Lost In Me

The best laid schemes of mice and men

I had been looking forward to spending the semester in NYC: taking in a new city, trying out a new job, and spending time with Drew and Cara. However, it seems that I am to escort my mother to Gunsan, Korea, to see my ailing grandmother... whose true condition my mother is reticent to tell me. But I should be back in a month or two, and maybe my job will still be available then.

In the meantime, I have a quantum mechanics final to prepare for.

I've been largely vegetating since coming back from visiting Drew last weekend, as if my brain still hasn't shaken off it's hangover. And I have to remember not to drink so much, as it only brings out all the buried sorrow that nobody should have to see.

I am in NYC, hanging out with Drew and trying to get a feel for this town. This afternoon, I will go see the restaurant where I may end up working for this semester.

Finally, tonight, Molly is out of my life. I'm going to clean her light brown hair off of my clothes and bed, and never think of her again. I'm never going to miss going on walks with her simply because she is lonely and needs attention. I'm not going to miss her distinct scent. And I certainly won't think of the times when I attempted to play guitar for her to cheer her up. Good riddance, I say.

And in case you were wondering, Molly is my former housemate's dog.

I have a bad case of insomnia tonight. Too tired to do anything productive, I got online and was immediately bombarded by Mike's IM's. Ranting and raving, he told me that the Democratic party's support of gun control was irrational; he claimed to have statistics showing that 20% of Republican voters would vote Democrat were it not for the issue of gun control, while only a negligible number of Democratic voters would be alienated to a third party, were the Democratic party to change their views. I suggested airily that perhaps Democratic politicians had real beliefs. Mike told me that real beliefs are also irrational.

As for my view on gun control, I used to believe in it until fascists took over Washington. Now I believe every American should own a rifle, and that sniper training should be a part of the standard curriculum in American high schools.

Murphy's Laws

Much like Galwang, I think Murphy was a student of probability, and one of his laws states that "If there is a worst time for something to go wrong, it will happen then." So it was that today, as I was typing up some intern applications with due dates fast approaching, my keyboard decided to die. How often is it that a keyboard malfunctions? It was certainly the first time I ever saw it happen.

Of course, as Motte tells me, the optimistic way to interpret Murphy's cynicism is that we should not expect to get lucky all the time.

I've been reading this article, about the Korean government's refusal to give foreign laborers in Korea a political voice. I don't know what it's like to be a migrant worker, but as a visiting student in the US I do know what it's like to be irrelevant in the eyes of the state; to live under institutionalized racism and oppression that is engraved into national policy. And when I read the ZNet article, that is what I see going on in Korea.

Now I haven't studied any political theory, but it seems to me that it is not the place of the Korean government to decide who can have a voice in national politics, and who cannot. There simply is a Korean society, and the government should represent all elements of that society. Migrant workers in Korea contribute to society with their labor, and through their work they have already become a part of Korean society. As such, these guests should have their fair place in the national polity. It does that matter whether they are Korean citizens or not, as that is only a distinction on government paper and does not reflect the reality that these people are working in Korea, and have chosen the country (even temporarily) as a place to live their lives.

The government has clearly stepped out of line. But perhaps this isn't surprising for a government with such a dictatorial past.

I had the strangest dream this morning, that I was a news anchor about to report a devastating earthquake in California in one of those breaking news interruptions. I woke up in a mild sort of panic, and had to scramble to my computer to check the news and make sure there was no real earthquake... even as I thought about how irrational it was to have to look. Ah well, it was a night filled with some very odd dreams; one involved me trapped with several people in a subway train that had somehow wound up in outer space, and was falling back into the earth's atmosphere as a bright meteorite. Another involved Hanna, though I don't quite remember the details of that dream.

Sigh.

I haven't had a very good time with the first couple of weeks back here at school, and I've decided to drop my classes for this semester and take a leave of absence. It's a long overdue break, as the past year has been very hard, and I think I only admitted that I need a break now, because I am so stubborn. I'm starting to realize the only reason I stayed in school last semester was because I needed to prove something to myself... but that only made the previous fall doubly tiring.

And so, I've been trying to decide what to do with my leave of absence. There is an old programming job back in Ohio that I might be able to go back to: that requires little thought and even less physical movement, which might be just what I need. Drew suggests that I go to NYC and rent out the free room in his apartment, and I do have an interesting job offer in a cafe in Manhattan. Interesting only because I've never worked in a cafe before. For a moment, I even considered extending my one semester leave to four, and volunteering to serve in the army in Korea. That thought didn't last long, as I started to remember the lyrics from a certain song by CCR:


Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white, and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief"
They point the cannon right at you

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no senator's son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one