inside the wonderful world of vee

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

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

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

i just found out… like a couple weeks ago… that in bullfighting, THEY KILL THE BULL. this is news to me. no wonder people consider it barbaric. here i was thinking it was not that bad. talk about misinformed.

in other news… i don’t think i’ll be going to mexico for dia de los muertos because there are too many people of the muertos variety as of late: mexican drug wars??? why have i heard nothing about this stuff. this is all very odd. fuck. why don’t we just all legalize drugs. then it won’t be as big of a problem. maybe. mixed feelings.

there’s a bunch of other crap i should probably write about but i don’t feel like it. got computer from old job, and giganto monitor. wooooooot. got bbq grill (or alex did) from lowe’s today. woooooot. been applying to a million jobs. boring. no real news on that front. have enlisted some magazine sales people for redefine. not sure how that’s going to work out. got a new piercing — one that’s actually pretty small. :D oh man. i need to cancel my newspaper subscription asap. setting up my old desktop also means i get to listen to a lot more of my old MP3s. which is fucking fantastic because i was kind of in a musical drought whenever i was at home. the home is hellllllzaz dark inside, though, which sucks because trendi was always chock full of sunlight and now the lack of sunlight is not exciting whatsoever. been playing a lot of ninja gaiden. everything else is shit, though — this whole past week has been *extremely* unmemorable. i definitely need to get on my shit. been in a bit of a black hole for the past week *__*

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

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

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

text is kinda hard to read, so:

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

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

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

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

come this friday, the 11th, i’ll be officially out of a job. fucking a. i’m not usually so worried about money because it always works out even when i’m just doing freelance crap but for this month — because i like to pay off my credit card bills 100% and not be in debt forever — it doesn’t seem like it’ll be working out. it better work out. i applied for unemployment since we (summer and i) got laid off due to trendi’s lack of money. well well. so. if you know anyone looking for freelance or contract designers, hit me up. until then, i will be nervously pondering about my near future courses of action *__*

on another note, i’m going to spain and ireland in september, and fuck, since i don’t have a job now, i’d might as well just stay in spain forever, right? AND go to burning man?! too bad all of that shit costs money… lots of money…

lately i’ve been in a bit of a funk so i haven’t written much. usually after the redefine print deadline push i pretty much want to die and therefore do not do much except for veg out. been playing a lot of ninja gaiden II with alex (and eddie the other day), watching a lotta siff movies reviews here, and working a lot on sushimonsters.com and other projects — new sushimonsters blog, too! wewt wewt. but yeah, if the last (current… spring…) issue of redefine doesn’t sell well… like 50%+, i think i’m done with printing. we’ll see………………………… it’s just………… too hard. yo. i wonder if i should try to hire someone one last time, though, to sell ads… i think i will try that maybe and see how effective they are… :/ but really it seems pointless. hmm. weighing the options here.

but yeah, if the last (current… spring…) issue of redefine doesn’t sell well… like 50%+, i think i’m done with printing. we’ll see………………………… it’s just………… too hard. yo. i wonder if i should try to hire someone one last time, though, to sell ads… i think i will try that maybe and see how effective they are… :/ but really it seems pointless. hmm. weighing the options here. oh yeah, amanda, the boston terrier i used to live with, had like a heart attack earlier this week. maybe she will die soon T__T must visit.

cali tomorrow. james’ wedding. too bad i’m missing a fuckload of events this weekend in seattle. GODAMMIT. if i had known i woulda just stayed here.

anyway, last friday we had a really interesting conversation at work. i wish i’d written about it earlier cause i can’t much remember now but yeah… here’s an attempt.

we got started talking about catastrophes somehow… natural disasters, and then went into some schpiel about how we needed to protect ourselves from natural disasters. first up, earthquakes and how seattle is long overdue for one. we assess our building and think that it should probably be okay since it’s brick and we’re on the top floor. there’s also the olympic sculpture park right next to us.

