cursory circumlocution

This “day” was a little difficult for me.  It’s not that I’m an automaton and cannot feel such a complex emotion, like Hew-mah would like you to believe.  It’s just that… I don’t know. “Love” is a really strong word, and even though I tend to throw it out there all willy-nilly on occasion (I LOVE THIS ICE CREAM FLAVOUR Y’ALL!), I just wanted it to be meaningful this time around or whatever. Anyway, it was just difficult, alright. >:-O

1. Condiments.  I love condiments.  I love sauces.  Buerre blanc, au jus, aioli, gravy, ranch dressing, relish, tartar sauce, especially KETCHUP.  I am a dipper, you see.  I love to dip things into whatever I can dip things into. (That’s what he said?)  I … whatever, there are just no words to describe how much I like love condiments.

2. FOOD. Who doesn’t love food? I like to shop for it, make it, eat it.  Which is really funny because I used to HATE everything.  I would only eat Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn and a slew of other junk foods.  My mother would threaten me to eat, and in elementary school, she would get my classmates to watch me eat and boss me around to make me eat (which, I guarantee you, they loved doing).  One time my aunt took my mom and I to this fancy buffet place in Hong Kong, and it was about 200 HKD per person (about 26 USD, but I mean, back in the day $26 was kind of a big deal).  I ate three popsicles and a helping of corn – not the cob, but the regular canned corn they heated up in giant fancy tubs or whatever.  Needless to say, Auntie Amy got suuuper pissed hahaha and was all “dude, I don’t know you; please go outside in the lobby to wait for us.” hahaha.

Then I started to make my own food – I have no idea when this began, but I still could NOT take the smell or taste of garlic and onions.  So I would get other people to prepare these for me, or just not include them at all (which was mostly what happened.)  Then about a year and a half ago, I thought, “What the hey! let’s just try it and see!” At first I still hated it, but now I’m all “mmmm the smell of fresh garlic getting minced and chopped”  By the way, mincing by knife > garlic press, you lazy bleepers!

Oh, I’m sure you noticed my Recipes category, right?  It’s a small collection as of right now, but my hope is to make it grow! (That’s what she said!)

3. Books.  I love books.  I mean, I already told you that I collect them.  But I love reading them.  To get sucked in by text on a page, to experience the feelings of the characters as they’re living their story… there is nothing really comparable.  I remember when I was about 12, sitting in the front of the school bus (lawlz, i was one of those kids.), reading the Iliad and feeling soooo terrible for Achilles and wanting to soothe his pain.  (Now I just think he’s a complete crying nincomdolt) So yeah. Stories.. stories in books, reading – yay!

4. Trivia.  I like knowing useless facts, and honestly, useless facts are most likely the only thing my brain wants to remember sometimes.  Where I put my car keys?  Nahhh, but matches have never been patented y’all!  I think that’s why I love history/ historiography – it combines the elements of Love #3 and this one.

5. Music.  I had a Cantopop phase (Faye Wong, Leon Lai, et al), then a pop phase (omgz Hanson, BSB, *NSync, Brit-Brit!), then a Celine Dion + Selena phase, then a goth/ alternative phase (because omgz I wanted to be cool and dark… most of the stuff I listened to around this time: Manson, Cradle of Filth, KoRn, KiTTie, Limp Bizkit [lawlz], Metallica, Pantera, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, et al), then a semi-country phase (Blake Shelton’s “Austin” and LeeAnn Womack’s “I Hope you Dance” are still two of my favourite songs), then a R&B/ hip hop phase (Musiq Soulchild, Luther Vandross, Marques Houston, some old and new LL), then a “I have no idea what’s going on but I like these tunes” phase (Grateful Dead, Dead Boys, BRMC, Interpol, Pigface, Skinny Puppy), then a post-rock phase (EitS, Red Sparowes, Gloria Record, TWDY, GY!BE et al), then a jazz/ blues phase (Miles, Otis, Coltrane, Billie, Ella).  Then I just up and quit these phases and listen to everything.  I now have a really really strange music collection.  And I love singing and “singing” to everything that’s not instrumental – cos then I’d be just bobbing my head and tapping my fingers to the beat.

6. Fashion.  I don’t know if this needs any explaining.  I like to dress myself in pretty things.  I like to dress other people in pretty things (does anyone need a personal shopper? ahaha).  If you get clothes from me as a gift, wear it because I’m doing you a justice in making the world a better place by beautifying it. :-x  I am judgmental about what people wear, even though I don’t roast them out loud (unless they are my friends… :D i <3 you guys).  And honestly, if you needed any further indication, my friends have told me that they have learned to purchase things for themselves based on this question: “is this Sue approved?” hahahaha.  Three places I would max out my sugardaddy’s credit card: Brooks Brothers, J.Crew, and Nordstrom/ Niemans/ Saks.  Just kidding about the sugardaddy.  I dilly dally about in Charlotte Russe and Agaci too cos a girl’s gotta have itty bitty shorts for the beach and stuff, you know?

7. Laughter.  It’s the best medicine, dontchaknow! I don’t think I’m a very good joke teller, but I know I have made people laugh.  That’s all the satisfaction I need, really.  Sarcastic, dark, dirty, awful jokes are some of my favourites to hear.  For example, ahem – and this is from a stand-up show I saw late last year.

A: who in here hates dinosaurs?

B: me.

A: what! why?

B: because they’re so cute and now they’re dead. :( :( :(

A: so you hate Jon Benet too?

8. The little things.  I’m the type of person who would notice the changes, and I’m the type of person who actually means it, especially in relation to gift giving. As long as it’s thoughtful, I don’t care that it costs $0. And by thoughtful, I mean that we’ve had enough conversations and whatever that you were able to recall something and know that what you’re giving me is going to be something I like/ enjoy/ would actually use. Some of the favourite things I got were 1) this circuit board with a message in blinking LED lights and 2) Reading the OED.  You could write me a haiku on a piece of pink construction paper and it’d go into my box of treasured things.

9. Family and friends (who are basically my family).  The parental units sometimes drive me a little craycray, and there is tension on occasion.  but man, spending time with people I care about and who care about me is perhaps the most awesome feeling.  Folk who give you unconditional support (well for the parents, especially Mom, I think there are limits but I don’t think I care to test them anyway [I mean, I am not itching to try coke anytime soon, soo...]) and will be the first to say something when what you’re doing is a little off (even though you may not want to hear it at first).  I’m so grateful to have known/ know such things, and I love them.

Next: 8 Fears

Hello, old friend.  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Lots of things have changed since I’ve last really posted (October 2010, hahaa), and in time, I will tell you stories.  Many wonderful (or not-so-wonderful and probably positively boring) stories.  But right now, I feel like procrastinating in my study for the last final exam of this glorious semester.  I’m bringing back the Twitter meme all my twiends (haha) were doing when they were stuck inside their houses during the snowpocalypse.  Anyway, without further ado, because I know you really want 10 days of me:

1. For two or so years, I was heavily involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism in my region, and this period was, like, the awesomest.  My friend and I would go to the fighter practices every Thursday, and while she was practicing with the rapier (sometimes I would do this too, but definitely not at competition level), I was off making scrolls for the champions or learning melodies and lyrics to sing during Feast or helping out in the kitchen making wassail or something.  Anyway.  The two of us would drive around to the Middle of Freaking Nowhere every other weekend to participate in the events.  I got to dress up in cute flowy long dresses with bodices and corsets.

Anyway, there were a lot of good memories associated with this period, despite the cold weather and mud I had to walk in or the bugs that flew around me from time to time (which got me unwanted attention once :/).  Also, if by chance you are reading this, M’lady Alexandria, the DUKE FOREVERRRR.  Hahaha.

2. While we’re on this topic of roleplaying and whatever, I used to do it via play-by-post in forums and then moved on to journals where I would just write and write and write.  I like to think that some of best stuff I’ve ever written was for a character named Caitrin, and I like to blame the fact that I did so much writing during these years that I now have developed some sort of writers’ block for everything else.  I think this is also when I started my habit of writing the meat of my papers first before writing introductions – I have no idea if either of these things correlate with one another, but I just tend to blame my writing “complications” on this period.  I did, like my SCA experience, have a ton of fun while doing this – although there were situations where I was so tired of the “out-of-character” drama that was happening.  Anyway, I am still fwiends with one of my writing buddies. (hola papi!)

3. I’m a bit of a control freak.  I don’t try to control people, no.  I just…worry and panic A LOT about things that I generally don’t have control over.  I have been advised not to plenty of times, but it happens anyway.  I try to think of myself as a spontaneous person, and I think I was one when I was a teenager or something, but I’m not.  I like to make plans and set plans into motion, and sometimes deviations will make me all craycray.

4. I get road rage.  This is probably the most hilarious thing you’ll ever read, but it’s true: I hate terrible drivers.  (cue laughter) People who refuse to let you in to the lane or speed up when you speed up or slow down when you slow down DRIVE ME NUTS.  People who cut you off, trying to do a jersey slide, Drive Me Freaking Nuts.  People who don’t use their blinkers or just leave their blinkers on for five minutes and never go and then when you speed up, they finally decide that they want to now turn into your lane also make my blood boil.  I have dropped the f-bomb more times in the car than anywhere else.  I have flipped people off – probably only twice, but still.  I have called people by a slew of names; my favourites being ‘bitch’ and ‘whore.’  I have used them enough to where my mom has also started to pick up my bad habit.  Now, I don’t actually pull up next to them, slow down to their pace and yell these things, but I have used my horn more times than I care to remember.  I don’t know.  At least I’m not the kind that will throw bricks at people’s windshields.  My dad, however, is worried that even from a distance, people will be able to read my lips and subsequently shoot me or throw bricks in my face.

5. I have crushed on many many many many fictional characters.  Trent from Daria (who didn’t?), Aubrey from Amelia Atwater-Rhodes’ Demon in My View (not so much in In the Forests of the Night), Cal – before all that craycray nonsense – from Cate Tiernan’s Sweep series.  These are all from yester years, of course.  Currently, I am crushing on The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper :( I cannae help that he is so smurt and arrogant about it.  Anyway, there have been plenty in all my 23 years of living, and I’m pretty sure I won’t stop any time soon either.  Oh, also, he is not a character, but I have/ had the biggest crush on Norman Reedus because of secret #2.  I mean, he is a fine specimen of a man, but #2 just sealed the deal for me, I think.  Okay whatever, enough with this weird stuff.

6. I have never fallen in love.  I know what it feels like to love a person – as a friend, as a relative, so I don’t think it’s too terrible of a thing.  I think I came close once, but there wasn’t enough time for it to develop into something remotely related to that word.  I mean, if you have to ask yourself whether you were in love with someone, you’re clearly not, right?  I’ve been told that “you just know,” and since I never knew, I was never. Haha.

7. I’ve already told you about my Hello Kitty stash.  I also collect books – not in the Gatsby way, but in a more serious way?  Except for that one time I sold 3 boxes of books to Half Price Books, I have never gotten rid of any of my books. I think I still have some old R.L. Stine Goosebumps series sitting around in boxes in the attic, along with my beanie babies (lawlz).  I also have not sold back any of my books from college except for mathematics and intro to philosophy (because I clearly did not care for either of these subjects; sorry, Logic).  I have the fantasy of having my own study filled to the brim with books: books, books everywhere!  I would like Beast’s library, but let’s be real… I don’t imagine I’d end up living in a castle or anything remotely similar to a castle…

8. When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor. More specifically, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon.  Then I wanted to be a cardiologist.  Then a neurosurgeon again.  Then an ophthalmologist mainly because I thought it would be some kind of poetic irony that I would be helping people who would have gone through the same crap that I went through.  Then everything changed when I took a particular Western civ class in college; I fell in love with history and never really looked back.

9. When I get nuts, I go crazy.  Or at least I used to; I like to think that I have inserted the word ‘moderation’ into my vocabulary.

10. My favourite word at the moment is ‘advesperating.’  Before, it alternated between ‘defenestrate’ and ‘serendipitous.’  My favourite adverb is ‘surreptitiously.’

Anyway, I wrote these down around midnight, so it’s probably a little obvious that I got tired toward the end of this segment.  But tada!  Secrets revealed!

When I was a little girl, I looooooved Hello Kitty and all her Sanrio friends. I mean, if you’ve got 2 x-chromosomes, you pretty much grew up knowing (and maybe loving) Hello Kitty. I don’t know why I was such a fanatic, but I know she and the other cast of characters became more “important” to me when I moved to Texas when I was 7 or 8. It was a familiar thing, a constant in the changing landscape. Asians did not dominate my new classroom, and it felt weird to be the minority. I suddenly felt the way Marcus, the only non-Asian boy in the entire grade in Oakland (haha which is funny), probably would have felt. And because of Hello Kitty, I was able to make friends with other girls in my class. Some of them were still completely rude (it is also strange to admit that I remember most of those awful transgressions, but I don’t think one can ever forget acts of racial discrimination, especially by that of a person who was supposed to be older and wiser and of authority), but in general they liked me cos of my cute Hello Kitty paraphernalia.

I never ran out of Hello Kitty things to share; around this time of my life, my mom and I returned to Hong Kong every year during the summer to visit relatives, who showered me with Hello Kitty stickers, stationary, plushies, and other crap I don’t remember. I now think stickers are a waste of freaking money because they’re not reusable anyway, and I remember sticking them EVERYWHERE. Oh, Sailormoon was a big favourite at this time too, so they also gave me a whole bunch of Sailormoon crap… like this denim romper and jean jacket set with Sailormoon’s face and name emblazoned on the back. I thought I was so cool back then. Now I’m just :-|

Anyway. Mom and I eventually found a store in town that sold Sanrio stuff, and it was pretty far from where we lived so I made sure to ‘stock up’ each time we were there. It wasn’t like I bought everything in the store – just a few select pencils and mini sticker booklets and stuff. But then that mall became more ghetto, so we didn’t go as often anymore, and one of the last few times I was there, it got closed down. Bummer. BUT WAIT. A few months later or maybe it was a year or something – whatever, time doesn’t matter here – the Galleria opened up a Sanrio store in the food court, and I was no longer special with my Hello Kitty stuff because then it started to become more maintstream and shit.

ANYWAY. The whole point to this story is I loved Hello Kitty and I knew where to get it and I knew how to use her to make me special with some of the girls in the class. Whatever. By the time I was in high school, I had a whole bunch of plushies, stationary, bath towels – you name it and I probably got it, minus the kitchen accessories and stuff because seriously, why would I have need a toaster that etched Hello Kitty’s face on it?

Since then, I haven’t bought much of Hello Kitty anything. I traded her in for clothes and shoes. So, a few months ago, my dad’s best friend in Hong Kong calls him up and asks to confirm our address because the post office sent him back his package intended for me. This conversation ensues:

Dad: What are you doin, man? What are you sendin’ her?
Uncle: Dude, I got these Hello Kitty toys…
Dad: Yo, man… do you even know how old homegirl is right now? She’s marry-able – way too old to be playin’ with Hello Kitty shiet.
Uncle: Dude, they’re just collectin’ dust and I got them with my McDonald’s meal, dude.

[sidebar: Now, you're probably thinking 'wtf is homeboy doing eating Happy Meals?' considering here in the States, toys only come with Happy Meals. But Hong Kongers are different and they don't play when it comes to their Hello Kitty paraphenilia. I remember back in 1999 McDonald's teamed up with some company and churned out these collectible Hello Kitty plushies. They had her and her boyfriend, Dear Daniel, dressed up in school uniforms, wedding attire, etc. I think each set was only available for a week until they brought out another set. If you bought 17HKD (~$2) worth of food, you can buy one of the plushies for about 20HKD (~$2.50). How awesuuum. It was so awesuuum to Hong Kongers that they waited in lines as long as what we see here at Walmart on Black Friday to get these plushies. So, yeah. It was soooo successful that they've continued this madness.]

This is also the same uncle that got me this Hello Kitty music box made for babies. It played music (duh) and the moon thing rocked back and forth and turned different pastel colours. I was probably 12 around that time… definitely not a baby. :-| Anyway.

So my dad tells him our address, and yesterday, I got the package.

It’s about at this time I realize that he probably didn’t eat at McDonald’s five million times and just got them as a set.

I didn’t know what they were or what to do with them. I thought it’d be silly to open them up and play with them beecause what if they were worth mooonay? So I googled and found out they’re called KITTYBRICK from around 2006. (no joke about collecting dust, I guess) And since I’m quite sentimental, I am a bit of a pack rat.  I’m thinking I may just stick them in my room somewhere or up in the attic as  I’ve already got way too much Hello Kitty stuff hiding in my room.

So I’ve actually got a story about plushies.  As you can see 5 of those Hello Kitties are from the 1999 McDonald’s collection.  I didn’t get the rest of them cos I had to return to the States and all.   I was very sad.  I also didn’t wait in line for these because my mom was not going to allow me to get that cray-cray over them.  Speaking of my mom and plushies.  A looong time ago, my mom got me this Green Apple Hello Kitty plushie from the store, and it smelled like the typical manufactured green apple smell. I refused to open the package because I didn’t want it to lose its smell so quickly.  HOWEVER, Mom decided it would be a REALLY awesome idea to give one of her co-worker’s daughter a present, so she went into my room and just picked up something out of the bag and GAVE IT TO HER.  Needless to say, as that Hello Kitty plushie was ‘rare’ (I dunno, I haven’t been able to find another like it thus far) I HAD A FIT.  It was a really traumatic experience, and Mommy got in trouble with Daddy :-x Whoopsie.  (I know this makes me out to be a really fucking annoying spoiled brat, which I’m not, but whatever.  I was like 13 or something and just not having it.)  Alright.. moving on… pencils and pens, y’all.  Cos I need multicoloured pens with the Sanrio label on it as if other pens didn’t work.

Then the above stuff are just stickers.  Lots and lots of retarded unopen stickers.  I don’t really want to open and use them, so they’re just… sitting in a box.  Also LOOK, WE ARE DINOSAURS.  I liked dinos a lot too, you guys.  I still do, but anyway.  So yeah, we are dinosaurs are kind of rare now too, I think cos I haven’t seen them out and about.  The dinos on the left are not we are dinosaurs, though they are dinosaurs… Anyway. whatever.

This is the only thing that’s out in the open, and it holds all my calligraphy pens and Chinese brushes and paints.

So, uh, yeah.   I have way to much Hello Kitty stuff that I’m not willing to part with yet even though I’ve outgrown them.  I may just put it all on ebay eventually.  We’ll see.  They were selling the KittyBricks for like $6 each….