Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit (and various iterations thereof) age: 21 location: oakland, ca hobbies: anime, manga, comic books, reading, writing, doodling, video games likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, animals, food, laughing loudly in public, SUSHI dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink(at)gmail.com wishlist playstation 2car a good night's sleep money stress-free life trigun long colt keychain hardon-kardon speakers 19" flatscreen monitor world peace realistic wishlist transmetropolitan vol 5-7, 9-10long-term obsessions comicsslash writing music animals life and living current obsession(s) supernaturalhouse m.d. veronica mars currently reading jonathan strange and mr norrell by susanna clarkecurrently watching smallville (3.4)farscape (1.) stargate: atlantis (1.7) scrubs (2.1) hana yori dango (20) utena (23) witch hunter robin (18) rose of versailles (19) matantei loki ragnarok (15) scrapped princess (14) sailormoon live action (25) supernatural (hiatus) house md (hiatus) |
Friday, July 14, 2006 [link] 03:52 p.m. listening to: "I Feel Love" - Blue Man Group & Venus Hum Library has been achieved (and I have a new library card that can be used at any library in Los Angeles County, which makes me happy). Lemon bars have also been achieved, although I have to wait until they cool to taste one. They don't look quite like the lemon bars in the picture, which worries me, but they smell very delicious and I'm sure they taste fine. Bah. Who needs presentation, anyway? And now, I am off to finish A Wizard of Earthsea and start The Tombs of Atuan. For some reason the library did not have The Farthest Shore, which was very sad. They also did not have Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Incredible Genius, but that is okay because I realized today that I have about five days before I become far too busy for reading, some of which involves being in another country. Gee. Where did the summer go? Friday, July 14, 2006 [link] 01:27 a.m. listening to: nothing I have been far too preachy, these past few entries, and so here is a light-hearted entry abut the things I plan to do tomorrow (er, later today): I will wake at a reasonable hour and walk to the library while it is still cool. I will check out The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin because I am nearly done with A Wizard of Earthsea. I will also seek A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle because I have already finised A Wrinkle in Time. I will also look for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers because the title amuses me, and I've heard it is good. I will make lemon bars. And I will make a chicken pot pie and I will not add any extra salt because the chicken broth you buy from the store has more than enough salt in it, thank you very much. I don't put salt in anything anymore unless I'm baking and the result is a palate that can actually taste things. The problem now is that all processed food tastes like salt. I am making a recipe book. It is not so much a recipe book as a list of recipes that I may need to consult often because while my memory is very good, it is not always accurate when it comes to things such as measurements and baking temperatures. I need to bake another pound cake sometime. Friday, July 14, 2006 [link] 01:02 a.m. listening to: nothing Gas is $2.25 a gallon (if you don't pump premium), I have no idea how much auto/liability insurance costs these days, and cars, in general, are expensive. Even if I get a license, I probably won't be able to afford a car for several years. Even if someone bought me a car, I'm not sure I could afford insurance. I can barely pay my cellphone bill. All of my friends who have cars got them courtesy of family members. I have no such luxury; my cousins won't even buy me birthday presents with price tags over $40. By the time I was old enough to learn how to drive, my father could not afford a second car. He'd lost the BMW in a car accident, 9-11 had changed the foreign investment landscape in such a way that we began to count our dollars and cents, and gas prices rose. . . and rose. . . and rose. My father earned below the poverty line. I made sure to go to college where there was public transit. "I think it's what makes Americans so mean," my boss's wedding planner confided. "Driving, it makes you angry, doesn't it?" He grimaced and mimicked clutching a steering wheel, fingers curved into claws. "Grrr! Like that. That's why Americans are so mean." "I don't drive," I said, shyly. "Well!" he cooed. "So you're not just a pretty face!" "It's very unusual, isn't it?" said my editor. "For an American to not know how to drive." It depends, I said, on where you live. New York or Boston, you'd