who are these people?
haven't blogged a real entry in a while, too busy with my ziggy stardust lifestyle. here goes.

so you think you know a person, but you really don't. even the people you see every day, for say, eight weeks, or ten weeks, or 23 years. how well do you really know them? it's even more strange when you grow close to people in a short period of time in an isolated place away from home, and then, when you see them again, it's as if they're totally different people. you notice things about them that you amazingly overlooked before. makes you wonder if you ever really knew them at all, or if the person you knew was somehow incapacitated in an accident and this person is just masquerading as them, or if it was all just a facade from the beginning. i guess it's the ultimate truth that we are products of our immediate environments, that we can change chameleonlike to fit the situation. we can change our spots, bringing some characteristics to the forefront while drawing back others.

and i'm no better than anyone in this way, not even bitch-ass girls who blog shit about me and my friends while being nice to our faces. if anything, i'm probably worse. with each new section of my life, i've been able to successfully reinvent myself, improving upon each previous version. there's a drastic difference between personal growth and reinvention. the point is that when you live in the moment, like most of us do, it's hard to really know what's real. we try on different hats, different personas, see what works, what sticks to the wall. but i like to think my core values stay the same, although my actions might not, and i haven't actually changed so much to the point where people who knew me before would say about me, "who is this person?" i think i treat people the same across time and locations, and i definitely don't front about how i feel about someone. as most of you know, i have a really hard time masking on my face what i'm thinking. and why should i?

one of the most unforgivable traits i find in women is deceit. i say in women specifically because i feel women are more predisposed to deceit than men and more adept at it. honesty, almost brutal honesty, is something i will always welcome in both men and women. most people will say it's one of the foremost traits of my character.

...or is it?

fuck good charlotte
since when did good fucking charlotte become society's moral fucking compass and arbiter of female values??? first, that goddamn "girls don't like boys/girls like cars and money" has reignited a new wave of misogynism, for no reason at all. i'm gonna say it just once: girls LIKE boys. girls could care less about cars and money. jesus. girls want someone to listen to them and make them laugh. THAT'S ALL IT IS. OK?!?

secondly: "hold on"--since when is good charlotte telling me to "hold on/things get better" going to make my life a better place?

thirdly: that mtv/good charlotte promotion a while ago about safe sex. how is good charlotte going to tell me to have safe sex? why must good charlotte be associated with safe sex? i mean look at them! it's too much.

ok i think that's enough.

long lost pics unearthed! see "new york cares" post below.

Which David Bowie are you?

oh my god
freesia lets her luda guard down:
like he needs to stop trying to make you into the type of girl that he wants to date... just because he wants some demure girl who will, as ludacris put it "be a lady on the street but a freak in the bed" (i can't believe i just quoted ludacris) does not mean that that's what's right for you.

another trying week of going out and getting drunk. sigh, it's a hard life. i've totally screwed over my body for the past week and a half, and as a result one of my wisdom teeth excavation sites is giving me drama and a swollen cheek. fuck.

shoutout to the bot, who shadowed me this week and provided much entertainment as well as a copy of the ima robot cd that i'm all over. until we meet again! eeoc, whaaaaaaat?

who, me?
The Entertaining Monkey - The "Merry Mercurial"
While a lively year of good times, good friends, and lack of boredom, only rarely are your own Monkey years constructive and capable of permanent development. Monkeys have difficulty staying on a straight and narrow course, tempted to take detours and short-cuts for the pure pleasure of discovery and novelty in 2004. It is not advisable to borrow or lend money to or from friends relatives or family members. Despite the drama, you do find the year's prevalent upheaval amusing. Attend more parties, weddings and happy events. Best months of the year for Intelligent Monkeys: July, August, September and December. Use extra caution during February, March, April and November.

"to world peace"
last night in berkeley

bot and cher

cher and friend

me and j-lo

christine and friend

bot gets tipsay

jean and jaime

scott and bot

bot (pre-"fuck you lisa") and jai

my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
the difference between freesia and i (guess which one is mine)


got some pics from alice's last week in d.c (FINALLY)

alice and i after 801 became 911, at a seafood restaurant on 17th street where we were the only straight people there

alice, scott, and i pre-tequila grill for the last time. oh alice and your smirnoff ices...

new york cares
often times i forget. it gets overlooked by d.c., england, berkeley, and sf. but make no mistake -- i grew up one glorious summer in new york city, a wide-eyed 20-year-old girl from "cali".

i lived on the third floor of a red brick apartment building on west 20th street, between 7th and 8th avenues, in the chelsea district of manhattan. my roommate was a 25-year-old korean girl from atlanta who had previously worked in fashion and was currently looking for work. she was very friendly, but i rarely saw her, and i think she eventually came to hate me for having so many guests stay over. my room was a living room that was converted into a bedroom and consisted of a full-size futon, a lamp, a dresser, a tv, and an air conditioning unit.