“triangle of life,” i told them. “not duck and cover.” there were visions of perplexion until i described to them the triangle of life routine and then they understood.

we decide that we’ll take a computer tower — probably mine, since it’s closest to the window and most bulky — to smash our single-paned windows (would be quite a feat really since there are wood bars in between). then we would jump to safety — or wait… we would take one of our ikea tabletops (which is basically just a flat sheet of wood) and use it to lower people… although sucks for the last person, who we’d have to catch on the bottom.

then we’d run to the olympic sculpture park and hide under this black squarish sculpture they have, since its underside is large triangles and it wouldn’t be smushed or anything. after all, there’s a lot of high skyscrapers all around us even though our building is not.

since we’re near the water, kristoph mentions that he has read that seattle’s ports are a top place to potentially smuggle nuclear weapons. what’re we going to do about that?

summer brings up indy’s using a lead-lined oldschool refrigerator to escape from nuclear holocaust in the new indiana jones movie, and we decide we need some of those in our office in case of nuclear war. and who knows, maybe it’ll work in other events, too. someone brings up that we probably won’t even notice that the nuclear radiation is coming until it’s too late, but kristoph says we can see the mushroom cloud before effects. i suggest that with every and any small move, we’ll just jump in the fridge. doesn’t matter what it is — we can find out later. summer says the problem is that we won’t know when to come out. good point. kristoph says that we’ll probably end up in there when the ups guy comes and freak him out.

but then we think… in the event of an earthquake or something, a tsunami is a big deal. what’re we going to do about that? we decide that we should put our lead-lined fridges outside the building and use little chutes to go into them (after all, the islands will feel the wrath of the tsunami before we do)… and we’ll have little drills inside the fridge so that we can drill a hole to eventually open the door of the fridge. and oxygen tanks for when we get out of the fridge. i mention that the fridge has to be IN the water for maximum safety (since sherry’s ex-roommate was in thailand during their last tsunami and she was in the water scuba diving and was safe, but when she got up, the boat they had come in — and all the people from that boat — were gone). hell while we’re at it, why don’t we just build a lead lined submarine so that we can all get to safety? custom-made. with persicope.

then comes talk of the fact that if seattle has a really long earthquake, the ground will liquify (solid liquifaction) and that buildings will sink into the ground. scurry.

that’s the gist of the convo. i’m sure i left some shit out but man, was it amusing.

really, though, living here is scurry.

there’s something interesting about working at trendi.com, and it is the fact that we somehow always manage to get into conversations about things that people are traditionally “not supposed to talk about.” and i mean, that’d be fine and normal if it were just once in a while, but it seems that EVERY time we get into a conversation as a group, it is always about something “uncomfortable,” be it racism, politics, religion, etc.

so, it seemed only apt that on the return of summer’s month-long vacation to chile, that we would get into a loud and largely unfettered conversation about racism in the local cherry street cafe (which, by the way, has the best fucking feta sandwich ever… maybe a feta sandwich doesn’t SOUND great, but it is GLORIOUS).

also in conjunction with normalcy in the world of trendi.com was the fact that summer and i largely agreed whereas kristoph didn’t quite understand or agree with our sentiments. jenny was not here today, but i reckon she would have been holding the middle ground of opinions, as she often does.

so what was our discussion about today? summer had never been too much into united states’ politics. she largely does not vote because she considers them to all be puppets being waved around by the same hands. i can see that to a degree, but i still vote myself (this topic was the root of a former in-office debate as well). upon returning from chile, however, she became a little more interested in american politics simply because she had been away for so long and had no grasp of the political climate in chile. i guess it made politics of any sort seem important in some way? i’m not sure.

anyway, barack obama has been getting flamed for going to a church that has a mission statement somewhere along the lines of aiming to help the “black community.” we got in a discussion about that, and kristoph’s take was that, in order to counteract racism, we need to get rid of labels like “black” or “white” that further divide the groups into their own little niches. he also thought that, dammit, they’re a church. they should be helping everyone, not just the black community. i can absolutely see that argument, but summer and i’s take on it was that what the “black community” is fighting in the short run is not racism, but socioeconomic inequalities. it’s difficult to fight racism since it is engrained into minds and opinions, but it is easier to fight something more concrete, like inadequate schooling, broken families, gang problems, etc. we thought that since people obviously already live in a community surrounded by blacks, they are comfortable with the term “blacks” and identify with it, and therefore, it is a necessary evil in order to get them onto the next step. after all, the largest divider between people is wealth, not race. take care of wealth first, and then take care of race.

summer brought up an example that, had it not been for people who had identified themselves in these groups during the civil rights movement, less would have been accomplished in terms of bringing about “equality.” kristoph brought up that it was these self-labeled identifiers of black and white that brought about the problem in the first place. both arguments make sense. it is unfortunate that such an arbitrary label makes such a big difference.

summer grew up in california and i guess her mother had always brought her to churches or meetings where people spoke of empowering the “black community,” so it was normal to her, and it seemed weird to her that people would make such a huge deal out of it. kristoph, on the other hand, had grown up primarily in canada and europe, and those places don’t place as huge of an impact on race as the united states does, so the whole idea of people being so caught up over obama going to this church just seems to be out of his understanding and grasp.

anyway, it was all extremely interesting, but it also got extremely loud. i counted a couple looks from people… one from a guy who was on the phone near us, looking over because we were so loud i assume he had a hard time hearing the telephone… and another from this group of three people — two white-haired elderly people, and one younger, tattooed dude. we saw them, mid-hooting-and-hollering, looking at us, and decided we needed to go because we were probably “offending people.” this was two hours into our long, long lunch debate. when i looked up at the elderly couple, both the man and woman were smiling at me, in a nice but still strange way. i would have liked to loop them into the conversation.

by the end of the conversation, none of us had changed our opinions on the matter at all, but we agreed that if obama’s speech (that he gave about the issue of him going to that church) was meant to spark debate and conversation about the topic of race, it had succeeded. i guess he wrote the speech himself, too, which was cool. unfortunately, i haven’t read it. i guess i should. but what’s cool is that the members of trendi.com are quite the melting pot. we have the general white bread girl from new jersey (lul), a half-black, half-white girl from compton, myself the asian from something something, and a polish-russian immigrant from canada who has lived all around the world. so i guess since we come from such different places, conversations are always interesting and sometimes enlightening.

other than when kristoph and jenny talk about the housing market and stocks. that bores the shit out of me. it’s like eating dinner at my house all over again.

but not really back as i never really was born there but you know. still.

therefore, it is time…
it is time to start re-learning some chinese in preparation of going to taiwan this november…

then after that, it’s time to learn russian, in preparation for russia next year.

i’m thinking of taking the TEFL so i can live somewhere else for like 3 months and then get english-teaching jobs around the world. the downsides to that, though… is that i don’t know if i’m brave enough to contribute so much time outside of the country where i know no one. being nomadic has its downfalls in the fact that well, it’s hard to get to know people for extended periods of times?! the upsides to that is well, traveling. but being that i’m a pretty nostalgic person, i’m not sure that’d work. that or i’d only want to go on three month campaigns to places to teach. crap. what to do with this life?!! i don’t know. all i need is a boyfriend husband person something significant other who likes traveling… that’d be cool.

i’m going to talk to dr. rarick tomorrow night hopefully about maybe getting some kind of experience in mental health or social work… i don’t know. all i know is i feel like i’m going blind staring at a computer all day. i’ve thought this before but lately it actually is hard to look at stuff. looking at the tv from not even halfway across the room with my contacts on = blurry… i can’t read road signs at night… it’s all kind of weird and all pointing to bad…

really all i want to do is do graphic design on a freelance basis, part-time. i don’t like this full-time graphic design thing… it’s wearing staring at a computer all day. regardless of what the reason is.

i’m moving from bellevue back to seattle starting september 1st. living with senor ryan pangilinan. it’s weird… for the first time since like almost when we first started dating things with lenny are extremely good. i don’t know why. it’s good, though. except it’s bad since we’re not living together starting in a few days. strange how things work… or is it a contributing factor? i don’t know. :[

xinlei is going to come up and visit end of september. sherry is going to be here next week. yays all around.

tofu dogs are SO terribly gross. i had a craving for hot dogs after going to snowboard connection to work today, so i decided to buy some tofu dogs. NO. NO NO. NO!!! NOOOOOOOOOO. so gross. although i must admit — the aftertaste tastes like hot dog. the during taste, however, tastes like shit. BLEHHHHH!!!

went to snowboard connection to work for the first time in a few weeks today. new store, right across the street from REI. i’m a bigger fan of the old one; the new one is too mall-like for my tastes; the old one had a lot more soul. maybe they can do some stuff to make this one have a little more personality, though. it’s just really squeaky clean right now. seems like a lot of people are quitting… 8( the place where the marketing/web people work is in some other warehouse that is not connected to the actual store… it’s really smelly too. smells like trash! MMM! and lots of disgruntled workers in that section! MMM! disgruntled workers. gotta love them. they should be opening up the old store again soon, though, which is cool… cause that store just looks so badass!

here are some pics of it: 1) the exterior of the store; 2) the shoes; 3) some fly new skate decks!!

some graffiti near the freeway by snocon (wow i suck with descriptions)… joe [2h], cliff [pg!], and bigfoot.

listening to — head automatica, something corporate.

i never get to write anymore. it kind of fucking sucks. the justification is kind of like this: i feel like i’m better (or have more potential) at graphics, and therefore i expend more energy towards that. writing… it just seems like the words i write and the things i think are just recycled unless i am writing a journal entry. but when i’m writing an article or something of that sort… it’s always the same words, the same format, the same lack of inspiration. therefore, i haven’t spent much time on writing. there just isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said, i guess? and with all of the things on the graphics front and the life front that i need to spend time learning, why bother, it seems… but i find that when i don’t write, things feel pretty off. it’s probably the only way that i can truly express myself, whether people read it or not. but i don’t feel comfortable writing in a journal when other people are around, so i just don’t write in it as much anymore. there are a lot more distractions these days — a lot more things to keep me from really sitting down and just writing down each day. it kind of feels just pointless. i don’t know why, though… why wasn’t it pointless before and why is it pointless now? certainly not THAT much has changed, has it?

perhaps it has…

i’ve seen the new darren aronofsky movie, “the fountain,” a couple times in the past month. it’s amazing… to me, anyway. amazing that he can craft such a movie, although there are a lot of haters. ebert and roeper (fuck those bitches) said it was “one of the worst movies of the year,” which, even if you fucking hate the premise, could not be true if you look at just the visuals and the music… the music is amazing. the visuals are unique. maybe some people think the story is a load of bullshit, but whatever. but definitely a lot of people seem to not like it… because afterwards outside of theatres you see people talking about how much they hated it. but mostly i think it’s because they don’t understand it. but who knows.

i’ve also gotten back into music, somewhat. for a while i was definitely burnt out on music — so burnt out that i didn’t really want to listen to it at all. it just all seemed — once again — so fucking pointless. why was i expending this energy to write about bands who barely even care? why do i even care? what the fuck am i getting out of all this?

but i guess lately i have been getting back to basics and trying to re-find myself? could it be? i forget what song it was, but a song came on in a movie or something… i vaguely think it was the decemberists, but i don’t think it was. but either way… the feeling it gave me was a really comforting one… and it just made me think how long it has been since music has given me a feeling like that. for the half a year before the past month or two, i’ve just been robotically listening to music for the most part, with little care or concern of growth. but whatever that song was that came on… reminded me of how much i used to like music. i used to be one of those people that would turn on music the first second i got home — the first second i stepped into a room. that’s the kind of passion for music that got me into creating a magazine in the first place. i don’t know what made me lose that. i’m trying to find out.

but anyway. i’ve been going to a lot of concerts and drum n’ bass shows (well, not a LOT of drum n’ bass shows, but compared to my uh, 1 in the past two years before that, 2 in 2 months is definitely a lot). dieselboy is coming up as well on december 12th. sucks cause all of the concerts i want to go to are at these big ass fucking venues. so it costs a lot of money. but whatever in the fucking hell. it’s okay.

i got a new job at the snowboard connection, helping them do web marketing stuff. i’ll keep my comments minimal for now, but they are definitely pretty um, disorganized. i think i can add a lot of potential growth to their web status, but that all depends, i think…

i’ve also been working at volt doing game testing a bit and they owe me a fuckload of money. i switched my address and i haven’t really gotten anything mailed to me since. they owe me literally four paychecks (personally, i think it’s 5, although they claim otherwise). so… fuck. i also am owed a fuck load of money by lenny and through a bunch of other facets, so… godamnit.

going to las vegas this christmas with my family. that should be interesting. get to watch cirque du soleil’s “o,” so i’m happy about that. asides from that, though, i’m not so sure i really care for vegas. but we’ll see. maybe i’ll become a gambling monster, since i’ve only gambled once and it was really fun (only cause i won $20, though, i think).

blah blah blah.

finishing up a glossy sample issue for potential distributors of redefine. going to send it to the printer tomorrow after lagging for-fucking-ever. i’m really kind of disappointed with myself. but there are only so many hours in a day…

i’ve also been taking a bunch of classes — and by a bunch, i mean two — illustrator and flash classes at seattle central community college. so far, so good. i think they’re definitely helping. the LITTLE knowledge i have gained in both (i am 5 weeks behind in the illustrator class because it’s an online class, and i have only taken 2 classes of the flash class so far) has already been useful. so i can only imagine… it will all be very useful. i want to go back to school, or just take time away from work to study up. funny how before i got a job again i didn’t care to study up on those things. it barely even crossed my mind. but now it just feels so very necessary. teaching yourself is definitely limiting… so i know i have to learn more. i think right now i just know enough to get by. certainly not enough to make a difference. and that’s what i want.

i’ve also come to learn that although people say that women are the chuumps, men are definitely the chumps. it is evident in posa’s relationship with linh, in andy [crossett]’s relationship with vanessa, and in my brother’s relationship with roxanne. there are others as well. so therefore, my theory is flawless.

in other news, the time after college is definitely a strange one. everyone strays. i guess it’s only inevitable that people will continue to stray even more.

i went home a couple weeks ago and went to a lesbian bar with xinlei and her friends. it felt just like a normal bar, really. i had a couple drinks — completely paid for, which was nice… although weird cause i’d never met those people — and drove him kind of drunk. no more doing that. yet another reason not to drink, kids…

last month or so i started playing hardcore diablo 2 with lenny, lewis, alex [bennett], eddie [kang], and the like. it was actually addictively fun… i died a bunch of times and kept remaking, but finally i got a pretty dope crossbow (arbalest) on my assassin (i was an assassin every time… and damn, they are fun to play — i dunno why no one plays them) which kept me alive for a long time since assassin claws themselves suck ass. but yeah unfortunately, i decided to play when i knew i shouldn’t have in a level i had done like 20 times without a fucking problem, and then i died, and i was really godamn sad. and that is probably the most disappointed i’ve ever been in a game. and i refuse to reroll. everyone says that i’ll go back, but i definitely won’t. not for a year or so at least but lenny and i started playing diablo 1 lol and shit the butcher is hella hard. don’t remember him being that hard. but we haven’t played in a while — but it’ll come back soon!

lenny’s mom also got this really cute puppy who’s named taylor. lenny was saying she should name him clark since they have another dog named lewis. she was like, “HAHAHA, lewis and clark! wait, i don’t get it.” lawl, it was funny. she also scared me the other day because i was eating her cooking and she was like, “do you know how to cook that?” and i was like, “no,” and she was like, “don’t be so mean to me!” and i was like, “wtf?” (in my head, of course). and she was like, “don’t be so mean to me! treat me like your mom! if you want to learn how to cook something, tell me. lenny doesn’t love me, posa doesn’t love me, etc.” it was too much -___- that’s one main problem in my book to be honest. i was talking about this to jeanette when i went back a couple weeks ago. i don’t want another fucking asian parent. i already have two and they are ALREADY too much. i want a white family. damnit. or a really fucking cool asian one. but we all know how godamn rare that is. -___-

i really need to back up my journal forum thing. what if it explodes one day? then i’ll be really fucking sad. i need to do that… quick. so much to do, though… so little godamn time.

oh yeah, something i kind of forgot about… “the fountain” made me really kind of depressed. as is this book i’m reading, “paint it black,” by the lady who wrote “white oleander.” man… sigh. i’m such a closet romantic, and i worry that my romantic ideal fails to be matched…

the day i came back from california last week, it was snowing like a fucking bitch. oh and get this. i missed my flight on the way home, so i had to drive back by myself. i parked 3 nights, 9 hours at the airport parking. FUCKING $88!! GODAMNIT FUCKING SHIT MONKEYS ASSHOLES. that’s so much godamn money. it’s not even funny.

anyway, i’m going to TRY to start writing in here more often, but i’m not sure that will happen, especially seeing as to how this entry took me a half hour to write. but it’s pretty long, i guess. it sucks that i had to ban xanga. i’m scared to look at it, but there definitely is stuff on it that i’d like to back up or look at sometime. but maybe not for a while. hopefully xanga doesn’t explode anytime soon.

i need to finish downloading the brand new album from trask, not that i’ve even listened to the songs i do have yet.

btw swimming is good for you too. btw i should probably get a physical. btw i think i should get a mammogram as well. things seem to like to… grow on me.

maybe it’s time to quit. it’s 1:08 am.

btw. on a side note. people are truly fucked up.

btw. on a side note. i need toilet paper.

btw. on a side note. here’s a conversation with tony that just so happens to be below this journal entry i’m writing in notepad, so why not put it? it relates to toilet paper, after all.

what a sick ass, am i right?

btw. i really need to go snowboarding. especially since i didn’t go AT ALL last year. i hope josh [hwang] will go with me a bunch after he comes back from the military for xmas. he keeps telling me how he’s going to ‘rape me’ though. i think i’m scared.

and on that note, it’s sleepy time.

hopefully i don’t have a dream about my teeth falling out tonight. i’ve had three of those in the past, like, two weeks. they’re really fucking realistic feeling. i wake up thinking my teeth really are starting to fall out irl, and let me tell you, IT’S FUCKING FUCKING SCARY. the dream interpreters claim that means that you’ll be overflowing with wealth soon, but i’m not sure that’s proper. i hope it is, though. money would be nice right now.
(xinlei’s response:)
weird that you posted this yesterday and i decided to randomly check your page for the first time in like a year. we are on the same wavelength lady. anyway i think people don’t know what they would do because not everybody is as outspoken as you (or wouldn’t be in certain odd/uncomfortably situations). and that is why you are the bombdiggity lady.

i’m watching… n/a
i’m feeling… ok.

“it’s been a long time… i shouldn’t have left you… without a dope beat to step to.” mmm this needs updating, and today is the day.

so what’s new? mmm, a lot of things, really. moved to bellevue with lenny and andy [crossett]. it’s not bad. everyone thinks moving in with your bf is such a big deal. i don’t know… oddly enough to me it doesn’t really seem much like anything. it still feels about the same most of the time, lol. but i’m weird.

i’ve been reading andy’s haruki murakami book, “hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world,” and it is amazing thus far. almost done with, so i hope the conclusion is a worthwhile one. definitely one of his better books i’ve read… right up there with “wind-up bird” if you ask me. very fantasmical. i enjoy.

time to recap the month…
august 28th or so — moved into new apartment. moving was a bitch, but at least we got to move in early
august 30th — i got stuck with moving out of our old apartment responsibilities lol. which was all fine and dandy but then i find out when i go there that there is a FUCKLOAD of stuff that needs throwing out aagh! and to my dismay: NO TRASHBAGS. luckily our neighbor who i have met once or twice lent me some trash bags and some awkward small talk also happened awrrghhhashh awkward small talk!! >_< also… plastic bags filled to the max required numerous trips down without plastic bags, since i only got two from them. and oh yeah knives in one of the plastic bags = stabbing mcstabbersons. but asides from that uh, it’s all good?
saturday, september 2nd — bumbershoot’s first day. hmm, what did i see, i barely even remember. oh yes. parked in queen anne cause that’s the best place to park for bumbershoot in my book — cheap / free and close! anyways, we were walking to the venue and two guys stopped lenny and i on the street asking if we knew who panic! at the disco was. from there they went on this rambling ramble about the music scene, with one younger guy (23? i think he was?) saying some shit about how the seattle music scene was changing because there were big hip-hop people like the blue scholars, bah bah bah, and bah bah bah, and his friend who was ten years older (or probably more than that) was arguing something else… it seemed like they weren’t even arguing about the same thing, but nonetheless, they were really into the shit, so whatever floats their freaking boats. yeaup. ended up giving them a copy of my mag and the older guy said he’d e-mail and that he thought it was cool / interesting and that he always wanted to get into writing, but that hasn’t happened yet!

anyway, onto the venue, mmm… started out by going towards the exhibition hall where there was a bitchy staffs person, and started to watch the thermals and was unimpressed, so we left. then we headed over to watch some film festival one reel thing, and that was pretty cool. it was like 8 short films… one was a failed pilot episode of some hbo show called “the pity card,” with zach galfinikas (or whatever) in it… it was really funny… then some thing about how this one type of squid hatches its eggs like stars (rather than burying them in the ground), and then there was this documentary spike lee made about al gore that was never publicized because someone democratic exnayed it, but it was really kind of amusing, and a few others i don’t quite remember so well… .. . hmm! time to consult lenny for a refresher: wallyball, playing volleyball with people at the united states and mexican border (hitting the volleyball over the fence). there was also another one where a guy gave away oranges and asked people if they were anyone’s favorite person, and it showed three different responses… iono.

after that we went to check out the rubber band dance group at some theatre and it was hip-hop mixed with ballet kind of thing. the northwest ballet people SUCKED. the first part of the rubber band dance group was awesome, one really cool thing with music by the rza or some wutang person, and another light-hearted one with very hawaiian-sounding music and lots of footwork (but not a lot of upper-body work), playing on the idea of a girl who bullies around a guy or something. i don’t remember. some really good stuff, though, except the piece they ended with was the lamest. why they did that, i’m not so sure.
monday, september 4th — i obviously don’t remember what happened on the 3rd, lol. on the 4th, went to bumbershoot again… free tickets, i mean, why the fuck not? it was my first time going. i think it’s well worth it, honestly… as long as you’re open to looking at more than just music. the other stuff balances it well, i think. anyways. went with lenny and jennifer [villaruz] — we were supposed to see metric before, so i thought, hey, we should see metric this time and i gave her a free ticket. i also had two extra tickets which i ended up selling (with the help of jenn) for $20 apiece. good shit. now to make up the other $200,000 i’ve lost from magazine printing lol! jk. le sighs. speaking of magazine printing, going to put together a mock glossy copy with low run distro of 30 and try to get distro deal… ingram distributors has expressed interest if they can see it in glossy format. they’re one of the biggest. the implications of that? i’m not so sure.

