ranking cities i'm familiar with according to things that are important to me

hottest people:
1) LA
2) NYC
3) boston

best dressed:
1) NYC
2) LA
3) boston

smartest people:
1) NYC
2) boston
3) LA

nicest people:
1) LA
2) NYC
3) boston

fastest (walking) people:
1) NYC
2) boston
3) LA

best service:
1) LA
2) NYC
3) boston

most insomniac:
1) NYC
2) LA
3) boston

best pizza:
1) boston
2) NYC
3) LA doesnt have pizza

best weather:
1) LA
2) NYC
3) boston

question

how often do they collect the quarters from parking meters? because i have never seen this happen...

surprise visit!

just right now, the ice cream man came to visit me! technically, ice cream woman. this is incredibly exciting. i don't think the ice cream man has been here in eons. really, i mean it, i think the last time i heard them was in 1992. the truck made two rounds around my house before anyone stopped them, which was me. i frantically ran out and asked for a spongebob squarepants ice cream-sicle kind of thing. they were sold out, so i got a bugs bunny one instead. my mother got a sno-cone. those are pretty good, too. the children in this neighborhood have no idea what an ice cream man is. now, THAT is a deprived childhood.

dont worry, i took pictures to document this marvelous event. post them soon, i lost my camera cable.

conversation about tea parties and puberty

irene: apparently, emily had to go this mother-daughter tea thing in 5th grade at her school where they watched a video about thier changing bodies and passed out tampons and stuff. is that a mass. thing?
taylor: uh, no. definitely have that in irvine. all my sisters went.
irene: i don't think i ever went...
taylor: how'd you miss the mother-daughter tea boat?
irene: it was on a boat?! wow! i definitely did NOT go.

dirty clothes

last night, someone pooped in the cabot laundry room. as in, left a pile of fresh crap on someone's clothes. of course, no one wanted to believe this and a bunch of people (who didn't see it) speculated that a squirrel must have snuck into the laundry room and pooped. i didn't see it for myself either, but according to these testimonials over the open-list, i'm pretty sure its human poop.

• " go check it out, it's still fresh and liquid"
• "For further explanation, the turd is roughly the size of a small squirrel."
• " a SQUIRREL??? that whole f*&%ing thing is the size of a squirrel!!"
• "Given the dispersion and probably trajectory of the stuff, I think it had to be a larger animal. Small animals just don't have that much spray factor."
• "there was a LOT of this poop"
• "very liquidy"

too good/bad to be true.

"The Blender shoot was really fun because it was super rock and roll — we had a bottle of [whiskey] and ate cupcakes."
- Avril Lavigne

(congrats to adrian for finding this.)

my puppy-to-be

its currently 5am on tues and for the past 4 hours i've been googling everything about puggles (beagle/pug hybrid): pictures, breeders, training, coat types, costs, whatever else. for the longest time, i thought i was going to get a shiba inu puppy, but now i think i changed my mind. i WILL get a puggle and he will be black with a white belly. yes! just like oscar eliot!

i have 2 finals and a 20 page paper (3 pages into it) due all within the next 36 hours or something, but you know how its impossible to start on anything until there's an hour left and then you have no choice? yeah, until then, i'll be looking at pictures of puggle puppies.

bad words

remember my good cereals list? i think its time for another list. today's is words i don't like saying, hearing, and/or sometimes reading.

• lozenge
• loin
• groin
• handsome (makes no sense)
• mushroom (same)
• buttocks
• brassiere
• trough
• broil
• awry (as a kid, i read this as awe-ree)
• follicle
• pustule
• thong
• moustache
• shampoo
• banal
• corps (always read this wrong in my head)
• vermicelli
• venereal
• woman
• yeast
• saucer
• girdle
• girth
• birth
• cloister
• ham
• uvula
• penal
• jaundice
• pregnant
• condiment
• fungus
• corny
• horny

trough and lozenge tie for the worst word ever award.

buy stuff here

i am spending way too much time (and maybe money) on these sites, but theyre seriously worth it. i will never buy anything at msrp again!

www.pricegrabber.com
www.pricewatch.com

yay for new camera memory card and 500gb external hard drive. amazing!

south korea to be renamed "terran confederacy"

do you know who she is? (hint: she is not me 4 years from now.) i don't know what her name is, but on pcgamess.com, it says she's one of the best professional starcraft players in korea, which probably means she's one the best in the entire universe. now i just need to find a country where they live and breathe 'alchemy' on yahoo games. and since we all know that i'm the alchemy champion (board cleared in 1:19, impressive i know), i would easily become an obsession there!

on saturday, blizzard entertainment officially announced the current development of starcraft 2 at thier worldwide invitational held in seoul (obviously). according to the AP, an estimated 35% of south korea's population is considered "gamers," many of them very familiar with starcraft and several of them now dead from game-addiction/overplaying (i'm totally serious). here is a brief timeline of what to expect from now:

• may 2007: blizzard announces starcraft 2 in seoul. south korea implodes with joy. blizzard does not announce specific release date.
• june 2007: korean government funds project to create time machine to teleport koreans into future, find out release date, and possibly procure a copy of starcraft 2.
• later 2007: mission fails. several koreans killed in the attempt. handful of anxiety/depression suicides also occur from failure to wait until next year. national holiday instituted to commemorate dead.
• sometime 2008: blizzard finally announces release date and price. koreans implode with more joy. release date is instituted as national holiday called "starcraft 2 release date."
• shortly after in 2008: starcraft 2 released. koreans implode even with more joy. seoul hosts starcraft parade on this glorious holiday.
• later 2008: consequential deaths follow from game-addiction. tragic news for the country.
• 2009: 8 year old korean boy hailed as new starcraft champion and prodigy. koreans elect him as president. south korea renamed to "terran confederacy" (or something like it).
• 2013: starcraft prodigy-king-president dies from game-addiction. koreans mourn, institute new holiday in his name.

am i going anywhere with this? i have a 20 page paper to write on farm subsidies due in 2 days or something. i'm just going to draw 20 pictures of cows and pigs and turn that in.

Gerbil Competition

Yesterday, in Bedford, there was a gerbil show. Oscar Eliot is currently traveling across the country and was unfortunately unable to compete (even though I didn't even know about the opportunity until I read this article on BostonNow.com). Had he competed, he would've definitely won the Best White Belly category, considering the runner-up was a handicapped defect. He would've also placed in Cutest Face, Best Gnawer, and...Best Fed?

Only one top gerbil? Gnaw, they're all Best In Show.

"It's the equivalent to the Westminster Kennel Club in there!" Judith Block from New York City said about the American Gerbil Society's 6th annual New England Gerbil Show. More than 200 people and their 77 show-gerbils squeezed, scurried and gnawed their way through the crowded Lexington Room of the Bedford Best Western last Saturday.

Braving bad weather and even worse directions, the Blocks
made it to the hotel on Thursday. It was worth it - they picked up their brand
new 11-week-old Gerbil pups, Pete and Guthrie.

Block says her special gerbil was Phoebe. "She would chew cardboard into sculptures," she said. "She had an artistic soul."

Amateur gerbilists took part in Pet Class competitions. Best Gnawer, Most Adventurous and Cutest Face were only some of the categories open to these gerbil competitors.

Tracy Kukkonen's Mochi took first place in Most Adventurous.

"He climbs on everything," Kukkonen said.

By the end of the day, Renee and Tom Arena and their son Justin Salmons from Waltham were on edge. It was a nail-biter as Buffy defended her crown for Best White Belly, while Blackie competed for the first time in the Best Color category.

It was looking grim for Blackie. Judges discovered a minor eye injury.

"They're in there splitting whiskers," Arena said.

In the end, Blackie took second place in her category. The Blocks pup, Pete, took third in the Spotted category. Block wasn't upset that Guthrie didn't place.

"All my children are special," she said.

great escape (to california)

do you remember 3 posts ago when i was wondering about how to get my gerbil home to california with me? in addition to the 3 very plausible (i'm serious) ideas i had, i thought of another one.

• find a band who is touring the country on the road, playing a show in boston soon, and returning to california in a couple weeks.

so, yesterday morning i parted with oscar eliot and he is currently traveling across the county on the pretty girls make graves final tour with moonrats. today, he's in nyc and if he's like me, he should be having a blast. by the time we're reunited again, he will be the most well-traveled gerbil in the world. i'm so proud of him.

great excuse

its may. 40 degrees and t-storms should not be a daily occurrence at this point in the year. on thursday, i just had to do something about it. i went online and

• 2 dresses
• 2 tops
• 4 sunglasses
• earrings
• headbands
• necklace
• ring
• belt

the sunglasses were non-designer, so don't freak out.

red cross hates midgets and pregnant women

in high school, red cross held blood drives in the gym at least once a semester. if i remember correctly, donating blood could clear up to 10 detentions! but unlike me, if you actually showed up early to school and went to those retarded advisement classes (aka homeroom in other places) and didn't have detentions to clear from your useless perfect attendance, you could also get tons of extra credit for most classes. even better, if you donated blood, they always gave you juice boxes and cookies, a tshirt and a sticker that read, "i donated blood today!" that falsely showed the entire world how much you cared about saving lives. this is what made me really annoyed:

• minimum age requirement was 17. i turned 17 senior year and this only gave me 1 year to even possibly take advantage of this marvelous opportunity. lame.
• minimum weight was something like 95-100 lbs. in high school, i always hovered around the high-80s (dairy-free, pescatarian diets really did something). i was planning on gaining weight in college anyway, so i thought i could finally get my juice box and humanitarian sticker then. i was over the detentions and extra credit, and their shirts were always too big for me anyway.
• sounds crazy, but i think drawing blood into a tube is totally fun. although getting shots are a different story.

then, in college, red cross raised the minumum weight to 110 lbs.! i'm a steady low 90 and the only time i would ever hit 110 is when im pregnant. and apparently, red cross doesn't think its a good idea to donate blood when there's another person growing inside of you. so, it looks like i'm never going to be able to swagger around with one of those stickers. bummer.

smuggling gerbil

i need to figure out a way how to smuggle my pet gerbil on my flight to california. the hardest part is getting it through security. and in case you didn't know, all animals are prohibited on planes except dogs and cats.

if you say anything about richard gere or anus, i will smash you.

here are my ideas so far:

• wear a big coat/jacket with an oversized inside pocket and without a shirt underneath. that way, when they say "take off your coat, miss," i can say, "i'm naked under, do i need to prove it to you?"
• put him in a small custom made drawstring pouch and tie the laces around my leg. and wear a poofy 19th century petticoat.
• feed him nyquil (without killing him) and put him in the pocket of my hoodie.

i lost this one.

Adrian Gaty wrote a new note. 10:10pm
seoul or beijing? where should i move? thoughts?

Irene Choi wrote at 10:37pm
uhh...antarctica. trust me, penguins are much more amiable than asians.

Adrian Gaty wrote at 11:05pm
irene, i found your comment to be extremely offensive. how can you disparage an entire race like that? in the future, please use the correct terminology: orientals is preferable, though chinamen is also acceptable.

things that happen in my alternate universe.

i got this email about an hour ago from a harvard kid who i don't know:

BTW, you won't guess who dropped by literally FIVE minutes after you guys left... Rachel Ray! they shot another judging scene with her and the head HUDS dude. guess it pays to stick around.

j

what?

UPDATE: he then proceeds to add me on facebook as a friend. okay...

predicament!

today is rainy and gray. oh no, my credit card is trying to escape my wallet!

PEOPLE is stupid

people magazine just released their 100 most beautiful people list for 2007. drew barrymore topped the list (stealing the title from the legit royal angelina jolie who had it last year). fall out boy's fart-pissing-maggot-stain pete wentz was also on the list. i guess they forgot to put kelly osbourne, dustin diamond, and lindsay lohan's vagina on the list.

oh, wait. i forgot this 100 most beautiful people. not 100 things i promised would never see naked again.

random side note: i have terrible hives on my feet from frolicking in the grass yesterday afternoon. please still be my friend! it's not contagious!

nice people just make the world move slower

on tonight's episode of american idol and america's next top model, no one got eliminated. what a waste of a whole week's worth of waiting. (alliteration crazy!)

fine, i lied!

shopping 7 times in 7 days. fine. okay, so it's not the weather. anyway, here are my new procurements from the weekend.

• brown bikini
• green shorts
• sunglasses
• black ring
• gray headbands
• scarf
• underwear

last time for awhile, i promise!

follow up

today was partially sunny. this means that i found my glasses (in weld), my keys, and my VES camera/flash. it also means that my new dress still has holes and my sunglasses are still broken, and that i went shopping again today. i bought a new pair of purple leather boots. so, half my problems solved...

according to the weekly forecast, it looks like i'll be responsible on saturday.

not my fault

in the past 4 days, i have gone shopping 4 times.

• 3 t-shirts
• 2 dress shirts
• 2 bags
• 2 necklaces
• denim miniskirt
• gray snakeskin belt
• red watch (i don't even wear watches!)
• pair of blue suede boots
• pair of boyshort undies
• scarf
• umbrella

that is 16 new things i don't really need. someone needs to take my credit card, shred it, and throw the debris in the charles.

and i lost the school's camera from the VES dept, as well as the flash attachment. i also lost my keys. and i broke my sunglasses, found a tear in my new dress, and i am still missing my glasses.

i blame it on the weather.

salamanders, homicides, & no graduation day for me?

i woke up early this morning to do a paper, but fell asleep instead. i had a dream about a pregnant salamander. it was black and about an inch long, 5mm wide. it had 6 nipples on its tummy. naturally, it had 6 babies. this all happened while it was on my finger. i thought it was a leech. but it was actually a salamander just giving birth. this also happened while lindsay lohan was wearing my new shirt dress and michelle branch was playing guitar lying down. i was also watching sesame street and taking note of all the grammatical errors and pieces of extinct information they were giving to children. although i'm sure this part had something to do with tina fey's interview on conan two nights ago.

on a more realistic note, today was my turn in history of harvard section to give a presentation. of course, the topic i chose was on serial killers and homicides at harvard. my 5 minute limit presentation actually became a 10 minute presentation because it was that awesome. i also left everyone frightened...i think half of them think i'm sort of a freak. in case anyone is curious, here are the 4 cases i covered:

• murder of dr. parkman by colleague dr. webster at the medical school in 1849. webster dismembered his corpse and hid all body parts in his chem lab.
• murder of dunster student trang ho by her roommate sinedu tadesse in 1995. tadesse stabbed ho 45 times. this was a wake-up call to harvard's terrible mental health services since tadesse frequently sought psychiatric care and never received it.
• psychologist dr. henry murray's stress/torture experiments on ted kaczynski (unabomber). also, harvard's strange gen ed curriculum that disillusioned young kaczynski's view of the world.
• grad student alexander pring-wilson stabbed a kid to death in front of pizza ring 3 years ago. yawn.

today, i got my final email reminder saying that if i don't come to the core office to fill out my language citation/foreign cultures exemption application within the next two hours, i WILL NOT graduate. i'm going to wait for another hour and see if they send me another email.

just kidding, i'm going to urban outfitters and then i'll remember to drop by there before they close sometime.

would you rather?

