Boo

Do you have that one image in your mind that is possibly recurring and definitely terrifying?

I mentioned earlier that I get scared pretty easily. (Example: I watched the preview, not the movie but the preview, of Hollowman and couldn't be alone for weeks. And even still, every time I see something that looks like footprints in my carpet I run away.) Normally I will have watched a frightening movie (Hide and Seek), just told some scary stories (demon stories always get me), read a scary book (made the mistake of reading Carrie all by myself last year), or, recently, read a scary play (I couldn't sleep the other night because we just read Macbeth for class and had discussed the meanings of the three witches and apparitions).

But what has become a daily routine of mine is to get frightened whenever I wash my face at night.

I have only seen one X-Files episode in my life and I will never see another one again. I don't exactly remember the plot. All I remember is an Indian guy without legs rolling himself around on a skateboard-type thing. He was so creepy and menacing. He would just roll around and attack people I guess, for no reason other than his understandable angst against full-functioning bipedal humans.

So whenever I wash my face, right when I have soap in my eyes, I think that man is next to me at my ankles, staring up at me. Even as I write this I'm getting a little fidgety. He's scary.

(Actually, I just read a scary story in People magazine and couldn't go to sleep right away. And since blogging always helps me fall asleep, (not that you're boring) I figured I'd vent about it. Unfortunately I chose the wrong topic to write on since I'm scaring myself as I type.)

My mother and I got into an argument about my sensitivities today on our way to Thanksgiving dinner. When I was little, I watched a version of Wizard of Oz I bet no one has ever seen. My mother took the liberty of ridding me of the pleasure of viewing the fantastic film with fresh eyes by taping it and omitting every part with the wicked witch and those monkeys. For years, I had no idea there was a bad witch at all, and to be honest I'm still confused about the monkeys.

I was arguing that had she not shielded me from the frightening images, I might have been a tougher human being. It's like an immune system. You have to let the kid play in the dirt a little so he can build up his white blood cells to fight against that cold so common and pig-like flu. Perhaps it is because of her constant veiling of reality (Like Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse! Look how I bring in literature) that I am such a scaredy-cat. Luckily I have a really good friend that I call every time I can't sleep. He talks me out of my senselessness until I realize that Kevin Bacon has no beef with me.

This is one reason why my CIA obsession has helped me so much. I ask myself, "Would Sydney Bristow really go to her parents' room because of something she read in a play?"

Luckily I don't get graphic nightmares really. My last nightmare a couple nights ago was pretty scary though. I dreamed I was the photographer at my sister's wedding and my camera wasn't working and I could only get four pictures of her special day. She was pissed. If you know my sister, you know that was a nightmare.

Le Portrait--Charles Baudelaire

Le Portrait

La Maladie et la Mort font des cendres

De tout le feu qui pous nouse flamboya.

De ces grands yeux si fervents et si tendres,

De cette bouche où mon coeur se noya,

De ces baisers puissants comme un dictame,

De ces transport plus vifs que des rayons,

Que reste-t-il? C'est affreux, ô mon âme!

Rien qu'un dessin fort pâle, aux trois crayons,

Qui, comme moi, meurt dans la solitude,

Et que le Temps, injurieux vieillard,

Chaque jour frotte avec son aile rude...

Noir assassin de la Vie et de l'Art,

Tu ne tueras jamais dans ma mémoire

Celle qui fut mon plaisir et ma gloire!

I know Alias ended up sucking, but that's not the point

A mug Erin bought for me in D.C. The real deal.

I've always wanted to be in the CIA. Sorry, let me rephrase. It just sounded like a good lead, although not entirely accurate.

I've wanted to be in the CIA since I was 16 years old, and for some time I was actually working toward that goal in, I thought, very practical ways.

Erin and I went to Blockbuster to rent a TV series on DVD, something that would make us laugh and have a whole new carton of inside jokes. We had already watched a lot of Friends and Seinfeld and wanted something new, something none of our friends would know the quotes from.

We couldn't find anything.

Then we came across a small show that was currently in its 3rd of 4th season: J.J. Abram's Alias.

We rented the first two discs of the first season and were immediately attached. Sydney Bristow was not only a perfect aspiration, but our best friend.

We watched the both discs, which I believe was just four episodes, in one night and kept talking about it all week at school.

The next weekend, we were prepared. With only kettle corn and Arizona Iced Tea for sustenance, we sat on the couch for 21 hours straight and finished both the first and second seasons.

(A couple embarrassing side notes, although this whole post is probably embarrassing enough: Our only breaks were trips to the restroom. I made Erin accompany me most of the time because some of the scenes were quite terrifying. Also, at the end of the second season, after our marathon was other, the cliff hanger was so appalling that I actually cried for several minutes. Erin was either amused or annoyed.)

After becoming addicted to the show, we began to reveal that each of us was also interested in becoming a clandestine, intelligence seeking agent for our country. We began engaging in secret agent-type activities to prepare us for our future vocation.

We would dress in all black and coordinate fights for a camera sitting on my coffee table. We would run around her neighborhood jumping over fences and climbing up buildings in search of God knows what, again dressed in all black. We planned on putting ourselves through our own personal boot camp, complete with pull-ups, push-ups and doing some fancy footwork with tires on the ground, this time dressed in camo. That plan fell through, probably because I can't do a push up. We would go airsofting in the wilds of Mission Viejo, dressing in camo and surgical masks. We would make up word games and codes in case we got caught and had to transit an important rescue message, dressed in our normal clothes because we would do this in the middle of class or while driving around or while at a restaurant. The most elaborate of emulations involved the two of us plus another friend dressing up, in all black, for a fancy dinner party. Two of us were trapped. One had to decode a message to find the key. Then we shot each other in the backyard in the dark with our airsoft guns. After we realized we didn't have goggles and we could shoot an eye out, we came inside and wiggled around in this weird crawl space I found in my house. Came out from the crawl space because there were nails and spiders. Then went to the attic to find season three of Alias. It was one of the most fun nights in my life, even to this day.

Besides our CIA play, Erin and I actually researched how exactly to get into the Agency. I had the brains and Erin had the brawn. I really wasn't (am not) very athletic so I was jealous when Erin would climb up a tall platform and I would be left on the ground jumping off curbs to try and look as cool as possible. But then I was a little better at solving our codes. So it was all good.

But then I discovered, or at least concluded from certain websites, that you have to have military experience to get into the CIA. I knew I could never get into the military because I am legally blind in my left eye. This didn't really stop me, though.

I remember walking up to Erin who was in line to buy food at school and telling her when I wanted to stop working towards our goal. My youth pastor had just unexpectedly died and it was the first time I had ever experienced the reality of death.

For some reason, this incident was so shaking for me that I was convinced working toward such a goal was useless and a waste of time. I said that I wanted to think about things that really matter, even though I didn't really know what those things were and still don't have a proper inkling.

Even though I still have this weird, strong desire to go into combat and prove myself in challenging undercover situations, I am obviously not trying to be a CIA agent. I still have a lot of goals for myself, so many that they're in the double digits. But working as a Bristow-type agent is no longer one of them.

But I learned so much in this era of mine. I challenged myself physically more in that time than any other, even when I was a cheerleader. (That was said partly sarcastically, but I really did have challenges in conquering the thought of being thrown up in the air and trusting Jr. Highers to catch me.)

I learned how to face fears, as Tyra Banks as that sounds. (Remember when she faced dolphins?)

I used to be scared to be alone, of the dark, of jumping of high things, and of a lot of other things. But whenever I was in those situations I would honestly think to myself, "What would I do if I was in a real life-threatening situation?" and even cheesier, "What would Sydney Bristow do?"

I know this is ridiculous, but I was seriously changed by all this. Just hold a dumb airsoft gun and getting shot in the leg with a tiny plastic bullet made me tougher, I swear.

Because I'm not sure of the point of this post I'm going to encourage my handful of readers. Challenge yourself in some way. Even if it's completely silly.

