inside the wonderful world of vee

i always write notes on little post-its in my car while i’m driving. it’s cathartic. anyway, this is from more than a week ago:

“democracy now always manages to teach me things. john cusack is on the radio right now, talking about his new movie, ‘war, inc.’ — which i had not a huge amount of desire to watch before but now do. primarily because of john’s sincerity. but that’s not the point i was going for. i wanted to mention the point — that with films like ‘blackhawk down’ — nice, real military equipment is lent to them for use. the price? the military can alter the script however they wish. FASCINATING.”

on sunday morning, i went to chinatown to post up a sheet of paper for people to draw on (clarification pic coming soon). after stopping in at snowboard connection that morning and talking to kenji, kenji suggested i post one of the sheets in king st. station to see what the bums contribute to it. what a fucking good idea, i thought! and i did. i parked my car and went to cross the street. this guy stood next to me, kinda well-dressed (not like suit, but like, clean) taller black dude… light-skinned. he said, “papa-san told me that if i didn’t take care of you, he’d kick my ass.” i said, “that wouldn’t be good.” so the light changed and i was going to cross the street and there was this drunkard lady approaching and she had beef with him. they exchanged some words. he told me to keep on walking. lol. then i got to the pole, and i started putting my shit up, and he was still exchanging words with the drunkard lady, and when that finished, he’s like, “go ahead, post your shit, i got your back,” and i posted it. when i finished, i thanked him (even though his bodyguarding probably wasn’t necessary, it was nice) and he said anytime i was down there he’d watch out for me. haha. how cute.

that evening, rachel and i tried going to a seattle international film festival screening. fucking sold out. mothabitch. i really wanted to see that movie. after locking my key in my car (alex had to rescue me), we had to kill time by getting some food. went to dick’s initially. outside a guy asked if we had any change. i said, “no, but want food?” and he said yea, and i motioned for him to come inside. i didn’t think he was coming cause he took so long but soon i saw him right next to me. damn, he was tall. dick’s was way too fucking hot, though, and the line was damn long, so we went down the street to kidd valley. he followed. his name was ratt, i think.

i bought him a cheeseburger, yam fries, and a strawberry milkshake at kidd valley, kind of fulfilling my dream of eating a meal with a homeless person. i don’t know why that’s appealing. i suppose i just want to hear their stories. unfortunately, he mumbled a lot and it was kinda hard to understand him. he wasn’t completely sane but he wasn’t even near psycho either. he could hold a conversation but just barely. i asked him how long he’d been on the streets and he said his whole life. he muttered some stuff about how people don’t usually pay attention to bums except for on thanksgiving and christmas. some other talk about how he wanted to leave seattle because it’s not bum-friendly, so i asked him where was better. he didn’t much have an answer that was better… think he said he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

he got a LOT LOT LOT of food stuck in his beard. it grossed rachel out big time. haha!! can’t say i blame her, i mean, it was kinda gross. i don’t really mind that kinda thing, though. but yeah.

later some guy who WAS bat shit crazy and definitely a vietnam war vet came in and was babbling about this and that. ratt said that this guy was also on the street his whole life. i gave him my yam fries because they were much too much for me to handle.

man. i like bums.

um, can i just start this off by saying… I LOVE FOLK LIFE? i’ve never been to the damned thing before. the only thing i knew about it was that it was a “hippie” fest but i am so into it. i guess i am partly hippie, maybe that contributes to the sentiment that folk life is AMAZING.

alright so, after circling around queen anne for a long while, completely unable to find parking, i decided that i should just park at the spaghetti factory since i have a pass to park there. and so i did. and i checked on this piece of paper i stuck on the pole near the sculpture park last friday, and it was full, so i took it down.

the point of that piece of paper was to tell people to contribute one thing to the drawing to build off of what was there before it. woot. i’ll have the results up sometime soon.

walked up to the space needle and it was like, five blocks or so. put up another sheet of paper right near the space needle. then walked into folk life.

upon first going in, this guy! and he had a “free hugs” sign so i gave him one. WOOT. the first of many. he had these little stuffed lions framing him. haha. they had tiaras… one had a tiara that was a tambourine. how cute.

there was another folk band with accordion and washboard… these things are all the rage nowadays, that’s for sure.

then there was this guy with a whiteboard… on it had the word “who’s right?” and below that were other words, like “athiests”, “jews”, “christians”, etc. um, he was doing a lot of screaming and not a huge amount of dispelling anything interesting, really. he asked this question… “who thinks they are a good person?” and someone responded that he said he was. and the sign guy said, “have you ever lied?” and the good person says, yes, and somehow the sign guy took that to mean that he wasn’t really good, because he’d lied before. blahblah. then he got bored so he pointed to lenny and asked lenny who he thought was right, off the people on his board. lenny said, “i think all of them have good qualities,” and the sign guy said, “i agree with that,” and moved on. some guy to our left said, “hinduism? there’s something right about hinduism? they have a multi-armed monkey man picking his nose… something something bullshit bullshit,” and i said, “it doesn’t mean that’s the part that is the good part,” and he did this kind of pompous knowing scoff/laugh and said something about else along those lines. and i said, “you don’t have to be religious — i’m not religious — to think that religions have something good to offer,” and he couldn’t even say a godamned thing. nor did he try. he just gave another knowing laugh. and i said, “yeah, that’s a good answer.” and i was like mad, lol, and turned around. what a fucker. can’t even give reasons for why he thinks no religion has anything good about it… can only press his opinion that is worth shit. FUCKTARD.

anyway.

there were some other guys with jesus signs (pictured) and these three guys wearing all black walked by and like said “BAAA BAAAA BAAAAAAA!” in their faces. it was really quite quite hilarious. shoulda videotaped. oh well, at least i have this photo. ahha. i mean. it’s an asshole thing to do. but it’s still hilarious. unfortunately i caught him in pic too late so he’s not screaming in this pic :{

walked around a bit. ran into lenny’s friend. it was kinda awkward. but interesting! because her husband had the exact same camera and exact same lens as i did! he had a lens hood… that was the only difference.

found some cardboard in a recycle bin (after lenny gave $1 to this guy who had a sign that said, “i bet you $1 that you will read this sign”), haha. genius. ripped apart the cardboard in preparation for sign-making. never a shortage of cardboard, i guess.

borrowed a marker from the vendor that lenny bought a nature photograph from, and wrote a sign that said, “talk to us (about anything) we don’t want money, we just want conversation.” (i wrote that last part because there were SO many people begging for money at folk life, albeit rather creatively.)

there was this DOPE balloon guy. he did some things i’ve never seen a balloon maker do. he would pinch off sections of balloon without popping it… i don’t really understand how. he also got water into the balloon after blowing it up with this little cup-like gadget. he was trippy. his hat said, “NO WEAPONS,” and he said he only made things that were “helpful”. which is soo awesome. this is his helpful thing for this kid… it’s a fire-fighting airplane… hence the water on the bottom of it (can’t really see :[):

drum n’ bass… with a TUBA? fucking awesome. someone said this was a french horn. it is a tuba, isn’t it? i don’t know. too lazy to look it up. oh god. no i have to. no, it’s totally a tuba. i win. asshole.

got a smoothie and went to find a spot. there was this great spot on a corner but this band took it, so we found another spot near the main path that didn’t have seating or nothing… we just sat on the ground. werd.

and so, the adventure begineth.

