Shabby as a Harlot's Painted Face at Noon

Part Un: Panegyrics

I'm in a very strange, yet positive, mood. I'm fairly certain it's because I'm wearing pants.

I had forgotten how pleasant wearing pants can be. Also: pockets! My hands have their own personal blankets! Pockets are a very useful invention. That being said, I don't think I want to wear pants more now; it's possible that the pants were (I took them off) pleasant to wear because I don't wear them very often, or, really, at all.

Or, and check this out: maybe it was the specific pair of pants. Maybe this pair of pants puts me in this strange mood. Maybe a different pair of pants will put me in a bad mood. I wonder if, someday, when I am displeased with the mood of that time, I could slip on those pants and everything would be okay. I wonder if, after today, I could condition myself so that that could actually be possible and not fucking ridiculous, like it sounds. I wonder if, eventually, I could just think about wearing that pair of pants and my mood would be automatically ameliorated. That would be useful. More useful than pockets, really. If pants can change your mood, then what the fuck? Really. I should be able to look at my goddamn curtains and think about how life is wonderful. Maybe now I will. I think the Pants Effect (...actually has a ring to it...) is wearing off. Or I could just be on my period.

I bet you're wondering how this fits in: cats don't wear pants either.

Part Deux: Calumnies

I realized yesterday that, in a nutshell, food courts inspire me to reflect on my life. That's really not true. But what is true is that it is in food courts (and food courts alone, it seems) that I really get just where the hell I am. I am the most cognizant of the fact that I am in Vietnam when I am in one. Most of the time, it strikes as a dawning, slightly upsetting revelation. What the fuck have I done? How have I knocked my life off-kilter? When did I wind up in Asia? Better yet, how did I forget? Can you imagine if I (you) had to spend all my (your) life in a food court? (Stu: I was with Hien. I had Wrap 'n' Roll; it wasn't good. She had Lotteria. We had an incredibly depressing conversation, not at all inspired by the roll of beef fat in my cold bun thit nuong.)

That same day (not a good Vietnam day), I ventured to the 4th floor to buy a Christmas card. It was like being in a film. As I recall, it was a horror film:

Bam! Hit 'dem little crackas with a freeze-pop!

Shop attendants (of varying degrees of same-ness) are standing in the empty aisles in front of their empty stores not talking to each other. IMAGINE IT. Every 5 feet is another Asian person, facing forward, staring off into oblivion, ignoring the person 5 feet away from them, not twiddling their thumbs, humming, or even attempting to entertain themselves. Either there's a cult leader in the back sitting in a swivel chair, smoking cigars, and watching them on a giant security camera, or they've all just lost the will to live because of their propinquity to the food court. Someone put them there in the morning and someone will dismiss them at night. Living, breathing mannequins daring you to spark them to life with your dong. I got my Christmas card and I got the fuck out.

Part Trois: Threnodies

I take a break from my conveniently-removed, pseudo-cognoscitive anecdotes to give you this timely excursus into topics with hopefully more pertinence and lesser fugacity:

And yet with jaundiced eye I gaze upon all the beauty and wonder about me, and with jaundiced brain consider the pitiful figure I cut in this world that endured so long without me and that will again endure without me.

-- Jack London, John Barleycorn

I've sat here for the past five minutes attempting to put into words what it was I really came here to say. I've fiddled around with loose metaphors, vague aphorisms, blasé attempts at honesty -- all of which fail to encapsulate the way I promised myself (and maybe certain bald-headed friends of mine) I would write. I figured this recent string of events would be convenient for this purpose and this purpose alone; alas, I seem to be wrong. With the arrival of one thousand emotions comes the perspicacity of none. 

Yesterday, this little boy I had never met before stared at me for a long, long time. He stared at me unfettered and unabashedly, content with saying nothing. Unlike all the other children who divert their gaze when they don't know an answer, he stared at me happily and I more than happily stared at him back. It brought tears to my eyes that awkwardly rested in my eyelids, like so many have been wont to do lately. When's the last time you bathed in someone else's naïveté? When's the last time you stared at someone else without pretense, without shame, without worry? When's the last time you sat across from someone and simply thought about how they were alive? Why does this strike me as so beautiful? Is it my lack of intimacy with others that makes these small moments so quietly powerful?

Maybe Stu was wrong and there should be no conclusion. We never really conclude our days; we simply go to sleep. We never really conclude our thoughts; we simply partake in and get distracted by new ones. We never really conclude friendships, we never really conclude ideas or philosophies, or even selves, though those, too, often come to an end. 

Maybe my conclusions are questions. Charlie and Stu are always quick to tell me that I'm still in that phase of my life where I do that a lot; I sort of resent that. I don't know if it's because I yearn to stop questioning and to start knowing or if I think they're feigning wisdom (eat it, suckers) and I believe that one should never stop asking questions. I'm not sure if 'knowing' even really exists. There're a lot of questions in that paragraph that I didn't pose as questions, I know. That's either meta or just plain ol' irritating. I'd stop if I could/wanted to.

So, I guess I'll leave you with this: when's the last time you allowed yourself to feel what you wanted to feel? (Why didn't I phrase that as, "when's the last time you allowed yourself to feel how you felt?" Those are two very different questions.) When's the last time you wanted something and didn't want to want something? When's the last time what you thought would make you happy made you happy and what you thought would make you sad made you sad? 


Huh?
 

Such a beautiful word for such a disastrous thing.

xoxo.


J

How do you stay faithful in a room full of hoes?

It's question day, sponsored by Kanye. That rhymes.

From this point forward, your measured approval of this blog post will only decline.

