I can now lay claim to the honour of having in my "arsenal" of shirts one that has managed to climb to "at least the top 3 shirts I have seen in Beijing," according to Ed, some drunk British guy I met at an outdoor concert. I didn't think "plaid" would "fly" in Beijing; I am often wrong.
Anyway, the ticket was free but the beer wasn't close enough to free for my liking. On my way home, Beijing's sky started pouring down on me until streets were flooding. I was in a taxi, though. The next day, a Chinese friend told me her Italian (congrats, by the way) friend had a flooded basement.
My first question was where on earth in Beijing do people have basements; my second, was if a house here even had a basement, why is it weak enough (as in "yo, that was seriously weak,") to flood; and my third, if I had bothered to create one, would probably revolve around my bitterness at being so far from the ground (the seventh floor, to be precise, is the top floor of my building and the uppermost level at which structures are capable of being built in China without elevators).
In other news, in one day I bought the following: a 2-person tent, a sleeping bag, a basket for my bike, some pancake thing, a belt with alternating pictures of Stalin and Mao (come on, it's kind of funny) and a zip-up sweater on which appears, in what seems to be swirling mist, the graven image of a dead robin.
I have, or will have, another profile published here, in which I write quite exuberantly. I thought it was really funny, and for that matter, borderline absurd; the Polish Embassy and my editor liked it though. So, hey?
Also, registration for classes at Carleton have been lacking adjectives like "hellish" and "annoying" only because I seem to have stopped caring. I have my journalism courses chosen and registered for, but I'm waiting on the political science department, which, for the fourth year in a row, is doing something stupid.
For how many years must human rights majors explain that the structure of their degree makes it impossible to have the prerequisites necessary for the majority of PSCI classes, which form almost one-quarter of our degree? My only guess is that it must be more than four. I am now waiting on the F.P of Maj. East Asian Powers, and the I.R of S/S.E Asia; both of which interet me.
I have also been writing things that, to me at least, seem somewhat funny. I shall excerpt a few here.
The following are three examples drawn from my "Top Ten First Paragraphs Written by NYU Creative Writing Students":
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It was like any other Monday. Raphael de la Fonza was checking the front pages of The New York Times to make sure he wasn’t in them.
“Phew,” he said, sitting back in the arm chair of his 5th avenue apartment. “Still got it.”
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A+ Welcome to NYU, my child. Welcome.
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Ken Fabian’s coat tails blew out behind him as he strutted towards the NYU creative writing department in the brisk, October breeze. He entered. His eyes, dilated behind black aviators, focused on the door of Room 204. He stopped in front of it. Taking a deep breath, he smashed his foot through the door, breaking it in half (The door, not the foot. This is Ken Fabian.)
“Hey you, professor,” he said, coldly.
“Um, yes?” said Jenkins, the cowardly jerk.
“Grade this!” Ken Fabian yelled, pulling out a semi-automatic gun and ravishing the professor like a good woman with a bad temper.
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Ken, please see me after class.
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Dear Professor Jenkins,
I was so about to write the assignment but this week NYC was a total vacuum of inspirati-OHH-ne. Dreadful weather too. But even the rain was, you know, somehow unpoetic. Gawd. I can’t believe I’m even writing you to explain. Cheers, Jenn.
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…what? C-
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This next one is from a similarly-styled list; one called "Top Ten Things Not to Say as High School Valedictorian":
“…and so instead of a boring speech I have prepared an interpretive dance, sans-clothes, in which I portray El Diabla De Esparanza, the demonic seniorita of whom I am merely an offshoot…”
“…and as for the imperialistic apologists in the Geography department who gave me an F when I labeled Tibet as not being part of China…scribbling out California on the U.S map and writing “Rightfully Mexico”…and to the bastards in the History department who dared contradict me on the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende…Finally, I got my acceptance out of this hell hole…HELLO BERKELY!”
“…Duh! I said. Man, what an asshole. Anyway, that’s why school was so awesome this year. Big ups to Jake and Paulo. Peace.”
