I've been writing and recording music lately, trying to get enough songs together to get an album up on iTunes. Quantity has finally reached its goal, and I've been sneakily testing quality on various so-called friends and family. The reviews/reactions so far have been pretty mixed. My friends in China generally give me at least one thumb up, partly because their culture doesn't allow them to voice criticism, and partly because of the One-Person-One-Thumb policy in China.
My family is generally supportive, though they express this support in very different ways. The "generally supportive" average is reached primarily thanks to my sister, who lavishes praise with a heavy hand regardless and especially irregardless of quality. (Somewhere Perry is getting very very angry about my word usage. Lucy, do what you can for him). "Mark! You wrote that!?" she shrieks. "It's soo good! You're amazing!" My guess is that up till now she thought I was clinically retarded, because I can literally play one chord and elicit that response.
My mother, the most musically inclined of my subscribers, is eager to listen to my creations but only has time to do so on the 32nd of every month. Never fear, my supreme patience is holding stong.
Gene, who now runs out of the house if you call him "Dad," gives a two-for-one deal: reserved praise and vague criticism. "Hey! That's...pretty good...but something's missing...I don't know what," is his well-rehearsed response. He is as consistent and oblivious to quality as my sister, though in a different slice on the spectrum.
Grandma and Boris never say a single word about the quality of the music. They react, but I haven't decided how to interpret their reaction yet. Usually it goes something like this:
(a three course meal is shoved down Mark's throat to lull him into a false sense of security and a very real sense of nausea)
Grandma: sing us one of your songs! You never sing to us!
Mark: ugh...I only sing to my microphone. But you can hear my computer imitate me. Want to?
Grandma: you didn't eat anything today! Do you want some strawberries? Plums? Chocolate? Herring? Pickles? I know! Let's drink a shot together!
(If you're wondering about the exclamation points, Grandma lives at around 130 decibels)
Mark: no thanks, I only drink with Michelle.
Grandma: well at least have some bread. Nuts. Potatoes. Want me to make you a steak? Pancakes? Why aren't you playing your song to me!?
Mark: uhh...good point. (Turns song on)
Grandma (listens for 5 seconds): BORIS! GET OVER HERE, MARK'S PLAYING US HIS SONGS!
Boris (from the kitchen): meh? You say something?
(They arm themselves with megaphones and yell into each other's earpieces for the next three songs. Boris finally comes over. Mark writhes in pain on the carpet; he is congenitally incapable of habituating to sonic warfare)
Grandma: is that your song playing?
Mark: ye...e...e...s.
Grandma: Boris, listen! Don't fall asleep, you old goat!
Boris: I'm not sleeping, I'm listening!
(5 seconds pass)
(Mark quietly gets up, negotiates the two blissfully snoring geezers, packs his things and drives himself to the hospital)
(scroll down three days and repeat)
Neither Grandma nor Boris has stayed awake for the duration of a single song, which is 3.5 mins on average. Good? Bad? I don't know but I'm going to be optimistic. At their age, if they don't die of something, it's probably really really really ridiculously good.
Mario is the only one who gives constructive feedback. Unfortunately, by some crazy coincidence, he's the one person whose advice I never listen to. Can't do anything about it, the decision was made a long time ago.
Chun is busy 758 hours a week so she has no time to give feedback. My turn to be the object of her attention was coming up, but then a little thing called Daylight Savings Time stole my spot. Now she's back in her exercise wheel, dancing her way into medical school. Don't stand in her way, she has a mean left pirouette.
And finally, there was one person outside the usual circle who got a taste of this album (that's coming soon to your friendly nearby Internet). That was my aunt. Around Christmas, she demanded I send her a song. Being an obedient little nephew, I obliged...and that was the last I heard from her. I should really go check if she's OK. Hmm...nah, I'll just wait till next Christmas. If she doesn't show up, then I'll know something's wrong. Never too late to call 911.
Showing posts with label Chun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chun. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Nostalgia And More Chinese Antics
Had an interesting evening meditation yesterday. I had started reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now a couple of days ago, and he emphasized that people live either in the past or in the future but never in the present. He himself is of course a level 6 ninja in this aspect, so I trust him. Anyway, I was doing the surrendering exercise, and I was focusing on some of my nostalgia for a certain girl whose name I will not say explicitly (I will be fair however and give a hint: her name is one of the 24 arrangements of the letters 'c,' 'h,' 'u,' and 'n').
Anyway, I was surrendering this and that, and some of the other, some etc., and also lots of yadda yadda yadda, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, which is of course strictly prohibited by the meditation police. It was going well though, but at the same time it wasn't a relaxing process, it was a bit of a race; I'd surrender one scene, and another would show up with a little sign saying "dwell in me for a bit," and I'd say "good idea...wait! No! I surrender you!" And then I'd sit there waiting for the next ambush.
This game continued for a while, and then I decided to invoke some Tolle magic on myself. Not being a "future" kind of guy, I decided to start with my past, and went ahead and erased it all in one stroke. Of course, I didn't actually give myself amnesia, but I somehow managed to get a feeling of what it might be like to exist in a state of memory loss. I said to myself that I of course have certain feelings about things, but that now it no longer matters how I got to those feelings. Thinking this way, I figured that it would be easier to surrender emotions - they'd have no past to cling to.
I never really got to that second part (surrendering past-less emotions), but I did feel really weird for a while. The state of having no past was odd and interesting, a bit like coming out of the pool into the fresh air. Eh...pretty bad analogy, go ahead and insert your own.
Feeling on a roll, I decided to try one other thing, and inspiration suggested to attempt disappearing myself. I visualized stepping back out of my body, and tried to erase both my body and my mind, dry-eraser-across-blackboard-style. This isn't the first time I've tried this, but it was the first time it gave any sort of result. Usually I just end up waking up from yet another daydreaming sequence where my erasing had seamlessly morphed into fingerpainting, or worse, the dreaded "washing dishes" nightmare.
This time though, I managed to slip into another weird feeling, different from the past-less one, but equally strange. I felt like I was in the background - this is the only way I can think of to describe it. I didn't feel my body at all, and didn't really have a center of mass to my consciousness, just kind of faded. Pretty cool, but very tenuous and hard to hold onto.
Blah. No more.
I woke up today at 7AM and remembered some dream, but then, in a moment of weakness, decided to get some more sleep. And that's the end of that story; dream lost forever. Shame on me. To atone, I took Michelle for a 4 hour vacation to the dentist chair.
MIT finally shut off my webspace a day or two ago, so the previous entry's sound files pointed to nowhere (at the time of its creation). Yesterday I spent a good 5 minutes(!) remedying the situation and throwing my hands up in the air at the various inconveniences involved. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files. Pictures and video are OK, but there's some kind of prohibition on plain old audio. Being, as always, on a tight schedule, I didn't have the time to fight the man on this one, so I just converted my clips to video.
More Chinese learning took place today. I was learning indefinites - things like anywhere, anything, somelobster, nokitten, and I thought the Chinese approach to using these was really funny and simultaneously brilliant. For example, when you ask a Chinese person who's headed nowhere in particular "where are you going, my Chinese brother?" he'll tell you "I'm not going where." Isn't that efficient? Or if he's really not going anywhere at all, he'll say "I'm not going everywhere." This is like something made to order for Abbott and Costello.
Here's a semi-accurate semi-completely-inaccurate Chinese style English conversation for you to see what I'm up against in my quest to learn Mandarin.
Mark: you good.
Authentic Chinaman: you good.
Mark: you are going where?
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going where.
Mark: not going where?
Authentic Chinaman: yes. not.
Mark: ah...and there is who?
Authentic Chinaman: there isn't who. There isn't everyone.
Mark: and you there will do what?
Authentic Chinaman: there I will not do everything.
Mark: excellent! can I come with you?
Authentic Chinaman: but I'm not going where...
Mark: I'm not going where either. I'm going there.
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going there. I'm not going where.
Mark: me too. Or was it me neither. Crap. You understand?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: you everything don't understand? Or you don't understand everything?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: yea, I'm pretty lost too. Good, I go now. See again.
Authentic Chinaman: see again.
Anyway, I was surrendering this and that, and some of the other, some etc., and also lots of yadda yadda yadda, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, which is of course strictly prohibited by the meditation police. It was going well though, but at the same time it wasn't a relaxing process, it was a bit of a race; I'd surrender one scene, and another would show up with a little sign saying "dwell in me for a bit," and I'd say "good idea...wait! No! I surrender you!" And then I'd sit there waiting for the next ambush.
