Disqus - Latest Comments for vmatsui

Re: the minstrel

Victoria — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:10:14 -0000

everything that rises must converge, right? so good.

Re: i will not compulsively check gmail, blackboard or any other site that has the potential to disrupt the sense of peace, though transitory, that has set upon me.

Victoria — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:45:53 -0000

okay i totally love this sentiment but had to say...you compulsively check blackboard?? NERD
yay i'm seeing you tomorrow

Re: should be reading catcher in the rye.

Victoria — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:40:16 -0000

so i wrote out a really, really long reply to your comment last night but then it got deleted when i signed in. it was too depressing to re-write so i just gave up. but one point i wanted to make was that i think you're looking at this from your pov with your personal experience in mind, and i'm looking at it from mine. in my experience, i narrowly avoided being an asshole for my whole life. i was this kind of person: "feminism is just women complaining about men! blah blah blah get over it" and "i don't want to talk about race because it makes me uncomfortable." and i was teh kind of person who all throughout highschool looked at the same four websites. do you know what i'm saying? i did not at all expose myself to other ways of thinking about or seeing things. and it took a sociology class to do that to me. a class that i only took because it was the only thing that fit in my schedule.

i think that you're one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and engaged people i know. i really do think so. and i think if everyone had that natural drive to seek out different opinions, thoughts, and to spend time really thinking about social issues critically and examining their own biases, then we'd be in great shape. but some people, like myself, and like other people i know, need to LEARN how to live that way. because it is so damn easy to go through life not thinking about things critically, epsecially when you are surrounded by people who are exactly like you and have the same opinions as you, and you are never FORCED to defend or challenge or change how you think. and i think it's really a huge failure on the part of the college if students graduate without having learned that. then what is even the point of school, you know? if it's just going to perpetuate this cycle of privileged people thinking only about themselves, then what is the point?

Re: grounds for play

Victoria — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:27:38 -0000

so cool!

Re: Signifying Nothing - LOOK HOW CRACKED AND GROSS MY TATTOO IS

Victoria — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:28:02 -0000

i read your comments right before i went to a scary, scary movie (the orphan) but they kept me smiling right on through! i kept thinking, why am i in a good mood? oh right.
I KNOW i need to get my circle tattoo. what happened was, i had booked this amazing artist who was way too expensive and i booked it 2 months ahead of time so when the time came i was like...i want something that not just anyone can do well. in retrospect...a very rash decision. also it's on my shoulder blade and my parents don't know and i am having a hard time hiding it. anyway. enough of that boring story. CIRCLE TATTOO WILL HAPPEN. hopefully by the end of the summer if i can afford it. are you still getting yours on your wrist? and will yours be a perfectly round circle? AND will it be a color?

you've gotten me all re-psyched to send your letter. i will mail it on thursday. I WILL. because that is my day off and i will do it so that i can get one back from you and i'm SO EXCITED about this tape!!
i miss you very much, man i wish we lived closer together.

love victoria

Re: Signifying Nothing - LOOK HOW CRACKED AND GROSS MY TATTOO IS

Victoria — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:37:12 -0000

yaay i'm glad you like it! don't worry, i'm following them...past the bacitracin stage, on to feeling constantly itchy and putting on lotion every chance i get

Re: to read

Victoria — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:36:25 -0000

sorry this response took me a few days! sometimes i am unreliable. but now i'm back.

you're totally right about pynchon, and others, being a literary rite of passage. like how someday i will read war and peace, and someday i will finally finish infinite jest (which is REALLY GREAT, and not something i want to read for the sake of reading, but just so enjoyable to sit down and read. but what i hate about long books is that they prevent me from reading other books, so i get impatient, and then i leave it for too long, and now i'm haflway through but i left it off in january, and i'd almost want to start again from the beginning. i'd recommend reading some of dfw's short stories first to get into him...interviews with hideous men is wonderful, full of pieces that make you realize just how damn smart he is, and how he really knows exactly what he's doing. my writing workshop professor told us the first day that when we submit something to be workshopped, we should imagine that there's someone in the back who knows exactly what we're trying to do, and who will call us out on the shit we know we're not pulling off. i imagined david foster wallace. le sigh.)

