IPOD
RADIO
I realize that I've been kind of a big giant recluse around here lately, especially with the journal entries. I've just been a little bit busy with some important things (as well as some unimportant things), but I promise I won't fall off the radar so much again. Now, onward to a real live month-spanning journal entry.
We both got fired on exactly the same day
that we were gonna quit it anyway...
Mid-January, Aaron Brothers Art and Framing was well into the swing of the biannual One Cent Sale, and despite the hard work and bitchy customers we couldn't have been better. Our store was at top form, and we had a wonderful line-up of management and staff. Not only were we at the top of our game commercially, but for once in the history of my working at that store, pretty much everyone got along. There was respect for the management, and in turn our management had a real concern and affinity for their staff. Trish, our General Manager, ordered in pizza days and had organized our karaoke night for Christmas. Jess, our Assistant Manager, was a total pal and fun to go to art shows and shopping trips with. Our head framer, Francisco, was an absolute dream: we were three days ahead on custom orders, and he would bring Mexican food for Carrie and me from the little taco stand by his house in Tijuana. None of this is to say that I wasn't still totally fantasizing about quitting every day, but it wasn't as passionate. I was really kind of semi-enjoying work, and I loved my co-workers to the point where I cared about them (and talked to them, even!) long after I clocked out.
Then came the sucker-punches from corporate offices. The main one: Trish was getting a promotion. Now, promotions are fantastic and I will never begrudge her that, but this particular promotion consisted of transferring her to La Jolla, the highest-volume store in our district. That sucked enough. Then, Jess was going to start training to be a GM, and who better to train under than Trish? To compound matters, the La Jolla store was ten days behind on their custom orders, and corporate had heard stories of a wonderful framer who had turned the Mira Mesa store around from a traffic jam to smooth sailing in a little less than a month. And so it came to pass that our store would be losing our manager, assistant manager, and head framer within the next week.
There was nothing left to do but reserve the entire top floor of Bucca de Beppo for an Italian food party on their last night. We took lots of pictures. It's a good time capsule.
A couple weeks after Trish and Jess and Francisco left, Janine deployed for the Coast Guard. She's in Jersey now, hopefully holding up well. God bless her crazy little heart. Jailbait Alison (who didn't show up) turned 18 and quit pretty soon after to pursue her dream of being a smarmy sorority girl. Sol is still here on the weekends only. The rest of the time, he's working at La Jolla. Trish has managed to make La Jolla the top selling district. She was also the only person to drink as much wine as me at the dinner. They had to cut us off because we were starting to be too awesome for the restaurant to handle.
Chi's talking about quitting. One day he might. I hope none of us are here when he does. I think the store might collapse completely around his departure. In the meantime, a bottle of good wine made his stories about Justice League of America that much more bearable. He also told me that he's "trained in knives." He held up his butter knife as if to drive the point home. I don't know how I feel about that.
Carrie and Richard are still just awesome. They got engaged recently, which is too adorable for words. Apparently our new bosses have a problem with them working at the same store together, so I don't know how much longer either of them will be there.
And Francisco and Jess are just at La Jolla now. I've worked over there a couple times and Francisco's always there and once he brought me albondigas soup with lime, and he's still happy to listen to my troubles and be my Ultimate Zen Master. Jess, I haven't seen in entirely too long. I miss her way too much.
Our new bosses... well, Alysa, our General Manager, is cute if ineffective. She smokes Chesterfields and is chronically late and reminds me way too much of myself, which is fine as a friend but let's just say I don't even consider myself managerial material. Kristina, our new Assistant Manager, is just a raging bitch and that's all there is to it. She wears her hair like a tribble and she has a lower-back tattoo that says "MADE IN SO-CAL." I guess I could look past it if she'd make an effort to have any respect whatsoever for her employees, but she doesn't. I hate her.
I'm scheduled to work eight hours this week. Times are bad at Aaron Brothers Art and Framing #32. Store #77 has never had it better.
Oh! it's so good, it's so good, it's so good, it's so good, it's so good;
Oh! I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love;
Oh! I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feel love!
February is the best month of the year, every year running, and I'll tell you why: Valentine's Day, two ridiculous three-day weekends, and my birthday.
Valentine's Day was absolutely lovely. Sometimes I think that my parents really hate me, and then sometimes they buy me a fucking Jones Soda Valentine's Day pack.
How great is that?! I was going to make a thread about it, but it wasn't disgusting enough. It tastes like cotton candy and Nerds and Kool-Aid powder on a summer evening. It's like everything you like best about childhood. It makes you happy just to drink it. I fell in love.
After school that day, I came home and dressed up in my best retro finery. Somehow Andrew and I had managed to secure reservations to my favorite Italian restaurant that same day. They had a special menu and everything, with fancy aphrodesiastic seafood dishes. We got calamari, which he said he'd never had before-a grave situation that had to be rectified immediately. Then I had shrimp and crab lasagna, and he had some sort of mish-mashed clammy mussel pasta. I threw three glasses of chianti into the mix and got insanely giddy. It only added to the good times.
I made him a mixtape, like I do every year because I think they're just a bit nicer than chocolates, and got so loopy on chianti that I forgot to give it to him until weeks later. Terrible girlfriendness aside, I think it game out good this year. It goes a little something like this:
It's my little tradition. He says it's a good one. That's good enough for me.
The three-day-weekends weren't too spectacular aside from sleeping a little more than usual, but my birthday was certainly interesting.
To be more precise, it was horrors and chaos, ranging wildly in size. My uncle Kevin was in the hospital suffering from an infection that may or may not be related to an overdose or a recluse spider bite. (Depending on who you ask.) Andrew was in bed, sick with a tooth abcess swelling his face up to epic proportions. Don Knotts and Darren McGavin died. My grandparents were too busy doing their taxes to visit. And so it went, and all I wanted were enchiladas. I got them almost a week later, when my grandparents finally came out. They were delicious. (The enchiladas, that is; I do not wish to know how my grandparents taste.) The steak and potatoes I had on the day of my birthday weren't bad either.
So, there are a couple of people whom I consider among my most favorite people in existence forever and ever, and they only continue to prove themselves.
Andrew went to San Francisco the week before my birthday, but there wasn't enough room with all his friends who'd planned the trip so I couldn't go. When he was there, however, he went out of his way and risked ridicule by his friends to go to the Beat Museum and bring me back awesome Jack Kerouac books. Not pictured: print version of The Onion!
There are no words to express how amazing Alukh is. Not only did she make me a beautiful shirt by hand, but she got me to pick out my own yarn colors under false pretenses. The detail on this thing blows my mind. For chrissake, it's got little beads knitted into it!
My baby sister gave me a rubber band triangle (like a ball but more creative!), a couple paper clips, a seed bead bracelet, a gift card to Nordstrom with no money on it, a sheet of stickers, a dollar, and a penny. She was amused to no end as she handed it to me in a heap. This confirms my scientific theory that first-graders are dorks.
My parents gave me a black Coach handbag. It is fabulous, and you can barely even see the logo which makes it all the more perfect.
Am I grateful?
Absolutely.
To bring that week to a disheartening note, my aforementioned Uncle Kevin did die. I wish there was more I could say about it, but I'd only ever met him a couple of times. He and my dad just didn't get along at all. From what I hear, he had a lot of problems that prevented cameraderie, specifically drug habits and certain ethnic predilections which made him not a big fan of my mother. My dad flew out for the funeral alone, and returned at the end of the weekend. It was tragic, but it happens.
Such is life, ne ç'est pas?
Sing that song that I used to know:
the fourteenth black domino.
Hold me like long ago,
a heartbeat sure and slow...
Not to jar you back into an upbeat entry so quickly, but for the love of god OZMA came back!
It was in January that they announced their intent to reunite, and we knew that we had to be there. I had seen them live four times before their original break-up in 2003, more than any other band. Three of those times were with Andrew. I found out about their break-up rather abruptly, and--oddly enough--from Bryan Lee O'Malley at Comic-Con not two weeks after we had slogged through throngs of pre-teens to see them open for Rooney.
But they're BACK!
We got to the Soma sidestage and were quite startled to see James and Sandy and Phonesevanth there as well, in a stunning lack of planning and forethought which might have allowed us to take one car instead of two. The other three were here to see some local opening act called OneRepublic. They sounded like if Muse and Maroon Five decided to start a side band that solely produced music for today's sensitive frat boy to use to get into girls' pants. Click on the MySpace link if you don't believe me. They also had Essence of Goo Goo Dolls, just to up the suckage ante. Horrible!
The second opening act was called Satisfaction, and they sounded like if Squeeze and Superdrag had a baby and decided to make that first letter of their names part of some kitschy family theme. (Seriously, there are families who do this: just ask my uncle Mike and aunt Maryanne and their kids Marilyn and Melinda.) Their singer looked like my friend Daniel, and their drummer looked like a young Huey Lewis. Though our judgment was clouded by the horrors of the first band, we were okay with this. In fact, Drew bought the CD and we discovered that we really liked them quite a bit. Aces!
The third band was just blah. Another local band called The Parker Theory, who had suckage with the added bonus of being generic and bland. The singer strained his voice while making weird faces like he was constipated, in the tradition of Dexter Holland. Bleh.
And then, Ozma came on to pump out the jams, and pump out the jams they did. Look at José there! You GO, you sexy tiger, you!
Of course they'd changed some. Pat, their original hulking chain-smoking Zen Dungeonmaster drummer, did not return. Their new one was pretty good though, and he retooled a beautiful piano intro for "Battlescars," which only made me love that song more. They sounded a little bit rusty, but who could expect more from a band who'd been broken up for over two years?
Star also has blonde hair now, rekindling my own interest in a bottle of bleach. Andrew yelled something about wanting to bear her children, and I almost had to wear a paper bag over my head for the rest of the night.
Still, for the longest time we'd always imagined a love affair between Star and Ryen. There was always something extra-protective about him toward her, and they smile at each other a lot more than any other band members. We would elbow each other and grin every time they exchanged glances.
Thanks to the power of MySpace, now we know that they're not. Apparently Star's engaged now, and it isn't to Ryen. We were disappointed that our intuition had failed us.
Still, Star is in Ryen's Top Eight! So... who can say what goes on in their hearts?
Ah, such romance.
After the show, we all went to Denny's, which was fun. I had a cheeseburger, on account of I don't get to eat them very often right now. I have given up fast food for Lent this year, in the hopes that I'll save some money and lose some weight. So far I don't know that it's exactly done that, but there's still a month to go.
