1. Do you have a friend like Mr. Potatoehead? In other words do you have a friend that trouble seems to follow like a bad penny? Tell us about that friend or one of his/her bad pennies?
I call him the Guy on Blades. He's always getting into trouble. One time his mother packed him a poppyseed muffin so he could have a snack on the flight over to Los Angeles. The police dog sniffed him out and security had to search through all his things. Apparently, the dog thought his muffin was opium. At least he didn't have dirty underwear in his suitcase. Another time, he was on a road trip and at 2 AM he stopped at a parking lot to figure out the directions to his next destination. Suddenly the cops surrounded him. He had wandered into the middle of a sting operation where the police were trying to bust a prostitution ring. And of course, my favorite, he had his identity mistaken while he was going to JPL as a summer reasearch student. Security thought he was a spy.
2. Was there something you really meant to accomplish, or really wanted to do that you didn't do last week? How come you didn't do it?
My mundane answer: not enough sleep. Reason: too much other stuff to do.
3. Pretend you're in the market for a therapist. What would be the therapist's most desirable quality? Why that one?
The therapist would have to be amiable and easy-going. I'm not about to spill my guts out to someone I'm terrified of.
I hope the shiny thing I see ahead is the light at the end of the tunnel and not an illusion. This week's phase of the experiment has so far gone off without a hitch. (Un)fortunately, I do not have the slightest inclination to calculate the odds that I faced to get it right on the first try.
I stumbled out of lab at 11 AM and discovered: I have nothing to do this afternoon. But my next thought was: I must get away before someone realizes I'm wandering out alone. So I stuffed my camera, a couple extra rolls of film, a water bottle, an umbrella (it never hurts to be prepared!), and a handful of change into my bookbag and hopped on the first bus out of town.
Passengers were forever getting on and off, but I paid scant attention to them. What I slavered over was outside. Did you know that Glendale's downtown covered bus stops are painted with old fashioned green and lined with faux gold? The bus stopped at one of those and I saw through a cafe window a balding man lean over to kiss a woman. Another couple outside the cafe were bickering. Along Los Feliz, there was a playground swarming with children and a wide concentric fountain tall and alone. The route wound around a residential area where residents crammed their tiny lawns with knickknacks and old junk for a yard sale.
The bus route terminated at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland. The light seemed brighter than usual (no trees in sight along the street, not even a scraggly palm tree) and when I got out to be swallowed into the swell of the crowd, I knew my afternoon belonged here--in the gaudy and touristy strip of Hollywood Boulevard.
I've been in Hollywood only twice before, but both of those times, I never stuck around to poke and prod. The first time my family and I were just driving through to get to downtown L.A. The second time, a couple of my friends dragged me to the Mann's Chinese Theater to watch The Matrix. In the dark, all I got was a glimpse of red. But this time, I got a good long look at it in daylight. There at the very edge, underneath tourists' feet, I saw Eddie Murphy's signature and his message, "Be free."
Some of my time was spent looking at the ground. The sidewalks are a step above concrete. It's a blue-gray granite covered in pink stars. The first name I recognized was Sylvester Stallone. Star-struck visitors often liked to break the flow of traffic by crouching next to the star to have their picture taken.
Most of the shops along Hollywood were dingy tourist traps selling three (cheaply made) t-shirts for ten bucks and postcards that either featured landscapes or half-nude women. I wandered around in the Guinness World Records Museum (a rip-off at seven dollars per head) and the Hollywood Wax Museum (I'm not afraid to admit that I was too chicken to go through all of the horror exhibit). Outside of the world records museum, I saw a mime who looked startlingly like a fake wax figure. When I stared at him, wondering if I should touch him to make sure that he wasn't real, he winked at me.
I saw Wonder Woman, arms crossed, red lips stretched downward, pissed. I saw Batman counting a handful of green bills. A man in a bright green pirate's costume raised his handbell stoically as I snapped a picture. A used bookstore owner, lounging against the doorway to his shop took a drag on his cigarette and told me, "Have a nice day."
Yes, indeed. I was having a very nice day.
Another Link: Plan B - A blognovel. My thoughts exactly. I tried it once and I'm not sure when I'll start up again.
Hellhole. The student who told me this today didn't realize how perfectly the term fit the situation. Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of other things that are worse, but it's not fear or pain. Maybe it's more lack of endurance and a softish perception--they tend to mute out everything else that would have a chance of bringing me out of a stupor.
