The Purple Tux
With just enough education to perform.Friday, August 30, 2002
California. It's where happy cows are made.
Summer nears its end.
I am a red hot chillin' fella.
Coldplay is cool.
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Oh yeah, before I forget to add this thought- the media can be self-righteous.
JetForze (12:07:59 AM): we have an army of sissies
JetForze (12:08:01 AM): its been womanized
JetForze (12:08:08 AM): 6 guys get killed in a ground attack
JetForze (12:08:12 AM): OMG WE LOST!
JetForze (12:08:36 AM): commander: but we totally wiped them out and secured the position adn [sic] all resouces [sic] of the enemy!
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
The other week, I was in a car with my friends. We were going along O'Farrell and I noticed a flashing sign in front of a video store- "Get your mind off Iraq, buy porn!"
I haven't totally been following the news as closely as I sometimes do. So this next might come off as unjustified xenophobic ramblings.
There's a great deal of controversy surrounding our government's stance on Iraq. Seems like Bush and Cheney are preparing for an assault or at least some way to unseat our good old buddy old pal Saddam Hussein. From what I understand, most of the public, or at least people who write letters to the San Francisco Chronicle are against such a campaign against Iraq.
Many times, our fellow citizens claim that we (as in the USA and its leaders) would be wholly unjustified to launch an attack on a country that has not yet attacked us (openly, I may add). Other reasons why we should not attack Iraq include how we don't have the support of most other nations, and how we don't have concrete proof Iraq helped out when we were attacked last September. Many of our fellow Americans are clamoring for public debates. Because we all know that a war will only have potential for success when it has the majority of support from the people. We, as individuals, gotta pay attention and listen to debates. Only after hearing both sides of the issue can we feel knowledgeable enough to make our own decisions about this situation. Which is smart.
But according to our venerable Vice President, there is evidence that Iraq has been amassing massive weapons of destruction, including biological and chemical weapons. Now I don't know about you, but bioweapons and chemical weapons scare the piss out of me. The thought of being infected with a specially bred deadly virus designed to kill victims slowly and with excruciating pain isn't a pleasant thought. I'd rather get blown away by a nuke than watch some green gas float in my atmosphere while I retch and choke to death on my own vomit.
Okay. I think that most people know Iraq has tons of weapons. But because they haven't done anything offensive yet, we, the US, have no right to attack them without just provocation.
I think that's bull$#!t. I may be a paranoid android, but I simply think that idea is fat bull. What we gonna do, just sit all pretty on our lazy American butts while Iraq hordes even more weapons to use on us? If you think about it, the president and the government leaders have the least to fear from Iraq. I'm sure they have secret underground inpenetrable bunkers specially prepared for our leaders to hide in, in case there's a nuclear holocaust. So when people start dying, it's going to be us. It's going to be soldiers and civilians. Just look what happened last year, do you think terrorists will show any mercy on fat American capitalists?
Yet here our President and his adminstration are trying to rally support for their cause. You know the old adage, "the best defense is a good offense." Don't call it an outmoded cliche. I genuinely believe that in this case, we may need to strike first. You ever watch those action TV shows where some punk with a gun has a hostage, and he's hiding out on the top floor of a ten story apartment, and then he uses a phone to make demands with the police? But, on the ground level, the captain of the SWAT team gets tired of waiting and says to his sergeant, "We don't negotiate with terrorists." Then he gets his guys to move in. Sometimes the hostage is saved, sometimes the hostage bites a bullet in the head. But war is hell. I have no counters to that. Things happen and sometimes I just don't know why (hey, that kind of explains my deal with calculus...). Maybe if you talk to someone more mature and wiser than I am, you can get some better answers.
Anyway, back to the subject. We can't negotiate with Saddam Hussein. The man has proven time and time again that he's a sleazy old mofo. For all we know, he's in league with Al-Qaeda. At this point in time, I think that we should have (I can't believe I'm typing this) confidence in our government. I think they're telling the truth to us, and I think that if and when they decide to attack Iraq, they deserve our support. I just pray it won't be too late.
People will surely die. In the end, only God can sort it all out. I'm not God.
So I bought the new Coldplay record, A Rush Of Blood To The Head, today. Just a little plug, and I think you should buy it, too. It's only the second record that I actually went to the record store to buy it the day it came out. Look, it'll bring a smile to your face, all right?
Thursday, August 22, 2002
"So don't go away."
I've been a student for most of my life. Every school year, typically by October or November, I start feeling burdened by my scholastic duties. I'm typically a laid back dude, and I'm mostly just chillin' all the time, but sometimes, academia rears its ugly head. I'll admit right off that I ain't the best when it comes to school. I'm not like some people who just breeze through school and know all their math and science and so on. I'm the kind of guy who does just enough to complete assignments or pass exams. Not a completely worthless slacker, but sometimes I don't put my whole heart into my homework.
So when I get blasted with homework and exams to prepare for, I really got to just FORCE myself to get all my crap done... It just doesn't come naturally to me, most of the time. I need motivation to do my work. Motivation. Grades sometimes aren't enough motivation for me. It's just ink on paper. I know that knowledge will be important in my future, of course; after all, "knowing is half the battle... GI JOE! (Real American Hero!)" That's why I do try my best to remember as much information as I can so I can apply in my life (er yeah, and that's one reason I suck at math and science... that's a whole other subject [it's a pun- get it? you don't get it, do you, I can see it in your eyes]).
One of the ways I get encouraged to study hard(er than normal) is the thought of a break. Like, "Finish doing this homework and then you can go play some MvC2," or "Finish reading this and you can enjoy the rest of the evening," or "All right, just this last problem, then I can play the entire weekend." Sometimes it's extreme as, "Uggghhn. Just... thirteen... more... weeks... until... finals... then... SUMMER VACATION!!! YAHOO!!" And regardless of what I hope for, the prize is always all too fleeting.
For example, there have been countless times that I played MvC2 and because of that, I missed a meal and had to go hungry. And then there's the instances in which I finished my homework Friday, and then on Monday we go over it in class and I realize I don't actually understand the stuff; a wasted weekend (in terms of learning). But then, there's summer... ah summer, wherefore art thou? Summer rocks. Plenty of time to do whatever you want! Yet I think that most people would agree that when their summer is too long, it gets boring. We get pumped up for school, since we're students and school is one of the main ways we socialize.
There's that pesky paradox. Do we want summer to stay or not? Do we want to chill in boredom, or do we want to be tortured in excitement? There's a balance somewhere in there. But I'm too busy enjoying my summer vacation to have an epiphany right now. I'll leave that to you.
Sunday, August 18, 2002
Natural Born Introvert. That's me.
If only someone would pay me for being a geek. I mean, basically all I've been doing this summer is sit on my butt, read novels (fiction, fantasy, science fiction mostly), read comic books, and listen to rock 'n' roll. Not too glorious, huh? Sure, I've hung out with my friends too, but even then I sometimes do geeky things, like read more comic books, or go to the comic shop, or play Street Fighter. I don't know. Sometimes I feel better if I'm just left to my own devices. I don't think any person can relate with Andrew Tan better than PerfectDru (that's what I call myself in my head). Once in while, I can have some long conversations with people. I guess they must be kindred spirits.
But I just find that most of the time, I have this attitude of "leave me alone and I'll leave you alone." Like that's the way things should be. I just feel more comfortable being with myself all the time. This must have something to do with being an only child in an Asian family. A lot of times, when I'm out in public, I'll see someone I sort of know. Maybe an acquaintance or classmate or former classmate or someone I haven't seen in a while. I'll see them in the mall or wherever, and I pretend I don't see them so I won't have to go up to them, say "Yo," and make small talk for 5 minutes. Thanks to my forensics (that's public speaking, not evidence examination) experience, I think I'm decent at ad-libbing and making small chit chat up, but it just doesn't feel natural to me. So what's the point? That must be why I avoid people sometimes.
Though being alone all the time does have a disadvantage or two. Mainly, I hate to admit this, but sometimes I feel lonely. To counteract loneliness, I usually just listen to music and/or read a book, but I guess humans can be cool too (sometimes). Since I'm a natural introvert, these periods of loneliness tend to be momentary and short-lived, and are most often experience in the late hours of the night. No big deal. "Don't worry about me."
The other day, I was walking on the streets of downtown San Francisco when I saw this familiar chick walking my direction. She was wearing sunglasses but I knew that I knew her, so I was kind of staring at her. When we passed by, I absentmindedly just stared at her (turned my head and everything). Then I realized I knew her from high school, she was one grade above me. So while I was looking at her, she must have noticed me, because she turned her head and looked at me too, even though we were both walking our opposite ways. After we passed each other, we both looked behind us and recognized each other. "Hi," she said, smiling."What's up?" I said, tentatively. Then, almost simultaneously, we both turned back around and continued walking in our respective directions.
It's not that often you recognize someone amidst the bunch of people who walk the streets of downtown San Francisco. It's even less often I even say anything at all.
"I promise we'll be perfect/perfect strangers when we meet/strangers on the street/lovers while we sleep." Well, maybe not lovers.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Transform with the best of them
Roll out alongside your greatest heroes
We all live in disguise
Don't be deceived
I hunger for more than I can hope for
The desire to excel is the will to survive
A vibrant emptiness fills the bottomless pit
I think it's time to wake up
A whisper breathes into the darkness
The dreary gloom responds
An ear-splitting silence shakes the walls
It's the end of the world
Friday, August 09, 2002
Lazy summer days. Appreciate the wondrous sense of lackadaisical relaxation. Enjoy it before real life catches up and smacks me. Summer. It's an oasis.
Stories. Everything is a story. There's no fate, there's no destiny, there's no chance. There is simply a story.
The crow flies east.
And haunting melodies fill the void of loneliness.
Imagine you were Black Bolt. You are one of the most powerful beings on Earth. You are the king of the Inhumans. The power of your smallest whisper could level entire mountains. Thus, you don't dare letting a sound escape your lips for fear of destroying the very planet. You look around at the world. All the craziness, and the anxieties of the people.
Imagine you were given a single chance to speak. Just one word. And you'd scream it at the top of your lungs, and let every single living being on the planet hear. Just one word. What would you say?
Relax.
(Apologies to Paul Jenkins.)
Thursday, August 01, 2002
Do you ever wonder about people's tastes?
I mean like, other people's taste in paintings, music, literature, videogames, movies, anime, or whatever art form. Do you ever wonder why a person likes something that you think is awful? Ever believe you're the only one in the universe who has good (or at least refined) taste, and it's your moral responsibility to set everyone else right? I gotta admit, I often feel that way.
Like take an English teacher for example. You know how they force you to read all these old "classic" works of literature and when they give a lecture they just drone on about how masterful Shakespeare or Hemingway or Steinbeck or Golding or whomever is? And ya just sit there and wonder to yourself, "Is the teacher insane, or does he just like old books?" I'll admit we read some dang good books in high school, but I can't say that Shakespeare owns. Sure, he innovated since he wrote his books centuries ago, but fact is, the original isn't always the best. Plus I bet you could say that Shakespeare bit off of Homer, and Homer bit off the Bible, and the Bible... It just goes on and on. I don't know why I was thinking of high school English teachers. I still have these terrible memories of Mr. Davis just, well, hating us. And discussing Madame Bovary as if it were some great cosmic secret that only HE had the wondrous priviledge to share with us. Madame Bovary's a good book, but it's not the best book. And then there's the countless teachers who shove Shakespeare up our butts. What I want to know is, why can't students ever read anything else besides the so-called established "classics?" Like something written in the past 50 years or something at least. It feels like so many teachers have some weird thing in their brain that compells them to love Shakespeare and crud. At least when I got to Davis, I read Maus in Comparative Literature. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, in case you don't know, is a graphic novel (or, comic book for the nonbelievers) that deals with a father/son relationship and the Holocaust. It won a Pulitzer Prize, too. It's a good book. I just saw the book at a store yesterday, so I thought of it.
For some reason my rant is going off topic. It's kind of embarrassing that I stray so much, but I am far too lazy to go back and delete some sentences. Anyone reading this ought to be grateful for my laziness-- I'm keepin' it REAL, man.
So take videogames as another art form. There are people who ONLY play RPGs and there are people who HATE RPGs. I can't understand either group. Often, as in anything, people act like elitist snobs (heck, I'm almost always an elitist). I wonder if there's some kind of chemical in the brain that leads to elitist behavior. Does it control taste in art? Some scientist should study that. Find out why some people like MvC2 but hate CvS2 and vice versa, why some people like Alpha 3 but hate CvS2 and are indifferent towards MvC2, and so on.
Speaking of chemical imbalances and such, I really wonder about Asian people and their musical tastes. The majority of the Asians I know, by and far, have absurdly different musical tastes from me. Was I born with a genetic defect? Am I missing a chemical in my brain? Why do I get annoyed by cheesy pop and R&B music? How come trance and techno get on my nerves? Why do I get a headache when I'm in a car that's blasting poppish-new school rap music? Am I a mutant? It's something to think about. Just what the heck goes on in a person's brain that makes them enjoy or dislike something. Then again, I could just be ignorant, and there could be studies on this subject and I'm wasting my brain cells thinking of crud like this. If that's the case, I'd appreciate some enlightenment.
I think I'll go play Radiohead's Kid A and finish reading Orson Scott Card's (the man is a genius, I tell you!!!) Xenocide now.
