Entries for March, 2004

I had this really funny joke that I made up. It had something to do with quantum physics and its effects on the ripples of space-time. But everyone that heard the joke either looked confused or disgusted. So let me downgrade my humor a bit and present you with the greatest comic strip known to man.



Yeah.

Written by jihwan at 10:17 PM.

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It's been quite a while since I've ranted on a touchy subject. I've withered from the bloodthirsty, put-em-up boxing jackrabbit to a senile, nap-lovin' Easter-bunny. That will not do. So, for the twisted joy of bashing a certain minority group, age bracket, or intelligence tier, I give you the all-new, completely unhashed Rant on Stupid teen girls: Part IV.

Scenario: Jihwan dials in the precise code for his weekday ritual, crosses his fingers, and opens the door of education's storage space. After retrieving his Psychology book, he slams his locker shut and proceeds to first period. En route to the brimming source of exciting knowledge, he notices two girls - one crying, the other comforting. Jihwan conveniently notices that his shoelace is untied, so natually he bends down to tie it. One minute later, Jihwan heads to 1st period with a smile on his face and a skip in his step.

---

My heart still goes out to that girl whose life had practially screeched to a standstill-- apparently, Hollister would not refund her money after she realized that the shirt she had bought was on sale at another store. I kid you not.

I can partly understand her agony. After all, a flimsy [but GLITTERY] cotton shirt made in Indonesia can cost up to 20 bucks a pop, as long as it has a big-store label on it. But let's get serious here; this girl was crying her eyes out at the absolute injustice of not being able to get a freakin' refund. And it wasn't a little "sniffle here, sniffle there" kind of thing. This was the type of bawling you see at crime scenes and funerals.

I just thought it was funny to see her priorities so obviously laid out like that. I mean, here she is in high school, with her whole life ahead of her. The chances are quite good that there are ten different strains of Gonorrhea festering in her body at this moment. She has to think about her education, about her developing as a person, and about her future.

And for cryin' out loud!! Corporate America has to ruin it all for her.

Written by jihwan at 10:34 PM.

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Talk to a group of females and bring up the subject of Britney Spears. Probably the first reaction will be a snide remark about how "she's fake," followed up with a round of hissing and extending of retractable claws.

I ask: why do women hate the fact that some people get plastic surgery?

If a woman [for the sake of argument, I use females] feels unconfident about herself, and decides that changing her physical appearance will boost her self-esteem, why do people look down on that? Idealistically people should be proud of themselves despite outward appearances, but that's not the case. In a society run by the outer crust of a person, you can't knowingly say looks don't matter.

That person obviously doesn't feel comfortable with herself as she is, and would feel more at ease and self-assured if she achieved what she perceived as good-looking. The fact that she achieved it by means of altering her God-given [or evolution-derived] appearance doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't downgrade anyone else. So why all the hate?

Back to the Princess of Pop. Women automatically dismiss her credibility as a singer due to the fact that she got breast implants and plastic surgery [which, by the way, isn't verified]. Granted, her music may not be Grade-A to most people, but females hear the words "Britney Spears" and automatically start secreting venom from their salivary glands and bunch up together in a pack, ready to savagely tear apart any opposition with the refrain "But she's fake."

I think that separated from the rest of their anti-surgery mob and given the chance, many women would seriously consider tweaking some part of their anatomy to look better. All you women who vehemently persecute the Britneys of the world, don't tell me you wouldn't do it. Deny it all you want, suck my blood out, gut me and slurp up my intestines with spaghetti sauce, but I have a theory. I'm going out on a limb with this one, and it may get me killed or castrated. But just entertain the idea for a minute.

You're all bitter. Bitter because you jumped onto the bandwagon too quickly. Bitter because now you can't get plastic surgery yourself because you'll go against the morals you so viciously defended. Bitter because I'm right.

Bitter because you're jealous.

Written by jihwan at 11:39 PM.

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나에게 사랑이란 관심조차 없는걸요. 쓸데없는 고민과 괜한 시간 낭비일뿐, 필요 없는거죠. 난 정말 여자와 사귀며 구속당하며, 기분 나쁠까봐 비위맞추려, 마음에도 없는 사랑한다는 말을 하며, 굳이 여자와 사귀는 게 정말 웃겨... 나 이해 못해, 왜 그럴까 도대체, 그렇게 여자때문에 고생하네... 참 딱해. 하지만 나도 가끔 외로움에 지쳐 나를 애써 숨기려고 하네.

가슴이 떨려와요. 나 조금씩 변해가죠. 이런 느낌 처음이죠. 이런 게 사랑인가요? 이제 알았죠. 내가 왜 이럴까? 이게 행복일까? 어쩌면 남들이 말하던 사랑일까? 뭔가 따뜻하고, 또 뭉클하고, 도무지 알 수 없는 느낌에 빠져들고... 안 보던 액션 영화, 안 먹던 음식들과, 그녀가 원하는걸 다 아는 내 가슴과, 그녈 위해 달라지는 내 모습에... 날 변하게 만든 너를 이제 원해.

