At this time, tomorrow

Five minutes till midnight and my shitty day turned into a something-close-to-but-not-exceeding good one.

Liz found my estranged cousin Ashley (one of the few family members I met in my youth that didn’t make me think I was mistakenly dropped on Earth by a more intelligent alien race to which I belonged) at a Redner’s market. She confirmed to Liz what I always knew: I was totally my grandma’s favourite. XD

I can’t keep “It’s a small world after all~” from playing in my head.

AND. I just read: 4 minute Twilight trailer July 15th.

Hells. Yeah.

AND. Goya-Champuru was a really good movie. I like hopeful-but-don’t-spell-it-all-out-for-you endings.

I am in the grip of academic uncertainty. Even more perturbing — I actually care!

I finished my sucktastic research paper (that I survived only by the grace of God — a box of midol, many cups of tea, and an extension). Having the paper printed and packed neatly in a folder, I thought my biggest worry could resume being who will win Top Chef next week.

But when I went to drop off my essay yesterday, the building doors were locked. Work, plus some traffic caused by a World War II reenactment (WTF?), made me late. Everyone was gone for the weekend.

And to prove that my gravitation towards failure is not solely the consequence of my own self-damning behavior, Fate herself enlisted the aid of an excited weekend speeder to smite me on the way to campus. That is, I was almost squished by a careless SUV. I actually didn’t realize how close I came to road-pancake status until I was told, “He almost killed you!” and given smiley-faced fries to ease my trauma.

I like to believe I would have survived and lived sweet off my lawsuit money.

Actually, I’m pretty sure the time I almost got hit by a car in Phoenix (my fault, I sprinted across 4 lanes so I wouldn’t miss the earlier bus to school — the car was so close and moving so fast that it hit my purse and the passing momentum nearly knocked me off my feet) and the incident while walking home with Ambur in middle school (driver’s fault — that bastard ran a red light and then ran over the tip of my shoe!) were much closer calls. No wonder Fate has it out for me. I’m tempting! (Probably pissed I made that bus too.)

Anyway, I emailed my paper but I’m not sure if it will be accepted and I may not find out until Monday afternoon. (This means I still have to write that last essay, though it may be for nothing.)

But onto better things:

J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard: “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination” If I quoted all my favourite lines I’d be quoting most of the speech.

And Neil Gaiman posted this link in his blog. 10 stories from the China Earthquake told through a series of comic strips by Coco Wang.

Today was so fun. I wasn’t originally scheduled to work, but Renate offered me the tail end of her shift so I could hang out with Jessie on her last work day before she leaves for bootcamp. She and Erin were kind enough to wait around an extra half an hour afterwards so I could have dinner with them, and even though it was her special day, Jessie treated us. How awesome! I was so excited to be out with them, I felt a little childish. But Erin and I agreed, I need more friends who aren’t assholes and a best friend that has her shit together.

More friends who make me feel like I’m worth waiting thirty minutes for? Yes, plz.

Hopefully we’ll all be having dinner at Renate’s before Jessie ships out for the Navy. And hopefully Renate will let me help her in the kitchen again. Her food is unbelievable!

A lot of co-workers want to see Sex and the City, but I am eagerly awaiting The Happening. I love (intelligently crafted) scary movies and I love M. Night Shyamalan movies. It’s win-win!

The Problem: I think most of my friends have taken a “NO SCARY MOVIES!” stance. Come on, you guys! A little fear is good for you!

I’m trying to work on my research paper. I didn’t complete the first major assignment, so it is necessary that this final assignment be done and be done well.

The weather is nice today, so my room is like an oven. Too hot to be productive in. And my desk is too small for my task anyway.

So, I move my large stack of reference books, my pile of photocopies of literary criticism, my bundle of blank notecards, and a handful of pens, highlighters, and pencils into the downstairs dinning-room.

I take Jasper outside and wear him out so he’ll sit quietly while I work and not cry for attention. I get us both a cold drink.

I do all this and I’m ready to be productive! But. Outside I can hear people debating over the cost and amount of blocks needed to finish construction of a new wall and porch. Upstairs Jared playing War on Xbox Live, the volume so loud that sitting an entire floor away is the equivalent of sitting in the first row at an IMAX. And even over the sound of guns I can hear his usual commentary, “Come on.” “Fuck you.” “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I open one of my Ibsen books anyway and begin reading. I get so far as “There was no biographical information even available in English until–” and he’s downstairs eating all things noisy and crunchy and turning the TV on, then turning it up to compete with the farm equipment outside.

I’m going to scream.

Come on. Fuck you. You’ve got to be kidding me.

I’m reading Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. And I swear, I had no idea it was “classic gay fiction” when I started reading it. (Though, if someone had told me, I might have read it sooner~) Sure, their relationship is destructive and akin to a trainwreck (because the narrator is an idiot), but it’s a good read nonetheless.

And every time I pause at a passage that I think I’d like to jot down, I see someone else has already dog-eared the page.

For I am — or I was — one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named — but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they are and the world are not.

                                               **

‘Somebody,’ said Jacques, ‘your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour — and in the oddest of places! — for the lack of it.’

If you’re bored and have or have not been following Chinese news, the heart-rending story of Chen Jian might be worth reading/watching.

The season finale of House seems to get sadder every season.

I was going to write a rant-post about Cassandra Clare, but decidedly, this is probably more meaningful.

I know I just mentioned this yesterday, but the 10,000 dead I noted has risen to around 17,000 with another approximately 60,000 people, both Chinese and foreign, still unaccounted for.

China was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale with aftershocks over 5.0. One the affected places of interest has been Juyuan Middle School where 30 students out of 300 have since been removed from the rubble they were trapped under when the center of the school fell. (Xinjian Primary School at Dujiangyan has also collapsed. The scene there is about the same.) Remember China’s One Child Policy. Many parents have lost their only child.

“The scenes of destruction and devastation are growing worse by the day in earthquake-hit China. Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan is in Beichuan, one of the areas hardest hit by the quake.” (Fair warning: Al Jazeera do film the dead. As rude as it may be, it’s not graphic.)

I think events like this, loss like this, help me put events that I thought were devastating in perspective. It’s easier to see selfishness and greed in yourself and in other people.

But I also feel frustrated and utterly useless when faced with such things. In the grand scheme of the world, I feel like I should be doing something more. It’s like an itch I don’t know how to scratch and it’s probably only me (being the weird person that I am), but I’ve always felt this way. I really, truly wish I lived for some greater purpose and could help people beyond the realm of “being a friend”.

I finished my latest Lit assignment by the skin of my teeth. In the realm of ironic, the professor I was doing the essay for happened to be just around the corner from the computer I was vigorously writing my last minute paper on. And whatever n00b used Gmail on the PC before me failed to log out. Kenny’s inbox was full of links to Naruto fanvids on YouTube. For those that don’t use Gmail, it displays approximately the first line of each email after the subject; I did not open his mail. I’m not that evil.

But I did leave him a message in his Drafts folder. (^.^)

I was doing research for my creative writing assignment, flipping through the Sinosplice blog archives, when I discovered Austin Kleon’s blackout poetry. My favourite:

I feel a little guilty having just submitted poetry involving natural disaster in China only to discover they suffered a serious earthquake today. Over 10,000 dead and thousands more trapped beneath rubble. And looking very creepy and plague-like, thousands of toads abandoned their oxygen-deprived river and flooded the streets. This is all on top of the HFMD outbreak.

As far as building stability and health goes, I guess Japan is preferable, but I’d still love to study at the Beijing Language and Culture University.

I finished Stephenie Meyer’s new novel The Host last week. I can’t remember if Steph M. ever revealed the length of the book before its release, but for some reason I was not expecting it to be so massive. The weight of it surprised me, I almost dropped it while sneaking a copy off the bookseller’s cart Tuesday morning.

Late Thursday night I was on page two-thirty-something when I peeled the Barnes&Noble 40% Off sticker from the cover and stuck it inside, not even half-way through the novel, as a marker. I thought, “I’m going to bed. I can read in the morning… But let me just skim ahead a second to see…” 6AM the sticker was still poking out the middle of the book, but I was finished.

Oops.

That said, I liked it. There were a few parts that dragged and I didn’t find it as good (or as quotable) as Twilight, but Steph M. is nothing if not a great storyteller.

There’s also Stephenie Meyer in another Borders Media chat, this time talking about The Host with the Arizona desert, the setting for much of the novel, as the backdrop. Is it possible to feel homesick for a place you only lived for six months, because I do. Right now, I miss Phoenix a lot.

TIME’s article on Twilight and Stephenie Meyer is great.

What makes Meyer’s books so distinctive is that they’re about the erotics of abstinence. Their tension comes from prolonged, superhuman acts of self-restraint. There’s a scene midway through Twilight in which, for the first time, Edward leans in close and sniffs the aroma of Bella’s exposed neck. “Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet,” he says. “You have a very floral smell, like lavender … or freesia.” He barely touches her, but there’s more sex in that one paragraph than in all the snogging in Harry Potter.

It’s never quite clear whether Edward wants to sleep with Bella or rip her throat out or both, but he wants something, and he wants it bad, and you feel it all the more because he never gets it. That’s the power of the Twilight books: they’re squeaky, geeky clean on the surface, but right below it, they are absolutely, deliciously filthy.

[...]

But as artists, they couldn’t be more different. Rowling pieces her books together meticulously, detail by detail. Meyer floods the page like a severed artery. She never uses a sentence when she can use a whole paragraph. Her books are big (500-plus pages) but not dense–they have a pillowy quality distinctly reminiscent of Internet fan fiction. (Which she’ll readily grant: “I don’t think I’m a writer; I think I’m a storyteller,” Meyer says. “The words aren’t always perfect.”)

All of the above are Trufax.

This movie is getting an insane amount of press; I stopped trying to keep up with it weeks ago.

But just now I read this article regarding the scene where Edward plays Bella’s lullaby. I love Matt Bellamy as much as Steph M., but I’m throwing my support behind Robert. It would feel more meaningful and genuine if he were able to compose his own character’s music.

Ironically, I was just re-reading this part of the book on the bus yesterday. XD

There’s also a seriously cute three-segment interview with Kristen and Robert, plus transcript, here.

I love RPattz interviews. I’ve never seen anyone stutter and mumble for over six consecutive minutes, successfully saying absolutely nothing, and look so adorable doing it.

1. I finally got the time to put my blueberry and raspberry plants, named Blooregard and Jezebel respectively, in the ground. There’s still work to do in the garden, but it’ll have to wait until next week, after my Lit essay is done.

Honestly, I know nothing about gardening. I just like eating berries.

2. New York is tomorrow! My outfit is laundered, the CDs to be sold at Book Off are safely packed inside my tote alongside a granola bar and my freshly charged phone and camera, and I’m knowledgeable enough on the subway system that I won’t look like a complete tourist. (I solemnly swear to refrain from taking pictures of myself gleefully posing with my first MetroCard. At least while still in the station.)

Maybe all my preparedness seems borderline-obsessive, but after having three dreams in the past week where I was on my way to Manhattan and realized I had forgotten something significant, I’m a little bit paranoid I’m going to forget something big. Like my wallet. Or wearing clothes. Nothing is more nightmarish than eating your lunch in the middle of Bryant Park and suddenly realizing you’re not wearing any pants. (Am I the only one that gets the “OMFG! Where did my clothes go?!” dreams?)

Also, it looks like I’ll be missing Neil Gaiman by a day. *sad*

3. I bought rollerblades last Sunday. Clearly, I’m a masochist. But surprisingly, despite my personal lack of balance and coordination, I’m skating more than falling.

Still not getting the concept of braking though. But I remember back in middle school when it was cool to have your birthday party at a skating rink and I’d be forced skate timidly around the same oval shape for hours. Rollerskates have two brakes and they both went unused by me. I’d build up momentum, excited I was staying on my feet, and when I wanted to stop I’d just have to wait for a bar or another unsuspecting skater to cross my path.

Stopping. That’s what the walls are for, right?

4. I had to call all the hotels on Otakon’s hotels list. Because first, I couldn’t find my reservation notes from last year when I was booking the rooms. And then when I found the notes, I couldn’t remember what the heck they meant.

See, you’re not the only people that don’t get me. I don’t either.

5. Finished Sarah Dessen’s The Truth About Forever and began re-reading Twilight with the purpose of marking my favourite passages before pulling the book apart to decoupage.