It's a little after 4am here, which means I'll be up in a little under 3 hours. I've finally finished packing... I do quite a bit of travelling, and I can only remember a handful of trips where I didn't forget something. It's usually something small, some nicety that I'd like to have, but it's become something of a personal challenge to try and bring everything that I'd like to have. On the other hand, my other goal in recent trips has been to pack light. These two critera, obviously, can only co-exist with much thought and deliberation. Hence, the late hour. Well, that's not entirely true... I would've been done earlier if we hadn't watched the Matrix (1) until 1 am, but I digress.

I'll be gone for about 3 and a half weeks (although, I plan on blogging while there so it won't matter much here), which is much longer than I hoped for. My mom invited me to Tokyo partially as a reward for my academic success in recent months and years, and I accepted her offer since I haven't been to Japan since I left there for the US in December 2000. When my dad was booking flights for me, I told him that I'd go insane if I stayed for more than two and a half weeks, but he went ahead and booked me for 3.5 weeks anyway. Apparently it had something to do with using frequent flier miles to get free airfare or something...

In any case, I'll try to have as much fun as is possible in Japan, which in my case isn't very promising. It will be nice to see some old friends again, and I'm sure I'll enjoy my mom's expensive high-tech apartment with built-in broadband. If nothing else, I'll have a great opportunity to go on a 3 week coding spree. I'll miss my kitten and comfortable living in good ol' Chico, but what the hey, it's only 3.5 weeks after all. I've survived worse.

I flew down to LA today, and after spending the night at my dad's, I'll be flying off to Tokyo tomorrow. The trip down here was more or less eventless, although it did take for ever to get through security at SMF (Sacramento Int'l Airport), probably due to the whole Be Afraid Orange deal. As I was going through the metal/bomb/sinner detector thing, I noticed a bunch of GBA ("God Bless America") stickers plastered all over equipment used by the screeners.

That got me thinking. The screeners work for the TSA, which makes them government employees. The equipment is also probably owned by the government. If that's the case, is it appropriate for there to be an excessive number of GBA stickers on these things? If people want to put GBA stickers, banners, Hitler statues or whatever on their personal property, that's fine with me (even though I find it distasteful). But when the government does it, I personally find it offensive. I'm not talking at the level of what some people call "separation of church and state", I'm just offended because I see it as an infringement upon my freedom of religion, and the freedom of many others. I see it as an official seal of endorsement from the government for Christianity and nationalism, and a sign of disrespect for other religions and more rational forms of patriotism (a.k.a criticism). In other words, I see those damn GBA stickers as symbolizing everything that is wrong with our government today.

I'm not sure where my train of thought is headed, so I think I'll get off at this stop. The bottom line is, GBA stickers offend me, but it's not like anyone really cares anyway.