Thursday, July 31, 2003
Turn Off the Idiot Box
Watched two episodes of "Jag" today back to back because we have cable and Jag is a constant on the USA channel, which has lots of similarly patriotic programing. I used to watch it in middle school and my mom still watches it. It was a better show before they started taking it to Afghanistan and whatever country is fashionable to invade at the moment; I felt it rather cheapened and sensationalized the premises, concentrating more about the gimicks than the people. I guess post-911 popularity got to its head.
My mom is watching some strange Bruce Willis movie right now, about him as a cop or FBI agent or in some other hard-boiled testosterone packing occupation. In any case, he has to protect this savant autistic boy, who inadvertantly cracks a government code, from being killed. Now, why on earth do all autistic kids in movie have to be savants? Is there no such thing as dumb autistic people? Are normal autistic people too "uninteresting" for daytime televison? It seems like a rather patronizing point of view.
Watched two episodes of "Jag" today back to back because we have cable and Jag is a constant on the USA channel, which has lots of similarly patriotic programing. I used to watch it in middle school and my mom still watches it. It was a better show before they started taking it to Afghanistan and whatever country is fashionable to invade at the moment; I felt it rather cheapened and sensationalized the premises, concentrating more about the gimicks than the people. I guess post-911 popularity got to its head.
My mom is watching some strange Bruce Willis movie right now, about him as a cop or FBI agent or in some other hard-boiled testosterone packing occupation. In any case, he has to protect this savant autistic boy, who inadvertantly cracks a government code, from being killed. Now, why on earth do all autistic kids in movie have to be savants? Is there no such thing as dumb autistic people? Are normal autistic people too "uninteresting" for daytime televison? It seems like a rather patronizing point of view.
Assorted Topics Party Mix
Topic 1: I feel sorry for Saddam, as a father who has lost his sons if nothing else. I heard on the radio that $30 million is going to the Iraqi tipster who helped us catch the sons, but I have mixed feelings about this. While I am grateful that.. uh... the war on terror... or WMD... or whatever it is now.... is going well, it seems like a rather vile thing to do to betray your own country and (if it was the case) guests (symbolically at least) under your protection at your house. However, it is hard to judge: I am reminded of, due to my History EE, the accusations of treason made by British diplomats to German nationals who tried to warn them about Hitler's ambitions and convince them to go to war over the invasion of Czechoslovakia before something else was attacked. I doubt neither Qasay and Uday nor the rest of Saddam's regime did the tipster any favors in the last ten years; perhaps he suffered from persecution like the rest. And houseguests like Qasay and Uday who (I'd imagine because of their violent natures and dire straits) force their way in by putting a gun to your head are hardly houseguests at all.
Topic 2: AP exam results- 4's in everything. IB exam results- 5's in mostly everything, even Chinese. Booya. Physics was a 4. Math Studies, from last year, was a 6. I am getting a diploma, yippie-skie-yay.
Topic 3: What I Did Today.
I went to the Oral Surgeon (no Malex this is not a sexual euphemism) for my consultation on my wisdom teeth extraction. I need to get four extracted through surgery, but we've decided not to do all four at the same time, so it's two on one side, then two on the other. Date of first surgery is next Wednesday, date of second surgery is yet to be arranged. It makes me kind of nervous with possible complications and everything and having a big gaping nose from my mouth to my sinus.
Also went to Rock Creek Park and splashed around in the creek with my pant legs rolled up. Walking on the rocky (well duh) creek floor is better foot massage than anything my mom managed in Hong Kong. Water bulges against the weather side (if such terms can be used for a water current instead of wind) of my legs in compacting ripples like the grooves of a record; on the lee side, there is a little dimple where the water is more shallow. I fell in at an area where the creek flew whitecapped and bubbling over a terrace of black rocks, the water level high from thunderstorms, got wet up to my waist, cut my right big toe on something sharp. Pretty dumb, wading in Rock Creek, god knows what's in it, but I am young, and invincible.
If people ask me about what I did while I was young enough to have energy and not good senses, I can tell them, God as my witness, that I walked in a (possibly polluted) creek, and it felt good.
