Vinh Pham

Although I have been very adamant about not smoking marijuana, I must admit that my views on marijuana have changed a lot in the last couple years.

I used to believe that smoking marijuana is absolutely bad, however, now I don’t really care if people do it. This change is due to a couple of factors:

1) marijuana is bad for you - shit, French fries are worst, yet we consume a gazillion of that shit everyday.
2) marijuana is a gateway drug - no… being a dumb ass is a gateway drug. if you are dumb enough to snort cocaine or shoot heroine, thats your own stupid fault, don’t blame marijuana.
3) marijuana is addictive - alcohol is addictive and yet everyone drinks it and drive around in their car. I have never heard one of my friends smoke marijuana and put someone else life in danger. I have heard plenty of my friends drank alcohol and drove home drunk.

I am not going to start toking up though for two simple reasons

1) I cant give my friends the satisfaction of saying “Haha, Vinh caved.” Not gonna happen
2) Most of the people who smoke marijuana are scums or criminals. Some people are normal, but most are scums and criminals who break the law just for the hell of it. I don’t want to be associated with scums. Maybe if one day marijuana is legalized and it gets sold in a more normal setting, like in a bar or something, then I would consider trying it, but for now, I will stay away from it.

If marijuana is legalized, those drug peddlers wont have a job. Maybe then, they will just die and fall off the face of the earth. Better for the rest of us.

If you don’t listen to NPR, I highly recommend you start. Its either 89.3 or 88.5. Its one of the easiest way for you to get educated about world events and become a more well-rounded person, it may also help you score some points on Jeopardy one day!

But anyways, on NPR yesterday I learned an interesting fact about outsourcing. In America, we are always afraid of outsourcing because we are afraid we will loose jobs and slow economic growth, however, this is not true. An expert on NPR said that when we buy a computer “Made in China” for $1000 dollars, only $100 of that $1000, or 10******* stays in America to pay for the computer designer, the marketing team, the retailers and so on.

Basically, although we are outsourcing a lot of the manual labor required to produce a product, a lot of the intellectual work behind a product is done right here in the US. So, as long as the US can maintain its status as an intellectual enterprise, we will still be profiting a great deal and creating great jobs. The only problem is, as these “developing” industries become more affluent, America begins to loose its grip on the intellectual advantage. Pretty soon, India and China will no longer be just “producers” or “service providers”, but will also take part in the planning process of every product.

This process will be speed up if Americans do not take it upon themselves to invest in higher education and inspire creative thinking. If we keep training people to do routine work, or we neglect to educate our own people, we will fall behind in the world.

When I heard this story, in my mind I drew a parallel between outsourcing and early America slavery. But instead of kidnapping people from Africa and bringing them here on ships, we now have the technology to put them to work right where they are born. We give them a measly reward for their hard work, while we, as slave masters, reap all the benefits of their harvest.

Betelnut is a highly addictive and legal stimulant that makes you euphoric. Betelnut Beauties are half dressed young Asian girls that sells you the Betelnut. This is apparently very popular in Asian countries. Funny thing is, it is a carcinogen and it will wear away your gums until your teeth falls off.

But none the less, mix an addictive stimulant with hot young and girls and you got yourself a foolproof business model. Reminds me of last Friday when I was at the bar and behind the counters were 4 girls with boob jobs. Although I liked to think they did not influence my decision to buy alcohol, I must admit I didn’t mind standing in the general alcohol area.

What if…… we open a bunch of coffee stands ( that just serves coffee not mochas and crap like that ) all around downtown san francisco, and hire young, half-dressed, girls to peddle the coffee drinks to pedestrians, passing motorists, and bus passengers? The coffee can be like the kind in the vietnamese coffee shops, so they are ready to go and can be handed to customers in exchange for cash on the spot. This idea could really bring an end to Starbucks. Even if the coffee taste like rat piss, I would still buy it from a half-dressed girl on the corner than get in line at a Starbucks…

If you want to see this in action, go to youtube and search: Betelnut Girls

Now that I don’t work, my morning hours are spent watching Save by the Bell, The Andy Griffith Show, and Little House On The Prairie. Yes, life is bitter sweet. Bitter because I am wasting my life away. Sweet because, well, who wouldn’t want to stay home and watch TV all day?

Anyways, Little House On The Prairie blew me away today because they had a show on Anthrax. Basically everybody in town started dropping like hell. With a such benign title “Little House On The Prairie”, who would have guessed the show would tackle one of the scariest bioterror of modern day life.

Another thing is, there is buttload of blind people in that show. It seems like any disease can make them blind. That sucks. And to think this is a true story.

If you keep up with this stuff, you’d probably already realize that with the advances of Web2.0 and Youtube, the internet is coming back. It seems like there are startups all over the place. Everybody and their grandma has a startup.

Hopefully we all learned from our mistakes last time, so this time we won’t have a big tech crash again. I don’t think the US would be able to survive another tech crash with the war, housing slump, environmental issues, and other stuff.

On another note, the girl that lives next door is loud. She needs to keep her windows close because you can hear her echoing throughout the parking lot. I can’t believe I went through four years of college and never once heard anyone getting it on. Now, I hear her like once a week. So yea, she either got good vocal chords, or her boyfriend is gifted. For me though, I am going to pretend there is no boy over there… Haha.

That’s me. If you Google “Vinh Pham” in images, I will show up. I look like an Asian Shakespeare. Sorry ladies, I am taken.

I was going to make fun of this picture, but I thought that would be mean. I am sure my face is going to end up on some website and someone will make fun of me too.

But yea, this dude is probably getting plenty of arse whereever he is. Homeboy could really use a Norelco and some face wash though. Sheesh, I’d like buy a him a haircut too, my treat. Just one Vinh Pham looking out for another.

Have you seen Padma Lakshmi?? Shes pretty damn hot. Now find a picture of Salman Rushdie and tell me he’s not the luckiest dude in the world (besides me of course :)). Shoot, who knew writing could get you arse…

I read one of Rushdie’s book in High School - Haroun and the sea of stories. I had no idea he was such a controversial figure. If I had known, maybe I could have used it as an excuse and not read that book. I didn’t like that book for one reason: The names used in that book were stupid. It annoyed me the way the characters were named. I wanted them to be Bob, Tim, or Joe. Not the weird stuff they were called. Besides that, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t understand most of it, and it was a strange book to read, but I thought it was one of the most unique reading I heard ever laid eyes on.

Watching this PBS special on the Iraq war is pissing me off. I am pissed off because I got in line to vote for John Kerry, but some how Bush still won. But I am ALSO pissed because people keep pointing fingers at each other.

Bush is obviously an idiot, and the war is obviously a huge mistake, but come on we got to stop blaming each other and just solve this damn problem.

No, running away is NOT going to solve the problem. What we need is a strong leader. Someone who will lay the smack down on the war, someone who will harbor respect from leaders around the world, and someone who DOESN’T point fingers. Oh yeah… one more thing… I don’t believe that listening to the “people” is going to help either. Obviously the people can’t be relied upon to make the right decisions. Thats why we need leaders! People.. aka. Americans.. like you and I, we are good at bitching, not making decisions. Continue your bitching, but dont point fingers like you know whats best.. cus you dont!

This reminds me of that freaking Ditech commercial that says “people are smart”. I really hate that commercial because they are blatantly lying straight to our faces. They know that people are stupid, so they blow sunshine up our arses and trick us into thinking we are smart.

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Reason for this? Well, I started to noticed that all my post with song lyrics in them get a lot of hits. So I am doing an experiment. This will test to see how effective putting song lyrics on my blog is. The song I choose is Fergie - Big Girls Don’t Cry. This song appeals to the slow, warm hearted crowd, but its also popular among the hip-hop crowd because about Fergie. So here it is, the lyrics to Fergie - Big Girls Don’t Cry. Let the experiment begin!

Some nights I cannot sleep because my arms and legs feel like its pulsating and it drives me nuts. I cannot describe the feeling to be honest, but pulsating is probably the closest to it. I guess another way to describe it is the feeling of being tied in a knot, or as if there were ants crawling up and down my arms. Regardless of what it feels like, the point is, it drives me nuts. I can not sleep and I have to get up and do jumping jacks or sits up in the middle of the night. Or sometimes I just twitch back and forth to make it go away.

It normally keeps me up for like 30 minutes then I can go back to sleep. In those thirty minutes it feels like hell. It almost feels like I want to just rip my arm or my leg off and toss it against the wall. I am having it right now, thats why I stopped sleeping and went to write in my blog.

I know there is a condition known as RLS and there is a drug for it, but I am not a doctor so I am not going to diagnose myself. If I was rich, or had good health insurance, I could go get it checked out. But even then its hard to figure out because it happens erratically. And drives me nuts!!