inside the wonderful world of vee

so i went into some nameless staffing firm today to register or whatever. i was about a half hour late because there was an accident on i5 and it’s damn near impossible to park downtown.  i left my portfolio in my car because i was in a rush (because i was late) and had to go back to get it. after i got it, i sat down with the recruiter dude and he basically looked through it and told me i sucked bawlz. but in a nicer way. he basically said i would never get a good job in design doing this and that i don’t understand design… and that my print design really REALLY sucks and my web design is fairly strong but still needs some work. and that i’m self-taught and it shows, and that my work with typography is weak. and that my pieces were all over the place and that i need to stick to one branded style (a notion which i find a little ridiculous). his accredidations, he said, was that he studied art in college.

i don’t know if that *really* gives him any credit but unfortunately, i tend to agree with him. my art skills are nowhere near where i’d like them to be. i *do* feel like the fact that i’m self-taught shows to a degree… i constantly find myself limited with my lack of knowledge. all of my best pieces i did when i was in art school or in art class. on my own, i have no desire really and don’t really get things done like i should. this past year at trendi yielded absolutely nothing for me in terms of things i can use moving forward, asides from a nice title of creative director.

so what does this get me? i’m not quite sure.

i’m listening to… thievery corporation - expo in tokyo, 2pac - ambitionz az a ridah.
so, y’all know i’m out of a job. why not have some fun in the meantime!?!!

our house has been getting some doorhangers and fridge magnets of different people advertising their services. i thought i’d try my hand at the matter. here’s what i made today for it:

i am literally going to go around the neighborhood and stick this on people’s doors. i’m still trying to figure out the best way of doing it, but it seems like it’ll be pretty fun ^_^ i’m very much interested in seeing whether or not this will yield anything.

text is kinda hard to read, so:

“Housing contractors and home fixer-uppers are always putting doorhangers, postcards, and other paper scraps on my doorstep, in the name of advertising themselves. Why are they the only ones who do that? Does it even work?!! I am a great fan of social experimentation (I was a Sociology major), so I decided to try for myself. It was between either this and standing on a street corner with a sign that says, “WILL DESIGN FOR FOOD.” (Don’t worry - if this works out, the sign comes next.)

What I’m offering is design services for just about anything - print and web. For the past year, I’ve been working as the Creative Director for a start-up, but we ran out of funding and I got laid off. I’ve done print design for two publications and hand-coded/designed dozens and dozens of websites. And what’s more is that I’m a fellow Seattlite, and I live in your neighborhood (on 61st). Yay?

If you’re thinking of hiring a designer for some work, I’d appreciate your consideration!

For samples of my work, go to: http://www.redefinemag.com/portfolio.pdf
Or view my resume at: http://www.redefinemag.com/resume.pdf“

in the interests of trying [?] to make a portfolio so that i can apply for a job for ride @ k2, i decided to try and make some shit for today. hopefully i’ll be able to make a thing a day or something. might as well…

had the outline of a doodle sitting around, with nothing much to do with it. this is certainly nothing special… just a manipulation of different textures… good to get the brain working in that direction again, though.

every time i’m down i find that i contemplate life so much more deeply. being comfortable never created much for anybody, i don’t think. the best art and the best writing comes out of tortured souls…….. why is that?

last week at sohaila’s art show, her new stuff was probably her best stuff that i have seen. it was fucking spectacular and very different from her previous things that i’ve seen. blew the other shit at that show right out of the water. and she’s going through a rough time too, and it’s as though channeling those negative energies always turns into something nicer. maybe in our self-loathing, we find more time for extracurricular activities?!!!

i haven’t turned much to art of any sort for a while now. i’ve found it to be rather frustrating since i’ve been out of school for it, to try and find time for making it. even in the simplest of daily ways, it has been hard to find a second or two to slow down and chill out and just draw some useless shit. but i’m making time these days. partially inspired by talking to so many artists recently and partially inspired by the fact that i have a blank sketchbook sitting around and partially inspired by the fact that these days i just need to focus my mind elsewhere.

and i will keep it all. even if it’s ugly or not fully realized, i’d might as well keep it, cause why not. it might be embarrassing later, but it’s always good to have an idea of where you came from. i find that when i read my old journal entries from 2001 or whatever, they are so embarrassing i can barely stand to read them. but then… without having had an idea of where i really was at that time, i’d never be able to understand how much i’ve changed and how far i’ve come. in my mind’s eye, outside of writing, i’ve probably been about the same person, although with shifted interests. in actuality, i am a fuckload happier now. like… seriously, a fuckload. and that’s a lot reading the old stuff makes me think, ’shit! i was depressed 24/7 or some shit. how did people put up with me?!!!!!!!!!!!’

funny, though, cause old, depressing times are when i wrote the best poetry and prose. i can’t really write a lick that’s worth anything now, unless i’m in one of those self-loathing states of mind. D:

but anyway.

for now, the goal is to change the mold and desire to create, create, create, even in the face of being tolerant of life. wish me luck.

today being the first truly nice day in a while (at least, during which i am not working), i’m spending a large portion of my day sitting outside on my front porch… if you can even call it a porch. it’s really more just like three stairs and a little creepy enclave. the house has burnt wood siding painted poop brown. lul.

i have some pictures from going to blvd gallery, roq la rue, and suite 100 gallery last night, but i think i will hold off on posting them til maybe tomorrow. or later. or maybe when i get a redefine art blog up.

