inside the wonderful world of vee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and so, the adventure begineth.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Ever own one?
neg.

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

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

dammit i have to post about this because no one else is.

american idol had their “charity” portion last night, and they closed it out with “shout to the lord.” WHAT THE FUCK. i find it hard to believe that all of the people currently on that show are christian. and if they are not all christian, why would they be okay with this?

not only that but PEOPLE are okay with it. i was looking on the internet to see if there was any controversy about it, and most of the comments are more along the lines of, “WOW THAT WAS SURPRISING, BUT GREAT! JESUS IS LOVE! I LOVE GOD! GOD GOD GOD! PRAISE THE LORD!”

you are all fucking idiots.

some quotes…

THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING INSANE.

this morning, nick and i went to the city church in the u-district. we were yet again in search of a charismatic church where people spoke in tongues. we were again /fail. oh well. i thought it was interesting nonetheless. city church is comprised of 5 chain churches throughout the seattle area. the main one is in kirkland. all of the other ones stream live from the kirkland church. the sound was really good, though, so when we first entered i thought that the worship team was in the house, playing live. they were not, even though it sounded like it. an usher brought us to our seats, and upon realization that it was not a live band, i was a little weirded out. but you know, whatever. the worship leader chick sang like a pop star or something, ad libbing like mad. many people did the “raised, outstretched hands” thing.

after worship, some lady — pretty, blonde, nicely-dressed — came on the screen and did some church announcement type things… a lot of which were pimping out these products available in their store. products included a book called “dating delilah,” with nice graphical design pages inside… a dvd / audio cd / mp3 disc of their previous conference’s message… etc. etc. etc. but there was a lot of, “BUY THIS!” and “BUY THAT!” but, to their benefit, it did seem very um, personal, despite the fact that the churches collectively probably had thousands of people. very very interesting. to be honest the whole idea of a church being conducted via tv screen is kind of “odd” but it’s actually kind of cool in some ways, too. you’re uniting people in a easy, local way to a bigger conduit. i don’t know…

then there was a “greet your neighbors” section. there was a guy in front of nick who was really, really good-looking… like really, really. and he was way into the whole service. that’s one thing about the people there — they seemed very sincere in their worship. many came by themselves and seemed unconcerned with their neighbors and worshipped solely for god. i mean, i think that’s great. being “real” is more important than partaking in a church ritual i don’t subscribe to. if that makes sense. anyway. back to the good-looking guy… i found it kind of… disturbing. it’s judgmental to say (as chris pointed out later today) perhaps but the guy looked like any normal rocker dude you would meet at a party or something… and i guess… why does that bother me? it bothers me because it’s common to go to a party and want to meet someone romantically interesting?? and i guess i am shallow but i am much more interested in people who are good-looking… that doesn’t mean i’ll like them after i get to know them, but it does make me want to start talking to them initially. way he was acting — and how he knew exactly where the book of judges (one of the least used books in the bible, i’d argue) was — probably was an indication that he was a hardcore christian. and being extremely involved in a religion is a significant life choice. so it is bothersome that um, i might come across someone like this not ever knowing, thinking he was awesome, and then having that be a significant issue/difference. and i wouldn’t really have a problem being with someone who was a hardcore christian (depending on what their other thoughts on things were) but it seems like hardcore christians often have a problem with other people who are not the same way. so really, it’s really a very selfish thing to be bothered by a hot guy at church who “doesn’t look like he would go to church”. oh so selfish. and so shallow. but it’s a thought i could not help. :[

after the meet and greet, a brief message began by the pastor of the day. he gave a brief testimony about this new couple to his church. the male of the couple accepted christ the first day he ever went to church. the next week, supposedly, he brought more people, and his girlfriend and kids accepted christ too. the next week after that, he brought even more people. blahblahblah.

then we were shown a dvd clip of the guy and his girlfriend, who had had HPV (they didn’t say that, but they kept saying “VIRUS” “CERVIX” etc… i can only conclude that it was HPV) and a malignant tumor?? or something?? because of it. she was pregnant, and the doctor said if it grew any more, the baby would need to be terminated. then they received “healing hands” in church, and the next time they went to the doctor, the tumor or cyst or whatever was “COMPLETELY GONE!” it was all a little strange. it was even staged like an infomercial testimony or something too.

after that, speaker man, who had come from las vegas, came back to the stage. he proceeded to tell a message. man, i don’t even know where to start. AHHHH. god. uhhh. where to start.

the whole message talked about the “power of words” and that they were more powerful than the physical. he mentioned this girl in high school who used to make fun of his eyes… they bulged out of his head because he had a lot of health problems at that time. he mentioned that he looked like bart simpson, but made sure to note that people in the audience who were saved probably didn’t even know what “the simpsons” were, and that it was just a show that he had seen a couple episodes of before he became christian. like, what the fuck???????????????????????

anyway, he was a funny preacher and all but he like… i don’t know. made the whole crowd repeat after him the girl’s name (which i forget now). he would say her first name, they’d repeat it, he’d say her last name, they’d repeat it, and he’d say, “was a bad person,” and they’d repeat it. it was all very strange, like he still………………… was very bothered by it. and he probably was. but… i mean………….. wtf.

let’s start with this part in… judges?? where ephraimites (sp?) were being persecuted or something, and the only way out was to cross this river to the other side. they were tested by guards/soldiers, and the soldiers would tell them to say “shibolleth” — because the ephraimites had a different language and way of speaking, they could not pronounce the “shib” and would say “sibolleth”… and once they did that, they were killed because their accent gave themselves away. 40,000 of them supposedly died this way. now, the preacher did mention that it was because they had a different accent, but then he took it deeper, and said that he had an expensive bible program and decided to look up the meanings of those words.

“shibolleth” meant “flowing stream” or some shit, where as “sibolleth” meant “burden”.

he ridiculously stretched it out to say that… we need to use our words in a way so that we are not speaking “sibolleth” but “shibolleth” — we do not want to “burden” ourselves with negative speech and negative thoughts… we want to praise the word of god like a “flowing stream.” like… how ridiculous. i mean, really. wtf.

i don’t even know. wtf.

two churches in a row, now, i also see the heavy influence placed on owning big houses and owning things that = money. it’s so weird. he mentioned some pastor who was given a $4 million dollar house by a random lady………… i mean……… why does a pastor need that? pastors should do something with that $4 million dollar house that helps the community or whatever. why should a pastor keep that shit? why are we for these things?

it’s just very strange to me that christians like him can be like, “we shouldn’t watch simpsons…” and “we should be the counter-culture”… when they’re like… embracing all these capitalist, non-jesus-type things. i mean, jesus didn’t live life extravagantly. he wouldn’t be paying money for neon wall hangings and fancy ass clothes. why do they?

anyway, there was a mention of the term “turn or burn”, in a joking way. but i wrote down to look up the term and find some related merch. nick found a couple related t-shirt designs… roflcakes.

***

after that, nick and i went to eat at this greek restaurant that i don’t know the name of. we had interesting conversation there about the church and our thoughts on it… politics… blahblah. nick is done with the church-hopping, though. evidently it disappoints him that people are that er, blindly following of religion. as for me, i still find it interesting. i’d go. if anything the speakers are still amusing. i’m so detached from the idea of religion that… i don’t know, i guess i can look at it very objectively and i don’t feel anyone should believe or not believe in it… i’m just completely apathetic to the thought. nothing that could possibly be said would make me care more or less about the existence or non-existence of god. it just doesn’t even matter in daily life.

the “it is not something that concerns me in my daily life” argument is one i have heard for politics, too… and i think that’s ridiculous, as politics are wholly entrenched in everything we know. but that’s another tangent.

***

after that, i went with alex and chris (future roomies) to ikea. oh yes. i needed to buy a bed base but then was not happy with the price / look / how inconvenient / blahblah. we kept talking about using 2×4’s in different furniture pieces. lol. well, as i didn’t buy a bed base, i may be able to put some 2×4’s in my bed frame and just use it from there. man, i don’t know. i’ll maybe look on craigslist or something. this is a nightmare.

blarghhhhhhhhhh no feely like talking about ikea. after that we went to the great wall to eat some japanese food. blahrhggahoaighaoisdoiahsfoaidsjaoidj aoij aoifhaoifhaiofhafoisafhoiafshoaifhaosfi ahofihasfoiahfoishfaoif haoifh.

***

soaking piercing in salt water. causes much droolings. 1/4 teaspoon sea salt dissolved in 1 cup water. my chin is in the water. i am rather amazed that there has been no pussing or anything, and i can move it around however the hell i want already and it doesn’t really hurt. is weird. mmmmmmmmm…………….. eating of cup.

