what im listening to right now.
[update 2013-07-26: youtube embed was added.]
Sixto Rodriguez, "Sandrevan Lullaby."
Good night.
Category: Background Noise
Caveat: Mexica Tiahui, Defrosted
This will possibly be my last post “by computer” (as opposed to using my smartphone) for quite some time.
I intended to take a walk, and somehow found myself cleaning my fridge instead. A certain compulsity is as work, right now, and I’m giving some free rein, but it’s strange to watch. The thing that’s odd is that normally cleaning a fridge is one of the most distasteful chores imaginable, for me, but I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I think I’m craving banality. Listening to music and scraping the layers of accumulated frost out of my freezer – an apt metaphor for my moment in life.
There’s nothing like some hardcore Chicano rap music to spice up a rainy afternoon and distract a troubled soul.
What I’m listening to right now.
El Vuh, “Mexica Tiahui.”
I couldn’t find the lyrics to this track published online anywhere.
I’m off. I’m going to walk there.
Caveat: Lose Yourself
I'm suffering from insomnia.
There are a lot of things on my mind, obviously. I feel an urgent need to do something. I straighten out piles of old papers, rearrange the books on my bookshelves, reorganize the files on my harddrive; clean something in my kitchen. There are more important things to be doing, too, but some of them feel heavy and I just don't want to direct my mind in those directions: my finances are more or less in order; my paperwork seems in order; Curt found someone to hire as a replacement for me and we'll be doing some orientation tomorrow.
But all that banality pales when faced with this giant thing happening to me. I'm sure it's much less interesting to the rest of the world than it is to me, too, but I told myself long ago that this blog was for sharing my feelings, mostly in honesty, however they might go.
I have a creeping suspicion that This Here Blog Thingy is going to be getting mighty narcissistic in coming days and weeks. I hope people can understand that. I'll get past it. I'm working on it. Trying.
What I'm listening to right now.
Daft Punk, "Lose Yourself To Dance." Haha. This video has Napoleon Dynamite dancing in one part. It's been a long time since I thought about that movie – I remember thinking it was awesome.
Caveat: Wending Around Kburbia
Today I set off to run errands. I’m trying to be “organized” about this long sojourn in the hospital that is fast approaching.
I took a long walk first, heading east from my apartment building along Jungangno (which just means “Central Avenue” but which I still always call “Broadway” in my mind for some reason). I went wending around “Kburbia” – the non-rectilinear streets on the west side of Jeongbalsan Park and north of Jungangno are eerie in the extent to which they echo yet reinterpret the curved streets and cul-de-sacs of suburban North America. I took some random photos.
There was a temple.
Then I went into the park and up the hill. I saw a magpie.
I saw a swampy place.
Turning the other way, there were redwood trees (a few of these are Chinese “dawn redwoods”).
At the top of the hill I took a picture of a view I probably have taken before – this is looking northwest, toward my place-of-work and the new towers of Tanhyeon on the right, beyond the old Ilsan station. Also, a fine portrait of the piece of dust on my lens, center.
I saw some weird bird sculptures.
Then I walked down the hill and went to the store.
What I’m listening to right now.
Ben Kweller – Holy Water from Guest List on Vimeo.
Caveat: 뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡
I decided to walk to the Cancer Center. I actually live that close – it’s about 3 km and it seemed like a good way to try to meditate and clear my head before the procedures.
Here is a picture of the National Cancer Center as I approach from the west.
Just past the highrise part is the main entrance.
My MRI and CT scans were completed without too much incident. Right as they were happening, it was quite intense – I likened it spending an hour inside a running washing machine while having scary, cold substances injected into you. They set up this IV apparatus on my hand, for quick, convenient injection.
It really only hurt when they were injecting the “contrast media” – at which point it was definitely painful. But in the MRI machine especially, it was quite a long time – about 40 minutes. I tried hard to keep my mouth and tongue still and tried to practice my anapana (breathing control) that I learned some years ago during my meditation training. I didn’t really succeed, so then I was making lists in my mind.
Afterward, I felt like crying – everything felt so overwhelming. Partly, I’d just undergone this experience after fasting since 6 am, and I’ve been pushing hard lately. I went into this little canteen they have in the hospital and bought some apple juice and sat in a corner and tried to think about something happy.
