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

A Nine Pound Hammer or a Woman Like You

"He cut a sliver of cheese from a wheel and held it out to me on the knife blade.

"You've given me something to think about in a sneaking kind of way."

"I thought you gave it to me.""

I'm not sure if I'm going to publish this post.

I normally try to blog about things of little...consequence. That don't risk [meaningful] judgment. That I can go back and read and think about how fucking undeniably clever I was in that moment (did you catch how my last entry's title was an 'American Psycho' reference and then I did one of those anecdotes on BSpears just like Patrick Bateman did on late 80s pop? DID YOU? I didn't until afterward and then I was like, 'this shit is made of GLORY.'). That's a good feeling, let me tell you. Not great, but good. Mais, maintenant I am choosing to exploit blogger.com and your attentions and instead this post will serve mainly cathartic means. Or it will propel me into a darker place that I will have to climb out of once again. I'm not too worried about it. Whenever I think of black abysses (abyssi?), I only think of that emo kid in his sister's pants. Puts things into perspective.

I talked to my mom for the first time in a while on Skype today. I acknowledge that this isn't suitable blog material, but I refuse to keep a diary. After we said our goodbyes I found myself wanting to call her again and to stare at her face until I felt some vestige of...emotion. Almost of simple recognition. While the topic at hand was tearing her apart, the only thoughts I was truly contemplating were the selfish ones concerning my own robotic-ness. She even commented on how I seemed so removed from the situation and I unhesitatingly agreed. I didn't know how to hide it. If I had, I'm not sure I would've bothered. I don't know if it has more to do with the fact that I am unphased about losing the house or if it alludes to my unrelenting disregard for my mother's emotion. I suppose the fact that I phrased it that way answers the question. Maybe it's both. She then elaborated with how I have changed and how I am "now so..." "--hardened?", I cut her off with. She disagreed and said 'matured' and 'realistic'. I don't know if I agree with that. I feel very nihilistic a lot, but I don't know why and I don't know when that happened. The things I was feeling (or not feeling) and the things I was saying were sort of surprising me. Not in the sense that when they came out of my mouth I didn't realize I was thinking them, but in the sense that I didn't realize how I actually believed the words I was saying. I've felt robotic before, but not to this level. I've never felt so robotic that I couldn't muster a twinge of emotion at seeing my own mother's face, unbridled with emotion. So unattached that I want to sell all my possessions in exchange for plane tickets. Maybe I did bring my French copy of Harry Potter; I'll have to go check. I hope so.

The alternate point to this post poses the question: is this indeed a construct of my dissociation or am I just awesome? Let's pretend, for just a moment (as any longer would instill fear in the masses), that the word 'awesome' does not exist. Then, I would have to rephrase my sentence to something like, "or am I just...now able to shed the trivialities that once made me so worrisome and materialistic, now able to see the nuances and subjective meaning of the word 'home'?" That was difficult and, unfortunately, not completely in the same traincar as my thoughts actually and inexplicably are. Which is why 'awesome' is so useful and so used. There's a quote floating out there about how no one can truly influence us to do something that we wouldn't've done of our own volition anyway, and I wonder how much of that is true. Is this actually a niche my personality has been waiting to settle into, is this actually a reflection of who I am--or is this simply a reflection of my circumstances and purely a coping mechanism? There's downward intonation at the end of that question. I know, I know, you can argue this for all circumstances. No one is without the effect of their environment and there is no 'you'. But there's a 'you' you can try to be--an adapted version of 'you'--and a 'you' you are effortlessly and I'm struggling with that line. If you want it, is it 'you'? Do I want it? I want parts of it. Like a cake. I really like cake, but I could pass up a corner piece. Depends on how crusty it is. I suppose I feel that way about a lot of things.

