An excerpt

From the paper that's due tomorrow and is not done, but done enough for me tonight:

About the same time, I found myself briefly and unromantically involved with another student from my Introductory Mandarin Chinese class. We were both incredible opposites; he was a talkative, tall white guy with a curly blonde afro who was enrolled in the course because he was deeply interested in Chinese culture and language. Meanwhile I hid myself and my decidedly Mullet-like hair in corners, and enrolled because I had a horrible complex about being a twinkie, or jooksing; someone who looks Chinese yet is unknowledgeable of Chinese culture. I felt it was a necessary duty to my ethnic heritage to suffer the rigors of Chinese eight times a week and still I felt unsatisfied as I did after eating another bland meal in the cafeteria, although my fried-foods binge had ceased. When Derek[1] asked me if I wanted to study together, I eyed him warily because he was the one who was always asking questions, always volunteering to speak, and always talking the TAs while the rest of us surreptitiously scratched our names into the wooden desks or fantasized about not being there. I surmised that if he wasn’t going to study with me because I was a brilliant student, then he wanted to study with me because he was a sexual fetishist of some sort, the kind with Asian porn religiously bookmarked and categorized on his browser. Despite of this creepy conclusion, I said yes, secretly hoping to confront him, smack his perverted –yet talented— brains out with our heavy course reader, and make him repent.

[1] Name changed to be polite

Tuesday night tally

Language acquisition

Gaaaaah. I hate Romance languages: what the hell do you need all those conjugations for? My brain is not processing all the irregulars, subjunctives, so and so ons that drive me batty. I sometimes wish I had the chance to continue with Mandarin or start with some language that doesn't use conjugations. I miss the simplicity of changing verb tenses with a simple character or two.

I like Portuguese: the curriculum here is pretty easy and I ended up skipping a year, something that's not uncommon. Maybe having another year to drill myself on verb memorization would have been a positive thing; however that meant I would have to sit through another year with egotistical athletes who do the bare minimum to get their language requirement out of the way. But last semester's professor made me want to quit and take up something else becuase she was terrible at teaching. I saw her three times last Thursday at Van Hise and then around the Union when I was milling outside the Campus Center. It was horribly awkward because I was the fumbliest speaker in class and wrote all my papers (in Portuguese, no less!) the night before, so my papers were even more incoherent and ratty. Still, when she saw me she said she liked my final paper...so why did I get a B?!?

I enrolled in Mandarin for my freshman year instead of the preferred Japanese becuase I still had horrible hangups about being an illiterate and mute jook sing. My professor was old but energetic and computer literate. He was also pretty traditional on characters; insisting on the gender-neutral character for he/she/it, for example. He also created supplementary programs with VB to encourage us to come up to the Chinese floor on Van Hise and get our learning on. Despite all of this though, I was still a little resistant about liking my choice and thought of it more as a duty to my heritage or something like that.

Second year was pretty interesting becuase we had a new professor who hated Professor Chen and his traditional (read: Taiwanese) ways. We got real books instead of a pretty thorough packet written by Chen, differentiated between our third person pronouns, and listened to him rant about our previous education in Chinese. Ironically, this was the semester that I began to actually like learning Chinese and then promptly lost the opportunity to learn for the spring semester becuase my Intro Soc class broke into two out of eight meeting times for Chinese per week. I found out earlier this year that I could have continued Chinese if I had gone to my TAs instead of hardass old Zhang. He wouldn't even let me go to the remaining six classes (three lectures and three discussions) and do extra work for four credits - as opposed to six - as an alternative. He basically told me, "Unless you are majoring in Chinese or need to fulfill your language requirement, I don't have the time to help you." What the fuck; I wouldn't have even bothered going to his office hours anyway.

"Open the door to knowledge!"

Saturday, here we are

I took Jeff back with me to Bradley, where Youssef was stuck DJ-ing for a social. We ate junk food from the vending machine as we watched people dance and then ate some tortellini I cooked. When the three of us were lounging in the office after cleaning up, a couple of our residents came in to tell us that somebody had driven onto the sidewalk from the parking lot by the cafeteria, fishtailed, drove down a flight of stairs leading to the dormitories, fishtailed, drove down the sidewalk between Cole Hall and the game field, fishtailed, drove off the sidewalk and into ten inches of snow-covered game fields, and finally stopped right before hitting a tree. HOT DAMN! Youssef went to check out the stairs while I went for a camera. We were shooed out but from what Youssef heard by spying on the Popo and the perps, a freshman from another school was the driver. She had a blood alcohol level of 0.2 - which I hear is pretty high - and that her car had really flown over those concrete steps. I know, I know; I'm terribly nosey. But what an amusing ending to a mild day!

El coche y yo.

Las pistas del neumático (the tiretracks).

El camino de towing. (No sé utilizar la cámara dela oficina.)

Restless

I can hear almost everything that goes on around my floor at night. Sometimes I feel like the captain of a quietly mutinuous crew, of silently stewing sailors seeking empowerment through collective muttering. I would like to say to them that I am not against them, yet at the same time my position prevents me from being percieved as sincere.
Earlier last week, S thanked me for being a strong individual, for being able to live with those who are eager to hate me, for being able to return each day to a home that is not quite like the home I have back in Illinois. Here is a home that welcomes, repells, or doesn't care of my comings and goings.

The sea is wide and deep; we are all at the mercy of her incredible strength, fearful and secretly hateful of her power to swallow us, and thankful for the little ways in which we're able to orient ourselves successfully. For the moment that we all live together, I am a captain not because I am most familiar with her. I am a captain now because I want to tell you how I have been finding my way, and that it is possible to get lost and taken from the stable, nailed-down planks of a ship into the sea, and still come up for air. Because I want to tell you how I have come up for air, and still get lost and torn from stable, nailed-down planks of a ship into the sea. The sea is wide and deep; I have opened my eyes to stinging saline and have seen some of the possibilities that lie even in the seeming dread of being tossed overboard.

Fanatical Harold and Maude entry

I got a chance to watch an excellent movie after reading about Bud Cort's appearance as the "bond company stooge" for Team Zissou as being totally unrecognizable from his earlier role in Harold and Maude. Was this something I am supposed to be surprised about? This interested me enough to go online and Google it. Harold and Maude: A movie about a suicidal rich white boy who falls in love with a woman old enough to be his grandmother? Sounds good to me, and not becuase my own romantic life somewhat mirrors the movie. I said somewhat.

I want that pea coat.

A reversal of the traditional December-May love affair- isn't it supposed to be an older man and a younger woman? Indeed. I think that's why it's still so influential; there is a genuine relationship that develops between Harold and Maude that has its funny moments but doesn't rely on that particular breakage from social norms for humor. It is charming and hilarious movie; Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort were well-cast into their roles and the wardrobe wasn't anything too too seventies, thank goodness. Cort is surprisingly good-looking in that psychologically-repressed, sulky sort of way. He has brooding, bright-blue eyes and a roundish face that at times looks child-like or adult with a tall lanky body that's firmly set in yound adulthood. I think that the physical contrasts within his body works well for the film because it mirrors his psychological conflicts. His character makes me wish I could wear suits with straight-cut trousers and striped ties all the time. Unfortunately, I need to be three inches taller and ten pounds lighter to accomplish that sort of classiness.

Best look ever.

For some reason, all the photos of Gordon make her look like a mean old lady even though she's a wonderful character on film. I like how she's also a very sexual/sensual woman despite her age. She gives me something to aspire to when I get older. Even though people in the service industry have started to call me ma'am already. What is that supposed to mean?

My criteria for a good movie is if I wake up thinking about it after watching it, it's a keeper. I loved the movie. I wish Paramount had included all the original naughty bits, like the makeout scene they showed in the trailers. I'm a pervy sort of girl. The 100% Cat Stevens Yussef Islam soundtrack did not impress me that much becuase it blantantly hippy-fied the movie. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. Even if the idea of inter-generational relationships are not your bag, go watch it for the mock suicides.

novo novo novo

I am taking up more space online than I ought to; these are only the beginning hints of my narcissism.

While I would like to appear more mysterious than I think I am, I believe that I don't have that many interesting secrets of my own. Nevertheless, privacy is privacy is carefully censoring my thoughts while being able to update you on what I think about. What I think about mainly pertains to my image maintainence and the materiality of my life.

Let's see who ends up reading this and how I end up appearing to you. You are entitled to change how you think about me but I am also entitled to evolve myself.