Thursday, June 10, 2010

Where I'll Go (Plus: My Boyfriend the Buddhist Monk)

I want to go many places. I've been to very few. The following post is a list not of places I've been, nor of places I probably, in all likelihood, will ever actually visit... but, rather, these are places or events that I have always wanted to go see/do/experience. It's fun to write about.


1. Hogsmeade, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter or some shit like that

Now, this is cool. They're making a theme park designed to be the new Harry Potter world. So, basically, all us muggles can go and pretend to be wizards for a short time. Here, we can drink butterbeer and... probably buy wands, and... hell, I don't know what else. But there's probably a bunch of flying mythical animals and shit like that.

By the way, I'm kind of a fake Harry Potter fanatic; I love the world but have never managed to finish one of the books. Love Tom Felton, though.


2. The Iditarod, the big dog sledding race in the Yukon yay polar bears

Animal welfare activists will probably want to kick me in the nuts with this one, but I don't have any nuts, and I'm probably not going to run the iditarod either. As a kid I worshipped Balto, and thought it was my life's destiny to become a dog sled runner. There's a lot of hardships for the dogs, and the people too; everyone suffers freezing blizzards, lack of food, lack of sleep... kind of like being a college student in New York, but with less people.


3. A Tibetan Monastery 'cause it's cool yeah yeah

For some reason, Tibetan monks have always been my favorite kind of people. Maybe it's their peaceful Buddhist nature. Maybe it's because I'm a weirdo. Probably the latter.

In any case, I do plan on traveling the world someday and seeing a bunch of different temples and monasteries. Mad cool, ne?

...chotto, demo, fine...

My mum says my boyfriend looks like a monk, like the Dalai Lama or something.

Here is a picture of my boyfriend who looks like a monk
Cute, right? Hehe.

And here's if he ever actually decided to become a full time, legit, Tibetan monk
"srry, no lovin for Kate, Buddhist monks are like super solitary LOL
sux 2 be u"

"OMG WTF BBQ oh well I still luv u mah sexy monk lol"

Okay, so he's not actually Tibetan, he's Taiwanese. Still.
Speaking of Winston, that brings me to my next place.


4. Cambodia, specifically Angor Wat cows not necessarily included

Winston is mentioned with this entry because his father is from Cambodia, while his mother is from Taiwan. Cambodia is one of the places I have to visit because of its history: I have long been fascinated and terrified by the legendary Khmer Rouge genocide that took place largely in Cambodia. Much of Winston's family experienced this horrible genocide, and they fled the country and came to America. But that's an entry for another day, and a whole lot to write about.

Cambodia, then, is one of the places I want to visit in order to see the museums and countryside for myself. I want to be closer to what I've learned about.

5. Japan's cherry blossom season I think it's a specific neighborhood sugoidesu

Japan is beautiful, so I hear. The Japanese language is beautiful, and I've been studying it diligently, both in class and outside. The sakura trees of Japan are super famous because they're really pretty, and for a certain time in spring everyone goes to picnic outside so they can be around these giant pink trees.

Who doesn't love giant pink trees?



6. Anime Expo, hopefully as an invited guest and not a visitor ...I'm a dork


Anime Expo in Los Angeles is one of the biggest nerd conventions in the world. Nerds come from all over to rejoice in their nerdiness, and those who are not fully immersed in nerddom are dragged by nerd friends and become nerdified through the nerdy halls of nerdy goodness. I, myself, am a nerd. I know this. I accept this. And I want to go to AX really bad. I'm a voice actor for anime so I've been to one convention before as a paid, invited guest, and I got to speak on a panel and sign autographs and stuff, which was really cool. Being invited to AX means you've made it in the voice acting world as a real, awesome person. But I suck and don't get much work any more so it'll probably never happen. LAWLZ.


K, I gotta go. It's my last day in Texas for a long while, so I shall go hang out with my mum and my bestest fwends Lauren Bird and The Gwate Donana (Joanna) then tomorrow I get to see my Buddhist monk again! Life is swell. (Btw. Kelly. I miss you.)

GO SEE HAIR ON BROADWAY. THIS CHICK IS IN IT AND SHE ROCKS.


And read Anna Karenina!
~Kate the wordly wishful thinker

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Book Haul

* * *

So, I'm a self-proclaimed bibliophile, but I'd like to think that I've lived up to this title.

I friggin' love books.

I also have my kindle, Isolde, but her battery is dead and I left the charger in NY; I believe the kindle is awesome and everyone should get one. But even though I have my kindle and love it, I still love the feeling of holding an awesome sturdy paperback and flipping real pages.

So, while I wait for a new charger, I satiated my hunger for new reading material and indulged myself. You could say I over-indulged myself, too. But I'd sooner spend all my money on books than on food. (Which would help, actually, seeing as I'm on a pre-tour diet.)

In my backyard there's this cool little bench in a plant-surrounded nook

...which you'd think would be awesome for reading, but it's so damn hot and there are a thousand bugs of both the crawling and the flying/buzzing/stinging variety living in all that greenery.




So, on with the haul...



Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
















the Prophet and other poems, Kahil Gibran, recommended by my friend Kelly
















Mother Night, by my favorite writer in the entire world, Kurt Vonnegut, my hero.
















So I'm gonna sit here for a while after I'm finished blogging and go read some Tolstoy. Go grab a book, everyone, and get off the damn computer ;-)








Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Sunflower?!

News update 1:
So, you may have noticed that I've changed the entire theme from "Strawberry Cup-Kate" and merged it with that other blog idea I had called "Sunflower Existence." This new title is referring to a Ginsberg poem that inspires me called the Sunflower Sutra.

Here is a short segment
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!
The entire text of the poem can be found here, if you aren't totally bored with me now.

Bear with me for a while. I'm gonna change the layout a shit ton of times.


News update 2:
I booked a national tour!

I will be starting the entire process in November, with two weeks of rehearsals before we open in Pennsylvania. I'm super ultra absurdly excited, as well as completely baffled as to what to pack. I'm gonna be on the road for five months; how on earth do you pack for that? At least I have my kindle, Isolde. Otherwise, lugging sixty or so books around with me might be pretty cumbersome.

Tweet me. I'm out.