Sorry for the long wait for the update folks. So many pictures.

Friday the 13th celebrated Olivia’s 25th birthday (again) aka End of Season, lol, and also the going away party for Nick Chaney aka Massive Clearance, as he’s moving back to New Zealand.

Olivia has WAY more amazing photos than me, her with her wicked pro camera and photography skills and all. You can view her photos here.

What a celebration it was! We started off at Hook, the basement bar beside the 711 behind Luxy. Then moved on to Dark + Light put on by A State of Sound at Luxy, featuring Burn Electric (Stefan & Dom) and Genetically Modified Beats (GMB – Eben & Matt), with DJ Hooker (Dom) playing at the end of the night.

Max, looking oh so HUGE mag man:

Marcus’ mismatched Nikes:

Audrey’s bare back, why is this girl single again? Oh right, cuz she’s that hot. Don’t be afraid to talk to her!

Olivia looking fierce in my H&M dress:

She has always been one for masks:

Lesley and I:

Jer double fisting it:

Lilian rockin her Rhianna nails, they are sharp! (Drew in the background)

Abe and Liam:

Stefan and his girlfriend… (what’s her name?? I forget, sorry I am bad with names…someone please tell me!)

Nikki in Rice Society!!

Nick Chaney, oh how we will miss you!!

Carol looking so sleek. Nice hair, girl!

Marika rocking her Rice Society chain! The hacksaw

Brian and Jessica looking fine in glasses. Sexy secretary look is working for ya!

Ben’s cool shirt – had to cut out his head.

Vicki and Lisa:

Amanda with her Rice Society earrings:

Bathroom door at Hook, this is what I felt like waiting for the 4 people to get outta the only stall:

Dom yelling again:

Sandi and Cresencio. Justin said it best about Sandi when he said, “She is so rock n’ roll tonight. Look at her in the spotlight. It’s like Nancy looking for her Sid.”

This was in Hook near the entrance. it reminds me of the movie Big where he gets his wish:

Star Wars figures in the box gets points every time:

Two rad girls who I wish were my friends. Sen Sen is the one on the right.

Jer and Max, I’m gonna miss you guys when you go on vacation!

Me on a cop scooter. Ya, I asked him. He said it was cool. I was laughing so hard:

Moved to Luxy, finally and watched the glow stick/lazer dancers. (Special thanks to Daryl who got me in )

Marcus did not go to Luxy.

Toby was having fun! He wasn’t even listening to Ween, and he was having fun!

Stefan rocking out for Burn Electric on the guitar this time. Nice surprise change to the keyboard. This man is talented in the music department.

Burn Electric:

Dom introducing GMB, Eben pictured here:

I repeat, Marcus did not come to Luxy and he did not buy Justin and I drinks either. Eben & Matt in their awesome outfits:

Timmy! (but said in the South Park kinda way, hehe) Timmay!

GMB:

Jeff, that’s a nice leather jacket. Shop more.

Shelly looking saucy. Really love the spring on the strap.

This girl followed us here from Hook. I think she may have been on her way to Fly, or maybe she was slanging some sponsered alcohol. either way, she was super happy to pose for my picture!

Dom made a mixtape. Around his neck. And now he wants to eat it. Hmmmm….

Jack and Dom:

Abe, you need to keep this tiger on a short leash! Liking that color on Tasha:

Sandi in the washroom looking all Nancy again:

Ran into Helen:

Abe and Johnnie. Abe’s obviously having fun!

Nick and Justin, the last goodbye!

Doesn’t that shirt look like Nick’s, above? DJ Hooker (Dom) rounding out the night. Lookit that chick in that background, total celeb shock – OMG it’s HOOKER!

One of the coolest parts of the night was signing Nick’s Adidas and also the Jenga blocks. I think the blocks were Rachel’s idea. Great memories! Happy Birthday to Ola and Til Next Time, Nick!

My ping-pong sucks, actually. Park Ki-yoel, the admin guy who has adopted me as his American daughter, took one look at my ping-pong moves and sort of hacked a loogie and shook his head.

But my school has the best middle school girls’ team in the nation, so I had a lot to live up to, playing on their ping-pong table and all. I’m gonna stick to badminton and volleyball. I’ll whip y’alls butts when I get home.

Things I find unusual, but I like:

Dog Dyes: People mostly have toy dogs here, and they dye their hair. So every now and then I am surprised to come upon a little white dog scurrying up the street toward me, bright yellow-tipped ears flopping around its head, bright yellow-tipped tail wagging furiously, tongue flapping in the wind. Some time afterward, a middle-aged man will walk along behind it and call it back to him.

Monstrous Males: The boys (middle school-aged boys, mind you) love the color pink. When we made nametags with their English names for Dani’s English class, and they had every color of the rainbow to choose from, boys would often pick pink. Many of them also decorated their nametags with hearts. Now I’ve also seen plenty of them decorated with laser guns and mutilated bodies and, of course, the token “sex” or swear words…but more often than not the pictures are much happier and very colorful.

They also like to pick girls’ names and often insist upon these names even after I explain that these are names for women. Some, like Coco, I have been informed are soccer players’ names. Some, like Andrea, are the kids’ CHURCH names. I would like to speak with the pastor at Andrea’s church. Still others just seem to want to appropriate female names as if for some kind of masculine movement. I would like to note here that I tried to look up a term for a proponent of men’s rights (think male feminist), and this is what I got back:

Yes, as a matter of fact, I did mean monstrous! Thank you, online dictionary.

awkward?: Often, a Korean sansangnim (teacher…get used to it) will sit down next to me at lunch and say “Many!” or “Many many!”. I really want to come back at them with “Are you saying I’m fat?”

which brings me to…

Eating:is cheap.  And I really like the food: lots of seafood and vegetables, and everything that isn’t spicy is salty. Except pickles. If pickled vegetables here are not spicy, then they are sweet–never salty. I never ate tons of pickles, so I don’t mind. And I love the spicy pickled veggies (aka kimchi).

I didn’t think I missed any food until about two weeks ago when someone mentioned guacamole. Naturally, I became very angry with said person for reminding me of guac. I craved it for days until John and his co-teacher found $3 and $4 avocados from Mexico and New Zealand at the Hyundai Department store. We made some, and my appetite for guac has been satiated for the time being.

Otherwise I only miss whole grains…I haven’t found whole grain pasta yet, and whole grain cereal is hard to come by. We found one loaf of what I think was faux wheat bread at one store once. And I haven’t seen brown rice at all. ALL of the rice here is polished. So I miss that. THANK YOU Ceecee for sending me All Bran…eating it for breakfast helps me feel slightly healthier while eating all of the empty carbs at lunch and dinner.

I could also use some poultry. Hopefully I don’t need to remind you that turkeys are a North American bird. Weirdly, they have chicken here, but they rarely cook with it. We’ve pretty much only had chicken in the form of fried chicken wings at “Hofs” (pub-esque bars). Now, this would be good enough, I suppose, except that so far all of the wings have had very little meat on them. They’re more bone and batter and grease than anything else. Kinda gross.

The establishment where we had the worst example of these fried chicken wings? A hof by the name of Kunte Kinte. I kid you not. It shares its name with the central character of Roots (“The Saga of an American Family”), a Muslim American slave who gets his foot chopped off for trying to escape. I find it interesting that in Annapolis there is a memorial to the “factional” Kunte and the novel’s author (K.K.’s supposed descendant) Alex Haley…but I digress. The real point: there is a Korean fried chicken restaurant in my super-homogenous neighborhood called Kunte Kinte. I mean, what am I supposed to think?

I should miss cheese, because it’s not very good here, but I don’t. I think I’m happy to have one less temptation to deal with. I think in about a month or so I’d kill for a “real” pizza, though.

One thing I do NOT like here: booze. The beer all tastes like Bud Heavy or Kingfisher. They have one “Black Beer Stout” that is the only stout I have seen, and it is more tolerable, but very malty and probably sweetened with the aforementioned rice version of high fructose syrup. And the liquor of choice is a rice-based drink called Soju. It tastes like watered-down Smirnoff. Same nasty taste, but half the alcohol content and half the bite. I only drink it when deeply masked by a lot of plum juice. Here of course they go shot for shot, and since I can’t stand vodka, it makes me want to barf to even consider that. I smile and swallow when offered, but I don’t go looking for the stuff.

