A True Underdog Story

Baghdad, IRAQ - Earlier this week during a surprise visit to tour Iraq, soon-to-be unemployed President George Bush was met with a double dose Iraqi love. In a surprise of all surprises, the American President, whose party has recently lost to the the incumbent Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill. for the upcoming term, was fielding questions through a translator during a run-of-the-mill press conference, when he was suddenly involved in what the Iraqi people have recently called "Shoe Loveball."

Unfortunately for the President, he was once again ill-informed about the Iraqi people. The translator was just about to warn the President about the game but was not nearly quick enough. Before anyone could realize what was about to transpire, two shoes from an Iraqi journalist were flung at the Presidential podium.

According to the official rules of Iraqi Shoe Loveball, any person hit twice with a single person's shoe is legally betrothed to the owner of the shoe and bound by Allah into a subservient marriage. If the first shoe hits, but the second shoe misses, then the thrower of the shoe is allowed one suicide bombing in any territory within the victim's ownership. If the second shoe hits after missing the first shoe, it is considered ultimate shame, and the thrower gets to make fun of the victim's mother for all eternity.

However, as stated, only if both shoes hit will the owner of the shoe be rewarded. The thrower in this case, is not rewarded with forced betrothal, but rather, rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven, on top of any accumulated virgins already earned. Only the owner of the shoe gains a new spouse if both shoes hit. The accurate thrower is rewarded in the afterlife and is usually recruited to the Afghan Hills, a friendly hunting team based somewhere in the caves around Mt. Noshaq, the highest point in Afghanistan. Their training is renowned for the thoroughness of its trainees and their fierce diplomatic prowess.

Luckily for President Bush, both shoes missed. According to the Official Handbook of Shoe Loveball, a supplementary pamphlet to the Qur'an with colored illustrations, anytime two shoes are thrown and both are missed, the recipient of the shoe-flinging is allowed to remained occupied in both the owner's and the thrower's countries. If the owner and the thrower of the shoes are from different countries, then the winner of the round is allowed to occupy both countries and gets to roll again.

Occupation of countries with the same color, like Boardwalk and Park Place, are of special value, since rent can be increased astronomically with the addition of hotels. For example, dodging two shoes from a thrower born in Syria, with the owner of the shoes born in Afghanistan (both Peach Territories) would be ideal in securing oil lines and surrounding larger markets like ever-friendly state of Iran. Such manipulation of international real estate is a valuable and viable alternative to the spiraling housing market of America. Bush thus has made progress.

This game is similar in principle to the American board game of Monopoly, which had a name change from the slightly less-popular "Worlddominationpoly." Actually, Shoe Loveball and Monopoly have nothing in common except for the fact that one party must own everything to win.

George Bush's dodging ability had never been questioned prior to his impromptu round of Shoe Loveball. He has been dodging legitimate reasons to go to Iraq for eight years, and this trip was no different.

Understandably, the game of Iraqi Shoe Loveball is a complicated and convoluted one, filled with ancient traditions and rules. However, one thing is certain: Bush's dodging of the shoes is an adequate metaphor for his regime's foot out the door of American politics. The Bush administration, however, has not completely failed. If anything, this week's shoe flinging finally brought to light the heinous weapons of mass destruction the Iraqi government was hiding all this time.

"I knew it," Bush replied, smiling as if he actually did.

A smile the majority of the country now equates accurately to trisomy 21.

Reporting nude and alone in Baghdad, Andrew Nguyen, AP.

Albert Lamorisse, Charles Darrow and Allah contributed to this story.

Rosebud...

The following is a list of things I want to accomplish before I die. The beauty of this list is that I don't have anything vague in here, such as "fall desperately in love" or "find eternal happiness." Those kinds of wishes point to the weaknesses of indecision and lack of creative happiness. If your are reading this, I want you to make a list and post it to me as a comment. And be serious (that's for you, Jag).

