I swear it was a joke when I started that blog. Maybe not like a complete joke, since it was half school thing, but I swear I wasn’t thinking of such consequences. I just wanted to share a laugh with my fairly sensible English class. I don’t like to say this, but I can write. I wrote stuff about being deaf and put “I’m deaf” in the favorite music section of my profile. I made up posts about how people pity me because I’m deaf and can’t enjoy music but I hate it because I don’t even know what music is, complete with a brilliant analogy of orgasm, saying that you don’t know orgasm until you’ve had sex. I made up several posts about being deaf until someone accidentally saw my fake journal entries and posted some comments of hope. I was laughing to death and so were several other people. Then it all got sparked up. Most people would have thought “okay, this is enough” by the time they got comments like “My son is deaf too. I hope you don’t lose your faith” blah blah. It didn’t occur to me, sadly. I made up some brilliant posts about how I got hit by a car because I couldn’t hear. Mind you, those were some brilliant writing. They sure deceived lots of people. See, it wasn’t really realistic at all. That’s how I realized people are such stupid creatures. It got all serious and I earned some e-fame. Oh those days. Tweeting was really too much since “twitter” is a word about sound. So instead a publication company suggested a book deal. By this time, my English classmates were scolding me harshly with jealousy, and my average had jumped to a 99. My teacher was amazed. “How did you manage that?” he asked. “It doesn’t even sound that real!” No, it didn’t. That’s what amused me when people actually believed that I was deaf. The thing is, you always hear about deaf people being all miserable about themselves on the TV, but they’re really not. Deafness isn’t half bad as blindness, and blindness isn’t half bad as being paralyzed. You can figure out what people are saying, you just have to be extra careful. Anyway, I had to make sure that no one who knows me pops onto my blog and post comments like “She isnt def I no her from school! This blog is a joke!!!!” Then I started acting deaf occasionally. It was a joke too, I assure you. “Speak up, I can’t hear, duh” kind of thing.
It was all that neuroscience shit that made me really deaf. I woke up one day—I don’t know what happened, since my perception is all changed and stuff—and I was living a normal day. Well, I guess it was a really silent day. But really, it was a good day. No one bothered me with anything, and I was having some serious relaxation time. Then mom took me to the hospital for, really, no reason, and the doctor said I had a neurotic disorder that made the concept of sound disappear within my brain (BS in my opinion. Tranquility is not a disability).
So apparently, I am deaf. But I don’t know it, it’s just that everyone told me I was deaf. Since my brain no longer has any idea about what hearing is, I don’t remember what it was like before losing my ability to hear. If I do, I don’t understand it. Now I’m real deaf. So you can believe that the blog is real. This is some crazy shit, what happened to me.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
This Indulgence Must End
Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s just that I go to a private school. Or maybe it’s just America (which probably is the case). But I find my generation extremely indulged.
People around me spend. Spend ravishly. Spend as if they didn’t know what recession means. My best friend—no offense to him—collectively got more than $1500 alone for Christmas. I don’t see the justification in it. Yes, he is the designated valedictorian. Well, I still don’t see the justification in $1500 for no reason. I have been a valedictorian before, and I have gotten nothing physical for it. $1500? Damned if my parents will ever spend that much money on me at a time.
I see justification in having a laptop, a car, an iPod, and a cell phone. That’s about as much justification I can figure for anyone of my age. Two laptops, one of them a 17” MacBook Pro, are not justifiable. Four iPods and an iPhone are not justifiable. A high-end compact camera and an SLR (plus multiple lenses, mind you) are not justifiable.
When I make a purchase that is over $100 or anything electronics, I have to think for an extremely long time, like this laptop I am researching for over four months now.
Whereas, my friends just seemed to find it incomprehensible that I was afraid my dad would not afford a new iPod for me.
My English class had to write a rather personal essay a few weeks ago, and we exchanged it in class and made notes to each other's essay. This guy's essay—he's new—particularly touched me, even though it was obviously written in a massive hurry and had no organization whatsoever (it was in fact the in-class writing exercise done the previous day). He had a paragraph of how scary it was to go to the doctor when he was little. Once, he had endured a visit to the doctor maturely, and his mom brought him to the dollar shop and got $4 worth of toy for him. Ten years later, he recalls the incident nostalgically and appreciates the fact that his mom spend $4 for him out of her not-very-thick wallet.
I was glad to find out not everyone around me was terrifyingly rich.
I feel most enraged when I see that art students don't do anything and have everything that they don't deserve. I feel most comforted by the fact that they will live in financial misery when they are out of college. But then I feel bad again because they will 1)inherit a shitload of money and 2)marry a rich guy, probably.
But then I should be able to spend loads of money while my parents are alive because they declared that my brother and I are not getting any property from them. But my brother is a failure and he probably needs that money.
Being considerate requires misery.
Now there's one more reason for me to be pessimistic.
So this is the story of the Panic of 2009. May I feel like a bitch now?
People around me spend. Spend ravishly. Spend as if they didn’t know what recession means. My best friend—no offense to him—collectively got more than $1500 alone for Christmas. I don’t see the justification in it. Yes, he is the designated valedictorian. Well, I still don’t see the justification in $1500 for no reason. I have been a valedictorian before, and I have gotten nothing physical for it. $1500? Damned if my parents will ever spend that much money on me at a time.
I see justification in having a laptop, a car, an iPod, and a cell phone. That’s about as much justification I can figure for anyone of my age. Two laptops, one of them a 17” MacBook Pro, are not justifiable. Four iPods and an iPhone are not justifiable. A high-end compact camera and an SLR (plus multiple lenses, mind you) are not justifiable.
When I make a purchase that is over $100 or anything electronics, I have to think for an extremely long time, like this laptop I am researching for over four months now.
Whereas, my friends just seemed to find it incomprehensible that I was afraid my dad would not afford a new iPod for me.
My English class had to write a rather personal essay a few weeks ago, and we exchanged it in class and made notes to each other's essay. This guy's essay—he's new—particularly touched me, even though it was obviously written in a massive hurry and had no organization whatsoever (it was in fact the in-class writing exercise done the previous day). He had a paragraph of how scary it was to go to the doctor when he was little. Once, he had endured a visit to the doctor maturely, and his mom brought him to the dollar shop and got $4 worth of toy for him. Ten years later, he recalls the incident nostalgically and appreciates the fact that his mom spend $4 for him out of her not-very-thick wallet.
I was glad to find out not everyone around me was terrifyingly rich.
I feel most enraged when I see that art students don't do anything and have everything that they don't deserve. I feel most comforted by the fact that they will live in financial misery when they are out of college. But then I feel bad again because they will 1)inherit a shitload of money and 2)marry a rich guy, probably.
But then I should be able to spend loads of money while my parents are alive because they declared that my brother and I are not getting any property from them. But my brother is a failure and he probably needs that money.
Being considerate requires misery.
Now there's one more reason for me to be pessimistic.
So this is the story of the Panic of 2009. May I feel like a bitch now?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Backwards Narrative (draft)
...On which Mr. Maddox has made extensive comments now. So it will be improved.
I walked the direction my back was facing, and so were all the people in the hallway. There were people putting books in their lockers, people pulling books from their lockers. Occasionally, a sheet of paper or two would be vitalized on its own accord and fly into hands and binders of people. If someone was creepy enough to notice it, they would have seen the history handout in my hands iron itself out gradually but perfectly. A few snow flakes levitated and were sucked into the grey sky. No one was careful enough to stop and observe this extraordinary phenomenon. Instead, people were all walking backwards casually. Only they weren’t. No one ran into someone else. We are all much trained in walking backwards.
I kept walking. I didn’t have to turn around to see there was a staircase. It came naturally to me, although I did look down while I was walking (backwards) up the stairs.
Now, forgive my excessive usage of the word “backwards.”
But I did keep walking backwards and went into a classroom. It was brightly lit. As I walked in, I handed the just-copied warm handout back into Mr. Stanton’s hands. The handout, just by pure coincidence, happened to situate exactly on top of other handouts. Two sheets of stapled notebook paper flung themselves into my hands. I identified it to be the essay for the test I have not taken yet (maybe I have). I put it inside a stapler and pressed it. The stapler not only unstapled the essay and swallowed the staple, but also miraculously filled up the little holes on the paper. I walked in a few more steps, and the plastic recycling can tossed up a wrinkled ball of paper in the air. I caught it with probably the least amount of motion physically needed to catch a ball of paper. Paper indeed acquires the habit of ironing itself perfectly in my hands, and the ball was no exception. It unfolded and unwrinkled to reveal its true halfway-written paragraph identity.
