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| 3 jun 2002 "there are those out here who claim to be so good you'd suspect that jesus holidayed in hell" so, friday, i was looking online for a red office chair and an end table (since i shattered mine). i came across this place called "design within reach" that has furniture that i can MASTURBATE to. and they have a store in palo alto! anyways, of particular interest was a lightsaber-ish lamp, a sexy end table, a cool umbrella stand (hm. no longer there), and an industrial tackless bulletin board. but, take a look at the prices. man. oh, to be rich... on a side note, they also sell 6:1 scale miniature furniture. can someone tell me what purpose this stuff serves? anyways, alan and i drove down to the palo alto store on saturday, but it was closed already. i squished my face against the glass and drooled over the stuff in there, but... i think i need to control myself. the problem is that once i see something i like, i get obssessed with it. and this reminded me of my "ratcheting" theory on human behavior. basically, i posit that when we see something that's the pinnacle of what we want, then we have a really hard time settling for anything less. basically, we keep "ratcheting" our level of standards up, and it refuses to drop. this is relevant in my search for an end table, because before i found dwr, i looked at a few on other sites that i thought were "ok." but after spying the swank dwr end table, i couldn't bring myself to even consider the others. this theory applies to many things... especially when it comes to things concerning aesthetics, including women. knowledge makes satisfaction obsolete. why are we humans like that? (i'm not saying all of us are like this) but i think it's pretty selfish, and it seriously limits us by discounting other things that would do just as well. most of the company went out to lunch on friday to send off a coworker who was leaving, but i didn't go because i thought i was going to play basketball. in the end, the session was cancelled, so i was left alone at the office with no one to eat with. so i IM'ed mike, and i wound up having japanese food with him and his roommate. it was kind of expensive compared to other japanese restaurants. aftewards, we visited a balls place nearby, a new place called "coffee?" i ordered a thai pearl milk tea, and it was ridiculously BAD. it tasted like a dirty sweetened liquified brick, if you can imagine that. *blech* i'm not going to even bother reviewing that place. but that's where i took the picture above of the typewriter. i had a picture with better composition, but it wasn't focused properly. *sigh* IKEA CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS. after i called in to get a missing nut, i have had no fewer than FOUR people calling me back, saying, "so, i hear you're missing a NUGGET. what is that?" so i tell them, "no (you dumbass), it's a NUT." and then they say, "hm. i'll do some more research, but you should get it in the mail in 3-5 business days." and a few days later, i'll get another call and have the exact same conversation. motherfucker. i've been having problems with my toilet lately. not that the toilet has been doing anything wrong, but i have been fucking it up. a few days ago, i totally clogged it up. i had to plunge like a maniac to get it to flush. man, plungers and toilet brushes gross me out when i think about what they come in contact with. and yesterday, i had my first episode of making nice skidmarks on the bowl. to my relief, they kind of dissolved in the water after a few hours. speaking of shits, friday night i had dinner with alan, peter, jan, sandra and chester at a new indian restaurant on castro. nothing special. afterwards, we wanted some balls, and somebody mentioned that instead of the places on castro, we should go to black pearl because there were hot girls there. ha! the place was pretty much empty save for two girls sitting on the couch. i left early, yacked in the parking lot (too much indian food, i guess), and headed over to gwen's place to meet up with the taiko peeps. basically, the guys living in japan (emi, shoji, and kris) had moved back to the states, and they were stopping by here for the weekend. holy shit, it was SO good to see emi again. i mean, i used to talk to this girl every single sunday night for hours! and then she and shoji got married and moved to japan. i'm so happy they're back. but i was pretty quiet that night. some people seem have this population range when it comes to being social, and i think my peak is somewhere around 2-5 people. beyond that, i kind of start sinking into the background, just people-watching and stuff. i guess the crowd makes a difference, but i thought that i was usually silly and animated among the taiko folk. i went home feeling kind of down, because i realized that as familiar as some of the faces are, i just don't have that much to say to them. and it's not like i don't like them... but i just can't find anything to talk about. gah. what's worse, i took all these pictures with my f707 that night, but because of the strong halogen backlight, all the people came out dark. god damn, that'll teach me to start using the +EV settings. saturday morning, i had some bad dreams. the first one involved alan coming into the room wearing a suit, standing on a pedastal, and singing, "it's time to say goodbye (to you)." yeah. it was like the _buffy_ musical or something. and before i found out why he had to leave, i got my third IKEA call. and then, i had another dream where i was a black football player at stanford, and i was summoned for an inquisition-type tribunal where i was being accused of racism. basically they found a shoebox of collages i did that were anti-black and self-deprecating, and i was going to get severely punished. luckily, sonya called and shook me out of that one. after lunch with sonya on stanford campus (where i bumped into adam), we saw the film _y tu mama tambien_ at the palo alto aquarius theater. lots of swearing in spanish (PUTA MADRE, BENDEJO!) and lots of sex. pubic thatches, penises, huge-areola'ed breasts, fleshy butts, simulated humping. there was even a shot of spunk in the water, which was a pretty artistic scene even though it would probably offend the more puritan-types. the movie was a good look at the contrasting economic classes of mexico, where one of the boys lives in a mansion, and the three main characters travel into the rural and destitute part of the land. i think i need to see it again, because i was so focused on the sex that i didn't see the "coming of age" theme that has been so highly touted. it's supposed to be a BILDUNGSROMAN! i was disappointed by how it ended, though. the opening sex scene made me wonder. how many takes did they have to do? it's one continuous shot, humping followed by orgasm followed by a playful conversation. i mean, that must be hard to act out. and the real question is, how do they handle the penis? do they tape it down (or rather, up), so it doesn't flail around and pop into view and ruin the notion that he's supposed to be inside her? wouldn't the