Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ May your body weight fluctuate erratically.

Life's Too Short For:
¤ Facing the same side of your carven obelisk every day.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May you leave your wall calendar on the same page for six months, just because you really like the picture, and don't have anything of importance to schedule anyway.

Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "The"
¤ Usage: "Let's go shop for The sex toys."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Deviations: None.
¤ Origin: Unknown.
¤ Notes: This one is all in the usage. While there's nothing unusual about saying "the noun," what makes it funny is that we use it constantly, and inappropriately, such as before proper nouns.  "I hate that new commercial for The McDonald's." for instance.  It's a sort of mock emphasis and formality and official-ness that spices up uneventful things.

Sadly, it's also a very verbal thing that doesn't translate very well into text; such as this description. -- October 13, 2003

I'm tired, probably since I was up too late yesterday, slept late but fitfully, and then went for a high impact jog in the afternoon.  Malaya has been working out for months, and is steadily losing weight and firming up.  I've been losing weight for no apparent reason, probably just since I'm not lifting weights anymore, but my waist is narrower than it was 3 months ago when I first started to think I was getting skinny.  It's weird, since I'm not making any effort to diet here, and I'm not getting as much exercise as I was in San Diego.  I guess I was just eating a lot there and didn't really realize it, and now that I'm usually sharing my meals with Malaya and not staying up for 24 hours at a stretch and snacking a lot, the pounds are dropping away.  We don't have a scale here, so I can't confirm that, but pants that were tight on my waist/hips some time ago no longer are.

This is a good thing, but it's odd to have it happening without me making any effort, when I had so much trouble losing 5 or 10 pounds in the past when I really wanted to. I am trying to get into doing more exercise, and for the first time in about 12 years, I can consider jogging.

I never could back in San Diego when I worked at the stadium, since I did so much walking and running at work, on concrete, up and down steps, I constantly had sore legs, ankles, feet, hips, etc.  The idea of going out in my spare time and exacerbating that with more pounding was insane.  I'd rollerblade or bike ride for exercise, since those were much lower impact on my legs.

Since I've been here for a few months though, and haven't had sore legs and haven't been beating them up with a stressful job, I figured I could try it.  Malaya runs on the treadmill and elliptical machine at the gym, and enjoys trying that some in real life, though she usually finds out the difference between "gym muscles" and real muscles in a hurry.  Anyway, we've been going out for hikes and long walks and have worked out way up to jogging some of the time, so Thursday night while she was off to have dinner with some of her colleagues, I went for a jog around the Lafayette Reservoir.  I posted pictures of it back in August, but those were just of the lower path, which is paved and well-traveled and about 3.5 miles around.

There is an upper path also, and it's hard-packed dirt, goes up and down painfully steep hills, and is over 6 miles.  There are half a dozen very steep trails between upper and lower, and we've found a street that dead ends right at one dip in the upper trail.  So I drove over to there, parked, headed out along the upper trail, took the first path down to the lower one, and jogged and fast walked around it until I was back near my starting spot, at which time I cut back up to the upper trail, followed it for a bit, and then returned to my car.  Exciting, isn't it?

No, no it's not.  But it was good exercise.  I figure I went about 4.5 miles, about 3 of that on blacktop, and ran for probably 40% of the time.  It took me about 50 minutes from leaving my car to returning to it, and I sweated and had a high heart rate the entire time.  Hours later, the only soreness I have is in my left Achilles and my hips, and I think that's mostly from the jarring I got running down some of the very steep dirt hills.

Malaya's goal is to be able to jog around the entire inner path without pause.  I share that goal, but I'd like to be able to do it at a faster rate than jogging, and I'd like to be able to run the entire outer trail, with some allowances made for the incredibly steep hills.  Running down them is suicidal, running up them is a heart attack.  But it's damn good exercise, and more fun than just tooling around the winding inner paved path.  Plus you get more sun, and my pasty white skin needs all the help it can get.

And now some news.

¤ So the ex-special forces guy in charge of the US' worldwide efforts to fight terrorism is... a fanatical Christian.

WASHINGTON - Pentagon (news - web sites) leaders on Thursday spoke up in support of a top general who has told church audiences that the war on terrorism is a battle with Satan and that Muslims worship idols.

Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin has made several speeches — some in uniform — at evangelical Christian churches in which he cast the war on terrorism in religious terms. Boykin said of a 1993 battle with a Muslim militia leader in Somalia: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

Boykin did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.

The problem here, if I need to point it out, is not the guy's eagerness or excitement.  It's that the fight against terrorism is a worldwide effort that requires cooperation from authorities in numerous other countries, and we need people in charge of it who can get along with them, especially with Muslims.  All of the key arrests thus far of al-Qaeda guys have been made by other countries, mostly Pakistan, in cooperation with the US.  How likely are they do keep helping out with the US leadership so clueless about cultural issues?

¤ If you were considering seeing the Lord of the Rings marathon on December 16th, when they'll be showing the extended editions of Fellowship, The Two Towers, and then the premiere of Return of the King, all in an 11 hour row... well, you'd better already have tickets.

Tickets, which went on sale Oct. 9, ranged from $25-$49 each and drew so many fans that online ticketing sites became clogged, forcing theaters to open their box offices to handle the demand for what had been originally designed as an online promotion.

According to AMC Theaters spokesman Rick King, the Kansas City, Mo.-based chain sold out its 15 theaters within the hour, switching to box office sales after its Internet exclusive offer crashed its Web site, MovieTickets.com, within 10 minutes of going on sale.

At Fandango.com, the online ticketing agency that services Regal Entertainment's theaters, Loews theaters and others, its 42-theater inventory sold out in a matter of hours.

Or a lot of money and a good eBay rating:

Late Wednesday, 34 pairs of tickets were being auctioned on eBay, with the highest asking price coming from a San Francisco seller, offering tickets at $455 a pair.

Now that I think about it, that would be a damn cool thing to do.  Once in a lifetime opportunity to see the three movies in a theater packed with rabid fans.  Just make sure all the little Gandalfs take off their big pointy hats before sitting down in front of you. I'm don't generally give much/any consideration to the other people in a movie I'm going to attend; I don't really enjoy it more or less with a packed house, or an empty one.  However for that sort of thing, it would be fun to get caught up in it and cheer along with the mob when cool stuff happened.

Malaya never caught The Two Towers when it was in theaters, and we haven't gotten the DVD yet since I'm waiting until November and the extended edition.  She is interested in seeing TTT in theaters though, and it looks like that is still possible, at least.

In addition to the marathon Dec. 15 showings, New Line also will prime the pump with theatrical bookings of the extended version of "Fellowship," playing by itself, from Dec. 5-11, followed by the extended version of "Towers," which is set for Dec. 12-15.

¤ The Matrix III is coming out in November, and while they didn't think to schedule screenings of 1 and 2 leading up to 3, they do have a pretty innovative marketing gimmick.

The Matrix Revolutions is to be released at exactly the same time in cities across the world next month, according to reports.

Industry newspaper Variety says this will mean a 6am start for fans in Los Angeles, 9am in New York, 2pm in London, 5pm in Moscow and 11pm in Tokyo on November 5.

It is the first time a film has been released in this way.

This is fine for me, since it opens at 6am on the US West Coast.  Obviously I'm not getting up (or staying up) until 6 in the morning to see a movie premiere, but it'll be showing all day and Malaya and me can catch a matinee or evening showing. Sort of sucks for Japan and Oz where it's opening past midnight, but real fans will still turn out for that; it's just sort of a midnight sneak.

I wonder how theaters are handling this?  I mean there aren't usually any movies playing from 1am until about 11am.  Is every theater on the West Coast going to open up 5 hours early just for this one movie? Are they going to just have the one showing at some ungodly hour, like 3am in Hawaii, and then close down and start showing it again with their other regular matinees the next afternoon?

In any event, it's a clever idea by the distributor, tying in well to the whole scifi and technology theme of the films, and it's getting them a ton of bonus publicity, though I imagine the logistics of it are an incredible pain in the ass.  I figure some wiz in marketing came up with the idea, sold his bosses on it, got a bonus and a vacation, and once he was gone all of the other employees were left to try and figure out how the hell to make this work.

"This is probably going to get me in trouble, but the Asians are killing our tour. Absolutely killing it. Their lack of emotion, their refusal to speak English when they can speak English. They rarely speak. We have two-day pro-ams where people are paying a lot of money to play with us, and they say, 'Hello and goodbye.' Our tour is predominantly international and the majority of them are Asian. They've taken it over."

"If I were commissioner, I would have a quota on international players and that would include a quota on Asian players," she continued. "As it is, they're taking American money. American sponsors are picking up the bill. There should be a qualifying school for Americans and a qualifying school for international players. I'm Australian, an international player, but I say America has to come first. Sixty percent of the tour should be American, 40 percent international."

You can see an article here from a golf commentator who discusses why Jan's comments didn't raise as much of a ruckus as Rush's did.  As he admits, it's largely because no one really gives a shit about female golf, while NFL football is the most popular sport in the US. He also says, 

Name a leading Asian-American political figure. Now name a well-known Asian-American in sports journalism. "Asian-Americans as a whole don't have a spokesperson," says Melissa Hung, editor of Hyphen Magazine. "We don't have a Jesse Jackson."

To make a bad joke, the criticism from Jan is that the Asians are too quiet and boring.  Doesn't their lack of outrage and media noise at her comments sort of prove her point?

The article also says:

Does half of America think Latinos are hurting baseball? That African-Americans are hurting basketball? That Europeans are hurting hockey? Let's hope not. Because those groups, much like Koreans in the LPGA, are making their sports remarkably better. And still somehow, half of the MSNBC.com poll respondents think Asians are hurting women's golf.

Well yeah, actually. Not so much anymore, but all professional US sports were segregated until the 1940's or 50's, despite overwhelming evidence that the best players in the minor black leagues were good enough to succeed in the major white leagues.  Most people, even racists, seem to be over this by now, at least when it comes to some black or brown guy who is really good, and on their team.  He's "our nigger" then, or words to that effect, and they're happy to cheer him on as he leads their team to success.  Just see how much cheering there would be if he wanted to date their daughter, though?

