Caveat: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language

I'm not a conlanger (q.v.). If I were a conlanger, however, Ithkuil would be the sort of thing I would conlangify, perhaps. Which is probably why it's good I'm not a conlanger – the last thing this world really actaully needs is more Ithkuils. There's something nevertheless appealing about the idea of perceiving a language as an almost purely aesthetic object – I do tend to look at Korean that way, on the days when I'm feeling more positive about it.

I have managed to catch a cold. Again. Not really bad or debilitating, but annoying. I guess that's what winter life is about when spending 6+ hours a day cooped up with groups of children. I slept a lot earlier today, instead of going to the bookstore as I'd well and truly planned to do. I guess I just need to accept that when I have one-day weekends, I'm not going to get anything "done." Next weekend is 설날 (lunar new year) – and I have nothing planned. The city will be shut down, and the idea of travelling anywhere in the country is utterly inconceivable (because for the vast majority it becomes obligatory to travel on that holiday), but maybe I can at least do some "urban hiking" or something.

Caveat: Ledger Art

The native peoples of the Great Plains – the Kiowa, Arapaho, Lakota and Cheyenne – had an elaborate art tradition involving pictorial drawing on animal skins, which they used to record stories and information about the natural world around them. As their contact with Europeans increased in the 1800s, they discovered that "ledger books" and Western drawing materials (crayons, colored pencils, etc.) worked well for this task too, and today there are fascinating troves of "ledger-art" from the 1800s. Most of these drawings are anonymous, but they offer a wonderful window into the pre-European imaginative life on the Great Plains.

There's a website that hosts some of these images. I find them really fascinating.

[broken link! FIXME] Plainsart_html_2209c942

[broken link! FIXME] Plainsart_html_m6b1c728c

[broken link! FIXME] Plainsart_html_21372e33

Caveat: the January afternoon

(Poem #5 on new numbering scheme)

the sound of the wind
in winter
in the frozen leaves of the frozen trees
is perfect
the buildings trace lavender-shaded
straight lines against pales orange curls of sky
near sunset
nearby
there are boys practicing soccer
on the dirt
on the playground of Munhwa Elementary School
and their breath
snakes up in visible lines of white
in the January afternoon
the setting sun reflects
garishly off garish signs
off a building across the street
off in a separate place 
again the sound of the wind
in winter
in the frozen leaves of the frozen trees
is perfect

picture
picture

Caveat: 깐죽거리다

A few days ago, I overheard the phrase 깐죽 at work, in the context of the English word “smart ass.” Ever since, I’ve been trying to puzzle out if there’s something equivalent, there, but the more I try to figure it out, the more I don’t think they’re really the same thing. You can imagine, though, why having a Korean phrase for “smart ass” might be useful to a teacher of elementary age Koreans with limited English ability.
There is nothing in the online Korean-English dictionaries for 깐죽 or its verbal derivatives (as reported to me by coworkers: 깐죽거리다, 깐죽대다). The Korean-Korean dictionaries didn’t seem very useful (or maybe I didn’t understand them well enough). Naver.com, for example, says, “쓸데없는 소리를 밉살스럽고 짓궂게 들러붙어 계속 지껄이다.” This is, in itself, hard to take apart, and it took some time pooking around google translate (plus the dictionary and some grammatical knowledge, because google translate is, by itself, useless for Korean-to-English) to even get the gist of it, which is something like, “To chatter on uselessly and harassingly in a vulgar manner.”
Images
While I can see why someone would draw the link between a phrase meaning that, and the English “smart ass,” they’re still not really the same, as it neglects the “smart” part of it – the fact that a smart-ass doesn’t just chatter uselessly, but that the smart-ass has an aspect of “too smart for his/her own good.”
One translation I found encouraging was in the lyric of a song called 청춘고백 by Outsider (image, right), translated here. The translation offered for 깐죽거리던 is “snarky” – which is closer to “smart-ass,” definitely.
Conclusions? None, really.
“깐죽” seems to be related to the idea of talking too much, and/or out of turn, and/or vulgarly, but I don’t see much to suggest it implies speaking in “smart-ass” way specifically. So it only means smart-ass in the more broad meaning of the latter term.
What I’m listening to right now – the song I mentioned.

