Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Last Class
First: Something that has been bothering me.
On campus they posted a sign that read 'GIANT BOOK SALE'. I was intrigued. Meandering my way around the circumference of ring road to discover for myself this advertised marvel that was this 'GIANT BOOK SALE' and after a short (though tiring) session of walking I arrived at the destination, the so advertised 'GIANT BOOK SALE'.
For future reference, if you are going to advertise a 'GIANT BOOK SALE', I expect to find GIANT BOOKS. No reader, see what they meant to say was, 'LARGE QUANTITIES OF BOOKS HERE' or something to that effect. Instead, they advertised a sale for giant books and broke my heart yet again.
Every year they do this. I expect to find man-sized versions of 'Little Red Riding Hood' and every year they crush my spirit.
Why, reader why?
To other matters though, today was the last class period for me this year, a moment all very bittersweet for everyone involved.
My classes have been amazing this past quarter. I met so many utterly amazing people in Creative writing, everyone is smart, funny, bombastic and interesting and everything was beautiful. I will miss it greatly.
Then Ngugi's class, I had a chat with him after class and he was magnanimous, accomodating and very down to earth and we had a very nice chat about numerous things. The man actually put a satellite TV producer on hold for me, some random student. The man is an intellectual and folk hero, a Nobel prize consideree, and really really cool. I've learned much about modern Africa's history in this class, I cannot take Masiela's 'The Haarlem Rennaissance and Sophiatown' next quarter but I hope to do so sometime in the future when I don't have to take logic and stupid math requirement classes.
I will miss those two classes. French seems a yearlong boatride of insanity that never ends so we're not quite done with each other yet in those classes. Steven Oliveri's students own the 8:00 French slot, represent bitches.
And oddly enough, today I end with a prayer, or less a prayer than a hope.
Let people love, live, listen and learn
Let them find their happiness and joy, their sadness and sorrow
Let them find their legends
Let them follow footsteps of their choosing
Let them forget not the unstrained comfort of their friends
Let them live, love, listen, and learn
Let them lie
Let them lie swiftly, softly under a sable sky
Let them swing, let them whisper
To a cloud, to a moon, let us sing sweetly you and I
Let us remember to live, to learn, to love
The moment of our lives flies fast
And when the moon sets in the steep starry night
You'll be human in your heart long at last.
I'll miss you peeps, it was everything and awesome
-Viet
On campus they posted a sign that read 'GIANT BOOK SALE'. I was intrigued. Meandering my way around the circumference of ring road to discover for myself this advertised marvel that was this 'GIANT BOOK SALE' and after a short (though tiring) session of walking I arrived at the destination, the so advertised 'GIANT BOOK SALE'.
For future reference, if you are going to advertise a 'GIANT BOOK SALE', I expect to find GIANT BOOKS. No reader, see what they meant to say was, 'LARGE QUANTITIES OF BOOKS HERE' or something to that effect. Instead, they advertised a sale for giant books and broke my heart yet again.
Every year they do this. I expect to find man-sized versions of 'Little Red Riding Hood' and every year they crush my spirit.
Why, reader why?
To other matters though, today was the last class period for me this year, a moment all very bittersweet for everyone involved.
My classes have been amazing this past quarter. I met so many utterly amazing people in Creative writing, everyone is smart, funny, bombastic and interesting and everything was beautiful. I will miss it greatly.
Then Ngugi's class, I had a chat with him after class and he was magnanimous, accomodating and very down to earth and we had a very nice chat about numerous things. The man actually put a satellite TV producer on hold for me, some random student. The man is an intellectual and folk hero, a Nobel prize consideree, and really really cool. I've learned much about modern Africa's history in this class, I cannot take Masiela's 'The Haarlem Rennaissance and Sophiatown' next quarter but I hope to do so sometime in the future when I don't have to take logic and stupid math requirement classes.
I will miss those two classes. French seems a yearlong boatride of insanity that never ends so we're not quite done with each other yet in those classes. Steven Oliveri's students own the 8:00 French slot, represent bitches.
And oddly enough, today I end with a prayer, or less a prayer than a hope.
