Monthly Archives: April 2011

goodness, humor

Fantastic government videos

Wow, United States Patent and Trademark Office.  WOW.  I am just… so pleased.

in a day when the size of your shoulderpads = how successful you were (like a female codpiece)

I did my first successful freelance martial arts gig about a week ago, and I was passing out cards with the name of my operation, but I haven’t trademarked it yet.  I googled “trademark,” and the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) came up.  And hey look!  They had an instructive video for noobs!  How sweet.  I’ll bet it consists of some plain woman walking around some dismal office in a pant-suit and shoulder pads (circa 1985), listing in a thin monotone while vaguely gesturing to the cheap bullet points that appear next to her as she lists all the boring shit I’ll have to read and fill out to get the process started.  Her hair will be the most entertaining visual aid, and her tobacco-stained teeth will resemble the linoleum in my bubbie’s kitchen.  The image will be grainy.  It’ll look like some shitty high school project.  Someone will walk by near the water cooler and engage in some jerky, awkwardly informative dialog with our host, then mercifully slink away, allowing her to once again focus on us, her victi-I mean viewers, with her dead gorgon eyes.

Yes, my expectations were good and set.  I’ve been putting off watching this video for a solid couple of weeks.  Well no more!  If I must watch it, then so be it!  My little one-woman company must must forward!  To the future!  To the trademark office!  To the educational video!

initiate fake shiny logo!

About ten seconds into this video, the collective weight of all my nasty assumptions imploded upon itself like a dying star.  The USPTO has apparently created an informative video in the guise of a mock news channel, complete with graphics, anchors (with names like Mark Trademan), a well-designed newsroom (completely digitally created), and even a little ticker along the bottom and feeds “United States patent and Trademark Office – Search on TESS – File on TEAS” over and over.  Not exactly informative, but it lends a sense of authenticity to have scrolling text meander across the bottom 5% of the screen.

It’s called TMIN (Trademark Information Network), and boy am I impressed.  Let’s watch!

is he winking at us?

Holy shit, it’s the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, live via satelite!  How did they swing that?  CNN’s been trying to nail that guy down for weeks!  And the Deputy Undersecretary!  The Undersecretary explains quite clearly what the differences between a patent, trademark, and copyrights are.

Too bad he’s stuck in that totally unfurnished office.  At least he has a nice view of the autumn colors until the cleaning crew arrives to let him out.

Now it’s up to the Deputy Undersecretary to really thrill us with her stunning delivery of the process of trademarking, etc.  Take it away, Sharon!

that's her "winner's flinch"

Woah, never mind!  Grab a nap, relax, maybe stop having that seizure first.

talk about trademark infringement

Wait, is that “reporter” in a Radioshack?  I thought this was a news room.

But enough chit-chat with the higher-ups.  It’s time for a 3D graphics display from an incredible, entirely fabricated piece of machinery, followed by a sit-down interview with OH MAI GAWD it’s a pant-suit!  And shoulder pads!  We found them, and they were here all along!  They were hanging out with the awkwardly informative dialog!  Yikes, it’s almost like she’s wearing camouflage of some kind.

"I borrowed this outfit from my mommy."

This guy just said we can use trademarks without registering them with the USPTO.  Wtf?  Oh wait, I need to protect it somehow.  Damn, never mind.

Wait!  This lady just said that the people who enforce this protection is the trademark owner.  So if someone tries to use my logo on their stuff, I get to use my ninja skillz to stop them?  And that’s legal?  Who knew the USPTO would encourage street justice?  I’m seriously diggin’ this video.

Bearing in mind that this thing was written by the guy who plays the head anchor, it really wasn’t half bad, especially given all I’ve retained about trademarking.  There are ten videos on his page.  My weekend is shaping right up.

EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL:

Patents are usually for inventions of some kind, things like machinery.  Trademarks are business-oriented, and protect brand names, slogans and logos.  Copyrights are often “entertainment oriented,” and protect books, movies, paintings and music.

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goodness

omg. KIDS.

My cousin showed me this video of a little girl who is chosen to join the Jedi Academy at Disneyland.  When the big fight with Darth Vader comes up, little Sariah does the unexpected: she crosses over to the dark side.

Watch her kneel like a veteran Sith.

brutal!

While the crowd is busy going wild for this girl’s decision to serve the Dark Side, Vader reacts like a champ: “All too easy,” he says, as the Jedi attempts to collect himself.