This game continued for a while, and then I decided to invoke some Tolle magic on myself. Not being a "future" kind of guy, I decided to start with my past, and went ahead and erased it all in one stroke. Of course, I didn't actually give myself amnesia, but I somehow managed to get a feeling of what it might be like to exist in a state of memory loss. I said to myself that I of course have certain feelings about things, but that now it no longer matters how I got to those feelings. Thinking this way, I figured that it would be easier to surrender emotions - they'd have no past to cling to.
I never really got to that second part (surrendering past-less emotions), but I did feel really weird for a while. The state of having no past was odd and interesting, a bit like coming out of the pool into the fresh air. Eh...pretty bad analogy, go ahead and insert your own.
Feeling on a roll, I decided to try one other thing, and inspiration suggested to attempt disappearing myself. I visualized stepping back out of my body, and tried to erase both my body and my mind, dry-eraser-across-blackboard-style. This isn't the first time I've tried this, but it was the first time it gave any sort of result. Usually I just end up waking up from yet another daydreaming sequence where my erasing had seamlessly morphed into fingerpainting, or worse, the dreaded "washing dishes" nightmare.
This time though, I managed to slip into another weird feeling, different from the past-less one, but equally strange. I felt like I was in the background - this is the only way I can think of to describe it. I didn't feel my body at all, and didn't really have a center of mass to my consciousness, just kind of faded. Pretty cool, but very tenuous and hard to hold onto.
Blah. No more.
I woke up today at 7AM and remembered some dream, but then, in a moment of weakness, decided to get some more sleep. And that's the end of that story; dream lost forever. Shame on me. To atone, I took Michelle for a 4 hour vacation to the dentist chair.
MIT finally shut off my webspace a day or two ago, so the previous entry's sound files pointed to nowhere (at the time of its creation). Yesterday I spent a good 5 minutes(!) remedying the situation and throwing my hands up in the air at the various inconveniences involved. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files. Pictures and video are OK, but there's some kind of prohibition on plain old audio. Being, as always, on a tight schedule, I didn't have the time to fight the man on this one, so I just converted my clips to video.
More Chinese learning took place today. I was learning indefinites - things like anywhere, anything, somelobster, nokitten, and I thought the Chinese approach to using these was really funny and simultaneously brilliant. For example, when you ask a Chinese person who's headed nowhere in particular "where are you going, my Chinese brother?" he'll tell you "I'm not going where." Isn't that efficient? Or if he's really not going anywhere at all, he'll say "I'm not going everywhere." This is like something made to order for Abbott and Costello.
Here's a semi-accurate semi-completely-inaccurate Chinese style English conversation for you to see what I'm up against in my quest to learn Mandarin.
Mark: you good.
Authentic Chinaman: you good.
Mark: you are going where?
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going where.
Mark: not going where?
Authentic Chinaman: yes. not.
Mark: ah...and there is who?
Authentic Chinaman: there isn't who. There isn't everyone.
Mark: and you there will do what?
Authentic Chinaman: there I will not do everything.
Mark: excellent! can I come with you?
Authentic Chinaman: but I'm not going where...
Mark: I'm not going where either. I'm going there.
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going there. I'm not going where.
Mark: me too. Or was it me neither. Crap. You understand?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: you everything don't understand? Or you don't understand everything?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: yea, I'm pretty lost too. Good, I go now. See again.
Authentic Chinaman: see again.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Q & A
Morning meditation:
Oof. Today was one loooong hour-long hour. I was really impatient for some reason, even more than usually. Maybe it's because today I meditated at ~11:30AM instead of the usual 9:00AM, and my brain had already had time to sink into the afternoon mindset, apparently one of ADD. Also, there were lots of distracting sounds today. Planes, trains, automobiles, humming refrigerators, ringing cellphones, garbage pickups, the walls crackling from minute changes in temperature, pretty much everything you could ask for except for the ice cream truck and carolers. And Santa Claus.
I did have a couple of interesting moments when I felt curiously misaligned with my body, as if I had drifted over a couple of inches, but was also simultaneously in the original spot. It was a tricky feeling to hold onto, because the moment I'd notice it, I'd snap right back into place. The day I can hold it I'll probably end up blaming it on excessive calorie intake.
I was thinking yesterday that God is a lot like the Placebo Effect. It doesn't really matter whether he's a sugar pill or an antibiotic or a big jolly bearded guy in a cloud, riding a dinosaur. If you manage to believe in him, even if you're tricked into doing so, you can extract benefit for yourself. Or harm of course. Let's forget about God for a second, and just think about the Placebo Effect. Basically it says that whatever you believe, happens. Like, if you take a sugar pill thinking it's a cancer cure, you have a 99.99% chance of being cured (Note: figures are not to scale). Or if you jump out of an airplane and believe you have a parachute, but you really don't, then you're totally screwed. Actually...ignore that last one. OK, if you believe in Santa, your parents will give you presents addressed from him. If you believe in a wrathful and vengeful God, I will come shoot you in the head. If my physician tells me my lymph nodes are OK, I will believe her, and they'll stop spraying fountains of blood. So you see that the Placebo Effect is very powerful. And now I forget where I was going with this.
A joke my friend Pei wrote about me:
It happened as mark was in primary school...
teacher : mark, how come u r late again!!
mark: I met a lost 3 year-old kid by the railway on the way here.
teacher: come on... pls use a better story next time.
mark: I did send him home.
teacher: where is his home?
mark: ya when I asked him that, he was pointing to the railway. So I put him on the rails.
teacher: .......
(my reaction)
Mark: that's good!
Pei: when I was thinking of u, I thought, mark, he is a baby-killer... here we go...
A joke I wrote about my friend Pei:
Pei: talk dirty to me, I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Mark: mm...your apartment's so dirty, so dirty, I'm going to go clean it right now!
Pei: yea baby! you know what turns me on!
Yea...that may take some background to understand.
And one more about Pei (we're collaborating on a joke book that only the two of us will understand):
Pei is walking down the street. She sees a 5 year old kid and his mother. The kid must have been misbehaving, because the mother is beating the crap out of him, spanking him like there's no tomorrow.
Pei: ah...I wish I had a kid.
(today, in the kitchen)
Mark is peeling a clementine. Michelle walks up and puts her hand out, demanding some. Mark shoves the whole clementine in his mouth.
Michelle: Mom! Mark stole my clementine!
I tried writing some more jokes today, but in a different style. I tried posing a question and then thinking of responses from different people, with the responses caricaturing the answeree. I can't really tell if it's funny, and you'd have to know the people reasonably well to understand what I'm getting at, but it made me crack up when I wrote them:
Question: You have 24 hours to live, what do you do?
Mom: 24 hours...that's 12 movies!
Dad: 24 hours...that's eight 3-hour meditations. No, wait! Twenty-four 1-hour meditations!
Mark: 24 hours...can I at least get an extra half-hour to blog about it after?
Grandma: 24 hours...do you know what happened in Israel in only the last 3 hrs? No? Well let me describe it to you in gory detail for the next 24.
Boris: 24 hou...(snore)
Pei: 24 hours...that's enough time to try 240 new sex positions!
Manlin: 24 hours...how fast do they deliver chocolate?
Zhang Xiao Yi: 24 hours...damn, my parents are going to kill me when I tell them!
Chun: 24 hours...OK, first 5 minutes - call my Mom and Dad to tell them the news. The next 23 hours and 50 minutes - plan out the remaining 5 minutes. Aha! Not a minute gone to waste!
Tina: 24 hours...wow, life sucks.
Mario: 24 hours...that's time enough to learn 3 new Chinese words, forget 5 Russian ones, and start learning three new languages!
Igor: 24 hours...Renata! What am I doing for the next 24 hours!?
Frank: 24 hours...no problem. I have a business plan just for the occasion! It's a franchise. We're going to have 12 stores open within the first 10 hrs and we should be up to McDonald's scale by hour 24.
Serge: 24 hours...that's enough time to build a successful family, right?
Perry: 24 hours...convert as many Christians as I can to antheism. Now that's time well spent.
Lucy: 24 hours...bull. I bet I can live longer than that.
Question: What will you do when your son's begging you for a new toy he doesn't deserve?
Mom: don't give it to him, but then cry myself to sleep at night.
Dad: don't give it to him. Instead, make fun of him till he develops a serious psychological disorder.
Michelle: I have a son? That means I had sex! EWWWW!!!
Grandma: buy him every toy in the store. Oh, wait! Did you say son or grandson?
Mark: my son? Did the condom break? This is a completely unrealistic situation! Fine, I'd probably go get a DNA test then, see if he's really my son. There's no toy in existence that a son of mine wouldn't deserve. Ah, he's already so much like his father.
Chun: tell him he can have the toy in installments. Get him planning his life early on!
Mario: how old is he? 5? Trade him in for five 1-year-olds. No! Half of a ten-year-old!
Pei: give it to him. I love him, so why wouldn't I buy it? Wait, that's not how you raise children?
Zhang Xiao Yi: Chinese children know better than to beg for toys. I knew I shouldn't have married an American. They're inferior!
Manlin: play mind games with him. "You really want that toy? You don't not really want it? You wouldn't want not to not want to want to not have it?" Hehe.
Tina: toys? Yay! Mine mine mine mine! Phew, OK, sad now.
Igor: oh Christ. Renata!
Frank: wait, how did he get out of his cage?
Serge: buy myself a new car. And a new house. And then work harder and earn more money so I can buy the toy. Man, where does the money go!?
Perry: you know those noise-canceling headphones? What did you say? I can't hear you.
Lucy: beat the little devil half to death. Studies show it's optimal for his development.
Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Mom: because we're vegetarian.
Dad: it's a reincarnation of a nomadic tribesman, come on dude, ask me something harder.
Mark: I told you ten times already! Don't tell me any news unless it's good news! I've heard this all a million times. People are dying, there's war and povery, blah blah blah.
Michelle: a chicken? Where?!? I'm scared. Wait, are chickens dogs or insects?
Grandma: a chicken? Do you know that ten people were blown up in Israel today?
Igor: Renata, didn't we discuss this the other day? What did we decide?
Chun: aha! All part of my plan for getting into medical school! Check!
Frank: I don't know, but someone grab that chicken! The chicken/turkey exchange rate is climbing faster than my blood pressure!
Paul: hahaha! Someone saw a chicken! That's so crazy, man, that's so crazy!
Mario: I don't know, but I trust it. I'm getting outta here.
Pei: chicken? Who cares about chickens? Ask me about fish.
Tina: crap, I had this at my Google interview...and I remember getting it right...what was it!?...ugh!
Manlin: mmffhhahmm...sorry, was eating chocolate. Umm... (pause) did you get that? My MSN died. No? I said "maybe there's better Internet connection over there?"
Serge: a chicken crossed my road!? Where is it? Give me that chicken, we have some words to say to each other if you know what I mean. Quickly, before I forgive it!
Perry: don't even get me started. And no, chickens were not created by Jesus, they were created by a little thing called evolution, heard of it?
Lucy: did you know that chicken blood is green? I swear. It's true. Fine, look it up nay-sayer. It's not true? No way!
Oof. Today was one loooong hour-long hour. I was really impatient for some reason, even more than usually. Maybe it's because today I meditated at ~11:30AM instead of the usual 9:00AM, and my brain had already had time to sink into the afternoon mindset, apparently one of ADD. Also, there were lots of distracting sounds today. Planes, trains, automobiles, humming refrigerators, ringing cellphones, garbage pickups, the walls crackling from minute changes in temperature, pretty much everything you could ask for except for the ice cream truck and carolers. And Santa Claus.
I did have a couple of interesting moments when I felt curiously misaligned with my body, as if I had drifted over a couple of inches, but was also simultaneously in the original spot. It was a tricky feeling to hold onto, because the moment I'd notice it, I'd snap right back into place. The day I can hold it I'll probably end up blaming it on excessive calorie intake.
I was thinking yesterday that God is a lot like the Placebo Effect. It doesn't really matter whether he's a sugar pill or an antibiotic or a big jolly bearded guy in a cloud, riding a dinosaur. If you manage to believe in him, even if you're tricked into doing so, you can extract benefit for yourself. Or harm of course. Let's forget about God for a second, and just think about the Placebo Effect. Basically it says that whatever you believe, happens. Like, if you take a sugar pill thinking it's a cancer cure, you have a 99.99% chance of being cured (Note: figures are not to scale). Or if you jump out of an airplane and believe you have a parachute, but you really don't, then you're totally screwed. Actually...ignore that last one. OK, if you believe in Santa, your parents will give you presents addressed from him. If you believe in a wrathful and vengeful God, I will come shoot you in the head. If my physician tells me my lymph nodes are OK, I will believe her, and they'll stop spraying fountains of blood. So you see that the Placebo Effect is very powerful. And now I forget where I was going with this.
A joke my friend Pei wrote about me:
It happened as mark was in primary school...
teacher : mark, how come u r late again!!
mark: I met a lost 3 year-old kid by the railway on the way here.
teacher: come on... pls use a better story next time.
mark: I did send him home.
teacher: where is his home?
mark: ya when I asked him that, he was pointing to the railway. So I put him on the rails.
teacher: .......
(my reaction)
Mark: that's good!
Pei: when I was thinking of u, I thought, mark, he is a baby-killer... here we go...
A joke I wrote about my friend Pei:
Pei: talk dirty to me, I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Mark: mm...your apartment's so dirty, so dirty, I'm going to go clean it right now!
Pei: yea baby! you know what turns me on!
Yea...that may take some background to understand.
And one more about Pei (we're collaborating on a joke book that only the two of us will understand):
Pei is walking down the street. She sees a 5 year old kid and his mother. The kid must have been misbehaving, because the mother is beating the crap out of him, spanking him like there's no tomorrow.
Pei: ah...I wish I had a kid.
(today, in the kitchen)
Mark is peeling a clementine. Michelle walks up and puts her hand out, demanding some. Mark shoves the whole clementine in his mouth.
Michelle: Mom! Mark stole my clementine!
I tried writing some more jokes today, but in a different style. I tried posing a question and then thinking of responses from different people, with the responses caricaturing the answeree. I can't really tell if it's funny, and you'd have to know the people reasonably well to understand what I'm getting at, but it made me crack up when I wrote them:
Question: You have 24 hours to live, what do you do?
Mom: 24 hours...that's 12 movies!
Dad: 24 hours...that's eight 3-hour meditations. No, wait! Twenty-four 1-hour meditations!
Mark: 24 hours...can I at least get an extra half-hour to blog about it after?
Grandma: 24 hours...do you know what happened in Israel in only the last 3 hrs? No? Well let me describe it to you in gory detail for the next 24.
Boris: 24 hou...(snore)
Pei: 24 hours...that's enough time to try 240 new sex positions!
Manlin: 24 hours...how fast do they deliver chocolate?
Zhang Xiao Yi: 24 hours...damn, my parents are going to kill me when I tell them!
Chun: 24 hours...OK, first 5 minutes - call my Mom and Dad to tell them the news. The next 23 hours and 50 minutes - plan out the remaining 5 minutes. Aha! Not a minute gone to waste!
Tina: 24 hours...wow, life sucks.
Mario: 24 hours...that's time enough to learn 3 new Chinese words, forget 5 Russian ones, and start learning three new languages!
Igor: 24 hours...Renata! What am I doing for the next 24 hours!?
Frank: 24 hours...no problem. I have a business plan just for the occasion! It's a franchise. We're going to have 12 stores open within the first 10 hrs and we should be up to McDonald's scale by hour 24.
Serge: 24 hours...that's enough time to build a successful family, right?
Perry: 24 hours...convert as many Christians as I can to antheism. Now that's time well spent.
Lucy: 24 hours...bull. I bet I can live longer than that.
Question: What will you do when your son's begging you for a new toy he doesn't deserve?
Mom: don't give it to him, but then cry myself to sleep at night.
Dad: don't give it to him. Instead, make fun of him till he develops a serious psychological disorder.
Michelle: I have a son? That means I had sex! EWWWW!!!
Grandma: buy him every toy in the store. Oh, wait! Did you say son or grandson?
Mark: my son? Did the condom break? This is a completely unrealistic situation! Fine, I'd probably go get a DNA test then, see if he's really my son. There's no toy in existence that a son of mine wouldn't deserve. Ah, he's already so much like his father.
Chun: tell him he can have the toy in installments. Get him planning his life early on!
Mario: how old is he? 5? Trade him in for five 1-year-olds. No! Half of a ten-year-old!
Pei: give it to him. I love him, so why wouldn't I buy it? Wait, that's not how you raise children?
Zhang Xiao Yi: Chinese children know better than to beg for toys. I knew I shouldn't have married an American. They're inferior!
Manlin: play mind games with him. "You really want that toy? You don't not really want it? You wouldn't want not to not want to want to not have it?" Hehe.
Tina: toys? Yay! Mine mine mine mine! Phew, OK, sad now.
Igor: oh Christ. Renata!
Frank: wait, how did he get out of his cage?
Serge: buy myself a new car. And a new house. And then work harder and earn more money so I can buy the toy. Man, where does the money go!?
Perry: you know those noise-canceling headphones? What did you say? I can't hear you.
Lucy: beat the little devil half to death. Studies show it's optimal for his development.
Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Mom: because we're vegetarian.
Dad: it's a reincarnation of a nomadic tribesman, come on dude, ask me something harder.
Mark: I told you ten times already! Don't tell me any news unless it's good news! I've heard this all a million times. People are dying, there's war and povery, blah blah blah.
Michelle: a chicken? Where?!? I'm scared. Wait, are chickens dogs or insects?
Grandma: a chicken? Do you know that ten people were blown up in Israel today?
Igor: Renata, didn't we discuss this the other day? What did we decide?
Chun: aha! All part of my plan for getting into medical school! Check!
Frank: I don't know, but someone grab that chicken! The chicken/turkey exchange rate is climbing faster than my blood pressure!
Paul: hahaha! Someone saw a chicken! That's so crazy, man, that's so crazy!
Mario: I don't know, but I trust it. I'm getting outta here.
Pei: chicken? Who cares about chickens? Ask me about fish.
Tina: crap, I had this at my Google interview...and I remember getting it right...what was it!?...ugh!
Manlin: mmffhhahmm...sorry, was eating chocolate. Umm... (pause) did you get that? My MSN died. No? I said "maybe there's better Internet connection over there?"
Serge: a chicken crossed my road!? Where is it? Give me that chicken, we have some words to say to each other if you know what I mean. Quickly, before I forgive it!
Perry: don't even get me started. And no, chickens were not created by Jesus, they were created by a little thing called evolution, heard of it?
Lucy: did you know that chicken blood is green? I swear. It's true. Fine, look it up nay-sayer. It's not true? No way!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
La la la
Got back to writing songs today, for the first time in a while. I worked on one where I had some good music already but no vocals. Decent results so far, but of the two verses and two choruses, none have anything to do with one another. The first verse is no-way-out depression. The first chorus is about "free love" / polygamy / an orgy cruise. Verse two is some cryptic warning / "I told you so." And chorus two is some kind of identity crisis advice. Can't wait to find out what my brain will come up with for the bridge and final verse/chorus pair. One thing is certain though, it will be tasty.
I also did some recording today. I had Guitar Pro play the song I wrote about Chun and recorded myself singing the vocals to it. Came out better than I expected, but it could use another twenty or thirty takes. Here it is (use headphones, I tried to do some stereo mixing).
Chun
Ok, song's over Chun, you can stop blushing.
The next song on the to-be-written list is a song about Perry. Mario and I brainstormed some good ideas today. The theme of the first verse is "undercover Christian." In case you don't know, Perry is the biggest atheist on the face of the planet, despite being only a foot and a half over midget-size. Or rather, he hopes to appear so. But after listening to this song, you will be convinced that he's actually an "undercover Christian," overcompensating for his true beliefs. The chorus goes in a completely different direction, which I will keep secret for now.
In other news, the Tootsie Roll supply is running low. I now have to get into the bag up to my waist to reach the top layer. And that's after only two weeks! Another six, and we'll need a new bag. And I really don't want to, I'm finally starting to get the sharp end of the side-effect stick. My jaws are getting so strong from chewing Tootsie Rolls that all other food has the consistency of extra-creamy soup or oatmeal in comparison. Chicken drumsticks are like Jello to my bear-trap-like mouth. I don't even notice the bones. I hope I don't bite my tongue.
I also did some recording today. I had Guitar Pro play the song I wrote about Chun and recorded myself singing the vocals to it. Came out better than I expected, but it could use another twenty or thirty takes. Here it is (use headphones, I tried to do some stereo mixing).
Chun
Ok, song's over Chun, you can stop blushing.
The next song on the to-be-written list is a song about Perry. Mario and I brainstormed some good ideas today. The theme of the first verse is "undercover Christian." In case you don't know, Perry is the biggest atheist on the face of the planet, despite being only a foot and a half over midget-size. Or rather, he hopes to appear so. But after listening to this song, you will be convinced that he's actually an "undercover Christian," overcompensating for his true beliefs. The chorus goes in a completely different direction, which I will keep secret for now.
In other news, the Tootsie Roll supply is running low. I now have to get into the bag up to my waist to reach the top layer. And that's after only two weeks! Another six, and we'll need a new bag. And I really don't want to, I'm finally starting to get the sharp end of the side-effect stick. My jaws are getting so strong from chewing Tootsie Rolls that all other food has the consistency of extra-creamy soup or oatmeal in comparison. Chicken drumsticks are like Jello to my bear-trap-like mouth. I don't even notice the bones. I hope I don't bite my tongue.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Torture Korean-style
Yoga graced my house today, and us mere mortals (Dad, Michelle, and I) evacuated to Barnes and Noble. The store kicks us out at 11PM, and we usually have another half hour of waiting till the yogis have had their fill of our couch and mood lighting. To pass the time, we park in a NASA-sized parking lot at the church at the end of our street, and zombie around till we get the "all clear" phone call. There's no entertainment there save Michelle's incessant chattering. Every now and then, Dad shushes Michelle: "Shhh, the priests are sleeping...with the priestesses." She's 11, there's no point in hiding the truth from her anymore.
That reminds me, Michelle's going to middle school this year, that day camp where you make unfortunate friends and memories that bring you to the psychiatrist later in life. Sadly I can't impart any social wisdom onto her, as I have been a near-recluse for the last years. My days of being a social butterfly of a little girl are long gone.
Chun told me excitedly today that she'll soon get to dice animals in the name of science. That includes mice, rabbits, rats, and probably some others I've repressed. I'm glad she's having fun. Go Chun!
I'm still on the Korean film spree, though the last couple are begging me to switch back to Hollywood. I'm talking about A Moment to Remember and Daisy, which start off cute, and then end with a dense hour of despair. Men weep or die, women lose their minds or die, and then if someone hasn't died yet, they die. The ones who manage to somehow survive all that weep or lose their minds. The aftertaste is one of hopelessness and loss. This of course doesn't make them bad movies. On the contrary, if you're Chun, they're very cleansing and provide an opportunity to use the famous tear ducts. But if you're Mark, a seasoned traveler of the movie universe, life has taught you there's a limited number of watchable movies, and sooner or later you're going to have to watch that movie you already watched seven times for an eighth time. And eight horrible endings is just too much.
That reminds me, Michelle's going to middle school this year, that day camp where you make unfortunate friends and memories that bring you to the psychiatrist later in life. Sadly I can't impart any social wisdom onto her, as I have been a near-recluse for the last years. My days of being a social butterfly of a little girl are long gone.
Chun told me excitedly today that she'll soon get to dice animals in the name of science. That includes mice, rabbits, rats, and probably some others I've repressed. I'm glad she's having fun. Go Chun!
I'm still on the Korean film spree, though the last couple are begging me to switch back to Hollywood. I'm talking about A Moment to Remember and Daisy, which start off cute, and then end with a dense hour of despair. Men weep or die, women lose their minds or die, and then if someone hasn't died yet, they die. The ones who manage to somehow survive all that weep or lose their minds. The aftertaste is one of hopelessness and loss. This of course doesn't make them bad movies. On the contrary, if you're Chun, they're very cleansing and provide an opportunity to use the famous tear ducts. But if you're Mark, a seasoned traveler of the movie universe, life has taught you there's a limited number of watchable movies, and sooner or later you're going to have to watch that movie you already watched seven times for an eighth time. And eight horrible endings is just too much.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
New Song
Introduced my parents to Malcolm in the Middle yesterday. They exhibited a common hypocrisy: while watching, they laughed themselves stupid, but when I asked them later what they thought of it, the biggest compliment they could muster was "I don't get it." Well, there's a good cure for "I don't get it," and that's "do it till you get it," so if they're thinking they're getting out of seasons 2-7, they're going to have to rethink their strategy.
Started a new song today, on commission from Mario. The requested topic was "how to discipline your children." Leaving the punch to the chorus, so far I have:
Verse 1
When you say Bobby, rub my feet,
or I've had a long day
make me something to eat,
you should only see obedience
don't put up with any less
Verse 2
When you say sweetie, I'm feeling kind of tired,
go and do my work
so I don't get fired
you should only see obedience
don't put up with any less
Pre-Chorus
But if the little ingrate doesn't run and obey
if he starts to whine and begs to go out and play
then you know it's time for discipline
then you know it's time to give him some...
