I haven't posted in a while, so I'm making up for my inactivity with what could comfortably constitute three individual posts, all mushed together.
As you all know, I am currently out of school for the summer, and to my parents' disdain, very much unemployed.
Whatever. I'm not ready to sell my soul to retail just yet. I still have my heart set on finding a cushy office-bitch job where I can be a foxy Xerox girl or some other position that is equally worthless and demeaning.
As a result, I have been living vicariously through my dialup connection on my somewhat brand-new laptop that has been crashing every other day lately despite numerous reformatting attempts.
I also lock my door to keep The Immigrants (I'm the only U.S. born in the family, thus rendering the rest of them "The Immigrants") from coming in to bother me about such topics as school, my grades, my as of yet undecided major, our inefficient and wasteful usage of electricity/water/gas/basic cable television (my dad is the frugal one-square-of-t.p.-a-day type), my messy room (I'm just in the middle of reorganizing, that's all), my discouragingly unemployed state, how much time I waste on the computer locked in my room...
[part I: a phone conversation with my crazy mom]
My mom called me from work a few minutes ago, really furious at me because I apparently didn't hear her calling me from downstairs to clean up all the boxes of shit I brought home from school before she left for work.
I think this phone conversation is a pretty good reflection of her typical stream of consciousness. Broken English remains intact, though much of it is also translated:
"I leave hopsital ID at home because I too busy with yell at you downstairs. All your fault. And you do not even answer me. You did not hear me yell?" - "No, I had some music on." (Shamefully, it was Belle and Sebastian, for those of you who would like to know.)
"When you going to clean up boxes downstairs? Almost one month since you are home!" - "Mom, it's been a week and a half."
"When you are going to clean?? Before start somesing ("something") else, you must first clean up mess. And when you are going to get job??" - Sigh.
"How you are going to get a job? It is too late. You never going to get job. Jobs already done. Everyone else find jobs month and month ago. You do not have job and never will. How you are going to a be lawyer? How you are going to go law school?" - ...
"Do not even think of going someplace but going law school. And marry right after two year of law school." - "Wh--what??"
"You will not gonna be old lonely lawyer. Marry when you're 23." - ...
"Put your brother on phone." - [nastily] "Why don't you just call his cell phone?
"Okay fine." --click--
- "Hello? Mom? Hello?? M-- shit.
[part II: an afternoon drive through new jersey]
Time elapsed during a car ride this afternoon: approximately 48 minutes.
Number of times I swerved into the wrong lane: approximately 4.2 times.
Number of times I heard Modest Mouse's "Float On" played on various radio stations within a two hour time span: 4 times.
Number of times I felt myself growing irritated by hearing Modest Mouse's "Float On" being played on various radio stations 4 times during a two hour time span: 4 times.
Number of times I felt ashamed of seeming like some kind of stupid-hipster-indie-rock-elitist while at the same time being in denial of this very fact: approximately 2.7 times.
Number of times I saw/almost ran over roadkill pancakes on the highway: 5 times.
Number of individual pieces and chunks aforementioned roadkill pancakes were in, strewn across the highway: approximately 11.3. (Sidenote: one bloody, fleshy chunk looked suspiciously like a human head. Ah, New Jersey.)
Number of times my small, annoying, overbearing Asian mom told me to do a number of traffic-related tasks (i.e. stop at the stop sign, slow down, watch out, stop swerving into the wrong lane, drive with both hands, be careful, GO): 27 times.
Number of times I silently said to myself, "SHUT UP YOU STUPID WHORE. SHUT UP. I KNOW HOW TO DRIVE. SHUT UP. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH I HATE YOU.":
approximately 43.17 times.
Number of times my small, annoying, overbearing Asian dad bursts into my room at night in a panic, worried that keeping a standard-sized oscillating fan running in my less-than-standard-sized bedroom will cause some kind of gradual asphyxiation process that will leech the oxygen out of the room and kill me silently but surely in my sleep during the past few days: 12 times.
The consequential temperature in my room due to my dad turning off the murderous fan as well as the added factor of our air conditioner not being functional, in degrees Farenheit: approximately 94.37 degrees.
Number of times I pray that aforementioned deviously homicidal oscillating fan would, indeed, mercifully kill me in my sweaty, sticky sleep (or even in my conscious state, it really doesn't even matter to me at this point) to escape this tortously humid, hot, Asian environment: approximately 37.2 times.
[part III: miscommunication and defeat]
A conversation I heard my mom having with our very white, proficiently English-speaking neighbor at the fence between our backyards:
"Herro!" - "Oh, hello there! Isn't it beautiful today?"
"Yes! But so many monk chikky!" - "... Monk chi-- excuse me?"
"Yes! So many monk chikky!" - "..."
"Oh, so solly ("sorry"), I mean is 'monkey chicken.'" - "Oh.. 'monkey... chicken?'"
"Yes, so many monkey chikky." - "I'm afraid I don't..--"
"-- Oh I means is 'chikky monkey!' So many chikky monkey." - "Cheeky monkeys? I'm not sure what.."
