Archive Page 2
year two thousand and seven
As of 2:50 a.m., January the first, year two thousand and seven, these are the things I would like to do before I die.

1) Master a deadly martial art (until able to pass, at will, as mysterious hooded ninja type figure).
2) Become a (part-time?) drummer for an eighties-style synth-oriented band, the lead singer of which must have large, feathered hair.
3) Raise a fiercely loyal, highly dangerous, ridiculously large dog, possibly named something overtly biblical/apocalyptic.
4) Become one of those people who is effortlessly neat and tidy, but not in an assholeish manner.
5) Go back to that Hungarian restaurant I went to that time, the one with the amazing dumplings.
6) Track down Clive Owen and make him understand that no one, No One, will ever love him the way I do, never ever ever ever.
7) Own some sort of property that includes a siege-worthy moat. And a maze. Like in the Shining. (The maze in the Shining, not the moat. There is no moat in the Shining. Fool.)
Move to Barcelona for a while and live an aggressively stylish, continental existence involving lots of attractive casual nudity and ironic disenchantment with the world at large.
9) Come up with an honest, year-by-year soundtrack for my life, starting with that first 1989 purchase of WHAM!’s greatest hits and pushing right on through to All 4 One and Boyz II Men.
10) Live in a turret of some sort, or at least a room with charmingly irregular ceilings. And a window seat. Like in Anne of Windy Poplars, or whichever the one was where she went away to teach and lived in that house with the trees and the pushy cleaning lady and wrote Gilbert Blythe all those letters.
11) Survive a large-scale zombie uprising, during which I prove my mettle and save an innocent baby or a bus full of kindergarten children. Or Clive Owen. Yeah. Maybe just Clive.
Filed under: lists, milestones | Leave a Comment
allgrownsup
About six months ago, my mom hit me with a real… whopper(?) of a question. (Whopper? Apparently I am now writing to you from the 1950’s.) I talk to my mom every day on the phone; as creepy as it may sound, she is the single most important person in my life. I forget what we were talking about on this particular day, but it started out fairly routine: inane recaps of daily activities, discussion of who had a cold and who didn’t, etc. Then the topic turned to me, my life, and my work habits.
“What,” she asked me, very very soberly, “do you think might be wrong with you?”***
It was a good question. I can’t stop thinking about it.
*** For anyone who is not familiar with my mother and/or my relationship with her, this might be a good time for a bit of a heads-up. My mom is a very unusual specimen of human. She’s charismatic and strong and exciting and scary and vulnerable, often all at once. By the standards of polite society, she can be more than a little bit crazy. People tend to feel very strongly about her, one way or the other: it’s either intense mentor/friend-crush or active dislike. She’s a professor of literature, and one time when I was eight, she spontaneously started singing at the top of her lungs as we walked down a crowded street; I slowed my steps and pretended not to know who she was. She still talks about this and uses it as an excuse to call me rude names. I call her them right back. A good time is had by all.
When I was six this paragon of motherhood persuaded me to call her by her given name instead of saying ‘mom,’ because, really, the whole ‘mom’ thing was “a bit much.” It didn’t stick, but I still remember the glorious two weeks I got to scream KYUNG-JA! as I trundled down the hallway of our building, announcing my safe return home from kindergarten. That same year, in the same run-down, low-rent apartment, she convinced me that the leaks in our bathroom were special, possibly even worthy of outright celebration, because hey, who else on God’s green earth got to use their umbrella, indoors, while they peed?
She is a remarkable woman.
(I say all this confident in the knowledge that she will never read this; she may be remarkable, but she is also a woman who lives in constant fear of clicking something wrong on her desktop and effectively ending civilization as we know it. The internet is not her friend.)
Now, this might be hard to believe for some, but the question of what, actually, might be wrong with me wasn’t designed to be hurtful. Worth noting, too, is the fact that I intuited this; it bruised my ego, yes, but my feelings weren’t hurt. We may not have a storybook mother-child dynamic, but we’ve also managed to avoid most of the bullshit baggage mothers and their grownup daughters so often seem to struggle with. We tend to say what we mean. It was a legitimate question, motivated by sincere curiosity tempered with real concern, and we followed it up with a reasonably humorous, fairly fruitful, very lengthy exploration of various possible answers.
Could it be, we pondered, That my innate laziness and inability to keep deadlines was somehow pathological? Perhaps there was some clinical way to diagnose and treat this issue. Should we maybe look into getting me a psychiatrist? I must be missing some crucial socialization chip to remain so brazen in the face of losing any and all credibility with every publication/grant-giving organization I’ve ever worked with. What, exactly, did I do all day, every day, for weeks and months on end, with all this time that I refused to devote to productive work of any kind? What, exactly, was I doing in London, since I’d already quit two universities and had no plans of going on to a third?
Dearest Mother, said I, nonplussed. Whatever can you mean? I DAILY undertake marathon viewing sessions of entire TV programs, good and mediocre. I strive tirelessly to improve what will one day, God willing, be an encyclopedic knowledge of the beautiful medium that is the adapted BBC miniseries. And you know what, Mother O’ Mine? Sometimes, just to spice things up, I forget to pay my rent and spend three straight days creating a podcast about angry mice that nobody understands. Once a month, in between getting drunk and stoned, I’ll even grudgingly submit to the inevitable and wash a truly epic pile of socks and underwear. What? What’s that, you say? Can you possibly be insinuating that you wanted more for your only child, that you expected more from the proverbial apple of your eye? Come, come. Turn off the oven. You’re not pulling a Plath on my watch. If you just look below the surface, you’ll see that these are all useful, marketable skills, skills that will allow me to support you once you retire, three short years from now. No, a little deeper than that. Deeper. Well, it’s not my fault if you can’t see it. Can’t blame me for that.
…
Yeah. No. That last paragraph? Didn’t happen. But maybe it should have. Maybe in the spirit of complete honesty, something the two of us have always prized, I should let her in on the full extent of the portents of doom that currently riddle my existence. She deserves to know.
Then again, I could just write about it and post it on the internet, a belated, passive confession to everyone in my life who isn’t her, my way of saying sorry, Sorry mom, really, I am. I know I was supposed to have a PhD by age 20, I know you hoped I would paint or write or oh, I dunno, do something. I know you worry that I haven’t found anything to be passionate about, anything to really devote myself to; I know that’s what you want for me more than anything, even if my ‘passion’ turns out to be (as you so colorfully put it) running a hot dog stand. I know a lot of things couldn’t be more wrong. But I promise I love you, and even if I’m not quite sure how yet, I promise I’ll make everything right, and sometime soon we’ll get to laugh laughs without even a trace of irony.
I miss you.
Filed under: milestones, waxingnostalic | Leave a Comment
This is mortifying to admit, and when I did it, I promised myself no one would ever have to know, but the fact of the matter is that when I started this site, I bought a book online entitled No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog.
I shit you not.
I flipped through it when it first arrived, and as far a I can recall it was everything it’d promised to be. Cute, quirky, and 100 ‘ideas’ long. True to form, though, before I’d utilized even one of the oh-so-tasty morsels of inspiration, I promptly lost track of it; the thing has gone to ground somewhere in the cesspit that is my room. I just spent a good forty seconds half-heartedly shifting some piles around, but it appears to be gone. Possibly forever. I just need to face that and move on.
So much for being even marginally proactive.
Filed under: piss&moan | Leave a Comment
holiday epiphany 2006
Christmas has somehow come and gone already — a flurry of last-minute gravy cooking, wine drinking, ribbon untying, and Twin Peaks marathoning.
We’ve only got four days until The New Year is upon us.
Remember how, when you were little, the three short months of summer vacation would just go on forever? Friendships could be made, solidified, and dissipated. Romances (such as they were, at age could be carried out in full, from that thrilling initial whack on the arm to the gradual, mutual loss of interest. You could laugh, fight, cry, make up, and ride your bike across town and back all in the course of an afternoon — and mean every bit of it.
The months go by so ridiculously fast these days; I know I’m not saying anything new here, but sweet CHRIST, I canNOT beLIEVE the year is over.
