Twenty Ten Are Died

Last day of the year means I have two choices: either phone my brother to wish him a happy birthday or use my blog to summarize how I passed the preceding 364 days. Obvs we know which one I'm going to choose, but can we at least recreate the decision-making process so I can imagine how the conversation with my bro-shat would go? Since I don't actually have an imagination I'll just assume it'd be like our last 400 heart-to-hearts:

- Hey.

- GFY.

- Things?

- GFY.

- Things no question mark.

- GFY.

- Get your GED yet?

- Sister's question, dick, not yours. GFY.

- I'm going to write in my blog.

Er, now I'm just delaying because I can't think of anything particularly interesting I did this year and have resorted to portraying my baby brother as a miscreant douchebag in order to compensate. He's actually a very sweet kid who engages in conversation like any other 14-year-old: Huh? Nothing? Whuh? Oh? Cool? Except he's 19 now.

Otherwise, bullet points since that's what I did last year:

- I spent $5500 on airfare just to eat lunch in nine different countries, which sort of explains the dumbfounded look I get whenever I check my account balances and wonder why I can't retire yet.

- I got in zero fistfights, which proves any and all theories of positive nuclear deterrence correct if you think about that point the same way I do.

- I bought a baseball mitt for like $20 even though I don't play baseball. You may think I pissed away $20 but I think the mitt paid for itself considering I'm paid in won. Imagine all the depreciation had any of those North Korean bombs landed. Diving catch, yo.

- Bought banana milk for a Pulitzer Prize winner. Suggested some edits to his magnum opus and, curiously, they're releasing a new edition next month if I weren't a liar.

- Spent eight hours in Vegas. I forgot to change my won over to USD before leaving Koko so didn't even bother looking for the hookers and coke. I instead walked around judging at all the pitiful losers gambling away their dosh on poker and slot machines before going home and opening an account with a sports bookie. I've won 15 of my 19 bets and am up like $500 right now. This is clearly a sound investment strategy.

- Stabbed my face nearly 1700 times, just because.

- Posed for some J Crew or Ralph Lauren or some other catalog that features cheap black suits in a faux-New England setting:



Also counts as the one wedding I made it to this year. The rest of the catalog is somewhere internetish but I have no idea where.

- Lost 47 lbs. I pretend it's because of the 10 minutes a day I spent in the gym for football, but it's really because I lived through a humid Asian summer. Been drinking 20 cups of water every day for the last three months and am still dehydrated.

- Went all Sasha on the world. Sasha won.

- Stopped buying cigarettes so I'd smoke less even though I just bum them off everyone else now. Since I have like three friends that means I've technically achieved my goal.

- Told a pretty lady we should go on a date because she never mentioned her husband until halfway through that date. She paid for dinner so okay.

- Ate 500 bibimbaps because vegetarian + Koko = great idea. Well, that and tteokbokki, yum yumz.

- Learned how to swing dance. If you saw me swing you'd say I didn't actually learn, but some girl made a point of using her broken English to tell me I wasn't the worst in the class because that guy over there understands Korean so no excuse. Burrrrrn!

- Spent 500 hours in an actual classroom with actual students, which is slightly less than the time I spent at school either asleep under my desk or awake and on Facebook.

- Phoned my brother halfway through writing this list to wish him a happy birthday one day early because I'm one day ahead and I'll forget tomorrow. Love.

- Wore my glasses 40% more than last year. Increase comes solely from the last two months now that my eyes have suddenly decided to stop working. Selah, lasik is cheap hurr.

Opuwo. Hope you have a great 2011 because it's the last full year before we all die or something Mexican.

Negative Birth Rate

I already have this big long list of reasons why I shouldn't have children, but yesterday I was given two more:

1. I'm not Korean, so I can't have adorable Korean children. The best I can do is halfsies, which make for children just as cute but only if the Caucasian double-helices I drop on their faces soften their Asian features, not overwhelm them. I'm thinking about my family's Arnold Schwarzenegger mouths and jawlines right now. Think I'll pass.

2. Er, this guy:



For the realz, how could I ever compete with that? I can't, so no children for me. I'll just look through homeboy's Flickr instead.

Christmas Dinner with my Niece

Well, breakfast her side.



Though really, rice and kim are good any time of day. Wonder if my blog thing here is going to evolve into a series of screen captures while Skyping with my sister and her daughter.

Scarf

I like playing basketball but not so sure I care to watch it. Rather eat my nachos instead.

Happy Holidays

Tons of Christians running around Korea, so I guess that means I have to sit my make-believe Korean family down in front of a photographer so we can get our cards out before the post backs up. Maybe next year I won't look so surprised that I'm the patriarch of a make-believe Korean family even though I don't speak much Korean.



From mine to yours.

Rivalry

We wear uniforms on Skype.

Tower of Babel

You ever teach English in Korea and they give you some book and say, Here, teach these scripted dialogues? And then you're all, No one I know speaks like this? And then seven weeks later you meet someone who does? (Or in my case remember someone who does?) Ja, well, that person is invited to my school next year so I can drop "authentic assessment" on everyone's azz during one of those staff meetings we never have.

501(c)(3) Jeonsa, Hopefully

I'm trying to establish a non-profit organization, but, uh, paperwork. Otherwise, I have a rudimentary web presence...

Gosen Community Effort

...and an initial fundraiser planned for December 24th. Christmas Eve, I know, so you'd think everyone would be too busy queueing at the airport while waiting for the TSA's bad touch, but Korea, so the only family anyone has to see are the pretend ones they think their transient friendships now pass for. Don't know how many people to reasonably expect, but I do have around 20 members of the beautiful people who've agreed to be auctioned off for dates, so at least those 20 plus the 20 they bring as emergency bidders in case it's awfully quiet during their turn on the block.

Also, got some free publicity in today's Korea Times:

A fundraiser to help southern African students



I'd normally just say something about jeonsa, but friend writes for that newspaper, so I guess I'll say thank you instead.

Skype Date?

This is one of the most heart-wrenching photos I've ever seen:


One of the South Korean men cries as their North Korean family members leave on a bus during the Separated Family Reunion Meeting at Diamond Mountain in North Korea on Oct. 31. Hundreds of Korean family members, separated for more than half a century, hugged and embraced each other in tearful reunions. (Photo by Kim Ho-young/AP)


I was going to say most heart-wrenching aside from war/famine/depravity/whatever shots, but this is fallout from a war that was mostly fought 60 years ago and has technically never ended, so no hedging necessary. Just terrible, right:

Hundreds of Korean family members separated for more than half a century by the Korean War embraced each other in tearful reunions on Saturday, a day after troops exchanged gunfire in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the countries.

“I thought you were dead. Mother missed you so much,” 61-year-old South Korean Lee Min-gwan told his 90-year-old North Korean father, Ri Jong Ryol, according to pool reports by local reporters.

“I did not forget [you] every single day for the past 60 years,” Ri replied to his son, who was 100 days old when they were separated during the war.

...

Millions of Korean families were separated after the Korean peninsula’s division in 1945 and the 1950-53 Korean War.

The reunions are emotional for Koreans, as most participants are elderly and are eager to see loved ones before they die. More than 20,800 family members have had brief reunions in face-to-face meetings or by video since a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000. There are no mail, telephone, or e-mail exchanges between ordinary citizens across the heavily fortified border.

Seriously, no word for 50 years; a couple sitdown lunches; and then goodbye, have a nice life. For all the gravitas someone like GWB thinks a somber tone and passing on golf lend his war mongering, or the scripted tears Lee Myung-bak sheds around a platoon of cameras, it's the people who actually want peace who end up getting rolled.

Sarah Palin's Onyati

Have been preoccupied with some work that's required me to pour through old photos of Namibia. Found one that reminds me of Sarah Palin, sort of. I mean, if she can shoot things then why can't I fish:



That video, though: hahahahahahaha. What sort of hunter ever asks if her gun kicks, let alone forgets to bring her own along on a three-day hunting trip? Whatevs, scripted reality. I only mock it because I'm envious of her production team. Mine made the mistake of panning out:



Eh, probably a good time to mention there wasn't any string on that pole, though there were actually fish in the oshana I'm sitting in.

Playing Jeonsa for Jeonsa

Borrowing Mgoblog's Picture Pages feature where homeboy who runs the site breaks down a play to explain tendencies, or why Michigan's defense sucks, or - and most likely - to say, Look at me!!!!!!!!!! I understand football!!!!!!

This is a play from my last game, a semifinal loss. There's nothing particularly important about it save this is my blog and I'm in some photos I found on some dood's Naver blog. It was either 1st or 2nd or 3rd down with, I don't know, 8 yards to go? There were about four minutes left in a game we were losing 14-8 at the time. (I know what the score was at the time because it was the same as when the game ended four minutes later.)

I'm playing strongside linebacker. Receiver attempts a crackback but I run through it because I'm either [A] roiding or [B] he just doesn't care about me.




I'm so very quick that I've now pursued the running back all the way to the weak side. The photographer is also very quick and is now taking photos from a completely different angle. The tackle is also very quick and changed his number as I ran though yet another block on this one - yes, one - play.

Homeboy just drops the ball for no reason. I should jump on it so that we get the ball around midfield and score so everyone can carry me around the field on their shoulders because I saved the game:




Er, the ball was bouncing straight up into homeboy's hands in that last photo, so now I have to settle for something a bit less heroic: your standard-issue tackle. This photo, by the by, is not a closeup; it's just that I had to crop 450 x 300 pixel photo from one oriented as a portrait. The look on my face means I've already screwed up:




Well bugger, I didn't make the tackle. At least I can still watch or something:




Oh wait, I'm still involved in the play. Haha, lineman, you tripped over me. If I'm not going to make the tackle then no way am I going to let you: 




By now I'm just waiting to see how far the lineman will rotate before hitting the ground:




Alright, cool. Linebacker friend made the tackle, lineman kicked some guy in the face, the other team ultimately punted, and we didn't win.



And really, now that I look at the photos again, I think all of them are from just a single play, so, uh, mitigating factors and stuff.

By Me, Through Me

Since I went to Korean chur-chee last week and found out the actual Biblical apocalypse is a comin' to the peninsula in the next few days, I went back last night to find out how we could all survive it. All, since presumably an apocalypse that begins in Asia will surely spread Amurka side, and you need to be just as prepared as those of us frantically selling off our won.

Here's the bulleted gist of our conversation with the 1/4 of dialogue belonging to me in parenthesis. Please consider this a road map for apocalyptic survival. Unless there are zombies, in which case you don't need Jesus so much as you need a boat (BECAUSE ZOMBIES CAN'T SWIM!!!).

- Revelations 6 or 7 or 14 - or maybe it was 3 John 49? - says something about four angels holding back the winds after this before some other angel came down from the east and was all, Wh-wh-wait a minute now while I go around marking my people up.

(What's "this"? Oh, WWII. WWII was mentioned in the Bible?)

- Somewhere in the Old Testament about red, black, and wind before all the figs fell off the tree. The red is fire and the black is smoke. When Hitler burned all those books, duh, and then the Jews became figs and fell off the tree because war is the same wind the four angels - north, south, east, west - are holding back while that one eastern angel fixes his hair. Do you like my new perm?

- Back to Revelation because baby angel has to leave a mark on people. What's the mark?

(Uh?)

- Passover was the lamb, and then they had Passover dinner, and then Jesus turned the Passover into communion, and when g-d first started the Passover he said to mark your doors or something with blood. So communion is the mark but not if you go to another church and take communion once a week because we only take it once a year, holla!

- So read this random verse in Jeremiah where he says something about a northern wind. THE NORTH! NORTH KOREA!!!!!!!!!

(Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!)

- And when KJI begins WWIII only those with the mark will find the sanctuary.

(You mean the bomb shelters under Gangnam and Myeongdong?)

- I don't think you believe that Jesus wrote the Bible so we aren't going to tell you his new name during the second coming, which you have to say when the bombs start falling else he won't hear you.

And then I left chur-chee and went home to make my own random Biblical connections to the apocalypse. In my version everyone dies so no use telling you here how to achieve salvation other than to go to the bank asap and change your won into USD.

Friends Are Languages, Sometimes

The book larnin’ hasn’t turned me into the pretend Korean I want to be so I started actual lessons this week, at a school, with a teacher, only 15 months after I should’ve been able to do more than just point at things and say eego, eego, hana. In my defense I have a fairly decent vocab for getting by on self-study, and I can read and write okay-ish. The lady who administered my placement exam was actually impressed with how much I knew, but only in relation to my inability to speak. And also because Koreans are conditioned to ooh and ahh whenever some rando white person can manage the remedial greetings (s)he learned on Arrested Development.

For the realz, though: facing down Korean is a daunting task. It may only take five minutes to get that ㅁ is the [m] sound, ㅊ is [ch], ㄴ is [n], andㄱ is halfway between [g] and [k]; an extra ten to keep straight when ㅇ is silent and when it’s [ng]; and maybe three days more to finally make sense of all the other irregularities; but to actually attach intuitive meaning to those symbols takes, er, I don’t know, the 15 months I’ve been here?

But that’s just the writing system; you also have to learn, you know, the language, which is all the tougher because of that completely foreign writing system. You can try to get by using Romanized versions of Korean words, but then you’ll move to Suseo, begin telling your friends you live in Su-say-oh, and they’ll never visit you because they’ve only been to Su-sowh. Even Seoul is tough because when Romanized looks like it should be pronounced Soul, but 서울 is two syllables, meaning it’s actually Sowh-uel.

All of this is just to say I’ve dragged my feet learning Korean, partly because ja, it’s daunting even though every other language is when first starting out; but mostly because of this photo:



Jes, three pretty ladies are why it’s difficult for me to rock out on Korean: people I've developed relationships with but for whom I'll soon have to look all over the internet for rather than all over Seoul if I want to see anymore. The one on the right is the love of my all things good in the world and is leaving soon for New York to start out life as an investment banker; the space cowboy in the middle is the prettiest lady I know and is applying to US law schools; and the one on the left took all the affection I’d saved up the past few years and moved with it to the east coast. I sometimes think about quitting my job, flying to Boston, and walking around random neighborhoods to look for her apartment just so I can tell her we should be together, but if I did she’d just laugh and tell me that all my relationships are transitory, so why bother learning Korean if you’re only going to live there for a year or two?

So ja, add Korean to my list of other languages I’m not at all conversational in but know enough not to die (Inandi hala okusa!), and I guess add the other 30 friends to Facebook that I’ll meet in the coming months because, you know, we're all moving on to the next best thing. At least I'm trying.

The Hip Joint

During school holidays Koreans make their children attend school. I think I’ve mentioned this before. Although it’s annoying that I have to teach a three-week English camp while school’s technically out, it could be a lot worse. Many other teachers have to throw together a curriculum on their own and generally have to do so during the two days in between when they’re told about and when it’s due. I happen to work in a district that coordinates these camps among its 50 or so junior highs, which means the only work required of me is to submit one lesson plan to a committee that will choose the 16 among us they like the most. (Korean sensibilities here, so basically the ones with the most shiny lights.) Since I teach English I’ll turn out a math problem hurr:

50 – 16 = 34 teachers who are going to plan a lesson that’s not going to be used

My first term I actually put a lot of thought into a lesson and found myself up pretty late the night before I had to send it in. It wasn’t chosen. Of course I didn’t realize it wasn’t chosen until I was at a camp meeting and noticed the other 50 teachers who’d been given the same task I was. That’s when I bought an algebra notebook to keep around in case I had any math-ish thoughts that would make life easier.

Halfway through second term I got the same email I did the previous one about lesson planning for camp and to make it fun and interesting and blah blah blah. To amuse myself I put together a lesson about geriatrics I knew they wouldn’t use but only took an hour to do. Obvs they chose mine and I had to present it to the other teachers, but one of them was offended and I was asked to revise it. I said no and they found another.

Okay, so basically three paragraphs so far just to say I recently had to submit another lesson for this term’s camp. The first time I tried really hard and they said I sucked; the second I didn’t try, the Korean admin loved it, but then some old white person had his feelings hurt; so this time I tried taking a middle road with my topic and came up with hipsters. Figured none of the other teachers would actually admit to being one, so on the off chance my lesson was chosen again there’d be no one to write a horrible emo poem about being marginalized by a ppt presentation.

But blah blah blah, in the end I didn’t actually bother with the lesson since, turns out, it’s even easier to just send in a lesson I’d already used with my own classes. But I didn’t come across that plan in my algebra book until after I’d put together the beginnings of an ethnographic hipster study that Gangdong District students could add to their list of things to talk about. Here are the stereotypes I’d come up with before realizing I didn’t have to think of any more because it was Friday and I had things to do:

- Suddenly discover middle names their birth certificates never knew they had.
- All that fixie rationale instead of just admitting you bought the bike because everyone else has one.
- Oh sorry, I meant you built your own fixie. Of course you didn’t buy it.
- 20/15 vision but still need glasses?
- No job but owns two iPods, a Mac Book, a DSLR, DJ equipment, and a 50’ plasma TV even though “I only listen to podcasts.”
- Luuuuuvs public transport but asks for a ride everywhere.
- Drinks $3.50 pints of Pabst because it’s cheap even though a six-pack of microbrew costs $7.
- Moving to Brooklyn, Pdx, or San Francisco next year, or something.
- Tumblr
- Always carrying around a book (s)he’s never going to read.
- Constantly references racist parents even though parents aren’t actually racist.
- Is an almost-musician because some friends are in this really cool band.

Blah blah blah I’m done talking about hipsters.

Question Bank

For classes I like:

How many apples are on the table?

For classes I "like" because I "like" all my students:

What is the most Chinese country in the world?

Cold Calling

Just in case you're in Garak-dong and feel the urge to worship during school hours. If you don't have your Bible handy you can read our school newspaper instead:

Our school have a special club. It's 'Christian Club' Everyone can join this club if they are Christian or who want to be a christian. They learn about Bible. They learn about why we have to believe Jesus and about Jesus's life. If you're a Christian or interest in Christian, why don't you join the Christian club?

Apropos of how I spent the few hours after school today. Some girl I used to tutor emailed out of the blue to see if I wanted to meet, as the Koreans say. (If you have a free time let's meet.) Eh, okay. So I went to some coffee shop entirely unsure if I was supposed to bullshit with her, help her with English, or...go to church? Ja, that last one, because the next thing I knew I was eating kimbap in a Korean bingo hall/church while listening to some woman tell me that Catholics and Protestants think God is just some homeboy off the streets but we, the Church of God, know God the Father and God the Mother. Also, earthquakes if you go to church on Sunday because Tuesday's better. Was about to file the evening under crazy time and have a laugh about it later, but then she started talking about WWIII and Kim Jong-un and when can I come back again to hear about the end days. I said next Thursday but she said a week is too long, come Sunday instead. We compromised on Tuesday because Monday I have to convert my savings to USD now that I have inside information about the hurry g-d is in to funk shih tup.

God a Cos Play

Gregor Mendel studied genetics by cross-breeding Arcade Fire with Beirut. He named his hybrid pea plants Fanfarlo.

Football Not Jeonsa

I was thinking just the other day about how great it’d be if I could somehow relive my glory days as a high school football player even though I was on the cross-country team instead. Oh look, an action shot of me playing in the Korean NFL:



Amazing catch, eh. It was 4th and 15 when I caught that ball on some game-winning drive or another. You may have noticed that guy over there in street clothes - as well as a curious lack of other players - and started to think this photo was staged, but you know, Korean rules and all: ajusshis and ajummas get to sit wherever they feel like no matter the inconvenience, which oftentimes means setting up right at the 50 yard line with a blanket; a tent; equipment for nine different, unrelated sports; seven orders of kimbap; and a willful obliviousness to the people trying to play football on a soccer field.

Aside from reliving the glory I would have enjoyed had I played football back in the day, let alone actually been any good, the reason I initially joined a team here was to tell everyone back home I was playing semi-pro football in Korea. Have to go where the paychecks are, non, even if those paychecks come from my job teaching and not anything sport-related. The problem with jokes, though, is that eventually you have to follow through on them or quit yet another thing, so erg, I made my way through an entire off-season, preseason, and actual season without ever knowing where to stand or what to do.

But selah, I enjoyed actually wearing pads for once rather than arguing with everyone about two-hand touch, and I think I finally had linebacker figured out there near the end, which good on me because learning always feels good even if your one tackle on the year came on special teams:



I would have had another tackle had the guy I hit in a different game held onto the ball, and maybe even another had the kick returner I was chasing not dropped to the ground when he saw me coming. I say maybe because, as I told him afterwards, he probably would have scored after running through my arm tackle. Talking shit is a major part of my game.

Team's name is Jeonsa, by the by, just in case there was any confusion about who named the team.

Ohio State Week

Wanted to title this post "Ohio State Jeonsa" but couldn't because, uh, this is what I looked like the last time we beat them:



Er, that was my mid-20s. Now I'm like 47 and doubt we'll ever win again. Shame, because even though OSU had won two straight before that game it was no big thing because we'd still taken 12 of the last 16, and it's not as if you can go around expecting streaks like that to last forever. Started bracing myself for a win every two years or something - like a normal rivalry - but then summer turned to fall and fall turned to nuclear winter. Srsly, in 2006 Troy Smith became only the second OSU quarterback in the rivalry's 103-year history to beat Michigan three times. It's four years later and Terrell Pryor will already be the third if OSU wins this Saturday. You know these guys only get four years to rack that shiz up, right? That it requires extremely unlikely circumstances to even win one game as a starting QB, let alone three. And Pryor's only a junior, which means he may get four wins before I decide to just be done with it and chew my face off. JFC.

Boo hoo hoo, I suppose. It's just football or something. BUT I DON'T BELIEVE IN JESUS SO THIS WEEK IS MY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!

For the realz, I totally went to bed Sunday morning after the Wisconsin loss fully expecting OSU to work us over like they were TSA agents and we just wanted to fly to Nashville or something for the weekend, but then I started watching youtube videos and am convinced WE'RE GOING TO WIN BY 400...



...next year. Sigh, at least I live in Korea and get the benefit of time differences. At home I'd wake up and three hours later would be sobbing over another year of suck, but here I wake up, go through an entire day, and at 2.00 am finally get to exercise my patience as the universe shits all over my head one long Beanie Wells TD run after another, even if it's some guy named Boom instead.

Official Word on North and South Korea

So Noko fired some bullets at Soko and now I have to sell advertising because - obviously - all major world news outlets and my sister are going to check this blog for expert analysis on inter-Korean conflict. I know there's going to be a lot of geopolitical speculation about Noko's aggression having to do with legitimizing the transfer of state power from Kim Jong-il to his youngest son, but that's not the case at all. What really happened is that Kim Jong-un, Dear Leader's son, is a fatty. Here's a photo I took when I went over to his house a couple months ago:



The thing about fatties is they have fat fingers. They also like doughnuts, and what happened was someone had left one next to the launch control panel, a little too close to the red button, and when the chubby little despot spied it from across the room he couldn't help barreling to the other side so he could pounce on it before his frail father did. So there, today's little war was nothing more than one small oops. Geopolitics isn't all that complicated, you know. I should start a think tank.

