May Flying Hamsters of Doom Rain Coconuts Down On Your City

death bewilders me.


i went in to work at the store yesterday and was told that one of the other sales associates had passed away over the weekend. i was in the middle of restocking ribbon, and i had stacks of the spools balanced just right in my arms (yes, the smarter thing would be to put them on a cart). when my boss told me, i forgot about the ribbon + moved my head, making the stacks topple: clack, clack, clack of plastic hitting the wood floor.


my first thought was, "no, that's not possible." just a few weeks ago we were unpacking an order of 270 accordion books and talking about summer plans. she was going to be a camp counselor at a camp for kids with autism. shortly after that convo, she went on leave to go to Texas to get treated for cancer. 


the image in my head of her at the store, very much alive, seemed strong enough to negate the words coming from my boss's mouth. i spent the rest of the day immersed in an overwhelming cloud of confusion.


i'd think i'd be a pro at handling news about death by now. for the past ten years, i've thought about my dead brother every day- where is he now? can he see me? can he hear me when i talk to him? i've processed my feelings about his death ad nauseum through talk, through art, through music, through words, with myself, with trained professionals, with friends. but my reaction yesterday proves that, despite all my grief work, the death of a young person is still unbearably bewildering to me because IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. my coworker is not supposed to be dead, she's supposed to be at camp right now. and then after camp, she's supposed to start another year of college. and then after that, she's supposed to do something else that does not involve being dead. 


in the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean", everyone's searching for the fountain of youth. i don't know why someone would want to live forever. the longer you live, the more ppl you know die.

Accidental Chinese Hipsters

aaaaaahhhh, i love this! it made me laugh. ok, so we're just assuming the ppl in these photos are chinese, but i like that this blog gives props where props are due. only thing they're missing is glasses with thick plastic frames.
accidental chinese hipsters

Sustenance

these past few weeks have been rough going. luckily, i found a collection of poems by alice walker in the "new arrivals" section of my local library. it's called Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, and i love the mental image of stomping my troubles away. cuz sometimes all i can do is howl and stamp my feet at what's happening in my life. doesn't necessarily fix things, but makes me feel better.

from "The Taste of Grudge", section XIII:

This we know:
We were
not meant
to suffer
so much
& to learn
nothing.

dead bird

this morning, i closed my front door behind me and found a dead bird at my feet. it was so brightly colorful that i wasn't sure if it were real or fake. i decided it had to be real because no one would manufacture a fake bird to look so awkward and deflated. 

once i decided it was a real dead bird, the questions started snowballing. they fell into two categories:

a. how did it die and end up exactly at my door? my apartment is on the second landing; there's a cement walkway and railing outside my door. on the other side of the railing is another house with a tree in the backyard. did the bird die in the tree and get blown to my doorstep? or did the bird die midflight as it was passing by? or did it know it was dying and was on its way to the tree to tell its long lost true love that she was the only one this bird had ever really loved and not a day had passed without this bird thinking of her, but then the bird died just steps from the tree, its body growing cold as the "she" went about her daily routine in the tree?

b. what does this mean for me? as in, what is the universe trying to tell me by leaving a dead bird at my door? or maybe a person put the dead bird there. either way, dead birds don't seem to be a good omen. since when is death of anything/one a predictor of good things to come?

it was still there when i came home. will it be there tomorrow morning or will the wind blow it away during the night? if it stays, will i leave it there indefinitely and get used to seeing a dead bird at my feet every morning? should i compost it?

Are Small Plates Scary?

a friend of my mom's took her out to lunch today. they went to a build-your-own-burger place, one of those trendy joints that seem to be popping up everywhere, where you're hard pressed to find a burger for under $10. i actually really like burgers, but I'm all about meat, not add-ons, so this kind of place is wasted on me. the concept was apparently a big miss with my mom, as well. 

"There were six steps," my mom said. "Each step had so many choices, and whenever you added something to your burger, the price went up a couple dollars."

faced with this overwhelming arrangement, what did my mom do?

she ordered sweet potato fries and a chocolate-raspberry shake. a magnificent lunch, if i may say so myself.

when i relayed this story to my roommate, his response was: "Well, Americans don't understand dim sum."

first of all, i took issue with his use of the word "Americans". i think he meant "white people." so i'm going to take the liberty of replacing his "Americans" with "white people". 

"What's so strange about dim sum?" i asked. "It's tapas; it's small plates."

"Yeah, but the concept of making a meal out of small plates is confusing to [white people]," he said. "We don't understand how you can have a meal without a main dish."

i disagree. i think dim sum is scary to white people because they're not familiar with the dishes and there's no written description of what everything is. it has nothing to do with the size of the plates.

what do you think?

Words/Phrases I Will No Longer Say

totally
you should totally ___________________  
sumpin' sumpin'
so-and-so loves him some ____________ 
my bad
awesome
cool/that's so cool
no way (but "NOOO" in mock or real horror is still ok)
get OUT! (but "shut the front door!" is ok)
you can't be serious/you've gotta be kidding/for real? (but "for realz" is ok, though i think it's got a fairly imminent expiration date)



i encourage you all to join me in purging your daily vocabulary of words/phrases you've used since junior high. it's time to freshen up our convos. i wanna hear more "shut the front door!" when i walk the streets. exception: i can still use words from this list in my writing if i can make it sound ironic.

Are You Smarter Than A Second Grader?

i volunteer in a second grade class in a SF public school during math time. apparently the big thing in education pedagogy these days is re-inventing the wheel, which means the kids are learning how to calculate multiple-digit addition and multiplication using means completely foreign to me, which means i am of ZERO help to them, master's degree be damned. today, after two months, i finally figured out addition:

  123
+456 

step one: how many hundreds do you have? 100 + 400 = 500 
step two: how many tens? 20 + 50 = 70
step three: how many ones? 3 + 6 = 9
step four: add up your totals from steps 1-3: 500 + 70 + 9 = 579
your answer: 579


does this remind anyone else of figuring out your tax forms?


now i just have to master multi-digit multiplication.