Lazy days

I am reading a lot, and loving it. I missed books.

Yesterday evening we went to my sister’s house to pick her up for shopping. The mall was open later than stores are open on the west coast, so we had a good few hours of shopping; my sister had a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of coupons to spend at one store and all three of us binged. I carried a bag that grew heavy enough for my injured back to feel.

Once home, I ate a very late dinner and then took a Zyrtec– an allergy pill once known for knocking me out for 4 hours in the mid-afternoon in Toronto on one of our family trips. After ingesting the pill, Mom wanted to watch one of the movies we borrowed from my sister, called Ice Age (I’ve seen #2 but not #1). My sister said it was cute, and it was, but I think because of the allergy pill induced haze, it felt way more cute than funny. When the movie was done, it was 12:30am and time for bed…

The Honeymoon’s Over

Of course, one person will never have every single quality you desire; my mother told me that long ago and I believe her. –Isabel Rose, p. 130

Day after day we create for ourselves, and each other, a space to bring our best selves, and a place for our most broken selves to be known. Knowing mends. Day after day we remember it is never wise to attack your partner, that you will live with the injuries you inflict. Day after day we try to be wise. — Alice Randall, p. 149

The good marriage is all about the freedom to discover who we are, coupled with the responsibility to be kind. The good marriage is all about private engagements and private pleasures, about taking the time to know someone more and more, year after year. It’s about learning your love’s true language and learning to speak it, at the same time you teach your love your true language. It’s about noticing and respecting the differences in your languages even as you become bilingual. –Alice Randall, p. 153

We’ve realized that the promise we made to each other was not that we would never change. Nor was it that we would be of one mind. But we did promise to stick it out, and to respect each other, and help each other through crises. — Elissa Minor Rust, p. 243

 We’re far more likely to find those moments of connection… if we are honest in who we are, and what we need. –Elissa Minor Rust, p. 245

From The Honeymoon’s Over: True Stories of Love, Marriage, and Divorce

Love, marriage, and divorce

Yesterday I went to the library to borrow books to fight the boredom of sitting inside all day long. Among a biography, a book of wild travel stories, and two fictions, I couldn’t resist taking that book with short stories about women in love, marriages, and divorces.

I am not thinking marriage because I need to get married by a certain age. I just don’t think that way. But I wanted to learn from other women what marriage was, and what it takes to stay in one. What lessons were learned, what regrets they had. What I can look forward to when I commit long-term to someone who is promising the same.

Among them: Don’t get married when you’re too young. Don’t get married because you just want to get married. Don’t marry someone even though there are more red flags than laughter. Don’t marry someone to escape something else. Don’t marry someone because they’re in the same religion, club, or whatnot. Know yourself, and marry with wisdom, love, and experience.

And others, when you’re in it already: Compromise. Have your own life. Understand and forgive because you have to live with your actions for the long run, and that you would like him/her to understand you and forgive you, too. Let the “little things” go and just chill out. Let them have their space. Have time together. Have time apart. Communicate. Listen. Respect. Learn. Love.

In any case, I don’t think I can study for this type of thing, even though I know I’m trying to study and take the test and promising myself I’ll get an “A”. This isn’t school. There is no “A”, even if there can be failure. What I’m learning is that it’s more like a full-time job where you’ve put your mind and heart on the table (instead of your career skills) and what you get back is something you and the other person have built that is supposed to be made out of companionship, a safe haven, warmth, stability, and love.

When I look at my parents, who are still together even though I swear at times my mom wanted to strangle my dad and my dad wanted to duct-tape my mom’s mouth shut, they’ve landed right in the middle of a comfortable, mellow, and content place in their lives. Dad will disappear a whole day for golf, Mom will dance the night away, but they will both disappear to other countries on some trip or another. Somehow, they made it work. And if they can work past sick and/or rebellious children, screaming fights, family vacations, and mid-life crisis, maybe I can make mine work, too.

Photo of the Moment #4

Apparently it’s possible to keep flowers alive in winter (or, unlike me, it’s possible to keep plants alive, period).

Walton Ford

A friend of mine introduced me to some of Walton Ford’s work. I’ve actually seen an installation of his in SF, but not his nature stuff, which I like a lot better. His nature works are strangely haunting, surreal, frightening, and beautiful. I found a collector’s book for $6500, but I doubt that I would own it. However, if something 1% of that price pops up, I might consider.

Conversation in car

Me: Yesterday, Dad hopped from the Chinese TV to the TV in the computer room and then went to the kitchen TV, and back again. He did that all day!

