SPIDER: In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of

Dear cold weather lovers,

I'm starting to hate the cold weather; the dormant Viet genes are starting to kick in. Notice that all the major settlements of Viet people in the U.S. happen to be in the more tropical regions. So this re-release is inspired by my crappy heater that I probably won't ever be able to get fixed properly. The problem is that about every 5th time it turn on, the air conditioner also kicks on with it, canceling the warmth. The maintenance guy can only see that the heater is working when he comes out to try to fix it.

Even if he were to try to fix the odd times that the AC turns on with the heat, there would be no way to see if his work was successful, since the heat comes on 4 out of 5 times, and he would leave when he feels it blowing hot air. So I've resorted to manually turning on and off the heat, checking after each time that the air is warm.

Anyway, the other reason for this specific re-release is that it mentions my brief, 3-year stint in Brooklyn, NY. A friend had just posted a picture of her sixth grade class on Facebook, and had tagged me as an MIA. Rightly so, because I wasn't in Brooklyn for 6th grade; I was there for 7th through 9th.

Also a couple of peeps from middle school added me on Facebook. So if you're reading this, cheers. This was the secret I've been keeping from you all those years.

--

Tue, Nov 7, 2009

I hate Jay-Z by the way. Every time I hear his voice, I change the radio station. Except when it's Big Pimpin because my favorite group from the South, UGK, are on there too. So I'll quote a couple of lyrics when it serves my purpose even if I think he is overrated.

This morning was the first time my heater turned on. I woke up when it felt like icicles were dangling off that special place underneath my blanket. The apartment's old, and the central heating is even older. The thermostat read '65'. My ass--it was like more like 55. Though cheapness has been ingrained and beaten into me by my parents, I'm not that cheap; I had set the temperature for 70. I had to hit the wall around the heater to get it to turn on. Corporal punishment does work.

The heat was on for 2 hours and still the thermostat didn't increase but 2 degrees. My apartment is about 850 sq ft, but it still shouldn't take that long.

And so it reminded me of my internment (imprisonment) in New York (because it's cold as hell there, if hell is cold). I won't go into detail about how it came about, but long story short, it was because of Dad.

New York in TV is nothing like it is in real life. It sucks to live there when you're poor. It sucks when you're poor and you came from Houston, where the cost of living is so much less. It sucks when you're 12 and going through puberty and you're forced to endure, 'Where are your cowboy boots?' by a bunch of idiot Brooklyn kids.

'If you don't like it so much here, why don't you go back to Texas?'

'MF, I would if I could. I didn't choose this f--king life. I didn't choose this f--king city.'

Those words were to foreshadow the internal conflict I had experienced a few months back. But at least this time around, I did have a choice, and I chose to leave. That's why I'm in Dallas. I love Houston, but you have to leave things that cause you to die inside, even if they are your blood.

In New York, they don't have central air conditioning or central heating in residences. Only large supermarkets have central temperature control. For people not in Texas and its neighboring states, what is 'central temperature control'? It's where you have a thermostat that you set to control the temperature (both hot and cold) for the entire apartment or floor. It is an utterly foreign concept for New Yorkers.

So what does New York do for temperature control? They have radiators and window units. It's the dark ages up there. Apartments with central temperature start at 2 million, because the ones that cost 1 million are still 600 sq foot sh-tholes.

Window AC units are the same ones you see in the ghetto part of Houston, like on those wooden houses on Wheeler facing the University of Houston. Radiators? I've never seen a radiator south of the Mason-Dixon line. It looks like many loops of cast iron that are connected to two hot water pipes. To turn the sucker on, you actually open the 'faucet' to let the hot water flow into the loops. Then the heat starts to 'radiate' into the room.

As antiquated as it sounds, it actually works well, except that it's an extreme safety hazard. It would certainly heat up a room in less than two hours. Just don't try to cook an egg on it, as you'll get your daily requirements of iron and lead from the paint that keeps peeling off.

---

My time in Brooklyn was probably one of the most difficult times of my life. Going through puberty is unquestionably not very fun. It's doubly difficult moving to another place, trying to start a new group of friends when you are an outsider and people laugh when you say ya'll (it feels odd to actually type ya'll, but I say it all the time). It was a very socially awkward time.

Most would argue that I'm still socially awkward, which I won't entirely deny. But I'll use my patented feel-good mantra (that I say in my head), 'Shut up, I'm a doctor, and I make more money than you do.' And if I make less, I'll say, 'Shut up, you bourgeois trash,' and run home with my tail between my legs. The mantra only works if you make a salary in the upper quartile.

I'sa Playa

Misogynists anonymous,

That is the title of the track. It happened to be on a solo album by Pimp C back in the day and was re-released in a Greatest Hits CD, which thankfully was available in Amazon's MP3 store. The reason why I couldn't find it was because the original track had some girl singing the hook, while the more popular version (the only version I've heard) was with Z-Ro's killer hook.

The lyrics of more obscure songs follow the theory of cancer: lyrics websites copy other websites carelessly without considering the actual song, and eventually all their lyrics end up the same and flawed. So I searched for the hook, the only thing I remembered, but I couldn't find it because no website had the current hook. That is until now.

So after listening to the hook about 20 times, this is what I believe it to be:

Z-Ro

I'sa playa, I'sa mac

I love gettin [with] these ladies with not more than my paper stash

Now rule once, get your cash on, M-O-B

Less paper in my pocket, my n*gga P-I-M-P

Homie don't hate me mayne*, just hate the game

The only reason your woman diggin me cuz I play with thangs

Don't take it personal, my n*gga, I don't love her, I'm a playa

She just gonna keep me company while get nipped it(?) as I lay her

I'm still not entirely sure about the last line. You can listen to the complete song via Youtube (which is how I found the song). And the chopped and screwed version too. Notice when Twista is screwed (slowed down), he sounds like a normal person.

My favorite verse of the song (Pimp C):

But me, I lick ya where he don't, and suck real hard on yo nipple

My game is sharp as a sickle, she love my pickle

And if you gave her a dime, n*gga she gave me a nickel

It is almost a limerick! Okay, maybe not.

--

The unfortunate thing that happens to me when I listen to rap is that I feel slightly guilty. It isn't because of lack of entitlement. I moved to the suburbs but I'm from the ghetto, so I do relate to the songs from personal experience. And it's not like I bought a grill from Johnny Dang** and Paul Wall and am out pimping a throwback jersey and Astros ballcap with all white Air Force Ones; I know my place and the only person I try to emulate is the man I aim to be.

The guilt is that some of these songs are so misogynistic, or hateful of women. At the very least, they idealize women as objects of conquests. And when conquered, the women become immortalized as the losers in 'Playa' Ballads, such as the above.

So here's another bit of cognitive dissonance of mine (though significantly less dissonant than the hate-yourself-for-sake-of-family variety): How can I be the man I want to be when I listen to music which are not of my values?

Right now, it appears that I'm ignoring the songs' messages while mellowing on the throwback beats. But I think there may come a time when I retire all my UGK and Tupac. Some evidence to this prediction is that I'm beginning to enjoy classic light rock because I'm beginning to relate to it more.

--

*stylized southern spelling of 'man'

**Johnny Dang is hilarious, a jeweler to the stars. Someone (not me) needs to write a Wikipedia article on that guy. And to clarify the 'oriental', he's Viet and might be my cousin.

Do You Know This Song?

Dear UGK fanatics,

I first heard this song back in the summer of 2004. The reason I remember it was that particular summer was because it was my first month in college, and I was still very impressionable and infinitely less jaded. They were better times. I remember sitting in the rickety, old, brown, broken auditorium 'desks' of the Lamar Fleming building taking Gen Chem II at U of H. The first time I sat in that auditorium, I thought, 'This is a college classroom? I had better desks back at my ghetto high school.' Though I was much lighter back then, it was atrociously difficult to sit in those chairs, much less learn anything.

Like any college student, I listened to tunes between classes (and while in class sometimes). But unlike most, I didn't have an iPod; I had a minidisc player (Sony’s update to the cassette Walkman) with the ability to catch FM stations, and it was always tuned to my favorite hip-hop station ever, 97.9 the BOX. The whole cast of the Mad Hatta Mornin’ Show on 97.9 is hilarious, especially J-Mac from Con-row. Ricky Smiley from the 97.9 the Beat, the sister station in Dallas, has nothing on Mad Hatta.

