Caliber
I love Caliber, a group of four photographers based in my beloved San Francisco. Their work is always crisp and never cliche, often beautiful but always appealing. I was scrolling through their most recent pictures while listening to the latest Bat for Lashes album, Two Suns, and it was one of those rare moments in my life when two otherwise unrelated entities found themselves in perfect harmony. There is so much of The City that I haven’t seen and Caliber is opening up my eyes slowly, day by day, to what I’m missing out on.
Could It Be?
Could it be that I’m using more than one word in a blog title? Could it be that I might just go to bed before sunrise for the first time in a month? Could it be that I actually fulfill my academic potential this school year? Could it be that my band(s) actually make some music this year? The possibilities excite me.
Hmmm
So apparently, April was Asian and Pacific Islander Appreciation Month at school. I say apparently because I didn’t learn of it until now. Way to encourage diversity, Sonoma State. I halfheartedly expected a newsletter about upcoming celebrations and shit. Sike. I pictured in my head the entirety of the gargantuan 3.7% of the student population that is Asian/Pacific Islander crowding into a classroom and eating lumpia and spring rolls. My preschool was very diverse. My elementary through ninth grade years found me surrounded by about 95% Asian people. The last three years in public high school had a healthy 27% Asian. I suppose I should appreciate the variance? For all you mathematically gifted people out there, calculate the chance that I, a gorgeous 100% Chinese male, would end up with an Indian girl at Sonoma State.
I have a guilty pleasure. Two, rather. I stay up really late at night and watch fitness infomercials and Spanish soap operas. I can’t stay away from them. I watch fitness infomercials to keep up with the new gadgets and equipment people come up with and the clever ways with which they attempt to peddle their wares among the unsuspecting public. The main reason that I watch fitness infomercials specifically is probably because I lead a very typical American college student lifestyle and I need motivation to get off my ass. So far, no luck. But I do love analyzing the actors they hire for the infomercials and criticizing, for example, the lack of definition on an asscheek here or an abdominal there. I just know that I could end up better, is all. (See, there’s my self-confidence!) It’s kind of a mental hobby that I don’t share/do with anyone else. The irony is that I’m really fit but think that I’m not. I also find other infomercials to be usually entertaining but the pitchmen, I hate them so. Billy Mays (OxyClean) Vince Shlomi (ShamWow) are two men that I very much despise, but I am forced to admire their skill at their trade. Spanish soap operas are great. Who doesn’t want to fantasize about chesty non-English speaking 20-something year old Spanish women engaged in unnecessary but entirely amusing romantic drama with overly serious 30-something year old Spanish men with bad hair and worse acting skills? A tie in: I’ve found that the majority of Spanish language programming is very breast-centric. Even on daytime talk shows, many of the hosts are configured for the camera in as sexual a manner as possible, even if said hosts are, to put it lightly, just a touch past their primes. Seriously, watch some Spanish language programming and note the proliferation of boob. I’m fairly sure that this isn’t just my overactive libido talking as well. It’s a phenomenon!
At any rate, what is with me and these month-or-two-at-a-time blogging hiatuses? (Oh, and you don’t have to look that one up. I know that hiatuses is a proper plural form for hiatus.) It’s summer now, so no excuses.
Twilight
I watched about ten minutes of the movie. Somebody explain the appeal to me? Wooden acting and a distractingly indiscriminate accent make Robert Pattinson hard to like. Plus, apparently vampires sparkle like diamonds in the sun. Way to unveil their tell-tale flaw, Stephenie Meyer. Delish.
Gonzales
Click the link. Go to the page. Listen to the song. Move.
My Vitriol
I don’t know how it took me so long to stumble upon this band. From London, My Vitriol is at the forefront of the Shoegaze revival (mixed with a little Alt-Rock and Post-Grunge, of course). If you know me, you know I love my Shoegaze revival.
My Vitriol with Always: Your Way
Massive Attack
There is one very substantial reason that Massive Attack is my favorite trip hop group, the reason being that any one of their albums is perfect for lovemaking. Even better is when you play all four start to finish and let them dictate the energy and mood of your night’s… activities. I always find myself listening for the basslines in every song. They’re low and sinister yet always very present and essential to setting the mood of the song. Massive Attack creates the perfect chill-out music. This particular song has me envisioning a night slithering through massive crowds of people in a steamy nightclub, ignoring the faces and only paying attention to the bodies moving in slow motion, all in perfect unison.