So I decided to walk to work – it’s just up the road a few kilometers from the cancer center. I felt kind of woozy from the stuff they’d injected into me, but I figured I could walk it off – and I did.
I hadn’t really planned to go to work today. They were surprised to see me there. But I told my boss, “I just want to feel normal. I just want to keep my routine.” I spent time trying to organize my desk. I wrote some emails to relatives.
Then I went into my BISP1 class – even though Gina was scheduled to replace me. She said, “Are you sure?”
I said yes – I wanted to see them.
Helen said, “You always complain about them.” This is true.
I said, “Well, today I want to complain about them some more.”
I walked into the classroom, and all 6 of the kids (4th through 6th grade) where on the raised stage part of the front of the classroom. While doing something resembling PSY’s latest dance, in vague synchrony, they sang “뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡” to the tune of the Star Wars “Imperial March.” Keep in mind that 뿡 [ppung] is Korean for “fart noise.” So they’re singing “fart fart fart” as if Star Wars were taking place, while dancing on the stage.
This is how my class started. It was excellent throughout, although I think the ladies at the front desk felt it was too loud.
Caveat: Stasera Che Sera
It was a strange, busy, up-and-down day.
I had to go to work early, because of an open house for parents. Not a lot of parents came, but some. Still, I never have much to do at these things – mostly it’s homeroom teachers meeting with them, after the director and sub-director make their talks. But they like to have me available, in the event some parent has a question or a complaint or a request, and I’m genuinely happy to be available for that – I sometimes enjoy playing a guessing game by myself, to figure out who is who’s parent, matching faces I’m seeing to the familiar faces of my students in my mind.
After this, we had a hweh-shik (회식, normally romanized as hoe-sik but that’s one case where the revised romanization is pretty inadequate to pronunciation and so I’m willing to break the rules) – the typical Korean business lunch or dinner. Hweh-shik lunches are more fun for me than hweh-shik dinners, normally, because less alcohol is involved.
We went to 보양 삼계탕 [boyang samgyetang], a fairly upscale samgyetang joint on the west side of Ilsan, with a really lovely view down a tree-lined boulevard of the Kintex convention center, in one direction, and the Goyang city stadium in another direction.
I normally really like samgyetang, which is a kind of whole-chicken-in-rice-and-ginseng-soup concoction, but both because of the sheer volume of it and the complicated spices and dismemberment of it, I really didn’t want samgyetang (remember that currently, because of my illness, eating is painful, for me). I’ve been preferring to stick to soft, squishy, somewhat bland foods, lately. I special-ordered some black sesame seed rice porridge, 흑깨죽, which was earthy and delicious. I also drank a cupful of ginseng liqueur by accident, thinking it was tea. I almost choked, and who knows how that will interact with my percocet. I survived and felt OK afterward.
Then it was back to work for a long afternoon and evening of mostly correcting things at my desk and playing around with various ambitious curriculum idea documents on my computer, which may never go anywhere but they help me to feel useful. I don’t have a dense teaching load on Fridays even on the normal schedule, and with the current test-prep schedule for the middle-schoolers (for first semester pre-summer vacaction final exams), I have even less.
I lurked at my cramped desk in the crowded staffroom and drank a lot of 보이차 [bo-i-cha = puer tea], of the teabag variety as opposed to the loose-leaf kind I like to make for myself at home. I cleaned my computer files. Next week will be plenty busy, because one of my coworkers is going on a short vacation and so I will be filling in quite a few of his classes. So I decided to just not be too stressed about not having a lot to do this day.
During my last class, I made the students do their homework during class. They don’t like this – but that’s my “punishment” when they all come to class with incomplete homework. So we were looking at a question to the tune of “Do you do volunteer work?” that was in their workbooks. One boy, Sangjin, wrote, “I don’t do this work.” That was his entire answer – it was supposed to be a short paragraph.
I asked him about it.
“I don’t do this work,” he insisted, refusing to elaborate.
“You’re not a volunteer, ever?”
“Yes.” Korean students inevitably say “yes” to English negative questions where native speakers might be inclined to say “no” or try to be less ambiguous by saying “right” or “correct.”
“It’s because you have a cold heart,” I teased.
“Oh no. I’m lazy.”
He grinned and made one of those silly two-hands-cupped-together-in-the-shape-of-a-heart gestures popularized by Korean celebrities.