Outsider (아웃사이더 [a-ut-sa-i-deo]), “청춘고백.” Korean rap/r&b. Awesome.

Caveat: 빈 수레가 요란하다

빈     수레가     요란하다
empty cart-SUBJ is-loud
An empty cart is loud. 
“He who speaks most knows least,” roughly.
Maybe I should shut up.
What I’m listening to right now.

Washed Out, “Amor Fati.”

Caveat: tüfachi mapu

 TVFACI MAPU MEW MOGELEY WAGBEN

Tvfaci mapu mew mogeley wagvben
Tvfaci kajfv wenu mew vlkantuley
ta ko pu rakiduwam
Doy fvta ka mapu tañi mvlen ta komv
xipalu ko mew ka pvjv mew
pewmakeiñmu tayiñ pu fvcakece yem
Apon kvyeh fey tañi am -pigekey
Ni hegvmkvleci piwke fewvla ñvkvfvy.

- Elicura Chihuailaf N. (poeta Mapuche de Chile)

El idioma es Mapudungun. La ortografía no es la que aprendí cuando estudiaba el idioma en 1994 en la UACh – no es una ortografía muy transparente, en mi opinión. Nótese que la "v" representa una vocal parecida a la rusa "ы" o la polaca "y" o también el sonido que se escribe en galés "u".  En la ortografía que yo aprendía, se la escribe "ü". También nótese que la "x" arriba representa un sonido casi exactamente el del inglés, "tr" en una palabra como "truck", y que la "c" es el del "ch" español o inglés.  Debajo, una traducción en español. No soy capaz de entenderlo muy bien sin la traducción – nunca lo aprendí muy bien y me he olvidado de casi todo. Pero me encanta el idioma.
En este suelo habitan las estrellas
En este cielo canta el agua
de la imaginación
Más allá de las nubes que surgen
de estas aguas y estos suelos
nos sueñan los antepasados
Su espíritu -dicen- es la luna llena
El silencio su corazón que late.
(Imagen: ciudad de Castro en la isla de Chiloé, región históricamente Mapuche en la Patagonia chilena.)
[broken link! FIXME] Castro

 

Caveat: Like a South Park Character

A certain student of mine drew this picture of me.

[broken link! FIXME] He 001

Frankly, I look like a South Park character. That's not so bad, I guess. I think the "this is warm" under my foot – which I initially took to be a pile of poop – is actually meant to be a "worm," but misspelled as "warm."

Who is the certain student? The boss's daughter. What might this mean?

Caveat: La girafa tiene frío

Siempre me ha interesado literatura para niños. Por pura casualidad encontré este poema que me acuerdo haber visto (o algo parecido) en algún contexto hace tiempo.

[broken link! FIXME] LajirafatienefrioLA JIRAFA

La pobre jirafa
se muere de frío,
pues llegó el invierno
y no tiene abrigo,
ni tiene bufanda,
por eso se arrima
tanto al oso panda.
¡Qué suave que estás!
¡Qué calorcito me das!

La mamá jirafa
llama a su vecina,
que es la oveja Fina.
¿No podrías darme
un poco de lana? 
Pues te la daré…
si me da la gana.
¡Anda, Fina!
¡Por algo eres mi vecina!
Arráncame tú un mechón 
pero con mucho cuidado,
no me hagas un chichón.

Y ahora ¿quién podrá ayudarme
a hacer una bufanda tan grande?
Buscaré a la araña, que sabe tejer
con las manos y los pies.

Y así, con ayuda
y con mucha calma,
la mamá jirafa
hizo la bufanda,
y a su hijita, con cariño,
se la regaló
y no puedes imaginarte
la alegría que le dio.

¡Ay, que calorcito
que siento en mi cuello!
Y se fue a dormir 
Porque le entró sueño.

– Marisol Perales

Caveat: I Bombed Korea Every Night

What I'm listening to right now.

