Verisign is just evil. They want to help China restrict web access to its citizens by assigning them their own domain name server and letting them get involved in the management of global internet traffic. This would allow Chinese officials to control access to "undesirable" websites and seems a questionable move at best.

I think my mother was referring to my freckles. This morning she told me I had lots of stuff "developing" on my face, and would I like to use her cream. I almost lost it -- how am I supposed to take that? I made her leave the bathroom, then looked at myself in the mirror trying to figure out what she could possibly be talking about. It couldn't have been blemishes because my face isn't breaking out right now. I could only conjecture that she must be referring to my freckles.

I thought about it all day. I think part of my frustration and lack of patience with her stems from our complete inability to communicate effectively. I'm so comfortable communicating openly so it's incredibly frustrating to be unable to. The language barrier is one thing, but even if I spoke Korean flawlessly and/or she spoke English flawlessly, we would still never be able to fully communicate with each other. Our relationship has never been that way. And her belief system is so completely different from mine that I don't think we could ever communicate on the same level -- we would baffle each other. The language barrier is an easy excuse and prevents us from completely and utterly hating each other.

It sounds horrific, doesn't it? But I can honestly and unbiasedly say that my parents are two of the most unpleasant people I know. I can safely avoid people who fall into that category in the rest of my life, but you can't let go of family quite so easily. And they probably only fall into the "most unpleasant" category because I tend to avoid unpleasant people and because I take most of what they do quite personally -- something I wouldn't necessarily do with an unrelated acquaintance. But at 30, they've been my parents for every single year of my entire life. And unfortunately, they will continue to be my parents until one or all of us dies.