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26/02/2008
David Archuleta, Imagine
This world is such a dismal place. Ice caps melting, Amazon turning into a giant tofu, no fish left in the ocean, friends letting you down, future uncertain, moral authorities spreading lies, people killing each other and so on.
But once in a while, you come across something so beautiful, so pure and so powerful that you start to think, yeah may be this life is worth living after all...
21:25 Posted in Musical | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
23/02/2008
8 per minute
1, 2, 3, 4... I still remember.
For three solid hours, I lay there counting, staring at the folds on his blanket slowly moving up and down. 8 breaths per minute, wikipedia said. Anything less than that, I had to call for an ambulance.
It was Halloween. Picasso had been bobing up and down all night, dancing away, apparently enjoying himself. All of a sudden, he just collapsed. I couldn't sit him up even if I tried. Within a minute, the club just kicked us out, without lending a helping hand. OUT, that's all they us to do. After bankrolling our pink dollars month after month, year after year, they treated us like a stinking street rat carrying a deadly plague from the Dark Age.
Once we're out on the street, I struggled to keep him on his feet, as he weave in and out of consciousness, and his limps waving involuntarily in the air. Between violent bouts of throwing up, he managed to shout "Let me go" repeatedly. Some concerned pedestrians asked if we need help. But the trouble is, I did't even know what Picasso has overdosed on. The cupid in that concoction of his recreational chemical alphabet soup. His ever-present "water" bottle hinted at GHB the date rape drug, and someone suggested giving him Speed as an antidote. But how in Hell can I get that on a busy circus corner full of passers-by whilst restraining a maniac?!
Finally, a familiar face showed up and offered to take us home, but to get a hysterical 6'2 giant into car was no easy task. In a moment of frustration, I smacked him in the face. The first time in my whole life. It didn't work, of course.
I don't remember exactly how I dragged his 175lb of unresponsive flesh up the stairs in the end. In order to keep him from choking in his own vomit, I had to maintain him in the recovery position, which eventually meant lying there holding him tight, baking in a swamp of sweat and organic smell. It has always been difficult to get his pulse, so I concentrated on his impossibly slow and shallow breaths, counting away til the sun came out.
Was it love? It must've been.
I've heard of a couple, in which one date-raped himself so often that the boyfriend has to carry a small bottle of antidote around, whenever they go out.
I can't. I'm sorry, I just can't.
19:10 Posted in HomoSEXual , San Franciscal , Personal | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
20/02/2008
Un Point C'est Toi
It's a lovely tune, isn't it?
21:30 Posted in Musical | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
May that Glorious Era Never Come
Kansas City has a long philanthropic traditions. It is not unusual for the wealthy to donate billions of their fortune to build some of the best libraries, galleries, museums as well as scientific research institutes right here. Without these visionaries, KC would be as plain as the rest of the prairie and I wouldn't be here.
Being a Chinese in middle America is like being an exhibit at the zoo. Trying to find a gay partner in this utopia of MWM-for-MWM (married white men) is basically home wrecking. Doing science in the rotting bible belt is literally a constant battle with religious insanity.
Just imagine there is a church in every single corner of the street, and all of them write to you about jesus who didn't really die.
In Kansas, we have had EVILgelicals successfully got onto the Board of Education, erased evolution from the science syllabus and installed their very own "intelligent design" creationist garbage for 2 whole years.
At my research institute, we have to employ a full team of retired policemen guarding the campus with loaded pistols, in case some crazy religious nut cases come crashing the gate, trying to save precious dead embryos & stem cells that were never there.
... and not to mention our extreme high rate of homicides and the Westboro Baptist Church fuckers that organize picketing at the funerals of AIDS victims. Private Catholic high schools can openly discriminate against the fair sex and banned female referees from presiding over basketball games.
All these SHIT makes it *really* hard to hire qualified scientists, or to be more precise, qualified white scientists who know better. As a result, we have lots of FOB Chinese scientists who are just happy to get out.
With a concentration of lonely aliens stranded here in a vacuum of support network, it was only a matter of time that some of them would find comfort and friendship (and usually more!) at certain free Chinese dinners every Friday night.
So it was no surprise that one morning, I found a poster offering such free Chinese dinner. What shocked me was that it's posted at work, written exclusively in Chinese, and bore the slogan "May the Glorious Era Dawn on Us, When All the Chinese Intellectuals are Converts".
Dar Dah. Welcome to the Chinese Christian Fellowship!! We are now recruiting. Virgins available upon request.
Well, none of my American colleagues wouldn't know what's going on, since the poster wasn't in English; my Chinese colleagues won't flip either, as they aren't aware of anti-soliciting laws.
So the whistle fell on my head, and I did my blowing.
As if the fire alarm has gone off and this was an emergency, the posters were removed immediately and within an hour, there was a frenzy of policy emails addressing every single employee at the institute.
No soliciting. No membership drive of any kind. No nothing not related to science.
Quite impressive, I have to say, and it makes sense.
Can you imagine Nature putting us on their news as the new flagship of "Christian science"?!
That'd be the E-N-D.
As if karma has been connecting the dots, everything came back to me eventually. The killer, according to Sherlock Holmes, always ends up at the victim's funeral. Hence the earlier post: http://vainpot.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/02/06/invitati...
I should've know that Frank was the "ringleader". Like Frankenstein, he too has a creator plus a collection of DVDs. They should've fired him last year, when he gave his boss a Creationist box set for Christmas!
18:30 Posted in Medieval , LABourious , iRReligious | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
18/02/2008
Real Conversations in America (7)
"Take care of mum" (a son's response, when his gay dad came out after 20 years of marriage.)
"Blacks are becoming the superminority. Both Asian and hipanic Americans are marrying whites but the Blacks aren't..."
"I have two Master degrees." (chat up line, San Francisco)
"Do they play black music here?" (husband asked wife, at a contemporary dance performance, Kansas)
"I grew up in a farm and every morning all the farmers would go and get coffee together. If you don't drive there in a pick-up truck, then they'd think you're a sissy." (Kansas)
"Honey, what's that on the drive way?" (The wife accidentally knocked over a deer on the Highway and dragged it all the way home leaving a long trail of blood.)
"Do you eat squirrel?" (my insane driving instructor, Kansas)
"You don't have a girlfriend or a wife? That's interesting!"
"Being unique or individualistic is not a virtue here." (Missouri)
"Am I going to die?" (after drinking from the tap in Kansas City, which has the purest of all American tap water)
"My name is Britney and I am a Republican" (a Kansas daddy made his 4 yo daughter say that... 20years later, she votes for Hilary)
"Your chance to play a dead body on CSI. Call now! (CBS, a TV channel)
19:10 Posted in Americano | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this
14/02/2008
Freaky Little.. Fruit Flies!
Now that I have become a neurobiologist, perhaps it's time for me to talk about behaviour; and what's better than to post the 1st ever porn video here on Valentine's day?! Mind you, this one is inspired by a vintage masterpiece from the 60s...
Yes, that's right. You are looking at naughty male fruit flies courting each other forming a daisy chain... Scientists like looking at these babies because they're easy to breed and train. In fruit fly, there's this master gene called "fruitless", which controls male-female courtship behaviour. When you put a virgin male with a female, he will chase her for hours non-stop, wing vibrating (songs!), foot tapping and abdomen licking until he gets it. However, if he was paired with a mated female, she'd fiercely reject his naive advances, and emotionally scar him for days (seriously!).
If the girl has a male version of fruitless, she'd behave like a boy, and vice versa. Boys with a mutated fruitless gene, will become gay, hence the video.
As it turns out, male flies also have "beer goggle", just like us. After a couple of pints, they will turn bi-curious, although it is currently unknown whether they will regret it later.
For a moment, I thought this means homosexuals are just genetically drunk~! But needless to say, monkey business is far more complex than flies sniffing each other's bottom - the fruitless gene doesn't actually exist in mammals.
Fruity science. Who's have thought?! ;-P
19:00 Posted in HomoSEXual , XY , LABourious | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
13/02/2008
I Support Freedom of Speech
17:00 Posted in Vicious | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
12/02/2008
I'm sad
I'm sad that people prefer comfortable blinding lies to cold hard reasoning.
I'm sad that people like being told what to do, rather than exercising their own cognitive faculty.
I'm sad that believing in something without a single ounce of evidence is considered virtuous.
I'm sad that personal faith *has* to be respected regardless of whether or not such a belief system deserves it.
I'm sad that America is reviving and exporting stone-age stupidity and the world is eating it up.
I'm sad that people still believe in the power of prayers despite counter-evidence.
I'm sad that faith curtail curiosity.
I'm sad that religion is divisive.
I'm sad that Islam's culture of fear is winning.
I'm sad that nobody stopped the fundamentalists from abusing their religious freedom and taking away others' liberty.
I'm sad that religious moderates are complacent about their extremist counterparts.
I'm sad that democracy can turn collective prejudice into blatant repression of minorities.
I'm sad that religion is allowed to intrude politics, control people's private life and distort the education of our children.
I'm sad that in a country founded by people escaping from religious persecution, you have to say you're a Christian to run for president.
I'm sad that in a modern everyone-is-equal society like Britain, people of different religions want a different set of laws.
I'm sad that however ridiculous and so obviously fake Mormon and Scientology are, people still got tricked into it.
I'm sad that children are indoctrinated even before they know which religion to choose from.
(I'm ANGRY that I've been Baptised at birth.)
I'm sad that everyone thinks their god is bigger.
I'm sad that missionaries go around the world and distroy local cultures.
I'm sad that, implicitly, all believers want others to be eternally burnt in Hell.
I'm sad that most people are too lazy to think.
http://www.thediplomat.ro/reports_1207.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7234291.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7239005.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/dec/16/religion.world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4887668.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7232661.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17book.html
21:25 Posted in Vicious | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
11/02/2008
Ice Queen
Hehe. I think I know a couple of people who'd find this strip funny...
Personally, I don't find it that offensive and why Washington Post made such a big fuss about it. I just find it sad that people think it'd be scandalous if Rice *is* a lesbian. Why should it matter?! So what if she prefers watching football to dating men. What I find *more* offensive was Laura Bush's suggestion that BECAUSE Rice is not married to a man, she's not qualified to run for president.
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06/02/2008
The Promise of 7 Virgins
In a way, I've always known.
There were only 2 possibilities.
I don't really know these mainland Chinese at work and I don't really get invited to their gatherings, as they don't really think I'm Chinese.
But guess what. In the name of the Holy Chinese New Year, I was invited to make dumplings. As soon as the door open, I saw a shrine on one side of the sitting room, a gigantic white cruxifix adorned with benign Made-in-China plastic flowers and nylon drapes.
That was the moment when I realised it was a Chinese Christian fellowship that I have entered. There they were, clusters of shy college girls and awkward boys, so characteristic of such gathering,
As soon as I buried myself in a bowl of raw mince pork, the host made a special announcement.
"His name is Ed and he is SINGLE!"
Cheers.
That was OK, since exactly 10 years ago I made that announcement myself in a Chinese Christian fellowship full of young unattached college girls, as a joke.
So it was both A) and B). They want to convert me as well as finding me a suitable partner. How very nice.
What really made me hide in the bathroom was that they started singing their very own "Jesus, I will always love you".
Coming to middle America is like turning back time. As a godless sodomite, I felt like I've been shoved back into 2 sets of closets.
As they encourage to talk to the 18yo girls, I said they were too young. I'm waiting for the older ones to get divorced.
They didn't like that.
But that didn't stop them from calling me up whenever they need a lift, to which I duly obliged. Some of my friends accused me of sleeping with the "enemy", but a friend in need is a friend in need.
22:05 Posted in Journal , Medieval | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/02/2008
Super Tuesday
It's so much fun to watch the primaries.
Those evangelicals Republicans have to choose between Mick Huckabee the young-earth-anti-evolution-lunatic and Mitt Romney the hypocrite with a phoney-religion background.
Ha. It must be their god's will~!
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