and back again

majorly jetlagged. being in community property class doesn't help.

HK was amazing, as always. will post pictures as soon as i get off my lazy ass and upload them.

off to hong kong

...again! will be back april 3rd. i'll try to upload pix and regale you with intense, nail-biting stories of the international commercial arbitration competition. wish me luck!

have you ever...

woken up in the middle of the morning to go dry-heave into your toilet, and then realized in a moment of clarity that you somehow:
1) left the bar without your (brand new very expensive) digital camera,
2) went back into the bar to look for your camera and came out with no camera AND no jacket,
3) left the bar best friends with several rastafari, a pacific islander man with a long ponytail in a wheelchair, and a large and very friendly black woman whose lap you sat on for a good portion of the night?

oh. you haven't? then i guess you wouldn't understand my saturday night.

  

dreamland where are you?

i can't sleep. must have been the giant cup of coffee at 9pm. or the five cups of tea at 11pm.

since my brain shut down about three hours ago, rendering me unable to absorb any more law, i have:

* found the peruvian cultural institute's cuzco website for reservation availability on the inca trail. it's in spanish, but it's not too hard to find where the availability search engine is. looks like i may be able to book inca trail reservations less than 2 months in advance. sweet. macchu picchu...i long for thee.

* found a $97 one way flight to freeport, bahamas. the second time this week i've seen this deal. had to resist the yearning of every fiber in my being to click the "buy" button. for the one way ticket only.

* tried to hypnotize myself to sleep. twice. so please do not be surprised if i start clucking like a chicken when you say the word "point."

* cleaned out my belly button quite thoroughly. it's amazing how much lint fits in there! gross. but awe-inspiring.

* thought obsessively about my cat, Mouse. she recently learned how to play fetch, is now very insistent upon it. too cute.

i leave for hong kong in two weeks. can't wait!

don't hate him girl

this site is hilarious...but there may be tort/privacy concerns? i love it anyway.

i want!

how cool would it be to have your own wine?

been awhile

I haven't posted in awhile, as is custom when my life fills with things I would rather not write about.

Most of my waking hours are spent contemplating, writing about, discussing, or worrying over the law and its many permutations, implications and consequences. Classes are in full swing, as is the legal clinic, clerkship, and preparations for March's international commercial arbitration competition in Hong Kong. This leaves little time for me to do things like sleep, eat proper meals or find humor and joy in life.

On a more interesting note: this past weekend, I discovered that Mouse (my adorble kitten) loves to be carried around in the hobo bag I brought home from Thailand. Much amusement and cross-town kitten-toting is sure to ensue.

winter reading

So far this winter break, I have read these books:

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A classic, and deservedly so. A very fast read. I'm working in Cat's Cradle next.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Extremely quick read, interesting but not too substantive. I think I would have loved this book in the fourth or fifth grade. Having read Garcia-Marquez, Esquivel's book (and for that matter, any other book written in the style of magical realism) pales in comparison. But it did make me hungry.


Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginides
Definitely recommended. Multilayered, meaty literature. One of those books that makes you sigh in contentment when you finish the last page, and feel as if you had lived the lives of those characters.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Absolutely amazing, especially if you know where he's coming from. I love, love, love this book. It's not often one comes across a style so fresh, so different, so gripping. It just pulls you in and doesn't let go.

Edit: Too good to be true, I guess. The signs were there, and I refused to see them. Sigh. I still like this book, but I do feel a little let down.

The Flame by Gabriele D'Annunzio
Suggested only if you plan on reading it while in Venice. Otherwise, D'Annunzio's writing seems to drown in its own emotion. Hailed as "one of the greatest descriptions of Venice in the history of literature." James Joyce called this book "the most important achievement in the novel since Flaubert." I found it a little too sentimental, too fin-de-siecle (but of course that's what it's supposed to be like)...but then again, if I were in Venice reading this book while floating down a canal at summer's end, I am sure D'Annunzio's words would ring exactly true.

quote of the day

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.
- Larry Hardiman

dreamland

i am in my second week of barely leaving my apartment, studying from the minute i wake (around noon) until the minute i fall asleep (around 4am) sitting up in bed with a tattered issue of The Economist, my only repreive from this hell, slipping from my fingers.

i think the stress is manifesting itself in my dreams. here are a few choice tidbits from my dreamland as of late:

- i am part of a theatre group at school that i never signed up for but am obligated to take part in anyway. i have been assigned to the clean-up crew. i decide to leave, but for some reason i have to leave bouncing on one of those huge inflatable exercise balls with the plastic handle attached to it. but my ball was only half-inflated, and i looked like an idiot bouncing/dragging all the way across the grass field.

