Voltron Moving Team [Lester]

Just got a new apartment in Point Richmond (Coach Carter, what?) so we're in the process of moving. In every good moving team you need people with special skills that come together to form the perfect Voltron Moving Team.

Head
- This person wakes everyone up in the morning, made reservations for the U-Haul, coordinates what will be moved when, and most importantly makes sure that nothing valuable breaks. Women make better heads than men.

Arms
- Obviously, the muscle of the group. These people look inside the trailer and ask themselves, "which things can these pussies NOT carry?" All heavy furniture is moved by these people.

Legs
- These are your volume/moderate movers. Anything that can be carried by one person should be transported by the "legs" of your crew. Light shelves, bed frame pieces, pillow cushions, clothes, anything that just requires quick and efficient movement in and out of the truck and unit.

If any of your movers do not fall into these categories, or if you have too many "heads," you are better off ditching them or else they'll just muck up your move and demoralize your crew.

The Slacker
- These people are lackadaisical about the move and work at half the speed of everyone else. They may pick up a couple pillows here and there, but generally treat the move as either a social event in which they tend to distract everyone else or as an obligation. They are dangerous to the morale of the crew, since productive members tend to get bitter at others for not working as hard as they are. Movers who show up stoned to fall into this category.

The Nazi
- This person acts like a "head" but instead of letting everyone else function as they naturally would, constantly questions what everyone is doing. A common end to Nazi-influenced moving is the Nazi asking one mover for the 6th time, "Why don't you do it this way instead?" to which the mover angrily replies, "Fuck you. why don't you move it yourself" and drops their shit to hang out with the other movers who have turned into demoralized slackers.

Aside from the general characteristics of good and bad movers, there are special skills that some movers may have that can help your move go even smoother.

Puzzle Master
- This person probably spent hours on their Gameboy playing Tetris, so flipping a chair upside down to wedge between a desk and a shelf in the truck is a piece of cake. Puzzle Masters should reside inside the truck and coordinate with the "head" (if they aren't the head) so that the furniture comes out in the right order, maximizing the use of truck space.

Motivator
- This is a people person and keeps everyone in good spirits as they pass each other during the move. +5% work ethic points to everyone on the team.

Generous Stakeholders
- Stakeholders are the people who are being moved. In some cases stakeholders are rightfully appreciative and reward their movers with nice presents. Wine, dinner, unlimited access to beer all qualify as good rewards. "You are welcome to crash on my couch anytime you want," is not.

Happy moving and Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I FORGOT WHAT I WAS GOING TO POST [Lester]

I will attempt to revive my memory by writing down my thoughts as they come to me.

marcus camby fucking rules my face. double double machine.

i ate 64 chicken mcnuggets today and raised over $1500 for the SF Food Bank.

tabasco is vinegar painted red.

here are some good wine choices:
2002 Sebastiani Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($12-17)
2003 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay ($30-35)
1997 BV Tapestry ($50-70)

i am afraid of oakland sideshows.

DRINK COKE PLAY AGAIN. YES!!!!!! That's it.

Fuck you coca-cola. Bullshit 1 in 6. I have bought at least 11 since the contest started and have only won ONCE. Fuck purple caps. Drink Pepsi eat my ballz.

Yeah that was pretty much it. sorry.

arizona is like vegas without the vegas [Liam]

soooooo
i'm in the desert, right? it's like a lesser florida without the beaches. the house is kinda cool i suppose.
also, i am too sick to pass the time drinking beer, OR exercising (the two possibilities i was counting on). here's hoping it's not the hantavirus-- i actually got sick going through los angeles, proving that LA can even make me sick flying past at 60 mph.

there's a horrible "arizona aesthetic" to this place that absolutely kills my eyeballs. it's like somewhere along the line when they were building everything here they decided that this detail

should be... on... EVERYTHING.

builder one: man, that is one ugly 7-11 we just built.
builder two: paint it pink and add a zig-zag shape somewhere. it's like a free pass here.
builder one: OH SNAP! if this building was any more harmonious with its desert surroundings it would be a sand dune! thanks, builder two!
builder two: it was nothing. to the ugly pink zig-zag mobile!
nununanananananuhhh! (transition to spinning pink zigzag logo)

ok, i obviously have nothing.
i'm sure i'll be posting again from my desert exile.

advisory: no shiny objects next 10 miles [amy]

Bridget sent this link to me:

The New White Flight

It's kind of long (or maybe I just have lots of shiny things near my desk), but the gist of it is that there's a decline in the numbers of white students at Cupertino high schools. Some parents who have moved their kids to other (whiter) schools claim that the atmosphere in Cupertino is too competitive, with an over emphasis on math and science. And in parenthesis, because there are too many Asians. As much as I hate to admit it, it might actually be true. However, I thought this was a decent point:

"Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students, says Denise Pope, director of Stressed Out Students, a Stanford University program that has worked with schools in both Palo Alto and Cupertino. But whites don't seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it's not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans."

One things about this article that's almost kind of funny is that it seems to focus on Asian-white ratios as a measure of diversity. The only mention the WSJ makes to Hispanics or African-Americans is one line describing a math class made of whites, Asians, and "other racial and ethnic groups." The situation seems to be described in terms of Oh No, there's Too Many Asians Beacuse All the White Kids Are Leaving. I dunno, it just gets kind of ridiculous. If you're taking your kid out of a school in Cupertino because of a lack of diversity (which might be valid), then there's probably a lot of other things you need to be talking about if it's diversity that concerns you.

And maybe I'm taking this out of context, but this woman sounds kind of unpleasant:

"It does help to have a lower Asian population," says Homestead PTA President Mary Anne Norling. "I don't think our parents are as uptight as if my kids went to Monta Vista."

So I guess it's "helpful" to have fewer yellow kids?

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant. Having lived in the Bay Area my entire life (and mostly in Union City), I've never experienced being the minority before. Maybe I'd be freaking out too if my kid was in an all white/black/hispanic/south-pacific-alaskan-native-islander school? Actually, I wouldn't want my kid in an all Asian school either. (Though Logan is pretty close to that.)

Um, Tiny Plaid Ninjas
(yeah, as you may have guessed, the majority of the amusement is in the title)

White Arbitrage [Lester]

What do these have in common?

Le Colonial
Lucy Liu
Crustacean
Devon Aoki

Is it that they're sort of Asian? Yeah, close but not quite. Actually, each of these are examples of people or things that take advantage of "White Arbitrage."

White Arbitrage
white ar·bi·trage
n.

The resource investment in exoticism over actual taste, resulting in a discrepancy in resources spent to actual value and immediate monetary or social value to the exotic specimen

There are people who make their careers purely out of the fact that they are, in some way exotic (See: Asian), nullifying any actual value they have in order to take advantage of the inability of others to see their true worth.

At some level it's probably gratifying to be as hideous as Devon Aoki (aka Asian Goatse Face), snickering in bed every night about how she turned down syndrome and Celestial genes into 7-figures. Or how the head chef at Le Colonial (where I will be entertaining clients tonight) giggles for every $15 bowl of pho she serves. In the end, though, how must it feel to be that hideous girl that her mother wouldn't even set up or the owner of a restaurant that would get laughed out of Milpitas Square... knowing that without the blindness of wide-eyed strangers, they'd be just another no-name struggling to make it.

BIIIIAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAA!

Vicious Biker Sniper Gang Uses Salmonella Toxic Waste To Take Unsuspecting Photos Of You! [Chris]

Uhhhh...hi...ok, introductions are over.

You see what I did with the title? That's what local news does every night.

I think I've hated local news for as long as local news has existed. (I am omnipresent and forever lasting backwards and forwards)

Please don't try to make sense out of that last sentence. You see…local news will lie. And by lie I mean tell horribly bad untruths without a speck of remorse for you, the viewer. Usually they'll try to scare you into watching. This tactic sometimes works on my mother, but I developed a keen resistance and now convert all local anchor speak to a convenient "mwa-mwa-mwa", a la every Charlie Brown teacher. I’m adapting to survive urban life just like Charles Darwin would predict.

