Day 198: Tzu Ching & TV Shows

 

July 17th, 2011I woke up in this morning EARLY, VOLUNTARILY IN AN EFFORT TO READ TO KIDS, for COMMUNITY SERVICE. Yep, that sounds about right. I went to Starbucks in the morning in an effort to get some coffee, met up with my friend Pam on the campus, and then we proceeded to Peterson Loop in an effort to start going to the Tzu Ching event. While there, we met up with and talked to Jessica, Jade, Michael, Martina, Alex, among other TzuChing officers. Jade, Pam, and I raided Jessica’s car as we began our commute to the Oceanside community center. When we got there Pam and I voluntarily chosen two Mexican kids, and began teaching them math. My kid just happened to be a lot smarter than her’s though, and I tried to make her read “My Father’s Dragon”, a book I read when I was a kid that I enjoyed much. She hated it though because after the first chapter she shook her head to proceeding the reading of it. I took a picture of a Mickey and Minnie Mouse mural to honor the day. The Tzu Ching masters provided us some unlimited ice cream, which was way too much to handle, and then gave us some vegetarian food, which was alright, but obviously not my cup of tea (or cup of Phil’s). Jessica drove us back shortly thereafter, and me and Pam went back to my place, where we hung out for a little bit.

We talked to Tyler and Manuel for a bit, and decided to play some Poker, but Tyler immediately ran away to a thrift store to hang out with his cooler friends. We subsequently watched the Pilot of Breaking Bad while talking much due gossip about members of the world as well as talked about hot poltical topics such as abortion (pro life vs. pro choice), before attempting to get a drink at TapEx. After realizing neither of us wanted it, we proceeded to Chipotle, went back to my place, where we failed to connect the DVD player to the TV to watch 24. Subsequently, Tyler came back, we watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother, as well as another episode of Breaking Bad. Manuel came back, and all four of us decided to play a quick round of Poker [ATTEMPT #2 = success] (me ultimately losing out in the long run). Pam avenged me, before Manuel destroyed her permanently. She left, and Tyler’s friend Neil came over to play poker with Tyler, Manuel, and I. I lost yet again, and because Alex Goetz came over bringing cookies, me and Lauren talked to her as well as everyone else the rest of the night. We played some Jenga (many rounds, with mostly me losing) before Alex left, and I watched Big Brother before going to sleep.

Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion. Walt Disney, born in Chicago in 1901, worked as a commercial artist before setting up a small studio in Los Angeles to produce animated cartoons. In 1928, his short film Steamboat Willy, starring the character “Mickey Mouse,” was a national sensation. It was the first animated film to use sound, and Disney provided the voice for Mickey. From there on, Disney cartoons were in heavy demand, but the company struggled financially because of Disney’s insistence on ever-improving artistic and technical quality. His first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), took three years to complete and was a great commercial success. DROOLS.

A few months into the Iraq war, David Petraeus, then a three-star general and commander of the storied 101st Airborne Division, told CNN about what it would take to win. “Frankly,” he said, “the way ahead will require a lot of determination and just plain old ingenuity and stick-to-itiveness.” It was January 2004 and the United States had lost 60 men and women. No one could have predicted accurately the course of the war then, but Petraeus stuck to his playbook, eventually becoming the top U.S. commander in Iraq, leading U.S. counterinsurgency operations and, in 2007, a strategy to overcome a bloody insurgency that was fronted by a surge in troops. EFF THE U.S. ARMY.

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