Is There Internet in Heaven?

From time to time, I wonder what happens to a blog or web journal after its creator passes away. Does it get deleted after a while due to inactivity, or will it forever be encapsulated in that web address, with its owner's last entry in full view for people to visit in 50 or 100 years? An acquaintance of mine recently joined a RIP group for one of her friends, and naturally I saw an overflow of emotion with each message: missing her and reminiscing ancient memories like yesterday. I didn't know the girl, but it seemed like she touched alot of people's lives. This got me thinking about my own cousin's death over 3 years ago, and I wandered over to her xanga. Her last post was still on Sept. 19, 2003, just as it was when I visited months ago, but still I read it. My cousin also has a memorial website with pictures and a section where you can share your memories with everyone else.

I'm sure there is some part of you stored in whatever you write, so no matter what happens to you, you are eternal as long as people keep reading your words. JK Rowling comes to mind as I write this, since she incorporated a cursed journal with the soul of its creator in the Harry Potter series. But, unlike this journal that would reply to Harry when he would ask questions, our blogs don't. But, anyway, what I'm getting at is with all the memorials sites and comments or wall postings saying "i miss you" and all, do they ever reach their intended? They are no doubt comforting to those left behind to look back on, but these weblogs and sites are deceiving. After you leave the message, something to the extent of "your message will be received the next time he/she logs on," and that's unlikely.

I wrote a letter to my cousin Melissa shortly after she died, wishing I had written it while she was still alive. I sealed it in the envelope and told my other cousin, her brother, to please put it in her casket. I wrote it to her, maybe hoping there'd be some response in the clouds or on some traffic sign, and I like to think that through some divine intervention she reintroduced some lost friends into my life shortly after, but reality is the envelope is still sealed and six feet under with no light source and no life. And no matter how many "I miss you" messages I leave on websites, they won't reply back "I miss you too." Part of me wants to believe that Melissa has internet access on a computer with no keyboard and is sitting on some cloud reading those responses without being able to type out a reply. But I guess if I were in heaven I wouldn't be spending my time on xanga, myspace, or facebook.

Sometimes I wish my late grandfather had a xanga too that I could look back on and write comments on because maybe then it'd be easier to remember him, and maybe I'd feel closer to him because I'd be reading thoughts that he himself typed into existance. I guess at the heart of it that's what weblogs are meant for-- sharing your voice, commemorating your own will. And it'd be so easily accessible, that even if you've left this world and are far out of reach, random strangers could google you up and you could have an impact on that person's day. But as expansive as the internet seems, it only goes so far as the next computer and otherwise is nonexistent. Still, as dour as all this sounds, I entertain the notion that somewhere beyond all the stars and galaxies that my departed friends and relatives know exactly when I think of them and they can hear when I call out to them.

minorities hating on minorities: the solution is understanding

"I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years," penned Kenneth Eng in his most recent column, "Why I Hate Blacks," featured in Asiaweek magazine. Currently he's being lambasted by Asian American and Black activist groups alike to his apparent ignorance, but to me this story is telling of a more deep-seeded intolerance among minorities. It is a dirty secret that we minorities don't want to admit to, because it speaks hypocrisy. Being a part of a minority, you face a constant struggle with your identity in a place run rampant with stereotypes and systemic prejudice, and to put another group down based on stereotypes and prejudice only perpetuates what you yourself try to fight.

What I see here, as in any other case of racial intolerance, is a lack of understanding and empathy. Asian and Black Americans are two vastly different cultures originating in different continents altogether and forced to live together in another continent. As progressive as Asian American and Black American activists are, minority children are unlikely to learn their own cultural heritage, let alone the heritage of other minorities. History books tell of the caucasian's manifest destiny in America and how they brought Africans in through slave trade and how they turned Chinese immigrants into indentured servants. Students don't learn how or why Filipinos migrated to the US, nor do they understand the Japanese American internment during WWII or the plight of the Vietnamese and Koreans due to Communism. I believe education needs to change and I would delve into it, but for the sake of brevity I'll save that for another time.

