cali damage

yeah, especially when there are so many single guys around that area.  They obviously work out a lot and dress well. . .You’d think they’d of found a nice lady already.

 if there’s one thing i hate more than ‘finals are hard plus i was late to work because my cat got sick,omg my crazy life!’  blogs, it’s deep and philosophical blogs like this one:

 i definitely know the feeling of… the greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment.but that’s life for you and everything happens for a reason.  and of course initial reactions may include frustration, bitterness, sadness, confusion, and disbelief– all of which are indications for you to put forth your time and energy into something that will directly reflect the effort. life is just not fair.  thats why you may cry yourself a river, build a bridge, then get over it or simply just continue to let the world go ’round.  things ideally works itself out.  and if not, you’re way better than the situation at hand so move on, move up, move ahead.
ok.   I’m not exerpting this from a larger story. That is the entire entry,  apropos of nothing. What strikes me the most is, despite being sincere and autobiographical, it manages to be more impersonal than an IRS brochure.What did this person even SAY?  It’s like, “Hey, great!  you totally used words!  That’s excellent how you put, like, adjectives and nouns together to form a sentance there!  Good job!”  Moreover, this is a UC BERKELEY student writing this, apparently.  As in, someone who must have gotten 1400 on their SAT tests.  So why would they write something so impersonal?

This is a classic problem:  people want to have their name and their picture all over their blogs. because then they can be, HEY LOOK AT ME!  I AM ON THE INTERNET WITH MY PEEPZ HOLLA WOO.  But the flip side to putting your big ego out there is, you can’t say anything bad about your family, because they might read it. ditto for your boyfriend or your boss.  So basically you can’t write anything interesting at all, and you wind up typing 1400-SAT score things like ‘life is just not fair.’  What happened to this person to make her sad?  It might be a very interesting story.  Maybe she got kidnapped by pirates.  Or got in a knife fight with Bo Diddley.  Or lost an air-guitar contest to a legless Eskimo playing air-ukelele.  But because she has her dumb pictures all over her page, she can’t afford to actually, like, tell a story, and instead all we get to read is that “Things ideally works itself out.” (sic) (take that, SATs!).

If it was just one sorority girl being dumb, that would not be cause for alarm or even surprise.  but there are like 4 trillion blogs with this problem, so I have to step in and solve it. 

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST DO A BLOG, DON’T PUT YOUR NAME ON IT.  DON’T PUT YOUR DUMB SMILEY PICTURE EVEN IF IT’S ‘SUPER HOT SEXXXY WHOO!’ BE MYSTERIOUS.  USE ACTUAL IDEAS TO GET YOURSELF NOTICED.  if you keep your identity a secret, you can write some truly exciting and real stuff, like a spy behind enemy lines.  You can expose your boss, the dirty secrets of your workplace,  the embarassing shortcomings of your ethnic group, the hidden initiations of your fraternity, all your family’s dirty laundry, your lover’s treacherous ways! In other words, you can actually write stuff worth reading about. Yes, you’ll have to change names of real people/companies, and maybe details about them.  Yes, you’ll have to make up an imaginary city for all this to take place in.  That’s all part of the fun.

You might think this is negative.  And it is. But for a reason:  If I want to find out why Phi Delta Gamma IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME of a fraternity, i can find that information on their official site. if I want to see wny Dow Chemical is TOTALLY FREAKIN’ AWESOME and loves the environment, that info is also readily available.  But if i want to read the  DIRTY LAUNDRY(both personal and institutional) I can’t find it anywhere, even though it is 1000 times as fun AND real!  According to some douchebag at Wired magazine, Blogs are supposed to enable us to, through the Miracle Of Technology, expand our horizons and learn about new cultures or points of view.  And yet here is what we end up with:  “life is hard.”  “LuV MaH PeEpZ whaZZUPP~!”  Thanks a lot, you douche.  Have fun at burning man.  To the lame bloggers: having your friends’ pictures all over your blog is a sure-fire way to get compliments even if you suck, But it is only the whistle-blowers and shit-disturbers that can deliver the promise of blogs, and  let us know what REALLY goes on in other walks of life!

