Strange Dreams

I've recently started dreaming again.

I stopped in my junior year of high school. It was just another fall night, with another dream, but it'd be the last one I would have for a little while.

I am walking with my two brothers in an open strip mall. The air is crisp- the sky, clear save a couple of cotton-ball clouds. We are heading towards a Starbucks. As we approached, a blinding flash fills the sky ahead of us. I can feel a breeze pick up and rustle my shirt. I fight the polka-dots to try and see. The breeze becomes a wind. I look up and I watch a dark pillar rise up and encroaching the blue sky. Those cotton-ball clouds quickly fled away. The wind is physically blowing me over. I see the ripples of a shock wave emanating out from the dark pillar of fire. I turn and grab my brothers' heads, tuck them them into my chest, and huddle against the concrete foundation of the Starbucks. I feel the ground beginning to shake. The windows break, raining little beads of glass upon us. A deafening roar fill my ears. The wind is becoming hot. I can't open my eyes. I can't breathe, my throat is dry. It burns. I feel blisters rising, my skin is boiling. I feel dizzy. The pillar of fire overtakes me. I see nothing.

I wake up. The pulse in my temple is pounding, my breathing is short and quick, I'm covered in beads of cold sweat. I died in my dream.

In retrospect the dream was strange because in my waking life, I rarely went to Starbucks in the first place. I also thought it was strange that I died in my dream- knowing the urban legend I thought I should be dead. Clearly I wasn't, so that was good. What wasn't good was that I wouldn't dream again until the summer of my junior year in college- a full 4 years and not one single remembered dream.

I can't remember exactly what my first dream back was about. I know I've been dreaming because as I awoke, I fell out of my bed confused and startled to actually be waking up. The dream escaped me in disorientation.

Familiar faces, fuzzy words, fragments of a porcelain jar, a flight through midtown, amorphous settings that change unnoticed, a sense of urgency, a sense of calm. It's great to dream again.

Some clean up to do

Alright- I'm going to start blogging more any day now...

Alright, from now on, there will be no more music on old sox with holes. I'm creating a separate music blog. The blog's called The Spirit Farm and it's at http://thespiritfarm.blogspot.com.

So what's going to be left on this blog? Haikus, my thought nuggets about current events, politics and life itself. It's ambitious of me to maintain two blogs, lets alone one- but I'm gonna try anyway.

In nice weather,
Greg

How's my writing- or how I use too many ellipsies.

Since I've been writing this blog, I've found that my writing has changed. I've been using far more ellipsies- you know, things like ";," "-," "...," etc. Ha, look at that, that's the most awkward lump of punctuation I've ever seen. Just because of that fact, lets reproduce it right here, just very largely:

";," "-," "...," etc.

Alright, now that's done, I feel better.

Does the fact that I use so many ellipsies in my writing a good or a bad thing? I'm not sure which it is, but I sometimes feel like it's the only way I can evoke a conversational tone when I'm writing. This helps me out when I'm writing one of my rants about something (speaking of which, I'll make sure to have another one up- I'm aware of how pointless but popular they can be).

Hmm.... I think that's it about this.

In mild weather,
Greg

P.S.- in a post about ellipsies, I used three quite blatantly. Oh the irony!

A call for aid to my friends/readers

Don't worry, it's nothing too dire.

Well for a little more than a month now, I've been driving back and fourth between home and work every day, spending a hour in transportation in all per day. So for the half hour going both ways, I need some way to entertain myself. I went and made myself a couple of playlists to entertain my own driving. But there's something off with listening to something you designed yourself. So the challenge is this:

Help me by suggesting songs to put into a driving playlist, or better yet, give me a set of songs to listen to while driving.

You'll be helping me out by making sure my attention is on the road rather than trying to skip a song that I don't want to hear. I'll say in advance that I greatly appreciate it.

Gettin' ready for work,
Greg

Hello, my name is Greg...

... and I'm back.  Did ya miss me?  I needed a break from this after pretty much marathon posting since mid-May.  It just kinda hit me one day and I decided to let it for a week.  So I'm back.

Returning,
Greg

P.S.- Speaking of which, I can't wait to see Batman return in The Dark Knight. I hope I can find a way to see it this weeked.

What kind of opinion should I form?

I was quickly glancing at headlines this morning and I saw this:

"Court rejects death penalty for raping children (AP)"

Wow.

What kind of opinion as I supposed of make based off of that title? Raping children is terrible- speaking off-the-cuffs, I think people who rape children (who aren't children themselves) deserve death.

But at the same time, I understand why a death penalty would be considered 'cruel and unusual punishment' by the Supreme Court. In terms of reciprocity, death isn't equal to rape.

