the running commentary

i've decided to keep a running commentary today.

i've downloaded many new songs onto my ipod, the one sticking in my head right now: Rooftops by lost prophets--a fun, fast anthemic song.

cheese workers won the powerball lottery. as if working in a cheese factory wasn't like winning the lottery of life in the first place. sheesh.

i'm now living vicariously through melissa.

i am typing up something for NASA. i am so cool. in the glossary of terms for this NASA training they define NASA. um...don't you have to have like 2 ph.ds to work there? and you need to have a glossary entry telling you what NASA stands for? hmmmm....disturbing.

i ordered a sandwich for lunch called the BBQ Broham. I feel like i am eating up my former boss whose name had the same pronunciation. divine justice, really.

i know, right, me being type A is a huge laugh. i do, however like the fact that Type A is the exact pronunciation of my past home: Taipei.

I needed to get away from my computer momentarily, so I took a walk around the block. a beautiful man was carrying two gallons of milk home, a girl was chatting on her cell phone about a local university, the architecture around my block is very modern--some of it is far too warehouse/grunge/utilitarian, in my opinion. one building reminds me of the communist buildings julia and i saw in spain--with a few extra frills...like franco with a sense of humor.

and now it is the end of the day and i must leave. have a great weekend!

gainful employment

where oh where has the julie gone? oh where oh where can she be? ...

my remissness in blogging can be explained by one very happy factor: employment! oui.

Let me weave the tale. picture it: one week ago. I am sitting waiting for a certain religious school district, whch shall remain unnamed, to get back to me with the news that I had been chosen as their communications director (I don't know what that Indian lady was smoking, I do NOT have an American accent, I speak ear-splittingly perfect Hindi) and anyway, I said to God, "God, I really want to hear definitive news about a job by the end of the day." and by the end of said religious school district's day I had heard nothing and was feeling the emotional anxiety of being useless and unwanted. (shut up, the melodrama adds to the story) so then, at 5:38 the phone rings *gasp* hope wells up in the heart! and a woman asks for Julie, Inc. and she asks if i have already found full time work, and i say no. and she asks if i will come in tomorrow and interview. and i say yes. and i come in and interview at 10am and by 1130am i walked out with a job, which i felt was an answer to my hastily desperate plea of a prayer. i feel like i have been sucked in by a whirlwind. I suddenly had a fulltime job and no time to do my homework besides my already full weekend. I came in on monday and have been absolutely swamped ever since. and i love it. the company is downtown in a section called little italy. san diego's downtown is one of the most lovely downtown areas in the world, and little italy is a charming part of said area. i am only 3 blocks from the harbour and when i look down the street i can see the ocean and many sailing vessels, one of which is a permanently docked ship called the Star of India and looks like it could be a model of the nina, pinta, or santa maria. it's lovely sails are unfurled and waving at me whenever i get out of my office--which is a conference room, actually. this place has so much work that they have hired a bunch of newbies and have no more office space. this place is staffed mostly through the good kind of nepotism and includes a whole taiwanese family. very adorable. we have bonded over jay chou. one of the sisters had a poster--she's my age and loves to ride motorcycles at the speedway and she has a kid and her husband works here too!

so, why is this job fabulous? first: flexible hours--that's right: i am never late. i'm contracting as a copyeditor for them so i am technically self employed--i am the sole proprietor of Julie, Inc. No joke. i do try to be in by 9:30, though. second, they have an awesome coffee machine, a fully stocked fridge of soda located conveniently in my "office", bagels on monday, and lunch on friday. third, the people are mostly very nice and my direct superiors are incredibly affirming and encouraging of my work and that makes me want to keep doing well every day. fourth, my boss is concerned that i havent filled out my paperwork and won't get paid asap and was deeply concerned that i had no health insurance. i'm not going to lie: i'm feeling the love for the secular workplace--or at least this particular secular workplace. the structure makes me more efficient every day. i've been exercising in the morning and eating breakfast at home. i'm completely overwhelmed and have no time to do anything besides school and professional work, but i'm pretty happy so far. apparently, if they have enough work they may bring me on as an employee (read: benefits). at this point i sure hope so!

anyway, that is where i have been, and may be. now that i am in front aof a computer every day i might be able to sneak in more blogging. for three days i had my head down in paper documents. i have emerged.

i never realized i was so type A. i really need to feel useful. i have ambition, or at least a fear of slackerdom. weird.

submit your one-two punch?

