Ah, the saga of Roy. I should write a book with all my inane drivel ... and then officially call myself "published author" Roy Kim. Har har. Today's saga involves me waking up at 230PM after a night of debauchery (and by debauchery I mean, of course, working on the new Tabulas front page). My stomach is unusually hungry (I don't normally like to eat after I wake up), but my mind manages to control my stomach by telling it, "Wait, and we'll have something better than the cup ramen." So I do a bit of touch-up work on Tabulas, then head out around 330PM. I don't care where I eat, as long as it's not KFC or Burger King (maybe I'm getting old, but those foods are starting to taste like sh'it whenever I eat from there now...). In any case, I head over to the Soondooboo (tofu) place ... and there's a sign saying they are closed today. So I walk another 10 minutes to my favorite jjajjamyun place, and they are closed. Everywhere I walk, there are signs saying that the restaurants are closed. (Did I miss some national holiday today?!?!?!?!?!) Briefly my stomach overrides my mind and makes the suggestion, "Hey, take the 20 minute bus ride to Mokdong (where I work) where we can get chamchi kimchi bbap (tuna and kimchi mixed with rice served hot)!" My mind temporarily accedes to the demand and I walk over to the bus stop (another 10 minutes from where I was previously). Then my mind exclaims, "WTF you are NOT going 40 minutes round trip just to get food, eat here you idiot!" So I begin wandering around for food. I can't decide where to eat. Have you heard of the philosophical question where two bowls of food are placed equidistant from a dog ... does the dog die because he can't decide which one to eat or does he arbitrarily choose one? Well, I'm about to prove the former. I decide that since I will be working 8 hours a day from Monday - Thursday, it might be a nice idea to get a hair cut. So although I haven't eaten, and my stomach is complaining quite loudly, I decide to get a hair cut before they close ... So I go back to the hair cuttery (which is by the jjajjamyun place), and I walk in (with that confused deer-in-the-headlight look) ... not entirely knowing what to expect. Sweet! There's an open seat. A rather stylish young man beckons me to sit down at his chair. There are a few people waiting, but no one seems to be taking the seat. I shrug, and sit down. He asks, "How do you want it cut?" I say, "Short, please." He mumbles some question and I agree (I figure it's not too important). Only later do I found out he mumbled, "Do you want a sports cut?" Apparently "sports cut" is synonymous with "dorky hair cut." The first warning sign comes when I realize he's been using the electric razor for farrrr too long when cutting the back part of my hair. Then the sides. I can begin to feel the breeze above my ears. Not good. So I didn't even get to think about where I was going to eat ... I was so worried about what this guy was doing. (By the way, I am really blind without my glasses, so I couldn't really see what he was doing) In the end, I got the dorkiest hair cut ever. I'm not a very good looking character, so a bad haircut amplifies my dashingly bad looks a hundred-fold. And guess what? My mind, realizing that it was stupid to go sit down at the barber who NO ONE WAS SITTING DOWN AT, gave in to my stomach and I ended up just eating at Burger King, which was horrible. I threw away half my food. So 2 hours later, what should of been at a maximum a 30 minute task ended with a half-filled stomach and a bad haircut. I blame all the restaurants for closing.

Before I begin this post, a happy birthday to Matt Compton, my roommate for two years ... happy bday dude! (It's 8/3 here in Korea, so I'm allowed to ...)

Back to your regularly scheduled program:

Yesterday I finished up work around 930 [I'm always the last one to leave now...] and left the hakwon [... but I got a set of keys!] and headed home. I was dead exhausted from teaching 8 hours (and being at the hakwon for 12+ hours...).

On the ride back, there's a bridge that I cross on the bus... and man. The night was beautiful. It was f'ing beautiful.

The moon was out last night, and it just seemed so _big_ because it was so bright. The image as I crossed the bridge with the bright moon reflecting across the dark river ... with the subway/train overpass bridge in the background and a huge domed building in the far right ... with the 63 Building (the cleverly named 63 floor building) in the background ... all giving off different colors of lights. I wish I had my camera then. I would of gotten off the bus, walked to the center of the bridge, and taken the exposure.

But no such luck. I had left my camera at home. So I hurried back home, grabbed my camera, and headed on the bus back towards where I wanted to go. About an hour later, I was back on the bridge, but as luck would have it, the clouds came out and thus blocked the moon.

Totally bummed. This picture, had I been able to capture it right when I originally crossed the bridge, would of been my favorite nighttime exposure. Damnit.

You can't capture them all, I guess. I did manage to fire off a few shots, but they were all sub-par, so I ended up trashing most of them. So that was a two hour expedition for nothing.

But there is something very scary about taking pictures late at night on a highway overpass ... with cars buzzing by you at 60-70 km (not horribly fast) while one is trying to get an exposure. Even if the "sidewalk" is about 4 feet wide ... one can always feel the buses and trucks rumbling past.

In terms of teaching, things are about the same. Totally burned out, but I'll survive. I'm ready to quit working here and go back to school where I can relax to some SVU late night, chatting with Yush and Sech (I do miss those two clowns, even if they are my mortal enemies).

The hakwon put me in a position to teach a one-time extra class for the 7th and 8th graders ... I made them a chemistry glossary and I went over some SAT math problems. Not getting paid, and I'm usually dead and hungry after teaching 4 hours of SAT in the morning, but it was enjoyable. Teaching SAT is f'ing repetition, and it bores me out of my skull. The 7th/8th graders I taught, who have a reputation for being bad, were truly interested in learning what I had to teach ... because it was above their level.

Perhaps it struck a chord with me since I've never been satisifed with the level of schooling during my pre-college days ... it never matched my level.

So although it was supposed to be a one-day thing, I decided I'll teach them as long as they're interested in learning. Of course, I'm not getting paid for the overtime work (as has become usual, it seems), but who am I to deny these kids real education when they really want to learn?

I got into the elevator after locking up the hakwon. A young father was in there with his three kids; one was a baby, one was a toddler, and the other was barely old enough to talk. What would of been a "aww c---" moment took a turn for the worse ...

The little boy (the eldest one who is just learning to talk) suddenly says out of nowhere "penis has hair."

Out of nowhere. I try to hold in the laughter and pretend I'm listening to music on my iPod. The father, obviously somewhat embarassed by the faux paus by his little one tries to cover it up ... he pretends to kick his kid, saying stuff like "You're not supposed to say that! Who taught you to say that?"