Topic 1: I feel sorry for Saddam, as a father who has lost his sons if nothing else. I heard on the radio that $30 million is going to the Iraqi tipster who helped us catch the sons, but I have mixed feelings about this. While I am grateful that.. uh... the war on terror... or WMD... or whatever it is now.... is going well, it seems like a rather vile thing to do to betray your own country and (if it was the case) guests (symbolically at least) under your protection at your house. However, it is hard to judge: I am reminded of, due to my History EE, the accusations of treason made by British diplomats to German nationals who tried to warn them about Hitler's ambitions and convince them to go to war over the invasion of Czechoslovakia before something else was attacked. I doubt neither Qasay and Uday nor the rest of Saddam's regime did the tipster any favors in the last ten years; perhaps he suffered from persecution like the rest. And houseguests like Qasay and Uday who (I'd imagine because of their violent natures and dire straits) force their way in by putting a gun to your head are hardly houseguests at all.
Topic 2: AP exam results- 4's in everything. IB exam results- 5's in mostly everything, even Chinese. Booya. Physics was a 4. Math Studies, from last year, was a 6. I am getting a diploma, yippie-skie-yay.
Topic 3: What I Did Today.
I went to the Oral Surgeon (no Malex this is not a sexual euphemism) for my consultation on my wisdom teeth extraction. I need to get four extracted through surgery, but we've decided not to do all four at the same time, so it's two on one side, then two on the other. Date of first surgery is next Wednesday, date of second surgery is yet to be arranged. It makes me kind of nervous with possible complications and everything and having a big gaping nose from my mouth to my sinus.
Also went to Rock Creek Park and splashed around in the creek with my pant legs rolled up. Walking on the rocky (well duh) creek floor is better foot massage than anything my mom managed in Hong Kong. Water bulges against the weather side (if such terms can be used for a water current instead of wind) of my legs in compacting ripples like the grooves of a record; on the lee side, there is a little dimple where the water is more shallow. I fell in at an area where the creek flew whitecapped and bubbling over a terrace of black rocks, the water level high from thunderstorms, got wet up to my waist, cut my right big toe on something sharp. Pretty dumb, wading in Rock Creek, god knows what's in it, but I am young, and invincible.
If people ask me about what I did while I was young enough to have energy and not good senses, I can tell them, God as my witness, that I walked in a (possibly polluted) creek, and it felt good.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Stuff
What've I been doing... I've been going to Lebanese Taverna and Monkey Mall. Normal things.
Tacked myself onto the list of people going camping in Rocky Gap State Park on August 1st, next weekend, probably much to everyone else's dismay. Malex said on Sunday night there wasn't enough room in the Malex-mobile for me with him, Nick, and Dena and all those gosh-darn tents, but apparently, as plans stand finalized as of Monday afternoon, there is enough room for Karina. She's always been smaller than me. At any rate I've gotten a ride with Erica Morgan who I don't know all that well except that she sat across the aisle from me in Pyschology in junior year I think and I remember watching her a lot and occasionally attempting to draw her. Her face gets blurred in my head with Debb and occasional Victorian ladies of Pre-Raphaelite oil paintings. That I won't have anything to talk to her about for the four hour round trip to/from Cumberland while Nick and Malex and Dena and Karina make memorable gay jokes in the Malex-mobile and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept I would've had to join the merry nine campers a day late and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept my parents would have had to drive around rural Maryland for eight hours total (two hours to Cumberland Saturday morning, two hours back, two hours to Cumberland Sunday afternoon, two hours back) (assuming I'd on my conscience let them) is of no consequence to anyone, because there is no space for me in the Malex-mobile. In all fairness Karina probably faced a situation like this too, so it was merely a calculation on Malex's part of who he likes better.
Went to Screen on the Green on Monday with Malex and Karina. We were supposed to watch Mutiny of the Bounty on the Mall but it was raining cats and dogs, a formidable challenge for even our umbrellas, jackets, plastic, blankets and towels, so we went to Chipotle, blooming into social animals, and then Borders, where we retreated into antisocial shells. It was fun though, mostly walking around in the evening and the middle of the night. I was amused that on the Metro to Rockville Station where Malex's van was, we were all silently, simultaneously and independently checking out the guy sitting across from us. Karina said, after a brief silence, as we got off the Metro: "Did anybody think that guy was hot?" and we all agreed, spontaneously, telepathically knowing exactly who "that guy" refered to. Malex said it was a particularly unattractive Metro car; there really was only that guy to look at. I personally thought he looked better in profile than from the front, as it is with some people. Malex dropped Karina off at her house so that luckily enough for her, she was inadvertantly quite clear of the van before me and Malex had a Something the Hell Happened. (One of those things between a Falling Out and a Dialogue where the next day people who weren't with you would still be like, "Something the Hell Happened between you and Alex last night.")
