Now We're Showing Those Damned Commies!

Because we're not selling them Ipods.

How much more stupid can this get?

Oh.. it won't work..

Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants.

Rock Rolls the 7-11

I was going to go to sleep but I must report a classic moment at the 7-11. I go over there to purchase some certain legal items that I can, by means of chemistry, turn into something like diet items (Oh, you all know!) and the nice Persian dude behind the counter looks at my shirt and says, "those are some pretty girls."

You see the freaking picture from my shirt and it's the New York Dolls 20 years AFTER they could try to carry off the 'dressing like chicks' thing.

I don't guess the guy is Muslim, but if he is, he won't be too picky about his virgins in heaven.

Good god.. the 60 year old Dolls!

Compressed Courses and Laggardly Instructors

So, at "Just Barely Accredited Online Master's Program" the cram our courses into gnarly little indigestible 4-week modules. As I've noted elsewhere, this leaves very little room for learning moments and many instructors don't even try. If I hadn't been a voracious reader and had my experience writing a couple of MAs for money I would be totally lost. But I understand what I have to do and understand the compressed schedule.. it is 16-18 weeks (depending on semester length) crammed into 4.

Which brings me to my complaint about the professors.. if they don't get me back my grades within a week isn't that like a 4-week wait after a 'normal' class? I work at a CC in California and if grades aren't turned in within one week of the end of the semester it's a cause for major trauma. This would work out to be about 1.75 days in the compressed semester (that might be wrong, there's a reason my degree won't be in maths!). Went I went to Big Important State University, they had assignments back within two weeks.

Shouldn't the evil profs have to live to some kind of standard?

Whaaaaaah! I want my "A!"

/whine

It Might Be a Guy Thing?

Or it could just be me..

But just now means that I haven't had a shower in 106 hours...
And I like it... my hair is a sculptural statement on beauty and age...
I've also been wearing the same T-shirt for almost 100 hours
I just did shave for the first time in those 106 hours, since trying to shave that much beard off early on a Monday morning usually means a nasty cut or a patch that is missed.
But all in all...?
I don't miss the shower at all.

Working my way to the trailer park!

Education is Evil and the Maths Support It

Knowledge = Power¹

Power = Corruption²

ergo

Study Hard and Become Evil!
(Hey, it works for lawyers)

-------------------------------------------------------

¹ "Knowledge is Power"
Sir Francis Bacon

² "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Lord Acton

Holiday in the Sun

Turkey Day came fresh and bright, which was a nice thing after the rain-squalls of the previous night. The lovely BAG had been poking around in the little envelope in which our cabin key had been packed and, lo and behold, she pulled out two squares of paper. Each piece was a free breakfast at the restaurant at the campsite and so our question of where we would be having breakfast was solved.If the woman who checked us in had mentioned this little bonanza, neither of us had heard her do so and that made this a lovely surprise.

I drank the wine that I hadn't spilled the previous night (yeah, I know, complete wino move) sent the first post from yesterday off and we got our stuff together to go out a-beachin!

That picture over on the left is the carefree BAG heading down the hill from our cold cabin. You can see it was pretty darned nice. If by nice you mean puny and windswept. But, you know - nice.

The thing over there on the right is the Eye of Sauron from the lovely semi-sculpture, semi-garden place between the restaurant and the store of the campsite.

Breakfast was good and we headed on out.

The f irst beach, which the BAG INSISTED we visit, turns out upon internet research, to be a nude beach. This would explain the old fat guy walking around nude. It still doesn't quite explain why the BAG enjoyed it so much. Unlike the last time we stumbled (well, me anyway) across a nude beach, I couldn't get the classic pic of the guy washing his hands in the creek. Those proto-Neanderthal shots are the bomb!

Anyway, the second beach was very nice as well, as the pic to the right should hint at. At about 2 it started to get extremely windy and cold, so we headed up the highway towards a road along a creek that had been recommended by the campsite hosts. It was incredibly boring and the road ended abruptly, which we took as a sign to head back to the campsite.

