Vroom vroom

There's been a rash of unsolicited introductory notes from people on Friendster I don't know. At first, it was kind of flattering and fun since I'm not interested in using it to meet people to date, but it's getting strange how they write as if they were cruising by in a shiny yellow automobile: "What's UP girl!?" That punctuation about sums up how I feel, too. It is a private revenge that I do look like my pictures, but only if you know me :)

In other news, Japanese Teacher continues to be amused by my passably eccentric outfits. I couldn't resist but wear the Avengers ensemble today, complete with sleek red on red and curvy head band. She's always so supportive. It's very nice to have an audience who appreciates such attention to frills.

Had conference with Creative Writing Teacher and we ended up talking about jazz singing. Billie Holiday apparently only had a "one octave [or two?] range". M. will have her singing class final at a four-hour performance at an undisclosed SF fish restaurant. O such vicarious glamour! Emboldened and reminded of singing's joys, on the way home I passed the time in the fast falling light with "Amazing Grace", "Ay Linda Amiga", and "Dolina".

If I ever have a son, I'm going to call him Esteban, after the incredibly hot, dead giant who washes up on the shores of Marquez' "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World". Kafka's "The Hunger Artist" is also a revelation, but the protagonist in that one isn't so overflowing with animal magnetism or nobility, so Esteban triumphs.

Need to go to SF this weekend to pick up Yevtushenko (how can it be that I have lived till now without having heard him? When was the last time I was shaken by the boom of such a voice? "Babi Yar", "Memento", and "Epistle to Neruda" have revived my girlish desire to be with a Russian poet for a perch. Surely the melancholia that courses beneath the bedrock of our cultures are the one and the same...) and a ticket home for Christmas. Discovered pretty girl in wushu class is from W, the small Northern European town where I went to high school... And that Creative Writing Teacher knows the cousin of a college friend and their cousin as well. In fact, they were all at the same wedding this past summer: my friend, his two cousins, and M. Assez bizarre, non?

And now, review of Japanese verbs and myriad ways to tell the time. Then more Confucian anecdotes on the choices of kings. Dinner will be the reward: sesame noodles with spinach and scallions. Maybe the flourish of a large egg.

PS The spellcheck on this blog thing is delightfully primitive: it suggested that I replace or correct "Yevtushenko" with "obtuseness". That's not as funny as when an anagram generator finds that "English department" is in fact "pretending Hamlets" or that God ("I am that I am") is revealed to be "Tahiti Mama". He may have been mad, but Gauguin could have been onto something.