So this song came on one day that freshman summer, and I instantly recognized Pimp C's unmistakable voice. As I listened to him ‘puttin it down hard’, I had tingles up my spine. There’s nothing like Pimp C’s nasty lyricism ('Take it off, chick, bend over, let me see it...') which are rapped country-style in tune to some bad-ass old-school beat. This particular song echoed the voice he had when he was just starting out in the 90s, a young buck who still had to catch his breath while spitting out killer rhymes. Bun B, the other half of the Underground Kingz, was as stellar as ever, and their styles complement each other marvelously. As I listen to their six CDs on my iPod Nano (I upgraded as the minidisc is pretty much defunct), I’m continually astounded that they can make such graphic sexual and violent references but still integrate it seamlessly into their songs. Whereas some rappers use smut for the sake of smut, UGK uses it to make you think. Of course not as much as Tupac (Brenda's Got a Baby), but more so than any Soulja Boy (whose Crank That is a song full of disgusting sexual references) or the other rappers on the radio today.

Anyway, that’s my little homage to my favorite group from the South. RIP Pimp C. I will forever be Third Coast made

Though it was an undeniable hit that summer, I’m frustrated that I can’t find any reference to that song. For those scorching months when it came on 97.9, the only decent urban station (104.9 KPTY is now defunct, taken over by some Spanish station), I would crank up the volume and enjoy some lyrics that I could never repeat in public. Very few people would appreciate an Asian dorky male doing karaoke to some stupendously explicit lyrics. One of their CDs actually contains a ‘STRONG LANGUAGE SEXUAL + VIOLENT CONTENT’ appendage underneath the ubiquitous 'Parental Advisory' label. That was the first time I ever saw that disclaimer, and I suppose it is warranted.

After that summer, I only heard it only 3 times since. About a month ago, while driving back up to Dallas, I was jamming to the aforementioned station. They oftentimes play old-school classics, and when I heard the unmistakable voice of Pimp C, I naturally turned up the volume. As always, the lyrics were supremely dirty but magically melodic. It was in the have-to-catch-my-breath voice, so I had thought it was one of UGK’s older songs, but then the hook came on that had been ingrained in my memory (but unfortunately, the words escape me). This is what I remember, and after 10 hours of googling the fragments over the past 5 years, I still don’t know the name of the song or where I can find it.

The hook by Bun B (or maybe Z-Ro?):
I’z a playa, I’z a mac. I love getting girls wit not nothin more than my paper stash…M-O-B…P-I-M-P. Man, don’t hate me, playa, hate the game…the only reason yo woman love me cuz I play wit them thangs(?)…lay her…

There’s another artist in the song, and I think the track is on his CD (since they don’t appear on the UGK CDs), but I don’t know his name.

So to all you hardcore UGK fans (or those with excellent Googling skills), what is the name of the song, and where can I find it? I have never bought a CD single, but I would spend $20 for this one track.
--

Update: I had composed this post a few weeks ago. Since then, I've found the song and downloaded it via Amazon MP3). The parts of the hook are nowhere near what I remembered.

Details tomorrow.

Shopper at Walmart - m4w - 22

'Dear cute brunette in the black designer frames and wool sweater,

'Did we have something going on at the Walmart on [address deleted]? I had passed you while going to electronics the first time and you looked at my face, and then you did the thing that most guys normally do, that is look down and check the package.

‘Were you looking at my Droid which I had holstered, or was it something else? Like my watch, perhaps? Or something more central? Just letting you know that I caught you looking!

‘A few minutes later, I came back to frozen foods because I forgot to get something. And when that box of indeterminate-ness (I forget what it was because all I could think about was you) dropped from the shelf, it was entirely by accident, but my subconscious may have had something to do with it. I leaned over to pick it up, but as I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, I couldn’t tell if you were checking me out again. If you did sneak another peek, did you like what you see?

‘If perchance, you were thinking, “wtf is this douchebag doing in a white tee and hoodie with pulled-up sleeves with some brick hanging off his right hip,” then please ignore this message.

‘Otherwise, call me at (832) 555-2134*. It’s a Houston area code, but I’m all Dallas, baby.’
--

I’m almost tempted to post this on missed connections via craigslist. As you might know from wasting time reading the posts, they're not all entirely serious, like this one, where the poster writes

You live 3rd Floor at Seville Lofts, Uptown/Oaklawn. Saturday Jan 23 around 3:30-5pm, I saw you blowing someone then he [expletive deleted] you for about an hour. You were right in front of your window, patio door and on your couch the entire time. Thanks for the great show! Tell me something about what happened. I'd love to watch you two go at it again.

I googled Seville Lofts, and it's not that far away (I'm hoping the 'm4m'** in the title was a typo). Then I realized I have internet... and I searched for ways not to be a creepy (and possibly gay) stalker.

And about the white tee and hoodie, in my defense, the Redbox finally had Inglourious Basterds and Burn after Reading in stock, so I had to haul ass to get there before someone else got it. Inglourious Basterds was amazing. I absolutely love Quentin Tarantino, but not in a m4m kind of way. In contrast, I love Melanie Laurent in every kind of way possible. I must learn French!

--
*a real number, just not my number.
**man for man

The Finger Snap

Dear snappers of fingers,

I was never a waiter, and I pray that I’ll never have to be a waiter. That job can be more difficult than my Monday nights, and the compensation is far less. Plus, people snap their fingers at waiters to get their attention. The worst I get is the lean over the counter, the scan of the pharmacy (which instead of just looking left and right with their eyes, they insist on moving their whole head to make a grand show), and the snide, ‘So you’re the only one here, huh?’ or ‘So they left you all alone?’

Being a retail employee (a serf to the many wannabe kings, queens, princes, princesses and even the court jester), I have the utmost respect and courtesy to other retail employees when warranted. And so as long as it looks like they’re trying and not just sitting behind the counter playing with their iPhone or Droid or themselves, then I don’t mind waiting a bit. And I never snap my fingers at anyone because it is so incredibly rude, and my food probably would have an odd taste and smell.

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
I do bite my thumb, sir.
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?*

But I do snap my fingers though, but in private and as a means of celebration for little victories over the dismal-er part of life. It’s like when adolescents and people of the inner-city ilk (myself included) do the multi-part handshake (the handshake, the clasping of palms, the lean-in for the chest bump/hug, the release, and finally the finga snap) and finish with a finger snap that looks like the person is trying to light a match. I haven’t grown to think that this is childish just yet, though I do try to keep my finger snaps private as much as possible.

The lighting-of-a-match finger snap, that was formerly solely reserved as the finish of the coolest** way two guys can greet each other, has insidiously found its way into my everyday routine, like the Asian carp in the Great Lakes. The Asian carp is just happy where it is in its new environment, but people just don’t understand and are trying to suppress it. So the celebratory finger snap, like the Asian carp, will remain hidden until a time when it becomes an acceptable sign of victory, like the V-sign*** 2000 years ago.
--

*Romeo & Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 44-46.
**this is debatable. Some people are of the opinion that the multi-part handshake is just stupid. I happen to be of the opinion that the people of the former opinion are themselves stupid, and therefore have no grounds to call anyone else stupid.
***Supposedly, the V is the one in Caesar's 'Veni, vidi, vici', and he threw it up in victory and the trend caught on****. But over the centuries and millennia, the V has become utterly antiquated, but some presidents (our current one excluded) insisted on throwing it up in celebration (‘Mission Accomplished’!). Or maybe he was trying to throw up the ‘dubya’?

****I made this up.

Senior Rings

Dear Saved By the Bell fans,

Balfour’s business model depends primarily on school pride and the popularity that exists only amongst seniors during their last year in school. Fortunately for them, it works enough to pry a couple hundred from enough cash-strapped students to make it somewhat profitable. They did not get anything from me; all my cash went to one of the only two adornments a guy can wear without question: the wristwatch. The other adornment is the circlet of death typically worn on the finger next to the pinky on the left hand. Let us have a moment of silence for our fallen comrades. May their mates forgive them their foibles and not nag them too terribly much.

