Hey Dum-Dum! You give me gum-gum!
Not as serious as my other quotes...but what is a Sunday more than a day to relax.
I went to Howard Hughes shopping center today with my sister, Karen as she went searching for shoes. Shoe shopping. .....yeah...
As an attempt to save the afternoon we agreed to go to the Third Street Promenade.
Much better.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Le Deuxieume Fois
"One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts--just mere thoughts--are as powerful as electric batteries--as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison."
I've dreamt of that cobblestoned street in Paris, aside the river. Where everything is silent and empty and nothing bothers you. You and the river are one. The world reflects upside down, what you could be or what you are....it's up to you really to decide which you actually reflect.
I've never been to Paris though.
I like to think it's like Chinatown in "Chinatown," as Jack Nicholson said and as Billy Joel said about New York..."It's a state of mind."
Some places are beyond anything you're unlikely to experience.
It's more than Miss U.S.A falling during the Miss Universe pageant, more than your Korean neighbors playing their electric guitar into the unholiest hours of the morning, more than the boy who unashamedly stares at you in English class, more than the little girls who come to your work who fancy themselves to be 30 years old but are in fact 8 years old.
But I don't want to be lost in a hole of fantasy forever. I see what's happening in Nicaragua, in Venezuela, in Darfur, in Honduras. There are no true leaders.
Makes you want to hope for the future, but I was the future not that long ago...see how time quickly passed by me?
We're going to start reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy in English now. I quite like the first lines of the chapter "Paradise Pickles & Preserves:"
"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun."
Tomorrow is tomorrow and today has already been today and will soon be yesterday.
SPLAT!
I've dreamt of that cobblestoned street in Paris, aside the river. Where everything is silent and empty and nothing bothers you. You and the river are one. The world reflects upside down, what you could be or what you are....it's up to you really to decide which you actually reflect.
I've never been to Paris though.
I like to think it's like Chinatown in "Chinatown," as Jack Nicholson said and as Billy Joel said about New York..."It's a state of mind."
Some places are beyond anything you're unlikely to experience.
It's more than Miss U.S.A falling during the Miss Universe pageant, more than your Korean neighbors playing their electric guitar into the unholiest hours of the morning, more than the boy who unashamedly stares at you in English class, more than the little girls who come to your work who fancy themselves to be 30 years old but are in fact 8 years old.
But I don't want to be lost in a hole of fantasy forever. I see what's happening in Nicaragua, in Venezuela, in Darfur, in Honduras. There are no true leaders.
Makes you want to hope for the future, but I was the future not that long ago...see how time quickly passed by me?
We're going to start reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy in English now. I quite like the first lines of the chapter "Paradise Pickles & Preserves:"
"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun."
Tomorrow is tomorrow and today has already been today and will soon be yesterday.
SPLAT!
Le Premier Fois
"I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life."
-Dodie Smith
Finals aren't that far away and I can feel every missing assignment and moment of inconsideration towards my French class, but not as fast as my mother's convincing attitude that I'm an ungrateful person. It's been a while that I've written in a blog, and I'm starting to remember why I stopped writing in one in the first place. But the point of this blog is to move away from the past.
The past likes to sneak itself under my door by passing through my ear and then my mind.
Today on the front page of the Times there was a very interesting article on pesticide used on Dole and Dow farms in Nicaragua that the farmers have claimed resulted in sterility and other health isssues.
"...Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita. Nearly every case ran into the legal doctring forum non conveniens, which says lawsuits should be heard in the countries where the damage occured. Lawyers for the companies convinced judges to transfer the cases to the countries of origin.
In practice, that stalled the lawsuits for years. Complex trials bogged down in ill-equipped Third World courts. Plaintiffs' law firms lacked money to pursue cases in foreign countries.
The companies settled some cases without admitting culpability. In 1992, several firms reached a settlement in which $20 million was paid to 1,000Costa Ricans. In 1997, Dow and other companies paid $41.5 million to 26,000 workers worldwide.
The money was divided among thousands of plaintiffs. After attorneys' fees, some workers received no more than a few hundred dolls."
--T. Christian Miller, from the Los Angeles Times
The facts are scary. I found myself reading through some parts to my mother. Men are called buey "a castrated bull," as found in the article, when they do not give have a children. I knew that there was a big macho culture in Nicaragua. I can tell that whenever I visit with my mother and as she drives a car, people--women, men, children, stare into her car finding it hard to believe that a woman was driving the car.
I'm going back...or at least attempting to go back in June. Since my boss at work hasn't allowed me to go with the days I requested off, I've had to go with the days she can give me. So I went from possibly paying $542 to $777. That's a lot of money. Makes me want to rethink going. But I need to go. I'll go crazy if I don't leave this country soon.
-Dodie Smith
Finals aren't that far away and I can feel every missing assignment and moment of inconsideration towards my French class, but not as fast as my mother's convincing attitude that I'm an ungrateful person. It's been a while that I've written in a blog, and I'm starting to remember why I stopped writing in one in the first place. But the point of this blog is to move away from the past.
The past likes to sneak itself under my door by passing through my ear and then my mind.
Today on the front page of the Times there was a very interesting article on pesticide used on Dole and Dow farms in Nicaragua that the farmers have claimed resulted in sterility and other health isssues.
"...Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita. Nearly every case ran into the legal doctring forum non conveniens, which says lawsuits should be heard in the countries where the damage occured. Lawyers for the companies convinced judges to transfer the cases to the countries of origin.
In practice, that stalled the lawsuits for years. Complex trials bogged down in ill-equipped Third World courts. Plaintiffs' law firms lacked money to pursue cases in foreign countries.
The companies settled some cases without admitting culpability. In 1992, several firms reached a settlement in which $20 million was paid to 1,000Costa Ricans. In 1997, Dow and other companies paid $41.5 million to 26,000 workers worldwide.
The money was divided among thousands of plaintiffs. After attorneys' fees, some workers received no more than a few hundred dolls."
--T. Christian Miller, from the Los Angeles Times
The facts are scary. I found myself reading through some parts to my mother. Men are called buey "a castrated bull," as found in the article, when they do not give have a children. I knew that there was a big macho culture in Nicaragua. I can tell that whenever I visit with my mother and as she drives a car, people--women, men, children, stare into her car finding it hard to believe that a woman was driving the car.
I'm going back...or at least attempting to go back in June. Since my boss at work hasn't allowed me to go with the days I requested off, I've had to go with the days she can give me. So I went from possibly paying $542 to $777. That's a lot of money. Makes me want to rethink going. But I need to go. I'll go crazy if I don't leave this country soon.
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