It took me being in this curiously strange mood to look at this large mug I stole from the Hofbräuhaus in München to think, "I should drink outta that." How is that possible? Most of the time I think, "Oh, that's right," or, "Oh, that's right, I'm awesome," when I see it. Never anything in regards to its utility. Maybe I just wasn't thirsty enough. ...Now there's an apt metaphor for you. Full circle I just went and I bet you didn't even catch it! That's a fucking conclusion, Stu! Maybe you just don't know it! When I go three exclamations in a row, I like to make it four!

A) Moods are so stupid! (Or five.) I put myself in this mood! If I want to be like this forever, I could be! Right now, I want to be able to look at every glass ever and realize that I can and, more importantly, should drink out of it. I could've drunk out of it this whole time. Also: am I going to drink out of it? I'm not sure. It's quite large. If she said that, she was probably lying to you.

B) Are we capable of watching ourselves? Are we capable of both knowing what's about to happen next, it still happening, and thwarting it?

Do I like Phil Collins? I have two ears and a heart, don't I?

'My friend Stu' was talking to me the other day about this blog. I really like it when he does that; he generally has nice things to say about it and getting him to stroke my ego is harder than pulling teeth. He's also quite a good writer. Now that I think of it, I feel similarly about his writing (what little I've seen of it) as he does about mine: it's a bit removed. He remarked on how I never use names and how I blatantly cannot conclude things; he suggested that it was because I never fully commit in the first place. My retort was that my blog is my thoughts -- generally not a concrete replay of events -- and therefore no real conclusion can be written, as my thoughts on most issues don't have any real resolution in sight. He made some convincing arguments about how that's not entirely true -- if thoughts don't come to a resolution in your head, you'll be bothered by them until you sort your shit out. In addition, he inadvertently challenged me to end my next post with a legitimate conclusion. Hopefully you'll find a satisfactory one at the end of this page. Though, as of this juncture, I know not. I hope future me doesn't let present me down.

This seems like a useful segue into the 'why I don't mention people' topic. For the record, addressing this seems unnatural and against the grain. But, alas, the reasons are fourfold:

a) If I mentioned people by name, talked about the shit they said and did, it'd be like telling stories. It'd be like listening to myself talk, which I do all the time and have no desire to do any more of. I do not, however, get to listen to myself think (insomuch as you can't really hear yourself speak) -- and that's how I feel it doesn't quite fit into this blog. What's more, I'm pretty sure that if I did quote-unquote tell stories, I would bore the shit outta myself. I have this dreaded fear of being boring; or, at least, people finding out that I am. Maybe you already knew? If so, thanks for not telling me. You're welcome for returning the favor, probably. Burn!

b) If I mentioned people by name, I would feel obligated to explain what they are like. Not doable. There are people I am around all the time that I couldn't answer the simplest of questions about. With anything resembling confidence, at least. I have a hard time fitting people into boxes, giving them adjectives. Giving them adjectives with any sticking power. I could talk about what they say and do, sure, but that's not really writing about them. Not writing about them in the respect they deserve.

c) If I mentioned people by name, I would feel obligated to explain how I feel about them or how I feel around them. Not doable. Though I suppose doing 'b' would greatly allude to doing 'c'--therefore letting 'c' off the hook--I still feel like it would be the cyber-elephant in the cyber-room. In order for things to make it into my blog, they have to be truthful and I have to find them interesting. Any of my thoughts regarding other people that meet those two requirements are generally not blog-acceptable. A story Charlie told me about 'feeling shame for your words' has been on my mind a bit lately. I don't think it's shame in this circumstance. It's a little fear, maybe some cowardice, sure, but it's more general practicality. I think you get it.

d) I don't explain people in my thoughts to myself. Doing so in my blog would be out of character, if my blog could possess that.

The only reason I dislike Lori Singer is because of that one scene in 'Footloose' where she needs band-aids over her nipples.

I didn't drink out of the mug. Yet.

I'm gonna go drink outta the fucking mug.

It's so big it's burdensome. But I regret not my decision. It would've been an enjoyable experience had my maid not thrown out my only goddamn straw. As it stands, it's merely moderately remarkable, solely due to its size and nothing else. That's right.

It's about that time. If I address the conclusion in my conclusion, does that negate the necessary conclusion-ness of said conclusion?

I'm gonna try to give people names. I'm gonna try to put myself in strange moods more often. I'm gonna try to look at things and drink out of them, straw or no straw. I'm gonna try not to talk in crappy New Year's Eve resolution-al metaphors. At least, until the next Kanye lyric that strikes me or the next picture that makes me sad I'm too young to know anything about hotter, younger Alec Baldwin. I'm gonna try to get those dudes that never told me they had the hots for me to tell the next guy to balls up. I'm gonna try to not walk out of parties without saying goodbye. I'm gonna try to not split infinitives. I'm gonna try to do small things until they don't feel big anymore. And I'm gonna try to cook pumpkin sometime, I think. I'll at least let you know how that one goes. I might even give the pumpkin a name.

xoxo,

J

Salvation à la mode and a cup of tea.

I'll admit it. It doesn't bother me. Oftentimes when I get bored, I read my own blog. Most of the time (I swear) it's in looking for typos or ways I could've been clever-er or more sensical with my transitions. I found a typo the other day on a post I must've read twenty times, which will only spur on this narcissistic habit (it's too late to go back and fix it). And then I realized I really like reading my blog because I always agree wholeheartedly with everything it has to say and I always get all the references.

What's that? Self-five? Nice! We out!

