News Friday

A couple of things about the news:

Why are people surprised at the pope visiting a gay-hating bigot? The Catholic church, as progressive as the current pope has been on income inequality and environmental issues, is still a regressive institution when it comes to gender and women’s rights. The church still doesn’t like the idea of birth control and abortion (great idea for poor, overpopulated countries!). The priesthood is still a men’s club! The order of the world is still God > man > woman > children > animals.

A part of me tends to be nitpicky about the whole thing however. Growing up Catholic, I’m sensitive to the differences between Roman Catholics and Christians. Aside from Christians separating themselves from the Catholic Church hundreds of years ago, why would Kim Davis, a Oneness Pentecostal, be interested in seeing the pope and vice versa? Shouldn’t the two be arguing over the nature of the Holy Trinity and calling the other a heathen?

Also, why Kim Davis? Were the Duck Dynasty guys too busy for the Pope that week? What about the God Hates Fags people? At least I find them more logically consistent than Kim Davis. Like the Catholic church, they stand up against divorce , which really is the bigger threat against traditional marriages.
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I can’t stand Obama when it comes to gun control. He rails against lawmakers and the NRA every time there’s a school shooting, speaking as if he has no power to makes changes. He’s the leader of the most powerful country in the planet! He can push his agenda if he wanted to. He certainly did with Obamacare. And he’s certainly trying with the Keystone pipeline. But when it comes to gun violence, police violence, income inequality, immigration, etc. it’s just one flower speech after another. Someone remind him that he’s not Maya Angelou. He’s the president. At least critics like Cornel West are willing to put some skin in the game and get themselves arrested in order to affect some change on important issues.
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Why is the UN having talks against cyber violence? And why is cyber violence solely “against women and girls?” I understand things such as revenge porn is mostly aimed against women, but a lot of the vitriol on the Internet is aimed towards everyone. It’s not gender specific. I would even guess there’s more animosity against gays and lesbians on the Internet than there would be against women. In any case, the Internet, due to anonymity, makes it a breeding ground for general negativity. Women claiming that cyber violence does serious harm especially to women is a disservice to the strength of women and downplays the effect of cyber bullying on men.

Also, shouldn’t the UN be focusing more on REAL violence? This seems more like a sham show to support censorship in many countries.

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Listening to some sweet Willie Nelson to calm down.

That Drawing Sucks

Everybody dreams. Everybody talks in their sleep now and then.
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Little late, but congratulations Alberta! Perhaps there’s hope that Canada would be back to its pre-Harper form. With all the focus on oil and protected areas being opened to exploration, Canada is starting to look more and more like the United States. But out of nowhere, the most right wing and oil-rich province elected NDP to power after decades of voting Progressive Conservative (what a misnomer!).  There’s hope that yes, it’s not too late for Canada.
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There’s been a lot of debate regarding drawing the prophet Muhammad and the difference between what Charlie Hebdo does and what Pamela Geller and her group has been doing. This is the difference: Charlie Hebdo is calling out all religions, Pamela Geller and her group is calling out all members of a religion and labelling them as savages. They are asking for moderate members of Islam to denounce the actions of the extremists, and without blinking an eye, calling every member of the religion a savage.  How can you get someone on your side when you spit right in their eye? There is no debating with this kind of rhetoric. They’re just as far gone as the extreme Islamists even though they are absolutely free to espouse any hateful sentiment and that people should not be killed for drawing anything.

What the shooters in Texas did is reprehensible. They might’ve done it over religion, but I believe that with their mental instability, they would’ve murdered for some other causes if the religion wasn’t there.

To call the incident as something uniquely Islam would be extremely dishonest. All religions have their sacred cows. To say that there is something about Islam which drives commands people to kill is not examining other religions or newspapers honestly. This is what makes Bill Maher’s take on the religion a little superficial. At the moment, drawing the Prophet Muhammad is the sacred cow for Islam. I doubt if most members of the faith would be driven to murder, maybe they would be insulted and annoyed, but extreme fundamentalist members of the faith see it as a hot button issue that would drive them to excessive action.  But this is not unique to Islam. Extreme fundamentalist members of the Christian faith see women practicing birth control as a hot button issue that would drive them to excessive action. Moderate members might be offended by gay marriage or contraception/abortion, but extreme members see it as a drive to murder. And if you look at the two sacred cows, one could even argue that a woman practicing birth control is more normal than drawing an ancient prophet.

Take the actions of Pamela Geller and her group. They intentionally goaded mentally unstable extremists by having a drawing contest of the prophet Muhammad. It’s intentionally mocking their sacred cows. And for what? Freedom? Not one person has ever had a birth control contest to goad mentally, unstable Christians simply for freedom. Commentators like to point out the urine-soaked Virgin or what not, and yes, no violence occurred. But there’s violence in other issues. Extreme members of the Christian faith are bothered by what people do out of necessity (birth control) or what people do out of love (gay marriage/adoption). Doctors just simply provide women the help they need, and news actors like Bill O’Reilly send insane followers to ultimately kill people like the late Dr. George Tiller. And then later, Bill O’Reilly rants about the dangers of Islam. It’s not a urine-soaked virgin, it’s doctors helping women.

