Where Has All The Creativity Gone?

I am not a fan of graffiti, few people are. But I do occasionally notice that a lot of work goes into it, however misguided the effort may be. You have to admit that someone must be pretty artistically talented to make some of the stuff I have seen on various walls, freeway overpasses and train cars in LA and Long Beach. Growing up in these areas, even though graffiti very seldom came anywhere near my particular neighborhood, I was exposed to it more than the average American, and I consider myself something of a connoisseur. (The 110 North freeway through downtown LA is some of my favorite.) Which brings me to my point: The "graffiti" on the UCSD campus is sickening. THEY USE STENCILS!!! Has anyone else seen this? This is an insult to the artform of graffiti. Are we such huge nerds on the UCSD campus that in order to deface something, we can't even come up with something creative to deface it with? Do we really need ready-made stencils to help us? If you are going to permanetly destroy a piece of property, shouldn't it mean something to you? Shouldn't it take some time and energy? Everywhere I look, from "Chancellor Dynes Posse" to the pig with the "PO" underneath (does anyone know what that means?), I want to scream, "You idiots! If real gangsters saw the shit you STENCIL onto walls, they'd kick your ass so fast you wouldn't know what hit you!" I am not condoning graffiti in anyway, but come on people, let's put some work into our vandalism.

For Julie And Sarah, Who May In Fact Be The Same Person

The details of my life are quite inconsequental. My father was a boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the Spring we made meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe, at the age of 14 a Zoro-Astrian named Velma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking. I suggest you try it.

Hey Look! I Can Post In Japanese!

And now, for my Japanese readers, a short introduction:

はじめまして！ 私はケリです。UCSDの学生です。四年生です。二十一歳です。せんこうは人類学です。目いっしゃになります。しゅしんはロングビチでうす。こうこう学生の時、日本語を勉強します。七月と今年八月の時、一ヶ月は日本へ行きました。東京と京都と大阪を見ました。東京に池袋と原宿と竹下どりを見ました。楽しました！

My Very Own カラオケ館

Karaoke-kan!

I just bought a $500 karaoke machine on my parent's credit card.

 Now, before you accuse me of insanity and greed, I will tell you 1) it only cost $230 (yay for internet sales) and 2) it is not for me, my parents are being reimbursed. The service club I'm in needs a karaoke machine for a fundraiser dance and low and behold, who do they ask to buy it for them? ME. Obviously, no one is more qualified to purchase a karaoke machine than me. I live and breathe karaoke. カラオケ。 So it will come as no surprise to you that I decided the best way to procure a karaoke machine was to have one sent directly to my house (it arrives Tuesday) along with enough CDs to total 520 songs. And of course, the club office on campus is nowhere near safe enough to house this fine piece of machinery, it will most likely have to be temporarily stored at the only place safe enough for it...once again....my house. Oh yes, this rocks. I see a karaoke party happening in the very near future....just like

Why I Love Price Club

So as it turns out, I was at Price Club (Costco as it is now called, for those of you that want to be anal about it) and saw chicken tortilla soup (my favorite) for 0.14 cents an ounce, the cheapest I have ever seen anything cost in my entire life. (When I am at Price Club, I don't actually look at the total price of anything, just the price per ounce, blame it on my dad--the life long grocery store clerk). So I bought the extremely cheap soup realizing only later that the reason it is only 0.14 per ounce is because it makes altogether 48 oz. of soup! That is way too much! What was I thinking buying enough tortilla soup (which, by the way, tortillas sold separately) to feed the entire Mexican population for a year? (ok, that was stereotypical.) The prospect of experiencing the monotony that is likely to ensue from eating the same kind of soup in "12 8-oz. servings" may in fact kill me. So long story short, (please, for the love of God) have some of my soup. It's conveniently located on the middle and bottom shelf of our refrigerator in two large tubs, and is currently elbowing out the milk.

My Trip To Japan (The Slightly Abridged Version)

The flight went well, although any flight that I get off of in one piece I would consider as going well. We took a two hour bus ride after that to the church that I`m staying at and collapsed into bed. We (Lori, Julie and I) arrived two days ago and since then have been getting accustomed to the culture and more importantly, the time change. We went to bed at 10pm Tokyo time our first night and had to be up the next morning at 8am to go to a welcome picnic, so we`ve just been ignoring the jet lag...I`m sure it will go away soon....

Today we wandered around the area we`re staying in and I made possibly one of the biggest discoveries of my life. Right down the street, a 2 minute walk, is a karaoke place. We went there today and it is soooooooooo cheap. Nothing like the U.S. It is not $45 an hour like I paid about 2 weeks ago, it is not even $25 an hour like I would have paid if I had been able to find the right place 2 weeks ago. For one person for one hour it is...get this...60 cents. That`s it! 60 cents! I am never coming home. Ever. I figure if I go enough times, I would save so much money that it would pay my plane ticket. It`s open 24 hours so I plan to sneak out and spend the night there. (No, not really.)

