ummm. no thank you.

derivative...

if you use this word in a sentence in normal conversation, you're a douche.

beautiful

beautiful slo-mo of a cheetah running.

I think it's interesting that its back legs take off at two different times. also, that at two different times in a single stride the thing is airborne.



last bit of trivia: the cheetah is the only big cat that cannot retract it's claws!

one of the best pranks i've ever seen

we demand a response!

so on whitehouse.gov, if you make a petition, and it reaches a 25k threshold of support, then the white house says it will respond to it.

this one was in response to all those idiot people who wanted their state to secede from the union (making them terrorists and unpatriotic). and it kinda makes me laugh.


click on this to deport them all!!!

gummi bears as you've never heard it

it's like a rotten tomato two people flip....

bad lip reading at its finest...

one of the best commercials right now

awesome...

compilation of sports greatest moments.

the "southern strategy" NSFW

lee atwater, an american political consultant and strategist to the republican party during the 80s, talks about the southern political strategy aka how to be racist without sounding racist.

this is only an audio file, but the man drops the n-bomb, so listen with caution.

oh hell, naw....

eric berry doesn't like horses apparently.

les mis and my brain

for some reason, i hate musicals. just the idea of them. singing and dancing in the middle of a perfectly good movie/play? ugh. what's the point?

but then, when i'm dragged to go see one. i love it.

mulan rouge
chicago
spring awakening
the producers
annie
the list goes on and on

and yet my brain persists that i don't like musicals. damn you society! and the most recent one i saw, les mis, beasley again, had to drag me to. i had heard some stuff about it. mostly that it was horrendously long.

they came out singing and when it didn't stop, i thought to myself, "self, there's no way they are going to sing this play for 3 hours", and suddenly i was regretting i ever agreed to it. but again, i was wrong.

les mis is one of the top two musicals id ever seen. the grandeur. amazing songs. awesome story. i laughed, i cried, it was better than cats.

and if you were wondering. spring awakening is the best musical i have ever seen.
1) because it was awesome
2) i got to see some chick's boobs
3) that chick ended up being lea michele

4) now whenever someone mentions glee, i can say that i've seen her topless


so i present to you a movie, i will probably not want to see, but i will begrudgingly go, but will end up loving, bc as much as i hate to admit it, i fucking love musicals.

why doesn't mtv play music videos? a response.

oooooo

ohhhh SICK BURN!

'dega

yes, i went to talladega.

me, beasley, slambo, dr. pee, and some other folks went to talladega to enjoy the roaring of engines and drinking of beer. also, i needed these other white folks to make sure i didn't get lynched.

how was it? the race was pretty damn boring, but the tailgating was pretty awesome. drinks and burgers at 10 in the morning? can't beat that.

here are the pics!

tailgating on the side of the road.

tailgating from afar

proof i was there

our seats

the on big wreck of the day.

which involved 2/3 of the cars

that was a fun part. (the only fun part)

i don't think i can love her any more than right now

alison brie...thank you for being awesome.





AND cute!

the best song about thanksgiving....well...evar!

i can't tell if this is satire or not.
if it is... brilliant.
if not...still brilliant!

i am an art buyer!

a patron of the arts! this is a piece from my roommates world war 2 collection. it's the burning of warsaw and the inside pieces of a stand up piano. it's his best piece and it's all mine!! hahahaha!

look upon and be impressed.

it's about 4'x5'. and if any of you would like to see his other pieces, please let me know. they are all amazing. my house is like a gallery!

someone chopping onions up in here?!

here's a really touching poignant letter a little 10 yr old girl writes to Obama about her two fathers and dealing with bullies. AND a letter back from the President. pretty fucking awesome. also, i don't understand how a innocent 10 year old has more sense that a lot of the social conservatives out there. i wish my daughter (lunchbox) turns out like her.


(if you're having a hard time reading the letters, the words are printed below each)

dear barack obama,

it's sophia bailey klugh, your friend who invited you to dinner. you don't remember, okay that's fine. but i just wanted to tell you that i am so glad that you agree two men can love each other because i have two dads and they love each other, but at school kids think that it's gross and weird, but it really hurts my heart and feelings. so i come to you because you are my hero. if you were me and you had two dads that loved each other and kids at school teased you about it, what would you do?

please respond!

i just wanted to say you really inspire me, and i hope you win on being the president. you would totally make the world a better place.

your friend sophia

ps please tell your daughters hi for me

Dear Sophia,

Thank you for writing me such a thoughtful letter about your family. Reading it made me proud to be your president and even more hopeful about the future of our nation.

In America, no two families look the same. We celebrate this diversity. And we recognize that whether you have two dads or one mom what matters above all is the love we show one another. You are very fortunate to have two parents who care deeply for you. They are lucky to have such an exceptional daughter in you.

Our differences unite us. You and I are blessed to live in a country where we are born equal no matter what we look like on the outside, where we grow up, or who our parents are. A good rule is to treat others the way you hope they will treat you. Remind your friends at school about this rule if they say something that hurts your feelings.

Thanks again for taking the time to write me. I'm honored to have your support and inspired by your compassion. I'm sorry I couldn't make it to dinner, but I'll be sure to tell Sasha and Malia you say hello.

Sincerely,
Barack Obama

neal boortz makes sense?!?!

actually a VERY accurate reason why the republican party lost this election, and how social conservatism is not working in 2012 america. i'm really amazed that i agree with just about every single one of his points on:

1. abortion
2. gay marriage
3. immigration

i actually had a conversation last night with slambo jones about these very subjects. america is a rainbow of people, and the gop comes across as the white people's political party and almost a white man's party. it's unsustainable now and even more so in the future. if they could just get their ideas in line with the times, i think independent voters would be more than willing to listen and vote. gotta win hearts and minds.

By Neal Boortz

For any freedom-loving conservative who wants to see a viable Republican Party thrive on the national stage once again, my rant from yesterday must be required listening. Go ahead. Click it. Take a listen. For you Republicans, it will make you mad. You need to be mad. You screwed up. You screwed up just as I said – have been saying for years -- you would screw up. You need to listen. Click on the link. When you listen you will know that I’m right.

It boils down to this …

The Republican Party needs an exorcism. It needs to rid itself of these abortocentrist nutcases who are chasing away voters, particularly women. This is about as clearly as I can say it: Abortion is NEVER going to be illegal. Get over it! The sooner you come to terms with this, the sooner you will be able to regain credibility with the voters. Your boys Todd Aiken, Richard Mourdock and John Koster chased away millions of female voters with their idiotic remarks about abortion … and they cost us two seats in the Senate. How bad was it? Romney carried Mourdock’s home county in Indiana! His opponent, Joe Donnelly, was the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Indiana in more than a decade! Are you listening, Republicans? Mourdock was a shoo-in! Then he opened his yap about abortion, and women went screaming for the exits. What did he say? Well – simply put – the message to women was that if you’ve been raped, don’t worry your pretty little selves over whether or not you might be pregnant, because if you are it is, after all, a gift from God!

Now here’s the problem, dear GOP leaders. Read this quote from Wayne Parke. He’s the Chairman of the Vanderburgh County Republican Party. That’s Murdock’s home country --- the one he lost:

"I was quite surprised and disappointed that Mourdock didn't carry his own county. But it's an indication that everything you say is so important and that debate comment he made just turned out to be disastrous."

Duhhhhhhh! Really? You’ve learned that lesson now, have you, Mr. Parke? Could you please send some memos to the Republican National Headquarters? Who knows --- if you and the GOP leaders had figured this out months ago, and if the word had gone out that GOP candidates needed to shut the hell up about abortion --- maybe things would look quite a bit different today.