Cake, "Motorcade of Generosity." I guess it's a little bit wild to have this song shuffle around entirely randomly on my mp3 player (from my 6000+ collection of songs that I rotate randomly on and off of the mp3 player). To have the song intoning "I bombed Korea" while walking to work in Korea. Well, you know. Weird.

It's about the Korean War, obviously. Cake is a pretty cool musical group, too.

Here are the lyrics.

I bombed Korea every night.
My engine sang into the salty sky.
I didn't know if I would live or die.
I bombed Korea every night. 

I bombed Korea every night.
I bombed Korea every night.
Red flowers bursting down below us.
Those people didn't even know us.
We didn't know if we would live or die.
We didn't know if it was wrong or right.
I bombed Korea every night. 

And so I sit here at this bar.
I'm not a hero.
I'm not a movie star.
I've got my beer.
I've got my stories to tell,
But they won't tell you what it's like in hell. 

Red flowers bursting down below us.
Those people didn't even know us.
We didn't know if we would live or die.
We didn't know if it was wrong or right.
We didn't know if we would live or die.
I bombed Korea every night.

[broken link! FIXME] Bomb_html_dd82d61

Caveat: Chromotype

This is very cool. I love typewriters. If I had a fixed abode (as opposed to a storage unit and moving once or twice a year for the last decade), I would collect them, I think. And I like to think about "alternative" methods of painting and doing art, too. This is definitely a conceptual piece but it has a strange practicality. A chromatic typewriter by Tyree Callahan.

Tumblr_lvjnizMGiu1r2syygo1_r1_500

Caveat: turns out, taking a boat up a mountain isn’t that useful

As an update to my previous post, I followed up with a co-worker regarding my confusion as to how "If there are a lot of boatmen, the boat goes up the mountain," can mean the same thing as "too many cooks spoil  the broth." 

I had been visualizing a group of men working together to get a boat up a mountain, which would, naturally, be a difficult thing, and therefore a positive accomplishment, unlike spoiling broth. Hence my confusion. But, in fact, it turns out taking a boat up a mountain isn't perceived as useful. 

I'm going to offer a slightly altered translation that, I think, makes this more negative connotation more clear in English: "If there are a lot of boatmen, the boat ends up far from water."

This removes the seemingly positive implicatures of getting the boat "up" a mountain, which apparently aren't present in the Korean – that's because the "going up" thing is inherently viewed as positive in English, but there's no "upness" involved in the Korean – it's that "lative" case ending I was preoccupied with, in fact: it means "into the mountain" meaning nothing more than "inland" (since all of the "inland" in Korea is mountain, this makes sense.

OK. So that explains it.

Caveat: 사공이 많으면 배가 산으로 올라간다

boatman+SUBJ many+IF boat+SUBJ mountain+LAT goes-up
If there are many boatmen the boat goes up the mountain.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what to call the -으로 [-euro = +LAT] ending. By my abbreviation, you can see that I’ve decided to call it a “Lative” case marker (q.v.), which I’ve never seen in any grammar of Korean. I’m just being an obstreperous and idiosyncratic avocational linguist, right? The ending indicates “direction toward” or “direction through” but also “manner” or “means,” and, as far as I can figure out, in colloquial usage it can be a “destination.” It is very common.
This wasn’t that hard to figure out, as far as semantics. But when I saw what the proverb was supposed to be equivalent to, I became puzzled. It’s said to be equivalent to: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Frankly, that seems to be exactly the opposite of its meaning, which is to say, with enough people (boatmen), anything is possible (getting a boat up a mountain).
I’m going to have to ponder this. I wonder if the important idea is that of the “boatman” in opposition to, maybe passengers (who aren’t as useful in getting the boat anywhere?).
Personally, I have no idea how to get from A (If there are many boatmen the boat goes up the mountain) to B (Too many cooks spoil the broth). Perhaps I need more boatmen?
Actually, I started thinking about Fitzcarraldo. Seriously – it’s exactly the same.

Caveat: The Value Chain

If you own an electronic gadget made in China, I think you should listen to this recent episode of "This American Life."

