Live fast, die pretty

Smarter than VNExpress...

To further my adventure into journalism, I’ve set up a designated email address at smarter.than.vnexpress@gmail.com for anyone who want to ask my opinions on anything. And inspired by a recent conversation with a slightly annoying reader whose favorite method of dealing with boredom at work is to start a fight with me, I will be start addressing my readers from a third person point of view in this column as the S.T.V

Since it has been more than a week when this question was asked in VnExpress, but none has cared to join the party, I am going to make an unsolicited attempt at the case

Có nên yêu con trai của tình cũ?

Dù rất muốn đến bên người con trai ấy, nhưng tôi làm sao dám khi mà trước đây tôi từng yêu bố của Sinh. Tuy giữa tôi và người xưa chưa từng có chuyện gì xảy ra, nhưng dẫu sao điều đó cũng làm cho tôi lo sợ. (Giang)

From: Giang
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 1:48 AM

(link………)

Dear Giang,

The S.T.V doesn’t think that there is anything wrong with the Old having a go with the Young at all. There are enough stories these days. Just look at Hollywood, and the general accepted view is that if everyone is having fun, then why not? Although the thing about age difference will eventually crawl up and get in the way. Your taste in music probably isn’t his, or imagine what it would be like when you are 60. That said, the earlier point still rings true. If everyone is having fun, why stop? There is, the S.T.V must admit, a higher chance than normal that your relationship will go south and you will get your heart broken, but that’s not a reason to give it all up…In the end, broken hearts are still better than dead ones (the S.T.V realizes this is dark, even for him)

Another point about your situation is about his father. Let discuss. The S.T.V, and you too, can say for certain that there are people who will find it abhorrence and somewhat unorthodox, including your ex (yeah he is dead but as he looks from above). Also, to your Teacher, the idea of his father “going” to where he is going can be creepy. But what the hell, that’s his problem. Father and son talk.

Anyway, relationships have plenty of landmines. If you avoid them all, you will miss out on great times. My final suggestion is go for it until it gets all dramatic and becomes Jerry Springer materials, then you can write back the S.T.V, I promised another letter on getting over the Yoga Teacher.

Cheers,

The S.T.V

P/S: The S.T.V welcome anyone to translate this letter and send it to VnExpress without asking his permission

Moment of weakness...:)

What came first, the music or the misery?
People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos,
that some sort of culture of violence will take them over.
Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands,
literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss.
Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable?
Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? (High Fidelity – 2000)

I am crawling over broken glass in the dark again. Recollection is often self-fashioning. Some of its relexive, designed to bury truths that can not be swallowed, but other memories are just redemption of myths. Personal narrative is not simply openning up a vein and letting the blood flow toward anyone willing to stare. The historical self is created to keep dissonance at bay and render the subject palatable in the present.

A person is told as much as he needs to know, including himself. Dostoevsky claimed that memory, even, is fungible and often leaves out unspeakabe truths, and “man is bound to lie about himself”. We tell ourselves that we lie to protect others, but the self usually comes out looking pretty damn good in the process. Is it true that people remember what they can live with more often than how they lived?

 

 

Given the passage of years and my chemical resume, I’ve came to a conclusion that chemical defines a vast landscape of intimate relationships in the world. I guess too much of a bad thing can actually be a good things when you are “pharmaceutical” autodidact.

Hope floats, sometimes, and sadly, in a canoe. Funny how the above songs are sang by female singers.

-k

If you love the song, I put it here.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1onr0iminhz

http://www.mediafire.com/?ndzdmwem2c2

Enjoy it with me.

 

What's wrong with men

I hope everyone enjoyed the Halloween

Last night, I nearly ended up staying up all night where a stream of creativity washed all over me in the middle of the night. I was full of a strange spirit so I had to furiously get it all down. I’ve been working on a project that requires some black magic being applied to a complex mathematical equation and I got very close to a solution until about 6am when exhaustion finally knocked me over. I went to bed and slept for a few hours before going to play a round of golf in the afternoon with two friends.

There is something going on with my fingers. Recently, I keep getting tiny cuts on the end of my index finger of my right hand. Just that one, all others are fine. The cuts aren’t deep enough to give me pain, but it’s weird. I am always careful with my hands. I don’t do labor intensive work, yet I am coming into contact with something that’s doing me harm in a very uncomfortable manner. Perhaps, I am being targeted by the world’s smallest and least skilled assassin. Random injuries with mythical causes bother me always. My jaws hurt a little now, and I have no idea when it started. I haven’t been slapped lately, although I probably deserved it, at least a few times in recent history.

This news is making it round on the web fast.

Lady Gaga stepped onto the red carpet on Monday night sporting a widow-esque black veil, and minutes later, celebrity photographer A.J. Sokalner was dead. Sokalner was working the red carpet at the ACE Awards that the 'Poker Face' singer was attending in New York City when he collapsed just minutes after Gaga took to the carpet. He was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital shortly after, and the owner of ACE Pictures, who Sokalner worked for, says emergency workers said he had suffered a heart attack

I still don’t know what to feel from this. I can’t imagine how you would explain this to a family. “I am terribly sorry to tell you this. We want you to know that your son died from photographing this woman [show the picture of Gaga]”. Doesn’t anyone tired of her yet? Isn’t clear she is a joke, and a machine fabricated by record company to indulge the gay market. A dude fell off a ladder and died today because of her. Seriously, how more poisonous this woman can be. I am sure this wasn’t on the dude top 10 list of way to die. I don’t like asking, and I don’t ask for much when I do, but I really hope that my death isn’t related to Lady Gaga in anyway. I’d prefer my friends and loved ones find me death naked with gay porn on the TV instead of having them playing ‘poker face’ in their head when they think of me.

The stock is coming back at a roar. I lost half of my gain in the last two weeks, which upset me a little. Let hope this move will last a little longer.