"How seery ("silly"), what I means is 'chicken monk.' - [getting rather uncomfortable] "I'm still not sure I know what you mean.."
"'Chicken monk!' So many chicken monk!"
This continued for a few minutes until my neighbor was flushed with embarassment and walked away, confused and mouthing the words "chikky" and "monk" to herself.
My mom looked so sad and lost in her gardening gloves, her slouchy socks, and her ugly straw hat, that I had to tell her what her miscommunication problem was:
Yesterday, it took over 12 hours of packing, loading, unloading into the car, realizing that there was not enough room to fit everything into the car, driving home, complaining, unloading, complaining, getting back into the car, saying "stupid cunt" under my breath a lot, driving back to school, reloading, vaccuuming, driving home, and unloading, but I have finally returned to my homeland of New Jersey.
What a motherfucking ORDEAL.
After not seeing the family in a good month or so, suddenly having them practically breathing down my trachea with crazy straws almost made me flip out.
My dad was sweet enough to greet me with a hug and a cheerful "Harro!" but the first thing my mom said to me was: "Chang Ddong (loosely translates to "Poopy Chang," some weird, sick nickname), umma have to go peepee." Ugh.
My brother was apparently not happy with me for being "too lazy" to bring down all of my shit from my room on the 9th floor, including my refrigerator, even when it was blatantly obvious that I hadn't finished packing yet. So my mom played watchdog at our illegally parked car for metermaids as the three of us went upstairs with a huge gray wheelie cart. I packed all my shit in boxes and garbage bags, my tiny 5'3"-ish dad staggered under the weight of my comparatively hefty minifridge, and my 5'10", muscular brother stood idly at my doorway with the cart, watching us sweating and struggling, with his hands on his hips, occasionally fanning himself with a little paper fan, sighing and rolling his eyes with exasperation that we were taking so long. HELP THE POOR OLD MAN OUT WITH THE HEAVY LIFTING WHYDONTCHA.
It became really apparent that I had way too much shit for just one trip, so my dad strategically packed us all into the car like Tetris pieces (a la the Simpsons at Rainier Wolfcastle's yard sale [Justin knows what I'm talking about.]), and my mom immediately whipped out an enormous ziplock bag full of strawberry (*starberry?) yogurt granola bars and a car-heated piece of sandwich, packed me full of sugar and stale sandwich meat, which made me immediately pass out uncomfortably wedged in between my mom and a laundry hamper with my face smashed against the fake fur of the ridiculously oversized (like 6 ft. long) stuffed St. Bernard lounging across our laps that my crazy mom got me last Christmas.
I woke up about an hour later to the sound of my own snoring and from the uncomfortably large pool of drool that was accumulating on the mass of wet fake fur that I was still pressed against, face first, and we were home.
After we unloaded most of the shit, my dad and I hopped back in the car to get the rest of my crap. The second trip wasn't too bad, mostly because it was just him and me, and I made him stay downstairs instead of having him up my ass the entire time.
I dumped out the gross green water in my turtle aquarium into the bathtub and tried to fill it with clean water while my three turtles were having heart attacks from being tossed around, but I didn't notice that the shower pully-thing was up... so water shot out of the showerhead and got me right in the face (D'oh!: #1). I was soaked. "SON OF A BITCH! MOTHERFUCKER!!!" I gave the shower the finger and had to mop up with the dirtiest towel ever, which was all I had left that wasn't packed up already.
I came downstairs to the lobby after probably two and a half hours where I caught my panicked dad, with his finger mid-dial on the security guard's phone, desperately trying to call my room when it was obvious that I'd disconnected and packed up the phone already. He's always such a nervous wreck. I mean, come on. What could I possibly be doing up there besides packing? It was as though he was convinced that I was kidnapped by one of the "crazy black bums" in New York or pinned under a heavy pile of boxes and dragging in my last dying breath in a pool of my own blood or something. God.
At this point, I suddenly realized that I couldn't find my school ID, and thinking it was up in my room, went back to the elevators. And walked nose-first right into a closing elevator door (D'oh!: #2). It was pretty awesome (meaning "horrible") because a big bunch of people I know were in the lobby and saw the entire thing.
"HAHA -- heyyy guys, umm.. you didn't see that, right? Heh heh." "Uh, yeah we did. AAAAHAHAHAHAHA.. ... -- Wait, are you okay? Are you crying??" "I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY EYE." ::pressing "door close" button as hard as I can::
It was already around 10pm by the time I came back downstairs and my dad and I were pretty starving. We drove for half an hour to this Korean restaurant we usually go to only to find it closed (D'oh!: #3). So instead, my dad decided to take me out to an extravagant dinner... at Wendy's.
Now the problem was finding a Wendy's. We both knew the general area where we could find one, but it was further complicated by the fact that I hadn't been in Jersey for a long time, and mostly by the fact that my dad still hadn't replaced his glasses after he broke them like four months ago. Also, my dad is blind as a bat. And was driving the car. Since my dad can't see, to get closer to big signs in the road, he'll squint, stretch his neck out, brake suddenly, and swerve the car into the sidewalk to get a closer look. So we're weaving in and out of the shoulder at this point.
