Yay, Saipan!

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (AP) -- In the first visit by a Japanese monarch to a World War II battlesite abroad, Emperor Akihito is heading to this tiny U.S. island to pray for more than 30,000 Japanese lives lost here in the name of his father, plus the thousands of Americans and islanders killed.

Read more here

girl on film

Tomorrow I get my photo taken for a UW admission publication sent out to prospective undergrads. I'm representing the English major, so there will be my thumbnail-sized photo boxed in with a short bio/praise for the University. I was interviewed coincidentally enough by the sister of my creative writing professor (after talking with her, I can tell their family is insanely brilliant). I don't know how it's going to come out. I gushed about the library-system and how my victorian professor was such an postive influence and inspiration. Because I went on so adamantly about him, he will be in the photo, too. How do I coordinate outfits with a Harvard man, I wonder. (As I type this, I can just hear Mike ask, "Why is your nose so brown, Mona?")

This photo, which will humblingly small and insignficant, has caused much vanity to surface (and truthfully, the reason I submitted myself to the eyebrow wax). This is all quite silly, but makes me think of Anne of Green Gables and her first formal prayer: "As for the things I want, they're so numerous that it would take a great deal of time to name them all, so I will only mention the two most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables; and please let me be good-looking when I grow up."

mike didn't laugh at this one

"I knew them back when they were The Petty Thieves..."
-Me, on the band, The Killers.

isolation

Sometimes, I think I'm the only living female who has not seen The Notebook.

he said, she said #1

A man walks over to his wife who is sprawled on the couch, lying on her belly and watching t.v. He kneels down and starts patting her ass, playing it like a drum. When she doesn't look up, he jokes, "Have you ever had your ass played before?"
She turns to him and says, "No, but I was in a band once. I played the ass."

funny

An email worth reading:

"Thinker's Anonymous"

Heavy thinking ...............My deep, dark secret.
I admit it now. I was a thinker. It started out innocently enough.
I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up.
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true.
Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home.
One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job.
I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka.
I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."
This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss.
"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche.
I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors... They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.
Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye.
"Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.
You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting.
At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's."
Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.
Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today, I registered to vote as a Republican.

to be a girl

From The Great Gatsby, Daisy delivers one of my favorite quotations:

"Listen Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"
"Very much."
"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things. Well, she less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

It's a shame Fitzgerald isn't studied more in English departments. There seems to be more interest in his wife Zelda and their chaotic marriage. Both of them were Gatsbians: beautiful, smart, vain and fascinating. Perhaps this hedonism and wrecklessness mixes poorly in the academy; Fitzgerald chronicled the glittering rush of capitalism, how it enables one minute and eviscerates the next, and in this very liberal city, that material worship doesn't seem right. What do you do? Shrug?

money, it's a gas

2005 UW Salaries
Tangent: This guy post scans of his tax returns. Is that odd? I only check my tax returns when I want to break into uncontrollable sobs.

Assuming this is true, some of my favorite professors make less than $100K, one of the true greats only makes $24K as a lectuerer. I found one professor's salary and I thought, "You make $110K and you only have office hours one day a week!!!" Maybe I should print this out with his name highlighted and tape it on his door. The college president makes $470K/year but was originally hired with a $160K bonus incentive. That's outrageous.

On a side note: I met a guy once who told me that he had discovered some huge security flaw in Internet Explorer and Microsoft was so impressed that they flew him in from Boston for a job interview, all expenses paid. They told him that they would reimburse him for whatever he spent while in Seattle. He racked up a $2500 bill going sky-diving with his friends. Microsoft paid in full and hired him.

revelations and a haiku

Mike and I were strolling through Myrtle Edwards Park when I had this stunning thought: we should give crazy homeless people who talk to themeselves cell phones so that they won't look more homeless, only less crazy.

A haiku I heard and will now butcher:
grandpa hanged himself
high on a cellphone tower
can you hear me now

swiped.

