:: heartattackmachine ::

:: Sunday, December 29, 2002 ::

Averystill: no, i'm sorry. i've fouled up several friendships lately. i wanted to avoid any more trouble. i'm sorry i was rude.
getoutyershirt: it's ok
getoutyershirt: from the little I know of you, I was disapointed and worried that you didn't like me
getoutyershirt: and it made me feel really sad
getoutyershirt: and that's why I kept trying
getoutyershirt: I'm pretty resilient.
getoutyershirt: I wouldn't say that I'm a pushover, but I'm hard to get rid of.
getoutyershirt: what happened with the other relationships?
Averystill: i know it sounds silly, but even though i've made a lonely place for myself to live in, i don't want to make any friends. i'm sorry that means you are neglected. i'm not sure i really want to talk about those other relationships.
getoutyershirt: ok.
Averystill: ok
getoutyershirt: I understand. I just think you're the shit. I don't know.
getoutyershirt: you can't live that way your entire life. there'll be people who will bug you to death to let them in.
Averystill: i'm really not
getoutyershirt: that's your opinion
getoutyershirt: you don't know what I mean when I feel someone's the shit
Averystill: alright. but i still know that you're wrong. i'm not being modest.
getoutyershirt: it's not about being modest, ryan
getoutyershirt: I know what you're talking about or I think I know
getoutyershirt: that's not fucking right
getoutyershirt: if you know enough not to say you're the shit, then you go down as the shit in my book
getoutyershirt: I think I suck ass. or I feel I suck ass. pretty much all the fucking time. does that mean I do?
getoutyershirt: and you're not a bastard
getoutyershirt: or you wouldn't be saying that you're not the shit
getoutyershirt: you'd get fired up if someone else told you weren't
Averystill: listen kid. i'm going to go skate board now. i don't think either of us do very well. i don't really skate board.
Averystill: night kid.
getoutyershirt: why do you do that?
getoutyershirt: ok
getoutyershirt: bye.
Averystill signed off at 8:14:02 PM.

:: judy nguyen 5:31 PM [+] ::
...

I feel good and I feel like an ass.
sorry dave. I understand why now.

:: judy nguyen 5:49 PM [+] ::
...

I'll agree with dave on this one: people who don't get the irony (that includes boston phoenix writers) of charlie kaufman's new movie adaptation suck big, dirty asspipe. yum.
I'm also glad that I got john exactly the video game he secretly desired: hitman 2. it makes me far cooler than I would be if I had dropped the two hundred bucks for a xbox or the girlfriend of someone else we both know. I did clue him in instead of just landing it on him when I'll see him monday, but we all can't be perfect?

:: judy nguyen 1:59 PM [+] ::
...

thou shalt not kill
cliches may be cliches, but rarely does it seem that they are fully realized in the minds of those who employ them

:: judy nguyen 9:43 PM [+] ::
...

I don't know why but I lied earlier. it wasn't really a lie. at least concious me wasn't lying though I can't say much about my unconcious. anyway, the realize I now remember I didn't call out to them was a felt as if when I opened my mouth and even as hard as I tried to force it I couldn't feel my voice come out. I think I feel that way a lot. probably in real life because in dreams I feel pretty confident. so now I guess my dream psyche has been poisoned by the awake.
eventually, while giving up, I realized that they probably needed the shoes.

:: judy nguyen 10:03 AM [+] ::
...

I forgot to write about this earlier but last night I dreamed I was on one side of a building and I took off my shoes and walked to the other side where I might have met john and we did the stuff we do when we are together and out (whatever that is) and then when I walked back to the first side maybe solo I saw a woman and a small child taking my shoes they were far away enough so that if I stayed at the same pace they would have been across the street before I reached my shoes I thought about speaking up but it looked like they might have needed them

:: judy nguyen 7:29 PM [+] ::
...

well, it seems that many people I know are having a bad time this holiday season and the rest are having dull ones.
personally and right now, I feel purged and I feel as if I should apologize john for last night, but in the same breath, it's probably another situation where though I'm to blame it's not really a place for apology.
I was talking to mikale. I started, well, talking to him yesterday. the story, interesting or not, was that thom was talking about his large mishap the other day (readers can probably find the stories of what happened to my friends on their own. or not. I just don't know if it's my place.) which directed me to his journal which I really haven't looked at for a while. well, the last two comments were from some guy who went by mikale and had about a gazillion sn's (only one of which he, later revealed to me, that he actually uses). I don't know. for some reason I was curious, and I guess perhaps merely for the sake of it. or maybe not. anyway, I question thom about him and he tells me that they're actually talking right now and after what seems to me as strangely unnecessary trouble and thom telling me that he's being an asshole at the moment (later this was explained in less vague terms by mikale), I get mikale's sn and we start talking. I probably shouldn't journal every detail. well, eventually I stop acting weird in the way I'll act weird and he turns out to be a great guy and I realize that I might suffer from manic-depression and it feels weird to be able to share aspects of myself that I've never really been able to before. the search and encounter of someone like you in the world will apparently never end.
anyway, after some coaxing and some guilt and some boredom last night, I told dave I'd come over. well, I don't know why I'm writing so much. it felt very much like portnoy's holiday with pumpkin's family. you know, they don't cook white bread through all the way. I'm not really dissing the st. germain clan really. it just felt weird. a social group. there was another social group at my house too, but I didn't really belong there either. a social group of self-made's is a little bit of an oxymoron. anyway, I like his room, I never knew he was a computer geek (his word. not mine. I never knew. it's interesting. well, I'm trying to juggle words and the balls as usual are falling out of my hands.), I can use his server for my domain apparently, and the more I know about jehae the weirder I feel and so yeah.
I got woken up this morning to open some envelopes and I wonder if I should buy john a xbox, but I think I should approach him about the matter first. vicky's in a real muddle, and I think I should hang out with her sometime soon. watching ann dissect the boxes for her new bratz dolls (which made up the bulk of her christmas presents), it made me sort of sick and I knew if the political critic in me really wanted to run into the bathroom and throw up, it's likely I could've.

:: judy nguyen 9:45 AM [+] ::
...

a new coat that I've named after you know who.
wow, wilder's hot. I don't know.
I might buy a domain and you better not steal it.
john hasn't called yet.

:: judy nguyen 4:39 PM [+] ::
...

with a smashing snl debut, al gore has decided not to run?
screw that.

:: judy nguyen 3:10 PM [+] ::
...

pictures of myself always seem to look sort of sinister. except for all the young ones now. sometimes I look well in the mirror.

:: judy nguyen 3:57 PM [+] ::
...

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here. smith scares me a little and john bought me a copy of the shorter oed. certain people welcome me here and seem content with my quiet. okay.

:: judy nguyen 3:56 PM [+] ::
...

john left on an aeroplane this morning and all he left me was a burned copy of bright eyes' last album. (kidding about the second independent clause)
I find myself bored, a little sad, and restless. maybe, I could slip down to camco for some orange dry, but maybe I'll just wait until my mom provides me with nourishment.

:: judy nguyen 2:47 PM [+] ::
...

well, I know I've changed it, but I still want you to see what it said:

wake up the dying, don't wake up the dead, change what you're saying, don't change what you said (the eels)

:: judy nguyen 3:59 PM [+] ::
...

did a good deed today and helped a pigeon out of the davis sq. t. however, it turned out that there was no film in my camera. doh.

:: judy nguyen 12:09 PM [+] ::
...

something I wrote this morning:

when I think of advice my mother tried to instill in us as children, I don't know if it is the fault of my own memory (I've consulted with siblings whose childhood memories now apparently are vaguer than my own) or if didacticism simply wasn't within her nature. the fact of the matter is I can only remember her warning me of the fragile and tortured complexes of barren women: "child, those unfortuanate souls, though not evil incarnate, are capable of very strange things. the trouble of their bad luck is a force to be reckoned with."
perhaps it was because we never heard any horror stories about old ms. fine kidnapping neighborhood children and chaining them to the radiator that my mother's warning never made much sense. at least not until mona's third miscarriage.
when on the phone with my mother, who herself had given birth to and raised three children with none of the complications my wife attempted to endure, she would fall silent with what I imagined a slow shaking of her head when conversation inevitably turned to mona.
"does she love you?"
"I think so."
"do you love her?"
"I'm sure."
"Then maybe that's enough."
I knew it only took me a little longer before I could see the beginning of the end.

