· fancyjournal

I REFUSE TO NOT WRITE FOR A YEAR.

I REFUSE TO NOT WRITE FOR A YEAR.

I REFUSE TO NOT WRITE FOR A YEAR.

so with the exception of my final tomorrow, my first trimester in japan is over. time has gone by too quickly, and i'm sad that the end is three months nearer. i love the people here, and while i do miss things about america, there are definitely a few things that i'm going to resent america for not doing/having [i'm of course talking about milk tea].

everyone's so sweet and nice, and i'm sad i have to go home for the vacation. i want to see alon and my family, but the 25+ hours of plane rides necessary to do so are pretty shitty.

jack had to be put to sleep :c i really only cried for three minutes about it the morning after, but i'm really going to miss how stoopid he was and the way [we liked to pretend that] he talked. he was 15, and for a dog with golf-ball sized tumors growing out of his neck, that's pretty good. but apparently his tumor was bleeding really badly, and there was no way to fix it. he could barely walk up stairs and he was most likely deaf, and it would have been selfish to keep him alive for any longer than we already had. beau's going to be so lonely whenever we leave him home alone, now, and i fully intend on buying him at least five really good chew toys. he deserves a more interesting life than jack had, and i don't want him to be sad now that his best [i.e. only] friend is gone.

so going home is obviously going to be bittersweet. yay thanksgiving, yay alon, yay family, yay home. boo jack, boo planes, boo cancer shit.

i'm SO looking forward to a week from now. by this time next week, i'll be at umass, seeing everyone i miss and meeting all of this semester's new people. but mostly i'll just be excited to have finished my CAT scan.

i've said it before, and it's probably such an obvious thing to say, but if i never had cancer, this year would have been so much easier.

thank god i own a digital camera, otherwise i wouldn't be able to tell you anything i've done this trimester. i remember parties, i remember talking, i remember food, and i remember people. i remember that 'all you can eat' should not be taken lightly. i remember that 'all night karaoke' is more of a command than a privilege. i remember that the average urban japanese person is surrounded by sex 23 hours out of the day [but doesn't really want to have it].

...i couldn't tell you one thing i remember from japanese 6, other than how to run a court case and the adjective for “having a knack for shrewd businessmanship” in japanese [wait. actually i forgot the word, nevermind]. i definitely learned a few good, useful kanji, but as anyone who's ever studied this language is going to tell you, i'm going to come across them again in a few months and need to look them up.

segue time!

...or will i?

**okay, from here on out it's a lot of esoteric preaching to japanese learners, so for everyone else, you may leave class early**

part of the reason i decided to write this entry in the first place is because of this new thing i'm trying called JUST FUCKING DO IT and it's going pretty well so far.

i stumbled [and by stumbled, i mean StumbleUpon brought me there, and if you ever want to get another productive thing done in your life you will NOT use it] this website, the other day, and i can confidently say the way i'm studying japanese from now on has COMPLETELY changed. the website will take you a good two weeks to read if you try to hit every page, plus there are a lot of hard-to-find entries and pages that only obsessively reading will bring you to. the method can be used for any language really. here are the main points of his site that khatz, the author, suggests that you don't mess with [anything else is up to personal tastes]:

-learning kanji systematically: the absolute first thing to do when setting out on learning japanese is to learn the meanings of all the jouyou kanji, plus 50 or so extra. using heisig's “remembering the kanji” and an SRS [see below], learn the meanings associated with each of the 2042 characters, and if you want, go to heisig's next book and make that 3007 kanji. also, notice that it doesn't say “after hiragana and katakana” or “meanings and readings”. if you see 'house', think of 家. if you see 'dog', think of 犬. don't learn their readings or compound vocab words. this will come later [naturally, you don't really need to make a point of it]. it makes it a hell of a lot easier to only learn one thing for each character, too—so much so that i got a little crazy and did 500 the first day :D


also, only go from english word → kanji. the other way around doesn't do a thing [and would also unnecessarily double your studying].


-using an SRS [spaced repetition software]: why don't you remember any of the vocabulary you cram five minutes before the day's quiz? because you do it once, hold it, and forget it. now, why do you remember your name? why do you remember your favorite movie quote? why do you know where your house is? when was the test for that, because i can't seem to remember that day.


oh wait. there was none.


you heard these things over and over, or went to these places time after time. you know them because you've done them so many times, over long periods of time. and once you knew them, you could start hearing or going with less frequency and still remember, right? but how are you supposed to use this with kanji? throw flashcards in a basket and pick out random ones till you know them?

NO.

an SRS does that for you. if you can't remember what the character that corresponds to “solely” is [welcome to me, yesterday] then you make it tell you. in 10 minutes, it'll ask you how to write the character associated with “solely” again. don't remember it? another 10 minutes. eventually, though, you WILL remember it, because it's kind of hard to actively ignore something without putting in effort to remember what it was you wanted to ignore. so finally, you go “oh yeah!” and think of the character 唯 [you don't write or type anything, just understand the shape and maybe trace it with your finger on your desk if you want]. then you show the answer, and if you get it right, you don't have to see it for another few hours, and if you keep getting it right, eventually you don't have to see it for over three weeks [such is already the case for me with easy ones like 人 or 会]. an SRS spaces these things out for you, so basically all you have to do is click the program and exist. the one i use [and am therefore plugging] is anki. it's not made for kanji specifically though, so it doesn't come with the kanji or anything. so here is the file [i'm nice, aren't i?]: http://tinyurl.com/6ohqmc [if that doesn't work, ask me and i'll give you the link to the file, or just google the yahoo! group called “Remembering the Kanji” and get the heisig.anki file from there].