…
Alright. Even for me, that is slightly too maudlin a note to close on. So, in an off-topic attempt to inject some levity into this circus, I have copied and pasted my ’06 Holiday Epiphany below:
manicmaya: You know what I think?
manicmaya: I think
manicmaya: Orlando Bloom looks like a rat
manicmaya: and everyone just needs to accept it.
manicmaya: The man is not attractive, NOR can he act.
todytheshroom: He definitely peaked when he jumped on that horse
all Crazy Elf Style in the second Lord of the Rings.
todytheshroom: It’s all been downhill from there.
Filed under: friends, milestones | Leave a Comment
have a cheeky christmas
Sometimes, my ‘peeps’ and I like to try and pretend we are grown-ups. We’ll sit around the kitchen table, the soothing tones of BBC4 filling the background as we leaf through newspapers, pretending to be cultured and discussing current events. True to form, though, it never really seems to take very long for things to fall apart. Below, a slice from just such an evening.
* * * SCENE 14.2 * * *
The kitchen is cozy, decorated with tinsel and Christmas lights.
David and Rory sit on one side of the table, each with his own newspaper,
idly flipping through. Maya sits on the other side, surreptitiously scouring
the weekend supplement for news about celebrities, the only thing
she’s actually interested in. Rory and David are making small talk.
RORY: I heard there’s a Japanese production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus on at the Barbican soon. It’s gotten brilliant reviews — we should go see it.
DAVID: Is that the one where they use like, seven different languages simultaneously?
RORY: Surely you must be thinking of Midsummer Night’s Dream.
DAVID: Ah, yes. Yes, you’re right. So was that production just a one-off then?
RORY: Yes, I’m fairly sure it was. I don’t know that it was even on in the city – it might just have been Stratford.
David makes a small grunt of acknowledgment and
turns a page of his paper.Rory looks down at his own
paper for a moment, then looks up suddenly.
RORY: OH! Did you HEAR about Lembit Opik?
DAVID: YES. My GOD.
MAYA: Who the hell is Lembit Opik?
RORY: Oh God, he’s this very well-respected British politician, a member of Parliament — I think he’s a Liberal Democrat –
DAVID: — and he’s had this really public, long-term relationship with this famous, respected weather forecaster woman — the only famous weather forecaster in England –
RORY: — she’s like, Oxbridge educated, and very kind of, dignified, and they were engaged to be married — and it’s just come out that he’s dumped her, and run off with a CHEEKY GIRL.
Expectant pause.
MAYA: What the HELL is a “cheeky girl”?
Stunned, slightly horrified silence.
RORY/DAVID: YOU DON’T KNOW THE CHEEKY GIRLS??
RORY: (voice full of pity) Oh, Maya.
DAVID: They sang “The Cheeky Song.” Do you not know “The Cheeky Song?”
MAYA: I think I might have missed The Cheeky Song.
RORY: They’re these twins, from like, Transylvania, and they have this little tiny Romanian mother who picks out all their outfits and dances and songs — she came up with the whole concept, really — and you can just tell from the interviews, this little old woman is like, a force of nature.
David: They were on X-Factor, I think. It’s like the British American Idol. They got kicked off really early because they were SO bad, but their song went to number one on the UK charts because of like, kitsch value.
RORY: You really don’t know the Cheeky Song?
MAYA: I really don’t know it. Is that the title?
DAVID: Yes. It’s actually called The Cheeky Song. Touch my bum.
Startled, Maya looks strangely at David. It is a look that clearly says,
No, Absolutely Not, I don’t care how amazing this particular fact may be,
I am SO not touching your bum that it is distinctly unfunny.
David clocks Maya’s look, and makes a pair of parantheses with his hands.
DAVID: “(Touch My Bum.)” In BRACKETS.
* * * END SCENE * * *
Please. Click the clips below and enjoy. The choreography is mind-blowing, and really, the accents alone are totally worth the five minutes of your life you will never get back:
THE CHEEKY SONG (TOUCH MY BUM)
Pay special attention to the lyrics. They will change the way you look at life.
HAVE A CHEEKY CHRISTMAS
HIGHLIGHT #1: The reindeer actually looks embarrassed to be involved. There’s a direct shot of it at the 01:08 mark, and it is clearly thinking GodDAMN, I need a new agent.