The following paragraphs are rated M, for mature audiences

I can’t remember how I got this link, but it ended up in my blog-materials collection. Read before continue. Are you familiar with the context? Ok

Th?t v?ng quá… chua d?y 2p dã out… r?i nó ng? khò khò… b? m?c mình n?m dó…

probably, the fastest conversation starter among strange women who just meet the first time is about what’s wrong with men. Among many deficiencies, about 99% women find men pathetically inadequate in two major areas. One is housework, another is orgasm.

A common complaint between women is that men often “fast”. The reason is because our biological wiring is designed to ensure survival of our race by giving guys the ability to achieve orgasms instantaneously with pretty much any kind of stimulus. This ability is very important, or was very important millions year ago when our great ancestors lived in hostile environments. Back then, we must understand that a guy could not afford to engage in a lot of time-wasting sentimental foreplay such as kissing, hugging dinner, diamond,..etc. A man had to immediately achieve orgasm with the female so that he would be ready to fight off dinosaurs, or hunt elephants or take a nap.

Unfortunately, millions of year do change things a little. Nowadays, the ability to have quick orgasm and then fall asleep is no longer as prized as it once was, especially among women. When a modern woman describes her ideal man, “being able to achieve quick orgasm” is pretty far down the list, right before ‘being poor’. Thus, we have a fundamental disparity between men and women. This disparity causes a lot of unhappiness, because when a man and a woman are trying to have sex, he will often climax before she is ready. Sometimes, he will climax before she is in the room. This explains why divorce rate is so high.

Well, naturally, guys get all the blame. You’d think that just once, a leading public figure, preferably, Linsday Lohan, would get up stage and tell all women “hey gals, let try to have faster orgasms so that everybody will have time to grow the economy and get us out of this recession”. But no. And as it is often the case, the responsibility for fixing problems is placed entirely on the shoulders of guys. Over the years (by which I meant millions of year), guys have developed a variety of techniques for delaying orgasm. One of them being very physical. The most effective physical technique, one that has been honed to perfection is when they guy, just as he is close, bangs his head violently into an iron bed. Other physical technique has also been developed. Of course, physical techniques are not practical in every situation. I let you reason this out yourself. That’s why guys also had approached the mater from another angle, which is mental technique.

The primary one is mathematical, which is when a guy tries to distract himself during sex by solving math problems . This techniques is the reason why, over the year, most of our breakthrough in sciences have been made by guys. It has nothing to do with guys being naturally better at math, it has to do with a lot of guys frantically trying to think about math during sex. You don’t believe Einstein was sitting under an apple when he discover the theory of relativity, do you

My point so far is that a lot of guys are making tremendous and sometimes painful effort to be more effective at satisfying their mates, and yet they are still, according to generally accepted standards, considered to be inadequate. And you know why, because woman invented standards. End of part one. To be continued soon.  

I have a ridiculous question. If you could go back in time and either shot Hitler, or cut both his legs and arms, what would you do?

-k

Torture in print..

For those who are most eager to sample my nutrition of wisdom and sarcasm the minute they have been published. I am sorry there is none today. It is raining outside my windows, and the sky is gloomy.

I bought some gold a few days ago after much deliberation. Having missed the jump, I am still curious to see how high it will go. So far, my trade is marginally profitable. I didn’t buy a lot, but enough to get me back into the market. I haven’t been active in trading recently. My attention has been focused almost exclusively on the stock market at home where my stocks are making me smile. I need to get my trading chops back, and need to take the baby steps.

I have been having some vivid dreams. Dreams that make me afraid to sleep. Dreams that I remember in full, and the consumer at least 20% of my thoughts. The other night, I dreamt that the modern world had fallen apart and we’d revered to an agrarian society. There was me and a group of people. We got together into a community. When I say ‘I’, I mean the character whose perspective I was watching things from. Not ‘me’ as the word is meant. There was a prince from far away came over and stayed around to observe how we’d built everything back up. After a while, another guy showed up who was wandering around to conquer villages and basically being a dick. In my dream world, there is no wars, per se. Instead, there is a ritualized team-sport sort of thing where only a group of people represented their community as a whole in armed combat. Whoever won was the new leader. So the bad guy was explaining what he was going to do to our people once he beated our team and took over, detailing his general dickyness. I got worked up and told him that I would kill him and stick his head on the ground Vladd III the Implater style. It was pretty entertaining and intense experience.

I finished reading Dan Brown’s new book, ‘The Lost Symbol’ a couple weeks ago, two or three days after I mentioned the book the first time here. I anticipated it, I bought it, I eagerly opened it. The first 50 pages were tolerable, after that, in all, it was torture in print form. When I bought the book the day it came out, I had done so because I read all of Dan Brown works and enjoyed the writing, embedded stories as well as character development. I know that Dan Brown is not a literary genius, but I read conspiracy thrillers to be entertained and as we all know, Dan Brown is good at this. But when his new much-anticipated creation hit my hands and I began to read, I was devastated. I found myself scanning over the boring detailed paragraph after paragraph to get the plot and in the end, the PLOT was a total disappointment. I know that no matter what, if you enjoyed DVC and A&D, you will feel compelled to read this book out of tribute or duty to Dan Brown, so consider you have been warned. The Dan Brown that wrote DVC is gone, he ran out of stories to tell. In the end, your reaction will not be “wow, what a good book”, it will be “phew, finally it’s over”.

I looked at the pageview counter today and it went over 25000 (full disclosure: with repetition). It is a shame that I bored 25000 people to death…

Friends, hope you are well. Are you? I am not, but what’s new?

-k

Biggest Lies in the World

This funny email came in this morning and I had to pass it along. A few are dull, but some really made me crack.

The Biggest Lies in the World.