also went midnight bowling last night. initially it was kind of fun… the first game, that is… i won with a 116, woot. but all subsequent games turned crappier and crappier, as i got more and more bored. the third was truly atrocious, though, because they had turned on the neon lights at that time and it rendered me somehow completely unable to bowl anymore. i couldn’t really see what i was doing. i dunno. it was weird because i never really thought visual cues on the ground made any kind of difference on my bowling, but evidently they made a huge difference. third game was a whopping 51 pointer. haha. last place. ftw.

at least the combination of blacklights and somewhat decent music videos (btw, i don’t care what anyone says but i freaking love THE VINES — the band) helped me to go bed last night. it was my first good night’s sleep in like……………… a week plus. and by good, i mean, i didn’t actually wake up a million times during the night. it was fooking fantastic.

that being said my soul is still in a state of self-torture. rarrr. relationship things for starters, but there is more.

lately i have been going to a lot more art shows than normal and conversing with a large amount of artists, and it just makes me want to better myself as an artist. like, really badly. it’s really hard, though, between balancing a magazine and working full-time. i mean those two things together are enough to crush the time but……………… blarhg.

allergies don’t help either ^_^

i’m determined to go this year. anyone want to go?

this morning i woke up with this idea in mind to make these large 3d art fixture type things with plastic sheet type stuff, string, and maybe wire later on. i would like to try it out… maybe small-scale first to see how it goes. i think i need a dremel or something, though. brawr. but i should like to give this stuff a whirl.

off to sxsw tomorrow at 6am. going to go to hojo’s tonight at like 11 and then wake up tomorrow at like 4:30 in the morning? death, i say. death. i’m a bit intimidated and scared of what this weekend will bring, but we shall have to see…

jenny brought in five boxes of girl scout cookies late last week. it’s pretty fucking evil. but evil delicious. T__T i was saying to jenny that what someone needs to do is make copies of the cookies girl scouts sell basically, and sell them in supermarkets. hua hua hua hua hua hua hua hua. tagalongs ftw. and this year i’ve eaten samoas for the first time and i guess they are pretty good too. mostly the texture is the best part, though. heee.

oh shit i need to blog about the murder mystery festival i went to in langley. i’d better fucking get on that shit. even though that was two weekends ago. bah. i guess i shall be doing that later tonight.

okay — here’s my so-cal journal entry, finally.

friday, july 27th
get to so-cal after work. got two hours of sleep before due to magazine design. w00! go crazy!!! jeanette and lindsay pick me up from the airport. great fun, great fun. we head on over to the omni hotel in san diego… jeanette’s friend kayla works for warner brothers and as a result, had a space there and all that jazz. free housing?! how can we resist?! so we get ready to go out.

“300″ party. yeah yeah. by the time we got there it was kinda late and no one was really around anymore… there was some dope ass food, though. if you’re wondering what it was for, it was for the “300″ dvd release. evidently clive owen (the main dude in “sin city”, during the prositute town section) and jessica alba were there, and clive owen was in the elevator with kayla at some point, talking to her. nyes. anyway, did i mention the food was good? yeah, it was quite good. that’s all we did really, so let me mention it again. the food was good.

apparently, like, people in LA like to pose on red carpets after they’re used.

me trying to hide from a picture and failing. this was at some rooftop bar. uh yeah. i just have to say — so-cal people, at least in this area? not my style. prior to the bar, though, it was even worse. we met up with their very friendly, quite possibly gay friend who was really excited to talk to me about seattle because he had just come up for ultimate frisbee or something… i liked him, though. very friendly. but yeah, before the bar we went to a club — a hip-hop / top 40s type club, and i’m not very comfortable in clubs unless they’re playing electronic music, so needless to say, i was uncomfortable.

that night we went home, and kayla had drunk quite a bit, i guess, and she was yakmaster flex. there was a lot of being woken up via her yakking in the toilet.

saturday, july 28th
got up in the morning time and went to comic con! holla! jeanette borrowed kayla’s pass and came with me for like, two hours. and evidently that was about all she could handle. i got a press pass… or else i wouldn’t have been there.

ugly dolls!!!!! they were sooooo nice feeling. man, i want a costume like that. i kept trying to run after them to take a photo with them. FAILURE. they couldn’t see except out of the little hole in the front of their body, so they didn’t know if anyone was in front of them or behind them. they kept crushing me later on because they were walking sideways and didn’t know i was in front of them… haha. but anyway, i was chasing after them and hugging them from behind for a while. it was great. love me an uglydoll!!!

did you know grimace used to have 4 arms? i didn’t!

can’t have a nerd convention without jabba.

can’t have a nerd convention without batman in lego form.

can’t have a nerd convention without an ass shot of spidey.

played a bunch of puzzlefigther here, but unfortunately, only terrible people kept challenging me. like, they would play me 5x and lose every time. and you’re supposed to leave after losing one round, BUT THEY WOULDN’T. one guy had literally never played before and still made me play with him 5x. it was pain. i also missed mega man dressed up, which sucked, even though i was there the same time mega man was :( :( did get to talk to some artists, though, and i’ll need to email some of them to follow up!! hmm, also bought a bunch of shit… let’s see… what else, that’s about it, i guess. jennifer [yee] was working at the wizkids! booth and i hung out with her for a little bit but she seemed quite very busy.

lunch/dinner at fred’s mexican cafe. it was decently good, even though they put coleslaw in their tacos. i have to admit i kind of liked it, though.

so kayla got sunburned really bad, because they were at the pool while i was finishing up at comic con. anyway, pool… that’s what people do in so-cal too!

this guy draws these pimp ass chalk drawings that don’t look 3d unless you look at them from a certain angle. famous guy. if you don’t know him already, you kind of suck.

jeanette wanted to go to the mall to buy some present for her friend’s birthday. we didn’t find a present, but my shoes were killing me, so i bought a pair of flip-flops. ugh, waste of money. but necessary at the time. i was literally dying. anyway, we had this really funny transaction with the guy at the counter. i was getting flip-flops and he started talking to jeanette, asking if we’d gone to comic con. she said i did, ran a magazine. blahblah, so i handed him a business card as i was being rung out. and i gave him my credit card too, but it took him a while to ring it up because we were all distracted. and then i noticed this freaking belt buckle that looked like a wad of bills (see below).

blang blang belt buckle. anyway, we got sidetracked taking pics of that belt buckle, so like, i nearly forgot to get back my credit card from the dude at the register. lol, as i was outside, changing shoes to my new flip-flops, i noticed i never got a receipt. i went in to get it, and he gave it to me. luckily no one had gone after me!!! anyway, two seconds later, he came out and realized that i hadn’t even signed the merchant copy. oops! worst credit card transaction ever!!!

on the way back, i saw this homeless guy. his sign intruiged me, so i asked him about it. he rambled a bunch of shit i honestly did not understand. essentially it went something like, the government screwed him a bunch of times — he had three houses and liquidated them but the government never gave him the money for them… and that he had to go to china and then couldn’t come back so he had to apply for refugee status. and then he said he learned some shit about being a pilot and knew how to hack into government things and he tried to use that to blackmail the government but it didn’t work. i don’t understand. and did not wholly believe at first (even though he talked very coherently and seemed like he knew what he was talking about… that was the only reason i had doubts — he was very well-spoken), but then he pulled out this note from china, which was all wrinkled and inside his passport… which basically said, yeah, he really had applied for refugee status in china. everything else i’m honestly not sure about because he used massive tech talk mumbo jumbo, but yeah.

the scene outside of comic con.

gasLAMP district. i kept thinking it was gastown like vancouver or gasworks or something. whatever the hell. this is the area our hotel / comic con / the bars we went to were.

bondi bar. well, i’m not a fan of expensive shit ($10 for 4 fucking tempura shrimp. they were good, and all, but what the fuck man?) — but this place LOOKED cool, at the very least.

well, we were pretty freaking amazed by kayla’s ability to hold a camera and take a picture of her touching her sunburn immediately right after it. really, that’s some coordination!

oh yeah, so some guy came over and wanted to recruit us to join their table because his friend (but not really his friend, as he had known the guy for only three hours… not to mention he was talking a lot of shit about the dude) had just flown in from nyc, and was single, and didn’t think that southern california girls were good because they were all superficial and stuff etc. anyway, this guy was really funny. eventually he brought over his friend (and he left), who i thought was interesting in a completely platonic way… and yeah, but lindsay and kayla thought he was annoying and had attitude i guess. which is weird cause he seemed perfectly normal to me… ALTHOUGH HE WOULDN’T DRAW IN MY BOOK. so that was kind of lame.

princess leia drawing in my book.

sunday, july 29th

so, this is some fucked up mexican food if i’ve ever seen it. it’s french fries, avocado, salsa, chicken (really good chicken), and cheese. FRENCH FRIES? californians are so weird, man. a “california burrito” is a burrito with french fries in it. the heck? anyway, it was kinda good at first but then got to be too much. eh, and it’s not mexican enough for my tastes, homie. i’m hella mexican, check the spanish text in my blog, yo.

the restaurant. roberto’s!

entrance to wild animal park!

merekats. however you spell that…

cool looking roach. this is a little smaller than life-size. as long as it doesn’t touch me, it’s cool. rainforest animal.

gorilla catching food. man, gorillas and monkeys are so cool. i honestly feel quite bad watching them in captivity because they’re so much like people…

hair shot of jeanette, i don’t know, i like it.

for those of you unfamiliar with the san diego wild animal park (actually, it’s in escondido, california) — it has this pre-built habitat for animals and they don’t pay much attention to them and kind of let them roam around on their own. tickets were $30. which allows you to ride this tram thing around the perimeter of this “habitat” they’ve built. now, for another $30 you can ride these busses which get you right up next to the animals — practically touching them — but yeah, that was too much money. but cool idea.

jeanette and i?!

white rhinos — two of twelve (at most) left in the world. pretty crazy to know that there are only that few left in the world and you are looking at them… they are going extinct due to poaching.

the ultimate in meow mix.

i can’t resist taking picture of this kind of crap. it’s just so pretty.

the best trees ever, i think. i think it’s a painted eucalyptus. cause if it is… best tree ever.

i wanted to climb that tree but it was covered with spider webs :/

anyway, after going to the wild animal park, jeanette and i went to irvine (LAMENESS) and met up with claire, jeremy, and phil [wu] for dinner. we went to an izakaya restaurant. it was actually pretty good although the salmon onigiri i got had like, barely any salmon. that kind of sucked.

afterwards, jeanette went back to la and we went out to newport beach for some bar-time. it was a sunday night so lots of things were closed, unfortunately.

jeremy and fil bought me shots of grey goose and petron. grey goose was decent. this is what the petron tasted like. this was at… i forget the name of the bar and i’m too lazy to look it up right now.

this was at the “barn bar” — there was sawdust on the ground, so it smelled like a barn. vibe was cooler, though.

