Recalcitrant Bastard

I just achieved the highest pinnacle of ecstasy any human being could ever hope to achieve.

I had a steak. A Wyoming steak. It was beyond description. It defied words. It transcended the mortal experience to be something greater. It was in its naked glory so perfect that steak sauce was rendered meaningless.

To end, I ordered a Brown Betty, which I in my shameful ignorance thought was only something from "King of the Hill". A Brown Betty is actually an apple crumble, but this Brown Betty was so crumbly that I could have been eating ambrosia and clouds and not told the difference.

I have never had such good food in my LIFE. I have eaten food on several continents, innumerable states, of every longitude and latitude that you could imagine, and nothing could compare to this one meal. The Cheyenne Cattle Company in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Look at it. Commit it to memory. Do not allow yourself to die before you have sampled its delights.

Yes, I am in Cheyenne, which is a mere one hour away from the Nebraska border. My traveling companion and I got the ambitious idea to touch Nebraska before we left for home, but we are so enamored with Wyoming that we may just stay here tomorrow.

I love, love this state. It is my favorite state out of all the states I've visited. I was greatly relieved to discover that Wyoming is not Idaho. Wyomingites are, in contrast to Idahoans, friendly and warm. They do not stare. Wyoming also remains the truest to its Wild West heritage of any place I've seen. Many of its small towns retain their Western architecture, log cabins and all. I do not like the Wild West so much for what it was, but for what it represents: independence, nature, a lack of people, horsies, mountains, streams, rivers, beauty, and Wyoming has all of it. Not to mention that the West has very good Internet connectivity. Even towns with population 200 had wireless Internet in their campgrounds.

My dream now is to buy land in Wyoming, even though it's completely infeasible given my current location. Travel there alone would be a fortune. But it is my dream. Maybe I could even move there someday. Given the number of jobs available to out-of-staters - unless I go down a mine shaft for Halliburton - that is also infeasible. But I can dream. And one day, I will own a patch of land or maybe a house or maybe even a ranch and be happy and content.

I am two days early, but here's a bit of Fourth of July cheer for you.



jdub says I look like a demonic patriot. It's the Idaho influence. I've never seen more American flags in my life.


Idaho Falls, Idaho



Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

( More Wyoming pictures )

[Click on any picture for a high-res version]

I've never seen such fat, round, shiny-coated ponies in my life either. The cattle are the same way. Idaho and Wyoming are Cow Heaven.

I had plenty to say about this trip, but I'll be brief. Idaho represents the perfect confluence of lush grasses, emerald farmlands, Western ranching, mountains, streams, and trees of every variety, but the people are bitches. They perfect the West Virginia Stare to the tee. They stare at me when I come into restaurants, they stare at me when I go into stores, and they stare at me throughout my entire meal. It's not just a cursory, interested stare; it's a long, hard, pointed, hostile stare. It's enough to make me lose my appetite, no matter how fresh their goddamn potatoes are. In fact, the only place where I felt comfortable and not-stared-at was Walmart. God bless Walmart.

To top it off, we saw a billboard in Idaho: "WARNING TO TOURISTS: DON'T LAUGH AT THE LOCALS". Who the hell is laughing at the locals? Paranoid freaks.

Wyoming still reigns supreme.

I have endless amounts of respect for Martin Luther King, Jr. How anybody could cleave to non-violence when the world is full of assholes is beyond me. Of course, I'm not inherently anti-violence myself, since I am of the mind that people should get what they deserve. This goes for everything from smacks to the head to smiles on the street. I used to be a "smile to strangers" type because I assumed by default that those strangers deserved one. I'm not that way any more.

I've been trying to learn to let things go. If the individuals in my environment are assholes, I should just remind myself that I'm getting out of here. Soon. My parents insisted on coming with me to Arizona the first time I went apartment-hunting. They marveled at how nice people seemed, and this was based solely on the fact that the cashiers were courteous. That's what I have to look forward to in a month. I shouldn't let certain incidents I've encountered here make me bitter. I shouldn't brood on the fact that assholes tend to pick on people they assume will never fight back. I shouldn't a lot of things. I should play with my new model Jeep CJ-5 in cherry red and chase the cat and have a happy, happy fun time while dreaming about a better and brighter future.

Martin Luther King, I salute you.