The kid immediately retorts, "You said it!!!"


I almost died laughing right there. It was one of those totally c--- moments.



Note: I have decided to no longer use the c-word any more. It's too... c--- ... too girly. Must stay real MANLY ON THIS JOURNAL.

In any case, this whole moment (for some reason) reminded me of one of my favorite bash.org quotes:

<Squizzle> WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR.

source link

Sometimes I wonder if these immature posts give people a bad image of Tabulas. Then I remind myself how much this site sucks and I feel much better. ;)

(Note: Bert noted that his birthday was also yesterday ... sorry I forgot! MUST incorporate a "remind me of birthday" feature into Tabulas ...)

In any case, I am a totally nice guy when it comes to my friends. Totally nice. For example, my roommate Yush likes nice butts. I personally find the objectification of women disgusting, but I humor him when we both see a nice butt and he starts a conversation about it.

In any case, a long-running joke about Korean girls is they have "high class, but no ass." Since I am in Korea, I am in the perfect position to help make objective observations about this long-running cliche. I know some of you (especially Yush) wonder about what type of butt the Korean girls have. So I will enlighten you.

I have been torturing myself with long hours of observation, extended notes, failed side-experiments... all for you, my lovely readers. FOR YOU. When I want to fall asleep on the bus while going to work after barely sleeping the night before, I catch myself! I say to myself, "ROY! YOUR READERS NEED YOU TO PROVE THE 'HIGH CLASS NO ASS THEOREM! NO TIME FOR SLEEP!" I then proceed to check out all the specimens available for visual consumption ... again ... for you. YOU!

I must say that Korean girls like high heels. This is quite deceptive. Because the styles are a bit different in Korea, you don't see too many tight jean shorts or super-high skirts (thank goodness, I really hate those) ... but you do see many mini-skirts (all of reasonable length) ...

Now, these conveniently tight miniskirts allow for perfect from-a-distance examination of the buttocks. Most of the time I will conclude based on the evidence that the woman might have firm, nice set of slightly-average size (undersized if you think American badunkadunks are "normal" ... which they're not, based on my experiences in Asia/Europe) ... but then I'll realize they're wearing high heels. And that will just skew the data set.

But once in a while I *WILL* see a well-proportioned pair of buttocks from a girl NOT WEARING HIGH HEELS!

I found myself behind such a pair today. At first, I dismissed the round bumpkus as being heel-enhanced, but upon closer inspection, I realized the girl was just wearing SANDALS!

So Yush, yes ... there is hope for you here. Although they are rare, I must conclude based on evidence that girls with a nice pair of buttocks do exist in Korea.

Again, I must offer the disclaimer that I personally am not attracted to big buttocks. This whole observation was done for the benefit of my roommate Yush, who is currently looking for a future Ms. Ho.

. . .

Here is part II of our new double-header post whammy!

I'm afraid that I am unravelling years of work by distinguished physicists. Since coming to Korea, I've been eating a lot of good food. My reasoning, although I'm wasting a lot of money, is that I probably won't come back here for a while, so I better damn well enjoy all the food.

I usually eat for two people ... but what worries me is that I have not been excreting the proper amount. Assuming the amount you excrete is linear to the amount you eat, the more I eat, the more I would excrete (either the mass per load or the frequency of excretion should go up!). However, I still have been only pooping once a day ... and the amount that comes out is quite minute.

So this begs the question: Where the heck is all that food going?!

The layman might initially thing, "Roy, you are burning the extra food into energy."

Bzzt. I am inherently lazy, and my "work ethic" has not improved. Just ask my SAT students. So I can therefore assume that I have not been burning more of the food.

So where exactly is the food going? Is my body a black hole for food ... where for every 1kg of food that comes out, my body only produces 0.5kg of mass in the form of excrement???????? Am I destroying mass, thus undermining the fundamental concept of conservation of mass?

Seriously, I can't sleep over this. If my body is undermining the very laws of physics ... I'm afraid of what my body may unleash on the world.

. . .

Does anyone find this image incredibly humorous? Just me?

Great suggestions on how to improve Tabulas from sal. Guys, if you want to improve Tabulas, just write a post about it and link to it from a comment in mine. I *do* take suggestions quite seriously and there *is* work being done hard-core behind the scenes, although it doesn't seem that way to you guys.

Based on a previous conversation regarding free templating, I may implement some sort of 'neutral' ground where *some* free users can get free templating ... (thinking something along the lines of paid users get to "give" certain features to certain people, kinda like gmail invites) ...

But yeah. I take Tabulas quite seriously, so please ... let me know how it can improve 8)

P.S. I enabled images in comments. I thought I had done this a long time ago, but apparently not. Thanks to sockhop for the heads up.

I feel the same way regarding the Tabulas downtime. Gosh, who are the idiots who can't even run a friggin' server?!?!?!?!?!? !!!!

On second thought, I should not of been singing "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield on the subway.

There was an ackward moment when I was with my grandparents; they both started walking off in separate directions. Do I stay with my grandfather? Grandmother? I was frozen in place (with the classic deer-in-the-headlight look) while they both walked away. These are the types of things that should be taught in schools. Proper etiquette.

SAT program ended yesterday. Two more weeks of teaching random classes and I'm out of here.

To my surprise, I got a check from Amazon from referrals... thank you to everyone from NeoPages.net who helped out refer people to Amazon.com. I was truly touched ...

"There's so much on my mind it's tearing me apart..." (full lyrics)

Exodus crafted a very good "wish list" for the new Tabulas. It's a bit heavy on the technical side, so I'll break this entry.

(I was going to write this as a comment, but it was quite long and I figured a lot of people would benefit from reading it on my main site).

(Onwards ...)

I have been logging insane hours at this PC bang working on the new display engine (still). You'd be surprised how long it takes... I can do most PHP stuff, but the architectural stuff is still my weakness.

I'll be able to demo the new display engine to you guys within a few days (hopefully by weekend's end). You guys can marvel at how clean and how VALID the whole display engine now is, and as requested by sal, the comments form spits out a lot of id/class values so you can style your comments.

You'll be glad to know I officially "quit" playing poker in casinos and online (except for my future trip to Vegas someday). I will continue to participate in relaxed real games at Carolina (which I am looking forward to).

