The Blue Mosque

Across the street from our hotel in Shah Alam, Malaysia, there was an exquisite mosque. Officially it's called the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, but affectionately dubbed The Blue Mosque (as you can see). It was gorgeous. I've never been in a mosque before and the experience was a little unnerving. It felt like Islam was very exclusive, as we (being outsiders) were not allowed in much of the mosque. And for women, we had to completely alter our appearance so as to show no curves of our bodies. However, I can see the beauty of the religion in their architecture. It was glorious.

Can He Jump it?

Honeymoon Idea #2

I went to the dreamiest park on earth tonight. Here's the website. We drove about an hour away from where we are staying in Shah Alam to a Firefly park. They take you out on a little quiet boat and you close in on the trees next to the river and there are millions of fireflies all twinkling in the branches. Rufus Wainwright's song "O What A World" was going through my head, especially the line: "'life is beautiful' on the New York Times..."

It was perfect.

Malaysia, Day Two

this is the Blue Mosque across the street from our hotel in Shah Alam, Malaysia

Sharon and I in Venice Beach, CA, with DP!!


inside the Blue Mosque, pardon for the flipped photo, i can't figure out how to twist it

Sister Cities

St. Louis might be the most dangerous city in America (CNN.com article), but Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea is the worst city IN THE WORLD according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. (The Guardian - UK article)

Blogging Ourselves to Death

I am reading 'Amusing ourselves to Death' for my Intro to Critical Theory class with Ronci. A lot of stuff in this book pisses me off because it seems too extreme, too apocalyptic. Life has gone on after TV and even the Internet, things are still kind of good and kind of bad.

However, this quote jumped out at me because of its relevance to blogging (the book was written in 1984, btw).

"The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraphy made information into a commodity, a "thing" that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning."

Blogs, anyone? And yes, I grasp the irony of me blogging about this. Neil Postman, the author, makes use of some Biblical imagery earlier in the book. He brushed against the idea that perhaps what God was saying when he outlawed graven images was that humans can't handle too many images, we need words. I don't know...

But speaking of Biblical imagery. Does this make anyone else think about the tower of Babel? That too much unfettered communication can be bad for a people?

Waitless.org

Okay, I feel like I'm selling out to The Man by talking about how cool a company's (especially one as big as Sprint) website is, but this is really cool.
The only thing I have a problem with is their slogan: "Fast-forward though the boring parts of life" That rubs me the wrong way in so many different ways I can't even start explaining it. Life is boring most of the time. It's part of the deal. Besides, "boring" is relative, kind of like "rich."
But anyways: what's cool about the site is that it tells you how to do really cool things (quickly, yes). But basically they're just cool party tricks that you can pull out nonchalantly and be like "what...that's just the way I do it, how do you do it?"

Here are the coolest ones, for the rest, go to waitless.org:

• quick peel a hard-boiled egg (time saved: 4 days of your life)
• quick-pop a bottle cap (time saved: 4 days of your life)
• instant shirt removal (time saved: 3 days of your life)