HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL (aka DAN-YO) AND RICHARD (aka THE DOC-TAH)!!!

Thanks for those forms Tiff!  I assume your dad wrote the note about the fax, seeing as he sent it, but he signed his name as “Tiffi” which I found very funny b/c it was, in truth, your dad, and I’ve never seen you sign your name as “Tiffi.”  It isn’t as funny if it really was you that sent it to me, but then I start laughing again when I think about the Elaine-dance-finger-pointing-dance-morphing-into-the-cardboard-dance.   My god, we’re talented! 

 

So for those of you who care, which is probably no one (except for maybe Tiffanie and a handful of other people who have nothing better to care about…where are your families?…MURDERERS!) Tiff and my desperate search to make our apartment livable has been full of both great successes and suicide-inducing failures. 

 

Our successes include, managing to find basic furniture (e.g. desks, sofas, chairs), finding a way to get DSL (both thanks to Tiff!), and finding out that the bathrooms have shower doors and therefore don’t need curtains, saving me an estimated $14.95. 

 

Our main failure is the fact that Tiff and I cannot get a freakin’ bunk bed!  I called Cort furniture and they don’t rent bunk beds (damn them!), and the only other place that I found that rented bunk beds was Rent-A-Center who so magnanimously offered to rent us a bunk (with delivery/setup/pickup and mattresses included) for a low, low, BARGAIN BASEMENT PRICE of $20 A WEEK.  Considering that Tiff and I will be needing this stuff for about 10 months, all we’ll be paying is $800!  Hello?  Am I missing something here?  I refuse to pay $400 to rent a bunk bed! 

 

So the only thing left to do is find another rental company (if such a company exists) or buy the bunk ourselves.  I’m all for buying b/c we’d actually save about $200 each but if you haven’t noticed, Tiff and I aren’t exactly the strongest girls on the block, and we have NO WAY of getting the bed and mattresses to our apartment, and knowing us, we’ll probably have a few “minor mishaps” when we assemble the bed.  Think Homer Simpson trying to assemble that outdoor BBQ grill…My sister said that we’ll probably be able to sell the furniture at the end of the year to other desperate USC students. 

 

Let’s hope that it all turns out well. 

Hello my Strawberry friend (Tiffanie), If you haven’t read your email lately, I sent you one, but here’s the gist of it:

 

I need those City Park forms.  Could you please scan and send them to me at my USC email?

 

Need them ASAP.  Will die w/o them.  Please, save my innocent (cough cough) Strawberry life!    

It’s hard to admit it, and part of me is still denying it, but I think I’m drifting away.  I can feel that a rift has formed between me and the group.  At first I thought that it was just some vague insecurity I had, something that would just go away if I could just see everyone more.  But now, I’m not so sure.  I can see that no matter what happens there are still divisions between me and “the others.”   I don’t feel as accepted within the group as everyone else probably does.  But then again, I’ve always been the outsider who never really understood why the two groups couldn’t coexist as one, b/c I wasn’t there.  I will never have that special bond that the rest of them now share from those hardships.  Not that I haven’t been through my share of troubles within the condensed version of “the group,” as if I could forget.  But as I watched these people laugh and talk yesterday, it began to dawn on me that I’m nothing like any of them. 

 

I got a lot of bad vibes from certain people yesterday, and even though I don’t really know them, and I don’t particularly care for them myself, I know they were insulting me and laughing at me.  How could I not know?  I was never more than 5 feet away from them.  Why did they have to ruin my night?  Where do they get off doing stuff like that?  Were they blind?  I was RIGHT THERE and they were talking PRETTY LOUD.  I’m hurt, yes, but overpowering my sadness and the personal shame, I’m angry.  I refuse to be around the individuals who blatantly found pleasure in insulting me.  It’s so much easier to be ignorant of it, and not be there. 

 

Sometimes I can’t help thinking that the group is just all wrong for me.  There aren’t too many people I can turn to for real support and real companionship anymore.  Things are too fractured; I just don’t fit in.  I can tell that everyone else has some network of friends that they can always turn to, but I don’t think I do.  Where is my niche?  I always feel like I’m some big, fat, boring, foul-mouthed, nuisance to everyone. 

 

Too bad I refuse to change.  I’m not one for forced change; I’d rather just be alone. 

 

Someone once told me that just because I’ve made new friends in California, it doesn’t mean that I can just leave the ones I have here.  Well, it has NOTHING to do with my California friends.  But I’m still sorry it’s like this.  I don’t feel this way to hurt any of you, nor am I finding this sadistically fun.  Understand that it’s very hard to pick up where we left off ten months ago, and go on like nothing’s changed.  Things have changed.  I’ve changed.  So have many of you.  We hardly spoke while we were apart, so we inevitably drifted.  What do you want from me?  “Things never change, (laugh laugh), let’s all be fake!?”  No, thank you.

