My opinions:

On dieting and plastic surgery-

Yeah, I know what you EXPECT me to say. "I hate those girls that diet! I mean, OMG, why are girls getting so skinny and why are they tarnishing their faces and bodies with plastic surgery?"

EVERY girl says that. But why? Cuz they're competitive. Let's be real. No girl is doing this purely out of pity and concern for others. There's too much Malice in their voices when they feel sorry for someone. Also, think about it as Natural Selection, ladies. The skinniest women will DIE from Anorexia. People like that Die, so that we can have less of it later on. And plastic surgery... ain't nothing worng with it. It's like makeup.

I hear people like Hallie Berry railing on plastic surgery, saying it tarnishes these young girls. In my humble opinion, it seems someone is insecure about her career founded upon her looks. What really does it do to these young women? It makes them look different, but so does makeup or a car crash. It's really all not that dangerous. It may show that these girls care about their looks and in a perfect world, people wouldn't care about looks. But People are Superficial. That's just the way they are.

Ever hear some lady say, "My god. You are so Superficial, Martha. I can't believe how you care about how your house looks." People like neat houses. Even if my room were as sanitary as Intel's clean room but disorganized, my mom would still tell me to organize. I've never told her she was superficial for wanting it to look prettier.

So ladies, Calm down. Quit with the tabooing about skinniness and plastic surgery. If someone is too skinny, maybe you should be Concerned, but don't be all gossipy. Talk to her but don't go around spouting nasty words about that girl.

This message has been inspired by hearing way too many girls at teen shops saying such aforementioned silly stuff.

I hate work...

Heh. I'll blog more often. This summer has been pretty meh. Fun things were seeing my high school amigos and the college ones too. Pretty much on a frequent basis. So I guess I wasn't lonely. There's been some rough parts but otherwise it's been good.

So uh. Jlee is back from bandcamp. Yeah. Like I said it was his bday. And Fiz is back from Oregon. So I managed to weasel a bit out of work to see them yesterday and we ate massive amounts of ice cream.

Jlee: "So this girlfriend was packing up her shit like mad when her boyfriend comes home"
Jlee: "When he comes in the room, she says, 'I heard, from a Very reliable source, that You are a Pedophile."
Jlee: "The man looks down at her and says, 'Them's mighty big words for a 10-year-old.'"

Fiz: "Hey your van has a security system"
Fiz: "And that security system is... "
Fiz: "That it's a Toyota"

I was amused. And this is the first time in a long time I have blogged about mi vida. I remember yesterday pretty clearly because.... after that, I went to the emergency room. I got home and I called a few people: Auchter, Shen, Helen, Karen. Then my stomach started to ached.

I went upstairs and started screaming for 20 minutes cuz I thought I was going to die. An' it was painful! Worst pain I've ever felt (and cramps feel hella bad). So finally I was convinced to go to the emergency room.

And that is all. ^_^. I have pre-ulcer condition or something. I never thought ulcers would feel that bad. But they say I'll be fine as long as I buy their expensive drugs and that I don't start vomiting/pooping blood. ^^;;;;;;

In case you didn't know...

Mongolia so far has 1 Bronze medal for Judo.

And China is about to beat the US in the Olympics. They have a total of 28 medals, the US has 29. China has more gold (14) than the US (10), though. So they ARE technically winning.

Nonetheless. Watch for Sumo Wrestling. Mongolia should bag it, unless the Japanese paid the Mongolian wrestlers loads of money to play for Japan's side :(.

Mongolian wrestling (not the sumo variety) is pretty strong as well.

On another note, the Iraqi soccer team is the soccer team I'm rooting for. But, like the players said, Bush is a bad bad man to use them for his campaigning. He ruined their country.

Today. I shall visit Jlee (it was his birthday last week and a praise session is in order).

Some days my life is like this:

Work until 8, do some grocery shopping, come home, eat and wash dishes, and do my dad's smelly laundry.

Those days are boring :(.

To prevent this, call me! Entertain me! And hang out.

Er. The end.

Ambition is gone. But. I'm having fun, nevertheless.

..........

... Remember when I used to leave away messages and I used to write long entries in my blog on a daily basis?

I had a lot of free time...

Something that I found that was kickass from this guy's blog (USS Clueless):

If you don't want to read through it, just read the bolded stuff. It's fun ^_^. At least, it was for me...

The Mongol Horde has long been vilified and misunderstood in the west. Even the name was chosen badly; the term horde suggests an armed mob with no internal organization which blindly attacks whatever is nearby, like a plague of locusts.

The reality was much different. At the time that Genghis Khan lived, the army he created was in fact the most disciplined and well organized and armed force in the world. It was an extraordinary force capable of amazing things.

The Mongols had the only major army in history consisting exclusively of cavalry. That, in itself, was remarkable; but when the Mongols campaigned, they would travel with about six horses for every man in the army, and their preferred campaign season was the winter, when the ground was hard and the rivers and lakes of the Asian steppes were frozen. The men moved on horseback herding unridden horses, and every couple of miles they'd stop and every man would remount. Each man had a specific set of horses belonging to him and would be careful to use them in sequence. As a result, they could travel vast distances without exhausting their animals.

In the mechanized age of blitzkrieg in the 1940's in Europe, an advance of 30 miles in a day was considered near miraculous, and it couldn't be maintained. A sustainable rapid advance was on the order of five to ten miles per day. But the Mongols could move fifty miles per day and keep it up for weeks. No army in history has ever moved overland as rapidly as the Mongols.

