Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Welcome to the Third Summer of Dresses

Happy Summer everyone! I know many of you are dealing with triple digit temps and I hope the A/C is good to you. I've been slow on the blogging because now that I have a new camera, the larger files take FOREVER to upload. That, and, for the past couple of weeks I've been working really hard, dealing with clients who are trying to ruin my life, and somehow managing to sneak back to LA for a week for my HS reunion. So I got all that to catch up on as well as wrap up the tales of Vietnam, Macau, Dragon Boating, blah blah blah.

I was really happy to leave the 115 degree temps in the Valley and paying $72.14 to fill up my tank. But now I come home to nasty humidity, so bad that the clothes in my wardrobe are damp. I will need to find a new flat, stat.

Welcome to Summer.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Personality Defect Test

A Quick Break for a Quiz. It's kinda true. What do you think?


Your Score: Starving Artist


You are 42% Rational, 28% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 71% Arrogant.



You are the Starving Artist! Like some sort of emaciated Frenchman, you sit in your fancy little chair and contemplate beauty, meaning, flowers, and all kinds of other ridiculous crap. You are more intuitive than logical, and are primarily guided by your heart and emotions. You are also very introverted and gentle. Of course, this does not mean that you do not have an ego. In fact, you are surprisingly arrogant for someone so emotional and gentle. This is why you are best described as a starving artist. You are very introspective and quite sure of yourself, as any accomplished artist is, yet your views are impractical, guided by feelings, and overly gentle. You probably find math, logic, and similar intellectual pursuits offensive to your artistic sensibilities, and you prefer the open-endedness of artistry because it's infinitely easier to ponder the beauty of a sock than to build rocketships. So really you have no reason to be arrogant, you big doofus, because the skills you value (emotion, spirit, art, etc.) in yourself are valuable only on a subjective level, meaning your arrogance is purely masturbatory, like the insipid self-pleasuring of some twat who spouts artistic nonsense only for the pleasant tinkling sound it makes upon his indiscriminating ears. In short, your personality is defective because you are arrogant, introverted, introspective, gentle, and thoroughly irrational...posessing most of the traits needed to be a starving--and useless--artist. So get out there, write a few short stories that are allegories for the indestructible spirit of socks, and starve!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Capitalist Pig.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Haughty Intellectual, the Televangelist, and the Emo Kid.

*

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If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

The following image was made by Stephan Brusche at http://www.sb77.nl, a real-life "starving artist". Check out his website if interested.

About Saint_Gasoline


I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
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Monday, June 02, 2008

Vietnam!

Saigon Hotel Chronicles: Chapter 3, Morning Cu Chi.

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It's not often that one travels to developing countries and says, Let's Go Clubbing. But some people do including my pal Powers. We were out the night before until 4 something AM, and had to wake up for breakfast and our tour to Cu Chi at 6:30 AM. By some standards this would not even suffice as a proper nap. But Cora and I got ready within minutes, showered and even had some time to throw some make up on. We could not assume that the boys were responsible enough to set their own alarm, and sure enough they didn't.

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We had a super simple yet incredibly delicious breakfast at the mini hotel, and then ran to meet our tour group where we waited and waited and waited for the bus.

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So the boys played with the latest eyewear street fashions.

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And I took pictures of little kids in their car seat.

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An average Vietnamese street, with a the Hong Kong pizza tradition Pepperoni's restaurant.

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One of the most immediate differences between HK and Vietnam is Hongkies are always on the go and Vietnamese can hang out anywhere.

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Just don't get hit by one of the 6 million scooters in Saigon.

Then we headed to Cu Chi. It's about an hour and a half away from Saigon. Usually tours end with the souvenier stop, but ours began with one.

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I'm not sure what handicapped handicrafts are. They are not made by handicapped folk as far as I could tell. Maybe they are calling the customers special?

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This is how humid it was inside. I couldn't even keep my lens fog free long enough to snap a pic.

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And then, we arrived at Cu Chi.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are an immense network of underground tunnels that are part of a much larger network of tunnels that span much of Vietnam.

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Backtracking a little, I was feeling very nostalgic before leaving for Vietnam, even if this particular era was before my time. I think a curiosity for the past, especially it's most painful moments, are deeply embedded in me. I wanted to walk the same roads my friends' fathers did when they were deployed here. I wanted to experience the lost memories, the lost lives. I wanted to feel a connection since my most beloved is deployed and I don't really understand what he's going through.

As usual, so many questions. It was really cool to experience it first hand. But also interesting and alarming to learn about the war through the Vietnamese perspective.

Our first stop, a wee tunnel just big enough for one person to fit in.

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This is not where they film Lost. I asked.

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Next stop, torture traps for the American enemy.

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An American tank.

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And more tunnels. This one was terrifying because it was pitch black and you couldn't tell how far you had to crawl before the end of the line. It has also been widened to fit Western tourists.

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Don't tell anyone but my legs were terribly sore for days after crawling in there.

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A trench.

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A crater.

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Our re-enactment.

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And the real deal!

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The girls grabbed the AK 47s

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And the boys fired M1s.

They did not offer us ear protection but we took it without asking. Unfortunately they were just regular music headsets! It was really F'ing loud and we had to run outta there quick.

It's actually pretty cool that they have the firing range right there because as you're walking through the grounds you hear the gunshots closeby and it's totally eerie.

Things to do before I die:
Crawl through Viet Cong guerrilla tunnels. Check.
Fire an AK 47 in Vietnam. Check.