Excerpts, Edits, and Additions to/from E-mails from Hong Kong

(I've been home for a while, btw, since June 15th, just not posted.)

May 26

Saw Siddhartha's fingerbone. Kind of. It passed me by in the street, drifting slowly like a parade float in a golden reliquary presided over by some monks and guarded by an escort of policemen. People lined the road and the pedestrian bridge overhead to see it pass. To me, it wasn't a big deal once the "Walk/Don't Walk" light switched from the red standing man to the green striding figure.

I was in a traffic accident today, and by traffic accident I mean the bus I was on scratched the bumper of the compact car in front of us.

Had crabs today. Not the STD crabs, the seafood crabs. Wondered what I came halfway around the world for, if I'm eating crabs. They were softshell though, and pretty good. I'm a champion crabeater, but not as good as you.

Linkin Park is coming here on June 17th, but I'll be home by then. Apparently William Hung is pretty big here too, so maybe his success isn't too blatently due to racial exploitation. My cousins imitate him all the time, seemingly unaware that they don't sound much better, what with the same accent and all, but they can rest easy knowing they at least look better.

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May 30

Cantonese food has a reputation for being bland for a reason. "Look! Food! Let's steam it!" Yarr... Did you know McDonalds is pretty upscale here? It costs about the same, but many other food places are cheaper so that it attracts a mostly middle-class clientele as opposed to the blue collar workers we get in the US, so that in HK while the food is the same the places are generally cleaner and there's better service. There actually
is service, for example; people will take your tray for you when you're done and give you menus and speak in very proper Cantonese, as opposed to even lower class or rural Cantonese.

Days are very long. Wish you were here, except, you don't like heat, crowds, or noise.

Went to Sai Kung, which is in the New Territories outside the city, and it's very pretty. It's got many villas by the sea along green mountains, and hasn't been too built up yet. By a pleasantly beautiful organic farm covering a series of gentle hills, Chinese herbal greenhouse, and insect museum,I went to the Shell Museum. Besides being a museum about shells, and it is also actually shaped like a partially opened clam shell, with windows at the opening, tapering in height into the clam "hinges," the entrance. The exhibits themselves are arranged in spiral corridors. It had all sorts of shells, and disturbing spiny, skeletal-looking cross sections. I will show you photos. Shells are very shiny. Did you know that they produce their own varnish? So it's not like you even have to polish them, just kind of wash them off.. and also there's no limit on their growth, they just stop growing whenever they die. So theoretically if there was a mollusk that was immortal it could keep on growing until it was the size of a small planet. And we could turn it into a space station and live inside the spiral corridors of its shell.

After a long walk through what can be described as jungle, I reached a Hakka (a Chinese ethnic minority) village by a stone pier, preserved from the 1900s. It's on a raised platform, accessible by stairs, but it's really tiny. The brochure says it housed 100 people but there were only like 8 rooms (not counting a room for pigs and other livestock) separated by walls and connected not by any interior corridors, but by an exterior walled courtyard. Most of the rooms had timber lofts reached by stair-like ladders, so there was a bit more room, but I couldn't bear living with the same 100 people in any case. But then again if you think about it I only interact with really 20 people throughout my life at any one time. Except that they never seem to be any of the same people that I'm with throughout my life except for my family; I don't really have any core of childhood friends, except for Christy but she's one and a half years older than me so ever since elementary school she's been in a different grade. In elementary
school it mattered in that we never had classes or lunch or recess together and now it's that we're at different colleges. So we've never really hung out together on a regular basis. I don't have someone who's been with me every single day, you know? If I think about it, the person I care about most in the world right now is you and I've only known you for 8 months and you already know me better than most people. I'm thinking about people I'd invite to my wedding or my funeral, and when it comes to friends, it's like for all of these years I've made none that really mattered. There are people I say hi to and talk to and maybe do things with when it's convenient for them, but there isn't anyone in the world, outside of my family which is there by accident of my birth, that would stick by my side except for you.

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June 1

I went swimming yesterday. I still suck. My relatives were like, "Can you do anything else besides doggy paddle?" I was like.. -_-

Cafes here are ridiculously cheap, and they're also clean and delicious. I love them. I had French toast with peanut butter yesterday and it was great. You'd think that peanut butter doesn't go well with French toast, but you're wrong.

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June 2

Went to the art museum today, the rather prominent pink building with upswept roofs in Tsim Sha Tsui, recognizable from anywhere in Hong Kong Island when one looks over at Kowloon. Two walls of the lobby are lined with parallel, floor-to-ceiling windows, so that straight ahead of you, unobstructed, like some grand photographic mural lays the harbor and the entire, signature skyline of Hong Kong Island. There's a promenade along the sea known as "The Avenue of Stars," an imitation of Hollywood where famous Chinese media personalities ("everybody who's anybody") each get a star in the walk and a slab of cement in which he makes his handprint. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and John Woo's stars were there. Well, also Andy Lau, but he's not someone you've heard of. Jackie's hands are much bigger than mine, but Maggie Cheung, who won Best Actress in Cannes this year (which apparently is a big deal, and makes her the latest news darling in Hong Kong) and who played Flying Snow in "Hero," has the same size hands as me. Somehow, sticking your own hands into someone's handprints makes you feel closer to them, as if having the same sized hand makes them smaller and more human.

At the museum itself, I got to see all sort of gold artifacts, glowing softy in a dark room and the craftmanship is really amazing. Of course you can see the evolution of craftsmanship, from rather crude artifacts from the Neolithic era which looks like someone pounded on a yellow gum wrapper, to some incredible filigree work in the Qin dynasty, gold so fine that it looked like woven silk, except that it was, of course, gold. It looks pretty sturdy too; some of the Tang dynasty stuff looks like it would
bend if you so much as touched it, which is not to speak badly of it, per se; it's just a different aesthetic.

Also jade, which was less interesting, because there are limits to what you can do with stone as opposed to metal. Apparently though, nobody knows what quarry the jade in ancient artifacts came from, because they can't find it anymore; it's a soft, translucent white-ish jade known as "nephrite," (this is why in poetry beautiful women are described as having jade skin.. they're not Martians!) whereas modern jade is dark green and hard and known as "jadeite." It seems very mysterious, like something out of a novel, having a treasured material from time immemorial, that can no longer be found.

Saw some watercolor paintings too, which were unremarkable ink and colour landscapes of trees and misty mountains and such. Also some Qin Dynasty glasswork, but this was also unremarkable because really, we use all the same techniques even today so it looks like things you'd see in Pottery Barn, and some artifacts honestly looked like plastic, except for some really lovely snuff bottles which were made of frosted glass painted from the inside with tiny bamboo brushes.

And libation cups carved out of rhino horn, all in the tapered triangular shape, which is very manly. They are a nice, glossy shade of brown, like a polished hardwood. I think I'd like to get a piece of wood carved to look like a rhino horn, and if customs officials stopped me for suspicious contraband, I'd tell them it's actually wood, and it'd be true.

Btw, saw something really cool on the Metro. There was an ad on the side of the subway tunnel which was a series of consecutive billboards, so that as the train passed by and you looked out the window, it looked like an animated billboard, kind of like a flipbook effect, but in the Metro! It was hella cool.

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June 3

Hey, if my feet are tired, does it help to lean against a wall? Does this take some weight off my feet by having my weight pressed into the wall, or does the normal force of the wall push into my back and into my feet, into the ground? Or none of these?

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June 7

I had a dream too, that it was next year and you had a job and I was at school by myself and lonely. I think your dream was much better.

I went to the Gold Coast, a five-star resort hotel, over the weekend. There was a beach and stuff. It was fantastic. I went swimming at the beach because while I'm not a beach person, I felt it was something I should at least try. Now, the beach in itself great for actually swimming, which was what the swimming pool was for. It was salty and murky, and the sand had a lot of shell shards and little bits of rock in it so it hurt to step on it, but it was really fun drifting on the waves and being washed up against the shore. Also, I found a clam shell, with both shells intact and hinged. Wasn't too sunny, but it's better that way because then it isn't hot. And also I went to the outdoor dinner buffet and ate a lot, and I ate some grilled ostrich, wasabi cheesecake, and also there was sushi, except that kept getting attacked by a horde of tourists. ^___^ And also I went shopping at the little umbrellaed stalls on the boardwalk but you don't want to know about
that.. and then I spent the night being hyper and jumping between two beds. Literally.. it's the bed jumping game. It's quite dangerous and juvenile actually -the mattress can slip, causing you to lose your footing, or if you don't stop in time your momentum can take you charging right off the bed into the closet, which is why you have to play. And also UNO and junior Monopoly with my cousins. In the morning, I went into the sauna,
which is just like a small room with lots of steam in it, and it's very hot and wet but it feels nice to breathe in, like you're drinking gaseous soup or in some sort of womb. And I went to the jacuzzi which is just bubbling water, except that I was the only one there at 10 in the morning so I swam around in it like it was my own giant private bath tub and massaged my feet with the water jets. And also, I took an archery lesson for thirty minutes and ended up having the string thwap the the inside part of my bow
forearm, despite me wearing a bracer, and also the index finger of my arrow hand is rubbed raw. But it was fun still, if tiring, because it was a real, wooden bow, and I even managed to hit the target several times.

And today I went to the top of Victoria Peak which is just a big tourist spot and saw some dried pufferfish which were inflated and strung from the ceiling, like some sort of macabre Christmas ornaments. I thought about buying one, but I a) wouldn't know how to pack it and b) don't know if it'd get through customs. I also took the Peak Tram, which is a trolley up and down the mountain. The tram is set along a steep incline, with ridges along the seat aisles to prevent someone from sliding. It feels like a roller coaster when you are at the very top, and you can see a little bit of the track in front
of you before it drops steeply away out of sight, and it feels that if someone released the brake you'd go roaring all the way down the mountain. Fortunately, the method of travel is much slower.

