Ice Cream

Imagine life without ice cream. Yeah, that would suck. Now imagine if someone gave you a nice bowl of Haagen-Dazs and said, “this is ice cream.”

You’d certainly walk around and say “ice cream is the greatest food evAr!!”

Now imagine your friend has also never eaten ice cream before, but instead of Haagen-Dazs, his first ice cream is Good Humor.

He’d also naturally scream “ice cream is the greatest food evAr!!”

Now imagine you’ve been eating Haagen-Dazs ice cream for 3 years and someone comes along and says “you if want ice cream, you can only eat Good Humor and not Haagen-Dazs.”

That’s pretty much what happened to me. Well, not with ice cream, but with my DVR. I went from TiVo to the Oceanic DVR.

TiVo = Haagen-Dazs. Oceanic’s DVR = Good Humor. I can’t stand the Oceanic DVR, I just can’t. Maybe if I hadn’t grown up with TiVo I wouldn’t be so agitated, but I did.

The only reason I’m using the Oceanic DVR is because TiVo is not compatible with HDTV in Hawaii. Short story: when TiVo gets its SDV dongle on the market, I’m jumping ship.

Please TiVo, get the SDV thingy ma giggy out! You said second quarter 2008, WHERE IS IT???

Improv Rules and Wingman Rules are the Same

I’m trying to learn improve. No I’m not taking classes, yet. I’m just learning the basics.

The more I learn about impov the more I realize how much of it applies to pickup.


So improv, or Improvisational Theatre or Improvisational Comedy is a type of performance where actors get on stage, work with each other, and make up a performance on the fly. Generally, the goal is humor.

In improv there are a few basic rules: Don’t Deny, Don’t Ask Open Ended Questions aka no Pimping, You Don’t Have to Be Funny, Making your partner look good makes you look good. See http://www.fnipgh.com/shortcut4.htm for a more thorough explanation.

As I learned the rules, I realized that many of them are exactly like wingman rules:

Don’t Deny
Don’t deny means that if someone presents a situation, accept it. For example if your partner holds his hands out with an imaginary bowling ball and says, “I’m handing you a bowling ball” don’t say “this is not a bowling ball, that’s a fried turkey.” Instead, accept it. In other words, do not disagree with your wingman; accept all his statements, even when he says “he shoves pickles up girl’s asses then eats them.”


Don’t Ask Open Ended Questions aka no Pimping
Pimping is when an actor forces the other actor to say something awesome. For example, one actor hands another an imaginary piece of paper and says “this piece of paper has the funniest joke in the world written on it, read it!!” That forces the “victim” to come up with a really funny joke on the spot.

Just the same, don’t put all the pressure on a wing. Only ask him questions you know he can answer. Never put your wing on the spot unless you know for sure he can hit it out of the park.


Funny Skillz Not Required
Don’t try to be funny and the humor will just come out. In other words, don’t try hard. Let it flow naturally. Pathetic = someone looking like he is trying too hard.

Making your partner look good makes you look good
Like don’t deny. Making a partner funnier makes the entire stage shine. Making a wingman look good makes both guys sparkle like ten giga-candle spotlight.

To see the difference between really awesome improv/wingman-ness and just decent, check out the Pickup Podcast and compare it to the Seduction Bible podcast. Both are very good, but only one is mind blowingly entertaining.

The Rail Reporting is Pissing Me Off

The Honolulu Advertiser and writer Sean Hao is now on my growing shit list of people and organizations twisting the facts on the rail.

It really pisses me off when the newspaper twists facts in a veiled attempt at unbiased reporting.

For those who don’t live in Honolulu, one of the hot button issues is whether the City should spend $4.2 billion (or more) on a 20-mile mass transportation system, aka “the rail.”

Obviously, grandmas and lobbyists are coming out of the woodwork to push or prevent this biggest public works project in the history of Honolulu.

So, today, the Honolulu Advertiser ran a story with this headline: “Most in Honolulu say they won't use rail regularly, poll shows”

Rather than quote the entire article, here’s the summary:

The poll was conducted on 510 residents
47% were very unlikely to regularly ride the rail
12% were somewhat unlikely to regularly ride the rail
24% were somewhat likely to regularly ride the rail
16% were very likely to regularly ride the rail

Margin or error was . . . I don’t know because it wasn’t published in the article. It was partially published in a linked pdf file, but that margin was broken down by the demographics and I couldn’t determine the margin of error for the entire poll.

Short story of me being pissed off is that no one ever said MOST people would ride the rail. Reading between the lines the poll shows that more people will ride the rail than originally estimated.

The City estimated that the rail would have 95,000 riders a day by 2030—less than 10% of the 2030 population (which is estimated at above 1.1 million). The poll shows 16%.

Today the population of Honolulu County (Oahu) is 905,601 (2007 estimate from the U.S. Census). 16% of that is 144,896 people. If we assumed zero population growth, 16% is still more than estimated. Add in the 24% who said that they are somewhat likely to be regular users, the tourists, people who will ride the rail occasionally, and population grown and maybe 175,000 people a day by 2030 will ride the rail—almost double the 95,000 estimate.

Point being, according to the poll, MORE PEOPLE SAY THEY ARE GOING TO RIDE THE RAIL THAN ORIGINAL EXPECTED.

The headline should have read “Poll: 16% Very Likely To Use the Rail Regularly.”

Rummikub

My latest nerd toy is Rummikub and I kick massive loads of ass at it—no one can defeat me.

Rummikub is an old rummy game similar to gin rummy. Players put pieces down on the table in either three-of-a-kind sets (9 of hearts, 9 of spades, and a 9 of diamonds), or three consecutive cards of the same suit (8 of hearts, 9 of hearts, and 10 of hearts).

Yet, unlike gin rummy, players can rearrange the pieces on the table to help them put more pieces down. Only problem is that all pieces after the rearrangement must still follow the three (or four) -of-a-kind set or the three or more consecutive card rule: no orphaned or dual orphaned pieces

The object is to get rid of all one’s pieces. For a better explanation of the rules see here.

Rummikub is an awesome game because it forces the players to see multiple steps ahead. Some moves require massive wholesale renovation of the table in five or six steps. One incomplete thought and a hanging piece screws up the player.

Rummikub is easy to learn, a pain in the ass to see everything, and a good exercise in seeing multiple steps ahead.

$10 on Amazon

All The Rail People Are Starting To Piss Me Off

So here in Honolulu, one of the big debates is Rail. In other words, should we spend $4.2 billion (or more) on a 20-mile mass transportation system?

If you ever want to spend a few hours dealing with truckloads of bullshit flying every which way, Google “Honolulu Rail”—I’m not even going to dignify the sites by linking to them. It is absolutely unbelievable how much unsupported and false arguments can be thrown back and forth.

As a resident of Honolulu, I am deeply offended that both sides would even think that I would believe so many blind and unsupported assertions.

Rather than making this a fifteen foot rant, I’m going to help spread this great article on the rail controversy: Part 1 and Part 2

Why Do All The Cool Shirts Have Skulls?

A few months ago, I looked through all my cool t-shirts and realized that most of them had skulls. I vowed to stop buying skull t-shirts and now I'm having a damn hard time finding t-shirts worth rocking. Here's some of the shirts I've passed on:







If you like any of these shirts, get ur virtual ass to www.buckle.com

Random Picture

I'm back, the Universe has been saved. Here's a random picture for your viewing enjoyment.


Miss Panama Carolina Dementiev Justavino, Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza and Miss Israel Shunit Faragi