Get a job, grouch

Here's a clip I really enjoy. It's Dave Chappelle hitting his usual 1-2, being frikkin hilarious and making a good point. Bewarned: the language is a bit rough.

What does a weekend in Korea look like?

Something like the following picture, which was taken at sunrise on a Sunday:


Those are bottles of soju on the table, for the uninitiated.

Maher...psychic?

Bill Maher's show is one of my favorites, and I'm thankful to youtube uploaders that I can keep up with it and watch old episodes if I fancy. I found this video from August 2005 interesting, since it effectively predicts the housing bubble and the declining dollar two years + before it became a crisis. Check it out:

Today in Konglish

Complaints

There's a popular message board for foreign EFL/ESL teachers (especially) in Korea, called daveseslcafe.com. While wasting time at work teachers much like and including myself go there to discuss myriad mindless minutiae about living and working in the Korea. Many people use the forum to complain. And they complain a lot.

I discovered this post the other day and I thought its rambling run-on diatribe pretty much lays out all of the complaints we waygookins (foreigners) typically have with the Korea. Annotated discussion follows after.

"Recently Korea is really bothering me. Maybe it's the change in the weather, but every negative thing that I can usually get passed is piling up. The horking(fn.1), snorting, hacking, spitting, littering, bumping, pushing in line(fn.2), prehistoric table manners(fn.3), people not saying thank you, excuse me or I'm sorry, cars blocking crosswalks(fn.4), motorcycles on the sidewalk, general discouresy, gum snapping, staring, inane questions(fn.5), those vegetable trucks(fn.6), the dude who invades my privacy (and sleep) over the speaker at six in the morning, car horns, excessive whistle blowing by those traffic guys, traffic congestion, polllution, neglect of dogs that are tied up all day, jerks who smoke anywhere and everywhere (fn.7)(even directly under no smoking signs), the ongoing nonsense about blood type, incessant insistences on Koreans being geniuses (fn8) and very kind, taxi drivers who don't stop for foreigners, anti-Americanism, the whole 5000 year nonsense(fn9), noise (everywhere, all the time), having to tell my students a hundred times each class to stop talking, the incredible hassle that one must go through to get a sick day off when you have the flu, cars going down one way streets in the wrong direction, neighbours slamming their doors every time they go in or out, lying recruiters, dishonest employers, sneezing on packed buses and subways, pushing onto an elevator before the people on the elevator have exited, the (criminal) refusal of parents to place their children in seatbelts, the fact that nobody washes their hands after using the bathroom(fn10), bus drivers who think that throwing their passengers around the cabin is part of their job description, the fact that they wait until the very last minute to inform the foreign teacher of anything(fn11), etc etc etc. "

fn1: I'm not sure what "horking" is. dictionary.com isn't either. One can assume it is some sort of bodily function related to the others that follow it in the sentence.

fn2: Not to mention the cutting in line. Just today I was at McDonald's (I know, I'm a loser). I walk in and the place is deserted. I take a friendly gander up at the menu board while I wait for the inattentive clerk to take her position (usually this requires a few extra moments, you see, it's not only that the McD's clerk has to muster up the strength to walk from here to there and take my order, it's also that she, like so many of her peers, must first glance awkwardly at her co-worker/friend, giggle a bit, and nervously glance in my direction so as to intimate that deciphering my dulcet tones is not something she is looking forward to). As soon as she'd readied herself behind the register this 5 foot nothing 75 kilo adjumma dashes into the pocket like Walter fucking Payton and jumps me in line. Cee U Next Tuesday, bitch!

fn3: Oddly enough this has never really bothered me, and no, I wasn't raised in a barn.

fn4: Really? This bothers you? Get over yourself.

fn5: See a previous post of mine about chopsticks skillz inre: inane questions.

fn6: Oh my god...the vegetable trucks. They've always been only a minor annoyance for me, in part because I lived on the 8th floor last year and this year I live on a back alley where only the more daring mobile-veggie-pushers bother to tread. But what they are, essentially, are a truck with a bunch of semi-rotten veggies loaded up into the back, with an old adjosshi (grandfather) driving and his adjumma (grandmother) wife sitting in the back with a bullhorn. Over and over and over again she (or a pre-taped recording) implores passersby to investigate her wares and consider purchase of said items, indubitably because they are priced preposterously low and/or are of exceptional quality. But man are they annoying.

fn7: That's me! :)

fn8: I don't usually have Koreans telling me they're all geniuses (tho I'm sure there are some who think it). I have heard Koreans tell me they're more evolved than Westerners because they have less body hair. Seriously. My only regret is that at the time I didn't respond with the sarcasm and incredulity which the situation would have normally demanded because I was trying to be polite. But what a fucking idiot that person was.

fn9: Koreans like to brag (not to me, but to some people apparently) that they have 5000 years of history. As if everyone doesn't...

fn10: This is just flat out wrong in my experience. Koreans are, if anything, too hygenic (at least the adults are, children, as always, are another story...).

fn11: I had this happen the other day with a "dinner" I was supposed to attend. I was told that morning. I didn't have plans that evening but I lied and said I did just for the principle of it. Plus, I hate having dinner with my co-teachers...