When I was back in the staff room, my collegue Kwon-saem (the middle school division bujang, a Buddha-like figure who spends long periods of time playing Windows Solitaire at his desk) came over and stuck the text of a poem or song in front of me.
“Can you translate this?” he asked, good-naturedly.
It was in Italian.
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Do you want me to?” I grabbed it back from him and handily translated the first two lines on the fly. Italian can be like that, for me, given my strong backgrounds in Spanish
and French and Romance Philology.
He was surprised – I wondered if he was testing me or if he had been joking. He laughed. “You are genius,” he surmised, in his laconic way.
I was pleased, and he and I spent about 20 minutes slapping together a translation into English using the googletranslate, which he then worked on rendering, in turn, into Korean. I never did figure out why he was working on it – it’s an Italian pop song from the 1970’s.
My mood was swinging up and down a lot, today. I’m sure it’s partly this feeling that life is being turned upside down while continuing through the same rhythms and habits as always. But I had a sort of breakthrough moment while walking home, that maybe it’s the percocet, too. It’s a pretty strong, opiate-derived painkiller (and believe me, I’ve been needing it).
What I’m listening to right now.
Matia Bazar, “Stasera Che Sera.”
Lyrics:
Stasera che sera
restare tutto il tempo con te
di notte l’amore l’amore
e’ sempre una sorpresa per me
poi respirare il profumo del mare
mentre dal vento tu ti lasci cullare
fare il signore o il mendicante
non scordarsi mai pero’
di essere anche amante
stasera che sera
restare tutto il tempo con te
di notte l’amore l’amore
e’ sempre una sorpresa per me
stringere il sole nelle mie mani
toglierti i raggi
come ad un albero i rami
per circondare il tuo viso in calore
non per fare un petalo intorno
al suo fiore
Na a ria na na na ria na na na
na na na na na na na na na na na na a
stasera che sera
restare tutto il tempo con te
di notte l’amore l’amore
e’ sempre una sorpresa per me
spegnere il germe del nostro gioco
sazi d’amore ma contenti di poco
chiedere all’aria i suoi tesori
e cosi’ nel chiuso
puoi sentirti sempre fuori
stasera “stasera” che sera “che sera”
restare tutto il tempo con te
di notte l’amore l’amore
e’ sempre una sorpresa per me
fare il conteggio dei giorni passati
sapere adesso
che non sono sciupati
e che tu sei sempre viva e presente
ora come allora
tu sei mia nella mia mente
Na a ria na na na ria na na na
na na na na na na na na na na na na a
stasera che sera
restare tutto il tempo con te
di notte l’amore l’amore
e’ sempre una sorpresa per me
stasera che sera
restare tutto il tempo con te
di notte l’amore l’amore
e’ sempre una sorpresa per me…
Caveat: Beastles
I like the Beastie Boys. I don’t like all Beatles, but I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for their Yellow Submarine. So this mash-up seemed awesome.
What I’m listening to right now.
The Beastles, “Ill Submarine.”
More:
The Beastles, “Let It Beast.”
Caveat: 귀신 듣는데 떡소리 한다
귀신 듣는데 떡소리 한다
ghost hear-CIRCUM rice-cake-sound do-PRES
[It] makes a rice-cake sound that ghosts hear.
Apparently Korean ghosts like rice-cake, so if you make rice-cake
noise near ghosts, they are happy. Hence, “Music to one’s ears.”
I’m not really sure what “rice-cake noise” might sound like, though – Korean rice-cakes are kind of doughy and keep quiet for the most part.
What I’m listening to right now.
Client (feat. D. McCarthy), “Suicide Sister.”
Caveat: Orkville Opiates
Sometimes I have a dream that is so strange, yet so evidently autobiographical and symbolic, that as I caress its memory traces upon awaking, I think to myself, “people will think I made this up – no one dreams like that.”
So I must aver at the outset, I really dreamed this dream.
Which isn’t to say I didn’t make it up, too. Of course, as we awake and shuffle past the curlicues of fog that shrouded our sleeping state, the memories shift and take on form as a narrative that wasn’t really present in the dream. At least some if not most of the creativity in dreaming gets applied here, maybe. I don’t think, however, that that means I made the dream up, in any intentionalist sense.
I hesitate to report it, because as dreams go it was so very strange. But I will tell it, nevertheless – because that’s one of the things I do on This Here Blog Thingy™ that almost no one else does, and somehow, doing so thus means more to me vis-a-vis asserting my bloggish individuality over this peculiar format than most of the other things I do here.
I had decided to return to graduate school. In the dream, it was clear this had been a very fast, impulsive decision – perhaps taken over a long weekend, perhaps taken while drinking soju with coworkers. I had made the decision out of frustration with the current trajectory of my life.
I was accepted into UC Irvine. Keep in mind, in my real life, I have never even visited UC Irvine’s campus, but it has a certain plausibility around it, given my Southern California links. The year I spent working in Long Beach was actually, mostly, a year spent working at a client location in Costa Mesa, only a few miles from UCI. So it wasn’t something utterly random, perhaps.
I packed my possessions out of my apartment here in Korea (where somehow all my possessions in storage in Minnesota were also crammed into my apartment). I loaded everything into my Nissan pickup truck that I owned from 2001 until 2010, and drove to UCI.
I drove. It wasn’t something strange, in the dream. Just driving from Seoul to Orange County. It took a long time – but no more than a day or two. It was like driving from Oregon to Orange County.
When I arrived at the campus, UCI was in a Mexican beach town, but a rather posh one. I suppose that’s actually a pretty accurate description of much of Orange County. It was much greener than what we think of as Mexican beach towns – the green hills around the campus resembled northern Baja in winter, when the rains make everything verdant but trees are sparse. I remember looking down a long street as I parked my pickup truck and thinking there were a lot of nice sailboats in the harbor.
I went into a large, glass-faced office tower to find it divided up into various departments. Oddly, most of the departments were “city government”-type departments – a police department on one floor, a sewer department on another, yet another area had the offices of the city bus system. There was also a retail area with some upscale shops, like the Costa Mesa mall, and a food court, and alongside the food court was the Comparative Literature department. This is the first time in the dream where I knew what subject I’d returned to graduate school to study.
I met a friendly woman at a desk, there. There were stressed out grad students dozing in very stylish-looking cubicles made of polished blonde natural wood, decorated with tasteful personal effects. The woman began introducing me to various people in the department, although remarkably, there were no professors. “The department is run as a collective,” she pointed out. One of the other students muttered something about Juche (the North Korean ideological system). Really?
I was self-conscious of being so much older than most of the students. I was introduced to a man half my age who would be my “mentor” – he had the remarkably fitting dream-name of Earnest Young. He had blond hair and a goatee. He asked me to tell him about myself. I began to tell him a rather redacted personal history, in Spanish, but after a while we ended up talking about my negative experiences with graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. At some point he said, candidly, that his Spanish wasn’t so good, and we switched to English. I had the feeling that maybe he wasn’t impressed with my Spanish and had offered to switch out of pity, but he’d said very little in the language, so I decided I was being paranoid.
We were interrupted by the woman from the front desk, who took me around to meet some of the other students. Then, I was introduced to an older woman with graying hair who was apparently part of the building’s janitorial staff, but she was being treated as a full member of the group. She was laughing at humorless in-jokes being made by a forceful younger woman with “Occupy Philosophy” written on her tee shirt.
I bowed to the older cleaning lady and greeted her in Korean. This impressed the other students, but the cleaning lady returned my bow and offered me a large plate with exactly two orange cheezits on it. I took the plate politely, and was about to eat the cheezits when I saw that written on them were the words “아무것 없다” [“There is nothing”]. I looked at the woman with alarm, but she just smiled shyly and enigmatically, and returned to her cart of cleaning supplies and began dusting an unoccupied cubicle.
I was feeling uncomfortable by this secret message I’d received, so I put the plate of cheezits aside on the desk that had been assigned to me, and resumed my orientation chat with Earnest Young.
He was explaining that we had to teach our own classes under a sort of rotating leadership. My first class that I had to lead would be about Witold Gombrowicz [this is very significant in the context of this dream, but very hard to explain – Gombrowicz is connected in my mind with the problem and aesthetic of apophenia]. There were some administrative details I didn’t understand, but I decided to let it slide for now.
Then I looked back at the plate of cheezits after a few minutes and there was a very small sculpture of a monkey gazing at the cheezits, as if it was hungry. The monkey turned its head and met my eyes intelligently. I shivered, feeling a sort of nervous, conspiratorial fear, as if the universe had shrugged and uttered, “Gombrowicz, indeed.”
I was tired. “Where will I sleep?” I asked.
The earnest Mr. Young glanced at me, surprised. “Oh, you don’t know. We will probably assign you to ‘Camp One.'”
I asked for an explanation. “We take the collective nature of our undertaking very seriously,” he explained, earnestly. Apparently, they lived like Occupy protestors, in large recycled Army tents in the modernist plaza outside the building, where there was a large sculpture in the style of Picasso’s amazing work in Daley Plaza in Chicago [That sculpture is a recurring character in my dreams].
“The views of the mountains are excellent,” the young Earnest pointed out. “And the outside air is invigorating.”
I shrugged, but remembered a problem. “I don’t have a sleeping bag.”
He looked at me, eyes bugging out, as if to say, ‘how could you neglect to bring something so important as a sleeping bag to a comparative literature graduate program?‘
I apologized, and mumbled something about how Penn had obviously habituated me to a different sort of graduate program, altogether.
He grinned, forgiving me. “Yeah, we don’t follow that old Penn style. We’re progressive.”
I nodded, and added for no apparent reason, “Like Columbia?”
“Maybe. I haven’t been there. This is a different world,” he said, gesturing around. The signs were in Korean, now, in the food court, and a large number of people were emerging from what was clearly a Seoul subway station stairway. Yet peering out a large window I could still see the green hills and the harbor with sailboats in the distance. So I had to agree it was a different world.
“I’m really tired,” I finally said.
“You’ll get to sleep, soon. But first, we’re meeting to watch cartoons.” He described a restaurant or bar location across the street from the tents where I would be staying. “Let’s meet there in about 30 minutes.”
“What are we watching,” I asked.
He waxed enthusiastic. “Oh, it’s a fabulous new program,” he exclaimed. “It’s called ‘pork the orkville opiates.'”
This title for a cartoon was so bizarre, so incongruous and yet hilarious, that I began to laugh.
I immediately woke up. Am I the only one who has noticed that a dream state cannot sustain an active, laughing subject? Do I begin to “sleep-laugh” in actual fact, when these dream-laughs occur?
“Orkville,” by the way, isn’t just some random name. When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I had a collection of stuffed toys that were perhaps intended to be alligators, but they stood upright and came in unusual colors, like blue and red and yellow. I had decided that these were definitely not alligators (even then, alligators!), but rather “orks.” My mother, a fan of Tolkien before Tolkien fandom was a thing, asked me if Orcs weren’t horrible, brutish and unkind creatures. I told my mother in no uncertain terms that no, those were “C-orcs, spelled with the letter ‘c’.” My orks were “K-orks, spelled with the letter ‘k’.” I clarified that K-orks were, in fact, vegetarians, and lived a communistic life in an amphibious riverine utopia named Orkville. I drew several maps and wrote a constitution for the place. I later invented a language for them, with an abjad writing system. I had one Ork named Barnabus York, and another named Merriweather Shadow. They were metaphysical detectives. I drew geneologies for them stretching back 50 generations, to show they were related.This was when I was 7 or 8. I was smarter when I was a child.
What I’m listening to right now.
Penderecki, “Viola Concerto.”
Caveat: Виктор Цой
Normally I don’t like to “follow up” on blog posts with related blog posts. I have a sort of aesthetic philosophy of “maximal divergence” that I try to follow.
But after my last post about Korean-Russian folk singer Yuliy Kim, I started exploring a whole fascinating world of Korean-Russian musical talent. I discovered Viktor Tsoi (Виктор Цой). This Korean-Russian, born in Leningrad in 1962 (and thus in the same cohort and generation as Medvedev and Putin, interestingly) was quite the phenom in the perestroika-era Soviet Union. One of his songs became an anthem for the protesters who eventually ended the anti-Gorbochev coup and thus ended the Soviet Union and placed Yeltsin in power.
This guy is awesome. He’s all 80’s angst and a master of all kinds of voices and genres adapted to the derivative late Soviet rock scene, Tsoi ended up dying at a very young age, in 1990. I like this guy so much I just downloaded two of his albums.
What I’m listening to right now.
Виктор Цой, “Песня Без Слов.”
Текст:
Песня без слов, ночь без сна,
Все в свое время – зима и весна,
Каждой звезде – свой неба кусок,
Каждому морю – дождя глоток.
