Commercial with an annoying song and unnecessarily massive PR campaign: Eggo Waffles / Eggo Lego Waffles / Eggo Waffles Cereal, the whole Eggo Kingdom. I HATE their commercials, but I guess it comes with the whole only watching Cartoon Network thing.

Phrases that need to be obliterated from the American language: A.S.A.P. and Understatement of the Year. "As Soon As Possible" is alright, it's the initializing that bugs the beep out of me, especially when it's used in EVERY EMAIL that you've sent to me every hour that I've promptly responded to every other hour! Time only moves so fast, Matthew Rosenburg of Mormonsville, Utah! As for the second phrase, I read an article in Time that used it three times, one being the title, and considering that was the first time I had ever heard that phrase, it was enough.

A book you should read: I just finished reading Out by Natsuo Kirino, apparently one of the most celebrated authors in Japan. A woman murders her husband, and she and her group of friends from the night shift become entangled in the crime. It's a really captivating murder mystery and thoroughly takes you through Japanese culture and then spits you out; I really had difficulty putting this one down. So much in fact, that for the past few days I have seen the sun rise before going to bed. Of course, I have this problem everytime I pick up a new book, but seriously, great book, read it.

Cute video game time: Pikmin 2 for Gamecube. No I haven't played Pikmin 1, but 2 was on sale at Best Buy and I'm sure 1 is just like 2. You are a spacedude named Olimar, and with your buddy Louie (it's cute how they pronounce their names, LOOey and OLmarh! ^_^;) you travel to a planet (that you found in 1) that's inhabited by these plant-creatures named Pikmin. You build an army of these little guys and kill bugs and collect "treasure" like bottle caps and rubber duckies. I love it. I thought about doing a website reviewing only really cute video games, but it might get ridiculously sappy...

I've been playing a lot of tennis with Ben. It's fun, but I'm starting to realize that I don't like how one-handed tennis is. I feel like the right side of my body is just getting stronger, while my left is kind of just there for support. I also don't like how everything is in "spurts" - you hit the ball, wait, run, hit the ball, wait... I'm sure it's completely different if I were actually good at tennis, but the game's starting to lose it's edge to me. Eeeh I dunno. But I really swimming and running better. I like even-ness.

So this weekend I'll be headed to Chicago with Ben and Nick for Play! A Video Game Symphony, similar to the Final Fantasy concert we went to... last year? The year before? Anyway, there should be music from a ton of video games this time, not just the FF series, including Metal Gear Solid, Zelda, Super Mario Bros, Chrono Cross and Kingdom Hearts! Yaaay super excited! And Nobuo Uematsu, composer of the FF music, will be doing some signing the day before on Friday, so we'll be there for two days. I don't really care about signatures, I don't even really have anything he could sign except for my $5.99 FFVII case, but eh why not, Japanese people. ^_^

Oh, and about my permed hair...

Listening: BT - Emotional Technology
Playing: Pikmin 2
Reading: Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle