Flat Stanely

I recently had a visitor here in the Korea. My cousin Natalie, who's about 6 years old, was asked by her teacher to dispatch the ill fated Flat Stanley who, as his name suggests, was flattened in some sort of mishap involving a large book and then appropriately enough realized life is too short and that he wanted to see more of the world while he still can. And so he was sent to me.

The idea is that I "show" him around town, take pictures of him at a few interesting places in my community and send him back home better traveled and perhaps a little wiser. Having done that, I would now like to show you some of the fun he and I got up to during his all too short visit.

Stanley at Bupyeong station, near my apartment. I live down the street that runs between the two buildings on the left.
Stanley on a hill overlooking my school and some apartment buildings.
Stanley at the front door to my school. Don't ask me what all that says.
Stanley in Bupyeong's annoyingly crowded underground market. Whenever I walk from my apartment to the station I have to go through this miles long maze of distracted ajummas.
Stanley considering his options in front of a (surprise!) Korean restaurant.
Stanley getting ready to board the subway.
Stanley overlooking the Han river and the 63 building in the distance.
Stanley in Gwanghwamun, Seoul.
Another shot of Gwanghwamun.
Stanley in front of Duksugung Palace.
Stanely in front of the statue of King Sejong.
Drunken Stanley annoying some Koreans on the late bus ride home.

The North

I want to go everywhere. You name the place on this planet, and I want to visit it. But the country I want to visit more than any other lies about 100 miles north of where I now sit. It's been my hope that during my time here in the south that I'd be able to make it there, but for westerners, and especially for Americans, that's a difficult proposition.

So second to actually visiting myself...this will have to suffice. It's called "The Vice Guide to North Korea" and it's a video account of how one guy got in and got to look around. If, like me, you share a fascination for the last isolated outpost of weirdness on this little blue orb we call home then you should check it out.

Believe it or not, I miss Burger King

In my old life, as a frequent fast food patron, Burger King was pretty far down on my list of places to get my greasy fix. But here in the Korea my options are pretty much limited to McDonald's, McDonald's, or McDonald's, which can really get old pretty quickly, and so the following video not only made me laugh but made me start craving a Whopper...


Human Head Found In Hamburger

Starship Kimchi

I wish I could claim credit for that wonderful headline, but the author of this article has to be given his due.

The article is basically about S Korea's first astronaut, and all of the trouble Korean food-scientists have gone to in order to ensure that he has his kimchi whilst in orbit.

It's worth a read for its lighthearted look at something Koreans take very seriously, and for nuggets of insight like this:

"It is hard to overstate kimchi’s importance to South Koreans, not just as a mainstay of their diet, but as a cultural touchstone. As with other peoples attached to their own national foods — Italians with their pasta, for example — South Koreans define themselves somewhat by the dish, which is most commonly made with cabbage and other vegetables and a variety of seasonings, including red chili peppers.

Many South Koreans say their fast-paced lives, which helped build their country’s economy into one of the biggest in the world in a matter of decades, owe much to the invigorating qualities of kimchi. Some take a kind of macho pleasure watching novices’ eyes water when the red chili makes contact with their throats the first time. And when Korean photographers try to organize the people they wish to take pictures of, they yell, “Kimchiiii.”

Good Lord

I liked this, two of my favorite people...Patrick Stewart and Ricky Gervais.

Another crazy dog story from "the Korea"...

No, not one of my own making. A 52 year old man in Jongno, Seoul (that's one of the good parts of town, btw) stole his landlady's dog, killed it, and was trying to eat it when the fire department showed up (because he'd created a small fire in preparing to roast the chihuahua).

And to clarify, whenever I write "the Korea" it's not because having repeatedly dumbed down my vocabulary and also having succumbed to the persistent grammatical errors Korean English speakers make that I have lapsed into some sort of strange anti-grammar dialect, rather it's because "the Korea" is one of the repeated mistakes I hear Koreans make that seems funny/charming to me.

Another would be adding pronunciation to the final letter in words like orange/strange/change, so that it's pronounced "orang-ee/strang-ee/chang-ee." I also enjoy how easily Koreans confuse "fun" and "funny," so that often they'll say something like "I went on the roller-coaster, it was very funny."

Anyway, digression ended.

One more picture...

This one just got uploaded to facebook...me chomping on a chicken's foot in our hostel on New Year's Eve...

Pictures of You

Actually, pictures of me, but I just really like that Cure song. And besides I'm you to you, it's only for me that I'm me, not you.

Anyway, from the last few months, including my recent China & Thailand trips:

My Christmas pileup (half of it, anyway)-

My classroom, the "English Only Zone"-


The front of my school, on a typically frosty day-

A giant golden bell that some sky god dropped to the earth, that's my guess anyway-

Buddhist younglings-


Can you imagine having to stand like that for eternity? Ouch-


Some palace in Bangkok-


My own private beach (mas o menos) in Koh Samet-


Looking the other way-


My bungalow was the blue-roofed structure obscured by the coconut trees, the hammock, and the other elements of paradise in the foreground-


The Beijing gang, from left to right- Joey, Julie, Dave, our hero, Feizal-


Me and Joey in Tiannamen Square-

Also in Tiannamen-


In front of the entrance to the Forbidden City-

Our biggest feast of the trip, Peking duck was a part of it but in the foreground you can see a dark brown hunk of meat on the plate there. That was donkey. And it was good-

Korean/Dogs News

Koreans are making international news lately because of something they want to do to dogs, and not, it's not eating them. It's cloning them. For about $125,000 you can bring long-dead Fluffy back to life and right the wrong done by the slow braking bus driver.

I don't have any moral issues with cloning but like every other Matrix-reared child of the late 90s I've been conditioned to be wary of technological progress and can't help but wonder if this is the first step down a road that leads to something like the zombie dogs from Resident Evil.

If these Cerebus wannabes do show up I guess the Koreans can eat them. Problem solved.

Counting Cash

Did you know that people around the world count their money in different ways? Well, I did, because I'm a seasoned world traveler and all [/dubious self-promotion], but I didn't know about all of the varied ways, especially in Asia. And I can confirm that the Japan/Korea portion of this video is 100% accurate, except they do it much, much faster than he does. Watch:


How People Count Cash? - Watch the top videos of the week here

Another School Shooting

Well, it's happened again. Some lunatic with access to firearms killed 5 innocent people and himself in Illinois recently. Here's part of the reason why:



Vote Democrat

Today in Konglish

These are the climes that try men's souls

It's cold. Really really cold. Mind-numbingly nuclear-winterish perfect-for-dog-sledding cold. The kind of cold that makes you want to wrap up in a dozen or so blankets and, bear-like, not reappear until sometime mid-May. I am just not used to this.

So these drastic climes in which I live have forced me to take drastic measures. Having gone in search of long johns, I found only the black tight-like undergarments you see pictured to the right.

The "long johns" in question could be best described as form-fitting, and as such are pictured without the wearer. Since my own form, when witnessed in its natural state, looks something like an oversized pear that's been left out in the sun, I decided to spare the author that particular ignominy and the viewer the loss of his or her most recent meal.

But dammit, they keep me warm.

So I Just Made My First Political Contribution

And it was to the campaign of this man.

Please, if you're an American and you're politically aligned at all with the left, then please contribute to his campaign. He has a real chance of beating the dark lady and winning the general election. And that would mean a lot for the country of my birth.

Do excuse me if it sounds like I'm a little late to the party, or as if I'm jumping on the bandwagon, but I've been an Edwards supporter from day 1 and would be still were he still running.

But that day is done. Obama is winning, and more importantly, he can win. Support him.

And is there a better line than the one he delivered in the speech below? It gave me honest to gawd chills when I first heard it. "Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."



Jon Stewart had a great quip after he viewed the following clip. "Jesus, did I just get inspired by Ted Kennedy?!" Well, I did too. Watch it if you'd like.

Today in Konglish

It's not just for New York anymore...

I love my hometown, and I love to see it move up in the world. All of the growth that has happened there, the endless stream of national magazines' lists putting it at or near the top of a 'Best Places to Live,' and mini-triumphs like the Hurricanes' winning the cup...they all make me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.

So here's the latest accolade for the burgeoning metropolis I once called home. Like the mega-cities to the north and east Raleigh now too has its own paranoid terrorist scare.

Sweet.

Namdaemun Burns

There apparently was a big-azz fire at Namdaemun last night, you can read about it here.

I've been through Namdaemun many times, it was an impressive structure right in the heart of Seoul. It's a couple of blocks over from Seoul station and it bestrides a major market which bears its name (my reason for being so near, honestly big-azz gates, historical or not, don't do much for me). Nevertheless it's a shame to see it go up like this.

The Year of the Rat

I was lucky enough to spend Chinese New Year in Beijing this year and because I couldn't be bothered to take my camera out of my pack a single time I have only this google-lifted picture to share with you of the experience (that is, until my friends upload their hundreds of pictures onto facebook) so I'm left with only the imprecise descriptive tool that is the written word to try and recreate what it was like.

Imagine, if you will, a city of millions. Imagine that each one of those millions has in his or her hand a dozen or so fireworks of different color, size, volume, and explosive shape. Imagine that on midnight of the New Year those millions of people rush into the city street nearest their home and begin doing what comes natural with fireworks. Imagine they've all been drinking, and as such aren't as concerned about safety as a professional fireworks-teer would be. If you can conceive of that then you have some idea of what I experienced in the wee hours of the first day of the Year of the Rat.

Now, bear in mind, I'm not talking about sparklers or some other sort of kiddie shi'ite. This was the real deal, and although it was easier to find a needle in a haystack than it was for a pasty foreigner to purchase fireworks in advance of the festivities, somehow all the native hosts of Beijing had in their possession at the midnight hour scores of colorful explosives. It's almost as if they'd been saving them all for themselves, or storing them up all year. Hell, they probably were.

Not that once things started rolling they weren't willing to share. I saw plenty of whities set off plenty of finger-tippers. I just didn't join in.

Now if this sounds at all like a complaint, or if it sounds like I didn't enjoy it completely, I don't intend it to. It was fantastic. It was beyond words. It was one of the most incredible spectacles I have ever witnessed. I loved every second of it.

There were other good parts in my trip. Donkey meat is surprisingly tasty. The Chinese people I had the good fortune of meeting, talking with, and sharing adult beverages with were all incredibly kind, funny, and most importantly: interesting. Peking duck is just as good the second time around. But nothing can compare to that citywide fireworks show. Chinese New Year is really something someone should experience in China once in their life if they can.

Oddities

So I saw this picture online today and felt obliged to share it. The romanized Korean mean "It is a foreigner!" which is something I hear often when doing odd things like shopping for groceries, buying a pizza, or walking down the street. Or, at least, things that appear odd to Koreans. Or odd for a foreigner to do.

Actually I shouldn't be so crass, I live in a big city and more or less blend in, it's rare that I hear something like this these days, and when I do it's almost invariably from some doe eyed Korean kid. It's still annoying though.

I recently took holiday* in Thailand, a country that's crawling with waegookins of all stripes and which is at least superficially accommodating of them, and upon returning to my arctic home in the frozen north it was hard not to notice the stares and mutterings of the locals. So perhaps I'm a little oversensitive right now. But hey, it's a funny picture.

At one point during my Thailand sojourn I was playing pool with a talented bar maid (she beat me in like 5 games straight, despite obviously trying to throw the last two my way) and the song featured in the video below came on. I think it's oddly appropriate not only in matching the picture above but in encapsulating my Thailand experience, and it's also really good, and so I humbly submit that the oddly patient blog reader who has made it this far may want to listen to it.

David Bowie's Space Oddity:




*I was recently complimented (at least I think it was a compliment) by a fellow American expatriate on how well I've adjusted my word choice to accommodate the Canadians, Brits, Aussies and others formerly under the aegis of the queen. For example I no longer say "I'm going on vacation" but rather what I wrote above. I've also been known to use "football" in lieu of "soccer." The Times, They Are a'Changin.

Newsflash: People Other Than Americans Are Stupid, Too

I love stories like this one, which details how 1/4 of the British public thinks Winston Churchill never existed and 60% of Brits think Sherlock Holmes did. I get so tired of reading news reports in the foreign and domestic press and watching TV shows ridiculing Americans for their stupids responses to basic questions about history and literature and other areas of general knowledge. It seems like every week there's some story out about how "72% of Americans think Jesus rode a dinosaur to have lunch with King Arthur" or something like that.

Don't get me wrong, Americans are stupid. It's just that they're not exceptionally stupid. Everyone is stupid. Especially when you surprise them on the street, shove a microphone in their face and give them 10 seconds to answer a question like "who were Reagan's Supreme Court nominees?"

Anyway, it's nice to see that Great Britain, a country regarded by my own countrymen as a nation of intellectuals, is just as full of dummies as the rest of the world. Bravo.

Today in Konglish

How to Get Kicked Off of a My Little Pony Message Board

If you have a sense of humor, you might find this amusing.

I wish I were MyLittlePonyBuiltMyHotRod, but alas, t'ain't so.

Fan Death Kills Again

I don't think I've mentioned fan death on my blog before, and those of you living outside of Korea might have no idea what it is. Let me try and explain. Bear in mind that the vast majority of Koreans (my guess would be 90%+) and essentially everyone in the Korean media believe every word that follows in my explanation.

Fan Death: if you fall asleep in an enclosed room (with no windows open and the doors shut) and leave a running fan blowing inside the room there is the possibility that the fan will suck out your breath like some sort of vengeful phantasm and you'll suffocate. Hundreds of people have supposedly succumbed to this health hazard.

Now, obviously, it's a big steaming crock of shit. But that matters for naught...I know several educated, thoughtful Korean adults who argue passionately in favor of the existence of fan death and who when pressed to supply evidence for the logistics of the threat will begin talking about miniature vacuums and unusual air flow.

It may not surprise you, dear reader, when I hasten to inform you that most of the victims of fan death are lonely alcoholics, depressed teenagers, spinsters, and others who are perhaps more inclined than the rest of us to view suicide as a rewarding and fulfilling temptation. Indeed it's almost as if fan death is used by the victims' families to cover up discussing what appears to be a more obvious, albeit more painful, cause of death. It's easier to blame fan death for little Jimmy Kim's departure than suicide brought on by the crushing pressure Korean society puts on its young people to excel academically.

Anyway, here's a recent news report about the death of an old alcoholic at the hands of his fan. It's all in Korean, of course, but it's only 30 seconds and if you view the clip you'll be treated to a melodramatic close up of the victim's body lying beneath the murderous appliance.

How to Make a Korean Pizza

This is hilarious and, sadly, mostly accurate.

My favorite religious song...

...it is the holiday season, after all. From the Concert for George:

Fuckin' USA

Some North Korean propaganda I stumbled upon:

I am Tom Wolfe

Subtitle: Author of a bloated, morally bankrupt waste of time entitled "I am Charlotte Simmons."

I just finished Tom Wolfe's latest, an 800 page diatribe against the moral weaknesses and self-centered nature of my generation. It was not a pleasant experience.

First off, the story just ain't that great. He's much more interested in exposing the realism of college life and 18-22 year old partying than he is in establishing dramatic tension. Things don't really get worrisome for the key players until we're 7/8ths through the novel. So unless you need someone to hold your hand through 700 pages of his expose on debauchery there's nothing compelling you to pick up the book.

But it also fails because the characters are all almost completely flawed, which isn't necessarily that bad, but the moral reckoning that does come for one of them doesn't feel genuine or important...it just feels random. He (the character who does lose something) suffers because of his self-idolatry but so too could have the 3 other vain characters who escape relatively unscathed. And how damning of my generation is it supposed to be that each character Wolfe creates from my demographic is completely self-absorbed, maniacal, devious, and only motivated by talking about or doing something completely for him or herself? There's no charity to be found in any of them.

Review over. Now let me post this on my blog.

Irony defined.

Election Day

It's election day here in the ROK, which means two things. 1st, and most importantly, I get the day off and don't have to work. 2nd, it means Koreans will almost certainly elect Lee Myung Bak, the man on the left in the following picture, as their next prez.


He's a former mayor of Seoul and a center-right kinda guy who already has a big scandal to his name before he's even sworn in, but he's probably not gonna rock the boat too much. Think of him as Dubya circa 2000, + kimchi.

Should you desire to read more about the election, you may do so here.

Lo Me Gusta

This Is Not How I Want To Go Out

I don't ride the subway that often, only on my (rarer and rarer) trips into Seoul for shopping / boozing / whatever. But whenever I do there's always that thought in the back of my head, especially when I'm first in line at my entrance, about accidentally slipping onto the tracks or, even more likely, accidentally being pushed onto them by some snub nosed ajjuma in a hurry.

Just the other day there was a massive backup on several of the Seoul lines because someone had been killed by an oncoming train. Now obviously that's a horrible thing to have happen, but it's not altogether unusual (I gather from what I see in the news that this happens once or twice a month in Seoul). What is interesting about this incident is who died, and why. You see it was someone who should've known better, and he died in what could be best described as a compromising position.

You see apparently the other day a subway conductor with diarrhea was working on one of the trains. Apparently his bowels had endured for as long as they could so when his train came to a stop he climbed out of his car, went down onto the tracks, and started to take a dump, when...BLAMMO! another train came along. Like I said, it's not the best way I can imagine to depart from this life.

For credulity's sake I'll link to this article about it. Unfortunately it's all in Korean, so you're gonna have to trust me on it. But here's how babelfish decided to render the first paragraph in translation, if you're interested:

"About it died in the electromotive car which the crew who falls from the subway which runs follows. This crew sees going to stool which is urgent becomes known that multi accident and the service environment improvement which the crew is inferior is coming out urgency is indication."

Today in Konglish

A Society Awash in Scandal

There's an interesting article in the Toronto Star about Korean culture. Some excerpts:

"And from the upper echelons of the art world to Buddhist temples, South Korean personalities are being ignominiously exposed for having faked their academic credentials.

...

Some blame the tendency to shave corners on a cutthroat mentality that developed in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which shook Koreans' faith in an ever-expanding economy. Others contend that South Korea has never shaken off the mutual back-scratching culture of a small society, where the establishment has tight personal connections forged by blood, school or regional ties.

Some suggest Korean society simply has an unhealthy obsession with success. "Living an ordinary life is not regarded as being successful, and staying still economically is seen as an unbearable retrogression," Kim says. "Korean society demands over-achievement."

Whatever the reason, Koreans picking up a newspaper or turning on TV news these days are confronted with seemingly endless stories of bribery and cheating, influence-peddling and corruption."

If you'll forgive a hung-over and anecdote-fueled rant, well, this is not surprising. I know it's wrong to generalize, and I don't mean to reduce anyone to a stereotype, but...Koreans love to cheat. Some (most) are honest, hard working folks, but I can just tell you from teaching and observing students that cheating is rampant here, and what's astonishing is how much it's tolerated.

Everyone cheats sometimes, and every culture has its cheaters. Koreans just do it more.

Religious Bob Sang:

"When you gonna wake up?" There's a terrificly terrible Bob Dylan religious-era song entitled "When you gonna wake up?" Of course he was singing about those of us lost in the darkness of secularism who'd rejected the Lord, but it's an apt question to post to American voters, IMO.

Keith Olbermann addressed the latest lie/outrage from the Bush White House the other night, and as usual, he speaks for me:

Living Reflection From A Dream

Below is a befuddling excerpt from a conversation I had with one of my co-teachers today. She had needed to use my room for a test, causing me to have to make some changes in my schedule, and she was apologizing/thanking me for that.

Co-teacher: Thank you one more time. I like your tenderness.

Our Hero: My what?

Co-teacher: Tend rance?

Our Hero: Oh...ok, thank you.

Co-teacher: Do you like Tetris?

Our Hero: Tetris? Of course, I love Tetris!

Co-teacher: I sent you some Tetris.

Our Hero: Oh, thank you, I guess.

When I got back to my office I figured the whole thing out. She had sent me a gift, and was asking if I liked it. It was a box full of tangerines.

I'm pretty good at getting through the accent, but sometimes it's just too much.

2 girls + 1 cup = the worst thing ever

I just watched this video. Do not search for it. Do not try to watch it. You will retch. It is the worst thing I have ever seen. It is impossibly bad.

Ok, ok, now go look for it losers, I know you can't resist.

But I warned you.

Boshintang Jim

Funny story.

And no, that's not my new nickname. "Boshintang Jim" is "dog soup," in Korean, and the following is a true story.

I was having my adult conversation class today. Once a week for two hours me and a few of the braver non-English teaching...er...teachers at my school sit down for what can sometimes be an excruciating, sometimes an enjoyable, but always an enlightening experience. We started off 6 months ago* with basic stuff like "tell me about your family" and "what kind of books do you like?" and have now progressed into more focused topics such as the environment, Korean history, etc etc, and in so doing we (I) have whittled down a once thriving, if incoherent, class of ~10 or so into a more manageable and more cogent group of 4 reasonably literate ladies.

Anyway, today the topic was pets and animals. I asked each of the attendees if they'd ever had a pet as a child, and if so, what was its story. Unfortunately most of them had not, and so it looked as if this was going to be one of those days of death on which getting them to talk is like squeezing blood out of a turnip. But one lady chimed in.

She had never had a pet, she said, but as a child her brother had. He'd found him in the street, adopted him, and loved him generally as children love dogs for over two years.

But their mother couldn't stand the dog. She connived to dispose of the mangy mutt in all of the usual ways, but nothing worked. Until one day, when the young boy was away from the home and the proprietress of the local boshintang joint sauntered on by. She offered to take the dog off of the mother's hands, and for a good price. The mother agreed.

And so it came to pass that the young boy's beloved pet, whom he had loved and protected and cared for, departed from his company and shuffled off this mortal coil in one of the most horrible ways possible. Naturally, the young boy was devastated and cried for days.

Now, it's not only that the dog was slain and consumed. You see, it's not as if they knock the dog on the head with a hammer and go about their business. That would be humane. But you see, in preparing boshintang, it's apparently necessary to torture the dogs. By whipping them. Until they die. It brings out the proper juices, or something.

So, the little boy's pet was stolen from him, hung from a meat hook, whipped to death and then flayed.

Like I said, funny story.

*Has it been 6 months? Wow.

Today in Konglish

I actually attended this event, but alas, I didn't score one of these cool Konglishy vests:

"Let's set people on fire!"

Apparently ~2500 years ago a Jewish prophet foresaw, in Isaiah 35:8, "the way of holiness" would be an American superhighway, called, fortuitously enough, I-35. A bunch of moonies have become convinced it's their destiny to camp out all up and down the American interstate and remind abortionists, homosexuals, and the other typical sinners that they're gonna burn eternally in hell.

How do they know this is the right thing to do? Well there's the typically opaque reference to "dreams and visions" which I suppose might be accurate if by "dreams" we mean some hard-up pastor's daydreams about getting on TV, and if by "visions" we mean the visions of all the greenbacks in the collection plates.

I suppose it also helps that I-35 and Isaiah 35 seem to go well together, unless of course one recalls that the book of Isaiah wasn't written in English, and there was nary an "I" to be found in its original text.

It's batshit crazies like these folks that make the heartland such a fucking laughingstock. When is this shit gonna end?

Anyway you can watch Pat Robertson's gleeful report here:

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.

Tsushima

So, Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) was this week, on Tuesday, and we had Monday through Wednesday off. Nice-uh. Most people were heading out of town, and my buddy Dave who hadn't left the country in the 6 months he's been here was itching to do the same. I would've been content to rest on my laurels and maybe go on a short day or two long trip within the country, but when he asked if I wanted to go to Fukuoka I said sure. I'd heard good things about it and it seemed we'd have a fun few days down there.

Another friend Oren joined us, and on Friday night we caught the midnight train* to Busan wherein we could take a ferry to Japan.

So we walked in to the international ferry terminal exhausted and groggy Saturday morning and tried to buy a ticket to Fukuoka. Sold out. What about tomorrow? Sold out. The next day? Sold out. I'd sort of expected this, Chuseok is the busiest travel time of the year in Korea, but I didn't want to be a Debbie Downer before we left and hadn't brought it up.

Despairing we collapsed on some benches in the terminal and slept a few hours. When we awoke, a few other ticket booths were open. One of them was for Tsushima. Well, if you've bothered to read the title of this entry you can probably figure out what happened.

It was alright. The town was a little on the small side, there was nothing to do during the day, things were more than a little pricey (honest to god the second you sit down in a bar they charge you 20-30 bucks for the table, even before you've bought a drink) and the 19-30 demographic upsayo (didn't exist). We had a good few nights out drinking, tho, everyone was superfriendly (the first place we went a bunch of Japanese ajosshis picked up the tab as we were leaving) and it was cool just to get away for a bit and add another notch on my belt.

But I won't be going back.

I managed to look goofy in every picture that was taken of me during our brief sojourn, and believe it or not the following is the least goofy looking and most publishable. Standing at the base of the hundred steps to enlightenment or somesuch nonsense (we climbed them and found only oversized hornets and a lot of moss):



*Ok, so we took a bus, but "midnight train" sounds so much cooler, and I've had that song 'Midnight Train to Georgia' in my head and on my iPod for about a month now.

Slightly Less Than 100 Bullets

My week, in bullet form:

-I visited the 3rd circle of hell, otherwise known as the Bukbu English Festival. "Bukbu" is the dong or gu or snot or flem or whatever the Korean word for district is in which my school is located. We took about a dozen or so of our best and brightest English speakers to compete against the other schools' similarly abled in a series of competitions...debate, essay writing, dancing, etc. It was the typical in its tedium, the worst part was that it took place on a Saturday. I don't like working on those.

-Speaking of tedium, two of our English teachers were leaving last week so we had a going away dinner. Imagine you're a young white devilishly handsome English-speaking male who's attending a 4 hour long dinner surrounded by 8 or so 40 year old Korean ajummas who despite their Korean Education Board-certified English speaking abilities persist in communicating in their native language. Imagine there isn't any alcohol being served. Imagine you have to pay 25 bucks for a dinner whose highlights include slices of tomatoes dipped in blueberry juice, undercooked un-de-headed prawns, and balls of fried squid. That was my Monday.

-I didn't go out this weekend, for the first time since I've been back. I was just too tired from work...I've been drinking too much anyway. I was up late Thursday at the Goose bidding farewell (again) to Sammy.

-I discovered this great performance by the man from the 2002 Grammys. As he said circa 1965, it should be played "fucking loud."

Uh, here's something

Well I don't really have anything interesting or new to report, but dammit I've got a blog, so I have to post something, right? So here's a video from a movie I love as much as everyone else hated it, Masked & Anonymous. Please enjoy.

PASSED AROUND OVER 1300X AND STILL GOING

No, I'm not talking about Courtney Love (rimshot). This is the title of a myspace bulletin thing I got the other day.

Now of late I've more or less eschewed myspace in lieu of facebook, where I just recently signed up and discovered that yes, the rumors are true, it's way better. But I still occasionally log in to, you know, waste time at work and check up on whose band's doing what.

I don't usually read the bulletin stuff, and god knows I've never contributed one myself (just FYI: the bulletin page is where you can send a message to all of your friends, the myspace equivalent of forwarding that picture of that d00d on top of WTC1 right before the plane crashed in) but the other day I was really, really bored. Like most days.

Anyhoo, my "friend" Daryn had posted something on the bulletin page (as he is wont to do - isn't it interesting how it's the same people posting on that thing over and over? Most of my friends avoid it, but there are like three guys who post two or three things a day. I can understand the bands posting their gigs' dates and whatnot, but do you really need to fill out every questionaire that comes your way or post all of the scores to every USA soccer match?). It was this:

PASSED AROUND OVER 1300X AND STILL GOING!!!

Body: YOU BETTER ADD YOUR NAME!!!!!JESUS DIED FOR OUR SINS.IF YOU ARENT ASHAMED TO CLAIM GODTHEN PUT YOUR NAME ON THIS LIST:.REPOST THIS AS YOUR SCHOOL NAME

Now let's just stop right here for a moment. This is not a Jesus-bashing thing. Back up the turnip truck, cajun, don't go jumping to conclusions. I don't really care if Jesus freaks feel obligated to forward stuff around the internet/myspace.com proclaiming their affection for the Lord. I don't even care if they forward it to me. So I am not making fun of that.

What's funny is what was under the body of the message. There were names. 1300 of them. I shall list some of the humorous ones I came upon in a quick scan of the list. They are:

0. JaNae...Williams
13. -el io-
26.Maya Aka Yaya
45. brItteRs *I ShOuLd Have BeEn NuMber onE*
63- Trae Carter a.k.a Trae pound b.k.a Now an Later..........
84. RAyeann aka rayray
134.JANETH AKA BROWN EYES AKA SWEET
136.3SA MZ T3MP3RX3158. *"X"* @.K@. CARLOS PACHECO
159. Scoot (young stunna)
160. R:a:c:h:e:L!
181.jatniel aka babyboy
227. Eric Paige who Eric Paige


Ok that's just the first ~250 or so. I'm sure the Lord is proud to have 3SA MZ T3MP3RX3 and jatniel on His side.

I have found another way for you to waste time

And it is this - The Yangpa

"Yangpa" means "onion" in Hangul and it's Korea's version of theonion.com.

My favorite after reading through a few pages - Brad Pitt Look-Alike Winner

I also like the Holocaust Museum one. Enjoy!

This is worth watching

Stephen Colbert vs. Rain, a popular Korean singer:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xXFa1yc6zH0

"I'm gonna be all over you like a raw egg on a bowl of bibimbap." Nice.