this guy kissed me like, five times that night. slightly disturbing, but mostly funny. i kept saying, “no, no me gusta!” and he would be like, “okay, okay, no me gusta,” and he’d leave for 2 seconds and then come back right away. -__-

here are some videos of me being harassed by old mexican dude! his name is ambrosio!!! he said his friend was a wrong “canciones de mexicano” — he literally spoke to me in all spanish, i’m kind of proud of myself that i understood… 90% of it. anyway, videos courtesy of jeremy’s AMAZING cellphone that freaking takes videos as well as my camera, wtf!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUAO_3MB7n8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_24_ClViI

group pic. woo. at fil and jeremy’s.

passed out at claire’s place later that night… they had these two really fat ass cats.

monday, july 30th
the next morning, woke up and went to eat at some sushi restaurant with my cs clan!! actually, though, there was no sushi-eating for the sushi restaurant was packed. we went to some chain called bj’s instead, and split 3 pizzas. the artichoke and spinach pizza was the best, although kinda salty, but still… everyone was freaking out about it being gross (before we ordered), but i thought it was good! after we ordered they didn’t think it was AS gross. let’s see… who was there… it was me, claire, joe [tran], mike [tran], aaron, tim, eddie, jason, and yuki [sawa]. werd.

we split this giant cookie thing with ice cream on it. ugh, made me not feel so good. richest chocolate cookie i’ve ever had. and i like rich.

teh group.

afterwards claire and i went to the tar pits… they were lame, asides from this little patch in the ground that you could play with.

the actual tar pits. i wish they weren’t fenced off, but they needed to be. there was this one tiny section, the size of a well or so, that they didn’t fence off on purpose. people threw a ton of trash in there. lack of respect, i tell you.

so afterwards, we went to the lacma (los angeles museum of contemporary art). this was the shit that was the major feature. granted, half of the museum was closed due to renovation, but this was some weak shit. this is actually one of the cooler pieces. i didn’t get one of the better ones because my camera couldn’t take it for some reason. but yeah. i don’t get it…

this is like the freaking hugest elevator ever. the size of my living room, literally. i wish this pic did it justice but it doesn’t.

these are images from the japanese art wing. the art wasn’t great, but the building was.

so these little trinkets used to go on bags, kinda like a drawstring, for people when they were wearing kimonos, since kimonos don’t have pockets. there were a lot — i should have taken more photos — but there were ones of animals and stuff. the one i took are primarily of people… not sure why… the last one is one claire liked. it’s actually a frog with its tadpole, although they kind of look like people.

after that, claire drove me to the airport, and jeanette got mad at me because i was trying to follow mapquest directions and not her directions. she was quite offended. lol. claire’s driving was quite very terrifying. i feared for my life, i definitely did. but i got back safely. hoorah.

—

at comic-con i decided to keep sketches. here is my sketchbook from comic con.

listening to — “soul train” on tv hahahah.

1:35 am — let me tell you, dudes and dudettes… there is nothing like old school “soul train”. the shit fucking rocks your pants off. reminds me of the times when i used to go to sleep listening to javier the xman on wild 94.9 haha. man, he was awesome. but then he left. to go to los angeles because of some internal crap. and i was sad. i even wrote him an e-mail saying, “sorry to see you go, your show is the best, blahblahblah”… it was a show that played nothing but slow jamz and my gawt it was awesome. so i stopped listening to 94.9 as much, and eventually javier came back, so i should start listening to it again

but now the doghouse has left as well… so old 94.9 just isn’t so good anymore

so yeah i haven’t made much tangible art stuff lately, but yesterday i went to the downtown seattle art walk (first thursday of every month, all the galleries are open for perusal), and it was umm, inspiring? in a way? i guess? this has always been my theory — that artists just need to be confident in themselves. lots of artists do things that i could do, but i would never think of pawning it off as art, would never think it is good enough for people to own or to love. and i guess that’s the major difference — that those people really believe in their own work. so i’m thinking… i could probably do that. i really wish i had gone to art school, but it’s a little too late for that now (is it?)

instead, i’ve been trying to reclaim whatever minimal art skill i have (at least in the fine arts) and trying to make physical manifestations of things. we’ll see how that goes. i actually drew something today that i like, but i kind of screwed it up when i was trying to overlay it with paper (hard to explain). but now i guess i will just transfer it and make it smaller and paint it…? lenny bought a pack of 3 canvasses — one for me, one for him, and one for andy [crossett], so that we can each paint a painting for our apartment. we’ll see when that happens.

saw death cab for cutie tonight @ key arena. it really wasn’t that exciting, to be honest. they’re not very good live. i think i will be forever satisfied with having seen them once. the decemberists, on the other hand, were about 10,000 times better. i’m pretty sure guns n’ roses, who i’m seeing tomorrow, will also be a ton better. also playing with death cab tonight was jenny lewis & the watson twins (the watson twins were sOoOo lame) and ted leo and the pharmacists, but unfortunately i missed them. sadddddfaceeee.

saw mel gibson’s movie, “apocalypto”, yesterday. it was entertaining. i wouldn’t say good, and his action fighting sequences were fucking terrible as hell (terrible camerawork), but the movie itself was entertaining because it was… funny. people say it’s gory, but the way people died was just funny — kind of like how people died in “a history of violence” — bad in real life, funny in the movies. perhaps that is a terrible thing. but unfortunately, i still find it funny.

couple days ago i put together a 1 hour showcase for some people from new york who were “trend finders”, and they had this lady named susan, who was convinced that seattle was a new hotspot. so i had to find two bands for her, and have them each play a half hour or so, and then do a q&a afterwards. it went well. had john [gillanders]’ band play and this other guy’s band, who i got off craig’s list. they’re called the GIANT KILLER ROBOTS! the guy helped me find a venue too, which was very nice. $250 pay for it. wewt.

i remember random strangers used to always find my journal through search engines. wonder if they still do.

