Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit (and various iterations thereof) age: 23 location: oakland, ca hobbies: comic books, reading, writing, doodling, video games likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, animals, food, laughing loudly in public, SUSHI dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink(at)gmail.com wishlist cara good night's sleep money stress-free life hardon-kardon speakers world peace realistic wishlist transmetropolitan vol 5-6, 9-10long-term obsessions comicsslash writing reading music animals life and living current obsession(s) dexteravatar the last airbender writing a novel currently reading watchmen by alan moorethe lioness quartet by tamora pierce currently playing final fantasy tactics advancepersona 3 currently watching ugly bettythe west wing dexter |
Sunday, May 11, 2008 [link] 05:25 p.m. listening to: "Iowa" - Dar Williams Lovely, lovely day today. I spend most of the morning cooped up inside playing video games, feeling as if I wanted to avoid the Sunday church crowd that tends to clog my street on Sunday mornings, compounded by the Mother's Day crowd. Then I got my things and trekked over to Piedmont Ave., where I bought some black licorice for my licorice-loving coworkers, ran into a Mills alum while purchasing fountain pen ink, and then spent a comfortable hour in the La Myx tea bar, writing and drinking several cups of white tea. I've run into several Mills alum working retail or at coffeeshops since graduating, and it always makes me a little uncomfortable. What did I do to get myself a cushy job that they didn't do? Mills women do end up in powerful places eventually--or at least making very comfortable amounts of money without necessarily being famous--but that has little to do with being a Mills alum and more with being the kind of person who decides to attend Mills in the first place: a smart, stubborn, hardworking woman who Wants To Make A Difference. I have no doubt that these women will eventually get themselves out of retail or waiting tables and kick some serious ass in the world. I just wonder how I managed to fall into a well and come out with fistfuls of gold. Saturday, May 10, 2008 [link] 11:05 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey It's been a year now, more or less, since I graduated. It's weird, because it doesn't feel like it's been that long. I still tell people, "Oh, I just graduated," but in the next few weeks and months, there'll be a new wave of college graduates, and I'll be another adult. I'm in a much better place than I imagined I would be, a year ago. I have my dream job, more or less. I'm writing; I'm working on a novel, even. Things that seemed impossible a few months ago now seem possible, and even probable. I like the person I am; I like the person I'm becoming. I've been lucky, and I hope I'll continue to be lucky, and gifted, and blessed. Saturday, May 3, 2008 [link] 10:15 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey Dead raccoon on the sidewalk, next to the chain link fence that separates the parking lot from the street. I first saw it this morning, when it still resembled something sleeping, or a plush toy. By the time I came back from work, someone had put an orange cone next to it and surrounded it with yellow caution tape. Flies buzzed around its head. Monday, April 28, 2008 [link] 06:07 p.m. listening to: "Horn Concerto in D, K421 - Allegro" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Went to Downtown Berkeley today, via BART--I just started bleeding yesterday and didn't want to do anything to exacerbate my womanly condition. It's also nice to just walk around once in a while instead of zipping by on a bicycle; I can listen to music, take my time, duck into any interesting little shops. If I'd been on my bicycle, I would never have noticed the tiny little Indonesian restaurant where I ate lunch today, for example. My errands were mostly a bust, though. I returned a book to the library and ate lunch; that was about it. The one store I wanted to check out turned out to be closed on Mondays, another store I went to in search of a messenger bag didn't have any that fit my specifications. (One came awfully close, but it was smaller than I wanted and also $65--which I don't mind paying for a bag, but only if it's perfect.) Reel Video failed to have the second season of Dexter or the first disc of Arrested Development. Berkeley Bowl didn't have my milk, but that was hardly new. On my way to Ashby BART for my return trip, I passed by another small outdoor-gear shop and paused outside the doors, wondering if I should chance going inside to look for a messenger bag. To my astonishment, this store--which I've passed by countless times before--seems to have been set up inside an old church. In the back was a large stained glass window of a sprawling fruit tree, glowing in the late afternoon sunlight. Rows of skis lined the wall below it; rows of jackets and parkas framed it instead of pews. Presented with such an incongruity, my writer's mind scrambled diligently and could only present me with a temple to conquering mountains. Sunday, April 27, 2008 [link] 10:29 p.m. listening to: "Killing the Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Things that make me angry about being a woman:
