Friday, January 23, 2004

Happy belated Chinese New Year, yesterday. I talked to Jeremy for long hours on the phone at one in the morning under the covers with the lights turned off, and with his voice in my ear he was all but next to me. It's one of those things you wish could last forever.

But then I had to go to sleep and wake up. I wore red and new clothes for good luck. I got money in red envelopes. It's Hou Nian, the year of the monkey. You know this. It's the first time I've really had a relaxed Chinese New Year... before, I've always been in school. If I was lucky the lunar new year might happen to fall on President's Day, but still, I'd never had quite as stress-free holiday as this.

David from school called me to wish me happy new year. He's a big fat Asian man who plays video games and has no friends and in this way reminds me of myself as I had/could've been. I figure that if he has low self esteem and thinks about killing himself the least a member of the human race can do is to talk to him every once in a while. I'd given him my number when he asked for it because I felt sorry for him but ever since then he's been rather liberally taking advantage of my patience. He has no sense of humor so to speak of. When you try to crack jokes with him he'll be very silent for a few moments and then just continue talking about whatever it is he was speaking of before. And it doesn't matter how you respond, he just keeps talking, on the same topic. It's not that he has boring topics; he taught me how to build a good snowman and told me all about Stargate SG-1, but he has a big loopy fat man voice, you know, the kind that goes: "waugh waugh waugh" very monotonously, like "Hoom hoom hoom" but not as Entish. It's horrible. I may sic Jeremy on him if he bothers me. It's one of the benefits of having a male defender.

I went shopping with T for Valentine's day gifts at Montgomery mall (known as Monkey Mall perhaps, so suiting). I had a Gap gift certificate from way back when, the year 2000, given to me by Pearl, a family friend. Apparently she'd given T one of those too. Unfortunately, neither of us actually shop at the Gap, which is one of the reasons that it took me so damn long to use my certificate. This is why gift certificates should be banned and people should give each other either gifts or money. Anyway, after a long while of desperately looking at things hoping maybe my heart might feel the faintest sort of spark of consumer desire, I got myself a jacket, which is admittedly quite nice. It's cute. We also went to Sharper Image and loafed around on the massage chairs without buying anything in that time honored tradition, and contemplated manly gifts (read: sharp, pointy and violent) from Chesapeake Knife and Tool/ the Discovery Store. It was all too expensive. I got V-day gifts (not anything sharp, pointy, or violent) for Jeremy (not at the Gap) but what they are I'm not at liberty to say.

Went out to dinner with my family and T's family and Pearl's family, all at once. It was rather hectic, but all Chinese dinners are.

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

A typical phone conversation (which I have nearly nightly) with Jeremy, arranged by topic, chronologically:

Grocery shopping -> factory farms -> milking machines -> making butter/cheese from human millk/ milk porn -> the location of udders on minotaurs -> improbable anatomy/evolution -> crystalline eyes on starfish that focus light -> diamonds -> the cool ability to form diamonds through magic to make obscene amounts of money/solidifying light -> magic powers -> if Jeremy could have any ability at all it'd be the ability to accelerate objects ridiculously fast -> dangerous projectile pebbles -> bullets and how slow they are -> dodging bullets -> how we talk about such weird shit -> -> how it would be terrible to be a telepath because you'd hear everyone's completely random thoughts -> trying to remember what we talked about -> the strange processes of human memory -> how you forget what you're going to say and then remember it fifteen minutes later, or in the middle of the night -> lucid dreaming -> How Dean Acheson or some guy in the Watergate trial was asked to testify regarding the Nixon tapes, and when the actual tapes were found and compared to the testimony it was discovered that he'd paraphrased the tapes accurately but the exact wordings were mostly off -> being recorded over the phone and wearing tin foil hats -> how we know so much crap and should play Trivial Pursuit over the phone -> chess over the phone -> Battleship over the phone -> telepathic chess in X-men -> some Darkover book wherein these telepaths instill the essence of fear into an enemy army -> random books we've read ...
Vikings and Mongols and Goths, Oh My!

Guess what! It's Barbarian Week on the History Channel! I'm so excited! ^___^
Wherein Sushi is Served from the Torso of a Naked Woman

This sounds like a marvelously creative, as well as tasty, idea. Too bad about the protesters though.. personally I think those Asian American women protesting this are doing worse by enforcing the stereotype that all Asians are tightasses. And if you're in a women's group I think your time would be better spent not complaining about the artsy presentation of food at a restaurant somewhere, but helping poor single mothers put bread on the table. Besides, it's a double standard. You know if it were a male model doing this, nobody would complain, though maybe there'd be a few jokes about the size of his sashimi.