***

THE FOLK LIFE STAFF GUY, IAN.
we’d seen this guy talking with the “who’s right” guy. he came down and sat down by lenny. ian and i talked about where vee and i were from and what we do for a living. he mentioned that he was leaving seattle soon and that folklife was like his goodbye seattle thing.

THE GIRL WHO WE KEPT IGNORING (AND FRIENDS).
so this blonde girl comes with two of her friends — a guy and a gal — and tries making conversation with us but we keep getting distracted and kind of ignoring her. she asks what our best conversation with people has been and i fail to answer because all these other people come by… (see below…)

THE 14 YEAR OLD RAVER GIRL.
so i saw that this girl was wearing a ton of candy and asked her about raving a bit. she said that this was her first time coming to folk life sober or some shit. i was like, what?? and she said that she had just popped an ecstasy pill (wtf!) and so i was like, whaaat! and i asked her how old she was and she said she was 14, and i asked her how many times she’d done it, and she said she’d lost count. i said, what? like 100? and she said, no, more like 23 or something. i was like, wtf, that’s more than me and i’m 24! and yeahhhhh. *__* she’s too young for that shit z0mg. her friend was on the phone, refusing to talk to us. i didnt talk to this girl but i talked to ian about them. i was like raver chix lul and he was like “hahaha”

THE GROUP OF 13 AND 14 YEAR OLDS.
initially spurned forth by two of them — sam and this other guy whose name i don’t know — these two thirteen and fourteen year olds sat down next to us. the asian kid with glasses asked us what we thought about marijuana. i said it should be legalized. i had forgotten who i was talking to. then that kid said that he agreed. sam was surprised. then asian kid said something about how marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol. i said, yes! but then lenny asked the kid if he’d done those things before. he said that he had not gotten drunk but had tried marijuana. so lenny said, then how do you know? and he didn’t seem to have an answer, really. meanwhile their group of friends came by but didn’t much say anything. when the 8th graders were talking to us about what we were up to i mentioned that ian was getting paid while doing this at the same time! sweeeet. i got the vibe that the asian kid with glasses was trying to act cooler than he was as a means to impress his lady friends. more power to him. go, asian kid. the girls in the group were quiet, they seemed like they wanted to talk but seemed like they were used to staying quiet. i wanted to hear what they had to say, but oh well.

THE ARMY GUY.
this guy came out of nowhere. i didn’t see him coming, but he gave his opinion of marijuana, and that was that it was not only a gateway drug but much, much more. he seemed to think that being in the military almost gave him credit to say this or something. so like this guy was just sitting there for a while next to ian listening to our conversation. so i saw him and said hey whats up. when we started talking about drugs i wanted to help him join in on the conversation so i was like “hey do you have any words of wisdom for these youngins?” and he was like haha i like how you turn to the oldest looking guy in the group, so i was like yea with age comes wisdom! lets hear it! so he started talking about how marijuana was more than a gateway drug and that he’s seen people’s lives ruined by it and he used to be a dealer down in cali but never did it. he started talking about how a joint was way worse than smoking a cigarette then the asian kid with glasses was like “do you smoke?” and he was like yea, and the asian kid was like you spend 3000 dollars a month on cigarettes, and the army guy was like dude i spent 3000 dollars in the past two days, and we were like wow on what? and he was like hahaha i dont wanna say so we all just assumed it was on hookers or something.

THE FOLK LIFE STAFF GUY, IAN.
ian interjected by saying that he was 25 and from his personal experience he felt that people did marijuana but outgrew it. oh yea this is where ian interjected with his personal experiences and that only people who have addictive personalities have a problem with marijuana, and that marijuana itself isnt bad, its just that the people who are gonna get addicted to something anyways happen to get addicted to marijuana

THE ARMY GUY.
got a phone call and left after not really agreeing with ian. so yea he was just like preaching about how drugs were bad and stuff and then he started talking about how his job is way more dangerous than smoking and that he was a soldier… anyways he ended up leaving and it was like woa

THE FOLK LIFE STAFF GUY, IAN.
ian tells lenny some stuff. (lenny?)

THE GIRL WHO WE KEPT IGNORING (AND FRIENDS).
the girl tries to continue that conversation and tries to ask us what our favorite conversation in other times we did this was. on the spot, i can think of NOTHING. now i can think of a buncha things i coulda told her, but at the time nothing seemed all that appropriate or interesting :{ suckage. they leave after a bit. sorry, gal.

THE HUGS RAVER KID.
this kid was dressed up totaly awesome, raver-style, and kinda femme, with lots of pink and purple mixed with black. he had purple/black hair, i think. totally etarded, i’m pretty sure. he was talking about how he had scammed some “dirka dirkas” into buying his broken ipod and that they owed him $10. and he was totally looking to get that $10 even though he had scammed those guys and sold them a broken ipod that was stuck on the same one song. wtfs. those people hadn’t even checked it!!!! and he was asking if we’d seen the arabs and iraqis and we said no. he went to go look for them. he kept yelling dirka dirka! im lookin for some dirkadirkastan guy!! when he walked over i was like lawl this is gonna be interesting

THE GROUP OF 13 AND 14 YEAR OLDS.
leave and promise to come back. before they leave, i tell them, that if they’re going to do drugs, to make sure NOT to do meth, crack cocaine, or heroine. ahahhaha.

THE LESBIANS WITH A KID FROM KAZAKHSTAN.
or at least i thought they were lesbian. they were nice and middle-aged, with a cute asian-ish looking kid who they had gotten from kazakhstan. one was saying that she was talking to her partner about the trip to kazakhstan and how vacations like that were so relaxing and nothing much mattered on vacation. she said that what we were doing with our sign was probably like a mini vacation. the other woman had other thoughts to add… and that was that as she was getting older, she felt like she was talking to people less and less because she had no real interest in speaking with them, and that perhaps she should do something like this, too. they tried getting the kid to say hi to us but he had just awoken from a nappy nap.