It's a classic case of my sense of moral dignity clashing with my logic in forming an opinion.

In introspective confusion,
Greg

PS - By the way, isn't that title kinda ridiculous in it of itself?

What do I have to offer

I've been looking through my old posts today and a thought permeated in my consciousness. The thought was: "What do I have to offer in my blogging?"

Honestly, I'm not so sure. It's just my opinions of a wide- but deceptively narrow- slew of topics, me talking about my life, and haikus.

It's all just a filtered diary fit for accidental reading by strangers, no? I mean, I don't provide a service, I don't do anything particularly special, I don't bear my entire living soul with these words. All it is is a few thoughts and rants about things. Who wants to hear that?

No answers to that question proves my point exactly.

In dim lighting yet again,
Greg

Happy Motherfuckers' Day!

That's what my dad like's to call Fathers' Day.

All you daddies, this is your day.

Thank your dad at the very least, I know I can't say it enough to mine.

Regards,
Greg

The worst kind of weather

There's bad weather, there's really bad weather, there's @$%^! weather, and then there's today.

Today's type of weather is the kind is hate dearly. I really have a hard time tolerating it. It's hot, it's humid, there's no wind. That's fine, I can kinda deal with that. Personally, I think that's a pretty crappy combination- like I would rather it be freezing, dry, and windy as hell much like how I imagine Siberia to be. Today however was worse.

Not only was today hot, humid and had still air, it teased one of those summer thunderstorms to cool the day off. It teased! It didn't deliver. I heard the distant rumbling of thunder, felt the breeze pick up, saw the dark clouds move in and even felt the few drops of rain. Despite all the signs, the promised torrents didn't come. The clouds parted again, the air calmed and the sun lit up the dull haze of the humidity. I feel cheated today. I wanted a cool thunderstorm all the signs pointed to.

Not only did the weather suck today, it decieved me. That's the worst kind of weather.

Suffering heat-induced delirium,
Greg

Some housekeeping

I lost my entire hard drive. If I'm not doing too much here, it's because I'm busy getting things back into working condition for me.

Doing my best tech support guy impression,
Greg

Note to my readers if any actually exist...

Hello readers (if there actually are any out there of course)!

Greg here. I've been writing this blog for a few months now updating it pretty frequently about a myriad of topics (honestly, mostly politics and my personal bitching- explicit or implicit). I was just curious to see if I actaully have readers.

Given the lack of comments I get, I would like to ask you guys (again, if there are any of you out there) a favor: leave comments. It does two things, 1) lets me know I'm not just writing for myself and 2) gives me input on my own content so I can change it up for you guys. Comments in many more successful blogs really add to whatever post the comments are on. Even if they're not really suggestions of comments on the topic, just leave one to say hi or something. I get awfully lonely in the florescent light of my laptop. Thanks folks.

In the florescence of my laptop screen,
Greg

Race is being run again

I'm not sure what it is, but race is back in mainstream American discourse. Between Barak Obama being the leading candidate for the Democratic Party, the illegal immigration question, the best collegiate basketball player being white (Tyler Hansborough), to even something as simple and picking ones head up and simply looking around in a class room, a cafeteria, an office, the street- race is back as an issue in American discourse. It's such a coincidence for me personally considering how much race itself has been a pivotal point in so many of my classes (Modern European History, Asian American Politics, American Grand Strategy).

Let me start with what I understand 'race' to be. The word itself is fairly modern in that people didn't talk about 'race' in Ancient Greece. In America, the notion of race has been attached to phenotypical connotations stemming from the days of American slavery. Dark-skinned Africans made up most of the underclass as slaves while light-skinned Europeans made the ruling class of masters creating a notion of racial hierarchy that has persisted today. Although slavery itself was abolished after the American Civil War, the concept of race and racial disparity has been encoded into the American legal and judicial system both intentionally and unintentionally. It wasn't until the civil rights movement in the 1960s that these institutionalized notions of race and hierarchy were addressed for, in many cases, the first time. Mind you this is being very brief but now, we have a man many would identify as 'black' as a legitimate candidate for President.

Race, beyond being associated to notions of class, also has come to represent a key part of peoples' identity. For example, one of the many things shaping my personal identity is as a Korean American living in the United States. Because of this, we get a "chicken or the egg"-like argument where race has been used to create a schema for people in the United States- namely through the use of stereotypes. There are enough harmful and dangerous stereotypes (the black underclass stereotype for one example) as well as many relatively benign ones (white people can't play basketball for example) too.

Alright, now that I've provided a little background of race in the United State as a schema, let me get to what caught my interest.

LZ Granderson, a writer for ESPN, wrote this article aptly titled "White men can't jump?" Now, I'm a huge sports fan because I have primal urges to associate myself to a larger association of people (fans) and that pro sports is every bit a part of American culture as music, cinema, current events, et cetera.

Professional sports for the last 50 years have developed and perpetuated specific racial stereotypes. LZ Granderson takes a look at this type of racial stereotyping that's prevalent throughout pro sports today. Tyler Hansborough and Kevin Love are outstanding collegiate basketball players but enough basketball pundits out there don't really consider them blue chip prospects for the NBA draft on nothing else outside of skin color. This kind of thing is seen in other sports as well, for example football: black quarterback, white wide receiver and white cornerback are all oxymorons to a lot of football fans. I hate to make it sound so academic- at the moment I can't really help it. But I really suggest you go and read this particular article.

Here it is again.

April Fool's!

It's that day when it's socially acceptable to be absolutely ridiculous. The internet has single-handedly made this particular day more ridiculous than it already is. Here are the few things I've found so far.

The most obvious thing is this from Blogger. Announcing a Google Weblogs service now (wasn't that was blogger became?).

Another one is the "Election Deathmatch" coverage on the front of ESPN.com. Since I can't find a way to link to the page, I'll describe it. First we have a split screen image of Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama with a caption that says "This year, Clinton and Obama face off in a winner-take-all tournament." Beneath, it says this:

What better way to settle the fight between Democratic Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama than with a winner-take-all, fight-to-the-finish, loser-goes-home-crying good old fashioned deathmatch? ESPN brings you all of the action LIVE, tonight at 9PM ET. Each candidate will take part in several events, officiated by libertari-pendant candidate Ron Paul. Challenges will include:

The Dick Cheney skeet shooting contest. What better way to prove you've got the poker face that it will take to negotiate treaties with hostile world leaders than by taking a load of birdshot to the face?

The Dennis Kucinich dwarf toss. Who's got the strength to toss the mini-congressman to the other side of the aisle?

The Al Gore 20000k Eco Fun Run. Which candidate can go the distance? Who can do it with the least carbon emissions, and without suffering an Inconvenient Stroke?

The Alberto Gonzalez "I Don't Recall" Relay. If history has shown us anything, it is that "forgetting" is part of being a good leader. Who can finish the race without letting any facts out?

The George Bush Constitutional Hurdles. Sure, clearing all those hurdles will be tough. Why not just knock them all down?

Catch all the action LIVE, April 1st at 9PM ET, and vote for your favorite candidate by texting your vote to 040108. (Vote does not apply to residents of Florida or Michigan.)

According to Google.com, Google and Virgin has joined forces to explore and start human settlements on Mars. Yep, this one's in line with the elaborate plans Google has done before. There's a link to the page here.

Also, every featured video on youtube.com redirects to this. Rick Roll'ed!

Finally, there's this released by the BBC. I think it's fun.


Happy April Fool's Day.

It's hard to fit in when.....

You're the WORLD'S TALLEST MAN!!

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day for all you Irish and Nigerians today. Yea, St. Patrick was also the patron saint for Nigeria. So everyone should pop open a Guiness and have a piece of flatbread. Have a safe one.

Oh, here's a video.

He killed the Little Prince?

An 88 year old German pilot believes he killed Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Saint-Exupery wrote The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) amongst many other children's books. Besides being an author, he was an experienced aviator. Saint-Exupery returned to France during World War II to serve in the Free French Air Force. He was believed to be shot down in the Mediterrainian in 1944- his body was never found.

The pilot, Horst Rippert, was a part of Germany's Luftwaffe and believes he shot down Saint-Exuprey's plane. He was a fan of Saint-Exuprey's work since he was a child.

Well so much for all that.

Goin' home

So I'm going home today. Gonna take a Chinatown bus but this one scares me a little. The bus stop is a few blocks north of Penn Station, right where the ghetto begins in Baltimore. I hope I don't get mugged, raped, robbed, etc. in the 20 minutes or so I have to wait there. That'd be very unfortunate.

Have a good spring break- we all need this week for the sake of our sanities.

It's hard to be funny.

I've got a small stand up gig tomorrow. Just a small five minute set amongst about 12 others. Just five minutes....

Do you have any idea how hard it is to be funny, by yourself, for 5 minutes? It's really hard man. The tendency is that once you get up on stage, you see the audience. They all have the expectation that you'll be funny, that you'll tell jokes. They're all sitting up there silently judging you- the first move you make is the most important.

How will I start this off? Which joke should I start with? Can I really commit now that I'm up here? What- when- who- how?

DANCE, MONKEY, DANCE!!

That's how I feel. Jesus, it's stressful.

To make things worse- I feel like my material for tomorrow sucks. Wish me luck tomorrow.

Here's my first stand up bit- EVER: