Haruyasumi!
AKA~spring vacation!
Today I went to the University Museum (of Archeaology, but no one says this part) for their Celebrate Japan special.^_^ I was sorta late so I missed a bunch of the cool stuff, like the sushi demonstration and a Japanese music performance...*sad* But I got to see the Taiko drum finale, performed by a group from Swarthmore!^^ It was really awesome, the drums were seriously rocking the auditorium, and even though it was really loud, the rhythm was putting me to sleep, it was so smooth (that's a compliment, really!).^^ ...OMG, the comma count in that sentence is embarrassing... Anyway! I also saw the Hinamatsuri display, some ikebana (flower arrangement), some kimonos, some Japanese calligraphy, but didn't get to see the anime movies (essential part of Japanese culture!) or the Japanese mask workshop! *sad again*
Oh well, it was fun.^^ Plus my compulsive obsessive tendency to write everything "cool" down in museums amused me for quite some time. There's this awesome story about Ravana and Shiva that really cracked me up, I hope no one thought I was crazy for standing in front of a 9-headed statue (that would be Ravana, not Shiva, and he actually had 10 heads, not 9, but the sculptors opted for symmetry instead of accuracy) and giggling.^^;;; Except now my head sorta hurts from museum overload.^^; I think I'll go wash some dishes, drink some tea, and hunker down to write something. Or hey, maybe color that girl I inked a while back, except then I'd kill my black prismacolor pencil. Perhaps I should go back to the old Prang for this one...
Nah.^^;
Oh yeah, and note to self: must bring Marya's books home for spring break so I can actually read them! Must remember to bring buy lotion at home! Must remember to write the history paper! (@_@) Must bring dirty laundry home so I can wash them for free! Must NOT leave half-finished bag of salad in the fridge!
Enough reminders for now.^^; The dishes beckon....
And the world...
...for all our sciences and sciences, is still a miracle.
That quote came from somebody but I can't remember who.^^ If you do, tell me in the comment section! :)
Anyway, I just had to say that because in physics lab today we got on to the topic of the astronomy (my TA's doing his Ph.D research on cosmic microwave background...I think that's what they're called...CMBs, basically.^^; Or he was calling them cosmic microwave remnants but they're the same thing).
And man, we are just tiny specks in this ever expanding universe, struggling to understand something completely beyond our grasp. It's humbling and awe-inspiring and beautiful. I can't describe my wonder.^^ I will go study for my physics exam content with my position as a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot part of a microscopic dot in a microscopic dot....speeding toward infinity. :D
Humans...
...are weak, petty, and selfish.
I am not an exception. A friend came home today and I meant to greet her with joy, because I really was happy to have her back. But by the time we got to talk to each other, I was a sullen brat for no reason whatsoever. And I couldn't get myself out of that ugly mood, even for someone else's sake. I'm just not strong enough.
This all sounds so cheesy, but it's how I really feel (at the moment anyway). I guess whenever anyone tries to express an emotion it comes out sounding cheesy. Hardly anyone ever wants to say that "I want to be happy for this person" even if they might think it with every ounce of their being, cuz it sounds stupid out loud.
Or something like that. I think another reason why I write is so I can try to express those types of situations and somehow make it not cheesy, somehow make it real. But there I go sounding melodramatic again.@_@ I'll just stop now before I bury myself in angst.
