kimmie nguyen:

Yoko Ono. Noise Pop.

Oh, Yoko. How we love thee. At 77 you are still putting out critically lauded albums; you remind us by your think-piece Twitter updates that art can happen anywhere; you have never given up urging the world to "give peace a chance;" and, as you demonstrate tonight at the Fox, you preach the transformational power of performance by the example you set onstage. And if anyone out there is a doubter or hater, we simply ask you to attend tonight's Plastic Ono Band Performance — which marks Ono's first Bay Area appearance in 14 years — and see for yourself why this woman, simply put, is a treasure.

via flavorpill.com

I hope I'm still rocking out at 77 years old. >_<

Koreans Reign in Texting World

"Ha Mok-min and another young South Korean, Bae Yeong-ho, recently conquered the world with their thumbs. Their Team Korea won an international competition held in New York this month to determine who can send text messages the fastest — and most accurately — on a cellphone.

“When others watch me texting, they think I’m not that fast and they can do better,” said Mr. Bae, 17, a high school dropout who dyes his hair a light chestnut color and is studying to be an opera singer. “So far, I’ve never lost a match.”

In the New York competition he typed six characters a second. “If I can think faster I can type faster,” he said.

The inaugural Mobile World Cup, hosted by the South Korean cellphone maker LG Electronics, brought together two-person teams from 13 countries who had clinched their national titles by beating a total of six million contestants.

...

Read full article on NYTimes: Rule of Thumb

It's these types of articles that make me wonder about opportunities that I've thrown away. Team Korea brought home $100K for fast typing. Fast typing! Where was that when I was going through Typing 101 in middle school? And what about those teenage years where I talked really fast? It was cool. But then again I also thought Burkenstocks and Sun-In dyed hair was cool too. Just think, I could have been the next John Moschitta, Jr. (you know, Mr. FedEx), except I didn't have any glorious, money grubbing reasons to keep it going. That and my friends never understood me.

On student's 20th birthday, dad begs searchers | CNN.com

"Len Gengel cries between sentences. "It's my daughter's birthday today," he says, choking back tears.

"We should be celebrating," he says. "Instead, I'm talking to people all day long, making sure they continue on the search and rescue. That's my objective today: to keep that search and rescue going."

Gengel's daughter, Britney, is one of four students from South Florida's Lynn University who are missing amid the rubble of Haiti's Hotel Montana. Two faculty members from the university also remain missing.

Britney, a sophomore journalism major with jet black hair and a bright smile, turned 20 Thursday. She had traveled to Haiti with 12 Lynn University students on a humanitarian mission to feed the poor. Eight of the students were rescued last week.

An hour before the magnitude-7.0 quake, Britney called her mother. "Brit said she found her calling, that she knew what she wanted to do for the rest of her life," her father said, pausing to catch his breath.

"Who knew an hour later that was going to happen? It's so hard to talk about. ... Think of the worst day of your life and then times that by 1,000."

......

via www.cnn.com

It's just so heartbreaking. Yet I keep watching to remind myself of the few things that really matter, and possibly even finding a way to make things better. Because it's easy to feel something for a moment and then forget about it as life returns to it's day to day grind. But for these people, well...they can never go back.

If you haven't yet, help bring hope to Haiti.