journal
03.11.02 bedhead
i am very japanese-trendy. i finally cut my hair. all off. wednesday afternoon, after a delightful lunch in midtown with sassy cho, i took the seven train up to flushing, emi narusawa in tow, to the most out of the way salon that two westfieldettes could possibly find. i had been there once before with s.cho and the owner knows a thing or two about hair, so it's worth the trip. emi got a magic perm, which took almost five hours because her head is very hairy. now her hair is all straight and silky, so korean.
i was determined to cut my hair super short, recently encouraged by jen's new 'pixie-cut' and also by an actress in the korean drama i've been watching (it's allowed). there was half an hour of arguing with the owner who felt that it would be much too wasteful for me to cut all of it off. eventually i got my way and she started snipping at the base of my neck. her husband, also the assistant, collected my long cut tresses and took them away into the back room. my hair might have a future on someone else's head... but that is disturbing to me. oh, i don't like that very much.
so the "disheveled" look is all time consuming and requires complicated mirror-angling that allows me to see the back of my head when i curl my hair. and what to do as this weekend i am going to a church retreat? i can't be styling my hair for 30 mins at a retreat. i can't be scurrying off to the bathroom with my jar of hair wax when others are doing their q.t. however i also *must* not be caught looking like dorothy hamil, which will happen otherwise. what to do, what to do?
the evening of many beers
on thursday night, jen, jennis, and i went to starbucks but jen sulked because she wanted us to be at a place where we could drink alcohol. like a bar. so we drove two blocks down to the jolly trolley, a local restaurant/pub in downtown westfield, rumored to be a popular hangout among westfield high school alumni. sure enough, within an hour, the bar area was crowded with guys from our class.
there was the girlfriend beater who abused both his h.s. *and* college girlfriends. this i know because jen happened to be a friend of the abused girlfriend's roommate during her days at douglass. i was told that he once threw pencils at her in a burst of anger. pencils sharpened to dagger-like points no doubt.
the '96 class president was also there. he gained so much weight that i could barely recognize him. also, the guy who was *the* biggest jerk for as long as i could remember (served as "biggest jerk" from sixth grade throughout h.s.) was sitting next to the wife-beater-to-be. actually, i am not sure if "biggest jerk" really was such a bad guy, or if i always thought that he was because he just *looks* like a prick. no, i'm pretty sure he was one.
there were many more, and really, not all of them are bad seeds. we didn't talk to them but we made fun of them and jen took some pictures of me (a recently aquired digital camera is her newest, favoritest thing), sort of posing infront of the group with my beer.
before we knew it, our little table by the bar had accumulated neatly stacked columns of beer glasses and jennis, for the first time in our company, was well buzzed. as emi once said, "that jen, she can do anything when she puts her mind to it!"
spuma means foam in spanish. i think. jenny's friend went to some sort of foam-club when he was in spain. well into the night, a man went up on stage or a platform with a large hose and shouted, "spuma! si? o no?" he asked the crowd couple more times before thick, soapy foam started to gush out of the hose. soon the dancing people in the club were up to their chest in foam, foam stinging their eyes, foam soaking their clothes, foam all over their face. some people were blindly waving their arms shouting, "no! no spuma!" but the spuma would not stop. as jenny recounted this story us, she turned down the corners of her mouth and held an imaginary spuma-hose in her hands before shouting with gusto and drama, "spuma! si? o... si?"
last week i had a dream that i met michael jackson. he was all checking out my old, black penny loafers and asked me what size i wore. when i told him, he got really excited and told me that he too was a 5 1/2. i thought that was an unusually small size for a black man, but i figured he had them surgically shortened or something. i mean, his nose has been whittled down to the size of a toblerone nugget. he had a cleft put in his chin. so what's a little feet-cropping, right?
he asked if he could try them on so we ended up swapping shoes. he was wearing trendy bowling shoes that i would have gladly traded for anyway. but here's the best part: michael jackson started to *dance* in my loafers! i got so excited that i asked someone to take a picture of me wearing michael's shoes and michael dancing in the background. isn't that funny? this one is making it to the dream journal.
deep thoughts by jack handy
the ones i like:
If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.
Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.
Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.
Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.
The next time I have meat and mashed potatoes, I think I'll put a very large blob of potatoes on my plate with just a little piece of meat. And if someone asks me why I didn't get more meat, I'll just say, "Oh, you mean this?" and pull out a big piece of meat from inside the blob of potatoes, where I've hidden it.
I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, "Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!" We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do.
If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and you friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.
I bet when the neanderthal kids would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying, "Don't forget the thick, heavy brows." Then they would all get embarrassed because they remembered they had the big hunky brows too, and they'd get mad and eat the snowman
03.12.02 i'd buy all the shoes in the world if i was a wealthy girrrrrrl
hannah and i shopped around tjmaxx while we were waiting for her 1hr photos to develop. there i found a pair of donald j. pliner boots for... $3.00! get out of town, right?! granted, they're rubber rain boots with buckles on the side and they have the sturdy chunkiness of firemen boots but still... they're well made and i think they'll look alright with a jean skirt. *and* the spring season is here, which means we'll be getting a lot of rain soon. there were two other pairs i wanted, but i'm being smart and i'm going to *think* about them until the weekend.
speaking of weekend, i'm most likely not going to the retreat. it's not because of my hair. my portfolio is going to be past due and i want to work on that over the weekend. but we all know the real reason is that i just don't want to go. is that so bad? people! people, why must you get upset about these things?
03.13.02 cafe des artistes
dream diary sharing is unbearable. we're required to draw our dreams in a sketch pad and share them with the class. one girl had a dream that she recieved roses from her boyfriend on valentine's day. "i couldn't believe it. on valentine's day, my dream actually came true. my boyfriend bought me pink roses." then she held up the dream diary high above her head and slowly panned it around so everyone could see the pink rose petals pasted onto a page. then all the other girls in the class went, "awwwwwe".
then there's the asian fob whose choppy accent and the irritating habit of saying "like" (pronounced 'rike') ten times before actually saying something communicative, reminds me of one wayne pai. "and like a, like a.... like a, it was like a, like really scary." all of his dreams strictly follow a basic sequence. he is with a family member, usually a brother. "bad guys" come chasing after them with guns. he and his brother run for their lives. eventually they stop running. they realize that they must *face* the danger. they fight with the bad guys and "beat them up". he always concludes with, "and like uh, i uh, like, i like wake up. and uh like, like a, a, like, oh wow. so strange dream, you know?"
i must also tell you about the guy with the smoldering eyes. he is very good looking in that dark haired, badass, tempermental sort of way. girls like to compliment him on his art work and it's so funny because his stuff is actually worse than art guy's. he could draw a circle and some girl will gaze at him with cow eyes before saying, "wow. that is so awesome. you are like so awesome." this will prompt him to step back from his easel, study his drawing for a bit (not giving the complimenter a single glance), and say something preposterous like, "thanks." but he says it in complete agreement, he nods, he bites his lower lip in contemplation and self satisfaction, his "thanks" is a loud and obnoxious "yes! yes! i *am* good aren't i, you doting cow?"
there is only one person in the class who really has talent. he's a soft spoken guy with pretty blue eyes and the kind of wholesomeness you see in gay men from the midwest. he smiles easily and has awkward mannerisms. he is probably the most talented person in the class and his work easily stands out from everyone else's. at times i am a little jealous. i'm glad he's not a girl.