I have a rough idea for up to but not including the pre-chorus. Here's the midi: Disciplining Freeloaders
The vocals begin 8 or 9 measures in, just match the dominant voice to the lyrics. It's nothing spectacular at the moment, I'll have to juice it up.
I left Boston yesterday, and in the emotional hurricane that surrounded the event, Chun let some truth slip through her usual compulsive lying. Her email to me yesterday had a great line, which I reproduce here with her permission: I have so little time to squeeze all the fun out of you. Now that's honesty in a relationship. I finally understand why I have intuitively been keeping so few friends. With more than a couple of people constantly squeezing me, I wouldn't stand a chance. It also now makes sense why I eat so much but remain skinny and beautiful - that's a tip for you fatties out there - hug yourselves and lose some weight.
Started a new song today, on commission from Mario. The requested topic was "how to discipline your children." Leaving the punch to the chorus, so far I have:
Verse 1
When you say Bobby, rub my feet,
or I've had a long day
make me something to eat,
you should only see obedience
don't put up with any less
Verse 2
When you say sweetie, I'm feeling kind of tired,
go and do my work
so I don't get fired
you should only see obedience
don't put up with any less
Pre-Chorus
But if the little ingrate doesn't run and obey
if he starts to whine and begs to go out and play
then you know it's time for discipline
then you know it's time to give him some...
I have a rough idea for up to but not including the pre-chorus. Here's the midi: Disciplining Freeloaders
The vocals begin 8 or 9 measures in, just match the dominant voice to the lyrics. It's nothing spectacular at the moment, I'll have to juice it up.
I left Boston yesterday, and in the emotional hurricane that surrounded the event, Chun let some truth slip through her usual compulsive lying. Her email to me yesterday had a great line, which I reproduce here with her permission: I have so little time to squeeze all the fun out of you. Now that's honesty in a relationship. I finally understand why I have intuitively been keeping so few friends. With more than a couple of people constantly squeezing me, I wouldn't stand a chance. It also now makes sense why I eat so much but remain skinny and beautiful - that's a tip for you fatties out there - hug yourselves and lose some weight.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Busy busy
Went over to civilization today and played some Mario Kart. Trash talking is a very big part of my game, and served me true while I battled video game amateurs (girls), but earned me only a close second when I faced Paul, the hero of our hit song The Paul Song. Of course if I had beaten him we would have had to rewrite the song, so perhaps I was subconsciously sabotaging myself, and I'm actually twice as good as he is at Kart. At last, a sensible and simultaneously flattering explanation.
We also played Taboo, which was even more fun. The teams were boys versus girls, which ended the only way it could, and I don't mean in an orgy. (Boys won by a long shot)
Before Chun came home, I jammed with Band-in-a-Box for a while - mostly major and minor blues. Every day I try to convince myself to go downstairs and plug into the amp, but it's so far, my inertia is so great, and the couch and refrigerator exert a gravitational force usually restricted to black holes and neutron stars.
I've been reading The Time Traveler's Wife out loud to Chun during the last week, but the page numbers are growing frustratingly fast and it's getting near that part where... where... hold up... where's my handkerchief?... sniff... anyway, no more reading. I'm going to grow breasts if I don't pull myself together. Time to go on a testosterone binge. Arnold, Bruce, Christian, you're going to return me to the male race.
Just remembered a great joke Justin Lee told me during the Maine trip:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None, feminists can't change anything.
We also played Taboo, which was even more fun. The teams were boys versus girls, which ended the only way it could, and I don't mean in an orgy. (Boys won by a long shot)
Before Chun came home, I jammed with Band-in-a-Box for a while - mostly major and minor blues. Every day I try to convince myself to go downstairs and plug into the amp, but it's so far, my inertia is so great, and the couch and refrigerator exert a gravitational force usually restricted to black holes and neutron stars.
I've been reading The Time Traveler's Wife out loud to Chun during the last week, but the page numbers are growing frustratingly fast and it's getting near that part where... where... hold up... where's my handkerchief?... sniff... anyway, no more reading. I'm going to grow breasts if I don't pull myself together. Time to go on a testosterone binge. Arnold, Bruce, Christian, you're going to return me to the male race.
Just remembered a great joke Justin Lee told me during the Maine trip:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None, feminists can't change anything.
Ouch
Chun and I had a revealing conversation today, while necking half-way through The Importance of Being Earnest. I was feeling good about myself, Chun having just unleashed thousands of calories worth of honey onto my Winnie-the-Pooh ego. I was feeling invincible. Then the conversation took an unexpected U-turn:
Chun: I'll always be here to boost your ego.
Mark: You should throw some curveballs now and then, keep me on my toes. (What was I thinking??)
Chun: OK! What should I say? How about...you're ugly...or...you suck at guitar. Hmm...no I better not, I'm afraid I'll hit too close to home.
Read that last sentence again. OUCH! In other words: "you want honesty? Alright. You're a worthless Quasimodo."
The Importance of Being Earnest taught a valuable lesson: never feel guilty. Lie to your friend, betray your brother, tattle, cheat, but never feel guilty. It was especially inspirational to me because I have so much to learn in this department, being of Jewish blood, and thus having 12 extra guiltophilic chromosomes.
Put in an excellent effort today in terms of watching TV. Saw two Malcolm in the Middle episodes I'd never seen before, and realized I can appreciate physical comedy. There was a scene this where Malcolm, Reese and Dewey are trying to frame Craig (the resident fatty) for running over Reese's leg and causing the huge welling that was actually obtained in an incident better kept secret from mothers. At the climax, Reese is pretending to be in pain, bleating unconvincingly "oww, my leg, oww oww." Dewey decides to help out and punches Reese (much more convincingly) right in the wound,transforming the pathetic bleating into authentic screams of pain. I must have laughed for two minutes straight, tears, stomach clutching, knee slapping and everything. People in pain, what could be funnier!
Chun: I'll always be here to boost your ego.
Mark: You should throw some curveballs now and then, keep me on my toes. (What was I thinking??)
Chun: OK! What should I say? How about...you're ugly...or...you suck at guitar. Hmm...no I better not, I'm afraid I'll hit too close to home.
Read that last sentence again. OUCH! In other words: "you want honesty? Alright. You're a worthless Quasimodo."
The Importance of Being Earnest taught a valuable lesson: never feel guilty. Lie to your friend, betray your brother, tattle, cheat, but never feel guilty. It was especially inspirational to me because I have so much to learn in this department, being of Jewish blood, and thus having 12 extra guiltophilic chromosomes.
Put in an excellent effort today in terms of watching TV. Saw two Malcolm in the Middle episodes I'd never seen before, and realized I can appreciate physical comedy. There was a scene this where Malcolm, Reese and Dewey are trying to frame Craig (the resident fatty) for running over Reese's leg and causing the huge welling that was actually obtained in an incident better kept secret from mothers. At the climax, Reese is pretending to be in pain, bleating unconvincingly "oww, my leg, oww oww." Dewey decides to help out and punches Reese (much more convincingly) right in the wound,transforming the pathetic bleating into authentic screams of pain. I must have laughed for two minutes straight, tears, stomach clutching, knee slapping and everything. People in pain, what could be funnier!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Camp
More nonsensical letters:
Hey Michelle,
First of all, you should know better than to call me before 3PM. At my age I need my sleep. If you don't want to wake me up, please call between the hours of 6PM and 7PM.
I'm still in Boston, though I've been alone most of the time starting 15 minutes ago. Everyone here is in paid slavery from 9 to 5. Booooring. It's Chun's first day today. She has mandatory orientation, something like that punishment in school where you write nonsense on the board 50 times:
"This hospital was built in 1874. 70% of the people who've attended this hospital are now dead. 80% of new employees experience acute depression, anxiety, migraines, vomiting, and jumping-out-of-windows tendencies...blah blah blah."
While she's away, I've been sitting in the apartment yelling "Ah Ah Ah, Ee Ee Ee, Oh Oh Oh, sss, sss, sss, SSS! SSS! SSS!" at the top of my lungs, after/along with my virtual singing teacher. There have been no complaints so far, so perhaps what sounds to me like nails across a blackboard really sounds like angelic choirs of Robert Plant clones.
Surprise! Chun's going to write to you too! The next paragraph or three are from her. Not to put her on the spot, but she has the funniest, most interesting stuff to say to you. I hope you're as excited as I am to see if she can live up to the pressure.
Later, gator
Mark "Too Good To Be True" Vayngrib
Hi Michelle!
This is Chun, not Mark. I started work today. It was pretty wonderful, but if it doesn't get a whole lot more wonderful fast, I might have to throw myself off the roof. Hopefully it'll be a 1-story building. Mark's been wonderful so far, but surely you know how amazing he is. Let me just say that twice more: Mark is soooo amazing. AMAZING! OK, calm...calm...breathe...Ommmmm. Phew! OK...I'm trying to think of other stuff to say, but all I can think about is how great Mark is...hmm...bye I guess.
Just kidding, it's Mark again. Chun will send you a letter via mail.
See ya soon,
Mark "Sometimes Also Chun" Vayngrib
Hey Michelle,
First of all, you should know better than to call me before 3PM. At my age I need my sleep. If you don't want to wake me up, please call between the hours of 6PM and 7PM.
I'm still in Boston, though I've been alone most of the time starting 15 minutes ago. Everyone here is in paid slavery from 9 to 5. Booooring. It's Chun's first day today. She has mandatory orientation, something like that punishment in school where you write nonsense on the board 50 times:
"This hospital was built in 1874. 70% of the people who've attended this hospital are now dead. 80% of new employees experience acute depression, anxiety, migraines, vomiting, and jumping-out-of-windows tendencies...blah blah blah."
While she's away, I've been sitting in the apartment yelling "Ah Ah Ah, Ee Ee Ee, Oh Oh Oh, sss, sss, sss, SSS! SSS! SSS!" at the top of my lungs, after/along with my virtual singing teacher. There have been no complaints so far, so perhaps what sounds to me like nails across a blackboard really sounds like angelic choirs of Robert Plant clones.
Surprise! Chun's going to write to you too! The next paragraph or three are from her. Not to put her on the spot, but she has the funniest, most interesting stuff to say to you. I hope you're as excited as I am to see if she can live up to the pressure.
Later, gator
Mark "Too Good To Be True" Vayngrib
Hi Michelle!
This is Chun, not Mark. I started work today. It was pretty wonderful, but if it doesn't get a whole lot more wonderful fast, I might have to throw myself off the roof. Hopefully it'll be a 1-story building. Mark's been wonderful so far, but surely you know how amazing he is. Let me just say that twice more: Mark is soooo amazing. AMAZING! OK, calm...calm...breathe...Ommmmm. Phew! OK...I'm trying to think of other stuff to say, but all I can think about is how great Mark is...hmm...bye I guess.
Just kidding, it's Mark again. Chun will send you a letter via mail.
See ya soon,
Mark "Sometimes Also Chun" Vayngrib
Friday, July 18, 2008
Boston
Took the Greyhound into Boston yesterday. I took the window seat though I usually much prefer the aisle, and paid dearly for not sticking to my preferences. A fat lady composed of equal parts cosmetics and irrationality sat down next to me, and scolded me during the next 4 1/2 hours about me encroaching on her personal space. I was not permitted to so much as hang a momentary elbow over her territory. She would close her eyes now and then for long stretches of time, and I would relax and not realize the first eleven times that it was a cunning trap that ended in harsh words and stern looks expressing strong doubts as to whether I was raised in civilization or in a jungle on planet Traflamadore.
The reception in Boston was regal in Oriental style #1: authentic Chinese food, Americanized Chinese women, and a big apartment to experience everything. Foolishly imagining this reception would stretch past the door to the apartment, I made the mistake of walking over to one of the local MIT zoos to experience some other people from my good old college days. Instead of chocolate and extensive praise, I received the slightly less entertaining sight of people weighing themselves on the Wii Fit for an hour and a half and having the gall to pretend they were actually having fun.
Today we (myself and fans) are going to dine at India Quality (Good Taste Chinese anyone?), and then see The Dark Knight. I'm expecting a great Joker. Heath Ledger may be dead, but that doesn't mean I'm cutting him an inch of slack. It just means he won't be able to defend himself when I give him a scathing review.
The reception in Boston was regal in Oriental style #1: authentic Chinese food, Americanized Chinese women, and a big apartment to experience everything. Foolishly imagining this reception would stretch past the door to the apartment, I made the mistake of walking over to one of the local MIT zoos to experience some other people from my good old college days. Instead of chocolate and extensive praise, I received the slightly less entertaining sight of people weighing themselves on the Wii Fit for an hour and a half and having the gall to pretend they were actually having fun.
Today we (myself and fans) are going to dine at India Quality (Good Taste Chinese anyone?), and then see The Dark Knight. I'm expecting a great Joker. Heath Ledger may be dead, but that doesn't mean I'm cutting him an inch of slack. It just means he won't be able to defend himself when I give him a scathing review.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
MCATs and Squirrels
A love triangle meets several times a week on the left fence of our backyard. Two of the squirrels clearly form a couple, but the third invariably attends their dates.
These squirrels, now that I think about it, are an almost exact replica of my life at college with Chun and Mario:
One lies draped over a fence bulb as relaxed as a loogie - he's usually off to himself, sleeping, or observing the other two. He turns away when the cuteness of the couple approaches disgusting. This is Mario across the board, though not nearly as lazy as the real one.
The second lies in often awkward-looking positions, with arms and legs branching at impossible angles, and head sometimes stuck in between the posts, like an ostrich in the sand. Nevertheless, he manages to look eternally relaxed; his eyelids teeter up and down. This is me.
The third runs circles around me, and climbs on and off in frenzied attempts to weed out something that's apparently permeated my entire hide. Though the squirrel version uses her face and not her hands to administer the cleansing, this creature is clearly Chun, who loves picking things out of other things, the first usually being dandruff, and the second - my hair.
The other, more obvious details of the love triangle's existence are not appropriate for the multitudes of 5-year-olds who peruse this blog daily, and I wouldn't want to be in breach of blog-writer-blog-reader ethics. Use your imagination.
NY/NJ forecast for tomorrow: pain, anaesthesia, death. Chances of root canal - 99%. Chances of overpaying for parking - 100%. Chances of watching a movie before going to bed - an ever unflagging 100% - that's destiny. Big day tomorrow NY/NJ, 299% worth of various crap.
Georgia forecast: light breakfast followed by 5 delicious hours of MCATs. Everyone wish Chun good luck, though this time the test is the underdog. Good luck Chun!
These squirrels, now that I think about it, are an almost exact replica of my life at college with Chun and Mario:
One lies draped over a fence bulb as relaxed as a loogie - he's usually off to himself, sleeping, or observing the other two. He turns away when the cuteness of the couple approaches disgusting. This is Mario across the board, though not nearly as lazy as the real one.
The second lies in often awkward-looking positions, with arms and legs branching at impossible angles, and head sometimes stuck in between the posts, like an ostrich in the sand. Nevertheless, he manages to look eternally relaxed; his eyelids teeter up and down. This is me.
The third runs circles around me, and climbs on and off in frenzied attempts to weed out something that's apparently permeated my entire hide. Though the squirrel version uses her face and not her hands to administer the cleansing, this creature is clearly Chun, who loves picking things out of other things, the first usually being dandruff, and the second - my hair.
The other, more obvious details of the love triangle's existence are not appropriate for the multitudes of 5-year-olds who peruse this blog daily, and I wouldn't want to be in breach of blog-writer-blog-reader ethics. Use your imagination.
NY/NJ forecast for tomorrow: pain, anaesthesia, death. Chances of root canal - 99%. Chances of overpaying for parking - 100%. Chances of watching a movie before going to bed - an ever unflagging 100% - that's destiny. Big day tomorrow NY/NJ, 299% worth of various crap.
Georgia forecast: light breakfast followed by 5 delicious hours of MCATs. Everyone wish Chun good luck, though this time the test is the underdog. Good luck Chun!
Monday, July 7, 2008
Good Luck Chun =)
Watched Kit Kittredge today. Finally, a movie that met expectations. Very low expectations. The popcorn, on the other hand, was exemplary. It was so good, we popped the family free refill cherry, and downed the second serving with forty minutes of trite overacted time-filler to spare. You know you're suffering when you begin to miss commercial interruptions.
Michelle is leaving us again. I know I know, I don't deserve it, who else gets two vacations a month? To celebrate, I have a date with Barnes and Noble's and then perhaps some hours of guitar inadequacy. Life is good.
Also going to try and get back to Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal which has been gathering dust on my harddrive. Not doing anything useful can be really time-consuming, and I've been neglecting my foreign language studies.
