Sunday, 1 April 2001 - Happy April Fool's Day!
2:30am, Monday Morning
I actually didn't play any real April Fool's jokes on anybody this year. Anyway. Here is a recap of my generally unexciting weekend.

On Friday night, we stayed home and Cami, Jeff, Leanne and I all watched Groundhog Day together. I had actually never seen the movie before and it was actually a lot better than I thought it was gonna be. Everyone else had already seen it.

Saturday, I pretty much spent most of the day by myself. When I woke up, no one was around. Cami and Jeff had gone up to LA for the weekend. Leanne went out with some guy she met by being single of the week. So I hung around the house. I cleaned up a little. I washed some dishes and took out the trash, and I tidied up my room (which is already messy again now) and vaccuumed it. I did laundry. Leanne bought a big bucket of Oxiclean from costco. I decided to see if it really would make my whites whiter and my brights brighter. Actually I added a scoop of it only to my whites, as I didn't really trust it with my brights just yet. And you know what? That stuff really works! My socks are like, whiter than they were when they were new! I've also heard from a friend that it works pretty good on tile grout. Wow, I guess some things that are advertised on TV really do work as good as they say! I mean, I'm on a roll here, with OxiClean and the George Foreman Grill!

While I was waiting for my laundry, I squatted on an eBay auction, and swooped in on the closing seconds and won an auction that this other guy had been bidding on for a week. I'm such an asshole! Anyway, it's a new toy for me, and well, I'll let y'all know what it is after I decide to keep it or not.

Then I went out. You see, I'm starting to collect footage for a Riceboypage.com video that I'm planning to put out. So I went out to collect some "stock footage" that I can throw in various places if I need to. I ended up going to the Eastgate Mall bridge over the 805 freeway. I also brought my Nikon 880 with me and got some still pics. Yes, I like to lay down in the middle of the street to take pictures of reflectors on the ground.

Oh, and for you northerners out there that have no idea what I'm talking about, in places that don't snow, we have little reflectors on the ground to help you see where the lane lines are at night, especially in the rain when the asphalt just reflects your headlights back up to the sky so you can't really see the lines. You guys don't have these things cuz if you did, your snowplows would just knock them right off. I'm so glad I don't live anywhere that requires a snowplow!

So I collected some footage and took some pictures. Then I called up Scott. We met from the riceboard. We had dinner at Wendy's with Leanne (because some people, unlike Jeff, like to eat at Wendy's), then Scott and I went to see the movie 15 Minutes. This movie came highly recommended by my sister, and plus, it has Robert DeNiro in it, so hey, I gotta check it out, right? Well it turned out to be pretty cool. Very intersting. And the best part is that the trailer for this movie did not give away the whole movie. Actually, it gave away so little about the plot, that I had no idea what was gonna happen. Which was kind of refreshing, in away, since many movies that come out these days tend to give away way too much in the trailer.

After I came home from the movie, Leanne and I discussed going to the San Diego Zoo together. Believe it or not, I've never been there. The closest I've ever gotten to going to the San Diego Zoo was when in Cami's sophomore year, she and Helen and Jesse did a video project, and I was the star. And in this little video, there was this half-asian kid who was supposed to be me when I was younger. This young version of me in this video was at the San Diego Zoo. So the closest I've ever come to going to the San Diego Zoo was having some kid who was pretending to be the younger me go there. Helen and Jesse were the parents. "Say Hi, Austin!".

But we ended up not going. When we got up this morning, it was practically noon already. This was thanks in part to the switch over to daylight savings time. And it was gloomy out. We felt very unmotivated. But we dropped off Groundhog Day at Blockbuster and ate breakfast at IHOP. And then we came home and sat around and did nothing for a while. Sitting around and doing nothing is one of the greatest things to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Tuesday, 3 April 2001
2:45am Wednesday Morning
Damn, it's only tuesday? This week is going so slow. So. U.S. and China relations is the big thing in the news. I think it's really ridiculous the way the United States is handling this thing. Yes, China has a responsibility to give safe passage to our men. But do we really have a right to demand that they do it immediately? I mean, we weren't exactly out there on a pleasure cruise. It was a military spy plane that we had up there. Was the bumping intentional? Was it the Chinese pilot's fault? Did the American plane cause the accident? I don't know, but that's not really the issue I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is the way in which we are going about resolving this thing.

The way I see it is this (and this is an analogy i stole from someone on the riceboard) -- if you're playing frisbee, and your frisbee accidentally lands in your neighbor's back yard, do you go over there, knock on the door and demand that they return your frisbee immediately? Or do you ask them nicely, not only because they would be more likely to comply, but also in the interest of maintaining neighborly relations?

We can take this one step further -- if you're hanging out your window, spying on your neighbor with your camera, and they catch you doing it, and as a result, they throw a rock at you and as a result, you drop your camerainto their yard. Do you go over there and demand that you get your camera back immediately? Would you even go so far as to say that it is still your camera and therefore demand that they not be allowed to see what's on the film, even though you were just using it to spy on your neighbor?

Suppose a Chinese spy plane was spotted off the coast of California. Two US Navy jets take off to intercept it, and somehow, whether by accident or not, a US Navy jet hits the spy plane, and disappears into the ocean, while the Chinese plane is heavily damaged and forced to land on a military base in San Diego (if it hasn't already been shot down...). Does anyone doubt that we would be on that plane within seconds looking at what they have inside and (possibly more importantly) what information they gathered about us? Wouldn't there be great uproar about this spyplane being so close to us? Hmmm?

But the really funny thing to me is how President Bush says that the way the Chinese are reacting to this situation is going to hurt relations between the US and China. What about sending up a plane to spy on China!? Don't you think that hurts relations? What about entering into arms deals with Taiwan? Don't you think that hurts relations between China and the US? I mean, even though we consider Taiwan to be a sovereign nation, China does not. And when it comes to diplomacy, you must consider things from the other perspective and not just your own, because the other side will choose their course of action based on their perspective of how things are, not ours! Sorry, Mr. President, but when it comes to trying to avoid "hurting relations" between the US and China, we kinda dropped the ball on that one.

None of this was initiated by China, so where does the US get off thinking that they can actually go around demanding stuff, and then complaining about how this is going to break down relations? We sent up the spy plane, not them. But of course, that doesn't matter, we're America, and our way is the right way.

As far as I'm concerned, this isn't about communism, this isn't about defending the free world, this isn't about who caused the collision, this isn't about airspace, and this isn't about what's legal under international law. This is about American arrogance. It's about America thinking that we can just go around and do whatever the hell we want with no consequences. We can't, and if we continue this sort of attitude, especially in the ranks of our top leaders, it's going to bring us much trouble in the very near future.

In other news... Last night I went to TGIFridays and played NTN with Jenny. This was the first time in a long time that I have been over there. There are pictures. Beer and NTN. Yummmm.

But I don't know why Jenny is bragging on her website about knowing what hit song John Lennon put out in 1971 -- after bragging about how great she is at Beatles trivia, she got that question wrong. Minus 250 points. But she did beat me 2 out of 3 games. I sense a rematch coming on very soon!

Also, I got a new desk to replace the one that was barely big enough for my computer. I got one of the extra desks from work, and man this thing is huge. It has enough room for all my toys, and then some! Woohoo!