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May 27, 2004
oddjob's post #2
see below.
Posted by me at 10:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
lunch with good ole ma
i love my ma. not because of what she did for me growing up or what i've become because of her (in that case i'd hate her.) i love my ma cause she'll play the innocent/shy little old chinese lady game with other chinese until they try to screw her. i love my ma cause she'll cut the line of twenty people (non-oriental) waiting for the bus and push the 70 year old plus white lady just to make sure we get a seat. then when that 70 year old lady closes the only operable window on the bus, my ma feigns like she's gonna smack her in the back of the head. it was so close i almost grabbed her arm. god bless america
Posted by oddjob at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
i am so totally getting fired tomorrow
for the past two days i have done absolutely nothing (disclaimer: i did about 15 minutes of work this morning. mostly photocopying. but i think that can easily be rounded down to "i did absolutely nothing"). now, the problem is I HAVE WORK TO DO. i just didn't do it the past two days. two reasons: 1) some of it i could do easily, but it's boring and i don't feel like it; and 2) some of it i have no idea how to do, so rather than getting in trouble for doing it all wrong, i'm just not going to do it at all and see what happens--will i get in more trouble than if i'd done it wrong? less? i'll find out tomorrow!
i hate this place. everyone is gone for memorial day already. and here i sit. mysteriously, even my secretary is gone, replaced by some weird guy i've never seen before. my secretary didn't say goodbye, and this new guy didn't introduce himself. maybe he ate my real secretary.
in other news, c. and i are still desparately looking for apartments in brooklyn that are not in williamsburg, or any of the fake williamsburgs (greenpoint, east williamsburg, bushwick, bed-stuy, and NOW! middle villiage in queens, which isn't even part of brooklyn. yay!), that are not in red hook or within a block of the bqe, that do not sit in the shadow of any housing projects, and that are not more than a 45 minute ride to manhattan. i think this is totally do-able if only the damn brokers would listen. i'd pony up the fee, people, if you'd stop showing me apartments under the belt parkway in what you are now calling "carroll gardens west". note for any future apartment shoppers: any referrences to "great views of manhattan!" mean that the apartment is practically sitting on the docks in red hook, and you've got a lot of water taxi riding in your future.
I AM SOOOOOOO LOOKING FORWARD TO THE TRAIN RIDE TOMORROW! No one but me and domestic workers will be going to work on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I might get a seat instead of having some dirty hipster hump my back while reading "the corrections" in hardcover! hurrah!
Posted by me at 05:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 26, 2004
don't big companies usually have lawyers to prevent things like this?
to continue on the oriental theme: you absolutely MUST click on this.
will i get in trouble for engrish-ing "i'm loving it"? i will, won't i?
Posted by me at 10:06 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 22, 2004
rats
on particulalry bad nyc days, i dream of moving back to detroit. i have idealized detroit: the boredom, the quiet, the cheap gallons of milk, the driving to kroger and parking and having a grocery cart you can take back to your car and then drive it home to your own driveway, the weird people who actually say "hi" and make eye contact!
no longer.
rats have invaded the little ritzy suburb where i grew up, including, apparently, the very street i grew up on. ick. fuck it, i'll just stay here, where i can at least get a good bagel.
Posted by me at 11:32 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
preaching to the--
As you may or may not be aware, Kirk Cameron is born again in the holy spirit. Fine. He goes around the country preaching with a rather creepy guy named Ray Comfort (you should really look at their creepy website, called Way of the Master) mainly to the already converted about how they're too shy and need to step up and start preaching or all the unbelievers are going to roast in hell, blah blah.
So I finished perusing the Way of the Master website (lots of flash. I also don't recommend the 20 minute audio file with Kurt telling you about the 10 commandments and how you're going to hell. Well, that's not entirely accurate--listen to a couple minutes, because it's totally awesome to hear the guy from Growing Pains talk about Jesus!) and I moved on to Ray Comfort's own ministry site, where I found this column about how he's afraid of witnessing to rich, snooty, intellectual types, anyone black, and anyone wearing a uniform in a position of power (but not, evidentally, afraid of witnessing to dumb white trash or anyone wearing a uniform connected to a menial job). And in that column, I found this gem:
"Even though the flight to Los Angeles was almost full, the seat next to me was empty. An Oriental woman wearing glasses sat one seat over from me. As I sat in my seat I could see three obvious reasons not to witness to this woman. First, she was Oriental, and therefore probably didn’t speak English. Second, she was sitting one seat over, so there could be no real depth of conversation. She might as well have been on the other side of the Grand Canyon. And third, she was wearing glasses and therefore was an avid reader—obviously well versed in the things of the world, and therefore extremely intelligent and highly educated to a point where she would be condescending toward the things of God. There was no doubt about it--she was wearing a white cravat. Fear was back."
Pause, take a deep breath.
1. Oriental: As we all now know, "oriental" is a word that has been out of favor (and is to some, i presume, just offensive) as a catch-all word to describe asian people at least since i was in elementary school (and you have to remember I grew up in the midwest, so the word may have been offensive well before then to the more sophisticated people on the coasts. snort.). now Ray is from New Zealand, and maybe it's still okay there, but it seems like he spends most of his time in the US, and most of it in LA, which from what I gather has something of an asian population. You'd think he'd have been slapped by a couple people already for using that word. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt, and pretend that this is just like my 85 year old great aunt who lives in Charlotte and thinks there's nothing wrong with "colored".
2. Obviously can't speak English: Yes Ray, because as we all know, all these asian people we see around us are ALL JUST TOURISTS FROM CHINA (trust me, Ray thinks they're all chinese) AND NONE OF THEM SPEAK ENGLISH. And the few that actually live here? One (hyphenated) word: take-out! Wow, this explains so much. I've always wondered why I've never been able to fully understand RRC--and now I know! She must not have been speaking English! Duh.
3. People who wear glasses must read a lot and are obviously smarter than Ray: I'll concede to him on this point. Not harder to be smarter than Ray, is it?
I like this paragraph too, but not nearly as much: "Minutes after I arrived, two police officers were ushered into my office. A week earlier Kirk and I had rented an orangutan for a day for our TV program on the subject of evolution, and the officers had posed for pictures with “Bambam.” They were there to pick up the pictures." That is TOTALLY a set up for some hot man on man on monkey action. Cue the casio keyboard music and roll the super-8.
NOTE: On the word "oriental"--I'm white, I can't speak to whether it would personally offend me, but I do know that the current p.c. word IS "asian" and has been for 20 years in the United States (I guess it's perfectly ok in the rest of the world). Now whether or not you buy into all the p.c. nonsense, the fact of the matter is that he should be sensitive to the fact that some people are indeed offended by "oriental". Whether you're not really isn't the issue--the man is trying to convert people to christ, and he should be careful with the words he chooses. Do you remember when the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hell sexual harassment thing was in the news, and suddenly all the tv news reporters started pronouncing "harassment" with a soft "a", so it sounded like "har-us-ment" and not "har-ASS-ment" because they were fucking crazy and didn't want the word "ass" associated with it (or rather, probably some crazy militant feminist group didn't want the word "ass" associated with it)? was that stupid? yeah. but you didn't want to be the one reporter still saying "harASSment" and be accused of being a woman-hater or something. and of course that's dumb, but the lesson is you should cover your ass (hehe) and just use the fucking word "asian" and be done with it.
Posted by me at 09:53 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
May 21, 2004
woonerf me
This is a great article that isn't full of a bunch of hippy nonsense about how bikes should rule the road or how we should all just take the subway. Like it or not, the car is here to stay, and as far as urban integration of the car in relatively residential areas (in other words, not in midtown manhattan, where something like this wouldn't make a whole let of sense) of cities, this would work.
imagine, if you will, bedford avenue in williamsburg, dirty hipster central. rip out the sidewalks, repave the whole thing in brick with planters in weird places, and let the hipsters roam free (they do this anyway in the normal street). cars have no choice but to go slow because they can't tell where the road ends and the sidewalk begins (because now there is no difference between the street and the sidewalk), and they, presumably, don't really want to hit a hipster (nasty dent in the car, and the grease would take a long time to wash off the hood). sure, a few hipsters might get hit by cars at first until the cars get used to the system (like I said, the hipsters will have nothing to get used to since they walk in the street without looking anyway), but after awhile the hipster injury/death rate should decline (which, depending on the value you place on hipster health and safety, may or may not be a good thing). when cars no longer feel that they have the god-given right to go 35 mph no matter who just walked out in front of them (i admit to feeling this way when I'm driving--and not only when i'm gunning for the post-modern-mod attired morons who just stepped out in front of my car without looking), they'll have to go slower. and i get a sidewalk that's the width of the street so i don't have dirty fucking hipsters constantly bumping into me as they walk four abreast down bedford towards the greenpoint tavern with their beacon's closet bags and half-eaten slices from that nasty pizza place next to the bedford L stop.
holy christ, I'm going to call Bloomberg right now and tell him my idea!
Posted by me at 02:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 11, 2004
"They jumped rope at night, and sang songs"
if you have an self respect, you will refrain.
Posted by me at 10:45 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 03, 2004
this thought kept me occupied for a full 3 minutes on the train this morning
hallmark makes greeting cards, but they also produce made for tv movies.
why?
i'm not complaining, as i feel that the made for tv movies hallmark makes are definitely of better quality than most (yes, they're sappy and predictable and all about family and love and crap, but they are at least filmed well and the acting is tolerable), but i do wonder why make them at all.
why, hallmark? what gives you the right to make tv movies? what made you wake up one day and say "greeting cards just are not enough! the cultural currency i have will best be spent on made for tv movies, usually about rural america and sometimes set during the great depression!"
Posted by me at 10:59 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 02, 2004
serendipity
i am watching a documentary that was made in the last few years but is for some reason relying 95% of the time on film shot in the late 60s (for no good reason. this isn't about the 60s, and it isn't artsy) and the film with the lines that run up the middle remind me of the crap films they'd make us watch in elementary school, films that had been made in the 50s and 60s, usually about nature and animals (i remember one about yosemite and a bear wondering through fields and fields of tall grass and dandelions. and then he'd come upon a river and eat a fish. all with some guy with a high, tinny voice telling us about hibernation.) presumably because the science of nature and animals for children hadn't changed in 30 to 40 years, but maybe just because they liked film and the only films they had were nature films. this was contemporary with the early vcr (in the days of vhs vs. betamax), so early that no one actually owned one (a vcr, that is), and they certainly had never thought about strapping one to a cart with a tv and wheeling it into a classroom. so we watched film. when it was raining and we couldn't have recess and they needed to do SOMETHING GOD ANYTHING with us they'd put us in the lobby of the school and we'd sit on the floor and watch recreational film (which is distinct from nature film by being all cartoon). the only recreational film i remember is "serendipity" which was about some sea creature that looked like a purple loch ness monster and was named, well, "serendipity". that's all i remember.
i also remember doing a lot of upper body work on the monkey bars, because i was training to join the army. i was 8. and no, i don't know why i wanted to be in the army.
i just published the above, but then i started thinking about "serendipity" and why i remembered the name of a cartoon i probably saw 3 times when i was 7, when i can't remember the name of some people i just graduated from law school with (i'm slowly loosing my mind. i really can't remember anything that happened to me between that ages of 21 and 23. you think i'm kidding but i'm totally not. and i wasn't even doing drugs then, i swear!). i think it's because of the word "serendipity" itself: every time i've heard that word since i was 7, i've immediately though of a pink sea creature with big, dumb eyes. i will admit i'm STILL not exactly sure what that word means, because i can't get past the cartoon character. i think it means something vague like good things working together in a coincidental way (a situation that some people would call fate or a miracle or something) but i'm really not sure. all i know is that it's a dumb word, and it sounds like something someone trashy would name a kid ($10 bucks to the first person who brings me evidence of a child with that name) or the name of a nail salon in fresno. you know, it's a trashy kind of word, but trashy in a sweet way, the way that say people who buy that thomas kinkade shit are trashy. squeaky clean trashy.
Posted by me at 12:07 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack