hi-fucking-larious

eight-year-old cousin chloe to my mom:

"um. 姑姑. can you like. have another baby (pause). cause like, diana's really boring."

but get rid of the gun/it's covered in clues/the one that you used/to kill off the player inside

totally feeling this right now

lupe!
ho, verbal
F-N-F U-P
yeah, we do what we do
chicago mann

can you let me know?
baby can we get up together?
i ain't like those chicks, i'll treat you better
don't waste no more time
baby let's go
maybe we can go
baby i'm down to do whatever
i don't really care, it doesn't matter
let's not waste no time
maybe, let's go

love, you gotta love it
hold hands in public
i does it, cool
i dug it
everything you do
and everything you doesn't
everything you done
hope i'm the one you does it to
hope this trick goes wrong
and i'm cut in two
so i can feel it twice as much as two lu's
to lose is something that i never wanna do
i'm too loose to check on this track like choo
choose, to choose, i'd rather have you
even if it's half
and i'll even hold for the whole if i have to
but i don't wanna one
that's too close to none, come
but get rid of the gun
it's covered in clues
the one that you used
to kill off the player inside
and i brought back some flowers from the funeral for you
you should come and make moves with a brother like uh

can you let me know?
baby can we get up together?
i ain't like those chicks, i'll treat you better
don't waste no more time
baby let's go
maybe we can go
baby i'm down to do whatever
i don't really care, it doesn't matter
let's not waste no time
maybe, let's go

yeah, i go by the name of verbal
yea let's go
yo
it all happened in a second
my universe froze
ain't a situation I chose
but it chose me
when i caught a glimpse
of the beautiful, just posin'
i know all the rappers be talkin' about clothes and hoes
but she ain't that type, ya see
anyway I'm still froze
like megatron in cryogenic form
i need to get warm
she's my cue
i gotta transform
so i could come through with whatever she wants
she's already glossed and flossed with charm like the 4 seas
can't imagine what her closet with cost me
yeah my brain spin with velocity
thinking about ways to get up
wishin', but i can't, so i could be the man
so i just stand, wishin' i could have her

can you let me know?
baby can we get up together?
i ain't like those chicks, i'll treat you better
don't waste no more time
baby let's go
maybe we can go
baby i'm down to do whatever
i don't really care, it doesn't matter
let's not waste no time
maybe, let's go

can you let me know?
baby can we get up together?
i ain't like those chicks, i'll treat you better
don't waste no more time
baby let's go
maybe we can go
baby i'm down to do whatever
i don't really care, it doesn't matter
let's not waste no time
maybe, let's go

yeah, uh uh
yeah, at times like this
i dunno what to do but to rhyme like this
she probably don't even know i exist
can't figure out why i can't take this
yeah, at times like this
i'm wishing i could be a little stronger than this
too many worries and prerequisites
just to reach ya, just to be with ya
so far, still so far apart, all i want is just to talk
uh uh uh
i swear to God
yeah
so far, still so far apart, all i want is just to talk
i swear to God

oh lupe why are you so coooooooool??

what. up.

dear diary,

today i parallel parked for the first time in an entire year. to cement my stature as supreme being of the universe, my mad pp skyLLzz were impeccable as always. i backed the car into the spot with perfect precision and effortless maneuvering. the quicksilver flow of my car along the sidewalk was a beauty to behold. a small crowd of pedestrians gathered to watch. afterwards they laid flowers at my feet when i emerged from the car's interior.

in other news, janus's spoiled ass demanded that i set up a tribute for her on lglbc, which i will ignore, because as soon as i get my new computer, i will put up a massive photoentry, inclusive of pictures of her skank ass. WHAT. UP.

until then, peace be unto you.

amen.

tissue for my issues.

one by one they leave me, leaving huge gaping holes in my heart.

first anna...then qs. then aileen. then tina. now ali.

i fill the holes by engaging in consumer frenzy.

exhibit a:



that's right. i bought the same skirt in five - FIVE - different colors.

i have problems.

warning: contents explosive

last night's items/events included:

