Things I Like, Lately

Kim's Mart: I love this place. Cheap noodles. Cheap cabbage. Cheap delicious Pocky delights. I've been going here about once a week, spending 15 bucks, and eating lunch with my finds for 5 days in a row.


Zinfandel Wine: I felt pretty sophisticated when I finally figured out my wine of choice. Now I know what to get when I go to the grocery store or wherever.


"You Don't Love Me Yet" by Jonathan Lethem: Relatable and real. This is my first Lethem read but I've only heard good things. The only turnoff is very detailed sexual descriptions of a very sloppy fat man.


Alela Diane: I've been listening to To Be Still like crazy.


True Blood: Four episodes in and I've already been embarrassed by a lot of SEX SEX SEX scenes. It's intense. But also a really good show (I know I'm late on the band wagon though).


A Clockwork Orange Soundtrack, on Vinyl: So creepy. I like to listen to it when I'm closing the store, in the dark.


Frye Erin Lace Boot: I must have these for Fall. Only $228! Ha.



Dansaren (The Dancer) (1994): Ballet documentary focusing on Katje Bjorner of the Royal Swedish Ballet. Incredible footage. Sometimes I miss ballet so much, so if I can't take class regularly, the next best thing is watching movies. Well, I suppose going to the ballet would be better, but that's not very convenient now either.

Untitled Story du Jour

(via They Don't Call Them Lovers In High School, Leeland)


They had never been to this part of town before.

Sometimes they each felt trapped in a different decade, but it never seemed to match up between the three of them. The surroundings built up around them screamed 1956 to one boy, the luminous signs of shut down diners advertizing oversized milkshakes and old-fashioned trans fat. Another saw 1977 in the scraggly beards and beaded bracelets of the kids crossing over the train tracks, just as they had decided to do that day. And one simply saw the present, in all its ambiguous glory.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” The youngest, Philip, asked the twins. The twins had been his best friends for only a short time; a boy that never held on to what he wanted for long, Philip desperately sought their approval and good graces, in order to remain in this little cohort as long as possible. The twins hardly took notice of him, however.

The eldest twin (by two minutes) hopped over the deeply inlet tracks easily, his perfectly spaced bangs wisped across his face, inhibiting his vision slightly. Philip followed, allowing his hair to fall over his eyes as well, but tripped over the first metal rail and was sent flying to his face, catching himself at the last minute on his weak arms. The younger twin leaped over Philip’s prostrate figure, ignoring his attempt to laugh it off. The two continued hopping over the ten feet of criss-crossing tracks, not looking down at the pattern of rails, but over towards the horizon. One caught his eyes on the oversized abandoned buildings erected in the 70’s, while one was attracted to the novelty 50’s Ford advertizing a dry cleaning service in dull white paint on its side. When they arrived on the other side of town, they at last turned around to face their younger friend, who was just rising to his knees.

“You guys just go ahead. I’ll catch up later,” Philip shouted across at them, his legs separated by the tracks, placing him in a wide, awkward stance.

“Ok, Phil!” they shouted in unison back, giving each other looks, like "I told you so" or a slight raising of the eyebrows that had that "I'm better than you connotation" as they quickly turned and trotted away, glad to not have the younger boy holding them back any longer.

Philip stood at a crossroads. He could trick himself into gaining the courage to cross over and join the twins, but he could already taste the embarrassment in his mouth. And, more prominently, he could hear his mother’s words burning his ears off….”If I ever hear of you going over to the East side, and you get shot in the leg, I’m not going to help you.” That was one of the more dramatic warnings. Usually it was a passive aggressive attack, like newspaper clippings of stories of kids going over the tracks to buy marijuana and never coming back.

He couldn’t go back the way he came though. Still hovering in his wide-legged stance, he twisted his body around to glance behind him; just beyond a patchy field of grass lay the outskirts of the West side of town, with its unwelcoming new architecture springing up in between older, decrepit buildings from another time. He saw clean windows, and modestly built, tasteful offices, unlike the monstrous square brick buildings that towered over the wide empty streets of the East side. Bustling car and foot traffic wafted toward him from the West side, calling him back to his after school program he had opted out of that day, with the help of the twins’ conniving plan.

Finally he brought his legs back together and stood squarely facing the East side of town. He looked left, then right and in both directions there grew dry, patchy bushes and dead, wild grass as far as the eye could see. He arbitrarily chose a side, one not being better or worse than the other, and put one foot in front of the other. He walked steadily, just inside the train tracks.

I love making fliers

Sleeping on a empty stomach in a neurotic head

(Astronomy Picture of the Day)

I dreamed I was in an airplane in space. The inside looked like a house and for a while I sat on a closed toilet seat reading a fashion magazine while my young Asian mother gave birth to a baby boy. She already had twin baby girls but I was not allowed to see them. I would not be allowed to hold the boy either, and this made me angry. A friend and I were supposed to take a road trip but the convertible would not start.

Back in the plane. After the boy was born there was word that we were in danger and could not land. Something mechanical had gone awry. Technicians and engineers worked around the clock to fix the problem, bent over wiring in a wind tunnel near the cockpit. Meanwhile food and utensils were running short. All the bowls and spoons were perforated so it was impossible to drink liquids. The crew and I took the last giant metal bowl and poured the last box of cereal in it (Chex) with the last of the milk, which had to be watered down because there was not enough to drown all the cereal. We scrambled to consume the last bits of sustenance on the airplane, crowded around the bowl. Draco Malfoy was there, sulking because nobody liked him. I thought that because we were all going to die, that I would show him some kindness so I offered him a bit of my cereal, which he eagerly accepted.

Suddenly I bit on a chunk of glass. It cut my mouth all over but I managed to spit most of it out. There was still a bit stuck in my right back molar, crushing it’s way into the indent of a cavity hole. It sounded like chewing on sand, the sound reverberating in my eardrums. The pain was indescribable and I screamed and screamed. I shoved toilet paper into the back of my mouth and bit down, blood flowed out in a dark, dark heavy mass. Someone called a doctor, but when he arrived he said that I had insulted him, and he would not help me. He led me to a dark metal room littered with inflatable exercise balls. The pain went on. I sat upon the balls, which deflated under my weight into oblong shapes. One turned into an inflatable slug, leaving a trail of sludge that later turned into tiny multi-colored beads. No one came to help me. I walked to the window and raised the blinds and outside was a breathtaking scene. I saw the moon gliding across space leaving a sparkling trail like a shooting star. The giant globe of earth was spinning and dancing amongst a backdrop of bright stars and space dust. I ignored the pain and focused on dying in the dark room with the beautiful view.

Oh Brave New World! That Hath Such People In't!

"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (1932)

I will start off by admitting that I did not actually finish this book. I tried to read it with an open mind, but about three quarters of the way through, I couldn’t take it anymore. While I recognize its influence and revolutionary ideas of the time, it went too far for me. The book sets out to describe a dystopia of the future (a response to H.G. Well’s utopian novel “Men Like Gods”) where the ‘flaws’ of the developed world work against society, devaluing real love and beauty and honesty. For example, people do not reproduce sexually anymore, the process is done in a sanitary laboratory with no human contact necessary. Young people are encouraged to take as many partners as possible, as “Everyone belongs to everyone else” a mockery of the budding 20th century idea that held that one should not simply mate with the fist eligible partner that comes along, but spend time finding one’s soul mate. Henry Ford is their God, because people are now in such awe of mass production and lucrative capabilities that they worship “homogeneity, predictability, and consumption,” rather than an ancient Christian God. Modern pharmaceuticals are attacked, with Huxley painting a picture of a world where doctors hypnotize children from an early age to indoctrinate them with the values of society. Anti-depressants are consumed like candy. I remember a Vonnegut story where something like this happened, but for some reason Huxley describes it in such an unrealistic way that I can only roll my eyes, whereas Vonnegut really makes me think about how much we, as humans, really should control things.

To me, the novel seemed to hastily attack the things that have made society, for the most part, work better in the last century, generalizing the ‘evil effects’ of birth control, capitalism, individualism, and optimism. I really have no idea of Huxley’s religious beliefs, but I can’t help thinking it was his outrage over non-Christian values that were the driving force behind this novel. Or, more likely, it is a critic of the post-industrial revolutionary ideals that are heavily laden in individualism and democratic rights. And although I have never gotten around to reading the Ayn Rand collecting dust on my bookshelf, I have a feeling a non-Christian reading Brave New World experiences the same kind of frustration a socialist would reading Ayn Rand. It just kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Maybe one day when I’m a little more mature and able to swallow his ridiculous, over the top doom vision of the future, or “warning,” I’ll get around to finishing the book.

Or maybe we are turning into unconscious machines and this future isn’t so far off? Oh man, now I'm not so sure :/

I love all these covers

Diggin' Around

I have a folder on my desktop titled "Delightful Images." Here are some that I felt compelled to share. Most are taken from the blogs I read on a regular basis.


Beautiful Peacock






mmmm summer


I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff


When I studied in London I lived two blocks away from the British Museum. I spent a lot of time alone in there and I love this map.


Cottingly Fairies- Remember what it's like to believe ridiculous things? I used to TRULY believe that if I rubbed a Troll's jeweled bellybutton my wish would come true.


I miss ballet like crazy.


Kirsten Dunst is my style icon, and in my opinion a very underrated actress.

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." -Richard Feynman

Over the past seven months I have had a lot of free time, and I have passed much of that time reading. Since I’ll be starting school up again in a month, I’ve decided to exercise my fuzzy brain by writing some casual reviews of some of my favorite books of the recent past. And because I have nothing else to blog about these days.

Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character” By Richard Feynman



While I am the first to admit I am completely incompetent and lost when it comes to science, and more so math, I am absolutely fascinated by it. Especially when it is presented in layman’s terms. This interest is probably heightened because the subject matter is such a mystery to me…it’s almost magical!

This book is an autobiography by Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize-winning physicist who was involved in the Manhattan Project (development of the atomic bomb during WWII). At some point during the project, Feynman and many of his fellow scientist began to realize the implications of their research, and his moral struggles are fascinating to read about. And because there’s no way I’m going to thumb through the book in order to recall his achievements in physics, Wikipedia told me this about him:

“…known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965…”

Anyone who can explain physics in a way that makes sense and even blows my mind is a genius. This guy is a genius. He’s even an amazing writer…what CAN’T he do?!

But, the best parts of the book are not the scientific descriptions, but the touching, humorous anecdotes of his life that literally made me l.o.l. I l.o.led in cafes, I l.o.l.ed late at night in bed when I literally couldn’t put the book down. It was just wonderful.

He had a passion for safecracking and drumming, likes topless bars and playing practical jokes on his friends and fellow scientists, which made him a well-rounded person indeed. Unfortunately, his romantic life was never as successful as his career; one might argue his over stimulated mind and hectic life left no room for keeping a consistent relationship. Poor Richard.

But, at the end of the day, his life was the perfect combination of inspiring, serious dedication to science, and vitality for carefree, enjoyable living with a quest for adventure, knowledge and new hobbies to explore. What a man. Oh, and if I had been around in his time, I would have called him a babe.


Feynman and his Bongos




It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.
(1959), quoted by James Gleick in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992)