"Yaejina (my Korean name.. um, don't wear it out?)! Is that it?" (::points::) "No, Dad, that's a Guitar Center." "Yaejina! That's it, right?" "No, Dad, that's Baja Fresh." -- Swings a U-Turn -- "Yaejina! That's it, right?" "NO DAD THAT'S THE SAME BAJA FRESH WE SAW ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY. IT'S A GODDAMN BAJA FRESH." "...
What is Baja Fresh? Is it Wendy's?"
We gave up on Wendy's after we pulled four or five more U-Turns on Route 1 and settled on the fine dinings of McDonald's. I didn't give a fuck anymore, it was almost 11pm and I was starving.
I sat in front of a drafty window, shivering in my shower-soaked tshirt (those stupid fucking turtles), trying to ignore the mongoloidian employee sweeping my left foot with a dirty broom, and opened up the buns of my first Big Mac in probably 10 years, and peered at the sad, gray, meat patty looking back at me under a few pickles and a mess of onions and sauce. It was pretty nasty. I looked up at my dad's sad, gray face, though, and ate the damn thing. It tasted like sin.
My dad drove us home, trying to fill my ear with irrelevant Korean politics, as I pretended to be asleep. Soon enough, we pulled into our driveway.
So there I was, back at home, in this strange alternate dimension of 56k dialup internet connections (because god forbid my brother set up the DSL connection that costs a fortune so it is useful for computers beyond his room), bar soap (I had to wash my hands with Listerine mouthwash after I finished cleaning out my turtle tank, praying that I wouldn't get Salmonella), and a house full of crazy Asians. Also known as MY PERSONAL HELL.
I've been trying to drown my sorrows in hours of Spider Solitaire, bad court television, and sleep.
I miss New York already. I miss Adan and the doggies. I miss good Mexican food. I miss not being allergic to the outdoors in the city -- my backyard is a goddamn forest. I miss free drinks at the Cedar. I miss watching Steve's menu accidentally catching on fire. I miss accidentally punching Soup's glasses off his face and destroying them. I miss having more to do than lying on my bed and typing ridiculously long posts about how much I miss being out of New Jersey.
Someone get me out of here. And bring me a goddamn enchilada from Paquito's.
P.S. Confidential to bald Asian man who stood directly behind me, pressed against my ass at the Cardigans' Bowery Ballroom show, who was singing along with every SINGLE SONG, a million decibels louder than Nina, making up his own backup vocals, and making guitar noises ("Ching! Ching! Chinnggg!!!" -- Goddamn... Even his guitar noises sounded stupid and Asian): YOU ARE MY WORST ENEMY AND I WILL NOT REST UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD.
Does the fact that the only reason I remembered that today is Mother's Day is because I opened up Internet Explorer, my homepage, Google, displayed this helpful image, make me a terrible daughter?
So I'm sitting here at my desk in my dark (the light bulb just blew out), shitty dorm room, pretending to study for my exams and wishing that this stale bag of raisins and seeds I found under my mini-fridge were a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's (it's hard times for broke college kids), when all of a sudden I hear really loud, slow, tinkly, jack-in-the-box-ish music blasting from the street 9 floors down.
It sounds like an ice cream truck.
A few things run through my mind:
It's kind of cold to be selling ice cream.
It's pretty early in the year to be selling ice cream.
Wait a minute, it's 10:35 pm!! What the fuck is an ice cream truck doing here?
Then, a succession of other noises join in to form a street-noise cacophony (keep in mind that there's an enforced 24 hour silence throughout the building that was started May 3rd):
Cars (probably mostly taxis) start honking.
Trucks start honking (not the wimpy "beep beep" of taxis, the "WOMP! WOOMMMMP!" You know what I mean.)
then,
Ambulance sirens go off.
Police sirens go off.
It was then that I realized.
The one and only possible explanation:
My recurring childhood nightmare that my deceased, creepy, old next-door neighbor would rise from his backyard grave in zombie form to stalk young children and eat their soft, sweet, candy-coated, taffy-filled skulls from behind the wheel of a non-threatening ice cream truck blasting slow, haunting music during the dark of night had come true!!!! THE NIGHTMARE HAD COME TRUE!
Well, either that, or some crackhead bum hijacked an ice cream truck and was selling ice cream to dumb NYU students for crack money. With the real driver's body preserved in the freezer.
Every once in a while, even the most bitter people have a nice happy interim from being miserable and resentful. Yay!
DOGGY!!!!!!
It's funny how things work out sometimes.
This post is going to be short because I have finals this week, and I haven't had any noteworthy instances of being harassed by random tiny-dicked Asians.
Also, I just got a Gmail account (sign ups for the general public aren't open yet) because I'm awesome. I get to invite two people to try it.
If you're interested, let me know.
[Peek-a-Foo]
