inside the wonderful world of vee

man, nearly forgot to mention james’ wedding this past weekend…

james and grace got married at some random church in the south bay (i know not what city even). hip-hop wedding. they met on hip-hop dance team, so they interjected a lot of hip-hop dancing into it… for example, during their first dance, they danced like normal, and then during the hook, broke down into a hip-hop routine… then went back to normal… then more hip-hop… then normal. amusing.

during grace and her father’s dance, grace’s dad had a headpiece with a mic attached to it and he sang, “the way you look tonight,” which was very impressive cause he actually had a good voice. ridiculously talented wedding.

the night closed out with another dance… they brought their church’s hip-hop dance team and all did a routine together. grace is goooooood dancer.

you know what’s cute? grace is a teacher and evidently all her students were invited to her wedding… lololololol. young, elementary school students. how ridiculously cute.

and finally… pastor jack’s marriage message. :D

he started it off by saying that when he first became the youth pastor of tcbc, james’ parents asked james what he thought of the new pastor. james was about 12 then. james said, “he’s alright. he plays basketball at least.” so… pastor jack decided to use a basketball analogy. HAHAHA.

three tenets of marriage, as it is compared to basketball:
1) never give up. in basketball, you always play until the end. don’t even think about the d word. it doesn’t exist. everything can always be worked out. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
2) the third quarter is the most important quarter. your first quarter is your life with your parents, your second quarter is your life in college, and the wedding is half-time. the next day is the first day of the third quarter, your marriage. fourth quarter? he didn’t mention that. what’s that? death and sucky oldness? no idea!
3) dream team. the cheesiest of all. prefaced by something like, in the 1960’s, the u.s. brought their basketball dream team to the olympics. this is the dream team — grace and james. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

*__* hilarioso.

man. coming home can’t help but render me a negative nancy. no wonder i was so damn emo in high school. seems like the less time i spend away from home (read: my mom) the more positive i am.

yesterday after dinner, my mom turns to my brother and is like, “THANKS FOR THE PHOTO FRAME!” uhh, and i was like, “WHAT ABOUT ME?” the person who bought the photo frame and uploaded pictures on it to BEGIN with… my brother didn’t do shit. he hasn’t even paid me for it yet. W T F. this shit always happens. i am starting to hate giving them presents.

the bitching never stops. yesterday i wore a pair of sneakers to the wedding, with my dress. i made sure to hop in the car really quick before mom could see. later in the car she asked me what shoes i wore and i mumbled sneakers and she freaked out. later she thought it looked okay, though, particularly because people also said it was fine and fashionable.

strangely they were somewhat lax about my lip ring. at first they were like WTF but they got used to it and then started to make fun of me and each other — they went from absolutely hating it and saying i wasn’t a little kid anymore to my mom telling my dad that she would put one on his top and bottom lip and sew them together. lol.

today i was going to go to san francisco by myself so that i could go to the moma. that woulda been nice but my mom ended up tagging along. dreadful. so many complaints about every little fucking thing possible. fuck. i can see myself like that sometimes and it’s fucking terrifying. not nearly AS much but man. too much even if it’s half as much. jesus.

sometimes her bitching is concern but most of the time it’s just really really annoying. maybe a combination of both actually. bleh. at the MoMA she also hated all of the art that was not photo-real or kind of intricate… basically anything that is not straight-forward painting. meh. i care not to explain such things although all i said to her about some of the older ‘uncreative’ pieces was that the reason the pieces were significant was because they were created in 1900, not in 2008. i think that went over her head and/or she did not care.

during dinner we ran into nancy’s parents and there was talk about how it was great that i came back for james’ wedding. earlier in the dinner my mom brought up that since her and dad gave $500 as a wedding present, hopefully james and grace didn’t think that the $500 was including me and phil as well. i mean, that’s a reasonable sentiment to have but when james’ parents came by she was like, “yeah! vivian was sooo excited to come back and told me to hurry up and go buy james a wedding present because she couldn’t wait to buy them a present.” LIKE WTF. what kind of freaking lie is that. and to like, one of your best friends?? so fucking fake.

