Uncreated Conscience

Those who know me and Bear know that I have excellent taste in romantic partners but unfortunately, my discerning judgment doesn’t extend to television shows. I have had deplorable luck with the two to which I’ve been (slavishly) faithful: first The X-Files and now Lost. I have come to hate both shows in ways I could never even begin to dream, yet I kept watching them to the bitter end. Lost, of course, is not yet finished and rest assured, I will stick this relationship out (because I am monogamous, apparently), but I simply cannot stand it anymore. I have been manipulated and confused so many times that I’ve essentially given up.

When I first started watching Lost, the relationship had been new and intriguing and mysterious. A number of seemingly unrelated persons crashland on a deserted island which may or may not be in the South Pacific. But what? There are hints that maybe the island isn’t deserted after all, that maybe there’s a vast conspiracy, and there’s simply mystery after mystery after mystery to be solved.

(The first season still kicks all the other seasons to the curb.)

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My Magical Uncle rules: George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.

I could have quoted my other favourite line from Don Hertzfeldt’s Rejected, but I figure “For the love of God and all the is holy, my anus is bleeding! (Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!)” wouldn’t fly as a title.

Firstly, whoever created this is a graphic genius. S/he should have my brainchildren:

LOST Showdown

My favourite is Ben’s look of utter bewilderment by “You will be stunned!” (Benry, I love you!)

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I’ve been thinking lately about the old adage write what you know, mostly because I either live with or know people with fascinating life stories who are also writers. (I’m looking at you, Russ, and you, Wicked Cool Riley. Plz to be writing your memoirs immediately and sending me the manuscripts. Kthx.) I, on the other hand, have had an almost disgustingly “nice” life: a more-than-comfortable bourgeois upbringing complete with prep school, art conservatory, country clubs, tennis lessons, dance lessons, horseback riding, fencing, exotic travel, etc. But more than that, I have been extraordinarily blessed by family.

I once facetiously told my parents that “I will never be a great writer because I didn’t have a terrible childhood.”

“Good,” they replied, “go out and get a real job.”

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Libba Bray wrote this beautiful post a few days ago about power of a song to transport you to another time in your life. Smells and songs are funny like that; nothing else can evoke such visceral memories the way they do.

Back in high school, I couldn’t exactly be said as having the most discerning of musical tastes: I listened to 101.1 Oldies Radio and analysed movie scores. But college, oh ho, college is this strange period of time in which the desire, no, the need to discover new music, new old music, old new music, music, music, music and stamp out a musical identity for yourself seems to be paramount. The bands you listened to were a bit of a status symbol, even if you weren’t exactly a Hipster. In some ways I came into college a little luckier than some; I was a blank slate as I had no real preference one way or another and was therefore inundated with a spate of different types of music by my friends. As it turned out, I seem to lean more toward glam-punk, but as I played DJ for myself this morning, I rediscovered some songs that transported me instantly to when I was 18 years old and fresh from Los Angeles, living alone in New York and far away from her parents for the first time in her life.

1. Rude and Reckless by The Slackers
2. Mad World covered by Gary Jules
3. Chelsea Hotel by Dan Bern
4. Walking in Memphis by Marc Cohn (although I keep thinking of Cher’s cover from the X-Files episode “Post-Modern Prometheus”)
5. 99 Luftballoons by Nena (what follows are some songs in foreign languages because I love learning songs in languages I don’t know)
6. Ya Soshla S Uma (I’ve Lost My Mind) by t.A.T.u. (All The Things She Said in English)
7. Moonlight Densetsu from Sailor Moon (Oh yes)
8. El Scorcho by Weezer (Russ has asked if I am aware of how cliché I am by loving this song—the answer is: I am)
9. All My Little Words by The Magnetic Fields
10. Big Dipper by Built to Spill

I haven’t been obsessed or fallen in love with a band or a song in a long time but in the past few days I’ve been watching the second anime series of Fullmetal Alchemist (called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) and I simply cannot get its theme song out of my head.

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This morning I got a phone call from “Home” around 9:00am EST, which meant it was 6:00am back in Los Angeles where my family was calling from.

DAD: Hey Noonster, I’ve got your brother on the phone; he needs help with an English assignment.
JJ: (hiding the fact that she was still in bed) It’s early back there, innit?
DAD: Yes, but enterprising fellow that he is, he left this off until the very last minute and we are in need of your assistance.
JJ: (sighs) What is it this time?

I am my parents’ convenient English tutor when it comes to my little brother. (I suppose can’t call him that anymore, since he is now 13 years old and two inches taller than me.) I am also their convenient car ride service whenever I am home and Trouble is still attending school. I fulfill the role of dutiful Asian daughter beautifully, thank you. Anyway. This morning my brother called. His teacher had given him the most inane assignment; the 7th grade class had just finished reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream and he was supposed to pick three characters from the play and then cast three famous actors in the roles and enumerate the reasons why.

