what up with it.

man, i haven’t written for a few days though a lot has happened. this is what happens when i don’t have internet freezing is also what happens when the godamn coffee shop you’re at doesn’t close their front door ARGHHHH DEATHHHH.

anyway, last night we watched the turin horse, which, after reading george’s review, i had really wanted to watch and even dragged along two other poor sops (gina and troy). it was, in fact, the most boring film on the planet — so boring and slow, really, that it became of the utmost hilarity, in that it seems impossible that anyone would direct such film intentionally, and yet, there it is, proof of intentionality, and proof that life is OMG SO ABSURD. it was beyond bad. and then was the polica show, which was also so, so, so incredibly mediocre that the entire evening — save for troy and i’s eating at swagat — was basically just a waste, which i could have spent instead watching bollywood movies and iranian action films that i have, or editing swahili videos for tuesday’s grimes show… but nOoOoOooo.

two days ago there was an excursion into the world of the mush, and it came in some kind of a flash that i should make movies… yes, movies. the kind where i would direct a human around, rather than just editing. it was a strange thought, an arresting thought, an aldous-huxley-looks-at-lawn-chair-in-doors-of-perception thought, of paralyzing brilliance — the floorboards were glowing — of all-encompassing beauty? it’s funny and ridiculous. but i never would have been in that position had it not been for my arms going absolutely numb for, i think, ten minutes or something. a quick online search yielded a result of a woman who had such symptoms and then got a catscan that was clean, got one three years later, and discovered that she had a brain tumor. it reminds me of the time that i had intense eye problems, and i didn’t know whether they were real or psychosomatic, but they seemed real, yet catscans had revealed nothing. and it is true that those problems came to pass after the 222222222222222ci. i remember feeling so, so, so lonely then, so frustrated that i went to get a catscan that day, by myself, and came back to my apartment at 716 n 41st st. and no one cared at how miserable of a time i had had. lenny, alex, and andy were hanging out, and i didn’t want to bring up how horrible and how terrifying of a time i had had in the catscan (recap of the event here). anyway. my eye has never felt normal since then — but it did subside a slight bit, and i just kind of ignored it, supposing it wasn’t a huge deal if the catscan didn’t result in anything. and i just felt generally idiotic for making such a big fuss, BECAUSE nothing came to be seen. but that doesn’t mean there is no problem, and such intense arm numbness scared the fucking shit out of me, and i need to go get a catscan stat, i think. but it is the case with insurance and such that… i just feel like i don’t even know where to go, and i’m scared also that parents will see the insurance, or i mean, how much does insurance even cover for this shit? can i actually afford this crap? so many questions.

i have been having nightmares lately. i never have nightmares, and don’t really know what the cause is. they are especially prevalent when i stay at troy’s house. the worst was two nights ago, when i spit out half my teeth and was desperately trying to hold in the rest. i have had these kinds of dreams many times — dreams interpretation guides say teeth-related dreams have to do with financial worries, though i know in my case that can’t be true — and i will say that they are, hands down, the worst godamn dreams ever to have… they feel so horrible, each tooth feeling like it is wiggling, hanging on by a thin thread, me never certain whether i’ll lose them all or not… are these dreams telling me i should take care of my teeth better? but i just got a teeth cleaning last year and it was okay… that dream was followed up by a strange escapade where lenny and i were wandering an abandoned mall or something, and we were looking for places to, i think, do the nasty. we went into the elevator and that seemed like the best place but there was something amiss about it; i don’t remember what. the dream pretty much just consisted of much wandering, inside and outside the mall.

this morning’s dream had to do theft. i was in the woods with some people and went outside, and there was really light grey layer of light penetrating the sky in dotted cross-type shapes. they got brighter and brighter. someone asked what they were. i think i said they were lasers. they got brighter, and closer, and began to descend, and when they descended closer, a blue kite-like strip became apparent and it looked like the drupal logo but had the words, very clearly, “laser druid.” it was some company or some brand. got inside and discovered that all of the computers and things we had had been hacked, and that the laser lights were information-stealing lasers, or something. it was strange; our computers were locked from normal use but also were completely dismantled. i think i went into the next room and began crying or being really upset, saying that my computer was essentially my life… it’s weird, its weird, it’s weird.

anyway, when looking at people on the mush, they are essentially a huge ball of hair and eyes to me, and it is hard to focus and mostly unattractive. it’s relatively such a hard thing, weird temperatures and body functions, weird reactions to perception. we began by taking a walk through mt. tabor which was beautiful on that day, drenched in fog, pure misting on the face. so good, so good. the greens and red-browns came to light, along with the realization that i mimick patterns in my mind that aren’t usually there. as far as learning, all i came to be left with was that i need a haircut and to tighten up my style a little bit. and to watch what i eat a bit more and take care of this body thing. and that i need to make films — perhaps not now, but that i can and am capable of making films. it has always been a bit of a thing where my favorite photographers are those who stage elaborate sets, but i have never felt comfortable with doing anything of the sort, never felt comfortable with directing people to do anything. i guess more than anything the experience was a reminder that perhaps i can do those things, and should, just because they’re difficult? i am not sure. but i am excited for this suite of swahili-related videos i am editing, and it will be fascinating to see if these result to something more, whether they will ultimately be used for their videos, etc. it’s unclear, all is unclear.

i think what troy learned was that anything can be done. which is cool. evidently up until now such experiences for him have been ways to work on the self — and this time, it was manageable, a sense that the self is doing fine and that the self just needs to learn to do things rather than talk about doing things. we had an idea the other night when out with abe about reviving all-day concert series ala jam bands of yore, and i think the mushy cemented in troy’s mind that it was possible to actually do these things, and that should be a partner and help me do those things, rather than waiting around and waiting for them to happen. undoubtedly, these were cool things to hear. i guess he also thinks that it’s time for him to get a real job rather than continuing to serve food to kids… :L

relatedly, troy and i had a really hilarious conversation the other night where we logic-holed our brain into ridiculousness. it had been quite a while (since blake was around) that i had had such high-logic brain-numbing discussion that it took way shorter of a while for me to be fatigued by it, but it was interesting, and a memory of times. blah, blah, blah. it’s 3:00pm. i am going back to editing videos. i have been reading a literate passion, a collection of letters between henry miller and anais nin. it’s interesting, it’s love, and i never knew that henry miller was really the one who was more in love with her, that he waited for years to marry her, but that she never wanted to divorce her real husband for fear of hurting him, even though she had stopped loving him years before and thought of him only as a good friend. interesting people.

i am at the wall st. protests.

I am at the Wall St. protests. I am very steadfast and confident in the importance of what I am trying to do; however, because of the lack of people who seem motivated or inspired by defining actual tangible goals and pursuing solutions, it’s discouraging. It is so very discouraging. Whatever is the point? Earlier today I wrote up what I guess you could call a manifesto — of what I believe and the change I want to make, the role I want to play. Well, crud. I don’t know what shape that will take on necessarily, though I am trying to pass it on. There is one girl, Earth, who seemed very muh in favor and aligned with my interests — but other than that, everyone seems to think it is a good idea but not to the point where they are willing to take it up for themselves. I am less than stoked by this. How is it in a park of thousands of people, and different ones everyday, the majority of people are only inspired enough to make meaningless signs and spout rhetoric? Who are the people who actually want to make change? are they really so lacking in ability that no one realizes that organizations need to become involved with one another, that people’s skills and talents need to be directed to places outside of the confines of this park? It is entirely annoying, and as “frustrating” as capitalism can be, making signs about how rich people suck is — first of all, short-sighted and ignorant; second of all, just absolutely useless. What is a sign like the one that just passed by — “END THE FED” — going to do? Why is absolutely nobody interested in actually working to actively do anything? I hope Giovanni and Michael and co. take it over. I really hope that they do… and that because they are a group of individuals, that they will be able to find the flaws where I could not, and actually direct this flow of energy into a place that gets things done, that creates answers and solutions for goals that everyone can agree upon rather than those that people can only individually spout off about. FUCK.

recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day seven: omaha.

(I am currently writing this from Gaia Italian Cafe in Lower East Side, Manhattan. Just the best fucking place, man, and right downstairs from where Jeanette lives. Wish I had found it earlier. I am soooooo into it…!!)

—

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.
—

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

Ohhhh so many days in Omaha. After a night out last night, woke up early to go to church. Wooooo! Not exactly my ideal type of church, but it was quite fun nonetheless. But a Monday mass is pretty much guaranteed to be mass with hardcore people, and as my previous trip to a weird Houston Catholic church also revealed…

This was the first time Rose had ever been to church, and man, I don’t know if Catholics just don’t want people to become Catholic or what, but the barrier to entry is set soooooooooo fucking high. It feels seriously that it is impossible for one to just simply jump into Catholicism. There’s not a goshdarn thing to jump into! They go to infinity from the get-go, rushing through just tons and tons of movements without anyone commanding anything, chanting lines here and there that mean Lord knows what; confusing, confusing, confusing!!! At least I still remember the Lord’s Prayer from my days in Catholic elementary school… woOoooOoooOoOo! :L

We went to St. Cecilia’s Church, which is huge, towering, and definitely not the type of church you see frequently in the United States. So it had that going for it. I would post some pictures that Rose took, but honestly, I’m so churched-out at this point in my life that particular church was not particularly all that interesting (it was alright, dude) that generally I am going to stamp a big fat “PASS!” on doing that shit. Boo-hoo-ring.

