Just talkin' tacos, man

"Don't get me wrong, I loooove Taco Bell, but sometimes...you want that real shit. Like where the tortilla is a corn tortilla...BUT NOT CRISPY. It's an oxymoron of food textures, all floppy and fall apart soft, yet grainy like a motherfucker."

The Hair, she is gone

That's right. I got a haircut today, and it's now short. I look like a handsome boy. Actually, I look even more like brother. That's kind of weird...though honestly I'd been mistaken for a handsome boy before when I was just a baby. Thank God I have boobs...

Anyhow after consulting my spiritual hair inspirators Rihanna, Janelle Monae and 80s Prince, I got a whole bunch of my raven curls lopped off. Damn, you know what else I just remembered that I look like? I look like a chubby, tan, brunette Robyn...which means I don't look much like Robyn at all, but you know what I mean. Though the humidity on the walk home has turned me into Domyouji Tsukasa from Boys Over Flowers, HA.

I took a quick photo back home and so far the Facebook audience has been approving.

I got my hair cut at Whistle today (first time there) and Tom, my hair dude for today was so excited when I told him I wanted to cut my kudzu growth like mess of curly hair. He almost squee-ed as he said, "Omg, this is going to be so much fun! I'm excited!!"

I was excited that he was excited. We were going on this crazy awesome journey together!

This is going to take some getting used to though. Like, I'm feeling phantom hair pains. Like I feel like I feel hair back there, but when I reach up to touch there's nooooothing. SPOOOOOKY.

A blog entry about pubes, but this'll totally blow your mind, Western beauty standards

So I'm watching the local Korean TV affiliate I get on cable only to see an ad that puzzles me. I'd watched enough Korean cable that this company was familiar to me as makers of this thing you put on your eyelashes to make it grow thicker longer, but...the ad was different.

They showed some generic Venus statue replica, as a voiceover intones, "Want a confident Y-line?"

And I'm all "Y-line?"

You gotta understand, in Korean parlance, a shapely body's referred to having an S-line. Or if you're joking around with a beer-bellied friend you might refer to their "O-line." But this Y-line shit was new to me.

As I was mulling this over in the split-second it registerd in my brain, I saw several triangular bushes, and my eyes widened as I realized what this "Y-line" was. Now the triangular bushes isn't all that original in the whole pube grooming ad department. So my first thought was, "Huh...I guess it's a depilatory cream for the bikini line. Though that sounds like a pretty bad idea."

But THEN the ad goes, "for a more lush and..."

"LUSH??" I almost lost it because I realized this cream was for encouraging lady bush growth. Seriously, how unexpected is that? When everyone's busy advertising ways to mow down and salt the earth here's a cream for making the carpet nice and fluffy?

References are fun

I already posted a link to this on Facebook, but had to share it here too:

"This cracked me so hard I had to bite my tongue. It was the best kind of inward guffaw. The kind where the brain just skims over and does a little mental heh, but then the gravity of the reference being made hits you like a ten-ton truck u-turning to make sure it gets you this time since it only sideswiped you the first time around and your brain seizes up and goes "HAHAW, William Carlos Williams." in Sebben's voice."

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/061809/dear-william.gif

On growing older when you've technically be prematurely old for a while

I recently had to sign up as cosigner for my little brother's apartment lease. For those out of the loop, my kid brother started college last year. My parents' had such crap credit that I ended up cosigning those loans as well. So besides my own student loans those are other things on my plate. Not that I'm annoyed by this, I'm glad my brother's going to school period. It's just weird how I've always been this sort of surrogate parent not just for my brother but for myself with a lot of things you'd expect the adult in your life to do.

Most people sort of have a moment where they're all "OMG. I'm paying for my own crap! I'm an adult" kind of moment, but the older I get the more I realize a lot of this "I'm a big kid now" crap is a little too familiar. Let's just say life is a little skewed when you're a 10 year old worried about not having enough money to make rent, let alone aware of such things as rent needing to be paid. Don't get me wrong. It's not like we were ever poor poor, we got by. Nonetheless I blame a lot of my weird hangups about and obsession with amassing money on that.

Writing your own parents' notes to your teacher is kind of embarrassing and pretty annoying. That one month I had to pay my own middle school tuition kind of sucked.

Anyhow, having to fax in that cosigner application this weekend was just another reminder how this shit got old a long time ago. I had no cake, but how about this for a birthday wish: For once, I'd like to totally just let everything go and have someone with their shit together enough that I feel like they can take care of me. Like for once be able to feel like I can gamble and fuck up and I'm not the one taking care of being patient of other people around me. I don't know, I always feel like I'm the one who has to like keep it together and listen to other people's problems, be their shoulder to cry on, put up with their tantrums and issues. Just once, like, I don't know, be allowed to have a little meltdown or something. And not worry about someone else's baggage and have them be like, "It's cool, daddy-o." Or a big one. A full on freak out. Whatever. Breathing into paper bags can be involved if need be. I'm not picky.

Smacked by hubris

So remember I made a minor crack about making shower mac and cheese like Hubert Keller previously? No? Well, anyhow, I shouldn't have spoke so soon because my landlord dismantled the kitchen sink to fix a leak, and like Gilligan's Island, what he presented as a quick 1-hour fix job is slowly turning into a 3-day project. I'm not making pasta with shower water just yet, but let's just say I'm annoyed at having to buy take out because I really don't feel like doing dishes in the bathroom sink again. I've never been so unhappy about having to order pizza. It's...it's just not what I wanted.

Oh, hey, so yea, I guess it's my birthday

I haven't had a birthday party in a long time. Like I'm pretty sure the last time I had one...I was like 12 or 11. Since then I haven't really done anything particularly birthday like. I don't know, my own birthday always kind of weirded me out. I'd forgotten my birthday was coming up until my mom called me yesterday. And then all day today the date would look weird when I'd see it on the computer and stuff and I'd realize, "Oh, yea. That date's my birthday." It's kind of ridiculous.

Twenty-six. Wow. Man, that's kind of scary as fuck. Just this past weekend some kid in my neighborhood tried to run game on me. I looked him up and down wearily (I was dragging my suitcase with me from the subway stop and I was pretty bushed) and just said, "Look, you're obviously too young for me."

His answer? "What do you mean? I'm 20."

Yeeeeea. That just made me feel older. God, 20 feels like just yesterday. I was all socially awkward and totally in love and the world was still had some mystery. And now...wait, you're expecting me to say I'm a cynical dried husk of a person. Actually, no. I KNOW RIGHT? I mean this is both surprising and not considering I'm not really a sunshines and puppies person to begin with. Let's be honest, there's really not much lower I can go with my cynicism and such. And that's good. I mean, I feel kind of grown up. I'm not gonna lie and talk about how I grew into my skin and shit, because, I don't think that's ever happening. Then again, I think I'm over the hysterics and bullshit of a lot of things. Difference between now and then is then I *thought* was over it all.

Now? I don't know. It's just life, man.

Tangent: This reminds me of a conversation I was having with my friend Joe about why I liked zombie movies. I was talking about how I always liked zombie films, not because it turned into this huge fad, but the thing that always scares me the most in horror films is the futility and bleakness of human existence. That's what's scary about life. That's why apocalyptic crap I can get into. When the Fearnet channel (come baaack) still existed on Time Warner Cable, I finally got to watch Hostel. I seriously laughed out loud watching that movie. I could not believe people were making such a bigass damn deal about gore porn when it had come out because it was just laughable. That's not scary. It was silly...anyway, around that time Joe asked me if I liked Haneke and then said that I was a terrible person with no heart (not because of Haneke, but because of the whole bleakness and futility bit). He might have a point.

Anyhow, I've been thinking I should do a bit more now that I'm older. Specifically, gotta be a bit more brave. So I guess I should try some things I've been only thinking about doing for the longest time ever. And I don't mean like my dream trips stuff, I mean like the attainable small stuff. For example, I keep thinking I should help out with the Big Sister/ Big Brothers program or BoostUp. Or on a smaller, more shallow scale, chopping off all my hair in a short, short style. Let's see what we can get done this year. Just this and that.

Oh, so my birthday party. Yea, probably not happening. I mean, I'm thinking maybe I'll plan a viewing party at the old casa of Zatoichi movies. I got an entire box set of a couple of the earlier flicks. Or old horror movies. That's always a favorite. I got a couple, but I've already seen these a couple of times, so if I go with that, I think it'll mean I have to find some other old horror flicks. Or maybe just do a viewing party of Top Chef Masters. I could even make mac and cheese in honor of Hubert Keller who is totally awesome. Though mine won't have prawns like his fancy mac and cheese from the dorm cooking challenge. But I can rinse the pasta in the shower like he did if people want the experience.