klandyland

I haven't posted since March...

2008-08-10T07:14:00.005-04:00

So let me put in a random, possibly tasteless, message saying that:

Between the tragic stabbings at the Olympics, and the decapitation of a young man in Canada, it seems that Chinese people have a knack for brutality. But we already knew this given their affinity for raping Tibetan nuns with cattle prods, didn't we?

(I have some friends who are into electro-torture, but that's their S&M thing, and it involves important things like consentuality and a safe word. But anyways...)

Is Random Acts of Severe Violence a new Olympic sport -- yet another sport that China intensely pushes their athletes to excel in (treatment akin to broke-ass circus animal training) in order to boost that nationalistic sense of glory, because China so desperately wishWishWISHES they could be "1st World" country?

Beijing is ready...to stab the shit out of you, World. Let the games begin!

I love the fact

2008-03-17T22:48:00.005-04:00

that a synth-pop band from the 80's is now a birth-control pill!

Yaz, the baby-making stopper:versus Yaz (as they were know here in the US):

Asian Dancers Be Breakin' It Down

2008-03-02T22:44:00.003-05:00

Okay, so we got two (next to all-) Asian American dance groups leading the top ranks on MTV's American's Best Dance Crew. And, the viral videos on youtube of the dancing Filipino prisoners made its sweep through pop culture a while ago.

Well, the orange jumpsuits are back. And they are (switch to Bay Area hip hop-ism): Hella breakin it down now!

Soulja Boy, Hammer, and drill formations!

I had two moist explosions in my mouth tonight

2008-02-24T01:59:00.003-05:00

Thanks to a trip to a sushibar for my friend Daniel-Linh's birthday. (Which, by the way, it's not good to bank of good sushi when you're in the Midwest and in a landlocked state.)

One of the things I ordered was nigiri sushi of ikura (salmon roe) with a raw quail egg on top. It's delicious; savory and little bit sweet. And the large orange balls that are the ikura just pop in gooey goodness against the tongue when you bite.

Some of Linh's friends around me were horrified by the order when it came out. They asked how I could think about eating a raw egg. And why is the color so outrageous. I told them: It's delicious. Between eating fish eggs and quail eggs: it's like two abortions going on in your mouth at the same time.

Then I did three finger snaps, in the shape of a Z.

* I stole the photo from someone's flickr page

Happy Vag-entines Day

2008-02-14T03:58:00.002-05:00

In the words of Cartman's hand, speaking as Jennifer Lopez (pronounced Hennifer Lopez):

Taco-flavored kisses for my baby!
David made that photo. I told him it looks like he's kissing Grace Jones (with a facial hair and lighter skin).

I (Heart) David

2008-02-10T03:40:00.001-05:00

My hands-down favorite song at the moment is "Tiger Phone Card" off of the new Dengue Fever album, Venus on Earth. It's a duet sung from the point of views of two lovers living apart, overseas.
At first, it sounds like a simple dancey number. (That's generally what you have to go on when you don't understand Khmer: just the sound of the music itself.) But "Tiger Phone Card" is one of the few DF songs that's actually sung in English, so I had to listen to it over and over again to desifer the words (the guy's singing isn't all too clear, and the girl's Khmer accent is quite thick). But having been able to sift through the lyrics, to my surprise the song turns out to be a clever modernization of a tradition Southeast Asian "I Miss You" song.

These "I Miss You" songs come from a folk tradition and are always about a woman waiting at home (while either working on the farm, or with child; and the sky is probably raining) for her lover to return (and he's usually working elsewhere to support the family, or in the army; either way, the fact is: he's not there with her). These duets pretty much just serves as a vehicle for these lovers to lament over missing one another.

"Tiger Phone Card" follows the exact same structure the "I Miss You" (or for the Vietnamese-mind, I'll call it the "Em Nho Anh, Anh Nho Em") song. One of the staples of the structure is that the beginning has to always set up I'm over here, and you're over there, and we're thinking of the other.

Now when I listen to the song, which is on heavy repeat through my speakers, it reminds me of David. We've been living apart from one another for about 2 years now (if not counting the year and half of him at UC Santa Cruz). And though we're handling distance fine--no crazy drama, thank god--it doesn't mean that being this far from each other is emotionally easy. Ever since I was able to transcribe the lyrics to "Tiger Phone Card," I can't help but convert into a trite kid who finds insight in pop music, in this homage to cheesy SE Asian love songs. The song now feels like it was designed for us (especially how the girl starts the chorus).

Tiger Phone Card lyrics (song link here)

Guy: You live in Phnom Penh
Girl: You live in New York City

Both: But I think about you so (so, so)
So much I forget to eat

Guy: It’s 4am I check my email
Girl: I’m just about to fall asleep

Both: So I write you back and forth
For days until we'll be together

[Chorus:]
Girl: The first thing that I’ll do
Both: Is throw my arms around you
Guy: And never let go
Girl: And never let go

Guy: I call you from my hotel room
I’m sitting on the hallway floor
I know that we are so (so, so)
So tired my phone card will expire.

Girl: You only call me when you’re drunk
I can tell by your voice
It’s the only time that you
open up to me
and tell me that you love me

[Chorus]

[guitar solo]

Guy: I’m 30,000 feet high
Flying through the dead of night
I took an ambient
So you can visit me in my dreams

Girl: You were red and blue lights
Floating right in front me
Your face was so (so, so)
So bright I had to close my eyes to see

[Chorus]

(Credit: I got the audio link off of The Hype Machine blog. Also note: I'm not 100% sure on all the lyrics, such as when she says "I'm about to fall asleep" to his "4am" line, since 4am in NYC would only be 4pm in Cambodia.)

Chuc mung nam moi!

2008-02-07T00:38:00.000-05:00

Happy new year (of the rat).

I have nothing inspiring to say or wish upon folks, so I'll just quote something that the singer from Dengue Fever kept chanting at a show, which Meling and Denay find amusing:

"New money, new money, new money!...But boyfriend stay the same."

I (Heart) New York

2008-02-05T20:19:00.001-05:00

Long time, no post. I just got back from a trip to NYC for a conference to promote the magazine I edit for. The day after my return to Bloomington, I had a short draft due for my non-fiction class. Here's the first draft:

I love Exploitation films—those cheaply produced movies that were most popular during the 1970’s; movies that attracted viewers not on the quality of the film itself, but rather by its prurient content.

Some of the more popular types of Exploitation films include Black Exploitation (or Blaxsploitation), Sexploitation and Women in Prison, Drug Exploition, Splatter/Torture Films, and even smaller sub-genres like Nunsploitation and Nazisploitation, Each of these categories sensationalize the very subject that is in their namesake. For example, Nazisploition films are always based on the premise that an underground Nazi regime is alive and well, and they are out to rule the world! Sexploition and Women in Prison films are soft-core porn-esque in that the movie pretty much serves as a vehicle for showing exhausting scenes of women placed in gratuitous sexual circumstances. (As in female characters exclaiming, “Oh my god! I just accidentally spilled this jug of water all over my thin blouse. I must take it off as the cable man walks up the steps to my house!”) Blaxploitation films, primarily involving African American actors and intended for Black audiences, are often about stereotypical African American concerns such as slum life, drug trafficking, and fighting The Man through violence and wit. Such is the case with the film Blacula, about an African prince-turned-vampire (by Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, no less) who awakes in 1973 Harlem where he must fight to save his woman and community from the threat of White cops.

I love Exploitation films because of their campy nature. They’re unpretentious in being so over-the-top: it’s not about good filmmaking, but engaging storytelling—sheer shock. Seeing this embarrassing level of “pushing the envelope” is humorous to me. I also find it fascinating because Exploitation films, really, exploit in two directions. They exploit the subject matter they present, as well as the audience’s preoccupations with the subject matter. And it seems so appropriate, illustrative of American culture that Exploitation films would have such success in grindhouse theatres across the country during the 1970’s. Because, coming out of a decade like the 60’s, Exploitation cinema offered a medium for viewers to have a voyeuristic relationship to topics that were still taboo, subjects that had recently been pushed to the country’s consciousness.

For example, if it weren’t for the decade of drugs and rock n’ roll, there wouldn’t be drug exploitation. If it weren’t for the gender revolution, there wouldn’t have been Sexploitation and Women in Prison flicks. (Sure, these films portrayed female characters in hyper-sexualized situations of questionable political merit. But it was there, on the screen, being represented, showcasing our relationship to sexuality and female bodies.) Also, if it weren’t for the Civil Rights movement there would not have been Blaxploitation, actors like Pam Greer, and classics such as Shaft, Superfly, and Coffy. Exploitation cinema staked the seedy spot of where America’s spirit stood.

Exploitation films don’t exist today. Just as culture changed with the times, so did mainstream filmmaking and its relationship to the elements that were once ghettoed only Exploitation. Today you can find movies that easily make use of casual sex. Why call it “Torture Exploitation” when every other horror movie features characters that are forced to endure slow, painful deaths with drills, saws, and other bladed instruments? Modern movies may pay homage to or borrow influence from the genre, but nothing that can capture the essence of the culture that circumscribed Exploitation during its heyday. Which is why, whenever returning to San Francisco, I automatically go to extensive Exploitation section of my favorite video store to rent stacks and stacks of videocassettes. Each film I watch is delicious, pleasurable, making me, dare I say, nostalgic for that blip in film history which I was not old enough to appreciate when it was active.

Recently though, I’ve noticed a kind of sensationalism in big-budget films since the events of September 11th.

In 2004, the movie Day After Tomorrow came out—its movie poster showing a post-apocolyptic New York landscape: the city and its buildings submerged in a tidal wave. The other month, I Am Legend was released in theatres; a story about one of the last men on earth, surviving in a zombie-infested New York City. In the movie poster, the actor Will Smith is walking the cracked and filthy streets with a collapsed Brooklyn Bridge behind him. Most recently, in early 2008, the film Cloverfield came out, the trailer for which features the Statue of Liberty standing tall. With her head torn clean off.

Again, films are reminding us of the era in which we live. Hollywood is exploiting New York and 9-11, and our fear of all that is packaged within that catchphrase (the rubles and fire and disintegrated body parts and grief of it all). I’m not sure what to make of this phenomenon or where it is going, but it’s obvious to me that New York is the new trendy setting for films about destruction and impending doom. For now I’ll call it New-Yorksploition, and nurse the queasy feeling that this new film genre knots in my stomach.

Your Home Smells Like Shit

2007-12-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

I had dinner with my friend Bill tonight. He has arms that hang low, and his body is built like a thick steak. He once was an extra on a set for a Danny Devito film, and all he was asked to do -- since he's so muscular -- was pick up Devito and throw him across the room so the camera could film him flying through the air. Bill says Devito said to him: "Don't break my neck, Lurch," refering to the butler in The Addam's Family.

He was telling me about how he can notice the smells of different atmospheres. He says that it's going to snow in Bloomington tonight. They said so on the forecast, and he can smell it in the lack of moisture in the air. He sometimes has to travel to do work out in the desert, and he says that the air out in the dryness smells differently too.

He also grew up behind a farm, where the air supposedly smelled differently depending on what was being farmed in the season. Apparently manure smells differently. "Cow manure smells sweet," he said. "And pig manure isn't as bad as chicken manure because chickens is just foul. The worst thing you'll ever smell," he said.

I told him that my mother's side of the family are a bunch country bumpkins, that they live on a farm in Vietnam that once belonged to my grandparents. I had only met my grandmother once before she passed away, and grandfather I had never met at all.

When I was five years old I had visited my grandmother and relatives, and there was this massive pig out in back that had nowhere to go because it had kind of outrown its pen. So all it did was feed and sleep and getting bigger. When I went to visit the farmer relatives about two years ago, the pig was gone and so was its pen -- replaced with an add-on to the house with a washing machine.

I told Bill that for farmers, it seems that they live for that smell of farmland. How that musty manure smell kinda becomes necessary for comfort. He told me once he was driving through some small town and he could detect the smell of cow manure and exclaim, "Wow, the smell reminds me of my childhood home."

She said: "Your childhood smelled like shit?"

I don't believe in an afterlife ore reincarnation. But if I had to decide, I'd like to believe I was a farmer in a former life, tilling soil that would one day belong to my grandparents.

______ Me Elmo

2007-11-30T00:29:00.000-05:00

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.

"Where are you from?"

2007-11-25T02:27:00.000-05:00

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.

I'm back in the Bay Area

2007-11-20T03:16:00.001-05:00

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.

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

2007-11-14T02:35:00.000-05:00

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.

Cycle

2007-11-12T23:21:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-12T22:58:00.000-05:00

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.

Didn't you know: China is Ready!

2007-11-10T17:42:00.000-05:00

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:

"We're gonna destroy our chests!"

2007-10-28T02:30:00.000-04:00

I recently met this undergrad guy named Daniel-Linh -- he's my mom's friend's nephew, also from the Bay Area. We ran into each other at a party. I've been to two undergrad parties since the beginning of the semester. We met at the party and have been running into each other ever since. Most notibly: the gym.