People sit around so much doing just the bare minimum. You're capable of a lot more than flipping back to the last TV show just in time to escape the commercials.

Lately, Taekwondo has been a challenge. I'm pretty awful at it. But it's fun and so rewarding when I do something right.

And lately I've been running a lot, which I used to hate. I used to be able to run only half a mile. Now I'm running over three almost every day.

And this damn newspaper has certainly showed me what I'm capable of, if not only that I can pull all nighters every other weekend.

If you happened to read this whole post with getting bored, congratulations.

Now go jump off a roof.

Make sure you land in grass though. It hurts like hell to land on the cement.

Update

Padmé no longer has a bald spot on her ass, and she's looking as regal as ever.

I'm full of it, but at least I'm full of something

I hate when people constantly talk about how busy they are, as if their filled agendas and mile-long to-do lists give them some sort of edge and excuse to go crazy. But I am going to be that person. In fact, I've been that person this whole semester.

For example, one of the hooks that holds up my shower curtain somehow ended up on the floor and every time I look at it I think, "I don't have time to pick that up." And it's been there since last Friday.

That's about all I am going to say right now. I will complain later about my crazy non-schedule, just a blur of people to meet and interview, pages to write, pages to edit, dogs to run, and friends that make me sit down and have a real, normal-paced conversation.

But I secretly like it. It makes me feel important. And staying up late makes me feel important. And waking up early makes me feel important. This is one of the reasons I want to live on a fishing boat. I can go to bed late telling stories about my tattoos and scars, then wake up early to make a weird breakfast and cast my lines. While everyone is on land, I feel so entitled to float on the water catching fish and eating it and bringing some home for people I like. Except when I do live on a boat, it'll probably be as a cook for the fishermen, because I'm not strong enough to strangle nets.

Don't ask how I had time to make this post.

A Mid-Production’s Quiet Leave

The venue Mysterium lived up to its name. Even in finding it on the dark streets of Orange was a conundrum. And once Theodore and I entered the Tarot and palm reading, Wicca and Reiki retail shop, I wish we had never found it. The people at the front were nice enough, and upon walking past the various spiritual healing books, past the Tarot reading rooms and then into the theater, I discovered the reason for their joy at our arrival. The theater, which was more of a back room, sat about 30 or 40 people and it was half-filled that Friday night. The audience members’ faces looked strained, confused, and unintentionally judgmental. They were watching the opening act: Puck, a gothic, Asian young man doing card tricks and jokes in a horrible British accent. And when people did not laugh, he actually said, “No? Not funny? Okay, maybe this one.” The best word I can use to describe it is “creepy”. And the creepiness continued throughout the mutilated rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The four Athenian lovers were dressed like those generic models on Target posters during August, advertising the latest white and navy back-to-school ensembles. Demetrius had a cast on his foot and a single crutch. He clacked around the stage while being chased by a very tall Helena. Peter Quince and his troop were not all male and were dressed as plumbers and construction workers and other blue-collar professionals. Thesseus and Hippolyta were dressed as a conventional king and queen, as normally as Mysterium’s budget could bear. And besides Puck’s gothic outfit, Oberon’s cheesy warrior outfit, and Titania’s rather revealing outfit, the fairies’ costumes were just the way you’d think a fairy might look, with just enough mysticism and imagination. This mixture of modern and traditional costumes was confusing. It did not add to the play at all and only enhanced the fact that this was a wobbly production. Luckily, it did its part to momentarily distract me from the across-the-board, poor and embarrassing performances, besides of that one 10-year-old girl who played that one fairy in those four scenes.

However unkind the acting was to my cheeks from my uncomfortable cringe, the only positive thing I can recall from the play was in the all of the actors’ performances: energy. Energy was in no way lacking from the stage. In fact, I think they stole my energy, because I walked away quite drained. Both Helena and Hermia were perfect examples of the enthusiasm, to which apparently the director made the cast pledge some sort of cult allegiance. Or maybe it was all of that Reiki they do. (Reiki, I found upon polite and deliberately nonjudgmental inquisition, is a Japanese, stress-reducer practice that moves healing energy through mental and physical massage.) Helena was out of breath as she ran after Demetrius, speaking her lines as quickly as she could. I appreciated Puck’s nimbleness as he jumped on the slide, stumbled on the swing, and hopped lightly after Oberon. But it was also very contrived. Everything Puck did was contrived.

