9 posts tagged “qotd”

What do you daydream about? Is it something far-fetched, or something that might actually happen?
Submitted by lost_in_eternity2207.

I daydream about boning or ravaging certain men to stay remotely alert in some classes. It's unethical and maybe even sacreligious for a school in which classrooms have crosses by the door, but hey, I'm graduating summa cum laude on Sunday. Some are far-fetched, some may happen, and some already have. How's that for ambiguity ;-).

What are your irrational fears? 
Submitted by Dan Culhane.  

Dirty toilet seats. You know how you'll shuffle in and out of public bathroom stalls because you find piss on the toilet seat? Yeah.

Oh, and on another bathroom note, having a coworker/director of the office walk into the bathroom while you're relieving yourself. Do you sit around and wait until she leaves to avoid an awesomely awkward conversation while washing your hands? Or do you work those vag-muscles to pee faster so that you can finish up, hop off the seat, flush the toilet and hurriedly wash your hands, and dash out the door before the adjacent stall door opens up? I go with the latter.

Babies - newborns, actually. Why do they look at you like that?

Forgetting the keys/ipod/cell phone/school ID even though you're 76% certain that you packed it.

Oh, I guess growing old and living with cats figures prominently in there somewhere.

Where do you consider home?  Is it the place you grew up; the place you're currently living?  Why is it home?
Submitted by uncagedbird. 

I didn't have the idyllic and classic "home" in which I grew up. I've moved and changed my permanent residence twice and I think it's safe to call this third place home.

The first apartment in which we lived was not in a good neighborhood. Home consisted of crayon-doodled walls, one bedroom which housed a family of four and neighbors who'd offer me and my sister cigarettes. We slept in our cribs until I was nine years old and my sister seven. Our parents each worked ten hour plus shifts and paid an old coworker at the garment factory twenty-five dollars a week to escort us home each day after school. His and his wife's breath smelt of cigarettes and they owned a fat cat. I remember relentlessly pillaging the sofa cushions and kitchen counter for loose change one week and came up with a hefty sum of $1.17. We'd struck gold and took the old man with us to the bodega and bought chips, ice cream sandwiches and jaw breakers. When we were short by a few cents, I remember him pulling out two quarters which was met by my unprecedented gratitude. Home was where, after watching episodes of Xena: The Warrior Princess, we'd detach the broom stick and hurl ourselves over couches and pretend to fight each other. Sometimes we'd invade our parents master queen-sized bed and wrestle like dogs, reminiscent of the boxing rings in All Dogs Go to Heaven. We'd be in opposite corners and pounce and growl at each other. We'd invite the neighbors across the hall to dive into the large bath tub and "swim" around. Eventually our imaginative refuges from boredom resulted in the building conspiring a meeting to have us evicted. Sure enough, it was time to move. I remember sitting inside our large moving truck, unaware that we were permanently moving away, only to be met with our neighbors and breaking the news to them.

The next apartment we lived in was dark and cavernous, compared to our first apartment. Three bedrooms, a long long hallway, small kitchen and large dining room. It was directly across the street from the 50th Street Subway platform and after living there for about two years, we'd stopped waking up in the middle of the night to the roaring B train outside our window. We'd grown up well enough to know that the white walls weren't our canvas on which we could decorate with Crayola crayons and that bathtubs weren't swimming pools in which to flood the bathroom below us. Every Thursday, we went to the local library for the RIF (Reading is Fundamental) club and we'd each get free books every third week. We turned our inventory of books into a library, made and stamped cards, created stickers for our neighbors. Yet, we still sought respite in our imagination like in our previous apartment. After the fever of the movie Titanic, our hallway was our personal sinking ship because it was so long, dark and narrow. We'd throw ourselves haphazardly against the walls and run back and forth in an exaggerated state of panic as if we couldn't abandon ship. During the Spice Girls craze, we'd hold imaginary microphones and hop around the sofas and lip-sync to their tracks. When our grandmother was up for American citizenship, my sister and I spent a large portion of our afternoons belting out the national anthem. The roof was ours, and we'd hang our laundry there and bring our chairs to watch the fireworks on July 4ths. But it wasn't perfect, far from it. Home was a place wherein a car in front of our building was set on fire and I remember seeing nothing but thick smoke through which we couldn't peer through outside of our window. A crying man was cornered in our lobby and through negotiation from the police, he didn't kill himself. I remember the police cars lined up outside downstairs and our mother closing the curtains. We'd hear our neighbors below us bellow and yell for nondescript reasons and when he went to the roof, we feared that he was going to jump. Pretty soon, it would be time to move.

Whether or not growing up in these shitty neighborhoods posed a clear and present danger to us is dubious. Though the apartments in which we stayed lacked central heating, crisp walls and peaceful surroundings, our parents still gave us memorable childhoods aside from superficially material things. A month long stay in China and Hong Kong. A trip to Disney World. Family gatherings alongside the East Coast for barbecues, lunches and picnics. Canada. California and Vegas. Christmases with a shitty plastic tree which we decorated with stuff from the dollar store. An entire encyclopedia set when we couldn't afford luxuries and nice clothing.

Our new and current home is a three family building my mother had purchased. It was ours and the landlord wouldn't be able to kick us out. Our entire extended family would live in these three floors. It was renovated and I remembered being amazed by how large and beautiful this place was and still is. It was in a neighborhood unlike the tumultuous ones in which we'd grown up, a touch more suburban and less urban. Here we'd make friends and write spells and incantations in our spell book a la Charmed. Summer afternoons were spent together upstairs watching Chinese movie series. We'd visit the local store which sold talismans and various knickknacks to which we ascribed magical powers. We'd have large gatherings of friends, play loud music, watch movies, hang out in our backyard, gossip about boys, burn candles and have Thanksgiving dinners. Pretty soon, home was stratified into the house here and dorming in college. Then I'd learn that other places would bring more comfort than this house. Book stores, Union Square, the East Village, LES, other peoples' houses etc. I guess as we grow up, we learn the difference between home and a house, that the walls and ceilings sheltering our belongings are just those and home becomes a nebulous entity. Regardless, I know in where and whom I can find home if I should feel homeless.

If you knew you had one week to live, what would you do, where would you go, who would you see? 
Submitted by normatheartist

questions like these bring to light the eternal clash of idealism versus reason. ideally, influenced by delusions of grandeur, i would get in touch with as many people as i can from my past. spend too much money, eat too much tiramisu, have lots of sex, get high within the boundaries of being able to enjoy it momentarily, etc etc.
BUT, reason is needed to taper the ends of these grandiose aspirations of the 'best week ever.' would i really want to get in touch with people from my past? and technically, i am in debt because of college loans, et al.

so here's the deal. i'm not going so far as saying i am living each day as if it was my last. but in light of how i've spent most of my summer and my college career, i'm pretty satisfied with what i've done and what i'm yet to become. i've had manic workloads, days where i don't get the chance to sit and rot on account of seeing friends and others, and written papers and entries ad nauseam. but while i do know workaholics who try to do as much as humanly possible, they completely lose sight of the most important thing: the time to appreciate things and others. so if it was really my last week, i'd keep doing what i've been doing for the past few months. i guess the only thing i'd change is i'd leave behind all the passwords to my blogs.

People do many different things to cope with stress, loss, and "bumps in the road". How do you handle stress and hard times? 
Submitted by RedlyGal. 

when i feel the urge to stick my head into a foot of water and scream, i write. i call and call. i get bubble tea. i walk out with my ipod to the middle of nowhere.

what i've always felt about my writing is that it is somewhat cathartic. i discovered this while reopening my journal from junior year of high school. pages stained with tears, irrational thoughts and drama, letters to those whom i could never bring myself to berate. and then there was this summer, where emotional bulimia was equated with physical deprivation. but writing doesn't dull the pain, it transfers the pain into words. such that the source of stress, be it a situation, or a person, slowly dissolves away, with each key stroke. and plus, i write because said pain can produce something beautiful rather wallowing in "bumps in the road." because years, if not months, later, i can re-read and reflect on how i got through it when i thought i couldn't.