03.14.02 die sonne scheint
it is warm today. hurrah, spring is here. it's a good change from freezing winds that felt like needles shooting at my face. remember that? i was even moved to shave my legs. people get a little freaky about weather changes. i'm seeing pale limbs (well, there's a lot of white people here) in shorts and tank tops. but it's march. it's not *that* warm.
e-love, slips right through your fingers...
i was watching a show called 'elove' on the oxygen station last night and it was about this couple who had met online through e-personal ads. anyway, the guy had just gotten out of a 10yr relationship ("one day, without any warning she just told me that she had found someone else.") and was looking for someone serious blablabla. but as soon as he began describing himself, i got all confused because he was gay without question. how could he possibly not *know* that he is gay?
anyway, one day he recieved an email from a woman who wrote some crap like, "i like holding hands and sitting in front of the fireplace. are you my match?" it was fairly obvious what her motives were. she included a picture of herself in the email and she is a pretty woman. she's an aspiring actress. she needs a sugar daddy. looking-for-love boie happens to be rich and successful. so they began talking on the phone and after a couple months of phone-correspondence, the guy was all like, "i am so falling for this woman. i am just nuts about her." so the met. but the actress saw right away that he is as gay as night. the boie however, remained hopeful, "i think we're really hitting it off. i feel a chemistry between us."
eventually, during a long, late night talk, the woman told him that she was feeling no chemistry, no nothing. she is a heartless, success-driven, aspiring actress but she is not cruel enough to take advantage of the boie because he is so pathetic and in need of love. the the kind of love that she cannot give. so they parted ways and he was crushed. later he made a feeble attempt to defend himself by saying, "i knew it wasn't really going to work out. she didn't have the look in her eyes. the kind of look that i get from a lot of other women."
03.15.02 no rice
today sucked. nothing, and i mean nothing worked out for me.
first i went to the box office for a concert ticket. waited in line for a long ass time as on an ill-fated day such as this, one *always* gets stuck in a line of *stupid* and *slow* people. i was rehearsing in my head, exactly what i would say when i reached the vendor window. a very quick and clear, "one for chestnut trio please" would do very well for me. i am a woman who knows what she wants. i do not dilly dally in lines. the ticket sales lady asked me if i had my student id with me. yes i did, or rather i thought i did. after thoroughly checking my wallet (pulling out of creditcards, receipts, sticker pictures) then removing almost all the contents of my tote, i realized that i had left the id in my coat pocket the other day after working out at the gym. i swept my strewn belongings back into my bag and slunk away with no ticket.
after that i went on to the art classroom and hastily put my portfolio together. on a shelf i spotted a can of finishing spray and since i still had half an hour before my aerobics class, i decided to spray my drawings, to prevent further smudging and such. however, it was so breezy out that the drawings got only some spray, and most of it was inhaled by me. feeling rather heady from aerosol-spray inhalation, i sat down at a table and wrote nancy, my teacher, an unnecessarily long letter explaining why two assignments are missing from my folder (i accidently left them in jersey).
on my way to aerobics class, i remembered that i did not have my student id, which i need to show as a pass. so i hurried back home and of course found that the drawings had arrived. rushed back to the gym and aerobicised for an hour with a very mannish fitness instructor who would actually *hoot* really loudly before counting off. "okay, now gimme eight squats, ready! HOOT! eight! seven!..." and so on. she was all bulky and blond and so demanding. i'm not going to her classes anymore. no more gestapo aerobics for me.
from the gym, i trudged back to the art room with my two assignments, and a sweaty pulp i was. i put them in the folder and discarded the long letter ripping it to shreds incase someone decides to rummage through the garbage can and *happens* to find it and *read* it. i also did not discard the priority-mail box in which my mom sent the drawings, because it had my home and apt address on it- you just don't want that kind of information to get into the wrong hands.
with a long empty box under my arm, i headed to the creamery for their yummy iced tea. however there was some difficulty entering the creamery as i could not properly open the door. my arms gave out like noodles and i let go of the heavy glass door before my body made it inside. i was wedged in half way, my long box flailing around as i made an attempt to somehow slide myself in without opening the door. people stared.
iced tea and a slightly crushed box in tow, i sauntered over to the ticket sales again. and what do you know? they were closed! so i just went back home.
the empty apt was all nice when i got back. checked movie listings to see if any foreign films were playing on campus. not this weekend. went into the kitchen for an orange and discovered that the light is no longer lighting. i also noticed that the rice cooker is gone. that little suzie took it to the retreat! dammit! what is this? no light for me. no rice for me. no jazz for me.
03.16.02 nevas evas to alcohol
jung and i went out for drinks last night. we started off with wine at her apt then she took me to this pub called 'the dark horse'. very white, a jung kind of place. as you know, i don't have much of a tolerance and last night skipped dinner. jung on the other hand, can probably drink most people under the table. we talked loudly with large, exaggerated gesticulations. we pounded the table, pounded our beers, and pointed our finger to eachother everytime we discovered we had something in common. we left the bar, arms linked and heady with drink, and walked further up college ave.
our original plan was to go to the diner but we went to players instead. there were maybe thirty people on the dance floor. it was eighties night and they were playing cindy lauper and tiffany. all i remember is doing the 'eighties dance', which is basically stepping side to side and snapping your fingers. we left players and went right next door to chumley's, possibly the only gay bar in all of central pennsylvania. it's a really small bar in a long, narrow room. there were maybe eight people there, including a butch yet somehow motherly bartender, ellen. we slumped dramatically into the barstools and started ordering drinks when this guy dressed in a football jersey, with gold chains around his neck and a shaved head offered to buy us drinks. i don't remember much from this point on, except that i met quite a few people, kept forgetting their names, started introducing them to other people in the bar (with wrong names), and relentlessly insisted to ghetto fab (the straight guy who bought us drinks), that he *must* be bisexual. we couldn't finish our last beers, and tottered out of there, loudly goodbye-ing everyone. vaguely remember walking home. definitely remember throwing up. talked to joe for a while but i couldn't have said anything coherent. i thought i was going to die. fell asleep on my side with a trash can next to my bed. i don't want to feel that sick from drinking never ever ever again.
i am experiencing a serious hangover. i've been nursing myself back to health all morning by drinking hot liquids. fatal attraction was on tv at 8am. i didn't know there were so many sex scenes. glen close and michael douglas doing it gives me the shivers. glen close has breasts that look like pancakes. did you know that?
it's been hours. my insides still feel yucky. maybe it's time for some solid foods.
03.17.02
it's snowing here.
jannie is in thailand. she's eating spicy foods and getting sunburned. she's watching tiger shows and thai girl shows. sarah met some guy. i told her that it would be best for her to stay single until i moved out there but does she ever listen to me? she's so much *less* sassy when she's dating. and what's sassy cho without the sass?
03.18.02
this morning i finished a prayer for owen meany by john irving. i had to wait till daylight to finish it because the second to last chapter gave me the shivers. and in the morning the ending gave me the shivers because it was so good.
my favorite scenes
remember that scene from 'fatal attraction' when glenn close and michael douglas go to a latin dance club? first you see all these really good dancers doing spins and complicated footwork, then among the feverish latino dancers, you see glen and michael. it's hard to tell whether glenn can dance or not because she's rigorously thrashing about and all you see is her head of exploding 80's hair. this is okay though because she plays a psycho and you think maybe psychos dance like that. then there's michael douglas who apparently keeps all the dancing in his neck. and it's his dancing that i sometimes think about because it looks so weird. and weird things make me laugh.
in the sound of music, there's a scene when maria and captain von trapp sing "somewhere in my youth or childhooood, i must have done something... gooooood" in a glass pavilion. right after the song, they kiss but all you can see are dark shadows of the two people. and if you look carefully, just as they kiss, the shadow of the captain's profile looks like a gorilla. like maria is kissing an ape man. this scene just destroys me.
final season
hurrah! felicity will be back on wednesday! just thought i'd share the excitement.
03.19.02
in my dream, sarah and i were perched on a small platform with wheels. it was being pulled by a car, and we sat there arguing. i was really angry at her and just as i finished saying something, i fell off the moving platform into the on coming traffic. a red car was speeding towards me, and as it ran over me i woke up. my heart was beating so fast that i had to turn on my side to breath. it was 6:30am. did i fall off accidently or did she push me off? what does this mean? that she's speeding off on the husband-hunting bandwagon? i should have pulled her off with me.
i have no single friends.
could you date someone who has the same name as one of your siblings? personally, i could never date a *paul*. wouldn't you feel strange about, i don't know, passionately *calling* out his name? the name of your brother? it's wrong on so many levels. but i guess that's just me.
03.20.02 more things i fear
it is a terrible thing when one unknowingly walks into a public stall and discovers, settled at the bottom of the porcelain-white toilet bowl, another woman's stool. this startles me in the way one would get startled when someone jumps out at them from behind a corner. i wonder how many more times this will happen to me before i die. how many more unflushed toilets with poop will i encounter throughout my life? and while i'm at it, i'd also like to know how many more paper cuts i'll be having. those give me the shivers for sure.
03.22.02 jersey facts
have you ever bitten into a mcnugget and wondered how it *tasted* like chicken without resembling any sort of meat at all? well, as it turns out, flavors for macdonalds foods are manufactured in a series of chemical plants off of the nj turnpike. mmm-mm good.
i'm a jersey girl. and you know what? it's jersey girl any day, over pennsylvania girl. we jersey girls have character. we have a bite. pennsylvania girls say "begels" instead of "bagels" and they still wear chunky platform boots because there are no malls, only stores like 'the bonton' or 'the shoe department'. it's a tough life for a jersey girl in the middle of pennsylvania. sometimes she wants to go watch a movie like 'in the bedroom' but she can't because they don't play movies like that here. one thing that's good about where i am right now is the fresh air. i know the air is fresh because i can smell the manure. and where there's manure, there are cows and farms which means that this is the countryside. and countrysides are all about fresh air. but i'm tired of this country life. like i said, i'm a jersey girl and i want out of this one horse town. i want to eat good chinese food and see more ethnic minorities. take me to the turnpike and show me some mcflavor plants. dammit, drop me off in the middle of newark and i'll take the train home. anything but perpetual cold, meat and potatoes, begels, snow snow snow, loud red fratboys and sorostitutes in chunky platform boots and stretchy black express pants. clomp clomp clomp!
well, i like it here sometimes. but i'm just saying i like it better at home.
03.25.02
poeks: so i almost burnt down the house last night
Lin is NICE: did you attempt to cook something?
poeks: i threw my cigarette into the metal bucket on the balcony before i went to bed last night
Lin is NICE: haha
Lin is NICE: did jim see it?
poeks: and when i woke up in the morning it was just a pile of melted metal
poeks: not yet
poeks: burnt through one of the boards of the wall
Lin is NICE: hmm
poeks: he is not going to be very gluecklich
Lin is NICE: he's going to be pissed
Lin is NICE: u better fix it up
poeks: i am v. v. surprised house still stands
Lin is NICE: so he won't notice
poeks: yeah, i'll just put some acrylic paint on it
poeks: some titanium white, and he won't notice
poeks: even though the board is like charcoal now
Lin is NICE: what board are you talking about
Lin is NICE: on the floor of the bacony?
poeks: the wall
poeks: by the door
Lin is NICE: it's just black?
Lin is NICE: is there a hole?
poeks: kind of
Lin is NICE: tape paper onto the wall and then just paint it over
poeks: ok
poeks: i can't go out there
poeks: it's makes me all uneasy
Lin is NICE: i'd try to hide it for as long as possible
poeks: there's the spirit
Lin is NICE: mabies if you spackle it
Lin is NICE: you know that stuff that you use for the edges of the bathtub and sink?
Lin is NICE: what is that called?
Lin is NICE: i think it sounds dirty
poeks: caulk?
Lin is NICE: yeah
Lin is NICE: but when you say it it sounds like 'cocking'
poeks: hmm, i never thought of it that way
Lin is NICE: i remember in 8th grade erica chow and i partnered up for a science project
Lin is NICE: and we had to build this solar-power contraption. the one that generated the most heat would win.
Lin is NICE: so we were building it in her basement and we didn't know how to make it waterproof on the edges
Lin is NICE: and mr.chow suggested 'caulking'
Lin is NICE: and i remember feeling a little uncomfortable
Lin is NICE: he had to keep saying it because erica never listens to her dad
poeks: HAHAHAHA
poeks: omg
poeks: you are so odd
Lin is NICE: it sounds like cock!
poeks: it sounds like cawk
Lin is NICE: 'caulking' with chinese accent does not sound like 'cawking'
poeks: you are turning into a pennsylvanians
Lin is NICE: shahup
03.26.02 when it rains, it pours
last year at this time, i had not one but *three* umbrellas. i kept them by the door in a little red crate. it was homey. now i have *one* defective umbrella. it is thunderstorming outside, with gusty winds and pelting rain and my nicole miller designer umbrella that sarah cho got for me one christmas, the umbrella that i just HAD to have the moment i saw it, the umbrella that has various beach totes and bikinis printed on it, is a bitch. it is so unpredictable that when i carry it (and i must carry it as i have no other umbrellas to turn to) i am in perpetual fear of umbrella-response to weather. it flips inside out *all* the time, even when it's not all that windy and i think a person holding onto a mangled, flipped umbrella, getting doused in the rain, looks very very retarded. i was that person this morning.
so remember those rubber rain boots i bought for three bucks? well, i still like them. they're very quirky and also functional as are completely waterproof, however are not wide enough for my feet. and the rubber doesn't give. those boots are killing my pinky toes. killing them softly. but i'm going to wear them anyway because i am iron foot jun.
jane loves me. she looooooves me.
"i admire those who take chances with their hair, considering how important people make it. "
*i* chopped off all of my hair. the hair that was cascading and full of lustre.
"i don't have a sweet tooth and i prefer greasy food over sweet.
but i like it when linda cooks desserts. they are good to eat."
teehee! heehee! muhahaha.
03.27.02 countdown to goodbye
it's on tonight. felicity. yeah.
03.28.02 mirror mirror
we're doing self portraits now. that means two and quarter hours of sitting in front of a mirror, staring my face. we had to draw a skeleton, from top of its head to the base of its sternum as a foundation. so my face is all done, i just added the hair today. and it's all creepy because it's my head with flesh, sitting on the rest of my still skletal body.
staring at myself for hours has led me to realize that i am forming wrinkles. there is a fine line under each of my eyes. at first i tried to smooth it out with my finger, thinking that maybe it was somehow a *temporary* folding of skin but that made a black charcoal smudge under my left eye. left eye jun ran to the bathroom and wiped under the eye with wet paper towel. but it was more like rubbing my eye with a brown paper bag. as a result, i had both wrinkle and redness. then i peed. when i got back to my seat, the mirror revealed that my fly was open. i thought about zipping it up really quickly without catching anyone's eye, but the entire room was set up with mirrors in all different angles for this project, so i had my doubts. had to make *another* bathroom trip. tiresome tiresome. i need to remember to zip my pants *all* the time instead of most of the time.
the zipper should be replaced with magnets. that way you won't ever have to bother. just do the top button, and hear that 'click-click' that lets you know that the fly is secure. no more embarrassing open-fly situations, no more painful skin zippage if you are a gross person and don't wear underpants- it would be so convenient.
to hold a fly together, the magnets would have to be really strong. but if the magnets were really strong, there could be complications, let's say... when you're hugging someone. your pants magnets might get confused and 'click-click' with the other person's pants magnets! yowzers! or what if you walk by someone's desk at the office and all of a sudden, paper clips are flying toward and attaching to your groin area? you'd have to pry them off with your finger nails and apologetically put them back on your co-worker's desk while muting the magnetic forces with your other hand. right kids, so magnets wouldn't work.
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