So I’ve been thinking for some time about heading back to where it all started. Well, no. Not Korea. But New York. Every time I go back, I feel more alive and excited about life. There are more jobs there. I won’t need a car. And the love of my life is waiting patiently for me to come back.
Ok, forget this. I am not as committed to these things as *some people* so I will just say, APRIL FOOL’S! And get it over with.
No, I’m not moving back to NYC. Though I have honestly considered it 100 times. It’s always in my back pocket in case of emergency. And I do love it there. But there are other places I’d rather try first and second and third and, well you get the idea. I don’t like going back. I feel like you go back “on your shield or you don’t go back at all.”
That’s lyrics to a friend’s song and I’m not sure if he copied that from someone else or not. I just mean that there are a lot more places to explore and returning to where you’ve been is reserved for when you’ve accomplished things you couldn’t do there. I have so much more of the land to conquer
Anyway, my “prank” wouldn’t be nearly as good as Graham’s – or as ludicrous as the Steelers saying that they are talking about trading Ben Roethlisberger. The joke is on them. Big Ben is going to retire next year and become an actor and make really awful comedies. But hopefully he won’t kill or conspire to kill his ex-wife and her new boy toy and then get “framed” for it poorly by a racist, bumbling cop.
It’s an old rivalry, though not as old as, say, that Isaac-Ishmael thing. It’s funny though, irony maybe (not Alanis-style irony, mind you) that everything boils down to a recognition of differences respectfully.
I came across this video which made me smile and I have to say that it is an overtly simplistic example, but an example nonetheless, of how one people group can get swept up into this irrational and fanatic disgust of another people group. While the Yankees-Red Sox thing may seem lighthearted, I’ve known people to get into major fist fights and such over such a triviality. Wearing a Yankees hat myself once, I was spit on by some broad who, in her defense, was a drunken idiot and had thought I was hitting on her husband. Well I wasnt… but he did buy me a drink and I accepted it. My bad. I was just you know, accepting the proverbial olive branch, and she went and rooned it. Ahhh good times.
Anyway, before I digress further, the video…
Nationalism runs these kinds of courses. Ayn rand had a lot to say about it. As did Hitler. My point being that it’s a careful line between pride and prejudice (hey good title). In another simplistic example, people ask me why I’m a Steelers fan when I’m not from Pittsburgh, never lived in Pittsburgh or even Pennsylvania. How can I possibly be a fan? Can I not say something along the lines of it’s a solid organization that I can really get behind ideologically and they have a good record and are now the winningest franchise in the NFL, not to mention they have a hot safety and quarterback? Or is that not really valid (well, not the hot players part) because I wasn’t arbitrarily and/or randomly born or bred there through no fault or effort of my own?
Now don’t get me wrong. Being proud of your nation and your peeps is not intrinsically evil. Few things truly are. (Well, at least fewer things than what we may think.) I’m pretty happy about being an “American,” and generally pleased with being “Korean” as far as my genetic structure goes. But using either classifications as a basis for being superior to anyone else is bunk. I have a thousand other reasons to feel superior. Mwahaha!
