Camping turns out to be not as painful as I thought it would be

View from Blue Mounds, Wisconsin.
Just to show you the perfect weather condition required to make me NOT hate camping...

I am not against camping, provided the weather is gorgeous, not too hot and not too cold; supply of alcohol is constant; bugs are kept at minimal and away from me; fire is made and kept; smores are made to perfection and fed to me; an awning is erected over the picnic table to keep food and supply dry and in the shade; kids are entertained, NOT BY ME; modern bathroom facilities are within short walking distance, like within 1-minute walk; gourmet food is brought and prepared, NOT BY ME, including pancake, scrambled eggs, bacon, AND drip coffee for breakfast.

Is this what Easter Bunny looks like?

I don't know why this picture so startled me that I could not stop laughing for 10 minutes.

Oh my god! I completely lost my bearings so that my co-worker needed to tell me to "Get a hold of yourself, lady!"

This goes to prove that NO, you do not want to see Easter Bunny come true, and that my instinct was correct all along,

"Kids, now here is the thing: Easter Bunny is not real. Can you imagine a giant bunny bouncing around in our backyard, and on rainy days, inside our house, hiding candies? What? Are you more stupid than I think? Can you not imagine how gross that would be, a giant bunny?"

Now they can see it with their own eyes. Awesome!

Do you feel guilty buying name brand products instead of the cheaper, generic, ones?

Well, I do. Especially after watching the Rosanne episode of Home-Ec where she gave Darlene's home-ec class a field trip to the grocery store, I've always felt quite guilty reaching for the NAME BRAND product instead of the generic, store-brand next to it, the one that is shouting loudly from its display:

COMPARE TO NAME BRAND NEXT TO ME HERE, practically the same stuff and at 50% of the cost! Only a sucker and a snob will pick him over me!

Reaching for the name brand would BRAND myself as a snob, an irrational person easily duped by flashy marketing, a bourgeois with too much money to spare... So what if the generic brand would ONLY save me a dollar? A penny saved is a penny, how does that saying go again?



(Watch from 4:20)

Something happened recently that absolved me from the guilt associated with the Rosanne Home-ec guilt...

In my last post I made fun of the confusing instructions that came with the Walgreen ant baits. Turned out that the instructions were not the only one that did not work... The Walgreen generic ant bait cost $0.50 less than the name brand, RAID. I dutifully purchased the generic brand, esp. at this economy, I wanted to show that I was not a frivolous consumer. Well, guess what? It does not work!!!

The idea of an ant bait is that it is supposed to attract the ants to go inside the thingy. That is the most important step. In fact, that is the first step, and the ONLY step an ant bait is supposed to accomplish.

After I put on the black housing on the floor, I watched the ants walk around it. Yup. They WALKED AROUND the darn thing! I tried to nudge them with chopsticks in that direction. They kept on during around, or, walked OVER the housing. They had no interest getting into the hole.

I finally gave up and got the ones made by RAID. And they worked like a charm. Or at least, they worked the way ant baits were supposed to work: the ants swarmed the new baits I put down on the floor, while ignoring the old ones.

Hallelujah! Tide laundry detergent, I am getting you next time I am at Costco!

The "What the __?!" epidemic

I am no Miss Manners, let me just come out and say that. (Although writing Thankyou notes is one of the very few rules I am forcing my kids to follow). I have a potty mouth when the kids are not around, or at least, when I think they cannot hear me (which by the way often backfires... So yes, Bad Mommy. *Slap hand*)

We do say "What the...?!" a lot indeed when we are driving. Every time someone cuts in front of me, I mutter "What the?!" under my breath. So it is definitely my own fault then. Lately though I have been noticing the increasing popularity of kids saying, "WHAT THE?!" Even the very little ones. My own 6 year-old and I have overheard even younger ones mouthing their surprise, discontent, disappointment with this now ubiquitous all-purpose expression.

They say it without reservation. No hand "quotation marks" around the words when they shout it out. No whispering. It has become part of the conversation.

"Hey, kids, come see what I brought home for dessert?"
"WHAT THE?! Oh, thank you! I love it!"

"Why is the room such a mess? Didn't I just ask you to clean it up?"
"WHAT THE?! I already did it but [the other one] messed it up again!"

"WAHHHHH!"
"WHAT THE?! oh, ha ha. You scared me!"

