I just wanted to do something nice for all of us. We hardly ever get to spend together as a family anymore and when she is home from work, all she ever does is stake a claim on the couch and the TV and watch her stupid Chinese shows. And since I love dim sum and haven't had in a while, I suggest going. Of course she brings up our financial situation and she's like, you should really save money to go back to school. You just got cable and internet and that's going to cost you an extra 100 every month and you only make 1600 a month. You need to save. And I'm just like, mother fuck. Don't you think I realize how little money I make to be supporting three grown people? The salary that I am earning now is never going to be enough for me to go to grad school even if I was living on my own and not paying for everything in the house. So.. dim sum is not the issue. And how much is dim sum going to cost me anyway? We're fucking Asian - dim sum should not be a luxury.
I hate how there are still so many things that are a luxury to us.
AND HOW IS THIS NOT PUTTING PRESSURE ON ME?
Mother fuck, I feel like I'm 16 again.
I can't keep worrying about everyone. I just can't.
MEANWHILE my fucking loser brother who is turning 20 in a few weeks is still motherfucking unemployed and I keep telling her not to give him any money and she's all like, if I don't give him any money, he won't have any money to spend and I'm like THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT! If all those dipshits who work at Starbucks and McDonald's and Foot Locker can get hired, there's no reason that this dipshit can't. Granted, this is not a good time to get hired, but he's not even fucking trying.
WHY AM I STILL THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS TO FUCKING TRY?
[edit]: omg, there's a sequel! another message! not as good as the first one, but still kind of amazing.
ahh, i hope there's going to be entire series chronicling his love life. the girl he's leaving a message for in the first one is named heather and if you noticed, in the second one, he's calling rachel, accidentally calls her heather and explains that his ex-girlfriend's name is heather. interesting, eh?
teehee, i am spilling over with excitement over these commercials! (ack, how lame. but whatever!)
being one of a handful of people to come into work today = bad being the last one to leave the office = worse needing to come in at 7am on monday = SHOOTME
This is the music video for a song called "Golden Cage" from a band named "The Whitest Boy Alive."
This is me finding psychology - in this case, the psych of perception, AWESOME - in everything I've stumbled on these days, and absolutely LOVING IT. Special Bonus? THE STROOP EFFECT! omg, squealz!!
*Ok, maybe just the best morning ever. Seriously though? This makes coming into work at 7:30am so much more bearable. And even better because after not being able to accomplish anything over at the hospital (boo!) [because the nurses hate me - more on that later], I have about an hour of doing whatever I want (yay!) because a) no one else is around and b) it's too early to start calling people.
Note: this is not the number one reason but it will be the first I highlight simply because it requires the least explanation.
This must have been blogged up the wazoo already but as always, I'm a day (or more than several) late. And I haven't spoken to anyone about this yet (then again, when do I actually speak with anyone these days?)
So, of all the people in the world that could cover Fergie's Glamorous, who should and would make the most perfect sense in doing so? Why, a CHOIR of course!
And I know you want to download the audio* too, because I sure as hell do! The mp3 included here should be the full version, but I think the video clip already has the full version too but I can't tell ya for sure because I can't watch it, because I'm at work. Whoops?
*Press the gray 'Play' button to stream, read the full post and scroll down to download it, for keeps, yo!*
Loooves it!
[Edit:] Ok, so the vid is like 20 seconds long, so NOT the full version. ENJOY!
I just spent my Saturday early afternoon watching this gem of a movie on the CW11. It's called Kiki's Delivery Service, and as much as I hate that it'd been dubbed into English, and what's more that the title character was voiced by none other than KIRSTEN DUNST, bahhh, I LOVED that I was able to see this on tv again. Especially since I have no idea where the hell my own VHS copy is. Granted, my tape was dubbed over in Chinese, but at least that's closer than in English. Except that, watching it again, I now understand a lot more of it than I did as a little girl.
In retrospect, I don't even know if I knew what was going on since much of what happens in the movie, not the actual plot, but the subtext seems unfamiliar to me. Then again, who knew what subtext even was at the age of 8? Oh man, this is awesome.