i’m listening to… brand new, alison krauss, martina mcbride.

i’m sitting in my room listening to country music and wallowing! it’s what i do best. there’s a comfort in not being comfortable. i can see how people can fall into depression in a way… although i don’t see how they can stand to allow themselves go through more than one day of this hell. it’s the longest day ever.

i haven’t written in this thing in more than a month. things have happened, but i’ve mostly kept it to myself in my own journal. everything is new. moved into a new apartment with farm, arlen, andy [crossett], andy [miscellaneous last name i do not know], and alex. got a contract job at engine interactive for $25 an hour for a couple of weeks and got $2,000, but that’s over now.

so now i’m basically just lazying around, wondering why i’m still here.

i feel so worthless and so malleable. so reliant on the ebbs and flows of other people. this is not the way it should be.

negativity blows, and i’m sick of being a bag of bricks bringing down the world, but sometimes there’s just nothing else on your mind… you know? not everyone knows i’m sure, but i’ve always been this way, unfortunately. i wish i could be a healing force — something that brings positivity to everything. but instead i think i’m unworthy, and i don’t think i should be allowed to bring down everyone. and i’m sorry.

i just watched “the hours” because a review on imdb said that it was “hopeful”… and i needed some hope. unfortunately, it wasn’t hopeful. it was about suicide mostly, and it could have had a hopeful resolution i guess - but the whole movie isn’t happy - and i wasn’t thinking that it would be… but it wasn’t happy at all. there wasn’t an ounce of hope. not an ounce.

everyone else has school and or work. i’m only working part-time and very little right now. it’s fucking boring. i’ve no motivation to do anything - although i have been doing redefine stuff… but that’s really about all, and it’s taking a lot longer than i’d intended simply because i can’t buckle down and do it enough. it’s so lonely here. i haven’t done a thing today cause i’ve no motivation. i’ve tried creating something - but all of my ideas are just recycled trash. i can’t even impress myself. there’s nothing original in my mind anymore. it’s creative stagnation. it’s garbage. these are the same old words written by someone else somewhere, sometime. it’s even worse with any kind of art. at least with writing i can appease myself. with art, i can’t even do that. graphic designer? i’m ready to scoff at myself. maybe there’s a reason i can’t find a job and shit.

being emotional sucks. i’ve always been kind of emotional, but not to the point of crying and breaking down sense. but i’ve been doing that relatively a lot. the other day i spent like an hour crying uncontrollably and the worst part is i don’t even know why i was.

when i think about it, i’m actually kind of considering going back to california (oh yeah, i did that last week too). i was opposed to the idea before, but i’m thinking now that i don’t have much left for me here. i don’t know, maybe i do, but it doesn’t feel like it. it’s so weak to want to go somewhere else to get rid of all the feelings, just because you don’t want to try anymore… but i dunno. i’ve no one to blame anything on except for myself. everything is the product of my pessimistic mind.

i’m racking my mind for things that are left for me here and not much comes up. i can probably only even count a handful of ‘friends,’ most of which are my current roommates, which kind of nullifies everything since that doesn’t equal going out or socializing more than television watching or shopping.

yeah, i should be looking for inspiration, but there’s nothing much left to inspire me. i’ve been trying. i’ve been reading a lot because that seems to be the most productive thing to do when you want to do nothing. i’ve been reading about politics… novels… whatever… and i’ve been doing a lot of writing because that’s the only thing that keeps me sane (esp thanks to my new typewriter!) — but asides from all that, there’s nothing new and refreshing, and nothing uplifting comes out of writing anyway.

i tried reading an adobe indesign book today and i found that i just don’t really care about getting better. it’d be nice to just fall off somewhere and forget about it all — to just live in the wilderness or something and HOPE that there’s something greater out there for even the worst of us, and that things really do work out for the best. but that’s why people believe in religion, right? and unfortunately, i don’t believe in religion. i think for this time in my life i am relying too much on having someone else save me. and herein is where the problem lies. i’ve always been self-subservient and haven’t looked to people for help too often, but i’m beginning to find the flaw of not being able to buckle and bend, and not knowing what it’s like to rely on someone for anything. people always let you down, it’s true - and i guess living an entire life knowing how much you can give and take instead of suddenly realizing it would be a lot easier.

girls always think too much about other people’s intentions, and i think i do too much of that just because there’s so much free time to allow that kind of thinking. i don’t want to be a drag, but i just want to feel wanted.

if it makes you less sad,
i will die by your hand.
i hope you wfind out what you want;
i already know what i am.
i’ll grow old –
start acting my age.
it’ll be a brand new day
in a life that you hate…
a crown of gold,
a heart that’s harder than stone.
and it hurts a whole lot,
but it’s missed when it’s gone.
call me a safe bet;
i’m betting i’m not.
glad that you can forgive –
only hoping that as time goes,
you can forget.
if it makes you less sad,
i’ll move out of the states.
you can keep to yourself…
i’ll keep out of your way.
and if it makes you less sad,
i’ll take your pictures all down.
every picture you paint;
i will paint myself out.
it’s cold as a tomb,
and it’s dark in your room
when i sneak to your bed
and pour salt on your wounds…
so call it quits,
or get a grip;
you said you wanted a solution…
you just wanted to be missed.
call me a safe bet;
i’m betting i’m not.
glad that you can forgive;
only hoping that as time goes,
you can forget.
you are the smell before rain…
you are the blood in my veins.
BRAND NEW - THE BOY WHO BLOCKED HIS OWN SHOT.

