Categotry Archives: General

since i got back from oregon i have been spending a lot lot lot of time watching japanese animation. my dialogue skills are being reduced to mini exclamations about things being “cute” or “sweet” or “yes” or “no” this is due to my japanese being not that great. in addition to my advent into japanese baby talk my ability to speak english cohesively is also going down the drain. i have taken to yelling at the screen. if you can call chortling and rolling around on the couch as a substitute for “yelling.” mostly my tv conversations go a little something like this:

“no! no, but oh that is so cute. oh you’re just so cute! give her the bear. no! ahhh….so cute! blush some more!” (this to a 5th grade character)

“he’s not…no! what are you stupid? he’s malevolent! evil. look at him. those glasses. evil i tell you evil. you can tell, violin music everytime he comes on. eeee-heeee-heee-heee violin! hand kissing! oh oh my! evil! evil!” (this about another 5th grade character)

“jump him! holy shit! you’re both so hot! would you just spit out that you love him and then make out?! crapity crap! monkeys! crap! hot! oh god. sweet jesus.” (this to her older brother who is a high school senior and his best friend who is also a senior as well as being the false form of this moon warrior guy and her love interest when he’s pretending to be human. this is complicated.)

i’ve been watching this for several days now. there’s 8 dvds which are…um about 3-4 hours each i think and then 2 movies. i am on the 7th dvd. i seriously watched from noon till midnight today. this is getting obsessive. i’m already contemplating what series i will begin rewatching after i finish this one. i am totally procrastinating getting anything done. i’m not even looking for a job. i’m not even writing any thesis papers for grad school apps. i hardly bother replying to emails. i look at who’s calling on my phone very carefully and spend an inordinate amount of time deciding if i really want to answer it. recluse city, here i come. you might think this is a cry for help. that i want someone to save me from the room, the couch, and the dvd’s. but really i am heartily enjoying myself and would have to be dragged out kicking and screaming.

anyway, my show aimed at elementary school children beckons. peace out.

people keep asking me how the second wedding was, how the trip to oregon was, how all my relatives was. and i keep saying, “good.” “fine.” “it was nice.” i really didn’t have anything further to say. i feel like i was being rude, because it was rude, but honestly, nothing else much to say about it. but i’m going to try now to say something.

seriously, watching your cousin get married is WEIRD. i mean it was great and i was grinning the whole time, but still. they are so in love and so perfect and it was so wonderful to watch them get married. but it’s kind of terrifying too because in the same sense that it is inspiring it’s also deflating since the whole effort of finding someone like that seems insurmountable. i am horrified to think of watching my brother get married. especially after he said to me, “if natalie wasn’t crazy we’d probably be married by now.” i almost shat myself.

6 roles of film later (3 taken by me) and what is there to show for it? only 4 pictures of yours truly. 4. out of 6 roles. that’s just pathetic. and 2 of them are terrible, one of them you can’t see my face, and the other one looks funny (because it’s black and white). i’m too lazy to scan them all now. and i’m not going to scan them all anyway because that’s too many pictures. but i’ll put up some in a while for you to see. there’s some cute ones of the couple and then also of my little cousins.

mostly what i have to say about this latest trip to the northwest is that it was long. i read like 12 books, went to two movies, ate out a lot, and sat around a lot in some crazy oregon heat wave.

by the time the wedding finally rolled around on friday i felt we had been there enough time for 5 weddings to have come and gone. it was beautiful how short and pretty and sincere their ceremony was though. and then it was just food, party, dance, sit, talk. well, plus, all the set up and take down of the chairs, the decorations, etc.

one valuable lesson i have learned here: never, EVER, agree to do any sort of set up for weddings again. i can’t imagine being in the wedding party is much better either. stress level is too high. coming just for the wedding and leaving whenever you want seems a much better way to go. (just in case katherine or john reads this or james tells them about it, i certainly didn’t MIND doing the decorations. it wasn’t HARD or anything. and i love you guys, don’t get me wrong. just never again.)

ahem. and now that i have placed the foot firmly in the craw, i am going to end this.

today leaving the movie theatre in salem i watched some mennonite girls and their dates/husbands walk away to their car and one of the girls was fondling the guy’s ass while they walked. his shoulder over hers, he weighed her down, while she committed acts of indecency on his covered flesh. is this right? what the hell do the mennonites believe and hold dear anyway? and why is there such a contingent of them in salem anyway? there were tons of them at the saturday market we went to yesterday too.

and speaking of the saturday market, i find it deadly amusing how people seem to find markets a convivial community sport in which they can give free rein to the impulse of approach. women just kept coming up to me and exclaiming over the hair, asking questions, even becoming hair-fondlers themselves. i react at the best of times with a nervous politeness which actually hides a seething resentment for all spooky strangers who dare to come near me. this was no different. on the plus side i got a pretty necklace and cool matching earcuffs.

last night at dinner my cousin james was relating a story of russian and cognac in which was featured the weighty sum of a thousand dollars per glass of cognac. i immediately flashed to an image of a virgin lashed to a spoke-rack which can spin to invert her–head down and feet up. her pubic hair is then set alight in order to mull the cognac in it’s glass over the warmth of her broiled virgin nether lips. this could cost $1000. especially if they billed it as cherry cognac and you received the cherry rights as well.

sadly it turned out that cognac just sometimes costs 1K.

the wedding was gorgeous and fun and possibly i will write more about it when i finally return home. ah home.

beneath the golden balm

and i am far from home.

“the exile’s lament” kushiel’s dart

here’s what you’re all really waiting for.

pictures. you know you love them.

i know i love them.

it’s funny that i forgot to mention the tacoma glass museum since fully a third of my pictures seem to be of it. that place is (in my opinion) awesome. and we didn’t even go inside. but the outside was super cool with lots of neat glass things to look at. i really liked it and am contemplating going back for the new japanese culture and anime exhibit that is starting july 12th. i’ll be up there again after all. or close enough. hwee. holy crap. antonia levi whose book i used in my thesis is lecturing on sunday. shit, if only i could be up there THEN. maaaannnnnnnn…. sigh.

yesterday i went for an interview. i just got a phone call offering me the job. i don’t even want a job! why did i say i was still interested? why? i could be jobless, free, and unfettered. no one else in my family has a job. my mom doesn’t care. but what if i turn down this job and then i can’t get another job for months? i have no skills. it’s not like i’m good at anything in particular.

let me tell you a little about this job. it’s working for a wholesale book distributor in the bay area (located in oakland by the airport and coliseum) doing customer service (phones) and data entry of orders. this is not glamorous. pay is minimal and it is far away from where i live. but there is a cat which lives there and lots of pretty books to look at and the potential for interesting co-workers. there’s no dress code, my hair can be as crazy as i like, and did i mention the on-site cat? it doesn’t seem like demanding or responsiblity driven work. but i am not sure if the computers are hooked up to the internet. which could pose a serious problem to my getting thru each day. wait…they have a webpage and email addresses…they must have internet. hmm well that is one concern eliminated. i could have health benefits again and money for all my expensive habits.

but working in oakland….for $9/hour….these are crazy intense drawbacks.

ahem. for those of you not as concerned about my personal safety as kristen, i submit this article for your perusal. in which you can read a stunning tale of a parolee on the lam, chased by cops to my neighborhood, breaking into houses, hitting the residents in the face (this actually learned by second hand sighted info), pointing a gun at them, stealing their car, trashing the neighbors across the streets fence, and then being shot by cops and taken to the hospital.

the fact that no info is given out about him–his condition, his name, his crime–is a little weird. the fact that my mom was home alone and could have been taken hostage is terrifying. but i will be blase and say that since nothing did happen to her there’s no use worrying retrospectively. but inside i will be screaming, “mommy! mommy!”

there’s still newsvans there. and cops were being all csi until 7 this morning. and there’s blood on the street. things like this shouldn’t happen in suburbia. which i know is a terribly stupid and naive thing to say. but come on, not MY suburbia.

i feel this is going to be inane. which is i suppose what i get when i’m this tired and still kind of reeling from the number of things i’ve done in the past week.

last wednesday i began driving with jacob and dianna up to doug and lisa’s wedding in WA. we stopped at their house on the way up and saw what a gorgeous family residence they have. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, lovely leather furniture, huge backyard, multitudes of plants, and intense croquet games. that house was MADE to raise children in. even if right now they’re using the extra bedrooms as “offices.” and let me tell you, it is weird to see pictures of your ex-boyfriend and his fiancee all over his desk when it used to have framed photos of you on it.

but the strangeness of the weekend was only beginning. being in tacoma and at UPS again was freakish. i could not manage to explain to anyone however why it was so bizarre in a bad way. i tried describing how depressing it felt to be back somewhere which hasn’t changed but in which you no longer belong AT ALL. but that didn’t seem to fly really well. it was like looking around at a place where i used to walk and laugh and be and now i am a completely different me who no longer gets to walk to class along the paths like she owned them, or run into people sitting in front of the SUB with glad cries of welcome and bon homie, or even have homework to do. my mind doesn’t even work the same way it used to. and being there again just made the differences which i am currently not so fond of more profound.