be a fool to own a car. California, especially Los Angeles? You'd be a fool to not own one, where the roads are the most well-maintained in the United States and there are exits every quarter-mile on the freeway. Driving does make you mean. It makes you snappish, surly, short-tempered, and defensive (to take a break from words beginning with s). I don't want to learn how to drive, it seems so stressful, but it's really a skill you can't get along without in the United States. I'm not in London anymore. I have never seen driving as a right. Do you want to tell me that the knowledge and ability to control a two-ton piece of machinery that has the power of two hundred plus horses and is capable of going twice as fast as a cheetah is a right? Do you think any of the working-class mothers in inner-city ghettos, the millions of cyclists in China, the sun-dark children gladly walking five miles to school see driving as a right? It's a privilege. Really, a lot of the things we take for granted here are privileges. We would do well to remember that. Wednesday, July 12, 2006 [link] 11:17 p.m. listening to: "Sin Nombre" - The Refreshments If there's one thing I learned when I was starving in Italy, it's that vegetarianism is a luxury for people who can choose what to eat. Meat isn't murder. You want to know what's murder? What's going on in Sierra Leone is murder. What's going on in Iraq is murder. When there are families and children dying in Cambodia for the lack of a single chicken, how can you call meat murder? There are many, many good reasons to be vegetarian: humanitarian (factory farming is cruel), environmental (factory farming creates an enormous amount of waste), health (beef, pork, and lamb are fatty and bad for you), socioeconomic (the amount of land it takes to raise one cow could be farmed to feed entire families), the list goes on. "Meat is murder" is not, IMHO, a good reason. The type of people who sing out "meat is murder!" and glare at you while you're trying to enjoy your hamburger more often than not have a glamorous, romantic idea of animals as cute, harmless woodland creatures and not the dumb, cruel beasts they can be and often are. People who condemn hunting in favor of "buying your meat from Safeway" piss me off. I would much rather eat a deer that was killed in the wild than a hunk of meat from a factory-farmed cow that was kept pinned in a stall, unable to move, for six months before being slaughtered. Hunters have great respect for nature and are often the biggest contributers to societies such as Audubon. There are bad hunters, yes, who kill for the sake of killing, but there are also bad Christians, bad drivers, and bad teachers. One should not generalize. People who force their pets to be vegetarian or vegan strikes me as just stupid and cruel. Your cat is meant to eat meat; it's just simple biology. I don't care if it's supposedly getting all the protein it needs from its soy cat food or whatever. Its body is designed to get its nutrition from meat. Mycoprotein just isn't the same. I don't eat red meat or pork. That doesn't meant I'm going to keep you from doing so, since I do so for health reasons more than anything else (although that means I may mock you with nutrition information). That also means that you have no right expecting me to make food from beef or pork. Why the hell would I cook something that I'm not going to eat? Friday, July 7, 2006 [link] 03:48 a.m. listening to: nothing What is it about this city that breaks my heart? I hate it here, or more precisely, I hate this wasteland, this black pit of Asian culture and little else. I have to go to three separate grocery stores to procure what I need, and there's no ethnic food to speak of. Well, except Chinese food. You can't beat the dim sum here. My family accuses me of being whitewashed. Maybe I am, except I'm horrified at the prospect. But I still use chopsticks, I sneer at soy sauce on rice, and I happily eat chicken organs. I hate and love this city. There's so much opportunity here--so much that's wasted, just because I don't drive. But even when I do get my license, when will I be able to afford a car? Never: I don't have any family members that will purchase one for me, and I don't see when I'll be able to afford a car, gas, and insurance on my own. I could love it here, if I could drive, if I didn't live here. If, if, if. Tonight, we looked out on the city, glittering and brilliant and harsh, turning the sky rose and violet, and my friend offered, tentatively, "I guess we do live in kind of an amazing place." "You know what's amazing?" I replied. "That we did this. All of this. We made it." You can't see the stars in the sky here, but the stars are on the sidewalks and in every streetlamp and every window. O, what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. (But man delights me greatly.) One of my greatest fears is that I will never be able to leave Los Angeles. Thursday, July 6, 2006 [link] 06:28 p.m. listening to: "Some Flowers Bloom Dead" - Wallflowers I am completely guilty of enjoying the Wallflowers. What of it? I also secretly like Matchbox 20. DON'T JUDGE ME. Completely boring day today. I just couldn't seem to make myself do anything, not even go to the store to collect some desperately-needed ingredients for fried chicken (such as, well, chicken). I took a nap at one point, in preparation for a midnight showing of the pirate movie. I had something else I wanted to say, but now I can't recall what it was. Hmm. Wednesday, July 5, 2006 [link] 08:59 p.m. listening to: nothing My fourth of July was characterized by a lot of lying around the house, feeling a little loopy from cold medicine. My hands have been breaking out again, so I thought some antihistamines would do the trick. I'd purchased some giant horsepills of cold/allergy medicine from CostCo and took one pill, which sent me into a "body high" not dissimilar to the effect that can be acquired through consumption of a pot brownie, but completely without the brain effects. It was a bizarre experience that I don't really wish to repeat. My skin does seem to be better, though. I made bread pudding today. It turned out fairly well, and to my great surprise was a great hit with my cousin, who normally eschews all bread products and all dessert products. The chocolate sauce, it seems, is the key. It's a very delicious chocolate sauce, not oversweet, made with Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream. In other words, it's a completely decadent sauce and I can feel myself turning into a ball of lard as we speak. Sunday, July 2, 2006 [link] 01:56 a.m. listening to: "Butterflies" - David Garza Went hiking today with Wayne and Gigi. It was fun, although we never did find the falls (did we pass them or something???). Then came home and made a pizza and hung out with friends. I am slowly poisoning people with Veronica Mars. I'm dreading the upcoming trip to China, which is not the appropriate attitude toward a trip, is it? But I just want to stay here, cooking and baking and spending time with friends and family. I'm jobless and purposeless and restless, and it's perfect, like I'm suspended in a bubble of unreality that will eventually burst and send me tumbling into the future. Thursday, June 29, 2006 [link] 02:12 p.m. listening to: nothing Today, I went to the store and purchased a bottle of tequila, four limes, a box of powdered sugar, and a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Infer what you will. (Also, today was the first time I was able to purchase alcohol under my own power. Somehow, the thrill is gone.) Tuesday, June 27, 2006 [link] 03:25 p.m. listening to: "Edge of the Ocean" - Ivy Some days are meant for lying on the grass, staring at the sky, counting the clouds and wondering just what you think you're doing with your life. This is one of those days, except suburban Los Angeles doesn't really have any yards to speak of and the sky is overcast with what they call June Gloom. It's the kind of day where you can smell other people's sweat in the air, it's so humid. I am convinced, with the invincibility of youth, that I will find a job after I graduate. My family doesn't want me to tie myself down to a lease: what if I have to move? What if I can't find a job? A lease will only tie me down. I want to be tied down. I can't seem to make them understand that after all the upheaval of the past few years--sleeping in my niece's bedroom, spending four months in England, shivering on a train platform in Italy--that nothing looks more joyous than a year-long lease that makes it impossible for me to uproot my life yet again. Maybe a year from now, when I'm flipping burgers at McDonald's and cursing my inability to take advantage of a job opening in Portland I'll curse the folly of my romantic ideals, but right now it looks like a pretty sweet deal. I'll find a job, I tell them. If I really want a job, I'll get one. It might not be in journalism. It might be minimum wage. It might be part-time, in which case I'll just have to get two jobs, won't I? Or three. Or four. I'll exhaust myself, hate myself and my life and my job(s), but goddammit, this is life on my terms. I'm sick of living my life on the edges of others' orbits. Monday, June 26, 2006 [link] 07:19 p.m. listening to: nothing Long ago, in my AP Biology class, my teacher once delivered a lecture on how your sense of taste can literally be fooled by bad eating. Good food tastes bad, and bad food tastes good. I don't remember if I actually believed him or not, but now I know: it's