Winter

... has been crazy. Not sure why, it just has been.

I don't know how much longer I'll be continuing this kind of blog, I have been finding that I have little to say lately. I guess that's the benefit of finally seeing my friends again - when I talk with people IRL I find less need to write about the things that are on my mind.

This isn't to say that I'm going to give up writing altogether, I just think that I'll spend more time on my cooking blog and may only update this one when I have the random urge to post something non-food related. Who knows what I'll end up doing.

Why Does Modern Music Make No Sense?

There used to be a time when popular music told a story. When you heard a song come on the radio, you could be transported to a place that was beloved and good, where emotions welled forth from a bottomless well and nothing was impossible. Whether the song was something simple and silly, like "Yellow Submarine" and "Brand New Key", or if it was meaningful and romantic like "When I Fall In Love" and As Long As I Live", songs had a deepness and a glow that has vanished in popular music today.

While one can find powerful songs on occasion through the various sub genres and obscure artists, nothing that the radio stations play today holds the kernel of truth that was present in the songs of years past. Instead, today's music is about slutty dancing, money, sex, drugs, and the various combinations thereof. I don't care about how gangsta you think you are, and I don't care about how you waste money on things which are of no benefit to the rest of humanity.



Will always be better than

Old Poems I've Found In My Room

Darkness
Spiraling towards the abyss
That remains in our mind.
Uneasiness settles
Tentatively reach out
Stroke the night
Feel it on your skin.
Embrace the blackness
And forget.
Nothing to fear
To love or to hate
Just empty solitude
In the warm onyx breeze
Contentment yours.

Just as you learn
To accept tranquility
In comes paralyzing
Cold and brutal daggers of
Light.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Come a little closer darling
Let me hold you in my arms
For when you are beside me
My soul begins to warm

Basking in the glow
Of happiness within
To stay this way forever
I'd give anything to win.

I try to act all nonchalant
But I feel you see right through me
You seem to read my very thought
On how my emotions yearn to be free

I don't understand what it is you do
To make my mask come all unglued
Whatever it is, please don't stop
For nothing else could ever top.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A pause as our lives flow quickly on by:
Do we enjoy the love and times we share?
Savor each moment and show how we care?
Or is it squandered then left out to die,
And we end up confused and asking "why"?
Instead of laying our heart and soul bare
We build up walls without doors, hardly fair
To show who we are we're too scared to try.

Then lucky am I to have someone who
Helps set me free, to have myself be true.
Knowing each other in the love we give
Understanding for holdups we now have
A deeper connection, a soothing salve,
Letting us be able to love and live.

I Don't Trust Food Reviews

I used to trust sites like Yelp to find good food close by, but experiences have shown that I really need to do a deeper analysis of who is reviewing the restaurant and what they are saying versus what I should interpret their posting to mean.
For example, I recently visited two different thai restaurants with a date - Bamboo Thai and Bangkok Spices. Both of these places had the same rating (4 out of 5 stars), with one deserving a 5 and the other, a 3. I got the same dish at both of these restaurants, so it wasn't a matter of preferring one type of thai curry over the other, it was a matter of flavor.
The first place I visited was Bangkok Spices, which is in an old Pizza Hut building on El Cajon Blvd. My date and I started out with the Tom Kah Soup, a coconut soup with a large amount of veggies which managed to be both sweet and spicy. I noticed many reviewers complained about a sheen of red chili oil on the soup, but I've accepted this to be standard on Thai and other SE Asian soups, and all it takes is a quick stir to make everything even and delicious. I got the Musman curry at a 4 out of 10,
and my date got the Drunken Noodles (don't remember the spice level),

both dishes vegetarian. We got so much food that I had enough leftover curry for two meals, and it was so good that I didn't mind. The vegetables were cooked just right, and the curry was so flavorful that I felt sad to ask for a box instead of finishing it. My date assures me that his drunken noodles were really good too, but I wouldn't know as I was too busy enjoying my own food to really test his (I only snuck a couple of bites). I know that the reason that Bangkok Spices got a 4 instead of a 5 is because of the service, but for an asian restaurant the service was actually pretty good. Besides, I'd take good food and bad service over bad food and good service any day.