afterwards, i was like, “why did you say that?” and she said it was to just make sure that they knew that i had bought my own separate present. it’s not like it wasn’t written on the freaking cards. FREAKS. chinese people, i swear. my dad doesn’t give a fuck but my mom, man. insane. so yeah pretty much i wanted to die all day. +__+ good thing i had a book to keep me occupied part of the time…

and uh yeah that’s why i won’t be moving back anytime soon. i think i will go pretty much INSANE. i am *definitely* the black sheep of the family. jeebus.

that being said every time i come back now i’ve been exploring san francisco, as i never really was much allowed to go there during high school except for the occasional trip (followed by really anal prodding). yesterday sherry and i went to golden gate park — which i have not been to before — and went to the deyoung museum inside it. it was kind of rad. <a href=”http://artandmusic.wordpress.com”>see pictures here!</a>

on a random note, i always get sick in enclosed cars from the fumes… i always thought they were kinda harmless though but my parents got a rental car and since california requires (i think this is a rather new law) stickers on things that have cancer-causing materials in them, the window of this ford focus — which smelled inside — said that items used in building the car are known to the state of california to cause cancer. so i’m not just being a freak. it’s good to open the window, kids. being holed up in a stuffy, smelly new car is BAD. good to know my being nauseous from new car smells is actually legitimate.

i’m listening to… … and you will know us by the trail of the dead, the blood brothers (no, they do not sound like the fall of troy at all, despite maybe the voice).
i’m feeling… neither here or there, really!

12:51 am — so i like never write in this journal anymore… the reason i thought was because life is soo boring. it might be more boring compared to before… maybe. but it’s not bad. it’s just not as dynamic. before i did all sorts of random stuff… and people would do them, more or less… that, or, if they didn’t, i wouldn’t care and i’d just go and do my own thing. i guess things have changed. and i guess now if people aren’t willing to do things with me, i’d much rather just not do it at all. i guess i’m jaded. why, i’m not entirely sure, because it’s not like i have done everything in the world. in addition to that, though, there is just so much shit to do when i’m in washington regarding redefine — it’s like a constant work that needs to be done, and setting my own schedule is great, sometimes, but i’m losing the willpower. i used to have a lot. but i guess too much lack of a schedule is making things kind of hard. during freshman year i’d get up at like 8 in the morning before class to finish all of my homework. now i can’t even get up if i have planned everything in advance. JAAAADED.

i guess a lot of it is being disappointed by a lot of people. starting a magazine isn’t easy at all, and while there have been a lot lot LOT of people who have helped — some of which were unexpected — there are also a lot who have been quite the opposite… a lot who you’d think would be able to help you the most but in fact let you down the most. it’s not a recent thing, and it has been that way since the inception, and needless to say, it’s disappointing. and it makes you wonder if those people really do give a rat’s ass about you. see, the way i see it is, if a friend of yours has the vision to pursue anything that is passion-based… be it being in a band, or being a dj, or starting a company, as a friend, it’s your duty to give them some kind of support. by telling people, or by attending a show, or whatever the fuck. i am cheap with money, but i wouldn’t NOT go to see a friend’s show just because i’m cheap. if informed about the event, i’d do my best to go and show up to give the support, simply because it’s not easy following any kind of dream, and people need any kind of help they can get. i’ve gone to a handful of shows and done shit i can for friends in bands. i mean, it’s not a helluva lot, but the support is there and shit. and it doesn’t matter if it’s a super good friend — it’s a respect that they are actually trying to do something. and when people don’t reciprocate that kind of thing for something you are trying so fucking hard to do, it’s — needless to say — extremely disheartening. and it makes you think these people must not care that much about you… so why should you care so much about them? and so it comes, the disassembly and disintegration of things… and the not really giving a fuck. i know once upon a time i was a huge flake, and that sucked too… it’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s similar, in a way.