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life, martial arts

A generation of softies

what a douche

I’ve heard many people compare learning martial arts to joining the armed forces.  Participants become physically and mentally tougher, learn valuable fighting skills, and get their asses kicked on a fairly regular basis.  Whenever I run into another martial artist, our common trials bond us together instantly.  The running joke goes something like, “What crazy bullshit did your master put you through?”  We compare scars and bruises, techniques and tactics.  With a knowing smile and a firm handshake, we’re friends before we even know each other’s names.

[Note: This does not include martial artists who brag about their abilities.  Those are a totally separate group of people who are all buddies for different, more self-indulgent reasons.  I do not consider these people martial artists at heart.  See picture.  Note the poorly photo shopped American flag, and how the portion of his black belt with kanji has been intentionally blurred.  That’s taboo.  Badly done, Chuck.]

But things have changed since I was a student.  Instructors praise their students constantly.  They smile and laugh when their students make mistakes, then encourage them to try again.  This positive feedback approach is the complete opposite of what my generation (and all past generations) of martial arts students experienced.  How will my students bond in the future?  Certainly not over what a bastard I was.  I hope.  Crap.

Yes, things have changed.  My instructors were never wrong.  Being in class meant not smiling, not laughing, and never, ever talking back to the instructor.  If you made a mistake, the Grand Master would point in out in front of the whole class, often with anger in his voice.  And for what?  To humiliate the students into getting it right the next time?  All it did was make me tense.  I was not happy there.  Why did I stay?

I think it must have been the people.  The fact is, even with the tyrannical nature of the studio, we still had a lot of fun.  We still joked around and laughed and goofed off (and got in trouble for it).  We would clean up the studio, then go out for Korean food at the 24-hour place in K-town.  I had a blast, and it saddens me that I’m not really in touch with anyone from those days.  Gotta work on that.

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goodness

Gee!

everybody hanbok!

The sheer ridiculousness of what pop culture can produce occasionally pulls me out of my sulking, teeny-bop-hating shell, and makes me smile.  A couple years ago, I could blame Girls Generation for doing this.

Gee has to be one of the cutest and simultaneously creepiest videos I’ve ever seen.  The song is super catchy, and the choreography is spot on.  Still, every move these girls make looks so practiced, especially their facial expressions and cutesy little hand gestures (called aegyo, which, I realize, are more common in countries like Japan and South Korea than in the U.S., but still, it’s weird).  They could be made of plastic, so the fact that they start out as mannequins is disturbingly accurate.

why no, Im not wearing makeup

They also spend the whole video acting like spoiled little girls, but wear stylish, skin-tight clothes with four-inch heels.  I grew up surrounded by Korean females of all ages who had the tendency to dress their age, but act like little girls when teased; this behavior was pretty much standard.  Still, seeing girls dress like women and act like children is just… wrong.

Having said that, I was pretty excited to find out that the odds of making it into one of these groups seems pretty high.  Some of them seem to change members on an annual basis.  Of the 41 major all-female singing groups that South Korea has churned out in the past four years, there were 212 current and past members.  That’s 53 potential members per year.  That’s literally about a one-in-a-million chance, but that’s still better than the lottery.  The only requirement seems to be glasses-cracking cuteness and a fathom worth of legs.  In fact, if we average their height at 5′ 4″, the cumulative leg length of these female hearth-throbs would span more than one fifth of a mile (22%).  Bad news, North Korea.  South Korea is officially WINNING.

80% of all their photos are 100% leg

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family, goodness, humor, life

Delightful disaster

scary-accurate

So… *sigh* I’m not known for being the best driver in the world.  I wrecked my first car within the first two years of ownership.  My second car (another Pontiac Grand Am) gave me all kinds of trouble.  I also had the occasional close-encounter with poles.  I sold it about a month ago just before it hit 100k miles and its value really plummeted, so I’ve been driving the car previously known as my dad’s old car, and before that known as my mom’s old car.  It’s a 13 year-old pile of American metal with 130k miles on it.  It’s louder and even less fuel efficient than my Pontiac was.  Time to get a new car.

A couple good people from out of town came to visit my family and see the sights of Los Angeles this past week.  We had a blast.  I spent all my time off driving them around my hometown, people-watching like a tourist and enjoying the company of people I don’t get to see nearly often enough.  You can imagine my delight when I was handed a chance to unwittingly entertain them with my notorious ability to cause body-damage to vehicles.