THE PEOPLE FROM REDMOND.
this mom, with her two kids and… boyfriend? stop by. she’s the only one who talks but she loves the idea. there’s some generic talk. we talk about the delicious-looking donuts her youngest son has. they’re from redmond, as the younger son baseball’s tshirt says (redmond west).

THE POETRY GIRLS.
so some girls were walking by and told us to contribute one line to their poem. i told the main chick that she should go contribute to the paper that i posted up, and she said, “oh? that was you?” and it’s pretty cool that she’d seen it! i gave her my card and told her to send me the poems she got. the line i wrote in her poem was “they then searched in vain for the fuse” oh yes! my line was something about “penguins marching in line to the ______” here’s one of the poems they got that people contributed to:

THE SHORTEST POEM IN THE WORLD GUY.
this guy waited until the group left and then approached lenny and apologized if he talked funny… i guess he’d suffered a stroke before. he then said he used to know the guy who wrote the shortest poem in the world and recited the poem. it was something about how a day is just from dawn to dawn. and lenny said, “that’s a very straightforward poem.” this guy was pretty cool i could see him standing behind everyone eagerly awaiting to talk to me so i kept saying hello to him to get him to join the group conversation. he seemed perfectly content and i could tell he wanted to wait till other people were done. i commented about the card around his neck and he said it was an indian reservation card or something, then he was like i suffered a stroke so please forgive me if im slow with this, so i was like oh ok and he said he used to know the guy who wrote the worlds shortest poem, and i was like oh cool lets hear it! and he was like oh man and got nervous and forgot the poem and was like forgive me im nervous, but then he remembered it and told it to me, it was something like “i yawn until dawn”, and was like oh thats very short and straight forward, nice!

THE FLY-BY KONICHIWA MAN.
some elderly man walked by and was like, “konichiwa,” and i said, “i’m not japanese, but okay.” don’t think he heard cause he’d said konichiwa without really caring if we responded, methinks.

THE CRAZY LADY WITH THE SUNFLOWER SEEDS.
this partially crazy lady with a bag of sunflower seeds came by. her first question to us was, “how come orientals don’t talk to people?” and we were like whaaa? cause how the fuck do you answer that? lenny said something about how it was probably cultural. she would sit there listening to his answer and not saying anything… picking at her bag of sunflower seeds. and then lenny would offer forth some other idea and she would continue doing the same. no real answer-giving. and then because it was so awkward, lenny would keep saying stuff about how he thought it was cultural that asians don’t talk to people as much blahblah, and also mixed in a lot of “i don’t know”’s because, well, she wasn’t responding and made everyone feel uncomfortable. finally she spoke and said that she thought it was all a front that asians don’t talk to other people and that there was nothing cultural about it. she was weird. and ignant. she walked away. lenny and i were giving funny looks to the air as she walked away and i guess she kept turning around and seeing those. i didn’t see her reaction but lenny said she looked like she wanted to kill. this lady was thoroughly disappointing, but good thing she showed up because she gave us something to talk about afterwards: her. anyways… i kept offering answers to her like well its mainly the older generation that is old fashioned and more reserved, but the younger generation is more outgoing and she was still mean muggin the whole time. so these two asian kids (see below!) sat down and i was like hey you guys why do you think asians in general are less social than most people?? the asian kids were like what ?? asian people are the most talkative in my class, (although one did say asian girls were more quiet!) so i was like oh no i mean the older 1st gen people, your parents are asian right? and they were like yea haha it sux and i was like lawl azn parents. so i keep talking to the old lady trying to convince her that its not a defect in asian genes, its a cultural learned thing but she was just not having any of it. she started talking about how when asian people dance they have no feeling and its all just robotic, and i was like again thats cultural. and then she started talking about how she doesnt like how people blame it on culture and that thats just a front to cover up their own inadequacies.. anyways i started showing disinterest in her and she got the idea and walked away. as she walked away i gave the two kids this funny look and she saw me and glared at me and i started laughing and she kept turning around to look at me as she walked away, owned! im sure i didnt help fix the image of asians in her head.

THE TWO OTHER ASIAN KIDS.
so while crazy lady was there, two other kids sat down — one mixed, one not. we filled them in on what the conversation was about and they agreed with OUR ideas about it, but again, they too were scared by crazy lady. as soon as crazy lady left, the mixed one said, “i wasn’t talking because she was there.”

THE HUGS RAVER KID.
he comes back and tells us that he found the iraqi guy he was looking for, and that the guy gave him his $10. a bit shady. lol. oh well. then he saw some guy walking by with a free hugs sign and ran after the dude and was like growl-screaming, “GIVE ME A HUGGGG!” (so wish i’d gotten it on video.) after he’d hugged that group of people, he came back, and i saw another, and i was like, “ZOMG FREE HUG!! GO GO GO!” and again, he growl-screaming, “GIVE ME A HUGGGGGG” and went flying after those people. ahhahaha. man. shoulda definitely taken a video after setting him up like that. damn. :{ We were talking to those two other kids when he came back and i had to give them the backstory on this guy and why he got 10 dollars and stuff, they were like ohhh ic one of those two asian kids complemented raver kid on his totally flaming outfit. awesome.

(see that guy with his arms raised? that’s our raver kid who growl-screams for hugs.)

THE SPOKEN WORD GUY.
this one guy, raajni, stopped by, and he was a spoken word artist. he had a buncha cds with him and had sold eight today. lenny bought one from him for $7, although the suggested price was $10. he liked what we were doing, and said that he was trying to spread dialogue just like we were. he gave us a little taste of his spoken word / rap, and it was basically along the lines of how there is no more democracy in america and that everything is a lie. i said, “i agree,” and he said, “she concurs,” and gave me a pound (fist pound). there was a lot of fist pounding and he was pretty much awesome. and in all honesty, his spoken word was not at all bad! his spoken word was suprisingly good it had a good message about the state of our country and where its heading

THE TWO GIRLS?
they don’t get a better description, unfortunately. one just asked me about my lip ring and said she was thinking about getting one later today. i said it just felt like getting your ear pierced. i don’t even know if they’re old enough to get that shit. don’t you have to be 18?!!!?!

THE PSYCHOLOGIST GIRL.
so, people with signs are DEFINITELY attracted to other people with signs. this lady stopped by and she had a “psychiatric help, 5 cents (suggested donation)” sign. she was with a guy who didn’t really say a damned thing. she talked about how she had earned $1.25 or so from four people, but that only one of those people had actually talked to her about an actual problem and that everyone else just wanted a diagnosis but didn’t want to share a problem. so this couple was pretty funny, i talked to them about how portland is a vortex of unfun and how it was good for them to get out of that horrible city. talked to them also about various stuff and she said alot of people asked her what her qualifications were and she was like “look im offering help for a nickle! do i need qualifications?” and i was like lawl, talked about peanuts and how she needed a booth.