Their military was extremely well armed and well equipped. They trained and fought with sword and lance but their primary weapon was the bow. Much is made of the Welsh longbow and it was indeed a fine weapon. The Welsh longbow relied on a naturally occurring piece of wood in the center of a Yew tree. But such a bow could never be used from horseback. The Mongols used composite recurved bows which were far higher technology than the Welsh Longbow and their bows had at least as much range and stopping power fired from saddle as the Welsh archers firing from the ground. And the Mongols could fire their bows in a full gallop.

Temujin (later known as "Genghis" or "Chingis") established a form of training known as "the hunt". The entire Mongol army would surround a large area (hundreds of square miles) and move towards its center as if they were closing a siege. Wild animals within that area would not be permitted to escape through their lines. (Men who permitted such escapes were punished.) Some trapped animals would be killed as the lines closed; often men would jump from horseback and wrestle the animals to the ground, or they would be shot or lanced.

When the enclosed area was small and filled with fear-crazed animals, some Mongols would then visit the commander of the force and beg for mercy for the remaining animals, who would then be permitted to escape. This was superb training for the rigors of war; the hunt would last weeks. Advances would be coordinated over wide areas via horse messengers and message arrows, just as if they were actually conducting a military campaign.

Ordinarily in a siege, the besieged have an advantage known as "interior lines"; it means that they can move their troops inside the siege to meet new threats much faster than the attackers can move outside. But the Mongols could move so rapidly and coordinate so well that they could actually redeploy their forces outside a siege faster than the defenders could inside; the Mongols effectively had "interior lines" outside the siege.

And their battlefield communications were amazing, too. They would tie messages to arrows and use their superb bows to fire them great distances. A relay could move a message miles in a few minutes. As a result, the Mongols could coordinate attacks over very large areas; something no other army in the world could do.

Genghis ordered that every man in his force wear silk underwear beneath their armor whenever in combat. Silk is extremely strong, and if a man was hit with an arrow the silk cloth would bind to the arrow as it penetrated his body. As a result, the Mongol surgeons could use the silk cloth to draw the arrow out of the wound, which greatly reduced the damage done by the removal.

The greatest general of the Mongols was Subedei (also "Sabutai"; spellings vary); he was not a noble but was extremely well thought of within the ranks of the nation. He had the honor of being permitted to enter the great Khan's tent at any time without asking permission or being heralded; he would simply walk in and sit in a place of honor near the Khan.

He was one of the few men in history whose genius and value were recognized by his peers, and deservedly so. (Subutai is from my tribe, or at least... my dad said he was.)

The Mongols sent ambassadors to one of the Arab nations, and the Arabs in their arrogance killed them all. Nobody did that to the Mongols, and they proceeded to plan a campaign to reduce that nation. But before that could happen, they needed to secure their northern flank. Thus Subedei and one of the sons of Genghis led a reconnaissance in force through central Asia and eastern Europe, a campaign which is now legendary.

Subudei and the prince used an innovative and brilliant feigned retreat tactic to win against 80,000 enemies with just 20,000 men. They destroyed these enemies with minimal Mongol losses. And when I say "destroy", I mean with extreme prejudice. The Mongols were not into mercy.

This can only be done if a force is superbly trained, because it is very easy for a feigned retreat to turn into a real rout. Only the best and most disciplined units can do this; for the Mongols it was a piece of cake.

During their campaign in some of the Arabian nations, they would approach a city and give it a chance to surrender. If it did, it would be accepted into the Mongol empire. If it refused and resisted, then the Mongols would lay siege (using siege engines built and operated by Chinese combat engineers who accompanied the Mongols in the campaign) and once the city fell the inhabitants would be completely slaughtered. Word of this spread and surrenders became the norm, as the Mongols intended.

The Arab noble who had ordered the death of the ambassadors was captured. The Mongols didn't believe that any noble should be executed. So he was nailed into a box, and the Mongol commanders used it as a table for a meal as he died inside it of suffocation. The Mongols did deserve their reputation for ruthlessness and brutality.

Long before the Pony Express, the Mongols had a similar system to communicate within their empire. They could move messages from Russia to Mongolia at a rate of up to a hundred miles a day, a speed of communication unmatched anywhere else at the time and not exceeded until the development of the telegraph.

The Mongols are the only army in history to actually have conquered all of Asia. They could have conquered Europe, too, except that as they were poised to do so word came that the Khan (not Genghis, one of his sons) had died. Mongol tradition was that all princes and generals of the empire must return to Mongolia and participate in the process of choosing a successor. The Horde returned to Mongolia and never came back. (In actuality, they didn't really want Europe.)

Some Europeans thought they had been saved by the Hand of God. Others thought that the Mongols had become afraid of the prowess of the Teutonic Knights. In actuality, the Mongols would have made short work of the Teutonic Knights, but no-one in Europe would have believed that at the time.

The Europeans and surviving Arabs created a mythology about the Mongols that masked Mongolian competence and discipline, mostly in order to salve their own egos.

The Mongols were barbarians; they were undisciplined; they were just lucky; they had been fighting against lousy central Asian armies instead of the great and wonderful armies of Western Europe and the Arabs which would surely have defeated them. So the mythology went.

These stories come down to us as folklore to this day. Anyone who has not actually studied the reality of the Mongols will not realize the truth: the Mongol army was the greatest military force that ever existed from between the fall of the Roman Empire and the time of Frederick the Great. Had fate not interfered, the Mongol Empire probably would have extended all the way to the Atlantic.