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untitled Thursday May 30
i thought today was supposed to be my last day at the store. but juan needs me tomorrow morning. at first, i wasn't so in to the idea of working so close to the departure date, but when she also penned on the schedule that it would be with riho-san, i guess i can't argue. when even the boss is trying to set us up, there's not much you can do to stop it. except, say, a big, long trip to japan [Ed note: Dead link removed].
untitled Tuesday May 28
i try to keep an open mind about some people. however, days like today, my constant self-challenge to quell the "old senile woman" stereotype and the "annoying french person" stereotype was futile, there was an old, senile, french woman at the store, and i really wonder how it is that people can be so obnoxious when they are old. she was worse than a five-year-old -- and i know -- i currently live with a five-year-old.
anyway. i just needed to remove that thought from my mind. i'm back to reality now; japan is in t minus 5 days, and i still have a number of items to take care of, namely, shopping. i read another installment of todd's webpage, which made me want to be chillin' with my homies in the chambana crib -- reading about nathan and todd kicking it. reva's birthday, as well. michael remarked that he was a little remorseful college wasn't this interesting when he went to washington university in st. louis. personally, i will say it again once more: you cannot beat the state school system in many cases -- they've got the resources, the space, and most importantly, the numbers. you will find people you want to hang out with -- luckily, living in allen did most of the finding work for me.
i can tell i have lost a little bit of weight, nothing significant, i just believe i am back to where i started about six months ago (everyone porks up for the winter, you know?). when you eat rice, fish, coffee, and seltzer water all day, though, you can expect results. we'll see what happens when i cut out the seltzer and half the other portions (aka, japan). i have verified with yasu-san and riho-san that frisbee does exist in japan, so it is totally on. as for other revalations, i don't have any caucasian women to impress here or in japan, so i am going to just let my hair continue to spiral out of control and see what happens. it looks as if longer hair is coming back in a little, and moreover, it gives off that psuedo-swashbuckling air that is, truly, the essence of (not) me. call it an experiment, and i can always run home and give it a nice cut if it turns out that i am dr. jekyll and my hair becomes mr. hyde.
a japanese girl (woman, whatever. my age, approximately) came into the store today. i believe she spoke less english than i do japanese, which was a beautiful thing. she stared into my eyes, i stared into hers, and then the moment was lost as it became more apparently obvious she did not understand when i asked what kind of salad dressing she wanted. worse yet, "dressing" in japanese is pronounced "do-rey-shin-gu". i had to call yasu-san over to explain what i was asking. i apologized in japanese for my lack of understanding, but that's not too impressive. i clearly see why americans are popular in japan -- we are a chance to practice english, and in this case, she was my chance to practice japanese. i failed. since i am not in japan yet, i feel as if i should use the language that is more easily understood -- and for these people, i think their rudimentary knowledge of english is much stronger than my ability to articulate myself in japanese.
tomorrow is wednesday. i shop for clothes and yen tomorrow. i work tomorrow night. i work thursday day. friday, i pack. saturday, i make sure all is in order. sunday, ikimasu.
ah, new york, new york.
ah, new york, new york. where else could i mention things like "hour-long songs, old people, and public masturbation" and be referring to events all from the same night? nowhere else, and that's why this place has class, let me tell you.
yesterday, cathy at work (a 30-year-old with a master's degree, working at a tea shop; you do the math) suggested that since i do not have anything to do in this town, i should join her and i-shan for a jazz show in manhattan later that night. personally, i was interested and excited, the prospect of doing something besides waiting tables and sleeping struck me as great. however, when i called i-shan (who is my age), she elected not to go, cathy said that it's the way she is; she is one of those people who always backs out of cool things and wants to hear about them later. sounds familiar. i know a few girls like that (todd, if you are reading this, i am sure you can think of who i am thinking of. and if it's not the same person, when i hear who you are thinking of, i would most likely remark, "oh yeah, her too.").