-using a monolingual dictionary: this one's kind of self-explanatory. if you're just getting started, then you should probably hold off and just use a J-E one until you're ready. but for the people i know/am talking to: let's go.


yahoo! 辞書 and the sanseido one are my favorite online ones. paper's stupid.

-immersion environment: this is the part that makes people cringe. it's easier to let khatz [the guy who made all this] explain it, so i recommend just going to the site and looking around [under “Table of Contents” go to “Physical Environment”].


the easiest part to this is listening to japanese all the time [the site says 10,000 hours in 18 months, and if you care to pull out a calculator, you'll see that's impossible (which is the point)]. basically, if you're being forced to read in english, do it with japanese playing in the background. if you're walking to class, listen to japanese music or a podcast. if you need to look something up on wikipedia [in japanese of course], then have perfume or rip slyme or some kind of japanese playing the entire time. also, he recommends listening while you sleep, but that's more to stress the “dusk till dawn” idea of CONSTANTLY listening. if you're breathing, you're listening to japanese.


silence just doesn't exist anymore guys, sorry.


also, most of this can be “hearing” instead of “listening”. background sound is good. you'd never be able to focus on anything if you were trying to understand every japanese word while doing it. just have it there. don't analyze it, just let it play.


i have just a half-hour short of two days' worth of japanese podcasts on my ipod. oh, wait, actually, i have a 31 minute audiobook of 藪の中 on there too. nevermind.

-learning sentences: the goal is 10,000 sentences, and admittedly that's a shit-ton of sentences. but don't aim lower. keep that as a goal. he finished [if i remember correctly] 7,500 sentences in the 18 months it took him to become fluent, so that gives you a better idea of how long that should take.


“so what do you do with these sentences?”


well, little billy. you see, after completing all the kanji [either 2042 or 3007. or more if you're insane], start finding sentences from reliable sources [textbooks, wikipedia, news websites]. take those sentences and fully understand them and be able to pronounce them [i told you readings would come later], and throw them immediately into your SRS. for anything you don't know or are confused about, use your [japanese-japanese] dictionary and figure that shit out. this will usually lead to another word you don't understand, and by the end, one small word might lead you to two hours and five more sentences.


sentences are the most important—and time consuming—and result-bringing part of this entire thing. i started early the other day [without realizing i was supposed to finish kanji first], and in six hours total or so i got 74 sentences. full-ass sentences full of shit i had never heard of, but now understand. look at that.
also, always write complete sentences—not individual vocabulary words. that doesn't teach you anything about the particles associated with it, or the situations it's used in, and it definitely leaves too much empty space on a card.

the fundamental point [and most interesting one] in my opinion, is the fact that input [reading and listening] is more important than output [writing and speaking]. writing and speaking incorrectly can really hurt more than it can help.


"but practice makes perfect!"


WRONG.


speak latin. go ahead. practice. speak it. now. you can't? well that's weird, i thought you said that you could correctly form a latin sentence with practice. or take those two years of spanish from high school and discuss nuclear physics. go ahead. if you practice enough, these words will come to you, right? your incorrect grammar patterns and pronunciation mistakes will naturally work themselves out of your system, so just say “yo voy a la biblioteca” until a debate on macroeconomics works itself into your vocabulary.


honestly. how can you expect to form correct sentences without correct sentences being given to you in the first place? and how can you recover from naturally saying all the incorrect stuff you've already pounded into your brain unless you stop saying them?

this entire site and method weren't made out of thin air, either. it was inspired by some polish guy [guys?] who learned english using basically the same method. and if you're skeptical about their english, feel free to go to their website. there are some audio samples of them talking too in there somewhere, and if you're still skeptical after listening to their “sloppy” [a.k.a. natural and not reading] english, then i've wasted both of our time.

is it too much information to say i used a squat toilet? answer: YES.

i spent the day with ko, one of my suite mates, in asakusa [which is different from akasaka, apparently] the other day. we ate lovely foods, walked around shops, and went to hanayashiki, or flower mansion, a local amusement park. and by local, i mean it was literally house, house, office building, amusement park, house, house on the block. still, we had fun waiting on lines and going through haunted houses with broken dead geisha robots.

one bad thing about riding a bike is that if you ride it for too long and get too sweaty, your shorts get a huge dark ass-sweat stain for all the world to see. i know this because the ride from campus to the train station took me an hour plus two stops at police boxes for directions. the distance was about two laps around a high school track, btw.

i'm drinking some kind of pepsi. except it's not pepsi. pepsi just put their name on a twist cap bottle of limeade and watered-down vaseline.
wtf is pepsi nex? that's not even a word.

i knew the japanese thought differently from most of the world, but it wasn't until ko asked me something did i experience it. as i took a picture, he asked me, "with what emotion are you taking this picture?" i thought his english was just rusty, but i realized that japanese people put feeling into a lot of things, and even the language has a lot to do with feeling.

anyway. my suite is having a unit dinner, and since each of us is [kinda] from different parts of the world, we're making food from our own countries. besides the fact that i can't cook/we don't have an oven, idk what the hell american food is. fried chicken? mcdonald's? apple pie? i can't bake here, and fuck it if i can make new england clam chowder or some shit. i told them i'd pour the drinks.

i've told everyone here i'm allergic to alcohol. i'm such a loser.

so there are two small hills outside the main class building, bakayama and ahoyama. baka = stupid. aho = idiot. yama = mountain. apparently you'll forget all your schoolwork and become dumb if you spend all day sitting on the hills, so the legend goes. on bakayama, there's a yearly "initiation" in which all new students participate, including myself and my fellow study abroaders. basically, you make some sort of performance, anything. ours is a dance battle between mummies and ninjas, and no, i did not come up with this idea. catch is, the costumes you wear for the performance need to be worn all five first days of class. there's a dude dressed as sailor moon, girls with giant cardboard squirtle masks, and me, a person with some ripped up bed sheets tied around my torso. did i mention i hate halloween?