While taking a "break" yesterday, I wanted to see how much my poker skills had deteriorated, so I loaded up PartyPoker on this computer and played two games. 1st place and third place in two games. Not shabby.

I quickly withdrew my money (free money rules!) and used it to pay for my ever-mounting PC internet cafe bills 8).

Things I want to do before I die (the selfish list): A good list to make ... set a general guideline of my life (day-to-day lists, although incredibly helpful, make life so damn boring).

1. Design my own house (interior and exterior) ala Frank Lloyd Wright
2. Live in a castle in England, a studio in Seoul, in the rural parts of Japan, and anywhere in Scandinavia.
3. Give a 'final' piano concert for close family/friends with Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" (all three parts), Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, Liszt's La Campanella, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody, and some duet with Mr. Virtuoso himself, if he would deign my crappy skills worthy to share onstage.
4. Travel to the rural parts of China and northern Africa (Morocco, Egypt, etc.) for a year just doing photography and publish a book about the trip (I'm guessing I'll need two copies ... one for myself and one for my mom, HAR!)
5. Make Tabulas into a real corporation (e.g. a S-Corp with like... REAL EMPLOYEES!)
6. Meet Charles Barkley

Ideally most of these things would happen within the next five years. I do eventually want to settle down and have 4 kids with any woman willing to put up with my crap.

. . .

By the way, isn't this girl really pretty? I was doing some internet stalking yesterday and found her site. Click the 6th tab from the top to get to more of her pictures (the folders that come up on the left are sub-folders you can select).

. . .

I keep having these recurring dreams of flying. I don't grow wings, but (in my dream) I have learned how to use the wind to fly... it takes me a lot of effort (for some reason it creates a real mental drain to fly in my dream), but I can fly. I can fly with ease at lower altitudes, easily flying above trees and controlling myself, but when I get too high, I lose control of where I fly ... eventually my concentration breaks and I plummet to the ground. I've had this dream about three times (it's never the exact same dream, but I do fly in all of the dreams and I always fly too high and I always fall and hurt myself) ...

So out of curiosity I decided to look up the meanings online (since we all know that the Internet is filled with facts) ...

(continue)

Ohhhhhhh baby let's get it onnnnnnnnnnn. let's love, sugar... let's get it onnnnnnnnnn.

Not entirely sure why I'm in such an amorous mood.

Neeraj and I have been corresponding via e-mail (GMail really is nice!) on Audiomatch. Looks like I'm going to temporarily shelve hardcore work on Tabulas to launch AM within the next few weeks.

(optimizing shiznits)

Ok, as for comments in the last post regarding the cute girl, I have downloaded and attached a few random images from her site that I found upon cursory viewing that emphasize her cuteness beyond "average" status. I hope you agree:

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I'm sorry, but any girl who can wear those glasses and have that facial expression while looking cute ... honestly deserves to be with me. ;)

[img:347000]
Given her being on the radio, I think she's some model or aspiring actress. If I wasn't so lazy, I would actually try to read her site and figure out what the deal is. But that's me. Eternally lazy.

[img:335944]
Totally unrelated, but what the heck. AWWW C---!

I have a deep dark confession to make. It's a problem I've been unwilling to face until I realized one of the little kids here at the hakwon is facing the same dilemma. It was in this moment of clarity that I decided to make the confession available for the world to see.




I listen to the Dancing Queen. And I enjoy it. But not only do I enjoy it a little bit, I enjoy it a lot.




Ok, take a deep breath. I'm sorry I had to lay this all on you.

The realization hit me yesteday that I might have a problem when I found myself listening to the song on loop while on the way to work. Not a great way to start the day.

The problem further compounded when I found myself humming the song while the kids were taking a practice SAT.

The problem outright reared its ugly head when I found myself singing the song out loud in the shower. Damn the acoustics in the shower ... making me sound so good when I sing out loud. But you know what's worse? The mirror is carefully positioned so that I can see my own reflection when I shower ... and then I think I'm re-enacting D'Angelo's "Untitled" music video ... minus the hot body and the excellent vocal skills. Yes, it's sad. I live a sad existence.

I'm afraid one day I may get plastered and find myself at a noraebang singing Dancing Queen with a bunch of pretty girls ... and find my one shot to trick one of them into liking me LOST when they find out my deep and dirty secret.

Let's just hope that no one has a digital camera/camcorder and eventually captures the horrendous moment and uploads them to the Internet.

That would not bode well my fanclub when they find out I'm secretly a big dork.

The server crashing every day has become a daily occurence. It's frustrating to you, I know. I'm sorry. It's more frustrating for me. (But as a side note, I'm incredibly amazed at how well one 1.3Ghz Celeron with 512 mb of ram is handling all this traffic!)

It's been one of those weeks, when things have been piling on and on ... I feel like I'm bottling up too much anger ... sometimes I just get this urge to go out and get completely plastered at some bar. It's a tough feeling.

I've been struggling with a lot of issues regarding my own life; in terms of the direction I want to take my life and what I want to be doing a year from now. I've also generally been disillusioned with this whole teaching experience (I'll write more about this once I get back, as it's really not appropriate to write when I'm hot-headed about the issue) ...

People have always told me I'm hard working, but I've never really felt that way about myself. I've always had these expectations of myself to be able to do everything my mind expects of me. But in those moments when I need to be working, I'll get lazy and do something inane. For example, thi whole Tabulas thing. Had I pushed for the control panel to be finished ... a lot of these server issues would be irrelevant.

I haven't accomplished much, if at all, of anything important on my "to-do" list. The problem is that I find myself (once again) spread far too thin. This job takes up 13+ hours every day (I leave at 8am and get back around 930pm) ... for which I only get paid 6 real hours. This has left me very little time to go out, meet friends and relatives, and to work on my own stuff.

Soon I go back and have a whole another life to deal with.

And I'm at such an important crossroads in my life. Once I get back, I have to decide whether to commit my money all the way to Tabulas; I will be investing upwards of $500/month (realize I don't have a job once I get back) to servers on Tabulas.

It's such a huge mental burden and it's honestly been stressing me out ... not letting me sleep at night too much.

Of course, it's totally not encouraging to read the responses I get from various people (the rational part of me tells me to ignore these people) who whine about server outages and features being stripped away.

I sometimes wonder if they can stick their heads out of their own asses and look at the reverse side of the equation and see me. The struggling kid, just trying to do what he loves, but finding it's not financially viable yet.

So he busts his ass building a completely new system, only to find it's way over his head ... so he's constantly discouraged and finds progress way too slow. (I think as a loner, it's important that I be able to see goals being reached to encourage myself, but too often I don't see it happening)

And this time, it's all a learning experience. This boy took no formal CS training, so he has no idea what he's doing half the time; the CP has been rewritten almost 3 times since I first started working on 2.0 as I find out various optimization tricks and mess around with the site architecture. I continue to do a lot of reading on optimziations, and just find myself totally overwhelemed with all the necessary components in making an awesome website that's well optimized (I've been reading on basic optimization of hardware, hard drives, OS, Apache, PHP, and mySQL; learning how to do advanced optimization in each is a friggin' task in itself).

The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Even about the things I know best ... I barely know enough to get back. I'm afraid I have no skills. And it's so depressing because there's so much to know in order to be the best. Sometimes it's just so much you want to quit ...

The pressures have been enough sometimes where I just seriously just sit on my bed and contemplate just pulling the plug on the whole thing.

For those of you who know me personally, I think you realize how much a crucial part of my life these projects have played; they've given me great joy and sorrow, while helping me define who I am ... and they continue to my hope for the future. It's the fact that I've been contemplating just giving up the whole thing worries me. If I'm going to commit, it has to be 100% on my end. I cannot have any doubts in what I am doing.

I see my friends coming back to college to get more schooling, and I wonder if I should just say "fuck it" and put my efforts into studying MCATs so I can apply to med school. But my grades are shit. What can I do?

On girls: I'll get serious for a second. I know I don't have time for a girlfriend, but it would be so nice just to have someone to talk to ... to confide in these feelings. These feelings I've pent up for weeks now; I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this entry about it now .. this was supposed to be a post just about the downtime. Maybe it's that damn Elliot Smith pushing me to vent these feelings.

But yeah, I really enjoyed the company of Judy while I dated her. It was the perfect relationship for me at the perfect time; I grew up so much in that relationship and learned so much about people ... not really sure if I ever thanked her for it. The split was quite amicable ... and we still catch up occasionally (although we rarely do since I'm horrible at keeping up with people).

Is there a girl out there? Some girl for me?

To touch her. To hold her. To talk to her. Making those small little jokes that make the small moments so special. Where is the girl? Something to break the fucking monotony of getting up at 9am, teaching until 9pm, coming to the PC bang and working on websites until I fuckin' fall asleep ... then starting that all over again. You know, to talk to someone about something deep or personal ... damn I miss it a lot.

It's killer here. This trip was an experiment to see how well I could survive on my own and push myself to reach new limits on a personal level ... but it's just been a summer of selling my soul to the hakwon while being dissappointed in myself.

It's so fucking hard. So fucking hard. But I have to push on.

(not really relevant lyrics, but what the hell)

Thanks for all the kind words. It's been such a blessing to have you guys all here with your support. It really helps me through the day ... I started to reply to all the comments, but it just got very uncomfortable for me to respond, so I decided not to (for now).

I'm still currently trying to figure everything out in my life ... and so posting will be light until I get out of this funk.

I was going to go out on a hiatus, but I figured it wouldn't be so nice to leave with just that negative post, so here is a slightly more upbeat post.

I have discovered the best notebook ever. Ever.


I've always been a note jotter; I love to buy little notepads and jot random notes as I go. Usually I throw these notepads away, as they're usually filled with drivel ... but I've never found a good "notebook" to write in.

Until today. While at CoEX mall, I discovered these notebooks that supposedly have a long hitory called "Moleskins."

They are amazing notebooks. The ones I bought are hardcover (made of leather) with really high-quality paper ... but the thing about these moleskin notebooks is that they are perfect for travelling. The whole style and feel of the notebook is quite elegant, yet stylish. The notebook comes with a handy elastic band that keeps it closed, and comes with a built-in cloth bookmark. The back portion of my pocket notebook also comes with a small compartment for storing small scraps of paper ...

I can't really find an image online that does these notebooks justice, so I'll take some pictures and upload them in a few days.

Just having them makes me WANT to write.

I saw a Korean movie today that I found to be absolutely entertaining. The actress in it is _my_ type of girl. I've always had odd taste in girls (as I've been told countless times), which I guess is great for my guy friends (less chance of conflict).

But in any case, I am totally obsessed with this girl (Lee Cheong Ah [이청아]:

[img:351987]
[img:351977]
[img:351976]
[img:351975]
[img:351974]
[img:351985]
[img:351986]
[img:351988]

Just my type of girl. I'm not down with that whole skanky-hot look that's been popularized by Britney. Give me a down-to-earth wholesome-looking girl any day of the week (of course, whether she *is* a whole another ballpark).

So officially, I have given up on Kate Beckinsale. I'm not sure how she expects to have a relationship with me when she won't return my calls, e-mails, or IMs. And that whole "marriage" thing with Len Wiseman ... I mean, come on. Give me a break. But I can't wait anymore, Kate. I just can't. If you're reading this, I'm sorry ... I must move on. And Lee Cheong Ah is the new lady in my life.

Lee Cheong Ah, if you're reading this, please contact me somehow. I'm waiting for you ;)

So until I return, I hope all of you guys do well. I shall return (not too long, hopefully) when I find some answers :)

- r

It was one of those Monday mornings where one wakes up and wonders why it's so dark. You wonder, "Hey, did I wake up early?! Can I get a few more minutes of sleep!?!?!?!" ... but then you look over to the clock and realize, "No, it's just a dark morning."

So the next logical step in your thinking process is "Hey, it's dark. Maybe it'll rain today." But then the part of my brain obsessing over Lee Cheong Ah takes over and the thought of it raining is ignored. Ah, the joys of the male brain.

Fast forward to 6pm. It starts raining. Greeeaaatttt. The logic part of my brain is screaming, "IDIOOOTTTTHHH" while the main part of my brain is still going, "Lee Cheong Ah is SO cute!"

. . .

Um, yeah. But in the same vein as Oliver's excellent post on Dieter, I want to discuss possible "spin-offs" to the whole superhero saga.

I think I am a realist, so I don't want to have superhuman abilites like being able to dodge a speeding bullet, bound over buildings, or have x-ray vision (by the way, Superman is PERV). I would like to be a superhero like Bruce Wayne; basically buy my superhero status.