Okay, I am no gym queen. I look pathetic for a muscle boy. I simply go to make sure my habit of writing (slouching in front of a laptop screen) doesn't make my muscles go to jelly again. I had gone to physical therapy the summer before I came to Bloomington.

So Daniel-Linh invited me to lift with him at the gym. I have never done his equipments before: benches that look like somewhat-S&Mish-torture-metal instruments. When I met him in the gym lobby before we went in, he just said with a straight face, "Okay, so today we're going to just destroy our chests!"

It sounded violent. It sounded almost sexual. It was full of testosterone that I felt a couple degrees more butch.

I am so sore. My arms are jelly and I had to bends my head down to shampoo my hair earlier.

***

Tonight I also went to see Sister Spit perform in Bloomington. They made me miss the Bay Area community (even more so).

***

For Halloween, I am going to go out as Mother Mary Miscarried. I'll post up pictures later on.

Chink

2007-10-24T22:00:00.000-04:00

I, for one, love the word Chink. And Gook. And Nip. Whatever the racial slur: I love them. More to the point, I love being able to say it myself. I'm vulgar, I know.

It's been over a year since I moved to Bloomington. Last year there was a guy on gay.com that would instant message me just to call me a gook. Or Japanee. And that would be it. I haven't heard from in a while, but tonight I signed onto gay.com while grading some homework when a message window from him (image from profile below) appeared on my screen:

Chink, he had typed.

By the time I had looked up to respond to him (I was going to be petty and type back "white-head bursting cunt face") he had already signed off.

That moment felt familiar.

October Blues

2007-10-18T23:23:00.000-04:00

This October has hit me like a rape. A slow, increasingly merciless rape. Right now I find myself in a deluge of tasks:

1. I have to read through a special 500+ stack of story submissions for my magazine's fiction prize contest (this process to be completed with two weeks).

2. I also maintain reading 100+ regular stories per week for my regular magazine duties.

2. I have to finish a story in time for my workshop in a week.

3. I must read 3-books a week.

4. I have to give a presentation in a week.

5. And I teach a 23-student class. Critical thinking and composition. And I'm finding that my west coast, asset-based, popular education techniques of teaching are just not the right kind of communication that these kids are used to learning with. In fact, it actually seems to confuse them. It's been weeks of highs and lows with getting these fresh-out-of-mid-western-white-bred-high-schoolers up to speed with their critical thinking and analytical abilities. And I'm just starting to understand that they are just not used to, nor are they responsive to my style of education. I've been developing the upcoming lesson plans with my newly revisioned teaching methods. This should be intersting. Wish me luck

In the mean time, a good thing that happened to me late was that David came to Bloomington last-last weekend. And we had a lot of fun. And by "fun" I means "sex."

Also, next Thursday I'll be giving a reading as part of my second year programming here at IU. I read/performed DJ Berkley pieces last year -- poems about fisting, how fast food companies symbolize mysogyny/patriarchy, and fake craigslist ads. The dean of my program said to me after the reading: "You're a bad, bad boy!"

I truly am an academic! Put the vulgar bay area immature community kid amongst scholars and pursuers of high literary dreams, and you get DJ Berkley declaring "I'll cure you're AIDS honey / Just bend over: I'll suck the poison out" at a University sponsored event. Come to think of it, it probably looked exactly like any other slam poet performance at a college.

For this coming reading, I think I'll read my essay about David giving me Chlamydia. And maybe more fisting from DJ Berkley, just for the new students who haven't seen it.

I hope you are all well. Miss you all. Me love you long time.

Films from the pits of hell

2007-09-25T00:01:00.001-04:00

My new bud Bradley and I have been exchanging bad films these past few weeks. Here are some movies I would like to recommend to you:

The Apple (1980): In the future (the 1994 future!) a young folk-duo, presented as a quickly over-killed metaphor for Adam and Eve, are tempted with the dirty apple of musical success by the industry giant Mr. Boogalow. Their love is tested by the draws of glamour, excess, and lots of ugly musical numbers. The Apple was made too early for New Wave, but too late for Disco—so what we are left with is lots of ratted hair in a roller derby fantasia!

Boxing Helena (1993): Boy loves girl. Girl doesn’t love boy. Boy proceeds to amputate all of girl’s limbs. He tries to make her love and depend upon him, but she just spits back emasculating insults. Which looks odd when you’re a strangely sexy-looking talking head (literally). Kim Basinger got sued for backing out of her contract to play the lead role. Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch, directed this and no one has trusted her with a camera ever since.

The Doll Squad (1973): Forget Charlie’s Angels, this film features a band of vixen commandoes that must stop the destructive plans of a madman who will unleash his army of plague rats. From the director who brought us “Astro Zombies.” A must-see in Female/Vigilante Exploitation.

No One Would Tell (1996): Candice Cameron (DJ Tanner from Full House) is left battered and bruised in her relationship with school heartthrob Fred Savage (of The Wonder Years fame). When she turns up missing, it’s time to bring Fred to justice. Sally Jessie Raphael—yes, from the talk show—plays a judge at the trial. It’s The Battle of the Child Stars, dating abuse style.

Teen Witch (1989): A high school girl transforms herself from hopeless to hottie through the powers of witchcraft. All under the guidance of the midget woman from Poltergeist. Musical numbers include slow-motion big hair with crispy bangs being tossed back in slow-mo, and white boy versus white girl rap. Wardrobe by Jordache and Cherokee Jeans.

She Fought Alone (1995): Tiffani-Amber Thiessen gets raped—Kelly Kapowski, how could you!—by the school jock. And everyone just wants her to shut her trap so the school can, what else: Play football! Misogyny is alive and well in this made-for-TV mello-drama.

Indiana University finally gave me grocery money!

2007-09-17T19:23:00.000-04:00

I finally got paid for the first time this semester last Friday. And to celebrate I went out and stuffed my kitchen with new inventory. Including a pyrex measuring cup, a chef's knife, and silicone muffin baking tray.

On Saturday I made a bastardized Korean BBQ beef with Thai basil. And eggrolls.

Today I came home from school and decided to make Vietnamese spicy sour soup with prawns (Canh Chua Tom). And the results were great! Took over an hour, what with making the broth from scratch.

Take a look see:

(still in the pot)

(and served out in a bowl)

Happy Birthday To Me!

2007-09-10T01:34:00.000-04:00

I wish to have this sex club story I'm trying to finish to complete itself in a rush of inspiration, before Tuesday. Send me good thoughts, please!

Black barbers are the best!

2007-09-04T17:59:00.000-04:00

My friend Anthony took me to a black barber this morning and they trimmed my sides and were able to shave designs into my head. Love Ngoc and Ngoc, but it's great to go to a place that is used to working with my nappy ass hair texture. They were even able to trim my sides with clippers, without even using a a guard. It was all done by hand and eye.

My favorite part of the experience in the Hoosier Barber cutting chair was when my hair lady, Pam, asked: "Is yer mama Asian, boy? Cuz you look mixed."

Blue Light Special

2007-09-03T17:03:00.000-04:00

At the Indiana Review, we have a little mascot: this metal lamp with a blue light. And lately, my editor Abdel has been taking pictures of it in various poses, all around campus. It's been posed looking up at a limestone brick building. It's been posed reading books, it's been posed in front of a laptop looking at pictures of itself.

And now this:

courtesy of http://indianareview.blogspot.com/

A hair for all seasons

2007-09-02T01:38:00.000-04:00

So, if you haven't known, before I left San Francisco this last August, I got my friend Ngoc to give me a new hair cut. And it looks like four different people's hairs fused together: long bangs in the front, shaved on the sides, along with a tapering shave in the back to make my hair fall into a pointed rat-tail. It was primarily inspired by Marilyn Manson's hair from the Golden Age of Grotesque era.

My main goal was to have my hair cut to be versatile; something that could be styled into a variety of modes. And this past week -- the first week of the school year -- I made my hair different for every single day.

Enjoy!

Come out, come out, where ever you are!

2007-08-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

This is hilarious.

Pent up priests become child fuckers. Mark Foley says no to pedophilia...because he is a pedophile. And now this anti-gay rights activist Senator.

What makes me sad is he has to get busted for such a freaky-deaky activity: cruising in a bathroom of an airport. Also, he's damn fugly. What would make it really gross is if we combined his and Foley's stories.

Imagine this:

(desiring) having sex with this:

(images taken from CNN.com and http://z.about.com/d/cameras/1/0/n/2/LittleBoyBlue.jpg&imgrefurl=http://cameras.about.com/od/digitalphotographycontest/ig/March-2006-Photo-Gallery/Little-Boy-Blue.htm&amp;h=375&w=500&sz=85&hl=en&start=3&um=1&amp;tbnid=u7VvnwgeYp-_qM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dboy%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN)

"Yay! White people!" -Wonder Showzen

2007-08-27T14:19:00.000-04:00

I taught my first class o the semester today. A room full of 24 students. Every single one of them white.

For me, tt's less of a racial thing than it is a visual aesthetic. There's too much blond and not even pigment. I've said it before and I'll say it again:

It looks like I am teaching the kids from Village of the Damned, and they're all wearing Abercrombie & Fitch and Ugg boots.

Mousetraps

2007-08-22T23:52:00.000-04:00

I went to the allergy doctor where they pricked my arms up and down with over sixty different allergens -- from grass to dog, mold to dust mites. And my arm began welting up like a battered wife in a Lifetime movie. It was gross.

Turns out I am allergic to Indiana. I am allergic to all 12 grass unique here to Indiana, all but three of the weed pollens, all but five of their tree pollens. I feel like a nerd in school again, with my newly perscribed artillery of nasal and inhalation sprays. Two types of inhalors, and Nasonex.

I also have been finding little black slender droppings in my kitchen pantry. My tea bags (does that sound sexual?) and pasta packages have been getting chewed upon. I bought mousetraps at Target and in less than five hours after seeting them up, I killed two mice. Their tails were sniff as I disposed of their bodies. Actually, I only disposed on one. The other one is in a black baggie next to the trashcan, on the floor. If you want, I will snap a picture and post it.

I was so hungry, and so low on food supplies, that I ate the green tea soba noodles that one of the mice had chewed into. I hope I don't die of some disease. But if I do, I hope I cause a plague outbreak.

America's Funniest Predators

2007-08-19T01:47:00.000-04:00

I have been throwing out all the moving boxes and putting my place together. I even decorated a wall with one of those 80's porcelain jester masks that Denay gave me. It is tacky and beautiful.

Orientation is on Monday. And right now I am refusing to do my pre-orientation reading and am, instead, watching DatelineNBC's To Catch a Predator "spin-off" show: Raw Predator, which is just a behind-the-scene outtakes version of the original show. Is it just me or does the title of To Catch a Predator seem a little deceptive? It sounds like a How-To Guide for parents looking to protect their children, and instead offers looks into men and their efforts to pork children. I imagine these parents tuning in, expecting one thing only to get something else, and gasping, "Filthy!...But genuinely arousing..." (<-- that's a Simpsons quote by the way.) What is disgusting about this spin-off is that Raw Predator's title somehow manages to sound disturbingly more like that of a porno film's. More than To Catch a Predator. (Or am I just sick for thinking To Catch a Predator sounds somewhat erotic? I'm probably sick.)

David has been watching this show religiously. (I wonder if it turns him on.) My friend Carissa calls it "America's Funniest Predators." What i find so hilarious about this program is that it pulls on so many heart-strings for American audiences. It exploits the paranoia of parents, it feeds the reality TV craving, it has overtones of taboo sexuality, it involves youth -- all packaged together like a pedaphelic (and less ghetto) version of Cops. With interviews! The kiddy factor reminds me of a Marilyn Manson quote regarding America's obsession with human exploitation: "Is adult entertainment killing our children, or is killing our children entertaining adults?"

(Funny enough, as I'm watching this episode, one of the predators is getting cuffed by the cops right now. And both the cop and the man are wearing yellow rubber Live Strong bracelets. It almost looks harmonious.)

In this episode I'm watching, the host says something along the lines of: This investigation was to uncover how these predators think, what is their thought process in making these decisions to stalk children on the internet.

Lies!

This is the least emphasized part of the show. They didn't come here to show something so deep and meaningful. They came here to offer the sensationalism of the idea of child-fucking, not the psychology of child-fuckers. The show normally just concentrate on the predators chatting on the internet with the decoy kids (messaging statements like "I want to stick my $%^& up your @$$...itll hurt, but its a good kind of pain, you know?"). Then they spend the rest of the time showing the host re-reading these chats to the busted predators. Of course the explicit suggestion of sex acts being done to teenagers by 43 year old computer engineers and truck drivers is going to dominate the audience's main interest -- not the investigative merit. Though, I can appreciate that kind of pretense. It hurts, but it's a good kind of pain, you know?