I've been thinking a lot about synthetic happiness lately. Like how this one dude who is a paraplegic, this one dude who almost bought McDonald's, Pete Best, and this one dude who committed a big political scandal a while ago all believe they're happier now than they would have been had things worked out "in their favor". Then there's all these studies about ugly cat posters that you're stuck with that I get but not enough to spout back to you and make it cohesive and entertaining, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I use 'there's' regardless of the number of the following noun and I have a velleity to change it, but if I use it in speech consistently, I suppose I shouldn't be bothered. Did you know 'linguipotence' is a word? If two roots can combine, are they technically already a word even if no one uses it? Either way: barring any factor of chemical imbalance, etc., you're going to make yourself a certain level of 'happy'. I wonder if it's just situational and not comprehensive. Or like, I really like this ugly cat poster now that you made me buy it with my father's organ money and I'm happy with my decision and oh, by the way I'm dating Bradley Cooper and I'd say my happiness on a scale of 1-10 is about a 9.7 or I really like this ugly cat poster now that you made me buy it with my father's organ money and I'm happy with my decision and oh, by the way my boyfriend beats me three times a week and I'd say my happiness on a scale of 1-10 is about a 9.7. The basis of this argument is just a component of the cognitive dissonance theory, but that's not the part I think I'm questioning. Is there really such a thing as non-synthetic happiness anyway? An emotion is a fucking emotion and none of them isn't subject to being created in my brain. We manufacture every commodity we strive to feel. If I get super hot, win the lottery, and hire men with broad shoulders to fan me with palm leaves every afternoon, am I gonna be just about as happy as I am now, being normal looking, lottery-less, and using the air conditioner like a normal Westerner? If I were cleaning the bar at Longhorn Steakhouse right now, would I be as happy as I am sitting in my room with a balcony that got cleaned yesterday by my maid? Is this only about situations that are irreversible? What situation really is irreversible? If I think something is going to make me happy, does it therefore, when achieved, make me happy? Why is that deemed 'natural happiness'? Especially if other people are better than us at predicting what will make us happy. Maybe I'm overthinking this; what's more, I definitely don't know enough about this topic to have given it the amount of attention I just did, especially 'publicly'.  I suppose I'm hoping you don't either.

Hens eject more sperm from socially subordinate males. You heard me. Explains my attraction to alphas. It also explains why chicken is so delicious. Also: did you know chickens got it on like this?

So, I realized something yesterday that about knocked me off my rocker. Here it comes: I live within a hop, skip, and a jump of three KFCs. THREE. If I go to a KFC down the street from my house and they are out of that mashed-potato-chicken-cheese-corn bucket, I have TWO more chances before I have to either break a sweat or hop in/on a vehicle and gallivant further away from my abode. By the by, since I have yet to eat at a KFC in HCM, I cannot start. Like using the library at Iowa -- once I went three years, my senior year it just wasn't an option.

CRAZY BUFFALO DARES YOU NOT TO MOOOOOOVE AWAY!

In a surprising turn of events, lately I've been contemplating staying here (future Jackie (or present, editing Jackie) is contemplating getting the fuck out). Don't tell my mom. Unfortunately, it's not out of any real desire -- it's out of sheer laziness. It wouldn't surprise me if the place I end up is just the place where I run outta gas. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that and I more than suppose that that's not unique to me. I just never thought I'd say that. Yet.

Seguing from that paragraph, I just started a list of things I miss about America. Then I stopped because it posed too many self-threatening questions. Here's the list of things of things I wish I missed the most:

1. a "democratic" government
2. clean sidewalks
3. my mom

Here's the real list:

1. The Big Ten Network, or the equivalent thereof
2. Wal-Mart
3. an easily accessible array of granola varieties and breakfast cereals to choose from

Do you ever wonder just what the hell happened? When did I start finding Wal-Mart cathartic? Did I not ever analyze this sector of my brain so I could continue on maintaining the delusion that I'm super-pro Mom & Pop? And I don't feel my missing The Big Ten Network is indicative of my actual personality, but the thing is, it is. There's no way around it. Sometimes after I drink a lot of soy milk or get false eyelashes or yell at a taxi driver, I give myself the heebie jeebies. Not the bad heebie jeebies, just the normal, weird kind.

I was hiding under your porch because I love you.

I was tutoring this young, nice, super-rich girl in the Pearl today. Looking out her window, I could see SKYSCRAPERS. I couldn't fucking believe it. I'm living in a town with SKYSCRAPERS. Not just one, but a whole line of them. A whole line of them whose beauty is simultaneously astounding and forgettable. I've been here for 9 months and I'm still walking out the door expecting to see a skyline comprised of 4 Kwik Stars, a Denny's, a Mickey D's, and a Super 8. I live in the 43rd biggest city on the planet and I keep on forgetting. It made me really happy; it was strange. For a number of reasons. The most prevalent of which is that lately I've been feeling I need to live in a smaller town to appreciate Vietnam. Those aren't mutually exclusive at all, you're right. I also don't see myself ever wanting to live in a big city. Or even just living in one. BUT GUESS WHAT?

Oh, I don't know. There are plenty of things I can think of to do. Maybe go downtown and try to find a Vietnamese man named "Phil".

Man, sometimes I look at my life and I think, "My God, what have I done?" Other times I do the same and think, "My God! What I have done!" I was having a few days of the former kind this week. And then my maid bought me canvas WITHOUT MY ASKING. AND NOT JUST ONE BUT FIVE. This woman brings us English muffins, does our laundry, cooks us dinner, notices my interests and aids me in my creativity. Who needs a boyfriend? It's so cool when people notice shit and then do. So often people don't. I don't a lot. If people just knew the shit we liked and what we wanted, maybe people would buy each other canvas more often. Maybe I would have a room full of canvas. Maybe I would buy canvas for other people so much that the canvas girl from the art shop down the street would learn my name and give me a hefty giảm giá.

I hate conclusions in the same way that I hate goodbyes. I would much rather exit a party unannounced.


xoxo,


J

Das Ist Sehr Laser!

Preface: [takes a deep breath] 23. Why is it all the songs about being 23 are existentially depressing?