1) dildo



2) flasher



3) naked brit in phone booth



4) tits



5) a bottle of carlsberg dropped 26 stories to land on the hood of a bmw (picture not included)

and

6) a 2am trip to the hospital for a broken hand



this is how we roll in the s'hai-town.

sharing is caring

aileen, i let you share my bed and now i am SICK! thanks for nothing.

in the past couple week scores of people have been coming through shanghai. our apartment has basically turned into a hostel. we have all the amenities of transitional living: shower, food, couch, blankets, pillows and a mysterious mattress.

yesterday began with dimsum and ended with me coughing and snuffling my way back home after yet another night suffused with cigarette smoke, probably a contributing factor to why i feel so shitty today. and the gallon of green tea i drank at enoteca is probably why i am awake at eight feeling infirm after falling asleep around four last night. sunday mornings are usually the worst.

tami, bry, tina, jodie, joyce, jen, her friend ray, and i ate dinner at bellagio (yippee taiwanese food!) before moving the party to enoteca next door. this enoteca's even nicer than the original on anfu road. it was great since tami and i were able to ponder the wonders of hanging out in shanghai after having not seen each other in four or five years, joyce and i got all hot and bothered discussing the literary merits of south asian female writers, and bryan and i were able to exchange some final words before he leaves this morning. it was also a brilliant display of my brain mass decay as i butchered both the english language and numerical representation with my ramblings.

"we are the cream de la creme!"

"my friend, he's making like, 85 grand a year, if he gets a bonus that's three figures! three!"

but what would the night be without the strangeness that occasions nearly all shanghai activities? joyce's friend nick shows up at enoteca. i have no idea who this guy is besides the fact that he sang opera at the carnegie hall as an eight-year-old and he starts out by asking me the standard

"what do you do here?"

"i'm here doing research."

the good thing is he guesses fulbright so all i have to do is nod. then follows it with

"what's your topic?"

"chinese characters..."

"oh you're the simplified characters person. that's not a real topic."

i'll be the first to admit there are far more socially redeeming topics than an academic, obscurely specialized focus on chinese orthography. but what the fuck, since i started my shit, everyone seems to know more about chinese characters than me.

nick brought a man with him, someone referred to as his "fairy godfather", a porty, balding middle-aged white man who is writing a book and does music reviews for the ft. hey andy! he's seen your byline! how about that! anyway, guess what homeboy's book is about? the making of amy motherfucking tan's bonesetter's daughter into an OPERA. yes, an OPERA. like the world doesnt have enough of her mysterious oriental oh-mai-gah-i-so-tortured-because-i-is-chinese bullcrap floating around in litspace. i do think amy tan is a great writer - she is an excellent manipulator of words, she is supremely observant and creative. but this power can be used for good or evil right and she picked evil. lady found a bankable gimmick and milked it for every royalty it's worth, which is why the asian american literary genre today is saturated with whiny crap from monkey king to snow flowahh and the secret fan (lisa see, i hate you. i truly. fucking. hate. you. you are the epitome of everything that is wrong with literature today. you are the paradigm of scholastic evil. if i didnt believe that book-burning is an unforgivable sin your bedamned pieces of shit would be the first in the bonfire). thanks a lot, amy tan, for fueling the fetishistic appetites of sinophiles the world over and creating a market for weepy female writers to exploit their ethnic background. AN OPERA OF THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER. seriously? SERIOUSLY?

but more fun did come out of the night. fairy godfather's wife is apparently very invested in the arts, and eventually arrived at enoteca with a small chinese man in tow.



"everyone! this is wu tong!" there was something about wong kar-wai, but i didnt catch it.

tina, however, got very excited and was jabbering on to the small chinese man about yo yo ma and such. i asked nick who the small chinese man was. "oh, he's played the sheng on yo yo ma's silk road tour."

wah! i've totally seen this guy perform! the sheng is this funky chinese wood instrument that produces this wild, reedy sound when played.



it was my turn to get excited and i told mr. wu tong that i saw him play when the silk road tour came to taiwan. well he's going to be in the operatic form of amy tan's novel bonesetter's daughter coming to you this september! but since he was so nice i decided to forgive him of that. as he was leaving he even gave me a hug!

anyway, the moral of the story is, which you are not feeling too hot, it's not a good idea to hang out in a smoke-infested room for four hours.

now where is my damn airborne...

huangshan? yeah i mounted that bitch

on saturday morning, 0530, aileen, aliana, anna, diana, jane, qiong si, sean (see-anne), victor and brian meet up at shanghai's long distance bus stop. from that moment on, everything that could go wrong, pretty much goes wrong.

first, jane almost doesn't make it because her skandalouz (tupac ft. snoop doggy dog) ass had been up all night doing chi knows what. she makes the bus with seconds to spare. meanwhile, brian has to take the 8-hr bus ride all by himself because our bus is out of seats.

we are relieved to be all accounted for, but little do we know that the adventure is just beginning.

the bus ride is said to be around an ass-busting 6 hours long. most of us come prepared for this, armed with ample supplies of oreos, chips, wine gummies, crackers, water, soda, fruit juice, berries, bananas, apples, oranges, books, ipods, beef jerky. except for jane, who had shown up with nothing but her ipod, because, again, she is skandalouz (tupac ft. snoop doggy dog). what we are not prepared for, however, is the bus - which besides having extremely poor ventilation and no shock absorption to speak of - stops about twenty times along the way to anhui province to pick up passengers. at first this confuses us, because as far as we can tell, the bus seats are all full. this only served to prove us naive in the ways of the china. plastic stools are distributed along the walkway and the center aisle fills up with folks shouting on their cellphones, screaming midgets, and swinging bags that miss our heads by mere inches. as the remaining airspace becomes occupied, we are horrified to see a trashcan passed forward to a mother who holds a screaming midget in her hand.

"no..." sean begins, "she's not really going to-" the baby shit hits the trashcan.

after a harrowing 8 hours, we arrive at a township in anhui. we are overjoyed to be off the bus, despite the sweltering weather. then we realize are in the wrong village. "it's an hour away," says a man. "i'll take you guys there for 250 rmb." we bargain down to 200 rmb and the 8 of us and our backpacks pile into the 6-person minivan. it is very hot.

much toil later, we arrive in tunxi, where our hostel is located. it is here we encounter the only pleasant surprise of our entire journey: the koala hostel.

the disasters progress from there. by this time it's too late to go to any of the neighboring towns, so we decide to explore the one we're staying in.

our first glimpse of the old town street. read: touristy.


but i did make a new friend.

jeepers creepers, victor's peepers!! chipperest chap in the forest!

after all this, we return to the hostel dirty, sweaty and exhausted. to make myself feel better, i take a shower. towards the end of my (hot water + high water pressure) fabulous shower, i hear jane screaming at me from outside.

"YOU'RE FLOODING THE ROOM!!!"

i quickly turn the water off and open the shower door. "what?"

about an inch of water is covering the floor between the shower room and our room door, and has flowed into the hallway. "MY BAG IS WET!!!" ali screams. "HOW THE HELL DID YOU FLOOD THE DAMN ROOM!!!" jane screams.

"HOW DID GUYS NOT NOTICE IT WAS FLOODING!!" i scream back.

in the morning, we wake up at 4 am to torrential rainfall. i hope that this means we are not climbing the mountain, but two hours later we are standing at the foot of huangshan. magical wonders that you behold when you enter!

the weather is worse than we had imagined, and our runners are bound to get wet. as a precautionary measure, we buy rubber smurf-shoes. thus, our journey begins.

while we were complaining about our ten pound backpacks, these guys are hauling up tons of shit the old school way. gangster!

the stairs are treacherous and slippery from the morning rain, and we struggle along, taking intermittent breaks overlooking valleys filled with fog and lush flora. unfortunately, the combined forces of mosquitoes, humidity, endless stairs and burning thighs sort of detracted from the awe-inspiring enormity of the mountains. also, natural rock formations such as this also threw a damper on geological majesty:

I give you...le cock de rock

replenishing lost energy the only way we knew how



my fave:



who will be the first to race off the cliff??


sean's idea of hell is an endless flight of stairs

after eight hours of racing up stairs and maneuvering around noisy tour groups, our thighs are strong enough to crack walnuts. coincidentally, we also arrive at the peak around this time. we discover that we are very sticky, and our strong thighs shake uncontrollably as we try to sit down.

also, jane's birthday came and went. few remembered. little was done. just kidding! we sang her happy birthday and the flooze got very very embarrassed. happy birthday nasty twin! i am always here to touch your tail.

someone (i think it was jane) had the bright idea to pitch a tent (pun intended) on the peak of the mountain (insert sexual reference here), thinking that we could wake up bright and early at the asscrack of dawn to watch the glorious people's republic sun rise over the horizon of the triumphant orient! when we arrive at the tenting site, it becomes apparent that the campsite is in fact three cramped rows of dingy tents that have clearly never been aired out. the facilities offer us some dirty blankets and a few army-issue coats as part of the package. anna bravely sticks her head into the tent and jumps back out immediately. "it smells like shit!" QS fishes out an empty bag of chips and a dirty tissue with a look of ultimate disgust.

i unzip me, jane and aileen's tent. "smells like armpit," i remark. "don't worry it'll be worth it to see the sun rise. it's supposed to be amazing," jane says, by way of amelioration.

we head to the hotel cafe for some hot drinks and sanity, stopping by the entrance to ask a concierge what time the sunrise will be. "sun rises at 5:06 am. you have a 30% chance of seeing the sunrise." "30%!!!!!!" we scream. "fuck yooooooouuuu!!!!!"

after a delicious meal of instant noodles and a terrific shower - and by shower i mean we wiped ourselves down with napkins in the hotel bathroom - we return to the tents. the tent area manager asks, "are you guys here to see the sunrise?" we affirm this. "not a chance! there'll be no sunrise tomorrow!"

deeply in denial, we set our alarms to 4:30 anyway, and crawl into our respective gas pits to sleep. it is raining quite hard as we drift off. "maybe it'll stop by morning," aileen mumbles.

we wake up in the morning to torrential downpour of biblical proportions. of course, climbing down the mountain is still an option - if we do not fear broke teef and cracked skulls. as it is, we decide to battle the tourist crowds to take the trams back down. after all, we had already scaled three peaks with massive backpacks. what do we have to prove?

made a phonecall under sean's poncho so her phone could stay dry, but i think a few people got the wrong idea...

the raingear causes everyone to look like a strange cross between the KKK and giant condoms. seen from below, an endless procession of yellow condom creatures ascend the mountain in the mad rush for the tram to go down the mountain.

once we come down the mountain, there is momentary debate. to go back to the hostel and wait in comfort and dry clothes for the bus, or to go to a neighboring township and be soaked while continuing our pursuit of tourism? the camp now becomes split. ali, jane, victor, sean and i decide to go to hongcun, while the rest return to the hotel. they would prove to be the wise ones.

the bus ride there is as crowded as the first bus, and the bus seats look as though the dead skin cells of ten thousand passengers have settled on the surface. delicious!

eventually (this after more pouring rain, haggling with a cab driver with halitosis that could decimate an entire chinese village, and a bathroom to satisfy your most perverted scat fantasies) we reach the city of hongcun, a most lovely little town that was designed to resemble the intestines of a cow. however, by this time the rain is pouring down so fast and furious my camera was starting to blur from water in the lens.

cheerful despite the elements

we were working the creepy angle on this one

this is the stomach of the cow!

la familia

hundreds of these quaint little alleys...almost makes you wish for the days of no plumbing and no electricity...

finally finally, we concede defeat and haggle with mr. dragon breath driver to take us back to our hostel, sean sitting shotgun where she breathes out of her mouth for an hour, and the rest of us four crammed in the back in all our glorious soppiness. the only thing that sustains us is the thought of dry clothes and hot showers waiting at the other end.

upon returning to the hotel, ali and i are so excited we immediate sprint for the shower (for which we had to pay 10 kuai) after agreeing to shower together in our bikinis (yes, we brought bikinis...don't ask why). but bad fortune had not finished dealing her hand yet. there is no hot water.

but it's still better to be cold and clean than dirty and warm, so here we are, waiting for the bus to take us back to civilization. i have a book, some hot soup and dry clothes. the horror of the weekend rapidly fades away....