WTF? Why the face?

Oh boy!  I’ve decided to blog again and there’s just so many things to say; I don’t know where to begin! First, here’s a picture of a really sad box that I met in London!

Stuck in the middle.

Really, so many interesting things that have been happening lately, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about.  I’m going to talk about all the random things in my life because those are the most amusing things to me.  I have a feeling this is going to be a long post, so I think I will give the sections titles.  If a section looks boring; you’re probably right, and by all means, you should skip it.  If you’ve never read my blog before, you picked a weird day to start.  If I don’t stop the “if’s”, you’ll probably stop reading, so let’s jump in!

London and the Ja Ja Ja’s

The first thing I must, must, must discuss is the Scandinavian music show I went to in London a few weeks ago; the Ja Ja Ja Festival.  Now, unless you’ve been to this brand new festival or perhaps Roskilde Festival, then I’m guessing you haven’t been to a show crammed-full of Nordic musicians.  Which, let me assure you, means you are missing out.  Except for Mew, my beautiful Danes, all the bands were fronted by women (and if you know Mew, then you will know that all of them sound like they are fronted by women).  To be a Scandinavian woman musician, I’ve determined you need to adhere to the following guidelines:

1.  Have long, unkempt hair.

2.  Go on stage barefoot, or at least find yourself barefoot at some point in the show.

3. As long as your feet are free, so should you upper lady bits be as well.

4.  Dance like you are slowly having a stroke.

5.  Play at least 7 different instruments, or at least hold something that could either be a handmade maraca or a dead pigeon.

6.  Every once in awhile, swap singing with whispering, cooing, or whistling.

To be fair, #4 may be the only way to dance with that type of music; music that I would describe as a cross between what the Aurora Borealis would sound like if it made noise, and fairies laughing as they dance upon water.  The second act, múm, tending to get a bit darker in some of their songs, and at one point, the lead singer did this interpretive dance-y thing where she swung her arms around in jerky movements until they were wrapped around her neck, then jumped in the air as she pretended to break her neck, followed by her collapsing on the floor.  This in itself would be pretty unusual–now compound that with the knowledge that she did it EIGHT times in a row…on two separate occasions.  That’s a lot of interpretive suicidal dance moves.

^That is not the suicide dance.  That’s just regular stroke-y type dance done by Husky Rescue’s frontwoman.

Also, my favorite band ever played!  They were gorgeous, as always (this being the eighth time or so time I’ve seen them).  I was just a bit disappointed that they didn’t play much from their last album.

If you don’t know them, here’s a really crappy video to get you started–it’s one of their slower songs, which I’m mainly posting because it has the least amount of feedback.

I love that it ends on, “Into your…”.  Guess you’ll always be wondering…

Dying to be Blonde

Moving on!  This next bit comes with a bit of background info about yours truly.  I have two social fears (well, that are relevant to this story, at least) that I don’t usually go bragging about–one is my fear of making appointments; the other is going to places where I have to ask for something (particularly when I’m not sure what the answer is–i.e. going to McDonald’s and asking, “Can I have a Big Mac?” is not a fear, because the likelihood that I know the answer will be “yes” is about…oh,  99.8%).  In Japan, the fear was so strong that I ended up dying my own hair, which meant that my roots were bright orange followed with patches of white blonde.  You may be wondering, “Jill,* are you really that afraid of rejection?”  And the answer is I don’t know, probably…yes.  The next thing you’re probably wondering is, “Jill, did you forget where you were going this?”  See last answer.  Okay; I’m back on track. In the kitchen a couple of weeks ago, my Japanese flatmate asked me if I was going to be blonde again because I looked like プリン (pudding). It was then that I decided I could no longer put off making a hair appointment.

Pudding: Sadly, I knew immediately what he was talking about

かわいいプリン

Now for all you men out there (I don’t actually know of any guys who read my blog, now that I think about it…probably because I try to lure you in with stories of floor feces, and then trick you into reading about hair coloring): if you don’t know about the hair shaming that goes on at a salon, just imagine how embarrassed you feel when your dentist asks, “Are you flossing regularly?”  and then you turn bright red and say (in false indignity, if you’re anything like me), “Uh…yeah, of course,” and they’re like, “Regularly?”  And you’re like, “Define regularly.”  And then they’re like, “More than once a month?”  And you’re like, “Lunar month or calendar month?”  And then they just sigh and shake their head, which is pretty terrifying since they are usually wearing horrible green masks and caps (as well as those wonky goggles), so that they appear to be disappointed, tutting aliens.

Anyway.  I walk into the styling area, which was very intimidating because (as I am cheap and went to a city college school of beauty–here, Erin smugly nods) all the girls who work there have about 10 pounds of make-up on their face and perfectly coiffed hair, while I was wearing a shirt that looked slept in.  The receptionist brings around the girl who has been assigned to me; her gasp and heart-clutch gave me the impression that I may have waited a bit too long to redo my roots.**

After she sits me down in the chair, she asks me what I want done.  Now, an an attempt to rise above my social anxiety, I had practiced this bit in my head; that I want the roots bleached; preferably not too light, with a bit of toning to take out the brassiness.  What I say is, “Well…you know…I want the roots done.”  She asks me if I usually have toning done, and I said I DIDN’T KNOW.  There is absolutely no legitimate reason for saying this, except for the fact that I am an inexcusable coward. The girl disappears after muttering something about having to wait for the head hair teacher (head of hair teacher?), giving me plenty of time to stare at my reflection in indignation.

15 or so minutes had passed when I saw her across the room out of the corner of my eye, talking with another student.  I can tell from their body language that they are talking in hushed, horrified tones that clearly were a direct result of my being there.  The other hairdresser walked across the room, as if she is going to get something from another work station–but then she just kind of stopped about 5 feet behind me, hovering in an almost subtle attempt to get a handle on what her classmate has been cursed with, before slinking back to her friend to commiserate.  Now, I’m just going to fast-forward through all the dying bits and get to the point where she toned and washed my hair.  I want to describe this experience to you as accurately as possible…so…imagine that instead of a hairdresser, you had a griffin with a blood vengeance against you washing your hair (hopefully moving his hands like this in your imagination), and every once in awhile the aggrieved griffin would turn the water temperature to boil before aiming it in a continuous stream at one point on your head.  I usually am quite stoic (lie), but there was one point where I cried out three times in progressively louder exclamations, and I think that surprised her into being a little less talon-ish.   But when she was finished, and I was back in my chair, I saw that the work of the claw-hair wash was I had developed dreadlocks. As she struggled to rake a comb through the mess, she asked (in what I think she thought was a nonchalant tone), “So, does your hair normally get pretty tangled?”  I hadn’t seen hair like that since the last time I saw my stepbrother****, so I just said, “Not like this.”

Moral:  Would I go back again?  Heck yeah; it was 14 pounds.  Now, on to some observations!

A Series of Coincidences of Ridiculousness (probably the most skippable part)

For those of you who don’t know (and in case I haven’t mentioned it before), I have two classes a week; same as everyone else in my program.  Everyone meets at the same time on Tuesdays for the core class (though there are two different, simultaneous classes), and then everyone meets on Thursday at the same time for their pathways class–my class has about 7 people in it, which just makes it loads of fun (read: terrifyingly intimidating).  One of my Thursday classmates and I went to the tutor’s room, as she wrote in the syllabus that she would put the articles for the class outside her door.  We got there and discovered there were no articles and no papers.  So we decided to email her later, and headed to the library.  On the way there, my classmate, B,  mentioned the buildings are connected by a rooftop walkway, which I hadn’t known about.  Fast-forward to the library interior.  As I walk in, I noticed my other Thursday classmate, J1, walking towards the back of the library, but didn’t think much of it.  At this point, B and I split, as I needed to get some books, and he needed to see a librarian.  After I checked out my books, I ran into my other Thursday classmate, J2.  She informed me that the professor only left one copy of one article outside her room, and that she had taken it to make a copy.  She then ran into J1 (apparently right before I had seen him) and had passed it along to him.  Pleased, I asked if he was still there, but J2 said she had just seen him leave.  I decided to not procrastinate on getting the article, and headed back towards the tutor’s office.  Along the way, I found the rooftop path that B had mentioned, and made use of it; thinking how nice and pleasant it was that day.

The rooftop path didn’t go all the way to the building I needed, so I took the last staircase down–but when I tried to get into the building, the door was locked.  Just as I was struggling to open it, J1 happened to walk by at the same time–talk about killing two birds with one stone!  So he walked over and tried to open the door–but it wouldn’t budge.  We struggled for a both seconds on both sides of the glass door, and then he shrugged and walked away.  Honestly, that must be some kind of metaphor–the exact thing you need is right on the other side, but you are powerless to open it the door; therefore you must learn to overcome obstacles/learn how to break into buildings.  In annoyance, I had to walk all the way back and around the buildings to get to office.  There was a table at the bottom of the stairs, so I went back down to place the article on the flat surface so that I could take pictures–and just as I opened my iPad, my internet turned on and I got a message from J2 saying that J1 had emailed everyone a copy of the article.  Haha.

After Thursday’s class, B told me that the door used a card reader to open, so clearly, I’m a dummy.

We’re Not Living in America

When I announced to people that I was going to graduate school in the UK, the most common response I got was, “What!  I’m going to come visit you!”*****

When I announced that I was going to work in Japan (the first time), most people said, “Have fun!” ******

I was talking to a classmate recently, and she basically asked if people (specifically guys) treated me like a stereotypical idiot from America/tried to take advantage of my assumed idiocy.  I laughed for a good solid 5 minutes after hearing that (which was much too long; let me assure you), before telling her that no; no guys ever try to take advantage of my blonde Californian situation.  But maybe that’s because I don’t think of myself as blonde or typically Californian.

Anyway, here’s the situation that usually happens when I meet someone who is British.

Brit: Where are you from?
Me: California.  Specifically, Orange County.
Brit:  The O.C.!  Is it like the TV show?
Me: Uhhh…I don’t know.  I never watched it.  Maybe though.
Brit: You must really hate this weather.***

Just for comparison, here’s the situation that usually happened when I met Japanese people:

Japanese:  Excuse me, where are you from?
Me: The United States.  California.
Japanese:  Ohhhhh!  California is very nice!  You are from Los Angeles?
Me: No, Orange County.
Japanese:  Oh.  Sorry, I do not know Orange County.
Me:  It’s where Disneyland is.
Japanese:  Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  So, what do you think of Japanese men?
::or::  Can you eat Japanese food?

There are so many other things I want to say about this topic, but I think I’m going to save it for another time, because there is one more thing I wanted to mention in this incredibly long post…

Halloween!

Some of you saw on Facebook that I dressed as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu for Halloween.  The reasons for this are severalfold.

1. The last weekend before I left Japan, I went to karaoke two nights in a row.  Both sessions featured American guys who had huge Kyary karaoke repertoires.  Therefore, despite never really hearing her music before that weekend (but knowing who she was, of course–you don’t spend 3 months with 18-year-old Japanese girls without finding out who she is), I had her (or rather, them) stuck in my head for the rest of my Japanese days.  I hadn’t really cared for her before, because I’m not the biggest fan of J-Pop, mainly because of the tendency for young girls to be both infantilized and sexualized before being just downright objectified (see: AKB48). Also, the music’s not very good.  But the thing about Kyary is that she does embody “kawaii” (that ideal cuteness), but she does not try to be sexy at all.  Frankly, she’s flat-out weird.  That’s what I love, and I can accept the idea of “entertainer” trumping “singer” in her case.

2. I love Halloween, but I am the absolute worst at coming up with costumes.  I don’t know if this is because I put too much pressure on myself, or if it’s because Halloween is when girls are supposed to get out the finest in their whore-drobe (and my whore-drobe is, well, pretty much non-existent), but I’m crap at it.  But then I remembered this time my old roommate K and I went to West Hollywood for a Halloween parade, where we ran into her freshman friends.  The girls were dressed as sister-wives, which was, as they put it, “the least sexiest thing” they could think of.  I thought that was brilliant, and I combined it with my feelings about Kyary Pamyu Pamyu being the least sexy pop star.

Actually, surprisingly sexy for sister-wives.

3.  It seemed like a pretty easy/cheap costume to make.

4.  One of my building managers told me that only 1 person had entered the building costume contest, so I knew if I did something unique like this, I would definitely win.

And I did.  Now I am the proud owner of “Zombie Apocalypse.”

Ummm…Creepy factor? Wasn’t going for that…

A Final Note 

Not that it has anything to do with anything (as this is accurate for most of what I write in relation to other things I write), but a Facebook ad recently showed me a picture of a woman struggling to hold on to a cat, titled with the questions, “Own a cat?  Still single?”  It seemed to me like it was saying, “Wait, even after owning a cat, you’re STILL single?”  So my first reaction was, “No, I don’t, and yes I am,” and my second thought was, “My God!  Are cats supposed to be the keys for getting boyfriends?”  Then I remembered all of those cat ladies with their loads of boyfriends, and it dawned on me, truly: cats are the answer.  And then the phrase “Curiosity killed the cat” came to my mind, and I realized “Curiosity” must have been the name of some jealous cat-lady’s boyfriend who decided he didn’t need anymore competition.  And that, my friends, is science.

StarNotes!  And yes, they are definitely out of order.

*Even though I dislike pretty much all forms of abbreviations of my name (Jill is super boring; Jilli is infantile [but allowed by family/friends who really love it]), I know must people really don’t want to start calling me Jillian.  Therefore in my imagined dialogue of my friend-reader, I will allow the nickname.

**Of course I’m exaggerating, but she definitely looked displeased to have gotten me.

***** Followed by, “I’m so jealous/I wish I was as adventurous as you/You’re leaving again?”

******Usually followed by, “When are you coming back?”  Japan is so undervalued.

***If more people watched “Arrested Development,” then I could say that the O.C. (don’t call it that) is in fact very similar to its TV portrayal.

**** Not me.  Stepbrother.  “Gotta lock it up!”  Fortunately, I did not lock mine up.

 

Again, if you’ve made it this far, remember: I love you best.