Monday, March 30, 2009

Beatniks & Bubble tea

BUBBLE TEA. You either hate it, or adore it because you're a weirdo like me.

Spring means bubble tea. Actually winter means bubble tea too. All times of the year call for some delicious, obligatory bubble tea. Normally when it's super cold I get strawberry black tea, but today I went for a coffee blend. It's the perfect lovechild of coffee and tea.



Now today I want to introduce you to my new found friend I picked up back in Texas the other week
The book is The Beat Collection, which I got at Half Price books for just five bucks. Perfect condition, huge and hardcover too, normally $25, so it was a really good deal.

The thing about the beatniks is that I never really knew much about them until I started my class this semester about Buddhism and its influence on the beat generation's writing style. My biffle Lauren has a blog entitled "Radiant Cool Eyes," with the subtitle "starving hysterical naked." I never considered this heavily, just figured she was just being emo or something, but then we had to read Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for class. Ohhhhh, so that's where it came from. Turns out Lauren's been quoting Howl this whole time and I never knew it. Yes, mock me however you wish, all your he's been around so long and how could you not know about Allen Ginsberg you trashy hobag or possibly why do you like his work so much it's so gritty and foul. Which is true. But I like some of his stuff, especially "Sunflower Sutra" and "America."

"Sunflower Sutra" is actually my favorite of his. Here's my favorite excerpt:

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!


That last sentence is just plain cute. Then there's also "America"... I'll only give you two lines that were really cool

America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?

Yes, these bits are very eloquent... however, much of the beat poetry is obscene for the sake of obscenity. Often those poems get SO foul and filthy that they become funny.

:edit: I had a list of the common occurrence of dirty words in one Michael McClure poem, but I took it down so that maybe people won't get offended at my dirty dirty mouth.

Obligatory cutesy photowhoring!! Since my blog seems to have a sort of eastern feel to it anyway, with all the Zen style and my gigantic eyeballs anyway...
OH MY GOD THIS GIRL HAS FUCKING GIGANTIC EYEBALLS.

My friend Chris today, on the subject of me being cartoonlike: "You're such a cartoon, I wouldn't even have to draw you. I could just put you on paper."

Friday, March 27, 2009

Spring Break: the epic adventure

I had a pretty kick ass spring break. It was a much needed brief escape from the city, going back to the countryside and warm southwest.


My week began the evening after I got off the plane; this is me walking around my charming po-dunk little town.
I felt somewhat fashionable.

Then I played with this puzzle. It was one tough puzzle. It also pissed me off significantly.
"ARRRGH why won't you fit???!?"

This is me at my gramma's house on Sunday. It was warm and we played outside and ate tons of food and they made me try on old clothes like my mum's wedding dress (which was loose on me! Huzzah!!)

I really like sitting on her ginormous porch. I was reading the Dharma Bums.

I got to spend some much needed time with the best dog ever, Allie. Did I mention she's the smartest and sexiest dog ever?

Action shot! Wshaaa

Awwwww, baby Sean-dog! I love Sean so much. Look how cute he is.

Actually, before all this we took a trip to the military base to buy some cheap tax-free stuff. I always love looking at the cool planes.

And then began the long and terribly boring stretch of road known as the void of West Texas.

Seriously. Nothing. For hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Our first nightly rest stop was in Canyon, Texas. Canyon is a wonderful little town. We stayed at this adorable Bed & Breakfast called the Hudspeth House.

And then the next morning, HUNDREDS MORE MILES OF NOTHINGNESS!

This is when we started to hit New Mexico. You can tell because it's WAYY prettier than Texas, with the mountains in the horizon and hills. New Mexico is such a more beautiful state than Texas.

SANTA FE ROCKS!!!

It is the most AWESOME town EVAR.

This is me sitting outside one of the museums on museum hill. They have TONS of museums including the native american museum, the Georgia O'Keefe museum, and the folk art museum, which was the only one we had time to see.
Beautiful scenery yeah?
And there are ALWAYS moutains surrounding you in the distance. Gorgeous.

One of my favorite things in the folk art museum: Gay-tor! I think this is Hispanic folk art.

Folk art from India. This museum was so beautiful and immense; I wish I could put all the pictures of everything here but it would make the bandwitdh explode.

Our first reason to go to Santa Fe was to go to this Japanese spa my mum had visited 20 years ago; I had stumbled on the website back in January and became a little obsessed with going.

Outside the spa doors. You actually have to walk up about 100 outdoor steps just to get here, but it's through this piney forest on a mountainside so it's pretty sweet.

Once you get there, you only wear these white kimono things and walk around the whole place waiting for treatments and stuff. They have this lovely koi pond here. The fish were so cuuute.
See? Everything is so Japanese and zen-ful! Plus it's a spa. Right up my alley...


Hot springs! In Japan you do communal baths, but I got me'self a private one. It's a little like a lobster boiling in a soup, but in a good way. Aaahhhh
You feel so relaxed and tired and happy after this. So much fun.


Morning after the spa and our delighful Santa Fe endeavors, it was time to head back through Texas. (I ate pancakes at a Mexican restaurant. Story below)

Me: (after I ordered my food and drink) And, uh, one medium coffee.
Man behind counter: Okay. De leets are over dere.
Me: ...The uh... the leets?
Man: De leets. For your dreenk.
Me: Do I need a leet?
Mom: LID, sweetheard.
Me: Ohhhh, lids. Right. Thanks. Sorry.


Back to exciting documentation of my long week...

Then we drove and drove and drove, all the way past the New Mexico/ Texas border and back through Canyon, then finally into Childress where we had pizza with our good friend Walter!

(I think I only took pictures of his dog the whole time. This dog has a vast history, starting with being rescued from starvation by my best friend's older brother and taken in as the dog of this coffee shop I used to have a community with, then taken by my boyfriend-at-the-time who in turn had to move out to an apartment to keep her, but then I decided she would grow too big for an apartment so I gave her to my Dad's friend Walter from the army. Needless to say she now as a wonderfully happy life.)


WHAT A SWEET PUPPY FACE.


And then I played with a whole bunch of baby chicks and ducklings and goslings at the local feed store upon arriving home. I'm such a farmgirl...
This one's name was Fredericko.


Not much happened after that except for a bunch of family stuff, plus I went shoe shopping and made a mean batch of vegetarian Chinese dumplings. Oh, and vegan pancakes. Whee.
Here are the dumplings in their pre-cooked glory... in the end they are fried on the bottom and steamed everywhere else. Pretty damn tasty if I do say so m'self.


So that was basically my spring break. Now I'm back in the city, where once again I am cold. So cold, in fact, that last night I had a dream that it snowed in my room and I couldn't use my computer because it was frozen into an ice cube.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Yay! I have lots of readers and that makes me happy!

I have a TON of pictures to upload, as well as a HUGE account of my splendid Spring Break.

In the meantime, here is a video I found humorous. Preese to be enjoy, much ruv, happy fun time.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

I made pancakes this morning.

I want to live in Tokyo and become a famous renown idol, then transfer my fameocity to the US and be wildly admired by millions.

Tonight I'm going to cook potstickers.

How come people are so horrified at people in the Philippines eating dog when they all eat so much pig, which is smarter than dogs?

Monday, March 16, 2009

Off to

SANTA FE!

And yes, the last post is about Bananagrams, and my mother. Never play Bananagrams with her. She is spawn of the word game devil. Also I get terribly competitive. But I'll still play Scrabble with anyone, any time, anywhere.

I think I'll update later this week with a recipe and pictures. I make a mean vegetarian Chinese gyoza dumpling and tamari sauce. So good.

<3

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Personal philosophies that will probably destroy me psychologically

1. Not winning something is complete failure.
2. Failure is an embarassment.
3. If you aren't better than everyone, you should quit.

I would make the absolute WORST motivational speaker. Ever.

Or maybe I should just quit playing word games.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Back to Texas for a week

So I will try my hardest not to update. Because I have one bad case of internet addiction. Admitting it is the first step to recovery, so there you have it.

Things I'll do in Texas
1. Road trip with mum to Santa Fe
2. Cook gyoza for family
3. Read a lot
4. Meet up with Bird and Ali, and whoever else wants to
5. Lie low.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Vanity, Hopes

I know this year is far from over.
But I've already begun to plan and hope and dream for the next.

Last semester was depressing. I was a Bodhisattva wandering the void of the city with only void and something from nothing. But from now on I'll take charge of life. And then, mid summer, back to my wonderful city, where I hope to do many things;

To have my own apartment,
And to have a job
and pay my own utility bills and groceries.
To excel in schoolwork;
take Chinese, and English,
and impress all my performance teachers.
To wear flowers in my hair.
To be quite vain
and a little bit Eastern
and a little bit Western (not country,)
and a lot of whoever it is I am,
and never narrow.
And to not close myself off, but let people in,
and be happy.

This is what I wish for the new year in my city.

Friday, March 6, 2009

This is an awesome video

Excitement and Dread

Excitement: Spring break! Mountain spa! Possible Disneyworld!

Dread: Next year. Everyone's already made their little pre-made room alliances, like "the four of us are gonna live together here," etc, all in their already formulated groups, leaving Kate out without any roommates. WOO.

I suppose it's my own fault. I'm too damn immersed in reading and other stuff, I guess just generally living over here at the faraway dorm, to get close enough to anyone. LAME! I suck.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Green tea: face mask? (A girly post)

I'm a big fan of the cheap, natural-ingredient, do-it-yourself home facial washes and masks. It all started when I looked for makeup tips and found this article that changed my pimply, adolescent life on how to make your own aspirin mask. The aspirin mask worked amazing wonders for me, and since my skin isn't very dry, I could use it about twice a week without needing additional moisturizers. There's some kind of acid in the aspirin that kills acne like mad. It's pretty sweet.

Then I took Ricebunny's advice once again for her coffee grind mask, which smelled really, really, really good. It was more of a morning face wash than anything else, but I liked it.

So tonight I wanted to make a big pot of green tea. Then I had the crazy idea to make a face mask out of the green tea grinds. Because, hey, green tea is supposed to have all this healthy stuff in it, right? And be good-smelling and have anti-oxidants (what the hell ARE those, anyway?) so I went for it.

Firstly, MY TEAPOT I PAINTED FINALLY GOT OUT OF THE POTTERY KILN and into my dorm! I was so excited!
I painted fire on the bottom to keep the tea warm.... ;-)
What I did was I slit the tea bag and poured the grinds into the water to make it infuse better. It did taste great, but was kind of stupid because that technique is used with full-leaf tea and not the kind that's grinded up into little bits in a bag. So I had all these grinds sitting at the bottom and no strainer.
Then, after drinking all the tea...
I took the grains at the bottom, mixed them with a dollop of honey (as a moisturizer, seeing as I wasn't sure how the tea would work out) and slathered it on my face. I did take a picture of my face with the mask on it, but my roommates were making fun of how I looked so I'm not gonna put it up and embarass myself further. Washed it off after about six or seven minutes.

Verdict: My face felt really, really, really really SOFT. And looked kinda glowy, which is nice. I attribute the softness to the honey but the tea probably helped a lot. It was pretty sweet (and a good excuse to drink a whole pot o' tea)


I'd like to think I have pretty good skin for someone my age... right?

In other news, I have been craving Ten Thousand Waves, hot springs (because, as you should know by now, I have few indulgences other than spa treatments; I adore the idea), Santa Fe... just a girly getaway with my mom, which I think would be really fun for us both. Also it is so damn cold here... brr... spring will be much appreciated. I'm gonna have a Central Park classy ladies tea party picnic and be SO happy to peruse the city in skirts when it gets warmer.


...but really this whole post was just so I could show off my newly painted teapot.


P.S. I should totally work at a spa like Jen's because I dig that whole scene so very hard. Maybe one day I will have my own spa... and serve everyone tea out of my badass teapot.

Thoughts as of late

1. I really need to get on the ball here and write another school blog. I just hate how I have to be all clean-cut and act like I'm desperately trying to attract incoming freshmen. Moreso I hate sounding like I'm trying to tell people to do something.

2. Clearly it's very mature to pretend someone you spent a good chunk of your adolescent life with never existed. Obviously I'm the immature one for remembering and learning from the experience. Yeah, it's much better just to pretend like it never happened. Clearly.

3. It's cold as balls. Is it EVER going to be spring? There are Easter decorations in the grocery store and there's a blizzard outside.

Because of the intense cold, I've been craving a beach vacation, which is usually so unlike me.