- i have a maniacal, abusive boyfriend with a thick southern accent, who is on his way to my apartment to beat me to death. i can feel him nearing and am petrified with fear, because i know he's going to kill me.

- i am at the hospital waiting room asking the clerk how much it is to get an abortion, having cheated on my boyfriend and gotten pregnant (the guy i cheated with is not in the dream at all--i don't even know who it is). the abortion costs $1700.00, which i do not have. my entire extended family is there. i get into an argument with my dad. my stepmother is being entirely smug. all of this is incredibly embarassing, and i am sobbing.

Here's a great website for those of us who are online all the time and are sick of registering for everyhing:

bugmenot.com

Public usernames. Why didn't I ever think of that?

Turducken is here!

The monstrosity is baking nicely in its own juices...will post pictures and review later!

Today I am eating:

Turducken with creole sausage and cornbread stuffing
Sweet corn cakes
Mashed potatoes
Roasted garlic lemon potatoes
Broccoli salad
Buttered corn
Stuffing

Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Lemon poppyseed scones
Cranberry orange scones

...and MORE!

wedding mehndi  

Two of my closest and most fabulous friends were married this weekend. Congratulations Aaruni and Pamela! 

princess 

spending most of my time reading lately--absorbing rather than purging information--so i have felt less inclined to write. short update:

-we named my kitten Mouse, and i am completely and utterly obsessed with her.
-my sister came to visit and we went to the zoo and saw koalas shit on each other.
-i took the professional responsiblity test, and left feeling unprofessional and irresponsible.
-i was too apathetic to vote yesterday.
-i bought three pairs of adorable shoes for $13.99 due to pricing error.
-they hurt my feet.

it is at once heartwarming and horrifying to suddenly realize you are at the age where all your friends and your friends' friends are getting married.

i am so proud of myself.

so. proud.

i just found and bought a round-trip ticket to Hong Kong from LAX, nonstop, on Cathay Pacific, for $503.00.

Five hundred and three dollars.

plus taxes and airport charges of course, but holy FUCK it's still cheap!

Victory dance!

*wiggle wiggle*

addictions

it just sunk in today that i am hopelessly addicted to two things: coffee and sriracha hot sauce. not together, mind you, but they might as well be, since they're sloshiing around in a happy stew in my stomach right now.

i'm the poster child for future heartburn commercials. i can see it now:

"i spent my twenties recklessly drinking caustic liquids that ate away my stomach lining. but thanks to prilosec, i now lead a somewhat normal life."

yum.

small joys

today i was driving home from class
when i decided to flip around and look for
a spanish language radio station to listen to
and i found a station where a woman was reading
what could, by its cadence,
only be a beautiful peice of literature
i listened and thought: this reminds me of
gabriel garcia marquez.
the rythm and the word choice were so familiar.

then, i listened more closely,
and realized--it WAS garbriel garcia marquez!
i had stumbled upon
a spanish radio reading of
"La prodigiosa tarde de Baltazar."

and all day i have been immensely proud of myself
for having been able to identify
Gabo in his native language.

and you thought this was going to be a poem, didn't you?

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

by Terry Bisson

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

the end

More stories from Terry Bisson here.

i'm obsessed. 

i wake up to this sitting on my chest in the morning. how can something possibly be so cute??? 

new arrival

i have a kitten! she is the most adorable thing in the world.

she doesn't have a name yet--any suggestions?

i wanted to name her mephistopheles, but she has such an angel face, i can't bring myself to call her the devil.