And that almost brings us up to date! It brings us to last weekend, at least, and that isn't half bad. Now I'm going to bed, so you'll have to hear about A Night on the Town with TedKoppel next time. I have to be on a bus in seven hours, to tutor high school children. Oh, joy. One more quarter. One more quarter.
[xoxo]
Oh joy, a survey! I rarely do these, but FreakPirate tagged me, and thus out of respect (and a slight fear of Canadian fists of fury) I shall see it through. I hope you've prepared yourself for extreme boredom, because HERE IT COMES!
Seven things I want to do before I die:
1) Write a book and have it published.
2) Return triumphantly to Tokyo.
3) Learn some kind of productive skill like sewing or knitting.
4) Meet some of the people whom I call my friends-on-teh-intarnets.
5) Acquire some pretty tattoos and Johnny Walker Blue Label.
6) Have a happy little home and family of my very own.
7) Beat Mario Bros. 1.
Seven things I can not do:
1) Beat Mario Bros. 1.
2) Solve multiple-variable calculus problems.
3) See anything further than 4" from my face without corrective lenses.
4) Walk in high heels like a normal person (thanks to a lack of arches).
5) Run long distances without having an asthma attack.
6) Drive to the grocery store without getting into at least three near-accidents.
7) Keep my goddamned room clean.
Seven things that attract me to Canada San Diego:
1) I go to school here.
2) My family lives here.
3) My favorite boy lives here.
4) Javier's Sombrero Mexican restaurants.
5) The weather is mostly beautiful.
6) It's an awesome place once you get out of the suburbs.
7) And did I mention the Mexican food?
Seven things I say most often:
1) Indeed.
2) Oh, I see.
3) OH, REALLY.
4) Oh my...
5) Quite.
6) Seriously?
7) OH MY FUCKING GOD I HATE (*insert whatever here*)!!!1!
Seven books (or series) that I love:
1) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
2) Life After God by Douglas Coupland
3) On the Road by Jack Kerouac
4) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
5) Girl Goddess #9 by Francesca Lia Block
6) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
7) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Seven movies I watch over and over again:
1) High Fidelity
2) Ferris Bueller's Day Off
3) Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
4) Better Off Dead
5) Empire Records
6) Cidade de Deus
7) The Rules of Attraction
Seven People chosen at random to take this:
1) Alukh
2) TedKoppel
3) MiniMeaney
4) And it seems like most everyone else
5) has already gotten around to this
6) survey, so I think that's it.
7) Okay!
Well. That was fun. I shall write a real journal entry as soon as I get new batteries for my camera, so that I can show what wonderful things I got for my birthday. Speaking of which: thanks for all the birthday wishes, guys. You all are top of cool.
[xoxo]
PARTY ALL UP IN THE HIZZOUSE! BREAKIN' IT DOWN WITH THE JOHNNY WALKER RED!
And when I say "party all up in the hizzouse," I mean I'm dancing to "Lucas with the Lid Off" in my room. Because that's the way we roll. On a different note, I don't think they pack nearly enough liquor into travel-sized bottles of whiskey. Don't you agree?
[xoxo]
I.) This is another one of my stupid little pseudo-updates. I'd make it a long update, but I have a couple hundred half-finished comic strips that I want to post up with my update about my incredibly convoluted and topsy-turvy current work situation, so it'll just have to wait a couple more days. I haven't posted any comic strips in forever, and this makes me sad.
II.) I will say, however, that although it took a couple of nerve-wracking awful screaming days, things are pretty much calmed down around this house regarding the whole college situation. Which is good. We all survived it, and things will be okay. It'll probably be even better once I don't live here anymore, but at least my mother isn't actively trying to chop my head off with a butcher knife while I sleep.
III.) In lieu of any real content, here are a couple of interesting upcoming events:
ONE Saturday from now: I turn 22! Hurray for birthdays! No idea what I'll be doing to mark the occasion. Perhaps my grandmother will buy me a car. Har har.
THREE Saturdays from now: A trek to the icy north! God (and affordable airline tickets) willing, Andrew and I shall head up north to visit Daniel and Hillary in Davis, but I have made it clear that if we don't spend at least one day in San Francisco I'm goint to stab someone in the head. Probably Daniel. I demand a pilgrimage to the Beat Museum, posthaste.
Let's hear it for Saturdays! Excitement to the max, won't it be? The days are just packed.
(AMENDMENT: Daniel sent me an instant message while I slept last night, saying "Made it clear to whom, exactly? Not I, certainly. I've decided that Oakland is so much cooler than boring old San Francisco, and I hang out there when I'm not in Marin, sipping champagne and making derisive comments about other peoples' jeans." So I guess I'll have to live out the rest of my pathetic days never having seen a handwritten Ginsberg poem or a letter from Kerouac. Oh well. Ç'est la vie. *sigh*)
(AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT: Daniel is a stupid nerd and we WILL be going to San Francisco. Even if Drew and I have to kidnap him and drive there ourselves. Once we figure out how to work Daniel's stick-shift pick-up truck...)
IV.) I have only a couple more weeks in which to write sixty pages worth of viable novella for my Novella-Writing Class. I only have ten pages so far, but on the plus side I rather like what I have written. Here is my favorite paragraph so far:
She said that once, when she was there, they took her to a lake at night and it was foggy and dark, but there were these fireflies and they were going absolutely crazy. She said there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, zipping and hovering over the water and the trees and the boats and right in front of her face. She felt like she could have gathered them in a ball and lit up the whole world, if only they all could have worked together. But instead they simply hummed along in the darkness, searching out paths with others, neither perpendicular nor parallel, each one blinded by its own faint little light.