The same goes for gay marriage. If you can make the case that a married gay couple living down the street from you, or across town for that matter, is going to have any negative impact on your own life, then I would say that we need to have a debate on the subject. Nobody has shown me that yet, so how about getting your GOP noses out of other people’s bedrooms? I’ve been on the air for years and never in my 42 years of talk radio has anyone been able to tell me how Joe and Steve living down the block in wedded bliss will have any impact on their life. Come into the 21st century with me on this one and just leave the issue the hell alone. If you’re so determined to defend the institution of marriage – the concept of committed couples living together in a dedicated relationship – then why don’t you turn your attention to Hollywood. Forget about demonizing a gay couple that is every bit as much in love and committed as you are to your spouse. Aim your derision on the Hollywood crowd that looks at marriage as not much more than a new car – something to be traded in on a new model in two years.

And when it comes to immigration, rounding up all the Mexicans in this country and sending them back to Mexico is never, ever going to happen. Do you hear that? It ISN’T going to happen! Does it occur to you that these people come here because they WANT to work? Do you really have such a huge problem with aspirational people? So come up with a reasonable policy on immigration reform, and lock down the borders. No problem with that. But give up this asinine idea that those already here – those who have been here for years – are going to be loaded into railroad cars and sent back to Mexico. Do you really want that? Do you really want to depend on those Americans who would rather spend their days hanging around convenience store scratching goo off lottery tickets instead of putting in an honest days work? Do you really want to pay $16 for a BLT? Yeah .. that’s right. Scare the folks with the actual work ethic away while pampering the moochers and leaches. Yeah .. that works. What do you think a Hispanic American citizen thinks when he sees a political party dedicate itself to the cause of taking a young female college student – a young lady who has lived here since her parents brought her here illegally when she was three – and deporting her to a country she has never known? Do you think it’s likely that Hispanic citizen is going to vote for your candidate? Tell me how that works.

Stop crying in your beer and listen up. America is going to suffer another four years under Obama because of YOU. The Republican party blew this one --- big time. Abortion – gay marriage – immigration reform. The perfect electoral storm, and you couldn’t have played it any worse. Leave these issues alone! Drop them! If the GOP cannot turn loose of this mindless social conservatism, then you will be relegated to second class status (politically speaking) for the remaining days of this Republic, which may not be all that many. The Republican Party as it currently stands needs to die. Like a phoenix, it needs to burst into flames and from its ashes rebuild into a party focused on …

Limited government
Tax reform
A strong military
The rule of law
Reducing regulations
Promoting capitalism – especially small businesses
Restoring self-reliance
Honoring the Constitution

Did you see abortion or gay marriage on that list? Didn’t think so. The Republicans need to become more Libertarian and less religiously authoritarian or the Party is dead. It’s amazing that these social conservatives have managed to screw this country they claim to love so much by handing Democrats victories this week thanks to these social issues.

paper menagerie

this short story won the hugo, nebula, and world fantasy awards. for you non-geeky types, these are science fiction writing highest awards. and this is also the first time a story has ever won all three. so please take some time (even if you don't like sci-fi) and take a gander. take some time to read it because once you start, the story and time will fly by and you won't want it to end.

"Paper Menagerie"
by Ken Liu
One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.

Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.

"Kan, kan," she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years, Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack.

She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her, curious.

She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded-up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it, like a balloon.

"Kan," she said. "Laohu." She put her hands down on the table and let go.

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.

I reached out to Mom's creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger. "Rawrr-sa," it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

"Zhe jiao zhezhi," Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn't know this at the time, but Mom's kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.

#

Dad had picked Mom out of a catalog.

One time, when I was in high school, I asked Dad about the details. He was trying to get me to speak to Mom again.

He had signed up for the introduction service back in the spring of 1973. Flipping through the pages steadily, he had spent no more than a few seconds on each page until he saw the picture of Mom.