The check’s in the mail.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.
I thought I already gave you that money I owed you.
I promise I’ll pay you back next Friday.
I’ve never been this drunk before.
I’ll never get this drunk again.
I’ve checked this Email out, and it’s really not a hoax.
Now we’re even.
I’m fine.
We found and fixed the last bug!
The software will ship on schedule.
It was as simple as that.
It’s all your fault!
I love you
You don’t need to use a condom; I’m on the Pill.
I don’t need to use a condom; I’ve had a vasectomy and tested negative for STDs.
A representative of the government says…
We’ll have the repairs on your car done by noon.
Operator, my calling card number is…
You look like you haven’t aged a day.
No, I don’t think that outfit makes you look fat.
This is what it will cost to repair your car.
If elected, I promise…
You’re going to love working here.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Nine out of ten people surveyed said…
Please hold, and a customer service representative will be with you shortly.
I’ll only take a minute of your time.
Our cellular phones will give you more freedom…
100% compatible with your existing equipment.
!!Make Money Fast!!
Lose all the weight you want!
I’m being totally unbiased.
I promise I’ll pull out in time.
With all due respect…
For your convenience…
In order to serve you better…
I’m planning to get a divorce so I can marry you.
I’ll call you.
I never meant to mislead you.
My wife (husband) is okay with me seeing other people; s/he just doesn’t want to know about it.
I’m not leaving you for him/her; I just need some space to think things through.
This will only hurt a little.
This will hurt me more than it does you.
I’m doing this for your own good.
It’s only for a little while…
I didn’t mean any harm.
Oh well, no harm done…
It was an accident.
I didn’t do it.
I don’t know who did it.
We are experiencing a peak level of call volume…
Free Adult XXX Web Site!!!
No obligation!
You may already be a winner!
This product was made in an environmentally friendly manner.
I know it’s none of my business…
I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but…
This should be easy.
To speak to a representative, press “9&Prime.
It’s nothing personal.
This isn’t partisan politics; it’s for the good of the country.
I’m not addicted; I can quit smoking any time I want.
New and Improved!
Trust me.
That was special.

-k

What happened last week..

I was taken aback last week when I woke up and realized after only one night the world has turned onto an unprecedented course.  

• PBO got the Nobel Peace Prize.
• NASA bombed the moon.
• The PETA made another leap in their effort to protect animals with a protest that features topless chicks bodypainted like lizards.

It took me until today to process all that.

There were a time, a better time, when dykes were actually dykes. There weren’t any of those lipstick lesbians (that’s you, Kate Perry), or girls who were just trying to fit into the whole bisexual trend. If you were a lesbian, you were angry, you hated men, and anything men, you despited pollution and the greenhouse effect, you loved animals and you did everything you could to protect them, like tying yourself to a tree, protesting outside office building and KFC, and lastly joining organizations like PETA where you’d get naked and show off your ugly lesbian body (which also is the reason you became lesbian in the first place because no man wants you), making the whole thing a real dramatic scene that people had no choice but to remember because it was so traumatic.

The bright side is that PETA is recruiting naked chicks, and naked chicks are always worth looking at, even when they are not so good looking, since it’s better than looking at non-naked chicks. And to be fair, I think if you can convince any girl, no matter how ugly she looks, that a cause is worth stripping naked for, you’ve done something right. Seriously.

Next, PBO said to the world that he was surprised that he won the Nobel Peace Prize, which in my humble opinion makes him the only person on earth who was surprised that he won the prize.

You scream that he didn’t do anything? But…but.. he is a really nice guy. And he gives great speeches. And when he is trying to make a point, he has this fantastic faraway gaze and extremely compelling hand gestures…..

At this point, the prize is not meant to award achievement. Back then, the Nobel Prize used to mean something (well, not entirely. Hitler was nominated. But it still meaned something. OK ?) when people won it many years after tremendous accomplishments. Now it seems you get it for not being like the guy before you.

Really I think it’s great that the Nobel committee, by the way made up of 5 guys appointed by the Norwegian parliament which is about as left-wing as you can get (hence Al Gore), is awarding prizes for trying a little bit for a little while. Sort of like our college education in Vietnam, where kids get diplomas for sitting in a room and learning nothing for 4 - 5 years. This brings hopes to out everyone that he doesn’t need to accomplish anything in life, but if he at least tries a little for 8 months, he can achieve his dream of taking down an increasingly watered-down prize.

Thank you, the Nobel Committee, you give hope to the mediocre.

Mulling over NASA’s bombing of our Moon leads me to think of two guys in Texas. An engineer, Clifford, and a dentist Quincy. One night, while they were drinking, the got to talk about war and medieval weapons – as we do when we open up and share our most inner feeling. Specifically, they talked about trebuchets, which are like catapults, but more powerful. Medieval armies used them to hurl large/heavy objects at enemy’s cities. Sometimes, the objects are dead horses. As you can imagine, this could be a real morale-breaker.

The two decided that they needed to build a trebuchet. And not just any, play ground trebuchet, they want to build the biggest trebuchet in the history of the world. In fact, they want to build a trebuchet that can hurl a truck two hundred yards (182m) – the size of a soccer field is about 110m. This wasn't drunken talks, they were serious. They traveled to England to consult a leading trebuchet expert (yes, there is such expert in our time). They built and tested extensively with small prototypes, which can hurl bowling balls. Quincy even purchased an eighty acre property near his house, just so the truck will have a place to land.

Do you see now? Men, no matter how old they get, like to hurl stuff and shoot stuffs, go fast, blow stuffs up and knock stuff down. This is why we have space program. No matter what NASA would have us believe, the goal of space program is neither to benefit our race, nor to advance the frontier of human knowledge. We don’t need to leave Earth to get to a hostile, deadly environment. We already have the Middle East. No, the purpose of space program is to give guys at NASA an excuse to build a whole lot of technical stuff and giant rockets that go so fast and loud and hurl large object great distances. I believe if the NASA people thought the taxpayers would let them get away, they’d probably try to hit the Moon with a truck too.