cathy and i climbed onto the f train (express out of queens into midtown/downtown) and headed to a place nestled between soho, noho, and the lower east side. she told me her opinion about soho: "the artists were there. it was poor. then, people saw what the artists were doing and wanted it. shops sprung up with designers who would make a dress, and only one of a kind. shops sprung up from the artists. then, she said, the money came. after the money came, so did stores like banana republic. after the chains have hit, it's time to move on. there's still plenty of emo glasses in soho, but there are more fake ones there now -- the real emo glasses have moved to noho and just south of it. i'm talking about a shift of 5-6 blocks here, but in manhattan, it makes a difference (i don't yet understand how). the cover was $20, and considering the chambana prices i am used to, i expected to get one hell of a show. certainly, i did, but i made more of a cultural purchase than a listening-enjoyment purchase; the final "jazz" act was nothing more than a badass drummer, bassist (string bass, of course), and two saxophonists. however, it was free jazz, mostly improv. this led to some amazing musical moments, but most of it was just...well, okay.
the event was held in a converted school gymnasium; for those of you who know of shirland and it's reputation as the town with one coke machine and a post office, think of shirland school's gym. like that. sans fluorescents and bleachers. anyway, it seems like it should be very hip to go to an underground show in a converted gymnasium with a bunch of emo-glassed young people and brian mulligan and rob butterfield look-a-likes, but to me, it just lacked in a way i can't describe. i guess i'll say it was unrefined art. when i saw incubus in peoria a while ago, everything about the performance was surreal; everything was planned and executed to a t, and most importantly, everything sounded and looked great. was there art there? sure, there was the music, but incubus had written that long ago. the only thing that was original to that night was brandon boyd's incessant "thank you peoria"s between songs; not being from peoria only made it that much more awkward sounding to leslie, liz, and i.
however, this performance was not planned. music was made on the spot. it was not perfected and crafted in the incubus way, and you could certainly tell that. however, i still appreciated this form of art, complete with the old man sitting in the front of the stage (where the bouncers would be at a rock show) with his inks, drawing each performing group as they played and then taping his (good) creations to the wall. sculpture pieces lined the floor by the walls. the stage lighting was awful. the microphone placement was terrible (the overheads on the drums...i don't even want to think about it). worst of all, they had some nice bose speakers to go with it all. i hate watching quality equipment receive improper utilization. who knows, maybe that aspect was another "art form" of the show. we left at about 1am, the last band played one song that was an hour long, it had no title nor plan -- it just ended when the foursome got tired. we had gotten tired before they did.
i slept on the f train home, but since it is an express, i got off at 71st avenue and needed to get home (which is 64th road, in queens the numbered streets mean nothing. they do indicate general direction, but since the grid is skewed, the whole thing is out of proportion. for example, 102nd street is two blocks from 108th street [not six], but 64th road is not only a road, there is also 64th avenue and 64th drive. i'm not making this up. therefore, 71st avenue to 64th road is about 12 city blocks, or a mile or so.). instead of walking at 2:15am (which would have most likely been safe), i switched to the g train which was waiting to begin it's journey (on nights and weekends this brooklyn-bound train starts at 71st avenue [this is the station by modus vivendi]). the train pulled out 10 minutes later (i could have most likely walked the 12 blocks in that time, given that the next station [67th] is still four blocks away.), and i looked out the window into the subterrianian darkness trying to focus on the pathways beyond. i think the subway system is interesting. eventually, my eyes shift focus to the reflections on the interior of the glass (dark outside, light inside), and i note that out of the four people in the car, the one sitting near me (about 8 feet away) is masturbating vigorously. i don't know when he began this, i was in that car in the station before anyone else, and i don't know what right he felt he had to pleasure himself in my train car. i chose not to make a scene out of it, i would rather not have a man with a penis hanging out of his pants talking to me or, worse yet, coming after me.
you see, men fear penises. not their own, naturally, but other men's penii. post-pubescently, we do not want anyone male (for straight men, of course) to see our pieces. in the public restroom, there is a no-look rule. men will skip urinals and stalls, there is a whole unspoken courtesy on this. moreover, if there are barriers between the urinals, all the better. the only time another man really needs to take a good look at our penises is when we are at the doctor's office. personally, this doesn't both me. the doctor, i am sure, has inspected so many members in his practice lifetime that mine sticks out as nothing special, it is probably far more normal than some of the strange things he has most likely seen. therefore, that can be ignored.