The other day a bunch of people from ILA went to this orphanage in Cu Chi and we painted their kindergarten room. Within ten minutes of my being there, my lips felt dry. I was hankering for some cherry chapstick, but, alas, I only had my Sephora lipgloss with me. Staring at these handicapped children in this 3rd world orphanage, I lined my lips with an expensive gelatinous glitter that never before made me want to vom. If I refound Jesus and wanted to give reconciliation another go, that deed would top my list. Note: I did not throw it out and have used it a couple times since, vomit-free. Maybe that's the deed I should be reconciling.

I didn't bring my French Harry Potter book. Pity.

Sometimes I see people and think, 'that's the person I could've been'. In some situations it gets as intense as 'the person I was going to be'. Maybe even 'wanted to be'. Surprisingly easily (and with an agility that even amazes me) I can pick up that hat again. I wore said hat the other night when I

(wait for it)


(wait for it)


(wait a little longer)


(I know I'm pushing it now)


(your irritation may be building)


(but you'll read on anyway)

drank Bailey's out of this Australian guy's shoe.

 In my defense, he claimed to only have worn it 4 or 5 times. Consider it a challenge for my immune system (that's what she said). I'm pretty certain it was my idea. I came straight from work and did not look good. I wonder if I would've looked better if I would've done that. Am I making up for feeling ugly by being ridiculous? More women should not straighten their hair, only put mascara on in the morning, and then analyze their behavior. I didn't feel ugly consciously; I'm simply considering that it's an option. I did feel dressed like a librarian, though. Are all these questions irritating you? They're starting to irritate me. And now I have more. Was I being ridiculous because I did not want to be there and was saying 'fuck it' in the grandest way I could muster? Was I displaying my alphaness in the most unfeminine way I could think of?

Either way, bucket list? Check.

I realized tonight that I'm not as robotic as I previously thought. I've been writing this post for a matter of weeks. While I honestly feel I've mastered the ability to shut off a few emotions, there are still several running rampant in my dendrites. The worst ones, if you ask me. I thought this knowledge would grant me a subdued form of solace; instead, it irritates me and fills me with self-doubt. It's the little things that get me. The things that I have no right to feel. By 'right', I mean a lack of logic or rationality.


I've caught myself a handful of times in the past few days being surprised as to my surroundings. Sometimes I get this flash of sight that I'm me, that this is for real, and that this reality is unrelenting. I don't know what that means.

There's a cockroach under my bed. I feel like this is a fantastic metaphor for a lot of things in life. You know it's there. When you didn't know it was there, you slept fine at night. But now you know and there's no going back until you stick your heel through those beady little eyes or until you find a big man to do it for you. 

I take a closer look around the room, but the midgets are still there.

Currently, two things.