So Kiki is a thirteen year old witch who has to leave her home and go to another city and "find herself" and train her powers. She settles on this bustling city that's very different from her hometown and throughout the film, you can catch various tones of class tension that I could not have picked up on when I was younger. She finds the city threatening and unfriendly. Her black cat, Jiji, who can talk to her, wants them both to leave but Kiki is determined to stay. Especially after she meets Osono, the owner of a small bakery and she offers her room and board in turn for helping out at the shop sometimes. It is then that Kiki also starts her delivery service, deciding that her only skill thusfar is flying, she can make some money delivering things for people. There's also a boy named Tombo (hello, voice of Matt Lawrence!) who is quite enchanted by her ability to fly (he is part of something called the Aviation Club and is constructing a plane out of his bike. I don't know, whatever.) At first they clash, because Kiki feels insulted that he would dare to approach her and chat her up, thinking it rude that a boy would talk to a girl before they were introduced. Yada yada, at some point, when Kiki starts to feel depressed about being in the city, she loses her ability to fly and spends some time trying to find out why, with the help of her older sister-type, painter friend who lives in a cabin in the woods (voiced by Janeane Garofolo). Related to the loss of her powers, she also finds that she can no longer communicate with her cat. Of course, in the end, she figures things out or whatever and can fly again. And in the American version, when her cat runs up to her, we hear him (voiced by Phil Hartman, ladies and gentlemen) call her name, implying that henceforth, they can talk to her each other again. However, in the original Japanese (and Chinese dubbed) versions, this never happens. And the director, Hayao Miyazaki, has said that the cat represents the child in Kiki, and the ability for them to understand each other at the end of the film, was supposed to be an indication that she has grown up now. Why this discrepancy exists in the versions, I can't understand.
All in all, it's a rather beautiful coming-of-age story. Originally. I used to cry a little whenever I watched this movie, I don't know why, but it always made me so sad. I guess at a young age, I was already very attentative and aware of childhood loss and the fragility of innocence. It's so tender! Wah! And watching this English version on TV for the first time, I definitely got a little misty-eyed when Kiki said goodbye to her parents. Wah, emotions.
This melody has been such a big, forgotten part of my childhood, I could cry.
This is the "music video"?:
Part 1 of the Japanese version, with English subtitles (you can find the other parts listed on the sidebar:
And here's the English language version so you can hear the lovely [GAG] voice of the Dunst.
1. slop·py /ˈslɒpi/[slop-ee] –adjective, -pi·er, -pi·est. (of literature and behavior) Weakly or foolishly sentimental: a sloppy romance
2. spoon·er·ism (spōō'nə-rĭz'əm) -noun A transposition of sounds of two or more words, especially a ludicrous one, such as Let me sew you to your sheet for Let me show you to your seat.
The prolonged absence from livejournal right now is making me burst with all these things I want to share, all of them outdated, and most of them already expressed in some other shape or form. Still, here I sit, at my aunt's house, the accursed fan of Granny's overheated, two-year-old motor whirring away, my fingertips tingling with the prospect of a real entry.
Something I've noticed recently: I take for granted that I'm usually on the same page, or wavelength, or whatever, as my friends and my family. Well, my friends more often than my family, but still. And when we're not on the same page, because I guess it's so natural to think that we are, it gives way to miscommunication and misinterpretation. One of the things that I always loved and took for granted, particularly because it had always been so seamless, so automatic, was being able to finish the sentence of somebody else, or not need to finish a thought because we were on the same page. It's another one of those things that seem to go on the increasingly long list of things that we don't notice or really think about until one day it's gone. And then what happens?
But all right, real news? I have a job. Officially now. I am going in tomorrow to sign papers with Human Resources, get a physical, and drug-tested. [Good thing I didn't succumb to peer pressure, eh?] I start work next Monday, on the first of October. The new assistant researcher in a spinal cord injury lab. Not all that close to adolescent or child psychiatry, but whatevs. It's time I reassessed my long-term career goals anyway. But yay, employment!
So the closer I am to actual employment, and wage-earning, the closer my fantasy of moving out of my apartment, and maybe out of Bensonhurst is becoming a reality. Brittany and Victory came down for a fun day in the Hurst last weekend and it was beautiful. (See Carol's photos if you don't believe me.) Lately, I've been feeling so much love for my old neighborhood, and taking walks along the same routes I used to take all the time in elementary school is bringing up a long-forgotten part of my past that I actually don't mind talking about. I don't know if it's the distance now that allows for it, but I've realized that there, indeed, have been very good moments in my childhood. Relatively speaking, I do know that it really hadn't been a picnic, so to speak, but it wasn't all bad either. I'm not sure if I could have been able to see that before now. Before having been away for an extended period of time and then coming back. Before living another kind of life. Sort of.
