I stared out my window for ages watching it come down today, crying.
This time last year, the hills around our house were a blackened smoking ruin.
There was still ash and burnt pinecones in the yard, leaves like bubbled carbon.
Exhaustion from fleeing our house, unable to sleep for days had me weak all over, chest in a vice of fear.
Wildfires continued to rage and my evacuation bags remained firmly packed for two more months. It would still be weeks before we got any precipitation.
Glass.
The year before we had no power for almost a month, windstorms constantly screaming through, and an inferno to the north doubling in size every white-knuckle night.
Kincade.
The year before we would soon be drowning in the smoke from the horror in Paradise.
Camp.
The year before, we were shell-shocked after a miles-long blowtorch raced over our city in a matter of a few hours. Totally unprepared. There wasn't even a certain death toll yet.
Tubbs.
Other areas of California have had that kind of misery again this year.
But we got a reprieve. Cooler temperatures. Unusual humidity.
The scariest stretch was a thunderstorm in early September that had everyone on edge and on the lookout for dry lightning. But it rained just enough in some areas that nothing got too out of control.
Even as I write this I don't want to jinx it. Even though the rain felt like winter already arrived today. Even though the forecast is for more over the next week.
It's almost too much to hope we made it through. You can't afford to hope.
But I did stare out my window and cry.
The ground is wet and everyone I know and love is fully vaccinated if they can be.
Mentioning an oxygen mask in that previous post seems like a dark joke now.
Would not recommend having contamination-related OCD during a global pandemic. 0/10
Not a good time.
But when you've been a hermit for eight years... quarantine doesn't change much. Sewing masks some. Binging Netflix some. Spending too much time on Reddit. Despairing about politics. Working on long-running projects.
Finally got around to watching the last Star Wars and Frozen 2 yesterday. Back-to-back. Weirdly felt like I was watching the same movie twice. Didn't think that would happen with those two franchises, but I guess that's the hero's journey for you.
Time passes...
Missed my last ding entirely. Sorry, 32. Here we are at 33.
I considered 2017 a bust.
2018 was not. But it was challenging.
It makes sense that I stopped making time to post in February of last year. It's when I became a mod of the K-Pop subreddit. I had only applied to help with banners and light moderation, but due to a number of circumstances, ended up being one of only a few primary moderators for a full year until we recently got some more in.
Modding a sub like that... holy shit, it's a lot of work. And stressful.
On top of that, the biggest criminal scandal ever in K-Pop, broke this February. We've been covering it with painstaking diligence ever since. And some of the reporting is brutally difficult to read.
I am very much aware that between this stuff and KPOPPY and EssentialKpop, I have basically taken on more than a full day job's worth of work... as a volunteer. It has given me a lot of purpose and satisfaction as I overcome challenges or problems, but I'm definitely still sick and not very functional otherwise. Been a weird year.
The rest of my time is spent with politics, mostly in the socialism/breadtube spheres. It's somehow both depressing and comforting. Depressing how far we are from sanity, especially with establishment Democrats hell-bent on losing forever. Comforting for the reminder that there are people out there who care and haven't been made completely batshit by mainstream media. The stupid, but informed, humor of stuff like ChapTrapHouse is cathartic.
It has to be a progressive in 2020. We need Bernie. Warren or Gabbard are the only other acceptable choices.
Still finding escape in BTS. Doing more and more amazing things all the time. They just performed, and won, at the Billboard Music Awards and started a world stadium tour. Still blowing my mind to have watched them debut as underdog nobodies and get to where they are now. Nuts!
Honestly, not too hard to understand when you see how close they are still. That affection between them stronger than ever, even though some of them have lived together for like 8... 9 years? Good god. Fun dudes. They're like the human embodiment of every team-building exercise.
Anyway, not much substance here. Just affirming my existence.
The Orville is still awesome.
Star Trek Discovery finally started to feel a little like Star Trek at some point in the 2nd season. Probably when Spock showed up. Still kind of a slog.
Goals this year are to make a healthy work/life schedule, update KPOPPY, and paint a little. One finished art project. I've barely done anything for ages, other than for the K-Pop subreddit.
Also want to plant some pentas for the hummingbirds.
Sometimes a competitive high school dance team serving pure 80s gives you the will to live.
Tomioka Dance Club, ladies and gentlemen.
Almost never listen to Western music anymore, but I'm pretty well obsessed with this MV and song. Super super super gorgeous video.
I basically decided to forfeit 2017. It was a despondent blight of fire and tears.
Trying to get things moving forward now. Or just... moving.
Following the solid week of crying grief over Jonghyun I rubbed my eyes lightly, exhausted, awake too long. Got a crazy after-image burst in my left eye that stayed with me for almost two weeks. Accompanied by a continuous headache. Probably a mild posterior vitreous detachment according to the internet. Could've been a stroke or aneurysm finally coming for me... wouldn't know. Still can't think about being out in the world enough to deal with seeing a doctor. I fully appreciate the depth of this foolishness.
