giant fish googled

Aw hell. I only just realized that I missed April Fool's Day. My second favorite holiday after Buddha's Birthday. And by a week no less. My plans are foiled! So I guess I'll just have to wait until next year. Until then, allow me to post a picture that I found somewhere on the internet under the search "giant fish".

a baby after my own beer

At no insistence of my own, my dear friends the Hanscoms named their second child "Stella" who was born today, named I hope after one of my favorite beers which I foresee will ensure that she'll be crisp, fragrant and delightful especially on a lazy summer night. Or else she will drink and cuss like a sailor. In either case, she'll be great fun at parties, something that just makes me want to love her more.

Congratulations to bringing child #2 into the world. I hope she'll live up to her namesake in spades. And here's to starting on a third. I'm thinking... Franzeskaner?

flip it and reverse it

(or "How to evolve faster")

Have you ever wished that you could be part of one of those sleep studies? The ones where they put you in a windowless room, which I imagine is buried deep near the earth’s core, and then see what happens to your sleep schedule? Because if we can manipulate our sleep cycles, then isn’t this as close to manipulating time as we will ever get?

So, for the sake of science, as well as the betterment of all humankind, I’ve been engaged in a sleep study of my own.

For the past couple of weeks now, I’ve gone to bed and woken up when I felt like it. As a result, I sleep with the rising sun and have my first cup of coffee at noon the next day. Of course, this whole thing really started because of one fateful night when I happened to catch “Dirty Dancing” on TV at 3 am. It totally screwed me over. Though I must have seen that movie at least a dozen times, I was compelled to watch it one more time just to see Patrick Swayze’s jazzy dance moves in the final scene. Man, he really knows how to bring it home. Who knew men’s hips were designed to swivel like that? It didn’t help that my ex-boyfriend is the spitting image of Patrick Swayze, a fact that to his embarrassment was realized on an overnight ferry bound to Tientsin watching “City of Joy” with a roomful of Chinese people. I'm not saying this to say that I think Patrick Swayze (or by implication my ex-boyfriend) is particularly hot. They are both okay looking. But everyone in the room, including myself for a brief moment, thought he was the person in the movie. He didn’t have the same rotator hips though… which was undoubtedly the reason I had to break up with him. But that is another story for another time.

So back to the sleeping thing. My ultimate quest in this experiment is this. Is it possible that if we listen to our bodies, we don’t need as much sleep as we think we need? All of us are bound by the strictures of certain commonly accepted ideas, such as the food pyramid, not swimming after you eat, pumping the brakes on a wet road, yada yada yada. But just as we know that the food pyramid is full of shit, it is very possible that the accepted wisdom that guides our daily lives have been built on ephemera, concocted from some stuffy white guy’s impaired brain.

I’ve already managed to dismantle the notion that we need regular meals at regular intervals throughout the day. My snake-eating thing is still working like a charm. So I have a good feeling about this. I’m thinking that I may be able to shave a good 10 hours a week of sleep time off my normal schedule. Sleep and food, two things that I think the modern person overdoses on through over-rationalization, these are the two obstacles preventing the everyman from fulfilling their greatest destiny. If we unchain ourselves from the enslavement of time, what will we not be capable of?

Previously unbeknownst to me, it just so happens that it is National Sleep Awareness Week. I suggest that in celebration of this happy coincidence, we all lie down for a nap…

dreaming of blogging or blogging dreaming me?

I dreamt last night that my friend Joe had a blog. And he wrote something in the comment section about how I never comment on his blog. So I did. And then I dreamt he thought it was funny.

Tell me I'm not mistaken but somewhere out there I think people have interesting technicolor dreams. That's because they probably lead interesting technicolor lives. Clearly I don't do either...

it's hard out here for a... grad student

It's award ceremony season here in Los Angeles and as I watched the Oscars the other night, I was reminded of how few opportunities we are given to commemorate our accomplishments, or even to mark the passing of time. As much as Hollywood represents something materialistic or superficial about American culture, and as much as we ordinary folk are divorced from that lifestyle, we should also recognize the absolute necessity of it, especially for its role within our ritualistic universe in this increasingly secularized world.

Our diminished capacity to commemorate things has left us without a formal venue to gather around and celebrate achievement, though I wonder if it is simply because commemoration at least in my academic world is generally associated with loss through graduation and departure. While there are holidays and birthdays, is it too much to want more? To want the formal integration of award ceremonies into our life? Why do kids and actors get all the trophies? Since when did they stop giving us those things? And for most people, is their college diploma going to be the last important commemorative document they get? Hell, that's not even an award. You paid for that piece of paper.

There are so many things to award in life, at least in terms of the things that I would like to have recognized. My best research paper, my first outside grant, best conference presentation, a published article. Even juicier are those other more intimate events--best kiss, best blowjob, best all time fuck ever--these are events that become diluted down to nothing more than information passed along in whispers over coffee, events that deserve greater fanfare. Screw that! Sound the trumpets, fire the guns. Maybe among the many skills we have to learn in the course of life, we should also learn to celebrate our achievements no matter how small, because for the rest of us, there is no Oscar waiting behind the curtain.

I suppose that in the pea-brained graduate student's imagination, the Ph.D. itself is as close to winning an Oscar as you can get. Except that by the time you get to this stage, there is a sense that the degree itself is not award enough for the pure hell that you have to go through to get it. The loneliness, the poverty, lack of any security about the immediate future. The sense that no one really cares about your work. Anyone I've talked to who have actually gotten their Ph.D. (and there are many of them because I have an enormous number of brilliant friends!) says that it is meaningless and empty. Of course, not only do I think these people are overly modest, I also think they're lying sacks of shit.

Everyone says that doing your Ph.D. is more like running a marathon than a sprint. Having actually run a marathon, I rather compare it to an iron man triathlon, the kind that beats you down and makes you feel like donkey dung. When I ran the LA marathon back in 2002, I hit the proverbial wall at mile 17. The subsequent 9 miles were indescribable agony. I have never recovered. No wonder it is taking me so long to finish my degree. I hit that wall in 2002 and I'm still trying to make it over the finish line.

At this moment, about a hundred and fifty pages of my dissertation stand between me and my degree. I have a feeling like I will finish or die. One of the two. It is that degree or me. I have no idea what I initially intended to say when I started this, because now that I brought up my dissertation, I can feel it trying to stare me down and all I can do right now is stare back and hold my own.

the emperor wears vintage

Go away 80s. I'll not mince words when I say that 80s fashion sucks. So stop it, please I beg of you.

It’s hard to tell if my visceral response to the 80s revival has to do with my own traumatic fashion faux-pas growing up. Like that time that I was waiting for my dad to pick me up from school when Courteney Schlein, an upperclassman who was waiting next to me, looked me up and down and said, “… Nice… vest.”

I was clad in a navy-colored puffy down vest, the kind that would be very comfortable if you were, let’s say, skiing in Vancouver. It might also have been unseasonably warm out that day. Of course, I never wore that vest to school again. (I have left out the part where my dad eventually pulls up in our rattling two-toned brown and beige Chevrolet cruiser as Courtney’s mom pulls up right behind him in an immaculate black Mercedes sedan.) Or maybe it’s because of the time that I arrived at a formal wearing a homespun creation that involved black and white houndstooth and a balloon skirt. A formidable combination to say the least.

Regardless, I like to think that my offense is simply on an aesthetic level, pure unadulterated aesthetics, of which mine are very refined and vastly superior to other elementary humans that walk this earth.

But it only dawned on me this afternoon that there is even such a thing as an 80s fashion revival. This occurred as I was eating lunch and taking a moment out of my otherwise very busy and important day when I happened to catch Beverly Hills Cop on TV. The opening montage had Eddie Murphy strolling down Rodeo drive and checking out all the fashion victims wearing clothes that look disconcertingly like the hipster fashion of today. My superfast brain proceeded to make the connection that there are people out there, I dare say very young soulless people, who never actually lived through the 80s, resurrecting out of some sort of retro tomfoolery a fashion wave that should lie deeply buried in our shameful past. What’s worse is the culture of what I call “ironicalism” surrounding it. Whatever (insert finger quotations here).

Let’s call things as they are. First, this so-called “vintage” craze is nothing more than used clothing. That’s right. That would be stuff that other people didn’t want and were almost willing to throw away but were too cheap to do so. So, while I am a believer of recycling and restoration of quality goods (homes, furniture, old typewriters, cars, handmade bespoke suits) I refuse to buy into this delusion over what is in fact thrift store shopping. And if you’re going to buy thrift store stuff, fine, it’s all good, but let’s not go calling it “vintage”. It’s just used shit.

The thing is, some of my best friends wear "vintage" and I love them despite it. I understand that old stuff has a lot more character than off-the-rack Banana Republic. I will even claim to have a couple of prized used items in my own sartorial collection. But if we could only be a little more honest about what it is. And if we could just refrain from pretending like 80s clothing has been around long enough to be "vintage". And while we're at it, can we please not pretend that wearing "vintage" shoes is not completely gross? Someone else's foot was in there for chrissakes.

Fashion is inherently referential. All the looks have been done before and even the bubble skirt of the 80s can be found to date back to the 50s. But what I would like to believe is that if there can remotely be such a thing as "progress" that this would somehow entail leaving the bad stuff behind, being able to judge the ugly from the beautiful, or at least place things in a refreshingly new context where to be ironic isn't just to reproduce a look but to reconfigure that look into a real statement with true irony. When it comes down to it, the whole 80s vintage thing is just a physical manifestation of everything else going horribly wrong in the world. It invokes Reaganomics, Less Than Zero, square headlights on cars. So I don't think that it is overreacting when I say that the next person I see prancing down the road in an ill-fitting "vintage" dress and some outlandish beaded necklace and Jackie O sunglasses is not only committing a crime against fashion but a crime against humanity and should be punished accordingly.

On a side note, it's fracking freezing in LA today. It must be 50 degrees out or something.

the dragon whips its tail

In an uncharacteristic departure from my general policy not to post pictures of myself, I'm publishing this picture to prove to my beloved friends that I indeed still live.

Here is a curtailed list of some of the things that have prevented me from writing anything:

Olympic curling, out of town visitors, karaoke, car wreck (okay maybe just a bump), grey goose martinis, 2 am chacharoni, Alee, huge fight with the BFF, minor fight with the dad, teaching, and did I mention olympic curling? All while ineffectively trying to make progress with my dissertation.

What I learned from all of this was that human relationships are require work. Sometimes if you're lucky, everything happens effortlessly so that there is a seamless flow between one's personal and professional life, but in most cases you have to make sacrifices to make one or the other succeed. And in the past week I've dropped the ball in showing how much my real friends mean to me.

So on a very personal note, I'd like to send out this belated Valentine's message to the following people:

1. To my "not-so-secret" admirer, thanks for the anatomically correct one pound chocolate heart. It is so grotesque/lovely that I cannot bring myself to eat it.

2. To the Hanscoms, my adopted family, thanks for being a constant in my life.

3. To Alleycat, thanks for making me miss you more.

4. To Kathleen, eat more sushi and call me in the morning.

5. To Walter and Lambda, I wait with bated breath for your visit.

6. Ditto for Anne.

7. To Lily, Happy Birthday.

8. To Rebecca, when life gives you lemons get your legs waxed.

9. To Strongsad, someday Marzipan will answer her phone. In the meantime, stop letting Homestar smoke so much.

10. To "the other Cho", I'll be in Boston in July.

11. Luigi, I know you're out there somewhere. I miss you.

12. And last of all, to the Xoo. Please don't be mad at me anymore. I'm not perfect but trying my best. I have a pig in a blanket and I'm at your door. If you hear me knocking, let me in.

Apologies to anyone else who is reading this. But sometimes you just have to bring it down and keep it real.

has it really come to this?

Okay listen. I honestly don't know what is more disturbing. That it took me over thirty years to learn how to tie my shoelaces properly. Or that I sat here with my sneaker in my lap reading "Ian's Shoelace Site" for fifteen minutes following Ian's shoetying instructions. Either way, I can celebrate knowing that my days of bungled shoetying are over. No more of those inferior loosey goosey slip knots for me. I'm all reef knots from here on out. Yes! Is this what nirvana feels like? There were certainly no empty promises here... Ian really does know how to bring the fun, fashion and science of shoelaces!

they are dead to me

The fog rolled in on Palos Verdes friday night in a thick blanket. You could barely see five feet ahead of you. Cars disappeared into the mist like sharks slipping out of sight on a dark ocean floor. It felt incongruous with the room that I had just left, warm and lively, full of sounds of tinkling glasses and muffled laughter. Like stepping out of a cocktail party directly into a zombie movie. That's when a group of zombies actually emerged from the mist and began to chase me. I pulled my camera out just as the leader started to shuffle over to devour me, almost succeeding, before I ran screaming away like a blasted flibbertigibbet. Miraculously, I lived to tell the tale.

fabulize

The following words are to be forever excised from the English language:

glamorous
vintage
quirky
eclectic
fabulous

If you find yourself using any of the above at any time you should send me $100 per word per violation. I accept paypal. However, I'm prepared to provide some wholesome alternatives so that we might begin to incorporate language into our vocabulary that inspire our imaginations instead of regurgitating stale platitudes that have lost any descriptive power whatsoever. Let's exfoliate such linguistic sleaze from our lips and begin to revel in the verbal delights of:

loosey goosey
tomfoolery
hullabaloo
flibbertigibbet
autological

Screw homogenization and let's live a little.

happy year of the...

That's right doglovers, this is my shout out to you.

Not having been a believer in horoscopes, especially since the Chinese zodiac insists that everyone born in the same year has the same freaking fortune, you can imagine my surprise when after reading my horoscope online, I admittedly felt, well, sort of inspired by the message. Right before I felt grossly ashamed for reading it in the first place. But I felt as if it was speaking to me, just me. Stuff like "Your happiness is before you, not behind you." Okay, run of the mill cheese. But then there was the most inspirational: "There will even be a positive change in the career". Hurrah! Does this not veritably guarantee that I'm finishing my dissertation soon? Would it be unwise to print this out and attach it to the cover letter of all my job applications? This surely can't be the same for everyone out there can it?

I figure that writing a horoscope must be pretty formulaic. As long as there are sweeping generalities combined with some choice inspirational mantras. So here is my attempt at a "Year of the Dog" horoscope for you all:

The year of the dog is all about you.
This year you will make some new friends.
And get closer to old ones.
And grow apart from some of them too.
Reflect upon your present blessings
not on your past misfortunes.
Because the Dow Jones will go up. And it will go down.
If you have a kid, it will grow bigger
eventually to hate you.
When your phone rings, someone will be at the
other end of the line, wanting to talk to you.
And remember, beyond all else, as Einstein once said,
"The difference between genius and stupidity is
that genius has its limits."

Unsettling is it not? Like an eye piercing the depths of your heart?
(Let's thank my friend Leo for the adorable photo. Taken in Seoul on a Nikon 90. Click on photo for unflinching detail.)

P.S. Yet another important mystery solved.

atomization

This is what happens when advanced technologies swallow us whole. Note the rapture on their faces and the eerie obliviousness to their photo being taken.

I don't know what's wrong with me but I've started a terrible habit of starting to prepare for the class I'm teaching only after the clock ticks over at midnight the night before. Though it shouldn't be such a surprise to me that I'm heartily maintaining my reputation as a first-rate procrastinator, I still wish I weren't so irresponsible sometimes, especially when the higher learning of tomorrow's leaders is at stake. I teach a class of about 20 students. All of them very sweet and enthusiastic. Or maybe they're very clever suck-ups. Either way, I feel somehow like I'm cheating them out of something. What that is I'm not sure but if I were a better teacher maybe it would be more clear to me.

The way that I have mastered procrastination could possibly be used in a case study of some kind. Instead of reading up on "Imperialism and Technology", the topic of tomorrow's discussion, I actually find myself sitting here ruminating on a strange experience I had earlier today in my exercise class where I had the unexpected delight of working out in a sea of porn stars. Living in LA is so endlessly exciting. It relieves much of the normal ennui of any average grad student elsewhere. So much to see. So much cleavage to admire.

Now I have never been one to particularly envy ladies with big racks. Much thanks to my first boyfriend who gave me the lasting gift of making me comfortable with my body, small boobs and all. But still, when confronted unexpectedly with size double D's in an extremely crowded kickboxing class, you start to take notice and succumb to their power. I think I must have mistakenly taken the porn star kickboxing class tonight. I realized only too late that almost everyone in there knew each other and they all happened to have massive breast enlargements. Porn stars have awfully skinny asses too. And they dress almost exclusively in pink. I dare say I may have been the most small-breasted lady in the room, not excluding the dudes.

The point of bringing this up is not to ridicule porn stars or the porn industry for that matter. But rather to note that it is a strange feeling to be in a room full of people most of whom have been surgically enhanced. It feels as if the fictive sci-fi world of cylons and cyborgs has finally arrived but it is nothing like we had imagined. Our writers and filmmakers were a bit deluded by creating machines in our image that were elegant and beautiful. If we take the cylons in "Battlestar Galactica" as a prime example, all the cylon women thus far have been totally flat-chested. But no one has correctly projected that our reality is much more twisted. And that machines, idealized in human form, would be sporting fairly obscene anatomically incongruous appendages bolted to their chests.

At least "Gattica" was on the right track with its theme of genetic engineering, but it too failed to represent the actual path that our societies have taken. In this case, sci-fi is much more rational and civilized than reality. If, that is, we accept that our reality and the future trajectory of human civilization, is one heavily invested in the production and reproduction of gigantic gravity-defying jugs.

found

I used to watch this show on PBS called "Antiques Roadshow" religiously. You've probably seen it. You just haven't been bored enough to actually watch it.

It's a traveling show that goes from city to city getting people to bring all their old junk to see if they've unwittingly been sitting on a goldmine all those years. My favorite part of the show is when the camera pulls back and pans around the room and you see hundreds of people forming lines behind the "experts" with their crap in old wheelbarrows or cardboard boxes. You can see a hopeful glimmer in their eyes, maybe even a bit of desperation, enough to make you feel uncomfortable but for that reason all the more riveting. The people seem to come from backwater middle America and the saddest thing next to watching their sagging flesh squeezed into cheap pants and hush puppies shoes is seeing their faces fall when they find out that the pile of crap they brought in is pretty much just... a pile of crap.

No, there is something even more tragic than this. It's when they find out they actually have something of value, something that their grandfather or great aunt had collected lovingly for decades--bits of collectible soaps or pop art or tea tins--one measly scrap at a time, that they then learn is worth thousands of dollars. The sad part is that you know they will walk off the screen, auction that shit off as soon possible, so they can buy themselves a new three-piece walnut bedroom set from Sears. Yeah, that's definitely the saddest. No doubt about it.

I finally stopped watching this show because of one episode. It was one where a kid brought in an old helmet that he literally found in his attic, wedged between the rafters and had been there since the time his family had first moved into their house. He had no idea where it came from and thought it was a part of some junky costume. What it turned out to be, amazingly, was an Italian masterpiece from the 16th century, hammered out of a single piece of bronze and covered on every inch of its surface in the richest and most intricate relief of figures fighting in battle. It was really breathtaking. It was signed. The artist-metalworker was someone famous. It was a historical treasure. The obvious part of it of course was that this helmet, valued conservatively, was worth a quarter of a million dollars, but probably closer to half a million. The kid and his mother started to stagger around like someone had clubbed them on the head. Apparently the helmet alone cost at least twice as much as the house they found it in. Art in the hands of the guileless masses. Both touching and infuriating at the same time.

Yeah that ended it for me. It's impossible to top something like that. The indelible mark though that this show left on me is the startling reality that one person's trash is another person's treasure. Truly. Even terrifyingly so. This brings me to my final point, which is, that one of my own personal treasures has been officially published in the most recent book of collected trash titled Found, an idea that was started by the irreverent Davy Rothbart (Listen to last week's episode of This American Life for his story. The first unrelated story is really funny too.):

A friend of mine pointed out that she found my name in it and lo and behold, it was so. That's me there below under "Reserved for Jesus".

In case you can't make it out, this is basically a threatening note put on my car by my neighbor and Minister for blocking part of his driveway. It was the "Thanks, In Jesus' Name" that really killed me.

If you haven't heard of Found, you can see some of it online. It's an interesting concept that connects the disparate trails of our human lives together into a universal weave of love, humor, personal tragedy. A good read all around. If you want me to autograph your personal copy, send it in. Who knows how much more famous I may get. You can pass my autograph onto your grandchildren, and their children, who can then bring all that old shit onto some lameass TV show and have them learn that that old signed manuscript is worth freaking millions. Then the circle will be complete.

it's back!

The folks at McDonald's better not be pulling my McMuffin. Oh, what an auspicious sign for the new year.

to be cont'd...

ahoy

A couple of days ago someone sent me this photo to my phone. I don't know the person who sent it. But I think it might have been the pirate, sending out an S.O.S. I think he needs me.

the morning after

As is only befitting my currently nauseated and hungover condition, I poured half a bottle of fish sauce down my leg while semi-consciously muddling about in the kitchen. I'm hungover because yesterday was my birthday. And after an evening of dry martinis and some experimental moves on the dance floor, I finished off the night huddled around a tray of tacos at 2 am with some of my dearest friends. The causal effect of which is that I now smell horribly bad.

Having my birthday mid-holiday season used to really suck. When I was younger, no one was around to celebrate it and if they were, no one remembered or cared. The Christmas frenzy generally drove all other thoughts out of their yet undeveloped pea brains. Even my family had to struggle to pretend like they cared. There was always a ring of hollowness about the whole affair, the two-for-one gifting being only one of the many letdowns. But now if I had to choose I wouldn't have my birthday any other way. Mainly because it truly touches me when my friends do remember to call or write. You really know who your friends are at times like these. We are all busy and preoccupied with our own lives, our own families, and as we get older I think it gets harder to have the same emotional energy left over to think of someone else at this time of year.