Let’s talk instead about the service itself, because that’s way more interesting. There were probably like 20 people at mass, with a priest dude who honestly seemed like he was totally a newb and didn’t entirely know WTF he was doing. Pretty sure he stumbled over his words a few times. Also, do they fucking take Communion at every mass? Cause if so, I didn’t know that, or didn’t remember that, and man dudes, that’s just kinda eating up the Lord Jeebus Christ a little too often, isn’t it? He doesn’t even taste that delicious in wafer form.

I refrained from taking Communion even though I’m baptized because I’m so very not into it and no longer feel the need to pretend. Well, that’s kind of a lie. When I went to Israel recently with my parents and a shit ton of the other parents from their church, I did in fact take Communion, though I only took the wine (or was it grape juice? Whatever…) and not the actual host. But that time it was mostly for the peer pressure reasons that led me to sign up to be baptized and to be remain sexually sacred until marriage back in high school… I was always the last one to do both! So… WHUTEVA! I remember there was one older girl in our church, Tammy, who refrained from doing the True Love Waits bullshit, and for sure, everyone whispered and wondered why she chose to make that decision. Judgmental churchgoers? NEVERRRRRR. I can’t say that I didn’t whisper and wonder because I’m quite sure I did or this wouldn’t even be on my mind or in my memory whatsoever, but… so it goes. It’s a natural repressed curiosity to wonder why someone else wouldn’t make the same ridiculous decision as you!

While we were at church, Rose picked up this book when they were reading a verse from Ezra. She thought it was a Bible but it was not; it was some weird book with hymns but also occasional directives. Not really sure what it was. It certainly did amuse me, though, that the verse from Ezra they chose to display basically just talked about how people should donate money. But… of course…

Afterwards, we went to AVANZAAAAA! I was really excited to go to a Mexican supermarket buuuuuut Avanza (2900 Leavenworth St.) was just alright. Been to better ones, bitchez. But what they DID have was a huge cup of fresh flan, made with milk not cream, and I ate the shit out of that for breakfast. A huge cup of flan for like $2.00, for breakfast? TALK ABOUT HEAVEN! HEAVEN FOR A SUGARY FATASS SUCH AS MYSELF!!!!

Beyond that, we went to explore a few places because we had nothing particularly better to do… Starting with the arboreteum area. We actually found it because we got lost, but whatever. It actually cost money so we didn’t go in and ended up at this mini-park with old Union Pacific trains and such… (Omaha being a middle-of-the-country connection point for original trains; it was just about the only thing near where it was). The trains were KINDA interesting just because I had a recent stint being really interested in trains (they’re such aesthetically-pleasing things)… but that’s about it.

Then I guided us to a random downtown park (where Rose learned that the oldest restaurant in town was a Chinese restaurant, and wanted to go there later on…) but yeah. It was a really nice downtown waterfront park they had, and I did a brief, long-overdue meditation there. It was quite good, quite good.

Alright, I guess I will share a couple of my photos since… they exist… (but that’s the only reason).

Not gonna lie; this dude was pretty cool, and like the praying mantis, this was the closest I’ve ever been to a grasshopper and the first time I’ve ever really had the opportunity to study em! It should also be noted that this motherfucker was fucking huuuuuuuuuuuuge!!

A husk of a man.

Then we headed to that oldest Chinese restaurant Rose had seen. It is called King Fong Café (315 S 16th St) and honestly is apparently quite shitty but the history behind it is KINDA cool… it was one of the first places in the States to import these Chinese lantern things and looks very old-school, even with the restaurant being on the upper floor as opposed to the first floor. I don’t doubt it has history but the food is probably MEHHH, with a and super Americanized menu, but the lady was very nice and let Rose snap a whole buncha photographs even though they were closed for lunch. So that was nice. But the street it was on was this weird ass part of town that reminded me a bit of Seattle’s Pioneer Square, only there was nothing really going on and just a whole bunch of somewhat shady people hiding under somewhat shady trees, waiting for the bus or something. Ohhhh the sketchiness of bus malls.

Instead we went to Panda House (301 S. 16th St), where Rose got crab rangoons, and I can bet this place is way better. They defo had some legit crap on their menu, though none of that was ordered (and we had just missed the lunch specials by 3 minutes or something). Because we dilly-dallied a bit, we got a ticket for an expired parking meter, though. But tickets in Omaha are only $15.00…!!!

Randomly found another park downtown soon thereafter. This shit was really fucking cool. It had the most amazing pioneer bronze sculptures ever, which had apparently just been put in in 2009. The detail on them was INCREDIBLE. Seriously. It seemed like they were real. I wish you could see that the wagons had grains, the tools had bolts, the drapery was amazing… everything was just so godamn rad. Definitely one of the coolest parks I’ve been to ever, and I can totally rant and rave about this place, for suuuure.

So fucking epic.

Afterwards, went back home to meet up with Bill and then headed down south to go to the Mexican neighborhood, which, strangely enough, seemed perhaps one of the hippest parts of Omaha, and it was the place with all the thrift stores and such. It had a SHIT TON of restaurants, some of which are supposedly amazing, but because people wanted cheap margaritas, we ended up at a restaurant that was pretty much not good at all, and of course, I don’t drink margaritas. C’est la vie… (here is a pic of the not-so-amazing food, the boys, and the drinks)

Before we went to the restaurant, though, we did go to this place that sold gardening pots for like, the least amount of money ever… it was seriously kind of incredible how cheap this place was… you could buy huge ass ones – you know, those giant planters – for like $20.00 or something. Surely that place is a front! Apparently there are never workers in there! Anyway, these are total Mario boots!

Our horrible “band” photo…

Gotta buncha snacks from the International Bakery (5106 S 24th St.) afterwards, which is a Mexican bakery. Can’t complain. They had these particular cookies and were really dry, and we all know I love a fucking dry cookie. The drier the better. Which I was joking, but I’m notttttttt at all.

A mural from the Mexican part of Omaha, had you any doubts as to its existence or legitity (not a word, but it should be, maybe…)

That night, we met up with SC dude and went to their venue, The Slowdown (729 North 14th St.) and got a tour of it. I mean, honestly, meeting with dude and going to tour the SC stuff is basically the only reason we stayed in town the extra evening, so it is great that it actually lived up to expectations (not that I had any, really, but Rose did) and it was easily the coolest part of our Omaha experience, just cause Slowdown is such a cool space; they really, really put a lot of thought into it and you can tell that from just looking at their setup, their weekly specials, etc. There is, apparently, like a giant 20-foot television; they have room separators so they can cater to large or small shows; the green room is fucking huge and amazing, and with showers; they have beer specials when they don’t have shows that are like $2.00 for anything – domestic or international – that’s on tap, and they have shit like Newcastle on tap, lucky me; etc. etc. The place is just super solid, and visually looks appealing in that typical black-walled venue kinda way. And it’s all-ages, and I guess most good shows that come through town go through there (as they are one of perhaps two venues).

From here I will show Rose’s pics, as I didn’t take any… also learned some more about Nebraskans and football from Jason, which was no doubt interesting… he was talking about how he was in fact super into football when he was going to school in Lincoln, and that the seats there are teeny tiny and are on benches that are marked with spaces (as opposed to being individual seats), and that, as a result, if you have a fat person on either side of you (which, judging from a lot of what I saw of Nebraska, is wholly possible), there’s a good chance that you’d be standing for an entire game because you literally cannot sit. So that’s funny. Anyway. Pics.

[ABOVE] Inside their offices; [BELOW] Jason has a creepy clown thing on his door… it is pretty downright creepy…

Inside their record store… dude, that chair is seriously the most amazing fucking find. You can’t see all of the details, but it has like, a wooden tree trunk base, and is made of upholstered brown leather with tartan patterning? WHAT THE FUCK; IT’S SO COOL! Evidently Omaha is a bedrock of amazing vintage finds, because no one really gives a shit and there is so much of it. I promised I wouldn’t let out the secret. I think I just did…

But yeah, it was pretty cool to see their warehouse and attached store. Rose was like, “Why is there no dedication or commemoration to Conor Oberst in Omaha?!!!” and that’s a funny thought, in general. The closest thing was this wall in the SC record store that had a bunch of old tickets and memorabilia tacked up from the early days of Bright Eyes and other SC bands. I dunno. Amusing…

Anyway, that’s it. Beyond that, I went to bed after doing some work; Rose went out and had a night out on the town with a boy. Snore! Snarf!!

(Side note: I am about to order what I think is an eggplant parmigiana sandwich from that place I said is amazing and I am totally stoked. And jealous that owner speaks Italian and Spanish fluently and owns such a cool place. I am also in major recipe-development mode and have been coming up with some ideas for things… and started practicing yesterday… so when I go home I am just going to be an insane baking fool! Imagine Chinese ingredients mixed with Latin American ingredients – that will about sum up what I’m going for…!!!!! STOKED!!!)

recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day four: denver.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.

—
DENVER, COLORADO AND ITS SURROUNDING AREAS

When you’re on a cross-country road trip of such brutal proportions, a day off — any day off — just seems like absolute heaven. Such was the case our first full day of not having any driving responsibilities — we had a day off, being chauffeured around by Kathy and Ed, in Denver and its surrounding mountain town areas. What wonderfulness!

This is apparently me sleeping.

Kathy and Ed’s kitchen. I’m always glad there are other people around to take photos (especially Xinlei for a lot of the trips I go on with her) because, left to my own devices, I focus too much one miniatures and could really seriously care less about anything else…

Breakfast was super chill. Kathy had bought a quiche that was heated up (she’s not horribly amazing at cookery), and I stole some of Ed’s cereal (a non-sugary kind I had wanted to try for a while… but was not impressed, no no)… we ate outside on the patio, and it was super nice… got a good view of some little prairie dogs. Haha. Cutie patOoties!