***

it’s snowing in seattle. in march. this was yesterday. w00t. snowed enough to stick a bit this morning.

i’m listening to… “hallelujah” by jeff buckley [cover].

nicholas hubbard and i decided to head over to church today. a while ago he had mentioned that for a while he went to all these different churches and kept a blog of his experiences in those churches. so i mentioned i wanted to go to a pentacostal church (to hear people speak in tongue), so he found one. only… they didn’t speak in tongues. but it was still kind of interesting. the church was the “bethel christian church” in the central district. this is going to sound kind of ignorant, but wow, there are a lot of black people in the central district. like… i don’t see *that* many black people in seattle, but that’s all i saw in the central district. it’s just interesting.

as soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a handful of people who were really nice. one lady, i forgot her name, was particularly nice and gave us these little booklets with bible verses in them. haha. she came up to us and was like, “shalom” to nick cause he looks a little jewish, and he was like “what?” and she said, “shalom,” and he’s like, “oh, no.” and then she turned to me and was like “ni hao ma?” and i was like, “yep, that’s right,” and she’s like, “yay at least i got one out of two!”

mostly everyone in there was old. and everyone was black. we must have stood out quite a bit. but people were all very nice and genuine (with the exception of one girl, notably).

let’s see. it began with singing and more singing. but what was interesting is that their singing didn’t include lyrics for people in the pews to sing. there were like… seven? choir people onstage, including a couple of instrumentalists. the first couple songs were good, but bylike, the third or forth, shit, the songs were really godamn good. so good. nothing i’ve heard before in church, but still good. it was fucking intense, though. i thought i was going to like faint at some point. i got all light-headed. it didn’t help that the sun just happened to be shining in from the window at me, either.

followed by that were some prayers. their prayers were largely of the, “we need you to get through the day, lord!” type nature, “thank you lord!” type nature. certainly nothing i was used to in church, but that was okay. it even got a bit repetitive in the sense that i soon had no idea what the guy praying was even talking about. it was dizzying.

next came the offering… they passed around these little buckets, and the usher (wearing white gloves of the snazzy variety) picked them up.

then came the offertory stewardship, with a message by some guy about “god’s purpose for money.” i don’t quite remember what it was about, but i did take down some quotes. because quotes are great.

next came announcements, and they welcomed us by telling us to stand up. i had written on the card i had turned in that i was referred to the church by “myself” and the lady got a kick out of that and said that, “vivian has come by invitation of herself.”

after that was some shaking of hands and meeting of people… it was fairly entertaining. lots of half-assed hugs and some real hugs. one girl was like walking by and thought that she should hug nick but then didn’t really want to and the result was like this half-hug, half-running away type deal. it was amusing.

then came more songs with the choir singing and no lyrics.

then came this oh my god. sermon. holy. let me start off by saying that before he really launched greatly into the sermon he mentioned that they were collecting $$ for a sister church in alaska. he’s like, “i need $1,000.” so we literally waited there until he got $1,000. it started off with a couple people giving $100 each, and then it was just this uncomfortable peer pressure type thing until people slowly coughed up the rest of the money. at some point he’s like, “if you don’t have money, that’s cause you haven’t asked for god’s help. hell, you can ask me for help, i have a couple thousand dollars in my pocket right now,” and he like pulled out a wad of cash out of his pocket. like. wtfuz.

i guess there was also a couple who had called him the previous night, fighting. he had talked to one person, then hung up and talked to the other person. he revealed to everyone in the church that it was fighting because the man ate 6 of the woman’s cookies. haha. they’d better have been girl scout cookies (which i bought this morning)!

alright. some other quotes from his sermon, cause he said some amazing shit.

there was also a mention of acts 2:45, and how god blesses people with money in the sense that they have two cars and a house that was formerly a mansion… like these were the things that matter. he also read a bible verse and then randomly went into a rant about how people need to have clean houses.

after his uhhh all-over-the-place and hardly enlightening or particularly religious sermon, there was an invitation, where people who wanted to be prayed for went up to the altar and got oil on their foreheads. they were prayed for. we sat in our seats and watched as people went up. one guy had like 4 guys putting their hands on him and praying for him.

this one guy came to us and put oil on our foreheads and prayed for us… nice gesture, i guess. but ew, oil.

after that was the benediction, which is a blur. and then we left.

the whole church probably had like, 25 people?? 30? 35? i’m bad at this stuff.

afterwards, i dropped nick off and rachel and i went to i heart rummage at its new location at chop suey. it was pretty f00king disappointing, actually. nothing of quality (or new) really. i want to make some shit. sigh. i’m so lame.

after that we went to this REAL rummage sale. unfortunately it was the last day of the rummage sale and we missed out on the good stuff, but i got a bunch of christmas cards which i think are fucking hilarious. i’ll scan some sometime. i love giving people christmas cards that are like… ridiculous and funny. ahhaha oh man. i have some ridiculous ones. i think i got at least like 50, and a couple books (50 years of best photos from life magazine and a disneyland book)… and it all only cost me $2.00!!!!!!!!

i’m watching “jesus camp” on television. these people are the most insane christians ever. fundamentalism for the lose. i am terrified of this country.

this movie and the events of the past week remind me that i can never ever be christian again. i don’t care if you’re christian if you don’t want to infringe on the rights and thoughts of others with your christianity. don’t christians get it? god gives people free wills so they can choose. don’t like that muslim neighbor of yours? get the fuck over it. god isn’t forcing them to be christian, so you shouldn’t force them to be christian either.

it’s so easy to praise the lord when things are going well but so difficult to point out the bad. this is and will always be the case with religion.

i am not so vain as to say god does not exist, because i don’t believe it. nor do i believe that god does exist. i just don’t give a fuck. not at all. you’re not going to know either way. faith in athiesm or in god are both blind. so………. i think i will just go with the flow until something or someone proves to me otherwise. and if they do, maybe i’ll think about changing my mind. but for now… these things are of no concern to me. i think what’s more important is making positive change in the *tangible* world through love and compassion and not through bigotry and repression. no thank you.

this country is terrifying. i wish to move. i don’t know where to move to, though. jeanette is moving to london. europe is too expensive. maybe mexico. hah.

i went on the ave today and there was some thing in this old closed down clothing store. someone had rented it out and put on this exhibit, with posterboards and videos. the whole thing was like, “psychiatry is institutionalized murder” and junk.

well, i thought it was a little strange… i mean… who would do this? i must say, at first i thought they were funded by some hokey organization. when i first got the flyer off the street, i was like, thinking… “wow! this is printed on really good paper. i wonder how a hokey organization like this one can afford it!” particularly because their posterboards and shit outside and in the window looked pretty ghetto. anyway, i was walking by the first time to go to the post office and when i came back, i decided to stop in. i only had, say, 10 minutes to spare because i had to go to german kurasu.

upon first entering, they had a bunch of tv’s on the right wall that i could see. the old, balding guy who handed me the flyer initially told me to sit down at the first television. i asked him how long. he said like, five minutes, so i sat down. it started off with a montage of news clips. nothing impressive. then it went into some quotes from various college professors and things… NO FACTS. JUST OPINIONS. they also have a few quotes from psychiatrists which were cut and pasted to make it sound like the psychiatrists didn’t know what they were doing or knew anything about “mental health.” blahblah.

it seemed quite propaganda-esque. anyway, i got bored after the first video, so i didn’t move onto the second one, as i had been told to do. i instead looked at this little posterboard which described torture techniques previously used by oldskool psychiatrists. i read it for a while while the people in my former group watched the second video, and then i continued to look around. for something about this organization. or SOMETHING. i wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but i went to this table that was layered with a bunch of food — croissants and things — and next to it were some pamphlets. the pamphlets hadcatchy subject titles on it, similar to the kind of thing you’d find on a drug pamphlet that says “ECSTASY” and the next one would be “METHAMPHETAMINES” etc. etc. instead this one had titles like “RACISM” (there was a word before that but i forget what)… crap, i forget the other ones. they all had to do with social causes or social wrongs or something, though. anyway, i picked up the racism one and leafed through it but there was nothing worth looking at i didn’t think (i should have taken one, in actuality). on the back, though, it said that this entire exhibit was held by scientologists for something something. and then it all began to make sense. i never knew they were so godamn sneaky, but it made PERFECT sense. that’s why these people have money to make these flyers and put up these flatscreen tvs. that’s why these people can rent out this old store. no crappy little non-profit group would be doing that. this is who’s behind it. AH. *light shines down from the heavens*.

i imagine that if you watch all of those videos in sequential order, as they encourage you to do, you’ll be brainwashed. no diz.

some asian guy in my original group was like, lapping the shit up, though. wonder what his deal was. they also had some people sitting against the frontside of their room, with their backs facing the entrance side… and they looked like they were counseling people or something. i didn’t get a good look, but they were getting individual sessions with people who i assume were people who had watched those videos.

i’m quite interested in going back and checking this thing out some more, actually. perhaps i shall tomorrow. if i come back brainwashed, well, you’ll know why.

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?