Closure

JFGI: Just fucking google it. Used when people ask stupid questions without asking google first.

I had to google "jfgi" to see what it meant. The irony is overwhelming.

First let me share this video because I think it’s amazing and weird and beautiful. Allison Schulnik, the artist, creates music videos for Grizzly Bear, which is how I came across her stuff.


[Pretend transition here.]

This was meant to be written in the quiet hours of the early morning, sitting next to my packed bags and appreciating the stillness of my house. That was the plan, but I accidentally fell asleep and woke up to frantically run around like a headless chicken, grabbing all the last-minute crap I forgot about.

So I’m writing my closing post now, in the international United terminal at O’Hare, waiting to get on my flight that has been delayed three hours. I’m staring at the bony butt of the older man sleeping across a row of chairs nearby. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

But alas, my ranting and babbling has come to an end. At least on this blog. By the time I have the internetz and actually get a chance to post this, it will be history. I’ll either be in my hostel or some internet café in Asia, jetlagged, hungry and melting from the sun.

It just recently hit me that I’ll be missing certain moments this year for the first time—Thanksgiving, Christmas, my brother’s graduation, etc. I’m especially sad to be missing the holidays in Seattle because it’s the one time a year I get to see my mom’s side of my family who I adore in a city I consider my second home. I also feel a tinge of guilt because my grandpa died last Christmas Eve, which was hard enough on everyone, and now I’m upping the number of missing relatives this year.

Trust me, I’m not thinking Oh man, what are people gonna do without me! Pretty much everyone is like "We’ll miss you, but we’re happy you’re doing your thing. Send a postcard." I’m the one who’s having trouble saying goodbye, even though this experience is completely self-inflicted.

Also, I only just realized it’s almost NEW YEARS. 2009 is close to over and we are embarking on a new decade. Can you believe that? I honestly can’t. It’s been a big 10 years, look at all the stuff that’s happened.

Just watching this, I think Oh yeah, I can’t believe that happened six years ago, it feels like a month ago. Oh dear Time, how you continually mystify me.

But here I am, getting ready to spend the next year of my life far away from everything and everyone I know. I promise that I will have a new blog up and running sometime in the not-so-distant future to document my journey. Hopefully it will be more interesting than writing about White Chicks.

Until then,

Thanks for ever reading my stuff, no matter how infrequently or anonymously it was. It means a lot to me.

J.

We Love You, Miss Hannigan

PDQ: Acronym for "pretty damn quick." Faster than "ASAP."
I need the money PDQ.

You may remember from way back when I was considering various get-rich-quick schemes. Ideas included selling plasma (not necessarily my own), gambling and working as an unregistered cabbie. Well, I pursued none of them and instead worked and babysat like a normal, boring person.

When I'm not at my internship, I feel like I'm usually entertaining someone a fifth of my age. I have lost count of the number of times I've heard a high-pitched "Scuse me, I tooted!" followed by incessant laughter.

I totally get her now.

But I must admit I've really grown to enjoy kids' company. They are an endless supply of absurdity and optimism, both of which are good for me.

Sometimes I play around in Photo Booth with them.

I also document the way they make their dolls bald-headed.

However, my biggest challenge as a caregiver has yet to come:

Beginning tomorrow, I am house sitting for a couple visiting their son in Chile for 10 days. Oh yeah, and they're also leaving their three teens and two dogs under my supervision. Jebus, help me. My head is still spinning from going over everything with their mom today—meals, alarm system, soccer practice, orthodontist appointment. Make it stop.

The daily schedule:

• 6-8 am: Walk dogs, shower, get dressed, wake up the youth, make them lunch, drive the youngest to school
• 8:30 am-5:00 pm: Try to uncross my eyes in front of the computer screen
  
• 5:30 pm-10:00: Make them dinner, help with homework, ensure no one is sniffing glue in the bathroom, escape to Twitter
• 10:30-6:00: ZZzzzzZZZZzzzz or something like it

I lead a rich life.

