Asian Haircut

The main reason I haven't been blogging is that most of my stories (good ones anyway) are a little weird to put on my main blog given my parents check it for pretty pictures. Thusly, I'll be using this blog a little to tell my more... fun stories of Taiwan.

Today Shin, a Korean kid and new friend of mine, decided to give my hair a makeover since he and I were both sick of every girl yelling "HARRY POTTAH" upon seeing me. We went to Toufa Wang (Hair King) and he attempted to tell the stylist what to do through a series of hand gestures and poor Chinese. The girl doing my hair was super duper ridiculously hot, just a side note.

I'm tired, so I'll cut to the chase. Here are the results.

http://picasaweb.google.com/magnakaser/ASianHaircut

chapter 1

Some people say suicide is the easy way out. They say that by choosing to end one’s life is to quit. The reason they can separate this decision from say, quitting one’s job or pulling out of a poker game, is that the aftereffects are unknown and wholly ineffable to us. Many have religion promising something great if they stick life out, and most of the rest simply fear the foregone conclusion they have in their minds of nonexistence. However, if you lack these scruples or fears, then why is it imperative that one stays alive? There are many reasons one should stick something out regardless of if they’re simply enjoying something or not. One is commitment. If one has something like kids or a spouse that is partially dependant on one’s self, be it financially or emotionally, they have a commitment to stay alive despite their best wishes. They have made promises in their life, which they may now regret, but must morally obey. It would be immoral for them to kill themselves on this basis, not simply on the basis of killing one’s self as you would have them believe. There are also many reasons why people would simply not choose to kill themselves despite having a hard string in life and no apparent fears of death; motivation being the key reason for this. Most people have some sort of motivation that guides them through life. Some goal which lights their way, something they are working towards and trekking forward at. It is this that keeps them going; this that pushes them forward. A lesser form of this is simple optimism. Even if they have no concrete goal at hand, they hope that one will show itself. In essence their motivation for continuing on is the search for something to be motivated for.

Now, imagine a person who has no motivation. He is floating through life and has been guided by commitment and optimism thus far. He does not particularly fear death any more than someone would fear anything unknown to them; nor does he follow any specific creed that has any bad notions towards ending one’s self. He keeps finding a light at the end of his tunnel and that light seems to keep flickering out just before he can come across it. His Tanatalus-esque life, ever in search of something similar to a driving force in his life, bores him. Not to say he never had any dreams or motivation, he, as all humans probably due as it is our nature, did. The key point is that he did. It was beaten out of him. Perhaps he dreamed too big and then too small, the juxtaposition destroying any chance he had of creating normal dreams. Originally he was going to be famous. His mind wandered though, he imagined the interviews he’d have been given and TV spots he’d be on more than what he’d actually do to attain such fame. After this dream was lost he simply wanted to reach some sort of happy, or hell, he’d settle for content, sort of state. He never did, though; he was thrust into melancholy and boredom. Why bother to think there was anything more when so much had already dissolved right in front of him? He didn’t truly believe there was nothing of course, simply nothing for him. He also lacks any commitment that makes morality an issue when it comes to suicide. Not to say he is so much a social outcast that no one will miss him; no, quite the opposite. People are always coming after him, always asking him to do things. These people will likely miss him if he were to kill himself but that’s hardly a commitment. If someone has a job at an insurance company in Vermont and gets their dream job as a best boy at a film set in Vancouver, he will likely leave and his friends in Vermont will likely be sad and may never see or hear from him again but we don’t think of it as something inherently bad he is doing by choosing to go into the unknown over the reliable. After summing this all up, as our person has, he has no commitments, no motivation and no hope of ever finding either of the two. All in all he had all the ingredients of a normal happy person, because most people are happy. They may not think it… but you have to be really depressed to notice that people are happy generally; simply based off the fact they aren’t as depressed. He is also unsure as to what may come after he ends his life, but has come to one conclusion: It could be better than this. Emphasis on the “could” because he very well knows that he could drop into hell, nonexistence or be reincarnated as something else (He was hoping some sort of neat wild animal, or possibly a female, to see what life is like from the other side.). He decides, however, to take this chance and go with the unknown.

With all this described, would we consider this person’s suicide a simple cop out on life? Would we consider it him quitting? Perhaps, but at least a case has been made for the otherwise. If indeed he does choose to stop respirating, we can see the merit in it. He’s done playing this game, done being in this life. He fully accepts his consequences, has nothing he is working for nor anyone who depends on him. He understands full well he may regret this decision and be drenched in fire and brimstone, or may not have a consciousness with which to even regret, or have to go through this whole thing all over again. But to him, what’s the difference? It’s going to happen sooner or later. He may as well have a head start.

This dialogue was exactly what ran through Jack Hendrix’s mind one summer day. Jack’s main reason for not killing himself up to this point was because of the guilt he felt he’d feel from making loved ones feel sad due to his choice; but this is just what he told himself. In reality, Jack was just a pussy and didn’t have the balls to do the deed. However on this particular day he did apparently have some sort of cohones, or at least a lack of better judgment.

“…may as well have a head start.” Jack muttered under his breath that one hot, sunny, beautiful summer day. He threw his laptop on the ground and ran towards his door. He rushed it open and ran down the long hallway in a full sprint.

His roommate popped his head out the door, “What the fuck are you doing Jack—“ his voice growing fainter as Jack ran down the hallway at breakneck speed. He passed two girls also living on his floor who spouted similar comments as he brushed them by.

He saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He saw it, and it was bright and beautiful. The elevator opened up and a woman asked why he was running or something, he wasn’t sure, he had stopped listening. The window was open, there was no screen. He jumped straight through.

The free fall in that beautiful summer day was wonderful for Jack. He smiled a real, honest smile for the first time in ages as he felt the sun on his back and the wind of 9.8m/s on his cheeks. The pavement grew closer and closer, and in his penultimate moments he decided this was not such a great idea.

For Taiwan Adventures!!!

http://magnakaser.wordpress.com/ !!!

Punctuality

I am someone who is, as we would say, habitually late. The fact you would have to call me habitually late, constantly late, usually late or simply never on time is the crux of this argument.

Something else you must agree with me on is that language evolves out of society and not the inverse. We create and use new words because we feel the need to use them, we as a people have some feeling or idea that is so extraordinary we must express it in more precise and concise terms. Rather than saying, "Philippe cleans his apartment to the extent it annoys everyone." we can simply say, "Philippe is anal." In lieu of exclaiming, "Looking at Harriet makes me feel extremely repulsed." we can put it as, "Harriet is fugly." Through whatever measures, society has always felt the need to create new words to express feelings in more concise and precise ways. In either case both statements are correct, but the fact we can squeeze so much meaning into the small words that came about to describe them is the point and fact.

This brings me to my point. You can say, "Pandarus is punctual." over saying "Pandarus is usually on time/early."

Now, to reiterate myself, I am habitually late. I am usually late. I am very often late. I am seldom on time. It may come as a surprise, but it seems we, in English, as far as I know, have no word that is the inverse of "punctual". We have no word that means someone is usually late, we have no word to say simply that someone is very rarely on time, that someone can somehow end up never meeting their deadlines, etc, etc...

To the average Joe who surely does not obsess and analyze seemingly and very often very probably meaningless things such as I, this means nothing. So what? Whatever.

However, looking at language as something that grows out of society, we can see something big here.

It is my sound conclusion that our society is abnormal. We live in a world with stringent deadlines and meeting times. Everything is laid out in front of us, set in stone. Some students in college will refuse to go to class late because it is a faux pas to do so. This is abnormal.

As English grew up as a language, being bullied by German and subjugated by French, it was a bit of a weird child. Regardless, through whatever twisted means it grew and is the monolithic world standard language we know and, if you are reading and comprehending this, likely are quite well at using today.

It never occurred to our forefathers to create or borrow a word from another language (If one exists.) that means or has the connotation of habitually late. This is rather unremarkable, as "habitually late" is only two words and one can see why making it more brief would really serve no immediate purpose. However, what makes it remarkable, what makes this all so important is that they did feel the need to find a word and use it and make it the standard for the inverse: habitually early or on time.

For some reason people being on time more often than not was so extraordinary, so amazing, they felt the need to describe it with a single word: Punctual.

This leads me to believe that our whole society based on incredibly stringent and unmoving deadlines and due dates is abnormal for us as humans, English speaking humans anyway, as a whole. Our language seems to show us that being late sometimes, showing up five minutes late, turning that report in just an hour past due... is entirely normal and to be expected.

It is not the writer's intent to say being late is better than being punctual; rather, that being punctual should not be the standard to which all is compared but be the tantamount of the human relation to the timespace. Being on time more often than not is superhuman, so much so people decided to make a word all about being such and not for the inverse!

So, for all you punctual humans out there, good job! You're better than the lot of us. But please, cut us some slack. We can't all be geniuses, Nobel Prize winners, or Olympic gold medalists... so why expect us all to be punctual?

Childhood Fears

I often feel, thinking back, I was much more intelligent and creative as a child. I don’t know if I became less so as I grew or if I just peaked early and everyone else grew to be more intelligent and creative where I stayed nearly the same and it eventually evened out to the point where I’m just a single face in mediocrity. Regardless, I vividly remember several things from when I was a child.

Occasionally as a child I’d hear ringing in my ears. I’m sure it’s something everyone knows about, a small high pitched whine that doesn’t seem to stop until you forget about it, upon which it promptly disappears. For whatever reason as a child I had this phenomenon happen many, many times. I was also paralyzed with the fear I was actually a robot and not a human. Logically putting these two things together I assumed the whine was either something going wrong with my mechanical brain or some sort of beacon I would eventually succumb to and become a sort of mindless drone.

Now in retrospect I’m not sure where I got such a ridiculous idea in my head. I mean, the whole high pitched whine thing being something wrong with my cybernetic body or a beacon is one thing and makes perfect sense; but being afraid of being a robot… that’s silly. Being a robot would be pretty fucking sweet if you had the sort of free will I had. This was a realization I had when I was much older and wiser… I think 9 or 10.

Nevertheless it stuck with me. I would be afraid to sleep if it happened when I was in bed, afraid of any sort of thing that would have me vulnerable or lose consciousness. I pondered relentlessly over what I should do to stop this, to break free of whatever my obviously insidious master had planned for me. Eventually I would break down and submit to his siren song and then have nothing left to do save his bidding, this scared me to my very core.

“How can I get over this?” I’d think. I would often look at myself ; at my arms or legs, and the cogs in my brain would start turning. Cut myself, if there’s blood I’m obviously not a robot. Now, I’m not sure if I actually took part in an act of 7 year old self-mutilation to prove I was a fully organic being or if I just received a cut somewhere as little kids often do while running around like idiots outside like I did. Either way, I was convinced this was not nearly enough proof.

It would be very easy, I surmised, that whomever could create such a marvelous piece of machinery such as myself could easily have created a simply layer of a blood-like substance between my fleshy covering and my cold mechanical skeleton. This was obviously the case. If not, my cover as a sort of undercover killing/world domination machine would have been blown ages ago when I lacerated myself and crude oil came spilling out.

I decided it was also strange I had never broken a bone where many of my classmates as well as my little sister had. My lifestyle of TV and Nintendo and the occasional trip to my backyard for an hour or so every few days was surely as dangerous as anything! My limbs must have been superhuman, almost as if they were metal, to have never fractured or broken! I thought about ways to break my limbs and see, because surely an x-ray would tell the truth, that were all inspired from TV in some way. I never, however, had the guts to go through with anything and just lived in fear every time that incessant whine occurred.

Thinking back on this over-analytically as I do I think I know where this came from. I feel I read, played video games, and watched TV more than most kids my age. I’m also pretty sure when I had this fear, say 6-8 years old, it’s an odd time. I’m sure most people don’t remember much before when they’re 5-6, I think I was just a 6 year old that noticed it. I could have just been placed there as a robot and told I was 6, I didn’t really have any concrete memories before then... aA few glinting things perhaps, but nothing enough for me to accept I was a human from day 1.

For some reason I notice the odd fears I had as a child either involved a loss of my humanity or a loss of my freedom. There are more, even stranger things for a 6 year old to worry about that I’ll probably write about later.

I get angry over things other people don't even notice.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/163925.html

Watch this if you haven't. You probably have if you've checked any game blogs/news sites/etc.. Is the stupid Fox News/Mass Effect thing.

They all cover it pretty well. Complain the psychologist chick is just riding the wave of sensationalism and doesn't know anything, and the spike TV guy does a good job putting them in their place. I don't feel like responding to all the silly and stupid things (Like how 13 year olds seeing porn is apparently damaging, and having no cases to cite whatsoever. I think I'd argue NOT seeing porn/knowing anything about sexuality would mess people up more but I don't wanna go into this.)

What I got angry about, very furiously angry, was the panel. Baldy, despite being completely misinformed saying "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie does Dallas", says he won't buy it for his kids. That's fine, I'm cool with that.

Angry black lady, which seems to be a token position on news shows, is completely wild. She makes a point saying a parent may want to play a game they don't want their kids to play, but uses it as reasoning for it not existing. Either:

A) Hide the fucking game.
B) Don't fucking get the game so you kids don't play it, show some responsibility.
C)Realize a 13 year old can play the damn game and it won't fuck them up after playing it and let them.

Crazy white chick #1 makes some crazy comments about how it should be rated AO. Let's make every movie that shows as much nudity X, though she'd probably be for that as well.

Guy I Like does a good job at saying, "WE SHOULDN'T CENSOR THIS SHIT IT'S THE PARENTS JOB TO DECIDE WHAT THEIR KIDS CAN/CAN'T DO AND ACTUALLY BE PARENTS AND WATCH THEIR KIDS."

To which Blondie replies, "Unfortunately."

That pissed me the fuck off. Both my parents worked since I can remember and they still spent time with me, watched what I did, didn't buy me shit they thought was too violent (I remember having to legitimize quite a few "M" games and Mortal Kombat.), or let me watch shit they thought was bad. I'm sure if they could do it, other people have the capacity to. Saying "Unfortunately" to someone telling you "You have to actually raise your kids and not depend on video games/TV/Internet." is infuriating.