Ordering pizza at midnight always sounds like a great idea. Until it is 1am and the only reason you are still awake is because you are waiting for that stupid pizza.

Hello friends, how are you?

-k

p/s: more about the trebuchet here.

Back from my hiatus..

“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”, the Nobel Committee gave the peace prize to PBO.

Meanwhile, in a coffee shop, your Dear Correspondent is typing a blog post, drinking his morning cup of coffee, staring out of the windows. Let’s see what he has to say.

I’ back from my unannounced hiatus. There were an errand that required my immediate attention and I had to be out of touch with the Internet for a week. Only time will tell, I suppose, but I have reason to believe that, I am back, at least for another couple months until my departure to the motherland. This seems like the same coffee shop, same table by the window, the text editor. I’m glad that you’re still here. I’m glad to be here again, writing the same new things I’ve always written, the same old subjects I’ve invented over and over and over for months.

First are the few questions I got while I was away fighting reality.

• This is from Mya
  
  I am married to a man who is a self-center withholding creep and very stubborn. He is also unfaithful in nature as you pointed out for all man, he chats chit, dating with young girls behind my back and I just found out one case. He has his good side too. What should I do to cope with such a man as we had a cute 22 months daughter and I want to stay with him. I know not to blind fold and hurt myself I should base our relationship on a mutual distrust
  
  a couple day later, with a new update
  
  Some extracts from his email to me:
  
  First of all, I love you and A (my daughter) dearly, I just don't know how to show it and once in a while, I screw up, that make me even question myself, if I love you guys or not???
  
  The biggest problem with me is my ego. it's really big and I am addicted to raising it. My dream is having a family that my partner will take care of my ego, but it's a unrealistic dream. I chat with girls outside not to look for sex or mistresses, just to 'massage my ego" because most of them I know respect me for the image portrait myself, a successful executive. One thing different here is in business, if I see the problem, I will find the solution to fix it. But for emotional problems, once the ego devil kicks in, I stop thinking rationally...
  
  …. being a center of the universe is cool, you know.
  
  I think you are married yourself to a very mentally sick man. I am sick! I don't know, maybe I would go crazy in few years time…
  
  You asked me this morning if I would like to continue to build this family? I think it would be a perfect mask for my social face, so sure I like to continue having it. But I am not sure if I can change, if I can beat that 'devil' in me. I don't know if I can be a family man. The bad side in me seems to take over me. Maybe all the truths about me should be revealed, I should be brought down to the ground, losing everything I have now, and rebuild myself again or to be gone forever would be a good thing....
  
  This is the man you are married to. I think I am bad, and I am sorry for treating you terribly. You are right this morning. So far tent make our bad sides flourish... I am not sure if we can control it any more... I don't think I am the person who make the call here... please make YOUR call if you are willing to take risk to continue living with such a bad person and help him to change.
  
  Hi Mya,
  
  I am sorry for taking so long to write back. I don’t like to talk about reality if I can avoid it, so please accept that I was really busy and leave it at that.
  
  Since my answer to your question could have a life changing consequence to your child, who hasn’t done anything wrong to deserve having me gambling with his life, let me first say that I will be as surprised as anyone that my advices have ever lead to a positive result. That’s being said, let’s keep rolling while the dice are hot.
  
  You asked me what you could do to keep the family together as in ‘and they live happily ever after…because of the kid’. Oh well..Here are the reasons why you should call a couple of friends and one really fat girl and hit the nightclub everytime you suspect your husband is out doing his extra-marital activities.
  
  1) If somebody is being a douche today, he will probably be a douche tomorrow, and as angry or sad as you get, it is not going to do a whole lot about it.
  
  2) Waiting for him at home doesn’t make you more desirable. I know that I sound like a jerk, but for some reason, people don’t like things they can get easily. If your husband suddenly remember you and call you up, it makes you are more appealing to tell him you are in a club than if you are sitting at home looking at old pictures
  
  However, in my admittedly limited and anecdotal experiences, the only reason you confess your sin is when you want to break up. If you really want to keep the relationship, you keep your mouth shut, buy a bunch of flowers and a designer bag. Otherwise, telling your partner you cheated is just a way to give away your own guilt.
  
  
• Hi knguyen
  Your blog is full of references to boobs. So what is your take on breast implants?
  
  Easy, I am not into them. I’ve seen girls that have chest like chess board and I still want to take them …. somewhere. I’ve never experienced a girl with a fake ones (strip club doesn’t count) but I imagine that it is pretty disappointing to go through all the deceptions and manipulations just to realize that you could get the same experience by grabbing a bean bag chair

I am giving this Productivity Blog an A++.

I am building a raft that is big enough for few people…Who’s in?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well. Are you?

Middle-aged man doesn't like Facebook

Last week, Man of the Year George Clooney ushered the following terrifying words

I’d rather have a rectal examination on live TV by a fellow with cold hands than have Facebook page

imagine the joy Your Humble Correspondent here felt when those worded were spoken. It was like the first time you hear the Beatles.

It is really no secret that I am not in the whole social networking  phenomenon (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc …). I have a Facebook account, and go there only when I get an email from Facebook that tells me something has happened and I am somehow involved (usually a friendship request, or an image of me got tagged). But I admit that I love it when I need just one friend to comment on your photo album for me to be able to look at every picture in it, even when we are not friend and your profile is private. This is perhaps the true force behind Facebook domination. It is more stalker-friendly than any other social network sites.

You know how when you are around your friends and you run out of things to talk about, or start repeating a story because you already know everything they’ve done, and everywhere that they’ve been to? That’s what the whole Facebook has done to everyone. There is no mysteries, untold stories anymore. When I see someone for the first time in a while, I don’t want to already know everything that has been going on with them. The party they went, the place they visit, the problem with school workload, etc, I want to find that stuff out while I’m hanging out with them, in life.

If you disagree with Clooney, I ask you, how can a guy who is currently sleeping with a model 20 years younger be wrong?