 

I know some of you are reading this with a deep sense of confusion, some of you may actually be mad, and maybe some tiny percentage of you may understand what I’m going through.  For those of you who are angry:  go ahead and be angry.  Why don’t you call me up and yell at me?  You’ll be greeted with this, “I don’t hate you, I just don’t know you anymore, and I don’t think you know me either (click beep beep beep).”  I don’t care.  I’m just being honest with myself and all of you.  Go ahead and insult me about my tastes, and my habits, and my personality.  Some of you already have.  And I have insulted many of you too, mentally or otherwise.  Sorry, really. 

 

Like I said, I’m not happy things turned out this way.  If you think about it, we’re really different.  I know you guys already knew this before reading this entry.  Maybe if I spent more time with you, I’d start loving you guys again.  Maybe.  But last time I checked, your ideas of fun, and my ideas are fun, are inexorably dissimilar.

 

Haha.  I’ve felt this way for such a long time.  It’s weird to read back what I wrote, and feel that familiar wave of denial, “Are you stupid?  There’s nothing wrong with you…go have fun with the group!”  Tsk tsk…there you go again, brain.  It’s not like I’m going to walk off into the sunset and leave the group forever (unless it’s what the group wants, and I’m sure at least two of you wouldn’t mind it; yeah, I know who you are…you can just jump off a ravine for all I care ß Ha!  Look what I wrote!  No wonder people hate me!  Heh heh heh). 

 

The last thing I want would be some great backlash of hatred, or even worse, pity.  I don’t want any effort to be made on your part; I have no expectations either way, from me or you.  I just wanted to get a lot of what I’m feeling off my chest.

 

Lor

Alright you guys, here it is, the one thing that will finally impart meaning into all of our lives…

 

JACKIE CHAN IS OPENING A RESTAURANT!

 

 

I don’t know if ya’ll already have a Jackie Chan restaurant on the mainland (No, Foo Chow doesn’t count, but I still want to go there!  Why won’t you take me?!), but OMG, a Jackie Chan restaurant in Ala Moana!!!  I think Jackie’s Kitchen is going to be one of those fusion restaurants, where they blend Chinese and American foods/styles together.  IT IS GOING TO ROCK!  I mean, everything Jackie touches turns into gold…except for maybe that Tuxedo movie…but we all know Jennifer Love Hewitt was the one who ruined it, not Jackie!

 

The sad thing is, when the restaurant actually opens, JC himself will probably be here in Hawaii, but by that time I’ll probably be in SC!  Yes, my life is trash, thanks for pointing that out. 

THINGS THAT HAPPENED ON MY BIRTHDAY…

 

1914: The U.S. House of Representatives approves the Clayton Antitrust Act (Now, why don’t I know what this is?…Oh yeah, b/c I had Al Sabea!  DOWN WITH MONOPOLIES!).

 

1917: Dutch courtesan Mata Hari is executed by the French after being suspected of spying for Germany.

 

1928: The Graf Zeppelin makes the first commercial transatlantic flight.

 

1945: Pierre Laval, prime minister of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, is executed by a firing squad for treason against France.

 

1946: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, the second most powerful leader of Nazi Germany, poisons himself hours before his scheduled execution for war crimes during World War II.

 

1964: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev is deposed.

 

Am I the only one who noticed how many bad things happened on my birthday?  Execution…execution…suicide…deposing…(nervous laughter)…

 

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY

 

Sir P.G. Wodehouse, Anglo-American writer (1881)

 

John Kenneth Galbraith, American economist (1908)

 

Lee (Lido) Iacocca, American corporate executive (1924) YEAH BABY!  THIS GUY WAS AWESOME! 

 

Virgil, Roman poet (70 BC)

 

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., U.S. historian (1917)

 

Jim Palmer, American baseball player (1945)

 

MYSTERY BIRTH…SEE IF YOU CAN GUESS WHO IT IS!

 

 WHO AM I?  I was born on this day in 1844. A German philosopher, I was one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century (see bottom of entry for answer!)

 

 

FUN FACT!

 

Pope Gregory XIII dropped ten days from the year in 1582, skipping from October 4th to October 15th. He also instituted the Gregorian calendar, which changed the leap year system by three days every 400 years.

 

HOLIDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS

 

Evacuation Day (Tunisia)

 

Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila (Roman Catholic)

 

Independence Day (Bosnia-Herzegovina)

 

White Cane Safety Day (What the hell is this?!  And what’s up with “Evacuation Day?!”)

 

ANSWER to Mystery Birth:  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche  HAAAAAA!  NIETZSCHE WAS BORN ON THE SAME DAY AS ME!  YESSSS!  DO NOT BE A SLAVE OF CONFORMITY!  LET US RETURN TO THE WAYS OF THE SPARTANS!  “GOD IS DEAD!” 

 

Curious to find out some of the famous people who were executed, deposed, or committed suicide on your birthday (thus forcing you to question whether or not you are a waste of skin)?  Check out this website!  http://encarta.msn.com/features/onThisDay.asp