anyway, i’m back at home in california. nothing much to do here, but this is a relatively good break, i think. i have a lot of work to do (although i have spent a large amount of time playing “diablo2″, roflskates). since i’ve decided to play d2, a buttload of poeple have also joined in, although i haven’t really played with any of them except for alex and lenny. what sucks thouhg, is that i left my glasses in washington cause ithought i had a pair here, but i cannot locate them, and staring at the computer for a long time is, essentially, death. but whatevers!!!

we’re having a potluck on friday and i’m going to sherry’s tomorrow for a potluck. wahOo. going back on sunday. going to try and meet up with liz and andy [crossett] on saturday. we’ll see how that goes. maybe meet up with one of my writers in SF as well. we’ll see, though. but the food is good. and this is probably the most people who have been back to cali for break in a long time. so that’s cool. i don’t have too much to say. the last month has consisted of… going to a circa survive show with ben [garrison], attending macguyver marathons @ cynthia’s because she borrowed the whole first season from her friend, went to a spacecraft launch event of their new officespace (lot of pretentious artsy hipster people and snowboarders and stuff, and basically i went with andy and john [gillanders] and none of us knew anyone so we really just did nothing but steal food and shit), playing a lot of diablo2, watching a lot more tv than i’d like, staying up late, waking up late, procrastinating, being frustrated with cd printers who were a week and a half late and therefore delayed the putting out of redefine, crying, attempting to help out in an elementary school classroom (the kids are so fucking cute, but i don’t think i’m really that useful… but i feel bad just kind of leaving after one time and not really saying shit… but the teacher sucks, and … other things…), being emo, getting some part-time contract job doing tech writing transcriptions, spending hours inside of costco like it’s a museum, reading (read “a million little pieces” by james fey, which is a book about a drug addict’s trip through rehab, and i think everyone should read it, “extreme encounters (which is a book on what it’s like to go through different things, like be shot, get stuck in quicksand, get bitten by fire ants, etc… awesome idea but poorly written and could’ve been a helluva lot better), and now i’m reading a book on exorcisms in america (so far its just said how exorcisms are a lot more prevalent than the catholic church knew, and that the whole exorcism craze blew up after hollywood showcased it with “the exorcist”… a sociological book that is not bad at all, especially considering i bought it for $1.99!), playing a lot of “katamari damacy 2″ and some other random crap. but that essentially sums it all up, i think. life is slow now, and it’s relaxing in some ways, but extremely unproductive as well. i function better and stress myself out less when things are fast and regimented, i think. kind of why i wanted to go back to school sometimes, but now that i’m graduated, the motivation is not there. i’m not sure what i’m doing here, but i probably do need to fix… something.

(arlen’s response:)
Howdy do Vee- You know people really genuinely care about you and your endeavor. I think it’s a bit extremist and unreasonable to presumptuously assume people don’t care about you just because they don’t make a contribution to your mag in the way you foresaw it. That really bothers me, but not because you’re being judgemental. You’re being so damn hard on yourself! STFU NOOB. I’d donate $100 to your mag if I had it, but certain things don’t allow me to do so (e.g., debt, it’s not easy living without asking your parents for money). It doesn’t mean people don’t care about you god damnit! People are just the fucking product of their circumstance; if I was a spoiled rich valley girl who didn’t give a fuck about your mag, I could easily donate $1000 to amuse myself as I laid in my lawn chair getting fed grapes by a few male strippers. All I’m saying is that’s just a terrible and inaccurate way to quantify if someone cares about your endeavor, and an even worse way to qualify whether someone cares about you. SO STFU AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT YERSELF NOOB, Arlen

i’m listening to… lenny talking on the phone.

1:06 am
coming home reminds me of why i told myself that i wouldn’t stay home. must find job in washington and must work there and must stay there…!!!! too much nagging! and bitching! and you-can’t-do-anything right-ings!!!

went to q-cup today and saw xinlei, claire, fontaine, and richard, and it was pretty rad. caught up. it was good times!!!!!! !!!! !! ! and that’s it…

i’m listening to… nothing. my brother’s playing SSX.
i’m feeling… okay, but a little bit of stomach not-good-feeling-ness…

conversation of the day (actually, an old one… ah, yes, miscommunication…!)
“so the gas station wouldn’t let us use their restroom, so we all had to pee in a bush.”
“yeah, sometimes if you have a big ass, they don’t let you use the restroom.”
“what? like i’m going to overflow the toilet or something?”
(it’s supposed to be, “yeah, sometimes if you don’t buy gas, they don’t let you use the restroom.”)

1:36 am — man, i still don’t have a ride back from the airport tomorrow *cries a river.

so today i went to san francisco with family and got a pair of pants, and there were these makeup sets that were 50% off, so we bought like five of them… i don’t really know why, but they were really really worth it… all this nail stuff and lipstick stuff and crap and lotion and blah, and only like $10 for the whole set or something

came home and met up with tomiko, claire, dahye (who i had to guilt-trip into hanging out with me :P), agnes, and phil [wu], and we went to oakland to eat soondooboo and go karaoke. i think all that korean food = indigestion (whatever that is), cause i feel like schiznack. the japanese music videos they had were fucking heelarious… =)

karaoke was alright… a little alcohol would have made it more than alright. X:

bugger… afterwards we went to a soju bang (just me, dahye, phil wu, and phil [hsieh])… and it was cool… phil and phil drank some ohbi (or something), and me and dahye watched, and we got slightly lost on the way home, but random turning on random streets managed to get us on the highway (instead of east oakland, thankfully). ah, yes, oakland, where security guards smoke weed with you in the middle of the street. =P

phil got me the new ak1200 cd… wOot! well, @ least i THINK it’s new, because i don’t have it, but then again, i don’t have any of his albums. it’s hella mellow, though, like ltj bukem or something. some songs are good… others are, meh.

gambatte.

i’m listening to… nothing.
i’m feeling… odd.

1:49 am — today was probably one of the oddest days that i’ve had in a long ass freaking time. okay, so i woke up, and had my brother take me to the bart station (which is like a above-ground-subway thing) so i could pick up my car because my dad drives it to the bart station in the morning. unfortunately, i grabbed the wrong set of keys and had to wait almost a half hour for him to return and give me his keys -__-; what a n00b i am.

anyway, so i picked up claire and we went to berkeley to sherry’s place, and then sherry drove me, claire, herself, and jeanette up to union square in sf. we picked a spot across the street from old navy and sat down… in the little doorway between gap and anthropologie i think. actually, i’m too lazy to finish this right now, so i’ll finish it tomorrow.

(four days later, i have decided to finally finishing updating this):
so, on our excursion in the middle of the street, we met many an interesting person. here are some statistics, cause i’m a sociology geek.

[ TOTAL RESPONSES ]
48: HALF RESPONSE (WAVE, SMILE, “HI”)
35: NEGATIVE RESPONSES (IGNORED, LOOKED AWAY)
26: POSITIVE RESPONSES (CONVERSED WITH US)
—
[ HALF RESPONSES ]
01: ASIAN MALES
02: ASIAN FEMALES
03: WINKS
03: PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN OF US
—
[ POSITIVE RESPONSES ]
01: HOMELESS BLACK MALES
02: HOMELESS WHITE MALES
02: BLACK FEMALES
06: BLACK MALES
07: WHITE FEMALES
09: WHITE MALES

i actually wish i could have categorized them better, but because they were done in the spur of the moment, they were very inaccurate and hurried. responses only include people who we actually made an attempt to greet.

