For a good time, call Nippon
This is what I look like today, my last full day in Japan.
Seriously, my face is stuck like this.
Catch you guys on the other side of the world.
It’s that time
Christmas 2008 is a strange time to be alive. This year my brother and I are scheduled to spend it with my mom, which means we'll sit together and have a non-Christmasy breakfast before watching a slightly uninteresting movie during which two out of the three of us will struggle to disguise our discontent in faked digestive difficulty.
I once thought Christmas was my favorite holiday, but like many things in my life, HWMNBN ruined it with some soul-crushing comment or act (I can't remember which) and now the only celebration I tend to look forward to is the one where I get to ring in the New Year and make resolutions I know I won't keep.
Who knows, maybe 2009 will be different. Let's hope so, at least.
One thing I will always appreciate, however, is my father's Christmas spirit. It's calmed down over the years, but I can always count on lights twinkling around our garage the day after Thanksgiving and a tree to put my presents under. Even through the ever-present fog of cynicism, that tiny ounce of Christmas burns brightly year after year, and it continues to sustain me.
Fact: I wore pink shell toes to prom
I’ve been introduced to a lot of very, very cool people through my internship, one of them being Bay Area based artist Ala Ebtekar. Here are some quotes about his art I found through Google: “...an attempt to glimpse a crossroad where present day events meet history and mythology.” “He creates images that combine the ideas and history of his cultural background in Iran as well as comics, animation, hip hop culture and mass media.”
Which all adds up to: he’s totally awesome. One of my favorite works of his was done with a combination of ink and acrylic paints on pages of the Qur'an, and can be seen here. Also, he prints ridiculously gorgeous Iranian script graffiti on definitive pieces of hip-hop fashion culture (Adidas products) and let me tell you, until seeing his stuff I hadn’t felt the itch to buy a pair of shell toes since high school. Google him; I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Here is a blurry photo of me wearing a shirt with one of his designs on it:
Nifty, right? The longer you look at it the niftier I’m sure (I hope) you’ll find it, and good news! It’s for sale! Just mosey yourself on over to the CONTACT link up top and shoot me an email if you’d like one. All proceeds go to San Francisco non-profit arts organizations, so don’t think this is a scam for my new laptop fund; although, if you’d like to donate to that cause as well, I won’t mind a bit
GAS-WIKI (totally un-verified and therefore possibly grossly inaccurate musings)
**WARNING: This is a continuation of my streak of stupid posts, so my apologies. It's just that lately I've been sweating in the most inappropriate places because I was afraid that I had announced the receipt of my internship on this website too soon. Until today I hadn't heard a peep from the organization regarding my schedule, regardless of the fact that since Wednesday I've sent my boss-to-be four separate emails and enough voice mails to warrant a restraining order. Fortunately all is well and I start tomorrow, and one of my goals for the job will be to not freak out if one of the seven paid staff members of a rather sizable non-profit doesn't run on Chelsi-time.
I know you all are feeling the lame-ness (my BlogCatalog rating even went down) and I promise you all that now that I'm finally feeling better about my status as a person of the arts, I'm going to unclench the sphincter and get out the remaining random shit on my mind before I get back to our regularly scheduled programming of the occasional rather than frequent bad post. Here it goes:
- What’s this I hear about getting a larger tax return than usual because the country wants to encourage us all to spend money? Are they for real? Because I’m seriously getting a boner at the thought of being compensated for the $139.00 Steve Madden boots I bought yesterday.
- Did the FDA REALLY approve cloning animals for food? What if they end up cloning a disease and then suddenly, BAM, the black plague of death (or something similar) is reintroduced into society via a rotten chicken multiplied by 1,000 and we all die? Do I need to become a vegetarian?
- Are we seriously not going to be able to go outside in 2012 because of global warming? I hear they’re building apartments in Antarctica (or maybe Alaska?) for the extremely lucky and social elites.