I got a couple of interesting emails last week.

• Hi knguyen,
  [edited for lengthy introduction]
  
  Since you just involved in a childbirth, I just want to know your opinion about proper etiquette when you get someone pregnant.
  
  Good question, perfect timing. So many people don’t get it wrong and hence cause so many trouble in the world. Here is the proper etiquette when you unknowingly knocked up a lady 
  
  First of all, a gentleman always offers to pay for the abortion. Not offering a hand to kill the kid is the sign of a coward. If she wants to keep the child, then you’ve got to do the only right thing and send her an apology card. Ancient wisdom also suggests enclosing another $100 gift card to “Babies R Us”. The amount could cover diapers for a couple weeks. They also have a discount near Xmas, if you’d like to save a couple bucks you can buy a few of them during that time. Anyway, send the sorry card, go the extra mile to give her the gift card, and be more careful next time.
  
  I almost threw up writing this answer, but sometimes I forgo my personal comfort for the sake of humor. Please don’t kill your kid. Talk to her.
  
• Hi Khanh,
  
  I like your recent ‘column’ and reading your “advices”. I have been going out with a guy for a year, but I think love faded, only routines left. I want to end it but I don’t want to hurt him. What should I do?
  
  First, how do you know my name?
  
  Lucky for you, there is a way for you to get out of a dead relationship without being perceived as the bad party. What to do is simply, just start acting like a complete bitch, eventually he will get tired of you and break up with you. Save you the trouble, and the guilt. But there is a risk I am compelled to disclose. If he has mental problem, then he will love you more…he will tell himself that he loves you despite all your flaws because he loves you for who you are…blah blah blah….In that case, you have got yourself in a hole, so the only way left is to go through the pain of the old-fashioned, crying, screaming break up.
  
  Hope that helps.
  

I finally got my copy of Dan Brown’s newest creation, The Lost Symbol. So far, it has been tolerable. My previous reading of Paulo Coelho’s lastest work, The Winner Stands Alone, was a big dissapointment of my time. You have been warned.

-k

A few more emails..

I haven’t been able to check my emails for a couple days. My friend’s wife went into labor somewhat early than expected on Saturday morning. They are also in the process of moving into a new place so “this incident” has put me into the position to take care of the moving plus buying diapers. Needless to say, I am fully worked but I am really happy for both of them.

To my delight, there are a couple of new emails.

• Hi knguyen,
  
  I am feeling lost. My mom passed away three weeks ago. The first weeks were chaos and it kept my mind off things. But now I feel a giant void in my life. I am feeling the kind of loniless that I have never felt before.
  
  As you realized, I write this blog to give people cruel, funny jokes but when I receive a genuine email as yours, I am pretty sure I will go to hell if I made fun of this one.
  
  Now, about your problem. I understand how you feel, I really do. You didn’t have time to think about the loss, and now it is hitting you. I wish I knew some words that could make you feel better, but I don’t. Here, there is a guy called Dr. Phil. He, likes me, gives advice, but unlike me, he is on T.V and gets paid a lot of money to do it. He is also bald. Half of the country thinks he is a joke, that includes me, but he also made a comment many while ago I overheard that it stuck to me until now. People often tell you time heal everything, but this guy says time doesn’t heal, but what you do with time does. You can experience a pain every day for year and never recover from it, but you can make peace with the loss and start to move on. I guess what I am saying is that focusing on your loss will only prolong your pain, you need to fill the void in your life. Until then, you can’t really begin to feel better.
  
  Hope that helps.
  
• Someone I had a crush on is suddenly single. How long should I wait before I can ask her out so that I won’t be just a rebound. I really like want this to be serious.
  
  D
  
  Hi D,
  
  Essentially, you are asking me how to run away happiness. Why does it matter? Whether is is a rebound, too much alcohol, psychological manipulation, or magic, the initial hookup is what counts. Once you’re in a girl life, it is hard for her to get rid of you. Noone wants to deal with all the drama of breaking up so most girls would just live the rest of their lives with someone they don’t love. Believe yourself to be a cockroach, noone cares how you get in the house, but they know that you are not going anyway.
  
  In life, there is no asterisk. Only score board.
  
  Best of luck
  
• Can you give me an advice if I am suddenly feel disapointed with everything?
  
  Lot of times, I have to bullshit my answerss, but this one I feel I am really qualified to answer you.
  
  One thing people often do to deal with life dissapointments is to give into that urge and murder countless people, but I dont want to end up in the front page with a caption “Internet advice columnist encourages mass murder”.
  
  Try adjust your expectations.

Good song I listened to on the radio while driving around looking for a place to buy diapers. (lyrics)

 Hello friends..How was your weekend?

-k

Ask me a question...

Either I am being conned or the previous post has elevated me into something of a gender/relationship expert. This week, I have been receiving an influx of emails from readers of this blog asking me questions as if I know one or two things about the world. Nevertheless, tonight I am going to attempt at being an Internet advice columnist to the best of my ability.

• Hi knguyen,
  

  A friend pointed me to your blog. You are hysterical. I think you are a witty bastard. Keep up the nice work. The Internet needs people like you. But I have a question. I enjoyed your recent post about the nature of men, why can’t they commit. But seriously, why men are such bastards?

  For the record, complimenting me doesn’t guarantee that I will answer your question in a serious tone, but it is a good start.

  Ok, why men are that way? To understand men, it is essential to remember that, deep down inside, we are also biological creatures. Although humans tend to view sex as mainly a fun recreational activity sometimes resulting in death, in nature it is a far more serious matter. Most species must have sex to survive. Take dragon-files for example. Next time you see two dragon-flies doing it in midair, pay attention to their faces. Do they appear to be enjoying themselves? Are they smiling? Of course, not. If you read Darwin’s diary and study evolutionary biology……….Oh well, I can’t continue to write this paragraph with a straight face.