I told her I wished that I could have seen them. Fireflies don't happen in California.
It's true, you know. Science says fireflies don't come west of Kansas. This makes me extremely sad. I've always wanted to see one flitting about in real life.
V.) I am sleepy, and I think I shall go end this and go to bed. Good night, everyone.
[xoxo]
I gotta take a stand. I'm full of shit. I put up with everything. My old man pushes me around, and I never say anything. Well he's not the problem, I'm the problem. I gotta take a stand. I gotta take a stand against him. I am not gonna sit on my ass as the events that effect me unfold to determine the course of my life; I'm gonna take a stand.
And I'm gonna defend it. Right or wrong, I'm gonna defend it. My father will come home, he'll see what I did. I can't hide this. He'll come home, he'll see what I did, and he'll have to deal with me. I don't care, I really don't. I'm just tired of being afraid.
It's okay. It's gonna be good.
Last night I fell asleep next to a liar,
and I woke up with a shiner...
As soon as I got out of work on Christmas Eve I drove out to Andrew's house. Any other time he'd be the one to go get me, what with his being an infinitely better driver than me and all, but on this occasion I had to go rescue him from his house and exchange presents and take him for burritos at Colima's. Why? Because apparently his brother James is more dangerous than anyone could have thought when you try to take away his World of Warcraft. Kicking and screaming dangerous, even. It was pretty fucking horrendous. Wanna see? Of course you do.
Egads, eh? It's finally pretty much healed up. In related news, we think James might have some emotional problems.
So we spent a good hour of Christmas Eve driving around the city trying to find a good sit-down restaurant still open. By "driving around," I mean going all wonky-astigmatism-eyed in the fog and nearly avoiding several car accidents while he questions how much driving experience I really have. (Downtown? NONE!) In the end we settled down with burritos, and then Daniel came over and we made fun of people on Myspace or something until I had to go home and sleep. I gave Andrew his present. (An iPod shuffle and Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume 4 with a pirate skull keychain on the box!) He handed me my present and it weighed about a hundred pounds. I heaved it through the door and my mother rolled my eyes and told me I probably wouldn't like it, but I asked for it so I'll have to live with it.
It's Christmas Eve and you know I am hardly sleeping,
but there are no presents waiting for me on the floor.
It's the one day of the year when I use
what my super Jewish powers are for. (HEY!)
Christmas was good. Very good. Extremely good. That ten-ton box from Andrew turned out to be The Complete Calvin and Hobbes hardcover book set. How I could possibly not like something like that, I have no idea. My mother was trying to tell him I'd rather have a Coach handbag or some impersonal crap like that. It's good to know that he knows me better than that. I'm about halfway done re-reading them all.
Not that my parents did a horrible job, either. From them, I got an HP PhotoSmart 8250 an über-fancy top quality photo printer which I love to death. I just bought a photo album at work. I'll be filling that sucker up posthaste. In addition, I got some awesome makeup, three pairs of knee socks, and chocolates. Hell yes. And a Tamagotchi thing from my little sister, which was cute. I got her a GameCube. it's kind of a... family present, really. It's lots of fun. Then, after unwrapping and a hearty breakfast, we packed up and went to the relatives' for dinner.
Leave it to my little family to go to my grandma's Christmas dinner and shake everything up with a smattering of Hannukah spirit. My dad may not embrace his Judaism, but that's okay. Even though I'm just a shixa in the eyes of the Torah, I can still play a mean dreidel. It's in the blood, you know. Besides, my uncle and his kids were also there, with enough good Christian values for all of us. By this, I mean that his stepson called from jail right as we were sitting down to say grace, which sent the mother into tears, and then during dinner he talked about the Chinese chopping up people in their food and called my dad a homosexual. Then he wrote me a check for forty bucks as a present. I guess that makes us even.
Check out that look in Boni's eye, holding that swap meet BB-glock. 10 years old and ready to fuck shit up. Dear lord.
From my grandma, I got a pretty silver necklace and one hundred dollars. It's no car, but there's always my birthday for that.... right?
She was into S&M and bible study;
"Not everyone's cup of tea," she would admit to me.
Her cup of tea, she would admit to no one.
Her cup of tea, she would admit to me...
The day after Christmas, I had to work. Biggest sale of the year, doncha know. For every one frame you buy at regular price, you can get a second frame (of equal or lesser value, marked with a copper dot sale sticker) for just a penny! But as I slaved away behind the register, I knew that it'd be okay, because Alukh was home for the holidays and the next day would be golden.
You see, my idiot dentist insisted that I take my labret out to do some routine x-rays, and wouldn't you know it closed right up? This was back at the very beginning of December, and was extremely vexing. So the only thing left to do was go back to Mastodon and have it repierced, and who better to come with me than Ally? We took her little sister with us, but she had to stay in the waiting room. Ally came in with me to hold my hand while the needle did its job. I ended up with Kate again, the same lady who did my labret the first time. She got the needle directly through where it originally was, so there's no scarring. It barely even hurt, and two weeks later it's almost completely healed. I'm utterly in love with that woman. We dodged the creepy guy in the lobby who suggested I get my undercarriage pierced, and--armed with new holes and newly acquired shiny things--went to the Irish tavern next door to celebrate.