Mom: Oh, he always does that. Sometimes, he will turn on one TV and then turn on the TV in the next room. He’ll hold two remote controls in one hand and stand in the doorway to watch both TVs!

Dad: Well, it’s because of the commercials! I don’t want to watch the commercials!

Me: If I ever catch you doing that, I’m taking a picture of you.

Taebo

Mom is exercising to Billy Blanks’ Taebo… with curlers in her hair.

Photo of the Moment #3

It is fucking cold here.

Photo of the Moment #2

GGB from across the Bay…

O’Hare International, you bitch

Yesterday I got stuck at O’Hare International for almost 7 hours.

Actually,  I don’t mind being at anyplace for that length of time if they had internet connection (there was WiFi you paid for, including little areas where you can plug in your laptop). Or I could buy a huge book, read, or nap. What was annoying about that wait was that this resulting 7 hours came in chunks of one hour.

A flight scheduled for a 6pm gate C27 departure is now departing at 8pm, at gate C28. No, wait, 9pm at C29. No, wait, 10:15pm at C29. No, wait, 10:45pm. No, wait, 11:17pm, at C32. No, wait,… You see how that goes?

Done this way, no one could take a nap or wander too far out from the possible 5 gates that this flight could be scheduled at. Changes were made at the last minute so if you nodded off, you might miss a gate change or time change.

And my flight was one of four flights in that area that was being delayed hourly. If the whole airport was doing this, no wonder I heard shouting, snoring, grumbling, crying, and general mayhem. No wonder the 7 hours waiting looked like a refugee camp, with children running everywhere, people on cell phones, people sprawled out sleeping, people pacing and sighing and looking out of the windows.

Finally, my flight leaves around midnight. We take off and land in the worst weather imaginable: a blustery, ice pellet blowing, soul-sucking, minus Celsius northeast blizzard. There are no taxis available at 3:30am, so I wake my mother at this time of night to drive the slow 45 minutes to the airport to pick my frozen ass up. I don’t sleep until 5:30am because my midnight munches are 5 hours overdue and hot won-ton soup is too good to pass up. Afterwards, as my father is getting up for the day, I pass out and do not emerge until the bright morning hour of 2pm.

It would’ve been the worst day of travel I’ve ever had in the States (even including that one time I had to stay over in Chicago, because at least I didn’t have to be alert for 7 hours straight for flight changes) if all my flights were full. However, the silver lining was that on the first flight I had an entire row to myself and on the second flight, the row had two people and three seats. Score.

Things I will NOT miss about San Francisco

1. Free WiFi is random. Just because you’re in Border’s doesn’t mean you can get WiFi that doesn’t disconnect you. In the space of 2 hours I had connected to about five different networks and only two of them stuck. I still had trouble uploading photos even on those connections.

2. Rush hour traffic, 4pm-7pm, on every downtown road, on every BART train, Muni train, and bus. Rush hour sardine crush on public transportation is awkward, hot, and uncomfortable.

3. How the city smells like fresh sewage once the temperature reaches 80 Fahrenheit.

4. People who are so open-minded that their brains have fallen out.

5. Ghetto-fabulous.

6. You can rent a spacious apartment flat for $2000/month. Or buy it for a healthy $400,000. Don’t even think about the entire building, unless you’re somewhat famous or wanting to live beyond Berkeley.

7. Pretentiousness. Especially the young yuppie-wannabe-tech-savvy pretentiousness that strive to keep up with the Joneses.

8. Random wafts of marijuana smoke that you walk through on your daily commute about town. If I wanted to get a contact high, I want to have a choice about it.

9. The random pile of human shit on the streets. If I go more than 3 blocks out of my house, I always pass by one.

10. Random earthquakes. You’re playing a game or cooking or, hell, sleeping and all of a sudden you feel vertigo, the building is shaking, and things are rattling. Earthquakes are a nice way to get your heartbeat up past 160 bpm. Goddamn earthquakes.

Last day in this town

… and I spent it doing moving stuff, of course. I keep wondering what else I haven’t seen here, what can I capture in my memory, but then I think that it’s a little too late. And that I’ve probably walked at least half the streets in this city by now. So instead I said my silent good-byes as I did errands, and that whatever I missed I can probably see again sometime.

Today, SF. Tomorrow, the rest of the world.

Things I will miss about San Francisco

1. On any given random day there is a chance you will see a person wearing burlesque make-up, a tutu, spandex one-piece, striped stockings, and a head scarf. It is not required that the day be a festival event. In other words, the weirdos.

