The Report

Spent all of Saturday on a report for social studies class about Chinese internet censorship. Falun Gong, Yahoo, Shi Tao—the usual suspects in that particular story, caught between what their government wanted them to say and what they actually thought. Useful homework, I guess. Meanwhile my friends were doing better things: Koksi was throwing a party, Andreas was doing birthday pizza somewhere in Landsberg, and his sister Ilka was supposedly worth meeting. Never met her. The weekend had that feeling of stacking one bad choice on top of another and deciding it was already ruined.

By late evening I caved. A week without World of Warcraft is longer than it sounds, and there was a four-hour dungeon run sitting in my queue. Got a nice blue item out of it, the kind of loot that feels meaningful when you’re holding it and meaningless the moment you log off. Hours spent. Time that could’ve been anywhere else, spent on something that will be invisible by next week.

Keynote’s still open on the desktop. The report is still five pages short. Going back to it now, back to internet censorship and the choices people make when they can’t choose anything. Probably the whole point of homework, come to think of it.