HIGHLIGHT #2: Approximately 01:20 into the video, the one on the left delivers the magical line “I will be your special DISH!” And it sounds distinctly like a threat. You will get chills.
HIGHLIGHT #3: In the very very last shot, one of them whispers a special Christmas message at the camera. The first time I saw it, I literally screamed and ran out of the room. It’s that good.
Filed under: friends, youtube glory | Leave a Comment
Devoted, chronologically-minded readers will know that last week, I had a dental mishap. I tried hard not to care, I did, but by the fourth day I had to face facts: this level of snaggle-toothery was just too much to handle, even for me and my admittedly questionable sense of aesthetic acceptability. Something had to be done. I needed to find a dentist.
Because I currently have no official purpose here in London, I am not covered by the National Health Services thingie. I searched online for ‘private dentists’ nearby; I live pretty centrally, so I set up an appointment in the West End. I knew full well that it would be pricier than something farther out, but my saintly mother sent me some money to splurge a little for Christmas, and I decided what I really wanted from Santa this year was the absence of a long, tooth-themed trek involving maps and the Tube.
The night before the fated dentist’s appointment, people came over, things got out of hand, and a very special cake was baked. A cake that made us all very very happy, for about six to eight hours. Except for one of us, who passed out at hour four.
I woke up the next morning feeling pretty out of it. I assumed this was due to the cakey festivities. I thought to myself, Hey, You know what might clear this right up? Yes! Exactly! More Cake! That is exactly right. Gee Golly Whiz, I’m sure glad I’m so smart!
And like some sort of stoner Cosby child, I proceeded to have a slice of cake for breakfast.
Two hours later, running late and unable to navigate the buses, I climbed into a taxi. A TAXI. In LONDON. Cabs here are unthinkable under all but the most dire circumstances because of sheer cost, so this should give you an idea of the state I was in. Fifteen minutes of luxurious sitting went by, and then BAM! I found myself wandering, confused, up and down an incredibly… ‘posh’ street (no other word does it justice). I vaguely remembered a street number; I felt in my bones that I should find it. I found it. It didn’t look right. I walked around some more and smoked a cigarette, but failed to come up with a magical new plan. I ended up back at the same spot. It appeared to be a private residence, with no signage whatsoever. Just a single gold-plated doorbell.
I called up my one hardworking, employed friend (the only friend I knew would be awake and near a computer at the ungodly hour of one p.m.) and had her look up the phone number and double check the address. I was apparently in the right place. I called them to confirm.
“Hello,” they said.
“Do you not have any signage?” I demanded.
“Signage?” the polite, clipped, British lady-voice repeated quizzically.
“Signage.” I confirmed, undaunted, not even the tiniest bit embarrassed, confident in the knowledge that this is, indeed, a real word. (It is. I double checked when I got home.)
Silence.
“Some sort of sign to indicate your place of business?” I tried.
“Oh. No, I’m afraid we don’t.”
“Right. So. I’m having some trouble locating you. What do you advise that I do?”
“Well, it’s (this address). You can ring the bell when you get here.”
“The bell,” I said, thoughtfully.
“Yes, the bell,” she repeated.
“The GOLD bell?” I demanded.
“Yes. That would be the one,” she replied, infuriatingly logical and calm.
“Okay.” I said. I rang the bell.
The woman who came to the door I can only describe as a kind of older, more squat Mary Poppins, as reinterpreted by the good people at Yves Saint Laurent. I’m talking about the distinctly scary, no-nonsense, Mr. Banks-intimidating, penquin-taming Dame Poppins, not the rosy cheeks and singing shit. I have never seen a more put together receptionist/doorperson.
After a long, awkward interlude during which I gave an unnecessarily detailed, rambling explanation establishing my right to be there, she ushered me into the waiting room. It was quite possibly THE nicest waiting room on the planet. Wood panelling abounded. There were walls of books with matching leather covers, titles embossed in 24k gold (probably). There were leather, high-backed chairs, and a huge leather couch. Lots of leather, really. And a fire. And, of course, me. Me, stupidly high, in full-on hulking, fro-haired, snaggle-toothed glory, wearing the same jeans I’d been wearing all week and unzipping my ancient, smelly, oversized, visibly torn ‘SeanJohn’ winter jacket (my mother bought it for me; she has never heard of Puff Daddy and I love her, so I wear it with pride).