and here, with all of this unspoken rule about keeping privates private, this man had the balls to wack off in my subway car. how dare he. so, i got up and moved to the other end of the car (not looking back), and got out in 15 seconds when my station had come. after the train pulled out of the 67th avenue station and i was walking up the steps, i was thinking, "did i really just see that?" see my earlier post about crazies on the subway. it's like the lack of daylight attracts them all; i just want to know who's funding their dollar-fifty to get in.
if and when i completely Saturday May 25
if and when i completely lose touch with sanity and reality, i am going to start amusing myself by posting bogus auctions on ebay. seriously, who really has 20,000 beardtrimmers just laying around, at a penny a piece? but the first link is the one i would really take part in. apparently, they are selling pills with which you can lose 95lbs in a month.
if life ceases to be interesting, i think i will start my own auctions on the front page (which both of these were, how i saw them); and when you click on my clever "HOW TO LOSE 95LBS BY JUNE, GRNTD!!!" headline, it will open up a page that will look like this:
95lbs? are you serious? you need our help.
and it will go on and on about how we'll send you this special diet in the mail, and how it is money-back-guaranteed and so on -- but we won't tell you what the diet is because you have to "buy it" for $9.95. if we mentioned "too much" online, we'd say we'd be giving it away for free. the actual diet will be the mailing that will come after you've purchased, and it will say something like:
you are fat, but your real problem is that you waste your free time looking for get-thin-quick schemes on the internet. this probably is why you are fat. our magic diet? stop eating. put down the chili dog. no, not the one in your mouth right now. the one on reserve. also, in the future, use this time to run. or play rugby. or work out. good luck! thanks for your business!
of course, all of the checks and postal orders and money would be sent to a p.o. box, because otherwise i would probably end up with an army of angry fat people after me, and trust me, if there is one thing that is worse than an angry fat person, it is many angry fat people. angry fat people who you stole money from. this isn't getting any better, is it? imagine herds of them, town-mob-style, all knocking on down my door asking for an explanation, with the chili-dog vendor cart nearby for quick refreshment after the do me in. that's not how i want to die...maybe i should stick to waiting tables. it's still good money.
being that most of my Friday May 24
being that most of my life in new york city revolves around sleep and the store, i don't often find the time to go into manhattan. today, however, i needed to go to sta travel to buy a japan rail pass for this summer, and their local offices are in between soho and noho. either way, on the subway on the way there, i was met by the best of new york all in 20 minutes. first, a man came into the car to announce that he was homeless for 8 years, but due to the program he was trying to collect money for, he had gotten himself off the street and into a real job (apparently, he gets paid to help homeless people, which is noble, if you believe him). after the entire car tried to ignore him, he left. after that, a few stops later, a man with a seeing-eye dog came in with a can-amp (usually used for guitars) that was rigged to a tape deck and a microphone. he was singing opera (not too shabbily, either) and made no apparent attempt to collect money from anyone...but he had laminated sheets of paper attached all over his shoulder strap, body, and back talking about the huge atrocities of seeing-eye dog quarantining in foreign countries. i suppose it is possible that this individual went all the way to london to run into this problem, but he was very adamant (after the song coming from his can-amp had ended) about rights for seeing-eye dogs. no, i am not making this stuff up.
then, while waiting for aya to use a bathroom outside a wendy's in noho, i saw a woman with a cardboard sign sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette. first of all, let me revise that. she wasn't a woman, she was a girl. she could not have been older than 23, most likely she was 20 or so. sitting on a manhattan sidewalk begging for change, while looking at the little hostess breakfast cake she had. for five minutes i watched her; she tried to hide it when she thought someone who would give change was looking and then brought it back out again when the sidewalk was quiet (which is in relative terms, it was a busy sidewalk). eventually, she realized she could place it directly
behind the cardboard sign and still read it while hiding it to the public.
in my consuming culture class last fall, (yay laura haber) we discussed a few people who had just gone out to live on the street, attempting a true, careless, homeless, possessionless lifestyle. i really wanted to strike up a conversation with this girl, she looked intelligent enough, but i live in a society that has trained me well not to talk to "bums", trained me that they are just lazy people who don't want to get a job, and trained me to think that i should give them change only if i didn't really want it anyway. as my dad likes to say, "i give to united way, and they give how they see fit. call them if you want my money." personally, i think that's a wise decision on his part -- but here in new york city, you can't just recline in your chair and watch tv and ignore the people on the telephone asking for your money -- because they are right in front of you, every day.
the last interesting person i saw today was a girl a little older than myself (23, maybe?) in the subway. she boarded and sat down next to aya, and i instantly noticed her sleek figure, long, beautiful hair, and essentially gorgeous body. when people ask, "what do you first look at in a girl?", i usually answer that i don't really know. however, within five seconds i had evaluated that the cute socks she was wearing beneath her sandals perfectly matched her shirt. booyah. chalk one up for phooze; nate, you can have your sockless-sandaled women anyday.
in an e-mail response to
in an e-mail response to may 21st's post, esther sent me this, and i asked for her permission to reprint it. if anyone would like posting access to this blog, please email me.
"i dont know where this is going, but i guess i'll just let it spew forth from my fingers. what you said about truth & little kids reminds me of when i was in this lit class & my prof said that english Romanticists believe that children were smarter than adults in that they remain true to themselves & their desires. i kind of wish i could still be child-like in that sense. i suppose i actually am because sometimes i do whatever i want & don't think of consequences, sort of reckless, i guess. but like they say, truth hurts & i think thats why people lie or don't say anything at all. a friend of mine once told me he thought i was a rather blunt person (i'd say he's pretty blunt himself, don't you?) and yet there have also been times i've done damage by withholding the truth. one thing i still feel guilty about is knowing that a friend was doing drugs (you name it, she did it) all through HS & 2 semesters at uiuc, but i never told her parents even though i could have. she wound up dropping out & just finished rehab, but it still eats away at me that it could have turned out different & possibly better had i said something. i guess i have yet to learn when/how to tell the truth. thanks for reading."
i've been too winded lately. Wednesday May 22
i've been too winded lately. look at all those long posts -- babble. as michael asked me, "who actually reads this?" i suppose the better question is, if you're reading this right now, what would you be looking at if you were not wasting your minutes here? that is the power of the internet, the power of the blog. we're deconstructing, bit by bit, the large conglomerate of the everyone-gets-it-in-the-same-place media and coming up with editorial content on the outside. i am not suggesting that i necessarily am this content, but if i have a shining moment; if any of us have "shining moments" in our posts, they can be instantly linked and viewed and distributed to the masses. god bless plastic. i wish i had thought of it first.
okay, my roommate, along with Tuesday May 21
okay, my roommate, along with my brother, know me best. however, i still confused him with the post below about pizza hut, so i'm going to write it off as stream-of-consciousness blather and move on. forgive its random direction. today i'd like to discuss how i got taken by a five-year-old. kazuya (ka-zuyaa, make the zu syllable very short. if you want to americanize it like my dad would, say "ka-zi-a") likes playing games like any five-year-old: if you beat him consistently, he will want to play something else. if he is losing to the computer, he will just reset the console. and, on top of all of this, to my great frustration as a logic, fair individual, he likes to bend the rules to what he thinks they should be. doing my best to accelerate him to a maturity where i can reason with him (or, out-reason him, thereby winning what i want; usually quiet), i will debate with him until the point where he just starts going on the "why" track, as many children his age do.
