The world needs a new meme “I comment therefore I am”

Unknown Mami over at well, Unknown Mami, struck gold with this great idea of creating yet another Internet Meme:

The idea is: we express ourselves, in addition to through our own blogs, also by leaving traces of ourselves with our comments all over the interweb. Unknown Mami decided that all of our comments are worthy enough to be turned into real posts. Because she herself is a prolific commentator, she is turning this into a weekly feature on her blog, otherwise the post would get too long… she said.

An idea that cuts down the actual writing? Esp. in the blasted month of NaBloPoMo? I am 100% down with it. I will at least try it this once. Take that NaBloPoMo! Another DAY bites the dust! Besides, I always do believe that comments are often the funniest, sometimes the scariest (i.e. on the political blogs), yet always the most revealing part of a website/blog.

I thought some of you may want to play too! So gather up all of your stellar comments: all your humorous, ironic, sarcastic, poignant, illuminating, sincere, pontificating comments, and turn them into a post.

The following are selected evidence of my insomnia, my restlessness, when I roam the earth in search of my next victim… Again, warning: discussions of Race and Stereotypes abound…

In response to #11 Asian Girls on the list that Stuff White People Like…

Disclaimer/Explanation: The way I see it, this site, Stuff White People Like, employees a tongue-in-cheek, straight-faced, sardonic, wry humor that I recognize in myself. When I saw #11 Asian Girls, I thought it was hilariously awesome. If we cannot laugh at ourselves, we have no right to laugh at the others. That’s how I view this world. Of course, of all the “items” listed on this HUMOR site, #11 has proven to be the most controversial and incited the most comments, and heated debates. Please be warned, and I am being serious, many most of the 17,295 (as of today) comments are lewd (even by my standard) and malicious. And in case you wonder, yes, I did read through many pages of the previous comments, before I left mine on Page 454. I considered it to be Cultural Study. Or as Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without a single failure.” (I have to google this shit up too. So no, just because I am Chinese doesn’t mean I have studied the Art of War…)

p.s. Something funny: I actually “tracked down” the genius who wrote #11 Asian Girls, and he wrote, “Yes, I am the non-white guy that is part of StuffWhitePeopleLike. Please stop sending my hate mail…”

Without further delay, here is one of the finest comments I have written. A masterpiece in the art of sarcasm.

#11 Asian Girls

submom on June 10, 2009 at 9:58 am

Dear Sir, I would like to thank you for putting us #11 out of the many things that white people like. I feel truly honored. (Do NOT imagine me saying that in an accent a la Master Splinter…)

On the other hand, I have to be honest, I am rather peeved that we are not on the Top 10 List. (Wes Anderson?! Ok. Fine. I can live with that. I like him too) I am not sure whether you have had a chance to read through all 14500+ comments generated by this post. (Great job! Congrats!) Granted most of them are hate mails from all groups of males: Maybe for once they can all agree to hate Asian females and hate each other? I thought I’d leave a post to thank your readers for the new insights about ourselves that I didn’t know before.
Here are a few things I’ve learned from your ab. fab. and maddeningly funny post:

1. If you are white and male and you are looking to date a girl of Asian descent (hey, let’s be PC here, peeps!) show her to your other Asian, preferably male, friends. (If you have no other friends of Asian descent, hmmm, I think there should be another post about this situation but I digress…) As a last resort, take her to any Asian restaurant (No, Panda Express does NOT count!) Ask them whether she is HOT by their standards. Do not trust your own judgement.

2. If you are a girl of Asian descent and are fielding interest from a non-Asian male, do ask him whether he’s ever been to Asia and more importantly, whether he’s taught English there. If YES to the latter or if he has stayed there for longer than a month, RUN.

3. If he says, “I love Panda Express.” Punch him in the nose and then RUN.

4. If you think you may be suffering from Yellow Fever or Asian Fetish, you really should get it looked at. Your insurance may cover it.

In response to the question posted on BlogHer: Dating Deal Breakers: What Merits an Automatic Dismissal?

I said:

“The first two questions I asked my husband as a litmus test when he first showed signs of interest in me (or when I finally were sure that he was interested): 1. Did you belong to a fraternity? 2. Have you ever been to Asia for an extended period of time?/Have you dated a woman of Asian descent? He answered NO to both. I admit I based the first question on stereotypes of frat boys from the movies/TV shows. Yes, I am a Fraternist. No apology there. The second question was necessary because I am Asian, and I have seen enough Western men (regardless of skin colors) with “yellow fever” to be alarmed. If he were into me JUST (or even, first and foremost) because I am Asian. Then sorry, not into that. I have also seen enough white boys being totally spoiled in Asian countries thinking they are the cat’s meow to want to weed out, or at least be super cautious towards, anybody that has spent a lot of time over there.

My other deal-breakers are more normal: RUDE to people in the service industry, e.g. waiters, doormen. Failure to hold doors open for others. Ok, maybe not so normal. I consider these to be telltale signs for a person’s character.”

Inadvertently I shared too much too candid too soon. Seriously, are you surprised? I may have also touched upon an area, race/skin color, that in general makes people hesitate, if not downright uncomfortable. The host of this discussion did not respond to my comment.

What is your blog rated?

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I have to say, and yes, the following reaction says a lot about my pretension, my secretly wanting to appear to be what I am not: edgy, devil may care, swashbuckling, avant garde, ground-breaking, cool, I WAS DISAPPOINTED MY BLOG WAS RATED

WTF? I am seriously crushed.

G?

I would think it at least warranted a PG-13.

I can’t believe I have only said FUCK once. So after all this, I have been exposed as a Prude. Great. Just great… Great as in

G???!!!

p.s. You can also rate your own blog on this dating site. And come back and gloat if you are rated better than G. Yes, come back and GLOAT! So I can curse you and thus improve my rating.

p.p.s. In case it is broken, I tested the accuracy of the rating algorithms with The Bloggess’ website. Fuck. It is very accurate…

NC-17 No Shit

p.p.p.s. PSA: Do remember to clear the histories if you are married or in a serious, supposedly committed relationship, you know, so you don’t get into unnecessary fights with your significant other(s). (Am I awesome or what for reminding you this?!)

p.p.p.p.s. I want to ask you guys: this format of Endless Postscripts, you all used it at high school when passing notes back and forth with your girlfriends, right? Don’t let me down.

p.p.p.p.p.s. Turns out I am rated differently on different dating sites. Excuse me, but why are dating sites offering blog ratings?

This must be from a super conservative or Self-denial Anonymous dating site: the reason for my blog’s BETTER rating is cited as Fuck (x1), Death (x1).

Credit: I need to give credit to My Wildlife’s Words. I found this phenom of Blog Rating badge-thingy through her “connections”.

“The Saddest Kid In The Class”

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I saw this photo essay on Huffington Post, and it resonated with me somehow. (Actually, not surprisingly…)

The kid’s name is Alex. A-L-E-X.

I hope s/he is doing ok. I hope the smiley face means this was all done tongue in cheek. Perhaps it is a clever maneuver, a sarcastic comment on, a protest against this ubiquitous school project.

Finally, Bacon Vodka is no longer just a myth…

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To those who have not heard about my temporary relapse of sanity that led me to embark on this dark and lonely road of trying to make my own bacon-flavored Vodka, I announced my Bacon Vodka experiment in August. Much to my own surprise, I actually followed through immediately and went to Walmart for the supplies on the same day… (Well, part of the reason was because that was when I just discovered PeoepleofWallmart.com and I was really excited to check out Walmart as an ethnographic study. Alas, I could not bring myself to scrumptiously photograph people when they were obviously not at their best. Besides, Karma works in the most mysteriously ways. I don’t look forward to seeing myself on that website).

I also followed through with concocting the brew that day, but it is not until September that I was finally sober enough to blog about the 12 Steps to Bacon Vodka.

Here is a picture of the Bacon Vodka, with bacon in it, on Day 1. After 4 weeks of soaking… this is what the bacon looks like.