I had recently watched an episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) gets tricked into buying fake rings for the entire school. And it seemed like the entire school got a ring. Honestly? Was it just the times (a 90s era sitcom) or do most people at predominantly white schools buy rings?

As a male in the real world (i.e. out of school and working), I find that tailoring first impressions is a must to be successful in any venture. The clothes someone chooses and the expression someone wears on his face tells a lot about the character, even if I don’t know a shred of the ‘personality’. The exterior gives an impression of the interior. Always. A man who doesn’t take care of himself externally likely doesn’t take care of himself internally. And the converse is mostly true as well, except in the case of depressed narcissists, which is fairly common (a psychologically tortured person with a show-stopping exterior)*.

This is not in defense of people who are shallow. And I'm not saying that the 'inside' doesn't count. I am simply stating that people develop preconceived notions because of a generalized perception of truth, which may or may not be ultimately true. As one of my favorite authors** wrote, 'If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.' If you see what looks like a car but you've never actually seen the model before, would it be prejudicial to think that it has four wheels, a steering column, a gearbox and brakes?

(Finally getting to the point of this post) So in my opinion, a man who wears a class ring is stuck in the nostalgia of former days long lost. Or he is still a boy in the midst of getting some serious poo-tang as a high school/ college senior. (Maybe I should have gotten a class ring). A class ring is like a letterman jacket, an article that is only attractive to pre-pubescent girls and those under the tender age of legal consent. Whereas my Gucci has turned heads from 12 to 21 to 51 to 71.

Thankfully I haven’t seen a letterman jacket except at church, worn by obvious teens. And fortunately, the class ring is starting to phase out among the younger crowd, though it seems that Aggies and Longhorns still have a tendency to pimp the right ring finger.

[insert one of 10,000,000 Aggie jokes here]. Half my high school who went to college when to A&M, so I think I can say this. If they're insulted, they can always point out that my alma mater's website is www.uh.edu (double-u double-u double-u dot uh dot com.

I can’t say anything about women with class rings since I clueless about women fashion. All I know is that some Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos cost as much as my entire watch collection, and my watches never touch the pavement.

--
*reference: all the people who end up on TMZ.
**Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Week in H-Town-dizzle

Table of Contents

Tue, Jan 19 – Blue Eyes
Blue eyes, the mesmerizing iridescence that makes me feel like Forrest Gump, pre-Jenny days (i.e. in leg braces). An exposition of the development of my weakness.
‘But alas, blue eyes are recessive, and unless I have some French blood in me from when France raped Vietnam in the mid-20 century (instead of cab-fare, they gave us French bread and pate), my kids are condemned to having earthy-colored eyes.’

Wed, Jan 20 – Cash, the Modern English Monarch
An airline stops taking cash for formerly included amenities. A review of the fine print on the American greenback.
‘So unfortunately, the airline is within its legal right to refuse to take your cold, hard cash in exchange for its similarly cold, hard pillow.’

Thu, Jan 21 – Heidi’s Boob-napping
Topics: Heidi Montag, Heidi’s new kids, TMZ, police discrimination, Texas > Cali, and a joke about Tiger Woods (he’s black after all!)
‘The Boss Man stands behind the cubicles spying over his minions and drinks out of the same thermos with what I hope are different straws each show’

Fri, Jan 22 – Punked! (TV Edition)
Mama puts my widescreen HD TV to shame.
‘The plastic film protecting the glass-like frame around the screen was still attached, and my antenna from the TV in my old room had miraculously migrated to the TV stand underneath the new member of our family. Traitor.’

Sat, Jan 23 – Hotdogs and Eggs
The emancipation from ground-up, unidentified pieces of ‘protein.’
‘It is ironic how home cooking means hotdogs and eggs while traditional Viet food can only be found at the local eatery.’

Sun, Jan 24 – SPIDER: Pool and Poker
My two dream careers which are even more far-fetched than my becoming a ‘writer.’
‘The side pocket ‘t*tty f*cked’ a couple of my balls, performed ‘rim jobs’ on a couple of others, and disappointingly ‘spit’ out a masterful bank [shot], but on the whole, the table was pretty accepting to my gentle, finesse-imbued touch.’

---

Unsubstantiated claims

This past week’s entries were spent recounting some of the tales from my last trip back to Houston. There are a couple stories about Ra Sushi on Westheimer inside the loop which will be released later this week.

The cold weather took a vacation in the tropics, and a week of 70 highs and 50 lows were quite welcome after a monstrous few weeks with near freezing temps. I also didn’t have to fuss with the gremlin-infested heater.

The electric bill was almost $100. Vaulted, cathedral-like ceilings = cool. Bill for resulting poor insulation = not cool.

I had been hung up on ‘Blue Eyes’ for a good week and a half until I had a ‘very friendly’ conversation with one of the regular customers in her early 30s. As the saying goes, there are plenty of fish (and cougars) in the sea.

My Citizen Eco-Drive watch (sub-$100) came in the mail. Eco-drive’s slogan is ‘Fueled by light, it never needs a battery.’ The Casio has been laid to rest, though the digital display will pulse away the time in the dark until its 10-year life expires. A post will follow in the coming weeks.

I assembled the nightstands that I had ordered through Overstock. They look a bit awkward flanking my temporary bed that rises just 4 inches from off the floor (perfect for the drunken stupors I no longer get). To do list: get a real bed. If you don’t buy it, they [females] won’t come [the alternate spelling has been tastefully expunged].

On my last day in Houston, I upgraded my dead Razr to the new Motorola Droid, the same one in the billboards with the ominous red eye staring out from the luminescent screen. I must say that it is a stunningly beautiful phone, and I like it much more than the iPhone. Handheld internet and GPS are a must. Review to come.

I figured out how to work and clean the vacuum, but like a typical 20-something bachelor, I didn’t put that knowledge to use.

In the boring, financial times, I rebalanced my 401k.

In deeper, philosophical times, I re-contemplated becoming a Catholic priest. Then I figured I was suffering from the grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side syndrome and subsequently spent my way out of my funk on Amazon.

Think of these 1-2 sentence updates as my tweets if I were ever to be sucked into the Twitter scourge. These updates are a nice way to remember what I was doing at a certain point in time. Diaries/Journals are surprisingly time-consuming.

I was depressed that there were absolutely zero comments on my backposts. Then I drank, and the feeling went away. Thank you MacAllan 12-year. Joking, but I am a little sad about the lack of love. The bottle of MacAllan, like the comment boxes, remains untouched.

I had a minor epiphany that the story of Narcissus would not have existed if people didn’t love him in the first place, despite the fact that he was an ass.

It’s the fundraising season of my local public radio station. I changed the station on my clock radio. These two events were entirely unrelated.

I wondered what percentage of people enjoyed what they did for a living. Then I looked at my pay stub, and I stopped complaining.

Ties are like nooses. Heels are like shackles. They both look good when done properly. Though women can pull off both, men who pull off both are generally frowned upon.

A pill-counting spatula makes a good letter opener. Actual letter openers don’t make good letter openers.

And finally, a friend once said to me, 'g, sometimes you can be a real blonde.' I understand that now, given the last 2 paragraphs of very random observations. Unlike my drinking water and cigarettes (if I smoked), I like my thoughts unfiltered.

Are you liking the table of contents or do you think it's a stupid idea and would rather have another post?

SPIDER: Shooting Pool & Playing Poker for a Living

Dear Dreamer's Son followers and those who would have followed,

This is one of the weekly Stupendously Pimped-out Industriously Delineated Extensively Reinvigorated Re-releases. It gets confusing to remember what SPIDER stands for, so I'll just make it up as I go along. This one is about my two dream jobs. If I ever make as much scratch doing either of these things, I'll kindly give up my day (night) job.

--

Nov 19, 2009

Before I started college, I had said to some teachers and friends that if I could shoot pool and play poker for a living, I would in a heartbeat. It was in a joking manner, but I meant it. Thankfully before I bought a ticket to Vegas, all the years of Asian guilt started hurtling back to the present. You can't ever escape your past. Here's a bit of the litany of Viet Catholic woes:

'If you don't become a doctor (an M.D. doctor, not those other 'doctors'; D.O. doesn't count either), then I will disown you.'

