Repeat after me: Wild animals are not pets. Wild animals are not pets. Wild animals are not pets.

Go get a dog or a cat, you freaks. Leave the mole and... and... whatever that other thing is... leave them alone!

British singer Amy Winehouse went to rehab the other day. Celebrities check in and out of rehab all the time, but I found this instance somewhat funny because one of her hit songs goes "They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no."

So it's "yes, yes, yes" now? Heh.

Well, it's about time. She's quite talented, and it would be a shame to see her career destroyed by drug use. And although celebrity rehab rarely works, I guess it's still enough to move her down to #2 on my celebrity death list. Britney Spears reclaims the top spot. Congratulations! I hope no one pulls another Heath Ledger and screws up my list.

"Rapists???"

That was the strange one-word SMS message I got from a friend this afternoon.

A few minutes before that, I had sent him a geek question about some PHP scripts. That "Rapists???" message sure wasn't the reply I expected. I was about to send a "Huh?" when the leftover text from my last message made me realize that it was my fault after all. I didn't ask about PHP scripts. I asked about PHP rapists... or at least my phone did.

Ever since I got my first cell phone years ago, I've been using T9 predictive text, which uses a dictionary to let you input text with less key presses. For example, if you want to say "chicken," instead straining your thumb to press 22244444222553366 (I feel tired just thinking about it), you can simply press 2442536--one key for each letter. So convenient, right? And if multiple words share the same key combination, T9 picks the most commonly used one for you... so smart.

Some of my friends find it strange that I always text in unabbreviated English, but I don't care. I refuse to learn Txtardese because I absolutely hate it. Plus I lack thumb dexterity, and T9 is pretty much the only thing that allows me to text slightly faster than your grandmother.

Back to my creepy text message.... 727478 spells "script," so adding a 7 should give me "scripts," right? Right? Nope. T9 smartly predicted that "rapists" is the word I wanted. Thanks a lot, T9.

Seriously, is "rapists" really a more commonly used word than "scripts"? The world is such a horrible place.

Looks like Scary Iverson has found his match....

"Please! Not in the ass!"

Last Wednesday, over a hundred hungry bloggers invaded TriNoma (Hate that name. Why is the N capitalized and the M not? Drives me nuts.) for a food tour organized by Yehey. Since free food was involved, of course I showed up.

We were divided into groups and herded like sheep along rows of restaurants. I normally don't like to be a sheep, but they were feeding me all kinds of food, so... baaah. I didn't take enough pictures or remember enough details to give you a useful recap, so I won't. Other bloggers have said enough about it anyway. Yay for laziness.

Check out this sad scene from Bubba Gump....

We did get to sample some of their other food items, but that photo op table was pure mental torture. It should be illegal to make people look at food that they can't eat! The Bubba Gump people were very nice though, so I forgive them.

Niceness is important. Three years ago, I invested a large chunk of my savings in a restaurant/bar. It has been a very bumpy ride, but the experience has taught me a lot about business. One of the lessons I learned is that customer service is king, and I got reminded of it again here. Many of the bloggers raved about Bubba Gump and La Maison's friendly staff. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Cabalen got negative publicity thanks to its rude and grumpy manager. Ouch. Someone needs to be fired.

What else do I have to say about the food tour? Oh yeah, I won a box of Krispy Kreme donuts in a raffle. Yay! Ate three that night and couldn't sleep until 7 AM... longest sugar high ever. I spent most of the tour with some kids from UP: Hello Kitty girl Tiffy, her sister Thea, two-time Palanca Award winner Hannah (Yes, two Palancas... and she's only 16! I told her to quit school), hungry guy Don, and Hello Kitty guy Bong. I also got to chat briefly with Jeff and Lalon and said hi to Shari, Benj, and Karlo.

Whoa, so many links. Might as well squeeze in one more huh. This is unrelated to the food tour, but... has anyone noticed anything different about our little shoutbox over there? Anyone? Paolo Mendoza paid to have it upgraded. Now it has all kinds of awesome features that I don't know about. Yay! Thanks, Paolo. You can have Jessica Alba when the Chicken Mafia takes over the world.

For the rest of you, Jessica Biel is still up for grabs, so... give us money now! Free food works too.

Has anyone here seen the new sci-fi action series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles? I had been waiting for it ever since I got blown away by the leaked pilot a few months ago. I've never watched any of the Terminator movies, but I'm more or less familiar familiar with the story concept. I've even made a corny Sarah Connor reference here once.

In this new TV series, hottie Summer Glau plays a terminator sent back in time by future rebel leader John Connor with a mission to protect stupid emo teenage John Connor from harm.

Hmm... why did Future John send a sexy fembot instead of a menacing Arnoldbot? I wonder if she's, um, anatomically correct, hehe. What a pervert John is. Well, he's so gonna get grounded when his mom catches him fooling around with his metallic bodyguard.

Anyway, Summer Glau is disturbingly convincing in her role as a robot. So does that make her a very good actress or a very bad one? It's a tough question, and I can't figure it out.

What do you think? Help me out here.

These kids from my dear alma mater could and should have picked a better name than "Ateneo Sports Shooters" for their little sports paparazzi club.

What's wrong with the name? Well, the acronym doesn't come across as very Smart, does it?

A.S.S.? Right on the eagle's ass too. And the camera shutter looks like an anus.

No wonder all their photos look like crap.

Don't watch this.

Hey you, didn't I tell you not to watch it? Your IQ is 50 points lower now, and you have no one but yourself to blame.

Don't click this link. I said don't!

Badger badger badger....

Quick, identify the man in this picture:

If you said "Ron Paul," you've just earned 50,000 bonus points. Yay! Well, not really yay. The points are pointless. But at least you get bragging rights... not that anyone cares.

So who is Ron Paul? He's a 2008 U.S. presidential candidate who has virtually no chance of winning it all. But his candidacy is interesting for a lot of people because of his message--he's the only libertarian in this year's presidential race. 20,000 bonus points if you know what a libertarian is.

To learn more, you can go look him up on the Web. Or you can wait for my upcoming blog entry about him and libertarianism in general.

For those of you in Metro Manila, there's a third (and much more fun) option. We have a small group of Ron Paul supporters right here in a country where 99.9% of the population have never heard of the guy. We're having an informal meet-up this Thursday, January 10, 2008 6:30 PM at The Promenade, Greenhills Shopping Center. Yeah, that's tomorrow. Should have announced this earlier huh. Sorry, got lazy as usual.

Anyway, if discussing politics over coffee is your idea of fun, come join us. 100,000 bonus points if you're an American citizen or can get one to tag along. Sign up now!