Irish Car Bombs and cheese fries for teh win!
Then we went back to her house for a little while and played Trivial Pursuit: SNL (never once getting a question about Celebrity Jeopardy, leading to our ultimate demise) and then we exchanged presents. She gave me two lovely shirts, made even better by the fact that she made them herself. I wore the navy blue wrap shirt for the New Year. Speaking of which...
Pop open a bottle of bubbly. Yeah.
"Here's to another goddamn new year."
New Year's Eve is really, really great.
Ahh, we came close to doing nothing whatsoever for New Year's. It was a dire situation. The entire week--month, even-- had been nothing but beautiful weather. No one had counted on rain, but it did exactly that, and both Andrew's car and Daniel's truck were rendered undrivable. We prevailed in the face of despair, however, and were able to make it to Phonesevanth's house, which, while probably not as nice as the party Andrew's older brother Alonso was throwing, was still tons better than nothing. Even if Sandy decided to do nothing for the first half of the party except be a real class act and watch softcore porn on his ex-girlfriend's TV.
Daniel came to the rescue right off by mixing up a lovely batch of gin-and-tonic. (I helped! I cut the limes, bitches.)
The only thing about too much gin is that it can lead to you impulsively hardcore slam dancing at inappropriate moments, like during Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve.
(But really, haven't we all?)
We counted down to midnight; we had no champagne, only gin and rum, but that was okay. We played Taboo and Smash Brothers Melée, because that's the way Sandy and Phonesevanth roll. I handed the camera off to Daniel for a while, but mostly he just zoomed in on my shirt to ridiculous degrees before passing out in the front yard. (Because it's not really New Year's with our posse unless someone passes out in someone else's front yard.) I liked the more "complete" pictures better.
The night grew long and we scooped Daniel up and sent him home with Matt where we hear he had to stop the car to ralph twice on the ride home. We went with William, I think, and went home, and slept, and in the morning we went to Fillipi's in Little Italy and had absolutely mind-blowingly fabulous sausage and mushroom pizza. And it was 2006.
And now it's even later and I'm falling asleep, so you'll just have to hear about the magical wonders of this year another day, some time soon since I don't have to be worried about figuring out how to upload movies. Good night, good night, good night, my dears. Good night.
[xoxo]
P.S. ~ Anyone know anything about this?
As you may or may not have noticed, I had a sneaky little wishlist posted through the month of December, in case anyone was feeling Christmassy. Much to my surprise, something from it actually arrived on my doorstep! It says it came from Illinois, but that's about as much as I know. How can I thank you if I don't know who you are, anonymous internet benefactor? And also, how can I ask you why you think my awesome writing (or natural wit and charm?) really warrants neat stuff and who you ought to see about taking medication for that?
To all the boys, all the boys...
I had the best dorm suite ever. EVER. And by "best" I mean "most dramatic." I guess it's not really a female dorm suite unless there's a tiny insecure girl crying and an overweight girl getting drunk and/or laid. (To my credit, I was neither.)
Here we are at the transmission party.
I love your friends, they're all so artsy, oh yeah...
So on the 3rd of December, Pulp! magazine Volume 2 No. 1 (Fall Issue) was released. It has a glossy tri-fold cover and manila folder inserts and it's impossibly hard to read, which can only mean that it's experimental literature, and I finally got off my ass and submitted something. There was a release party at Prayer's apartment. I made a solemn promise to myself not to drink, because I still didn't trust my stomach after a run-in with Crown Royal and food poisoning and Hefeweizen and nachos and my black suede Kangaroo shoes earlier in that same week. (An episode which I'd rather not relate in further detail, if you don't mind.)
Hey, did you know that I rather enjoy gin-and-tonics? Neither did I! But now I do! WHEE! Yeah okay, that solemn promise lasted about until half an hour into the party when Janice thrusted a cup of Tanqueray into my hand and really, what could I do but drink it? It would have been rude of me not to.
So here's what I like about Creative Writing department parties. For one thing, you never know when someone's going to show up wearing something like a programmable marquee belt buckle. Even if the person wearing it is dorky old Adry, at least you've all had a bit to drink and that makes it almost okay.
Because then Nancy and John Walton and some other dude decide to make a human pyramid to touch the ceiling and you forget all about Adry and his belt buckle anyway.
Then Shoshanna jumps on Nancy like a crazed redhead tiger and makes the little Asian girl next to them spill wine all over the carpet and you run to get club soda but all you can find is gin-tonic so you suggest that instead and god knows if it worked or not.
And there's some dude (whose name you forget) with a really boss hat, and there's a dog who barfed up all the brie and baguette you were feeding it earlier and then ate it, and you have no idea what's going on now but things are clearly getting interesting.
So you decide to dance by yourself for a while to The Rapture, and somebody stuck a Newcastle label to the window and you take a picture because you're interested and a little bit narcissistic and that's fine, too.
And then Prayer breaks out the guitar and asks you to sing for her because people inexplicably like your voice, and everyone's inspired by the little comic strip you wrote, and everyone in the room sings "Semi-Charmed Life" and everyone in the room remembers all the words and the stairway echoes with a chorus of doot doot doots still ringing til midnight when the gin has worn off and it's time to leave.
