snuffed the huff

after 2 years and aprx 100,000 emails, i am no longer working for the huffington post. as of this morning. i think it is time to move on to new adventures... like sleeping. i've heard good things about it. so congratulations to me! i wonder if not being sleep-deprived will change my personality. maybe i'll become... nice. and cheery. and bright.

O_O

to sleep, perchance to dream. let's see what happens.

it's ok, it's the blues

I'm sentimental, so I walk in the rain

I've got some habits even I can't explain

Could start for the corner, turn up in Spain

But why try to change me now?

I sit and daydream, I've got daydreams galore

Cigarette ashes, there they go on the floor

I'll go away weekends, leave my keys in the door

But why try to change me now?

Why can't I be more conventional?

People talk, people stare, so I try

But that can't be, 'cause I can't see

My strange little world go passing me by

So, let people wonder, let 'em laugh, let 'em frown

You know I'll love you till the moon's upside down

Don't you remember I was always your clown?

Why try to change me now?

ironic

this morning i went to starbucks craving a double tall vanilla latte and a bagel. while i waited in line, i battled with my guilt over my extravagant weekend spending, and in the end, we reached a truce. i ordered just the vanilla latte, single shot. as soon as i order, the guy behind me pipes up and adds his order, and then pays for it. i was forced to make awkward conversation with him while we waited for our coffee, and the entire time i kept kicking myself for not getting everything and an extra tin of cream cheese. and black and white cookies. and a yogurt parfait. and a mug. and now i have alanis morissette stuck in my head.

dammit.

i love you, taboo

i realize you-had-to-be-there stories aren't funny to anyone who wasn't there. but they amuse me, so too bad.


team boob:

- he's a rapper. he's underground now.
- tupac?
- ...because he's dead?


team awesome:

- it's... not straight...
- leaning tower of pisa.

if taboo ever becomes an olympic sport, i would get a gold medal in guessing.


- it's white. um... black people... it's their job to get it...
- please don't tell me the word is cotton.

if taboo ever becomes an olympic sport, bev would get a gold medal in racism.

ohana

ever since i sprained my ankle, my coworkers have been sending me links to winter boots with good traction. my inbox is full of l.l. beans.

oh, hiro.

fuck yo stairs!

dim sum death

this morning i was nearly run over by a dim sum cart. i was walking by a restaurant just opening for the day, and a short chinese woman with heavy duty gloves up to her elbows was cleaning the cart out with a hose. just as i passed, the latch that was holding the wheeled cart in place snapped off, and it lurched towards me. i froze, eyes wide as sesame buns. the woman dropped the hose, which started flailing wildly, and she was screaming NO NO NO NO NO!!! 2 men in a van ran out to help her get it back to the top of the sidewalk and relatch it. luckily, i regained my senses and hopped out of the way, and the three of them were able to prevent the cart from rolling into the street. a dim sum disaster. being run over by a dim sum cart would have been a silly way to die, although i guess it's unlikely i would have been killed, just maimed. shrimp shumaimed. and then they might have offered free dim sum for the rest of my life or the world's largest pork bun. mmm.

my morning brush with death had me in a weird state the entire way to the office. when i got off the elevator, i ran into our IT guy, who looked like the sky was falling and he was the official sky-catcher. our network went down again yesterday, and so we all spent the day cleaning our desks and avoiding jason. i'm guessing he had to stay ridiculously late last night to get everything back up and running, as he always does whenever the network dies. he must be feeling pretty frazzled and irritated right now. like everything is going wrong. like he's the only one who can fix anything, and everyone keeps calling him and asking him to do every little thing... man. if anyone has a reason to go postal, it's him. which is why tomorrow, i'm bringing him some sticky rice.

sea

When I turned seven, my father gave me a conch and told me it held the ocean. The spines were worn round and smelled of brine. I held it over my palm and shook gently to release water or fish. My father took it and pressed my ear against the smooth flesh pink mouth of the shell, watching my face closely as I listened. I strained to catch sounds of the beach, but received none. I heard no sea gull cries, no laughing children or off-key melodies from an ice cream truck. I did not hear sand or surf or people on holiday. Instead, the shell breathed into my ear the muted roar of distance and open sea. When my breath grew calm, and my eyes still, my father saw that I had heard.

“For when you seek quiet,” he said, placing the conch into my hands. “When too many people and too much noise surround you, hush and listen.”

tmmi (too much morning information)

i love weekday morning sex. half-conscious, fumbly sex in the brightening dawn just before you have to do everything you have to do. it makes doing everything you have to do that day a little bit cheerier. unfortunately, this rarely happens due to shower politics and time constraints. when i think about it, it's kind of a bummer. this morning i did not have sex. instead i had a bagel that was toasted right and evenly schmeared. and you know something? it was almost just as good. so the next time your bed mate rouses you with morning-breath nothings to get some nooky when you're groggy and not having it, toast her a bagel. or just roll over and suck it up.

skin

i feel the fragility of my physical form most keenly when sick. we are contained by such expendable bodies surrounded by shadows that limit and threaten to abbreviate us. sometimes, witnessing the strife and achievement of our species is uplifting and inspiring. but when the focus shifts to the physical frame of a person, suddenly in light of the volume of a human soul, the haphazard design of the package defies logic and terrifies. to think that our shells and the confusion of the inner mechanical workings that keep us moving through our physical space could be so imperfect and splintered, all the while holding a fathomless, ever-expanding, gorgeous humanity... sends a chill through my body and causes my nonphysical self to shrink back and hesitate.

if life is a miracle, and death is a tragedy, then the gauntlet-like set up of this world is one hell of a scam.

bang bang

there was an anorexic boy in my yoga class this morning who wore neon yellow spandex tights and a tie dye tank that showed off his belly button piercing. he was accompanied by 2 female friends plus 1 of unidentifiable gender, and they giggled and whispered to each other until one of us finally told them to shut the fuck up. we all gave her a silent namaste.

on an unrelated tangent, i was considering the etymology of the phrase, "bust a cap in yo ass."

the phrase, according to urban dictionary, basically means to fire a gun at someone. "Cap" would refer to the bullet, since it's more likely that the bullet would be the thing ending up "in yo ass" than the gun itself, unless of course you got really crazy and actually fired a gun embedded inside of someone's ass, which would be rather impressive but a different kind of scenario altogether, more freakishly sexual than threateningly angry. anyways. so a cap, or percussion cap, is an antiquated piece of a gun, invented for more reliable shooting in bad weather. take it away, wiki:

The percussion cap is a small cylinder of copper or brass with one closed end. Inside the closed end is a small amount of a shock-sensitive explosive material such as fulminate of mercury. The percussion cap is placed over a hollow metal "nipple" at the rear end of the gun barrel. Pulling the trigger releases a hammer which strikes the percussion cap and ignites the explosive primer. The flame travels through the hollow nipple to ignite the main powder charge.

modern bullets now include a primer within its casing, which serves to replace the percussion cap.



before this invention, the percussion cap butted the primer which butted the ball. so, to recap. when someone feels homicidal tendencies towards you and threatens to "bust a cap in yo ass," they mean that they will pull the trigger which will cause the striker to hit the primer, or butt-end of the bullet, which will then crush and ignite, propelling the bullet out of the barrel and ultimately into your ass. but the phrase is "bust a cap in yo ass," not "bust a primer in yo ass," and as we have learned, while the design of the modern bullet technically replaced the percussion cap with the primer, the two pieces are separate and distinct. therefore, the phrase's historical reference creates a striking visual. the speaker intends to pull the trigger which will kick, crush, and explode the ass of the ass of the bullet, thereby killing (kicking, crushing, exploding) your ass. expresses the full and exact extent of speaker's rage.

fascinating.