Vonnegut dies at 84.

This is really sad news since Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors.

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Vonnegut quotes:

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

A list of his books (the bold ones are my fave, read one if you haven’t!!!):
1950s: Player Piano (1952) • The Sirens of Titan (1959)
1960s: Mother Night (1961) • Cat’s Cradle (1963) • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine (1965) • Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade (1969)
1970s: Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye, Blue Monday (1973) • Slapstick or Lonesome No More (1976) • Jailbird (1979)
1980s: Deadeye Dick (1982) • Galápagos (1985) • Bluebeard (1987)
1990s: Hocus Pocus (1990) • Timequake (1997)

Official Vonnegut Homepage

It’s been awhile since I updated on one of my favorite type of news….CELEBRITY GOSSIP! haha. Lots of big news this week. We finally found out who Danielynn’s father is (did we really need a DNA test to prove this?):

Travis Barker shares why he and Shanna got back together. Unfortunately the answer is lame and does not offer anything juicy like how could Shanna forgive him after making out with Paris???

Zach Braff has a super fan.

Fergie sends Alanis a booty cake.

Justin is worried about Brit. I wonder if everytime Britney hears/sees/talks to Justin she feels a huge ache of regret. It’s so crazy how since their lives have forked they have turned out SO differently!

This story outrages me! If you remember my post about the Grand Canyon Skywalk, I was very excited and looking forward to it! But then I read this disappointing post from a recent visitor to the skywalk and how he got ripped off. Him, as did many other people, figured the price would be $25 from the press release:

Access to The Skywalk will run from dawn to dusk and will cost $25 per person in addition to the cost of a Grand Canyon West entrance package

Guess how much he ends up paying?

We walked in to get the tickets and met a very long line of people waiting to do the same. After 10 minutes of waiting, a “Question Answerer” came by and made it clear why it was taking so long: the sales people had to explain the “packages” and pricing to each and every person in the line. This was not because the package was that complex, but because each person in the line thought they were going to be paying $25 per person. In reality, the tribe was charging another $50 on top of the $25 for each person. You read that right, 75 bucks a pop. The “Question Answerer” explained it to us:

“The investor wants to get his, that’s the $25. But it’s our land, and we don’t get any of that $25, so we have to get ours too, you know?”

The conversations were the same throughout the line. “That’s a load of crap, but, we drove this far, might as well just do it.” And most people did. So did we.

Also, you can’t even bring your cameras onto the skywalk!!!. But in the post, he does admit that the view and experience was very cool and unique. I don’t know if it’s $75 worthy though. If they keep this up, I have a feeling they will lose a lot of customers as more people find out the truth about the pricing. I’ll be waiting for the price to go down or when coupons come out haha.

Is it cheating if I make eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce from a jar?? haha. I’m such a lazy cook!

Next week is National Eggs Benedict Day (I know, they have a day for everything nowadays!!!) and I was thinking about making eggs benedict, but the sauce seems very complicated haha. Anybody have a good Eggs Benedict recipe to share??? Anybody want to come over for some Eggs Benedict if I end up making it?

I love eating out and I always feel sorry for the waiters/waitresses that have to put up with those picky/rude customers that think they are above the people serving them and give them crap for every little thing. I just found this blog by a waiter called waiterrant which is mostly about experiences this guy has had with people as a waiter. There are some hilarious stories in there. I noticed one post called 50 signs you might be an asshole customer. Do you do any of these haha?

2) You ask for separate checks after you’ve finished your meal.
7) You ask the waiter for ice, sugar, and lemon and make your own lemonade. (I’ve seen people make their own ice tea too!)
9) You bring your dog or cat into the restaurant. (This isn’t France!)
30) You praise the waiter to high heaven but leave him 7%. (The Dreaded Verbal Tip!)

How you treat your waiter can say a lot about your character

I remember when I was little my mom would hide eggs with change/candy inside them around the house and we would find them. I miss easter egg hunts!!! Maybe next year we can have an adult easter egg hunt at a park or something…who’s in? haha.

Anyways, I have the cutest Easter recipe to share. If you are vietnamese or chinese you know what bao is. Mako Ito has posted up a recipe for BUNNY BAO! So cute! I wish I was at home, I’d make my mom make these for me. She always makes me regular bao heheh.

Bunny Bao Recipe

Watch TV On Your Phone For $15
How To Plan A Seductive Easter Egg Hunt For Your Sweetie
2007 Top 100 SF Restaurants
Cool Harry Potter Cake
Ride The Real Estate Rollercoaster

This post is inspired by Niniane. She just read a book called The Promise of Sleep. Here are some interesting facts she got from it:

I used to think that sleepiness increased linearly with number of hours awake. If you feel sleepy at 9pm, you must surely be even more sleepy at 1am! Not so, says the book. Our bodies release biological alertness hormones twice a day. If I miss the 10pm sleepiness train, I will not be tired again until 2:30am.

I also learned that exposing your body to light will make you stay awake longer. Even shining a bright light on the back of your knee will confuse your body’s clock and make you less sleepy.

I love sleep. I try to sleep at least 8 hours a night. When I get less, I am sooooo tired…like today!! Anyways, here are other cool facts I found about sleep:

– Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you’re sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you’re still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

– Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

– After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you’ve slept enough.

– Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

– The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

This one is funny for me:
– Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

*I apologize for the inappropriate link below, I have no idea how it got there!!! Hopefully the one that is there now is the correct one.

This is pretty cool to see. A guy took a picture of himself every month while he was consistently working out for 4 years. Here are the first 4 months which should be inspiration enough for anyone to start working out.

Click here to see him after 4 YEARS, it’s crazy!

Speaking of working out, check out this personal trainer’s business card. It’s pretty creative!

Sorry for anyone who’s been visiting my site for the past 3 days or so, my hosting was being switched to new servers and as a result a few things got messed up. So sorry if you came and the post you were looking for was missing or you saw a bunch of errors. Also, my previous 3 posts got lost unfortuntately :( But all is better now, so I’ll have some interesting links and cool things to show you again!!!

Here are some links I posted about but they got lost:

free magazines
top 10 april fool’s jokes of 2007
Tom Yum Fried Rice Recipe