Our next thai excursion was to Bamboo Thai Cuisine, located in a strip mall on University Ave. I was very hungry by the time we got to the restaurant, so it is saying something when I say I was unimpressed, as things tend to taste much better when I haven't eaten. I got the Musman curry again at a 4 out of 10, and the date got yellow curry fried rice, and both of us felt let down with our meal, as both were rather bland and unimpressive. I didn't care to try his (which is again saying something, as I am a notorious food thief), but my vegetables were overcooked (carrots should never be soggy) and the curry sauce was incredibly bland, no flavor and little heat. I would expect this from a mediocre yellow curry, but not my beloved Musman!! They then gave us this weird complimentary dessert, which was sweet but again not very flavorful. I would give them a 3 in hopes that this was just a bad night on their part, but I have no interest in testing that theory with a return trip.

My later readings of reviews led me to the conclusion that those giving high ratings were white people who didn't eat much Thai food before and therefore found this place flavorful and full of friendly staff. As I said before, I don't care about service, because as long as you serve me my food warm then you are getting a good tip, everything else is unnecessary. I'd rather be talking with my company and enjoying my food, not answering a waiter's annoying questions every few minutes.

This compared with my Indian food experiences has led me to the conclusion that people on the internet are not to be trusted, and care must be taken when selecting places for yummy food.

I am Not My Vagina

The Vagina Monologues is being performed on campus again (they seem to do this every semester), and so every day on my way to classes I am barraged by women standing in booths, yelling at me and my fellow classmates things like "love your vaginas" or "save the vaginas", referring to low self esteem and violence against women I presume. While I understand that the performance is meant to help women learn to love their bodies and to help them feel a sense of empowerment, I cannot help but feel ire towards these women. My intense feelings of frustration and anger towards their message can be best summarized in one phrase, stated so bluntly in the title of this post:

I am not my vagina.

No one is. To say that the one thing that identifies and unifies women is our genitalia is not only short sighted, but misogynistic as well. Yes, I just called the feminists in charge of The Vagina Monologues misogynists, and I feel I have a good reason. Not only are they completely ignoring the narratives of women without vaginas and the men who are born with them, but they are telling their audiences that the only real things that matter are what is between our legs. It is bad enough that society tries to define me by their rigid roles of gender, the last thing I need is for these alleged feminists to help them along. I may be lucky in that I identify as the gender I was assigned, but as any trans person could attest to, the presence of my vagina has little or nothing to do with my identification as a woman. Its presence may assist the cis-centric public in their supposed need to validate my chosen identity, but it has no sway in how I see myself. If I woke up tomorrow with a penis and a y chromosome, I would still see myself as a woman, and more importantly, I would still see myself as me. To claim that we as humans are so limited in our self expression that we have to tie all sense of identity to our genitalia is shameful, and I hope that no one feels that their gender is all that defines them.

To then argue that my vagina automatically gives me a shared commonality with all other vagina possessors is a fallacy of the most ghastly kind. I am more than my gender. While you may look at me and rightly assume my female status by my feminine attributes, those who care to know me can attest that I am so much more than that. I may be a vagina possessing woman, but I am also a bookworm. A crocheter. A sci fi fan. A thrift store bargain lover. An ice cream aficionado. An assault survivor. A vegetarian. A pirate supporter in the epic Pirate v Ninja debate. A Hindu. A viral video lover. A devourer of thai food. A believer of ghosts. A sudoku champion. A statue collector. A listener of blues and big band music. A blogger. A Californian. A foreign movie watcher. A webcomic reader. An occasional drinker of Southern Comfort. An environmentalist. A best friend. A realistic optimist. A pro-choicer. A smart blonde. A future teacher. A nerd. A reader of romance novels. And so much more.

None of these things require or in the slightest way involve my possession of a vagina. So please, people of The Vagina Monologues, stop assuming that my vagina is my one defining quality. I don't have to love my vagina to love who I am.

And for the record, my vagina does not sing, or wear hats, or feel emotions or speak or feel the need to be celebrated. It is not the Bermuda Triangle. It is not a flower. It is just a minor part of my body, and it will never be the one thing that defines me as who I am.

I am not my vagina

I am Back!

It has been a long trip my friends, but I am glad to say that I have been granted a temporary freedom from writing papers, and so I am ready to celebrate by, you guessed it- MORE WRITING!!

I am weird, I completely understand. :)

The next few days will be filled with things that I've scribbled thoughts about while in the midst of paper extravaganzas, and once things get caught up I'll be able to write about things as they come once again. Not that anyone really cares, but I just felt that giving a heads up would be a nice thing to do.