Goodbye Quiznos

For about 85 percent of my commute downtown today, I was composing in my head a rather angry letter basically summing up my experience with my first job. Halfway down the hill though, something changed my mind.

Or rather someone changed my mind.
His name is Sean Fournier.



I got his free album from a Facebook ad the other day. I hadn't really listened to it, but it was free and referenced to me because of some of my favorite artists, so I'd figured why not?

I love this music.

It's the voice and the piano mainly (I'm a sucker for a guy who can play the piano), but it's also more than that. Something about this is just uplifting and made my spirit feel high. So I'm spreading the word. Check it out, get the 6 track album free and enjoy.

The Stupid Stuff I do to my body

I donated blood yesterday, like I normally do. every 54 days or so.

The experience wasn't really any different than any of the other times I've donated blood this year (I'm either at 5 or 6 donations), with the exception that they couldn't find a good vein in my left arm, so they had to start over in my right.

The process isn't really painful, and I'm not bothered by needles for some reason (but for those potential readers who are, I'll do you the courtesy of not going into detail), so the actual donating process was easy.

It was the next day (today) that I experienced problems.

I was biking to work like I usually do, when I began to feel lightheaded. This was worse than any of the other times I've felt as such after donating blood, so I made a point of finding the nearest place of food (McDonalds, but I went to the Subway across the parking lot) and sat down. My vision went blurry, and I saw stars, I started sweating bullets. Needless to say it was not an experience I would like to repeat.

I sat for a least an hour and a half, ordering food and drinking plenty of water and then continued on my way to work, albeit at a slower pace.

Cartomancy

For the past few weeks, I’ve been attempting to teach myself cartomancy or card reading: Tarot’s idiot younger brother, and to say the least it’s an adventure. The closest I’ve ever gotten to divination before has been those little paper fortune tellers people made in elementary school, so I’m finding there’s a lot of history to this.



As an abridged version of the tarot deck, people have been using playing cards for fortune telling for almost as long as they’ve been around. No source is exactly sure whether they were developed first for games or divination, but the deck of cards have been around for at least 600 years and used for both.

Now, I know there are some who would argue that the mathematical laws of statistics make this kind of fortune telling a load of crock. Statistically speaking, you have the same 1 in 52 chance of drawing any one card first; however, I found one site that gave me some food for thought:

“Statistical laws imply that a deck, properly shuffled, will yield the same chance of a given Card being drawn. But the key to this axiom is that this is true – but it is a law of averages; if you draw a Card from a deck ten thousand times, you’ll find that each Card has roughly the same chances of being drawn … but for small numbers, the Universe has a method to communicate with us.”
- Excerpted from the Arcana Arcanorum

Pair that with the hundreds of different spreads used by those consulting the cards and there are near infinite combinations that can be interpreted by someone who knows what each card is said to represent.

Being that I’m a novice, I’m not yet very good at reading the cards. In fact, I wrote all the meanings on the cards to save me the trouble of looking them up every time I do a reading.

All the same, it’s a good distraction when I’m bored or unable to sleep or just have a nagging question that I don’t know who to ask. So excuse me while I shuffle up and start reading.

Western

Just found out where I'll be dorming in Bellingham.
Nash Hall room 310.
I'm more excited to not have to wait than I care where it is, isn't that sad? I always tell people I'm a patient person, because I am, but the anticipation for this has been driving me crazy. Yay!

October 16, 2008

I’m sitting in Seattle Central Community College, the SAM building. I keep telling Leasha that SAM makes me think of the Seattle Art Museum, but she just ignores me and maintains her position of Science & Math. Whatever.

It’s a nice place this cozy little college in the heart of the city. Out of the corners of my eyes, I enjoy watching the diverse mix of people walk by me in my spot where I sit invisible in this chair. I’m not an actual student here, but that’s not important, is it?

I’m spending the day with friends, doing something different. It’s a big school, they don’t care if sit in their lobby typing whatever words I may type. I’m not actively doing anything disruptive. If I was going to do that, I would have followed Stasie into her math class and shown the professor who the heck is boss. It’s numbers, plain and simple. Algebra, geometry, you never really learn much beyond the basics, it’s just different ways to do the exact same thing.

