Before the invention of the Internet, what did people do when they couldn't go to sleep at night?  Watch bad infomercials until dawn?

I'm staying up and wondering about that, because A) I took an unnecessary nap earlier today and B) I am stalking my old Sunday school teacher's old "thing."

I say "thing," because I don't know what happened to them.  She liked him and he seemed to be interested in her (from her side of the story), then she found out he also had an old "thing" who'd moved to New York despite their long term relationship.  And from the looks of it, he and the New Yorker hadn't really ended things.  My sweet Sunday school teacher also shared the same first name with the said New Yorker, and that can't ever feel good...

From the looks of it, he left his surgeon gig at UT Southwestern to take up a teaching job in NY, and his profile picture is a professional photography-level picture, including the girl that left him in 2005.  Oh snap, did they get married?

I am just completely assuming that last part, because I have an overactive imagination.  And just because it looks like he's moved up north also.

I didn't used to think I had it in me to write fiction, but it's a genre I am definitely wanting to explore.  I am so nosy, and this totally helps out with my writing process, because I like to make up stories in my head about people I barely know.

Despite my assumptions and interest in other people's love life, I'm not interested in writing boy-meets-girl stories.  I'll let my characters meet each other and fall in love and junk, but I don't want that to be my focus.  I want to tell stories about the change or lack of change in a character, because how many decent love stories can you pump out anyway?

As much as I like getting ideas from other people's lives, I haven't written one that's completely empty of my own life experiences (will I ever?)  I don't think I have the guts to post my short story here about the rituals of a first date, because it's way too semi-autobiographical.  And embarrassing.

I also wrote another short story about a girl who gets negative body image messages from women's magazines, and that too is semi-autobiographical and revealing.  It talks about subjects that I will never bring up in a casual conversation, because I don't like watching my friends squirm in awkward silence.

I sent those stories out to literary journals, and I think they'll be confused.  They're kind of short, even for a short story, but too long to be considered prose poetry, if such a thing ever existed.

Yay, can't wait to get those rejection letters in the SASE envelopes I sent them.

Ugh, I completely forgot I still have to take one more semester of Italian until I watched a Barilla Pasta commercial when they're all, "Mamma mia!" and junk just now, jabbering in a language that I'm supposed to be "proficient" in.

Okay, just kidding, because they didn't really say "mamma mia" and break out in song and dance on a pier by the Mediterranean Sea, but I really did forget about my last semester of Italian this fall.  And how I'm completely boned, because this new prof is a tough old bird, from what I hear.  She actually makes you do lots of homeworrrk!  And speak back in Italian!!  What is this, like a fourth-semester Italian class or something?!

OH WAIT, IT IS.  And I still have no more knowledge of Italian than an Olive Garden patron, reading items off of a menu.  "I'll have the GUH-NOH-CHEE, pur favoray."

oof, something about hot faces in suits always makes me all warm and sweaty

I'm not gonna write some hoity-toity review in high language about how the new Batman movie explores the psyche of a vengeful, anguished soul perfectly or of how I waited in line for hours and hours to see it because I'm just that hardcore into Batman.  I mean, I like Batman but not in that way.  (I meant "that way" as in I don't like him enough to wait in line for 3 hours just to get a decent seat.  To be clear: I still would like to make kissy faces and babies with Christian Bale.)

Anyway, so all's I'm sayin' is...  that it was really good.

I came really close to crying like 7 times during the whole two hours and thirty minutes, but I didn't want to disturb the extreme fans with my loud, obnoxious sniffles.

And I don't think I've been so tense during a movie before.  The Dark Knight had the formula of escalation and conflict down pat.  I was reading my creative writing textbook on the pot this morning (yeah, what of it?!), and it discusses a lot of how to create conflict since there's no story if there is no conflict.  Yeah, chew over that one with any movie/show/book you've ever encountered in your life.  Okay, a GOOD movie/show/book.

After I got done watching the movie last night, it took me a second to realize I wasn't in Gotham City.  I wasn't in the same city as the caped vigilante, Batman.  For a movie to remove me from my reality to its reality so wholly was what was so amazing about the film.  And because I can't stop thinking about it from a creative writing pov as I do my morning "duties."  Haha, get it?!  DOODIES.

...if you've taken off the "View Photos of Me" tab from your profile?!  What am I supposed to do with myself when I'm bored with web comics and Reddit?  Why do you have to punish ME because you: are a sloppy drunk or have a new internship?

kitty cat

Besides medium rare steaks and lap dances from real strippers and not a drunk girlfriend, what do dudes want as a special occasion gift?

I've got a double-whammy coming up for A (his birthday and our one-year anniversary, both in August), and it's been difficult to brainstorm what he wants as a gift.  It's not that he's a difficult person, just that he already has what he's wanted before.

He's allergic to booze, so I can't top off whatever thoughtful gift with an expensive bottle of wine, the easy way out.  In fact, he hates booze because it gives him a rash and a case of the girly giggles until he throws up and goes to sleep without brushing his teeth.  He's really meticulous about his dental health, so I don't want to upset him and stuff.

I had a great idea for his birthday gift, but it kinda fell through because of our cruise on the week of Aug. 17 - 23, so that's sort of disappointing.  Okay, now you're all, "Shut your face and stop complaining--you're going on a freakin cruise," but this gift idea was kind of perfect.  It involved pre-season (read: cheaper) tickets to a big-name sports franchise in Dallas for Aug. 22.  Once I told him about my plans in vague description after the fact we decided on the Caribbean getaway, he guessed what my present was as soon as he could reach a computer with internet access.  Damn his computer literacy.

I decided to look up "boyfriend's gift ideas" on Google and a lot of dumb items came up...  like this and this.  Like A or anyone who's not an idiot would like a 14-dollar roll of toilet paper with a special message that you could've put together yourself with a roll of POM 2-ply from Sams.  By the way, I love POMs, because any other brand that's more expensive just give me dust bunnies in my butt.  Too fancy and fluffy for me.

What really got me was the Couples Edition Conversation Starters.  So it's full of really thought-provoking questions that you're supposed to ask your significant other when you still like them but can't think of a darn thing to talk to them about.  Can you imagine how people would use these?  What if one of the questions was something like, "Do you believe in the existence of a god?" and the girl is a believer and the guy is agnostic?  The guy's like, "I'm not sure if there is a god," and she bursts into tears and is all, "How can you say that?  And can you stop speaking with the G in GOD with a lowercase g?  He's a proper noun, you know!"

Anyway, so back to my point--gift giving is hard when it turns into a big test of how much you know the other person...  especially with a set budget to avoid being too lavish since we'll have already gone on a cruise by the time it's our anniversary.  If you think you have any good suggestions, holler over private messages instead of comments, because A actually bothers to read this thing.  Shh.

How long did you think it was going to take until I wrote about this?

What I love about his live music is that they're not just little snippets of a concert...  he intros with a variation, an improvisation of a song I love and then BOOM--he plays the first note of that song and I set off in a gleeful squeal (as well as the gazillion girls who were with him that night).

I can't believe I'm missing his concert in Dallas this August 1st.  I know; you're probably like, Did I read that right?  Did she just say that she isn't going to her rockstar/god's concert and be like half a mile away from him while wondering where that marijuana smoke is coming from while sipping a 20-dollar beer?

My girls who went with me last year are going to be prepping for summer school finals around that time, and A will be on a rafting trip, so he gets off easy.  He knows he wouldn't really have had a say so if that trip wasn't planned months ago.

I tried hollowing out a book, but it didn't really work out.  When I say "it didn't really work out," it makes it sound like the book and I tried very hard to make it work, including couples therapy.  When it told me that I was really selfish and I didn't know how to listen constructively, I screamed, "Well you have a small wienie," and left.

Making a hollow book makes a lot of little fuzzies of paper, and I don't have that kind of patience for this shit.  Can't believe potheads can sit there with their lazy asses and carve out a book and I can't.

But I guess potheads have more of a reason to keep a secret hollow book.  What would I have kept in mine?  Doodles and scribbles of "Mrs. Min Mayer" all over wide-ruled paper?  A copy of Playgirl?

I think I just really liked the idea of having one...  but not enough to finish the pet project.

I also used to like collecting cigar boxes when my parents owned a gas station.  I stole kids' meal toys from Babe the Movie that my cousin had (mini stuffed animals made out of felt) and made elaborate construction paper settings for the animals in the boxes.  A pond with rocks for the swans.  A perspective-challenged fences and mud pen for the pig.  You know, really crafty stuff only little girls and homos-to-be loved doing together.

