Meat Shield

This blog site is better than this piece of meat.

It is inevitable when you travel to coin your own phrases as you travel with a group of people during your trip. It becomes an inside joke of sorts, and it’s never as funny when you explain it to others who were not there, but those that went, ‘get it’. Sometimes the phrases aren’t even funny, but alas it does bring back memories. One such phrase I coined during my time in Asia this past year was the term ‘meat shield’. I coined this term as I was crossing the busy streets of Hong Kong with a friend. You see, if you are not careful in Asia, you can easily get run over by moving vehicles when crossing the street illegally. They just don’t care. It’s a risk we all take when doing illegal crossings as a pedestrian. In North America, drivers actually slow down at turns, and there are less blind spots when turning than in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

So what is a meat shield you ask? Let’s say you are crossing the street, and there are cars that turn right onto the intersection you are crossing, (the car will hence come veering at full speed to your left side), you must make sure that there are a fair amount of people on your left hand side when you cross the street illegally. The people on your left will of course soften the blow if indeed a car turns a right at blazing speed. These aforementioned people on your left will thereby act as your ‘meat shield’ because they are made of flesh and they will soften the blow of a car hitting you, if indeed the crash does reach you. The most likely scenario is the car will slow down because he/she will have hit so many pedestratians before he/she reaches you, the driver would’ve slowed down by the time the car is near you. So the more ‘meat shield’ buffer zone between you and the car the better.

This concept also works when you are making a right turn in North America, and a car is turning left to the street you are turning out of, thereby shielding you from oncoming traffic as you make your right turn. This however, is simply known as a ’shield’ because the car isn’t made of meat.

The end.

Peanut Butter

Sometimes when I get hungry at work and have nothing to eat, I go to the cafeteria and take those small peanut butter packets and eat it with a plastic knife. Now you know.

Primo Spot

There’s never a better feeling than finding a primo parking spot near work. You see, where I work, parking is hard to find. Free parking is even harder to find. There is also free parking about 10-15 min walk from the office building at a neighborhood park, if you can find a spot. If you can find it, it is still a bit away from the office.

Where I work, parking is definitely a premium. One must pay an outrageous price to park inside the office building. The third option aside from busing, is to park at 2 hour parking spots two blocks away from the work place. This is one of the closest free parking spots you can find. The problem with these 2 hour parking spots are just that, it’s only 2 hours. Parking enforcers usually give people a half an hour leeway before they ticket you. So if you park in this zone, you would have to check your car every 2.5 hours for marked tires. Tedious to say the least. Each ticket will set you back $35. That’s 35 chances at the lottery jackpot. 35 slices of pizza sold at 93 cents each. That’s one month of food and education for a World Vision Child.

There is a set of spots however, that are as close to the office as the 2 hour parking spots. They are the closest free parking spots that you can find, but space is limited. This is what I call the primo spot. When you score one of these spots it’s one of the happiest feelings in the world. It’s free, and it gives you peace of mind knowing that there’s no way in hell you will get a parking ticket today. I just can’t help wipe that stupid grin off my face when I land one of these spots.

Then I realize I have another 8 hours of work ahead of me.

All You Can Eat

All you can eat. Four simple words. Fighting words really. It's a personal challenge between the restaurant owner and yourself. There can only be one winner. The restaurant is banking on the fact that you cannot eat full value of what they're charging you to eat 'all you can eat'. On your end of things, you want to make the owner pay for what he's done. Make him regret his decision of deciding to offer an 'all you can eat' menu in the first place. It's really a challenge to your man hood. Not only do you want to get equal value for the amount you pay, but you want aim to eat him into the poor house. You vow to make him plead for mercy.

Of course, when the process begins, you do feel like you can eat the entire world three times over. You're armed and ready. You brought in loose pants. Belts are entirely optional at this point. You and your friends have starved yourself for an entire day for this event. The craving for nourishment in your body simply cannot be contained a moment longer. You place your initial order. The amount of food your group orders frightens the waitress. She questions whether or not you can finish what you ordered. She politely informs the group that you must pay extra for any leftover items. Your group reaffirms her that it is not a problem. We know the rules of the game already. No drinks, because it takes up valuable stomach space. You proceed to finish your first order and polish it with 'blitzkrieg' like efficiency. The Germans would be so proud. The second order comes. No problem. Third one comes and goes, and there are visible signs of degradation, but as soldiers, you march on. We were heavy hitters after all. The fourth order rolls out, and then it begins.

This is the portion of 'all you can eat' in what I like to call the 'blame game'. You realize at this point of the dinner that you've over ordered. Any excess food left over food on the table means that you would have to pay extra. That would mean the house wins. It's against your ethics to let that happen. "Over my dead body" you'd say. So the finger pointing starts to happen on who should finish what they ordered. The conversations are usually variants of the following quotes. "You ordered this, so you should eat it." "I ordered it for you guys", or "I didn't tell you to order that, I don't even like tuna" and finally "I didn't order that!" You get the idea.

After the minor blame game, and challenging each other to 'man up' and finish the left over items, everything is quiet. Everyone at the table has the glaze in their eyes. The digesting glaze. The leave me alone or I will puke on you look. Then the jokes starts flying around the table. You plead to your buddies to stop making you laugh because you're so close to puking. Any semblance of laughter will upset the space/time continuum within your body. You can feel the food rising up and down your esophagus with every breath you take. It's almost painful.

If you puke, you know you will never hear the end of it from your friends. That's when you know you have some great company amongst you. Some of the best memories have spawned from our many 'all you can eat nights', and I would not trade that for anything in the world.

Actually, that's a lie. I'll trade it for anything worth more than ten dollars.

Coldplay's 'Fix You' has been on my mind so I leave you with this. Take it easy my friends.

Worse Case Scenario

Swine Flu gone wild!

You've heard this topic done to death by now but here's my take on it, but I figured I give you my take on this subject matter. That's right. You have to hear about it from me, whether you like it or not. I suppose you can just stop reading if you want to. That's up to you. The subject matter of course is the swine flu. H1N1.

In the grand scheme of things, there's not that many deaths that are associated with this virus. SARS infection/death ratio was far more alarming. I suppose what makes the swine flu frightening is that it could mutate to a stronger more deadlier strain...but that can also happen with the 'regular' flu. Here are some rhetorical questions. I always ask such questions in my blogs. So should we not worry at all? Is it all just hysteria created by the media? Perhaps. We should of course still wash our hands, sneeze on our arms and not our hands, stay home when we're sick etc. That's just using common sense.

It is amazing however, to observe how fast and easy a single virus can spread around the world. That's the scary thing about this situation. What if this was something more serious and deadly? Say a zombie disease infection. The world will be goners in no time. Imagine that! There will always be those jerks (like in the movies!) that are bitten/infected by zombies who like to hide their wounds so that they can make it to the 'safe' zone to be amongst uninfected humans. Just by hiding their 'wound' these diseased ridden people for some reason think they are 'safe' from the virus by not letting people know. We all know they will turn into a zombie soon enough and surprise their friends with a big bite to their neck once their mutation is complete. In a flash, everyone will be infected in the 'safe zone' because of that one stupid jerk. No one is safe.

This of course is a worse case scenario situation. There's no such things as zombies and zombie viruses of course. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to buy a gun now to protect myself, just in case. Remember, aim for the head. Also, I need to buy some bandages to hide this bite wound so that I can make it to the safe zone across the border. If I hide my wound, and pretend I wasn't bitten, everything will be fine. Who likes to be quarantined anyways? I certainly don't!

Click here for the current song buzzing in my head.

Soup Skin

"I'm craving a bowl of soup THIS big!"

Have you ever made soup and didn't drink it right away? A layer of what appears to be skin forms after the soup cools usually. When you dip your spoon into the soup, a wrinkle will always appear after your spoon has penetrated the top layer of soup. This layer is what I like to call "soup skin".

