kimi: "are you in the matrix?"
ali: "are you in the matrix?"

i have this long black coat from h&m that goes all the way to my ankles. it's thick, and waterproof, and comes with a detachable hood, and is sort of like wearing a sleeping bag. i bought it for about 50 quid (~$75) within the first month that i got to england. my friend jane bought the exact same one the first week we were there, when we were still at orientation in london. i thought i'd hold out to see if i really needed it. little did i know how much that jacket would be with me.

jane and i would sometimes wear our jackets together at the same time, and we'd look like the matrix, with our jackets flowing out behind us. i wore it everywhere, especially during the winter months, but also well into spring. it was the only surefire way to stay warm. for the first time in my life, i took advantage of coat check at clubs--we all wore our clubbing outfits underneath and then shed our coats once we were indoors. it was only a quid or two, and well worth it to stay warm while standing in the queue outside or waiting for a taxi.

i had never before owned, and probably never will, a coat that warm. i mean, i lived in mild san francisco, where we have one temperature all year-round--foggy. a coat that heavy is never needed. sherwynn always joked about having a coat-burning party once we got back to the states, as a way of forgetting about all time we spent wearing them, to purge ourselves of the memories of freezing cold england.

if you look at my pictures from my year abroad, the coat is ubiquitous--venice, rome, edinburgh, paris. everywhere. i used it as a blanket more than a few times while sleeping in hostels and run-down bed and breakfasts. but i also have local memories of the coat. i remember wearing it when we'd walk 20 minutes from our flats to the cinema (save our money on a cab, and faster than the bus) to see 3 pound movies (about $5--so cheap!!) or to tesco to buy groceries, which were so heavy and burdensome for the walk back (we finally got wise and brought our backpacks). i remember the cold, cold walks to the library or to campus or to sherwynn and michele's flat just across the vale. i remember eating balti with the girls, or sunday roasts, after which we didn't have to eat for the entire rest of the day. i miss full english breakfasts--fried tomato, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, fried eggs, and tea. i miss 99 pence pints, or 1 pound vodka shots, i miss blackthorn, snakebites, that cinammon-flavored shot, all the various drinks that were so goddamn cheap. the clubs where it was free to get in, or very cheap if you were a student, clubs that were swankier than any i've been to in the u.s., besides maybe d.c., but even then, the nicest d.c. club can't touch the dodgiest uk one. i miss all the cheese music that we sang along to, and the lovely british lads that could dance together in groups without it being a reflection on their sexuality. god, i miss my own room.

i actually wore my coat a few days ago to tart with ali and kimi. it was freezing cold that night, but somehow it just wasn't the same at all. here's to england, and hopes for more adventures with my long black coat.

macs what.

while you're pondering whether or not there is much more to life besides queer eye ten-hour marathons, check this out. some highlights:

"Holidae In" by Chingy (featuring Ludacris and Snoop Dogg)
Yes, Chingy is having a little get-together at the Holiday Inn, and he's invited Luda, Snoop, you and four of your friends. "What we gon' do?" asks the backup singer. "Feel on each other," says Snoop, "and sip on some Hen." Good times!

I don't know who the fuck Chingy is, but the guy knows how to throw a party. Even Ludacris is excited about it -- "For shizzle dizzle, I'm on a track with the Big Snoop Dizzle!" -- and when Ludacris gets excited, you'd better hide your vagina.

.......
"Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down

Listening to this song forces me to ask some difficult "What if?" questions. For instance: What if I met the woman who seemed to be the love of my life, and what if, just as we were about to consummate our love, she reached for her CD player remote control and switched on this song by 3 Doors Down?

It's not a question of whether or not I'd still be able to make love to her. Obviously, I wouldn't have the ability. My penis would immediately drain itself of blood, and once it had run out of blood, it would begin to drain itself of erectile tissue and veins and skin until there was nothing left but a shallow cavity above my testicles. No, the vital question is, Could my love for her survive? And the answer is no. No, it couldn't.

.....

Memo to the East Side Boyz, YoungBloodZ and other rising hip-hop stars: Pluralizing your Z's really isn't that cool. It's actually sort of dumb. In fact, the only way 3 Doors Down could possibly be worse as a band would be if they were called 3 Doorz Down.

baby, here i am, i'm a girl on the scene
soul is making a comeback: i'm really diggin' "got to give it up" by marvin gaye and "hard to handle" by patti drew. i think it's a sign that it's time to dust off the ole gadonkadonk (i've got a chinese bootie, according to cherry). shake that thang, miss cana-cana....

recent epiphanies:
1) it's difficult to meet really cool, interesting people, especially after college.
2) i am a magnet for cliche-ridden guys.
3) when one person flakes, a chain of flaking materializes.
4) i look like jiminy cricket, which is just ironic since i have no conscience.
5) taboo is the new "it" game. fuck! one should never use "it" in quotes. very pretentious. FUCK! i just did it twice. dammit!

oh, and my doctor confirmed it today, for all you in doubt: "you've got a strong heart," he said, looking at the cardiogram. looking at your heart is a very surreal experience. i think you realize just how material you are--i mean, the body is just a bag of skin and bones. and this little muscle is the only thing that keeps that bag going. you realize that it doesn't matter how smart or witty you are, how attractive you are, if you're in love, or in agony, or depressed, or whatever. empirically, you are a mass of blood, water, skin, cells, whatever. and the heart runs the entire operation. and if that heart decides one day that it doesn't want to do that anymore, you're dead. and that's it. i tried to avoid any existential crisis while i stared at my heart pumping on the screen. in fact, it kind of looks like someone clapping in there, sort of funny. like i've got my own little in-studio audience in there, applauding me, egging me on. i should probably back up to why i was getting my chest felt up for a half an hour (not in the good way, you cheeky thing). i've got a musical heart, meaning i have a heart murmur. but i got a clean bill of health today; it's benign or "innocent." oh, but it's not that innocent, i told the doctor, ripping off my paper gown to reveal my red vinyl bodysuit. oops i did it again, i played with your heart, got lost in the game.... FUCK! this is the second time i've referenced that song in this blog, DEFINITELY not a good sign.

tony blair gets down to the darkness, shouldn't you?

i've been seeing a lot of movies lately, so i'll just summarize:
love, actually: you would need to have no heart at all to not say "awww!" at least once during this movie. i liked it a lot, but it's no four weddings or even bridget jones. such a date movie.
kill bill:loved it! but bring a barf bag if you have a delicate composition. great soundtrack.
runaway jury: yeah, this was a bad decision on my part, but freesia (or should i say....jokester?) suggested it. it was really predictable. i liked this movie the first four times i saw it, when it was called the firm, the client, the pelican brief, and the rainmaker.
bullets over broadway: very funny, john cusack plays against type, channels woody allen. "sex is economics!" supply and demand, i guess.
punch-drunk love: god, paul thomas anderson is a genius. so talented. i really liked this one. also liked that it wasn't half as long as magnolia, but still as good.

i saw matt gonzalez (sf mayoral candidate) at the bar last night!!! crazy shit. he was just sitting there talking to some blonde, and i was like "oh my god, is that matt gonzalez?!?" it was so cool! my friend wanted to challenge him to a game of pool, but i was too starstruck.

alright, that's all from here. over n out.

lisa's beginner's guide to nyc (for irene and all):

first, get a map. nyc is really easy--there's uptown (higher number streets) and downtown (lower number streets). streets go east to west (east streets are east of fifth ave., west streets are west of fifth ave.), avenues go north to south. avenue blocks are MUCH longer than street blocks, keep that in mind when planning your trips!!! make sure your subway map is up to date since they've made a lot of recent changes to subway lines.

bring good walking shoes, since you'll be doing lots of walking. also, bring your nicer clothes--everyone is really stylish and it's easy to feel like a grubby tourist everywhere you go. trust me, you won't look out of place in your nicer stuff.

not sure how long you're going to be there, but buying a subway day-pass (it might be called a funpass) is ALWAYS cheaper than buying individual rides.

things to def. do on your first trip to nyc:
museums:
-the met (be sure to see the temple of dendur, of "when harry met sally" fame); this place is really overwhelming, focus on what you want to see, you'll never hit it all
-the natural history museum is pretty nice, if you're into that stuff; if you're into modern art, go to the MOMA (it's in queens while the manhattan one is under renovation); the guggenheim is really cool (the building is a spiral), but expensive admission
-the lower east side tenement museum is off the beaten track, but i liked it. you get to tour actual tenements that they've renovated to look like how they were at the turn of the century. it's a good tour, you learn a lot about immigrants.

other tourist shit:
***must do***times square at night--will take your breath away. be like my friends who bought me one of those 100 sexual positions booklets for $1 there. go before 5 PM if you want to be on the street outside TRL (mtv studios are there, you can't miss it)
-central park--i like strawberry fields and the "imagine" mosaic (if you're a beatles fan); also check out "the mall" (pretty tree-lined walkway) and bethesda fountain (in lots of movies); lots of walking to be done in central park, don't go there if you're tired
-empire state building--i'm not a big views person, so i've never done this, but i've seen pics and it's very nice, though it looks really windy
-i'm not sure if you can go to the statue of liberty since 9/11. i think it's cool enough to see it from the ferry, instead of actually going up it. you can see it for free if you take the staten island ferry.
-chinatown--oh smelly chinatown. go and be with your peoples. shop for fake louis vuitton and kate spade purses on canal (good for gifts for friends back home), or get (my favorite) chinese slippers at pearl river mart (477 broadway), they have the best selection. also, canal is the place for fake rolexes and bootleg CDs and DVDs (the quality is usually pretty good). oh if you know chinese, haggle with them for lower prices, it works. chinatown is also the place you should buy all your souvenirs--you can buy 5 of those "i heart ny" shirts for like $5, and shotglasses, and everything is much cheaper in chinatown. EVERYTHING.
-rockefeller center--there's probably the ice skating rink and xmas tree up there by now. i've never seen it (never been in nyc in the winter), but i'm sure it's lovely. the nbc studio is nearby there, if you want to take the tour, it's pretty good, and also radio city hall is close for a photo op. while you're around there, i'd stop by the flagship h&m by there, i think it's on 55th, but you should double check (hm.com).
-south street seaport: shopping here is the usual chain stores (gap, jcrew, express, american eagle), but there's also a beautiful view of the brooklyn bridge (go at dusk, or at night, very romantic) if you go into the mall and find the patios at the back on the second or third floors. also eat a crab sandwich while you're there (see below).
-grand central station main hall--everything moves so fast!
-you'll probably want to do ground zero. i've never done it, it's a little too heavy for me, but you should go if you want to....

other famous movie/tv stuff:
-the seinfeld resturant is near columbia: broadway and 112th or so (you can look it up online), never ate there, i hear it's ok
-the when harry met sally "orgasm" scene was filmed in katz's deli (e. houston and ludlow st.), they've got great corned beef sanwiches, but PRICEY!

misc. hangouts:
-if you're into spoken word, the place to go is the nuyorican cafe in the east village. 236 e. third st. betw. ave. b and ave. c

shopping:
my favorite shopping stretch (not for the weak) is on broadway from around 21st ALL THE WAY DOWN to canal street. from 21st and broadway going downtown, you will pass jcrew (actually i think the jcrew is on 5th ave.), express, banana, nine west, express, victoria's secret, the strand bookstore (12th and broadway, the biggest used bookstore on earth, i swear), urban outfitters, virgin megastore in union square. below the virgin megastore, you'll hit the nyu area, where there are tons of shoe stores with good prices, a gap, a barnes and noble, nyu bookstore near washington square park. keep going until you get to houston (pronounced "house-ton"), and once you cross houston, you've entered soho, aka shopping heaven. if you stick on broadway, you'll hit zara, club monaco, dean and deluca (where's felicity?), more nine wests and victoria's secrets, the soho h&m, banana, old navy, steve madden, cute little boutiques, a cool store called yellow rat bastard. about h&m, my favorite one is probably the one at 34th street/herald square (i hear there are actually two there now). it's HUGE.
a funkier place for browsing used cds and funky accessories is st. mark's place. to get there, turn east when you see the gap on east 8th street and broadway, pass fourth and third aves, and you're there. you can eat at village mingala, a good burmese place while you're there (see below).

all this shopping is making me hungry! all these recommendations are cheap and good.
-ok you're tired and broke. get a hot dog special at gray's papaya (check online for locations). good cheap hot dogs.
-must have dunkin' donuts coffee, everyone drinks it there, and it's really good.
restaurants by area:
Union Square
Chat n' Chew: 10 e. 16th st., between union square and fifth ave., comfort food, good mac n cheese and coleslaw
Republic: on the west side of union square (37 union square west between 16th and 17th streets), a trendy, but only decent japanese noodle bar.
Yama: 122 E. 17th Street at Irving, this is the best sushi i've had in nyc

East Village/near NYU
Village Mingala--21 E. 7th st. between 2nd and 3rd aves, burmese food, get the mango salad as a starter, it's TO DIE FOR, noodle dishes and beef curry are also really good
Around the Clock--open all night, good food, typical american food cafe stuff
Veniero's--342 e. 11th street; old style dessert place, good cheesecakes, they close at midnight or 1 am on the weekends.
Dojo--24 st. mark's place between 2nd and 3rd aves., cheap cheap japanese food

West Village:
Moustache: middle eastern food, 90 bedford street, get the naan bread and ouzi, it's really good, very filling, share if you're not too hungry.

Near 34th Street/Herald Square:
Pongal: 110 Lexington Avenue, between east 27th and east 28th. good indian food, all vegetarian, the dosas are so good, they're big ass crepes filled with onions, rice, etc. whatever you want.

Chinatown:
Joe's Shanghai: 9 pell street, between bowery and mott. good dim sum, get the soup dumplings, so good. you'll probably share a table with other diners, it's popular with the tourists.
Nha Trang: 87 baxter street, get the steak cubes!!!!!!!!!!!!! vietnamese food, everything is good and cheap

South Street Seaport:
crab sandwiches at south street seaport, the best place is at this stall in the food court in the mall called "simply seafood". go to the top of the mall, it's at the end near the tables, get the soft shell crab sandwich with fries. SO GOOD. my mouth is watering right now.

new project for the rest of the month: writing my novel

intersections of life
23rd and clement
jackson and fillmore
eucalyptus drive
26th and taraval
irving and 7th
hearst avenue
haste between ellsworth and fulton
west 20th between 7th and 8th
116th and broadway
edgbaston road
rhode island and 17th
florida and 13th
amber drive
dartmouth street

people are always asking me for recommendations for cities i've lived in. new york city tops the list for most frequently asked questions, london comes in second, and san francisco a respectable third. i've become lisa.citysearch.com. i'm going to work on posting those recommendations here, so i don't have to keep re-writing the same email over and over.

i'm a city girl, always will be. i remember when lin waxed poetic about nature and scenery and foliage, i gave him the classic "what the fuck?" Lisa Look. lin is definitely a country mouse, god bless his pacific northwest-raised heart. i also don't understand the suburbs--i just don't understand them. it just doesn't process, you know? i can at least respect the mentality of people who come from places like the countryside, but not the suburbs. even the word itself indicates inferiority to the city: "sub-urban," meaning "below" or "lesser" urban. (note: for more on the origins of the san frnsiscan superiority complex, click here or here)

i have a ritual every time i move to a new city: i set a destination (usually a store or shopping district or museum), take a map, an umbrella, my walkman (tres 80s, i know), a bottle of water, and hit the streets. i like to explore the city on the first go by myself. i've got a pretty good sense of direction (and i'm the bomb parallel parker!....but i digress), and i don't like to be distracted by people who do not or who do not trust mine. plus i just like wandering around at my own pace, which is usually superfast. i'm a darty walker, as anyone who visited me in nyc can attest to.

i love love LOVE public transportation, especially subways and all their variations. taking public transportation and walking around the city by myself makes me feel like a native. there's also something so romantic (ho romantic-ahhh) about underground trains. all that confined space, close quarters, furtive glances. you can get a really good measure of the make-up of the city by the people who ride the subway. it's an awesome cross-section of people, without all the bourgeois riffraff who have cars.

i love the sound of cars whizzing by my window. i love the streetlights, i love the office buildings with inexplicable lights on late at night. i love the minimum wage workers who i ride the train with at 11 pm, on my way home, on their way to work. i love the pulsing, vibrating, throbbing intersections, seething with life during lunch hour. i love the fashion shows on the sidewalk. i love the food carts. i love times square, farragut square, trafalgar square, union square.

oh, and this is just for freesia:
freesia: whatever taiwan!
me: nice.
me: i don't think taiwan appreciates that...
freesia: yeah well..
freesia: what's taiwan done for me lately??

The New Choice
Shen later told a laden story: in 1998, APIRH conducted 12 focus groups with Asian and Pacific Islander women. "Many didn't know what 'pro-choice' meant. They didn't even know the political term was related to abortion. For whatever reason, the pro-choice movement did not connect to their lives," she recounted.

i like my men like i like my coffee: puerto rican!
gold star for first person who can identify what movie that quote is from (use the comments feature, people, it's there for a reason!).

i've been really into whiney boy music lately: gavin degraw, rufus wainwright, the shins. that sucks! guys need to fucking suck it up and be men. dammit. kidding, of course. i'm so not about machismo/patriarchy/male-domination/gender roles. but whining is really the last straw.

sometimes i see movies about artists/musicians/geniuses and i can't figure out how they are married and have children. how do these people have the time to cultivate a relationship and spend time with their families when their lives are so absorbed by their work? regan pointed out that people are just attracted to people who are intensely driven by something. i can definitely understand that; i think i've been there. but how do you separate the artist from the man? is it possible to do that? are they two different beings? can you stop yourself from falling into the trap of loving the artist instead of the man?

i guess it starts when you're young: you have crushes on celebrities, boy bands, teen tv stars. and then when you grow up a little, you want to find heroes. and then you actually start to meet heroes: people who are your age who are doing truly remarkable things. and they've got that thing, that fire inside, for lack of a better cliche. they're the most, the best, The (fill in the blank) that you've ever met. and you can't help but admire them.

maybe there's more than that. maybe there's that attraction, whether immediate or accumulated over time. you engage in passionate conversation, you see the spark in the person's eyes when discussing their life obsession, their voice elevates, they gesture with emotion. you see the flicker of worry on their face, unsure if they have overwhelmed you with things that they are immersed in at all moments of the day. you share your own ideas, passions, what makes you angry, what makes you laugh, your ambitions.

and there's this awesome moment that is difficult to catch, but so precious if you can notice it. you see the person integrating you into their schema of the world. you see them processing you as a whole person, bit by bit. of course they don't realize you are doing the exact same thing as well. but you are doing it too. and at that moment, you know there's going to be a lot more than this.

l.a. story
ever since i saw mulholland drive, i can't shake this creepy feeling whenever i visit l.a. there's just this kind of scary, sad, lonely, emptiness. it's like i keep expecting to see the man with the cowboy hat around the corner, or the little midget, or the scary nightclub singer, or *gasp,shiver* the blue box. and it's even worse because my past three visits have been in the winter, so there isn't even the nice weather to compensate for the eeriness. in fact, this time around it was cold as fuck.

nevertheless, i had a good time. we got in around 2 in the morning after a very fun ride down in regan's rickety oldsmobile. crystal and chris picked me up and we stayed up until 5 am catching up. saturday we met up with anne and went to the getty museum. the collection wasn't very spectacular, but the architecture was great. i wanted to do more cultural stuff this time around in l.a., since i realized that every time i've visited over the past four years, all i have done was shop and party like a rap star. there's nothing wrong with that, but i just feel like i don't know l.a. at all. anyways, that night we had dinner at a japanese curry place on sawtelle (thanks gloria), and then went to a bar called temple bar to see a really good hip hop band that a few of crystal's friends are in called ill again. we ended the night at sketchy's pad, watching 2 fast 2 furious, which, i'm sad to say, was not fast and i was the furious one for staying up to watch it instead of falling asleep like most of the others.