But I would be far more practical than Batman. Although I am not dissing on Batman (but I hear Bruce Wayne is a PERV), I think that he helps maybe less than 0.00000001% people in Gotham City. So you must be asking yourself, "What superhero does Roy want to be that would be practical?"

My superhero ability would be to give out umbrellas to hapless idiots who forget their umbrellas on days where it is obviously going to rain. I would buy the umbrellas in huge bulk lots (perhaps from CostCo?) after winning the lottery and then go out on days when it would rain ...

It would be a realistic superpower. THE POWER TO GIVE UMBRELLAS OUT!!!!!!! FEARRRR!!

See a poor hot girl in a white t-shirt standing in her building, staring at the sky, willing it to stop raining because she forgot her umbrella? NO PROBLEM! I would come to the rescue; I would walk by and throw her an umbrella. Before she could thank me ... I would run off (kinda like Spiderman [a perv] and Batman always do after saving the day).

How many people do you know have sat inside, trying to "outwait" the weather? Let me give you a hint: THAT NEVER WORKS! I know for a fact that Mother Nature is a vengeful person and can be quite "moody" sometimes (insert subtle PMS joke here ... then prepare oneself for the deluge of "it's not cool to joke about periods" responses).

You see? I would be MORE powerful than Mother Nature; I would allow people to stick it to Mother Nature and walk out in the rain!

My enemy might be the other umbrella man. We compete in giving umbrellas out ... and unlike other superhero/supervillain sagas, our feud would benefit people, not destroy whole worlds (I'm looking at YOU, Silver Surfer. Yes, you. Asshole).

Plus I think I would get mad chicks. I'm sure of this, because superheros always get the hot chicks. Even sissies like Cyclops got Jean Grey at the end.

. . .

But yeah, I got caught outside in the rain today. The first few minutes sucked, but after a while (when you pass the point of "hell, I'm already wet, let's just embrace the rain like P. Diddy loves to do in his music videos) it's kinda cool. I would quote the popular Hillary Duff song here (hint: rhymes with "Come Clean"), but I remind myself that I am old now and I have to be mature.

Wow, this was only supposed to be a short introduction to my post, but I guess it's kind of a long post already. Oh well.

. . .

I love galbi (pork or beef, sauteed Korean style and cooked and served over burning coals). There's a small place by my studio that I love to eat at... it's run by a middle-aged couple and their two daughters (both about my age... RAWR... jk). The couple are the friendliest people I've met so far; they've been so kind to me since my first day here. They sometimes hook me up with a free drink (Coke) ...

The food itself is pretty good; to me, all galbi tastes about the same (tastes: good), but this place has a special lemon-type sauce with their daegeegalbi (pork) that makes it taste SO good. It's a bit pricey to eat by yourself, as you have to order for a minimum of two people (so I end up dropping about $14-$20 everytime I visit). One might think that I would have trouble downing two servings of meat in one sitting, but OmahaSteaks.com and my bank account would tell you different.

The restaurant itself is open-aired (a style not common in the US). It makes a pleasant meal to sit down and watch the cars and people go by while they stare at me downing sick amounts of meat (Takesi Kobayashi, you are my HERO!).

There's something so fun about watching other people eat at these galbi-jeeps (galbi houses) ... there's really no equivalent to this type of restaurant in the US (and those that do exist, as far as I can see, are more restaurants than "social" gathering places like these places). One can learn a lot about a culture by the way people interact, eat, and drink (alcohol) in a dinner setting. There's something so comforting in watching people, both pretty girls and ugly guys ... middle-management drones and low-wage workers get together for the ritual of eating grilled meat, KNOWING they're going to have a nasty aftersmell afterwards.

[And the guy who hauls around traditional organic Korean liquor just went past the restaurant. He hauls around this big cart of liquor daily around the city, ringing his bell. He is quite a character; he always seems a bit too happy to meet people, which leads me to believe he's been partaking in his own liquor far too often... Joseph (co-worker) says he sells the best stuff in the city...]

Galbi goes well with soju (I'm told, as I'm not a drinker ... I can literally count on one hand the number of times I've "gone out drinking," and all these things happened in Korea since the whole culture is alcohol-driven). Soju is "the" Korean drink. In essence, it's watered-down vodka. But, it tastes like rubbing alcohol. Again, I've never tasted rubbing alcohol, but it's EXACTLY the way I imagine rubbing alcohol tastes.

[Aside: One time while I was cramming for a chemistry exam with Paul, George, and some other people, Paul mentioned that drinking wood alcohol (pure) will blind you. There was some silence, and then George says, "Damnit, you shouldn't have told me. Now I'm going to be thinking about that everytime I'm doing an experiment with it ... it's going to make me want to drink it!" Paul just replies, "I know" then gives him this smile.]

In Korea, there's a whole hierarchical system of respect when drinking. You can NEVER pour your own drink, and if you are of a "lower" social status (not in the Communist "overthrow the aristocrats" status way, but like the "your grandfather deserves your respect" status), you MUST accept the drink with TWO hands. By implication (since Korea is a paternally-driven society) that all women must accept drinks with both hands from their male counterparts.

It's fun to watch a group of guys sit back, eat some meat, and drink some soju. Probably one of the redeeming masculine activities that Korea has to offer ... but it's still far offset by the Korean manbag obsession (GOOD GOD ... BURBERRY MANBAGS?!?!??!).

[For those of you NOT in the know, 'manbags' are 'handbags' for men. Not to be confused with 'messenger bags,' these are HANDBAGS. There is no MISTAKING them. What the HELL guys have to carry to require a MANBAG is beyond me. Maybe they keep their balls in their (::input rimshot::)]

In any case, all galbi comes with ggigae, which is a hot and spicy soup with some tofu, vegetables, and some clams (well, the place I eat at). There apparently is a lady who prepares the ggigae, because the owner always bellows, "Ahjumma (lady), one ggigae please!"