By this time we were a bit hungry but since we had reservations for a complete Thanksgiving dinner we didn't want to eat much. So we grabbed some cheese and pemmican (can't escape from the BAGs essential Cheyennese nature!) and headed back to the cabin to eat.

We opened the pemmican and it was wondrous "State Miracle Pemmican!" The first piece I pulled out is over there on the left - an exact representation of the state of California (with the lines of fat which laced the meat exactly describing our internal waterways and freeway system). It was a complete miracle and I celebrated it by scarfing the stuff right down.

About 30 seconds later the BAG pulled out a piece and started laughing.

She had pulled Montana.

Later, I caught her chewing on yet another piece of the meat in a vain effort to turn it into something resembling Texas.

But the first two were legit, and if this ever happens again I believe the BAG will have a strong argument for three different miracles and thus an induction into the ranks of saints in the Catholic Church.

The lord moves in mysterious ways.

After this it was all just waiting for dinner, which was quite satisfactory and one thing about getting a plate at a restaurant is that it interferes with gluttony. This is a good thing. Dinner didn't start until 7:45 and by the time we got back to the cabin it was time to get under the covers, fire up the matress heater and cling together ("cuddle" as the BAG insists on referring to it) for heat.

Not quite a Thanksgiving like the epic one in Death Valley, but better than staying at home and watching football games.

HAPPY BIRD-EATING DAY! (Featuring hot, bird-on-bird action!)

Amusingly, when the BAG and I arrived at the first beach (mis-named "Bonny Doon," at least for one of the seagulls in the picture) we came across this lovely Thanksgiving tableaux.

And we wish the same to you and alla yours!

;-)

Holiday in Camp Odious

So, like, right after I got off the intarwebs last night I did a very unclever thing. I had purchased a lovely bottle of wine but had neglected to bring a cup. The lovely BAG opined that I should just drink from the bottle, but not wanting to live out her memories of reservation life (and mindful that one of my front teeth is still glued in some 15 years after the glue should have failed) I decided not to swing a big old bottle of wine around and instead found an old Arrowhead water bottle that was in the lesSUV. I filled it and it looked something like the picture you see over there to the left. And it worked well for 23 seconds.

It's failure is represented in the picture to the right.

Which is the upper right corner of our bed. And, unfortunately, where my laptop had been sitting at the time of the spill.

I swiped the laptop away in a hurry and asked the BAG to get the big pillow - I turned the computer so that the keyboard was upside down and parrallel to the ground. Fortunately my speed, and gravity, were my allies, and despite the fact that I had pretty seriously splattered the keyboard, everything works.

Except the BAGs brain, since about 5 minutes later she asked me, in apparent seriousness, if my computer had "fried yet."

It's at moments like this I understand that battering can conceivably have a decent reason.....

yeesh. as the BAG would say.

In any case, I am far to ghey to beat a woman, so we cleaned up the best we could and then slid into the bed. The bed is heated which is a good thing. The "cabin" is canvas and it is really freaking cold. The bathroom is close, but outside, and for some reason when we got here the windows were uncovered. As the bed warmed up we felt better (the smell of wine that permeated the beddings helped reassure me) and when the rain squalls came we congratulated ourselves on not having gone camping, and turned over in our very warm bed.

The rest was sleep.

JC Auto: Born on a Holiday

Off on a holiday. Got started a little late as I had to attend the Associated Students Meeting at Swamp Valley College. The AS sat around for a half hour bemoaning the fact that they didn't have a quorum (50% of all members plus one), which was (a key word here)15 members. Only 10 members were present. After that half hour someone said, "it sure is hard to get 15 members with all the members who are no longer part of the AS because we've suspended them for not coming to meetings."

About two of us got this immediately - if you're waiting for suspended members to be part of a quorum for a number of members that includes suspended members?

Let's just say you can suspend my member anytime you want.

So the chair gathered up all the name tags and started tossing out suspended ones until she had only the missing members who weren't suspended. Eight. Which means the total number of valid members was 18 and there had been a quorum from the start.

