inside the wonderful world of vee

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO… “Exhale”, “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston, “Silly” by Denise Williams.

So I just got back from the Jason Mraz concert tonight, which was excellent since Jason Mraz is like the sexiest man alive. Even his last name is awesome!!! Lenny had bought us tickets for our three year anniversary back in August. We broke up in September? But he still let me go with him which was cool… it was a very enjoyable show…!!! He also covered “Build Me Up Buttercup” and “Mary Jane” — both were very awesome. Lots of crowd participation, unpredictability, and what seemed to be funny cute nearly stand-up stuff. The show got me all pumped up afterwards and I could not wait to go home and to write and to sing. So I cut my nails while singing with Alex sitting right next to me, playing videogames with HsuKen… they both had to put up with my singing. WAHAHA. Alex went to bed, though, so now is writing time!

Earlier today, I woke up in the morning, hung out with Micah for some, and then got ready to take the MAX to the Greyhound station. Everyone was telling me about how Greyhound was super shady, and while it’s not as nice as the Amtrak, it’s not that bad — at least not in the Portland to Seattle leg!!! There was a ride array of humans, including some dirty people and some younger people. I pretty much slept the entire time, although I woke up pretty much at 15 to 30 minute intervals. That was kinda annoying, but I slept mostly zombie-like.

At one point, the bus turned into a stop and everyone woke up and looked around as the bus driver barreled towards the end of the bus, thinking he was doing something important. He was just taking a piss, but he definitely commanded our attention. I found it quite amusing.

The primary reason for that was: the night before was my last night in town and there was an attempt to get ahold of some druggular substances but that fell through, so instead Jack, Micah, and I got drunk. They drank big bottles of wine and I drank a little pathetic bottle of Arbor Mist, which is like a wine cooler. Wine coolers and those kindsa fruit shit combined with alcohol do NOT do me well. I’ve consistently found this to be true yet I continue to consume them, primarily because they actually taste tolerable. Tolerable is relative, though. So that little thing of Arbor Mist was, Jack said, equivalent to drinking a can of Pabst, AKA I-Am-Pathetic. I mean, I’m so pathetic that I drank it and felt buzzed but mostly fine, lying on the couch… but then I got up to go to the bathroom (the upstairs one, as the downstairs one is consistently running out of toilet paper… hell, the entire house is consistently running out of toilet paper), and then I got all light-headed after I got out of the bathroom and thought I was going to pass the fuck out. I had to sit on the stairs for a while, and then while the black-out feeling subsided, I started to get super cold… I finally convinced myself to move and when I finally sat down again on the couch it felt better, but it was weird. I really need to avoid these fruit alcohol type drinks. The last time I drank one of those was a couple years ago on a road trip to Oregon with Andy Crossett and Lenny… same type of drink I drank… and I literally had to lie down for a while because I was blacking out and unable to control my body. It was weird. And the times before that, I would drink like a Mike’s Hard Lemonade or something and get hives and feel sick. NO MORE DRINKING FRUITY ALCOHOLIC DRINKS. PERIOD!

Anyway. To add to that, since there was no drugginess, Jack wanted me to try some of his Dexedrine, which is a light speed used to treat ADHD. Each pill was 5 milligrams, I guess, which is really little, so he gave me two initially… it sobered me up and made me alert for a short time and gave me a minor bit of tunnel vision or something. But then Jack and Micah started talking about cars so I got bored and was dozing in and out of sleep, cause cars are boring and alcohol makes me tired, and Dexedrine is supposed to wake you up, but it wasn’t doing it’s job. When I finally did get up, though, the Dexedrine definitely sobered me up and I didn’t feel drunk anymore. But I didn’t feel like ANYTHING. I just felt like normal. So Jack gave me two more, for a total of 20 milligrams, and all in all, it didn’t feel like shit. We stayed up for like three more hours watching shitty music videos (and miscellaneous videos, such as “BANANA PHONE!!!!”) on YouTube, and when we finally went to bed at 5:30am, I thought I was ready for bed but boy was I not. I laid there for an hour and got up to use the computer for a bit… when I went to bed again, I continued to lie there and got I think 15 minutes of sleep the entire night. Fucking terlible!!!!! Strangely, though, I didn’t feel tired when I woke up at 8:00am or whatever. Weird. I don’t think I would do Dex again, though. For one, I’m against pharmaceuticals, and frankly, it just didn’t do anything to me really. Meh.

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. :{

as mentioned previously i went to microsoft today to chat with some xbox guy. i MUST say. despite all of the talk of microsoft being a faceless corporation — this and that, that and this — out of everyone they have been the BEST about getting back to me. guitar hero and rock band and even record labels are taking their sweet ol’ time. so uh, go microsoft, in this regard. :0 i must say i am quite impressed. going to try and hit up ps3 and wii, so we’ll see how they go :D

so… a couple weeks ago, went to this seattle semi-pro (SSP) event at king cobra because a band, black eyes and neckties, was playing. it was quite entertaining, at least for the first half. ben and nick went, too. smoked out for the first time in forever, as it was 4/20 the next day, so that was most excellent. there was this cute little gay guy next to me… blonde with a little brown beard. haha. wearing a checkered or something flannel and then putting on another jacket on top of it that was a kind of plaid. ahahha. so cute. and really friendly. i forget his name. josh, i think. anyway, i guess it’s common policy to throw pabst cans at the wrestlers while they’re on stage. pabst was the only shit people really drank. yeah……… i think that’s about it.

quotes from SSP:

some random quotes of nights in the past:

so yeah i went to the parlor room a couple? weeks ago. i think the day after ssp. aka getting drunk TWO DAYS IN A ROW. which is, for me, a fucking record. people there are way uppity and totally dressed up. not quite my bag of chips. did however see hsu-han, hsu-ken, and tammy vu thurr. was entertaining. posa’s co-worker… who tammy knows… was very. very. amusing. and crazy. drunk. so we were sharing tables with this guy, and we ordered food and he ordered food. they never brought us a bill, so i told him a couple times to double-check that our stuff was not on his bill when he got his bill. he freaking straight-up thought i was crazy, i’m pretty sure. whatever though. that’s what i get for trying to be nice.

trendi.com is FINALLY launching!! MONDAY IS THE RELEASE OF OUR FIRST BETA. AMAZING. BOUT TIME.

anyway, more later, maybe.