I've never seen this picture. Dad described it: Mom was sitting in a chair, her side to the camera, wearing a tight green silk cheongsam. Her head was turned to the camera so that her long black hair was draped artfully over her chest and shoulder. She looked out at him with the eyes of a calm child.

"That was the last page of the catalog I saw," he said.

The catalog said she was eighteen, loved to dance, and spoke good English because she was from Hong Kong. None of these facts turned out to be true.

He wrote to her, and the company passed their messages back and forth. Finally, he flew to Hong Kong to meet her.

"The people at the company had been writing her responses. She didn't know any English other than 'hello' and 'goodbye.'"

What kind of woman puts herself into a catalog so that she can be bought? The high school me thought I knew so much about everything. Contempt felt good, like wine.

Instead of storming into the office to demand his money back, he paid a waitress at the hotel restaurant to translate for them.

"She would look at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful, while I spoke. And when the girl began translating what I said, she'd start to smile slowly."

He flew back to Connecticut and began to apply for the papers for her to come to him. I was born a year later, in the Year of the Tiger.

#

At my request, Mom also made a goat, a deer, and a water buffalo out of wrapping paper. They would run around the living room while Laohu chased after them, growling. When he caught them he would press down until the air went out of them and they became just flat, folded-up pieces of paper. I would then have to blow into them to re-inflate them so they could run around some more.

Sometimes, the animals got into trouble. Once, the water buffalo jumped into a dish of soy sauce on the table at dinner. (He wanted to wallow, like a real water buffalo.) I picked him out quickly but the capillary action had already pulled the dark liquid high up into his legs. The sauce-softened legs would not hold him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his legs became crooked after that, and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually wrapped his legs in saran wrap so that he could wallow to his heart's content (just not in soy sauce).

Also, Laohu liked to pounce at sparrows when he and I played in the backyard. But one time, a cornered bird struck back in desperation and tore his ear. He whimpered and winced as I held him and Mom patched his ear together with tape. He avoided birds after that.

And then one day, I saw a TV documentary about sharks and asked Mom for one of my own. She made the shark, but he flapped about on the table unhappily. I filled the sink with water, and put him in. He swam around and around happily. However, after a while he became soggy and translucent, and slowly sank to the bottom, the folds coming undone. I reached in to rescue him, and all I ended up with was a wet piece of paper.

Laohu put his front paws together at the edge of the sink and rested his head on them. Ears drooping, he made a low growl in his throat that made me feel guilty.

Mom made a new shark for me, this time out of tin foil. The shark lived happily in a large goldfish bowl. Laohu and I liked to sit next to the bowl to watch the tin foil shark chasing the goldfish, Laohu sticking his face up against the bowl on the other side so that I saw his eyes, magnified to the size of coffee cups, staring at me from across the bowl.

#

When I was ten, we moved to a new house across town. Two of the women neighbors came by to welcome us. Dad served them drinks and then apologized for having to run off to the utility company to straighten out the prior owner's bills. "Make yourselves at home. My wife doesn't speak much English, so don't think she's being rude for not talking to you."

While I read in the dining room, Mom unpacked in the kitchen. The neighbors conversed in the living room, not trying to be particularly quiet.

"He seems like a normal enough man. Why did he do that?"

"Something about the mixing never seems right. The child looks unfinished. Slanty eyes, white face. A little monster."

"Do you think he can speak English?"

The women hushed. After a while they came into the dining room.

"Hello there! What's your name?"

"Jack," I said.

"That doesn't sound very Chinesey."

Mom came into the dining room then. She smiled at the women. The three of them stood in a triangle around me, smiling and nodding at each other, with nothing to say, until Dad came back.

#

Mark, one of the neighborhood boys, came over with his Star Wars action figures. Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber lit up and he could swing his arms and say, in a tinny voice, "Use the Force!" I didn't think the figure looked much like the real Obi-Wan at all.

Together, we watched him repeat this performance five times on the coffee table. "Can he do anything else?" I asked.

Mark was annoyed by my question. "Look at all the details," he said.

I looked at the details. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say.

Mark was disappointed by my response. "Show me your toys."

I didn't have any toys except my paper menagerie. I brought Laohu out from my bedroom. By then he was very worn, patched all over with tape and glue, evidence of the years of repairs Mom and I had done on him. He was no longer as nimble and sure-footed as before. I sat him down on the coffee table. I could hear the skittering steps of the other animals behind in the hallway, timidly peeking into the living room.

"Xiao laohu," I said, and stopped. I switched to English. "This is Tiger." Cautiously, Laohu strode up and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands.

Mark examined the Christmas-wrap pattern of Laohu's skin. "That doesn't look like a tiger at all. Your Mom makes toys for you from trash?"

I had never thought of Laohu as trash. But looking at him now, he was really just a piece of wrapping paper.

Mark pushed Obi-Wan's head again. The lightsaber flashed; he moved his arms up and down. "Use the Force!"

Laohu turned and pounced, knocking the plastic figure off the table. It hit the floor and broke, and Obi-Wan's head rolled under the couch. "Rawwww," Laohu laughed. I joined him.

Mark punched me, hard. "This was very expensive! You can't even find it in the stores now. It probably cost more than what your dad paid for your mom!"

I stumbled and fell to the floor. Laohu growled and leapt at Mark's face.

Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Laohu was only made of paper, after all.

Mark grabbed Laohu and his snarl was choked off as Mark crumpled him in his hand and tore him in half. He balled up the two pieces of paper and threw them at me. "Here's your stupid cheap Chinese garbage."

After Mark left, I spent a long time trying, without success, to tape together the pieces, smooth out the paper, and follow the creases to refold Laohu. Slowly, the other animals came into the living room and gathered around us, me and the torn wrapping paper that used to be Laohu.

#

My fight with Mark didn't end there. Mark was popular at school. I never want to think again about the two weeks that followed.

I came home that Friday at the end of the two weeks. "Xuexiao hao ma?" Mom asked. I said nothing and went to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror. I look nothing like her, nothing.

At dinner I asked Dad, "Do I have a chink face?"

Dad put down his chopsticks. Even though I had never told him what happened in school, he seemed to understand. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No, you don't."

Mom looked at Dad, not understanding. She looked back at me. "Sha jiao chink?"

"English," I said. "Speak English."

She tried. "What happen?"

I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away: stir-fried green peppers with five-spice beef. "We should eat American food."

Dad tried to reason. "A lot of families cook Chinese sometimes."

"We are not other families." I looked at him. Other families don't have moms who don't belong.

He looked away. And then he put a hand on Mom's shoulder. "I'll get you a cookbook."

Mom turned to me. "Bu haochi?"

"English," I said, raising my voice. "Speak English."

Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. "Fashao la?"

I brushed her hand away. "I'm fine. Speak English!" I was shouting.

"Speak English to him," Dad said to Mom. "You knew this was going to happen some day. What did you expect?"

Mom dropped her hands to her side. She sat, looking from Dad to me, and back to Dad again. She tried to speak, stopped, and tried again, and stopped again.

"You have to," Dad said. "I've been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in."

Mom looked at him. "If I say 'love,' I feel here." She pointed to her lips. "If I say 'ai,' I feel here." She put her hand over her heart.

Dad shook his head. "You are in America."

Mom hunched down in her seat, looking like the water buffalo when Laohu used to pounce on him and squeeze the air of life out of him.

"And I want some real toys."

#

Dad bought me a full set of Star Wars action figures. I gave the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Mark.

I packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it under the bed.

The next morning, the animals had escaped and took over their old favorite spots in my room. I caught them all and put them back into the shoebox, taping the lid shut. But the animals made so much noise in the box that I finally shoved it into the corner of the attic as far away from my room as possible.

If Mom spoke to me in Chinese, I refused to answer her. After a while, she tried to use more English. But her accent and broken sentences embarrassed me. I tried to correct her. Eventually, she stopped speaking altogether if I were around.

Mom began to mime things if she needed to let me know something. She tried to hug me the way she saw American mothers did on TV. I thought her movements exaggerated, uncertain, ridiculous, graceless. She saw that I was annoyed, and stopped.

"You shouldn't treat your mother that way," Dad said. But he couldn't look me in the eyes as he said it. Deep in his heart, he must have realized that it was a mistake to have tried to take a Chinese peasant girl and expect her to fit in the suburbs of Connecticut.

Mom learned to cook American style. I played video games and studied French.

Every once in a while, I would see her at the kitchen table studying the plain side of a sheet of wrapping paper. Later a new paper animal would appear on my nightstand and try to cuddle up to me. I caught them, squeezed them until the air went out of them, and then stuffed them away in the box in the attic.

Mom finally stopped making the animals when I was in high school. By then her English was much better, but I was already at that age when I wasn't interested in what she had to say whatever language she used.

Sometimes, when I came home and saw her tiny body busily moving about in the kitchen, singing a song in Chinese to herself, it was hard for me to believe that she gave birth to me. We had nothing in common. She might as well be from the moon. I would hurry on to my room, where I could continue my all-American pursuit of happiness.

#

Dad and I stood, one on each side of Mom, lying on the hospital bed. She was not yet even forty, but she looked much older.

For years she had refused to go to the doctor for the pain inside her that she said was no big deal. By the time an ambulance finally carried her in, the cancer had spread far beyond the limits of surgery.

My mind was not in the room. It was the middle of the on-campus recruiting season, and I was focused on resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed interview schedules. I schemed about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they'll offer to buy me. I understood intellectually that it was terrible to think about this while your mother lay dying. But that understanding didn't mean I could change how I felt.

She was conscious. Dad held her left hand with both of his own. He leaned down to kiss her forehead. He seemed weak and old in a way that startled me. I realized that I knew almost as little about Dad as I did about Mom.

Mom smiled at him. "I'm fine."

She turned to me, still smiling. "I know you have to go back to school." Her voice was very weak and it was difficult to hear her over the hum of the machines hooked up to her. "Go. Don't worry about me. This is not a big deal. Just do well in school."

I reached out to touch her hand, because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was relieved. I was already thinking about the flight back, and the bright California sunshine.

She whispered something to Dad. He nodded and left the room.

"Jack, if — " she was caught up in a fit of coughing, and could not speak for some time. "If I don't make it, don't be too sad and hurt your health. Focus on your life. Just keep that box you have in the attic with you, and every year, at Qingming, just take it out and think about me. I'll be with you always."

Qingming was the Chinese Festival for the Dead. When I was very young, Mom used to write a letter on Qingming to her dead parents back in China, telling them the good news about the past year of her life in America. She would read the letter out loud to me, and if I made a comment about something, she would write it down in the letter too. Then she would fold the letter into a paper crane, and release it, facing west. We would then watch, as the crane flapped its crisp wings on its long journey west, towards the Pacific, towards China, towards the graves of Mom's family.

It had been many years since I last did that with her.

"I don't know anything about the Chinese calendar," I said. "Just rest, Mom. "

"Just keep the box with you and open it once in a while. Just open — " she began to cough again.

"It's okay, Mom." I stroked her arm awkwardly.

"Haizi, mama ai ni — " Her cough took over again. An image from years ago flashed into my memory: Mom saying ai and then putting her hand over her heart.

"Alright, Mom. Stop talking."

Dad came back, and I said that I needed to get to the airport early because I didn't want to miss my flight.

She died when my plane was somewhere over Nevada.

#

Dad aged rapidly after Mom died. The house was too big for him and had to be sold. My girlfriend Susan and I went to help him pack and clean the place.

Susan found the shoebox in the attic. The paper menagerie, hidden in the uninsulated darkness of the attic for so long, had become brittle and the bright wrapping paper patterns had faded.

"I've never seen origami like this," Susan said. "Your Mom was an amazing artist."

The paper animals did not move. Perhaps whatever magic had animated them stopped when Mom died. Or perhaps I had only imagined that these paper constructions were once alive. The memory of children could not be trusted.

#

It was the first weekend in April, two years after Mom's death. Susan was out of town on one of her endless trips as a management consultant and I was home, lazily flipping through the TV channels.

I paused at a documentary about sharks. Suddenly I saw, in my mind, Mom's hands, as they folded and refolded tin foil to make a shark for me, while Laohu and I watched.

A rustle. I looked up and saw that a ball of wrapping paper and torn tape was on the floor next to the bookshelf. I walked over to pick it up for the trash.

The ball of paper shifted, unfurled itself, and I saw that it was Laohu, who I hadn't thought about in a very long time. "Rawrr-sa." Mom must have put him back together after I had given up.

He was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe it was just that back then my fists were smaller.

Susan had put the paper animals around our apartment as decoration. She probably left Laohu in a pretty hidden corner because he looked so shabby.

I sat down on the floor, and reached out a finger. Laohu's tail twitched, and he pounced playfully. I laughed, stroking his back. Laohu purred under my hand.

"How've you been, old buddy?"

Laohu stopped playing. He got up, jumped with feline grace into my lap, and proceeded to unfold himself.

In my lap was a square of creased wrapping paper, the plain side up. It was filled with dense Chinese characters. I had never learned to read Chinese, but I knew the characters for son, and they were at the top, where you'd expect them in a letter addressed to you, written in Mom's awkward, childish handwriting.

I went to the computer to check the Internet. Today was Qingming.

#

I took the letter with me downtown, where I knew the Chinese tour buses stopped. I stopped every tourist, asking, "Nin hui du zhongwen ma?" Can you read Chinese? I hadn't spoken Chinese in so long that I wasn't sure if they understood.

A young woman agreed to help. We sat down on a bench together, and she read the letter to me aloud. The language that I had tried to forget for years came back, and I felt the words sinking into me, through my skin, through my bones, until they squeezed tight around my heart.

#

Son,

We haven't talked in a long time. You are so angry when I try to touch you that I'm afraid. And I think maybe this pain I feel all the time now is something serious.

So I decided to write to you. I'm going to write in the paper animals I made for you that you used to like so much.

The animals will stop moving when I stop breathing. But if I write to you with all my heart, I'll leave a little of myself behind on this paper, in these words. Then, if you think of me on Qingming, when the spirits of the departed are allowed to visit their families, you'll make the parts of myself I leave behind come alive too. The creatures I made for you will again leap and run and pounce, and maybe you'll get to see these words then.

Because I have to write with all my heart, I need to write to you in Chinese.

All this time I still haven't told you the story of my life. When you were little, I always thought I'd tell you the story when you were older, so you could understand. But somehow that chance never came up.

I was born in 1957, in Sigulu Village, Hebei Province. Your grandparents were both from very poor peasant families with few relatives. Only a few years after I was born, the Great Famines struck China, during which thirty million people died. The first memory I have was waking up to see my mother eating dirt so that she could fill her belly and leave the last bit of flour for me.

Things got better after that. Sigulu is famous for its zhezhi papercraft, and my mother taught me how to make paper animals and give them life. This was practical magic in the life of the village. We made paper birds to chase grasshoppers away from the fields, and paper tigers to keep away the mice. For Chinese New Year my friends and I made red paper dragons. I'll never forget the sight of all those little dragons zooming across the sky overhead, holding up strings of exploding firecrackers to scare away all the bad memories of the past year. You would have loved it.

