For those of you who missed it....

I'm reposting this from my Friendster blog, because I believe that every negative post should be followed with a humorous one. Anyways, here goes:


Call me paranoid, but there isn't a day that goes by without someone making Wilson the butt of a good joke.

So here we were, our butts planted on the bench next to the 16th tee, waiting for the group in front of us to finish playing the hole. The afternoon was winding down, and our group of four had developed a sort of companionable silence during these particular lulls in play.

Our group was comprised of me, Tom, Hubert, and a middle-aged Korean fellow who's name I can never remember, but simply referred to as "that Korean dad". We all felt bad for the guy, since it was plainly obvious from the start that he was far more proficient at golf than any of us, and it must have been trying his patience waiting for us to bumble our way down each and every hole. To his credit, he tried to give us some tips in broken English, if only to speed the game up.

In any case, it during this particular lull that he decided to give me a personal lesson in golf swings. He had stood up and was motioning towards me with his 3 wood.

"You, you look at my swing." The Korean Dad assumed his stance at address and took a few cuts at the grass. "Look, look."

I stood up and walked to within a few paces of his position. He motioned at me with his club again.

"You look. When bring club up to hip, then you cock wrists up." He proceeded to demonstrate the proper cocking action of the wrists during the backswing. "You cock here, then bring up while turning shoulder. No moving hip or knees! Then when you swing, no moving head forward." The 3-wood came down in a slow "whoosh".

I nodded a few times in agreement.

He continued on. "Now I show you your swing, okay? You look."

He brought the club up to waist-height, but instead of cocking his wrists, he kept his left arm straight as he took the clubhead vertical. "Look, you no cock wrists. Must cock, okay? Too high!"

Someone snickered to my left. I glanced over to see Tom with his arms crossed, his trademark grin plastered across his face. He snickered again.
"That's right, Will. You no cock." This time, he didn't bother to hold back his chuckle. I threw a golf ball at him in disgust. To my surprise, however, the Korean Dad began nodding his head.

"Yes, you no cock."

Oh great. The double entendre had completely flown over his head.

He started his imitation backswing again. "You no cock here, bring club too high, no cock, no good!" I groaned inwardly - would he stop saying that damned phrase? "Must cock wrists here, no cock is bad." No, really? Tom was having a field day with this - he had strolled over to my right, and was now doubled over in repressed laughter.

There was no way out of this except to integrate his advice and quickly move on before it got any worse. I pressed lips together and took a few experimental swings. At this point, my brother had caught on to the pun and began heckling as well. The Korean Dad remained blissfully unaware of the juvenile humor and continued to make his case in breaking the Guinness World record of "Most Perverted Puns in the Space of Five Minutes."

"Yes, yes, good! Now...there, cock! You have good swing! Good! You swing is good when have cocking action!" Oh Dear Lord. "Good, good swing."

This was getting ridiculous.

Luckily, the group ahead of us had moved on and Korean Dad, after nodding in approval a few times, turned around to warm up for his initial drive. Christ. It was about friggin' time. I leaned on my 5-iron and shot a glare over at Tom, who was still engaged in that ridiculous goofy chuckle of his.

"Hey Wil, you no cock? No cock?"

I sighed. It was going to be a long time before I lived this one down.


Yes, yes, laugh it off. The other reason why I reposted this is because I was in the pharmacy the other day, and a particular product reminded me of this story.

Maybe I could have used one of these last time:

http://supportsusa.com/arm/wrist/long-cockup.htm


.....I'll take an Extra-Large, please.

Banal Pet Peeve #1

Few things in life are more annoying to me than women stereotyping men.

I mean, it really, really sets my teeth grinding, and we're talking at least of half-centimeter of lost enamel here.

When I listen to a group of women complaining about men by using blanket stereotypes, I suddenly become very defensive. It seems to smack of hypocrisy to expect the male sex to cater to every feminist notion, but to then turn around and spout the same sort of close-minded bigotry that they extolled against in the first place.

Let me clarify.

I am not saying that I'm against the typical exasperated female rant. Things such as "Gawd, I'll never understand why Scott insists on doing (fill in the blank here)." or "John has this ridiculous habit where he (fill in the blank here as well), and I hate it with a passion akin to having lava poured into my eyesockets."

I mean, let's face it. There are certain tendencies that can be attributed to both the male and female sexes. It is the stuff of endless banter, rants, and one-sided bonding material. This is nothing new. It is, in fact, somewhat banal.

What pisses me off is when the talk starts becoming condescending, judgemental, and downright mean-spirited. You know, the real male-bashing stuff. We're talking dialogue like:

"I don't understand why Mark does this!"

"It's because he's a man, and men are stupid."

Or:"Why are men such babies?"

"Because men are mentally and physically weak, and they all want their mommies."

"Yeah, all men are the same. Bunch of walking fuck-machines."

"And all the good ones are gay."

I can't stand this shit. Now that I think about it, I have actually moved past being pissed off to simply feeling pity. Granted, we all have days when the other sex ticks us off, and we're all prone to making statements like this without thinking it through. Hell, it makes us feel better for awhile, and then we forget about it.

But for those women that really feel this way, that automatically treat a male with certain level of disrespect because of what's hanging between his legs, then hey...

...I feel sorry for you.

The source of all this irrational exuberance stems from my belief that you should treat every person with at least a modicum of respect, regardless of what they look like, etc, etc. I believe you have to give respect before you can get any back. I believe that judgemental thinking is the sign of a lazy mind. And regardless of how naive it may sound, when I meet a person for the first time, they start with a clean slate. They are A-OK in my book until proven otherwise.

Listen, I like making jokes, and girls are a good source of material. You will hear me joke about female tendencies - hell, you'll even hear me join in the male-bashing if it's all in good fun. There's no use in being a tightwad about the eternal differences between men and women.

But you will never hear me spout some backwater, asinine vitriol about the female gender. I have the common decency to treat each women with respect, and my personal opinion of said females has, and always will be, based on their individual character. Not because of their lack of external genitalia. I would just like to be treated with that same level of respect. If you're going to judge me, judge me as Wilson Lin. Not Wilson Lin the Nice Guy, or Wilson Lin the Asian Dude, or any o' that stuff. Please.

So if you really believe in that stuff, girl, get off your soapbox and let the bitterness go. Because we're all hypocritical at some level, but come on, don't make it so damned obvious. Have some diginity, for Christ's sake.

It just ain't a healthy way to live.

That is all.


Tootles,

Willer

Here's a better picture of the whole deal.

I am friggin' skilled.

Excuse me while go a few rounds with my boxing bag to, you know, reassure myself. Of stuff. 

That's right. I did that all by myself.

That's right. I'll come clean. I honestly enjoy wrapping presents and putting the pretty bows on and coming up with wierd ways to make it aesthetically pleasing. So there. I just did this one today, a birthday present for one of my friends.

Admit it. You just wish you were secure enough in your manhood to do this. Admit it.

 

So Blogspot is starting to grow on me.

I've got to admit, this is a nice change after spending all of my blogging time on Friendster.com and MySpace.com. There's more of an emphasis on external appearences at those sites. And with good reason, I suppose - Friendster and MySpace make it a priority to emphasize the social networking, which is great when you're looking for a way to keep in touch with a circle of friends.

And when you're looking to make new ones, of course. *winks* So I've never been able to shake the "dating game" feeling when I try to blog my way around those sites. You spend your time dressing up your profile in pretty bows and musical tassels, piling on the custom HTML to make it as original as possible. And hey, I had fun doing it. There's a sort of right-side-of-the-brain stimulation in making the "Internet You" pop and flash on the home screen.

But my point is that I feel like Friendster and MySpace are more about how you look and sound in an ADD-minute. And it's less about what you really have to say, because in my opinion the meat and potatoes of online networking sites are found in the weblogs. Down in the trenches, ya know, esse? This is where you can really get to know a person (to the extent that anyone can really know anyone else through this opaque medium). This is where the connections are made, because if someone is willing to read through and comment on your 3-page spiel on the evils of bratwurst, then you've got something going. And you can be a tad more sure that they aren't wasting your screen space because of that hot picture you posted in your profile.

What really got in my britches was the fact that only people who created Friendster profiles could comment on the blogs themselves.

Blogspot, on the other hand, let's anyone comment. And that brings me to the central point of this rant: the more I browse through the multitude of blogs on this site, the more it feels like a place where people care more about what you say (or rather, write), than how many "friends" you have linked to your network, or how cute your profile is, or if you're interested in meeting up for lunch in Real Life. Friends with benefits over coffee, or maybe more.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not standing on a soapbox here and thumping a Bible. Friendster and MySpace cater to a crowd that's looking for those things. And that's cool. But Blogger, well . . .

. . .the peeps here seem to care more about the thoughts behind profile. And that, to me, is keepin' it real. I'm sure LiveJournal is much the same way.

So yes. *looks around* I like it here.

I think I'll stay.

And get this, I didn't even have to pay them this time. 

Messing with Picasa + Blogger

This is another test run, but FYI, this is picture of a Taiwanese sunset. My cousin snapped it while leaning precariously over a rest stop balcony railing. Quite beautiful, and it makes me a little nostalgic to boot.

A little aside: Taiwanese rest stops are HUGE. Think of your standard foodcourt at your local mall, and multiply that by a factor of 4. Now slap on a good-sized 7-11, and you've got yourself a bona fide Taiwanese rest stop.

In short, America = Land of Crappy Rest Stops. Weak sauce, folks. Weak sauce.

Testing!

Weee! Dolphins are cool, and tuna nets are sucky!