THE SALMON GUY.
so i don’t know if this guy came by because the psychologist girl was there but he said something about, “what do you think about this problem? no more salmon fishing for this year,” or some shit. and we were like, surprised, both by the idea of it and by his statement, i guess, since it was so random! this was obviously very much on his mind. haha. this guy was funny, he was appalled that they cancelled the chinook salmon season, and i was equally apalled because i love salmon, and he was like at least the silver salmon season is still on, and i was like oh jea silver salmon is my favorite salmon! his wife then came to talk to us about what we were doing and how it was awesome

THE HIP-HOP TEACHER.
this black lady came by and lenny talked to her a bit about the marijuana convo we’d had with the kids. i didn’t listen to that entire conversation but did catch that she worked at a middle school for a rotation program… those schools had hip-hop dance, i guess, not squaredancing shit like we used to. she said she saw a few of the kids she saw at the middle schools and that they would stop swearing as soon as she walked by. haha. she seemed cool but again, i didn’t talk to her that much. oh yeah, and she asked us what star signs we were and was surprised that we were sagittarius and cancer… she thought that we’d be aquarius and gemini. keke. then she asked us if we knew where we could pick up a program. we weren’t so helpful in answering that one.

THE OLD GUY WITH THE HAT AND GLASSES.
he was a cute older guy who sat next to lenny. i’m not sure what he talked about. i forget T__T

THE ASIAN LADIES WITH THE ANIMALS.
a couple of asian ladies came by and one was silent while the other one asked us questions like, “what animal would you be?” i answered that i would be a sloth. (i wanted to insert the awesome fact that sloths could swim well but i didn’t.) lenny said he’d be a flying squirrel. as she was leaving, she told me that next time she thought of a sloth she’d think of me. lol? when vivian said a sloth i was like DUDE A SLOTH’S HEAD IS LIKE ABNORMALLY TINY <– cute old guy, above, thought that was hilarious. i wanted to say my half favorite fact that sloths can swim really well but there wasn’t a good place to insert that in. darn!!

THE MEDICAL MARIJUANA GUY.
he was just passing out flyers. guess he didn’t really want to chat!

THE POT-WANTING GUY.
this guy was a total bum and talked to us briefly about how he likes making signs too, and that once he made a sign saying “potless”. then he asked us if we had pot. lol.

THE GUY WHO WORKED AT UW.
this man and his wife — who had funky fake teeth — stopped by. he worked at uw for biostatistics and we talked about how the building was far away and stuff for a while. along with tons of other people, they asked us if it was a school project. it’s funny, people are searching for reasons, and after i say that i was a sociology major then everyone is like, AAAH. as if all the pieces finally come together and it actually makes sense now. haha.

THE LADY AND SON IN RED.
both of them were in red, yes. i was talking to someone else when they came by but the lady seemed really cool and nice. she liked the idea. the son didn’t say much. we talked to the lady about the scary lady who was kind of racist and she said, “it seems like she is the one who didn’t really like talking,” since scary lady would say stuff and then like not really respond to our answers. lenny talked to her more. the lady liked what we were doing and asked how often we do it and the types of people we talk to and if we got anyone freakish so i mentioned racist lady. as they were leaving i told em they should try “talk to us” sometime

THE JAPAN-LIVING GUY, MICHAEL.
i didn’t talk to this guy much, but he had a blonde mustache with one tip (right side) that was white hair. it was quite interesting. quite interesting indeed. this guy had lived in japan for a while when he was 18 and was pretty fluent in japanese, i think. he said he’d been the only white guy there so everyone knew his name was michael but he didn’t really ever know what most of their names were. haha. he’d spent a recent year in china and picked up some chinese. i put him on the spot and had him try to speak some but i think he was a bit bashful about it. this guy was pretty cool, very chill and laidback, he looked kinda goofy but i liked that about him. he was the kind of person that i can get along with easily he was in seattle for a few months on his break from this neat study abroad program he was in for school he just got back from china and was gonna go to japan next and then 2 other countries which i forget. the thing i liked about michael was that we could talk about the people vivian was talking to and it was fun like that, he stayed for a while and we had many a conversation.

THE WELSH ACCENT GUY.
this guy had some musical wooden sticks. he sat down and he said, “nihonjin desuka?” i said, “no,” as i always do when people ask that question haha. and lenny said, “iie, chugokujin desu.” whatever. people always ask that shit and i always try not to humor them haha. i always answer with a blunt “no”. it’s almost weird that they say that right away because they’re expecting that you’re japanese and asking you in japanese — probably to show off their limited shitty japanese skills — but if you’re not japanese… and you didn’t know any japanese… then you’d just be like, “what on earth are you saying?” and it’s just a bit odd to ask that in another language, i think. just my opinion because it happens to me so much, though, i guess. i talked to him for a while as lenny was talking to michael. i mentioned that he had an accent and asked him if he was irish, and he said no, but i had a keen ear, and that irish accents are similar to welsh accents, and maybe that’s why. um, he told me this joke… something about how people who speak three languages are trilingual, people who speak two are bilingual, and people who speak one are american. we then talked about how it sucked that in america you learn another language when you’re in like, middle school and high school, and not elementary school, and by then, you can’t learn languages as easily. he said he used to tutor vietnamese kids and that the older kid would learn english fine but never could really get rid of his accent, whereas the younger kids learned the same amount of english over the same amount of time but were able to get rid of their accents. interesting point.

THE BEST IDEA GUY.
this guy asked us what we would do when we were out of good ideas. i think lenny said something about how we wouldn’t run out of good ideas, and i said something about how we’d just keep using this idea. i don’t know. then he asked us if this was our best idea and lenny said sushimonsters was his best idea. yeaaar. so this guy was like ‘this is a neat idea what other ideas have you come up with’ and i was like ummm and then he was like ‘whats the best idea youve ever had’ and i was like ‘this one!’ and he was like ‘haha’ and he was like ‘ what will you do when you run out of ideas’ and i was like ‘cry, ill cry’ and then i was like ‘ no just kidding i wont run out of ideas’ and then i mentioned sushimonsters.com and then michael was like ’so what are you some kind of good idea guy?’ that was funny.

THE TIT GUY.
this guy was the only one to come over out of his group of four. he was baked, i guess. came over and lifted up his shirt and said, “tit?” and then said, “talk to you about anything, huh?” and i said, “yeah, anything, but i don’t want to talk about your tit,” or something, and he said, “do you want anything?” and looked at me, and i was like, “uhh no,” and he’s like, “don’t get shy on me now, you don’t seem shy,” and i was like yeahhhhhhhh. felt a little awkward haha. after the tit thing and intense look… not really sure why :0 he just bumbled on a little and then apologized for being really high.

THE 14 YEAR OLD FREE HUGS GIRL.
this younger girl had a free hugs sign so i called her over and gave her a hug. i pretty much gave a hug to everyone who i saw with that sign that looked our way, haha. she was wearing a tegan and sara shirt and i mentioned that redefine had had a tegan and sara interview recently, and she said, “oh no way!” so i wrote down the address of the website for her, along with the redefine myspace site. she told me some story about how she went to go see tegan and sara in bellingham and almost passed out because she was anxious since they were four hours late getting there or something. i don’t really know. she also said that her friends and her were starting up a screenprinting clothing site and was going to launch into something about how we should work together but then caught herself and said nevermind. she asked me what my lip ring felt like and i told her just like a ear piercing, really.

THE GROUP OF 13 AND 14 YEAR OLDS.
they came back. sam was first and said that he kept his promise. i said something about how he loved us and was like, “right?” and he was like, “yeah.” haha. he was this cute little black? maybe mixed? kid with basketball shorts on. they had a crew of like 8 kids — guys and girls — their age. i don’t know the names of any of the rest but we talked to them for a good freaking while. this time we talked about a lot of things.

for starters, myspace, and how their parents wouldn’t let most of them have them. apparently those kids had taken sexual predator classes in school hahahaha. weird. and i said, “we never had those,” and lenny said, “because it wasn’t a problem when we were kids,” and i guess that’s true. sam asked if we’d watched “to catch a predator” before and i said, yeah, and that he should be able to have a myspace because don’t predators usually target girls? and this taller boy with massive calves (i guess he “had hops” hahaha) and a basketball t-shirt on said that he had been approached by older men before. the first story was that he was at a basketball court playing basketball and some guy approached him and asked if he wanted to play, and he said okay, and played with the guy for twenty minutes. and he got really sweaty. and then the guy said that they should go to his house to shower. hahahaha. and this kid told him to fuck off. and he said that it was easy because these predators who had approached him were way shorter and smaller than him (he was pretty tall). this other predator came up jogging behind him when he was running around greenlake. again, he was sweaty. the guy said that later they should go skinny-dipping in the lake at midnight. hahahaha. the kid again told this guy to fuck off. and lenny told him, “maybe you should stop getting sweaty, then,” and he said that he got sweaty from doing nothing. SO FUNNY. we continued talking to the kids about what they termed as chimo’s (child molestors) and four of the kids (two being brother and sister) had a sex offender living in their neighborhood. this chubbyish kid said that there was one living two houses down from him and that that guy would always be staring at him. haha. that kid was cute too. quite rotund.

this one girl had a really cool necklace with legos on it, and i guess all four of the girls there had one of those and they’d made them together. they looked DOPE. i want one. anyway, one girl (after being asked by lenny) suggested that we talk about how young kids have cellphones. she said she was 14 and had just gotten hers and thought it was ridiculous that some 8 year olds are walking around text-messaging on their cellphones. interesting stuff… i got my cell when i was 16 so it’s not too far off. interesting, the generation gap.

we asked them if they had people in their school that smoked pot. one girl said only one kid did. her friend said, “yeah, but there’s only 19 people in our class,” and she said, “true.”

after that we got to talking about the rules they have at their catholic school, since all of them went to catholic school. something about how girls aren’t allowed to wear nailpolish… and then there was talk of uniforms and all that jazz. and how they got in trouble more than we could ever imagine. sounds like a pain. i went to catholic school… i don’t remember it being that strict since i was third grade and under, but as a high schooler or middle schooler, i’m sure it’s a bitch.

at some point talking to all these kids got overwhelming. there were just SO MANY of them and all of them had something to say, which was really kinda cute. they were really open and cool kids.

THE PREACHER LADY.
as we were talking to this group of kids, stupid lady came by and handed us this piece of paper. she said, “this is a good discussion topic.” the paper said on it something like “make peace with god.” further inspection made us realize that it was some advertisement for billy graham. ahha. i said, “no, we are not talking about this,” and stashed it away. lol. kid who had been approached by elderly men said something negatory about those christian word-spreaders (of which there were a LOT LOT LOT at folk life).

THE COOL-LOOKING KIDS.
again, some emo-ish looking kids… four of them… one with a banged up hand drum. talked to them briefly about how — and this is kinda weird of me — they were the coolest-looking people to stop by and that other people who “looked cool” didn’t really stop and talk. and one of the kids said, “guess they aren’t really that cool, then.” touche. his other friends were rather silent, however. i dont remember that conversation at all and didnt notice that they looked cool , i did comment about how their drum was neat though

THE OLD CHINESE MAN.
lenny talked to this guy a little and then told me to speak to him in chinese. bah. putting on the spot. such badness. i spoke to him a little about what we were doing there and he asked if we were practicing english and i said no, that we were born here in america, and he got a bit uninterested at that haha. and i asked him if he was playing his instrument, since he was carrying a case, and he said he was taking a break, and then said bye and left. ok so this guy was mad grinning at me, he was standing to my left when we were talking to people and i noticed him and was like have tharr!!! and he was like are you chineeese! and i as like im half , are you chinese? and he wwas like yea, and i was like do you speak mandarin? and he was like ya, and i was like so does she! you can speak to her!!!

THE SPANISH SPEAKING GUY.
some guy came by and said, “hablas espanol?” and i said, “poco,” and he said something really fast, and i said, “lentamente, por favor,” and he said something about, “yo quiero ir al bano?” and i said, “no,” not that that even makes sense. but he left and as he was leaving, said to his friend, “they said to talk to them about anything.”

THE RAINBOW CAMP PEOPLE.
two folks, unique? and mike, came by and gave us some flyers for this event in wyoming that is like burning man but FREE. sounds interesting. i am actually kind of interested. welcomehome.org is one of the websites. i don’t remember the other off the top of my head. she said that she thought we would love it and it was for weeks or months at a time. i don’t think i’m that much of a hippie haha but she said that it would involve just going into the woods, having giant bonfires, playing music, doing drugs — and she kept stressing we didn’t need to do drugs but that we could — and other fun ol’ hippie stuff. sounds like a jolly good time, i’d say. they said they were getting there a week early so they could get the best hallucinogens but again stressed that we didn’t need to. unique? said that if we went they would for sure see us. she was crouched talking to us and three dirty guys threw water down her pants and said, “it was getting hot down there,” and she stepped up and smiled and they were like, “ohhh she likes it!” and i don’t know if they knew her but it was fairly amusing.

