following are my new, revised uncompromisable requirements for my future bitsy pookums (the first two are old):

1. must have a pretty name
2. must smell good
3. must love calvin and hobbes (not the philosophers)*

* if said girl is unfamiliar with calvin and hobbes, she must love them upon first reading and proceed to devour the entire series. i mean, we wouldn't even have to talk to each other! on any given day i could open up to a strip, point to it, and say, 'this is how i'm feeling about the state of my life right now.' well i guess that's talking. boo.

(that was a joke.)

(it must mean something that i felt like i had to point out the joke above, for fear that people would actually believe that i won't want to have to talk to my future pooty pie.)

(if you understand those nicknames, i want to marry you. no, not you, jesse.)

by the way, i'm done with college. it is now that i face the greatest crossroads of my life: do i open a boba truck with joan (possibly called bobalicious) and drive around the US to different college campuses, or do i move to bavaria and open a cheese farm with joyce? i think i need to pray about this.

jesse went home thursday, steve went home yesterday, and dave moved out today, which means that i'm alone in the apartment for the nite. hm, it's 3:30 in the morning and nothing gay or moronic has happened yet...oh well, there's always tomorrow nite.

Two quotes, from two great minds, along the same lines of thought:

'I have become an enigma to myself, and therein lies my sickness.'
-Augustine

'Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, Where have I gone wrong?
Then a voice says to me, This is going to take more than one night.'
-Charlie Brown

So where have I gone wrong; have I even gone wrong somewhere? Why does everything seem so bittersweet these days? That's kind of how I feel about California, like it's a land of mystery, most of which I'll never discover. Stuart Hampshire, the priggish English philosopher we're forced to read for Philosophy 2, actually had an interesting point about how certain places, or certain sights, or certain scenes freeze in our mind and make us feel happy and yearning at the same time, as if they touch some long-lost and possibly never-realized part of our memory. Maybe it's sweet because of the good times I had with people, or myself, and bitter cause they're unrecoverable.

I used to go up to the top of the Campanile (before it closed down) and stare across the bay at Mt Tamalpais. Sometimes the bottom half would be covered in clouds or fog so only the top was showing, floating in the sky, and it felt like something magical must have been happening on the mountain. Later I would drive there and hike to the edge of the ocean and stare across the water. The sea was always so calm and expansive and I wondered if there was a giant Poseidon-type guy who lived miles offshore and made really huge splashes in the water, just for fun, when nobody was looking. The point of this silliness is that sometimes it feels like the exciting, mystical things are on the edge of my vision, and I can never turn my head quite fast enough to catch them.

I just realized that I've been capitalizing the beginning of every sentence...I must be in a damn serious mood...better stop before somebody gets injured.

guest quote n + m + 1 from the BHOT:

eric: man, i had massive diarrhea today
eric: when i got on the toilet it came out so fast
eric: i had to take a shower afterwards cause there was so much splashage

speaking of which, there's been a new development. the managers aren't letting us move out because we're on the lease till may, so me, steve, and jesse, might stay here together and look for another roommate for when dave moves out. well played, ya brigands! let the stories keep coming...

changing the topic, here's my song of the week, 'zero chance' by soundgarden:

I think I know the answer
I stumbled on and all the world fell down
And all the sky went silent
Cracked like glass and slowly
Tumbled to the ground
They all say if you look hard
You'll find your way back home
Born without a friend
And bound to die alone

ah i love it...

quote number n + m from the BHOT:

jesse: squeak, squeak, pfffft...bloop
jesse: mm...heavy underwear
jesse: if anybody wants me, i'll be in the bathroom

how sad, we're moving out after this semester, which means my supply of bathroom jokes will run out, which basically means that i'll never have a humorous blogspot entry again.

i think i read somewhere that the movie my sassy girl was based on the online journal of this guy who recorded his adventures with his actual girlfriend. so maybe they should make a movie out of my blogspot, based on jesse! they can call it: my sassy girl.

first tenet to understanding women and men:

"it seems like with girls who are closer to their dads, they have easier time making guy friends..and guys who are closer with their moms have easier times making girl friends"

-the wisdom of carolyn liu

talking to my jobless buddy:

me: why can't i get a stupid interview?
me: i can't believe companies are so good at weeding out morons from competent people

i guess either i got a lot dumber in the past four years, or getting a job is harder than entering college. i shouldn't have listened to all those 'practical' people who told me to just go to college and bypass entering the job hunt early, now my stock has gone down after 4 subpar years and i'll never have a chance to make the nba...

i guess it was bound to happen one day. i just didn't think it would be this way, so unexpected and unannounced. i mean, no matter how much you brace yourself, the shock rips through any pathetic attempts at preparation. come on, who knew? i thought i would've been the one in the shower and he would've been on the toilet...