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that a simple IM is better than a comment, so do whichever gives you most comfort! =)

25 THINGS TO ACCOMPLISH BEFORE DEATH:

1. Graduate from dental school.
2. Watch 5000 movies.
3. Garner a massive, wall-breaching DVD collection, only consisting of movies I love.
4. Take a cross-country road trip.
5. Have my honeymoon in Tahiti.
6. Visit the following places: Vietnam; Amritsar, India; Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, China; the fjords of Norway; Ireland, Wales, UK; the Mediterranean coast; Jerusalem; Dubai.
7. Spend a whole day with the woman I love watching and singing along with Disney movies.
8. Have one of my good friends preside as a priest to my wedding (and baptizing my children too!).
9. Have my brother be my best man at my wedding, since it would be impossible to decide which one of my many good friends would be best man. I'll probably have 5 other groomsmen, haha.
10. Get (good) season tickets to see the Warriors.
11. Be able to bench press 250 pounds (and no more!).
12. Live to see marriage rights for same-sex couples, so all my friends have a right to get married.
13. Not say a word for an entire week.
14. Be involved in the making of a studio film, be it writing, acting or directing.
15. Win an Oscar (or at least get nominated).
16. Visit Disneyland everyday for a week with a group of friends with whom I know I'll never get tired.
17. Spend a whole day at the movies (that's the first showing of a movie until after a midnight showing).
18. I'd like to grow my hair out until I get a ponytail.
19. Then I'd like to shave my head.
20. Make a YouTube video that would get 1 million views and a 5 star rating.
21. Sing a duet with the woman I love in front of a large crowd.
22. Take a cruise across an ocean.
23. Finish my education in Spanish and Vietnamese. Learn Korean and French.
24. Own a sport bike.
25. Write a best-selling memoir.


As you can see, I will delay studying for finals for as long as necessary.

More School

I know it's not quite as late as I normally post, but I thought I'd be better off dedicating the rest of my night/morning to the age-old habit of studying. As old as time itself, pulling all-nighters has been a tradition of college students globally. Who am I to break and challenge tradition?

Tonight I feel obligated to relate a story. In lieu of my friend Travis leaving next semester, I thought I'd mention him before year's end. He came in my room today, accompanied by the ever-hilarious Craig Jeong (strangely not of Korean descent, but that's another story for another late night).

We swapped stories about fights and what-not. Charles relayed some hilarious ones about how he cried in the fifth grade. It has been awhile since I have personally been involved in a fight. Surprisingly, I haven't gone fist-to-fist with anyone here yet.

The closest I've been to a fight, as I told it to my four friends, was when I was at a house party a few months ago.

It was a rather large party, probably a bit over a hundred people there. Some people were intoxicated, and I'll refrain from revealing my own physical condition simply because I don't want to get too personal on such a public forum.

Anyways, people were intoxicated. As such, people got boisterous. As a matter of fact, there were multiple very loud people, many of which were Lakers' fans. Being from the Bay Area, I am naturally a Golden State Warriors fan. Inevitably, our love for our respective basketball teams clashed. It was an interestingly heated exchange, my one to their multitude.

So I was exchanging insults with a crowd of Lakers' fans, among them my roommate, Danny. One of these Lakers' fans had a friend named Steve, who was not a fan himself, but rather, was friends with the general crowd of raucous malcontents. While this exchange was happening, and it was happening rather chaotically, Danny was yelling at me, defending the honor of the beloved Los Angeles Lakers.

"Andrew!" he joked out loud. "Wanna take this outside? HUH? HUH?!"

I obviously had no desire to leave the premises of the party in order to engage in violent combat with a person from whom I slept six feet away every night. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to fight either.

However, neither of our opinions were shared by Steve, who quickly grabbed my collar and brought me close to his face. Now, Steve is not a very tall man, but nor was he lacking in strength. As a matter of fact, with that grab, I fully began to appreciate the bulk of his muscles. His biceps were roughly equivalent in size to a newborn rhinocerous, or a rhino calf (though I like Yahoo! user Nemo's answer best).

So he brought me close to him and said to me, "Hey. You better cool it. Your friend says he wants to take this outside. We can go outside if you want."

So yes, Danny almost got my ass kicked. I repeat, Danny almost got my ass kicked.

I'll let the reader decide whether Danny was drunk or not.

Bioinformatics, FTW!

bi·o·in·for·mat·ics n. (used with a sing. verb)
The use of computer science, mathematics, and information theory to model and analyze biological systems, especially systems involving genetic material.


