This, then that.

You have to read my bitchin' before you get to the super kawaii photos of the kids having a ball jumping off the couch. Didn't hurt that I had fun taking those photos as well.

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Today's been an asshole day. Usually I refer to it as a clown day, but no, today's unique. It's a stinky butthole day. It's been one of the worser days at work bar none. I cannot even fanthom days like this at work at any other time in my history of working. It's just too bizarre and idiotic. A lot of little things, but mostly three major things that really rubbed me the wrong way.

1. Asshole Quality Guy. This guy is probably about my age, maybe younger. I think the only way to find out is to extract the stick out of his ass, cut it, and see how many rings you can find on the stick to determine how old this putz is. At first, I thought he was just misunderstood because the guys always made fun of his long, unkempt hair. Then as time passed, I realized that he's just a prick. Everytime he comes by, he'll make a comment or two about something we're doing wrong, and it got to the point when I realized that either we're not doing something wrong, or whatever we're doing really isn't a big deal. A real man would just compensate and roll with that shit. I complained to the boss today because he found something to complain about - that he had already seen the orders and we didn't need to call him on his pager - which was protocol. It's like, fuck off, man. Grow up. You're not happy with your life, go tell someone who innocently asks you how your day was. When you're at work, do your job and shut the hell up.

2. Coworker hit me. I didn't work around guys for most of my life, so I've been kinda out of it. But I've managed to gain a certain respect from the guys I do work with because I treat them with respect, I listen, and I'm a pretty logical guy. I don't talk shit about most people, and I speak intelligently. Some of the guys have taken to punching each other for sport, and yeah, it's pretty much like grade school most days. Because of the language barriers between everyone, it's down to pretty primal displays of communication. I've stayed out of it mostly. But today, one of the American co-workers that I get along with decided to grab my neck with my back turned, and so I whipped around and told him to never do that again. The one thing about me is that if I get surprised, hit, or any amount of pain is inflicted on me suddenly, I will go from Bruce to Hulk in seconds. I get crazy angry. It's almost scary because I have lost it with almost anyone, even my wife. She once shot a rubber band at my face and I had to storm off before I yelled at her. Just don't touch me, and it's all good. But if you do something to me physically, you'd better run. Anyway, he tried to joke it off and I told him again, don't do that ever again, I AM NOT JOKING. But in the same conversation, we talked normally, though for the rest of the day, we had semi-normal conversation but it was definitely a little weird and different.

3. Fucking Racism. One of the most evident things around where I work is that Race is front and center. It's not always about that, but it's all about that at the same time. Yesterday two contracters who were painting the building got into a bloody fight and they were two different races. May not be race related, but sometimes it's indirectly about that. I think even problem number 1 is subtle racism, in that there's a miscommunication and the main difference is that everyone's a different race.

Well, today during lunch a old issue came up again, when my co-worker pulled up an image from his email of fetus soup. It's a fucking chain mail that has pictures of "Canton" people from China, basically preparing said topic. The photos are realistic enough, and it's graphic, but what smarts is that words like, "The Chinese are crazy." and "The Chinese are disgusting" come up between the co-workers over and over again. When I'm standing in their midst. I've raised my objections, but they largely ignorant of their implications.

Now, I'm not the ambassador of Chinese people throughout the world, and fuck if I know what billions of Chinese people do or not do, but to slander a race based on some photos really irks the shit out of me. It's the blatantness of their exclamations, the generalizations of their accusations, and just the blind naivete of eating whatever bullshit is fed to them just pisses me off. As an educated guess, those photos are either shopped or they are effects. Mostly because we do have the laymen's skills to do that kind of effects. Furthermore, it would just be retarded for anyone to allow any photographer that obviously had a lot of skill capture the whole thing. The thing looks very set up, instead of the amateurish nature one would associate with highly immoral or illegal footage of that sort. Most the most logical explanation - one that I shared with my co-workers, is that no matter what culture, what country, what religion you're from, cannibalism is pretty much a no-go. Baby cannibalism, as one could imagine, is a definite taboo. Just not going to tolerated.

I searched online to look for facts and clues to bust that hoax, and I've come up with that it originated from a now defunct tabloid, there are no sources, but I also learned about Blood Libel. Basically when a race libels another by attributing a horrendous inhumane act like cannibalism in order to trigger that instant blind revolt toward the other race. I've read that a couple of senators and pro-life American advocates had jumped on that, and I've read all the racist crap that pours out of the comments from this discussion. Slurs, generalizations, disgust. Blood libel in action.

So all I have for my co-workers is just reasoning through common sense. So you really want virility and sexual prowress. You don't mind paying a ton of money. You don't even like kids. But seriously, who the fuck would want to resort to cannibalism?

Sigh. Hopefully tomorrow will not suck so hard.

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On a lighter note, early September's looking pretty exciting. Next Wednesday, OSX based ipods with flash memory is going to surface, and even the Nanos will have video capability. I had a friend's video iPod yesterday and that puppy sucks up battery like nobody's business while playing video because of the hard drive. So even though I'm likely not going to get an iPod due to the redundancy factor, I'm still excited.

And the PSP too.

DSC_8962, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

DSC_8942, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

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DSC_8934, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

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DSC_8944, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

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DSC_8959, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

DSC_8957, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

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DSC_8949, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

Listening to the Rain

Actually had a couple ideas for a blog, but when I stepped out of the shower, all I heard was the rain pouring down outside - Summer in Washington, and the rain is just coming down outside. But there's something comforting about the sound of rain. I think back when I was a kid in Singapore, listening to the rain. I think of the warm rainfall that was pouring down at different occasions of my life. And I just thought about the last campout as well, when it rained the whole day, and then Alex got his hand burned on the stove. After subjecting him to cold ice on his hand, we went for a walk in the rain and then to cheer him up, I jumped in the rain puddles and he did as well, and then just forgot about the whole pain. Our shoes were soaked but it was the rain that makes me remember the whole incident. I think about the time when I hadn't started school yet, and was at home while my brother was already in school. My mom was home and I felt safe, and didn't want to ever go to school because I liked being home with my Mom. I think about the time all us guys decided to play soccer after Sunday School in Singapore, and it was a farce to play in a watery, muddy field, but it was great fun.

And I think about what the rain will mean for my kids.

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So I just noticed that Blogger added an upload feature on the blog. Silly bastards. Now I'll just have to use it. I liked the photo posting to Picasa at first, but after they imposed the 1 gig limit, I just went with Twango because I'd hate to work within restrictive limits like that.

I dunno, maybe I'll give it a try, probably not though. Depends on how dependable the streaming recording is for Youtube I guess. The video quality isn't that great, but I skip a few steps in order to get it down. Ah, I don't know.

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I realize I'm behind on this, but I picked up God of War for the PS2 this weekend. I had rented it before without beating it, but I did enjoy the scale of the game and overall, it was a pretty fun game with enough action and gore to make me cringe in a good way. But I realized something else, that Amazon.com was probably a good place to buy used games. The more I use EB Games or Gamestop, the more I'm realizing that they're underpaying for trade-ins and overcharging for used games. They're handy to have around the malls and stuff, but definitely gotta start stretching that dollar from Amazon.

I did some overtime on Friday so I'm a little zoned out. I get overly tired throughout the week and the weekends aren't really enough for me to recover. Oh well.

I'm fading right now as I blog so I'm going to go veg. 1am is late for me now. How sad.