Illness makes a fool of me on the regular.
I did some reading. Ready Player One was a miserable shock. I had heard so many good things about it. I was genuinely startled to experience how poor it was. It's just... yeah... it's just not good.
Got through John Green's Turtles All The Way Down with difficulty. Had to take breaks for a few days at a time because I was crying through so much of it. Then Jonghyun happened in the midst of that and I didn't come back to it for a while. It's very good. But extremely challenging to get through for someone who has OCD and mental illness on-par or worse than the protagonist. It was so damn real to my own experience that it could only be a painfully anxious ride. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to have OCD, read Turtles All The Way Down.
Saved The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage for the last of my reading stint. Figured it would be the most fun. I was right. Pretty harrowing tale. Pullman is such a beautiful writer. Effortlessly vibrant. His Dark Materials is a very important book series for me so I'm thrilled to have more stories within that universe. Eagerly awaiting the next installments.
Mostly I've been escaping into BTS. Bangtan Sonyeondan. Which is also foolish. I thought my Kpop group fangirling days were behind me. I'd never again follow a group as closely as I followed DBSK.
But BTS... is an irresistible force of nature.
They had impressed me early on with the steady pace and quality of their promotional periods. There was a clear difference between the dozens of other groups I see debut and disappear yearly. Their WINGS era at the end of 2016 really reached a critical mass of attention. Finally recognized with big awards. Then their unprecedented grassroots worldwide fanbase voted them into a Billboard award and all of the press, hype, and collaborations that came out of that launched them into the stratosphere. Completely wild to witness that happening in real-time.
The sheer mass of their content online is simply insane and it's the easiest thing in the world to fall into and luxuriate. Foolish because investing emotionally in such a thing has gotten me into trouble before. Grief-stricken, physically ill, trouble... when things have gone tragic or criminal. Namely DBSK. As I said, I thought I'd never let myself be sucked in again.
But here we are.
I've never seen an entire group be as tightly bonded as these seven are. A lot of circumstances around the creation and development of the group are unique in the industry, so it makes sense. The culture of affection runs deep.
They have a large body of socially/politically conscious material. Much of it written by them. Hard to not appreciate that considering the environment they're in. They have a category of material I refer to as their 'Hey, try not to kill yourself' songs. Lost, So Far Away, Not Today, 2! 3!, YNWA, etc.
My favorite of which is 'Tomorrow'.
I find them to be helpful, personally.
Comforting.
Cross-posting this from my KPOPPY blog as it's relevant to personal matters.
Couldn't bear thinking about this post, but I think I'll do it now while it's still raw... for my own process. I will not be posting music videos for a few days. I'll try to catch up at the end of the week and weekend. Thank you for your patience.
Kim Jonghyun of SHINee has passed away.
In the full post there is SM's official statement, some links, and my personal response to what has happened. Everything is after the jump-cut so it can easily be skipped for anyone having too difficult a time with all this. Please do not read further if frank discussion of this event would overwhelm you.
To Shawols, I love you.
To the greater Kpop community, hold each other tight.
Provide all the support you can and embrace support yourself if you need it.
To Jonghyun, thank you for sharing your voice and your music.
The whole state is on fire.
My hometown is on fire.
My nerves are on fire.
Fucking everything is on fire.
A few years ago I described wind thusly:
Wind is one of those things that I'm obnoxiously sensitive to. It's akin to that damn scratchy tag in your shirt that feels like it's stabbing you every two seconds. Except it's all over my skin and constant. Wind gives me a headache, makes me itchy everywhere, and makes my eyes and nose hurt, even if I'm not outside. Something about the atmosphere changes. Barometric pressure something-or-other. It makes me feel crazy. I want to peel all my skin off. Rip my hair out. Beat my head against a wall. Like... crazy crazy. Wind like this makes it impossible to sleep and that makes me feel especially crazy crazy.
We had a wind event something like that a week ago. I say like that tentatively, because this wind was the most terrifying wind I've ever experienced. It had been going all day, making me cranky, filling my clothing and hair with static, giving me a headache, sucking all the moisture out of my skin, nose, and throat. But in the middle of the night, I was up like normal, doing work on the computer, wondering if I should just turn in for the night because there was no way the power wouldn't go out with the insane speed of the gusts. The whole house was shuddering.
And the power did go out. Came on again a few minutes later, but I left my computer off, assuming it'd go again. And it did. There was sound out in the neighborhood, voices, my folks were talking in their room. Left my room to discover the rest of the house was full of smoke. Neighbors were standing out in the middle of the street with flashlights. Once out in the street we looked to the hills set behind our house.