At the bottom, threaded through Hong Kong Park, and took a path through a niche behind a waterfall where a man sat on the rocks reading. Revisited the tea museum which I had gone to a few years back, but the great inflatable teapot which had been standing on its grounds is now gone, which is a pity. Many things are still there, like the stairway over which a shallow current runs, and in which a braver person than I could walk up or down, and the cocktail glass shaped fountain accessible by a series of stepping stones across a pool, and with a bench running around the stem on which someone can watch the encompassing cylindrical curtain of water.

Oh yeah, I also got to the fourth level of Prince of Persia. Those swordfighting skeletons and slicing sheets that come out of the floor and ceiling are incredibly disturbing.

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June 10

Not much going on... was sick for a while, but only with a sore throat. Think it may be the result of allergies; my nose is chronically congested.

Went and got a facial, which involves paying a lot to lay around for two hours waiting for the gunk on your face to try, and waiting for people to get around to you, and getting sprayed with steam and being rubbed with various creams. With your eyes closed. While you don't talk or move. Got a mask, which smells like chemicals, sort of like paint, but if you were there, you wouldn't go, "This smells like paint," but rather, "This has a chemical smell, which reminds me of the way paint smells, because they
both have a chemical smell, but it's not as if this actually smells like paint." It covers your eyes and mouth and is kind of heavy so it feels almost like someone's trying to cast you in iron or something. I felt like a Malfean.. you know, deep in my underground slumber or something. Except without the slumber part. Afterwards, I looked exactly the same.

I did go out for soft shell crab tempura though. Mmm! Delicious!

Also: got a haircut. Decided that since you were going to get a different haircut I ought to get a different haircut also, since it'd be hypocritical to tell you to change your hairstyle, and then be unwilling to do the same myself. Also, worse comes to worse, we can look stupid together and Bob's your uncle. Now my hair is wavy.

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June 12

Well yesterday, I got to go to my uncle's (mom's sister's husband) decoration ceremony at the Japanese consul-general's residence, because he received the Order of the Rising Sun with Rosette (aka shiny shiny!). He likes calling it his 'bottle cap.' :P He used to be the head of the department of Japanese Studies at Chinese University and got it for
lifetime's service in promoting the study of the Japanese language in China.

The consul general's residence is at nearly the very top of Victoria Peak, which is the highest point in Hong Kong. For once, my ears didn't feel plugged. I don't know, maybe I just like low air pressure places, because "normally" in the valley it feels like every sound is dampened. I've tried yawning and swallowing and holding my nose and everything.. my ears don't "pop" like they're supposed to.

Anyway, it was kind of weird, because people kept bowing to us and I didn't know what to do, and you didn't know what language to speak to people unless you were good at that ineffable art of telling Chinese people from Japanese people, which according to World War II propaganda is possible, but very difficult for most normal, non-jingoistic people. The rule of thumb I used during the occasion was that apparently Japanese people are the more polite and better dressed ones. (As in, white gloves well dressed)

Anyway, in an impeccably neat reception room with a yellow carpet, there was a Japanese-style table with a photo of the Emperor and Empress each, with the Japanese flag to the left (respective photos of.. the prince and princess?.. were on the fireplace by another wall). Me and my family were close to the front, because we were family. There was the reading of the scroll "from" the Emperor (in Japanese, he probably didn't write it himself though), the ritual champagne toast by my uncle and aunt (his wife, my mom's sister), and the pinning of the medal, winking with its dark red stone, and a speech by the consul-general and an acceptance speech by my uncle in English (which I knew pretty well anyway because I'd proofread it). I have some pretty decent photos of the event since I was in front (with my digital camera) but they aren't great, about as crappy as the ones in the paper. You see how well you can photograph when you're jockeying for good shooting positions with the press.. they're pros at that kind of thing. There was a photo session afterwards, which was pretty tame too. There were some good catered snacks passed around though; very simple, but extremely classy things, like smoked salmon/shrimp/scallops on crackers... mmm, snacks. My aunt (mom's brother's wife) says she finds one of the consuls (in white gloves) to be "handsome, in a genteel way".. which I find amusing, because I think the word she's looking for is "bishonnen"... :P Anyway, when we left, the entire staff bowed to us simultaneously, in a synchronized manner. It was terrifying. I did bow back.. and they bowed again.. it freaked me out.

--

Am home. Don't know when I'll be seeing Jeremy again. He's graduating today. Have that strange, disjointed feeling one gets when one goes home. Should not count on getting too settled in; am going to Hong Kong on the 22nd, and coming home only on the 14th of June. Will get disjointed feeling again.

This is what happens when you play D&D with a level 1 party.

The Unexpected Party

(Malex is staying only three weeks in Maryland, and is then going back to California for some research program on retirement savings. He sucks.)

Malex, Janis and Lauren came over today to visit me, after getting thoroughly lost figuring out where to park, and delivered unto me a painting/ collage in acrylic with the words "Fuck Yeah!"

They inflicted donuts and cookies on me, played mancala/ read the questions off of my Trivial Pursuit cards.

Your Educational Link for the Day

Artemisia Gentileschi, an incredible female painter of the Renaissance/Baroque period. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Saw Troy with Jeremy, Chris and Jose. I suppose you would like it, if you enjoy watching all the characters from the Iliad assraped repeatedly (figuratively, of course).

("I'm Agammemnon, I like conquering shit! I'm the villain! Yarrr!")

("I'm Achilles, I'm a big pussy! Boo hoo hoo! I'm secretly a kind and sensitive soul and I have a love interest!")

("I'm Helen, the most beautiful woman in all fo the Ancient World, but for some reason, contrary to every standard of classical beauty, I am as skinny as a stick. Every sign of the vivacious charisma and forceful presence that made me the most compelling woman in all of history will be removed until I am just a generic, pretty face as dull as dishwater and just as forgettable.")

("Let's kill off Agammemnon and Menelaus!")

("Let's remove every sign of intervention by the Greek Gods, every ounce of homoerotic tension between Achilles and Patroklos, and every actor who looks, speaks, or is actually Greek, or anything else remotely interesting...")

("Let's turn the Iliad into a politically-correct, modernist exploration of the human pysche, but with stock Hollywood character concepts!")

You'd think that people would realize that a poem that has survived for over 2000 years has done so for a reason, but no, they gotta go fuck with it.

Morons.

At least we get some good shots of Brad Pitt's butt.

Occult Week

My posts from today are a rather eclectic collection of things I've been doing for the last two weeks.

-watched Hellsing, the anime. I had been misled into thinking it was a phenomenal anime because of Kay's fantastic AMV, but I ended up not liking it too much. I liked the way they treated Victoria's angst with becoming a vampire (not an original subject in modern vampire lore, but still well done), the infighting among different vampire hunting organizations (mainly the Catholic and Protestant branches) and the thorough knowledge of British military structure. Still, I wouldn't say it was great because it taxed my suspension of disbelief just a wee bit much. Honestly, any fantasy character (and by my definition, horror still counts as a part of the fantasy genre by dint of being "fantastic") with powers must have rules regarding them somehow, in order to be believable. If in this universe vampires are killed by blessed silver, then it shouldn't be too much to ask that a vampire who is stabbed/shot greviously with blessed silver be killed consistently. Anyone with godlike powers ought to have a set limit to their godlike powers, or else a story degenerates from being a story, and turns into a special effects extravaganza (*cough* Matrix 3... *cough*). Besides, too many questions were unanswered for there to be much semblance of a plot. I should also note that there's an absurdly high mortality rate for... well, all the characters.

Also, though Jeremy prefers watching anime with subtitles, Helsing, which takes place in London, really should be watched dubbed. It takes place in London, therefore you ought to watch it in English. This is a no-brainer. Most of the voices are pretty good. Integra's voice actress is right on the mark, as is Ferguson's, though he's only a minor character. Alucard's voice actor has a nice voice, but can't act for shit. Walter sounds like a nondescript English butler but isn't bad. Victoria's voice is annoying because it's too "snobby British" for a cop. Priest Anderson, they gave an over the top Irish accent, which makes sense because he's Catholic, but I just never imagined him that way. It's like making Wolfwood Irish.. it's not something you'd do. But I prefer the dub just because the translation flows better in English than the translation for the sub, which is rather bad. There are just little things you wouldn't do in English that are annoying in the sub. For example, the translation of names. Alucard is translated as "Arucard," Ferguson as "Fargason," Integra (a girl's name) as "Integral," Anderson as "Andersong"... It's silly. Random epithets are clunky. Who gets called "Little Kitten" as a nickname? This is "Baka-chan" in Japanese so it makes sense there, but in English, a kitten, by definition, is little. And no one, as far as I've experienced, has ever been called a "sow" or a "whore-bitch."

-Van Helsing, the movie. It was fun. I liked it. It had many scenes that made me jump (but then again I shriek when Niall jumps out at me from around a corner), non-stop action, cool Gothic scenery, asskicking weapons (repeat-fire crossbow, anyone?) and trite comedy which I found funny anyway (I never claimed to have refined tastes). Downside- many scenes with lots of goop, and Kate Beckinsale in slutty make up. Their Dracula wasn't that great... fairly cookie cutter. It's not, you know.. high drama, but it is a fun movie.

-Hellboy. It's good. It has likeable, quirky characters with defined personalities that you can relate to emotionally and deadpan humor in the strangest places. Plus, some of the concepts are pretty original (a clockwork villain??). Not as fast-paced as Van Helsing, but of course it makes up for this with having better, you know, story and acting. Gee.

Wish they wouldn't do that, "Oh my god, somebody save my kittens!" cliche they do in every movie when some natural disaster or monster is killing people in the city left and right, and some moronic woman wants the hero to save her cat, but at least it's in character. Hellboy likes kittens. And chili. And pancakes. That's what I love about him; you can't be hatin' on a superhero who likes pancakes. And plus, the first ever human/demon romance story arc I've ever seen.

-Jeremy's favorite anime, Vampire Princess Miyu. She's a vampire. She's a princess. But don't be fooled, both of these aspects are completely irrelevant to the actual plot. Anyway, it's about this vampire schoolgirl (!!!) who acts as an immortal guardian to mankind, slaying demons who prey on human emotions. Despite sounding corny, it's rather well done, a bit depressing even, as it is essentially an ironic commentary on human nature. Each episode has a demon that preys on some human's flaw or dream, and the demon's appearance and manner of feeding somehow relates to said human weakeness. This format allows it to go on a truckload of philosophical tangents. It's a bit hard to understand since (according to Jeremy) it takes many concepts from Shinto and uses theatrical devices from kabuki, but the incoherence is the result of an alien culture, not because its creators were incompetent with storytelling. Oh, and the last episode made me cry for like ten minutes nonstop. Not really an uplifting anime, but it's damn good.

Museum Weekend, Part 2

After lunch, went to the Dime Museum in Baltimore. As we went in, the director explained to us that it was an authentic recreation of traveling sideshows from the 19th century, which is basically a disclaimer that anything we see that's offensive is "history," not sensationalism. Therefore he covers his ass and we can't sue him.

Though it's intended as history, it's not that edifying. The main draw of the museum is what drew our ancestors (okay, your white ancestors) to freak shows a hundred years ago... weird ass shit.

It's got the world's largest bat, which weighs 600 ponds and "can kill a horse." It's a baseball bat. Har har har.

It's also got an "authentic" fossilized fairy and the world's biggest wall of ties. It has Victorian samplers, which would be exquisitely lovely except that they're embroidered completely in human hair. God, Victorians! I think their imperialist tendencies must've been compensatory for something. There was a good deal of relics from the Victorian era, like jewelry made tiger claws, or more eerily, people's baby teeth, and a landscape picture supposedly made of multicolored butterfly wings glued onto a backing (it looked very cool, but could've been done with tissue paper as well). Naturally, there were also some mummies, one of an "Amazon," and one of some pharoah, which I would be disinclined to accept as authentic if it weren't for the fact that the mummy of Ramses the first was actually found in a dime museum by Niagara Falls. (True!)

Museum Weekend, Part 1

My dorm sponsored a trip to see some museums in Fell's Point on the first of May, so I went, with Jeremy. Went to the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, a rather cheesy place in Baltimore, but sadly the most visited museum there. Baltimore is not that great a place. Did learn a few things though.

-Did you know that Pushkin was black? <--- (I purposefully do not capitalize this, unlike my socialistic sociology book. IMHO, there are no such thing as races, only ethnicities. Therefore black is an adjective, not a proper noun). I find this tidbit of knowledge to be pretty cool. I knew he was a great Russian writer, but didn't know he was black. I'm glad he was taught to us in school as "a great Russian writer" rather than a "great black writer," because the latter would imply that he's only worth studying because he's black and therefore satisfying some "cultural diversity" quota in the school curriculum.

-Did you know that Rastafarianism is actually a religion combining mysticism and Judeo-Christian beliefs? And all this time I just thought it was a dress style.

-Sheba was a great civilization that was a precursor to Ethiopia. All my friends at UMBC are science majors of some sort and so they don't understand what motivates me to read up on these things on my own. They are my friends in terms of social activities and entertainment, but it gets a bit lonely sometimes in the academic sector. I wish I knew more about the ancient world. It's rather remarkable how many great civilizations we've forgotten. 500 years of influence and centuries later, it's as if you never were. Ashes to ashes, I suppose. Persia, Kush, Canaan, Syria, Phoenicia, Anatolia, Abbyssinia, Aramaia are all names to me, and yet what places they must have been.

Did you know that Kay is a fratboy? I mean, in hindsight it seems rather obvious. You look at at our roleplaying group and you go, "GEE, I wonder who's the fratboy??" It's amazing how he can be simultaneously cooler than us yet nerdier than us at the same time.

I learned how to crochet. When people ask me what I'm making I say, "A tangled knot of yarn." I really don't know what this is. It's too small to be anything. Maybe a penis warmer I guess.

Check out my econ project webpage, yo.

No, I didn't do the html. I wish.

Gay or Asian?

See, it's not that I think that being called gay is an insult, or that I object to good-natured humor regarding the androgynous dress style of many Asian men, it's just that the kung-fu/samurai/Chinese food delivery stereotypes are some of the most annoying and grating pieces of shit I've ever seen. Oh yeah, and I so want to be "a crazy cool Americaaaaannn!" because clearly, all true Americans are white.

-_-

Morons.

In This Day and Age College Kids Who Drink are Outlaws While, Say, People Who Get Rehab Against Heroin Addiction Are "Victims" or Have an "Illness."

On Sunday night, Jeremy walked me back to my room, kissed me goodnight, and left. He turned the lights off as he closed the door behind him, I locked it, and went to bed.

About five minutes later, a shaft of light fell over my face as the door opened, and in came two guys, hoisting my roomate between them. They flopped her down onto the bed. A small crowd was gathering in the hallway. Two people were the RAs from the front desk (who check IDs), and one (a Sarah, I think) came in and sat on the bed and called my roommate's name but she wouldn't respond. There was a quiet argument about whether to call an ambulance; the terrors of being treated like a criminal weighed against the necessity of getting medical help. Sarah went to call the EMTs. John, one of the guys who'd brought Mai in, talked to her in a firm and gentle voice, asking how much she'd had (a Long Island iced tea and two marguiritas), a soothing sound in the dark interspersed throughout the room by sporadic bursts of speech over cell phones to worried friends across the state. Mai insisted in a slurred murmur, as her eyes focused and unfocused, that she was fine and wanted to sleep, and John insisted over and over again like a lullaby to a child that they were just making sure she was okay, in a rise and fall of voices by the bed.

A very cop-like cop came in and asked where the sick person was, and asked John questions (WHERE WERE YOU. at a club in virgina. HOW MUCH DID SHE HAVE. three i think a long island iced tea and two marguiritas. ARE YOU OF AGE. we are but she isn't. HOW OLD IS SHE. twenty i think but i'm not sure you can check her id. IS THIS HER FIRST TIME DRINKING.) "no," I said and they asked who I was and I said I was the roommate and I showed him the empty vodka bottles between the wardrobes and he asked how old I was and I said eighteen and he asked if there were any full bottles in the fridge and I said no and that I'd not actually seen her drink and didn't know who the empty bottles belonged to since she often has guests over. Then he asked her if she'd been drinking and she said: i never drink in here i just keep the bottles here: and he said, that's not what i asked i asked if you ever drink and then he asked me if she'd been drinking over the weekend but I was home over the weekend and didn't know and the cop held her wrist to take her pulse and she said: whaaat are you doooin???? and he said: taking your pulse, and she tried to bat his hand away but failed. Then the paramedics came in and the cop told them the same story (though I don't think he believed the part where I said the bottles weren't mine even though it's true because he's probably too used to people lying about that kind of thing so even when it's true it sounds like a lie). Then I went downstairs to check in a friend of hers who the desk staff wouldn't let in because she didn't have proper ID and when I came back up to my room the paramedics were taking her blood pressure and then they were trying to convince her to go to the hospital (because she didn't even know her own name or how old she is; she's 19 not 20) but she didn't wannnnaaa but they decided she was under 21 and drunk so she couldn't sign a release form anyway so they took her anyway and they put her in a stretcher and she said why are you strapping me in? but it didn't matter because she couldn't sign a release form, and they took her in the ambulance and left with her friends following her. So I went over to Jeremy's to stay the night.

On Friday night at dinner, I had said, "Mai, I don't care if you drink in your free time because it's your business, but could you at least hide the bottles?"

Sunday, went with Jeremy to Rock Creek park and walked the three mile trail from the entrance at Russet road to Lake Frank and Lake Needwood, which Jeremy calls "Lake Needlewood," which we both agree is a better name. The sky, in degrees of grey and white, hid the sun from the woods and grass in shades of damp green. I showed Jeremy the rocks I had gotten stuck climbing, but we conquered them this time by walking up tree trunks fallen aslant along the slope, weaving through a horizontal jungle gym of fallen foliage a few feet above the ground. We found deer by the flicking of their white tails, the rest of their bodies thickly furred in a sheen of grey. By some small falls, a heron with outstretched wings stroked the air, strutted upon a pair of stilt-legs and speared its beak into the water, emerging with a wiggle disappearing down its throat.

BTW, Lake Needwood has a wooded island.

On Saturday, went to the National Mall with Jeremy, when the sun was bright and the air clear from a week of rain and thunderstorms. Went to the National Aquarium, a dowdy, civic-looking building in which you descend a claustrophobic staircase, the walls badly painted with murals of aquatic life, into a basement resembling a modest fish shop. Saw some puffer fish unpuffed, a long murray eel milky-eyed and sinister, horseshoe crabs (which I got to pet), small alligators, pirahnas, a giant mollusk the size of a small watermelon, hermit crabs caught exposed outside their shells, fiddler crabs with their one giant claw and a tiny one, flounder almost indistinguishable from rocks, an ornery snapping turtle, lobsters the size of your cat, and gar, weird fish with long noses. There went my three dollars and fifty.

Also went to the National Gallery of Art to look at Italian Renaissance paintings, glowing in oils or softer egg tempera, the transcendant Raphaels and the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, the sole Leonardo da Vinci in the Western hemisphere, and, I'm sure, other Ninja Turtles. Also, Botticelli and Titian and Giorgione and other people from history class, who are, inexplicably, not amphibians of any sort. We sat in the National Gallery sculpture garden for a bit, beside the smooth, granite-ringed fountain in which you can dip your feet, and looked at the sculpture resembling a stack of chairs melded together, and the optical illusion sculpture resembling a pile of cubes (Jeremy calls it the Q-bert box), which are actually rectangular. After the museum closed, we strolled through the maze-like pathways of the Hirschorn sculpture garden, with strange objects in bronze, few of them coherent but most of them at least pleasing to the eye in an unexplicable way. Here, a giant bronze ball with etchings, somehow resembling a bombed out city, and from a distance, the etchings looking like reflections in the globe, there, the primordial round shapes of a monolithic woman, there, a nude composed completely of metal cylinders, there, a bird made of rounded crescents... so forth. Oh yes, and there, a statue of a woman that looks completely normal.

