Echo

The Truth About Appliances

I’m grumpy when I wake up. It can’t be helped.

Today:

Michael: Do you want the heater on or off?
Me: I want it up my ass.
Michael: No Julia, it’s too big.

More random notes

For some reason I don’t want to write recaps lately. Perhaps I’m feeling more private than usual. Even though there isn’t much to hide. Anxiety, work, netflix, sexual abstinence…blah blah blah. What’s ever different.

I’ll tell you something that bugs me. Cancer. Yeah, it bugs me and does a lot worse to other people. It comes out of nowhere and fucks up the lives of good people and the good people who love them. Fuck Cancer. FUCK YOU. No one invited you to this party. But still, you show up, you park your stupid death-trap hatchback in the middle of the front lawn, you drink the last of the keg in your little red Solo cup, you grope people’s girlfriends when they’re passed out in the coat room and you let out the nastiest farts on the dance floor…

Honestly. Just go home. No one likes you and you ain’t got no friends. I fucking hate you.

*****
I’m at home in the bay area. There have only been 3 plane rides in my life where I seriously thought I was going to die, and today was one of them. My flight out got delayed for 5 hours and we took off in high turbulence. The plane got hit by lightning or something because there was this flash and a metallic CRACK! and people screamed. The woman behind me kept mumbling to no one in particular, “They wouldn’t let us take off in a storm if it was dangerous would they?” But we got to a higher altitude and it was fine. I was kind of sad though, in that I really like sitting at home with the door to the balcony and all the windows of my room open, just listening to the rain. Or waking up to the sounds of a storm outside, but knowing it’s the weekend and I get to stay under the covers. It doesn’t storm very often in LA, and I was sad that I would miss this one. Mostly, I just don’t want to be in this house.

*****
I figured out today that sometimes people have intimacy issues because they are afraid of criticism. They’re afraid that someone will get deep inside of them and then go to town on their most delicates, the inner chamber where their flaws stand naked and vulnerable. This points an accusational finger straight to a childhood influenced by someone who was unabashedly and relentlessly critical. It lends itself to a perpetual feeling that something is broken inside and will garner disapproval and disappointment, and that things will be okay once it’s fixed, whatever that may be. But unfortunately, it’s a phantom feeling, kind of like when people have their legs amputated, but they’ll still itch like crazy even though their legs are no longer there. That feeling will ALWAYS be there, and no matter how much you fix of yourself, it’ll still mysteriously exist. At some point, you have to stop fighting with it and start living with it. People will internalize something–in this case, a general environment of being criticized and feeling as though they’re seen as flawed along with feelings of incompletion–and believe that their imperfections are the causes of discomfort. And so they feel that once they fix whatever is causing the discomfort, whatever it is that will garner criticism, they will finally feel 100%. But it’s phantom–that feeling will persist. So they’ll keep fixing and fixing, driven by a fear of being wounded by criticism and of being seen as inferior, and end up being afraid to let anyone near them before they’ve fixed whatever will (or potentially might) be criticized. They in essence, piss their lives away. For the most irrational and frustrating of reasons.

Be good to your children. Let them know that no one is perfect and even if they make mistakes or don’t look or act a certain way, that they are still loved and that love is unconditional. Don’t nitpick at them until they get so scared of doing things wrong that they would rather not do anything at all. Because what a stupid reason not to let people get close to you, as a grown adult, just because you think that people will take away their love once they discover your flaws.

*****
I don’t trust people. I don’t trust people who can walk into a place and seem to be buddies with everyone. I don’t trust people who sit back and seem to know something that no one else notices. I don’t trust people who smile too much. I don’t trust people who silently brood. I don’t trust people who always get angry. I don’t trust people who never get angry. I don’t trust people who say they’ll call but never call. I don’t trust people who constantly call. I don’t trust people who want to know everything about me. I don’t trust people who don’t care who I am. I don’t trust people who tell me to trust them. I don’t trust people who say they can’t be trusted. I don’t trust people who need to be paid money to be trusted. I don’t trust people who think trust is a payment. I don’t trust people who have never met me. I don’t trust people who want to meet me. I don’t trust people who think highly of me. I don’t trust people who think I’m just shit. I don’t trust people who can see deep inside of me. I don’t trust people who have no idea who I am. I don’t trust people who believe things only after they’ve seen them. I don’t trust people who believe everything they’ve seen. I don’t trust people who claim to know where we’re going. I don’t trust people who want me to trust them. I don’t trust people who want to be trusted. I just don’t trust people.

And yet I’m in love with people, all people abstractly, most people quite spiritually, some people very literally. Everything that carries life, somewhere, there’s something beautiful that flows within them, and you can’t help but defer to that.

So how does this work? This trust and love thing? Why aren’t they automatically co-existent and integrated? And if I don’t trust people, why is my trust so often getting taken advantage of?

I think I need a lot of love and it makes me angry and scared to admit it.

Asians–Built For Effeciency

My coworker just came back from a show in New Orleans and was telling me how on Valentine’s Day, he had 4 Hurricanes and 2 Hand Grenades to drown his sorrows (his wife and kids were back here in LA). It started me thinking again that maybe there’s a pleasure to drinking that I can’t relate to, because halfway into 1 drink, 1 beer, 1 glass of wine, whatever…my face is red, my head is throbbing, I’m feeling queasy, and my eyes hurt. And yet I soldier on because I thought this is how everyone feels and yet everyone else seems to enjoy drinking. I know that Asians lack an enzyme that helps break down alcohol, but then I would talk to other Asians, and they didn’t seem to have the same symptoms unless they drank a huge amount.

I decided to do a search on google for “allergic to alcohol” and pulled up up this explanation:

When a person drinks alcohol, it is absorbed into the bloodstream and broken down in a series of chemical reactions which take place with the help of enzymes. One of the intermediate breakdown products is a fairly toxic chemical called acetaldehyde. Most people have enough of an enzyme called “acetaldehyde dehydrogenase” to keep the level of acetaldehyde which accumulates in the system fairly low. Some people (often they are ethnically Asian) are born with very low quantities of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. When they drink, they get sick, because too much acetaldehyde accumulates. The anti-alcoholism medication Antabuse (disulfiram) works by inhibiting acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. You are having an Antabuse reaction without the Antabuse. So don’t drink, and consider yourself lucky that you don’t need to worry about becoming an alcoholic.

I’ve read about Antabuse. It’s supposed to be a pretty good deterrent for alcoholics. If being on Antabuse is how I feel when I drink, then I’m not actually having fun when I drink, which makes a lot of sense. The strangest thing is that I accepted all the negative symptoms because I assumed everyone felt them, but because people LOVE drinking, then the human standard was that the symptoms were worth the price of the buzz and therefore, I enjoyed drinking, too. This explains why I don’t really like drinking and don’t go out of my way to engage in the act of drinking, though I’ll nurse one if I need something to do with my hands at a party or for social reasons. But it never occurred to me to think about how I don’t enjoy drinking and that maybe I was having much more negative physical reactions than other people. Strangely, tequila has minimal negative effects. I can handle tequila better than anything, but only if it’s straight.

I think that’s great though…that Asians have this built in setting to prevent them from becoming alcoholics. Because if you’re an alcoholic, you can’t work overtime. It’s brilliant! But somehow, I don’t think that the plan was for them to get their kicks on other recreational drugs. Raise your hand if you know Asians who are X addicts. Yeah, they love that stuff. I personally stay away from it because I’m afraid if I tried it, I’d like it too much.

Random Notes

Monday is Michael’s magical birthday. 21 on the 21st. I expect you all to show your respect by taking the day off work.

*****

If an ace can be both one and eleven, then tequila is both magical and delicious. evil

*****
and then there was one.

Sagittarians–I’m gunning for you….

So I was sitting at home one day, thinking about how little I remember of junior high, which is probably one of the most traumatic rites of passages legally-enforced by American society. The suckitude of junior high in my mind kind of clumped together into one dark, murky disgusting blob with a smell and aftertaste best likened to Ass, when I remembered one thing that made me chuckle.

I had some class with this guy named Nate and we were always in a group together with another girl (Cara?). And Nate would always wear this t-shirt that said:

And it would always crack me up and brighten up my day because…well…sneezing and farting at the same time–it’s just ANOTHER potential source of embarrassment that could ruin the life of a 12 year-old.

To this day, whenever I hear someone let out one of those whopping throat-tearing sneezes where it sounds like a lung was just shot through a nostril, I always think about this shirt. And then I laugh at the fact that I always automatically think about how hard that person’s buttcheeks must be clenched. I mean, everyone else thinks the same thing too when they hear someone sneeze, right?

Anyway, I got back in touch with Nate a few weeks ago through the wonder that is Friendster. He sent me this picture today, and it made me chuckle, just as it did so many years back. And considering I was having a shitty morning, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

What Is This World Coming to…

Weekend Recap

I’ve been suffering from AFNGR–anxiety for no good reason. I can’t seem to figure out what bug crawled up my ass, but I’ve been going to bed with this sense of dread, that I really fucked up on something but I can’t remember what.

Is it the money issue–how my money got locked up in a new savings account that I forgot to link to my checking, an oversight that will take 7-10 days to remedy, coming at an unfortunate time when I have bills in the thousands due 6 days before I’ll have enough money to cover them? Compounded by this ridiculous speeding ticket that I now have to fight?

Is it the girls basketball team that I’m trying to start, when I get plenty of emails from girls who are interested in playing but who don’t want to commit? Am I actually stressed because I have a bad feeling about playing, considering basketball has led to 3 out of 5 of my knee surgeries? Am I feeling bad because I arranged to shoot around with one of these prospective girls today, but we missed each other after she made the hour-long drive from Orange County, due to her waiting in the parking lot of the entire complex while I waited outside the actual gym within the complex? Am I upset because she left me a long, angry message about how not cool I was for making her drive so far and then bailing, when in fact, I’m a bit irritated about why she wouldn’t think to actually go to the entrance of the gym rather than the large parking lot used collectively by all the other large stores and vendors?

Maybe I’m feeling overwhelmed about needing to talk to my boss about how it’s not cool anymore that he’s underpaying me for my position, let alone the fact they’ve tacked on the responsibilities of two other job positions, while meanwhile, the girl who comes in an hour late and leaves an hour early is complaining that I don’t seem busy enough.

Maybe I’m just feeling generally overwhelmed.

Maybe I’m freaked out because someone invited me over to his house to hang out tonight and the thought of being alone with a guy I could actually like made me nervous, and that upset me that I would get so nervous. Maybe I hate the fact that an invitation like that stirs up all of my defenses that tell me my #1 priority is to get OUT of the invitation, even though I know it makes no sense. Maybe there’s no cure for how shy I am when I’m in one-on-one situations, and being so much better at hiding it in public makes it only so much worse.

Maybe the fact that pretending my dad doesn’t exist makes it easier for me to not think about it, but is actually making me crazy with guilt.

Maybe I just need a big fat Time-Out so I can get my X’s and O’s straight or at the very least, figure out which basket I should be shooting at.

And by the way, happy Venereal Day.

Cool things about the weekend:

Urethra, Thode, An Unnamed Librarian and An Unnamed Blogger embarked on a life of crime this Saturday night. They were recruited by a seductive Swede named Svetka. The unruly quartet also attempted to start a brawl with a Birthday Girl in a shiny aqua halter top, but the Birthday Girl’s inability to put together nouns and verbs in a logical order defused the situation. West Hollywood is on high alert. Warrants have been issued for Lucy Liu, Lisa Ling and mysterious blonde who goes by the alias, Uma.

I was marathoning The Shield, Season 2 this weekend when in one episode, the crew breaks into an apartment to apprehend the brother of a gang leader. I wasn’t paying too much attention (folding laundry at the time) when the brother started screaming something and I realized, I know that voice. They brought him in for interrogation and I was right–there was my friend Reggie, Mr. Smiley, crying like a little bitch the moment a menacing Michael Chiklis got in his face. I was proud of him though. Even though he weeps like such a pretty lady.

I spilled my coffee at the Coffee Bean today. This cute guy who works there (who we actually saw at the bar last night!) helped me clean it up and remade the drink for me. I wish he hadn’t been so cute. It made me feel more like an idiot. Wait, this wasn’t a cool thing about the weekend. Ah, it doesn’t matter. Spilling things, knocking things over, shooting holes into my feet, being all around confused…that just sums up my life these days.

Please Help Me If You’re Good at Math

I’m going to fight a speeding ticket that I got last week that really pissed me off. I made a right turn and half a block down, a motorcycle cop got me for going 54 in a 45 which made no sense to me because there’s no way I could have accelerated to 54 in such a short distance, even if I was flooring it (which I wasn’t). So I’m trying to bring in the math to prove that by the laws of physics, I couldn’t have been going 54. But I’m not very good at math. So please help me if you can!

The official literature on my car says that it goes 0-60 in 6.6 seconds. That’s an acceleration of 9.09 mph per second.

Even though he has hiding in this driveway in the middle of a block, I just measured the distance to the next street (which was where I pulled over), which is 100 meters away (328.08 feet).

The minimum range for a radar gun is 50 feet. So I could only go a maximum of 278.08 feet from where I made the right turn, before he would be unable to clock me.

Velocity is acceleration x time. So this is my breakdown:

At 1 second (after turning), I was going at 9.09 mph. I traveled a distance of 13.332 ft.
2 seconds = 18.18 mph. 27.572 more feet traveled
3 seconds = 27.27 mph. 39.996 feet
4 seconds = 36.36 mph. 53.328 feet
5 seconds = 45.45 mph. 66.528 feet
6 seconds = 54.54 mph. 79.992 feet

I would have had to travel a minimum of 267.42 feet in order to be clocked at 54 miles per hour, which would mean it’s within the realm of reason that I could have been going that fast if the radar gun had indeed been located 100 meters away from my start point.

Except he wasn’t 100 meters away. He was 60 at most which should make it impossible for him to have clocked me at 54 miles per hour. I’m going to go out and measure the distance some time this week, but I’m trying to make sure that my math is correct, or the way I’m measuring the velocity/acceleration is correct. So if you’re good at this stuff or have any tips, please help me! I know I wasn’t going 54 mph because I wasn’t gunning it and didn’t have time to go that fast in the first place, but I just need to prove that there’s no way that an acceleration to 54 mph in that short of a distance is possible.

Thanks!

ps–actually, what’s strange is, I asked him about the radar and if he had my measurement on record from a radar but he just walked away and didn’t answer my questions. So I don’t know where he got 54 from.

You know what I just remembered?

How my brother used to write me letters and he would end them all with:

Ta ta for now!

Love,
Michael “Sunshine” Shih

This was like, last year.

Need Female Basketball Players

Well, I’ve been begging my friends and have posted an ad on Craig’s List, so I may as well try here. If any of you guys know of girls living in LA who might be interested in joining a women’s basketball team through the rec league, let me know. I want to sign up for the crappier of the two leagues so they don’t have to be good. They just need to be willing to commit to showing up. I need 10 more girls. The cost is $55 which includes team registration and uniforms. Games are Sunday afternoons in North Hollywood. Let me know if you guys have any friends, ex-college roommates, penpals, whatever.

Found Money

Yesterday I checked my Datek (now Ameritrade) account for the first time in 3 1/2 years and found that I had 60 shares of Microsoft that I had semi-forgotten about. And 1000 shares of a stock that is now defunct. I think I had gotten bummed when everything was crashing and stopped checking. But it was cool to find money that I’d forgotten about. Granted, the account is now worth less than half of what I put in, but at least it’s extra money for a rainy day.

My coworker is trying to convince me to buy a couple thousand shares of DESC. Here’s the company summary:

Distributed Energy Systems Corp Formerly known as Proton Energy Systems, Inc.. The Group’s principal activities are to design, develop and manufacture proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrochemical products for commercial applications. The PEM technology is incorporated in two families of products namely, hydrogen generators and regenerative fuel cell systems. The hydrogen generators convert water and electricity into high purity, pressurized hydrogen gas using PEM electrolysis. The regenerative fuel cell systems integrates PEM hydrogen generation technology with PEM fuel cell technology to create a power quality device that produces hydrogen from water and electricity, stores the hydrogen, and uses the hydrogen as fuel for the production of electricity. The products of the Group function as power generating and energy storage devices.The registered trademarks include Proton(R), Hogen(R), Unigen(R), Fuelgen(TM), Hipress(TM) and Transforming Energy(TM). On 10-Dec-2003, the Group acquired Northern Power Systems Inc.

I’ve been burned by the stock market before but maybe it’s worth a try. But for the same amount of money I could probably buy a house somewhere on the outskirts of LA. My other coworker put $6,000 down and bought a condo which he’s renting out, and is looking for another one. It never occurred to me to look into these things but I guess the way people make money in this world isn’t about how much salary they make, but how they invest that money. I have a strong aversion to financial matters and paperwork. But for once in my life, I’m motivated to learn. I’m also going to draw up a will and living trust so that if anything ever happens to me, 1. The government can’t freeze my funds or take half of it; and 2. My brother is taken care of.

Thanks everyone, for your kind words and support. It means a great deal to me and you guys are one of the big positives in my life. I’m feeling better today. What’s there to think about, you know? You can’t make decisions for others or change how they feel. You can only decide how you’re going to deal with things and who you want to be…if you’re going to let someone else’s bullshit sink you. I’ve got a great life with great people around me. And that’s more than a lot of people have. So who cares what unhappy people think, right?

So who wants an ice cream sandwich?????? Yeah you…right there, chubby…I know you want one…

Rough day today.

Sometimes I think you just have to realize that maybe you can’t have a relationship with a family member, no matter how much you want to. Because it’s not good for you. And it sucks. It really sucks.

The only nice thing that happened was this meter maid was going to give me a parking ticket because I found myself too upset to drive so I pulled over and got out to get some air. I was on the phone standing next to my car when I saw her writing me up. I asked her not to, that I was standing right there and was about to put money in but she said she had already put my license in. So I just kind of felt resigned, because of all things, this wasn’t worth fighting over. So I opened my mouth to say, that’s alright, but instead, I broke down sobbing. She put her arm around me and said, “It’s okay,” very maternally. I told her, “My brother’s having surgery right now, ” when that wasn’t what was making me want to die as much as, my realization that my father has never thought of me as a real person as much as an extension of my mom who he hurts just to get back at her. She asked me if I needed a hug and I said yes. So she hugged me and I told her, I’m so sorry…I’m not doing this just to get out of a ticket. She said, I can tell. And she talked with me for a while.

And that’s what hurt the most, you know? When strangers are kinder to you than your most loved ones. That’s what really fucking hurts the most.

why are girls named chastity always such sluts?

Today’s notes:

1. I am on the verge of a black eye. A bag of frozen peas is seeing what it can do.

2. Fried chicken…only the devil could have invented fried chicken.

3. Max is Urethra’s bitch.

4. Diet Coke with Lime will leave a strange, artificially-sweet aftertaste that last hours. The phantom taste will make you wonder if you possibly have a brain tumor if you don’t remember having drank it.

5. Went and played basketball at the gym and got elbowed in the face driving the lane (unrelated to near-black eye). Next play, drove again, crossed over a defender for a 6 ft bank shot. The guy on the other team said, “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were black.” I told him, “I am black.” Then got sad, wishing I were black and could dunk.

6. Very, very, very upset about my lack of motivation to write. It’s compounded by the fact that all of my friends make more money than me, and that I am severely underpaid for my position (or, the fact that I work 3 for the price of 1). Does anyone know of any job openings in LA? Seriously.

7. Blah

2/5 Recap

I did nothing today except go to the gym and play 5 games in the row of fullcourt basketball with the boys. Surprisingly, I played really well, hitting a lot of outside jump shots and going 2-4 in the low post with some spin moves and one over and under. My back is finally in good shape, though I’ve gotta be careful of my knees. My heart rate monitor said I burned 1284 calories, which means I’m going to crash sometime very soon. The last play of the last game, I went full steam for a loose ball and got slammed in the hand by a defender going the other way, jamming the fingers of my left hand so badly, that the knuckles are all bruised up and I’ve got a blood bruise on my wrist from where my hand snapped back and hit my Polar watch. Thank God the thing’s made out of rubber. God, I love pain from sports. Nothing makes me happier than being able to play basketball–setting a pick, slamming into people down low, charging through a crowd with my shoulder down for a layup under the basket, crossing over and blowing by a defender caught on his heels. I really wish I had bionic knees. If I could do something to strengthen my knees so I didn’t have to worry about tearing my ACLs again, I would go back to being a slasher instead of a perimeter player.

I saw Reggie at the gym! This parade of familiar faces coming back into my life continues. I was so happy to see him I jumped up on him and wrapped my legs around his waist and then immediately felt weird because we were in the middle of the gym. He just started a production company and booked a bunch of commercials. Look out for a cute black guy in an upcoming Bud Light campaign. Again, how weird is synchronicity? I happened to be in Santa Monica yesterday, and I was walking by this restaurant he worked at last year. So I thought I would drop in and see if he might still be working there and be on shift, but he wasn’t. I haven’t seen him in over a year and then randomly, the day after I go looking for him, I run into him. Back in the day, we broke up with our respective partners a week apart, and it seemed like whenever one person would hear from their ex, the other would too. It was weird. Today, I asked him how his ex was and he told me she was actually dating a chick for a while. I started laughing.

Let me tell you about a funny thing that happened with my chiropractor last year, I said.

I’m on my way to a photo opening right now, waiting for Matt and Mul to pick me up. We’re supposed to grab drinks afterwards and I told Reg I’d give him a call and let him know where we end up. Hopefully he comes out tonight. Reggie is a Taurus. If I made out with him, I would have only 1 last sign to make out with. But that’s not right; I respect him enough not to take advantage of him. (I say this now while I’m sober).

Today’s mood: Sore

I am fucking with you.

(I am NOT fucking with you.)

I am fucking with you NOT fucking you

(I am not fucking with you.)

I am fucking you, not fucking with you.

I am fucking not fucking with you.

I am not fucking fucking with you.

I am not fucking you.

(I am totally fucking you)

I am NOT fucking with you

Today I was lonely.

L-O-N-E-L-Y.

Today I was bored.

Very, very bored.

My friend Max’s trailer.

Interesting article about mail order brides being abused in Newsweek.