sunday we went to lacma (l.a. county museum of art), which has a really good collection of modern art. they had this funny exhibit on buddhism, and it felt like buddhism for dummies. there were these placards up, with like FAQs about buddhism: "what is the heart-mind?" "where is it?" "how big is the heart-mind?" that night we watched both the neverending story (i'm still traumatized from childhood) and shaolin soccer (so funny!). i think i made a comment about falcor being "so l.a." because he rocks the fur and the iridescent snakeskin at the same time. also, that pendant atreyu wears is pretty hot. accessories complete the outfit, right, carson?

monday regan picked me up, and we had lunch at this cute cafe in echo park, and i had a very l.a. sandwhich--brie and avocado. so good, but also so heavy. we then went to los feliz village and saw lost in translation. i think the jury is still out on this one. i did like it, but i'm not like mad jocking it, like a lot of other people. maybe i need to mull it over a little more. i think my main gripe is that the whole "japanese are quirky" thing got a little old, and that just wasn't that funny in the first place. i guess it's true that you have to leave your politics at the door when you watch movies or else you will never enjoy any movie. but yes the director did a great job of evoking a certain mood, and i think there are a lot of subtle moments, and it raises a lot of issues about the random nature of relationships and loneliness and solace.

goals for this week:
1) find a job (ha.)
2) begin attending yoga classes or a gym
3) finish reading "the namesake"
4) get a bunch of clothes hemmed/altered/tricked out by kindly chinese lady at neighborhood alterations shop/sweatshop

iTunes: lots of stuff by The Shins; "are you gonna be my girl?" by jet (i know they did a iPod commercial, but so?); "for you" by duncan sheik; "roses" (THE JAM!) and "she's alive" by outkast; anyone have the new rufus wainwright or new travis cds and want to burn me a copy??

i've never been idle in san francisco in october.

this didn't occur to me until today. i think it's because the full impact of daylight savings time has now hit the city. you switch the lights on around 5; you turn on your heater for the first time in seven months; you take out of storage the coat that you live in for the next five months; your face feels really cold when you're sleeping; you look longingly at your tank tops, skirts, and flip flops/chinese slippers (ha), sitting there so lonely in your drawer, and think of warmer times.

maybe the cold is just coming as a shock because we've had such a long and luxurious summer. my boss on my last job was trying to convince me that october really is the nicest month of the year in san francisco, and i guess he was right.

we used to have this paper skeleton door hanger that we put up on our door every halloween. his name was bones. my sister was particularly attached to him. i'm sure he's rotting away somewhere in the garage. my mom has always had a big thing for halloween: every year she buys enough candy for the entire sf unifed school district, which we proceed to eat well into the christmas season. she makes little goody bags for me, my sister, and our friends. and she loves pumpkins, especially the little mini ones. from where i'm sitting, i can spot five of them in a four-foot radius of me. my auntie's witch mask that traumatized me so when i was young in an incident i'd rather not talk about is lying on the couch, ready to scare more poor little five-year-old girls. sniffle.

anyways, enough with the nostalgia. i'm fleeing the weather and the freaks to go to l.a., for fires and some of my best friends from high school. i never return from l.a. without great stories and a renewed appreciation for home. see you in november.

Denny201 (3:46 AM): stanford boys are so replaceable aren't they
Denny201 (3:46 AM): like interchangeable parts

plants may not have brains, but at least they can take care of themselves
that is the title of a song i heard on the radio tonight, i kid you not!

instead of recapping what happened tonight and last friday night, i will refer you to both freesia and jaime's blogs, respectively.

i stayed in all day today and finished my first grad school app of this round of apps. feels decently good. i was pleasantly surprised that last year's personal statement required almost no editing. on the other hand, i spent hours and hours touching up my resume, debating the difference between "organized" and "managed" and whether i should spell out "United States" or just put "U.S." looking at the resume, i couldn't help but think: damn, i'd hire me. shoot. i've got a mad sexy resume, yo.

on a related note, my boss from this summer called me to follow up on the letter of recommendation he wrote for me. it was nice to talk to him. he was always very nice to margot and i, in an uncle-y sort of way, you know, supportive and caring, asking lots of good questions about your path in life, etc. he was always trying to steer us into law school, to which we politely nodded and smiled, even though neither of us intended to do that.

funny thing, though: tonight my mom said that she supported my decision to go to j-school, but was hoping that i would consider law school, and well, she continued, who knows, maybe i could do both? i was shocked, since i off-handedly mentioned law school just a few weeks ago (an idea i quickly abandoned), and i don't recall her jumping off her chair or anything. my mom is great because, in total atypical chinese mom style, she stays out of my decisions about my future and my sister's as well. sometimes i wonder what she really wanted me to be, but i know she's proud of what i've chosen to do. i know this because she and i have the same doctor, and the doctor tells me that my mom brags about my sister and i. aw shucks.

i know my dad is mad proud of me, too, because he thinks i'm really an artist at heart, like him. he has always pushed me to work more on my creative writing and move away from journalism, but i think i'm too chicken to do that. i think he's also down with me because he was an activist in the 1960s at city college, and he's happy to see me work on things like hardboiled because he's all about the people, too.

it's cool to have your parents be 100% behind anything you want to do. one less thing to worry about. i think they'd be alright if i told them i wanted to go back and get a degree in art history, or move to another country to work (for a year or so), or travel, or whatever. i've never had to stress about making them happy or getting them off my back or living up to their expectations. the only thing they've ever wanted was for my sister and i to be happy. and they really meant that, and not in the "we know what will make you happy, too" type of way either. my parents are pretty cool people.

at the risk of making this an obscenely long post, one more thing and i'm done. yesterday before i went out to meet kristin and freesia, my mom said to me, totally out of nowhere: "you never know, you might meet the man of your dreams tonight." i immediately replied that i had already met him. ah, my male readers, you're so vain, i bet you think this song is about you. and maybe it is. but my point is that i think i've met so many cool guys that it's highly likely that i've already met "the man of my dreams," although it's a concept that i don't really believe in anyways. i don't buy the lightning bolt, or the tingly feeling, or any type of immediate feeling of someone being The One. i also don't really have a laundry list of characteristics i look for in any ideal male prototype. i believe in connections (physical, emotional, intellectual, friendster) and in chemistry (thanks to bethany, summer '01). you just can't idealize or romanticize relationships. there is no empty pedestal in my life that i'm looking to fill with a guy. so why do i think i've already met this "man of my dreams"? i know a lot of guys who can be the "man of my dreams" for the night, or two weeks, two months, maybe even two years. and i'm pretty content with knowing just that fact. right now, that's enough for me.

per your request, i've added a comments feature. bring it, bitches!

agency

so there are the things you want to do and the things you don't want to do. but there are also the things you would do if you didn't have anything else better to do, and things you want to do, but suspect they won't be that fun per se. finally there are the things you don't want to do but feel like you should ("the veggies").

something that i have the biggest issue with is people telling me to do things. if you push me too much too quickly, it's an immediate no. i also don't give into guilt trips or whining. i'm also completely at the whim of how i feel the day of (even up to the hour of) the event, and if i don't feel like doing something, i usually don't do it. most of you know i'm not a big follow-through person.

but over time, i've come to believe in doing things that i don't want to do either for my own nebulous well-being or the tangible well-being of others. and most of the time these things have really paid off, gone beyond my expectations, and i ended up glad that i did them and proud of my good judgment.

lately, though, i haven't been enjoying my decisions, and now i'm just resentful at myself for doing things that i didn't want to do in the first place. maybe the pay off will come later. but for now i'm doubtful of anything that i have even remote reservations about. i'm taking my life back!

yeah right.

nobody broke your heart

on my drive home last night, i heard a beautiful song on the radio. it sounded like elliott smith, and the kid on the radio confirmed my guess. the song was called "alameda," and i went home immediately and downloaded it. man, i thought, i forgot how much i like his music. i should dig out those old albums...

i have to admit that i first heard his music from good will hunting, not exactly "i knew him before..." stuff, whatever that bullshit is. i think it was that last song in the movie that got me. it was the perfect accompaniment to that final shot, the back of a car driving, presumably, towards california and love (how ironic). i went out that week and bought the soundtrack, and it was simply beautiful. always been one of those cds i can just put on and listen to over and over. the songs were simple and sad; a man, his guitar, and a haunting, delicate voice. his stories were of heartbreak, disappointment, disillusionment, pain, and the temporary solace that alcohol and drugs bring. they were the songs that made me want to crawl into bed and under the covers and cry myself to sleep on cold rainy nights.

today was a warm windless day in san francisco, one of those rare days when you can leave the house without a sweater. and they say it's supposed to be sunny all weekend.

somehow, there's something to look forward to.

praha
And if they come for him, then this is how he wishes to be taken, from her arms, from this narrow little bed, which can scarcely bear the weight of the two of them ... Her hands are everywhere, her mouth is everywhere, their clothes, emptied, collapsed in a useless pile--let the Russians have them. Though they never left their beloved little apartment, they have made their successful escape, he and his wife with the beautiful pianist's hands and the hoarse voice and the soft day-old stubble on the top of her shaven head and the acquired taste of that tremendous jaw. His beautiful, brave wife: She would not choose to be anywhere else but here making love with him; she would choose a city under attack with him over any safe paradise that lacked him. And the list they have spent so many hours making, let it go, let the Russians burn it or eat it or give it to shrugging, stymied cryptologists. There is no frontier to cross that they cannot cross right here and now as their bodies merge--his and his wife's--as they close so tightly that there is no longer a clear distinction where one begins and the other ends; a fusion has occurred, as it does every time they are together; parts are exchanged, and no one finishes quite the same as they began. So let them have her piano, her easels and canvases and darkroom, all her secret papers from the embassy--the hell with all that.

god so after two months i finally finished prague. and in celebration, i'm going to relate a memory from my travels there a year and a half ago:

prague was the last weekend jaunt i took before i returned home from my year abroad, so it must have been around may 2002. biff, who was also studying abroad for a quarter, graciously offered to put me up for a few days, even though she was in the middle of finals. she was late to meet me at the airport (she accidentally got off the bus in front of a bar that had a sign that looked like a plane in front, which was nowhere near the airport), and i panicked because, well, i was by myself, it was late at night, and she wasn't answering her cell phone (i found out later she had lost it). by then, i knew that in travelling alone, everything that can go wrong will go wrong (i.e. VENICE, *shudder*). but she got there eventually, and we took a bus to the underground and went back to the converted hotel in the middle of the city where her program was housed. her place was beautiful--orange walls and french windows, and so clean.

