i'm not done

two children are running around in a playground. they both stumble and scrape their knee.

the first kid is wearing shorts. the scrape is obvious. the kid is bawling.

the second kid is wearing pants. the scrape is hidden. the kid is holding back tears.

who's more hurt???

the children have to write a quiz after recess.

the first kid is still sobbing and seems unfit to write the quiz. the teacher excuses the kid.

the second kid is in a bit of a bind. the kid is distracted and can't focus on the quiz. the scrape is still hurting because it hasn't been tended to yet. so the kid asks the teacher to be excused. but there's no outward sign of anything seriously wrong, so the teacher refuses to excuse the kid.

first kid gets another chance. second kid fails.

the end.

---

ok... now i'm done.

garbage

i wonder about this world sometimes.

say one person is born into poverty. say another person made stupid mistakes and ended up in poverty. now two people are in poverty. who are people gonna be sorry for? who are people gonna try to help? who is more deserving of your pity?

of course you're gonna pick the one who didn't ask to be poor. you're gonna feel more sorry for the one who couldn't help being born poor. the other one deserves it. right??

say one person is born with a disease. like AIDS. say another person made stupid mistakes and ended up with AIDS. who are you gonna pity? who would you help?

of course people are gonna wanna help those innocent children. cuz they're innocent, after all... people who make stupid mistakes deserve whatever happens to them. right??

unless... UNLESS...

you made stupid mistakes once. and you experienced first-hand the consequences of your mistakes. and you remember how horrible it felt... in a sense, more horrible than if someone had always suffered those consequences. but no one would see it that way, cuz it doesn't occur to people how relativity comes into play, how if you're born blind, yes it is a pity, but if you were able to see once and then you did something stupid and you became blind, how the consequences are THAT much heavier to bear and THAT much harder to swallow... and what, someone who can't help their suffering is going through a worse kind of suffering than someone who creates their own suffering? says who?? is any human being in the position to weigh it out and make that kind of call??

i feel bad for people who are afflicted and it's not their fault. but actually, i feel worse for those afflicted who've brought it upon themselves and therefore seemingly deserve it. the typical mindset is that people who are helplessly afflicted deserve a chance at a better life. people are gonna wanna help them... people who aren't in their position but feel sorry for them. but the reckless ones? only people who have been in the same position before will understand what they're going through. who else would want to give them another chance? who would want to help them get better after the stupid things they've done? they're the ones people are gonna overlook. they're the write0ffs in society. their causes aren't worthy enough to those who have their lives all together. they have the least hope to get better because they're shown the least amount of sympathy.

garbage.

---

Romans 3:10 - As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.

Be With You Ima, Ai Ni Yukimasu

i apologize for the vagueness of my last post. it's cuz i want everyone to watch it and i don't wanna give anything away! :P though i suppose anyone could look it up and spoil it for themselves... but at least you won't hear it from me.

the movie came out in japan in 2004, but i just found out that there's an american remake in the works... and i don't think i'm too pleased. it's supposed to come out next year and jennifer garner's been casted (apparently). i'm really skeptical about this......

if you ask me, i say it's better to watch the original japanese version first. at least before the english one comes out. it's just a different portrayal of life and love and appreciation of beauty unique to japan and its culture.

Be With You

alice recommended this movie to me. it's a japanese flick... such a refreshing change from your typical north american love story. (i'm disenchanted by most of them.) Be With You is so sweet and simple and innocent. i admire the characters portrayed in the movie... wish i carried their demeanor, actually. and their lifestyle too. and the storyline itself isn't that simple... it really makes you wonder. i thought i got it the first time, but the more i thought about it, the more i wondered how it could've played out... and i'm still trying to work it out in my head.

i really really like this movie.

quelque fois

sometimes i wish life could be as simple as msn and star trek.

we could go around with signs on our backs or on our foreheads or something. if we're in the mood to socialize, we can let people know. and we can easily find other people to talk to who are in the same mood. if we're not in the greatest of moods, we can display whatever mood we're in and people will know by just looking at us so we don't have to explain ourselves. if we don't wanna be disturbed, we can indicate that too. and as a last resort, if we can't indicate how we feel clearly enough and we just wanna be completely invisible so as to avoid any kind of [mis]communication, we can use a cloaking device.

isn't that a lot better than being misunderstood? or having to give a play-by-play every time someone asks?

i think my tank is empty. i think it has been empty for a while. i think i am only going through the motions. i think... i dun wanna do it anymore.

