Entries for December, 2004

Everywhere I go, I see a group of people playing poker. When there's some free time in class, a congregation of would-be sharks migrate to a corner of the room and start dealing out cards.

This recent craze over poker is getting really, REALLY annoying. It has spread everywhere. I see TV commercials, internet popups, and books on "Mastering the Intricate Art of Poker." The hell is that all about? It's like American society's not knee-deep in a steaming pile of crap to begin with, but we're just gonna shovel more of it onto the heap by advocating gambling nationwide?

There are two predictions I make about this occurence:

1) That this poker thing will fade out and die like any other fad.
Safe and harmless, just like POGs, Pokemon, yo-yos, and those friggin reality TV shows [which stubbornly won't disappear from television network broadcastings].

2) That the "innocent fun" that all these people are having will eventually hook them into the innocent addiction of hardcore gambling.
Then, in 10-20 years, America will have a working class population that has a 60% divorce rate, a spike in the number of homes mortgaged, a plunge in the quality of inner-city aura and safety, and an overall depreciation of what little quality we have in our neighborhoods.

My reasoning? Because the percentage of voters that would support gambling, laws and restrictions that have thus far prohibited casinos to open businesses in cities will be overturned. The propositions that were 80% against such encroachments by casino moguls would be replaced by a large democratic majority of voters who still believe that gambling is still just "innocent fun."

The result? The safety, the environment, and the quality of our neighborhoods would be shot - the results that most of us currently vote vehemently against. Then, because of the large revenue that the government would collect from the casino businesses, the feds would have to bend and even break some stands on laws and restrictions regarding these businesses. The political structure and the economy of the states would collapse. Most importantly, Jihwan would have to live this whole period of his life watching the nation shoot itself in the foot.

...


That's my projection for the future.

Extreme?
Perhaps.

Warranted?
Probably not.

Interesting?
I would certainly say so.

Written by jihwan at 08:59 PM.

3 x 0 = 0

I call home after practice to tell them I'm heading home. My dad picks up and says, "Oh, yeah, don't be surprised when you get home. We got two dogs."

If you know my parents, they aren't the very spontaneous type. So to go and get not one, but two dogs... that was extraordinary.

...

I remember when my sister and I were young, we would harp on and on about wanting a little puppy we could play with. We promised them that we would bathe him, walk him, feed him, and clean up his little poo-poos. To no avail.

Now that one of us is about to go off to college and the other is a sophomore in high school, I guess they decided that we were old enough for a pet.

...

So one minute I'm trying to decide whether or not to take home my math book and attempt to do my homework, and the next, I have two large, bouncy 8-week-old puppies to take care of.

What's that, God? You want me to take on more responsibility? You want me to get off my ass and do take charge of something other than myself?

Gotcha.









And enough with the whole "fattening them up to eat them" thing. Like I didn't hear that joke a billion times already. I'm Korean. Get over it.

Written by jihwan at 10:11 PM.

9 x 0 = 0

After practice today, some of us decided to go to the mall to buy Christmas presents for our two coaches. The brigade, consisting of three guys and two girls, decided to meet at the local Toys R Us first.

After buying the joke gifts, we then agreed to go to the local mall to buy the real presents.

After about 20 minutes of searching for a parking spot [do these people have nothing better to do on a Friday night than clog up the parking lot with their stupid cars?], the guys finally made it inside the mall.

---

I called the girls to see where they were. But because the reception was so bad, I could only make out fragmented sentences, including the words We're at the -----house.

I looked at the guys.

"Is that a name of a store?"

They shrugged. After about five minutes of standing around feeling lost and stupid, I finally decided to ask some resident mall rats.

"Excuse me. Is there a store somewhere in this mall that's named 'something-something-house?'"

The ditzy little valley girls, probably around 13 or 14 years old, stared at me with symmetrical cookie-cutter looks of pure, unfiltered pity like I was a starving child from Ethiopia. Apparently, this incredibly dorky asian guy didn't know his way around the mall. How idiotic of him.

"Sorry, I don't think so."

gigglegiggle

twits.

After a few more embarrassing attempts at asking passerbys and enduring the stupid jokes from the other two, I walked over to the mall directory.

I don't know what the shoppers thought of us as they walked by - the three of us just stood there staring at the brightly lighted sign. We couldn't even figure out what the stores sold, let alone where the girls were. Brookstone? Illuminations? Charlotte Russe?

Three high school seniors on the Academic Decathlon team. Dumbfounded by a mall directory map.

---

We tried calling the girls again. And again and again. When we finally got through, I threw a fit, yelled at them, spitting saliva all over the clean marble floor, and demanded to know where they were.

---

The guys saw the queer expression dawning on my face and looked at me quizzically.