Or maybe I'm just feeling tired and hungry. It probably explains my lack of wordage these days. About five hours of sleep in the past twenty-four hours. Skipped breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the "slavedriver" (the other student's nickname for my supervisor, not mine) is not done steamrollering me yet.
If I were my mother, I would be very worried.
Links: Princeton accused of Ivy League hacking. Are you surprised? I'm not surprised. Students have always been pawns in the battle between prestigious universities. (Another article at the Yale Daily News.) Lack of Women in The New Yorker Magazine. These are some very interesting statistics. I wonder what one of my former profs (a woman and a former New Yorker editor) would say about this. Maybe I should start submitting stuff to the magazine. Sandboard no Sahara. That guy must have serious sand scratches on his surfboard.
Machines are constantly humming--an eerie music. They are banshees crooning softly. The scanner buzzes like a chainsaw in its work. Light leaks out in a spray, showering the nearby computers with white.
Besides me, there is only one other living person in the lab. But I wonder if he is not just another machine--one with skin, hair, eyes, fingers--but a machine nonetheless, staring at the monitor in front of him, accessing the information as if they were ones and zeroes instead of words and pictures.
I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. --Hamlet
I need to escape.
Perhaps my petulant behavior the last few days (or maybe the last few weeks) has roots in my inherent restlessness and independence. Some people may find comfort in grinding routine dictated by others, but I chafe beneath these rules. I find that I don't like being an underling. I'm squashed beneath the daily, hammered relentlessly with someone else's vision.
My summer job is slowly choking me.
I listened to someone waxing lyrical about his vacation to Eastern Europe. I overheard a telephone conversation where one guy was standing on an Italian terrace, watching an oncoming thunderstorm. And I think, those sound like nice places to escape to. But I don't really care where so long as I'm away.
However at the end of the day, in the midst of wondering if I'll be lucky to get even six hours of sleep, I console myself with the mantra: Soon, soon.
1. Do you think pornography is dangerous? Why, or why not?
No. Maybe some of the people who use pornography are dangerous, but in the end, it's just a bunch of pictures.
2. What do you think about people being held in jail without charges, without access to a lawyer, or a phone call for an indeterminate period of time?
I suppose the authorities might have good reason (in their mind) to do so, but I find it a bit too totalitarian. I would definitely want to know what sort of suspicion they had about me.
All I can think of is: Isn't there a better alternative? How will the government agencies handle the amount of information from a couple million informants? And since these are just ordinary citizens, how are they sure that something looks like suspicious activity. How are you going to trust common sense when the next door neighbor's only feeling depressed and not building a bomb in his basement?
I've been busy and exasperated. If there was a term for my organizational skills, I'm a minimalist neat freak. I can't stand a mess. But I don't explode and let everyone around me know my quirky pet peeves. Instead, I bottle it up--which can't be a good thing for my blood pressure. So I only fume silently when people scatter things about and do haphazard planning (if it can even be called that) on paper towels and pieces of plastic in the name of scatterbrained brilliance.
With a satisfying thunk, Marty dropped his history textbook on the table covering up the words "on weekends". There was a perverse pleasure in looking like he was breaking the rules--even if he really wasn't. The local bookstore frowned upon students studying in the adjoining cafe. The rationale was that the students would take up space and drive away real customers, as if the students didn't already go there to buy sandwiches and drinks.
He took out another textbook from his battered green bag and opened it up to pages 266 and 267 where he hid the latest copy of Batman. Studying in a no studying zone but actually reading comic books--what sneakiness! He chuckled to himself and turned a page, immediately drowning himself in ink, color, and Gotham City.
But as Batman was about to nab his latest victim, Marty became aware of something outside of the comic world making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He raised his eyes a fraction above his textbook shield and locked gazes with an old man sitting at another table across from him. Watery and faded eyes glinted from the overhead lights. The old man smiled, open-mouthed, revealing red gums and a solitary tired tooth.
Looking back down, he no longer saw Batman. With a trembling hand, he flipped the comic closed and looked at the textbook. The old man's face stared back at him from an early twentieth century lithograph.
A link: The Little One. Well, when I was three years old, I developed a phobia for The Incredible Hulk. I still think angry green men are scary.
For the past couple of hours, I've been cursing at tempermental scanners. And for my pains, I finally bring you photos.
Ditch Day Photos. Yep, after two months of hemming and hawing, here they are.
San Francisco Photos. As of right now, I only have the ones I took around the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art up. More to come (hopefully).
Hints for the puzzle: 1) If you knew these numbers intimately, they would be on your driver's license, passport, birth certificate, and your SAT score report. 2) These numbers describe something that happened. 3) The event that happened is related to the mumbling I put on my chrono page.
