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"Scores of California banks, thrifts, credit unions and life insurers have begun turning over confidential information about their customers--including account balances and Social Security numbers--to state officials in an effort to comply with a new federal law designed to catch parents who fail to pay child support...about half of the participating institutions are taking advantage of a provision that enables them to simply hand over the names and account balances of all their customers..." --Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1999

"Twenty-four hours a day, Acxiom electronically gathers and sorts information about 196 million Americans. Credit card transactions and magazine subscriptions. Telephone numbers and real estate records. Car registrations and fishing licenses. Consumer surveys and demographic details." --Washington Post, March 8, 1998, explaining the functioning of the nation's largest data warehouse.

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Even though the FBI's 1997 data shows that the rate of violent crime has dropped since the 1970s, two-thirds of Americans actually think that crime rates are increasing. The Kentucky Legislature voted 76-9 to let ministers carry concealed handguns during sermons.

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Equal opportunity department: In a recent Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, only one--Oprah Winfrey--is black.

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more recommended sites
(been surfing courtesy of snu's T1 connection)

a very smart article at the ethical spectacle ::: black people as scenery

for all you graduating people, the real vonnegut's real commencement speech at rice

this could be the next big thing since "I kiss you!" [thank you ken!]

a glossary of terms for international students at the kennedy school of govt (my favorite : "good luck to you and the red sox!")

the la asian am film fest, going on right now!

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from feedmag
"WHICH IS WHY THE "BEYOND RACE" TALK so popular nowadays is a dangerous sort of lie. It is indeed true, as the anthropologists tell us, that race is a social construct -- one of the most idiotic, criminal constructs imaginable. But dream scenarios of a postracial society in "2050" tend to obscure the fact that white privilege remains, for now, a reality. We will go beyond race when black skin ceases to be a stigma, a "problem." Or, as Winston puts it: "What you see is what you get, a big black motherfucker from a low-budget environment. If I'd been to outer space, written books, had dollars, drove a Mercedes-Benz [like the City Council incumbent], I'd imagine myself beyond race too. I'd imagine myself way beyond race. I'd imagine myself right out of this fucked-up neighborhood."

courtesy global exchange
send a fax to the gap on their sweatshops in saipan

an account of A16
A great collection of photos (50+) as well as first person p on this past weekend in Washington DC

more DC pics
eddie's web album, contains about 50 shots w/captions.

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"What can't be done politically has to be done culturally." -John Trudell

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[courtesy g.a.]

They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee (on being consigned to a mental institution, circa 17th c.)

m a y . 2 3. 2 0 0 0
(1:13 am, san francisco) | snacky don't care

yesterday was 40 hours. gotta love that time difference. dsl is fucked up so here i am a mere dialup dolly again. a dialup dolly with 100 new messages. my cat greeted me with the stench of her korean twinkie-esque Lotte Custard fueled doo-doo (apparently she dragged them out of the basket, into my bed, sucked the cream filled contents out through bite holes and left the empty wrappers on the bed.

m a y . 2 1 . 2 0 0 0
(10:36 pm, seoul) | super bishi bashi champ

listening to : god (no, i haven't suddenly gotten religion. god is a korean pop fivesome. if you'll permit me to wax stupid, now that would be a wack heaven)

in the u.s. i'm 97% against cute. i heard the four letter word -- like many a smallish asian girl -- a lot growing up. i spent high school cultivating a foul mouth and an evil eye to combat the label. and now standing tall in bare feet at 5'1" and a bit more i'm still anxious to be taken seriously and still identify in the anti-cute camp. so no stuffed pikachu dangling from my backpack, no baby voice, and above all, no pink. except for a justifiable kids watch habit b/c they are only ones that fit & look normal instead of gigantor on my wrist, i avoid cuteness as much as possible.

in the u.s. i'm 78% against consumerism. i'm starting to break my yuppie restaurant addiction, and. and. and. well, ok, maybe the only non-consumer virtue i've managed to uphold is borrowing books instead of buying them and bringing lunch to work (when i had a "work" to go to but that is another detour). still, i'm not willing to let my function in this world be reduced to propping up MNCs by impulse buying because i'm too emotionally wrecked to engage the rest of myself. in the hidden persuaders researchers measured how housewives (this was the 50s? i think) dropped into a semi-hypnotic state in supermarkets and would just start putting items into their carts heedlessly. so, yes, i am the girl who wrote "we work to consume to fill the void left......" in chalk in tompkins square park.

but get me inside korea and i'm buying cute stationary literally by the pound. i have nearly a week's worth of office-y dresses now and multi-simul-gasp, a pink dress (i tried to tell myself it's red but it really is fuschia). it's a spree, yes, a spree totally counter to huge chunks of my belief system. i can stroke my 3 dollar tshirts all i want but i have spent whoah damn amount of money.

korea is funny like this. or, is it i'm funny like this in korea? can i attribute this to vacation mentality - letting go of the work ethic, or what have you for juuuuuust a little bit? or can i blame the environment's expectations of femininity/youth and crazy rampant consumerism? or dammit, does it just make sense cuz i can get things that fit me here and chicken finger sized stationary that reads "Cure. What is a friend? It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself"....

the only cousin older than me on my mom's side got married today. i could see all my relatives counting backward to my birth year and then calculating the approximate number of months left until i should be getting married. the older i get, the more annoying korea will get. "oh, don't you have a boyfriend?" will take on kind of a strident/pitying tinge.

indulging my obsession with migration and return at : suitcase.net. please check out the essay on the tonto phenomenon

m a y . 2 0 . 2 0 0 0
(7:52 am, seoul) | office clothes

after rain, taxis reflecting stoplights look like dorothy's ruby slippers, glittered. ben says korea smells right after rain, i think i feel here most when i smell korean disinfectant. there's no pine-sol here.

