Last night, I almost passed out in Copley station.

I don’t have that gene that correctly encodes the enzyme that converts acetaldehyde into acetic acid. In other words, when I drink, I don’t metabolize alcohol all the way. Acetaldehydes, toxic as they are, accumulate in my bloodstream, as opposed to turning into the relatively benign acetic acid. This translates into me being extaordinarily bad at “holding down” my alcohol. After about a half-drink, my pulse races, I feel lightheaded (which turns out to be a distinct symptom from actual inebriation), and my ears, followed by my face and eventually my entire body, begin to get hot and flushed. However I have historically been able to hold down one drink, no problem. One drink was my limit, I was aware, so I never felt the need to push beyond it.

Last night, I had a highball glass-sized serving of a mojito, and not even all of it. It was about three-fourths of it. Turns out my limit can be a lot lower than I thought it was.

After leaving POPS, a restaurant at the South End, I found it increasingly difficult to walk. Yang found this amusing, as did I at the time. We got to Copley Station and waited for the train. I found myself getting progressively sleepier until I had to lean on Yang to stay standing. Then, all of a sudden, the most extraordinary feeling came over me: first I lost my hearing. It was perplexing because one minute I was in a loud station with the distant shrieking of train cars grinding against their tracks. The next it was silent and muffled. Then, I lost my vision almost entirely; I remember being aware of where things where, but couldn’t actually “see” anything. Then I began to get very lightheaded. And then I was struggling to breathe. At this point I was very aware that if I passed out, this could potentially be very very bad. I did not want to end up at the BMC because I had 3/4 of a mojito. So, in a cold sweat, I tried my hardest to repeatedly force air through my lungs. I had no idea what I looked like to outsiders or how successful it was; it didn’t feel very successful at all, as it seemed that my lungs forgot how to reinflate themselves. Yang maneuvered me to the bench and I sat down, kept trying to breathe. I was freaked out beyond belief. I don’t know how much longer this went on for, but eventually the feeling subsided. I ended up afterwards with a pounding headache and a wrench in my abdomen.

Remarkably, I did not throw up when we got home, and a few hours later I was fine. But I do remember waking up at 4 a.m., completely vexed by the possibility that I might experience the threat of asphyxiation again. It took me a bit to get back to sleep.

Call it what you will—extreme Asian blush, alcohol poisoning, overdosing—it was not a good experience. I now know better than to try and finish one drink. However, given that I’ve had a whole day of lucidity (no hangover) to ponder this, I’m both saddened and frustrated by this. Especially as Yang finds it entertaining to flaunt his Asian but nevertheless functional genetic makeup every time we encounter alcohol together. Through no fault of my own, I cannot simply savor a good tipple like any self-respecting serious foodie. On winetasting tours, I am the first to resign myself to waiting in the car. At dinners out, I am the first to lose my ability to engage in meaningful conversation or attentive tasting of the food. There is a world of flavors, textures, and scents from which I must quarantine myself. The injustice of it all.

I should perhaps stop whining (hah) about this. At least I am able to have some cheese with that. (Thank you, Yang.) On a more upbeat note, I have yet to find myself put in grave physical danger by a cheese. Yesterday, while wandering through the South End, we happened upon a little Formaggio, where I picked up a jar of fig jam and some of the most unbelievably creamy comté ever. Which I shall have tomorrow. Without wine.

Okay, so the title made my day sound a lot more gleefully debauched than it really was. No, I didn’t go on a spree with a wealthy benefactor’s credit line, nor did I actually even buy that many things today. (If you care, I bought four items – a Calphalon wok, a fancy hat, a pair of gloves, and a $50 gift cert to GameStop – can you guess what time of year it is? Oh don’t worry, everyone has already opened their gifts, except for the 2 people who don’t read this blog.) But in any case, today was quite an adventure, one that started at the Prudential Center, took us to one nifty locally-owned hat shop in JP, and eventually ended up here. It gave me a chance to think over some things that I don’t usually think over.

Basically, I learned that my almost-lifelong eschewal of fashionable wearables seems to have met its demise. Which may seem like a terrible thing, if you are of a more practical mind. Or it may rather seem a good thing, if you are more of a staunch cultural enthusiast. Either way, this does not actually mean that you will see the likes of humble little me striding about the Boulevards in knee-high lambskin boots with a Murakami-Vuitton handbag tucked at my side. Far from it. Nope, not even a superlong skinny scarf (too cold right now). I have merely decided that fashion and all of the hubbub surrounding it make both a fascinating study and a worthwhile use of my time and money after all.

For the staunch cultural enthusiasts reading this, you may be wondering, “Dear God, what did fashion ever do to be deserving of an almost-lifelong eschewal?” The answer, my friend, is that fashion razed my crops, ate my cows, and carried off my wife and daughters. The real answer is that when you are(were) young and esconced in the limited world that is a mildly wealthy suburbian public school, fashion is fed to you in all of three ways: 1) mainstream fashion magazines, 2) mainstream television, and 3) the “popular girls” clique. These things, added together, hardly comprise a flattering impression of what fashion is or does to people. Of course, it was possible to go beyond the one-dimensionally glitzy surface if one had the interest for it, and in the process discover much more interesting things, but if the initial impression was repelling, one could hardly blame impressionable young me for taking several steps back before turning and dashing the other way.

So basically in high school, there was no possible way that I could have found out about, much less take an interest in, spiffy things like lopsided handknit scarves, plaid fedoras, fingerless gloves, hand-screened shirts by local artists, super-moral designer labels, biodegradable wallets, hand-forged jewelry, and how all these things relate to the grand scheme of society and how its fantastically complex gears turn.

(Aside: (Boy do I have a lot of these. (Ooh, so meta! (It’s because my brain works funny (not funny ha-ha funny, more like funny tee-hee (Apologies, no more of this tomfoolery))))) I realize that pretty much all the things I just listed off can be thrown into the categorization bucket known as “trendy hipsterism.” Which I am fine with — I realize that no matter what aspects of fashion we are dealing with, there will always be stylistic judgements at hand, meant to both organize and exclude. But in this case, I don’t think the things I have just mentioned should be taken as an exhaustive list of all things fashionable things I currently find enthralling. The list was meant to introduce, not exemplify. I actually entertain an as-yet undisclosed fervor for those LV-Murakami handbags. Oh, nevermind, I just disclosed it; darn. Anyway, back to your regularly schedule topic)

I’m fairly certain that living in the city, going to college to get a joint BA and BFA, studying to become a designer, and meeting Jessica all contributed heavily to this change. It was probably inevitable anyway if I was to become any sort of designer-slash-artist to be reckoned with. So am I happy with this change? All I can say is, I am happy that I have found another source of inspiration and proof of the restlessness of human creativity.

And for the ascetics out there, who would deny that fashion is anything more than a silly waste of effort and cash, I would also say that your view is equally valid. No one is really right on this matter. But I would also say, I am no longer one of you, and that’s kind of just the way things are.

By the way, that site I mentioned up there, MADE-BY.org, is really informative, like an interactive issue of Good. It makes a couple good points:

“Marketing budgets are taken into account in the price of the end product. Consumers therefore personally finance advertisements that encourage them to purchase the relevant goods.”

“Organic cotton is dearer than ordinary cotton. What does that mean for the selling price of a T-shirt? Less than you think. The cotton costs of a garment amount to about five percent. Organic cotton costs roughly twenty to thirty percent more than ordinary cotton. This means that the consumer ultimately pays one to two percent more.”

Signing off nao!

I love weekends like this, where you just kind of go “Hey you wanna drive up to New Hampshire and ride an antique cog train up Mt. Washington?” and then you kidnap the Honda Civic from Yang’s parents and go do it. Except then you don’t ride the antique cog train once you get there because of some timekeeping mishap, but it’s okay. Because there was a lovely walk in the Flume Gorge in the morning and many takings of pictures and delicious mouthfuls of cold mountain air, and loud music in the car both ways. Also, I came very close to finishing an extremely long, extremely skinny, extremely bright green lacey knit scarf.

Anyway, as a result of our unfulfilled mission, we are going again next week. Yes we are. Part of it has to do with the fact that they refuse to give us a refund, but part of it is reveling in the sheer fact that we *can.* I have this distinct feeling that, if we were any other age, and living with any other people, this would have been a “No way, forget it, it’s not worth the effort/time/gas.” But as it were, we are young, unriddled with responsibility (except for grad school applications… ah hah hah hah…), and also slightly giddy with the possibility that we’d get to do something Steven Fry did and thoroughly enjoyed. I’m speaking on Jess’ behalf of course.

So this was basically an awesome Sunday. On days like this, I would just like all of the internets to know just how cool my life is right now, and how possibly it would never be this cool again. So even though we have mice romping through our apartment’s snack supply (a situation hopefully soon remedied with sonic pest repellers), and weird neighbors (some of them birds), and tons of late nights/hard work looming… I’m thankful for this year. So very.

Pictures here.

Yesterday was a dizzy, happy, excited, sweaty day. In 75-degree sun a group from Tufts led by my former professor David Guss cavorted down Mass Ave, chanting and singing an anti-Palin funga tune. We were part of the HONKfest Parade, and this group of ours had polar bears, honeybees, songbirds, an injured moose, lynxes, a melange of other animals, a fantastic lipstick missile float with a plush pig strapped to it, and Prof. Sarah Pinto dressed up as a very congenial Sarah Palin.

