10 short friday notes
1. It’s FA’s birthday tomorrow! It’s Ryan’s birthday on Sunday! One is a never-ending ranting (though recovering alkie) beeyatch, and the other is learning to wield a plastic sword.
Hiyakkkkkkkkkkkk!
2. Check out this article on Life at Cuil. Do you think all the pampering will be worth it?
3. My eldest sis and I are getting Ryan a cake from Mama Min. Can’t wait to collect the cake!! Will reveal which design I ordered next week 
4. If you refer to something as a ‘black hole’, are you being racist? Goodbye common sense, hello absurdity.
5. (Sort of) celebrated Kim’s birthday last week by stuffing our faces with bbq-ed crabs at Klang. I like the photo below:
Me, KY, Kim and Ringo. Click on the photo above for a larger version
6. Have so many blog posts to write but got lazy. Which reminds me, I’ve yet to complete my Hong Kong trip journal thingy. But lazy. But.. must.. chronicle… (still lazy). Also, my memory seems to be deteriorating. Age thing?
7. Hey it’s the beginning of the Hungry Ghost Festival! I hate this month, because I’d start seeing things that I made up in my head. Blah.
8. Maxis charged me RM1.40 for a 6m44s call to the Streamyx hotline. Internet at home is still rather fucked. I don’t care, I think it’s only right that TM gives me back my RM1.40.
9. Someone posted this on the Nick DiPaolo forum with the subject, “Why I am never going to prison”…
10. A couple more hours till the end of the world. Doomsday, Last Day, Armageddon, whatever. But there is hope! A spaceship awaits to take passengers to another planet where life is going to be pretty much awesome. However in order to secure a seat, you will need to have hardcore sex with Verne Troyer. Would you shag him or would you rather die?
oherro ryan! I buy you some more balls okay?
Suanie, I’m still an alcoholic. No recovering for me kthx.
oOo crabsssss, i miss the crabssssss
You sag your pants in here, someones gonna be up in your butt.
1. Glad to hear Ryan has given up the booze. Not sure why FA is playing with plastic swords though.
4. ‘In astronomy, the term black hole refers to a star that has collapsed upon itself, creating something so dense and small that it does not have any physical properties besides a gravitational force so great that even light cannot escape its pull.’
I can see why those officials got upset. Obviously not knowing the meaning of Black Hole means they have small dense minds, thus the comment was obviously refering to them. No logic can escape their brains pull.
The thing I find funny about the whole thing is this; in the US of A you’re supposed to refer to AFRO-AMERICANS and NOT BLACK people. What does the article do?
‘One black official demanded an apology, and Commissioner John Wiley Price, who also is black, said that type of language is unacceptable.’
After all, the whole point of using AFRO-AMERICAN was to disassocciate race from the term BLACK. Malcom-X never asked people to stop using terms like ‘Black Sheep’ or ‘Black Hole’, he just asked that they refer to him as Afro-American so that he was not associated with negative terms.
Which leads to the question. What are we going to start using for White Holes, White Dwarves and other astronomical phenomena? After all, they are named after their colour, NOT whether they are good or bad. And are there not negative terms with other colours as well? ‘Don’t touch it, it’s WHITE hot’. ‘You are like a WHITE washed TOMB?’ ‘They are WHITE WASHING to hide their hypocrisy???’ ‘You don’t look so good, you’re very white! Are you feeling Okay?’
Fact is, it is getting very stupid when you can’t make a perfectly innocent statement without people getting upset.
The problem with using Singularity [as suggested in the article] is there is more than one type of singularity. Stephen Hawkings I would suggest ignores the term Black Hole as he is talking froma scientific stand point where they seldom use colloquial terms for phenomena.
6. You’re memory is still Okay. Now, where is that $1 million dollars I lent you?
7. Can’t celebrate Hungry Ghost festicval anymore. Some Texas politicians feel it’s racist, all those ghosts running around look like KKK members.
9. Someone gotta be da booty!!!!
10. If someone has sex with Verne, can they release the tape afterwards?
just not supposed to call them negro, black is okay. however negro should be correct, that’s what the blacks in the olden days call themselves. african-american just links them to africa where they come from, and we all know that humans ALL originated from africa, and there are lots of blacks who are jamaican, bahamian etc; are they all africans too? why aren’t they JUST american?? “nigger”’s the other non-PC term (considered to have a racial slur) but i really don’t understand why.
hey I chanced upon a mahsing group paper bag. is that ryan on the bag?
he’s a butt-warrior, hunting booty with his spear
–> Christmas: I think ‘negro’ and ‘nigger’ were terms used when blacks were sold like cattle, which is why they are considered derogatory. On the other hand, there’s been a whole debate about this recently: http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/index.php?id=654
It’s Hungry Ghost Festival? I thought it’s Olympic, not to mention Moon Cake Festival, since they’re starting to sell moon cake already.
Julian - The term Negro originally came from the Latin and just means ‘Black’. It was used in the past [by Romans etc] just to denote skin colour and back then had no derogotory meaning. Romans etc sold people as slaves regardless of skin colour.
Later, when the slave trade was predominate in the US of A it did take on some derogotory meaning along with the completely derogatory ‘N’ word. Thus, both of those terms are [as you have pointed out] considered derogatory now-a-days, even if one of the terms originally wasn’t derogatory in nature.
Sometimes people can turn these terms around, for instance, ‘Christian’ was originally a derogatory term for followers of Christ. Rather than fighting the term it has now become the normal term for followers of Christ.
FA: can’t believe his godmother bought him the nike ball, sheesh! you are not as bad an alkie compared to last time lah. don’t want to rehash the past here
KY: jom!
ST: heh best video evar!
dabs: unfortunately your reasoning will not go down well with a lot of people… who unfortunately like to self-victimise. happens everywhere, just under different guises.
christmas: negro’s not an offensive term according to my dictionary. ‘nigger’ is a different matter, categorised as ‘extremely offensive’. my understanding is that it reminds them of the times of slavery, bla bla bla. it’s only in recent times that it’s considered derogatory. something evolved from the ‘black hole’ thing i suppose. though there’s a diference on how one intends to use the words, i believe.
annegel: yes
when he was 2.
julian: thanks for the link. i spent about 2 hours on it, inclusive of opening other related links
simon: bah mooncakes. i hate mooncakes.
ringo can’t go out without makeup.
Val: and you are not the Val I know
IP address, kind of a giveaway 