Now, what I am suggesting goes against human vanity so it’ll probably neverh appen. But just in case, though, let me say what i want to read when i read your blog:

1) stuff other people think is super-important but you think is bullshit, and vice-versa

2) things you feel ashamed of / times when you knowingly did something phoney / times when you feel like a total fraud
3) lies you told
4) revenge you got or want to get
5) actual experiences, not pithy sayings
6) people you feel jealous of and why
7) secret stuff that people who are not in your race/social class/sex/job would not ordinairly know about.
8) weird stories about that crazy uncle/ ex-roommate / cat lady next door
9) pet peeves, the randomer the better
10)  weird notions that your parents put in your head, that maybe you don’t agree with them but you catch yourself doing it anyway.
11) social rules you think are bullshit.
12) embarassing habits/obsessions. things you do excessively when you are sad.
13) critiques of the media/your school/social group, based not on what they portray but based on WHAT THEY LEAVE OUT (i.e. what is NOT DISCUSSED that should be).

14) get all anthropological on your mileu (i.e.  list the unwritten rules of your clique/religion/workplace, and the social pecking order) 

Whether you are a scientist working on quarks, or a Klansman with a fetish for teddy ruxpin, or a college girl who is wrestling with self-determination-vs.-sluttiness issues. . . this 14-point secret-spy-style blog program is garunteed to produce a fun/sad/real blog. If you know any blogs like this, leave a comment and let me know!  If you know anyone with a crap blog, email THEM a link to this, so that they can get pissed off and write me hate mail.

p.s.in case you’re curious, here are two blogs that actually do this.  STEREOLABRAT and BIGDEADPLACE. 

I realized what Myspace is – high school yearbook signatures.  Terrabytes of them.  Used to be that you only had to endure that circle-jerk of shallowness once a year. (Dood, remember that party, ur so kewl have a wicked rad summer don’t ever change xoxo).  Now, thanks to myspace, we can do that all year round!  Holla!

See, this is what happens when you get people who are incapable of any kind of introspection and let them make a page detailing their innermost thoughts.   Plus most of the writing is the result of mtv-reality-shows, where a whole generation thinks if they ACT all famous and have ‘an attitude’ then they will become famous.  You could say I am over 20 so I am supposed to hate myspace. Hell no—it’s not like there is a rule that teenagers HAVE to act like illiterate narcissists.  The fact is, my position on youth culture has not changed with age at all.  I hated teenagers since I WAS one.  Now I think about it, I hate them way LESS than I did back then.  With one exception – nerds. Fuck nerds. Bunch of sell-outs.

Let me explain: 

The irony of  all this myspace-and-MSM-etc is,  that  it’s  the smartest 1% of the population – nerds – who are working like 60-hour weeks programming the most advanced experimental code, to enable the dumbest 50% to ‘holla’ at each other and ‘hit me back’ . . . exactly the same kind of people that would never even look at those nerds in real life.

That’s so funny I could LOL!
 
That’s fucking great, “Amazing Amber124”— some guy worked an 80 hour week coding, so that we could all know that  “I  *heart*U2!”  . . .AND backup copies of your  statements are in bomb-proof data centers in 4 states! Because that’s how much we *heart* keeping your wisdom for future generations!

.
Hey K3LLY— don’t you feel important? Some dudes and ladies went to grad school for 5 years to learn PLSQL and PYTHON coding, just so you can let us know that   “MY LIL BRO IS THE SHIETttTTTTT”. 
.

Oh, plus  QTPRINCEzZ’s interests are :
movies. music, fashion, tennis, hot guys, life…anything…i love talkng to ppl..so much fun!!! eeek..hehe beach, snowboarding, shooting stars =), adventures, shopping, food, eating out, sports, friends, deep conversations, dressing up formally, hanging out, hanging out with the v-club!!! woop woop.  See, before the internet, I would have had to live without that information.  I would have been scratching my head, “What kind of guys does qtprincezz like?  Lame ones? Or hot?”  Or maybe losing sleep over the question, “Where can I find someone  else who likes both life AND food?  Am I the only one??”

Anyway, I know I can’t singlehandedly stop this whole ‘social network’ industry, I had to at least try to make it less dumb.  So here is a myspace page I made.   I encourage other people to make pages for stuff -  like the Battle of Hastings, and inanimate carbon rod,  coelacanth twins, or  a small flake of eczema.  Together they could make a more interesting network.

and this time she is dating cannibal corpse??