At the same time, this newfound love also reinforces the need for me to get out of here. At the very least, I need to get out of this apartment and start all over. Make new memories and hack away at all the old, bitter attachments. It'll be great. It'll be hard to find a 3-bedroom to rent in Brooklyn, but it's not impossible. The rent will probably suck ass but at least it'll be split, more or less, between me and my mother. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself because it'll probably be a long time before this can happen. But it's going to happen.
I thought that we were going to be together forever. Everybody thinks that. Nobody ever anticipates someone you've known and loved basically all your life just dropping out on you. Unacceptable when fathers do it, it is just as bad when a stupid boy does it. In fact, it's probably that bad because it was preceded by your father leaving. But that's beside the point.
Oliver Gold, known as Ollie to everyone in the world except his grandmother who refused to mutilate her dead husband's name, checked off a lopsided box on a discreetly small piece of paper in the second grade and became my on-again, off-again boyfriend for the next two years. We were drawn to each other right away: the redheaded Jewish boy and the Asian girl who, despite having only learned English just the year before, was the star pupil of the class. We hung around each other all the time and were teased about it mercilessly. Oddly enough, the teasing lessened and soon stopped altogether once the other kids knew that we were "dating".
My parents started threatening divorce the year I turned nine years old. It was a disgusting battle that lasted a full year out of a war that would, in many ways, last a lifetime. It was during a time when it was still surprising to hear about divorced couples, especially the Asian ones. Her whole life, my mother was unassuming, quiet. Except for the trophies she won during her own school days for volleyball competitions and the like, my mother never had a title. All of a sudden, she was Subversive. All of a sudden, her name gathered the whispered and nudged "That's her right there. Mizz Lee. Her maiden name," kind of attention at parent-teacher conferences and the afternoons when for some reason, there was a delay in dismissing us students and the parents stood idly by the school doors and started to talk.
The skit itself, from an early appearance on Conan. I now recognize the guy as one of Kevin James's friends from the King of Queens. The KFC Bowl is at the 2:55-ish mark. All the rest before that is about old ladies having sex and giving birth. I'd skip it if I were you..
Of course, this is all my way of saying "I want one!" and lamenting the lack of a KFC in my vicinity. Emphasis on the word "vicinity."
for THAT post but it's almost 3am on a friday night and after everyone has left my room, i lost all motivation for/pretenses of studying for my human rights final.
i was (and still am) considering going to bed when this song popped up on my shuffling iTunes and i just got so ridiculously sad, i just had to share it with you.
It's actually very corny, I know, but that's really how I roll anyway, so who am I trying to kid?
But just between you and me - and I'm going to say this now and get it out of the way so it has no place in another entry that I will probably write Tuesday night or next Monday night - i have never been more scared in my entire life.
• Go to IMDB.com and look up 10 of your favorite TV shows. (Or more... maybe?) • Post three official IMDB "Plot Keywords" for these 10 picks. • Have your friends guess the show names.
1. Brother Brother Relationship / Missing Father / Suspense 2. Crooked Cop / Death Row / Gang 3. Awkward / Quirky / Prank 4. Religion / Extinction / Female Killer 5. Class Conflict / Dead Girl / Neo Noir 6. Wealthy / Teen / Gossip 7. Explosion / Engineering / Urban Legend 8. Science / Bullet / Investigation 9. Gun Nut / Smuggling / Spacecraft 10. Doomed Romance / Death / Supernatural 11. Conflicted Hero / Karaoke / Curse 12. Bully / Marijuana / Dungeons And Dragons 13. Band / Beach / Family
[The timing on this entry may be way off, but then again, I was never one to be too keen on noticing such things. ]
1. The sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body." -- wikipedia 2. "Follow the lines and wonder why / There's no connection." -- The Shins, "Phantom Limb"
I was in the library the other day and I didn't know which playlist to have on in the background that wouldn't distract me too much so I went with "Songs to Write a Paper By" ( tracklist here ).
I hadn't gotten very far down the list when I started aching. Powerfully and dully at the same time. Every now and then, when I hear a song from that CD, something shifts inside of me. I, of course, imagine some old tired muscle stretching and trying to loosen up a crick deep inside somewhere. That's what my nostalgia for Tim, for that whole phase of my life, feels like. It never fully occurred to me that I was his rebound until I, as per my usual stalkerish ways, found out he got engaged to the girlfriend he had back home. Before me. And if I recall correctly, the only one before me? Well, actually, I guess it's the only one before and after me, isn't it? How's that for filler space?