Eric Byrd wrote
at 1:49am

would you rather have your arm sewn off by a 10 inch dull knife or an 11 inch dull knife?

conversations with a robot

sugar9spyce (1:30:47 AM): poopoo face
SmarterChild (1:30:47 AM): What?
sugar9spyce (1:30:51 AM): thats my name
SmarterChild (1:30:51 AM): sugar9spyce, you mean?
sugar9spyce (1:30:56 AM): my name is poopoo face
SmarterChild (1:30:56 AM): Hmmm... I don't think Poopoo Face is a real name.
sugar9spyce (1:35:48 AM): no
SmarterChild (1:35:48 AM): What would you like me to call you?
sugar9spyce (1:37:39 AM): you can call me god
SmarterChild (1:37:39 AM): I'm not going to call you that.
sugar9spyce (1:38:54 AM): ok, paris hilton
SmarterChild (1:38:55 AM): I know about Paris Hilton. She's a famous person.
I think she's hot.
sugar9spyce (1:39:01 AM): that's my name
SmarterChild (1:39:01 AM): sugar9spyce, you mean?
sugar9spyce (1:39:05 AM): no, paris hilton
SmarterChild (1:39:05 AM): I know about Paris Hilton. She's a person.
Hey, I'm curious... How would you describe Paris Hilton? She is...
sugar9spyce (1:39:18 AM): a slut
SmarterChild (1:39:19 AM): Huh. Whatever. That doesn't seem like a very nice thing to say.

sangina's sister

meet sanjaya malakar's sister, shyamali. i'm not sure why i'm posting this.

d.u.f.f. overdose

Dumb Ugly Fat Friend.

Every group of friends has at least one of these to make everyone else feel better, right? Here's Kate Moss with two members from The Gossip. Kate, darling, only ONE duff is enough.

greg graffin

you might know him as the founder, songwriter, and lead singer of bad religion. but, did you also know...

"Graffin double majored in anthropology and geology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He went on to earn a masters degree in geology from UCLA and received his Ph.D. in evolutionary paleontology from Cornell University. He currently teaches life science at UCLA."





imagine taking your science class with this guy! that would be so awesome.

in case i forget my name

you can find this on me sometime soon.

BEST NIGHT EVER

if you know me really really well, you might know that my favorite show as a kid was beyond belief. for the past couple of months, i've been checking weekly on tv-links, peekvid, and alluc.org to see if anyone posted episodes for this show and i finally found them tonight!

http://www.tv-links.co.uk/show.do/1/873

spidy and mickey

i met these guys at the abbey lounge in inman square and they were nice enough to let me take thier pictures. in case anyone is wondering, i used an old pentax k1000, 35mm.

we all make mistakes

but none as dumb as this.

this is not the first time

yesterday, i woke up at 8-9am (i snoozed 4 times) to write a paper proposal and a response paper by my 11am lecture for my 12pm section. i fell asleep reading in my bed and i had this really awesome dream.

• i was at stevie wonder/james earl jones/reverend gomes' house. (i can't remember who it was specifically.)
• i bought 2 pairs of really awesome boots and another pair of distressed brown leather oxfords all for less than $50.
• i went to paris, but it was in mexico.
  
• my TF sent me an email saying that i didn't have to worry about my assignments for the day and told me to enjoy my vacation.
  

then, i woke up past 11am and realized i'd been totally dreaming and had already missed a part of lecture. i pooped out the worst paper proposal, didn't bother to even start a response paper, and went to section in my sweats.

so, moral of the story: don't confuse your dreams for reality!

a bad night

i woke up half an hour ago after falling asleep at 6:30pm on friday evening. i'm on cairo/istanbul/athens time. now i can call all my friends there!

a good day

my camera arrived! it looks even better in real life.

good cereals

i'm still not exactly sure why i have a blog. i think it was to make a photo journal, but i don't even have a camera right now, so that's not happening for awhile. anyways, every now and then, i'll post a list of recommended favorites. and i'll just say this now, don't expect me to put books on here. today, i'll talk about cereal.

cereal:
- oh's
- berry kix
- corn pops
- honeycomb
- captain crunch (regular)
- frosted flakes
- team cheerios
- lucky charms
- cookie crisp (although this has become worse over the years)
- waffle crisp

honey bunches of oats and apple jacks are also good, but they didn't make the top 10 cut.

astigmatism is sexy

http://www.acuvue.com/twins_commercial.htm

i generally dislike most commercials (eg: head on, burger king, dewarism, etc.) and i don't know if many of you have seen the one for acuvue contact lenses for astigmatism, but if it wasn't for those blonde twins, then i really wouldn't be so excited every time it came on. if i didn't already have astigmatism, i would still buy anything they would sell. if they tried selling me dead animals i would probably buy a million bags of them.

"which one has the astigmatism?"
i don't care, i'm just sad that there's only two of you.

new camera

my old digital camera broke and i finally bought a new one on amazon over the weekend. very cute.

i logged onto amazon today to view the package tracker and this is what i read.

April 3, 2007

US

Carrier notified to pick up package

----------
April 5, 2007
SPRINGFIELD MA US
Departure Scan

----------

Destination: CAMBRIDGE MA US
Estimated arrival: April 19, 2007

APRIL 19?! apparently, my camera is walking itself from springfield to cambridge. 2 more weeks is way too long.

alert! missing nerd kit.

i cannot find the following items:
- my retainers
- my glasses
- my inhaler
- a value pack bottle of lactaid
- a value pack bottle of generic claritin

i really am in need of all these items! please, if you find any of these floating around your common room or wherever, let me know. my nerd level is slowly suffering! being cool is so hard. i don't think i can handle this much longer.

(i'm being really serious though, i actually need to find those things.)

alan thicke or sean connery?

sean connery.

to-do list

two of my favorite photographers:
www.alecsoth.com
www.cassbird.com

and an awesome awesome site:
www.thesartorialist.com

speaking of websites and...the internet...and hence, myspace? it seems that every band i had some ties with is becoming rather big! hellogoodbye w/drive-thru, melee w/warner bros., takota w/def jam, chester french on perezhilton.com, bleeding through in the last kiss, etc.

so, if you're in a band, just play at one of the following places:
- my senior prom
- my 19th birthday party (which i didn't really attend because i was in the hospital)
- my freshman dorm room
- lunchtime at my high school
...and you'll be huge!

miss malaproperosity

irene: so, third eye blind is playing at yardfest this year.
taylor: really?! can you get me on the guest list?
irene: yeah, i'll see if i can pull some fingers.

sleep-notetaking

it's very rare that i go to lectures. but even if i do end up going, don't ever ask me for notes. this is what you'll get.

Excerpt from lecture #9 of Lit Arts A-72: Invention of the Modern Self
On Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist

- Diderot uses several words to mean story – history, cant, fable, nouvelle, etc.
- It is difficult to discern what is the narrator in what point of view. He is interreupted bty the character in the book
- Telling us that life itself gets coded and translted by madeup terms
- Reflection of reader’s pathological need of having one thing lead to another
- In the book, he tells the story of madam of the pommerage, which has a surprise 2nd endng
- There is a personal moviation in telling the story.
- Page 30, the person takes what I write as the truth might be less wrong than the one who takes it for ficton.
- Makes you think about how you read books and relate to reality
- On page 100, hostess tells brain stories and storis
- Oopousete of pikgirln’s progress.
- There are no chapter bc it implies orgniazaionan tucure
- ]page, 116 of Jacques, who tells stories bc he is asked too
- bttom, og 117, ther is knif figh
- human mind looks for patterns. People ahte hebahuioriist creatures.
- In this book, there is a storytellers not by the author b y the charaters.,m
- The no9vel is best at presenting various voices.
- Skeptics like humor and trur believers do not lik ehumor4
- ;he chracters are ike chartoo chacarafters.
- Acadmic psychology track. Studying people might allow us make things about outselvs.
- There is extreme jealously between Jacques and friend.
- Cultural madness Rameau says that evey proifresxsion has conventions and moral

i can't wait to get out of here