/me facepalms

Chinese Americans trying to talk ghetto.

Really?

You know y'all needs to stop.

You're Chinese.

/me shrugs

Deal with it.








#thug4life
#poppincaps
#deeznuts
#actuallyfacepalmed

Murrkah.

Photo courtesy Phoebe's ball & chain.

It's officially Memorial Day, peeps. Time to wander over to random neighbors' and friends' houses and steal all their barbecue.

I'm going to need the local television stations to stop showing this commercial between newscasts.  It's making me cry.

From Art Van.  Who knew? Super clever and touching.

If this commercial doesn't make you sob like a baby, you're dead to me.

Dammit, Art Van.

#yourcountryismycountrysbitch

#americameansasswhuppers

Well, now.

Guess I'm not going downtown today... Unless I'm carting around 4 breeders and a bolt cutter. 

That's a Mad Max reference, in case you haven't already seen it twice...

It's the freakin weekend!

Friday was a great day. 

Some coworkers and I painted and decorated some apartments for new residents as part of an amazing community outreach program called NSO, and then held a welcome party for them.  Part of NSO's program involves providing homeless citizens with apartments as they try to reenter the workforce and normalize their lives.

We pooled some money together to buy home furnishings, and used the slowest freight elevator ever to cart everything up.  This included couches, microwaves, blinds, shower curtains, bed dressings, dressers. Sounds expensive, but we found a few couches at a resale store, and an electronics store manager hooked us up with great deals on microwaves and televisions. Sinks, stoves, fridges beds, and showers were already provided.  

And then yesterday, we held a welcome party in the gym for the new residents. There was a raffle for our PWAT paintings (I guess when you're just starting to decorate, you'll take anything lol). Our culinary department chipped in big time with a truckload of delicious southern foods. Even the mac & cheese was good. And I'm picky abouts my mac.

This sounds like a lot of work, but there were 7 of us to handle things. It was all done within a week, And I got to eat chicken wings and cornbread and collard greens and sit & chat with some of the funniest, nicest, most appreciative people I've met in a long time. The only problem was that we expected them to take the rest of the food to their rooms to save for later. Unfortunately, their seconds and third servings of the heavy food left them lethargic, and I think they just wanted to pass out on their new beds.  So we were left with half a truckload of food that had to be tossed.

Check out the guy on the scooter. He's a speed demon!

In other news, ITS BOY BAND WEEKEND, BITCH!  That's right! A full 3 days of the best boy band jams ever. I already lost my voice and messed up my ponytail jamming to Larger than Life on the way to work yesterday.

Aww, yeah!! You know you love it!!

I rented a cute old school bike with a basket today...was too lazy to haul mine around...and rode the shoreline to the Electronic Music Festival (sweet website). My head still hurts.

On Serration & Kegare

This one's for you, Phoebs.

Rereading this, it's completely narcissistic. I'll leave it for now, and hope my next post doesn't come off so whiny.

----------------

Technically, I was supposed to move back to Japan after college, get married, have children. I've been stalling for time ever since. I could always thwart my mother's half-hearted attempts to remind me of my familial responsibility. A new career opportunity, some community commitment, our property here needs attention, new friends. Whatever works for a few months. 

My brother has sighted a chink in my armor. The threat of discarding my Otosan's old things that I would most cherish. It's the best way to turn me into a giant sobbing mess. 

spider monkey.

For every stall I give him, he throws away something that belonged to my Otosan. Yeah, in that order. Not an exaggeration. He plainly states that he will, and then he follows through. A phone call to my mother from work the next morning always confirms it.

I don't find long term value in jewelry or property or karu or 401k plans. The most valuable assets for me are seemingly insignificant possessions. 

Like the fishing rods my Otosan used to teach me to catch hamachi along with an early lesson in humility and perseverance: If we didn't catch anything that day, we wouldn't eat. 

Or the rusty used canoe I helped Otosan seal when I was 8, now neatly stored in my mother's shako. 

Decidedly irrelevant possessions like these are rare and priceless because...

Sigh. I believe that each item holds within it a small piece of a person's spirit.  If I fish using my Father's tackle, his spirit will sing to me. I won't just be fishing; I'll be spending an afternoon with my Father.

It's why I barely go into that room.

And that's the best way I can explain that.

And a chance casual conversation with my brother (also my HOH) about spring cleaning showed him how important those things are to me, and gave him the opportunity to use them like a jagged knife.

He is so much like my mother - clever and singularly focused. My diversion trick doesn't work on him. He won't be distracted from a point. Who knew the skinny boy sobbing on my parents' bed with fresh welts on his back would grow up to become so power hungry?  

That reads exactly like the back story for every villain in every superhero movie. Ever.

But also, I'm faced with my own kegare. With every stall, I'm plainly stating that I value my freedom more than I value my Father. And my brother gets to twist the knife just a little to the left. 

Borrowed Socks

It's mid-May, for Trek's sake.

Seriously. Where's spring?

Weekend at K-Dubs

When you wake up in the morning in a strange bed and double-check your reflection in your phone and realize you look like a cross between Basquiat and Gojira...

#medusa
#stinkybreath
#coldintheD
#bitchbetterhavemycoffee
#needpants
#filtersdontworkonaliens
#1stworldproblems
#thewalkingdead
#deflategate

Nothing Interesting to Report

I'm chillin' at Kristyl's place for the weekend.

I've lost 1.5 of my 3 excess pounds so far.

Gonna check out Flower Day on Sunday. Honestly, I just don't feel like gardening anymore. I was maintaining the garden out of respect for my grandmother, but I think I'm just going to hire a landscaper this time.

Oh, filters. Blessed be.

The people who go to the annual Flower Day are crazy stepford wives on crack. Seriously. Those women are crazy. It's like they've been pacing around in their living rooms all year waiting for this one day to come. And don't even dare get between a Flower Day wife and a vibrant bundle of impatiens...if you do, just stab yourself in the neck and get it over with.

And the poor husbands. In their khaki shorts and their pink polo shirts and their horrible long white socks tucked into their jesus sandals, holding their wives' purses and pretending to care which hue of pink goes best with the house and tugging their broken little red wagons full of half-dead annuals.

It's so sad.

You simply have not lived until you've heard my mother say, "Girl, bye."

Went to the Metro Times Best of Detroit event tonight. They had these cool indoor local food and wine vendor booths with way too much food. Some trollop wore the same dress I did, only in a different color. I should've punched her in the testicles.

Rihanna got to swim with sharks for a photo shoot. I think I cried when I saw that on ET. The #1 thing on my bucket list.  I wanna swim alongside at least 1 great white just once in my lifetime. I watched a documentary where a scientist said that, as long as you're facing them, they treat you with respect.  You're not officially "prey" until you lose the eye contact.  Apparently, the largest group of great whites can be found off the southern African coast. They're so smart and mysterious and beautiful.  Don't you think?

I saw Ex Machina. It was so clever and good. Okay, it was actually so good that it made me wish I was smarter Nice surprise ending, also. And it's the real kind of sci-fi. "Real" = actual possible future (like Trek)...not a cheesy implausible future like Star Wars.

That's it. I got nothin.

Back to Bleh

I gained 3 pounds in New Orleans. I'm so pissed.

I don't understand. I did a ton of walking every day. I ate, but mostly light stuff and stuff I couldn't pronounce like "beignets". 

It has to be the alcohol. I was certainly very liberal with the, eh, libations. 

Can alcohol make you fat?

OMG. 

Pipe Music = "Al Green" for Pigeons?

When you're too lazy to even blow dry, comb or even PART your hair, you're probably too lazy to open a door.

So I'll just stand here and wait for someone to walk by and open it for me. lol

This just in: New Orleans pigeons are perverts.

Every time the ferry turns on the pipe music, the pigeons start having sex.

WTF! Gross. I did tell two pigeons to get a room.

It's definitely this city.

Aimlessly wandered Bourbon Street in an attempt to try all the popular "take out" drinks and collect all the cool cups. A cute and funny and charming and quite persuasive Irishman wouldn't give me back my phone until I agreed to have breakfast with him. 

Thank goodness for filters.
*Courtyard
*Wacky bed decor
*Room service
*Ominous streets...my fave!
*Remnants of hand grenade/diner

It was circa "North by Northwest" charming. 

I'd had 2 hurricanes and a hand grenade (bestest drink ever!) at that point, so the teeny local diner on the next corner with all of 3 tables did just the trick.

He looks more Italianish than Irishish. Actually, he looks exactly like the actor in Age of Adeline (great movie, btw). He has that manly scruff and the super thick longish hair that looks like a silk sheet. It's sort of uncanny. 

I'm calling him O'Brian.

And he has the boyish nervousness of a guy who doesn't have something scripted to say to a woman. He was unsure how to take charge of the conversation. And his inquiries were hesitant. It's beyond refreshing. And I'll bet the technique has garnered him a gaggle of thots. 

Or maybe it's this city.

I'm not gonna lie. At 1am, there are lots of flirty guys around with alcohol-induced courage, armored with a variety of pick up lines.  I would think that a woman walking alone in New Orleans would mean that there's something wrong with her. But apparently, it only means she's been separated from the protection of her pride.

But O'Brien's kind of concentrated "I see beyond the fact that you have a vajayjay and you smell clean" focus and affected obsession works for me.

Or maybe it's this city.

He does have really nice lips.

And in the whole 4 hours, not one "I've dated (and/or love) Asian women" reference.  

However, he had no idea who Jean Luc Picard is.

Sigh. Some things just can't be taught.

Damned city. They let anyone in.

Side note: A dude wearing a Star Wars t-shirt told me to come over and touch his lightsaber. Probably his 20th attempt to be clever that night. I told him I'd like to borrow it so I could shove it up his ass and watch it light up.  His buddies were still teasing him by the end of the block. 

::Insert "record skip" sfx Here::

...when you gotta interrupt your weekend o'debauchery to log in to Second Life and pay your rent...

On Catastrophic Events

Ugh. Left the stupid tote bag

on the kitchen table.

Well, merde.

This stupid fight is all anyone's talked about all week. Interviews with celebrities about who they think will win and giant billboards and excited coworkers preordering pizzas and kegs of beer and constant Xfinity pop-ups demanding I buy the fight on demand. I can't even call Comcast to pay my bill without the automated attendant screaming at me about it. 

Well, damn. Had I known the quiet celebrity sports guy who came to the homeless shelter opening in Mexican Village and brought a legion of fans with him all those months ago was going to be in the fight of the century tomorrow, I would've asked him to autograph something.