The article also points out that lots of the top white female golfers are damn boring as well.  The best female golfer around is Annika Sorenstam, the one who made a lot of media noise for competing pretty successfully in a men's tournament earlier this year.

Here's what Stephenson said about Sorenstam in the very same interview with Golf Magazine: "With Annika you're scared to say anything. Her locker is always next to mine, and I don't know her. I've left notes of congratulations on her locker because I'm scared to bother her. She's so focused all the time -- I just wonder what she's really like."

Okay, it's hard to deny the hypocrisy of that one, I'll admit.

However, the article never really refutes Jan's main comment, which is that the Asian women are very quiet and don't talk to their playing partners very much in Pro-Am events (where rich people pay big bucks to play a round with the pros and walk around with them during it).  I take it this is because Jan is more or less factually accurate, and the Asian women golfers really don't talk enough to be interesting playing partners.  I guess that's a valid criticism, but it's foolish to assign personality traits to an entire race.  And what is Jan suggesting we do about this?  Kick all of the white players who don't talk much off the tour also?  Factor joviality in with average score in some new weighted system to balance communication skills with playing ability?

Her comments get more ridiculous the closer you analyze them.

So are Jan's comments racist, and should she be disciplined for speaking her mind, or what?

IMHO, she's unquestionably racist, or at least bigoted in a broad sense.  I'm sure that she personally is fine talking to and eating with and associating with Asians; she just sees something that she thinks could be better for the tour and doesn't realize how blind she is to the larger picture. It's basically like what I said about the whole Rush Limbaugh/black QBs thing on Oct 3rd:

I'm not saying it's a consciously racist "pick on the black failures" mindset; it's more like their mental filter simply screens out the aspects of reality that they find upsetting or that just don't fit into their perception of world events.

This is what it's like to be Rush Limbaugh.  He sees a player who he doesn't think is as good as the media says he is.  But while a normal person would stop there, in Rush's world there must be more to it

1) Jan Stevenson (at least subconsciously) doesn't like seeing her sport dominated by Asian women; 2) some Asian women golfers don't talk very much while playing, therefore, 3) there must be too many Asians on the tour since the tour isn't succeeding, and 4) limits on the Asian women should be set.  It doesn't occur to Jan Stevenson that plenty of white women aren't talking much while they play and aren't media darlings, and Jan Stevenson wouldn't notice this about the Asian women if they weren't winning so many tournaments.  If black women were doing what Asian women were doing, Jan Stevenson (and others who think like her) would find things about the blacks that were different, and that they didn't like.  There would be too much talking or joking, or their clothing wouldn't be conservative enough, or they wouldn't observe appropriate golf etiquette, or whatever.  And in that case as this one, Jan would never realize that plenty of old school white women did all the same stuff.  Just like Rush points out the one QB who he thinks is overrated and connects that to his being black, while never considering that perhaps most of the white QBs are overrated also.

There seem to be two basic defensive reactions through human history to incoming foreigners: 1) Those dirty foreigners are too stupid to come here and they'll lower the quality of our people through inter-breeding, become criminals, etc.  2) They'll take our jobs/women/golf tournaments, etc, since they have some sort of competitive advantage that we're not going to openly admit to since it would make us sound less than superior.

#1 is obviously a lot more common, since incoming foreigners are usually poor and hungry and fleeing persecution or difficult conditions in their own country.  Of course they soon adapt to their new country and are usually far more motivated than the lazy people of that country, and in a generation or two they are proud parts of that country, and generally join the majority in disliking whatever the next new influx of foreigners are.  #2 is less common, but it's what we're seeing from Jan Stevenson with her worries about the "Asian Invasion" as some old white guys at the stadium I used to work at used to call it.

To go from the very general (since the preceding two paragraphs were intended to apply to hundreds of countries and situations throughout human history) to the more specific, Asians in the US get the "model minority" stigma, and get some discrimination because they are overachievers, at least compared to the lazy white/black/whatever people who were here before them.  Asians work hard and own the businesses in poor (often black or brown) areas and are often in conflict with the disadvantaged class of people who live in their neighborhood and shop at their store.  This is pretty much a stereotype, but go sit through Do the Right Thing if you want a graphic depiction of it.  In other areas, Asian kids are really pushed by their parents to succeed in school (Malaya certainly was by her parents) and guess what?  They work hard and get the best grades and get into the best colleges.  Which leads to white suburban types bitching about quotas when damn near the whole incoming classes in math and science at Berkeley and MIT are Asian.

Incoming "invasions" of whatever race are easier for the existing majority to accept if they can reassure themselves that the incoming people are inferior.  When the incoming people are outperforming the existing population right from the start, it's damn uncomfortable for the people who were already there.

This happening in women's golf isn't exactly on the same scale as it is in other areas of society, but as Jan Stevenson points out, there are a lot of Asian women who are now really good at golf.  There are some uncomfortable feelings about that for the white women who used to dominate the sport, and they'll pick out any little thing to criticize about the incoming Asians.  Even though many of the Asian women are Americans; the perceived cultural difference makes them seem "other." 

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