Let people love, live, listen and learn
Let them find their happiness and joy, their sadness and sorrow
Let them find their legends
Let them follow footsteps of their choosing
Let them forget not the unstrained comfort of their friends
Let them live, love, listen, and learn
Let them lie
Let them lie swiftly, softly under a sable sky
Let them swing, let them whisper
To a cloud, to a moon, let us sing sweetly you and I
Let us remember to live, to learn, to love
The moment of our lives flies fast
And when the moon sets in the steep starry night
You'll be human in your heart long at last.
I'll miss you peeps, it was everything and awesome
-Viet
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Happiness
Howdy reader, it's not been so long now. But that is ony as a function of the readily availible nature of this blog as it is immediately placed on my homepage, as it is. It's dark as it is right now, been raining for a good long while.
Yesterday I played the Sims 2 all day long. I'm not particularly proud of myself, but there you have it. You know people always say i'm going to be okay reader, how do they know? Recently I turned in a story i wrote in a single night, how could you have known that its failing would affect me so greatly? The truth is, the reason i've been playing so much in days of late is because frankly, that fear I mentioned last post is academic.
Yeah it's true, I've not been keeping up with my work. a function of perhaps my own laziness, perhaps but also ... well my friend went through a particularly abusive breakup with her first boyfriend and I had to be there for her reader, you understand.
But it still doesn't change the facts.
I'm several assignments behind in French, i've done close to none of the homeworks, I don't know what's going on in class. All of the late critiques i've turned in for creative writing recently just got sent back to me with 6s for scores because in spite of the amount of work i put into them, they are still late and I don't think Frank has the patience anymore to actually read through them. I don't know what I'm going to write about for my African Lit paper, and looking at the facts streaming through the WGA strike right now, I'm particularly scared about my future job prospects.
Reader, over half of the WGA is unemployed, writers work job to job, paycheck to paycheck and most supplement their writing jobs with alternative employment that they keep well into their later years. Annual incomes can dip as low as 5,000 a year and even when you do write your opus there's no guarantee that some executive won't send you a smarmy little note asking you to add in more 'tits and ass'. Really though it's the money that scares me.
Reader, I do love what I do, honestly. I can't imagine doing anything else at this moment in my life and I love my writing. But this scares me, a lot. Right now another one of my friends - whose parents are unfortunately a lot more traditional than mine - is at the receiving end of the tradition stick for pursuing an english degree instead of her parent's mandate that she be a doctor. In their words exactly, she is a 'waste of money' with an attitude problem and she never thinks about how much she hurts them.
Tradition, what did we learn from you anyways.
I find that interesting about the state of asian-americans in this country, that dedicated adherence to the exact same principles of sacrifice and ... whatever that exists in black and white terms, refusing to adapt or change. It might not be applicable to other ethnicities but let me speak for a moment about the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese community as it exists in the United States is a dying one, doomed to eke out its meaningless and slowly suffering existence until the sheltered dreams of the 70s Saigon boat-people generation vietnamese die slow and miserable deaths. Why so? Because they have refused to adapt.
Two years ago I went back to Vietnam, what did I find? The language and culture had continued to evolve, even as our community leaders had adamantly insisted that 'everything under communism is bad'. They had a word for computer, which up until - well frankly now - my siblings and I had always called 'computer' in a vietnamese phonetic model (i.e. stereotypically vietnamese). The word was 'may vi tinh' translating literally into 'thinking machine' and it represents the problem of the Vietnamese in America right now. What culturally have we invented that is new in America? The Latinos have invented their own pertinent definition of Latino-American that is distinct from the culture of their South American counterparts, what then of the Vietnamese? We have maybe Paris by night, and then what else? Trumped up beauty pageants where over-make-upped beauty queens spout trivialities out of their clown-like faces? A dedicated adherence to a stagnant cultural moment that did not even exist?
So much of what is Vietnamese-American is harkening back to this 'loss of country' as the defining and rallying moment for all Vietnamese-Americans. As if it is our defining moment that we must take back and reclaim our homeland like the returning sons in an epic poem. Perhaps, maybe someday, but what until then? If you ask me how I define myself as a Vietnamese-American I will tell you in food, in religion, and in a trivial conglomeration of disparate details but culturally there has been no evolution within the Vietnamese community. This die-hard adherence to this cultural moment, this myopic paralysis within the community has strangled any and all chances for its new evolution outside of the boundaries of Vietnam.
It is why - I imagine - there is that reported split within the second generation Vietnamese, the characterization as 'valedictorian delinquents'. You create a model wherein those who toe the line with this archaeic social structure reap the rewards of societal support, but what then for those who fail? What the elder members (not all, but most) of the Vietnamese community fail to acknowledge is that even within the earlier society that valued success, those who failed to achieve the defined parameters of success had their place too. But not here in America so that when these teenagers do fail, they turn to the culture that is most immediate to them: latino gang culture.
Where is that vitality of language that would expand and reinvigorate how the Vietnamese-American youth understand themselves? Where are our words for 'computer', 'cell phone', 'video game', and all the other terms that we could define ourselves in? This is the failure to expand beyond this 70s moment that is strangling my capacity to legitimately define myself as through and through, Vietnamese American.
Ultimately I do not think my children will speak Vietnamese. Perhaps they will learn a few words to appease me and perhaps they will take a few classes to learn basic phrases but as it is, unlike the Chinese, Korean, and Latino communities Vietnamese-American teenagers do not speak to each other in Vietnamese. We cannot. We are communicating in a language that has stopped developing (here at least) beyond a certain cultural moment at the end of the Vietnam War and that paralysis is killing any chance that a legitimately seperate, Vietnamese-American identity will emerge.
A Demain mes amis.
-Viet
Yesterday I played the Sims 2 all day long. I'm not particularly proud of myself, but there you have it. You know people always say i'm going to be okay reader, how do they know? Recently I turned in a story i wrote in a single night, how could you have known that its failing would affect me so greatly? The truth is, the reason i've been playing so much in days of late is because frankly, that fear I mentioned last post is academic.
Yeah it's true, I've not been keeping up with my work. a function of perhaps my own laziness, perhaps but also ... well my friend went through a particularly abusive breakup with her first boyfriend and I had to be there for her reader, you understand.
But it still doesn't change the facts.
I'm several assignments behind in French, i've done close to none of the homeworks, I don't know what's going on in class. All of the late critiques i've turned in for creative writing recently just got sent back to me with 6s for scores because in spite of the amount of work i put into them, they are still late and I don't think Frank has the patience anymore to actually read through them. I don't know what I'm going to write about for my African Lit paper, and looking at the facts streaming through the WGA strike right now, I'm particularly scared about my future job prospects.
Reader, over half of the WGA is unemployed, writers work job to job, paycheck to paycheck and most supplement their writing jobs with alternative employment that they keep well into their later years. Annual incomes can dip as low as 5,000 a year and even when you do write your opus there's no guarantee that some executive won't send you a smarmy little note asking you to add in more 'tits and ass'. Really though it's the money that scares me.
Reader, I do love what I do, honestly. I can't imagine doing anything else at this moment in my life and I love my writing. But this scares me, a lot. Right now another one of my friends - whose parents are unfortunately a lot more traditional than mine - is at the receiving end of the tradition stick for pursuing an english degree instead of her parent's mandate that she be a doctor. In their words exactly, she is a 'waste of money' with an attitude problem and she never thinks about how much she hurts them.
Tradition, what did we learn from you anyways.
I find that interesting about the state of asian-americans in this country, that dedicated adherence to the exact same principles of sacrifice and ... whatever that exists in black and white terms, refusing to adapt or change. It might not be applicable to other ethnicities but let me speak for a moment about the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese community as it exists in the United States is a dying one, doomed to eke out its meaningless and slowly suffering existence until the sheltered dreams of the 70s Saigon boat-people generation vietnamese die slow and miserable deaths. Why so? Because they have refused to adapt.
Two years ago I went back to Vietnam, what did I find? The language and culture had continued to evolve, even as our community leaders had adamantly insisted that 'everything under communism is bad'. They had a word for computer, which up until - well frankly now - my siblings and I had always called 'computer' in a vietnamese phonetic model (i.e. stereotypically vietnamese). The word was 'may vi tinh' translating literally into 'thinking machine' and it represents the problem of the Vietnamese in America right now. What culturally have we invented that is new in America? The Latinos have invented their own pertinent definition of Latino-American that is distinct from the culture of their South American counterparts, what then of the Vietnamese? We have maybe Paris by night, and then what else? Trumped up beauty pageants where over-make-upped beauty queens spout trivialities out of their clown-like faces? A dedicated adherence to a stagnant cultural moment that did not even exist?