Which saying do you believe to be true, but just can't seem to follow? 
Submitted by Maxvan.

"What goes around comes around."

As much as I love the song by none other than Justin Timberlake, and Alicia Keys' usage of it in the song "Karma," sometimes it's just hard to follow. Not too long ago, I'd written about the original interpretation of karma. And I still remain somewhat firm on the belief that you've got to take care of yourself and not wait for the universe to accord you with what you assume you deserve. It's unfortunate, because many people whom I've come across are genuinely good (and that's still moral relativism) who are still fated in a way that they don't deserve. And many those who treat people like shit and exploit others somehow manage to end up on top of the world. Does everything come full circle? In some cases in the past, it's happened to me, but more often than not, injustices remain unaccounted for. While I may have let bygones be bygones with certain people and happenstances in the past that I'd once felt an entitlement to because I wasn't treated well, I've yet to see it come around. But who knows? Maybe it just means that the story isn't over. Conjuring up high school memories is pleasant, isn't it?

How many times have you had your heart broken? 
Submitted by BullDogg.

This reminds me of the first time I'd ever touted that phrase. A total digression from the question, but I like revisiting certain memories. It was the end of junior year and I'd finished a demonstration at the Javitz Center in the city. RB, a great guy friend of mine, gave me the biggest hug and planted one on my cheek and told me that that was the last time he'd ever see me again. He walked away to look at shoes and he graduated days later and I never saw him again.

I've never had my heart broken before probably because I've never completely worn my heart on my sleeve, offered it as a totality, or what have you. I've been hurt, had my heart bruised several times, be it guy related or unrelated. The most recent debacle isn't equated with having my heart broken. And I'm going to go off on a strange analogy that just came to my mind. You know how they tie calves by their necks to posts, not allowing them to run free? The purpose of doing so, of not allowing them the freedom of mobility, is to keep them soft. Keeping them soft makes good veal, because their muscles are prevented from tightening, from becoming tough. Well that's how I feel about where my heart was. That it was somewhat tied to an ideal of a person, that it wasn't allowed to progress, get stronger and be healthy. That I didn't know enough to cut myself loose. That it'd gotten so soft and vulnerable that upon being hurt, it was defenseless, thus making the blow that much harder upon impact. That's why I don't eat veal. Or meat for that matter.

So to answer the question: zero.

When was the last time you felt butterflies in your stomach?

CG will LOVE this one, 'cept she's well on her way to Europe in a few hours. With no Internet access. In truth, I'd say roughly three years ago, when around JC - great friend on whom I thought I'd developed a crush. Turns out it wasn't so, as he was more of an older brother type whom I'd rather hug than fool around with. Makes me smile to this day, esp. since AA and I sniffed some Ralph Lauren Romance cologne at Sephora today - his signature scent. I digress - thought I'd had it a few times in the following years as CG will attest to the months known as November and some December, but, in retrospect, there's a very fine line between butterflies in your stomach and psychosomatic nausea - that small kick in your core that makes you want to shake yourself out of it. :-)

What are five things that most people don't know about you? 
Submitted by mika.

1) I have freckles on the right side of my midriff that line up and form the shape of the "M" for Scorpio, even with the little extended tail. ;-)

2) If I remember my dreams upon waking up, I quickly look them up in my dream dictionary. They're eerily concise, way more dependable than astrology.

3) My last three lobe piercings were facilitated in the basement warehouse of a supermarket. While the guy had his ear piercing gun to my head, I was staring at crates of bananas. No worries, he was licensed.

4) Despite being repeatedly mistaken for Vietnamese, Korean, mixed, etc, etc., I'm a quarter Manchurian, which explains a bit about my personality.

5) My aversion to horror movies is attributed to my viewing of Gremlins years ago as a child. Needless to say, I'm pretty chickenshit when it comes to these.