Buying train tickets tonight got a little complicated and took way longer than expected so I will now go collapse in bed. No wait, I will not dignify my futon by calling it a bed. It is a blanket that Japanese people pass off as a bed. "It`s just like camping!" Grrrr. Little do they know, I did manage to find five more futons and when piled on top of each other I sleep almost two inches off the floor.

I have spent way too much time in Japanese arcades lately, everybody wants to go get those little sticky picture things taken with the American girls so everytime we go, we play this new game we found where you hit taiko drums (those really really big Japanese drums) when it tells you to, just like Dance Dance Revolution but with drums. Anyway I am sad this will never come to America (I think taiko drums are too cultrally rooted in Japan and nobody thinks it would work in America, which is so not true) because I have blisters and skin missing from my hands where I have worn it off playing this thing. We even made a trip at 11:00 at night (everything is open 24/7 but that could explain why I'm so tired all the time) so that we could play as long as we wanted (hence the blisters...which I just bandaged up and kept playing...its a sickness, I think).

The first day we went to a Japanese restaurant with the cushions on the floor (and no holes under the table to hang your legs) on one side and regular "Western-style" seating on the other. Since I am a bit overzealous when it comes to my usage of the Japanese language, I yell out "Ohh! Let`s sit on the Japanese (no-chair) side!!" in Japanese. One of the waiters heard me and insisted that everyone sit on the Japanese side because once you say something here, they are only too happy to oblige. So everybody who was American walked out with numb legs and most of them still arent talking to me.

After class on Friday we had a swing/country line-dance party to show them a little good ol' American culture. It was great but all the Japanese girls were too shy to dance and most of the American guys thought it was stupid so all the American girls danced with the Japanese guys, who are all about a foot shorter than us. One girl, Laura, is 6'2". It was junior high all over again. We were so tired the next day and didnt really want to get out of bed and teach when our prayers were answered and a typhoon hit that day which meant class was cancelled. So we all crawled back into bed and slept through it. I would like to say that I've actually seen a typhoon but at the time, I couldn't have cared less.

Last night we went shopping in Ikebukuro, the closest really big city (Tokyo is more a collection of big cities, there is no real "Tokyo" its just the name of the region). We went into this pet store that had squirrels for sale. They were the cutest little animals I have ever seen and I want one so bad. I think I could smuggle it on the plane home, next to my nail file and the fireworks I bought a few days ago...

We tried to buy bullet train tickets too, but it turns out that they dont discount them during the month of August because so many people are travelling anyway and its too expensive without it ($100 each way), so very long story short, we are taking the bus. Yes the bus. Three hours in the ticket office and all I have to show for myself is a bus ticket. Grrr. That's ok, I dont care how I get to "Toyotaville" as some like to call it (that made me laugh for so long because it is so true), as long as I get there.

Today we went to Tokyo Tower which looks just like the Eiffel Tower but they brag that it's taller. The Japanese are really defensive about their tower, the brochure had in big print, "Taller and lighter than the Eiffel tower, the Tokyo tower is an engineering marvel and we used less paint to paint it too." Serious, I'll show it to you when I get back. It was pretty cool, you can see Mt. Fuji, Yokohama, the Rainbow Bridge across the bay and the Imperial Palace all at once. They even have a glass floor to look down. AND I ordered for everyone in our group at a restaurant today all by myself!! It was the first time the waiter didnt look at me like I was still speaking English. My Japanese level has officially reached "functional".

We arrived in Toyota(ville) last night after our bus (grrrr to the bus again) was an hour and a half late. Then it turns out we got off at the wrong stop (who knew there was more than one stop in Nagoya?) and we ended up on the side of a busy street nowhere near a bus stop. (Only I would pick the one stop that doesn't have a "bus stop" to get off of a bus at.) So this man who got off at our stop and thankfully spoke English led us to the nearest subway station so we'd have somewhere to meet my friend who was picking us up. So here we are, three American girls laden with luggage following a tiny old Japanese man uphill in the dark and the rain to the subway. We made it obviously because I am here now. And let me say, it is SOOOOOOO great to be back!!! Everybody remembers me and I've gotten to see all my old friends and eat real homemade Japanese food. I showed the family here my album and they absolutely loved it and it's so nice that my Japanese has improved (mostly from the last two weeks) that I can talk to them more. All three of us put on the family's yukatta (the Japanese robes that look like kimonos) and took pictures in them. I am officially Japanese, the transformation is complete.

Post #1

Alright, here it is, my very own blog. I knew this day would come, I have bought into the narcissism of the masses in believing that someone may actually find anything contained herein at all interesting. And unlike a few people I know who are qualified to post their thoughts and therefore justified in making that assumption, I cannot claim any merit in my writing ability. This is a chance for me to babble on about inane subjects while experimenting with big vocabulary words I don't completely understand, yet am too lazy to look up and will probably use wrong. I don't guarantee that I will even update it regularly, just when the urge strikes me and I feel like I have something to say, so don't hold your breath if it goes days, weeks, months, years without updating. I have no idea what HTML is, so I'm operating solely on text here... There? Is that self-depricating enough to make you read this if for no other reason than that human need to see someone completely suck at something while hopefully excusing my shortcomings? I think that's more than enough of an introduction to my thoughts...stay tuned.