| A vendor tried to get Dave to buy, for retail sale in his stores, a bunch of mechanical apes that wiggle to the "Macarena." The guy gave a free one to Dave and he brought it home. The recording is, like, a serious bootleg, real crackly and inaudible, on a 30 second loop. The hilarious part - and it is hilarious - is that it's activated by hand clapping. I hear Dave out there clapping, followed by the "Macarena in a can," and then Dave's unbridled cackling. |
I spent five hours reading yesterday: one hour on the train to Ewha, three hours without break while there, and then another hour on the way home. Nuts. I had a huge headache when I got home.
I’ve started reading a book about evolutionary psychology. I feel nervous when I think about it. I’m listening to that nervousness; I know it’s telling me that I’m afraid to learn something that might shatter what I’ve accepted as truth. The whole idea that there are genetic determinants that explain specific sex differentiated behaviors would seem, to me, to support the claims of those babbling fools who always dig up Wild Animal Kingdom as justification for how men’s sex drives are always out of control and how it’s "just the natural order of things, babe."
But it’s the things that make you angry or scared that you learn the most from. I’ve accepted the idea of inherent sex difference. I mean, that’s obvious right? And I think now it’s important to know precisely the origins of those differences and to understand how we can better eradicate the behaviors we dislike. Just because our genes say it's so (particularly about "urges") doesn’t mean we have to like it nor accept it as uncontrollable. And certainly, any differences don't justify the oppression of others. I always like to use the example of how our backs are ill-designed for walking upright. Eighty-five percent of adult chronic back pain is associated with no physical dysfunction; it just hurts because we walked and the genetics didn’t get it right. It shows that we have improved even beyond what we were merely programmed.
Out around doing errands before the big day. The streets were empty during the lunch hour and I half thought that maybe a lot of people had taken the day off. Nope. They were just all in the bank withdrawing money. Me, I was paying bills. On the way in you have to take a number. Then you wait until your number shows up in brilliant red next to a teller’s station. We’re all waiting…and waiting. Suddenly, all the signs with the red numbers revert back to zero. There was a unison, "Oh," and everyone rushed up to the counter. Numbers all null and void, any adherence to order discarded. I waited. A few minutes later, the numbers were corrected and people filtered back into the waiting area. It was silly.
I bought strawberries today. I think we’ll eat them for dessert tonight as sort of an X-mas eve treat. When I first arrived on the Seoul scene, I was really disappointed in the fruit selection. Basically, you can count on apples and bananas year round and nothing else. Time has proven me wrong. You know those mandarin oranges you can buy in a can? They’re good right? Well, here you eat them fresh from the branch all fall and winter. They’re seedless! Strawberries are available from now until mid-summer. Big, red juicy ones. I’ve learned that variety is not as satisfying as quantity of things that hit the spot.
One final thing on this X-mas eve: I finally did the right thing and bought a carton of soy milk to try instead of regular moo milk. You know - lots of dairy stuff ain’t good for you, despite all those efforts to convince the masses otherwise by the Dairy Farmers of America, or whatever they’re called. Anyway, I got the stuff, put my Quik in it - I never drink milk without the chocolate - and it tasted just like liquefied hay with some chocolate mixed in. Gross! Well, there are other brands so I’ll try them before I give up.
|
future
past
index
|