It's difficult to pinpoint when this change takes place, but at a certain time, Christmas stops being Christmas and birthdays stop being birthdays. Instead you start to feel like they are just days like any other and the only thing that really differentiates them are as memories, memories of shared times. This makes it hard to live in the moment. Instead, the moment is already being thought as something that will later be remembered, sometimes even before it takes place.

This is not the way that I want to live. But it's hard to experience the holidays in any other way. It is just a time for the production of memory--good memories perhaps, but nonetheless based on a hyperconsciousness of time passing. We are constantly on the move, moving from producing one memory to the next, and if we're lucky we'll even remember them. How do you stop time and truly experience a moment? Can't we just learn to be content with right now?

As the new year quickly approaches I would like to suggest that we allow ourselves to get excited about things again like when we were little. Allow ourselves to look forward to the new year, the next step, the unknown, and stop second guessing ourselves, or preparing ourselves for disappointment. There's a lot that I expect or hope that will happen in the next year but I also resolve to try and appreciate things as they happen, not be afraid of the flow of time, and enjoy life as it is without trying to press everything into discrete memories when the clock clicks over.

(Behold, the magical 405 freeway in all its holiday glory.)

feeling the christmas spirit

Two turtle doves and a partridge in a palm tree.
Merry Kwanzukkahmas everyone.

no high impact gyrations

The elevator in my building smelled strongly of Goulden's mustard when I got on today. So much so that in that brief trip down to the parking garage, I was transported to a world of grilled ball park franks saturated with charcoal smoke and the sounds of summer fun. The unseasonably warm 80 degree L.A. weather did not detract from this feeling of going back in time, all of it making me appreciate how connected our olefactory senses are to our memory.

Things have finally settled down here. The frenzied grading has ceased. Christmas presents have been bought. And finally I have a chance to catch up on things, review my week, maybe even the year, and wonder where all the time has gone.

Whether it is related to the Christmas season or not, I have been running into a variety of Hollywood people, perhaps more than I have encountered since I first moved here seven years ago. Maybe it's my own circles of activity that have changed, which if that's the case, I really must be doing something horribly wrong. Though I'm uninterested in the Hollywood scene here and am even less impressed by the idea of celebrities, I frankly find it very difficult to stop staring when I see someone famous. What I usually do is the "pretend I'm not staring" stare. That usually results in a stiff neck and serious eye strain. But how can you not help it? Especially when you notice that most celebrities look like ass in real life.

First on my list of bad looking real life celebrities is David Alan Grier. Now you probably won't know who he is. It took me a while to figure out that he wasn't one of the Wayans brothers. This is how he normally appears on TV. He's an okay comedian. Nothing really remarkable one way or the other until I discovered that in person he looks noticably older. In fact, he reminds me of non-other than the late:




Redd Fox!







Then last week at a sample sale, I looked over at the register next to me at a gargantuan figure looming in my field of vision. Aside from my surprise that Marcia Cross, generally considered an "A-list" celebrity, was at a sale that I would be attending, in any case, I think that she's delightfully pretty on TV so I was in no way prepared for seeing her in her unadulterated state.

Which is as the spitting image of Skeletor. I am not exaggerating when I say that she must have been about six feet tall but weighed only a hundred pounds or so. Her face gives new meaning to the word "gaunt". Yet, despite her gauntness, her hair is very red and she has freckles, making her lovely still.


My last celebrity sighting is one that makes me truly marvel at the magic of TV makeup. How is it possible that this actress, Christine Elise, most notable for her appearances as bad girl "Emily" on Beverly Hills 90210 (which I swear I hardly ever watched), someone who I only remember because of this weird thing she had going on with her jaw, would in actuality look uncannily like...

Gary Busey.

In fact, I was working out right next to her at my kickboxing class this morning and I nearly fell on the floor a couple of times because I was transfixed by her sandpaper-like skin and the deep crevasses lining her face. She looked to me like she might be a hundred years old.

Well, thank god I got that out of my system. Now I can move on to contemplating other less important things like when I'm going to finally hand in my chapter to my advisor and whether I'll get hired in the coming year... For the time being, I think I may have to go back to the elevator, breathe deeply and think of summer barbecues.

in the shop

For those of you wondering about my spotty postings of late, it's because my flux capacitor is on the fritz and needs to be taken into the shop. Actually I've been busy as it's the end of the quarter but hope to be back to writing soon.