My mother is a very tactless creature. She's not a bad person, but she has the kind of personality that I wouldn't wish on myself. Note that this is fruitless wishing, because anyone in my family will tell you that my thoughtless, spiteful, and talkative personality is hers, action for action. (I successfully deluded myself into thinking otherwise for years, though.) In fact, the only trait I inherited from my father was probably the horrible sense of humor.

Lack of tact? Try this one:
Janice: Mom, your eyesight is going? How well can you see me right now?
Mom: Oh. I can see you just fine. And the pimples. Look at all that acne! Here-and-here-and-here-and - oh, there too.
Janice: Thanks, mom.

So you can see my mother isn't the most tactful of creatures. In any case, I had a conversation with my sister the other day:

Janice: I think I'd want two, but three kids would be the max.
Sohyun: What if your last pregnancy was twins?
Janice: ... I guess I'd just have to kill one.

And then today, with my mother:

Janice: And then I told Sohyun I wanted two kids, and she asked me what if the third pregnancy was twins? That would be terrible, huh?
Mom: Just kill one.

When we have the same punchlines, you know there's trouble. Sadness. She does impress me at times, though. I overheard her on the phone today, talking to her supervisor (who she loathes with a burning passion):

[phone]: [---]
Mom: We can't do that. Dr. A hates Dr. B.*
[phone]: [---]
Mom: Why? Dr. A left Dr. B's practice. [pause] You didn't know that?
[phone]: [---]
Mom: [disdainful pause] You must be the only one in the entire Nephrology section [at Huntington Hospital] who didn't know that.

And she wonders why her supervisor is intimidated by her.

*[names protected for privacy purposes ]

==

So anyway, I don't watch much TV. Anything I really want, I just download on the computer. What does this mean?

I had no idea what source of evil Oh! Oxygen was.

I did NOT know that Oxygen indulged in female pr0n.

No, seriously. I turned on the TV at around midnight last night, and the camera kept zooming in on these shirtless guys playing basketball.

And when I say zooming in, I don’t mean on their faces. No, this was literally four minutes of sweating, flexing pectoral muscles. Then the mom of one of the guys comes home, and she stares with this avid, I'm-going-to-eat-you-up-my-pretty look at a particular specimen.

This was kind of like watching a train wreck. I know I'm going to get someone saying that I was -really- watching out of some prurient need, but no, I was really just curious to see if it would develop a plot.

In any case, the mom (my guess is that this is targeted at middle-aged moms who want to fantasize that they're still hot) eventually starts a Dangerous Affair (nothing is ever mentioned of her husband; my guess is that she had an immaculate conception) with the guy, who is twenty-three to her forty-something.

This culminated in the most absurd scene of screwing, which occurred in the car. In the FRONT seats. How did that work? Did the gear shift magically disappear? And she was driving a COMPACT. I heard that's nearly impossible.

[Although I guess I can ask Christina for confirmation and/or experimentation. ]

The half hour episode ended with her watching him - the only adverb that occurs to me is "lustily" - as he plays basketball with her son. And you know, you can just take it from there.

Oh! And the commercials. There was an ad for Birth, which I heard got booed down at the film festival it played at (that's the one where Nicole Kidman plays a woman whose husband comes back in the form of - yes, of course, a ten year old. I think a nice cocker spaniel would've been better). In any case, I wonder that such a hated movie would be advertised on Oxygen - is that its target audience? o_O

But of course, the best ad was for the following website: Tabu Toys. I was vaguely horrified because, well, is it so hard to spell taboo correctly? I mean, what's a Tabu?

Anyway, I only went to the homepage (... I somehow didn't feel like browsing), but I was GREATLY amused to see that if you want advice on what kind of sex toy to buy, you can ask Christina's Toybox. [snark, snark]

(I was vaguely surprised to see that they advertise adult sex toys on TV. Granted, Oxygen IS cable and it WAS past midnight, but I thought that the FCC would've gotten there by now.)

In other, older news, I went to CalSO, aka Cal Student Orientation. (And for the uninformed, Cal is UC Berkeley's nickname.) We were informed not to wear red during game week - it can cause groups of people swarming around you, harassing you to take off the Evil Color. The hatred is already quite strong, even among us freshmen.. some girl in my CalSO group was from Stamford, Connecticut, and whenever she said her hometown's name, people hissed. (And yes, that's with an M.) Ooh! Freshmen get free tickets to all the sports games, excepting the Big Game and the one vs. USC.

I saw Vanessa back from John Muir at CalSO - apparently she's going to Berkeley too! She's staying at Foothill. (She heard my laugh and recognized me that way - it makes me wonder about my voice..)

I am signed up for a Jane Austen seminar! *squeee* We read Emma and Sense & Sensibility. ^^ I'm also signed up for some R1B course (this one's on mythology expressed in media) and, though this one might change, an Ethnic Studies course. I personally can't sign up for anymore classes until my Telebears II appointment (*hears crickets*). ^^ To be honest, I'm vaguely confused as to what I should really be prioritizing and trying to get. I know I have to fulfill all these Breadth requirements (who came up with that name, anyway?), but really, who knows what to take? I'm thinking of taking some rhetoric classes (the study of argument, apparently), too. ^^

CalSO itself was okay, but I had more fun when I went and did random things. Met a psycho chick named Kali ("My parents named me after the Indian goddess of death"), and I swear to you, she was crazier than me, even if she claimed otherwise. She's great fun and she's in my Jane Austen seminar, too. In any case, since she's staying at the Foothill dorm too, she said she wanted to visit it.

It was 11:30 at night and we were at Unit One. If you don't have an idea of how the Cal campus is set up, all you have to know is that FOOTHILL IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF CAMPUS. RAWR.

Unfortunately, we didn't know this, and so we set on this bizarre, midnight trek, trying to find Foothill. This has so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to start, but it also included us walking into a construction zone, because Kali wanted to look for interesting things to take pictures of. ("Look, wires!").

Janice: If we get molested, I'm throwing you to the wolves.
Kali: I'm sure they'll ravage you first.
Janice: You're white, I'm asian. You're much rarer around here.
Kali: No, no, because then the chance is better that the molester's asian, too. It'll probably be one of his own kind that he wants first.

Eventually, we did find Foothill, which is a freaking huge enclosure, btw. We got lost inside because except for the gate that we came through, all the others were locked. Sigh.

Once we got outside, we got lost on the way back (at this point, it was waaay past 12) and ended up in Stern (all-female dorm at Cal). Bizarre.

Back on the topic of molesters: Kali's theory was to cheerfully greet all approaching male strangers. (Literally, she said "Howdy!" to all of them.) Why?

Kali: Well, if we can identify his face, he probably won't do anything.
Janice: Are you sure?
Kali: Yeah! I've read articles all about it.
[guy approaching us pulls down his sweatshirt hood and pulls up his shirt collar around his mouth]
Us: ....

Clubs to Join at Berkeley: Berkeley Esquires, Berkeley Squirrel Fisher's Club. (The latter is catch and release, m'dears.) August 21st, darlings, is move-in day. [the rest]

Posted by Kylara @ 09:06 PM PST [9984 have fallen.]

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Subject | "HP #6"

Music | nothing

Mood | Somber