That’s a mighty fine log you got in your eye there.

Art, “Terror,” and a bit about Godaddy

 

An art opening, an art opening! Got a gallery show opening this weekend with a couple of other artists. Exciting stuff. It’s always good to meet new artists and see what kind of works other people are into. I also learned that I’m not the only foreign artist in the country who dabbled in making action figures.

Despite Korea being quite small, I’ve never been to this city right next to Seoul where we’re having the exhibition (Ilsan, northwest of Seoul). The place seems quite young and the architecture feels foreign to me. It’s almost as if I’m walking in Japan. I would hang out in Ilsan more if it wasn’t an hour and a half away from where I live. And really, there are far too many bars near where I live for me to wander far in order to get a drink. My neighborhood has made me lazy.

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Are we feeling better now, Canada? Are we all good? I gotta say, the overall reaction to the shooting a couple of days ago was far more level-headed than one would expect if it happened down south. No giant panics and no moral outrages. No one is going after swaths of Muslim populations. What troubles me though is the almost too-canadian rumored reaction from our Prime Minister during the shooting: that he hid in a closet. How Canadian is that, eh? “Mr. Prime Minister, a gun man is causing trouble outside, you’d better get inside this closet!” Can’t we at least get a panic room or something?

On a more serious note however, I’m more troubled with Canadian politicians and Americans calling the whole thing an “act of terror.” Glenn Greenwald made a good point about it, and it’s something I always felt was the general bias when it comes to the liberal use of Western force in other countries. The shooter targeted Canadian military. As cowardly in terms of the attack coming out of nowhere as it is, there appears to be an effort not to harm civilians, but only to harm soldiers and those in power. Sure, there was an element of “terror,” but wouldn’t the act of combatants attacking others who are technically combatants be classified as par for the course in war? It wasn’t an act of terror. It was war, and Canada has been at war (against vague terror) along with the United States for over a decade now.

Calling the attack an act of terror, in my mind, does two things. One, it is used as another piece of propaganda for more war, more money for the military, and more kids being sent to fight overseas. What exactly are we doing in Afghanistan? For what purpose are we there for? Couldn’t Canada find a better way to achieve these goals outside of military intervention?

The other thing it does is that it defines the word “terror.” It was an act of terror when a man targeted soldiers and a government facility. I’m not going to argue against that because it definitely was terrible and I do feel for the victim and his family. I’ll give you that. It was an act of terror. He did not shoot civilians, but that poor soldier did not see it coming and did not deserve getting shot that day. But how do we define the actions of the US military when they bomb innocent civilians through signature strikes? How do we define the thousands of deaths in the vague “war on terror?” These are actions which kill not only supposed terrorists, but also civilians. Aren’t the people living in these neighborhoods also terrorized?

Now, I’m not saying that United States is a monster for conducting a terrorist campaign on several nations in what appears to be a disproportionate act of vengeance. What I’m saying is that “terror,” “acts of terror,” and “war against terror” are all horribly vague and maleable terms. They are trump cards which justify horrible actions and push forward shortsighted government policies. Sure, we can call something an “act of terror.” What happened in Canada was an act of terror. But let’s also examine our own terrible actions and see exactly how terrible we have been.

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Problems with Godaddy again. Well, I don’t know if it’s Godaddy, Korea’s fickle Internet, or whatever. Ugh!

Worry Sex Children Japanese Shooter

Random thoughts:

It’s funny how what was an all-consuming thought last week is now almost a blip. Don’t get me wrong, I still worry about things and how the events from last Monday will affect me, but now I got other things in mind… trivial yet consumes me more. And isn’t that the biggest luxury of all? Being free to think and obsess over the trivial things?

Speaking of all consuming, Norm MacDonald is right. Men don’t think about sex every six seconds. They only do so once in a while. The problem is, the minute men think about sex, it’s all they could ever think about. It takes an orgasm to get them all sleepy and out of that funk. And no, I’m not saying I’m currently thinking about sex.

Met an old friend last week. I haven’t seen him for about eight years or so. He’s now got two kids. This got me looking at my other old friends. Most of them have kids now as well. Heck, one of my old roommates has three. I don’t know how a person could afford three kids in this economy. Anyway, sometimes I feel left out. Like I should be moving on and having kids at some point. Then I remember how unstable my life can be and how demanding children are. Glad none of my orgasms ever became people.

I just learned yesterday that a girl I know in Japan is a bit of a nut… a Japanese right wing nut. It’s one thing to honor the dead and respect a bit of your culture and history, but it’s another to honor the war criminals from World War II. I honestly don’t know how anyone in Japan can take politicians and people like these seriously. Look: there was a war. Japan was one of the bad guys. Maybe some soldiers did it for God and country. Maybe some were forced. But they were the bad guys and they did some pretty horrible things. Sure, the Japanese government has “apologized” many times, but they’ve also turned back on their apologies as well. And people still honor war criminals like they deserve it.

