July 15th, 2008
Subject: I’m all alone….
Yo Yasi,
It seems that I have reached a plateau in my daily quest of finding love. I am a stunning gentleman who still hangs on to the idea that chivalry is not dead. I recently feel as if this idea is about just as old as… something really old. My question to you is should I throw my ideals out the window and start kicking ass or am I on the right path to love (which becomes more distant every day)?
-Kyle
Dear Kyle,
Outside of people (mostly women) calling it dead, chivalry never really existed outside of the thirteenth century, when Sir Lancelot and King Arthur pranced around in tights and chain maile and vowed to “always do ladies, gentlewomen and widows succor.” (No, succor means “help” or “relief,” perv). What I think you’re trying to tell me is that you’re a nice guy. But to be honest with you, I don’t really know what that means. Nice is such a vague description of oneself. It’s like calling something or someone “interesting.” I don’t really think there is such a thing as a “nice guy” (and no, not on some “bitter, party of one?” shit). I think we all have in us the capacity to be nice, just like we have the capacity to be cruel, to be loyal, to cheat, to lie, to always do ladies succor, and so on and so forth. Personalities are as much a collection of learned behaviors, habits, and self-defense mechanisms as they are intrinsic traits. So if your idea of being nice is letting people walk all over you, then maybe you need to examine your motives. Remember that people will only treat you as badly as you let them (I reserve the right to say this again and again in future entries until it becomes my Dr.Phil-esque calling card and someone gives me a fucking talk show).
What troubles me more about your question is this: “should I throw my ideals out the window and start kicking ass.” (I’m actually going to ignore the “kicking ass” part because I find it equal parts disturbing and jock-jams). Since you visit this site, I’m going to go ahead and guess you’re somewhere between 15 and 22 years old, and I think it’s a bit early to start giving up hope and joining eharmony.com. And at the risk of sounding like some sort of after-school special (cue “The More You Know” rainbow), you should never change who you are for someone else. I don’t believe there is any yellow brick road that leads to emotional fulfillment. I think that you do you, the best you can, and somewhere along the way someone sees that you, and for one reason or another, loves it. So what all this rambling is leading up to is: stop being a pushover, keep being yourself, and don’t join eHarmony because it’s expensive and full of weird single Christian fundamendalists.
Yasi
E-mail Yasi your question at AskYasi@thehundreds.com. There is absolutely no guarantee she will answer your question, but at least you can tell your friends you talked to a girl.
July 1st, 2008
THREE EMAILS, ONE ANSWER.
NUMBER 1
Subject: read
Hi, i’m Billy,
One question, why don’t you want anyone to see your face?
Thanks, bye
billy
NUMBER 2
Subject: Hey Yasi !
Why Do You Cover Your Face ??
Myspace.com/sc00by
NUMBER 3
Subject: Yo yo yo
Dear Yasi,
You seem like a very cool person.
Sincerely,
Joseph
AND ANSWER.
Dear Everyone,
Since my last post was a horribly stuffy/pretentious/nerdy dissertation on Oscar Wilde, I figure why not follow up with (yet another) Wilde quote. (Consider yourself blessed that my favorite writer is not Chaucer, or say, Dr. Phil.
Anyway, Wilde says that a man’s face is his autobiography, while a woman’s face is her work of fiction. Perhaps I took this sentiment as inspiration for this column. (Wilde is perhaps the patron saint of botox). I guess there are few other reasons that could explain the constant hiding of my face. Maybe I’m a hideous troll (I am actually strikingly beautiful, but I can show you some photos of myself at 13 that Wes Craven could make a nine-sequel horror movie from). Maybe I’ve been in some trouble with the law (I’d rather not get into it but rest assured there are no federal authorities after me. Anymore). Maybe this column is ghost-written by some guy Bobby outsources in India (this is totally possible, what up Sanjay).
