I read Timothy Goodman’s corny-ass love in Paris in one sitting. He’s right. The love is corny as fuck, but his prose saved the story. His writing is concise and lyrical. The art part is hard to read though. I skipped that.

Tôi đang lừa dối em
Mà sao em không biết
Những lời nói tình duyên
Với tôi không cần thiết
Chớ nên thề thốt chi
Ðùa vui thôi đấy nhé
Say đắm và si mê
Sẵn sàng đang nhạt nhoè.

Tội nghiệp quá, xây những lâu đài cát mơ
Biển vắng trong chiều sắp mưa
Tình cũng như là đám mây mịt mù
Tình là nhớ, xin nhớ không lừa dối ai
Ðừng nói câu chuyện lứa đôi
Tình cũng như dòng nước trôi.

Khi tôi tìm đến em
Là tìm vui trong chốc lát
Ðến một lúc rồi quên
Nhớ nhung không cần thiết
Khi em hiểu rõ tôi
Yêu nghĩa là phai phôi
Nghĩa là mang hận hoài.

Phạm Duy

Simone Stolzoff’s The Good Enough Job comes at the critical moment of my own career evaluation. I fell into the conventional wisdom of following my passion. I believed that if I worked hard at what I loved to do, I would become successful. I spent over 20 years of my career from a web designer fresh out of college to work my way up to become a design director. Now I am on the brink of losing everything. A director title doesn’t mean anything. I have come to accept that money, power, and privilege overrules passion. I am in the process of separating my identity from my job and my self-worth from my output. Fortunately, I am not alone and Stolzoff has the proof through his interviews with people who have burned out, become disillusioned, and find meaningless in what they do. It is an essential book for anyone who wants to reclaim their life from work.

We work too hard.
We’re too tired
To fall in love.
Therefore we must
Overthrow the government.

We work too hard.
We’re too tired
To overthrow the government.
Therefore we must
Fall in love.

Rod Smith

Because I am their daughter my body is not mine.
I was raised like fruit, unpeeled & then peeled. Raised
to bleed in some man’s bed. I was given my name
& with it my instructions. Pure. Pure.

& is it wasted on me? Every moment I do not touch
myself, every moment I leave my body on its back
to be a wife while I go somewhere above the room.

I return to the soil & search. I know it’s there. Buried
shallow, wrapped in rags dark with old & forgotten rust,
their discarded part.
Buried without ceremony,
buried like fallen seeds.

I wonder about the trees: Date palms veined
through the fruit with the copper taste of cutting.
Guavas that, when slit, purple dark as raw meat.

I have to wonder, of course, about the blood orange, about the pomegranate, splayed open, like something that once was alive & remains.

Safia Elhillo

I strongly agree with the conservative justices on college admissions. Race should not play a role in education. All kids deserve an equal opportunity. They can’t be discriminated for their race. What Harvard had done to Asian-American students was discrimination and shameful. By helping one race and hurting another, Harvard has put an end to affirmative action.

The admissions processes at George Mason University have not considered race as a factor since 2007. Read the university’s statement regarding the Supreme Court’s decision on college admissions.

Ngày thứ sáu lại đến. Sau ngày làm việc hôm nay, ngày mai đi biển Wildwood một tuần. Lần đi nghỉ mát này chỉ riêng gia đình nhỏ thôi. Đi đông cũng vui nhưng cũng có cái buồn. Tụi nhỏ tụ tập lại xem iPad hay chơi game. Rất khó khăn tách rời bọn nó ra khỏi máy vi tính.

Tôi không muốn con mình đi vacation mà vẫn chỉ ngồi trong nhà trọ. Nếu chỉ chơi game thôi thì cần gì phải đi xa, mướn nhà cho tốn tiền. Ở nhà chơi được rồi. Con mình thì mình dễ nói. Con người khác mình đâu thể nào nói được. Thôi thì cứ để mặc tụi nó chơi từ sáng sớm lúc mở mắt đến khuya lúc đi ngủ.

Tôi cũng chẳng hứng thú làm gì khác ngoài vô phòng nằm đọc sách. Hy vọng lần này sẽ lôi tụi nó đi tắm biển, đạp xe, đi skatepark, và viếng thăm những nơi lân cận.

Càng ngày tụi nhỏ càng bị lún sâu vào thế giới điện tử mà không thể nào kéo ra được. Dường như bây giờ là chuyện bình thường mà cha mẹ phải chấp nhận nhưng tôi vẫn luôn lo sợ tụi nó sẽ bỏ hết các môn học, thể thao, và các sở thích khác và chỉ tập trung vào thế giới mạng.

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

Langston Hughes

I am so glad that Xuân chose to join the swim team this summer. He didn’t do so well in his first competition because he kept looking over the other lanes to see where the other kids were at. I reminded him to focus on his own lane and to get to the finish line first. He seemed to take my advice on his first freestyle competition and he finished first.

This seven-year-old kid is a true athletic. From ice skating to skiing to scootering to swimming, he just puts his heart into and does it. He likes to play video games as much as his older brothers, but he also continues to be active. I really hope that he will stick with swimming. I don’t need him to be great. I just want him to stay active. In my book, he is already already a swimming star.

Females rappers exploit sex as well. Hood Hottest Princess is Sexyy Red’s soundtrack to PornHub videos. Back up by pounding productions, Red gets freaky and filthy as fuck on “Mad At Me,” “Strictly for the Strippers,” and “Pound Town 2” with Nicki Minaj. No crime in that, I suppose. Most of her lyrics are too explicit to be quoted, but I find her some of punchlines hilarious. On “I’m The Shit,” she talks shit, “Bitch, you ain’t tough, I’ll slap you in the head / How you sleepin’ on me? You ain’t even got a bed.”