Witch Hazel

Jesus christ, will I ever be done? Now I have to apply for financial aid stuff. I have to somehow come up with thousands and thousands of dollars of cash, yo. A lot of its due in a little over a month, which means I have to apply before I even know if I get in or not? WTF? Unless I'm missing something, that means I have to apply for financial aid through schools I might not even get into/choose to go to. Beautiful.

I need lots and lots of cash. Looks like it's time to get back to work!

I think....I am done!!!!!!

commence fireworks!

I just might be done with my grad school applications. I'm going to re-print a few things, check it over one more time, and then send them off tomorrow.

I worked fucking hard on this, so I MUST get in somewhere. I WILL get in somewhere!

fireworks again

It is my aunt and uncle's 27th wedding anniversary on Friday. 27 fricking years! I was two when they got married, and I remember the wedding. Me and my twin sister wore matching white lace dresses and in our heads we looked like princesses. In actuality we looked like stumpy little babies with brown bowl hair cuts. My aunt wore a wedding dress, and then a shimmering green kimono, and I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Alright, I'm going to go over everything one last time. Goodnight.

Crap:
- the hidden bottles
- no money
- laziness on some freelance work, that I haven't followed up on

Good:
- I am almost done with my applications
- feeling pretty good about it. I got so much help and advise from people near and dear to me, and I was actually moved to tears last night thinking about it.

Here is my aunt's stuff after me and the other guy set it all up. Looks good doesn't it?

The show was in the gym of this Buddist temple. And the temple was in San Jose Japantown, the cutest Japantown I've ever been to. It was definitely very cool to see what remains of the established Japanese American community all come out. Which means a whole bunch of old genki peeps came out. Maybe things sort of started to die down after the concentration camps for Japanese Americans all those years ago. We're a much more scattered, diluted group these days. One lady told me it was her 88th birthday next week, and another lady was 91 years old! They were so happy and smiley and energetic and healthy. Believe me, if their blood line stayed in Japan, they would have been defeated by the world long ago. Old people are OLD in Japan.

For the first time in months, I worked today. I got up at 3am, went to San Jose, unpacked a crap load of my aunt's designs, set them up in her booth, and sold 1,600dollars worth of stuff. Not bad. I was working hard in the beginning, really being a good sales girl. But then exhaustion hit.

How did I ever do it? Work sucks. I'm exhausted.

Feeling a little nostalgic. Here are a few karaoke favorites, dedicated to the ladies who sang them at work. Over and over, and over and over again...

At the time I wanted to pull the plug on the damn machine, but now they make me feel kind of happy.

This song was a favorite of my old Ginza mama, and coincidentally the ghetto mama likes this one too. It's fun to sing.

Japanese say goodbye to Western playboys.

My dear friend sent me the above article about how the sudden shortage in western male playboys in Tokyo has caused the huntresses who feed on them to starve.

I read it and laughed my ass off.

It's beyond me why any Japanese girl would specifically target dumb western playboys to con into marriage. I mean what a stupid premise for a relationship. I can think of a dozen times that ended badly just off the top of my head -- including my parents' marriage.

I guess the Lehman Brothers boys were the first to go, but they definitely aren't the last. When I left Tokyo a few months ago, it was still high times in Roppongi. There was no shortage of white boys high on themselves. Japan's kind of like a candy store for western men. I am not joking or exaggerating, I've had a few western men explain to me their "gaijin power" (gaijin means foreigner). For example:

me: "Hey watch out, a car's coming."
him: "Don't worry, it will stop. I have gaijin power."

Okay maybe that wasn't the best example, but you get the idea. They set foot in Japan, their stock immediately rises, and they think they have super powers.

In related news, I had a long conversation with Dancer Girl, and she updated me on all the news.

She's still hostessing, and basically the long and short of it is, the economy sucks and business is seriously slow at the ghetto club. Like seriously slow. Even the super regulars are having a hard time finding the dough to come in, and there are some serious tensions. There was even an inexplicable fist fight between two super regular customers, which made me laugh because one of them's short and hyper and the other one's tall and sleepy. Nobody is making even close to as much money as they used to. Dancer is really focusing on getting another job, but even that is proving to be pretty difficult.

There's a new girl, she's Japanese and really cute and pretty. She has a French boyfriend who is ridiculously posessive. He'll come into Roppongi with her, and sit in McDonalds all night until she finishes work. FREEEAAAAAAAAKKK!!!! And she's a little dumb, because she lets customers basically make out with her. Excuse me, she just started working there, which means she definitely has not built up a strong relationship with any of the customers (read: she has not gotten a lot out of them yet). So why is she giving it up? The rule is, you get more than you ever give. Come on now girl.

Dancer Girl talked to her and told her something along the lines of "uhhh, could you not do that because that makes all the customers think we're that cheap, and I'm not, so you're cramping my style, so can you not inconvenience me like that?"

Then she turned around and retarded drunk Mia (remember her, the chronically underemployed actress?) was sitting there making out with some gross customer.

I guess times are hard right now.

I had a really freaky dream last night that I was driving all crazy in a cartoon-drunken manner and doing things like dropping a person off and not even letting them close the door before I swerved away, bumper-car-ing all over the place while I parked and stuff. And the worst part about it was that I couldn't stop! I sort of wanted to just stop the car and get the fuck out, but I couldn't.

It was really stressful, so I woke up pretty worn out.

We don't get TV reception at my mother's place, so we decided to watch a really old tape of Star Wars: A New Hope over dinner. That movie kicks so much ass. I think R2D2 is what future iPods are going to be like. A gadget that does everything for you, plus has a personality.

My mom started talking about what computers were like in the late 60s in Japan. She was an office lady for some company, and she said there was a Computer Room that was huge and temperature controlled with big giant gears or wheels or something. And that big huge computer used to do something with a punch card, and keep track of everyone's salary. They used to also use a calculator that was so big and heavy, it had a handle. Kind of like a briefcase or something. And those were what everybody used, and that was the cutting edge technology. How times have changed.

Meanwhile, jesus christ, the stupid internet just keeps going down every few minutes, sometimes for hours. Since the internet is only working a fraction of the time, then I think we should only have to pay a fraction of the total cost. It's only fair.