Cecilia Tan's web journal, entries from 1996


November 12, 1996

This is the eulogy/obituary I wrote for Zot! on November 12:

This morning at 8:52am, our beloved furry companion Zot! passed away from a tumor obstructing his lungs. It was unexpected. He showed no signs of illness or discomfort and happily spent his last day snoozing between my feet while I worked, had a rambunctious evening of crumpled-paper and ribbon chasing, and slept in our bed with us until some time this morning when he jumped out of the loft. He was alive but laboring to breathe when we woke up, and died a few minutes later. He was eight and a half years old and lived a very full life for a cat, accumulating friends and acquaintances in Providence, New Jersey, Silicon Valley, Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, and Boston. He loved the great outdoors and had a penchant for tuna with cheese, as well as odder foods like hot sauce, corn chips, Pringles, and plastic bags. Fondly remember him and drink a cup of pu-erh tea in his memory.


September 30, 1996
Warning: this entry is a long rant on being twenty something and the state of the media today. If you like pop culture theorizing, you'll like this. Actually its only 4 paragraphs... I've spent the last two days at NEBA, the New England Booksellers Association trade show. NEBA attendees, who are mostly independent bookstore owners and employees, tend to be a somewhat stuffy lot. Last year was the first time we exhibited. This year, more people know who we (Circlet Press, I mean) are. The result is that the real stuffy ones, the ones embarrassed by the whole concept of erotic science fiction, come walking along, see our sign, and then look away quickly....

I was part of a panel called "Biblio-palooza"--basically a panel discussion for booksellers on how they can perhaps tap into "alternative" culture as a potential market for themselves. Stop seeing those skate punks out front as a traffic problem and start seeing them as constituents. Stop being afraid of those vampire wannabes and stock something besides Anne Rice! It's not just about Generation Y teens, either, it's Gen X bibliophiles like me who end up buying a lot of our cool books at Tower Records. And it's over 30 folks into alt culture who assume the bookstore is a stuffy as it looks.

My points were pretty simple. 1) The thing to understand about this 15-35 group is that the only form of legitimacy we recognize is "outsider status." 2) This is a generation of many, many subcultures. Joining a subculture is a quick path to outsider status. We are more likely to define ourselves with sexual orientation, ethnicity, specific activities (skating, snowboarding), as well as style/fashion and type of music we listen to, than previous generations. 3) In this, the media age, the main way of participating in many subcultures is THROUGH the media, through the common media that a particular group shares. CDs, movies, and, especially, MAGAZINES AND BOOKS. What is the major part of many zines? Reviews of other zines and other culture-defining media.

Thinking about that outsider label, who is it that labels themselves such? Who are our outsider icons? Besides Kurt Cobain and Jerry Garcia, who do you find posters of in a hip poster shop? Albert Einstein, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso. Not exactly obscure figures from history. But we recognize they were cool for their funky weird unique outsider-ness of their own. Outsiders are the intellectuals, the artists, the cynics, the nerds, the unpopular... the previous generation had a word for them: BOOKWORMS. These days, we still read a lot of books, but with the mass media, we are able to connect and touch others like us across the country. Through zines and the Net we participate in subcultures we might otherwise be isolated from. We don't just sit around and mope with a book while bullies torch our locker. We cut and dye our hair, we take up strange, dangerous hobbies, we tattoo and pierce ourselves... The older generation thinks we don't read because we don't fit their image of the quiet, contemplative bookworm. What I tried to wake these booksellers up to is the fact that actually, we're media junkies. We can't get enough books, tapes, Cds, tv shows, magazines, Web surfing, etc. We'll get them anyway we can. And if the bookstore wants to continue to sell to the next generation of bibliophiles/book junkies, they're going to have to do a better job of reaching out to us.

My final point regarded the fact that there are two reasons why I or another "alt" cultural denizen might buy a book which the bookstore owner may not have thought of. The younger may purchase items which will help confer outsider status on him or her. Anything from a book of funky poetry by a really weird old guy (Henry Rollins, or Allen Ginsburg, or William Blake, could be any of these... if found in the poetry section no, but if shelved in the "outpost culture" section with other funky unique books? Then yes...), to the Anarchist Cookbook (just cuz it'll upset the parents). The older, more established goth, skate punk, queer activist, young leftist, POET, on the other hand, may pick up books which enhance, enrich, or reinforce their already established outsider self-image.

This explains why I go into Tower not intending to buy anything, just to browse, which is, in and of itself, a really cool activity to take part in at 11:30pm after chowing down some great sushi or having drinks with friends nearby... and I see this cool book and that cool book, which if they were in my regular bookstore went unnoticed. Have I used the word post-modern yet? No. Post-modernism's defining form is the pastiche, the accidental or intentional juxtaposition and combination of things formerly separated. The ultimate deconstruction of meaning comes when any coincidence can lend or reveal it... So is it any surprise that a bunch of art books, a bunch of poetry books, a bunch of biographies, a bunch of media-tie in books, don't seem that exciting in their individual sections, but when mixed together under some banner like "pop culture" or "books on the fringe" or "OutPosts" they are lent a cachet of funky weirdness, of quirky uniqueness, that makes them attractive to folks like me? Not a coincidence, I'm sure.


