Monday, September 26, 2005

The Bee Box

I stopped by the vendors who like to entice me to spend more money at my University than I need to only because I heard Mercy trying to talk herself out of large earrings.

I promptly talked her back into them. "Mercy" and "downsizing" are not words that belong in the same sentence.

She tried to talk me into earrings. This is Mercy. This is what she Does.

Instead, I saw one of those giant plastic pseudo-mod/semi-rave rings with a bee inside it.

I was immediately lovestruck. And it was $3.

It is peach, with sparkles, a mummified bee inside it, and it is in the shape of a heart. It reminded me of a poem I read once, "The Bee Box," in which a male lover wants to get flowers for his beloved, but finds that he gets stung by a bee in the process. Noticing how the bee bravely chose to give up his life to protect the thing he loved (in his bee way), the man decides instead to give his beloved "this brave little bee, who proves there is love even in the smallest of things."

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Wide awake, despite appearances.

Received a note in the mail today from Mr. Cardoza that was written on a peice of paper he'd found in his desk . . . with a quote I wrote down sometime after I (inevitably) must have had a breakdown in his office. My quote read: "I think I'll be better when I get out of high school because then I can learn to, like, sleep."

Ironically, this arrived today. Of all days. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night, woke up at 8 am, was in class until 4:30 today, and then had a film screening from 6-8. And I cannot sleep yet because I have to hang out at work while we get our floors waxed.

I still haven't learned to sleep.

Am I better?

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Waterworld.

This is the progression of hellish plumbing events that occurred on Saturday, September 18, 2005 at the Colonial Apartments in Isla Vista, CA:
  1. Apartments 13 and 14 flood during the early morning hours.
  2. I wake up at the crack of noon and find that we have no hot water--which is highly unusual because our building doesn't have legitimately cold water ever.
  3. This progresses towards us having no water at all because the plumbing in the two flooded apartments needs to be fixed ASAP. (Note: This was not a good thing because I was not feeling well and it was very hot in our building that day, both of which would have been fixed by a shower.)
  4. At about 3:30 PM, we get water again and all three of us at home take showers to revel in the glory of running water.
  5. Now Dani and I cannot get our water to turn off. We have a scalding hot bathtub for about an hour until one of the plumbers on-site can get a chance to fix it.
  6. My sink is backed up and it takes literally two hours for a sinkful of water to drain down. Plus, the garbage disposal spits food up the other side. Wonderful.

Everything is back to normal by today, but nonetheless, Saturday's plumbing disaster was horrible. I have never been so happy to do dishes as I was this morning.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Ring-a-Ring O Roses

Marcus and I are up in Ashland for the weekend. Tonight's adventure was Kit Marlowe's Tragikal History of Dr. Faustus in the Elizabethan Theatre.

So, the Elizabethan Theatre is, as the theatres in Shakespeare's day were, open air.

Ashland is, as Northern coastal states are in September, prone to rain.

I am now a resident of Southern California. I no longer own real shoes.

All of this is a recipe for my tiny little body to have a true Elizabethan theatrical experience.

It drizzled on and off throughout the course of Faustus, and I, in my lack of warm clothes and vastly inappropriate shoes, was soaked to the bone by the end of the show. Therefore leaving me, as well as other members of the audience, the possibility of returning to our hotels to develop pneumonia/catch the plague and die.

But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Here's how Marcus and I summed up the works of Kit Marlowe:

Me: You know, all the funny bits with Robin and Wagner didn't really come across on the page.
Marcus: That's because Marlowe isn't funny on the page. In Edward the 2nd, someone gets a spear shoved up their ass.
Me: Now that's comedy!

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The God of Small Things

Heather and Miyuki are here, and they've come bearing massive amounts of small but wonderful gifts.

Miyuki brought us all little gifts to say, "Thanks for letting me stay with you because the University screwed me out of housing." We all received a little paper folding cup-thing with various designs. Mine, naturally, is red. She also gave us all a small notebook, and these things truly are the Way to my Heart, notebooks and the like.

Heather, after 5 months in Japan, returned with a host of little goodies for each of us. We all recieved a sake cup, a soup spoon, and an individualized rice bowl. We all also got two fans, one with a cultural design, the other with a Disney character because the Japanese are evidently all about Walt and his creations. (Cassie got Ariel because she loves mermaids, Dani got Marie from the Aristocats because that's her middle name, and I, naturally, got Tinkerbell. Jen also got Tinkerbell, but that was more of a default "there were only 4 designs" kind of thing. Hers is not as awesome as mine.) We all got a Japanese candy, and from there the gifts begin to vary. Jen got two great Engrish shirts and a pair of Japanese Ped socks, which Japanese girls wear with their high heels. Her pair is brightly striped. Cassie got a lot of weird-ass arcade items, because she asked Heather for 'random crap,' and an Engrish shirt that Heather said reminded her of fart jokes. Dani got an Engrish shirt that actually made sense, as well as a purse from Hiroshima that was hand dyed. Dani and I also got hairclips, which was odd, because we both have short hair. My Engrish shirt was the most awesome of all, though. It is a white tank top with piles of pink glitter over the letters that reads: "I can't dance / I'm a bad driver / Fuck rockn & roll / I like to jerk off / Spiga jeans girl." And I am totally wearing it to class tomorrow.

Heather also brought each of us a unique cultural gift. Dani received a geisha doll, Jen a lace fan used in tea ceremonies, Cassie an opium pipe, and I got a Japanese calligraphy stylus.

I could not be happier. Last night, I was sleeplessly perusing eBay for antique pens because I hadn't acquired any new ones since Venice last summer, where I purchased a lovely red glass pen with changeable nibs. I found a couple of unique antique ones that I'm vaguely interested in, but this pen is just what I needed. It's the first Japanese pen in my collection, and, to go along with it, Heather bought me what turned out to be a marriage record book, which is intendd for a married couple to record their wedding and the fruits of their union. I am going to treat it like a pillow book, because, in a way, that's what it is. Regardless, it's lovely, and the absolute perfect gift for me.

These small things are the way to my heart.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Do not touch the electric third rail.

The fact that my landlords are ridiculously bad at explaining things is very problematic.

Somehow, they keep finding more and more ways to suck money out of my bones as though it were chewy tasty marrow and they starving junk-yard dogs.

There has been a green sheet of paper sitting around my apartment for a week with some kind of inexplicable charge on it, which, naturally, no one has investigated and it becomes my duty to do so on my day off because I am Responsible.

Evidently, we were supposed to have called and changed the billing name and address for our non-included electrictricity. When I moved in two months ago, you think they would have told me this. But no.

So now, in addition to the extra 60 dollars they started charging us on our rent every month to include the originally non-included cable, I owe them $23 for July's electric. And I owe the electric company an $80 dollar security deposit and another $12 dollars for changing service.

I cannot get a fucking break from these people. And if they would just do their tennants the service for telling them shit, I would be far more prepared for the slow draining of my resources.