Bourist

I had the day off work today so dug a few tourist books out and went looking for Biwon, some sort of secret garden in Changdeok Palace. Here are some photos:






Though those aren't actually mine. The only photo of Biwon I managed was of the outside wall:



Was taken at 4.15 pm, which was 15 minutes before my book said they stopped letting people in and 45 minutes after they actually did. Selah, still had a nice look around Changdeokgung as well as Changgyeonggung, another palace right next door. Wonder who the president of that neighborhood association was back in the day. Probably the baller who lived in this house:

Oh the Hotness

I suppose there's this guy:

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hands in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.—How beautiful are the retired flowers! how they would lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out "admire me I am a violet! dote on me I am a primrose."

Hmmm, sounds like a lot of the pretty friends I have who walk around being beautiful without ever saying a word. You and you and you and you. I once dated a lady who actually pranced around her room exclaiming "I am a primrose!" but she was way hot and close to naked, so I let it pass without remark.

Peppero Day

Peppero Day in Korea. Whoever comes to Asia as a means to escape hollow Western over-consumption because, like, they're so spiritual over there will love Peppero Day because it's all about love and stuff. That or there are these shitty little cookie sticks called Peppero no one will buy November 12th through extremely late October, and the only reason anyone buys them in bunches November 10th is because if you place four Peppero sticks next to each other they look like I I I I. If you put a backslash between the second and third stick it all of a sudden looks like II/II, or November 11th. Get it? Hahahahahaha, now buy some Peppero sticks and give them to your girlfriend because the people who make Peppero have marketed 11/11 as Peppero Day, and if you don't give her like 900 boxes and a stuffed animal she'll sound like this, only more whiny:



All because even Buddhists convene focus groups.

All hating aside, I come to school on Peppero Day secretly hoping to get like 20 boxes from students because their affirmation is what I strive for on a daily basis. Plus, since they taste like crap I can just re-gift them to other students, which makes them all love me even more. And that's me, a semi-adjusted grown man with a beard. Just imagine all the psychosis my junior high students go through. The American equivalent is Valentine's Day cards, so you can understand the palpable buildup during some pointless English class as everyone wonders whether cool smoker guy over there is going to drop a box of half-eaten Pepperos on some some girl with straight A's that she'd throw away in a heartbeat just to watch him play Starcraft for 18 straight hours.

Well, that's 9th grade, mature and all. My 7th graders are a bit more ruthless even though they smoke less:



For the realz. I got to school today and the first student I saw took out her gun, pointed it at me, and said, Peppero! To be fair, it was she who gave me a box, but that's besides the point since I'm constructing a narrative that runs counter to what really happened, in which case I should only talk about the six boxes I gave out that class instead of the three I received throughout the entire day (plus two of those individually-wrapped ones). Srsly, only three boxes? My plan at the beginning of the day was to take the standard Hey, look at all the Peppero my students gave me photo and post it on Facebook to see where I fit in amongst the arms cum Peppero race all the teachers here have, but three boxes is way too embarrassing, so I just sat at my desk doing the sort of math that would make me feel better about myself. Let's see: because of finals, the only class I actually had today was an extra-curricular listening class that meets before school even begins. So out of 15 students I scored three boxes + the two bigger Pepperos I mentioned before. That means were I to have seen the the usual 150 students I would have roped in like 70,000 Pepperos. That's a record, so fo'shosili, I declare myself the best teacher in all of Koko.

Pdx and Another Sigh

Sometimes I'm from Dtw and other times I'm from Oregon. It depends on the point of conversation: if dropping my gangsta vibe, then Dtw represent, yo; if explaining to a pretty Korean lady the reasons for my beard and that yes, she can still love me despite the facial hair, then I'm from Oregon.

Today I'm from Pdx because I came across this video while collecting material for a lesson entitled "Why Pdx is better than Seoul." That or Cory posted it on his facebook. Same same.

G's Up Gardens Down

The G20 is holding a summit in Seoul later this week to discuss how to stay rich even though everyone owes everyone else money but so what at least we have functional armies that can just take things from other people. Or something. Korea holds some pathological belief that were anyone to eat Korean food, or hear Korean music, or drink Korean rice wine, or see that Korea hosted a meeting between heads-of-state that 42 other countries have hosted before then everyone will want to move to the peninsula and become Korean, so of course the government's concerned about the reflexive protests that always accompany these types of meetings. To ensure that the Korean brand remains artificially pure, every single member of Kim Jong-il's family has been conscripted into security detail and has spent the last month walking around Seoul with a fistful of granola. Anyone whose Pavlovian response has been to drool has been subsequently tossed into a jail cell.

I made you a greeting card.

Rosetta Jeonsa

I've taught hood rat English, English as a second language, English as a foreign language, English for yo' mama, and took like two linguistics courses in college. Once upon a time I decided this was sufficient enough background to begin offering online lessons in Oshiwambo. Er, that didn't go well, partly because who with a reasonable internet connection five years ago wanted to learn Oshiwambo and mostly because who with a reasonable internet connection five years ago wanted to learn Oshiwambo from a perpetually drunk oshilumbu? It wasn't necessarily that I had a drinking problem, just that I could say Onda hala okunwa ombiila na punyapunya nOmbiila, opuwo and that's about it. (I want to drink a beer, some wine, another beer, and nothing else.)

Ok, now I'm in Koko and you're not (except the 70% of site traffic that comes from Korea, 70% code for five people), so maybe I should put together some Korean lessons for you, jes? Not "hey, want to learn Korean from someone who speaks Korean" lessons; more, "hey, want to learn how difficult Korean is for someone who spends but two hours a week trying to learn" lessons. So here you go, a sample sentence from my workbook:

앤디 씨 친구가 약속 장소에서 20분 동안 앤디 씨를 기다립니다.

Easy enough. It says, "Andy's friend has waited 20 minutes for Andy." Now you speak Korean like a boater. But why you'll never speak Korean well enough to pull one of those insanely hot ladies I always gawk at on the subway:

앤디 씨 친구가 약속 장소에서 20분 동안 앤디 씨를 기다립니다.

That's the exact same sentence, just so you keep pace. See, I'm a good teacher and can anticipate your learning needs. Ok, again, this time with English explanations:

앤디 씨   친구가     약속 장소에서           20분          동안    앤디 씨를    기다립니다.
(Andy)   (friend) (at a meeting spot) (20 minutes) (during) (for Andy)     (waiting)

The parts-of-speech markers are nice (가 is a subject marker, 에서 indicates where an action took place, and 를 is the object marker), but good luck with that syntactic order. You should probably just never leave Amurka and if you do go to England and nowhere else.

This course is opuwo. You pass with a C-average.

Miss-tache

Uh, these two photos:





You'll have to close your eyes and pretend they turned out the way I'd intended. Pretty obvious where this thing was headed.

Bush Baaaaby!

If you're not from the Dtw area then this video will precipitate a bunch of wtf; if you are, then this video will precipitate a bunch of nostalgic tears to be shed over our lost 90s youth. 



I just relived every Friday and Saturday night between 8th grade and senior year in high school, before I went off to Ypsilanti and started listening to CDs instead of WJLB. Good thing that video's only three minutes long, else I'd be tempted to look around for recordings of JLB's Roll Call.

What's up y'all, whachu gotta say? Who's checking in on the roll call, baaaaaaby?

And that video up there may looked dated and what what, but only because of the fashion. Tune in Detroit public access today and you'll get the exact same video effects. Sigh, progress.

[Oh ja, video dug up by homeboy. Merci, yo.]

Hanshik Jeonsa

I came across this photo a few weeks ago on Facebook and thought, Er, I don't remember that night out at noraebang:



But that guy's fat and I'm not.  Maybe if I still lived in Chicago, but I don't. I live in Korea and only eat Korean food. (Not to mention where could I noraebang in Chicago?) For the realz, that stuff is like celery: the more you eat the more unfat you become. Last week I purposely sprained my ankle just so I could sit around eating 17 meals a day instead of running, but the net result was -5 lbs.  Also, I don't have HIV anymore because 17 meals a day means a whole lot of kimchi. (Kimchi cures everything, yo.)

Whatevs, the guy in that photo is awesome and looks like a sweaty mess. I'm going to try my best to look like his stomach, starting today now that I've had cold pizza for breakfast and am going to meet a friend for dinner at one of these Euro restaurants. "European" is code for "not-Korean," so even though it's vegan/vegetarian it really means I'll probably have a heart attack before I go to bed but not unless I forget to eat my kimchi.

Dirty Fu Manchez

Eh, I'm not really big on having kids of my own because, er, relationships.  That and my sisters can pop a few out for me to dote on five minutes at a time before I go chasing off after some...

...sorry, saw some bright lights.  Huh?  Whuh?  Oh ja, kids.  As of right this second I would choose not to have any.  Perhaps I'd adopt a cute Korean baby were I rich and bored, but right now I have a long list of reasons why me as parent would be a bad idea:

- I live in a studio apartment.

- In Koko.

- And I wouldn't have the slightest clue about throwing away diapers considering all the complex recycling rules Korea has but doesn't enforce. 

- I can't be bothered to sleep less than 17 hours in any 24-hour cycle.

- Congenital birth defects

- I'm remarkably selfish and don't see how I'd be able to tote a small baby or even toddler around Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia for the whole of this upcoming February.

- I'd probably give my kid some random African name just so everyone would know I'd lived in Africa once, and then kid would hate me for it during all of elementary and junior high but would start to come around on it in high school and then buy me a thank you card in college once he realizes 3/4 of his friends are only his friends because of his cool African name.  I think I settled on a boy halfway through that run-on sentence.

- Congenital birth defects

- I'm not dealing with someone's nine-month mood swing.

- I have stumpy legs and no kid on earth deserves that.  I suppose I should file that concern under congenital birth defects.

- Congenital birth defects

And then a host of other faux-concerns about over-population and environmental impact blah blah blah.  But mostly I'm concerned about congenital birth defects.  Not sure why exactly: there aren't any in my family history that should worry me.  Probably just looking for a reason to post this photo:



Oh look, a mustache!  Wait, time to re-evaluate my family medical history: my dad has a mustache, my uncles have all had mustaches, my brother-in-law has a mustache, a bunch of hipsters I know in Pdx have mustaches, and I'd have a mustache if my job didn't involve a bunch of adolescent children, so perhaps I really should be worried about congenital birth defects.  But then again, mustaches would be awesome birth defects, so I'm going to start pumping away.  My mother will be very excited for all the new grandchildren running around on Christmas morning.

States of a Union

Blah blah blah Eric and Katie got married blah blah blah last weekend blah blah blah.  Should find something else to write two or three sentences about (one when I'm in run-on mode) but this photo is too good not to share with the four people in Korea who read this as well as Sasha and my dad.  (My sister also reads this but she was at the wedding and doesn't count.)



Those two have split time between four states: I see the Alaska, Hawaii, and Michigan, but where's the Nevada?  I'm guessing that was a showgirl outfit but obvs it didn't come out until after all the guests/cockblocks went home.

School-wide ESL

Follow-up from previous post:



The students seemed to like it and the adults didn't appear to notice the language, so good on a bit of hahahahaha for my Friday afternoon.