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.

march 26th to april 2nd, 2007 (nippon!)

11:32 pm — before i start, some conclusions:

1) japanese women cannot walk with heels on.
2) japanese people don’t fucking eat vegetables other than regular salad (which, nutrition-wise, doesn’t really count).
3) japanese food you can think of off the top of your head (teppanyaki, sushi, yakisoba, tonkatsu, ramen, etc.) pretty much is japanese food, period.
4) japanese women say “gozaimasu” as a kind of formality meaning thank you or whatever, and say it SUPER nasally. amuse.

i’m not really all that impressed by tokyo, actually… although it is a great place to hang out when you’re young and robust, i imagine it’d be kind of boring when you’re older. and… there really isn’t that much to do anyhow. i think we only had fun cause yuki was there and his friends were there and miko’s friends were there… had we not known any japanese people there, it’d probably have been a helluva lot lamer…

now for recaps… oh my god i am so tired. this will probably have to be finished later since there’s so much shit to say.

monday, march 26th
lingo picked me up in the morning… i basically stayed up all night. slept like 3 hours. maybe. this pattern will soon be repeated, as you will find out soon. we headed over to tony’s house in issaquah and tony had JUST woken up basically and was not at all ready lol. nor had he really planned anything for us to do… lol. so we left in a hurry to go to the airport. got on the plane. “the fountain” was on as well as “stranger than fiction”… i was super excited to watch “the fountain” but unfortunately the audio on lingo and i’s consoles were not working. motherfuckers. united gave us some form we can fill out to maybe get some miles. but yea.

taking pics in the seatac airport… why not!?

sleeping in the seatac airport… why not?!

sleeping on the plane!!!

gag…

wednesday, march 28th — akasuka


got off the plane at like, i dunno, 3pm or something, and we had slept a lot of the plane ride and were mostly rested up. took the overground train to our place in asakusa… khaosan tokyo akasuka annex hostel. it was kind of hard to find at first but was then okay. the overground train seemed like the longest ride ever. seemed almost longer than the plane ride to japan lol. also, like, i kept sleeping with my head resting against the window behind me, and unfortunately, every time the train from the opposite direction passed by it’d scare the shit out of me and wake me up heh, cause it’d make the window rattle. anyway, we got to the hostel, put our shit down, and decided to go cash in on one free drink that our hostel offered daily at the location of their other akasuka hostel (khaosan tokyo smile). i got a white russian or whatever. it was good, as there was like no alcohol in it. lol. we were like the only people in there at first, although some people showed up later!

afterwards, went to eat some ramen at a corner shop in akasuka. had to cross a bridge to get there, and saw lot of dinner boats that people ate on. ramen was okay. we were the only tourists in there. tonkatsu ramen — i had miso-flavored one, and mine was the best. everyone else just got plain meat ones… and mine had like veggies and corn and stuff, so it was automatically better :0

after we ate it was like eight and we just walked around akasuka at night and looked at all the temples that were lit up by lights. looked good. yeahp. then we went back to the hostel and went to bed essentially. cool place. note: these photos are a culmination of everyone’s photos, so… yeah. i cannot take credit for most of these.

everyone else got a kick out of this. i actually didn’t even get it at first. lol?

our roommates for that night were a couple from australia and they were both graphic designers who had huge packs that were like, as big as me. they were going to india afterwards, and the girl had just come from china. lucky.

thurday, march 29th — akasuka, ueno, and akihabara



the next day, we all woke up at like 5am and decided to go rent bikes at 7am. had a difficult time finding the bike rental place at first, because we found a bike parking garage and assumed it was NOT in there even though it was. the bikes you could rent cost only 200 yen to rent a day (like, $1.50), and had these cool ass locks. if your key wasn’t in, you couldn’t rotate the bike tires. it was neat… the tourist map we had also had this giant pagoda logo which was an “information center” so we were looking for a big ass pagoda building — in reality, it was this little tiny thing that was like 10 feet tall only. lol. godamn tourist maps…

got our bikes and biked around the area cause lingo and i were super fucking rusty. scary man… very scary… to bike in the city cause there is just so much fucking shit around all over the place.

it was still early and nothing was open yet.

porn movie theatre in asakusa!!!!

anyway, ate lunch at yoshinoya, which is a cheap chain store type place that sells basically beef dishes with cooked onions over rice. pretty good and definitely cheap. everyone says shit in japan is sooo expensive, but it’s not really — maybe if you compare it to like, china, but compared to the u.s., not really.

after eating there, i had a massive nosebleed in their bathroom and was in there for fucking ever, bleeding all over the chair and floor and crap like that. after that day my nose pretty much hurt like a bitch :/ like, up in the nose cavity, not on the surface…

went to an arcade we found and allllmost beat “time crisis 4″, because i had exchanged $10 USD for 1,000 yen. unfortunately, though… i lent tony a couple hundred yen to play, and he died real fast, and so i was halfway through killing the final boss when i fucking died. godamnit. and no more money to beat it. UGHHHHH.

after that, we got our bikes which we parked on the side street and biked over the ueno. about a… 30 minute bike ride or something. it was kind of scary because of the huge amount of people X___X massive dodging required… almost killed myself and a few pedestrians um, a couple of times.

walked over the land bridge in ueno and went to this six story anime store (unfortunately, it had no naruto stuff — tony and lingo were looking for it, and i was looking for a rock lee to buy lenny since he looks like rock lee — or any katamari stuff, which was super sad!). yeah.

ueno

walked over to ueno park afterwards where there were a lot of cherry blossoms and stuff, but we were a week early for the cherry blossoms to be completely bloomed… lots of people and lots of of stairs, and i was quite sore the entire trip.