biff was a great hostess, probably the best one i know. even though she had to go to classes during the day, she left me a key, her map, and detailed instructions on how to get to interesting places. i went to the old jewish quarter, the castle, the charles bridge. i wandered the city during the day and met up with her after her classes. biff is of ukranian descent, but apparently czech language is nothing like russian, so the language was just as intimidating for her as it was for me. it was great to have a guide who was familiar with the city and its history, especially its communist history. i was completely fascinated with it--i didn't exactly learn about life under communist rule in 10th grade history class. it was something totally unknown to or even hidden from me as an american. she showed me the old communist headquarters, dark and imposing. she showed me the communist housing ghetto, in the distance, a group of stern-looking blocks of concrete that reminded me of the sf state dorms. she pointed out the irony of the newly opened museum of communism being located next to a mcdonalds. she took me to frank gehry's beautiful "fred and ginger" building. we hiked up a hill and over a couple voraciously making out to a see great view of the river. the sun was out, and to me, coming from britain, it seemed as if i hadn't felt the sun in years.

biff's friends (all from the claremont colleges) were incredibly nice, if only a tad too american. we spent a good amount of time with them at night. we went out one night to a nice restaurant for her friends' birthday and then to a cavernous wine bar. i remember having a conversation with one of her friends from south carolina who hadn't met a black person until college. we ate a goulash dinner one night, and i remember being so ashamed that i could barely eat half of it. the prague beer was really strong and dark--i felt like it was putting hair on my chest. we had a bagel breakfast one morning at a great coffee shop, and she showed me the american ex-pat newspaper, the pill. until then, i never knew how many americans had defected to prague. biff told me about how the czechs resented the americans who flocked to their city to spend their dollars, which bought lots of czech crowns (i don't think the czech republic has the euro).

for some reason, my strongest memory of prague was at the airport right before i left. i tried to spend all my crowns before leaving, so i wouldn't have any left over, but when i got to the airport, i realized that i didn't have enough money for a proper lunch. unfortunately, i was also famished. i remember wandering the cafeteria, wondering how i was going to fill myself on the tiny amount i had. i ended up with a shriveled sausage and a soda. i don't know why i still remember that every now and then.

no romantic fling, no raucous partying, just a great time in a beautiful city.

untitled
saturday i pulled myself out of bed around 10:30 am (quite a feat) to go to berkeley to see michael moore speak at the greek. my friend imad from cal in the capital was supposed to have taken care of my ticket for me, but when i got there, it seems he thought i was getting my ticket from cherry. he ended up scoring an extra ticket from, ironically enough, a pasty republican ASUC senator. so, thanks, paul.

the greek was PACKED; in fact, sold out, and i've never seen it sold out before. it was a hot day in berkeley, and we were sitting in the sun, sweaty body next to sweaty body. moore made us all wait for about 45 minutes longer than expected, and in the meantime, the people i was sitting with started the short-lived wave that went around the stadium. that was a highlight. i have some problems with moore as a lecturer. he's a decent filmmaker, i guess, but a propagandist. he uses his statistics without citation and from questionable sources. he likes to vilify people instead of institutions. he spent a little too long talking about the presidential candidates. he borders on mediocre stand-up comedy at times. but he really can rouse the rabble, and they were indeed roused on saturday afternoon. berkeley folk love michael moore, and they cheered his every word. i did like his spiel on abortion, something to the effect of: "saying 'i am personally pro-life' is like saying 'i am personally pro-pigs flying' because i will never get pregnant and i will never have an abortion and so all men should really shut the fuck up about it." i couldn't agree moore (bah-dum-bum).

i left the show and returned to my car to find a nice parking ticket. yes, folks, two parking tickets in one week. this is why i hate having a car. the sign said "2 hour parking, saturdays and sundays excluded" so i thought i was fine. but it was also a yellow zone, so i guess yellow overrides all other signs. boo! i dejectedly drove back over the bridge and comiserated about my parking troubles at home. if anyone has any money to spare (these tickets are NOT cheap), send checks to the lisa parking fund.

i also had two similar conversations with lin and dennis, and i have to say that yesterday was a sad day for guys. they get screwed over by girls every day, and i know i do nothing personally to further their cause. yes, girls can be completely frustrating, and hypocritical, and vague, and emotionally fucked, and they screw with your head, saying one thing one day and another the next. and oh the games. you never really know what their agenda is. i know this, and i can't really give advice about it because each girl has a different agenda, and she keeps it carefully hidden. it's not like a code that only be deciphered by other girls; it can never be deciphered. in fact, the agenda is rarely known or acknowledged fully by the girl herself. it's a little easier if you get a girl who's upfront and forthcoming about things, but still, you never know. that's the best advice i can give to guys--you NEVER know what a girl is thinking, even when you THINK you do. even if they act a certain way, or say something, or, say, write something in their blog, you never really know if it's true, if that's what they really feel. don't rationalize it out, like "oh, well, she has no reason to lie." girls don't need a reason to lie. they do it just for freaking fun. i feel like girls who read this blog are going to give me shit for saying this. but i mean, is it really false?!?

ok. anyway. last night biff and i went to oakland to see the coup and crown city rockers play a benefit concert (yes, i was in the east bay three times in two days). it was a totally awesome show, and i heartily encourage all to peep both bands. it's hip hop, people. good stuff. we came back to sf and had a great late-night snack at mel's on geary, talking about our dream jobs, grad school, the difficulties of leaving san francisco, and woody allen's older work vs. his newer work.

this week bodes more spurts of running about intercut with spurts of slacking. l.a. trip has been confirmed: oct. 31-nov. 4, foos.

lend me some sugar, i am your neighbor!
it's been an exciting few nights in the bay. last night i went to popscene with biff and her pomona friends. i have never been to popscene before; no, i never went in high school. for all you not in the know, popscene is one of the only 18+ clubs in sf (the other is club platinum). the music is brit pop/indie rock/80s, and the scene is mod/emo/underage. we took swigs of gin in the parking lot next to the club before going in. i was told the dress was "mod," so i was there in my black eyeliner and nude lips. unfortunately, most of the crowd was emo-punk-kelly-osborne, so i felt a little out. but once they played "date with the night" by the yyys, and we hotboxed aaron's car, i knew everything would be allllright. the music's pretty good, but the cure can be hard to dance to, you know? but it's a fun spot, in a sort of tongue-in-cheek-high-school-prom sort of way. "pretty in pink" was playing on the tvs in the club, so that added to the mood.

today was a beautiful warm sunny day and freesia and i made our way over to berkeley and then wasted some time at bay street, aka the bougie-est mall in the bay. i mean damn. came back home for friday pizza night, and watched some felicity season 1 on dvd. watching felicity is actually really painful--it's like going back in time to senior year high school, and re-living all those awkward emotions. it reminds me so much of myself then, when i was totally absorbed in my emotions, and acted on them completely, making myself look ridiculous. and would i have gone to college just for a boy? yes. even the way she dresses hits a nerve--i remember how i dressed out of high school, and it makes me a little embarrassed. i was so self-conscious and awkward and nervous and overwhelmed. it's not a time i love to re-live, but at least i know that felicity becomes more poised, self-assured, and mature over the years. hopefully i'll get there someday, too. ;)

sorry for that digression. anyways, so three felicity episodes later, frees and i went to the mission (biff: "the mish") to meet ali, kristin, marisa, and some davis folk at a bar called skylark. it seems cool, except it was hot as HELL on the dance floor in the back--sweaty, humid, blech. but they played my jam (seed v. 2.0), so i was happy. ali and the crew went back to her car to sip on e&j, but frees and i said "payce" and cut out. so here i am.

pretty packed schedule this weekend. does it ever end? where's the lisa time?!

mumblings of the bot!

xSgtMeatx (11:01 PM): i mean
xSgtMeatx (11:01 PM): wonderful
xSgtMeatx (11:01 PM): i mean tendency
xSgtMeatx (11:01 PM): ok do you don't
xSgtMeatx (11:01 PM): i mean so
xSgtMeatx (11:01 PM): sorry ic na't function

blogspot's kinda freaking out on me tonight, so i hope this goes through.

today was the kind of day that is representative of a larger theme of my life: being irresponsible. i don't think i was always this irresponsible. in fact, i was pretty damn responsible in high school, driving my friends home, calling when i was going to be home late, not drinking and driving, always taking the proper precautions, etc. somewhere in the last 3-5 years, however, i've abandoned much of that former, more responsible self. i thought growing older meant becoming more responsible, not less.

nowadays, i'm a child, quite the spoiled brat. i wake up really late, and can't be bothered to get up to answer the phone/doorbell, even when it's an old friend calling to meet up for coffee while she's visiting the bay or to sign for a package (second attempt now). i drink till i puke. i drive drunk. i run red lights. i flake on people all the time. i arrive late to all appointments. i run up $200 phone bills on my cell phone. i tell people i'll do things for them, and never follow through. i write nasty emails and carelessly send them to the person i'm writing about. and let's not even get started on guys.

so i guess it shouldn't have been to my surprise today that i got a $50 parking ticket for parking in a truck-only loading zone. it was just for ten minutes to run into urban to exchange something. i run up to the metermaid, but it was already done. strangely, i wasn't that pissed off. i think maybe deep down, i know i deserve it, and more. i'm an irresponsible person, and i don't get what i deserve often enough. in fact, i skate by on a lot, mostly luck and the tolerance of others. and i know it. margot would call this "youngest child syndrome" -- i know how far i can push people, and i take advantage of this. i'm used to people forgiving me for my faults. it takes a lot to make me feel guilty, and it's not helping that one of the stanford boys convinced me that guilt is a useless emotion. dc definitely enhanced my irresponsible tendencies by pairing me with some of the most tolerant and caring people on earth, bless their hearts. but now i'm on a fucking downward spiral. somebody stop me. hold me accountable. make me keep my word. be angry at me when i don't. make me show up to things on time. tell me when you think i'm trying to do too much at once. remind me that i can't make everyone happy and it's ok to say "no" to some things sometimes. remind me of past consequences. help.