The term 'soup skin' is used a bit differently in my circle of friends. It's part of my group of friends unique lingo. All groups have their own set of vocab that means something to them. This one is ours. The origins of the term actually came from my brother. Here's the back story. We were big wrestling fans in the late 90s and early 2000s. One day as we were watching a match with Hulk Hogan in it, my brother commented that "Hogan's so old, he has soup skin!" We're all like...what the f--- is soup skin? My brother goes on to give a detailed explanation that Hogan's so old that he's starting to get folds/wrinkles on his body that looks like soup skin. The very same wrinkles you see when you first dip your spoon into the surface layer of cooled down soup. We never heard wrinkles being described like that before. As we looked closer at Hogan, sure enough the folds in his skin did look like soup skin. Please see the picture above for visuals of this 'soup skin' phenomenon.

Now that you know what 'soup skin' means, I would like to ask you one question. Do you have soup skin? If not, it's only a matter of time.

I shall now leave you and your soup skin with a nice little song. It's called "Airplanes" by Local Natives: Click here and press the "play this track" button to listen. Lyrics can be found here. Enjoy ladies and gents.

Like a BOSS!

You know it's a good night out with your buddies when one of them ends up puking as the evening draws to a close. You're probably thinking, that guy probably had too much to drink that night. Guess again.

A friend of mine got a deep fryer as a present this past Christmas. This can only lead to one thing. All you can eat deep fried night. We had one of those a few weekends back and it was a sight to behold. We had deep fried wontons, onion rings, chicken wings, steamed buns with the sweetened condensed milk as a dipping sauce (double yum) amongst many items that we were gonna deep fry. Every bite squeezed out oil. It was greasy and it was oh so good.

This got us thinking, WHAT ELSE could we deep fry? EVERYTHING tastes good deep fried! Even spoons! Our imagination ran wild. Hulkamaniac wild. We listed out gummy bears, MARS bars, apples and oranges (We rationalized in the end it wouldn't work cause there was too much water), steak, pizza pops, pizza dough, entire pizzas, chocolate, ice cream, bannnas, dim sum, thin hot pot meat slices, pig intestines, sushi, and yes, even Admiral Ackbar...he is one giant calamari after all. We must devise a clever plan to trap him first. He's good at sensing traps. That last suggestion was mine and mine alone.

At the very end of it all, we were pretty grossed out by all the crap we ate. There was so many leftovers but we all felt so gross and bloated. We wanted no part of it. The honeymoon was over. Our love for all things deep fried has ended. We wanted a divorce, regretting every bite we took that night. We never wanted to see anything deep fried ever again in our life time. At approximately 2:30 am in the morning, the host of the party that evening had enough.

He puked. Like a BOSS!

It was a good time to call it a night after that. The very next day I woke up hungry and wished I packed some of the leftovers home. Life is full of regrets.

Unicorns, Minotaurs, and Centaurs

A Unicorn being courted by a centaur as a pervy looking Minotaur watches in complete and utter blissful glee. Thank you Arty Chee for drawing my absurd artwork request.

I’ve always found something innately funny about the aforementioned titled creatures. Anytime you bring up Unicorns, minotaurs, and centaurs in a conversation you are bound to get some laughs.

The unicorn is definitely the girliest creature of the three. Just check out the girly toy aisle at your local toy store. There are three things you would find for sure in that aisle. The color pink, Barbies, and unicorns. Girls have such limited toy options. It’s quite sad really.

A unicorn is often thought of as a beautiful creature that has similar likeness to a horse but has a lion’s tail and a long, straight, and spirally twisted horn. It is usually depicted as white in color and is seen as a symbol of chastity or purity. Yep, they have the makings of a good housewife. Neil Patrick Harris aka Doogie Howser M.D. can attest to the Unicorn’s greatness.

Next up we have the Minotaur. The creature has recently made a pop culture comeback. It has been recently featured in some sort of SUV car commercial and of course in the movie “Role Models”.

The Minotaur has the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. The Minotaur was a fearsome creature with quite an appetite for human flesh. According to Wikipedia, which is always a reliable source of information for the lazy, “required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, be sent ever ninth year” for the creature to feed on. All you can eat young maidens and young Athenians. Yum.

On a random yet somewhat related note, I bet a Minotaur if cooked properly, would make a great steak or burger. I assume that it would be very beefy and it would most likely be bad for your arteries since it is just pure red meat. BBQ Minotaur meat however, is as exotic as you can get. When you eat a Minotaur, you won’t feel as bad because Minotaurs are such jerks. If you eat a unicorn however, you will cry as you eat it because unicorns are so beautiful, nice, and rare.

Finally, we have the centaur. They have the head, trunk, and arms of a man and the body and legs of a horse. I really don’t have an opinion on a centaur, but I always envisioned them as pompous jerks with British accents just like elves. They think that they’re all high and mighty but they are a bunch of wusses. I hear that they shoot a mean bow and arrow though. I also have no idea how they procreate, but I know they probably secretly dream of getting it on with unicorns.

The three creatures differ any many ways but they all share one thing in common. Like true love, it's all just a myth.

White Bread

Young Julie had a few too many Jägerbombs before lunch...hence the crazy eyes.

Remember the first time you found out white bread was bad for you? My wee brain could not comprehend such a discovery. I understand that hamburgers can be bad for you, deep fried foods without a doubt, and of course bacon is definitely not good for you...but white bread? It's as wholesome as you can get! That's what I thought anyways. I mean we always use the term it's our "bread and butter". The Bolsheviks promised their people "Bread, peace, land" to get into power. It's the bare necessity for people. It's a good source of vitamins and nutrients according to Wonderbread! How can it be so bad for you?

Like white bread, a lot of things in life are not what they seem. There are many 'layers of truth' in life. With age, our life experience slowly unravels the layers of truth that society cloaks itself in. With each passing day, our childhood innocence is washed away. It's an interesting self discovery when you become more critically aware of how the world works. The notion of right and wrong seems a little bit more askew as we grow older. Businesses and government may not always have the interest of the people in which they serve as their number one priority. History also likes to repeat itself, and not in positive ways. Some recent examples are of course the Iraq War (Vietnam #2) and of course the recent economic meltdown of well...the world. People just never learn from the past (I too am guilty of this).

One can even argue that relationships sometimes can be boiled down to the proper usage of semantics, proximity and psychology. Personally I must admit that relationships are definitely a lot more complicated than I anticipated as a young lad. It's never as simple as Hollywood would have you believe.

Teachers always told us to find a career that we enjoy first and foremost and everything else will fall into place. For many however, job satisfaction is a rare occurrence, as many work to make ends meet. A dream career is just that, a dream. I am indeed in the ever elusive search for job satisfaction. I have a good career, but I feel like I am missing something. I feel that I am indeed capable of greater things.

I've been stressed lately, but I really do not know the cause of this. I keep waking up in the middle of the night. I've been grinding my teeth as I sleep more than I usually do. The issues of society, career, and life perhaps have been weighing down on me, but I've always been a thinker (believe it or not). It's never really caused me stress. I've been depressed before but never STRESSED.

No matter how much I try to change to be a person that just goes with the flow and enjoy life as it comes, I know that I am a planner. I think and plan. That's what I do. I even know the topics of at least my next 4 blogs. That's just me. I would like to drop everything that I have going for me and travel the world and become a nomad and try new things, but then reality sets in. I would think of the responsibilities that I have and realize that I'm not the spontaneous person that I wish myself to be.

I just need to learn to enjoy the little things in life because like the song goes, you never know what you've got 'till it's gone.

At least I've gotten used to eating whole wheat bread now. See, I'm not a complete cynic. It's all about the baby steps.

A bit of song sharing time. Eyes by Rogue Wave. Enjoy.

A Farewell to Late Night

This blog posting is a tribute to Late Night with Conan O'Brien who's last show airs tonight. Some of you are wondering why are you being so sentimental over a comedy show. I guess it's because I've been a viewer for 14 years and I sort of grew up watching it. This is a warning. This blog post might be longer than that popcorn one you guys kept complaining about.

One evening during grade 8, I managed to stay up past 12:30am and to my surprise there was another show on after the Tonight Show. It was some low budget show (everything looked cheap on the show) hosted by this tall pasty white guy with a sidekick (Conan had Andy Richter as a sidekick from the shows inception in 1993-2000). I decided to stay up cause the guest that night was Chris Farley and as a big SNL fan at the time, and I wanted to see what he was up to. I do not remember much about the show except that the humor was so offbeat and it seemed to get away with more wackiness since it was on so late.

Whenever I could stay up I would watch Conan. He was on week to week contracts for the first couple years he was on the air. Critics also loathed him. He was a nobody. But I loved his self deprecating humour, and the risks the show took to make the audience laugh. No show was ever really the same. On Conan however, there was always something new. One night you could be watching Pimpbot 5000 calling Conan "white bread", the next night you could be watching the Masturbating Bear and Vomiting Kermit go at it on the show (Click the link to see a clip of it). The Masturbating Bear is exactly what the name of the character suggest it is. It's a bear that frantically goes at it on the set. The most famous of his characters was of course Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. It was juvenile and brilliant at the same time...and it worked.

As a Harvard graduate and a former writer of The Simpsons and SNL, Conan's show was a show that was filmed with sketch comedy and witty writing. Some of the jokes just fall flat because they were so outrageous (S&M Winnie the Pooh), but he continued to push his comedic prowess and wasn't afraid to try new things...something that Leno and Letterman isn't willing to do (How many times do we have to see Jay Walking or Will It Float segments?). Conan's remotes (skits filmed on location - please see the videos below as examples), In the Year 2000, Celebrities with talking lips, Satellite TV, Conebone69, the string dance and of course, the Walker Texas Ranger lever, were some of his best work in comedy. The zaniness and comedy of his show and the fact that Conan was wacky on stage but intelligent and articulate off it was something I can relate to. Well, perhaps not the intelligence part.

I hardly missed his show throughout high school, then I got a life and didn't tune in every night like I used to, but I still followed his show throughout the years. Conan's ratings shot up big time in the past few years and he's become more 'famous' but he never let his fame get to him (He still drives his '92 Green Ford Taurus - He often jokes about it on the show). The critics who were once very harsh on him adores him now, but really his humour never really changed. Sure he was a nervous performer in the early years but his comedic genius was always present, he just had to refine it.

Tomorrow, after 16 years as the host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, he is ready to move to the 11:30pm time slot and take over the Tonight Show in June. There is no way he can get away with the things he does at 12:35am (Masturbating Bear and Pimpbot 5000 are now gone the way of the Dodo bird), so his comedy I am sure will be more toned down. His show will no longer have a low budget feel to it, which was a part of the appeal, but like all good things, it must come to an end. I will regret not getting a chance to see him live in NY but I look forward to his take on The Tonight Show.

Comedy itself has to continually evolve and mature...a lesson in life in which I am also learning.

I look forward to seeing Conan tonight night as he broadcasts one last time from Studio 6A.

Cool. Just got word that Andy Richter is joining Conan on the Tonight Show.


This is my favorite remote he's done and one of the first I saw back in the day (filmed in '97)...when no one really knew who he was or watched his show. Please take a look:



Conan going to Chinatown to celebrate St. Patrick's Day:



Conan visits FAO Schwarz - The perfect balance of intelligent comedy and juvenile humour.



Old Time Baseball Remote



Highlights from the past 16 years





Update - Conan's Final Goodbye on Late Night