All thinks considered, I ought to be veg.

Today mom and dad bought some crab to go with our weird-ass Chinese-meets-Middle-American Thanksgiving dinner. The crabs were kept live in a brown paper bag in the sink outside. Later my dad dismembered them and removed the parts that we weren't going to eat.

When I was a kid, mom would buy fish from the Chinese supermarket. Chinese supermarkets, for those not in the know, generally have a live seafood section where you can pick the fish you want and have the option of taking it home and killing it there. As the fish would be fresher if you cook it soon after killing, my parents would opt to buy the fish live. On the drive home I would have a fish in a bag flopping and dying next to me. Upon reaching home, I would go to my bedroom so that I wouldn't have to hear my mom whack the fish's head off. One day, my mom showed me the fish's headless body in the fridge; the nerves were still active, so the body made breathing motions as it had before death.

Yet the only reason I didn't want to eat fish was because I didn't like the taste. Now I enjoy fish. I suspect that I plain don't have any illusions about the dead animals I'm eating.

Seeing M. Butterfly: A Drama in Three Scenes.

Scene one: the costume shop at a small university. Between a barely-started Beijing Opera dress and a kimono stand ME and FRIEND.

Me: What's this all about?

Friend: We're doing M. Butterfly.

Me: Really? I love M. Butterfly! We should see it together.

ME turns to the rack. The sections are divided according to character, with the actor's name beneath. ME reads the name for Song.

Me: Huh. That name doesn't sound Asian. Maybe it's like my last name and it got Anglicised when it came over here.

Scene two: a month later. ME is walking by the theater building on his way to the library. Hearing music, he looks over, not slowing, and sees some actors. One is wearing the Beijing Opera dress.

Me: Hm. Is that the actor playing Song? He looks like he might be half-Asian.

Scene three: a few weeks later. ME is sitting in front of the computer; in the last week he has spread word of M. Butterfly's production, and he is now checking the school website.

Me: Oh, they've announced M. Butterfly, and there's a picture.

ME clicks on the link and sees that the role of Song is played by a young white male.

Me: We're gonna have a problem here.

Fin

Seriously, are there no competent Asian students in our acting program? I might still see the play since a hundred free seats are reserved for students, but if I don't get one of those, I'm probably not going to pay. Honestly, it sort of defeats the purpose of M. Butterfly to cast someone who isn't of Asian descent in the role of Song.

While in the library

I've been spending the last four hours of so working on my statements of purpose for grad school (by which I mean I've been getting only the pre-writing done). And I've been listening to this for almost the entire time:

Besides the trance caused by monotony and repetition, listening to this piece made me consider throwing caution in the wind and trying my hand at costume design.

But that really isn't who I am. Maybe ten years from now.

Ants and spiders

This morning, while getting ready to take my shower, I saw a spider in the tub. I've never really understood why spiders crawl into tubs or sinks. They can't get out and they inevitably drown unless the user is feeling particularly merciful that day.

Anyways, the spider drowned as soon as I started my shower--I tried to get it out, but it didn't want to grab onto my plastic flower. At the end, I reached over to get the conditioner and the bottle fell right on top of the drain, upending a huge amount of hair and the dead spider.

I left it alone and went on with my morning, figuring I'd deal with the cleaning some other time. Later that night, I noticed a huge number of ants on the rim of the tub. After killing them with Raid, I looked into the tub.

The spider had disappeared, but there were a few of its legs here and there.

I suppose that this could be karma. I prefer to think of it as more proof that nature is ugly and horrible.

Can't get away / Tarots of our lives part the second

This morning, I fell asleep at 2AM and woke up at 7AM. Thinking I could go back to sleep, I went onto the computer to check some stuff. Two hours later and I was wide awake. I decided to put some music on and plugged in my earbuds. But then the strangest thing happened. I could hear someone saying my name. I assumed it wasn't for me and went on my merry way.

I heard my name again. I wondered if it was my roommate. I looked outside the windows; not seeing anything, I went back upstairs.

About a half hour later I went down to get breakfast. I could still hear the calling.

Looking outside, I saw an old neighbor from my previous apartment.

It really is a small world (town), isn't it? I had thought I had left everything from the old place, terrible, dirty kitchen and all.

And now for a sudden segue: the second part of my tarot thing. Continuing off of the previous post, here's another set of video game tarots, this time from Persona 2. Since there were about six years between the two games, that gave them enough time to revamp much of the art style and design, and this meant that they brought a very different style to their tarot cards. The heavy use of gold and black give the cards an appearance of shadow puppets bred with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Images from rpgclassics.

Last minutes

It's the day before school and I'm blasting through four days worth of backlogged webcomics and blogs via the library internet. This will be the last of my lazy summer days. I'll be entering my last year of college and will be applying to grad schools. I'll also be helping TA a class, an experience I've only had once way back in my last year of high school. I'll be one of several TAs, but I'm also, as far as I can tell, the only one not working towards a career in education. We'll see how that goes.

