westernization of east asia

that's the name of the class I have tonight. I thought it was going to be some cool class where they rail against the encroachment of globalism and McDonalds on places like Singapore and China but instead it's about the Japanese and Chinese adoption of western principles and the all the shit that went along with it. that would be fine if our professor wasn't a total tool, but he is. he thinks he's all cool because he doesn't own a television and he typed up his syllabus on a typewriter because he doesn't own a computer. and apparently we shouldn't either. so instead of adopting his font size rules for the gigantic, overwhelming majority of us that use computers, we have to make sure that whatever font we use isn't bigger than the one on his syllabus. dickweed. buy a computer already or learn how one works so you can successfully interact with the people paying you several thousand dollars for your class.

an example of what we get to study? how the translation of the word liberty into chinese went through many different stages, what the political and social structures were like when the word entered the chinese lexicon and what they're like now when it's used, how we should be aware of our political and social attachments to the word when we look at the use of it by the chinese and so forth. actually all of that stuff is very cool. i like that kind of stuff. but only with someone who feels i'm close enough to their level that they can have a discussion with me. not some guy who makes us buy the book he wrote so we can read it and have him lecture from it. how about diversification of sources, idiot? huh?

as you can tell i'm looking forward to school tonight. bleh.