ruined map

2004-03-15T01:35:00.000-08:00

What is it that goes through your mind when you write? Are you thinking mainly about yourself or the people around you? Is there an idea that guides your writing or do you follow the shape and movement of your words? Are you thinking about your past or your future? Do you think about place in terms of space or time? Do you feel like a hedgehog? Do you feel like a fox? Are you hoping for fidelity, shape, or escape? Do you want fame, or do you want sustenance, or to scratch an itch? Do you wish you were more beautiful or do you wish beauty to be in love with you?

2004-03-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

Yes, more self-indulgent complaining. Perhaps you should skip. That's not a tease. It's here for my benefit, really.

It's late, it's early. I'm writing my paper on some Hemingway novel. I have some interesting ideas. They are totally messy and incoherent. I'm pissed at that, and the fact that I'm too tired and my brain is not functioning. I wish I didn't have to stop to go to sleep, because I have so much crap to think through. Why do people have to get tired?

Can't I just write in here and can't people leave me alone? I write in here, but I'm always embarrassed when people actually read it. The existence and relative permanency of my stupid past ramblings are grating. Why do they all sound so naive and stupid, and earnest and pretentious? I feel like have to compulsively embarrass herself. I don't know exactly what it is I'm trying to accomplish.

I just want to vent! I'm talking like I know what people are thinking when they read this. It's so neurotic. And useless. I just want people to know I'm am tired and pissy, but what's the point of saying this? Nobody gets anything out of reading this. When they read it they waste their time. blacka hola.

I mean, I could definitely give you straight, meaningful, set of stories about my life, but everyone will see some meaning in it, and I'm afraid of meaning anything. Or being seen to mean something. Not sure what I mean. If I write them, I can just see myself trying so hard to put it all together, contriving it and going lalalala, here's a neat compartment of a story. Please love me and I am so interesting and fascinating. And maybe I've told this story before? Some people can probably do this because they care more about entertaining others than about impressing others. Wonderful lucky liar people.

I hate it when I have ideas that I feel like are not my own. Feels like I can chart and reference everything thought I have to its source. It feels like leeches and I feel like I am frantically trying to slap them off before they suck me completely dry.

It's weird to be tired, because I feel very bitter and i want to be non existent. Sleep is basically the need to stop existing for awhile? Maaaaybe....

I know absolutely what I should do. I should keep a file for all this, and just keep revising and adding to it whenever I'm tired and nonhuman. Then I don't keep repeating myself.

2004-02-25T03:11:00.000-08:00

There is a retrospective called Ant Farm 1968-1978 at the Berkeley Art Museum. Ant Farm is an art and architecture collective, best known for Cadillac Ranch. They were fascinated by mobility and impermanency, in opposition to the permanence and presence of traditional architecture. They are similar to the British architecture group, Archigram. One of its founders, Chip Lord, is a film and media professor at UCSC (chair of the department too). I was unaware of this! It would be great for Fish Rap to write an article on the Feb 26th "Blow Up" event that's accompanying the exhibit. Food, DJ, prize giveaways, and an "inflato object building" contest, along with Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier the other founder. Hmm hmm hmm, what's the fish rap email?

Read more about the exhibit and about Ant Farm: San Francisco Chronicle article

2004-02-23T02:56:00.000-08:00

The beauty of desperation: is it necessary to have more than one blog, or is it just desperation?

Cross posted cross posted...

I never write creatively. It's a structure and pasting process. Right now I'm stuck on the first dialogue passage of my hemingway imitation. I've got to make it sound like ten year olds are talking, but if I consciously try that then it'll just sound dumb. I've noticed as I've gotten older that children tend to be mature talkers, which makes me wonder if I really have to necessarily "dumb it down." It is because children speak so confidently. For me, the least mature talkers are probably teenagers. And the most genuine portrayal of teenage dialogue requires streams of tentative and naive cliches. It keeps getting worse as we grow older, I think. One gets involved in emotions and situations that are too complicated not to be filtered through ingenuine sounding and trite cliches. One starts speaking in sarcastic tones because of this. It would be best not to talk, sometimes. It's not so all the time. Sometimes I feel like as one gets older, it becomes increasingly necessarily to decompose the cliches by writing more.

Here's a peak at what I've written so far.

The Medieval Village

This morning in the medieval village of Capena, Manny walked past the church where mass-goers were milling out into the ice cold, sunny day. Manny observed as Tancredi filtered out of the crowd and rushed towards him, waving a pack of cigarettes above his sand colored head.

"Manny, today's the day!"
"I'm going to the store to buy rosemary. My mom's cooking for the block party."

Tancredi pulled a cigartette out of the carton and waved it in front of Manny.

"I'm not smoking today. Smoking's bad for you."
"You smoke everyday, Manny"
"No I don't. I never smoke. I have asthma."
"Yea right. How come yer always coughing?"
"I have Tourettes!"
"Fine. Let's go to the schoolyard. The fires are getting set up and I need a spark for this cig. St. Anthony's come out to see his shadow!"
"Let's go to the store first. Dad say's smoking's illegal for minors."
"Don't be an American!"

Manny responded by sticking his tongue out. The cold air stung his tongue and he quickly replaced it back in his mouth. His tongue felt dry.

2004-02-21T03:04:00.000-08:00

I should be shot for not sticking to my strict schedule of reading and studying that I have planned for the coming weeks. However, this online thing has me in the grips tonight. Part of it is that I found some great livejournal communities to participate in, and since they mostly have to do with books, history, and art, I feel somewhat okay as I'm still sticking to academics. I'm still keeping a livejournal, actually. I don't really have a split personality, but it seems that at this moment I can rationally split up what I want to say between two different circles of friends. This blog seems to be for my college friends, while the livejournal is for the friends at home as well as for participation in communities (discussion journals). This isn't actually necessary, but as it turns out my college friends gravitate towards the blog format, while my friends at home are on the livejournal. One is a more individualistic format, and the other is more network friendly. Everybody can read both my blog and my livejournal, but it should be interesting to see what I deem as appropriate entries for either social circle. What sort of things do I feel comfortable saying in one group and less comfortable saying in another? Some things make more sense in one context than in another. How often would I feel the need to cross-post? I've always felt somewhat of a split between home and college, and even in going back and forth during holidays I've felt like my values and interests change depending on where I am. Even music that I like while I'm in Santa Cruz don't seem to fit in while I'm at home. To a small extent, I feel more pretentious while I'm in Santa Cruz and also a lot more withdrawn. I also feel more academic and analytical, nihilistic even. While I'm at home, I knit, think about food, sex, and sometimes once in awhile I read. I play video games, take walks with my grandma, listened to pop music, go places without needing a purpose. Which isn't to say that one is more "me" than the other and that I'm somehow being ingenuine in one of my modes. As time goes by, I see both sides finally intermingling. The reason I've suddenly become fascinated with home, with LA, is that I finally see what I love about college in my home setting, and what I find so empty about college is being enriched by the substance of home. Sometimes I chastise myself for growing more towards my college self, since I resent and feel bitter towards this place for making me feel like I must change or I won't belong. And yet I've somehow grown to fit more in Santa Cruz than in Monterey Park. I feel displaced when I'm back home, as the public library seems smaller and is never quiet enough for god sakes, and everyone still listens to music I would be embarrassed to bring up in Santa Cruz, and the only real entertainment is going to a poolhall.

Anyway, I started this entry saying I should be shot. What I really actually wanted to point out was that UC Santa Cruz has a Science Writing program, which is part of the Natural Sciences Division. Since I completely strayed from this and there is no hope of a really good segue, I decided to heck with it. A new paragraph should be segue enough. Anyway, this science writing program (see the site) is widely acknowledged as one of the top programs in the country. New Scientist calls it "The best academic training ground in the U.S. for science journalists." Now, compare this with the sad and pathetic whining that has been going on with the demise of the UC Santa Cruz Journalism minor. The existence and success of this science writing journalism program is never mentioned by those advocates of the journalism program in the humanities. The journalism minor has never really been that good to begin with (if we are to judge by City on the Hill, not necessarily for the writing but for a defective nose for news and a sad, toothless sense of biting humor -- as music journalism, they offer us, "Haha, I partied with Britney Spears and you didn't!"). It isn't entirely the fault of the humanities. What it all comes down to is money, which has probably helped the science writing program to quietly but surely build itself up as a solid institution; while the humanities department nursed its young, un-disciplined idealists in a languishing program funded on leftover money. The complacent journalists that get produced by the program think it's somehow sufficient and even heroic to give "voice" (everyone's favorite word) to their complaints ad nauseum in the garishly mundane political rhetoric that they just learned in class. The self importance that they feel in their journalistic mission is just stinky. At least at Santa Cruz, people in the sciences tend to be more vocationally minded while humanities people think they're hot shit which can be somewhat infuriating. One runs on the vices of narrow practicality and the other runs on the vices of egotism. It just happens that one gets things done better than the other. Same goes for the conservatives and liberals.

I personally feel like the best place to go for getting a journalism education, if one is not interested in prestige, is to a Cal State college. After one gets a solid high falutin liberal arts education, the demotion to vocational college should ground one in the reality that it is also just as much a trade and rid one of the heroics. The Dean of Humanities himself justifies the cancellation of the journalism minor by saying that UCSC is a research institution and not a vocational school. I say this not because I feel like there is really no place at UCSC for journalism (there are some places like Northwestern to name the most obvious, and if people here actually cared enough to do more than just write about problems, things might actually work out here...), but because even if a big campaign for money were to be conducted, money would never come as easily as it does to the sciences. The effort to sustain journalism through fundraising will take away time and energy that could be spent on enriching the other programs in the humanities (one developing program is South Asian Studies, which I feel a serious university cannot do without; while a journalism program in which mostly technical skills are taught, skills that is quite frankly very easily picked up through on the job experience, just wouldn't be worth the trouble). I also say this because so many people devalue the resources available at community colleges, vocational schools, and cal states. I grew up hearing how these places are shit, but these places are more affordable and the teachers are soley employed to teach (they are not involved in book writing and research usually)... deep down it's such classist and egotistical BS. If I were smarter, I would have gone to those schools for my basic college education and waited until I transferred to a university for my mind to be blown by exciting ideas. If the world were better, it would occur to more high quality professors to teach at these humbler institutions. There is so much out there already to make it so that the ivory tower does not have to be built so high.

It also seems like the best thinkers and writers at UCSC are too busy working on their primary majors to take a journalism class. Another thing I object to is that most of these primary majors don't encourage students to express their ideas in "easy to understand" language and be creative about the essay format, so that they can come away with the confidence that they can write for both the public as well as the academic community.

Maybe i'm being too contrary to reality. I dunno.

2004-02-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

Last summer I was employed at your average computer corporation, where my sole responsibility was to print pages and pages of patent papers from the US patent website. All the while I was looking for some of the famed oddities that sometimes get patented, as a tiny reward for being tortured with boredom at my job. The only things of interest were some neat diagrams of antiquated 19th century tools and contraptions. I especially liked the patents on baby doll heads and action figurines. There was a patent for an early 20th century amusement park game in which three racially coded dolls were hung in a row to be shot at for prizes. Today I found out about a book called "If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive... Discorporation and U.S. patent 4,666,425." by Chet Fleming of St. Louis, Minnesota. The book itself is supposed to be an ethical treatise on the practice of keeping severed heads alive, but I was curious to read the actual patent details. Look, but don't infringe: Patent #4,666,425: Device for perfusing an animal head
There are diagrams in this one, but it requires downloading a specific picture viewer. "Waste products generated by metabolism inside the head (or added to the blood during processing) can be removed in one or more waste removal chambers, such as chamber 60 shown in FIG. 3." I wonder what that's supposed to look like?

I wish I had slipped this one in among the stacks of computer software patents that I had to print out last summer.

By the way, the UK was kind and humorous enough keep on their website several links and references on the "strange and unusual" patents in that are among their archives. "Please note: The Patent Office does not endorse the view that any patent is wacky or absurd just because a third party has chosen to list it on a website or in a book about strange inventions."

2004-02-19T21:58:00.000-08:00

Today belongs to the zombies. I had been a nihilist all along -- in other words I believe in nothing. People who do believe in something astonish me and I admire them. Some people pose as nihilists and think they're doing something new. Nihilists cannot lie. Babies are nihilists. I think the hamster I'm babysitting looks like a nihilist.

Then again, I believe in everything. So it's circular. So's everything.

Four hours of office filing. Four hours of lectures. Insert a hamburger in between. And that's my day.

I stayed up all last night reading Fathers and Sons, which is where I got the nihilist thing from. I have not slept very much at all. Shall I subject myself to more nihilistic fodder by reading Farewell to Arms? Ah, I feel like ditching class tomorrow. Need more will power. More brain cells. More something. Coffeeeee. Sadness. I feel I'm going to shrink down to the size of a molecule. I think I'm spacing out right this minute.

2004-02-13T00:11:00.000-08:00

I don't think anybody but brian has found me. You see, only a few days after plotting the death of my loveishello.com domain, it went kaput all on its own. The lonely year of ravings was up, and now I'm here warming up a seat on the blogspot bench. Afterawhile, I realized that I seem to know a lot of people sitting on the bench with me, but most of them doesn't seem to have noticed me yet. It feels almost like livejournal, except these folks can write darn good poetry, and I don't mean to offend them by calling it poetry (what would you call it?), and have really intelligent musings on their really good and really bad days. There are also the expatriate and the i can do anything on no money guy (please forgive the not too creative title, i'm in a "huh?" moment) who operate off their own sites. Now I would urge Jason to join us over here, but he's got a pretty good set up at livejournal so why fix a good thing? Now I wish everybody had a comment system so I can talk to people and they can talk to me. I'm too lazy to figure it out right now. Anybody want to give me a tip? ioogooi@yahoo.com

2004-02-13T00:02:00.000-08:00

Here's another archy and mehitabel verse:

archy interviews a pharoah

boss i went
and interviewed the mummy
of the egyptian pharaoh
inthe metropolitan museum
as you bade me to do

what ho
my regal leatherface
says i

greetings
little scatter footed scarab
says he

kingly has been
says i
what was your ambition
when you had any

insignificant
and journalistic insect
says the royal crackling
in my tender prime
i was too dignified
to have anything as vulgar
as ambition
...

2004-02-12T23:49:00.000-08:00

During the early 20th century, let's say around the 1910s, poetry was a popular thing. When the Armoury show came around with its nudes walking down stairs, the newspapers and media published plenty of badly but gaily written verse interpretations ("rudes walking down stairs...") of these cubism/futurism/"avant-garrish" pieces. There was William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound going to the same school, H.D. and Marianne Moore just across the lake. When one got bored of poetry, one could go follow up on Hemingway and Fitzgerald doing their thing, too. And then there was Don Marquis, writing up his weekly jottings about archy the cockroach and mehitabel the cat. A more beautiful set of versified run on sentences there never was:

wail of archy

damned be this transmigration
doubledamned be the boob pythagoras
the gink that went and invented it
i hope that his soul for a thousand
turns of the wheel of existence
bides in the shell of a louse
dodging a fine toothed comb

i once was a vers libre poet
i died and my spirit migrated
into the flesh of a cockroach
gods how i yearn to be human
neither a vers libre poet
nor yet the inmate of a cockroach
a six footed scurrying cockroach
given to bastard hexameters
longfellowish sprawling hexameteres
rather had i been a star fish
to shoot a heroic pentameter

god i am pent in a cockroach
i with the soul of a dante
am mate and companion of fleas
i with the gift of a homer
must smile when a mouse calls me pal
tumble bugs are my familiars
this is the punishment meted
because i have written vers libre

.....

2004-02-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

Yay, wooo hooo. And I just baked an onion!

2004-02-10T22:09:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to delete the last entry, but I feel like it. It was a lazy lack of restraint. I don't know if they are things I should be saying or not, if they're statements of the obvious, or what. I will probably get different answers from people, and I'll be even more confused.

I finally met with my advisor to confirm that I've fulfilled all my major and general ed requirements, only to find out that I had already fulfilled them last quarter. This quarter has become one of those tests of whether I was really in this for the degree or in this for the love of it. I probably wouldn't take back this quarter so far, since it's a chance to mature some my lit crit and writing skills with a clear career goal in mind rather than to feed a hazy need to sound intellectual, and also to tie things up in Santa Cruz. I'm considering entering another round of schooling in the future, either in journalism or graphic design.

It's midterm week. It's one stupid thing after another. Did not turn in a paper on time. Wrote another paper with no thesis. Gave bad driving directions to a stranger (makes me feel dumb). Overfed the fish (furthermore feeling guilty about taking pleasure at seeing the big fish biting the heads off the little fish). Didn't do the dishes for days. Left coffee stains on the countertop. Spent too much money eating out. Didn't go to sleep at 10pm. Have urge to watch American Idol. Watched too much Food Network. Ate an obscene amount of chocolate. Drinking wine and eating canned fish when I should be studying.

2004-02-08T23:33:00.000-08:00

I have this theory about why people don't like Lost in Translation, but I haven't seen the movie, so it would be foolish to present it (of course it has less to do with the movie and more to do with my observations about the trendiness of japanese "culture"... Did anybody actually expect to see Japanese people portrayed in any complex way when all they are is a trend to us still? Sure, they're so creative and artsy, but it's all just another image for the culture vultures to descend on... Now that they've proven themselves to be so wacky and cool, they are now worthy of real authentic human beings? Probably not, since we have expectations of them as being so wacky and interesting. Of course they're portrayed in the movie as parodies of what we find is so cool about them, is there any wonder??). Damn I have to see the movie. Maybe I am a idiot Nazi for trying to defend the movie. How do you explain the comment about the "l's and r's" getting mixed up? In what sense was that joke brought up? Are people being subtle about their accusations or are people just being crudely politically correct? Am I defending the movie because I find Sofia Coppola's aesthetic so alluring. Okay, probably.

I hate having pride about my culture (and I do have that accursed pride), because I feel like it isn't PRECISELY the feeling I should be having. To have to feel pride means to have to concede that there is some necessity to do so, that I had to lift myself from some sort of guttered place. Right from the beginning terms I've lost. AND I've never even been in the gutter. Is being Asian some sort of struggle? I'm not a fucking victim, even when I'm victimized, dammit... I think... it's pride isn't that makes me not want to concede victimhood. Do I have to go out there and find some drunks and get them to be racist towards me so I can really get all riled up? I'm not saying it isn't problematic, but damn do we have to overdramatize it so much? Why should I celebrate my Asian-ness? In what way do I represent Asian people? I've never lived in Asia. Sure, I've lived in a transplanted version of it maybe-- the family connections, the Monterey Park thing, the immigrant thing... but I have no claim on anything really... Why should I feel pride? And yet, when some white bearded white guy at the bar starts spouting at me about origins and being proud of them, and then pointing out my supposed accent, why do I suddenly feel threatened? I originated in Palo Alto, California. Who fucking cares about origins? God, so what if there's a book about how the Chinese discovered America before Columbus did? Why should I be proud about that? Why does it even matter? Why is it needed as a political tool to justify and validate ourselves? What are we competing with? No one is seen as human in a competition, are they?

How can I ignore history? Is that what I am doing, though? Is history for pride? NO no no... What happens when racism stops and all we're left with is the vice of pride? Is the plan to turn minorities into the future Jerks of the world, when it comes their turn to hegemonize or dominate? I thought minorities were happy being victims. It's sublime isn't it? How come Asians have to major in Asian American studies? Why aren't we curious about other cultures? Why is there an expectation that it's a good thing for us to be in a comfort zone? Really, let's all dwell on ourselves some more, why don't we? It's so empowering. Let's rediscover the self that others have prevented us from knowing. From lack of a vocabulary, discourse. Damn, it's hard to admit that all this is actually in fact necessary. I am stupid for not majoring in Asian American studies. It's a little easier to stomach if one is in Latin American Studies, because it feels like you're thinking about someone other than yourself. But when you're in Asian American studies... well, I dunno, is it to prevent people from calling you a nerdy mathematician/kung fu fighter evil manchu emperor with an accent? I feel like it's a crusade against ignorant pathetic drunkards, more than anything.