i worked only three blocks away, on fifth ave. and 23rd st. so i would wake up, shower, and roll into work, yet still manage to get there later than my co-workers who had to take the subway in from brooklyn and the bronx. bethany was my co-intern who had been working there for two weeks already while i was in the philippines. we clicked immediately.

bethany became my partner in crime. the city scared me to death, but i told myself that if bethany (a tiny girl from "bahs-tin" who looked like she was twelve) could handle it, i could, too. we spent almost every day together for 8 weeks that summer, and i never got sick of her.



the days were hot, and i used to sunbathe on my fire escape and listen to alicia keys. i was going through a halter top and flip-flop phase, and that was pretty much my uniform the entire summer. but it was still hot beyond belief. more than once i went straight home, threw off my clothes, and sat in front of my air conditioning in my underwear until i cooled down. more often, bethany and i would go out after work, shopping up and down fifth avenue near the office, to bryant park for monday night movies, to soho for middle eastern food, to herald square. our goal was to hit each banana republic in the city, and we came damn close. i learned how to walk like a new yorker, fast, darty, and with a little swivel.



there was a steady stream of visitors through my apartment. sam and bethany, drunk and eating m&m cookies (sam would always go directly to my bathroom; bethany kicked me countless times in bed when she stayed overnight each weekend); crystal and freesia, with their endless shopping bags; kat and sketchy's 20 fake rolex watches; kimi and shimon camping out next to my bed for a night; laurie waking up at some ungodly hour just to go to h&m; chain-smoking owen and his sexual escapades; ali and jonny stopping by; bethany's insanely boring i-banker yuppie friends. i didn't know a soul in new york when i stepped off the plane, but somehow i was never alone.

crystal made fun of the hassidic jew children on the statue of liberty ferry; we stumbled on a cafe from a scene in "you've got mail"; we bought tickets to see "chicago" from the tkts in the world trade center; i threw up a dub in the met; we ate crab sandwhiches in the shadow of the brooklyn bridge; we drank dunkin' donuts coffee on monday mornings; sam and i had cigarettes on my fire escape; frees, crys, and i took a chinese bus to boston for a day and threw up dubs at harvard. in july we went to seattle and scandalized the DC interns. we sipped forties or brass monkeys on my rooftop, getting drunk amid the lights of downtown. we ate mr. softees endlessly, at all times of day. we let our bosses take us out to a yankees game and buy us beer and hot dogs. bethany and i roller skated in central park, fell asleep on the grass, and then went down to chinatown for steak cubes.



and that's what it was. i was young in new york city, with great friends and no inhibitions. one of my strongest memories from that summer is laughing, i swear that's all we did, everywhere. somewhere among all the mr. softees, banana republics, steak cubes, softshell crab sandwiches, falafels, and m&m cookies, i guess i grew up.

i usually hate long lists that generalize about a group of people or an emotion, but this is actually quite on point. damn, i didn't even realize #25 until i read it here. curse you #30, curse you. i can't believe a guy actually knows about #47. i swear there are only like five of these that i disagree with personally, but agree with about chicks on the whole. this guy is good.

this one wasn't bad either.

so this is the new year
it is hereby resolved:
-be less contentious when drunk
-write more, inlcluding that novel
-hie thee to the gym
-always use protection
-be on time
-eat three square meals a day (coffee doesn't count as a meal)
-no coffee after 11pm EVER
-don't double-book
-be more patient with friends from high school (and earlier) and always remember that you love them very much no matter what they say/do/wear
-take a trip at least once a season to somewhere i've never been
-drink more milk/take calcium pills
-read more nonfiction (blogs don't count)
-go to england like i've said i would for the past two years
-be on time (it bears repeating)

p.s. hey alice, let's get together soon.
p.p.s HAWAII, march 3-10, with jokester. hell fuckin yeah.

please god, let me write like a man
some recommendations:
- sam goes all the way uptown for some hot chocolate with milk in it (even though the manager wants him to use water). "hello, may i speak to...to michael?"
- lin spends a week in san francisco with me and leaves with an expanded knowledge of creperies, a waning coffee buzz, and a distaste for the south bay. my work is done.
- imad returns from that sad old bugger of imperialism and concludes that i should hold public office.
- dave, come back. we miss you so. who else could possibly get 42 eprops on one post?
- arthur only reads peoples' blogs to see if they've mentioned him. i'm not sure if he reads mine, but if so, this one's for you. if you click only one link this year, click here.

a latecomer:
- brandon finally discovers girls and affirms my suspicion that i know no single guys who are not bitter and fed up with chicks. the bit was well-written, b, but remember blogging means never having to say you're sorry.

I'd give anything for a cheese steak sandwhich and fries
You know the Paul Frank monkey? I have these Paul Frank monkey PJs that a bf bought for me one year, some of you may be familiar with them. "Well, this is the only time you'll get to look like the monkey on your pyjamas," my mom has just consoled me. And it's true. I do look like that monkey right now. My cheeks are massive.