Teardrop, off the album Mezzanine:
Delay
I feel like my blog posts have to be mini-events in and of themselves. I feel like I have to compose momemtous, thought-provoking works of great intellectual depth and introspective worth. I am resolving now to keep this going. The only obstacle is my own knack for procrastination.
Grind
Let’s see. 3:50am. I’ve been at my Accounting book for the last few hours, and I feel like I’ve made zero progress. The actuality of that claim might even be indisputable. I still have to tackle Bio. Or maybe I don’t.
I stepped on a push pin five minutes ago, lying on its side in our kitchen. My right heel hurts like hell. My stomach is bothering me. I had a very indulgent linner (lunch/dinner) at 4:45pm. It’s been digested for a while, so my energy drink is wreaking havoc on an empty stomach. My eyebrows are doing that thing where they scrunch together into mild furrows because you’ve been exerting yourself mentally for an extended period of time with little-to-no reprieve.
Winter break is coming up. Technically, I have about five days and 11 hours left of nonstop implied and expressed attempts at being studious. I have five goals for my six weeks of break.
1. Finish the first half of P90X. I bought that shit for $112 ages ago but slacked off with both it and my diet, two big no-no’s in the reality I’m trying to create for myself. Goal is to get it done by Spring Break and complete a second cycle before summer. Because God knows life is easier when you’re a babe. <==insert self-deprecating sarcasm with a small touch of wit here.
2. Write my damn book and finish my damn poems. Those are pretty self-explanatory. I used to write prolifically. Now it seems that I need external motivation such as requests and contests in order to get anything done at all. That fact depresses me more than slightly.
3. Finish reading certain things that I’ve begun but not finished. I hate leaving things unfinished. But inevitably, it happens.
4. Find myself a summer job. It’s hard steering oneself down a white collar career path because the economy is down and paid internships are lacking. But this summer I will persevere and lock up something good, if only because I just said so.
5. Finally write some music with my band. We’re in college and we’re lazy. There, I said it.
It is assumed that I will see the people I need/want to see, because otherwise, I neither need or want to see them. That makes sense to me at the moment.
I made amends with an old friend of mine the other day. That made me happy, because 1. the reason it initially ended was a dumb one and 2. I liked being friends with this person a lot. My message for the day is: Cherish your relationships! You never know when or why they might end.
I’ve found that I can both study and sleep to death metal. That effectively makes me more xbrootalx than you. But I can never get enough of my M83.
Darryl pointed out something hilarious to me earlier today. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the Filipino Obama:
Dreams
As of late, I’ve been having some very bizarre dreams. Last night, I dreamt that a mechanical thing was killing people while on the hunt for me in some unnamed city. The thing looked like a metal triangle, side opposite hypotenuse down, with treads and a grotesque little terminator-esque head on top. I believe it was some secret government project and for some reason, it wanted to kill the hell out of me. In my dream, I estimate that I ran full speed for a good five miles through the city, through an airport terminal-looking building, and into the suburbs, hopping fences and diving through windows along the way. I managed to lose the thing while in the airport terminal, as there was an abundance of fresh blood there for it to be distracted by. I broke into a window and hid in the bathroom of a house. The owner of the house walked in, and in one of those strange dream incontinuities, I just so happened to know him. How? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. He looked something like the portly balding white guy in the Geico commercials who is trying to pull a Steve Irwin on the Geico gecko. I remember vaguely other people in the house who might or might not have been his children. I also remember parkouring into a store very similar to Old Navy and being accosted by various saleswomen, who accused me of being “Something.” The “Something” was said in Chinese that I don’t quite remember. What I do remember was high-tailing it out of there and into the other stages of REM.
Though not a dream, another night last week was something altogether else. I had finally crawled into bed at about 5am when all of a sudden, my mind was flooded with thoughts of my paternal grandparents’ old house in my hometown. My grandparents moved from that house years ago and my grandfather has since passed away. I haven’t been there since I was in elementary school. In my mind, I was compelled to take a ridiculously detailed tour of my memory through the house, noting every room and detail, right down to the particular pictures that always sat on the mantle. I was overcome with an overwhelming desire to buy the house and make it my home. I wanted that house to be mine. I wanted so badly to be there, just to relive every memory I’ve ever had within the warmth of those walls, with my family together, my grandpa laughing and smiling, and my cousins and brother and I building forts in the family room with blankets and sofa cushions.
Here’s what makes it strange. I emailed my father later that day, recounting everything to him about grandpa and the house. He emailed me back, saying that earlier that same night, he had also dreamt of my grandfather and the house. In his dream, my grandfather was selling the house and it was located in a different city, San Francisco, which is the city that I plan to live in after college. How uncanny is that?
