mood: happy, except for the very uncomfortable and distracting pain in my back
music: Real World ‘09 – Rob Thomas

My favorite solo artist, Rob Thomas, came out with a new album, Cradlesong, last week! I’m listening to it right now, and I’m easily growing very fond of it. He’s just such an amazing lyricist, and I just love the way that he uses instruments. His voice is so comforting to me, too. He’s going to be on tour in February; I wonder if he’ll make it up to San Francisco.

On the surface, it seems as if I’m having a very lazy, unproductive summer, seeing as I’m like the only one of my friends without either a job or summer school (or both), but in truth, I’m having a wonderful time getting in touch with all the different parts of myself. That sounds so sexual, haha, but I mean things like playing WoW (I’m a bar from 75 and ahead of all of my friends, which I am both proud and slightly embarrassed about, since I’m sure it has something to do with my pathetic social life in Berkeley last semester), watching and re-watching a gazillion random shows, writing (21 pages so far of Live, Love, Dream, which I’m so damn proud of), drawing (Diana found some of my drawings yesterday, which was entirely too embarrassing for me to handle, hahaha), EATING (yes!), cleaning (god, I love cleaning, even though admitting so makes me feel like a freak), etc. It’s a lot of fun, and it makes me feel good about myself — something that I think I deserve after that disastrous semester.

In other news, my bones have gotten so messed up to the point where I think I could conduct a musical piece just by cracking different parts of my body. Oh god, please save me.

Thursday night, my friends and I are finally gathering for dinner. I’ve seen everyone, but not at the same time, and it’s already been a month since I’ve been back, so I’m really excited. Mag’s coming back next Thursday, and Jayne’s coming back the week after that. I really hope that we’ll be able to all do something before Jayne has to leave for summer school at Santa Barbara.

I’m going to see Transformers 2 again this weekend, which I’m super excited about. It won’t be as fun seeing it without Di or Jayne, but I’m just excited anyway. It’s been way too long since I last saw it (2 weeks ). Ooh, I’m reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth right now, and it’s absofreaking amazing, oh my gosh. I read her Interpreter of Maladies last year and fell in love with it, so I knew I had to buy her new collection. Her short stories are utterly enthralling, even though they’re not about much in particular. The review on the cover reads “Never before has Lahiri mined so perfectly the secrets of the human heart”, which I think tells it all. In each of her stories, I identify with some character, some concept, anything, and it’s just so magical. These are three excerpts that I really identified with in the first story, “Unaccustomed Earth”:

When Akash was younger she had followed her mother’s advice to get him used to the taste of Indian food and made the effort to poach chicken and vegetables with cinnamon and cardamom and clove. Now he ate from boxes.

“I hate that food,” Akash retorted, frowning at her father’s plate.

“Akash, don’t talk that way.” In spite of her efforts he was turning into the sort of American child she was always careful not to be, the sort that horrified and intimidated her mother: imperious, afraid of eating things.

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By now Akash had forgotten the little Bengali Ruma had taught him when he was little. After he started speaking in full sentences English had taken over, and hse lacked the discipline to stick to Bengali. Besides, it was one thing to coo at him in Bengali, to point to this or that and tell him the corresponding words. But it was another to be authoritative; Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult. Her own Bengali was slipping from her. Her mother had been strict, so much so that Ruma had never spoken to her in English. But her father didn’t mind. On the rare occasions Ruma used Bengali anymore, when an aunt or uncle called from Calcutta to wish her a Happy Bijoya or Akash a Happy Birthday, she tripped over words, mangled tenses. And yet it was the language she had spoken exclusively in the first years of her life.

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“Why does Dadu take his shoes off?” Akash asked Ruma.

“He’s more comfortable that way.”

“I want shoes off, too.” Akash stomped his sandals on the floor.

It was one of the many habits of her upbringing which she’d shed in her adult life, without knowing when or why.

I also really liked this: “In their opinion their children were immune from the hardships and injustices they had left behind in India, as if the inoculations the pediatrician had given Sudha and Rahul when they were babies guaranteed them an existence free of suffering” (Only Goodness 144).

She just does such an amazing job of illustrating what it’s like to live as a first-generation minority in America, a situation that makes you feel like you don’t completely belong in or fit in with either society. I’ve always been a little envious of my friend Kelly in that way, because she’s like fourth or fifth generation Japanese, so she’s pretty much white in everything except for her appearance and her history. But maybe that’s even harder, in some ways, since she has like no connection to her ethnic heritage and yet doesn’t fit in with white people the way that other white people do. I dunno.

In other news, I’m sad that my printer has decided to stop working for no apparent reason. I’d really wanted to scan in some old drawings and stuff I found, too. Boo.

I love singing, and I miss it like crazy. It really sucks living with people.

Songs on my current playlist that I’m trying to learn:
Blame It – Jamie Foxx
Green Light – John Legend
Wake It Up – E-40
Addicted – Enrique Iglesias
Don’t Panic – Coldplay
Part of Your World – The Little Mermaid
The Distance You Have Come – Natalie Weiss
Swagger Like Us – Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil’ Wayne, T.I.
And So It Goes – Billy Joel
Inaudible Melodies – Jack Johnson
Shiver – Coldplay

I’m obsessed with the SHOW: A Night in the Life of matchbox twenty right now, but every time I listen to another video of how amazing they are live, I want to cry at missing the LA concert earlier this year. I don’t know if I’ll ever get another chance to see them. I’m an idiot.

