We went to KTV from midnight-5am since that's the cheapest block of time on Thursday. Altogether the five hours cost 306 NT$ per person, about $9 American. We got our own room with a big comfy black leather couch and access to a buffet with a couple types of cold and hot soups, caffeinated soda drinks and coffee to keep you going, desserts, breads and jams, noodles, french fries, chicken nuggets, etc. The boys especially made good use of the buffet and got their moneys worth. The singing itself wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. There were two microphones in the room that we could pass around. And they both had an echo effect that made even the weakest most off-tune voice sound somewhat passable, and with two people using both microphones it was especially hard to sound too bad. So I don't even have to get way drunk to sing, in fact we didn't do any drinking at all... Most of the songs were in English, with the exception of a couple Ricky Martin songs and Feliz Navidad. Being the only native English speaker there and the only one to grow up with these songs actually gave me an advantage over reading for the faster songs which helped bolster my confidence in my tone-deafness. I ruled at "Baby got back", though probably only Rae will appreciate what that means. At 5 am we split a cab home, and I slept until 4 today, and I just got back from the pool and am about to go out to B1, a local bar I haven't been to yet.

When I got back to the apartment yesterday I turned right around and went to the MOCA again with Jianna to see the finished first floor installations, half of the first floor was dedicated to an artist who was into using glow in the dark green liquid in plastic containers and industrial twist-ties and tubes, also in neon glow-in-the-dark kind of colors, and lots of motion and weird sounds, I'm not sure what the greater message was, but it was fun to wonder through the various rooms he/she (?) had set up. The other half of the first floor was a big plastic bubble basically the shape of that half of the first floor, so you went through a tube in the hall and then the white plastic filled the rooms completely like a second skin. I thought leaving the exhibit was like being born, Luke compared it to the quarantine in ET.

...

I went paragliding last Sunday. It was a lot of fun. Paragliding is half way between parasailing and hangliding. Basically you and a guide/coach are hooked up to a parachute and then you run towards the edge of a cliff/hill near a beach so you get the coastal winds. You actually leave the ground before you get to the edge of the cliff so there is no sensation of free-falling or any opportunity for the parachute not to open. It is very safe, despite what I know all of you who aren't Rae are thinking. You land the same place you took off from, or at least we did, if you are so inclined you can actually paraglide for many kilometers, supposedly in favorable winds people have paraglided almost the full length of Taiwan. Our flight maybe ran between five and ten minutes.

We went with a group called Freshtreks, run by a French couple (the wife works for an architecture firm in marketing, but the husband needed something to keep him busy). It was a package deal, we met in Taipei and they drove us out to the beach to the north (WuLien?) and supplied us with lunch. It was a really fun day. G, L, D, and this Scottish girl all came. Then there was an American father and daughter (the daughter was probably 15 or 16), two engineers from Taizhong (a German and a Dutchman, named Oand A) a Taiwanese guy (H), a Belgian (E), and a group of four Indians. After the paragliding we went down to the beach and hung out for awhile, but you couldn't go into the surf past your waist because it was the weekend when it officially became "winter" and the riptides were considered too strong for swimming. I didn't bother going in at all because it was cold, I just sat on the beach talking to L. Eventually we played some summer camp type games on the beach and then headed home to Taipei. It was a pretty tiring day, but it was a lot of fun, the paragliding and the getting out to see the coast away from the city.

...

In cooking class we made something with "wu hua ji rou" (five flower pork), I don't remember what the actual dish was called. It involved this really fatty pork, kind of between huge cuts of bacon and salted pork, dry tofu, green peppers, this weird vegetable that looked like an onion but smelled like garlic, and a sauce that was a combination of "tian mian jiang" (sweet noodle sauce), soy sauce, hot sauce, salt, sugar, and water. The pork was first boiled for a long time with some ginger and some other stuff, then everything is cut to look similar and its all thrown into the wok together (of course). It was delicious like something made with that much fat and oil is bound to be.

The verbs lie and lay are commonly confused. This is not because of the meaning of the verbs, but because of the way they are conjugated. Firstly, we will look at the meaning of the verbs:

Lie: to be in or move into an esp. horizontal position on a surface:

The mechanic was lying on his back underneath my car.
The cat just loves to lie in front of the fire.
She lay back in the dentist's chair and tried to relax.
Lie still a moment, John.
He lies awake at night, worrying.
He lay down on the bed and cried.
I usually lie down (=rest/sleep) for an hour after lunch.
Snow lay thickly over the fields.

The verb lay means to put (something) in esp. a flat or horizontal position, usually carefully or for a particular purpose:

She laid the baby (down) in its cot.
I'll lay your coats on the bed upstairs.
Perhaps we should lay paper over the floor while we're decorating the room .
She laid aside her book and went to answer the phone.
The dog laid its ears back (=put them flat against its head) and howled.
He laid down his knife and fork, saying he couldn't possibly eat any more.
Lay the rug flat on the ground.
There will be some disruption for the next few weeks while contractors lay
a new cable/sewer.
We're having a new carpet laid in the hall next week.
They've been laying bricks (=making a wall with bricks) for two weeks and
the first floor is already finished.

I'm surprised you had nothing on Gen. William Boykin's God-is-on-our-side rantings. After all, this is a senior anti-terrorism military officer saying "My God is bigger than your god." As I expected, the Globe's James Carroll has a well-considered response to this jerk. Carroll remains one of the clearest voices I know on moral and spiritual issues.

October 20, 2003

NOTE FROM CHRIS:

The Olsen Twins have their own toothpaste coming out. It's "sort of bubblegum with a minty flavor to it."

Hmmm... ever wonder what other strange celebrity/product combos might be out there?

12> Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge -- Life Savers' Five Flavors of Terror Alertness

11> Britney Spears and Madonna -- Breath Savers

10> Giorgio Armani -- Italian Dressing

9> George Bush -- Boggle

8> Robert Downey, Jr. -- Super Shootin' Smacks, the Intravenous Breakfast Cereal

7> Arnold Schwarzenegger -- Kleenex Tissues With Lotion

6> David Beckham (circa 2034) -- Old Spice

5> Ted Williams -- Sub-Zero Freezers

4> Michael Jackson -- Mr. Potato Head

3> Bob Dylan -- voice recognition software

2> David Crosby -- seed catalogs

and Topfive.com's Number 1 Other Celebrity-Endorsed Product...

1> Kevin Bacon -- Sixth Degree Geneology-Tracking Services

Reading Steve Coquet's commentary brought this offering to mind as a short message to Republican leadership: "If you are in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging"

I was surprised that there was so little commentary on the sporting escapades of both the Chicago and Boston baseball teams. There was an impressive amount of media coverage here.

My favorite comments on the proceedings were

that the Chicago loss was a tragedy of Olympic proportions in that the Cubs had finally CONVINCED the most doubting of their fans that they had achieved a position from which they could not possibly lose before dashing their dreams and

the most unhappy fans of all were the FOX network executives who would have a received a much higher audience share from a Cubs / Sox World Series and lastly

that the Cubs and the Sox should arrange to play each other anyway and donate the proceeds to an appropriate charity (possibly to one involving the production of miracles). The last comment was my own.

Homer's most powerful lessons include the need to restrain hubris, to cooperate with allies, to engage the real world rather than black-and-white caricatures. If Achilles and Odysseus can learn those lessons, maybe there's hope for Mr. Rumsfeld or even the mighty Mr. Bush.