Каждому яблоку – место упасть,
Каждому вору – возможность украсть,
Каждой собаке – палку и кость,
И каждому волку – зубы и злость.Снова за окнами белый день,
День вызывает меня на бой.
Я чувствую, закрывая глаза, –
Весь мир идет на меня войной.Если есть стадо – есть пастух,
Если есть тело – должен быть дух,
Если есть шаг – должен быть след,
Если есть тьма – должен быть свет.
Хочешь ли ты изменить этот мир,
Сможешь ли ты принять как есть,
Встать и выйти из ряда вон,
Сесть на электрический стул или трон?Снова за окнами белый день,
День вызывает меня на бой.
Я чувствую, закрывая глаза, –
Весь мир идет на мня войной.
Here is a tribute to Viktor Tsoi by a Korean group called 윤도현 밴드 [Yoon Do Hyun Band], where they sing that famous perestroika anthem translated into Korean.
윤도현 밴드 [Yoon Do Hyun Band], “Группа крови” (корейский вариант).
Caveat: Юлий Ким
Yuliy Kim (Юлий Ким) is a rather famous Russian folk musician, who became popular in the 70’s and 80’s as a “subversive,” performing concerts and making music in opposition to the Soviet authorities. He is also, interestingly, ethnically Korean and was born in the Russian Far East. He worked for some years in the 50’s or 60’s as a school teacher in Kamchatka (the part of Russia across from Alaska, more or less).
There are several hundred thousand ethnic Koreans still living all over Russia, and an equal number in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia (notably Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to where they were deported by Stalin in 1937).
What I’m listening to right now.
Юлий Ким, песни об Израиле (Songs about Israel).
Like a lot of Russian folk music that was tied to the opposition in the communist era, it’s tightly intertwined with various Russo-Jewish traditions. So that’s how you get a Korean singing about Israel in Russian. The Koreans and Jews in Soviet Russia have had similar histories in some respects, not least in their having been persecuted on an ethnic basis for perceived congenital disloyalty. Kim’s father was executed by the Stalinists not long after his birth, for example.
Here is a picture of Kim with Yuri Koval in 1964, that I found on a Russian-language blog.
Caveat: Trust
I have many shortcomings, I know. Although I consider “reliability” to be something I need to work on, I don’t see “trust” as exactly the same thing as reliability, although they are clearly related or interconnected to each other.
“Trust,” to me, means keeping specific (explicit) promises as well as fulfilling people’s ethical expectations, e.g. to respect things like boundaries, privacy, etc. Reliability is more about fulfilling implicit promises that go above and beyond general ethics, especially on an ongoing basis. I have mostly tended to view myself as trustworthy but not always reliable – perhaps partly because I’m not very good at figuring out other people’s expectations of me (implicit promises), but also because reliability seems more open ended and I’m not as good with open-ended commitments as I am with narrow commitments. If I say, “I will do X tomorrow,” X gets done. If I say, “I will do X every day from now on,” X may get done for a while but over time I will fail.
…trustworthy in the short term, I guess, if not always reliable.
Today I had two people convey to me that they basically didn’t trust me. Whether this arose in conjunction with issues of reliability or not, I can’t really figure out. Neither used those words (“trust” or “reliability”) – in both cases, the communication was fraught by the language barrier that arises so often for me. I think I understood their meaning, however – neither was a case where there was a lot of room for misunderstanding.
So people don’t trust me? Coworkers? Students?
This makes me miserable.
Needless to say, it was a crummy day. There have been times when I have let people down. I think I’m pretty good a admitting those mistakes. I’ll own up to them and apologize and hope that I can be forgiven. I really don’t feel, from what I understand at this point, that either of these cases, today, were examples where I “earned the lack of trust” (so to speak) that was communicated to me. These things today, they feel undeserved.
So I come online and start ranting about it, but I do so in unfulfilling, vague generalities because, god forbid, I further erode any possibility of trust.
Grump.
What I’m listening to right now.
Phantogram, “When I’m Small.”
Caveat: Personally I Don’t Think Winnipeg Is That Bad
There seems to be a whole sub-genre of music devoted to disliking Winnipeg. There was an album by the Venetian Snares a few years back, called “Winnipeg is a frozen shithole.” And today I ran across this gem.