see, chris, there's always at least one thing that screws up the equation, though corinne and i find that it is often that those who like outdoor sports do not watch sports on television. this reminds me of jill's famous test in which she would coyly ask the man she was dating "so...do you like to watch sports on tv?" and "do you drive an SUV?" and the trick was that those were two of her biggest pet peeves. so an answer in the affirmative to either meant that was the first and the last date. i would love to see if anyone else can formulate a personal one-two punch to eliminate rotten eggs. mine might be "so, are you eli manning?" and "do you live in lakeside?" of course his reaction to the question "can we go to IHOP for dinner?" would be crucial as well. my sister, lauren, for instance would fail because she scoffs at IHOP and does not recognize the treasures therein. incidentally, she would fail for a number of other legal reasons as well, despite being an awfully fun person to be around.

emily, i have indeed been very vexed by the heinous personal ads for old men and young thai girls on my site. lately it's been the oakland raiders, and that is a step better, much as i despise them, it's a lot better than prostitution on my site. should i get rid of adsense? i don't think i've made any money off it.

class tonight was fun. i'm really enjoying the deep, interesting discussions we get into every week. today was about defining ethnic identity and how prejudice relates to ethnic violence. we tallied up a number of factors that might be used to create a model predictor for ethnic violence--not just tension, but the threshold where tension turns into violence. if you are interested i'll email you the list, too long to write here--one interesting point was that you can't just use economic position, you have to account for economic activity and how it is going up or down and who it is affecting as it shifts. civil right movement and WWII germany show that relatively wealthy countries can breed ethnic violence as well as iompoverished ones, though economic prosperity generally helps people live in harmony. it's giving me lots of interesting research ideas. did you know that botswana is called the african miracle? because even though they had a colonial government, multiracial society, and severe economic crises they managed to gradually and peacefully reform and transfer power as opposed to rwanda, zimbabwe, and to an extent, south africa.
i also read a study about the breakup of czechoslovakia's republic and how one of the reasons they were vulnerable to communism was that they werent arguing about policies, but about how the whole state was structured and how that revealed inequity between the two major ethnic groups. so then they were never able to construct an effective government. i'm wondering if taiwan's government could be headed in the same direction. maybe not, but it would make for interesting research. if they can't pass laws to make things better, or change things up, then they are vulnerable to outside pressure.

i can't stop watching sportscenter

more etcetera to report:

first, i would like to announce my sinceeeeeere thanks and love for alexander graham bell whose invention has allowed me to take care of all of my class scheduling problems while sitting on my bum in my pjs! yes! and then to al gore for inventing the internet for the same reason.

second, i was so annoyed that eli manning came back against the eagles sunday. eli manning is a boil on the butt of humanity. i couldn't help but think that jessie's mom must have been in a foul mood after the giants came back from their deserved spot 17 points behind the eagles to win on OT. i spit on them.
Yesterday I had my second speed reading course and missed the charger game AGAIN, and i'm starting to think it should be my new suspersititious strategy because they killed, skinned, annihilated the tenessee titans. charge!!! 66% of teams who start out 2-0 make it to the playoffs! oh, chris berman is still my favorite sportscaster. i ruv him. and i hate to admit that terrell owens, while a big a-hole primadonna who should have no place in the nfl, is extremely attractive. i bet he has access to lots of low quality ladies.

can someone tell me why nascar is considered a sport? i mean, i get that car racing is entertaining...but a sport? hmmm.

my speed reading teacher looks exactly like nicholas cage in his raising arizona days. it's sort of creepy. i keep expecting him to freak out, but he remains even keeled thus far. not everyone can say they learned speed reading from nic cage. i wonder if he has a statutory asian bride. one of the girls in my class looks like emily parrino. so i assumed she was smart. that's what i get for assuming.

best quote from a sportscenter commercial today: "it's monday night, so go ahead and invite that guy that your wife doesnt like, but who you've defended for years as being an OK guy."

corinne and i were discussing today the feasability of finding a man who likes watching football inside, also likes doing outdoor activities, is intelligent, loves pancakes, and is sensitive/christian. we posit that our expectations might be too high.

not much

I once saw a Gilmore Girls episode where Emily Gilmore responds to some question about television by saying "Unlike the rest of the nation, I'm not obsessed with forensic science." I cannot say the same. Since being home I have been breaking up my study sessions with various incarnations of CSIs and Law and Order. I don't even care about forensic science and yet I cannot stop myself. CSI: Miami is going to Brazil for their opener.

Anyway, my lack of bloggage can be blamed on adding a class and the final steps of transferring to the Political Science department. When my PS 601 professor heard that I had transferred from Asian studies he said "I didn't even know we had an Asian Studies department here" which is excactly what my Wellesley prof said. and then my 601 prof said "It's a good thing you got out of there." great.

as for other advice this week: when i was getting my car aligned, the mechanic said "drive that thing until it dies and then buy a Honda."apparently, according to him, every daewoo owner in the US is totally screwed.