But you do what you got do to make things happen. And in four short weeks, that thing will happen, and I will leave for Thailand. Yes, I'm excited/apprehensive, but my emotions are still very hazy because it hasn't really hit me yet. I'm far more preoccupied with the preparations than the actual journey at this point. I don't expect my "Holy shit, what am I doing??" moment to occur for another 23 days.

Until then, you can find me driving someone else's minivan.


J.

Young & Wild

No Homo: Phrase used after one inadvertently says something that sounds gay.
His ass is mine. No homo.

OK, I consider myself relatively in the know with lingo—which is ironic because by saying that, I just made myself sound like my jeans go up to my armpits—but I must have missed the boat on this one. Do people (and by people, I mean dudes) actually say this? I've never heard it firsthand, but the idea makes me laugh and cry in unison. If it's a harmless joke, that's one thing (though still not funny), but if it's actual attempt to disclose masculinity and self-confidence, you, my friend, are one sad bastard.

This, however, is humorous:



In other news, Where The Wild Things Are is opening this weekend, and my jazz hands are out in full throttle. What I mean is that I'm really excited.

Can we just talk about Karen O for a second? As you may know, she's responsible for the film's dreamy soundtrack. But even more awesome, I discovered she's half ASIAN. Half Korean to be exact. After recent virtual creepage, I came across photos of her without her usual David Bowie-esque makeup and immediately recognized it.

Us halfsies just know.

Besides the soundtrack, I'm also really looking forward to watching Max Records on screen. Talk about casting. He just has that look, you know? That perfect young-yet-wise, angelic-but-mischievous face. I have no clue if he can actually act, but he's definitely special. Lots of kids are cute and all, but something about him evokes this strange notion of childhood that's both romantic and sad when I look at him. I don't know, I'm a weirdo.


But don't you just want to squeeze him so he can never grow up and will be embalmed in beautiful, dewy youthfulness forever? Well, too bad the movie was shot about two and a half years ago so the kid's about to be teenager. Damn puberty ruins everything.

Moving on, I was thinking about how cool it would be to start a zine or more realistically a website for people my age. About what? I don't know. To be honest, I mostly just wanted to come up with a cool title for it.

It's like what Dave Eggers wrote in "A Heartbreaking Work of A Staggering Genius" when he's auditioning for The Real World and explains the magazine he and his friends just started up:

Now what's it called again?
Might.

M-i-t-e?
No, M-i-g-h-t. Everyone spells it M-i-t-e. It's ridiculous. Why would it be named after a bug? Mite is such an obscure word, compared to Might, right?

Well, what is it named after?
Well, it's a double entendre, see—you'll love this, this is great, it can mean two things at once, can sit right on the fence between two meanings—with, in this case, "Might" meaning both power and possibility.

Ooooh.
Yeah. I know. It's good.

So I came up with reFRESH, thinking Awesome, this is original and works on multiple levels—slightly geeky Web browser reference and will also have the reFRESHing (subtle, right?) voice of my generation. Until I discovered it already existed. The gays beat me to everything.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to think of another name for my theoretical magazine/website that will most likely never be produced.

Until then, my blog shall do.


J.

Yes for Extraneous Videos

Swagger jacker: A person who steals someone else's flow, lines, jokes, swagger.
Guy 1: Ay, bro, I just spit this whole song.
Guy 2: Na, you didn't, Hova. I heard Biggie say you a swagger jacker.

You know what I miss? Sister, Sister. I used to love that show. In fifth grade, my friend Yaosca used to come over to braid my hair and watch it with me. I felt so damn cool, like I was friends with Tia and Tamera myself.

Remember this opening? The quality is shit probably because whoever posted it taped directly from the television, but the song is still da bomb.



Two other, completely unrelated songs I love—these from Europeans:

Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle, "Sing Sing", France



The Dø, "At Last", France/Finland
This video is especially exciting



I've been meaning to a write a hearty post about art and accessibility for a while now. I got all these disconnected thoughts floating around my head but have yet to formalize an argument. I don't know, something's cooking though. I'll keep you posted.

Until then, do your own style in your own time.


J.

Really, We're All Just Searching for Our Pot of Gold

Hot snack: The small amount of acidy puke you have to swallow when you are just sitting around minding your own business and you have a little unexpected burp.

