Reaching Out

How do you prevent yourself from seeing "unpack, restructure, refine" as "THIS IS TERRIBLE REWRITE EVERYTHING"?

Heart-shaped watermelons in Japan:



Clerks at Fukuoka's Iwataya Department Store show off heart-shaped watermelons produced just in time for Mother's Day on Sunday. The unusual fruit is the invention of Hiroichi Kimura, a farmer from Kumamoto, and his wife. The couple said they had tried for three years to create the perfectly heart-shaped fruit, which they say symbolizes their passion for farming and their affection for each other. The Kimuras shipped 20 of the special fruit for the first time this year, of which five were for sale at Iwataya priced at 15,750 yen each.(IHT/Asahi: May 9,2009)

How fucking cute is that????

h/t Disgrasian

Hat tip to Disgrasian for pointing out such an iconic birthday. My first reaction was to text my brother: NO WAI! Instant noodles is fifty years old today! Wat a celebrasian! (Okay, it was a couple of days ago, so what?)

I practically grew up on instant noodles. Maggi Mee is a HUGE household brand name in Malaysia, to the point that instead of saying "instant noodles" we say "Maggi Mee". My dad worked for a Nestle division which developed flavours for Maggi, so we had plenty of noodles at home. I ate a lot of chicken flavour because that was all I could eat at the time.

When I was 8, we started having Cintan (pronounced chin-tahn) Mee Goreng noodles. These noodles are slightly different in that once you cook it, you drain out the water and then mix in the seasoning.

We experimented with different flavours and different brands along the way. One of my favourites which got discontinued was the Maggi Abalone flavour. I was kind of upset.

Other favourites of mine include:

Maggi brand:
- Curry

Cintan:
- Asli (soup and dry)
- Chicken

Myojo:
- Vegetarian
(Myojo has become extremely hard to find recently. Damned shame.)

Mamee:
- Asli (dry)
- Chicken (soup)
- Curry (soup)

Eating instant noodles is the thing that every poor struggling student eats in Malaysia, and probably here too - it's cheap carbs, for crying out loud. It's fun! For my discerning taste, quality is fairly important - I don't like Canadian brands because I can totally taste the chemicals. Noodle quality also depends on how crunchy-yet-soft the thing is, how little/much water is needed to complement the noodle-eating (I have noodles AND soup in my spoon, rather than eat the noodles first then drink the soup), and how strong the flavours are.

One of the joys of working for Givaudan was that I got to take home all these weird foreign noodle brands to try out. We tasted stuff from surrounding Asian countries for comparison reasons. We fed them to tasters to see how our noodles compared as well. Noodle-making is one of those consumerist, yet artistic, things.

The NPR article is pretty awesome, by the way:

The funeral included speeches by prime ministers and chanting by the monks, but there were also goodie bags. Each attendee received a five pack of Chikin Ramen, a container of Cup Noodles, and a book of Ando's famous sayings. I happened to be struggling over whether to begin a career as a writer. Then I read the first saying in the book: "I invented instant ramen when I was 48 and Cup Noodles at 61. In life, there is no such thing as too late."

A few days later, after I flew home, a friend asked if she should leave her boyfriend. Unsure what to say, I opened Ando's book. One saying was related to his failure to sell a product called instant rice. "When you enter a market," Ando had written, "do it slowly. When you withdraw, do it quickly." My friend was single the next day.

Soon all my friends wanted advice from the inventor of instant ramen. "Flavors taste best to those who appreciate them," I counseled one. "Food is balance," I instructed another. Still, some of the sayings were downright cryptic. One friend asked, should I propose to my girlfriend? I answered with Ando's most famous utterance: "Mankind is Noodlekind."

We debated what Ando meant by that, and eventually decided he meant my friend should propose. Then we cooked and ate the entire Chikin Ramen five pack. This year, instant ramen demand is expected to surpass 100 billion servings worldwide. Thank you, Momofuku, and not just for the noodles.

*dances and spreads sprinkles around*

Read and weep about the 5 Most Baffling Sex Scenes in the History of Fanfiction.

My brain broke very early on.

George Takei (Mr. Sulu) in a fake PSA on homophobia:



Leonard Nimoy's song: "Highly Illogical"



Nimoy's Ballad of Bilbo Baggins:



*dances*

Spock Vs. Q:

*dies laffing* WTF?

This is absurd and awesome at the same time!

h/t Angry Asian Man

If you're a Final Fantasy VII fan, which I was, back in the day, despite having never played the darn thing, I have a present for you.