0.437 seconds after i opened the bathroom door, jesse opened the shower curtain.

he wanted to shower and i needed to take a dump. it was the first time our age-old roles had been reversed. oh, mine eyes.

verse of the day:

My eyes...flow unceasingly, without relief...
Lamentations 3:48

there was something wrong with my template or something so i couldn't post for awhile. but now it's fixed so i can resume frequently posting...............................
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i seriously can't wait for the nba season to start. yay nets!

if the warriors win 32 games or less, eric's treating me to the house of prime rib. i wonder if they take 8 month reservations.

God, i can't think seriously while listening to sun yan zi sing about love through email, or something to do with cyber love and electronics. be back later.

proverb of the day:

'A fool's lips bring him strife,
and his mouth invites a beating.'
Proverbs 18:6

i saw 'my sassy girl' last nite, and i'm still thinking about it. i don't even know the name of the girl main character in the movie, and i don't remember how to say the name of the guy main character, so i can't even think about it properly. you know, like when you dwell on something, the labels run through your mind, for example if you're dwelling (different than reflecting or thinking, closer to daydreaming) on the Little Mermaid, the words ariel and prince eric will flash through your head several times, probably unconsciously. anyways, so the only thing that can flash through my head is the stupid name of the movie, my sassy girl. the effect of the movie is so great that the title has even started to sound romantic to me.

i would continue, but it's only 3 pm right now, which means the hour for pointless pontification is over 9 hours away.

i am so old.

people keep asking me if i'm a freshman. are you blind? can't you see the years of tragedy seared into my eyes?

anyways, i flew back to the east coast last week for my cousin's wedding in ny. my flight back was really early in the morning; i stayed up all nite before it so i was really tired on the plane. i fell asleep right away when i sat down and started dreaming that i was in a car, and in my dream i wanted to sleep, so i put my elbow up on the door to lean my head on my arm, and then the little vietnamese lady next to me yelled 'HEY!' cause i was digging my elbow into her neck. i woke up and looked over and mumbled something like 'oh sorry, i'm in a car' and fell back asleep till we landed.

travelling between the coasts always makes me sad, i always forget how pretty and tranquil holmdel is and how nice it is to see my parents and my friends and the funny stories bing has about doctors rubbing his scrotum with pimple cream (didn't actually happen).

alrite that's it for now. too much punk rock, brain rotting...

allright, here's a story that happened today (i think living with jesse has completely destroyed any concern for my personal dignity that i might have had):


so i've been looking for a job for the past couple weeks while i've been kinda bumming around; i've applied to a thousand places so it's kinda hard to keep track of all of them, especially cause they never call me back. um anyways, so i was hanging out with this guy this morning and when i was driving back to my apartment i realized i really had to take a dump. thoughts are in italics.

pete, driving home: wow it's a beautiful day, nice and sunny and br - oh no i really have to take a dump!

when i walked in to my apartment my roommate was in the shower so i daintily waddled around until he got out and then i rushed in. near the end of the ordeal, the phone rang.

dave: hello?
pete: oh God, don't be for me
dave: lemme check if he's available...hey pete, can you take the phone? i'm on the cordless
pete: ummmmm
dave: it's a lady who sounds kinda professional
pete: alrite, can you hand it to me? i'll open the door a bit
dave: ok here's the pho - OH MY GOD IT STINKS!!
pete: hello?
lady: .......
pete: uh, hello?
lady: hi, i'm from the princeton review, we received your application to be a tutor
pete: ok, slowly pull the toilet paper roll, don't let it squeak... right, i remember sending that in
lady: so we were wondering if you are still interested in a position
pete: softly, softly...you're a smooth daddy pete... actually i'm waiting to hear from a couple other interviews, could i call you back next week?
lady: sure
pete: thank you
lady: great
pete: yup
lady: ok then
pete: right
lady: goodbye!
pete: goodbye!
FLUSH