I have a feeling Tech is trying to kick me out and extort money from me at the same time. How else am I to explain sudden phone disconnections and a solicitation to join the alumni organization for five hundred bucks?
To do: Amazon Light. Neat. Now I can search for stuff without the annoying extras. Scientists identify the spark of life. So now they think they've identified a switch that simply turns life "on". Don't be fooled. Life can't be as simple as what this article implies. Single Gene Makes Mice Big-Brained, Study Finds. For some reason, this reminds me of the plump white rats (as big as water bottles) sitting in plastic cages staring at me as I work. Maybe they think I'm a tasty snack.
A puzzle: Once again, I've updated the links page. The blogs are now divided into two sections labeled by number. So what do the numbers mean? What the numbers are is probably pretty obvious, but here's the teaser: What do the numbers represent? And why did I use them?
I attended a baby shower lunch mostly populated by people at least a decade older. It's not that I felt out of place or uncomfortable, but I had absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. I honestly can't fathom the situation of having children when I have been an "adult" for only a few years. What can I tell an expectant mother or father? Nothing. I have no experience or authority.
I don't have experience in a lot of things like skydiving or camel hopping in the Sahara Desert or even going to a live opera. But I can attempt to imagine it.
However, when I try, I only draw up with a blank.
Oh sure, I've had the ocassional nightmare where I'm about to give birth to ten kids at once. Then I only know fear. I've become some bloated monster waddling about, wringing my hands, panicking because I don't know what to do. And in waking life, I feel this same helplessness. While others coo adoringly at pudgy infant faces, I can only stare with horrified fascination as those same infant faces drool in my direction.
I realize that I have little, if any, maternal instinct. This in itself doesn't disturb me, but what is worrying is that this will be labeled as abnormal or deviant. There are people who believe that women should be perfectly happy for having children. Maybe evolutionarily speaking that is true, but I don't view myself as a breeder whose sole purpose in life is to increase the population.
Perhaps I've just associated with the wrong age group. I suppose I'm not mature enough to appreciate the priviledges and responsibilities one acquires when one enters parenthood. People my age are just starting to think beyond the fumbling in the backseat of a car. Commitment and independence are seeping into the periphery.
When I was seven or so, a few of my aunts became pregnant with their first children. I felt no awe. I probably didn't understand what was going on. They got fatter and crankier and whenever I got curious, I was promptly told to play somewhere else. And the end result was a small, wrinkled human being who wasted more diapers and attention than a hyperactive puppy.
1. What is the most important thing going on in your life this week?
In order of importance: 1) I need to harass the housing people at Dartmouth to make sure I'm not living in a cardboard box this fall. 2) I need to go grocery shopping. The cupboard is looking kind of bare. 3) I need to do some experiments in lab. (Sorry, can't elaborate.)
2. Tell us about your quintessential faux pas.
Everything I do is a faux pas. The most embarassing one is passing people and not knowing whether to wave and greet them or not. If someone looks familiar, I wave, but it turns out to be someone completely different. Sometimes I can't recognize someone because he or she changed some fashion accessory (clothes, hair) and I accidentally ignore them. And other times, people seem to be waving at me, but in reality, they're waving at the person behind me.
At least I don't make slurping noises with my food.
3. Why would you most likely be nominated to speak your mind, and what is it you're going to say?
I'm not sure if anyone would nominate me at all. However, if I were to nominate myself, I'd do it because I don't waste words on frivolity. I don't consider myself "outspoken" in the traditional sense because when I state an opinion, I state it once. There's no need to hammer the point home by repeating myself. That's why I find most speakers, orators, and mundane gossipers boring. (And if people miss what I've said, it's their fault for not listening.)
The stool is too tall. Or maybe I'm too short. My legs dangle over the side, six inches off the ground. I don't really like sitting on stools. They have no backs. Something on the floor, quite close to my right foot, catches my eye.
It is a cricket, perhaps half the size of my palm. The creature is still and waiting. The body is a dull yellowish-green with brown stripes. The antennae are graceful curving swoops that emerge from the head to trail back on the floor. The legs are arched, powerful. Back south, I've seen his cousins jump as high as my waist. In folklore, a cricket is said to bring good luck. Perhaps I should catch it in a glass jar and keep it as a pet.
Instead, I come down from my stool to stomp on it.
A screech pierces the air. "No!"