. . . talk about your gluttons for punishment.

is cannibal corpse really in love? let’s find out!

(reading from left to right)

“cannibal corpse ringtones” NOT SURE

“stalking your every move?” MAYBE

“her crotch is bleeding?” YES!

I can’t even figure out what is the weirdest thing about this.

plus, how likely is someone who is listening to “fucked with a knife” going to be to donate to disaster relief charity?   I like to think 100%, but the actual figure could be as low as 90%.

and this is NOT EVEN THE WEIRDEST THING.

the weirdest thing is below:

Someone wrote a computer program, using the latest technology, which  automatically tells me Cannibal Corpse Lyrics  fans may be interested in Aqua.

Lynyrd Skynyrd?  Bush???????

 OK, that part is pretty obvious.

but Aqua?  are you, like me, imagining a Death Metal cover version of I’M A BARBIE GIRL???

“I’m a barbie girl / in a barbie world/ no escape from your fate / you can comb my hair / undress me everywhere/ my knife deep inside /  life is fantastic”

 So, CC fans like aqua but, according to that same site’s Aqua page, Aqua fans do NOT like Cannibal Corpse.  Don’t blame me, man, i am just the messenger. 

last weekend was the wonderfully-named APE convetion; the Alternative Press Expo.

I am always surprised when I go there because . ..  even though  it is a comic book thingy, I can’t see   Mr. shaved-on-sides-with-pony-tail-and-trench-coat-and-pants-bloused-into-unlaced-combat-boots and his friend Mr. Obese-with-giant-4-color-shirt-and-huge-floppy-shorts-and-goatee. Instead, everyone looks like they are in an Indie band,  the gender ratio is almost 50/50, and everyone is friendly!

Fashion-wise, most of the gothic people have stopped coming, and have been replaced by a a wave of wacky thrift-store girls with tight wool sweaters,  flood pants, and purple stockings.  I don’t understand why this is, but I stand behind it 100%, and if anyone knows who is responsible for this change, please ask them if they can package the phenomenon, perhaps in ray-gun form. 

Anyway, here is my favorite new comics. they are all available online for free, but if you like them, you should buy the print version: 

action philosophers! world’s greatest thinkers explained to the layman in superhero format.
crying macho man! - it has jokes!
matt howarth was not at APE but damn, he has a webpage. His M.O. is to have alien bounty hunters attack real rock stars like Residents or Hawkwind. 
carl is the awesome! I really can’t explain this.
Hellen Jo’s Page-  she does  . … perhaps I should just give up even trying to summarize these.
Jason Thompson’s page  - incredibly detailed, obsessive renditions of HP Lovecraft stories, plus romance.

Derek Kirk Kim! – this guy wins awards. Everything from misanthropic rants, to bittersweet romance, with pictures.

same hat!
translations of obscure Japanese gag and horror manga.

http://www.girlsandcorpses.com/ - I have been assured that this is not photoshop.  Still don’t understand how they keep the corpses from falling apart, though. Those girls are pretty vigorous.

Dirk’s Tokyo Comic> - this German Gentleman’s tokyo blog is in comic book form! Not only that, but if you have a stunt you want him to do, email him, and he’ll go out in public and do it, and then write a comic about it!

Permanent links to these comics are on the right side of the screen. 

Since I am no longer in Tizzokyo, i decided to get a new webpage. from now on, all my new posts - japanese and otherwise - are going to be on cali damage! I will be keeping my old pages online as an archive. the new page will be mostly about music, rants, and ‘here is a strange thing i did today’ kind of bullshit. 

I tried to fix most of the old site’s problems when i configured the new site — It’s got an easy-to-search archive, RSS, easy-to-read colors, and is generally a fucking sellout.  On the other hand, I collected all the best links from TOKYO DAMAGE REPORT, and put them in one place. .  . so even if ‘My Life Is So Fucking Interesting’ - type blogs are not your thing, you can still find lots of links to Tokyo artists, Japanese-language tools, and tour guides at CALI DAMAGE. 

best of all, I will actually be updating it all the fucking time!!

Please tell your friend. Friends, if you have them. 

send them a link to http://www.hellodamage.com/

now, let’s try to pick up where the last page left off. . . . .