noisewar internetlainen - games, politics, and sarcasm

On Wednesday, the Olympic torch passed through San Francisco and we went down to Embarcadero for lunch to see the festivities. Predictably, the well-to-do-but-willfully-modest lower-upper-middle-class yippies were out in force, holding aloft sighs emblazoned in magic marker fury. Free Tibet! Down With China! Free Burma! Free Darfur! Free Sudan!

Fights almost broke out if not for the meaningful police presence. In the distance, I saw a Free Tibet banner, floating above a sea of sight-seeing baseball caps, meet a giant red flag of China. They lowered quickly, disappearing into the mass, and then people erupted in a mix of cheering and jeering. It wasn't as bad as earlier in the day when protestors shook a bus they thought contained the Olympic torch, but it really caught the feelings of the moment. I watched bemused as an old Chinese woman yelled at a Free Burma chick to "stop causing trah-bul" or when an elderly man argued with a kid who had no idea what his Free Darfur T-shirt really meant.

Then again, it's not like the adults understood what it all meant either. I don't want to get too contentious, but the Free Tibet people have to understand that since the Mongols conquered them, Tibet has never been considered a free nation by anyone except themselves. As unfair as it is, the world runs on established documents and treaties, and none exist declaring Tibetan sovereignty.

Instead, the international community recognizes the Succession of States principle that essentially says when one state takes over another, it assumes the former's assets. In this view, Tibet was passed over from Mongols to the Qing, Qing to ROC, and finally ROC to PRC. Interestingly, Taiwan (the ROC) actually denies Tibet's independence. Not one foreign government supports Tibetan independence despite criticizing the violence- the world would fall apart! States would be meaningless.

So what defines a state? The answer, sadly, is everyone else. Without international diplomatic recognition, no amount of desire for independence can *make* you a state, anymore than Hawaii's islanders can declare themselves historically sovereign from the United States. Tibetans validly point out China colonized them by force, but that essentially validates they are a subjugated state. Are our southern states rightfully independent because the Civil War formed the Union by force?

One cannot go around earning freedom by demanding it. Knowing the Chinese people well, protests and shame are only going to reinforce their adamancy. If we want results, first take politics out of the Olympics, as it was always meant to be. Then treat China as a peer, don't bring Western arrogance to the table. They will follow that lead far better than any empty threats. Or crazies yelling out "FREE CASINOS FOR TIBET!"

As your dutiful reporter of the asian masculinity-pedophilia complex, I must share with you one of the most disturbing things I've seen. English lessons, teaching subtextual phrases like "take anything you want," performed in spandex; may include random close-ups of sports bras. Doesn't any director in Japan just crack and say "Dammit guys! Just once let's do a piece without rape fantasy in it!" Thank god they never got their hands on Sesame Street. Their penchant for sesame and violating tentacles would have left Oscar lecherous and the Count breathless.

Just in time for the Oscars, we watched Little Miss Sunshine over the weekend. It is a real desert american comedy, and I loved the spot on commentary on underage beauty pageants. It tickled me to no end that people dress their girls up as whores, but when they actually act as such, some indefinite line is crossed, and they are suddenly morally conflicted. Moreover, it shows that the american ideal for beauty has girls dressing up, increasing age, whereas in Japan, they dress down, with sailor skirts and high-pitched childlike squeals.

Trying to understand why this difference exists, I think it comes down to values. Americans prize the confidant power of the femme fatale, and the Japanese prize the innocence of a lolita. I attribute American men as more self-confident, and asian men as one of two extremes: passive, or excessively male dominant. Often both. I read in the Economist recently a study that showed sexual satisfaction between couples is correlated to equal social status. It was no surprise then that Japan had one of the lowest ratings among developed nations.

The San Jose dating scene that I've seen has been indicative of cultural difference. Is it an accident that white guys and asian girls are far more common than the other way around? It would follow that if american women have the same tastes as american men (power, confidence, independence), but asian couples have a great divide what they value (master and submissive), the combination of aggressive american women and passive asian man would suffer.

Of course, when I say american, that encapsulates asian-americans, so the issue is hardly that simple. The latter is very diverse depending on which generation they are, how much cultural tradition they've absorbed, etc.

