isn't it weird how famous ppl become through dying?

after i crawled out from under my rock yesterday and discovered diana died, i've found maybe 300+ pages pointing to her death... and maybe just one on her when she played bball(this was from the cupertino courier)... many of those come from xangas and blogs... a couple from the east coast area's paper publishers...

i honestly still can't believe that someone like this person committed suicide... seemed to have it all too

this nails a lid on the whole taiwanese happiness idea: study hard, go to a good college, get a good lover, get married, get a good job, have kids, and you can be happy. living life in the now so much that you are unprepared for anything that occurs outside of that... it's good to live life in the now... but it's not good to do it so much that you can't see your future...

so if that azn bubble of happiness bursts, what does that leave you with? there's gotta be more to life than this... do we depend upon what society offers us so much that we are clouded beyond belief?

sometimes i am thankful that God saved me at an early age... you could argue that i might've not known what i was doing, but the concept of heaven and hell is so strong in my head that i could not induce myself to commit suicide now if i wanted to... even if i'm spiritually backsliding...

God, i ask you to open my eyes... i ask you to open my eyes... don't ever make me close them... there are a lotta ppl in this world who still haven't really heard about you... you gotta just make me see who needs this... help me to look around me... i don't need to go to africa to show your message... there are many around me who need this message... help me to be brave, and to do this out of love...

didn't want to stay up, but somehow, i just found out one of the girls who came from the same class as mine at mvhs died about a month ago... freaky:

Death of Diana Chien

truly saddened to hear about this... truly am... and still contemplating how much one can do to help... what could i have done when we were still at monta vista, instead of living in my bubble? sometimes it tears at me... maybe i'll take a hint that grades and money and success and a good lover are simply not enough... maybe i'll start looking out for others' needs instead of living in a virtual bubble...

ykno what's interesting is during spring break, sarah, sam's former girlfriend, also came that close to death... and was also from mvhs... the difference is that she didn't voluntarily want to go into it, that the car she drove got totalled, but she walked away unharmed... she decided then to get baptized... and to rededicate her life to christ...

and on the other note, yesterday was good friday... this was the most important message ever sent: Jesus DIED... the fact that Jesus was actually willing to die... the fact that he died a gruesome death... the fact that it was JESUS who died, and not "some man..." now do you see the awesomeness of this? also, the death would have all been for nothing had not Jesus rose again...

hey it's time to wake up/ hey it's time to see/ it's time to get off of this merry go round

Inhabited- Merry Go Round

you know i'm stuck in between/ the walls they confine me/ i want you to lift me out/ when i let go/ let you take control/ i give you everything/ everything i am

Inhabited- In Between

inhabited is like alanis morrisette vocals with an upbeat indie/rock bg...

now i understand why 12 stones doesn't get that much respect... there's the criticism that they sound too much like Creed... that there's too many bands which sound like Creed... i can kinda understand this... also a lotta of their songs are familiar... yes, the talent's there... the talent is there... but it's as if all the songs are the exact same... this is to a better 2nd album...

rock hard, christian... but keep your eyes on christ... because once your eyes are taken off... you tread a fine line between what is good and what is secular... the potential for good is there... but so is the evil... but a lotta things are like that... like money...

coke slurpees and milk are ownage... not taken together though... that's just nasty...
just like how i have a preference for cheese and bbq korean beef ribs, but don't want the two mixed together...

speaking of coke, i bet you never really thought about the ingredients that contribute to coke's flavor:
original recipe:
Merchandise # 1 is sugar

Merchandise # 2 is caramel

Merchandise # 3 is caffeine

Merchandise # 4 is phosphoric acid

Merchandise # 5 is a coca leaf & cola nut extract

Merchandise # 6 is probably lime juice, but was incorporated into merchandise # 7 as an oil

Merchandise # 7X is the flavoring mixture

Merchandise # 8 is vanilla

Merchandise # 9 is probably glycerin, but is no longer used

the 7x flavoring mixture:

http://www.sodamuseum.bigstep.com/generic.jhtml?pid=10

you can never really figure out the ingredients unless if you are "hunting" for them as you're drinking the drink... to me, the nutmeg and phosphoric acid stand out though... and the sugar... vanilla could stand out as well too...

maybe God does want me to be a surgeon after all...

check this

i'm not jumping to conclusions yet though... i need to improve my studies, and i still can't wavedash :D

ok, if you google "taco bell" lent, you should be able to hear a .rm file of npr driving up to taco bell asking for lent specials... they would not be doing this unless if they were going down on sales... also, as i was looking through various journal entries on this, someone brought up an interesting point about how they could be doing this as a "post-passion" craze... it's quite possible... like how the capitalist society seems to always want to find some way to cash in on the current fad... i could imagine booger fling or macfondle's doing it... in some ways they are... cheaper fish fillets i think... but really, you think giving up meat draws someone closer to christ? well, i dunno... everybody has their own issues to work out... surfing the web and video games seems to be my crux...

but personally, lent is not about the giving up... it's about the filling up... i haven't done the filling up part yet, but i'm getting there... getting there...

feeling like the walking dead... moving around on 2 hrs of sleep today... maybe it was less... but i can't go to sleep... i'll just end up living on tokyo time like the end of last quarter... it's alright, it's just a day... and right now i don't feel that tired... i just have to keep moving and thinking...

using the setup on the blog below, i just completely messed up what was a perfectly good-sounding jeremy camp- understand song :) my cd's fine though... but the created .mp3 is just utter garbage... it's instant fun though... haven't you ever screwed around with your phonograph when you were younger?

