the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
9.26.2006
Profound Thought of the Day.
So there's this really creepy painting of Jesus taped to the mirror behind the rows of hard liquor at The Library. Buddyguy Steve and I were ogling it last night over a couple of Yuenglings, and the following line somehow climbed out of my mouth:
"Jesus? He's like... the David Blaine of Jerusalem."
We laughed, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the Jesus painting was staring at me for the rest of the night. What a fucking creep.
I usually get over celebrity sightings pretty quickly, but I have to say that I JUST SAW SOMEBODY on the street that I never in my dreams would have thought I'd run into in the city.
It was a pretty surreal experience. At 10pm, I was just coming out of the subway station, back downtown from 110th Street on the 3 train, when over the din of my gigantic headphones, I heard this odd racket...
... You know when on TV, when someone gets shrunken down to a comically tiny size, whether through scientific lasers or some kind of magical bewitchery and/or sorcery, their resulting voice sounds like an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" cassette being played on fast-forward? This is what I heard.
I saw this very annoyed-looking, tall white guy walking towards me in a huff. Behind him, in the dark, I could barely make out a small black kid wearing a football jersey, yelling at him in this awful voice, shaking his fist in a rage.
But once our paths crossed, I quickly realized that the pint-sized black kid screaming profanities actually was no ordinary pint-sized black kid screaming profanities, it was actually BEETLEJUICE of Howard Stern fame!!!!
I was so blown away at seeing this 4'3" guy chewing out this enormous white guy (who may or may not have been Artie?), his head the size of a large-ish potato, his yellow teeth jutting out like the inside layers of a geode.
I haven't been updating here as much as I'd like to.
Fact is, I think I'd just like to start again somewhere new. I know I've said this before and haven't done anything about it. But I'll keep you all posted.
Also: The comment counter thing is broken. Alas.
I wrote a gigantic post about something kind of personal and it exploded into a multi-page journey into self-discovery (that sounds totally gay but it is totally true) and I kind of left off of it because it was getting a little overwhelming. When I finish I guess I'll pop it on here.
School started Tuesday. Fuck, do my classes SUCK!
My nagging thought of the month:
My parents and I were driving into the city, and as per usual they were crankin' the Korean radio station. There was some advertisement wherein a mother and a daughter were having a heart-to-heart (possibly about noodles, I don't really remember), and I was kind of taken aback when the mother flippantly referred to her daughter as "e-goh-sah," a word that I kind of took to mean "you little bitch" in Korean.
It's strange to me how vastly different traditional Korean culture is, compared to modern American culture. And it makes me wonder how I might have turned out had I not been raised to lower myself and self-deprecate and humiliate myself -- and expect people to see this as a positive aspect.
People often get frustrated with me because I am genuinely clueless as to how to take a compliment, especially if it's about something physical or aesthetic about me. I can say "Thank you," and flash my teeth, but I can feel the facial expression I'm making and I know I'm grimacing and not smiling. Compliments make me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I usually reply with, "You must be blind or retarded," and silently think that the person is lying to me. The next several moments are then squandered on figuring out the motives behind why this person is torturing me in such a way.
I think a lifetime of being told and telling myself that I'm a fat loser who will never find a boy who really likes me really is evident in the way that I am -- I still have trouble making eye contact and holding my own in conversations and I have terrible posture. My smile never looks genuine. I'm trying to work on these.
My mom has very rarely unleashed the word "e-goh-sah" on me -- I can probably count the number of times on one hand. (I think the last time it came out was when I accidentally did a Piledriver on her with my entire body weight on her shin.) So as we were driving along, I asked her what the word meant, and after a long period of silence, she told me that though it's a not-so-nice word, it's used often as a term of endearment.
"You know," she said. "Like 'ddong-gahng-ajji.'"
And that last part really drives my point home, I think -- that traditional demeaning Korean ways of perceiving oneself is just deplorable. While a lot of American families (though definitely not all, I'll concede) call their kids "sweetie" or "honey," the translation of "ddong-gahng-ajji" roughly comes out to mean "shit dog."
I have, very often thoughout my life, been affectionately referred to as a "shit dog."
I mean, I don't fault anyone for it, I mean it's the heart behind the actions and I doubt my parents' intentions were malicious, but it's just startling to realize how very divergent my micro and macro environments are.
So I looked out the window of our car, deep in thought, strapped in tightly by my seatbelt, watching the tree branches whip by in a blur. I couldn't help but feel a strange sensation, like as though those trees were holding out their branches to me, trying to grab me and drag me down and suck the goddamn life out of me.
... I really have to get more sleep. This is all such a random jumble, I know. It's 6:20am and I haven't slept yet. My sleep schedule has been all sorts of fucked up lately.
I took this photo.
Anyway, what I meant to say is that I love you all.
[Peek-a-Foo]