1) So, I'm assuming Britney has a new album out. I don't know what it is called or anything about it; I only have a velleity to look it up. Even in writing this blog, I'm not going to do it. But I know a Gaysian that played me a song of hers I had never heard before (though for all intents and purposes, I have) and I'm pretty sure I might've read a headline or a song title somewhere on AOL.com or something. Anyway. He played me that song and it was a piece of crap. Like most of the music she's come out with lately. I use 'lately' loosely--I lost track somewhere around 'Circus' and that song about threesomes. Was that like a year ago or something? 6 months? 2 years? All okay songs, but nothing I know the verses to or, God forbid, would pay $1.29 for to appease the RIAA. Her music has stagnated. They all run together. But her image has not. This is my point. How fucking awesome and appropriate would it be if she released something more akin to...I don't know, Alanis Morissette...Fiona Apple...Florence Welch...or even Liz Phair circa the 90s before she got all that nasty plastic surgery and was still singing about penis. YOU KNOW? She's been through all this fucking crap (which I was able to minutely enjoy in 'Piece of Me', but that still fit the confines of the playlist at S(c)ummit), she's obviously pissed off about it, she has so much fucking material to work with and she's not doing it. If she were to release an album with some anger, with some 'fuck-you-I-won't-do-what-you-tell-me', without the autotune, with some harmony, with some rock roots, with an indie touch, with some mother-of-God violin, JESUS. Not only would it be the end of the world, but I, and I like to think many others, would wear our Britney flags proudly. Her demographic isn't the same anymore. If she stopped singing, "1-2-3, Peter, Paul and Mary, gettin' down with 3 P", and started singing, "boy, I kinda dig threesomes / Never thought I could write that / Chicks can be talented / for both sides I'll bat" or, "K-Fed wasn't that good in bed / I was drunk when I got pregnant / and my kids want him dead," or something (...I never claimed to be that one guy that writes all the pop music ever), the 12-year-olds might not like it, but the girls who were alive when Baby! One More Time came out would throw open their closets and break out their Britney keychains once again. Such potential for irony. Such potential for so many dichotomous feelings the end result would just have to be passionate. THERE IS STILL TIME, BRITNEY. You can still make your first concept album! I'm not asking you to release something solely on vinyl. I'm not asking you to get caught naked rolling joints and grilling hamburgers with Charlie Sheen. I'm not asking you to fake it till you make it. I'm asking you to stop pretending you get down in da club and to start writing songs about this one curious stretch mark of yours on your right thigh from your second, almost-terminated pregnancy. Something real! Go the JT route. Or maybe you just can't write your own music. That's fair, I suppose. I'll leave you alone, then. You'll hear from me again when you sell the rights to 'It's Britney, Bitch!: the New Musical'.

2) So, I left the sugar on the counter. There were a whole lot of ants in there in the morning. Ruined the sugar. I always think about how people are ants (and no other animal). We all want to go for the sugar. But if we do, we end up in the trash. If we wouldn't've gone for the sugar, our lives would've been longer and arguably more fulfilled. But we're fucking greedy. We want that sugar and we want that sugar now. Everyone else is doing it. What's wrong with the flour? Was the sugar worth it? Did we even think about the consequences of going for the sugar? Does it matter? Why didn't some of the ants go for the sugar? Were they too stupid? Were their noses operating on sub-par olfactory systems? Did they just not give a fuck? Do they not like sugar?

And now, another:

"Sipping a highball after dinner, hearing the rushing of water in the electric dishwasher in the kitchen, I brought up a question that had puzzled me. These were good, thoughtful, intelligent people. I said, "One of our most treasured feelings concerns roots, growing up rooted in some soil or some community." How did they feel about raising their children without roots? Was it good or bad? Would they miss it or not?

 The father, a good-looking, fair-skinned man with dark eyes, answered me. "How many people today have what you are talking about? What roots are there in an apartment twelve floors up? What roots are in a housing development of hundreds and thousands of small dwellings almost exactly alike? My father came from Italy," he said. "He grew up in Tuscany in a house where his family had lived maybe a thousand years. That's roots for you, no running water, no toilet, and they cooked with charcoal or vine clippings. They had just two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom where everybody slept, grandpa, father and all the kids, no place to read, no place to be alone, and never had had. Was that better? I bet if you gave my old man the choice he'd cut his roots and live like this." He waved his hands at the comfortable room. "Fact is, he cut his roots away and came to America. Then he lived in a tenement in New York--just one room, walk-up, cold water and no heat. That's where I was born and I lived in the streets as a kid until my old man got a job upstate in New York in the grape country. You see, he knew about vines, that's about all he knew. Now you take my wife. She's Irish descent. Her people had roots too."

 "In a peat bog," the wife said. "And lived on potatoes." She gazed fondly through the door at her fine kitchen.

 "Don't you miss some kind of permanence?"

 "Who's got permanence? Factory closes down, you move on. Good times and things opening up, you move on where it's better. You got roots you sit and starve. You take the pioneers in the history books. They were movers. Take up land, sell it, move on. I read in a book how Lincoln's family came to Illinois on a raft. They had some barrels of whisky for a bank account. How many kids in America stay in the place where they were born, if they can get out?"

 -- Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck