My Asinine Thoughts

I’ve been a big fan of comic artist Gary Larson for quite sometime now. He created The Far Side, a comic strip that appeared in many newspapers even after he retired. I discovered him through a Taiwanese daily newspaper when I first came to Taiwan and I’ve been a fan ever since. His comic strips are so funny and so different from the others because he’s got such a wicked sense of humor.

I saw some Far Side Galleries on sale at Powerbooks yesterday when my family and I went to Trinoma, but I resisted the urge to buy since I’d rather have the 2-volume set I’ve been dreaming about for the past4 years. I just want to make sure that when I buy the set, I’d be living in a more permanent place since it’s so heavy and would be a nightmare to ship.

I suck when it comes to giving gifts. It’s not because I’m too cheap or thoughtless, I just don’t have the knack for picking the right gifts for people. I myself prefer to broadcast to the world gift ideas for me because I hate getting bad gifts… and I’ve had some really bad ones through the years. Believe me.

More than anything, I hate getting used gifts. I know some people who are chronic used gift givers, talk about cheap. I once had a friend who gave me a used, cross-stitched Christmas decor the size of a lemon for my birthday. We’re still friends.

Recycled gifts are different however since they’re new and you can always recycle them back, but they always seem to take the form of toiletries though.

So in the (mean) spirit of gift-giving, find below my top 10 Up Yours gift ideas for people you hate.

1. For the wedding gift (preferably while honeymooning): A his and hers copy of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (audio book / paperback)

2. For the birthday gift: Extraderm anti-aging cream

3. For the Christmas gift: Recycled gifts given to you last Christmas by the same people

4. For the graduation gift: Classified Ads, lots of ‘em

5. For the housewarming gift: The Amityville Horror DVD

6. For the wedding anniversary gift: calling card of one of the best divorce lawyers in the country

7. For the baptismal of a godchild: Several years’ supply of condoms (at least enough for the mother’s remaining child-bearing years)

8. For the Bon Voyage gift: A “Thank God They’re Going Away” party

9. For the Retirement gift: A noose

10. For the Chinese New Year gift: A red envelope filled with paper money (the ones burned by the Chinese when someone dies)

Guess what I found through perseverance and determination!

I was just as shocked as the rest of the world when news of Heath Ledger’s death started making the rounds. I’ve been looking forward to the next Batman film and Heath’s take on Joker for months and it really sucks that he had to die at such a young age. So while I was feeling bad, I came across one of Just Jared’s posts about Heath and laughed so hard I felt really guilty afterwards.

Most Popular Search words in Google the other day:

01. Heath Ledger
02. Keith Ledger (!!!)
50. Keith Fletcher
58. Keith Legend

I’ve been guilty of road rage from time to time. Of course since leaving Pinas a few years ago, I haven’t had much chance to lose my cool while on the road. Lose my life maybe (because of the horrible horrible drivers here in Taiwan). Whenever I come home for a visit though, I always end up having to drive somewhere - usually because I was forced to - I HATE DRIVING!

Can you imagine driving around Recto at around 4 in the afternoon? Divisoria at any time of the day? How about getting stuck in EDSA for more than 3 hours for no apparent reason? And what about driving along 10th Avenue in Caloocan amidst the jeepneys, tricycles, and thousands of students from Caloocan High School?

There are worse drivers than the Filipinos but I’ve often wished that I could express my feelings (verbally + dirty finger) to offending drivers everywhere without having to roll down the window. Ditsi forwarded a link a few weeks ago that would solve half of my driving issues but alas! It doesn’t seem to have the audio function that would enable erring drivers everywhere to hear the sweet, dulcet tone of my voice…

• Puchang #$&*@$# driver ka! Di ka ba marunong mag-signal? G*g*!
• Gaaah! Gitgitan ang gusto mo ha! Sige! Gitgitan tayo, Leche!
• P***** ***! Singit ng singit! Manigas ka!
• Babanggain ko na kayo! Die! Die! Die!

I try to avoid driving as much as possible because I sin less.