last night, at dinner, michael and aya were out somewhere, so it was myself, ai (the housekeeper, speaks about 15 english words), and kazuya, who can speak to ai in chinese and me in english. he also understands my japanese and corrects me when i am wrong (smart kid). it's usually a large challenge to get him to eat food, but last night he was piling it all in...at a rate that would concern a parent with choking concerns. as a result, i told him, "kazuya, this isn't a race. just take your time eating..." so we sat back and ate for about fifteen minutes; discussing other 5-year-old topics of his choosing; this most often meant that if i was not looking at the paused nintendo mario game on the television nearby, he would bring it to my attention again with "look, look there" and such phrases with a fully-loaded mouth of rice. then, after we had finished our rice and vegetables and pork (one of the best combos, i think), he had a small glass of milk and i had a proportionally larger glass of tea. he was resisting ai's attempts to make him finish his glass of milk, so i said to him in english: "kazuya, i bet i can finish all of this tea before you can finish that milk!" he accepts the challenge and we begin...naturally, i could drink that much tea in a matter of seconds (it was room-temperature), but i wanted to keep the competition interesting for him. he finished his milk just about when i finished the tea (of course i timed it this way); then, i said to him, "well, it looks like you won just by a little bit." upon hearing this, he looks at me with a face so anguished you would have thought i had threatened to turn off his mario game (this is what he calls it). immediately, he slams his hand down on the edge of the dinner table and says, "no! this is not a race!". ai quickly interjected with some chinese, obviously indicating that he needed to behave, but i was defeated, depressed. he had remembered an offhand directive i had issued fifteen minutes prior, and when i violated my own rule, he instantly exclaimed the exception.
i suppose this story doesn't really have a cohesive thought at the end, i hope it seems to stand on its own and give a glimpse of the five-year-old i happen to reside alongside. he is cute, i will say that, but kids his age are just smart enough to use their mouth but not control it...it would be interesting to see what a society would be like where everyone operated logically and intelligently, but spoke as freely as he or she wished. in this world, social expectations and orders keep us from saying the real truths sometimes, even when they are obvious. maybe that is the purpose of this post, to show how i feel our society oppresses itself via ignorance, apathy, and general helplessness pertaining to thoughts of the large masses versus one. i don't really want to change the world, i just want to understand everything about it.
friday, i began working as Sunday May 19
friday, i began working as a waiter in michael and juan's (aya's) store, modus vivendi. in latin, modus vivendi suggests a number of people of different cultures and races living together cooperatively -- not implying that there is total harmony, but definitely not implying dissonance; given the many different races out in forest hills and rego park, i'd say it's reasonable. i'm not quite sure how the municipalities work around here; all of the police cars are uniformly nypd, yet the address for mail here is rego park, not "queens", or "new york city". at the store, there are two shifts per day: open until 6pm, and 6pm until close. open is usually defined strictly as 10:30am, which yields a seven-and-a-half hour shift, but close is whenever the customers stop coming.
during friday's open, i worked alone as a waiter, and juan helped me make most of the food orders and showed me how things were run. however, nothing, not even pizza hut, could have prepared me for last night. here i digress: toward the end of summer before my junior year of high school, i applied at a local pizza hut. reasons: one, my girlfriend at the time gina used to work there, she suggested it to me. two, i was guaranteed the job. three, somehow i just felt i needed extra money. naturally, since the rate of attrition at such locations is pretty sizable, i was given a job as a waiter. training was no problem, i had to watch the silly videos on food safety and so on, and then i began working sundays. mind you, i was still working at the ever-famous rockton china palace on friday and saturday nights (as i did all throughout high school after i was old enough to work); so essentially my only "free time" was saturday afternoons and sunday nights.
the latter was usually spent doing homework for the following week; somehow, i managed to do this for 3 months. on top of this, i was involved heavily in the production of a midsummer night's dream at hononegah, which required monday through thursday, six to nine at night. on top of that, at the end, there were often saturday afternoon rehearsals. again, who knows how i managed to stay alive; my only reasonable answer is that in high school you don't have to actually do anything. oh, i know what it is now. after my sophomore year horror story, i decided to remove myself to the "standard" lit classes as opposed to the honors curriculum. in the end, it was a far better experience -- it was far more interesting for me to watch fifteen stupid people trying to discuss huck finn than be the stupid person in the honors course. moreover, it gave me an opportunity to watch these people as people, i learned a lot about people who are different than me in this class. moreover, mr. passmore was an excellent instructor. i'll revise that. they weren't stupid people, they were just...undeveloped. the problem i ran into in high school was that i had developed mentally to the point where "normal" kids annoyed me, but the other "developed" kids had way too much drive and motivation to get the A and to get into an ivy league school or something. i guess that's why i got along with everyone but had no strong friends until later on, because i fell right in the middle of the two student types.