I was telling them all about the LA riots in 1992, and how my family chose to abandon our house when we could smell smoke from all the businesses being burned down just a couple miles to the south.  On our way out of town, we drove through a firefight between some armed civilians and the LAPD.  Just as we were discussing this, BANG!  The rear window shattered.  I was backing up SLOWLY into a parking spot in a poorly lit underground lot, and the back window touched what looked like an air duct.  Apparently safety glass all breaks at once, and with the same enthusiasm as a gun going off.

Even so, it was a fun day.  We went to a museum, had lunch at Umami, visited The Farmer’s Market and The Grove, saw the lights at LACMA, had Korean food for dinner, and gelato in Silverlake for dessert.  The window incident was a source of comedy and proof of the unpredictable delights of backing into front-only parking spots (of course, you could only see the “head-in parking only” sign if you were already going in head-first.  Fuck).

I guess it could've been worse

Dad and I went to the junkyard today to see if we could find a replacement rear window.  No luck, and they wouldn’t let us bring my camera in (fuckers!), but we snapped a couple cool shots with a phone anyway.  Take that, dirty commies!  I’m surprised by how fun it was going to this junkyard.  Those cars that were completely demolished were totally hypnotizing (see above picture).  I’ll have to go back and sneak in a legitimate camera.

We ended up buying a replacement rear window at a nearby junk shop (just $55!), and replaced it ourselves in my folks’ driveway.  And I finally remembered to drop off all that stuff at Goodwill!  Dinner tonight was ramen, strawberry mochi, olives and sweet red wine while watching a three-hour block of Daria.  Overall a really fun day.

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goodness, humor, work

Haiku surprise!

Remember this post when described how I discovered first-hand that all-day meetings do, in fact, exist?  I just found the haikus I wrote during the last meeting that day.  I’m pretty pleased with them:

I write haikus to
keep myself awake sometimes.
This is one of them.

I needed to demonstrate to my new coworkers that I was creative, playful, and overall the kind of person they’d look forward to working with.  I had told them about this haiku entertainment strategy, so I needed something to ease them into it.  After that it just snowballed into a poetic storm of sass and topical comedy. (names changed for the sake of my precious anonymity)

Hey, Elizabeth.
Guess what I’ll do after this.
That’s right: ICE CREAM, BITCH.

if only they were all this adorable

At UCC, the
kids can major in drinking.
Drinky, drinky, drink.

The issue at hand was obviously the kids drinking habits.  College kids.  And the parents are apparently appalled at the amount they’re drinking and how easily they can get a drink.  This discussion continued for about five minutes before I felt the need to point out that the best way to keep your kids from blacking out every Thursday night was to make them feel so good about themselves while sober that they didn’t feel the need to get drunk to feel good.  I pointed out that this was the responsibility of the parents.  The reception to that comment was… mixed.

I just feel so sharp
in my little white sweater
and silver bull studs.

I wore the most “professional” clothing I owned that day so I would represent the office well at all the meetings.  I looked like quite the little executive.

"we just want our kids to grow up into their own happy, well-balanced, totally terrifying adult basking sharks."

The power couple
could sell me a live gator,
and call it a purse.

The head of this parents group at the time was this married couple who had more energy and enthusiasm about this group in their left pinkie toe than I have in my entire body about most things.  They’re a tough act to follow, and hypnotizing to watch.  Like a shark attack.

The purple lady
is inconsolable.  Pull
yourself together.

I don’t recall what it was about, but it must have been great to warrant it’s very own commemorative haiku.  Wait, is a haiku commemorative if it’s written as something happens instead of afterwards?  Crap.

Basketball event
basket ideas: tattoos,
botox, lip piercing.

This basketball event required baskets of donations to raffle off and make some money for the parents group.  Wine, sweets and sports memorabilia were popular items.  Not very exciting.  The event went off without a hitch though, and everyone loved their baskets.  But seriously, imagine how fast the botox basket would have reached its top value.

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goodness, nerd

English is purposely fucking with you

It occurred to me recently that there’s a difference between “on purpose,” “purposely,” and “purposefully.”  Although they’re all similar, they imply subtly different levels of enthusiasm for committing an action.

seriously, Louise, wtf?

If a hypothetical lady, Louise, were to throw a kitten “on purpose,” she did so with intent.  Her intention was to throw a kitten, and she did.  She doesn’t have to have any other reason for throwing the kitten.

However, if she were to throw a kitten “purposely,” this would imply that she had some underlying goal to achieve, and throwing the kitten was simply a step toward achieving that goal.  There is some implied (potentially malicious) intent behind the purposely executed action.

“Purposefully” is, in a way, the strongest of the three phrases.  It implies that as Louise throws the kitten, her reason for doing so is in the front of her mind and it is strong enough to drive her to action (she is literally “full of purpose”).  To do anything “purposefully” gives the action a sense immediacy, and urgency that doing something “purposely” or “on purpose” would lack.

I’m inclined to say that “on purpose” and “purposely” are, in essence, interchangeable.  After all, if Louise throws the kitten at a man “purposely,” with the implied malicious intent of hitting him with it, he has every grammatical right to turn around and exclaim, “You bitch, you did that on purpose!”  So perhaps the two have the same meaning, and are just used in different forms.  Still, I would argue that there’s a very subtle difference between the two in common usage.

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badness, martial arts, work

Just say No

Being a nanny must be a crazy job.

I chat with nannies at the dojo who talk about how hard it is to discipline the kids because the parents consistently undermine them in order to be the good guys.  The parents don’t want to spend the little amount of time they have with their kids disciplining them, so they get away with murder while mom and dad are around, and harass the nanny with “mom lets me do that” when they’re not.  It’s an uphill battle.  I can’t imagine working for people who aren’t on board with setting up some kind of structure with their kids.  Why send a kid mixed messages?  What a complete waste of time.

that's a "bad choice"

I’ve told a few nannies (and parents) that they can just say no to their kids, but they don’t want to be too strict because they’re afraid of losing their job.  When one nanny said this, I was baffled.  Wasn’t her job to act like a parent in the absence of the parents?  She responded, “They (the kids) will lie to their parents that I’m hurting them, or ‘she made us to this or that.'”  WHAT?!  Jesus.

There are a couple of kids at our dojo whose behavior has improved since they started taking classes with us, but they still do stuff at home like intentionally break windows and hugely expensive flat screen TVs, and fight violently with each other.  I saw a new woman with them last week, so I took a moment to chat with her.  I asked if she was the new nanny, to which she grimaced, “Yeah, unfortunately.”  I was struck dumb for a few seconds.  I must have looked really, really stupid.  I just couldn’t think of what to say to a nanny who didn’t want to be a nanny.  How long have you been with them, I asked.  One and a half months.  And she’s already miserable.  The kids are out of control, the parents undermine her, she’s afraid of being too strict; it goes on and on.  I gave her some advice (don’t give up, talk with the parents, make sure you’re on the same page, ask for their support, feel free to put the kids on timeout if they misbehave), and walked away shaking my head.

So now I have a question: Who in their right mind wants to become a nanny?  Who aspires to raise someone else’s kid?  Is this a profession like bus driver, filled with people who just couldn’t cut it in any other industry?  My morbid curiosity has been piqued.

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goodness, martial arts, work

Success!

I worked my first paid freelance martial arts gig yesterday.  It went so well; I’m actually pretty shocked at how smoothly it went.  Bear in mind I was teaching girl scouts and their and moms, so the likelihood of a mutiny was pretty slim, even if they did out-number me 24:1.

why yus, yu CAN haz a marshall artz, hehe

We started by ducking, then we combo’d with a palm strike, and moved onto the first self defense move I learned when I started training.  I asked if they had questions, and the moms had plenty of “what if” scenarios to pick my brain about.  One of the moms was nice enough to occupy the girls while the women circled up and I gave them the best advice I could about getting pinned to the ground, getting lifted from behind, being attacked while entering the car, etc.  At some point I reminded them that “you’re probably not going to be attacked… ever.  I hate to break it to you, but you’re just not that popular.  Chances are, you’ll never need to use these skills in a fight situation.  The point of classes like this is to give you the confidence to ask that person standing too close in line if they could back up a little; day-to-day stuff to make yourself feel more comfortable and confident.”  That seemed to resonate with them.

They asked about pricing (yikes!  Should’ve crunched some numbers before I got there), so I said $15 an hour per person for a group of five or more, $20 an hour per person for fewer than that, and “I usually charge between $60 and $70 an hour for private lessons,” meaning that’s what I would be charging if I ever did any paid private lessons.  Ever.  Regardless, they seemed enthused.  Fingers crossed!