I told the girls [who had already bought the gifts and were on their way home] that I would see them tomorrow and hung up.

Then I turned to the guys.














"Guys. We're at the wrong mall."

Written by jihwan at 10:29 PM.

4 x 0 = 0

This morning on the way to practice, I was listening to the radio. In between the incessant self-propaganda that the station spews out and the selection of uniform, cookie-cutter American pop-culture music, I was mentally writing out this entry.

Did anyone else notice that 102.7 - KIIS FM has gotten severely Black-inized the past few years? I've only recently started to listen to the radio again, only because the Buick that I exchanged for the ol' Saturn P.O.S. has no CD player. Because I listen to most genres of music and don't really DISLIKE any specific ones, I tune in to 102.7, the local station of mixed-genre music.

But I've noticed that for a while now, the station has consistently been getting taken over by what I like to call "Black Music." Now, by Black Music, I'm not being racist or stereotypical. It's what I call really bad, really stupid Black hiphop.

Black Music has three main subjects:

-The ho's gettin' bouncy in da club.
-The pimps smokin' a joint in the back o' da Ben-Z.
-The multi-billion dollar superstars droppin' lyrical bombs about livin' in da gHettO.

It gets really old, really fast.

I hate the radio.



***


On another note, the morning DJ was talking about the most popular baby names for this year. This is what she said.

"Having trouble naming your newborn jewel? Want to be original? Well, I've got the top five most popular baby names that parents all over America have been naming their kids this past year. The most popular girls' name was Deena, and the most popular boys' name was Aiden! Give the gift of names this year! Make it special!"

Translated, it goes something like this:

Having trouble naming your kid? Want to be original? Well, I've got the five most overused names for 2004, and here they are. If you want your daughter or son to have the same name as hundreds of thousands of kids their age, consider severing your brain from your head and throwing your child onto the factory line of mediocrity! Deena and Aiden! Take your pick! Be original with the names! Make it special! Spell them any way you want! Deenah? Aidyn? Your choice! Let's celebrate the mindless conformity that is American pop culture with some pimpt-out music from some really gangsta black rapper! Only on L.A.'s #1 Hit Music Station, K-I-I-S, KIIS fm!


***


Between the constant blare of Black Music and the Communistic single name propaganda, I started to freak out and almost slammed my 45-ton Buick into the car in the next lane. Then I got smart and turned the radio off.

Then I drove to school in silence.

Written by jihwan at 07:22 PM.

4 x 0 = 0

He steps outside the stuffy car and checks his watch. 12:26 am. It's Christmas Day, and the family expedition to visit the annual display of dazzling Christmas decorations has ended in failure. He leaves his parents to bicker about directions and wrong turns and stolls toward the beach, letting the cold ocean air ruffle his hair and the salty scent of the sea awaken him from his road trip torpor.

He walks past the shops lining the Newport beach pier and quietly heads toward the sand and water as though not to awaken the atmosphere of the silent night. He somehow notes in the back of his mind that the unlit shop windows seem like eyes that have just fluttered off to dreamland. The stores have retired to their beds - why hasn't he?

As he stands near the lonely lifeguard stand, he looks out past the waves at the black water, at the twinkling lights of the Huntington pier winking at him from across the promontory, at the thousands of other lives that are progressing so definitely independent from his own.

He suddenly feels so small, so insignificant. All he can see past the water is blackness, a pure void of nothing. The view, or the lack of it, coupled with the usual reflective mood of the holiday season, makes him feel like a child at the New York Stock exchange - powerless and lost. No matter how hard he yells trying to be heard, no matter how much he waves his arms around trying to make a difference, he's lost within the overwhelming drone of bigger things, of more important interactions of which he is not a part.

This jumbled mess of thoughts, all in a span of a couple minutes - flashes and bursts of nonverbal language that he tries to untangle and decipher as he sits at the computer now.

He calls her for the second time that night, only to get the voicemail message again. He stumbles over irrelevant words, squeezing out a "Merry Christmas," trying to explain how this moment, frozen in this time frame, is one in which he just wants to hear her voice, Nothing else.

He is abruptly shaken out of his sappy, sentimental thoughts by the giggles of his sister and cousin running toward the sand, their breaths trailing behind them in the black night like frosty wisps of holiday cotton candy.

He mentally slaps himself for being so stupid, so disgustingly quixotic, and immediately regrets the phone call.

He shakes himself off, buries the cell phone deep inside his jacket pocket, and runs off to join the tangle of arms and legs that is the result of a failed piggy-back ride on the soft sand; he doesn't look back at the gloomy water, even when his parents voices cut through the night air, yelling at him to get back to the car.

Written by jihwan at 05:45 PM.

2 x 0 = 0