Dear neighbor in apartment 33,

Please turn up your music! I love those loud, wall-shaking, hip-hop beats, especially at 12 am when I have class the next morning. But as it stands now, I can’t make out the words. It’s just a nondescript thudding sound, unless I’m sitting in my favorite chair next to the wall where I can sometimes make out those wonderful and witty lyrics. So please, turn it up. Wake me up from my boring slumber and don’t think about the welfare of your neighbor. That’s okay. When you hear that thump-thump-thumping noise at 12 am but it doesn’t go with the beat, that’s me at the door. Oh, I’m not angry at all. I’m coming over to politely ask you to turn it up even more, so all of our responsible and studious graduate student neighbors can share in the wonders of your stereo system. Turn it up because the walls are too thick and too well insulated to transmit any kind of sound. And while you’re at it, leave it on even longer. Four hours per day is certainly not enough of your diverse musical tastes.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Life’s too short to worry about everything. In fact, it might just be too short to worry about anything.

I’m posting my thoughts on Ray right now, before it leaves my memory. I will be honest; Taylor Hackford is a cool guy. He knows what he’s doing and he’s a good director. But I just saw Ray at the Beverly Center (avoid this theater—more on that later) and it blew, big time.

Joined by intrepid if slightly lackadaisical cinematography duo Cindy F. and Chuck D., we proceeded into the theater at the very top of the Beverly Center complex. It is large and seems underutilized, but it was a Wednesday night, so I’ll give them some slack. And slack it was, the sound system rates a D- on Phil’s Phonic Quality Rating System (PQRS) and the projector had some major registration issues. The film jumped and jittered vertically (no, that’s not a dance move) which made me feel as if I were starting to go blind. Perhaps the creators intended it this way, to make it a more visceral experience and help us identify with Jamie Foxx? (Who, by the way, was brilliant in this film and its saving grace.) I’m afraid not. All it did was give me a headache and made me want to run out of the theater and complain to management. As a matter of fact, a half hour after the movie should have ended, Cindy did just that, but alas, alack, to no avail.

You can’t be anyone other than who you are, so don’t even try. Actors exempted.

From Chris Jenkins: “Technology should be your mistress.”

(then I think: “Oh, but she is….”)

Found Kevin Thompson’s blogsite (well, okay, I asked him today in class), and from there that took me to Cindy Fang’s blog. Yeah, they’re cool, I guess. But they don’t run their own webserver like me and I’ll bet dollars to donuts they didn’t install their blog software themselves. :) Okay, geekiness rant over.

This cracked me up. If you don’t know Whose Line…?, watch it.

(order: Wayne, Chip, Colin, Ryan; subject: something that could go bad on a date—falling out of the car) Now, you have to sing this as you read it, or it won’t be as much fun.

Oh, Heidi-didi-didi-didi, didi-didi-di

My date and I were drivin’
I’m lucky to be alive
We were goin over 60
It wasn’t my kind of jive
Then my door opened
It could not be beat
I fell right out
…Boy, that was neat