Perpetual motion

I seriously need some "me days" soon. I've been doing stuff non-stop since I got to Beijing. While I like every single thing I've done so far (with exception to breaking off the key in my door and having to sit outside my apartment for a few hours), I can still tell that pretty darn soon I'm going to crash. And I'll wish I had done my laundry first.

Today we went to the Bookworm again, which is where Bob Marcacci (The Carden program... director? I think?) hosts his weekly open mic poetry reading. While the Art Institute of Atlanta has undoubtedly made me very cynical to most all things art related and has made me think that most "artists" today are so paradoxically narrow-minded when it comes to what they classify as "art", I'd have to say that this group seems pretty darn genuine. There are lots of people from many different parts of the world who come there and read poems and such in their own language. Its really neat actually. It won't stop me from making fun of art and artists (especially the narrow-minded, pretentious kind), but at least now I'll make somewhat of an effort not to generalize my mockery to the entire community. Only that aspect which demands specific attention.

I got home tonight, trying to think of a poem I might be able to write about next week's theme: Color. What I thought might happen, happened: I came home, wrote about 3 sentences, became physically ill at how trite and cliched my effort was, quickly deleted it, played video games, watched Carnivale, and ate some M&Ms. Now I'm writing in my e-chronicle about how lame a writer I am. Oh, by the way, thanks for reading.

Tomorrow will be another fun-filled day. More bestowing my awesome command of the Southern-American-English language to today's Chinese youth (to which today I said allowed in class, "Holy crap" when some of the students started telling me their birthday was after September 11th - them's is some young uns!), and then probably preparing my bad self for a weekend of overnight watch duty on the Great Wall. So don't try anything funny, Mongolians.

Once again, I'll leave you with one, no... two hot new pictures fresh from the Canon (the first one is at the top!). Its from this fancy place called the "Old Summer Palace", where the emporer used to go after a arduous week of copulation with his 100 wives. They had it rough in those days.