Wo jianzai

Celebrated a few birthdays with some drinking at our place the other day. There must of been something extra special in the drinks because Mario was experiencing weird effects. We had the following two conversations at the peak of inebriation:

Mario (chewing a piece of gum): dude, my senses are so powerful, I can taste that piece of chicken you're eating from all the way over here.
Me (demolishing a piece of fried chicken): what does it taste like?
Mario (gets a bearing on his long-distance taste buds): ...gum.

(a little later)

Mario (still chewing gum): dude, my brain...I don't think anyone can understand what's going on in my brain right now. It's amazing.
Me: psh, I bet I can. Summarize it in two words.
Mario: Gum... ... ... ...good.

Nevermind, that sounds pretty much like the effects of alcohol.

I've been watching some Chinese movies lately, namely The Chinese Odyssey Part I & II. It's pretty glorius slapstick. There's lots of crotch humor, which is apparently as funny in China as it is in the United States. It must be some kind of genetically grounded reflex, like a mental kneejerk - when a man's crotch gets kicked, punched, set on fire, hit with a combination of gravity and tree branch, etc., you MUST laugh. And since I must, I did. A lot. Of course there can only be so much vicariously experienced pain before habituation sets in, but the movies threw in a good measure of other guaranteed laugh-elicitors - unibrows, horrible special effects, cross-dressing, and funny phrases like "Boyo Bolomi!"

I downloaded some more singing-training material. According to the latest, in five weeks I will no longer sound like a creaking door being slaughtered, or if I do, it will be as much as an octave higher than currently.

I've also been learning lots of Chinese lately by chatting with Chinese girls on various continents. Hmm, thought I had more to say about this...

Last Words

Mario goes to work at around 2, and Franco and Daniel are at college, so I get myself to myself for a large part of the day. There are lots of advantages to alone time. You can sing really loudly, set new standards for minimal clothing, play music and movies at top volume, boobytrap the place for when the roommates get home, cry for hours about how life is misery mounted on misery and how nobody ever does what I frickin' tell them to, etc. It's a variety pack, and I'm taking full advantage.

Friday Franco's holding a party at our place - I was told there will be alcohol, Kool-Aid, chicken, and watermelon, because the birthday girl is black. What better birthday present than a racist joke, eh?

Dava's (the Living Incarnation) techies finally responded to my dad's emails. Actually they responded on August 28th, but Yahoo Mail shooed the Divine Email right into the spam folder. Needless to say Yahoo Mail is going straight to hell. Anyway, this means my parents are now going to be devoting lots of their time to the Way of Freedom as Dava calls it. On one hand this could be a problem, because I'm kind of counting on them to make some money so that I don't have to. On the other hand, maybe my inheritance just got one hell of a lot bigger. Having Gods as parents could open some doors...or get me tortured and crucified, can't remember which. Hmm...I guess I'll have to do some risk assessment.

It's kind of strange to be sitting here, calmly writing hilarity, while Hurricane Ike is flying straight at me with what I doubt are the best intentions. As of now I have about 48 hours before Ike's elemental fury unleashes itself on the half-evacuated city of Houston. If this were a movie I would be spinning sentimental confession pieces over the phone to my friends and family, doubting my sexual preferences, and generally being a pathetic wreck. Fortunately I'm really hungry and all I can think of is that tuna that's sitting in the fridge. Mmm...tuna...

Blog Entry 468

We moved into our apartment a week or so ago...technically. Daniel and Franco signed the lease and danced right in, while Mario and I stalled for a couple days, maximizing our abuse of his aunt and uncle's hospitality. For three or four days we'd make weak attempts to move, but the reasons to stay were numerous and just a fridge door away. We pretty much had no choice.

Yesterday I successfully made an ass out of myself trying to set up wireless Internet. I walked to Target (more than a mile away!) and bought one of those Cable/DSL routers. When I got home I threw four years of irrelevant MIT knowledge at the thing to try to get it to show me my mail. I eventually gave up and summoned the help of a real king among nerds - Gene, who by some freak coincidence happens to be my dad. Five minutes of teamwork later we deduced that the router wasn't actually a wireless router at all - it was just a bunch of Ethernet jacks held together by a "Cable/DSL Router" sticker. It was back to the store for me. Who would have thought that in 2008, when even plants are online (the sub-bark temperature of the 56-year old oak outside my window is a pleasant 76 degrees), non-wireless routers are still polluting the shelves of our stores.

We decided to try out Angel Food Ministries - this company that sells you packages of food at relatively cheap prices. The company cooperates with churches in different areas to handle the dissemination of Angel Food packages - yet another activity of the Christian franchise. Our church bears the innuendo-soaked moniker - "Love in Action Church." I'm expecting at least nuns in playboy bunny costumes. At best, I'll soon be a newly converted Christian. Anyway, starting on the 27th, I should be comfortably eating on $50 a month. I will update as to the success of this experiment immediately upon survival.

I've been having weird and unusually violent dreams lately. Not yet sure what they mean. The other day I dreamed about some psycho killer who I couldn't convince in time not to shoot Chun right in the throat. This is an obvious hint for me to work on my debating skills. The next part is harder to qualify. Chun made a miraculous recovery and the guy went on trial. However, to make sure his sentence was fair, he was a member of the jury presiding over his own case. In the dream, this frustrated me to no end, because he was obviously just going to walk. Anyway, I finally got him back by waking up. Now he's worse than dead - he's back to "never even existed."

We're Back

Haven't written in a while, so you'll have to pardon the spelling and grammar errors. I've mostly been sitting on the couch at the Mendiola house (as evidenced by the permanent butt-print), eating free food, and moving my wrist back and forth in that not-what-you're-thinking way.

Making progress with ear training, I can now hit about 80% consistently for all melodic intervals up to an octave. I've also started practicing hearing chord quality, though the results are hardly bragging-worthy.

I've gone to church twice here now. I think it's time to stop now, before it becomes a trend or worse, a habit. The pastor has kept me on my toes thus far, alternating ideas that verge on the sensical and ones that border on Nazi. For instance, he spent twenty minutes advocating above all else a personal relationship with God, a view I intellectually admire without having a shred of my own personal relationship. Then, just when I was about to bring out the applause, he started ranting about how there are only two types of people in this "fallen world," offspring of the seed - those who believe Jesus Christ is "the tits" (The One and Only Way to God), and offspring of the serpent - everyone else. Having found myself singled out as a son of a serpent among rows of flattered Christians, and offended for my family that only has one Zodiac-appointed snake among the lot of them, I respectfully gave the pastor death stares for the remainder of the pandering.

I've also been having frequent religious discussions with Mrs. Mendiola, with sporadic attendance by Mario. Usually this involves me inventing scenarios that involve her committing to some statement, and then try to trap her into a maze of deductions that end with her being the Antichrist. So far, she's done a remarkable job of remaining calm and unshaken, and most frustratingly, not yielding an inch. Not even calling her a fanatic, a terrorist, and pure evil convinced her otherwise. However, in my defense, it's much easier to defend against contradictions when your viewpoint of the world is "it's God's plan." Contradictions are then just the spice of his creative license.

Chez Mendiola

At Mario's house now. It's pretty nice, kind of like the home we stayed at in Maine. Mario's parents are pretending to like me, but I think I can get them to openly hate me by Tuesday.

Went to church today and sang some ballads praising Jesus with the better-than-expected church band. Christian songs have yet to branch out to a fourth chord, so it was easy to sing along. Then a girl missionary told us about her work in some African country converting the heathen children. And then just as the bell was about to ring, the pastor showed up and delivered a lecture that was a little over the top. Key points: The Joker from the new Batman is the quintessential atheist, people are inherently evil, it's up to the church to save America, because we've been going straight into hell since 1991. Since I came to America in 1991, this has special significance for me.

We've been playing a lot of liars' poker. I thought it would be a cinch with all these churchgoers, but they're even more outrageous liars than my parents. Mario and I have lost every game here, and Igor shouldn't sit too comfortably in California, the Mendiolas are coming.

Have a bunch of new riffs that are resisting development. My ear is also being stubborn and refusing to learn intervals above a fifth. And intervals below a fifth. Still, I'm closer to perfection with every passing day, and when I'm there, I've got it made. Beautiful men with well-trained ears are a rarity in this cruel world.

Texas

I'm finally in Texas, as of Tuesday to Wednesday midnight. Three studs picked me up from the airport, making four Adonises altogether. Everything is indeed bigger here. The bugs are big and in big supply, the first thing out of the fridge was a huge chunk of meat, and families are apparently not educated as to contraception, hence huge. We visited Mario's cousins today, and they have four children and a dog, some kind of horrible nightmare in my anti-responsibility utopia. The kids were nice and much more obedient than my sister, but their sheer numbers still made them terrifying.

Tomorrow we're going to Mario's ranch where he claims there's plumbing. I will be the judge of that.

I've been doing some ear training lately, and progress is slooow. My ears take about half an hour to warm up, but even then they'll refuse to recognize the quality of an interval above a fifth. My guesses are often embarrassingly far from reality. Oh well, at least my girlfriend's prettier than yours.

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.