either way, the management at pizza hut was terrible...god bless jo's heart (the divorced 46-year-old whose career path was a manager at the loves park pizza hut) because she was very hardworking (yet senile), but someone somewhere along the line decided i could open sunday mornings with jo and work all sunday afternoon by myself. usually, i could. however, after a few times i was asked to stay well until the evening, and a few times i had to cover a party of 15 kids and 3 dads coming in after a soccer victory. getting 15 drinks orders and then having to worry about breadsticks and such is not my idea of fun. moreover, the usual customer was a pizza hut customer. i am not degrading pepsico, or its subsidiaries, but anyone who knows anything about the loves park pizza hut is fully aware of its ghetto-fabulous exterior and general target market. moreover, the pizza is not even that good. i worked very, very hard at that job; often, i was rewarded with large tip totals at the end of the day.
however, overall, the experience was a negative one. i was always busy when i was working, i was a little underpaid, and the pizza was making me fat. i would eat two meals (lunch and dinner) plus soda in-between on sundays, and once a week was enough to make me reach a huge 210 pounds by the time i quit. i always feel a little guilty about the manner in which i left, namely, by not showing up and then calling a few days later to inform them that i could no longer do the job. i left them out to dry for one sunday afternoon, but i think it should serve appropriate information to also say that they didn't have enough employees to be able to call anyone else in. no one really wanted to work there anyway. however, this job was invaluable waiting experience...learning how to be polite to everyone, even though i thought i had mastered this with the china palace clientele...managing 10 tables at once, so on so forth. understaffed, underpaid, and overweight. that was my experience, i am sure you see why i discuss it the way i do now.
anyway, back to the present. michael's store is very busy on weekend nights. however, because the main dish is usually dessert, the serve time is much, much shorter. this caught me off guard, i am used to the style of getting everyone's order first (if there are multiple tables waiting, which there were), then bringing all the drinks, then bringing all the food, etc etc. at modus vivendi, well, you can't do that. everything moves too fast. with 18 tables in the place, all of them are full on weekend nights. that's about nine tables a person. each table is served in about 7 minutes (from drinks to dessert), and each tables sits for about an average of 60 minutes. overall, you're turning over at least 8 tables an hour; if you try to keep track of 5 or 6 tables' status in your head, you will die. i almost did. i messed up a few orders, forgot about a few people's requests, had a few tables ask me if i had forgotten about them (when i hadn't, i just had no time), and so on.
it's akin to fighting a house fire with a garden hose. you're trying to save the house next door, you accept that your house is already gone...so you're just spraying the wisps of flame that come out towards the house next door. i suppose that's a bad metaphor, instead i'll say that the squeaky tables were getting most of the grease. however, it is not possible to serve 30 or 40 tables in a few hours (which i did during the peak time, 10-midnight) without making a lot of money, even if the service was sub-par. also, note that i bring out the bad cases...most tables received totally acceptable service. also, i was getting tips just for trying to keep up. hey, i'll take the sympathy tip...
when we left just before 2am, i had $93 more in my wallet, a figure i cannot complain about. i think i like this idea, working in an upscale so-called "tea and cafe gallery" where a small slice of tiramisu costs $4.25...the checks are usually $20 or so, and so fifteen percent is about three dollars. yes, it was crazy. but, since i find it hard to run around a lot for exercise, it is excellent exercise: i am on my feet walking/running for 7 hours straight and making (in summation) about $15 per hour to do so. not a bad take at all. i told michael that since i am his brother, he need not pay me wages, i will just take the tips. however, he feels the need to pay me wages as well. fine, but then i will pay him back for the ticket out here that he covered.