friday we picked up erica and jason at the airport and went back to campus. but we didn’t stay nearly as long this time and then we got to go to happy dragon, the best restaurant ever. man i love them so much. the gimp was even there and faked remembering us out of a chided sense of compassion. it was beautiful.

and then friday night we drove up to seattle to see anderson and his new band chuckanuut drive play. for those of you who have not heard me and/or erica speak of anderson, our love for him is intense, full of rivalry, and lasting. it is absurd how great this boy is. seriously. so we’re lurking around looking for him and we find him then and he is all with the washington hickish alt boy look. he’s rebuilt a 1968 mustang. he’s gotten arm muscles. he’s better then ever before. erica and i are swooning. and then what does he do while we watch fireworks across the sound from gasworks park? he stands behind me and is all sweet and cuddly while inwardly i’m screaming, “yes! yes!” and erica is looking on with a jealous but concurrently delighted face. but then he has to go set up for the band and when we get back to the bar he comes and sits with us and launches into talking about his girlfriend who has the flu and is oh so wonderful and blah blah blah. it was so upsetting. but he showed us a picture and she is gorgeous and he is so adorably into her that you can’t actually blame him. (fucking can too blame him. fucking cock-tease. fucking argh.)

chuckanut drive=great live. and the two main front guys (guitars and vocals) were awesome. and very nice too. even though erica kept telling them to take their clothes off. and then i got carried away and asked them to take their clothes off, slap each around a little with their cowboy belts, and make-out on stage. seriously though, they were hot. one of them is getting married this month too. crazy month of weddings.

saturday we got up late, rushed around like crazy, got dressed and went to the church. which we got to just in time. immediately running into doug’s mom who was so giggly nervous and excited. she hugged me and was so happy to see us all there while we signed the guestbook and people stared at us. cause we were all so snazzy. and i have a lot of multi-colored hair.

the wedding was nice. it was very small and sweet and full of religiosity. whoo. lots of father son and holy spirits amen. and seeing people our age up there being stressed to about the foreverness of this and the holy sacrosanct of marriage and the binding laws etc was kind of intimidating. but, hey, more power to those who choose this and go thru with it and MEAN it, ey? admittedly it was also fun clutching erica’s hand, death grip on jason’s knee, unable to wipe the grin off my face, and carefully trying not to look at the snickering face of the best man which kept setting me off into snickers too. i shouldn’t be allowed at weddings really. i have no sense of decorum.

the reception afterwards was full of chatting and schmoozing. i did no actual schmoozing. jacob looked slick enough to schmooze, but also seemed to avoid doing it. we basically had a little enclave and fought tooth and nail when drug out of it. take, for example, the bridal bouquet toss where we all attempted to pretend marriage. i grabbed jason, erica held onto brian for dear life, and dianna mutinously refused to let go of jacob. sadly the groom’s mother saw us hiding and forced us out on the grass where i quickly drug erica to the back of the group of girls and refused to go any closer to the dreaded flowery death sentence. fucking wedding traditions. fucking stupid. amy, (doug’s younger sister) caught it and we all breathed a healthy sigh of relief while we in turn mocked and goaded the boys out for the garter toss. jason refused to dive for it, for which i might never forgive him. the brother of the bride caught it on the second attempt. hi-larious.

sunday we hung out in seattle with brian (best man) eating at nasai and shopping. we then dumped jason at the airport and went to tacoma again to meet up with susan, karl, and brenden who we all went to school with. which was oh so great! it was so much fun seeing them all again. they’re all younger by 1-2 years then us but are an awesome group of people who we associated with while at school. they told us about this movie they’d seen which i am now getting and once i have it i think we should all watch it. maybe it will be brilliant. it certainly sounded brilliant from their descriptions.

monday and tuesday were spent driving home with a brief interlude at powell’s in portland where i bought way too many books. man i love books. i’ve got almost a complete set of margaret mahy books now and a first american edition of rushdie’s jaguar smile

pictures should be up sometime soon. i’ve got two rolls. it’s amazing as usual how few pictures of me there are. and no real good ones of the lovely dress my mom made for me. although i got several compliments on it, (though not nearly as many as i got on the hair over the course of the weekend. shit, i fucking love this hair.)

and that concludes this hell of long post. if you actually read it all i thank and congratulate you. if you did not suffer thru all my descriptions…well…whatever. you can look at pictures later.