2. Independent cafes with free WiFi where you can camp out all day as long as you buy a drink every couple of hours. However, you have to *find* these cafes first, and hope that there is one near your apartment.

3. Everyone has a style. Whether it is in fashion or even remotely attractive is not really the issue.

4. The sunny days. When it’s not foggy, SF sparkles, even down in the ghettos.

5. There does exist a group of people who will be just as into that weird hobby as you are.

6. Food. You can get any type of food here, such as Eritrean or El Salvadorean. And it will be good, within a 20 minute drive, most often available past dinnertime, and affordable.

7. The ocean, desert, or mountains within a 3-9 hour drive. Geography for all moods– it’s possible to take a four-day weekend to see the desert and the next to see the mountains. Las Vegas or Reno is not terribly far, either.

8. The fact that it’s normal in this town to be 30+ years old, unmarried, living in a rented room from paycheck to paycheck, tattooed, in school, and in a band. San Francisco doesn’t care– she will cater to you anyway. (This is probably a good reason to move out before you find out that you’re 45, unmarried, living in a rented room paycheck to paycheck….)

30 and childless

“Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn’t happen.

…

“I’d been attempting to convince myself that this was normal. All women must feel this way when they’re trying to get pregnant, I’d decided. (”Ambivalent” was the word I used, avoiding the much more accurate description: “utterly consumed with dread.”) I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contrary– such as the acquaintance I’d run into last week who’d just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a king’s ransom in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted she’d been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldn’t find them. I saw the joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignment to New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid.” — Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

My sister is four years younger than me and I think she knew she wanted to have kids when she turned thirteen. I, on the other hand, waited out the years wrapped in the echoing mantra reverberating through my head “I’m not ready”. This year, I turned 30, and I’m still not ready. My mother told me something would suddenly turn on inside of me… but, what can that feeling be? I still don’t “feel” whatever it is I’m supposed to feel, this burning, aching want of a baby. I don’t feel or think that a baby will make me happier or more well rested or less stressed. I. just. don’t. feel. IT. Whatever IT is. My mom calls it “settling down”.

One of the good things about being 30 is that you’re over the part where you wonder if there’s “something wrong with you”. I don’t think there is anything wrong with me. This is the way I am, and this is the way I feel. It may be different from millions of 30 year old women out there, but I’m okay with that. What I think is wrong is the expectation to conform by a society that wonders if you’re odd if you feel that visiting Morocco is more exciting that being pregnant.

What itch do I, this old haggard dried-up woman of 30, feel? I want to travel; I want to see the world. I want to learn as much as I can of every subject I think is interesting. I want to know 5 languages fluently. I want to publish something, whether photograph or an article. I want to sit and sip coffee at cafes in Europe and write about how each place has changed me. I want to work in science. Those kinds of things are what I yearn for.

Perhaps I am a “late bloomer” and I won’t feel the burning urge to procreate until I’m 35, after I’ve done a healthy amount of traveling and learning. Whatever the case, my priority is not children, marriage, house, or being a slave to a career. I’ve met people who have or have had those things and they are not generally more miserable or happier than I am.

Instead, my top priority is simple: loving, and taking pleasure in, life. When I die, I want to have loved more years of my life than hated.

Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer

via Kottke:

The immense, awe-inspiring, Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer (Superheavy Armored Walking Tank) is thought to be the brainchild of notorious Nazi (mad) scientist Doctor Siegfried Qual, who built the initial prototype as a gift to Adolph Hitler. However, considering Qual’s well-deserved reputation for intellectual prowess, it seems doubtful such an unworkable construct would have been devised by him.

At any rate, the massive “Thor’s Hammers” first appeared on the eve of the German invasion of Russia. Although the Wehrmacht felt they were far too big, slow, and vulnerable to be of any use, they appealed to Hitler’s vanity, and he authorized the construction of a series of the enormous walking machines.

Can anyone tell me if this website (not Kottke, but the one about the walking tank) is a joke? Because the first thing that popped into my head was a certain movie.

When did you last love life?

“I have no possessions here but I am richer than an oil well. When I said I would give my life, I began to value it, and valuing it became a verb; an active part of speech. Nothing is missed now, I run up and down my mountains of treasure like a fabulous glittering thing from legend. I am all the gold and jewels of the East. I am my own flying carpet.

When did you last love life?”

–Jeanette Winterson

Large-photo friendly blog changes

I apologize for the style changes around here, as I was in search of a design that would allow me to post a photo wider than 500 pixels.

