Starting My Year the Way Its Usually Ended

The end of each year brings about numerous top (insert number) lists. So why not begin it with a top ten resolutions goals for 2012?

1. Be awesome (Really)
2. Be fluent in Mandarin (Really)
3. Stop eating for two when I am only one (Throwing away that pizza box)
4. Stop using soy sauce in every dish I cook (or find suitable replacement)
5. Eat salad (This one rides the fence as I find that salads depress me)
6. Exercise (At least to the point where I am not out of breath after one flight of stairs)
7. Punch someone who deserves it (This will be one of those opportunity presents deals)
8. Speak slower (Less Scorcese more Cleveland)
9. Get better eyes (LasEk)
10. Get paid more so I can get better eyes (Dem some expensive eyes)

I recently learned that I have the eyeballs of a decrepit senior citizen. So I need to be much more cautious and caring towards my only source of vision. (Until they develop those Geordi La Forge visors) The people at the Lasik office were pretty clear that my eyes look like the cornea version of the before in a Dove commercial. So now I will be confined to my stylishly Kim Jong Il, Chanel brand glasses until I am able to physically have the surgery. (I'm suffering so greatly aren't I?)

Happy 2012 blogosphere!

Versace for H&M

Versace Is Doing an H&M Line — and You Can Preview It Now

Let's hope they make it in a size 12....

A Type

Another night on the train, traveling to a relatively close location (in the city that would be about six stops). At the fourth stop, two Asian American girls get on in mid conversation about one girl's recent happenings in her life. In my people watching ways I deduced them to be of the general early to mid twenties variety and also close to what my cousins and I call "Azn" (pronounced A-zee-an).

What qualifies someone to be Azn? Well first of all, in order to be considered part of any group is the style of your dress. We have our hipster, preps, punk rockers, goths, douchebags, etc.

Azns are super trendy. They have (successfully?) combined all the stereotypical popular images of asians and mixed them with other popular looks.

• Anime Hair
• Brand name clothes
• Drives a Honda
• Drives a suped up Honda with the word "Civic" across the back windshield
• Saggy Skinny jeans (it used to be wide leg/baggy when jnco was big, remember jnco?)
• Any extras from Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift ( I know it's set in Japan but it was shot in LA and LA is full of AZNs)
• Only eats out in Ramen or Sushi places
• Dress similar enough to everyone he/she hangs out with

Well these two girls weren't completely Azn, but they seemed to be dressed alike so I can imagine them as the Azn girlfriend. I have never dressed like my friends on a normal day.. Or maybe I have never been friends with people that looked enough like me to have it seem that way. I recently had an experience when my roommate and I came out of our rooms dressed in the same colors of Red and Black. But I highly doubt I look anything like a tall black girl. 

Azn appeal aside, the most humorous thing about these two girls, for me, was that they had mirror image hairdo's. The were doing the hair-down-with-one-bobby-pulling-back-the-front-lock hairstyle. I say mirror because they were sitting across from each other and they had their respective bobby pins on opposite sides so that it looked like a mirror image. They even did a mime routine with each other.

OK, they did not, but it would have validated this entire entry...

Heard in the Office:

"No diarrhea allowed today!"

"There are things only a straight man can do..."

"I'm giving you a massage and you want to make small talk?"

Spotted on the Street - Man with Claw Arm

Fun Fact: It stayed on with straps going over his other shoulder. In the movies the wooden forearm just attaches. Learn something new everyday.

Another fun fact: He was wearing a rainbow sock on his arm to avoid chafing.


First movie reference that popped into my head: The Fugitive. Most people at this time would say 127 Hours, but I actually never got to see that movie and The Fugitive's villain was actually referred to as "The One Armed Man". 

Brand Me

A look inside the workings of Lexicon and how they coin those billion dollar names.

Article reposted from Lexiconbranding.com, originally published at FastCompany.com

Motha Wha?!

I was on the 6 train commuting to wherever I was going (I was doing the pseudo sleep-sit at the time which meant I must have been on my way downtown)and the train was crowded enough where all the seats were full and a couple were standing in front of me. On the other side of the couple, sitting across from me, was a mother and her young child in a stroller. Anyone living in the city knows what a pain a stroller is for the mother and other train commuters, but physical mass wasn't the issue in this particular case. The child started to cry, he wanted to get out, but the train was in motion and crowded so the mother kept him in. He started to buck up and down back and forth. Soon the sporadic cries turned to consistent wailing. 

Crying children do not bother me. Having raised my brother for the first eleven years of his life, I can take it. At this point, crying children actually make me laugh. Not in a cynical way but that's another story - I digress. Anyways, there is nothing to make the kid stop. He just wants to get out but he can't. The mother is not going to let him out which is right, so he goes on wailing. I see this through the slit of my mostly closed eye (I say "eye" because for some reason my right eye opens easier than my left...)and in my pseudo sleep state a very clear wantonly authoritarian voice breaks through and a woman starts to criticize the mother. "If that were my child, it would know who's boss.... You have to train them like dogs." The guy she was with laughingly agreed with her in the way you do when you don't want to garner your companion's wrath. 

That obnoxious comment was coming from the woman standing directly in front of me. I made no motion to show I had heard her opinion nor made any comment to show my disdain. You have to pick your battles and her ignorance about child rearing was just not worth it. Plus, I know she'll be eating her words once she has a child of her own. Even though I will not be there to witness it, the prospect is enough for me to deem justice served.

What did surprise me was after the next stop, the couple took over the emptied seats next to the mother and I saw that the woman was Asian. For some reason, I am assuming other Asian women to have the same knowledge about the frustrations and complications of raising a child that I have, but that is ignorant of me to assume other Asians within my generation were tasked with role of being an associate parent to your younger siblings. Perhaps she was the youngest, or the only child. Who knows, but I felt bad for her. Poor girl has no idea and clearly no one to tell her.