Song list
So a while back Majo told me about how there were these LJ things where you let your playlist go on shuffle for 15 songs, and then post the results. Today I was trying to get my mind of some stuff and I thought it'd be a good way to distract myself.^^; So here they are, in all their anime and Japanese glory:
1. “Platinum,” Sakamoto Maaya
2. “Hesitation,” Hayashibara Megumi, Saber Marionette J-OAV
3. “Tom Sawyer no Boken,” Yonekura Chihiro
4. “My Lover,” Tokyo Babylon
5. “Ready Steady Go,” L’Arc~en~Ciel, Full Metal Alchemist
6. “Rinbu Revolution,” Okui Masami, Shoujo Kakumei Utena
7. “Tasogare no Umi,” See-Saw, Hack.Sign
8. “Omokage,” Hayashibara Megumi, Shaman King
9. “In this Arm,” Okui Masami, Slayers
10. “Eden,” Yami no Matsuei
11. “Kiss in the Dark,” Okui Masami
12. “Nemurenai Yoru wa,” Okui Masami and Hayashibara Megumi, Slayers
13. “Aka to Kuro,” Ali Project, Noir
14. “Tamashi no Refrain,” Neo Genesis Evangelion
15. “Egao ni Aitai,” Marmalade Boy
Man, some of these songs I like, hardly ever listen to anymore (the "My Lover" song from Tokyo Babylon, for instance. Apparently Seishirou's image song?).... And I'm sad that none of the Matantei Loki songs got on the list!;_;
Oh well, it was kinda fun.^^; Now I'll go back to being inexplicably tired while studying for my Japanese kanji quiz.
Late nights
....with tea and honey roasted peanuts, hmmmm.
I had this whole big long rant...thing half typed up this morning, but then Majo called from Missouri (you never called back!;_; I waited and waited and waited...) and I sorta kinda ranted at her so lost most of my desire to finish up said rant thing. So I'll just tell you it ran the gamit and was a summary of the 3 hour long rant session on the state of the world between myself and roommate (we are neither of us optimists, it seems). Some issues touched upon: women's rights (this started it ALL), gay marriages (can someone PLEASE explain to me why this is even an issue? Are these people breaking down churches and forcing priests to marry them against the doctrines of their religion, or are they simply asking for civil benefits which should be given to all human beings?), which led to affirmative action (and idiotic College Republicans with their STUPID "affirmative action" bake sales, as if buying a cheaper cookie is comparable to getting the higher education a majority of the black community otherwise wouldn't have a snowball's chance in HELL of getting), which flowed into racism and the social inequality of this country, which then led into the hypocritical role of religion in many peoples' lives (not a large # of people, I believe, are really religious in the sense it is meant to be. I know a rare few who are, and for that I am honored).
Would you believe if I told you that this morning's unfinished rant was even longer than this?^^;; Roommate and I were two ANGRY women yesterday night (I emphasize "women" cuz it was that issue which triggered everything). Think women's rights have been achieved and it's all equal everywhere? Heh, not when you have ladies like the one in my roommate's class. She was doing a presentation (this isn't a rant, this is a "report") on some writer, who said that it was woman's natural inclination to go into the literary field, while going into sciences and medicine was against her nature and she is de-feminized. (My roommate is pre-med, btw, and you all know I want to get my Ph.D and start researching animal behavior, so you can imagine how we took this 'revelation.')
Now, if she had only been presenting, I'm sure my roommate would not have gotten as angry as she did. But the girl proceeded to agree with the writer, saying something like, "Well, doesn't that make sense? Look around you: lit classes are always predominantly girls. And how many girls do you see in engineering classes? Maybe it's in our nature to be good at literature." My roommate held her silence through this, but when the girl continued to sprout her cr*p and said, "If women go to work, who's going to watch the kids?"
Then roommate struck back: "Why can't the man stay at home and watch the kids?"
Do you know what that girl said in reply? "Well, how's the woman going to make as much money?"
*insert look of total and absolute disbelief from self as roommate related this experience yesterday night*
Because MAYBE, the woman would go into science or medicine or engineering and make just as much money as the man in those same fields. And if that girl's sitting there saying that it's woman's "instrinic nature" to be better at literature and so that's the sort of job they should aim for, but then she goes on with how a man would also inherently make more money than a woman (since you know, "How's the woman going to make as much money?"), this implies that even in the so-called woman's field of literature, men would still make more than women! Do you sense a flaw in this logic?
