unwaking

I just had one of those horrible dreams, the kind you have of real life, that could be real, that you are convinced is real. The situation is something you wanted so desperately to happen, something to make sense of your current life, and just as you were reaching the moment of understanding, the culmination of your wish, you wake up. You stumble across the floor because it is dark in your little place, you go to turn on the light and the switch is dead. You hear someone slowly approaching on the steps outside, and you think it can only be one person: he of whom you just dreamed, and you are frantically attempting to wake up and turn on a goddamn light, why won’t the light work, and what’s going on, why is he here, where has the fucking sense to my...

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Posted on 28 Mar 2003 | 1 comment

weekly wrap-up

I didn’t like this week’s Friday Five, so I’m trying out Weekly Wrap-Up: Weekly Wrap-Up #48 – Fears & Phobias: 1. What simple things scare you? Why? Walking up a flight of stairs. I am convinced that I will trip and fall and knock my front teeth out. Every single time. 2. Do you have any phobias? If so, what? I have two. One has become infamous: soured dairy products. Nothing freaks me out like milk that has passed its expiration date. It’s past a “gross-out” for me; I am truly afraid of it, like it will infect me or crawl out of the carton and become sentient or something. I am also extremely claustrophobic, but that’s not as weird. 3. What is your earliest memory of being afraid? As a child of four, I had...

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Posted on 28 Mar 2003 | Comments Off

nein! mein geliebtes bauerndorf!

No one could confuse me with a console gamer. I don’t even own a console, and have held a controller maybe, um, five times. I’m not even a PC gamer (is that the proper term?) except I did have a terrifying run-in with Quake once, in which I merely jerked the joystick in a continuous rightward direction and held the trigger down and screamed. The effect of this being, of course, my big bad manly protagonist twirling in a pretty ballerina circle while littering the universe with bullets. Until he ran out. And then he died. Therein ended my PC gaming career. Nowadays, it’s Myst III and The Sims, and neither of those require bullets or ballet moves. Thank goodness. But I do love to watch other people play games. It’s sad, really. I...

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Posted on 28 Mar 2003 | Comments Off

meteora, etcetera

Sushi with Chris and Clay on Tuesday night was lots of fun. They’re my adopted little brothers and my source for Stuff That I Can’t Keep Up With, i.e. new movies and music and books. Clay insisted that A Feast for Crows is coming out in two weeks, but George R.R. Martin says otherwise. Chris informed me that Linkin Park‘s sophomore release “Meteora” is out now and their sound has hardened and improved. And both of them highly recommended the trailer for “Phone Booth”. What a horrific trailer. Am I getting old? The premise of “Phone Booth” is that a slimy man, played by the too-pretty Colin Farrell, answers a pay-phone and is told not to hang up or he’ll be shot. (By Kiefer Sutherland, even. I like...

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Posted on 27 Mar 2003 | 3 comments

raising eyebrows

raising eyebrows

One morning I was blearily walking around with Scott’s lorikeet Midori on my shoulder and decided to show him a mirror to see if he liked it. A lot of getting to know Midori has involved what Scott tells me he likes and dislikes, and some random experimentation. The mirror was a random experiment. Or perhaps I heard somewhere that birds like mirrors. Anyway. I was walking around with Midori on my shoulder, and I showed him the mirror and his reflection in it. What did he do? … I can safely say I was not expecting to get my eyebrows...

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Posted on 27 Mar 2003 | 4 comments

picard knows

Villanelles are tough to write. Villanelles are even tougher to write in the style of a famous poet while being incredibly amusing. I share with you Modern Humorist’s Holy Tango of Poetry: If Poets Wrote Poems Whose Titles Were Anagrams of Their Names. (Read all three pages!)

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Posted on 26 Mar 2003 | 2 comments

eurofoto

I know I fell down on the job of posting email updates while I was in Europe this year, but I think I will work on an after-trip recap. Someday. For now, though, please peruse the photo album.

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Posted on 26 Mar 2003 | 2 comments

success

O, it feels good to sit down with yourself and take stock of everything you have and everything you need and everything you want. Really, I should say “I” because that’s what I did, this weekend. It was a beautiful weekend, weather-wise, the trademark blue-sky Marin resonating with the cheerful outlook ahead. As it wrapped up, I got to meet a new person, a friend-of-several-friends who is visiting the Bay Area. She was charming and sweet, and the interaction reminded me that I am too. I also watched “The Spanish Prisoner” — David Mamet’s only PG rating, as far as I know — and enjoyed it thoroughly, so much so that I’ll watch it again before I return it to Netflix. So, the future gets brighter all the time,...

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Posted on 24 Mar 2003 | 8 comments

defunct

Things happened. I don’t remember when things happen, but dents on my shins, dents on my car remind me. Timelines sink into dishwater; my hands hold the line, and they hold lines. My friends connect to me, throw lines, hooks catch into skin. There is nothing to pull because my skin comes off like a lizard’s, with any thought, a whisper of dead cell shell. If you bring me a toaster, I would have to make bread, so don’t bring me a toaster. This is how I see problems in my life: I avoid because there are steps in between to solving them. Please don’t ask me for my advice. Right now, I would advise you against anything. Snowboarding? Hair-dying? Marriage? Travel? Avoid it all; everything can and will kill you. Or parts. Or break...

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Posted on 22 Mar 2003 | Comments Off

plumbing the depths

Who said the current job market sucks? If you are a computer programmer who speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese, this $11.75/hour job for a plumbing supply company could be yours!

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Posted on 22 Mar 2003 | Comments Off