WHAT THE?! Mom! My new DSi froze again!"

"What the?!" indeed.

Do the younger children know what usually comes after the THE in adult speech? I surely hope not. I was hoping that they think "WHAT THE?!" is the complete expression in itself. There is nothing that's supposed to come after it. But then my 6 year-old started saying, "What the BEEP?!"

"What the?!" I thought. *Pull hair*

Thinking back, even Buzz Lightyear in his own first feature-length cartoon after Toy Story says "What the?!" once or twice - I remember that one because we had the VHS tape and watched it many many times. The boys were a bit young to pick up on that then. Now this expression appears just about in every cartoon not targeted towards the very young set. That is, NO, don't worry, Telletubbies do not say this. In fact, they don't really say much at all. Nor does SuperWhy, Dora, or Bob the Builder.

But I bet that if you turn on network TV on Saturday morning, also known as "Cartoon all morning so you can relax while your kids sit in front of the TV" Saturday morning, you will hear "WHAT THE?!" more than a few times.

At this juncture, I am ashamed to report, I don't know how to react when I hear the kids say it since the cartoons that we allow them to watch (e.g. Skunk Fu) use this expression, therefore, they are sanctioned by FCC, ergo, we parents should be ok with it too.

Despite the above complaint about my losing control over the upbringing of my kids, I am no prude. I'll prove it:

What the f*ck?!

p.s. Turns out the answer is once again, "It's the economy, stupid!" According to MSNBC report in March 2009, "a foul economy is prompting more outbursts of foul language." *Scratch head* I didn't know my kids read our 401K Statements...

How Nordstrom honors the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month...

First of all, for all of ya who are uninitiated: May is designated by the U.S. Congress as the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Don't fret if you didn't know until now. The first week of May is actually Asian Pacific American Heritage WEEK. Between the Swine Flu and the Oprah-KFC debacle (Seriously, folks. How much does it cost to just pay for those grilled chicken? They look extremely unappetizing to me anyway...), I don't think the mainstream media even remembered. So, you are forgiven.

Secondly, I promise I will not get on my soap box. There are many books/articles/websites out there if you are interested in reading about stereotypes, underrepresentation, Fu Man Chu, Lotus Blossoms vs. Dragon Ladies, blah blah blah. (That would be me preaching to the choir - the conundrum is if you are, you would have known already. If you don't care, you are not going to check it out anyway...) Yup. Otherwise known to the "mainstream" society as, cough cough, "whining"... I say that because the common comment, from the "mainstream" society, to the critics of stereotypes is, "It's just a joke. YOU PEOPLE have no sense of humor!"

"You people". I wince every time I read or hear it. In real life. In the movie, Tropic Thunder, it was hilarious how they played with it.

Anyway, I digress.

So in honor of the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Nordstrom is hawking designer t-shirts by, you guessed it! Asian American designers. Anna Sui and Koi Suwannagate. YES! Represent, girls! (I just have to ask: Was the ubiquitous Vera Wang too busy or too expensive?) Don't get me wrong. These are extremely gorgeous tees, at $60 a pop. And the profits will go to the scholarship fund for OCA, an organization dedicated to advancing the cause for Asian Americans.

I am sure Nordstrom's efforts are appreciated but I am quite amused by the irony in this shirt.

Call me nitpicking if you wish. And I assure you, I have a great sense of humor.

Rising to the Challenge: trying to explain why I don't watch Lost

Dear Mr. Gleeson,

I know this sounds like a cop out to you, but here is a short, incompletely researched response to your question to which I have not responded to. But I have other duties to tend to, such as packing for our long trip to Asia which commences tomorrow, (Here is a picture as proof), finishing my work (unfortunately, I am one of those women that are "uppity" and need to prove themselves), and taking care of my children (hence the second part in my Twitter ID "Submom"). Anyway, enough with the violin in the background...

Though I am never an avid fan of any TV shows... On second thought, I do recall not being able to sleep when the BBC TV series, "Jane Eyre", was on many years ago. Kind of silly, I know, since everybody knows the plot already. But Timothy Dalton was quite dreamy as Mr. Rochester. By the way, what happened to the guy? Anyway, I digress...