it's not a 'superiority conflict' when we know we're better
email from biff (keep those recall jokes comin!):

Hey dude,

nice article, thanks for passing it on. I can dig "Sco" but never "Frisco" although the etymology bit was pretty cool. i kind of want to get a sweatshirt with a district name on it, but not anything as unhip as "Mission", "Fillmore" or "Sunset" . If you are a true Sanfrsiscan you would call these places "Tha 'Mish", "Da 'Mo" and "the 'Set". But honestly, I think that we SFers are just getting too hip for even ourselves. I think it's time to take this superiortity conflict a bit further and just secede. We could even have our own governor. That was too easy, I recall that last joke.

ah, libertad
back to the 2am-12pm sleep cycle. but i've been keeping busy. friday i peeled myself away from the iBook to go to berkeley to pick up my diploma and order some transcripts. i have to admit i did get a little excited seeing my name there with my degree and stuff. it's a big achievement, man. i was also relieved that gray davis' signature was on there, and not arnold's. glad i got out when i did. then i came back to sf and got de-briefed (kimi: "haaay!") with the steering committee of the campaign.

saturday i hung out with kimi at stonestown for a little bit, and we ran into the better luck tomorrow cast. we happened to be walking into borders as they were being escorted out before their dvd signing session. it was ben, stephanie, and daric (i don't know their real names). ben is short, i didn't really get a look at stephanie (sorry, guys), and daric seemed skinnier. later that night i watched about schmidt with biff and kimi, and then went to a bar in japantown for a fundraiser with some folks from the campaign.

sunday was a beautiful day again, and i went to orinda with biff and reagan for a pool party. the house was absolutely beautiful, like mtv cribs, but even nicer than some of those houses. the weather was perfect, and the company (pomona folk) was fun.

getting grad school apps. ready for next semester. trying to set up a trip to LA around halloween, i'll be in touch with you socal fools.

recent downloads: "get by," talib kweli, "danger," erykah badu, "hands down," dashboard confessional (don't clown!), "lady don't tek no," lyrics born

forrealtho
"There is no shortage of Asian-American women who don't mind going on camera and engaging in sex, showing their faces and bodies," Hamamoto says. "You'd think there would be tons of Asian-American men who'd want to do this. What it comes down to is [Asian-American males] don't want to represent. If they continue to do that, they deserve all the shit they get" from stereotyping.

Rad Nar!
Saw Lyrics Born with the Quannum Collective at Bimbo's tonight--great show, but the Slim's one in early-mid-2002 (can't remember) was better. Joyo Velarde is freaking cool (pinays, what?), and LB is always makes things fun. DJ Shadow made a small cameo at the end, but I don't think he was even spinning. DJ Shadow is elusive to me--I did see him open for Underworld back in 1999 (2000?) at Bill Graham, but I'll never forget going all the way out to Manchester from Birmingham in 2001 just to see the fool and finding out the show was sold out. The Brits and Europeos in general love underground hip hop, and they got mad love for Shadow. I was a little disappointed that he only did one of his old classics (Lady Don't Tek No), but it was my favorite LB song. Gift of Gab did Alphabet Aerobics (you missed out Frees). Graduating from college is great cuz I get to go to concerts whenever the fuck I want to.

It was the type of show where I loved being in SF and being from SF, the best city in the world. I think I love SF most when I'm driving up Columbus through North Beach facing the TransAmerica Pyramid, past all the little Italian cafes and bars. Or when I'm driving down Market near Freesia's house and there's that curve and you can see all of downtown in one beautiful panorama. Or driving down one of those hills with the cable car tracks (powell?) towards the Bay, with Alcatraz right in front there. For being born and raised here, I am still a sucker for the typical tourist shit.

Watched Love and Basketball today with the F. It was eh. I don't know why everyone loves it so much. Then I went over to Frees' and we had a tee-shirt deconstruction/reconstruction/tricking-out partay while listening to Dashboard Confessional (I know, I know, I've sold out to emo). Fuck Harry Potter 2! Hella boring, I fell asleep each of the two times we attempted watching it. Freesia's got a crush on Ron, so she stayed awake.

God, I really hate AIM. I feel like a lot of people are going through a hate AIM and hate Friendster period. I'm definitely there.

Recap on the last few days:
Tuesday we won the election and defeated Prop. 54. I went to the victory parties, had four drinks (magic number again!), and felt really happy.
Wednesday I went to my new doctor and got scolded for answering in the negative to the question "Do you exercise?" Also found out I lost about 5 pounds in the past month. To celebrate/lament this, I spent $86 at Crossroads, and solidified my title as Label Whore by buying a pair of Paper Denim and Cloth jeans. Went to lunch with Frees at King of Thai, got Rad Nar (rock on!) coma, and took a nap with Falcor on Frees' bed. Oh, Falkie...

From this month's Teen People (i get a free subscription, alright??): "Georgia Faust got literary with an Eminem bio (page 56): 'I don't normally read biographies, but this one was really cool. I also love The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.'"

anonymous email excerpt
"There was no catfight. Bryan and his gf went off on their own. Julie, Andrew, and I went to their place (Andrew & bryan’s) and just hung out for awhile. Then bryan came with her and they went upstairs to have sex—end of story."

parlay?
on friday night i went straight from work to 26 mix to celebrate my sister's birthday. yes i was at work until 11 PM. luckily there was no dress code, and i wasn't dressed grubby, so i could just go straight. met up with kris and frees, and then jaime rolled through with her friends. it was cool to talk to my sis' friends; they're a strange bunch. lots of screechy girls and mellow guys. one of my sister's friends said that he expected me to be exactly like laurie, but i'm totally different from her, namely i'm much more sarcastic (my sister has no comebacks, can you imagine...). another friend of laurie's said i'm a total soap opera. that is more than partly true, and i have said it myself in recent months. anyways, it was a pretty good night, since i had four drinks (magic number), the last one was a henney shot (oh, memories), and i only had to pay for one of them (haaay). the thing about older guys (i.e. guys with jobs) is that they are very liberal with their money at the bar. can't hate on that!

saturday i got up early to supervise a precinct walk for the campaign in the sunset. i was nervous about having all the responsibility, but it went really well. after the precinct walk, i had to go into work, but i ran into hella traffic downtown, which made me all pissy. went into work for a few hours, picked up freesia, and went over to berkeley to see theatre rice. met up with alice, jaime, and tommie. we didn't get in until the second act. it was alright: better luck tomorrow the musical was hilarious! then we went to a co-op party where i met up with some old hb folk. many tiny dixie cups of spiked lemonade, a mojito, a pot cookie, a few pot brownies, and a sour apple shot later, we were all ready to go to the theatre rice party to cause a hardboiled ruckus, but when we got there the cops pulled up to shut it down. too bad.

one more day before the election! then back to sitting on my ass.
anyone want to see lyrics born/quannum collective with me at bimbo's on thursday??

new trends for fall:
-newsboy caps: something about newsboy caps make guys look a lot better. note this does not mean that it will make all guys magically cute. but it will definitely accentuate the pre-existingly cute guys.
-JAs: And you thought you got over J-league guys. don't call it a comeback.
-older guys/law school guys: climbing the charts, but it is TBD if i'll be jumping on that bandwagon. at least they're not business school guys?

iTunes: "caravan," blur

sDobraDo (11:35 PM): it's not fair
lisa n da sky (11:35 PM): that she has shingles and you don't?
sDobraDo (11:35 PM): EXACTLY

iTunes: Dido, "White Flag", Nico, "These Days," Beyonce, "Baby Boy," The Beatles, "Sexy Sadie," Radiohead, "No Surprises," Bright Eyes, "Katie Come True"

DC Nostalgia: waking up to the latest headlines on the radio, coffee breaks with bot, georgetown shuttle to go shopping, wild thang's tennis ball on his rearview mirror, coming home to 801 after a tough day, crawling into bed, taking a long, satisfying nap, waking up and gossiping with alice and jaime or calling lin and rj to come over.

my family's really been getting on my nerves lately. more specifically, my mom and sister. i'm not asking for sympathy from them, but after a 12 hour day of hard work, all i want is to either be left alone or treated cordially at least. yes, they've both had tough days at work too. but have they worked for 12 grueling hours for no pay? at least my friends allow me to bitch. my family won't even give me that. i stared at precinct numbers, cross-checking a list of them with phone lists for a large part of the day until i got a headache. i had no lunch today, just some chips and half of my boss' burger king chicken sandwhich. i fought with the fax machine and the copier. i came home to find that the rebate for my phone can't be processed because they didn't receive my proof of purchase with it, although i'm sure i sent it in, and of course i didn't make a copy of it before sending it in. my sister always wants to use the internet "for two minutes." my mom won't let me change the channel from cheesy romantic comedies/giants game/the wb. my dad can't drive me to the BART station tomorrow because xyz. my mom lectures me about "being a little nicer" and also "helping out more around the house." i wake up the next morning and my sister's hair is all over the shower. she's taken the salad i specifically told her i wanted for lunch the night before. at the office, no one's made coffee by the time i get there, and i've never been able to make a satisfying pot. my boss is sick and i'm in charge of work for all the other interns, who can't seem to keep up.

every day, i feel like the city's sucking the life away from me a little at a time. i need to get out of here. fast.