September 30 web page update

Last night (September 29) my neighbors called me to tell me that my cat, Zot!, was paying them a visit and if I wanted him back I really ought to retreive him at some point. I've always suspected that when Zot! would disappear for 7 or 8 hours at a time that he wasn't just asleep under a car somewhere, but that he was making friends around the neighborhood. Now I'm sure of it. He sat ontheir porch and cried and cried until they let him in. Then he wanted to go through every closed door in their house. He had made himself right at home by the time I went over somewhat later...


September 24, 1996
So last week I past my tenth anniversary of starting tae kwon do, and my fifth anniversary of being at Jae H. Kim's. It seemed only fitting that Mr. Kim taught me Kwang Gae, one of the second degree forms--the first new form I have learned since getting my black belt.. It is graceful, powerful and beautiful, and I can't do it worth a damn yet. But I will.
August 4, 1996
Can you believe I finally got my motorcycle on the road this year? And it only took two trips to the autoparts store! Believe it or not, the first free weekend I had the entire summer was in August, so I didn't have a day free to do the maintenance I needed to any earlier. Sad. The bike fell over twice during thw e winter, both times in high winds in our tiny, high-fenced back yard. With no driveway and no garage I had it on the patio with a cover on. There's nothing like looking out the kitchen window and seeing your motorcycle lying like a beached whale in three feet of snow. Standing it back up I had to dig a trench to stand in. Luckily(?) my house contractors had left a heap of cardboard in the back yard, which it fell into both times, making damage mostly nonexistent. I couldn't help but notice that things like the rear drive oil leaked while it lay on its side for hours, maybe days, at a time.

Anyway, I changed the oil, changed the oil filter (the second trip to the store was to get a trickle charger for the battery and the right size oil filter wrench), changed the rear drive oil, drained the old gas and put in new, tightened nuts and bolts, checked cables and the like... I felt psychologically like there was tons more work to be done and that it was unsafe to ride without more fixing up... until I washed it. Cleaned it and shined it. I had never realized before that some parts of the bike had an actual mirror-bright see-yourself kind of finish! Chrome polish for the metal bits, non-chrome stuff for the plastic... amazing! I felt quite good about the bike after washing and detailing, as if that had made it more road-worthy.

Every year I have jump-started my battery from my car. Every year I read the warnings in my service manual and in books warning me that if I do so, I'll fry dainty electricals and cause myself trouble, etc. This year I felt paranoid enough and decided to get the trickle charger, finally. I get home with this tiny little thing which has a list of Warnings, many of which warn of fatality and catastrphic destruction so strongly I began to wish I'd just jump started the thing. The directions say things like: full charging will take 24-48 hours. DO NOT OVERCHARGE! Check battery every hour to be sure. Yeah right, like I'm going to check the thing 48 times in two days, not sleep, not dare to take off my insulated gloves for fear of electrocution, to keep it from frying my battery? Hey, isn't jump starting sounding really good?

I ended up hooking up the battery, which I had connected and tried on the hope that it hadn't gone dead while sitting in my laundry room over the winter, and trying to turn the engine over. There was still enough juice in the battery to make the engine cough once, but only once. I figure'd I'd let the charger run a few hours and then try again. I decided to do it the really tricky way--without taking the battery off the bike again. Getting the battery off the 1985 Honda Shadow VT500 is a bitch. You have to take th eseat off. To take the seat off you have to remove the sissybar tool kit compartment and also yank out a metal piece attached to a strap. The whole operation is a lot of trouble to go to if you don't have to. And putting it back together is worse. Anyway, I left the battery on and went and had Vietnamese food for dinner. When I came back, I cranked it--vroom! Voila, and I was back on the road. I noticed once my riding skills came back to normal that my front brake has gone ridiculously soft. Maybe in the spring I'll have the time and money to have a shop look her over. Winter's coming fast, already.


April 1996
I tested for my black belt on the 28th, despite a sprained thumb. I sprained it about two weeks before the test and the day of the test I could just about make a fist... boy did it hurt when I got a good right cross in on my sparring partner. Two weeks after the test, feeling really pumped and excited to leap forward with new-found momentum, I woke up one morning with a severe back spasm and could barely walk for a week. Nothing like a little excruciating pain to give you a hint that you need to get less stressed and slow down. Unfortunately, I'm not slowing down. I'm packed with deadlines and responsibilities and I'm juggling, juggling, juggling...
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