  People are selfish and go after what they want. It just happens that men between the age of 11 and 70 want women and some of them don’t mind hurting a few women in the process. Sorry.

• Hi anh,

  [edited for a lengthy introduction]

  I’m in love with a girl who has a boyfriend, she loves me too but doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend. Advice?

  Cuong

  Hi Cuong,

  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the painful truth is that you are a plan B. If you take a girl to a Chinese restaurant and a beautiful waitress comes to your table while your date is in the bathroom and tells you that she wants you to come to her apartment and watch her dress up as a geisha (I know it is Japanese), you will leave your date with a check and a broken heart. Girls (like us) are going to go after what they want they most, you can sit around waiting for this love of yours to leave her man (which she should have already if she wanted you the most) or you can start hanging around Chinese restaurants. I suggest the later.

• Hi knguyen,

  I am a frequent reader of your blog. I am in a dilemma and your thoughts on relationship sometimes prompt me to think so I’d like to ask you for an opinion. There are 2 guys, A is a good friend of mine, but I know he wants more. The other, B, I do like but I am a little hesitant to date because I dont want to hurt A, and B also has a “reputation”. If I choose to date B, I will have to find a way to break it to A. Any ideas to take care of this problem?

  I think you need to be straight with this A character. Being a desirable person puts you in the awkward position of having to tell people that you are not into them, and when you do that you have to pretty blunt. Now, believe it or not, this A character is probably living in a fantasy world where he dreams about the two of you one day living in a beach house in the Caribbean, fishing and [fill the blank] all day and until you tell him otherwise, he is going to keep dreaming of that beach house. So, if you start dating someone else without telling A how you feel, it’ll be like A coming back from a long day of fishing and finding you with another man in the house. You’ve got to destroy that beach house, you’ve got to. Tell A in unambiguous terms, don’t leave things open for interpretation, don’t “may be we can together in the future, but not now”, just cut it off even if you really believe you may in the future. He will be upset but he can get over a rejection, he can’t get over a “maybe”. Have mercy.
  
  P/S: angry letter from A is welcome.

Friends, how have you been? Have a nice weekend.

-k

 

 

I am not making these up...

I wandered to VnExpress-Tam Su again last night when I was drinking alone and trying to meditate, plan my future, think about what is coming next, plot my escape from the Internet and ponder where to escape to, then a quick scanning the headlines rained on my night dreaming parade…

There are so many frustrated women out there.

The reason is that, despite millions year of development, women still have trouble accepting that men don’t have a rigid and well-defined moral codes. This is not the same as saying men are bad, although we are capable of doing bad things but generally it happens when men try to impress women by acting aggressive and stupid. It is a good start to note that men never really grasped the basic human moral codes, which I believe was invented by women million years ago when the men are out hunting and picking nose with spears. Upon return, there were certain rules that men were expected to follow unless they wanted to get into troubles. Since then, men have been trying to follow those rules with extremely irregular results because men have never internalized these rules. Think of a dog you had whom you told numerous time that he is not supposed to get into to living room and poop on the floor. Of course, he knows there are these rules, but he never really understood why, so every once in a while, he gets to thinking “sure, under normal circumstances, I am not supposed to poop in the living room, but obviously the rule is not meant to apply when there are certain external conditions such as my boss is away on business.

You see, morally, most men are just like your dog, only taller and usually less hairy. They are aware of the rules, but they have trouble keeping these rules in the forefronts of their mind at certain times, especially the present. This is particularly true in the area of faithfulness. I realize, of course, that there are countless examples of men being faithful to their mates until they die, usually as a result of being eaten by their lovely wife after copulation. Male outside the spider community, however, do not held a terrific record of faithfulness.

I am not saying men are scum. I am only saying that many guys who consider themselves to be commited to their relationship will stray if they are confronted with overhwhelming temptations, also defined as “any temptation”.

If you are a woman and you want to have a successful relationship with a guy. The next relationship-enhancement tip is: do not expect a guy to make a solid commitment. By “solid”, I mean “within your lifetime”. Guys are extremely reluctant to make commitments. This is because they never feel ready. This natural tendency makes women go crazy at their slumber sleepover, “why he hasn’t told me he loves me”, “what is he waiting for”, “when is he going to propose”….If men were turkey, you could put them in a 1200 degree oven on July Fourth, and they still wouldnt be done in time for your Thanksgiving dinner.

Women have a lot of trouble understanding this, they ask themselves, how can he is ‘not ready’ to make a permanent commitment to a woman whom he has been seeing for years. And this same guy was somehow capable, at age 11, of commiting himself to a lifelong, passionate relationship with a sports club somewhere in Spain, who have never so much as sent him a card.

Now, some women have concluded, to a certain degree of correctness, that guys, as a group, have the emotional maturity of hamsters. who will scream headlessly, scamper across the kitchen floor and hide under the refigerator of non-readiness as soon as he senses that the door of commitment is about to close and trap him in the wire care of true intimacy. This, however, is an expected natural behavior after all. Men are born with a fundamental, genetically transmitted mental condition wordly described as “if you get attached to a woman, somewhere, some unattached dude is having more fun than you”. This explains why all attached guys assume that all unattached guys lead lives of constant excitement involving hot tubs full of naked international fashion models, whearas in fact for most unattached guys, the climax of the typical evening is drinking alone while blah blah ing on the Internet….

You understand why men are extremely reluctant to make commitments, or even to take any steps that might lead to commitments. This is why, when a guy goes out on a date with a woman, and finds himself really liking her, he will demonstrates his affection by avoiding her for the rest of his life. The reason: using the linear thought process, he has realized that if he takes her out again, he will like her more, so he will take her out again, and eventually they will fall in love with each other, they will get married, they will have children, then grandchildren, and eventually they will retire and take a trip around the world, and they will be walking hand in hand on some spectacular beach, reminding each other about the lifetime of experiences they’ve shared, and then several naked international fashion models will walk up and invite him to join them in a hot tub, and he won’t be able to do it.

I realized I am making a few gender-based generalization here, but my feeling is that if nature doesn’t want me to make gender-based generalization, SHE would not have given us gender.

-k

 

Old people

I don’t normally blog in the morning, much less on a Saturday morning but it has been raining since last night, and I was woken up early by the sound of rain failing against my window today….

I spent a good amount of time yesterday watching the videos in this site http://www.lifeadvicefromoldpeople.com/. Seth Menachem takes his video camera out on the streets and collects life advices from old people. I had a similar thing going on back when I was in Vietnam. A week before my flight, I came across this interesting story – a conversation between an MBA and a beggar about the fine art of entrepreneurship. Then I thought it would be fun if I can talk to someone from a different live.

A few days later I met Van, 72, a well-aged homeless when I was having breakfast.  I asked him if he would like to sit and talk with me, he said ‘yes’. We talked for two hours about his life, where he came from, how did he get to where he is…A loyal consumer of opium back in its day, he talked passionately in favor of legalizing mood-altering chemicals, but he despises people who depend on these things. He was, as the cliche goes, married but wasn’t happy. He said it was an one-night mistake and time was different then, he can not just walk away. His wife loved him dearly, but he was the kind that is more happy when he is in love than to be loved. And there is really no nice way to say this, he smacked her around. I wished him well and gave him some money when we parted. May be I will see him again when I am home. Life has many ways of testing a person, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once. One of a few memorable highlight of my vacation.

Here is the history of modern art in three paragraphs from my favorite article this week.

Impressionism - painting outside of a studio with quick, loose brushstrokes to capture an evocative impression of their subject. Van Gogh was an Impressionist but wanted to express how he felt about what he saw so he distorted the subject. This helped to lead to Expressionism practised by artists from Edvard Munch through to Francis Bacon. The Fauves (wild beasts) expressed themselves by painting with bright colours. Jackson Pollock did it by throwing or dripping paint on a canvas. His paintings were abstract -- Abstract Expressionism.

Cezanne was very important. He began as an Impressionist but then started to look at a subject from two different perspectives to represent how we see. Picasso and his friend Georges Braque were very impressed and started to paint subjects from lots of different views. This is Cubism. Marcel Duchamp was a Cubist but then changed art for ever. He said the idea is more important than the medium and refused to stick with the limited choice of canvas or stone. So he chose everyday objects and called them art because he had altered their context. This led to Conceptual Art where the idea becomes the medium.

The Dadaists were very cross. They blamed the horrors of the First World War on the Establishment's reliance on rational and reasoned thought. They radically opposed rational thought and became nihilistic -- the punk rock of modern art movements. Dada plus Sigmund Freud equals Surrealism. The Surrealists were fascinated by the unconscious mind, as that's where they thought truth resided. Piet Mondrian thought he could paint everything he knew, felt and saw by using two lines placed at rectangles and three primary colours. This was called Neo-Plasticism and was inspired by Cubism. So was Futurism, which is Cubism with motion added. Vorticism is the same as Futurism, but British. The Minimalists might represent the real truth because they weren't trying to represent anything. Performance Art is Dada live.

Someone posted this text conversation on a forum I visit daily. Have a laugh, people. That is your new definition of a relationship.

A: was it more than 30 minutes?
B: ya
A: then you're in a relationship

Hello friends, how are you?

-k

Bonus. If you want my advice this weekend. Do not go and see The Final Destination.

Phone - Book

I got excited and warmed up after I read this book review this morning so I went to a bookstore and bought it.

Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion by Izabella St James

….
Being a Hefner Girlfriend was a specialised job, not to be confused with being a Playboy Playmate. In fact, Girlfriends were not allowed to become Playmates because Hef had found that they tended to flee the Mansion as soon as they collected their $25,000 Playmate cheque. Girlfriends were given their own bedroom, an allowance of $1,000 a week in cash, a new car, free dental and medical treatment, almost limitless clothes, hairdos, make-up and facials and all the cosmetic surgery they could wish for – Izabella reckons Hef shelled out $70,000 a year on breast implants.

It was a very generous deal in many ways, but it did have its drawbacks. First, there was a strict curfew, so unless you were out with Hef, you had to be back in the hutch by 9pm. Second, while you could order any food or drink you wanted, at any time, from one of the many Mansion “butlers”, you were not allowed into the kitchen, even for a glass of water. And third, of course, you had to live in the extraordinarily dingy Playboy mansion, where all the furniture was falling apart, the mattresses were stained and the carpets were covered in dog poo. I remember visiting it in the early Nineties and being struck by its shabbiness then, and evidently it was the same or worse when Izabella moved in. Part of the trouble might be that Hef does not actually own the mansion; he has to rent it, room by room, from Playboy Enterprises and, according to Izabella, pays $25,000 a month for his own bedroom.

But the real drawback was Hef. Stuck in his perpetual Groundhog Day, padding around in his pyjamas, eating all his meals in bed, watching the same classic films with the same old cronies night after night, going to the same bars – Las Palmas on Wednesdays, Barfly on Fridays – the only variation in the routine was restaurant night on Thursdays when the Girlfriends were allowed to choose where they went. But even so, Hef always took his own food, lamb chops. And even when they went out for parties or special occasions such as the Grammys, Hef would only stay long enough to have his photo taken before herding all the Girlfriends back into the car. Surrounded by phalanxes of security men, and roped off in VIP ghettos, they never had the chance to meet anyone.
…..

interesting, no? I haven’t finished it yet, but I have detected dishonesties here and there. There are a lot of complains. About the mansion’s rules, about Hef, about Valentine days, about The Girl Next Doors. It is still an interesting read overall…You know, stories that involves multiple women fighting to death over an affection of a rich man are always enlightening.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about now is not the book, but the bookstore. I love bookstores. To me, a bookstore is one of the few evidences we have that people are still thinking. A bookstore is a black-and-white small world, divided into fictions and non-fictions. In other words, you can easily tell these guys are lying, and these guys are telling the truth. It would be nice if the world is like that.