LilBadUpdate
tuesday: radiohead
straining to see, blocked view, tiny thom, great music, lost car in parking lot, frustrating traffic out of concert. i hate shoreline, but always forget when buying tickets to see awesome bands. cemented my disgust with the south bay. got last DC cell phone bill -- why didn't anyone stop me??
friday: free time?!
actually got off work at a decent time, albeit still late to meet up with frees. did a little shopping downtown before having an entertaining dinner with my parents and frees. came home to eat cake and ice cream and finish watching "east is east." i fancy movies about diaspora.
saturday: zoom zoom
woke up early to go precinct walking in the richmond district. crappy coffee at chinese bakery with a faulty lid. decent dim sum breakfast. walking richmond hills, sticking flyers on doorsteps. the fog cooled the sweat worked up. covered a precinct, then rushed over to lake merced to give stuff to a volunteer at dragon boat festival, braving 19th avenue traffic. rushed back to 6th and clement to face pushy chinese grocery shoppers and bad drivers. deep breathing exercises at stoplights to calm myself down. zen-ed out at green apple, browsing the great new books sale. bought hemingway and fanon, dirt cheap. went to frees' to watch harry potter 2 and play with falcor. went home, ate mom's wine-marinated chicken ("who needs the chicken?"). went to apature in soma really late with good sports kat and frees. almost hit a car, not paying enough attention on the road because of all the stress. tried halfheartedly to sign up volunteers for the campaign, luring them with free drinks. ran into a bunch of hardboiled folks, past and current. finally able to procure some truly non-campaign-related-time, so went to biff's party to let the stress go. sangria, floating fruit, reese's pieces, parliaments, tortilla chips, biff's puzzling skirt, party fouls, good vibrations stories, stanford virgins.
sunday: like a chicken with its head cut off
more running around like crazy. woken up at 11:30 by volunteer. rushed down to civic center to drop off a card table, signs, etc. for the anti-war rally. drove around looking for a parking space, running smack into matinee opera traffic. finally scored a space in the TL. browsed the tables at the rally, tried not to get suckered into a $15 tee shirt. had to escape the mass of people, so ambled over to sf centre (the irony is not lost on me). went to office to set-up for phonebank tonight. one of the volunteers said we went to middle school together, but i didn't recognize her at all, still don't know who she is. walked back to my car, swung by civic center, loaded my car with the table, etc, prepared to go home to sit on the new couch and read, but hit maddening folsom st. fair traffic. finally got to relax with prague by arthur phillips after dinner at the grammy's. too tired to read more than 10 pages. it's only 11:45, but cannot hold eyes open another second. this week only gets more fun, since it's the week before the election. so be nice to me if you talk to me.

haters from the sucka-free city
freestyln2 (12:18 AM): please don't ever call it paly again
lisa n da sky (12:18 AM): lol
lisa n da sky (12:18 AM): why not?
lisa n da sky (12:18 AM): mr. kandell called it that too
lisa n da sky (12:18 AM): ummmm i think i just answered my own question
lisa n da sky (12:18 AM): haha
freestyln2 (12:19 AM): cuz palo alto is not even close to being cool enough for that kind of nickname
lisa n da sky (12:19 AM): YES! that's so true!!!
lisa n da sky (12:20 AM): but writing palo alto takes so long
lisa n da sky (12:21 AM): i could save up that time and go to the beach
freestyln2 (12:21 AM): true
freestyln2 (12:21 AM): but not "paly"
freestyln2 (12:21 AM): something else
freestyln2 (12:21 AM): something like... wacktown
lisa n da sky (12:21 AM): how about
lisa n da sky (12:21 AM): yeah seriously
freestyln2 (12:21 AM): although i suppose that isn't any shorter either
lisa n da sky (12:21 AM): i was gonna say "palosucks"
lisa n da sky (12:21 AM): but yours was better
freestyln2 (12:21 AM): or crappy alot
lisa n da sky (12:21 AM): lol
lisa n da sky (12:22 AM): palo shitty-o
lisa n da sky (12:22 AM): ok let's stop
freestyln2 (12:22 AM): lol
lisa n da sky (12:22 AM): wait did you mean crappy alot? or crappy alto?
lisa n da sky (12:22 AM): both are applicable
lisa n da sky (12:22 AM): i was just wondering

aw shucks
jaime, your post was so nice. i thought i'd return the favor. i think i'm so freakin lucky to be able to hang out with folks from DC back here. it's cool how we can capture some small part of DC life when we get together. about friday night: don't even trip, since i was really high and couldn't have drove down to palo alto anyway. i went home and totally crashed. we'll work the "hot berkeley chick" thing down in stanford some other time. yeah, it was too bad rawhide sucked. reminded me of that time at Home in DC, except without alice puking (HA!). p.s., there aint nothin wrong with younger guys, man. equal opportunity...

this weekend was so hectic. friday night i escaped from work to see the yeah yeah yeahs at bimbos with some friends from cal. karen o kicks ass. she's my new idol. move over felicity...

saturday morning i went to the immigrant workers freedom ride rally in civic center to promote no on prop. 54. that was pretty cool, gray davis was there. when he said that he had just put dolores huerta on the uc board of regents, i completely thought he was joking, and laughed out loud. wtf? after that, freesia and i went to the beach at crissy field for few hours of vitamin d. i love indian summer. we came home and watched that salma hayek movie frida. didn't love it as much as i thought i would. damn she's got huge boobs. after that, we got all hooched up and rolled out to aforementioned rawhide, in soma. there was an ok sized crowd there, but almost no one was dancing, and the dj was horrible (milli vanilli!). i felt bad cuz i got a gang of friends from hs to come out and pay the $10 cover. oh well.

sunday was a scorcher, so freesia and i went to ocean beach for a little to lay out, and then i went with cherry to the polk street festival. it was already over by the time we got there, but we still bought some cute jewelry (isn't that all street fairs are good for?!). cherry also dragged me into good vibrations, this famous sex shop, and then proceeded to clown me when i wouldn't touch the dildos. i've got limits, yo. we actually looked for that rabbit dildo from sex and the city fame, but couldn't find it. afterwards, i speedracered it down to palo alto to hang with my favorite cohorts of the APA intelligentsia at stanford. i've decided i fucking hate the south bay. the drive down there made me mad sleepy, and it's really boring on 280. it really is the armpit of the bay area. hanging out with owen never changes much (chain-smoking and hours of navel-gazing) but it was a good time with him and the vanguard of apa grassroots organizing.

DAMN! jaime just told me we missed family day. we were planning to have an 801 family dinner tonight. damn.

time for bed. zzzzzz. sorry this entry was a bit diary-like. i'll try harder next time.

oh, dalai lama...


During his current tour of the United States, the Dalai Lama has confirmed his status as the world's No. 1 feel-good guru, reaching across boundaries of culture and religion. Who could fail to admire a spiritual leader who, fresh from meeting President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, tells Harvard students to spend less time on their studies and more on becoming nice people, and makes them laugh by telling how he hit a parrot with a stick when he was "a young, naughty Dalai Lama?"

there is no modern romance
haven't had much time for "reflection" lately. things are mad hectic, i work 11 hour days, and when i come home i just eat dinner, chat for a little, have one meaningful conversation with whoever happens to call me that night, and then crash. quite a change of pace from the past three weeks of waking up at noon and hanging out with frees all day.

some stuff going through my mind:
-i've been shaking the creases out of my DC work clothes for the past week. oh, i've missed thee. but sf is still too casual to wear my work shoes.
-this whole east coast hurricane thing has got me thinking about what we'd be doing in DC if we were all there now. i envision something like all of us holed up in 1327 or 801, and what else? getting faded and partying. also, for those of you actually on the east coast, fyi, no one here cares! i mentioned it to three people and none of them knew what i was talking about. the big news here is the recall postponement and THE GIANTS.
-i was in berkeley on tuesday and it was pretty annoying. first, i was like three people away from getting into the connerly debate (which he didn't even show up to). then we went to henry's and it took us 45 minutes NO JOKE to get drinks. how annoying.
-i saw "thirteen" with biff on sunday night. let's just say it's not the feelgood movie of the summer. but it did remind me of those awkward, angry teenage years. i don't think i've managed to shake the angry thing yet, and, i'm sure some would argue, the awkward part, either. it's a really powerful film, and the acting is superb. it made me glad i'm not a teen anymore, though.
-i love college radio!!!

that's it for now. like i said, haven't had enough time for "reflection."

oh one more thing. i was reading something that said that exploring a new city is like falling in love: scary, exciting, intimidating, full of adventure. it's a good analogy. maybe that explains the bad case of wanderlust. travelling is a piece of cake compared to love.

last thing! i'm going to see the yeah yeah yeahs tomorrow. thanks to christine and almost every other friend for setting me straight. i'm going to make karen o proud.

"i thought of you today when everyone was all pissed at me."

thanks, j.

oh, i've got a new gig, too. full-time, unpaid, hardest i've ever worked in my life.

this was an actual conversation from dinner tonight at grammy's house:

aunt karen: "so laurie, how far into that book are you?"
laurie: "i'm on like page 8."
aunt karen: "really? you are a slow reader."
laurie: "i only read a little bit before i go to bed!"
aunt karen: "hmm well you've had it for a week now....so that means you read about a page a day?"

another conversation between my uncle and aunt, about my grammy:
uncle randy, to my grammy: "you could use some teeth whitening."
aunt karen: "nah she's too old. old people have no use for white teeth."

yes, harshness runs in my family, esp. on the chinese side!

lisa n da sky (12:26 AM): damn what am i gonna wear
lisa n da sky (12:26 AM): ?!?
itz just j a i (12:26 AM): time to shop!
itz just j a i (12:26 AM): something sexy and hoochie
itz just j a i (12:26 AM): you know, usual lisa outfits

captApHAB (7:30 PM): what going on with the govt. job you've got lined up
lisa n da sky (7:31 PM): i haven't contacted my boss yet, but i will
lisa n da sky (7:31 PM): i wasn't sure if i should call, email, or just send my resume
lisa n da sky (7:32 PM): what do you think?
captApHAB (7:32 PM): i would call
captApHAB (7:32 PM): since you already know the person
lisa n da sky (7:32 PM): what should i say?
lisa n da sky (7:32 PM): i'm thinking of sending her an email
captApHAB (7:32 PM): you didn't already discuss the potential job?
lisa n da sky (7:32 PM): i did.
lisa n da sky (7:33 PM): but i don't know how to say "what's up with my job, yo?"
captApHAB (7:33 PM): just leave out the yo and you'll be okay
captApHAB (7:33 PM): but start with dude

it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me
i've just dusted off about a fifth of a pint of ben and jerry's cherry garcia after a "men are from mars, women run from penis" session with dave. it's one of those talks with a member of the opposite sex (pun intended!) after which you feel like you've rubbed your eyes and looked upon your relationship history with a complete comprehension of it. it all makes sense now! all the misunderstandings, seemingly mixed signals, definitely mixed feelings. all the crawling under bedcovers and wishing it was all gone once you re-emerged. all the interpreting and re-interpreting words, phrases, motions, actions, non-actions.

