Looks to be from about 15 years ago, but it’s a timeless masterpiece–from the rakish, bandana-wearing gaijin to the M.I.A.-esque techno soundtrack to the serene happiness on the aerobics dancers’ faces.

Or… if you’re a foreigner who would like to learn Japanese…

• our kitchen is a bit more well-equipped from the wedding gifts
• I get to wake up every morning next to a beautiful woman
• our apartment is an absolute mess from all the moving boxes
• I suddenly have a little free time, because there’s no more wedding to plan
• I don’t have to say goodbye to Mindy at night any more.

The wedding turned out wonderfully, if a bit hectic (all the “usual” last-minute wedding preparations, plus the emotional strain, plus moving Mindy’s stuff into my apartment, plus the wonderful-but-tiring opportunity to host 6 out-of-country guests (bridesmaides, plus the parents-in-law, plus my sister-in-law-in-law (err, my brother-in-law’s wife… what’s the name of that relationship?) ). It was Mindy’s parents first time in the states, which meant it was the first time our parents met, and also the first time that I got an opportunity to really host them. That last bit was really good–the opportunity to host them. In the past, I had always been visitting them, which meant it was them driving me around, them treating me to good restaurants, them cooking for me. I find it hard, generally, to serve Taiwanese parents. (don’t misunderstand, the hard part is not in finding motivation to serve, but in getting them to let you serve them. From my ?? perspective, the parent-child relationship is so fixed that it’s almost awkward for them to receive care instead of giving care). However, now that they were on my home turf, heh… I finally got to treat them at restaurants, drive them around, cook for them. It was wonderful to be able to return the love, finally.

But man, that last week before the wedding was hectic.

More later–hopefully plenty of pictures, an itinerary of wine tasting (the blogosphere was disappointingly uninformative on good santa barbara vinyards to visit), and santa barbara food.

Another entry from McSweeny’s lists:

Three Items at the Supermarket I See in a New Way, Now That I’ve Read Some Books on Literary Theory.

This is brilliant.

// TODO: insert witty and sublime metaphor about Supermarkets and Life here

His replies have been amazing, especially in their spread of subject matter.
Ranging from introspective

to psychotic

to (probably my favorite, by Doctorow), futuristic.

About 10 minutes south of UCLA on westwood. Atmosphere semi-casual; dinner entrees ~10-12; awesome desserts; very authentic.

Ramayani Westwood
310-477-3315
1777 Westwood Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90024-5607

Saw a link to the xplanet app recently, and been thinking “wouldn’t it be cool if I could set a real-time picture of the earth as my desktop background?”

Turns out people have already done this.

(note: this only has directions for Linux/Mac. As a hack for windows, you can add set up Active Desktop to fetch one of the pictures from here every hour or so (this article on tweakxp shows how to set up active desktop nicely… now you only need to schedule the hourly grab) )

(and for more really neat maps out there that work with xplanet (or on their own): this is a great resource)

• From mefi: “The British Library has compiled an online archive of northern speech dating back to the 19th century. The recordings range from from audio from Victorian cylinder dictaphones to 1950s football fans chanting.”
• From Language Log:
  • “an experiment comparing how different English accents are perceived by native and non-native speakers.”
  • The BBC’s take on accents in England
  • A bit about “Estuary English“

This all seems a lot more real after visitting England this summer.
Of course, what i really gotta learn is Cockney Rhyming Slang