Things That Make Me Cry

grim-realizations: Debbil says hai It’s kind of awesome...

Fri, 10 May 2013 05:54:28 +1000

grim-realizations:

Debbil says hai

It’s kind of awesome being an atheist. ^.~

I want to see a real kitty fit into this. Especially the tail...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:04:17 +1000

I want to see a real kitty fit into this. Especially the tail bit.

daunt:

thewolfandowl:

CAT.

ARMOUR.

CAT ARMOUR.

Lets just take a moment to envision how a cat would try to escape from this….

I’m slightly perturbed that the teachers’...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:42:00 +1000

I’m slightly perturbed that the teachers’ handwriting in the first seven detention notes look like kids’ handwriting.

Good handwriting was positively fetishized in my convent school. We knew who the girls with the best handwritings were—their written exercises were pinned on boards at the back of the classroom for all to admire—and we aspired to write just as beautifully. I remember swapping all my pens for a particular Pilot ballpoint pen in blue ink because the girl whose handwriting I worshipped used them.

I get complimented on my handwriting a lot as an adult and especially in the US, though I suspect that’s really because I write in full cursive, something I’ve done since I was ten. My handwriting is not terrible, but objectively, it’s not great—I have pathetic visual/spatial perception, and it shows in the irregularity of my spacing and margins. My frustration reached its zenith when I was introduced to chemical formulas and notations with those danged superscripts in secondary school. I hated how my Chemistry homework looked and quickly applied to drop the subject for English Literature.

glitterbites:

Collecting these because no one understands their genius. They make me want to go to school. Ps please don’t change the source!

Also: Write and queue twenty Tumblr posts, never click...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:30:33 +1100

Also: Write and queue twenty Tumblr posts, never click “publish”.

To people who complain that coconut water tastes assy:

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:14:21 +1100

It must be terrible living in a first world country where coconut water comes packaged in tin cans or paper cartons and can only be found in Whole Foods Market. Life is hard. Especially yours.

afterellen: OH NO SHE DIDN’T! Fox News Anchor Tricia...

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:43:53 +1100

afterellen:

OH NO SHE DIDN’T!

Fox News Anchor Tricia Macke called Rachel Maddow “an angry young man.”

Somebody hold. my. earrings.

This household voted, even though the puppy is the only member...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 18:23:54 +1100

This household voted, even though the puppy is the only member born in the USA.

Love this illustration by Lawrence Cox. Switched the Moxiepup to...

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 03:45:37 +1000

Love this illustration by Lawrence Cox.

Switched the Moxiepup to a fish-based kibble, so this captures her yawns and burps perfectly.

THE INTERNET IS BACK!

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:00:28 +1000

My dog is very good at Street Fighter. Karate KICK!

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 09:23:33 +1000

My dog is very good at Street Fighter. Karate KICK!

WHOA ON A SECOND. (I’m Asian and I still needed to screw...

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:11:12 +1000

WHOA ON A SECOND.

(I’m Asian and I still needed to screw up my eyes to see the message. Take that, stupid racist advertisement.)

copyeditor:

The racism is lost on Kiev-based ad agency Tabasco in an advertising campaign by Ukrainian travel agency Multipass.

Humans on the internet: online shoppers who leave reviews.

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 08:37:05 +1000

I’m positive there are a handful of women out there who post clothing reviews on the vendor’s website to subtly boast about their figures. Example*: “I bought this jacket in an XS and the fit was terrible! I’m a 38-24-36; I could barely close the jacket around my chest yet it looked like I was wearing a flour sack around my waist. Made me look like Adele when I’m more Elizabeth Taylor, even on my bad days. Sooooo unflattering!”

So don’t shop at the Gap and get a larger size? I’m such a good advice giver.

*An actual review heavily embroidered to protect the whiny. Who uses semi-colons online anymore?

Ling Long magazine: a women’s periodical based in Shanghai...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 11:43:00 +1000

Ling Long magazine: a women’s periodical based in Shanghai that ran from 1931 to 1937. Topics discussed by the magazines’ writers included single-sex marriages between women, veneral disease, and singlehood among many others.

