obama supporters, stop calling me. really. the primary is a month away and i'm already screening calls.

can't remember if today was mom's birthday or whether it was the 14th. still think about her every day but now it's less guilt, less sadness, more wondering, mostly straining to remember

oh god, what i thought was apricot jam was actually cherry blossom antibacterial soap and i didn't realize until i swallowed. SO DISGUSTING.

i organize my itunes playlists by date because i like to be able to go back and remember a time and feel the specific mood. this is my latest playlist; i don't know what mood this is.

2008/02/22

1. jori hulkkonen - lo-fiction
2. the airborne toxic event - does this mean you're moving on
3. apparat - komponent (telefon tel aviv remix)
4. shiny toy guns - don't cry out
5. dangerous muse - don't cry out
6. estelle - american boy
7. danger - 11h30
8. dangerous muse - break up
9. kylie minogue - in my arms
10. amerie - some like it
11. arctic monkeys - the view from the afternoon
12. hard-fi - hard to beat
13. the stills - still in love song
14. ladytron - destroy everything you touch

i used to be so aesthetically opposed to arctic monkeys but actually that one song is very pleading and pretty so i am okay with it.

this is ridiculously tacky, but my favorite thing in the world is jamba juice, and i am really sad that there isn't one where i live. i went to one yesterday and then vowed not to return the rest of the week because i haven't had anything out of a blender in at least three years, trying to get myself used to the idea of living in a world without cold, fruity deliciousness. i've put up with it pretty well, substituting my bad habit (i know how disgusting jamba juice really is) with root beer floats instead. well, this vow isn't working because again, i am craving one morning, noon, and night. it's worse than cigarettes, this thing.

i've been eating nonstop. i went to 3 different korean barbecues today. i am feeling so fat. i always say there's nothing to do in chicago besides retail, but i forgot about the korean barbecues.

I'm at my parents' in Chicago. I asked if there was any bottled water and they said no, but have a beer. I feel old.

after allowing myself one more episode of "lipstick jungle" because it was online and free and i didn't want to do dishes, i've realized that i'm okay with any show that plays iggy pop ("the passenger") over a sex scene. also, the costume design is better than on "cashmere mafia." not necessarily more fabulous or even better looking, but definitely more realistic.

the writers' strike being over makes me happy. i do not own a television set, i tell people, because i am afraid i would end up watching too much tv. i was blissfully unaware of television through most of college because the only show i cared enough to follow was the oc. i ended up watching a lot of family guy because i was friendly with drunks. then itunes started carrying television shows and the pure ease of it all, like tivo except better, portable, ruined me. i do not like "good" television like "mad men" or [i am having difficulty thinking of another show with any amount of critical praise]. i watch a lot of trashy, awful reality television. i like serial dramas that recycle one another's story arcs. i watch pretty much anything with an asian character because i am still hawkishly concerned with media portrayals, even though i am far past looking at it from any sort of academic perspective.

so, in the absence of even semi-good television ("desperate housewives," "gossip girl," "lost"), i have been watching:

cashmere mafia
lucy liu is in it. also, she is dating an asian-american man. they had a dumb conversation about pressure to date other asians and how they usually just end up dating white people. this was not rocket science, except for in the realm of primetime television that white people watch, so i suppose it was sort of bold in a bland 8 o'clock storytelling way. also i hadn't ever seen an asian-american couple on television before. the show, other than that, is bad, but not as bad as...

lipstick jungle
oh my god, this is bad. i didn't like "sex and the city" so i don't know why i thought i would enjoy either of these. lindsay price is in this one, playing a terrible fashion designer. also, let us all cry for brooke shields now.

project runway
very bland. oddly enough, i love jillian, the blandest, the most. also, i actually do not mind christian so much.

project catwalk 3
worst design competition ever. by far. even worse than project catwalk 2. please bring back elizabeth hurley. they aren't even at the istituto marangoni anymore, they're doing catwalk shows in some random house. in a random house. and they're not even invited to show at london fashion week, they show "during" london fashion week. i hate kelly. this show does, however, probably have the best soundtrack, season after season, of any show on television.

survivor: micronesia
so far, after one episode, the worst season of survivor. i haven't watched all of them, though. survivor: fiji was the best in a twists-and-turns kind of way, survivor: cook islands was best in a tug-at-the-heartstrings kind of way. of course, borneo will always be king.

kyle: xy
i really don't understand this show's appeal to me at all. it's not very trashy, the acting is not quite poor but not quite good, either. it just never really hits the mark for good or bad. maybe because the lead is hot, i don't know.

make me a supermodel
i actually really dislike tyson beckford, and i am fully aware that these people are too old, too fat, too unaware to be made into supermodels, but most of them are still just hot enough to be interesting. at least, in a group setting.

canada's next top model
the winning girl had an eating disorder and was annoying. now she blames top model for her eating disorder and has become a happy fat campaigner. i really don't like talking about eating disorders for some reason.

project runway: canada
this was actually a pleasant surprise. right up there with season 1 of project runway and season 1 of project catwalk. i suppose the first season is always the freshest.

but at least now "lost" is back.

i don't know where all the time goes when all i do is work and i don't take work home.

i had a dream i'd been adopted by some french family and we were broken down on the side of the highway and we found ourselves in this adobe city, like taos or something, and in one of the rooms were twelve pots of ice cream, and when you ate the ice cream you couldn't stop eating it, you were just stuck there. i didn't eat the ice cream and neither did my sister but the rest of them were just shoveling it in their mouth with their hands. and then we went to escape and there was a parking garage made of poured concrete and not clay, and then these men came out dressed in kevlar and shot me.

i haven't had a dream i remembered for almost six months.

i made a typo while filing my state tax return and the estimator said i would get back $6,000 from the department of revenue. then i went back and found the typo and now i am getting back exactly $1. last year i got $3, so clearly the recession is killing me.

things i thought of today:

- when someone gave me his copy of less than zero, he said i would like it because it had "a lot of gay content." which isn't why i liked the book at all. also, i used to read less than zero two or three times a year, but i haven't read it in at least a year now. growing up=losing a taste for bret easton ellis? maybe.

- making kimchi is sad because a. you have to make it in large batches and i'm single and i do like kimchi but what's the point of having a week's worth in the fridge when i eat out five days a week, b. i still can't get the recipe right because i'm too lazy to acquire either oysters or fish sauce, c. when my hands are in the cabbage, it feels like a little bit of culture dying, or maybe i'm getting whiter or something.

- i had a powerbar for breakfast and i remember when powerbars were the big thing and i don't know why, they all taste like chalky peanut butter, no matter what flavor. now i guess it's luna bars or clif bars, which aren't all that great either. then i thought about wheat grass, which made me think of jamba juice, which made me really sad that we don't have those here.

fromstjude

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

mine are bolded:

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college (three times)
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (piano, figure skating, violin, swimming)
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs (i received full financial aid because i used my father on my fafsa instead of the madam. the madam paid for the remaining expenses of books and food and gave me a stipend.)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs (i had to take out a student loan for the time that the madam and i were fighting)
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (four summers)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18 (1 for violin, 3 for english, 4 for math, i'm good at english, bad at math)
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child (most done by my parents, some on loan from my parents' friends' gallery)
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (Kaplan, 200 additional points)
28. Had your own TV in your room in High School
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

i'll let stjude state the obvious: "i didn't read the questions through before i started reposting/answering. now that i have, i think this quiz needs a lot of revision. it doesn't really account for things like cultural capital, language access, immigration status, race, religion, handicaps, family size/type, sexual orientation, community resources, and whether one grew up in an urban/rural area."

going to work this early is so gross. i'm always so thirsty at four in the morning. my perfect morning before work would give me an hour to sort of lie in bed and watch random things on youtube, then another hour for a lazy breakfast, and another hour to shower and fix my hair before i have to be anywhere. reality: wake up, read some news article about bhutto with one eye open, smoke a cigarette, wash my face, walk out the door.

Today I woke up and ate a gigantic bowl of kimchi but there was no rice and i wanted something carby so then I had a pint of Cherry Garcia and I felt pretty ill, so I drank six glasses of water and got back into bed. I thought about picking up my room and cleaning the kitchen but instead i watched an episode of Desperate Housewives and thought of what it would be like to be a desperate housewife. And I'm pretty sure it would be like either of these AT&T commercials from when I was little, either lonely and romantic, or just terrible and annoying:





When I think of watching television as a child I mostly remember AT&T commercials. That logo is so superior as compared to the current design. I hope someone else remembers these.

at julie's birthday when tiffany asked if she had any coke and julie said "i don't do coke" and it turned out tiffany was talking about coca-cola. which means two things: there are at least two other people left who don't do coke, and that there is someone more boring than i am who drinks soda at birthdays.

I'm reading Oh The Glory of It All finally and it is really not that great, which is kind of shocking considering how much I love reading about excess. I used to love writing about excess but now I am responsible, other than buying expensive pajama pants. Don't drink any longer except wine, don't smoke as much, go to work on time days (Thursdays seem to be a problem still); most jarring change of all, don't buy magazines anymore (significant amount of monthly budget used to be set aside for Arena Homme + and 10 and boring ones like wallpaper or Vanity Fair). I eat boring food like store-bought olive tapenade on multigrain bread (Monday's lunch). The sybarite and wastrel are being put down ever slowly. This is worrisome, because this book I have supposedly been working on for the past two years but haven't touched in at least two months is all about a family of excess. Having none in my own life as of late I suppose I will have to draw inspiration from actually spending time with them. A possible full 48 hours at Christmas, even.

meme from nondescriptboy

what's in my freezer:

sara's things: bag of corn, bag of okra, a large tupperware with something red in it
opened (not sealed) bag of supermarket corn from before i can remember
bag of peas
bag of green beans
bay scallops
2 cleaned squid
1 large piece of some kind of pork
ziploc bag of gochugaru
one pie shell in tin, uncovered, that now smells like gochugaru
a plastic starbucks beer mug (i don't remember where this came from)

i have a really boring freezer.

hanging out in the madam's house without her there is so sad. i end up sitting on her bed watching her tv, because i don't have one in my apartment and i end up entranced by tv guide channel and home shopping network. get this quilt for three easy payments and look, both on-air talent hosts fit under it with room to spare. went out a few times. i used to find driving on the watterson near sunset really romantic; now it's just annoying, everything so far apart.

1. jose gonzalez - crosses
2. the bravery - time won't let me go
3. duran duran - planet earth
4. sugababes - about you now
5. girls aloud - call the shots
6. ok go - a million ways to be cruel
7. roisin murphy - dear miami
8. the rosebuds - cemetery lawn
9. ryan adams - the sun also sets
10. kylie minogue - 2 hearts
11. mika - relax, take it easy
12. cold war kids - hang me up to dry
13. girls aloud - sexy! no no no
14. james blunt - fall at your feet
15. albert hammond jr. - hard to live (in the city)
16. final fantasy - peach plum pear
17. youth group - forever young
18. ac newman - on the table
19. air - photograph
20. kenna - out of control (state of emotion)
21. mates of state - california
22. kanye west - stronger
23. band of horses - the great salt lake
24. band of horses - the funeral
25. robyn - with every heartbeat

leaning very british, don't know why