Photo of the Moment #1

In the past 6 months, I’ve hit one of the lowest lows I’ve hit in awhile. I didn’t take photos and I didn’t blog (although a lot of that stuff is coming out now). So I’m starting a “Photo of the Moment” thing. At first I wanted to do “Photo of the Week” but what if I wanted to show more than one photo per week? And “Photo of the Day” felt too relentless. Therefore, of “the Moment”, wherein I give myself space to maneuver.

I’ll start with this photo, as it’s the view from the room that I will leave in less than a week. This view is what made me take the room, and although it’s not of a lake or of a beautiful building, I love how I can see trees and hills. I’m in the process of slowly saying goodbye to California, my home for the past thirteen years. There’s no other way I can think of do it but through photographs…

And in my new “state”, or rather, country, what better way to get to know a place than to explore with one’s camera? On one hand, I’m sad, on the other, I’m so excited!

Oh shit: thunderstorm

There are two places on earth (so far) where I’ve seen thunderstorms in which the raindrops were so big and the storm so fierce that I thought my belongings would be broken by the force of the rain: the countryside in New York State, and on the Thai islands.

The year I turned seventeen, my pediatrician moved her office into the countryside of upstate New York and thus our visits to her took an hour longer. One of my last visits with her was when I was eighteen, and of course I had my driver’s license so my mother gave me directions and told me to go by myself. The skies had been grey and rumbly, but it wasn’t something I paid attention to. Before this, I’ve driven to high school in the worst weather, which in upstate New York consists of huge snow storms, ice, and slush. It wasn’t until I was twenty minutes into the country when the skies opened up and the first fat drops thudded into the windshield.

Five minutes later, it got worse. Then it got worse than that. I thought after it was over, I’d see stipples punched into the windshield because the drops were falling so hard. It got so that the windshield looked as if someone had poured a bucket of water over the car, continuously, despite cranking the windshield wipers to full speed. I pulled over, hoping to wait out the storm because from experience I knew these types of storms lasted about 10 minutes. Muffled thunder reminded me that the storm was still in full swing. I was in farm country, on some lonely road, and no one was out there.

Out of stubbornness, I had refused to buy a cell phone or a beeper until age 22, so in this instance, I was all by myself in the middle of East Bumblefuck, in a crazy thunderstorm, with no communication (unless I got out of the car and walked a mile to the nearest house)… and then the engine light turned on and glowed a malevolent red. I had no idea what the engine light meant, at age eighteen. My stomach clenched nonetheless, as I discovered that I could not turn the car on. Cue shivers of fright and a large lump of “Oh, fuck me” dread. I thought: well, if it’s stuck here, at least I can walk in the rain a mile. At least I’m not in the Sahara. At least I know roughly where I am.

It took me about ten tries and some amount of panic before I was able to pull onto the road and make my 5 mph way to the office, another 30 minutes away. I watched the evilly glowing engine the whole way, body clenched in fear that the car would just stop and never turn on again. I’ll have to thank my parents’ good habit of buying quality cars because I do make it, safe and dry. Of course, the storm was over by the time my appointment was over, and I did tell my mom about that engine light. To this day I have to idea why the engine light turned on. And I thought that was the worst time I’ve ever been in a thunderstorm.

Until fast forward eleven years, where I got caught in a thunderstorm while on a long-tailed boat going from one beach to another, in Thailand. Carrying and holding all my relevant belongings with me, including my boyfriend. At night. With stitches in my leg from three days before.

Of course we didn’t mean to travel that way on purpose, as we were on Railay Beach trying to find accommodations for the next week. Since the beach had turned into Resort Central and we were looking for humble little cheap bungalows, a friend of my boyfriend’s told us of another beach nearby called Ao Tonsai, which had bungalows for lower prices, some climbing spots, and wasn’t full of yuppies who were afraid of nighttime. It was a 10 minute boat ride, so after dinner we decided to take our backpacks and go shelter-hunting.

Two minutes onto the boat while the motor is chugging away, the thunderstorm descends. Fat drops hit the ocean as the shore recedes; the storm deepens, the atmosphere becomes misty, and my skin moistens as everything turns to water. My boyfriend and I cram all our belongings into the center of the boat, throw an old, used mat over them, and the boat drivers throw a tarp over us. They stood on the boat, in the storm, and steered the boat out into the ocean.