saw some kids being attacked and swarmed by pigeons and all that good stuff…!! lingo and miko got some good pics of that shit. lol.

after that, it was about, like 4pm and we had to meet yuki and miko’s friend tetsu at akihabara at 5pm, so we rode over there. took forever to meet up with both of them cause it was a crowded station and yuki was late and stuff, but yeah. this chick in this photo up here was promoting for a maid cafe!!!

went to eat at some nice restaurant and tetsu treated us. the place was nijumaru, and was a izukaya, which serves drinking food and snacks…)

walked around and went to don quixote, which at the upstairs of it (well, 5th floor or so) had a maid cafe, where girls dress up and talk to lonely guys. you pay them to talk to you. pretty fucking stupid. anyway. 6th floor had some weird thing where you can dress up and they take pics of you. i have no idea. japan is fucking weird, man.

random girl singing. not sure where!!!

after that, went to tully’s and met up with yuki/lingo’s friends from the united states. tetsu treated us yet again to ice cream and coffee. their ice cream had hot coffee on the bottom of it. kind of interesting…

it was interesting to see the shift between customs for the japanese dudes who had lived in the u.s. — they lived there for like 5 years so they had like really good english and not even their accents were too bad, but like… they would be talking to us and it’d just be like, what’s up, yoyoyo… and then they’d introduce themselves to tetsu and would all of a sudden be super formal, with like bowing and giving him their business card with two hands and stuff… lol. most amusing.

one of the guys who was there drove the jr transit trains. lol. he’s not a conductor, though! apparently conductors do the announcements over the intercom. hm, that’s news to me!

headed back to asakusa in a hurry so that we could return the bikes by 12am. got stopped by the police. they started off by asking me if i was okay or something and i obviously didn’t understand, so they talked to tony. and said some shit. and they looked at our passports and stuff. and we barely made it back in time.

went to bed after we got back to the hostel. i bought some towels from 7-11 prior to coming home and FINALLY took a shower for the first time in three days. it was a nice push-button shower that saved water and shit. wee!

attempted to sleep and COULD NOT SLEEP. AT ALL. the new roommate that night was from singapore and he slept right next to me in an upper bunk and was SO LOUD. it was INSANELY loud.

went downstairs for a while cause tony was down there and looked at some pics of tokyo, but then tony wanted to go to bed so i went too. there was this super fucking annoying guy downstairs who was talking about fucking his girlfriend in the hostel beds, in the shower stalls, in the toilet stalls, etc… when she came to town, and the same guy like, hit on every fucking girl around. he was annoying as SHIT. anyways.

went back to sleep at some point, and i spent the whole night up wishing to die or wishing it was morning so it would all just fucking end lol. at some point, tony started snoring too, and would basically snore at the intervals the other guy was not snoring. there was quite a pattern going on, and i remember thinking that compared to this guy’s snoring, tony’s was hella soothing, lol, cause it was like 1/3 the loudness.

i usually clap loudly to make people wake up from snoring, but with this guy, it was unpossible. lol. he would not even fucking stir. asshole.

woke up at 5am after a night of NO SLEEP AT FUCKING ALL. wee!

friday, march 30th — tsukiji, ginza, shibuya
once again, got up at 5am and got ready to leave to the tsukiji fish market sometime soon. a guy from the hostel, sarub, went with us. he had gone to the fish market the day before (wednesday), but the fish market was closed on wednesdays, so pwn the noob!!!!!

anyway, took most of my pics at the fish market because i’m weird, and SQUID ARE SO CUTE!!! there was lots of cutting of giant tunas.

we had lunch at a sushi place, and looked around for a place that had a line with japanese people, but not a HUGE line like some places had. i had whale nigiri, aji, anago, amaebi… anago was OK, not as good as unagi, and aji was kind of good… amaebi was eh, okay… whale was fucking nasty… kujira, it’s called. anyways. i also had a cooked tuna shioyaki that was pretty not good and looked nothing like its respective photo.

afterwards, we walked to ginza and looked at buildings there, in an attempt to find a citibank. sarub had a book which detailed where all the citibanks were, which was helpful, as citibank was like, the only bank in japan that allowed atm withdrawals from mastercard and visa.

lingo and i were in desperate need of a toilet, so we walked into one tower and happened to explore it. downstairs had some genmaicha soft-serve ice cream there, MMMM! tried toilet with ass spray action, and it was okay i guess, but couldn’t figure out how to FLUSH the toilet, rofls. lingo loved the ass spray cleaner and got addicted to it, rofls.

ginza sucks. these statues were the only fucking good thing about it.

okay fine this clocktower is KINDA cool but all these things are situated in the mall so that makes them lamer.

anyways. went to shibuya to meet up with yuki and he took us to a korean-influenced restaurant with small dishes again. sarub came with us, and then left to go meet up with other people afterwards (from some website called sofacrashers or something, which basically allowed people in foreign countries to go online and say, hey, i’m alone in this city for a week, who wants to show me around?). interesting.

afterwards we went to some department store or something and came across these weird exercise machines that were supposed to simulate horseback riding when really they were nothing like that… didn’t feel like a workout at all, really. interesting. lingo got addicted to these too. rofls.

then we went to karaoke at big one — two hours of karaoke at 1,000 yen an hour each for all you can drink. i was drunk after three. lol.

after singing, we went out to the hallway where lingo was talking to people, and joined in, kind of. lots of random shit was talked about, like…

- fat girls and pussies.
- homo! homo! homo!
- miko’s bus announcer voice.
- “funniest shit ever…”
- took lotsa videos…

videos sum it all up better, though, so yeah. no need to write about all this, as it is quite difficult to capture the greatness with just writing.

we had to hurry to leave to catch the subway, since it closes @ 12:30 or whatever. this is soon to be a pattern.

at this point, lingo was like a walking zombie… lol. ALSO soon to be repeated.