What I am now noticing about To Catch a Predator is how it reminds me of my very own youth with the internet. I would chat online and older men would approach me. Most of them stopped chatting after I said I was 13 or whatever. But every once in a while I would find a man who would take it into the sexual arena of conversation. They'd ask how big I was, and whether I've even had sex with the boys at my school.

I never did meet up with any of them. The first and only guy I had ever met back then is my friend Ryan, who is just a couple months older than me. We remain friends to this day. Something I'm finding disturbing about watching To Catch a Predator is how it profiles these men. They offer these guys a name, an abridged backstory (husband? father? occupation? etc.). And that makes me consider the hypothetical of the men I had refused to meet. What would have happened had I agreed to meet RNance408 at the McDonald's on Lawrence Expressway? Would I have been scared for my safety? Would I have been digusted by what he looked like -- how he was even uglier in life than he looked in the ratty photo he emailed me? Would he have suggested getting into his car and going for a ride? Would I have said yes and went for it out of curiosity? Afterall, nothing is perhaps more dangerous to a young person than confusion and intense curiosity of their own budding sexuality.

I'm not feeling remorse for never putting myself into a scenario where I would have had to answer these questions. Instead, while watching these studdering pedaphiles get interrogated on TV forces me to imagine the possibilities. It's not an intense reaction, but rather a dampened dread, a muted feeling of violation. Unwillingly, I end up revisiting how fragile and lonely it felt as a suburban kid raised by immigrant parents who went to Catholic Church 3 times a week. How naughty it felt to meet other guys that loved guys, even if they were older, even if it was only through words on a screen in some chatroom. How dangerous and good it felt to connect with them, with little regard to the age gap. It hurts -- being forced back to this sort of memory -- but it's a good kind of pain. I think.

Just finished moving into my new apartment

2007-08-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

And now I need to sort through the boxes and actually turn this place into a home, instead of a shanty-town of storage cartons.

In the mean time: Entertain yourselves with this delightful number.

I want Fancy to perform Bolero (Hole Me In Your Arms Again) at my wedding. Or, even better, a bad Vietnamese wedding singer (1 woman, with huge hair and monster-claw bangs) performing this song with the support of a synth keyboard band (3 men, all wearing shimmery fabric vests).

And we shall all do the same dance choreography that the singer does.

Quote of the day

2007-08-11T01:59:00.000-04:00

"I’m only judgemental towards people I don’t like." -David

Packing Vampire

2007-08-07T03:24:00.000-04:00

Again, I'm up at 3:30am, packing my apartment. I can't wait to move next week. The shitty thing is that all the U-haul places are rented out (what with this being a college town, and August being the peek moving month). I was lucky though...in securing...a 16-foot truck...with a fork lift. I don't even have enough things to fill half of that monstrosity, let alone need a fork lift in the back.

As I was cleaning my folders and folders filled with paperwork and story drafts, I came upon the admissions folder that Columbia had sent me. How sad it is that as a pack rat I had held onto this fleeting opportunity even when I chose to come here to Indiana, where the NY skyscrapers are replaced with cornfields, and the taxis are replaced with pick-up trucks with confederate flag decals. It's not that I regret coming here (hell, I stand by my belief that the Mid-west is exotic!). It's just that looking at the Columbia brochures and the literature on their program made me wonder for the very first time: What would my life be like had I decided differently.

Then I remembered that I would absolutely broke; Columbia estimated my first academic year would cost around $60,000. I wasn't even making half of that the last year I was living in SF.

In something completely unrelated:

I found out that David's first and last name (same as mine) is an anagram for "I've dandy gun."

I (HEART) China!

2007-08-05T15:07:00.000-04:00

If not simply because they came up with such brilliant slogans to promote their 1-child law as:

"One more child means one more tomb."

It's 3:54am and I'm Still cleaning my place

2007-08-05T03:50:00.000-04:00

I have been on a strange sleeping pattern. Haven't been able to sleep until around 5 in the morning since I got back here.

My apartment is a mess. I had to scavenge through dumpsters to rally up a mere few cardboard boxes for my upcoming move. The worst part of moving/cleaning living quarters (especially having left it abandoned for months on end) is having to work through the congregation of insects that have armied together since you last set foot in your own home. There are pill bugs crawling across the carpet. There are even dead, dried up husks of pill bugs curled up on my carpet. Hell, I somehow managed to even smash a few of these shells into the carpet throughout the week, and now they're a pain to even suck up into the vacuum cleaner.

The spiders have taken over all the corners of my house -- in my room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room. And Indiana spiders lay damn thick webs too. I try to wave my hand in the bottom corner of my room, where a spider had been collecting littler bugs above my laundry basket; I wave my hand there to destroy the web like picking up a cotton candy from the machine. But instead of breaking easily, my fingers just seem to pluck the threads like taut harp strings. I imagine these spiders, despite even the smallest of sizes, probably pack a strong irritating bite.

I also forgot, since last year, that the summers out here also assures that you will be walking and without expecting it, you would already walked into a spider web. It gauzes over your face like a warm film, and I can't help but imagine a spider hiding somewhere on my person, only to bite me later. Or lay eggs in my nose. I once got bitten by a spider three times on my face, during my sleep, when I was six or seven years old. The doctor made me rub meat tenderizer on the raised bumps "to bring down the swelling."

I got bitten by a mosquito almost immediately when i got back. I was outside trying to see if my car would start, and the bitch nailed me on the right bicep. I'm allergic to mosquito bites, and this one swell up into a nice golfball.

***

I miss David. A lot. The thing about long distance relationships -- compared to say, dealing with dead lovers (and here I'm going to be super pretentious) -- is that you don't have the same kind of void. You know that the person is there, out somewhere, without you. Having broken up with someone, or having them walk-out/die on you gives a definative sharp hole. You don't have to ponder what they are doing without you, what they're eating for dinner, or what song they're listening to on their headphones.

Long distance doesn't offer this sort of clarity. Instead you are given a muddy question mark of what could be. I wanted David to move on out here with me (even though I know that's not possible right now), and what I am left with is the frosted idea of what could be. His presense floats only in my imagination: there he is sitting at my kitchen table, there he is lying on the couch reading a internet printouts of celebrity gossip. It is the hypotheticals that feel sharper than pure, complete lack.

Back in Indiana

2007-08-02T02:20:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone back in the bay for the warm send-offs.

I need to sleep, so this posting is abreviated. In my last few days in San Francisco I can show these two pictures:

from the Farmerbrown's send off

And Dore Alley on Sunday (where I got "woofed" at for the first time by a bear!)

Good-Bye Happy Hour

2007-07-30T14:37:00.000-04:00

For my last night in SF I'd like to invite you to come out tomorrow to a chill early evening at Farmerbrown in downtown. Just a simple, laid-back chance to say good-bye and thank you for the summer. The food is amazing, the atmosphere is sexy, and happy hour is from 5-7; I'll be there from 5 til probably 8. Hope you can make it.

Farmerbrown
25 Mason @ Market, near Powell BART/MUNI
(doesn't really look like a restaurant from the outside; look for the graffiti)
5-8pm
TUES, July 31st

http://www.farmerbrownsf.com/location.html

Requiem for Tammy Faye

2007-07-28T22:08:00.000-04:00

I am sitting next to my sister right now at my folks' place. Mai asked if I had seen Tammy Faye on CNN, and then we looked up the video on YouTube.

So sad. She looks so frail. And her voice is so weak; she reminds me of my host grandmother back in Japan when I went to visit her in the hospital (obaachan had been going through medical complications due to her cigarette habit). Mai also noted that Tammy Faye looks all the more frightening because on top of being a so wasted away, she's still incredibly done up.

I thought she looked like Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, at the end of the film when she's a riddled out speed freak.

Have we no respect for the dead?

I bought a new book today

2007-07-27T02:09:00.000-04:00

"The Mother Garden" by Robin Romm. I read most of the stories from earlier publications in various magazines. Hope the collection is good.

I got my hair cut yesterday. It's hard to explain. I'll have to show pictures.

I also took my friend Billy to Good Vibrations -- the sex shop. I had to explain to him that the clean carpet, well lit, squeaky clean condition of Good Vibes is not to be expected in any other sex shop. The other ones are usually seedy, if not humid feeling. And if they have "arcades"/coin-op porno booths, more than likely the rest of the shop has a salty smell to the damp air. Also also unlike Good Vibes they seem to have walls that, when you touch them, seem to feel like it's wriggling beneath your hand (what with all that semen swarming).

I saw the "after" scene of a drive-by shooting today

2007-07-24T03:17:00.000-04:00

On my way back from the gym this afternoon I stopped by Ross in the hopes of finding a pair of Dr. Marten's boots. (Ross, I am now completely sure, is the biggest freakshow -- it attracts a lot of people that have no problems with diving through the racks like animals and leaving the discarded refuse where they fall, with or without hangers.)

Anyways, on Ellis, after clearing the busy commercial street of Powell I saw cop cars boxing the end of the block at Mason. There was yellow tape around the cop cars and along the perimeter were lots of rubberneckers. Families, tourists, kids with their eye-balling parents. The CSI scene was complimented with a gray sedan on the side of the blocked off street. Its windows were shattered all over the pavement. There were bullet holes punched into its doors which the cops were measuring.

There was also blood on the pavement. I slowed down enough to see that.

The gawkers were leaning over the yellow police tape with their camcorders and digi-cams out. And they were documenting this: a crime sight that obviously involved the dramatic injury of at least one human being.

I wanted to say something snide to these people. Something like, "Very classy, taking pictures like that!" But I didn't because part of me slowed down to be entertained by the spectacle too.

I have noticed a parallel between punker boys and fags

2007-07-17T02:38:00.000-04:00

As someone who was a teenage punker and goth, and a damn proud faggot, I took note on a BART ride this evening. These three punked-out early teenagers entered the train, and boarding with them was an equally punked out, fish-netted, safety-pinned-speckled-black-backpack-wearing young lady friend. She was simply a friend; a girl who plays with boys.

In other words, these boys had (what I have noticed consistently amongst small groups of punker boys): the urban young rocker equivalent to a fag hag.

Like stereotypical fag hags, these Punk Pugs (as I now dub them), tend to be bigger, kinda homely looking, girls who adore and flutter around the wanna-rock-hard boys. Instead of going to the clubs, the Punk Pug will be there at the shows/concerts and enjoy sharing their mate's mutual appreciation for eyeliner and chipped nail-paint.

Now that I think about it, my ex-girlfriend Daphny was/is a Punk Pug.

DJ BERKLEY TO PERFORM THIS FRIDAY!!!

2007-07-10T22:11:00.000-04:00

It is now official:

DJ BERKLEY will be performing in full -- Macklin, Robert, and Me -- in the Mission this Friday the 13th! It truly shall be an unlucky day for the injustices of the world. DJ BERKLEY shall fist a new hole into oppression with NEW genious poems. And maybe even a cover of one of Paris Hilton's prison poem.

This is DJ BERKLEY's first performance in SF in over a year!

For those not in the know:

DJ BERKLEY is the Worst Spoken Word Artist in the World, having congealed from the love juices of Full House's DJ Tanner (Candace Cameron) and Saved by the Bell's Elizabeth Berkley (aka Jessie Spano). As the world's foremost radical and profound artist, writer, activist, poet, vaginist, gender-queer, post-sexual, and last remaining dinosaur, DJ BERKLEY fights centuries of oppression through the awesome power of spoken word.

WHERE: 737 CAPP STREET btw 22nd/23rd St
WHAT: Benefit for new documentary about legendary tranny performer, Vicky Marlane (SF's "girl with the liquid spine")
WHEN: Fri. 13, at 8pm

Is there anybody out there?

2007-03-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

My deepest apologies for letting this poor thing rot in the void of cyberspace -- not that anyone actually reads this (I'm sure) anymore.

Anyways, I'm back from a wonderful weekend in Kentucky -- which was absolutely necessary catharsis for freeing me temporarily from Grad School Life. Which is to say: this trip was necessary to give me a life.

And the return has inspired me to take time from my awful work load just to write this.

Over the weeks I have to:

1. Deal with a student made a mysogynistic comment in class, followed quickly by "That's so gay," and "fucking retarded." This student was a sad case of stereotypes coming true; he's a frat boy, as well as a jock.

2. On the plus side, I just got named the incoming fiction editor for Indiana Review.

3. I saw old porno video arcade machines. Ones where you used to put a penny in this wooden box, then crank the metal handle on the side and look through telescope lens to see black and white photos of women. Women wearing frocks showing off their ankles. Scandelous!

4. Slipped and fell on ice and broke my cell phone. (I totally ate it -- Charlie Brown moment with the legs going up and hip bone smaking sheeted pavement. The bruise was a long purple blob that went from the top of my right ass cheek to the curve of my lower back.)

5. I got to see David and visit folks back in SF for the couple days I was there for Spring Break. Love you all.

6. Had a heart to heart talk with my friend Carissa, who helped me admit to myself and own the fact that sometimes I feel really lonely here at IU. Lonely in my program in particular. Because: unlike all the other students in my department, I haven't been able to make really really strong friendships with anyone because a lot of the peers that I do get to work with are rather heterocentric to the point of unstated homophobia. Loaded material to talk about in length than I care to elaborate on at this moment.