true. Potato chips are now too salty and taste disgusting. Alfalfa sprouts are the best thing ever. Soda and juices are sickly-sweet and leave a bad taste in my mouth. Cold grapes make the best summer snack. Sauteed vegetables are pointlessly salty and oily; plain steamed is the way to go. I will never, however, give up chocolate. Or cake. Or cookies. Or pastries in general. Or Krispy Kremes. A girl's gotta have some fun in life. Sunday, June 25, 2006 [link] 01:25 p.m. listening to: "Momentary Thing" - Something Happens I was so bored earlier this week that I baked another pound cake (more butter, less flour; it turned out a little greasy, but damn did it taste good). My cousin came home and exclaimed, "You baked a cake!" "Yeah. I was bored," I confessed. ". . . you must have been really bored." I think I have turned into a 50s housewife, only with considerably less sex because I don't get to bang the mailman. I went and saw Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat on Friday night with Hetero Lifemate. It was fun, and Joseph was shirtless for 75 percent of it, which makes it even better. I think his abs deserve their own song. Tuesday, June 20, 2006 [link] 04:52 p.m. listening to: "On Your Porch" - The Format I had occasion, the other day, to think about how odd it is to be queer and religious. I don't identify as religious when asked, for much the same reason that I don't usually identify as feminist. I don't want to be associated with those people. But whereas I can, occasionally, count myself as feminist, I don't think of myself as religious at all. I don't pray. I don't attend church. I don't even believe in Jesus as the Son of God. I do, however, believe in God--or at least the presence of a higher being--and I try, as best as I can, to adhere to Jesus's teachings: not because I think he's the Messiah, but because I think they were pretty good teachings. Love, compassion, you know, all that good stuff. The thing about being religious and queer, though, is that there aren't many of us out there. Religion and homosexuality go together about as well as vegetarians and the NRA. A lot of the LGBT people I've met are avidly anti-religious--not that I blame them, considering that I was of a similar mindset not so long ago, and considering what a lot of very conservative, narrow-minded, fundamentalist-types have done for the LGBT community (read: not a lot). What startles me, though, is how much animosity you can garner when someone else who's queer finds out that you're religious. There's that sudden flinch, the slight baring of teeth. They look at you with pity, confusion, or anger: how dare you believe in this God who supposedly hates us? How dare you take their side? Are you so brainless? Are you such a sheep? It's confusing and a little irritating. First of all, don't make assumptions about me. Secondly, why in the world do we have to be on sides? Don't we all want the same thing? Monday, June 19, 2006 [link] 01:57 p.m. listening to: nothing When I took a bite of the pound cake I'd made on Friday, I realized that this was the cake my aunt used to make when I was small, until she discovered cake-mix-in-a-box and never baked from scratch ever again. Armed with this knowledge, I packed the pound cake up as soon as possible; my aunt's cake went stale remarkably fast, which was probably another reason why she baked out of a box; the cakes stayed softer longer. "What should I make next?" I asked, when the pound cake had been deemed a success. "How about dumplings?" my cousin suggested. Like the kind my aunt also used to make when I was small; I suspect she's manipulating me into cooking all the things her mother used to make. Four just-made dumplings are boiling now, so I can determine if I made the filling correctly. I've shown my niece how to fill the wrappers, wet the rim, and press the edges together. I don't know she knew this is where dumplings come from. I remember doing this when I was her age, only the filling was pork and shrimp, because I ate pork and my cousin didn't have high cholesterol. When I chopped the young leeks for the filling, a smell rose up and filled the kitchen. It smelled like the kitchen of my youth. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands: you become your mother. Sunday, June 18, 2006 [link] 08:22 p.m. listening to: nothing I have a few things I need to get done next week. - go to the library - buy ingredients for a chocolate cake - juice the rest of the grapefruits - make dumplings Busy busy busy! In a very fulfilling sort of way. Sunday, June 18, 2006 [link] 12:21 a.m. listening to: "Momentary Thing" - Something Happens I've reached that point in my blogging where the lines between the LiveJournal and this blog have become blurred. I still refer to this blog as my "real blog," where I talk about real life things that have actual, you know, impact on my life. But the LiveJournal has been used for that more often than late, partly due to a friend's influence and partly due to my own greed for attention. Who doesn't want to wake up to a dozen comments exclaiming everything from envy to joy to praise? Still, though, this journal sees less use than it should, and I feel that my entries have become less and less of substance of late. I fear that I have become boring, and then I remind myself that I shouldn't care. It's not as if I'm under some sort of contractual obligation to be entertaining. But I feel that if I'm going to be boring, then why am I writing this at all? Every blog is in some sense masturbatory, and I might as well put on a good show. Perhaps it's time that I draw some sort of line between material that goes on here and material that goes on the LiveJournal? Some of them are obvious: entries about my real life (work, play, cooking, baking) go here, entries about Veronica Mars go there. Cross-posting is always an option. Then there are fuzzier things, like my writing. The LiveJournal originally existed for fannish and writing purposes. Then people I knew in real life friended it and demanded more real life things; they were not interested in clicking over to another journal to read about the mundane details of my life. Which prompts the question, well then, they must not be that interested in my life after all! I have pondered, on and off, the merits of creating an RSS feed. I want to please, and it would make things easier for a great many people, I think, if I created an RSS feed or something similar so that people could add this journal to their friendslists. At the same time, though, I dislike the idea of becoming "one of the Borg," so to speak. I don't want to become another entry on someone else's friendslist. It destroys the sense I get that this journal is an island that exists seperately from anything or everything else. I also like my lack of ability to track how many people are reading this thing. I can't help but check, every once in a while, how many people have me friended on LiveJournal. I want to be popular; doesn't everyone? Here, though, where I can't see how many people are reading (or supposedly reading) at any given time, I don't have to care about popularity. It's very liberating. There's also the issue that I don't want to bore people on the LiveJournal, which is very frustrating. I believe very strongly that a blog is for me, not for the others; when I know that my words are duplicated on dozens of friendslists, however, it's hard not to feel guilty about cluttering others' screens with my inane prattle. Should I talk about writing here or there? The LJ was originally meant to be a writing journal; I very much liked the comment system and the idea that people would be able to leave me feedback on my writing. What about general writerly musings, though? Meanderings on present tense vs. past tense? Thinking out loud about character development? Just general rambling about my writing process? Would anyone be interested in reading this? And even if they were, do I necessarily want them to comment? Life is abound with mysteries. Friday, June 16, 2006 [link] 10:11 p.m. listening to: "Be Mine" - R.E.M. I successfully baked a cake today. I am invincible. Wednesday, June 14, 2006 [link] 08:22 p.m. listening to: nothing Fridays are now going to be spent looking after the niece. I can't say I particularly mind, although I'm worried. How does one entertain a seven-year-old for an entire day? Maybe I should make up lesson plans or something. My days are starting to become restless. I wake up, play video games, spend time on the computer. I don't go outside anymore unless it's to go to the store. What's the point? There's nothing to do around here. I want to throw bladed objects at trees. I don't know. I've been writing, some. It's nice to write every day. My attempts to make pound cake were foiled by a lack of cake flour at the store. Today, however, there was cake flour. So tomorrow, hopefully, there will be pound cake. Sunday, June 11, 2006 [link] 10:53 p.m. listening to: nothing I juiced grapefruits today with my niece. I sliced the grapefruits and she juiced them with the electric juicer. It reminded me, strangely enough, of juicing oranges with my father. He would always mock me whenever I failed to slice an orange into two similar halves; I'm very bad at eyeballing these things and tend to end up with one "half" that's far more shallow than the other. My niece, however, only said, "how cute!" and juiced away. Life is funny, sometimes. Tomorrow, I'm going to try making pound cake. |
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