cotton dreams

I slept with a blankie until I was 18.

This isn't something I'm especially proud of. In fact, I spent most of middle school and high school ashamed of this fact, and spent a lot of time and energy figuring out how to best hide this from my friends. I was pretty sure I'd be a laughingstock when everyone found out their senior class president still slept with a security blanket -- the same one he'd had since birth.

Actually, it wasn't quite the same one. The first one, lovingly sewn for me by my grandma, was left at an airport after some trip when I was 3 or 4 or 5 or some age like that. I cried for days, until my grandma sent down another one, hurriedly sewn in the interim. That temp-blanket slept with me every single night of my life until I left for college. I took it to camp, I hid it in sleeping bags when I spent the night at friends -- I couldn't sleep without it.

I loved it, my blankie. I loved the way it smelled, I loved the way it felt, I loved playing with the frays and numerous holes that formed in the 15-or-so years I owned it. Every night I would carefully place it between my knees, and blankie would do his job, making sure those knees never touched when I curled up in the fetal position to sleep.

Then, when I left for college, I decided I didn't need blankie anymore. I decided the comfort I felt every night holding blankie in my arms wasn't worth the shame I'd feel every day, having to hide him from roommates, hook-ups, friends, and girlfriends. And I didn't regret that decision. In fact, I didn't give blankie a second thought.

Until tonight, that is. For whatever reason, when I pulled the covers up and closed my eyes, the first thought that ran through my head was: I wish I had my blankie back. I don't really know what that means, but I considered it significant enough to roll back out of bed and brush the digital dust off this sporadically-used blog.

I guess we all have to come to terms with becoming and adult at some point. With growing up, with change. With new stress and new circumstances. I know I don't need my blankie anymore, and now I have something else (someone else, really) I get to sleep with that provides security in a way blankie never could, but it's interesting how when life gets overwhelming, we revert back to the things that first gave us comfort.

And with that little diatribe, I'm going to sleep. Sans-blankie.

still alive

I've been a bad blogger. I start to make good on my promise to write more and then completely shut down, letting the site go dark for over a month.

It's funny, though, because the reason I started this blog in the first place was to get me writing. Writing anything, really, although I did my best to be entertaining. However, since school's been out, I've been doing a pretty damn good job of writing things that are actually productive. And while I'd love to report that I've finished those projects and can move on, we all know that's not the case.

I am, however, about 3/4 of the way through the first draft one of one them, which is a big deal for a guy who's never really finished anything in his life. So fear not, one or two readers of this blog, for a lack of posting means I'm actually getting real work accomplished, and that's something I can feel pretty good about.

In other news, I dropped my phone in the toilet on Sunday and some woman totally hit me with her car today. All in all, not a good week for me, technology-wise.

Happy Day-We-Told-The-British-To-Fuck-Off Day, everyone.

thieves!

Los Angeles-based band Lustra recently claimed that Miley Cyrus stole one of their songs. You've probably never heard of Lustra, but they wrote the wildly-successful and popular song "Scotty Doesn't Know", featured in the movie Eurotrip. The Cyrus song? "Rockstar".

You can judge for yourself, but if you ask me, I think that Lustra has a pretty good oh come on who gives a fuck no one is ever going to listen to either of these songs again anyway.

lowfermation

A couple weeks ago I read an article in Time that reaffirmed something I have long believed: most people are morons.

One of the assertions in this article is that most people vote on the basis of "low-information signals", which are "stupid things like whether you know how to roll a bowling ball or wear an American-flag pin". The article goes on to claim that what initially set the Democrats apart was their reluctance to participate in this type of politics. It also asserts that this reluctance is what is probably causing them to lose so often.

Meaning: our country has been brought to the verge of collapse because John Kerry looked like a doofus trying to catch a football.

I assumed this type of low-information signaling as the basis of decision-making existed only in the political realm, but I just read something else that leads me to believe that people are morons basically all the time, as opposed to just when they're voting.

For those who care about celebrities, Uma Thurman's stalker was just declared guilty of fourth-degree stalking and second-degree aggravated harassment. (Sidebar: fourth-degree stalking? Can someone explain to me the differences in the degrees of stalking?) On People.com, there is an article interviewing a juror who talks about how the jury came to a decision.

"'At one point, leaving the stand, she seemed to hide her head in the crook of her arm,' Steel also says of Thurman - though, she goes on to report, the jurors questioned just how frightened Thurman might really have been."

Excuse me? She might have hid her head in the crook of her arm? Meaning that she was afraid? Are these people retarded? I have no idea whether or not this guy should have been convicted of stalking, but using a potentially accidental gesture committed by an actress as evidence is the type of thing that makes me terrified of our legal system. I wouldn't trust a group of twelve random people to watch my stuff while I take a piss, let alone decide how much time someone should spend in jail.

oh, and

I would also like to thank everyone I know for all the wonderful birthday wishes and free drinks. I am truly grateful for you all, and you will never know how much you truly mean to me.

the best thing in the world

I've posted this before in my cleverly-titled "things" section of this blog, but I would like to reiterate the awesome nature of "Stuff White People Like".

Never has a written publication been simultaneously so true to my heart and so embarrassing. It's like the writers have personally interviewed me and everyone I know, and come up with a fairly comprehensive list of all the stupid shit we find fascinating for no reason at all.

I check it every day.

breakin' the law

The corner of 1st and Berendo is a right-turn only. There's a big sign right next to the stop sign, and a big arrow painted on the street.