I was one of the polar bears, and, in a set of XL white sweats, furry paw mittens, and a polar bear ears cap, I really did want me some cold and frost. (We were also carrying hockey sticks.)

Sandwiched between 2 drum-pounding, horn-blaring bands, both of which featured rather scantily clad dancers in fishnets galore (on that day, we were jealous), we had good beats to dance to, and people clapped and chuckled when they saw our floats/costumes. There was much clapping and support when we sang our funga tune exhorting people to save the ice caps, and little kids found our costumes delightful. (It’s good to be in Massachusetts.)

We ended at the Harvard Square Oktoberfest, where each group passed in front of a stage and was announced. Then the group de-costumed, disbanded, and I met up with a few friends to wander the ‘fest stalls. (Nothing too unusual to report — a lot of Boston festivals are actually pretty similar when you get there — but I do always enjoy dizzying amounts of people, cute dogs, and a festival atmosphere.)

All in all it was a good day. I got home exhausted and promptly took a 2-hour nap, waking up in time to marathon through 15 more episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura (hey, it’s good) with Yang.

This was the first time I’d ever been in a parade, rather than just an amused spectator, and it was a great experience. I was apprehensive at first. After all our theme was overtly political and I as much as anyone know about how coldly the public can view activist rallies, demonstrations, and picketing. We certainly had the look of an activist group — we had our fair share of picket signs. But, as it turns out, the costumes and the dancing and the infectious beat won over a lot of our audience. And that, I realize now through experience, is what the philosophy Honk is all about.

We had a lot of fun, and though some of the polar bears looked downright miserable in the sun after a half-hour, we saw a lot of faces light up when we went on by. Sure there were also a lot of blank expressions but I don’t expect 100% success; there will always be people who choose to be impervious to festival magic. But it’s a very rewarding feeling to see people waving back and clapping in response to our message. I think my cheeks hurt from smiling for 2 hours straight, I needed a shower badly, and my feet were aching like none other, but oh, it was worth it.

Go HONK!

More pictures can be found here.

Before I forget this forever, I have to write down what happened last week. We caught a mouse.

Actually, we’ve caught mice before. One time, I was sleeping and Yang woke me. I opened my eyes to find him standing at the foot of my bed, my plastic wastebasket in his hands. Apparently the mouse had gone scoping for food in my trashcan, but this time there was no plastic liner bag for it to climb out on, so it got stuck and frantically scrambled about until the scrabblings woke Yang. Yang is a remarkably light sleeper.

Anyway that time we let the mouse go quite easily. Brought the wastebasket downstairs and outside at 3 a.m. in our pajamas and poured the poor traumatized little guy out on the sidewalk and away he zoomed.

There was this other time when we didn’t catch the mouse, so much as discovered its rotting corpse behind some shelves in the kitchen. Who knows how long it had been there. Kevin’s snap traps apparently do work.

Anyway, this time was different — the mouse was alive when I found it, like the trash can episode, but it was caught in a <i>glue trap</i>.

If you don’t know what a glue trap is, this is what they are: nasty angry tenacious little buggers designed to slowly torture a mouse to death via chemical burns, thirst, and starvation. If the mouse is lucky it will inadvertantly eat some of the glue and it will die rather quickly of poison. Most mice, however, simply get stuck and in the process of trying to wrangle free end up ripping off skin, hair; breaking their limbs; etc. Sometimes they get stuck by the face and suffocate. So pretty much glue traps suck and I don’t even know why didn’t throw them away when Kevin left. Laziness, I guess. Never again will I be lazy.

…Because as a result of the laziness, I spent 15 minutes lubricating the stuck mouse with canola oil on a Q-tip, in an attempt to free it. Eventually I got it out of the glue, but by then it already looked half dead. It was trying to run away but a leg was twisted the wrong way. It was pretty horrible to watch. I grabbed it and put it in the grass to hide it better but then left it on its own.

What is true about mice is true about people in war: in that when you don’t see them, when they are abstractions, it is easy to despise them and want to eradicate them. Maybe that’s why we left the traps out without really thinking. We really did want rid of the mice. But after you spend a few painful minutes prying a series of tiny mouse toes out of some nasty viscous glue crap, it’s hard to want to kill them. In fact you feel like a jerk just for thinking that you wanted them dead.

But what can you do? Mice are mice and I don’t want them trotting with their little germy feet all over my kitchen. I’ve seen Ratatouille but it can’t be taken quite so literally. We should get some of those humane mouse traps. Especially now that winter is approaching and mice are going to be seeking the warmth of human apartments soon.

Living in the city is different all right.