i'd rather have a bottle in front of me...

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dateline: oZburg

19 september 1996 10:47 p.m.

As often as I willingly subject myself to its unholy influence, sometimes television pisses me off. First, exactly how many times do we have to see Bob Dole fall on his wrinkly, bony Republican ass? Last night I was flipping through the channels at random and I saw his flop at least six times in one orbit of Oceanic Cable's expansive smorgasborg of channels. What point is our visubyte-obsessed media trying to make? That Dole really did have at least one life left? That America's moral decline is entirely the fault of shoddy workmanship or Communist platform-building contractors? And why couldn't he at least have taken out a journalist? It was like shooting fish in a barrel, but the guy completely misses injuring anyone else and instead hits the concrete alone... and meanwhile pops a blood-vessel in his eyeball. He joked about it later, but thanks to the wonders of technology I saw the fall in slow-motion from about thirty different angles. Did you see look on his face right after he fell? I think someone's diapers needed changing after that... And his "hair" didn't get mussed at all by the crash. Curiouser and curiouser. Second, as if I didn't insult myself enough by actually dancing the Macarena in front of a zombie-eyed crowd last week, I flipped to CNN just in time to see an entire segment dedicated to the "appeal" of this Plague of Mankind. Yet another sign of the coming apocolypse. I will never forgive myself. Since I'm already going to hell, I don't know what kind of punishment the gods will unleash upon me for my one moment of weakness. I'm sick. Strep throat, I bet. A patient I checked out on Monday had it. And my miso soup tastes funny. I have a test tomorrow, but I'm this close to staying home. If I wasn't such a cultured, classy lady, I'd be discussing my phlegm at length. But I know I'm the only one who cares how thick, or how white, or how oddly salty it is... A few examples of role-models for Asians have rolled in, but for the most part I'm still convinced they're way too rare. Pat Morita, "Mr. Miyagi" from "The Karate Kid," is a great guy. Local -- he does bank ads now -- and I'm sure I saw him shopping at Safeway once. That said, I think he's basing his entire career on the appeal of the "funny oriental man" stereotype (at least "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" did it tongue-in-cheek). I guess Jack Soo is before my time, but I think it was pretty much the same for him. As for Jackie Chan? He is undeniably cool, but the martial-arts focus of his career -- if not intentionally -- still blends into the sadly narrow world of his peers. There are clearly fewer of us female types, though (no, Suzy Wong and Mimi Miyagi don't count -- but thank you for playing, Kev). The only other name that has come up is Ming Na Wen, one of the stars of "The Single Guy." I definitely like her, though. Sharp, sarcastic and regularly slams her husband. Except for one episode I've seen (in which the French were equally drowned by stereotypes), her race has never been an issue or used as a convenient plot point. Well, TeachText couldn't be all perfect. I finally figured out the Case of the Vanishing Scroll Bars, a HTML quirk that has been foiling people who bravely endure perusing my pages with Netscape 2.02 or earlier versions. Seems my trusty "editor" (which lives in 512k of memory with lots of room to stretch) occasionally eats the closing tags for some of my pages, particularly if I've copied things from one file to another several times. I actually think it's scary how the newer versions of Netscape (and probably that accursed MSIE) automatically work around incomplete or sloppy page design. I don't know why, but I do. Almost, but not quite, the same sensation I get when I get into a car with automatic seatbelts. No, no... that metaphor (or simile, or whatever) doesn't scan. I'm going to bed. (...she said, quitting Eudora with 143 messages left to answer.) Oh, wait. Not yet. "Al TV" is on MTV tonight! You know, his polkas are the best...