I’m just off to bed, but I saw this meme on Melissa’s blog and decided to try it. Two Names You Go By 1. Gord 2. 고드 (but never 고든) Two Parts of Your Heritage 1. French-Canadian 2. Scottish-Malawian Two Things That Scare You 1. The fact my girlfriend risked herself getting renal failure while pumping a suicide-attempter’s stomach in the ER a few weeks ago. 2. George Bush and his Administration Two Everyday Essentials 1. Coffee 2. Some time online Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now 1. A gold chain with a medallion my mom gave me after …
Category: PERSONAL
I’m All Shook Up
I realized today that I’m just not taking care of myself. I am sleeping at odd hours, not eating proper meals, spending a lot of time working on all kinds of things, feeling some stress, and it’s starting to wear on me. Even though I had breakfast (a late one, at 11am, but breakfast all the same) I was shaky by 4pm. I mean literally shaky. Sweating a lot, inexplicably itchy, and weak. I’m sure it’ll pass, if I sleep enough tonight. So I’m going to let all pressing issues slide until tomorrow; tonight after work, it’s just a little …
오예, 베이비!
The title of this post is “Oh Yeah Baby!” written in Korean. It’s something I once taught some kids at one of those camps I used to work every summer and winter in Jeonju. Hearing tons of kids laughing and teasing one another on the bus and then following up with, “오예, 베이비!” — in fact they were saying it in English but with the cutest little accents — brought me such joy. It’s a happiness comparable to what I feel right now, having just heard that it’s very likely I will, in fact, be able to attend the Clarion …
Yellow Dust Fever
Today was the worst Yellow-Dust-From-China day I’ve seen yet. The whole city was smoggy, to a degree comparable to the smoggiest I saw in Gurgaon — which was shocking at the time — and everyone I saw responded to it. The people climbing the stairs at my station, on the way home, dragged their feet as if they were fifty years older than they really were. It was awful. Lime advised me to go to a pharmacy and get a face mask for my trips outside, and of course, like a dope, I said it wasn’t for me. I mean, …
BIG NEWS!
I gotta check on whether I definitely, absolutely have the time off, and whether I can get to Seattle, Washington by July 18th, but anyway, I just got a call and I was invited to participate in the the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. Which is, like, a very BIG deal. I feel complimented since they haven’t sorted out the list of attendees and therefore couldn’t say for sure whether a scholarship would be in the works. So it looks like my schedule this summer will be, June 17th – July 28th — Seattle, Washington, followed by as quick a jaunt …
Crash
I’ve run across a lot of criticism of the film Crash lately, so I decided to watch it. When I got to the end, last night, I couldn’t help but wonder what all the fuss was about. Not just the fuss about the racism, but general fuss. It’s a movie about racial tensions in LA. Well, what else will a movie in LA be about? Okay, that’s snide, but really, I don’t know that I think the movie warranted that much attention. And then there’s the anti-Asian angle. Angry Asian Man isn’t the only person who thinks that Asians got …
Rupt — an experiment in fiction
Well, after several months of trying and trying and trying again, I just may have gotten the ending for this story I’ve been trying to write, “Rupt”. The draft I’ve got now, numbered version 3.5 (.5 always means almost ready, but I need feedback) is pretty different from what I started with. The last day or two saw me cutting several characters out partially or completely; and a major subplot was excised. This plot wasn’t contributing much anyway, and when I removed it, I realized what was missing in the story was a third character, a necessary character, a child …
Weird Moments, But Nice
Last night, I spent a bunch of time previewing a movie that I was planning to show a class today. I hadn’t seen the whole film in a while, and I got through it and managed to choose important scenes for discussion, but the problem was what it did to my mind today. When I woke in the morning, for almost the first time since I’ve come here, I had this strange, sudden awareness that, Hey, I live in Asia. I mean, I’ve been aware of it, for a long time, but the awareness has continually just far enough from …
Chopstick Tax Coming to China?
Actually, I don’t think this idea a bad one. I’ve thought of the disposable chopsticks Korea goes through and mused on similar ideas.
Zohar Studios
Stephen Berkman is a very weird man. But, you know, in a cool way. Wacky camera obscura/photographic oddity. My friend Jack would probably love some of this, though you’d never know it from his pictures. Via Boing Boing.