43 minutes after scheduled time, the meeting started. My report is early and was brief and I snuck out shortly thereafter.

Picked up the POSSLQ and literally shot over the windiest highway out of Hometown USA. No traffic at all, which is quite odd for a Thanksgiving eve, though the newsradio was reporting trouble getting to ski and gambling destinations.

We also shot up the prettiest coastline in the world and I stopped to take that orange picture (the one without the booze in it).

Unfortunately it took me a while to find a place to pull off the road, and by the time I did it was a bit dark for an ideal photo in a handheld camera type environment thingie.

So that is what you get.

The BAG was so impressed by all this natural splendor (She is one of the dirt-people, you know!) that she spent the entire time

I was trying to find a vantage place for my photo, sitting the lesSUV minutely inspecting the dust on my dashboard.

Like she hadn't seen that a million times before.

I tried to snap a candid shot, but with the self-reflexive narcissism of the truly inspired self-centered, she has a weird radar for cameras and wheeled around and gave me her biggest possible grimace.

That's gonna be some skull when it's up on someone's fireplace mantle.

We stopped off to get a flashlight and some batteries and decided to eat at the Mexican place next to the store. Unfortunately, no one had informed the BAG that Mexican food might include such oddities as burritos, chimichangas, or tacos.

One look at the menu and she wheeled about, out the door and to the completely closed coffee shop next door.

After I explained what the upside down chairs on tables, and turned off lights meant, we hopped back in the lesSUV and headed towards are campsite.

With the native tracking skills of the BAG and my superior intellect and map reading ability, we shot right past the entry to our little campground.

Good enough news as the next turnaround had a lovely little restaurant at which we ate dinner. I had a turkey sandwich and the BAG ordered that traditional Mexican dish, the calimari sandwich, with potatot chips from a bag. You could practically hear the mariachis play!

I was amused because the drink menu included the unusual, "soju saki cocktail" which sounded like just the thing that might be peace to even the warring Japanese and Koreans surrounding Dokdo (look it up, I know you don't know).

Just so I could say I did, I had the Soju Sea Breeze (something like it anyway, neither the waitress nor I knew the ingredients for the thing and when I took a picture of it, the lovely BAG added a traditional Korean gesture to the whole thing - the pointless peace sign in the background.

She could be a finger model, if it weren't for that whole twisted little finger thingy.

We paid (that is to say I did) and headed back to our lovely lodge, which is nestled in the headlands below the foothills (I'm confused) above the ocean. The place is spartan, but we saw several deer, and the mattress is heated, so we will alternately be cooking (me when the BAG has the thing turned on) and freezing (The BAG when I surreptitiously turn it off) and there will be no sleep all night as we fight over control of this.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, or something.

There is only one outlet in the place, and it serves the lights and the mattress-heater (and I know better than to unplug that) and so I will flail this up to the web, and if the battery on the laptop holds up, take a few more pics from this evening and post them in a bit.

If not, I will simply fight with the BAG.

PAPERS AS THEY SHOULD BE WROTE (Day Three)

So when you take a day off from work to write your paper, is it wrong to find yourself, at 10:42 in the morning, drinking that beer you didn't have last night? And listening to Nick Lowe and the New York Dolls?

What if you are in bed and, if you consider a t-shirt and underpants a matched pair, you aren't very matched at all?

Is it a mitigating circumstance that the weather in Hometown USA is depressing and gray?

Probably not... so I have done a bit of work on the paper... I am up to 1,000 words or so although two paragraphs are still almost complete plagiarism and some vestigial memory reminds me that this is a "very bad thing!" Before I left work last night I printed out my clipped notes, almost 30 pages of them, so when I do get revved up it should be a very short and disorganized wade through a bunch of silly crap to get the other 2k words written.

Anyway, with plagiarism in italics, here is the critter as she exists..

In Kim Yong Ik’s, "They Won't Crack It Open," readers find a brilliant but rather surprising and subtle examination of the destructive effects of racial essentialism. Kim takes a multicultural lens and by inverting it tells a deeply personal, but at the same time generally applicable tale of how racial essentialism can destroy individuals. Part of the literary beauty of this piece is that it takes a path usually not taken and, when arriving at the common destination, more clearly limns the difficulties of arriving there.

Part of the subtlety is that Kim is writing about racial (social really) essentialism in the United States that has nothing to do with racism or foreigners and little to do with immigrants. Kim uses a kind of reverse etching to sharply outline the effect that dominant culture essentialism has on its less successful members.

To simplify Dyson, essentialism is based upon the philosophical claim that any particular racial entity can be, at least theoretically, defined by a finite list of criteria which must all be present in order for an entity to belong to that race or ethnicity.

Some Philosophical Conclusions from Essentialism
The essentialist claim that only people within a group can understand the group leads us to the good old “slippery slope” argument (one of my favorite straw men) If I can't be a feminist because I haven't had the experiences of a woman, then we might say that an American feminist can't really be a feminist because she hasn't experienced the sort of oppression of women that, say, a woman from China has (or vice versa! The Chinese feminist can't be a real feminist because she hasn't experienced the sort of oppression that American woman have!). The point here is that if different experiences are seen as dividing lines, then there have to be good reasons to draw those lines one place (between male and female feminists) and not others (between American feminists and Chinese feminists). So far I haven't been shown any good reasons for doing so.

Essentialism is also divisive by nature (it has a black and white, or, in or out nature), and by implication this divisiveness is permanent and can’t be overcome. That seems wrong to me--I don't see feminism, for instance, as inherently female--historically its ideas came from the reaction of women to their own oppression, but reacting to oppression isn't 'female'.

It may be a function of a multicultural environment today and not a clever stratagem by Kim, but the title is a lovely mis-signifier as it seems to be considering the United States from the perspective of a visitor or immigrant who can’t get in. Yet, like the coconut that will never be cracked, the title signifies the “inner” circle that unfortunate citizens of the United States can never achieve.

It is worth admitting that Dick and his mother aren’t completely insiders. They are immigrants to the United States as well. Dick’s mother is clearly an immigrant ( 52) and Dick’s birthplace is never explicitly mentioned, although it is likely

Mom’s blindness!

Brilliant description of the distance of proximity, “When he was away, he was so good to me, writing to me every week. Now at home he never talks to me and gets cross with me easy.” (52)

Dick’s largesse to the Korean children is stolen. When, just prior to leaving Korean he brings blankets and food to the blind children, it is the fruit of larceny, “Later an army investigator had come a few times inquiring about some missing army goods.” (53) Dick can only live out the “Greatest Show on Earth” when he is divorced from it and even then he must steal from it’s fringe traveling show.

“The Greatest Show on Earth” is clearly a metaphor for the United States and when Kim gets here and it is clear that it shuts down for the season, that it’s geography is limited, and that not all are invited to see it, he metaphorically sees that it is only a vision, not a reality.

The blind Korean kids are at least two kinds of metaphors
1) The third world looking on, uncomprehending
2) Uncorrupted innocence

The fact they will never crack the coconut (and what another lovely symbol!) may mean that they will never taste the liquor within, but also that they will never be disappointed by contents they might not understand

Kim cleverly contrasts and compares the experience of Dick’s mothers to Korea. By doing this, Kim orientalizes (in the sense Edward Said would use the word) the lifestyle of poor white United States Citizens.

Kim typically wrote stories, although in English and for and English audience, of Korea. "They Won't Crack It Open” is a fairly substantial departure from this ouvre.

The intro is brilliant once you finish the story and as you read it you wonder how much is intentional and how much is (THAT WORD FOR EXTRA LUCKY). As you go on and experience the clever imagery and subtle wordplay that Kim uses throughout, you realize it is primarily intentional

Compare to frozen hands story for the pain coming from “within” the culture. Dick is essentially killed by the expectation of his own culture. Kim brilliantly models this as his cab driver takes the narrator from the airport through the steps of decline. (INSERT THE DRIVE)