[There's a horrible Korean-American joke ... Will Smith enters a Korean restaurant with his friend and they both sit down to order. The Korean friend orders something and then goes to the bathroom. The waiter comes and takes the order from Will. When the Korean friend returns, he asks Will, "What did you order?" Will replies, "I got whatever you got, but I got ggigae with it." (Let the joke sink in ... yes ... yes ... it's the stupidest reference to "Getting Jiggy with It" EVER). (Ok, let it sink it. Ok, let's move on. Enough emotional and mental damage has been done with that aside)]

So this ggigae lady ... is there a job where your sole purpose is to provide the ggigae for the galbi? Are there like ... freelancer ggigae people out there, who go from place to place trying to pay their rent by making ggigae? Do they go into a restaurant and does the owner sit down and the ggigae lady carefully perfects her creation and offers it to the owner, who takes a sip and goes "Hmm..." and depending on the length of the "hmm" the ggigae lady must figure out if she's been hired or fired? Does anyone wonder about these things except me? I feel that these are questions that MUST be answered!

Hmm, so anyways I've developed an affinity for tofu. Not entirely sure why, but I think eating a lot of it in Korea (which has GREAT tofu) has something to do with it. But unlike the times when I use self-delusion to trick myself into thinking that "sure, it's ok to eat a lot of McDonalds ... it's healthy ... your Big Mac has LETTUCE in it!" or "steak is GOOD for you! Get the extra large combo from OmahaSteaks.com," eating a lot of tofu really is healthy for me. So that's a good thing. At least I won't keel over and die at age 28 from a heart attack because of bad eating habits ... no, my sedentary computer lifestyle will kill me then! Muhahahaha. Take THAT, health nuts!

My stint in Korea ends this Friday, so expect a bunch of middle-of-the-road realizations about life.

A beautiful digital camera that is tiny and has image stabilization built-it! I was originally leaning towards getting the Optio S4, but if this baby comes out soon... oh how nice it will be.

On my list of "wish I could, but I never will:" Motion M1400 Tablet PC; the tablet PC is in essence a tiny laptop that you can use voice and a pen on the screen itself to use ... once you configure it, it's amazingly easy to use. I don't think I'll be buying a desktop anytime soon; quite honestly my 500 Mhz Stinkpad 600X Craptop does everything I need it to; play MP3s, check e-mails, make websites, etc. So my craptop can remain my workhorse.

Over the past week, I've been shopping Lightbox7.com to potential buyers. Sometime yesterday, I came to an agreement with a buyer and will be transferring the site over next week.

It's come time for me to man up and realize that I cannot do everything I think I'm capable of doing; I must admit to myself that I must prioritize the things in my life, just like everybody else. Time is wasting away far too much to be bogged down with too many projects.

With server costs that I am loathe to pay, I realized that selling one of my sites was my best option. It would provide me with short-term capital to invest in my other sites while freeing up server use. The one site that came to mind was LB7.

From an economical standpoint, dropping Lightbox7.com was a no-brainer. Currently it's sitting on my most expensive server (1.7Ghz Celeron with 1GB RAM; by comparison the current database server is a 1.3Ghz Celereon with 512megs RAM). It also has a solid enough user base (~2K) that I would receive bids that would high enough to be worth the whole ordeal of selling a site and transferring its rights, without being enough users that I feel like I'm "losing out" on anything.

So selling it has indeed solved many of my problems; I can now move the Tabulas/AM databases to a server that is better equipped to handle mySQL (and since they will be the only things on there, I can disable Apache and install mySQL 4.0, which should provide to be a big performance boost on those two sites. I also have some short-term capital to help pad my bad account over the upcoming months while I try to get all my projects together and launch them.

The selling part was incredibly difficult; I received three serious bids on the site. The hard part of the site is pricing it; it's a huge burden to pay for, but it has so much potential. I am not a marketing man, so I know the untapped potential to make people pay for such a site is out there; furthermore, the site is more or less complete (in an embryonic stage, sure, but everything *works* as advertised), so whoever bought it could let it go hot and start reaping the rewards of immediate marketing.

Because the site had an unsteady revenue stream, pricing it was hard. Development of the custom site would be quite expensive, but then again, it had no consistent revenue. I received about the same offer from three people ... but one person offered $500 more, so I accepted his offer.

I had to inform the other two of the sale, but then one person replied back, "Can I make a counterbid?" Another e-mail quickly followed, saying, "I really want the site, so here is my new bid: $XXXX.

The new bid was twice his old bid and exceeded the second highest bidder by a 4-figure price. I was flabberghasted.

But I had given my verbal word to the other buyer ... how could I renege on my agreement and accept this offer?

Given my bank account (although it's padded from working in Korea this summer), I was so hard-pressed not to accept the offer he put on the table... I literally was banging my head on the desk (I'm sure I confused the coworkers at my hakwon, seeing me doing this) not knowing what to do.

In the end, I decided my word was more important than accepting the higher bid. I don't want to use capital for Tabulas on a deal that I reneged on ... that would just not be right (plus bad karma).

I just hope I don't regret taking that higher offer... and I hope someday the new buyer realizes what a great deal he got on the site.

But damn, it would of been nice to buy some of the toys in my previous post (see below) with that extra cash ;)

One of the good quotes from the Charles Barkley book where he talks about perspective:

It's very scary. Terminal illness is just ... man. To think "I can brighten up this kid's life, if only for a few minutes" is kind of overwhelming. And if you can't get some perspective from that, then you're hopeless. I'm bitching because my breakfast is cold?"

I found out yesterday my grandmother has cancer. Both my grandparents are in their 80s, but it really doesn't strike you that they can pass away like that ... it was a rough night for me. I can only imagine how my father is feeling right now. I'm going straight down to her hospital after work today to see her one final time.

It's weird because I think the doctors give her a few months, but I'm not coming back. So this really is like a final goodbye for me. My last time I can see her alive and talk to her.

My grandparents come from a completely different era. Being raised in America, I have also a very different mindset ... but the whole time I've been here, my grandparents have been amazing to me. I go there almost every week and we have lunch, and although we don't have much to say ... it's the small things that you remember.

I called my grandfather yesterday (the whole family is starting to gather in Seoul to visit my grandmother in the hospital) ... and he seemed very visibly shaken up. He's growing old, and so he's become so dependent lately on my grandmother.

Although my grandmother is in her 80s, she is seriously the strongest woman I've ever met. When my mother flew in, my grandmother took public transportation all the way to Incheon airport (she lives in Anyang, which is at least two - two half hours away from Incheon by public transportation) just to greet my mother. Because my mother had other people picking her up, my grandmother then promptly took a bus back home. What an amazing woman. She has so much strength ... and then to hear she has cancer sucking the life out of her. So hard.