i’m listening to… daphne loves derby’s new album, the strength of all convinced. i’ve listened to this album probably about 80,000 times. also, ruiner by a wilhelm scream (whatevers).
july 1st, day one, milan
ghetto. chinese tour groups are ghetto. they will try to rip you off however they can. but more about that later.

i am currently @ holiday inn, where there is wireless connection but i cannot figure out how to connect to it. most most tragic. :[

so it goes like this… 40,000 hours of plane ride. watched “million dollar baby” which was an alright movie at best. no idea why it won so many awards at all.

finally got here. got picked up to go to milan. blahblah. ate gelato, which all seem to be owned by asian people and don’t taste as good as one would imagine. saw the duomo cathedral, which is one of the largest - got partially destroyed during world war ii, blahblah. lots of trendy ass people in milan (fashion capital of italy, pretty much)… seems like the social class discrepancies between the rich and the old are really huge. me and sherry are wanting to have a contest to see who can gain the most weight. then we both went to eat another gelato. the second one i got was a banana one, and i had forgotten - banana gelatos are freaking gross. they’re calling gelati here… wonder why they’re called gelato in the u.s.

also this freaking chinese lady… she’s not in our tour group - she was just in the huge square outside of the cathedral… BLEH!!! horrible… she had a son and a daughter. the son kept capturing pigeons, and she kept grabbing them for him and putting it in his hands in a “certain way” as if it looked right… it looked like the pigeon’s wings were going to snap off. at some point, she put the pigeon in a plastic bag. i thought she was going to take it home and eat it or something, my god. turns out she poked a hole in the bag and put the plastic bag with the pigeon in it to her son. and her son dropped it. and it was just flopping around in a plastic bag. the woman reached for it and then thought, nevermind, and just left it there flopping around there on the ground. there were seriously so many people looking at her. finally an old dude went to tell her to let it go and she did, smiling and shit, thinking she was cool.

onwards… chinese tour groups suck. they don’t include tickets into the tour. they were supposed to book us in rooms of two but instead put us in a “three bedroom” room, which in fact is… two beds and one cot, which i assume will be mine.

also - we’re in italy. we’re only eating non-chinese food for two nights. the hypothesis? they get something for bringing all of these stupid tour groups. tonight we went to this nasty ass chinese place. seriously, the only people who were there were us and another tour group that came later (that had the same meal as us). that restaurant seriously only made like 6 dishes or something. we had three cabbage dishes. GRANTED they were three different KINDS of cabbage, but still. what the hell.
july 2nd, day two, verona & venice
juliette’s balcony is lame. verona is kind of cool looking, but beyond that, there’s nothing more but the myth of shakespeare’s play being held place there. and a couple streets that looked like cs_italy, but we later found that to be true (if not more true) in siena as well.

venice is cool, though. st. mark’s basillica doesn’t necessarily even have st. mark’s bones (just some dude’s)… and the italians made up some story about stealing it out of istanbul and covering it with pig meat so that the people would be digusted when they were checking through customs. no idea. umm lots of poeple, 2x the number of pigeons. expensive living. we saw a glass-blowing presenation (though i’ve seen one before in seattle, and this one was lame in comparison) - it was still cool though. found out how colors are put into glass… from infusing it with different metals. manganese makes the coolest purple color, copper = green, red = gold…

moving onwards… went on a gondola ride. it was like 30 euros a person for a 45 minute things. euro = more than the dollar, so it was quite a bit. my mom thought the gondola man was good-looking because he looked like jack nicholson. WTF. didn’t stay for long… went back and went to dinner. the food was definitely better, but still pretty bad.

afterwards, we went to our hotel all early and shit, and the kids (there are 10 of us, 11 if you count the girl di who came seperately with her family but hung out with us sometimes)… anyway, the 10 of us went out to dinner again, at this restaurant near our hotel. we got two tables, and the five people at the other table shared a pizza. the waitress got pissed. at our table, it was me, sherry, andy, nancy, and fontaine. we played some game where everyone has ten fingers up, and then we go around and peoplesay, “i’ve never ____” and if you have done the thing, then you put your fingers down. me and sherry were teh losers. :[ for the whole meal i got eaten by mosquitos, and my hand got all inflamed and itchy an shit. because it always does.
july 3rd, day three, pisa & florence
drove to pisa. pretty. lame. didn’t do anything, and it was hot. we just ate, but at least there was a cute waiter. me and sherry’s parents thought he was ugly, though, but my mom has no credibility since she thinks jack nicholson is good-looking. the parents made me put on like 10 kinds of medicine (okay, literally 5) - so a couple of them turned all rashy and shit. on the way back to our bus we took this bus, and sherry’s mom met this kid from south africa. they came with their school on a whole freakin trip of europe. LUCKY. left pisa. drove to florence.

saw the cathedral of santa maria del fiore, maria of the flower or whatever. the dome was painted by brunelleschi, and while it was inspired by “the last judgment” by michaelangelo in the sistine chapel, i’d have to say that brunelleschi’s was cooler, symbolically and just visually. anyway, the santa maria del fiore was a nice gothic-styled church… blahblah most people think that goth means like devil-worshippers and death and shit, but in-fact real goths are actually christians who made these immense, huge-ass churches that were only lit by outside lighting through stained glass windows, and their attribution to the darkness was actually because their churches were so dark. *NOW YOU KNOW. anyway.

bought a neato bracelet for 5 euros. there’s a long corridor in front of an art museum in florence, and it has sculptures of all these different artists, philosophers, architects, etc… like galileo, giotto, many others. it was pretty rad, even though i didn’t know most of them. also saw dante’s “girlfriend’s” family church (although from what i learned in class, she wasn’t actually his girlfriend, and the two barely even knew each other - he was just in love with her anyway). that was boring. walked through this corridor “rapidly” because apparently people were shooting other people with straws and toothpicks hahhaha. but we missed them.