I felt woozy. I sat down.
The doorbell rang. I heard La Poppins get up and answer it. I heard polite, muted murmurings. An ivory-haired, impeccably dressed old man, probably around seventy-five, turned the corner and came into the waiting room. He was accompanied by a beautiful, dignified, slightly younger woman (in her fifties, I would say) in a gorgeous tweed outfit and pearls. They spoke to each other exclusively in Russian. She lovingly adjusted his tie. They studiously ignored me as I sat, incredibly stoned and starting to feel a bit queasy, watching them intently from the corner. I became convinced that he was a retired Russian oil-baron and she his classy long-term mistress. I decided he’d probably had dealings with the mafia in his time. Perhaps he had had people killed, back in the day. Perhaps he would have me killed, for ruining his mojo with my fro and my SeanJohn. Perhaps I should make a run for it.
But what if I wasn’t fast enough? I’m not particularly nimble. What if he caught me?
Luckily, a nurse came to collect me before I actually worked myself into enough of a frenzy to run away or accuse anyone of plotting to kill me. She was a remarkably cheerful, chatty young woman, pretty and fresh-faced and rosy — in fact, she and the receptionist together would have combined to cover all the nuances of Julie Andrews. She was a temp, she told me. Was it quite cold outside? We would have to go up four flights of stairs, but Oh, weren’t these old buildings beautiful? Wheezing and spaced out, I made a valiant attempt at small talk through all four flights. She led me into a room.
I don’t know if any of you have seen the 1988 Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche adaptation of Unbearable Lightness of Being, but the room I walked into was straight out of the Prague hospital where Day-Lewis (or Tomas, for those who have read the book but not seen the movie) worked. It was huge, airy, high-ceilinged, and absolutely bare. It felt like our voices should be echoing. Tucked in one corner was an old fashioned sink and a small, serious looking cabinet. And right smack in the middle of all that empty space, all alone: a single turquoise-upholstered dentist’s chair. Standing at the door, transfixed by the chair, I realized I was shaking the hand of a tall, hunky, aggressively blonde man in a white lab coat. His name was Hans. Hans Lock.
Hans is Danish, and when I told Hans my name, Hans got very very excited and said something to me in very fast Danish, because he thought I might be Danish, because apparently, Maya is a very common name in Denmark. Hans was sad when I was forced to admit no, not Danish, sorry, and I, too, was saddened by the whole affair. I bemoaned my non-Danish roots. Still, we rallied, and over the next half hour, Hans checked and cleaned my teeth, told me my fears of late-stage gingivitis were largely unfounded, and promised to fix my snaggle tooth when he got back from his holiday trip in January. Dazed, I thanked Hans and made my way out of the building.
At no point did anyone yell at me for not getting regular dental check-ups or taking better care of my teeth. At no point did Hans try to make me feel guilty for smoking or berate me for not brushing after lunch as well as breakfast and dinner. I’d just been to the dentist, and no one had tried to scare me with apocalyptic predictions of toothlessness by age thirty unless I changed my thoughtless ways. The only thing Hans had said that wasn’t outright congratulatory was a mild “you could floss more,” and even that had been presented as a kind of friendly offering, take it or leave it, in case I really wanted a little somethinsomethin to spice up my oral hygiene routine.
I was filled with joy. I decided I loved Hans, and I fucking loved Mary Poppins, too, in all her incarnations. The cake in my belly kicked into overdrive. I bid Reception Poppins adieu with a knowing, familiar nod of the head, and stepped out into the street with a light heart: Russian mafia and SeanJohn be damned, it was a beautiful day.
It wasn’t until half a block later that I realized I had no clue where, in fact, I was.
Or how to get home.
Filed under: drunk&disorderly, mishaps | Leave a Comment
hardy peasant stock
One of the many perks of coming from hardy peasant stock is that I don’t often get sick. (Other ‘perks’ include a set of seriously no-nonsense childbearing hips and the implicit knowledge that, should famine ever strike, I can count on my brute strength and fat stores to see me through to the other side, even as my willowy, aristocratic contemporaries fall like flies around me — a thought that gives me much comfort through the long, cold, lonely nights.)
