its been pretty hot lately, just like when i first moved in here. i contemplated getting an airconditioner then, maybe i should follow up on that thought.

thankfully its nice and cool right now. all the windows are open, so theres a cool breeze coming through. reminds me of family parties. funny how i attach things like weather to childhood memories. as i have said before, oxnard has the good air.

when i think of family parties, i think of
staying up till 4AM
the sound of mah jong tiles clattering in the garage
karaoke videos playing out as the aunties tismis
the younger kids running up and down the staircase
styrofoam cups and plates strewn about the house
the girls hiding out in the den playing MASH
the guys playing nintendo and watching tv in my room
and a cool breeze blowing through the open window

we used to have family parties all the time. somehow everyone we knew found some reason to throw a party that weekend. i think that's just the way it is when you grow up in a military town. families go overseas, come back from abroad, someone retires, someone else has just enlisted, a party is thrown. and our "family" has always consisted of other military familes marooned in oxnard. not too many of us brought our blood relatives with us from the philippines, so to make up for it, we became each others family.

family... i miss them on nights like these. i miss just BEING there. regardless of how badly i get along with my family sometimes. that's what families are all about anyways.

i want to go home.

all of a sudden i had a craving for filipino food. i called up ellen to see if she wanted to meet up with me before class and get some, but she had just gotten back from her job at ikea, so no go. she's always buggin me bout gettin some filipino food, ever since i took her to goldilocks in cerritos waaaay back when. i think thats the only one i've been to that has menus and serves you at your table. and i rarely get filipino food back home. my dad's been kinda lazy about it, especially with my mom in san diego at the moment. last meal i had with the fam was at rubios... my brother's hella hatin on it though. how can you go wrong with 99 cent fish tacos? fools got problems.

i've been pretty hungry all week actually... its like i dont know what to buy when i go grocery store shopping. i'll buy oreos, ruffles, cheese, milk, kool-aid... and then i'm stuck. i'd buy meat, but then, what would i do with it? steaks are for eating out only, i've decided. and making any kind of complicated dish with multiple raw elements is just too difficult, too messy... i hate having to scrub shit off the stove and counter... but i do it every week regardless. turned into a semi-anal retentive neat freak lately. i guess it just matters more when its your shit that's dirty/broken/disarrayed... i could have cared less when it was other peoples shit when i had roomates.

its nice to have people over though, they give you a reason to cook. i go all out when i have the right elements and right people around. i know how to cook only a few dishes, but the ones i know i do really really well. i've never cooked for my family before... besides on the obligatory mothers day/fathers day/birthdays or what not. what a bad son i am...

time to head out to school. pick up my usual tuna melt at the little cafe in the wilshire bullocks building. i wouldn't go there if not for the beautiful views of downtown and hollywood i can catch from the 5th floor. delicious.

i'm sleepy, but not achingly so... such desires only seem to come during my waking hours... i've gone beyond the snooze button and have advanced to actually changing my alarm time in 30-60 minute increments when it goes off. i need my sleep when i'm sleeping. but for some reason not when i'm awake. make sense?

anyways, this paper should have been done days ago. its not even worth any points. its on a pass-not pass level. and i've already got my arguments outlined, so all i gotta do is put them in paragraph form, right? and yet i still sit here looking for different shit to look up. trying to figure out what websites i forgot to peruse during my daily surf, and re-skimming ones i just read only 30 minutes ago. i do that a lot.

i don't even remember what pR0n sites i used to go through anymore. ever since i got the gamecube, i've been more engrossed in gaming matters and less so in porn accumulation. yes, i have a lot of porn on my computer. too much in fact. but then again i have too much of everything. too many records, too many dvds, too many magazines, too many... well, you get the picture. but always, ALWAYS, not enough time.... never enough time.

but back to the subject of this paper. i'm pretty sure i can finish this thing in 3-4 hours tops. maybe even less. if i get it done by 12, i can still get a good 5 hour nap before class. sounds like a plan. alright. goals set. gettin hyped. off to a running start... feet don't fail me now.

its been like, what 3 months since i've posted on this thing? kinda missed it... and its 2nd bday is comin up. in one of those "remember the good ol'days" kinda moods. i'm sure no one's going to read this.

i hate to admit it, but sometimes i feel like the emotions that once drove me to march in protests and spit in the face of "the system" and "the man" has slowly begun to fade. i've begun to get caught up in that survival mode that everyone warns you about, the one in which you become more concerned with feeding and clothing yourself rather than what always seemed to be more pressing political and social concerns. its not that i dont care anymore; i care more than ever. its just that now i'm caught in this delusion that getting through law school is still in line with what i used to more actively advocate. as if being a lawyer will make me better equiped to "fight for the people." i dont go to actions anymore. i dont go to as many political events either. and sometimes spoken word just.... well lets say sometimes i can't sit through whole pieces anymore. in fact i'm not writing pieces anymore either; my creative side, which always inevitably was attached to my political one, has also begun to fade away... maybe this is why i've been depressed so much lately. ostensibly i'm living a pretty good life... i have my own apartment, filled with lots of crap to keep me mind-numbingly entertained, a wonderful girlfriend, i'm getting a good education, in law school no less, and yet.... i still feel like i'm missing something...

i'm missing the point....

tyler durden should be showing up pretty soon.... ive already become an insomniac/narcoleptic.... and i'm sitting in front of my new ikea desk....

if you're reading this, i must have neglected to tell you that i'm on livejournal at the moment... dunno if i'm abandoning blog, but for now, i'm over here

for anyone who cares to know:

well, i've moved into my place in K-town... its gonna take me a couple days to get settled, and if you know me, you know i've got way too much stuff for a person who moves every year (my 4 boxes of "miscellaneous" stuff is a testament to this, as well as my 14 crates of vinyl)... if anyone wants to hang out, gimme a ring, but i'm pretty sure i'll be holed up at my place for most of this week. and since i dont know shit about what cable and phone companies i'm supposed to call up, or how much its gonna cost.... i'm pretty much not going to have internet for awhile either. so dont IM me (cuz you can't), dont email me (because i'm hesitant to open messages anywhere but on my own computers), and dont message me on friendster (because i'm trying to cut down, for chrissakes!). but call me, or roll on by, because i bought a case of MGD and i'll be dammed if i'm gonna drink them alone.

from www.xanga.com:

Due to continued and ongoing DDOS attacks, Xanga has now been down for over 24 hours.

This is the most concerted and determined of all the attacks we have experienced. Every time we bring the site back up, our attacker will find another avenue to renew their attack. I'm sure whoever is attacking us sees this all as a game, and is having a grand old time. I don't really get that mindset. Also, each and every one of these attacks is a felony charge.

These attacks have placed us in a classic Catch-22.


We want to share as many details as possible with our fellow Xangans
We don't want to give information that our attacker can use against us
We have chosen to break that conflict by upgrading both our hardware and our ISP. As many of you have pointed out, it is difficult to defend a Distributed Denial of Service attack. However, there are things that you can do to greatly increase your defenses - and rest assured, we are doing every one of them.

Many of you have asked for an ETA on bringing the site back up. Here's the deal - there's a chance we can get the site back up tonight, at our current ISP. If that doesn't work, then we will move the site first thing tomorrow morning and have it up by the afternoon.

We will find a way to make it up to all of you. In the meantime, our entire team is working around the clock to bring the site back up - better and stronger than ever.

Thanks for your patience,
The Xanga Team

***

jeesus crist am i glad i didn't jump onto THAT bandwagon. fuckin DDOS'ers, just a bunch of script kiddies who think they're l33T just because they can click on the "attack" button on their training wheeled pseudo-HaX0r program. then again, big brand name spots like Xanga are supermagnets for those kind of bottomfeeders. just look at the big virus of the month, blaster or whatever its called. not only does it attack a security weakness in windows (and there are millions of those- microsoft and bill gates really don't give a shit honestly), it is designed to attack microsoft's support servers themselves on the 26th. the virus even includes the lines "billy gates, stop selling shitty software and fix windows" or something to that effect (obviously i'm not in the mood to do accurate research at the moment). oh btw, if your computer sporadically turns off, you've got the virus. anyways, what was i saying? oh yeah, xanga. some hater was bound to attack it sooner or later. people love to root for the underdog, and in this case xanga's not it. its why people who claim to be hackers like to attack microsoft programs (i shouldn't be using outlook express anymore, but its so damn convenient. damn you microsoft!), because they wanna see linux or macs win. government sites get hit because they represent "the man," and xanga got hit because, well, people talk about it too damn much. it wouldn't be much of a leap in logic to say that friendster is next. crap. we're fucked. we might as well go back to rotary phones.

from http://gocalifornia.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.realhaunts.com%2Fstates%2Fcalifornia.htm:

Panorama City

Name: Wal-Mart
Location: unknown

In this building, that is now a Walmart, a woman was killed in an elevator crash. Many employees at the site have reported seeing a female apparition on the third floor of the building. There have been noises of stocked merchandise being knocked over on the floor, so many believe it is the ghost of the woman doing so.

from www.ghostresearch.org:

North Hills - James Monroe High School - Witnesses have heard loud footsteps and opening and closing of doors when the halls are lonely. The girls gym room is haunted students have heard lockers open and close when no one is present.