So I was given information about a former classmate of mine (read: gossip), someone whom I considered at one point to be a friend. She was beautiful but she played a lot of mind games. She hurt friends of mine and injected herself into relationships. I never knew the *real* her, and after a long time, I realized that there wasn't anything real. She was a pathological liar. She pilfered from books abstract sayings and high-flown names, fashioning herself into whatever the book was that week. And she forgot me as easily as I forgot her. The received information (read: grist from the long-distance rumor-mill) led me to her website, which then led me to one of her many "profiles." The personal photo/avatar she used was a red, white and black illustration of a collared-dominatrix, showing the region from mid-cheek to just below the bustline. I recognized this immediately because it came from MY old website (There's proof!). I had spent a long time on that graphic and here she was, stamping ownership on it. Well, that might be going a bit far, figuring that she didn't claim to have created it. I should take it as a compliment that she thought so much of my work to use it, but it feels better to say to the gentlewomen of the jury, "That bitch robbed me!"

wax on, wax off.

In an effort to tame my mad-professor eyebrows, I scheduled an appointment at the uber-posh Jeremy Todd Wellness Spa and Salon. Some prices are outrageous, but I figured it harkened on the real estate tenet: location, location, location. It's tucked in the pocket corner of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, formerly The Four Seasons. In a very Gatsby way, the lobby smelled like money. A woman with bright coral gems boa-constrictored around her neck walked by me, saying in a weighed-southern twang to another woman in equally reptiilian jewlery, "Oh honey, you can use mah phone!" Wading through these ritzy folks, I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman sans the prostitution.



A blond woman named Nancy led me to a room with flickering votive candles and soft plucking music. The bed felt marshmallowy and comforting. Nancy swiveled a magnifying lens over my head and flipped on the lens' bright white-blue light. In that dark, womblike room, I felt like one of those corpses on CSI. The wax was uncomfortable, but not torturous, like almost-boiled water. It was not the searing disabling pain I had expected.

When it was over, Nancy handed me a mirror. In that fierce white-blue light, my eyebrows looked perfect, even and gorgeous. But the rest of my face was horrible. My foundation seemed thick and caky, as if it came out of a mortician's makeup line--something you would slather on a corpse. This is how they sell product so as to dupe you into believing that you can maintain their work: guilt-inducing lighting. I bought the pencil and brow set she used. When I paid at the front desk, the gal said, "Your eyebrows are perfect," she smiled. I know she wanted to add, "...but the rest of your face looks like shit!" And with the same energy and enthusiasm, she would have continued, "Would you like to make an appointment for a shit-face-erasing facial?"

Once back into the more forgiving natural light, I drooled outside the windows of Luly Yang. A woman waited for me to take the photo, and I motioned for her to continue and explained that I was done. She said, "Oh no, go ahead! I'm actually supposed to be headed in the opposite direction, but these dresses are so gorgeous, I had to walk by!"









And after all this silk and glitter, I see this. A grown man in a jean skirt, strikingly familiar to the Utilikilt, attire which confuses me all the same

dante's inferno

Odawni and I went to Dante's last night to get a drink before seeing the show at Giggle's Comedy Club. We didn't make it Giggles and ended up at Dante's the whole night, drinking Mojitos and having a great time.

Good question.


Odawni picks out some tunes.


Awww...


Cue the banjo music...She's pulling out the ammo because it's time for...


Dueling cameras!


Mo, O, and some Mojitos.

Porn & Piety

I'm downloading a Shakespeare lecture series from a guy's computer which also harbors the movie "Poolside Gangbangs" and the WOW Worship CD. This is odd, perhaps, only to me.

Wait, he has Barely Legal, too! And Hilary Duff! Can porn and piety coexist? I'm so nosy...

starbuckian slip

All this anti-climatical news about the tsunami warning is getting to me. Have you seen the footage the news outlets are using of the Crescent City residents evacuating? There's one young woman who's running with her friend when all of a sudden she breaks into a stupid twisted-leg jog?

