Breaking and Entering

Have you ever done something criminal without intent?

Like, many people have left a store with something in their pocket they forgot to take out at check out. Something like that.

Did you go back and pay for it or return it? I mean, what are you supposed to do? You don't want to admit you stole something inadvertantly. They're going to give you a dirty look. They might even remember your face next time you're at the store!

You don't want to get blacklisted for a 25 cent packet of Juice Fruits. No!

Like what if you REALLY want to steal one day. Then you're screwed because they're always watching you. 'Oh, my god, Tasha. It's that guy who "accidentally" stole a packet of gum. We better keep a close eye on him."

I bring all of this up because I actually have unintentionally broken and entered a house in the past.

What happened was few of my friends and I were delivering a piano to an house where the owners had gone on a vacation and left the driver the key. The driver knew the homeowners personally and had been shown inside the house. And you have to understand, my involvement was very peripheral. I was just there to give a hand to move the piano.

The driver parks in the driveway at the house where we're supposed to drop off the piano. Two guys and I grab the piano from the back of the truck while the driver goes ahead of us to get the door. We rush to the piano to the front door when the driver guy says, "guys, the key isn't opening the door."

"What do you mean?"

"The key isn't working."

"Let me see that," I go working on the key. Jiggling and wiggling the key. And it doesn't work, "It's the wrong key. Try the other doors."

We go around and try to open all kinds of doors here and there. And none of the doors work. @#$@#!

And here's what happens. You know, one of my biggest strengths is also my worst! I don't like to take "no" for an answer. I mean, what are we going to do with the piano? Return it?

No! The piano is going into the damn house if it means I have to break and enter!

I rose to the occasion. I was meeting my life's challenges head on. I put on my McGuyver hat.

I pulled out a credit card. I shimmied the card in the space between the door and its frame. And in 10 seconds, I opened the door.

Yeah, I was THAT good. Like some spy. The guys were in awe, "you are the man, dog!"

More than anything, we were just glad that we didn't have to drive back to the place where we picked up the piano.

So we pick up the piano and run into the house. It couldn't have been three steps into the house when the driver guy says, "guys, something's not right."

"What is it this time?"

"I don't recognize the inside."

At this point, I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. The guy runs out of the house and looks at the house. And the thought enters my mind when from outside I hear, "@#$%, guys1 We're in the wrong @#$%^&* house! Get the @#$% out!"

"Oh, @#$%!" We grabbed that piano and loaded it onto the truck. Then we peel out of the driveway when our driver guy says.. "ah, we were supposed to go to that house," pointing to the next house down the road. We drive 50 feet down the road and onto the driveway, praying to God that the neighborhood Big Brother watch group has taken a day off.

Sure enough the key opens front door at the new house. We dropped the piano to where it was supposed to go and flew out there like bat out of hell.

And that's my story of accidentally breaking and entering into a stranger's house.

Political Implication of Benjamin Button the Movie

Brad Pitt Facial Transformation (Ed Ulbrich. TED Talks: How Benjamin Button got his face)

When I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," I thought that they did a remarkable job with to make Brad Pitt look old. So imagine my surprise when I learned this morning via TED podcast that the old Brad faces were actually computer generated. What they did was a remarkable feat. Phosphorus marker was used to map out a basic set of human facial expressions (in this case, of Brad Pitt) which was then superimposed on an older facial model.

Besides the obvious entertainment applications, this holds a great political implication. Any head of a political state can now be recreated on the computer with his/her willing consent. For instance, this may be something that aging dictators (i.e. KIS of N. Korea) might want as a backup plan to keep the masses at bay. Osama bin Laden may have uses for this.

Granted, this is not possible in the immediate future. The technology is still in its infancy and is too expensive when compared to a body double. You'd need banks of computer to store and process. This may become an application for a routine public service announcement within ten years. There will be a need for public policy and law against the use of this technology for the purpose of deception, broadcast impersonation, identity presumption, etc.

