Do not order black spaghetti for dinner at a dark restaurant. It looks like something that could be served on "Fear Factor"...

Never before have I considered that being able to turn over in your sleep, pain-free is a luxury that I should be grateful for. How low can I go?

I think I'm a little dyslexic. I read "... wish you a happy and prosperous 2005" as "... wish you a happy and preposterous 2005."

What is my neck telling me?

Getting fragments of facial hair in your eyes sucks. You should close your eyes when using a beard trimmer. What seems very odd, but by no means is a complaint, is that when there is a fragment of hair or an eyelash in my eye, it prefers to stick to my fingertip than my eyeball.

I now know why one of my shoes breathes. It has a lung.

When it comes to art, there's a thin line between genius and garbage. Last night I watched a number of pretty modern dance pieces. One piece, "6th Street (In)n" was quite psychotic, it's hard to describe it in words. I'm sure many didn't get it, but I was amazed. It's unusual for dance to evoke such feelings inside me, but this was much more than dance. Or rather, it barely seemed to be dance. It seemed to be something else. In the program, the dancers were refered to as "passengers." The piece was to "Sixteen Reasons" by Connie Stevens and "Twilight Time" by The Platters. It was quite haunting.

In New York if you get arrested for assault and you possess a black belt in any martial art, the charge automatically becomes assault with a deadly weapon. Trained people can be dangerous. In that case, why has no one suggested banning martial artists or people with combat training from airplanes? It's quite an insult to consider that a nail clipper is viewed as more dangerous than I am. Ensuring safety by making sure people don't carry tweezers on board seems a farce.

May is when I have my "deadly weapon" (aka black belt) exam.

Can you see the forest from the trees?

New York has 17% of nation's HIV cases, and in parts (like the Bronx) certain STD rates are 5 times higher than general population.

NY just has a lot of EVERYTHING - noise, traffic, culture, crime, people, money, pollution, languages, cuisines, theaters, rats, public transport, historical/tourist landmarks, museums, lights, concrete, etc, etc.

What does it mean when you often dream of fighting against a person who doesn't seem to get hurt or injured, someone with limitless energy? Someone who won't drown, someone who's eyes keep coming back to normal after they are pressed in... ok, I think I just gave too much detail...

It would be nice to be invincible. Sometimes I feel too human.

And no, I didn't injure myself.

Today I was trying to exit my college though a door that was partially blocked. An elderly woman who was ushering an event in a large room near that exit told me that the door was locked, asked if I could see that the door was blocked, and told me that I deserved a spanking. I wasn't sure how to respond. I said sorry, told her that the door didn't really seem blocked (there was just a 'wet floor' cone in front of it) and then I walked away. Maybe I should have told her that I am a graduate student, not in a 1940s pre-school. I shuddered when I thought this woman might get some kind of pleasure from spanking me.

"House of Flying Daggers" is a Chinese film that's opening in NY and LA today. I saw it in Hong Kong over the summer. It's interesting that because it's a foreign film, there have to be plot descriptions (spoilers) in the US trailer and Western press. I watched the film barely knowing anything about the plot, and I kept being pleasantly surprised. The audience around me stirred whenever there was a plot twist. The US audience is, sadly, likely to be less bemused.

I noticed another cultural difference. This was taken from the bottom of a review in today's NY Times:
"House of Flying Daggers" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some bloody violence and discreet sexuality.
If there was a similar review in HK, it'd say that it had a typical amount of violence, but was very sexual. Americans are blasé towards sex.

If you go to see it, or if you listen to the music on the official website, I wonder if you'll feel that the score has hints of the score of "The Godfather" and "Romeo and Juliet" (1968). I wonder if this is plagiarism or a lucky/serendipitous link.

Here is the link to the website.

Escalation:
Curious. Terrible. Changes objective, substantive interaction to hurtful, win-lose confrontations. It causes people to have firmer, deeper or more extreme positions.