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the only channel we get is armed forces network, which means i wake up to katie couric and public service announcements on bingo night at the osan officer's club. yesterday's/today's today show featured marc anthony who said the smartest thing i've heard about the 'latin explosion' in a long time. kudos to couric for setting up the framework by asking "so i understand you dislike the term crossover artists." my typically mangled paraphrase of his answer : "it insinuates that i've coming from somewhere else and trying to get somewhere i don't belong. i was born in new york and i'm 100% puerto rican." he prefers the term bicultural. go marc for refusing a media label.

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listening to : yo la tengo's i can hear the heart beating as one and my expianoplayer radio station at sonicnet (i guess imagineradio got swallowed up)

reading : robin

/// democracy in action, sort of ///
this is a totally fascinating site where the top 5 most asked questions by AOL users are answered by the white house press office : http://askgov.aol.com/

m a y . 1 7 . 2 0 0 0
(2:22 pm, seoul) | smells like korea

listening to: beulah (on the plane i was listening to the pop channel, and for the first time the duh-ness of pop lyrics made me sick. "oh baby come in to my heart do you want me hold me tight." coco lee in particular. puke puke. i still like the backstreet boys though)
reading: fantasies of the master race

i haven't been able to write here. obviously. paul tells me that late '99 was better. i tend to agree, ignoring the weirdness of rating periods of my life. i am too wary now. the pieces of emotion that peep out [via squidlist : "blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light"] are bent by embarrassment. i think the dsl only made things worse in my mad dash for info overload, and now that i've successfully installed more ram (i was/am very proud of myself) all i do is troll through craigslist looking for a life i would like to purchase. [try this one : "cafe for sale"] the solution seems to be to start over.

(medium sized sigh)

yesterday was seoul national university's first ever spring festival. and like spring flings all across academia it consisted of bands, booze and bbq. i was brave (for me) and ate soon-dae. (intestines stuffed with blood marinated noodles i think) maybe i'll just revive the gi check. k pointed out that the april InStyle has anointed korean as the next It cuisine. damn. it'll just get more expensive than it already is.

i've been first love obsessive lately. luckily i found ember.

>>>other recommendations>>>>

slate sets the record straight on the iloveyou virus

a slashdot article on pinkerton's (yes that pinkerton's) attempt to capitalize on the school security market

wussy boy's (aka big poppa) poem "Poetry Widow"

a salon article: "silencing joseph stiglitz"

craig duffney's sketchbook sampler

a funny as shit cartoon on the whole napster/metallica showdown

sf hipster (who like many of us, have a airplane safety icon fetish)

and dammit, go subscribe to red rock eater. phil agre is my hero.

m a y . 5 . 2 0 0 0
(11:43 pm, san francisco)

watched: hairspray and a hard day's night. is it ridiculous to admit that i have a crush on ringo now?

shu and i did some long distance commiseration last week. i dunno if our supertwin penchants for intensity and no-holds-barred friendships are the end result of what happens when an only child is tossed into boarding school. in college i bitched and kvetched about how a culture of busyness was to blame for deteriorating friendships. "i'll call you" we falsely promised, waving across midday streets full of backpacks and people. yeah, i was busy then. sort of. (i still had time to wander around the library stacks putting all the browsers to doodie.com) now it's worse.

related link of the day : bad friends, from pinkcowboy

it's all tied into the modern day obsession with trying to feel important. these days (thanks to my fresh-but-not-impressively-speedy dsl line), i multi-task like a home office pro, laptop open, cordless phone tucked under my right ear. meetings make us feel important (as paul pointed out) - so i bounce from project to project, meddling. i want a title. i want a business card. i suppose i could manufacture all of the above myself.

haven't learned to accept my limitations.

m a y . 1 . 2 0 0 0
(3:56 pm, san francisco) | rabbit rabbit

i discovered the best (so far) way to usher in a birthday: standing in great american music hall in front of a stage fulla rocking new york city Versus, "dancing a silly little indie rock dance with just enough sangria in me to make the scene feel not scene-y at all"... thank you jean!

a p r i l . 1 7. 2 0 0 0
(11:58 pm, san francisco) | ends

i have gotten better at endings and dreamings. i'm trying some beginnings now too. i got a sf public library card.

to keep me company while i wrote i put a candle next to my laptop. unfortunately now there's a halo of candle wax on my desk.

new project : webzine2000

a p r i l . 1 2 . 2 0 0 0
(5:36 am, san francisco) | elements of style

on april 4th, i fell over a vacuum cleaner.
on april 5th, i forgot my credit card at the two tongues show.
on april 6th, i wondered what it would feel like to catch a chicken, and if it would feel like success.
on april 7th, i decided not to wear the pink wig to el bobo.
on april 8th, i walked away.
on april 9th, i bailed on two birthday parties.
on april 10th, i wanted french fries.
on april 11th, i got laid off.

holy whoah-damn of the day: continous motion generates own breed of stasis