I remember that in '94 or '95 Saipan had a tsunami scare. Since we lived close to the beach, the cops came around to our neighborhood blaring out instructions to leave. Of course, my brother and I weren't worried. He told my mom that he would stay and "watch the house," which meant finish watching Ricki Lake and I would have to load groceries into the car alone. I asked him if he would he be happy knowing he was watching Ricki Lake when he died. I don't remember his answer. There might have been some violence and brother-inflicted head trauma after I said that.

Last night, I dreamt that I was in some hotel or convention center. Everyone had to evacuate, so I head out of the building with everyone else. I noticed on the way out, people were still waiting in line at Starbucks. A short-haired woman dressed in a red business suit stood motionless with a startled runaway-bride-bugged-eyed stare.

I'm thinking this means I need a tall, non-fat vanilla latte.

life in the slow lane

Because this is my last week of unadulterated freedom, I went to my touch-up appointment with the most awesome stylist Carinn at the oasis of awesomeness, Vain.

It looks like this:


What's better than my hair? My shirt!

if only

My boiling hatred for a certain someone is being manifested in my dreams. I dreamt that I was walking with a group of my friends to a concert when this little asian girl calls me out. She looks like a younger version of this person. Her arms akimbo, she says she'll kick my ass. I reply, "I'll put you down in a second!" (That's some B-movie cheese for you) My friends hold me back, but there's an unmitigated wrath bubbling within. My animalistic capacity for violence gives me the thought of having just one well-aimed and perfectly executed punch to her jaw. I never get this chance because she's gone.

But you know what's not gone? My undeniable addiction to cute, unoffensive webgames. Got me by the horns, I tell you.

night at the ram

Left to right: Susan, Angela, Me, Gian-Carlo, Dave, Anna-Beth, and Charlie.

Some of the English 498 class and Charlie, a true great. Anna-Beth, Angela, Susan, Charlie and I moved to the bar after dinner and continued talking about young adult literature. Then the booty-shaking rap music started blaring and Charlie left before his vermouth came around.

You can find more here. They're somewhere there.

don't mind me, I just woke up.

I had a dream I was at school and I saw my old Spanish professor in the library. He's surprised to see me and I try to tell him all that's happened since class ended but he disappears. Then I see a group of girls from Saipan and they're also students. I have to leave. I'm in another class and my professor is named Jason and he's completely bald. Everyone is turning in their portfolios and I realize that an important component of mine is missing. When class lets out, I head toward the building where his office is located. I realize I don't know his last name. On the way there, a drama class is staging a play, something from Shakespeare. I spot my best friend from high school; she's wearing roller skates and oblivious to me. She wheels offstage. Then I'm on a bus but I'm not sure where we're going. I check the LCD screen in the front of the bus and the numbers change from 11 to 15. Houses pop up outside the window. We're on Saipan. I pull the chord and we stop in front of a grocery store. I have no idea how to get home, and by home, I mean Seattle.

I had very good intentions when I made my paper proposal to my professor. The independent study hasn't started, but I realize that I have nothing of social or literary import to say. I have this week to put something on paper and about 10 weeks to write 25 pages. I love Victorian literature very much, but it is exhausting at times, especially with a Victorian genius watching my progress. Wish me luck on this.

I got my first jury summons. They'll pay me 10 bucks a day for at least two days. I'm debating whether to send in a hardship letter because I do have work that week and an important lunch with my scholarship donor. I could always spew out crazy shit like, "He's guilty of course. This is according to the prophecy." I have five days to reply.

You know what's weird? I went into a gas station the other day and there's that "We Card" sign and I shuddered because the year indicated is not my year! I remember that on my 21st birthday the bartender looked at my I.D. and exclaimed, "Oh no! The '83's are legal now!" Now, when did everyone around me become 18?

pink slip

I got a message yesterday from a guy who worked with me on a mega-project back in January. I was surprised to hear from him because I had stopped working for the non-profit world about a month and a half ago, but since he didn't know that, I called him back. He said he needed the pictures for a marketing brochure he was making. I told him that I didn't work for X anymore. He said, "Yeah, I heard that." He then continued drly, "Congratulations on your scholarships." Then it hit me: how the hell would he have known that? He wouldn't have known that I got the scholarships unless he talked to my ex-boss and she gave him my number. It's unsettling. Sure, let me drop everything I'm doing right now and help you pro bono. Right.

Which brings me to the whole getting axed from the non-profit/private foundation world. Back in April, my boss calls me to join her at local bakery where we frequently had meetings. When I get there, she buys me a cinnamon bun and a drink and sits me down. While I'm mid-bite, she said, "There's no easy way to say this..." which of course began her spiel. She said that there wasn't any funding for the position and that I could just tell people that. I knew what it was really about: I wasn't fit for the job.

I agree. The job looked great on paper and sounded fabulous at cocktail parties ("Yes, I work for X; we work to strengthen families and transform neighborhoods"), but it was confusing, thankless and exhausting. It was a love-hate relationship. I loved working with teenagers, teaching digital storytelling and creative writing. I met talented and dedicated people who truly believed in transformation ideas and neighborhood empowerment. Their work extends into their homes, seeps into their weekends.

But then there was the other side, the cattiness and competition. I encountered ageist people who spoke only in abbreviations and others who couldn't understand why I had to miss a meeting because it conflicted with my class schedule. Last quarter, I told someone that I was teaching reading and writing to first-graders in the Central District. She said curtly, "Uh huh, that's great, but you should be working in this neighborhood." I wasn't expecting a humanitarian award, but I didn't think she would stomp all over my work.

So when I was let go, I entered into an unemployment funk. I was dumped! And I was the one who wanted to leave them first! I had sacrificed an internship at a literary agency for them and I was dropped. I said, "Oh no you didn't!" and they said, "Oh yes we di-id! Booyah!"

I was feeling sorry for myself, imagining all the horrible things I would have to do for money (I had an *excellent* street corner in mind). This lasted two days. I had great support. Mike was really sweet, saying, "I've been fired from more jobs than you've had!" So I cried a river, built a bridge and got over it.

And what do you know, I'm the happiest I've ever been. I received enough scholarship money to postpone working for a bit. I'm more frugal but less stressed. My chaos is school-related, the way it should be.

I could say more, but it's just whining. I should ask them, "Where is it? Oh that's right, it's in your face!

Nerdolescence

There's something disenchanting about seeing nerds become celebrities and the celebration of that upward social mobility. Granted, I loved the movie Spellbound. The movie was painfully accurate about the exciting and exhausting world of academic competition. On Saipan, I toured the speech and debate circuit and was fortunate enough to win sometimes. I had to work extremely hard, though, as did the others who frequented those competitions. I was such a nerd and I knew it. Nerdhood brought with it isolation and awkwardness. It was great. What made it somewhat magical was that it was mysterious to those who didn�t spend countless hours preparing for a five minute speech and couldn�t relate to the exhilaration of holding a plaque your name in tiny engraved letters. Now the movie and the recent Tony-award winning play are great but it feels almost corrosive, as if the magician�s trick has been revealed. I did find one line funny out of this year�s National Spelling Bee: �Can you spell that?�

Narcissism with a small �n�

The other day I was on the computer in the library, working on notes for my final. The computers were placed next to the tall windows which faced the walkway outside. As I worked, I noticed that many people were looking in. It felt uncomfortable, but I knew that they weren�t looking at me: they were checking out their reflections. About eight out of ten people casually and not so casually followed their moving bodies mirrored on the glass. It�s a small strangeness that people can be captivated with the image of themselves in motion. It�s different from looking into a mirror because that face is still. I don�t think many people have huge dance studio setups or mirrors large enough to capture a short walk. Mostly women did this, but I caught many guys changing their walk slightly. I find this lower-cased narcissism fascinating.

My genius professor walked by without paying any attention. He did not turn his head once.

I broke the internet

The internet wasn�t working a while ago but it seemed to make me want to do everything that requires it to work. I had short-term memory loss. I typed for a bit, then wanted to check my email. Couldn�t do that. I typed for a bit more, than I remembered I wanted to get a recipe from Rachel Ray (I love her show�s catch-phrase end rhyme: I�m Rachel Ray and your next meal is only thirty minutes away!) Couldn�t do that either. I was deflated.

My overwhelming dependence on technology makes me want to cry while eating, too.

anxiety

I�ve always related to Lisa from The Simpsons. One of my favorite episodes features her posing as a college student, having fooled some young-looking girls on her gymnastics team. (Tangentially, this has one of my favorite Homer quotations. When Lisa�s new smart friends drop her home, a silhouette of Homer appears in the window. He drunkenly sings to the tune of Chumbawumba�s song: �I drink a whiskey drink; I drink a lager drink. And when I have to pee, I use the kitchen sink!�) On another episode, Bart prays to God for a snow day to come and cancel school so he could study for an important test. When it arrives, Lisa panics from the cancellation and pulls out an emergency school kit, a box that unfolds into a miniature classroom, complete with a school bell ringing and a teacher scolding someone for chewing gum.

I remember in fifth grade my mom left early in the morning to go to the store and I started to panic because she wouldn�t be back in time to get me to school. I started hyperventilating when finally I spotted her car start up the driveway.

That same year, I almost had a nervous breakdown when I thought I failed a homework assignment. My teacher tried to assure me that I hadn�t, but I started that dramatic crying with the jerky breathing that everything I said was a blubbering stutter.

I was attached to school like suction-cup Garfields to a car window.

And some days, I feel like Bart praying for a snow day, begging for just a little more time.

It is finished.

I got my seminar 21-page tome back with a red "A" on it. The exam was lengthy and challenging but somehow I managed to keep enough strength in my hand to be typing this.

I saw this the other day.


More here

final.

My last final is in two and a half hours. After that, I descend into another academic fog, this time, it's Victorian literature, baby!

Did you know that Queen Victoria slept with a cast of her dead husband's hand? After he died, she also wore black mourning clothes until her own death 40 years later.

Did you know that none of what I have just written will be on my exam?

food for thought

When Mike shut the trunk of his car, he didn't notice that I was still rifling through my bag, so when the heavy metal frame came down on my forehead, I had a small red welt, but a sudden but enlightening perspective on the world!



The Steel Pig, one of the best places to eat in Seattle, is located right next to the Church of Scientology. Is it a coincidence that a place that serves soul-food is right next to a "church"?



If Tom Cruise or John Travolta ever came to Seattle for a service (are there services?), would they delight in the cat fish and crab cakes? Or the psychadelic portraits?

the karma police

I was waiting for a bus headed downtown the other day when an older woman cut in front of me. Usually, I would have pistol-whipped her, pulled her back with a surge of fury and anger and told her, "Oh hell, no." But I didn't. Not because she was older, but she was a tourist, so of course she wouldn't know the proper etiquette of the Seattle metro. She had been dropped off by her hotel's shuttle and when she emerged from the van, she sped over to where I was standing, dressed in those old-woman synthetic-floral-track suits that made a swoosh-swoosh sound when she walked. We filed onto the bus and she took the empty seat next to mine. The bus trudged on and she got up several times with questions. When she plopped herself back down, she unfolded a colorful cartoonish map that structured Seattle according to its stores and sights. She asked me how to get to the museum. I told her it was on First and University, pointing to the map. She gave me a look as if I had been speaking in Chinese, and continued staring at her map. We both got off at the same stop but something made me feel as if I should wait for her instead of running up the escalator like I usually do. I stopped and told her, "If you want, I'll show you how to get to the musuem." When she stepped forward, her face lit up and I had a strange thought. If a natural disaster had occurred at that moment, say an earthquake, and this woman and I were trapped in the Univeristy Station, she would say something comforting like, "Don't worry; I'm a mom, my daugther's in college, too." We entered into a friendly but anonymous conversation, where she thanked me for demystifying this city and asked me where I was from. She said she was Mexico and was in town for her granddaughter's graduation. When we were street-level, I pointed her in the direction of the museum. She thanked me, said God bless you and walked off. Feeling good about myself and the great deed I had performed for this woman, I then proceeded to beat up a hobo.