I lift my foot up. A latex covered hand picks up the cricket's body, a mangled mass of broken limbs, crushed skull, and twisted antennae. Folklore also says that when a cricket is killed, his brethren will visit the killer and eat all of his clothes. I suddenly feel chilled for my instinctual impulsiveness.
One of the post-docs in the lab owns a tarantula. The giant spider is on constant pest control duty--he feeds on the extra mouse pups that the scientists find no use for. But when he's presented with the gift of crushed cricket, the tarantula rejects it, scuttling to the side of his plastic cage and placing his two front legs on the wall as if to flick me off.
Is this just the beginning of the cricket's revenge?
Somewhat related: Octo-wussy. Spiders are meant to eat prey alive by first liquifying the insides first. Humans, though, aren't adapted to eat live food.
Someone once told me, "Art isn't necessarily beautiful. Art is work. Anything man-made is art." To some extent, I agree. Just look at any modern art museum and their broken lamps on pedestals. Maybe I don't like it, but someone else does. Art is purely subjective and quantifying it as low-brow, middle-brow, or high-brow and politicizing it as left, right, PC or not completely misses the point.
Art is like dreaming. It's personal and speaks to the "heart", the emotions. Anyone can appreciate the musical "genius" that Mozart put in his work, but if it evokes nothing except faint drowsiness than it really isn't the type of "art" for you, is it? On the other hand, if you relate to the songwriting of Eminem and Puff Daddy (or P. Diddy or whatever his name is these days), who am I to begrudge your taste? The next door neighbors may be playing Britney Spears 24/7, but I don't storm in and chew them out for playing "low-brow" music just as people shouldn't come by my room to tell me to turn off Bach's Brandenburg Concertos because they dislike it.
Unfortunately, some people are like picky mothers who only allow their children to read award-winning books. Following a cannon preset by a bunch of stuffed shirts no longer makes art meaningful. Instead, it becomes a requirement and the art appreciator is no longer a thinking, feeling human being, but an automaton forced into one strict path by dictators who think they know what's good for you. What's the point of appreciating Shakespeare when you have it shoved down your throat?
I'm not saying that people should become completely indiscriminate in their tastes. Quite the opposite. But I suggest that everyone be allowed to examine their own artistic thresholds and motivations. Does something make you think? Or are you just saying it makes you think to impress other people? Socialites who want to be seen should mingle in their own parties and give up their seats to people who are truly opera lovers. Druggies should get their fix elsewhere and leave the raves to people who enjoy techno music. And don't collect bloated clay figurines by some famous artist because you think they have investment value. Collect them because you think they're beautiful.
Links: What's Your Inner Demon? I'm a sleeping demon. Yeah, figures. PhinisheD. But wouldn't this message board just waste more of their time? Someone once told me of a grad student who got kicked out because he took too long to write his thesis. Virtual Fishtank. Yep. Fish run the internet. L is for lawsuit. I can't believe some people think that you can sue your way to success. The path to true success is paved with hard work.
Blogger has been acting up lately. Apparently the template server is down so I guess I'll have to make do by updating manually. If you want to comment, use one of the links in the previous posts or sign the guestbook.
Shocked: 99 alien fish snagged in pond. There's no accounting for human irresponsibility. The local environmental agency might catch a majority of the fish, but there will still be some left--the original owner dumped the flesh-eating fish two years ago, plenty of time for the fish to have proliferated and infest other bodies of water. It's going to be the dog and rabbit of Australia that crowded out the native species. It's going to be the fungus that got transported to the Americas in the early 1900s and killed off most of the American walnut trees. Even if we stopped the emissions of all the greenhouse gases tomorrow, stopped the cutting down of Amazon forests, and started recycling everything, some careless idiot is going to do something stupid.
Are Mac users smarter? I'm not too sure about that. I think it's more of a comfort usage than buying Macs as status symbols. The majority of academic insitutions use Apple computers because of some deal that made getting those machines cheaper. As a result, all the labs and workstations of any given campus are stocked with Macintosh computers. And if a student wants to get their own computer, they're more likely to get a Mac simply for compatibility's sake.
Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive. Maybe I'm not partial to video games because they take away your imagination to give you memory-bloated graphics (that aren't too good anyway), but IF games can get addicting. The first time I've played one was in elementary school. It was based on The Hobbit. I always got stuck in the dark, damp caves and ended up killed by Gollum. If you don't want to download an emulator, you can always go to iFiction and play your heart out.
Yeah, one of those days where everything goes through one ear to and out the other and nothing happened in between. I feel as if an alien brain-sucking insect had decided to use my head as a slurpee. Brains, all gone. If I try sitting on a seat without a back, maybe I'll fall over and crack my skull on the table. Or maybe it'll just make a hollow sound instead.
