Yearly Archives: 2002

When I Procrastinate

I was able to accom­plish noth­ing school relat­ed today. I’m just too damn tired. Eight and a half hours of work, fol­lowed by three hours of class. I did get a free piz­za out of it though…the infor­mat­ics depart­ment was cel­e­brat­ing a data­base trans­fer, and ordered too much piz­za, so they con­sid­ered that I was a stu­dent and gave me one. Not too shab­by.

I found out that red­heads need 20% more anes­thet­ic than most peo­ple, because they are more sen­si­tive to pain, or less sus­cep­ti­ble to the anes­thet­ic.

I got home and Dolly was just crazy with ener­gy. The poor kit­ty had no one to play with her all day, and she lost her toys — again — so she prob­a­bly slept most of the day. I found one in the coat clos­et, so I played with her as much as I could before I got tired and hun­gry.

I stum­bled across Jenny the Lam’s page today, and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. It’s refresh­ing to have entries that aren’t just rants (ha! I’m such a hyp­ocrite), but with some thought behind them as well. I’ve always enjoyed the naked way she seems to express her­self, but she seems to have gained some more depth to her writ­ings. It’s giv­en me much to think about, which is an extreme­ly good thing.

You Never Know Until It Happens

I believe my grand­moth­er is dying. I don’t have many details, as I haven’t been well informed (though I’m not sure that I want to be). I tried to vis­it about three months ago, but my work and cir­cum­stances pre­vent­ed me from going. I’m going to Hong Kong this Christmas, which should be amaz­ing, and hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to see my grand­moth­er one last time. When I spoke to her on the phone, which is always as awk­ward as ever, she sound­ed very light-head­ed. My moth­er told me that she sound­ed more healthy than before.

I once talked to Ms. Patricia ______ (I can’t believe I for­get her last name) about my grand­par­ents. I told her that I always felt like I loved my grand­par­ents, and that I was always wor­ried about their well-being, even though I nev­er real­ly had a life with them. They briefly raised me when I was too young to remem­ber much. I have always won­dered whether I would cry if they should die. One can always say that one won’t cry, but when the sit­u­a­tion aris­es, things can be quite dif­fer­ent.

I also told her that I hoped that they would die at a time that was con­ve­nient for me. This wor­ried her. I asked myself, “Is this real­ly what I wish? Will I feel dif­fer­ent­ly when the time comes? Have I tru­ly become so cere­bral, so engulfed in a Lermontovian nihilism, that I can say such a thing?”. I’m not even sure if this is some­thing I should be ashamed of. I mean, these are peo­ple that I’m not close to. Is it pos­si­ble to love some­one sim­ply by blood? I believe it is; I know peo­ple who only know how to love by blood. However, it is not pos­si­ble for me. In fact, blood has no bear­ing on what I feel for a per­son. I wish I could even begin to under­stand this. I believe that my grand­par­ents love me. I feel it in the way that they look at me, the way they treat me. I always won­der if any­one else has the same con­fu­sion. Do I love them as they love me?

I can’t tell.

I Write This After Dinner

These titles are get­ting rather vague, which can be a good thing I sup­pose. They sort of remind me of the way Tool names their tracks (Sober, Parabola, H., Stinkfist), which is sort of an equiv­o­cal, gen­er­al state­ment on what their sub­ject mat­ter cov­ers. After all, Stinkfist is great song on fist­ing and soci­etal stan­dards. I’m still unsure as to what my favorite song of all time would be, but that one is def­i­nite­ly with­in the top 5.

I had a great night, feast­ing on Prime chick­en thighs sim­mered in a cream of mush­room sauce on a bed of rice. I tried out a new cider, called Blackthorn, which I find is very sim­i­lar to Strongbow, with a dri­er taste. I’m still fin­ish­ing my Hong Kong milk tea as I write this, made with con­densed milk, of course. Best served very, very strong. I could­n’t find any of the Rickshaw brand, so I went to a med­i­cine store in the mid­dle of Chinatown and bought half a kilo­gram there from a sweet old Chinese woman. It was the first time in my life that I had to use my knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage, as I guessed she did­n’t have a prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of English.

I found anoth­er Dears song called No Return, which just sounds so great. It tru­ly fol­lows the form of their “orches­tral pop noir roman­tique” style, where­as some of their songs don’t. Blood Roses by Tori Amos is pret­ty good too, as I enjoy the sound of a harp­si­chord (though my ver­sion of Aria from Goldberg Variations is piano), if it did­n’t have what I feel is too dis­so­nant a vocal part near the end.

Black Nails

I don’t real­ly know what to say. I’m just gen­er­al­ly feel­ing shit­ty. I can’t con­cen­trate on my home­work, I’m slack­ing off at work, and I have lots to do. I did­n’t know I had an assign­ment due today, so I hand­ed in some rough work of about a quar­ter of the assign­ment. I actu­al­ly had the whole thing done, but I did­n’t bring it to class. Then I have a mid-term tomor­row, for which I’ve only stud­ied about an hour, worth 30% of my final mark. I just can’t seem to con­cen­trate on any­thing. So I paint­ed my nails black today.

People some­times ask me why I do it. Whenever I tell them, they nev­er under­stand, which would­n’t both­er me so much, if they would actu­al­ly try to under­stand. But peo­ple just judge, and nev­er ques­tion. Fuck.