LOL-Tiggerz!

1) Yesterday as I strolled about Hongdae and Shinchon taking pictures I had no card in my camera!

2) All dressed up, suit, tie and lesson-plans in hand I catch a cab to work today to discover..
Classes begin tomorrow!

The good news? Tuesday is my day off each week.

Half a week of the semester already under my belt!

Somehow, total nutbags still have my address...

2009 Sep 9th - Wed at 6:00 PM
MICHAEL E. SALLA, Ph.D.: The Science, Spirituality, and Politics of Extraterrestrial Civilizations.
Potluck dinner followed with a presentation by one of our most outspoken scientists exposing the still existing Cold War cover up of our contact with extraterrestrial civilizations and the opportunities presented by our new transparency policies.
Location: Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) - 101 San Antonio Rd. - Petaluma, CA 94955
www.exopolitics.org

Ah, really, could you fuckers just die?

I got some "noetics" for you and it all focuses on the first two letters, you lame fucks.

Christ.. 27% of the US is farking birther/neo-con/president-is-foreigner idiots..

then you have to add these wingnuts to the overall percentage of negative contributors to the gene pool.

How did humans ever get past the third generation>

Somehow, total nutbags still have my address...

Moments of Historical Infamy

Seven, August, 1965...

I am just beginning to develop into the handsome devil that I am today

BUT

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is knocked out of first place on the US Singles Chart by "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am" from Herman's Hermits.

Did we then have, at last, no shame?

Good news; Bad news

Google News loves me!



MSM, on the other hand?

Best Neil Young Song EVAR!

Crazy obsessive lyrics, killer riff, insanely fractured pyrotechnic guitargasms in the solos

No discussion will be brooked...

Look, I'm a Scar!

Click on it and you'll see a version that is still only .66 the size the page was.

The Grind Down to the Grind (and some good news)

Been a long time since I posted here as I have been working on projects, small and large.

I've been editing like a madman on various pieces that just keep flying in on the mojo-wire.

Still getting my classes for Fall together. I refuse to go through the kind of chaos that last semester was. While my evaluations rose steadily, I'm still an egotistic little shit who wants to be at the top of the list, and I wasn't. It hurt my little ego.

Finally I've been working on the whole lit-deal, such as it is, over at Morningcalm.

The good news being that a semi-big article I wrote about translated Korean lit is just now published on the Sat-Sun Korea Herald (you can see it here - I am also the skilled photographer who didn't notice his own fat shadow on the pavement!).

I saw an article on Korean Lit in the Herald last Sunday and was kind of surprised, since the Herald is an English newspaper, that it only talked about works in Korean. On reflection this was not too surprising, since I bet many English-savvy Koreans pick up the English-newspapers to keep in practice. Still, on Monday I sat me down and slapped out about 1K words on good Korean Lit in translation. Gave it a once-over on Tuesday morning and it went skidding back out over the mojo-wire.

Wednesday I got a response that they wanted to publish on Saturday, but needed something graphic. The scan I sent of some of my body-parts was deemed too graphic in one sense, and not impressive enough in another. So I grabbed all the books and scanned the covers (which is what had been the graphic interest in the piece I first saw to start all this). But in the text of the article I named a couple of bookstores and in my email I said pictures were available.

Which is how I ended up out in the rain on Thursday afternoon, taking pictures and eventually meeting a lovely Canadian couple who I went out with for beers..

LOL.. all good... I got another publication for not much work and it's on the lit-tip...

And today was drop-dead gorgeous in Seoul - not so humid, a bit windy, even a hint of cool. Graduation day between terms so happy kids and parents running around between the colored parasols of flower-sellers; determined ajummas twisting roses and wrappings into photographs.

Nice-uh!

Lolcatz on Y E Yang

From a generally shitty poem (obviously and admittedly based on "The Mighty Casy") over at ESPN comes this last verse on the occasion of Yang beating Tiger..

Oh, somewhere in South Korea the sun is shining bright,
A band is playing somewhere, and there the hearts are light,
And in Seoul the men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there was no joy for Tiger as he meekly putted out.

Interruptus....

MAF sends the quote:

"if your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."
- henry j. kaiser

and in her understated internet way asks the related question:

nice, eh?

yeah.. but really.. isn't that the "bitch question?"

everything interrupts and we have become a less interruption averse culture as shit like the telephone, intarwebs (as a social tool), and advertising have started fracturing everything.

Every once in a while I have this fantasy. It involves no people, because people are the interruptus.

In it I am transported to some kind of cabin (all the mod cons, of course) and stranded there. All I can do is read and write.

In some versions of this fantasy I have no coffee or booze, in others I have ample supplies of both.

But the main point is there is NO interruption unless an eagle dive-bombs the pad.

The fantasy ends there, of course, because I would have to then imagine doing something creative, and that is beyond the pale, suspension of disbelief, or even reality. ;-)

Best Punk Lyrics by non-Punk Band. Duh...TOOL!

Fuck L Ron Hubbard and / Fuck all his clones.
Fuck all these gun-toting / Hip gangster wannabes.

Learn to swim.

Fuck retro anything/ Fuck your tattoos.
Fuck all you junkies and Fuck your short memory.

