I'm desperately seeking an I.T. Solution: to magically combine my Blogger and Tumblr account content and house it all under my own URL.

Magically, I said.

All ideas welcome. The magical ones get recompensed.

lower case i

(a hipster romance fiction)

I met him at the Toy Division listening party. Toy Division is my roommate Erin’s 8-bit Joy Division cover band. Erin and I were toasting the end of a long summer copy-editing Arthur magazine for nickels on the dollar to pay rent on our Southeast Williamsbushwick studio. This album was going to make us rich a little less poor.

While we got drunk on un-ironically chilled cans of ironic beer, news travelled from the bartender (what was his name again?) that a helicopter piloted by a Yankees pitcher had just crashed into the side of a building on the Upper East Side.

And I love moments like this; when news of a jerk dying outpaces the jerk turning in his proverbial grave. An Al Qaeda Steinbrenner joke was inevitable but sometimes it’s the simplest form of sarcasm that gets the biggest job done.

“I guess he really hated the Yankees.”

We said it at the same time. I looked up to see the face of my Romulus… or is it Castor? Anyway, I looked up. The bartender I’d taken for granted. My bartender…

You could hear an iPhone drop. Love was taking place.

Oh and his name is Victor.

Cross-Posting. GIMME A BOOK DEAL.

Dear BEA Publishers,
It used to be all you needed to get published was rohypnol, a turkey baster and ten minutes with Sonny Mehta. Today, a book’s marketing gimmick is developed so far in advance of the actual book you can actually get a deal with just a mockup of its eventual hashtag.

So let me cut to the chase. I’m a writer. I want to get published. Here are the books I can write (most of them in less than a week). I guarantee publicity and sales. You don’t even need to tour me. My Skype account’s been upgraded. My LinkedIn account’s been updated. But look… if Microsoft and 5 billion Wall Street dollars fail us (which of course it won’t), I am not afraid to inject botox into a little girl’s face on Good Morning America. Fuck it. I will botox SEVERAL little girls if necessary. So in no particular order, some books that’ll make us all some mad coin.

1. A guide to tantric masturbation.

2. “What Pantone is your Parachute?”

3. The surefire Asian weight-loss diet no one’s talking about yet. (Hint: North Korea)

4. A series of romance novels about white+asian graphic designers.

5. A series of hardboiled crime novels starring an NYPD detective of Middle Eastern origins.

6. Dictionary of foreign neologisms used in American English, replete with a pronunciation guide (native, adopted), etymology, and graphics.

7. Reinterpretation of The Little Prince in which the prince is a junkie.

8. One of those Tiger Mom books laid out like one of those “Weird Japanese Inventions” books.

9. A book about flea markets that turns into a tote bag when you get pregnant.

10. The Bible in Asian pidgin.

Bucket List

It would be awesome to usher the apocalypse by crossing out some things on my bucket list, but that would require my having a bucket list, so all I have now is a meta-bucket list: a bucket list of bucket lists.

Before I smolder in a lake of fire governed by zombie tigers, from whence I came there are:

1. Things to eat
2. Places to see
3. People to meet
4. Dares to execute
5. Truths to tell
6. Fears to overcome
7. Faults to admit
8. Something purely gluttonous and selfish
9. Any iteration of any of the seven sins (since I'm burning in hell anyway)
10. Any iteration of pure kindness.

Sidenote: why are there seven deadly sins but not seven fecund virtues in the Christian mythology? There are Seven Virtues in Buddhism, after all. Of course they're just a group of Buddhist Gods, but... If eternal salvation really depended on a bunch of fat Asian dudes I'd have organized a Groupon orgie for a barbecue lo mein combo at a casino, and tape cheap computer gadgets and pirated dvds all over my body a long time ago.

Sometimes I revel in the fact that there is something wrong with us.

Transcript of text-versation with Michelle Borok, whose birthday is right after mine.

Michelle: Happy birthday lover!
Anne: I love it when you wish me happy birthday because that's one year closer to when i never have to hear from you again.
Michelle: I love it when you get one year older because I know that our life bonded together is that much closer to finally being over.
Anne: I love getting older because that's just more of your mistakes I get to mock derisively.
Michelle:I love being with you as you get older so I can watch your sharp mind turn into a dull baby spoon. Only good for eating man yogurt.
Anne: I love eating man yogurt because it reminds me of what you could never give me: joy.
Michelle: On your birthday I wish I could spread that joy all over your face, and maybe you would choke on it a little bit.
Anne: And then I would walk around Manhattan and people would point and laugh. That's my gift to you on your birthday: granting ++++ +++++'s wish.
Michelle: Perfect.

You've been in New York too long when...

A dream I had last night.

(It starts as a harlequin romance)

Afternoon sunlight poured into the bedroom like a syrup, casting amber light across the face of Fabio, pronouncing his roman features: alabaster skin toasted almond, deep penetrating eyes and aquiline jaw. His arms were taut with the strength of carpentry, and in the Tuscan sun, each tensile motion he made toward his obedient fawn was pronounced with muscular shadows. Annabella laid supine on a bed covered in soft cottons that smelled of Freesia and human desire. She would wait for him with her body, but beckon him with her eyes.
As Fabio approached Annabella, he pulled her chest up to his face, with one motion of the hand between her shoulder blades. She moaned with her head draped back, feeling his hot breath become cool against her skin. The downy hairs on her body invisible but to Fabio now bristled awake. She lifted her head to look deep into Fabio's eyes and confirm a ready eagerness to make love. Their eyes met inches apart...

(Then, suddenly, a change of tone)

Fabio narrowed his eyes as if to warn her of the thunderous effect of his affection. As if... He kept one hand between Annabella's shoulder blades and pursed his lips, perhaps preparing to make a statement. Perhaps... He exhaled once, seemingly preparing to dive in. Seemingly...
After staring at her through several breaths, he took his other hand and wiped gently at his nose. Then he did it again. He repeated this motion several times, each time less intent on wiping away whatever was bothering his face. It looked like nothing more than a gesture.
Annabella then slowly, stutteringly lifted her hand toward her own nose, paused just before her fingertips reached her nostrils, took one more good look at Fabio, whose eyes finally dilated, whose lips curved into an approving smile. She touched her left nostril and discovered... an interruption. A sticky obtrusion. A booger.

This is the dream I had. It started out as a boner fide wet dream set in Italy, only to quickly devolve into an episode of Seinfeld. (sigh)

Birthday parties are for assholes, not dickheads.

Let me begin by saying I am sometimes an asshole. Never a dickhead, but an asshole, sometimes.
Dickhead=top. Asshole=bottom. I'm a bottom.

Let me continue by saying that only a dickhead wants to party like an asshole, but an asshole is the only one who can enjoy their own birthday party.

Dickheads throw frat keggers. They have sweet 16s at nightclubs intdended for salty 21 year olds. When they were 18, their parents rented a penthouse for graduation. They wear tiaras covered in tiny plastic dicks to their bachelorette parties, because they're dickheads. They invite DJs from London to celebrate objects because the British are dickheads. They get married on yachts they don't own. They coined the French acronym "rsvp."

Assholes host "marathons" for shitty TV shows. They celebrate adult birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese's. When they were 8, their parents made them spin around blindfolded swinging aluminum bats at pinatas and identically shaped children who were rapturously following the papier mache effigy, waiting for it to explode into cheap candy. Assholes hire karaoke DJs because assholes like to sing out loud. They get married in houses they own. They coined the American acronym "BYOB."

Another wholly anonymous breed of person chooses never to throw parties. I guess that person doesn't fit in the dick-butt dichotomy. Maybe they're pussies or twats. More on that later.

I've never felt badly about throwing my own birthday parties. If there was ever a day one was allowed to revel in their self, to be totally self-absorbed, I think it's the anniversary of my birth. But, and with full psychoanalytic disclosure, I admit that having birthday parties as an adult has everything to do with having been denied birthday parties as a child. You see, my dad was a twat. Big time. No birthday parties. No Christmas presents. When the phone rang, he'd pick up the receiver and drop it back on the phone. One time he told me he'd take me to a friend's house to hang out, and instead drove me with him to work. Said later that he wanted to use the carpool lane during rush hour later. He was a real winner.