So, like I was saying -- Champion Sex Abuser Mountain Cat Finds Bird Flu In Big Guns!

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That was an obvious cry for attention.

So in closing, I guess what I'm really trying to say is….I hate you local news. I hate you.

P.S – I hate you local news.

bald-faced [Liam]

I'm probably gonna be pretty self-absorbed once I get going about my facial hair saga, so before I get to all that-- first off, Chris and Amy are newly recruited to brog...
Hi
If you don't know them, they both score like an eleventeen on the 1-10 Liam Boylan empirical dopeness scale.

so, i finally cut off my beard today. i'm not exactly sure why either. i was just watching a dvd and i paused it to go shave. i think i wanted to see the rest of my face, and i would have just taken the beard off and put it back on if i could. having felt this coming a few days ago, i at least made a point of documenting the beard... especially since it represents a fairly extreme possibility for the hapa camo factor i've discussed in another post.

This is, incidentally, one of the most myspacey pictures i've ever assembled.
But yeah anyway at some point during my recent lumberjack phase it was brought to my attention that some of the hairs in my beard were red. This is a stunning development for me personally. If I had grown up a stepchild would I have been the recipient of beatings because of some latent redhead vibe? Does this play into my own irritability? I guess I should be grateful it's only my face, because i think i would look RETARDED with red hair.

<-- beard sample i just had to scan as evidence.

next time i plan to do a "deleted scenes" post, becaue i've got a small hill of blog-related visual gags that i never quite finished (all of which i had to wade through over the course of typing this).

Brought to you by Affirmative Action [amy]

Hi.

I don't post very often. But I thought I'd try this out because people will continue to read even though I personally won't be producing on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. So... increased readership, same minimal effort.

Um, I got this button recently. I think it's cool that his boots are so large.

in defense of the button fly [Ben]

So last Friday we were talking about clothes, and suddenly, with more than a hint of chagrin in his voice, Liam uttered the words, "I'm dunno dude, I think I'm with Brian on this one...." And even as his words trailed off, my forehead was cloven in two by a molten flash of pain, the intensity of which was surpassed only by my disbelief.

Engulfed in a sudden whiteness, I reeled--not drunkenly, although I cannot blame you, friends, for suspecting so. Unable to stifle a cry, I sunk to my knees, grasping for the shards of my shattered taste equilibrium. For just a moment I thought I glimpsed the Balrog of aesthetic travesties--Thomas Kinkade--risen from the abyss, clad only in brown belt, black shoes, and white knee socks, poised to savage me with polka dotted and plaid bolts of lightening. Knowing nothing but that I alone could oppose this madness, this disastrous assault on the respectable definition of "well-tailored", I marshaled the following points in defense of the button fly:

1) Durability. Quite simply, there's more chance of your cock making an unexpected appearance if you're rocking a zipper. It may never have happened to you, and perhaps it never will... but I have suffered friends. There is photographic evidence. And because of this, I prefer to play the odds.

2) Safety. There's really only one situation where I want interlocking teeth in the vicinity of the precious. The danger is, of course, mitigated somewhat by the proper use of boxers or boxer briefs. (The jury's out on whether or not men who wear briefs actually possess penises and/or opportunities to use them.) But then again, why roll the dice when you don't have to?

3) It's the male bra strap. Really, now that I've taken time to reflect, this could be the most important point of all. This isn't the most perfect analogy. Obviously, some girl jeans have buttons, so there is a degree of familiarity, but the angle's all wrong, and in my experience, there's been very few times the entire unbuttoning operation has gone completely smoothly. Now, my male readers are probably being persuaded away from the button fly at this very moment, for who indeed would seek to put an additional roadblock between his penis and a willing female? But really, wouldn't we all agree that once fly fumbling has commenced, there's little chance of turning back? And wouldn't we all feel a bit better if ham handedness during assisted disrobing wasn't entirely our domain? I thought so.

Your thoughts on the matter are entirely welcome, but if they differ from mine, completely and irredeemably wrong.