can i? dare i?? will life allow me to shut down so that i can recharge???

i wonder......

if i can drop a course at this point and not receive an F.

if i can give up all my ministries. and maybe, just maybe, keep one.

if i can cancel my phone plan. or any other types of plans.

if i can be anti-social and not have anyone notice.

burning!!!

tabasco sauce is amazing. i love my spicy almost as much as my sweet. we have a jumbo bottle at home, and i've gone overboard with the tabasco lately... i drench my meals in it. one of the reasons i love tabasco sauce so much is cuz it actually tastes good to me. i like the fermented pepper taste, and the fact that it's not a thick sauce. for example, i really don't dig the ketchup-thick hot sauces they serve at pho's... i'd rather use the chili oil, and it's quite upsetting when restaurants don't carry the chili oil.

so i was having some tabasco-soaked salmon yesterday as a "late-night" snack. anyway, the problem with sauces in general is that they tend to get messy. but i don't remember it getting messy last night. and so i was careless enough to rub my eyes before going to bed, and...

ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

my first reaction was to wash it out. but then (and i hate it when this happens), my idiotic curiosity took over and i wondered to myself, how long does burning last? i wanted to find out.

so i lay down and closed my eyes and.... buuuurrrnnneddd.... for a while. in the meantime, i was thinking of other things... like, what molecular properties constitute spicy? how is it that we are able to sense spicy only in certain places (like the mouth, eyes, nose, etc.)? what do those areas have that other areas lack? are there unique spicy receptors? how is sensing spicy related to sensing hot? does spicy do any damage to the areas that can sense it? why is it that the spicy feeling lasts so much longer than the spicy taste?

i may have drifted off, i'm not sure... but i was aware that my eyes were no longer burning about 40 minutes after i first closed them.

i dunno if i'll ever get around to answering all of my questions. maybe if this happens again. and knowing absent-minded little me, it just might ;)

overheard ;)

"love is not some syrupy mish-mash. . . ." tony costa in his feb.11 workshop on church denominations

(yes, church denominations :P)

submission

this topic keeps resurfacing... i've been thinking about it again lately cuz it came up in class, plus i was reflecting on it while preparing for one of my papers. you know the submission blurb in Ephesians 5? a portion of it from the NIV looks like this:

v.21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives and Husbands

v.22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

what immediately stands out? the heading, right? even though the headings we find in our Bibles are technically not a part of Scripture, we actually read more into them than we should, non? i confess to using them... like when i'm skimming the pages to look for a certain passage, i use the headings as markers. you know who puts them there? not the translators. the editors. yes, i realize they're trying to be helpful... but there's no escaping subjectivity when it comes to matters of perspective, which is what these headings ultimately boil down to. take the above verses... did you know that verses 21 and 22 constitute a single sentence in the original Greek? the English translation actually breaks down a lot of the single Greek sentences into multiple ones... for example, verses 15-20 also comprise a single sentence... wait, maybe verses 21-22 are even a part of that sentence? i can't remember now. but either way, those two verses are a part of a single train of thought. basically something like, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, and wives to your husbands. so first of all, the English translation cuts it into two sentences. and then the editors read the English and arbitrarily decide that v.22 is the start of a new train of thought concerning wives and husbands, and so they put the heading in. do you not admit to interpreting the verses differently with the sentence split and the heading than if you were to have read the original Greek?

ok, i'm done with that. i also wanted to share a perspective on submission that i've been struggling with for a while. i do advocate the discipline of submission, by the way, even though i may not be coming across as such... but even then, it's quite complicated. so here's the thing... i believe we ought to submit to one another, and wives to their husbands as an extension... and ideally, this works out. if we all love each other the way we should, there should be no fear in submitting to one another. but all it takes is one person to not do their part, and the whole thing collapses. or does it?? because by saying that, i'm assuming that submission is a two-way street. is it? ideally, yes, because two-way submission is beneficial and hence a positive experience for both parties. but if one person submits and the other does not, and worse yet, the other person takes advantage of the one person's submission, then what?? do i continue to advocate submission even then? i want to say no. because it is so hard to know where and when and how to draw the line... for example, abuse. but here's the irony of it all: the essence of submission is most clearly demonstrated when it's one-way. kinda like how you know how much faith a person truly has only when it's put to the test. ** added feb 9: i thought of something else... you know that passage on loving your enemies? if you love only your loved ones, or basically anyone who would love you back, to what extent is that really love? i mean, it's love, no doubt... but it's conditional. and for some reason, i have no problem classifying unconditional love as greater than conditional love. but does submission work the same way? or are there a lot more loopholes to it? ** if you can submit to a person only if that person submits to you and it's equal between both parties, how genuine of a submission is that?

