Blogspot, lightly sweetened oat bran flakes.

It rained very hard this morning and there were puddles all over Park Avenue. The women of investment banking teemed at the corners, afraid to slosh into the street. It was a scene reminiscent of nature footage of wildebeest preparing to ford crocodile infested waters. Or Frogger. In this context, I had a flash of nostalgia.

In 2nd grade, my teacher introduced our class to the wonders of plant vascular structure, capillary action and food coloring. We all had Tupperware vats of blue liquid that we stuck celery into. In our marbled composition notebooks, we jotted down our unfounded hypotheses about the fate of our celery. Peyton Eisenstein-Nichol confided in me that she though the celery would melt. She always was a stupid girl.

Of course, my bachelor’s degree now tells me that the blue coloration would climb up the celery’s xylems, progressively choking off the poor plant’s life as the hypertonic fluid drained its cells of precious turgor. At the time, some little shit dared to eat a piece of the blue celery. Alas, my 2nd grade self was a huge pussy—and everyone knew it.

I was reminiscing about this as I huddled among the stylish metaphorical wildebeest this morning, thinking how my pants were like that celery. Since the beginning of 2007, I’ve lost 3 inches off my waist, but I’ve yet to replace my work wardrobe. As a result, my pants are always sliding off my freshly crafted ass, making brushing contact with whatever was on the ground. The mucky rainwater would slowly ascend my leg via trouser solvating not food coloring, but dead rat proteins, taxi tread and possibly the residue of a used condom.

It is now 3 hours later. My pants are still wet and endearingly grayish. Rat blood and lube sure make great surfactant.

Blogspot, EVERYONE IS GONE FOR SPRING BREAK.

As this blog is a comprehensive narrative of my life, it's safe to assume that a lack of entries denotes that absolutely nothing has happened in my life in the few three weeks. Bimbos die and VA hospitals go unmanaged in the world outside, but in contrast, early March has been a personal statis for which Tony Kushner's angels would have sautéed their own wings to effect upon a world of progress. Ahem.

Oh, but I am being facetious! I am, as always, chock-full o' anecdotes--mostly about the weekends. Turns out employment makes longform partying (spreading the joy out over the week: Tuesdays are the new Thursdays are the new Fridays) impossible, so fun becomes condensed into those magical hours between 5PM Friday (assuming BossBoss decides to keep Sabbath) and 7:15 Monday. A badger must rend many of tunnels to find his quarry, and the weekend is one’s bloody ground squirrel after days of digging through the mud of employment. It’s ancient wisdom. I know—for I am Chinese.

So: I will detail my last two Saturdays. Booze notwithstanding, there will be no themes overarching the two. Pay me and I might consider trying to divine meaning from my pathetic social life—much too Carrie Bradshaw otherwise.

Item One: March 3rd

If Tony Kushner’s aforementioned angel (let’s call her Emma Thompson) tried to stop time’s militant march towards certain catastrophe, failed, and ended up accelerating the flow of time in a given town, you’d have Hoboken. It celebrates St. Patrick’s Day 2 weeks in advance (a good holiday approximation of catastrophe). Our lovely neighbor-upon-Hudson becomes an ocean of wasted sluts dotted by policemen bobbing gently on its green waves. The whole event has the feel of a forceful rebuke, as if the masses are saying “Fuck you, Gregorian Calendar. We can celebrate green leprechaun beer whenever we want.”

That Saturday I went to a party hosted by my co-worker Michelle. By coincidence, it was also St. Patrick’s Day themed. Although I had my concerns that it would be one of those famed Ivy-League clusterfucks (Omg, you were on the Princeton squash team!), it turned out to be quite fun. I met some super friendly people, for example Michelle’s on again off again manjunk, Will. Will has an ultrasound stimulator on his hand. He claims it’s to encourage bone growth after some undoubtedly awesome accident he had—probably whilst working for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. This employment status makes me suspicious that he’s not using the ultrasound as a weapon—disorienting dolphins competing for the East Coast’s limited supply of delicious mackerel. Management of aquaculture indeed! At one point we went on the roof to enjoy a 60 degree day. The brilliance of the sun caused my exposed forearms to glow with the pale halo usually attributed to Cate Blanchett under cinematic lighting. It’s significantly less sexy on me. Also: doobiez—my cheek muscles hurt for days from the laughter.

Item Two: March 10th

This party began, like all good ones do, with an internet banner ad about potato chips. J.Hart and S.Lim, dapper hosts, spent $20 and received a box filled with the following:

6 Bags of Flavored Potato Chips Unreleased to the General Public
1 CD of World Music (to be played in the background)
Instructions on Food and Drink Complimentary to the Chips in Question

Each bag of chips had a national theme to it (Chile, Jamaica, Aztec-Land) and was to be paired with food and drink brought by the guest. Thinking back on the experience, that party resembled a Chia Pet in a “just add people and booze” kind of way. At the end, we voted on which chip should be released into the fierce potato chip market. In that sense, the party was a focus group. We are all pawns of the corporations (but there was booze so who cares!?).

J.Hart's invitation threatened the well-being of our loved ones if we didn’t show up on time so, true to form, only the Asians showed up on time. Our people are, if nothing else, united in our punctuality (and love of Sanrio). I was supposed to bring gazpacho but freaked out after I realized that I didn’t own a blender. So instead I mixed some tomato paste and salsa together and called it a day. Other people put in relatively more effort—for the Thai chip compliment someone made a lemongrass-coconut soup and our last course was a risotto with shrimp on top. I had tons of fun, but more importantly, I picked up a lot of MySpace friends. Success!

Blogspot, block o' nonstop Queen songs.

Go to weather.com right now. Check your local weather. Look at the Doppler radar. You are seeing the future.

At first I was shocked that the forest-greens (heavy rains) and oxygenated-blood-reds (severe thunderstorms) of my youth had been replaced by this mess. The new version looked pale and sickly, like a mat of green scrambled eggs with flecks of ugly yellow parsley overlaid on a map of New York. Then I started playing around with it and realized: Praise be to the host of hosts--this is Google Earth WITH WEATHER.

Blows my mind.



I'm currently looking at a map of cloud temperatures of thunderstorms over the Philipines. It's a good thing I'm doing laundry today because I just creamed myself. Twice.

Blogspot, dispatch from baby's first fashion week.

Wikipedia once told me that The Nanny, Fran Drescher's masterpiece sitcom, was inspired by her interations with her friend Twiggy on a cruise they once took. That Pygmalion tension of mixing rich and poor, fabulous and horrifyingly unclassy--I was meditating on these issues as I urinated at the Gotham Ballroom after the Cynthia Rowley show on Thursday night.

I had just physically collided with Alan Cumming as he came out of the bathroom. He, being fucking awesome, brushed it off with a 'oh, terribly sorry.' My response was 'Oh my God', followed by a weasel-quick fleeing into the bathroom.

Thinking of this experience now, a story of one of the physician's assistants I volunteer with comes to mind. During a female pelvic examination in her early years, she had taken a peek into this one woman's vagina, stepped back and shrieked 'Oh my God.' This is perhaps a little more mortifying than my collision with celebrity, but in my mind now, Alan Cumming and massive yeast infections will be coupled until I die.

As for the show itself, I took issue with some of the detailing on the shoulders. Remember in middle school Home Ec when you made stuffed animals and had to leave about an inch between the seam and the edge of the fabric pieces you were sowing together? Probably not, but they disappear when you flip the sown fabrics inside out. The shoulders on two or three of these dresses looked like the edges of unflipped 7th grade stuffed animals or the crinkled edges of a well made empanada or pot sticker dumpling.

I took issue with one of the looks in particular, a metallic dress with flame print covering the bottom of the skirt. I'd like to RSVP on this invitation to call this dress "The Firecrotch." Granted, I didn't have the greatest view of the models, but I did have the most amazing vista of Tim Gunn's grimaces. He was clearly not digging the empanada shoulders.

But I a lot of fun and bonded a bit with the gays. And the open bar at the afterparty was nice. Cynthia Rowler herself is adorable and elfin. She even deigned to speak with me! A big thanks to Svedka for sponsoring both the fashion industry and my Friday morning hangover! A big thanks to Leigh Watts, the greatest publicity intern ever. Whoever is reading this: hire him.

Blogspot, delicious on steak, soups, seafood and pasta.

Lately at work I’ve been largely ignoring the task at hand and reading TV reviews of shows I don’t watch. Generally, I enjoy reading reviews. It makes me feel more like I’m part of the zeitgeist. It’s also interesting to experience media through different lens—a movie as impressed on someone else, then transcribed into words and then posted on the internet. Interesting, yes, but not always pleasant. For example, reading a Stephen Holden review is a little like looking through lenses that are irrelevant and retarded.

But I do love me some David Edelstein.

I think TV reviews are a little different from most. For the most part the shows being reviewed only air once (unless it’s on Vh1) so it’s not so much like a movie review, where the point is to gauge whether or not Shortbus might have been worth my hard earned $10 (as it turns out, no).

Regarding my views on TV critics: Writing about a medium as closely intertwined with the mass and popular as television, I think these people are freer from necessary pretension than their counterparts in cinema or literature. Television’s vapid, as it were. So to mirror that, it’s generally acceptable for a review of a TV show to say absolutely nothing beyond “this show is shit”—which is why it’s a really nice surprise when TV reviews are really well written. Since, as social animals, humans have an inborn desire to systematize life-experiences into a hierarchy, in my head I have arranged TV critics into a pantheon—a system akin to a media criticism Santeria. In such a spirit I shout ‘Ashanti, Ashanti!’ to my choice for chief among these saints, Salon’s Heather Havrilesky.

She almost makes me want to start watching 24, only seven years behind the rest of Amerika! Almost.

I like how she references her 2nd grade experiences in her reviews. It reminds me of innocent, non-English speaking times. Jesus Christ she is funny! Ok. Now that that’s out of my system, back to work.

Blogspot, gift of sight.

Six years after my first attempt, I finally went ahead and got contact lenses. The optometrist I went to confirmed what I had suspected all along, that it is more difficult to get the lenses into my eyes because I'm Asian. My mom's theory for why I failed last time is that I couldn't bear the thought of touching my precious peepers (read: a loss of resolve on account of me being a spoiled princess).

This is not the case. As it turns out, I have no problem raking my hand across my eyeball in order to remove the lenses. Insofar that I have no regard for the physical well-being of my eyes, I am very manly--I daresay an anti-princess of opthalmological health.

Such an anti-princess am I that it might just be an inborn thing. After my eye exam the optometrist told me basically that my fovea (the part of the macula responsible for discerning detail) is crazy-shaped and my optic disk is gigantic. This all means that I'm at high risk for developing glaucoma later on. The upside of this I guess is bascially that I might have a good excuse to smoke lots of pot in the future. The downside is blindness.

But back to the contact lenses! I'm getting used to putting them in already. On Sunday morning it took me about 20 minutes in the bathroom of my parents' place to shove these puppies in. I was expecting a similiar ordeal this morning so I got up early, but it only took about ten tries with each eye. As a result I got to work about half an hour early and realized that the sunlight really pours in the window at 8:20. It's nice to sit in for a few minutes, especially on a cold day like today.

So that, combined with that whole thing where I can now see shit, is the good part. Bad part: Being unable to discern detail at any distance, I never noticed this before but--Jesus fucking Christ--winter really kills my complexion (insofar as crushing self awareness of my skin tone, not so manly).

In other unmanly news, I'm going to a Cynthia Rowley show for fashion week on Thursday. Emaciated teenagers! Handbags! Unnatural stomping down runways! God, I can't wait. I'll even be able to see them now, so that's a nice bonus.

Blogspot, Abandoned Pools song,

I bit my lip on the elevator down from work yesterday. I didn’t bite down awfully hard, but I did it with one of my sharper teeth and in the middle of the scar of a recent cold sore, so I drew blood. It turns out, a good amount too—I could feel a drop coalescing and beginning to roll out of my lip.

Thinking back on it, I wonder what the lawyers from the 21st floor, my elevator-mates for this ride were thinking. On one hand, I guess a single drop of blood sliding down the corner of some young thing’s mouth is a little romantic. Then again, I don’t think I've ever made a very convincing consumptive libertine.

As it were, I guess it was pretty gross, so I wiped it off with the back of my hand. People on the street would just assume it was a burgundy tattoo of an amorphous streak--all the rage among the downtown kids, I'd say. To stop the bleeding, I started to lick the wound, figuring that if it was good enough for White Fang, it’d be good enough for me. It kept bleeding for another minute or so (my powers of healing rivals those of Wolverine’s obviously), during which time I ate enough of my own blood to make me a little nauseous, like during a nosebleed.

An interesting side note: one of my co-workers went to medical school at Mt. Sinai for a year and tells me the nosebleed nausea stems from taking in too much iron at once. A tip for you anemics out there: When you feel faint, just drink your own blood.

As a whole, other people’s blood doesn’t bother me all that much anymore. I saw a heroin user this Saturday while volunteering at the ER who had a huge abscess on his arm. One of the physician’s assistants opened the abscess lengthwise with a scalpel. Pus and blood rocketed out and hit him on the face shield. To clear the area, the PA pushed on the surrounding tissue. The extruded liquid ran progressively less pea soup colored and more red. A couple years ago I might have been grossed out more by the experience, but my verdict: pretty fucking sweet.

In contrast, I had to have my own blood taken a few months ago as part of a checkup. The nurses tell you to ball your hands into a fist when they insert the needle and tell you to relax after the sample reaches a certain volume. To hear the nurse tell it, I was so fixated watching the vial fill up that she had to tap me on the shoulder to tell me to un-ball my fist. God help me if I ever need dialysis.

A weird contrast: seeing other peoples’ blood as a vessel for gas exchange, nutrition and hormone transport and seeing my own as red(dish) gold. Just another way in which I am selfish, I guess.