I've been fiddling around with two times eleven, the account I could have gotten four years ago but didn't until earlier this week. It's pretty much guaranteed to be mine forever and there's no ads--a good deal if I ever saw one. The problem is, should I opt out for the poorly designed (i.e. white background with Times New Roman text) geeky page or something more, well, picturesque?
I usually leave my door open. Most people in the dorms also leave their doors open, although in the last few years, everyone has taken to keeping it locked while they're out (or asleep) due to thefts. Mine is open when I'm in--which is usually during everyone else's sleeping hours--not to annoy my neighbors with loud music, but to welcome passersby to drop by and chat.
An open door can be a welcome mat. A closed one can indicate several things, none of which are good. If you are on the outside of a closed door, it can be an unwelcome or do not disturb sign. It could also be exclusionary. On the inside, it may mean anything from privacy to antisocial behavior, and if you're a paranoid lab rat it can be a cage (and if it's locked, no amount of bloody clawing can get you out).
Aside from those silly Stanford safety videos telling people to stand in the doorway during an earthquake, I like standing in the doorway for another reason: it's a threshold that allows me to see both sides at the same time. Take a moment to stand in the doorway, arms to your sides. Which direction are you standing? Do you look outside the building or toward the interior? Or neither?
I stand, left foot in front of right, at the crack between the interfaces. To my right is outside and to my left is inside the building. On the outside I can see a wooden table with a green umbrella. An overhanging olive tree is infested with at least two squirrels. I can't see beyond that, it's a hazy unknown that stretches behind that tree. I can't see all of the interior of the building either, but I know there's a lounge with a fan dangerously wobbling about as it twirls overhead. I know somebody broke a glass in one of the rooms. I know practically everything that may be wrong with the building. I can see each side through my peripheral vision, however I am really looking at the door frame. But what's so important about the door frame? There's a hole in the door frame, the one where the locking mechanism fits. It is this tiny insignificant hole that determines everything.
So when that door locks, on which side do you hope to remain?
Other things: International Blog Meetup Day. Completely pointless if you don't have a car. Logophilia. Finding interesting words have always been fascinating, but new words and word combinations? Maybe it's just me, but they sound a bit awkward. Research: video games decrease brain activity. Sounds like something someone's mother would say to get her kid off the computer. I personally don't think video games are all that interesting, although it is disturbing when you notice people still playing games at six in the morning.
I hope my handwriting is legible for most people. Here's the Tuesday Too.
1. Yes conflicting theories abound, what do you think dreams (nightly adventures) mean, or do you subscribe to a particular theorist and why?
2. When you are confronted by a homeless person asking for change, how do you respond? How does it make you feel? If you've never been in this situation, imagine it, and calculate your response.
3. Do you feel you have been short changed in any way by destiny/fate/god? If so, how?
The Volute glimmers, a pulsing brick heart rising above the dark grass. A father and his young daughter sit on the top edge contemplating the nearby building. The bagpipe player stands on the opposite side in gray sweats, his left leg bent forward a little to tap out a beat. The nagging blowhard music is the voice of a fishwife, her demands echoing up to the tops of trees.
A path runs down past the Volute, past two lily ponds, past a prickly cotton tree. Tarnished sunlight brushes against a few chairs and tables and along some overhanging leaves. At one table, a girl is slumped over a magenta binder, her head pressed against her studying aids. Her long dark hair fans out, hiding her face.
Two nameless birds with burgundy wings fly from my feet as I walk past her.
Linkage: 1000 Blank White Cards. Like Magic: The Gathering except you make your own cards and your own rules. The 1000 Journals Project. I love looking at the scans. Maybe I should scan in some of my own writing. IVF mix-up heads for court. Yikes. I would be very disturbed if I owed my life to a mistake made by a tired technician in some clinic. Jury acquits 'sleepwalker' in UMass sex assault. I've heard of a case where while a man was sleepwalking, he killed his mother-in-law and woke up while he was driving to the police station. But regardless of whether or not this student was sleepwalking in his dorm, something should be done (i.e. treatment for his disorder or punishment for a crime).
People don't see me. This usually happens in lines when I'm standing in the middle of outrageousness--like that guy with the dreadlocks and biker chains or that girl with the sparkly boa. No, I haven't frequented clubs recently. But I have been to grocery checkout lines and bank tellers. They don't see a drab girl in the middle of a flock of peacocks. They see nothing. Yes, my powers of invisiblity come into play when I'm in a line and some people want to cut through instead of walking around.