My parents were separating/divorcing as I turned 16. It was a tough time, not because I wanted my parents to stay together but because my mom was so fucking miserable contemplating how she'd fare as a single mother. Note: after a couple years in a one bedroom apartment and no car, she bootstrapped herself into the family business and sent me off to college. By all counts I think she did swell.

Meanwhile back at sweet sixteen... I was so bitter at all the kids with their quincenieras and adult-mimicry that by the time my birthday reared around I was hell bent on out-enjoying myself by spending the evening after a field show competition, with my loyal marching band mates, at Denny's eating beef barley vegetable soup and french fries. Just as we'd do after all our competitions.

That night, one by one, each of my friends defected. "Sorry man, I gotta go home tonight." "Hey, maybe next week we can go to Burger King. I'll buy you a Whopper." "Oh man, it's your birthday? Sorry, I can't hang. I'm gonna see Jennifer." I was so dejected and sad. I really thought long and hard about the meaning of friendship and life concluding only that I may as well resign to being a twat, just like my dad. Fuck parties. Fuck celebration.

Mike Martinez offered to drive me home that night, on his way to pick up a girl. He just needed to stop by his house to change clothes. And I'll never forget these details, because my truly, sincerely, epically bummed-out depressed ass was like an etch-board to the world. Not even Mike, my asshole best friend, was going to let me third wheel for the sake of my own self.

We got out of his car and headed toward the house when Bruce Watanabe happened to drive by in his rice rocket and said "hey, is this where Anne's party's at?" Mike gave him a clear zipper across the mouth gesture, eyes wide open. I looked in shock at Bruce, who said "oh hey. I guess it's already started. Happy birthday!"

Mike walked into the house ahead of me and screamed "Bruce fucked it all up!" and I heard the loudest collective moan ever. When I got into the house I saw dozens of friends' faces, and my mom in the back laughing hysterically. I hadn't seen her laugh in years.

Mike explained to me that my mom had been organizing this surprise birthday party for me with him for weeks. I don't know how else to depict the joy I experienced on that night, except to say that I vowed never not to have a birthday party after that. I guess that doesn't make me so much an asshole as a sucker, but depending on who you ask, it might be the same difference.

A Year Ago Today I was in Mongolia. Today I'm a Mongoloid.

It feels like just yesterday I was waking up on the carpeted dirt floor of a "4 star" Mongolian hotel room, celebrating the end of my birthday trek around Terelj National Park with Michelle, but the fact that I can drink top shelf vodka again is my only real indication that the memory is an old one. Then again, one can only resist vodka for so long in New York City before being accused of being a homophobe.

Last week I happened to recount all my tales of Mongolia to a family from Le Vigan, France (it's closest metropole is Montpellier and the area is appropriately comparable to Vermont, politically et cetera). The family was riveted by my stories about horseback philosophy and the meditative silence in a daily ritual of napping, leagues away from plumbing, electricity and mundane stress. But halfway through my above average French retelling of the Asian outback, Fabienne (mother of the family), says to me:

By the way, in France we call them Mongolians, not Mongols. Mongols are what we call people with downs syndrome.

First, I'd like to point out that I inferred she was talking about downs syndrome without actually knowing that "trysomanie" was the french term for it. I inferred because Americans use the word "Mongoloid" derogatorily to refer to the same. I'm not sure why I assumed the French word for a mongolian was "Mongol" and not "Mongolian" or "mongolien" but I had actually been talking about that very vodka that felled me. So I had to ask:

Can't vodka be mongoloid?

Fabienne said no. "Nothing's Mongoloid unless you're trying to insult someone," she said. I'd argue the only people who'd understand the insult are dead... or Mongolian. I am trying to reappropriate the words to signify nothing more than that something/someone/anyone comes from the upper steppes region adjacent to Uzbekistan, Russia and the People's Republic of China. Easier known as Mongolia, Mongol, Mongoloid. For fucking Christ's sake Ghengis Khan fucked and killed more people than Ceasar and Charlemagne combined. What part of that is retarded?!

So I am officially pledging for reclamation of the grammatical fragment "Mongo-" and proudly calling myself a fucking Mongoloid.

Natsume Ono in New York City

Natsume Ono Book Signing and Giveaway (Original Prints and Art!) at Kinokuniya New York.

Starts at 7pm.