After we left Washington, we tried to go to a pizzeria in Dupont Circle for dinner at Kay's suggestion via cell phone, but the circle by the fountain was flooded with pro-choice ralliers pysching up for the big women's rights march on Sunday. Jeremy was getting that tight, clenched muscle look around his jaw, so we left. He did like the ginormous subterranean escalator from the Metro station to the surface, that eerily lit, monumental ode to Death Star (One and Two) ventilation shafts, even if the Metro system was crammed with protestors of all sorts, from the NOW ones to the pro-choice ones to the anti-IMF ones (from a totally different protest down 19th Street). Like cicadas, it's just that type of season. We ended up going to the Barnes and Noble in Bethesda, around sunset, in that small plaza with a brick-lined road and flower pots and outdoor cafes, and from there went to Raku, the Japanese restaurant next to Deli Dhaba. It's a small and cozy place with outdoor seating, and on the inside, colorful paper umbrellas suspended from the ceiling and oblong lamps emitting a buttery glow, and all the smells mingled together which are almost as essential a part of the decor. Service wasn't great; they gave us our food but it was so crowded they didn't have much time for anything else, and the food was an hour in coming and they took twenty minutes to give us our check. But the food was good; I had a bento box (I didn't eat the actual box) and Jeremy had teriyaki salmon.

Now I make you hungry.

Addendum

I don't mind coming in on my roommate having sex so much as the fact that it's never with the same person.

On Friday, went to Bal'more with Jeremy. I thought he was going to take me out to cheer me up from the random depression I'd been in for the last week. But no, he apparently had needed to go fetch the Exalted Players Guide from the Inner Harbor Barnes and Noble. Silly pie. He should learn how to BS.

The sun had come out after basically two weeks of unremitting rain, and made things shiny again. (Malex, I hate you for being in Southern California and not dealing with East Coast weather. :P) We went to Fort McHenry, which we found out later was called Federal Hill, very steep and imposing from up close, with grassy slopes that rise steeper than 30 degress. The top of the hill, with the oversized Star Spangled Banner drooping in windlessness like a disappointed bird, is flat and surmounted by a toothy ring of cannons. It's very freaky, especially to someone like Jeremy with no depth perception, because the slope of the hill disappears behind the ridge formed where the flat and the incline meet, so it looks as if past a certain point the ground just gives way to thin air. But from the top you can see everything, downtown across the harbor with sailboats like little triangular paper cutouts, those crew teams in their slim maritime needles slipping through the blue, and fireboats uncharacteristically jaunty in red and white and thick smoke mushrooming charmingly from the pier. The skyline casts a clean silhouette of sunlight on metal and sky mirrored in glass, and in other directions away from the city, so far in the distance as to be painted against the horizon, roll the hazy blues of hilly piedmont.

For a while you might even say that the city is fair, until you are, in the course of a day, begged at for money by ten (we kept count) people. One man asked us for money for coffee... across the street from a tavern. God, I don't know why I make eye contact with anyone anymore, because as soon as you take your eyes off the sidewalk and look someone in the eye they ask you for spare change. Jeremy told me he does make eye contact, but has mastered a look of such contempt and vitriol that most people just find it better not to approach him for anything. Only one person was with an organized charity. I suppose you could count eleven people total if you count the little girl who tried to sell us chocolates, and twelve if you count the drunk who yelled at Jeremy belligerently and incoherently, but didn't ask for money. The drunk was bellowing "Lifeguard!" at Jeremy (who was wearing his lifeguard t-shirt) and I thought he maybe needed medical attention, but he kind of fell back once Jeremy marched me past, towed very firmly by the arm. He probably was just drunk and didn't need a lifeguard at all (we saw him again on the way back). After all, if I really had some sort of emergency and honest intentions, I wouldn't have been cowed by having someone glare at me. But I also wonder, if I were homeless and had a medical emergency, if I would have any kind of conviction regarding my right to be helped. Most of us would consider a medical emergency a life or death situation, but I think homeless people are so used to being in life or death situations and being ignored (not having money for food every day is a continuous life or death situation in its own way) that maybe they've stopped expecting passerbys to even care about the most terrible of tragedies.

In any case, we didn't give them money.

We walked to historic Fells Point, with brick streets and small shops that sold genuinely interesting gifts items. We had tea at a small, if expensive, Egyptian cafe called The Nile, with frescoes from the Book of the Dead (said Jeremy) where Anubis weighs the souls of the dead, and hieroglyphs painted along the walls. On the other wall was an Egyptian hunting scene with archers and trappers and a woman on a papyrus boat amongst the cool reeds of the Nile, inhabited by comical fish and a graceful flock of herons in flight. This segued, next to stairs to the upper (private) floor, into a mural of veiled women and men in headdress captioned in Arabic. I thought they got their genres mixed. In any case, there is nothing quite like the texture of late afternoon sunlight on a hardwood floor, so the atmosphere was fine by me, and it was a rather relaxed affair revolving around mint tea, jallab (date juice with the subtle hint of rosewater as an aftertaste), a bizarre, honey-coated dessert that looked like a giant wheaties (kunafa), and a cinnamon buttered, almond cake with oranges (basbousa). Later, we went back to B&N, and wandered around because I swore I'd seen a theater around there somewhere, except I must not've (there's a theater along North Charles Street but none downtown). In the coming of the evening, we found a cozy, winding walkway through a series of waterfall-fountains, where the niche behind a curtain of water provided a little bit of privacy.

Revenge of the Asian Tattooist

Martial Artist Kills Burglars

Hee hee! You get 'em!

Went to a formal, multi-course dinner at the Skylight Lounge and learned which forks to use for what food.

"How long will it take you to get ready?" Jeremy asked me.

I said, "Not too long, I just need to change."

Fifteen minutes later, I had shaved my legs, changed, put on my shoes and pantyhose (via a very inefficient process of pulling it while jumping up and down) and was watching Jeremy strive in mortal combat with a necktie ("Argh, it's ALIVE!!! Og kill!!!!") while turning a very elemental shade of red. And he was asking me how long I'd take?

But he looks very cute and squared away while he's playing Mormon.

We were late, but that turned out to be fortuitous because we missed that first half hour of the dinner where people are suppose to "mingle," and we all hate mingling.

Note: Silly white people! You invented gunpowder as a weapon of war, you are (outside of Japan) the richest people in the world with the best health care systems, you have industrial development that's the envy of all countries.... but you still eat rice with forks! What the hell is that? Did someone wake up one day and say, "Gee, look at this eating utensil that is comprised of a series of a parallel tines. Let's eat miniscule, granular objects with it." Morons. Rice is for spoons.

See... when you're too busy conquering people, all the blood in your brain flows to your weapon hand.

How to Collect Semen From A Rhino

Hey, it's Libertarian, er.. "Liberty" Week at UMBC, where we have an orgy of fun-filled Libertarian activities.

Tonight we had political satirist Bob Somerby, and an audience of all of fifteen people.

And next Sunday is the trip to the shooting range!

Oh, Poop.

I've been sick since Friday morning.

I have a fever, upset stomach and diarrhea, which are okay by themselves except that they all ganged up together and formed themselves a roleplaying party. ("I'm the mage!")

Being typically incompetent, UMBC's health services aren't open on weekends. You'd think that if they had to be cheap they could at least staff the health services with pre-med students desperate for money and experience. (Kay, who is a pre-med, "prescribed" me some of his leftover medicine for nausea. I know this is illegal. I don't care.) You might say, "Oh, it's Easter," but Jesus, Health Services is never open on any weekend. They're open from 8am-5pm on Monday through Thursdays, and they close early on Fridays.

But if you want to think about this philosophically, last Easter over high school spring break, I had a high fever and a cough caused by respiratory allergies for three days (strangely enough, after a college visit to UMBC). When I got up from puttering around in bed swathed in blankets drinking lots of water I noticed that the magnolia tree right by my front porch was in blossom and some of the petals were falling down, and I started crying. Well, being sick was basically my spring break but when I got back to school it seemed like everything was different somehow, like it was clean and made new, as if you could feel the place and times changing around you. (This could also be a result of the real academic year drawing to a close as we got into AP and IB Testing Season, and everyone getting their college acceptance notes, and beginning to disappear into the ether of a Real Life, and the days getting longer, and the snow finally going home.) My blog entries from last year around that time don't quite capture what I felt (and neither does this one), if simply because I am not good enough with words. I used to spend hours outside listening to the silence alternating with the wind in the trees, and watch how each blade of grass turned a translucent green-gold in the reborn sun, and hiking on top of hills so that I could see the straight trunks and the newly lush leaves of the trees under and around me.

----

Sunday, April 20, 2003

I am painfully happy for the beauty of the world. I think heaven must be a sunny walk. Why does the world have to change? I must go on living (school, job, marriage, kids) to be happy, but I'm happy already, so why won't the world stay as it is, with the wind and shadows in the grass? It feels like the end of everything, though I know there are no beginnings and no ends, simply living on as one lived before, and the world continues as before.

Anyone can have ambitions, but being content is God's gift. Let me be content then, at least for a while.

Monday, April 21, 2003

"So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then." -To the Lighthouse

I am happy now because there's not anywhere else in the world I'd rather be or anything else in the world I'd rather be doing. I spend most of my life either looking forward or backwards, but I've spent today all mellow and at peace waiting for something to happen.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

There's no greater joy in the world than a good, long, two-hour walk with birdsong and tall trees. It was very strange.. I felt like I'd turn a corner and see something.. I don't know what, like some lost world I once belonged to, a place where I should be and half remembered.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

I have re-discovered a passion for walking, which I suppose is much healthier than my winter passion for S&M and German men.

