Having not really watched the Oscars for a few years now, I must say that was an entertaining show. Even though I've barely seen any movies the past year, I enjoyed the broadcast.

It's hard to believe that I'm now at the last stretch. I have nearly all my chapters drafted, and one nearing completion, and from then on it's just a matter of revision until my committee says "OK" and signs off. Then it's on with the cap and gown and off I go, away from Berkeley.

I don't take for granted how very lucky I've been to attend graduate school... now that prospective season is upon us, I'm reminded of just how many are denied the chance to pursue graduate study, and how most of those who do get in are saddled with work and debt. I was fortunate enough to have adequate financial support throughout my tenure, and to be able to leave with little liability. On the other hand, for the past few years Berkeley has just been such a profound weight on me, and I'll be so glad to finally lift it off my shoulders.

The dissertation has its on moments and off moments. There are some chapters I really dread revisiting, and other portions that give me a lot of energy. Lately I've been working with the idea of male hysteria, and have found it very productive in helping me understand contradictions within the realist mode.

As I enter semi-public life in a few months I'm going to have to think about how much exposure I give myself through blogs, profiles, etc. I tend to be quite intimate in any kind of communicative context, and I feel the confessional mode is something that comes natural. However, now that I'll be professionally responsible for other kids, I'm wondering how much of myself I want to let people see. I'm not good at censoring myself, shutting off what I really think and feel. Anyway, in the next few months I'll be shutting off this blog. I haven't really been paying much attention to it, so I think it'll be a good idea to say goodbye to blogging for a while. However, eventually I'd like to set up a more directed, focused blog, something on modern Chinese culture, or a blog that deals with the intersections between post-colonial, racial and queer theories, a place where I can work out my thinking about certain issues. But I'll wait before embarking on that.

I'm honestly wondering just how many people, other than fundamentalist religious nuts and other moral zealots really care that Michael Phelps was caught sucking on a bong the way a hustler works on a well-heeled john. Maybe I've been in higher education way too long and I assume that pretty everyone either smokes or drops a little weed in their Lucky Charms. Now some power-hungry police folks are trying to interrogate all the witnesses at the party to build a criminal case against the poor guy. My suggestion to Michael Phelps: never cross the South Carolina border, and if you can comfortably set up shop in another country (like Roman Polanski), why not? It's seems obvious that the sheriff wants to ensure his re-election by nabbing a "star."

As previous blog-posts have indicated, I've never been a big fan of Michael Phelps, nor have I been a detractor, either. He's just a dumb 23-year-old who happens to be a phenomenal swimmer. People seem to forget that first part. He's not very charismatic in person, and while he's game for interviews, he doesn't exactly shine and make you think, "now this is the kind of guy I want to go see an art-film with." He's not a bad apple either, certainly no saint, just a decent chap. And, as is well known, he has a wild edge, and I've heard all sorts of stories about him drinking under-age at bars and crashing his SUV.

There's all that banter of "with great fame, comes great responsibility," although what they really mean is "with lots of cash, comes great responsibility," and to a certain extent I agree. But we can't expect, or force, all our athletic stars to become saints like that ever winsome Joey Cheek, who got his visa revoked by the Chinese government on his way to protest Sino-Sudanese relations on the eve of the Beijing Games. Fame and money by themselves do not a conscience make, and trying to force all our stars, from Michael to Chris Brown, to fit into this template of middle-of-the-road morality is, at best, laughable. Do Michael Phelps and Chris Brown really deserve all the money they're making? Probably not, but once you go down that road, well, you'll start questioning everyone. Does Angelina Jolie really have the right to steal all the babies she wants? Did he really deserve that tenure-track job? That, my friends, is what an income tax is for.

I think not being all that thrilled by Michael Phelps (although admiring his accomplishments and his basic decency, if not his ability to string together a rhetorically resounding sentence) in the first place has led to me not being all that surprised, shocked, or concerned by what has transpired. What I have been concerned about is the whole effort to tear him down, through the media and the legal apparatus. For me, it just seems like the reverse side of the coin of the limitless adulation that was showered upon him. It's really not so much about the guy himself, as all the desires, ambitions and hang-ups being projected onto him by people with nothing better to do (although me spending the time writing this blog post rather than working on my dissertation demonstrates my own strange priorities). You just want to say, "You know, he's just a dumb 23-year old." I did plenty of stupid things when I was 23 that I heartily regret. But that's what youth is for -- it's something that makes you cringe. I'm sure there are hundreds of people who have photos floating of them sucking on bongs, or doing even worse, but the only reason why they don't get into trouble is the fact that they're neither rich nor famous.

In some ways you can argue that Michael Phelps represented the last hurrah of American patriotism and belief in its political, economic and moral superiority over the rest of the world. Now in the throes of an unending global crisis precipitated by years of reckless American financial behavior, pride has given way to resentment, and Michael has now become the target of a national schadenfreude. Perhaps the solution is for the nation as a whole to take a collective bong hit. Breathe deep and keep it in.

I haven't had insomnia in two years. But right before I'm about to do my one and only job interview... it hits. Great.

I had a really awful plate of fish and chips tonight. I won't name the place where I had it at, because it's a relatively new bar and there's no point in talking smack about an establishment when so many businesses are struggling to make it. But I was amazed at how any place could actually fuck up fish and chips. The chips were fine. The fish was not fine. The batter was OK, and the fish itself was very flaky. But it tasted really, really off. In fact, the flesh was bitter. It came with a side of tartar sauce but no lemon, which would have been handy as other than the bitterness, the fish had no flavor whatsoever. It was the blandest fish and chips I've ever had. I used up the tartar sauce and I still wasn't finished. With a price tag of $13, and a beer of $5, I ended up spending, for some odd reason, $24 to make up for tip (it was as a group, so a few dollars could've been lost in the calculation). The high price tag for an obviously terrible plate of fish left, well, a bad taste in my mouth. It made me long for the mass produced fried fish and oysters at Ivar's in Seattle's. Yes, Ivar's.

My mother was rushed to the hospital last week with a very dangerous rise in her blood pressure. She spent a good amount of time in the hospital as doctors rushed to inject drugs to lower her pressure. She went through numerous tests to figure out what was wrong, but the doctors couldn't pinpoint anything. Thankfully the doctors were able to stabilize her in time before something worse happened, and she didn't have to go through surgery. She's now back home recovering, kind of in shock about what she considers a near-death experience. Ever since she left her job to take care of my dad, she's been on low-income health insurance, but I'm not sure if it's going to cover the whole stay.

My family has been through rough times the past few years, but this, by far, is the worst, and it's closely connected with the economic depression we're in. My brother lost his job almost a year ago and has been struggling to find any kind of decent work since. My dad has been very ill, and my mom had to retire early in order to take care of him (after which the hospital tried to revoke her pension, but which she later regained after much fighting). They bought a retirement condo in Chinatown a few years ago which they are now trying to sell in vain, as it's lost much of its value. In all our calculations we thought that perhaps my dad would die first, and then my mom would continue on with our help. But the idea of my mom going first puts everything out of whack; my dad can't survive on his own and will need much more assistance.

My older brother is a teacher in China and barely makes enough to get by on his own, let alone help us. For quite a few years it's been assumed that I would get a job as a professor and financially keep the family afloat. However, given how my experience on the job market has been, the prospects of me finding gainful employment in academia seem to be dimmer and dimmer.

There's a lot of regret to go around. Why didn't my brother stay with his engineering job? Why did my twin have to get an English degree rather than something useful? Why did I go to graduate school in literature? None of us thought things would be this bad. And most Americans didn't, especially those of us who grew up in the super affluent 80's. Real poverty didn't touch us, we were a developed country, not one of those places in the third world. We had education, they didn't.

For my brothers and I we thought just getting a college education would be enough; just being able to get into college seemed so daunting as it was. We thought, anything was better than being uneducated and working class, like my parents. Who knew that in the end it would be us who were helpless, trapped in stiff competition with the millions of other college graduates sufering the same disillusionment.

Of course, in many ways we are still lucky. We're not Gazans who've just suffered a brutal, merciless campaign of aggression. We're not stuck in the inner city, or migrant workers back in China, we're educated professionals of one kind and another, and that gives us something of a leg up, but not much. The point is that no longer are we somehow in another world, apart from "those" people. I think many people would agree that we are now more cognizant of our connectedness with the more unfortunate among us, that we are linked in a common chain. If anything, I hope we recognize our commonality and solidarity, and finally work together to confront the exploiters, the bankers and speculators and fraudsters, who caused this global mess in the first place.

Going through the shock of nearly losing my mother has been devastating. Knowing that my parents may perhaps end their lives in discomfort, mired in debt and illness, is also very hard to bear, and the shame I feel in not having been able to avert that is great. However, I must learn to accept this possibility and look at it straight in the eye. I'm aware that the likelihood of finding a job in academia are minimal at best, and I may have to try to find some kind of work, any kind of work, to stay afloat and support my family. For years I'd been looking forward to the prospect of actually joining the real middle class, those people with disposal incomes and who can afford to live in relatively comfortable, safe neighborhoods. Now I know that most our generation will not make it to the middle class, that we will always be laboring till the end of our lives. As hard as it will be, nevertheless it's something we should take pride in. Those four decades of relative prosperity were, after all, just a historic blip, and now it's time to return to the fold of how history actually works.

I'm not going to take this misery lying down. I'm going to try to save, to work hard on finishing my dissertation, to give my all in the one job interview I have. And if it doesn't work out, I'm going to sulk for a day or so but I'm going to go right back and start planning ahead. Everything might be taken away from me, my career, my family, my hopes for the future, but I'm not going to let them take my dignity. I grew up poor, I know what it's like, and I'm not going to feel shame about it anymore. I'm going to fight, and if I don't make it, I'll die trying. And I won't regret it.

I woke up crack of dawn yesterday to whip up some pancakes from scratch (amazingly easy) and fry up some bacon, sausages and eggs for my Tuesday Morning (in America) Super Duper Obamarama Inauguration Breakfast. While the early morning hours were hectic, watching the ceremony with my friends was quite fun.

Strange Obama-related confession: I think Robert Gibbs, the new press secretary, is cute. Maybe b/c he vaguely reminds me of my bf. I also kinda think Tim Geithner isn't such a bad looking chap himself, but personality wise seems kind of dry.

Andrew and I were just finished having dinner in Chinatown when we noticed waves of police cars, fire engines and helicopters swarming nearby. The protest against the BART killing had just turned into a violent riot. I'm watching images and reading stories online, as well as hearing hundreds of commentators duke it out in a war between racists and enablers. The word "thug" has been thrown out quite a bit as a kind of slur: "he was a thug, so if he died, it's not big a deal."

The point is that, despite the guy's criminal history, he was involved in no crime that warranted him being shot by a police officer. Plain and simple. It can't really get more obvious than that. We grant the police the right to use deadly force to protect us, and when they abuse it, none of us feel safer. My roommate's girlfriend was nearly shot by a police officer a few weeks ago who grabbed her from behind and did not identify himself as a police officer. She was not a thug by any means.

And yes, thug is a scary word, and thuggish behavior is frightening, and having recently been the victim of thugs, I can tell you how frightening it can be. But they are humans, too, and you can't let an epithet absolve you from being lazy and understanding that they have lives and problems and conflicts just like the rest of us. Anyone who just dismisses the death of an apparently innocent black man as a thug is merely providing a cover for his own racism. And the victim apparently worked a 9-5 job as a supermarket butcher, certainly not easy work, a job that requires skills and intelligence and is needed in our community. And he was a father. To some he may have been, and perhaps always will be, a thug, to others, he was their whole world. His death does no one any good. Those trying to use him as a poster child for the typical "thug" found the wrong guy to pick on.

Now, unlike those who instantly point to this case as an example of systemic police injustice against blacks, I think the circumstances in this event are just too weird and idiosyncratic to call it a textbook case of judicial racism just yet. It could very well be an instance of "black panic," but as the officer in question still has yet to be interviewed, no one knows. We just don't know enough yet to really figure out what happened, except that it seems clear that what happened was wrong, and no one should have died.