Writers party til the break of dawn.
It's true.
There is just one moon and one golden sun,
and a smile means "friendship" to everyone.
Though the mountains divide, and the oceans are wide,
it's a small world after all...
The following weekend, my family took a quaint two-hour drive past San Onofre into the heart of "the O.C.": Disneyland. The thing I like best about the L.A. area is that the sky is always a crazy unnatural chemical blue. It's one of my favorite colours.
I'd never been to Disneyland during the Christmas season before. It was really beautiful. I'm kind of a sucker for fake snow and Christmas lights. Especially Christmas lights. And lights were everywhere. Down the French Quarter, across Fantasyland, absolutely everywhere.
It's a lot bigger than it was the last time I was there (seven years ago). It's weird looking out where the parking lot used to be, and seeing a whole other theme park. We didn't go to California Adventure; there was too much to do at just the one park. It seems like the kind of thing you need to reserve a weekend for.
It was a lot of fun though. What a huge place. The kind of place that makes real snow fall in an 80º December in the middle of Orange County. What a magical world we live in.
Christmas, Christmas time is here:
time for toys and time for cheer.
We've been good, but we can't last;
hurry Christmas, hurry fast...
Okay I know it was already Christmas, but that's a story for another journal entry. I have to figure out how to upload movies onto GoogleVideo or something. Trust me, the karaoke from our work Christmas party is worth it. Till then, happy holidays everyone. There's still six more days of Hannukah. Live it up, goyim!
[xoxo]
a.) Time-and-a-half pay.
b.) I might get to model for a photo project for our ultra-talented framer.
c.) Alukh is coming home.
All in all, I'll get by. More tomorrow when I have a day off. Something about Disneyland, something about Christmas parties, something about co-workers and ex-co-workers that should be shot, and something about what happens when dorky lit students get together and party down. Here's a preview:
FUN FACT: Franzia box wine is the national drink of Spanish immigrants. I know this is true because my grandpa and Andrew's dad are the only people I know who buy and drink it for reasons other than "college party." BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!
[xoxo]
p.s. ~ What the hell, I haven't updated in a month?! Why don't people tell me these things? God I'm lazy. I blame finals.
happy birthday, happy birthday...
Where, oh where, oh where have I been these past three weeks? A good deal of November has consisted of nothing, but the twelfth was Andrew 'n James's birthday. Ohhhhhhh me.
I was pretty worried for a while that I wasn't going to be able to make it to their party because I'd been emergency-employed to babysit a sick little sister, but luckily enough I was able to procure a ride, albeit late but good enough, out to Min Suk Choi where the festivities were being held. When I got there, Dan and his girlfriend had already gone home, so it was just me, Drew, Sandy, Sandy's ex Phon, and William. An interesting dynamic, to be sure. (We were still waiting on James, who'd gone to some Röyksopp concert or something.) I gave him his present (Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 for Mac!) and took my seat at the table. This is pretty much all that was on there by the time I arrived:
In the foreground: tiny fish. Tiny salty fish. A delectible appetizer, I'm told. NOT. COOL. Andrew admitted that I probably wouldn't like them, but everyone else insisted that they're good. Like a yummy piece of wood, they said! They definitely had the consistency of a wood chip, but the flavour left something to be desired. In the background, however: soju. For the uninitiated, soju is like Asian wine cooler, only better for two reasons. a.) It comes in a myriad of delightful flavours! b.) It will fuck you up. They'd ordered one pitcher each of yoghurt, lemon, and pineapple. Andrew and Sandy were already well into them when I got there, and I became determined to catch up. Genius. Because I can totally match two 200-plus-lb. boys for drinks, right?
Andrew wasn't actually very gone in that picture, so much as he was just pretending to be. I, on the other hand, was getting there at record speed. (When Sandy took it, Andrew said it was dorky as hell, but God I adore that picture. Look! A Christmas tree! Ooooh!) As I proceeded on this journey of self-discovery, I became acutely aware of a cherry at the bottom of two of the pitchers (tossed in from Phon's personal frou-frou drinks). I decided that I had to have them, and after unsuccessful stabs for glory with a chopstick, it became clear that my only choice was to drink my way to them. Meanwhile Sandy started getting really fucking loud and obscene (even more so than usual), and then he tried to molest William with his mouth or something and all of a sudden it was time to leave.
Sandy peed on a tree out by the car. We got it on video. It's pretty sweet. I'd host it, except for the fact that I'm laughing like a goddamn maniac through the entire clip. I sound like Fezzick from The Princess Bride right before he drops dead of iocaine poisoning. Never go in with a Sicilian when death is on the line! AH-HA-HA-HA! AH-HA-HA-HA! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-*! Nerd alert.
Memories fade,
but the scars still linger...
After the restaurant, Phon drove us all to Belmont Park to meet James. I wish I'd taken pictures. We walked down to the waves. I think I took off my shoes. I tricked Sandy into turning around so that Andrew could throw a chunk of seaweed on his head. Sandy grabbed a clump the size of a six-year-old in each hand and barrelled after us. We would have made it to safety, except that I stumbled over my half-on shoe and fell over and was thus consumed by kelp, laughing panicked and hysterical. James got there and couldn't find us, so we had to go hunting. We finally did meet up, where he and Sandy conspired to say some real fuck-ass things and start being real jerks, and I remember getting very upset with them, and walking back to the car, and then we may as well have teleported back to Drew's on winged unicorns, from all I can gather. I woke up in the morning with a pound of sand in my hair and a mother of all splitting headaches. Drew fixed it with Excedrin (because he is awesome) and tried to show me how to play PGA Tour.
Unfortunately for my health, I had to be at work by noon. I spent most of it lying on the floor behind the framing counter trying to make the room stop spinning and my tunnel vision go away. Luckily for me, the general manager wasn't there. Doubly lucky for me, the assistant manager had a hangover of her own and wasn't about to fault me for mine.
Apparently I didn't do anything tooooo embarrassing while we were out, but let me tell you, it took me a week to sleep normally again. MORAL: never underestimate the soju. Jesus christ.
What has happened to
the friend that I once knew?
Has she gone away...?
Speaking of work, it's been nothing but drama-drama-drama lately, and it's all coming from Janine. Our cute little confident Janine, whom we have loved and still love dearly, has lately become a fucking train wreck of illogical decisions, downright arrogance, and an unhealthy obsession with the Society for Creative Anachronism where they have fake wars and beat each other up with rattan swords. If that sounds like a scary combination, you're right. Every time we work with her, it's some variation of how fucking awesome she is. "Oh my god, everyone at SCA thinks I'm so hot! I'm like a Ferrari! I'm probably the hottest person working here. It's because I'm a D-cup. Oh, you are too? Mine's just so much more pronounced, though. I'm tall and hot and have hot tall boyfriends. I rule. I had sex with my ex-boyfriend in the sci-fi section of a bookstore in Julian! That's how hot I am! I RULE!" Which is, of course, all insecurity problems because her boyfriend left her. She also joined the Air Force on a whim to get back at him, and pulled out a couple weeks later because she decided that they're "anti-feminist." So she said she's joining the Coast Guard instead. They're more liberal and pro-woman, she says. I say: good luck with that.
Today Janine topped herself yet again. (It seems to be happening every time Carrie and I work.) Apparently at her last SCA fake war, somebody made her a chainmail bikini, and she had pictures taken in said bikini. I guess she brought the pictures to show someone at work, but what happened was she left them on the fucking stocking stuffers display where kids can reach them, forgot about them, and went home. And they were picked up by Jess, our assistant manager. GENIUS! Jess probably wouldn't have reported her either if everyone wasn't getting so agitated with her from past events anyway, but as it stands she reported it to our general manager, who was pissed off beyond belief and reported it upward to the district manager. I guess they're treating it all as an accident, but I hear they're going to make her talk to human resources! AWESOME. Ohhhhhhh, Janine. But you didn't hear this from me. So shhh.
No, no, no:
have you no ambition?
In other news, I just love it when people pay attention to my writing!
EXHIBIT A:
You see, I got inspired, and I made a little thread about it here on the Silliness board, and it got kind of popular. It even got moved to the Lifestyle forum, which lent it a little bit of credibility. One of the awesomely wonderful editors suggested that I make an external blog about my adventures of soda. So I did! Lo and behold, the blog made it to the Newswire! Technically, I guess you could say I was featured on the front page of SG. Hee! That whole thread makes me very happy. I'm famous on the internets! Kind of. Hah!
EXHIBIT B:
Everything Else is a Picnic: Will This Song Live On Long After We Do? is officially being published in my school's experimental literature magazine. Yay! They let me pick whichever comic I decided fit best. So far, of all that I've done, that one is my favorite.
It's 1:22 in the morning now, and I think I'm going to get some sleep.
Yes, that sounds like a splendid idea.
And tomorrow, I shall go shopping for Thanksgiving delicacies.
(And get my hair cut! Hurrah!)
Good night.
[xoxo]
but don't forget: you've only got so many tricks --
No one lives forever!
"What?!" What's that, you say? "No Everything Else is a Picnic?!" Yeah well, fall back or I'll cut you! Yarrr!
Sorry guys, but on the plus side it means that I've been a little bit busy, and there are all the more photographs for it. Like of pirates. Arr! Okay okay, I'm a geek. Yes. I know. Let's get crackin'.
Tonight, tonight,
I'm burning Star IV...
The Thursday before last, Andrew and I went to see Coheed and Cambria, which was brilliantly awesome. I got all the books, because I'm that kind of kid. The security bastards wouldn't let me bring in my camera, because they are such fucking assholes. (Same assholes that took away my autograph-sharpie at the MTX show, thus depriving me of any good nonchalant excuse to talk to the venerable Dr_Frank.) At any rate, looked a little something like this:
Only, you know, with even more ROCK. Like, double-neck Cheap Trick guitar kind of rock. I spent the car ride there telling Andrew how I can totally play "The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut" on my guitar; then they end the show on that song and turn it into a 10 minute outro and Claudio played guitar scales behind his head, promptly cutting my guitar bad-assery and egomaniacal pride off at the knees. It was more than made up for by the general radness of the performance, even if they were off-tempo a little on some bits. Conversely, both opening acts blew chunks. It is of my humble opinion that Blood Brothers should be dipped in acid and fed to sharks with laser beams for eyes. Dredg weren't horrible so much as insufferably bland, so I don't know, they can choose their own boring death.
Hey, hey, hey, my comrade:
strike a pose for me...
That same Saturday, my co-worker Sol and some visionary contemporaries of his had an art show downtown , and because he's awesome he invited everyone at work to come and see it. Live music, cheap food, and rad art, all for a $3 donation. How could we pass it up?
Jess and I came in one car; Master//Blaster (Carrie and Richard) came in another. The original plan was that Jess would pick up her girlfriend and then we'd pick up El Boy. The way it worked out was that, as completely independent of each other as humanly possible in that they don't even know each other, Julia and Andrew both decided that they wanted to be antisocial and play Warcraft on their computers at home instead. The fact that they have the same birthday raises the possibility of mysterious astrological implications, and you can't argue with astrology, so we just moped a little, popped off to Henry's Market for snacks, and went as buddy dates. Master//Blaster laughed at us, and we told them to shove it: we were by far the cutest girly dates in the whole joint, and everyone deserves a little Warcraft now and then.
The tiny little cute Japanese girls. They were everywhere. Anywhere there was something to buy. They purveyed the buttons, they mixed the drinks, and they mixed them strong. Who can resist an itty-bitty Japanese girl waving a Red Bull and Vodka in front of your face for a dollar? And in this manner, at the art show, I became very very very very drunk.
Nobody knew what to expect from Sol as far as his artwork went. He does everything from full-wall graffiti murals to carving patrons' likenesses out of giant blocks of cheese. The art show had a theme of rebirth ("over 'n over") and thus he dedicated it to the ladies. One of his works was a set of three sculptures, of a girl at three stages in her life. The other was "The Period Posse," a set of eight transparency paintings (finally finding a use for our store's ever-popular clear acrylic box frame!) with a girl on the front of each one, and an acrylic-painted maxi pad inside. We recognized one of the girls as our co-worker Jailbait Allison, but only in the eyes and the hair. As a sort of interactive-piece-slash-guestbook, he put up a large sheet of butcher paper for everyone to draw on. I painted the Virgin Mary in wax-resist when we first got there. I came back half an hour later with a drink in one hand and a hot dog in the other to find some fucker drawing some sort of Satan-uterus over her face, and I promptly freaked out.
I couldn't decide whether I was appalled or insanely amused by the symbolism. I decided to go with the latter, because there was really nothing I could do about it at that point.
My photography started getting really bad later on. Sorry! But I just had to show you that Tonya -- our ex-framer, who left a two-week notice and then bailed out of showing up in favor of being somebody's sugar baby down in Mexico for a couple weeks -- showed up, thankfully just after Jess left to avoid maximum drama. I'm still just a mite furious that she blatantly ripped off my tattoo idea that I asked her advice on and then raped and bastardized it for her own dark designs, even more so than having to work double shifts to cover all the hours she skipped out on. Sol says she got sloppy drunk and passed out on the snack table.
And I can't believe that anyone would
want to do such a terrible thing, but
why should I care...?
(Nothing bad ever happens to me...)
The following Wednesday, I was doing my student-teacher-ing over at the high school. School lets out for the day at 2:10. We made it to 1:45 when the school went under CODE RED TERRORIST BOMB THREAT LOCKDOWN and everyone had to hide under desks with the lights out. at 2:00, the principal dismissed everyone to go home... except everyone parked out in front of the 700s building. Apparently there was what appeared to be a pipe bomb planted in the parking lot, and they had to call the bomb squad out to dismantle it. Oh good, guess who parked in front of the 700s building. Detained as I was, I called up Alukh to whine about it. (And also to tell her that an Honors English teacher that neither of us ever had remembered us both and said to tell her "hi!") Row by row, they let people leave. Finally, at 2:40, after everyone else had left I was allowed out to my car, with the principal shaking her head. Why? Because I'm fucking awesome.
It figures, doesn't it? I asked for permission to take pictures. They said they didn't mind. It's not every day that you get the fucking bomb squad huddled around your car. I asked if it was a real bomb or not, but they said they weren't authorized to disclose that sort of information. On Friday, in my mailbox there was a letter home saying that it was, in fact, just a PVC pipe with some junk glued on it to rile people up. It figures.
How can it be a Homecoming
when it never was a home?
Teaching at the high school has really been going well. The kids are very good, and for the most part, they try really hard. I can see where it would be easy to get so discouraged when they're being marginalized by the entire school, even their teacher (whom I'm really not meshing very well with--it's really hard to nod and smile when she's calling their work absolute crap under her breath and expecting you to appreciate the sentiment).
The school just had its Homecoming last weekend, and our home team won the football game. I didn't think we were even capable of winning a game. I guess it's good to know that the high school itself isn't jinxed. There were tons of confetti stars on the ground, left over from the dance and scattered everywhere. Everywhere. Glimmering and blue, crunching and cracking wherever I walked. I never noticed them when I was a student there. I know somebody who did.
You won't recognize that last quote, because it's a line from a song on the EP that my band made. The one out of three that I only wrote the music to, and my favorite and without a doubt the best song on the tape. I was talking to Nancy (who co-runs the experimental literature magazine at college) about playing music, as she just bought a drumkit, and that came up. She asked me to send her a copy of the record, so I did. The consensus of the Pulp! staff is that I sound "like a girl version of a nice punk boy; it's really funny." I like the sound of that. I think that the girl who wrote the song would pretty much hate me for sending that song out into the world. That's okay, though. She's hated me for years now anyway.
[xoxo]
