And the wheel turns…

It’s snowing in DC.

Recently, I was asked what type of music I listen to. For most people, this question is pretty simple. Being me, however, I came to the music I listen to in a really round-about way. I started listening to music the same way I started drinking beer; I felt like I SHOULD be listening to it, so I started picking songs that sounded snazzy and finding copies of them. Seriously – before that, it was 100% books on tape. How lame was I?

Through this rather haphazard method, I picked up a truly eclectic taste in music. In the past month, for example, I’ve had the following songs stuck in my head:

• “Friends in Low Places” – Garth Brooks
• “What’s Going to Happen” – Scrubs: My Musical
• “Con Te Partiro (Techno)” – Andrea Bocelli
• “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” – Smashing Pumpkins

This kind of musical ADD tends to confuse people, though – so I tend to answer “Arena Rock”. Hard to go wrong with Journey!

It’s been a long time, though, since I’ve listened to JPop. A chapter of my life slammed shut around three and a half years ago, and I seriously thought Asian dramas and JPop went with it. It’s funny how we gravitate to the familiar.

A friend mentioned she was watching a Korean series (The new Hana Yori Dango), and I found myself thinking, “Hm… I wonder what’s showing these days…” That lead to finding “Love Shuffle”, and today I find myself listening to Uematsu Hidemi’s “Dear My Friends” on repeat. So much for staying out of Japanese pop culture. Suddenly, I have a fierce desire to go back to Japan, and I’m left horrified at how much of my Japanese has deserted me.

Part of this is introspection. When things are tough, or when I’m making tough decisions about things, I tend to look inward and examine my choices. Not that it does me much good – I never have had a strong understanding of my self. My apartment is finally furnished, and I’ve been doing a lot of sitting in my armchair seriously considering what’s next. I haven’t been dating for a while now, but in the past six months so many of my friends have entered into serious, committed relationships or gotten married that I’m beginning to feel left behind. I’m also realizing that there’s a lot I want to do before I settle down.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been developing a friendship that could be heading towards something more. At least – it feels like all the other times things headed that direction. Even if I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to pursue that, I’m not really sure I will. I don’t want to go into a relationship without there being a possibility for something more beyond fun and sex, and I worry about all those things I want to do; all those mistakes I’ve yet to make. What if the next relationship DOES work out? Will I settle down? Will I miss out on all those experiences I want to have before I do?

That’s what ran through my head as the girl above asked me what type of music I liked last week. I thought about my tastes, and I wondered what type of man refuses to commit to someone because he worries he’ll miss out on something, and what that says about the person he’s refusing to commit to.

I tried to explain for a moment, then I answered, “Arena Rock”.

Thoughts on Beginnings and Ends

When I first created this blog (a year ago this week!), I was facing a pretty hefty beginning. I was leaving my native country for the first time to live abroad in a (not so) strange land and, lured by the apparent fame of travel and personal bloggers whose every spare thought is deemed credible by their legions of readers, I had high hopes for chronicling every detail of it.

As much as my time abroad was definitely a beginning, it was also an end. While the actual experience of studying abroad was far from the life-changing experience it’s touted to be (hence the lack of deep, insightful posts while there?), the time I spent there and the time I spent building up to that experience did change me. I began to spend slightly less time online, preferring to talk to people in “real life” instead; I began focusing more on “getting out there” and “experiencing my environment”; and most important of all, I made the decision to be more honest and open with the people around me.

I thought about that decision tonight as I waved goodbye and yelled after her, “Call me if you’re back early on Sunday!” She yelled back that she would as she crossed the street and entered campus proper. The girl in question and I have been friends since day one – the first day of freshman year. There was a time when we saw each other almost every day. Lately, though, with a plethora of excuses like “increased workload”, “job hunting” and “hectic schedules”, we’ve found it harder and harder to make the time. This sort of dodging defines our relationship – or at least my side of it. There have been times when I hoped we might become more than just friends, and times when I knew things would never work out if we were.

(more…)

Aids and Gay Rights – ooh, I’m getting political!

Tim appears to have been too lazy to post this gem, which is arguably the creepiest “children’s book” I’ve ever seen besides the one I posted earlier.

I’m particularly angry at this book because it appears to be a book that exists entirely to serve the “nurture” end of the “why are some people attracted to the same sex?” argument. Seriously – are they trying to indoctrinate young children now? Oh – that attraction you’re feeling? Yeah, you’re just not right in the head. Go see a therapist and get some drugs; they’ll fix you right up!

Seriously people, this is not the solution. Shouldn’t we be trying to teach our children to be more open-minded rather than closed-minded? Sometimes I feel like the government should just take all children at birth and raise them in a government-sponsored institute. I mean, sure – we’d never be able to create a government responsible enough to raise them without bias, but the idea of ridding the world of prejudice once and for all seems wonderfully tempting.

I don’t really know enough about the issue to be able to say that attraction to the same sex is definitively an issue of nature OR nurture, but I do know that what the friends I have who are gay feel is real enough and that those of us who aren’t gay have no right belittling their feelings because it doesn’t fit our narrow conception of correct gender roles. Teaching children that it’s “all nature” or “all nurture” is not the way to go – kids should be taught to examine the facts and view these things with an open mind (My how Post-Modern of me!)… Of course, I’m not really sure if that’s even possible. It seems natural to believe that you need to teach kids SOMETHING for sure so they have a frame of reference… If you must teach something, then, doesn’t the more open and accepting idea seem the better one to teach?

Just to end the night on the same note it started on, here’s an interesting pro-safe sex (really anti-AIDS) commercial I found on Stage6. Fair warning, this commercial is NSFW.

Booya – Safe Sex

If anyone wants to see it full sized, the original can be found here.

Oddly, the ending makes this commercial seem to be promoting abstinence as the best option, but the commercial doesn’t really show any consequences of pre-marital sex (other than it being boring or just not the right “fit”), and the ending just really seems to flow as a natural consequences of having found the right fit at last… It’s kinda hard to tell what they’re trying to say, actually, except for the final frame’s blatant “fight aides” message.