Then came the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Neighbor turned on neighbor, and brother against brother. Someone remembered that my mother's brother, my uncle, had left for Hong Kong back in 1946, and became a merchant there. Having a relative in Hong Kong meant we were spies and enemies of the people, and we had to be struggled against in every way. Your poor grandmother — she couldn't take the abuse and threw herself down a well. Then some boys with hunting muskets dragged your grandfather away one day into the woods, and he never came back.

There I was, a ten-year-old orphan. The only relative I had in the world was my uncle in Hong Kong. I snuck away one night and climbed onto a freight train going south.

Down in Guangdong Province a few days later, some men caught me stealing food from a field. When they heard that I was trying to get to Hong Kong, they laughed. "It's your lucky day. Our trade is to bring girls to Hong Kong."

They hid me in the bottom of a truck along with other girls, and smuggled us across the border.

We were taken to a basement and told to stand up and look healthy and intelligent for the buyers. Families paid the warehouse a fee and came by to look us over and select one of us to "adopt."

The Chin family picked me to take care of their two boys. I got up every morning at four to prepare breakfast. I fed and bathed the boys. I shopped for food. I did the laundry and swept the floors. I followed the boys around and did their bidding. At night I was locked into a cupboard in the kitchen to sleep. If I was slow or did anything wrong I was beaten. If the boys did anything wrong I was beaten. If I was caught trying to learn English I was beaten.

"Why do you want to learn English?" Mr. Chin asked. "You want to go to the police? We'll tell the police that you are a mainlander illegally in Hong Kong. They'd love to have you in their prison."

Six years I lived like this. One day, an old woman who sold fish to me in the morning market pulled me aside.

"I know girls like you. How old are you now, sixteen? One day, the man who owns you will get drunk, and he'll look at you and pull you to him and you can't stop him. The wife will find out, and then you will think you really have gone to hell. You have to get out of this life. I know someone who can help."

She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my American husband, he'll give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. And that was how I got into the catalog with all those lies and met your father. It is not a very romantic story, but it is my story.

In the suburbs of Connecticut, I was lonely. Your father was kind and gentle with me, and I was very grateful to him. But no one understood me, and I understood nothing.

But then you were born! I was so happy when I looked into your face and saw shades of my mother, my father, and myself. I had lost my entire family, all of Sigulu, everything I ever knew and loved. But there you were, and your face was proof that they were real. I hadn't made them up.

Now I had someone to talk to. I would teach you my language, and we could together remake a small piece of everything that I loved and lost. When you said your first words to me, in Chinese that had the same accent as my mother and me, I cried for hours. When I made the first zhezhi animals for you, and you laughed, I felt there were no worries in the world.

You grew up a little, and now you could even help your father and I talk to each other. I was really at home now. I finally found a good life. I wished my parents could be here, so that I could cook for them, and give them a good life too. But my parents were no longer around. You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It's for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone.

Son, I know that you do not like your Chinese eyes, which are my eyes. I know that you do not like your Chinese hair, which is my hair. But can you understand how much joy your very existence brought to me? And can you understand how it felt when you stopped talking to me and won't let me talk to you in Chinese? I felt I was losing everything all over again.

Why won't you talk to me, son? The pain makes it hard to write.

#

The young woman handed the paper back to me. I could not bear to look into her face.

Without looking up, I asked for her help in tracing out the character for ai on the paper below Mom's letter. I wrote the character again and again on the paper, intertwining my pen strokes with her words.

The young woman reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. Then she got up and left, leaving me alone with my mother.

Following the creases, I refolded the paper back into Laohu. I cradled him in the crook of my arm, and as he purred, we began the walk home.

when/if i have a little girl....

i had a few rules that i was going to follow:

1. her name will be lunchbox
2. she will be morbidly obese so that no boys will ever love her.

but after watching this video, i have now amended the rules:

1. her name will still be lunchbox
2. she will EITHER be morbidly obese OR a beast, like this little girl