Dude, I was just talkin' to my girl and out of nowhere I had to swallow a hot snack without her noticing.

Hot snacks are the pits.

Regarding my last post about the New Moon soundtrack, I told you. And I'm not even saying that I personally feel this way, I'm just the psychic messenger.

In other news, I'm officially leaving for Thailand Nov. 18th. I fly into Bangkok for a day then over to Phnom Penh for two weeks and then to Pattaya for the rest of my TESOL certification course. After that, who knows. Am I totally pumped to travel and teach English? Yes. Does it make me a little nervous that the second phrase that pops up in Google Image after Pattaya is "Pattaya Girls"? A little. Adventures, people, we all need adventures.

Now for the best thing that was once actually labeled "news" by someone in a position of broadcasting power.



Until next time, stay out the trees and away from the crack.


J.

Sights & Sounds

Imma let you finish: An obnoxious way to interrupt someone and steal their moment, while wryly mocking the media train wreck that is Kanye West.

Bob: Thank you Mr. Brown for having us in to give this sales presentation. We'd like to talk to you today about...
Alfred: Yo, Bob, I'm really happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but I just got to say our product is one of the best products there is!

First, my last blog was very unlike me, I know. But I was hurtin', man. Hurtin' real bad. A guy at the Gap store was pressuring me into buying a pair of pants later that afternoon, and I almost broke down in front of him. He could tell and thought I was nuts. I'm better now though.

So let's talk about things less meditative and more frivolous than the death of a living creature, like articles of fashion I want:

A pair of browline glasses so I can look like this guy.

A sharp, ever-so-slightly masculine blazer like the one below from Urban.

As my mother once said after I told her she looked like a Chinese school boy when she got her haircut extremely short, "Androgyny is très chic." It's true, you know.

Now let's discuss music because I want to remind all you young whipper snappers I still know what's up.

Have you heard about the new New Moon soundtrack? It'll be probably be awesome, but I'm a little shocked who's on it. I just would have never guessed Bon Iver or Grizzly Bear would want to jump on the hormonally-charged vampire train. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but some music fans are sure to throw around the word "sellout".

It would be tough to be an indie band with an image of obscurity and impervious dedication to uphold (because it's like all about the music, man) while trying to grow a fan base and generate a steady income. Being featured in a Twilight movie is a huge deal, but then you run the risk of having brace-teethed girls running around with your band name and this image across their newly budded breasties.

He's 17, by the way. Awkward.

On another note, I am madly in love with Neko Case, not just as a performer but as an individual. I've listened to her for a while now but have revisited her work a lot lately, and I always discover something new in her songs. I appreciate that despite her amazing song-writing, haunting voice and crazy past, she seems like a very approachable, relatable person.

She's this charmingly strange woman who loves animals more than anything, dreams about tornadoes and has no desire to have children. I read this story about her life and music like half a year ago and never forgot because I thought it was great and so is this multimedia.

One of my all-time favorites:



She's probably the only person who can convince me to give country music a chance.

Until next time, don't forget your headphones.


J.

That Smushed Face

Hello, I have a lot I've been wanting to write about lately, but the main thing on my mind right now is Sumo. We just put my sweet pup to sleep, and it's been really rough so the best way for me to cope is to reflect.

The Beginning
Summer after sixth grade, I was obsessed with the idea of having a dog. No one else in the family was particularly into it, even my little brother, because he sucked. But I somehow managed to drag my mother to the Anti Cruelty Society Downtown one day and that's where I saw this little mug.


Amidst the barking and cage shaking of the other dogs, he sat quiet and composed observing the chaos around him. When I walked by, he looked up and said, Hey you, I think I'd be a good fit. I get along with all types of people, I'm super low maintenance and my fur is pretty. I had to have him.

My mom liked him too but wasn't going to make any decisions that day. "We'll go home and talk to your dad about it." Fine. So we did, and he was surprisingly gung ho. We'd go back to the shelter tomorrow and get our dog.

The next day, his cage was empty. The other canines continued to bark, and I wanted to scream back at them. I threw a shit fit in the middle of the shelter and demanded to know where they put him. My mom said she would track him down, and my dad took me and my brother to get hot dogs.

