Echo

How to Properly Release Doves at Your Wedding

Dear God,

I would like to date an Aries next.

Thank you,

Julia

Dreams of a Non-Crack Smoker

I have strange dreams. Sometimes they’re like movies, complete with three-act structure and integrated themes. Sometimes they’re so real, they bore me to tears, like when I had a dream that I was at work putting together an Excel file, and that was the entire dream. Often, they feature Mexican migrant workers or Andy Garcia (unrelated to each other).

(ps–did you know Mickey Rourke was Andy’s little league coach when Andy was a kid in Miami? For reals, dude. Some people will leave their kids with ANYONE)

Last night I dreamed:

I wanted to make my hair super silky like in those Pantene commercials where their hair just spills down, like a river. I went to Walgreen’s and bought some conditioning oil but when I got home, I was reading the directions and it said, “Not to be used if your hair is colored.”

And I got so CRAZY offended because my hair is black and I’m like, What–just cuz my hair is BLACK, it ain’t good enough for your product?!?

But then I realized that the packaging was referring to highlights.

If not smoking crack gives me dreams like that, then maybe it’s time that I started.

1/19 Recap

I was at work today when I get a call on my cell phone from an area code that’s either my aunt (who wants to give me Lakers tickets), my cousin (who wants to go to dinner sometime this week) or this guy I had given my number to in September. We had hung out once but then he seemed really young and annoyingly flakey so I didn’t have much interest. He called a few times after that and I turned down the invitations politely, and then just stopped picking up when he still kept calling. Normally I let that area code go to voicemail in case it’s him, but I figured that since it’s been a couple of months since I last heard from him, I’d be safe.

Wrong.

So we chat and I remember he’s a nice guy, even though I don’t have any romantic interest in him. We talk about our New Year’s, about bad knees, his work etc. and then he segues into, “Speaking of work, that’s actually the reason I called. Would you be interested in working with me?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“What we would do is we’d go get coffee; then we’d sit down together and I would look at your current investments and your goals, and come up with a strategy to help you maximize your investments.”

What?

He’s cold-calling the people in his little black book? What a fucking asshole.

So I say, “Well actually, I just transferred all of my investments to Morgan Stanley literally 2 months ago and I have a friend of a friend handling my account so I can’t pull out now.” (heee! I said “pull out”)

“I understand,” he says. “But would you be interested in buying insurance? We provide a wide range of insurances that protect you from many things that can occur. For instance, do you know much about disability insurance? With disability insurance, if your back got bad enough to the point that it prevented you from working, did you know that disability insurance could cover you at nearly the same salary that you would be making at your job?”

Yeah, he’s definitely giving me a sales pitch. I tell him that I’m not interested and thankfully my work phone happens to ring at the same time so I have to go.

So he tells me to let him know if things don’t work out with Morgan Stanley and then asks if he should give me a call the next time he and his buddies hang out at Q’s [a local sports bar].

I wish I had said, “No, that won’t be necessary.”

But I’m too fucking polite.

Pisser.

Fucktard.

Dumbass.

I hate salesmen.

I went to see the psychohypnotist today. Interesting. I’m going to give it up to 4 sessions to see if it produces any results. If it does, I will be singing her praise from the mountaintops.

Today’s mood: Supposedly reprogrammed

Dolph Says, “Don’t Go To School Kids! Unless That’s the Only Place Where You Can Score Weed!”

Dolph Lundgren, known for his villainous roles in Rocky and a slew of terrible action movies often found on the Porta-Potty of basic cable (USA Networks), has a wasted Master’s Degree in chemical engineering and was the recipient of a Fullbright Scholarship to MIT. Proving once again, what’s the point of an education if you can make mad bank by slapping some canola oil on your boobies and beating the crap out of people.

1/18 Recap

Quickly because I have to be at work at 7am tomorrow…

This weekend I bought 3 18-count cartons of eggs from Costco, because Brian and I seem to go through a dozen a week (Eggs: It’s What Lazy People Eat). Now anyone who knows me knows that I can cook. But you know that joke about how someone who sucks at cooking can’t even boil an egg? Well, I swear to God I can cook, but apparently I don’t know how to boil an egg. I was trying to make hard-boiled eggs on Sunday and I asked Brian how long you need to boil an egg for and he didn’t know. So I let the water boil, and then cooked the eggs for about 45 minutes (I accidentally forgot about them). They turned out okay. Today, I wanted to make egg salad so I asked Brian how long an egg should boil for knowing full well that he didn’t have the answer, and he told me to look it up. So I did, and the recipe said, “Bring the water to boil, then cook for 1 minute.” Whoa. I overcooked my eggs by 45 times. I am 45 times more retarded than the average person.

I went to my friend AD’s birthday party tonight at a karaoke bar. I wanted to buy him a birthday drink and he wanted to do a shot of tequila together. Uh oh. I had planned to stick to juice tonight. No alcohol. And for him to suggest the evil which can notoriously send me careening down a dangerous, wanton path…

Well, luckily, 1 shot of Patron and I was fine. AD, however, was a different story, as he becomes friendly, adorable Huggy Bear when he’s drunk. Men, women, children, inanimate objects…all will receive some love from Huggy.

I chose not to sing as I have respect for fellow human beings and I just don’t wish that kind of hurt on anyone. Instead, Matt and I made up a game. It’s called My Cover Band Would Be Called…

Basically, we would name a band, and throw out what the name of our cover band for each particular band would be.

For example:

U2= Homo Bono, for me(a U2 glam cover band full of glitter, hyperbolic makeup and pronounced codpieces); Discoteque, for Matt.

Wilson Phillips = The Fat One (Matt and I were unanimous)

Bon Jovi = Styl Horse (pronounced Steel Horse), for Matt; Jersey Tuck Job or Feathered Pubes for me (have any of you seen Triumph the Comic Insult Dog when he asks Richie Sambora if he feathered his pubes in the 80s?)

There was much discussion tonight about the fact that we are getting old and are around the age where many people get married. As most of our friends in Michigan are. I’m starting to get a little nervous because I honestly can’t see myself even in a long term relationship, as I have yet to invalidate my history of being flighty and I just don’t feel comfortable being alone with people, male or female. I’m seeing the psychohypnotist tomorrow so maybe she can help shed some light. She asked me what I wanted to see her for when I was making the appointment today. I told her, “I just want to feel more integrated. Like there isn’t something I’m hiding, some part of me, even though I have no idea what it is or if it even exists.” Hopefully this can help.

(Mark Mulder, St. Louis Cardinals)

I just became a big baseball fan.

1/17/05 Recap

I almost nodded off at work today with only 20 more minutes to go. Didn’t even have enough consciousness to surf the net for weird pictures of people. The problem was that I had a big meeting earlier today and I got so wired running a mental sprint, that I just ran out of juice by the end of the day. It didn’t help that I spent two hours of lunchtime with the tax guy trying not to nod off as he did stuff that he could have done without me there. I dissolved my corporation today. After years of it hanging over my head as a sign of failure (I took a loss every year in the thousands, but it was mostly to help out my taxes), it’s finally gone. A moment of silence, please.

Okay that’s enough.

I finished the last DVD of the 3rd season of 24. Okay, I now watch it in my bedroom with the door closed because I kind of get choked up about Tony and Michelle. They’re…kind of…cute together. In the scene after Tony does the exchange for a kidnapped Michelle and the ensuing big shootout finally ends, they’re just on the ground in each other’s arms, clutching each other and sobbing; I actually sniffled a little and said, “Awwww…I want a husband…” That will be the only time you will EVER hear those words pass my lips in that order. Without the word “mail order” thrown in the middle.

Today is Martin Luther King Day and I would have really liked to have taken it off to celebrate the beauty that is the Big Black Brutha…er, I mean… the legacy of a great man. Here’s something I was thinking about. My brother and I both know the meaning of sadistic authority. It’s when certain authority figures provoke you until you act badly, just to show that you are someone who acts badly, and then they stand back and act like, “Whoa! What’s wrong with you?” Like they had nothing to do with it. It’s infuriating and frustrating, especially when you’re not the one with the power or authority, and you feel discredited because as far as other people can tell, you just acted badly, and they don’t realize that you were provoked. It creates a defensive, untrusting and angry mindset. A feeling of being trapped.

This dynamic makes me think about the plight of black people living in the U.S. Coming from a history where authority is too often cruel and unfair, as a group, they’re conditioned to be quite defensive and hyper-aware of the need for self-protection and the survivalistic need to be distrustful. But within a more evolved and positive environment as the current state of our nation is supposed to be, they should be able to put down the past injuries and grow past them in order to self-actualize. But the only problem is, that if there are people in positions of power who want to prove a whole group inferior, they can easily provoke members of that group to act poorly in a “predictable” fashion, by unfairly putting pressure on them in a way that results in certain negative outcomes. Within the right set of circumstances, anyone can act negatively, just as within the right set of circumstances, anyone can feel safe enough to act positively. But if the overall authoratative climate is one that wants to see certain people or groups fail, then they are going to greatly influence that group and trap them in a devastatingly negative self-fulfilling cycle.

I just think there is too much corrupt power. I know I post about it all the time, but too often, the people who seek power are the very ones who are too dangerous to have it. Power means responsibility for realities beyond your own, so the more power a person has, the more selfless he has to be. But if you look around, people in power are often the least selfless people. Think about politicians, celebrities, bosses…all of these people have power in some sense. But how many play out the manifestations of their own egos instead of giving of themselves in a degree that is in direct proportion to their range of influence? A true leader, belongs to his people. Not vice versa.

I hate corrupt, self-serving authority.

And now, the only time I want to talk about it, let’s just get it out of our system…

Brad and Jen.

My stance is… leave them alone. I don’t care who they are or how goodlooking they are. They’re two people going through possibly the hardest emotional times in their lives and we should have the decency not to be so insensitive to that. I don’t mean you have to go out of your way to care. I just mean, stay out of their business.

Dude, imagine the hardest breakup you’ve ever had, with someone you were head over heels in love with and possibly thought you would spend the rest of your life with. Then imagine if millions of people were dissecting your pain and private life in the least sensitive manner possible, judging you and throwing out baseless rumors when it’s none of their fucking business in the first place. Personally, if you guys did that to me, I would hunt down each and every one of you and bring upon you a violent end. I once nearly hunted down a friend just for commenting about a hard break-up of mine in an insensitive, snarky way. It’s just not cool. And yeah, we expect more from our friends than strangers, but if you’re a stranger, then you don’t even have any business making comments!

They’re probably going through one of the most painful times if not THE most painful time of their lives. If any of you have gone through a divorce, have had parents get divorced, or have been in a household where the parents fought bitterly over divorce, then you know. It’s very very emotionally difficult and heartwrenching. It’s not a circus. It’s not a soap opera. It’s real life. And I don’t care if they’re celebrities but these are real people with real feelings and real suffering.

I think the difference between these two and say, a certain media trainwreck known is Bennifer, is that the latter kind of made a mockery out of celebrity and relationships. Brad and Jen didn’t go out of their way to get the spotlight and sport gaudy displays of affection and celebrity. Yes, celebrity is what it is, and the good comes with the bad. But few people realistically anticipate what the reality and price of fame are before they’re suddenly thrust in the middle of it, nor is it fair for us to say they deserve it for being rich and famous, just because we’re jealous and want to find some way to tear down our own demi-gods. Don’t fucking forget, we put them up on that pedestal…so what does it say about us when we have such a vicious obsession over breaking down our heroes? I didn’t so much feel sorry for Ben and J-Lo because they kind of put themselves out there for this kind of attention, encouraging both the positive and negative. But Brad and Jen made an effort to live lives as normal human beings, and I think we, as the masses, should have the human decency not to make a mockery out of a very difficult time for two fellow human beings.

