This, then that.

You have to read my bitchin' before you get to the super kawaii photos of the kids having a ball jumping off the couch. Didn't hurt that I had fun taking those photos as well.

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Today's been an asshole day. Usually I refer to it as a clown day, but no, today's unique. It's a stinky butthole day. It's been one of the worser days at work bar none. I cannot even fanthom days like this at work at any other time in my history of working. It's just too bizarre and idiotic. A lot of little things, but mostly three major things that really rubbed me the wrong way.

1. Asshole Quality Guy. This guy is probably about my age, maybe younger. I think the only way to find out is to extract the stick out of his ass, cut it, and see how many rings you can find on the stick to determine how old this putz is. At first, I thought he was just misunderstood because the guys always made fun of his long, unkempt hair. Then as time passed, I realized that he's just a prick. Everytime he comes by, he'll make a comment or two about something we're doing wrong, and it got to the point when I realized that either we're not doing something wrong, or whatever we're doing really isn't a big deal. A real man would just compensate and roll with that shit. I complained to the boss today because he found something to complain about - that he had already seen the orders and we didn't need to call him on his pager - which was protocol. It's like, fuck off, man. Grow up. You're not happy with your life, go tell someone who innocently asks you how your day was. When you're at work, do your job and shut the hell up.

2. Coworker hit me. I didn't work around guys for most of my life, so I've been kinda out of it. But I've managed to gain a certain respect from the guys I do work with because I treat them with respect, I listen, and I'm a pretty logical guy. I don't talk shit about most people, and I speak intelligently. Some of the guys have taken to punching each other for sport, and yeah, it's pretty much like grade school most days. Because of the language barriers between everyone, it's down to pretty primal displays of communication. I've stayed out of it mostly. But today, one of the American co-workers that I get along with decided to grab my neck with my back turned, and so I whipped around and told him to never do that again. The one thing about me is that if I get surprised, hit, or any amount of pain is inflicted on me suddenly, I will go from Bruce to Hulk in seconds. I get crazy angry. It's almost scary because I have lost it with almost anyone, even my wife. She once shot a rubber band at my face and I had to storm off before I yelled at her. Just don't touch me, and it's all good. But if you do something to me physically, you'd better run. Anyway, he tried to joke it off and I told him again, don't do that ever again, I AM NOT JOKING. But in the same conversation, we talked normally, though for the rest of the day, we had semi-normal conversation but it was definitely a little weird and different.

3. Fucking Racism. One of the most evident things around where I work is that Race is front and center. It's not always about that, but it's all about that at the same time. Yesterday two contracters who were painting the building got into a bloody fight and they were two different races. May not be race related, but sometimes it's indirectly about that. I think even problem number 1 is subtle racism, in that there's a miscommunication and the main difference is that everyone's a different race.

Well, today during lunch a old issue came up again, when my co-worker pulled up an image from his email of fetus soup. It's a fucking chain mail that has pictures of "Canton" people from China, basically preparing said topic. The photos are realistic enough, and it's graphic, but what smarts is that words like, "The Chinese are crazy." and "The Chinese are disgusting" come up between the co-workers over and over again. When I'm standing in their midst. I've raised my objections, but they largely ignorant of their implications.

Now, I'm not the ambassador of Chinese people throughout the world, and fuck if I know what billions of Chinese people do or not do, but to slander a race based on some photos really irks the shit out of me. It's the blatantness of their exclamations, the generalizations of their accusations, and just the blind naivete of eating whatever bullshit is fed to them just pisses me off. As an educated guess, those photos are either shopped or they are effects. Mostly because we do have the laymen's skills to do that kind of effects. Furthermore, it would just be retarded for anyone to allow any photographer that obviously had a lot of skill capture the whole thing. The thing looks very set up, instead of the amateurish nature one would associate with highly immoral or illegal footage of that sort. Most the most logical explanation - one that I shared with my co-workers, is that no matter what culture, what country, what religion you're from, cannibalism is pretty much a no-go. Baby cannibalism, as one could imagine, is a definite taboo. Just not going to tolerated.

I searched online to look for facts and clues to bust that hoax, and I've come up with that it originated from a now defunct tabloid, there are no sources, but I also learned about Blood Libel. Basically when a race libels another by attributing a horrendous inhumane act like cannibalism in order to trigger that instant blind revolt toward the other race. I've read that a couple of senators and pro-life American advocates had jumped on that, and I've read all the racist crap that pours out of the comments from this discussion. Slurs, generalizations, disgust. Blood libel in action.

So all I have for my co-workers is just reasoning through common sense. So you really want virility and sexual prowress. You don't mind paying a ton of money. You don't even like kids. But seriously, who the fuck would want to resort to cannibalism?

Sigh. Hopefully tomorrow will not suck so hard.

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On a lighter note, early September's looking pretty exciting. Next Wednesday, OSX based ipods with flash memory is going to surface, and even the Nanos will have video capability. I had a friend's video iPod yesterday and that puppy sucks up battery like nobody's business while playing video because of the hard drive. So even though I'm likely not going to get an iPod due to the redundancy factor, I'm still excited.

And the PSP too.

Life on Another Planet

I spent most of this morning pissed because I heard of the suspension of two NY DJ's. Not that I had any love for them, but these two idiots re-broadcast a segment that featured a computerized voice prank calling a Chinese restaurant, and then proceed to pepper the conversation with racist and sexist crap. That itself is really annoying, but there actually is support for the two DJs from the fans, and some from the media as well. I get a little tired of the double standards that exist between people of color sometimes. It seems like some racism get noticed and remedied, and some don't. Anyway, the support for the DJs is scary to me. They cite freedom of speech and expression, they cite that people need to get a life and learn to take a joke, and they blame CBS for the suspensions because they are censoring the shock jocks.

Now I don't necessarily want the jobs to be terminated, but I do want apologies to be public. Stupid, crass humor by shock jocks will always exist, but our society needs to be more unified as to what constitutes responsible entertainment and what doesn't. First of all, if you've listened to the broadcast, you'd know - it isn't funny. The joke isn't at all funny because unlike a good prank call, the caller isn't making fun of himself or the situation, it is simply insulting the victim. I'm sorry, but the primary premise of the joke - a computerized voice prank calling an Asian restaurant while throwing racist comments isn't funny. It's just mean.

Anyway, I've been just pissed about the whole thing - and I'd probably post something about it in a public forum or something. I don't know. It's eating at me. Spreading prejudices is just plain hateful for me.

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On the brighter side, the news that Gliese 581 c being possibly habitable is just geeking me out. I'm not real big on astronomy, and not that into sci-fi, but hearing that there could be another planet that's habitable that's 20 light years away, and that if any of us wanted to visit - we couldn't. It would have to be what I read would be a "generation ship", a spaceship that's big enough to have a small population (so as to ensure genetic diversity) that carries on toward a mission that will last 500 years and many descendants, before they even get to the planet to begin any kind of steps toward populating the planet. That stuff is just mind-boggling. It's exciting and humbling at the same time. Just amazing. Read more about that here.

Aloha?

This latest obsession about the 50th state is pretty all consuming. The more we read and find out, we're finding out more pros, and obviously, more cons. In addition to the poor education system, one of the other worries that I've been having is the institutional racism that seems to be boiling under the wraps. I don't know if it'll affect my kids or myself that much, but I'm worried about my wife, who is used to being part of the majority race. I mean, fair to say that in Washington, racism is alive and simmering as well. Even my wife has experienced some of this through my children's eyes, when we were in Packwood and some lady was commenting on our kids being Asian. "Haoles" as they are referred to, as just Cauasians who they feel stole the island from them, and turned it into just a tourist-driven economy. Some people are bothered by it, some aren't. I guess the concensus is that if an individual is open and respectful to the Hawaiian culture, they will be accepted as such. Common sense, really.

I've been lurking the forums and asking questions, just trying to get the most information I can possibly get to make an informed decision. We're even going so far as to thinking about a vacation to the islands at the end of the year to get a preview to the kind of lifestyle Hawaii has to offer.

I think though, for now I have to leave the idea alone for a while - it's consuming my mind a little too much to be anyway close to being healthy - looking at Flickr with "Hawaii" tags, looking up advice from natives, just submerging myself in wayyyy too much info. And my wife is pretty stoked about thinking about it too. She's looking at the change in lifestyle, a possibly slower pace of life, a change in scenery.

Now we know that it's easy to dream about paradise in the dead of winter in Washington, especially how cold and wet it is right now. But if this urging persists after summer, maybe we'll just have to try it and see.