I have discovered my new Cause of the Week!

For completely selfish and self-preserving purposes, I would like to take this moment to encourage all of my multi-ethnic brethren to register as bone marrow donors.  And especially for my own self-serving purposes, I would like to encourage Japanese-Swedish mixed Asians to donate (jk).

The fact of the matter of the matter is that while there is only an incredibly small number of minorities registered to donate bone marrow, there is an even smaller number of multiethnic individuals registered.  And as much as modern PC thought tries to tell us there is nothing to this whole "race" thing, the cold hard reality is that when a child is born to two ethnically different parents, and it turns out that that child needs  a bone marrow transplant, the chances of them getting a match with other family members is almost nil, and with there being so few ethnically mixed registered donors, the chances of them finding a match and having their lives saved is almost non-existant.  And being an American of mixed descent, I find it a little scary that if I am ever in need of tissue or bone marrow, the current system almost needs an act of god for me to be able to find a match.

The registration and typing itself only requires one vial of blood.  On the grand scheme of things, that's less than the doctor takes if you have to go to the hospital (trust me, I know.  I had the flu a few weeks ago and the lab managed to take four vials of blood over the course of three hours).  And while the procedure to actually remove the bone marrow is incredibly painful (you have to get the epidural and all), there are a couple things to think about.  First of all, even though being registered and having someone find a match puts you in this moral bind between your own desire to avoid pain yet to also be able to help another person live, there's the fact that even if you were not registered, it wouldn't prevent that other individual from getting sick.

Yet if for some reason you are opposed to this registration or procedure, I am not going to sit here trying to preach you into adhering to my own personal beliefs, just as I would hope that even if you were to disagree with me, you'd still be able to see my point of view. 

It is just my hope that if you've never given thought to registering as a bone marrow donor, this little post might make you think about the great benefit you could give to another human being.  Though it's wonderful to dream of someday creating a new medicine, or performing a heroric dread to save millions, it's another thing within the grasp of all to take an afternoon (only an hour or so, even counting transit time), to register as a bone marrow donor.

Who knows, if you're mixed, and you encourage a few mixed people around you to register with you, and they the encourage a few, you might not only be setting yourself up to be able to more easily receive a donation if you ever need it, but you might be able to save lives by increasing the donation pool.

Either way, with all that corny sentiment, please take the time to look into registering. 

http://www.psbc.org/community/programs/default.htm

^^^^check it out!!! \(^-^)/

Life hasn't been good so far.  I'm trying to get better, but it's not going well.  Life is hard, work is hard...but worst of all, life is lonely.  Today I finally told one of my friends about my problems, but the new problem is that he's  in China.  He's due to be back in July, I miss him.  I feel kinda bad about making my problems his, but I desperately need someone to talk to.  I have no one I can collapse in front of, and stop being so perfect.  I can't even stop being perfect for my parents because they're just so "proud" of me. 

Ugh, another monday tomorrow...goodie.  Oh well, can't control time yet...need to work on that.  Later.

I wish my parents hadn't had me.  They wanted children, but I don't think they wanted me.  I was never good enough for my Mom, and all my Dad ever did when he wasn't ignoring me was telling me how ugly, stupid, and generally bad I was.  They love me because they have to, because it's what looks right to the rest of society.  They had me because it was expected of them to have children, becuase they were in the correct point in their life and socioeconomic bracket to be worthy of procreation.  I wish they'd just skipped me. 

They've always been nice to my brother, no matter what he does, they've had nothing of praise for him.  I don't understand what I ever did to them, why they could never be nice to me.  I've worked my entire life to make them happy, but was never good enough for them.  And now, I don't know how to make myself happy.  I wish my parents would stop caring, I wish they could just understand that I don't want to live anymore.  I live my life currently so taht no one who I associate with would care of I died.  Except for my parents, no one would really be affected if I stopped existing.  I wish they would just stop caring, I wish that I could just die without hurting anyone.  I don't want to live anymore, but no one will let me die. 

People always tell me the most selfish thing to do is commit suicide, but what about making someone continue to life when they have absolutely zero pleasure in life.  My life is pain, disappointment, and abandonment.  I want people to stop caring, I want to be allowed to end my life, I have nothing to live for.  I simply want to end it now, instead of spending the next few decades faking pleasure in life, only to suffer alone inside my own head.

I want to die.  I want to just go to sleep and not wake up one morning.  I want it all to be over.  I want to kill myself, but I also don't want those around me to be hurt. 

Someone just shoot me, please.

And now, a for a moment of extreme geekiness:

It's eight o'clock, Saturday night...and I am sitting at home watching Star Trek.  And although this may seem like a completely looserish way to spend my Saturday night, it's actually kinda nice to just sit back and relax like this (especially since I hate cigarette smoke, and Saturday nights at bars are especially smokey). 

And with that lovely intro, here is a Star Trek rant.  (Yes, I admit that I can do these, and I am perfectly confident in my geekiness.) But this rant is not the classis Kirk vs. Piccard argument (and by the way, Piccard is infinately cooler).  Instead, here is the question of a Kiyomi-style Star Trek rant: Does Start Trek have an obligation to stretch and challenge the boundaries of gender and racial roles depicted on television? 

Let's begin.  When Star Trek first came out, it was the first mainstream television show to feature as full-time cast members a Black woman and an Asian American man.  On top of that, one character was also Russian, a fact that is probably lost on many young people now adays, but more notable when the show first came out during the middle of the Cold War.

With these characters, Roddenberry was showing a picture of the future different from that put forth by many of his contempoaries.  Instead of depicting a future where all ethnic minorities have suddenly disappeared, or where white males have managed to maintain their strangle-hold on all positions of power, Rodenberry's future (though unremarkable in 2005) was near revolutionary for its time.

The next Star Trek series to come out was admitedly less notable in the ethnic and sexual make-up of its characters, with the possible exception of casting a woman as the ship's doctor and a Black man as chief engineer.  And all this with the only other Black man on the ship being so done up in makeup that all you could gess was that he was a Klingon who stood a little too close to the sun-lamp.  Indeed, the only recurring Asian American character barely made any appearance, and then she was only the ever-safe Japanese woman married to the white man, and participating in nothing more daring than being the preschool teacher.  For this second series, unfortunately, although it did have some individual good messages from episode to episode, did fall short of the legacy started by George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. 

The third spinoff in the Star Trek series did make a better attempt challenge social ethnic and gender rolls, casting a Black man as the commander of a space station, but again fell short in giving Asian Americans  any notable role besides (again) being the Japanese wife of the white man (incidentally, the same character). 

And while I am not universally opposed to these unions (afterall, I am the product of one, though I think my own parents should never have had children), it does disturb me that the Asian woman and the white man is the only multiethnic pairing widely accepted in America, but still seen as a progressive way for producers and writers to bring minorities into their plotlines.

The only other major character of any shade of color (and we're not counting the blue and green guys), is the doctor, the actor himself being half Middle Eastern.  To note, he is the only regularly occuring multiethnic character I can think of, even though (thinking logically) it'd make sense to see more multiethnic individuals in the future.  I mean, look at what's happening to America now, what do you think it would realistically look like however many centuries from now.

The fourth in the Star Trek series took the role of pushing social stereotypes to a further extent, though at times at the sacrifice of good plotlines or compelling writing.  Asian Americans finally made a comeback, with a Chinese American cast as "Ensign Kim."  I have often wondered why this character had to be Korean, since there is never any reference to that made in the series, but perhaps it was seen that some audience might find Japanese characters hard to believe if not bound in matrimony to a white male, and a Chinese character would be too confusing, as all the Klingon characters seem to also always have Chinese names.

And unfortunately, our Korean male character still seemed to have to go through the series as the quintisential geeky Asian guy.  Good at science and math, but unable to take any real leadership and eternally lost in all matters concerning sexual relations.

