Pathetic!

Meaning my blogging..

it's been busy as I've had to catch up on all the marking that I had avoided in the first half of the semester. I've also been a very social critter with James, Gord and Scott visiting me at various points. Much blah-blah-blah about writing and just about an equal amount of drinking.

With midterms graded and returned, and next week featuring tuesday and friday off, I think I'm ok with the school thing. This weekend is a quick trip to Tokyo with the BLF (she will stay on two days after I do, for some kind of ceremony in which she gets a tattoo and has her little finger chopped off.

I'll google what that means later.

For now I have to figure out the minimum amount I can bring (including all my camera gear, since part of this trip is to take pictures for a photo-article I will be publishing next year) for a three-day, two-night trip.

see you on the flipside...

Scraps..

Some awesome things on the writing horizon at BPU2. The Mentor and I have a scheme for analysis that is both a mile wide and, so far as we can tell, previously untapped.

But, really, doesn't all that fade in the face of Rosemary Chicken with scallions and cherry tomatoes? With a Heineken on the side?

Clearly, that question was rhetorical!

Re-unification

Had an interesting talk with the Chinese and Korean students in my conversation class. These are pretty articulate and pretty smart kids, and a couple of things they said quite suprised me.

First, ALL the Chinese students thought that not only should Korea unify, but that it would. Second, the Korean students were split. Half thought there would be re-unification and the other half thought there shouldn't be.

The short explanation of this is that the Chinese kids believe in re-unification as a general notion, and are clever enough to generalize it. When I said something like "WTF you OWN North Korea, why would you give it up?" they responded with "countries should be unified." And then made an exactly parallel argument about China and Taiwan.

The Korean students, on the other hand, were split between fuzzy racialists (we are all one) and people who were afraid that the economic failure of NK would mean a re-unification would economically destroy SK.

The Chinese students found this interesting, as they identified a similar problem as the main reason that Taiwan had steered away from re-unification with China. That is, they thought Taiwan's historical aversion to China had been economic, and now that China was a tiger, this problem had gone away. Some of the Korean students were politely sceptical that this was the ONLY fear Taiwan had about Chinese rule, but I was amazed at both the depth of thought (I heard some things I hadn't considered) and their willingness to try to express it in English.

AT LONG LAST: PLANT-BLOGGING AND THE RETURN OF THE GARBAGE GODS

As I am sensitive to the requests of both of my regular readers ("Anonymous" and that other "Anonymous"), today I return to the mighty house-plant blogging endeavor. In fact, I have been so remiss in my plant blogging that I have failed to mention two new plants. The first is a Rosemary plant, one of two that the BLF and I picked up in Gwangju two weekends ago (the other is suffering a slow death in her dark apartment). This bad boy has already been trimmed for at least two chicken dinners. The second plant is some other kind of thing, which I picked up just down the street.

But that was then and this is now.

The first thing to note is that I did track down some potting soil. I memorized the word for soil and went into a little shop just up the street. It looked grim upon entry – the typical collection of lovely plants that were clearly rootbound in the little containers in which they sat. But using my piss-poor Korean and pointing, I got across to the woman what I was looking for. She moved a little screen aside, and lo and behold there were three bags of potting soil. I purchased one for 10 chun won and lugged it up to my apartment. I also asked the woman if she had any pots, but the ones she had were quite expensive clay ones.

Buoyed by my victory, I went back out onto the street to try to find some kind of ceramics store which might have something I could use for pots. No luck there, but the garbage gods did bless me with one medium-sized plastic bowl that had previously served to hold something greasy, with green flecks. I tried not to think about that as I tucked it into my backpack. I made it back to the apartment with this treasure in tow, and decided it was time for the heavy-drinking section of my day.

I stepped outside my door, took about 23 (it could have been 22) steps down the hill and, lo and behold(!), there next to some brand new garbage, was a big old black pot.

I beelined over to the thing and was ecstatic to see that it contained several more largish pots that would suit me just fine. This put off the heavy-drinking section of my day by several score minutes. I scooted back up to the pad and started dishing dirt (as I do) and pulling plants out of pots and re-potting them.

When I was done, my repotted collection was fantabulous. Also, I was coated in mud and dirt was scattered all over the floor.

Now I need to figure out where to place these plants, as well as get a few new ones. I want full-tropical up in this fugger. Full Tropical!!

When I get all that figured out, I'll be back with the most potted plant shots since Chris Hitchens went after Al Sharpton about atheism!

Artopia! Klimt in Seoul!

As we headed off to the Gustav Klimt exhibit at the Seoul Art Center, we made a terrible miscalculation. We ate at the waffle house near Noksapyeong station. After stuffing ourselves ill, neither of us wanted to head across the Han for the exhibit.

Still, Sunday in Korea does not bring tempting couch-potato fare such as the National Football League, and with little better to do, we headed off on the 6 and 3 lines, and were dumped off in some non-descript area of Seoul. The BLF (just now upgraded from OAF) immediately began freaking out that the “neighborhood map” that is a feature of each subway station, did not have the Hwarangan Museum on it. Being a bit taller than the nearly-subterranean BLF I could see the rather prominent street signs that pointed towards it. To be fair to the BLF, these were printed in rather large English, and that probably put her off track.

We walked (BLF suspiciously muttering all the time about how lost we were and how the “Koreans would slaughter us and eat our brains for anju") and as we did saw a cool overpass-slash-water-sculpture that, when we returned to, was alas off.

But we found the Klimt exhibit and bought our tickets. About 12 bucks each, US, for adults. The exhibit was a bit crowded, and had an unusually high percentage of people who didn’t really know how to queue and instead bumped around randomly and cut in front of things. In fact, in just about 1.3 years (cumulatively) in Korea, this was the first time I ever felt that expat complaint that Koreans paid no attention to who got some place first.

Oh well, it lightened up, and so did I. The exhibit was grand, particularly in the cases in which it had the planning sketches from pieces the Klimt painted. The first chamber, of course, was an obligatory attempt to tie Klimt’s art to Asian/Korean influences. It had some Asian paintings he had owned, as well as some Asian clothing. This was, I thought, good marketing, because it brought him home to the local issue.

Anyway, after that we wandered through the chambers and goggled. It was a bit dark in some places, in consideration of the age of the art I’m certain. But it was grand.

There were some great sketches leading to development of posters – in some ways Klimt prefigured computer typography and the Adobe Ilustrator program. Of course he also blew by those limited things in every conceivable way – his skill was that he could toss in those approaches, photo-realism, negative space, negative space defined by detritus, toss out brush strokes, and still end up with something mesmerizing. The room of pencil sketches of naked women was funny for more that one reason. Klimt drew some pretty graphic sketches of naked women, at least as graphic as you could get before the razor blade and Brazilian Wax. But no matter how obscene the picture (and at least two were graphic depictions of masturbating women), he gave them those great antisceptic “painterly” titles: “Reclining Nude #1 With Legs Parted.” Then there were the ajumma and ajeoshi, who had brought their kids to the exhibit to introduce the kids to culture. That was all good in the more tasteful rooms, but the haste with which kids where whisked through this room was epic.

And it had a totally cool “electronic poster/panel” section that showed various works that were not present, but gave context or meaning to pieces that were there. Another excellent panel combination compared works of Klimt to fashion that had trod the runaways in 2006/7. A really brilliant thing to see. This also contained digitized pictures of his friends and family, including a very spooky (we think) death mask of Klimt himself.

Then it was off to the “total artwork” section. Klimt and some of his fellow “secessionists” wanted art to extend beyond gilt frames and embrace entire environments. So they designed rooms and buildings that were entirely coordinated: A kind of proto-quieer-eye-for-the-straight-guy thing. The accompanying text related a (probably apocryphal) story of one of the “total art’ dudes opening a fashion line because people were walking into his “art” space in clothing that clashed.

A few final paintings, and we were out for the day, after I took a photo for the BLF’s brother (the bear one, obviously!). That was pretty funny in itself. Korean couples were running all over these rooms taking pictures, but they were using the art as a background. I took a shot of the bear shitting in the woods(?) and security was on me in a trice. Either you have to be taking a picture of a girl flashing two peace signs (in front of anything you want), or you need to be Korean. Outside of that. “No pictures please, sir!” LOLcatz..

BLF wanted to walk more, so we headed up the hill behind the museum and found a nice little Buddhist enclave which was gearing up for this weekend’s celebration of the man/god/extinguished. Thus there were lanterns hung everywhere. Here, we saw something amusing, this display which indicated what, if you took a particular trail, you could eat afterwards without fear of caloric impact.

Then it was down the hill backwards, to the plaza outside the Opera House. There was an Opera that night, so the sharply dressed intelligentsia were queuing up like sheeples from their glossy cars. In the plaza, there was a water-display timed to various snippets of opera. It was cool.

We wandered about for a bit, found a place that served semi-German beer, and chilled for the time it took to have two beers (me) and two cokes (BLF). Then it was off to the subway and our divergent trips home.

I think you should ALL fly over to Seoul and see this exhibit. I have a spare room with a bed, and the round trip is less than 1,000 US. You Americans lose at least that much each day on your plummeting stock market!

Heck, you get a view of Namsan Tower each night and at least one sam gyap sal dinner for free.

You parochial bastids won't come!

Unecessarily Graphic?

It isn't Just Fan Death that can kill you around these parts, mister!

I have to hat-tip the BKF for giving me a clue of this. We were walking to dinner during his visit (a time I already refer to, with just a hint of woe on my otherwise noble countenance, as "the good old days") and he started laughing. I asked why and he gestured back over his shoulder, "There's a sign back there that threatens to kill litterers."

In the interim I have learned the word for garbage, and so today as I walked past the store I could read some of that white sign scratched in the concrete. It says, "If you litter around here, I'll kill you!" (that is kind of translated from the literal)

New Words are -
걸리면 = When caught
버리다 = throw away
죽는다 = dies

and I think(?) that the verbs are all in the root form to make it simple for foreigners to understand? The BKF can clue me in on that, I'm sure.

UPDATE - The only other thing I can easily read there is the advert for cigarettes, not only because it is ubiquitous here, but always looks the same - white circle, red letters, blue background. Now THAT is marketing!

The Hills Are Alive....

Walking up the hill behind BPU2 to get to Namsan Park I first come across this little shrine, tucked between two horizontal trails across the hill. Around it you can see the kind of springing that is going on.


Those once ochre and dull-green hills have asploded with color - in fact much of the cherry-blossom color has already fallen off of the trees. As you walk through, the wind brings down gusts of blossoms, like velvet flakes of snow.



Finally, a close-up of the 무궁화 bushes reveals that they are finally starting to come back from their savage pruning. Good, since I think it will mean a second efflorescence on the hill.

I'm all for it.

How Simple Am I (Pavlov's Translations)?

The editing came through tonight. I was thoroughly excited to get the email and see the two attachments. My feeling was like a jackrabbit in that classic HST thing (for you slow ones, I'm the jackrabbit):

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now and then... No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front tires."

And we all know how that kind of game ends. Road Hassenfeffer. Still, I was excited. And then thrilled when I saw it was actually an achievable edit, not 100 pages of total gibberish due tomorrow morning before I could even go to sleep tonight

Dear Imaginary Lord - do not take this thrill from me or I will take a fistful of Xanax and try to swim to Japan. I could be the first waeguk to make it!

Taking an assignment and "running" with it

The cute kids in my communications class do an advertisement. Just for BAX, I think they are calling the drink "Super Eight!"

Enough Said

The Klimt exhibit in Korea (which OAF and I shall see next weekend) occasioned this quote from Teit Ritzau the Austrian art organizer in charge of the exhibition.

Private lenders from countries including America and Germany made the exhibition complete but it was difficult to convince them to contribute their collections,” he said.

“Korea had not much to offer them back.

But of course Korea does (eg Celadon and painting, often decorative ) have much to offer back.

Which no one knows the first thing about, due to Korea's failure to spread knowledge about Korean culture.

It's the same old problem.
Korea might never be China in the international imagination, but could it please step up and be Korea?