[ CONCLUSIONS ]
- asian people are mean.

the first two people we got were homeless people and jeanette and claire were scared to death of them. one homeless white guy pulled up his shirt to reveal his stomach and he had all these needle marks and stuff… or something… that’s what everyone else said anyway; i had no idea what it was ;( i thought he was sick ;X

so then this black guy comes along… who ended up sticking next to us the whole time we were there. the first second he saw us he gave us job descriptions… i was public relations (because i had the sign), sherry was sargeant in arms (who was in charge of security), jeanette was the leader, and claire was security. he then pronounced himself to be the ceo of our newfound company and i made him a little sign that said “ceo” which he displayed on the rim of his hat ^__^ he sang a little song for us too… which he later sang for another girl. i don’t remember much of it, but i remember lines from it that said stuff like “you smell so sweet; you could be perfume” and “you make me so rich; you could be cash”. lol. he didn’t sing bad though. while he was singing, he was saying how he was “on stage” because it was a black man singing to four asian girls… and then he kept saying how people must be thinking “why is this black man talking to four asian girls”? he talked about how him and his wife were separated because he had a ‘temper problem’… O__o; and how he worked for the government for like eleven years or something. it was neat.

next along we had this guy who worked at puma who became our buddy… he was on his lunch break and he went to go get chinese food and on the way there he started talking to us and saying that it would be easy for four attractive asian girls sitting on the side of street to get people to talk to them. so he went, got his food, came back, talked to us a little, went to eat his food, and came back again later… and he was trying to get jeanette’s number to find out about clubs and crap… supposedly, but yeah, that didn’t work. oh for a while we were saying no girls would talk to us and so he was holding up our neon sign and trying to get girls to talk to us, but that didn’t work =(

then a well-dressed black man came up and he told us he was a tapdancer, and we convinced him to do a little tapdance for us. he started talking to the other people about how some girl was sueing him and how messed up it was, but i wasn’t paying attention because i was listening to these two other people talk =(

i wasn’t listening partly because i was listening to this little brat who thought we were hella weird for sitting there and he told me that, basically. and then he was like “okay, so people are just supposed to talk to you about anything?” and i said yeah, and he was like “then do you know anything about carpet-munching?” i’m like “omg, okay, i can’t help you out there, sorry. ask one of these guys.” and then he got all pissy and was like “you should change your sign to ‘talk to me, but i won’t be able to help you with anything’.” i mean, stfu you little brat! how would i know anything about CARPET-MUNCHING! i mean really!

a gay-but-not-so-gay homeless guy also showed up asking us if we wanted some beer, heh. he had a bunch of food he got from some funeral and he was going to give it to his friends because he had been “blessed” with the food. i thought that was cute, but then he got all weird… ;X he asked us all, “so, who here has gotten an orgasm?” and he guessed that i might have, claire hasn’t, and that sherry and jeanette have. haha. then he was asking me, “have you ever dated a homeless man?” and i said “no”, and then he said, “do you want to?” and i thought he said something else, so i said, “yes” and he’s like “really? then give me your number and address.” and i’m like “oh uhhh i think you’re a little too old for me… yeah.” haha. but yes… i concluded a couple days ago that’s what i need… a gay guy who doesn’t know he’s gay (he was soooooooo gay). i started ignoring him because he kept saying how i had a nice smile and nice eyes, so i just talked to our black ceo… and then i guess everyone else said he said something about how he had to leave because he couldn’t continue sitting there and not being able to do anything about his [boner]… and i guess he got up and left with a BONER. blech. queer eye for a straight man.

we also got like two groups of two middle-aged white, female teachers… they were all very nice and thought we had a terrific idea.

two other white female students appeared and took pictures of us for us… and they were really nice… they were doing surveys or something. *shrug.

but yeah… asian people are REALLY mean. we passed SO many and only three even acknowledged us at ALL… and two of the people who did acknowledge us were fobs, which gives the others no excuses. two others took pictures of us but didn’t say a word to us… stupid tourists. xP

later that night we just got some boba in berkeley at sweetheart’s… and met up with richard and dottie and co… and so me and claire decided to go back to room with a cue and play pool to end the day. voila.