In many ways, a bookstore is a ‘smarter than you’ store because to walk in a bookstore, you automatically admit to the world that there is something that you don’t know, and to say that “I’m not very bright”. What do you think about that?

Coincidently, while I was writing this post, someone sent me a link to this new website www.lamebook.com. Hope you will enjoy it, because I did. Thanks Lily.

On my way back home on the subway, I overheard an argument between a couple. Essentially, the boyfriend made a comment that he feels less important to the girl than her mobile phone, and that she is constantly checking and texting.

I guess he doesn’t realize that people find joy when they look at the phone and see a new message arrived. People need that. It is very important to human being to feel they are popular and well-liked among a large group of people that they have no interest in. Weird, I know.

To them, it is essential to be getting a constant stream of text and calls, to be ready to interrupt any conversation in order to answer a call that was not at least urgent, to send endless texts. At this moment, the world is filled with “good morning, my love. I miss you”, “where are you”, “what are you doing”. Things that take ten minutes to be typed in and only three seconds to be spoken, but that’s the way the world now is. The phone is now not only a method of communication, but also a thread of hope, way of fooling ourselves that you are not alone, a way of showing people how important you are.

Now, you know why airlines always tell you to turn off the phone. It was never about safety because it is really dumb to rely on the honesty and responsibility of strange customers. They just want you to use the phone attached to your seat. The kind that costs 10 dollars a minute and use the same transmission system as your cell phone in your pocket.

I am not doing well with my trading at all. Feeling pretty beat up and dejected, that’s why this post lack the usuall sarcasm. I am sorry.

How was your weekend, friends?

-k

(500) Days of Summer

Out of exhaustion, I decided to take a long walk and went to see (500) Days of Summer this afternoon. One of my friend swore to me that it is good and if I honestly don’t like it after I see it, she will compensate me and let me see her boobs. As much as I love boobs, I am still an honest person..when I can. (500) Days of Summer is a beautiful movie.

If you are lucky enough to have ever been in love, the odds are you’ve also had your heart broken at least once. If you had seen Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, and remembered how good it was, (500) Days of Summer will bring you that familiar feeling after you walk out of the theater. It is a film that show the development, rise and fall of an interesting relationship. It is a journey that is made up of laughters, conversations, perfect silence, naked days together. A journey that ends abruptly with your beaten corpse washed up near the shore of rejection. Well, may be not that colorful.

I want to skinny-dip in Deschanel’s eyes.

When you are curious enough to watch the trailer, you will hear the narrator voice early on that “This is not a love story. It is a story about love”..but something you must know, he is only half right. To me, the film is very much a love story, and while it may or may not end the way we expect, it is a more complete, believable and relatable love story than any number of romantic comedies or drama that they shove on the screens every two days. Romatic comedies usually tell us that true love is guaranteed with whomever we choose if only we want it enough and make a fight for it…this movie, however, reminds us how full of shit that idea really is. It boldly ignores the conventions and expectations of the genre and treat viewers as intelligent people familiar with love whether it be real, imagined or misguided. We all have traveled the peaks and valleys of our own relationships, and can easily identify with Tom (or Summer) one way or another as we watch the film. Some of our loves have ended, some are still going strong, and some were never meant to be. Plus, how can you not love a movie if it tells you that the best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature.

Here is the official trailer.

On another hand, I found myself puzzled today about something that I have always taken for granted – that is how women put on their perfume. It seems like they have their strategic area. Places, for a reason, they think that men are going to. They always hits the inside of the wrist. Are they convinced that it is the most action-packed area? Why? What is happening there? Or because it is for when you slap a guy, he will still find you attractive. Imagine

Female: [slap] [slap]
Guy: Nice..Chanel No.5

How are you friends? Hope you will enjoy the movie as much as I do, if you ever see it.

-k

This is a rant.

I know that we have enough negativity in our life already; jobs are disappearing into air, the market is in the crapper, the house values aren’t worth as much as we are promised it would, H1N1 is spreading to schools, summer is coming to end…Now, it is safe to say that I am the kind of person who always try my best to be positive, because constantly negative people are no fun to be around, although I never consider myself neither a pessimist nor an optimist; I like to think I am a realist. However, my farther often told me that angry men will only carry heavy burdens – which is a short way to teach me that if I constantly stay mad at the world, the world is going to weigh me down. Yet, he also used to say that if you are not pissed off, then you are not paying attention. And this, I happen to agree with. That’s said, here is my latest explosion.

There is a disturbing trend I’ve noticed recently is men who now have briefcases with wheels on them, like my luggage. And it is making me to close my eyes and turn my head away every time I see it. A briefcase, in my humble beliefs, is a time-honored symbol of manhood. It doesn’t matter what you put in your briefcase. It can be filled with actual work documents, gym clothes, turkey sandwich, comic books, Playboy magazine, or a year’s supply of condoms. It can be brown, black, leather or steel. Expensive or cheap. No matter. But, you may not wheel your freaking briefcase.

I know that at this point, some of you is already thinking about how is wheeling a briefcase different from wheeling a suitcase. Which is a fair inquiry of the young mind. The answer is this. The briefcase is out final stand, a line that men must not cross. As our society has grown softer, and more dependent on technology, we’ve lost all connection to our physicality. We no longer ride horses, we cruise-control in the BMW. We no longer take care of our crops, we eat ramen noodles. Hence, after centuries of modernization, holding the briefcase with a firm, manly grip, a steady shoulder, is the very least you can do. It is the last flag of dignity for our gender. Do not burn that flag, guys.

On another related subject, I bought a briefcase today for myself.

I agree with the conclusion in the end of this comic. Not a surprise if you’ve been here and know me long enough.

This is also a funny link. Enjoy.

-k