No go for Asian Americans on primetime

I almost forgot with the war going on that “Black Sash” was premiering on the WB. Of course, my trusty TiVo was programmed to pick up stuff with Russell Wong, so I was happily reminded as it started recording the new show.

Unfortunately, I was not so happily impressed by the show itself. Yes, as I’m writing this, there’s still 20 minutes to go in the pilot, but so far, the show has been some updated version of “The Karate Kid”, except not as good as that might sound. Wong is an ex-cop who was set up by his former partner, getting caught with tons o’heroine and being sent to a Hong Kong prison for 5 years. He’s back in the Yay Area now and he’s teaching martial arts to a group of teenagers (none who are Asian it seems) and being the Mr. Miyagi of today’s angsty teens– there’s the the angry girl who wants to avenge her father’s murder, the abused teen trying to get out of a battered home, the nerdy girl who’s actually ridiculously hot and is pining away for a boy, and the black kid who, outside of a gadget habit and being the object of nerdy girl’s affection, seems pretty much to be included because he’s the black kid. And hey, after Jim Kelly’s crucial part in “Enter the Dragon”, you’ve always got to have the black dude who is into martial arts. I’m all for promoting Black-Asian relations.

Oh, Photo!

Yes, my friends and I mock all those silly people out there who use analog cameras. Granted, if you’re looking to do some real, impressive, hot shot photography, you should go with an analog camera with all the lenses and attachments and stuff, but the value behind a digital camera is growing everyday. You can buy a decent digital camera now for one or two hundred dollars and taking digital photos can provide some great flexibility:

• You can immediately see what your photo will look like and retake those eyes-closed, weird smile, makes you look fat, short or stupid photos over and over again until you get it right. Yes, it can’t perform miracles, but you can try to get the best image you can.
• With a decent size piece of media (Compact Flash, SmartMedia, etc.), you can take hundreds of photos without ever having to rewind or reload.
• Video. Some of the more magical cameras let you take short clips of video footage. It won’t be a replacement for a real video camera, digital or otherwise, but could be useful if you need a quick video clip of silly antics.
• Immediate gratification. If you need a photo right away, you can simply take the picture, download the photo to your computer and then use it in either digital or printed format. Personally, I find it very useful when I need to take a quick snapshot of stuff I’m selling on eBay or something I want to quickly send someone over email.

Trouble in Paradise

So, when I was enjoying free cocktails and beautiful sun in Kauai, the nation went to war. It’s very strange– Hawaii can be on a completely different terror alert than the rest of the country. Hey, it’s the island way.

So, the war had already been going on for over 24 hours when I returned to the mainland and now that I’m done clearing things off of my TiVo, I’ve got CNN going on in the background all day long. (BTW, why is Wolf Blitzer allowed on the air?) I have to admit: I still don’t see the point of this war. Bush keeps calling it the war to free the Iraqi people and yes, Saddam is a very, very bad man, but when did the Iraqi people ever ask us to free them? Are we getting Iraqis pounding down the door seeking political asylum?

Vindicated

My friend came over on Saturday and we started chatting, more like arguing, about the war on Iraq and the situation with North Korea. He’s been following everything closely and thought that I was crazy to not support the war on Iraq and to be concerned more with the situation with North Korea. His point was that Iraq poses a direct threat and that North Korea does not. He says that Iraq clearly has weapons of mass destruction and Saddam is willing to use them, as he already has against us and his neighboring countries. Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, only wants money and knows that if he were to launch any attack, it would be suicide. I argued that I just don’t buy the whole issue Bush has with Iraq– I think it’s a product of the Bush administration’s strange obsession with Iraq and Bush’s hope to get reelected. Kim, on the other hand, may want money, but he is a completely unknown variable with the way that country has been closed off for so many years and I don’t put it past him to launch an attack just to prove a point. I mean, who lets hundreds of thousands of his people starve to death in the spirit of self-reliance and military strength? It’s that stubborn Korean pride that I know so well and there are no limits to it. We argued back and forth until the Stanford-Cal men’s basketball game came on, at which point all discussion ceased, rightly so.

