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Wow, 2 days in a row, first my Tweet on the Google Music Beta blog post appears on Huffington Post.  And NOW, thank you @ChristianMcM.

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My New Theory: Racial Categoricalism

This was a blog post I wrote awhile back HERE

First there was racism, then stereotyping, then what Oliver Stone coined as "Placism" (from the Movie, "Any Given Sunday" quoted by Jamie Foxx's character in the movie), where each race should know their place.

Through the racism and the stereotyping that ensued, everybody started becoming categorized, and because of those dumb ass psychiatrists and the pseudo doctor psychologists, the box that everybody is categorized into is getting smaller, and even sociologists are starting to become guilty of this micro categorization of societies, groups, religions, etc. Therefore categorism is not just limited to ethnicity/race. Just look at drug addicts, criminals, people from a disadvantaged socio-economic class, sure there are some patterns (correlations), but these idiots by saying correlation does not equal causation, by putting everything into a nice, neat category is in essence are contradicting themselves by saying correlation equals causation by their categorization.

Therefore, I now coin the term "Categorism", where everything is concerned, especially how race is placed in a box. For an example of what I mean, please click HERE I don't consider this racist, I consider it racial categoricalism where Chinese people are supposed to be this way...

Example, (from my observation of living in the US):

Asians (as far as they're concerned we're all either Chinese or Japanese), anyways, we're either model students, chaste, non-sexual beings (at least for the men), skinny, effeminate (men), kung fu fighters or weaklings, for the women, sex toys or chaste or kung fu fighters, submissive.

Black people: Criminals, rappers, athletes, can sing & dance well...

These are two examples I like to use, because I was talking to my white friend the other day and he admitted that if we (Asian & Black people) didn't fit in these categories, it would be hard for him to accept an Asian person or black person that doesn't not fit these neat categorical stereotypes...

Living in South Korea now, when you say caucasians, the first thought amongst the average Korean person (my own informal survey), the categories are for men:

1. All are handsome or good looking (I try to explain that models appear in magazines because they don't look like the ordinary person, yet they don't understand).

2. All caucasian men are tall (I'm 176 cm or 5' 9 1/2"), I'm not short OK!!!

3. They're all English teachers or US soldiers (20 years ago, just US soldiers).

4. They're all rich (think about it, if you're rich would you travel over 10,000 miles for a job? I try to explain that most English teachers are here because they can't find a job where they're from with their liberal arts, history, English Lit degrees and I always say, if you're living and eating well there's no reason to emigrate...

For the women:

1. They will all get fat or they are all fat!!! I'm confused with this one... (Then again, a hot chick in any country has no reason to emigrate, don't call me a chauvanist, guys know what I'm talking about).

Yet caucasians can be outside of these categories and be accepted, even as a Kyopo (a Korean person that lived overseas), I am categorized by Korean people.

The most common questions I heard:

1. Why did you want to come to Korea?
My reponse: Lower crime rate, a homogeneous society (over 20 years of living in a heterogeneous society you want a change!), quality of life, plus living in Asia is very addicting, don't know why?

2. When will you go back to America?
Been there, done that...I'm sick of 4 seasons, if I choose to emigrate again, why do I want to go back to where I grew up? I want to go to a warm weather country, wanna leave behind the cold!!!! This people definitely cannot understand, so my response is America is not the world, there's Europe (which I would rather live in, knowing what I know now), Africa, SE Asia, Central Asia, South America, etc etc etc why limit yourself?

The most common misconceptions of Kyopos (Koreans that lived or grew up overseas):

1. We're all super rich.
2. We all went to great colleges/universities.
3. We all study hard.
4. The world is our oyster.

So, being a Kyopo, if you're not rich and did not go to a great college, people disperse away from you like ( fill in analogy here)...

Just my new theory, perhaps one day it may be published, LOL upon further research. 

Self Esteem is Over Rated!!!!!!

As a really young kid growing up in the 80's I remember "self-esteem" was a big "buzz word". There were all sorts of child experts who never had kids or have kids who became drug addicts or frequenter of jails and prisons, yet they were making millions of dollars selling millions of books teaching how to cultivate "self esteem", "self worth", "self confidence", blah blah blah.  The 80s was called the "Me Generation", I think what I see in Asia nowadays is far more severe but that's a rant for another day.  Why is self-esteem over rated you ask?  Very simple, human beings are not as complex as everybody makes it out to be.  What makes everything complicated is a lack of KNOWLEDGE OF SELF.  If people don't know what the hell they want or know who the hell they are, how the hell do you expect to communicate with others?  Although I'm not a sociologist or a psychologist or a social psychologist, and I don't pretend to be either.  I have some unscienfitic, unverified sociological observations, and here's the correlation I came up with, the lower the self esteem the higher the achievements in life or you can flip it by saying the higher the self esteem the higher liklihood these people won't achieve anything in life.  Now I know all of you are gonna say, "NOT ALL", OK let's break down what "NOT ALL" really means.  "NOT ALL" refers to the exceptions to the rule, if that's hard to understand, let me even break it down in simpler terms by me quantifying this.  If 95% of people who have high self esteem don't achieve, when you say "NOT ALL", you're referring to the "5%" thus the exception to the rule.

Based on my observation of "high self esteem" people, they have high self esteem as a result of who they compare themselves to.  For example, I had a Kyopo friend who was cocky bordering on arrogant, upon further observatioin, he would always surround himself with people whom he considered to be less intelligent than him, so he could be the smartest guy in the room.  How narcissistic is that? Another dumb ass comment he made was that it was hard to find a job in which I replied, "I never, ever had a hard time finding a job."  When he learned which college I went to, in a demeaning way, he's like, "Eh, it's alright."  He graduated from UCLA, I was impressed until later, I found out he was a friggin Sociology major!  If I knew his major then, I would have said "Of course, you can't get a damn job with a Sociology major", these are the same jerkoffs that come to KR & JP and teach English cuz they can't find a job that pays equally as well back home from the "No career majors."  And these same people have very "High Self Esteem", and they are not in short supply either. 

Another group of jerkoffs are the English students who can speak a little English, they brag in front of their friends how good their English ability is and these same jerkoffs tell me to speak English to them when I try to speak Korean.  After I oblige and patronize them by purposely speaking super difficult English to them along with some street slang, I did them a Public Service by making them realize how much more they have to learn, and these douchebags hate on me for this when they should be licking my ass and thanking me, oops I forgot this high self esteem jerkoff can no longer brag in front of his/her friends with the same conviction before they met me and I put their ass on check.  So one of the freight forwarders I'm dealing with, our relationship started out that way, now we speaking Korean 90%.  Another supplier though is a funny case, he won't take my calls anymore, he looks at the Caller ID and sees if it's me won't pick up the phone.  I always say these jerkoffs that can't speak the language as good as they think they can GET YOU KILLED!  They can mistranslate something and get you into a lot of trouble.  I punched a dude in the face and some translator was there and he was HORRIBLE, he could have sent me to jail.  Then he had the nerves to get angry at me for me wanting to confirm every word he was translating, saying it was mendo kusai, I told his sorry ass, it's my ass on the line not yours plus you're getting paid by my tax dollars so earn your damn money.  This guy also told me he was a pre-law major at a US university, yet I knew more about the law I did as an amateur Law hobbyist!!!  Go figure.  Many people that have very low self esteem I know about anything, always work harder and want to hang out with people smarter than them so they can get better.  When you have high self esteem and you THINK you're already good I guess there's no more room to improve.  I'll finally close with one of my entertainment idol Howard Stern, he has a very low self esteem and that low self esteem drove him to work hard at his craft and now he's the highest paid radio personality in the history of radio.

I'm for supporting people, giving them moral support, etc.  I am not for cultivatig self esteem because it's over rated.  Our parents & siblings tried their best by curtailing our expectations.  Our siblings also have the job & responsibility of putting us in our place before we get too big headed, or our friends always kept us in check, yet with the proliferation of the single child homes and sit in front of the computer all the day culture, these social skills are not being executed so you have people who derive their sense of accomplishment based on how good they are on WOW or Starcraft.  FYI:  This does not translate to real life!  Let's not re-invent the wheel people.  Most of the times, what worked for centuries is the best way.

Stuck in the middle...

Now, you guys are gonna ask, am I going to whine and cry about why I didn't become what I wanted to become.  HELL NO.  I don't blame anybody for my successes and failures in life but myself.  Nobody was walking by my side when I was at my desk studying or putting in extra hours of work to pursue my dreams.  Contrary to popular beliefs, I DON'T BELIEVE PEOPLE HELP US ALONG THE WAY, they introduce us to opportunities, or hell, let's put it more bluntly, they may open doors for us, but it's our choice whether we walk in that door or not.  For those of you that are a little dense, this proverbial door is not always a literal door or even "opportunity".  This "door" we speak of figuratively in analogies also refers to knowledge or advice or entry into places we normally wouldn't be accepted societally, having said that, it's your choice whether you run with the advise, or the opportunity and when I walk in the door, it is I, alone who walks through the door.  Just as when I went through my private hells, it is I, who had to suffer the agony alone.  Sure you can have friends by your side during the ordeals, but at the end of the day, you have to pick your ass up, you go to sleep alone, they can't be there for you 24/7 nor can they be the ones who pick you up.  You have to pick yourself up  and re-motivate yourself.  I opened with this intro so y'all know where I"m coming from.

I grew up in three different cultures, born in KR, spent the first 7 years of my life in JP, and the majority of my life in the US and the last so many years in the motherland.  Many Korean people I meet tell me I don't think like a Korean bullcrap, I then turn around and say, hey my parents are Korean and compared to how they taught me YOU DON"T THINK LIKE A REAL KOREAN.  So, to many douchebag, wish they could speak English like me, had my experience of living in the US Koreans, I'm too American.  Yet to the Kyopos (Korean Americans), I'm too Korean or I'm a pseudo-Korean.  Case in point, I knew this hyeong (older dude), he would always say I'm a pseudo Korean cuz I can't speak Korean well, yet he's the one who refers to himself as "Daniel", I never, ever referred to myself with a "Christianized" name!  He didn't go to the army which is requried of all Korean males, I did, yet I'm the pseudo Korean?  Amongst my own people I don't fit in because I hate how Kyopos think they're better than Koreans who didn't live overseas or can't speak English.  i have news for them, when you speak English, you speak with an Asian rhythm this is why you always try to make me feel bad by saying "You talk like a white boy" comment...Can't fit in with my own people, oi vay...Having grown up in Japan at my most impressionable age, I learned to love the samurai culture, yet Westerners or outsiders don't get it when they talk about the samurai way.  Kevin Costner in the Bodyguard said he likes the Samurai because he has no fear of death, that's so shallow, anyways I talk about it in Episode 3, sorry not trying to be a plug machine...yet because I'm not Japanese, I don't quite fit in (although I'm Asian) and in the US, despite the fact I can speak English like a "white boy", I never fit in cuz I wasn't white, my family also emigrated to the US prior to the Korean immigration explosion, when that time came, I didn't know how to act with Asian people, let alone my own people.  I consider myself patriotic, not nationalistic.  What do you mean by this, you ask?  Patriotic means you love your country, will fight and die for you country, whereas nationalists only see their country, buy prodcuts only produced by their country, refuses to see the bad in their country, and many nationalists mistake my patriotism for nationalism.  So cosmically, I guess you can say my time was all screwed up.  Here's an example of racism I experienced in my high school drama class.  We had to do a skit, some girl dresses up in a bath robe and pretends to be a slob, the drama teacher raves about what a great job she did, so I dressed up in drag (not a pretty sight) she gave me a C+ for my efforts.  Hey, it takes a lot more cajones for a man to dress in drag than for a chick to wear a bath robe and act like a slob!  This taught me a very valuable lesson:  If I were white I would have gotten an A+.  