Meanwhile, as we are raised to be ethnicly ignorant, we grow up in an environment of racial overload. We think in terms of color-- red, white, black, yellow--- when we are all really just different shades of brown. We turn derogatory slurs into slang without thinking. We'd rather trust the truth in stereotypes than to see the truth to a group. And why? Because it's easier. It's easier to generalize than to go out of your way and seek answers. It's easier to believe that intelligence and personality traits are somehow related to your skin tone. It's easier to be stupid than to think. And so I challenge this to you, dear reader: be intelligent. Think and try to understand a situation before you form and verbalize opinions about a group of people. Don't be so ignorant to think you know everything.



http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/27/racist.column.ap/index.html

Flasher Exposed!

So I get to class barely on time this morning. I hitched a ride with my boyfriend's roommate and his girlfriend to campus, and we hit every red light imagineable, not to mention being stuck behind very indecisive drivers. I get dropped off at my building at 8:01... class started at 8, and i still had to walk a flight of stairs to get there. I say bye and jet out while they're still sayaing goodbye, and it's a good thing I left too because they were getting mushie up in there.

I run up the stairs, down the hallway, and open the door to my classroom. Deliberately disrupting class, I went to my usual spot, set my stuff down, and searched for the attendance paper being passed around the room. Then I sat down, and made myself comfortable for the next hour and a half of rambling from my professor. Forty-five minutes into lecture I pulled out my phone and started playing "Dope Wars," the perennial classic that allows me to buy drugs low in Amsterdam and sell high in Kabul, earning $6 million dollars within 20 days. If only I could be a drug dealer in real life.... or maybe not.

Anyway, thirty minutes into my quest to suppress boredom, class is ended, and I walk back towards lab. I pick up the campus newspaper, and flip through a couple pages before halting on the bolded words GPD: Flasher Captured. And reading more and more into the article I understand more of what happened to me early one morning at the bus stop.

I woke up early that morning so I could go to campus and finish some homework before class at 8AM. My stupid self thought that the bus ran before 7, but I learned the hard way that it did not. I arrived around 6 at the bus stop. Fifteen minutes later, another girl sat down next to me on the bench.

Around 6:30, while I'm thinking "any minute now, the bus will come," a tan-skinned man wearing a baseball cap, sat down on the bench across from us two. I felt that something was amiss when I saw him come from a different direction, but maybe it was the fact that he wore shirt and something that looked like a sarong that caught my attention. Using my peripheral vision while trying not to make obvious that I was scoping him out, I soon realized that he wore nothing underneath the sarong. After he sat down he spread his legs wide (this I also caught peripherally) so that his sarong, which hardly covered his lower trunk when he sat regularly, was concealing nothing at all.

Thoughts raced my mind like what would happen if I made eye contact?, what happens if I try to walk away?, and what if this is nothing at all? were superceded by the prevailing fear not knowing what he had in mind and what he planned to do next. My mother had always warned me to never be out past dark because of all the stories about college girls who get mugged/assaulted/raped/murdered while doing activities at night. Her advice always applied to the night and never the morning, because anytime that the sun was up makes crimes against college girls unseemly. I've constantly broken this advice-- shopping for groceries at 3AM and going out clubbing. In times like those there were sketchy people who tried approaching me, but I never felt as vulnerable in those instances as I had at that moment, with the sun peering through trees in the eastern sky.

I still sat there fairly complacent while my mind was suspended in disbelief over the strangeness of the situation.

Five minutes later, he got up and started walking back in the direction from which he came. I watched him peripherally, and once he was a couple yards away I watched as he broke into a full run to a nearby parking lot. He got into his blue sedan, and drove away. I was too shocked at that time that I hardly noticed his license plate number.

I laughed it off later that day, retelling my story to those who said I was "flash-propositioned." I told my mother the story and she asked if I called the police yet. Mulling over the thought, I knew that I could not identify him nor aptly describe him had I been questioned to.

Reading into the article, I found out the flasher was a early-thirties Italian who would flash girls in the early morning as a stress-reliever. Characteristic to his cases were sightings of a blue, 4-door Dodge that would drive by moments before he would expose himself.

:::Sigh of relief::: at least that's one less weirdo that's on the streets.