A comment thrown about by the racist camp was the fact that when blacks kill each other (and others, as well), there's nary a protest, but when a white cop does the same to a black man, the city blows up. Of course, the power relationship is different; it's the issue of a person who is paid to use his authority in a legal matter instead abusing it. However, there is a good amount of truth in what they're saying. Hundreds of people have been murdered in the past few years, and no one seemed interested in doing anything about it. So many of us have been living in fear for our safety and lives for years on end, and we feel that the police have been ineffective in protecting us. Where was all this energy and outrage and protest when civilians were mowing each other down? Certainly, this is statistically far more dangerous than being murdered by a police officer. All the anger and opprobrium being heaped upon our anemic police force isn't going to do a thing about increasing my chances of being safe when walking home at night. I've always hated the term "personal responsibility," it being the favorite keyword of condescending and sneering conservatives, but how about "community responsibility"? When are communities of color going to take responsibility for the flow of weapons, drugs and fear that make everyday life in the Bay Area barely bearable?

The war on Hamas and the Gazans is terrifying. At some point you wonder what the point is of all this. To completely destroy Gaza? To make the territory impossible to ever govern itself? To teach the people a lesson? To engage the Palestinians in a war of attrition in order to even out the ethnic demographics?

It seems to me that the scale and cruelty of this attack (and no amount of propaganda and blaming of Hamas [much of it richly deserved] can mask the wretchedness of what Israel is doing) are not only unnecessary, but disastrous. That in the long run this will be catastrophic for Israel, and render it vulnerable for generations to come. And in the long run, it will be catastrophic for us. I don't know why some Americans think that we're immune from retaliation... we're going to be pulled into this cycle of violence, and it's going to be ugly.

All throughout middle school and high school we were taught about the Holocaust, and played host to a number of presentations and groups that had pro-Israel ties. We were taught to think of the Holocaust as a unique teaching moment, one to remind us of our common humanity, and of our responsibility to stand for the powerless. I even won a state-wide writing contest about the Holocaust. The Holocaust reminded us not just of the vulnerability of one persecuted minority, but of all peoples. Not just one particular ethnic minority, but everyone else as well? Wasn't that the lesson we were supposed to learn?

It's hard not to think that all of those lessons, those school assemblies, those essays were a waste of time.

The first half of 2008 was perhaps one of the happiest times of my life. The second half among the saddest. I'm glad to say goodbye to the year.

What amazes me about people who argue that the Palestinians "asked for it," or aver that they are the only ones who have the power and ability to pursue peace, is an utter inability to feel any kind of compassion and sympathy for people who are so nakedly vulnerable. Knowing that random rockets might be coming my way is also scary, and I do feel for the fear that those on the other side are experiencing. But in no way can that ever compare to massive bomb attacks that seek to destroy the very possibility of existence. Disproportionality is a completely valid argument when the ratio is a lopsided 400:1.

But that is apparently the exchange value between one type of life and another. I guess what I want to ask is why do people in the West feel so confident that their governments, their states and their institutions will remain intact in the next hundred years? Just 60 years ago most of Western Europe was on the verge of dissolution. From where comes this confidence that we will always be citizens of a secure nation-state, accorded all the rights, dignity and humanity that such status confers? Who is to say that, 50 years from now, we might find the tables turned and discover ourselves to be stateless beings, colonized and helpless, vulnerable to the whims of a conqueror, unable to achieve bare existence and exercise political sovereignty and yet assigned the responsibility for all that is done to us, and not accorded compassion from people in powerful countries because we simply don't count?

I am aware of how sensitive these issues are in the West, whatever one says one will be accused of bearing prejudice and even a racial grudge. And I don't have the temerity to say plainly what I feel about both "sides" of this conflict. But all I will say is that all lives count, even if they seem foreign to us, or less intelligible because they speak and worship differently. All lives count, if only because we can always just as easily find ourselves on the other side of the unequal equation.