This is amazing. Such a fucking amazing song.

mood: good
music Song for A Friend

Orchestra makes me realize how much I hate people who stereotype teenagers, which leads to a bunch of other realizations about people making assumptions about stupid things and how it really, really bugs me. This has historically been Jayne’s field, but it’s begun to bother me more as I’m exposed to more of it.

1. Teenagers. My orchestra director (who warrants a rant of his own, ugh) likes to complain about kids these days and how they are deficient in manners, sense, and attention span. He also likes to blame this on the music we listen to, the video games that we play, and the technology that we’re immersed in. He yells at us when we miss a cutoff and then complains about this, as if music, video games, or technology are actually relevant to the fact that we just didn’t look up in time. He once spent twenty minutes telling us this story about these punk teenagers who yelled and swore at him and all this shit — as if all teenagers are like that. Oh, puhleeze. What stupid bullshit. So a couple of assholes were total dicks to you — they’re hardly representative of the entire adolescent population. Get real — there are plenty of adults who are total pricks and bitches, too. Hell, YOU’RE KIND OF AN ASSHOLE. How do you explain that away?!

2. Music He also likes to complain that we can’t play classical music because all teenagers nowadays listen to is “[insert beatboxing sounds]“. Okay, first of all, this is a really stupid stereotype that’s extremely untrue. Second of all… God, this has been a huge one of my pet peeves since forever: I hate it when people declare certain genres of music “not music”, like hip-hop, rap, techno. MUSIC IS MUSIC. Anything can be music — I can drum my fingers along the edge of my wooden desk to a quirky beat — AND IF I WANT IT TO BE MUSIC, THEN IT IS. It’s fucking stupid when people try to like… I dunno, act like snobs just because they listen to classical or rock or jazz or country or something. A lot of “hardcore” musicians feel this way, which always really irks me. Hip-hop and techno, dude, those beats alone are music; they’re frickin’ amazing. And rap? I don’t care how corrupted or messed up or misogynist it is, it’s still MUSIC! Rap is like…frickin ingenious, anyway. Some of those rhymes are like…super intense. Ugh, I don’t know, it just makes me so angry. And it is VERY possible to appreciate both rap and classical and like them both; I certainly do! Along with techno and rock and jazz and hip-hop and alt and indie and country and a bunch of other stuff. I’m very proud of it.

3. Video Games I’m also very bothered by people stereotyping people who play video games to all be idiotic nerds whose entire lives revolve around their game and who miss out on social interaction because of their game. There are people like that out there, sure. But it doesn’t mean that we’re all like that. The WoW stereotype is the worst. My director likes to bring WoW up every rehearsal to make fun of it, which makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I’m sorry if I don’t like the implication that I’m a nerd-drone with no social life or manners who should be looked down upon, but I hardly see any of those qualities in myself or any of my friends who game. I love WoW; it is a brilliant game with an ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT and RIDICULOUSLY FASCINATING backstory. It’s a great way to bond with friends, meet new people, and escape from the world. I’ve become so much closer with Di and Jayne just by playing with them, and I’ve even become a lot closer to Ocean because of it. I’ve met some really nice people, although I’m not as social as either Di or Jayne (but that’s just me as a person). And a lot of times when I’m fighting with one of my friends or really, really upset over something, I’ve gone on WoW and done a few quests or an instance and you know, it’s like reading — all your worries just vanish and seem totally inconsequential. It’s a social tool, a stress reliever. It teaches teamwork! To instance, you really have to work together; if the group dynamic sucks, then you’re screwed. If you don’t have manners, then you’ll get kicked or ditched and won’t have anyone to play with! So it’s stupid to say that video games corrupt kids. They’re actually really beneficial; as long as you don’t get ridiculously obsessed, then you’ll gain a helluva lot from WoW. And about the obsession/addiction thing — fuck, being obsessed with/addicted to ANYTHING is harmful. So stop blaming the goddamned video games.

4. Technology Which leads me to a rant on a similar vein about technology and how its benefits outweigh its shortcomings significantly. All that shit about how like… Technology renders us incapable of communicating in person and having like knowledge of common courtesy and manners and shit… It’s so stupid. I know for a fact that technology helps build relationships, not ruin them. A lot of times, people feel more comfortable being themselves online where they’re not being watched than in person. I believe this is why online dating is such a booming business. When you meet someone online, you hardly lose all your manners, but you definitely feel more comfortable acting like yourself; significantly more anxiety is involved when you’re interacting with people in person and have to act/respond instantly. Online, you can think through your thoughts before you say things without being stared at weirdly.

I dunno, I always think about Mark and me, and how there is no way in hell that we would be so close if it weren’t for technology. Because it has been online that we’ve really gotten to know each other, spilled our secrets, shared our deep thoughts. In person, there was always all that awkwardness and uncertainty about how to act towards one another. But online, it was easy to share the details of our lives and our dreams and our problems. We even argued online, you know? We still do this online thing even though we’re dating now, and Mark worries that it impedes our relationship in some way, but I think that it only enhances it. Now that we’re super close, I feel perfectly comfortable talking to him in person about all the things that I tell him online, something that I don’t believe could have been achieved without the miracles of instant messenger.

It’s the same with my other friends; I’m super close with the ones who I’ve gotten the chance to talk to online — and the ones that I haven’t are never really up-to-date about my life. ‘Cuz when something happens, I tell the people who are online, you know? I hardly call up all of my friends and tell each of them whatever happened. It’s just so much more practical and easier, in the way that it’s just easier to share my thoughts through written word than oral language.

Hrm. Anyway. Back to studying for Astro… LOL.