| 22 mar 2001 weekdays are a bore for me. work by day, television by night. i do have a pretty good tv schedule, though. two things caught my eye last night. first, was _the daily show_. there was this one story about the fact that in 500 million years, the sun will grow bigger and bigger and scorch the earth until all life is eradicated. i've heard this many times before, but last night was the first time i had a reaction. i was scared shitless. no more life on earth! can you imagine that? will the universe then be devoid of any creatures? man, this would be a good time to start believing in extraterrestrial life, because the cosmos would be pretty useless if there were no living entities in it, right? after the freaking out, i just got depressed. so no matter how well we recycle and prevent the earth from running out of resources, no matter how kind and tolerant and peaceful we humans are towards each other, we won't last forever. and that's a really scary thought. theology aside, the world will end someday. no questions asked. *shiver* second, was _the man show_. now, i know it's a very offensive show to begin with, but i've usually just taken the whole premise and content as a joke. one of the hosts bags on his wife all the time, but i hope that in reality, they do love each other, and he really respects her and all that. i don't watch the show usually, but leno was just too boring. anyways, there was a segment on "the lady-sitter," or rather, a product that you use when you want to get away from your girl and keep her occupied. and the product is... a gay man! holy SHIT. i was pretty much shocked. how fucking offensive. i mean, that was just out of line. they had scenes with this caricature of a gay man frolicking about with the woman, and i just wondered how the producers greenlighted this whole skit without fearing massive backlash. maybe they didn't care. which is even worse. ----- if all goes well this summer, i'll be visiting japan in august to see kris and shoji's first taiko concert in hakodate. i'm excited to go back to japan. well, despite the torturous plane ride. first, i hate flying because i feel there's no control over the safety. second, it's HELLA boring. few things are worse than sitting in a cramped chair staring at the back of the chair in front of you. but anyways... japan! yay! i lived there for six months through the stanford SCTI program. no, i don't remember what SCTI stands for. i lived in a homestay in kyoto during the spring, and another homestay in kasumigaseki (40 minutes outside of tokyo) during the summer. springtime was taking classes at the stanford center in kyoto, and summertime was an internship pretty much doing nothing. i never surfed the web so much as when i was working in japan. the more time distances me from my stay in japan, the more fondly i look back upon it. i know that i was pretty much miserable during some stretches of time, but now i've forgotten what that felt like. i do know a lot of it stemmed from my trademark "no women" lack of motivation that i've talked about. i just wasn't interested in anyone there. there was that sexually-charged thai girl, though, but she was kind of nasty. and being abroad can be a pretty lonely experience. especially when you aren't any good at the native language, so few things that you see and hear make any sense. things were worst when i had just moved to tokyo, and i had no idea where any of my stanford friends were in the city. i spent a month pretty much alone every day. whenever i got homesick, i went to mcdonald's. it's the bastion of american culture. i got big macs and fish filets, and soon i felt like i was at home again. fish filets were extra special because no one in japan orders them, so they have to make them piping hot for me. man, mcdonald's was never that good in the states. what i miss most about japan is the fact that i felt safe. i hitchhiked with no fear or reservations when i was over there, and that's something i would NEVER do here. when my friends and i toured the nation, we slept out in the open in parks and stuff, without ever giving thieves and other criminals a second thought. and i never felt afraid when i was walking along a dark alleyway, no matter how late in the night it was. i really liked that feeling. here in the states, even the most protected suburbian gated community can't give me that sense of safety. uh oh. the job calls. my boss just stopped by my office to politely tell me that i'm on a schedule. as if i didn't know. but i do need to get my ass moving on this project i'm working on. time to put on my engineer hat. oh, one more thing. GO STANFORD! (sweet sixteen game is tonight at 7:20, channel 5) |