Bright Days, Stupid Nights

It's a good life. (Reference Bixby's awesome short story by the same name, though actually I'm being truthful.)

Two three-day weekends in a row. Saturday, spent the night out on the town in Seoul, chatting up a gay newlywed couple from Amsterdam until 3:30 in the morning, then hitting a few more spots (including a front stoop for a Heineken) and finally crashing at a friend's apartment at around 7am. Got up like 3 hours later to head out to a Buddhist street festival, learned how to make origami(?) lotus flowers. Very fun.

This weekend, heading to the beautiful old capital of Korea, Gyeongju. Renting bicycles and tooling around, looking at all the traditional buildings while keeping our eyes peeled (gross) for monks celebrating Buddha's birthday. Anyone know how old he is these days?


What're you doing with spring?

[P.S. I have no right to use those images. I'll replace them with my own photos asap.]

Coworking

Today in class we were reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary. Remember Beverly Cleary? No, not Superfudge--that was Judy Bloom. Well, today Ramona got sick all over the classroom floor and her mother had to leave work to pick her up and I'm standing there at the head of the class holding my bright yellow paperback and wondering how I'd feel if I worked with Mrs. Quimby.

People who have children hope for help from all the people around them--coworkers, bosses, etc. They need a little slack, an unscheduled day off now and then, even sometimes the legitimate chance to go pick up their sick daughter from third grade. In today's overpopulated world, with big city social isolationism contributing a little something as well, people feel less and less inclined to pick up that slack.

Also, you know that mean waitress who's ditching out of work early (again) to pick up her kids from high school (while her out-of-work husband sits at home), leaving you to refill the salt shakers at server's minimum wage ($3.15?), could have had an abortion if she wasn't in a position to juggle all the aspects of being a parent, even though you don't really think you can decide whether other people should have abortions and so you end up just grumbling to yourself while you fill your salt shakers and hers, too.

In general, I wish we were all a little more willing to let out that slack. Bring back the tight-knit community, which understands that parenting is more responsibility than anyone ever expects and that it is the most important reason that the community exists to begin with.

We'd have to scale down our population a bit before we could retain that perspective, though. Just my opinion.

Miss Muffet A Feminist?

Embracing feminism doesn't mean that we must expect the same things from women and men.

It means that gender differences must not make us assume gender inferiorities.

I realized that last night. This morning, I remembered the following nursery rhyme:

Little Miss Muffet crouched on a tuffett,
Collecting her shell-shocked wits.
There dropped (from a glider) an H-bomb beside her--
Which frightened Miss Muffet to bits.

Turns out, that was written by Paul Dehn to protest nuclear war (duh). The fact that it came to mind while I was reading Freakonomics seemed appropriate, since the chapter titled "Where Have All The Criminals Gone?" makes the convincing case that they have, in fact, been aborted. I suggest you read the book for yourself. The book also added a capping quote to an issue I was thinking heavily about a bit ago: "What the link between abortion and crime does say is this: when the government gives a woman the opportunity to make her own decision about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a position to raise the baby well."

But, in the words of Mark Twain, I'm getting off track. Of course we can't expect the same things from women and men. Women don't have as much testosterone. Men don't have as much bleeding from the uterus. And you know what? It's really not as simple as that.

And in the end, I think Miss Muffet would have accepted her fate calmly. She eats curds. You can't tell me that doesn't build character.

I Love Craig's List

I'm no longer worried about where to find an apartment. I have confidence that CraigsList is going to come through for me, as long as I wait til I'm back in Buffalo. Now I just need to get to work motivating the people I want to live with me. (Hear that, Jenna, Brandon, and Tami?)

I still need to figure out the job situation. I really can't afford to go jobless for any stretch of time once I'm back in the states, and since that's coming up in less than four months, I feel that I really need to narrow it down. I'll keep you posted on how that goes--keep me posted on any further ideas.

I'm almost finished with For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I'm thrilled with it, it was way better than A Farewell To Arms, and I suggest you run right out and get it from your local dosagwan because it's fantastic.

And that's all there is for today.

Hypocrite with a Cushy Job

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress was hilarious. I seriously recommend picking it up at your local library. (Here I'm being hypocritical--I haven't even set foot in the Suji dosagwan, and it's right across the street from my apartment building.)

I've been putting some thought into the kind of work I might hope to start when I'm through with my contract in August. So far, I see three clear options:

1. Food service. I loved catering, so that might be a good option. Though I doubt any job will ever be as cake as that one was. I've also been thinking about how important it is to me to learn how to cook more varied dishes... I might look for a job in the kitchen of some vegetarian restaurant.

2. Customer service. I'm incredibly patient, I have a wide vocabulary of subservience, and I love being behind-the-scenes.

3. Tutoring. Frankly, I'm kind of hoping to pick up some tutoring work no matter what other work I do.

The big issue is balancing my wish to live in Buffalo with my wish to support myself. Are there jobs in Buffalo? For what am I qualified? What can I get that I won't just quit after a few days?

The second biggest issue is my desire not to own a car. It would be a serious conflict of my general life philosophy if I started guzzling gas. Particularly since I think the best way to cut a lot of the impetus for war in the Middle East would be to severely reduce our dependency on gasoline.

Hilarity

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress is hilarious so far. Susan Gilman reminds me of David Sedaris, in that when I finish rolling around laughing, look back at the page, and reread the section, it sets me off laughing again. (And yes, both Gilman and Sedaris literally have made me roll around laughing.)

Even the Subtitles have Subtitles: A list of my to-be-read pile

I've been out of the USA for 7 months now. If the situation were a lot different and instead of a plane, I had taken a pregnancy test all those days ago, right now I would be a lot heavier, a lot scareder, and probably a lot more excited for the 9-month mark.

As it is, the only one that counts is the 12 month mark, when I'll be returning to the US. But in what state will the States be?

In related news, still trying to figure out who I'll vote for come November. Damn, now it looks like I'm going to have to focus on more than one issue. I haven't finished Fiasco: The American military adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks (reference the fact that the book's dimensions are something like 1ft X 6in X 450pg), but that's not the problem. It's this economy issue. I mean, I don't really believe in the economy, but if I did, I hear I'd have to be worried. So I guess I'll go along with it, same as I went along with kneeling and eating the wafer back when my family was "Catholic."

Fiasco has intrigued me enough that I recently bought another nonfiction about war, America's Splendid Little Wars: A short histoy of U.S. engagements from the fall of Saigon to Baghdad, by Peter Huchthausen. Looks interesting--and more importantly, short.

I also bought Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of growing up groovy and clueless, by Susan Jane Gilman. This one came highly recommended by Laurie Notaro, author of The Idiot Girl's Action Adventure Club (which I've never read). Obviously, a few interim reading projects are going to be put on hold while I digest these.

Above all, I finally got my shipment of used, cheap books from www.powells.com. I suggest you check them out--free shipping! (Not to Asia, but oh well.) Among the riches: You Are The Message by Roger Ailes, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, by Albert Einstein, and The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, by Douglas Adams. Sadly, no explanation book for the Einstein, so I'm going to have to try to struggle through it alone first.

So I'm pretty much drowning in unread books, and I therefore can't be spending any more time listing them.

Dear Bias

Right now I'm reading a biography of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il. It's horribly biased, but interesting nonetheless. For instance, did you know that North Korea ("the People's Democratic Republic of Korea," despite being communist) once kidnapped a South Korean actress and her director husband in the hopes of improving the NoKo film industry? And that Kim Jong Il is a nice, smart guy, according to Vladimir Putin?

I'm also back to doing some calculus work. Pretty pumped about that.

In related news, I've decided to attend UB when (/if) I go back to school, for mathematics. I'm currently researching the idea of going for a master's, rather than a second bachelor's.

In unrelated news, I customized my Google News Aggregator, and I'm in love with it. Do it yourself!

Wishing to be the Friction in your Jeans

It's a new semester. All week it's been, "No running in the halls!"

New books to figure out. New names to learn. One of my classes, there's a girl named Cherry and a girl named Strawberry. Blueberry dropped out. (I'm not even lying.)

That's not to say there haven't been a few good things to read this week as well. The article telling us about how one out of every 100 Americans is behind bars, found through Objectify This. The presidential hopefuls on msnbc.com, of course.

And the Best Buddhist Writing 2007. Two excerpts from the essay entitled There's No "I" in Happy by Matthieu Ricard:

"...A person whom we consider today to be an enemy is most certainly somebody else's object of affection, and we may one day forge bonds of friendship with that selfsame enemy. We react as if characteristics were inseparable from the object we assign them to. Thus we distance ourselves from reality and are dragged into the machinery of attraction and repulsion that is kept relentlessly in motion by our mental projections. Our concepts freeze things into artificial entities and we lose our inner freedom, just as water loses its fluidity when it turns to ice."

...

"You are napping peacefully in a boat in the middle of a lake. Another craft bumps into yours and wakes you with a start. Thinking that a clumsy or prankish boater has crashed into you, you leap up furious, ready to curse him out, only to find that the boad in question is empty. You laugh at your own mistake and return peacefully to your nap. The only difference between the two reactions is that in the first case, you'd thought yourself the target of someone's malice, while in the second you realized that your 'I' was not a target."


Take that, negativity! You're only a mirage created by my mind's egotistical habits.

On Tuesday as I walked to work, I found myself trying to convince myself of the following:

I am everything. I am the world. I am the rocks beneath my feet. I am the sidewalk. I am the snowflake as it tries to follow the car. I am the wind current. I am the air passing through that woman's lungs. I am that woman. I am the force of gravity, I am the electromagnetic force combating gravity. I am not the center of the world...these things are me. I am a small part. I am insignificant--I am everything. I create the world around me. The man walking in front of me creates the world around him. He is me. I am him.


...Actually, at that point it got kind of personal, but it was interesting while it lasted.

Red, Reading, Will Reed

I was recently disturbed by Zeitgeist, the movie about the three interrelated topics of religion, 9/11, and the US Federal Reserve Bank. I'd like to be blase on this one and act like I knew everything that movie had to tell me, but I really didn't. Straight through, I was pretty wide-eyed.

I recommend watching it. (Just don't take it as gospel. Obviously.)

This is totally different from how I also recommend She's The Man.

I just finished reading Rubbish by Richard Girling. I don't recommend it. I'll let you know where it takes me, though. It was about on the same level as The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen. The Green Book at least had the benefits of being very short and packed full of easily applicable tips.

Now I'm back to the hilariously titled Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks. I've got to struggle through this mammoth tome in time for the election. At some point, I'll have a few pages of quotes, a distillate of the book so you don't have to read it--let me know if you're interested in receiving them.

And now I'm reading my students' essays. They continue to be the bane of my existence.

Peace.

Rubbish is Rubbish

Now two-thirds of the way through Richard Girling's book Rubbish: Dirt on our hands and crisis ahead. I'm thinking there's a lot in this book I could have gone without--the entire 20-page section on how great apples and cheese used to be, for example. Then again, it begs the question of how often we need to hear something repeated before we actually do something about it.

I've gotten three implementable ideas out of this book so far.

1. Go to farmer's markets. Buy local. Avoid supermarkets. Not only does this support local economy and (probably) better humanitarian/environmental business practices, it also reduces the transport of the goods you're buying, which helps the environment out a lot.

2. Reduce your personal waste stream. Everything you use goes somewhere. Be more conscious of what you use in a day. For example: how was your lunch packaged? I should be bringing a tupperware container to the restaurant I get kimbop at, but I haven't yet, which means every time I get lunch there, I throw out a plastic bag, a square of tinfoil, and two wooden chopsticks.

3. Do more research about energy production. I don't actually know how feasible wind power is--but I do know that Denmark gets about 20% of its electricity from wind turbines. This book's reminding me of what a false savior nuclear energy is, considering we don't know what to do with it besides bury it (the book is about the UK), and it's going to be around for way longer than we can reasonably guarantee safe storage.

So...my goal of learning about waste disposal and energy production has not been met by reading this book, but it did help me to refine what it is that I want to learn more about. Sweet!

Trash Vortex Update

Not really that surprising that Greenpeace has something to say about this.

Not really surprising that I don't know what more to say.

Recycle!

On to a new topic. I've finished The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, both in book form and in the Nova made-for-TV movie form that's available on the internet.

My conclusion: while it did serve to get me interested in physics (reference my anticipated shipment of Einstein's paper on his theory of relativity--and another book to explain the Einstein) it's kinda lame and really cursory. Though maybe that's as it must be. The book was about 400 pages and the movie, three hours. Who could even start if either were longer?

Reminding me of resolution #7. Be less verbose.

Guess I recently notched it up to 8--no alcohol this year.

Reminds me of a great friend from college who'd always give up Bud Light for Lent.

we're all Deer in the Headlights of this one

When I stumbleupon'd the plastic soup twice the size of the continental united states that is afloat in the pacific seas, I was reminded of why we need to chuck our disposable culture.

I've always had the hope that our huge ocean rafts would be more intentionally created. (Reference one of my favorite sci-fi novels, Snow Crash.)

What do we do about this? It's one of those "Oh, man.." kind of problems.

Drowning In Waste

I'm about a third of the way through Rubbish by Richard Girling, and my favorite parts so far have been the tours he's taken me on in management facilities for our three primary wastes: bathroom waste, recycled waste, and unrecycled waste. I was actually most surprised by the recycling section, because I had slightly higher hopes for what's being done in that sector.

Worry number one: Why aren't more things recyclable? This doesn't even come from the book, it just comes from looking around. Can we recycle CD jewel cases? Can we recycle plastic bread bags? Can we recycle the screw-on tops of our water bottles? In most cases, the answers I've found have been NO. WHY?? And why don't we listen to people who tell us not to buy things that aren't recyclable?

Worry number two: Why aren't things recycled more efficiently? If I have a first-edition PET bottle, never before recycled, why does it have to become a gutter in its next life? Why can't it be washed out and reused the way it is? Or at least cleaned, melted, and reused as another PET water bottle? What is the deal with making our recyclables into disposables after only a few cycles?

Worry number three: Why aren't more people worried about this? I mean...how much more room do we really have for landfills? And isn't anyone worried about this modern-day version of 'sweep it under the rug'? I've heard the argument that we can just store our garbage on the moon, or shoot it into the sun, so why get up in arms...but I've also heard the argument that it costs between $5,000-$10,000 per pound just to get something into orbit, so that doesn't really seem all that feasible of a solution. Besides which, siphoning off resources out of our closed planetary system just because we don't want to go without our chuckable water bottles seems like an awfully shortsighted idea.