Actually, whatever reason I give you will probably not be satisfactory, so I’ll just say this: What is a face anyway? Just a collection of parts, really, and viewed differently by everyone. You (Billy, Joseph, and young Scooby) may think that I am gorgeous, while some others (such as blind people) may think I am repulsive. I happen to think that my words (which are so eloquent and graceful) are more important than said face, so by covering it perhaps I am making a statement of sorts. Or maybe I just really like dressing up (I have a whole collection of animal masks and am currently awaiting an adult-size Tigger costume I ordered on the internet). Maybe I just really used these questions as an excuse to throw TWO Wilde quotes at you. Here we go:
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
You can say whatever you want about me, but you can never say I lied (except to my parents, the cops, a few bouncers, and all cab drivers).
Yasi
ps thank you, Joseph.
E-mail Yasi your question at AskYasi@thehundreds.com. There is absolutely no guarantee she will answer your question, but at least you can tell your friends you talked to a girl.
June 24th, 2008
Subject: Very Critical Question
Hi Yasi,
I have this question that I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while. To be honest, I have been putting it off for a long, long time, but after reading some of your other emails, I realized you are the right one to answer my question. This is the point in my life where an answer/response is absolutely crucial, and may, in fact, determine the next four-forty years of my existence (if I make it that far). I hope you’re ready to save a life:
“Name a way in which the treatment of the figure of the Spectator differs in Wilde’s “Soul of Man Under Socialism” from its treatment in Debord’s /Society of the Spectacle/. Make an argument about the key political significance that attaches in your view to this differing treatment of spectatorship in these texts and then substantiate your claim through readings of relevant passages from both texts.”
A 5 pages double-spaced response by May 8th, 2008 would be perfect. Thanks Yasi.
Sincerely,
Marcus Im
Berkeley, CA
Dear Marcus,
First of all, I would like to thank you for such an interesting and thought-provoking question. Secondly, I’d like you to know that I answered this in full way before your May 8th deadline but purposely held it back because I think everyone should read Wilde, and because I derive a perverse joy from evil doing.
It had been a while since I had read “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” so I went back and brushed up. (I’ve never read “Society of the Spectacle” and I don’t plan on it, sorry). It’s a bit verbose, yes, but it’s a worthwhile read especially if you consider yourself any sort of liberal. People (well, people who know who Oscar Wilde is) tend to forget that he was actually quite political and wrote a great deal of social criticism. I think that some people mistakenly read this particular essay as satire because some of the things Wilde says seem ridiculous, but in fact they only seem ridiculous because his views were so alien, especially at the time of publication. For example, “When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed their personalities.” (He also goes on to say that Jesus didn’t believe in marriage). There are many other gems like that, but I’ll let you find them yourself.
Wilde’s whole argument in favor of socialism is that it brings about individualism, which seems counter-intuitive. However if socialism is viewed as a socio-political structure that’s sole purpose is to remove structure and create freedom, and if it assumed that freedom is the only condition from which individuality can arise, then Wilde’s argument is somewhat sound. We are hindered by property, hindered by money, hindered by an obsession with control lest we lose these things and become a have-not. Here Wilde is speaking specifically of material wealth but I think the metaphor can easily be extended to anything we think we possess. The constant struggle to remain in possession is at best tedious and at worst crippling. How are we meant to evolve as individuals under such constraints? “What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.”
Anyway, I could probably ramble on about a lot of different points here (his ideas on rebellion are pretty amazing) but I think I lost most of my audience around the third sentence of this entry. A lot of what he says is absolutely subjective, and a great deal of the essay meanders off into his favorite subject of the inability of the public to understand or appreciate art, but as a whole the essay does force you to look at things differently.
For those of you who are still awake, here’s a little gift (my favorite lines from the essay):
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Yasi
PS You probably shouldn’t sign your requests for plagiarism with “Berkeley,CA” because it doesn’t really take a genius to figure out which school you go to.
