The Brain Dump

I'm dating a crazy-super-hacker-nerd . . .

. . . or maybe that was a dream.

Regardless, Christina has found a way to get around the troublesome Chinese firewall: Hotspot Shield. The purpose of Hotspot Shield is to protect your computer while unsecured (or even secured) wireless networks via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Basically, it sets up a private little connection between me and the Hotspot hub, which, in turn, is connected to the intertubes. This protects my intertubing from any eavesdroppers that might want to know what I'm doing, as well as protecting passwords, bank accounts, etc.

It is, in a sense, my own private tunnel under the Great Firewall. See, the firewall doesn't monitor private networks, so as long as I'm hooked up to my VPN, the Chinese won't be monitoring what I'm doing. And as long as they aren't monitoring what I'm doing, they won't be blocking my searches because the firewall only blocks what it knows is in violation of its definition of "decent." If it doesn't know what something is, it doesn't bother with it.

Booyah.

So now I am able to see my blog. And Christina's. And anything else on the internet. Wee!

It just makes the Chinese firewall all the sillier. It took Christina an afternoon to figure out how to thwart it. Two minute download, seconds to install: open access to the internet. It begs the question of why they should even bother censoring the internet at all. Whatevs. I don't care anymore. The only price I have to pay is a slightly annoying bar across the top of pages I open that asks me if I want to invite any friends to the Anchor Free Hotspot Shield Network. Free and open access to the internet? That's a price I'll gladly pay.

Hello, hello, hello!

Christina and I have successfully made it to Anyang, Henan Province, China. Hoowah! It was a crazy long journey (we woke up in order to catch our 6:30am flight at 3:30am on the 17th, finally pulling up to our apartment in Anyang at 1:00am on the 19th--that is, after a flight to Toronto, a four hour lay-over, the flight to Beijing, and a six hour drive to Anyang--jet-lag doesn't even come close), but now we're finally starting to settle in and we have the internet working and I can update the ol' blog. I wanna give Christina a chance to putz around on the intertubes, though, so that's all I'll say for now. But there is much more to come, so check back with me tomorrow.

Yay for China!

Howdy, readers, from the Lone Star Repub--er . . . I mean, State. The Lone Star State . . .

Yes, I'm back in Texas, ever-awaiting my letter of invitation from the Chinese government. Christina is in Minnesota doing the same. Its hard being away from her. I've decided I very much do not like it. But how can I be blue when I've moved back in with my wonderful parents . . . my . . . my wonderful . . . oh-so wonderful . . . puuuuuh . . .

OK, so it has been difficult. I'm not the most patient person when I'm around my parents. It's just . . . good lord do I not want to live with them anymore! I enter their house, and once again I'm in high school. I suppose that's how it goes with most parents, right? Guuuuuh.

An upside is they hadn't seen The Dark Knight, so I got to see it with them, bringing my total viewings to 三。 <-- that would be "san1," or three in Mandarin. Oh yeah. I've been rockin' the Chinese lessons. Though I'm fairly useless when it comes to the doodles. I would be lying if I didn't say I had to look that one up. Doodles, though. Seriously, China? What kind of a country develops thousands and thousands of doodles instead of a much smaller number of letters? Maybe it's the bull-headed American culture talking, but letters are clearly the better way to go. Friggin' doodles. And it's not like China doesn't know about letters now. Yet they insist on the doodles. Sigh . . .

That was, of course, sarcasm for any Chinese official who might be reading. I greatly respect China's rich and wonderful culture and all of their . . . doodley goodness . . . yay, China (can I have a visa now, please?)!

A great burden has been lifted from my shoulders. But we'll get to that in a second.

Hello, readers! So it's been over a month since my last post and for that I am sorry. I've been packing up and getting rid of all my earthly possessions (I'm down to books, DVDs, a couple instruments, and my bed) and Christina and I have been trying to do as much as possible in Chicago before we leave. She, however, has found the time to update her blog and even make a pretty design for it, so I thought I should pick up the slack as well.

Our departure date draws ever-closer, though not as close as you might think. Unfortunately, due to the Olympics, China is restricting the number of people it is allowing inside the country, which means Christina and I will be going there in the middle of September now--not August as originally planned. Alas, our leases are still up come August 1st, which means we will now be spending six weeks--not two--at our respective parents' houses (hers in Minnesota, mine in Texas).

So that blows.

However.

All is not gloomy in the Land of Chris, for, as I stated earlier, a great burden has been lifted from my shoulders. You see, ever since nerding it up with Batman graphic novels, I have grown ever-more dissatisfied with the Dark Knight's portrayal on that silverest of screens. Yes, Burton's was good--great, even--but it was also cartoony and lacking the depth that many of the better graphic novels have achieved. And so, I resolved myself (I'll say, around the release of Batman Forever) to writing the Batman I wanted to see on film. This even went so far (and I am sadly serious) as to sketching out a prologue and loose plot structure for said film.

Then Christopher Nolan started making them. I remember walking into the theatre for Batman Begins and knowing (having never seen the movie) that it would be the best Batman movie ever made. Similarly, I remember this past Tuesday, walking into the IMAX theatre at Navy Pier, and knowing (having never seen the movie) that The Dark Knight would be the best Batman movie ever made.

I was right. On both counts.

The Dark Knight is literally everything I have ever wanted in a Batman movie. So much so, that I can't imagine any other movie (even one made by Nolan) doing anything more to top it. They understood, on a fundamental level, the relationship between Batman and the Joker. They understood Harvey Dent. And they didn't pull any punches. Oh, the spoilers I could sing!

Heath Ledger is as good as everyone is saying. His Joker erases all others from existence. It is incredible how scary and funny--he's really, really funny--he is able to be.

I also had the pleasure of seeing the film on a screen six stories tall. That certainly added something to the experience.

I love this movie. I no longer have to write my own Batman movie--one that does justice to all of the character's potential--because Christopher Nolan did it first. And better than I could have ever possibly hoped.

See this movie. Seriously. See it twice. You will want to.

So I really dropped the ball on posting last week, didn't I? I blame school, and to a lesser extent society. Four more weeks to go before I'm outta here!

Speaking of outta here, it is official. Christina and I have signed and mailed the contracts--we have a job in China! We'll be teaching at Anyang Normal University (nice to be normal) in the city of Anyang in the Henan Province. We need to be there by the middle of August. Our correspondent, Marvin, tells us we will have a newly renovated four-bedroom apartment waiting for us. Yay! He also apologized because Anyang is such a small city. The metropolitan area only has five million people in it . . .

Speaking of fiction writing (hmmm, not as smooth), my story, "Dick and Jane: A Love Story" (found in the sidebar) was workshopped in my fiction writing class last last Thursday. You may remember me wondering how my professor would respond to it. Well, now I know. He, in a word, didn't. Yes. No comments. All he did was tell the class that whenever he reads a story with metafictional elements he feels like he doesn't have the vocabulary to talk about it. So he doesn't. Part of me can respect that, but then another, much larger, part of me wants to grab him by his writing utensil and yell, "Your the damn teacher--find a way to talk about it!" . . . I'm working through it. Actually, I set up a meeting with him this Tuesday to make him talk about it. 'Cause that's how I roll.

Speaking of rolling on and on with no clear end in sight while the entire country wants to pull its collective hair out and making the hurting finally stop . . . Hilary is still in the race! Y- . . . yaaaaay . . . ! But she's not actually who I want to talk about. John McCain was recently on the Daily Show, and a few things he said really gave me pause. The first thing was how he spoke about Hamas. Jon brought up a comment that he made, saying that Hamas endorsed Barack Obama. Whether or not he was taking out of context, whatever a Hamas endorsement would mean, it was what he said next that really stopped me. He called them a "transcendent evil" who want "to destroy everything we believe in." Now . . . I was under the impression that Hamas was a Palestinian resistance group fighting against their perceived occupation by Israel, which is continually supported by us. I didn't realize that they aren't really people, they're just an abstract evil that needs to be destroyed. That's cool, whatever. He continues, saying, "I think they think that I'm their worst nightmare," something that he is proud of, and I wondered what kind of appeal he was trying to make by playing off xenophobic, anti-diplomatic, sentiments in the American people . . . Don't we want peace in the Middle East? Maybe the ability to respectfully address one another and come to a resolution that fosters harmony between two suffering peoples? Maybe I was wrong again . . .

The second thing that got me was when Jon Stewart suggested a running mate for him. Hilary Clinton. After he overcame his shock, Johnny-boy stuttered that that was something that he had never considered before, but I thought wouldn't that kinda be awesome? What would be a stronger show of bipartisanship than taking someone from the other side as your running mate? It reminded me of the early presidencies, when the vice presidency was given to the runner-up. Have we fallen so far from a common ground that that notion is seen as both ludicrous and disastrous?

Speaking of disastrous, Myanmar sure is turning out to be a shithole, ain't it?

That's all for now. I'll be better about posting. I promise . . .

Well, I thought I'd post something today, seeing as it isn't a leap year every year and wouldn't it be lovely to have a February 29th in the archive.

So here we are. Not a whole lot going on . . . well there is one thing. It's pretty inconsequential but, you know, I thought I would just throw it out here since I got nothing else going on. Christina and I have officially decided to pursue positions teaching English in China. Hoowah! We've actually been preparing resumes and such (sending them out, etc.) for a few weeks now, but it's official because we have both told our parents.

So there's that.

We'll be gone for a school year. Right now we're just sending our info to as many universities as we can find, hoping to get the best deal that we possibly can. We are both super excited, and our parents are (thankfully) very supportive of the arrangement. Her parents seemed a little concerned about how I would make it, but other than that . . .

Pretty exciting. And I'll be sure to tell you all about it (assuming their pesky firewall doesn't block blogspirit . . .).