Americrits.

Wasn't it a few weeks ago that Michael Jackson was the butt of a good percentage of American jokes? How is there an outrageously overplayed death dirge given to Mr. Pop when just a week before his death there was a market where media execs could give the stamp of approval on writers' relentless exploitation of Jackson's molestation manisfesto? If America isn't a hypocrite, who is?

Get the girlfacts

I have entered into the anti-girl phase of guyhood. My behavior is replete with symptoms. I meet an attractive girl and I have two things running through my mind: "Let me see your curriculum vitae and a medical history report and then we'll talk."

You'd be surprised how unromantic questionnaires can be.

If my thoughts were discovered, I would reply, "On used cars, you get the carfacts. On girls, you get the girlfacts"

"So I'm a used car now?"

With all sincerity, yes.

different goals

Three days ago I was studying at Starbucks when I was distracted by three 28-somethings that talked loudly two seats over from me. They were attractive and white. And since they were in the Irvine Starbucks they must have been moderately successful, at least, considering the cost of living of the area. I listened to their conversations. Weird, I know. But I was in need of a break and they shouldn't have been talking so loud if they didn't want me to listen.

Now these were three friends apparently. Two girls and a guy all seemingly approaching 30--and fast. They sat for about an hour talking about one thing: money. How much their apartments cost, their cars, their insurance, their jobs--everything had a dollar sign attached to it. None of them seemed too interested in kids simply by the way they talked about money like it was the end of all things. It was almost pornographic. Crude.

Yesterday, I was at another coffee shop in Irvine. Now this time as I sat studying, three middle eastern men and their wives sat a couple seats down from me. Each of the men, who were all in their mid-20s, had a child with them that was at least 2. The whole group made up several people. Three families sat and drank legal stimulants.

What struck me was that the White Americans who sat next to me before all were a little bit older with no kids--at least from it sounded like. They were just three individuals talking.

The middle-eastern people talking were just three families talking.

Networked

Two lines from It's a Wonderful Life

"Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world, You once called me "a warped, frustrated, old man!" What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help. no securities, no stocks, no bonds. Nothin' but a miserable $500 equity in a life insurance policy. You're worth more dead than alive!"

and then later:

"Remember, George: no man, is a failure who has friends."

I have one question:

Do facebook friends count?

Soulmates

I find it very interesting when a person says about their mate: "He (or she) is the one for me." It gets me wondering. How come the right person for everyone just happened to go to the same college and to be in the same socioeconomic status with the same sort of parents and the same sort of opportunities? Why is it that someone's predestined mate happens to go to the same church and lives in the same town or has the same skin color or has the same religion?

Pulling a Cobain

"Why do I care what Kurt Cobain thinks?"

Really, though. What's so great about hearing Nirvana's tune?

Why does Kurt's All Apologies deserve my attention? I can't empathize

with a drug-ridden life or even underachievement, let alone with that

grunge lifestyle. I have nothing in common with Kurt's experience.

And yet I listen and care. And I like it. But why?

Is it that I like those guitar riffs, or maybe the beat, or maybe the lyrics? Whatever it is I actually like, it is not because I can relate.

I can't. And really, who can? Who can relate to most forms of art?

We don't like paintings because we saw the picture being painted or that we are somehow connected to its content. We like the fact that the painting shows us something we have not seen, even if that just means a different perspective. So much of the beauty of artwork is rooted in the fact that it is new to us. Another's art is the expression of something outside our own experience. It is another's.

The same follows for stories. There is a reason that we don't only read our own autobiography. It's not words we're looking for. It's words of someone else's life. Not our own. If we were satisfied with only our own thoughts, then why listen, why read? The case is that we are not. Instead, we eager to hear someone else's ideas, imagination and insight.

So whether we are talking about haiku's or rock songs, the notion is clear: they are fascinating because we didn't make them, someone else did.

This may seem obnoxiously obvious. But the existence of culture (i.e. all the traditions, values, art, language, literature) illuminates something fascinating about the human life. It is horribly limited in scope. Each person gets one pair of legs, one pair of eyes, one pair of ears, one brain, and one chance--and some people barely get that. Even more, each person occupies a ridiculously small portion of the earth, let alone the universe. So it is no wonder that our life, no matter how mobile or blackberried we are, is significantly limited.

It is no wonder that we crave for more experiences. We have around 80 years and unlimited desires. We will never be able to do, feel, taste, see, or hear all that we could. And time is ticking away all the while. Although we want to see all the stars, the planetarium will have to do. So how do we bypass the economics of human experience?

In short, culture. At the heart of culture lies the sharing of experience through various modes and channels. When we gather our experiences into a pool of variety, we all of a sudden get to know the things which we by nature cannot know: the experiences of another. Culture allows us to transcend the loneliness of individuality. So although we know so little on our own, the words, paintings, and songs of others get us through.

It just so happens that Kurt Cobain made his experiences sound real catchy.

missionary position

Am I a bad guy for trying to find a girl to date at Church? According to most people I have talked to about this quest for an eternal mate at the most eternally-focused group around: Yes, I am a bad guy--nay, the worst sort of guy. They'll tell me: "That's not why you should go to Church." And maybe they're right. But I don't think this is the case. Because finding a girl any where else is rather difficult and, frankly, I am over the search.

I consider myself to be somewhat thoughtful, somewhat in the sense that I love theories that sum things up. This is a problem though since I very rarely find thoughtful girls. They are either smart and skeptical or dumb and confused. Either way, it seems the furthest these girls think about their lives is whether or not they will attend grad school. Or even worse, what's going on Friday night.

Yeah I could put out a personal ad, I could sell my body over craigslist, or maybe I could sign up for a dating service like E-harmony and be matched up in 56 catagories which obviously make people fall in love. But I am through with the notion that compatability is synonomous with love. In fact, maybe I am through with any sort of notion that there is a girl for me out there---or even more severe, that I am the guy for one girl. I don't believe in the Uber-match, that one completely congruent piece of person.

So why would someone with so little faith in the opposite sex's ability to cosmically arrange a marriage find himself within a group of 20-something churchgoers, where faith abounds and premarital sex is shunned? Because Christian girls think. They can't not think. They must ponder the Universe. If a girl has found herself pledging allegiance to the King of the Universe, it necessitates an altered perspective. If a girl claims Christianity, she in essence claims her place in the system of things--she affirms that she is part of an organized reality. Christianity makes a person humbly a piece in a vast network of interrelated cause/effect relations. It makes sense of the world, whether or not someone can understand it. So whether or not the Christian girl has a high IQ, she is (unless she is faking the whole thing) able to think about the world as a whole. To the Christian girl, life is not a series of random events. Life is not chaotic--it's organized, organized by God. And with the assumption that the world is organized, I feel a girl has the best opportunity to think about it.

I don't feel Christian girls are easy for a date. I feel like they are easy for a good thought.

Maybe I am a bad guy for not being in Church already.

murder you can tap your foot to

Who can avoid the ubiquitous guitar-smash--that guitar-o-cide that has been so prevalent in the last 40 years? The broken guitar has been somewhat of a sign of the end of the set. And who can really tell whether or not the guitars are punished because the drugs have worn off or have just started to climax. Whatever the case, a rock band's emotional involvement is often considered directly proportional to the degree to which their stage is destroyed. And it is not entirely uncommon to see rockers destroy just about every piece of sound equipment on stage--rock band manager's cannot be anything other than upset. But what's even more strange than the execution of sound is the sanguine acceptance and downright approval of the audience. It is almost as if witnesses to this melodic massacre don't only applaud the mic's condemnation, they encourage it--nay they expect it. But what an irony, right? Because isn't the essence of the rock band the guitar? Aren't the drums indispensable? Isn't the bass fundamental? So when the rocker's crush their instruments, shouldn't we all recoil in disgust as if from cannibalism? Because, frankly, the guitar pays the mortgage.

But we don't recoil. We, as the respective audience members, don't protest the onstage atrocity. We clap. We cheer. How do we accept this horrible fact of rock? How is this just in the rock universe?

The guitar smash is not just a crime of passion. The guitar smash is the full-fledged signification that rock and roll, at its essence, is not about 4-4 beats and power chords: it's about a lifestyle. The guitar smash is proof that rock music is something that lives in the blood of the makers. The guitar is merely a messenger of internal struggle--that adolescent angst. So every time a rocker smashes his guitar and kicks the bass drum, he isn't saying that he is passionate about that particular song or even that he is extraordinarily high. Instead he is saying that rock never was, or ever will be, about the music.