Not all people who have children are stupid, but all stupid people have children. It is one of the great tragedies of life.

jdub and I were discussing how difficult it is to drive in Berkeley. Berkeley has the worst driving streets I've ever seen: n-way intersections and illogical one-way streets. jdub informed me that that was done on purpose to encourage people to walk instead of drive.

Now this is the most perfect example of California logic in existence.

Here's how normal people think:

"We have Option A and Option B. We want people to choose Option A. Therefore, let us make Option A better."

Here's how Californians think:

"We have Option A and Option B. We want people to choose Option A. Therefore, let us make Option B worse."

I wonder if it's possible to be a tourist in your own state. I found this super sweet bed-and-breakfast in Odebolt, Iowa. Included are such attractions as:

Biscuits and Gravy Breakfast

Neverending Cookie Jar

Damn straight.
_________

Speaking of biscuits and gravy, my biscuits and gravy prowess was called into question today. I challenge phlegmato to a cook-off. No fillers, mixes, or bacon allowed. Bring it!

(I'm just bullshitting. I can't cook worth a damn.)

Tags: iowa

I am a little concerned that my life seems to be slipping by. When I was in school, time didn't move at all. Now I'm having so much fun, I'll be dead before I know it.

This country has some great town names.

Some of them stand on their own. I'd love to live in Pie Town, New Mexico or Bacon, Indiana, but I'd avoid Prison Farm, Montana. Remind me never to set foot in White Settlement, Texas or Dead Woman Crossing, Wyoming.

Liberal, Kansas may seem like an oxymoron, but no more of a contradiction than Virgin and Nipple in Utah.

A strong statement was made when Poverty, Kentucky was named, but its evocative powers can be challenged by Notrees, Texas.

There are six states with a town named Gay, but only there is only one Gays, Illinois.

Some towns complement each other. No doubt Hungry Horse, Montana was formed before Dead Horse, Alaska. There is Why, Arizona and Whynot, North Carolina.

Unalaska, Alaska was named that because its residents didn't want to be part of Alaska. tdj would do well to avoid Furry, Mississippi with the same fervor.

( Happyland, Oklahoma. CLICK FOR MORE AWESOME. )

With all the late-night LJing I do, I could have written fifteen novels by now.

Californian Asians have attempted to draw me out before. When I evinced no interest in their exclusionary activities and showed no sympathy towards their cliqueish mentality, I was accused of being whitewashed. I finally realized that my feeling of distate stemmed from the simple fact that I was not like them at all. We did not share a similar background. We did not share a similar culture. All their talk about "Asian pride" and pseudo-ghetto posturing was foreign and repellent to me. There was nothing linking us but a few bits of DNA that colored our hair dark and our eyes brown.

Today, I talked to aritei and found a group I do connect with: Asian chicks from Oklahoma.

In all seriousness, talking to her was amazing. Kim is one of those rare Asian women who grew up in an obscure, middle-of-the-country state just like me. I related to her effortlessly.

On one level, people do connect with each other through their ethnicity, but only in an indirect way. Shared ethnicity implies shared traditions and mores. If you are an American, though, it goes far beyond that. How you were raised and where you were raised are more significant.

Culture-wise, Oklahoma is distinct from Iowa. They have more cows than we do. We have more corn than they do. Kim has a badass accent*. I sound like Dan Rather after speech training. But their culture is open and friendly. They have the feeling of "caring about your neighbor". Their educational system is top-notch. All of this was familiar. And after we acknowledged these more important commonalities, we could chuckle over being the only Asian girl in a class, having mothers who knew nothing of the local fashions, and feeling the faint, automatic sense of familiarity between us because our parents came from the same place.

This was just another incidence of a phenomenon I've observed since moving here. Almost without exception, the people I relate to the best are non-Californians. It's eye-opening how little their race, age, and current circumstances matter in comparison to this one criterion. I don't mean this just in reference to my dislike of California. There are things like shared life experiences, childhood memories, and world views that simply aren't the same here. Nobody knows what the hell 4-H is. Nobody runs after you in the street to tell you your headlight is broken. Nobody has ever caught frogs in a friend's pond or done any of the things people who live close to nature do. It's a different world.

aritei: people here bash the state a lot
aritei: unless we're at a football game
aritei: or texans are around

One of the things that saddens me is how many people leave their childhood homes, citing boredom in search of something better. What they don't know is that "there's nothing to do here" is a universal sentiment. I've known people in New York City and San Francisco and Los Angeles who have said the exact same thing. What makes life exciting and interesting are the people around you and the friends you have, not how much urban clutter there is.

I am guilty of wanderlust myself. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to experience excitement. In the end, touring the globe only made me appreciate the things I had taken for granted.

Kim and I both agreed that it would be nice to return to our childhood homes once we grow up and have seen enough of the world. She was quite vocal about returning to Oklahoma to raise children, if children were a consideration. There's no better recommendation than that. In a parallel non-childfree universe, I would feel the same exact way about Iowa.

Of course, I'm destined for Austin. Because it's inevitable.**


* Unfortunately, her accent only comes out while drunk
** Obscure inside joke

aspartane wrote a great article on bureaucracy. Pure poetry.

Bureaucracy is an all consuming, all destroying demonic force that is slowly squeezing the life out of our society. We are all familiar with the satirization and parodying of the bureaucratic system, the inefficiency, ineptitude and maddeningly complicated particularities make for comedic gold for anyone who has had to deal with it firsthand. All the while, those who have not dealt directly with the bureaucrat laugh and take it all in and assume, that as with most parody there is a good deal of hyperbole involved, it cannot possibly be that bad.

Well let me tell you, its not that its that bad, it is fact quite a bit worse.

It's very telling that I've cut my away messages down to "Food" and "Sleep".

While reading news from home, I stumbled across this article: A Child From China. It was the story of an Oklahoman couple who went to China and adopted a baby girl. They mentioned that nearly half of the Chinese orphans up for international adoption are adopted by American couples. They were one of them.

The large majority of these orphans are girls born into rural families who still favor boys. This historic preference (boys can work more, boys can take wives while girls leave the family) coupled with the one-child policy has put pressure on rural families to abandon female children. The author pointed out the irony in that the abandoned girl children who find their way into American and European homes enjoy a lifestyle far above that of the average Chinese boy. Still, this is a great minority.

He waxes a bit too poetically on the idea that these American-raised babies would grow up to become strong, independent American women who would return to the land of their forefathers and change China's culture from within. He fails to see that these cultural tendencies are, like everything else, rooted in practicality. There is a reason there's such a discrepancy between the attitudes of city-dwelling Chinese folk and country-dwelling Chinese folk. The former have no need for manual labor, while the livelihood of the latter depends on it. There is a great disconnect between the two. Even when my parents speak of the peasants, it's as if they were speaking about a different species.

No, if you want to get rid of male favoritism, you will have to get rid of the incentives for favoring males. As long as China's countryside remains dependent on agriculture, the peasants will favor boys.

Reading this article did remind me of a thought I had a while ago, though. I am firm in my adherence to the childfree lifestyle. In other words, I never want to have children. I have no particular inclination towards children or child-rearing and I frankly do not think it is a responsibility I can live up to. To me, parenthood is not an opportunity to mold someone in your image or to guide someone along the "correct" path or to shape someone into an idealized vision of a human being. I see it solely as the responsibility to care for another person. Your reward, if you succeed, is someone who is equipped with the tools to choose their own path, form their own ideas, and lead a life they are content with. It's a difficult task and not one I want to deal with.

However, if there were ever the distant possibility that I would change my mind, I would consider adoption as desirable as pregnancy. In many ways, it is superior. I do not place any premium on my genetic material. There are many children who need adopting. No need to have one of my own when I could just adopt one that's already there and in need of a home.

And frankly, pregnancy is just not something I want to go through.

If it ever came to that, why not one from China? Whatever hypothetical children I could have with my hypothetical partner would always be half Chinese at least, full Chinese at most, so it's not like it'd suffer strange looks or comments. It's not too bad an idea. If it ever came to that.

The time has come once again for an anonymous comments post.

* Comment with a juicy secret.
* Ask me a question.

Take your pick or do both. IP logging has been turned off.

TV is a beautiful invention. I've learned so much from watching TV. I watch science shows, forensics shows, surgery shows, shows about nature, shows about biology and psychology and law. Discovery Channel, Discovery Channel: Health, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet - they are my bread and butter.

One of my new favorite shows is "Trace Evidence: From the Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee". Dr. Henry Lee is a renowned forensic scientist. When I looked him up on the Internet, though, I got this article.

Dr. Lee always speaks patiently in a voice heavy with an Asian accent. Everytime I see Dr. Lee on television, I have trouble suspending my disbelief that he always speaks in such a stereotypical manner. I don't believe it. It is just too much. Sort of like watching some famous African-American ballplayer on Leno or Letterman coming across like "Allen Iverson" -- You know what I mean. Really urban.

Or for a second, imagine a middle-aged country music star speaking to a sell-out crowd between songs at a concert. His speech is full of witticisms and country twang. The fella could fit right in on "Hee Haw." Now imagine this same fella' talking on the phone to an accountant. Suddenly "Onery Bill Johnson" sounds like ordinary "Mr. Bill Johnson" of Memphis, Tennessee. -- All that exaggerated southern accent is just gone, gone, gone.

But, c'mon. Does he always speak like that? In fractured English. Or is Dr. Lee having a bit of fun at our expense. What do you think?

Hey. Genius. Didn't the thought ever cross your mind that "Onery Bill Johnson" drops his accent because he doesn't want to deal with the bigoted likes of you? Or that those "really urban" ballplayers just talk like that? Because you do know that not everyone speaks like a whiny, spoiled, elitist, bigoted, suburban white Northerner. Or that Dr. Henry Lee lived in Taiwan until he was 30?

Fucking idiot.

I love bluegrass.

For the thousandth time, I regret that my parents forced me to play the piano. I didn't even object to their idea of music lessons when they brought it up; I just wanted to learn the flute instead. 11 years later, there I was, half-assed piano skills in hand and countless hours of my life wasted on something that wasn't even good for a college application. Chinese girls who can play piano are a dime a dozen. Try a badass flute for a change.

Sadly, over a decade of torturous training has soured music learning for me. I decided I would not be able to learn another instrument with a half or even a fourth of the effort I used for piano, and that's not saying much. The knowledge of exactly how much work and sweat it takes to master an instrument is enough to put anyone off. There was a time when my teacher told me to practice five hours a day. I managed three. It was pure agony every step of the way. It didn't teach me dedication or the value of hard work. It taught me that I hated piano. At most, it taught me that if you hate something, it'll be twice as difficult as doing something you like. This lesson was later reinforced in college when I made the same mistake myself by picking an unsuitable major. I fervently hope I've learned this lesson.

I do regret this wasted opportunity, though. I have listened to music with interest for years, but it wasn't until I first saw "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and explored the wonders of Flatt and Scruggs and Ralph Stanley on Rhapsody that I found my music. It was a religious experience. I could continue extolling its virtues with obsessive fervor, but suffice it to say that it is the only music which can make me feel good no matter what mood I am in.

Now that I've found a genre I truly love, I find myself doing the one thing I never thought I would do: consider taking up music again. Not piano, though. I need something more bluegrass-y like the banjo or the mandolin or even the common guitar. Or maybe I could sing. I sang "Blue Moon of Kentucky" (to myself) for hours today. Once I master the voice crack, I'll be set.

Relax. Let all your worries about the day go and just relax. Slowly roll your eyes up as if trying to see the back of your eyelids. Roll them up further. Roll them up more. Hold them there, but relax the rest of your body. By now, your eyes are probably burning, maybe hurting, and more than likely, they want to close. Don't let them close. Keep your eyelids open. Roll your eyes up more. Your eye muscles are now relaxing. They're starting to shake now. This is normal. It's their way of relaxing.

If an emergency should by chance occur, you'll come out of the trance immediately, instantly, with fast, quick, and sharp relaxes and crystal clear thinking, able to handle the situation calmly and effectively. Now let us relax your body.

Those two above paragraphs were excerpts from relaxation tapes that jdub sent me. I have never heard anything more awesome in my life. If you want them, hit me up.

I recently noticed something interesting.

I saw this flag in Jessica Simpson's newest video. (Horrendous, by the way. A blond Daisy Duke? I'm not even a fan and I'm appalled.)



I called it the "rebel flag". I'm pretty sure I've called it the "Confederate flag" for most of my life. But because everybody I know who talks about it calls it the "rebel flag", I've begun doing it unconsciously also.

It's interesting how quickly these things can just creep into your speech. I am well-acquainted with the phenomenon through my own Pittsburgh flatness and Californian "o"s. When I really think about it, I'm not quite accentless after all. I delight in my muddled Eastern overtones. I say "tar" instead of "tire". I say "sharh" instead of "shower". Pretty much anything with an "ar" makes me sound drunk. I just discovered via Google that my math teacher's usage of "jag-off" is proper Pittsburghese and not an unholy slip of the tongue. I refuse to say "crick", though.