They were on fire. A ridge of flames surging down towards homes. The whole sky to the west was glowing orange, billowing with smoke. The fire was roaring it was so powerful. Explosions. Power transformers, propane tanks, ammunition stores in residential homes, etc, all blowing up like bombs going off in a war zone.
I pulled up local radio (KSRO) on my phone and listened attentively, shaking, and dumbfounded. We packed absolute necessities, not knowing if our neighborhood would burn. At 4AM we evacuated to the fairgrounds area, the first shelter area people were encouraged to gather. Thousands of people swarming and parking in the dark. Two major hospitals had to be evacuated, patients set up in a makeshift triage center. Families. Pets. Everyone in pajamas. The kind of scene you only see on the news or in disaster movies. Very fucking real.
Through the incredible generosity of wonderful friends, we had safe spaces to rest. Through incredible luck, we got power and internet back at our house within the first couple days. A house still standing.
Woken from a dead sleep a couple days ago to sounds that will haunt me forever, a mandatory evacuation taking place in the neighborhoods just across a highway from us. Very close. Close enough to hear the bullhorn calls, the doors and windows being pounded on, the sirens, the series of car doors slamming in rapid succession... all as if it was happening next door. One of the fires had jumped to the east of us, threatening residential areas in our direction.
That sick adrenaline. I could barely gather my packed bags again I was shaking so hard. But we weren't evacuated. Encouraged to stay put, in fact, to allow the mandatory area to use the escape roads as quickly as possible. Days later, that's still the most active fire in the region, so we're still walking on eggshells around here. But any immediate danger has essentially passed. We might even get some rain or drizzle soon.
Burned/burning areas in my neck of the woods right now.
It has been a hard fucking week.
And compared to a huge amount of my fellow city residents, insanely lucky and relatively easy.
But it's definitely a wild experience to barely leave your house for five years and then flee it halfway across the city ahead of a firestorm that's destroying everything in its path.
Everyone learns faster on fire.
I've had that old Alkaline Trio song stuck in my head this week.
Once the fires cool and the smoke has cleared and the ash stops falling like snow, I'll be trying to volunteer somehow in whatever limited way I can. I have to try. Until then, we're living out of packed bags. Edgy and anxious. Nothing else to be for now. There is some positive amusement in seeing a literal 747 flying low over my backyard while I eat breakfast, about to drop a metric fuck-ton of retardant on the hills nearby. Surreal. Never been so happy to hear multiple planes and helicopters circling all day long. Heroes up there.
Mostly been numb/terrified emotionally. But seeing pictures of the Luther Burbank Center scorched, where I performed for 9 years, and the Round Barn reduced to soot, an unforgettable icon of a hometown I've lived in for 31 years... made me want to shrivel up and cry forever. What happened in Coffey Park is shocking to the senses.
I've always hated wind.
I need a more violent word than hate for my feelings now.
Trixie Mattel's country folk album came out at the beginning of the month.
98% of the music I listen to these days is Kpop. Barely listen to American music anymore. But when I did previously, it was mostly heavy rock and a bit of hip-hop. I can enjoy just about any kind of music. The one exception I've always had was for country.
I have a really hard time listening to country. It's the twang. In the vocal. Sometimes in the instrumentation even. That twang has always been nails on a chalkboard to me. Like when you have to take cough syrup as a kid and you get the full body shudder from the taste.
I can't deal.
But not all country has a strong twang and I can typically tolerate the genre fine when it isn't present.
I wasn't initially aware that Trixie was so musically inclined from watching Drag Race and other media stuff. But she started incorporating singing and guitar relatively recently along with her standup. Stuff that she had been doing pre-drag.
Late last year I stumbled onto this video.
And I turned into a bit of a sobbing mess.
Brian has a lovely voice. It's not particularly unique or spectacular. There's something about a simple, clean, warm, vocal performance, cutting away any frills or crazy production, that's so damn nice.
And really no twang. Only the occasional tease of one, which I don't mind.
Also an incredibly sad song. Oh heavens. The travelling artist's woes of their personal life being abandoned or falling apart for the sake of their job and what they love to do. Not uncommon. But the lyrics cut straight to the heart of it. Forthright and accessible in such an effective and heartbreaking way.
It hurts.
But I need to go off on a semi-related tangent first after the jump.
I appreciate when the internet gets playful and creative for April Fools' Day.
Reddit has been doing projects for years that typically are a combination of testing the maximum server burden, demographics, and/or new potential functions for the site.
I've participated in each year since the OrangeRed vs. Periwinkle battle of 2013. Hats hats hats.
I stayed gray for The Button as a part of the waiting Red Guard.
In Robin last year, I helped grow with several huge chats and ended up in the final merged chat before it all crashed. Those of us who lasted to the 17th tier (about 3,000 people) have a private subreddit named after the chat's final merged names /r/ccKufiPrFaSh...
This year was /r/place. Reddit users could place one pixel at a time on a single, shared blank canvas. You would then wait a set period of time to place your next pixel. The time varied, starting at 20 minutes, but eventually dropping to 5.
The result after three days is what you see above. Well, not exactly. There was a huge follow-up effort to clean up stray pixels and restore certain areas that had been swallowed by the Void. But the actual final piece isn't much different from this. There are dozens of articles around the net about how this all went down, so I won't go into that sort of thing here.
The timelapses and heat maps are absolutely brilliant to watch. The most spectacular follow-up is The /r/place Atlas. A detailed, crowd-sourced, map to every little thing on the canvas, complete with thorough explanations.
It's this kind of thing that reminds me how much I love the internet for the incredible cooperation that is possible. /r/place is a manifestation of that in general. There were probably a lot of expectations of it being a vile trainwreck of bigotry and hate symbols. Turned out to be quite the opposite.
It was damned heartwarming.
I just have a few things to say about my individual contribution after the jump.
The winter rains in California are proving their worth in full.
Baboon flower in vibrant bloom.
Spearmint. Luxuriant.
Three cheers for that.
31.
I just jumped through my last five birthday entries. All variations of 'I'm a miserable mess, trying to get by, relying on the little things'.
Yup.
Same.
Doing art when I can. Working on Project for Awesome stuff to donate at the end of the year and a similar charity/auction thing in the summer. That'll go to London. I'll probably be posting some of that soon-ish.
I have things to say about reddit's /r/place April Fools shindig from this year.
Also Trixie Mattel's folk album. Future posts.
Day to day, it's getting enough food in me, getting some exercise, chores while listening to podcasts, feeding the birds, reading a bit (currently the Kingkiller Chronicle), keeping up with Kpop posts on my blog and Essential, a little tinkering with my KPOPPY re-coding project, watching a few shows and my youtube subscriptions, art when my fingers are feeling good, and sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
With a steadier constitution I think more on some blunt realities.
For example, I haven't left this city in five years, but I don't know what it looks like. I know my street and the park a bit (PokemonGo), but...
Took a drive with Ma not long ago. Hadn't been in a car in all that time. Incredibly disorienting. She didn't go far. Just beyond the neighborhood. But it was hard for me.
Disorienting... yeah.
Vertigo almost.
Vertiginous is the word.
Not just the movement of the car. But the reality of viewing an area that I've been inside of continuously, but haven't been witness to. My house is a time machine. My life for five years is a blur within it. Everywhere else is changed.
It was overwhelming and hard enough for me to live out in the world when I was running at peak capability. Even as I get better, it's beyond daunting to think about re-entering it when my illness is still so present. It's fair to say the illness was always there, but I had only been white-knuckling it all along. Couldn't ever form a contingency plan. So when my hands metaphorically ripped off, I went flying. And now I don't have anything to reliably hold on with.
Just left looking for my hands.
Not sure if that's even what I should be doing.
White-knuckling is clearly not sustainable.
There's a certain healing comfort to the routine I'm in now. But the awareness that I'm a hair's breadth from doom at any time is always there. If something happened to my folks. If I got sick in a more emergent way. Shit happening in general. deep breath
And always the friends and family who I am utterly isolated from, unable to see or support.
I have a niece I've only really met through screens.
The positive up-tick in things of late considered... that kinda thing fucks me up on the daily.
Gotta take a towel to my cheeks and go watch the birds.
Mysteriously busted my calf muscle a couple weeks ago. Almost thought I had a blood clot or something. Incredibly sore and painful, but didn't know how I had done it. No swelling or bruising while it was excruciating. Magically disappeared after a few days. Some bruising showed up days later. Strange.
Maybe I'm reaching an age where that kind of thing hits harder and more randomly. My body has always been pretty resilient and un-pained. Remarkably so with 10 years of ballet, including pointe. Or un-remarkably? Hard to say.
Little things.
An American Gods TV series started on Starz. First two episodes were pretty fantastic. As much as the penultimate plotline in the book was difficult for me for personal reasons, the mythology referenced is a delight. My favorite reading material growing up. Greek, Norse, Egyptian, a multitude of others. Significantly responsible for my de-conversion from Christianity and arrival at agnostic atheism. Pure fun to see these characters brought to life on screen. Done very well too. Not for the prudish or faint of heart to watch, but worth it so far.
Also watching the new season of Produce101 in the Kpop realm. All boys this time. We're calling it Broduce101. The first big cut brought it from 101 to 60. I lost 4 dudes I was checking for in it. About 15 others I'm still rooting for. Mnet is sticking to the season 1 format pretty closely, which I'm pleased about.
On the note of competition shows, spoilery RuPaul's Drag Race update after the cut.
But first, a relevant Saturday Night Live sketch that just aired:
My physical health has improved significantly over the last handful of months. Being able to eat full meals, exercise, and have no panic attacks really does wonders.
I'm pretty numb to the politics now.
The women's march after the inauguration made me feel a little better. A growing (young) undercurrent bending towards justice. On that note...
Let's have a fun post.
A timely post.
A post-verbal post.
I drew a couple of my favorite looks from UNHhhh's 1st 'season'.
Last year, with my body being more resilient, I still felt like I was in a dark fog. The future was a black hole. Still is. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
However, it just so happened that I got around to watching RuPaul's Drag Race again. Lots of seasons to catch up with. I just hadn't managed to get to it after many years.
It's one hell of a show. It's like taking American Idol, X Factor, Project Runway, Face Off, So You Think You Can Dance, a comedy roast, and SNL and putting them in a blender.
Wouldn't recommend it if you're uncomfortable seeing people cross-dressing or gender roles getting scrambled. And if that's the case, what's wrong with you? How's your head? Lel. :P
At any rate, it's glorious.
Season 9 is starting on Friday the 24th on VH1. WATCH IT!
I got through seasons 5, 6, and 7 in rapid succession and watched 8 as it aired.
Season 7 was particularly enchanting due to a certain Russian hooker (season 7 spoilers) with a crippling anxiety disorder, who openly expressed that struggle along with the intense challenge of being a somewhat recently sober drug addict in the sequestered crucible of recording this insane show.
This would be a good time to warn that there's NSFW material ahead.
Drag queens, gay men, and the kinds of things that drag queens and gay men find amusing, especially one who was a sex worker/drug addict. You've been warned.
I didn't make art for the Project for Awesome this year. I'm still sitting on a good idea, but I'll be saving it for next year to give myself more time.
The main reason I never got to it... or really anything else... politics.
Quick check-in.
My brother saw a painting somewhere, took a picture of it, and requested I re-create it.
Thusly...
It's becoming a thing.
Likely hard to discern at this state, but it's a overhead view of a beach. As if shot straight down from a drone/quadcopter. Waves lapping up. Beach-goers with blankets and umbrellas. Surfers wading out. Palm trees.
I have no idea who the original artist was. Also don't really know what the medium was. The picture my bro sent looked like a painting that was printed on a canvas with some vague craquelure effect on it. A bit strange.
So I'm using acrylics in a watercolor-ish manner. Multiple transparent layers, glazes, starting messy and becoming more careful as I progress. I've never painted something quite this big before. Not as my own piece alone at least. I've done smaller parts of big murals. But this sucker is 60x40. Bananas for scale in the first shot. Lol. It comes up to my eyes.
Trying to only do one layer every couple of days to keep my fingers from freaking out. Doing okay so far.
Cracked up watching the opening ceremony for the Rio Olympics. In one of the first video montages there are a bunch of overhead shots exactly like this one. Funny coincidence.
Also got an idea for a Project for Awesome Art contribution.
More on that later.
Picked a few of the first burgundy beans out of our garden yesterday.
Yay, veg!
I have strong feelings about augmented reality being the standard of the future.
It seems inevitable to me that a digital or virtual reality will interface with reality reality more and more.
And I like it.
There is an issue of access for now, the requirement of a device to participate.
But the potential is what I find inspiring.
During the recent ugly month I started reading Harry Potter again. A distraction from intermittent panics. When PokeGo started taking over in the form of strangers meeting, in odd places, at odd hours, to participate in a world that would normally be hidden... all I could think of was how Harry Potter begins. With strangers, part of a normally secret world, congregating at street corners, landmarks, parks, and community centers, to communicate, discuss, and celebrate their apparent freedom from a terrorizing maniac.
There will always be people who will take wonderful things and use them to cause harm, as is and will be the case with Go.
But fuck 'em.
The positivity, the cooperation, the sun and exercise and enthusiastic mutual interest shared by many... seems like that's exactly what we need right now.
I woke to the fresh news of the Bastille Day horror in Nice.
If we will have atrocities like these as a new normal in the west.
I hope we can have a new normal of a positively augmented community.
Christina Grimmie was shot dead by some lunatic after her concert on June 10th. In front of her brother. I didn't follow her closely, but I follow and participate in a wide range of Youtube channels/communities. And I felt ill.
Two days later Pulse happened. 49 people killed and many wounded while having a great time at a gay club in Orlando. During Pride month. And that made me flee from news because I was trying to avoid a panic attack. But caught enough of a news blurb about the horror of first responders coming on the scene to the eerie sound of the victims cell phones ringing together as their loved ones desperately tried to find out if they were okay.
And that triggered some bad panics, which meant the typical of little eating, no sleeping, black hole of pain in the chest for days.
In the midst of this JYJ's Yoochun was accused of sexually assaulting a woman.
Shock and dismay.
Then another accuser and another and another and another and...
We're at 5 or 6 now, spanning over the last couple years. Looks like a pattern. TRIGGER WARNING. They all worked at adult entertainment bars, he lured them into a bathroom 'so they could talk', locked the door, and assaulted/raped them, except for one (the 5th) who came forward with the same story, but that she fought back so hard he let her go eventually. /TW
The news reporting on this case has been totally ridiculous and irresponsible mind you. Lots of misinformation and conflicting reports. The investigation is ongoing. Suffice it to say here that I think he won't be charged with anything, but I side with the victims.
Already ailing from the Orlando panic attacks, this properly drained the life out of me.
Then Anton Yelchin was killed by his own car in a terrible freak accident. He is/was my favorite part of the new Star Trek reboots. Like I would literally tune in if the first movie was airing on TV just for his parts then watch something else. By all indications was an extremely talented young actor with huge potential and adored by everyone he worked with. Seemed like a real genuine fellow.
Then the significant terror attacks that made news here. Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh... all the escalation during Ramadan and Eid.
And Brexit.
And nutcase Trump.
And Clinton being exonerated despite so much shit and apparently Chelsea Manning recently attempted suicide.
Then Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in rapid succession...
And I barely want to look at the fire fight, sniper fire, fucking whatever is happening in Dallas after the protests right now. 5 officers killed.
...
None of these things are equivalent, of course. Each their own kind of horror and nightmare.
I kept wanting to write something, but felt I needed to wait for my own health until there was some kind of reprieve... which never came.
Purely selfish grief. I'm in no line of fire or blast radius or losing family members or getting assaulted. But I feel a little bit like I did after 9/11. Numb and anxious trying to keep it together with that footage on TV in class all day every day during the week. I remember taking a shower that next weekend and just falling apart. Exhausted tears.
Feel like that right now. Just a little bit. Smaller scale. A similar kind of emotional exhaustion.
Life is so good, generally speaking. The world is on average a much kinder, freer, less-violent, and less painful place to be alive in right now. And my mostly gentle privileged tiny slice of that is vastly better than it is for many.
I suppose it's just the hyper-connectedness of information, which amplifies feelings of helplessness and frustration when there's so little I could possibly do.
Probably stupidly shallow, but Iceland's performance at the Euros was this itty bitty ball of joy through all this. Thanks, Iceland.
Inhale. Exhale.
I'll have to face a very different kind of JYJ music at some point here.
There's just this sickening limbo of not knowing wtf is going on. Jaejoong has the advantage of military isolation. Junsu is in the middle of his concert tour and very clearly determined to give 1000% to audiences that don't want to dwell on the horror of his bandmate's alleged behavior.
But there's this fear that if Yoochun is completely let off that they'll still promote with him.
They shouldn't. Cut ties. Protect themselves if they have nothing like this to hide.
But what an awful position to put them in. After everything they've been through.
After all the fans did to support them.
Happened to see these two mourning doves gettin' it on in the backyard a few weeks ago. Ha! Get a room!
We're gearing up for a garden. Hadn't spent much time out with the birds through the wet winter. A few days ago I noticed one of the Scrub Jays has a bum wing.
Hanging awkwardly. And the poor thing isn't able to fly very well. It was extremely windy the last couple days and I didn't see him. Hopefully get out tomorrow to see if he's around/better.
D:
Took me forever to crack open the Nvidia Shield Tablet replacement after the recall. Just kept putting it off. Then I had all the Windows 10 troubles and didn't want to deal with it. I was planning on rooting it so I could format my SD as internal storage and do all that. It was daunting, so I procrastinated.
But then there was a huge update around the new year, which integrated everything I would have wanted to do into the Nvidia... no need to root. So that spurred me to get the replacement going.
I've been using it since and it's perfect in every way for my needs. That update freed up an enormous amount of space and made the SD formatting super streamlined and easy. Woo!
I expected the old one to shut off much sooner than it did. It continued to work for like three months until it bricked itself. Thus ended the life of my first tablet. I gave it a ceremonial burial in the 'ship this tablet carefully so it doesn't blow up in transport' box that Nvidia provided.
Bye, tablet! I barely knew ye!
ONE BERNIE, PLEASE!
The election was already ridiculous, but things have really escalated into madness over the last month. The DNC is totally effed. The fraud, the rigging, the voting problems... it's all gross.
I imagine it will only get worse closer to the convention. I'm appalled by how Clinton is representing herself through all this.
It's going to be Hillary vs. Trump and that's...
... ugh...
... uuuugggghhhhh...
We need election reform, news media reform, all the reform. Good god. It's bad.
I'd like to think Hillary can get a landslide over Trump.
I'm genuinely paranoid this could go very differently.
UUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHH.
In happier and vastly more entertaining news, the end of the Premier League season was an absolute delight.
Leicester won by 10 points. No one was touching them.
But the runner-up positions were still in tight contention up to the end. Tottenham, having their best season... ever, could have pulled off 2nd and finished above Arsenal for the first time in 20 years. The rivalry runs so deep that this had Arsenal fans shitting themselves. But then Tottenham choked in their last few games allowing us to gain on them.
It came down to the last game of the season.
Arsenal played Aston Villa (relegated)
Tottenham played Newcastle (relegated)
These games were played simultaneously. Tottenham only needed a draw to hold 2nd.
We had to win.
And beautiful beautiful Newcastle, playing purely for the yucks, absolutely destroyed Tottenham. They even went down to 10 men... and still destroyed Tottenham. 5 - 1.
Each time they scored, Arsenal fans went absolutely nuts, getting the results through social media.
And Arsenal won. 4 - 0.
Thereby, Arsenal popped above Tottenham into 2nd and the 21st St. Totteringham's Day in a row was celebrated like we'd won the damn league ourselves.
IT'S HAPPENED AGAIN! IT'S HAPPENED AGAAAAAIIIIINNNN! TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR, IT'S HAPPENED AGGAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNN!
Being an American who really doesn't care all that much about clubs and their local rivalries...
This was just far too comical to not enjoy in every way.
The narrative. THE NARRATIVE.
This season was so damn strange anyway. Very amusing.
It'll be interesting to see if it gets crazier next season, or if things get back to something more normal.
Euros over the summer though! That'll be fun.
I'm determined to stay relaxed and detached this time so I don't have a total anxiety meltdown like I had during Germany's run for the World Cup.
A gift from my Aunt a long time ago. A Lily of the Valley teacup for May.
It's been a minute.
Say you stumble in the middle of the night and fall into a well.
And whoooooshcrunch there you are broken at the bottom.
And you shred your hands in the effort to climb your way out.
And it takes a very long time.
It's not until you can look back into the well in full daylight that you realize just how deep it was.
You can't fathom how you were ever able to make it out.
I know I'll have setbacks. I recognize I'll stumble again. The truth is it doesn't always get better. Sometimes it gets vastly worse. All you can do is try to prepare yourself for when it gets bad so you can get better on the other side.
I've had this feeling before. Especially when I've recalled school, mostly 7th through 12th grade, I wonder how I did it. Getting very little sleep at night from anxiety. Early morning. Every day. Overwhelmed by too many people and too much noise and chronic stress and illness and no relief. Objectively, I know I got through it by being a suicidal zombie, which isn't any way to be. But I can look back and awe that I didn't blow my brains out every day. I got to the other side.
Here I am on the other side again.
For the last few months I have noticed, in small ways and big, that my sensory experience is vastly different than it was for roughly the last four years. My 'normal' during that time was to have a panic attack if I felt too cold or too hot or needed to burp or felt hungry or full or from watching a movie or for seemingly no reason at all.
My nervous system was on a hair-trigger for every tiny little bit of stimulation. And every response was a grenade going off in my ribcage, ripping my limbs from my body, sending me in a terrorized scramble to collect them... even though they were right there where they should be, attached to me just fine.
But surely they couldn't be when I felt like I'd been blown apart.
I know things about myself now. I know that when I'm totally fucked up and in a panicked state, but trying to hold it together, my right arm twitches involuntarily. My elbow swings away from my body, pulsing by my side. I know that the smaller anxious moments make me yawn compulsively and grip and massage my collarbones and neck without thinking about it.
I yawn a lot still.
But the grenades are gone.
So now I can eat full meals. And have seconds!
And I can watch an icky scene in Orphan Black and laugh through it.
I can go through the majority of my days feeling stable. The steadiness is so palpable. It's remarkable.
It's so distinct that I know even a year ago I was nowhere near this.
I turn 30 in a week and I'm a total failure by normal people standards.
But hey, for the first time in four years, I can eat seconds!
Win!
Got hired for a temporary little job creating questions for a trivia app... the Kpop section. It pays to be knowledgeable about an obscure niche of a niche bit of pop culture.
Got asked to contribute to a tumblr typography project for Hank Green Out of Context, which will probably be posted within the week. Mine will certainly be the least competent of the bunch, in the typographical sense. It's not something I've studied/practiced. But I did a playful Illuminated Manuscript dealio, which is kind of hilariously stupid.
JUNSU IS MAKING ONE MORE ALBUM BEFORE ENLISTMENT.
Bless goddess Hani for dating him so he would delay military to be with his lady-love for a little while longer. I mostly just want to marry her myself. I usually don't take much interest in female idols, but she's the anti-idol and I love her dearly.
EXID has a similar rapport to what DBSK had back in the day. Their company is less strict though. Would never have gotten a drunken, spastic, performance like this from an SM group.
Hani is fucking precious.
And Solji's voice is fierce af.
Arsenal's season utterly fell apart for the 2nd half of the season. Lol. And Leicester have had this fairytale, planets aligning, prophecy fulfillment of a prophecy that never was. And while most everyone hates little Leicester now, Arsenal fans are rooting for them to beat Tottenham... because Tottenham. If Chelsea beats them tomorrow, I believe it becomes impossible for them to beat Leicester for the league.
Özil was on an insane roll during the first half of the season. Assist-machine is an understatement. Around the holidays I thought of doing this Norman Rockwell mash-up with the Gunners. His PR people started a little contest for memes/comics/sketches related to his assist record, so I figured I participate with the idea. Not concerned with the contest really, I just think it's cool of him/his people to do fun things like that.
Kicked it out rather rapidly to preserve my fingers, so it looks sloppy as all get-out to me. Lol.
Been a wild season. Leiscester is still top. Arsenal just beat them in a massive game over the weekend... with a goal assisted by Mesut to Welbeck in literally the last minute of the game.
Near pissed myself.
Politics
I've always participated in terms of researching and voting, but also felt it's all pretty bullshit-y and helpless. For the first time in my life I get to vote for someone I sincerely want to be the president. Not a lesser of evils or whatever. My ideals have alignment with an actual candidate... remarkable!
Bernie, of course.
Bernie Bernie Bernie.
There was a time when I 'supported' Hillary, because it seemed likely she would run in the future and she would have aligned a lot closer than anyone else I had seen. And even now, if it got to be her as the nominee, I would feel relatively comfortable in voting for her.
Then she started campaigning in earnest. And against Bernie. And it all turned to shit.
At this point it feels like a betrayal. With the absolute clusterfuck happening on the Republican side there was this extraordinary golden opportunity for the Democrats to show a positive, intelligent, and united front. They started out that way... a bit. But then instead of steadily and logically expressing the differences between the Dems and their reasons for their platforms, Hillary made an about-face. She started eating her own. Attacked the other guys by straw-manning and misrepresenting their positions on the major issues and disparaging them.
Especially now that it's just her and Bernie, she does this constantly, which is especially ridiculous because Bernie's record is rock solid. And when Bernie accurately refers to her inconsistent record she gets hyper-defensive, calling it an attack, sexism, harassment, and "artful smear".
WTF.
And the polls show I'm not the only one WTF-ing. It's clear that the group of people voting for her are people unfamiliar with her record, leaning on name recognition and assuming everything she says is true.
She's overwhelmingly distrusted by young people. I'm convinced it's because young people are using the internet, researching her record, seeing videos like this one where we hear her own words out of her own mouth... and her claims of consistency become instantly hollow and dishonest.
I agree with Bernie here. It's not exactly a problem that she has changed her mind on things, but it's the way she now claims consistency during debates. She knows her constituency won't check what she says. So she just states that she has always had the position she currently has even though that's bullshit.
I'm so angry about this I don't want to vote for her at all. Even if she's the nominee over Bernie.
I'd rather vote for Jill Stein or write in Bernie. It's just so fucking aggravating that she had the opportunity to be honest, forthright, and strong... she would have been an easy shoo-in. But she or her people thought it would make her look stronger to bullshit and attack the other Democrats.
Utter fuck-up as I see it.
At any rate, BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT.
Scalia died over the weekend. Holy shit. The Republicans are crapping their pants and warning Obama against replacing him during an election year. That he shouldn't even bother and let the 'American people' choose based on who becomes the President. Lunatics. We voted for Obama twice. He's got a year left. That's his responsibility and we gave it to him.
I sincerely think the Republicans have lost their damn minds. I've watched every debate on both sides. It's a fucking circus over there. I'd be horrified if I was a Republican to see that total shit-show. It's a farce.
Also been watching the Flint crisis, which is heinous beyond words.
I was raised on Star Trek. Measure of a Man. The Drumhead. Who Watches the Watchers.
I can't help but crave utopian ideals. How can there ever be change if we are constantly leaning backwards into stagnation and the status quo?
JYJ
The variety show hilarity they recorded right before Jaejoong enlisted will be coming out soon. Really takes me back to the old days seeing the clips/highlights. Laughter and tears all the way through.
Yoochun released a mini-album out of frickin' nowhere. We kinda knew he had recorded something before enlistment, but nothing had been said about it. Then BAM... mini.
Jaejoong released his full album just a few days ago, which we were expecting. Another lovely rock album, more diverse than WWW, but less heavy.
My favorite track is Run Away, largely because it's just so different for him. Really ethereal. And so much English! Unusual.
Junsu Dracula'd the hell out of Dracula for the 2nd run. Ripping his throat apart in the process, like ya do.
He'll have a small Japanese tour in the Spring. I'm guessing he'll enlist sometime in the Summer.