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Among such mad-capped lines my mind has, of late, been a'wandering. I often think up things as I bike to work (at the Beijing offices of China Daily) and sometimes I write them on taxi receipts from my wallet in the subway. Half of it, as some of you who have called me on it have noted, is "vaguely" auti-biographical; I pray (secularly!), however, that people will enjoy it anyway, irrespective of knowing me (or for that matter, liking me).
My most recent work of non-list-style fiction is a short account of two friends on a plane bound for Peru; one of whom has replaced their only cooking stove with a 1930s-era typewriter. It is called "A Distinct Lack of Cooking Stove" and a short excerpt follows:
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“Rick,” Dave began, uneasily. “What did you do this time? I swear that you usually screw things up near the end – as our Visas are running out. For this, I have been grateful. But I don’t like seeing that grin while my ears are popping. What did you do?”
Rick removed his headphones: “Pardon?”
“Why are you grinning?”
Rick’s face tempered itself, like wise steel.
“Well…” Rick said, rubbing his thigh. “You know our cooking stove?”
“I am aware,” Dave said curtly, “of it’s existence.”
It must be said here that most of this trip was to be done by camping – two men, both virile, somewhat manly, and heterosexual, fighting the elements and, potentially, Bolivian bandits. A noble quest, said beautiful, drunk women, when the two had brought it up at the bar back home.
“Dave, I took out the cooking stove and replaced it with my typewriter.”
This piece of information shook Dave like the booted-kick (and subsequent kiss; the memories are still painful) of an Eastern European, tin-pot-dictatorship-funded private security guard.
“What?” Dave, now queasy (not from the flight), asked.
“Dude, think how fucking – I don’t know – romantic it’ll be? A fire; a tent; the Peruvian or Bolivian, wherever we are, wilderness around us! It’ll be great man. I’ll transcribe everything.”
The passages Rick was here imagining went something like this:
Lights shimmered in the distance. Eyes, perhaps of a feral, predatory man-eating beast, were potentially gleaming at them – literally! Gleaming! – from the bushes.
And:
As Dave pushed back the undergrowth, he noticed the rash was back. “It better not be Leprosy,” he said, bravely. “Because that would be inconvenient.”
And:
The mists over Machu Picchu swirled around me, moistening the paper jammed into my 1936 Smith-Corona L-2. I felt like a foreign correspondent assigned to cover “the life-changing experiences of Rick Glenners.” I wasn’t doing a good job: I was too caught up in “the moment.”
“Fuck you, Rick.”
“Goddammit Dave, think how many chicks this will get us? Even seeing the typewriter will snap their panties!”
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Among this writing, there should be witty italics; my computer seems incapable of allowing them to remain, though they enhance the work's...how does one say...esprit du corps? That's probably wrong.
Also, something I wrote (An Internal Memo to William) is now online at www.feathertale.com, a website on which some of my work appears and a website I wish I could say wasn't run by a friend willing to publish said work." It is a good site however, and funny; at least one of you regularly make out with someone who has submitted work for it (not me, ew, gross).
Precise URLs, may be the following:
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http://www.feathertale.com/Fiction/internal_memo.htm
http://www.feathertale.com/Contests/examples.htm (the one about the emerald)
http://www.feathertale.com/Fiction/wile_hospital.htm
http://www.feathertale.com/Fiction/superman.htm (one that is, I suppose, timely)
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Anyone who has gotten here without speedily-scrolling can now claim to know me as well as my parents, probably, unless you are my parents, in which case: stop reading my blog Mum, GOD, how embarrassing! (Edit: Thinking my mother would copy\paste how I spelt embarrassing, which before I changed it, was embarassing, into AskOxford.com, whereupon she would be directed to a "commonly misspelled words" section, to which she would then post a snarky reply in Waugh-type prose along the lines of "Oh Dearie, how *too* embarRassing," on my blog, ridiculing me, I have changed it already. I must say: Ha, Mum. I have one-upped you.)
And since I started on a claim, I will let you end on the one in the last sentence (above the edit, which probably counts as a sentence).