So much of what is Vietnamese-American is harkening back to this 'loss of country' as the defining and rallying moment for all Vietnamese-Americans. As if it is our defining moment that we must take back and reclaim our homeland like the returning sons in an epic poem. Perhaps, maybe someday, but what until then? If you ask me how I define myself as a Vietnamese-American I will tell you in food, in religion, and in a trivial conglomeration of disparate details but culturally there has been no evolution within the Vietnamese community. This die-hard adherence to this cultural moment, this myopic paralysis within the community has strangled any and all chances for its new evolution outside of the boundaries of Vietnam.
It is why - I imagine - there is that reported split within the second generation Vietnamese, the characterization as 'valedictorian delinquents'. You create a model wherein those who toe the line with this archaeic social structure reap the rewards of societal support, but what then for those who fail? What the elder members (not all, but most) of the Vietnamese community fail to acknowledge is that even within the earlier society that valued success, those who failed to achieve the defined parameters of success had their place too. But not here in America so that when these teenagers do fail, they turn to the culture that is most immediate to them: latino gang culture.
Where is that vitality of language that would expand and reinvigorate how the Vietnamese-American youth understand themselves? Where are our words for 'computer', 'cell phone', 'video game', and all the other terms that we could define ourselves in? This is the failure to expand beyond this 70s moment that is strangling my capacity to legitimately define myself as through and through, Vietnamese American.
Ultimately I do not think my children will speak Vietnamese. Perhaps they will learn a few words to appease me and perhaps they will take a few classes to learn basic phrases but as it is, unlike the Chinese, Korean, and Latino communities Vietnamese-American teenagers do not speak to each other in Vietnamese. We cannot. We are communicating in a language that has stopped developing (here at least) beyond a certain cultural moment at the end of the Vietnam War and that paralysis is killing any chance that a legitimately seperate, Vietnamese-American identity will emerge.
A Demain mes amis.
-Viet
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Secret Secret, can you keep it
There is a secret boon to this blog. and that is this
Recently my mother has taken to blogging.
It's not so much that I dislike her doing so as the very prospect of my mother now actually having access to every intimate thought, personal detail, and humiliating moment of my life is one that I believe could even chill the staunchest of men to the bone. Ask Blackbeard what his worst fear was and he will tell you of the time his mother caught him gawking at the mistresses of the bordello.
Not that there's anything about mistresses in my blogs. Or bordellos. Blackbeard I can't promise he won't be in there.
Jokes aside, I'm scared. Very scared reader.
I fear greatly for my future, or prospective future, and given the amount of work remaining to do i fear greatly still. I'm haha, so ... i'll try my best but I am rather scared at this moment so you'll have to forgive me if i'm less funny than usual. I know you go here for the funny. At least I like to think you go here for the funny. Maybe you go here for the drinks, i'm not sure but while you're here i'll try to make you laugh.
Just, this is all I can manage today readers. I'm slowly unraveling at the seams, haha. Ah, finals will be over soon enough one imagines.
A demain
-Viet
Recently my mother has taken to blogging.
It's not so much that I dislike her doing so as the very prospect of my mother now actually having access to every intimate thought, personal detail, and humiliating moment of my life is one that I believe could even chill the staunchest of men to the bone. Ask Blackbeard what his worst fear was and he will tell you of the time his mother caught him gawking at the mistresses of the bordello.
Not that there's anything about mistresses in my blogs. Or bordellos. Blackbeard I can't promise he won't be in there.
Jokes aside, I'm scared. Very scared reader.
I fear greatly for my future, or prospective future, and given the amount of work remaining to do i fear greatly still. I'm haha, so ... i'll try my best but I am rather scared at this moment so you'll have to forgive me if i'm less funny than usual. I know you go here for the funny. At least I like to think you go here for the funny. Maybe you go here for the drinks, i'm not sure but while you're here i'll try to make you laugh.
Just, this is all I can manage today readers. I'm slowly unraveling at the seams, haha. Ah, finals will be over soon enough one imagines.
A demain
-Viet
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sims 2
I very often do not write in this. So much so that even in spite of making this posting edition my homepage, i still find very little time to update.
As it is i've not been on the internet much (are pigs flying too?) no reader, it's simply been because of the thanksgiving weekend and my sister's come back down and we all had a grea deal of fun watching the office and just general cajoling with or at her expense. (Fix global warming?) Reader shut the fuck up, i'm not on the internet that much.
(...)
Fine, I concede the point but what I HAVE been doing is playing a great deal of the sims 2
(?)
