Will's Personal Manifesto

Hey, hey, hey, everybody out there! Please allow me to  properly introduce myself. For starters, I'm an unabashed teetotaler, and I like to think of myself as an international man of truth and justice for all. I don't drink or smoke, and I honestly never get bored. I love action figures, and all sorts of other types of pop culture iconography. I love my country, too. God bless America!


I am a highly artistic and creative guy, and I've been that way since before anyone who really knows me can even remember. As a result, I've never been bored a single day in my life. As far as I'm concerned, there is just way too much to see, do and create in this world, so even though I do know why some people get bored, I don't truly understand why anyone should have to.

Just about anything requiring artistic talent I tend to be not all that bad at. Just for starters, I've been a natural mimic since childhood, and though I've yet to learn any musical instruments (though I just got a used guitar), I can actually carry a decent tune when singing. Not bragging, it's just true.

Unfortunately however, I grew up in southwest Missouri... where seeking non-blue collar work (or just about anything related to my talents and interests) was mostly out of reach and unfortunately, deemed (mostly by my constantly feuding parents) to be more or less out of the question.

So, I suppose, in the beginning, a big part of the reason I originally sought work in Asia as an English teacher, was to get the hell out of the Midwestern American "sticks," and well away from the "redneck" mentality that I felt was suffocating me.

But, even though I like to try to make friends with everybody, from everywhere, regardless of race, color, creed or whatever, please do not mistake me for someone who is not patriotic. In fact, I love my country, the United States, dearly, as I'm sure you love where you're from too, so if you truly want to be "friends," as the old saying from the American Revolution goes, "Don't tread on me." 'Cause I figure, if I can be polite, and respect and admire others, and keep from shooting my mouth off about all that they personally hold dear, I do expect everyone else to reciprocate - whether they happen to have the right to have and bear arms or not.

Here's the deal. All mean stereotypes aside, I've personally never owned a firearm, and unless there were to be dire circumstances required, you couldn't give me one.

And no, all Americans are not "dumb," and the mere notion is prejudiced, pure and simple. Needless to say, the United States is a big country, made up of people from every single nation, color and creed in the world. So, if you want to get mean and judgmental, I'm going to expect you to clarify just exactly which Americans you think are stupid. The Asian Americans? The Native American Indians? The African Americans? The Mexican Americans, or perhaps the European Americans who fled wars and religious persecution in their former homelands in Europe?

In any case, as a political and social entity, the United States isn't perfect, and nobody that I've personally ever known has ever tried to claim that it is. But here's the real point:

Just like everybody else before us, as a nation, we have been guilty of most of the same things every other major world power has been guilty of since the dawn of human civilization (like our then feuding parent countries, mummy Britain and papa France). However... I firmly believe that America has had, and continues to have, a greater positive effect on the world than a negative one.

In fact, if you've studied even a little about world history, you might see that despite its flaws, there has never been a country truly like the United States before. You're entitled to disagree (in some countries, that is), but I'm afraid you'd have to work pretty damn hard to get me to believe that you aren't unfairly and irrationally biased, so... if you do have an anti-American bone to pick, you may just be better off to drop the issue and leave it at that. In fact, please do.

I'm here to have friends and be a friend. I'm here to learn and share with everyone, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, anti-religion, or social, monetary or political affiliation. Or whatever else separates people instead of bringing us together. For me and quite a few Americans (and non-Americans) I know, none of that amounts to a hill of beans in the end anyway.

In any case, nowadays, I'm so far removed from Hollywood that I probably will never get anywhere in the entertainment industry, but I've reached the point where I'm not sure if I care anymore either.

As far as my foreign language ability is concerned: My spoken Mandarin Chinese is conversational, but I still have quite a ways to go to master both the Traditional and Simplified Chinese writing systems (which should be understandable given the fact that I was not born in China (thank God), and one has to be literate in roughly 3000 characters to be able to read a modern Chinese newspaper!!!), but I read Romanized Chinese Pinyin with relative ease. I'm still very much in the process of learning both Korean and Japanese as third and fourth languages, respectively, so that's all there is to that.

Just like everybody else, my life is a work in progress, and just as I like to live and let live, I do expect the same courtesy in return. So, peace out, everyone!