anyways, went there and saw copeland right away. they were… okay. kind of boring, to be honest. honestly, i don’t think i was expecting much better anyways. they were good for about 1/2 and then it was like, “god this hour is too long.” at least his voice got better. it started off really scratchy and out of pitch and bad. after that, we went went to go see go like hell in the EMP. nice venue; i think they remodeled it or something, cause it didn’t seem so nice when we went to see jimmy eat world there back in like, i dunno, shit, 2002 or something. damn, time flies by fast. anyways, go like hell was okay. their singer chick had an awesome raspy voice, but punk seriously bores me… one guy was wearing no pants and a thong. hot. after that, went to the main stage to see atmosphere. fucking boring, but it was cool how into it the crowd was… they were totally waving their arms in unison and oh yeah, a load of them freaking went there and waited like 3 hours in advance, wtf! so they basically went to bumbershoot to see one thing or something. crazy. hardc0re! extreme! atmosphere’s stuff was okay during the songs with live bands, but the others were whatevers. halfway thru atmosphere’s set, left to go see feist, and she wasn’t bad… talked a lot, though. i don’t really care if people talk… they are, after all, the artist, and they are more than just a robot, but these two chicks there with their husbands were downright livid. they were like, “she talks to much! i don’t want to be here!” one of them wanted to leave feist’s set halfway to go see metric, but her bf was like, “i want to stay here,” and she’s like, “BUT I HAVE NEEDS TO!” lol, it was amusing. anyway, halfway thru feist’s set, we left to see metric, and metric was SO GOOD. it is one of the only shows i’ve been to in seattle where the whole crowd was actually moving and dancing and into it. there was this one raver dude there who was totally full-fledged into it and dancing his ass off, and it was awesome. i think some people were making fun of him and he left, but i’m not entirely sure, actually. or maybe he THOUGHT people were making fun of him and left when they weren’t. shrug. it was fucking awesome, though, even if most of the songs they played were NOT songs i was familiar with, it was easy to get into it. go metric.

oh yes, i should mention that i got cut from my city of kent job. so uberly lame mclamers. basically… dea had told me that i could start full-time whenever i wanted, because sacha went out early. well, obviously, i took on some responsibilities i needed to finish up. she wasn’t supposed to be going out until late october, but instead, she went out the end of august. i was going to start full-time towards the middle of september, since i had planned to go home from september 6th to the 10th and we had decided that really early on when they worked up a schedule and forced me to stick to it, but nOo then the bitch is like, “we need someone full-time now, so peace…” and btw she didn’t say it to my face, arian from big fish told me. fucking lame ass shit, dude. i really think it’s cause vince was pushing to keep me around but then he got a better job and left, so she’s like whuteva, i don’t need to keep her around anymore. biatch. sOo yeah now i am looking for a job again… hoping to get a job @ evogear, so uh hopefully i hear back from them about the second interview soon? :/

le sighs. for now, i am doing some contract bullshit work for microsoft, some freelance crap, and working almost full-time at volt (for this week anyway), so we’ll see. at least i still have money coming in, lol, and big fish owes me 1k plus. so yeah. whuteva. bitches.

i’ve become a clotheshorse lately. how lame. is that what it’s come down to?!!!
tuesday, september 5th — went to a drum n’ bass show with tony [cordova] and yuki and nate [davis] showed up too! yay! good stuff. well, okay, let me rephrase: okay stuff. we went to see pendulum. not the biggest fan, i’ll be honest. couldn’t really get into their beats, but the war room was cool. haha tony and yuki went out to get some beer out of my car, and turns out they missed the end of the set without even knowing it. eediots. and we went to jack in the box afterwards and they were making some loud ass gay jokes in the car and the guy at the window was gay and then i was like sorry for the rowdiness, and he just shook his head. hukkkk. bOoOo so mean. anyways. yes, pendulum was just okay. hopefully aaron simpson & zacharia tag team this friday the 22nd will be much better. i can’t imagine that it wouldn’t. CAN’T WAIT. hopefully no one flakes out on me!