Then we went to a state park called Roxborough, and it was right next to the famous Red Rocks Ampitheatre (which seriously looks like the most awesome place to see a show — right there next to The Gorge, if not better). Description on a Colorado parks website describes the place as, “More than 1.2 billion years of geologic time are represented by the spectacular red-rock formations found within Roxborough State Park, which is located southwest of Denver. Ecologically, the park is highly diverse as a result of its location in a transition zone between the plains and the mountains. The area’s geological structure has resulted in micro-climates that have produced seven distinct plant communities in a unique mixture of prairie and mountain species. As a result, Roxborough is home to abundant wildlife, including black bear, mountain lion and deer.”

It was about a half hour or maybe more drive to get there from Ed and Kathy’s house (which is actually located in Littleton, Colorado, which I believe was the site of Columbine). It was actually pretty crazy… I wouldn’t think it would matter that Denver is a mile high, but I am apparently so out of shape that slight inclines were initially me wearing me out. My body definitely got used to it after a little bit, but initially I couldn’t catch my breath and I was seriously like, “WHAT THE FUCK!!! HOW AM I THIS OUT OF SHAPE!?!!” I mean — I guess I am still out of shape cause I probably shouldn’t have been out of breath at all, but the fact that it’s a mile high makes it a LITTLE better. Very little, though. Pathetic. The image below is one Rose took, of a view from a teeny tiny little lookout point that took like 1 minute to walk to.

Having traveled so much, places always remind me of other places, and geographic formations always remind me of other geographic formations. This one reminds me of the formations at Cumbe Mayo in Cajamarca, Peru, just a little bit. I guess in some ways it’s funny to no longer be astounded by beauty in nature in such an extreme way, but at the same time, it’s not that it isn’t remarkable — it still is — but it is no longer remarkable in a way where I feel it necessary to constantly say aloud, “Oh my god, this is so beautiful!” but sometimes I forget that other people haven’t traveled nearly as much as I have, and that as a result, they still do need to say these things… sometimes I need to remind myself of that. It’s like with Burning Man, where everyone was like, “Your mind isn’t blown right now????” and I was just like, “No, this feels totally natural to me.” And it wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed by anything that was going on — I was — but nothing felt so incredibly foreign that it was constantly astounding me… it was just like, “Well, clearly this is a environment where anything goes, and here it all is, splayed out, and it is just going.” I guess there is nothing in the positive realm of things that people do that really blows my mind anymore; the things that blow my mind are more in terms of things that exist in the universe, or the really truly horrible things that people can do. I don’t consider this jaded, though… it just seems like… tolerant. But maybe is my skewed view. But anyway…

Well, we didn’t see many animals, though we did see a praying mantis that was sitting real pretty and nice… which is pretty cool, since I have never actually seen one before… it was just sitting there forever. Such beautiful things!

Apparently Colorado peaches are a big deal. Or at least this is what they kept telling us.

We later on went to the mountain town of Georgetown. Small mountain town with cute little tourist shops, fresh air, etc. Think it was very much reliant on tourism, and one of the shop owners mentioned to Kathy that the reason was coming to an end because the days were getting drearier.

We took a tour of a place called the Hotel De Paris, which was pretty interesting. We were not allowed to take photos inside, but the place had a really interesting history, with a founder (Louis Dupuy, though that was his fake name because he was running from the law in France or something) who knew nothing about architecture but a lot about business, and he did really clever things like saving money where it didn’t matter (in terms of striking visitors with a good impression) and spending money where it did matter. For example, he had these really ornate table legs on his dining room tables but when you lifted up the table cloths, the tables were just crappy wooden planks. Or he would get slightly mismatched objects that looked just close enough alike that no one would really notice unless they were really studying them in-depth. Clever dude. Also used a hotel to try and spread his ideas about good hygiene — through hand-washing, less people in an individual room, etc. Through the tour we learned that Coors Beer was founded around the same time and that they were contemporaries, and that Super 8 was also around at that time (but was much lower-class than this particular hotel). The lady who was giving us a tour totally had a crush on the dude posthumously — it was very obvious — and we all definitely got a kick out of that. Here’s a before and after shot of the place just because it’s interesting:

One of the shops, being hella senile and shit. I got a major, major kick out of the tennis balls. Major. Side note: As we were leaving this shop, Kathy destroyed one of Ed’s sunglasses, which I guess was like… the fifth one she’d destroyed in a couple months or something. Not sure how the woman even does it!

The Trading Post was a cute little shop there. The store owner was a cute little man. He got really excited about taking a photograph of us and dressing us up. This picture below frightens me a lot because I feel like I look like Yee-Ma. Lord fucking god.

There was this really cool antique shop and bookshop in town where I found an excellent book (I read the first few pages and definitely needed it; don’t remember what it was, but it was about travel and one guy’s adventures, basically, and it was a very, very old book…). I thought it was $15.00 or something, which was cheap, a splurge for me because I didn’t need it. Turns out it was actually $45.00, and the $15.00 was a leftover remnant. The shop owner said that they liked to keep those older prices of the books on the books because it spoke to the book’s legacy, and I really liked that. They had wonderful books in there. When I explained to Rose the situation and why I didn’t buy it, she said, “They didn’t honor that?” and I said that it made sense that they wouldn’t… and she said something like, “You’re a good person,” which is the strangest response to that thing because to me, that’s just what makes sense…

On the way back to Littleton, we stopped by another little town, but again, there wasn’t so much except for a little town and some shops. And apparently a pizza joint that is totally the jam, but we didn’t really eat at it (constant abstinence from food, I’m tellin’ ya!). Not sure what makes a Colorado pizza a Colorado pizza, though. I’d be curious to find out sometime. Then we went back to the place and ate some roasted veggies, bean dip, tortillas, etc. that Kathy had bought the previous day, and it was like, presto! Instant meal from a bunch of pre-made things! But it was good, and there was some fucking jamming queso, hah. NOMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

After it got later, Rose and I wandered downtown and just wandered. Here are some of the things we found…

13th and Sherman St. I’m not at all interested in this mural. What I am interested in (but we did not get to eat at) is this vegan and vegetarian restaurant right next door to it, called City O’ City… it was so nice-looking and so hoppin’… then again, Denver was just a hoppin’ place, in general…

This is a truck next to a show we walked by, which I knew Troy would kill me for not going to… George Clinton and Parliament Funk! AND IN DENVER? I’m sure it woulda been fucking awesome. Unfortunately, it was also like $45. A dude in line who answered my question about what it was insisted that we should go, and I mighta, but the price was just a bit too steep for the two of us.

Denver’s downtown area (pictured above) was just in general kind of rad. Here were some of the extremely large-scale installations found there, that again, makes stupid Seattle’s Sculpture Park seem just so dumb… (someday I’ll get over how much that thing sucks…)

After going downtown, we visited Gypsy House Café (1279 Marion St.) a bit north from downtown Denver. IT HELLA RULED. Man. If I had this in my town I would DEFINITELY go there everyday. I’m talking… normal bookworms, Muslim women, gothic kids galore. It was fucking fascinating. And they had hookah. And they had a super vegetarian-friendly menu. Shit ruled so hard. I think there was a venue attached to it in the back (where I suspect some kind of goth show was going on??) but I can’t really be sure.

Anyway. I eavesdropped on a LOT of conversation, mostly on our peer-aged Muslim gal pals who were talking a LOT about makeup, and one of them was talking about how she went canoeing fully covered but pulled her head veil back because, “A hijab tan is the worst thing ever.” I thought that was just the most hilarious thing… they also talked a lot about how people would welcome them to the United States after they said they were from Colorado, even though they were born in the States, just because people wouldn’t believe them. Bum deal.

This is a sign found in their bathroom. Fun one.

After working at Gypsy House Café for a good hour-and-a-half or something, we decided to go onto Larimer Square, which Ed had said would be a “happenin’” part of town… and it definitely was, though in a frat boy-y kinda way.

What we ran into on the way there was fucking Denver’s OKTOBERFEST! We were clued in by this really horrible metal-punk-Irish band, complete with accordion, but even more obnoxious than one might ever expect from a band like The Dropkick Murphys, even. God, that shit just doesn’t work for me and just never has, though I applaud their efforts… I guess…

My eyes were definitely popping out of my head when I saw these marshmallow treats, and I was definitely wondering, “WHAT THE FUCK!?! WHY DON’T OTHER PEOPLE USE OTHER KINDS OF CEREAL THAN RICE KRISPIES FOR MARSHMALLOW TREATS? GENIUS!!!” I mean, it’s not that novel of an idea really but it so is, too… I think I need to combine my newfound love for Peanut Butter Puffins (seriously, the best thing ever…) and make marshmallow treats using those… omg omg omgogmaogmoamgoagmoagmoamg. I am already pre-dying with taste satisfaction. RECIPE FORTHCOMING ZOMG. OMG AND I CAN ADD SOME BANANA TOO HOLY SHIT.

The rest of Oktoberfest is what one might expect: a bunch of drunken idiots milling about. But everyone seemed to be in high spirits, extremely friendly, and bro-y, but in a different way from the usual bro. They were all like skater-snowboard bros, which is a more tolerable kind of bro (and which, up until recently, I hadn’t really considered a bro, but they are bros in other people’s eyes, I guess). MM-HMM. Yeah, I’m kind of a boring counterpart to these kinds of things just because I don’t like, party. Or drink. So I just kind of sit, and for some people, it’s weird to go to a bar with me as I do not drink or whatever. With multiple people it’s fine, but with just one person, it’s sometimes like, well, might as well not.

Along the way back, we passed one of many marijuana dispensaries, but this one is particularly dope because it’s built out of an old gas station. Caaaamoooonnn. That totally rules…

Anyway, got sidetracked there. This was just a funny thing we happened upon walking by a tall skyscraper building… and both of us did a double-take — for good reason, obviously.

That was pretty much the end of the evening. Crawled home and back to bed.

recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day two: boise, salt lake city.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.

—

BOISE, IDAHO

Woke up and spent the morning with Brian Baker! He drove us around in his “ghetto” car (he has two) and took us to Boise’s downtown, where I had only been in passing before. He had a 5-panel mirror in his car… could see everything and all angles! Yay! I think every Asian mother should have one of those, maybe

We went to Goldie’s for breakfast. I didn’t eat much; just a side of red potatoes with an in-house seasoning mixture that was not particularly interesting. Thank lawd for hawt sawce.

Walked around afterwards, which included heading to Freak Alley, where a bunch of graffiti (and other) artists had paid money, generally, to draw up on a section of wall. There were a good pieces, but they were few and far between. This would be one of them. I guess it is a portrait of an older shop owner who had died.

This is of Jimi Hendrix, which was put together by smashed-up mirrors. Pretty neat.

We then went to this parking lot full of graffiti. There were some fun things.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Wasn't the yellow man also in a painting at de nada?"]

[ABOVE] Brian inspecting da fatz; [BELOW] Brian gettin’ low/homoerotic.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Gideon & mosaic"]

There were plenty of finger-painted handprints. We decided to add our own with nice thin-tipped Micro pen (of which I was freaking out and telling everyone to “be gentle” with )

Fucking hellzaz rad Ninja Turtles mural thing. SOOOO RADDD. Definitely the best thing in the parking lot. The models are doing a great job, too.

Went to the train station afterwards. Apparently bitchez be gettin’ married out tharr. It was a pretty neat place.
After getting out of downtown Boise and getting Brian’s car tour, we just hung around his place a bit and he gave rose a brief introduction to dubstep and the history of dubstep. Got to listen to some of his new tracks, a lot of which are really good! I really hope that he gets something out of his music because dude is so much better than a lot of bullshit that’s out there right now. That and he’s been doing it for-fucking-ever and deserves it, because he is goooood.

Anyway, heading out of Boise, there was this lovely building. We most certainly had a hey-day.

—

BETWEEN BOISE, IDAHO AND SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Not the most glamourous of rest stops"]

—

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Didn't expect to see rain in Utah"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Giddy punch!"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Another day, another state"]

We stopped by a park that was a teeny tiny nook off of the Salt Lake. As Rose said on her Tumblr, “Millions of mosquitos not pictured.” Yup. Although I had purposely carried around deet for the duration of the trip, I of course forgot that it might be a good idea to actually bring it when we were exploring a swampy park right at sundown. Dammit!! We ended up running from place to place in order to avoid being eaten alive so thoroughly… and while that helped — minorly — we still got eaten alive. Indeed. Bug bites on top of bug bites! Surprisingly, I didn’t get it too bad this time even though I usually am quite loved by those miniature havoc-wreakers. This time, Rose got the brunt of it, and like me, she swells up to infectious states, and I think in some places she had three mosquito bites in one section that made for a reaaaaaaaaaal fun time (sarcasm). She was quite pOofy. Reminds me of the time when I went to Europe as a kid, got a huge big bite on my arm, and then my arm swelled up huge; for the rest of the trip, my parents and brother called me “potato arm.” That’s love, I guess. But yeah, despite the mosquito-y death — definitely worth in on the picture-taking and general beauty arena!

Rose was endlessly fascinated by how beautiful Utah was, cause — I guess — coming from Los Angeles she kept thinking that Utah and anywhere outside of the West Coast was basically really hideous and boring, but I mean, Utah’s one of the raddest geographical states, for sure! She also considered it the Midwest which was really just kind of amusing.

We drove a bunch and got to Salt Lake City that evening, where we were staying with a Couchsurfer. What I knew of the lady was that she was a mom who had a stripper pole in her living room. You know… whatever… that sounds fine. Not judging as some people just enjoy the exercise of it or whatever. But it got real weird kind of fast, and right before getting there I was just major cranky pants (snatched the iPhone out of Rose’s hand when she was reading her own directions to the house and getting a little bit lost and I was certain I knew the directions and thought it would be better if I just told her as opposed to having her look… but it was totally cranky!) from being really, really hungry… and then being stuck behind a train for godamn forever! We also went to Whole Foods after getting lost a whole bunch and bought a bunch of dinner fixin’s, but by that time, I really didn’t care to be shopping and really just wandered around aimlessly cause my brain wasn’t really working. Rose picked out everything and I helped pay for it, barely really knowing what was going on.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Half mile from our destination, stuck behind the longest train ever. So hungry!"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Welcome to tonights friend for a day!"]

There were three other CouchSurfers in the apartment, and I just kind of like fuuuuuck, cause I didn’t necessarily want to deal with that many people at the time. There was a 19-year-old girl from Montana who had run away from Montana because she had “gotten into trouble,” which on the last straw involved crashing her grandfather’s car into a ditch and then ditching it. She was on a trip with a guy she had just met — another CouchSurfer — who was from Virginia or something and had just graduated from Business school. He was an interesting dude — the type of dude who is probably really sad (as evinced by some details he later let on) and displays it all through this kind of cock-assuredness “I am so smart and witty” attitude that, as he got drunker and drunker throughout the course of the evening, became very obviously just a front he used to make living with himself a lot easier. When I first arrived, he pretty much just played 20 questions with me, which I didn’t mind because the attitude was so direct and interesting. He guessed right off the bat that I had been a Sociology major, and also guessed something else which I have since forgotten, and I was pretty impressed immediately. And then he wanted me to guess what he had graduated studying, after telling me that he had graduated from Jon Hopkins, which I had THOUGHT was a medical school and not just a general school. He got offended when I thought he was a nurse, and then also offended when I thought he had studied some kind of translation thing. (I later found out that he was an English major, which… I don’t know why he would have been so offended by the translation thing. Newb.)

After those fairly OK exchanges, the conversation somehow got steered towards politics (he was a Ron Paul supporter), and he said something really dumb about how Barack Obama wasn’t really African-American because he was born in Hawaii and was only half-black, but how does that discount him from being African-American? Dude wasn’t even talking to me during this conversation because I had removed myself from speaking, but that’s when he really started bothering me a HUGE amount, and I kind of started making faces and being even more anti-social because I just couldn’t stand really being in that room. I was ready to be like, “Hey guys — I’m going to go take a walk and I’ll be back,” but then Rose had finished putting stuff in the oven and needed to go to the car, so I went with her and vented. By the time I came back, I felt a lot better, and just getting slight perspective by removing yourself from the situation helps sooooooooooooo much. But anyway. We went back upstairs, ate food, and I started warming up to the dude a LITTLE bit. It took a very long while, though. I will get back to that later.

The last guy was a very, very large man who said he was in the midst of divorcing his wife and fighting for custody over his child. He said he had another lover and that he was homeless for the time being, but that he wanted to get in on a work trade for shelter thing that was going on in the city — only there was a waiting list for it. His options, I guess, were CouchSurfing or staying in a shelter with 400 other people, and he said that he was scared of staying in a shelter. Freshly homeless, I guess. He said, “You wouldn’t think so, but large guys get scared, too. We beat up other people and then we go home and cry about it.” Although he was very large of the not particularly muscular type, so I’m not entirely sure how many people he beat up. Interesting? Dark past? Wonder who he was beating up, or when it was, and why. (Presently Rose and I are talking about “doing violent things and wanting to cry about it” and she said she gave a kid a black eye once when she was 15. She says, “I’ve definitely now decided never to punch anybody in the face.” I’ve never done anything violent, but these stories remind me of dad, and how my parents used to talk about how my dad beat people up for no reason… such as picking fights with people the bus stop…!!)

Back to the dude who had previously been bothering me. Throughout the course of the evening, dude continued to make a lot of comments about blacks… such as… when he and I were having a deep conversation and a hip-hop song came on, he immediately went to change it and said, “I can’t listen to black music right now. It’s too intense.” (Actually, the word wasn’t intense, but something a little more ignorant than that.) He also got to questioning, “Can you be racist and truthful at the same time?” and it was a good question, I think… just because it showed that he was thinking a little bit about his own actions. Apparently, upon graduation, he had a six-figure job lined up, I guess, but then decided he didn’t want to work long hours every day and be unhappy. He wanted to get out and explore the world and just see things while he was young, and he said that part of his reason for deciding that was that his father had died early, after always saying he wanted to do this and do that, but had never gotten the opportunity to because he was always working. It was kind of heart-warming, but dude was definitely conflicted; he felt bad for hating his father and not getting along with him prior to his death, but also said that he had hated the man ever since he (he in this case being the CouchSurfer) had punched his sister when he was young and his dad immediately punched him out. He said, “Well, at least I learned never to hit a girl,” but he was still mad at his dad — evidently a huge dude — punching him — evidently, at that point, a tiny kid. Which makes sense. But to have that kind of regret can really eat away at someone, particularly when you don’t know if it’s right or wrong… but I hope that he talks to someone on this trip who can help him with that. He said to me, “I guess I’m being really honest with you right now, but I know I’ll never see you again.” I guess it’s good that people are willing to always talk to me about these things, even when I don’t particularly vibe with them well. It has always been the case. And I have felt, especially lately, that I really need to do something with those abilities / tendencies… hrmph.

But yeah. Dude was super interesting, and very confused. You could tell that his rich background and surroundings tainted him from who he really wanted to be; he had been a baseball player in college and touched upon the fact that he had gay friends… and while he was definitely not so familiar with gays he felt it necessary to leave that detail out, he did mention that he was the only one on the baseball team WITH gay friends, and that he got a lot of shit for that because it was such a taboo for everyone else around. So I guess his heart is in the right place, and I have to give him that for being able to tolerate and accept other people when surrounded by such closed-mindedness. And it’s easy to judge him for even being closed-minded to begin with, but the dude is definitely trying to make strides, and if his goal right now is to just follow where life takes him without a worry, and his way of accomplishing it is through CouchSurfing, I can imagine only that he will, even a year from now — if not less time — be a much more mature and actualized dude who will be useful in making positive change. I’m sure all of the remnants of past ignorance will not go away, but I’m positive that he will make huge strides towards more and more openmindedness. We actually also had a conversation after he made the “black music” comment about how that was a bad thing to say, and he acknowledged it, and said that he had had conversations with people before where he was in my position, telling other people that racial constructs didn’t matter — but then said that being mugged and jumped in Baltimore had unfortunately tainted his experience in a way that actually influenced his thinking actively. And I can understand that, surely, as Baltimore is a particularly gnarly place, especially with regards to race relations… but I just hope that he will see soon that being black is not necessarily equated always with bad things. I guess I can say that I went from being his biggest skeptic to his biggest supporter, and I’m really glad I got the chance to hear him and understand where he was coming from. Rose and the CS host were definitely more tolerant of him at first, but also later on seemed more annoyed by him after I had arrived to a place where I thought he was fine and/or going to be fine.

Onwards to details about the CSer herself. I really don’t know how she afforded such a nice apartment, and without working. She had a young child. She was formerly Mormon and married, and it seemed that after finding herself anew (post church-shunning) she had turned from what was probably a typical Mormon lady with typical Mormon gender roles to an extreme opposite, with stripper poles and always making comments about how strong women were. It was almost as though she was trying to convince herself constantly. Which I don’t necessarily blame her for — it was just very interesting. I suppose when you’re in that kind of situation and have been judged for being an ex-Mormon with a baby who is now divorced, it is only natural that you need to rely on yourself an extraordinary amount and prop yourself up, even if that involves hyper-correction. But yeah, I didn’t necessarily feel all that comfortable around her because I didn’t feel like she really understood my kinds of comments or brand of humor, but it’s all whatevers.

Dinner seemed to take forever, with a bunch of hovering piggies pigging out (myself included — there were some of the best fucking local flavored tortilla chips EVER). Although what Rose made for food was very much standard everyone-in-Portland-would-eat-this-and-know-what-it-was-and-probably-cook-it-or-something-similar-fairly-frequently, the people here were absolutely mind-blown. Like, seriously!!! Other than the large homeless man, the other people were just like whuuut about most of the stuff. And granted, I personally had never eaten endives before, they weren’t mind-blowing. The CS host chick actually wrote down directions the next morning on how to cook all of these things, which was amusing just because it was mostly like… sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and roast. Haha. But I guess everyone needs to learn sometime. Rose’s beets were particularly super ace, though.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Feast for our four new friends; baked beets w vinaigrette glaze, red wine endives, portabello mushrooms & quinoa w bruschetta"]

There were some neighborly dudes who kept wanting CS host to hang out. They live the floor below her, I guess. As for me, I was not particularly interested in talking to anyone this evening, and was probably being a bit of a quiet butt, but WHUTEVA.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Courtyard riders"]

Anyway, after eating and after CSer lady took the 19-year-old (haha) — during which Rose took a nap / eavesdropping break and I had that deep conversation with the kid from the East Coast — we went to take a night walk around SLC. Baby had passed out long beforehand, and mom wrapped her up in a blanket, took the stroller, and departed the hOoOoOoose, baby in tow. The new baby carts are fucking intense pieces of machinery, man. Some have thick wheels as though they’re for off-roading or something. The one she had was maybe not THAT intense but it was fairly intense.
The walk mostly took us downtown to the main Mormon cathedral (?) complex, where Rose smoked a pots cause she thought it’d be funny, haha. It was interesting-ish but not hella, but it was nice to be able to just walk around there for a little. Took a few pics, but they are mostly who cares.

Partway through, baby woke up and started crying and got creeped out by this fleece blanket she had that had a dog’s head on it. Honestly, baby seems a little schizo or something haha. Apparently she sometimes walks by certain alleys and says there are fairies or something. But maybe that’s just how babies are. It was interesting to see her freaking about the dog having a head and being wrapped up in that heady-dog-blanket, but it was pretty much between that and being naked (she seriously had no clothes on), so eventually, after mom telling her she needed to use her “real words” — which, she of course didn’t, since it was like 2am and baby was cranky — baby started behaving and we headed on our way back (but not after walking a few more extraneous blocks).

Interesting rainbow metal thingy installation which CS host had never seen before. I did see later on in the local SLC weekly that it was a new installation and it had won some kind of award. WHUTEVA!

Thus concludes day two!

[ROSE'S TUMBLR SUMMARY OF DAY TWO: "street art tour & crash course in dubstep in Boise. Back on the open road, salt lake sunset, & a feast for our new friends to be followed by a downtown wanderings. & I think I may love Utah."]

not gonna lie…

parents were just here, visiting me, in portland, for a few days.

what can i say… the first couple days were fine, even pleasant, even, though it has to be taken into consideration that it was mostly pleasant because of what it wasn’t — that it was pleasant because i had expected worse and gotten dished out less than “worse.” but hey, standards are standards, although they may not be extremely high. so there’s that.

this particular evening, we went to shandong in portland. first time going to that restaurant, and i must say that i was quite very stoked that there is! indeed! close-in! portland! good! chinese! food! shandong was half americanized, but in a really good way… it was authentic although it catered very much to americans. so i am into it. the dan dan mian (which i will now make in the future nearest) was of particular note, and they have a really good koreanized jja jjang myun… so i’m into that, too. i will definitely be going back, oh yessss. so excited. funny that it is down the street from the ambassador — this really funny chinese food / karaoke place that troy and i went to on our first date. dare i say the ambassador even had a better chinese eggplant dish than shandong, and i’d say the ma po tofu, too? i dare. funny fun fun funs.

anyway. when the parents came, we did some hefty driving, first to silver falls state park — apparently in the amazingly named city called sublimity. that place has like this trail that is 8.5 miles long and goes through 10 waterfalls. the north falls were AMAZING because they fall from pretty high and then have a seating area behind them that is carved into the rock and is basically a circular section looking out onto the opening of the rest of the park. hard to explain — will have to snag a photograph from the mother who actually took photographs — but yeah.

yesterday, we went to astoria (pretty pointless, i must admit) and then to seaside, which looks totally different in the summer! last time i went there was in the winter, or fall or something, with sherry and tinwin. i don’t feel like half the shit that was open this time was open then. i bought a shit ton of salt water taffy. some that was super cheap and some that was more expensive… i must say… more expensive salt water taffy is WAY better than cheaper salt water taffy. the chocolate peanut butter ones i got (more expensive) had real peanut butter and just generally hella ruled. the other kind all kind of tasted artificial, and very little like what flavor it was supposed to, no matter what flavor you got…

the rents met troy and really, really liked him. and generally, they gave everyone a good impression when in a public setting. i feel bad in some ways, because hanging out with them too much makes me turn into this ugly, ugly person that i am usually never like around anyone else; it is just that they are so, so, so suffocating, and negative… and there’s so much a reason that i broke away and live on my own and will never go back. i mean… it’s nice to see them occasionally, but rather horrible to feel like i am constantly being judged and micro-managed. i felt bad in some ways that troy would ask me how my day was — when the rents were here — and i could kind of only answer in the negative because it was a negative… because whereas usually i can make shit roll right off my back, in the case of my immediate family, it is truly, truly something else. i just can’t let shit slide in that way. it’s just not possible… everything is just such, such a far cry from who i am. i am the opposite of planning out every second of my day, of worrying about every little thing… and though i care about those things sometimes more than my friends, the degree to which i’ve scaled it down from my origins is like… almost insurmountable.

but anyway. originally my dad had really not wanted to go to dinner because he thought he’d have to pay for everyone, but he ended up footing the bill, though i have to say that literally the reasoning he gave me was (said in chinese): “it looks better this way.” and yes, it did, but… yeah. i mean… i pick up the details that may get lost in translation but i suppose in every family and with every set of facades, only those who were really in it know the truth? and there are a lot of things i could say but suppress. today, i found myself taking deep breaths a couple of times to get a double-take and to not say things that were biting and unnecessary… but those deep breaths and second thoughts only accounted for like, 2% of the things i probably did end up saying, or the bad attitude that i gave off when i shouldn’t have… i don’t know, man. i don’t know. it’s something i have to work on… because yes, they are in the wrong, but i could act better, too… i could take the attitudes that i take in other aspects of life… of going with the flow… of letting things go… and apply it to these difficult familial situations, as well. i’m learning…

i haven’t updated in a while, so this is a complete brain dump.