got back and hung in the hostel living room lounge for some hours, talking to some swedish people and stuff. they were watching south park. and they looked super old but were only like 20 and 22 — one guy had been there for like a year. tony was like, “don’t swedish people make awesome watches and stuff?” and i was like, “dude, that’s swiss not swedish!” and a bunch of european dudes had a real big laugh about it. lol. but apparently it is a common mistake lol…

we went on a midnight 7-11 run so miko and tony could get more beer. lingo passed out early and before we left tony went up and threw a tripod at lingo LOL in an attempt to wake him up. then threw everything in his pockets at lingo trying to accomplish the same. rofls. i bought a hentai mag at 7-11. tony and miko didn’t even remember going to 7-11 in the morning. lol.

went to bed and got about three hours of sleep. the roommate was still snoring loudly, but this time it was somewhat tolerable.

thursday, march 29th — mizue, shinjuku, akasaka
woke up at like, 8 or something ridiculous. i woulda slept more, but tony had told me to keep my key outside the door so they could pick it up before they came to bed, but they weren’t in bed in the morning, so i figured they never got the key. so… i kind of freaked out in my head because i was wondering if it was lost or not, so i had to wake up… turns out tony was passed out on the sofa downstairs and he HAD picked up the key — lingo and i spent two hours watching bad music videos on tv instead.

it was raining this morning really heavily and we were like super bummed, because we had to check out this morning. rain would have gotten us and our luggage soaked. luckily for us, however, when we were ready to leave, the rain stopped. we subway’d over to our new hotel in mizue (which is between the airport and asakusa… and btw, NO ONE knows were mizue is)… and we couldn’t check in until 3 because they were cleaning, so we walked around and explored the area.

went to eat italian food at some restaurant because italian food there is different — like, they put seaweed or salmon roe or random stuff on some dishes to make them more japanese. all italian restaurants have tabasco sauce readily available as well. i got doria. it was good. this restaurant had a cool self-service drink area and a buzzer that you could press when you were ready to order.

afterwards went to a ghetto ass fucking arcade to play the lamest fighting game ever (forget the name). mostly, we went there to kill time. it worked, i guess!

then we went to eat dessert at some cafe, and it was good times.

then we checked in, some people took showers after not taking them for so many days, and then we went to shinjuku to like, go clubbing. met up with yuki and walked around for a while — miko and i were going to fob it out on sunday, so we bought some socks, but no luck, cause there was no time to buy any other clothes :/

we went to eat teppanyaki / okonomiyaki and stuff…

then went to don quixote to buy lingo a sweatshirt since he was freezing his ass off. lol. he bought one and then takeo showed up. they all bought some sake at the store and drank it up in the street. drank up A LOT.

then we went to 747 karaoke to pre-funk it up for an hour. they sucked. didn’t give us more than three rounds of drinks. they were stingy! left quick since they no like us, and everyone else bought more sake for more prefunk. BAD IDEA.

we went to mcdonald’s to eat some food and drink. everyone was okay at this time. yuki treated us all. sat downstairs in a corner, and got soooo many looks! takeo sang happy birthday a few times to tony, and that was the start of having people stare at us. then we like, poured sake in a mcdonald’s pudding cup and made chairs fall over, and were loud and english-speaking, etc. got ready to leave and people were STILL staring.

but then tony started talking to some autistic-type girl and we stayed longer. she had pics she took from turkey or something. while waiting, we met a guy who had won a million dollars (USD, i think), and had given it all away to charity. he showed us photos of him next to the money.

he kept talking to me and i didn’t understand. made yuki/takeo translate. the dude drank 20 cups of coffee daily and he was droolmaster flex :0

lingo left after going to mcdonald’s since he was like, a zombie… lol. we met with raver richie around 11:30pm to go to ageha, and when we got out of the first subway train, yuki puked when we were coming up. he started not walking very well. lol. and it took forever to get from train to train since takeo and tony had to carry him!!

then yuki got on a train and puked all over the place (it was HUGE) and fell in his own puke :/

then at some point we ended up somewhere weird, and all the subways were closed. we talked about taking a cab, but yuki could not be moved, and the place we were standing just so happened to be a place that made it “illegal” to hail a cab.

first yuki passed out, then as tony was having some heart-to-heart with me, he passed out.

and then takeo passed out. lol. before that, though, takeo was trying to hail a cab while half asleep and it was quite scary. his eyes were like, closed as he was trying to hail the cab. lol.

then like… we tried to get tony and takeo up at the same time, and they were both like hella out of it, and just both were like, “okay! let’s get up!” although they had been like passed out, and both stood up all of a sudden together and ended up stumbling all over the place. but they were like, excited to get up, although they seemed not to know what to do with themselves after getting up, lol. eh, hard to explain. had to have seen it!

miko, richie, and i stayed there for forever, til like 4am. then we moved the three of them to a different corner where we attempted to hail a cab. sat for a while cuz it was hard to hail cabs, and yeah. takeo woke up at some point but was like a zombie! he kept saying, “samui! samui! samui!” then would go inside the store to get some food. then would come back out, eat the food, and keep saying, “samui! samui! samui!” then go back in the store. he tried paying for two empty bags of food at some point. HAHAHAHHAHA.

at 4am, some security guard dude helped us hail a couple cabs. the first said that he could only seat 2 people and that no one could sit in front. i think he was lying. then we got 2 other cars, and tony, takeo, and yuki took one to yuki’s apartment, and me, miko, and richie took the other to “shinohashi” (#4 bridge or something, where yuki lived, across from the iranian embassy, lol). suddenly, when we got out, yuki and tony were both all full of energy, lol. wth. we went to yuki’s and it cost about 2,000 yen, and everyone was confused. it was cheaper than we had expected.

tony and yuki had thought it was still like 12am and had no idea why we didn’t go to the club. lol. motherfuckers. yuki had a mean anti-social cat that hissed at epople. anyway, some people played on the computer but i went to bed pretty early and slept on yuki’s bed… there was some down blanket and i wrapped myself in it. at some point tony woke me up and carried me to sleep on the couch for some reason, and the down blanket was still wrapped around me (above and below). when i woke up, i was sweating like hell. lol. hot as balls. went to bed at 6am, woke up at 9am. gg.

saturday, march 31st — shibuya, mizue
called lingo when we woke up in the morning and said we were almost leaving. what a lie. lol. we were watching tv for like, ever, and basically left in like, an hour and a half. lol. takeo came with us. we got back to mizue and showered, got ready, and ate lunch at some french-influenced restaurant, then left to meet yuki in shibuya at hachiko. also met up with miko’s friend, yuji!

tony’s finger was rotting off from infection!

i had to go to citibank in shibuya to pick up some cash for miko and tony, since none of them had any money.

yuki took a lot of long exposure pics with all of us in that shibuya intersection (the busiest intersection in the world?) and it was quite boring…

then we all went to eat at a restaurant, kinda americanized again… i had some spicy chicken, miscellaneous asian stuff. kind of good.

after that, went karaoke yet again, at a new place… for 1,000 yen an hour. we stayed an hour and a half. again, there were limits to drinks, but it was better than yesterday. probably cause there was no crazy drinking today — it was fairly reserved.

it started raining when we left, and there was a guy pissing in the corner near hachiko. yeah. we waited for there a little bit. met up with richie and had to take a shuttle bus to go to ageha. takeo went home because he had to dj in the morning.

loud guy on the bus was screaming about being a gai-jin and a teacher in japan, but i guess he had pretty good japanese.

got to ageha. tony lost his wallet and found it. 35,000 yen cover. hi-tech lights, sound, and good music… reggae room — first time i’ve seen such a thing in a club!! it started out good then turned super bad. all the “hot girls” were there, i guess. tony almost got beaten up i think, cause he was freaking some guy’s girl.

richie kept saying something about how since we candywalked, we danced like we weren’t from japan. i don’t see why it matters, though — not everyone needs to look the same.

yuki lost his locker key cause he was breakdancing for a little while, but he found it because someone turned it in. karma, i say, because tony had found someone’s lost wallet and was trying to find a credit card in there to use it. grrrr.

also, ageha had like, a side room that had food vendors!! nice touch! yuki bought some stuff that was like jambalaya. it was kinda good i think. we fell asleep outside for a little while, waiting for the club to close at what we thought was 5… turns out it closed at 6… we ended up leaving at 5:30 because tony wanted to dance for a little longer. haven’t seen tony dance like that in, like, forever?

walked to some convenience store where some african dude offered to carry my food, saying that i was too small to carry it all. and one reached for my money, but i was like, “that’s my money!” i don’t know what that was all about, but then they bid me good day and left…?!

then we went to eat at some place where you pay first in a vending machine… had some curry stuff and some lady who worked there was incomprehensible. spoke in mumbles and crap. even japanese people didn’t understand her!

after that we went home because the trains were open, and slept in for the FIRST TIME! til 1:30pm.

there were so many people getting on the trains at 5:30am… asked yuji where they were going / coming from, and even he had no idea! and he is japanese!

sunday, april 1st — harajuku



went to harajuku and met with nanako. went to park, and there were some guys there with “free hugs” signs. one of the guys with the sign was talking to someone, so i hugged him from behind. lol. he was super surprised, and in america, people with that sign probably would have been like! hi! and hugged me back even though it was surprising… but this guy didn’t, lol. yeah. he was just kind of awkward about it.

soo… i made up a sign that said, “hugs, 1 yen,” and lingo held up a sign above me saying, “and herpes.” i got two people willing to pay one yen each, and two who didn’t have money so lingo “loaned them money”, and one which was tony, and two who were two cheap to pay one yen (which is 1/100th of a penny!!) bitches!

harajuku was kinda disappointing because i expected it to be a helluva lot bigger, but it was actually kind of small and restricted to just one small park section. some girls with costumes and what not.

afterwards, went to eat tonkatsu ramen. lingo and tony got spicy ramen and put a whole bunch of garlic in it. sounds good.

went shopping afterwards — there were some places with cool punk/goth clothes, but they were expensive. and there was one that was cheap, but it was for skinny people only :/

after that, we walked over to shibuya because tokyo tower was closed (yuki had wanted to take us there). we met up with yuki halfway and then went to the same ol’ familiar area in shibuya where we decided to go karaoke. takeo showed up too. some place where they filmed the karaoke scene in “lost in translation” tried to rip us off, so we went to big one — the same place as the first night we went karaoke. it was 25,000 yen a person for all-night karaoke, til 5am!!! same cost as 2 and a half hours lol. awesome!!!

only richie, lingo, and i stayed up the ENTIRE night. miko stayed up most of the night. takeo passed out first, then yuki, then tony. same ol, same ol. as we were leaving, i rubbed yuki’s head to try and wake him up, and he hated it, apparently — i didn’t see his face, but miko said he looked pissed lol. then i rubbed takeo’s head to wake him up, and his reaction was funny because instead of doing nothing like yuki, he started slapping the chair next to him hahaha. lol…

anyway, at 5am we walked to the place by hachiko and the busiest intersection in the world or whatever was now basically deserted!! everyone went home and took naps and left individually.

monday, april 2nd
left to go to the airport. thought our flight was at 5pm, but really, it was at fucking 1pm. so we sat in the airport forever. since we never really had time to go shopping, we talked about going shopping at the airport, but there really wasn’t anything to buy. had risotto at the airport. tried massage chairs with lingo at the airport. they were mostly fun but made me kind of sick afterwards. watched part of “stranger than fiction” on the plane, and it seems pretty good but i didn’t get to finish it — did, however, watch parts of “the good german” with george clooney and it seems dumb… and watched the whole of “curse of the golden flower,” which VISUALLY is AWESOME but everything else about it is fucking terrible. ick. ICKKKKKK.

long time no typing in here, and i’m on my way to canada right now with the parentals, so might as well, right? maybe. well, this will be gradually updated throughout however long. i took some notes from before that said:

