In the books and stories that I've been reading lately, they often hint, and occasionally simply state, that (roughly translated) "everything begins with honor." I wonder how much of modern society is still driven by honor, by piety and compassion, respect and veneration.
Sometimes I wish there were a button I could push to make it clear which of my writings I mean seriously, and which I write with my tongue in my cheek. A while back I bought the domain www.randalrants.com, which would probably work as my tongue-in-cheek writing repository; I'll have to get around to getting that up one day.
I've wanted to say something for a while, but have never gotten around to finding the right words to say it. I'm tired of waiting, so I'll put it poorly. I know a person who has a talent for catching moments, penning them down and putting meaning into them. This person can talk about 2 seconds out of the 86,4000 in a day and make it sound more significant than another person's entire week. For a long time, I thought it was the most lovely writing I'd ever read. I still think it's great.
But people weren't made to live on moments. All those little moments of two and three seconds will dissolve beneath your feet and leave you to fall if you don't have peace with the world to catch you in its net. I still love reading this person's writing, but for all its heartfelt passion and stir of life, it's still somehow so painfully hollow. And so the moment passes, taking all the energy we put into making it significant with it, and we're left chasing after something that might not have ever really existed.
Since moving up here, almost every time I see an Asian woman she's with a white guy. So some more thoughts on the issue:
* On fetishists; is it any more wrong to hate on someone for having an Asian fetish than to hate on someone who has, say, an eye fetish? What about a boob or ass fetish? Where do you draw the line between a fetish and a preference? Is there a line between the two?
* On respect; it's a lot easier to deal with interractial couples when they at least have a mutual respect for the other's culture. They don't have to know everything about it, but at least making some sort of an effort (e.g. learning the language, reading the history, etc.) would be a nice gesture of good will.
* On gender discrimination: As far as the yellow community goes, it seems like yellow women dating white/black/brown boys is a big no-no, but a yellow boy dating a white/black/brown girl is just kind of weird, but not frowned upon too much. That kind of sucks. We should all hate equally, or love equally.
Come to think of it, the two female cousins I have the most immediate contact with have both been dating white boys for as long as I can remember (since I was....9? Maybe even younger?). Curiously, I've never been particularly upset by that, but every now and then I see some interracial couples and can't help but get annoyed. Seems like most of the time it's when some dorky lame ass white boy gets a girl who, were she dating someone from her own ethnicity, would have a much higher minimum standard of excellency (or mediocrity, as the case may be). You can't really get mad at someone who'd be a mad pimp regardless of what color girl he was dating, but it's much easier to get mad at someone who's only getting some because of the color of his skin. But then, how different is that than someone getting some because they've got a 12" penis, or were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, or happen to have a good physique, or a great peronality, or whatever other quality you can think of?
Old Asian people like me. This seems to extend beyond my friends' parents into general old (40+) people. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's kind of neat. I was getting my haircut once at this Korean place in Buena Park, and the hair cutter lady asked me how old I was. When I said I was 21, she said "Oh, if you were 30 I would have introduced my daughter to you." Today I was at the tea shop I took a class at last time, and ended up sitting down for a good 40 minutes or so drinking tea with a couple old Asian people as one of them was telling me old Chinese fables and the morals behind them. Apparently, I'm not Asian enough (I'm not :()
I should be able to randomly stab a certain percentage of smokers proportional to the chances of me dying from second hand smoke. If they can shorten my life just by being around me, then I should be able to shorten their lives too.
I saw K-Pax recently. There was a quote in there that said how the human way of thinking that "an eye for an eye" is fair is backwards and completely wrong. I liked that movie.
I used to write in here more. I'm not writing so much now because life's been busy busy busy with all sorts of random hobbies and other constructive things. Life is on the up and up; I'm motivated and energized; each day is an exploration into something new.
What is it about interracial dating that bothers guys so much? I say guys and not people because I'm not sure how women feel about it; but it crawls and claws beneath the skin of many guys I know, including myself. There are plenty of yellow guys who have written and ranted and raved about yellow women dating white guys. Sometimes people give them flack for it; particularly yellow women who have/want to date white men. Along with it comes remarks like "why are yellow guys so insecure and why do they get all pissy when we want to date white guys? I bet white guys don't get pissy when white women date yellow boys."
Oh, but I'll bet they do.
I bet white boys get just as pissed off as yellow boys when white women are getting banged left and right by black boys. I bet black boys are just as pissed off as white boys when black women are getting banged left and right by white boys. No matter how you mix the colors, I'll bet the boys are always pissed off when their women are off banging boys of other colors.
I don't know if the women feel the same way as the boys do. I imagine they get annoyed when boys of their color are messing around with women of another...but maybe women aren't as prone to being pissed off and angry as the boys are over something that shouldn't be such a big deal. Thinking about it rationally, color in and of itself isn't enough of a reason to be bothered, and so we can convince ourselves that the Right Thing To Do is to let it go.
But when nobody's looking, or when you're with your close friends, I'm sure unpleasant words fly about.