The downside of not getting sick very often is that when I do, it takes a while for me to realize it’s happening; and when my sickliness becomes undeniable, I’m never quite sure what I’m supposed to do with myself.
I’ve spent the past week being grumpy and clammy, either in bed or running to and from the bathroom in various states of undress, hoping none of my flatmates is around to see me. It sucked. It sucked a lot.
But I’m better now. And you know what? If the mood struck me, I could go somewhere. I mean, I probably won’t, but I could. I could go somewhere, not knowing where the nearest bathroom is, and you know, it would be alright. I would be okay. Because I’m BETTER now.
Hot DAMN life is beautiful.
Filed under: mishaps, piss&moan | Leave a Comment
bacon is dangerous.
I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but every now and then, for no particular reason, I get an uncontrollable urge to try and channel me some Martha Stewart. So last week, on an otherwise bright and innocent morning, I cooked breakfast. I had someone over and I decided I was going to attempt some hardcore omelette action; I’d even gone out to M&S, the NICE grocery store, to buy the eggs and onions and mushrooms and bread and bacon.
OH, the bacon.
I love England. I do. But I will say this: British bacon is not real bacon. It is a glorified bastardization of ham. I know this claim will cause much controversy, but I stand by it. English Bacon is not crispy, nor does it come in strip form. IT’S NOT “PROPER” BACON.
The wonderful thing, on this brisk, sunny morning, was that I’d purchased true, greasy, crispy, strips of actual bacon. I came home, I collapsed in a chair and recovered from the foray into the outside world, I cooked, I achieved an omelette that did not fall apart. My guest was happy, I was happy, the bacon was curly: all was right with the world.
Mid-meal, I bit down into what was probably my sixth or seventh mouthful. And heard a crack.
My Beloved Bacon broke my goddamn tooth.
Uuuuuggggggggggggggghh.
The background story in brief: Two years ago I was visiting people in Boston. At one point during this vacation, I found myself in the fluorescent-lit bowels of a straaange, deserted New England storage facility… where I found some seriously strange shit. One item in particular actually made me laugh so hard and so spastically that I smacked my face into a conveniently located iron bar nearby. Not my best moment, really. I badly chipped three of my most prominent teeth (the pillars of my mouth community, you could say), and for the rest of the trip I had a lot of bits missing from my mouth (it wasn’t as bad as it sounds — I still managed to have an excellent time). I got them fixed when I got home to Seoul. At considerable expense, I might add. The same week I got them fixed, I went out for a drink. There, in that bar, as I stood minding my own business, drinking a beer, SOMEone, someone whose full name starts with Claire and ends with Kim, knocked my elbow — creating a very very tiny chip in one of the brand new veneers.
Last goddamn week, my Beloved Bacon absolutely decimated that same sliiiightly chipped veneer.
When I told this to the elbow-knocking Architect Of My Misfortune, hoping for an apology of sorts (or, at the very least, some sympathy), all she could muster up was:
“Sweet. So does that mean you look kind of like a crackwhore now?”
…And I had to admit to the shameless hussy that Yes, Now, When I open my mouth, I do look distinctly like a really really rough crackwhore.
Martha Stewart would be HORRIFIED.
Filed under: mishaps, piss&moan | Leave a Comment
A movie called “The Net” came out In 1995, the year I moved to America. God. Almost twelve years ago. Before Google, before Wikipedia, before iTunes and Amazon; in the heyday of dial-up America Online. HA.
The Net was a Sandra Bullock vehicle: Sandra, post-crashing buses with Keanu and making mind-love with Sly, but PRE-crashing cruiseliners with Jason Patric and exploring the ripe comic potential of a manly woman in a beauty pageant. (TALK about a FISH out of WATER! SO hilaaaaaaaaarious!) It was a delicate time for Sandra, but The Net was masterful, and it pulled her through.
‘95 was kind of a big year for computer/internet movies. “Hackers” came out that summer, too — and while it’s hard to imagine now that Angelina sexing up SickBoy could be anything but a smash hit, I’m pretty sure that at the time, The Net was a bigger box office draw. In it, Sandy plays a disheveled, withdrawn, but still-fairly-attractive-in-a-hermitlike-way hacker-type person. Then … oh, I forget the details, but basically, mysterious, technologically savvy evildoers steal her identity and make her life hell, and she spends the rest of the movie trying to clear her name and stop some larger catastrophic event. I’m almost certain there was a final showdown at a computer convention, complete with one of those scenes where you see a copy/download progress bar on a computer screen slowly fill up to 100%, which it needs to do, while the bad guys are getting closer and closer and closer.
The reason I bring this up is simple: I did all my Christmas shopping today, in two hours.
Online.
There was this scene in The Net, right at the beginning, where they are establishing that Sandra truly is a hermit: sitting sullenly at her messy desk, she orders HER PIZZA via the INTERWEB, with just a few clicks of the button. THEN we find out she does lots of magical things online, like banking and getting groceries delivered. It soon becomes clear that the entire movie is a hysteria-tinged warning, a vision of a dystopic future where it will be possible for people to practically withdraw from society, to lose their very humanity. She does everything online! She never sees people! THIS IS WHY IT WAS SO EASY TO ERASE HER!!!!!
I remember, at the age of twelve, being particularly impressed by the pizza thing. It seemed wildly futuristic at the time. Now I do it on a weekly basis, sitting at my messy desk.
What worries me most of all is that I just don’t have Sandra’s mad hacker-type skillZ to get my identity back when they erase me. I have no big floppy disk with which to upload/download something pivotal at a convention while angry, burly men close in upon me. I don’t even know where I would find a computer convention. Why do they even WANT my identity anyway?? So I know my way around Amazon.com, so what? IS THAT SUCH A CRIME? Why ME?? WHY???
Maybe tomorrow I will go properly introduce myself to the deaf old lady who lives next door. Just so SOMEone will know the difference when they replace me with a streetwise hooker named Ruth and give me her identity instead. (You know. Cuz Ruth is probably real good at what she does, so she’ll be able to fool people like family and flatmates.)
Yes. That’ll foil the wily, eraser-wielding bastards. They’ll never see the deaf old lady coming.
Filed under: TV&movies | Leave a Comment
ch-ch-ch-chaanges, part deux
So, continuing on from the first installment — I’m moving to America.
After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to relocate to Austin, Texas.
So far, four out of every five people I’ve told has responded with a knee-jerk: “Texas?? WHY?”
The fifth: “Austin?? COOOOL.”
…which proves… nothing, really. I mean, other than the sad fact that only twenty percent of my friends are aware of how amazing Austin is. If you happen to be part of that other eighty, please, feel free to verify and fact check. Eventually you will have to accept that when it comes to general lifestyle, live music, film festivals, good schools, interesting people, ‘vibe,’ and (relative) affordability . . . Austin’s got it all.
So sometime this coming spring (March? April? May?), I’m going to pack up my mountain range of possessions, ship it surface-mail to my uncles or aunt, and hop on a plane to someplace American-y. In this place, I will get a new driver’s license (old one’s expired), buy a sturdy-ass used car, and wander down to Austin to find an apartment, dropping in on unsuspecting friends along the way. Once I do find an apartment, if there ends up being some lag time involved before I can move in, I’ll do some more driving and seeing of people. The goal is to eventually stop in and see all y’alls in and around Boston/NewYork/LA/SF/Seattle/Chicago.
Then I’ll settle in to my new place, go into debt buying overpriced furniture and kitchen utensils I don’t even know how to use (happens Every. Time. I. Move.), and figure out my life. Possibly transfer my old Wesleyan credits to UT Austin and finally get that impossibly elusive… B.A. (And thereby stop bringing shame down onto my elders.)
I’d never even visited Austin until last summer, but I am officially happy with this plan; it’s pretty solid, financially and logistically (minus the whole furniture thing). Also, I’m really intrigued by the idea of trying to be on my own someplace – actually on my own, with no one around to lean on.
It will either be deeply liberating and wonderful, or trigger an all-systems meltdown of truly epic proportions. Either way, something will happen.
What more can you ask, really?
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UPDATE: Yeeeeah, no. Portland, Oregon. I am now moving to Portland, Oregon. Long story.
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