Kid that runs into lennys house
Alex and his shittalking
New computer
Etc
Redefine event
Helio sequence interview

now, why i would really write “etc,” i don’t know, and i don’t really know what “alex and his shittalking” means either. i’ll have to ask him sometime O__o freakish. anyways. i’m at the border right now and we’ve been here for like an hour and a half and have gone a 1/2 mile. another 1/2 mile to go to get to the border. wtf. so slow on memorial day weekend. i knew a lot of people were planning on going to canada this weekend, but this is ridiculous. hardly even worth it, i’d say… spending 3 hours (roundtrip, perhaps?) getting into canada for like a day… pfft. haha, now my parents broke the rules and were driving on the shoulder to cut into other people’s lanes… :/ stupid. and they rented an suv too… lamez0r…

sooo onto the topics:
kid that runs into lenny’s house: lenny has some neighbor kid who is a little retarded, and he just rang the doorbell one day, lenny opened the door, and he started making incomprehensible noises (and he’s korean, but he sure wasn’t speaking korean) as well as roughly playing with lewis and throwing my camera on the floor and stuff. lol. his name is patrick. eventually, lenny got him outside, but then somehow the door didn’t lock, and before we knew it, patrick had returned again. freakish. i think this happened like 3 times, not sure why the door didn’t lock, but his mom came and got him once or something. i guess another time, lenny’s mom was coming home and he opened the door while she was driving. hella dangerous :0 little mentally-challenged boy :/
alex and his shittalking: like i said, i don’t remember. fill-in-the-blank maybe later, perhaps?
new computer: so, the dell laptop — the one i am currently typing on, mind you — broke, and i had to resort to buying a new laptop. i bought an hp laptop… it was an amd, and i thought, hey, why not test it out? AMD is NOT good for laptops. gets hot super duper uber fast :/ but that being said, it was pretty :0 and hp has freakin amazing service. very impressive. they sent me a msg saying it was shipped out, and i got it the next day. free returns — no restocking fee, i don’t think. i forgot to write the rma number on the outside, but was it a problem? neg, not for hp! the day i returned it, i returned it @ 6pm and they got it by 10am the next day when i was thinking, “crap! i didn’t write an rma number on it!!!” but they had already scanned it and everything. freakish. the computer, did, however, come with an hp game console that had a bunch of pop cap games, and well, it got me readdicted to zuma. i didn’t think that computer zuma would be okay after playing console, but it was fine, and in fact, i do weller at it. i do gooder at it wewt.
seattle international film festival opening night gala (05/25/06): somehow this year, the seattle international film festival invited us to cover their stuff and be a part of their press guests uhhhh… even though we don’t cover film. welp, i guess we do now :0 haa… bribery will work for these people!!!!!!!!!!!!! well, sort of. w3rd. it was um interesting. lots of “fancy free food”… but it was mostly just random mixtures on tortilla chips. chipotle was there with beef on tortilla chips, and it was super yummy. there was free mixed alcohol… gin and cranberry juice-type mixtures, and it was strangely good. too bad i drank three of them and uhhhhh felt nothing. i felt slightly buzzed initially, but afterwards, nothing much really. lame. but oh well, i guess, as it was free for me and my date (a $100 price), and i got hojo and his date and ryan and his date in as well, for a whopping $300 free!!!! this month is free stuff… as i will tell you about later… so all in all, it was cool. the dj played really great music too, lots of old skool funky beats. and less pretention than i thought there would be. there was also azelle’s chicken (oprah’s favorite chicken, omg… omg?), bluewater bistro (they had this yummy seafood mix on top of tortilla chips that was soooo yummy :0), some sushi (but it ran out right before we got there, as some old guy in front of us was asserting would happen; he was right. lol he was funny, he was just waiting in line over and over again to get sushi)… lots of chocolates, caramel-covered apples, cupcakes, fudge, that sort of thing. good stuff!!! it was at the mohai (museum of history and industry) in downtown seattle, and yeah. i thought a gala = dressed up, but it was pretty mixed. some formal people, some cocktail dresses, some jeans and casual attire. lollerskates.

i’m listening to… … postal service.
i’m feeling … alright!

3:24 am - roar!!! i watched way too many movies today. this japanese movie, “dreams” — which had a couple of really cool clips with awesome cinematography, and also a buttload of meh, sort of boring crap. we watched this entire clip that was like 15 min long of people dying in a blizzard in like alaska or something without sound cause there was sound all the way up until that clip. turned out it got a little unplugged SOMEHOW. i don’t really understand how.

also rented “naked lunch”… i’m not sure what it’s about. it’s a david cronenberg movie… really fucking weird. i think it is about a couple of things… mostly different layers of consciousness, but i don’t really know. i noticed everything happened twice, though. he’d be in two different places at once — and there was one scene where his friends were there, and then it cut to another scene where his friends were somewhere else with him. he also woke up twice somewhere… shot his wife/lover “joan” twice… just seemed like there was a lot of duality. and i can only think that it was related something to the amount of drugs he did in the movie (hallucinogens) and layers of consciousness… shrug.

also watched “lethal weapon 4″ (half of it) and “lethal weapon”… i can see why the chicks think mr. mel is hot because of it. he’s like ‘the man’ in it. you know — crazy, unstable — what girls like!!! :0

anyways. i got drunk yesterday for the first time in 80,000 years cause josh made me buy two tequila shots — only @ earl’s, one shot = 3 shots. it was DEATH. white tequila for the LOSE — seriously, the grossest shit i’ve ever drunk in my LIFEHIZZLE. it burned bad. anyway. somehow it got me drunk. standing up after that was uber dizzy. like i was on E or something. it was crazy. made me thinkin kinda weird too after we left the bar and went to our apartment… about how redefine is a failure and that sucks and about how i am jobless and that sucks and about how i am over here having fun having parents pay for rent and it’s just bad news bears. :/ it’s not like a job or money is a measure of a person, but they are necessary things.

josh came back a few days ago from iraq + other places… he brought some videos from iraq. some kinda interesting stuff and some kind of meh stuff. it’s crazy though — very much like you see in the movies and shit. :X oh well. anyway. more later. there’s this one missle thing called a javelin. costs 1/2 million per. we watched on this video where three were fired at this tanker in a span of like … a minute. two missed completely. the third hit. one and a half million dollars down the drain in ONE MINUTE. the other day on the news there was a story about how 12 schools were being cut to save 12 million or something. in the bigger picture, 12 million means fuck shit. seriously. as far as the government is concerned? 12 million ain’t shit. that’s freaking 24 missles. that’s it.

war is a tricky thing. it’s easy to say you’re against war and against fighting. i am against fighting… in an everyday, practical purpose. but i think that there is a fine line when it comes to war. i believe war IS necessary, although it is a last resort. it IS in fact noble in some cases, but it’s hard to direct that many soldiers and that many commanders into following the rules and making it the way that it should be all the time. talking to josh about it has put a lot of perspective into it. i’ve always had the thought that hey, you should respect the troops even if you’re against war. most people join for the college money or because they don’t know what they’re doing with their lives. they consider it a job… a job that all of their training leads up to. it’s like when you train all your life for a sport and you finally get into the olympics or some kind of shit. war is an especially strange thing — especially with its mob mentalities and what not. but i think that people who are quick to dispel war should consider… well, what alternative is there? sometimes there ARE alternatives. but not always.

it’s another one of life’s anomalies… no easy answers or solutions. in a recent conversation (probably a couple weeks ago) with andy [crossett], we talked about how the u.s.a. really isn’t that bad. it’s terrible and there are shitloads of conspiracies and cover-ups and secret government fuck-ups. and it IS fucked up. but the truth is although there are probably places better than the u.s., the majority of the world’s people are WORSE off. we’re lucky… really, we are. and i’ve made it a personal philosophy to try and refrain from saying defaming things about the united states… at least, not to the extreme… not the type of shit you’d find on bumper stickers and shit. cause yeah. even though there’s tons of fucked up shit, we’re lucky.

but then you can go off about how as a developed country, the u.s. might need to be a better leader… and there, it might possibly be true. one of these days — possibly when the u.s. is no longer the superpower — i think things might be better. who knows, though.

i’m listening to… SUFJAN STEVENS for teh win.
i’m feeling… not too shabby bobby!

10:57 pm
december 20th — my birthday! had kind of a bad, unproductive day all day until i went to pick up sherry with andy [crossett] @ like 9pm wheeeheehee. when she got here, people started coming over @ around 10… it was kind of a last-minute birthday gathering so it was like me, farm, arlen, lewis, gareth, hojo, jennie, chol, cynthia, nate [davis], daniel [kim], sherry, crossett, and ummm lenny came later. alex [bennett] unfortunately was in boston at the time 8[ !! farm made jello shots and bought me a cake, and it was g00t. although purple jello shots are no good, and neither are the reds, and i think the oranges are best. xD played a little “mario party” and waluigi has this taunt that says, “you’re lousy!” and peter and hojo kept saying he was saying, “you’re learning!” so that if parents walked into the room, they’d think the kids were up to something good. rofls. mostly i just got a weeee bit drunk, but i felt kinda sick, so i stopped. fruit + alcohol mixes usually aren’t too good, but that was OK i guess. jennie and cynthia brought me a tin can filled with random crap like paper clips, rubber bands, duct tape, etc. and had a card that said “what would… MACGUYVER DO?” rofls. lewis also saw that on my buddy list i had tiered people. keep in mind that this was from SOPHOMORE year… probably like the beginning of it, and i haven’t changed it in years. i don’t even know what the categories mean anymore, rofls. i had one that said “expendable,” which in retrospect, is quite mean, although true. but the other was “ifitmakesyouhappi,” which… i don’t even know wtf that means.

december 21st — sherry had wanted to go to the aquarium, so me, her, crossett, and lenny went. before that, we went to eat at this japanese restaurant. it was alright this time. finally went to the pirate store, and it was not as exciting as i had imagined, although they had the ’seattle’ version of the ‘new york’ puzzle that lenny gave me. but other than that, and some fake teeth, it was hardly exciting. went to the aquarium and a baby otter had just been birthed! HOORAH!!! it was so cute… they just like lie on the mommy’s stomach all day and the mommy swims it around. LUCKY. that’s the fucking life, dude! hmm it was alright! there’s this one room of the aquarium where they have a bunch of different animals… lots of fish and sharks and stingrays and stuff… and i guess there used to be an octopus in it, but it’d be eating sharks at night when no one was around. finally they watched it, and it was eating them! so they had to get rid of it. you can tell the animals want to escape, cause they can’t feed sea otters shit in shells (despite how they normally crack open all their foods and eat em) cause i guess one of the sea otters before took a small rock and kept pounding away at the window everyday til finally it broke one day rofls. poor aminals. 8[ as cute as they are, i don’t think i’d ever want a pet other than a cat or a dog (because they’re used to be domestic)… even if it means never having a turtle — or even worse, a monkey 8[ after the aquarium that night, sherry and i started putting together a puzzle that lenny had bought me for my birthday. worked on it for like 3 hours, then went to dante’s bar with crossett, hojo, and gareth for trivia night. we sucked balls. our name was “bob lablaw’s law blog,” from “arrested development.” GOOD SHIT, YO. probably the funniest part from the show lately, really :0 the only question i knew (for some reason) was that the capital of columbia was bogota. how useless. :0 man, and sherry is the epitome of lethargic. we’d go to the aquarium (that she SUGGESTED we go to), and she’d be like, “i’m tired.” we’d eat @ a restaurant, and she’d be like, “i’m tired.” we’d go to the bar and she’d be like, “i’m tired.” we’d be sitting around in my apartment, and she’d be like, “i’m tired.” WTF!

december 22nd — worked on the puzzle some more with sherry and we went to four seasons to eat lunner (lunch + dinner). yummy. then went to visit lenny at work and brought him some food. got a mouth guard from walgreen’s for fucking $23, and sherry bought “the clapper” for her cousin, rofls. $20. who’da thunk they still made those things!! i bet my parents would like it, but they don’t move enough as it is. sherry got picked up by her cousin, and i worked on some christmas presents and later that night lenny came over and we just hung out and worked on the puzzle some more, but he has a short attention span

december 23rd — hmm, did nothing much during the daytime except for hung around and finished the puzzle and watched tv. finishing the puzzle took like 3 hours, with a grand total of like… 10 hours or something. at least. at least it looks good in completion. it’s a puzzle of 1,000 pieces of new york city. tony and tammy [vu] dropped by, and i went with them to my neighbor’s, and we just watched a bit of TV. boring. that’s really all they were doing when i got there — watching tv and drinking. we watched “best of the best,” some lame kung fu movie i’ve never seen :0 hurrah, old school, and it’s lame ass kung fu movies! went home, packed my bags. lenny came over and brought me some fat eats (romio’s chicken wings, which are yummy, although the wings themselves look demented) and some salted trout that he fried. yummy. we watched “the island,” which seemed like quite the high-budget movie. directed by michael bay and it was a warner bros. picture. really quite weird to me that no one watched it, cause it seems along the likes of “minority report,” although i liked “minority report” much better. still, it looked cool, and it had big stars (ewan mcgregor and scarlet johansen), an insane amount of product placement, and an african guy who turned from bad to good! all of the pieces of an excellent movie, omg. shrug. really though, i don’t get why no one watched it. yar.

december 24th — lenny dropped me off @ the airport at like 11:15, and my flight was @ 12, although slightly delayed or slow or something. slept the whole ways. got home, bummed around a little, and my godparents came over. exchanged parents (they gave me $300, i got their daughter a paint set and got them a photography book that freakin r0x!!!). had a dinner table conversation — that, as always — somehow goes back to business. and I STILL HATE BUSINESS. i know that i want to run one, but i just hate the logistics of the shit. i just want to be able to do whatever and be OK. X__X we watched “kung fu hustle,” and it was OK, some parts were quite funny, and i appreciate the way that they made everything cartoon-like… but still not my kind of movie, really. i just really liked the part where steven chow beats up everyone in the ax gang. that was funny. but everything else was mostly OK. my mom hated the movie and thought NOTHING was funny. she never finds those kinds of movies funny :0 don’t think my godmother did either. interesting!

oh god lenny’s mom thinks that he shouldn’t date people unless he’s planning on marrying them!! ohnoes, she asked him if he’s gonna marry me and have kids with me… DANGERRRRRRRRR!! DANGER.

merry xmas everyone! or whatever it is you celebrate (this PROBABLY only applies to liz!)

i’m listening to… “fresh prince of bel-air” on nick @ night, garden state soundtrack.

10:01 pm - last night we returned to mike’s for an evening of drunkenness and craziness. it was relatively calm minus the drinking, being that i never drink… but it just seemed like a perfect time to get rid of my existence. how extreme, huh? i always hate when people drink to get rid of their problems or whatever, but how about that? that’s exactly what i felt like doing. so i did.

just drank a couple of mixed drinks and took like three shots. then at some point lenny wanted to go to qfc to buy a pie tin and some potato chips to burn in a pie tin… so me, lenny, ron, and jayson went… on the way we somehow got to talking about porn and someone had the idea about going to 7-11 to buy hustler. and i was like, “we should bring hustler around with us in qfc and read it aloud while walking around,” so everyone’s like, “OK! YEAH! LET’S GO BUY IT!” i bet the 7-11 guy loved it, because he used to always hit on liz / make comments to alex about girls he was with (including us).

then we went to my apartment because i wanted to grab a jacket, and while i was grabbing a jacket, the boys decided that they wanted to watch the pr0n. so we watched the pr0n. girls eating girls and guys doing girls, but it was all fairly boring.

finally we went to qfc and walked around for a while there, reading hustler aloud and shit. finally we were going to buy shit and i put the hustler with the cover up on the table, and lenny turned it over so that the naked guy on girl action was showing… and the cashier was not pleased, no no. no. when i couldn’t find the pen, he grabbed the mag and literally threw it aside. lmao.

yeah. and that’s that. we went back and everyone was like, “where the fuck were you guys? we thought you guys bailed.” i guess we were gone for like two hours or an hour and a half or something.

lalalala. today alex and i went swimming in the lake @ sandpoint’s warren g. magnuson park, and later jennie and chol and company showed up, and yup!! yup. that beach or whatever the fuck sucks. there’s huge rocks on the bottom. it fucking hurts to walk on. death, i tell you, death. also, the water makes your ears burn and there is a whole lotta ducky poopie. and that’s that… some more stuff, but yeah.

shit actually seems to be picking up with the publication. more people writing in about it. more people saying ok. more people buying ads. more people saying ok. i just wish i wasn’t doing all of the work, but i’m not fucking kidding - things come out best when you do them yourself. and it’s a fucking sad state of things, but what’re you gonna do?

call it my insecurity or a self-fulfilling prophecy. i’m beginning to wonder if it’s going to end just because i’m too scared for it to continue. i’ve never had the feeling of thinking something is so impossible to make work that you just can’t… i wonder if things are really that impossible anyway, or if everything is just a hopeless feeling i have that makes me think it’s impossible. how stupid. feelings are such a bizarre thing that i cannot even begin to understand or describe. i wonder if feelings should even be thought of logically or if they should just be swallowed up whole, no matter what the implications are. it’s hard to distinguish between what is good and what is bad, because something like this can feel so right and so wrong at the same time. i have definitely never felt like this before… and if things do end, i can only wonder if i’ll look back on this with regret or happiness.

who knows, though… there’s still time.

i’ve been down
and i’m wondering why
these little black clouds
keep walking around
with me.
it wastes time,
and i’d rather be high -
think i’ll walk me outside
and buy a rainbow smile,
but be free…
they’re all free.
i look around at a beautiful life,
been the upperside of down,
been the inside of out.
but we breathe…
we breathe.
i wanna breeze and an open mind.
i wanna swim in the ocean.
wanna take my time for me…
all me.
so maybe tomorrow…
i’ll find my way home.
STEREOPHONICS - MAYBE TOMORROW.