Sure, I get annoyed, but there's not much that I can do about it. I'm one of those itchy people that get ignored on a daily basis--the street musician, the beggar man, the pasty-faced valet who holds his hands out for the keys--simply because I don't belong in the world's chic originality.
I want to stand at the apex of the podium and proclaim (using a megaphone of course): "I exist! I'm here! I'm as human as you are!" I'm not a genius. I'm not a procreative nut who wants to single-handedly populate Mars. I'm not a saint. But I think like everyone else. Therefore I am.*
Being a nonentity to some people can be dangerous. For example, go-cart drivers. I was walking on a path designed for pedestrians when a campus security guard in a white go-cart barreled out of nowhere pushing 30 miles per hour. I froze--the cliched deer in the headlights--paralyzed for half a second with all my previous thoughts wiped from my head. The next second, I threw myself to the side before I was turned into a bloody smear on the pavement.
The guard didn't break. I didn't hear him utter a curse or shout an apology. He didn't stop to see if I was unhurt. To him, I had simply not been there. Okay, so maybe he would have felt something if the wheels had run over my body, but I'd bet anything that he'd think it was a squirrel. And since it's a four day weekend, no one would have noticed anything out of the ordinary until Monday. By then, the birds would have pecked out the juicy bits.
*Yes, I know I shamelessly butchered Rene Descartes' "I think; therefore I am."
Links: Scrollbar Racing. Another choice opportunity for a hard-working bookie. Goat Born With White '3' On Its Side. Yeah. And that petrified sweet roll that looks like Elvis is Graceland's new god. Dosgames.com. Last night, I had a computer game dream. I was playing three games simultaneously, none of which I've ever heard of before. I was in the games--mazes which were woven together but remained separate. One was futuristic with robots and lasers. The second was magical with monsters that resurrected after I thought I killed them. And the third had a ghost which tried to take over people's bodies. I am not a gamer. I don't even play computer games occasionally. It simply doesn't interest me. So I find it odd that I dream of it.
It wasn't even the result of an explosive argument. No vases or heavy books were thrown about. Nothing. It had been calm, like the eye of a hurricane, except the winds surrounding it had been invisible. When he had arrived home, she already had her bags packed.
"I've realized that we don't suit," she said.
She had patted his face and left. He had been too stunned to do anything but gape at her and watch her car roll out of the driveway. The rest of the night became numb and gray, and when he slept, he dreamt of nothing.
But now, the next day, the numbness was replaced with fire. Anger. His stomping made harsh thunking sounds. His mouth curved downward. And most of the time, his hands curled into fists. How dare she?
His co-workers stayed out of his way as much as possible. Gigi hid in the breakroom talking on her cellphone in hushed tones. Pedro, naturally a cheery man, tweaked the ends of his moustache nervously as he glanced over at Frank's direction. He had taken over the bread counter--the furthest away from Frank's ice cream and juice bar.
Why? kept running through his head and as the day grew longer, this voice jabbered louder and faster until he couldn't think any more. He was so angry that he felt his face flushing even as he opened the fridge for ice.
Less than an hour before closing time, the customers slowed to a trickle. Pedro was now hiding out with Gigi and he was alone at the counter. A young woman entered and took out a ten dollar bill, already intent on ordering. She looked nothing like Susanna--she was short, dumpy, and casually dressed rather than having Susanna's slim and sleek style--but she had that hurried look as her hair escaped haphazardly from her ponytail. That painfully reminded him of Susanna, the hurry to get anywhere except to him.
"Could I get a chilled mocha?"
His simmering temper billowed into fierce steam. "Sssorry," he hissed. "We don't ssserve anything in the juice bar past 5 PM. Sssee? It ssays ssso on the board." He grinned showing a handful of uncorrected teeth and jabbed a finger toward the chalkboard above his head.
She blinked. "Umm...." He could already see her silently wondering why coffee was considered part of the juice bar.
"We have some other drinks not in the juice bar," he added, not particularly caring.
"No thanks."
Pedro headed back out of the breakroom and noticed the woman stuffing the ten dollars back into her wallet. He gave Frank a dark look as he went back to organizing the cakes in the display counter.
It's not my fault, he fumed. Frank slammed a cupboard door harder than necessary.
* * *
In reality, I'm not sure why "Frank" was in a bad mood, but somehow I wasn't surprised considering his inhospitality.