On the other hand, I’m not immune to reading an article if the headline pops up on my msn homepage. I’m susceptible to all this crap too. But I try to force myself to change the channel when the gossip shows start talking about it, to ignore the newsstands and to refrain from speculation with friends because it’s none of my fucking business. I just keep thinking that if I were in their position, all this bullshit would aggravate an already devastating emotional situation and it’s really quite cruel; I would hope that if I were in this position, people, especially strangers who have nothing to do with my business anyway, would have the kindness to stay out of my personal business. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. People in masses have the propensity to extreme levels of cruelty. Especially when envy is involved. But just think about your own difficult experiences with personal pain. Now imagine it scrutinized and mocked by millions. Would you be so heartless as to wish that on anyone?

Raise your hand if your 45-ish tax accountant with a fascination for Asian culture and Asian women also insists on giving you a hug hello and goodbye after every session.

Anyone?

Anyone???

oh god.

Alright kids, let’s do a roll call of new blogs of people I know but didn’t know had blogs until recently:

Rebecca is a smart, sassy girl from the midwest who can kill a man using only 1.25 fingers. She could kill women and children too, but that’s just showing off.

Rob is a cynical optimist braving the urban jungle of New York City. He can tell you the best places to go to watch people buy crack. It’s a fun activity. Like tailgating. Bring your own folding chair and a cooler of beer. And a foam finger.

Thode’s site deserves some serious design concept awards. It’s very creative and the writing’s funny and fresh.

I’m staying in tonight because I just love the feeling of being at home and cozy sometimes. We went out last night and being the weakass Asian that I am, two drinks damn near had me falling into the pool. But I was STILL able to tell that there was no one hot in the bar, so don’t believe any rumors that alcohol clouds the judgment of all pertinent superficial matters. What about that mailbox incident last year, you say? Once again, I promise you that even sober, I would have totally thought that mailbox was really, really hot.

I need to submit an article outline to a men’s magazine by tomorrow. Sometimes it worries me, how much I trip myself up about things. It freaks me out, getting published or having my creative pieces out there so I tend to sabotage myself. Writing this blog is a love/hate relationship. It’s what I do to keep myself from becoming completely reclusive, afraid of showing any of my work to anyone. I could easily become like that guy, Henry Darger, who died and afterwards, his landlord found enormous amounts of art and manuscripts that he had been privately creating behind closed doors, and nobody ever had any idea.

Speaking of things that people do behind closed doors, have you guys ever heard that REM song, “Life and How to Live It” ? It’s based on this true story of this schizophrenic guy who divided his house up and would live different lives between them, but after he died, they found this huge stash of all these copies of the same book. Apparently, he had written a book, but he had kept every copy ever printed in the back of his house and never showed it to anyone. And the book? It was called “Life and How to Live It” of course. That’s one of my favorite stories. I would do anything to get a copy of that book and read it. [note: I saved this post and searched the internet and found a rare books dealer who has this book and have ordered it, and I thought this piece of news was important enough to justify a run on sentence.]

So anyway, this weird issue I have…my mom and I were discussing it and I told her that I’m thinking about going to see a hypnotherapist. I want someone who has a solid background in clinical psychology but who also understands the marriage between the mind and the soul, the psychological and the existential. I don’t know what my problem is, why I get so freaked out when I think about my work being exposed. Because my work is me and I’m highly sensitive because I haven’t learned the separation between the art and the artist yet. And I’m afraid of what they’ll find hidden in my closet. I don’t think I have anything in my closet. I feel like I’m always obsessively going through it and have ransacked the place of anything repressed and juicy. But all indications seem to be that there’s something unresolved back there. Maybe it’s a childhood trauma. Maybe it’s a past-life trauma. Maybe it’s negative attitudes. Or maybe I’m just fucking undisciplined. But sometimes it freaks me out when I think about how there can be certain factual incidents that have happened in a person’s life, but you honestly can’t pull up a memory of them. Yet you know they must have happened because you’ve seen pictures, or other people were also present at the time to confirm the experience. It’s scary to think about how ANYTHING can happen to you and your mind can just veto your conscious power and decide, yeah, that memory…it’s not going to exist anymore. Like some of the women who get raped on roofies and wo would have no idea what happened if no one told them. Memory is such an amazing, twisted fucking fucked up fucky fucky thing.

I surfed a few blogs today and you know what I’m proud of? More and more people are saying, “Fuck grammar!” in the name of expressing their own personal style. I figure, when it comes to writing, if other people can get where you’re going and get into these personal experiences through the guidance of your words, then you’re the fucking bomb. For example, the whole preposition rule. It’s bull. When we speak, we say, “Who are you coming with?” “What are you thinking about?” Like Winston Churchill mockingly but correctly put, “This is the sort of English up with which I cannot put.” Who talks like that?!? If I wrote things like, “About what are you thinking?” and “With whom are you coming?” in the dialogue of my screenplays, I would deservedly receive the reputation of being a really bad writer. And I think some of the people who are always correcting other people’s grammar do it to feel undeservedly intellectually superior. I suspect these people are insecure about their own lack of personal creativity. Anyway, the first thing they always teach you in writing classes is to be brave enough to write in your own voice. I figure, words on a page are a blueprint, a guideline for the imagination to visualize a live event or conversation. And that’s more important than staunchly sticking to often outdated rules. I mean, I’m not advocating a complete disregard of grammar rules so that people sound like illiterate idiots. But when I read people’s blogs and I can tell they’re completely uninhibited in the way they write and are speaking exactly as they would in real life, it’s so refreshing. Totally honest.

I watched a few episodes of the 3rd season of 24 tonight. Brian thinks the show is terrible. I think it’s amusing. They deal with such serious matters, but the production just isn’t that good. The acting is terrible and the character of Kim is kind of a joke. She threatened to turn the beginning of this season into a WB teen drama. The office is dealing with a serious terrorist threat that could kill millions and she’s spends the first episode overtaking every scene with, “Waaah! We need to tell my dad that we’re dating because it’s been three months and you promised we would tell him if we were still dating after three months!” Um, little girl? We revolve around the sun. Not you. [Anyone else get annoyed by the way she runs around the office referring to Kiefer as “dad?” How about a little professionalism, girl-in-bad-haircut? Jeez.]

But I digress. Kiefer is so in character, and that’s so riveting to watch. The only weird thing is that every time he gets up close in someone’s face and is doing his velvety yet urgent whispers, I can’t help but think about how bad he must smell. Because Kiefer’s a method man and he figures, he’s this guy under great stress who’s running around sweating out spent adrenaline and not eating or rehydrating…for twenty-four straight hours. You can tell how he IS Jack Bauer. Plus, Kiefer’s a fan of hard living in real life. So I just bet when he goes in and becomes Jack Bauer, he’s just not really concerned with personal hygiene.

Or maybe this is my clean freak streak showing.

We’re getting ready to go out now. Haven’t been to a bar with these kids in a very long time. I cleaned up my bedroom and made my bed. Hmmm. This hasn’t happened in a while. Something’s going on with me.

So this is how it went down.

I’m in the kitchen, vehemously scrubbing the dishes with soap and a sponge like an obsessive-compulsive, opting not to use the dishwasher because I was awashed by my hardworking-Asian-in-the-fields ancestor roots and wanted to work with my hands. There’s a joy and naturalness to doing something that takes great manual effort. I was also very high.

Lauren is listening to her phone messages when she turns around and says, “Some brother…just left me a message saying, ‘So this is how it’s gonna go down bitch. You haven’t called me back.’ I think it’s this guy I met a long, long time ago.”

So she’s a little bit rattled and I’m telling her that guy sounds insane, especially if he’s been harboring anger at you for not calling him for this long of a time. Because it means he sat there and stewed about it obsessively. And I’m starting to freak out for her.

She wants me to listen to the message. I’m thinking I’m about to listen to a message from someone unstable enough to be a bona fide psychopath; she puts the phone to my ear and indeed, I hear a man say, “So this is how this is gonna go down bitch. You haven’t called me back.” Then pathetically, “So call me…bye…”

I started cracking up and said, “Lauren, that was a gay man. That brother’s gay.”

“So this is how this is gonna go down bitch“?

Honestly, he sounded like some girl trying to start a catfight.