:: judy nguyen 2:55 PM [+] ::
...

I'm not entirely sure if I'm really someone who uses that word totally that often. though maybe I should.

:: judy nguyen 7:42 PM [+] ::
...

turns out...

...that my leto photo likely didn't come out. bleh, should be more careful about these types of things. oh, and if it did, my flash was set to 1000 iso. blah.
...the threading on my lens is busted. I now know what to tell mommy and daddy what to get their darling (right) for christmas when they ask.
...keith has a livejournal and that he's far cooler than I ever remember taking him for granted for. kind of makes me want to get in his pants though john is way mine.
...professor yeager is one of those crazy bleeding heart liberals that still yet refuse to look at the underlying, really vicious circles of cause and effect of society. but I guess I probably should have at least known that when he had that totally didactic speaker come in who almost made me feel completely guilty for not signing up for his organization. geez. maybe earlier than that even.
...shel silverstein is probably the heaviest influence on my writing and that he was totally killer and that it totally sucked when he died.
...there's something like trivial pursuit:the last 20 years and I totally want that. totally.

:: judy nguyen 7:41 PM [+] ::
...

in a fairly uninteresting chain of events, today I met once-teen-heartthrob jared leto. I wonder if his nonplussed, jaded attitude is common to has-beens and perhaps never-mores or if it was a fixture even in the heyday of my so-called life.
however looking at imdb.com, that jared hasn't been faring too badly lately. possibly a better time than with ms. danes.

:: judy nguyen 3:46 PM [+] ::
...

"how robin would have loved this!" the aunts used to say fondly. "how robin would've laughed!" in truth, robin had been a giddy, fickle child--somber at odd moments, practically hysterical at others--and, in life, this unpredicatability had been a great part of his charm. but his younger sisters, who had never in any proper sense known him at all, nonetheless grew up certain of their dead brother's favorite color (red); his favorite book (the wind in the willows) and his favorite character in it (mr. toad); his favorite flavor of ice cream (chocolate) and his favorite baseball team (the cardinals) and a thousand other things which they--being living children, and preferring chocolate ice cream one week and peach the next--were not ever sure they knew about themselves. consequently their relationship with their dead brother wa of the most intimate sort, his strong, bright, immutable character shining changelessly against the vagueness and vacillation of their own characters, and the characters of people that they knew; and they grew up believing that this was due to some rare, angelic incandescence of nature on robin's part, and not at all to the fact that he was dead. (the little friend, tartt)

:: judy nguyen 8:52 AM [+] ::
...

john's party last night was cool.
because it was an hour drive home and he didn't exactly want to stay at work until nine or ten, steve, whose fledgling band john was a member of for some of the summer, arrived early. eventually having warmed up to him, I lost track of things once kama arrived (milcah's guests [a staggering majority of the overall], with little fuss, filed up the stairs), and it really wasn't until dave arrived before I settled in again.
for john, I felt a blend of distance and desire. or was it desire with clouds of distance? it was little I could do to drag him out of there and have him to my own. I don't think I've before felt that way so pointedly. hmm. hesitant and a little intimidated, I bowed out of a lot of socializing with this strange, new group of people.
I felt oddly and distinctly attracted to one of the first few of milcah's friends that arrived. it wasn't until later that this tom and his friends moved downstairs. it was a very weird feeling, one of the very few times where I've ever so overtly flirted with anyone in my life. I tried to maintain the role of girlfriend of the host, and I think I was substantially sucessful. my feelings of thrill and dirtiness were inextricable. though john denies this, I find it difficult to believe that he didn't notice.
almost all of john's guests were related in one way or another to hbs. they all really did seem pleasant enough, but kat, I think, was the only one that really reminded me of the close friends of his that I have met. I mentioned this to him, and he said that she was difficult to get to committing to hanging out. I suggested that her invitation that she should hang out with us both at some point could be an excuse.
ian and mari were at the party for a little while, though john was convinced that they would not come. our collective opinion of them is waning.
though I did drink considerably more than I ever do, I'm in a pretty good state this morning and I didn't even moan and groan myself out of bed that much either. I finished the box man earlier this morning (nico, if you read this, tell ryan that woman of the dune was missing from the bookstore I frequent), and I've begun to read tartt's the little friend. I'm only a few pages in, but the little I gathered from there and then rereading the jacket summary is harrowing.

:: judy nguyen 8:04 AM [+] ::
...

she got hers, but tonight, he'll get his:
fish, birds, animals--all engage in strange courtship rituals before mating. according to specialists, it's apparently a modified form of attack and threat. all living things have their individual level of influence, and they demonstrate an instinctive reaction in attacking any encroaching invader. but mating would never come about if you based yourself on the single principle of attack no matter what. since coupling is the contact of epiderms, it will never take place unless somewhere the boundary lines are broken or some door is opened. therefore, in mating, by a modified movement or gesture that at first glance resembles attack but that somehow is different, a technique is born by which the protective instinct of the other party is scrambled or made to relax. it's the same for humans. we talk about romance, but this is after all merely aggressive instinct camouflaged with makeup and feathers. whichever it is, it doesn't change the fact that the ultimate purpose lies in breaking down and disregarding the lines of demarcation of a given area. from my own experience the line in the case of humans seems to be located at a radius about two and a half yards. courting is good, making the other part hesitate with sparkling beads and all that is good; anyway when you get through that line of demarcation you have already taken possession. at this very close proximity it is difficult rather than easy, as one would expect, to distinguish the true character of the enemy. only touch and smell are of use. (kobo abe, the box man)

:: judy nguyen 12:15 PM [+] ::
...

looking for how to write utopia in greek. cuz I plan on getting inked again next weekend.

:: judy nguyen 12:06 PM [+] ::
...

well, yeah, now I'm completely convinced I can't be a lawyer. and if I was before, now I know what to say why.

:: judy nguyen 12:04 PM [+] ::
...

a little raving marxist (not really) name dan feder sent me this:
This War Brought to You by Rendon Group By Ian Urbina
Asia Times Online
WASHINGTON, Nov 12, 2002 -- "Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy."
So twice a week, for US$3,000 a month, the Iraqi student says, under condition of anonymity, that he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firm with close ties to the US government. His job: translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq.
"I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance, the CIA or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones calling the shots," says the student, "but ultimately I realized that the guys doing spin were very well and completely cut loose." And that's how Baghdad's best-known opposition radio personality was born six years ago - during the Clinton administration. It was one of many disinformation schemes cooked up by the Rendon Group, which has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations fighting the psy-op war in the Middle East.
"The point was to discredit Saddam, but the stuff was complete slapstick," the student says. "We did skits where Saddam would get mixed up in his own lies, or where [Saddam's son] Qusay would stumble over his own delusions of grandeur." Transmissions were once a week from stations in northern Iraq and Kuwait. "The only thing that was even remotely funny," says the student, "were the mockeries of the royal guard and the government's clumsy attempts to deceive arms inspectors."
The Saddam impersonator says he left Rendon not long ago out of frustration with what he calls the lack of expertise and oversight in the project. It was doubly frustrating, he says, because he despises Saddam, although he adds that he never has been involved with any political party or opposition group. "No one in-house spoke a word of Arabic," he says. "They thought I was mocking Saddam, but for all they knew I could have been lambasting the US government." The scripts, he adds, were often ill conceived. "Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache," the student notes, "when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?"
There were other basic problems, too. Some of the announcers hired for the radio broadcasts, he says, were Egyptians and Jordanians, whose Arabic accents couldn't be understood by Iraqis. "Friends in Baghdad said that the radio broadcasts were a complete mumble," the student says. One CIA agent familiar with the project calls the project's problem a lack of "due diligence", and adds that "the scripts were put together by 23-year-olds with connections to the Democratic National Committee."
Despite the fumbling naivete of some of its operations, the Rendon Group is no novice in the field. For decades, when US bombs have dropped or foreign leaders have been felled, the public relations shop has been on the scene, just far enough to stay out of harm's way, but just close enough to keep the spin cycle going.
As Franklin Foer reported in the New Republic, during the campaign against Panama's Manuel Noriega in 1989, Rendon's command post sat downtown in a high-rise. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Rendon operatives hunkered down in Taif, Saudi Arabia, clocking billable hours on a Kuwaiti emir's dole. In Afghanistan, group founder John Rendon joined a 9:30am conference call every morning with top-level Pentagon officials to set the day's war message. Rendon operatives haven't missed a trip yet - Haiti, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Colombia.
The firm is tight-lipped, however, about its current projects. A spokesperson refuses to say whether Rendon is doing any work in preparation for the potential upcoming invasion of Iraq. But a current Rendon Arabic translator commented, "All I can say is that nothing has changed - the work is still an expensive waste of time, mostly with taxpayer funds." However, Rendon may just prove to be one step ahead of the game. If Saddam is toppled, a Rendon creation is standing by to try to take his place. The Iraqi National Congress (INC), a disparate coalition of Iraqi dissidents touted by the US government as the best hope for an anti-Saddam coup, has gotten the go-ahead from US officials to arm and train a military force for invasion. The INC is one of the few names you'll hear if reporters bother to press government officials on what would come after Saddam.
At the helm of the INC is Ahmed Chalabi, a US-trained mathematician who fled from Jordan in 1989 in the trunk of a car after the collapse of a bank he owned. He was subsequently charged and sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison for embezzlement. Back home in Iraq, he's referred to by some as the so-called limousine insurgent and is said to hold little actual standing with the Iraqi public. Shuttling between London and DC, Chalabi hasn't been in Iraq for over years, and draws "more support on the Potomac than the Euphrates," says Iraq specialist Andrew Parasiliti of the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.
"Were it not for Rendon," a State Department official remarked, "the Chalabi group wouldn't even be on the map."
With funding first from the CIA throughout the 1990s and more recently the Pentagon, Rendon managed the INC's every move, an INC spokesperson acknowledges, even choosing its name, coordinating its annual strategy conferences, and orchestrating its meetings with diplomatic heavy hitters, such as James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. Not that the Rendon Group was the first purveyor of psy-op tactics for promoting US foreign policy in the region. In fact, some of the most impressive spin maneuvers and disinformation campaigns occurred during the Gulf War in 1991, the lessons of which are particularly pertinent as the US again gears up.
Most notorious was the work of PR giant Hill & Knowlton (H&K) (for which current Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke worked after she was an aide to John McCain and Bush's dad). Subsidized by the Kuwaiti royal family, H&K dedicated 119 executives in 12 offices across the country to the job of drumming up support within the United States for the 1991 war. It was an all-out grassroots blitz: distributing tens of thousands of "Free Kuwait" T-shirts and bumper stickers at colleges across the US and setting up observances such as National Kuwait Day and National Student Information Day. H&K also mailed 200,000 copies of a book titled The Rape of Kuwait to American troops stationed in the Middle East. The firm also massaged reporters, arranging interviews with handpicked Kuwaiti emissaries and dispatching reams of footage of burning wells and oil-slicked birds washed ashore.
But nothing quite compared to H&K's now infamous "baby atrocities" campaign. After convening a number of focus groups to try to figure out which buttons to press to make the public respond, H&K determined that presentations involving the mistreatment of infants, a tactic drawn straight from W R Hearst's playbook of the Spanish-American War, received the best reaction.
So on October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill at which H&K, in coordination with California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, introduced a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah. (Purportedly to safeguard against Iraqi reprisals, Nayirah's full name was not disclosed.) Weeping and shaking, the girl described a horrifying scene in Kuwait City. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," she testified. "While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns and go into the room where babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." Allegedly, 312 infants were removed.
The tale got wide circulation, even winding up on the floor of the United Nations Security Council. Before Congress gave the green light to go to war, seven of the main pro-war senators brought up the baby-incubator allegations as a major component of their argument for passing the resolution to unleash the bombers. Ultimately, the motion for war passed by a narrow five-vote margin.
Only later was it discovered that the testimony was untrue. H&K had failed to reveal that Nayirah was not only a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, but also that her father, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, was Kuwait's ambassador to the US. H&K had prepped Nayirah in her presentation, according to Harper's publisher John R MacArthur, in his book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. Of the seven other witnesses who stepped to the podium that day, five had been prepped by H&K and had used false names. When human rights organizations investigated later, they could not find that Nayirah had any connection to the hospital. Amnesty International, among those originally duped, eventually issued an embarrassing retraction.
When asked if it acknowledges the incubator story as a deception, H&K's media liaison, Suzanne Laurita, only responded: "The company has nothing to say on this matter." Pushed further on whether such deception was considered part of the public relations industry, she reiterated, "Please know again that this falls into the realm that the agency has no wish to confirm, deny or comment on." Years later, Scowcroft, the national security adviser at the time, concluded that the tale was surely "useful in mobilizing public opinion".
H&K's baby-atrocity routine really won over the hearts, but for the minds of realpolitik skeptics the Pentagon had other methods. To sway them, the Pentagon flooded the major media outlets with reports of a top-secret satellite image that allegedly showed 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks amassed at the Iraqi-Saudi border.
Once again, this was misinformation. When the US military refused to hand the satellite image over to the press, several investigative journalists opted to purchase commercially available, but equally detailed, satellite images on the open market. Shots of the exact same region, during the same time frame, revealed no Iraqi soldiers anywhere near the border. The journalists hired a coterie of experts, including a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who specialized in desert warfare imagery, and the verdict was the same: no Iraqis, just desert and a lot of US jet fighters sitting wing-tip to wing-tip at nearby Saudi bases.
But by the time those questions began circulating about the Pentagon's supposed satellite image and the web of decisions being spun around it, the US military was already set on course. Once again, a similar mobilization is in high gear, with skeptical questions lagging behind.

© Asia Times Online, 2002. Distributed in partnership with Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net). All rights reserved.

:: judy nguyen 12:02 PM [+] ::
...

according to john's "forgotten english" daily calendar today is the feast day of st. emillion, the patron saint of those who have misplaced a possession.
I just mention this because I know I tend to harp about things and people. people, I know, can be found, even though I don't always have the courage to acknowledge that.

:: judy nguyen 6:46 PM [+] ::
...

oh, baby, where are the fireworks!
iraq said yes! no war!

:: judy nguyen 9:32 AM [+] ::
...

quotable notables? right:

I turned to look but it was gone
-scrawled on the corner of a desk in college of arts and sciences 211

from kobo abe's the box man:

when anyone comes into contact with the scenery around him, he tends to see selectively only those elements necessary. for example, though one remembers a bus stop, one can have absolutely no recollection of a large willow tree nearby. one's attention is caught willy-nilly by the hundred-yen piece dropped on the road, but the bent and rusty nail and the weeds by the wayside may just as well not be there. on the average road one usually manages not to go astray. however, as soon as one looks out of the box's observation window, things appear to be quite different. the various details of the scenery become homogenous, have equal significance. cigarette butts...the sticky secretion in a dog's eye...the windows of a two-story house with the curtains waving...the creases in a flattened drum...rings biting into flabby fingers...railroad tracks leading into the distance...sacks of cement hardened because of moisture...dirt under the fingers...loose mahole covers...but I am very fond of such scenery. the distance in it is fluid and the contours vague, and thus perhaps it resembles my own position. the scenery has the gentleness of a garbage dump. one never wearies of looking at such a view as long as one is peering out from a box.

when you're thirsty you can't help running in the direction of illusory water, even though you realize it's a mirage.

:: judy nguyen 3:36 PM [+] ::
...

hey kids, I know I don't wear a 34c. so what is this doing on my desk?
and so the story of the absent roommate goes. first my chair. then my bedframe. and now this.

:: judy nguyen 8:18 AM [+] ::
...

there are too many times when I can't help but have classic love songs stuck in my head.
the usual suspects: dindi and l-o-v-e

:: judy nguyen 1:19 PM [+] ::
...

anyone know how erotic warming oil works? I suspect it's some kind of weird superconductor.

:: judy nguyen 12:54 PM [+] ::
...

jones and john are out:

I knew it was only a matter of time before I heard buskers performing coldplay.
this morning was the first time I heard wonderwall too: backbeat the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out I know that you've heard it all before but you never really had a doubt

:: judy nguyen 12:51 PM [+] ::
...

well. there's a majority in the house, and romney won by a landslide here. there seems like there's nothing we really could've done. I guess the only thing we could do is hold on tight.

:: judy nguyen 7:31 AM [+] ::
...

I get emails like this and wonder if there's something really wrong. with me:

i really am sorry about bugging you with touching and stuff. as much as you don't like it, i think i do like it, especially in the morning...makes me feel safe and warm and close to you; but i understand that it just keeps you from sleeping, so i won't do it anymore. sometimes with as much as you joke about other things -- making fun of me, telling me how much i suck and whatnot -- i make the mistake of thinking you're less than serious about other things [like tickling and now this touching in the morning]. i'll be more careful.
i'm gonna wait a couple hours before i work the plan out with ian and mari, make sure i still feel up for it for tonight. i'll probably try to get in touch with them early afternoon...do you have any preference on the dinner plan?
john

:: judy nguyen 7:29 AM [+] ::
...

relatively new stuff:

fuck it, he cried and he stormed out the lot.
she could not stamp out a dropped cigarette. (partially inspired by a tindersticks show)

-do you know what I would want a tattoo of?
-what?
-a green rose
I slowly started to lose faith. -a rose?
-a green rose
-does that have any specific reference?
-yeah, do you know the portrait of the artist as a young man?
-I haven't read that book since I was in high school
-it means utopia
-yeah I know. I wrote papers on it
-most people have no idea what I'm talking about (more or less, except for you know, a transcription of a conversation with joe)

:: judy nguyen 9:52 AM [+] ::
...

yeats, to be honest, kind of bothered me a little:

for some reason, dan had once tried to argue to me the irrationality of the word okay.

:: judy nguyen 9:49 AM [+] ::
...

melissa arrived late thursday night, and by last night, it already seemed like she had been around for weeks.
I know it didn't take me too long after I came back and was hanging out with john to feel as if I had never really left. but this is something new.
dave: please, I care, you're causing yourself unnecessary pain. I thought you told me you were getting past it. I still really find it haunting, though, when I hang out with any of them.

:: judy nguyen 9:33 AM [+] ::
...

something old: or because, hell, it's the same basic concept, but who's being more rational:

I love you though you're horrible, she said.
Am I really that bad?
He was answered with a nod and laughter.
But it doesn't matter.
I know.
They paused and she asked, Where do you see us in twenty years?
Dead. Under a pile of rubble of a post-apocalyptic-
See! You are horrible!
But in each others arms.
Oh.
Where do you see us?
Apart.

:: judy nguyen 9:26 AM [+] ::
...

yeats:

though john says that he was writing about ireland, I think there's a lot of wisdom here. and by lack of conviction, I do not mean apathy. I'm prepared to quote from wilde and personal experience.

:: judy nguyen 12:13 PM [+] ::
...

not that I'm a total conspiracy freak or anything:
hearing two girls in the photo lab discussing sensed dubiousness of senator wellstone's "accident" yesterday, I feel a little less crazy for my "wag the dog"-esque view of the recent sniper fiasco. I know john and I have talked about this, but I can't help the feeling that it all seemed somewhat slick. it came to such an abrupt end. I think that it's clear that public reaction would be what it was.* very few resources would have to be applied, and relatively few casualities would result. I'm only surprised that the muslim/sept. 11th card isn't being played harder.

---

*those with any doubt are suggested to see michael moore's new movie, bowling for columbine

:: judy nguyen 10:02 AM [+] ::
...

oh and also friday night in new york at this pretentious seafood restaurant at e. 6th and a surrounded by crazies and presumably sheltered by john and kirk was my one first experience of being high in public. in short the shit was scared straight out of me and I swore I was going to get thrown out of there or given a talking to at any moment.
john also mentioned that it was probably the best weed I've taken in his presence.

:: judy nguyen 4:47 PM [+] ::
...

taking the highest bidder:
earlier today I took a nice header into some pavement. the things highest up my list of concern are: the shit I will have to go through to get this broken tooth looked at, my stupid fucking scraped up knee, tomorrow's depth of field assignment, my sociology readings, and john's temperament (not that it's bad. he's doing fucking fantastic. I'm just concerned because well shit happened, and though I'm pretty calm, I'm concerned if he's not.).
the one high point of this whole ordeal (other than, perhaps, added character) is this prescription for vicodin. I don't know about anyone else, but I really have to be banged up to resort to painkillers.

:: judy nguyen 4:38 PM [+] ::
...

recently I seem to be making friends

:: judy nguyen 11:50 AM [+] ::
...

because sometimes you just get those ideas:
he stooped to caress nina's body. -cold as a corpse, he chuckled. -a corpse.
remembering something done often at some point and yet never previously been recalled, he remembered all those preschool 'science' books talking about how hot things grew cold. and I know this sounds funny, though often that phrase is exactly how it is read, but this isn't the case here. it wasn't until an introductory environmental science course (rocks for jocks) that he realized just occured.
it had been about five hours from now, and it was clearly not 98.6 degrees.

:: judy nguyen 5:34 PM [+] ::
...

I've figured over the weekend that the first season of the young ones is my favorite television show of all time. we've only gotten to the first episode of the second season and it just strikes me as well... a sitcom.
beginning to feel bad that I confused kids in the hall with it.
and also, for all those who want to know, vyvyan is the one I would fuck.

:: judy nguyen 5:28 PM [+] ::
...

where's my john?
the other night when we were talking about tattoos and how they suck if they aren't assigned meanings that transcend any specific reference and how you can't hide a tattoo if it's on your knuckles, I asked him if I had ever told him about the guy who came through a couple years ago who had jesus tattooed to his forehead. john seemed pretty impressed by that.
there was a poem but I couldn't recall it.

:: judy nguyen 6:12 PM [+] ::
...

in 1996, more homicides occurred in st. louis (population 374,000) than in the entire nation of scotland (population 5,100,000) -- and scottish homicide levels are considered high by european standards.
(messner/rosenfield, crime and the american dream)

:: judy nguyen 7:59 AM [+] ::
...

----- Original Message -----
From: judy nguyen
To: gounderground@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 4:33 PM
Subject: Re: [gounderground] I got a kick out of this


ugh. I don't really want to worsen the vibe I'm picking up, but how many people did we kill, have we killed? and nonetheless there are more competent persons on "that" side to defend than dubya. there is a long history of looking at government policy far too subjectively. this mistake applies as well to liberal perspectives. such was made unfortuanately clear in the soviet experiment, and I'm not just talking about stalin. I don't have the authority to say that if significantly more objective leaders had been in power that socialism would have worked, but I'm almost certain things would've been far less tragic. I've suffered way too many headaches this past weekend with liberals who seem too far off the deep end when it comes to looking at what really works in the real (sorry) world. and I wasn't even the one arguing against them. mentalities vary to a great degree, and undermining this is fatal in accomplishing any revolution. the larger the revolution the larger the importance. somewhat tangentially, david sedaris once wrote that nearly all communists picture themselves as those carrying the clipboards. not a good idea. like it or not, brave new world (do not confuse this statement with 1984. there is not one utopian theory.) makes a lot of sense, and perhaps sadly, I'm not clear whether that is good or bad. josalee, I admit I have no idea where you stand politically, but I hope nevertheless you find value in at least some of the above. and I post this to the list because I find that it's important that everyone hear this. maybe I'm terribly wrong and didactic and all this was painfully obvious to everyone and by being a liberal we're naturally inclined to take things objectively and so I suck, but I've seen far too much that worries the shit out of me even when I feel I'm sure I shouldn't worry at all. to quote somehow who this weekend I realized was my favorite female singer songwriter (aimee mann): history shows but rarely shows it well
I know I didn't pay attention in high school history courses. though I do have to admit, they did suck.
also in preparation to anyone who says they lost someone that day, I'm sorry and I can't relate. I don't know if it's gross to say, but the only thing that bothered me as a direct response to the attacks is that my shithead of a brit friend, though he got his travel plans messed up, did not appear to put in effort into getting in touch with me. perhaps I'm too far on the other extreme, but it seems far less dangerous.
judy
----- Original Message -----
From: Josalee Thrift
To: gounderground@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [gounderground] I got a kick out of this


yeah, let's sympathize with the guy who's responsible for killing 2,000 americans and convince ourselves that it's OUR fault.

sounds like a GREAT idea.
----- Original Message -----
From: judy nguyen
To: gounderground@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 11:41 AM
Subject: [gounderground] I got a kick out of this


only wish I was so clever: http://perceptions.diaryland.com/010927_61.html

:: judy nguyen 1:44 PM [+] ::
...