I revel in my Midwestern usage of "tennis shoes". It's "sprinkles", not "jimmies". It's "pop", not "soda". It's definitely not "coke". If you use it like that around me, I'll probably giggle.

I'm still trying to eradicate the Californian part.

Sweet-ass poll time!


Poll #514734 Linguistic flags
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What do you call that flag?

Are you a damn Yankee?

Do you have any special words or phrases that people around you don't say?

If you are from Texas, check this box.

Seriously, where are you really from?

I know I've already asked you fifty times where you're from, but it's an essential piece of data for every unscientific linguistics survey.

The first thing I ever noticed about the dating site Eharmony was that it did not allow for gay matches. But the jig seems to run even deeper than that:

"Neil Clark Warren is the Christian evangelical who runs Internet dating titan eHarmony...a dating site that attracts a lot of Christians, and won't match gays or depressed people or anyone who's been married more than twice."

- Salon.com

All right, gay people evil. Yes, we know. But the rest? That goes above and beyond the call of duty. I wonder if this isn't why I got stuck in the "20% of the users we cannot match". After taking the test, that was the message I was given. I was not even allowed to browse the ads on the site. 20% always struck me as an unusually high number for unmatchable personalities, but throw in the non-Christian depressed gay divorcees, and it begins to add up.

One of the popular urban legends about eHarmony is that if you reveal in your profile that you don't regularly attend church or aren't Christian, you won't get any matches.

I had never heard this rumor before. But after reading this article, I can see why it exists.

It's quite possible that the number of unmatchables is so high because we simply don't live up to Warren's ideal of a marriageable person. From the article, it seems he is obsessed with the idea of marriage. I'm not given to impulsive elopements and I'm not inclined to pop out five kids on the spot. In Warren's dreamland, maybe I should be. In the dust bin I go.

As for my romantic prospects, Warren had some grim news. He said that because I was bright, I "lose at least 95 percent of candidates because of IQ."

Any guesses as to the writer's gender? That just seals the deal. You disgust me.

Time for a little rant.

I am sick and tired of people bragging about things that only exist due to practicality. I am sick and tired of people drawing faulty conclusions.

"Most Europeans have passports. Most Americans don't. Americans are xenophobic and close-minded."

Wake up. It would take someone four days to travel by train across the country from San Francisco to New York City. That kind of scale is unimaginable for someone who doesn't live with it. You can drive across Liechtenstein in one hour. Hell yeah, I would have a passport if I lived there. I would need it. I wouldn't be able to live without it. Does the fact that practicality makes me need this thing render me superior to someone who needs one hour to drive across their city? No, so don't assume it does.

"Americans don't know any language except English. They're ethnocentric and close-minded."

When was the last time substantial numbers of Europeans learned Thai? Or Korean? Or Amharic? People learn languages to communicate. People learn the languages they need to know. There are areas of the United States which are heavily Hispanic. People who live in those areas tend to know a lot more Spanish than people who don't. Does that make them better people? No, they just do what they need to survive.

I am sick and tired of walking on eggshells around people who think my sole duty in life is to sit there patiently while they criticize my country. I am sick and tired of people who attribute my objections to "American propaganda". Hey! Guess what? I didn't have any love or appreciation for this country until I went to Europe, so it can thank itself for breeding this patriotism. Do you know what angered me the most? It wasn't criticism of America's actions or politics. It was the Europeans' belief that they knew more about America than I did. It was the Europeans' unshakeable faith in my stupidity. It was the arrogance of thinking and telling me that I was constantly bombarded with propaganda when I saw just as much propaganda over there. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Say what you will about arrogance, but I don't think it's polite to talk shit about someone's country when you're in it. I didn't do that when I was in Europe, but I've seen plenty of Europeans do it over here. I don't think it's polite to crack snide little jokes about someone's country at every damned opportunity. I don't do that, but I've had plenty of Europeans do it to me.

I finally realize that there is no need for me to shut my mouth politely when other people feel it is their god-given right to sling crap whenever they can. Why is it that when an American criticizes Europe, it is "American arrogance", but when a European criticizes America, it is "opening your eyes"?

Fuck these double standards.