my parents met troy a couple nights ago and were quite stoked on him. (we went to blossoming lotus, and i was rather surprised that they kinda liked it… but i was glad to give them the new experience because it was their first time eating at a place with food that said GF — gluten-free, R — raw, and … something else i forget… dad said it made him poop well… dad loves to comment on toilets and bathroom facilities… seriously…) anyhoot. troy seems like the type who would probably please any parent. but seriously, they had nothing but nice things to say about him, which is good. dad even went as far as saying he was pretty good-looking, haha. it’s funny, though, because dad barely said anything to him — but, as troy was pointing out today, of the three things dad DID say to him, one involved inviting him to taiwan in november. which is pretty hilarious. like. dude. we’ve been dating for a month! luckily, i can say these things to troy, and dad can say shit to him (like tonight at dinner: “take care of my daughter!”) amongst a table full of 7 other friends (robby, rachel, shawn, andrew, christopher, rose, gina)… and troy won’t get frightened away. haha. i guess that’s good. the other night at blossoming lotus troy thanked dad for paying for dinner, and he said, “it’s family!” and in a lot of circumstances it would be truly head-in-the-hands “fuuuuuuuuuuuck” — and in this case it was subtle and he barely heard it, but “take care of my daughter!” today was definitely met with a head-in-the-hands reaction on my part and a lot of laughter on everyone else’s part. luckily, it was funny enough that it wasn’t uhhhh hugely awkward. it’s just funny because money is such a “thing” with the rents, and such not a thing for me… they said multiple times, “troy seems nice!” to which i would respond, “he’s the best!” and mom would respond with something like, “the best should still need to know how to earn money!” once, dad said, “i hope he makes enough money to take care of the both of you!” or that “he knows how to plan for your future!” and… firstly, it’s like, dude… we have been dating for a month… secondly, it’s like… dude, we split payment on a lot of things, and i do that with all guys i date… and thirdly, it’s like… dude… we’ve been dating for a month. haha. even if it feels like longer than that…

a couple days ago troy and i went and had a picnic at colonel summers, and i started telling him about a dream i had about george clooney. when i initially told gina this dream, she said, “troy is kind of a george clooney,” and it was only until i started telling him this dream that i began to realize that fuck, the dream kind of was about him, or something. what happened in the dream was that the police were looking for george clooney in this city with super narrow streets and high walls (kind of like siena in italy, or something). they looked for a really long time and could not find him. finally, i think they stop looking, and i run into him. i jump up and hug onto him, like a koala bear, and am bawling FURIOUSLY. i have never cried like this in a dream or in real life. soon thereafter, he lets me down or something, and says, “but i am going to see you in a couple days!” and i instantly start laughing. end of dream. this was when troy was on tour… totally was about him… and i don’t know why i didn’t realize it until that moment when i was retelling it to him. sooooooooooo weird. sooooooooooooooooooo weird.

life is funny, anyway. shit just pops out and punches you in the face and you’re just like… whaaaaaaaaaaaat. there have been no use of words like the “L” word — whatever — but there certainly has this feeling of just this thing being the realest, easiest thing i’ve ever had. it’s pretty fucking crazy. i am really, really happy.

in the work world, too — life is good and easy. i pretty much have not had to look for graphic design projects in a really long time, and everything is just… easy… and it’s good… 2011 is the most magical of years. and i’m just trying to figure out the best way to round the rest of it out. for starters, beginning in mid-september, i will be embarking on a cross-country road trip with rose, who is moving out to new york. it will be something else, i am sure. until then… i have a little more than a month (man, time is flying, again) to do a million things… psychedelic things… helsing junction farm sleepover things… camping under the stars things… loving life things… eating food things… soaking in everything wonderful and wonderful and wonderful and wonderful and wonderful and wonderful things…

i’m ready.

OH DUH. it is to be noted that last saturday, rose, gina, robby, andrew, and i went camping and found an amazing, amazing, amazing situation for ourselves. these are robby’s photographs from his iphone. see below. OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

basically, gina / niko’s friend bobby had a space out in southern washington that he shares with this hippie retreat place… they have a bunch of land friends can camp on. we had a bonfire and basically slept under the stars — no tent — and then went hiking the next day. gina destroyed her really awesome sneakers hiking in the river. ah man. it was good times… there were a lot of s’mores eaten. probably too many s’mores. but it happens…

campground area:

but yeah. we found a really amazing swimming hole with a waterfall. below are pictures from it. pretty much there was life before the waterfall and life after the waterfall… haha.

robby tried to dive into the river with us but then froze to death (0 body fat) and then had to get out. as for andrew and i, we went close to the waterfall and it was seriously 2x closer there. like, it was cold when we got in, but when you got near the waterfall it was some serious shit. afterwards, the four of us were so cold we were seriously retarded. for starters, we could only — in andrew’s terms — “shrimp” to the shore… as in — we were walking upright when we went into the water but crawling on all fours when we got out. it was also like a three mile hike into the waterfall area, through rivers, and while it was slightly challenging and uncomfortable on the way there, on the way back we were seriously being so retarded… practically falling off logs… i felt like i was way closer to nature because of the poor decision-making skills i’d newly possessed: rather than going over a set of fallen branches, for example, i would crawl in between them and find my face now inches from ferns i would have otherwise simply risen above… it was strange, profoundly strange, deliriously delightfully naturally strange. high, high, high!!!!

carebear strikes again.

mom’s original email:

Hi! Phil and Vivian,

How’s everything? We are doing fine. If you need to contact me, just send email to me. I can find Roxanne’s email address, say hello for us.

Mom

my response, part one:

things are good! really busy!
where are you guys now and what is the latest thing you’ve seen?

my response, part two:

you know what would be fun.
i think from now on our emails should all include 2 thing that have recently happened which have made you happy, and 1 thing you’re looking forward to!!! OKAY??!
[ [ [ [ [ PS - PHIL DID YOU EVER GIVE THEM MY PRESENT?????????????????????? ] ] ] ] ]

i’ll go first.

- COMING UP: i’m looking forward to seeing everyone at jeremy’s wedding this weekend! not looking forward to giving wedding $$$ ;p
- PASSED: my friend just gave me a bunch of images of his artwork. you can see it here… it’s the trees! he started with a single brush stroke (japanese sumi ink) and then added the trees after the basic shape was formed. they’re all differerent and all really incredible. see here.
- PASSED: we had an alice in wonderland-themed picnic in the park last sunday…!! i made a dress, kinda. here are some pictures:

heck yeah! i will make you bitches think positively!!!

>>>

in other news.
it’s funny to have recently met the swahili people because they are so much on the same page… i mean, they even say “so good,” which is pretty much just really super ridiculous. cosmic.

today i went to a lecture that troy (yeah, troy, but not the los angeles one) invited me to about science versus belief. it was interesting… interesting in that… i am also trying to bridge science with spirituality, but the route the dude (a chemist who basically reworked entire theoretical physics models to fit his worldview…) took was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo far removed from everything i’ve been thinking though the basic topics are still there. as is the basic notion of duality… so… i can say he’s astute, but i disagree completely with EVERYTHING he said, and it was maddening because there were people in the audience (“audience”) who were really quick to accept his theoretical model though his graphs and charts meant NOTHING at all and had NO value… and one guy behind me was saying, “you just have to realize that people are idiots and the majority of people don’t know what’s right!” and that was his argument against the current theoretical physics models. it was kind of sickening and really, really disturbing. anyway, the fact that he is a chemist — an extremely rigid form of science because as blake said, “it’s generally figured out and is a complete science,” only adds to the fact that i think what he’s saying is crap. furthermore, he would say stuff like, “that just doesn’t look right to me,” and that was essentially his justification for that stuff being ‘wrong’ and his model being ‘right’. man, i swear, you can manipulate data in any way to construct the reality you want…

anyway, i’m going to los angeles this weekend for jeremy’s wedding. i am going to call up troy. i rather doubt he will meet up with me… or even responsd to me… but i’ll try anyway. other than that… oh right, xinlei got engaged. aaaah! everyone!

and lastly, one more thing. after last friday’s chemical ingestion session with blake, the next day, I BECAME A PRO BIKER! seriously, though. i went to research club the following day and was biking circles in ladd’s addition with no hands. weirdest fucking shit. it just magically clicked and now i can bike huge huge huge huge huge huge huge huge huge stretches and blocks and blocks with no hands. and i don’t even have to think about it. it’s super easy. second nature. makes ZERO sense. i dunno what clicked or why, but something clicked. SO WEIRD.

blake also leaves in a couple weeks for montana and then the east coast, which is kind of a little strange. i don’t think i’ll realize just how strange til it happens, though…!

i also opened a new bank account with wells fargo because they don’t charge you the same amount in ridiculous fees that chase does. the banker who opened my account was really quite fun. he also told me a banking joke — of “which there are not many” — but i guess people at wells fargo say that “chase chases all their customers to [us]“. har har har.

anyway. exciting things coming up. i’m finally lighting a fire under my ass again, at least a little bit…

what a day is.

i recently had this thought — what troy described as a “fight club” kind of moment — what i would only describe as a moment of clarity — however simple it might seem on the surface (it barely sounds like a revelation when written — but my, it certainly feels like one). troy has been ever telling me that time is but a concept — that it is not real — and while my terrestrial mind would be hard-pressed to believe that it is 100% non-existent — there has been a phenomena with me lately where i am discovering the value of what we call “a day” — whereas before i was constantly blathering on about how there are not enough hours in a day, lately i have been discovering that time is eternal? at least much, much more malleable than i had once thought before. when i had this realization it was the feeling that time is simple to manage — that i can practically do everything i want to do all the time. seriously, there are occasional logistical difficulties — i can’t be everywhere all the time or make a car drive the same distance in less time — but i can accomplish so much, and without as much stress as i would have previously thought, ever. i have been hyper-aware of time this past week in new mexico — this mystical land — and this feeling is unshakeable.

ROSWELL -> SANTA FE.
(written in the car, 03/17/11)

april 20th, 2011.
this was all in the car, after i left carlsbad caverns in southern new mexico and drove (yes, i was writing while driving — there was no one on the roads, after all, and it was clear on both sides for miles) from roswell to santa fe.

when i first entered carlsbad caverns, i had run down the entrance to the caves — probably like half a mile — not taking my time, barely noticing anything, really… and just concentrating on the act of walking downhill, stopping occasionally here and there, as people do, to take photographs and not really see. and then, i reached the “big room” (see picture above, which i did not take). the “big room” is a giant room in which there are many, many formations, which are all astounding, and remarkably different. a quarter way through the big room, it finally fucking dawned on me. i am in a fucking cave. a HUGE cave. i’m in a fucking cave, and it’s millions of years old or some shit, i’m not even noticing it at all??????? how am i not noticing it at all??

from that moment, i took my time. and when i left, i stopped by a small trail, where native americans had previously been thought to reside, and i climbed atop a tiny hill. when i got to the top of the hill, i meditated. i had meditated the previous morning and great sand dunes national park, and let me tell you… a morning meditation session in nature is truly like nothing else.

i had a series of revelations upon that mountaintop. they all sound really dumb when written — as many revelations do — but when i was up there, feeling them, it was powerful.

the first had to do with time, as i wrote down later. the second i am not writing until presently…

the second lied primarily in my method of meditation. i was meditating, lost in my own thoughts, til the wind started blowing strongly, and i came half back to reality, in a sense. i was centered in that midpoint which i love so much — between wake and dream. there, i began to look to the wind as an indicator of when i would stop meditating. i had been doing it for a while, and somehow, a rule i had newly formed for myself involved meditating until the wind stopped. it didn’t stop for a long while, and i found myself fixated upon the point of it blowing. upon realizing this, i was a bit soured upon the idea — i was obviously not that deeply entrenched in my meditation — and it dawned on me that i was willing the wind to stop so i could stop. it was just a rule i had made for myself, as i do. but that desire reflected so much a desire i always see and mock in my parents. for example, whenever we go somewhere and the weather is great, they’ll thank god, or whenever we go to a restaurant and a good parking spot opens up, they’ll thank god. i found all of that rather ludicrous, yet i was doing the same thing — albeit in a non-verbal manner — but my thoughts were selfish, and human… i was begging that nature stop for ME, lil’ ol’ me!!, so i could finally cease meditating because of this stupid rule i had invented. how human, and how selfish of me!

realizing that was important, i think. it involved taking nature for granted, in a sense. i am not certain whether my attempts to remedy were laudable, but i attempted to, by thanking the moment, and the situation — simply acknowledging the fact that i am a silly human and that i had made this rule, and sorry nature, but now i will depart, by my own accord, because it was silly of me to expect you to stop for me. thank you nature, i must depart. and then i left, after giving thanks.

las cruces + mesilla + albuquerque + santa fe, new mexico.

I had the luxury this week of taking an incredible duration of time to explore myself and my psyche. During the early parts of the week (March 21st, to be exact) and until early Friday morning (March 25th), critical thought was not entirely present… not that it was particularly lacking, but I was CouchSurfing at the time, or else traveling on busses and trains, and just generally exhausted from never getting that great a night’s sleep. From March 25th through March 28th, I rented a car. I must say that the amount of thinking this afforded me resulted in a lot of interesting thoughts, and I have generally emerged from this with some lessons learnt… whether for better or for worse… generally for better, I suppose, in the long run, though right at this very moment, I am at the Albuquerque airport, feeling like I am in some kind of purgatorial hell of my own creation. What I have, most of all, is all of the time ever to wait and to wait and to wait and to wait. That may be the number one lesson I’ve learned through this week’s-long adventure in New Mexico (with 3/4 of a day in Colorado)… and that is the importance of patience, patience, patience.

(Side note: there is this weird shop in this airport that is selling flavored popcorns with the weirdest flavors ever — including green apple-flavored popcorn. Though I was intending to snack on all of the existing food I had in my bag, I realized I had less food than I thought, and am actually slightly short of snackable foods for dinner, and it is only 4:00pm, and I will be flying through midnight! So, I’d really love to try that weird ass popcorn, but not enough to buy a giant bag for $4.00… I should probably eat a piece of fruit or some broccoli instead. We’ll see what is affordable and not too unhealthy…)

Anyway. I’m going to jump backwards in time and try to recap this past week as best as possible. This will be recapped out of order, and I will temporarily forgo writing about Israeli and Jordanian adventures, as well as writing about my SXSW experience of mega-weirdness this year. I suppose the New Mexico trip feels more immediate, and is therefore easier to write about, and so I’m going to do that, presently.

—

Sunday, March 20th, 2011.
Road-tripped into town with P.Rama (details on that later), from Marfa, Texas. More details on Sunday, as Sunday was pretty extraordinary. I got a CouchSurfing host in Las Cruces, though, and waited outside their apartment for a couple hours for them to get home. I believe I got woken up by sounds of sexy-fun-times a couple times. Which is never particularly pleasant…

—

Monday, March 21st, 2011
Woke up and hung with the roomies a little bit, and then walked around. Had a buncha my stuff but left some at the apartment. Made up half a mind to go to Mesilla, New Mexico, which is a small, quaint little historic old town that is practically part of Las Cruces (though technically not). Anyway. Not too much to speak of here though I had my first New Mexico meal there. It was fairly good, though not astoundingly so. My two other New Mexican meals later on would prove to be much more delicious. Before I went to lunch, though, I did have a really nice conversation with this Japanese guy (or at least he was partially Japanese, as his name was Takeshi) who worked at the Visitor’s Center. I don’t think he could have been more excited to discuss the area. He was originally from the Bay Area, and we talked about things like housing costs and general history of the area… yadda yadda.

Another thing worth noting here was my experience at the Mesilla Cultural Center. I basically stayed in there for a couple hours and stumbled upon it on a completely random whim. I mean… as happens. Wasn’t even entirely planning to go down the street that I did go down to get there, but I’m glad I did. I got there and there were people — the director of the place and another guy — working on some upcoming festival they were having that is supposedly kind of a big deal. They immediately made me feel at home, in a rather formal way, but I poked around while they discussed business. Lots of Native American literature, and lots of just kinda metaphysical and mystical stuff, in general. As well as a lot of non-fiction by a lot of famous (?) female authors. It was a good time. In any case, the volunteer guy who was in there left, and I was left to talk with the director. I felt like she had the kind of human spirit that would be into something like this, so I asked her to suggest me a book based on what she knew of me. I will admit that she did give me a whole slew of books initially… except I’ve been rather into poetry lately, so I had it in my mind that I wanted a poetry book, despite the fact that I didn’t say it outright. Eventually, she fed me some super delicious super traditionally Mexican coffee (which leads me to remember an experience on our Israel / Jordan tour when people wouldn’t drink coffee offered by store owners because they were seriously afraid of being drugged… fucking ridiculous) and I skimmed through a stack of books. Frankly, the only one that –really– appealed to me was this book by Joy Harjo, entitled In Mad Love And War. The director lady who suggested the book put on a traditional Native American record as I was skimming through this stack of books, and later said that she knew I was going to pick this particular book and that is why she had put on the Native music. Whether that is truly true or not is uncertain, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. I typed out a poem in my last entry, but man, did this book speak to me. On so many levels, at the moment… I intended for it to be a birthday present, but I am no longer feeling the magic of that action. I am, however, still in love with the book, and as I have been reading it the past couple days, I have not been able to deny the feeling I have… of just being pretty much astounded… that this book was introduced to me. And that it is so very fitting of my emotions, of my mental state… of my writing preferences. Particularly in poetry. I’m extremely specific about poetry, and very little of it actually riles me up in any meaningful or excited manner. But nearly everything in this book just feels so very clever… anyway. I gave her one of the many bracelets I made for my REDEFINE SXSW show (which I never did end up distributing because I was a madwoman) — which say, “I am a note of the cosmic music + I will go on vibrating forever.” Hippie dippie, but it simply seemed so very appropriate…

Later that evening, I returned to Las Cruces. Just down the street. Spent some time using the internet at WHATABURGER simply because I thought it was the funniest notion ever, but WHATABURGER was not nearly the eavesdropping gold mine that I had hoped it would be. Unfortunate. Later that night, there was a pretty good Burger Records show at the Railyard in Las Cruces, which is a pretty rad hole-in-the-wall venue that is super DIY… hell, they weren’t even charging to let people in, which was nice, and people seriously brought their own 24-packs of beer. And everyone got mega-trashed, and people in Las Cruces (perhaps because it was college break, even) party it the fuck up. There were some ridiculously drunk people, and the general vibe was rowdy as shit. The main attraction was, for me, Thee Oh Sees… and they certainly lived up to the garage rock legendary reputation they have. As for the other bands… I was into them initially, but there were six garage rock bands in total, and by the third, I no longer gave a shit, and it was slight torture to wait out the rest.

Here’s what I wrote in my iPod while being bored by those bands:

“garage rock is becoming rather pointless, a next installment in punk rock, a simplistic outlet that is enjoyable only in the short term, easy to sway to, easy to play, but the ultimate in definiting the ever-growing detritus that is music journalism. how does one continue to write about these bands that may be solid… ish… yet are so very much alike that there is very little setting them apart, save for general charisma? on a 7-band garage rock bill this reality of musical limitation and stagnation and general pointlessness becomes ever-painfully apparent, and moreso with every word shouted through a distorted mic.”

