2015-08-05 – CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Best hyperbole ever!
"tla alahui, tla petzcahui in tlalticpac" - Nahuatl proverb
He aquí los pensamientos aleatorios de un epistemólogo andante.
"eald enta geweorc idlu stodon"
"Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?"
"The immediate task of philosophy is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy shape." - Karl Marx
"i" before "e" except after "c" - disproved by science!
"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." - Don Marquis
"[M]etaphysics is no different from table manners, in that there are all sorts of ways to set the table, all of which will look “wrong” from the outside, but all of which work just as well as any other for those who adopt them?"
- Justin Smith-Ruiu
"A blog is the height of ego and narcissism, rivaled only by the act of procreation, or the wearing of a man-bun." - Jamie Wahls
"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." - Flannery O’Connor
"Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn't it make sense that death, too, would be wrapped in dream? That, after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called "a dream body"? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, never again return to your physical body." - spoken by a character in the excellent movie Waking Life (2001).
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." - Marcus Aurelius
"If I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had some ice cream."
Sometimes setting yourself on fire sheds light on the situation.
"Tenho o dever de me fechar em casa no meu espírito e trabalhar quanto possa e em tudo quanto possa, para o progresso da civilização e o alargamento da consciência da humanidade." - Fernando Pessoa
피할수 없는 고통이라면 차라리 즐겨라
As of June, 2013, I have assumed a new identity: I am a cancer survivor. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him.
- David Hume, in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1779
A blog, in the end, is really not so different from an inscription on a bone: I was here, it declares to no one in particular. Don't forget that.
- Justin Smith-Ruiu
재미없으면 보상해드립니다!
All things are enchained with one another, bound together by love.
- Nietzsche [really!]
Leviticus 19:33-34
Business is a good game - lots of competition and minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
- Nolan Bushnell
What if we're not conscious, we just think we are?
Donc, si Dieu existait, il n’y aurait pour lui qu’un seul moyen de servir la liberté humaine, ce serait de cesser d’exister.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Solvitur ambulando.
Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Los Angeles is to America what America is to the world.
- someone on the internet
Art is not a projection of self, it is an utterly alternate self.
Loneliness. Did ya know that loneliness will kill you deader than a .357 Magnum? Did ya know that?
- Andrew Sims (Rapper)
"When I was a stranger you gave me razor wire and pushed me in the river." - Matthew 25:35
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to soliloquize. Where was I?
- the villain Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in the cartoon Phineas and Ferb.
Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen.
- Hendrick Hamel
Liberty and justice for all
Offer not available in some areas
Prices subject to change
- internet meme
I will buy a 32 foot ladder at home depot, and I will make America pay for it.
- a Mexican
Psalms 51:17
Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
- Linus Pauling
I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.
여유있는 태도를 잃어서는 안 된다
Blogging online since 1965

My name is Jared Way. I was born in rural Far Northern California, and became an "adoptive" Minnesotan. I have lived in many other places: Mexico City, Philadelphia, Valdivia (Chile), Los Angeles. And for 11 years, I was an expatriate living in South Korea. In the summer of 2018, I made another huge change, and relocated to Southeast Alaska, which is my uncle's home.
I have a background in Linguistics and Spanish Literature. Two decades ago, I was a database programmer. Last decade, in Korea, I worked as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher. Currently I'm a ne'er-do-well retail clerk and freelance website administrator living amid the Alaskan rainforest.
In June, 2013, while I was in Ilsan in South Korea, I was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent successful treatment. That changed my life pretty radically.
Currently, you could say I'm "between jobs," somewhat caretaking my uncle (to the extent he tolerates that) and getting adapted to life in rural Alaska after so many years as an urban dweller.
These bloggings, then, have been my random jottings on the subject of my mostly pleasant life among the Quasi-Confucian Cyber-Industrial Paleolithic Peninsulites of Lower Far Siberia, and my more recent time spent on the Free-range Insane Asylum known as Southeast Alaska.
I started this blog before I even had the idea of going to Korea (first entry: Caveat: And lo...). So this is not meant to be a blog about Korea, by any stretch of the imagination. Life in Korea, and Korean language and culture, inevitably played a central role in this blog's incarnation for many years, and life in the rural, temperate rainforest plays an important role these days.
Basically, this blog is a newsletter for the voices in my head. It keeps everyone on the same page: it has become a sort of aide-mémoire.
For a more detailed reflection on why I'm blogging, you can look at this old post: What this blog is, and isn't.
If you're curious about me, there is a great deal of me here. I believe in what I call "opaque transparency" - you can learn almost everything about me if you want, but it's not immediately easy to find.
A distillation of my personal philosophy (at least on good days):
I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state. It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you. Happiness is something that you do. And like most things that you do, it is volitional. You can choose to do happiness, or not. You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.
"Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation." - Gilles Deleuze (writing about Spinoza).

Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Noise
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: The true secret to privacy online
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Links #35
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: I started my stupid blog 20 years ago today
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2859 “A lousy Buddhist”

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Caveat: You cower in your tower praying that I’ll disappear

What I’m listening to right now.
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Saul Williams, “List of Demands (Reparations).” This song has a reference to the concept of reparations for African-Americans, which has recently seen some revival, especially on the part of the stunningly talented writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Lyrics.

I want my money back, I’m down here drowning in your fat
You got me on my knees praying for everything you lack
I ain’t afraid of you, I’m just a victim of your fear
You cower in your tower praying that I’ll disappear

I got another plan, one that requires me to stand
On the stage or in the street, don’t need no microphone or beat
And if you hear this song, if you ain’t dead then sing along
Bang and strum to this here drum ’til you get where you belong

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

I wrote a song for you today while I was sitting in my room
I jumped up on a bed today and played it on a broom
I didn’t think that it would be a song that you would hear
But when I played it in my head, I made you reappear

I wrote a video for it and I acted out each part
And then I took your picture out and taped it to my heart
I’ve taped you to my heart, dear girl, I’ve taped you to my heart
And if you pull away from me you’ll tear my life apart

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

Ecstasy, suffering, echinacea, buffering
We aim to remember what we choose to forget
God’s just a baby and her diaper is wet

Call the police, I’m strapped to the teeth
And liable to disregard your every belief
Call on the law, I’m fixing to draw
A line between what is and seems and call up a brawl

Call on them now ’cause it’s about to go pow
I’m standing on the threshold of the ups and the downs
Call up a truce ’cause I’m about to break loose
Protect ya neck ’cause son I’m breaking out of my noose

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

I got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth, you wanna be somebody?
See somebody? Try and free somebody?

Got a list of demands written on the palm of my hands
I ball my fist and you gon’ know where I stand
We living hand to mouth
Hand to mouth

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

Caveat: 무의도

2015-08-05, 04:34 2024-08-17 Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

Today was the last of my little summer break.

I went to a little island called 무의도 (Muuido) with my friend Peter. He is returning to the US soon, and so we had decided to get together at least once before he goes, although I have a feeling he’ll come back to Korea at some point.

Anyway, this island is a small, touristy kind of island west of the Incheon Airport, which itself is on an island west of the main part of the city of Incheon, on the west coast of South Korea west of Seoul. The airport, and thus the airport island, is easily accessible from where I live in Ilsan, so it was convenient to take the bus from where I live to make this trip.

To get to Muuido from the airport, we took a local bus to the southwest corner of the airport island, and walked across this cool causeway to get a ferry. It’s a short ferry ride – at low tide, it seems like the ferry trip was about ten boat-lengths – maybe less.

On the island, first we walked over the little hill from the ferry terminal to the west side. Off the shore on the west side there is an even smaller island, that can be reached by walking across the channel between them at low tide. We did this. Peter wanted to see this island because it had been some kind of prison camp in the 1960s, and was used to train some convicts for a dangerous mission against North Korea. Unfortunately, the convicts had different ideas, and assaulted a bus and tried to escape at some point, and were killed. This was memorialized in a movie that Peter had seen. I had no knowledge of this story.

After visiting the prison island, called Silmido, we caught a bus and rode around Muuido some. There is a beach on the west side farther south, made famous by some TV show sometime back, and now very crowded and touristy. I didn’t enjoy the beach that much, but Peter had come here before with some coworkers and was waxing vaguely nostalgic.

We stopped and had lunch. I had some 바지락칼국수 – something like a clam-broth hand-made noodle soup. Then we decided to go to the airport. This was not random – it turned out somewhat by coincidence that our acquaintance Basil was flying out of the airport this afternoon.

Basil is moving to Istanbul. He said he was giving up on Korea. He seemed in good spirits.

I have known Basil since we worked together at LBridge in 2008. In fact, we met before I started at LBridge, just walking down the street in Ilsan and exchanging greetings as two “foreigners living in Ilsan.” Anyway, Basil and I have criss-crossed paths many times, including my having visited him in West Virginia in 2009, and him visiting me a few times in Ilsan, etc.
So Peter and I saw Basil off at the airport.

Here is a map I made of our meanderings at Muuido. I drew some low-tech lines on it: red is bus trips; orange is walking; pink is the ferry.

Here are some pictures we took.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]