anyway. i will read borges. i really will. i think i'm partly afraid that i'll try to love him but then i won't and then what kind of person will i be?? i'll read a few stories tonight. or tomorrow. and let you know. i read the circular ruins last semester and i wasn't in love. but maybe i just need to read more than one at a time and really get into it.

i actually love taking classes because they force me to read. for example, would i have read (and understood, and loved) five books by faulkner if not for my faulkner seminar? no. but i have the opposite problem of you i guess, is that i only finish books for class and never give myself time for outside reading.

sorry for the loooong long rambling!

Re: to read

Victoria — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:08:29 -0000

yeah! i love that tesla + mark twain were bffs, and that he was rivals with edison. i just love thinking about famous people's relationships with each other. since we hardly ever think of them as real people with real friends. i wonder what mark twain and tesla talked about.

ugh, pynchon. he's one of those guys i know i should really get into and read, kind of like borges, who is obviously way more accessible but still someone i put off because...i just want to read a good book, you know? i don't want to decipher some thousand page tome that everyone is telling me is amazing but i just can't get through. i know that david foster wallace loved pynchon in college so that makes me kind of sad, but then i remember that dfw was a crazy fucked up genius and i'm not, so whatever. i read the crying of lot 49 a few years ago, and by read i mean looked at each word on each page but had no idea what was going on. i might be revealing something bad about myself here but, oh well. let me know what you get out of reading gravity's rainbow.

i really loved white noise, if that redeems me in some way...

Re: Signifying Nothing - Book Review - 'The Letters of Samuel Beckett' - NYTimes.com

Victoria — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:36:48 -0000

ah fuck i just wrote out this long comment and disqus deleted it. fuck you disqus.
so yes! i should look back at our old emails. there were some great ones there. and we DID write letters to each other, i just remembered, over the summer. camp letters?? like the time i sent you four at once and you had to sing in front of the whole camp. i loved your letters.

i totally agree with you about the journal thing too. i took a short course on thoreau last semester and he kept a journal every day for over twenty years. and every entry is beautiful and incredibly insightful. i couldn't even believe it. how can someone write so beautifully EVERY DAY? i think a lot of it has to do with practice, though. i've just never been comfortable with my journal voice. i don't even know who i'm talking to. and even when i try to tell the truth, i end up saying something like "so yeah it sucked but...oh well! i'm sure it'll get better." why do i lie like that?? why do i write in my journal like i would talk to an annoying acquaintance? i think that's why i get tired of it usually.

btw i'm going to write you an email soon. this week is just hellish but hopefully i will take some add medication and be really prolific!!

Re: Green Lights - Simple test of arduino reading the length of a...

Victoria — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:48:44 -0000

you a genius

Re: Green Lights - open studios 1 mouth tracking algorithm shifting...

Victoria — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:36:31 -0000

crazy!
what were you saying?

Re: grounds for play - and a hat. i think the hat is too small but i...

Victoria — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:35:18 -0000

how are you doing this?? how are you making such complicated things? TEACH ME

Re: crap

Victoria — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:59:45 -0000

i would eat at your restaurant every day.
also, totally second you on the female friends thing. here i have only female friends because there is one boy on the program. i used to think girls were bitches (thanks, homann) but now i think they're wonderful. it's so nice to be around girls all the time, i love it. i know i'm going to go back to vassar though and have no girls and have to make conversation with zack about video games and youtube videos. i feel you.
also what i wish is that i could start my real life - have my own apartment, etc - and just go somewhere to take classes i was really interested in. this "college" thing - the campus, the dorms, the parties - doesn't appeal to me at all anymore.

i'm procrastinating on writing this paper that is 8 days overdue right now. the syllabus says papers after 8 days will not be accepted so...down to the wire. but i just can't bring myself to do it!

