i'm so gross right now

magic i started the day with a list of grievances, all of which have been resolved

except

now i'm sick :(

becoming fire dragon and i have no medicine

everyone's sick; we spend all day rushing inbetween a stewing outdoors and frigid indoors

continuing grievance - i miss my missychen

sweetestheart

photo delights

not in order

UK

Austria

Danmark

Kazakhstan

Switzerland

красиво было так

Тридцать комариков выбежали на поляну и заиграли на своих скрипках. Из-за туч вышла луна и, улыбаясь, поплыла по небу.

"Mмм-у! . ." - вздохнула корова за рекой. Залаяла собака, и сорок лунных зайцев побежали по дорожке.

melon flavor

i cut up a watermelon for the first time today. these milestones, they may come late, but they do come

babyface

the black-eyed aesthetic is universal amongst the female abc kind

as hot as colombia

Yesterday was an unprecedented, stunningly brutal heat. It was either oppressive humidity or pollution that was visibly white-obscuring the pavilions. In Colombia you had to watch a video in a small room with no windows or cooling, chockablock, before entering. The room became an anxiety-inducing oven while it broadcast a short film on coffee and rainforests and hand-woven cloth. more interesting than the film was the fact that when you breathed in, your lungs squeezed together with the feeling that there was no oxygen in the cloud of wetness you just inhaled. It was like dry drowning and panic. I looked towards the way out and was about to tell hank that I was going to pass out when the pavilion doors opened.

what if

i want a cool name too?

nighttime in donghu

I like standing on my balcony. In the day, the heat here is unbearable. you have to pull your clothes off of your skin, desperately clingy from sweat and the water in the air, but moreso from sweat. The money that you stuck in your back pocket comes out damp, probably already molding. In the night, the tame humidity is perfect. you smooth your way through the air. I like looking ten floors down, ashing to the winds. My room looks down on the main promenade that runs through our complex. For a village that houses so many people, walking through the place is like strutting through a ghost town. But I watch the people who do mill about. I would have a spectacular view - absolutely spectacular view - of the river and the radiantly hued Shanghai skyline, if there weren't an opposing building absorbing the view for itself. My friend lives there and I've seen the absolutely spectacular view. But from my balcony, I can only see her building and the people inside it milling about in their kitchens, and I like that too.

instant coffee in china

lost at the expo

was released early from first day, on-site 14-hour training, made it out alive in 9 instead. catherine and i became lost looking for the bus to japan. some say this mythical bus is located near argentina, others say south africa. doesn't matter, since i don't know where either is. once on bus, missed our stop, which happened to be the last stop on our side of the river, and were driven under the river to the other side of the city. sat and ate pocky on the bus as it made a loop back under the river. walked ages to the next bus, past north korea, maldives, and kazakhstan, watched some ethnic dancing in the street, finally came back to donghu over an hour after we set out for home. currently eating untasty melon, trying to move my body as little as possible in the process.

my umbilical cord

i am deeply pained and take umbrage at the state of my interwebs connection

the gift of the gab

i could never live permanently in a country without freedom of speech

jungle drum

my favorite thing right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npawmHVaf-E&has_verified=1

it plays on repeat outside of the iceland pavilion. the population of iceland is so small, that when i told one of the iceland pavilion girls the name of the only icelandic person i know, she knew her.

also cool:

http://www.smartshanghai.com/blog/1669/Getting_Pissed_at_the_Expo.html

icelandic birthday party

knowing a little bit of danish is pretty useless unless you're at an icelandic birthday party. then it's a neat parlor trick because they only sort of understand danish too.

notes from the overground

being on a long haul flight between multiple time zones feels a lot like being a zoo animal, where you are cramped into tiny spaces and sleep out of boredom. Woken by your keepers for food. you're not hungry because you don't know what time of day it is anymore and haven't even had any opportunity to burn off the last meal, but you eat because the food tray is plopped down. you assume that the dieticians have already figured out what is best and in what portions.

I confess I do not believe in time

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour.)

Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between.

the great firewall

there's some serious vpn magic going on right now. helloooo bloggins.

up in the air

I used to feel like I was an extra in some other main character's life, existing to make his surroundings more believable by tottering about. I daresay I do not feel that way anymore, though I still can't shake the feeling that things happen to me as opposed to my making them happen. I am capable only of reactions.

bon voyage to valjean, bon appétit to buca, piggy chen, khenkel, missy chen, and mrs. tuckersman.

excuse my homicidal rampage

my deep-seated hatred for FedEx snowballs by the day

eff you, FedEx, for sending my computer to godknowswhere, thereby sticking me with vista for the next three-and-a-half months

welfairytales

Highlight 1: Little Mermaid Statue

The pavilion features the "Little Mermaid" statue from Copenhagen. It is the first time for the statue, a Danish national icon and major tourist attraction, to leave her hometown. Built in 1913 to honor the famous fairytale character created by Hans Christian Anderson, the Little Mermaid has been sitting on the edge of Copenhagen's harbor since 1913. The mermaid statue will make her Chinese debut at a man-made lake resembling the sights of Copenhagen harbor where the statue resides.

Highlight 2: Bicycles

In the pavilion visitors will be able to borrow bicycles and cycle throughout just as the Danes do in their cities. The concept of sustainability is reflected in free bicycle riding. Riding a bike through an area which is designed like Copenhagen streets will not only evoke the real Danish lifestyle in the capital city, but also promote environmentally friendly concepts. Denmark is a nation of bikes, and Copenhagen is famous for its free city bikes.

Highlight 3: Danish Lifestyle

Visitors can bring their children to play in an open square or enjoy a fun picnic on the rooftop garden. They can also sit beside the pool where the mermaid statue resides and put their foot into the water, just as Danes do in the Copenhagen Harbor. They will get the chance to sink their teeth into famous Danish specialties, such as open faced sandwiches better known as "smørrebrød".

09 04 19 kirsebærtræernes blomstring

what manboys want

every guy in los angeles needs to just go have sex with chuck palahniuk and bret easton ellis

i win again

soOOo... i accidentally left my laptop 183 miles away.

cocker beagle

i think i met an actual dog whisperer today

going to take a sentimental journey

last night in my boudoir for a long time. i wish i could get tattoos of all my erstwhile living spaces so i would never have to leave them behind.

18+hours of wakefulness, i am more tireder than this animal.

the moment of snoozing is upon us at last.

sings like a bird

diva tantrum since 5 am. this does not bode well

klap ved mig nu

LA, 2010

nice att du gillar frasse

we resigned our lease today. friends, we're here to stay. especially now that the kazakhs, uzbeks, and russians have moved in.

The Day in Pictures

.i'll keep that in mind

i have tonight and tomorrow to figure this shit out

ohmyoshkosh first boxed flowers of my life a real blomstringsfestival

now that i'm awake

what i really need is a teepee for my room and a cat named vasiliy

red circles bocce queen

There is some kind of moral in this. Or not a moral but a fact. Things go missing. They just disappear. You invest your whole being in not losing something and still, incredibly, against all odds, you lose it. The more you covet something, the more certain it is that you'll lose it, and the more devastating this loss will be when it happens - which it will. So that's how it was now, that was the world - glaring, unfocused, harsh, blurred - through which I would pass like a ghost. No photograph could ever show the world as it appeared to me through those sunglasses.

Spent all day in the outside, in a beautiful afternoon of bocce and roses. The bocce balls were like whirling blue and red universes clinking into one another. For twelve hours I felt every single moment of my life pass.

eleven days

Det lyder spændende med verdensudstillingen. Hvad skal du lave? jeg glæder mig til at den slutter, så at danmark kan få Den lille Havfrue tilbage. Vi er mange, der er meget utilfredse med, at den er blevet sendt til Kina. Den lille Havfrue skal stå i København.

"Norwegians and Swedes, they speak with what is literally a mild form of a tonal language, a singsong language, while Danish is literally different from that ...They're sort of aware that their language sounds a little strange a little bit funny...What I need to do is almost contract my diaphragm and sort of hold my air in and speak very much from the back of my throat as if part of my mouth is almost slightly numb, or paralyzed. It's strangely not difficult to do that but it does produce an odd sound."

faerobics

my mom fucking loves her wii fit. it makes her squeal with joy. i don't like an additional mechanism in my life telling me that i'm uncoordinated

instrumentation

i stopped playing piano when i lost my bass line

signed sealed delivered

had a lovely time at short stop last night.

great music, great ghost stories

action réaction

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

the fly

trapped a fly in my room and released it into the great outdoors. the capture was surprisingly easy - it was more like a pet fly than a feral

The Houses of Hancock Park: 450 N. Rossmore Ave: Part 2

we have been featured in the latest post from our brother blog, Houses of Hancock Park.

The Houses of Hancock Park: 450 N. Rossmore Ave: Part 2

we are excited to have been elevated in status from six-legged plebian to paris&tinkerbell

claw me like a cat, I'm beaming

bluish by animal collective makes me think of silver lake and driving on sunset boulevard, beautiful stretched-soul times from my rambunctiously dawning twenties

the pertinent question is

what would johnny weir do?

these things will make you complete

i had a lovely time at the bootleg tonight.

metric - raw sugar

mouthy

new languages

symptom of oral fixation?

someday, when i can speak russian, i am hopping on the trans-siberian railroad

oh look i can't even see my paw

ёжик

be good

it's a kind of...magical zebra...with wings

- stephane lambiel, on his costume

negra

we met a little black cocker spaniel named shadow. which got me to thinking about what you could call a white dog that follows you around, like lamb or halo, ghost, effluvial soul

doo doo doo

i had an okc account until i realized i fucking hate boys

go go gadget

holy moses, we've entered the 21st century

in this city

i would like most, to go to new orleans

life post-mortem

Я решу, когда подержу в руках.

mary

Five hackney droshkies stood on the avenue alongside the huge drumlike shape of a street pissoir: five sleepy, warm, gray worlds in coachman's livery; and five other worlds on aching hooves, asleep and dreaming of nothing but oats streaming out of a sack with a soft crackly sound.

chalfonte year two

they raise the rent until they chase you out

hot-n-fun

i wear my snobbery like a flotation tube, deflecting the dumb that tries to get too close