Sunday, April 27, 2008 [link] 10:29 p.m. listening to: "Killing the Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Things that make me angry about being a woman:
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 [link] 02:05 p.m. listening to: nothing Oh God, so tired. Saw John Butler at the Fillmore last night. Amazing performance; probably the best concert I've ever been to. John Butler was witty and kind, and absolutely some kind of fingerpicking genius. Watching him on YouTube is absolutely nothing compared to seeing him perform live. The climax--the several climaxes--of "Ocean" can only be described as an exultation. You can feel that fierce, wild joy pour off of him in waves and infect the audience. Also, I am a total sucker for audience singing, and the audience absolutely knew the lyrics to every single song, even the ones without words. My schedule, unfortunately, does not accommodate evening shenanigans. I tried to take a nap beforehand, which proved unsuccessful, and basically got only four hours of sleep last night. Made many foolish mistakes at work. Fortunately, they were all on practice releases (I think). Am going to take a nap now. Thursday, April 17, 2008 [link] 02:11 p.m. listening to: nothing there is something wrong with my shift keys, and ONLY my shift keys. i attributed this, at first, to the water i spilled on my keyboard a few days ago, except--as i said--it's affecting ONLY the shift keys, including the shift key on the side where i did not spill any water. getting the greater than and less than signs to populate just now to make break tags was very exciting. this is what happens when i hit my right shift key 1.x.x.p01.x what you can't see is that it also made me go backward and forward in this browser tab and also brought up the bookmarks panel in firefox. this is what happens when i hit the left shift key fq;8792KO: what you can't see is that it also brought up my history. in the past it's also launched mediamonkey, but i uninstalled it because it was driving me crazy, and also i don't use mediamonkey anymore anyway, since i switched to itunes. i was supposed to go to the compusa down the street from my work today to buy a new keyboard, but i forgot and came straight home instead. now i guess i'm going to try and hold out until sunday, because i have a coupon for staples that will get me twelve percent off on a new keyboard, but it's only valid from the 20th to the 26th. but it's cool, i won't be home a lot of tomorrow or saturday, so really today will be the most annoying day. Thursday, April 10, 2008 [link] 03:13 p.m. listening to: "Stones II" - Ultima Online Spring has sprung! The farmers market down the street from where I work now sells strawberries and asparagus. I bought a bag of kettle corn to share with my coworkers. I love kettle corn. I got a call yesterday from someone at Mills, who now runs The Weekly--er, I mean The Campanil. She wanted to talk to me about website issues and also wanted to discuss having me come in and train the new copy chief and the new copy editors. I was glad to help (the paper holds a very special place in my heart), and afterward she asked, "So, how are you? How's life?" "I'm. . . great, actually," I said, surprising myself. "That's good," she said. "You know, you sound really happy." "I'm in a better place now than I thought I would be," I admitted. I am very fortunate, and I think about this maybe once a week. I like my job. I like my coworkers. I make a pretty decent amount of money, enough that I can afford things I want, and better yet I can afford to be generous to my friends. I don't mind my apartment so much. I mean, it could be better, but I'm going to move, and I know I can afford a much better place. Things were bad for a while, but I really landed on my feet, and it's sort of startling and gratifying that someone can hear over the phone that I have no wish to complain of unhappiness. Tuesday, April 8, 2008 [link] 03:42 p.m. listening to: nothing One of my friend's greatest fears is that "people forget me as soon as I leave the room." Isn't that everyone's fear? Why is it so hard to shake the hard, certain truth (not necessarily fact; just because it's true doesn't mean it's real, just like it doesn't have to be real to also be true) that if someone were to erase you from this world tomorrow, nobody would notice that you were gone? Monday, April 7, 2008 [link] 06:56 p.m. listening to: Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach's Quartet in A Minor, Wq. 93 I've been listening to a lot of classical music recently. I haven't sincerely listened to classical music since high school, probably, and by "sincerely" I mean