Metaphor-mosis

Alas, either I've reached some point of profound clarity or it's 3:12am.

Today was a weird day. It was my last day of classes as a college undergrad. Tuesdays are generally my "fullest" days of the week since I have the most classes: Radical Philosophy, Critical Procedures (the English senior seminar), and then Advanced Poetry. For Radical, we talked about a zine a lot of friends [and fellow students in solidarity] and I were involved with...

Cover art clearly done by some sort of undiscovered genius, back cover art by Ram Dass, but I doubt that guy has any profound insights about anything.

And then went straight from there to give a presentation of my English senior paper on Franz Kafka and existential angst of the nth extreme. I received several compliments that my project was incredibly depressing, and for Kafka's sake, I couldn't be happier to hear this.

Btw, the next time you want to get thoroughly creeped the eff out enter "kafka caricature" into Google Images.

Kafka has, quite honestly, gotten me through a very difficult time this semester. To be graduating college is just as confusing and nerve-wracking and existence-questioning as Dustin Hoffman makes it out to be. So many times I felt like I'd hit a wall, was trying to climb up a wall without a foothold, was trying to climb over a wall when it had no top, was trying to tag it with a police officer standing right over my shoulder, and other wall-related metaphors; and Kafka was pretty much the only one smacking his head against the wall right beside me. Instead of pretending that remarks like, "You'll be all right" and "it'll all work out" were really what I wanted to hear from people, I was able to confront and deal with my thoughts, anxieties and emotions by channeling them into a wormhole of endless literary pessimism. So thanks, Franz!

P.S. You're hot. I'm not joking.

After that, I went to my final class at Whittier College. Evar. Which consisted of a class reading of pieces of poetry we wrote in Advanced Poetry this semester. Everyone knew everyone, everyone supported everyone, and I'm happy to report that I can say this dynamic was true of many other classes, departments and organizations I've been a part of while at Whittier.

(and to hear what's wrong with Whittier, see "The Foggy Glass" above.)

In a very real way, it feels like a significant chapter of my life is ending. Like, if my life were a movie about college, this is just about the end of the film where I would interior monologue in a journal like Lizzie Mcguire about all the things I've learned from my experiences. Less than two weeks from now, the credits will be rolling in a freeze-frame montage of all the characters in my life (I'll be caught mid-sneeze, I know it) with a little epilogue blurb about where we wound up.

I guess at this juncture I'm just wondering what my blurb's going to say. Right now I'm still in college, I'm still in my little padded nest where it's safe to say, "Yes! I'm going to write for television! Sure!" without having to put my money where my mouth is. But soon enough I'm gonna have to put money everywhere. Into rental payments, auto payments, loans, groceries, un-stretched out bras... and lord only knows where that money's going to come from. This is the part where academia shoves me out of the nest and sees how I do.

"Use your feathers!"

"I don't have any feathers! You only gave me a degree in Creative Writing and Philosophy of Film! Most people don't even consider those real majors!"

"Then flap your wings harder!"

"I'm trying!"

"What? I can't hear you!"

"I said I'm trying!"

"I still can't hear you, you're too far down!"

"What?"

"What?"

"WHAT?"

"I said, 'what?'"

"What did you say?"

"I said--"

splat.

And that's the Kafka coming through, in case you didn't notice. Drop a cockroach off the top of the Chrysler building and you get virtually the same thing.

So hey, the chapter's not over just yet. I've still got a couple weeks left of College Land, flowing with beer and acceptable excuses, before I have to face what I imagine must be the painfully confusing phase of early-adulthood. Now that I ain't got jack to do (except take two finals, find a job, find a place to live, find a way to make my life work), I'm theoretically at the peak of my college appreciation: for the first time I'm seeing just how enjoyable and finite college is AND I have the time to take bittersweet advantage of that period. Let's have fun, class of 2013.

...I don't know when this post became my "official keynote speaker" address to this year's graduating class, but I think it's important that we all be honest with ourselves: life is scary, but we get through it. In our fears and doubts we often become blind to the fact that life also happens to be interesting and rewarding in an infinite number of unforeseeable ways. If you told little first grade J-Mil... well, first, that people call her J-Mil and often legitimately do not know her first name, and second that she would one day come to replace religion with Kafka, film and feminism, she would probably ask you how many Beanie Babies she'd have by then.

At least thirty.

I could never have predicted my life as it is now. Likewise, I won't be able to predict the next 10 years, 5 years, or 6 months. I have absolutely no idea what's in store for my freeze-frame epilogue, so in the meantime, I'm just going to let the film keep playing.

...Metaphors.

Fring Fried

It is most humid as fuck. It is most hot as fuck. I am most miserable as fuck.

I think I would do better living somewhere colder, like Vermont, or... Alaska. But for now I just stand in front of the open freezer door and imagine I'm in a better place. A place that smells vaguely of frozen corn dogs.

This "elementary school" that I work at gets more ridiculous by the moment. A teacher recently quit, or went on vacation for like two weeks (...can you even DO that?) so-- here's the way the principal works-- she stuck this other teacher's class with mine and basically said, "Figure it out."

"But I'm teaching third graders. These are second graders."

"Just make them do work."

"Together? But you're giving me second graders."

"Just make them do work."

"They can't do anything unless I teach it to them. How can I teach large concepts to two different levels at once?"

"Just make them do work."

"But they're getting confused. They can't do work if they don't understand it."

"Just make them do work."

"Are you listening to me? Can you even understand what I'm saying?"

 "Just make them do work."

"Purple robot monkeys eat my socks."

"Just make them do work."

Says I.

Anyways, if any of you is a Breaking Bad parasite like me, perhaps you'll enjoy this: Go Fring Yourself

Ring Ring Ring Ring

"Lazy Sunday" is a phrase invented to give lazy people a day off from feeling guilty.

 *scratches belly*

Not like it counts, anyway. Almost every weekend I'm unable to sleep in. Why? Because a woman roams the neighborhood at 8am belting, "TAMAAAAAALES! CHAMPURRADOOOOOO!" And sure enough, if you go outside you'll find her pushing around a grocery cart filled with tamales and champurado.

briefoverviewofwhatthesethingsare

TAMALE

Delicious corn meal thing stuffed with meat or-- if you're a God-subverting vegetarian like I am-- cheese. The ones the tamale lady makes even has a pepper inside.

CHAMPURRADO

A thick, cinnamon kind of milky beverage served hot. It is pretty dank.

They're both really good and really cheap. A small consolation for being awoken before noon. I guess of all the things Whittier could use to wake me up, tamales and champurrado aren't the worst. Just like the ceaseless pops and bangs I hear outside my window all night. Those are fireworks. Right?

BORED BLOGGER CHALLENGE: Use the words 'flabbergasted' and 'incidentally' in a picture involving penguins. Go!

...That's all I've got. Happy Sunday.

Where... Wha...

And thus, without anything better to do with her life, J-Mil has once again resorted to blogging.

FEEL MY WRATH.

I said wrath, damn it, WRATH!

Except now I have shit to discuss at ye old Scuttlebutt, as opposed to every other post you've so diligently read on this page. Things have changed. I'm a different person. I have a new apartment. I have new jobs. (the shock-factor there is supposed to be the fact that I have a job.) I have a couple new pairs of underwear with animal prints on them. Shit's happening, fo real.

I'm spending the summer living just a hop, skip and a jump from campus instead of at home. This is the first time since Prague that I've lived in an apartment with a whole bushel of roommates. Now, in Praha (sorry, a little inside I know) it was a complete luck of the draw (plus a little discretion from the housing coordinators) as to who would be my roommate/apart-mates. Luckily, my roommate in Prague was an Irish booze fiend with an affinity for Futurama. As a nerdy faux-intellectual with an affinity for Futurama, things couldn't have worked out better. And my other housemates were pretty cool, too.

But now I'm living with pre-established friends.

Or whichever appropriate meme just became popular.

We were already comfortable with each other when we lived a 5-minute walk apart. We were already comfortable when we decided to eat every meal together. We were already comfortable when we passed out drunk on each other's floors. We were already comfortable when we puked on each other's floors. We were already comfortable when we fucked each other's floors.*

*Only YOU can stop domestic carpet abuse

So imagine our comfort levels by this point. We have been living in the same home-- which may be defined as a one-stop shop for eating, sleeping, shitting and sitting. Do you have any idea what this means? Those four things each comprise 25% of what I do with my life.

We have gotten ridiculously comfortable. Like, unprecedentedly (spell check's giving me the 'okay') comfortable. I know my roommates' eating habits. I know their showering schedule. I know how long they've been sitting drunk outside on the back porch. I know when it's time for Nicole to clean the cat shit out of the litter box. In what other circumstance would I  EVER know that?!

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. I fuckin' love these kids. Why else would I choose to live with them? But man... sometimes you get uncomfortably comfortable. Like, bowel-movement-familiarity comfortable.

100th poop joke! Everybody DAAAAANCE!

p.s. I don't watch South Park

Now on to the other quirky trials and tribulations of my life.

I currently have one job and one internship. I had another job working as a freelance writer until I got sacked because I had one other job and one other internship and therefore not enough time to dedicate to said other freelance writing job. Shit happens. Did you not just see the Hankey the Christmas Poo picture I posted?

Job: teaching grammar/vocab/math to 1st-5th graders at a summer learning program

Internship: shooting/editing video content for an "up and coming" (to be read with kind-of-bitchy sarcasm) L.A. media/lifestyle website.

I don't get paid at my internship. I drive an hour to North Hollywood a few times a week and live the high life chopping up Final Cut timelines all day. I pretend to hate it except that I actually love it. A few weeks ago we were shooting stuff for my friend who has a pretty awesome blog about food trucks. What were we doing? Filming her at these various food trucks. Did we get a shit ton of free food? Yes, yes we did. Was it delicious? Yes, yes it was. The things these people come up with...seriously, sushi burritos?!

And yes, that is a samurai wearing a sombrero.

So that part of the job's been pretty cool. And I've discovered I really like editing. It's like putting a puzzle together, except some artsy-fartsy experimental-education teacher gave them to you saying, "Put them together however you want." So I make videos. Mostly web shorts and spotlights and things like that.

As for the "paying" (to be read with unapologetically-bitchy sarcasm) job, I like it. I like kids. Except I hate them.

I like the idea of kids. I've determined that instead of being a parent, I'd much rather just rent some children and the second they feel the need to rebel against authority I'll just return them to the Rent-A-Kid shack or exchange them for another one. Now, this is a little hypocritical of me since I was often the obnoxious class clown in my youth ((says the old and wizened 21-year-old)), but Jesus W. Christ, I don't remember it ever being acceptable to get up and lie on the floor in the middle of class. That's what these kids do! And yell made-up words, and break their pencils so they can leave the room to sharpen them, and argue over whether so-and-so's a boy or a girl, and the list goes on. Kids are little shits.

But then they tell you you're their favorite teacher and somehow that cancels it all out. I work at THE shittiest learning program in all of [insert small city in Southern Orange County], but to see them absorb anything that we go over in class-- and enjoy it, sometimes-- is fairly rewarding.

[sentimental music]

This blog is long enough; bless your soul if you've made it this far-- and with so few pictures! So I'll delve into the nitty-gritty of working as a teacher some other time. Because if I've learned anything, it's that the pain and misery of others is fodder for entertainment. For now, I'll leave you with this bit of wisdom:

Never eat raspberries.

Or As I Like To Call It, J.Lo.I.T.T.Mo.Mn.E.F.T.W.Ia.Cs.H.T.A

J-Mil's List of Intriguing Tidbits That Might Or Might Not Ever Find Their Way Into a Conversation, So Here They Are

1. I saw the Dalai Llama speak, among other prominent world leaders such as the former prime minister of Poland and the former French president. I was literally sitting, like, 10 feet away from the guy.

 He was somewhat hard to understand.
:'(


:)



:D



xD



>:(

2. On my last night in Prague, I saw crowds of people marching solemnly through the streets with a giant Czech flag above their heads. The first president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, had just died. It's chilling and absolutely crazy to think about.

3. When I was younger, I didn't know that "nuts" was slang for "testicles" and I just thought it referred to any private parts. So one day a boy on the playground kicked me in the vagina, and as I was recounting the event to my carpool the next day I said, "...And then he kicked me in the nuts."

4. I once walked out in the middle of a Mad Science class in like... 4th grade because I was the obnoxious class clown, and the teacher reprimanded me, and I was not gonna put up with that shit so I just packed my things and walked home. I never made silly putty that year.

5. During my freshman year of college I was in a class called Ethical Theories, and I had a habit of ceaselessly asking difficult questions that make us all hate our lives. So one day when my teacher was addressing a question I had just asked, she referred to it as a "Quessica." And that's how I got the nickname "Quessica" among certain folks in the Whittier Philosophy Department.

6. I had a piano teacher who lived in a creepy mansion that had literally been put on wheels and awkwardly plopped into an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood (I know this because there were multiple documented news articles about it hanging on the wall). It was stuffy, creaky, and my instructor's wife designed doll gowns for a living so there were crazy, elaborate Victorian dolls staring at you all over the house. There were rumors that a ghost haunted the place, which was easy to believe when the "waiting bench" faced you a few feet away from a menacing air vent with wrought-iron floral patterns over it.

7. Also, in my current neighborhood there's this other house that looks like a swamp shack, and much like my piano teacher's place, it is a strange-looking house plopped into an average suburban neighborhood. It's surrounded by foot-high weeds and I'm pretty sure it's built on stilts. This is the home of the Witch of Oceanside. A typical angsty high school prank to pull on a Friday night was to drive up to her house in the middle of the night, creep up to her door, and knock on it. You would instantly hear a blood-curdling scream from inside, because that lady was bat shit crazy and went insane whenever the outside world tried to get in touch with her. She would often scream expletives like, "God damn it get off of my fucking property!!" and one time I even saw her run out with a broom (okay, I may have watched from the car on a couple Witch of Oceanside excursions). I can't remember what she looked like, but I remember that she gave me the chills. She looks as crazy as she probably was.

8. AND in my neighborhood growing up I passed by a creepy-looking house on the way to elementary school. The weeds were so overgrown that they were about two feet high in the driveway cracks. An old, undriven yellow car was parked out front. Stacks of newspapers flooded the driveway. It was horrifying. Even more horrifying is the reason it went unoccupied-- the guy living there had Alzheimer's disease and he smothered his wife to death with a pillow in that house. Not long after, he caved from his guilt and shot himself. That shit HAPPENED in my hood.

So now the rumor of that house is that every Halloween, blood drips down the stairs of that house to the first floor. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the facts of what happened in that house. We were in elementary school, scary stories didn't have to make sense.

...There have been a significant number of eerie places in my life.

9. During Winter Break last year, we had a heavy rainy season that broke through a massive hole int the ceiling and dripped onto my bed for the two weeks or so that I was gone. By the time I returned to campus, my room smelled awful and my bed was a soggy pile of mold. Whittier College had to reimburse me for my damaged items.

And that's how I got these sick new bedsheets!

You wish I was kidding.

10. I'm part of a fraternity-type thing on campus known as a society. Societies are basically less-douchy if not slightly less-legit fraternities and sororities. I'm part of the Sachsen Society, which is best classified as a co-ed fraternity. We're like... one of three in the nation. I'm so proud *tear*. Well, every year we host an on-campus event known as Psychedelic Circus, which is basically a daytime music fest with tye dye, henna, hookah, slip n' slides, and so on. It's a good old-fashioned shameless hippie fest.

Flyer formatted by the incomparable Irene, and illustrated by the incomparable Google images search engine.

This year we're gonna have jell-o wrestling. AND... perhaps most exciting of all... we got a parachute. Yes. The parachute that you think you may be thinking of. A big, colorful rainbow parachute that you played in P.E. when you were like seven.

[may be conducive to hot-boxing, more updates as this hypothesis develops]

I've already played more games than I could possibly say with it, and Psychedelic Circus isn't for another week. I might be a loser... but more likely you're just jealous that you don't have an awesome parachute to sit on while you eat lunch. What do we gain from sitting on the parachute during lunch, you ask? Nothing. We are just very attached to our parachute.

11. We totally hung the parachute from the second floor of our housing today, creating an awesome Rainbow Cave under the balcony.

12. I had a professor who knew the guy who discovered the color purple.

13. I generally have very heavy periods. Can't unlearn that now, can you?

14. My best friend gave me an awesome present for Christmas (or my birthday? I confuse my stuff-getting holidays) this past year. It's a world map that's all one color, and you scratch off the countries you've visited to reveal their colors underneath. So far I've scratched off Mexico, parts of the U.S., and pieces of Spain, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Amsterdam and London. It takes a scratch map to show you just how depressingly insignificant these travels are. I mean, honestly, has anyone LOOKED at Russia lately? That place is massive!

Russia, y u red?

15. I became vegetarian over last Summer, officially launching me into the wonderful and terrifying world of cheese, tofu and hot sauce, all of which I love. I put sriracha on everything. You want to see what my Facebook profile picture was for a while?

You want to see what my diet has been for a while?

Obsessed. Spicy food is my life. I frequently order 9 or 10-level curry at thai restaurants.

16. I'm obsessed with thai. Perhaps that's not very intriguing, but it's not meant to be. It's supposed to be a hint that you should get me thai food. I like red curry with tofu.

Whoah Guy.

Guess who's back.
Back again.
J-Mil's back.
Tell a friend.

Even though they'll most likely respond with, "What's a J-Mil? What are you talking about? Are you delirious? Here, sit down. I'll get you some water."

Yeeeup, I decided to do that blogging thing again. I technically was for a while last semester, which I spent in Prague. YES, I was in Prague. And I'm not going to talk about it at all. If you want to know what I was up to you can check out my Prog Blague (which, as it turns out, is actually the most unoriginal title for a blog about Prague). Let's talk about now. Let's get in the present. Let's pretend that I haven't completely abandoned this blog for a little under two years and move on. Because repression is awesome!

So right now I'm back in school, getting ready for the end of the school year. WTF am I going to do with my Summer? Originally I wanted to go on a three-month jetpacking excursion through Candy Mountain, but I recently found out that place doesn't exist. So now I'll most likely be working at a Vietnamese grill and using my spare time to watch Ugly Americans and get fat off breakfast burritos from the Alberto's by my house.

Photo collage of my summer:

Until then, I am working hard in school and bullshitting my way through my introductory social work class. While the work load from all my classes is a bit frustrating, I'm happiest when I'm busy. When I'm not busy I get bored, and it seems like whenever I get bored I try to find the most efficient way to kill my brain cells. I watch TV, stare at Facebook for hours on end, drill small holes in my forehead using my dad's power tools... I crave stimulation.

And that's why we have Whittier! This semester has been oodles of stimulation. Why, just last night I went to a school dance for the first time in... well, like a year. It got so loud and so drugapalooza'd that the Whittier PD literally ticketed the school and shut the whole thing down. It was a beach-themed dance, so before I knew it I found myself amidst a mass exodus of drunk ass bitches sloppily waddling around in their bikinis and trying to find their other sloppy drunk ass bitch friends. It kind of looked like this:


VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill
...Sorry, that's mean of me to pass judgment. I'm sure they all have wonderful personalities.

Like these bitches.

 It was an odd night. After the dance got shut down by... like... the entire Whittier police force, I went back up to my dorm to discover the fire alarm had gone off. But Campus Safety was not around, because they were ALSO handling the dance situation. So it was me, my friends, and a cluster of drunk fools in bathing suits awkwardly standing outside our dorm at around 12 o'clock at night. Eventually we got the okay to get into the building, but then the halls were just crawling with drunk people. Several awkward encounters. At an after party I went to later that evening, some shirtless douche bag grabbed my wrist and wouldn't let me go until I told him my name. In my panic I said my real name, which was perplexing. I usually say my name is Lucille, and sometimes they believe me.

Well, I guess that's all for now, nothing particularly riveting I'm afraid. Crossing my fingers for increasing rivetage in the upcoming weeks! If I don't rivet hard enough I don't know what I'll do.

How Robberies Happen At Whittier College.

It starts off very simply. You go to Campus Movie Fest and watch a bunch of great videos, including one you made. You don't get an award, but eh, it was mostly for the experience. While you are at Campus Movie Fest, you see the man of your dreams there with his girlfriend, who you just found out about at that very moment. Practicing the healthy habit of emotional eating, you decide to go to The Spot and order ice cream or something to console yourself. You saw people eating McFlurry's on a tv show the other day and they looked, like, really good.

You step inside the student lounge on your way to The Spot and what should be on the television but It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the best show in the world. And is that the new season? Sure looks like it. You slide into one of the couches and watch for a bit with some other students.

As soon as the show hits a commercial break, you set your purse down to hold your prime Sunny seating and slide over to The Spot and ask if they have like oreo milkshakes or something. They say no. You ask if they have anything like ice cream, and they point you to the freezer full of Ben n Jerry's. But you know if you get one you'll eat the whole thing, so you refuse. You look at them desperately. They say they have smoothies. You ask if they have any... you know... not-fruit flavored kinds, because you figure this is as close as you will get to a McFlurry. They say oh yes, they have strawberry and-- You cut them off. No, any that aren't fruit. And they explain oh no, there's no fruit, it's a strawberry syrup-- You stop them and reiterate yourself one more time and they say yes, and begin to list off flavors like strawberry, mango, pineapple-- you say you'll look in the freezer and leave the counter.

You hover around The Spot for a while and settle on a nice slice of cake with chocolate icing instead. Yum. Excited to settle down and watch some Sunny with a fat slice of cake, you return to the student lounge... only to find that your purse, and all the people that were sitting around it, are gone. How the FUCK could this happen, you wonder. You knew the kid sitting next to you... he drove you to that... that... Jewish temple fieldtrip thing! You guys were in a carpool together! Isn't there some sacred bond of trust once you carpool with someone? You can't believe this would happen. Thank God your wallet wasn't in that bag. That's just it-- there was nothing in that bag but a bunch of pens and loose tic tacs... it was just a really cool purse! God damn it!

You interrogate a few guys sitting by where you were. They say they saw the people watching tv all get up and leave, but that you didn't see them with the bag. You fume. You begin committing hypothetical murders in your head. You storm out the door seeing if you can find the culprits and suddenly you realize-- your brand new fucking PHONE was in that bag. Yup. That's gone too. FUCK. You stomp around the Campus Center, which is buzzing with people enjoying their late night barbeque. You look for the culprit but do not see them. You are only capable at making nondistinct growling noises at anyone who makes eye contact with you for too long.

During all this you are holding a slice of cake on a plate.

You cannot conceive of being robbed in the student lounge at Whittier College, where people go the whole year without locking their doors. Whittier students had always seemed so honest. You chug back to your dorm in disbelief. You stare angrily down at your cake. Then you have a bite of it. It's not even that good. COME ON.

You walk all the way up the stairs to your dorm, where you see a figure stooped at the top. You think nothing of this until you hear four magical words: "Is this your purse?" A guy is sitting at your door with your purse... and your phone, too! He says that he dialed the last contact you called, which just happens to be your roommate. She's not on campus but she has told him where to go. You thank him profusely. He says he saw it sitting by itself in the student lounge. You realize that, oops, technically he is the one who took your purse, but he did it out of being a good Samaritan so you thank him again. The Whittier community did not let you down!

You have your purse and phone back. But the guy who gave them back to you is gay, so no remedy for your other boy issue. And maybe next time you should get mozarella sticks.

Upgrade for Only $12.99 A Month.

Sick... stomach... dying... I feel the way that woman in Men In Black must have felt right before she gave birth to that giant tentacle baby.

That, or I feel like there's a mutant alien worm trying to eat its way out of my stomach. In any case, there is something in my belly, it is not human, and it wants me dead.



So... awkward. In my poetry class we post our poems to a shared blog on this site. Since I already have an account my username leads to HERE... my little... lime green blog! Now the whole class is a few clicks away from my innermost publicly shared information. SHHH! Did you hear that? What if they're reading this right now. Get out of my head! Don't you know I'm the only person in the entire internet who can have a Blogger account?!

Scuttlebutt: The Hottest Post Yet! And Other Heat-Related Puns.

I am sitting before my laptop stripped down to my underwear. This isn't the most surprising thing, though, because I like to walk around in my underwear. But if, in some distant hypothetical world, it were not the custom, then it would give more weight to and validify the following statement:

Yeah, it's that hot.



P.S. I also like to use big words and formal logic language when I'm in my underwear.

On Saturday God's thermostat broke. So he called Satan over to fix the problem. Satan came up to check it out and said, "By God, you're right, I'll fix it right away!" God mumbled something about not taking the lord's name in vain then went out to run some errands while Satan took care of the problem.

Well, about an hour later God returned with an armful of groceries from Trader Joe's and no sooner had he walked in the door than his mochi ice cream began melting right out of the package.

"What the devil!" The suddenly British God exclaimed, sweating so profusely from the heat that he created an entire disgusting, polluted bay in Cerritos.

"You called?" Satan said. "I fixed your thermostat. I don't know how you got on before I showed up, it was freezing!"

God was speechless. He was frustrated by Satan's error, but being a compassionate God, he was able to forgive Satan. But then Satan gave him the bill and the extremely unreasonable charges pissed God the fuck off. So in a fit of displaced anger, he forced several Whittier students to go out and clean the bay in Cerritos.

And that is the story of why it's hot as hell out right now.



Yesterday I had some fun encounters with dehydration. I was sitting in my room around 7:30pm and it was STILL beastly hot. I began feeling kind of unusual. To quote myself because everything I say is a stroke of genius, I said to my roommate that I wasn't sure whether I was about to "laugh, cry or poop."

Later on, after concluding it hadn't been any of the three, I walked down the hall to the bathroom. I think I blacked out for a few seconds because as soon as I shut the door to the stall I had no idea where I was, and I stood in there looking around for a little bit. I figured out pretty quickly that I was in the bathroom, but what took longer was assessing which stall I was in. By the end I had a rough idea of which of the two stalls I was in, but I didn't look much further into it because I didn't think it was all that important to know.

Dehydration is the feeling of being drunk and catatonic. I felt that little tickle you get at the corners of your mouth after you've had your third shot, but I had no desire to move. But at the same time I had to move because I needed to feel air on my skin.

Conclusion: drink water, folks. This weather is unforgiving.

On The Subject Of Being Bad Ass.

I'm in Video Production at my school and I made this poor kid, bless his heart, act in a short video I wrote called "How To Be Bad Ass." Now I'm sure when he was commissioned to do this project he was under the impression that he would be playing a bad ass. Well... that was not the case. The video is a satirical how-to training video in which a "wimpy" kid is turned into a bad ass. But by the end he isn't a bad ass... he just looks kind of silly. And maybe he dies. Who knows. I'm not making promises. Check it out when we're finished making it.

But in discussing this script with people, it became clear to me that there are some discrepancies over what a bad ass is. My assumption was that a bad ass is like an action hero who wears combat boots and runs from explosions really slowly.


Bad ass?

But long ago, the first time I tried to film this video, the actor came to shooting with a suede leather jacket and a silk tie, thinking of THIS type of bad ass:


Bad ass?

And then I started thinking, isn't the original bad ass like a dude with a motorcycle and tattoo sleeves? Or is it a coy, sophisticated genius, like Sherlock Holmes? Or is it Laura Croft? Or is it a ninja? Or is it someone who can put their foot behind their head?


Total bad ass.

I don't think bad ass is an image, or even a particular lifestyle. Through my extensive research of typing "bad ass" into the Google image search engine, I've determined that bad assery is a mindset. You could be whoever you'd like and still be a bad ass. Who knows. Maybe I'm a bad ass.

No. That's a lie. Bad asses don't have blogs.