So my bioinformatics report is due in less than 12 hours. I think I've made great strides in finishing it, though. After my peer review, which was done by the great Doo Lim, I got the paper to be more focused. I must admit, though, Mr. Lim is a very interestingly concise and good peer editor. His comments on each section of my paper were astonishingly in-depth, as exemplified with my favorite comment below:

"Abstract: Nonexistant"

Needless to say, his other critiques more than made up for it.




Yes, I'm screwed for this.

Anyways, this week AXE, my fraternity, is selling holiday grams near the Univeristy Center. Since our banner is too large for the table, we had to duct tape it to a light pole on one end and to the end of the table on the other end. People can see us better that way.

Yours truly did the taping of the duct, but such rigorous manual labor forced me furhter into insane thought: Why is Gorilla tape so awesome?

It's "incredibly strong" but I don't think it's quite comparable to a REAL gorilla's grip. Plus, why would you sell a product that has a hairy arm holding it? Gorillas are just scary. Their arms are unnaturally hairy. I mean, how does hair like that even begin to develop?

That kind of hair reminds me of my friend Jagmeet. He's hairy. He's also a covert terrorist. He told me he reads this blog, so I thought I'd return the favor and indulge his hairy ego by mentioning him.

I'm scared though. He might praise Allah all over my residence hall.

I hate racist jokes like that. I hope it was funny enough to compormise my morality though. Jag would compromise his life for his religious morality. F-ing AYrab.

Yeah, I really dislike racism.

But seriously, I taped that banner well, almost too well.

It was gorilla-tape-nice-and-tight.

Birthday Blog

I guess now is as good a time to blog as any other. I've been watching movies again lately. For some reason, I've been gravitating toward animated films. I recently saw the Hayao Miyazaki classics, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky(1986). I also watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and Bolt (2008). They were all good. I particularly enjoyed Nausicaa and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time for some reason. I didn't think the others were as good, but were still enjoyable. I might do reviews later. Anyways,

I'll start with last week. My father came to visit me in Stockton last Thursday. I had just woken up to his abrupt phone call.

"Andrew, I'm here."
Groggily, I replied, "K. Dad. Lemme get ready." Click.

I gathered my books and whatnot and joined him in the passenger seat of his pedophile/kidnapper white Nissan Quest van. My brother and I had merrily placed a "Mystery Spot" bumper sticker years ago on the back bumper so as to avoid the inevitable stares of passers-by who might find the van shady. Needless to say, the yellow sticker only made the van creepier.

But the creepiness wasn't new to me, as I walked down the stairs of my residence hall into the passenger seat of my dad's van. At this point, I was so tired that I delayed putting on the seatbelt. I just sat there lazily, body as exhausted as I usually feel when woken prematurely.

We got onto the street without any trouble, my seatbelt still unbuckled, and, talking sparsely as only father and son could, we continued driving. We came up to a stop sign and saw a police car parked, seemingly looking for stop sign-violators. My dad commented uneventfully, "Doesn't it seem like the police are everywhere?"

Before I could come up with a cynical I'm-tired-dad retort, I heard the saddening siren of a police car. I put on my seatbelt. I knew what was coming. We pulled over.

"I pulled you over," the police said callously, "because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt." He pointed to me.

"It's National Click-it-orTicket Week, so we are told to look out especially for seatbelt violations. How old are you, son?" the law enforcer asked.
"Eighteen," was my weak, and notably only possible, reply.
"I'll be right back."

I swear the whole time my dad was smiling as if he wanted to seduce the policeman out of a ticket. I myself am guilty of trying to laugh off the ticket. He came back.

"Sorry, officer," I said. "I'm still in college. You know how irresponsible I can be."
He laughed. "That is true. Let me see your license." I gave it to him.

I thought it was money in the bank at this point. Surely, he saw I was charming and couldn't possibly give me a ticket now. Still, a few more jokes wouldn't hurt.

"What's your address, Andrew?"
"My home address or my school address? Well, I can't really call it home since my parents kicked me out a long time ago. You can see why," I said, pointing to the seat belt.
He laughed really hard this time.
"Yep, those things are mighty inconvenient. I'll just use the address on your license."


And then I got a ticket.