There’s a broom leaning against the wall across the room from me. It’s casual, like it’s some sort of cool cat over there next to the fire extinguisher. It’s seen better days since it was new. The black paint of the shaft is beginning to wear away near the handle, and the bristles all curve inward where you can tell it’s taken the brunt of the impact from sweeping the floor.

I wonder idly if it gets used. I want to touch it, to feel it, to acknowledge that it exists with something other than my eyes. But I won’t. I have no qualms being that crazy guy who everyone remembers for molesting the broom – I’ve done worse things – but it seems almost rude to disturb its peace. It’s sleeping over there in its corner. It hasn’t done anything to me.

I feel like it should be able to come alive at any moment and start dancing, or grow arms and start gathering buckets of water like in Disney’s Fantasia, but there’s no Mickey Mouse with a wizard’s hat here, just me, my imagination and a bunch of college students passing through on their way to classes. The fluorescent lights aren’t flattering to its figure, but it would be pole thin no matter what light I saw it in.

I want someone to spill something. A bag of chips or bread crumbs, give it a duty.

“NO FOOD in recycle”

The sign is just to the right of the broom, above the recycle bin. It’s commanding and forceful. Someone probably put it there because people were putting food in with the recycling. The three arrows in that familiar triangle mark the bin, each opening labeled. Glass, cans, plastic, paper. I wonder if people listen to it.

A dissertation on the cross-demographical appeal of the Sailor Scouts, or why Sailor Moon rocks

Certain kinds of Japanimation always give me that nostalgia for childhood. Take for instance Sailor Moon; it’s exactly the kind of mindless cartoon everyone should love as a child. Sure, it was technically a little bit before my time, but there were still reruns on as I started my spending more and more time with that little thing called the television.

I will always remember the opening what with its cosmic crickets followed by simplistic guitar and drum riffs and lyrics. It was one of the first shows I really started to like, and I liked it even more than I liked Dragonball Z, which I guess in a way set me apart from the other little boys my age. They just wanted to see gratuitous cartoon violence. I wanted to see gratuitous cartoon violence and pretty girls. Not that I knew anything about sex at the time (not that it matters anyways what with the whole homosexuality thing I got going on), but still, there was something appealing about the one that the other just didn’t have.

This brings me now to my rambling musings and the point of this. Despite being just another crappy child’s show, Sailor Moon deserved a far better audience than it ever received. It had the kind of crossover appeal you just didn’t find in the other shows of the time.

For the girls, it had strong, albeit ditzy female role models in Serena (which I’m guessing is the Japanese approximation to Selena, which would be appropriate considering the whole moon thing. If that last sentence made no sense, look up Selena. If you get something about the late Hispanic pop goddess, keep looking) and the Sailor Scouts. In its continuing story arc about the reincarnation of the moon princess, the show also had the kind of romantic quadrangles that make preteen girls swoon.

For the boys, there was that whole gratuitous cartoon violence I mentioned earlier. People were always dying or getting kidnapped by monsters sent by the nefarious Queen Beryl. It was a little Scooby-doo how the girls faced a different monster pretty much every episode, but such was the ratings climate of the time. Besides, when you’re a little kid you don’t really notice how it’s exactly the same thing every episode, I mean duh, it’s a different monster. Also, pretty girls in skimpy sailor outfits, need I say more?

And finally, for the gays, well, I guess it’s kind of hybrid cross between the girls’ and boys’ reasons really. The pretty girls weren’t cool because they were pretty girls; they were cool because they were pretty. The romance was a little soap-operatic (How many times did someone’s name get screamed in agony as they died or get healed with a kiss/tear?), but it had to be that kind of over the top otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to the younger audience’s simple grasp of the romantic. Oh yeah, and in true classic anime fashion, there were always homoerotic subtexts to tickle budding gaydars. Ever notice how some of the Scouts could be (and were) mistake for boys or how in the one movie young Darren was just a little too friendly to the green alien boy who comes back years later like a stalker ex?

