Super Troopers

I forgot to mention the other day that after 3 years, I finally finished watching the end of Super Troopers. I saw the first part of it in some kind of a party setting, and I suppose it didn't interest me enough to seek out the rest purposefully. Anyways, I saw the whole thing on TV, and though the plot was still too involved, I saw more of it that I liked than before. The Farva character is great; he reminds me of that guy Sampson in grad school, who futilely tried to come up with nicknames for everything.

"Our shenanigans are cheeky and fun. His are cruel and tragic."

"License and registration...CHICKENFUCKER!"

Oh mercy! I think I like cruel and tragic best. If I think about my favorite comedies - Divorce Italian Style; There's Something About Mary; Jackass; Eric Cartman - they all share a streak of cruelty.

FYI: If you were to ask me how it's possible for a guy to get his game on without making a sleaze out of himself, I would point to the Foster character. In case you were wondering.

Restless

I can't sit still. Even watching TV makes me feel antsy. It's a very familiar feeling I get in these hot, airless summers, and typically the remedy I seek is to go surfing. I I would love love love to hit the surf right about now. I've been on my best behavior all summer, not having gone to the beach even once since I've been back. The temptation to cave right about now is ripe, and the only thing keeping my resolution strong is the thought of being in PR in a few days. I'm going to have an apoplectic fit if the job interview makes me have to cancel the trip.

Pre-Cognitive Self

I was sitting out in the dusk tossing a ball to the dog when my attention was arrested by a bird flapping in the air. It stayed in one place, the way you sometimes see birds gliding on the wind, except that it wasn't gliding because its wings were flapping. I don't know why, but seeing this bird took me back to an old memory, and I thought of Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony.

It happens relatively often, reverting to this self from this particular time. Certainly there is no other memory that can be triggered with such a lack of specific stimulus (eg, the only thing that can really remind me of age 10 at this point would be something like the elementary school playground). It must have been something about the color of the sky (blue and pink) or the dreamish way the mountain ridge looks with the atmospheric perspective (technical term for how medieval painters conveyed depth through color), or the futile flight of the bird. I was 3 or 4 again.

As soon as this feeling gripped me (and it left just as suddenly), I asked myself why I always deja back to this vu, when I do, and not to some other vu. The easiest answer I came up with is that this is the only time I remember when I had a tabula rasa, and the only cognitive faculty I exercised was the one recording external stimuli - without any clouding or interpreting by an awareness of an Ego, and therefore all the more crisp as an imprint. For this reason, the memory of this age can be triggered by colors or shapes alone: the colors and shapes that I remember from 3 or 4 are usually autonomous, not integrated into particular narratives. In fact, it's interesting that the things I do remember most are the commerical objects I came into contact with, such as Care Bears; these defined my self. There are some other memories that are encased in narratives (like the time I put my own velcro shoes on in the garage, and as I was walking out my dad stopped me and explained why it was that my shoes were on the wrong feet; or the time my cousin tried to teach me how to ski by explaining the snowplow stop as a "pizza," and I had no idea what she was talking about because a pizza is round and the skis were straight), but as a rule their recollection is never as swift or vivid or as unsolicited as the Care Bears-class of memories.

I remember the exact moment when I first recognized the Ego as such, though I don't remember at what age it happened. I was in bed trying to fall asleep - it must have been summer, because I was insomniac that night, and I don't remember being insomniac on winter nights - and I suddenly thought about dogs, and how different I would be feeling at that very moment if I were a dog instead of a person. Then I marvelled at randomness and improbability of it, that I was placed in this body and this brain, instead of a dog's.

When I try to recall what time of my life was happiest, I generally draw a blank. I'm pretty sure I haven't been consistently happy since the day I first set foot in my first preschool, which I don't remember, but I'm told I cried and cried and cried that day. However, when I have these "Care Bear" deja vus, I feel a vague sense of contentment. It follows then that the only time I was happy in my life was when I wasn't self-aware. When I was trotting around, dog-like, absorbing things without response or reflection or commentary.