Titania’s energy was a different kind. As if her odd, strips-of-lace costume was not racy enough, she had to act as if she just drank her third Irish Car Bomb the whole time she was on stage. She arched her back in weird ways, lifted her arms with wrists left limp and revealed more of her leg than I wanted Theodore to see. She said her lines as if she was approaching a hiccough and she made unprecedented eye contact with Oberon, Bottom, and me at one point. If she wanted her performance to be remembered, she succeeded.

The characters I did not mind coming onstage were the misfits practicing their play. These were the scenes I enjoyed most while reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so it is only logical for me to enjoy watching them. Yet, more than that, I think I enjoyed watching the crew in play rehearsal because I was pretending, and hoping, they were rehearsing to actually better their upcoming actual performances. For example, perhaps when Bottom, a big, annoying, clumsy boy, practiced Pyramus, he was unconsciously practicing Bottom. Rehearsal is where all the actors needed to be. I appreciated their energy; but I’m pretty sure they forgot that other actors were on stage. There were no connections.

Unfortunately, I have little material left to thrash. Theodore kept glancing at me during the first half and we would meet eyes and nod our knowing faces: intermission was our only hope. We were sitting next to another student from class and his friend and they also left before the second half could begin. I can only imagine how obvious it was that at least four of the fifteen audience members no longer sat in their seats. However, I do not believe the cast’s nor ushers’ spirits could have been brought down. They were positive, happy people and believed they were doing a superb job, down to the delayed jokes and Puck poking his head out from the backdrop to tell a confused audience that it was in fact intermission.

No, Mysterium’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream did not succeed in interpreting this colorful, Shakespearean play for the audience. In fact, it frightened me. The play is eerie enough with its meshing of two realms and characters with goals difficult to relate to, like vying for an Indian child or fighting a love poison’s strength. Then the hyper players added to its creepiness by trying to make every line sexy and to get through every line quickly. What was so bold was they never deterred from their enthusiasm. We were basically on the stage with them the room was so small and they could probably sense how uncomfortable we all were, or at least they could feel our lethargy, and yet continued on in their zestful fight to end the scene more quickly than the one before. And as an infidel in the audience, I was able to enjoy the play more as someone might have in Shakespeare’s time. I was not a passive, modern-day member who did not a thing to represent my disfavor for what was unfolding before me. I was actively sighing, whispering, and taking down rude, but witty, notes on each element of the poor production. They should be happy I had no tomatoes with me. I was so worked up over their raping this play of any of its worth and value I believe it holds that I was tempted to stop by one of the private rooms to get a first-hand relaxation Reiki experience. But we made the cowardly decision to bolt for the car and leave Puck’s accent and Titania’s drunkenness to torture the faithful and committed remaining souls.

This man and this woman and this man and this woman and this man and this woman

All I know is that this is a collective wedding held in Korea. People from all over the world came to participate, although half of one couple participated a bit passively. Lucky guy.

This just reminds me of the marriage rush of people my age. I don't exactly understand if it's a trend that people follow, a mass of weddings must mean it is the right thing to do. So go for it. Or maybe it's because these young men and women don't know what else to do with their lives. Do they have no career goals? Nothing they want to do in the prime of their lives? I have a hundred things I want to do before I'm married. Granted, most things you can do single are things you can do married. But it's not the same. And I must concede that there are very many young couples in their early 20s who are ready to get married. My sister was one of them. She was 21 when she married her husband and both of them were ready. They had been dating for more than six years and they were just in the right place. And I can now report their marriage is nothing but bliss and cotton candy and pink muffin ponies. And an occasional bit of reality.

The top picture scares me. It's a good image of the graduating class of a Christian liberal arts college during any given year.

Some are ready. Some are not. My three readers, do not get married unless you can stay awake at your own wedding.

Breaky breaky

After my first testing Oct. 2008

Marker

Please look at my eye. For those who do not believe me that my eye is a lazy bastard, here is the proof. While my leg kicks ass, my eye is not very competent.

Hello friends. I broke my first board today. I am quite proud of myself. Although my instructor gave me a hard time for not hitting it in the middle, I think it just shows how off-center I really am. I am now an Orange Belt and testing for Orange Senior next week. Perhaps afterwards I will take another intimidating picture. Two thumbs up.

I got my first bruise from sparring a couple weeks ago. And I would have documented it but by the time I thought of it, the black and blue had faded.

A small addition slightly political and actually opinionated. After all, the title of my blog is À Mon Avis, which means "in my opinion" in French.

Before every class we recite the tenants of Tae Kwon Do:

COURTESY, INTEGRITY, PERSEVERANCE, SELF-CONTROL, INDOMITABLE SPIRIT. Then we quote the Tae Kwon Do Student Oath:

I shall observe the tenants of Taekwondo.

I shall respect my instructors and senior students.

I shall never misuse Taekwondo.

I shall be a champion of freedom and justice.

I shall build a more peaceful world.

SIR.

I, as a faithful Taekwondo student, observe the entirety of this five-part oath, even the last one. I strive to build a more peaceful world through my No. 3 leg sidekicks, No. 3 leg front kicks, No. 2 leg spin sidekicks, spear hands, ridge hands, and No. 1 leg double rounds. Ergo, I anticipate to be up for next year's Nobel Peace Prize. I have been doing this longer than a few weeks. I'll try to be more symbolic, to represent something more than myself, to be eloquent and use my hand gestures sparingly. I will even try to bring the Olympics to Costa Mesa, CA for 2018.

YES I CAN.

Ireland

This is my best friend. She draws and paints, and talent she's got.

A cone, a collar, a few inches taller

I moved back with my parents recently. Oh joy, you say. But actually, there are many benefits to living with your parents, especially ones like mine: a stay-at-home mother who cooks like Emril and a dry-humored father who rolls his eyes at everything, especially that damn espresso that is just never good enough.

First of all, I think my mother actually enjoys doing laundry, because every two weeks she offers to clean my clothes and even stops me from leaving the house so she can "press my blouse." (I would have just said iron my shirt, but she's a classy broad.) Second, my father is quite fancy. He loves going out to dinners, nice dinners, which is a perk for me and whichever friend I have over at the time. There is not a restaurant in Orange County that he hasn't visited. And every time he lets them know exactly what he thought of the experience. I keep telling him he needs to create a Yelp account, but he doesn't listen. He's too busy drinking wine and watching 24, Law and Order, Monk, or one of the hundreds of DVDs he owns. But my most favorite are the conversations my mother has, either with me, my dad, or herself. She is such a hoot. You should meet her.

She's good at offering perspective on all matters. My dog has mites. Apparently, according to the vet, all dogs have mites but Padme's are concentrated in a certain area, which has resulted in a chewed off, Australia cut-out on her ass. We got all the pills, medicinal baths, and, yes, Elizabethan, cone collar (pictured above). Our other dog, Phoebe, who is such a Q-tip, really hates the collar. I don't think Padme really notices when she has it on. She's just really confused at why she can't chew more of her fur to resemble a larger continent. But the Phebester notices. Normally the two of them play tug of war and all that and get along great. But with the collar, Phoebe becomes a maniac. Pad is just jumping around like everything's normal, and Phoebe freaks out, gnashing her teeth and the whole bit. We had just broken up a rumble between the dogs and my mother and I were in the kitchen when she, in all seriousness, empathized with the fluffy Phoebe:

"Well, I can understand. I wouldn't want to play with someone who had that on their head either."

I love my mom.

(Padme's patch is not shown. She is embarrassed and wishes not to reveal her lower half to the public until the hair has grown back. She's not Britney.)