace corps has always had a problem assuring volunteers and itself that the job assignments overseas were real and meaningful. too often peace corps assignments have been marginal and sometimes nearly nonexistent — with ill-equipped young people having to fashion a job on the spot under the watchful eyes of local people." [ pen name | 4:37 PM | ]
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Monday, December 12i would imagine that girls who are skinny but constantly make remarks about “oh my god, i can’t believe i’m eating this (half a) fry, oh my god i’m going to be fat” would make a lot of inadvertent enemies. other girls must hate that. if people were given free rein to annihilate other people, i’m sure “girls who are skinny but act like they are sinning with each breath of air they inhale” would be among the first to go. you have to wonder if these girls are doing it because they are socially conditioned to think that a lady does not over indulge, or if they are just not-so-subtly sticking it to their more fleshy peers. i would like to think it’s the latter, which would be far more amusing. but somehow, i think it’s the former.[ pen name | 11:02 PM | ]
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Friday, December 9"ever since i was little, i loved basketball more than just about anything. randomly, inexplicably, coincidentally, the greatest team basketball player of my lifetime landed on my team, in my formative years, and i had the privilege of watching him, day in and day out, for 13 years. his work ethic and his competitiveness rubbed off on his teammates. he always rose to the occasion when it mattered. his passing was contagious. when you watched him long enough, you started to see the angles he was seeing; instead of reacting to what just happened, you reacted to the play as it was happening. there's mchale cutting to the basket, i see him, get him the ball, there it is ... layup! bird gave that to us."“larry bird just throws the ball in the air and god moves the basket underneath it.” it's hard for me to justify my love for larry bird. in bird's prime, i was still in taiwan and not conversant in basketball or english. during the celtics' three titles (1981, 1984, 1986) i didn't really watch any sports. the only reason i liked larry bird and the celtics was because my dad liked larry bird and the celtics. that was enough for me apparently. with every other sport, i just decided to pick a player, a team, or a city (usually pittsburgh) and liked that organization until i found a better reason to like another organization. i had all sorts of weird reasons for liking certain players. i collected baseball cards of players with mustaches for awhile and knew only those players. i didn't even really like mustaches, just players with mustaches. i liked the way "bonilla, bonds and van slyke" sounded together. i enjoyed how every team in pittsburgh had gold and yellow as their team colors. i admired the asymmetrical helmets of the steelers. i liked saying "roberto clemente" and was touched by the circumstances of his tragic death. through it all, i only ever truly loved the celtics. which is odd considering i never saw any game in which the celtics were actually really good. i saw bird, mchale and parrish as they were declining. i never saw dennis johnson play. i saw danny ainge in phoenix and portland, but not in boston. i feel like all my "memories" of great celtic wins are only from (the same) highlight reels. i've read nearly every celtics related book i could get my hands on, and have a respectable base of celtic knowledge, but i wasn't fortunate enough to be cognizant of bird when he was the living legend. it's not like i can honestly say that "those celtic teams were great" because i've never really seen them play. it makes me question just how much reason we really have to have to like anything. then again, if mustaches are reason enough to collect men, then why not any reason under the sun to like anything? [ pen name | 5:36 PM | ]
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Tuesday, December 6heard'em say. i'm about to become a taste hypocrite, this is my story. i used to dislike kanye west. not hate really, just dislike a lot. i thought the hype on him was way too huge, he was lauded left and right for his lyrical skills, his witty rhymes and his intelligent subject matter, he was the next coming of biggie. no such thing i said/say. i appreciated kanye's production skills, but as a lyricist, it bothered me that he was perceived by the public as the greatest thing since hip hop hit suburbia. kanye's rapping style was more comparable to nelly's sing-song than anything else i could think of.plus, kanye's ego didn't really rub me the right way. i saw him on punk'd or something and there he was with his upturned collar and his pink polo shirt running around being an egotistical maniac. i couldn't dig it (him). but people around me loved him, and my current roommate started to ride kanye's jock like he was kanye's original video ho. so really, i was surrounded by kanye all the time. but i'm a man of willpower and character, i did not turn. i enjoyed kanye's work during my infrequent forays into the night life, but never in my mind. i stayed true to my initial impression of kanye despite being bombarded by "kanye is great" opinions all around me. i must say however, that during all of this, i had the utmost respect for kanye's "through the wire," which i thought was just the greatest song. that was a track that i could get behind, in thought as well as execution. but that was it. more kanye hating moments came after i found out about him teaming up with common, and then his work with john legend. i was never that high on john legend, thinking him highly overrated and really annoying after a few songs. again, his "ordinary people" was an amazing song, but that's about it. trudging through john "legend's" full album further reinforced my idea that kanye was ruining things and not deserving of his lyrical accolades, since it sounded to me like he penned most of mr legend's lyrics -- which were disgracefully shallow and utterly boring. kanye's work on common's new album was also just so-so in my opinion. i took it a bit personal that an ultra magnificent emcee such as common could only gain popularity as the sidekick to some flash in the pan. i'm sure common was insulted too, although i'm sure he enjoys the money he receives from being associated with kanye. then i read about kanye in time magazine. about his struggle making it as a non-ghetto, too suburban, rapper. about his professor mother, his pastoral marriage counselor father, about kanye's struggles and dedication to his craft. kanye may be one cocky fool but he had to be, because everyone shut him down everywhere. the real turning point for me was watching kanye's "driven" episode on vh1. i watched it three times over one weekend, and i got sucked in each time. i started to see where kanye was coming from, and i could get past his braggadocious demeanor. plus his music was growing on me. i found myself listening to kanye's first album over and over, and a few tracks (all falls down, spaceship, got'em high) started getting lodged in my head. i was getting kanye-fied. heavens me, who was i? kanye was also immortalized in his "bush doesn't care about black people" speech, and that was just a ridiculously great moment. then, during an early thanksgiving dinner with some friends, we discovered that his "family business" track was really the best hip hop holiday music. try it, i dare you. and now, with kanye's sophmore release, "gold digger" is just an infectious dance song, and "heard'em say" is fun to sing along to. so yeah, i guess i like kanye. dammit. i still don't think he's the greatest thing since dinosaurs roamed the earth, but he's better than i thought he was. i doubt anybody cared about this, but i feel like i owed it to kanye. if i'm gonna dance or sing along to his stuff, i might as well retract my previous negative opinions about him. this isn't a love letter however -- most of his songs still suck -- just a statement of taste hypocrisy. i think i have better things i should be doing, but somehow this was important to me. thanks for listening. and thank you kanye, i guess. [ pen name | 5:28 PM | ]
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Thursday, December 1this is a request mr radio man, just one desire from a hip-hop fan. what has "east coast rap roots, funk influences, syncopated beats, duo rapping and the heavy use of slang?" yes, that's right, gangstarr. thanks to a heads up from superlum, i fiddled around with pandora today and i was amazed. my life changed, seriously. pandora is a web service that lets you find music that you like based on what you already like, and then they play it for you. sounds ridiculously great right?other sites let you rate certain songs and they'll select upcoming songs based on those selections, but as far as i know, pandora is the only service that analyzes a song and then matches up that song's criteria -- thanks to the music genome project -- to recommend additional songs. so it's not like "if you like nelly you'll like lil'jon" or whatever, it's matching up the songs based on "has similar east coast rap roots, the heavy use of chordal patterning, a tight kick sond, barebones arranging and an electric bass riff" type stuff. is this crazy or what? heck, it's fun just to see what they say when they break down the songs. i didn't even know that i liked "melodic part writing and busy synth hat." but i do! when i put in gangstarr as my first selection, pandora played a gangstarr track, "skills," and then it started to play other songs. you can thumbs up or thumbs down the songs to give pandora a better idea of what you want to be listening to. the first selection pandora made for me after the gangstarr track was "proceed (live)" by the roots, one of my all time favorites. i was hooked. the next few selections gave me songs that i already loved or introduced me to artists that i didn't even know i loved yet: radioactive - large professorby the time digable and dj jazzy jeff rolled around i was already aim-ing and emailing everyone to try pandora out. i'm in heaven. the only "bad" song that pandora recommended me was "balla babyz" by chingy, but i can forgive that since i started adding in criteria other than gangstarr. after i dialed it back to just gangstarr, pandora didn't miss. not once. and because i didn't want to be unscientific, i started a new station and tried out pm dawn, to some mixed results. apparently pm dawn -- "hip hop roots, rap influcences, r&b influences, mild rhythmic syncopation and acoustic rhythm piano" -- is similar to marques houston, n'sync, mariah carey and brian mcknight. not exactly what i was looking for. but who am i to argue? this pandora thing is amazing -- plus they have an interesting blog. go try it out like right now. rejoice people, rejoice! [ pen name | 2:46 PM | ]
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"some scholars contend that pandora's 'box' may have been a mistranslation, and her 'box' may have been a large jar or vase, forged from the earth. in fact, there is evidence that suggests pandora herself was the jar. in ancient greece jars commonly bore images of women. the jar was said to have been in a jar form because of the similarities between a jar and a woman's uterus." [ pen name | 1:02 PM | ]
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