이런거죠. 이게 사랑이죠. 조금씩 변해 가는 내 모습... 난 웃고 있죠. 행복하죠. 늘 지금처럼 영원히 그대를 사랑해요.

Written by jihwan at 11:36 PM.

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Friendship - the noblest of bonds. Some call it loyalty, others call it empathy. Some forgo the niceties and enjoy the company, others relish the definition of the word in all the aspects as culture, personality, and language allows.

Remember Kindergarten friendship? Your best friend was whoever shared his jellybeans with you that day, and you would walk out at the end of the day with a sloppily-made object that was supposed to be the consummation of your eternal bond. I remember the pinecone I brought home and showed my mother, explaining how "we're gonna keep it and be friends forever and ever," stressing my point by spanning my short little arms as wide as they would stretch. That friendship lasted a good month until someone else gave me a stack of POGs and Slammers.

Then there's Second-grade friendship. This was the first time friendship actually resembled what we humans brag about. I still remember her name. Monique Owen. Elementary kids in Anaheim didn't have the segregational bias that breaks high-school kids into "the Koreans" and "the white kids." It was an innocent friendship, and although boys my age would give themselves the cootie shot every time she came near, I really liked her. She was the tough tomboy, and would protect me from some of the rougher kids. In return, I would be the kid to run to the teacher and tattletale if Monique got into scrapes even she couldn't handle. We got each others' backs. That friendship lasted about four years, until I transferred out and moved an hour away, an indeterminable distance to us at that time.

Middle-school friendship. At the age of self-discovery, I was creating new ties with others. Choice of friends became less focused on material goodies and more on shared hobbies and interests. As I spent more time with my new acquaintences, I learned their little quirks and personalities and grew to like their company. Due to shaky adolescent confidence, I branched out tentative tendrils of emotional links, which proved fruitful. It gave me confidence in myself and what friendship should be.

And now, those guys and I are involved in a High school Friendship. I can't clearly outline what that is, because I don't have the convenience of hindsight yet. We call each other up to watch a movie at so-and-so's place. We decide to crash at his house because it's late, so we drag out the sleeping bags and spare shorts. Lying there talking about useless stuff seems to be the extent of our connection. But there's something else there. I don't know what to call it - explaining without speaking, understanding without listening - but it seems to have more substance than anything else I've experienced. We make fun of each other and don't mean it, we hit each other and laugh, we support each other with a word of advice or a sardonic smile.

In retrospect, I guess everything becomes a bit clearer than it was before. Sometimes I wonder about all those other people in my history. Where they are, what they're doing, what effect I had on them as a person - it's all fruitless, but it still tugs at the back of your mind once in a while. Sometimes I mentally create a slideshow of my life and sit there in awe of how the hell I got this far. I'm not naive enough to think that everyone I think of fondly remembers me, but I fool myself into imagining that they think of me and reflect. I don't follow Webster's definition of friendship, and I don't have my own. What friendship was, what friendship is, what friendship will be...

I'm learning.

Written by jihwan at 03:35 AM.

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We had our first cheerleading practice today.

Yes. CHEERLEADING.

Every year, the school holds an event called Powderpuff. It turns the tables quite nicely on the sex-stereotype that accompanies the delicate sport of football. The senior girls square off against the junior girls in a brutal contest of athletecism, and the guys stand on the sidelines and cheer them on. My friend Sark and I thought, "Why the hell not?" and showed up at practice with a few other guys we managed to convince. [C'mon, guys, football is a woman's sport. How about something manly... like cheerleading?]

Unlike some *ahem* stiffnecks, we participated in the cheers, the dance moves, and the one-person-stands-on-other-people-and-does-the-high-V stuff. Because all the other guys were about 6 feet tall, I was elected the official "flyer." Which means exactly what it sounds like. I fly.

I accidentally kicked one of the guys in the face as I was being chucked up into the air, and his lip was bleeding pretty badly. I realized just how dangerous cheerleading can be. I mean, at least in football you're wearing pads. Cheerleaders wear skirts, and if they fall, they FALL. And here in Woodland Hills, the ground ain't made up of marshmallows.

We discussed various ways of spicing up the show with war paint, T-shirt bazookas and a Braveheart-style mooning segment with the numbers '05 painted on each buttcheek. After all, what's the fun in being a fool if you can't be a BIG fool?

To the senior cheerleader pansies: Bring it on.

Written by jihwan at 01:25 AM.

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Products with corporate logos on them. You've seen em - the Coca-Cola caps, the McDonald's shirts, the Gatorade sweaters.

