michele

today apparently, my brother disobeyed the law. and not in the sense of rolling thru a stop sign or ripping the tags off mattresses at the store. oh no. he brought down the ENTIRE martinez police force on himself and his young, stupid, pot-smoking friend bobby. and how did he do this?, you might very well ask. the answer–fireworks. illegal. oh yes.

i just got an email from my mother that says:

Just had a cop here to see if Adam was my son.� He and Bobby set off some fireworks earlier and didn’t get out of town fast enough.� There were about 4 cops out on the street talking with them, but they let them go.� Seems lots of people called including another cop who said they sounded just like gunshots.� The one talking with me wanted me to know that all martinez cops were in the neighborhood NONE WERE ANYWHERE ELSE! because of my son.� Doesn’t that make you feel proud?

end email.

it makes you wonder how many cops there really are in martinez. 5? it makes you wonder what happened to the apathetic draw of the donut shop. jared? it makes you wonder when my brother is going to learn not to pull this stupid shit. never.

you wanna know how he got the fireworks? he gave some free wood to a guy who came to big b. and in exchange the guy gave him a couple hundred dollars worth of fireworks. we set off a whole bunch on the fairway at sunset river resort over christmas. even blew the head off a snowman for the hell of it. so…really who am i to talk? i even advocated the insertion of multiple bombs in the set-off-tube for the grand finale christmas show. dangerous? oh yes. admittedly it didn’t work. but still. there was the potential that instead of firing upwards it could fire sideways into one of the small watching children who didn’t have the sense to back up as far as i did. stupid children.

in a weird way i AM kind of proud of him. i mean, maybe it’s a special skill type feat to get the whole police force out in blue waylaying him on the sidewalk, lighter in hand. oh wait…that wasn’t as cool the last time that happened when mark luna threw the bong AT the police cruiser. well but fireworks are cooler. i do like fireworks. during the day though? what’s he thinking? that’s not cool. hmmm all of a sudden this entire endeavor is seeming more and more stupid.

i love eloise! no really i do. she is the fucking greatest to ever hit the ball right out of the park. and of course i love gene for making eloise possible. here’s looking at you, kid.

dinner party at my house albums.

thanksgiving 2002 at kristen’s house.

and then of course the main page of eloise, which i’m sure you don’t need this link to get to what with the other links but whatever.

today i called my mother from inside the house twice. once i called because a cat was sitting on my lap and i didn’t want to disturb her urinating highness for fear of reprisals in the form of warm yellow liquid. so it makes perfect sense that i used the cell to call the house phone to make my mother get out of her chair where she was probably suffering from the same restraining fear as myself, right? and all to ask if there was anything to eat and then to gratefully acquiese when she offered to make me a BLT. which within 15 minutes she had deposited on my, thankfully, cat free lap. delicious. and all the more so for how little effort i put into it.

secondly, i was taking a three hour long bubble bath per usual weekend fare, (don’t ask anymore why i had “water” tattooed to my arm. i am a fucking prune-skin fish i tell you), when jason called. having talked to jason while in the tub before i decided that it was no big deal to do so now. and figured if i kept all movement to a minimum he wouldn’t hear the water lapping at the edge of the tub and know i was in there anyway. the conversation went a little something like this:

“hi!”

“helloooo.”

“what’s up?”

“are you in the bathtub?”

“shit! how did you know that! i didn’t move!”

“you sound like you’re on a speaker phone. which is what it always sounds like when you’re in the bathroom and on the phone.”

(much laughter and vague embarressment on my part.)

plan thwarted. anyway so he called to see if i wanted to go to the movies because apparently it is lonely in the city when everyone has gone off to tahoe, a fact of which i of course was unaware. anyway so we’re trying decide on a movie which takes some doing as we both have to list and enumerate the points of the ones we want to see. him-intacto (some spanish thing with people blindfolded and thier hands tied running thru a forest), about schmidt (you know), and adaptation (postmodern bullshit with fucking nicolas cage). mine-just married (ha ha ha ha!!!) just kidding. well not kidding about the fact that i want to see it*, but about it’s being the only one i currently want to see. anyway so we decide on about schmidt and he’s going to come out and we’ll eat some dinner or something and go be entertained by jack nicholson. it was at this point in the conversation that i remembered i promised my mom i’d be home for dinner tonight since i wasn’t home once all week long (fuck was i ever tired).

so i’m like, “jason! mom’s cooking something and i bet some of it’s not meat so we could eat here and it’ll be tasty and free!”

and he, of course, being retiring and non-imposing is like, “uh, well if you think it’s all right.”

“sure it is! i’ll see you soon!”

i’m sitting there in the bathtub going, “hmm…maybe it’s time to shower and get out now so i can tell mom jason’s coming. and be ready and stuff…” but then i’m like, “shit dood i’ve got the phone RIGHT HERE. i could just call and tell her.” and so i did. and now she’s making chicken (uneatable by jason), mashed potatos, salad, and corn bread. but more importantly she laughed heartily and was disgusted by the fact that 1) i was calling from the bathtub and 2) i was still in the bathtub, having been in there for a good 2.5 hours.

this story serves to illustrate the fact that i am a lazy ingrate with fingers and toes indistinguishable from prunes and that my mom is a fucking saint to put up with me and my friends and cook pure tastiness all the time. but don’t look too harshly on me because i’m taking her to see lord of the rings tomorrow, and that’s got to be worth something, right?

*note: erica. dude. where’s my ashton kutcher watching friend when i need her? where’s your chicken farm, dude? dude, where’s your squishy boob?

if i say it twice it’s like the chinese pandas which are always given the same name twice because apparently for pandas it’s a sign of reverence and not stupidity. but for me, even with my vague connection thru chinese storytelling, really i’m just still stupid. dammit. why am i even still awake? (shut up, i know it’s only 10.) look at that i’m a belligerent tired person. heh.

so. there’s this thing called the miki scholarship which my alma mater gives out to people who want to go and study in japan for 9-12 months on any subject, with any sort of directional help that can be imagined and gotten, and with a stipend of what it would cost to attend UPS for the year. the trick is to 1)come up with something good and 2)apply. because no one applies. no one. it’s fucking amazing. my senior year they were holding applications and they were lowering the standards and encouraging almost anyone to apply. did i apply? no. but i am thinking about applying now. it’s my last chance to apply (you can only do it up to three years out of school, and since it’s only an every other year thing, this is my last chance.) the thing is…i want to go to grad school. i do. but i also want to go to japan. and i also want to study something. and i want money. and i want…i want lots of things right. but let’s be honest here, if i can come up with something really fucking good, and go to japan and complete an amazing research article, than my chances of getting into a good grad school are theoretically going to be exponentially increased, right? admittedly i don’t think it will be that hard in the first place to get into the schools i was going to apply for. you only need a 2.0 for sfstate. and the university of london doesn’t seem like the toughest nut to crack, or the only monkey in the barrel with an eyepatch and a cutlass. so i shouldn’t have that many obstacles facing me. but still….japan…with money…and the support of the miki foundation (sizeable monetary and political backing)….

the reason i am writing about this at all is because i think i came up with a relatively good idea and i was going to ask for opinions. canvas my readers as it were, garner the poll. ahem.

you can do research in conjunction with the shikoku university in tokushima, which has a literature department with japanese lit studies and english lit studies. and what i was thinking was that i could gain access to some classrooms in order to see what the difference is in the two programs/how the lit stacks up against one another/what texts are considered the most important. in order to compare that against whether or not there has been a change(/how big the change is) since the american occupation of japan since the 40’s. specifically though, i want to look into the propaganda writings pre-war and post-war aimed at children. because some of the stuff that i have read that was written pre-war is amazing. but then some of the stuff written post-war, in particular i am thinking of a tract leaflet handed out to visiting school children at this one temple in hiroshima that talks about the graves of the soldiers, women, and children (i wish i had it in front of me right now) is equally amazing. and i’m really more interested in the children’s perspective on the war advocacy movement in conjunction with the post-war defeat-debris sweeping under the rug movement, while also being clear to look at both sides putting forth “informational” literature and what exactly each one is saying or what they are not saying. but i could tie it in with the university teachings and work, perhaps, under the tutelage/with the help of a professor. while also maybe visiting some elementary schools and the temples and such-like.

eh? mind you, obviously i would say it better than that. with more big words. and real words. and an impressive preliminary bibliography. and with the proper things capitalized.