Paresh’s Blog

so who remembers this guy:

haha, that’s good old Bob Ross from the Joy of Painting on PBS. i hadn’t seen that guy in years but out of nowhere his show was on and i couldn’t help but watch. i was simulateneously mesmerized by the beard and brainwashed by the afro. there was something in the way he mixed titanium white with phthalocyanine blue that was sheer magic. watching him paint was like watching televised valium.

that was until he decided to use pale gray to make a shadow on a tree. i mean, i did not buy the illusion of shadow one bit. plus, i was giving him the benefit of the doubt when he said adding that one extra tree to the foreground was bold but well worth it. that tree had no place among those bushes. it was completely arboreally out of place. thank you very much bob ross, i have totally lost the joy of painting.

UPDATE: yes chris, i did find out shortly after making this entry that he is dead. but of course this is just light hearted mockery, and i’ve made fun of living people in far worse conditions. so i figure, what the hell.

so i was at ranch 99 today and, as i often do when i go to the asian supermarket, i was perusing the candy aisle. i tell you, there are few things in life better than the vast selection of asian candy at the asian supermarket. i think i survived on a combination of white rabbit (rice candy), hello panda cookies (cookies with chocolate encapsulated inside)and haw flakes (tiny discs made of plums) when i was in high school. yin yan (little compartmentalized cups with cookie sticks in one compartment and dipping chocolate in the other) were good too, but the best by far were pocky sticks. pocky sticks were all the fun of yin yan without any of the mess (i always managed to get chocolate on my knuckles while dipping, don’t ask me how). they came in a box pre-dipped so it was just a matter of taking one out and chowing down.

so i was wandering through the candy aisle today and either this was a particularly well-stocked ranch 99 or i’ve just been out of the loop, but there were so many new varieties of pocky sticks. they had a strawberries and cream, plain strawberry, white chocolate, a couple with chopped nuts, etc. etc.–it was madness i tell you. but the best i saw by far was this one:

haha, that’s right Men’s Pocky. apparently only us men can handle the sweetened dark chocolate flavor. which makes sense i suppose. haha, the japanese had enough troubles when the pokemon cartoon started giving kids epileptic seizures, the last thing they need are all of poor defenseless women being overcome by a pocky flavor they are just incapable of handling. its good for the company and its good for society.

well, realizing that my last entry is more ranting than i normally do, i feel the need to realign my blog’s umboi (i’m not sure that’s how its spelled in english, i tried looking it up on google but couldn’t find anything). umboi, very loosely translated based on my grandfather’s explanation, is your spiritual energy. i want to say karmic energy but i’m not entirely sure that’s right.

anyway, to lighten things up again after my torrent of rage at suze orman, with my ample free time these days, i was watching jimmy kimmel and he had william hung on. apparently he has a third album coming out where he covers the musical greats like billy ray cyrus. so jimmy kimmel starts asking him about his love life and it went something like this:

JK: so how are the ladies?
WH: you know, i meet a lot of women and i can kinda have my pick–
JK: really? are women just throwing themselves at you?
WH: i get a lot of marriage proposals on my website
JK: have you made sweet love to any of them?
WH: no, i’m waiting for the right one
JK: aw come on, you gotta get on this while you still have the fame. you don’t want to be a 70-year-old virgin
WH: i’m a serious lover [emphasis added]

i think i almost had a coronary when i heard him say that. the combination of the seriousness with which he made that statement and the horrible image it brought to mind, i damn near keeled over laughing. i tell you, the kid never disappoints.

oh and i thought i was done with this entry until i saw this in the onion. its so messed up, but i’ll be damned if it isn’t funny:

Calcutta Fire Marshal: Many Indian Homes Lack Bride Extinguisher
CALCUTTA, INDIA—Failure to own or use a bride extinguisher results in millions of rupees of property damage in India annually, Calcutta fire marshal Prasad Chandra said in a press conference Monday. “This tragedy occurs far too often when well-meaning husbands, attempting to collect on a dowry, ignite their brides indoors. The damage is often compounded when a burning bride attempts to escape and spreads the flames to other homes,” Chandra said. “If you absolutely must burn your bride, avoid additional destruction with an affordable bride extinguisher. And, if possible, confine the burning to your backyard bride pit.” He also recommended that homeowners install and periodically test marital smoke detectors.

“If you watch even one second of PBS and don’t contribute, you’re a thief…A common thief!”
–Betty White on the Simpsons from the episode “Missionary: Impossible”

ha, that was a great episode. homer phoned in a phony $10,000 pledge to PBS to get them to end the pledge drive and go back to the show he was watching. he had to claim sanctuary in his church in order to escape betty white and the PBS pledge enforcement van. hahaha, but i digress.

so i had a big ole draft entry saved about how much pbs pledge drives suck these days. but seeing as how i’m a week overdue on that entry, i’ll summarize: everyone hates pbs pledge drives but i, as a bleeding heart liberal, think they are necessary to preserve a vital public service that is being constantly threatened with elimination by the republican right on the theory that it is too “liberal” (yeah, apparently its too liberal to show educational and informative programs that may not necessarily tow the party line). i can see how that nova special on string theory is too liberal. (i’ve seen that special 4 times i still don’t get string theory, but i’m also not a quantum-physicist so i don’t feel too bad about that). but i digress again.