Speaking of things that the gays love, I CANNOT get enough of Mariah Carey, so I must share it with you since I didn't save my cigar boxes to show and tell with.  I can't pick a favorite track (I do have several that I like to have on repeat: I'm That Chick, I'll Be Lovin U Long Time, O.O.C., For the Record, and Heat), because that's like asking which one of your babies would you rather save from a sinking ship.  Probably the one that cries less.

Don't all of her videos just have her in skimpy outfits with a wind machine in front of her while she poses a new one every other second?

I just got my keys and trotted downstairs, because I reaaaally wanted a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke at 2 in the morning from Jack-in-the-Box.  Except I couldn't go because my parents took their car and my car to the donut shop because they're leaving separately to church tomorrow, and my mom will swing my car back home for me to take her (and I have work in the afternoon).

Okay, that explanation of our ride arrangements was totally unnecessary and long.

So basically, I got sad from finishing writing a short story and I didn't want to sit at home in the dark to think about it. Instead, I wanted a cheeseburger and a soda to keep me company.

One would think I'd be happy from finally finishing a goddamn story, but while writing (about the rituals of getting ready for a first date), I got struck by a big wall of sadness because it had some stuff in it that I didn't really want to deal with.  Like how no matter how great the first date or the first month or first year of a relationship is, there's almost always an end, and I don't like thinking about that.

But while writing that story, it turned into something way deeper than looking pretty for your date, and I sort teared up (I felt the sting behind my nose before that fat tear rolls down) and ran outside for food...  only to realize I don't have my car, so I'm really stuck at home with a banana or ramen noodles.

I'm gonna take a hint from the Fates and work on a banana while watching Roseanne.

got this from a neighbor:

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was 11 years old--I wasn't chubby yet back then, but I was probably working on a sleeve of Chips-Ahoy with a tall tumbler full of milk (while watching Pokemon after school).

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today? 

1. Go to sleep without eating any more of these little peanut brittle things my mom made... what was she thinking?!  Now I'm going to stay up and eat these all night.
2. Wakeup and beat the holiday traffic to Dallas to see my bebe for lunch.
3. Find out if this place is open for the Fourth so we can lunch there.  A says it's the "best Indian food according to Indians."  If they are closed, we'll probably get Korean fried chicken on Royal instead (Koreans like to stay open on national holidays, maximizing the kaching-ching).
   
4. Watch Wall-E.  Am very excited.
5. Maybe finally buy some new perfume if the shops are open.
   

3) Snacks I enjoy:

For now, the peanut brittle things, but I love me some good kettle chips.  And guacamole.  Not together though.

But honestly though, I'll eat anything.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Invest!  That's like asking a genie to get an unlimited amount of wishes for your third and final wish...  then I'd probably spend it on buying property for myself and my family.

This is all, of course, after I quit school.  There's no use in being a hippie creative writing student if money had already corrupted me.

5) Places I have lived:

• Busan, South Korea
• Little Rock, Arkansas
  
• Hot Springs, Arkansas
• Texarkana, Texas
• Arlington, Texas
• College Station, Texas

At this rate, I'll be heading further down south into one of the bordertowns.  Adios, amigos!

6) Jobs I have had:

• Hurricane Harbor--I sunburned my scalp and whined about never working again ever.  After one day of work.
• Random tutoring gigs to Korean fob kids.  They are really cute.
• Student worker at the university library.
• Weekend obituary writer at the Bryan-College Station Eagle.  It hurts me to read their page now, because my old boss left and no one cares to make it look pretty and in alphabetical order or in proper AP Style.  Everyone thought I'd be all sad and morbid bc of that job, but it kind of did the opposite.  Being hungry for dinner during work also took my mind off of things.
• Sales associate at Victoria's Secret.  The store plays the songs I already liked (hasn't ruined them for me, yet), and my co-workers and I like to moan about how rough retail is, but they make it fun.  Folding thongs and trying to convince people that they need yet another credit card, on the other hand, has been maddening.
  

7) Bloggers I am tagging who I will enjoy getting to know better:

Sarah Kim!  Girl, you need to update more often, because I miss our intimate roomie times--surfing the internet in silence until one of us finds something funny and sends the link over AIM.  And walking together to pickup lunch between classes.