Destroying Villages, Homes, and Crops

This rocks hard.

A Strict Regimen of Soda

My Hero is a Glorious Drunkard

I think Christopher Hitchens is one of the most interesting people alive today, and I try to read and listen to everything he writes or says. Like so many great lettered men he also is, apparently, an incorrigible drunkard, not that I think that's necessarily a great fault.

You can read of his most recent drunken adventures here, in the observer, which has, may I just say, come up with a terrificly droll title for that piece.

Speaking of drunken adventures, whoa was Friday tough on the old constitution. I nearly broke my 5 or 6 year long streak of having not puked. Joey wanted to go to Seoul and we wound up in some dance club in Hongdae and that's always bad news. But I made more of a fool out of myself with my weird gyrations on the smoky dance floor no doubt than I did with my over-consumption of 3 dollar jack and cokes. I really should know by now that I should never dance. Ever. Never ever.

Blue Angels

So apparently some sort of weird blue apparition appeared at a gas station in Ohio. Below is a video about it. What I really dig about the video is how people try to explain it, specially that chick who's all like "angels, there're angels here." Why an angel would descend from heaven to flutter around an Ohio gas station for a half hour and then fly away without announcing itself, well, that hasn't been resolved yet.

The Ron Paul Revolution

I'm no fan of Ron Paul. It's the fashionable thing these days for liberals to jump all over this guy's junk because he speaks the truth about the reasons we went to war, what a failure it's been, and what we should do about it. And don't get me wrong, I'm glad he does all of that, someone should. But that aside, he's a nut, and he's just another "constructionist" loony. Life begins, for him, at the moment of conception. The federal income tax is unconstitutional and should be completely abolished, says he. So too is our participation in and funding for the United Nations.

This man's ideas and policies are appealing at first, but on closer inspection it's obvious they're dangerous and not very well thought out. He's just another knee-jerk populist spouting bluster. But he's interesting, and so too is this article at Time.

My favorite part:

'one of his staffers walked up to a man and asked him if he was a Ron Paul supporter.

"No. They're all nuts," he replied. "I'm just a guy in a shark suit."'

If one more Korean compliments me on my chopstick skillz

I'm gonna poke them in the eye with one. I am so sick of hearing that. "Ohhh, you use chopsticks very good!!" Or something like that. What a backhanded compliment that is.

I guess that doesn't sound that bad written down. It's something about their tone, you have to hear it, they make it sound like I've solved a rubiks cube in 30 seconds and yet they still aren't impressed. If you've searched your limited English vocabulary and that's the only idea you could come up with for something to say while eating with me, then, well, don't say anything at all.

Something else: Pepero Day. I know, I can hardly believe it's here, too. Ain't it amazing how the time flies? Anyway, I'm thankful it falls on a Sunday this year, since that means I won't have to rent a truck to cart home all the little boxes of Pepero my students would've given me.

For those in the dark: Pepero is a kind of candy in Korea. Here's the classic flavor:


Anyway, the kids love 'em.

Well once a year Korea celebrates "Pepero Day," on which one is obligated to give and receive boxes of these things to friends, lovers, co-workers, the milkman, etc etc. The entire holiday was, as you might imagine, dreamed up by the Lotte Co. peeps who produce said product. Which in my humble opinion is taking corporate sponsorship a bit too far. Can you imagine if Americans celebrated a "Snickers Day?" Actually it's probably not that far off. As commercialized as American culture is, the Koreans are ahead of the West, I think. Hell, even their baseball teams are named after corporations. They don't have the "Incheon Bears" or the "Seoul Lions" but rather the "Hyundai Tigers" or the "SK Pumas." In American we've only had the cajones to name stadiums after corporations. Fuck, I wrote "we" as if I was somehow included in the naming process...see how insidious it all is?

Anyway, rant over. To borrow from Mr. Orwell: "I loved Pepero Day!"

Awfully Awesome

Ok, so the sound quality's terrible. So Mick and Bob trip each other up. So Bob's voice was still in transition from 80s high pitch twang to 00s growl, and he possibly hadn't warmed up. Still wish I coulda been there. Course round about the time it was recorded (98) I didn't give a shit about who either Bob Dylan or the Stones were. Live and learn.

The Menace

I read this article over at salon.com the other day, and well...it's true. I took the little "who's your candidate" tests at the bottom and, as the writer predicted, Kucinich was #1 for me in both. If I relied on the issues alone, Kucinich would be the d00d I'd vote for. But...he's just too kooky. Maybe it's the ears. Maybe it's the wife with a tongue stud. Maybe it's the UFO sighting. I dunno.

Still, I'm glad he did this:

Yet another embedded video

I really never have anything interesting to report about my life. So here's another video. The preseason college bball poll just came out, and UNC was #1. That's both a blessing and a curse, of course, but here's hoping this season ends in the same way this one did:

The Revolution is Over

And it was televised...

The Won is King

John Hodgman is my favorite contributor to the Daily Show, and this clip from not too long ago I thought was pretty funny. It also explains why I'm happy that I'm paid in Korean Won right now.