October 26: Party On A Mountaintop At Sunset

There is probably some good Chinese explanation for this but I say, get some friends together and gather on a nice mountain or hill, fan yourselves and hold your hands out. Bring some babies with you. For me, the mountains are too cold and snowy so I think I'll just sit in my bedroom and hold my hand out.

hero of the realm

I played Lands of Lore obsessively back in the 90's, and though I got to the very end I could never beat the game (for reasons unknown to me). Playing it this time, I found a few websites that offer up advice on this complicated game and this time, I actually conquered it. Over 10 years later, I finally beat Lands of Lore.

oh no

I found a program that emulates DOS on my mac (DOSBox). I then downloaded Lands of Lore, Commander Keen 4, and Tetris Classic.

I AM NEVER GOING TO GET ANYTHING DONE EVER AGAIN

See: this old post

September 23: Do Absolutely Nothing

According to my Chinese calendar, today is Sit On A Rock And Stare At The Ground Day, which I have been celebrating enthusiastically in my own way, by sitting in bed and staring at my computer.

Open letter to the asshat who broke my car window and stole my ipod,

Yeah I bet you thought that was pretty awesome, walking along Melrose between the hours of 7pm and 10pm last Monday and you saw a fancy lil ipod in a crappy looking car. You probably thought it was your lucky day! Some rich idiot left their expensive thing out in the open for you to take! You can finally pay your meth dealer back!

The brick you used to smash my car window is more useful than what you stole out of it.

So the jokes on you, my friend. That ipod is 6 years old and the only thing that keeps it alive is that charger you thoughtfully left in the car. See, no new-fangled charger is going to charge that thing. And good luck trying to connect it to a computer, you need a 6 year old charging dock with FIRE WIRE to do that. Do you even know what fire wire is? Do you even own a computer? Also, good luck trying to sell your ipod. Who wants a thick, heavy, 10gb ipod with a black and white screen and a battery life that is measured in minutes, not hours? I hope its battery malfunctions, explodes, and burns your house down.

So what hurts me the most isn't having to get my window replaced or losing my ipod or cutting my hands cleaning the broken glass, it's that you stole a thing of mine and you won't even use it. Not like it would give me some satisfaction if you did, but here's what's going to happen: you will turn it on and 10 minutes later it will turn off and you will toss it in the trash or in a bush or something. Awesome. What a total waste.

But let me thank you for not taking anything else in the car, or the car itself. You left my stereo, my phone, my maps, even the blanket in the backseat. If you'd opened the trunk there would have been a flashlight, some oil, bungee cords, and even a spare tire that would be yours for the taking as well. So thank you so much for only taking the ipod. Also thank you for not breaking anything else.

In conclusion, even though I was stupid for not hiding my attractive expensive things while parked on the street for 3 hours, you were more stupid for risking jail time to steal something that is obsolete and pretty much broken.


Yours truly,

Former Ipod Owner in the badly-painted Honda Accord


R.I.P. My 4th ipod, whose name was poddy. Thanks Henry.

chinese calendar

Back in May I was lurking in Viet-Wah a semi-creepy grocery store in the Little Saigon part of town when I found a lovely little chinese everyday tear-off calendar. Since the year was half over it was half off and I was in love. As I started tearing off days I noticed every once in a while there was a fun little picture instead of a big number for the day. I scanned all the ones I've torn off so far and included some here because they are just too awesome to keep to myself. I mean, what holidays are these? Are some of these as political as I think? I love the bottom part with that loud grid of information, especially the little horoscope animals in a box at the bottom, what does that mean? "Goats and Oxen are going to get along today"

please click on them to zoom, the poor quality of the printing is lost in these crisp small images.













The last one was during Chinese New Year. Together with an image of a woman and a baby on May 10 (Mother's Day) those are the only holidays I've identified.

I went to the website at the bottom of everyday and it's kind of great. Who is Mister Hau??

I've decided when I come to a day with a picture I'll scan it and put it up here on that day.

blog famine

seriously, not a lot has been going on, but I feel bad about not blogging about the nothingness. Today I went through my Itunes and after a little research, added the correct release date to every album. (some of them had no date so I had to wikipedia that, and some had incorrect release dates, like Cat Steven's Mona Bone Jakon is from 2000? mmm I don't think so)

Oldest song: 1954 "Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt

Over 75% of my collection is from the 2000's, here's a fun graph to show how it breaks down by decade:



Of the 2000's songs, most (1079 of 4051) are from 2007. The least (72 of 4051) are from the year 2000. Of those, the one that has been played the most (14) is "The Fake Headlines" by The New Pornographers.

Of all the songs from the 60's, "Wouldn't It Be Nice" from The Beach Boys has been played the most (58), despite it reminding me of Michael Moore's Roger and Me.

Yay for Smart Playlists, making all this pointless organizing possible.

Only Photographable thing that has happened in about a month:
Chris and I made pizza. It was delicious AND educational. Turns out Pilsbury refrigerated pre-made pizza dough isn't too bad and you should add like twice as much basil as you think you should, because it tends to shrivel. Also we found this awesome goat cheese that looks like brie but actually tastes like something.

don't worry, happy libby is still happy

I know my last post was maybe alarming to some of you. I can't say that things have gotten better, but they are definitely bothering me less.

My time has been taken up by:

a physically exhausting job that requires little concentration
an awesome boy who always opens the car door for me
this hilarious/silly game: improbable island
checking stuff out from the library

that is all.

bare cupboard ingenuity

I haven't gone grocery shopping at all this month so I've been surviving on the random bits of food in the pantry and leftovers from past roommates...Today I reached a new low in combining ingredients for no reason other than that they were there. My recipe today:

2 6-month old sausages found in the back of the freezer
2 remnants of bags of broccoli that used to be Jasons, probably about 6 pieces between the two
remnants of a bag of Trader Joe's frozen Soycutash which is like soybeans and corn
1/3 of a giant can (yes, a can) of macaroni
Knorr parma rosa sauce packet
5 or 6 flakes of minced onion
about a tablespoon of cream cheese (for creaminess)
same amount of garlic powder (for masking the flavor of the other ingredients, that sauce packet turned out to be kinda gross)

I mixed it all together and sampled my creation. Not entirely horrible when warm but then again I was really hungry. Later, not as hungry and not as warm it was disgusting and slimey. Like bland macaroni salad. But then I microwaved some just now and it was pretty okay. Good thing I made enough for like 3 meals. Success! I've staved off starvation for another day! I also made chicken curry with a badly freezerburned piece of chicken, a curry packet I purloined from my dad's house that has to be at least 3 years old, some more flakes of minced onion, and microwaved brown rice. I'm afraid to try it.

Orson Welle's finest work

Remember The Critic? That show was amazing! It totally skewered modern film and I see where Family Guy got its penchant for jump-cutting to non-sequitor pop culture spoofs. (I also saw Judd Apatow in the credits! Man that guy is everywhere)

Oh and I got a job! I'm glad that Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design has prepared me for my role as Macy's Junior's Department Sales Associate. I'll be making slightly less than what I was raking in when I first moved here. Plus I get an employee discount! Awesome!