I can't help but wonder why I keep having these all-consuming, meaningful relationships with guys who are so completley not interpreting it the same way or even asking for the same thing. I guess that's why I have such a hard time defining these relationships - because of course I have to define them - because they're so different from what anyone expects of a first love. Does it count as a first love if that love isn't reciprocated? Reciprocated being a very general euphemism for, I don''t know, deceit? Which in turn is another euphemism for whatever the hell Roger was.
Anyway, Roger wasn't the point. The point was Tim. And what I have come to realize he meant, or means, to me. Although brief, and weird, and doomed from the start, it was the healthiest relationship [out of the many two in my college career] I'd been in. And so, this time of year, I tend to think about him some. It's a warm kind of thinking. Not the kind that torments and hurts me like my other types of nostalgia.
Like I said before, it's a gut reaction to recognizing any remnant of the past I shared with Tim and whatever aching I have is in reference to the end of all that. My phantom limb. It explains why I keep an eye out on the trees on the lawn to check for signs of cherry blossoms. Why I pause midsentence when I recognize any one of the 18 or so songs I had never heard until they were burned onto a CD for me three years ago. Why when it just starts to get warm out and I walk through the quad and I wind up sitting on a bench somewhere outside and smell the sun on my skin and feel it burning in my hair, or why when I come back to the apartment and it smells vaguely and feels also like bricks that have been baking in the sun, I always feel just a twinge of grief.
I want to clarify that by using this limb metaphor, I am not implying that I feel as though Tim is still a part of me - that I'm still dwelling on that. But, in the end, what i take, or took?, from that relationship will always be a part of me even though nothing else is.
And if anything, I welcome these memories because above all else, whatever the relationship meant, we had good times together and for what it was worth, I think they were genuine. It's a lovely feeling, actually. The tiniest hint of sadness that's ultimately overpowered by... love, love for love's sake, and faith in love. It tells me that I should still have faith in love.
No more frilly-nilly stuff. After a brief flirtation, I've realized that snazzy "bloggish" types are not for my precious lj. So back to basics it is. Well, as close as I can get it without it being fugly. And you will just have to ignore the ads on the side - a HUGE mistake on my part.
I wish THE SUPER SQUARE could be together more often. There's always someone missing. I had the most brutal time chillin with Carol and Jenn the last weekend of spring break. It was the perfect end, despite the weathers genuine efforts, to an otherwise dull and semi-annoying week. And Cil came home for spring break on Friday so we (the Square minus one, and Kristen) went to see The Namesake last night and I proceeded to sob. My face was completely wet with tears. But it was a good cry. Kind of. Better than the time I cried during Jersey Girl - which I know I am never going to live down but people should really stop making fun of me for it because it's just tactless - but we all have our crosses to bear. Whatever, I know I'm crazy anyway, so whatever, keep 'em comin'.
I'm a bit amused right now because I just sent my Adolescent Psych professor an email telling her I had to postpone our meeting back to 3pm today and when she emailed me a response back, the only thing in her email was the word, "Fine." I think she's all huffy now. Which is Fine. by me. I don't need to get on her good side. I don't even want to get on her good side. [This is the same woman who talks to us and treats us like a buncha middle- schoolers.] This is also the same woman who mysteriously lost my paper and made me send it to her immediately after class. She also accosted me as I was entering the classroom on Monday to tell me this. So picture it: I walk in in. I need to step around her corner of the table to get to the seats by the window. She sees me. She stands up with that grandmotherly look she has with her arms outstretched towards me. I freak the fuck out and I'm pretty sure it was apparent all over my frickin face. But then she grabs me firmly by the shoulders and I believe I am shaken, you know, like the way you're not supposed to with a baby, and she tells me she lost my paper.
What the fuck, right? And this last half totally ruined my original intended theme to the post but I was just so thrown I had to, um, throw it in here. Bah. I'll redeem myself in a few days.
I had a really long morning today. Not only did it start too early but my body hasn't adjusted to the rude change in time so when I "normally" would have fallen asleep at 5am, to the rest of the Eastern United States, it was 6am. Which also follows that when I was jostled awake three hours later at 9am, to me it felt like 8. It was still three hours, but somehow knowing that just one day ago it would have been 8am and not remembering when the last time I got up at 8am was just made me more upset.
And arriving at Social Services already pissed off is never a good mindset. And then it took forever to get back to Bensonhurst because the trains run so fucked-uply in the middle of the day and plus, Harry and I had to go out of our way to return the monthly Metrocard back to Mom so she can use it later - like, literally stepping foot outside of the train station and walking a long few blocks to another train station to hand it over because we were told the N would be skipping those stops and of course our mother didn't think it was necessary to bring her cell phone with her, because what could possibly go wrong, right?! So we had to walk over there from one train station to the next because we knew she was already waiting and there was no way to tell her, "Hey. this is going to be a pain in the ass." And then by the time we get there, we realize that the N is running just fine, contrary to what the train conductor told us 15 minutes prior.
We were not happy. Not happy at all. And then Harry and Mom started screaming at each other in their crazy adolescent and just plain crazy ways. So then I had to stifle my own aggravation and try to do damage control. In public. Which is always nice.
Horrid.
And then on Wednesday, I have to take her to see a hand surgeon and function as a translator, because after all, that's what I apparently do best.
Also, I tried approaching the subject of my postgraduate living arrangements with my mother Saturday night. Her reaction is making me very afraid to bring it up again. But I know I will have to, sooner or later.
My friends, it's been so long since I've logged into the livejournal client that I forgot my password. I noticed that the last time I posted an entry was almost precisely 3 months ago and that shit just won't fly. What's even more unsettling is I feel I don't even have things I can say. And by that, I mean I don't have anything post-worthy, not that I do and I feel I am incapable of posting. Yeah. Ok.
I'm cutting this entry like whoa to go easy on the listspace. I post such long entries, sigh.
In other news, Kristen has given me a new name. Nie turned into Nieffs (she decided one "f" wasn't good enough) which morphed into Nieffer, which spawned a Nieffenstein. Actually, Nie and Nieffenstein are the opposite ends of a continuous spectrum on which one Kristen can find many different forms of my name at various lengths. Like a rainbow.
The rest of this post, I've decided, is going to be in list form to run through things I would like to share with the world. And it's also going to be cut, because this entry is getting too long for my own liking.
ok i'm a huge fan of cosmic irony and any form of irony for that matter to the extent that i sometimes egg things on, spur thigns on whatever, help it on its way. but current music this morning is total coincidence i swear.
i'm an asshole so i don't deserve to complain about not getting much sleep last night (ok two nights ago) and not getting literally any yesterday. forgive me if my times words are all fucked up - if i don't go to bed and experience darkness, the day's not over. imagine the utter confusion/sadness when i see this when i come home from the library around 7:30am this morning and she tells me that we blew a fuse last night. i was all thinking sunday night when really.. she meant monday. monday at 7pm to be relatively exact. 12 hrs prior to the conversation. talk about weird.
so now i'm trying to stay awake because class is at 11 and if i go to sleep, i will surely not wake for at least 7 hours. and to stay up all night finishing a 10-pg paper for a class in which you kick the most ass and then miss it would be suicide-worthy.
so to keep myself occupied, it's actually not working all that well because all the typing is tirng me out like whoa, here are some songs that you should totally download.
current covers & remixes i love:
pink nasty covers usher (burn) ok, never heard of her before but this song sounds super nice and classy coming out of her mouth. plus, you know, i love usher.
Aside from the rut that I am in now - that being that I'm supposed to be writing a series of responses right now or the 10-15 page paper (both due Tuesday) but can't write anything beyond "Week Seven - Asian American Aesthetics - Documentary // The films this week" - I have been in a major musical rut for what appears to be a really long time now.
Exhibit A.
These are the top 30 songs on my iTunes. Notice the dates last played. Not that I'm necessarily ashamed. Well, causes for embarrassment include #s: 17, 19, mildly 20, and 28.* I mean, this is some pretty great stuff. And this only goes as far as October 2005. And it doesn't include songs that I don't finish listening to. Whatever.
And if you squint and look at what song is currently being played, we move on to Exhibit B.
Exhibit B.
I have just today discovered Ben Fold's cover of TPS's "Such Great Heights." How is this possible? TODAY, people. TODAY. Ugh. I am disgusted.
So then of course, I had to find some sort of visual counterpart to this.
Watch his hands go! It's MANIC! And watch it to the end. It's kinda great.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bealoser's journal![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/happy.gif){kind=small}
jubilant![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/cranky.gif){kind=small}
cranky![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/sleepy.gif){kind=small}
sleepy![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/hopeful.gif){kind=small}
hopeful![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/confused.gif){kind=small}
nostalgic![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/nerdy.gif){kind=small}
productive![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/y/cold.gif){kind=small}
cold