The God of Small Things

No, I'm not making fun of Brian.

I just finished reading a book called The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It's about an Indian family and other stuff. It's honestly one of the best books I've ever read. I haven't read many books, but this one is easily the most uniquely written style I've seen in a long time.

Actually, it's ok. You should check it out for yourself. I'm going to insert it now (my favorite excerpt)

It didn't matter that the story had begun, because the kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.

Next up is Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom and Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I don't know why I've started reading again. It's a bit soothing, actually.

I've also started going to the gym again too. It's thrilling. I've never before experienced that rush of endorphins that seems to elate everyone else, at least not until last week.

Since then I have been running more and feeling really good.

My life is going well right now.

It's hard sometimes to recognize when that is, so thank you to all my friends who make this possible.

I'd like to thank the Academy as well. Together, we shall prevail.

My Life is Complete

I follow religiously the Ball Don't Lie NBA blog on Yahoo!

J.E. Skeets, the editor, often holds these "Create-A-Caption" contests with fake prizes. He posts up a picture and beseeches his readers (who number in the thousands) to create the funniest caption, which he chooses and puts under the next contest.

On more than one occasion, I offered my own NBA-related humor, but always to no avail. I wasn't hurt by it, really, since I know there are dozens of other submissions. BDL is extremely popular.

However, the other day, one of my captions was recognized as a runner-up. My Yahoo! nickname is AJ. The picture for which I wrote the caption is not the big one, but this one. I can prove it by showing you my original submission, which is number 41.


I am funny after all.

Or at least, I was funny once.

Denver Overload

I got a call from Anna, Cece, Hien and I think Lana. It was 4AM. Wonderful. Haha, they're hilarious, those Denver girls. I hope the retreat went well.

About 15 hours later, Matt and I picked up Quyen from Lion Plaza. I met her parents, who are very chill and funny. We ate at Sushi Boat, which was ok. Matt was marveling at the carousel of boats going counter-clockwise with its crew of sushi plates aboard.

He commented at how many boats there were, how it was so hard to choose a boat from so many.

And I of course commented, "Now you know how our parents felt."

There were a lot of edamame plates. Matt and I decided to place six of them on one boat, just to throw people off. Quyen, of course, wanted nothing to do with it.

"OMG, I don't know you guys," was her constant intersession.

Well, for those of you who understand the dynamics of sushi-boating, it takes a bit of time before one round is complete. So Matt and I got 3 or 4 plates of edamame on one boat. Running out of said edamame plates, we waited, plucking up innocent edamame plates along the way so as to hold them off for the mother ship.

I see our boat coming back around, and Matt and I make quick of our work. We run out again however, and only got about 4 on the boat. So we just waiting one more time for the carousel to come back around, again plucking up more plates of edamame.

Then, I catch a glimpse of the boat.

"Damn it," I exclaimed. "Guess what Matt?"
"What," was his reply.
"Wrong boat."
"What?"

We had almost covered up two different boats with edamame.

Epic edamame fail.

But at least we got frozen yogurt later. =)

It's Business Time

This is an interesting setting, in more ways than one.

I feel a sense of digital deja vu, typing along in the wee hours of the night. Those who know me understand that "wee" in this context doesn't mean the early hours of the morning. This time, it means "little" or "very small." 2:30AM is not late, it is a small hour, a time ungrown into the day. It's still early for me. My deja vu comes not from my physical setting, the school of business is very new to me. It comes from the familiarity of late-night procrastination.

These hours have inadvertently become familiar to me, like a child who never grows up, trapped in an innocence that we cannot help but come to love.

But maybe we don't love children like we think we do. Maybe we simply have grown used to their presumed innocence, their assumed naivete. We are used to their smallness, their youth that we sometimes envy. And maybe it is not the Love of emotions, but rather the Love of habit that we feel for them.

For we are often broken-hearted more over habit than for love itself. It is the habit of care that becomes for us a part of our day, a part of our lives and a part of ourselves. And when this habit breaks, against our will, against our choice, we become desolate, like we lost a part of ourselves, a sandal in the ocean that the tides take and never return.

I hate these hours. I used to revel in them. I used to dominate the nightly/morningly rants and adventures that were a part of me like the air I breathe. They were the branches to my tree and my leaves were golden, shimmering just as the sun hinted its suffocating arrival.

But like a tree, my leaves have fallen, and I grew accustomed to my emptiness. I didn't mind losing my leaves, my glistening foliage. My branches were barren, but I still had myself and I was okay. But autumn's end inevitably brings winter, and now I am laden with snow. I embraced my fate with optimism at first, admiring the twinkle of each snowflake, the beauty of powder glistening around me.

Then the snowflakes built up. My boughs were burdened with blankets of blizzard-induced snow, and their weight pushed me down.

Now these hours are lived without adventure, without enjoyment. They are a burden on me. My choices have left me heavy with duty. Each new dark realization becomes an icicle below my branches, stabbing into the air like a falcon's talon, searching for weakness.

I don't want to be a tree anymore. That's lame.

We were all young once, wishing, yearning to be free. I was too. So I chose to reach as high as I could go. I never realized that no matter how high I want to go, that no matter how beautiful the journey and growth may be, I will always be firmly rooted in the Earth. Terra Madre holds me down.

I know why the caged bird sings.

Cuz it's fuckin' boring in a cage.

My Favorite Albums of All Time

It seems like toddlers are in a permanent state of inebriation. Their drunken actions are excused simply by the fact of their youth. They are difficult to control, to keep track of, because they are always going around, looking for new things or finding new things to explain and figure out. Like drunk people, sometimes they find something that catches their interest, and once something else grabs their attention, the previous adventure is immediately forgotten, lost as a distant memory. Forgetting about the past, they live in the present and cannot worry about the future or the consequences of their actions.

Like drunkards.
We drink to forget, to fill our lives with a placebo vibrance so that we dull our worries about our future. Except that in children, this is okay. It is understandable because they have not learned to Worry, to think about Consequences. Eventually they will learn that things come with Repercussions, that a wigged-out old nerd named Newton decreed every Action with an appropriate Reaction. Until then, however, their naivete is their golden ticket from punitive judgment, their permission slip for a field trip to be carefree, signed tacitly by the World as their legal guardian. For when we grow up, there is no one else but ourselves to hold us accountable. We ingrain in our souls the shackles of Responsibility and Morality, forgetting our carefree memories of a happier time, and there is no permission slip or waiver to remind us of our follies.

Or we drink. We escape. Alcohol becomes our telescope into the stars, where everything twinkles merrily, and the celestial bodies have nothing to do with our Earthly problems. While Newton proclaimed us grounded, Galileo let us look out into a world not our own, a vicarious and precarious glance into an Other.

But a child always looks through this lens, always sees with the utmost clarity the Nature of Things. And their questions are pure, questions asked with alacrity from drunk astronomers, to which oftentimes there are no tangible answers, only more questions.

But we're stuck in an unfair, unanswerable world, where Growing Up means blurring our vision, where Age equals Responsibility, where Maturity comes only with Morality and Accountability, where telescopes are put away and alcoholism is a disease, where we can't get the signature to go on our field trip, where Time goes forward, uncaring, unstopping, where children must Grow Up and Grown-Ups must Remain Up.

And scariest of all, where Chuck Norris awaits.




On a lighter note, I started the second part of this entry back in the early days of January, with the idea of recapping my favorite films of the year. Then I thought that movie reviews were too long, and that generally, few people watch the movies I watch. So I decided that I would recap all the albums of my life, ranking them accordingly.

Since this will obviously cause rifts and clamors of argument over my opinion, I offer this caveat: These are my personal favorite albums of all time, not the objective greatest. I will list my reasons accordingly, but please keep that in mind.

With that said, I shall begin, two at a time, starting with the honorable mentions and numbers 10 and 9

Honorable mentions:

15. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me (2002)
14. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans (2005)
13. Avril Lavigne - Let Go (2002)
12. Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This to Memory (2005)
11. The Killers - Hot Fuss (2005)

10. Sarina Paris - Sarina Paris (2001)
Notable Songs: Look at Us, Just About Enough, So I Wait
Sarina Paris makes my #10 mainly because her music is insanely catchy. I am a huge fan of pop-like sounds and melodies and though her lyrics are lacking, it is more than made up in her stylishly synthetic and pulsating voice. Her songs exude energy and the dance beats that constitute the majority of her music combined with techno-voice are the perfect union of pop/electronica. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of beat-driven pop music.

9. Stars - Heart (2003), Set Yourself on Fire (2004), In Our Bedroom After the War (2007)
Notable Songs: Heart, Calendar Girl, The Night Starts Here, Personal, The Big Fight
I grouped these albums together because they all have similar sounds. You can almost look at them as one big album released by the very talented Canadian indie band Stars. Actually, After the War has a bit of a more melancholy sound and moves a bit slower than the first two, but it's still very similar in theme and tone. To me, these three particular albums represent a three-act story. Act 1, Heart, establishes the tone and the characters involved. It introduces you to the interesting sounds and wonderfully conversational lyrics of the band. Act 2, Set Yourself on Fire, continues the story and almost builds up to the pinnacle, Calendar Girl, and the third Act, After the War, is like the sad resolution. Calendar Girl and Heart are honestly among two of my favorite songs of all time. I have to thank Winnie for introducing me to Stars. They pretty much embody my current preference in music, sad lyrics, sad melodies and both male and female vocalists.

More to come later!