Where was I? Oh, yes, I can understand your demand for a proof for my accusation that the writers of Lost have been known to change the plot when one of the mysteries was "figured out" and became public consensus through the many fan sites. I swear that I have come across an article talking about this, quite a few years ago, otherwise I would not have formulated such an impression since I do not watch the show. None at all. For those who simply came upon this blog post of mine without knowing the back story of why I am writing this post, please curb your anger. Yes, I know I should not be talking about a show I have not even seen. It's a long story. Suffice to say that on Twitter, I made such a bold confession: that I Hate Lost. The claim was made partly in jest as one of the random cyber vents I send out via Twitter: "You Know What I Hate?" If you are familiar with Mad TV, you know the bit I modeled this on. The audience is supposed to say, "WHAT?" with much glee and anticipation.

And it all went downhill from there.

I didn't mean to do this to garner attention, you know, the way how some people yell out obscenity for attention. Some other Twitterers responded and asked me Why? I then responded, because I was brought up with good manners. All in the name of trying to explain why me, personally, do not, and will not, spend my time watching Lost.

Yes, I get the irony of me spending time Twittering and writing this blog. But you have your guilty pleasure, and I have mine. Live and let live, they say.

Perhaps I was flattered that someone even cared about why I do not like Lost, won't even give it a try, No Sirree. I now feel compelled to give them a good reason. I am by no means a good writer. Please bear with me here.

So I cannot present you with the article tonight because Google failed me. When I typed in the keywords, "Lost Writers Changed Plot Fans Speculation", BOOM! the search engine came back with articles after articles, blogs after blogs, posts after posts, analyses, interviews, on Lost and its writers. It was like I opened Pandora's Box! And I promise you that I will continue trying. I am a researcher at heart, and I am as of now obsessed with finding it.

What's really interesting is that I came across quite a few articles that talked about how the Lost writers made up the plot(s) and mysteries as they went along, twist after twist (i.e. what I call "upper hand" over the audience which got your goat) especially in the previous seasons. So that pointed to the same direction as my said "grievance", to a certain degree. What I also found interesting is that even the writers themselves are finally realizing the entire alternative universe that they have created has taken on a life of its own. A new ecosystem separate from its creators. The collective force of the fans is larger than the writers themselves: through the Interweb, the fans have conjured up ,multiple universes more immense than what the writers have envisioned in the writers' room. I am especially fascinated by these two articles: one about continuity of the "mythology" and the other one about "time-space continuum".

(For Mr. Nation's dilemma for keeping all threads accounted for and untangled, I would like to suggest a relational database. Not a joke. In fact, the George Lucas empire does just that for the Star Wars ecosystem: with its own "Continuity department")

All brainy stuff. Great for debates and discussions, preferably after a pint or two.

In fact, if I were still in school, the analysis of the universe within Lost the Show and the meta-universe of Lost the Fandom as a way to understand how the Internet has changed how popular culture is shaped would be the subject of my dissertation.

Seeing how I have left school a long time ago, I will not spend my time on the show. Sorry. It requires too much investment on the part of the audience, perhaps that is where you and I differ fundamentally as TV watchers. I am the "brain-dead" type. I do not want to get sucked into a fictional world that is striving to be as complicated as the real world (albeit in very different ways) that I have to constantly worry about what is going to happen now and agonize over the fact that I cannot figure the mysteries out.

I worry too much as is. As for puzzles, I have my Sudoku and Crossword puzzles. Or my pre-teen boy.

And I stand by the point that it is hypocritical that men (yes, mostly men) laugh at women for treating soap opera characters as if they were real live people, while they discuss incessantly about what is going to happen to which group on the show Lost. I just have to laugh. Not passing judgement here. Just sayin' that if you think one scenario is ridiculous, then you have to take a good look at the other scenario.

Sincerely,

Not a Lost Fan

Happy Valentine's Day. And here is a necklace to remind you of your big fat behind...

Is it just me. or does not the entire jewelry line based on Jane Seymour's Open Heart design remind anybody else of a buttock?

The first time we saw the commercial on TV, either from Jared or Kay Jewelers, purveyors of cheesy jewelries, my boys cried out, at the same time, "It looks like a butt!" And I had to agree with them.

So nobody at those jewelry stores, when they were just looking at the designs, BEFORE they turned the design into actual goods, saw that and said, "Maybe we should look into something else..." ?

So, maybe it is really just me then.