Cabernet Sauvignon
Best from: California, Chile, France   Goes with: Western foods

Chianti
Best from: Italy    Goes with: Italian

Merlot
Best from: France   Goes with: American and French meals

Pinot Noir
Best from: France (Burgundy), Oregon   Goes with: Everything

Zinfandel
Best from: California, Italy (Primitivo)   Goes with: Hearthy fare, burgers to bolognose

Shiraz
Best from: Australia   Goes with: Steak

I have conflicting feelings about Valentine’s Day.

I don’t like how  people feel pressured to dine out, by presents for their significant others but I still want to celebrate it (without gifts). I feel kind of upset that my husband does not care about it and I think he is not romantic enough but I am not very romantic myself either. I want to have a nice dinner but I don’t want to cook it.

I think I will just ignore Valentine’s Day and have my romantic dinner some other time.

I don’t like people who are mean without any apparent reason. Then there are people who are usually nice to you or not depending on their mood, the weather or who knows what. I knew people like that and it is no surprise I don’t keep in touch with them.

Everyone has their own problems. We all have bad days, we get stressed out. But I believe we could still try to be nice to other people, even if we do not like them very much.

I was reading the review of a book on  the way the Internet is  reshaping American culture. The reviewer highlighted a few arguments from the book, which I thought would make great discussions (and maybe featured questions . So, I decided to post them here.

1. The Internet is the first social environment to serve the needs of the isolated, elevated, asocial individual.
2. The Internet is possibly the most  radical transformation of public and private life in the history of humankind.
3. The Internet invites people to carefully craft their privacy into a marketable, public style. In doing so, it creates an environment in which everything is on display all the time… This turns the culture into a giant popularity contest, an expanding and never-ending version of high school.
4. Popular culture used to draw people to what they liked. Internet culture draws people to what everyone else likes.
 
I think the first two statements do not need to be discussed. The Internet is a huge outlet for people who are isolated or asocial. And it had a big impact on public and private life or how we define these.

The last two arguments are more interesting. I agree that people craft an online persona, a representation of themselves in the digital medium. I find this to be a fascinating extension of real life, not necessarily something bad. Still, finding people from high school on Facebook does not always bring back the nicest memories     

Popular culture is mainstream by definition. So, I don’t understand how it would help people discover what they like rather than what others like. I feel like the Internet is just another medium to promote popular culture.

What do you think? Do you agree with these arguments?

This is a hard one. I only read a few answers not to be biased in my answer…

I think my magic key would open a box (a nice wooden one with engravings) that contains a book. And the book would be a book that gives me wisdom and helps me find out the answers to the important questions I have such as the meaning of my life or can one ever find inner peace.

Do you think such a book exists?

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

We got some feedback about how Xanga users wanted to see the previous featured weblogs. So, we entered  the ones we could find here:  http://www.xanga.com/featuredweblogs.

We will keep adding to this blog.  You could subscribe to featuredweblogs to see the posts among your subscriptions!

Featured weblogs are a lot of fun, so definitely check them out.

I would normally say “I will never have children”. I was never the mommy material. I did not dream of having kids or what I would name my kids them once I have them. Right now, I don’t think I will have children. The only problem is that I may be missing out something very special in life. So, I don’t want to say I will never have children because I can change my mind in the future. But if I do change my mind, it will not be because of the social pressure to have kids, it will be because I truly want them.
  
I cannot think of anything else that I will never do in life. Kill myself? There may be certain circumstances where death is a good alternative such as being have to go through the latest stages of cancer.

Maybe sky diving? I would have a heart attack and die before I reach the ground anyway

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

NY Times does not have nice things to say about the movie:
“…But the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence,
and the monster does cut a satisfying swath through the cast, so your
only complaint may be, What took it so long?…”

Here is the link to the review: http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/movies/18clov.html?8mu&emc=mua1

to see Napoleon Dynamite made it to a lot of people’s worst movies list. I
loved the movie. For me, it is one of those movies I can watch over and over
again.

I was playing with posting to my Xanga blog using my email. Someone asked me how to do that and I decided to write this post. The following information is taken from the Xanga Help.

To email a post straight to your Xanga site, first find your unique Email Posting address by visiting this link: http://edit.xanga.com/emailposting.aspx

Here you will see an email address to send your entry to. You can use any emailing program (including the ones on mobile phones). To add photos to your post, just attach images (multiple photos
accepted) to your email and they will be posted onto your site
as well.

Under
Email Post Settings, you can also choose where your photos are
placed, control your privacy status, and enable eProps and comments for
emailed posts.

Just find your unique email address and try it. If you do, let me know what you think!