Learn to swim.

Fuck smiley glad-hands / With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional / Insecure actresses.

Learn to swim.

Cuz I'm praying for rain / And I'm praying for tidal waves / I wanna see the ground give way.

right here, baby!

From Japan (Via Joe Seoulman)

Ah CRAP!

I forgot to say...

click here...

Letter of Application

Dear Hussein Obama,

I write this letter to express my interest in a position on one of the “Death Panels” that your proposed health-care program will institute. As a long-term employee of the Democratic National Committee I am acutely aware of the fact that many so-called “citizens” of the United States would do themselves, and our great country, a favor by going away (I am thinking, particularly, of free-market economists, AIG executives, anyone associate with Goldman Sachs, successful small businessmen fighting the taxman, and the three home-schooled girls in America who didn’t get pregnant in their first semester of community college!). As these selfish conservatives, many of them drug addicts, liars, and/or perverts who use falafels to satisfy their bizarre sexual urges (and that’s just O’Reilly and Rush), will not kill themselves, I believe it is necessary for the government to kill them.

And it will save money.

Toss in a handful of religious figures and we will also lower the child-molestation rate in this fine country.

My fiancee, although not a man (I am ashamed to admit I am not gay) is a fan of WWII literature and particularly that focusing on the holocaust, and I think that her study of Germany's WWII liberal, permissive, socialist, and pot-smoking regime will be of use to me should I attain a position on the Death Panel.

Although I am white and aging myself, I am no fan of the elderly, crippled, or Republicans. I think it is this overall attitude that makes me entirely suited to be on one of the Death Panels. Every pet I have ever had has died. Not all as young as I might have hoped, but I think in all cases it is fair to say that I hastened their demise. Also, my father died when I was thirteen. I am humiliated to admit that my mother seems likely to live to age 100, but if I am appointed to one of your death squads I will be certain to ensure that she is one of the first to stand, then slump, then collapse, before the bullet-pocked brick wall which represents victory!

Sincerely,

Charles Montgomery
Cold Blooded Killer and Fan of Universal Health Care

PS: Dear Hussein, please support my linkwhoring by clicking over to my other blog, which is currently in some kind of Korean (South!) contest.

Korea Journal

Good news on the lit-front.. Looks like I will be reviewing two books for the Korea Journal

Toy City: Lee Dong-Ha, tr.Chi-Young Kim, (St. Paul)
Who Ate Up All the Shinga?: Park Wan-suh, tr. Yu Young-Nan and Stephen Epstein, (Columbia)

Which will be good for the CV, among other things....


Slightly more detail here at Morningcalm..

Sweeter Than Honey!

Just back from being a panel discussant and presenter at ICAS 6 in Daejeon. 

It was a pretty good gig other than the fact that our presentation was at 8:30 AM on a Sunday, so virtually no one attended.  I got to hang with James from The Grand Narrative and meet Gomushin Girl as well as (the other) Charles from Liminality.

But the best part?

Getting back and realizing that I hadn't had time to do my Friday "Get Fuzzy" and "Comics Curmudgeon" rounds. And, hell yeah it has to be done in that order!

Aaah... sweet, sweet home!

In Which Yvonne is Pictured Eating...

We took the Mugugnwha to Chuncheon. I always prefer the train to the bus, because Korean intercity buses do not have bathrooms and that can be a bit inconvenient. The trip is two hours and quickly moves out of Seoul and into much more beautiful territory. We arrived at Namchuncheon Station at about 1:00 and set about to buy a return ticket.

All seats for Sunday were already taken! So we purchased two standing tickets and headed downtown to find a yeogwan. This was easily accomplished and the next task was to find food, which was surprisingly difficult and Yvonne even contemplated eating something from a street vendor. Instead we kept walking back towards the train station which I knew was closer to our first tourist destination.

Eventually we found a small restaurant with pictures on the walls and Yvonne pointed to one and ordered it. This turned out to be, when I looked at it more closely, Galbijim which is a delicious soup of beef ribs. The nice ajummah made it not so spicy for Yvonne, and we scarfed it down with rice and beverages.

Then it was off to the Kim Yu-jeong memorial museum. Here I managed to NOT take a bunch of film clips to use on my other site. Instead I filmed the walk up TO the museum and the beer afterwards. I R-tarded!

Then it was off to the bus stop and we miraculously caught a bus that was heading somewhat in the direction of the Chuncheon Museum, which Yvonne wanted to see. At a certain point we saw a traffic sign saying that the Museum was 2 kilometers to the right. The bus kept going straight, so we got off and walked towards the museum. Yvonne got all confused about where we were going and started badgering random-passersby, I just kept walking because, well, those convenient signs that Chuncheon had put up kept telling me which direction to go. ;-)


Eventually we got there, and Yvonne took a quick spin around the museum (it was just before closing). Then it was off to the hotel and I had to do a quick editing job for Ewha University while Yvonne went off on an epic, and unsuccessful journey to find the bookstore in Chuncheon.

Next morning we headed out at about 11 and immediately set off in the wrong direction. ;-) We wanted to go to find a ferry (story of my life) to an island that supposedly featured camping. We wanted to check it out, plus taking a ferry is always cool, and it supposedly had good hiking and biking trails. Our hotelier said that the island (and surrounding Chuncheon) was “like Vancouver.” I consider all Canadians to be transplanted Frenchmen, I don’t care about them or their silly surrender-cities, and I have no idea what our host meant by his comparison.

But we set out, and once again on a path with absolutely no places to eat. I should note that a remarkable number of places in Chuncheon were closed or out of business. Yvonne was demented with hunger and as we passed the “Medizone” a store that sells medical appliances, she looked inside and said, ‘there’s a good-looking restaurant.” Not wanting a delicious lunch of catheters and replacement limbs, I insisted we keep walking

We wandered down to the river, the Ethiopian Korean War Shrine (yah, really), and then beyond.

Yvonne was boinking out again about where we were, but this boinkology was assuaged by some Galbi-Tang that included the biggest freaking ribs in the history of mankind.

We ate, then headed back towards the river. Yvonne gave in and asked directions. They were pretty much the same as what the map had told me, but she felt better, and we walked along to lake up to the ferry. Along this path I took some of the bug pictures you see here, including that one to the left which shows some kind of unfortunate food-chain-type-thing happening to a bee.

We took the ferry and then started to walk toward the resort. A truck driver who had been on the ferry offered us a ride, but in my best fractured Korean I told him we were happy to walk. He accepted this and then rode off.

Only to stop about 100 meters later.

Excellent dude got out of the truck and, mainly in pantomime, indicated to us we should not walk on the dirt road and that if we went about 20 meters to the left we would find a bike/walk path. You hear a lot of shit, and some of it deserved, about Korean neo-confucian lack of concern for others, but it seems that the further you get from industrial hubs, the more this attitude fades away.

The island is beautiful and we have a place to camp, come fall. We wandered around a bit, sat in front of the market and had a drink, and then slowly walked back to the ferry.

As I was taking pictures of bugs, we missed one ferry. As we sat there waiting for the next one, we took a short stroll and found this unfortunate poodle in a cage. The pic isn’t close enough, but the cage bottom is clotted with dog-crap and fur. Underneath the cage it is a bit worse. Koreans routinely treat dogs in ways that wouldn’t fly in the US, but I should say that this dog was quite healthy and only barked, in a woeful looping way, when we walked away after petting it through the mesh of its cage.

The ferry was quite unsafe by US standards – they never picked up the gate – but I felt no qualms as I watched the pilot work. It reminded me of my days in Louisiana on the boat “The Second One” (perhaps I should not have been sanguine there, as the “First One” had sunk). The pilot could “walk” the boat and pinned it against the dock without need of any rope. Nice-uh. It cost 3-chun for a round trip. Add all the shit you’d have needed in the US and we would have paid a bit more. I guess it’s all a balancing act.

Then it was back to Chuncheon for Dak-Galbi, the “dish” of Chuncheon. Yvonne and I will be going back to Chuncheon, so I will save photos of that for later. Suffice it to say it was like womy…. Er.. it was hot, plentiful and cheap.

Another night waiting for my second edit job… ho hum..

In the morning we took a cab ride to the Kim Yu-seong memorial which is about 5 kilometers (I’m guessing) from the museum. Then, as the hotelier had told us we could walk from that point, we got on a crazy long and hot walk to the waterfalls.

Yvonne had another one of her moments – that girl needs a GPS/Satellite Camera/Vibrator installed in her bad self so that she can stay calm!

But we got to falls and they were just as beautiful as advertised. They were also in a narrow canyon of damp stone walls, so it was about 20 degrees cooler. Nice-uh!

On the way out we had some food and then footed it another mile or so to the next train station. There we got to see why the train was full when we had tried to book on the previous Friday. Ganyeong is some kind of Tommy’s Holiday Camp for Koreans, or at least it leads to one. After our long death march in the sun, we got to the train station and it was already chock full of Korean kids. I was in search of a PC Bang so that I could get the files that I needed to edit, so Yvonne headed to a café, and I headed downtown, which was overrun by kids and stuffed with cars trying to escape.

It was a bit of a zoo. The PC Bang was completely full, so I couldn’t download my files to edit.

No big deal. I met Yvonne back at the Café and we had a drink, then caught the train.

Our tickets were standing, but there were empty seats, which we grabbed.

The empty seats held up for about an hour, and then the older folks who had them got
on the train and we went to the space between cars. It is hotter, but you can sit down there.

Then it was home. Yvonne had to head to Daejeon and I had to head home to edit 20 pages of (brilliantly) translated text.

Chuncheon is beautiful, the people are friendly, and nature is right up in your grill.

I’m going back. ;-)

I will not, however, take the bold step that Yvonne took when she ate the “pizza-cone” fresh out of the microwave!

Back from Chucheon..

And had two editing jobs on the "vacation."

Got one done, working on the other.

Chuncheon was farking gorgeous..

It is surrounded by mountains...

It has many lakes flowing into rivers.

'We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.' (Chapter 11 of Lao-tzu's Tao te Ching)

For now though.. I have to finish the second editing job....

Pics to follow..