Pithy, Artsy Shorts

The best things to write in the middle of the night when one can't sleep are as postmodern as the fleeting, anonymous, and selfish cars outside. Drivers and machine make their way to either fruitfulness or desolation; their lights leave no trail.

Beautiful Fool
A beautiful fool, enraptured and enamored with a shiny object that is his ideals, casts only a shadow of effectiveness. His ideals have crystallized to a magnetic end, but the shiny object is the opposite polarity as the beautiful fool. He can run and try to reach but is constantly and inevitably repelled by impossibility. He is just that: a dogmatic, beautiful fool.

High Touch
When slogging through thick mud with the texture of too many ideas, one struggles through imagining that one will reach enjoyment and relief at the end, but the mud is continuous; it will never end. It is a barren, monotonous field. On the bottom at the feet is the quicksand of too many goals. One cannot choose to be swallowed and enveloped without a strange will.

Antagony
To want but to not need
To admire but not receive
To enthuse but not be pleased
And to indulge without greed
These are all elements of antagony

Back 2 School

After moving in my stuff and settling down to classes, I must post something witty and disparaging. Now that I have the exorbitant privilege of a refrigerator and no mandated meal plan, this means no more awkward wasted time at the dining hall and 1 hour plus food binges. Speaking of awkward, I managed to get 2 photos with our great President Joseph Aoun:

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Con$idering that I am looking for co-op and have several new commitments this semester, I had to engineer a new diet and schedule worthy of the Mayans and their calendar.

The Joy of Rice
Sweet, white grains of jasmine rice! A rice cooker is a godsend to college students and can even be your only cooking utility, although I also bought a combo pan-pot thing from Amazon just in case.

When the rice begins to form and solidify, you can throw in your meat or "sides" as said in Cantonese to steam-pressure cook. This can include, for example, sausages and Chinese sausages. Best of all, you can save valuable time and eat pre-cooked rice! A miracle!

The ceremonial first rice of the semester. I am proud to eat this nutritious staple of my ancestors eaten even in the Qin dynasty.

My school convenience food pyramid

So far, I have infallibly eaten rice at every meal with a side, which makes me feel less tired than eating bread for some reason. You can even pair it with a two-serving Boloco bowl. I thought I reached new lows when I ate Boloco rice with rice, but talk about economical!

Let's do some sophisticated, high-level accounting. $1620/110 = $14.73 per meal swipe. Boloco bowl = $9.82. NO THANK YOU MEAL PLAN

Saying that the meal plan is not highway robbery is like saying fast food doesn't cause obesity.

Ready for the next nuclear attack

How about some tuna tartare? IS CANNED TUNA

I wonder if I will eat so much canned tuna, get mercury poisoning, and become a thermometer.

Incredibly Funny Professors
I had the amazing luck of getting a gaggle of funny professors this semester. Being tired increases the delirium and makes their jokes 2x funnier, and when I want to sleep in class (don't judge me, I study a lot outside of class anyways), I somehow start cracking up at their incredibly cheesy jokes.

For example, my mid-level accounting professor asked on the first day to ease the tension (but ended up creating more), "How do accountants get paid?" Student: "By providing a service." Professor: "Yes, that's right, just like a doctor. He tells you to pull down your pants, sticks a shot up your butt, and gets paid." (NO JOKE)

Now, my management information systems teacher is a true comedian, and the Boston accent helps. When he was concerned that the unusual two-tiered class schedule would mess with his SoulCycling class, he said, "I want to weigh as much as I did when I first started: 8 pounds, 9 ounces."

If my mouth could send text messages and emojis, LOL chat bubbles and Pusheens would be flooding out.

The Mysterious Author

When I was a child, I was quite a bookworm (or, from a badly-translated bootleg Fullmetal Alchemist sub, "a book-eating monster"). I read many books that have been since forgotten for similar reasons as others: among them, the vicarious hedonism of being transported to another world.

With the decline in use of physical books, I reminisce warmly on when I read for leisure. Now, my reading is mostly filled with technical and professional education materials mixed with the hullabaloo of the Internet.

Amy Tan I
A Chinese-American author always stuck with me. Although I never read any of Amy Tan's books due to procrastination, thinking that I wasn't old enough at the time to understand or appreciate them, I still haven't read The Joy Luck Club due to my self-disdain of lengthy time commitments like reading a novel. This is despite finding copies of her early novels in the house; as irrational as it seems, I don't want the obligation of finishing a book weighing on other commitments.

Passing Affairs with Asian Literature
I never finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha although I was enchanted by it, but I finished the 656-page Brothers by Yua Hua in a record 3 lazy summer days years ago, gripped by its illuminations of the rapid change in China and its people. I considered Ties that Bind, Ties that Break about a girl's struggle against foot binding enough old Chinese historical lore for middle school, and the obscure Japanese book The Spring Tone now seems to be like a Haruki Murakami ripoff judging by the things that a friend who has read his books tells me.

I must admit that I am biased, but I relate strongly with Asian books for their similarities, implicit understanding, and culture.

The Library as a Tomb
The library is a peaceful, productive place I love in all of its forms, but its functions have confused me. Clearly, the majority are non-profit, but it boggles the mind that it is impossible to read or watch everything in a library. In fact, I wonder how many materials are even cycled through, about the people who devour the most obscure, rigorous, and technical texts, or how many times a passionate romance fantasy by a small-name author is even read in an oversaturated genre.

Time cannot be taken back, so only the readers will know what they gain from the experience.

Writing can be easy as virtually everyone who is literate can do it as I am now, but I think that many words, worlds, and knowledge will scarcely be opened, sort of like being contained in a tomb. The same goes for published works of the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, etc. and the passing and transient minds who made their ideas known.

The Mysterious Author
One personal touch I find entertaining is the book jacket. In a valiant attempt to hook the reader with a cliff-hanger, the author's description usually follows. Often times, it reveals funny quirks usually involving habits or pets of someone who devoted so much time writing something for purpose or profit.

Amy Tan II
Revisiting her website, I read her brief autobiography and felt many parallels and understanding of her Chinese-American life to mine. One of her books' author descriptions mentions being part of a band of famous authors called The Rock Bottom Remainders. Many promotional materials mention this funny and colorful fact regardless of its seriousness, but I think it inspires one to live a creative, interesting, and full life.

I Made Business Cards

As a heads-up, I made basic business cards for future use. I designed them to match my site with a minimalist flair.

They also make great bookmarks. I only put my website because my information will probably change, and it is the best aggregate for important information and links.

All this talk of business cards requires a reference to the famous American Psycho business card scene. "Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now...!" My business card logo says, "It's hip to be square."

Fun trivia: one of Patrick Bateman's favorite songs is Whitney Houston's "Greatest of Love All"