It had something for everybody if you bothered to look past the frilly pink exterior, and it was a damn sight easier to follow than half the stuff on primetime now. But it had a good run while it lasted.

Memories

A little poetry to mix things up:

Memories
Mariposa moments removed by a gust,
a shimmer dissipating.
Soundless stomach-flutterings of doubt remain
in monarchal landmarks of the mind.
The subject to every object of affection
the dust, scales of the wing,
fall four times flight forever.
Citrus colors catch the attention:
a warning against the attraction.
Ensnared in nets and stifled in chemical jars
they are lost.
Put on display and paraded around,
but can they ever truly match the beauty
of the freedom lost?

Displace Me

On April 28, 2007, I displaced myself as part of a national demonstration on behalf of the peoples of Northern Uganda who are forced to live in grossly overcrowded camps due to the civil war that has been fought there for the last 22 years. Over 70,000 people took place in the event across fifteen cities, including myself and six friends.


For one night, we slept in ramshackle cardboard huts, shivering as the cold air from over Lake Washington settled over Magnuson Park and the thousands of bodies therein. For one night, we gave ourselves to the cause of peace, demonstrating in hopes that we could gain the attention of our elected leaders and affect them to make a difference half a world away. For one night, we were displaced.

I still think on what that event has come to mean to me. It marked the moment when my eyes were opened to the world around me. I’ve always known that there was suffering in the world, but like most suburban American teenagers, I had no true concept of what that meant. There was war and poverty and unfairness, but it was always remote, distant. Like a colony of ants in the backyard, it was never something you noticed.

But since displacing myself, I’ve felt that knowledge pressing on me, pulling at me to do something. You cannot remain apathetic when it is within your means to improve the conditions of the world around you. Doing so would be a gross irresponsibility.

I pre-ordered a copy of Black is for Sunday the DVD and bracelet set documenting both the displaced in Uganda, and those who forwent the comforts of their life for one night to help them. It was on the honor system. They would send it to me with no guarantee that I would make my donation in return.
At the time, I thought the $35 was nothing in comparison to the difference it would make. When the set arrived though, my family was not financially well off and as a high school student with no job; I was not going to rely on them to pay off my obligation. So the DVD sat unopened on a shelf in my room gathering dust for almost a year and a half.

I looked at it nearly every day, and felt not only guilt for not honoring my promise to contribute but also responsibility. It was a reminder that there was something else in the world that deserved my attention. The petty struggles I faced in school were nothing in comparison to the challenges in the world. It became a source of strength for me. If they can live their lives and survive in the conditions that they did, nothing should stand in my way.

I got a job this past September, and with my second paycheck, I went to the bank and ordered a check for $40 addressed to the Invisible Children organization. Only since that check went in the mail have I felt closure enough to finally open Black is for Sunday and start wearing the bracelet. I now wear my reminder around my wrist where others can see it and be inspired to make a difference.

Jazz Inflection (Extended Version)

I’m listening to some jazzy smazzy whoop de dazzy music style of this and that for all of what? Seven seconds more than it used to be? It’s what I do but so are you, know what I mean??? Crack an egg and let’s make breakfast. It’s time to chill the so called flower of our youth, preserve it in the refrigerator with all the others, but no, let it grow. Find that field and plant it so young. Nothing is wrong. All of it’s gone. Why oh why? Because the sky so blue said so.

Hark, hear the bell? Let it ring and sing and keep out of the way as it travels on. Outward and upward, going nowhere but where it wants to. Feel the glass window break
bread with the song on my side of the mountain. I'd rather not. Fight fires with flowers when all the world's a pearl and I'm just an oyster ruminating in my cozy shell.

Clap top Lambchop, where'd your Shari go? This old man is going home. Left a word to the right that was down when we all up and went away. Bittersweet butterflies floating on a breeze carried one way, two way, three way, four score and seven years ago Mao took community to a whole 'nother level.

It's arbitrary evidence to suggest that evolution emigrated here from where it once sat in silence. Balloons can't escape this myriad monkey house of demolition.