7. and, most recently: I went to Kentucky with Denay and Ryan this past weekend. They came in from Chicago. We went bourbon trailing (since Kentucky is the Land of Bourbon!) to Jim Bean and Maker's Mark. I ate this dish that is a Louisville, Kentucky original that has the name of scat sex act: a Hot Brown . It was amazingly rich and heavy and heart-clogging. but I enjoyed this priceless bit of what I'm appreciating as Native to the Mid-West cuisine. Also, while we were in Louisville (pronounced Loo-a-vel), Denay, Ryan, and I went to this impressive 5-in-1 interconnected gay club called The Connection; which includes a dance club, a drag theatre, and a shower show bar (which turns out become a cruise bar in disguise). Like all the things above, I'll talk more in length later.

I hope all is well with you folks reading this. I'm feeling a lot better than my early paralyzing home sickness at the start of the semester. It's no longer snowing and frigid, and today was actually a really sunny beautiful day. I'm sure the novelty of the warm thick heat will soon die, as I normally hate hot weather -- I love my foggy San Francisco. But for now, with this hot weather, I'll savor this momentary satisfaction that spring is here.

Stripped

2007-02-07T13:56:00.000-05:00

I'm happy because Wednesday is over; it's the worst day of the week for me. Also they called a mistrial for Lt. Ehren Watada -- who I think just hands-down hot! If you don't know who he is, check this out. Lt. Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. Sexy. Plus I like the way his parents spelled his name.

In Bloomington news, they featured an article about student strippers who work at the local strip club called Night Moves. I have a friend who lives by there and -- behold! -- the apartment I'm going to move into in August is just down the street. For some reason, I never considered how many students would be pole-straddling there. And more importantly, I somehow never considered that plenty of professors probably patron it too. Anyways, here's the article.

Student by day, stripper by night
Dancers often struggle to balance professional, school commitments
By Zack Teibloom | Indiana Daily Student | Wednesday, February 07, 2007

A stripper who calls herself Portia shows off her dancing skills at Night Moves in Bloomington. Portia is one of 10 students who dance at the club for college money. Ronni Moore/IDS

Lit up by a series of blacklights that reflect off walls splashed with neon Jackson Pollack-esque paint, a student dancer who calls herself Portia spins around on a pole at Night Moves in Bloomington. As she strips, her panties accidentally come undone in front of one of her professors who's visiting the club. Suddenly, Portia's dual identity of student by day, stripper by night, is as exposed as her privates.

She's one of 10 students among the club's 35

dancers, working to earn enough money in tips to cover books and tuition.

Though tips can be high, working as a dancer while being a full-time student still has its downsides, from both a social and an academic perspective.

Balancing herself upside down while spreading her legs on a pole appears to be easier than balancing working late at night and getting up early for class.

"It's hard to get up for your 8 a.m. after giving lap dances until 3:30 a.m.," said Portia, a junior. "By the time you get home, it's almost time for class."

Night Moves waitress and former dancer Heather Emerson has also had her share of problems balancing both sides of her double identity. The semester when she was in a small discussion class of eight students, her professor came into the club, paid the entrance fee and left immediately after making eye contact with her.

"It was awkward talking to him after that," said Emerson, who plans to graduate next spring.

She said several people she knows, including her school principal, math teacher and people she went to Sunday school with, have seen her perform. Her ex-boyfriend's dad came in as well but, instead of leaving upon recognizing his son's ex, paid her for three lap dances and asked her not to tell his son about it.

Aside from the occasional awkward encounter, a number of the dancers said they have a good relationship with regular customers and their bosses. One of Portia's best customers brings her cookies on days she has tests and gives her $200 at the beginning of the semester for book money. Her regulars treat her like family, and often order her favorite kind of pizza and have it waiting for her when she comes in to work.

But dancing for strangers can be dangerous, and dancers have to put up with threatening men inside and outside the club. Portia said she always carries mace with her in case someone follows her home. Inside the club, Emerson has to hide her emotions while dealing with rude customers, she said. Dancers are never completely nude, they are required to wear panties and cover their nipples at all times.

Emerson said guys have told her they've slept with hotter women and that she has the smallest breasts they've ever seen, but she has to just grin and bear it.

"At first you think it's a great job," Emerson said. "You just take your clothes off and make money, but eventually guys say things that get to you. I just smiled the whole time, but I really wanted to punch him in the face."

Student dancers

Even among the dancers there is a great deal of fighting. Emerson left her job at Brad's Brass Flamingo in Indianapolis after another dancer punched her in the face during an argument. Portia has seen women strangle each other at Night Moves over wearing another dancer's outfit without asking and both she and Emerson said there is a ton of cat-fighting in the club. However, they try to stay out of it.

Night Moves Co-owner Rodney Domer said there's a clear difference between the student dancers and the other women.

"Students act more intelligently," he said. "They're here to make money, while some of the other others use it like a night out."

Domer even helps students out by giving them the night off when schoolwork becomes stressful. He also said he lets them use the club's wireless Internet to do homework on the premises.

IU graduate Nicki, a waitress at the club who wished not to be identified, said her gender studies major has helped her see stripping from a different perspective. From what she's learned, she said the feminist movement has varying opinions on whether it's degrading to women or empowering.

"You know, student by day stripper by night," she said. "They come here and take guys' money making them think they're something they're not. Why not?"

She said she definitely notices a difference between student dancers and others.

"The way they carry themselves and treat customers, they have different social skills than some the other girls and I think it helps them make more money," Nicki said.

Three-figure tips

Money is the reason the women dance in the first place, and they make a lot of it. Emerson said she makes about $200 a night in tips as a waitress, while Portia brings in $700 to $1,000 on a good weekend night. Her earnings allowed her to pay for a new $16,000 car in cash after a year of working.

Most men sitting in what the dancers refer to as "pervert row" -- the chairs around the stage -- tip a dollar or two, but dancers remember their biggest tips well. The day after Christmas, one guy was so happy to have 15 minutes with Emerson that he gave her a $200 dollar tip and said "Merry Christmas." The tips are often given for the dancing, but men will occasionally proposition sex for a much larger tip. One man put $1,000 dollars on the table and propositioned Portia, but she turned him down.

The money was what attracted Emerson to stripping, since she was trying to find a way to get out of her parents' house and get her own apartment. But her plan left her on her own quicker than she thought. Her parents found out the day after she started stripping and kicked her out, forcing her to pack a garbage bag full of clothes and find a new place to stay.

She said that ever since she started dancing, she hasn't done as well in school, and she said she imagined a different life for herself.

"If I could do it again I probably would have found another way to get out of my mom's house," Emerson said. "I could have lived in the dorms, known different people and I would have graduated by now."

Portia had friends who danced and decided to do it after breaking up with a boyfriend who was against it. When college ends, Portia plans to end her dancing career. For her, it's just a way to make money and a little secret that she'll keep from her future husband and family.

"I will never tell my future husband," she said. "I don't think a respectful person will respect what I've done."

Semesters Gone Wild!

2007-01-31T21:54:00.000-05:00

I am taking two seminars and they're kicking my ass. One is a "Humor in Use" class -- which sounds great, until you have to read all this theory on joking and humor by people like Freud. And then it just sucks the fun out of humor.

The snow and bitter chill is gross. I am still riding my bike around, which is fine since they plow and salt the roads. The only painful thing is when I have to get up at 7 to teach my 9 o'clocl class in the mornings, when the sun isn't up yet and it's still 0-degrees outside. Then my hands freeze and it feels like frostbite. My friend's roommate got minor frostbite on her hands, coming to campus; she was diagnosed at the health center -- so I guess frostbite is a possible reality here.

Trashy news in the B-ton lately: A baby was found in a dumpster. And Girls Gone Wild! was going to throw a party here. They canceled it. I found this article below.

'Girls Gone Wild' event canceled
Campus groups ask city for help in stopping controversial entertainers
By Mallory Simon | Indiana Daily Student | Thursday, January 25, 2007

Several campus groups have successfully forced the cancellation of the shirt-raising "Girls Gone Wild" event that was scheduled to take place Friday night at Jake's Nightclub.

More than 125 members of the Bloomington community, including students, faculty members, administrators and campus groups, signed a petition Wednesday calling for the event to be canceled, according to e-mails obtained by the Indiana Daily Student.

Jake's owner Dave Kubiak and representatives with "Girls Gone Wild" refused interviews with the IDS.

Kubiak, owner and manager of Bluebird, also cancelled a show in September 2006 featuring a Jamaican artist with anti-gay song lyrics.

Bloomington Safe & Civil City Director Beverly Calender-Anderson said administrators within the city government including Mayor Mark Kruzan were notified about the outrage regarding the event and a possible protest, which spurred a meeting Wednesday afternoon with the nightclub's owners.

"We spoke with the owners of Jake's and expressed our concerns that this was not appropriate entertainment for this community," Anderson said.

Anderson said at the conclusion of the meeting that the owners of Jake's, 419 N. Walnut St., were weighing their options about whether to cancel the event.

Wednesday night Kubiak responded to criticism by canceling the event but declined to speak with the press about the situation.

"We are sorry if the idea offended anyone, that was not the idea," Kubiak wrote in an e-mail sent to various campus groups. "We respect our town and would like to put this behind us."

According to an e-mail from Kruzan, Jake's will now be hosting a "college-age music evening" instead of the "Girls Gone Wild" event.

Uproar about the event began with the creation of a Facebook group last week by Bloomington resident and former IU student Liz Ladd, whose group's description said: "Porn is a business and its workers should be contracted while they're sober and paid with money, not T-shirts, hats and underwear."

Less than one week later, there were more than 160 members of the global group. Ladd said her concern was sparked by a recent Los Angeles Times article that described several allegations of rape against "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis.

"I thought I would help make people aware," she said. "It was important to still respect people's right to make choices, but to also help them make an informed one."

Carol McCord, assistant dean for the Office for Women's Affairs, said the tactics used by the workers of "Girls Gone Wild" were of the most concern.

"It's not that we are against women having the right to choose what they want to do with their bodies," McCord said. "If a woman chooses to go into the bus or about making pornography that's different to me than her being coerced when drunk and someone getting rich off of it. As an advocate for women, I want to make sure they have the right information about these people and their tactics."

Francis and his company have found themselves in legal trouble regarding several allegations against them, including using girls who were under the age 18 in their videos.

In September 2006, Mantra Films Inc., the company that produces "Girls Gone Wild," pled guilty to charges that it failed to document the ages of girls in Florida and were fined $2.1 million according to court records. On Monday, Francis himself was sentenced to two years' probation and 200 hours of community service for violation of federal laws which seek to protect the exploitation of minors.

The debate about the event at Jake's is not the first of its kind to take place in Bloomington. In 2002, "Girls Gone Wild" made a stop at Vertigo Nightclub, which no longer exists. The same year, film crews from Shane's World filmed a porn movie in Teter Quad, for "Shane's World Vol. 32: Campus Invasion." The incident was donned the "dorm porn" and garnered national press attention, according to previous IDS articles. In 2004, a freshman created the Web site www.teenkeira.com, which is now closed, where she posted semi-nude photos of herself from her Briscoe-Shoemaker dorm room. The University eventually decided not to take any judicial action against her. In 2005, Playboy made its way to the Hoosier state for its "Girls of the Big Ten Party Schools" issue.

While pornographic materials and IU may have a history together, Erick Janssen, Associate Scientist at the Kinsey Institute, said the reason why students engage in this kind of behavior merits more research. Janssen spoke of several issues which arise out of the "Girls Gone Wild" debate, including whether the outrage would be the same if it were males and not females engaging in the behavior, whether the prevalence of sexual material on the internet is a factor, and issues about regret, morals and consent.

"It'd be silly to assume there was just one reason," he said. "When it comes to the reason, it can be anything from someone wanting to be liked by the people around them, the disinhibition due to alcohol, for others it may be attention, or, maybe they truly really like that T-shirt."

With the event canceled, the debate about what would have happened, what could have happened and why girls did what they did, will likely be laid to rest. Still, Ladd and several of the campus groups have lauded the quick movement of the campus community and the aid of the city in helping to reach an agreement.

"I'm thrilled, it's a great example of grass-roots work," she said. "I truly didn't think it was possible to cancel the event. But, I think it's great that enough people cared enough to put something together to not only raise awareness but to say we don't want this in our community."

While this cancelation is a socio-political boost to our modest college town, in some ways I feel at a loss. Though sexist and creepy, a local Girls Gone Wild! party could have afforded me the priceless opportunity of opening the local paper and seeing the blurred pictures of any number of my students lifting their shirts in a drunken torpor. Then the next day, when they come to class, I could just ask, "Where are your Mardi Gras beads?"

Back in B-ton

2007-01-13T22:10:00.000-05:00

After I'm settled into my new classes, I'll try to start posting more regularly.