Bronson-Davis Empire

Missing a wedding this weekend.  So it goes with living out of state or country.  Some of the time that's just a convenient excuse (and whoops, forgot the card as well), but most of the time it's either work or money that prevents you from seeing your favorite people tie their nuptials into a knot.  Saturday's edition of I'm a Fairly Good Friend but Most of the Time I Suck is partly because of Google Maps...

We could not calculate directions between Garak-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea and Fenton, Michigan, United States.

...and this job of mine but mostly because Eric and Katie planned their wedding around Michigan's bye week rather than any of my long weekends.  Not like they hadn't time enough to make this about meeeeeee since Eric first proposed 47 years ago.  Sigh...

Since I feel horrible and left out that I won't be there, I decided to get them the best wedding gift ever; basically, just gathered the four photos I had of the two and made a book on Shutterfly.  Here, read it:

Bronson and Katie after he got her pregger their second freshman year of high school:




After they left their eight kids in the care of the state, both enrolled in junior college in the late 90s and fell in with whatever the edgy scene was back then.  I think Goth.




By junior year they'd both run out of money for makeup, so they started looking around for other standard college scenes.  Katie got really into The Doors.




While Eric got a huge enough man crush on Dave Matthews that he joined a frat.


Nice bottle tan on your face, bro.


Sometime after university both met for the first time on a fishing boat in Alaska.  Katie had actual job skills that took her between there and Hawaii depending on the season while Eric had his little Polaroid and could take photos, so the two began moving back and forth together.




Then I got tired of doctoring photos so I fast forwarded to when they were 60 or 70 by uploading the first photo I pasted their heads onto when I'd bugun this post:




Whoops, that was the transgendered version.  This is the Happily Ever After version:




Book concludes with a photo of Eric and Katie enjoying a moment alone with just each other, which I imagine to be their happiest.  Unless someone took that photo for them, then nevermind.  But still, they're happy, in love, and going to be married this Saturday, so big love to them.

Sigh, Pdx

Everyone loves those movie scenes when they personally recognize the locations where the film was shot, probably because the bout of nostalgia it precipitates.  Me, it's just about every Gus Van Sant movie that I get to be all, OMG, OMG, Portland!  Especially during this movie, where I also get to be all, OMG, OMG, I lived in that house!

House as rendered by the $100 point-and-shoot I lost yesterday:




And house as rendered by slightly more expensive equipment at 1.40 of following trailer:



All those interior scenes - with the dark green walls and the brick fireplace - were also shot inside my old house.  Cool, I suppose.

Share(e) a Thought?

If you're white trash then there's a good chance you're fretting over the Sharia takeover of the American legal system.  Not me, though.  I went to a Muslimistic law school and the degree I took from there means I can't sit for the bar in any state save France, but no way would I ever live there now that they call French fries freedom fries.  But if al-Qaeda ever succeeds in restoring the caliphate then maybe I can get a job as a public defender or something.  Check that: I want a prosecutorial role so I can track down any former lady friends who went adulterous on me and, well, you know how those things end.  Hahahahaha.  

Otherwise, anyone with Yosemite Sam mud flaps and a shotgun who's so smitten with the American way of life should probably read a primer on how the American way of life is conducted via the legislative process.  As in, there's a constitution that specifically prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, so the more gruesome consequences associated with Sharia - I stole a loaf of bread: bye, hand! - won't exactly pass judicial review, not to mention the arduous process it takes for a bill to become a law.  But that's just the civic application of Sharia.  Mostly, Sharia is a system governing the personal lives of Muslims, just like every other religion and its precepts.  Any current law that coincides with Sharia principles most likely coincides with Christian principles as well.  So there, honkey.  

I only bring this up because I read this article the other day.  There's some lady running for senator in Nevada, and either she's very stupid or she realized the people she was speaking to are very stupid and so she said something even more stupid than all of them combined so that they'd vote for her even though they'd vote for her regardless:

In a recording of the rally provided to The Associated Press by the Mesquite Local News, a man is heard asking Angle: "I keep hearing about Muslims wanting to take over the United States...on a TV program just last night, I saw that they are taking over a city in Michigan and the residents of the city, they want them out. They want them out. So, I want to hear your thoughts about that."

Angle responds that "we're talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe it isn't a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it."

"My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States," she said. "It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States."

Er, Dearborn again.  Poor town.  100,000 people live there and 30,000 are of Arab descent two, three, or four generations removed from the old country.  And of course half the other 70,000 want them out: there are racist dipshits everywhere.  But Sharia law governing Dearborn?  A bit of context:

See this Arab-looking dude?



He was the mayor of Dearborn but really he just owned the city from Henry Ford's death till his own.  Of course he governed with Sharia principles, Muslim terrorist and all, but he was an Italian man named Guido who went to Catholic Church and based part of his initial campaign for mayor on "the Arab problem."  I know his name was pronounced guy-do and not, uh, you know, but just wanted to point out how funny all the constant references to the Sharia that's taken root in Dearborn are when really it's been governed by principles perfectly in tune with Amurka: the mafia.

Entente Cordiale: Cory Sieg

Profiles of people I adore. The reasons for my affection are generally legitimate, but sometimes they're remarkably shallow. You'll see.

Namibia, in a nutshell:

Our closest neighbor, Krieger, we saw only behind the wheel of a speeding bakkie.  When he drove across Goas, he scattered anything in his path; boys, goats, teachers.  It happened twice a day.  Krieger on his way to and from the dorp.  Krieger's truck wings around the church, rumbling across the ruts in the sandy road, then careens across the soccer field in the middle of a game.  A fluffy-white-haired honking murderous Santa bellowing, Halloo! Halloo!

According the the principal, Kieger had a binding legal right to drive straight across the soccer field.  Once, I spoke up about it during morning meeting.  I usually kept quiet, but I felt the behavior of a white was something within my purview to comment on. 

"Seems a little dangerous," I said.

"He holds an easement," the principal said. "I've seen the document, which was duly notarized in Windhoek."

"He can't drive around the field?"

"Why should he drive around when the document gives him the right?"

"To spare life and limb?"

"Did I not say the document was duly notarized?"

One time Cory Sieg was sent on a mission by his principal to get the electricity at his school turned on.  This is quite an intimidating request to make of someone who's lived in Africa for all of a month, but Cory just up and went to town to interrupt five smoke breaks and nine naps at three different ministries only to find out the bank receipts and account numbers he had were all good and what what but they didn't have the official stamp from the Ministry of Such-and-Such.  That ministry, obviously, was closed because it was 3.30 pm on a Friday and all the hikes leave early, though it would have been closed any other time of the week because of lunch.  Cory, proficient already in Oshiwambo and fluent in Get It Done, nevertheless footed it over to Ministry Such-and-Such, broke into someone's office, and stamped his shitty little piece of paper himself.

"Ohh, the official stamp!  We will turn your lights on now now!"

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Look at Cory and those long azz gorilla arms:



All he wants to do is hug everyone.  Seriously, I'm trying to think of a nicer human being but can't, which, phew, because otherwise I'd secretly begrudge him his charmed life.  Things go sour for him like everyone else, but unlike everyone else it takes all of 15 minutes for g-d to remember, Whoops, he's not the Job I was looking to fuck with, and then he/she/it restores Cory's previous condition along with a bit extra for the trouble.  Like:

- A bit of here-and-there during childhood and homeboy lands in Some Guy's 7th grade science class.  When time came for Cory to move on again, Some Guy was like, Eh, that's stupid, just come be part of our family.  So next morning Cory wakes up with best family ever save mine but with only 10% of the dysfunction.  And then 15 years later I refer to Cory's dad as Some Guy only because he's like my best friend in Pdx or something.

- Cory intermittently sends out resumes while occasionally bitching about his boring engineering job in Pdx.  Boring engineering job lays him off just so Cory can freak out for like 11 minutes before Superstar Let's Draw, Color and Then Design Wind Farms Company asks him to bike downtown so they can hire him on the spot and pay him like twice what he was making before.

- Cory struggles with the end of a relationship that dates back to college.  He finally cuts his losses, joins me for a single beer, and six days later meets some bad ass lady whom I only call bad ass because that's kind of her name.  Then she and I go have margaritas just to talk about how awesome Cory is:



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When I first moved to Pdx I was surprised to find Cory not only had clothes but also spent quite a bit of dosh on his wardrobe, which, uh, look what he wore every single day Nam side:



Two hours after taking this photo I was in Cory's kitchen on his family's homestead.  I'd brought a pair of trousers to have mended since Cory's meme had a sewing machine or something.  She asked how my pants had gotten so ripped up and I gave her some cock and bull about a man physically stealing my girlfriend and the ensuing chase through the mahangu fields that required jumping a few barbed-wire fences.  Her response was that even half-white girls were too much trouble and that I needed an Owambo wife. 15 minutes later she was in the kitchen trying to betroth me to her domestic worker:



Perhaps if my lady friend weren't so hot, ja?

Three months before the last photo and three months minus two hours before the one previous to that, Cory and I were hiking Fish River Canyon with some other friends of ours.  The canyon starts of pretty straight but eventually begins to snake back and forth, which is when it becomes practical to wade across the river in order to keep to the inside rather than waste time along the outside bend.  The first time we were faced with this choice - wade or walk along the outer rim - we had just finished lunch followed by a short swim.  The river where we'd stopped was chest deep, so obviously 200 meters upriver it was exactly the same.  Our group was divided about our next move, so six walked on while Cory, some guy with dreads, and I stripped balls out, threw our clothes and packs on top of our heads, crossed the river the way it was meant to be crossed, and then giggled the rest of the day because the water never reached above our ankles, whoops. 



We proceeded in all our shame to the the meeting spot we'd spied from afar.  Got there before the others, obvs. 

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Point of all this: Cory wins at life.

First Person in the World to Ever Have This Thought

Korea is the traditional and modern, juxtaposed.  2:1 no one's ever gotten high and gone on about that for hours.  But since it's too late to be original I'll just mention that I have to finish a ppt for school tomorrow and was just rifling through Google for images when I noticed I live in this city: 




As well as this one:



Mostly the second one, obvs.  Need my banana milks at 3.00 am just as much as I need them during lunchee.

The Great Big Eraser in the Sky

Thunder is the sound of Jesus editing a term paper before he ever bought a Mac Book.  Things are a bit more subdued in my classroom, where today my students were doing writing exercises to practice giving advice.  One of the prompts:

My girlfriend says I'm too ugly and she wants a new boyfriend.  What do you think I should do?

Korean adolescents, so five minutes in I realized I'd forgotten to tell them 가정 폭력 is a serious problem the world over: no punching, kicking, or killing our hypothetical friend's girlfriend.  25 erasers immediately began their Christ-like revisions.

So Many Double Entendres Up in Hurr

Not much commentary here, though a bit of background: the school festival is a comin', so quite the mass of students stay after school to practice their routines till they die.  Now imagine the principal, some civic leaders, and a million parents all clapping along, tapping their feet, and wearing oblivious smiles while Gwen Stefani goes on about ooooh ooh, this my shit, this my shit.



I thought about breaking out my busted azz Korean to tell the class advisors who were also watching this, but I'm not not entirely sure what 바나나는 시트 입니다 [banana shit be] would have communicated, double entendres working on both ends here.

Like, if You're Looking for a Godfather or Something

Sometimes you become an uncle because your sisters reproduce and sometimes you become an uncle because your dearest friend from a billion years ago finally pulled the goalie.  (Hahahahaha because Nate played college hockey for gross azz Michigan State.)

Perhaps I'm looking at my very first nephew here:




When during the pregger does that thing either form or not form?   I'll know then.  Regardless, look how well suited these two already are for parenthood:



Guarantee they do 1000 times better with actual Baby S up there.