The sims 2 is, well the sims 2 but since you already know i think i'll just tell you what's been going on.
when everything began it was initially just sissy jimenez, roberto jimenez, her husband, and albert jimenez, her friend. now as it was, I set it up so that she had double chemistry with her friend, and none with her husband which i argue is because he's dyed his hair and failed to keep up his weight.
SO EFFECTIVE was this technique that literally the moment i began playing the two of them hit off an adulterous relation just as the camera zoomed in. A long while after (Roberto was reclusive, he seldom left his room) Roberto discovered the two of them making out and in a fit of rage (his actions controlled by me) he broke off his marriage with Sissy and threw her out of the house. Sissy moved back in, at Albert's insistence and together they had a few good months of a relationship during which time Roberto remained (understandably) bitter that his aspiration of becoming a family man had been dashed before his very eyes.
He cried a great deal.
Finally he (wisely) decided to move out of where his old friend and his ex-girlfriend were banging each night within close hearing range of his bedroom to room with his friend, Seurat Georges the cat burglar. Seurat never quite cared for Sissy, he found her too ambitious.
also she often forgot to install fire alarms. For unfortunately after marrying Albert for a good three months during which time he celebrated his 50th birthday, the malevolent hand of god (me) decided to silently break the fire alarm that could have saved poor Albert from a violent and flaming death. Sissy was very sad about this. But as it was she had a good support network and herself, a loner, she found it very easy to lose herself to her job as a lawyer.
Sissy was in fact, a most fantastic lawyer. While due at times to make mistakes of varying severity she exhibited an incredible resiliency to the pressures of making her way up in the cutthroat chain of modern justice. Many friends, a few teased lovers but no roomates and a rekindled relationship with Roberto kept Sissy afloat during these years, and even long after that when she continued to drink her youth potions, holding an engagement like a doggy treat in front of the ever-needy Roberto who - lured by the promise of starting a family with a woman he once loved - took after his opportunity with gusto.
Yes, Sissy was canny but in her defense, her job was at the utmost of her priorities, and eventually with each excitened and denied sexual urge in all of her male friends and her legitimate connections with her female ones, she worked her way up to be the district judge of SimCity, otherwise known as 'The Law'.
Meanwhile, as Sissy made for herself her ultimate ambitions, Roberto also was grappling with a moral dilemma of his own. His friend Georges was charismatic, outgoing, and ripped to the core with a confidence to show it and a beloved Border Collie named 'Killer' who often took to rolling around in puddles and asking people to play with him. Roberto was none of these things and despite all this Luisa, the maid, still took fancy to him.
A man having already suffered through an adultery, the prospect of cheating on his once-again beloved Sissy with another woman stank of too much irony for the family-man Roberto to endure, and yet he continued. She was kind, he noted, and unlike Sissy she did not much care that he was overweight and largely unattractive. Luisa was a blessing, and each day as she came to his house to clean up he got to know her better and better until one day she began hanging out at Roberto's place with increasing frequency. A moment of weeks later, they kissed. And as the wintertime wore down and the snow began to fall Roberto had his first sexual experience with Luisa, the one he'd been so vehemently denied by Sissy.
Soon after this he began to question seriously how to break off his engagement with Sissy. She was a good girl, yes, but she had cheated on him before. Broken their marriage to run off with his best friend and slept with him (loudly) even while he'd remained in the house. Roberto was hurt. But still, he was afraid to do so directly and having nothing left to do, he invited Sissy over one evening and when he knew that she was within full viewing range, kissed Luisa full on the mouth.
The ensuing argument involved fighting, poking, slapping, and tears that flew violently around the room and by the end of it, Roberto had broken off his engagement with Sissy in almost exactly the same fashion as she had so many years before. He proposed to Luisa immediately thereafter on the spot as Sissy left down the street and as she fumed long away, Luisa blushed bright with happiness and accepted Roberto's marriage proposal. Later that morning they were wed.