You can, of course, find my babes Johnnie, Jack, and Jim, at any ex-pat bar in town…for five times the price. I can buy a huge bottle of Korean beer or a bottle of soju the size of an American beer for a little less than one American dollar. Johnnie with a splash of diet coke is more like $5. But can I complain? Like the cheese, I am kind of glad to be rid of the temptation to buy/consume.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love a Black Label for Christmas. Hint, Hint.

If you are feeling giving at any time, please send said gift, or a gift of calling cards so I can call you on my cell phone on the bus ride downtown. Or send whole-grain pasta, rice, or flour. I will send silly t-shirts or notebooks that have terrible English grammar on them in return…for example, right now I am using a notebook with a panda on it that says:

“HOPE EVERYDAY TURNS OUT TO BE A SPECIAL FOR YOU.”

That’s one of the better examples of grammar, actually. The panda is drinking a cola and leaving footprints on the ground, and when you flip the pages of the notebook you see him say “Hey~”, sing two quarter notes, and then fall on his face and spill his cola. Then as you continue to flip, he begins reading a journal and says “I WISH YOU R”, with the R falling on his face. Then he falls asleep and drools on himself. You get the idea.

Hat perc vágás nélküli, folyamatos steadycam shot..mialatt Robert Carlisle (The Full Monty) ledarálja Johnnie Walker történetét:

Released: August 2009
Brand name: JOHNNIE WALKER
Agency: BBH London
Country: United Kingdom
Category: Alcoholic drinks
Tags: Johnnie Walker: Keep Walking
Short film commercials credits:
Agency Producer: Ruben Mercadel
Creative Director: Mick Mahoney
Creative: Justin Moore
Director: Jamie Rafn
Producer: Stephen Plesniak
Director of Photography: George Richmond
Post Production: Glassworks London

In an age of globalization Johnnie has become a citizen of the world. He, just like so many other citizens of the global village out to find a better check or pay at all,  is packing his bags and leaving the Scottish nock which saw his birth. His career plan was long ago changed from the traditional perspective of place, position, seniority and tradition to the modern concept of a boundary less career. Johnnie is no longer a citizen of a particular place but a man of the world, free to look up the highest bidder, a nomad in the caravan of riches together with rock stars, unemployed, refugees, footballers and international CEO’s. “You move ore you are dead” says Johnnie who walks his talk. If you thought that his walking stick was a mere question of rhetoric’s you were mistaken, not wrong but definitely mistaken… Some one made Johnnie an offer he could not resist.

A clan of spirited kilts will find rest with the Gentleman gone.

Spiritus fugit

Yet another case that I have covered turns out to be from Obama’s pick for Supreme Court Justice…

Remember the girl who couldn’t run in her school’s student government because she called a teacher a “douche bag?”

If you don’t, click here.

Well, apparently, she sided against the blogger…

I’m not liking this…It’s beginning to scare me…

This is just the next thing in a list of reasons she isn’t fit for the position…

She’s a member of La Raza…

She promises Empathy…

Read

You guessed it…La Raza…

Any group that calls themselves “The Race” scares me…

That adds more weight to her statement:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

In case you don’t know what La Raza is, it is a group that advocates driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, amnesty for them too, and the seperation of several southwestern states from the Union…

This is on top of her yearbook quote…

And her promises to not judge blindly…

Read

A quote from none other than Norman Thomas…The Great American Socialist leader…

The quote is:

“I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won.”

Thomas also said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Now, I’m not saying that Sonia Sotomayor is a socialist…but do you really want someone who obviously admires a Socialist leader on the Supreme Court?

Woman… CHECK
Minority… CHECK
Emotion Chip… CHECK

That’s right kids, not only do you not need to have even a working understanding of how a constitution works (Unlike the Supreme Court in California), you need to have “Empathy” to sit on the Supreme Court– like Barack Obama’s recent nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Mrs. Sotomayor, in addition to having a name with sweet alliteration, said she hopes “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”. Great…

DEVELOPING…

Read– NY Times

UPDATE from Mr. Harrington:

Now, If I may be so bold…

Justice is blind, one must not use “empathy” while administering this kind of justice.  Justice is blind, and no one should take into account any “life experiences” or “empathy” in order to administer justice.

Folks, she is not fit to be a Supreme Court Judge, based solely on her “empathy” standard.

Here is the Oath of Office administered to Supreme Court Justices:

“I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

“Without respect to persons…I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me…”

Impartiality…It’s important.  “She’s not fit, she must quit.” –To paraphrase the great American defense attorney Johnnie Cochran…

You should call up your Senators and Representatives and let those on the Judicial Committee know that Justice is Blind.

UPDATE: May 27, 2009: From Mr. Harrington:

Apparently, The Honorable (heh) Justice Sotomayor is connected to the Firefighter advancement test case…

Who knew?

Now Newt Gingrich’s quote from today makes much more sense…

From Twitter: @newtgingrich: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

A few of the family photos, brightened up just a little.

I haven’t done all that well at getting all the pics added to this blog, but at least I finally managed to make them accessible.

Aunt Dot’s Old Family Photos This one has the whole pages scanned in.

Separated Photos And this one has quite a few of those as separate photos

Vad gör Johnnie & Mattias i Nynäshamn? Vad gör Cayenne, byråjycken Rocky och FF ute på Enebybanan? FF har spanat och smygplåtat… Tack vare huvudpersonen är det möjligt för Nynäshamn att ta plats på Sverigekartan. Allt kommer visas i en TV nära dig. Men du får hålla dig till tåls några veckor.

Minicrossar, fyrhjulingar,  Johnnie, Mattias och galet mycket skumgummi. Hmm, saker händer ute på Sweetspot. Cayenne och Fröken Friberg var på plats och spanade. Resultatet ser ni snart i TV-rutan.

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Another extraordinary wedding for the Rocha family this weekend… Mr. and Mrs. John Azevedo Jr.  This one has been a long time coming.  Nancy has been a part of our Borba Family celebrations for many years, but now she is officially a part of the family.  My words (and photos for that matter) cannot describe how beautiful this wedding was.  All in black and ivory with elegance in every detail.  Of course it’s easy to enjoy such a celebration when you are surrounded by wonder family and honoring a couple you adore.  I wish them many years of blessings and happiness.

so the juice finally got convicted of something. i blame cochran’s death- and the fact oj committed armed robbery, among other things. ugh. idiot.

everyone seems hung up on the fact that the jury deliberated for thirteen hours and that oj was convicted on october 3, thirteen years after being found not guilty. and here’s my reply to that: in 1973, a running back was the first player to surpass 2000 yards in a single season (by three yards) and went on to be voted the league’s MVP– all while wearing the number 32 WHICH IS THE NUMBER 23 BACKWARDS.

my sarcasm probably isn’t clear via blog. but i’m making fun of you.

anyways, his lawyers want a re-trial, something about the jury avenging the verdict in 1995 that acquitted him of murder. blah blah blah

i mean, it’s not like it’s tom robinson in maycomb, alabama (‘to kill a mockingbird’ by harper lee. duh). oj is not someone we would associate with phrases like “good-willed,” “great actor,” and “completely innocent.” he cheated death (jail) by the skin of his teeth (the incredible shrinking italian leather gloves) and what white person would not love to see him receive a disproportionately cruel sentence that oh, i don’t know, sends him to the chair. sorry- i think my conservative is showing.

anywho, i think he’s going to jail AND i’ll even bet that he gets killed. and kardashian and cochran aren’t here to help him. inmates, start sharpening your toothbrushes.

“I am a black man.  I am the great-grandson of slaves, the grandson of a sharecropper, the son of a hardworking businessman.  I am at least a fourth-generation American: This is my heritage and my country and I am so very proud of it.

I believe in the goodness of this nation even when I have been so often exposed to the worst part of it.

I believe completely in the legal system as it was designed to function by the Founding Fathers, although I know from my experience that too often it doesn’t work that way.

Many of my battles in American courtrooms have been a single attempt to extend the benefits of that system to those people who for so long have been excluded.”

Johnnie Cochran (1937-2005)