Rick, Clay, Cynthia, and Freddie

I'm not trying to pick on redheads here, but everytime I see either one of these folks, I think of the other 3. They all look related!!

Vocally separated at birth?

Is it just me or do Strawberry Rick Astley and Cher the Fierce-Maned sound similar? You decide.

PS - it only works if you listen to their songs with your eyes closed.

Love in the Time of Recession

Dude ain't got no money. He can't even buy her flowers! For Pete's sake, they can't even go anywhere exotic because of the floundering US dollar. Not to worry - putting the common man's woes with the current US economy to song and dance can make for an inexpensive dance date! So who cares if those futbol players are suddenly richer because of l'Euro? Some things like the love of uber-beautiful Keri Hilson are always free! As for the economy, we'll just let the free market thug it out till they get it right.

Not phat at all

Ladies and gentleman, presenting the fattest states in America (as per this article)!

1. Mississippi, 32.0 percent
2. Alabama, 30.3
3. Tennessee, 30.1
4. Louisiana, 29.8
5. West Virginia, 29.5
6. Arkansas, 28.7
7. South Carolina, 28.4
8. Georgia, 28.2
9. Oklahoma, 28.1
10. Texas, 28.1

Fight spam!

I love Snopes.com. Everytime I get a guilt-inducing gut-wrenching email about a disease-ridden child or an email promising money from Microsoft and AOL, I immediately check it on Snopes for legitimacy. More often than not, it's fake, and I let the email sender know. Spam and inaccurate forwards are such a pain. I mean, why does anybody care that Barack Obama could secretly be a Muslim?

Hello Myers, hello Briggs

I am an INFJ. What are you? Take the free test and leave me a comment about your personality type.

For more information about the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), click here. You can get more information about the individual MBTI personality types by scrolling down to the 'Type dynamics and development' section and clicking on the relevant personality types in the 'The Sixteen Types' table on the right-hand-side.

Sashay shante!

Why oh why do men who dress like women look better than women who actually are women!

For all you psych majors

I have been conducting my own personal Pavlovian investigation regarding a hard candy related incident. You know when people keep a pile of candy at their desk at the office for folks to enjoy? Well the administrative assistant at my office started doing just that a few months ago, and I had no idea why I'd feel so delighted everytime I tried one of the butterscotch candies. I got slightly addicted to them and I had a feeling I had had this candy before, but I just could not figure it out. It made me nuts. What was it that I felt everytime the butterscotch lapped up with my saliva in my mouth into apparently happy blocked out memories? It felt like repressed previous incarnation memories that they show on TV. For months this black hole in my memory bothered me. Then one day, as it usually is with these things, I suddenly remembered. Twenty years ago my family was visiting Lahore, Pakistan, for my dad's youngest sister's wedding. There I met one of my dad's maternal uncles. I've met him only that one trip, but it was sufficient for me to give him the name 'toffee waale dada' (the grandpa with the candy). A tall man with a white moustache, he'd be swarmed by children wherever he went because of his candy stash. He'd always, always, always have this delicious hard candy for the children. I remember it was as addictive as a drug. I'd never been able to find candy that tasted exactly the same until twenty years later in Tulsa, Okla-frikkin-homa.

So that's what it was. I'd forgotten the taste of the candy and only remembered the wonderful grandchildlike happiness it brought me at the age of 7. That feeling was triggered back into the foreground of my mind when I experienced the same taste again. What a completely involuntary reaction. I didn't even know why I was feeling what I was feeling. It's like my mind has a, well, mind of its own.

Ars gratia artis

Meet Joseph Chamberlain, a self-taught inner-inspired artist that I ran into at a mini fair in the Williams building during the lunch hour. I stopped and chatted with him about his art and ended up feeling quite talent-deprived after he described his dedication and drive toward his work. For instance, one painting he's been working on for 7 years and will take another year or so to complete. Why? Because it involves him using your everyday ink pen and drawing in little circles until you cannot tell if the painting's a computer printout or a photocopy. Dang.

Joseph talked of using colours to express his heart on the canvas. The only thing that stopped me from feeling like an idiot is my medium of expression: words.

'...and words are all I have, to take your heart away'.

The big picture

I had developed global myopia living in the US for so long, so I decided to tack on a World Map next to the US map I have up in my office cube. Gosh, what a difference it makes. It's all about perspective I tell you. My mind's feeling open again! Suddenly I can see all the other countries in the world, and many are as large as if not larger than the US. I sorrowfully also realised how far India and Oman really are from the US. All of it takes my breath away. I have been so deeply embedded in the US for so many years; you have a tendency to get cut off from the rest of the world here. The years I've been here made me feel like my life before the US was a hazy dream that didn't make sense anymore, but now I feel like I've got a grip on reality again.

So hello, Libya, Australia, Peru, and Norway! Hello all you others! So good to see your pretty political demarkations again!

I declare

That I am a casual, flat-shoe wearing, comfortable clothes wearing, highly sensitive chick.

That I will never apologise for my feelings.

That I will walk around with my nose in the air if I feel like it.

That I am not interested in the rumblings of dumb people.

That I simply do not care.

That it feels good to not care.

Barbaric news

God, this is so terrible. . I repeat, I repeat, all men and women are as equal as the teeth of a comb. You are no better or worse than anybody except by your deeds.