See, Malex wondered if I was insulted that he chose to give Karina a ride to Rocky Gap and not me, and I didn't answer, and he gave me time to collect my thoughts. Here they are:
It was on the topic of why there is this wormhole in time space that allows there to be enough room in the van for Karina but not for me but the answer of course is that I am obnoxious and while I am a person who you would not object to watching screen on the green with I am not a person who you would trust with teamwork activities such as setting up tents. (or directing Sharon's Personal Profiles and fucking it up so that my media productions teacher says 'i think you owe sharon an apology' like i enjoy screwing up). It is very discouraging that someone on the brink of college and independence should feel all of eleven years old again and it seems that I am not entering college but middle school where an unspoken communication passes between people and they all in a group move away when you enter a room and there are times when i would like to be anyone except for myself. High school was great in that I could sit down and eat a sandwich at at least one table with nobody objecting to my presence, because having every single cafeteria lunch table turn you away ('this seat is saved for someone, there's no space for you') and eating standing up is the shits. (and also standing on the outside of a great barrier that is more transparent and invisible than glass yet harder than crystal that stretches in each direction between you and the rest of the world and warmth and people who laugh all the time and loneliness that is not a thing and a demon you can kill so much as a giant spreading deafening nothing empty of anything at all.)
There is a small core of people within my world. Everyone else exists outside of it, like Sharon and Ruchita and Lizzie whose lives seem so tidy and well-organized and so together like little suburban lawns. People walk the bridge across the gap between my world and the other all the time. Most of the time they leave; Nick has left and Malex is leaving, but also they come in and I think of the letters that Andrew and Doug wrote, and they wrote not because they had to but because they wanted. I think though that I have a strong and quiet pillar of humanity that I share with no one, and if that is taken away only then would I contemplate putting a pistol in my mouth and shooting myself. And it will not be taken from me because I have either the faith or stupidity to believe that things will be all right for me in the end and I may come out a better person.
I really feel bad for sending Malex on a mad guilt trip though (having conveyed some of the above to him in the midnight dark through an intensely awkward silence) because he's a nice boy and all he said was "Well you're kind of distracting." Jesus Christ, I bet he didn't know I was such an emotional piece of work. :P Hell, I didn't either. This, my friend, is why you should date MEN.
Malex called the next day with a "Hope you feel better" message on my answering machine which would've been funny had my parents gotten it (I can imagine: "What... did you have a fever?") but I got it and he invited me to watch Trigun with Janis and Lauren and it was a good show and Lauren was great and we got on swell which goes to show how well I can get on with people one-on-one if they aren't defensively huddled in with twelve other people at a party. And then I came home and had issues and read some All Quiet on the Western Front which made me even more depressed and had more issues and then checked my family email because my mom was expecting a message but there were 401 messages most of them spam probably all of them except that my connection kept dying at message #137 so I kept trying to Get New Messages and I'd get 136 of 401 and then my connection would die and I'd try again and get 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 so that I got four duplicates of each spam letter: 4 times 136. So I deleted them all, turned the computer off and went to bed.
I am sorry that Haie Westhus died because I liked him.
Today I got my learner's permit (very belatedly) so that hopefully a year or so from now I won't need to find space in someone else's minivan, and wrote, the old-fashioned way, to Andrew at camp and Doug the Eagle Scout and Jen recovering from surgery at home.
What've I been doing... I've been going to Lebanese Taverna and Monkey Mall. Normal things.
Tacked myself onto the list of people going camping in Rocky Gap State Park on August 1st, next weekend, probably much to everyone else's dismay. Malex said on Sunday night there wasn't enough room in the Malex-mobile for me with him, Nick, and Dena and all those gosh-darn tents, but apparently, as plans stand finalized as of Monday afternoon, there is enough room for Karina. She's always been smaller than me. At any rate I've gotten a ride with Erica Morgan who I don't know all that well except that she sat across the aisle from me in Pyschology in junior year I think and I remember watching her a lot and occasionally attempting to draw her. Her face gets blurred in my head with Debb and occasional Victorian ladies of Pre-Raphaelite oil paintings. That I won't have anything to talk to her about for the four hour round trip to/from Cumberland while Nick and Malex and Dena and Karina make memorable gay jokes in the Malex-mobile and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept I would've had to join the merry nine campers a day late and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept my parents would have had to drive around rural Maryland for eight hours total (two hours to Cumberland Saturday morning, two hours back, two hours to Cumberland Sunday afternoon, two hours back) (assuming I'd on my conscience let them) is of no consequence to anyone, because there is no space for me in the Malex-mobile. In all fairness Karina probably faced a situation like this too, so it was merely a calculation on Malex's part of who he likes better.
Went to Screen on the Green on Monday with Malex and Karina. We were supposed to watch Mutiny of the Bounty on the Mall but it was raining cats and dogs, a formidable challenge for even our umbrellas, jackets, plastic, blankets and towels, so we went to Chipotle, blooming into social animals, and then Borders, where we retreated into antisocial shells. It was fun though, mostly walking around in the evening and the middle of the night. I was amused that on the Metro to Rockville Station where Malex's van was, we were all silently, simultaneously and independently checking out the guy sitting across from us. Karina said, after a brief silence, as we got off the Metro: "Did anybody think that guy was hot?" and we all agreed, spontaneously, telepathically knowing exactly who "that guy" refered to. Malex said it was a particularly unattractive Metro car; there really was only that guy to look at. I personally thought he looked better in profile than from the front, as it is with some people. Malex dropped Karina off at her house so that luckily enough for her, she was inadvertantly quite clear of the van before me and Malex had a Something the Hell Happened. (One of those things between a Falling Out and a Dialogue where the next day people who weren't with you would still be like, "Something the Hell Happened between you and Alex last night.")
See, Malex wondered if I was insulted that he chose to give Karina a ride to Rocky Gap and not me, and I didn't answer, and he gave me time to collect my thoughts. Here they are:
It was on the topic of why there is this wormhole in time space that allows there to be enough room in the van for Karina but not for me but the answer of course is that I am obnoxious and while I am a person who you would not object to watching screen on the green with I am not a person who you would trust with teamwork activities such as setting up tents. (or directing Sharon's Personal Profiles and fucking it up so that my media productions teacher says 'i think you owe sharon an apology' like i enjoy screwing up). It is very discouraging that someone on the brink of college and independence should feel all of eleven years old again and it seems that I am not entering college but middle school where an unspoken communication passes between people and they all in a group move away when you enter a room and there are times when i would like to be anyone except for myself. High school was great in that I could sit down and eat a sandwich at at least one table with nobody objecting to my presence, because having every single cafeteria lunch table turn you away ('this seat is saved for someone, there's no space for you') and eating standing up is the shits. (and also standing on the outside of a great barrier that is more transparent and invisible than glass yet harder than crystal that stretches in each direction between you and the rest of the world and warmth and people who laugh all the time and loneliness that is not a thing and a demon you can kill so much as a giant spreading deafening nothing empty of anything at all.)
There is a small core of people within my world. Everyone else exists outside of it, like Sharon and Ruchita and Lizzie whose lives seem so tidy and well-organized and so together like little suburban lawns. People walk the bridge across the gap between my world and the other all the time. Most of the time they leave; Nick has left and Malex is leaving, but also they come in and I think of the letters that Andrew and Doug wrote, and they wrote not because they had to but because they wanted. I think though that I have a strong and quiet pillar of humanity that I share with no one, and if that is taken away only then would I contemplate putting a pistol in my mouth and shooting myself. And it will not be taken from me because I have either the faith or stupidity to believe that things will be all right for me in the end and I may come out a better person.
I really feel bad for sending Malex on a mad guilt trip though (having conveyed some of the above to him in the midnight dark through an intensely awkward silence) because he's a nice boy and all he said was "Well you're kind of distracting." Jesus Christ, I bet he didn't know I was such an emotional piece of work. :P Hell, I didn't either. This, my friend, is why you should date MEN.
Malex called the next day with a "Hope you feel better" message on my answering machine which would've been funny had my parents gotten it (I can imagine: "What... did you have a fever?") but I got it and he invited me to watch Trigun with Janis and Lauren and it was a good show and Lauren was great and we got on swell which goes to show how well I can get on with people one-on-one if they aren't defensively huddled in with twelve other people at a party. And then I came home and had issues and read some All Quiet on the Western Front which made me even more depressed and had more issues and then checked my family email because my mom was expecting a message but there were 401 messages most of them spam probably all of them except that my connection kept dying at message #137 so I kept trying to Get New Messages and I'd get 136 of 401 and then my connection would die and I'd try again and get 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 so that I got four duplicates of each spam letter: 4 times 136. So I deleted them all, turned the computer off and went to bed.
I am sorry that Haie Westhus died because I liked him.
Today I got my learner's permit (very belatedly) so that hopefully a year or so from now I won't need to find space in someone else's minivan, and wrote, the old-fashioned way, to Andrew at camp and Doug the Eagle Scout and Jen recovering from surgery at home.
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