Apparently he had been moved to a Petsmart in Broadview, a southern suburb of Chicago. We didn't know if he would still be there, but we were going to make the drive to find out. I ran in the store like a crazy person looking around every which way, and there he was against the wall. I sighed of relief, took him out of the cage and walked him down the isles. And then he humped a bag of dog food.

I wanted his name to do something with his heritage (he was a Japanese Chin) and the fact he liked food. I shall name him Sumo, I decided, you know, like a sumo wrestler.

Over Time
Then, like the way many kids get with things they are once so passionate about, I lost interest. It's not that I didn't care about him anymore, I just didn't want to be responsible. I didn't want to walk him, I didn't want to brush his fur and I didn't want to feed him all the time. My original obsession was taken over by laziness and preoccupation with pathetic middle school woes. And Sumo lost interest in me. He discovered who his real love in the house was—my mother, the food bearer. The woman who constantly bitched about his shedding then secretly fed him chicken chunks under the table.

This continued on over the years, a shared distance between me and him. I should also point out that Sumo is much more like a cat than a dog. He enjoyed his space and privacy, and if you ever tried to get him to do something like fetch a ball, he looked at you like, Fool, please. Get it yourself. The only time he barked was out of excitement of being fed. He was definitely a fat kid of dogs.

But he started acting differently in the past year. Sumo had always been mellow, but now he seemed to have no energy to the do the simplest things. He didn't hold his beautiful fanned tail up anymore, he wanted to turn around after half a block when being walked, even his appetite diminished. And this past month was the worst. He couldn't make it up and down the stairs by himself anymore, so he would just wait on one of the middle steps for long periods until someone picked him up. One of his back legs started curling under the other. He painted louder than ever like he wasn't getting enough oxygen. His cataracts got worst and he aimlessly ran into things.

And then for the first time in years, Sumo actually started acting like a dog, a dog that wanted company and affection who sits at your feet and lays on your lap. We all became extremely sentimental toward him once we realized his days were numbered. I started paying more attention to him and remembered why I loved him so much in the first place.

My parents took him to the vet the other day to see what was up. Turns out he had two growths, one on his lung and the other on his kidney. He had advanced arthritis in his hips. He was already 12 years old and wasn't going to get any better. The vet gave him some pain medicine and that was that.

The past few days were up and down. He wouldn't move for four hours at a time and then would get surprisingly energetic. But on Friday night, he couldn't lay comfortably or seem to breath well, so my dad stayed up all night with him. And yesterday morning, my parents decided it was time to end his suffering.

Going In
Driving to the animal hospital with Sumo on my lap was one of the worst car rides of my life. The moment we all got into a little room to wait for the nurse, we transformed into blubbering children. Even my dad was a wreck. The nurse came in and told us the procedure, that they would put a catheter in for the anesthesia and then the poison. She took Sumo away for ten minutes as nostalgia and tears took over. He came back with a bandaged arm, completely unsure of what was going on. My mom snipped some hair from his tail, his best feature, and put it in a plastic bag.

Then the doctor came in with two needles in her hand. She was very kind and respectful and told us what to expect. The first needle went in and Sumo sunk to the metal counter in 30 seconds. Then the second needle went in, and I watched the life leave those big watery eyes. It broke my heart seeing his body lay like that.

When the doctor turned to each of our red, streaked faces, I could tell she sincerely felt for us. Can you imagine having her job—taking away the lives of animals people adore? Not that it's a dishonorable profession, it's actually a very necessary one. I just couldn't do it.

What's worst about the whole experience is the permanency. The fact Sumo will never drink from his water bowl that's still sitting on the kitchen floor. The fact that his hair is still covering that nasty blue couch upstairs he will never lay on again. The fact I can't hear his dog collar clinking up and down the stairs at night. My nose stings just thinking about it.

Shit, I haven't cried this much in one weekend since my grandpa died in December. I'll eventually be fine, but right now it's all a little too fresh in my mind.

So Sumo, my dear: thank you for being such a wonderful companion, and I hope you rest in peace. May your next chapter be filled with food, lush pillows and many back rubs. Love you always.


J.