Murakami - Hear the Wind Sing - an Excerpt

"Out of all of Hartfield’s works, one story, The Wells of Mars stands out, almost suggesting a hint of Ray Bradbury’s future appearance on the writing scene. It was a long time ago when I read it, and I forget most of the details, so I’m only going to give you the most important points.

Mars the Planet

This story is about the countless bottomless wells dug into the surface of Mars and the young man who climbed down into one. These wells were dug by the Martians tens of thousands of years ago, and that’s well-known, but the strange thing is that all of them, and I mean all of them, were dug so they wouldn’t strike water. So the question of why the hell they bothered to dig them is something nobody knew. As for the Martians themselves, aside from these wells, there wasn’t a trace of them left. Their written language, their dwellings, their plates and bowls, metallic infrastructure, their graves, their rockets, their vending machines, even their shells, there was absolutely nothing left. Just those wells. And the Earthlings had a hell of a time deciding whether or not you could even call that civilization, but those wells were definitely really well made, and all those tens of thousands of years later there wasn’t even so much as a single brick of a ruin

Hipster in the Woods

Untitled

Into the woods go the hipster boys and girls. The city is just so overly populated with too much technology disrupting the flow of nature. I dare you to go completely unplugged from this mundane world and immerse yourself in the deep green of the woods. That dude from Emory did it, he wrote a book about it, and got a big fat bag of cash from everybody from the vegan nature lovers to the bacon sucker rednecks down the trailer parks.

I think they might have wifi in the woods? I need it to upload live photos of dead branches and other significant flora and fauna like squirrels, moss, and stuffs. I will have so many followers on Tumblr, and that makes me so damn happy I won't mind making another tofurkey for my brutal meat-eating friends even though it's not even thanksgiving yet.

Ode to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Kontemplation

My friend Maria was tripping and talking philosophy to a tree in an Amsterdam park. She made a friend that day. How about my experience with drugs? I ate two cookies laced with weeds once... unknowingly. That's what you get for eating dessert before the main courses. Attending a liberal college, I also found a bag of weeds lying tauntingly in the hallways a while ago. Somebody lost their joint!

Boys and girls, I don't smoke. Well, I do, sometimes, depends on your definition of "smoking" and what is being smoked. Real smokers swallow, let it soak in, and drift it off their nostrils. I just blow it off, though. That still counts, right?

A Trilogy of Downtempo Love

I present to you three sensual mixes with melodic rhythm, cool vibes, and provocative lyrics to make it easy for you to drop 'em down low, keep it intimate, and get your groove on. All together, the mixes have been played for more than two thousand times on 8tracks. With a total of 24 tracks, you are guaranteed to have up to an hour of pure audiorgasm. Well, I'm starting to sound like a bad infocommerical here, so please excuse me and enjoy the music!

Meditation on God

My relationship with God is getting stranger and stranger every year. I was born into a Catholic family; even though my mom is a born-again Christian, she takes it more seriously than anyone else, a God-fearing woman, that is. She believes in her supernatural connection with God, who gives her strength and wisdom to endure hardship. She has been constantly praying so I quit liking boys, but I don't think she can change God's intention.

My mind wandered during a biochemistry lecture one day. I should have been focusing on what was being said about DNA replication and reparative mechanism from damages. Instead, it dawned upon me with certain questions that I am sharing with you below.

Short Fiction - Hera on a Diet

Not Vegan

Hera hastily opened the greasy wrapper of the burger and sunk her eager teeth into the sesame dotted bun. She picked up a bunch of fries, smothered it with ketchup, and swallowed everything with a sip of sweet tea. Nothing comforted Hera more than this divine combination of carb, fat, and protein, and indeed it made her double chin more defined and toned almost like a Greek statue. She swiped away a speck of ketchup dropped on her belly and vaguely remembered a time when her dress was several sizes smaller. Oh well, who needed to be that skinny anyway. She could still move around freely and had not destroyed any furniture nor paid for a second seat on the airplane. She had good friends, her husband loved her, and she was happy. What else did a woman need?

Demi of Baltimore

Demi of Baltimore

Today I want to rave about this restaurant I went to during my college senior year. It's a neat little place called Demi. I was having my winter blue back then, but eating here really cheered me up, and that's what matters the most to me. There's another restaurant named Crush at the upper level with its own charm as well, and I recommend both places. For now, I just focus on Demi. Everything about this place just screams for big success, from the wonderfully flavored and artistically presented dishes to the well decorated ambience and friendly services. I almost felt bad eating the food since everything looked so pretty. I remembered thinking how lovely the ingredients embraced and highlighted each other's flavors and textures. The waiter was informative about wine pairing, so the experience was definitely a blast. And yes, did I mention he looked cute too?

My "smart" phone put on a mentally-challenged fit and refused to work, so I guess putting some of the restaurant's own photos is the best way to show you what I'm talking about. I had some of the dishes shown below, and ate off the plates of my friends a bit too much more than what I should have, I think.

1. Pepper crusted tuna, vanilla soy broth, caramelized rice, sriracha aioli 

2. Crab crusted salmon, kabocha squash curry, pickled carrot

Lady Vengeance - A Sociological Interpretation

Lee Young-ae as Lady V

Lady Vengeance is the third installment of Park Chan Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy. With the tagline “Lee Geum-Ja, have mercy on us,” the movie followed Ms. Lee’s journey of redemption after nearly fourteen years of incarceration for a monstrous crime she did not commit. The original poster for the movie during the Venice Film Festival in 2005 stated that “all she wanted was a peaceful life.” Based on the law of retaliation, the macabre nature by which Ms. Lee achieved her goal could be more easily understood and sympathized under the sociological interpretation.

As a tradition in Korea, newly released prisoner is expected to eat a square of hard tofu to symbolize a new beginning. A pastor who helped Geum-ja spiritually during her incarceration was completely shocked when Geum-ja flipped the tofu plate to the ground and told him to “screw off.” Her norm violation drastically dragged viewers to the shocking crime she confessed to when she was only nineteen: she kidnapped and murdered a five year old boy. As a result, Geum-ja ostracized herself completely and received the most negative sanctions to her act. There was a riot when she was forced to re-enact the crime scene. The whole nation was dumbfounded by “her youth, her ruthless methods, her unabashed naivety… but what shocked [us] more were her beautiful looks.” This quotation indicated that her stigmatized identity as a child killer greatly complicated her impression management. She had no knowledge of the murdered child Won-mo’s favorite orange marble or which pillow the actual murderer used to suffocate the boy. Geum-ja’s failure to adhere to her role performance as a cold-blooded murder strongly supported that she indeed wasn’t a “wicked witch.” At this point, viewers had no knowledge of why she had to confess to such a heinous crime.

...so that you'll live white and never sin again.

Geum-ja’s lengthy jail time and her interactions with the cellmates proved essential to her redemption. Consider that the prison was the ultimate example of total institution, the blue uniform that Geum-ja’s cellmates had to wear was a part of a degradation ceremony that served to strip off their old identity and enforce conformity. However, Geum-ja’s greenish-yellow uniform, her status symbol of being a well-mannered prisoner, separated her from the rest of her cellmates. Indeed, through her constant act of praying, meditating, and helping others, Geum-ja’s managed to project a saint-like impression. Despite her physical confinement, she achieved two statuses: “the kind-hearted Geumja” – “the Angel,” and a more subtle “the Witch,” each of which she had the freedom to alternate accordingly within the complex subculture of prison.