THEOREM I.

Medium sized mid western American cities are boring, aesthetically lacking and devoid of culture.

PROOF (REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM)

We know Indianapolis is a medium sized mid western American city. I was not looking forward to it (because of THEOREM I.), but I went there last week and stayed in the downtown area. It was NICE. It had nice restaurants and nightlife in its own kind of way...there were people sitting outside of Starbucks on the street at 11 pm! Therefore it follows that THEOREM I. is FALSE. Which proves the negation of THEOREM I.:

THEOREM II.

At least some medium sized mid western American cities are nice, aesthetically pleasing and have a compelling (if not unique) culture.

THEOREM II. LEMMA

Why do people order tomato juice on flights (and no where else)? I am on aforementioned flight to Indianapolis, and on a plane of maybe 30 people, at least 3 order the tomato juice. When exactly was the last time you ever saw someone order a tomato juice at a restaurant for example? I vaguely remember a time when you might have served a tomato cocktail at the dinner table before a holiday meal - and I am talking pre 1975 here people! I am not the only one confused about the in-flight tomato beverage phenomenon. The only place tomato juice belongs is in a glass of vodka (and even then, cultured people use clamato juice instead).

How many people tried to comment on my posts since I changed the blog template? Sadly, we will never know. Perhaps some of you thought I just liked to talk and not listen. Despite that being a highly accurate conclusion, I am happy to report that I have fixed the comment problem, and I now look forward to your feedback. It is autumn now, my favourite time of year in this part of the world. As a one time bonus, I am providing pictures I took last weekend. Enjoy!

All 3 of you who actually read this blog will notice some changes! My attention whoring efforts have led me to release Chase The Dragon v2.0 with two significant new features:

• A new "mysterious" look and feel.
• An affiliate program so that everyone has the opportunity to make me more popular.

This all coincides with the "new me" - Chan Thai Long v2.0. After all the annoying unsolicited emails, mail server filters, inbox rules, etc. I simply gave into the spam. I decided to go for the penis enlargement and the order of viagara. Hey, I am JOKING! (or am I ?????????).

But seriously, why work when you can spend hours on your blog template??? As my forefathers would say: an ounce of time is an ounce of gold but you can't buy that ounce of time with an ounce of gold...ah, never mind...

I have already made indirect reference to the "famous" Xiaxue blog in Singapore. Xiaxue belongs to a particular class of blogs - basically young adults, usually female, commenting/bitching about their makeup, friends and social lives while being very careful to implicitly reference sex at least once every 10 lines. Hell, sometimes they simply just blog about sex (like this one who feels compelled to take pictures of herself naked with her cell phone besides just writing about it). Not that there is anything wrong with that...but I guess I was reflecting on how some 20 year old girl in Singapore can talk about her makeup, clothes and sex life, i.e. HERSELF, and generate a 100 comments per post - to the point of creating on-line enemies! And then, in a moment of revelation, I realized these are Attention Whores!

I started to investigate this phenomenon. First, I considered simple economics - clearly a steady supply of attention whores is indicative of a large demand...but that's like saying the internet is full of horny guys downloading porn, and we all know that can't be true. Next, I figured it must be a lack of attention on the part of their parents, but that is equally silly - how can you blame parents when they are busy at work all the time trying to pay the $600 monthly lease on the BMW! Sometimes there is only one parent anyway, so how can you blame someone who isn't even there?!? Then I figured, who gives a sh&t! - this woman is taking naughty pictures of herself and posting them in her blog - who am I to question that kind of public service!

That being said, I do want to touch on a couple of points here before I am completely misunderstood by all you world-wide-web-do-gooders:

1. Attention whores are not always female. There are more than a fair share of male attention whores. This is not a sexist thing.

2. I don't think the term "attention whore" is necessarily negative. Kind of like, in the right context, the term "slut" might not be a negative, as in WOMAN #1 comments to her friend WOMAN #2 about the really sexy dress she is wearing: "Oh Xiaxue, you slut!". I am honest enough to admit that I love talking about myself and I am envious of someone getting 100 comments on their blog postings. You see, I think I AM an attention whore! Kind of like, in the right context, I think I am a slut.

Lastly, sometimes the greatest wisdom comes from the least likely source, and we appreciate the attention whore:

http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2005/10/if-i-were-guy.html

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BLOG (blog) n. 1. an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log.

v. 2. to author an online diary or chronology of thoughts.

Dictionary.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. PROLOGUE

5. EPILOGUE

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1. INT. COFFEE SHOP - MORNING 1.

A normal Denny's-like coffee shop in Toronto. It's about 9:00 in the morning. While the place isn't jammed, there's a healthy number of people drinking coffee, munching on bacon and eating eggs.

Two of these people are a YOUNG MAN and a YOUNG WOMAN. The Young Man has a slight working-class Cantonese accent and, like his fellow countryman, eats rice like it's going out of style.

It is impossible to tell where the Young Woman is from or how old she is; everything she does contradicts something she did. The boy and girl sit in a booth. Their dialogue is to be said in a rapid-pace "KIDS FROM SHAOLIN" fashion.


The boy and girl laugh, their laughter putting a pause in there, back and forth.


A WAITRESS comes by with a pot of coffee.


The Waitress pours the Young Woman's coffee. The Young Man eats more rice.


The Waitress leaves. The Young Man takes a sip of his tea. The Young Woman pours a ton of cream and sugar into her coffee.

The Young Man goes right back into it.

I think some of my more possessive readers were offended by the comments I received in my previous post. Just so we are all clear, my religion strictly forbids dating of any kind. Anyway, these vile "comments" are not the thoughts of an actual individual, but the act of evil, malicious spambots on the prowl of unsuspecting, naive bloggers like me (I am so innocent!).

Here is another blog post that got spammed. I simply found this one at random (i.e. clicked next blog). BTW, I actually read the post and this "husband" is setting the bar way too high. Please return the iPOD before anymore damage is done.

Note: as of today, it would appear that the aforementioned blogger has deleted the spambot comments and addressed the spambot issue as I will outline below!

My blogmentor has suggested we all turn on the image-thing-a-ma-jiggy verification for comments. In your Blogger Dashboard, go to Settings | Comments and select "Yes" for Show Word Verification for Comments. He has also envisioned spambots evolving into communitybots - false people interacting with you on a website providing the facade of popularity and belonging. Very Deep. Of course he also suggested pornobots.