I guess the reason why the Japanese don’t get so villified and that they sometimes get a pass for flying the Rising Sun Flag is because the media hasn’t really made enemies of them as much as they did the Nazis. It’s why Japanese educators think they can just skip the horrors they did on history books because it’s not played on the media much. Look at the last few years. How many games have been made involved shooting Nazis? How many games have been made involved shooting Imperial Japanese?

And speaking of shooting. Korean men are required by law to serve two years in the military. One man went berzerk yesterday and gunned down twelve people. He must’ve really hated the place because he only had two months to go before he could resume civilian life. And to this day, they still cannot find him. There’s a popular reality show here about life in the military. It shows comoraderie and how Korean men are toughened up in the barracks. I never liked the show because it’s all boring machismo bullshit which inadvertently wanders off to the latent homosexual. Plus, it’s a reality show. I guess they glossed over the parts where they sometimes make soldiers go insane.

How’s that for a random thoughts?

So Sad

So uh, that was pretty sad news the other day. Some sad gunman shot at a bunch of people in a campus in California, killing seven people and injuring several others. The gunman made a series of videos and a lengthy manifesto detailing why he wanted to shoot women and how much he hated them for rejecting him. He hated the fact that women in campus didn’t pay him any attention and that they would rather go out with idiots. In his manifesto, he fantasized about killing most women in the world and just keeping a select few for breeding. What a charmer!

Now, there’s already a bunch of spin on the story. People are rallying for gun control. And yes, it is a bit ridiculous when law enforcement officials have to go through so many hurdles in order to get assigned a pistol, and yet any individual on the street can get a pistol with barely any question asked. Despite, this, I’m sure not much would happen because we’ve seen similar stories likes this too many times and if anything, there have been more pro-gun legislations passed since Obama got elected. People will use the story for their own agenda, and it will probably be the agenda that gets more people killed. Heck, even as I write, I’m looking at a story that blames homosexual impulses on the shooting. Great. Blame the homos. Have more of them stay in the closet and lead unhappy lives.

I saw some of the videos (I couldn’t get through all of it) and read some of the gunman’s writing. Sad. This was a kid who couldn’t get laid despite being the son of what I assume is a fairly successful director. He drove around in a beemer. If a rich kid in a beemer couldn’t get laid, what chance does the kid in a Kia have? This was a kid who had resources. How come those who don’t have money are still able to get laid? Doesn’t he deserve as much? Many people felt that the videos were extremely narcissistic, and they truly are… but I felt more depressed thinking that this was a sad and terribly entitled kid who couldn’t get anything that wasn’t given to him in a silver plate and wrapped in a bow, someone who truly just didn’t understand how humans worked.

The whole thing kinda bugged me, because we’ve all been there. There’s always a girl you couldn’t get. There’s always times when we felt ugly and dejected… hating the girl we like because they’re out with someone who treats them like shit. I know many men in their thirties who are still like this kid, alone and wishing for company. But usually when you feel dejected, you get over it. You move on. You don’t turn and seethe in hatred of the things you desire and can’t have. And you certainly don’t write pages of fantasy manifesto about them.* It’s just terribly unattractive.

As for being a virgin, you don’t obsess about being still a virgin at 22. Who cares? Lower your expectations. Stop aiming for the 10 and aim for the 8. Or wait a while. There are no scoreboards out there. I believe losing one’s virginity is one of the biggest letdowns most people would ever experience in their lives. I know it certainly was in my case. So I’m really lost whenever I hear people obsessing on either side of the spectrum: those wanting to get laid ASAP, or those saving it for marriage like it’s a precious gift. It’s not a rite of passage. It really isn’t. After years of having sex, the first one would most likely be the most forgettable of all if it wasn’t the first.

If anything, the shame of being a virgin (not that there should be any shame to it) is just something that reeks out of people who obsess over it. It just makes it easier to tell.

The gunman actually reminds me of those terrorists expecting to be with 72 virgins after they blow themselves up. If you read the holy text, those virgins they are promised have alabaster skin and golden hair (and apparently, gigantic), much like the blonde sorority girls** the gunman lusted over. It’s like some terrorists’ rage, much like the gunman’s is just rooted in lack of access to sex, and that if the both actually got laid now and then, they would relax a bit and enjoy this wonderful world for what it is: a world of endless sex possibilities. And really, if he was so pent up, why not just hire a prostitute? Heck, hire a classy prostitute. It’s better than shooting people up and dying as a sad loser that people will blog about and criticize. That goes the same with terrorists. There are wonderful women in this world. And beyond the joys of sex, there is greater meaning in life. IN LIFE! You have to be living. Live, get laid, and be happy.***

 
*I never wrote manifestos over how much I hated young, pre-Seal Heidi Klum.

**Beautiful, blonde sorority slut? How creative is this guy’s fantasy? It’s like he was raised on Playboy and Axe Body Spray.

***Now, I realize that the gunman was mentally ill. He was truly ill. And while I wrote more about the common frustrations of wanting sex and not getting any, I think the recent tragedy’s roots are more about mental illness and the need for sensible gun regulations. But that topic has been covered so many times by people smarter and more competent than me. And yet, here we are still.