This is not doing good things for my self-image, which, as some of you may know, has of late become preoccupied with the idea that I have a fat face. Looking over my high school photos and comparing, I fear it's true. "Medium!" teases Freesia, who knows that every year some well-intentioned male always buys me an article of clothing sized medium, which throws me into a self-conscious fury about my perceived body size. This happens because, these males claim, they judge a girl's size by her height, not her weight, and I am pretty tall (although Ali loves to make things worse by saying that I'm not really that tall), even though I have long had a obvious (however apparently not to males) preference for wearing my clothes on the small size.

Anyways. After weeks of having the bejesus scared out of me by all my friends who have gone through this wretched procedure, I was finally ready to face the chair. Unfortunately, two nights prior, Biff and Kimi regaled me with horror stories of heads being jerked around and waking up midway through it to sights that they spared me details of. "Lisa, you're talking to three people who have all gone through it," Kimi said. "I mean, you will live!"

Then it occurred to me that this was something not unlike giving birth. People do it all the time and live. It's an everyday occurence. In fact, this is probably the closest I will ever come to giving birth and having something, four things to be exact, extracted from my body. Funny how the recovery period for having a child is actually shorter than undergoing this surgery.

So I lived. I actually woke up crying, an interesting side effect. I guess you can cry and not be conscious. It's a reaction to pain, not always an emotional response, or something? Very odd. Odder still is that I couldn't stop crying even after I was in the recovery room. I actually had to tell myself to stop being a sniveling wreck because there was no reason to cry. Yet if I hadn't been in public, I would have cried for a bit longer. Crying is one of those things where once you start, it's really hard to stop because you start feeling sorry for yourself and then your mind starts to search for other things to cry about, and then you're a sobbing crumpled mess. But, it's also very therapeutic. Kimi told me a long time ago that it's ok to cry because it means you're healing. The last time I cried was that night in DC at Dream, on Lin's shoulder, for hours.

So I've been bed-ridden for the past two days. My dad spoiled me like a baby all day yesterday and my mom takes the night shift of being Florence Nightengale, a role she enjoys to no end. I've been alternating between magazines, painkillers, antibiotics, and movies, and online a little bit. The movies I've been watching have done little to decrease my delirium at being inside for so long: Igby Goes Down, Your Friends and Neighbors,Restoration, and 8 Women, an eclectic mix (has anyone seen any of these movies?).

>

I should be back to my usual carousing self in a few days. Big birthday shout-out to my pimp, who turns the big 21 today. Your life will never be the same, my friend.

And, for your enjoyment, pics here and here of Lin's tour of SF (courtesy of me) last week.

what shall we toast to?
so jokester says that the words of the break were "bar" and "stones." but i'd say the words of the break were "random ass folks from back in the day" and "the mixing of two worlds." here's the two week holiday night recap:

mon/22: elbo room with biff, kimi, ali, freesia for gift exchange and ocean beach ice teas that are KILLER
tues/23: THE ONE NIGHT I CHILLED AT HOME
thur/25: dragon lounge with crys ("did you bring the coochie??"), frees, ali, cherry, jonny and crew, laurie and crew (eug, poof, pete, keith, jeannie, crit, scott)
friday/26: hobson's choice/city tavern/blue triangle with elementary school crew, middle school crew, high school crew and hella friends (aka night of randoms aka night of john solomon)

check out my phantom shot hand--my hand is actually starting to curve naturally into the shot glass holding position. not a good sign.
sat/27: 26mix for kathy's birthday with kimi

me and frootz (she looked like that in every picture)
sun/28: frjtz/crepes on cole/tart/pig mania domination with lin, dennis, jokester, and kat
mon/29: berkeley/zachary's with cherry, alice and lin, then ghiradelli/twin peaks with lin and jokester
tues/30: valencia/place pigalle with dc crew: alice, jaime, lin, dennis, scott
weds/31: freezy's heezy
thur/1: tart with jai and lin
fri/2: elbo room and toxic ocean beach ice teas with the margotbot, boyfriend of the bot, and friends of the bot (incl. this guy i went to preschool with)
sat/3: julip/bliss bar/pupusas with alice, scott, dan, biff, alex, kimi

"today is for god, not for dates!" -- freesia, today
"you're a marxist with fashion sense." -- biff
"you're gonna have a hella strong urinary tract! OK? OK??" -- me to jokey
"you like that movie, huh." -- jonny to lin
"we made sweet, sweet lipstick all night long." -- crystal

just a new year's list.
"waltz #2," elliott smith
"so says i," the shins
"gigolo," nick cannon feat. r kelly
"it's my life," no doubt
sea change, beck
the complete stone roses, stone roses
another fine coaster, samson lee
transatlanticism, death cab for cutie
the namesake, jhumpa lahiri
the rotter's club, jonathan coe
the fellowship of the ring, jrr tolkien
frjtz
pig mania
waking up and yelling "I WANT MY GIFTS!" at sleeping laurie at 8 am this morning like it was christmas, then wearing all the hella cute nyc stuff with my pjs