What a "Garden of Eden" lesson! The old folks were right that the Tree of Knowledge is the source of all evil, but they were wrong to try to pursuade us that it had anything to do with disobedience or pride. Intelligence is what causes pain - and I don't mean the high intelligence that you have when you're a sage (which I'm hopeful will prove to be a good thing, eventually), I'm talking about the barest intelligence you need just to feel and know that you are you and not something else. The only natural happiness - tthe only kind of happiness you don't have to earn through sweat and tears - are those spaced out moments, when you lose your specificity and are a mere conglomerate of sensory intake.

Sha-Wiing!

I got the second interview! This is the job I was waiting on yesterday.

Empty Inbox :-(

Last week's interviewer said that they were going to make a decision Wednesday or Thursday this week. I haven't heard from them yet, so it's not looking very promising. That's kinda sad.

I also won't be seeing Cheap Trick, as the event sold out early.

I'm comforted by the fact that a week from today, I'll be toasting in the Carribean sun. Sipping mai tais and licking rainforest toads and rubbing elbows with Ricky Martin.

Immigration Bill

I must not be understanding the immigration bill right, because I don't get that provision about preferring educated immigrants. Isn't America the one place in the world where (theoretically) you can forge your own destiny? Where you can escape the oppressive dream-killers at home and take a piece of the pie you wouldn't otherwise get? To allow only the educated to pursue that dream is to give the haves even more opportunity, and to make the have-nots lose even that teeny foothold they have, of hoping to find happiness if they're willing to work hard enough for it. True, I think the American Dream is increasingly turning into a load of hot air, but I haven't heard of better alternatives yet. While we still have a little bit of that role as the world's freedom-loving haven, I feel it's important not to exclude all the real dreamers in favor of the spoiled brats with a trust-fund-bought edumacation.

So much for the idealistic Rex. There's also the very cynical and practical side to immigration: labor. What the American labor force really needs are people who are willing to do all those difficult tasks that born-Americans (including yours truly) think they're too good to do. Like cleaning toilets. It's as true in this country as it is in the other wealthier ones, that you import your Polish plumbers or Asian housemaids or whatever. Just try getting born-Americans to do that stuff, and they'll start unionizing and raising hell (and hopefully I'll have a chance to defend them, hehe), and even if it all works out it still won't be the most efficient way of getting things done. That's just how the temperament goes.

My case study is a story my dad tells about how the rents were pinched for money back in '79 after buying their first house. Both my mom and dad were working and bringing home a respectable amount, but they were afraid it wasn't enough so my dad started looking to moonlight as a janitor or a used car salesman. By the way, my rents are immigrants. Anyways, my dad was willing to suck it up, in the great tradition of the American Dream...but he didn't get the job because the manager just couldn't accept that a college graduate and gainfully-employed engineer would stoop such menial work.

It must have been infectious, because today these same tough-nut immigrants won't let me take an entry-level job because the $14/hr pay is an insult to my pride and worth. Unless it's really worth my while, they argue, I'm better off hanging out at home. With my dignity.

The lesson to be learned here? While it is degrading to clean the toilet at home, there is no shame in cleaning the toilets of strangers.

Think about. I think that's human nature.

In spite of this minor beef I have about the immigration bill, I hope it passes. I don't suppose a single person thinks it's perfect, which is the reason behind all the baby mama drama - excuse me, compromise - that's been going down in Washington.

My Favorite Wife

SLOW AND PAINFUL. I can't believe they tried to pass it off as a comedy. It was so NOT funny it was practically tragic!

If Cary Grant is supposed to be a comedian (the way the trailer promised; "the screen's favorite comedian," it said) then I don't get Cary Grant at all. Sure he's fairly easy on the eyes, but if those are the only two axes (looks + comic timing), then he barely makes a poor man's Gary Cooper. Even if you decide to chuck the comedy requirement and amp up the dashing romanticism - and North By Northwest would suggest that this is Cary Grant's proper franchise - I'd still prefer Gregory Peck. The three of them basically look the same. I mean, the way a Toyota basically looks like a Lexus.

Interesting note about Peck and Grant that I just found on imdb: Grant got the first offer for Peck's role in Roman Holiday, and Bogart's role in Sabrina. So really he just hates Audrey Hepburn. There may be hope for him yet...

Anyways, thank god he turned down Sabrina, because he would have ruined a perfectly delightful romantic comedy. Bogey made the movie.

Who Killed Vincent Chin?

I did...with my ignorance.