i'm sure there is a lot more to say about the store; i do want to discuss the other employees, but i wore my fingers out digressing about pizza hut and high school. i'm terribly sorry about that, you can hear about riho-san and i-shan later on. oh, and in case i confused anyone earlier: michael's wife's name is juan li, in chinese. when she moved to japan, you have to get a name, so her name there is aya yokoyama. therefore, i tend to call her both. aya and juan are the same person (juan is pronounced "ju-en").
number of days lived in Thursday May 16
number of days lived in new york city thus far: 2.5
number of meals eaten: 7
number of times i have been severely concerned for my well-being: each time i ride in the car with michael
now that we've run the numbers, so to speak, i'll discuss what's been happening. my mom arrived with me on monday night (late), and she is leaving today (thursday) to return to roscoe. my dad had an east coast trip this week, so he made a special attempt to visit and came for about six hours yesterday evening. unfortunately, on tuesday my mom caught wind of the notion that juan and michael were interested in selling their apartment (actually, there's an open house this sunday). for those of us who remember 1103 south busey's bathroom, in all of it's ugly glory, my mom could not let this bathroom be. yesterday we ventured out to the northern boulevard home depot. it was an odd juxtaposition of usual events. on one hand, i was stuck with my mother and a shopping occasion: a usually-lethal combination. however, this warehouse of goods contains items of interest such as power tools, paint, electrical stuff, and other cool hardware. therefore, i survived. also, home depot doesn't have that usual "department store scent" that is females are immune to yet can put the most caffienated male to sleep within minutes.
i'm reading all of this to my mom as she irons her outfit, and now she insists that i caulk the bathroom today. this was the one task she was not able to finish yesterday and last night, and now she has asked me to complete this. this request comes peppered with phrases like, "i trust that you will..." and "i know you will take care of this..." and other mom-friendly guilt-inducing phrases that moms everywhere know and use to get their children to follow. as i dictate, my mother requests that i add the word "lazy" directly before children in that previous sentence. now, she says i'm taking far too many liberties just to make my story sound good and to make her sound like "a mom". she has her lips pursed about this. she told me to tell you that.
she has now walked out of the room, so i can finish this post in peace. of course i am going to make her sound like a mom, that's what she is...ah. she has returned. i have stopped reading aloud, but she knows what we are up to, and has informed me that i am to stop discussing her immediately. onto my dad. he left last night, so similar posting castastophes cannot occur from now on. i feel a little bad because at dinner with dad last night (mom was busy bathroom-ing, by her choice) because kazuya was very interested in teaching me japanese and correcting my japanese. unlike michael, who is always talking, kazuya will pause to listen to me and talk to me about any topic i choose. therefore, with dad on one side, and kazuya on the other, i feel a little bad that a 5-year-old was getting most of the attention. however, dad and michael were entrenched in discussion about something that did not have to do with japanese, so i admit that i failed to be interested. at this point i consider my study of the language to be quite intensive, spurred by my own knowledge of the difficulties ahead, as well as e-mails from charlotte, who is currently in japan, about not knowing various words of importance. enough said on that. let's move to the future, eh?
this week i will help michael and juan clean their apartment for the open house, and i will attempt to learn more things about the store. last night i was taught the secret sandwich sauce recipe, which is excellent for two reasons: one, i now can say that i know a "secret-sauce" recipe; mcdonald's ain't got nothin' on me, and two, juan trusts me with her recipes, which can guarantee that next year at the house i may know how to prepare a few interesting dishes. oh, and it helps them in the store if i know how to make the foods, too. i suppose that's the unselfish bonus. then, since my mom leaves, i can basically do whatever i want. i brought running shoes, and i think, since the store is about a mile and some away from the apartment, that i'd like to make a regular habit of running back and forth; i'd like to get in shape.
sore atode, shiranai. there i go with the japanese again...i don't even know if that's correct. i guess it's the exposure. i have to drive now, in new york city. this should be just like champaign last week when i moved out.
whoa, it's been a little Tuesday May 14
whoa, it's been a little bit since i've posted, but now i'm off: i've moved out of the dorm; nathan and i carted all of my stuff via the badass buick (see below) to my house, and then mom and i left last night via amtrak. my summer plans are available at the left, i will not reiterate them here, but i will discuss the train ride itself.