Yesterday, a reader had some dialogue with me via comments over my rash indictment of James Xi Zhang and China's imposition into world trade. He brought up some good points that many are feeling right now in the apparent fallout of the American government, so I'll use this post to address my thoughts:

Hi am back...yes of course China is a huge threat to companies here, but is that stopping companies from getting most bang for their buck? Not really. By sending everything to be manufactured over to China, they aren't looking at the future of Americans - their consumers. So I guess the big question is who is responsible for our future/change necessary for a better future? Individual consumers ??? (No - Americans are cheap, lazy, and selfish for the most part) Companies ??? (No - they are heading us down a downward spiral where China rules) Government ???? bingo. They need to regulate our (companies and consumers) greedy butts. That's one advantage China has over us- much more control (although perhaps now unstructured and chaotic) over their companies and people. I believe they are looking at the future. They are improving everyday. You should look at their environmentally friendly plans - all of which beat any green attempts here. I'm not pro-China. Just concerned at the way things are going these days for America. Yes we are all to blame, but more so the government.

O btw I don't see how Mr. Zhang represents the corruption in China if he's not guilty at this point. I believe he's very much American. I know you're not totally serious but this is someone's rep on the line. I've been in a lawsuit before and if you're not guilty and someone is telling you are....not fun. So that's why I'm pushing this point so much... From what I heard, there's no proof so far, so until then stay nice. Thanks for reading. This is great fun...

I understand where you are coming from, and I feel the same way about the lack of government intervention in what is clearly a self-destructive relationship between consumer and corporation. But you draw some conclusions that come from the wrong direction.

First, exporting American jobs to China is not necessarily a bad thing, and it is certainly inevitable as the world becomes more globalized whether people want it to or not. Lower prices mean better savings, more money to spend elsewhere, better cost of living. The problem is that the prices were so good that the consumers lost their heads and sent our national savings rate into the negative. We lose more jobs to Mexicans than the Chinese, and studies have shown that wages for Americans as a whole, or even for the working classes, took little to no damage. If unemployment really did match immigration rates, the country would have more than twice the unemployment it currently has, and growing.

Secondly, China exhibits a pretense of tight control over its companies, but it also turns a gigantic blind eye to the many it chooses to ignore. The government is even less empowered than us to make sweeping reforms because the corruption is entrenched at the state and provincial levels. I've been following their environment reforms, and as admirable as they are, they were created because of how POOR local regulation has been, and the ecological damage there has been immense. Their new policies are amazing, but by the time they're implemented, alot more damage will be done.

Finally, Americans need to stop blaming the government. Doing so is what led to the tragedy in New Orleans. People seem to forget the vote to enter war with Iraq was unanimous. People seem to forget that after going into war, you need to supervise it as well, not just let the commanders do whatever. It's no accident that welfare reform under Clinton actually decreased dependency on welfare. America is a REPUBLIC, not a democracy, per intention of our founding fathers who purposely designed the government to be inefficient. We have electoral votes. It is the duty of We the People to organize those votes against the forces of gerrymandering into a keen weapon of change, not sit at home and complain about it.

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” -Thomas Jefferson

As for Mr. Zhang, regardless of whether he is guilty or not, you can't deny it gives Asian men a bad rep in times when Asians have been accused of spying in Federal buildings and stealing from Texas Intruments.

(more PBF over here)

Now that World Jump Day is over, stupidity will diffuse more evenly among the 23.934 hours in the sidereal day. If you hadn't heard of it, it was a call for millions of chumps across the planet to jump up and down at the same time in order to shift the orbital path of the planet, and thereby bringing world peace, global cooling, and a climate of general inanity. C'mon folks, the idea makes no sense at all in regards to physics. If anything, if should be World Blow-Upwards-At-The-Sky Day and instead of spreading across the globe canceling out their own foolishness, they should do it all from one place... like a poisonous rainforest or something.

But the strategy they've come up with is not new. Dantesoft sent me a BBC article nicely summing up the troubles a giant EA has faced. From the folks I've talked to, what burnt people out wasn't so much the workload, but the pointlessness of said work when constantly defined and redefined by suits and producers, the worst combo for human health since the Big Mac and large fries. Try changing 3-4 managers a month. Try marketing perps invoking art/code pipeline changes. One gent, who was friends with the guy who filed the class action suit against EA, told me of a game in which developers would try to score points based on how many times they could get producers to say "in reality...," and of course bonus points if you could get them to play the crying card. I kid you not, they cried.

So I guess we are to believe that significant jumping up and down has changed the orbit of EA's heart. I'll believe it when interns stop abandoning their internships there.

But jump hard enough and you'll plummet through the Earth into China, where they're still busy at work ruining stereotypes for Chinese people stateside. Read this incredible story about how Massive Black, related to the artistic monument that is ConceptArt.org, had their business sabotaged and stolen shamefully and shamelessly by their Shanghai faction.

This is the John Grisham tale of the game industry. Where asian women here in the Valley enjoy the benefits of being stereotypical dragon ladies and kawaii dolls in the sensational yellow fever of the interracial dating scene, asian guys are haplessly painted as spies and fu manchus. Y'know why? 'Cuz of selfish assholes like James Xi Zhang and the massive fraud, embezzlement, and conspiracy he perpetrated against Massive Black. If Hellgate is delayed for this, he's a dead man.

The nostalgia tide keeps crashing in. Being a cool nerd is sadly no longer socially contrarian.

On a crazy whim, we drove out towards Taizhong, but ended up giving up halfway and exploring XinZhu instead. The photos tell all.

When I stayed in XinZhu years ago, I was sequestered in the Jiao Tung university dorm rooms trying to surf Chinese MTV without running into the many barely scrambled softporn channels they came on late at night. I was disappointed that I didn't get to see the real city much. But this time we really scoured it up and down.

We hit up downtown first, which was an explosion of shops, restaurants, and street vendors, and I was on a holy quest for Green Apple Green Tea Conjac Drink. It is the most delicious beverage mankind has ever invented, with the exception of Surge soda. Xstine's mom, by then, was pretty familiar with me, and very chatty. I remember when I first met her, ceremoniously at the opening of an elevator door, her first reaction to me was a shocked "ah yo!" and then a brisk turn and disappearance off-stage. For those who don't know Mandarin, "ah yo!" translates to "oh yo!" with a Scottish accent and a startled face.

But once we were off on our merry trip, and after I had made fun of her for expecting all her daughters' boyfriends to be "tall dark and handsome" in contrast to my "short light and boyish," we were good friends. It is really strange to me, the expectations asians have for their children. On one hand, her mother is keenly aware that "tall dark and handsome" still landed her in a turbulent marriage, on the other hand, she preaches it almost automatically to her daughters. Find a handsome man. Tall. Owns a house. Doctor or lawyer. Tall. Handsome too. You have to wonder how a man so tall, handsome, rich, and perfect is going to show fidelity in marriage, no? She admits to me, true, but like Xstine's dad, what other monologue can you supply her?

What fascinates me is that asians deeply believe in fate. Their word for getting what you deserve is "huo gai," translating literally to "life-meant." In other words, your suffering was meant for all along. When you study in school, your major determines your career. Your career determines your wealth. You wealth determines happiness. Is it any surprise then that asians LOVE gambling? Your ability to win is predetermined. Your ruin is predetermined. There is no personal responsibility! All you need to do is work hard, and Old Man Heaven will reward you with a lot already chosen for your life. Sadly, a life of working hard and penny-pinching often leaves the people unprepared for a change in world paradigms, or an estate tax at the end. Women are housewives, men are wageslaves, neither can reconcile nor empathize.

I talked about this in length before, having noticed it as an immutable aspect of the Japanese culture, this concept of blind sacrifice. If there is a lesson to learn, it is that Americans have this one advantage. We are not the smartest, not the hardest working, not the best behaved. But as long as we idolize individuality and the ability to adapt, we will be what Darwin terms "fittest." It's sobering, but I think important to recognize that strength while we still have it. When Josie Wales is forgotten for the Naruto spirit, we'll be in trouble indeed.