Some funny moments during that particular evening, though, in the form of serendipity… as happens:

[1] A guy — who turned out to be one of my CouchSurfing host’s ex-boyfriends — came up to me when I first walked in and was like, “Excuse me, were you just at a house party in Austin??” Turns out he was at our house show at SXSW because someone had recommended that he go see Moon Duo. Fucking crazy…;

[2] A friend of a friend who I was introduced to, named Aimee (maybe not that exact spelling, but something just as unusual)… knows James Ward, who was from North Carolina, and had stayed on our couch for a while with Jay and Clare… crazy… small world…;

[3] Later that night, when we got back to the CouchSurfers’ place, they had three other dudes there, and they had all just come back from SXSW… and I asked them what the best show they saw was… and they said Casiokids… and I asked where… and they said at one of the housing co-ops near campus… and I was like, “THAT WAS MY SHOW!!!!” … life is crazy… the craziest bag of bullshit… who can even begin to understand…

—

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
The next day, I got an early ride from Neeshia (who is really awesome and let me sleep in her bed!!) to the Greyhound station, as fucking Las Cruces practically has no bus service. Which is ridiculous, considering it’s a college town… but everyone has their own cars, I guuuuuuessss. (Side note: I want to punch myself in the face right now…)… in any case. I took the bus to Albuquerque. Along the way, there was a “security stop” near Alamogordo, which is where White Sands is-ish. There was a security checkpoint when Koury, Kevin, Tim, and I went through last year for Cash Only, but we didn’t get stopped. We did this time, and security agents came aboard to check everyone’s passports. Felt like when we were in fucking Israel, coming from Palestine to Israel. I mean, same fucking shit, which is INSANE. In any case, they basically checked the identification of all Mexicanos, and it is blatantly racist as shit, as they literally looked at me and the white girl next to me, and were like, “You guys are American citizens, right?” I mean… how the shit do they even distinguish? Does a fifth-generation Mexican-American have to undergo the same kind of racial profiling? I’ll bet he or she does, and that fucking sucks…

Anyway. Got to Albuquerque, and it was fairly late in the day. Right off the bat, some Native guy gave me a bus pass for the entire day… so I saved two bucks, which was really nice. My impression of New Mexicans and their friendliness is solidly through the roof! Good feelings only.

Went to my CouchSurfer Jennifer’s place after taking a romp through a nearby supermarket. It’s kinda funny… I asked some lady with a car where the nearest supermarket was, and she told me it was MILES away. So I declined to go there and headed towards downtown to find one… which I didn’t. Turns out it was less than a mile from Jennifer’s house, and it took me like, fifteen minutes to walk to. Always funny to ask people who drive about directions and distances, cause they often have no fucking clue…

Hanging out with Jennifer was really awesome. I am only her third CSer in the past year, so I’m totally stoked I got to stay with her. We have somewhat overlapping interests… she is quite starry-eyed and cosmic, into gem healing and tarot and other dimensions and ghosts and all sorts of those kinds of things. I am into those things — to a lesser degree, particularly because I have less direct experience with it, too — but it was a lot of really good conversation and getting to see some parts of Albuquerque I haven’t seen before. At the very least, it was WAY better than when we rolled through last year… I mean, what Kevin had to say about Albuquerque last year was: New Mexico Your Bringing Me Down [sic]. This year, for me, it was way better. Apparently, only the downtown is weird, and the other parts are A-OK… particularly the University area. Good to know. Anyway.

Jennifer and I went to this free local film thing put on by Local Q, and while they were making these super amateur announcements at the very beginning, I expected the whole showcase to be pretty downright bad, but there were actually pretty solid films… there was a web series called INDIE which was pretty funny, as was this one really cool short film about eco-friendliness… I forget the name now, but maybe I’ll fill it in later… afterwards, we went to Flying Star in downtown Albuquerque. Flying Stars are a series of 24-hour (or similarly late-opening) diners that serve really amazing dessert (I stole some of Jennifer’s bread pudding, and it RULED) and nice, organic food. It has Wi-Fi, too. Pretty cool place, and I wholly intended to go back to one of them when I returned to Albuquerque, but as it turns out, I didn’t return to Albuquerque in any significant way (more on that later).

One of the things Jennifer and I talked a lot about was past-life regression. I got it in my mind that I would go to this place called Crystal Dove on my subsequent return to Albuquerque. I thought maybe I’d get a past-life regression tarot reading, just cause I’ve been interested in that shit lately and it’s really expensive… more on that later, too…

Later that night, we just chatted, and I slept on a hard wood floor. It wasn’t the most relaxing experience… and it marked the beginning of a series of communication-related feelings of anxiety I would have that would prolong towards the next week, to the present, to the who-knows-how-long-of-a-lasting-duration… these days are long…

—

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
Off to Santa Fe. Took the RailRunner, which goes back and forth between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Got in at noon. Rob from CouchSurfing picked me up on his lunch break and took me to his parents’ place in the suburbs, which is where he was staying for the week since his parents were out of town! He had barely worked that day, I guess, but we still went to eat lunch. I wasn’t even hungry, but I ended up eating an entire plate of food — best of which was this fucking guacamole taco. Sounds ridiculous, but it was SO EFFING GOOD. I seriously was… astounded… by the fact that something like that could be as delicious as it was. I mean, it sounds like peasant food!! Peasantly!!!

Anyway. While he went to work, I walked around downtown Santa Fe. There honestly is some solid arting there!! A lot of money in that town, though, from lord knows where. I also camped out at a bookstore for a while using their internet, til I was kicked out… but it was my first time REALLY using internet in a while, so it was super nice. And the workers were really kind of fun hipster dudes. Think the bookstore was called CW bookstore or something.

We went back to Rob’s place after he got off work (he seriously barely worked that day… but he is a lucky dude with lots of remote work, like me!!!) and unwound for a sec. Then we headed back out to eat pizza with his friends… only I just drank an ice coffee (no beers or pizza for me, in the interests of watching my figure — I had just eaten a huge amount of Mexican food that morning!!!!! — and just generally saving money). Afterwards, we went to a bar to drink margaritas, but again, I abstained… it was nice, though, and Rob had recently gone to Africa for three and a half months on a crazy road trip… and he had the craziest stories, one of which involved nearly being thrown in jail in Zimbabwe because he didn’t have gas and were trying to cross the border into another country in a “stolen” car, since the van they were driving didn’t have proper documentation, I guess. He was working his entire Africa trip, though, using a satellite internet connection… which I didn’t even know existed… but how crazy, right? You can be in the fucking African bush and still online — granted it costeth a fair amount of $$$$$$$$… but yeah, I guess his van broke down a million, zillion times, and they thought they’d nearly be killed a couple times… but luckily everything worked out for the best! Yay!

On the way home, he and I had a super funny conversation about Jesus and Indian food… with the two topics beginning individually but later — yes — actually intertwining. Good times…

More on New Mexico later. It’s time to get ready to board my fucking flight to Seattle from Albuquerque, motherfucker.

arr.

quick notes.

camping at olympic peninsula this past weekend with lenard. it ruled. so fun. most notably: exploring some far parts of rocky ocean beach (with mini tidepools), weird sand that was like snow patterns we saw in iceland, and lotta weird rocks, including the following specimens: [a] weird amalgam metamorphosis rock; [b] jabba da hut rock. seriously. it looked like jabba — same shape and even had eyes and face. lenny snapped a photo and i will show when i get a copy. as for my own camera, i accidentally forgot to bring my battery, and as a result, could only take pictures with the film camera i brought. finished a roll of 36 exposures finally, though. thank heaven!

stopped by aberdeen/hoquiam on the way back and went to a couple garage sales… highway 101 passes through aberdeen and as we were driving through the town yesterday, we told ourselves that we would stop by the garage sales we saw the next day because we passed by sOo many of them yesterday. so today we stopped by one on the main road that was mediocre — just got a couple of cookbooks — and then a really epic one where we had to follow signs to this guy’s house… and got allllllllllllll sortsa junk. including but not limited to: [a] three awesome tapes! yeah!; [b] cool lace circular patterned thing; [c] really awesome pillow with a top side that has this cool geometrical/nature-ish crocheted (maybe) pattern; [d] nostalgic mcdonald’s limited edition batman glass cups (chose the one with riddler on it); [e] hilarious family portrait of two babies to hang on our wall (it actually fits the decor of our household and i just thought it’d be funny); [f] old ass kodak disk 8000 camera (which they don’t actually make film for anymore but it has 15 exposures and 12 are already used up, but they will be a funny surprise and even better — i have 3 of this weird film format to work with…)

i also ate WAY too many marshmallows this past weekend and was a major fatass. diet begins tomorrow. but most of all: i made what i now call a “it’s s’more” (in the sound of “when the moon hits your eye… blahblah… it’s amore!”)… which began as a marshmallow sandwiched in wheat thins but then turned into marshmallow sandwiched in wheat thins with spreadable cheese. FUCKING NOM!!!

anyway, i haven’t bought stuff randomly in a while, so that felt kinda good, and only cost $5.00 for all that (from both garage sales). yeah, garage sales! yeah, garage sales in hoquiam!

uhh and then tonight i went to a show and it was pretty funny. but first. holy crap. the middle performer, pete swanson, blew my fucking mind. he probably played like a 12-minute set, but both cole and i agreed that we were transported into some other realm devoid of time. as for me, i lost myself in that music and about 75% of the way through it discovered that i had put my arms in some weird way so that they no longer had any feeling, but it didn’t even matter. the music was so, so, so fugging amazing. it… was amazing. it’s one of the best things i’ve seen (even though i didn’t actually see it — i only heard it) in a long, long time. it was… ace. so good.

as for the headliner. i’ve got some mixed feelings about it and am not sure how i’m going to write up the review. even more importantly, though: [a] she broke a beer bottle and evidently got glass in someone’s eye and cut someone else; [b] she had come off stage and was walking around and i just happened to have started to text someone and she was walking up to me and actually saw me texting! oOps. ah, well.