/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