and none of it was anything i hadn't heard before. i guess it's just that every once in a while you need a guy to remind you. cuz you sure as hell don't believe it when a girl says it.

so here it goes, ladies, even though i know you won't listen to me when i write it. i don't want to repost the entire conversation here, so this is the essence: guys think with their little head 98% of the time. girls, however, misinterpret the thoughts of this little head to be the thoughts of the man's bigger head, or more likely, his heart. this is a mistake made by both naive, trusting, romantic 13-year-old teenage girls and cynical, surly, sarcastic 22--going-on-23 women alike. i'm sure this is the kind of mistake one could conceivably make for one's entire life. nice guys, shady guys -- they're all the same, see, because they all have a little head. the "nice" guys just try harder to disguise the fact that they think with it. but do not misunderstand: they think with it just as much as "shady" guys do.

so, see? i've cracked the code of how men work. i mean, i'm sure this is just a way to put the blame on men for my misfortunes instead of on my own fears of commitment, relationship neuroses, and *gasp* the omnipresent anxiety that my personality and looks just aren't sparkling enough for slightly above average guys.

but, fuck it. i'm feeling good.

another priceless gem from the superlative SFGate Morning Fix (subscribe now, salvation can be yours):

Dalai Lama Says Shut The Hell Up And Quitcher Bitchin'
The Dalai Lama dedicated an interfaith temple Sunday and urged his audience of several thousand people to be religious and choose a faith. "Religion should implement. The teachings should be part of our life," the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said during the second stop on a 16-day U.S. tour. "If there are people who don't have much interest in religion, they will see negatives," he said. "What the hell is wrong with you punkass college dweebmonkeys anyway?" he added, grabbing the microphone from the stand and launching into one of his trademark inspirational fiery tirades. "What, you think it's all about Jesus and thin bland little wafers stuffed in your mouth by a horny priest and kneeling and subservience and guilt? You think religion means you get to shirk responsibility for your goddamn life and fork it all over to some bearded angry dude and his bleeding-heart son? What are you, slug bait? Intellectual meal worms? Spiritual slurm? Let me tell you a little something ! about suffering and faith, OK? Let me tell you about these Chinese stormtrooper scumsuckers and their little Communist police forces that swarm into your temple in the middle of the night and torch your one good rice bowl and drive you out of your homeland, OK? I've been wearing the same damn robe for eighteen years, you feel me? Now, who wants pie?"

got this message through friendster today, from a person i'm connected to through two cal folks:

hey mondrian's really cool. i took history of art 186a last
semester at Cal, the course really gave me a new
appreciation for his works. they've got a kind of subtle
beauty.... very fragile but somehow loud at the same
time....

anyway i noticed the pocket constitution + fountainhead in
your self-description..... should i take by that that you're
libertarian/objectivist/classical liberal?

i'll comment here, since i think some might also be confused by these references in my friendster profile.

the pocket constitution is a sly reference to my summer school teacher mr. chris green, not a statement of a belief in the predominance of individuals' rights over the state. the fountainhead is a book that has been mentioned/offered/recommended to me many times throughout my life, yet i have never read it, and highly likely never will. many of the other things i list in my profile are also elusive, though oft-mentioned to me. it's strange how such things keep occurring in my life.

piet mondrian made me believe in art. when i saw "Broadway Boogie Woogie", i understood it immediately. it hit me in the chest. it just made sense. i'm not sure if i first saw it in an art history book in a library in birmingham or in new york city's moma. either way, it stuck with me.

while abroad, i wrote a paper comparing mondrian's piece with Camille Pissarro's"Le Pont Boieldieu a Rouen, soleil couchant":

The sensations of the painter (and by extension the viewer) are paramount in both works; a naturalistic representation of the cityscape is secondary or even unimportant to both artists. However, it would be incorrect to say that neither painter was concerned with realism; in fact, Mondrian wrote in 1942 that his main object was always realism. But he believed that natural representation revealed nothing about an object; he progressively came to see that the truth must be achieved by abstraction. Mondrian’s art was a reality of the mind, not of the eye. He wanted his paintings to be formations where “an emotion in the artist is evoked in the beholder through a situation offered to his senses, not through an account of the emotion itself.” In Broadway, this is achieved by the placement of repeated but randomly colored small blocks of color within the yellow bands. This construction represents Mondrian’s impression of the perpetual motion of people, traffic, and flashing lights that can be found in midtown Manhattan, especially in Times Square. Instead of simply reconstructing the scene realistically, he paints a scene that evokes the same awestruck, overwhelmed, and excited response from the viewer by assaulting the senses with flashy colors and commotion on the canvas. “The title points to the inspiration of music and dance, but without knowing the title, one world think of music in seeing this wonderfully lively, colorful, jazzy canvas,” writes Meyer Schapiro. Likewise, those who view it immediately understand the work, especially since it happens to be on display in midtown Manhattan at the Museum of Modern Art: the viewer feels what Mondrian felt because he/she is just steps away from it.

mondrian taught me to appreciate modern art. it's fun, it's playful, it's inquisitive, it's self-reflexive, it's socially conscious, it's meta. in my life, i think i'm always in pursuit of the feeling i felt the first time i saw mondrian's work: exhilaration, happiness, and that click where it all makes sense.

quotes of yesterday:

freesia: "do you even know me, teen people?"
lisa: "i'm trying to have a serious conversation with you about whether or not you would date yourself, and you're not even taking it seriously!"
mtv on tony hawk: "he was a skater boy...he said 'see ya later virginity.'"

from the mixed-up files...
From: lisa
To: anne
Subject: more signs that the grading system at cal is FUCKED
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 16:05:50 -0700

you wanna know about how things will never be the same? i realized last night that for the next ten weeks, it will be impossible to just drink on a weeknight, since i'll have to work at 9 am during the week. so i'll have to restrict my drunkenness to just friday and saturday nights. this is it.

yeah i'm glad i didn't go down if it was overcast. well my flight for DC leaves in about seven hours. i'm all packed and ready to go. the fourth of july is in less than a month, if you want to make plans to visit...

i can't believe i'm going to have to wake up at 9 AM for the next ten weeks!!!! horrors.

lisa

On a political note, [Britney] Spears also confided that she supports President Bush and doesn't care for celebrities who criticize the war on Iraq, saying: "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes, and we should just support that and be faithful in what happens."

lisa n da sky (1:24 PM): oh man, everyone at the club was asking me what 801 was
itz just j a i (1:24 PM): hahahah
lisa n da sky (1:24 PM): cuz i posted it on friendster
lisa n da sky (1:24 PM): 801 style
itz just j a i (1:24 PM): hahahah
lisa n da sky (1:24 PM): hella funny
itz just j a i (1:24 PM): we've created a new "phrase"
lisa n da sky (1:24 PM): haha everyone wants to get in 801
itz just j a i (1:24 PM): hahhaha
itz just j a i (1:24 PM): can u blame them

no paparazzi, please
lisa n da sky (1:37 AM): jaime's friend was like you look familiar, i've seen your face on the internet
lisa n da sky (1:37 AM): and i was like wtf?!
allyp0o (1:37 AM): HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
allyp0o (1:37 AM): PORNOGRAPHY
allyp0o (1:37 AM): didn't u know?
lisa n da sky (1:37 AM): and he was like is there something called the lisa look?
allyp0o (1:37 AM): u're all over the placE!
allyp0o (1:37 AM): hahahahaha
allyp0o (1:37 AM): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
lisa n da sky (1:37 AM): funny cuz earlier that day margot's cousin stopped me in urban outfitters
lisa n da sky (1:38 AM): and said she knew who i was
lisa n da sky (1:38 AM): from pictures
allyp0o (1:38 AM): dude i'm trying hella hard not to laugh too loud right now
allyp0o (1:38 AM): hahahahahahaha
allyp0o (1:38 AM): HAHAHAAHAHA
lisa n da sky (1:38 AM): damn those fucking dc pics get around
lisa n da sky (1:38 AM): i know, i was like naked pictures?
allyp0o (1:38 AM): HAHAH SO FREAKING HILAROUS

scene from around lin's birthday party:
me: "let's do hungover swimming tomorrow morning!"
rj: "uh yeah, so i can like gulp the entire pool?"

does anyone else dream about ice water after a night of drinking? i dream about ice water all night long, in every scene of my dreams. cup after glorious cup of ice water. and when i start waking up, i want whoever is nearby to bring me a cup. sometimes i even delude myself into thinking that a cup of ice water will be sitting prettily next to my bed when i open my eyes. weird thing is, when i do wake up and get myself a cup, it's never EVER as good as it was in my dream. maybe it has to do with the crushed ice in my ice water in my dreams, as opposed to the cubes in reality. how does crushed ice make things taste better?

"what kind of friend is always hiding?" -- from "y tu mama tambien"
it's really interesting how after you graduate from college, life becomes disturbingly similar to life in high school. "what do you want to do?" "i dunno, whatever." today for example freesia and i went to king of thai on taraval and then stonestown. a trip to tart would have made the regression complete. the main difference is the alcohol involved and the greater variety of bars/clubs to choose from. i'm now driving the same car i drove when i was a junior in high school ("let's go to jamba mods 8/9/10") and hanging out with the same crew from lowell. granted the problems we face today are of a different nature: group trips to 24-hour walgreens in emergency situations, detailed descriptions of bikini waxes, searching for jobs, guys, and the elusive perfect "bite the knuckle" outfit. the game has changed, but the players stay the same.

tonight i kicked it with my two favorite girls from homeroom 105 at presidio middle school (class of 95), kimi and biff. we watched "y tu mama tambien" just because i hadn't seen it yet, and we were all just in that mood, the "let's live vicariously" mood, let's call it. during the movie, biff and i made plans to pick up four high school guys (two for each of us), take a road trip, and make a movie called "and your mom too." younger guys, man, younger guys.

i think the fact that my girlfriends have such extensive let's call it historical memory can be a little disconcerting at times. there's always tension between the you who you were 8 or 10 or 15 years ago and the you who you are today, and it's your friends who will notice and comment on it. it's the true friends who let you evolve and who love you for sometimes being a hypocrite or doing things that are out of your character. i do love, however, how we can be frank with one another about topics that we have to dance around or approach delicately with other people we've only recently met. it's hilarious to make fun of each other about our past actions, clothes, personality tics, and let's say, indiscretions. damn, i've got the best friends on earth. and they're not the kind who are always hiding. ;)

all ya gotta do is say yes
sometimes the heat makes people go crazy. it's like in a streetcar named desire -- people are hot and sweaty and cranky and impatient and inflamed with passions that they can't control. every impulse seems magnified until it nearly jumps out of your skin. you want to hit someone one second, and the next you want to kiss them. hard.

and it's tough to figure out which you want to do more.

maybe it has to do with the temperature of your body. maybe it has to do with the heat wearing down on a person, bringing them to their boiling point. maybe it has to do with the mosquitos, or the torrential rain, or the pounding sun. maybe it has to do with looking for activities to do indoors to beat the oppressive humidity outside. maybe it is as simple as wearing less clothing in the heat -- a flash of thigh or abs or calf or forearm, or a little bit of sweat on the collarbone. a miniskirt, say...

in one of the early scenes in the movie, marlon brando strides into the cramped apartment, just home from work. he's sweaty and dirty and thirsty. he's wearing a tight sweatstained tee shirt that shows off his muscles. you know that vivien leigh is looking at him in the same way that you're looking at him because there is no other way to look at him. at that moment you feel what she feels--yes, he's your sister's husband. but man do you want to jump him.

and is that really such a bad thing? should you feel guilty if you don't think it is? can you just plead heat insanity?

so you solemnly pack your bags and dream of the creeping fog and chilly winds from the bay and the way streetlights in the mist look so peaceful when you stumble home drunk at 3 am after a night out in north beach or lombard street. you hope the fog will cool your veins, slower your heartbeat, ice your skin. you look forward to turtleneck sweaters and jeans. you look forward to quiet nights at tart, or borders, or at frees' watching felicity season 1 DVDs and eating kettlecorn (two coke minimum still in operation). you want the sanity that the cool bay air brings.

but when you get off the plane, waiting with anticipation for the ice in the san francisco air to hit your face, you realize there is something very wrong. because there is no icy breeze. you're feeling a little bit warm under your hoody. it's actually hot in the city. so the itch remains under your skin, urges bubbling just beneath the surface.

your family teases that you've brought the hot weather back with you from the east coast.

but honestly you wish you had just left it all back there.

more post-DC comedown testimonials
CherryOs (11:38 PM): shit, i almost feel like i need more a of shock factor for my nerves when i party
CherryOs (11:39 PM): here in berkeley
CherryOs (11:41 PM): really, it was disappointing
CherryOs (11:42 PM): i kept thinking in my head when folks were "freaking" or acted like it was hella bomb, thinkin' in my head "hommie, ain't no party like the partying we fuckin' did this summer"
CherryOs (11:43 PM): damn lisa
CherryOs (11:43 PM): coming back to berkeley, i feel like a different person after this summer
CherryOs (11:43 PM): i didn't know them 8 weeks of all that crazy shit we did did all this to us!

lisa n da sky (11:05:36 PM): hey quick advice
preshpupp (11:06:14 PM): no waxing does not hurt

letters from a nut

Dear Ms. M.,

Thank you for taking the time to describe your experience in our Georgetown store.

We apologize for the terrible inconvenience we caused you at the register. We do, in fact, accept all non-worn items for return in all of our stores. Please be assured that your comments have been shared and addressed with the store's management team, their District Manager, and the company's Director of Stores. Feedback such as this has given us the opportunity to re-train our staff and prevent future incidents of this nature.

Thank you again for making us aware. We do hope that you will give us the opportunity to better serve you in the future. If you have any additional concerns or comments, please feel free to contact me.

I would like to offer you a gift card for your experience, in the hopes that we can retain you as one of our customers. Please provide me with your mailing address, so that I may send one to you.

Regards,


****** **********
Communications Manager
Urban Outfitters

non-DC quote of the summer (sorry kimi!!):

freesia: if she wants to be jlo she can be jlo

in reference to james' "body artwork":

dave: i'm going to ask james to do one for me too. it's cheaper than a tattoo and not as permanent!

Bennifer: Why Are We Hoping for A Flop? (washingtonpost.com):

Ben Affleck on Leno, on his supposed infidelities at a stripclub:

"'By the time the tabloids get ahold of it, I'm, like, in a three-way with Michael Jackson and Elvis and the Wolfman, you know?' he continued, revealing perhaps a shortcoming in his counting skills. 'But it was relatively tame, as those things are.' "

LOL
excerpt from alice's email to jaime:

*****'s hickey was like the size of my palm and the shape of the british isles hahahaha. it was so nastY! it looked like someone either socked her in her neck or sucked the life out of her veins. gross.

oh stanfurd
"If there was ever anyone to embody the phrase 'puke and rally,' it's you." -- Dennis

from the ny times review of s.w.a.t.:

Following a failed jail break — after which Montel inexplicably gets to speak to the television cameras — he offers "a hundred meelleeeeon dollars to whoever gets me out of here."

...

"Who do we have to paiyyy?" he snarls to his lawyer. And when she lets him know bribery is out of the question in America, Montel hisses, "Then who do we have to keeeel?"

dave: you like the yuppie crowd?
me: hell no man
me: i'm from the bay area
me: i like guys with bay area style
me: which is
dave: homosexual?

the most foul experience i've had here, aka yet more reasons why dc is wack
i went to urban yesterday to return an lingerie/underwear set i had bought earlier this summer (a depressing experience in and of itself). i get to the counter, produce the goods for return, and the guy picks up the underwear and smells it. this is completely true. he did it quickly, not like he was relishing it or anything, but he picked it up in his hand and shoved it against his nose. again, i am not lying. he looked a little greasy and shady, too. i laughed ("HA!") when he did it, meanwhile he was asking me for my reason for return. i was dumbfounded but managed to stutter out something about just not liking it. then he said they usually don't take underwear back, but they'd make an exception since it seemed like it hadn't been worn. keep in mind that all the tags (which are large tags) are still on the underwear, which should make it obvious that it hasn't been worn. he then picks them up AGAIN and smells them AGAIN. so he smelled them not only once but TWICE. i swear this is true. it was so foul. *shivers*

unexpected alice quote of the summer (while playing taboo):

me: "ok, this is something we spread a lot...."
alice: "um, peanut butter? mayonnaise?....our legs?"

--------------------------------------------
last night, in alice and my room:

rj: "which one's your bed?"
me: "guess."
rj: "this one."
lin: "how do you know?"
rj: "it's the one with the blinds open."

hell yeah bitches!
itz just jai (12:20 AM): yo...i'm like comparing every thing back home to our nights back in dc
itz just jai (12:20 AM): and i find myself thinking...damn...if i was with lisa and alice right now..they'd be down to go out and party
itz just jai (12:20 AM): instead of sitting around and doing nothing
itz just jai (12:21 AM): fremont ppl just arent as cool as u guys!

preshpupp (10:28 PM): damn dc is full of people trying to hook up

hella love for the EU, yo

freesia: the one who they call by not his name...the belgian one?

rj: the accident proneness is kinda cute too
rj: like an injured baby bird
rj: that you want to have sex with

margot: yeah somehow the less clothes you're wearing, the less dignified you feel
margot: like, that's why having a murderer come after you in the shower is hella embarrassing
margot: cuz at the same time you be thinking, damn i look hella dumb

me: are you saying i'm not your girl?!?!?!??!?!?!
rj: no
rj: you're saying
rj: that you're not my girl.
rj: 4 drinks, friend.
me: i think the first prize will buy more than 4
rj: if that's the case
rj: we're going to do all of page 2
rj: and the back of page 4.

a gem from wild thang:

lisa n da sky (12:03 AM): time is limited
lisa n da sky (12:03 AM): game must be accelerated
Crappydawg (12:03 AM): true, true
Crappydawg (12:03 AM): no more screwing around
lisa n da sky (12:04 AM): must focus now
lisa n da sky (12:05 AM): plus i have way less tokens than you
Crappydawg (12:05 AM): yeah, but you know how to use them, i can't even find the coin slot
Crappydawg (12:06 AM): oh wait, that doesn't sound right

from the goddamnitfreaking duh files...

The Medium is the Message...this
RIP Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980 (on this day)

Thank you for inflicting numerous hours of painful media theory on lowly undergraduate mass communications students who really want to be writers and could give less of a shit about "hot" and "cold" media. Thank you for turning the study of media into a cold, sterile, unfriendly, intrusive, confusing, annoying activity. Thank you for paragraph after paragraph of dry robot text.

Brilliant cameo in "Annie Hall," though...

rj: i'm like jack sparrow
rj: i'm just in it for the booty

"you ever get phantom sunglasses feeling on your head?" -- margot

cherry: HOY! baka nag mumuk-muk kana diyan

Where Have All the Lisas Gone?

About half of all boys in Raleigh Colony were named John, Thomas or William, and more than half of newborn girls in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were named Mary, Elizabeth or Sarah. Even in the 20th century, John, William, James and Robert were, in some combination, the top three names for boys for more than 50 years. Among girls, Mary held on to No. 1 for 46 years, when it was supplanted for six years by Linda, fought its way back for another nine, then succumbed to the juggernaut of Lisa.

xSgtMeatx (7:48 PM): HOT FAX
xSgtMeatx (7:48 PM): is the new slang
xSgtMeatx (7:48 PM): for
xSgtMeatx (7:48 PM): ....i dunno, something hot, but that's not a fax

me: margot says lin definitely lives up to his name
rj: DEFINITELY
rj: today he called himself wild thang like third person
me: what did he say???
rj: he said wild thang needs to drink tonight
rj: so try to find a place where i don't have to drive

joking with rj about how my mom drank with us last night...

me: yeah my mom can throw down
rj: lemme holla at your mom
rj: maybe she can buy for us