Walking makes me really really happy. It's so peaceful every day, I don't give a damn about anything, and for that hour and a half, I have everything in life I wish to have. Today, a boy on a bike, maybe around twelve years old, smiled so warmly at me as he went by that it was like the sun came out (I mean, the sun was already out but it was like a second sun came out), and later on, he was with a bunch of friends in the street laughing as they raced each other on bikes and scooters and on foot. And how can such exuberance help but be contagious? And the Good Humor truck came out, the epitome of childhood happiness, and the boy's friend on the bike rode after it, and life was good.


----

Maybe it'll be something of the same this year. Here's hoping.

So happy Easter, y'all.

And I knocked this time!

I really wish I could stop walking in on my roommate having sex.

Speculations Upon the Nature of Eden: a Movement in Three Parts

The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore has the Della Robbia sculpture from Renaissance Florence featured quite prominently as a dramatic device in "The Birth of Venus" (the recently published novel, not the Botticelli painting), the one where the snake that tempts Adam has a woman's head. I went to see it last Thursday, with Jeremy, but it was something of a disappointment.
---

On Saturday, I went to New York City for a wedding in a ratty, Azn part of Flushing. I personally didn't find it to be that great a wedding; why anyone would have a combination traditional Chinese/nightclub themed wedding afterparty I don't understand. (Presumably the actual ceremony had more decorum; I wasn't there.) You can go to a nightclub for $5 any time you want, but you only get married (hopefully) once in your life. If you ask me, in my fluffy pink thought bubbles where logic and laws of physics do not apply, I'd get married with ribbons woven through my hair, on a wooded island in a glassy lake accessible only by swan-shaped boats and fairy dust, and because my husband will be handsome, rich, intelligent, kind, and perfect in all ways, his smile would bring out the sun itself, so it'd never rain, (it may mist at worst, but that's atmospheric). Or, I'd get married in an Italian villa and ride away in a horse-drawn carriage festooned in garlands. At some point there will be soap bubbles, and ballroom dancing of the kind in which your satin dress rustles across the floor (and it doesn't matter that I can't dance, I'd take lessons six months before, with my husband, who, because he is perfect, is already an amazingly talented, yet infinitely patient, lord of the dance). And then I'd be in a loving relationship, become independently wealthy, well-rounded, good-natured, travel the world beloved by all for my meritorious contributions to society, and live a life of effortless luxury. And then after I die people will look at my gravestone and think, "Damn, she was cool."

Or something like that.

In the event that the above, by some horrendous tragedy, shall not come to pass, I should at least like to declare an edict that there will be no moronic fratboy-esque games at my wedding after-party, with flashing lights and a DJ yelling things in one of those car advertisement voices: "Now everyone on the left side cheer! What's that??? Louder! I can't hear you!!!"

There will be no Eminem or Ludacris at my wedding.
---

If I ever think about getting married, or raising children, or living somewhere or going places in my hazy pastel daydreams of the future, I inevitably find myself inserting Jeremy into the place of what previously was just some nebulous, idealized male figure. That doesn't mean though that I have anything planned, or even marginally intended. I think Jeremy finds it a bit hurtful that I make no long-term statements. It's not that I can't see myself with him in five years or so, it's just that I refuse to say anything, almost like avoiding a jinx. The thought of committment doesn't, say, make me recoil with a jolt of horror, it's simply that I fear to trust to hope as the armor against heartbreak.

Journals from Spain

(I found these on an old clipboard. They are only a three day record of a 10 day trip in 7th grade. Please forgive the bad writing. All mispellings, bad Spanish, bad grammar, inadequate descriptions, and aspects of my personality as a twelve year-old are, as they say in the computer business, features, not bugs. All linked photos are not mine, but included to enrich my otherwise inadequate text. The paragraphs in italics are my account of the journey on the plane, which I noted for some reason. It is terribly irrelevent in retrospect and is included for completeness' sake only. You may skip if you so wish.)

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Day 1: Madrid

Remind me never to fly Spanair again. I usually find flying pleasant, but this was not the case. It might have helped if my overhead light and air vent had been working. In the middle of the night, it was unbearably hot, and I couldn't get to sleep. My headphones didn't work so I couldn't watch the movies.

I decided to take my watch off because the strap was making me hot. I put it on the arm rest, but it kept falling off. Finally, I attached it to the hook that holds the table in place. I went to the door to look out the window, like I usually do, but there was no window. I went to the W.C. to change and took off my shirt, but I had nothing to change into, so put it on again.

However, I did get little blue slippers that were fun to slide around in. At fist I had no idea what they were. I thought they were night caps or something. I asked one of the flight attendants, who like much of the crew, didn't speak a word of English. Regadless, I didn't get far. I found out they were slippers after seeing someone slide around in them. It was still very hot, so I went to the front of the plane and back. Just because you like to know these things, here is the food I ate on the plane: fish with rice and veggies (eggplants!), crackers with cheese, cheesecake, and some grey round stuff that tasted disgusting. I fell asleep soon after.

When I woke up, we were prepared to land. We could see the sun rising throuh the window. When we landed, we had to go down the stairs, instead of through a gate so I got to see the sun rise. It was 12 degrees C, probably the perfect termperature, and my first view of Madrid was of a sunrise over the hills. (Despite the fact that my ears hurt.) After customs, and upon exiting the airport, we waited for the bus. It dawned upon me that Madrid looked very much like Hong Kong, with the same climate and vegetation. After heading to our hotels, we toured Madrid. There seemed to be an unusual nmber of motorcyclists willing to run me down. There were too many cars smokers, and beggars, which made it hard to breathe. We went into a little bakery to seek refuge and breakfast. "Er, pan for favor?" asked Jacob, the same boy on the plane sliding around in slippers. "You want this?" the person asked in English. It was very funny and we got away from speaking more Spanish.

We went to the Royal Palace. In front of it, were several mounted guards. (Personally, I wonder if they like their jobs.) After awhile, the rode away, and I was able to get a close up photo. They were chased by a bunch of kids who wanted autographs. Later, they changed the standing guard. After a series of military salutes, they finally changed.

We had to meet behind the Royal Palace and between a church which I do not know the name of, at 12:00. In that area, was a statue of Felipe II This statue was flanked by 4 obelisks, which were flanked by 4 balls. Behind the statue was a gate, from which one could see Toledo, a neighboring city. This place is my favorite in Madrid because when you lie down, the stone is cool, the sun is warm, and every hour, the nearby church tolls its bells.

Passing the front of the palace again, we saw a guard on a motorcycle with a machine gun in camaflage uniform. He looked strange next to the ceremonial guard with their blue uniforms and bayonets. The modern guard seem to be everywhere.

We headed to the park, where there was a maze made out of bushes. The bushes were short and could easily be seen over, but it was fun chasing people around. I get tired easily, so I sat by the fountain and splashed the water. Nearby were many statues of Greek and Roman people that I have never heard of. Madrid looks and smells like Hong Kong except that Madrid has Greco-Roman influences. The park is my second favorite place. (It always seems that I always take the most pictures of my favorite place.) We ate lunch at Museo de Jamon (literally, Museum of Ham). I ate limon helado, or lemon ice-cream. It was ice cream inside a lemon. (Try new things. I wonder what orange ice-cream is.) We then went back to the palace. Christine got rubbings. We went back to our hotel for siesta, then went to dinner. It was very greasy chicken. I think the Pepsi made me hyper, because I am REALLY HAPPY AND HAPPY AND HAPPY AND TIRED.. zzzzzz...

Day 2: Villa Nueva de Canada.

I met my host family today. My "sister", Lucia Monserrat, had made me a Welcome sign. She also gave me a little blue teddy bear that plays music when you squeeze it's paw.

We went to Segovia, the city where she and her mother were born. It has a castle and a (scribbled in the margin of the page: "811-7310 Don Angel".. I have no idea what this is) cathedral, and was built by the Romans. It even has an aquaduct running through it. I bought a book in Segovia. We had lunch at a small cafe. I had orange ice cream this time. It tasted like lemon ice-cream, except orange. After lunch, we went to another part of Segovia and saw the fountains near another royal palace. It was winter, so the fountains were off, but I bought some post cards which I probably will never bother to send home. Wen we got home, my family had a stange conversation with Teresa, Lucia's friend, and I hopped into her car and got driven to Maria's house. There, we dropped off Teresa's brother to play soccer in the middle of the road with his friends and I was introduced to Maria. Her American is my friend, Anne. We walked to the house of Julianna, and her "sister" Anne. We played soccer in the middle of the road and were occassionally scattered by a passing car or motorcycle. Many people would sit on the front steps and talk. We went home after dark and ate dinner at about 10:00. We watched a soccer game, then I went to sleep.

Day 3: Home Stay.

I had cereal for breakfast. I didn't know that eating cereal could be so hard. For example, which goes in first, the milk or the cereal? How much milk or cereal do I put in? What do I do with this little packet chcolage? I learned after a while. Afterwards, we went to the Prados Museum of Art in Madrid with Blanaca, another friend of Lucia's, and Christine. I got 2 brochures; 1 on Goya, 1 on Velazquez, and 1 on the Museum itself. Then, we went to Toledo. It has two beautiful cathedrals. In one, I saw a painting, the burial of Count Orgaz. It is the only painting that a certain artist is admired for. I forgot his name, but the painting is so famous that I'll find it soon. After lunch, we went to an observatory on the outskirts of Toledo near the top of a mountain. I took a couple pictures from there. The parents were having coffee, so we played hide and seek and hiked to the top of the mountain. I took a picture from the top. I am going to school tommorow, so I have to go to sleep early. Bye.

Day 4: Homestay

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The journal ends. Dammit! I wish I'd written more. Or at least taken more pictures, but I, like Rob, who was also in Spain, am camera shy.

Back from Spring Break. I now have a lovely green vase full of daffodils which Jeremy picked from his garden for me. I have to return the vase though; his mother wants it back.

Did you hear about the high-ranking admiral who retired from the Navy? There was a great controversy when he admittedy shortly afterward to being gay. It's not really a great surprise then that he was a rear admiral.

-Paraphrased from a Conan O'Brien rerun

Madness in the Dark

Lauren recommended to me an excellent Trigun fanfic. V. short but v. powerful. Spoilers.. duh. You know which one.

Apparently there's a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie being made. Rock on!

You PETA People Are Gonna Kill Me For This

Senate Passes Fetus Protection Bill

I'm vaguely pro-choice but I'm not against this at all. If you can get prosecuted for killing a cat, you should be prosecuted for killing an unborn child, for God's sake. This is a no-brainer. I don't consider it murder on the same degree as killing a full-grown person but it should still be a criminal offense. I mean, compared to offenses like parking tickets, pulling the tag off of mattresses and pirating music... After all, even if for the sake of argument a fetus doesn't have rights (which I think it has at least as much as any animal*), isn't the assault of a pregnant woman, as well as being an assault on her person, a violation of her right to choose? The criminal is essentially attempting to make an abortion for her, which anyone on either side of the argument can agree is a heinous deed.

*My opinion on animals is that they can be killed for the utilization of a resource, as a preservation of a cultural tradition, or to euthanize them. They should not be killed because someone enjoys the suffering, or if they are someone elses' property. However, the intention is more important than the act in this case. A butcher who kills not because he must provide meat, but because he enjoys watching the animals squirm, is to be condemned. A matador (whose vocation encompasses centuries of unique tradition and is the social glue of an entire community) who performs not because he likes killing, but for the love of grace and precision in his movements and respects the bull as an honorable enemy, is to be applauded.

Fetuses should be given at least this much protection, and for goodness sakes, a lot more. A sense of ethics, if not the government, should say that an unborn child should not be killed after it has developed a heart and brain, unless the mother is in grave danger or it is so deformed, handicapped or severely retarded that it would be a mercy to the child not to bring it to term.

Full human rights, for fully-formed human beings, go as follow: Among other things, they should not be killed for any reason except self-defense, should not be euthanized unless requested, and even then, probably not. I don't care if the guy is retarded or deformed or handicapped after he's born, you can't kill him. Can you really look a retarded person in the eye and say that all those years he's been alive were a waste, and then drill a hole in his head and vacuum out his brains? Didn't think so.

Therefore fetal rights lie somewhere in between, deserving of more than animals with no sentience or nor souls, but not a human with moral, spiritual, emotional and mental capabilities yet.

Excerpts from Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About:

So, as I was saying, 'insomnia'. The thing with insomnia is you never know when to give in. Do you stay there, trying to get to sleep, or do you give in and say, 'Well - not going to get to sleep anyway, might as well get up and do something.' It's a tricky one and no mistake. When I get insomnia, I generally try all the standard things: I try to relax, I try to clear my mind, I try to think of something pleasant (often this turns out to involve Courteney Cox and, in the 'encouraging a condition where sleep is likely' stakes, backfires massively). If none of these works, I'll quietly get up, go downstairs and read Pinter until insomnia's spirit breaks. What I don't do is turn to Margret and, at intervals precisely judged to be 'just long enough to have allowed the other person to have got to sleep again', keep saying, 'I can't sleep' and, 'I can't sleep' and, 'Really, I just can't sleep' and, 'I'm still awake, I just can't sleep' and, 'Pheeeeeeeeeeeeee - I can't sleep' and, 'I don't know what it is; I'm tired, but I can't sleep' and, 'I can't sleep' and, 'I can't get to sleep' and, 'I'll be so tired in the morning - look at the time. But I can't sleep'. Because that's the kind of behaviour that can lead... to... someone... snapping.

I do this. I bounce up and down on the bed and pound the mattress in a tantrum with my wimpy little fists. "Jeremyyyy! I can't sleeeeep!" *whine, mope*

..

(When his roommate's not there, of course.)

Deep Fried Chocolate Sandwiches

Mommy, I'm scared.

You Are No Longer Welcome In the Homer Reading Group

I know people like this. This is also, sadly, an aspect of roleplaying groups as well.

More excerpts from "The Birth of Venus" (which is an quite interesting with some really memorable dialogues. This is not one of them but I thought I should note):

"Then move your black snatch out of the way," he shouted, shoving her back. "Slut. We don't need women of the Devil's color on our streets. Watch your step or you'll be next for his knife."
"Not before your balls are hanging alongside the Medici crest," she muttered, as she started to push me out through the back of the crowd.

This is one of those things that are only funny to me. The Medici crest consists of a few pallae (pills), which are symbolized by a set of spheres or balls.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Look at My Telekinetic Robotic Arm!

Malnutrition in Developing Countries

While I admire our good intentions, should I be just a whee bit concerned that the government is putting stuff in our food without our knowledge? (Or it could be with our knowledge and I'm just uninformed..)

Just so you know, I'm on spring break. It's very boring. Because it coincides with my Rennaissance Art class, I've been reading "The Birth of Venus" by Sarah Dunant, a novel which is quite visibly displayed front and center in hardback in every Barnes and Noble all over America. You can't miss it. If I ever become an author I'd die to have publicity like that. It's currently #24 in Amazon.com's sales rank. Dear Lord! I'm reading a popular novel!

*faint*

It angles towards the "Girl With a Pearl Earring" crowd, except it's a bit more feminist and a bit more erotic. It's about this girl, Alessandra who's the daughter of a rich merchant and has a passion for painting which apparently is not proper for a girl of her station. She's intelligent, spirited and stubborn but not very graceful, modest or obedient, unlike her older sister (if life was like novels, older sisters through some phenomenon of medical science would always be prettier), which I guess is supposed to be a character flaw of some sort. The operative word here would be "spunky" or "plucky" or something eye-rollingly campy like that. Then she gets sent off to her arranged marriage*... blah blah... and I should mention that there's a young, sensitive and spiritual painter of few words who is employed at her house.

--
"So you think he is impervious to women?"
She snorted. "If he is, he'll be the first one I've ever met. He's just rigid with purity."
---

(sounds like a boy I know)

Chick factor on a scale of 1-10... 11.

The main character is a lot more vivid than Griet from "Girl With Pearl", but also is a lot more cliched and the product of an anachronistic "girl power" mind set imposed on another era. It's among the most politically correct books I've ever read, and this is coming from an ardent reader of fantasy, a genre that's basic appeal is historical revisionism without the pretense of accuracy.

Reviewers say "Birth of Venus" is "well-researched," (wow, that's a lot of quotes) but I'm taking an introductory Renaissance Art class and I know all this stuff already. It's not giving me any more insights into Renaissance Florence than my professor and his fifty minute narrated slide show three times a week (though admittedly he is a very good professor and it is a very good slide show.) Maybe "Birth" is well-researched for a casual read, but it doesn't seem like this woman spends her life working on this stuff, which is what separates the greatest period writers from the kinda good. My first thought goes to Mary Renault who sets the standard for Ancient Greek historical fiction, but since you guys have never heard of her (illiterate heathens!), I'll use Tolkien as an example. I know he's not a historical fiction writer, but my point still stands. I mean, these people eat and sleep and probably shit history. They're in it for a living. If you're just a "hobby historian," though there's nothing to say you can't write a good novel, in terms of richness of detail and thoroughness of research, you really can't compete.

But anyway, Birth of Venus is pretty good anyhow. It's very fast paced and not boring anywhere, and though the protagonist is cliched, she's at least very likeable. Some of the theological points are quite profound, and yes, some moments are very poignant. The author could have just pulled some cheap and easy plot or dramatic devices and she doesn't, and I respect her for that. Also, I'm halfway through and it's suddenly gotten very interesting and quite unconventional...

*An arranged marriage sounds a lot like college. As a rite of passage into adulthood, leaving your family for a strange home where you don't know anyone. Okay, without that.. having sex with a random stranger part. .. Oh yeah, and without AIM.

At the recital hall, a beautiful sound emanated from the stage. The richness of violin, flute, clarinet and cello swelled in full and mellow notes, in subtlely textured harmony. Then the musicians stopped tuning their instruments, and the concert for contemporary chamber music began.

Contemporary music is terrible. At worse it sounds like a bunch of autistic kids who found the key to the band room; at best you can tell there's something like rhythm and notes, but it isn't anything. It's empty. If music is nourishment for the soul then this is just nothing at all.

I left (in the rain) during Intermission, while the table for the post-concert reception was set up. Lemon merangue triangles are among my favorite desserts, but I wouldn't for love nor money sit through the second half.

I did, however, pick up the pamphlet for the entire music program for this semester. There's some Bach and Beethoven to be had in April.

Thank the Lord.

I went to listen to the seminar in the library gallery on housing prices in the U.S, because I'm an econ major and feel like bettering myself. There were many graphs in shiny ink on glossy paper. I understood the principles of supply and demand in relation to the market. The speaker finished, and opened the floor for questions, and while faculty members asked questions that I didn't understand about things like tax deductions and refinancing mortgage and monthly payments, I walked around looking at the walls of the gallery, at an art exhibition with black and white photographs from the Cuban Revolution. For being black and white photographs, these were tremendously moving, full of so much hope and exuberance of a bygone era. They're such frail and ephemeral things, and not a little sad for it since we all know how that revolution under the Havanna night and Che Guevera's pen turned out. It made me wonder who the people in it were; who they are now, who that little girl laughing under the light of the sun in a little white dress lifted and swung up in Fidel Castro's arms is, whether she's still laughing. There's a sequential pair of photos, the first one showing maybe half a dozen members of a crowd waiting for the arrival of Castro to make a speech, wearing expressions of anxious anticipation, and the next photo, taken right as Castro arrives, when such joy breaks out on the people's faces it's like the surging of a wave. There's just that moment of a temporary dream that makes it so beautiful and sad. In the meantime the seminar concluded and the audience converged on the reception table for coffee, fruit, and lemon merangue triangles.

Kay made his first anime music video for Hellsing, to E.S. Posthumus' "Pompeii" (apparently an opera of some sort). It's badass, and he's going to show it at Otakon. Go download it. Now.

La Historia del Mamut

Cancer! Al mamut le dio cancer!

(This song is stuck in my head)

Wherein Angie Reverts to Fall Semester, Freshman Year

Niall and Paul have kicked me out of Jeremy's room, after staying there for five months, without any advance notice to either me or Jeremy. We didn't know there was any sort of problem but apparently we didn't deserve to be told what it was.

Yes, I technically have a place to live, but I'm not quite sure how I'm to call it home, and in the meantime I have no cash and I've got to get myself some soap and shampoo and toothpaste because I haven't used my own bathroom since September.

I should also like to note for the record that Tim has an endearing assholic facade but it's rather unclear if he's really an asshole or just acting for our amusement.

Quote of the Day:

"I only ever knew one guy who died. I had this friend who died, who ran across the street to buy some cigarettes and got hit by a car. I was like, 'Idiot! Everyone knows that cigarettes kill you!' "

On Sunday, we went to the Olive Garden with Jeremy, Jose, Kay, and Eric Numberless, Jose's tagalong friend. Kay says that the food isn't authentically Italian but nonetheless I thought it was good, which just shows that I really don't care about authenticity.

I also like General Tso's chicken.

Statement!

Watched our production of The Bald Soprano on Friday, an absurdist play by Ionesco, the same guy who wrote Rhinoceros. All the usual absurdist themes; the failure of logical deduction, the failure of language as a form of communication, failure of the ability of names as a form of identitym, people lack purpose and are alienated and don't really know each other, etc. Unlike Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead, it was actually funny (or better performed at any rate). However, I find it kind of amusing that absurdist plays have a standardized set of themes in the first place.

Bram Stoker's Dracula... Spoilers Below, Punks!

Finished Bram Stoker's Dracula. Good book, and a lot more modern than Frankenstein. I love the format. Diaries of different people and newspaper clippings and other transcripts are pieced together for a cohesive narrative. This is very suspenseful and intriguing until maybe the second half of the book where all the diary-keepers finally meet each other and put together all the clues. After that, it loses a lot of momentum, and while it stays in diary format it becomes just like a novel that switches between different first person narratives. Half of the dramatic tension came from the fact that you as the reader knew exactly what was going on but the characters didn't. The ending was terrible. I haven't seen the Dracula movie but I could totally understand if they changed the ending; they open the coffin and cut off his head. The end. They don't fight him or anybody or anything. I don't care about combat that much, but they could've at least had a dramatic showdown or something. Alas, no. Well, they had a minor character nobody cares about die in a really dumb way.

Also, while the characters were likeable in their diaries, once they all get together to hunt vampires you start getting some of that terrible Victorian dialogue. The book is quite dated in many ways, from its descriptions of quaint medical procedures (like blood transfusions before the discovery of blood types), staunch belief in physiognomy which has been debunked as a science, 19th century views of the lower class, and appalling ventures about the nature of mental illness and the criminal mind. Of course people go crazy when you imprison them in horrible asylums in the middle of nowhere in padded rooms with straightjackets and no friends, family or other social relationships! Jackasses. I can excuse Dracula's cruelty because he drinks blood to survive; Dr. Seward's cruelty as a psychiatrist is harder to excuse. And who on Earth describes people they meet as being, "noble"? Nobody I know uses that word as an adjective to describe anybody anymore, unless they actually are aristocrats, which is a social status, not a character trait. And nobody I know invokes God and His righteous justice quite as often as these people do.

The most notable aspect of Victoriana is that the whole vampire thing reflects sexual anxieties, where the female vampires are described as being "wanton" and "voluptuous," while the human heroines are always described as being "sweet" or "pure." (Of course once human heroines become vampires, they too become wanton and voluptuous, which is an extremely horrifying thing for all the male characters of the novel, watching their girlfriends turn into undead sluts and whatnot). And all this with maidens dying before their wedding days (and this in Frankenstein too) and having her fiance become horribly anguished over his duty to destroy the sensual creature who has risen from the grave as a travesty of the memory of his chaste, untainted girlfriend... and by doing so, saving her soul from eternal damnation and allowing her pure and holy spirit to rest peacefully in heaven... Honor killing, essentially. Hell, if that doesn't say, "I hate my id" right there I don't know what does.

I do like Mina Murray as a female character though. Despite her Victorian tendencies toward swooning or shrieking or getting the hysterics (really, not all that often) and making melodramatic speeches on how brave the men are, she is quite strong. She's one of the most developed characters in the book, and is extraordinarily intelligent and perceptive, as well as being an organizational and logistical genius.

She also gets kudos for knowing how to use a gun.

Do Me, You Big Studly Viking Warrior!

On Friday, saw Hidalgo with Jeremy, Tim and Kay, because none of us wanted to see Passion of Christ. Much as I like the guy who plays Jesus, Jim Caviezal (who I've repeatedly been insisting is the Next Big Thing since last year when I saw Count of Monte Cristo, despite everyone being like.. who??), I don't particularly feel like seeing that movie. Too damn violent.

Anyway, Hidalgo was pretty dumb. It's about this long distance horse racer raised by Sioux Indians and who ends up being conscripted into the Union Army and taking part in Wounded Knee (where I'm sure he would've met Tom Cruise's character from Last Samurai and gotten along quite well) and feeling big walloping doses of White Guilt as he gets deeply depressed, drowning himself in alcohol, has horrifying flashbacks and needs to find himself and meaning in life, etc. Except unlike Tom Cruise he ends up in Bedouin Arabia instead of Meiji Japan, and gets called an infidel every five seconds and of course the sheikh's daughter falls in love with him because he's a symbol of western freedom and she's all oppressed by her sexist society and whatnot. I don't think there was any character who wasn't a stereotype.

"Oh, White Man! Save me from my arranged marriage!"

You know.

"Oh, White Man! Teach me about the values of individualism because we have silly accents and don't understand!"
I wanted to see a nice, sexy, enlightened Arab man in a movie for once, dammit. But in the meantime white men can continue saving everybody..

Oh yes. And apparently a great way to celebrate when you've won a 3000 mile horse race with a wounded horse is to splash around with him in the ocean.. full of, you know... salt water...

On Thursday, went with Jeremy to a discussion by several guest speakers about whether Christianity is intellectual suicide. Jose was the one who gave us the idea to go, but he never showed up, having gone to fencing instead. His loss, really. It was rather exciting; the place was packed and with the air of people turned out expecting a fight,　because of course all the Christians showed up in spades, and all the atheists showed up in spades because they couldn't turn down such a tempting call to arms. A ton of people we knew showed up, like Sam and Mike (who had actually graduated last semester so I hadn't seen him since then) and Strong Sad Eric (formerly known as Loser Eric in my blog, but he's actually a really nice guy, if socially inept, so calling him Loser Eric sounds mean.. and he reminds me of Strong Sad from Homestar Runner). These debate things are the best when every single person entering the room has his own foregone conclusion, and nobody's foregone conclusion coincides with anyone else's. Also, they had chai, so it was good.

Actually, the event was sponsored by several fellowships, so all the speakers presented the Christian point of view with intent to convert, and there were no opposing speakers. Still, I (unlike Sam, who is an out and out atheist) found that they addressed criticism pretty well, if with logical loopholes. The first speaker we had was a scientist, and a horrible speaker though an educated man. The second guy was better, presenting a hilarious parody of the modern liberal mindset which I can't say I'm not guilty of, though he tried to prove that Christianity wasn't intellectual suicide by listing a number of mentally talented Christians over the years. This is a dumb argument, because surely nobody believes that individual Christians can't excel in the sciences or arts or philosophy, it's just that Christianity as an institution makes Christians in large numbers one of the most terrible things this world has seen. For every Tolkien or CS Lewis there's a hundred rednecks, moms who do things "for the children," or medieval serfs. And surely they aren't bad people on their own and with their families, it's just when they start getting together and lighting torches and brandishing pitchforks that the world is in trouble. And this, honestly, goes for any other ideology in the world which believes itself to be the only right one; communism, veganism, football fans, what have you.

On the most part though I do respect the speakers immensely. I did talk to one of them, the second speaker, afterwards, asking him why salvation had to be obtained through Christ specifically, as opposed to any other God. His answer was that he personally believed it to be so because it was in the Bible, which he as a historian believed to be true over any other religious document. He told me to spend a long time looking at the Bible analyzing it like any other historical document and asking questions regarding its truth value. Is this well translated? Is this a good copy of the original manuscript? What time period did it come from? Who was it written by, who was it written for, and what society was it a product of? How well does it correspond with the accounts of other documents of the era? I would, like any other document, have to make a judgement using rational analysis, about whether what was said therein was historical fact.

I told this to Sam, who did the online version of rolling his eyes and asked, "Why not believe Greek myths then?"

Which is a good point, but I still do respect the speaker as the only Christian, Jeremy not withstanding, who has ever given me an answer to the question of, "Why Christ? Why should I believe in the Bible moreso than any other holy text?" with something other than the circular response, "Because it says so in the Bible."

Morons!

Have made cup and straw kazoos with Jose, Jeremy and Niall. What you do; take a paper soda cup, after you've emptied it, wash it out, and punch a hole through the center of the bottom side with your straw, and stick your straw in partway. Clench with your teeth the side of the straw that's sticking out of the bottom and suck in air through your teeth. Tada! Cup kazoos!

Unfortunately, Jeremy and Paul, his roommate, cannot for love or money, make their kazoos work.

Jeremy is like this though; he's terrible with woodwinds. He has a bamboo flute he got at Rennfest which he tried to learn to play. It's one of those flutes which, unlike a recorder or a penny whistle, you don't blow directly into, but hold it sideways across your mouth and blow across the mouth hole, for better sound quality. Well, he can't do it. I told him that it's just like blowing across the mouth of a soda bottle to produce a low whooping sound, but apparently he can't do that either. I think this "trained incapacity" (as Sociology 101 would have it) comes from playing trombone all these years... perhaps his mouth is conditioned to only move in a certain way.

