Elyse Sewell's Journal

Subject:	my place in the old world
Time:	12:58 am.

I may have slept too long on composing this entry: my Euro vacation is over and I'm back in Albuquerque; so much has happened between then/there and now/here that I feel like I'm trying to write about the distant past rather than two weeks ago! Oh well, I'll do my best to make it interesting even if it's not quite fresh. This entry is about Budapest.

I never really got comfortable with the Hungarian Forint (US$1 = 193.77Ft). Every time I bought something, I'd scrabble frantically through my wallet, unsure whether the banknote I eventually thrust at the cashier would be enough to cover my tab or too small by an order of magnitude. I was so overwhelmed by arithmetic that my practice of vigilant change husbandry lapsed into chaos: by the end of the trip, my coin purse was literally bursting at the seams with Hungarian shrapnel of every denomination. The dudes on the bills gazed 'pon my fumbles with frosty disapproval.

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Comments: Read 144 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	comment solicitation (written in haste!)
Time:	9:02 am.

Vienna was not really part of the plan, but I ended up here on a layover, awaiting a train to Budapest tomorrow morning. Arrived after midnight and just got back from a long walk around: maybe my blood is just boiling from all the sugar I've eaten (literally had naught else today but 1.33 apples and a bu-uu-nch of candy), maybe it's the random luck of this nice hotel in a cool 'hood with its affable desk clerk Heinz, maybe it's just the vestiges of my explosive childhood crush on Tom Hulce in Amadeus, but Austria is giving me a really good feeling and I'm sorry that I'm not going to get to lamp here longer. So commenters, does anybody live here? Anybody have a good Vienna story to tell me? Anybody got Tom-Hulce-in-Amadeus' number?

Any Budapest tips/tricks/dares also warmly welcomed.

Unrelated decoration: Swiss banknote.

Comments: Read 152 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	mein Lieblingsgemüse
Time:	4:20 pm.

Hey dudes. As of today, I'm on Euro vacation: warm greetings from the Continent.

I had a li'l layover this afternoon in the World's Second-Worst Airport (London Heathrow), just long enough to flip through a copy of The Independent looking for signs of

rhodri, snicker up and down the aisles of the airport convenience store, and shake the ashes out of my pant legs (Murkin panties combusting as they do in the presence of British accents. Cad fancy!).

My countrymen, did y'all know that they basically speak Murkin in the mirrorworld, skewed about fifteen degrees more hilarious? Do they do it just to tickle me pink, or do others find these product names amusing too? To get the full effect, you must imagine a Yank saying the name, chewing up his /r/s like hunks of Oberto. "You guys gotny mora those Revels? C'n I've a Starbar?" It's not natural. British Brunch Bar and NutriGrain Elevenses Raisin Bake are not meant to share a 7-11 shelf with Funyuns and Flamin' Hot Asteroids.

For some reason, the process doesn't produce the same effect in reverse: the thought of a British accent murmuring "Pop Tarts, Cooler Ranch Doritos, Cinnamon Toast Crunch" just makes my nips tingle.

So. I'm in Düsseldorf now, plotting a course for Points Beyond. Don't ask where: dunno yet. Meanwhile, light a candle for me tonight as you pray to the Patron Saint of Free Wifi, that I may continue to blog 'em as I see 'em. Amen.

Comments: Read 211 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	stop having a boring tuna
Time:	7:34 pm.

I went impulse shopping in the travel agency and came out with a weekend trip to the Republic of China. Greetings from Taipei! Look at all those Japanese cars driving on the right-hand side of the road: it could almost be South Carolina. I haven't felt this at home since I went to the American consulate to get blank pages put in my passport. My passport at this point is a grubby and mutilated libretto indeed; this latest addition was the fourth set of supplementary visa pages to be crammed into it. The newest pages aren't plain blue like the older ones, they're festooned with all manner of inspirational quotations from Honest Abe and lurid unitedwestand images of bald eagles 'n' fruited plains and shit. They're so over-embellished that they don't even look blank; in fact, the Taiwanese passport control officer just flipped right past them and sploshed my Taiwan visa right on top of an old faded (cherished!) one from Milan. Annoying.

Anyway, I'm headed back outside now, but not before I seize this opportunity to increase your guava Slurpee awareness. The Slurpee machine right next to this one was dispensing lemon-lime out of one nozzle and lychee out of the other. I got a 12-oz guava/lychee: delect! O summertime.

World's best Slurpee flavor: Diet Coke, never spotted outside of West Hollywood. World's worst: "Slurpuccino," mercifully discontinued recently in Hong Kong, but its Folgery ghost still adulterates the flavor of its Orange Creme successor at my local 7-11.

I think this was a pocket mirror. Not positive. Does it really matter? Shagbark!

Comments: Read 86 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	clockin a grippe
Time:	2:29 am.

I possess a finite amount of good taste, and I choose to apply it to books, music, snacks, and congee flavors. Crabmeat and roe congee:

Sweet-potato flavored Kit Kat:

I just don't have enough available connoisseuseship in my brain to attempt to be a book snob, snack snob, juk snob AND flick snob. I rarely watch movies, and when I do, I'm alone, usually in a state of psychic desperation. I don't want to watch people shooting guns; I don't like boring shit; I can't stand to be left befuddled by David Lynchian whatthefuckery. I enjoy cheerleading- and gymnastics-centric themes and low-IQ Jennifer Aniston vehicles. So I was watching a shanzhai DVD of He's Just Not That Into You the other day. What're you going to do about it, lose all respect for me?

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Comments: Read 191 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	fai di
Time:	11:59 am.

I can hear my next door neighbors perfectly. They fight a lot but they like to get busy! They're doing it right now. The girl groaned, in Canto, "fai di!" ("hurry up!"). I was like, ooh, harsh, but then the stereo started playing a Cantopop song with the refrain "fai di, fai di-i-i-i, fai di." Please, please let me run into them in the elevator so I can hum it. Even though the dude leaves his foot stink powder-dusted slippers in the hallway, then puts them on and leaves the building, creating a breadcrumb trail of dusty white nuggets, I'd still like to open up talks about a possible glory hole.

So much better to be sharing a wall with them instead of TV-blasting Unknown and Bitch Who Sticks Her Head Out and Stares Every Time She Hears the Hallway Door Open.

Comments: Read 160 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	you can't beat solidarity
Time:	12:03 am.

Mandarin pop enthusiasts, I have a favor to ask of you: does anyone recognize the first song in this video (it starts at about :20)? Can you hook up the title and artist, or an mp3? Sorry to make you click through, but this is coming from the Chinese Youtube and I can't find the embed code. [Video via ChinaSMACK] EDIT: I got it! Thank you, ic70492.

Dance performance video.

I first heard that song in Shanghai, in the bathroom of a KFC where I was pit stoppin'. By the time I realized what a monster jam it was, it was already over, and I scrambled up to the counter calling my agent to explain to her that I wanted her to explain to the cashier that I wanted to know the name of the song or see the CD they were playing in the store. My heart was already sinking, knowing it wasn't going to work (I know through firsthand experience that, when you can't see the stereo, "Please write down the name of the song that was playing before this one" is almost but not quite impossible to communicate via charades). It didn't work, of course: the guy behind the counter told Juju who told me that he hadn't heard the song and there wasn't a CD player (it was Muzak, I guess). I left, frustrated. But then I heard the song again in this video and now I have a chance to find it and put it in my iPod and rock to it until my heart stops.

And while I'm using my Livejournal to get stuff that I want, gimme revenge on Go Sushi in Causeway Bay, home of the most abominable sushi I've had outside of Boise, ID. I will not apologize for ordering a melted cheese-topped shrimp tempura roll; I have no patience for sushi purists. Wrap some seaweed around some pork floss and birthday cake, sprinkle salmon eggs and glitter on top: you have made legitimate maki. A "cheese-topped shrimp tempura roll" sounds good; this partially-combusted slice of wanksta petroleum loaf was just a carcinogen. It tasted like ashes. And that roe corona you see in the top right corner was a California roll which was dry and did not cohere and fucking blew: Go Sushi, we got BEEF.

I approached this Free Giftwallah on two separate occasions to get the Free Gift I deserve and didn't understand why she wouldn't fork over the Gift (a juice box or a chocolate Hanukkah gelt) or even make eye contact with me. I finally figured it out tonight when I saw other people doing it right: you only get the Gift after you've stepped onto the (up only) escalator. At the summit, surprise surprise, you're trapped in a labyrinth of a mall and must shop your way back to ground level.

Comments: Read 133 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	i wasn't lookin for a mountain
Time:	12:02 am.

Are you guys more into plastrons or carapaces?

I would like to shake hands with the bitch who could wear these impractical shoes for more than an hour without the universe somehow ruining them. Puddles of quicksand and plagues of feral cats would appear in her path; her pustulent bunions would burst. These were designer samples and I was allowed to ruin them; all the pressure was off. Still, the moment I tied those little tassels, I found myself rummaging around the studio looking for wasabi peas I could wash down with some Popov. Don't those feathers seem to say, "Quick! Find a way to puke on us!"?

Out of four versions of this picture, this was the least annoying facial expression. Still annoying. Nice weave though.

This shanzhai masterpiece (on a handbag in the HK subway) reminded me of an ancient lady I saw in Shanghai carrying a huge purse with bedazzled letters that said, "THE STOOGES THE CRAMPS NEW YORK DOLLS." Fuck it, I didn't turn away or even try to stop smirking as the old lady's daughter saw me, looked down at the bag and then back up at me. I smirked off into the sunset savoring the fact that they now knew that something risible was written on the bag, but would probably never find out what.

COMPULSIVE EDIT: I'm adding one more ridic shoe pic to try and cleanse the system. You want to read LJ entries about something besides designer shoes and makeup, you say? Well, you have to wait until something good happens to me besides "I spent the day comfortably, in makeup and designer shoes." I'm not exactly at a fucking zenith of intellectual stimulation right now. I've been in HK so long that the thrillz ain't growin on treez like they used to.

Comments: Read 150 or Add Your Own.

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