My mind was running with this one story someone I knew told me once: that a long-tailed boat had capsized during a boat ride like this, and how two people died because they didn’t know how to swim. The boat had capsized in the middle of the day, with no storm. I knew that I should have taken comfort in the fact that I knew how to swim and that I’ve had years of experience swimming in the ocean, but panic is hard to repress completely.  I knew I was okay, but I also knew that I shouldn’t be too confident because you never do know. And this panic made certain things stand out in memory.

I remember looking at my man and thinking that I would never forget this particular boat ride, ever; it is one of the most joyous memories I now have, despite its craziness. His rain splattered smiling face against the black roiling night is engraved in my mind, written with alarm and delight. Drops of water dot his glasses, strands of his hair are plastered to his face. The storm raged; I distinctly remember the sound of raindrops on plastic tarp and the misty, wet, boiling look of the ocean.

What was amazing about this little boat ride above all the other boat rides I’ve ever had was not that we arrived safely. We did arrive safely, laughing and buzzed from adrenaline rush. It was simply that the storm ended abruptly two minutes after our feet touched the ground at our destination. To this day, I think that particular thunderstorm was timed.

A fanatic Thanksgiving and a joke

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. — Winston Churchill

My Thanksgiving was interesting, shall we say? All of it would have been a little less depressive and a little more “Let’s enjoy this time together!” if the conversation weren’t always steered towards 1) species going extinct, 2) revolutions, 3) politics, and 4) genocides and other mass killings in the world. I have to sweep my hat off to the 19 year old paranoid schizophrenic communist girl who attended this Thanksgiving party, the only single person who I avoided talking to directly because, well, maybe that my own mother had to flee China at the start of that “revolution” that made China a miserable place for, oh, the past 50 years or so? And that she believed her office, phone, and home were tapped and people were out to get her because she’s communist? Where’s McCarthyism when you need it?

But, 19 years old. I figure if a decade of life experience hasn’t mellowed her out, then fatigue will. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the 19 year old showing me how desperately ugly and sad fanaticism is.

The rest of Thanksgiving was awesomely fun, as I did pick up a guitar and learn a few snippets of songs, chords, and methods before my fingers cried “Uncle”. Charade was played, drunkenly, and many groaned and moaned from a too-full meal and tryptophan effects. And, some jokes were told:

An Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman were exploring the jungle when they were captured by a cannibal tribe. The tribe was preparing the three men to cook but the men begged to be saved. Finally the chief allowed, “Okay, we will let you go on one condition. If you can go out and find any fruit, and shove ten of that fruit up your arse without flinching or such movement, we will let you go. If you do move, we will chop off your head and cook you!”

So the Scotsman goes out and comes back with ten apples. He finishes with the first one and tries with the second apple but it’s too much for him, he can’t get it in, and he bends over in pain. The chief comes over and chops off his head, and now it’s the Englishman’s turn.

The Englishman had gone out and found ten grapes. He thinks this will be really easy and was about to put the tenth grape up his arse when he sees the Irishman coming up with his ten fruits. The Englishman bursts out laughing, and the chief comes and chops off the Englishman’s head.

Up in heaven, the Englishman meets the Scotsman at the gates and the Scotsman asks, “How the hell did you die? You had ten grapes, didn’t you?”

And the Englishman says, “Yes, but then I saw the Irishman come back with ten pineapples!”

And if you imagine that joke told in an Irish accent, it’s better.

Overheard at Thanksgiving dinner

Indignant all-around activist on rant: “…15,000! That’s how many sharks are killed each hour! For shark fin soup! They just catch the shark, slice of its fin, and just throw it back into the water, just like that! Can you believe that? And they kill 15,000 sharks per hour! It’s–”
Irish hard-rock musician, from across the room: “But on the upside, I can swim out farther!”

Goal approaching, cue panic

I can be a goal-achiever when I want to be. This week is the starting of final preparations for a major move in my life, perhaps permanently. I am moving 5,900 miles away from my current location. Almost six THOUSAND miles. I’ll leave you to figure out the geography and how big of a move that is.

The point is: I’m scared, exhilarated, overwhelmed, and hit deeply in that part of me that believed “this isn’t real” but now is thinking, “Wow, this is real!” Yes, it’s real, and I spent all of today researching, on top of the researching I already did. And I panicked. And I sat overwhelmed. And large parts of me celebrated, cheered, and faced the future with the kind of rawness that I didn’t have when I was 17 and moved across the US. It just didn’t seem real during the previous hellish six months in which I barely blogged. It seems real now, when I have the time to sit with myself and think about what exactly it is I need to do in the month I have left here.