I think I might visit some of my relatives this week. They all suffer from a congenital defect called "family values," and risk getting a heartattack if kin enter their vicinity and don't drop by. I definitely don't want any dead family karma. Those tend to take revenge on you by manifesting as some horrible disease. You can hope it's merely physical like cancer and not truly insidious like "family values."
Less than two weeks left till I get to visit my girl! She's probably fainted twice reading the previous sentence, expecting horrible jokes on her account. If so, I hope today is not the morning of July 10th, and I haven't made her late for her date with the MCATs. Yes, yes, she's one of those - aspiring murderers. Steady hands, loves blood, kills your rabbits for free (I'll never let this one go), and refuses to settle for a lesser profession than sending people's insurance rates through the roof. But...that's all in the faaaaar future. For now, she's a little study-monkey, working her butt off to earn herself debts and slavery for the next X years. Aaanyway, por donde iba?...It's so easy to get distracted when people have ambitions to poke at. What I wanted to say...I think...was: let's all help her with a cheer. Join hands you homophobes...and:
Chun, Chun, she's our man,
Even studies on the can,
Verbal, physics, bio, chem,
Wait a minute...what the hell is she thinking? She's an electric engineer...ahhh!...must salvage the cheer...Good Luck Chun!
Michelle is leaving us again. I know I know, I don't deserve it, who else gets two vacations a month? To celebrate, I have a date with Barnes and Noble's and then perhaps some hours of guitar inadequacy. Life is good.
Also going to try and get back to Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal which has been gathering dust on my harddrive. Not doing anything useful can be really time-consuming, and I've been neglecting my foreign language studies.
I think I might visit some of my relatives this week. They all suffer from a congenital defect called "family values," and risk getting a heartattack if kin enter their vicinity and don't drop by. I definitely don't want any dead family karma. Those tend to take revenge on you by manifesting as some horrible disease. You can hope it's merely physical like cancer and not truly insidious like "family values."
Less than two weeks left till I get to visit my girl! She's probably fainted twice reading the previous sentence, expecting horrible jokes on her account. If so, I hope today is not the morning of July 10th, and I haven't made her late for her date with the MCATs. Yes, yes, she's one of those - aspiring murderers. Steady hands, loves blood, kills your rabbits for free (I'll never let this one go), and refuses to settle for a lesser profession than sending people's insurance rates through the roof. But...that's all in the faaaaar future. For now, she's a little study-monkey, working her butt off to earn herself debts and slavery for the next X years. Aaanyway, por donde iba?...It's so easy to get distracted when people have ambitions to poke at. What I wanted to say...I think...was: let's all help her with a cheer. Join hands you homophobes...and:
Chun, Chun, she's our man,
Even studies on the can,
Verbal, physics, bio, chem,
Wait a minute...what the hell is she thinking? She's an electric engineer...ahhh!...must salvage the cheer...Good Luck Chun!
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Bad Movie
Saw Wall-E today. Blah.
The first 6 hours of the should-be trilogy were almost bearable. There were cuteness, silly music, and cockroaches - apparently a recipe for success judging by IMDb's thousands of satisfied fans. It used to be that when prompted for my opinion on a movie, I could safely defer to IMDb; this saved the trouble of later defending said opinion. But now IMDb must be in league with the movie companies because the average rating for a crappy movie is around 8. Wall-E is rated an astounding 9.3. I would have been happy to agree if I hadn't watched it. Unfortunately I did, and even the IMDb-sponsored professional applauders in the theater couldn't convince me of a single point deserved above a "5 for special effects."
"It's OK, it's over, you made it," I thought, as I made my way back to the car with my parents and my little sister. Wrong! My dad, though he claimed the movie had bored him into a stupor, would not stop reenacting the aforementioned boredom, with such skill that I fell asleep at least 8 times behind the wheel on the 2-mile ride home. Bored my ass! Now the traitor's probably voting on IMDb to infalte Wall-E's rating to an even greater obscenity.
Just heard from Chun, she loved it of course. This is good intel - she is not to be trusted.
Showed grandma our music today. Can't say she loved it. I showed her ~5 songs, and when I mentioned Mario was still finishing one of them, she asked "why finish? They all sound the same." Ouch. No worries though, grandma's been discredited. I grabbed a piece of apple pie as I left her house, and it smelled like cheese. When she shoved a tomato under my nose to smell the divinity, it smelled like the fish she'd been slicing. Hey, if she can't tell the difference between those...
The first 6 hours of the should-be trilogy were almost bearable. There were cuteness, silly music, and cockroaches - apparently a recipe for success judging by IMDb's thousands of satisfied fans. It used to be that when prompted for my opinion on a movie, I could safely defer to IMDb; this saved the trouble of later defending said opinion. But now IMDb must be in league with the movie companies because the average rating for a crappy movie is around 8. Wall-E is rated an astounding 9.3. I would have been happy to agree if I hadn't watched it. Unfortunately I did, and even the IMDb-sponsored professional applauders in the theater couldn't convince me of a single point deserved above a "5 for special effects."
"It's OK, it's over, you made it," I thought, as I made my way back to the car with my parents and my little sister. Wrong! My dad, though he claimed the movie had bored him into a stupor, would not stop reenacting the aforementioned boredom, with such skill that I fell asleep at least 8 times behind the wheel on the 2-mile ride home. Bored my ass! Now the traitor's probably voting on IMDb to infalte Wall-E's rating to an even greater obscenity.
Just heard from Chun, she loved it of course. This is good intel - she is not to be trusted.
Showed grandma our music today. Can't say she loved it. I showed her ~5 songs, and when I mentioned Mario was still finishing one of them, she asked "why finish? They all sound the same." Ouch. No worries though, grandma's been discredited. I grabbed a piece of apple pie as I left her house, and it smelled like cheese. When she shoved a tomato under my nose to smell the divinity, it smelled like the fish she'd been slicing. Hey, if she can't tell the difference between those...
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Great Depression
Today I came within an inch of damnation. A day after posting on Craigslist, I was surprised and delighted to see that someone was interested in my quality services as a tutor. Not just interested, they wanted me to tutor their currently mediocre but soon to be genius offspring, every day of the week. One or two more such customers, I thought to myself amidst a fit of giggles, and I'd never need a job again. I went to sleep blissfully ignorant of the storm gathering in my Inbox.
I woke up this morning, and found four more wonderful emails from wonderful people with wonderfully thick children. This is where I should have pricked up my ears. Instead, I pranced around the room, threw handfuls of credit cards into the air, and only then got to reading.
Woe was me. At first glance, the emails spoke of normal people who wanted to send me baskets full of checks. But things tended quickly to the creepy. The writing had obviously missed out on some grammar and spellchecking. At the same time, the people all claimed to be from England - a little-known country that chiefly exports clones of Henry Higgins - the Naziest language Nazi of all. Everything suddenly became crystal clear. I was being asked to participate in something intrinsically un-American, and thus undoubtedly Communist-inspired. I was being asked to give an American education to a foreigner!
I was shocked! Revolted! ...But slightly tempted to participate. This last thought that zigzagged through my mind scared me most. After much deliberation, I have decided to do the right thing and turn myself in to the government. Tomorrow will likely be my last day as a free American, for temptation is harshly but justly punished in our wonderful country.
Made some more progress with my music - the Tina-turned-Chun song is moving along beautifully.
I'm writing and expecting...yearning for...nay, praying for an interruption, because material is scarce, and my movie hormones are flaring at full throttle. Tonight still lives with the promise of another B-rated film ruthlessly sacrificed to my addiction, but time is passing and...was that my name being called? Hm...no, that was just me saying it aloud. Enough! I suppose tonight, I'll have to initiate the ritual.
I woke up this morning, and found four more wonderful emails from wonderful people with wonderfully thick children. This is where I should have pricked up my ears. Instead, I pranced around the room, threw handfuls of credit cards into the air, and only then got to reading.
Woe was me. At first glance, the emails spoke of normal people who wanted to send me baskets full of checks. But things tended quickly to the creepy. The writing had obviously missed out on some grammar and spellchecking. At the same time, the people all claimed to be from England - a little-known country that chiefly exports clones of Henry Higgins - the Naziest language Nazi of all. Everything suddenly became crystal clear. I was being asked to participate in something intrinsically un-American, and thus undoubtedly Communist-inspired. I was being asked to give an American education to a foreigner!
I was shocked! Revolted! ...But slightly tempted to participate. This last thought that zigzagged through my mind scared me most. After much deliberation, I have decided to do the right thing and turn myself in to the government. Tomorrow will likely be my last day as a free American, for temptation is harshly but justly punished in our wonderful country.
