Katrina. Global warming. Watching the nightly news one might notice how fear, in one form or another, keeps you interested; it keeps you tuned in.

Anaheim, CA — Someone almost drowned at Disneyland today. How to keep your kid safe from a torturously agonizing drowning DEATH, after the break.

Things like this piss me off. Ok sure I made that one up, but I see stuff like this all the time on news stations. It’s not really relevant to the public discourse and isn’t really news, is it? Good thing more and more people are becoming aware of this culture of fear that has always surrounded us.

I just saw a documentary that all of you need to watch if you haven’t already: An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore and this movie-film (hah!) do an amazing job painting a picture of the world if global warming keeps up its current trend. I finished with a feeling best described as uneasiness, maybe a dash of fear. But I want to make it clear that this fear wasn’t the kind I mentioned earlier.

This film does not take advantage of your fight-or-flight mechanism. This film, in a precise and factual format, opens your eyes to the very scary truth about about global warming if things don’t change. In the words of Roger Ebert: “You owe it to yourself to see this film.”

Back in 2005 my sisters and I took a trip to Beijing. It was a very eventful and educational trip but one thing definitely stuck out: the Starbucks in the Forbidden City. Crazy! Not even 100 years ago any non-eunuch male found in the palace meant instant death by strangulation, or something like that. Now it’s just another tourist spot with coffee-diluted culture. Well it looks like Starbucks may be on its way out.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing’s Forbidden City may close down its Starbucks in the face of growing protests that the presence of a U.S. coffee shop in the former imperial palace is an insult to Chinese culture, a newspaper said on Thursday…

Source: Reuters

Me at the Forbidden City’s Starbucks (2005)

Hope you’re all having a good day. This weekend…Vegas! Next weekend…Tahoe! I’m so excited.

So I started off my New Year’s Eve snowboarding at Mountain High and if I can say I accomplished one thing that day it would be linking turns switch. Yes, I did it…exciting! The evening was spent watching the best funk-soul band Breakestra bring in the ‘07 at Zanzibar over in Santa Monica. It was amazing to say the least: the crowd, ambiance, music, and of course the company. I’m sure the positivity will continue throughout the year. I wish you all an exciting, safe, and prosperous 2007!