David Jonathan Ross launched a lovely microsite for Megazoid, a stunning display typeface. Jason Santa Maria has done an excellent job of showcasing what Megazoid can do. Furthermore, he gives the webpage a soul, which is missing in today’s web design. We need more unique designs and less templated systems that kill the beauty of the web.

By the way, I had the opportunity to provide David feedback on Vietnamese diacritics for Megazoid.

Á đù… Đến giờ mà còn bắt học DEI? Đám Vail này chắc chưa đi mưa nên chưa thấy lạnh. Thì ra toàn là dân trượt tuyết nên đéo biết lạnh. Chẳng những đành phải học DEI, mà tôi rất vui vì còn có công ty xem trọng giá trị của DEI.

My friend and I had a cat we called Mother.
I took the couch; my friend got the one bedroom
because he often had sex and needed
that private darkness. I had not yet had sex
of my own volition. No one knew
I had been raped. I was so unknowing
I barely knew it myself, how lost I was
to myself. I was maybe twenty. We loved that cat
that had wandered into our lives, rubbing our legs,
needing love and milk and a safe place
to sleep like any creature arriving on this earth
from God knows where and God knows why.
One hot August day I was sitting outside
when Mother joined me and sat on my lap,
a thing she had never done before.
And that was where she died. I called Jeff,
who had gone to a motel somewhere
with his girl of the moment. “Mother died,”
I said. There was a long silence, then
he whispered quietly, “Oh, no,”
as if he wanted to keep his sorrow to himself.
Many years later I told my actual mother
about the rape. She cried a little and was angry
on my behalf. I was calm. Relieved.
Then life went on, as it does,
without much of a pause. I was not healed
by telling her, I am sorry to say.
I am still not, at seventy-nine. The beautiful gray sky
of a rainy May day, and the lindens
coming into flower. That smell!
You and I both love it. (Did you know
all along I was writing this poem to you?)
Often at night we walk to the river
and stare down into the black current
which has reached flood stage
and carries everything before it.

Jim Moore

I woke up early this morning this morning to do some work. Kids didn’t have school this morning, but they had dentist checkup appointments at 11:00 am. After they finished, I took them to lunch. They wanted soul food; therefore, we went to Milk & Honey. After lunch, we went to the park until around 3:30 pm.

I decided to go back home so I could replace the flush and fill valves in the master bedroom, which I had been putting off for a few weeks. The entire job took about half an hour. Then I also changed the shower head. Even though the tasks were trivial, they made me feel good. For someone who is not that great at doing handyman work, I had accomplished something.

I don’t want to ask people to help me all the time. I am sure handymen wouldn’t do these kinds of job; therefore; I try to do as many as I can on my own.

The nice thing about this blog is that I can document these kinds of trivial things that no one else cared but me. Whenever I needed to know what I had done in the past, I just have to refer back to this blog. This is why I love blogging all these years. OK, enough rambling.

It was the way summer hunted me:
a sequence of instructions
in the folds of a flower.
How do I explain the hatred of the sun,
the terrible wonder of being alive?
Fuck the fucking birds. I looked
to the sky to join the storms. I couldn’t
have imagined you, swift as the lightning
I traced with my finger, a song scratched
into a back. I ached with the not-knowing.
On Mother’s Day I knelt and begged
for something to help me. Is that God?
I played “Here Comes the Sun”
in the psych ward and everyone
watched as I shook. This
is not true, I said. The sun
is already here. Hope was slight
as an eyelash. How clean the sky—
a cloud that posed as a spine.
There was no container
for my despair. In your face I saw
a sequence of instructions.
When you touched me, I named
the future: Be here. Stay living.
I was running once. Did I tell you
how I wept like that? I saw a fox—
my life bound into tricks. The past
is the past is the past. An idea grown
in the name of the obvious. How
a beloved becomes a stranger
and a stranger becomes a beloved.
I can hate what is true, the thick beauty
of it. I am always in the school of the dead:
a bracket, an aside, a reordering.
I tell you language is always a failure,
a string waiting to be plucked. A song
you love and cannot resolve.
What’s the difference between
rupture and rapture? Not even salt.

Erika L. Sánchez

Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.

Ocean Vương

In the last couple of days, I spent some times revising the look and feel for the Law Library’s LibGuides. I put in custom CSS rules to override Springshare’s default styles so that the page has a bit of our brand elements. I also made sure the colors passed accessibility test. It was a nice, little project.

Điều vô lý là đây là lần thứ nhất tôi nghe Điều vô lý thứ nhất của Nguyên Hà hát ca khúc Hồ Tiến Đạt tuy album đã phát hành 6 năm trước. Tôi được biết đến và mê giọng hát Nguyên Hà qua tác phẩm bộ ba Địa Đàng của nhạc sĩ Quốc Bảo nhưng lại không tiếp tục theo dõi đường lối của cô sau đó.

Từ Địa Đàng thứ nhất (phát hành năm 2012) đến Điều vô lý thứ nhất (phát hành năm 2019), Nguyên Hà hát chuẩn hơn nhiều, đặc biệt là cách phát âm của cô không còn nặng nề như xưa nữa. Chẳng hạn như ca khúc chủ đề, cô hát rõ ràng từng chữ, “Ta mang về em một chút đường / Tan tan vào ta ta bớt đắng”, qua tiếng đàn guitar và cello mộc mạc.

Qua giai điệu blues buồn mang máng, cô hát ca khúc “Em ở đâu” nhẹ nhàng nhưng truyền cảm, đặc biệt câu, “Em chưa muốn về / Em đang muốn quên / Những lắng lo ngày nào những nỗi đau ngày mai”. Ca từ của Hồ Tiến Đạt cũng khá lãng mạn, “Hay em muốn về cùng tôi xây tổ ấm / Bên kia đồi, hong tóc khô bên trời / Nghênh ngang cơn gió thu về / Tóc em thơm mùi gạo khê / Em ơi hãy về”. Thời nay chỉ nấu cơm bằng nồi cơm điện đắt tiền làm gì mà còn mùi gạo khê.

Ca khúc êm dịu “Đôi điều cho ngày mai” được thu âm giản dị qua tiếng hát Nguyên Hà và tiếng đàn dương cầm. Nhưng lối dùng syncopation tạo ra phong cách piano jazz khiến cho ca khúc nổi bậc hẳn. Nhắc đến jazz thì phải đề cập đến bài song ca giữa Nguyên Hà và chính tác giả qua ca khúc có tựa đề rất thực tế, “Khi mình chán nhau”. Qua nhịp điệu bossa nova lả lướt, đột nhiên chàng hỏi nàng, “Một ngày không xa đó / Nếu tôi và em / Bỗng nhiên chán nhau”. Yêu nhau, bên nhau, chán nhau là chuyện thường cho những mối tình trẻ. Còn tình già như tôi thì không có quyền chán. Có chán cũng ráng chịu chứ than vắn thở dài cũng chẳng được gì.

Tuy khám phá hơi muộn nhưng Điều vô lý thứ nhất là một concept album đáng được thưởng thức từ đầu đến cuối từ giọng hát đến ca khúc đến hòa âm.

Last Saturday, on my youngest son’s seventh birthday, I subscribed to The New Yorker. I decided on the annual subscription of both digital and print edition. I hope my kids will pick up the paper magazines to read if they see them lying around the house.

Without a doubt, The New Yorker is one of my favorite publications. In my freshman year, my English teacher required us to subscribe to The New Yorker as part of our class assignments. Each week, we had to read an article in the magazine and wrote in our journal what we thought of it. My English at the time was horrible. I did not understand what I was reading. I didn’t take The New Yorker seriously because of illustration on the cover and the drawings throughout the magazine. What I hated The New Yorker the most was its long-ass essays.

After that English class, I never picked up The New Yorker again until many years later when I began my interest in reading and my English was good enough to understand its writings. I started to appreciate those long-form investigative reports and cultural commentaries, in which the writers had to put in tons of research. In addition, I appreciated its political coverages, which are grounded on facts, honesty, and integrity. They write the truth without the fear of political power and government pressure. The New Yorker is a cultural treasure. I hope that Condé Nast keeps it the way it is and won’t fuck with it like Jeff Bezos fucked up The Washington Post.

I had a subscription to The New Yorker for a few years before our first son was born. I had to cancel it because I could not keep up with the reading while being a new parent. In addition, I wanted to focus my time on reading long books. Now I need to manage my time better to see if I can read both in my spare time.

My Dearest Vương,

Our little King turns seven today. It’s hard to believe. Time flies by so fast. It has been a joy watching you grow in the last 2,555 days.

Congratulations, you have finished reading a 189-page book. That’s quite an accomplishment for a second grader. In the past few weeks, I had been looking forward to reading The World According to Mister Rogers with you. I treasured those 15 minutes together each night. I chose this book to see if you would take on the challenge of reading a text-only book instead of a picture book. You protested, but you kept on reading. I was also hoping that you would remember a few words of wisdom from Mister Rogers. Even though I read this book before, the following passage stood out to me as we were reading together:

It’s not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we’ve never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that’s gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.

I am glad that you have picked up reading so fast. Though I am not surprised at all. You will accomplish anything when you work hard at it. When I first taught you how to ski, you simply lay down on the snowy bed in the middle of the terrain and refused to get up. Then when you had decided to ski, you went all over the mountains and even in the woods. At the end of last season, you told me that you wanted me to teach you snowboarding next season because, as you said, “You are the best instructor.” I am flattered. Of course, I am the best instructor and I don’t even charge you. Snowboarding will be more challenging to learn, but you will get it. I can’t wait for us to ride together.

Being the youngest boy in the family, you get all the love, especially from mama queen. She would do anything for you, but I can see that you like to do things on your own. You want to be independent like your older brothers. I definitely encourage you to continue to do that, but don’t be shy to ask for help if you need us. We’re here for you.

You have a strong mind. You don’t let anyone deter you from doing things you want to do. You do whatever makes you happy. As you grow older, don’t lose that strength. Your confidence will carry you through life. Listen to your own voice. Think for yourself. Make up your own mind. Stay true to yourself. Don’t let anyone else define you.

I have confidence in you. You will turn out fine as long as you continue to be who you are. I wish you a wonderful birthday.

Love,
Dad