I- love the things you say but I hate that they exist to be said.
-Yeah, I know what you mean
subhead: I hate the phoenix but I'll make this one concession
ted drozdowski, the phoenix, 10/4/02
Mann explains that the dark and stormy tales of Lost in Space, in which references to drug abuse and other compulsive behaviors abound, are more the result of her taste in reading that anything else. I'm really interested in the human brain, so for quite a while now I've been reading about the brain and psychiatry and everything in-between. I'm interested in people and how they work, and in general I'm interested in self-awareness. I go to therapy, and for me there's a big incentive in trying to be really self-aware. I want to act like a conscious person.
I'm trying to formulate my own unified-field theory about the human mind and human behavior. I believe that there's no difference between brain chemistry and human emotions. If you experience emotions, you'll experience a change in brain chemistry. I've read studies that prove childhood trauma triggers measurable changes in the brain. And I think the subconscious wants to tell the story, even if someone can't consciously tell the story. That's why somebody who was molested as a child will often act in a sexually inappropriate way -- become a sex addict or a prostitute, or be sexually avoidant.
Personally, I don't want to be somebody who acts from out of the subconscious. That's very out-of-control behavior. So that's why I do a lot of reading about addiction and brain trauma, and it really brings me to a greater understanding of other people. Even the more extreme cases of people who are drug addicts and have problems with compulsive behavior that seem inexplicable.

:: judy nguyen 9:38 AM [+] ::
...

it's been tough the last couple of days, real tough:
at last night's aimee mann* show, the two seats to the left of us were empty for a real long time. midway through juliana hatfield's set, a middleaged man came and we stood up to let him through. after maybe ten minutes and he had settled in, tucking his coat into the empty seat, he offered that I could leave mines there also; his wife wouldn't be attending. I told him I didn't have a coat. I didn't say thank you and I didn't say okay and I wasn't really curt but I wish I had said more and the longer you wish
the more difficult it is.

---

*we're going to a signing this afternoon. I want to say something and there are things I could say. but I don't know.

:: judy nguyen 7:36 AM [+] ::
...

a b- on my first exam of the semester. it's not bad. not really. he said that the average would be the cut off point between a c+ and a b- and I wasn't on the lower end of the b- spectrum. though it's a pretty narrow one. I didn't work that hard, it doesn't mean that much to me and yet somehow I expect more.

:: judy nguyen 7:20 AM [+] ::
...

see the chaos

---

sorry about earlier. as you see it has been fixed.

:: judy nguyen 12:12 PM [+] ::
...

I miss david.
pictures from this weekend's misadventures in vermont's fair ol' kettle pond coming soon.

:: judy nguyen 2:48 PM [+] ::
...

I feel like I'm running out of brain cells today.
I think I should start telling people that my tattoo is an external expression of an internal issue. it's hollowing to talk of movies and rock bands. even if people think I'm really cool for all the references to imaginary bunny rabbits.

:: judy nguyen 2:43 PM [+] ::
...

shortly before we left this morning, I wondered how a leaf could've fallen into my glasses. it turned out to be a bee. I can't say that I didn't even blink, but I probably didn't blink any more than usual. more than I can say for the puss. eh boy?
while looking for a copy of art's maus,* I found I went to college and it was okay authored by a man merely known as jim. from the first strip, I noticed an apathetic sympathy that right away reminded me of david. I thought about him a fair bit this weekend. some sort of quest for an ideal I guess.
he worked at mcdonald's too. but he was a little more embarassed.

---

*which I rather be reading than a densely written history of soviet politics

:: judy nguyen 7:49 PM [+] ::
...

I was looking for a way to say things:
there are the posters on his wall. the albums on his shelves. the recollections of stories he has told. the first three quotes on his log. this thing around my neck. the everything scattered everywhere. that give me the distinct feeling of belonging here.
when I started writing this, I think I was worse off, and now that I'm beginning turn, I continue to wonder if it's justified, if any of it's justified, if it being justified should even matter. and why shouldn't it matter?

:: judy nguyen 5:12 PM [+] ::
...

saw adam in the street today. like seeing emily at the end of last year.* got me thinking about accusation and the tactics we employ to avoid being subject. I only noticed when he was just passing me. he likely recognized me from far off. I couldn't tell what was on his mind. is the fucker married yet or has the engagement been broken off? I'm sure it probably doesn't matter.
john: I'm sorry about earlier.

---

*astonishing the way people move

:: judy nguyen 1:49 PM [+] ::
...

I found some peaches that my mom had given me* about a week and a half ago now. I couldn't find it in myself to humor them for too long.
the developing tank I bought yesterday at ferranti-dege confuses me.
though I sleep like a maniac, I think john's staying up too late.
he didn't seem too well last night.

---

*and I, of course, had forgotten

:: judy nguyen 2:30 PM [+] ::
...

trivial pursuit:
with lingonberry and black currant flavored sodas and having avoided inclusion in wars since 1814, one might think the swedes have got it made.*
however john still didn't let me have the phil hartman question. well, I did win once.

---

*in a certain light
p.s. I am back. NOW get me a drink

:: judy nguyen 7:59 AM [+] ::
...

my mother knows about my tattoo now. when she asked me what it was and I said temporary. a lie. that she saw through and I immediately began attacking the point of further discussion. reminded of a poem I had been inspired to write much earlier this summer. hard to describe schematics. I don't know if I want to transcribe it here. a phone call in the not quite middle of the night.* a person who is my mother. and yet I'm not me and so what if she is she?
how many people would be in our lives now if not for extenuating circumstances

---

*because who sleeps in the middle anymore?

:: judy nguyen 11:58 AM [+] ::
...

was planning to be back in town today but apparently that turned out not to be the case:
you risk tears if you let yourself be tamed (st. exupery, little prince)

:: judy nguyen 11:35 AM [+] ::
...

today is john's thirtyfirst birthday.
okay. all right. fine.

:: judy nguyen 10:59 AM [+] ::
...

something about throwing up for well over a half hour saturday night and being very aware of own mortality should have been here.
but something fucked up.

:: judy nguyen 3:44 PM [+] ::
...

this week's boston globe magazine:
in an article about women venting about their miscarriages through the internet, the writer describes a certain rare neural disorder as incompatible with life. I'm not sure about my thoughts on this phrase. even if I was sure about her* writing.

---

* a survivor herself

:: judy nguyen 8:07 PM [+] ::
...

you just gotta hear me out, man. it was seriously as if she considered her entire fucking life a sob story. but don't think I wasn't crazy about her. she had these incredible fucking eyes. when I looked into them my soul was burning out.

:: judy nguyen 2:39 PM [+] ::
...

I once told john that he was one of the two people that I know that have ever managed to consistently make me feel real. he told me he wondered if those people weren't a little doomed in the long run.
we have some fantastic moments together. much like late tuesday afternoon. but I wonder if there isn't a pervading, underlying sense all the same.

:: judy nguyen 10:58 AM [+] ::
...

wait a minute before you trash this altogether: part two with dedications (or in other words, geesh. I don't think I can get to sleep before I finish this fucking story.):
The morning after I moved in, I woke up and found my arm around her bare chest. We had slept together a few times before, but I had never spent the night together with her.
Though I would've liked to continue in that position, I noticed the time and realized that I would have to leave soon.
I tried to pull back my arm, but my hand seemed tangled in the thin chain she had around her neck. She woke up and I noticed she wore the star of david.
"Why do you wear that charm? You're always talking about your disenchantment with religion."
"During the Holocaust, Hitler made the Jews wear yellow, cardboard tags. He killed them all the same. Do you think it mattered who believed and who did not?"

---

Though we hadn't planned any trips in the near future, she decided to obtain a passport.
I found her one day sitting at the kitchen island, grimacing at the photo. I told her that it couldn't nearly be that bad. Unconvinced, she handed me the small folio.
As I expected, the picture was far from terrible. In a quirky way, she had even been cute. What puzzled me was that the printed name was Sarah Libitz-Casey and not simply Sarah Libitz. I asked her about it.
"When I was ten, my mother remarried to a horrible, abusive man. He left her fortuanately. But not without changing her daughter's name."