So now Lauren’s a little embarrassed because we’re about to make fun of her because some guy who’s OBVIOUSLY gay but in complete self-denial was pissed at her for not calling him.

I say we need Brian’s opinion for verification. He’ll know if the guy’s gay.

Brian listens to the message and then starts cracking up, throwing the phone back to her. “That’s Colin.”

Remember Colin and his raging boots from a few posts ago? Dude, he’s most definitely some beautiful-black-but-psychotic stalker. I was totally freaking out that Lauren was being stalked by a maniac.

This guy is FUNNY.

My favorite part of this article…

The girl likes to have her hair done and have nice clothes and always look good. And she also always like to smoke but she NEVER has any herbs of her own to bring over so that I can smoke with her. She doesn’t have herbs, blunts, liquor, a car, her own place, nor does she have any money. So that means that I have to provide everything…But I didn’t have any money on me and I had run out of blunts so we needed to go to the store to get a blunt. I told her that I didn’t have money in my wallet but I had the herbs and the drink at home and all I needed from her was SIXTY CENTS to go buy a blunt from the store. Can you believe that this bitch didn’t even have SIXTY FUCKING CENTS in her pocket? She gave me like 35 cents in dimes and nickles and I was able to scrape up the rest of the change from the floor of my car. So between both of us, we were barely able to scrape up 60 cents for a blunt. While we were still in the car, I thought to myself, “Why the fuck am I with a female that doesn’t even have sixty cents in her pocket”? But this night, it didn’t matter. We got to the house and I rolled the blunt, we smoked it, and then we went upstairs and she sucked me off swell. But because she didn’t even have 60 cents, I was kind of offended when she asked me to suck her titties first. How the fuck are you gonna ask me to suck your titties when you don’t even have SIXTY FUCKING CENTS to your name?

Man, I obviously didn’t have enough balls in college. Wish I had written something like this and not cared so much about things like grades, or graduating, or not being homeless when you don’t have a job.

um, yeah…I’m gonna have to ask you to turn the crazy down a notch…

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005013091,00.html

Do you ever feel…not so fresh?

1:44am and I wonder what it would be like to just not go to work. Just pull an office space and decide not to go anymore. I went to the bank during my lunch break just to do a balance inquiry. Like visiting my money in its theoretical form will reaffirm my will to work. I kind of like having money. But I don’t like to work. Someone work out a happy compromise for me. One that doesn’t involve sex with a very very old and very very rich man.

I wonder if blogging is bad for me. Like, if you have a jolly good time masturbating, you end up not having any drive to go out and get the real thing. Increase time spent blogging…decrease time spent screenwriting and other writing of that ilk that could potentially bring in income. Shame on you guys for letting my masturbation problem get out of hand.

I made empanadas for dinner tonight. Just wanted to try but I substituted out such incredients as lard, using butter instead. Because it’s uh…so much better for you. But actually, I didn’t even have any regular butter in the house so I used light butter for the dough, which I figured would kill the recipe since the lard/shortening/butter is necessary for good pastry texture. And then I baked them instead of frying them. The results weren’t so much empanadas as beef and potato pies. And then I accidentally left a batch in the oven for 80 minutes (they’re supposed to bake for 20) because I zoned out.

There should be a Special Olympics event called Living. You just go about your life trying to put one foot in front of the other and make it day to day without any tragicomical disasters or setting anyone’s pets on fire. I would try out for this event, but probably not even qualify for competition, when it’s discovered that no matter how well labeled and obvious a plate glass window is, I’ll still walk into it.

I’m so tired but I don’t want to go to bed.

Going to bed = alarm clock going off = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = snoozing = getting up = cranky shower = work.

By not going to bed, I prevent this whole process, creating a break in the time/space continuum by interrupting the logical chain of events so that resulting events can not occur. Therefore, by not going to bed, I don’t have to work. Ha! Take that God! I beat you.

No, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.

We Salute You, Patrick Kerney!


Car Alarms Are Really Sensitive and the friends of the Navy congratulate NFL’s Patrick Kerney for being Fa-bu lous!