bleh so tired of talking to PR people!
wednesday, september 6th – went home… lenny had to leave work hella freaking early for it, but yeah. the initial trip — aka as soon as i got off the plane — was filled with buttloads of bitching about my clothes, my job, etc. — luckily, that subsided for the rest of the trip. surprisingly, actually. but yeah, went home, went to eat food, cause that’s what we do, and that’s that.
thursday, september 7th — went to sherry’s and hung around her house. didn’t do too much. went home and went to eat at some NASTY ASS FUCKING RESTAURANT. which my parents were raving about. but it was sOoOo not good — nothing had flavor. they soon came around and agreed with me. cause it was gross. man. went to go look @ phil’s cats. or maybe that was thursday, i don’t know. but they had these two little cats, cept now they are kind of full-grown, so it was not as exciting. one of them was like retarded and incapable of eating food, though — every time it ate food, it’d spit it out again and pick it up again and spit it out again (on accident). they feed their cats bread. WTF?
friday, september 8th — drove around the bay area taking photos of sushi restaurants — from oakland to alameda to hayward to san leandro to blah to san ramon… yeah. almost got the hook-up with a family friend’s restaurant of san ramon, but not enough time so that fell through. damnit… need tutorials T__T the number of visitors to sushimonsters has been declining. BAD. VERY BAD. it’s cause i’m the only asshole who works to get traffic. godamnit. anyway, at nighttime, went with dahye to xinlei’s house to play poker. lost ten bucks. shit i think i barely won any hands at all. it was quite pathetic, actually. a couple of xinlei’s friends were there, and she totally lives in the sticks of walnut creek. hella fucking far from the freeway, and she still pays more in rent than us in bellevue! yay! fuck the bay area. i can’t think of a reason to live there (minus friends maybe), really. maybe if i were blinging out of my ass.
saturday, september 9th — went to the winchester mystery house with xinlei, her bf matt, and sherry. it was uhhhh okay. not as exciting as i had remembered it to be. honestly? i think i confused some dream i had with reality or something, because i distinctly remembered this one area, but… it… didn’t exist. yeah. i am a freak HOOOO T_T anyways. i ordered some clothes from ebay. where the fuck are they! godamn my clotheshorseness! anyways, there was also this “behind the scenes tour” which was a couple bucks more, so we took it, and it was a little more exciting… showed us the basement and coal shoots and how the elevators worked and stuff… yeah. sherry said they should have had the behind the scenes take place first, and i think she is right! oh well, though. dude, they had an arcade there with fucking mario brothers arcade game, wtf? i played the simpsons arcade game… the side-scrolling one like double dragon type. speaking of video games… alex’s ex had all of his video game consoles when they broke up so uhh now they’re all hers. that just makes me mad :X i want a nintendo bad. T__T i rhyme. went home and ate dinner with family and roxanne, and after dinner, sherry and i went to the theatre to watch “little miss sunshine” — IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME, even if steve carrell didn’t play a huge noticeable role. very cool characters who made an outrageous plot believable.
sunday, september 10th — came home. la la la. think bought groceries @ the korean market near our house, paldo world. that place is weird. they don’t sell chicken. do koreans not eat chicken!!!! although, i can’t really think of where they use chicken, minus the fried chicken you see at some restaurants. DUN DUN DUN, THE MYSTERY QUESTION: DO KOREANS NOT EAT CHICKEN!?

in other news, i don’t remember much of what happened each day minus a couple things: someone made us a craft sushi monster. it’s fucking pimp!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ve started playing diablo 2 again, cause it’s good for you. we don’t have a table, so we need to go buy one tomorrow @ ikea. k i guess we’re going wednesday.

i don’t think i mentioned anywhere that some day in august, lenny, posa, linh, and i went to shota sushi & grill, and we got a huge ass platter of sashimi (disgusting) and what we wanted was a godamn video of the chef preparing something, but that didn’t happen. i did try every kind of fish though,and in conclusion: aji (spanish mackeral) is pretty good, but my favorite is sockeye salmon, which is apparently weird. but whuteva! at some point we also went to isami next to uwajimaya, and that place is fucking gross.

yupyup.
friday, september 15th — crossett rented some movie called “alice” (or “neco z alenky”) by a czech director, jan svankmajer. it was AMAZING. what was also amazing was a short that was on the dvd, “darkness light darkness”. it was a bunch of body parts coming together to form a person in a tiny room — a body made of clay. AWESOME. he’s like a surreal cinema guy, so his other work used puppets, props like animal skulls, and clay to get the idea across. AWESOME. right up my alley.

saturday, september 16th — watched the fucking ong-bak sequel movie, “the protector” with posa, linh, lenny, and alex. god. it had definitely one of the stupidest movie scenes i have ever seen. jeezus man. there’s this one part where all of these EXTREME!!!! people come out and start attacking him with rollerblades on and riding bikes towards him and at some point a fucking sand buggy tractor something or other thing. SO STUPID.
sunday, september 17th — yet another movie. “the sentinel” with michael douglas and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh eva longoria and uhhhhhhh that fool from 24. i forgot his name right now. blank. it was better than i’d expected, but those kind of stereotypical action flicks always get lost in memory after time goes on…