As for Seurat, he'd always maintained his mantle of quiet indifference from the madness that occurred around him. His existence before Roberto's arrival was one of quiet tranquility: he awoke each morning to eat, work out, play with Killer, then at night he went his way about the world working his way slowly up the crime chain. as it was though, the nature of his job made it difficult to explain what exactly it was that he did do for a living, but as Seurat rarely ventured outside his house, this mattered not. He was there when Roberto and Luisa began to hit it off. secretly he settled the notion in his mind that there was a great deal more chemistry between Luisa and him than Roberto and her but as Roberto had already had enough of that kind of shit to deal with, Seurat had held back and waited for the next girl to come along. As it was, this next girl came along in the form of the replacement maid they sent in to replace Luisa when she forfeited her regular duties as a housemaid to move in with Roberto and Seurat. While Seurat was quietly not entirely happy with the additional bed that had to be purchased, since Luisa had both her maid's training to guide her and her cleaning neuroses to drive her, there was little that Seurat could do to complain about how thoroughly she cleaned the apartment each day he and Roberto came home.
As for the replacement maid (named Karen) while Seurat was very aware that he had no chemistry with the girl, he was also very aware that he was coming very close to 50, having worked most of his life in poverty he was nearing the age where all one can do is think about how people will be expecting one to retire soon. Seurat had lived a small, enclosed life with few friends and even fewer good memories and in his desperation ( and perhaps wisdom) he threw himself with reckless abandon into pursuing the girl and faced with the presence of a ripped, charming, outgoing young man Karen soon too came to wed Seurat. It was the shared sentiment of the house that the maid they sent after Karen was simply far too homely for anyone to wed. Perhaps the maid service had caught on.
At this moment in our story for Georges and Roberto, all was happy and grand. But as a month past, Killer first succumbed to old age and died a quiet death in his doghouse. Seurat was out of the house at the time, but it is said that when told he mourned quietly in his stoic way, the death of his longest-lasting companion. Both of them seniors now, their younger wives had both taken to prenancy with the hopes of becoming doting parents to beautiful children which they imagined would bring them nothing but joy. The babies they DID bring though, brought about a great deal of sleepless nights and suffering voices that rang for attention and changed diapers. Karen in this situation showed her mettle by neglecting her mother's duties in favor of her work and an ever mindful Seurat took to caring for his newborn child between his naps and his dentures.
Luisa too took care of Seurat and Karen's child, even as her pregnancy progressed day by day she would rock Seurat's child softly to sleep, her maternal instincts strong enough even to inhabit the vacuum of affection created by Karen's irresponsibility. They all tried diligently. Roberto even - embarassed by his wife's coldness - even took to caring momentarily for his child but soon found the task too daunting. Regardless, he still forsake sleep with every baby's cry for food.
It was in this circumstance then that perhaps in a stroke of misfortune, the work of a malevolent god, a fire broke out once again as the result of seurat's growing senility and slowly burned down the house, taking with it Georges, Luisa and her unborn child, Roberto, and even the adopted child that Seurat had accidentally adopted when Karen called the adoption agency to see if they would take back the baby.
Only Karen survived. But returning home to an ashen gutted frame of a house in which her friends and family had all died, she persevered for a day. enough even to clean up the house but as her memories took a hold of her she spiralled deeper and deeper into depression, manifesting in a sad motion of tossing a sack of potatoes into the air as though it were a child. And by the end of a wek a second act of diving intervention had joined Karen with her loved ones. And the house rang empty.
that's it for now folks, everything that I described above ACTUALLY HAPPENED
...
IN GAME
A DEMAIN MES AMIS
-Viet
As it is i've not been on the internet much (are pigs flying too?) no reader, it's simply been because of the thanksgiving weekend and my sister's come back down and we all had a grea deal of fun watching the office and just general cajoling with or at her expense. (Fix global warming?) Reader shut the fuck up, i'm not on the internet that much.
(...)
Fine, I concede the point but what I HAVE been doing is playing a great deal of the sims 2
(?)
The sims 2 is, well the sims 2 but since you already know i think i'll just tell you what's been going on.
when everything began it was initially just sissy jimenez, roberto jimenez, her husband, and albert jimenez, her friend. now as it was, I set it up so that she had double chemistry with her friend, and none with her husband which i argue is because he's dyed his hair and failed to keep up his weight.
SO EFFECTIVE was this technique that literally the moment i began playing the two of them hit off an adulterous relation just as the camera zoomed in. A long while after (Roberto was reclusive, he seldom left his room) Roberto discovered the two of them making out and in a fit of rage (his actions controlled by me) he broke off his marriage with Sissy and threw her out of the house. Sissy moved back in, at Albert's insistence and together they had a few good months of a relationship during which time Roberto remained (understandably) bitter that his aspiration of becoming a family man had been dashed before his very eyes.
He cried a great deal.
Finally he (wisely) decided to move out of where his old friend and his ex-girlfriend were banging each night within close hearing range of his bedroom to room with his friend, Seurat Georges the cat burglar. Seurat never quite cared for Sissy, he found her too ambitious.
also she often forgot to install fire alarms. For unfortunately after marrying Albert for a good three months during which time he celebrated his 50th birthday, the malevolent hand of god (me) decided to silently break the fire alarm that could have saved poor Albert from a violent and flaming death. Sissy was very sad about this. But as it was she had a good support network and herself, a loner, she found it very easy to lose herself to her job as a lawyer.
Sissy was in fact, a most fantastic lawyer. While due at times to make mistakes of varying severity she exhibited an incredible resiliency to the pressures of making her way up in the cutthroat chain of modern justice. Many friends, a few teased lovers but no roomates and a rekindled relationship with Roberto kept Sissy afloat during these years, and even long after that when she continued to drink her youth potions, holding an engagement like a doggy treat in front of the ever-needy Roberto who - lured by the promise of starting a family with a woman he once loved - took after his opportunity with gusto.
Yes, Sissy was canny but in her defense, her job was at the utmost of her priorities, and eventually with each excitened and denied sexual urge in all of her male friends and her legitimate connections with her female ones, she worked her way up to be the district judge of SimCity, otherwise known as 'The Law'.
Meanwhile, as Sissy made for herself her ultimate ambitions, Roberto also was grappling with a moral dilemma of his own. His friend Georges was charismatic, outgoing, and ripped to the core with a confidence to show it and a beloved Border Collie named 'Killer' who often took to rolling around in puddles and asking people to play with him. Roberto was none of these things and despite all this Luisa, the maid, still took fancy to him.
A man having already suffered through an adultery, the prospect of cheating on his once-again beloved Sissy with another woman stank of too much irony for the family-man Roberto to endure, and yet he continued. She was kind, he noted, and unlike Sissy she did not much care that he was overweight and largely unattractive. Luisa was a blessing, and each day as she came to his house to clean up he got to know her better and better until one day she began hanging out at Roberto's place with increasing frequency. A moment of weeks later, they kissed. And as the wintertime wore down and the snow began to fall Roberto had his first sexual experience with Luisa, the one he'd been so vehemently denied by Sissy.
Soon after this he began to question seriously how to break off his engagement with Sissy. She was a good girl, yes, but she had cheated on him before. Broken their marriage to run off with his best friend and slept with him (loudly) even while he'd remained in the house. Roberto was hurt. But still, he was afraid to do so directly and having nothing left to do, he invited Sissy over one evening and when he knew that she was within full viewing range, kissed Luisa full on the mouth.
The ensuing argument involved fighting, poking, slapping, and tears that flew violently around the room and by the end of it, Roberto had broken off his engagement with Sissy in almost exactly the same fashion as she had so many years before. He proposed to Luisa immediately thereafter on the spot as Sissy left down the street and as she fumed long away, Luisa blushed bright with happiness and accepted Roberto's marriage proposal. Later that morning they were wed.
As for Seurat, he'd always maintained his mantle of quiet indifference from the madness that occurred around him. His existence before Roberto's arrival was one of quiet tranquility: he awoke each morning to eat, work out, play with Killer, then at night he went his way about the world working his way slowly up the crime chain. as it was though, the nature of his job made it difficult to explain what exactly it was that he did do for a living, but as Seurat rarely ventured outside his house, this mattered not. He was there when Roberto and Luisa began to hit it off. secretly he settled the notion in his mind that there was a great deal more chemistry between Luisa and him than Roberto and her but as Roberto had already had enough of that kind of shit to deal with, Seurat had held back and waited for the next girl to come along. As it was, this next girl came along in the form of the replacement maid they sent in to replace Luisa when she forfeited her regular duties as a housemaid to move in with Roberto and Seurat. While Seurat was quietly not entirely happy with the additional bed that had to be purchased, since Luisa had both her maid's training to guide her and her cleaning neuroses to drive her, there was little that Seurat could do to complain about how thoroughly she cleaned the apartment each day he and Roberto came home.
As for the replacement maid (named Karen) while Seurat was very aware that he had no chemistry with the girl, he was also very aware that he was coming very close to 50, having worked most of his life in poverty he was nearing the age where all one can do is think about how people will be expecting one to retire soon. Seurat had lived a small, enclosed life with few friends and even fewer good memories and in his desperation ( and perhaps wisdom) he threw himself with reckless abandon into pursuing the girl and faced with the presence of a ripped, charming, outgoing young man Karen soon too came to wed Seurat. It was the shared sentiment of the house that the maid they sent after Karen was simply far too homely for anyone to wed. Perhaps the maid service had caught on.
At this moment in our story for Georges and Roberto, all was happy and grand. But as a month past, Killer first succumbed to old age and died a quiet death in his doghouse. Seurat was out of the house at the time, but it is said that when told he mourned quietly in his stoic way, the death of his longest-lasting companion. Both of them seniors now, their younger wives had both taken to prenancy with the hopes of becoming doting parents to beautiful children which they imagined would bring them nothing but joy. The babies they DID bring though, brought about a great deal of sleepless nights and suffering voices that rang for attention and changed diapers. Karen in this situation showed her mettle by neglecting her mother's duties in favor of her work and an ever mindful Seurat took to caring for his newborn child between his naps and his dentures.
Luisa too took care of Seurat and Karen's child, even as her pregnancy progressed day by day she would rock Seurat's child softly to sleep, her maternal instincts strong enough even to inhabit the vacuum of affection created by Karen's irresponsibility. They all tried diligently. Roberto even - embarassed by his wife's coldness - even took to caring momentarily for his child but soon found the task too daunting. Regardless, he still forsake sleep with every baby's cry for food.
It was in this circumstance then that perhaps in a stroke of misfortune, the work of a malevolent god, a fire broke out once again as the result of seurat's growing senility and slowly burned down the house, taking with it Georges, Luisa and her unborn child, Roberto, and even the adopted child that Seurat had accidentally adopted when Karen called the adoption agency to see if they would take back the baby.
Only Karen survived. But returning home to an ashen gutted frame of a house in which her friends and family had all died, she persevered for a day. enough even to clean up the house but as her memories took a hold of her she spiralled deeper and deeper into depression, manifesting in a sad motion of tossing a sack of potatoes into the air as though it were a child. And by the end of a wek a second act of diving intervention had joined Karen with her loved ones. And the house rang empty.
that's it for now folks, everything that I described above ACTUALLY HAPPENED
...
IN GAME
A DEMAIN MES AMIS
-Viet
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
About Love
I do not believe in fate. Bee would like to believe that people are fated to be together but i've yet to see any evidence that anything in this world is not as a consequence of chance and the decisions we make in our lives.
See, it's nice to think that while you're in a relationship you were always fated to find each other and there's such thing as soulmates and what have you but when you're out of a relationship you realize how utterly bull that is. I mean seriously, this is all due to some cosmic plan? Fuck that. You are where you are not because of fate or stars but because you were lucky enough to find someone and you've worked to keep it working since then. There is no such thing as fate, only such things as people who try their best to get things to work and sometimes they succeed and they like to call it fate. But it's not.
there is no fate in this world, there's only the wily hand of chance that guides every aspect of our lives. To be lucky is everything, but even the lucky can't save themselves from failure. So accept things as they are. They're not the way they are because it was meant to be but rather as a consequence of the things that were and weren't done, the people that were and weren't there, the things that did and did not happen. You are lucky, people in relationships. And if you continue to be lucky it will be something grand. I wish you the best.
-Viet
See, it's nice to think that while you're in a relationship you were always fated to find each other and there's such thing as soulmates and what have you but when you're out of a relationship you realize how utterly bull that is. I mean seriously, this is all due to some cosmic plan? Fuck that. You are where you are not because of fate or stars but because you were lucky enough to find someone and you've worked to keep it working since then. There is no such thing as fate, only such things as people who try their best to get things to work and sometimes they succeed and they like to call it fate. But it's not.
there is no fate in this world, there's only the wily hand of chance that guides every aspect of our lives. To be lucky is everything, but even the lucky can't save themselves from failure. So accept things as they are. They're not the way they are because it was meant to be but rather as a consequence of the things that were and weren't done, the people that were and weren't there, the things that did and did not happen. You are lucky, people in relationships. And if you continue to be lucky it will be something grand. I wish you the best.
-Viet
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