Really. Take a look at it. Because if you don’t, you will not fully appreciate the reason why I have been leaving it alone in the freezer until tonight, nor will you fully appreciate the fact that I am a brave soul. Or crazy. Or both.

My youngest has been on my case lately. “Why aren’t you drinking your bacon vodka?” “When are you going to drink your bacon vodka?”

He has gone straight past the obvious question of “Why?” to wholeheartedly accept the fact, yup, my mom has bacon-flavored vodka that she made herself in the freezer. He has also told several innocent bystanders this matter-of-fact-ly when we were out and about.

To not disappoint him further, instead of baking him cookies that he has also asked for, I told him after I came home from work on Friday night:

Do you want to watch me drink the bacon vodka?

(Yup. They are going to grow up to be great writers… I try my best to provide them with a childhood that is as extra-ordinary as possible)

So we did. I mean, I made a Bloody Bacon Mary out of my bacon-flavored vodka, and he watched me drink it with anticipation.

“Did it taste good?”

“Yes. It tastes like tomato soup.”

“Oh. Good!”

And that’s that.

Hey, I am not the only one who thinks that the Smiley looks like a pervert!

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Jane over at They Call Me Jane has been calling for everybody to share their crazy search terms, i.e. the keywords with which people were led to your blog, and she calls this Friday The 13th,

Share Your Crazy Search Engine Terms Day!

It is Jane. Naturally I ~~obliged~~. wanted to be in on it. (Just confirmed my suspicion by really looking the word “obliged” up: it has the connotation of doing someone a favor. Doh. It is the other way around. Hence the correction). Not only that, because she used to be a teacher, and you know, “Once a teacher, always a teacher”: I even did my homework assignment in EXCEL. Yeah, I am a teacher’s pet. Bite me. (Not to mention the free blogging idea to fill the daily quota for NaBloPoMo… But Shhh… Don’t tell Ms. Jane, please)

Unfortunately, none of my search terms are overtly exciting… As you can see for yourself: (You will also see that I don’t get too many hits. But THAT is ok. Really. I mean it… I am having fun. More importantly, I have made a few great friends in the process…)

One search term (or group of search terms) that did get my attention is “Smiley Pervert”. There are 15 searches that used similar terms: perverted smiley faces, pervy face. I am happy to confirm once and for all that I was NOT the only one wondering: What is the deal with the smiley faces looking so similar to a pervert? Once again, the Internet helped me prove that I am not insane.

I did remember seeing the search term, “what a serial killer look like,” but it did not show up in the summary my Blog Stats showed me. Oh well. Maybe the serial killer wannabe also hacked into my account and got rid of the record because he did not want to leave any trace of him ever wondering what a serial killer looks like.

Since my own search terms are not bizarre at all, I decided to artificially provide random blogs with bizarre search terms such as,

“Cow Poop For Dinner”

“My Girlfriend Hot Mom” Warning: Searching this term will result in lots of pornographic sites. No shit.

“Dung Beetle Soup” and then “Dung Beetle Salad”

“Frog Milkshake” This actually does exist as a food item somewhere in South America. Dreamed up by one woman who, clearly, has lost her mind!

“Hippo Vomit Sandwich” Some lady is going to learn that the announcement of her pregnancy attracted this bizarre search term…

“Ninja Sex” Well, turns out Ninja Sex Party is a comedy troupe. So I modified it to “Ninja Sex Lunchroom”. A poor, unsuspecting Book Review Blog will be pondering over the stats tomorrow, wondering… WTF?

But I swear, I was NOT the one that searched for Wrinkled Boobs, which coincidentally was the genesis of Jane’s Share Your Crazy Search Engine Terms Day bonanza.

I hope I don’t get an F in this assignment…

The white flag goes up…

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Remember the tagline of my blog? These posts are supposed to be my therapy sessions. Ranting about the demise of Thanksgiving and gloating about making shotgun Christmas ornament is not very healing. The following is one of my therapy sessions. I am getting on the coach now. You have been forewarned…

I am not quite sure about the whole Twitter and the blogging thing any more. First I have the follower counts to obsess about. Then I agonize over how few of the @’s I have been getting. Now there are the LISTS that scream “Popularity Contest” more than ever. The same with this blogging thing. I installed the WordPress Blog Stats plug-in. Now I get to watch the pot boil.

Don’t worry. I am not going to whine. Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die. There is actually a funny story I want to share with you. I want to explain why I am scared to death of popularity contest. Literally. Anxiety attack type of reactions. Chest closing down on me. Disorientation. Hard to breath kind of thing.

As soon as I sense that something is in essence a popularity contest, I never bother trying. I just give up. I am scared to death of popularity contest. I am also scared to death when I have friends. When people take a liking to me.

In short, I am afraid to disappoint.

I am not a shrink, but my guess is that you would be scared of popularity contest if you went through fourth grade through sixth grade with NOBODY in your class speaking to you. The entire three years… Silence. As if you were not even there.

No violin in the background. I will save you the drama and just list the facts:

I was one of the popular kids in my class from first grade to third grade. I remember that because I remember being one of the first ones to be chosen whenever a game demanded such cruel device of pitching innocent children against each other.
One day, out of the blue, during fourth grade, I noticed that nobody in my class would talk to me. They willfully ignored me. I was suddenly invisible to them.
Since all the kids stayed in the same class throughout the remaining grades, this silent treatment lasted till I graduated from grade school.
I thought about running away from home because my mother would not believe me. I was unable to convince my parents to transfer me to a different class or school.
I started thinking about suicide early on because I had no idea how to end THAT. Please don’t be alarmed: When you believe in reincarnation, the thoughts of suicide do not carry the heavy concept of sin and ending.
This childhood experience affects what I do, think, say from that point on.
I still have nightmares about THAT.

This is actually a funny story. Well, what happened AFTER the grade school is. As the years went by, I would see some of my tormentors classmates in the senior high school we went to. Apparently there was going to be a class reunion the year we entered college. “You are like the ugly duckling turning into a swan now.” Code for: you cleaned up good. Mind you: we all went to same-sex senior high schools so the person that said this to me was female. Would you like to go?

Of course, as needing therapy as I am, I went. I was curious. I wanted answers. I of course also wanted to show that I turned out ok. Despite everything. Somehow I also managed to charm.

On the long bus ride home, the man-child sitting next to me was very obviously smitten. I have been wondering for six years why they all treated me like shit, actually, worse than that, like NOTHING, back then, but I was also lucid enough to have guessed that probably nobody else remembered THAT but me. I took my one chance and gingerly brought THAT up.

“Do you remember when in grade school, none of you talked to me for three years?”

“Huh. Oh. Yeah. You still remember THAT?”

I proceeded to describe in simple terms how it felt to be me in those years. I was looking out the window when I spoke. The last thing I wanted to see was the expression that proved my suspicion that none of my sufferings were real to anybody else, that I might as well have imagined them. Soon I heard sobbing. I turned and saw tears streaming down his cheeks. Then came the Confession of the Century that I was not expecting:

“It was ME!”

“Huh?”

“It was me that told everybody to stop talking to you.”

Then I remembered that we were best buddies in the third grade. I recalled watching him hogging the Pacman machine until the store owner came out to give him his coin back. I even recalled going to his house and playing with him and his younger brother, and his mother saying, “Come back again soon!”

“… why?”

“Hmm. I guess because I liked you.” More sobbing. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know it was so difficult for you.”

“There. There. It’s ok. I am ok now.” I ended up having to console him.

The truth of course was: I was not ok.

Later, through college years, he wrote me several love letters. I did open them but could never bring myself to read them.

Hi. My name is L. I am forty years old and I still have nightmares about my friends not talking to me. In my nightmares we are all still 10 years old.

Bring back Thanksgiving! Please, no Christmas decorations until Black Friday…

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Veterans Day.

I always thought it is a fitting coincidence that Veterans Day falls in November, right before Thanksgiving.

As you know, Veterans Day is celebrated in other parts of the world. On November 11, 1918, at 11 am (Paris time), the Germans signed the Armistice that officially ended World War I. The day was originally celebrated as Armistice Day (also as Remembrance Day in Europe). In 1954, the U.S. Congress passed and amended an act to officially make November 11 the Veterans Day, honoring all veterans, and not just those who served in World War I. What took them so long?!

I don’t think I will be able to say anything more eloquently, more heartfelt, than this blog post, “The Greatest Casualty is to be Forgotten”. As she put it so well, you don‘t have to support war to support a Veteran. [Update: The blog I linked to has since become inactive. But the saying “The Greatest Casualty is to be Forgotten” will continue to resonate]

Thus begins my tirade against the demise of the significance of Thanksgiving in the face of overwhelming commercialism…

Are you ready for this?

I started campaigning for a forced postponement, a temporary deferral, of celebrating Christmas until AFTER Thanksgiving Day four years ago. I even registered for the domain name: BringBackThanksgiving.com (which is still available… Any takers?) I stopped paying for it after two years when I realized that with a full time job and three boys to take care of, I simply did not have the capacity to deal with Microsoft FrontPage. (Yikes. Do you remember the days, the days before Blogger, WordPress, etc. when one had to use a software such as FrontPage in order to have one’s own website? *shudder*)

“Curb your enthusiasm!” I beseech you. “As you recover from the sugar high from all the Halloween candies. As you dispose of the spider webs, the goblins, the mummy tombs, the rotten carved pumpkins.”

Please, oh, please don’t switch directly from Orange and Black to Red and Green. However tempting it is when you move all the Halloween boxes down to your basement and see all the Christmas boxes beckoning at you. The smiling Santa with the chubby cheeks. The snowman. The reindeer. Resist the temptation: Didn’t Jesus die on the cross partly to teach us this lesson? Be strong for the sake of your children.

The children need you to show them that, Yes, you believe in the meaning and significance of Thanksgiving Day. Yes, it is important that we take one day out to deliberately remember and show gratitude to all the people who add meanings to our lives, to all the material goods that we are blessed enough to own. To strangers who give you a smile in the street and thus brighten your day. To strangers who by merely doing their jobs are making the world a better, safer place.

My heart aches upon seeing houses adorned with Christmas lights right after, sometimes even before, Halloween. Of course I am not intimating that the homeowners are therefore not thankful. No siree. I am simply dismayed that the significance of Thanksgiving, the arguably ONE holiday that we should all be able to agree on and celebrate, is undermined sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas.

(I admit: I may be putting my foot in my mouth by saying this. I have no clear idea how the native Americans take this holiday though I suspect there must be a lot of conflicting feelings. Do they sometimes wish that Squanto were not so kind as to assist the pilgrims? FWIW, by reading “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” and “Teaching About Thanksgiving“, I am convinced that Thanksgiving is indeed deeper and bigger than just the Pilgrims and the Indians… I hope I do not offend should anyone of Native American descent stops by this post…)

I blame the turkey.

You heard me right. It is the turkey’s fault. In terms of merchandising, turkeys are just not as attractive as say, bunnies, chicks, Santa Clause, snowman, reindeer, and so on. I have not seen any child hugging a plush Turkey toy lovingly.

turkey

To be honest, that red thing hanging down the throat freaks me out. Pardon me for being crass, but it always reminds me of testicles. I don’t know why. But it does.

Many, especially Hallmark (bless their heart!), have tried to turn the turkey into an adorable icon: but seriously, how adorable can you make a turkey?

Turkey for eating

Even more sickening is that in these cutesy depictions of turkeys, they are all forced to celebrate the event in which they will be slaughtered, cooked and eaten! The abomination!

No cute icons, no easy way for merchandising. No easy way for merchandising, no rampant commidification of Thanksgiving. No rampant commidification of Thanksgiving, no shelf space at your local drugstores and grocery stores.

(I am grateful for no longer being in the academia which affords me the opportunity to posit theories full of holes and preaches them on the Internet with no qualms… I am like Glenn Beck on an anti-Turkey path…)

But with your help, we can stem the tide. We can start it from inside of our homes.

Perhaps we can all start a tradition of having each one of the family members mention one thing that they are grateful for, every day, in the month of November. No matter how small or how trivial.

Perhaps we can start a quiet movement to resist the Red and Green color scheme from popping up inside of our own houses. Until the day after Thanksgiving.

On the morning of November 27 this year, I am moving up the Christmas Tree from our basement first thing in the morning. I am really looking forward to it. And to optimize my effort of transforming my house into a winter wonderland for Christmas, I shall keep the decorations up until after Valentine’s day. Thank goodness for the lllloooonnnngggg winter here. That is, of course, until one of you starts a campaign for bringing back Valentine’s Day…

Forget glue guns: Metallic Permanent Pens are the only things you need…

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This was the post I meant to compose this Saturday, right after I rushed the kids off to the Religious Education class kindly provided by the Catholic church. Especially helpful since their mother is a Heathen. As usual, we were late. But this year the teacher is nice. She never once gave me the evil eye for stomping into the classroom with my unbrushed wet hair and my youngest sipping on milk box (NOT juice box, mind you. I am a good mother) while holding a half-eaten cereal bar. She is not like this other teacher that my oldest once had who admonished HIM and not me directly, “Your mother should really try to get you here on time every Saturday. She should also take you to Mass every Sunday.” And later, the same teacher caused my oldest, at the age of 6, to fear that my husband and I would be going to Hell because we are not regular church goers.

But I digress. This post is not meant to discuss the complexities of talking/teaching about religion(S) in our mixed-faith household. I can only fall into Psychotic Ranting once a week, at most. Or, I try to ration myself. This post is about the other joyful aspect of parenthood (fuck that. It is ALWAYS the moms that have to do this. So why bother? I am just going to use this word) Motherhood, Arts and Crafts.

If you are one of the loyal followers (Seriously, people. I love you and I worry about your mental health…) of my descent into Inferno, then you have come to learn my ineptitude in making anything with my hands and my faith in Glue Guns. Imagine my surprise when I found a notice from the RE class, wedged into the corner of my youngest’s backpack, about some Decorating a Christmas Tree For the Zoo thing. Deadline:

TODAY! (November 7)

Are you kidding me? First response.

Cough cough. “Do you know about this thing from your Church School?”

Boy nodded.

“How come you didn’t tell mommy?”

“I did and you put it on the refrigerator!” while pointing to the incriminating evidence.

Ah. No wonder I ignored it until now….

“Uh. Right! Okay! So… Do you still want to do it?”

“Yes… If it is not too much trouble…” complete with Puppy Eyes.

Gosh darn it! Why can’t he behave like a brat at this moment. I hate it when they are all considerate and stuff.

Second response:

I threw every arts and crafts thing we own onto the table. (Although I am not handy and don’t spend quality time with my children, I have hoarded a lot of arts and crafts material AND kitchen gadgets AND nice cloth napkins for when the time comes… The time when I would fulfill my destiny as Super Mom…) What to do? What to do? Yes, the CD craft idea!

We didn’t even have time to warm up the glue gun. Fortunately I found FOAM STICKERS! Thank you Michaels! Although yours is a store full of crap, I am very grateful for the crap I routinely buy from you. AND….

Metallic Permanent Pens! I have a set of 4 colors! YEEESSSS! I brought them back from our last visit home and have forgot about them until now.

This may require some explanation: My husband and I are weird. We get excited over pens. Not the fancy Montblanc, but inexpensive, yet “fancy”, cheap chic, pens that you can find in PEN STORES in Taiwan and Japan. Yes, people, they have stores dedicated to PENS over there. Your regular ballpoint pens. Roller ball pens. Mechanic pencils. Coloring, note-taking, highlighting pencils. Permanent markers. Jelly pens. White board pens. 0.1 mm. 0.3 mm. 0.5 mm. 0.7 mm. 1 mm. And the colors. Oh, the colors.

I spend a lot of time browsing, lusting after, choosing, and purchasing pens whenever I go home.

Because of my foresight of hoarding things which are otherwise totally useless, I was able to complete a kickass Christmas ornament in 15 minutes.

Even more impressive is that I was not fazed at all when I saw the fine print:

“Please make sure your ornament has a religious theme to it. NO Santa Clause or Rudolph the Reindeer please.”

I swear. I did not make this up…

I grabbed one of the metalic pens and wrote, under the Christmas Tree,

Happy Birthday Baby Jesus!

p.s. Of course, now I am looking at my masterpiece again, and wondering whether Baby Jesus would ever need gloves and snow boots (’cause that is what that red thing is. It ain’t no Stocking for what’s-his-name to put presents in!) where he grew up. It’s all desert there, eh? What with the camels and all. Tell me there are camels! Our porcelain camel is our favorite from the Lenox Nativity set that my mother-in-law gave us. (Well, “favorite” after Baby Jesus of course…)

p.p.s. Seriously, Lenox people, are you sure there were GEESE and ROOSTERS in that manger the night baby Jesus was born?

p.p.p.s. You know what is the best part of this whole Decorating the Christmas Tree ordeal? I rushed into the classroom to give the teacher the ornament. She looked at me like I was crazy. She had forgot. All the kids screamed, “What is that? What is that?” NONE of the other kids turned in the ornament. Heathen: 1

Really!?! I will show you how inscrutable I am in plain English…

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Warning: This post should be filed under “Psychotic Ranting and Anonymous Foaming”, a category available from NaBloPoMo, (Thank you to whoever was wise enough to create this category…) in which I whine about stereotypes that caught me by surprise. Please feel free to ignore me when I am behaving like a rabid dog. Come back when I am normal, or normal by my standard.

The thing about reading a fiction is that a good book sucks you in, lures you to identify with the protagonist, even more so if it is from the first person point of view. Most fictions have an underlying universal theme: family, betrayal, love, hate, loss, reunion, found happiness, redemption, self-discovery, at least the successful ones do.

I went into the library in search of a good book to read. I do this by browsing the book shelves and see what strikes my fancy. Like many things I do in life, I trust it to chance. Serendipity. I love the sound of it, more so since I learned how to spell it correctly.

I came across a book by one Jonanthan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You. The front flap promises a “riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind — whether we like it or not.” Wonderful! Besides, this book apparently was being adapted into a feature film from Warner Brothers Studios. Even better! This way I can just read the book and skip the movie: since we all know, as a rule, the original books are infinitely better than the adapted films, right? (Except Marvel heroes movies of course. IMO.)

So imagine me, a universal reader, Everyman (Or, Everyperson if you want to be all PC about it…), following along the storyline. Everyperson, moi, going merrily down the road with the narrator who just lost his father and whose family is not mourning/coping properly, (Ok, so not so merrily after all. Sorry, my bad), I thought, “Dysfunctional family,” yup, we all have one of those. But wait. Hmm. The author could have lightened up on some of the cliché phrases and expressions, but that is not a good reason to put down a book once you started it. Or… is it?

Then on Page 11, BOOM! it came. Out of nowhere. The Chinese showed up.

My landlords are the Lees, an inscrutable, middle-aged Chinese couple who live in a state of perpetual silence. I have never heard them speak. He performs acupuncture in the living room; she sweeps the sidewalk thrice daily with a handmade straw broom that looks like a theater prop. I wake up and fall asleep to the whisper of her frantic bristles on the pavement. Beyond that, they don’t seem to exist, and I often wonder why they bothered immigrating. Surely there were plenty of pinched nerves and dust in China.

Really!?!

I am back. Here are the thoughts that went (are going) through my mushroom-cloud head:

Maybe this book was written in the 1960s before the Civil Rights Movement. Or maybe it was published in the late 20th century since you know, we were oh so unenlightened back then. (Nope. It was published August 2009…)
Maybe the narrator is what they call an “unreliable narrator”, like John Dowell in The Good Soldier, Frederick Clegg in The Collector, and even Humbert Humbert in Lolita.
I can’t really “demand” authors to start censoring themselves on the basis of Political Correctness.
I guess all that “identifying with the narrator” was for naught. I am the “inscrutable” Chinese. Wow. Imagine that!

Well, Mr. Tropper, this is where you left me befuddled and where I leave YOU! On Page 11…

Sax Rohmer published the Fu Manchu novels in 1913. Wasn’t that like, hmm, almost a century ago?

And, really? Just because someone does not talk to you, all of a sudden, they are inscrutable? Maybe they just don’t like you because you are living in THEIR basement.

Is it because of our eyes? So small, you can’t see “into our souls”?

Oh, and news flash: The whole inscrutable Chinese thing? MEGA TROPE! Done to death since the 1870’s.

Until you also think the French with their obsession with wine and cheese, the Italian with their obsession with impeccable fashion style even when they are just sitting inside their own house, and the Germans with their inherent love for logics and orders, and all the FOREIGN languages they speak with, are also inscrutable, don’t call ME inscrutable.

And if you are keeping the landlords in the movie, I dare you to make them inscrutable. No, seriously. More jobs for Asian (Asian American) actors. I support my kind. I can’t wait to see it.

Things I should be doing instead of agonizing over falling behind for NaBloPoMo…

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I know myself only too well. I already missed the 8th post for this NaBloPoMo thing I decided to participate in. Deadline yesterday. But I am going to cheat by turning time backwards through the magic buttons on my blog dashboard.

It is not because I am a religious person and I don’t believe in working on Sundays. That would have thrown a giant monkey wrench in this whole A Blog Post EVERY Day thing. For that conundrum, Pajamas and Coffee had an ingenuous solution. It would have been due to a religious reason if Laziness counts as a religion. I didn’t write a post yesterday (which is today if you look at the date on this blog) because I actually had lunch with a group of friends and afterwards had a friend over and we finished an entire pot of Spiked Rum Apple Cider. Social life is very inconvenient when you are an aspiring blogger… Just sayin.

So to make up for the missing day (which is today in case you are confused), I am going to insert a filler post called, “Things I should be doing instead of agonizing over Not Blogging” since that was what I did, inside my head, when I was still sober, the whole day yesterday (today, I mean… Ok. You got it…)

Blogging. Duh.
Doing Quicken. I haven’t touched that baby since July. All of our Credit Card accounts have automatic payment set up, so I have been slacking on reconciling the statements with actual shit that I ordered online. I am sure by now there have been numerous fraud purchases charged to my litany of cards now. Well, here is what I am thinking: I HOPE, if there is any fraud charge, it is of a pornographic kind. THAT would be a hilarious topic for my blog to help fill this void I call My NaBloPoMo Idea Bank…
Doing the laundry. I can’t see the floor in my closet any more because there is a mountain of dirty clothes. That should be a sign when you need to hurl yourself over the mountain to get to the other side to reach your clean clothes.
Folding the laundry. I HATE HATE HATE folding the laundry. Probably because it means I cannot be on the computer when I am folding the laundry. There are currently three baskets (the record was five. I love buying laundry baskets) on the family room floor, waiting for me to pay attention to them. My kids have learned to look into the dryer to find clothes to wear in the morning. Did I tell you that I have the best kids and I love them?
Grocery shopping. There is no milk nor bread left: The common barometer for how well a household is faring. No milk/no bread = Irresponsible mothers = Ignored kids = Repressed anger = Serial killers

Nope. That’s not an oversight on my part. Believe me, it’s always the MOTHER’S fault…

So there you go. A filler post. Tissues in my bras. White tube socks in my pants. 99% of the stuff found in hot dogs (which I feed my children with. Thank you very much). The thing they injected into Octomom’s lips… Oh, you get the idea.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…