No.  It’s just another day off. 

What’s there to celebrate?  Affirmative action?  That kept me from getting a job because I’m the “wrong” minority.  In fact, last time I checked with education textbooks, I’m not even a minority.

I think that if us Asians took a serious stand we’d be able to show the type of muscle we do have in this society rather than cower as we do now to save face or not make waves.  Sure, as minorities go, we are liked better because of our stereotype of being yesmen, katos, or technical workhorses.  We’re treated better for it too, though there still is hatred and suspicion mostly from the other minorites.

I tell you as sure as I am an American if we Asians did a protest or boycott you better believe people will pay attention and not make a joke of it like the “Atzlan” protest a few years back when they boycotted coming out of doors or doing business or driving on the street.  Let me tell you there was no loss of business; everyone I ran into in L.A. was bemused by it and everyone, everyone, commented on how good the traffic was.  Boy that made a difference just not the one organizers thought it would.  Have they boycotted since?  No.

I think if all Asians denied their services for one day, you’d see a difference.  If all Asians, stopped practicing medicine, doing taxes,  practicing law, technically supporing, making food, etc.  You’d see it.  Heck if we all, for one day, DO IT WRONG on purpose, contrary to what is EXPECTED,  you’d see the difference too.  They’d be out for our blood, but we’d have taken a good chunk with us if we did.

By why do we need to?  There’s NO stigma for success.  No oppression for skilled.  Unless it’s from the unsuccessful and unskilled.  But then the proles have always complained, always harangued, always rioted.  Just give them their bread and circuses for a day or two and they’d shut up.

Heck give them a national holiday.

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Interesting quiz

Here’s how I scored unsuprisingly:

If Democrat:

John Edwards (31 pt)
Hillary Clinton (16 pt)
Barak Obama (13pt)

This is where I stand on the issues.  But if voting, I would always vote against Hillary.  Because I think HE is shriller and faker than the other fakes.  As if I would every vote Democratic again.

As Republican
John Mccain (16 pt)
Ron Paul (22 pt)
Mike Huckabee (4 pt)
Mitt Romney (9 pt)
Fred Thomson (6 pt)
Rudy Giuliani (4 pt)

Well it looks like I’m more Libertarian that I though I’d be.  But then the Republican Party has changed with its neo-cons.  eww.  neo-cons.

Two things for sure.  No Child Left Behind has to go.  Illegal Immigration has to be dealt with severely. 

Honestly, I’m really an Imperialist at heart.  I believe we can solve all our problems by conquering weaker nations and stripping them of their resources, colonizing them by eradicating their populations and placing our own citizens where theirs USED to live.  We really wouldn’t have too much of a terrorist problem if we forget about human rights and torture & execute anyone related to terrorists without trial and just burn their villages down and shoot everyone or take them to our labor camps.

We would do wonders for our economy if we can have a fresh population of “indentureds”  to do our menial labor.  We could reduce our prison population too.  After all, I’ve always believed that there no resource as renewable and eco-friendly as the “human” resource.  Who needs cars when we could have rickshaws and litters.  Who needs to worry about a busy schedule to do laundry, mow the lawn, dress, bathe, etc. when we could have our indentureds take care of it for us.

I’ve always felt that the American delusion of liberty, equality, and human rights have always kept the United States back
from being a real top notch nation and kept it’s citizens from the real carefree pleasures, luxuries, and benefits of being the most powerful nation on Earth.  Look at what ancient cultures that have embraced this policy had accomplished:  Egypt, the Pyramids; China, the Great Wall; Rome, the roads, acquaducts, our western culture; Greece, philosophy & western culture too; Persia, the preservation of ancient knowledge; England, the English language and culture; Mayans & Aztecs, staying the apocolypse with blood sacrifice.  I could go on forever.

We really should take war seriously for what it is:  the tried and true, practical, method to acquire wealth and resources.  Wars for ideology, like “democracy ” and “freedom,” is as best infeasible and at worst dangerously romantic.  We really should be at war more often with our rivals (like the EU, Russia, China, Canada) to conquer them and take their  resources.  Plus, who doesn’t like being called “master?”

At least then it would be an honest, undelusional, and un-hypocritcal foreign policy. 

Give birth.  I don’t have ovaries.  Thank goodness I’m spared that experience.  The only hard part of being a male is having to initiate and receive rejection, after rejection.  In the end women have all the power–and the support of American society.

Keep crying Hillary.  Cry yourself into office you fake.

Bona Dea.  You know she never shed a tear after Katrina, yet when someone asks about her hair–tears.

Speaking of another thing that I’ll never do:  be president of the US, but then why would I want to? 

As an Imperial I see democracy as an infernal waste of time.  Give us a Caesar, give us an emperor to make the decisions and be done with this sham–no–illusion of American liberty and the sovereignty of the body politic.

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I always have the butterflies.  Everyday I have to be up on stage.  Which is everyday.  But as my old TV and Radio professor and director used to always say before we went on air:  Everybody’s got butterflies, it’s your job to make them fly in formation.

So in short I have to suck it up: the fear, the jitters, the overwhelming desire to puke every second and just act.  Everyday I have to put on Mr. Chiang the teacher (the character is confident, moody, forceful, deliberate, rude, in-your-face, frank and honest to a fault, and a drill searjeant with a hint of heart).  Most things that I am really not or that I am in part, but not as exaggerated. 

It has been an interesting gig.  One of the most difficult roles I have ever had to play:  me, but not me, not really me.  It’s as scripted as it can be, but mostly interactive theatre or as I’ve learnt to call it: confrontational theatre. Only a few students (or ex-students) have really seen me “off-stage” as really the introverted, insecure bookworm.

Like people have said before teaching is 3/4 acting and 1/4 actual teaching.  That’s true, all true.

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I’d have to say the zipper is by far the most useful.  Everyone owns one.  I wouldn’t even put it beyond the bushpeople in Africa owning one now they’re being civilized because their habitat is divided among several nations and they’re not allowed to cross borders.

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Two year olds are brand conscious.  My co-worker Jerry’s little daughter knows what Target is and can name brands of cereal.

Yes, I am conscious of brand, but then I know some people who own the sweatshops that make those clothes too.  Did you know that it costs something like 50 cents to make women’s underwear that sell for 40-50$ here in the states?  I asked him why the mark-up.  He says people don’t think it’s valuable if he sold it for $5 (still making a killing as he pointed out) they’d think it was crap, that people attribute quality to the brand and cost of a thing.  So the same product as another brand and lower price sold at Walmart is considered a crappy product, but it’s the same product sold at Victoria’s Secret and $50 in the mall, then hey, it’s got to be quality!  Amazing.  Perhaps I should invest in the garment industry.

You know I can say the same for education.  Since people perceive that it’s free then they don’t value it, but it’s going to cost them some tangible price then what do you know suddenly they’re interested.

BTW is it me or is there always some fat Texan in a ten gallon hat that always shows up at lingerie shows and hogs up all the cheese?  I remember in August ’95 at this show in the Sheraton Vancouver–you know, I think that’s a story that I’m NOT about to tell unless it’s in person with liquid refreshment and salubrious surroundings.

Cheers! 
 

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Here’s a something that I wrote during my meditations today and a good example of today’s topic of criticism:

Tell me why I should still believe in God?  Scratch that.  I believe in God I just don’t believe that he’s for me or that I want a relationship with God.  Why?  Because I cannot believe that he is for my good.  Maybe for others–I don’t know their stories–frankly I haven’t heard many of them at all.  All I know is my own life.

The one big factor is his promise to supposedly “prosper me & to bless me.”  Also that if I “ask, it will be given.  Knock and the door will be open.”  I mean that most people say that I don’t have a right to ask anything from God & that he doesn’t have an obligation to answer.  Correct.  Supposedly he loves me, but I haven’t seen him do so or make good on those promises.  Others will respond by saying that he doesn’t work on my terms to prove himself or that he’s been working for my good behind the scenes.

Any reasonable person will need more than that response.

I hate disingenuous “Christians” that would answer that way.  Don’t they know how perfectly ignorant and arrogant that makes them sound?  Not to mention half-assed?  How many true testimonies of God have I heard from credible people?  Hardly any.  Most tales are half-baked bits of mumbo-jumbo droppings from the lie-like-the-devil-to-save-face tree.  Come on.  You are not fooling me.  Half-assed stories from half-assed people.

Just another reason to not want a relationship with God.

If most of “his people” or at least people who represent him have never had a real tangible answered prayer then why should I believe the case that he answers is true?  Because he said so?  And since he is God that’s all that matters?  Hogwash.  “Faith” is too convenient for those faithless to use as an excuse to never face their faithlessness.  Hell, everyone is faithless and has to confront it whether it is a nugget or a mountain.

Another half-assed answer would be to give a bunch of advice and quote scripture.  That’s very nice.  But again meaningless because of credibility.  Why the Hell should I take advice from a person who has never experienced God’s fulfillment of promise?  Worse yet, that smacks of sympathy and heartlessness.  We all know that sympathy is of the devil.  It’s only feeling bad without real compassion or obligation to love and act in genuine love.  Like making a donation to charity.  It’s more meaningful to suffer with the suffering than drop a cool million.  I don’t think I need to go into the idea that advice and quoting scripture to the suffering is also heartless.  I don’t want to hear it, nobody does.

Worse still are those that’ll say that I’ve got to love first to experience love.  Are you “Christians” supposed to love first as you say?  Where’s the love in that response?  It’s precisely people like you that don’t love or act in love that have brought me to this point in the first place.  Stuff it.

But I don’t blame you.  Not fully.  If God gave you any real experiences you might be different, but he didn’t.  As for me, I’m one of you.  I’ve had only one real prayer request all my life: I want significance, acceptance, and to be loved.

But I know that will never happen;  that that prayer will never be answered.

So I wait to have my mind changed by true believers with real testimony.  I don’t mean about relationships, but something true that God has done for them.  Not some half-assed story of “healing” or other dubious, flashy, and generally false miracle or some other sanctimonious rant about selfishness, faith, or other generally Pharisaical finger pointing (I don’t claim to be a Christian or holy or anything except a human who is frustrated and annoyed by supposed Christians’ meaningless and ultimately hateful responses to people who genuinely hurt), but something deep, a real request–something personal that really was answered.

I doubt I’ll ever hear any.

Revenge.  No seriously, it depends on the type of criticism.  If it’s some sort of ad hominem attack and not really meant as criticism for improvement then I strike back or wait for the opportunity to strike back.  If it is meant in the spirit of helpfulness then I would consider it.  The tone and attitude of the person doing the criticism is also important. 

People doing it on-line or via e-mail are cowardly and generally are in the first category of people unless they are not afraid and are willing to take an on-line public backlash.  People who do that do it for show–I know I do when I post public criticism of that nature.  People should criticize privately and in-person one-on-one with the person they are trying to help.
   

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No.  Sometimes family members know the person best to find a match. I’ve a some friends that had arranged marriages.  They ran away first, but in the end married the other person and actually liked them.  Arranged marriage still has the same problems as match making and it’s not as if you can’t run away if you don’t really like the person.  One of my Korean friends came to America just to run away from her intended of course she ended up making a whole slew of stupid decisions and wound up pregnant.  C’est la vie.

I think that marrying someone that you “love” while you are young and still maturing is a silly thing.  Most Americans buy into this idea that just because you’re “in love” during high school or even college that you will remain in love.  Especially that romantic feelings should over power any good sense.

No marriage in general is abused.  It’s still valid, but general abuse and foolishness has screwed it up.

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I’d pursue being a writer and professor right away and move to Canada somewhere like Kelowna or something.  In fact, I’d abandon my teaching job in the middle of class if I found out that I suddenly had the money to.  I’d drive off and never look back.

Case in point:  I’ve been working all day on something that had been completed last Wednesday and was given to my dean.  Something which she promptly lost and, last minute on Friday, requested me to write ALL OVER AGAIN!  Something that she should have written because she is the Dean of English and should know the ins-and-outs of the department and, because she LOST the fucking report in the first place.  What the fuck!  Why am I covering her smarmy, incompetent, ass?

I told her no.  She insisted.  I said I’d do it for her, but that she’d have to make a deal with the devil.  So she owes me something.  Fuck.  I will remind her that she does for the rest of the year.  That’s two favors now she owes me one for that prick K.A. that I was forced to pass because the school district wanted to avoid a lawsuit and now this. “I never lose anything,” my ass.  Shit, howmany times has she called me down to look for her fucking car keys that she keeps chronically losing.  What’s the count so far 8?  9 times?  That’s almost once every week for the first quarter.  Buy a string and tie it around your neck like the mariner’s albatross lady.

Oh, yes, when the revolution comes I’ll make sure that old madame guillotine is nice and dull for this one, but I’ll probably have to get in line to pull the rope.

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