And let me report another thing roommate told me about. One of her close friends works as a financial analyst, and a while back she complained to a male colleague that women are being objectified in porn sites, especially Asian women, because they're "exotic," hence there's all these porn sites devoted to the display of Asian women. The guy had no idea what she was talking about and she was quite surprised. Then a lightbulb (a dim one) went on in his head and he said, "Oh, so I guess it's like how those black guys always want to have white women as their trophies, right?" (Ok, first of all, this MYTH was begun by that propagandistic, first full-length film produced here in good ol' US, where this "black" man played by a white guy lusts after a pure virginal white girl. We had full grown idiots who fired guns into the screen when it was aired because they were so angry at that "horrible" black man. People who were in my AP US history class probably remember what I'm talking about, since we watched it.) So anyway, roommate's friend is understandably shocked by this...ignorance, but the man does not stop there. His next words were, "But like (in reference to Asian fetish porn sites), I've never heard of anything about how Asian women are good in bed!"
Roommate's friend, wisely, said she was going to end the conversation. She goes back to her cubicle, but this guy follows her, and then proceeds to ask another male co-worker, in front of her, whether or not he's heard of Asian women being good in bed.
This is it, guys. Know why the world's messed up? Not because those poor wretched people at the very bottom of the social ladder are ignorant, because they're so freakin' poor they'll never get anywhere. It's because people who are supposed to be educated, people who pride themselves as better off, people who can actually move into a position of power, THEY are ignorant.
Oops, it turned into a rant.0_o; And here I thought I was all ranted out.
Oh yeah, and we talked about stem cell research too. I love how people are loudly booing gay marriages, yammering about moral implications this and moral implications that, then turn around and applaud stem cell research and research in aging. You want to talk about morals, you take a good look at what it really means to grow stem cells and clone a human being. Excited that people who need organs will now be able to have them? What about when you rip that organ from a fully grown clone created for that purpose? (I need not remind you that twins are genetic clones.)
And aging? People getting all excited because hey, if this works we can increase our lifespans to 200 years! (Like unlimited supplies of telomerase so that our telomeres won't ever get shorter, which by the way, is a situation found in many cancer cells. Still want to live forever?) What do these people need to do that they can't do it in a normal human lifetime? Why do they need 200 years? Meanwhile too many of these same people who desire eternal life waste the lifespan they already have through envying the accomplishments of others or lazing around or not taking advantage of the opportunities presented to them. If you're so freakin' afraid of not having enough time to do stuff you want to do, get the @#$% up and do them instead of waiting for some miracle drug that'll turn you into a demi-god. And fear of death? Why are people so afraid of death, the same people who have religions supporting them, who are supposed to have something beautiful waiting for them afterwards, WHY DO THEY FEAR? I am not at all religious and I have no idea what happens after you die, but I can tell you now, you can't escape it. It's as natural as birth and while I don't want to die, I can be perfectly happy without 200 extra years. Researching aging when improving health conditions and nutrition have already given us so much more time implies a puerile fear or just plain greed. Or both. Goodness knows humans so often have both.
Dang...that was another rant.@_@ I'm sorry, I just get so angry when I think about these things (at least you guys weren't there when roommate and I were ranting, that was even scarier. And longer). It's probably better not to think about them...much happier that way.^^;
I've noticed that recently my stories have also gotten darker, perhaps in response to this growing sense that there can be no resolution to these problems of prejudice and ignorance until after we are long gone. But always in my stories the characters get a happy ending. Always. So perhaps subconsciously I'm still optimistic, because in my own little worlds, people can learn to understand one another and cross the gulf of differences. Despite the flaws of being a human being, I guess the following holds very true:
夢を描くのは 「人」 に生まれたから. (Yume o egaku no wa 'hito' ni umareta kara.) ~ exerpt of "Asu e no Brilliant Road," from Uchuu no Stellvia
"I sketch out dreams because I was born to be human."
