confusionSpent the whole weekend either on the phone with or out with someone. Not the someone who is mentioned below—never heard from them. But someone new. Someone interesting. Maybe I’ll speak more about it later, now it is enough to say I had a good weekend, and look forward to spend more time with this person. :)
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Because I’m a nice guy and because of things like this [ wikipedia.org ]! I think copyright is a good thing in general. But the insatiable desires of the capitalist enterprises chasing the all mighty dollar (or Euro, or Yen, or Pound, or Renminbi, or whatever) has pushed copyright so far beyond what is reasonable that they are in fact destroying the vary basis of what makes free markets and capitalism work. I don’t agree with the Copyright Term Extension Act (aka the Sunny Bono Act or the Mickey Mouse Act) which extended copyright but neither will I resort to piracy of copyrighted material. I choose to fight the system from within the framework of the law. I do not believe that we have come to a point where breaking the law is the only effective way of changing the law [ eldred.cc ].
I talked to Okie Chinco Chan [ jiminjapan.com ]the other day and we are going to try to plan a trip for China this spring. I looked for guided tour type trips but they cost upwards for $4000—without airfare! So we are reading up on our guidebooks and plotting an assult. Beijing to Hong Kong? Or Hong Kong to Beijing? You know it’s cold as crap in Beijing in March, and hot as hell in Hong Kong. How do you pack for something like that? Anyway, I also bought the Rosetta Stone [ rosettastone.com ] Mandarin Chinese language course. We’ll see if I have the mental capacity and sanity to learn a little Chinese before I land there… I already got the important stuff down: Wô yào yī gè nǚ rén! (all kinds of funky chars there with strange accent marks and such… may not display correctly…) Means “I want a woman” though I met one the other night… we’ll see if she calls this Saturday. And lets see how many people jump on that line :)
The ‘Idol’ phenomenon has hit Singapore hard. It’s now down to the last two contestants. I neither know nor care which can sing better. I have no interest in the ‘Idol’ franchise. I lived in England when the first Pop Idol aired and the sick voyeuristic orgy that it was made me question the sanity of the British people. Then I moved back to America and it followed me! I lived through two incarnations of the bad songs. The utter hysteria of the people who become addicted to this show served to confirm my ‘take the safety labels off and see if the problem fixes itself’ attitude towards American intelligence. Now I come to Singapore—half way around the world and low and fucking behold, Singapore Idol. It’s a bunch of pre-teen girls wetting their panties over a couple of guys who would not touch them as they have the wrong plumbing.
But enough bitching about Idol, I just don’t get it. I mean I like to a good train wreck as much as the next person, but I just don’t get it. The reason I do find the Singapore Idol interesting is that the final vote is being take very seriously. And it has little to nothing to do with the abilities of the two contestants to sing. It’s all about looks, but not because the girls find one guy more attractive than the other. No, it has to do with looks because it’s all about racism. See one of the contestants is of Chinese heritage and the other is Malay.
It really is that bad. Apparently there are people planning to spend a hundred plus dollars on voting for the candidate who shares their ethnicity. At fifty cents a vote that’s a deep seeded racism.
Most people think that America is racist. And it is. But one thing I have learned form living abroad and traveling is that America is far from the most racist nation. In fact we are probably near the bottom of the pile. The big difference is that there is some sort of dialog in America regarding race relations. We fought a war that had a lot to do with racism and we spent another hundred years acting openly racist. Now we still have a long way to go but there is a dialog, muted as it might be.
America has a built in advantage when it comes to racism: the melting pot. The fact that we are almost all mutts, that after the first few generations immigrants tend to acculturate, has helped long-term racism. I am not saying that racism is dead in the US—far from it. What I am saying is that America is far ahead of the rest of the world in regards to racism. It’s hard to explain without being in another society and observing it, but trust me; most of the world is racist, many of them have just never met someone of another race.
I never was too into Thanksgiving. My family is not what you would call a close nit group. As soon as I was old enough to get out on major holidays I did. I spent the Thanksgivings and Christmases of my teenage years at the movie theater, because movie theaters are open 365 days a year.
This year I am halfway around the world and it’s not a holiday here, so I spent Thanksgiving at work. I called my mom on Friday morning my time which was Thursday evening her time to talk but work quickly interrupted my call and I did little more than say hello. So all in all it was a fairly typical Thanksgiving for me, even halfway around the world. I don’t even think they have turkeys in this country…