FIN


hm, i'm realizing that a lot of my blog entries center around the bathroom and the toilet. let me analyze myself and decipher the hidden meaning...it means pete, you're lonely and going crazy. look at this, you're even talking to yourself as if you are actually talking to yourself, as if it's an original device that wasn't already used by dave eggers in A Heartbreaking Work. alright, enough of trying to be clever beyond my abilities. here is a translated waka from eleventh century Japan, a sort of extended haiku, which i will quote as if i had it in mind all along, even though i just randomly flipped open a book and saw it on a page:

A thousand strands of black hair, tangled hair - like them my thoughts, tangling and entangled

yeah...following one strand of thought hair...what if the nets get swept tomorrow?? i wonder who my Most Hated Laker will be next year. this is how it's been the past three years, ever since they officially sold their collective soul to satan during the fourth quarter of game 7 of the semifinals against the blazers:

1999-2000: brian shaw
2000-2001: rick fox
2001-2002: derek fisher

but this year rick fox is making a strong bid for the post-season MHL, what a guy. EXACTLY, rick, EXACTLY.

i spent some time with tuma this week. being around him makes me feel so christian and unchristian at the same time; it's like hanging out with him points out the own insincerity of my christian walk, but at the same time the honest acknowledgement of certain things is already a step towards holiness. i had such a hard time coming up with an answer to his question "how is God shaping you through your reading of the bible?", i didn't know if i was trying to answer the question or if i was trying to come up with an answer to get out from under the microscope.

he said that a believer's post-conversion experience will not necessarily be different than his pre-conversion experience, to contradict my assumption that the regeneration of a man's spirit will be a radical thing, a definite change in his consciousness. but he said that that doesn't have to be the case at all, that anything in your experience is just that, empirical, feelings-based. the change comes from us trusting God's promises, obeying His commands, and watching His promises be fulfilled in our lives, rather than searching ourselves trying to find traces of Him...

God's promises, and God's commands, work hand in hand to establish God's name throughout the earth...and not for our detriment, but for our good. you heard it here first! the new and improved tuma's creed =)

quote number n + 1 from the BHOT:

jesse: i really really have to take a dump
pete: lemme pee first
jesse: just pee through my legs!

...

...

...




ok maybe i switched the names

quote number n from the BHOT:

jesse: whatcha doing?
pete: i'm cooking dumplings and chinese vegetables
jesse: ooh cook me some of that BOY CHOY...i mean bok choy!!
jesse: ...i'm not gay

oooh...

april is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.

i only get to quote that 1/12 of the year, what a shame. well i guess i could change the month name, but it wouldn't really make sense.

so i had a quote 'but for the grace of love, who would remain at all' that i thought was from a smashing pumpkins song, but one day i looked it up and the actual lyrics are 'but for the grace of love, i'd will from heaven above'...too bad, i liked to think that billy corgan would say something like my version. guess what, i'm doing stat homework =O

heard around our apartment:

'COME ON WEBBER! SHOW US YOUR BALLS!!'

dude i'm getting rocked in my ncaa tourney pool. i'm 19th out of 20, behind a bunch of freshmen, two girls, and one girl who's a freshmen! not that girls don't know anything about college basketball, except that one of the girls once asked 'do you get four points for shooting from the other team's side?' and it's just embarrassing to be behind freshmen.

anyways, i still don't know what to do this summer or with my life. but it doesn't matter anymore since me mitch and robo are driving up to seattle during spring break to become rock stars. is it just me or do some eighties rock songs, the happy sounding ones, make you feel like you're in an open cathedral filled with heavenly light? like some old dreamtheater stuff is like that...walking the line between cheesy and transcendent.

why is this song so sad? it makes me want to cry...

I never knew, I could feel like this
Like I've never seen the sky before
Want to vanish inside your kiss...

Those are happy lyrics! Why isn't this song happy?? Argh, it's such a good sad bittersweet melody they should have made it a sad song of lament and not a love song. I'm needing a new good tragic song right now....

i think i realized something about prayer and what it is to me, and maybe Christianity in general. i think to me, a good prayer life is something that is constantly new and original, i guess saying something in a way that i haven't said before. but then that's not the purpose of prayer, to create new mantras as if to access God. the Lord's prayer is so simple, it says nothing about the specifics of life. right after the Lord's prayer Jesus says if we don't forgive sins against us, God won't forgive our sins. i guess his point is that prayer is more for God to change our hearts. i dunno, i haven't figured this thing out yet. i can't just sit there and talk and talk and say things for an hour without feeling like i'm talking to myself or letting my mouth go on autopilot - as if the quicker words come out of my mouth, the more my heart is into it when actually it's the less my brain is into it, and i can't sit there and try to concentrate on God and empty my mind of distractions without falling asleep. i don't know...i'm tired. what should i do with my life?

i think i've been reading too many of those modern, stick it in your head with one short burst kinds of writers lately. i noticed i've been unconsciously ending posts with one sentence standing by itself, and i'm really not that good at meaningful non-cheesy one-liners. so i'm putting myself on ending-with-one-sentence probation for a few posts. boo to one sentences!

here's a poem i wrote sometime last year. it's called A Change, which is strange, because i feel now like i did before i wrote it...i'm gonna have to come up with better titles. if it sucks, i'm sorry. schuck it long, and schuck it hard...just kidding! time to go back to my stat homework, which i can't do even though i have the solutions right in front of me. i guess i should drop my lifelong dream of becoming a statistician and stick to daydreaming about playing on a mountain with all the people who've ever meant something to me, while listening to A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton...from the Legally Blonde soundtrack! have i thoroughly disgusted you with the state of my life at this moment yet? who am i talking to? is this blogspot for me or for you two? anyways, in my head, the mountain looks like a cross between the mountain-lake in the beginning of What Dreams May Come, north Berkeley (the view driving up Euclid...and the whole area is so homey), and the mountain in The Silver Chair which Jill and Eustace find themselves on by accident and Aslan blows them off. I think it's the change in the air that's doing this to me, making me think about all these trivial things...everytime it gets warm it reminds me of the other 20 times in my life that it's gotten warm. Yes, I forgot that this post is morbid. On to the morbidity!


A Change, that's more of a creepy disconnected sigh than a change

I lost an illusion today,
A hidden one I never knew
But still I knew when it was gone.

(I think I’m clashing)
Love with the Wholes
Weep to despair and affliction of souls
Dangle from an endless rope
Be stricken by dear-held hope.

(My life comes from my heart
And who I am. – I yearn,
I long for God and valor,
I trip my way through filth and squalor.)

I believe in always
Unchanging and eternal
I believe in promise
Blood of soul, hope’s kernel
I believe in once
Dreamt before, seen tomorrow
I believe in never
Firmly planted, seed of sorrow

(My life comes from my heart
But my heart lives in a shroud -
Scared of light but not quite blind,
Meekly poking at Truth’s mind.)

I believe in deception
Search the path ever above
I believe in obstinance
Clinging to unordained love
I believe in sadness
Fall from the road, whisper a prayer
I believe in broken hope
Float endlessly through empty air

(I wish, I wish I had their love
I wish I could believe what I know
Before I unravel. – Taken apart,
My head is much closer than my heart).

But then in silence comes the stir
A whispered cry to end the night
I find belief in all things right,
Noble and true, lovely and pure.
These things were set before my start
They come on wings, invade my heart.
I float down gently to the ground
Once frozen, now with few seeds sewn,
Seeds of love to kneel around;
My God has not forgot His own.


yeah that last verse seems out of place, but what do we have besides hope?

ok i had this dream last night where i was traveling around with a bunch of my friends and at one point we were at this mall and we were throwing this football thingy around, but when i caught it it turned out to be like a barely alive cat, not like limp or anything, it was like it was stuffed, very stiff, but everytime i caught it it would start scratching and attacking me. so one of my friends was like, we gotta do something about this cat, so he stuck it in a microwave to make sure it would be dead! and he was like, i've done this before, the minimum microwave time needed is 5 minutes and 30 seconds. and i was like, oh no what if it explodes! but then i thought, silly me, it's stuffed, of course it won't explode.

well, time to go get gered up to watch mothman prophecies.

get it?? gered!

i just noticed i misspelled 'integral' in the subheader...how embarrassing. and on valentine's day too, that's not very sexy. so what's the most romantic thing i ever did? well once in eighth grade i rode my bike five miles through the pouring rain to give this girl a big bouqet of flowers...wait that wasn't me, that was bing to jessica chao! ok...i used to have a big crush on this girl so i sent her a valentine saying 'as you probably already know, i have a crush on you'. wait...that was charles to joan! eh...once me and bing got lost on the way to menlo park mall and ended up listening to shania twain's still the one over forty times on repeat. or maybe it was when me and jesse changed the oil for my car and we spent the day exerting ourselves half-naked with chests glistening. ok i just remembered that i told my parents about this web site. well...once me and juney drove down to monterey in the middle of the night and spent the next day rollerblading on the boardwalk and climbing up and down cliffs overlooking the pacific and driving along this incredibly gorgeous highway...

romantic sentiments always make me nostalgic for the more halcyon =O and carefree days of my childhood, which really have nothing to do with romanticism. like riding my bike through a park forest with my family or meeting lots of new friends at a summer camp in the middle of nowhere (ok it was piano camp. PIANO camp! ...in KANSAS! i don't care, i loved it.) or playing around in someone's backyard with my friends after dark. or any of the trips i went on with my family, driving up pikes peak and mount evans in colorado, or visiting the redwood forests in oregon, or the canyons in utah, or the blueberry mountains in maine, or the beaches in north carolina...i acted like a bored snobby little kid on those trips but i loved them, mom and dad, they are my favorite memories in the world and i dream about beautiful places all the time...my first memory ever is driving along this amazingly blue ocean in hawaii when i was two years old. maybe this is why i love nature so much...anyways, those were the most special times in my life.

i'll leave you with the words of one of the greatest love songs ever:

I was alone, I never knew...what good love could do
Then we touched, then we sang...about the loving things!
Long night, all night, oh every night
So hold tight, hold tight, oh baby hold tight!
Anyway you want it, that's the way you need it, anyway you want it!

That's the way i want it...

here's a little something i typed out on june hye's computer once when we were studying. there's no point or anything really.

I used to have a cat named Tiger, who got killed in a fight with a raccoon one day. Actually his name was Tiger II; that reminded me of Tiger I, who got run over by a car. That reminded me of my dog Casper who was an American Eskimo; I once chased him around the neighborhood three times before he got hit by a garbage truck. That reminded me of the time I had a fish, which flopped out of his tank as I was carrying it across the street once and got squished by a car. That reminded me of the time that I adopted a kid, because we had a lot of pets together. The End.

i think i'm feeling an identity crisis coming...maybe not crisis but lament. dammit, i wish i was more articulate, i wish i was the first to say the sweet and provocative phases that are so common now. (i think this is a side effect of post-modernity - the awareness of being aware - it's cheesy to say 'you look wonderful tonight' but it's not cheesy to say 'as eric clapton once said, you look wonderful tonight' or 'as tony bennett (or sinatra) once said, i love the way you look tonight' or 'as styx once said, we're just a bunch of men attracted to each other' - it's dangerous, because what happens when you aware yourself into paralysis? cycnicsm eats away at our originality and creativity. even this little side note was mostly borrowed from Umberto Eco (eco, eco, eco....=)). we can't ever be sincere or simple because we know too much and everything sounds rote coming out of our mouths.)