The Drivemocion:

12-inch Powerbook

Processor: 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4
Memory: 1.25GB - upgraded
Display: 12.1″ 1024×768
Hard Disk: 80GB
Weight: 4.6 pounds
Battery life: up to 5 hours

Plus: Slot loading optical drive, Video out (VGA, S-Video), ethernet, wireless, bluetooth, firewire

Sony DCR-DVD 403 (or Canon DC20)

2.7-inch wide, touch panel LCD
Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound
3.3 megapixel resolution (pwede na)
10x optical zoom

Canon IXUS 700

7.1 Megapixels
3x optical zoom
2.0″ LCD
Super quick start-up

others: surround sound speakers for my computer, 100GB external hard drive where I can store all my mp3s and video downloads, book collectorz software for my book inventory, 50 cc scooter plus Astroboy helmet, trip to Vietnam in July and Palawan in November, and peace and happiness. Not necessarily in that order.

Question: What to do when you’re on vacation, have no money to spend and bored beyond belief?
Answer: Stay at home and surf the net, nerd!

Question: What to do when you’ve exhausted all the movie news from IMDB, Ain’t It Cool News, and JoBlo?
Answer: Look for some more! Check out Just Jared dot com.

Question: When you’ve almost fried your brain reading useless information, what do you do?
Answer: Read something with more substance! Check out the blog of Waiter Rant.

Question: When you’ve just about had it with reading, what do you do?
Answer: Watch videos of course! Choose funny ones to keep things light and keep problems at bay. Watch Numa Numa 3x before going to sleep.

Question: When watching Numa Numa is considered too lowbrow, what to watch next?
Answer: CNN’s Your Command. Watch Christiane Amanpour’s “Eran” and I dare you to keep a straight face after Chechnya.

Question: When butt hurts from too much sitting, what to do next?
Answer: Shut off the computer, jump on the bed and start reading a book.

Question: When even reading a good book makes you feel restless, what should you do?
Answer: Eat or sleep or both. Hey, works for me!

Question: What to do while waiting for the last Harry Potter book?
Answer: Entertain yourself with all things HP in the meantime.

I gotta get me some Prince albums.

I’ve been a Microsoft IE user forever. I recall a short period when Netscape Navigator was used at home but in the whole, I’ve been pretty much loyal to IE. Yes, I am a sheep but my only defence is I am technologically inept. Very.

I had my computer re-formatted a few weeks ago as well as updated old versions of certain applications I normally use. It has been a fiasco of epic proportions since Jeeves has been underperforming on so many levels ever since. I had problems with loading of pages and applications, non-responding programs for no reason, and Outlook saying buh-bye each time I launch it. I was pissed, no, I was incensed! I decided changes had to made. Obviously Microsoft Office 2003 had to be scrapped because of problems with Outlook and Word (hang! hang! hang!). I will demote myself to 2000 which worked better for me the last time. The question now is, what would I use as mail client when I’ve finally uninstalled Outlook?

Google gave me an answer in the form of Mozilla’s Thunderbird. It has almost all the necessary features of Outlook like POP support and support for HTML mail, but more importantly, it’s open-source which means it’s free! There are a few features which take some getting use to and there’s also a lack of advanced email options that one gets from Outlook but I’m just happy I can get my mails from the Heyey server with no problems.

Now that I’ve officially changed my mail client, I took the next step and changed my browser as well. I’m now using Mozilla’s Firefox which Jeff has been telling me about for months already but which I didn’t listen to because I was so lazy. Since I’m on a break now, it seemed like I’ve ran out of excuses. While I still have some issues with Thunderbird, I have nothing but good things to say about Firefox. I love tabbed browsing! If you’re someone like me who hates lots of opened browser windows as well as seeing them below scrunched up together then tabbed browsing is the answer. Now I can open multiple sites with just one window open but with tabs on top so I can easily switch from one site to another. Ctrl-T has suddenly become a good friend

Other features and advantages of Firefox are too technical for me to explain or even understand but I do understand that Firefox will be less susceptible to viruses because it’s not as widely used as Internet Explorer, thus less prone to hackers. My only worry now is some pages on the web might not work or display as well with a Firefox browser, that’s why I’m keeping my Internet Explorer in reserve just in case.