which leads me back to square one. ahhh... there's no place like home.

based on a true story

mother and daughter step out of the house. it is bright and sunny outside.

achoo!!

the sneeze begins a much repeated and overplayed conversation.

daughter: it's the sun, i tell you.

mother: oh really. and how does the sun make people sneeze? explain yourself, daughter.

daughter: the light triggers something... and then... i can actually feel the sneeze coming on...

mother: oh, daughter! you crack me up. sometimes i question your science background! you know better than that... your explanation makes no sense. it's all in your head.

daughter: but mother, i've observed and analyzed my sneezes over the years! i know what i'm talking about.

mother: more than a nurse does? let me ask you something... can pepper going up your nose make your pupils constrict? can light entering your eyes tickle your nose and make you sneeze?

daughter: but it does!!! i feel it!

mother: prove it, daughter. prove it. your explanations are weak. where's the evidence? you know, it's probably psychological.

daughter: just wait, i'm gonna look it up and prove you wrong...

mother: yah, you keep saying that...

so after many years of skepticism from mother, daughter finally bothers to do some research on this strange behaviour to prove mother wrong. she's a bit lazy so she decides to just google it. sure enough, there are plenty of sun-sneezing links. she goes through a few of them and picks one with sufficient information. she emails the link to mother. she tells mother to check her email and stands behind mother while mother reads the article.

mother: look at the name of this site! madsci?? you expect me to trust a source called madsci? and who is this author? anyone can put an MD or a PhD beside their name. where are his references? i don't see any. statistics, where are they? my goodness. there is nothing in this article with sufficient proof. nice try, daughter.

daughter: oh please! he tells you that he's read articles from medical journals! so what if he doesn't reference them? this is obviously not an academic paper, so you can't call his writing style wrong... and why would he lie? besides, the explanation makes perfect sense! and i don't have to search those journals to know those articles are there. who's looking for such a hardcore scientific breakdown anyway? i just wanted to let you know that there was such a thing.

mother: look at the language he uses! i could interpret that to mean mere speculation. if i don't have stats, references, hard evidence... you can't expect me to believe it's true.

daughter is getting peeved. very peeved. when did mother lose her sound judgment?? what is mother learning at school?? is she getting brainwashed to the point where she feels that she must apply scientific methods to everything, including conversations with daughter?? mother should know better than that. and mother should not forget that daughter is just like mother and will not have the rug pulled out so easily from under her. mother is getting carried away. time to fight fire with fire.

daughter: scholars are divided on the Old Testament, and no one can conclusively prove that Moses even wrote the Pentateuch, so i guess we can't believe that either eh?

now daughter is also getting carried away.

mother: oh c'mon, you can't make that jump!

daughter: so let me get this straight... you really don't believe this article? you want me to take the time to go through some medical journal to find a paper to prove to you what this article already states??

mother: yes! exactly!

daughter: forget it! it's not worth it to find you an academic paper just so you can critique it and find some sort of flaw for you to undermine the validity of sun-sneezing.

daughter storms off. she knows she is overreacting, but at the same time, mother knows daughter well enough to know what buttons to push, and daughter believes that mother has aggravated her on purpose. but that's ok... two can play this game.

a couple of days pass... daughter finds out from someone that there is actually no conclusive evidence that MSG is bad. daughter doesn't even bother to confirm this because she is solely intent on figuring out a way to pushing mother's buttons and knows that mother is very much against using MSG.

daughter: did you know that there is no conclusive evidence that MSG is bad for you?

mother: of course it is, don't be silly.

daughter: nope. you can look it up, you won't find anything.

daughter knows she cannot verify this but keeps going anyway.

mother: too much sodium is bad for you. at least with salt, your sense of taste can tell you when you've had too much. MSG is dangerous because you can't taste how much sodium you're actually ingesting.

daughter: yah yah, but where's your hard evidence? where are your references? at least that guy on madsci had an MD and a PhD on top of that... where's yours? you're only an RN, so you're less credible than him.

mother begins to rant and rave, and daughter can't remember anything mother says for the next little while except that mother's voice is really really loud.

daughter smiles :)

mission accomplished.

--

an hour later: daughter goes to mother's room to keep mother company and eventually falls asleep while mother continues to study (because mother is a very good student and daughter is a delinquent in comparison). once again, all is right with the world.