Tag Archives: i should have gone to bed

Thank goodness Halloween is here because I look better in drag

Disclaimer: Objects in the mirror are both closer and farther than they appear.

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Preamble: I have no idea what the point of this post is or whether there is any. Except to demonstrate the power of Picnik, the danger of believing in profile pictures in social media (Think Catfish), and the fact I look much better in black and white which is why I secretly long for living in Pleasantville before those stupid kids ruined it for everybody, and I will gladly trade places with Tom Baxter in The Purple Rose of Cairo, incidentally a movie I also watched multiple times hoping Tom would turn and address me directly, “Hey you!”

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For our graduate production, my undergraduate class staged M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang. The play calls for an Asian man to live in drag, pretending to be a woman and fooling the self-delusional French diplomat (based on a real scandal!) None of our male classmates stepped up to the plate, and therefore we had a woman playing a man playing a woman.

Although I suspect that how we did it due to necessity was not optimal for the theatrical production, I later learned that there is a term for this: Faux Queen, aka Biologically-challenged drag queen, Female female impersonator, or Female impersonator impersonator.

When I was young, I fantasized about dressing up as a man because being a man gives you a lot more freedom (Think Mulan). I wanted to be a swordswoman in one of the Wu Xia novels or movies (Think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), dressed up as a young warrior scholar so I could roam the world and right the wrongs.

To this day I look forward to rainy days before or after it actually rains. It gives me an excuse to walk around with an umbrella.

I was fascinated by Victor Victoria and (still) believe that Julie Andrews looked much better as Victor.

For the majority of my high school career, all girls school, hello! I did behave and dress more towards the male end of the spectrum: closely cropped hair, asexual clothing, and let’s not forget, aviator sunglasses. I was known to make young girls blush when they mistook me for a dashing young man. Well, I was relatively tall and lanky and handsome. In a manga-character-like, pre-sexual, innocent kind of way. For a bunch of high school girls with similar lack of exposure and access to the other sex.

When I said I peaked at the age of 18, until then I had been living an arguably cloistered life, I was not kidding. Being naturally feminine has never been my strong suit. And of course, who’s to say what defines femininity any more, and the distablizing ambiguity suits me fine.

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CODA: You know, I’ve struggled with this post since Monday. Normally if I am having such trouble with the direction I have been going in a post, I’d scratch it. Just as I was ready to give up and start anew some other time, I realized that Monday was the day when I bought my plane tickets home. This rambling on gender roles and prescribed femininity came from my anxiety of going home home next week. As much as I feel unease sometimes in this country, I feel/fear that I stand out like a sore thumb (and to some extent literally since I am tall by the local standard) over there. Oh well. I will be a woman playing a woman. Thespians, we are good at it, eh?

Moon Struck

I have witnessed history tonight (or last night). I reveled in the glory that was the Super Harvest Moon.

According to NASA, on September 22, 2010,

For the first time in almost 20 years, northern autumn is beginning on the night of a full Moon. The coincidence sets the stage for a “Super Harvest Moon”…

Northern summer changes to fall on Sept. 22nd at 11:09 pm EDT. At that precise moment, called the autumnal equinox, the Harvest Moon can be found soaring high overhead with the planet Jupiter right beside it. The two brightest objects in the night sky will be in spectacular conjunction to mark the change in seasons.

.This also means that yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival for Chinese, the second most important holiday arguably after Chinese New Year. Did I remember it? Of course not. I really suck at being Chinese… So I made it up by trying to capture the image of Super Harvest Moon for posterity.

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This picture taken with my iPhod. Amazingly clear.

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Can you see the “spur” of light below the moon? That is Jupiter. Neither can I. Sorry. You just have to take my word for it: Jupiter was there. Right underneath the moon. It was so bright that I kept on asking Mr. Monk, “Are you sure it’s not an airplane? It is not moving?”

Sorry if it looks like a bullet hole on a piece of black canvas.

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This time I tried to take a picture with my Blackberry

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You can see why Blackberry is just not as sexy as iPhones…

This picture of the moon unfortunately reminds me of something that rhymes with one of the planets. Or it is calling my name to go through the tunnel. Maybe both at the same time. It is kind of disturbing to say the least…

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Since my Nikon failed me, I used my Flip video to capture the glory of the moon

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It annoyed me to no end that my Nikon completely failed me. Most likely user error but I am blaming it on the machine, like most callers to IT Help Lines.

When I remembered that I could use my video cameras for the job, the clouds came. So now Freddy Krueger can pop into the frame at any second. I get dizzy staring at this picture. Am I in a nightmare already? (3:41 am already? Yup. Better be in a nightmare otherwise I’ll have hell to pay tomorrow morning at 6 am when the alarm goes off…)

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A la Monet

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This one took the longest time to produce: I first used my Casio digital to capture a 7-second video of the night sky. I wanted to post it on my Facebook and be done with the whole thing but Facebook said it would take 76 hours to upload the file.

16.6 MB for 7 seconds of footage. Srly?

I ended up taking a screenshot of my laptop as the video was playing. Opened up Visio. Ctrl+V to paste the picture into Visio. Cropped the picture and saved it into a JPG file. Viola! Here you have a grainy picture of the moon, covered by dark clouds.

I expect either fiddlers to start showing up from the other side of the roof or the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw to materialize in this picture.

Super Harvest Moon has come and gone. The next one won’t be here till 2029. (The thought of how old I will be… STOP! BRAIN! Don’t even go there! Where was I?) Welcome Autumn because this means we can finally put up Halloween decorations and apple cider donuts are now officially in vogue.

I am going to bed. BUT not before I make it up to you by leaving you with this Harvest Moon in its finest…

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