Most of my friends work freelance, so booking a job, then doing the job, then getting paid for said job is literally an everyday thing for them.  This was a new experience for me, so I’m pretty thrilled with the result.  And a couple friends helped me design business cards that I got to pass out to the moms when they asked if I taught adults!  And I got some girl scout cookies out of it (they went straight to my friends)!  Overall, WIN.

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badness, humor, work

Haiku distraction: Spirit fingers edition

I was raised watching musicals.  I could sing along with every song in Oklahoma, Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, The King and I, Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi, My Fair Lady… the list goes on, and I love them all.  Point proven.  Moving on.

now in eye-bleeding technicolor!

One of the events I’ve been planning for over a month went well today; a reception before a musical performance of On the Town by the university students.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and after intermission, the play finally seemed to hit its stride, but I wouldn’t see this play if it were performed by professionals.  Nothing about a jazzy, WWII era New York filled with sailors and sassy women belting out verse after verse about taxis and contemporary landmarks appeals to me, especially when they spend 80% of their time gazing appealingly over the heads of the audience as if to say, “Hey, what’s that?!  Oh never mind, it’s nothing… Hey, what’s that?!”

As I noted first in this, and then this post, getting caught at an event in which I’d rather not participate requires some kind of self-created entertainment/distraction.  Hence, the Bitter Haiku was born.

You’d think the dean of
theater would memorize
her introduction.

The dean of theater was basically reading from a prepared statement.  Of all the people in the university from whom I don’t expect this… it’s her.

Really?  Not even
one gesundheit?  In a full
theater?!  My word!

I sneezed during the dean’s intro, no one said a word.  Unbelievable.  I’m already annoyed.

The play opens with
film footage.  Seriously?
Ugh, bad idea.

Ok, who’s fuckin’ idea was this?  It’s a play, people.  That’s like opening a sculpture exhibit with a painting.  That’s like asking for a manicure, and getting a haircut.  That’s like paying for apples, and getting fuckin’ oranges.  They’re not the same thing.

Everyone is so
excited.  Maybe that’s why
they can’t hit a note.

Ask anyone in the dating world; first impressions are pretty important.  So when the play opens with a few solid minutes of film footage, then the three main actors deliver minutes of dull dialog, followed by butchering the main musical number… let’s just find the silver lining, and call it lots of material for Bitter Haikus.

really? I can climb it?!

The museum scene
was always gonna be the
best, naturally!

It’s the Museum of Natural History!  Of course it’s gonna be a good scene.  Who doesn’t love jokes about dinosaur skeletons?  This was the highlight of the production for me.

.

Ninety minutes in,
and I’ve smiled exactly twice.
Is it over yet?

This is a play about some nice guys falling in love with some hilarious women.  There are loads of opportunities for comedy and that “awww” moment.  The guy behind me was laughing his ass off, but I couldn’t find much reason to grin, let alone laugh.  I felt disappointed and left behind at the same time.

They bullfight with a
tablecloth, and stacked people
dance: plagiarism.

see it done here first, and properly

There were at least half a dozen very specific examples of choreography throughout the play that were basically stolen from Singin’ in the Rain.  Two of these examples were ripped straight out of the scene where Gene Kelley, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds sing “Good Mornin” (in which two characters try to cheer up their glum friend), and were used in a scene in today’s production (in which two characters try to cheer up their glum friend).  The similarities are… depressing.

wait… it dances?

Don’t hire a male lead
who can dance!  When would he find
time to run around?

The one guy we spend the majority of the play following around spends the majority of his time looking confused, and speed-walking around the stage, trailing after extras with more purpose in one stride than the male lead had during the entire four-hour production.  When he finally broke into dance within the last twenty minutes of the play, I was shocked–shocked.  “Was he supposed to be dancing this whole time,” I thought, “or did they really hire him because of his amazing voice, despite his complete lack of dancing talent?”  Then I remembered: none of the other two male leads did any dancing at any point in the play.  None of them.  No wonder I was so much more impressed with the women.  They sang and danced, often at the same time (once while in a handstand), and still managed to hit every note.

If there was just one fewer dance number in which the cast coordinated pumping their dancing spirit fingers in the air to the beat of the live orchestra, I think I would have enjoyed it a little more.  At least I got paid.

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