It's merciless what I'm proposing. It seems to not allow people to be curious, even in a trendy way. Why am I trying to make it hard on people? I'm wrong of course because it's better than the more negative approach of hate and othering and ignorance.

I feel like I've put myself in the role of the victim just by having this rant, but really I think I'm ranting because I think I'm smarter than everybody else.

2004-02-08T22:53:00.000-08:00

The Sun Also Rises is a thoroughly depressing little book. The characters should just be taken out and gored(ha!), shot, because that's the only merciful thing to do. I'm not finished yet with the book, so maybe they all do get killed in the end. What is it about? Maybe it is about that feeling of self-importance one gets from having suffered by the hands of cruel social rituals. One can't even suffer without it being ultimately a matter of ego-boosting or self-validation. If you want to avoid being accused of being self-involved, one might as well not have emotions at all. I lead a relatively drama-less life. I am happy. But ultimately it makes me feel like less of a human being. And therefore I am somewhat unhappy (though I could ultimately ignore this, since ultimately this unhappiness is just all fakery). Create a little drama by forgeting that most of my problems resolve themself almost immediately, have conniptions, drink lots of booze. Now I feel human.

Do I even like the book? Yeah, I actually want to read it over and over again. Suffering makes great reading, especially petty and pointless suffering. Books are so fun.

I mean sure, there is real suffering in the world, but who would ever wish that on themselves? It's much better to keep busy with fake simulated suffering. It's okay, as long as it is imagined.

I stayed up really late last night watching Sunset Boulevard and a little bit of the Farewell to Arms movie. They're hilarious. Movies are so fun.

2004-02-05T00:34:00.000-08:00

Is my page even here anymore? Here I am, making up theories on why I miss home. It is Los Angeles, for crying out loud. It's where things happen, but where you get the impression that things don't. Read City of Quartz. The LA Weekly, too. It's a big enough city where the politics actually seem to matter, but is really just more tawdrily inconsequential. It's not so obviously hip and hippie like San Francisco (did not grow up there so I have nothing against it except in regards to the way it's adored) and is in fact quite ugly, depraved, conservative; and really only hip in a slightly victimized and misguided way. I mean that it's cool, but only cool in that it gets cool slightly wrong. Things are cheap in LA. I keep saying it's where real people live. I guess real in the sense that the suburbs are actually interesting, rather than vacuous and manufactured. Mainly, this place probably lives in my head. But I am missing lunar new year festivities. I am missing cheap produce. I am missing the LACMA and Getty and MOCA. I'm missing out on things I don't even know I'm missing. I miss the really horrible, non-existent bar scene. Maybe I'm just sick of college students. I like when New Yorkers from New York come here and tell me that Los Angeles isn't as diverse as their home town. I miss that you can almost pretend one is back in Taiwan, when one lives in Monterey Park, even though I've never ever been to Taiwan for any substantial amount of time. Just thinking about the way my family ended up in MPK is weird. We lived in Pomona for awhile, with extended family and grandparents. There wasn't much peace between the two sides of the family, to the extent that butcher knives were brought out. Something about piano lessons and hoity toityness. Sigh. My mom picked up and took the kids, once it was to escape to Taiwan; this time we escaped to Monterey Park in a red mazda sedan. It was really my grandma's town, then. My dad knew my mom would go live with my grandma. He came to Monterey Park and drove down every street looking for the red mazda sedan. He actually found it. We all moved in across the street from my grandma's little apartment. Life was pretty quiet and boring for many years. It was okay to take piano lessons here and be hoity toity for awhile.

This isn't much of an ode, I'm not exactly doing a good job of selling it. It's not coherent enough. It's not rich enough in detail and maybe I just don't know how to articulate it. It's about being the best of both worlds, I think. It's exciting and it's not. It's where one might shape ones life, in more than just one single way. Perhaps I'm just imagining it all. It seems like a place where I can do the things I want to do, or at least get a start on it. Being here at college, the strange and intense, but ultimately inconsequential activities that we engage in, in and out of the classroom... I'm getting all fed up by it.