school – JavaJunkee

The Story

Tell me a story, she said. Her voice was sleepy and her eyes half-closed. I began to tell a story. In English, she said, as she did every night. I want to hear a story in English. But you won’t understand. It doesn’t matter. I want to listen to you tell me a story in […]

The 100% Perfect Burrito

This week’s writing experiment. with apologies to Haruki Murakami One beautiful August afternoon, at a food truck on some narrow side street in west LA, I ate the 100% perfect burrito. Honestly, there was nothing about it that made it particularly delicious. It didn’t seem to have any special ingredients. The underside of the tortilla […]

The Proclamation

Last week’s submission for my fiction class. Enjoy. As the time for him to walk onto the stage drew nearer, Philip’s deep sense of pride at having been chosen to read his essay at the town celebration became all the more completely eclipsed by his intense nervousness. This year was a big celebration—one hundred fortieth […]

My Onion Wanna-be Piece

Every week we’re supposed to write a short (250-500 words) piece of fiction, based on a list of experiment ideas. Last week I submitted this, based on the experiment “Chronicle,” which suggests trying mimic the style of writing used in newspaper articles. Naturally, I gravitated toward an “Onion” style piece. I will try posting my […]

Spring 2010

Wednesday morning, I returned home from my trip to Nagoya to find a letter from the folks at the TA program, which informed me that I was not accepted for the coming year’s group of TAs. (They were very friendly about it, explaining how the constraints of a limited budget meant they had less to […]

On the Move

Tomorrow morning I’m hopping on a plane for Nagoya, just shy of three years after getting engaged in Tokyo, and just over a week after breaking off that engagement near LAX. While I’m in Japan, I’ll enter my thirtieth year here on Earth, my final year of trustworthiness. I guess my hopes of making my […]

Mirrors

My rating: 5 of 5 stars I just read this book for my Literatures in Translation class, and I have to say, it’s better than any world history book that claims to be such, without even claiming to be such. It contains an astounding amount of facts and information about world history, all presented in […]

Get Ready to Start Calling Me ‘Master C’

I may have grown up listening to David Alan Coe, but that don’t mean I can’t get myself edumacated. I had a little case of the Mondays going on today, but then I came home to find a letter in the mail from CSUN informing me that my thesis proposal has been accepted. Yay! Now […]

Freedom

I celebrated the Fourth of July this year by watching three David Lynch films back to back. We started with my favorite, Blue Velvet, followed by Wild at Heart, and finally Lost Highway. It was my first time seeing Wild at Heart, and I have to agree with some random comment I spotted on the […]

It Has a Name

Trichotillomania – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Growing a full, even goatee is complicated by this condition, particularly when I’m working on big, important assignments or projects, such as the 4,000 word take-home final that is due in just over twenty-one hours.That said, reading through this wikipedia article about the condition leaves me feeling quite grateful […]