It's a fanfic written by a Lori MacDonald back in FF VII's heyday, and it's fucking hilarious. Perfect comedy. Cleverly written.

It's called Grief Counseling. I hope you like it. Myself, I cannot stop laughing, and I have to walk away from the computer every few paragraphs.

=D castusalbuscor and I went shopping yesterday. First, I shopped a lot at Shopper's because they were having one of those 20x Optimum points sales, and then we walked to the Halifax Shopping Center (yes, all the way! with a stop at my place to drop off my stuff) to get him some heels. I still can't believe we hit the jackpot for him so quickly! A shoe that fits AND is comfy AND actually looks decent! I nearly bought a pair of red pumps because, frankly, I have no red shoes, and that is starting to look like a wardrobe deficit. We also stopped by Ecco where we both swooned over a pair of gender-neutral shoes that looks classy enough to wear out, but casual enough to wear to the club, and were comfy to boot. We also liked the sales associate. He looked very uncomfy and maybe overeager but he was way cute.

Anyway, I want to review the SATC movie which I went to see with Alicia sometime two weeks ago, and talk abut Stonehaven, but I also want to take things easy today and do laundry instead, so here're a few awesome linkes instead:

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon reviewing SATC. I'd been waiting for her to do so for a while now.

An Open Letter to Certain White Women Who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November, an article which I feel adequately confronts white-female privilege and the ridiculous silliness sprouting all over the place from HRC supporters whining about HRC's loss and how some of them are actually saying they'd rather vote McCain. MCCAIN!! WTF?

An article about Distinguished Schmucks who feel it's okay to ignore women in academia or any other SRS PROFESSION and what should be done about them. It usually involves the men in the situation to actually do something other than stand there feeling uncomfortable.

Hoyden About Town's Anti-Feminist Bingo!! Another of her neat anti-feminist bingo cards can be found here. They made me laff - I hope they will amuse some of my feminist LJ friends too!

Renegade Evolution posts about "Vanilla Privilege" which SHOULD be an entirely new idea to me, but as a person who actually enjoys BDSM, talks openly about it and has people either going all "Ooookay, what-eve floats your boat" or somehow or another has them entitled to ask me all sorts of stupid, personal, kinda-invasive questions about shit - I just felt much better that RenEv discussed it.

Because RenEv is awesome, she also has this great post on everyday sexism which she doesn't even try to theorize anything - just points out some everyday shit that she, as a woman, dealt with that very day, which men probably will never have to.

Also, apparently the next Transformers movie will have a female bot. Hopefully this time around there will be actually more robots than humans. However, like many of my over-sensitive, something-wrong-with-us, overly-critical, can't-get-over-ourselves [read:feminist] peers, I also wonder why she needs child-bearing hips, boobies, and a fugly fuschia. Okay, I don't hate the fuschia that much, but still, it's a silly colour for a robot. Why not silver? And why a FEMALE bot? Aren't bots androgynous? Do they have sex? If they're going to have both male and female bots, I better see some bot-sex in the next movie. Otherwise, that's a waste of my ten dollars!

The F-Word, a UK feminist blog, has a pretty good article on being a male ally of feminists, and drives in what makes a good ally, what doesn't, how and why, and why it's important that men, too, espouse feminist ideas. It's one of those things some people I know (like my exes) should read, but I get the sinking feeling they never will. Well, maybe Sean will.

Cara at the Curvature continues to point out just how FUCKING CRAZY AND DANGEROUS THE WORLD IS TO WOMEN DESPITE ANYTHING THE ANTI-FEMINISTS SAY. Trigger warning. Read and be outraged. I know I am.

Okay, have fun!

'Cos, well, she is.



Racially-charged, should-be-offensive-but-still-omg-so-funny:


Only Whoopi could pull that off - delivering a fantastic joke and presenting thought-provoking questions at the same time... challenging her audience is what makes her so amazing to me.

HAY GUYZ!

If you're in ANY WAY artsy and stuff, here's something fun to be a part of!

Basically, a guy is trying to put together 123,456 pieces of art, each featuring a number, for the whole of next year.

The project is called Count High:

The goal is to collect artworks from people like you. Your artwork can be anything. You can draw it, write it, paint it, etch-a-sketch it, crayon it, crop circle it, photograph it, do whatever you want. It can be any medium you like. You are in control of your artwork, not me. I have no guidelines. The only thing is, it has to prominently display the number I assign you. You get a number by emailing [counthigh (at) gmail (dot) com] and you send your artwork back through the same email. It’s as simple as that.

I think it's a really neat idea, so I'm totally pitching in!

My Count High number is 263!! Now to figure out how to incorporate that....