Monthly Archives: May 2010

goodness

But What to Wear…

It’s official: I’m going to ComiCon this year, possibly for three whole days, as a correspondent for a comic website. You’d think I’d be nervous about doing whatever it is a “correspondent” does. But foremost in my mind is what to wear. I HAVE to cosplay.

Requirements:
-At least a little sexy (hey, I’m young and I like my body, what do you want from me?)
-Can’t show too much skin (I’m not a slut)
-I can’t do anything too crazy with my hair (I have work on Monday)
-Comfortable shoes a must

So here’s what I’m thinking:
Toph– Toph is the greatest cartoon character I’ve seen in a long, long time. And I have the same haircut and everything! But I don’t want to dress exactly like the cartoon, because that always looks ridiculous. A friend had the great idea of doing grown-up Toph, but I didn’t commit, so I couldn’t pull it off. Anyway, how would I make it clear who I was trying to dress as? Maybe pin an Earth Kingdom logo onto my jacket? Ugh, that’s so lame.
Catwoman– An obvious choice for the sex appeal, but I was thinking of doing Catwoman while she was still hooking. Problem: I don’t have hair that short anymore, and I’m not willing to cut it again. And going all-out with the cap will be trouble ($$).
Kay (from Akira)– We have the same haircut! I’ll have to go through the comics, but I get the feeling that finding her clothes would be an expensive pain in the ass. Still, I’m really into Akira right now (just found all but one of the comics to complete the 38 comic run), so I’d love to do something in connection with that. I could paint my old helmet to look like Tetsuo’s (wait, they don’t wear helmets, lol).

I want the costume to look awesome, but lack the desire to work hard to follow through. So it’ll probably be just another half-assed attempt at Toph this year. I could go all-out ridiculous, and do sexy Toph… yikes.

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life, uncategorized

Event Horizon: Daydream

I used to daydream all the time; in the shower, in every class, in front of my computer at home, lying in bed at night, eyes wide open, thinking, concocting, creating. I knew it wasn’t constructive. At one point, I realized that I was using my daydreams like currency, paying myself one or two units of imaginings as a reward for studying, completing a spreadsheet, reading a chapter, returning a few calls. Rarely was anything as attractive or satisfying as my own imagination. I was addicted to the waking dream.

What was it all about? Most daydreams played on my desire for an identity switch; I would be powerful and generous, or poor yet heroic. Sometimes I was the villain (fierce retribution against those who had wronged me or my family), sometimes I was the rescuer (always the quiet type to start), sometimes I was the rescued (rarely). Often I had some fantastic ability, physical or otherwise (psychic ninja!). But it was never perfect in the sense that I was flawless, or without remorse or regret. To some extent, my fantasy self was always broken. And, like all heroes, that’s what made her strong.

I was re-reading one of my favorite mangas, Mail by Housui Yamazaki, tonight. In the first issue, a brief origin of the protagonist’s special powers is told slowly and thoughtfully, urging the reader into a sense of empathy and anxiety, until his curse becomes a boon. This is how I imagined my alternate self to be, and how we demand our heroes to be built: the rough road leads to a fair-minded, soft-hearted, human weapon. How many heroes have we lauded for their struggles in such a fashion? Superman, loved and pitied for his strength and inevitable, eternal solitude; Spiderman for his durability and agility with the heart-on-his-sleeve personality; and the ultimate: Batman for his broken innocence and brutally dark rebound onto the offensive, occasionally blurring the line of justice to satisfy his own fantasy of what justice should be.

What fueled my insatiable hunger to daydream? I submit that I was, like most of us, an innocent victim of my own humanity. The desire to be special, the drive to procreate, the rush that comes with great risk, the need to re-experience the enormous euphoria after a brush with death; what combination of these shared experiences created the perfect cocktail for this sharp reflex to recoil into my own head? Maybe any combination would have done that. I can’t claim to know for sure. How strange, the mind. How unique, how common.

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badness, life

Dissolving the Hero Complex


So apparently I have panic attacks. I just found out about a month ago that when I go to bed and my heart starts to pound as I’m lying motionless in the dark, that’s a panic attack. And thank god, because I thought it was a symptom of some mysterious condition, or my heart was going to explode or something.

I was lying in bed tonight, and it happened; my heart started beating hard and slow. I was lying on my right side like I usually do, and I turned my head into the pillow until one half of my face was pressed into it. My head slid down the pillow until it touched the bed. My left eye batted open and shut, and suddenly I was 15 again. I can’t count the number of times I did that growing up, striking that position while my heart thundered in my chest and my left eye I stared at my mattress in the dark. How long has this been going on? Why would a 15-year-old have panic attacks? (hint: Read previous entries.)

Albeit I was thinking of something somewhat panic-inducing tonight as I laid there (in some police show I saw a while back, some officer saved some woman being attacked by some guy, blahblahblah, violence and hysteria). But it doesn’t take that kind of thought to make my heart go nuts.

So why does it happen?
I have a theory: I can’t do it all. I can’t save everyone, and I hate that.

I realized recently that my perfect world would be to have everyone just go limp to cut back on resistance while I try to move us all forward. I’m just realizing how crazy that sounds, but for a long time, that was the way I would have preferred things. Accepting the fact that I can’t control everyone, that there isn’t some magical combination of words and good looks that will place everyone I encounter firmly under my control is something I’m very slowly coming to terms with. I need to let people get away with the harmless little stuff people (and kids) do now and then. I think it’ll make me a better teacher, and an easier person to be around in the long run if I can keep making progress in this direction. I thought I was pretty laid back before, but I was content in my sense of control, however false.

So I’m learning to loosen-up. It’ll take a while, but I’m working on it. I’ve recognized the problem, and I feel good about that.

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humor

Seafood massacre

Red Lobster (and other seafood restaurants), you have attracted my satirical ire.

Aside from being synonymous with tacky, Red Lobster also has the most careless wait staff and patrons I have ever had the misfortune of observing on TV. Heaven forbid they get anywhere near some king crab or Cajun grilled shrimp, because that shit will go flying across a table, get slammed onto a plate, and brutally cannon-balled into a dish of butter with such immediacy that their love affair with slow motion brutality against maritime confections (second only to having heart attacks) can only be described as barbaric. I have never seen so much reasonably tasty-looking food get so horribly manhandled.

How is watching beautiful food get abused appealing? At what point do I nudge the guy who ordered the lobster tail at the next table and say, “Y’know what you should do with that? Try smothering it in some disgusting garlic cream sauce, dousing it with way too much lemon, and covering it– I mean COVERING it– with some horrible combination of spices that’ll mute the natural deliciousness of the dish. Or maybe smear something on it you would never think of… how about some maple syrup? Then just drop it onto the plate a couple’a times just to watch it bounce. I see it in commercials all the time. I’m pretty sure that’s how you should eat seafood.” FALSE.

That is all.

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