Ego Strip
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "pachwork" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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11:14 am
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Ooh a post
And a cool one too
http://www.freewayblogger.com/index.htm
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05:29 pm
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California bans SUV's!
Now if only they'd tell the SUV owners!
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01:21 pm
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And then the Blundering Bush spoke...
So I haven't been able to find it in a news story online just yet, but I just heard Bush on NPR "misspeak" himself in a wonderful way. I won't do the quote justice, but I just wanted to put down the gist of it.
The bad guys out there are trying to everything they can to get us. They have resources and creativity, and so do we. They look for any way in which they can harm this country, any way that they can take away America's freedoms, and so do we.
Anyway, people on the right were trying to spin this in a positive way, (yeah I know!) but seriously, what would Freud say?!!
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06:28 pm
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Weekend adventures
Ah, such a good weekend!
Great america was so much fun. Much more than I expected actually. The last time I went, they had closed down my favorite ride, Stealth, so I was disappointed. But this time it was all about the company. Since you practically spend all of your time in lines at theme parks, it's the friends that really make the day fun or not. I guess the little kid in me is unwilling to surrender the notion that the rides are the end all be all of the theme park experience.
One thing that I didn't expect was to really have a great time hanging out with John and Charlie's friend, Ljuba. I guess I feel like I used to have a lot of gay friends, and now I have so few. While I definitely know I kept the best ones, it was cool to make new ones. It reminded me of back when I was coming out. Have I really become so antisocial? No, I suppose that it's just the intense need to get into the queer world has faded.
Anyway, if Great America wasn't enough to make a weekend spectacular, I got to play D&D afterward. It was a really great game. Why you ask? Well, generally my favorite part of games is the story telling. (Basically D&D is my way of maintaining the delusion that one day I'll be a writer, without actually trying my hand at anything serious on a regular basis.) And there was so much storytelling. In fact, while many of you may think of D&D as a game where fictional characters fight each other. There was absolutely no combat in this game. It was awesome. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mingerspice's presence was missed though. See you in 9 days! Yay!
On Sunday I went to the wedding of two people who were in Japan with me. They were adorable. The experience made me feel, jealous, scared of commitment, jealous of their commitment, and frustrated by my inability to articulate these emotions to Dave in any coherent way. Mostly though, it was really nice. I caught up with my friend, Nicky, who I haven't seen in ages. It's really weird talking to friends that have kept in touch with all the people from my freshman dorm. It makes me feel inauthentic as a Stanford student... and this causes me to... (Wow, authenticity workshops. Haven't thought about that in a long time... This post is becoming too nostalgic!)
Now I have piles of work to do, as I catch up with all the work that I was supposed to do last week, but didn't because I am a lazy ass.
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06:28 pm
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"Rare tea magic!"
Ooh and also "Unadorned Sand Gongs!" I'm so excited for this weekend! (And such a nerd.)
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07:50 pm
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Can I flash you?
Invalid video URL.
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07:44 pm
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HyperGraphicAudioNodeVisualization Thingy
This is kinda fun to play with. Wish the database was bigger though.
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05:33 pm
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Yay work friends!
So my friend Susanna has done an excellent job of cheering me up today. I feel like last night's fight wasn't such a waste, and I feel ready to cope with future battles. (Though, hopefully my emotional batteries will have a little while to recharge.)
Thanks for the virtual group-hug of comments, guys.
What have I learned from these events? I'm not sure. I guess my expectations have been given a reality-check. I know where things stand. I've got a better idea of how much crap I'm capable of putting up with before I go berserk. I don't know where we go from here, but much to my surprise, I haven't given up hope.
I guess I can't stay depressed for long. I should be careful, though, otherwise I'll have to re-title this page to, "Blatantly Bipolar Blog, Banter and Bitching 'Bout Blah Blah Blah."
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01:02 pm
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Boo Catholicism!
So I fought with my mom for and hour or so last night. I thought it would lead to something productive, but it didn't. We just hurt each other's feelings a lot. I yelled at her, which is something I haven't done for a long ass time, and she cried a lot, which is something she does all the time. At the end, not too long after she finally got up the courage to be honest about all sorts of nasty things that she thinks, I hung up on her. Very childish, I know. So much for being well adjusted.
It was good to have Dave hold me after that.
Feeliin' kinda fragile right now. I'll be alright though.
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04:01 pm
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While we on the subject of happiness
So apparently German has this word, "Vorfreude," which literally means, "prejoy." It's the joy you feel in anticipation of future joy. How cool is that? It's so Tao! I wish I could go around in life with this perpetual vorfreude state.
This reminded me of the emotion of missing something in anticipation of losing it, for which a word exists in Japanese (at least according to Ming, who has never actually told me what this word is).
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02:40 pm
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Barack Obamania
This state senator from Illinois is now running for senator. His name is Barack Obama and he spoke at the Democratic Convention last night. His speech kicked ass. I don't know if his charisma will really come through in the text, but if you get a chance to listen to the sound clip (he's like 20 minutes in to the clip, and you can skip ahead), I highly recommend it. I don't know why, but I just really like this guy.
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02:06 pm
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Thought I was being sarcastic, didn't ya?
So my niece, who is now 2 years old, is obsessed with digital cameras. She's awed by the magic of pictures of herself and other people. At her party, my mom pulled out a camera and she immediately ran to have her picture taken with me. (She sorta knows that in order to have one's picture taken you have to run away from the camera. Preferably toward other people.) She plopped down on my lap and then immediately ran back to the camera to see the fruits of her labor. The trouble is, she doesn't yet quite grasp the fact that you have to remain still for a few moments for the picture to be taken. For her it's like a strange game of tag. In order to have your picture taken you must tag someone, and then run back to the camera, where you will be shown your picture. The game then begins again, and she runs back to the person she's having her picture taken with, and then back to the camera to demand that she get to see it.
Childrens' perception of technology is awesome.
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01:59 pm
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Overshare-o-matic
It's really hard to comment on peoples serious posts, isn't it? My last two posts were both kinda downers. Everyone's probably all, "God, John. Could you turn down the self-pity?"
Ugh, now this post sounds depressing, too!
That's it. I'm gonna go post about kittens. Or maybe kids-saying-the-darnedest-things. That always scored big on America's Funniest Home Videos.
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01:02 pm
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No place like home. Thank god!
So I spent the last weekend down in C-bad with my family.
It was my niece, Nia's, 2nd birthday. Her first was celebrated in China, so this was really her first birthday where everyone got to see her. I spent most of the party actually helping out my little sister, who was trying to make a movie commemorating the whole adoption process and the past year of the kid's life. I had spent a few hours over the course of the past week explaining to my sister how to rip music from CD's and also finding other mp3s for her. (Disney either has some rip-resistant CD's or my sister is just inept. Probably the latter.) Anyway, the monstrous 45 minute movie with lots of transitions took hours to render so my sister was stressed out. By the time we actually got the thing to play on my older sisters brand new 62" TV many of the guests has already left. The movie, however, turned out really good. It was funny, touching, and artistically well put together. (Now I have to figure out how to make it into a DVD so my sister can send it to the people who missed it.)
Anyway, the other reason that I went down was because my little sister is in a musical. It's called "Fate." It's an original work by a local artist. Overall it was so-so. The pacing was poor, much of the first act should probably be cut. Some of the songs were alright, but only one of them was really that memorable. I felt like it would have been a lot better if the writer/composer hadn't also been the director. I felt like she had a vision that she wasn't really willing to be flexible with. Some of it seemed more fit for the screen than the stage. (Like the cast of 50 extras. I'm not kidding, there were 50 extras!) Anyways, it wasn't bad. I rather enjoyed the villain, who was an amazing actor, very creepy. In fact, most of the cast was pretty good. It was really the show that needed work. Basically it was a love story where the two main lovers die in the first act and are then reincarnated in the second act, where they finally get together against all odds. Cheesy, I know, but hey. Musicals are pretty cheesy most of the time. So I didn't really count that against it.
The weekend had a downside though. As usual, it was centered around my mother. She did two things, one which annoyed me, and the other infuriated me.
Throughout the whole weekend, she would introduce Dave as my, "friend." I would always correct her to whoever he was being introduced to and state that he was my, "BOYfriend." Eventually I thought she would get the hint. She never did. Not even when it was done in a small room in front of the same people, who surely heard me correct her the first and second time. It was really awkward. It was like she was playing a childish game where she pretended not to hear me.
The other thing she did really got to me. At the end of intermission of the play, as we were walking back inside, she tried to speak to me quietly so no one would hear:
John's Mom: Honey, you know, we live in a more conservative community
John (who has been holding Dave's hand for the last 10 minutes): I know mom.
JM: Well don't you think that you should act accordingly.
J: No Mom, I don't. Maybe I'll broaden some people's horizons.
JM: Well you can respect these people's desire not to have their horizons broadened, right?
J: No Mom, I can't.
JM (looking extremely hurt): Oh... You can't?
There were a couple other things said, I don't remember exactly what, but she was then pulled away very quickly by my Grandma who has Alzheimer's, and needs a lot of attention. We never really got a chance to talk privately for the rest of the weekend, so I haven't had a chance to tell her how that made me feel. But I intend to next time we talk.
On a lighter note, I miss the beaches in SoCal. They're so beautiful and warm and fun.
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04:53 pm
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AIDSWalked
Here are some pics from the event on Sunday. All in all it was a great time. I got to see some a capella friends I don't see very often. Hal Sparks was there, and he was hilarious! And thanks you to you guys, I raised $925. Hooray for charitable friends and family members with money!
http://www.stanford.edu/~shelby/AIDSWalk2004.html
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04:17 pm
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The parents of my friends
So, I've been chatting with Ming's mom for the past 30 minutes or so. Wait, let me explain.
She signed on as mingerspice and I started sending IM's. I guess she eventually got fed up with the incessant, "Ming? Hello? Hello, Ming? Ming-chan?" etc., and told me who she was. After that we just got to talking. First about Ming, and then about travel, and then about food. We stuck to safe subjects mostly. But it was a really nice conversation. It was the kind of conversation that I wish I could have with my own Mom.
Conversations with my mother have 3 components: worry, guilt, and details. She usually opens with worry. She'll wonder if I'm eating right, or getting enough exercise, or if I'm working too hard. After I've spent all my energy assuaging worries, I usually sit back and allow her to begin her details period. She'll tell me all the details of every day that has happened since I last spoke to her. Not only that but she'll work in details about all of my other siblings, and people that my family knows. No relationship is too small. She recently told me about something that was happening to the mother of a girl who was possibly in my high school class. I'm not really sure why she does this. I think perhaps she really believes that it is her duty to be my news service. I don't really mind the thought of having this kind of conversation where I'm updated on the lives of my family members, but it's the level of detail that always brings my interest down to almost nothing.
Mostly I think that she believes that by doing this she is keeping me from drifting away from her. She must think that if I have ALL these little details that I can't possibly lose touch with my family.
Which brings us to guilt. No conversation with my mother is complete without a little guilt. Usually it's something small, like reminding me that if I decide to go to grad school I can, of course, move back home if I should need to save money. She always sets these little moments up to remind me in some very subtle way that it pains her how far away I am, that if I were closer I'd be able to see my siblings and nieces and nephews more often, that in general everyone who cares about me would be happier.
Why do I have these kinds of conversations with my mother, you ask? Well, because it's easy. I long to have interesting conversations with my mother, ones where we each share things and contribute to a discourse. However, this never seems to work. I'm not sure if it's because our interests are entirely disjoint (which can't possibly be true) or because our opinions on various issues have made us realize that any subject we choose to discuss will result in heated argument, or maybe it's just force of habit.
Still I wish I could have a half-decent normal conversation with her every now and then. One like I have with my friends' parents. One where the conversation is guided by interest, and not by weird manipulative emotions.
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11:52 pm
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And time... is still marching on
I feel like my unpacked house is a metaphor for my life. An inane thing to say. Inane, but true, however.
I sit around and look at it for an hour, unhappy with the way it looks. Distract myself with the internet for a while, eat some food, do some work, yadda yadda yadda. And then when all is said and done, it's still in the same sorry state that I left it.
Alright that's it. I'm going to unpack stuff for the next hour. Marry Poppins eat your heart out.
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08:02 pm
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Last minute advertisment
So in case anyone doesn't know, or just needs a reminder, I'm walking the AIDS Walk on Sunday. If you'd like to sponsor me, go here:
https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=47124&lis=1&kntae47124=96F0A91A1F8E4ADFA78F2EDBE6D95CD9&supId=45581243
Please sponsor me. Please please please!
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07:27 pm
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Oooh! Pic me! Pic me!
Three little testaments to my vanity can now be yours. Collect them all!
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07:04 pm
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I am intruiged by this... how you say... "blog?"
So I've been poking around livejournal for the past couple hours.
I figured it would be best to immerse myself in the system before I forgot that I was really going to give it a chance. I must admit I am feeling the tingly bubbly feeling that I get from excellent performance art and insidiously good marketing. It's "community" being packaged and sold in 7 fun new flavors.
My junior-high school, misanthropic self-defense mechanisms definitely kicked in bigtime. I almost gave up right away, after trying to put together a page with a more acerbic wit than I really am capable of wielding without feeling like a complete fake. But I held on for a little longer, just to really see this through.
It was probably a bad idea to start by tweaking the settings of my journal page. I ran from the drab looking text of "default," which clearly labels one an outsider, into the bottled-style of creativity ex machina. I think I ended up with a page that looks terribly dishonest, like I'm trying to belong too hard. Maybe that's how everyone feels when they make their first page. I'm certain that I know how to be both honest AND friendly with strangers. So why was it so hard to design a page that put a public face forward while not feeling like a fraud? Maybe it's just the impersonal nature of the internet, or the chains of working within a restrictive medium. I don't know.
After giving up on that process I went to look around at the pages of my friends. I guess I have to take a second to explain that I felt a little self-conscious writing "friends" just then. I must admit that the appropriation of the word "friend" by live journal, freaked me out at first. I added all of the people that I knew from my friends' "friend" lists to mine. But then I immediately longed for the validation of appearing on their "friend" lists. Yes I know it sounds stupid and neurotic (as does this whole post certainly), but I'm trying to be as candid as I can. This is how I felt.
Anyway, back to those friends' pages. I looked around and had a great time. I experienced some technical difficult that made it so that I couldn't check out or write comments at first. I was initially irritated by this, but after a little bit I thought it was probably a good thing. It gave me time to acculturate a little bit before I could make an ass of myself by writing something idiotic or violating some blog etiquette. By the time the glitch went away I was feeling good again. All junior-high emotions returned to their properly repressed regions of my psyche. These people I know are really fucking cool. And they share their coolness so wonderfully. Ming's voice rings true across cyberspace and Lolo's pictures captivate in 500 x 375 pixels. This blog thing looked like something I wouldn't mind being a part of.
I feel like me and LJ still have some issues we need to work out. (As soon as I started really enjoying the experience I began running into features that are only available to paying users! Grrrrrrr, insidious marketing!) But for now, I guess I'll actually write a post or two.
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