sat there and just listened to it. That's the only way you can actually listen to classical music, in my opinion--at least, classical music with any depth. I can't write, read, cook, or surf the Internet while listening to Beethoven; the Beethoven either distracts me from my task, or I have to block it out entirely, neither of which does my any good. I've found that the best times to listen to classical music are while walking or riding public transit. I could also just, say, sit or lie there and listen, but I find that a little boring; I'd rather be going somewhere or doing something, except that whatever I'm doing must also allow me to focus on the music. This results in an extremely limited range of activity. I went on just such a walk today, while listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and while it may seem a bit cheesy to listen to "Spring" while, well, enjoying spring, that's precisely what I was doing. It's really spring now, I think; I was waiting for it to begin raining again, but it's been an unusually dry winter--or perhaps the ones previous have just been unusually wet! But everywhere is a riot of sourgrass and golden poppies, and I spotted some thick, full-headed dandelions sprouting out of a crack between the street and the curb. There's a particularly fragrant bush on that walk. I went to the library today, for lack of anything else to do (I'm not in a position to spend money frivolously right now), and discovered that the tiny building is positively packed. Shelves behind shelves. Talk about an efficient use of space! I picked up the second book of the Lioness Quartet, as I finished the first today, as well as Clueless and four classical music CDs. I'm not entirely certain when I'll be able to find time to listen to them, so I'm settling for ripping them with iTunes to listen later. Wednesday, April 2, 2008 [link] 05:35 p.m. listening to: "Ocean" - John Butler Trio I purchased a typewriter at a yard sale the other day, completely on a whim; I had no room in my apartment for a typewriter, and I'd probably never use it with any regularity. But it was only ten dollars, and I have a fountain pen, so why not a manual typewriter? Googling demonstrates that I may actually have overpaid for my typewriter; it appears to be an Underwood 5, the first reliable modern typewriter, and the company produced millions of them. You'd be hard pressed to get more than five or ten dollars for it. I'm hardly disappointed--it's not as if I expected to pick up something valuable at a yard sale, and ten dollars is a small price to pay for--as far as I can tell--a perfectly good, still functioning typewriter. And the popularity of the model means I should have very good luck finding ribbon for it. Tuesday, April 1, 2008 [link] 03:12 p.m. listening to: "Edge of the Ocean" - Ivy To call oneself a writer is to declare oneself a little bit mad. There are too many good reasons to not be a writer: there is no money in it; neither is there any job security; you will forever be looked down upon by friends, relatives, and acquaintances who would rather that you grew up and got a real job, one that didn't involve making up stories that nobody cared about; the short story market is dead; the novel market is dead; people are in love with reality television; people no longer read the newspapers; people no longer read. Furthermore, to write means--as J.D. Salinger once put it--to always be a little bit unhappy. You put a little bit of yourself into each word, only to have them sliced to pieces by critics with no poetry in their souls, who were never brave or bold or insane enough to write stories of their own. You search for meaning in everything you see, smell, hear, touch, taste, and you always fall a little bit short because life doesn't hold the meaning that stories do. You are always a little bit disappointed. You are never quite good enough. You are always frightened. You always find yourself talking about things that don't matter to you because no one cares or understands about the things that do matter to you. And you are always a little bit alone, because writing is by nature a solitary occupation. Writers are even uncomfortable around other writers; you sympathize, but do not understand, because there are a hundred ways to tell the same story and all of them are true, right, and valid. I remember well telling the then-dean of students at my university, freshman year, that I wanted to be a writer. She gave me a look of startled horror, as if I'd just confessed to wanting to be a garbage collector, or a cannibal. "My mother was a writer," she said; ah, all was explained. "It was hard for all of us. . . but, well, if it's a passion. . ." It is a passion. It must be a passion, because otherwise it isn't worth it. As Harry Crewe said in Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, it is not a comfortable passion. She spoke of loving her new homeland, which to all the world seemed a barren wasteland, save for a few who understood and agreed that yes, it was not a comfortable passion to love this place, its heat, the scratchy wind, the endless sand. Do I wish I weren't a writer? I'd be lying if I said yes, and I'd be lying if I said no. Certainly my life would be easier and less complicated if my passion had been for maths, or aerospace engineering, or motherhood, or if not easier, at least more successful in a conventional (financial) sense. But sometimes I find meaning in a ride down an escalator, or I make someone laugh or cry with a well-turned phrase, or I write some sort of great and unholy truth, or a story suddenly takes a new and unexpected and altogether wonderful direction, and I am in love with writing all over again. I never fell out of love with it in the first place. Friday, March 21, 2008 [link] 03:53 p.m. listening to: "Wild Horses" - Rolling Stones Almost five years ago, my freshman year of college, I got a jury summons two weeks before summer break. I deferred, saying that I was going to be out of town and would be back in August, and they never contacted me again. Three weeks ago, while checking the mail looking for Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, I got another jury summons. And no Phoenix Wright! Talk about a bait and switch! To make matters worse, it was for a Monday, which is normally my day off. So I let my employers know that I had jury duty, in case for some reason I ended up having to go to the courthouse again on Tuesday, and grumpily went to the courthouse. I sat in the large jury room for a couple of hours until I heard my name called--and told to come back at 1:00, because our department wasn't ready yet. I sighed, went home, ate lunch, and then went back to the courthouse, where I sat for another half hour until my group was called again. After this point, I'm not allowed to talk about anything that transpired in the courtroom--because yes, I'm on the jury! The tale gets more mystifying and coincidental from here, but it'll have to wait until next week, when the trial is over. Wednesday, March 12, 2008 [link] 07:46 p.m. listening to: my library on shuffle Ever since I made a conscious decision to adopt a "lifestyle change" several years ago and eat more healthy, I've thought a lot more about my food, and consequently, where my food comes from. Really, it was not a radical change from my life before; my family's unspoken rule has always been, "the fresher, the better." This meant fresh vegetables (unless they were impossible to find fresh, like water chestnuts or baby corn) and fresh meat, whenever possible. It never even occurred to me to eat frozen or canned vegetables, when I started cooking for myself, and I'd never seen a bag of frozen chicken parts until my cousin Lee started shopping at CostCo. Part of this, growing up, was the luxury of time as well as money. My father made the money to buy fresh vegetables, meat, and seafood; my aunt had the time to cook them. It never occurred to me that some people might not know how to snap green beans because they'd always come out of a bag in the freezer. Meat, though, is where the real difference lies. With the doctrine of "fresh is better" came "alive is better." In fact, in Chinese, "live" and "fresh" are the same word, when it comes to meat (or at least seafood). It wasn't unusual to come home to a sink of live crabs, and I used to amuse myself by poking them with chopsticks until they tried to pinch me. I went with my aunt to the large Chinese grocery stores where live fish swam in tanks and waited patiently while the fishmonger netted one out of the tank, hit it over the head, and gutted and scaled it for me right there. My father disappeared to mysterious stores or butchers and return with whole chickens, feathers still dangling loosely from the skin. The fresher, the better. This scandalized some of my less ethnic (read: white) friends who'd never seen meat in anything other than a styrofoam package. Which brings me to today's topic: Why are we so ashamed of where our meat comes from? This cool guy says, "The minute you start to eat something like liver, hearts, ears, or tongue you become to connected to that food and that animal. You realize that it was alive because you're aware that your body has those organs or features too." I grew up eating offal: pig's ears, pig's feet, pork blood, chicken livers, cow's stomach, sheep's brain, chicken feet. As a matter of fact, I love these things. I become very upset if I buy a whole chicken and it doesn't come with giblets. He believes this is a matter of responsible eating: waste not, want not. I agree. I also think organ meats are just damned tasty. I am not bothered by seeing the animal's head on a plate. That's how I know it used to be an animal, and how I (hopefully) know that the animal was fresh and recently slaughtered. The fresher the better. I suspect that people who don't like their food to "look at them" feel guilty about eating something that used to be alive--that once used to actually be able to look at you with those eyes. I can't reconcile this at all; if you can't handle seeing that it used to be an animal, then you probably shouldn't be eating it. When did people become so disconnected from their food that they can't even handle that it used to be a whole animal? I've killed and eaten chickens that I helped raise from chicks, and I don't feel at all barbaric for doing so. In fact, I feel less barbaric. Isn't it barbaric to be willfully ignorant of where your food came from? Doesn't it say something, when you can't bear to look at something that died so that you could enjoy a delicious steak, or chicken parmesan, or barbequed ribs? Acknowledge it. Respect your goddamned food, because you are what you eat. Sunday, March 9, 2008 [link] 11:06 p.m. listening to: "Killing the Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Really, I'm just looking for a reason to archive the blog, as it's gotten a bit long in the tooth. (And hasn't been archived since. . . last year? This is less impressive than it sounds, as I no longer blog daily.) There was a time when I wrote daily, and I no longer know why this is the case. I suppose, like anything else, it's a matter of habit, and I've gotten out of the habit of blogging daily. But I do other kinds of writing, now. I write more fiction. For a while, writing fanfiction and working this job, I thought: Could I be happy doing this, maybe? Working at some job that I enjoyed but did not particularly love during the day and writing fanfiction for my own pleasure and the pleasure of others at night? This is something other people do, and I don't judge them for it, but I'd always felt that my "destiny," so to speak, lay in publishing. I was wrong; I don't seek the status or legitimacy that comes with publishing, I just want to be read, and I wanted people to enjoy what I wrote and--if possible--laud me for it. This was and is easy enough to accomplish with the Internet, and I have indeed accomplished it. But is this enough? Could I be content with this? I examine my life and frighten myself with the answer: yes. I feel some pressure from external sources, perhaps, to achieve the legitimacy of print publishing, in the same way that I feel pressure from external sources to seek a career, promotion, upward mobility. I remind myself on a weekly basis that a career or a promotion are not what I want; I want only to survive, and I want to write. It would be nice if I could make my living entirely from writing, which is another--very good--reason to publish, but it would not make me unhappy, I think, if such a thing never came to fruition. I am not terribly concerned with debates over "higher" or "lower" art forms, and I don't feel as if I'd be "wasting" myself if I did this for the rest of my life. Maybe other people would think so, but other people can go hang. However, a factor to be considered is that the audience on the Internet is very different from an audience you'd find in a bookstore. There's not a very large market online for original stories; people online seek familiarity in fanfiction, looking for characters and situations they know. Original works are successful online, so far as I can see, inasmuch as they mimic fanfiction in their tone and content (often escapist, very often erotic). While I love the praise I receive online, it still seems so superficial, and in the back of my mind, I know I'm being praised for the gay sex, the popular couple/pairing, or some combination of both. There's more freedom to be found in a book, but at the same time, there's more insecurity. I know that if I write gay sex or a popular couple and post it to my LiveJournal, that I will receive comments. This is less true for a novel, not to mention that with a novel I would also have to go through the nervewracking process of finding a publisher, finding an agent, etc. I guess the conclusion is that I'm afraid, and if I never start anything at all then I'll never fail. But fear is no reason to stay curled up in the safe confines of LiveJournal, writing fanfiction and gay erotica, where I know I'm read, where I've become at least a little bit successful. That's a sad way to live. |
blogs better than mine alexandra kleeman andy dailykos gen neil gaiman places to go shameless plugs blue tumbleweedscolored ink the book notus bebhinn friends book of genismshike.org pirates' alley yaoiville non-friends casualvillain.comjenwang.net mooncalf quirkybird shadowscapes spamcan twoflowerian fiction verabee comics 9 chickweed lanebaby blues candorville doonesbury foxtrot frazz jumpstart pearls before swine zits count your sheep something positive questionable content achewood penny arcade faux pas friendly hostility three panel soul better days vg cats bob the angry flower kagerou graphic smash girlamatic other sites i visit with some frequency dictionary.comexplodingdog gamefaqs kekkai.org livejournal orisinal the onion postsecret wikipedia i owe my stress to pitas.com |