Amazing still it seems / I'll be twenty three / I won't always love / What I'll never have / I won't always live / In my regrets

- Jimmy Eat World

Certain songs remind me of the better days -- when TRL was good and Carson Daly wasn't on coke:

And that's about the time she walked away from me / Nobody likes you when you're 23 / And you still act like you're in freshman year / What the hell is wrong with me?

- Blink 182

You might say if I listened to better music, this pattern wouldn't be nearly as evident. You might be right. The great thing is, though, that neither of us will ever know. However, I do know that if you're reading this blog and you're 23, ten bucks says you're selling insurance a few miles away from your childhood home. That sounds judgmental from where you're standing (sitting), sure, but you're not privy to this ode of lugies I'm being forced to indulge in via my bedroom's eastern wall (southern?). Rectified?

Chapter 1: Wo Bist Du, Carl?!

I spent the day of my 23rd birthday alone, often not cognizant of just what day it was--without a cell phone, camera, or any device with a clock. The camera wouldn't be so remarkable except for the fact that I spent my birthday in a small Bavarian town nestled in the Alps. On my way out the door to read me some Bill Bryson, I turned around to grab my iPod, thinking I should keep an eye on the time. It took me 1.3 seconds to realize it didn't matter. Technically, does it ever?

GaPa is almost too quaint. I half expected Rod Serling to step out from behind a tree and say, "Jackie Kehoe doesn't know it, but she's just dropped into a community that doesn't exist in time or space. She's just embarked on a one-way trip into...the Twilight Zone."

I went to a bridge on the bottom of a mountain with a book, some bread, and yogurt and actually had a remarkably good time. Everyone should spend some significant day alone. It was much different than any of my other birthdays and I would argue that it was preferable. Quite a feat, ye fellow extroverts. At least, I think I fall into that category still. I don't hate other people's birthday parties, I just hate my own. There's always this...pressure. This birthday monkey on your back that's fiddling menacingly with your earlobes and just daring you to have a sub-par time. Maybe that's why people drink so much on their birthdays; they just can't soberly handle it. However, the introversion of that day was remedied in the night by hundreds of men in lederhosen (one man in lederhosen looks like an idiot, but hundreds? Sexy.) at Garmisch's annual Festwoche and specifically two German men able to linguistically keep up with me and lingual-ly blow me out of the water. I used to think Amy Winehouse nailed the definition of the man I want:

In one experiment, a chimp was trained to hit a bar in his cage to be administered with a dose of cocaine. At regular intervals, the number of times the chimp had to hit the bar to get the coke was increased. The experiment was finally abandoned when the chimp hit the bar over 12,000 times to get a single dose of coke.

"You don't like ballers / they don't do nothin' for ya / but you'd love a rich man / six foot two or taller."

But now I know I want a man that also tells me to stop using phrases like 'palatal-alveolar affricates' because it turns him on -- or some other similar sentiment muddled by translation and wishful thinking.


Chapter Deux: "I laid there and pushed candy bars into my face, like logs into a sawmill."

I never did find Carl. I'm pretty sure he's somewhere in Wisconsin or something.  


Chapter Ba:  d --> b: #__VC : I love you, doner. Especially when you're in my mouth. Doner, why must you taste so good and juicy? To rile up my emotions? To make my former existence seem painfully shallow and dead?

Check me out: I climbed one of the Alps. NOT ONLY did I climb one of the Alps, but I climbed one of the Alps ALONE. NOT ONLY did I climb one of the Alps ALONE, but I climbed one of the Alps ALONE and IN THE WIND AND RAIN. NOT ONLY did I climb one of the Alps ALONE and IN THE WIND AND RAIN but I climbed one of the Alps ALONE, IN THE WIND AND RAIN, and SAW NO ONE ON MY ENTIRE JOURNEY UP THE MOUNTAIN. Seriously, guys. I'm no Scott Sanborn, but if I were a meteorologist, I'm sure I would call it somewhere in the realm of a 'mild pouring'. No wonder I never ran into a soul; Germans know better now (they learned the hard way). When I hit a clearing about halfway up the mountain, I almost started crying. Might as well have nicknamed my umbrella (ella ella, ay ay ay) Rihanna because I didn't know if it was going to survive that beating or not. God, that reference works on so many levels! Well...almost so many. If you live in one of those tribes where the counting system is, "one, two...oh gosh, a whole bunch!", it does. Wikipedia the things I tell you if you haven't already started. I wish my name were a verb. This is me, having a run at an honest display at emotion:

Surely it was merely the apocalypse and giant Jesus-serving dinosaurs were shitting on the mountain over and over again to enforce the futility of our supposed purpose.

Chapter Quatre: “The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”

I could live in Munich. Especially at night. One of my favorite moments was standing on the Odeonsplatz, where Hitler gave one of his famous speeches, and taking the road around it that Deutschers took to avoid saluting. You know, this one?

Achtung! Ich habe braune augen! Schwarzkopf! Das ist alles der words ich remembere zu meinen Deutschen classen!

Sorry, Iowa, but this does not compare to the clock museums and Indian burial grounds you tried to educate me with. 

Chapter Funf: Jews

We also took a tour of Dachau--our tour guide was very charismatic and, actually, doing her PhD on the topic. Unfortunately, what I remember most about it was that I kept thinking I was tired of standing and how disgusted I was with myself. I'm standing in a mother-of-God gas chamber and complaining?


Chapter Seis: Somewhere out there is a lady who I think will never be a nun.

I also could live in Salzburg. Especially when it's sunny outside. While there, on our way up to the Hohensalzburg, Ash and I went around back and stopped in the church. While she decided to sit back in the pew, I thought I might give kneeling a go. For maybe twenty seconds, I attempted to reconnect with my Catholic past. And then the lights went out. ...Well, I tried. 


Chapter VI: Eskimos don't believe in bridges?

