Friday, November 30, 2007

______ Me Elmo

I just saw the new Tickle Me Elmo special edition commercial on TV. And I had to find a web copy of it.

Yeah, I agree with this writer. Elmo looks like he's jerking off or something.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

"Where are you from?"

I got back into Indiana today at 10:30am. I had a red-eye trip that started in San Francisco at 1am, with a stop in Dallas. I thought I'd be able to sleep on the plane, but with all the noise. And even though I reclined in my seat and closed my eyes to let exhaustion take over, I was left with a waking, wandering mind with the rattle of the plane's turbulence shaking and shaking and shaking.

When I arrived in Indianapolis, I staggered through the airport to the wafting aroma of competing breakfast options from the food court: McDonald's Sausage McMuffins, Chick-Fil-A fried chicken nuggest with buttered biscuits, Arby's roast beef made from cow byproducts. It was florescent lighting and fried grease, and it made me alert with nausea.

Just as I stepped off the escalator to go to baggage claim, an old man and an accompanying middle-aged woman (his daughter) walked past me. I had a heavy messenger bag weighing down my shoulder and my hands were clutching a water bottle and toiletry travel bag. The old man had pale skin which looked even more ghostly against his dark brown suit. He was barely shorter than me and looked like Hank Hill's dad from King of the Hill. When we crossed paths, he stopped walking and crooned, "Where are you from?" I was still groggy from sleeplessness and it took me a few seconds to realize he was speaking to me. Hesitantly, I replied, "San Francisco?"

The truth is, I knew what he was getting at. And it showed in his response back, "San Francisco! Yeah right!" He shook his head and leaned on his cane to rejoin his daughter.

I told this story to my friend Viet when he picked me up half an hour later. We were in a giant pickup truck, riding down the highway in true Indiana fashion. We drove past barren crop fields and wilderness, followed by more barren crop fields and wilderness. Viet shook his head about the old man. "Welcome back to Indiana," he said.

But as much as I am bothered by the cultural backdrop that is Indiana -- the fact that in the last year I've attracted a racist stalking on gay.com, befriended Anthony who was arrested in Martinsville for being Black, and now this -- there is hope to be had. When the old man rejoined his middle-aged daughter, she shook her head and diverted her eyes from me. As they walked away, towards the escalators I had just departed, I could hear her response to his inquery: "What are you doing? Why did you even ask him that?"

I'd like to think she was embarrassed. But at the same time, I feel bad for hoping even that.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I'm back in the Bay Area

Right now, I'm at my parent's home and my god-sister Ngoc is relaxing my hair. The chemicals are making the livingroom smell like a bad perm using rotten eggs. Pain = Beauty.

It has occured to me that now that I'm staying with David in SF, I should take advantage of the time to find different ways of describing the Tenderloin district.

Exercise #1:

"The Tenderloin district is the area of the city that looks like God made a diorama of tall buildings -- then threw into the shoebox lots of pigeon shit, urine, broken syringes, unbathed bodies, discarded sweaters and ripped pants and other soiled clothes -- and shook the whole thing up."

Eh, not very good. But it's a start... Now I need to wash the cream out of my hair so Ngoc can flat-iron it.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

if A = B, and B = C, than A = C

I think that's how the concept works? I'm awful at math and all things universally logical.

Anyways, I just thought a little about what my classes are like here, and what my writing workshop looks like. What we do -- we 11-12 fiction writers in the program -- is give our pass out stories and critique one another's work. A professor/mentoring writer facilitates our discussions and teaches the workshop each semester. One of my favorites is a man who is a little Danny Devito shaped. He's as short as I am, and he's quite stubby looking.

And for a writer, I realized that he really could not improvise his work choices. I had him last semester as a teacher and found this little quirk about him ironic considering that he has to work with words. In anycase, this poor ability of his to wisely talk on the spot can make him come off significantly more abrassive than he really means to be. So what you're left with is this guy teaching our class, and in the middle of discussion make a comment that sounds awkwardly sexist. It would be even worst when he was critiquing our works. He was quite the pusher -- which is a good thing -- but he'll often sound much more offensive than what was intended.

Once he said, regarding someone's new story: "Good writers don't do this," refering to a specific passage that had challenges with dialogue or syntax or something nerdy like that. The implication of his statement made the student cry. It said that if this student wrote this piece of writing, and this piece of writing doesn't come from good writier, than student = shit ass artist.

That's a little bit about what my shark tank can look like sometimes. And I love it! Devito is one of my favorite professors here. Hurts so good.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Cycle

Lately, because of how tired I've become due to work, I've been living in cycles. I just stepped into the bathroom to take a shower right now, and I noticed the clothes I had left on the floor.

I've been taking to sleeping in trackpants, a t-shirt, and a pair of wool socks. Now, every morning, I go to the shower, strip, and leave the clothes on the carpeted floor. When I shower later that night, I just step out, dry off, and put those same clothes on for the rest of the evening.

I hate routine lives. And I'm not any more productive because of this.

Busted

I was just chatting online. I have a lot of work to do in my life: working two jobs -- editing, teaching; classwork, workshop, and lots and lots of reading. It's nebulous, I know, the crude attempts at describing my life.

Anyways, despite all the work, I still end my evenings usually chatting online and/or smoking. I can't help it: I'm lonely. It's strange being in a community that is so washed out and hetero that it leaves me craving any contact with outside voices. Maybe that's why I constantly have a deep craving to sign onto gay.com and smoke weed.

::sigh::

And all this -- the notice of my psychological dependencies -- had to come about just now, right after I smoked some.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Didn't you know: China is Ready!

China did this song to promote the upcoming Olympics. It's like "We Are the World" in that it's just a shitload of Chinese pop-icons singing a line each. It's their anthem about how they're prepared to enter the developed world.





Between Aqua Dots made out of GHB, recalled lead-laced Mattel toys, and spilled oil -- I'm not convinced they're ready. China should just stick to songs like this: