This is SO cool.

I just downloaded software so I can write stuff in Chinese. Now I can write totally grammatically incorrect things in a language I hardly know! yay!

你好！我叫Sophie， 我没有汉语名子， 可是星期四，Zhao (I don't know how he spells it in Chinese) 老师给我一个名子。我工作在他家。我有三个东西：他们不是狗可是我不知道怎么说 "cat"；我的老师不喜欢他们。他是狗的人. (我说一个太不好的东西吗？我要说，他喜欢狗。)昨天我说，我不很喜欢狗。他很不高兴！ 我们的棵是〇块，可是他要吃饭。常常她问我，你有没有男朋友？可是他不喜欢美国人, 是 ok!

Well that's enough of that. Want to know what I (think I) said? it's super lame...

"Hi! My name is Sophie. I don't have a Chinese name, but on Thursday Professor Zhao will give me a name. I work at his house.
I have three things: they are not dogs but I don't know how to say "cat"; my teacher doesn't like them. He's a "dog person." （Am I saying a very bad thing? I want to say, he likes dogs.) Yesterday I said I didn't much like dogs. He was very unhappy! Our class is 0 dollars, but he wants a meal. He often asks me, do you have a boyfriend? But he doesn't like Americans, it's OK!"

This is awesome.

High School Nostalgia...

... three words I never thought would come out of my mouth. But I was recently going through some old Word documents, and came across some pretty decent stuff I wrote back in high school. It kind of made me sad - I had so little faith in my abilities back then, and I haven't done any creative writing of nearly that quality since I came to college. But I'm also glad I got some of the things I was thinking back then down on (electronic) paper.

So in the interest of blowing the mothballs off my dirty laundry, I started up a new little blog to post some of my old writing. I'm not looking for comments or praise or anything (though you're welcome to leave it!), I just hated the idea of all this stuff sitting on my hard drive and festering. I'll be going through it, making some minor edits (mostly for my dignity's sake) and posting a new piece every once in a while. So, enjoy. Or not. I don't really care.

http://formerlywritten.blogspot.com

Nice little notes about life

1. I hit back breakfall #1000 today! Doing a thousand of something really makes you appreciate the value of hard work, even on something pretty basic. It also makes you appreciate how large 1000 really is.

2. The other day, as I was driving to the rec center, a perfectly straight line of maybe 8 geese marched across the road. I stopped the car to watch them (I didn't really have a choice); there was something inexplicably nice about it.

3. In babysitting, I'm using some of the same things my old babysitter used to do with me - for example (and I owe her big time for this one):
"Round ball, round ball" (rolling a finger around their palm)
"Pull (someone)'s hair" (pull their hair)
"One slice, two slice" (slice up their arm. With your hand, not a knife.)
"TICKLE UNDER THERE!" (tickle under their arm. obviously.)

I really liked my babysitter as a kid, and it makes me happy that she's been helping me out!

My New Motto, from the genuis mind of Mark E. Rogers

"Glory's going to stick to us whether we like it our not," Shiro said, "so we might as well be comfortable with it. We have to be honest about this. We're two fearsome studs. Someday they'll have to make a movie about us. A real gory one, like those samurai flicks back home. You know, the ones where the blood's bright orange, and it squirts out forty feet - "

"Shiro, I've shed a great deal of blood," Tomokato said. "And I've never seen it squirt out forty feet."

"Well, maybe you haven't," Shiro conceded. "But it is a splendid effect, isn't it?"

Tomokato made no reply. Still, deep in his heart, he knew the kitten spoke the truth.

A Brief History of My Failed Career Goals

I just had a really interesting conversation with a friend about failed idealism and how neither of us knew what we wanted to do with our lives. I don't feel at all bad about not having a life plan, but I wish I could pour myself into something the way I used to, with that conviction that I could make a difference to people.
In any case, that's not what this post is about. This post is a brief venture down memory lane, into all the things I used to think I wanted to do with my life (in roughly chronological order)...

Veterinarian Despite my love for animals, my fear of needles and complete lack of interest in medicine quickly did away with this one.

Ballerina An obviously poor choice. I don't know what my stated reason was for quitting ballet at age six, but really it was because I thought I looked silly in a leotard. I stand by that decision.

Teacher I never really wanted to be a teacher. It was going to be my day job, while I pursued my passion for something else (like being a ballerina).

Writer This one lasted a while. I was going to write novels and screenplays in French and English and live in a little flat in Paris. This may stem from the fact that I got a lot of encouragement (both offical and unofficial) as a child, and my early poetry includes such classics as "Porcupine is Running Around the Room in Underwear" and "We Eat Pizza in My Van, Dude." I think the aspirations for being a writer, or at least a poet or novelist, actually ended when I started reading real authors write about how they are passionately driven to write, and they couldn't dream of doing anything else. I could. And, as evidenced by the fruits of a year-long writing mentorship, I don't have the staying power to write stories longer than 5 pages.

Actress Every middle schooler's dream of turning into a star and being able to flippantly laugh about how unpopular and nerdy she used to be in middle school. When it became clear that no matter how decent an actress I was, I don't have the temperament and single-mindedness to be a star, and no matter how popular I got, I was not going to rise out of nerdy status, that dream fizzled.

Eco-Terrorist OK, this only really lasted one summer. But "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a really fun book, I had just gotten dreads, and one of the leaders of my volunteer trail crew got around the country by hopping trains and dumpster diving. Also subverting the system is damn cool. Maybe this one isn't totally dead.

Director I loved, loved, loved directing the short plays I did. But "The Flies" kind of killed it for me. I realized that, while other people might be different, if I'm going to be happy with my life I've got to still have faith in what I do, even when the whole thing is falling to pieces. Directing has been a fair weather friend; I came too close to quitting and/or falling asleep from pure exhaustion during the performances of my own show to think that this is actually what I should be doing with my time.

Super Secret Assassin/Bad-Ass Employee of European Dictator I get a really hot outfit. And job security, even without robotic dreads. However the castle has not yet been built, the territory has not yet been conquered, and (more importantly) there are no business cards yet.


I'm sure there are more that have been on my list at some point or another. I am taking this not as a sign of fickleness but as a sign that I haven't been grabbed yet. But it's interesting: in high school, my friend and I used to come up with ridiculous ideal jobs for people we knew - the perfect, totally implausible job. But no matter what ideas we threw out there, we could never come up with one for me. Does that mean I'm not particularly well-suited for anything? Or have I just not stumbled upon it yet?

One thing's for sure, I've worked enough unsatisfying jobs to know that I'm not making any compromises.

A New Top Summer Read!

Among many adventures (including Ethiopian food and failed attempts at getting into places with college ID's) I had in the Cities yesterday, I went to Midway Used & Rare Books, on University & Snelling in St. Paul. For the New Yorkers out there, this is like the Strand with fewer miles and waaay more comic books. Basically, a great way to blow far too much money on cheap books.

And it is there that I unearthed, in the $2.50-per-book bargain basement, the next great classic of our age.

That is, Mark E. Rogers' The Sword of Samurai Cat.

I was skeptical of this book. It was in the young adult section. I thought it would be really lame and funny. However, when I pulled it off the shelf I quickly realized that this was no trivial piece of literature. It follows the adventures of Miaowara Tomokato - yes, he is a cat, and yes, he appears on the cover and inside illustrations in full samurai armor - and his nephew Shiro. In the first twenty pages alone (which is honestly all I have read so far), our fearless hero defeats not only Meister Rodgerz and his traveling Nazi performance of "The Reich of Make-Believe," but also does battle with a horde of undead Communists. Before you think too hard about the political message in this, consider that the author is clearly sympathetic to his victims:

"'But seriously folks,' der Kommissar went on, 'Why is a Muscovite putting his clothes on like what you get in a salad?'

'I don't know, why?' a dozen decomposing voices asked.

'Because it's a Russian dressing!'

Tomokato opened fire again, blowing another five hundred cadavers into stench sauce. When he relented, squinting though the gunsmoke, there wasn't a single zombie left on its feet.

'Gee, Uncle-san,' Shiro said, 'I kind of liked that last joke.'

'You will never be a true samurai,' said Tomokato."

Genius. And this book is obviously not only meant for children, as it contains such erudite references and imaginative bits of imagery as, "Gleaming wickedly, Eisensteins montaged."

The author is even so humble as to admit his own failings in recounting such an epic tale: "The carnage that followed was indescribable - so I won't describe it."

And with that, I will take a lesson from the sage and enlightened Mark E. Rogers, and not attempt what I cannot achieve. I cannot fully encompass in one blog post the utter magnificence that is The Sword of Samurai Cat. You will just have to read it for yourselves.