THE INSTRUMENT KIDS.
three kids with various stringed instruments in their cases. asked them what kinda music they played, and they said, “kinda like folk.” i said, “oh yeah. duh. it’s folk life,” and they said, “yeah.” asked them how much money they’d made over the weekend, and they’d made like $120 or so. not bad, not bad. they were young. again, probably 16 or under. cute kids. one was silent. the other two kinda talked.

THE CAMERA GIRLS.
we were walking to sushiland and had to walk through fun forest, and i saw some emo kid with a “free hugs” sign so i went to go hug him. he asked me what my sign said and i showed him, and his two female friends started talking to me about my camera, and one had just gotten a film minolta camera from her grandma and wanted to invest in a digital rebel next. ah yes more 16 and under year olds who are friendly. it’s fucking weird.

THE FACTORY MUSIC GUYS.
so, at every local seattle event… or maybe washington event… there are these tribal guys who play music. they were at all the days of folk life, of course. one of the guys saw our sign and started talking to us after we said hi to him. just asked him if they’d sold a lotta cds and they said today was slow but sunday went very well. interesting!!

***

OBSERVATIONS:
1) people our age (21-30) barely talked to us. the primarily age groups of people who did talk to us were 16 and under and hmm, probably over 45 or so. very interesting.
2) some people seem to assume that “talk to us about anything” means that we have the answers to everything… no… it really just means talk to us. lol.

***

i shall end with photo of little girl crying. haw haw. this is totally NOT in focus but look at her awesome (and scary) balloon. she was unfortunately no longer in the throes of anguish, either. she was totally crying a second ago. :[

cirque du soleil is pretty much always good. but “corteo” is REALLY good. i’ve also seen “o” (one years ago in vegas) and “verakai” (two years ago). “corteo” is the best of the bunch. primarily cause it’s a helluva lot more twisted. i suppose it helps that we got $100 tickets and were sitting in the fourth row and could actually see details on the faces of the people. oh man. totally worth the $50 extra or whatever. meep meep!

the synopsis for “corteo” is basically… this clown dies and the show goes through his procession after death to heaven. or at least that’s what it seems like. some trippy shit, with some pretty cool costumes. below are my favorite clips:

helium dance act, with short midget lady. she was ridiculously cute. there was also a midget man. they were the same size hehe. he was less cute, but still awesome.

wheel act. weeeee.

this one is actually kinda different. the girl wasn’t in the version we saw.

by the way, cirque is based in montreal and there were like, a couple americans and a couple canadians. most everyone was ukranian, russian, or from some other part of the former soviet union. i bet their accents are fecking hot.

i’m listening to… bangarang. (go dl their mp3s for free! they are buds.)

this is so old because i so don’t update this shit enough these days but um… last saturday was the biggest trip, ever. lewis invited us to go to this girl’s house and uh her house was trippy. wait, but before that……………………….. we drove to the 7-11 near our house and then drove to the trippy house… but when we got to the trippy house, we realized that… jesus, we live literally five blocks away. so we drove back home and walked back to the trippy house. got there with three cupcakes and a 12 pack of beer (both of which helped with easing us in considering we didn’t know anyone) and people were stoked on that (and actually DEVOURED the cupcakes even though they were kinda smushed).

and here goes the beginning of why this place was so fucking trippy:

1) instruments.
got to the living room and saw a couple people playing instruments like acoustic guitars and drums. look CLOSER and they have fucking every instrument known to man or something. including… A STAND-UP BASS. WTF. A WASHBOARD. A MELODICA (which i am going to buy as soon as i have money, even though it’s only like, $30). all sorts of hand drums. a mini keyboard. an electric guitar, of course. a cowbell. all sorts of fucking shit. INSANE. so i don’t even know if everyone knew each other — i don’t think so — but one person would start playing an instrument and someone else would join in and someone else would join in and before you knew it, there was a helluva jam session going on. and sometimes… it sounded fucking good. what trippy shit. everyone knew how to play an instrument. it was freaky and weird. but i didn’t know how to play an instrument (not really, anyway). and this asian girl was sitting next to me and she was weird and quiet and… weird. anyway. so that was point one where i was thinking, “fuck, i wish i was high.” AND THEY HAD A GODAMN VAPORIZOR. i wanted to use it really bad. but i didn’t know the people who lived there so i didn’t really want to ask :/

2) mouse.
meanwhile, in the kitchen, a mouse had scampered in from outside. it went under the fridge and people were trying to lure it out. evidently, hot drummer guy was trying to sing to it under the refrigerator. i didn’t see that. but that sounds funny.

3) snake.
snake… unrelated to the mouse, strange as that may seem (particularly strange since snake… who is named snakey… eats live mouse for dinner. but that one was not his meal… that one came in from outside). chelsea owned a snake. she put it in a basket. it was somehow amusing.

4) instruments.
i’m sorry, but the instruments were so trippy and cool they deserve TWO “trippiness” notices. by this point, hot drum guy who was really high i guess had gotten into a groove with the drums and wasn’t really caring what people were doing and not really caring that other people wanted to jam. he destroyethed the drums in a loud but quite impressive manner. i sat on the floor next to the loudass drums because i’m not sure why. because that’s where i had been sitting all night. went deaf. he apologized and introduced himself and thanked me for going over. lewis said he shouldn’t apologize because i had chosen to sit there. touche. and truth. nonetheless.

5) foursquare.
so…………………… i got up at some point to see what the foursquare commotion was about. in their fucking laundry room they had taped squares for foursquare. well, i never really actually played in elementary school. i sucked something awful. HAHA. but it was amusing nonetheless…

6) strobe.
… combine foursquare with strobe lights and you get the biggest clusterfuck of a foursquare game ever. good thing no one was epileptic cause that woulda been something awful. time #2 where i wished i was high. yeah, yeah. i voiced this concern. someone else agreed. immediately one of the guys who lived there hooked a sistaz up.