Casting of black characters in this series, unfortunately, seems to have turned into more of a joke, with a Black Vulcan called Tuvok (You'd just about expect him to come out with his own rap record.) 

Notably, though, this series finally did cast a Latina character, though being half Klingon, that is made more a point of than the fact that her last name is Torres.

And finally, to the most recent Star Trek show, incidentally taking place before even the original series.  (And let's leave aside any comments about technology showing up in the show or special effects, that's for another geek-out session). 

In this show, we have finally reached a point in our social advancement as to allow an Asian woman to appear in the show in a capacity beyond just being the appendage of a white male.  Just to note, though, a Japanese woman played by a non-Japanese American actress.  My friends tell me I should stop demanding more, and just be pleased with the fact that there are more than zero Asian Americans on television (and we're not counting Chinatown wait staff and prostitutes). 

Be all this as it may, final verdict on the most recent Star Trek series is still pending, though I a still not too impressed.  Perhaps someday, my kid or grandkids will be able to watch a TV show staring a cast that looks like them.  Then again, we can always take my brother's solution to the entire thing.  He plans to marry a white woman and have white kids, then he won't have to worry about then being biased against as minorities, or having no good role models on television.

But in conclusion, Star Trek started out as just a silly show with a side message that tried to make social statements, and over the decades has morphed into a silly show trying to make social statements, to a silly show trying too hard to make social statements, and finally it now seems to a  silly show (period).  Maybe someday we'll be able to have Star Trek Excellsior, and finally let Capt. Sulu back into the limelight.

And in all defense, I don't consider myself a Trekkie.  It's just that growing up, if my parents wanted me to see a positive Asian American role on TV (and they did not consider waiter, prostitute, or beaten wife a positive rolle), they only had so many options.

And now that you've all lost all respect for me, I'll sign off for now.  Bye bye.

How many of you here have seen the movie Ocean's Eleven?  Well, if you haven't, skip reading the rest of this paragraph and go out and rent the movie.  It's a good flick, worth seeing.  But for those of you who have, you know that scene where the Black British guy is watching the building being imploded on TV, and you can see the thing actually falling down in real life through the windows behind him in the background?  Well, if you don't remember, that's what the scene was.

Well, to make a long story longer, last night I was watching the fireworks over the Seattle Space Needle on TV and trying to figure out why my TV was having such a strange echo.  At about the same time, I happened to look out my window and realized that the strange echo wasn't my TV.

Now, I like to think that I am a relatively intelligent person.  Relative being the operative word here.  And for some reason, it had never occurred to me that if you can see the space needled from your window during daylight hours, it stands to reason that when they're shooting fireworks off the thing at night, that you'll also be able to see that.  Don't worry, after I made my discover (and in my defense, it was only about one minute into the fireworks), I proceeded to turn off the television and just watch the fireworks out of my window.

Now, the kinda sad and pathetic thing was that I had to be all by myself while watching these things.  I've been single now for a year...the longest I've been single since I was about fifteen.  Sure, there have been some guys around, but no one that's actually been the "boyfriend," or for that matter, who's wanted to be.  Granted, though, this isn't entirely for any failure on my part to find a boyfriend.  Honestly, I haven't been looking, or guys who have presented themselves (creepy bible-thumping Christian white guy my brother says reminds him of a fish) have just been too nauseating to even contemplate.  Normally, I'm Ok with the fact that the closest thing I have to a man in my life right now is my boss who is just about as infuriating as a boyfriend, but it's different on New Years.  And as much as I try and avoid all this Hallmark fake sentimentality, I'm just gettin' sick and tired of sleeping by myself!  (Hell, at all else it's winter and gettin' kinda cold out.)  jk

But complaints and accounts of my selective stupidity aside, HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone, and I hope you look forward to dealing with me in 2005 as much as I look foward to annoying you all.  Think about it this way, though, most people who try to commit suicide are eventually successful, and I'm up to three tries, so eventually I may be checking out of all this, so just enjoy my company while I'm around.  Take care, and peace out!