actor be hard (i know i would be)? love scenes in non-porn really fascinates me because it seems like it would be really hard to do convincingly. i should like to see the movie again. some people equated it to a mexican _american pie_, but damn, it's so much more mature than that in terms of content and demands from the audience. a few people left the theater in the middle. after grabbing another drink at black pearl (where i met douglas osheroff, the nobel prize-winning physics professor) i dropped sonya off and went back home to pick up alan. and then we headed *back* to palo alto to visit design within reach. since it was closed, we went to borders books where i bought two books: _norwegian wood_ (because everyone raves about it) and _life after god_. i think that after i read the latter book, i'll have read all of douglas coupland's works. i also got this $20 magazine that's a pictorial on various posters, advertisements, and photos in international media. i like eye candy. i was also thinking about subscribing to _metropolitan_. i had this for a year back in school (because of some fluke, i got targetted as an architecture major for a while). _metropolitan_ is basically an architecture and design magazine, but after mulling over it for a while, i realized i don't like following hobbies that i can't afford. i can't afford to the furniture i lust over, much less postmodern living room sets entire buildings. we dinner at zao noodle cafe (the spicy edamame was undercooked), we prepared for the party. ----- yup. the party. since it was being thrown by stanford guys, both alan and i knew that our ex's were going to be there. on my part, the anticipation was sort of like the feeling i got this morning when i had to get up early to take my car into the shop... it wasn't that big of a deal, but if i had the choice, i would have preferred not to, you know? (bartleby!) luckily, i got my encounter over with early on, and it didn't linger unnecessarily. i spied k2 come in, surprisingly wearing a rather lo-fi denim jacket (which probably cost buku bucks anyway) and one of those black wool soft-billed caps you see on british orphan kids of yonder (like oliver twist). i guess according to some fashion magazine, the plebian look is in. alan went to talk to her while i got my jameson on the rocks, and then i walked up to say hi. no eye contact. hm. and finally, i got an "oh hey... i didn't know you were going to be at the party." double hm. i guess she's trying to reaffirm the old notion that i am a social hermit, which i was back then. and then i gave a nod and a smile to her boyfriend, who admirably looked congenial for his obligatory reciprocal act. and that was it. rather painless, right? i remarked to ting how amazing it is that two people who used to be so close can diverge like that. i guess you could say it's sad. of all people in our lives, you'd think our significant others would be ones that we'd want to keep close to us forever. i mean, don't people use "forever" often when they warble sweet things to each other? ah, the stark juxtaposition between the intent and the reality of that spoken word. i really should stop drinking. it would save me money. i had two jameson's, a double shot of absolut, and a cranberry/vodka. didn't feel anything except the heat, which was probably from the fact that we were packed in there like sheep. alan and peter had a decent chemically altered time, and it's a shame ting was tired. she made some interesting comments about how among the three of us guys, she could only see peter being totally faithful. *ponder* and she was convined that i was somehow still hung up on k2. eh? this statement doesn't relate to her comment, but i really don't think the k2 that i knew exists any more. i sort of wanted to get trashed that night. ting is our perpetual designated driver, but like i said, i had four drinks (plus a really weak candy-ish shot) and felt nothing. so besides that, i had one other goal. i kind of figured that another girl i knew was going to be there, and the only thing i really cared out the four hours i was there was that i talked to her. and i did. so happy joys for me. but yeah, it was like a stanford lambda party of my college days set in the future when the guys had more money and the girls still hadn't changed their wardrobe. some guy, raymond, thanked me by name when i gave him a cigarette, and i had that strange feeling of semi-flattery and semi-shock when a stranger knows who you are. the social perks that came with being romantically linked to an inner circle asian socialite like k2! the male/female ratio, by the way, was really good. very atypical of the standard bay area proportions. i was just kind of annoyed at the fact that everyone wore black. i swear, black is what you wear when you can't find anything interesting to put on. i know it's the conventional norm, but dude, have some imagination! so throughout the night i was sifting through the cookie cutter homogeneity and focused more on the people who had the balls to break out of the standard. girls in red! ting says i'm picky. why shouldn't we be? i drove home, and while alan slept in the car, i put in my norah jones cd. i'm not super-infatuated with her smoky voice, but it was definitely one of the most peaceful drives i've ever had. and when i got back, i kind of played the father/host, putting the sheet on the futon, arranging the sleeping stuff (blankets and pillows and sleeping bags), giving alan his advil and water, digging out some clothes for ting to wear. and before i went to sleep, i wrote: "clubbing is a string of meaningless eye contact that signifies nothing but the random coincidence that you caught each other sizing the other one up." 4am. 13 cigarettes. ----- sunday. chill. woke up at noon, had burgers (with greasy sauteed mushrooms) at clarke's, then headed off to my office with ting, alan, and peter to grab some utility and cable bills. why? to prove that i lived in palo alto. i heard a long time ago that palo alto has some parks that are only reserved for its residents, so it was high time i checked it out. so we went to foothill park (middle and right pictures) up on the page mill in the foothills. it was nice... amazing to see such a large expanse of virgin land when you previously thought palo alto was just a yuppie residential area. alas... i tried, but i failed. i just can't take good landscape pictures like eric does. must practice more. i think part of it is patience. i didn't want the other guys to wait for me, so i didn't get to try different things... the most evident was when i tried to snap one of those cliched "canoe by the dock in a lake in front of a foresty backdrop" shots, and i just didn't feel inclined to wait for the canoe to drift to where i wanted it to. surprise! no allergies! nice. after we got home, jack came over, and we watched the lakers/kings game while gorging on kfc. god bless colonel sanders' 11 secret herbs and spices and the fatty death of fried chicken skin. ----- i wonder... all these words, all these memories. parties, meals, movies, pictures. has anything changed? are we any better? |