long entry. keep going. well, not you. me. i know it's not too interesting.

food here is awesome. soda here is neon colored. vending machines are plentiful.

there are absolutely no public garbage cans outside. NONE. in the city? NONE. in buildings? SOME. and you'd think there'd be litter all over the place. i have not seen more than a lone cigarette butt on the ground this entire week. it's amazing. people don't spit their gum out on the ground either. you basically hold your garbage in your pocket till you happen to find one a few hours later.

also, i knew public restrooms didn't have paper towels or blowdry things to dry your hands, so everyone carries around their own hankerchief for such an emergency. but most public bathrooms off campus DON'T EVEN HAVE TOILET PAPER. everyone carries that around too. little kleenex pocket packs. when i bought my japanese cell phone, a pack of tissues came in the gift bag. guys here all have man bags, too, which is nice to see. i just feel like they're so convenient. getting oneeeee.

nicole from umass and i have been hanging out a lot, watching top model and eating american food like good tourists.

i hate this entry. too long, nothing said.

EDIT: i just taught ko the word "spank," and he goes "you always do to your boyfriend?" this entry is now worthwhile. thank you.

BYE.

american airlines knows how to keep you busy on a 13-hour flight. i watched sex and the city, an hour and a half of japanese tv about mold, 2 hours of the office [which was funnier than i expected], and i played four video games for quite a while each. that all still left me with 5 hours to sleep, but i only slept for about an hour. there was no one on the flight, and out of the five seats in the middle row, i was four away from the japanese woman who shared it with me. i could have lain down, but armrests and seatbelts made that more of a hassle than it would have been worth.

when i finally got here, i was greeted by two girls: one girl who was supposed to pick me up and some other girl who replaced the original second girl. so after they made me send my huge suitcase by delivery to my dorm and tried to make me buy my train ticket myself, i realized they weren't the most helpful for my first day. they were really sweet and nice, but since my biological clock [is that the term?] was running at 3am, the 2 hour-long train rides into mitaka [the city where my university is] didn't make me like them any more for dragging me around tokyo.

along the way, though, i did manage to see the one thing i was hoping i would: crazy engrish shirts with nonsense written on them. a girl at the train station sported a t-shirt with the printed words:

i love chocolate.
i love sweets.
i love milk.
i love banana.
i love candy.
so let's go to it.
let's live glutton life.

after we got into mitaka, we needed to get to campus from the train station, so we get into a cab. this is a well-noted anecdote of japan, but i had forgotten that many drivers, garbage men, and other service workers [again, is that the term?] wear white gloves on their right hands. oh, also, WE WERE DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. i say 'wrong' because i'm american, and we are the standard for everything in the world. plus, all the cars in japan would probably lose in a demolition derby to a collection of hot wheels cars. i think i could touch the roof of a japanese 18-wheeler.

normal safety is not a concern for the japanese. rather, they don't need to concern themselves with it because no sane japanese person would ever steal someone else's shit or kidnap someone. there are probably 2 bicycles to every car, if not more. none of them are locked up, though. japanese people just don't steal your shit, so there's nothing stopping you from picking one up and walking away with it. my bike has a key that unlocks the back wheel, but other than that the only thing keeping it in place is the kickstand.

also, the replacement pick up girl, when we went to transfer trains, helped three middle eastern men find their way around the station. but she didn't just tell them where to go, no, she walked with them to another platform, probably bought their tickets for them, and she might have served them some tea at some point between turnstiles. idk, but in new york the most you'll get is a finger point to the station, perhaps accompanied by a grunt.

today, there was a matriculation ceremony in the campus chapel. it was basically church mass. we sang the school song which sounds like they just slapped new words on a hymnal, prayed, and spoke with the reverend. plus it was obscenely humid, so the 800 people in pews around me weren't happy either.

i also bought a cell phone which i have to pick up tomorrow, but cell phones in japan are ridiculous. you can pay for vending machines, movies, and groceries just by holding your phone up to a sensor. you can transfer shit from one phone to another just by holding them next to each other. you can watch live tv, create a workout schedule complete with pedometer, and read barcodes with a cell phone. i got a pretty cheap and simple phone, but even it has half that stuff.

i think that's all for now. i need to finish unpacking and get to bed before my japanese placement test/interview [eeeesh] tomorrow.

sorry this wasn't funny. i'm still jet lagged/uncreative.

baii!

this post probably won't be too entertaining either, but who am i to be pessimistic...

i didn't sleep at all last night since i slept all day yesterday, and so today i was overwhelmed by a general feeling of shitblahh.

i was supposed to have a quick 3-hour day today, but that would have been too nice, so i'll explain the issue later.

i sat next to this woman with lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain. all of these stories are blurring together, and all i can do is thank what/whoever kept me safe in the way it/they have.

thank you.

anyway, after getting up and waiting in the waiting room for my dad, i burst into tears and got re-hooked up to saline to flush my system a little.

TODAY WAS TERRIBLE.

i slept at my dad's until my mom drove me to my own house, where alon's chest was waiting for me to put me head in it. that was my favorite part of this week.

i also just took a bubble bath, but i always end up feeling more dirty after baths than when i first got in, so that quickly turned into a shower.

in general, bad day, crappy week, shitty feelings, bad adjective + noun.

note:

-mild retardation of the face.
-( *~*)~pufflysnatch~(*~* ), my new best friend.
-two IV bandages.

i hate writing in my livejournal for long periods of time.

PISSED.

and so it has begun.

yesterday was probably up there on the list of my most miserable days. in my last post, where i wrote "blueberry nausea," i was mistaken. it was just regular old chemo nausea, and it lasted for a good ten hours. i writhed in bed for most of that time, but i wouldn't know how long exactly since my eyes were fixedly studying the insides of my eyelids. when i wasn't imitating a fetus, i was forcing down food, but perhaps ardyth's insta-pad thai wasn't the best choice.

i also managed to eat an entire box of saltine crackers and a 20oz of ginger ale within an hour.

i don't know if i'm proud of that.

i hit the hay at 11, and woke up at 6, completely nausea-free. and so starts today.

i had to get to chemo by 9, so i wasn't in any rush. eventually i was served breakfast, but i couldn't eat it all, so we just left.

i got some vitals checked because all of the doctors were surprised by how nauseous i was when they saw just how much anti-nausea shit i had been pumped with. it was concluded [and i agree] that it's all in my head, and that i'm making myself crazy. so i left the room with a prescription for lorazepam [or ativan for umass students named ryan flynn], and went and got hooked up. ativan also puts you to sleep, so it made me un-crazy as well as drowsy.

most of my craziness is with saline. saline is what they pump you with when you're not on drugs for a moment. something about the word 'saline' makes my skin crawl. i just imagine that terrible but familiar hospital smell, but in liquid form. i imagine it being pumped through my veins and nourishing my organs and phasing out my blood slowly until i'm running on clear, geriatric fluid. it makes my stomach turn and my head spin. i taste it in the back of my throat until my eyes roll back in my head. then i come back down and start over.

i'm done with that conversation, i don't need another blueberry incident.

so anyway, i sat next to geraldine, an 85 year old black woman with a heart of gold who smelled of huggies and happier days. she wasn't much of a bother, as we both slept most of the time. the ativan knocked me out pretty well, and so my six hour day of sitting in a chair was split into time with my hoodie, my ipod, and my japanese book.

it was a pretty boring day, and so this is a pretty boring post. i'm at my dad's house now with a cup of ginger ale and a box of pop'ems, and i'm waiting until i can take another ativan. maybe i won't be so crazy.

this is me today, as i was about to leave.
 
i had quite a few more bandages but i'm wireless now and it feels niiice.

anyway, see you tomorrow.

maybe not.

could it be? well, let's not get used to it.

my dad told me i should blog about the next few weeks while i get chemotherapy. he's internet savvy and all now, so i listened.

and for all of you who are a little confused, it won't be difficult to catch up. cancer --> chemo --> happy. i'm fine, so don't worry.

anyway, let's just review what's happening. i started my first day today, and my treatment will be over on the 28th day. i have five days of chemo, then two weeks off, and then five more days. so i'll really only be wedged between old people and their even older counterparts for ten days total. at four hours per day, that leaves me with 40 hours of good ol' summer sittin' around time. it should be noted that i have no problem with that.

and so we begin this morning. it's 9:00. my chemo starts at 9:45. after sitting in my bed for ten minutes trying to figure out how to get up, i finally stumble my way to my door like a damn newborn giraffe. i can't remember what caused this, but somehow it took me ten more minutes to walk down the hall and into my shower. at 9:35, ardyth shouts into the bathroom that i need to get my ass moving, so i leave the bathroom with a grunt and probably half a q-tip sticking out the side of my head. once i'm dressed in my pre-chosen comfy clothes [i knew that was a good idea], i start a one man slapstick act with myself, and i'm the only one who can see it. after untangling my ipod headphones from every wire that has ever come within five feet of it, i proceed to kick my sandal under the see-through stairs and accidentally detach my keys from the carabiner that is now lonely on my belt loop. i get in the car with my japanese textbook at 9:47 and we head off.

the woman who hooks me up to machines is eileen. she's insane. she used to bowl with my mom [although, who hasn't bowled with ardyth], and before this whole thing she had only seen me when i was four years old or so. it's impossible to capture her ridiculousness in writing, so perhaps i will tape her one day.

anyway, so after i get a butterfly needle placed in me, i'm taped up and the sitting begins. i can't get up very easily, which leaves me sandwiched between the two people who will get my chemo party started: tom and blargle.

i'll start with blargle. i obviously do not know his real name. if i had asked him, i might have ended up more confused than before, so i refrained. blargle is a semi-obese balding black man with sparse white body hair and even sparser and whiter facial hair. he is absolutely unintelligible. i was practically sharing an arm rest with this man and i can only tell you two words i understood: fried chicken. when eileen remarked to another patient on the other side of the room that she couldn't make chicken for the life of her, blargle's ears perked up like he had been waiting for his moment to shine his whole life. when eileen approached him, he opened his mouth and horrible noises came forth. i assume he was talking, but i can't be sure. one of the noises sounded like "fried chicken" and his hand gestures mirrored those of emeril lagasse. eileen apparently spoke his language, and said she would try his technique next time she makes it. so blargle left after twenty minutes, and so did the smell his diaper so liberally offered passersby.

tom wasn't as interesting, and he probably knew this, since all four of the nurses quite openly offered me suggestions on how to get him to stop talking to me. his whole cancer deal was more intense than mine, and i was thankful that i don't have to walk around for 48 straight hours carrying a box of chemicals with me every two weeks for the rest of my life like he does. eventually he went to sleep and i got to watch the food network in peace.

the old ladies and i oohed and ahhed at the tv for an hour until i opened my japanese book. i plan to finish my current textbook this summer, which won't be a big deal. i got about halfway through chapter 10 in the hour i had left, but there was one question that completely confused me [chapter 10, 2C for anyone who actually owns an IJ book a.k.a. no one].

alon and my father, both on their blackberry phones, thought it would be great to send me 83 text messages each with their lightning speed smartphone texting skills. so that was a good anxiety attack.

and i also had a mini-asthma attack, but i'm good. my mom thought i liked blueberry muffins [although i have never specifically expressed the obscene hatred i hold for them to her, so it's an honest mistake], and right after they switched the chemical i was on, i took a nibble of the baked, slimy, boring cupcake version of the devil. immediately, i got extremely hot, my face was probably turning red, my breathing became labored, and my body felt a weird pressure like i was sitting at the bottom of a 10ft deep swimming pool. they switched whatever it was i was on temporarily and i threw the muffin angrily into the garbage.

my dad finally came to get me and we ate at panera, where i obviously exhibited no loss of appetite and was my usual cakeprincess self.

so this is me right now, at home, post-everything:

note:
-hair [that should start going away by day 19]
-cotton ball covered in painful hair-pulling tape.
-expression of general death.

okay, so that's all. i'm nauseous from thinking about that muffin, and now i'm upset.

have a lovely day!

okay!

OKAY.

bye :D

alright, memories. quick recap:

college happens. did i tell you muffin died? why is my computer so slow. alon and tyler have a lot of fights. holy shit, massachusetts is a nice cozy beach-weather temperature of about -14ºC. tom has sex with black men. oh, btw, tyler and alon are good again. jesus' birthday. rhiannon and amanda have issues. alan chow fixes tyler's computer. tyler loves alan chow long time. brian and tyler rearrange room for the eighth time, sources say tyler hates it a little bit. tyler sends mail for first time in life. blockbuster rents out all its movies to us. pound #6.8 and below have premiered. go watch.

ooh, there has to be more to that. guess not :(

soo, the only reason i wanted to write a blog was that saturday night was so ridiculous, so i apparently have to do that now. gayyy, here we go.

...actually nevermind. i'm soooo not in the mood to type anymore. well. moral of the story is, don't eat at fired up. it's berkshire in circle form.

OOH i'm in a bad mood now. i hate everyone.

i think i'm getting sick :( knock knock.

american idol is on at the same time as antm.

alright, i'll stop trying.

goodnight, see you in, let's see... july.

massachusetts is quite possibly the coldest state i've lived in. it's not even november yet, and i find myself crazy gluing my peacoat to my bare skin seeing as how jesus blessed me with the wonderful ability to not grow body hair. YEAH THANKS JESUS i really appreciate it.

so obviously piety has yet to grow on me in massachusetts. what is this place good for.

last night, alon, amanda, brian, nathan, rhiannon, tom, myself and some other bitches went to diva's, the gay club in northampton. i really only went to see tom perform, but it was good anyway. you see, children, thomas likes to dress as a lady. his lady name is "tara dactyl", and what a fierce bitch she is.

oh, yeah, btw drag queens don't scare me as much anymore. they still do a tiny bit. but not like omg-scary scary.

well, tara was in a competition, but didn't win. it wasn't that she wasn't good, though; it was kind of a gyp. but, yeah, hey. ANYWHOM.

i made a deaf friend. his name is yuriy, but he tells me to call him yura. he moved here 3.8 years ago from ukraine. he knows english and everything, and he speaks like deaf people do, but he doesn't know sign language. that means i have to try and understand him, but it also means that i don't have to sign to him. he's my russian doll. mrs. brooks will be so proud.

sarah lundin shout-out.

brian just had a phone conversation, this was his side: "hello...yeah, i know where the fuckin campus center is...no, it's like five dollars a minute you fuckin neckbone...alright!! bye."

it was his mother.

so on the subject of neckbones, brian has to write two blogs per week for his english class. he asked me for help, so i decided to lend a helping hand. i said, "write this all down," and began to speak, making him type whatever came out of my mouth. this is the end result [btw lyndsey is his professor]:

how come all of cascada's songs are the same thing with different music/words. and how come she always whispers the title before the music solo. what the hell.

pound #3 came out a while ago, if you didn't know.

i find myself so god damn tired in linguistics it's not even funny. yeah, it's interesting, but allophones and voiced alveolar fricatives are of none of my concern when i got two hours of sleep the night before. the other day we analyzed where to put the infix fucking in state names. like ala-fucking-bama and minne-fucking-sota.

since when is minnesota a state. next you know they'll be taking planets out of the solar system, sheesh.

i don't think this entry was all too shabby. good job, tyler.

thanks, tyler.

no prob, tyler.

GOODNIGHT.

and i agree.

he bit me yesterday. and he runs on his wheel from about 10pm–10am. but he's still my muffinpoopypoosnackfoofoobeautyqueen. amanda likes to put him in his ball and bowl him down the hall and shake him and spin him. i then proceed to cry a little and muffincuddle for the rest of the night. then he pees on me and i throw him back in his cage and cuddle time is over.

alright, jeffrey sebel—okay brian's persuading me to go to the gym, i'll finish updating when i get back [or not, whatever], lataz.

ALRIGHT WHAT'S UP WITH THAT i'm feeling uninspired and not funny. that's alright. olivia's the only one who reads this anyway.

HI OLIVIA :D

you guys, bryant [a.k.a. the introverted suite mate] moved out. we're too much of a party suite for him to properly study and everything. i completely understand—everyone in the suite drinks a six pack or handle every day of the week that ends in "-day". i had already seen his penis twice, though; i think it was time for him to leave. that's aiight, though, we'll just bring the party to him in the other building.

NECKBONE.

dude the soda machine just gave me two fantas for the price of one.

i know i haven't updated in a while, but a lot has been going on and i've had a lot of work, so lj's been pushed down on the priority list. yes, i know, i have to read 40-something pages in japanese literature, but this is easier/more interesting/more tyler-centric.

my side of the room is becoming messy. not omg-stephanie-tanner-just-backed-joey's-new-car-into-the-kitchen messy, but still enough-to-make-danny-tanner-freak-out messy.

what the hell is a tv? i haven't watched tv in forever [other than project runway]. ULI SUMMER PARTY SANDALS MIAMI ADVENTURE. okay uli.

so, this weekend was columbus day weekend, or, as the out-of-state umass students like to call it, "yo wtf where is everyone?" the streets were barren. alon, amanda, brian, a few other people, and myself were pretty much the only ones here. worcester was constantly empty, and they served all the good food for the people who stayed; they don't make blintzes for just anyone. justine also came up this weekend, and nothing was ever more precious. her getting high was precious. her being a norwegian model was precious. her teaching me polish was precious. btw, she says "precious" a lot.

heyy, so i'm slowly learning to speak hebrew. i'm putting sentences together and my vocabulary's growing. basically, it's all tov.

youtube should be my homepage, because i've not left the site for the past three days. it's like my p2p/choreographer/tv, i love it.

i finally learned the "slave 4 u" dance. it was getting on my nerves that i didn't know it, so one morning when brian was sleeping, i replayed the video twenty times and got it. now, i don't stop.

okay, so i'm excited. brian and i got a "fish". its name is banana nut muffin, but we call it "muffin" for short. it crawls through its tubes and shit and runs on its wheel. he's kind of a sociopath, but whatever, we like it. here's our muffin:

he's a qt.

so alon has been making videos of our time here, a series entitled "the freshman fifteen", and each episode is a pound. two have been made so far, but i'm pretty sure only pound #1 is up. if you just subscribe to the user "omgprodcutions" [yeah, prodcutions, not productions, alon's an idiot], you'll get them all, but i'll probably post more in coming entries. EDIT: okay pound #2 is up.

amanda, brian, and i have been speaking with a purposely-bad russian accent for the past week. it's getting on all of our nerves, but we just can't stop.

guys, ariel's urinetown and ohs' noises off are the same weekend, which is good because otherwise i wouldn't have been able to see the ohs one. AHH i'm so excited to see mrs. brooks and everyone and also mrs. brooks. EDIT: nope, they're not the same weekend, sadfaces. okay, so i'm not seeing noises off but i'll come to a friday rehearsal + still get to see mrs. brooks woo!

guys i'm gaining weight.

it was so nice being alone in the suite [other than brian]. yeah, leonard stayed here, but i still haven't met/even seen him, so we don't count him. his girlfriend/slave, however, is constantly coming in and out of the room with laundry or groceries or some shit that leonard should just get himself. i hate him already.

i know this post has been just a bunch of tiny thoughts, but i'm almost done.

we downloaded two episodes of are you afraid of the dark? the other night. it's so much scarier as a kid. remember the opening credits, with that boat that drifts in the water and the swing that swings and the shutters that slam? nostalgiaaa.

i need a new dry erase marker. okay get me one alright goodbyee.

speaking of our common room, DUDE IT'S CRAZY. okay, they gave us two love seats, a couch, two end tables, and a coffee table. we took that and turned it into a crazy party palace, adorning the room with things like colored christmas lights hung with black duct tape, pizza boxes, and a revolving "blue moon beer" sign that lights up. basically, enough stuff to have to lock the suite doors at night.

so, have you ever lived with someone really creepy? well, my suite mates and i have. one of our suite mates has recently started to hang around us, which was totally cool at first, but is now just weird. he was very sheltered, and doesn't know much about the ways of human interaction. not to say that we are better than him or anything, but he is really just a creepy kid. he's either making innuendos to the point of inappropriateness or keeping to himself to the point of creepiness. he also asked me what a "circumscribed" penis was, then asked if i wanted to see his to make sure. there really is no way to describe him perfectly, so just take my word for it; he's weird.

brian and i went on a shopping spree the other day, and i came back with a bunch of scented sprays and fresheners. our room smells like somewhere between the wonka factory, the garden of eden, and a gold's gym.

so, there are a lot of evangelists here at umass amherst. they hold wooden crosses and quote the bible and tell us our professors are stupid. this morning, on the way to japanese class, one such disciple was performing. now, i try not to laugh, because i feel like it's immature, and, whatever, let him be. this morning, though, i couldn't help but smile [holding back laughter], and i don't know why. anyway, after i had passed him, and in no way directed towards me, he yelled "homosexuality is an abomination!" now, yeah, we've all read leviticus 18:22, and, yeah, i know the bible clearly states that menz shouldn't do the nasty together, and, yeah, i never get so protesty and fight-for-your-righty, but i did. i turned around and gave him the finger for a solid three seconds [not the most mature of actions, but the best i could do on such short notice]. i don't know if he saw me, and i didn't care much, i just needed to get out my frustrations via that holiest of digits. he continued on his way with "abortion is an abomination! such-and-such is an abomination!" followed by a passerby screaming "you're an abomination!" yeah, it put a damper on my day, but, hey, at least i'm being more productive than he is.

heyy, so remember when i said i had a break down because i didn't know how to write sentences? okay, so the paper which caused me to freak out came back to me with an A on it. so that's cool and all, but these papers are weekly, and i needed to get my next one done. so, for the next one, i decided to use my new writing skills and do everything right and support my arguments and quote the readings and not start sentences with "also." I GOT A C. this paper, possibly one of the best papers i've written in a while, was given a C, while the other crap i did got me an A. i hate sociology.

haha i saw a vending truck today. on the back it listed some of its wares: "burritos, pizza, pretzels, soda, ice cream, dvds, candy." i'm sorry, what? why do you sell dvds. stop. the radio was also playing out a big speaker atop the truck, but it was during the commercials, so it made it even weirder.

uhh, i have a japanese test tomorrow. どうもありがとう、mr. roboto.

i saw the second jackass movie tonight/learned it was possible to chug beer via butt hole.

i need a haircut.

there was this song on this morning on brian's radio alarm, and i want to know the name of it, but i don't even know any words to it, i hate that.

coming home this weekend, wahh!

aiight, night.

yeah, so i have two posters on my wall. a kill bill poster, and a pulp fiction poster. but it just looks like i like the left side of uma thurman's face.

my linguistics teacher can't spell. he's also an israeli gay man with reddish hair. whenever he misspells something on the board, he makes this noise that sounds like something the sider press kids would do. the english alphabet would probably spell this sound as something like MNYEH. i feel like hermione granger talking to professor trelawney whenever i speak to him, because everything i say, he's like "nah, i guess you're not [linguistically] gifted." the class is still fun, though; we learn zulu. CLICK CLICK.

OH. i need to learn hebrew. alon constantly speaks in hebrew, and i need to not be paranoid that he's calling me things like "tally-tall noodlegay," and other things as such. all i can say is "ani mtsots zain."

it's a good start.

so, i've had two minor breakdowns in my time here. the first was around 230am a few nights ago, where i had this weird feeling that something bad was happening to ariel and i couldn't stop it or help her because i was in massachusetts. the second one was less psychologically interesting, when last night i had my ultimate realization that i cannot write at all. whether it be a paper, a paragraph, or poetry, i cannot put sentences together. so that basically sucks really basically it's dumb and bad so i need to work on it i guess so yeah sentence.

japanese class is fun, but only because of suzuki-sensei. for example, he'll turn on the projector, revealing some cartoon people. he'll look at them, be geniunely startled, and then say something like, "OH...はじめまして。 [OH...nice to meet you]" and then laugh like a japanese man. unfortunately, his t.a., who reminds me of jamie chin HARAJUKU STYLE, taught today. homework is fun for the class, too, especially since i know more words than a lot of the class [i'm in the beginner's class since teaching yourself doesn't count]. i.e., we had to make up sentences that demonstrated the particle も [also; too]. so, i write things like 「このいくらはおいしいです。スズキせんせいのいくらもおいしいですか。[these salmon rolls are tasty. are your salmon rolls tasty, too, professor suzuki?]」

that's dirty, actually, i should erase that from my book.

so, apparently the kelly "shoes" storm has hit, and there were no survivors.

i think brian had a sexual encounter on my bed [it's not lofted like his bed, so it's lower i.e. easier to dominate a woman on]. i yelled at him for it, to which he denied everything. whatever, i'll just have wild gay sex on his bed. we'll call it even. i'll call it even.

to this day, i can't listen to britney's "breathe on me" without doing an interpretive dance in my seat.

alright, alon's girlfriend, justine, is here for the next day or so, so i'm going to go invade their private lovespaces. guhNIGHT.

well, of course, classes started wednesday. of course, my first class ever is in a building named dickinson. and, of course, there are two dickinson buildings. and, of course, i went to the wrong one first. but i finally got to japanese class on time. my teacher, suzuki sensei, is the cutest man ever. he's about 26, from tokyo, and speaks engrish. so that's fun. then all my other classes and things are altogether pretty dumb, but nothing boring or anything.

do i seriously have nothing to say for the next day?

why are american apparel models all hairy and europeein'.

okay, so last night, i actually went to a frat party and enjoyed myself. i wasn't there for long, but i was hanging around with this girl, olivia, and some of her friends that brian sort of picked up.

olivia is this girl who appeared in my room one day, hanging out with brian. she has got to be the most beautiful girl i think i know in person, and she's nice and sweet and everything. if i open the door and she's in my room, it's like HEY.

so olivia slept in brian's bed last night, but i know nothing crazy went on because i was six feet away from them. it was more of a slumber party, except she woke up with hickeys.

i saw bob saget last night. he's so dirty/says he fingered kimmy gibbler. it was like mother theresa telling fart jokes.

what a horrible entry. sorry, dude.

um, so let me see. yesterday, i ate breakfast with thomas and then ran errands with him. he reminds me of paul, which is bad unless it's actually paul.

then the school had this huge barbecue where i saw jess azrikan and jen hazelton. alon and i hung out with anne [my japanese major lady] and her boyfriend, pat. then we got a lot of free shit and went back to alon's room, where we webcammed with his girlfriend, justine, and i showed her my titties.

so that's yesterday. more fun than it looks like in text. this morning was just alon, brian, and myself going to the textbook annex and getting all our books. if you hate spending money on books, be a japanese major; seven books for $138. DAS CRAZY NOW.

you know what's not fun. me just getting in a ten minute conversation with the introverted suite mate about nothing. aaawkwarddd.

"why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?...that's when you know you've found someone truly special. when you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence."

tonight, my jewish CCCHHH-half is going to the hillel house to nosh some lovely kosher mishigas. alon's basically just schlepping me to meet the whole jewy mishpokhe. i'm not going to kvetch all night; i'm not that much of a farbisine sheygets. besides, i'm going to the gay barbecue afterwards, so i shouldn't eat ongepatsht. OY.

umass has a lot of barbecues, i just realized. BARBE-Q-MASS.

WARNING: i'm gonna get fat here. nesquik strawberry milk two nights in a row. i wouldn't doubt a third. FREE GYM TO NOT USE WHOO!

OH. i had something to say but i forget.

hello.

i hung out in alon's room for a while before we went jammin'. he taught me hebrew and had a poster of angelina jolie's boobies.

alon went to sleep around 10, because he's a one minuteman mover and was working all day. so, i was alone for the rest of the night, and wanted to do some exploring, but i was invited to a party--a gay party. it was basically everywhere i didn't want to be: around crazy alcohol, around crazy pot, around crazy fauxhawked men kissing each other on the cheek five times. this guy, thomas, brought me, and he's nice and everything, but i needed to leave. it wasn't my scene. so i went to the campus hotel and sat on the huge benches and enjoyed the moon and a phone call to barak.

then i got lost.

so barak went on the umass site, found a campus map, and directed me home via cell phone. and now my feet hurt. thanks, gap shoes.

i can't wait to organize things.

R.I.P. STEVE IRWIN CROCODILE HUNTER.

alright, i have platonic breakfast plans with thomas tomorrow morning, goodnight babies.

we got to umass around 10ish this morning, and had three hours to move in. they went surprisingly well, considering the loads of bags and gallons of tears my mom was carrying. all my shit was organized and put away--then we opened the suitcases.

after a while, brian was back in the room, my shit was all folded [gap style] and pretty, and i had met some of the other suitemates. one is really introverted, one is really sporstroverted, and the other is really massachusettroverted. the place is huge as compared to what i had thought it was going to be like. my clothes are hung, my computer's set up, and my oxyclean daily face wash is neatly tucked away with other bath & body beauties.

we just rearranged the room thrice, only to realize it didn't need to be. brian and i went on a shopping spree for cables and wires galore [which are now daintily strewn over water pipes].

i saw anne, my lovely japanese major friend. we're in the same building. so good. sushi study party ALL NITE.

my family was chillin with alon, as i'm about to go do now. we're going to the jammin' hallway party later tonight. it should be off da chain. WHATEVER I NEED TO MEET PEOPLE.

i may update after the jammin' fiesta. i may be too busy bustin a move, who knows.

okay, here's the text message i sent ariel, detailing some events early on in the car ride:

okay. so this is what just happened. we got mcdonald's. the fries are all dumped into the bag as a communal fry holder, as usual. mom puts three little salt packets in and shakes it, because you know how yosh is. yosh doesnt know, so five minutes later, opens another salt packet and pours it over the bag. mom tries to stop him, and all the salt goes into the bottom compartment of mom's car's center console, you know. so the next five minutes is mom calling yosh an asshole, dick, idiot, etc. and yosh is asking for more fries and saying "SHUTUP ARDYTH." all the while going 60 in the fast lane of the southern state parkway. her arns are still folded.

my mom told me i'd smell like a fruit salad with all the scented things i got at wal-mart. EXCUSE ME this is tyler's wal-mart time, i like being scented.

i need to find a radio station list or something, because when 100.3 is staticky, i have problems. although, we heard "sexyback" five times on the way here. but we also heard that song, "how bizarre", so idk what to do.

happy birthday petey and greg.

there's a pool/jacuzzi downstairs. my bathing suit's under miles of piles of luggage. i want aquajoy.

barak met my parents last night when he came over to sign my yearbook. they loved him and helped him with dental issues and demanded he know the bill of rights. my dogs ate him. i watched 'next' and ate pop'ems from stop'n'shop. then i said my lehitraot and we were over it.

i'm more excited for japanese class than anything else about college.

DUDE IT'S COLD. fuck you, ernesto. oh, excuse me. ¡vete a la chingada, ernesto!

i said bye to my dogs today. they were being total dicks. jack didn't pay attention and beau wouldn't even look at me. i hope they remember that when my mom kills them.

"it ends tonight" is a really depressing song at this time in my life. make sure you listen to it when you pack for college/are about to die. PLUS if you speed it up it's like REMIXXX.

i can't wait to shower tomorrow, my hotel [inn] room is made for handicapped people, so i have a big shower. unfortunately, everything is at wheelchair height, so that presents a problem.

i was my parents' designated driver tonight. it was only 500 feet of driving, but still ironic.

lobsters are yummy.

i don't feel like i accomplish anything when i write here. THAT SUCKS québec style.

i leave for massachusetts in less than 24 hours. i started packing two and a half hours ago, and finished my clothes in those two hours. one big suitcase, one little one. now, idk what's wrong with everyone else, but packing is not a week-long event. it's only a week-long event if you have a week in which to do it, and you pack one shirt every half-hour. retard.

a summer job at the gap was apropos; my denim-folding skills would never have been more useful.

i'm trying to hold in my excitement as much as possible, because i'd like to not sound like an idiot, but it's no use. DID YOU KNOW when you vacuum seal [fancy talk for 'sit on'] ziploc bags, they hold wicked* more shit than just juice boxes and tasty sandwiches? i have five t-shirts in one, and eight boxers in another. i have nine ziploc bags. that's my life today.

*yeah, i'm going to need to learn to say that.

so, i got choked up today [COLLEGE STYLE] for the first time. i realized i had to leave my doggies--and that ardyth was probably going to kill them. jack's leg is still messed up, and now beau has some thyroid problem. and they both have smelly dog farts.

my biggest concern [COLLEGE STYLE] is that i'm going to become seriously behind in music. like, worse than the middle east. then again, i'm listening to sclub7. okay.

wow, i really do have more clothes than jesus, my mom was right.

i have a lot to say, but idk what it is. i'll end this one for now.

p.s. hi jas.