Damnit, I originally stopped writing short inane posts because they weren't important, but that's what people will remember. Sure, people have their life accomplishments, but the loved ones always remember the small things. I've refrained from posting so many little anecdotes regarding my grandparents while I'm here ... but I'm going to write them all now. It's those small moments I'm sure I'll remember the best as I grow up ...

(here we go...)

I cannot believe I left that depressing post up there for so long. I am finally back at home ... the last few days are a complete blur for me. I got about 5 hours of sleep the night before my last day (Friday) ... and Friday night I went out with all my coworkers (as well as a dinner thing with the hakwon owner) ... and ended up getting like two hours of sleep that night. I flew out, got almost no sleep on the plane (damn those free movies!), but I passed out on my Chicago - RDU plane ride. I came back and watched Harold and Kumar with Yush (need to get back into the American thang). And I find myself awake still. I should sleep soon.

I notice whenever I get on a plane, I am secretly hoping some hot single girl will sit next to me. Nothing like a 14 hour plane ride to get her acquainted with me.... but then it always turns out to be a fat dude or an old man. Do hot single girls my age not ride coach?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I'm in the market for a new cell phone. But the American phones all suck. Here are the problems:

• Ugly: Yes, I know I always make fun of people who buy stylish things. But damn. I need a nice-looking cell phone.
• Features: If it's not pretty, it better pack in a lot of cool little features. But guess what? American cell phones are over-featured in the absolutely wrong places. All the camera phones here look like ass, and all the decently-looking phones have absolutely no features.
• OS: I CANNOT STAND THE OPERATING SYSTEM ON THE NEW CELL PHONES. Why does everything need to LAG on a cell phone? My old Nokia 8890 had no lag which I LOVED.
• Overfeatures: I am a minimalist. I like my phones to have as few options as possible. And when it HAS features, I would like them to be in a logical order. My mom got me a new phone when she upgraded our family plan, but the new phone has the most retarded options organization ever.

I am seriously considering buying another new Nokia 8890; it's small, has great reception, and doesn't have a bunch of useless features and doesn't have a laggy OS. But no camera phone ... and that's something I really wanted to experiment with. :/

I'm totally excited to be home. There's lot of stuff I need to get done. So I shall now crash ... and when I wake up tomorrow, I will become my old webworkaholic me :)

Apparently Toronto has implemented a very interesting solution for cooling their downtown (Canada needs cooling down?!). They take cold water from Lake Ontario then basically pump it through pipes in offices, thus cooling the offices. Kind of works like the way the dorms at Carolina are heated; they just run hot through the pipes, and it sure works well enough.

Very very interesting.

By the way, Terrance as a good story on what happened tonight ...

My game is really really rusty. I made about 3 crucial errors throughout the game. I'm surprised I lasted so long. I just gave up at the end because my chip position was in a bad situation and my game wasn't as sharp as it should of been.

Oh my goodness. Why can't I stop listening to this MP3?! What's WRONG WITH ME?!?!?!?!

My life is an utter bore right now. Didn't get much (translation: any) sleep last night because I had a lot of stuff to catch up on.

I'm currently helping in the move of LB7 to the new owner's site (as well as working out the logistics of transfering the money ... Escrow.com has impressed me so far throughout this transaction) while trying to persuade a client to switch from a Flash-driven site to a standards-compliant site (Color Matters).

This was the first client I actively pitched standards to, so it's not going so well. I'm sure I'll get the pitch down with more practice so the future clients will love standards as much as I do now :)

So my main task last night (besides doing some work on maintaining the servers) was going through and fixing up user registration on Tabulas. Before I left for Korea, the aces.tabulas.com (a personal data server) maxed out the users, so it wasn't creating new folders for users. Thus, the gallery features weren't working for many people.

Diagram of Data Distribution in Tabulas

Let me first explain this diagram. This diagram is a very rough outline of how data is stored across the Tabulas network. You have two basic types of backend storage; textual and multimedia data types. The textual information (entry) as well as all settings are stored in a mySQL database (Note: I think this is bad architecture; in the long run I would actually like to offload JUST the entries onto a separate server).

Within the multimedia hierarchy there are "personal data servers." These store your gallery files (and once 2.0 launches, they will also each store your RSS files, media files, CSS files ... anything that's multimedia-related will go there). The advantages to moving static stuff like that is for performance reasons; the best way to optimize a large site like this is to separate dynamic and static data ... you can tweak many settings once you know certain pages are or are not dynamic (you don't have to leave Keep Alive on in Apache for dynamic data).

So aces.tabulas.com, the first PDS, maxed out while in Korea. This prevented new users from uploading images. So in the first test of scaleability, I tried adding the new PDS (lca.tabulas.com, which stands for my new love, Lee Cheong Ah) ... with a little difficulty. Apparently some of the older PHP scripts had to be updated to handle these changes ... but in the end, it took me only about 3 hours to set up the new PDS (this included time in hacking the old control panel scripts ... 2.0's CP already inherently handled this). And in the future, it will take me maybe all of 10 minutes to set up another PDS. I could probably automate it if we ever get to a point where we get 30,000 users within a short time period ;)

So be happy! The first test of scaleability is the direct result of the past few months of work (mostly backend stuff that none of you saw). This is what I meant by working on more scaleable code - it allows me to handle a greater volume of users with real ease (just by throwing more hardware at the problem).

Overheard in Incheon Airport as I was flying out ... two American guys were discussing their favorite airports.

Guy 1: "Dude, Incheon Airport is SO nice"
Guy 2: "Man, I don't think so. O'Hare is so much nicer"
(Editor's note: WTF?! O'Hare sucks!)
Guy 1: "What?! Are you serious?!"
Guy 2: "Yeah man. All the stores here are the same. O'Hare has a better selection of stores."
Guy 1: "Dude, it's an airport, not a f'ing mall."
Guy 2: (Silence)

. . .

Police quietly arresting spam offenders: Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.

Excellent.

. . .

Oh yeah, Quentin Tarantino got a blog. A real one. Fun to read.

. . .

Tonight I decided to finally implement a quick little feature that has been bothering me for the longest time ... the commenting process is a lot smoother and idiot-proof.

Commenting has always been kind of slow (this is a universal thing once you get a large system, and not limited just to Tabulas, although the problem is exacerbated because of the lack of hardware).

Because of the lag, people would always double-post comments or just get impatient. Sometimes the DB locks up and then people have to wait longer than they want to.