I feel very boring. I have little news of interest to anyone but myself. I could tell you about the online class that only me and one other person participated in for 90 minutes. or how i'm excited to be in the states for football season and totally bummed that the class i had to add is on Monday night, imparing my Monday Night Football watching, so i didnt get to see my charger's crush the LA Raiders in such a humiliating manner that I actually felt bad for the Raider nation. At least they have the best theme song in football. I had a job interview--it went well and by now I know that means nothing. Everyone says "wow, your resume is amazing" which means that the element of suck in the equation is me, myself. :( I really want it--it's for a communications director for a christian school district. *sigh* see my crushed spirit. oh, but I did sell my first thing on ebay. um, by the way, when someone at the post office asks you "what's in that package?" the wrong answer is "perfume." the right answer is driving to the UPS store and saying "a gift." apparently all things containing alcohol cannot be sent through mail. if you tell them.

pollocking my room

This is me, striking poses after playing pollock:

For the past week, the great majority of my time has been spent on painting and designing my room. and finally i am done. so here is my triumphant last day. today i did the jackson pollock splattering of my wall. i think it looks pretty cool, it was murder to prep for. but i got some good shots:

2nd day--oh the lessons

my notes from yesterday read like one long expletive, all aimed at: myself. in my first class it is due to the fact that i like to talk, i like to engage with the professor because he's so funny and because he is saying really interesting things and i like to make sure i am tracking with him because these first few lessons have been chock full of dense philosophical history of political science and it's kind of a mindscrew. anyway, so i talk. i'm thinking it may also be some sort of wellesley induced thing where i don't want it to be just the men who are speaking out in class because women for whatever reason do tend to quiet down in the presence of opinionated males. the problem is that sometimes i talk and i don't know what the F I am saying. As in, he asks rhetorical questions but he lets the end hang for so damn long that i find myself answering them to kleep the flow moving. So I sound like an assing moron. as linda way quoted from proverbs: even fools can sound wise when they are silent.

there is a great soundbite that i have to share with you all, though, that comes from the class in which i am an ass. our prof uses tons of examples to drill things into our heads. so he was talking about some kind pf preparation and he said "you know, we might make sure we have enough space between our fingers because, you know, if we have a penis competition we want to make sure we can hit all the notes!..." wtf??...ooooohhhh, pianist. so only me and the few girls next to me laughed really hard like 4th graders because of that. and then we bonded afterward over our love of the lowbrow humor. pianist is a tricky word. you might all want to practice right now just in case.

my post communist class expletives come from the fact that he assigned us a good 500 pages of reading, which is basically impossible if you have any other life, so i had to pick and choose and skim. well, you know how indiana jones chooses the cup of the carpenter and the knight says "you have chosen ..wisely" well, i was the guy who chose unwisely and ended up getting my skin sucked off my face and turning into dry bones in 2 minutes. i chose to read all the books he assigned...he focused on the articles and one of the books. that was nice. there are only 8 peoplke in this class, so if you havent read carefully you really cant run and hide, you just have to say "i don't know" to his face when he asks you a question. that's fun. yeah, so apparently he assigned us this assing Putin book for shits and giggles. yep, we werent going to talk about it. just read it for fun in addition to the effing communist manifesto and commie theses we were assigned. grrr. fie on you. of course, it seemed like a few of us were in the same boat, i hope he wasnt vastly disappointed.

oh, but what am i going on about...there was definitely some good to be gleaned from that class, like the fact that our prof is this very vigorous, healthy russian male who compares all good things to sex. ie, charismatic time, which is basically transcendent time, eternal time, something that connects you to a greater whole; rational time is the clock, traditional time is like sun up sun down of olden days, and charismatic is the time over and above. yeah, so he's like "charismatic time...is like after you've had GREAT sex and you are walking down the beach with your loved one, it could be day or night or afternoon, you dont care!" and then in describing a theoretical stage "it's like the moment of anticipation right before..well, you know, before the act of love." the act of love. so smarmy!! so now all of soviet history is just an analogy for sex. thrilling. he also had a great story about the early days when they were trying to stimulate the economy, but the famed russian textile machine was only putting out like 3/4 of a yard of fabric per person. just enough to make for every citizen some tie-on speedos they had in the early days of russia. we all enjoyed the speedo quote. they were made of some kind of satin-like material and tied at the side with ribbons=--skin showing, oh la la.

well, better luck next week, i guess. argh. just got the shaft from yet another job. sadness.

Labor Day!

Okay, first order of business on this laborious day: Jens Steltenberg, Norwegian prime minister: A+ addition to the HOt World Leaders List(HOWL). He gets an A+ for being a Labour Party leader, and since we are inducting him on labour day, and since I have been knee deep in reading about Communist--aka Labor Lovers, the good, the bad and the ugly--the timing of Melissa's suggestion could not have been better. Yes, Melissa Tan is responsible for Jens being the first inductee into HOWL in about 6 months. Good eye, Melissa, we all appreciate your attention to detail in this matter.

It is Labor Day in the United States, which in our typical rebellious fashion, we do not celebrate on May 1st like the rest of the world, but on the first Monday of September. Labor Day, in most of the world, was one of the good things established by Communists--or at least was a result of their intense lobbying on behalf of workers, in addition to their establishing the 8 hour workday--and thank God for that! you should have seen what those piggy capitalist employers would do to people when there were no laws! it was horrific. teh fact that the french have whittled it down to a 30 hour work week because they are constantly Le Tired, begs the question: how soon can i become a citizen in this lazy paradise?-- and women's day, which is celebrated on March 8. Marx, by the way, was way sappier and more idealistic than I thought. He had this idea that labor was the one thing that separated us from animals and that in the perfect communist society we would each labor at exactly what we were most talented at and desirous of doing, which would fulfill us, and we wouldnt even need pay because we would be so fulfilled with the fruit of our labour. and we would give from each according to our skill to each according to their need. wow. marx definitely underestimated people's ability to be lazy megasloths and greedy bastards. it's kind of shocking for someone to have such faith in human nature. anyway, you will be happy to know that our paid labor, even though we agree to it and engage in it somewhat voluntarily, is still a form of slavery according to Marx.

in noncommunist news, i am in the throes of painting and redesigning my room! it's fabulous. i have paint all over myself. the room will have 3 white walls and one bright blue. and then...jacksonpollock-like splatter! if i can do it. we shall see. the ceiling has been a real pain. helping our endeavor not at all is the fact that we decided to paint on one of the hottest weekends of the year. still, painting is fun. i rather enjoy manual labor. yesterday, my arms hurt a bit--to be expected when painting, but my ass also hurt--for reasons totally unexpected and unexplainable by me.

today we went to Home Depot, which is the haven for all things home improvement and raw-decoratory. with my tank top, pink pants and exposed tattoo i felt right at home. We then went to trader joes where i didnt feel as comfortable in my trashy digs, but didnt care because trader joes is the food shopping mecca of my world. i would like a cot in trader joes, possibly in the ethnic food/chai aisle. how did i live without chai for so long. truly, it's amazing what one can do when God is the center of one's vision. that hyperbole would have been funny if Africa and India didn't exist.

saw Little Miss Sunshine. awesome. totally hilarious. steve carell as the proust scholar...killing me. Kill-ing Me. i've had residual fits of laughter for the days since.

back to painting!

back in business

Just when I thought I was immune to myself, tonight I went and pulled a classic julie. after a lovely dinner with my aunt and her new husband, I went to Barnes and Noble, bought a super cheap version of the Communist Manifesto, which I have to read for class, and settled down in Starbucks to do said reading. Dum dee dum, it gets to be 11 o clock, suddenly i'm re-reading sentences five times and i think "it's time to go." well, it sure would be...if i had my keys. but my keys are in Barnes and Noble, probably at the info desk or in the bathroom. B&N closes at 10pm. one hour earlier than I looked for my car keys. so i had to call my mother and have her pick me up. i am 27 years old calling my mommy to come pick me up. i also had to track down a toothless lady from mall security to beg her not to tow my car away. i didnt have to track down a toothless lady, per se, but the lady i tracked down happened to have some very meth-like tooth problems involving wide open spaces b/w her teeth. anyway, despite the late night and urgency, toothless security lady still had time to diss my car. when i said "it's a maroon daewoo" she said "what the hell kind of car is that?" i was like "yeah, it's a little korean car, very small, little car...korean, maroon" her: "roving unit 1 I have a lady who locked her keys in barnes and noble, she drives a, say that again" me:" yeah, uh, DAEWOOOO, daayyyywoooo... i'm going to kill myself" what makes this even better is that i need to get my brakes checked out and i told the guy i would come in tomorrow at 8. but B&N...doesnt open until 9. the irony is killing me. when would i ever promise to take my car somewhere at 8am? dumb friggin luck, eh?