So I just realized yesterday that expressions like “I’m going to beat you to death,” “just go and die,” and “why won’t you just die?” are apparently normal everyday things to say to your kids in Chinese. I guess I never realized this because I just didn’t grow up around an actual Chinese community of any sort, and I figured these were just angry things my dad said to me all the time and he was actually threatening to kill me and he actually wanted me to go and die. I also didn’t realize that these were considered vulgarities in Chinese — up until yesterday I honestly believed I didn’t know any vulgarities in Chinese because I don’t know any words corresponding to the vulgarities I am familiar with in English. My mom never swears, and has always told me that she came from the kind of family that didn’t say things like that.

I came across a couple of rap songs in Shanghainese on Youtube last night, which was apparently completely disgusting and vulgar. And I understood pretty much every word of them, because it was the sort of thing my dad has been saying to me all my life. I couldn’t believe it. And I guess I also realized that I probably found my life at home so unlivable because I took all of it literally and personally, and I didn’t understand it from any cultural background like my parents do. It’s like… if someone said, “F* you” to me in English or German, I would dismiss it as just some random angry expletive, but as I have been understanding Chinese until now, I would have taken it literally. I guess these things don’t mean anything to people like my dad and uncle, who just throw it around pretty unconsciously.
I really wish I’d understood that growing up, and maybe then it wouldn’t have been so scary and painful. And even though I now do know how theoretically I’m supposed to disregard those sayings… I really don’t know if I can actually condition myself to believe that it doesn’t mean anything. I mean… is it really possible to tell someone to go die without even thinking about it a little? It is really possible for a human being to say things like that without even believing it a little, that they wish someone to die?
I wish Chinese people would stop saying such horrible things. They’re really awful, and I don’t think they’re of any constructive purpose — why are they teaching them to students of Chinese? If you’re learning Chinese right now, I suppose it’s good to understand that it doesn’t mean anything — but isn’t it better to just stop saying it?

I appreciate her work. Really I do. In fact, she’s one of the reasons I don’t particularly want an apartment with a private bathroom next year. (Well, not her specifically, but the janitorial staff in general.) They do a good job in general, but the one on my hall has some serious passive-aggression going on. Maybe she feels unappreciated. I’m probably the only person (except perhaps my roommates) near me who actually say hi, etc. But she will not stop leaving our trash cans in the doorway.

If my room were not on the end of the hallway, ie if there were some way I could actually get to the door without dragging the trash bins out of the doorway, maybe I wouldn’t mind so much. But generally I don’t come to my room empty-handed — I’m probably carrying a bag and maybe a cup of tea or something, and I see these two stacks of bins outside my door. I would kick them out of the way, but where can I kick them?

We generally put trash out against the walls, so that there is actual walking space. When the bins are flush against the walls, no one’s path is obstructed. People come in and go out the stairwell fine. Nobody is so wide that they need more than a yard-wide hallway to walk. Why can the bins not be put back where we put them? Is it passive prodding so that we will take our bins back in? Is it so we know which bins are ours? Furthermore, since the university is so concerned that we would not find our doors in an emergency if we put things (posters, post-its, signs, etc) on our doors, what exactly would they think of trashcans actually obstructing the doorway? After all, if these trashcans were inside our quad, obstructing a doorway, we would surely be fined, but it’s okay outside?

I’m really sorely tempted to go out right before she makes her rounds every day and move all the hallway trashcans to the bathrooms’ doorways. Just to let her know what I think of it.

My suite has been coffee-scented since yesterday, and I notice it only when I first come back to it. Why is it that I don’t notice the absence of coffee when I leave?

Yes. The answer is yes, as long as I don’t dislike you. No, I probably won’t begin to dislike you after you ask your really personal question.

I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d address it. I realize this is a preface to a question that you think might possibly offend me, so by first asking this question, I will go easy on you if it actually turns out to offend me. Here’s the news: It makes no difference. I am not easily offended, and in fact I’m probably dying to tell you whatever it is you want to know if I only had a chance. Just stop asking, “Can I ask you a really personal question?” first.

Moreover, what am I supposed to answer to that, anyway? “No, you may not ask me a really personal question?” I would never get to hear the question and I wouldn’t even know if it were personal. So. Ask away.

…mostly because my other blog has. Yes, that other blog, the one nobody I know in real life knows about. But having an alternate life is über lame. (By the way, I have the right to say über, since I know some German. Über is über strange-sounding from most people, especially when you pronounce it so that it rhymes with goober.)

Originally the other Marli blog was founded because, as I explained there (not in these exact words), there are things that (1) I’m not prepared to have all over the Facebook newsfeeds and (2) wouldn’t make sense to most of my friends anyway. But instead of splitting into two people/blogs, I probably should just keep everything together and keep those two points in mind when I blog. And besides, funny thing is that with a bit of generalization, most things make sense to everyone.

So, keeping things appropriately vague:

1 - I was on campus over Thanksgiving break — this is sort of expected, since I’m from Los Angeles and it would take some two days of travel just to go home and come back, and it would amount to basically being at home for two days, one of which is Shabbat, which my parents kind of resent and is consequently kind of tough on me at home. Hey but at least I could have gotten some shopping done, which I didn’t get to do this weekend, but think of all the things I can do with the airfare I saved!

2 - I realized sometime in high school that many aspects of peoples’ personalities are entirely fabricated by that person. Usually they are caricatures of the person’s actual personality; sometimes they reflect the person’s more ideal vision of themselves. Just like everyone else, I have such a persona, and there’s no use being cynical about its existence because it’s kind of a fact of life. Besides, nobody keeps it up perfectly; we all let people see through occasionally.

3 - I’ve often wondered, if I had gone home for Thanksgiving, or if I went home for winter break, how would my friends of 2+ years perceive me? How different or the same would I be? I wrote an essay touching on the matter in German a couple of weeks ago — I hope that I’m different enough that most of my friends would notice, and I hope that those I think are my closest friends would see that I’m not so different after all.

4 - People really like to judge other people by their appearances. I admit to having spent a good half hour this afternoon laughing at the photos that angsty teens/tweenies posted on a “post a picture and tell about your crush” site, because it’s 95% girls who are doing it, and most of the boys posted are of various grungy subcultures — so lots of silly emo kids with guitars and bleached/dyed hair and crazy product and facial piercings etc. So yeah, I feel a little bad about it, but I don’t know these people, and hey at least I’m not one of those unfortunate boys who have no idea their photos are on this site along with the obsessive ramblings of their merits.

So I showed a picture of someone I know to a friend of mine and asked, “If I show you a photo, can you tell me how religious you think this guy is?” And he said, “He seems like a snag; sorry, it’s a derogatory term.” (By the way, it took me a couple of minutes to figure out that snag = misnaged.) But during this conversation it occurred to me (again) that while it is to some extent true that what a person wears is not always just a reflection of their inner self or some ridiculous such sop. It’s also to an extent a uniform, because the wearer knows (or thinks he knows) exactly how other people judge others and then sends the appropriate signals so that people will judge him the way he wants them to do so.

5 - I am a hypocrite. Saying one thing and doing another is all too easy — this ties into the other themes — because what I say isn’t always what I really think. Or, correction, what I say is at least 70% of what I think, because the other 30% consists of counter-arguments/counter-rationalizations, etc, and I happen to think it is really quite impolite to drag people into my internal debates, which I haven’t worked out yet. So I may come across as being 100% confident of what I’m saying when I’m not quite so. This also means (I really hope I’m right about this) that people aren’t actually as terrible/stupid/hypocritical as we may think they are.

6 - When I say I don’t judge people, that’s about 80% true. Sort of. I just don’t have the time to think about all these people enough to stick them in boxes. The ones I do end up thinking about, I like enough that I don’t want to put them in boxes. So I will take note of individual traits, but to piece them into a coherent picture of a person is truly too much to ask of me.