Others: Los Angeles airport shooting kills 3. LAX is actually a lot more strict than some other airports I've been to. Maybe they'll start tightening up security again, i.e. making people park a mile away and shipping only passengers to the departure terminals. Alain de Botton: a journey and a book are perfect companions. I don't get it. Read while you're traveling to an exotic locale? It's almost an oxymoron--the interesting stuff is right in front of your nose and still you insist on burying that nose back into the pages of some book. I'd rather look at the scenery passing by or sleep than read a book. (Then again, I get motion sick while reading a book on a moving vehicle, so maybe my viewpoint is a little skewed.)
The lonely gravel road was a silver snake winding into the middle of farmland nowhere. The stones bit through the thin soles of my tennis shoes and the air, slightly heavy, prickled my skin. The night was clear except for the moon and a few stars which made the grass stand out in stark relief--yellow stalks almost as tall as me.
The fields around the road were fallow. Weeds and grasses had taken over for the year and hid the compact ground beneath. Crickets harped like bull frogs, also hidden in the grass. I jumped from the uncomfortable gravel to the edge of the field. Hearing nothing squished beneath my feet, I waded forward. The grasses were antennae brushing against my arms and legs. As I moved further inward, the crickets sounded louder. Did they hear me coming?
Something brushed past my ear. What was that? I looked up briefly toward the sky--it was brighter up there--not quite dark, a luminous navy. Dark spots moved lazily against this background in a complicated dance. Some of the dark spots flashed bright green.
I raised my hand and felt something drop onto my finger. Cupping my hands to see what I've caught, the firefly crawled into the depression of my palms and flickered. For a moment, my hands were illuminated, a fleshy neon, with a slim insect in the middle, ruddy, discrete, except for his flaming behind. A crackle popped in the air above and I raised my head to see the first of the fireworks, a streaming liquid that bleached the night.
Looking back down to my hands, the firefly was gone.
KevinDonahue.com. The author (of the same name) talks a lot about golfing, his wife, and politics. Oh yeah, there's also a liberal sprinkling of memes. Interesting in a traditional webloggy kind of way. My Scribble. This one looks new as the author only started in late June of this year. The design is certainly unique--did she draw the picture herself? And the list of shopping links seem indicative of...something. Blue Lenin. Stopped in February due to Geocities' change in FTP policy. Oh well. Q Daily News. A weblog with intelligent commentary by a New York City doctor. My only gripe is the archiving system. There's no good way to get all the back entries with one click. PeachBeach. Another dead site. Rantings of an Unexploded Scotsman. There's some very good writing in here. The Adventures of Soopa Pig. Mostly day-to-day mundane accounting. Plus baby pictures. More suitable for the author's friends and family. War is Peace. A dead end. Only a poem about 9/11 remains.
Check. Double check. Check again. That was the past couple of days in lab. Sometimes I wonder if pipetting for an excessive amount of time would amount to carpal tunnel syndrome or if the air really wasn't being refreshed by the fume hoods but rather recycled so that I was actually breathing hazardous fumes all day. (Ah, the joys of vaporized ethidium bromide!) Dangerous substances are everywhere. I use acrylamide (a neurotoxin) fairly frequently. And beware of those biohazard bags. You don't know if someone's just finished an experiment and dumped all their leftover virus constructs into them.
Sometimes I would be suspicious and think that the radiation shields aren't shields at all, but "hot" P32 emitters. The geiger counters, of course, would be in on the joke and refuse to beep at all. Even scarier is when they do beep. In a previous summer, one guy working on the bench across from me decided to order some radioactive zinc. The entire area turned into a mini-igloo built of lead bricks. And when the geiger counter was stuck inside, it went completely crazy.
Compulsive checking isn't confined just to laboratories though. Take tonight for instance. When I was walking home from work, I noticed at least two helicopters making the rounds above campus. Search-lights swept the area below although I wasn't sure how effective they would be. By the time they do spot something, it might be too late--like a lab explosion (or in the case of UC Irvine an entire building with years of research going up in smoke).
Oh yeah, tomorrow is July 4th. Maybe that's why the helicopters were prowling around tonight. But that won't help me. I'll still have to go to work. No holidays (or weekends) for me.
Other news: Washington State Illegalizes 'O' Word. (via Ye Olde Blogge) "While many Asians under European colonial influence have not been educated to the application of the word, they now understand its meaning and connotations." Oh, so now I'm stupid and uneducated because I don't particularly consider "oriental" demeaning? Please poke me in the eye. Why make such a fuss about the English language when there are other languages with words that are actually worse? Wolfenstein 5K. I remember the old computer game. It made me nauseous. So does this new javascript version. Michael Jantze's The Norm Cartoon. A cartoon character with a blog. Heh.