then we went to a leather factory for literally 45 minutes. tours always make you go to little places where they can profit… so that they can make money off of comission and shit. that was boring. real boring. and they FEIGNED a demonstration. they just rolled some gold leaf on a leather trashcan instead of really giving us a leather demonstration… it was freakin lame as hell. they just wanted our moneh! anyways. afterwards, we went to eat at this ghetto chinese hole in the wall… but it was better food, for sure. stayed at the worst hotel ever at the night. had to sleep on this pull-out bed that was all freakin lumpy and shit, so instead i slept on the floor. woke up halfway through the night, though, cause the floor was too hard and it was owning my back, so then i had to go to sleep on the pillows… and my back hurt for the rest of the trip since that night ugh. in the morning, the hotel refused to give people seconds of eggs. italian people are freakin nazis. but more about that later.
july 4th, day four, siena & rome
in the morning, there was briefly free internet, so i got to check deviantart for ville’s number. was supposed to meet up with him in italy because he happened to be there @ the same exact time (he’s from norway). but i had no way of calling internationally, so that pretty much just sucked. turns out he wasn’t in siena that day anyway, because he ran out of money to leave florence. whatever.

siena was interesting. lots of brick buildings with an outer wall surrounding the city that is built on a hill (siena was originally a different country from italy… but it got conquered. owned, biatch… would have liked to see how they got conquered, though, considering the ownage location). found a spot on the outer wall where you could climb up… would have climbed up more but it’s just um scary. narrow ass streets. didn’t really do much, though. once again, we just ate a meal, which was the best one we had in all of italy. yummy ummy yumm T__T then we left and went to rome. four hour drive of doom. for two of the hours, me, sherry, and bonnie were brainstorming up a castle. this was all sparked by my desire to be married in a castle. many people helped. the picture will be scannd later, but basically, our castle had vin diesel as the shrek of a swamp outside of our castle, rocket man who helped carry people over the castle walls (the dragon who lived in our castle also helped carry people over), bow man and arrow man (who were in the watchtower), noah’s ark (in the moat), and um… you’d have to see it.

rome was pretty freakin rad. at night we went up to a lookout point the hotel told us to visit. we felt like “real” italians because it’s a hangout for italians… minus the fact that our parents came oo, and the result was that we were travelling in huge packs of chinese fob tourists. i suppose. got a crappy cot for sleeping in at night sigh. my dad took the sleeping, though, cause he claimed it was comfortable huk T__T
july 5th, day five, rome
went to the vatican city. BORING. st. peter’s basillica is fucking ridiculous and mostly just pisses me off. the place is so freakin nuts. gold on the ceiling, huge sculptures, marble everything. made in 120 years. how creepy. you’d have to see it to belief how pompous and how ridiculous it all is. the “pieta” is there. who cares. the only cool thing about this place was the golden altar. it’s like a relief sculpture with these rays of sunlight or something coming out of it. looks really abstract and pretty rad. but the church is truly disgusting. i was so disgusted by it the whole time - just wanted to leave and talk shit about it, really. the catholic church only looks so nice because when they were losing power back in the day to other branches of christianity, they decided to commision all of these hardcore art pieces and awesome looking churches to “attract” people. OBVIOUSLY it worked, but how pretentious is this? on the floor of the church, in the CENTER of the church, it shows how “small” other churches are in comparison to that one. to make it worse, the vatican shop sold shot glasses and candles with the pope’s face on it. talk about ridiculous religious iconography.

afterwards, we went to the trivoli fountain which is SO FUCKING AWESOME. the most awesome fountain i’ve seen yet, that’s for sure. and we also went to the pantheon (which is seriously, absolutely whatevers… who the hell cares. it is probably the MOST boring place we went to on the whole trip). then we went to the vatican museum. this was OPTIONAL. it was either, go to the vatican museum and the sistine chapel, or go to SHOPPING. everyone went to the vatican museum, i’m pretty sure, because it OWNS THE FUCK OUT OF SHOPPING. vatican museum was the best part of the whole trip. lots of awesome little tapestries and paintings and crap, mostly of bible stories. or just stories in general. the raphael room wins all. each wall represented a different thing: theology, poetry, philosophy, and justice (random). very awesome. wish i could have spent a whole day in that museum actually, minus the hurting neck (because there were so many paintings on the ceiling and shit). there was also a constantine room which was cool too - each wall depicted a different portion of his life. there was also a modern art portion, which were like eight rooms, and SHERRY AND I WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE. we saw probably two people the whole time, and they just walked really briskly through. saw a lot of crap pieces and a couple of awesome ones. there was a painting by renaldo guttuso which was soooo awesome. i tried looking for it online and couldn’t find it, but his art is something like this:

lots of crap out of his good art too, but hey, whatever. there was this one piece that was like stained glass, but it had a backlight to it, and i dunno, i totally tripped out on it like i was hallucinating. it was so weird. there were a couple of other pieces that tripped me out too, but whatever. the sistine chapel took pretty much forever to walk to, but omg, it is freakin sweet. bought a book on all of the symbology, so i look forward to finishing reading it. too bad i forgot everything i learned from my two classes on italy / italian art.