The things we pass

Today I visited my grandparents.

When I was young, I used to spend a week out of the summer at my grandparents (back then, I wasn't nearly as easily distracted as I am now, so I could handle spending a week without internet and decent television). There used to be a boy who lived way down the hall. For whatever reason, we became friends and he helped me pass the time.

I thought he was super cool, especially since he had a SNES, a magical console I didn't have that had all sorts of magical, legendary games on it. We'd (sit and I'd watch him) play Ghosts 'n Goblins, the game that solidified my fear of haunted houses and my hatred of games that require reflexes.

I remember that we'd hang out a few more times afterwards, but I eventually stopped going to my grandparents' every summer and we never saw or talked to each other again.

I wonder how many experiences like that we have; meeting people, forming brief connections, and then parting, neither harmed nor enriched by the experience.

"I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight."

Just got back from LA. I visited a few museums and hope to post some of my shitty, low quality, awkwardly angled pictures later. But for now, let's chronicle my favorite part of the trip: my inability to eat.

On the first day, I should have known what was going to happen. The uncle I was staying with wanted to treat me to homemade sushi and I, in my cravings for cuisine of the Far East, was very excited and ate much sushi and sashimi. This was a mistake.

The next morning it felt like someone had sewn a baby into my belly.

We had been invited to dim sum at the horrible early hours of 8AM. Wanting to get at least some food in, I had a few dumplings. This was another mistake.

By the end of the second day I decided I would only eat a little bit and would avoid as much rice and rice-products as possible under the assumption that my stomach problems were caused by the rice part of the sushi.

By the third day I was feeling pretty constipated. No amount of eating as little as possible and drinking lots of water was helping me. But by some miracle, I became well again on the fourth and penultimate day.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if my stomach problems weren't caused by LA pollution. The Bay Area has generally good weather and air, and several years of living in Northern California, with its trees and close proximity to the ocean, has probably cleaned at least some of my system. I wouldn't be surprised if LA's smog was the cause of this. I hate almost everything else about LA, anyways; why not add the air to my list?

I said I became well near the end of our trip, but that's not quite true. My stomach stopped hurting so much, but my appetite hadn't quite returned. In fact, it still hasn't fully recovered.For now, I'm going to look on the bright side. If this means that I can be satisfied by eating kids' sized meals, maybe I'll slim down a bit.

And really, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

Miuccia Prada and the Mulleavy Sisters

I think of these ladies as my heroes and icons (as creepy as that sounds). The Mulleavy sisters, the founders of the Rodarte fashion brand, are both graduates of UC Berkeley. Kate studied art history and Laura studied English literature.

Sometimes I wish I could be like them. They studied artsy stuff (like I am) and they started a successful and quickly growing fashion company (I'd rather go into costuming, but the similarities are there).

But then I remember that I don't have creative talent.

Miuccia Prada I have grown fond of because she's just a little weird. She took over the company in 1979, has a degree in political science, apparently studied to be a mime, was a former member of the Communist Party (according to her, every rich young person back then was), kinda feminist (I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but let's bring this conversation back from the brink of politicking), and, of course, designs for a high fashion company.

But the main reason I like her so much is the way she views sexuality. Prada "has an eye for the perverse. Her work is about inversion and parody, making otherwise dowdy garments desirable, while simultaneously taking the sex out of sexy." One needs only to look at her Fall 2008 collection: what ought to be little-girl fare becomes severe, funereal, church-like sexiness. Fetishistic chastity. Decadent virginity, if you will.

And I'm all about the teasing and not about the pleasing.

Shirts

Oh balls. I bought a bunch of shirts and, because I momentarily forgot how fat I am, they're a size smaller than what I should wear.

I guess I'll be burning some eyeballs when I try them on.

Today I went to the San Jose Museum of Art

See title.

There were a few pieces I was greatly enamored with. First, this very cute stop-motion clip titled "A Wolf Loves Pork."



Next up the Listening Post. The video doesn't do justice to the installation: the entire room echoes with the nonsensical voices, and entire separate bits of posts move across each monitor, making it almost impossible to follow a single one.



Then there were the paintings. These next two were by Sandow Birk, and the computer quality is pretty shitty. These paintings are so much bigger and more impressive in person, especially Purgatorio. The last one is Painting #3 from Themes for the Fin de Siecle, meant to accompany a text written in 1940. The beautiful iron gate works well with the foreboding atmosphere of the piece. In person, it's very glossy, almost like a book cover. Beauty in fear and war. I like.

Beautiful things and ugly things

Ugly things: your sister's Newfie taking a wet dump and getting the shit stuck on his ass fur.

Beautiful things: Guo Jingming, Chinese author who writes predominantly YA lit. I'm sure he has plenty of fangirls. If there were an author in America who looked like him, the Twilight fans would have a collective coronary.