Re: Green Lights - Apparently all the hip kids are into datamoshing...

Victoria — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:49:50 -0000

i could make a great music video out of our skype chats
sometimes you look like a datamoshed monster

Re: Positive Misanthropist

Victoria — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:34:29 -0000

what kind of desserts? how do you make yummy vegan desserts? vassar's cafeteria doesn't know how.

Re: What I do when I should be doing school work

Victoria — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:20:12 -0000

wow. i'm really impressed. feed me.

Re: i dance like everyone's watching

Victoria — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:59:59 -0000

dooon't worry, i totally know how it is. that's how i am with your lj posts (which, by the way, WHERE DID THEY GO). and also i was thinking about quotes that can be motivational. and i agree with you in these two cases (our favorites):
this too shall pass
what will be will be

but what makes those different is that they're not...corny. and they're not whimsical statements about life, they're just kind of factually true. they also don't tell me what to do. maybe i just don't like quotes that get all bossy.

also so weird that you reminded me that marissa goldberg exists.

Re: Green Lights - I can’t believe that 36 % of Americans have no...

Victoria — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:54:16 -0000

no opinion? does that mean they don't care or don't know? so bizarre

Re: brain so good, couldve sworn you went to college

Victoria — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:43:18 -0000

i think once you have a pretty camera, the skills will follow. and by skills i mean learning how to work the camera which i think does most of the work for me.
i will take pictures of the scarf i'm knitting soon! i want to see your projects. mmm i love knitting projects.

Re: The Fifty Most Loathsome People of 2008

Victoria — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:14:35 -0000

i disagree. this isn't me.
who's the "I"?

Re: some other things going on besides crows and murder

Victoria — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:09:05 -0000

i'm not sure what wiley's view of the publishing industry was. but mine was definitely an idealistic one. i basically thought that the publishing industry was about finding new voices - finding the next incredible writer, the next literary genius. but that's actually a very small sectre of the publishing world because literary fiction doesn't sell well at all. it's the cookbooks, the commercial nonfiction, the thrillers and chick lit stuff that makes money. and the publishing industry is a corporate business and money is the bottom line, so to invest in a new literary writer is to take a huge risk. it's not profitable.

so i guess i thought i'd become some sort of editor and start discovering all this amazing new writing and helping writers develop their work etc but there's so much business and money in the way of all that. and that's not really how it starts, i learned - usually a writer will send their work to a small magazine and get recognition that way. that's the first step. not to find a publisher. so now i think that's where the exciting discovery stuff is really happening. of course a literary magazine is also going to have a bottom line. but that's not the driving force of it, you know?

also i'm sorry it took me weeks to respond to your comments!! but i'm here now.

Re: Signifying Nothing - The birth of the robo-novel | Books | guardian.co.uk

Victoria — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:04:04 -0000

i was going to say, one night last semester wiley and i watched as many documentaries about real dolls as we could find. i really haven't thought enough about it on an intellectual level to have a real stance on it - my main reaction is a gut one, and so is a rather unsophisticated "yuck."

i think something telling about the real doll industry is how male-dominated it is. i have only seen one male sex doll (...not in real life). most of the documentaries we watched were about men who used female real dolls. i think it's interesting also what kind of real dolls are most popular (little girl versions, asian versions). it makes me uncomfortable. so maybe it's not the objectification of sexual intimacy that bothers me but the objectification of the sexual partner - specifically, the woman.

Re: highlight of the inauguration

Victoria — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:54:25 -0000

oops i meant "when black will not be asked to GET back"

Re: highlight of the inauguration

Victoria — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:23:13 -0000

i know!!
when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right

Re: That's Heroin for ya!

Victoria — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:15:01 -0000

yo i'm reading your blog now hope thats okayy