Why do we change the names of some cities and not others? Is it because Munchen sounds stupid? Why do I keep fiddling with my false eyelashes?

Chapter Siete: Ron Steele

I'm shitty at conclusions.

xoxo

A Business of Ferrets! A Whole Business of Ferrets!

"Vem por aqui" - dizem-me alguns com os olhos doces
Estendendo-me os braços, e seguros
De que seria bom que eu os ouvisse
Quando me dizem: "vem por aqui!"
Eu olho-os com olhos lassos,
(Há, nos olhos meus, ironias e cansaços)
E cruzo os braços,
E nunca vou por ali...
A minha glória é esta:
Criar desumanidade!
Não acompanhar ninguém.
- Que eu vivo com o mesmo sem-vontade
Com que rasguei o ventre a minha mãe
Não, não vou por aí! Só vou por onde
Me levam meus próprios passos...
Se ao que busco saber nenhum de vós responde
Por que me repetis: "vem por aqui!"?
Prefiro escorregar nos becos lamacentos,
Redemoinhar aos ventos,
Como farrapos, arrastar os pés sangrentos,
A ir por aí... 

 -- Cântico Negro, José Régio

 I had an overweight, amiable, Portuguese George Clooney (with more nose hair) passionately recite this to me in a cafe last night.  It was neat. It was one of those moments where I realized while it was happening that I was experiencing it because of all the other life choices I've ever made. That of all places, I was there. I wish moments didn't have to be so unique to elicit awe. To elicit awe on such a thing as your general circumstances. Which in itself is cool. The second those moments stop coming, someone shoot me.

 Secondarily, it made me realize that I need to find something to memorize and later impress people with. As it stands, I can only recite the opening of Romeo and Juliet, 'Solace' by Dorothy Parker and virtually every line from the stage version of Footloose. I still remember a prof of mine reciting Chaucer (we spent weeks analyzing the third and fourth lines of the prologue from The Cantebury Tales -- I can take you step by step from Middle English to Modern English when it comes to the sounds in those two lines (prospective employers, check this girl out)). I'm sure it was their charisma and not the content -- they could've been speaking gobbledegook and the passion would've carried through -- but nonetheless, I think it would be in my best interest to memorize a French poem or something.

As long as you are not reading me, the fourth word of this sentence has no referent.

 J-Wow (as he shall be known) told me I was interesting. I was interesting because of the passion with which I spoke of things. I never get that. I only get how disengaged I am. Either I was faking it sufficiently to make a good first impression or conversations are more like sex than I realized: the output you produce is substantially a reflection of the other person, or that other person's effect on you. Probably both. I wonder what I would do if I ran into someone that spoke Lezgian. Oh, shit! Lezgian is classified as 'vulnerable' by UNESCO's World Atlas of Endangered Languages. Better get on my Lezgian lessons before the next generation dies and my generation makes English the desired tongue. Did you know there are 191 documented languages spoken in the US? I didn't know Yiddish was endangered. Welsh is vulnerable, too! I also didn't know this: The Last Two Speakers of Ayapaneco Aren't Speaking to Each Other. Talk about being forced into something. And the least mature comment I've made all day: Anal has 23,000 speakers and Anus as 70. I can't believe I just said that. Instead of those pageant moms, I'm gonna be that mom that forces her kid into spelling bees and learning three languages at once. My kid won't have friends. That's okay, though. He/She'll be trilingual and probably above 5'10'', so they're set.

BECAUSE I SURE CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING TO TOP IT.

  I sang "I'm Proud to be an American" through the streets of Ho Chi Minh today. This was only after I logged into Facebook and was reminded that it was July 4th by all the statuses about fireworks. Then I sang a song about bubble tea. I'm thinking about going on a bubble tea diet. It's like drinking and eating at the same time and I really like killing two birds with one stone. Think of the time I'll save! Tempus fugit! I do realize that by that logic I should only be eating hot pockets, yes.

It's big, it's blue, it's round, and it's about goddamn time, honey.

 My blog really seems to bring out my inner geek:


The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

 Man, when I was a kid, all we had was the Grout Museum, and all that was was a couple of mannequins dressed up in bonnets holding rusty lanterns and warming themselves over a cardboard cutout of a lit woodburning fireplace. And a John Deere tractor. And a gift shop where you could buy John Deere tractor hats. I once went to the Griffith Observatory in Hollywood and there was this group of 5th graders learning about shit I had to learn about in college. Iowa is a good place to grow up if you don't want to get mugged, but you sure aren't going to not get mugged because you distracted your mugger with a well-timed quip about thermodynamics.

Your breakfast is gonna taste so good tomorrow morning.

Part II: Between Scylla and Charybdis


Let's say I'm getting interrogated. Here's how the following would play out:

"Jackie. Jacqueline. Has any man seen your lady parts lately?"

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact, one has."

"Where was it?"

"In the women's bathroom at one of the many local movie theatres."

"...That's rather...unlike you, is it not?"

"It wasn't consensual."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. You were raped?"

"No. Not at all. I suppose my dignity was raped, sure, but that's not what you mean."

"Just tell us what happened."

"Do you want the Reader's Digest ver--"

"Just tell us."

"Okay. Well, you see, I went to see X-Men, right? Which was fantabulous by the way. But before the movie, I figured I should pee because I hate getting up in the middle of movies and wondering what happened in that five minutes you missed even though the person you're with always tells you not to worry because you didn't miss anything. Anyway. I venture to the ladies' room and start my nice, solitary pee when I notice a shadow eerily close to my door. I think it's strange initially, sure, but then I brush it off as a woman backing up as far as she can from the mirror to see how big her butt looks. I continue my thing. Then, before I know it, a man is sticking his entire head into my stall, underneath the door. Unfortunately, instead of thinking quickly and wearing cleats that day, all I think of to do or say is, "Woah". He jets like a whore outta church and I stand there, confused as to whether I should commend him for his bravery or to stare down every mofo in the place with a light-colored collar."