Tengo libros

For an English major, particularly one of the literary studies kind, I don't read much. I argue that's because I have to pour over books for serious business--why would I want to read in my free time? Now that it's summer, I figure I'll want to catch up on some reading. So here's my summer reading list:

Frankenstein: this is for an internship in the coming semester. I've already read the damn thing twice, so I'll mostly be skimming for a quick refresh and gawking at how gay Henry Clerval and Robert Walton are for Victor Frankenstein.

The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: the complete collection of stories (each about ten pages in length except for the novella The Real Story of Ah-Q) by Lu Xun, one of China's leading writers. Since they're short, I can read a few a day, but the real reason I got it is to infuse myself in the stagnant, decaying atmosphere of late-Qing China. I have no excuse to not get through this by the end of the summer.

Spring Snow: 1912 Japan, the rising middle class, and misery. Asking me to not read this is like asking me not to breathe.

I Am a Cat: satire of early 20th century Japanese society. Again, how could I not read this?

Only the Ring Finger Knows: pure, unadulterated trash. After reading a few pages, I started craving McDonalds and Dancing With the Stars.

To the negative four people reading this blog: got anything you plan to read this summer?

Unspoken

My sisters and I went to the funeral today.

It was for their mother and their grandmother. I'd never really been told about my dad's first wife, their mother. I gleaned a few things from comments they made: that she and dad were introduced through high school friends; that she was a very modern lady; that she passed away from illness.

When I was younger, I had a bit of a crisis. If my mother wasn't their mother, that made her the wicked step mother (for, let's be honest, how many kids haven't at least heard of that particular fairy tale trope?). My mother didn't really fit the mold: she wasn't a cackling witch, she wasn't vain, and she couldn't be cruel to my sisters even if she tried (at least part of that is because my mom is far from imposing).

When I was helping my older sister clean some stuff out a year or so ago, she told me that in a fit of postpartum depression, my mom told my dad to burn all pictures of his first wife. My sister hadn't found out until almost twenty years later. She had saved one picture.

I never really pry into my dad's past. He tells me what he does, but I just try not to bring up his first wife. Part of me fears that, even over twenty years after her death, he might still mourn her, might love me and my mom a little less.

She died at 32, in 1986. I was born in 1989. He remarried not even three years later.

I wonder how my sisters felt about that. They never do call my mom "mom." She's always "J" or "your mom."

Today we went to the graveyard after walking the dogs at the beach. My oldest sister had gone inside the flower show and my older sister was trying to balance the bag of McDonald's and keep Paddington, her Newfie, from barking at people.

"How did your mom pass away?" I asked.

"She committed suicide."

"Oh."

"Yeah. It was a chemical imbalance in the brain. She had medication, but she wasn't taking it--SHH!" She turned back to shush Paddington.

So that was the illness my dad was talking about.

I think I won't pry into my family's past anymore.

Cynophobia

I'm staying with my older sister for the next few weeks; the reason being that she wants me to keep her dogs company while she works from 9 to 7 and because she wants to give dad a break from having to clean up dog hair.

I don't particularly care for dogs. I think they're repulsive creatures, all slobber and fangs and fur and feces. No, I should amend that statement. I don't mind dogs when they're not mine and they're not close to me.

My ideal dog, really, is Jessie; Jessie is my oldest sister's Shih Tzu and he acts nothing like a dog. He's quiet, he doesn't run around much, he doesn't move in the car or stick his head out the window, his mouth isn't big enough to make much drool, he doesn't try to come near me, and he leaves me alone when I'm eating.

All these admirable qualities are completely lacking in my older sister's three dogs. Between the three of them is a combination of everything I hate about dogs: Forrest always thinks I'm going to feed him; Daisy is hyperactive and improperly socialized; and Paddington is a monstrous Newfie, only two years old, barely disciplined and strong.

But then, I suppose I'll be fine. Even if it took me years to finally muster up the courage and strength to push down my gag reflex, I did finally manage to pick up one of Paddington's monster turds. If nothing else, it's fun to watch Forrest think I'm going to feed him.

All the cool kids are doing it.

Way back when I was young (which would make this long before I very suddenly bloated past the 180 lb mark) I had a blog. I abandoned it because my life really isn't all that interesting. But because I exist to make people unhappy (and because, as the title says, everyone else has started a blog), I decided to start another internet diary. Here's what you can expect:

Updates whenever I damn feel like it.

As little politicking as possible. I, unlike some of my peers, was raised properly to not question the dominant culture and structures of oppression. That and I do not trust myself to have very well formed opinions.

Mostly pictures and videos. Probably of fashion and other types of fabulosity. From other people's blogs and websites (I'll credit as often as I can).

If I really hate myself and you all, some of my writing.

That really is all. If you decide that you're actually interested in reading this thing, I hope you enjoy yourself.