In the mean time, this bit of interesting news (which is a little old, but news to me):

The nation's first and only "nationally recognized" Asian-Am frat, Lambda Phi Epsilon, got in the news last year in December with the death of a Laotion guy due to -- investigation decided -- hazing. What is amazing about this is that the pledge who died of alcohol poisoning had phrases written on his body such as "I'm gay" and "FAG."

Now, from this and other articles, I don't believe that the guy's death was a hate crime on us fags. But it's just lovely to see what passes as amusing to even my Asian American brothers; what lovely choice words to have markered on what is soon to be "People's Exhibit A."

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYBODY!

Slowing Down

2006-12-15T02:31:00.000-05:00

This blog will be slowing down now that I'm back here in the Bay Area. It's hard to report from the Small College Town With Big City Trash, while not being in the Small College Town...

Anyways: Happy holidays to everyone. In spirit of the season I witnessed this last night and it is literally the greatest gift of Christmas EVER: Twisted Sister singing Oh Come All Ye Faithful on Jay Leno.

They have a Christmas album out -- their farewell record.

Leaving for the Airport in two hours

2006-12-09T10:23:00.000-05:00

I'm packed. The semester is over. I've collected my students' portfolios and will be sending my grades via email.

And on my last day here in Bloomington until the spring semester, this happens. I'm actually going to miss B-ton. But at least I get to come back for this rally!

Ku Klux Klan might hold rally in Bloomington
By IDS Reports | Indiana Daily Student | Friday, December 08, 2006

A Ku Klux Klan rally might be held in Bloomington this spring.

The director of Bloomington's Safe and Civil City program, Beverly Calender-Anderson, received an e-mail Wednesday from Phil Lawson, the Imperial Wizard of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK. No specific date was mentioned in the e-mail.

The e-mail came just days after KKK leaflets were distributed to the yards of several Bloomington homes. Mayor Mark Kruzan released a statement regarding those e-mails, saying that the distributor of the leaflets craves attention and that it is frustrating to fuel the desire by responding to the leaflets.

"I want the community to know that the city of Bloomington administration and city council find the materials to be as offensive as do all of our citizens," Kruzan said.

Last Week in B-Ton

2006-12-06T02:18:00.000-05:00

It's been in the low 20's these past few days. It's even snowflaked a few times, but not enough to gather anything significant on the ground. It's been so cold that my feet hurt.

I've eaten at Steak n' Shake, and I have to say I've never eaten anything so terrible in the midwest before. I had a "green salad" that included chucky cuts of iceberg lettuce with limp tomatoes that were obviously canned (they were pink, not red, and looked so soggy). I got sick off the meal. I denounce Steak n' Shake. Their shakes are okay though.

I had my very last class tonight. Aside from teaching late today and Friday, I'm done. So tired. Indiana still has crime going on:

Student gets throat cut in class

Russ McQuaid (http://fox59.trb.com/news/local/eveningnews/knifeattack,0,7351848.story?coll=wxin-evening-news-3)

December 4, 2006

One Jennings County High School student is hospitalized, another is jailed after an unprovoked slashing attack in the high school's study hall.

Investigators said the slashing happened at 8:25 a.m. Monday at the high school in North Vernon in a room of approximately 150 students and two staff members.

"The suspect student, from what we've been told, without much warning and nothing being verbalized, basically approached the victim from behind, brought the knife across the throat," said North Vernon Police Officer Andrew Richmond. "The cut was about three or four inches long and very deep, not deep enough to sever any blood vessels."

As the freshman student sought medical help, his 16-year-old attacker fled the high school out a back door. He was apprehended ninety minutes later, two miles north of the high school, in a ditch near his mother's house. The knife was recovered from a table in the study hall.

"This student had no intent to harm any other student," said Dr. Michael Bushong, Jennings County School Superintendent. "This was an act taken and directed at one other student."

Bushong said there are some indications that other students knew animosity or a possible attack was brewing. The attacker faces expulsion from school and will appear in court Tuesday to determine if he will be tried as an adult.

When I actually can think right, I'll update tomorrow...

Seasons

2006-12-02T01:56:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and my windows were frosted over. The light from the sun was so muttled through the blinds. It started snow flaking today, and it's freezing outside. My feet hurt from the coldness and the heating unit in my living & dinning area sucks shit. The heater in my bedroom is fine, but these ones up front don't even heat up to warm touch.

I've been so busy grading my students' exams and giving them feedback on their short stories. I'm not sure if university teaching is for me. I'm not disciplined enough to juggle this: writing and teaching/reading student work. I've been trying to finish one story to turn into my workshop, but it's slow coming.

My preoccupation with Engrish is tickled by this. I want to turn this into a performance piece. It's hypnotic, you'll continue to hear and see these girls after it's over, long after.

Save Me!

2006-11-29T02:30:00.000-05:00

It is almost 3 in the morning, and I'm still up grading really bad first draft of short stories from my students. Eh, they're not all bad, but most are.

What is keeping me sane is to take breaks between every couple of stories. And you know what I do during these quick breaks? I look at internet porn. They don't even turn me on, but I look at them anyways. They help distract me.

Back in B-ton

2006-11-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

I have way too much work to catch up on. I need to grade my class' final, their first short story drafts, prepare a draft of a story of mine for workshop finish my professor's book, and read 90+ pages of my peers' fiction for workshop tomorrow. Dammit.

Hope everyone had a great holiday.

Please enjoy this:

Elkhart woman charged with killing her 4 children
Prosecutor says he might seek the death penalty
By Tom Coyne | Associated Press | Monday, November 27, 2006

Elkhart County court security officer Mike Cain, left, and Elkhart County Corrections officer Cpl. David Kerk, rear, escort Angelica Alvarez from the Elkhart County Courthouse following her initial hearing Wednesday in Goshen, Ind. Alvarez was charged wit

ELKHART, Ind. -- A prosecutor is considering seeking the death penalty against a mother charged with strangling her four young children.

Angelica Alvarez, 27, of Elkhart, was ordered to be jailed without bond on four counts of murder during a court hearing held Wednesday just hours after she was released from Elkhart General Hospital. She had been in the hospital since being found unconscious with a faint pulse Nov. 14 next to the bodies of her children, ages 2 to 8.

Elkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hall called the case one of the worst he could recall because four children from the same family were killed.

"That is particularly troubling, and I think a circumstance of this nature requires an appropriate response," he said.

Authorities allege that Alvarez strangled her children, Jennifer Lopez, 8, Gonzalo Lopez, 6, Daniel Valdez, 4, and Jessica Valdez, 2. Fernando Valdez, the father of the two youngest and Alvarez's husband, came home from work and found their bodies in the basement of their home in Elkhart, 15 miles east of South Bend. The charges came a day after 300 people attended the children's funeral.

Hill would not give specifics on how the children were killed and does not know whether investigators have a theory on motive, saying Indiana law does not require it to try the case.

"I don't think there's anybody on this earth that can suggest to me a reason for killing children. So I'm not too concerned about what motive might be there," he said at a news conference.

Hill said he would not describe the case as a murder-suicide attempt.

"I would not consider this as anything other than a murder at this time," he said.

Elkhart Circuit Judge Terry Shewmaker ordered Alvarez be jailed without bond and that she be examined to make sure she is competent to stand trial. Hill said earlier he had no reason to believe she wasn't.

Gonzalo Lopez, father of the two oldest children, has said Alvarez was depressed after losing her job and had been hospitalized for 12 days. Officials at Norco Industries, where Alvarez had worked as a housekeeper for three years, said she quit in mid-September.

Lopez earlier told the South Bend Tribune that he met Alvarez in Mexico and that they lived in Lazaro Cardenas, a port city in the state of Michoacan. A decade ago, Lopez and Alvarez moved to Goshen, Ind., a town near Elkhart, where Lopez had family.

Shewmaker asked Alvarez through a translator Wednesday at the courthouse in Goshen whether she was in the country legally. She said no. A pretrial hearing was scheduled for Dec. 21.

Hill said the Mexican consulate has been in touch with his office about Alvarez and said U.S. immigration officials also have inquired about the case. He said her citizenship status was not a concern.

"I don't think that really matters," he said. "I don't care if she is an American citizen; I don't care if she's a Mexican national; I don't much care if she is from the planet Mars. When you commit a murder of a child in Elkhart County, you will commit a steep price."

The Monday before Thanksgiving

2006-11-20T22:30:00.000-05:00

I gave an exam today, and unfortunately all 14 of my students were there to take it. Parts of me wished that I would have less timed essays that I'd have to read and grade over the break -- but no. Dammit.

I went to the gym, and when I was done I had an intense crazy for mid-western trashy food. So I went to the brewery and had a breaded pork loin sandwich and beer. I've been drinking more beer here than I've ever had in my life, so I guess I should be happy that I'm absorbing this midwestern chic. My friend Randy had promised he'd take me to go shooting after I get back from SF and before I leave for the winter break. WooHoo: Gun-tottin'!

I've watched a few episodes of Heroes on NBC, and for some reason I'm finding myself drawn to the actor Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura on the show. His character can bend space and time when he makes this severely constipated face. I don't know why (aside from that he's a regular Asian character on a scripted prime-time television show that doesn't look like an alien like Daniel Dae Kim). I guess there's something about bloated chinky heads that I find endearing -- much like a lot of laughing buddha headed men I've found myself attracted to for some strange reason: David, my hot Korean doctor, my ex, etc. Masi was on Conan tonight, and sounds really cute when he speaks unaccented English.

Guns, Pho, and more trashy news

2006-11-17T22:11:00.000-05:00

More Klan stuff in the local news. Martinsville, the next town over, is 15 minutes from Bloomington, and is rumored to be 70-something% Klan affiliated. It doesn't mean 70% of everyone is a Klan member, but that people are somehow related to or have some ties to Indiana Klan history/diaspora. I don't know how credible this statistic is. Either way, they got this in the news.

Oh, what the hell: All these news stories are worth reading!

I went up to Indianapolis last night to go out for the first time in ages. My friend Gerald took us to this club called Talbott Street. Being there reminded me of a question I have never learned the answer to: Why the hell do gay men love shitty, shitty house music? I have to admit that the space itself was nice though.

I hadn't been to Indianapolis in almost a month. I spent pretty much all of October going up to Indy every Sunday just to eat Vietnamese food. Bloomington doesn't have a single Vietnamese restaurant, and the withdrawal symtoms do get really difficult. Like San Jose, a lot of the Vietnamese businesses in Indy are in the same area with the Mexican businesses. It reminds me of Tully Road: taquerias next to pho shops, panderias sandwiching the Vietnamese market. It's nice to see some consistent ghettoing. All this is set up in the business district that also has a Dan's Gun Shop where, according to their church bulletin-like sign on the street, they "rent guns" and pay "cash for your firearms." And if you have a problem with that, their sign already has a rebuttal ready: "I DON'T MAKE THE RULES, I JUST FOLLOW THEM"

It's freezing, and parts of me are shrinking because of the weather

2006-11-17T21:25:00.000-05:00

I realize now that when the snow falls, possibly soon, I will probably need to start taking the bus and cool off on the scooter. The chill is even cutting through my shoes and I can't feel my toes. There is a bus that stops right in front of my apartment, and can take me as far as the Sam's Club and Super Wal-mart! However, the buses here are not all too desireable (i.e. They suck because the only come once every hour, and stop running past 8:30pm -- and I have a class that gets out at 9pm).

I went to the Super Wal-mart (I know, I'm evil -- but I'm broke and desperately needed more socks). In the parking lot I saw a car with a Confederate Flag sticker on their bumper. Which was okay, because parked next to it I saw a huge pickup with a "Klan Knight" sticker in their back window. It should be noted that this Super Wal-mart is on the west-west side of Bloomington and is nowhere near campus, let alone my place.

Bloomington is, I do believe, the most liberal place in all of Indiana. We have the 5th highest concentration of same-sex couple in all the United States. The other week, during the mid-term elections, the Republican campaigners were sent into B-ton to swarm and rally and convince folks to vote Red. And they were obviously successful -- HOORAY FOR THEM!

There is a small cooking supply store along the main shopping strip of downtown, a couple blocks from the campus' main gate. It's called The Inner Chef and is gay-owned and happens to have a rainbow design as part of their logo/sign. My friend Tracy told me that a couple years ago Fred Phelps (the reverend who protested Matthew Shepard's funeral, and looks like Senator Palpatine from Star Wars) came to Bloomington to protest The Inner Chef. So sad. He went from protesting things like the memorial service for a gay man whose murder rocked the country, to holding up signs in front of a shop that sells knives and pans. In a small town. Of Indiana.

In the news: I'm thinking of changing the subtitle of this blog to "Small college town with big city trash."

Bloomington woman stabbed in fight
Alleged assailant faces preliminary felony charges
By Michael Reschke | Indiana Daily Student | Wednesday, November 15, 2006

A Bloomington woman stabbed another woman in a fight about a man Monday, police said.

Monday night, Bloomington Police Department officer Dana Runnebohm was called to the Bloomington Hospital's emergency room to talk to a woman with a stab wound, BPD Detective Sgt. David Drake said, reading from a police report.

The woman, 23, said her attacker, Latrice Greer, 28, called her while she was outside of her apartment in the 500 block of South Basswood Drive, Drake said. Greer told the woman she was outside of her apartment and that she had something for her, Drake said, reading from the report. The woman told police she did not want any problems inside her apartment, so she went outside, Drake said. Once outside, Greer walked toward the woman and swung at her with something in her hand. The woman put up her left forearm to block and said she then felt a great deal of pain and began to bleed severely from her forearm, Drake said.

Greer then swore at the woman and got into her car and left. The woman called a friend to take her to the hospital and was treated at Bloomington Hospital for a deep laceration several inches in length on the underside of her left forearm, Drake said. She suffered extensive muscle and tendon damage that will require surgery, he said.

Later that day, officers found Greer at her residence, Drake said. Greer said she had not been to the victim's apartment that day, he said. She said she was with someone else who could verify her whereabouts. Greer gave officers the name and number of her alibi, but when officers called the number she gave them, that person denied seeing Greer that day, Drake said.

Greer was arrested on the preliminary charge of battery with a deadly weapon, a Class C felony, he said.

In the news

2006-11-14T21:48:00.000-05:00

My next project will be to write tales based on these types of small college town news stories. How sad is it, to be that young and acting up that bad and causing building structure to fall apart. ::sigh:: Why, oh why did I never have such a freshman college experience? My favorite feature is how cute the report is: the vagueness of the offenses, so pias. She "made vulgar statements" and "stuck her middle finger at them".

Student attempts escape from hospital
Freshman had .30 BAC, arrested on multiple charges
By Kristi Oloffson | Indiana Daily Student | Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The IU Police Department arrested an intoxicated female student Saturday morning after she attempted to escape through a bathroom ceiling in Bloomington Hospital, according to an IUPD report. The student was transported there after police responded to a call that she was unconscious in a Briscoe Quad dorm room from overconsumption of alcohol, said IUPD Capt. Jerry Minger, reading from the report.

The freshman, a 19-year-old resident of McNutt-Delgado, began vomiting before the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital, Minger said.

Her blood alcohol content was above 0.30, he said. Her BAC was taken at the hospital, said IUPD Sgt. Don Schmuhl.

The woman "became belligerent by being loud and cursing at the EMTs," when they arrived at the emergency room of the hospital, Minger said, reading from the report.

The emergency room personnel allowed the woman to use the restroom, and an ER technician waited outside the door for her, Minger said. When she did not come out or respond to knocking, the technician entered the room to find the woman making an attempt to climb into the ceiling, he said.

The ceiling hangers, which hold the ceiling tiles in place, then collapsed, causing half of the bathroom ceiling to fall in on the technician and the woman, Minger said. The student then began cursing and made vulgar statements to the hospital staff and stuck out her middle finger at them, Minger said. The estimated damage to the room was several hundred dollars but no one was injured in the fall, he said.

After the woman was treated and released, police told her she was under arrest for illegal consumption and criminal mischief, Minger said. She was transported to Monroe County jail where she was released Saturday afternoon upon her own recognizance, said officer Jeremy Sender of the Monroe County jail.

+++

I'd like it if the woman above was the one who caused this, but... I guess even Asian people in the Mid-West can't drive either. (But then again, Kilroy's is such a frat-boy-ish hangout -- I've seen screaming drunken men standing at the entrance, fondling their girlfriends' breasts, and yelling obnoxiously at passing cars -- I'm not convinced this was not divine intervention.)

Student struck by automobile outside Kilroy's Sports Bar

By Michael Reschke | Indiana Daily Student | Monday, November 13, 2006

An IU student was injured after being struck by an automobile near Kilroy's Sports Bar early Saturday morning.

As of Sunday afternoon, Jina Yang, 21, a resident of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority, had been released from Bloomington Hospital after being treated for injuries from the accident.

At about 2:50 a.m. Saturday, Yang and another pedestrian were crossing North Walnut Street. The other pedestrian jogged and made it across the street, but Yang walked directly in front of a vehicle that was heading north in the right lane, said Bloomington Police Department Lt. Janelle Benedict, reading from a police report. The driver of the vehicle, Emily Young, 20, said she slammed on her brakes in an attempt to avoid hitting Yang.

Yang was lying on the pavement and appeared to be bleeding from the head when officers arrived, Benedict said. She was treated at the scene and taken to Bloomington Hospital for further treatment.

Young was arrested on preliminary charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, causing serious bodily injury, a class D felony, and illegal consumption, a class C misdemeanor.

The Craigslist posting I put up during halloween

2006-11-13T23:37:00.000-05:00

TOP WANTED - 27 (Mission District)

Bottom for SERIOUS ONLY agressive top.

I just finished passing out treats, and am ready for your sugar daddy up my candy bag. Saw some hot sailor costumes. But the masked ones like Skeletor and Pinhead got me thinkin -- I WANNA GET FUCKED BY MASKED STRANGER!

Mask up, come into my room. I'll be lubed up, on my bed, ass up, and you make like The Dinosaur or Death or whatever you've got covering that fugly mug of yours and take me like a bitch. Staying in character is plus: Dinosaur face? I want roaring. Jason Vorhees hockey mask? Do that chh-chh-chh-cha-cha-cha while you pound my hot hole.

Built 5'11", buzzed brown, green eyes, with nice round ass, ready and willing. Your pic gets mine. Masked with bod pic nice, but not a must."

+++

I got one victim. I'll post up our interactions another time.

When Pizza Delivery Drivers' Attackers Attack

2006-11-12T14:49:00.000-05:00

I had pizza with my friend Randy last night, and when the delivery boy/young man brought the goods, attached to the pizza box was a xeroxed strip of this Indiana Daily Student article.

+++

Delivery driver assaulted, breaks 2 bones in leg
By Kristi Oloffson Monday, November 06, 2006

This is a composite picture of the suspect in the assault of the Aver’s pizza delivery driver that occurred Thursday night.

IU police are investigating the assault of an Aver's Gourmet Pizza delivery driver that occurred Thursday night at the Herman B Wells library, said IU Police Department Capt. Jerry Minger, reading from the police report. No arrests have been made at this time, Minger said.

A passer-by called the police and officers arrived to find the driver lying in the parking lot behind the library, complaining of pain in his right leg, Minger said. The driver told police that after he delivered a pizza, he returned to his car to find a man sitting in the passenger seat whom he did not know, Minger said. After the driver told the man to get out of the car, the man in the car began to "intimidate the victim with profane language," according to an IUPD press release.

A second and third man also approached separately, both shouting profanities at the driver and challenging him, Minger said. After the "verbal altercation" had passed, the three began to walk away, but the driver said something to the three suspects, who all appeared to know one another, Minger said.

At that time the first suspect turned around, thrust an ID at the driver and said that he had just returned from Iraq, Minger said. The second suspect then hit the driver in the face near his jaw, causing him to fall backward on his right ankle, Minger said.

The driver was transported to Bloomington Hospital, where doctors said he broke two bones in his leg and had to undergo surgery to correct the injury, Minger said.

Police are still putting together composite images of the three suspects, who were seen running toward Jordan Avenue from the library, Minger said.

+++

I'd like to think: Only in Bloomington.

Doesn't the sketch look like Corey Feldman? What the hell was he doing in Iraq? And hanging out with two thugs? And wearing that ugly beanie?

+++

For all my East Bay folks, consider the possibilities of this phrase existing back home: Oakland City University. It's real and here, right here, in Indiana, and more than likely filled with white people.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO

2006-11-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

A new story of mine is in the new issue of Watchword that just came out. You know you want it!

CLICK HERE

If you help support this beautiful effort in Bay Area based small press, me love you long time. In this issue, you'll also find a story by Dustin Heron whose new book Paradise Stories will be coming out in January .

I made pasta for dinner

2006-11-10T23:51:00.000-05:00

And it reminded me of how, at SFSU, there was this crappy pizza place downstairs in the Student Union. And they served pasta. They served "Lasagna."

It was really a bunch of mystery pasta made to look like a lasanga brick. Imagine a heat pan at the cafeteria, you walk up and when you order, the woman dips her spatual into the heat pan. At the top of this steel pan is a layer of mozzarella cheese, red sauce, and the obvious flat lasagna noodle. The lady cuts you a square of the thing, and when you get your plate, instead of earth-crust-like-layers-of-alternating-sauce-and-cheese-and-flat-noodle, repeat... Instead of all that, it's just a penne and sauce. Or linguine and sauce. Or corkscrew pasta and sauce.

They just stuff the inside of the lasagna with yesterday's left over pasta.

Nothing quite like it.

This posting has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Thanks to Denay's banana-nut bread. I'm beginning to understand why people don't read people's blogs. For the most part, blogs are just just mental masturbation. But in this case, not even I seem to be getting off.

Swept Away is playing on VH1 as I type this

2006-11-09T11:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my friend Chad's birthday, and we celebrated at a Bloomington staple: this brewery that has the only beer I whole-hearted love, Upland.

Before that, I went to the Asian Cultural Center to sit in on a talk panel about Trans-racial/Trans-national adoption. I've always had mixed feelings about this topic Afterall, I (along with everyone who I've ever talked to about this) have never seen a single Asian American adoptee that was... oh dear, this is so insensitive to say, but... we have never seen a single SANE Asian American adoptee. Particularly the Korean ones. In the words of a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (but let me assure you, the surname is Kim): "God, all [Korean adoptees] are fucked up."

I watched the panel of mothers talk about their experiences adopting and raising children from China, and the PI. And to be honest, I'm having trouble processing all the info. So, I better stop now and let it ferment for a little bit. (More on this another time.)

This weekend I will be going to the Indianapolis Queer Film Fest, which looks to be interesting with RuPaul in the musical Zombie Prom. I saw a documentary about Zombies during Halloween week (did I mention that?)

There's not much to report except one good news: I won IU's nomination to the Association of Writers & Writing Program's Intro Award for fiction. It is for the latest draft of my story "Forgetful" -- a piece about a guy who experiences being a Fob in reverse chronological order (in other words, instead of being a Fob who becomes "American," he grows up in America only to suddenly lose his ability to speak English). The story was selected by a judge outside the university: Michael Martone, who is a dazzling and hilarious writer, and I am grateful and honored he chose my story.

So, now IU is sending my story to compete at the national level with the AWP, where I will get my ass kicked and not win the possible publication in some literary journal, and where I will get my ass kicked and not win that money (which is $50, mind you). Wish me luck!

The other week, I went to a Goodwill in Indianapolis and bought a bunch of old records to decorate my living room

2006-11-07T20:54:00.000-05:00

I just pinned them to the top of the wall, where it meets the ceiling. So far, I have the following:

Sissy Spacek (of Carrie fame) -- Hangin' Up My Heart
Linda Ronstandt -- Living in the USA
Paula Abdul -- Forever Your Girl
The Cars -- Candy-O
Michael Jackson -- Thriller
Janet Jackson -- Control
Culture Club -- Kissing to be Clever
Go-Go's -- Beauty and the Beat
Strawberry Shortcake -- Live
Tina Turner -- Break Every Rule
Bette Midler -- The Rose soundtrack

Slip n' Slide

2006-11-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

It started raining again tonight, when I was in the middle of my pedagogy class. I dread the rain now, having almost died a couple weeks ago.

No hyperbole: I was almost roadkill a couple weeks ago, on the evening of Monday October 9. This is what you miss when I don't update my blog.

It was dark when class let out then. And the rain was pouring like the end of the world. I mean puddles in the sidewalk give pedestrians the splash treatment when cars fly by. I had taken my helmet with me indoors and, like an ass, I left it in the English grad student mailbox room. When I got out of my pedagogy class, I realized I was not longer holding my helmet and with all the major rooms closed, I would have to ride home in the rain without it.

And then Murphy's Law.

I was being cautious -- driving slow and steady on the slick road. And at High Street and Hillside, only two blocks from my apartment's block, two cars in front of me break suddenly. They weren't even 100 yards away. I break. Hard. Too hard. And my back wheel fish-tails foward, and I'm now facing my right side, the sidewalk. The bike collapses and the shield that covers the driver's legs in the front of the scooter, I can hear it gritting against the paved pebbles of the road. I squeeze the handles because I'm afraid that if I don't I might fly off and tumble into the trees on the side of the street. Because if I didn't hang on, I'd grind my helmet-less skull against pavement like a block of cheese on a steel grater.

It happened so fast that I only remember noticing two things:

That my right palm does graze the road as I slide my 50-odd yards
That the right side of my body does touch the ground, with my black shoulder bag on my back cushioning my ass

Then I smash into the car in front of me, a green Nissan that broke for the car in front of it -- my front wheel lodged under his bumper. I am soaked in gray gutter water. My right sweater sleeve, my right pant leg down into my socks and the inside of my shoe -- all heavy now with water. And it's still raining hard as I stumble to stand up, dazed. I go up to the passenger window of the car I smashed into and he asks if I'm okay and I say yes even though I can't feel my right hand. I clutch the wrist and notice that I only have a small dot in the left bottom of my palm and realized how lucky I was to just be in one piece.

It was like that kid's game from the late 80's or early 90's: where you attach a yellow vinyl carpet to the water hose and fly down the thing with your friends. Slip n' Slide, I think it was called. I think the jingle sang You run...you slide...you hit the bump and then you dive!

Because I was too confused to know what to do with myself and the situation, I told the driver he could leave. He never once stepped out of the car. When he took off, shattered red plastic from the fender of my front-wheel cover were splayed on the ground like jig-saw puzzle pieces. A red pick-up pulled over and a nice couple offered to take me home. All I could do was say, "Oh, it's okay. I don't want to get your car wet." over and over again, clutching that numb right hand. I made myself close and open it, to make sure it wasn't dead. The couple loaded my bike into their trunk against my protest and ushered me into the front seat, where I just repeated "I don't want to get your car wet."

When I got home, I showered, looking pathetic as I sat on the tub floor holding my knees in and let the hot water heat my cold skin. I must have looked like those rape victims you always see in made-for-TV movies, or at least that guy in "The Crying Game".

My right side had a purple elongated shape of Japan running up and down for over a week. Too bad David wasn't with me, because I would have gone around showing off my bruise, saying he did it to me. I'd tell people, "He didn't mean to do it...He's just been a little stressed lately."

Or, "I know he loves me. He said he was sorry. This is how I know he loves me."

Or, "Please don't tell anyone. I did kinda deserve it."

Then I'd go home, turn my head so I can see the bruise in the mirror, and play the crying game.

Roadkill

2006-11-05T16:13:00.000-05:00

I will have pictures to come of a lot of things. From my scooter, to the lovely weather and fallen leaves, to (yes!) roadkill. (For some reason, my flashcard reader won't work right now, so the digi pics are waiting.)

We have soooo much roadkill here in Bloomington. It's as if the animals have all contracted the same sense of suicidal tendency. I go to the gym -- less than 2 miles from my apartment -- and my scooter has to dodge splayed open raccoons, tired-tread-imprinted squirrels, and a number of other furry creatures I can't recognize because I'm going too fast to stop and take a closer look, because if I do stop and take a closer look the people driving behind me will think I'm crazy (either that, or I'm trying to peel me my dinner off of this here street). I counted 4 pavement patties last time I went to the gym.

The squirrels here, I must also remark, are huge. They're fat and juicy looking, and I want to poke one, if only I could get close enough.

I've been working on my southern accent. People in Southern Indiana have accents, which I find absolutely adorable. Hoosier Hick Chic, I want to call it.

Adding to the chic is my recent discover to two Indiana natives...

Orville Redenbacher: the popcorn man
Colonel (Hardland David) Sanders: Kentucky Friend Chicken, whose animated corpse gets paraded around in KFC commercials now -- Have they no respect for the dead?!

Last night I watched a documentary on the History Channel, "The Secret History of the Ku Klux Klan." There was a whole segment about Indiana being the biggest Klan state for a while. Home, sweet home. This hooded appetizer got me ready for my next documentary, on the Food Network, about Colonel Sanders and KFC. "Finger-lickin' good!"

Right now, I'm avoiding grading my student's papers and finishing that book I need to give a report on tomorrow for my Pedagogy class. Instead, I'm watching "No One Would Tell" on Lifetime, where Fred Savage (The Wonder Years) plays an obsessive and abusive boyfriend who kills DJ Tanner/Candace Cameron (Full House). Sally Jessy Raphael has a cameo as the judge at Fred Savage's trial. The most disturbing part is Candace Cameron has my sister Nancy's haircut in this movie.

Oh DJ Tanner.

Before this, Lifetime was playing "The Stranger Beside Me" -- where Kelly Kapowski of Bayside High School is newly wed not to Zack Morris, but to a rapist who terrorizes the neighborhood they move into.

Damn, I wish I could write this stuff. Forget the MFA degree, I want to just develop made-for-TV movies and teen dramas. And every single story will include a character who says, with spite, to her best friend, "What's wrong [insert name]? Didn't he respect you in the morning?"

Hot Buttered Rum!

2006-11-04T13:45:00.000-05:00

First off: my apologies for not updating this damn thing since September. It's been a rough mid-term, trying to balance writing, teaching, and classes all at once. But luckily, I read The Sound of Paper by Julia Cameron, a wonderful book about finding balance with your writing and it's given me a second wind. I will be trying to apply the writerly things it's taught me, and this blog will be slowly filling you in on the past few weeks, and my current Klandyland life...

So, it's fall and the weather, on a good day, is dark and cloudy like in SF, and on bad days, is raining and miserable. The leaves have turned.

I'm watching Intereview With a Vampire, again, for the 5th time since I've moved here. The movie -- the greatest vampire porno ever told -- is constantly on one of the Showtime channels. I've watched Queen of the Damned a bunch of times too in the last couple months -- and that's even funnier because it was meant to go straight to video/dvd (possibly with the Special Feature section having the audio of the black box from Aaliyah's plane). But because Aaliyah died, FOX thought they'd make more money off of a dead body, so it was released to theatres with its horrible CG and MTV soundtrack and bad acting (e.g. the scene where she fucks Stuart Townsend in a bathtub...filled with rose peddles...and they bite each other).

It all reminds me of the new Nora Robert's novel Denay is reading: "Dance of the Gods" -- the second installment in Nora Robert's trilogy modern day vampire romance/porno. The best line in that book is, "He pulled her loose pants from her hips, and there was nothing beneath them but woman, hot and wet. Hotter and wetter when his fingers found her."

Earlier, when I was reading submissions to the Indiana Review, a blocked number called me and I picked up thinking it would be Denay and instead it was Bill Clinton. "Hello. I'm Bill Clinton and I'm calling for your support of Lt. Governor John..." I normally hang up when I get these messages, but it was Bill Clinton and even though he said, straight-up, it was a pre-recorded message and even though it was impersonal, I actually listened to the whole thing, sitting on my second-hand couch which is covered with a bed sheet to mask the suspicious stains. For some reason, hearing his voice directed towards me made it feel like he was actually speaking to...Me! God I'm lonely.

My friend Jeff and I talked about how now that it's so cold (Bloomington drops into the 30's and 40's in the evenings), the saddest thing is to not have someone to cuddle up with in the chill. Then, for reasons I cannot remember, we started talking about office sex and how hasn't done it in the United States.

But maybe I have.

Maybe.

All you people at HIFY: I'll let you consider the possibilities of that for a minute, let that paranoia of Did He or Didn't He? set it -- let that paranoia drive you to sterilize your desks with the vinegar spray beneath the kitchen sink. Because: Remember that awful Shaggy song "It Wasn't Me"? How he had sex with the woman on the coffee table, and then the microwave, and then the doggy bed, and then the air-conditioner hanging from the window, and then the stroke-paralyzed mother in the living room, etc.? Well, if I were to have office sex (or, maybe, when I had office sex) it would be all up on everyone's business.

You're Welcomed.

+++

Yesterday, I went to a cocktail party for my program and the host and hostess had a full bar, along with -- brewing in the kitchen -- Hot Buttered Rum. I had never had such a thing and when they served me some, the melted butter floated above the mix of warm cider and rum and cloves. It was fattening and congealing on my lips, that butter. It reminded me of Wisconsin's Butter Burgers. I told a few people what a Butter Burger is. We sipped our Hot Buttered Rum, standing next to the hostess as she made more -- dressed classy in her red, high-waisted dress, at the stove and emptying a whole bottle of rum into the pot (looking like Faye Dunnaway in Mommy Dearest). And they gagged at the idea of a butter burger, meat patty fried with butter, buns slathered in butter, and served up hot with a pad of butter melting on the meat for that extra butterness.

I've never eaten one myself, but the opportunity might be realized. They have a few Culver's here in Indiana. Culver's: the Wisconsin chain. Culver's: Frozen Custard & Butter Burgers. A heart attack, waiting to happen. A place, I'm sure, that if you eat at often enough to look like zachhart12 on gay.com.

I was chatting online again the other day, and out of nowhere, because we were both in the Bloomington chatroom, he messaged me just to say this:

Nevermind that he got the ethnic slur in the wrong direction. He spelled it incorrectly, that Crakre.

"Spic asian"? Maybe he has mild Dyslexia and meant "Spice asian" -- as in, he mistook me for one of the Spice Girls, the one who will replace Ginger Spice for the reunion tour: ASIAN SPICE!

Not White Power -- GIRL POWER!

T-Storm!

2006-09-27T18:15:00.000-04:00

I graded my students' response papers on the cardio bike machine at the gym earlier. I tried not to sweat on them while I peddled, but you can't really prevent the occassional grotesque sprays.

I was going to go out and grade my students' poetry assignments, but the clouds swept out of nowhere and now it's thundering and lightening and raining-ing. And it was such a sunny day till 4. Apparently people say of Bloomington: "If you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes."

So, now I'm watching Project Runway reruns and eating ramen from the pot. At the bottom lefthand corner of screen is a "T-Storm" warning. Heidi Klum's nose is right next to a doomsday declaration that Brown, Hancock, Johnson, Madison, Marion, Morgan, Shelby counties better hit them basements cuz twisters on its way, I tell you what. I'm in Monroe county.

WOW! I just saw a PSA by dontlie.org, telling people in Southern Indiana to not buy guns for underage kids. We don't even have "Don't buy booze for Under 21" PSAs back home anymore. This is the real American Dream: to stand outside of a Walmart and ask approaching patrons, "S'cuse me ma'am, but would you mind doing me a big favor and getting me here a hunting rifle? I have the money, and I'll give you twenty for yer' troubles..."

Stuff going on in SF

2006-09-23T23:55:00.000-04:00

If you're in San Francisco: go and give my vicarious love. Wish I was going to APAture this year...

Han is emceeing! And you get an amazing package with Tony, Jenny, Hoa, and Mako all together! Hoa said she was going to reveal her new performance art piece where she overs herself with Greek cheese and lights herself on fire! MORE EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!

Poetry and Fiction
The Actors Center of San Francisco (co-presented with Poetry Flash)
180 Capp St. @17th St., 2nd floor
$10-20 sliding scale ($8-$20 for KSW members)

Join us for a night of poetry, fiction, and spoken word from some of the Bay's most promising authors and performers, who offer everything from ruminations on family relationships to experimental works that push the boundaries of the imagination.

PROGRAM Emceed by Han Pham
Ruby Veridiano POETRY
Elz Cuya POETRY
Maile Arvin POETRY
Jenny Zhang FICTION
Tony Luong POETRY
Mako Matsuda POETRY
Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen POETRY
Parnaz Foroutan POETRY
Josephine Penano POETRY
Rocky Choi FICTION
Tony Luong FICTION

check out www.kearnystreet.org for more info

Falling Back

2006-09-13T23:43:00.000-04:00

It's starting to get cold here. I think, earlier this week, we had one night that dipped into the 30 degrees range. I need to buy a comforter.

My car came the other day, and the truck driver couldn't drive the 8-car-piled-into-a-rack-in-the-back-of-his-truck truck into my neighborhood because, he said, "There are too many low trees here in the midwest." Which was true: he wouldn't have made it here. So, he came over with the car, and I had to drive him back to his truck in the K-mart parking lot. K-mart's lot is always empty. No one wants Martha Stewart products when they could have Target next door. I drove the trucker back and on the way he how he loves coming to these college towns: "A lot of sweet cheek girls...with nice asses." He asked me if I like the girls here, and it made me uncomfortable.

Nick is watching Open Water on TV right now. We're waiting for AAA to come bby and jump my car. All that inactivity has actually drained my battery.

Last week, some fag on gay.com called me a chink. Actually, here's the actually conversation:

zachhart12: engrish?
zachhart12: LOL chinkies
engrishlessons: actually: it's more a japanese
phenomenon
zachhart12: LALALAL JAPANEEE
zachhart12: we bombed japan?
engrishlessons: Chinese people can pronounce
"l"
zachhart12: lol
zachhart12: well i dont care
zachhart12: it sounds dumb :D
engrishlessons: that's fine. so does zachhart12
engrishlessons: So sad when you're being
mocked by a zit-riddled honky 20 year old
who doesn't even comprehend English on
your own level

I was actually upset when it happened. Then I reacted...Which is sad because he already looks like this.

I miss David.

Last week I saw Morpheus beat up Angela Bassett in What's Love Got to Do With It. Denay and I would watch it at least once a year on TV. Since she wasn't with me to watch it, I filled the void by buying an Ike & Tina Turner album on iTunes. I've had Proud Mary on repeat ever since.

My friend Leo used to imitate Robin Williams imitating a woman

2006-09-02T17:25:00.000-04:00

I watched two terrible movies on TV that are set in San Francisco: Mrs. Doubtfire and Sister Act II: Back In The Habit.

They remind me of home. Now if only they played The Princess Diaries, I'd have a trinity. I found out last night Anne Hathaway was in a movie where you get to see her titties. A new friend I met here in the program went to school with her. And trashed her room at a party once.

My question is, How the hell does one look at the person like this and NOT tell she is a man in drag?

Thursday is Relax Day

2006-08-31T15:44:00.000-04:00

I started teaching yesterday and the students asked me where I was from and when I said San Francisco they looked at me with heads cocked like birds. I wasn't able to figure out why until after class when several said they thought I was going to say "someplace in Asia." All but one of them are white.

I'm grading papers right and watching this lovely movie on Lifetime, "The Substitute".

"High-school teacher Gayle Richardson has quite a temper. After finding out her sweet hubby was a two-timing jerk, she kills both him and his mistress in a rage and burns the house to the ground. A year later, Gayle is teaching in another town under a new name. But her luck is about to change when a few suspicious people — including the student she's seducing — start digging up this murderer's disturbing past."

This movie has it all, including a murderous vamp with a thick (faux?) British accent crushing girls inside of gym bleachers. And the foreshadowing elements of Mary Kay Letourneau's story is perfect because it turns out that this Sunday, Lifetime will be airing "All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story"!!!

Forget orientation week and teaching practicum. Walking these women is all the training I need.

Late Notes

2006-08-29T00:37:00.000-04:00

It's 12:30 here in Bloomington, and I'm exhausted. Had my first day of classes and one of these classes -- "The Teaching of Creative Writing" -- is in one of the oldest buildings on campus. Which is to say: it doesn't have airconditioning, or at least not in the non-admin rooms, so I was stripping in classes and had to talk about how much I love bad movies and make fun of experimental poetry, with only a tanktop on.

I bought a scooter last week. I can't seem to upload the pics I took of it. It's a used Honda Metropolitan, red and cream (IU colors, no less) and I think I'll name it Hikki because that's what I was gonna call the dog Denay had gotten me (and an hour before I was to physically meet the dog, it got ran over by an disgruntled Asian woman).

I can't think. Instead, I'll paste in my Lost of Reasons to Watch the Fantasia Barrino Movie (that I had forgotten to post last week):

When she vomits at the breakfast table. Perhaps the best purge-on-camera moment since Linda Blair.

Also the scene where she walks into the church and just stumbles down the aisle, in the middle of mass, and sings acapella during a sermon, thus causing the whole choir to join in with her tearful wails. Because I always sing in sinc with strange pregnant women who walk into my church and cry Hallelujah, Hallelujah at the end. That scene was stolen right from Alex Haley's Queen, where Halle Barry stumbles into a church and screams, "Help...me...I'm...hungry...I...am...NEGRO! I AM NEGRO!"

But god damn, how can one woman deal with so much crap by the men and the system around her? I feel for you “Tasia”

I love how American Idol is referenced and playing in the background during various moments of the movie, for “subtle” foreshadowing. E.G. 'Tasia is shoplifting, and the convenient store worker is watching TV while the announcer introduces Clay Aiken.

Part so bad it doesn't even count as good: The movie doesn't touch on her illiteracy.

But she does do a PSA about it after the credits!

The list of pre-existing damages to the apartment I need to give my landlord, ten days after I had moved in

2006-08-24T01:55:00.000-04:00

I'm so paranoid about being blamed for anything. When my parents were here, my father found the following (with some input from me):

Bathroom

showerhead flange not securely adhered to wall
holes in wall around the (non-toilet-side) towel racks, from a previously removed towel rack (also rough caulking on the right side)
several large stains on vinyl floor
floor chips/cut spots
nicks in bathtub
scratches & nail holes on rightside of cabinet and lower wall of the sink
chips and holes directly above cabinet lights
holes on wall left of sink

Doors

Front door: scratches & paint spots, and wood peeling at bottom
Small (linen) closet: wood peeling
several large stains on vinyl floor
paint spots, scratches, and strange dark lines on all wooden doors of entire apartment (including closet door of bedroom)

Carpet

small white paint spots on carpet throughout apartment
small red spots in living room near kitchen
carpet not effectively adhered to wall edges

Kitchen

Large counterrim chip right above dishwasher
Crack on side of countertop next to oven
burn spots on top next to oven
about 40 nail holes of various sizes on walls, most notably screw holes in front of sink
damages (e.g. scratches) to the wood walls of the dishwasher's countertop, along with peeling at the bottom
about 20 scratches and marks on vinyl floor
large stains on floor in front of, and coming from, the refridgerator and dishwasher (3)
cracks where countertop meets walls (2 at caulking)
burnt out lightbulbs

Living Room

indentions (2) on wall on frontdoor side, along and turtle-shaped chip
many bumps/raises on wall that stretches into kitchen
also on living room-to-kitchen wall: long cracks that run along/from windows, from ceiling to floor
several small nail holes (found 4)

Bedroom

many small holes on walls, notably the inside wall (furthest from bedroom door)
larger holes on window wall (4, along with another beneath the window counter)
two large holes on upper wall connecting to linen closet (though this seemed intentional to allow flow from airconditioner/heater)

Home, Sweet Home!

I am using two different electric air-fresheners to get rid of this stale smell in my apartment that is part thrift-store and part funeral home

2006-08-22T23:35:00.000-04:00

I started my orientation yesterday and everyone seems great and they're only twelve of us (six in poetry, six in fiction) and because of this, it's a little too obvious that I'm the only Asian person. And the only one representing the west coast in this batch of first year students.

Our director told us in the first 15 minutes of the day that we are not to date our students. About half an hour later two deans of the graduate school (I think...maybe one chancellor and one dean -- but what does it matter? They're both "important" persons) reminded us that were are not to date our students. Then about four other mentors/instructors told us at various times throughout the day that we are not to date our students. What an odd thing to suggest. All this time I was thinking to myself: Yes! Fresh, virginal, barely legal hicks! That is exactly why I joined this program!

I was told that for many of my students, it would more than likely be their first time seeing a person of color and to not be surprised if they use the term "Chinaman."

I took my parents to the Catholic church (as oppose to the nearly 80 other churches in Bloomington) on Sunday. I couldn't help up count how many non-white people there were: Us, a South Asian family of four, and an woman with her boyfriend: 9:250-ish. Not bad.

Enough about ethnic observation crap. Now for the important stuff:

Only a block or two away from campus is the Subway that Jerod went to. THE Jerod. Turns out he use to live right above the shop and he went to IU, and so I'm no longer proud of going to the school with the Lilly Library or the Kinsey Institute or the #1 Music school... It's all about being part of the alma mater of the man who taught America that you can achieve your dreams by walking downstairs to a chain that calls their workers "Sandwhich Artists." I have reached the motherland.

I spoke to some of the fellow graduate students about places I want to visit while I'm here and they offered some more suggestions to add to the thematic list. It now reads as follows:

-Fairmount, Indiana: James Dean's hometown, and the destination for the annual festival
-Gary, Indiana: So I can drive past the Jackson family house and hopefully feel the ghost of child abuse. I wonder if that tree the boys had to pick their switches from is still in the front yard, or if that was just fictionalized for that made-for-TV movie.
-Martinsville: The town about 15-20 minutes away that's suppose to be "80% Klan affiliated." Though, I'm reevaluating this since someone told me a Black girl was shot on someone's frontporch there when she went door-to-door selling Encyclopedia Britannica. Now that's the most non-threatening thing you can sell door-to-door. Why would they shoot her? I can understand the annoyance of someone holding a box set of designer steak knives or the Bible up to their keyhole. But this girl was selling Encyclopedia Britannica -- her only crime was spreading knowledge. Albeit overpriced knowledge. (I'll want at least two white people with me if I go here.)
-Graceland and Dollywood: Everyone I said this to raved about Dollywood.
-Graceland, Too: I was told about a man whose house is the home of the largest collection of Elvis whoo-ha, and you knock on his door at anytime and he'll give you a tour and if you go three times you become a lifetime member with free admission priviledge. I wonder how he'd react if I ring his bell with a stack of encyclopedia in hand.
-Lexington, Kentucky: Where Sybil settled down after merging her 16 "multiple personalities"
-That Subway: I'll put up a pic when I finally get a chance to do my pilgrimage. I pass by it on the bus from school everyday.

The cicadas here chirp like crazy all through the days and nights. I was told this is nothing compared to two years ago when they swarmed and Bloomington was featured on CNN because they took over the town and a short and frightful reign. When he was here, my dad collected some cicada shells they molted out of. I wonder if they allowed those on the plane or if it was considered restricted material.

I have a few more days to get the list of already-existing-damages-to-the-apartment-to-my-slumlords.

I need to get the new Outkast album.

Hoosier Daddy?

2006-08-20T00:08:00.000-04:00

It is hot out here, and the humidity has turned the air into warm pudding. I actually feel like I'm back in Southeast Asia.

My place is not the amazing and well designed (affordable) home I thought I'd be getting. I shouldn't have been so naive as to think those damn models the apartment complex tour guides show you was the real deal. There are pockets of happy details among...not so happy details: Oh cool, I get a new toilet and sink...sitting on ugly, worn vinyl. Yay! New carpet...that's poorly installed and is driving my allergies crazy. Cobwebs with thumb-sized spiders, cracks in the wall, and peeling panels in my kitchen complete the murder scene that is now my home. You know that episode of South Park where people -- rather than wait in line at the airport -- would rather ride that machine that anally penetrated you and made you give oral and handjobs all at once? It's kinda like that: Despite my living condition, it sure beats living with dirty roommates again.

And here I was being so smug about how easy it was for me to find a place to live, and how cheap the rent is. I do believe it was the Germans who have the proverb, "God punishes all small sins immediately."

One of the home furnishing items that's making my place look a lot less depressing was delivered today: A couch I found at a used funiture store

I finally got my internet set up this morning. Hence this.

I got so bored and cramped (considering that my parents are still here) once I was able to check my email, that I started looking up internet porn in the living room. My mom was in the kitchen. My dad was in my room taking a nap. I was yards away from both. And even the porn did nothing to ward away my boredom. It was a slow day filled with rearranging the layout of my place, and trying to find a Public Radio station, only to just go into iTunes and broadcasting KQED. The little touch of home was be nice.

I now have a Sam's Club card, a Kroger's card, have twice gone to Walmart (shame on me), and been in and out of Target's doors fourteen times. There are a hell of a lot of Korean people here. They travel like packs of wolves -- I never see less than five a time. I first noticed this GOD DAMN MY UPSTAIRS NEIGHBORS ARE MAKING SO MUCH NOISE AT 12:39AM DON'T THEY KNOW TO BE A BIT MORE CONSIDERATE?! IF THIS GOES ON DIAMANDA GALAS' ALBUMS WILL BE RINGING THROUGHOUT THIS PLACE ONCE MY PARENTS ARE OUT.

Okay. They stopped. Now, back to the Koreans. I just see Koreans hanging around outside of Target and the mall with other Koreans, speaking Korean.

I found a decently stocked Asian market. I can survive here. Carolyn had told me a while back that I need to destroy the relationship between the Korean American adoptee in my program and his parents. "For his own good!"

Half of the Hoosiers I've met have accents. I'm trying to acquire it for immitations purposes, once I'm back to visit.

I saw a business called "ARAB Pest Control" -- I'll be sure to snap a picture. Not sure what to make of that.

Packing

2006-08-14T21:41:00.000-04:00

I hate it.

I also don't like being at my parent's place for more than a few hours at a time, as they just start telling me all the things I did wrong with my life.

God I'm annoying: such a complainer.

I miss people already. My apologies for not being more present during this whole Good-bye Process. Please accept these hilarious bad poems and emotional vomit from my slovenly ex-roommate's myspace, as a token of my remorse. (I went to retrieve my wireless router from my old place the other day, and there is now cookingware turned upside down in the carpeted livingroom. And that ceiling-scraping dead plant Tommy brought home is still on the kitchen table, rotting like Miss Haversham's cake in Great Expectations.)

I am leaving for Indiana in less than 12 hours. I have not had time to make my farewell phone calls to people. I told the saleswoman three times that I wasn't interested in opening a Macy's today because I'm from Indiana. When she asked for ID with my credit card, I handed over my California State ID like an idiot. But she said, sincerely, "Have a safe trip back to Indiana," after handing me my bag, so I guess it's okay.

Welcome to Klandyland!

2006-08-11T20:50:00.000-04:00

You know Lil' Kim's intro to her reality tv show, Countdown to Lockdown?

Yeah--It's kinda like that. "In just four days, I am going to Klandyland..." Just kidding Indy. I love you and am very excited to become a Hoosier. Please don't lynch me.

Among the many things I will miss most here in SF is being able to watch this with my friends: From the network that brought you Student Seduction starring Jessie Spano, and Human Trafficking starring tATu, comes the feel good movie of the year:

The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life Is Not A Fairy Tale