So then, last night, I watched a bit of “Real Time with Bill Maher” and the same issues came up, of course. Bill pointed out that while Saddam does have weapons and is not following UN sanctions, North Korea is clearly getting ready for something by taking out fuel rods, testing missiles and tailing American spy planes. He considered that a direct threat, not Saddam’s behavior for the past twelve years. He said that it was time the US stopped waiting for the international community to do something and step up– that any use of nuclear weapons is an attack against the United States, as many presidents have said before and that the only way to prevent a nuclear war is to follow a policy of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Damn skippy.

Priorities, Priorties

Well, the whole world is all messed up and I can’t help blaming Bush for it. Everyday, we get closer to going to war with Iraq and I just don’t understand why. So, they say Saddam’s stockpiling weapons again and when we told him to stop, he didn’t. No, shit, really? Yes, he’s technically in violation of Gulf War treaties, but are we really surprised? I mean, just because we whooped his ass over ten years ago (damn, has it really been that long?) doesn’t mean he’s not going to try some stupid crap again. He’s Saddam. That’s what he does. You can’t be an evil dictator without doing stuff like this.

The price of gas is skyrocketing now and people, as usual, are claiming that this war is really about oil in the end. We want to “stop terror,” but other countries aren’t joining in because of economic ties, i.e., they need oil. Maybe that’s the case, maybe it isn’t. It’s probably more about the Bush administration’s strange obsession with Iraq, Bush’s attempt to emulate his father and hopefully unlike his father, time the war on Iraq just right so it’ll carry him through to a second term. As for oil though, last time I checked the US has enough oil resources domestically to meet its needs, but environmentalists and the like won’t let us drill for it, forcing us to go to OPEC. Oddly enough, while this is certainly a simplistic way to look at it, the same people who won’t let us drill don’t want us to go to war. Well, what the hell are we supposed to do then? Yes, we should probably trash all our gas-guzzling cars and all get little electric vehicles (well, I won’t until Lexus makes an electric luxury sedan with over 200 HP under the hood), saving the environment and reduing the burning of fossil fuels, but the reality is that there are a lot of freakin’ things that need oil and gas and that’s not going to change overnight, so what do we do in the meantime?

But the real thing that is scaring the crap out of me is the situation with North Korea. Why is no one taking this as seriously as they should? Yes, we could whoop their ass if they ever tried anything, but it only takes one nuclear bomb to kill a whole lot of people and mess up those who didn’t die from the explosion and their children for decades. There is some strange irony to the fact that the first uses of the a-bomb ended World War II, resulting in Korea being released from Japanese colonial rule. Of course, the post-war division of the country by the Allies also resulted in the Korean War, the political division of the country into two separate states, and the development of a very isolationist, very closed, very scary Communist North Korean state. Ah, history.

Incidentally, I went to the dentist a few weeks ago and he acted like I might be personally responsible for the situation with North Korea. He’s got his hands in my mouth, light focused on my face, and the conversation is pretty much like this:

• Dentist: “What is your ethnicity again?”
• Me: “I’m Korean.”
• D: “Right… that’s what I thought. What do you think about this whole thing? Its very scary.”
• M: “Yeah, it is. I think they’re just after aid, money.”
• D: “Mm… so you think it’s just blackmail?”
• M: “Yeah.”
• D: “You’re parents imigrated here? When was that?”
• M: “1973.”
• D: “Oh, so you were born here.”
• M: “Yup.”
• D: “Right… right…”

I don’t think he was really looking to call INS or anything, but weird, definitely weird. Of course, no day is complete unless somebody’s asked about the immigration history of your family while inside your mouth.

So, as we start the mad goose chase to catch Saddam again (what happened to our search for Osama Bin Laden? can we only focus on one Middle Eastern villain at a time?), North Korean jets tail American spy planes and the North Koreans start missile testing. Is this what Bush calls setting priorities?

Simple Host rocks my world

I finally found a hosting service that meets all of my needs– Simple Host. Lots of disk space, lots of bandwidth, lets you run your own CGI scripts (therefore, the blog is now hosted where it should be) and great email management features. All for a reasonable price.

It seems too good to be true. We’ll find out if it is.