---

After I had left her, I was in shambles. I went to a bar across the street and downed a few too many shots. I called my friend Ross. He told me to come right over.
I waited a few minutes for the cab I had called. Worried that I had missed it, it took some effort to find someone able to drive to his neighborhood.
When the cabbie asked what race I was, I responded that my father was Spanish while my mother was Mexican. Soon I realized that he had asked the question to tell me a story he had once heard on the radio about how a Cuban woman had cut off her husband's pennies. I gritted my teeth a little but was glad that there are still people out there who can sustain as simple pleasures.

---

I had to call out a few times before anyone came to the third-story window. (There was no buzzer)
Ross' roommate Jack came. "Ever had ham soda?"
No, I couldn't say I had.

---

This story is dedicated to Ross Popoff (Walker). Loosely fictionalized around my relationship with him, it is far more a statement about what occurred than anything I can imagine. Rarely are tributes written to failed relationships. I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry. It was the loneliness that frightened me away. And what still does. This is also dedicated to Jamison King who helped me out that night and John Galvin who continues to. Also a small thank-you is needed to that cabbie for his simple form of optimism. However twisted.

:: judy nguyen 11:59 PM [+] ::
...

like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

:: judy nguyen 9:00 PM [+] ::
...

wait a moment before you trash this altogether: work in progress:
That was the last thing I heard when I walked out of the apartment. What had she meant by waiting a moment? I wondered. I had been holding my breath forever.
Even though it had torn me apart to end it all, I had been long reduced to pieces by the whole charade.
It's so hard to not understand. And yet, it's often so much harder when you do. I once heard in a song that one act of kindness can be deathly. By now, I knew what that meant all too well.

---

There was a time where I hadn't seen her for a very long while. I admit it's more than a little hard to see someone who, in addition to going to school full-time, worked two jobs to support herself. But we had seemed to manage when we first met.
It was only after months of unreturned phone calls and pleads of it being four a.m. in the morning and dead asleep that I began to think about all those advances by doe-eyed, waifish boys and girls that I had passed up. Not that I experienced any pang of regret. None of them had the same fire as she. And anyway, I was not yet near giving up.

---

I had reached her once in a caffeinated daze on the last stretch of writing a lengthy paper.
She described her schedule for the following week, bemoaning the fact that she never had a moment free and excited that it was nearly finals.
Casually, I asked if I could see her soon.
There was a long pause where I imagine she was searching for a plausible excuse.
"I don't know, David. Finals will be a real drain. And even after. I'm doing more hours at the coffee shop. Also, I thought it would be wise to take up another job."
"But there's no time at all? You'll be free all day Thursday. After all, everyone needs a little study break."
After much haggling, she finally let in and agreed to tea at her apartment. But only for an hour.

---

When I got there, I sniffed out the place, searcing for evidence of an elusive lover who spent long hours lost between her sheets. Of course, I knew there was no such thing. But that idea seemed much more sane than the one I knew to be true.
In conversation, she was pleasant but restrained. She had not yet mentioned the time, but she frequently looked at the clock on the wall behind me.
Then I started in. Her indifference was horrifying. Eventually she began to weep uncontrollably. She apologized. She gestured to her machine, telling me that there were thirty messages on it, and they were all from me. She did everything but offer any plan, any mere shred of hope, that could, in any way, console me.
And I told her so.
She grew quiet, and with tears still welling in her eyes, turned around to face me. (In her hysteria, she had been pacing in her small room. Around me but clearly avoiding my eyes.)
A few minutes passed and before I could apologize, she spoke up and muttered, "Maybe you can move in."

:: judy nguyen 8:46 PM [+] ::
...

Subj: (no subject)
Date: 7/31/02 11:09:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: j. nguyen
To: j. galvin

I was wondering this morning why I had even started on ross yesterday.
well, I told you some of this before but it seems fresher in my mind now:
was talking to jamison (couldn't imagine him any older than 26) on aim. had me call him because I seemed so messed. I hadn't really met him before but he mentioned being at this show at the middle east that I had gone to. I remember eying someone that seemed to fall within his characteristics. anyway, nice guy. fairly cool. so it took me a while to get there. failing to find the cab that he called, getting the nerve to try to call a cab, finding one that could take me there, listening to the cabbie's story that he had heard about a wife cutting off her husband's pennies, being completely unsure of what end of the street he lived on... when I was up there he was already in bed with his friend marie. he didn't know that she would be over before talking to me, but she had come over on a whim to see one of jamison's roommates... (for some reason related to his going back to school in the fall, he had to move out. periodically he lived at his girlfriend's house. she was gradually going more and more nuts and he left because he thought she would be better at getting her shit together if he wasn't living with her. now he's sleeping in an office?) and they couldn't wake him up. we had a fairly good time. when we hugged we fell off the bed (I think this is why I thought of it). at first I slept in the middle, but sleeping three in what must've been a full bed was getting a little on my nerves and I got on the floor.
in the morning, he played tigermilk and made me a nice cup of sugary earl grey.

:: judy nguyen 8:17 AM [+] ::
...

Subj:
Date: 7/31/02 10:43:17 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: j. galvin
To: j. nguyen

ugh. i don't think i like that picture of me. i look so pasty. white. sallow.
but it's ok that it's there. i like that you like it. you do?
j

:: judy nguyen 8:12 AM [+] ::
...

dave says I have a californian accent but doesn't know where I got it.* john didn't have a strong comment.
I must've spent a week tops in that damn fucking place.

---

*annie said I didn't sound asian

:: judy nguyen 8:47 PM [+] ::
...

rumblebunny:

:: judy nguyen 8:25 PM [+] ::
...

john says that greil marcus would write an essay about this:

:: judy nguyen 8:24 PM [+] ::
...

we had agreed to meet at the middle east at one and I arrived a few minutes early. deciding that I rather not wait inside, I think I leaned against a tree, tearing the plastic off beth's new album, somewhat engrossed in her thank you's. I heard someone call my name. I looked up to judge the direction and saw a man with blood down his bare chest and splattered all over his pants. he appeared unaware of the bleeding. if the others by his side had any blood of them I would've wondered if he was even wounded. john found me and pulled me away. I eventually ate healthier and more suited to my appetite, but in the face of a situation like this, what does what we eat matter?

:: judy nguyen 7:20 PM [+] ::
...

favorite foods:
black black gum
cognac*
apricots
escarole
pesto**
mulligatawny soup***
lime rickey

---

*john tells me that I can very seriously hold my own with this drink
**with everything
***with lots of basmati rice

:: judy nguyen 7:07 PM [+] ::
...

kim says he looks younger in this:

:: judy nguyen 3:25 PM [+] ::
...

a photograph of photojenny:

:: judy nguyen 3:23 PM [+] ::
...

as I was telling john:

about this girl's rose necklace, I think I would want one* on my back.
somewhere above the bra line. half navy. half lavender.

---

**a rose. not a necklace.

:: judy nguyen 1:25 PM [+] ::
...

:: judy nguyen 12:53 PM [+] ::
...

you sure this ain't no sociology project?
last night john told me that annie's new boyfriend was twenty. not only does the fact that she wasn't single significantly alter the context in which I held the weekend,* but the idea that she was also dating someone ten years younger, when I thought about it, feels almost eery.
I've grown to understand that age, though not merely a number, is a moot point in many contexts. though any other relationship I've had has been with someone within two years of my age,** my relationship with john is the only one to have invaded as many aspects of my life.
someone my own age would not necessarily have significantly more experiences that I and neither would they have the same. something about that is incredibly scary yet beautiful in the same.

---

*not only was he held responsible to a third party* but so was she**
**with the exception of ross who was twentyfour. the relationship was problematic if relationship at all.***

---

*me
**not that I have ever had any reason to doubt john's words. I like to associate with people who don't. I don't look for it as a primary desirable characteristic, but it's a symptom.
***don't dare tell me I didn't call don't dare say I didn't care

:: judy nguyen 4:43 PM [+] ::
...

you ask what need I have for a thousand houses. I respond that it's only metaphor, but you tell me that's not answer enough:
just a few years ago, existentialism* seemed enough. a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts covered all the necessary bases as a moral system substitute. if anything should dictate how someone should act, why not a meditation of real-world effect?
however in the past year or so,** I have been obsessed with the idea of human existence in general: she looks like the real thing she tastes like the real thing my fake plastic love but I can't help the feeling I could blow through the ceiling if I just turn and run(radiohead, fake plastic trees).***
I looked at my father, at his hands, his face, his eyebrows, and I knew that this man had nothing to do with me. he was a stranger. my mother was non-existent. I was cursed. looking at my father I saw nothing but indecent dullness. worse, he was even more afraid to fail than others. centuries of peasant blood and peasant training. the chinaski bloodline had been thinned by a series of peasant-servants who had surrendered their real lives for fractional and illusionary gains. not a man in the line who said, "I don't want a house, I want a thousand houses, now!" (bukowski, ham on rye)

---

*I was reading a book of sartre's plays*
**perhaps it is time for a little prozac

---

***I've considered tattooing this on my body but have realized that I probably could never get the words small enough
*nausea wasn't very good at all

:: judy nguyen 4:51 PM [+] ::
...

funkcornbread: what's up?
getoutyershirt: hmm.
getoutyershirt: spoke to john's love of his life
funkcornbread: huh?
getoutyershirt: you have to be creative
getoutyershirt: if you can conceive of not being with the one you love most deeply
funkcornbread: what's stopping him?
getoutyershirt: things happen
getoutyershirt: I'm not with the love of my life
getoutyershirt: it becomes inconvenient
getoutyershirt: and often inconceivable
funkcornbread: but if it's truly meant to be....
getoutyershirt: you can't just say you love someone and have that be the end of that
getoutyershirt: maybe it isn't
getoutyershirt: I can't assign assumptions like that to the term I'm using
funkcornbread: why not?
getoutyershirt: (or john or annie (person being spoken of))
getoutyershirt: because you can't
funkcornbread: take a chance
funkcornbread: don't play it safe
getoutyershirt: maybe if you can love someone one at a time without giving that much of a shit about the people in the past who things might not work out at the end with, you can be with the love of your life
getoutyershirt: but if you don't do that, maybe you can't be with that person
funkcornbread: hmm
getoutyershirt: the person who I consider (though warily) the love of my life is david
getoutyershirt: and I'm not with him
getoutyershirt: something like that isn't even in discussion
funkcornbread: why do you consider him as such?
getoutyershirt: because my feelings for him almost lie at the core of my very being
funkcornbread: what does that mean anyway?
getoutyershirt: I don't know. that's how the articulation of what I'm feeling comes out.
funkcornbread: why can't you be with him?
funkcornbread: too far away?
getoutyershirt: that and other things
getoutyershirt: which include being with john right now
funkcornbread: well, ya
getoutyershirt: not having talked for a long period of time
getoutyershirt: (and things can happen even in much shorter periods)
getoutyershirt: like being with john or in david's case for a while, being with lindsay
getoutyershirt: or in my case initially, about two years ago, my being with chris
funkcornbread: I guess my feeling is that if a bond between two people is so strong, there must be something real about it
getoutyershirt: beginning to form ideas about life that aren't necessarily shared by the other person
getoutyershirt: there is
funkcornbread: maybe I'm simpleminded
funkcornbread: people grow apart
getoutyershirt: but it doesn't necessarily have to be one thing or other
getoutyershirt: I guess, but that doesn't mean that you don't still feel for some of them
funkcornbread: where's the gray area?
getoutyershirt: and what's really growing apart?
getoutyershirt: how do you define that when it seems ambiguous?
funkcornbread: developing diverging ideals
funkcornbread: maybe it's the point when the intense feelings disappear
funkcornbread: or are diverted to someone else
getoutyershirt: then what explains still feeling that way?
getoutyershirt: or what justifies still feeling that way?
funkcornbread: you still feel the same towards him even today?
getoutyershirt: I think I do
funkcornbread: I can't relate
getoutyershirt: mrr.
getoutyershirt: you've only loved one person?
getoutyershirt: so maybe it doesn't apply*
funkcornbread: I thought I loved someone before her, but I was 13
funkcornbread: and it was nothing
getoutyershirt: ok
funkcornbread: so, I guess it doesn't apply
getoutyershirt: it might apply some day
funkcornbread: I know that I certainly don't feel the same about jehae as I did when we were together
getoutyershirt: a lot of what I'm saying is just relative to me and john and david and annie and other people floating around out there who share similar experiences.
funkcornbread: back then, my whole being focused on her
funkcornbread: right
funkcornbread: I was deeply concerned about whatever she was doing
getoutyershirt: I don't know. neither do I think that the relationships here when there were no extenuating circumstances were ever quite normal "seeing one another" type relationships (from what I've heard from john and what I've experienced with david)
getoutyershirt: ok
getoutyershirt: though that doesn't necessarily cause any of what I've mentioned about
getoutyershirt: above rather
funkcornbread: does the fact that the relationships weren't normal mean anything?
getoutyershirt: that was what I just said
getoutyershirt: maybe
getoutyershirt: but I don't know
funkcornbread: afterall, given the chance to spend lots of time together, who knows how you're feelings about david might have changed
funkcornbread: oh
getoutyershirt: some say that ghosts exist because they have unfinished business**
funkcornbread: right
getoutyershirt: the term ghost can be metaphorical
funkcornbread: but what kind of business? was it just that there was no defining "end" to the relationship?
getoutyershirt: if things don't play out until their extent, who knows what would happen?
funkcornbread: right
getoutyershirt: but then why weren't the relationship normal initially?
getoutyershirt: anxieties?
funkcornbread: you tell me...I don't know
getoutyershirt: anyway, bleh. I hate rationalizing things to nothing
funkcornbread: hey, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
getoutyershirt: *hates rationalizing things to nothing
funkcornbread: ha

---

*I feel the same way about the little prince. I mean, yeah, same with other books, but I didn't get stuff about st. exupery's* work for a while.
**I have had many other ghosts outside of david. many of whom I've realized weren't worthy of the categorization.** I think I would've long knew if he was not.

---

*ah. just now reminded of quebec city. why does that feel really really nice?
**though sometimes I wonder what side of the line dan really falls on.*

---

*really wasted too much time there.

---

is snow that lasts only for a day white as snow that lasts forever because that snow didn't last two days? or three?

:: judy nguyen 10:31 PM [+] ::
...

before that, however:
I have spent the entire day with hearing that recalls the experience of being in water.
briefly, just now, my ears popped and I could hear fine. but barely for a moment.

:: judy nguyen 10:04 PM [+] ::
...

talked to annie* tonight for the first time.
I know that leaving it as merely that will be horribly ambiguous and insufficient to anyone outside my own head because I don't think I've said so much to one person about what goes on in my head about conversations and what goes on in those actual conversations.**
anyway, I was going to leave out all other details, but as you will see, I decided to leave one in...

---

*pronounced the way one does in ani difranco world. apparently she's french-canadian.
**though maybe annie caught a whiff

:: judy nguyen 10:00 PM [+] ::
...

moving out and who knows... I might take my stuff with me!:
after much deliberation, I decided to move to blogger. I don't know what having a lj paid account is like (though I've considered the idea, I've never been fully convinced), but the servers there are much faster. though introductory annual pricing is a full ten dollars more, the options on problogger are drool-worthy and I may be convinced into shelling out the thirty-five. curiously I wouldn't be able to do so without upgrading, but I'm also considering moving the current contents of my lj onto blogger. a large project.
I hope people give a shit, even if only about inconsequential little me. nevertheless I'm retaining my lj account if little more than an archive. I've even been keeping up a little more recently.
note: the fruits of yesterday's braindrain have been posted.

---

[7/25/2002 20:52 | kennedycrash]
me, everything makes me tired:
but yes, if it works for you, do it--please keep us posted where you go--I'd like to stay in touch even if I am never on IM.
[7/26/2002 22:39 | loopbliss]
Re: me, everything makes me tired:
and neither am I. yahoo! messenger got deleted on this computer sometime when I was away and I never bothered to redownload.

:: judy nguyen 8:50 PM [+] ::
...

research:
as I've told the few people (only john and michael come to mind) I have, work on my thesis/book of meditations on beauty and its relationship to death is indefinitely postponed.*
however, I'm beginning to reread white noise.** I've realized just how imbued with themes of death and aesthetic delillo's work is. the protagonist's difficulty with the german language (even as the founder of hitler studies) is tied to his obsessive aversion to death: what we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation. why not begin taking notes now I wonder as I read?
might as well later.

---

*I suspect a lessened pretention and a sizable grant necessary. also, a little more ambition.
**delillo, I now think, is one of the few writers I find consistently compulsively readable. who are the others? (he's no dummy either)

:: judy nguyen 5:40 PM [+] ::
...

I've been in a very good mood in the past few days.
or a very good state of being.* with those I enjoy, I suspect I am a fuck awesome individual to be around.

---

*can one be saddened in a favorable mood?

:: judy nguyen 5:15 PM [+] ::
...

what this is all about:
heartattackmachine is derived from desolation row. the phrase isn't particularly meaningful. I merely like the sound of it. besides, it's a fucking clever song.
wait a moment before you trash this altogether originated as a headline I wrote for nerve. just today I realized how far this theme goes. see my oft-quoted passage from calvino.

:: judy nguyen 4:26 PM [+] ::
...

death=beauty=fragility

---

Would beauty have any intrigue or presence at all if there was no knowledge of death?

---

instinct=attraction to signs of health. animals--vividness of color
humans--tangible signs of fertility

---

would there be any distinction between how healthy one is over another if there was no death?
is there an ultimate form?

---

however health is not the only mark
signs of death or the frequent permanency of fragility (tragedy)

---

girl in wheelchair struck me as incredibly beautiful. would not have been so striking without her disability. she also smoked

---

inanimate objects. events

---

relationships. precious only because they end?
(countless references in pop culture. see Virgin Suicides, etc.)

---

concept of afterlife an antithesis of beauty?

---

both are fearful (awesome?) things for their sheer immensity and ambiguity, but do those who hate death hate beauty (degrees of hatred)

---

is beauty quantifiable?
in certain contexts much of it can. however there are many complexities involved in relationshipal beauty.
I do not think there exists or could very well exist a sufficient authority short of god (and do not even ask if the existence of god necessitates afterlife) that can conclusively distinguish the valve between platonic and romantic relationships. perhaps all unanswerable questions can be answered by the number 42.* Neither does length determine value. Aristotle: Is snow that lasts a day any whiter than snow that lasts forever?

---

*geek!

:: judy nguyen 6:45 PM [+] ::
...

my intellectual capabilities are spent for the day.
more word later after I recover a little.

:: judy nguyen 3:52 PM [+] ::
...

feeling sort of lousy. a couple doctor's appointments. everything I've been concerned about checked out pretty well (apparently I probably have short roots and depo provera might be a better option). except for, well, my hearing. damn machine was broken. I hope that I'm not actually going deaf in my left ear. but then fuck it if I am. I guess. a bit like the narrator's attitude toward death in slaughterhouse-five. if it happens so it happens and how can it be helped. though I'm not sure if vonnegut was as outraged by deafness as he is by death. that could've be sort of witty. there's probably a term for it. there are terms for everything.
at the library right now. have been here since five though I had about a half hour dinner at friendly's. the last time I've been in one was sometime in late winter. with whathisname. geesh. if there's something I've acquired in the past year it's better recognition of jerkoffs though as one of things john confronted me (I should say a lot more nice things about him. because there are nice things to say I think. and not merely out of some false duty.), last night and today, is that I don't yet necessarily know if in those situations what the right thing to do is.
oh. and the first couple of chapters of coetzee's disgrace pissed me off and I think eco's name of the rose may be a little too much for right now.

:: judy nguyen 7:53 PM [+] ::
...

if this isn't scary, I'm not sure I can say what is: beyond the rubber bullet:
lev grossman, time, 7/29/02

the u.s. armed forces don't do much shooting anymore. even in afghanistan, they engage in more advising and guiding than gunplay. soldiers today are asked more often to keep the peace or defuse demonstrations, and the last thing they want in those situations is to fire a lethal weapon. that's why the pentagon is spending more and more research-and-development dollars on weapons that stun, scare, entangle or nauseate--anything but kill.
the u.s.'s nonlethal-weapons programs are drawing their own fire, mostly from human-rights activists who contend that the technologies being developed will be deployed to suppress dissent and that they defy international weapons treaties. through public websites, interviews with defense researchers and data obtained in a series of freedom of information act requests filed by watchdog groups, time has managed to peer into the pentagon's multimillion-dollar program and piece together this glimpse of the gentler, though not necessarily kinder, arsenal of tomorrow.

directed energy weapons imagine a cross between a microwave oven and a star trek phaser: a tight, focused beam of energy that flash-heats its target from a distance. directed energy beams do not burn flesh, but they do create an unbearably painful burning sensation. the air force research laboratory has already spent $ 40 million on a humvee-mounted directed-energy weapon. expect to see it in the field by 2009.

antitraction material sometimes keeping an enemy down but not out is good enough. the southwest research institute in texas has created a sprayable antitraction gel for the marines that is so slippery it is impossible to drive or even walk on it; one researcher describes it as "liquid ball bearings." spray the stuff on a door handle, and it becomes too slippery to turn. the antitraction gel is mostly water, so it dries up in about 12 hours. it is also nontoxic and biodegradable.

malordorants working for the pentagon, the monell chemical senses center in philadelphia has formulated smells so repellent that they can quickly clear a public space of anyone who can breathe--partygoers, rioters, even enemy forces. scientists have tested the effectiveness of such odors as vomit, burnt hair, sewage, rotting flesh and a potent concoction known euphemistically as "u.s. government standard bathroom malodor." but don't expect to get a whiff anytime soon. like all gaseous weapons, malodorants once released are hard to control, and their use is strictly limited by international chemical-weapons treaties.

projectiles no one likes rubber bullets--not the people being fired at nor the people doing the firing. "it's very easy to put out an eye, to blind someone," says glenn shwaery, director of the nonlethal technology innovation center. "how do you redesign a projectile to avoid that?" the answer is, with softer, flatter bullets, beanbags and sponges that spread out the impact and hit like an open-handed slap from andre the giant. shwaery's team is looking into an even more radical solution: "tunable" bullets that can be adjusted in the field to be harder or softer as the situation warrants. "we're talking about dialing in the penetrating power," he says. "it's the difference between 'set phasers on stun' and 'set phasers on kill.'"

webs and nets spider-san has competition. a firm called foster-miller, based in waltham, mass., has created the webshot, a 10-ft.-wide kevlar net. packed in a cartridge and fired from a special shotgun, the webshot can entangle targets as far away as 30 feet. bigger nets can work on bigger targets. the portable vehicle arresting barrier, developed for the pentagon by general dynamics in falls church, va., is a tough, elastic web that springs up from the ground in an instant to block a road. it can stop a 7,500-lb. pickup truck traveling 45 m.p.h. and then wrap around it to trap the occupants inside.

real ray guns further out on the horizon, the line between weapons development and science fiction becomes perilously thin. mission research corp. of santa barbara, calif., is working on a pulsed energy projectile (pep) that superheats the surface moisture around a target so rapidly that it literally explodes, producing a bright flash of light and a loud bang. the effect is like a stun grenade, but unlike a grenade the pep travels at nearly the speed of light and can take out a target with pinpoint accuracy. or picture this: a flashlight-size device, currently in development at hsv technologies in san diego, that transmits a powerful electric current along a beam of ultraviolet light. shine that light on a human target, and you have a wireless taser that can paralyze targets as far away as 2 km.

drugs, bugs, and beyond even their supporters agree that "nonlethal weapons" is a dangerous misnomer and that any of these devices has the potential to injure and kill. what is more, some of them may not even be legal. over the past three months, a chemical-weapons watchdog organization called the sunshine project has obtained evidence that the u.s. is considering some projects that appear to take us beyond the bounds of good sense: bioengineered bacteria designed to eat asphalt, fuel and body armor, or faster-acting, weaponized forms of antidepressants, opiates and so-called "club drugs" that could be rapidly administered to unruly crowds. such research is illegal under international law and could open up terrifying scenarios for abuse. "this is patently quite dangerous and irresponsible," says human-rights activist steve wright, who, as director of the omega foundation, works with amnesty international to monitor nonlethal weapons. "what the u.s. invents today, others, including the torturing states, will deploy tomorrow." just how much is that magic rubber bullet worth to us? maybe some science fiction should remain fictional.

:: judy nguyen 7:37 PM [+] ::
...