anywaaaays the two of you reading this are making me nervous! i haven't thought with purpose in awhile...not just with purpose, i mean with elevated purpose, as in the kind of thinking where right when you begin you know you're gonna feel a lot better later. it's weird, cause i've had too many changing mindsets. for example, in the summer i actually stayed up late at night reading ts eliot and letting Little Gidding sink into my imagination, and i haven't read anything since. freshman year i was all into becoming the best guitarist in the world and i don't even know how that phase died away, but i'm worse now than i used to be, which is kind of sad because i used to think 'i'm improving pretty fast, i wonder how good i'll be in three years or so' - of course in less bland and more snobby words. soph year i was into being a good christian, a typical asian college christian, if that makes sense - who knows everybody in all the fellowships, is respected and stuff. now i guess i realize that even spirituality and faith can be more of a hobby than an identity if you're not careful. i forgot to be as shrewd as a snake when it came to evil and i'm still trying to learn humility. i'm not a poet but i write poems, i'm not a musician but i play music..the thing is, i've been going through the post-modern mindset, buying into it more and more, becoming more self-aware until i'm too scared and cynical to assume anything.

this year i had what many people are horribly longing for, a committed very much in love relationship, which is still true. but even we fell into being post-modern, into being cynical and overly surfacey and analytical. it was hard because we were and are so close to breaking through that, to forgetting everything that's been fed into our minds and instincts and letting the relationship build from the ground up, no assumptions, hopes stronger than fears. it wears you down knowing that the other person is gonna examine every word out of your mouth, instead of trusting the words. i wish we could rattle off thoughts at each other nonstop, no inhibitions...i loved every moment spent with her, or maybe i should say 'this is gonna sound cheesy but i loved every moment with her', the joking, the hugs, smiles, sighs, questions, pauses, even insecurities. i could say something like 'well i'm touched cause the fact that she's insecure means she thinks that much more highly of my opinion than other peoples' but that's not the truth. i really can't find much objective good in insecurities, just that they're part of her, so i embrace them. now the question is, how much of this am i writing for myself, how much for people to read, and how much for her to read? i'm gonna try not to think about that, but this is for you, i love you juney...you taught me a lot about the characteristics of real, irrational love. i don't care how unoriginal or cheesy i sound, i'm pretending i'd never heard these phrases before and i'm the first person to ever say them, to ever feel them enough to express. alrite...back to stat homework. sorry i ranted so much on post-modernity, i don't think i understand it that well, so you can kinda ignore what i said...aha! it creeps out again. ok, thank you and good night.

quote 4 from the BHOT:

pete: it was one of those things that looked good from a distance but got uglier and uglier as i got closer
jesse: you mean like the singer from the cranberries?

quote 3 from the BHOT:

steve: ...i'm not a mormon...
janet: steve, mormons can't eat beef
steve: yes we can

wow, that post written on 1/29 was really long with too many big words and not very fun to read at all. everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. =)

i had a weird dream about the author of the book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius last night...he had written a mini-journal of the first 20 years of his life and i was going through the highlights in fast-forward. everytime something weird would happen, this random guy would pop up and together him and the author would lose an eyeball and it'd be rolling around on the floor but their sockets would regrow them, so by the time i woke up they had each lost six eyeballs.

quote 2 from the BHOT (an old one):

korean girls, to jesse: tee hee!
jesse, to the korean girls: jesse scores points with the korean girls! aww yeah!
pete, in the background: *shakes head in disbelief*

quote 1 from the Black Hole of Time:

steve: i can't hear anything
janet: why are you putting in ear plugs while talking to people?
steve: ...cause it's fun

so i started this thing in december as a way to get all my ground-breaking never-before-thought-of thoughts out to the world but where i wouldn't have to do any real thinking myself, where as i typed precious gems would spill out of my fingers onto the screen, but i ran into two obstacles:

i) i'd hadn't imagined that the page would be so ugly (and i had no idea how to format it)
ii) my fingers are useless

even this little post has more cheesiness than self-aaaaaaggrandizing self-aware self-mockery. anyways, i forgot about the whole thing until i came across what i had had in mind in actual physical form - the book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Actually, reading the book didn't remind me of this blogspot at all, it's just that today my mind was so numbed while trying to do my stat hw that i actually read the profile of my own screename (...) and saw the link there. but being reminded of the blogspot triggered the thought hey, i kinda wanted to do something like AHWOSG so i guess it was kind of a reverse revelation or something...i should stop typing before my keyboard strangles me for being so dumb - if i come back here in a few days and re-read this post, the chances are 99% that i'll immediately delete it and refuse to come out of my room for fear of being shot by the two people who were unlucky enough to read it