this paper cut really makes me feel alive

yah-ta-ta

i found a new toy yesterday - Forvo. people recording how they say things.

for example, http://www.forvo.com/word/don%27t_mention_the_war/#en

reddit

This may sound odd, but I had a lot of Indian (south asian) friends when I was a kid and I always wanted my house to smell like theirs. I'm first generation Ukrainian so my house always smelled like cabbage, sausage, and mix of cigarettes and cheap beer. When I was old enough to move out and have my own apartment I tried everything from roasting my own herbs and spices to grind for curry powder to always cooking with cumin, garlic, fenugreek, etc. Nothing worked and I just realized after reading this post how bizarre this is.

death in vernon

worst interview ever. i'm going to go shoot myself in the face now

st petersburg 2012

void

if i don't get chinese food soon i'm going to die

wheek wheek

i've been really frustrated lately. so i painted a guinea pig.

о лошади

norway tunisia

my father, silent man, is always watching travel shows and i sometimes wonder if he'd rather be someplace else

the suburbs

first three things ma said to me when she walked into the house:

1. aaah!! aaaahh!! aaaaaaahh!!
(i let the dog lie on the people blanket)

2. did you gain weight? you look fat and your face is so round.

3. why is your hair so red?

dreams like oceans

at night before i go to sleep i like to survey my bedroom in darkness with my blind eyes. i like to see the things i own and where i've placed them and the enormity and grandeur of my space makes me proud.

last night i drank chamomile tea, which is supposed to promote a more rested sleep. i dreamt of a tupperware full of orandas. i've had dreams of fish my entire life, but i've never thought of them in connection to a greater state of peace.

tell the truth but tell it slant

Yesterday we went back to USC for the LA Times' Festival of Books, where there were far too many children underfoot. for some reason, the festival of books is skewed towards being a small-children-fun-fair and the extreme heat and scampering children (i don't even hate children, but this was Actually too many) made walking around the festival virtually unbearable. the big people who do the actual reading find solace in the panels going on all over campus.

at twelve o'clock we attended the nonfiction panel Tell the Truth but Tell It Slant. the panelists were brilliant (Avrom Bendavid-Val, Geoff Dyer, Pico Iyer, Frank Westerman) and i'd like to read one thing by each of them. i was very excited to hear geoff dyer, whose essays i've enjoyed reading for some time, speak. geoff's mouth moves like a ventriloquist dummy's and he starts off every statement with a dropped-jaw drawn-out, weeeeeellll, and finishes every statement with a big swig of bottled water. we were seated next to an awful, clueless woman who made a racket throughout the entire discussion, zipping and unzipping her purse, shuffling her papers endlessly, rustling her bag of lifesavers and stuffing lollies in her gob. the dyer book i'm reading is an LA public library copy; i had it signed and plan on returning it to circulation.

at one thirty we had chipotle.

at three o'clock we went to the Focus Features screening of Beginners. the movie was excellent, making you sick and confused by toying with your emotions, making you joyous and then miserable but never letting you savor any feeling for more than an instant before changing again. like life. our friend Rey had a few lines in the movie and he looked very beautiful. the entire movie is filmed on the east side of LA, and i enjoyed seeing all my familiar favorite places in it: this scenic hill, that sunset junction, this shabby bookstore, that gay bar, this house party that's just like one i've been to.

halleloo

just when i thought my life was becoming boring, i turned on the tv to see a boy i once met and had a big crush on dressed as a drag queen on RuPaul's Drag Race

blini

without these my entire life is so unfulfilled

the foundation pit

He took long walks, in solitude. Once he stopped on a hill, away from the town and the road. The day was blurred, uncertain, as though time went no further; on such days plants and animals doze, and people remember their parents.