we actually had italian food, though, for ONCE. we had an accordian / guitar / opera singer too, who had a CD with a place where they could sign their signatures. hah. weird. people actually bought it. WHY I DON’T KNOW. the pasta was gross, though. i could have made better pasta out of cream of mushroom soup, but the atmosphere was cool i guess. after dinner we walked to the coliseum. it was quite the walk. quite the walk indeed. met a guy named secundo who was missing a finger and keptspeaking just italian to us like we knew what he was talking about or something lol. but he was nice. there was also another dude who was like, “okay, walk to the end of this street, make a left, and then ask someone else.” auntie ruby asked a bunch of tourists for directions, lol, and they were just like hell if i know. climbed shit to take awesome photos of the coliseum (damn trees)… walked the ruins. saw an awesome guy who made fucking awesome art out of spraypaint. wish we could have stayed to watch it for longer, but no one seemed to care really. good shit. rome is humbling in a way. sure, the whole roman empire was a bunch of jackasses, but at least they were amazing jackasses.
july 6th, day 6, pompeii
saw the ruined city. pretty interesting, but they should definitely keep the plastered people… i guess people stole a bunch of shit from there, so they hide all of the cool stuff and put it into museums :[ what’s left there now is just the buildings, mostly. umm how they make plasters of the dead people is… the people get buried, and then the hardened lava makes a shell around their bodies, and then the interior decomposes, and you’re just left with the bones and a shall around the bodies… so then they inject plaster into the shell to make hard, movable people. quite the interest. ummm… yeah there’s nothing much to say other than that. +__+ at night we almost walked like 45 minutes to go eat gelato, but then decided to turn back and just ate ice cream at some place across the street from our hotel. [[NOTE APRIL 2008 — I’M NOT SURE WHY I WROTE SO LITTLE ABOUT POMPEII CONSIDERING IT WAS PROBABLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLACES ON THE TRIP T__T NOTABLE POINTS INCLUDE THAT THERE WAS A RED LIGHT DISTRICT THERE AND EVIDENCE OF STOREFRONTS WITH SLIDING GLASS DOORS]]
july 7th, day 7, capri, naples, & rome
my last day in italy. went to capri, which is like this island. on the way there we took this bumpy ass big boat and somehow i fell asleep, but most people felt pretty sick afterwards. then we took a boat on a tour around the island, and that was pretty rad. the sunlight / limestone combination makes the water this really pretty green color… and at some places the limestone turned into sheets of marble, and the light turned the water into this really green emerald type color. after that, we took a bus to the top of the mountain, and the streets are hugely narrow… they all have the most nuts driving skills. ate dinner at the top of the mountain with a view overlooking the water sorta. it was a whatevers meal, and my last italian meal of the trip :[ on the way down, it took probably about half the time, and most of the people on the bus were scared out of their minds lol. on the way back we stood outside because there weren’t any good seats on the boat, and just were there for 30 minutes with the seasalt and wind blinding our eyes and stuff. but somehow it was fun. afterwards we stopped briefly in naples (which was not intended, i don’t think) and had a bit of time to walk around - the only thing around was this castle nueva… but we coudn’t go in because it is now a museum :[ is naples named after napoleon? does anyone know? because the houses look like… french. and everything seems frenchish. we ate CHINESE FOOD for dinner. can you believe that. the last day of the tour in italy and they take you to eat chinese food?!!! at night people just came over to our place and we played cards, and that’s that!!!
july 8th, day 8, goodbye italy!
hello 24 hours of consecutive airport / airplane time!!! DEATH. lenny picked me up at the airport (HE ORIGINALLY THOUGHT IT WAS 10 AM AND WAS THE AIRPORT WAITING OFR LIKE THREE HOURS HAHAHA HUK) and we just sat around and stuff with liz, eva, and alex… and then josh kept calling me to tell me to go to dante’s (bar), so i went there to watch people drink and stuff, and it was alright. afterwards, lenny and i went over to cynthia / chol / jennie’s, and we watched part of “hitch” (which i had seen on the plane earlier that day, along with “robots inc.”) but we didn’t finish it cause josh and cyn fell asleep, and we just went home instead and um stuff.
SUMMATIONS OF THIS TRIP:
- ate a lof of watery scrambled eggs (because that’s how they make em).
- saw a lot of graffiti… italy has an INSANE amount of graffiti on old-school buildings. it’s seriously nuts - a lot of people didn’t like it, but i thought it was mostly rad, despite the fact that a lot of it was relatively shitty and a poor excuse for artwork. if you want to see some cool artowrk, check out http://www.brosart.com/. they tagged their address in a lot of places, and they had some awesome stuff. not the best out of all of it, but some really good stuff nonetheless.
- italy is a weird country - from city to city it looks completely different, and it might as well be a different country altogether. inbetween the cities is nothing but farmland and bits and pieces of ruined old castles and shit.
- lots of people with trendy ass clothing, especially in milan.
- my mom bought way too many “pi jian” which are like those giant scarves you drape over you. why, i don’t know. other moms too.
- learned how to play hearts. i SUCK.
- ate a ton of hazelnut spread (ie: nutella).
- ate a ton of gelato, but i was not impressed really. i found that a lot of places in america have better gelato / gelato flavors. >__<
- listened to like 3 CDs 80 times each. at least 12 times each, i’d say. the CDs were new albums by the myriad, facing new york, and daphne loves derby. i had a couple others too, but they weren’t really worth listening to more than once.
- saw very few hot guys… i was counting, and i probably saw only about three.
- mullet mohawks are all the rage. r0x.
- my dad told me my belt looked punk (WTF?!) and asked me if i was trying to be a punk. i said no, but i like their clothing. he said, they’re the ugliest. i said, i like it. when i came back to seattle, my mom was like, try not to be too punk, okay?