7) weed.
two fat bowls. four girls. one girl who did not know how to operate a pipe. fat rips. much high. but damn, i still wanted to try that vaporizor.

overstay.
considering we didn’t know the people who lived in the house it was a little strange that we were one of the last ones to leave, at like 2:30. oh well.

after work on friday, summer and i headed over to the olympic sculpture park. w00t w00t for one block walk. she’s into experimental music, so i said i’d try and get her in… under the premise that i thought i had a +1. wasn’t sure if i did. apparently i did? though? because it wasn’t a big deal at all. we just waltzed on in. no one really checked. pretty sure if you just walked in like you knew what you were doing, no one cared at all. lollercopters. they barely checked us upon walking in. some girl took a pic and gave summer a card where we could check out the pics online but i didn’t get one and i think she dropped hers T__T

ice carving of a gibson guitar!

waitress spilled some whino. made cool patterns.

free food. of the thai chicken variety. probably the best thing that was there. there were also mini veggie burgers… smoked salmon on cucumber… i would’ve liked more variety. oh well. it was free. who can complain. open bar, too, but i didn’t drink, so that is kind of a waste.

experimental orchestra with 50 local guitarists and bassists. interesting stuff. four parts. first was interesting but kinda boring and not very complicated and was more like droning with slight variations. third was the best, as it was the most experimental and had the most going on, with various sounds coming out of every nook and cranny. i thought it’d end at three but it ended on four, and by four, i don’t know if four was worse or if it just got boring by then, but four definitely did NOT hold my attention.

through all of this, though, was the awesomeness that was the conductor. totally awesome. by the way, the conductor showed up, like, ten minutes late, and everyone in the audience was sitting awkwardly, and the announcer lady who worked for SAM had no idea who he was, either… it seemed no one knew so they were kinda like, “UHHHHHHHHH… GO DRINK SOME MORE! YAY!”

FIN! to part three, i believe.

summer really liked this guy’s sweet stache and beard combo.

so during this whole one our long symphony of guitars or whatever, people were watching from up on the street because they didn’t want to pay the $175 - $250 (which is a bit ridiculous, anyhow). it’s funny, though, that they just stood the whole time, watching through the fence. good thing for most of them — as they were tall — that the fence was short!

by the time it ended, the sun had gone down. finally. initially, it was burning into the retinas. these here are food tables.

by the way they had these uber trippy “royal port-o-potties” that were pretty much just like regular toilets…… had full-blown sink with like, a plastic countertop that was made to look like granite, a mirror, a nice toilet seat, a somewhat real flusher… FREAKISH. it was driven in on a little car type thing, with two women’s rooms and one men’s room for each of them. FREAKISH.

next to the restrooms, we saw some CAKES. they had pink paper boxes full of cake but wouldn’t tell us where we could get cake. we tried to follow them briefly to the magical land of cake, but failed miserably because they would not reveal their secrets… :[

follow the pink-haired maidens…

olympic sculpture park’s new giant traffic cones. more at artandmusic.wordpress.com!!

oh by the way, dj derek mazzoni of kexp was there (i don’t know how to spell his name and i care not to look it up). probably my favorite kexp dj, as i don’t really listen to kexp much. but he’s rad.

robosapiens? who belong to…

... this guy? who bangs on drums and plays in front of a strobe :D he's one of those street musician types, with paint cans for drums. jea jea.

oo yea, night pics of ice sculpture!!

nothing like neon strings for bling, and oh yes, it is a gibson.

more to come, sucka. eventful weekend. although i must say, upon leaving the sculpture park that evening my weekend was very unpleasant. :{

lot to talk about about this past weekend, but i will post this first.

i’ve noticed some disturbing trends as of late, and they really bother me. i hate playing this asian race card unless it is rightly warranted, but i *feel* like it is warranted in this case. perhaps i am wrong.

now i don’t notice this much, but i especially noticed it this weekend when i was in the u-district. there would be people standing out at the u-district street fair, representing so-and-so cause, trying to get people to talk to them or whatever. i was with lenny at the street fair. on three? separate occasions, people would talk to people before and after us, and then completely ignore US.

which i find very interesting. once a larouche girl stopped me outside the post office in the u-district, accosting me because she said, “you care about politics, right? asian girls don’t stop for this stuff. they don’t care about politics.” of course, she was playing the race card to try and get me on her larouche crazy ass side so her opinion doesn’t count so much… but she’s right. i’ve noticed it, by being on the other side… that it’s true. asians don’t fucking talk to you. it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing, either. nor does it matter that YOU are asian. they (being generalizing, here) just talk to you less than all other ethnicities. not only that, but they straight-up ignore your ass. not even a polite smile or anything.

that being the case, i can’t entirely BLAME those people for not attempting to talk to me and talking AROUND me… because i’m asian. nonetheless, i CAN be bitter about it. because for all of their liberal-promoting ideas, i don’t know… i suppose i think that liberals should be carebears and not picky and choosy like that. i guess i wish that every liberal were a hippie in the nature of non-judgmental nature, but that just isn’t true, now is it?

well anyway. i just think it’s frustrating. cause i’m all for these retarded liberal causes but people just avoid talking to me. bitches.

on another note, there was this guy begging on the street for gas money, and lenny gave him some monies, and some lady walked by and was like, “get a damn job,” or something. her son was embarrassed, i guess, and came back and said something to the bum and gave him a quarter. it’s the gesture, not the amount, i guess.

but the real part to gripe about?

she was wearing a yellow tunic type shirt with this symbol emblazoned throughout it.

this symbol is the sanskrit word “om,” which stands for peace. how can you be a spiritual and/or religious individual with a shirt promoting PEACE… and treat another person like that? you don’t know his story or jack shit about him. not cool.

listening to: “cherry” by ratatat, “reh. vuh. lee” by the helio sequence, “come a little closer” by brandy. keke.

i don’t really like cupcakes but cupcake royale cupcakes are yummy.
but they fucked up my order. i asked for four of kate.
they gave me four of mr. formal! BITCHES. he lacks personality.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
to make it worse they give you a DOZEN. not a baker’s dozen. WTF!
at least i made a homeless dude selling real change kinda stoked.
he said he always sees people with cupcake royale cupcakes
and that he feels bad asking for one because they’re expensive.
as i was walking back to my parked car, he said hello to me…
for some reason, i instinctively said, “i don’t have money,” which was a lie.
i didn’t have a dollar (the price of real change) but i did have a twenty.
i offered him a cupcake to make up for lying to him (not like he knew).
he chose to take one of plain ol’ mr. formal, and then said of cupcake royale:
“they’ve come a long way. i’ve enjoyed watching them grow.”

—

in a nutshell, this past week:
- sold $1k of advertisements in the next issue of redefine… by myself. *self-pat-on-back. profitable? no. not yet.
- worked ass off because trendi hath launched our beta!!! final-freaking-ly. sign up if you like clothes. or if you like to be critical of other people’s clothes?
- celebrated gildas’ birthday. went to dinner at a korean restaurant and had much too much food.
- celebrated alex’s birthday. bought him a lavender cupcake from cupcake royale (aka the best cupcakes ever). had a “birthday topper”, which was a plastic ax. (on saturday, i will give gildas a cupcake… his topper will be a pink ballerina. i know, i’m twisted.)
- watched “live free or die hard”… yeah, ridiculous. and kind of awesome.
- finally played a bout of diablo 2. my character was going to expire in 56 days, oh no!!!!
- went to an eisley show with ryan — openers were vedera and the myriad (who we tried to interview a million years ago, but they were poor at following up with us). eisley pretty much sucked the first half. it was disappointing. the second half was better. but sheri is picking up some really terrible singing habits, that’s for sure.
- the projector, aka my former best friend, has been taken away by chris. to where? I DON’T KNOW. maybe it’s back now, actually… i should check.
- went to dean zulich’s art institute of seattle hall of fame induction. i freaking didn’t stick around for the food, though, and instantly regretted it upon leaving. lul.
- got my *first* letter back from a prison inmate!!!!!!!!! christopher davis, of oklahoma. i will scan in soon.

what i think next week will be like:
- trying to harass more people into buying redefine ads.
- working ass off more for trendi’s beta launch.
- celebrating no birthdays.
- lots of movies, courtesy of netflix and screeners from the seattle international film festival.
- “party in the park” at the olympic sculpture park. free ticket. heck yes.
- cirque du soleil CORTEO!!! YEAHHHHHHHHH. it’s been a while. like a year and a half since i’ve seen a cirque. mmmm. and this one was special expensivo tickets.
- camping at the olympic peninsula for memorial day weekend. hiking, biking, kayaking? YEY-YER.
- continuing to wonder what happened to GOOD DAMN R&B, MATE.

virginia sent me this questionairre for some project she’s doing. thought i’d post my responses.

***

1. How did you start going to church?
had been going to church all of my life because my parents raised us in church.

2. At what age did you really feel you started to know God? If you remember a moment, please feel free to tell a story =)
mmm, it wasn’t until my junior year in high school that i actually started being interested enough in christianity to really sit down and read the bible every night or whatever. i don’t feel like i ever really knew god… i just had a gradual desire to find out more, i suppose, and i think junior year was the height of my taking action to GET to know god. don’t think i ever got there.

3. How involved were you with your church?
hmm, i guess fairly involved? partook in praise nights and church retreats and worship service and plays and all that jazz. i guess you can’t get too much more involved as a high schooler.

4. Were you closer with your church friends or your regular school friends?
church friends, but that’s mostly because my parents (or i should say, my mom) didn’t really like me hanging out with school friends. lol. it wasn’t until senior year in high school that i started making asian friends in high school that they were more okay with me hanging out with them. HA.

5. Did that community have a lot to do with how active you were in your church?
i’d say definitely. need a social life somehow. lol. and church was always just kind of a place to get together with friends to goof off.

6. Did you ever feel a struggle with who you were outside of the church (or inside of the church)?
good question. in some ways. for example, with the whole baptism thing… i was in the group of the last people “my age” to do it, and i would have not done it at all had it not been for that whole ‘peer pressure’ and ‘looking bad’ type of thing. i never felt like i was in a comfortable enough point to get baptized, but i still did it. when i was a senior in high school i started seriously questioning christianity for the first REAL time. and at that point, every time i went to church, i would struggle with the thought of even being there because i simply did not think it was right… i would sit in the sermon every week and all i could seriously think about was how to refute what the pastor was saying because it was illogical. it was seriously torturous.

7. How did you deal with it?
i did get more and more bitter about christianity during that point… i did a LOT of negative writing about christianity and christians at the time… i wrote about what i thought was hypocritical, why i thought it was not the religion for me anymore, etc. again, before whereas i totally goofed off and half listened to sermons anyway, now i listened, but with the full intent of pointing out to myself why they were wrong. it was like something i could not force myself to stop doing… i had just opened my eyes all of a sudden… which was frustrating and enlightening at the same time.

8. Tell me about a time in your life when you felt your belief in God was at it purest. When you had no questions.
i don’t think i ever had no questions… but i guess junior year of high school would be the year when i most believed in it and most sought it out. i can’t really recall details now, sorry. but i do know that my belief in god was largely selfish. it was along the lines of… i would do things like “daily bread” (daily devotional) but
those are all for myself and for my own peace of mind. those are not for god.

9. What do you think about those “Jesus is my Homeboy” t-shirts?
er, i wouldn’t wear them but i can see the appeal. i don’t find them offensive. because jesus IS a homeboy if you believe in him, i reckon.

10. Ever own one?
neg.

11. Now that you’re older and more mature in your relationship with God (for better or worse) - how do you look back on these times?
well in retrospect i think that i never really believed and a lot of it was forced or a part of my own delusion or own desire to find meaning somehow. like i mentioned, i certainly never believed enough to feel comfortable with baptism, and i never really felt all that comfortable taking communion after baptism. it was just all a bunch of hoobah you’re supposed to do and i did it because it was supposed to do it. i do think this fling with christianity was a positive experience in SOME ways. i now know that i will never be christian, yet i know enough about the bible to have intelligent discussion with people about christianity (and know more than some current christians know about the religion). i do like that because of growing up christian i am now so SURE that i am against organized religion (and don’t really care about religion in general) that i don’t question the “meaning of life” anymore. the struggle is pretty foreign to me these days. somehow, funnily enough, finding out that i do not believe in a religion at all helped solidify the outlook that life is what you make of it and whether there’s a meaning or not after death, we’ll never know for sure. so i don’t give a fuck about religion in my own life anymore… i can now go to other churches (and i do) just to study how people conduct religion and not have a fleeting thought about believing in the shit. had i not grown up in church, it’s likely i would still be struggling with this desire for finding meaning.

12. When you see younger Christian kids that are clearly in that period of their lives what do you think? (Think Mandy Moore in “Saved!” and “Jesus Camp”)
i think that they are young and impressionable and generally don’t know themselves yet. i don’t take them seriously or their opinions seriously (particularly like the 12 year old anti-abortion christian kids and shit like that, god). nor do i blame them… but if i have the chance to seriously question their beliefs, i will do it… the problem with kids that age is that people DON’T question enough, because if you do question, people look down on you. i remember questioning a pastor at my church before and he really got quite flustered and frustrated about it and never really answered very well. it’s important to open up dialogue with impressionable christian kids because most likely, no one else will. not that i’m saying to shoot down their entire belief system or anything, but there are some logical questions that they should think about, and there are some things about similarities christianity has with other religions that they should learn before making an educated decision about their own religious beliefs. lol.

what i know and love about you is all going away… to be replaced by belltown swanky type bullshit. for the lose. :[ it is all very depressing. who is even moving into these swanky ass condos at this time of shitty economy? i can’t even begin to understand this shit.