When did I become the stupid one? It's incredible to think that after all these years, after all the rhetoric I've spewed, I've fallen into every stereotype I thought I so cleverly sidestepped. Girls are lame. Asians are naive. Pretty people don't even try, because everything gets handed to them. When did this happen? As long as I was in school, I was the opinionated whipsmart hard-working Amazon. I barely kept up with the national news because, well frankly, I didn't have to; attitude and instinctual intelligence were enough to get by in most social situations. After all, does anybody give a hot damn about local news? Who even knows who's on the city council or state senate?

The answer, it turns out, is Everybody. How did I not get the memo?

In the end it was just book-smarts. I've become purely ornamental now, because I'm so handicapped in worldly knowledge that I opt not to say anything, over saying something idiotic. Today, for instance, there was a viewing of the documentary about Vincent Chin with a panel discussion, and I feel CERTAIN that I would have been smacked upside the head, by all, if I had admitted the truth that I had no idea who Vincent Chin was. Or last Tuesday, when I went to the National Womens Political Caucus meeting supporting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, I was the only person there who didn't know which Sacramento leaders were throwing in their support for which candidate.

You can picture me standing there, nodding and smiling blankly. Let me tell you, it's a fucking uncomfortable, out of body experience.

The only thing worse was when I pretended like I knew what I was talking about (I was able to comment a bit about present-day Detroit; not that I fooled anyone for one second, I'm sure). As I rambled on about the economic depression and abandonment, I would see this Expression creep into my listener's faces. It resembles that pitying look I used to give my students when I was trying to be encouraging.

Miscellany

"Nothing is harder to write about than love. It's so simple! You have to catch it in the details."
- Billy Wilder et al. [+ recorded from memory], The Lost Weekend

"I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn..."
- P.G. Wodehouse

Saturday, August 11 - I get to see my heroes CHEAP TRICK perform all the Sgt. Peppers songs at the Hollywood Bowl! Three words say it all: Bun. E. Carlos.

LSAT went up a bit last week, and I can just FEEL it going down again. Perhaps the best strategy is to take a break every other day, or every three days.

Commie Interview

I'm VERY excited about the call-back I got today: legal work at a firm that does labor advocacy! Not only is this great because I got my foot in the door all on my own - something I despaired of doing at this stage of work experience - but it's also perfect because I can actually act like I care about this cause. The reason my old dreams were crushed was because I was just the little guy up against a monolithic, uncompromising System.

By the way, if you're more versed in commie lingo than me, I'd really appreciate some pointers (eg buzz words for "little guy" and "system") between now and 2pm tomorrow. Nothing says comaraderie like the right street slang.

I should have paid more attention to the commie movement that used to go down at Leopolds with the grad students union. It was such sweet access to the underground, one I fell ass-backwards in, and I'll probably never see its peer! UM was hella unionized. But how could I have known that I might be called upon to bust out some credibility?

Priest vs. Maiden: Possibly Some More Thoughts on Camp

I'm really down on the masturbators these days, for some reason. When something annoys me, it's quite likely that I'll characterize it as some kind of self-stroking. For instance, my brother and I were talking about Oceans 13 the other day, and I said that I wasn't going to go out of my way to see George Clooney jack off to his own smugness anymore; the last 15 minutes of Oceans 11 was more than enough for me, thank you. My brother said that Adam Corolla had a similar complaint, but worded more lucidly: two hours of Clooney, Pitt, and Damon standing around grinning their "I'm too cool for you" grin.

Come to think of it, that's precisely what I hate about many kinds of British comedy. The posturing, or whatever. Even a good joke, excessive self-voyeurism can ruin. Family Guy has the same problem (in addition to South Park's very apt critique about the interchangeable jokes).

But I digress. I'm supposed to talk about Priest and Maiden. I had a sudden urge today in my car to pop in my old Iron Maiden mix tape, compiled by my fellow Grease ensemble member in high school whose name I forget. I always was a fan of Hallowed Be Thy Name. I thought it would be a good song to karaoke, which must have been why I got the idea of seeing what versions of it are on youtube. I found an old live version, and even before the bells stopped ringing, I was turned off by a distinct impression that somewhere, a dolphin was being flogged.

The surprising thing is that Judas Priest doesn't seem to have that same problem - and you would totally expect them to! I mean, the bondage gear: nuff fucking said. And the sound too, of course, it doesn't hold back anything. And yet, it's so interesting: I've always found Priest stuff to be of unimpeachable taste. Observe the Breaking the Law video: perfect, exquisite! I really think it's something that all videos should take as their philosophical basis. Far from conjuring up "masturbation" when you hear Priest, you're actually more inclined toward "AWESOME."

Why is that? My best hypothesis is that they're just so far over the top that you couldn't possibly imagine them voyeuring off themselves; that is, if self-awareness were present at all, wouldn't they be restrained by modesty and embarrassment? It may also have something to do with my personal take on gender. People like Rob Halford and his bondaged bandmates so thoroughly embrace the feminine that it looks more like copulation than masturbation. By contrast, the toughness and the seriousness of, say, Hallowed Be Thy Name easily slips into macho posturing. (I still love the song, but it an be precarious.)

Could this be a model for my preferences in people as well? Is the secret attraction of androgyny the idea of my own inclusion, qua feminine? If so, talk about self-stroking! Still, I think there may be something to this idea. People who approach their masculinity as a purity thing usually look to me like they have less of it, paradoxically.

Smutty Romance Novels

One of the great things about the public library is that you get all-you-can-read access to those bargain bin harlequin romance novels. I like to think of them as the "thinking man's pornography," which roughly translates into "women's pornography." Zing! They're a good way to unwind. Apparently, as I found out from one of my friends, there's a whole cottage industry of turbo-powered academic women who support this sort of thing - the lesson being that one should take the "guilty" out of the "guilty pleasure" association. At least that's what I'm going to argue.

I haven't gotten acquainted with much of the ouvre, but my few exposures are limited to the bodice-ripping period pieces; I see no reason to expand. Today I picked up a book that told the story of a young lady in the Spanish court who runs away a New World paradise in order to escape the lecherous attentions of Ferdinand and the jealous wrath of Isabella, following her true love who happens to be Christopher Colombus' first mate...

Promising, right? I thought with a story like that the romance couldn't fail - but I was wrong. The consummation happened in less than a page, while the rest of the love scene was filled with fluff about how they're married and love each other, in a way they thought wasn't possible.

So I went back to the book I had started yesterday, which I got tired of because the plot was a little too involved. Girl receives orders from her brother's kidnappers to pay a hefty ransom. Girl turns into a highway robber. Girl robs a viscount, of his heart among other things. Elaborate rescue plot which I wholly skipped over. Viscount's follows his heart and consummates with highway robbing girl (agonizing about how he could break off planned marriage with honor) and on that very night fiancee gets kidnapped by same as brother. Brother and fiancee share cell -

at which point I stopped reading again, because the denouement was so obvious and convenient.

As I left the library, I had a strong urge to get that bad taste out of my system. I promptly went to the bookstore and bought the next installment of the Proust magnum opus. It was one of those reminders today, as to why it is that non-easy books must exist.

Seriously, I Hate My Life

These website applications: you think they're going to save your work when you hit the SAVE button, but apparently you'd be wrong. I just lost about an hour's work because I thought it was safe, for some reason, not to write on Word first. Dumb! It was difficult work, too, involving me bullshitting about how much I love to "help people." I had forgotten why I resolved not to do any more community service work: it's because I hate feeling like such a charlatan! And honestly, there isn't any other acceptable thing to put on your applications; I've thought hard about it. "It was so rewarding to know that I made a difference..." blah blah blah. Now I have to go back and go through that whole aenema all over again.

Team America

I don't know what everyone was talking about; it's a great movie! I love how they were able to get the puppets to make facial expressions, but for some reason they still walk like spazzes. I was skeptical about giving Team America a chance, but the hook for me was the scene where Gary gets drunk and pukes out in the alley. After that I had to watch the whole movie, and was rewarded with some memorably asinine gems, like:

1. Freedom costs $1.05
2. When Chris was a child, he was gang-raped by the cast of Cats
3. "I promise I will never die"
4. Derka-derka Mohammed jihad sherpa
5. AIDS AIDS AIDS!

Moves to Learn By

I saw this video a few weeks back on dlisted, and I figured I keep it in here for the archives.

Psychology Mastermind or Dunce?

I had my big job interview today, and I haven't the foggiest how it went. Far from gettting any humdinger questions, I barely got asked anything! The interview lasted about an hour and a half, during which I spoke for about ten minutes. And nodded a lot.

Halfway through the interview, I figured that either the manager loves talk - which I can totally understand - or they were trying to sell themselves just as much as I was trying to sell me. In either case, it was best to shut up. With my brilliant mastery of human psychology, I reasoned that if the manager loves to talk, he'd be much more likely to walk away with a positive impression of the meeting if I just gave him hella audience. Then I made sure to throw back some key concepts back to him ("we're something like type 'A-' personalities"), so that when he thinks back to the interview, he'll conflate some of his lines with mine, creating the illusion that I actually spoke more than I did. Ha-ha!

Honestly, though, I don't know what to think. I've been on the other side of the conversation too, during rush, for example, and I know that sometimes you gear yourself up to talk a lot and fill up all the space when you know that you're in for an otherwise painful encounter. If that were the case, I was a dunce for not grabbing the initiative by the horns and forcing him to learn more about me and captivating his slack interest.

I got two questions, which I think I answered competently enough: What is your commitment? and, Why entertainment? Then I got introduced to the director and the manager asked me to recap those two answers. The recap I don't think I aced as well, because I accidently waxed negative about my former occupation. Hm, now that I think of it, maybe my not having a chance to say a lot was the best thing that could have happened for this interview. I, of all people, am familiar with the old principle that the more you say, the more you'll say wrong. I don't think it's quite at "adage" status yet, but it's something my mom likes to remind me of.

GUESS WHAT I GOT A JOB INTERVIEW!!!

I don't want to jinx it by saying anything more yet, but it almost makes me cry to think that my unemployment woes might be over...it all goes down in about 24 hours.

Current Audio

My Chemical Romance
Teenagers

I dig the groove. A pleasant surprise from MCR, and I liked them pretty well already. One thing: does it not remind you of the Georgia Satellites, a la Keep Your Hands to Yourself? I suppose it's a great a time as any for that sound to be making a comeback; still, funny to think it's actually happening.

2 and 2 Together

Aha! I just got the reference. In yesterday's play David Henry Hwang made several references to BD Wong as the big actor who got his start in M. Butterfly. It just hit me, as I'm watching the opening credits for SVU, that BD Wong is the psychiatrist and token Asian of the show. I was a fan and didn't even know it.

PS - NO SHIT! I'm learning right now from SVU that NAMBLA is a real organization. Okay, I suppose I should have known that, but I just assume that South Park makes up a lot of stuff.

Lawrence of Arabia

I don't get it. And hey, it was WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too long. This is the only movie I've had to watch in 3 separate sittings - not because I was busy and had to do something else, but because I would get too exhausted after a while.

I'm at the credits right now. I wonder why Spielberg and Scorsese got included in the special thanks.

Anyways, first the good. Visually beautiful! If you were to translate the concept of epic into pure visual form, it would look exactly like this. Any other movie, it would get boring to see people plodding along on camels though the desert - and only that - for about 30 minutes. But the palette and the composition kept the interest up.

I'm not sure why we should see Lawrence as a hero. I get that the best heroes are supposed to be ambiguous, but I don't think Lawrence qualifies. Basically we get a raging egoist, who gets raped, and then loses it. I feel that if anything, a hero should find his moral center in the face of adversity. I also feel that adversity should consist of something more existential than a few minutes of feeling unmanly. Really, all women deal with sexual exploitation like it's a way of life, and you don't see (most of) us screaming for a bloodbath. When I think of my real heroes - like V (V for Vendetta) or Brando in On the Waterfront - their moment of herodom comes with the philosophical discovery that they play but a small part in the larger human struggle. A non-real hero - say, American History X - stakes his whole identity on his cornhole. It's egomaniacal, that's what it is.

Still, Lawrence has one very fine heroic moment: when he has to execute Gasim. It's so...muah! perfecto.

Another Important Lesson

I had this thought while watching Yellow Face - and I feel almost certain that I've reflected on this before, though I don't remember why - that there is something very comical about TREASON as an insult. I can't put my finger on it. It strikes me as being similar to the comic potential of COWARDICE, or to a lesser extent VOLUPTUOUSNESS, or perhaps even CANNIBALISM. Well, let me qualify: cowardice is additionally funny because it reflects back to the character of the insulter, ie it takes a certain amount of cowardice to insult someone you know won't fight back. But I also think it may be funny for some of the same reasons as treason. I have a few theories.

1. It's quaint and improbable to require the opposite characteristics (love of fatherland, courage in battle, chastity) as necessary virtues in our postmodern world.
2. The vices themselves are so improbable as to be quaint (treason, cannibalism), or inevitably an exaggeration in the context of an insult.
3. The corresponding virtue is so strong an expectation that it's impossible for anyone to live up to it (loyalty, thinness, comeliness, virginity of mothers). By the same token, the insult could be considered a "cheap shot," like calling someone fat or ugly or saying your mom's a slut.

Despite what I threw in there about our postmodern world, I have a hunch that any of these reasons might be more timeless. Being a Persian-sympathizer was a standard trope in Greek comedy, and Archilochus, who lived in a time when people actually did fight in battles and protect their virgins, often makes fun of himself for being a coward and a lecherer. I haven't made up my mind yet. I'll have to give more thought to why these things are funny.

Yellow Face

The bulk of this play was very good, quite insightful about what it is to be Asian American, and an interesting adaptation of real political incidents. It was hard to like at first, though, because the opening comedy was...uh, not honest. How should I say, it seemed to discuss Asian Americans in a way that was intended to make the White Man laugh. I mean, for most Asian Americans, I doubt that David Carradine being cast in Kung Fu is a real issue anymore. Nor is "taped up slanty eyes" (whatever the hell that was).

To be honest, I'm not even sure I get all the hype about Asian Americans in the media. Who decided that Hollywood was such a great job that it was something Asians should WANT representation in? I believe a lot of Asians - including myself - would feel repulsed and demeaned to be mixed up in all that trash (well, unless I'm the media person BEHIND the camera...hire me as a writer!!). I'm as offended as the next person when the media start playing up stereotypes, but if we're going to pay attention to what trash are saying about our people, our time would be better spent listening to politicians.

But I digress. The other major flaw with this otherwise fine play is the end. The playwright actually had the nerve to make one of his characters (named David Henry Hwang) dissertate about the themes and structure of this play! Talk about self-indulgent! I could almost hear him whacking off to himself in the wings. Then he tries to avoid the label of self-indulgent by having the character admit it would be self-indulgent to have an autobiographical character named after himself. Nice try. It might have worked if there weren't that other character crying out, "You mean that all this time I've just been a character in your play?!"

Ugh! Suddenly I felt an urge to cut someone.

ADDENDUM: Shit! I just found out that my aggressiveness was fueled by envy. DHH started writing plays at Stanford, went on to the Yale school of drama, and became an Asian identity spokesperson. FUCK ME. I wanted to do that!

Assclowns

Today I went to LA because a temp/placement agency asked me to register - the natural implication being that there was a chance they could use me. I show up and the guy acts all surprised that I'm not a JD! Then we get to the work experience part and he's all, "So you're looking for...ENTRY level work?"

First of all: DUH! What kind of an assclown would I be looking for temp work if I already had a JD, and didn't go to some crap online law school? He needs to reevaluate who actually require his services. Then he goes on about how all their clientele want experienced legal assistants; again, if I had that, I sure as hell would be able to get my own self hired, thank you.

Second of all: I never represented myself as anything but entry-level assistant. If he thought otherwise, that means he read neither my resume nor my cover letter - which is just ludicrous when you consider that his whole job is to read - gasp! - resumes and cover letters.

This makes me mad, and not just because I was hauled to LA under a stupid misconception that probably won't bear fruit. Why do people put such a premium on experience over brains? THIS is what you get when you keep recyling the same incompetents year after year, instead of giving the new people a chance: a guy who doesn't even read the one document which it's his job to read. I could deliver better work in under two weeks on the job. People should keep that in mind and favor my 1-year's work experience over the chump who sat at the same desk for 15 years: maybe there's a reason he never went anywhere else. ESPECIALLY if you're talking low-level "assistant" work. What's so fucking great about spending 7 years typing other people's calendars? Anyone with a brain would have learned everything he needs to know by year 1/365.

Attention to Detail

is a skill I always lacked, and always will. I've known all my life that it will be the cause of my downfall, and yet that changes nothing. How very un-capricorn of me. All the horoscopes say that I must be great at middle-management, office administration work...ha! I'm trying to get one of those jobs now, and every single one of them asks for attention to detail.

I suppose it even got me into trouble in grad school. The minute I start taking on more than I want, the quality suffers; inevitable, like a will of it's own. Today I asked some of my professors if I could list them as references, and wouldn't you know? the one who was on my back the most about being more "papyrologist-like" got the one email where I didn't catch the typo! Oh well. I guess he should be glad I'm not going to be a papyrologist.

I have two or three leads going on with the job search. That's happy-ish news. I wonder, though, if I should hold out for that job in television. You know that Office Space question, if you had a million dollars what would you do? Me, the best reason I want a job is because I can't watch TV all day. It's really not even about the money, it's more about the self-respect.

Anthropological Insights

What I should be doing right now is writing cover letters (man, they're a bitch!), which means it's the best time to resume the blog.

The good news is I pretty much sat out the blues period. I think my parents were sensitive to the mood swing (and I actually find that mildly surprising), because they suggested over the weekend that we go to a farm to pick some fresh cherries. I love cherries! - primo laxative.

So today we set out to a place called Phelan in the high desert. The trip itself was a bust because the newspaper RAN LAST YEAR'S ARTICLE and we found on our arrival that with the dry and cold season this year, none of trees have even started bearing fruit. Nevertheless, I didn't have such a bad time, because it was fun to see the rock formations and other desert stuff, and particularly how the area is starting to get developed. Not only were the roads being expanded, but there was also a noticeable outcropping of farms and churches, with Korean people peppered throughout. My parents said that there's a fad going around where church communities talk each other into moving to these large tracts of cheap desert land in order to raise orchards and crops, and sometimes dogs and horses too.

It's like I always suspected: Korean people LOVE their farming!

But in order to have symmetrical confirmation of my theory, one would expected to see a proportional rise of Korean fishing communities. It may be the case that they do in fact exist, but I haven't seen them because the fishermen represent only about 10% of the Korean population. But I also had an alternative idea: what if the farmer/fisherman zest is manifested temporally instead? That is, instead of seeing 90% farmers and 10% fisherman, as per the distribution of faces, what if we became both farmers and fishermen at different phases of our lives? It certainly is the case that I'm a beach boy/girl myself, which sets me apart from the shade-seeking, mountain-hiking crew that is more likely to be vegetable-farmers. And if I think back to my parents' younger days, they too seemed to have a special love for boating and sea-faring, which has since phased out, since the advent of the vegetable garden.

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The other anthropological insight hit me during a practice LSAT test, when there was a passage about the model of separation, alienation, and reintegration in rites of passage. I thought, isn't it funny how all people independently arrived at this conclusion that it's a good idea to torture your teens? It seemed to be a way to set up an artificial bonus for reaching adulthood, but only recently have I started reflecting on just how necessary that bonus is. Adulthood, contrary to childhood expections, is NOT reward unto itself. You have to have a real good reason for wanting to enter it, and this is why I've been so resistent to admitting that it's time to grow up: I don't live in a society that demands that I get something branded, or hunt down a helot. So from my point of view, becoming a contributing member of society meant little more than loss of leisure, loss of freedom, and most of all, MORAL COMPROMISE.

My career choices correspondingly were an attempt to avoid moral compromise, an ineluctable thing, and eventually I found myself in the ivory tower - with no dough, no freedom, no leisure, and moral compromise anyways. I think what happened afterwards was a kind of rite of passage: I felt complete alienation and insecurity as I saw my life's identity dismantled before my eyes. (If you're keeping track, that would last week.) I was so desirious of a direction and routine, and a safeguard against being the Walmart employee living half-starved on microwave hot-pockets - that suddenly that old thing about becoming a automaton-drone of society didn't look so bad and mean anymore. No matter how awful and mundane my 9-5 would be, I could very probably find satisfaction in my work...if I knew that those hours were adding up to major dollars and cents, and a guarantee of future happiness.

I haven't found the reintegration part of this journey yet - that will come when the hiring happens - but now I see the value of torturing teenagers. I imagine those Spartan youths, sleeping naked in shrubs and hunting rodents for food and murdering helots at night, would have had a series of reflections similar to mine.