Unfortunately, I need to turn left on 1st to go to school every day. So for the past year-and-a-bit, I've simply ignored the sign and gone on my merry way. I could never figure out why it was right-turn only to begin with.

Today, all that time I saved finally caught up with me. I got pulled over. The cop walks up: license, registration, and insurance.

"You a California resident or a student?"
"Student"
"What's your address here"
"[My address]"
"Ah, local. You should know about that turn then"
"Yeah, I know"

He writes my ticket, comes back to my window.

"You really should pay attention to that sign. Giving tickets for that is really easy"
"I imagine. Why is it a right-turn only, anyway?"
"I dunno. Doesn't make any sense to me"
He hands me my ticket, then says:
"So you have to appear in court on June 9th. You can get that date extended, though, if you want to. I go on vacation in July, so you might want to extend it until then"
"... What?"
"You didn't hear that from me. Have a great day"

And he's gone.

this is a disaster

The pentagon just announced they're deploying hand-held lie detectors to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an attempt to more accurately weed out terrorist activity. The detectors have three electrodes that attach to the suspect's hand, and the device displays "Red" if it believes the suspect is lying, "Green" for the truth, and "Yellow" if it can't tell.

We invaded Iraq six years ago in some misguided attempt at a "War on Terror", and now it's looking like that war has been reduced to 20 year-olds using color-coded palm pilots to protect us.

How far we've come.

socio-economics lesson

I'm going to preface this with saying that I am not an expert on real estate, gentrification, community development, or the North University Park neighborhood. But something fascinating is happening around here, and I want to give my two cents because it's my blog and I can so deal with it.

This week, the good ol' Daily Trojan has been running a series of articles on USC's "Master Plan", which is a 30-year, $3 billion plan for USC's expansion. (The details from the DT can be found here, here, and here.)

Since you probably don't want to read all that, the basic principle of the master plan includes incorporating the land that is currently the University Village on to campus, razing it and replacing it with retail and higher-end shops catered to students, and narrowing Jefferson Blvd. from a 4-lane arterial to a 2-lane campus street.

While obviously the university is wildly enthusiastic about the plan, the non-university-affiliated residents of the community are not, and I find this fascinating.

Let's start from way back. In the 1960s, USC used a policy called "eminent domain" to seize areas surrounding the current campus to give us enough space for the campus we have today. I had to look up "eminent domain" on Wikipedia, but apparently it's a policy the U.S. has that allows private property to be seized for specific purposes, generally government or development related. Apparently "university purposes" qualifies as sufficient enough reason to seize land. So after USC's land-grabbing 50 years ago, the community is naturally distrustful of basically anything it does.

This time, however, there's a bit of a difference. Downtown is becoming livable once again. There are lofts, condos, restaurants open past 5 pm, supermarkets (well, okay, one), a mall... Droves of people are moving in, land prices are skyrocketing, and gentrification is in full bloom. One mile south, USC is also growing. Enrollment is at an all-time high, construction is going on like mad (between the new commons and the new cinema building, everywhere I go borders a construction site), and USC is facing tremendous pressure to start housing students with an out-of-state enrollment of around 50%. The Jefferson-Fig-Exposition-Vermont border is bulging at the seams.

Meanwhile, evil corporations like Conquest Housing are taking advantage. The housing shortage around USC is jacking up prices like mad, forcing students to grab their ankles and driving long-term residents out of the area. There is a definite problem.

USC claims their master plan will ease this issue. By focusing on residences, they believe more students will move back to campus, easing local demand and decreasing traffic in and out of the area. And frankly, I agree, but only because USC's change fits in to the broader way Los Angeles is changing.

I hope it's rapidly becoming obvious that Los Angeles, in it's current form, is an unsustainable city. The population is not decreasing. Traffic is disastrously bad, and all this Caltrans improvement shit isn't having any effect that anyone can see. The freeway-based city dreamed up in the '50s does not work with the current several-million population.

Los Angeles is changing. Not quickly, but they're working on. For the past year, the MTA has been working on expanding the already-existing but barely-useful subway line to include several stops around USC's border before making it (eventually) to Santa Monica. The East-West public transportation option is the missing link, and I applaud USC for being one of the first institutions I've heard of in Los Angeles to say, "You know what? This is broken. And the only way to fix it is to actively make it more difficult for people to drive. Fuck you all, we're forcing you to take the train, or to walk, or to ride a bike".

As for the additional neighborhood impact, I'm afraid it may be a losing battle. Of course no one wants to drive anyone out. I doubt it's USC's goal to be a fungus on the community. But these wheels have been in motion for a long time. Capitalist demons like Conquest have been driving out residents for years, both directly through their price jacks or indirectly through their offensive and demeaning 15-foot billboard ads. At least USC is trying to help. It may not be the silver bullet, but it's a strategy that makes sense. Thirty years is a long time. The neighborhood will change, whether anyone likes it or not. Let's not let people like Conquest do it for us.

can't fight the flood

It's been a while. Probably long enough that everyone who was once so excited about the intimate details of my life has long since stopped waiting for updates.

Well, I'm still here. But I don't have much to say. The past month has been a sleep-deprived blur, and unfortunately, I'm still knee-deep in the shit until next week. All my neglected activities during production have caught up full force, and for the next five days I'm going to be struggling my way back to shore.

But then I'm done. DONE. Nothing but piña coladas and little drink umbrellas for the rest of the semester. Maybe I'll even drop a fancy picture update. How fucking sweet is that?