My first goal is: to start enjoying life again, to force myself out of this numbness. To re-connect with the world.

What better way to do that than to have a Thanksgiving planned with a bunch of friends?

Six in the world

Imagine leaving your suburban home with your family of six to travel around the world for a year. Now imagine that your four kids range in age from four years old to eighth grade. Then, imagine taking them to India, Africa, or Tunisia on a limited budget… and you have Six in the World.

Sold some stuff

Me: “Is it okay for me to buy something even though I have a $100 bill?”
Tattooed cafe clerk: “Umm… let me check… yeah, it’s okay.”
Me: “Sorry, I just sold some stuff so that’s why I have these.”
Cafe clerk: “Sold some stuff?!”
Me: “I sold a COMPUTER.”

He’s a keeper

Smartassery

Customer: “How long are you open today?”
Coworker: “We’re open until we close.”

Conversation with Boyfriend

me: “Have you ever been to the Natural History Museum here?”
him: “Pshhh… it’s full of old dead animals.”
me: “So I guess you’re not into going to an art museum?”
him: “That’s a building full of pictures on walls…”
me: “Well you know those rocks you climb? They’re just rocks!”

Holding it in

Tonight, I just want to decompress from frustration and incredulity. There is just so much that has blown my mind negatively over the past six months that I thought I couldn’t be astounded anymore… but this weekend will probably prove me wrong.

Connection

My boyfriend is looking for a new job. Since English is his second language, he gave me his CV in English so I can edit it for grammar and vocabulary. And through this activity, I feel connected to him, that there is someone out there with me and for me.

It is amazing that over months and months apart, our connection remains, that even after almost a year, I still think of him as my singular love.  In a little over a month, I won’t be missing him anymore.

However, I will be missing my family and all the friends I’ve made here. But that is what the internet is for– to help keep everyone still familiar with each other…

Choosing the beggars

I will not give money to the bums or homeless. Since I have no idea whether they will use that money to buy drugs or rent, I figured it’s safer to give them food.

So today I was working in the afternoon taking photographs for a band I know, and we all go into Popeye’s to eat fried chicken. Towards the end of the meal, this guy next to us started to beg us for money. Two band members (and you know how much money musicians make) gave him change. Five minutes later, the guy begs again. I glance over at him and that glance, that one look that took him in, I knew that at most I’d give him whatever’s leftover from my meal. As if he needed it.

Because this guy was fat. He was bigger and fatter than the biggest guy in the band.

I don’t know about you, but here is a list of bums/homeless that I’d rather not give anything to:

1) People whose BMI is larger than mine. If you look like you’ve been eating more than me, it’s a no-go.
2) Those who have cell phones.
3) Those who are studded out in leather jackets and pants; also those who are wearing tall black leather motorcycle boots.
4) Those whose dogs are happy, well-fed, and have shiny coats.
5) Those who are young and strong enough to push a 100-pound cart around the city all day long. If they are fit and hale enough to do that kind of physical labor….

I mean, seriously, are you kidding me?

100 ways

What are your most creative ways to say “I Love You” to that one person who needs to hear it multiple times? One of them: have your dog say it (youtube video of segment of late night TV show). And another:

#30) True story—this took place about seven years ago and it was probably the worst romantic mistake I ever made. I was in mid-orbit near Arcturus cluster, just prior to our first battle with the Ximphids, those loathsome orange-hearted reptile flowers (all praise their gentle rule). I was ordered to take a small shuttle and install quantum signaling units on our recently-militarized passenger ships. And at the time I was deeply in love with a woman named Four, a signals-processing corpswoman on the CENTCOM cruiser. I decided to add a special code to the announcement matrix of the battle cruisers so that they would send the words “I love you Four,” signed with my name and my public key, encoded into a subsignal embedded in the principal security wavelength. I knew that Four would see it, because it was her job to receive and interpret the millions of messages received per second from the various ships of the fleet. However—and this is funny or sad depending on how you see life—in a forgetful moment I used the old cruiser encryption standards for my private message. That caused interference with the shared navigation graph. And so fifteen days later I watched as the CENTCOM cruiser (its misdirected rockets misfiring wildly as Ximphid drones carved into its hull) turned end-up and smashed into the hyperoxygenated atmosphere of the low-gravity moon Elchi, whereupon a jet of flame rose briefly a hundred miles into space, atomizing my love Four along with the half-million crew with her on that vessel.

From How to Say I Love You 100 Ways.