[broken link! FIXME] Images (4)[Update 2012-03-17 It turns out this radio show has some scandal associated with it. Given that, I probably should retract my recommendation to listen to it. Most of the commentary below stands, however.]

Normally, I don't have a lot of patience for Ira Glass's brand of vaguely sanctimonious hipsterism, but this show hit home to me. It's somewhat directed at Apple, which is a mark in its favor in my anti-apple worldview… but I'm well aware that Apple Corp is far from the only – or anywhere close to the worst – offenders in the realm of worker exploitation in China. I would, in fact, wager that my cheapo Jooyontech desktop was made in China without anything even resembling a passing nod to workers' rights such as Apple presumably tries for (apparently witthout much success, but still, at least they pay lip service to it, right?).

Despite everything said in the above-mentioned program (which I will reiterate, I hope you listen to), I still don't think Paul Krugman is wrong in his quote at the end – this is just another country (albeit, in China's case, a historically unprecedentedly huge country) working its way up the "value chain" in the process of modernizing and industrializing. The US, Europe, Japan, South Korea – all these countries passed through phases where things like child labor and complete union illegalization were nearly universal, and perhaps, as a good marxist, I should accept that this is just a sort of "mode of production" that every country must pass through.

All the same, it's sobering and depressing to think that it is somehow inevitable, even sitting in a country such as South Korea that is only now beginning to emerge from the far end of this agonizing socio-economic process.

OK. Nothing to add to that. Just listen to the show. Think about it, the next time you play with your iPad or log onto the internet on your cheap, convenient computer, or whatever.

Here's a question: "What is stuff for?"

Meanwhile, what I'm listening to right now.

Metric, "Sick Muse."

Caveat: Yoo-hee the Witch

I've written before about how frustrated I've become trying to find Korean television dramas with English subtitles that I can watch on my computer. It really does help me learn Korean to watch, but I'm just not able to really get enough of what's going on to watch without subtitles, yet.

[broken link! FIXME] Images (4)I've had a couple of false starts, where I find a program and watch a few episodes, but then I can't get the rest of the episodes with subtitles, so I've taken to finding shows and downloading all the episodes before watching them. What I end up finding becomes somewhat random – i.e. I'm not really watching shows because they appeal to me but rather because they're the ones I can find.

One show I started watching recently because I'd gotten all the episodes is called "마녀유희" [ma-nyeo yu-hui = "Witch Yoo-hui" in official translation]. It's a romantic comedy series (or really, mini-series in US parlance) from 2007. A too-young female business executive (heir to some rich family presumably) has a bad personality and this ne'er-do-well medical-school dropout (and wannabe French chef) does a pygmalion on her.

That should be enough to get the gist of the story. You can read an atrociously written summary at the wikithing. The whole connection to an actual witch-based fairy tale is tenuous at best (mostly played up in the intro to each episode). I had been hoping for something brilliantly conceived like the [broken link! FIXME] Hansel and Gretel meta-tale movie I liked so much a few years back.

But, so… I've been watching that. It's entertaining, anyway.

Caveat: Like some cat from Japan

[broken link! FIXME] Ziggy_html_mf1125bbWhen I was 17 and 18, the coolest musical groups in the world were Talking Heads and David Bowie. I was a weird kid, right?

I heard on the radio that David Bowie is turning 65 today. He's kind of retired, apparently.

What I'm listening to right now.

David Bowie, "Ziggy Stardust." Lyrics:

Oh
Oooh yeah
Ah

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly,
and the spiders from Mars. He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band

now Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, aww he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
'came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan.

So where were the spiders, while the fly tried to break our balls
With just the beer light to guide us,
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?

Oh
Ooh oh

Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo
The kid was just crass, he was the nazz
With God given ass
aww He took it all too far but boy could he play guitar

Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band.

Oh yeah
Ooooooo
Ziggy playyyyed guitaarrrrrr

 

Caveat: 빛 좋은 개살구

ImagesThis only means, “The radiance (luster) [of] a good apricot.” 빛 [bit = light, radiance, luster] 좋은 [joheun = good] 개살구 [gaesalgu = apricot].  
This is one of those proverbs where knowing its (semantic) meaning tells you nothing about its (pragmatic) meaning. Pragmatics is not semantics.
So I just went ahead and looked it up. It’s used the way we use: “All that glitters is not gold.”
Good to know. Dried apricots are generally available at local grocery stores. I often buy them.

Caveat: A Rainbow Dung

Jinmo, a first grader, made a somewhat incoherent story, along with illustration, with a poignant ending (below), such as only a first-grader can invent.

[broken link! FIXME] Dung 003

It is so characteristically first-grader literature, because of the predominance in the tale of things like boogers and poo (which in Korean is 똥 [ttong], and so I allow them to use the relatively inoffensive false cognate, the similarly-sounding English word "dung"). The story also included the Lion King, a ghost, and a booger fly.

The "rainbow dung" in the lower right is compellingly rendered, doncha think?

Caveat: “Control Your Class”

Sometimes one student can ruin a class. Or a day. And there's nothing to be done about it – just bluster through. Sometimes parents make boneheaded requests, and there's nothing to be done about that, either – just bluster through.

So I was already having a grumpy day. And then… 

Recently, some random strangers (trolls) posted utterly non-useful comments on one of the youtube videos I posted of my teaching (it was an effort to show how I tried to teach "debate" to a very low-level 3/4/5 grade class, and felt it went better than I'd ever dreamed. The substance of the comments: "control your class!"

<rant>

I saw the comments, and I watched the offending video – frankly, it's not that uncontrolled. It's from a few years ago – it is, in fact, from my last day at LBridge, at the end of August, 2009 – so over 3 years ago, now.

There's the one kid, John, who was always vaguely ADHD and so I tolerated a kind of restlessness in him. Excepting him, and his special circumstances, none of the other kids show a great deal of uncontrolled-ness. To provide additional context, this was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a regular class. There was the fact that it was my last day – the kids were aware of this. There was the fact they'd just attended an assembly where they'd received special packages of goodies – that's what a number of them, notably John, are obsessively fiddling around with. Finally, I'd decided to deviate utterly from the expected curriculum, without preparing them for this fact. I'd "wrongfooted" them. So there's the fact that they don't really know what I've planned for them. And finally, we cannot forget that the presence of a video camera, in and of itself, will tend to make kids act out and do strange things – they don't get the "just act normal" dictum that older kids or adults can understand.

Considering that, I'd urge my anonymous commenters to realize that context in these things is important. Further, it doesn't appear either of these creepy commenters went on to watch the subsequent parts of the same video – they only watched the first video, and therefore they didn't, in fact, see that the kids actually managed to present their "debate" – pretty low-level, admittedly.

But obviously, I've taken these anonymous, troll-comments personally. Because, when you get right down to it, I do feel some insecurity about my ability to control a class. Like on bad days. Like today.

But I'd like to set aside that insecurity, for a moment, acknowledging it for what it is – an expression of insecurity about my teaching ability, and not something grounded in sound pedagogical theory or child-development psychology.

Kids do not, in fact, need to be "controlled." "Controlling" kids has nothing to do with providing them with a good education. Kids need to be engaged. There are only two reasons kids need to be "controlled" in a classroom: 1) their safety, 2) because they make the adults uncomfortable. Only the first reason is legitimate. The second reason is just about people nursing secret fascisms in their blasted, grown-up souls. "Controlled" kids are bored kids, depressed kids, turned-off-to-learning kids. Kids should be positively engaged, and to the extent a teacher is successful, they will then control themselves.

Really, watching that video, after seeing those comments, I was expecting to see kids jumping around or bouncing off walls, and in fact, I saw no such thing. I saw a few kids fiddling with things, OCD style. I saw a few kids looking around at other kids, or making side-comments in the their native Korean, a few times, even, to clarify what I was saying in English (I rely on and encourage this – it's called "leveraging peer-teaching" between those with stronger English skills and those with lower-level ability).

And if one goes on to watch the subsequent parts, you will see that without any violence on my part (meaning not physical violence, but authoritarian verbal coercion a la the "traditional classroom"), I get 100% participation in my little experiment to teach debate to high-beginning elementary English learners.

</rant>

Sigh. I deleted the trolls. And I posted a link to this rant at that video. Not that it makes a difference – I have 0% expectation that the offending trolls would read this rant or, that, if they did, would understand my points. Nevertheless… I had to get the thoughts off my chest.

Caveat: illusions of freewill and purpose we cannot but believe

Here's a book I want to read: The Atheist's Guide to Reality, by Alex Rosenberg. In a review at 3AM Magazine, Richard Marshall summarizes,

Rosenberg is a fearless naturalist, whose ‘nice nihilism’ doesn’t imply that we can become nihilists. He disturbs the comfy domestication of the naturalistic world view. Evolutionism and physics gives us a nihilist universe, purposeless, meaningless, ultimately devoid of everything we think is important. But it has constructed us as having evolutionary reflexes that grant us illusions of freewill and purpose we cannot but believe.

Even the review makes for very dense reading. I haven't been doing very well at dense reading, lately – but I hope I can find Rosenberg's book at Kyobo or somewhere like that.

Caveat: Happy Perihelion!

[broken link! FIXME] ImagesToday is perihelion. I hope you have a good day, so close to the sun.

It seemed very cold outside. That's because perihelion has nothing much to do with climate. 

My little ones (first graders) where so hyper today. I came out of the class, and went back into the staff room, and I said, "It's like teaching popcorn." Unfortunately, it was a metaphor that had to be explained, which seemed to lessen its effectiveness substantially.

What I'm listening to right now.

Madness, "Blue Skinned Beast."

Caveat: Popstar

My students alleged that I resemble pop star 임재범 [im-jae-beom, which he himself prefers to romanize as Yim Jae Beum (which is, in my opinion, a truly misleading and horrible way to romanize it, but, well, with names there's a lot of freedom on this matter in Korea)]. 

[broken link! FIXME] Im_html_m2985a3ecI don't really think I do.

In researching it (i.e. typing his name into a Korean search engine and seeing what pops up), I think it must just be the glasses and the haircut, more than anything else. Perhaps the rather exaggerated way he changes his facial expressions as he sings – I do that a little bit during my classroom antics. I certainly don't sing like him, though.

 

Caveat: Haraboji Hairstyle

A student asked me, the other day, "Teacher! Why haraboji hairstyle?"

"Haraboji" means "grandpa." So he was referring to the fact that, as I have allowed my hair to grow out a little bit in the last several months, the gray shows more, as well as the fact that it continues its thinning, apace, up top. I guess as my hair grows longer, I end up looking older.

I should observe, as I have before, that I have NEVER had a conversation with an adult Korean (male or female) about my appearance where the question "why don't you dye your hair" DIDN'T come up. They seem to find the fact that I don't do this astounding. I have almost succumbed to the pressure, but it has always been something that repelled me as being somehow vain. I would sooner begin shaving my head, to be honest.

Well, anyway. Was I offended? No – not by the student. But I may return to the shorter hairstyle – I'm not so utterly free of vanity as all that. I'm not a grandpa yet. "Ajik" I said to the student. "Not yet."

Caveat: 맨끝에 정든다

I’ve been fishing around for some new activity to replace my year-long effort to translate the 108 Buddhist aphorisms. [broken link! FIXME] The 108 were the right level of difficulty – they were quite hard in some ways, but because I was somewhat familiar with the subject matter (i.e. Buddhism) and they were predictable (they followed patterns) I could manage them.
I’ve been looking at various lists of Korean proverbs and aphorisms. Every time I try to understand one (without looking at the translation), I don’t do very well. But I’m still tempted to mess with it, because I like proverbs and aphorisms, and they give a lot of insight into culture.
Here’s a proverb from one of those lists.
맨끝에 정든다
only-end-AT attachment-begins
“Only at the end does one grow attached.”

I take the verb to based on the root 들다 which would mean it’s irregular in a way I didn’t realize (dropping -ㄹ)
I think the [broken link! FIXME]  [jeong] here is the same 정 (情) [sentiment, attachment, love] I’ve discussed previously.
I didn’t select this proverb because it seemed particularly relevant to any of my current life events – I only selected it because it popped out of the list as something I might be able to figure out in a reasonable amount of time.
Maybe I’ll try to do a more-or-less randomly selected proverb a couple times a week. We’ll see how that develops.

Caveat: The Hoping Machine

Walking home from work, the night air sparkled with a sprinkling of snow, the air cold and clean-tasting. Work is hard these days. I'm trying hard to improve my teaching, and there's a lot of pressure and discomfort at work because we've been losing students, too. This is partly just because hagwon business is cyclical, and parents always pull their kids out of hagwon in January, when public schools are in vacation and parents find other things to do with their kids. I can never understand how Korean managers – ever relatively good ones such as my current boss – seem to take these cycle-driven losses of enrollment so personally, and assume there's some mistake being made by teachers as opposed to just being the vagaries of the market.

Well, anyway. So work is hard, these days. I have a tight, dense schedule, too. But I felt OK about it, today, walking home in the dark in the cold in the snow in my dreams.

I found this really interesting image online at a site called love all this – it's supposedly Woody Guthrie's New Year's resolutions.

[broken link! FIXME] Woody1

I really, really like the resolution that goes: "19. Keep hoping machine running." It appears he doodled a picture of it, too. I like the idea of a "hoping machine." I'm doing some repairs on mine, currently.

What I'm listening to right now.

Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea."

Caveat: Swans to come

[broken link! FIXME] ImagesI've been reading Wallace Stevens – one of the greatest poets, in my opinion. He has a poem called "Description Without Place" – it's quite long – and there's a part about Nietzsche and Lenin that fascinates me. Here is a frequently quoted part about Lenin:

Lenin on a bench beside a lake disturbed
The swans. He was not the man for swans.

The slouch of his body and his look were not
In suavest keeping. The shoes, the clothes, the hat

Suited the decadence of those silences,
In which he sat. All chariots were drowned. The swans

Moved on the buried water where they lay.
Lenin took bread from his pocket, scattered it–

The swans fled outward to remoter reaches,
As if they knew of distant beaches; and were

Dissolved. The distances of space and time
Were one and swans far off were swans to come.

The eye of Lenin kept the far-off shapes.
His mind raised up, down-drowned, the chariots.

And reaches, beaches, tomorrow's regions became
One thinking of apocalyptic legions.

So what are the swans? Utopian dreams? Revolution?

Caveat: Second

I was quite amazed today in my RN1 class when my student Taeu said he'd done his homework. He'd indeed done most of it. I made a big show of congratulating him. "Wow," I said. "That's the first time in six months that you did your homework."

He got a hurt look on his face. "Teacher," he complained. "Second."

What I'm listening  to right now.

Absurd Minds, "The Question."

Caveat: From Pyeongyang to Dënver

I'm not really very well-informed on this, but I've formed an opinion anyway. North Korea remains more-or-less stable for two reasons: 1) the state leverages traditional Korean communitarianism to get buy-in from groups that would otherwise resist (mostly the "bureaucratic class" and/or the low and mid-ranking military); 2) the economy is much more pre-industrial (i.e. feudal) than people have been thinking – many (if not an outright majority of) North Koreans are existing in an essentially pre-industrial society based on subsistance agriculture.

I have formed these opinions partly just through reflection – I read articles about NK often, but I can't really point to specific articles that caused me to develop the above view. If I run across something specific in the future, I'll try to remember to add them to this post or some future related one.

The below graph (from Brad Plumer at Wapo's Wonkblog) is an interesting summary (and never forget that before about 1960, North Korea was more industrialized than the South – a legacy of Japan's colonial industrialization policies for the peninsula and the fact that the North had at least some coal).

[broken link! FIXME] North Korea vs. South Korea FIXED

Mientras tanto… what I'm listening to right now.

Dënver, "Olas gigantes." This is a Chilean music group. I think the diaeresis (or "umlaut") on the "e" is just a playful bit of typography, as opposed to symbolizing anything, although there are some native languages of Chile that use the double-dotted diacritic on certain vowels to indicate laxness or centralization in their orthographical systems, and the word "dënver" has a certain Mapudunguny look to it (I studied the native language Mapudungun at Univ. Austral de Chile in 1994) – but Mapudungun itself doesn't use "ë". I don't know if the group's name has something to do with the American city of Denver, either.

Letra

 

Dijiste vamos a nadar,
nunca he visto olas tan gigantes,
dijiste qué nos va a pasar.

 

Y que todo va en bracear,
y hacías con los brazos
de manera circular.

 

Entonces nos lanzamos a nadar
y las olas explotaban
como si nos odiaran,
y nos golpeaban sin piedad,
y yo braceaba y braceaba,
no servía de nada, daba igual.

 

Es que yo en ti confiaba más,
yo sólo seguía sin más
tu físico espectacular.

 

Así que simplemente me dejé llevar
y ahí vi como pasabas,
toda doblada tu espalda
y no vi más.

 

Caveat: ya tu sae, oh, te dejaron flat

Proyecto Uno es un grupo musical estilo merengue-house – consta de dominicanos de Nueva York. Lo encontré en el contexto de vivir en Filadelfia en los 90. Aquella ciudad, con su gran población caribeña, tiene su propia cultura latina, distinta a la cultura mexicanizada de la gran parte de los EEUU. En general, resulta en que las radiodifusoras de la costa atlántica de los EEUU tienen un índole distinto de lo de las de la pacífica o del interior del país.
What I’m listening to right now.

Proyecto Uno, “Te dejaron flat.” La letra (encontrado en internet… he intendado algunas correcciones pero sigue una transcripción imperfecta):

P1Te dejaron flat
Primera noche, recibí una llamada, aha
Fue mi exnovia, sorpresa en mi cara, aha
Ella me llamó pa decirme, negrito me haces falta, aha
Yo la quiero sacar a bailar pero yo no tengo plata, a.
So what’s up baby, echa pa acá y yo cocino, aha
Es una mentira, sin embargo es mi estilo, aha
Ella dijo sí, en una hora estoy ahí, aha
Me quedé esperando hasta que me dormí (you tell me)
Uh, ya tú sae, oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, plantao
Say word, (word…) oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, bajo ya
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Segunda noche, ella me llamó pa tras, aha
Pero como Robelto Durán, yo dije no más, aha
Ella lloró y me dijo discúlpame por favor, aha
Si vienes a casa te demostraré amor, aha.
Me tardé pero arranqué y yo llegué, aha
Pa la casa de la chama, le toque y timbré, aha
Ella contestó con una cara asustada, aha
Dijo que su novio vino sin decirle nada (damn!)
Uh, ya tú sae, oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, plantao
Say word, (word…) oh te dejaron flat
Uh, ya tú sae, hey
Eo, eo, eeo, eeo, eieio, eieio
Eo, eo, eeo, eeo, eiooo, eiooo
Sigue
Think you gonna play me out this time? (this time)
Think you gonna leave me stinkin?
Think you gonna hurt me?
Think I had what you been drinkin?

 Hey mami no te cruces porque no soy tu jueguito
No me llames por teléfono si tú no quieres dar
Con mala fama y yo te lo confirmo
No quiero problema, tú así conmigo
No vale la pena, ay negra, ay negra
Por qué me trata así, no me digas que me quieres
Si yo sé que tú no tienes tiempo para mí (you tell me)

Mami menéalo, mami menea, nea
Mami menéalo, mami menea, nea
Dale pa bajo baby, dale pa bajo así
Dale pa bajo baby (pick it up, pick it up, pick it up)
… con Proyecto… Uno!
Y la gente dice
Uh, ya tú sae, oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, plantao
Say word, (word…) oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he… (break it down)
Así, así, así, así, así, así
Así, así, así
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube

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