Living in Korea, I have two problems, because of my Korean pronunciation, they think I'm a foreigner (meaning Chinese), when they find out I'm a kyopo then they either hate on me or want to ask me a million questions or have free English practice with me!  The ones who hate on me are hilarious, although they hate on me, they try to send their kids to US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia or Malaysia or the Phillipines to learn English, thus they're hypocrites!  Another bunch I run into are the ones who want free English lessons or practice, this is why I stopped seeing my extended family, it really became a burden when they all asked me to teach them English, I was tutor during the army, you think after I come home after military duty, teaching punk kids English which I'm getting paid for, I would want to teach English for FREE!  Because of my lack of Korean ability, I miss out on a lot of parties, or the party starts after I leave and when I hang out with kyopos, they talk like dumb asses and I just can't relate to them because of what they consider important to them.  I don't care about bragging about being able to speak English, a billion people on this planet can speak the language therefore I'm one in a billion that can do something, not that special or unique, we were just fortunate enough to be in a position where we're able to learn the language based on access to education or goegraphical location.  The fact I'm semi-billingual, doesn't mean squat either because I know Europeans that can speak 7 languages, so all these things people are so arrogant about, I'm not about it cuz  I always look up for my standard of what is the best instead of looking down and THINKING AND BELIEVING I'm the best.  Plus they're into all their brand name items, I don't care how famous a brand is, I care about whether it looks good and feels good and serves the function I want it to serve.  If you're so into brand names and being cool, buy a Damn Mac!  I even had an argument from my kyopo friend from the suburbs of LA, he said the Mac is a superior computer on every level, but e won't get one.  You see the logic here?  

This point brings me to my next point.  I love tech, I'm a wannabe tech geek, tech otaku, tech maniac, whatever label you want to put on it.  Yet tech geeks are anti-weightlifting, anti-SiriusXM, anti-Howard Stern, anti-sports, all the things I also love.  I don't fit in their world because I don't love tech gear just because it's tech gear.  I love tech gear for its functionality for the average person, iPhone vs. Android.  I tried to give my friends technical support on their damn Android phones, whoever said that the Android platform is SO OPEN, is a liar.  First of all every carrier puts all sorts of crapware on the phones, so that if you want to buy music, apps or ringtones, you can only get it from their universe.  I tried to hook up one of the kids that works with me's phone (Samsung Galaxy S) to the Google Android App Marketplace.  No dice because the carrier has to allow the device to be attached to the gmail account.  I meet techies, because I'm buff and am not a vegetarian, I prefer shots of Jack Daniels to sips of beer, I'm even an outcast amongst them!

The hardest thing for me to do is meet people I would like to have a long term relationship with, male or female, but you guys know how I feel about male/female relationships, just list to Episode 7 of my podcast, but I digress, I say I love going out and meeting new people, actually it's a very anxiety ridden experience for me.  First thought in my mind, will people like me?  How much charm do I have to turn on?  Will I say something stupid or do something stupid?  So, for me, going out is a really painfully agonizing process for me.  When I meet peeps who I think are cool, turn out to be rather lame or too shallow or mornonic or fill in the blank.  I might meet someone that's way too far to the right or left politically, or I might meet super pretentious people, who think they're greater than they think they are.  I remember meeting suburb jerkoffs claiming they're from the nearest city.  If you can't be honest about where you're from (or ashamed or lack pride) then what else are you not telling me?  The biggest hurdle I run into is meeting hypocrites.  I understand in the Christian context we all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  Please don't be preaching to everybody saying this is the way to salvation while you're paying for call girls, hookers, or having homosexual relations or whatever and presenting this family man image.  I'd rather hang out with an honest thief or racist than a holier than thou religious person any day of the week!  Despite the fact I hate meeting people I do it because it's all a numbers game, the more people you meet the higher liklihood you will meet someone you can have a long term relationship with, whether it's offline, Twitter, Facebook, etc. or as one dude once told me get in where you fit in.

I grew up in 3 worlds, yet I'm part of none of them.