Give your man one of these.

This is an awesome gift. Period.

Cheap, but so freaking useful. I sometimes give these as gifts to my friends.

I carry the survival knife at all times. Mostly just use it as a knife or bottle opener.

The size and profile is perfect. I don't want a bulky knife in my pocket, I want a flat blade.

This fits the bill perfectly.

$3,800

Years ago, I took loans for college. After graduation, payment became due at $50 per month, and the interest came out to about $200 per year. In other words, 25% of my monthly payments were just going to interest alone instead of paying down the debt.

I decided this might be good for my credit score. A long history going on for years, of steady payments on a loan. Next month, the final payment will be done.

I will have paid $600 in interest on a loan for $3,800. That's around 15%.

It was nice being able to make such ridiculously low monthly payments. But what of my credit score?
Will I look like pure awesomeness? We'll find out.

The Frog Prince

Never before have I ever seen an animated movie with such deep meaning, never one which was so delicately written that a child would feel it were made just for them, as much as any adult.

That good. So good I tell my friends.
It gets my glowing review.

Dumbing Down of America

Interview with the author (watch the full thing). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6FKkWFHyi0&NR

Some very powerful statements.

The new world order doesn't want children to be creative, well educated, or critical thinking.

• Corporations want employees that are 'school to work', and have no skills or options, just do the work and quit job hoping so much.
• Goverment wants citizens that don't question authority, and don't question what is best for them. They want non-thinking followers.

For several hundred years, there has been gradualism in the educational system, and movement toward 'regionalism' in government where what is good for an individual or a city does not matter. Wealth of well to do cities will be flattened out and distributed to other cities. Wealth of rich nations... yeah, that's happening too.

Regionalism is 'collectivism', is communism. Both capitalism and communism have a dark side. I fear that the dark side of America will make other dark times seem very small in magnitude.

New Haircut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1QFRJ7r89w

Thanks, Alita!

true love and soul mates

People ask me if I believe in 'true love'
And I want to refer them to a linguist for reality therapy.

OK, love is love.
There is no artificial or fake love.
The color blue... is blue. It comes in many shades, but there is no TRUE blue.
So why should there be "true love"?

See where I'm going with this? The phrase "True love" fucks us over.
It gives us this idea that we should live our lives seeking true blue.
As if we should just seek for something that doesn't exist.

We should seek our 'soul mate'
That's more bad language. More 'impossible'.

Nobody is perfect, and no love is perfect.
OK?
Think of yourself and your parents and any brothers or sisters.
You fight and you hate. I'll bet you don't even want to live together forever, am I right?
Your love is not perfect, and it never will be, because it can't be.
Why? Because you're all human, ok. That's why.

And guess what.. humans aren't perfect.

You need to wake up and realize several fundamental things:
1. There is no true love. (love is love is love, nothing else. Don't modify it with any adjectives and then say there's some new kind that people don't know from birth, and then don't get all high and mighty with me telling me I don't know my shit because I'm single!

Never disqualify someone as ignorant about love because they are single, they might know way more than you do. Besides, it's really condescending. "Well if you haven't found true love, then what could YOU possibly know?)
2. There is no soul mate (there is only good matches for you, and NONE of them are perfect. Not to mention that a 'soul' or 'soul matching' has nothing to do with any of this. When was the last time someone walked up to you, eyed your breasts and said, "Sister, I like your soul! I feel a compatibility coming on.")

You develop entire libraries of inter-connected and supporting ideas about 'true love' and 'soul mates' and you live your life hoping and acting weird, missing good opportunities with good people... because you're waiting for perfection and expecting something that doesn't exist.

You're going to be searching a long time, I can tell you that much.

And you're going to be unhappy with every single lover you ever have. You will look back on them with this harsh judgment about not being a perfect soul mate, or not giving you "true love". As if. See how silly you are?  You got these goggles on that prevent you from interpreting reality. So what's real now?

I've known this long enough to settle down with the idea that I will love a lot of girls in my life. I'm never going to judge them by thinking, "Well this one wasn't true love, and that one wasn't true love, and that one was imperfect..." I am going to love them with a pure kind of love that you have never achieved because YOU still got broken reality goggles.

You still think you'll only fall for one person, a soul mate. And that when you do, it's going to feel different.
It won't feel different. It's going to feel sexy and friendly, like it always does. That's nature's work.
The only "soul mate" qualification is to have a working relationship that doesn't end.

But even that can result in you judging people as having some kind of false or substandard love.
"It didn't work out, so he was a bad lover."

No he wasn't. He held you close, and did everything that a lover does. Took care of you. He cooked you breakfast. Drop the harsh reality. He was just fine. Why did it end? I don't know. I'm not you.

I look back on my exes and mmmm. They were scrumptious. They were perfect. And you know what? I still love them and we sometimes get together with them when the timing is good. That's a special kind of love you can't have if you're busy judging the past, and judging everybody against an image of perfection.

Join me. Understand "pure love". Pure is the only adjective that I approve of attaching to the word love. It really filters out the confusing instead of adding confusion to it. Mmm. Language is everything, it influences your philosophy. Set your mind free. Embrace pure love.

Shanghai

Opportunity came knocking. I'll be moving there next month.

I was just getting settled into life at Nanjing. This is good though.

I just finished watching Season 6 of 'Weeds'. Wow, talk about emotional. Amazing ending and edge-of-your-seat writing.

I met a girl, like her. She's a Westerner, which takes a load off.
She has some emotional stuff about an ex boyfriend.
I've met like... a million girls like that in my life.
History does a number on the female brain.