Made some more progress with my music - the Tina-turned-Chun song is moving along beautifully.
I'm writing and expecting...yearning for...nay, praying for an interruption, because material is scarce, and my movie hormones are flaring at full throttle. Tonight still lives with the promise of another B-rated film ruthlessly sacrificed to my addiction, but time is passing and...was that my name being called? Hm...no, that was just me saying it aloud. Enough! I suppose tonight, I'll have to initiate the ritual.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
I Love Watermelon
I have pimped out all of my skills on Craigslist, with the frail hope of earning a dollar here and there giving private lessons. If there's something you want to learn that I don't know, and that you are willing to pay for, tell me. I will learn it and teach it to you.
Went to Barnes and Noble's again today, read a bunch of books that failed to make an impression on me. My sentimental half screams that this is because I'm still heartbroken from The Time Traveler's Wife, but I punished it with a Civil War book. Next time it'll keep its fat mouth shut.
Did some writing today - got well on my way into a song that started out about Tina, but tragically lacked a necessary depressing quality, and thus slowly transformed into a love song for Chun. I am now frantically juggling Tina between a slow blues, and an open window.
Meanwhile, Mario has come out with a new single, mourning his love for Iris, who is unfortunately a willing captive of a better man. The song is nearly complete, lacking only lyrics, but they will undoubtedly come around soon and be somewhere high on the scale from 1 to Pathetic.
Michelle asked me to tuck her in today. I considered it for a brief moment and then laughed in her face, a move which somehow doesn't hold the same element of surprise as it used to.
Michelle has a fat friend, who conveniently stores all self-consciousness for her condition in Michelle. Whenever Mom says "hey Michelle, where's fatty?" or Dad asks "where's Piglet?," Michelle inexplicably gets as offended as if it were her own liposuction-filled future they're talking about. Being intrinsically mild-mannered and considerate, I generally restrain my witty insults, and if anything, try to turn the conversation to safer and less fertile ground - such as how fat people contribute to society. By the way, has anyone found the answer to this one yet?
Went to Barnes and Noble's again today, read a bunch of books that failed to make an impression on me. My sentimental half screams that this is because I'm still heartbroken from The Time Traveler's Wife, but I punished it with a Civil War book. Next time it'll keep its fat mouth shut.
Did some writing today - got well on my way into a song that started out about Tina, but tragically lacked a necessary depressing quality, and thus slowly transformed into a love song for Chun. I am now frantically juggling Tina between a slow blues, and an open window.
Meanwhile, Mario has come out with a new single, mourning his love for Iris, who is unfortunately a willing captive of a better man. The song is nearly complete, lacking only lyrics, but they will undoubtedly come around soon and be somewhere high on the scale from 1 to Pathetic.
Michelle asked me to tuck her in today. I considered it for a brief moment and then laughed in her face, a move which somehow doesn't hold the same element of surprise as it used to.
Michelle has a fat friend, who conveniently stores all self-consciousness for her condition in Michelle. Whenever Mom says "hey Michelle, where's fatty?" or Dad asks "where's Piglet?," Michelle inexplicably gets as offended as if it were her own liposuction-filled future they're talking about. Being intrinsically mild-mannered and considerate, I generally restrain my witty insults, and if anything, try to turn the conversation to safer and less fertile ground - such as how fat people contribute to society. By the way, has anyone found the answer to this one yet?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Guests
My cousin and grandma from Baltimore dropped by yesterday on short notice. My cousin is a business guru with grandma's thuggish good looks. We skipped the usual midnight movie showing, and talked in bed till 3 AM. He told me some wild stories about taxi drivers and hookers, and I reciprocated with my own wild tales of sitting on the couch in our lounge. He was so impressed, he passed right out, so I went to sleep as well. In the morning he was gone, but he'll be back for more stories. They always come back.
I've been breezing through The Time Traveler's Wife - an extremely easy and entertaining read. It is drawing near the end, and my magic 8-ball is growing increasingly pessimistic. The level of drama, nostalgia, sentimentality, and inevitability has gotten so high that my tear glands are begging for an interlude. I've been drinking a lot of Gatorade to replenish my fluids. The only thing that cheers me up is thinking about how hard Chun'll be crying when she's reading it. Other people's tears always provide for quality entertainment, and Chun also has excellent delivery. (Don't worry Chun, the fall of my reputation as a dry-eyed stoic will protect yours.)
Watched a sappy Russian movie from the 80's today, a close relative of my worst enemy - Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Watch it (the French one) if you're ever feeling more than usually sadomasochistic. The Russian movie was entertaining in comparison, despite being a colossal bore.
Michelle has volunteered me for a set of pushups with dad. I miss my couch.
I've been breezing through The Time Traveler's Wife - an extremely easy and entertaining read. It is drawing near the end, and my magic 8-ball is growing increasingly pessimistic. The level of drama, nostalgia, sentimentality, and inevitability has gotten so high that my tear glands are begging for an interlude. I've been drinking a lot of Gatorade to replenish my fluids. The only thing that cheers me up is thinking about how hard Chun'll be crying when she's reading it. Other people's tears always provide for quality entertainment, and Chun also has excellent delivery. (Don't worry Chun, the fall of my reputation as a dry-eyed stoic will protect yours.)
Watched a sappy Russian movie from the 80's today, a close relative of my worst enemy - Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Watch it (the French one) if you're ever feeling more than usually sadomasochistic. The Russian movie was entertaining in comparison, despite being a colossal bore.
Michelle has volunteered me for a set of pushups with dad. I miss my couch.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Blah and Blah
Ohhhhh Shaymalayma. I was wrong about you. You managed to make me laugh with your stupid stupid movie.
Mario left today, I think. I guess we'll find out soon.
Chun uploaded a bunch of pictures today, from senior ball, our trip to Maine, so I freed up some time in my busy schedule for some narcissism. Our house is already a narcissist's dreamhouse - wall-length mirrors in every bedroom - but when you're as special as me, you can't help wanting to be surrounded by yourself from all sides.
The trip to Maine, in case someone doesn't know, was an extreme adventure into mother nature. For four days, twelve of us (6 guys, 6 girls) camped out, without even so much as a firepit(!), in a beautiful home in Acadia National Park.
There was only one Wii, two TVs, central heating, and a half dozen bedrooms worth of accomodations, but luck favors the brave. We managed to survive the harsh conditions by always looking for that silver lining - the Stop & Shop at the end of the driveway, our two cars, and 12 credit cards. Everyone made it out more or less alive, and no one got pregnant from the late night orgies. Still, I wouldn't recommend it.
Almost got roped into a Dickens movie today, an idea that could only have spawned from the Masterpiece-Theater-zealot mind of my materfamilias. At the last moment I was stricken with a sudden case of jaw-breaking yawns and I was mercifully allowed to go to bed. Dickens stayed downstairs and entertained my mother for the next two hours. Dad didn't even put up a fight, he just went straight to bed and cried himself to sleep.
Think I'll go to Barnes and Noble tomorrow. It's time to get disillusioned with Queen.
Mario left today, I think. I guess we'll find out soon.
Chun uploaded a bunch of pictures today, from senior ball, our trip to Maine, so I freed up some time in my busy schedule for some narcissism. Our house is already a narcissist's dreamhouse - wall-length mirrors in every bedroom - but when you're as special as me, you can't help wanting to be surrounded by yourself from all sides.
The trip to Maine, in case someone doesn't know, was an extreme adventure into mother nature. For four days, twelve of us (6 guys, 6 girls) camped out, without even so much as a firepit(!), in a beautiful home in Acadia National Park.
There was only one Wii, two TVs, central heating, and a half dozen bedrooms worth of accomodations, but luck favors the brave. We managed to survive the harsh conditions by always looking for that silver lining - the Stop & Shop at the end of the driveway, our two cars, and 12 credit cards. Everyone made it out more or less alive, and no one got pregnant from the late night orgies. Still, I wouldn't recommend it.
Almost got roped into a Dickens movie today, an idea that could only have spawned from the Masterpiece-Theater-zealot mind of my materfamilias. At the last moment I was stricken with a sudden case of jaw-breaking yawns and I was mercifully allowed to go to bed. Dickens stayed downstairs and entertained my mother for the next two hours. Dad didn't even put up a fight, he just went straight to bed and cried himself to sleep.
Think I'll go to Barnes and Noble tomorrow. It's time to get disillusioned with Queen.
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