'If you don't marry a Vietnamese Catholic girl, I will disown you.'

'If you don't have lots of grand kids, I will disown you.'

'If you don't let me live in your house when I'm old and wrinkled, I will disown you.'

'If you even think about playing poker or shooting pool for a living, I will disown you.'

'If you don't play blackjack and baccarat (WTF is poker?), you are a traitor to your gambling heritage.'

And so on. I guess I've been disowned. Oh well, that's life I suppose. Things fall apart. At least I didn't kill myself; then God would have disowned me, which would be the ultimate disowning.

--

Melodramatics aside, I did think about shooting pool and playing Texas Hold'em for a living. But there were some issues with that career path:

Firstly, you can't make money shooting pool anymore. Big tournaments only pay out 25k to the winner, and these guys make me look 150,000,000 times worse than I make you all look. If you've seen me shoot pool, you may think I play pretty well, but compared to money and tournament players, I pretty much suck. After the fundamentals of pool (stroke, bridge, balance, etc), there comes the strategic side (cue ball control, table position, defense), then the mental side which I think of as being able to win when you should win. Finesse (the name of my pool cue) and I have been at this for quite awhile, but we're still nowhere being near the caliber of people who make money from this game. Plus, people don't let themselves get hustled anymore.

Now with Texas Hold'em, the only things that kept me from it was the bankroll and my age. Over 21, check; one roadblock unblocked. A bankroll is the money you set aside to fund your poker ventures. Inevitably, you're going to lose in more than a few sessions (sittings at a poker table), but in the long run, your bankroll should increase, allowing you to move up to higher limit games.

The concept of a 'bankroll' was invented, in my opinion, to allow players to track their winnings and losings and to play games within their means.

The problem with chronic gambling at regular casino table games is that you're going to lose in the long run, even with perfect basic strategy in blackjack (the casino game with the lowest house advantage). You can't bankroll that because your bankroll would always decrease. That's why people (of the Viet persuasion) who plop down hundred dollar bills at the baccarat tables are idiots--you can't win in the long run.

The beauty of poker is that you're playing other people. And the better player will win in the long run. Yes, the river is going to burn you a few times and you may lose with pocket rockets and big slick, but if you get your money in when the cards are in your favor, eventually you'll make money (hopefully).

Once I pay off my student loans, I'll start to build my bankroll to fund my second job. What am I going to do in the meantime? Read books on poker theory and start to develop some catch phrases.

My favorite one so far is from my uncle Scotty Nguyen:*

'You caw, it gon be aw over, baby!'

----

Platinum-limited, invitation-only to purchase, super-exclusive commentary:

Last week, I got to hang out with the guy who single-handedly got me through pharmacy school by waking me up for the sort of important tidbits, the stuff where if you mess up, the state board of pharmacy will send you a mean, threatening letter and then change your ‘Prior Disciplinary Order(s)’ to ‘Yes’. It’s as bad as your mother pulling down your pants and spanking you in public. You might also kill someone, but that’s not nearly as important as avoiding becoming the laughing stock of your pharmacist friends.

So we had lunch and played a few games of pool in which I thoroughly excel amongst my friends. He surprisingly won a game by sinking the 8, and another by my sinking the 8 before its time (which I refer to as 'committing statutory’). The side pocket ‘t*tty f*cked’ a couple of my balls, performed ‘rim jobs’ on a couple of others, and disappointingly ‘spit’ out a masterful bank [shot], but on the whole, the table was pretty accepting to my gentle, finesse-imbued touch, which was a little surprising given my lack of recent practice.

As soon as I get a table of my own, I might actually try to pursue playing in tournaments and such. The potential is there; just the work and dedication (and resources) are lacking.

In the meantime, I’ll have to learn some trick shots, because for whatever reason, women seem to like the grandiosely impractical (where the hell are you going to perform a trick shot in an actual game) over the masterly fundamental (Tim Duncan-like boringness).

*not really my uncle, in case you were wondering.

Hotdogs and Eggs

Dear ghetto brethren,

‘Tomorrow when you’re home, you can fry up some eggs and hotdogs. There are some tortillas too.’

Stacking bread* means never having to eat hotdogs ever again, except at sporting events where you’re charged $8 for something you could have made yourself for 25 cents. Hot dogs on sale typically cost a buck for a generic pack of 8. Mama usually buys several packs like she was at Costco and freezes them in the refrigerator. She thaws them out when necessary and adds one to her ramen as a source of protein. That’s her dinner. People would be shocked to know that Dad is a pharmacist when we live like we’re below the poverty line.

But Dad wasn’t always a pharmacist, and when he was chasing after his dreams, he was hemorrhaging the family’s assets like a gunshot wound to the abdomen.** Before he became a professional student, Dad had owned a washateria (the southern word for laundromat; everyone in Houston calls it ‘washateria’ and would make a confused, frowny face if you used ‘laundromat’). It was fairly successful, but he sold it in the early 90s to go back to school to become a ‘real doctor.’

It was right after he sold the business that I started becoming conscious of my surroundings (around 5-ish). Mama still worked, but Dad was using the monthly payments from the sale to pay for tuition. And so to save some money, Mama bought stuff like ramen, hot dogs, eggs, and generic cereal. A couple nights a week, Mama would cook some Viet stuff, but it would be mostly white rice, some broccoli with not-so-select cuts of chicken, and simmered fish that had a plethora of tiny bones that lodged in the back of my throat.

I preferred the coronary-artery-thickening American trayf to the stuff she cooked. Don’t tell me that one of the advantages of living at home through college was that I had some of Mama’s fine home-cooking; I frequented Taco Hell more times than I ate at home.

She’ll probably never change her eating or buying habits. I think she could live off of $20 a week in groceries if she had to.

The next day instead of following her suggestion, I drove to Fuqua and Sabo and had some traditional Viet beef noodle soup at Pho Saigon. It is ironic how home cooking means hotdogs and eggs while traditional Viet food can only be found at the local eatery.
--

*one of the many ghetto slang for that ‘paper’, as in the paper on which rests dead presidents, Ben Franklin, and Alex Hamilton. Isn’t it funny how when people talk about dead presidents as a placeholder for money, they don’t realize that Ben Franklin wasn’t a president? And Ben is probably the most important dead white guy.
**one of the focuses of my book that I’m actually starting to write

Punked! (TV Edition)

Dear big-ass TV owners,

Mama told me there was a surprise for me when I came home last week. One of my guesses was that she spent a bunch of time packing all my boxes for me to bring up to Dallas. That would have been awesome. Another guess was that she was going to have another kid. That would have sucked. But it was neither of those things. Vegas would have given odds of 1:150,000,000 for the former, and 1:100 for the latter. Thankfully it wasn’t the latter. It’s not that it wouldn’t be cool to have a younger brother or sister; it's just that I wouldn’t wish another human being to have to live under Dad’s roof.

Vegas would have given 1:1 odds for the actual surprise: a big-ass TV. When I opened the familiar faux-redwood door to the place I still considered home, I was greeted by a piano-black monstrosity floating delicately above those tacky metal and glass stands (tacky because they try too hard to be modern). The plastic film protecting the glass-like frame around the screen was still attached, and my antenna from the TV in my old room had miraculously migrated to the TV stand underneath the new member of our family. Traitor.

Mama hadn’t come home from work yet, and I couldn’t find the remote, which as it turns out, was a problem (as troublesome as the current Great Recession) as new TVs are so cool that they don’t have buttons (on/off, volume, channel) on the actual thing itself.

So after I ripped apart the house trying to find the key to nirvana, I trudged sulkingly up the stairs to my room with its infinitesimally nano-scopic 24” screen. But then I remembered that the antenna had Benedict Arnold’ed itself downstairs for wider pastures. Great. Then I remembered that I had just completed a 4.5 hour trek across a desperately boring part of Americana, and I remembered that sleep is good.

A couple hours later, I was greeted with Mama’s tinny voice, ‘Hello! You home!?!?’ Then she proceeded to rub my nose in the TV I had bought a few months prior on Black Friday.

‘Oh, what size you say your TV. Forty-six? Oh, this one bigger. It LED. You say your LCD? So this one better, right?’*

‘Yes, Mama. You win.’
--

*In the Vietnamese language, is/are are not necessary sometimes, and so when older Viet people learn English, they also neglect to use is/are.

Heidi's Boob-napping

Dear tabloid readers/watchers,

One of my shameful secrets is that I watch TMZ. Unlike STAR magazine and the other tabloids, they really don’t take themselves seriously. Sure, they make fun of idiot celebrities, but they also make fun of themselves. The Boss Man stands behind the cubicles spying over his minions and drinks out of the same thermos with what I hope are different straws each show (I think it would be slightly more unsanitary than Michael Jordan’s use of the same drawers every game). Their potshots, scripted or otherwise, are generally spot on and in decent enough taste.

There’s also a cute Latina with prominent grill (the kind where it looks like she has braces) and those black designer frames with thick end pieces. What makes her attractive is that she’s dorky so it makes you think you’d have a chance, even though a NYC hostess would probably have a better chance of getting away from Tiger’s sight.

So there was this story about how Heidi Montag (you know, that annoying chick who you want to tape her mouth shut and bend her over--she might be into that kind of thing*) got a boob job. She had promised the exclusive first photos of her ‘new kids’ to some trashy magazine, and so after her operation, she covered up her new purchase(s), Michael Jackson style. Some neighbor had seen Heidi with a bag over her head (which isn’t a bad look) and reported a kidnapping to the cops.

A few minutes later, the boys in blue and black (who beat minorities black and blue), showed up to protect the United States’ most valuable assets: its Hollywood celebrities.

Cali’s bloated tax dollars at work. That’s why I live in Texas. People would sooner pull one of the many 12-gauges from their garage and go a-huntin' if they see a crime happening. The slogan 'Don't mess with Texas' extends beyond littering our roadways.

It's a shame about Heidi, because I liked how she looked pre-plastic surgery. Too bad you can't fix personalities with a scalpel (maybe a lobotomy?).
--

*Hope she doesn’t sue me. Though I’ll probably make more money than she does over a lifetime, she definitely makes more than me this year. It’s a dismal world when celebutantes make more than doctors.

Cash, the Modern English Monarch

Dear grip* holders,

On the news recently, there was a brief story about how some airline is no longer accepting cash as a form of payment for the formerly included amenities that are now optional for a small fee (food, drinks, check-in bags, pillows, blankets, the shoddy unbalanced tray table, the seat cushion, the privilege of using the facilities, breathable air, etc). They now only accept credit or debit cards. Plastic > paper, apparently.

All U.S. bills carry this message in tiny capitalized print: THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. That little wording means that cash is king. Cash is universal. It’s what the backwoods folks take the middle of nowhere. Even bears and deer take it as a form of payment, because as a living, breathing thing in the United States, you’re obligated to take it!

Not quite. The 10 lawyers for every 1 doctor in the U.S. (isn’t that a sad ratio?) will be quick to point out the wording: all debts. If there isn’t a debt, then there isn’t an obligation to accept the almighty greenback (with the peach, blue, yellow, and even fuchsia tint on the front). Let’s have a couple of examples:

Debt: After a meal at a sitdown restaurant, you now owe the establishment for the food. This is a debt. Any U.S. bill will work, and Mr. Franklin is accepted everywhere. According to one of my patrons, if a place will not accept cash, then the debt is immediately absolved. That’s why you don’t see the message ‘No Bills over $20’ at a dine-in restaurant.

Not debt: A fast food joint where you pay when you order. There is no debt yet since they haven’t given you a good or service; therefore they’re not obligated to take bills over $20. Same thing at convenient stores: a debt is never created for the ‘legal tender for all debts’ to take effect.

So unfortunately, the airline is within its legal right to refuse to take your cold, hard cash in exchange for its similarly cold, hard pillow.

Like the modern English monarch who is only a figurehead and is hardly lord (or lady) of Britain, the U.S. note is fading as the defining impetus of our society. Its weakening stance in our economy in relation to plastic is paralleled by its position in relation to the Euro. Even the villains in the latest Bond film requested a bribe in Euros because ‘the dollar ain’t what it used to be.’**

But for myself, I will always carry a couple of dead white guys in my pocket, especially my favorite president: Mr. Andrew Jackson, with his white pompadour and sad eyes.
--

*Ghetto speak for the roll of bills that you hold with a ‘grip’
**The Quantum of Solace. A paraphrase, naturally.

Blue Eyes

Most nights when I’m working, I want to holler and scream the staff at the two emergency care centers across the street for sending me so many new customers. There’s another repeat offender 10 miles up in Plano which also sometimes incurs my wrath. But a couple of times a year, I’m blessed by the presence of beautiful blondes with devastatingly deep azure eyes, liltingly pained dulcet voices (because they’re sick), and the patience of a third grade school teacher when Barr runs a mass recall on generic Adderall.

One such heavenly creature came by recently, but unfortunately, it was during a time of abysmal turmoil: three insurance problems all at once, and all of those customers were there waiting. No tech, no problem; I am g, after all (excuse the arrogance, when you work this job, you have to have some confidence so that people don’t walk all over you). A couple of 1-877 numbers later, I got everything resolved, got those scripts out pretty damn quick, and even added some patient counseling in there (may cause drowsiness, take with food, this is my cell number in case you need to reach me for any reason, wink* etc).

When the night slowed down a few hours later, I felt haunted by those cobalt gems that rested underneath the shock of honey wheat bangs. I don’t really obsess over girls anymore (those restraining orders became troublesome**), though this girl did warrant some stalker-ish action. But thankfully the trance, caused by the iridescence of the windows of her soul, tapered off over the remaining hours of my shift.

Though I confess to be equal opportunity when chasing after the fairer sex, I have such a weakness for blue eyes, the true blue eyes that shine without need of refraction from pieces of plastic. That pretty much all but precludes women of negroid or mongoloid descent. The pretty Chinese girl that came by earlier with the blinging watch (my Gucci’s relative?) did absolutely nothing for me; I might have been more turned on by the watch. But the girl with skin the color of pale amber makes my spine tingle just thinking about her.
--

There’s a line in a song by Tupac that reads

Lately, I’ve been really wanting babies
So I could see a side of me that wasn’t always shady

Around the start of the third year of pharmacy school, I started to dislike myself. It was the time when my classmates were thinking about what they would do after pharmacy school (residency, retail, hospital, or other), while I was stuck contemplating the MCAT that I was about to take to apply for 4 more years of floggings, plus 3 years of being an attending physician’s man-servant (aka internal medicine residency).

I think that was the time when I started growing the fat tire around my waist and started drinking more. And over those final two years, I wished that I was someone else or that it would all be over, including my life at the depth of my despair.

I had told my ex during one of my vulnerable moments that I hated myself. Thinking back on the reasons she cited for breaking up with me, I think it was my own self-worth issue that was the problem. I don’t blame her: Most people think I was well-adjusted when in reality I was a couple steps away from six feet under. (Note to the guys: saying that you don't like yourself is generally considered a bad move. No one had told me.)

During orientation for new pharmacy students the year prior, I had said something which I had forgotten in the madness: ‘Some of you will fail; it happens to the best of us. But no matter what, you’ll always have your life and your health; school is secondary to those things.’ For myself, I would add God in there as well. But in the course of my misguided quest to redeem my family, I had lost all those things, like Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. And I began to loathe the man in the mirror.

So it was this time that I began to look for things which were dissimilar to myself, since I hated myself. It was about the time I started digging vanilla and whitemeat, and the blue eyes that I would never have, in an attempt to see the 'side of me that wasn’t always shady' in my future kids, who hopefully wouldn’t look similar to me. Otherwise, I might grow to hate them as well for being so much like myself.

But alas, blue eyes are recessive, and unless I have some French blood in me from when France raped Vietnam in the mid-20 century (instead of cab-fare, they gave us French bread and pate), my kids are condemned to having earthy-colored eyes. But I’m starting to like dark colored eyes again.

And I like myself too, even with the 30 extra pounds and diseased liver***.

[I have intentionally not used the phrase ‘brown eyes’. If you don’t know, don’t ask; it’s a disgusting metaphor.]
--

*joking, of course
**again, joking
***joking…hopefully?

Week in Review

As promised in the last post, this is the g-Style table of contents for the last week.

Tue, Jan 12 - Backposts, natch
Exploring the seedy underbelly of bastard words and how they come to defile the most pure and born-again virgin English Language. Fo shizzle, my nizzle.

Wed, Jan 13 - My Country Tis of Thee
A somewhat nostalgic look at the difficulties facing first generation Americans who have never been back to their home country. An essay by an American Born Viet (ABV not ABC). Included are mentions of the Tet Offensive and the Fall of Saigon, and (more importantly) a picture of pretty Viet girls in traditional ao dai attire (from Wikipedia, natch).

Thu, Jan 14 - Being Claude Speed
Combining light philosophy (the kind that doesn't want to make you gouge out your eyes), with the Matrix, and Grand Theft Auto III. 'It is oddly therapeutic to be so violent.'

Fri, Jan 15 - Rejection Notice
'It's always the pretty ones who reject you, while the dogs are sending unsolicited offers of credit.' American Express puts a hand in g's face.

Sat, Jan 16 - Going Postal
Irritation at poor delivery service, a new recipe for unquenchable ire. 'GTA III is missing postal workers. I just want to talk to them nicely... with a rocket launcher.'

Sun, Jan 17 - g-Style, the Weekly Blog-azine(TM)
A new way of writing and publishing blogs. 'It will be where I try to kiss the reflection in the water; hopefully I won't fall in and drown.'
--

Week in Review

Most of this past week has been spent in anxious desire of an iPod case which didn't show up until after I returned to Dallas. I had finally caught up with all the backposts since I hadn't published anything since Dec 21st, 2009. Though it is a lot to read, I hope you do manage to peruse through them if only for a couple of giggles.

I had discovered the satisfaction of blowing up cars and razing groups of pedestrians with a machine gun in the PS2 classic Grand Theft Auto III. Subsequently, my vision has worsened as well as my real-life driving skills.

There was a pretty girl who stopped by the pharmacy a week ago who was the inspiration for tomorrow's post. She had the prettiest eyes, the color of the Caribbean Sea, and her adorable frown (because she was sick) made me want to hold her in my arms even though what she had was probably contagious.

I returned to Houston to enjoy some R&R before the start of another hellish week. And I still haven't gotten a prescription for Xanax yet...

And Dallas finally warmed up a bit. The cold front has thankfully departed, and the heater is somewhat intact. Every fifth time it turned on, the air would blow instead of the heat because of some short circuit or something. It was annoying to say the least.

If you like what you're reading, please click on the follow button to your right. And if you have any comment, friendly or insulting, feel free to leave it. Growing up in the ghetto means that you learn to never take things (ie, critical comments) too seriously, because after all, you could be lying 6 feet deep.

So Follow and Comment. I exist because you are here. And because you see me and I see myself, I am no longer Invisible.

g-Style, the Weekly Blog-azine(TM)

Dear future g-Style subscribers,

It has come to my attention that people generally don’t take things in moderation. I cite all the alcoholics, foodaholics, sexaholics, and hydrocodone-aholics in the world. People also don’t like stuff that’s very lengthy, even if the Extenze commercials would purport otherwise (using their oh-so slutty actresses). 'He's been taking Extenze for a week, and I can really feel the difference.' Liars...

The epiphany came after one of my friends texted me saying my ‘blog is hilarious!’ but commented that I’m ‘letting [my] readers down’ by not having had posted this past week. It also came after another of my friends commented on about a dozen posts in a row. So at least 2 people have a tendency to read several posts at once to catch up.

I’m not sure if anyone actually checks in everyday to see if there’s another post up. If there is such a kindred soul, I do apologize for my lack of regularity (I should buy some yogurt or bifidus regularis). This is a problem that simply has to be addressed immediately. Some of my more demanding (rude) customers would put their left fist on their hip, lean over slightly, give a reproving sneer, wag their index finger threateningly and say, ‘So how are we going to fix this?’

*dramatic drum roll*

The Final Countdown with Will Arnett as GOB, my favorite character from Arrested Development.

I am adopting a magazine style with a weekly summary of last week’s blog entries so you can figure out what you want to read. All writings for a week will likely have been finished before Monday and will be released daily at 9AM. I am tentatively setting Monday as my summary day, where I get to pat myself on the back and laugh at all my jokes and cry all my crocodile tears. It will be where I try to kiss the reflection in the water; hopefully I won’t fall in and drown.

Seeing as I will have composed all my crap before the week has even started and will have started forward posting them, delayed-release style, the daily readers will be satisfied. And because of the week-end summary on Monday, my buffet-ers will be pleased.

And hopefully I’ll get more consistent, loyal readership. So get off Amazon.com, Buy.com, Overstock.com, Macys.com, [porn site deleted].com, or any other website that detracts from my ego. Grab my blog-azine off the cyber rack, look through the table of contents, gawk at pretty pictures of Marisa Miller in nightvision, and enjoy the musings of the ever so slightly insane.

-g
editor-in-chief, g Style Blog-azine(TM)

Who do you suggest I use as my new pretty-girl substitute? I think Marisa’s posse might be considering to threaten me with some litigation.

Going Postal

Dear online-shoppers,

I've grown to become moderately patient over the years from my brash youth. I order stuff online and can wait to have it be delivered a week later because I know it is what I want (a specific type of iPod case). What I can't stand is post office idiocy and purported use of 'improved' delivery services.

One of those things is UPS Mail Innovations. How it works is UPS (United Parcel Service) mails the package to the USPS (US Postal Service) regional processing center closest to your area, and then USPS takes it and delivers it. It's supposed to streamline the process, and your package should be received sooner. It sucks, and it tosses salads.

My package shipped from Atlanta on the 7th, arrived in Austin on the 11th to the regional processing facility. It was forwarded by USPS to somewhere in Oklahoma City, bypassing Dallas completely. And now it's somewhere in limbo with a 'The U.S. Postal Service was electronically notified by the shipper on January 11, 2010 to expect your package for mailing'.

I'm pretty sure UPS or USPS by themselves could have gotten the package to me quicker without the other guy. Though 'working together' sound so much cooler, it really amounts to a longer wait time and more risk of packages being lost.

I guess I should be angry at the merchant for using such a retarded shipping system. I did order the damn thing on December 29, and my iPod is yet condomless.

GTA III is missing postal workers. I just want to talk to them nicely...with a rocket launcher.

Rejection Notice

Dear plastic-users (non-silicone variety),

My VISA rewards card is nearing the end of the 6 months of bonus cash back (3% on gas and groceries, afterward 1%), so I am searching for a new card with better rewards. I thought I had found what I was looking for in the American Express Blue Cash card, which offers 5% back on gas, groceries, and drugstores after you spend $6,500 annually. As materialistic as I am, I hardly put more than $1500 a month on my card, rent and utilities included.

Though even with my limited plastic-use, after some calculation I figured that Blue Cash was worth it, and so I applied. I've never been rejected from any college I've applied to, but I've been denied credit twice for these suped up rewards cards. Bastards. They know I'm a credit card deadbeat who pays off full balances each month so they don't make a dime off of me.

It's always the pretty ones who reject you, while the dogs are sending unsolicited offers of credit.

I guess my 1% cash back will have to do for now.

Being Claude Speed

Dear reality escapists,

I don't blame you. Reality sucks. Sometimes I like to imagine that what I see around me is simply a figment of my own messed up brain. After all, if all the sensory information were simply fed into my brain, like in the Matrix, what does it really matter if the outside world really exists in and of itself? I like to think this because at times, I don't want to face the facts: this world can be really ugly (references: wars, famine & gluttony, Tiger Woods, and Lindsay Lohan).

I had bought a PS2 about a year ago along with the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy, but never got around to playing it to progress through the story line. School, depression, and guilt (of not doing anything productive) got in the way. But now, the guilt is gone, and my only obligation is to my blog on which I have woefully underperformed. That's okay, I've backposted so that there's an entry for every day I've missed.

And this entry is one of several forward posts, ones that are scheduled to be released at 9AM each day. With my homework done, I can focus on being Claude Speed, the silent anti-hero of Grand Theft Auto III.

If you've never played the Grand Theft Auto series, you're missing out. You can blow up helicopters, peoples' heads & limbs, go on wild police chases where the chasee actually escapes (via police bribes or Pay N Sprays), and just cause general mayhem. It is oddly therapeutic to be so violent, even in a video game.

Though GTA III does mirror life's frustrations in some ways. The paramedic mission absolutely blows chunks. I still haven't beaten it, and I end up blasting the ambulance and all the patients I saved when I inevitably fail the mission.

You can finally air out your grievances with only minor repercussions (hand cramps).

I know, I know, I should really go buy a PS3 with GTA IV, but I'm holding out until I beat the GTA trilogy first.

My Country Tis of Thee

Dear Expats and 1st Gen Americans,

I've ceased becoming irritated when people asked me where I hail from. Just to piss them off, I say I'm from Houston. I know they're asking me of my ancestral origin, but I tell them what country I associate myself with, and that country is the United States of America. The U.S., where dreams are made, broken, and remade with only a blatant hint of racial, socioeconomic, and religious prejudice.

On the U.S. Census, I would put myself into the category of Asian/Pacific Islander and the subcategory of Vietnamese if they have that. Most people would consider me Vietnamese-American, but I think of myself as American Vietnamese. After all, I was born and raised in the States; why would I put first the name of a country I've never even seen except in internet ads? If I were adopted, would I not take the last name of my adopted parents rather than that of my blood parents?

Recently, I've noticed that it's the expatriates that have a somewhat higher tendency to ask about nationality. In their eyes, I see a sadness of a forsaken or lost country, the same sorrow I see in my grandmother's eyes as she dotes on her grandchildren who can't even speak the language. It's a similar lament I see in my mother's eyes as she recounts the stories from her teens. It is a tear that has yet remained unshed from my eyes.

One such expatriate came by the pharmacy the other day. After the transaction, he asked the question I've heard 756 times:

Expat: So where are you from? Korea? [I do not look Korean at all]

Me: I was born and raised in Houston, but my parents were from Vietnam. They came over after Saigon fell.

Expat: And when was that?

Me: In '75, a few years after the Tet Offensive.

Expat: Have you ever been back there?

Me: No, never been. I don't have any plans in the near future.

Expat: Why? Are you scared?

Me: It's just the lack money and the work schedule.

--

But truthfully, I am a bit scared of what I'd find. Sure, people will try to swindle and charge me a lot more for something than it's worth, but I can afford to pay $1.50 (converted to Viet currency) for a bowl of pho even if the locals only pay $0.25. That's not the reason.

I am afraid that I'd see the land I had lost, my birthright, and break down crying. I'm afraid that I'd return and my ancestral home would reject me as foreign, something that is not part of itself. I'm afraid to look upon the 4 and 5-star resorts that grace the shores of a land once blasted by B-52s and razed by napalm flamethrowers. I'm afraid I'd look upon at my distant cousins and they'd laugh at my broken Vietnamese. And I'm afraid that the country I would be visiting is not that true Vietnam that my parents fled from.

And Vietnam no longer exists; only the Socialist Republic of Vietnam does. Saigon no longer exists; it is now Ho Chi Minh City. And it's not minor quibble about proper names; if you fly a Communist Viet flag on any expatriate soil, you will have a small uprising on your hands. The yellow star on a blood red field is an insult to all those refugees who braved the Pacific on fishing boats and helicopters. In our hearts, only the yellow flag with three horizontal stripes exists even if no country will claim it as its own.

I know what my ancestral country is; I don't want to go there only to find it gone, like that waif who finds the address of his birth parents only to discover that they have long passed away.

And so I abstain from returning to delay the realization of the truth that I already know: The country of my fathers is gone.

I will always love America, and I wear the badge of 'American' proudly (though I may neglect to mention that fact if visiting a hostile country). But there will always be that part of me that longs for the rice paddies that are no longer there, the talk of the brash fishermen chewing on tobacco and pickled-dried fish, and the pretty girls in ao dai who tease me in my dreams.

[I'd marry the girl on the left, but I think the one on the right could teach me some things]

Backposts, natch.

Dear word-enthusiasts,

My new favorite bastard word is ‘natch.’ By bastard word, I mean something made up that had not existed in the New Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary at the turn of the last last century (1900). English, as I have mentioned to some friends before, is such a mutt language that there’s really no point in talking about purity or tradition. If words like ‘chillax’ and ‘fo shizzle’ can become so common as to be used by 30-somethings in everyday parlance (while ‘parlance,’ a delightfully delicious word is not oft used), then we might as well burn our hardbound dictionaries and resort to Googling ‘[insert word here] definition’ or ‘[insert word here] urbandictionary’ every time we don’t know a word. This is exactly what I do; I don’t remember the last time opening up a paper dictionary.

Confounded by the definition of ‘natch’? Have you still not googled ‘natch definition’?

If not, I’ll enable your laziness:

Tech: There’s a refill request in the queue, but the doctor approved it for tomorrow.

Me: So I’ll just have to run it through at midnight?

Tech: Yep

Me: What is it for? Hydrocodone?

Tech: Natch

I had only recently come across the bastard [word] a week earlier on Maura Kelly’s blog. She had made some interesting comment about something entirely unrelated to opiates and followed it up with ‘Natch.’

My next series of moves: Double mousepad tap ‘Natch’. Ctrl+C. Alt+T. Ctrl+V. ‘definition’. Enter. All in less than 2 seconds. In other words, select, copy, new tab, paste, type ‘definition’, and enter. Ah, the wonders of keyboard shortcuts and the Google Chrome search bar.

What’s it short for? Have you still not followed my keystrokes?

One more example before the big reveal:

So I haven’t posted since Monday of last last week due to my laziness (I guess I’m the pot in the pot & kettle metaphor) and the lack of internet at my parents’ place. And I had to drive home and back to Dallas within 2 days because I had to work the weekend after Christmas. So that’s another 9 hours I didn’t have. [insert more excuses here].

So as you can see from my very well thought out reasons which were entirely out of my control (laziness is a pre-existing medical condition which under the new healthcare reform bill, you will be unable to criticize me for), I was unable to post.

But I promise I had typed up the posts. The check really was in the mail. Scout’s honor! Not that I was ever a scout.

Blogspot has a really neat feature where you can back-post and forward-post, meaning you can predate and postdate blog entries. So I’m going to take advantage of that. Natch (naturally).

Lego Hair

Dear gel-lovers,

For the longest time, I had shiny hair that glistened as if it had been layered with shellac. In actuality, it was just simply plastered with level 12 extra-mega-super hold gel. One of my friends referred to it as 'lego hair', the look of the fake plastic helmet hair you attach to the yellow cylindrical heads of your Star Wars Lego figurines (I still have my Han Solo action figure).

When I graduated, I wanted to change my appearance, so I opted for the long hair which ended up being a bust because it was so high maintenance. So after I got a fade (which felt like 3 lbs of hair had been taken off my head), I went for the mousse instead of the gel. Even then, the lowest strength I could find at the Blue Box Retailer was a 7 Extra Hold.

Nowadays, I wet my hair, apply the mousse, and style as desired. After about half an hour when the mousse has dried, I run my hands through my hair a few times to minimize the comb marks and shellac-y look. Sometimes I forget, and I end up looking like a high-schooler for a few hours.

One of those nights happen to be while working. One of the smartass techs came over and tapped my hair.

'Just checking to see if it was real.'

Now, I make sure I check the mirror before I leave the apartment.

The Time-Has-No-Meaning Watch

The weekends are slow, like the calm before the zombies start gnawing on your leg a la Shawn of the Dead. It's as barren as the Dallas streets when the Cowboys are playing; more people were outside after Fat Man (an atomic bomb, not an actual Fat Man) dropped on Nagasaki. If tumbleweeds still existed in this part of Texas, I'd be ducking and diving to avoid them. Slow. S...L...O...W...

But I like my work like I enjoy some of my music: chopped and screwed, i.e. repetitive and slow. So weekend nights are oh so nice when my eyes are paid to remain open.

During weeknights, the job is hellish up until about 11PM, so I glance at my digital Casio ($20 at Walmart 4 years ago) every 5 minutes to see how much time I have left until I see some respite. I have contemplated trying to get a prescription that reads 'Xanax 2 mg #6 (six), i at 8PM on M,T,W every other wk PRN idiocy.'

Thursdays and Fridays treat me well, and Saturday and Sunday nights are paved with lollipops and generic Zoloft (which is coincidentally the preferred SSRI on my prescription coverage).

It was on a Saturday night when the Cowboys were playing the Eagles that I pimped my Movado, the one I nickname the Time-Has-No-Meaning watch. But the pharmacy greeted me with 4 waiters (people who want to wait on their prescriptions) and a couple of insurance problems. It was as if the world had sensed my assumption and arrogance and went out of it's way to punish me.

But at 9PM, even the world (or at least the 50 mile radius around Dallas-Ft Worth) took a break to watch the 'Boys skeet shoot some endangered birds from the air. And the only reason I knew the time is because 9PM is one of the few things I can look at the Movado and be certain of the time.

Elegant simplicity, for when time has no meaning except as a status symbol of how much money you make.

Is it 9:10, 10:10, or 11:10?

False Predictions

Dear Shooters of the Breeze,

How did the phrase 'shoot the breeze' ever come about? And how does it relate to talking nonsense that you think really deep and soulful (+/- influence of a hallucinogen)?

There's a security guard who only works nights, and unlike me, he works every single night (I get 7-on-7-off). I think he emigrated from some African country or maybe from the Caribbean. His accent is fairly thick, but he has such a grand smile even with teeth that has never seen the light of a dentist's office.

Every now and then he comes over to the pharmacy to buy a candy bar or just to say hi. Sometimes he asks about what's the best thing for such and such condition. A couple of nights ago, we had a conversation about his schedule. That's when I learned that he didn't have nights off. Ever.

I ask the question that everyone asks me: 'Isn't it hard working nights?' He said when he gets home, he gets to take his daughter to school, and he picks her up a couple of hours later. He only gets like 5-6 hours of sleep a day.

So the conversation turned to what he'd do if he were to leave the job:

Security Guard (SG): My job, it's not going to be necessary in the future.

me: How's that? We're always going to need security.

SG: In the future, people will be more well off. Why would they steal a candy bar if they have $5 in their pocket? What's the point?

me: I guess. But some people just like to steal.

SG: Yes, but I think it's the culture around it. If people weren't poor, they would not need to steal.

[I like his idealism. A little naive, but very noble.]

SG: We will always need food and healthcare. People will always get sick, and people need to eat. Security? Who needs it. I think I might try to go back to school to become some kind of healthcare technologist.
--

Coincidentally, the next night, the night checker came over to the pharmacy with a somewhat concerned look on her face. She asked if anyone had paid for anything at the pharmacy, to which I responded to the negative. Then she recounts her dealings with a well-dressed gentleman who seemed to be a frequent grazer at the grocery store overnight.

Checker: The last time, he kept the sandwich wrapper and asked me to ring it up. But this time, I looked, and I saw him eat something, but when he checked out his groceries, there was no food to ring up. So I thought he might have come get it from you.

me: Nope. Not here.

checker: You know, I think it's the way he's dressed. When you see a homeless looking person come in off the street, people automatically suspect something and are overly cautious. But when some guy in a shirt and tie and overcoat comes in, no one would suspect that he would be shoplifting.

I didn't see the guy personally, but I know that overcoats cost at least 2 bills, and I'm sure a guy dressed like that would have $5 in his pocket. I would like to think the best about people, to hope that we're all good people who've gone astray sometimes. But my fear is that we're all bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.

SPIDER: Running on E(mpty)

Re-release #5, a little serious this time:

I think I was feeling a little depressed at the time. Sleep deprivation will do that to you.

--

Oct 14, 2009

What ever did happen to 'E' as in 'Ecstasy'? Did the rave fad die out with all the swirling lights and $15 bottled water? Haven't heard too much dance/trance/house music lately; a few dance/trance songs manage to break the Top 40 every now and then but none recently. Maybe the DEA finally cracked down on the import/export business. Probably, it just got old.

Well, this isn't about that 'E'; it's about the 'E' you see on your fuel meter in your car, the one that when you see the needle point to it, you exclaim 'F--k, I need to put $2 worth of gas (0.25 gal) if I'm going to make it home,' and you pray that you're not in the ghetto. But when you're in Houston, you're mostly in the ghetto, so when it happened to me, I just prayed I wouldn't sputter out on the freeway (which would have meant nearly certain death in Houston traffic). Also, Mama gave me her credit card to pump gas while I was in school, so I'd always hold out until I got home.

Aside from the literal, I've run on E in the figurative sense since 11th grade of high school. Back in the day (all 6 years ago), I thought I still had a chance to get into an Ivy or a prestigious private/public school (until it was snatched from my grasp by well-meaning parents, which will be a major focus in the book I'll never finish). I was (and still am, maybe?) very intelligent as measured by standardized tests. Absolutely zero common sense, but very knowledgeable about test-taking. In fact, 40 points away from a perfect 1600 on the SAT, and those 40 points I blame on my being ESL (Engrish is Second Rangrage)*. I also got all 5's on the 8 Advanced Placement** tests I took my senior year. I was a junior when I entered college. Major nerd? Head buried in books?

Nerd, absolute yes, book burying, no. I played Starcraft and random online games up till about 2 weeks before all the tests. And then I crammed hard like trying to stuff that last crab puff at the end of a Chinese buffet orgy. But unlike the people hopped up on Red Bull, Adderall, Ritalin, meth, or E, I did it with natural adrenaline, the adrenaline that comes from the fear of bringing shame upon your family.

Mama's guilt-trip is the most potent stimulant known to man. And I pulled it all off. Scot free. Nearly perfect on all accounts, except it came with that gnawing hollowness of getting something you didn't feel you deserved (or that you didn't want).

Friends and classmates jokingly ask to trade brains with me for a day or for a test. Trust me, you don't want this flaming ball of madness in your head. All the Xanax, Lithium, Effexor, Prozac, Ritalin, Adderall, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Depakote, Cymbalta, and Ambiens in the world won't save you from going stir crazy. How did I do it? On the fact that I couldn't fail, that I wasn't allowed to fail.

It wasn't just the typical Asian guilt-trip, about bringing honor to your family and such so that Mom and Dad can say to Aunt and Uncle about how good their son is. No, this is redemption for all the mistakes your father had made.

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. -Ezekiel 18:20

But iniquities were heaped on me. And being a faithful son, I bore them. I bore them almost to death by my own hands (read my book if I ever finish it!). But no matter how hard I rebelled against doing what was expected of me, I eventually did do what was expected of me. And I did the expected and more. The model student, the perfect front, all shattered inside.

All the time I felt empty, but I could always seem to pull off that one test, and then the next one, like Elijah in 1 Kings 19 (I'm in no way calling myself a prophet). But I made it through all that, hollow and broken, but the shell of myself still existed to walk up the steps to get my diploma, the one that was forced on me.

More was (is) expected of me. But having thoughts like 'I think I would rather die' flash almost as frequently as thoughts of sex made me change my mind. So f--k the world and its cancer and its swine flu and its AIDS and global warming and the quest for world peace; I'm not the hero you were looking for. Find some other martyr to stone, one who will willingly give up his life. Me? I want what's coming to me.***

Take me as I am.

(next post will be a funny post, I promise)

--

*Viet people don't juxtapose R and L

**Advanced Placement earns college credit at most universities; 5 is the highest score

***'The world, and everything in it.' -Al Pacino, for all you Scarface fans

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Deluxe commentary: I'm having the time of my life! And with the new healthcare reform, I probably make as much now as a pharmacist as I would have made as a doctor 7 years from now.

It doesn't pay (moneywise) to do good for society. Think about it: all those investment bankers are probably geniuses compared to that idiot doc who prescribes the newest fad drug because of the pretty drug rep.