valerie profile picture

valerie

Oh inverterd world!

About Me

Huge capacity for mischief. Easily entertained. Animal care-taker. Insomniac.

My Interests

Aikido, cycling, travel, music (especially of the nerd rock, quirky, indie, self-deprecating variety), dogs and dog parks, feline friends, hot boys, honu, secret space stations.

I'd like to meet:

Always up for meeting anyone who secretly crushes on Rivers Cuomo partially because he is so f--ked up in his orientalism, overweight dogs who don't let their excess weight hold them back, precocious kids with overactive imaginations who don't judge my broken Mandarin.

Music:

Weezer, Jack Johnson, The Strokes, Massive Attack, Elefant, Nada Surf, Lizzie West, The Shins, Cat Power, Tegan and Sara, Calexico, Felix da Housecat, Spankrock, Portishead, Alvaro Zelaya, Oxford American, Radiohead, Plot Against Rachel, Louis Armstrong, The Kooks, Calexico, Peter, Bjorn and John

Movies:

Saving Face, Cars, Lie With Me, The Royal Tenanbaums, High Fidelity, Amelie, Lilo and Stitch

Books:

A Feather on the Breath of GOd, The Great Gatsby, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, Native Speaker, Yellow, The Namesake, The Last of Her Kind, For Rouenna, Paper Bullets,Norwegian Wood, Spudnik Sweetheart, Where the Body Meets Memory: an Odyssey of Race, Sexuality & Identity, and yes, can you believe it, Harry Potter books 1&2

Heroes:

inventors of secret space stations, care-takers of bears and little animals, anyone who has his or her own reading room, my coast to coast roommate and playmate

My Blog

Drowning

It is definitely not hard to move in this body, this frame that has been shaped by countless hours on the mat, in the gym, on the bike. The physical tasks are often effortless and in the twilight of ...
Posted by valerie on Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:48:00 PST

Dizzy

Just when life has stopped moving at the speed of light and you've started to breathe normally for a second, things pick right back up again. Another decision, another life change, already? I can ha...
Posted by valerie on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:49:00 PST

Drive

Is it too much to want more than one major thing in this lifetime? We always hear about the selfishness of women who want both motherhood and a successful career, as if working full time and taking c...
Posted by valerie on Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:00:00 PST

Categories - for simplicity and easy reading

Brown Tabby:When my cat crawls into my lap, I hold her as close as possible and listen to her pur. In return for pets, she will rub her face on me and look into my eyes. She is over five years old n...
Posted by valerie on Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:08:00 PST

Wisdom or Telling it Like it is or Might Be

Boys:If there is a hot girl, not conventionally pretty but quirky with a sexy vibe and Williamsburg haircut, your boyfriend (assuming he is not too conventional himself, but even if he is) will likely...
Posted by valerie on Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:46:00 PST

Impervious

Overly optimistic and somewhat idealistic, I ran from convention, afraid it would catch up to me if I didn't actively fight it. But then something happened, cliche as it sounds, I think I grew up. W...
Posted by valerie on Wed, 04 Jul 2007 04:06:00 PST

Un-Ambivalent

It was never ambivalence that stopped me but more likely the feeling that the cause was so overwhelming that any contribution on my part wouldn't matter. This still seems to be the case. Yet now, th...
Posted by valerie on Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:49:00 PST

Stripped Down to Nothing

There is a hole whose shape and size continues to fluctuate depending on my mood. This is the hole where disappointment and anguish reside. Sometimes they retreat to the background of my consciousne...
Posted by valerie on Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:21:00 PST

Loves of My So-Called Life

What a week! In the last seven days I saw Haruki Murakami (my literary hero) and heard him read from one of his short stories, went to my first Aikido seminar (extremely fun), drank with at bunch of ...
Posted by valerie on Thu, 03 May 2007 02:33:00 PST

Orientalist Dream Come True, Embrace the Fetish, Return the Gaze!

Yesterday in class, the discussion finally featured Asian American Studies. It's still strange to me to be in seminar talking about AAS issues in "mixed company." At SFSU, it seemed so safe. Yeah, ...
Posted by valerie on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:25:00 PST