basically the gist was that in the old days pledge drives meant marathons of the best shows on pbs (i’d never even heard of mr. bean until a pledge drive in 1997) but for the last 3 weeks, they’ve been showing these weak self-help shows non-stop. i had an itemized list of shows and why they suck so much, but i’ll focus on the one i hate the most: suze orman. i have never seen a more self-congratulatory and patronizing person on basic television. she stands on a stage for 3 hours spouting on about how stupid people are with their money and how stupid they would be not to listen to her. of course she leaves out how stupid it would be throw money away to see her rant in person but, then again, i suppose it would be too late for everyone in the audience. basically, she embodies all that is evil about self-help “gurus”. they make it sound like everyone but them is an idiot and that all of peoples’ problem can be easily solved merely by nodding in agreement to everything they say–and, as we all know, that’s pure crap.

and, dammit, i can’t help it, i also hate this lady barbara sherr. she’s this lady that looks like the beaver’s grandmother and her show is about living a fulfilling life after 40. after 40?!? if you are suffering pangs of angst over turing 40, here’s my advice: let’s all close our eyes and harken back to the days of yore when the average life expectancy was 35 and that’s if you were lucky enough to survive your first year of life and weren’t the victim of a plague or a famine. and if that’s still not good enough for you, then you’re hopeless. just buy a red corvette and find yourself a trophy spouse (i’m being equal opportunity here) because its all gonna be downhill from here.

anyway, to summarize: drop the self-help jerks and bring back 6 hours of cooking shows and rick steves. unless and until that happens, i’m content to continue stealing from pbs.

that’s pretty much how the bar exam has left me feeling. its been two weeks it ended and i would have updated sooner but its taken me a while to get out of that anxious state where i was still stressing about a test that is now totally out of my hands…and i was also trying to find the right balance of zen-like relfection and just pure bitching. i’m still not sure i’ve found the right balance, but i’m tired of saving this entry as a draft.

this test is an utter beast. its so far above and beyond any exam i’ve ever taken or could even think of taking (or, god willing, take again). the exam, by its very nature, wears you down physically and mentally with each day. by the time we got to the very last essay (or performance test B for all my cohorts), i actually dozed off for a few minutes while i was reading the question materials. its just so damn hard to stay focused after 21 hours of testing, that i could barely understand what i was reading.

but the best part about the bar is that no matter how prepared you are (or think you are) going in, it will leave you feeling defeated and broken. i’m not going to go so far as to say i was competent in all 13 subjects (that’s for the committee of bar examiners to determine), but i can safely say i was slightly more than literate. yeah, i’m not sure what that means either. we spend so much time getting psyched out about all the little tricks they are going to pull on us and the sheer amount of stuff we have to remember, that its almost impossible for a sane person to leave at the end of day and feel satisfied about their work. i’m used to having a healthy dose of self-doubt after a test–i’ve felt it after just about every law school exam i took. but this is different. with all the other exams i could at least say i spotted all the issues and was at least able to BS convincingly. my self-doubt on this test is more whether i even properly identified the subject being tested. but that’s the game with this test and i guess that’s what the bar examiners are counting on.

but on to lighter issues, the test was in the oakalnd convention cetner and while most people opted for a hotel room that was close, plush and expensive, i stayed at my mom’s cousin’s motel in downtown oak-town (7th and fallon if you know the ‘hood). sure the motel wasn’t the marriott, but it was a cool 10 blocks away from anyone else taking the bar. but the best part was that i actuall had cable for 3 days. it was awesome. i forgot how much i enjoy watching discovery channel. i watched a show on monday called dirty jobs and it was really interesting. i was hoping to fall asleep watching tv but i was too nervous to sleep so i watched a good amount of tv that night.

i also got to sit next to possibly the most annoying person they could find. i found out from angela on thursday afternoon that this girl went to boalt and kept a blog of how many practice multiple choice questions she had done. sounds annoying already huh? so she was the queen os stretching. she would come in every morning and proceed to execute a good half hour of various stretches (everyone’s favorite was the walking and swimmig–we were all waiting for the inevitable moment where she clocked a poor old lady proctor). this girl also came in every morning waring a t-shirt with some saying on it specific to the bar exam. i thought they were custome made but it turns out that she bought them online. how do i know this? i found her website. oh yes, the website really does exist. she had her name written on the little make-shift purse she brought with her and thanks to google, i found her page: http://home.comcast.net/~gaelen/index.htm (it’s not hyperlinked for a reason, so just copy and paste) there’s a link her bar exam page at the bottom of the main index. so yeah, there were a bunch of things she did during the exam that bugged the hell out of me and that i would have told the proctor about had her hearing aid actually been in working order but whatever, its done.

anyway, this has gone on long enough. and though it is sorely lacking in zen-like reflection, i’m tired of saving it as a draft so it is what it is. i have some thoughts on pbs and pledge drives bouncing around in my head which i’ll get to sometime this weekend hopefully.