1. What do you find most troubling about your way of life? If your life is carefree please give me a hint, which has nothing to do with winning the lottery.
I never have time to do anything. If only I was more efficient. But in this case I'm like the person who ends up filling up an entire house full of junk simply because there is the space. Entire chunks of coveted time are gone because I underestimate how long something's going to take, something else demands my attention, or I'm just plain lazy.
I'm also fairly paranoid. I know that they know that I know because they can read my mind.
2. What is your prescription (non psychotropic), or outlet for dealing with stress and anxiety?
Writing and sleeping.
3. What's the real reason you get up every morning?
There's always something I've left unfinished the previous day.
I'm finding it true that with time, there are some things I am beginning to see in a new light. I've rediscovered Erik Satie, a French impressionistic composer mostly forgotten except for the Gymnopédies (which every young pianist is obliged to churn out). Ethereal and minimalistic, no wonder his pieces require a peculiar sense of aesthetic.
When I was younger, I was surrounded by pianists who were obsessed with playing faster and louder. Technique was everything. Who cared if you liked or hated a piece--emotion was irrelavent. They wanted to show off. They needed to show off. At one point, I believed myself to be one of them although at the same time I realized I could never be as good. For one thing, my musical memory is horrible. I've been known to forget entire pieces in the middle of a concert.
Eventually I advanced to a level where my piano teachers trusted me to pick what piece to work on. In fact, they expected it. Suddenly a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Now this was what making music was about. Choice. Oh sure, I was initially overwhelmed with so many choices that I didn't really know what I liked or disliked, but I eventually developed my own taste (which I've told Belle)--impressionistic and unrepentingly romantic.
There are still some people who pound out the notes expecting praise--a poor reason to justify playing the piano (or anything, really). It may be a form of self-gratification, but I only play for myself. In extension, the foremost reason I write is for myself, and I practice biology because I like doing it (and considering the specifics of my job this summer, I'm definitely not doing it for the money or the praise).
The summation of Satie's life probably articulates this the best:
Satie lived as a true artist, for his music and his ideals. He had no respect for money and lived a poor life for many years. He was never afraid of expressing his true opinion. If he found someone to be a jerk he made this perfectly clear (and took the consequences).
Unfortunately, Keith decided that Blogger Insider was too much of a hassle. I completely understand. Running a project as big as this requires a lot of dedication and resilience to organize not to mention the ability to endure the crap bounced back due to flaky partners.
But after looking at his latest post about someone else wanting to take over the project, I now feel like an idiot for immediately forwarding this guy's e-mail to everyone else. Apologies for getting "spam" from me (but at least I didn't forward it to everyone I knew). Perhaps I made too many assumptions.
I actually don't really know what to think. On one hand, I really enjoyed doing Blogger Insider. It gave people a chance to interact with others rather than staying in their own isolated world. I wouldn't care too much about who was running it (although I do appreciate it) because I owe my loyalty to no one. On the other hand, it is Keith's creation and absolutely nobody should be subjected to seeing someone else run off with his or her baby.
Maybe I'll lay low first and see what others think before I make an ass of myself.
Links: DIRK. Addictive. I keep on adding connections like moon to satellite (I'm surprised no one else got it first). Children die in hot car while mom at salon. Another example of why some people should not have kids in the first place. I Love Egg. More mindless fun.
I should get today off. But no such luck. (My birthday is also on another Canadian holiday but I don't get that day off either.) By virtue of birthplace and parental circumstances, I am Canadian. Bet you didn't know that. But don't despair, most people don't and can't tell. I am one of those unique animals called a culturally Americanized Canadian. I'm as Canadian as Peter Jennings, Shania Twain, Kevin Bacon, and (gasp!) even William Shatner.
I even used Americanized spellings. (Oh, the horror!)
Wanted in Manitoba: mosquito-eating bats. What they really need is an electrified bug zapper doo-dad. Toronto worries trash will hurt tourism. Not only tourism but public health. Society today places so much emphasis on white-collared workers and elitist occupations requiring higher education (and I admit that I am guilty of giving into this emphasis), but it shouldn't be forgotten that the underdog is just as important. The garbagemen, the plumbers, the construction workers--where would our take-it-for-granted and convenient society be without the foundation? Made in Canada. Like beer cases with tuck-in handles. I don't even like beer. Blogback. The little copyright icon at the bottom of the Blogback comments have been replaced with a maple leaf. Whee!