Man, this would have changed my life if I knew about it as a schoolgirl. I wonder how Ling Long compared to the Sisters Pictorial magazine from Hong Kong that littered the tables of every single hair salon in my hometown when I was growing up. I never read them because they didn’t have many pictures… and I resisted reading Chinese outside of school. *shamefaced*

When I finish catching up with everything posted to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram, only to find out that 23,455 unread posts have accumulated in the meantime.

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 09:30:00 +1000

Mean Girls is one of my favorite comedies. When people rave...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:36:18 +1000

Mean Girls is one of my favorite comedies. When people rave about The Big Lebowski, I space out and give Mean Girls a small, affectionate hug in my mind. I rewatched the movie recently, and I spent the entire time grinning like an idiot.

Except at the bits involving the “Cool Asians”.

As you can see from this clip, the two girls are speaking Vietnamese to each other. Given the level of fluency, these two actresses and their characters are very likely Vietnamese-American. In this movie, however, they have dubiously authentic Vietnamese names. The names of the girls in this video are Trang Pak and Sun Jin Dinh. Trang sounds Vietnamese, but Pak is not exactly a typical Vietnamese surname. Dinh, on the other hand, is genuinely Vietnamese, but the syllables Sun Jin are blatantly East Asian—Korean or Chinese to be exact. Recall for a moment if you will the Korean female character in Lost—her name was Sun-Hwa Kwon, and she was played by the actress Yunjin Kim.

So how did these two names come about? My theory is that the writer, Tina Fey, barely had any Asian friends to consult* or worse, cared not one iota for authenticity as long as the names sounded sufficiently Asian. I believe Trang Pak and Sun Jin Dinh were created by combining two unrelated Asian names—Trang Dinh (Vietnamese) and Sun Jin Pak (Korean)—that exist in real life. This is not implausible—my own name has been combined inexpertly with another Asian friend’s name by a mutual acquaintance in a piece of fiction. While she asked for permission to use our names, which we didn’t have a problem with as the character was incredibly minor, she did not quite ask us if the end result sounded plausible.

This isn’t a big deal to me, really. I wasn’t bothered that the character’s name in my friend’s story was unlikely to exist in real life, and Tina Fey’s ignorance** of Vietnamese nomenclature barely marred my enjoyment of the movie. But while I can overlook ignorance, I cannot forgive laziness, because how difficult can it be to find authentic Vietnamese names to use in a movie? Mean Girls came out in 2004; Yahoo! was already a decade old, while Google was entering its sixth year. No writer with internet access today or even eight years ago has any reason to botch Asian names.

So, non-Asian writers—the search engine is your friend, and so is Wikipedia. Up next: A guide to getting Chinese names right because the diaspora makes it a bit complicated and hoo-boy, the NYT still makes mistakes on occasion.

*I say Asian, and not Vietnamese, because many Asians will be able to set you straight on names, possibly from a lifetime of a being mistaken for something else.

**It’s also possible that she just wanted to acknowledge two very dear Asian friends in the movie with a mash-up.

Well, we DO have a great badminton team… Hidup Malaysia, I...

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 05:31:33 +1000

Well, we DO have a great badminton team…

Hidup Malaysia, I guess.

[Photo by Mike Blake for Reuters]

It’s a satirical website set up by environmental...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:27:00 +1000

It’s a satirical website set up by environmental activists.

amyvernon:

When social media goes wrong. (Or right, depending on your point of view, I suppose.)

marcovhv:

This is the internet, telling Shell how it feels about Arctic energy. The PR nightmare is still live here while it lasts.

“I know we did stuff together once, but yeaaaah…...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 07:10:33 +1000

“I know we did stuff together once, but yeaaaah… it’s time to move on.”

Posh Spice-Beckham sums up why I avoid high school reunions.

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 07:05:10 +1000

Posh Spice-Beckham sums up why I avoid high school reunions.

D’awwwww…! frenchiesrule: ebats: apparently MLB...

Sat, 26 May 2012 08:36:02 +1000

D’awwwww…!

frenchiesrule:

ebats:

apparently MLB pitcher david price (tampa bay rays) loves his frenchie so much he asked for him to be included in his action figure. i will ever so slightly cheer for the rays now.

This is so cool.