There's nothing more American than paying companies to advertise their products for them.

Written by jihwan at 09:27 PM.

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For those of you that know of or have been in Riley's class [remember when I went about 3-4 days without sleep during summer school?], this will be the funniest thing that has happened to El Camino High School's science department since Riley's induction as a teacher.



You ignorant, self-righteous bastard. I always knew you were smoking something. Walking into class with your disgusting grin, wearing your only pair of pants and your stupid ARMY shirt, stuttering like a 15-year-old pinto as you try to blindly argue that you have the right to be a teacher, making up horrible jokes and laughing as you flunk half your class, forcing your kids to stay at school for 6 hours after school was out, dishing out aneurisms left and right, giving students cases of insomnia, being the most anal person I have had the cruel luck of knowing, with your crappy banjo and puppet and thinking you're funny, going out of your way to pile on mounds of unnecessary work, then lowering our grades liberally and at your whim when we don't complete it, handing out A's to the kids that sell their pride and dignity to the Devil to bake you cookies and buy you school supplies, then butchering the grades of the kids that have a backbone for all the crap you put us through, and to top it all off, smelling like a dead raccoon dipped in festering tuna paste EVERY SINGLE DAY... I loathe you. Everyone that has had Riley, we are comrades-in-arms. I salute you for putting up with him and keeping your sanity. Because I lost mine.

Written by jihwan at 12:26 AM.

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You try everything in your power to accomplish something. You work at it, strive for it, and spend countless hours trying to achieve the goal. Then at a checkpoint, you look around and realize something:

Nothing's changed.

Written by jihwan at 11:15 PM.

I disagree!

When I was younger [back in the dark ages when I used to watch TV], I would watch shows like The Andy Griffith Show and I Love Lucy.

Then I would think to myself: "I wonder what it would be like to live in back then without color? Whoever invented color is a genius!"

Written by jihwan at 05:22 PM.

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The sidelong glance.

No, I do not like you. I have no intentions of a) asking you out, b) meeting your parents, c) settling down and raising a family, or d) partaking in colloquial sex rituals with you.

I just think you're amusing.

Written by jihwan at 10:39 PM.

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Sometime during the school day, I lost my freakin' sock. I remember being annoyed because it had a hole in it, and the next thing I notice is that the sock is gone, hole and all. So I was condemned to trudge through the day with one sock while my sock-less shoe got all smelly from the rancid sweat my foot produces by the quart.

It's a little thing, but it pisses me off. I just don't understand how one moment my feet are nice and content, and in a matter of minutes one of them is plunged into poverty and is filing for welfare.

Maybe that hole in my sock grew bigger and bigger until it sucked itself into an unknown dimension; maybe I got picksocketed. [hurray for dry, parched, dehydrated humor.]

Maybe I'm dyslexic.

Written by jihwan at 04:53 PM.

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What animal should you never play poker with?
A cheetah.

Did that joke make you laugh?

Humor has changed. I remember that even back in the early 90s, people actually thought those kinds of jokes were deserving of a small chortle or at least an appreciative chuckle. The play on words, simple puns, nice economical knock-knock jokes... they were all potential riproarers. Not these days.

These days, the jokes have to be laden with all sorts of cynicism and satire and injected with a double dose of cyanide to ensure that the stonecold people of the twentieth/twenty-first century get their kicks out of degrading someone else. Or a group of people. Or a nationality. Or people as a whole.

At the cafes, the audience doesn't sit around drinking coffee and eating cinnamon buns anymore. Nowadays, any successful joint with a comedy routine serves bubbling vats of Drain-O with neat little side dishes of obsidian and poison ivy salad.

It's like the 80s when the kids actually used to sing the school songs and participate in National Earth Day and stuff like that. Nowadays, you can't get kids to do jack squat. They just stare and you with cold, lifeless eyes that seem to exude nonappreciative ignorance.

Times have changed, man.

Written by jihwan at 11:06 PM.

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For about thirty straight minutes today, I got a kick out of playing Dr. Frankenstein with two bags of gummi bears. I conveniently had a sharp razor on my bedstand, and I got my daily jollies mutilating certain bears and transplanting limbs and heads onto the deformed bears so that I had a whole army of multicolored zombies. I mentally added rivers of blood running down the wrinkles in my bedspread and severed extremities strewn over the battlefield like the aftermath of a gritty war game. I enjoyed it immensely.

Then a queer feeling came over me and an evil glint in my eye twinkled as I lined them up and viciously slashed all of them to death and ate them. Ate them all. Bear meat good.

Someone please reassure me that I'm not the only one that does this kind of thing. I don't want to have to institutionalize myself because I played out a scene of the Holocaust in my bedroom.

Written by jihwan at 10:43 PM.

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