Holding my essay and now flat paragraph, I went to my seat in the corner. I made a few awkward, unnecessary motions to unsettle the backpack from my shoulders. I dropped it on the floor in a way that probably hurt my backbones. I sat down, pulled out a pen, and started un-scribbling the essay portion of the test that was in my hands. By un-scribbling, I refer to the curious capability of my pen to suck up the ink already smeared into the paper.
When I was almost done whiting out the first page of the essay, I started giggling for no reason, and so did half dozen others in the room. I was grasped by a strong, subconscious desire to take a look at Christine, my eccentric classmate. Half the class started to laugh out loud, and so did I. I turned to Christine’s direction. Oh, indeed! She was typing on a typewriter. A big old typewriter with a bell and the platform and everything. How she managed to fit that inside her bookbag I don’t know. It should have weighed good ten pounds. The whole class started laughing out loud. The laughter got louder and maniac. Then it was suddenly silent.
Ding.
Christine’s typewriter announced the end of a line, rather loudly. The class started laughing again. Christine didn’t even seem to care. She kept un-typing her essay with a very straight face. We were still all laughing maniacally. Someone said something out loud incomprehensibly. Then we all went silent, forgot about Christine’s typewriter, and worried about the test.
When the bell rang, the now perfectly blank notebook paper attached itself to the notebook, which I shoved inside my bookbag. With another awkward motion, I threw it around my shoulders and walked outside the classroom, backwards.
I walked the direction my back was facing, and so were all the people in the hallway. There were people putting books in their lockers, people pulling books from their lockers. Occasionally, a sheet of paper or two would be vitalized on its own accord and fly into hands and binders of people. If someone was creepy enough to notice it, they would have seen the history handout in my hands iron itself out gradually but perfectly. A few snow flakes levitated and were sucked into the grey sky. No one was careful enough to stop and observe this extraordinary phenomenon. Instead, people were all walking backwards casually. Only they weren’t. No one ran into someone else. We are all much trained in walking backwards.
I kept walking. I didn’t have to turn around to see there was a staircase. It came naturally to me, although I did look down while I was walking (backwards) up the stairs.
Now, forgive my excessive usage of the word “backwards.”
But I did keep walking backwards and went into a classroom. It was brightly lit. As I walked in, I handed the just-copied warm handout back into Mr. Stanton’s hands. The handout, just by pure coincidence, happened to situate exactly on top of other handouts. Two sheets of stapled notebook paper flung themselves into my hands. I identified it to be the essay for the test I have not taken yet (maybe I have). I put it inside a stapler and pressed it. The stapler not only unstapled the essay and swallowed the staple, but also miraculously filled up the little holes on the paper. I walked in a few more steps, and the plastic recycling can tossed up a wrinkled ball of paper in the air. I caught it with probably the least amount of motion physically needed to catch a ball of paper. Paper indeed acquires the habit of ironing itself perfectly in my hands, and the ball was no exception. It unfolded and unwrinkled to reveal its true halfway-written paragraph identity.
Holding my essay and now flat paragraph, I went to my seat in the corner. I made a few awkward, unnecessary motions to unsettle the backpack from my shoulders. I dropped it on the floor in a way that probably hurt my backbones. I sat down, pulled out a pen, and started un-scribbling the essay portion of the test that was in my hands. By un-scribbling, I refer to the curious capability of my pen to suck up the ink already smeared into the paper.
When I was almost done whiting out the first page of the essay, I started giggling for no reason, and so did half dozen others in the room. I was grasped by a strong, subconscious desire to take a look at Christine, my eccentric classmate. Half the class started to laugh out loud, and so did I. I turned to Christine’s direction. Oh, indeed! She was typing on a typewriter. A big old typewriter with a bell and the platform and everything. How she managed to fit that inside her bookbag I don’t know. It should have weighed good ten pounds. The whole class started laughing out loud. The laughter got louder and maniac. Then it was suddenly silent.
Ding.
Christine’s typewriter announced the end of a line, rather loudly. The class started laughing again. Christine didn’t even seem to care. She kept un-typing her essay with a very straight face. We were still all laughing maniacally. Someone said something out loud incomprehensibly. Then we all went silent, forgot about Christine’s typewriter, and worried about the test.
When the bell rang, the now perfectly blank notebook paper attached itself to the notebook, which I shoved inside my bookbag. With another awkward motion, I threw it around my shoulders and walked outside the classroom, backwards.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