first of all, i have not travelled to the east coast by land since 6th grade or so in a car ride with my dad. this was by interstate, and we made a number of stops in either altoona, pa or zanesville, ohio, or who knows where. point is, i've never sat in the same place for 24 hours and watched the terrain, at ground level, change next to me from flat, boring illinois through the hilly pennsylvania and all the way to new york city. unfortunately, the train was an hour late leaving, and throughout the weather, equipment, and signal delays, our trip took 5 hours longer than it should have. luckily, it's summer. i think my mom and i were the only people on that train who just really did not care when we got into new york. my mom said early on in the trip, "travel taught me patience." she is a wise woman. she leaves new york city on thursday, my dad is swinging in wednesday night, and then after all that it's just me, michael, juan, and kazuya until june 2nd (again, see left). i'm rather looking forward to it, i always learn from michael.
i'll discuss my responsibilities at the store and any new york city hijinx that occur in the next three weeks as they arise. feel free to mail me.
the badass buick Monday May 6
i filled up the badass buick (not my car, but it is the same except mine's two-door and has different hubcaps) today, nate did it last time; it was my turn. note that my badass buick is not to be confused with this apparently equally badass buick. anyway, nate and i don't drive too far too often, but inevitably we will fill it up just to have it fall upon that yellow-orange tick mark all over again by the next day (ok, slight exaggeration).
i am beginning to suspect an elite, underground gasoline-smuggling ring in the champaign-urbana area whose chief theater of operation is centered on siphoning gas out of my car's 13.4-gallon unsuspecting, unlocked fuel tank at all hours of the night. seriously, the thing holds thirteen gallons -- and it's no gas guzzler, so there's got to be something going on. as my dad's favorite cartoon character foghorn leghorn would say, "i know, i know, figures don't lie...". except, yeah. i can't even hear foghorn say it anymore; in my head, it's overshadowed by my dad's poor constipated-sounding imitation. on with the story. on my way to pay $16 for gas, i note the following sign on the door of mobil:
STORE HAS LESS THAN $50
while in line, i also note the guy in front of me paying his bill with a $20. so do i. now, regardless of change returned, that's $40 in 2 minutes. obviously, this sign (and i didn't need to experience today to figure this out) is targeted at individuals who are smart enough to read signs but not smart enough to think about their implications or even do basic math. however, this place has been held up before; clearly, they're only fooling the bare-minimum of idiots who can read at a second-grade level or above but cannot function on basic addition and subtraction skills. therefore, exxon mobil corp., i propose the sign be changed to the following:
STORE HAS LESS MORE THAN $50
but if you take any of it, we will skull-fuck you.
it's vulgar, yes. however, we're not dealing with white-collar embezzelers, are we? we're dealing with people who are only intelligent enough to operate some weaponry, and not intelligent enough to say, "would you like fries with that?" as a result, i think skull-fucking is a good crime deterrent. oh, and as a side note, if you fail to see the amusement in this, you don't read the onion often enough.
yesterday, i received this e-mail:
yesterday, i received this e-mail:
Believe it! You have a secret admirer! Just click to http://www.SomeoneLikesYou.com to find out who!Email address: [removed]
Secret code: 265hsxSee you soon!
Best wishes,
The SomeoneLikesYou Matchmaker
riiight. so i turned to todd, who agreed with me that these things are silly. instead of picking out who i dig, i'd just be sending it to everyone i know trying to figure out who sent it to me, and that sounds like a large waste of my time. moreover, that's probably how i got it in the first place. as a result, if you want to waste your time, you may use my login above and tell people that i like them. but then again, why propogate this annoying usage of bandwidth? if you like someone, just be ballsy like laura was (if you don't know what i mean, e-mail her and ask; she'll probably kill me, but it'll be funny.)
i just finished the alkaline Wednesday May 1
i just finished the alkaline trio bootleg. i'll admit it was a little embarassing that i barely knew any of the song titles of such a decent band, luckily mike o'leary helped me decipher them. they will be available for download until i take my computer down after finals, so you have about a week from now. after that, you will not see me until the fall (see below).