I've been waiting for something like that to happen for a conclusion to this blog post. Thank God.

xoxo,

J

That Croesus wants to capriciously inviscate my face?

Part I: Her Fast-Luck Oil and Her Magic Stones

(The following is purposefully vituperative.) 

I had a good Vietnam day today. I think it has something to do with my propinquity to the pretty parts of Ho Chi Minh. When I spend my time in eastern Phu Nhuan and eastern district 7, my mood is automatically ameliorated. I also spent a large amount of time in the workplace discalced, which is a recent goal of mine for my career as a whole. Is that too hoydenish? At least my feet aren’t papilionaceous! I’ve been worried that that’s too overpowering a quality of mine, that it’s pernicious to my quote-unquote attractiveness. That my hoydenism is perceived as too gauche. I’m not at all cognoscitive when it comes to this situation. I wish I were clairsentient. Once in a while, I have a flash of gnosis, but it’s always too ephemeral and fugacious. If it’s anathema to my happiness, shouldn’t that give me a strong predilection for change? Maybe I should do some more noctiviganting in district 7 on Charlie’s scooter to discover some aphorisms about myself. Too bad I’m not usafructuary to it. Maybe it’s because I suffer from a slight case of hypobulia. But change is ineluctable, hypobulia or not. At least I’m not a bobadil or a harridan—I mean, right? And if I’m conscious of it, my voice is pretty damn mellisonant, if you ask me. Please don’t inveigh; I would find that to be a peccadillo. However, you may inveigh my tumultuary way (check out that pulchritudinous meter!) of stringing these iterative verbages together. 

Part II: The Return of Bobbejaan

You either found the above completely unremarkable (save perhaps its logic or validity), amusing and clever, or highly pretentious and obnoxious. If the latter, I do believe you’re just jealous of my command of the English language—and that includes AAVE. I mean, c’mon! I got all those words into ONE loosely connected paragraph! Not too shabby! Feel free to leave me a comment if you’re overcome with uncontrollable emotion, whichever pole it may lie on. 

I’m about 5 hours into the spelling bee (clearly). I finished part 1 of 4 at 55% accuracy and I think that’s a large enough sample that I needn’t do any more math. My computer is having serious troubles downloading it, so I may have to settle for only the first half (8 hours). Life is full of constant disappointments, you know? BUT—they used the word ‘bobbejaan’ again this year; closure is had!

Life is exactly like the spelling bee and exactly not like the spelling bee simultaneously. All the pretty girls are one by one dropping off, like synchronized healthy lemmings, leaving the crippled, blind ones stuck in some tree about a mile away from the fatal cliff, not realizing how much they should relish life. Also, the spelling bee is entirely based on luck. Who wants to be the kid that has to spell 'mycetophagous' and who wants to slap the kid that gets the word ‘motif’ or ‘alchemy’? All these kids have read Harry Potter! And why did they give the Indian girl ‘masala’?

Riverside Casino and Golf Resort once gave me $30.

I really need to work on my French spelling patterns. I’m abysmal. You’d think I’d be good at it! Unless it’s food. Duh. I’m solid at Latin and pretty solid in Greek and my German could be plenty worse, but mon francais est terrible. I think it’s because Dr. Bailey pronounces all the French words anglicized and I then change my spelling of them accordingly, knowing they’re French and spelling it using French phonetics. Knowledge isn’t always power, kids.  What’s more, Dr. Bailey has a wide-brimmed glass of red wine to sip during the kids’ ponderings. Could be that. 

Also: (as if you wanted to know more about my spelling habits), I’m super hit or miss. I can’t spell vinaigrette, but tokomak? No fucking problem. Khong fucking sao. Bildungsroman? Consider it done.

This is a people shooting hat...I shoot people in this hat.

I LOVE ROOT WORDS. How cool is it to hear the word ‘terraqueous’ and know EXACTLY how to spell it and EXACTLY what it means (…give or take) without any explanation?! SO COOOOOL! I still remember the first time I ran across the word 'acephalous'. My kid better be an awesome speller. He or she is going to know how to spell ‘omelette’, if I’ve anything to do with it. I started teaching my E6s prefixes and their minds were blown. I also went into a savant-like explanation of the word 'hook', in every sense, alone and phrasal. The white board was beautiful.


Part III: This next part is me reining it back in, actually.

Another also: there’s a dog outside my window that has recently graduated from begging to not be beaten again to pleading for the culprit to stop gnawing slowly through his hind legs. And in my summer school class, that rooster cockafucking(the only things cooler than prefixes are infixes)doodledoos all the way till 11:30. If you don't care about infixes (don't knock it till you've tried it, yo.), skip the next three pictures.

Then I should've said 'cockadoodlefuckingdoos'...DID YOU EVEN NOTICE?

WAIT WAIT THIS IS INTERESTING:

SOOO COOOOOL! No? Just me?

This is Cantonese. I wonder if Lezgian has infixes...

 

 

 

 

                                        

If anyone wants to know what I did in college, I'm now referring them to my blog. This is the exact format of every day that was my life, only half the information was blanked out and we had to fill 'er in using solely our desperation and will to live.

Man, English sucks. I used to defend it because its idiosyncrasies are abounding (a product of its bastardization, which is super neat) but now that I know that Tagalog has innermorpheme infixes, Cantonese has 'devil' as an infix, and Esperanto's 'learn-ed' words are harder to pronounce than their layman's counterparts, I give up. Lingua franca, my ass.

< /geekout >

xoxo,

J

PS - It's almost 1 AM and the dog is nowhere to be heard.

My Annual Trip to ESPN.com

SPOILER ALERT: If you are a product of the late 80s and early 90s, the following may haunt you for what could possibly be days (the love you remember feeling as a child is about to be dispelled and replaced with a wrenching fear of the xylophone setting on any standard keyboard):

Halt. I am Reptar.

I mean, is this guy right or is this guy rhight?

I miss the Dodge Street Hy-Vee. I don't know what it is about that place. I think it was the lighting and the pre-packaged sushi. It definitely wasn't the fact that they carded you for grenadine. I'd like to be kidding, but I'm not. About my lamentations, not the grenadine, though both are true. Grocery shopping isn't pleasant in Vietnam. Short women run their carts into you like you're some sort of white-demon magnet and the cereal selection is seriously lacking. If I had to list my havens in Waterloo, Iowa (home excluded), Wal-Mart at 3 AM would most likely make it into the top 5 and sturdily rests in the top 10. If I had a billion dollars, I would buy my own space and turn it into a grocery store that dished out non-expiring Special K coupons and didn't allow talking or bubble violations. Then I would run for mayor and the scholarly breakfast easters, agoraphobic, mime, and deaf/mute communities would be MINE. If items were being discontinued, there would be a bright neon sign that said, "BUY THIS NOW BEFORE IT EXISTS ONLY IN YOUR HIPPOCAMPUS AND SELECT SPECIALTY RETAILERS ON THE WEST COAST". Except for on the orange peelers (are those a thing?), if they ever face extinction, just to be ironic.


I've always thought about leaving Vietnam and riding a motorbike to my next stop, preferably in Europe. Then, I realize that that's crazy and I'm completely a-okay with my unaccomplished life:

Keiichi “Kei” Iwasak's route taken on his bike. 37 countries and 28,000 miles. 160 Yen in his pocket (or $2).  He has since been robbed by pirates (PIRATES) and arrested in India, nearly died after being attacked by a rabid dog in Tibet, and narrowly escaped marriage in Nepal. He makes his living by doing magic on the street.

Compared to that guy, I suck. You probably suck, too, though. In my defense.

11 HOURS TILL THE SPELLING BEE 11 HOURS TILL THE SPELLING BEE 11 HOURS TILL THE SPELLING BEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, guys. I'm going to sit down with my notebook and pause the video after each word, take my guess, and calculate my average. When it's too depressing, I'm going to start thinking about how I'm betting looking and have more friends than all these twelve-year-olds, though this paragraph begs to differ. My favorite contestant last year was this guy:

There are more benefits to wearing footie pajamas to school, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, though it's anathema to my chafing condition.

The word he went out on was 'bobbejaan'. If you ever sneak into ESPN's archives and find the footage from last year's bee, his number is 253. It's priceless, not on YouTube, and you won't regret it. ...God's going to give me an ugly, dumb kid to teach me a lesson, isn't He? 

In other news, I was sitting in a cafe the other day when I remembered how beautiful I used to think that spot was; I had stopped noticing. I love traveling, but does living somewhere 'foreign' take away the beauty and novelty of it all? Does the brevity of a situation determine its beauty? Can that be said about life? Are things only appreciated if they are brief and fleeting? If we lived for a longer amount of time, how would that change things?

It's also weird how happiness is completely subjective and random, you know? I got a package and a letter the other day, and I was about glowing. If we wanted, sadness could elicit the same response. Nothing is stopping us but us. I mean, it helps if you have Special K with Red Berries in the fridge and chai powder in your cupboard, but you get it. Do you know how obnoxious it is to heat up 2 oz of water without having a microwave? I'ma have to wait until my velleities to make an iced chai graduate to legitimate yearnings.

 My maid also works at a bakery and just brought us ENGLISH MUFFINS. Since I a) have a maid and b) have English muffins, here's something to make you feel better about your life:

Source: The University of Texas / The Texas Tribune

 That worked, right?

 My three least favorite books in the world are 'Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry', 'Heart of Darkness', and Twilight #4. I felt like this post was lacking a conclusion.


xoxo

Like a S'more You Can Take a Shower With

Part One: Chimerical

So. Maybe I'm eons behind the internet times, maybe you already know this, maybe you don't, but here it is:

MAJOR UNIVERSITIES POST COMPLETE LECTURES -- AUDIO AND VISUAL -- ONLINE AND OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC (THIS MEANS YOU).

Kids, kids! You can now continue learning FO' FREE "at" an institution that never would've accepted you in the first place! I just spent the last hour reading notes from MIT's 'Problems with Philosophy' course; that probably equals the same amount of time I spent reading my Neuropsychology notes over the course of a whole semester. The more and more I look back at it, the more and more I think I got a good grade in that course because I sat up front and made constant eye contact with the professor that could not be mistaken for anything other than, "Yeah, you did see me at the casino last night. And every Wednesday night before that. You should probably start tipping me for those waters, sir, if you're picking up what my dendrites are throwin' down." ...Come to think of it, that was also the semester where Michelle Kehoe killed her family. Either way, a win's a win, but I really should've milked that more than I did.

 Now, GO! BE FREE! Be free and LEARN!

For example, I've learned a lot in the past hour. I've learned that I think there should be some sort of 'awesome' test at the end of college because grades simply are not enough of an external motivator. Or maybe not even a test--maybe some sort of looming punishment. Or maybe some sort of comparative evaluation where even the thought of paling in comparison to your peers is motivation enough to make you think that you actually do find this shit interesting, if'n you don't. You'd be none the wiser. Or, OR...this is every day and we don't realize it because our egos simply couldn't handle it. Or, instead, life could just be like 'The Giver' and then we wouldn't have to worry about all these dumb choices.

Take the following:

By whose criteria do we judge whether something is good or evil? Is it adequate for a theist to claim that God has a different morality than we do, so (some of) what we count as evil, He counts as good, and (some of) what we count as good He counts as evil? It seems to many that even though omnipotent, God cannot violate the laws of logic or create new laws of logic. What about moral principles such as: torture and murder for fun is wrong. There seem to be principles common to all human societies. Could God violate them and still be good?

I disagree; I think if God wanted us all to wear overalls after 11 AM on every national holiday because that's the logical thing to do, He would and, more importantly, could.

What's more, if there are infinite universes, I'm God in one of them, right? Am I also God in another one of them whilst also donning a hat? If there are infinite universes, isn't it statistically more likely that we live in one with a god (or two or drei or ciento y uno) of some sort? I mean, you have all the universes that have no higher being, then you have all the universes that have some sort of higher being, from an old man in the sky to an old man in the sky with a chronic rash to a purple blob who's decided the Lezgian people are its chosen people. You can have lots of varieties of something (or multiple somethings), but only one nothing. I don't know much about math, but I know it makes you THINK.

Math is hard.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about two things:

1) This town is getting smaller. I never thought that saying that about the place I live would be a relief, which is neat.

2) My German teacher from college, Carl. Boy, did he look like a Carl, too. I have this urge to tell him how cool I thought he was, but I can't remember why I thought he was so cool. He was from Wisconsin. I miss him. Carl, if you ever find my blog, I think about you all the time. Sometimes in a sexy way, but then I think about that Christmas card of yours with your wife and kids and that urge retreats.



Part Two: It's My Fucking Birthday

I told Stu and Charlie I would write about them in my next blog post, so here I am keeping my word while season 5's episode 11 of '30 Rock' loads.  For those of you who don't know these two bastards, I'll keep this brief and retinal-friendly. By the by (which is 'terloops gezegd' in Dutch), Stu is a reserved, bald-headed, British Zen Ninja and Charlie is an Aryan, anti-Americana, atheist vegetarian. None of those adjectives is a lie. Look at me accept 'none' as singular, ma! Be proud, dammit! ...Please.

Here are my feelings on them, sorted pictographically by business day of the week:

Monday

Tuesday!

Warm.

Delicious. 

How I celebrate all my "Wednesdays".

Thursday.

Track 6: Jesus Saves 

Turns out Rick Springfield was right about a few things.

Keeping Your Emotions at an Echo

100 days. I've been here for 100 days and now I'm officially feeling it. Not in the good way that it could be, either. A lot of that (the good way of feeling a place) resides in a sense of novelty which never does age well. Through a certain string of events, I'm feeling it. Maybe day 104 or something will be more like day 96. I hope so. I'm not actually counting. Like days in the Bible, only not.

Me, too. Me. Too.

On the upside, I had a really fulfilling TOEFL class tonight. My BK Science 70-ers decided to enlighten my life with the marvel that is KidsBeer:

I LOVE MAO TSE-TUNG!!!

We took a break from learning about SHARKS and tsunamis to discuss said marketing scheme. When the topic of the tsunami in Japan came up, Sean Park waited for a lull in the conversation, stood up lackadaisically, slowly raised his chubby fist in the air, and said, "Down with Japan!" Fuck, I love chubby Korean kids. I was all hating myself and missing having friends until that kid decided to denounce my irrationality with his awesome. I dedicate this post to you, Sean Park. I only hope it does you justice.

Right now seems like a nice paragraph to talk about something I've observed or some pseudo-insightful remark I have on my personality, but my moods have been so polar-rific lately that I'm questioning what I do and do not know. It's interesting/stupid that the post before this was about how robotic I was feeling and this one errs on the north side of PMSville. Maybe I need to change my diet. Maybe I'm just detaching again. I wish I had a personal mechanic that could disengage my 'abort' button. I wanted to type the sentence, "It makes me wonder what I'm actually feeling", but that seems silly. Doesn't make it not true, though. I'm aware that Personal Insight is just behind this door and it's either locked and the two respective sides of the key lodged in the Box of Laziness are labeled "intelligence" and "exposure therapy" or it's ajar and I'm just sitting in a moderately comfortable armchair with my left leg half asleep waiting for whatever it is to come and eat me or to summon Gozer and bring about an end to all of this.



Friends don't let friends cross the streams.

PS - I just made $20 writing that last paragraph.

Man, I love learning. I have this one job, right? I'll read you (read: make you read) some of the guidelines on 'Class Management':

Honestly, students do not like to study ... They should be scared of teachers because of the rules ... What happens when students lose attention? -- To catch a tiger, go into a tiger's den. ... You should be an eloquent lecturer. Do not sit. Students will lose attention soon enough ... When students are daydreaming, it means you have no sense of humor. Remake your class a fun and interesting [sic].

So, instead of listening to their stupid rules (the above does not do it justice; that was just the paper I have lying here) and abiding by their guidelines, I just make Powerpoints. On Wednesdays, I get paid to sit here for three hours and make Powerpoints and/or blog/facebook/grooveshark/wikipedia/stumbleupon/eat. I just learned how fireworks are created! MAN! I wonder if there are adult classes for this type of thing.

01:GI101:AAA = General Information 101: Because College Never Taught You Anything Useful

A ridiculously non-intensive course teaching you crap you might've learned when you were 8 but forgot and now you feel intellectually inferior to your peers when it comes to general knowledge and conceptual understanding. What the hell is the internet, anyway?

Prerequisite: desire to learn and non-idiocy. The final consists solely of an application of the knowledge you learned--for example, you may be required to roast vegetables, aurally determine the problem with a car engine, quote 80s movies, or answer probing questions on your own religion. Course fee: $14.95 for "What's  Wrong with my Snake?" (John Rossi, D.V.M., M.A.) The final grade for the course will be pass/fail. Consider it a thinly-veiled metaphor for your life.

This is what happens when the veil is lifted.

In the words of Jemaine Clement, "Like an abandoned school, I have no principal."


xoxo