Wednesday, September 13, 2006

The air smelled like a sour, sweaty fat man this afternoon when I was making my way towards the subway station --- I couldn't place the smell at first. It's not enough to just say something's "bad", you know? Bad doesn't describe anything. I like being specific. And I like similies. Similies, I think, serve a purpose in good, everyday conversation. Of course, most of us don't know how to indulge in good, everyday conversation. But that's just because most of us are insanely boring and just don't realize it.

Like, when someone uses the word "nice" to describe practically everything. It makes me want to slap them hard across the face --- enough to leave a handprint. Okay. Not really. That's going to a psychotic extreme here, so let's just say that I really, really, really hate it.

Another thing I hate is when we're at a training session and someone --- there's always someone --- who'll wait until the very last minute to ask a really stupid question. Like, something that was already addressed just a few minutes earlier. And the thing is, it's not like these people weren't paying attention during training --- unlike me. I'm always in a semi-unconscious state the minute I set foot into a training session. (As opposed to totally unconscious at a meeting.)

Like, there's this one guy. Every. Fucking. Time. Always with the stupid questions. And I realize it's equally stupid of me to sit there and roll my eyes and sigh loudly, but I can't seem to help it. I guess the slow-mo turn of the head and incredulous stare that says, "Are you fucking kidding me??" isn't any better.

I did that yesterday.

It kinda just slipped out.

I hate where I sit. My supervisor's cubicle looks right into mine and I have to actually turn around to see if he's checking up on me, but I'm kinda paranoid that he might misinterpret the frequent glances in his direction with looks of intense longing. Though, if he asked me out, I'd probably go. But then again, I think he's got a girlfriend. And like I said in another post, I think I have this tendency to like people I can't have. Not that I like him.

Okay, so, after not watching Survivor since the All Star game, I think I might actually want to watch the new one that's set to premier tomorrow. You know, it's the one where the tribes are segregated according to race.

And here's something shockingly stupid, courtesy of Jeff Probst, he of the toothy-white grin and vacant, nobody's-home-gaze:

" "When you start talking to a person from Asia, you realize -- Wow! They have all different backgrounds!" gushed Probst, who described himself repeatedly as a 44-year-old white guy from Wichita. [...]

The other day, he told the reporters, he went to his dentist, who is white, and the dentist brought in another dentist, who is Asian. "And I found myself saying to the Asian doctor, 'Where in Asia is your family from?' " The dentist said he was Korean. "The only reason I had the courage to even ask that question or the knowledge to ask that question was I'd just spent 39 days with people from Korea," Probst said.

Yes, he really did.

Asians, he explained, include Chinese and Japanese and Koreans and "they don't necessarily get along," adding, "This is stuff maybe I should know." "

OH. MY. GOD.

Like, I wonder if Jeff Probst read that in paper --- that amazingly ignorant quote --- and cringed, thinking, "I am a fucking idiot."

Okay, so the chances of that happening are probably slim to none.

I mean, it doesn't make me mad or anything, 'cause the fact is, there are probably a lot of people out there --- you know, yahoos living in backwater towns --- who think this, too. To them, a yellow face is just a yellow face.

I mean, how else can you explain the way Asian actors are usually seen in roles that aren't necessarily of their ethnicity. Prime example? Zhang Zi Yi, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh in Memoirs of a Geisha, portraying Japanese women. And then there's Keiko Agena of the Gilmore Girls, who plays Lane Kim, a Korean, when in reality, Agena is Japanese. Ditto for Emily Kuroda, who plays Lane's mother.

Or Maggie Q, who was recently in Mission Impossible III --- she's half Vietnamese and half Polish-Irish, but she routinely plays Chinese characters.

All I'm saying is that to a lot of non-Asians, we're pretty much interchangeable. They see yellow skin, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes and they just assume we're all one and the same.

Ugh. And don't get me started on all those creepy guys with Asian fetishes --- you can always spot them a mile away. They're the ones who think that all Asian women are shy, quiet, demure, delicate and helpless. They're the ones who have learned how to speak Mandarin or Cantonese and who say stupid things like, "I love bubble tea and dim sum."

Um, yeah. Good for you.

Okay. That's the end of that rant.

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