Though this is no news, we do live in a brave new world.

America, revisited.

America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America, sixty thousand IOU's. November 19, 2008.
I can't stand my own mind.
America, when will we end the human war?
I'm sick of you jacking off to warmongering videos on YouTube.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't rewrite this poem till I'm in my right mind.

America, when will you be a Bodhisattva?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you feed the hungry?
When will you be worthy of your million dead poets?
America, why are your libraries full of empty chairs?
America, when will you send your meds to Africa?

I'm sick of your insane demands.

When can I go on eBay and buy what I need with my good looks?
America, after all it is you and I who are perfect - not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Your starving, hysterical, naked poets are dead of bloody cirrhosis.

It's sinister.

Are you being sinister? Or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to a point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.

America, stop pushing I know what I'm doing.

America, the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't watched the news for months,
Everyday the old yell "terrorists!"
while the young kill each other.
America, I feel sentimental about the nine-to-five workers.
They cry every night wondering if life should be so pointless.
I stare at the moon, blue and poignant.
Everything is made from corn.

Damn it.

America, I used to be a Sunday school teacher and I'm very sorry.
Now I repent with the green, green tea every chance I get.
When I go to Chinatown I eat hot noodle soup and walk down the K-alley to the city light.

My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Tolstoy.
My parents think I'm perfectly crazy; and I won't say the Lord's Prayer anymore.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.

America, I still haven't told you what you did to Little Robert after he came over from Iraq.

Hey, I'm addressing you!

Are you going to let our emotional life be run by easyspeak Armani boys?

I'm obsessed by the tube.
I watch it when I don't want to be human.
It stares back like a mirror image of my self.
I even take it to go on my iPhone in the morning.
It's always telling me about patriotism.
Politicians are serious. Reverends are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
Everybody is talking about terrorism.

It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a Chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of two bags of green tea, millions of mis-educated emo kids,
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1 gigabytes an hour and twentyfivethousand nursing homes.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the 46 millions of uninsured,
who go to chiropractor for medical problems
acupuncturist for chiropractic problems,
and emergency room for pain pills.

I have abolished the orphanages of India, Haiti is the next to go.
My ambition is to be the President despite the fact that my eyes are slanty.

America, you are a free country. Aren't you?
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like MLK.
My lines are as vivid as his dreams.

America, I will short all my verses against your burning stocks.
America, your CEOs jump from scrapers.

America, free Llasa; free Tibet
America, save the Invisible Children
America, creativity and the blue sky must not die.
America, I am the Guantanamo animals.

America, when I was thirteen, my family moved to New York.
I only knew three words of English, "Yes", "No", and "Thank you."
Children can be mean.
They spat at me for being a ching-chang-chong.

Still the sun shone brightly then and the fog wasn't as thick
You have no idea what a good thing blowjob was back in 1993.
Your president smoked cigars instead of coke.
Mother Teresa was still alive.

Everybody must have been a terrorist.
America, you don't really want to go to war.
America, it's them bad Terrorists.
Them Terrorists them Terrorists and them Muslims. And them Terrorists.
The Islam wants to eat us alive. The Islam is power mad.
Inshallah wants to take our children from our Jesus H. Christ.

China wants to grab Africa. Her needs oil reserves.

Her wants our auto plants in Detroit. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes wetbacks learn Ingles and Mandarin.
Him with two billion little slanty eyes like mine.

Hah!

Her make us work in Wal-Mart twenty-four hours a day. Halp!

America, this is quite serious.
America, this is the impression I get from the TV.
America, is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or replace desperate someone's desperate job
I'm unpunctual and narcoleptic anyway.

America, I'm sleeping hungry on the bare floor tonight.

- Credits to Allen Ginsberg

This is a tribute to Allen Ginsberg. He addressed America regarding the anti-communism hysteria in a sarcastic yet non-condescending undertone. I have been contemplating this poem for a while now. I draw a parallel of our era.