In any case, upon comment form submission, the submit button disables itself, so no more double posted comments. It also redirects you to a page that "processes" the comment so you know something's happening. Most of the time, the "COMMENT POSTED" message should come out along with the "Please wait" message ... but sometimes when the server lags, you will actually have to wait.

Nuggets of Knowledge would be a great name for a company. I'm going to be LLC-ing my projects soon (although it would be uber-l33t to declare a S-Corp and then actually get to call myself "CEO", I can't really afford to pay taxes twice on like razor-thin margins ;)) ... and I've been thinking of cool names for company. In the end, I may pick the vainest company name ever, but what the heck. All big companies are named after some family or some person. Just as long as I don't get too vain like certain other Internet self-proclaimed Kings, I should be OK. (But dag ... really... that is one VAIN page)

Anyways, here are some cool "nuggets of knowledge" for you:

• Yamaha RH5MA headphones are absolutely awesome! They aren't too overpriced at $45 either! I get really uncomfortable using earbuds for extended periods of time (from my iPod), so I bought some "normal" headphones. Honestly though ... given the MP3s I listen to, the quality of the headphones isn't THAT evident ... but I do have a few lossless tracks on my iPod that it really makes a big difference.
• I bought Joel on Software from Amazon and have been reading it voraciously since I got it two days ago. It's a pretty darn good book! Nothing too specific (it's based on his weblog), but it's generally his experiences in software development. I partially wish I had read his chapter on "Why Not to Rebuild a Whole Program From Scratch" before I scrapped all 1.0 code for 2.0. If you have a bit of money (and some time) to burn, buy it.
• On the other hand, do *not* buy Defensive Design for the Web. It is the most useless book ever.

Do you ever just *not* like somebody? It's weird ... growing up in a society that urges you to be open-minded, I can be surprisingly close-minded.

Sometimes you meet someone ... and in the first ten seconds, they act in just a way that you decide, "I really don't like this person. At all." It's not that they offended you or commited a social faux pas (actually it's a good thing to commit a faux pas, cause it's funny) ... it's just you get this feeling that their inner personality is dull or totally not cool. I'm not sure what it is.

There are two such people on the UNC campus ... my close friends know who they are. Heaven forbid if these two people found out how I really feel about them. These two guys ... have done nothing to me ... but I still just _don't_ like them.

One of them just gave me a bad impression the first time I met him ... and then did nothing to really improve on that.

I have a general mistrust of Asians when I first meet them ... which is why I generally avoid KASA and ASA and all those Asian student organizations like the plague. It's not that I'm a "twinkie" ... or that I dislike Asians. But in general, I don't find my way of thinking matching the way they think.

A few years ago, some guys were trying to start a new Asian frat on campus. I actually was semi-thinking about joining the charter class ... the only reason I even considered doing this is because the charter class was filled with some guys that i have the upmost respect for. But then I realized that these guys wouldn't stick around for too much longer, and then I would have to deal with incoming freshmen who ... joined Asian frats.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I really don't think I would get along with freshman guys who joined Asian frats. I see them around on campus, and just shake my head. But you know what? It's not even a reasonable reason why I don't like them. I realize I"m being close-minded, but I just can't do anything about it. I just see them, and I immediately have this feeling of distrust towards them. Why is this?

Maybe I just don't like those Asian-Americans who walk the fine-line between accepting the American culture and embracing their heritage. I'm all for embracing cultural heritage, but sometimes I see that these Asian organizations is just an excuse to only have Asian friends and to network within the Asian societies on campus, and I detest that. Although my personal life is not that much better, I just feel that joining these organizations closes you off from the network.

Then again, I'm not entirely a social person, so my friends are mostly Asian. But these friends are usually ones I've met through church ... for random acquaintances, I meet a fair mix of Asians and non-Asians.

But how many of those in ASA, KASA, and those frats/sororities really care about the Asian culture? Sure, they do superficial things that make people aware, but on a deeper level, do they care that much? (Note: I don't really care that much, so yet another reason why I choose not to join these organizations) If they don't care, then they are simply joining so they can hang out with other Asians, which then really defeats the purpose of college (meet a lot of different people).

I'm sure this is the most disjointed post ever ... but it's 4am right now. For some reason, I've been sleeping at 8pm and waking up at obscenely early hours the past few days. I think it's because nobody bothers me when I work at 4am in the morning ;)

As you can see, I am putting it to *full* use.


By the way, that kissy is for all you paid users of Tabulas. For you free users ... well... you get ... NOTHING. MUHAHAHA. NO LOVE FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dag. life is good.

This is a combination of two posts that I've been throwing around in my mind whenever I have free time.

Disclaimer: I am not a polisci major. Most of this post just comes from my laymen's knowledge of geopolitics, economic necessities, and general observation. Feel free to correct me on anything you find wrong.

(Nation states and the absurdity of Olympics)

I didn't really watch them too long. I watched them long enough.

Some notes to the future people in charge of doing these award shows:

• 1.) Not having a host is stupid. Each show needs the host to give some sort of continuinity through the show. I'm pretty sure this is a "duh" factor issue ... what idiot decided, "Hey, let's have no host!"
• 2.) Get people who can perform well LIVE. Hoobastank.. well... uhh... if you watched it, you suffered enough.

So I decided to watch some World Series of Poker instead of watching the crappy MTV VMAs ... and I would like to say that Erin Ness is friggin' HOT. Not only is she incredibly cute ... her personality is so ENDEARING. Plus she works for Maxim ... total plus!

I cannot find a single picture of her online... which is totally sad.

gold teeth and a curse for this town
were all in my mouth
only, i don't know how they got out, dear
turn me back into the pet that i was when we met
i was happier then with no mind-set

and if you'd 'a took to me like
a gull takes to the wind.
well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
and i'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would 'a fared well

new slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries
hope it's right when you die, old and bony
dawn breaks like a bull through the hall,
never should have called
but my head's to the wall and i'm lonely

and if you'd 'a took to me like
a gull takes to the wind
well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
and i'd a danced like the kind of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would 'a fared well

god speed all the bakers at dawn
may they all cut their thumbs,
and bleed into their buns 'till they melt away

i'm looking in on the good life
i might be doomed never to find
without a trust or flaming fields am i too dumb to refine?
and if you'd 'a took to me like
well i'd a danced like the queen of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would 'a fared well

What I've been working on.