Politically Noncommital Girl Strikes Again!

Went to see a screening of a documentary called Life Over Debt organized by Oxfam, an organization against global hunger that I'm kinda in. Chris (Brian's twin brother and head of the Economics Club) sprung on me saying, "You're an econ major? Would you like to be more involved in contemporary economic issues?" and I was like, "sure..." because I've lately been trying to make an effort to partake in more student events, with marginal success. Besides, I've always felt a bit guilty about being such an uninformed voter and so politically inactive. I can't even classify myself as either liberal or conservative, much less find a party or a politician to support. I didn't even vote in the Maryland primaries today. I was reminded in the morning, but then I forgot by lunchtime, and in any case, all the Democrats seem alike to me. I feel bad about this; voting is what Nick and Malex and Andrew would've wanted me to do. At any rate, the documentary, which I did remember to go to see, was about how Jamaican farmers are driven out of business by foreign corporations which sell things at lower prices, or something like that and is very anti-globalization.

I found it like Bowling for Columbine in that instead of taking the responsibility of being an objective film, it goes for emotional manipulation and cinematography instead. Not that it wasn't artfully done but I'm just saying it seemed a bit too perfect. You know, it of course must have many shots of carousing tourists (always fat and white and sunburned) with (poor, black) people working in factories, and analogies comparing foreign corporations in Jamaica to colonial slavery. Obviously many of the people representing the anti-globalization point of view had to be impassioned blacks with thick Jamaican accents while the sole speaker for the WTO had to be a bald white man with glasses who was coolly composed and well-spoken, the very epitome of a (imperialist) corporate shark. (Also he had no eyebrows. Is that freaky or what?) So whether intentionally or not, a lot of the documentary took advantage of people's guilt over being relatively affluent, or their residual white guilt over historic oppression of other cultures, or xenocentrism (where people sentimentally find other people's cultures to be more wiser, richer, and more wonderful than their own simply because it's exotic) to be emotionally manipulative regarding the issues instead of being informative about them.

The discussion following the screening was pretty much a recruitment drive for the Coalition Against Global Exploitation, a local Baltimore association. Personally I think this makes any sort of educational and informative documentary screening and discussion lose a bit of credibility as being .. well... educational and informative. Because if the impartial facts truly and rationally stood for themselves, education without proselytization would be enough to convince someone of the merits of CAGE or a similar organization. All you'd have to do is say "This screening sponsored by CAGE and Oxfam" on the posters and have a contact e-mail address. The fact that most of the "discussion" period was devoted to the logistics of joining CAGE and what they as an organization do, instead of the documentary or the issue itself, seemed rather to defeat the purpose. There was no real "discussion" because there was no real dissent- it wasn't possible to express dissent without sounding like an asshole. (I, for my part, didn't speak out at all on everything I've written here, and nobody else did.) I'm sure the people with CAGE are nice and very tolerant; it's just the nature of public groups that nobody wants to be the sole dissentor.

I don't know what I think of it really; maybe protectionism is better for developing countries to be able to develop their own enterprises. It is true that people ought to have a right as consumers to buy whatever they wish, be it local or foreign goods (which was the argument of our WTO corporate shark*), but this may not be a priority if it thwarts the growth of local businesses. US businesses based in a country ought to be subject to health and labor regulations of some sort, though obviously the idea is that these regulations will be more lenient in another country than in the US, hence encouraging investment. "Free trade zones" sound like cowpoo* to me. I appreciate the infrastructure and new technology that foreign investment provides, but it is also cowpoo that free trade provides jobs to people who otherwise wouldn't have them. This may be true in some cases but in many cases it takes away jobs by driving away local businesses by encouraging imports instead local production. Also, short-term loans to countries, with interest, is pretty dumb because they can't use that money for long term investment and just end up in debt. Obviously, we ought to stop subsidizing American enterprises that produce things for which there is no demand and instead fund the transitions of some of those enterprises into other venues.

However, I still don't think globalization is generally evil.

*Who probably isn't as much of an asshole in real life as the documentary makes him; anyone can seem an asshole in documentaries when juxtaposed with shots of mournful mothers and starving children.

*Cowpoo! Like bullshit but better.

A Story

Me and Jeremy made a blueberry pie.

Then we ate it.

The end.

Wherein Angie Catches Fire

The rowing machine at the gym gives me blisters, the worst of which Jeremy casually popped with a knife and swabbed with rubbing alcohol. Mein Gott it burns!!!! @__<

On Monday, at Jose's behest, I went with Jeremy to Latin dancing lessons. Poor marching band Jeremy cannot move his hips for love or money; he seems not to be inhibited, but just to be physically incapable of the motion. Shall put him on the stairmaster for a while and see if he learns to wiggle his butt. Won't mention it otherwise; he seems rather sad and discouraged by his lack of progress* anyway.

*Symptom of a condition commonly known as Whiteness.

On Saturday we were going to have an impromptu LAN party but it didn't work out because it was a bit too impromptu; no one came. Also people kept asking, "Who's coming, what are we playing?" before deciding whether to come. Because everyone was waiting on everyone else's decision, nobody made any decisions in the end. Kay was busy messing with his new computer and when we called him to invite him to our LAN party (without the party part) he asked us who was in it, and since nobody much was except for me, Jeremy and Niall (Chris didn't have a computer to contribute), he decided we weren't cool enough for him and spent the day hanging out with his other friends. There was a simultaneous LAN party in Potomac basement, but our hardware wasn't good enough for them and they ended up unintentionally excluding us by playing Unreal Tournament 2004 extensively.

Went to Wizards of the Coast at Arundel Mills today with Jeremy, Chris and Niall, since WtC retail stores are being closed. Got me some transparent pink dice and some glow in the dark ones, and got, at somewhere else, one of the Half-life expansions. Thanks to Steam, with one CD key I can play basically everything in the Half-life expansion pack including Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic and Day of Defeat.

Niall pushed me across a parking lot in a speeding shopping cart.

At Best Buy later on, while waiting for seats to open up in a nearby Ruby Tuesday's, we bumped into Kay, with his Other Friends, and a 19 inch computer monitor in a shopping cart, which promptly keeled over from the weight. We were sickened and left for dinner. I ordered some indeterminant yet tasty meat-with-potatoes meal and Jeremy got something fishy and uninteresting. Jeremy eats and likes any and all seafood; therefore, he is to be ignored anytime he recommends a seafood restaurant or entree. In the meantime, Niall made friends with Sam Adams. I have determined that when people get drunk it doesn't do much except make them act more like themselves (more open, and pronounced mannerisms becoming more exaggerated, etc); therefore, Niall got more Niall-esque.

Have also installed Jeremy's version of Homeworld (the first one), on my computer. Have finished the tutorial, and suck at it tremendously. Nothing else is new.

Dorkiness

On Friday we spent a night playing Niall's Final Fantasy I based tabletop roleplaying game. It went something like this:

----

Niall: You walk into a town. It has an inn, an item shop, an armory, and a small fountain in the middle.

Me (Thief): I play in the fountain.

Niall: You, and the rest of the party (because in Final Fantasy you can't split up), are thrown out of the town. Great job.

Jeremy (Black Mage): I'd peed in the fountain as well.

Niall: To the west and north is forest. To the east is the ocean, to the south is plains.

We defeat some imps and reach a castle.

Niall: The king says, 'You must rescue my dear daughter! She has been kidnapped and is held in a cave to the west!'

Chris (White Mage): We'll save your daughter if you can aid us by providing us sufficient resources to do the job.

King: You may take whatever treasures you find in this castle.

Jeremy (Black Mage): I lift my hat, and while the king is shocked, snatch the crown off his head! That's a treasure.. and something we did find in this castle..

Niall: You attempt to snatch the crown off the king's head.. the crown stays. It has been molded to his head and his skull has grown around it.

Jeremy: Ew!

------
Later:

Niall: You encounter six wolves!

Jeremy: I take some of the food I'd taken from the kitchen and try to feed the wolves and make them friendly to me.

Niall (rolls): You manage to make two wolves your allies for life.

(we attack and kill the other wolves)

Me: I skin the corpses and carry the pelts to sell them at the next town.

----

Niall: You arrive in a vast chamber of the cave. In front of you, you see a giant lizard man holding the Princess in the air.

Jose (Fighter): Put her down now!

Lizard man: I shall never relinquish my sacrificial victim!

Chris (White Mage): How about a trade...? You give us the princess and we give you.. Angie!

Me (Thief): Hey! I'm not a virgin.. er.. *schemes* ... eh, sure, I'll be the trade.

Niall: Okay.. you trade your thief for a useless princess. The lizard man is now holding Angie in the air and licking her.

Me: I chop off its tongue with my dagger.

Niall: It takes no damage and immediately regenerates its tongue, but it's pissed off and attacks the party.

Chris: I grab the princess and run away towards the castle to get the 10,000 gold reward while the rest of you stay behind and fight...

---

King: Thank you, great adventurer, for returning my dear daughter to me.

Chris: Do I get my 10,000 gold?

King *giving it*: Yes, here you go... and your doom as well, foolish mortal!

Niall: The King shows his true form! He's a demon!

Me: And the princess?

Niall: She turns into a succubus. You, the white mage, are all alone with a bag of gold and two angry demons. The rest of the player party is not with you because you betrayed them and left them behind.

-----

We got bored of that game for a while, so then we had everyone else calculate the stats for the character another person would play. The thing was, if your stats were being calculated, you weren't allowed to speak up. For example, if you were Jeremy, you would play, in the game, a character named Jeremy who was exactly like you, with exactly the same personality, memories, skills, and experiences. However, since your 'character' is created by other people, you'd end up actually playing other peoples' perceptions of you.