yaY :D i am feeling much better and ready to play again. :P i found a shitload of great shows coming up in Jan and Feb on www.brownpapertickets.com. POlly? oOh! or daISY? since yu'll be here around then. and then, mebbe i will visit lynn in koreeeeea... :D man, i had to call 8 people today to talk to someone! it was 10:30, just got off work and feeling like chatting. usually, i jus call lynn and she picks up (since those are her prime hours) and we blab and then i get home and happy happy. sigh....... maybe it wasn't just me feeling under the weather and antisocial this past week. everybody's fricken v/m picked up. :T dood, it's so weird. my phone rarely does this cuz the keys lock once i'm done using it, but TWICE already, i take it out of my bag and it's dialing "LYnn's cell." wth. i dun even kno how it finds the entry... O_o

so in other news, i finally checked out the podcasts from mosaic (www.mosaic.org) and they are GREAT. erwin even has a site and it is off the hook, http://erwinmcmanus.com. i've been searching for an "erwin" up here, so i've been asking people where the charismatic, intelligent speakers are at. i checked out this church my friend recommended, GRX, which incidentally turned out to be my cuzn's church. so i went and the assistant pastor was speaking (go figure). and it was soooooooo disappointing :T. he was speaking on how to treat disabled people b/c his son has down syndrome. great topic, but man o man. the substance went something like this: at first, we were frightened, and then we realized he is great, he is human and we are all disabled in some way... so you should approach disabled people w/ 1. love, 2. kindness, 3. fellowship (it literally said this on the powerpoint). i wanted to book it so bad... i know this is harsh, but come on. if yur a group of people familiar w/ christian doctrine, isn't it kind of a given that you should treat all people with the same love and respect, regardless of their mental or physical state? and he couldn't graduate the message to let's say, high school level language and complexity? i felt like he was preaching to preschoolers. i hope the actual pastor has more to offer. since i've been home, i feel like my sense of reality has shifted a bit, and i'm searching again to make sense of it all. thus, i'm back on the church hunt, so i can get some intellectual discussion going on the nature of life and existence of god, etc... i wonder how it happened. perhaps too much time on my hands and episodes of feeling powerless against the tide of things. plus, the reading i've been doing has focused largely on the metaphysical. wonder where all of this is taking me...

wut else? lately, i've been feeling a growing rebellious distaste for the whole feminization thing. see nytimes article: "what's a modern girl to do?" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html?emc=eta1. i am getting tired of guys and girls who perpetuate the whole passive, easy going, just smart enough to keep a conversation going, pretty feminine girl thing. it really does feel like a conservative undercurrent has steadily reversed our trends towards backward progress (i blame the bush administration). or mebbe i need to stop hanging out with asians. the girls always act like accessories and are so repressive of their personalities. it's really sad. the guys have to put on a show and they treat the girls like prizes to be won. it's so primitive. i miss the days when gender wasn't such an issue and guys and girls could really view each other as equal friends. like when we were 6. ehehe... my frustration could also have been multiplied by the dumb korean drama i just finished a few days ago... korean dramas always piss me off because the characters are so f-ing passive and cheesy. i luvs the movies, but i am finding that a lot of the korean men directors are misogynists. so sad cuz the movies are so great, but the women are treated like shit, or have invisible abstract roles, or are eevil. wat is going on with the world?

oh! i wanted to give props to elle (www.xanga.com/orchidelle) for her lively photos (no plastic smiles there) and her mini essay on the death penalty. altho i don't agree wholly, it made me think (no joke, elle), and i appreciated the substance. we just had this conversation last week on how we view each other's professions as having true impact on people, versus our own. when i was in south america, i remember thinking, i can only help them so much. bandage here, medicines, etc... one person at a time. but to truly help the society, you have to work at the legislative level. so when elle was talking about possibly spending this coming summer in thailand battling the sex trade, or in africa to participate in the genocide trials, or in peru to advocate human rights, i was just overflowing with respect and admiration for her and her capabilities (haha, who would have ever thought this day would come? ;).

anyways, siesta time. LYNN, i want more posts/emails! lookie how diligently i am shooting the shit for u. i am even going to retype this funny quote i read in "time" for you:

"Saddam Hussein stood up at his trial and shouted, 'I am not afraid of execution! Until his lawyers explained, 'You are not going to execute anybody. It's you who is going to be executed.' At which point [Saddam] said in Arabic, and this is a rough translation, 'Ah, my bad.'"
--Jon Stewart