i remember once just turning it to play, then turning it off(you could still hear the vibrations of the phonograph, just that the record wasn't turning, then just whirling it(remember, i'm a kid, so i have no sense of rhythm) backwards or forwards... i also remembered using the NEEDLE to scratch on other occasions... bad idea... i ruined a few good disney songs that way... our indiana jones: temple of doom record is messed up because of it... the narration keeps repeating "the walls began to shake... began to shake... began to shake... began to shake..." i copied my bro's way of "fixing" the narration cause it looked funny; he'd jump and land hard on the carpet, making the needle jump... of course, he'd jump too hard, and so the record would skip too far forward, so he'd jump again to try to fix it, but he'd just eventually end up "jumping" the entire record... man, the things you did to satisfy your inner child... y'kno, the funny part is, i would love to do simple stuff like that all over again... and even for a moment escape the current hectic state of life...

i was walking home from the bus, and wondering just how whitewashed i am... then i catch the shadow that is leading me as i'm walking to my apt, and compare it to the azn girls nearby and guy... they are walking with shoulders unmoving, going forward...

my shoulders are bobbing, alternating back and forth... if it was any more emphasized, i'd be doing a thug strut... if i was black, they'd think i was full of it...

so i can never be completely whitewashed now... there's the proof... as long as i unconsciously strut walk... as long as i know how to emcee

the crap under my toenails might smell like stinky cheese sometimes... don't worry, i never force anybody to smell my feet, unless if they want to... and it doesn't have a very high radius where you can smell it...

here's something recently learned... chinese have been all over the world far earlier than you would expect, in places you prob haven't considered beforehand... they were in cuba helping the cubans drive out the spainards, in the phillipines helping THOSE ppl... they were in peru... in louisiana before any of the future americans came over...

yeap, writing's getting boring...

pod - change the world

of all the places you'd expect to find a sign advertising for lent...

taco bell?

i wish i had a pic to show you guys... it was weird... they were advertising vegetarian quesadillas and tacos for ppl observing lent... jeez man... christians aren't vegetarians... some of them have special ways of observing lent... but i've never heard of a guy going quesadilla because of his devotion to christ... even if you're mexicano, you have to be some messed up follower there...

trevor, lead vocalist/guitarist of fm static, strangely did NOT leave thousand foot krutch... he's still in both bands, which is funny, cause on one hand, tfk is this hardcore, emceeing, heavy distortion band, and on the other hand, fm static is a poppy rock band... which is probably funnier is that the photos on both band's websites look totally different too; trevor looks like a blink 182's mark on fm static, and yet on tfk he's all with the hooded sweatshirts and the gangsta look...

latest weird free software setups to fool around with:

try this:

download and install all of these(all these are free btw):
silent bob
(enables you to record any sound that's coming out of your soundcard and save to .wav, you'll need to spend maybe $10 on some other equipment to fool around fully... more on equip later)
ots cd scratch 1200
(a cd player that you can use to scratch cds with the whole authentic vinyl effect... very good at that... no ability to record what you make though, and that's what the above is for)
analogx scratch
(enables you to scratch and save .wav files)
bon wav2mp3 converter
(enables you to convert .wav files to .mp3 files to save space)

can't really save with the above, but if you wanna play around with more:
kb piano
(enables you play with your keyboard as a piano keyboard)

getting any ideas by now?

for equip, just go to radio shack and get:
a 1/8" stereo to 1/8" stereo miniplug... that enables you to plug the line in from your soundcard to your line out of your soundcard
and get a headphone adapter, which branches your line out to 2 outputs... this enables you to be able to still hear what you're doing, as you're gonna plug the above into the line out part

i'll leave it to your creativity to figure out what you wanna do from there...

some other stuff that might interest you:

beat it- like linkin park's keyboard; load up to 16 samples, and you can play them back
ap guitar tuner- best software tuner... ever...
hammerhead rhythm station: still my fave music ap... next to any recording software such as cakewalk's music creator... make authentic drum loops, and then save them as .wav's...

of course, dj'ing's not my main... guitar playing is... but sometimes it is interesting what happens when you combine scratches and dist w/emceeing aka linkin park

4.4.04

this marks the day joey became an uncle :D

happy bday, austin lin

and congrats, paul!

go congratulate joe(and paul)...

*sniff*... this is weird...

Boondocks on passion once again

how true... such is religion and philosophy... you tell ppl you have the solution to all of their problems... but they've gotta do their hw... they've gotta read into it to get the meaning, they have to spend hours hunched over book... and they shut you out from there... why do you think the only jews who are christians are the only ones who have pored over a bible?

ppl are paying tribute to kurt kobain, the guitarist/lead vocalist of rock band nirvana... it's been about 10 yrs since his death... i have mixed feelings about this... this is because i have a cd of "nevermind" from my bro... and a lotta ppl thought his music style at the time was revolutionary... perhaps... it did break away from the norm... i also liked a couple of his songs, such as "nevermind"... but you could also music more or less went downhill from sometime around there... although we could credit that to offspring or green day i guess... all the rock songs you hear these days are made up of ppl just playing rhythm guitar... how creative... how talented... also, let's honor kurt kobain, the musician, not the person... he was known to be somewhat, well, knocked up in the head sometimes... so no wonder that he would take his life... his personality was not something we should respect...

did i mention i'm happy the spurs snapped the lakers' win streak on sun? don't rule out the spurs... they pulled the upset against the lakers last season... they could do it again this year... sometimes i can be more anti-socal than pro-norcal...

christianrock.net isn't a bad internet radio station... too bad i can't listen to it at the apt, internet radio ends up bandwidth like crazy...