E-mail Yasi your question at AskYasi@thehundreds.com. There is absolutely no guarantee she will answer your question, but at least you can tell your friends you talked to a girl.
June 23rd, 2008
Subject: argh.
So Yasi,
i look at the hundreds blog and other blogs, and your lives look like so much fun. Parties, clothes, barbeques, hot chicks, hot dudes (well besides the hundreds crew….). I basically just sit around in my room in nyc, and i don’t have many friends to go out and do things with since i go to school in connecticut. But now it’s summer and I really wanna break out of my shell, start chit-chatting with people, and break out of my monotonous circle of getting up, eating, going online to read the hundreds and wishing i was in cali, sleep. How can i be majorly cool like you Yasi??….well if you consider yourself cool that is.
Gracias,
ash from the city that never sleeps
Dear Ash,
Well, as I have tried to explain time and time again, I am absolutely not cool. But since you think I am (god bless your little heart), I’ll dutifully try to answer your question. I suppose the blog is fairly accurate, we do go to parties and barbecues, and we do wear clothes. And the Hundreds guys are pretty ugly (except for Bert, who is way hot. back off sluts). I can’t really speak for everyone, but since “we” is more comforting to me, I will anyway. I’m not quite sure if we’re cool or if we’re completely and utterly lost (or if there is a difference between those two things). The best way I can explain it is that some nights are kind of like the video for that Smashing Pumpkins song “1979,” and some nights, well, aren’t. Some nights you black out, some nights you wish you had blacked out, some nights the music is amazing, some nights hurt, some nights you find new friends, and some nights you lose your wallet (or phone/camera/keys/heart/will to live). Some nights you wake up with weird things in your purse and you have no idea where they came from. Some nights everyone comes over, some nights you don’t go home, some nights you wish you were home, and some nights you don’t know where home is. Some nights you make snow angels on cars. Some nights you make out, some nights you make up, some nights you fall, and some nights you regret. Some nights you wake up with bruises of questionable origin. But most nights you laugh. And if you’re lucky, once in a while some random hands you a bag of poppers on the street at 2:30 am so you wake up with confetti all over your clothes. And without the advent of digital cameras, we probably wouldn’t remember any of it.
I’m not sure why we do what we do or what we are looking for or what it all means, and if I think about it too long my mind wanders off down the beach in search of an Arab to kill. But in your case, it sounds like you’re searching for people to “chit chat” with (is that what the kids are calling it these days?). My wise (and incredibly sexy) friend Jensrocker always says “you’re not going to meet anyone sitting at home.” So even if some nights are going to suck, they’ll still suck less than staying at home alone with your mind and Bobby’s posts.
Yasi
E-mail Yasi your question at AskYasi@thehundreds.com. There is absolutely no guarantee she will answer your question, but at least you can tell your friends you talked to a girl.
June 18th, 2008
Subject: hot, reckless, totally insane
sorry for missing the weekend, i am busy trying to invent stories about shoes. but on to my question: what happened friday night?
PJ Canale
Mon petit editor,
There is nothing more amusing than having a private conversation on the very public internet. Without incriminating anyone (that means you, my beloved club) I will paint you a picture of this past Friday the 13th evening with a stream of consciousness/word association type thing. Here we go:
masking tape pentagram - otis - blonde - pierced - dollar dollar bills - chest naked - murder dress code - r kels - donna summer - fugazi - tecate - jack daniels with a straw - candle wax - candle show - accidental asian - ear muffs - face time - lesbian conversions - trapeeze videos - night vision - sunglasses - dice - homeless on broadway- did i mention lesbian? - casino pechanga.
Basically PJ, our lives were changed on a level as profound as Buddhist spiritual enlightenment. But I’m sure you felt the same way about the Nikes.
Maybe next time?
Yasi
E-mail Yasi your question at AskYasi@thehundreds.com. There is absolutely no guarantee she will answer your question, but at least you can tell your friends you talked to a girl.