Er, we do live near Tinseltown. Movies do, in fact, run our lives, but dear God, I could teach English better than this.

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Can I just say here that I hate Kate from Lost with all the passion of my soul? So much that words cannot even express the depth of my loathing? And if ONE MORE PERSON tells me that Sawyer’s love for her is “true,” I will shove a fork in their face. I’ve hated that pairing since the beginning and I hate it even more now. Mostly because Kate. Needs. To. Die. Surely the writers of Lost must know how much the fans hate her guts.

On the other hand, my love for Benjamin Linus continues to grow.

On the other, other hand, Jack clearly has no idea what he’s doing. He’s almost as annoying as Kate. No, scratch that; no one can be as annoying as Kate. What happened to Jack? Not that I liked him much to begin with, but this season he has become an utterly different person.

Carry on.

And so do I. I’ve Twittered before about my newfound love for Chester 5000 XYV but failed to follow up with an actual blog post about it. (Warning for the kiddos—not that I think anyone younger than 18 follows my blog: Chester 5000 XYV is porn.)

I love graphic novels and comic books but was never allowed to read them as a child because my mother deemed them “not girly.” (Also on the list of verboten reads included such series as THE BABYSITTERS’ CLUB by Ann M. Martin and GOOSEBUMPS by R. L. Stine.) I dislike the gender bias of graphic novels, not because somethings aren’t inherently “boy” books or “girl” books, but because it’s less an issue of gendered books so much as how one perceives information. I am a visual person. I relate to the world with images as much as words and I certainly express my thoughts visually as well as verbally. (more…)

I am stressed about something, but I can’t quite pinpoint what exactly it is I am stressed about. Certainly looking for a full-time position while revising my novel and trying to juggle familial and romantic expectations at the same time is wearying, but not exactly stressful. Yet my body is carrying the weight across my shoulders and I have been having the most bizarre dreams ever. For instance, last night I dreamt I was in a shoppe looking for a pair of jeans when the saleslady refused to sell me a pair because they were 27″ short and “only for fat girls.” I said I didn’t care if they were for fat girls, all I wanted was a pair of jeans that fit. (For the record, I hate this two sizing system nonsense when it comes to pants. Also, the inch measurements are a total lie. I don’t have a 27″ waist. I wish I did. The “waistband” doesn’t even reach the natural waist. Anyway, carry on.) The dream then morphed into another one where I was in a house and watching someone jump from the Skyvan, except he didn’t open his parachute and just crashed into the hedge by my house. He got up and shook himself off and walked away. In his place there was a really ugly and deformed cat that I was expected to love and care for except all I could feel was revulsion.

Now, people who are well-versed in dream interpretation, tell me those aren’t the product of stress! But what am I necessarily stressed about? I have no clue. Life is generally pretty good for a person like me. Those who have known me long enough know I don’t spazz without sufficient reason. I haven’t spazzed out yet.

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Last night I took a bit of a trip on the wayback machine and spent the night at my darling Sofa’s apartment to have a TV marathon, gorge on Chinese food, and drink fruity pomegranate wine coolers. I became friends with Sofa over the length of a cigarette. She likes to believe she was the first friend I made in London, but that is not true; Charlie was the first friend I made in London. Sofa was the first person I met, but our friendship didn’t come about until later when we both went outside by The Guardian building to have a smoke break.

Upon first glance Sofa and I are certainly not people you would ordinarily expect to be friends, let alone best friends. Hell, I didn’t expect to be friends with her either: when I first arrived at our flat, she answered the door in a white skirt, green Lacoste polo, Rainbow flip-flops…and a genuine pearl necklace. I had eyeliner smudged across my lids and was wearing torn jeans, my ratty old chucks with drawings all over them, and a Ramones t-shirt. She was a charming Southern belle from Virginia with aspirations to a diamond ring by spring; I was a quirky sprite of an Asian girl from California who came to England to stalk Carl Barât and be a Libertine. That was our first meeting.

Of course, we are each more complex than the personas we put on; I was the one that ended up with an engagement ring on my finger (a pink plastic heart with a smiley face on it from the Jersey Shore, thank you) and she was the one who had the more libertine lifestyle when we returned to New York. We lived together for three years before I decided to leave Manhattan for more space and less rent, but what I miss about our time as roommates were the weekend afternoons being less-than-productive: watching hours of TV (…we once spent an entire day watching Kyle XY on ABC, running to the bathroom only during commercial breaks), eating the entire Chinese food menu, and drinking the girliest, fruitiest wine coolers we could find. So we made do on a Thursday night after work and she introduced me to her new favourite show Bones.

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