I'll be there translating for her. :B (Yes, I just did :B)

Formula

I've returned to this blog after a long recess only to whine. And yet this is no revelation. The fact is, I've been whining a lot the last year, and am not sure if it's hormones (which I'm happy to admit, make me seem more shemale than woman sometimes), or the dutch oven of rush hour shart toxins in my new neighborhood in NYC.

I am guessing what has rendered me more New York Chinatown (crowded and annoying) than San Francisco Chinatown (unique and cheeky), is the sick realization that I am deep-down-inside, a Los Angeles Chinatown (flashy but unenterprising).

Nothing's more offensive to a New Yorker than to be accused of seeming "LA-y."

I'm rehabilitating my ego. Mind you, a rehabilitation assumes nothing more than that something has always thrived in its natural circumstances but may have been handicapped by external forces: aforementioned toxic air for example, or... private tragedy, public trauma, illness, cheap tampons...

My recovery is going to be simple, as the absence of two things glare back at me when I assess the damage I cause myself when whining out of my pajama sweats (designated attire for whining):

1. Writing.

2. Lists.

Consider this a template.

INRE: Writing.

All of us have an innate talent. Granted, some of you have utterly useless talents, they can all be boiled down to one action. I don't claim to be a good writer, but it's something I can do... confidently.

The big reveal is that I haven't been writing. This is the kind of absenteeism that'll turn math professors into Unabombers. Do what you're good at and you won't ever find yourself wrapping explosives kraft paper and string out of a wood shed in Montana. Or in my case, eating leftover potatoes from a diner in an unlit bedroom watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond, while stroking a gun.

INRE: Number 2. Lists.

All of us have our own system of discipline. For some people it's assistants. For others, it's a wife. For me, it's personalized lists. To Do lists, Top Ten lists, shopping lists, a roll call of corporate indigents, cast members of my NAMBLA TV show "How I Met Your Son"... I take real joy in my lists.

Make your discipline joyful.

Double-Posting: Epic Valentine's Day Gift

An epic accidental Valentine's Day gift from the most epic accidental Best Friend I made last year--Rie Yamamoto--including her email introduction to the gift. I so flattered.

Hi Anne,

How are you doing???
I am in Chiangmai, Thailand right now.
I just started exhibition from tonight.
AND gallery made poster for this exhibition to put entrance of the
gallery. The owner loved the one you are in, so they use the photo!
Hope you like it too :)

I love you too, still now!


Rie

("I love you too, still now!" is a reference to a phone conversation we overheard in the Lower East Side. A man repeating "I love you too" over and over. We joked he doesn't love the person on the other end of the line. He loves him/her... too. Big difference.)

I love you too, still now, Rie!

Some Fun Things I Found in my 2010 Journals

In non-chronological, topical order.

+(dead flowers)

+(a credit card I found at Lake Michigan)

+(ticket stub for a strip club in Ulan Bataar called The Seoul Club)

+(Ivan Albright postcard)

+Gerson Goldhaber

+"Love is the infinite placed within reach of a poodle." --Celine

+To sit in this dim and complete silence is a singular pleasure. Even if the restaurant stinks like horse shit.

+If you fart in a sulfur pit, is the fart still dealt? It smells like a fart here.

+Fritos smell like fucking feet.

+Einmal ist keinmal

+(A Vehicle ID Number )

+Youth lateral to existing fixie market. (Clearly I'd been in a business meeting...)

+terra damnata

+I am the fucking tower of Babel. (Yes, I was drunk. The writing is blurred.)

+I'm insane.

+Insane // Exsane

+I think I have ADD

+I need to figure out what I want.

+I want to make out with someone on a train one day.

+If you hold me in the guise of something other than what's here is it lying low.

+What's killing more Chinese people?

+Which came first, night or day?

+Tooty Toyota

+Imperfect as we are.

+By the time I have children, it'll be OK to name a kid Adolf.

+Quintron

+Unassuming millionaires

+Is Dad gay? I love champagne. (sic)

+good memory good memory good memory good memory

+I want to die. I want someone else to do it.

+I feel good.

The History of Japanese Pedestrian Traffic Rules

I learned something really interesting on my last trip to Japan, and I know everyone reading this blog reads it sometimes for educational purposes, so...

In the U.S. one customarily defers to the right when walking down a sidewalk, to avoid running into oncoming pedestrian traffic. In Japan however, pedestrians do not defer in either direction when on the sidewalk. It is not uncommon in the land of the rising sun to be caught in a "shall we dance" pas-de-deux right in the middle of the Shibuya Scramble Intersection for hours. I wondered why such an efficient and over-logical people would run into this problem and discovered why.

The origins of this behavior can be found 300 years ago. In the Edo Period, when urban planning began on old Tokyo, people walked right into each other, at which point samurai swords would be drawn (lower castes would draw bamboo sticks, and women would draw ninja stars). Whoever successfully swung the sword through their opponent's torso first would naturally win the right of way, which frequently ends up being a left of way, because sword sheaths are usually kept on the left side.

This practice became unwieldy and messy, not to mention all the deaths meant women were now working overtime to replace human capital with babies. Lots and lots of babies. Women, tired and more fearful for their lives, learned to duck quick when swords were swung at them on sidewalks. They deferred by bowing. This is where the customary Japanese greeting originates. Bowing is a literal "bowing out." Now a de rigeur greeting, bowing is still a traditional Japanese's preferred hello.

Unfortunately, bowing out has become so inculcated in the Japanese moor that no one gets killed in pedestrian battles anymore, and many an educated academic blame this act for the precipitous decline in the country's population. The Akita Prefecture has been hit particularly hard, where the population has more than halved in the last twenty years. It is no accident that Akita translates to "faceless halves."

One peculiar exception to the rule of no rules in pedestrian traffic is on escalators. Misbehaving on an escalator is a crime punishable by excommunication. And visitors are not exempt. Anyone who's been on a Japanese escalator can tell you, one always rides on the left, leaving an aisle open to the right for those wishing to use the escalator as a traditional set of stairs, and step up or down. This practice too, has a peculiar ancient origin.

An enduring myth of heaven and hell in the Shinto religion is "The Stairway to Heaven," believed to have been first communicated in the Jomon period, when the very first steps were created leading up to animist shrines to the Gods of fertility and crop. In "The Stairway to Heaven" myth, it is believed that only those deceased who have had enough faith in the stairs while alive, will be carried to that "other side" in a moving stair. This is where the phrase "spirited away" comes from.

In the myth, those who didn't believe in the moving stairs would of course, start walking up the stairs to heaven. Unfortunately they would end up in hell, as punishment for not believing in the moving stair.

Today, those who still believe in Heaven will stand paitently on the left column of an escalator, while the right side is reserved for atheists, nihilists, felons and Koreans to walk up or down.

Uh, who just left me their phone number without a name?

I will never:

Wear Uggs

Wear cargo pants

Wear polar fleece as my outermost layer

Pick my nose in public

Stop using my hands to eat

Make glottal chewing sounds while eating

Not laugh maniacally

I will, however:

Wear ill-fitting shoes

Wear unflattering clothing

Wear the same long underwear several days in a row under everything

Pick my belly button in public

Not necessarily wash my hands when I should

Slurp my noodles

Fake a laugh

Dad

This is the first Christmas Card I’ve ever received from my father. At my 31 years of age, it was fifteen years in the making. I assumed it was a twenty dollar bill sandwiched in a Hallmark, to make up for lost time. A tax. I stuffed it in my purse and we walked into the restaurant for “catch up family dinner.” And I pre-empted the duty with wet-eyed boasting that I loathe Christmas.

Anne: It reminds me of all the things I want but don’t have.
Dad: You’re too young to hate the holidays. You gotta take it easy.
Anne: So… what about that North Korea, eh? Crazy town.

He tells me I ate a lot of sashimi as a toddler. When I was three all I wanted was sashimi. My sister laughs, “and what did I eat?” she asks.

Dad: You ate a lot of udon.

So funny. No wonder we look nothing alike, my sister and me.
She tells me she’s jealous of our ability to converse at length in Japanese about “issues.” Like North Korea’s embargo on conversations about Christmas joy.

Dad tells me we ought to go hiking/camping soon, but that I probably couldn’t handle the mountain he’d take us to. It’s 8 hours of difficult climbing, he says. It takes five teeth to hold my tongue.

As we part ways he tells me to call on him for moral support more often. I want to punch him in the face with my saddest stories. But I am satisfied. We’re one small step closer to whatever that pit was he left when I turned sixteen.

I open the Christmas Card in my sister’s parking lot, and I cannot read the English.
I cannot read the English.
I cannot read the English.
I cannot read the English, because the handwritten Japanese, in a beautiful long-hand I’d always tried to emulate, blinded me.

Makiko,
This is for 15 years of Christmases I missed.
I hope we have more now.
-Kikuo

I am buried in the fear of an emotion I worried I would never have again, but I am going to use this fear to create a courage. To take the risk fifteen years in the making, of refusing to fight.

Tonight, I become a pacifist.

Crystal Math

I am insecure and border on psychotic when I weigh over a certain number.

I am an arrogant cannibal when I weigh under that number.

This is what I look like:

95-105 Lbs. This only happens when I'm severely agitated or trapped in a dungeon with nothing but a dripper of fen-phen and a rack of shake-weights. Weightlessness gives me the very courage I need to withstand the fear of yo-yo-ing back my fat. Whenever I'm in that dungeon, I think, "finally, I can live in Japan." Also, "maybe I can eat my way through chicken-wire..."

105-115 Lbs. I love athletic activities but this is my peak confidence zone, so I'll overcompensate with Sex Drugs and Rock n' Roll. Gym? What Jim?

120-125 Lbs. Lock down and initiation of what I call The Cosmetics Paradox. The fatter I get the more makeup I wear. It's also The Workout Paradox. The fatter I get the more often I go to the gym. I reward my good behavior with food and stay fat. Then I hate myself even more, become reclusive. This is also when I get really into building and crafts. The last time I weighed 125 pounds I built a shed! Yeah, installed a drip-feeder and an oscillating dumbell for the small animal I planned on keeping in it...

Now take these numbers and confound them with age.

I am 31 years old, over my number, and could care less. I've dipped below the number and hated myself; jumped over the number and assumed the world. And you know what I've learned in all of this?

Fuck math.

No Holds Barred.

How AIM Saved My Life.

I can be serious when I need to be serious.

I can be mean when I need to be mean. (Though I will always respect a stranger's privacy...)

I can let my guard down when I have to.

And pull out all the stops. I'm fucking hilarious, peoples. A laugh machine.

No holds barred, kid.

Fun with Mom

Mom's funny. I love it when she visits me until I can't stand it. But no one needs to know how she drives me crazy. Better you think of her as the silliest person I know.

(note: All this goes down in Japanese.)

1. Mom and I are walking around town on a Saturday in a Hassid neighborhood. Man in Hassid vestiment walks past us on sidewalk. Mom says, "Happy Sabbath!" and cocks her head to the side with a smile and the footstep equivalent of a peace sign: viz. Lollipop Kids from The Wizard of Oz. Man says "why thank you!" Mom explains to me that's what you say to Jews on Saturday. Thanks, Mom.

2. We walk past a billboard for The Tourist (starring Johnny Depp and Angelina MoJolie). Mom says, "I want to touch his facial hair." Stunned, I ask, "what... do you... mean...?" Mom replies, "you don't think he's handsome?" My jaw drops and I look at Mom. She doesn't realize she's just come up with the best euphemism for getting physical since "knocking boots." I eventually tell Mom "yeah, I'd totally touch his facial hair..."

3. Mom's sleeping. Sunlight breaks through a gap in my curtains and would pierce Mom's face but she's laid a sock over her eyes. Viz. Me as baseball umpire: Safe!

4. Mom gets a caramel apple from a Halloween party. Slices small pieces of it to eat throughout her stay, careful to distribute the caramel evenly. By Day 5 of her stay with me the apple looks pretty much done. I throw it away. Mom asks me where the apple is and I tell her. Then, in the angriest I've heard from her since I joy-rode Dad's car in the 10th grade, she whines, "Whaaat?! WhyyYYyyyyYyyy?" (If you know the Japanese or Korean language you'll totally know the tone I am trying to evoke here.) Ten minutes later she's still complaining about how I threw away perfectly good caramel apple. Sorry, Mom.