The fact is, I have a lot of nostalgia attached to Winnipeg – more than to any other place in Canada. I have some fondness for the Vancouver of my childhood visits, and the flash-romance of the week I spent stranded in Ottawa during my strange, cross-continental foray into homelessness, in my 20th year. But Winnipeg was a connection built on repeated visits with my spouse Michelle during the mid 1990’s. It’s a place of magic and romance and nostalgia re-nostalgified. Is that odd?
What I’m listening to right now.
The Weakerthans, “One Great City.”
Lyrics:
Late afternoon, another day is nearly done
A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
That hollow hurried sound, feet on polished floor
And in the dollar store, the clerk is closing up
And counting loonies trying not to sayI
Hate
WinnipegThe driver checks the mirror seven minutes late
The crowded riders’ restlessness enunciates
The Guess Who sucked, the Jets were lousy anyway
The same route everyday
And in the turning lane
Someone’s stalled again
He’s talking to himself
And hears the price of gas repeat his phraseI
Hate
Winnipeg
And up above us all
Leaning into sky
Our golden business boy
Will watch the North End die
And sing, “I love this town”
Then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaimI
Hate
Winnipeg
Below is a picture I took in Morris, Manitoba (about an hour south of Winnipeg), and above right, a desolate highway sign in Pembina, North Dakota, both in 2009 (I may have posted these pictures before – if so, apologies).
Unrelatedly (hopefully unrelatedly), a quote:
“The more laws you have, the more criminals there will be.” – attributed to the Tao Te Ching, but I’m not sure of that.
Caveat: 19.74 km
I used Google maps to diagram my long walk on Friday, which I did with my once-upon-a-time fellow Arcata High School student, Mary, who was visiting Seoul for the first time – because both of us like to walk.
How weird is it, by the way, that there are two AHS class of 1983 people living in South Korea at the same time, exactly 30 years after our graduation? That’s weird.
But anyway, such as it is, we took a long walk.
I took the subway (line 3) into Gangnam and met her there. Then we went to my favorite Kyobo Mungo (giant bookstore thingy). Then we walked back north to the river and across the river on the old Dongho bridge (동호대교 [dongho-daegyo]). There our luck got interesting. Nestled at the base of where the subway crosses the bridge and then tunnels into the mountain to become subway again, near Oksu station, there is a Buddhist temple called 미타사 [mita-sa]. Because it was Buddha’s birthday, the temple was very busy – imagine a Buddhist version of a church Christmas street fair and festivities. Children were darting about, and old women were ushering and monks were clacking their monk clackers. An old woman showed us a lantern and subsequently invited us in. Now in all my six years in Korea I’ve only been invited in once before to an on-going Buddhist service, and certainly not into something so festive and interesting. Mary took a lot of pictures while I tried to speak along with the chants (=prayers, with the words projected onto a big screen). It was interesting an entertaining. A talented woman sang pop songs and Buddhist “pop” music – sort of a parallel to Christian pop music that goes on in worship services, I suspect.
Here, I found another rendition of one of the songs we heard. (What I’m listening to right now).
“빙빙빙” [bing-bing-bing].
Imagine exactly what you see in the video, above, but with a giant gold Buddha as a backdrop. Here’s a picture I took right after that song ended and the singer was departing the stage. The projector screen still says the song’s title.
It was a lot of fun to be inside the temple. They wanted us to stay and eat but we pleaded busyness and so they dispensed some rice-cake sweets to us and sent us on our way.
Then we walked to Itaewon.
We had lunch at a Spanish restaurant called “Spain Club.” It was pretty good – we had some tapas.
Itaewon is, among many other things, Seoul’s (and Korea’s) only predominantly Muslim neighborhood – and it being Friday (Muslim sabbath) combined with it being a holiday (Buddha’s Birthday) meant that everyone was out in force. The mosque was packed with prayer-goers at a giant outdoor picnic. Here’s a picture of the entrance and the inside of the courtyard area.
From Itaewon, we walked along the east side of the Yongsan U.S. Army base and on up the south side of 남산 [nam-san], where the iconic Seoul Tower is located. I’ve taken many pictures at Namsan before so I didn’t take any this time.
At the top of Namsan we looked in various different directions and then we went down the north side of the mountain into downtown. We walked through Myeongdong. It was so crowded that it was like being at a rock concert but instead of music it was Chinese and Japanese tourists absorbed in a consumerist frenzy (Myeongdong is a popular fashion shopping area). Finally we made it to Cheonggyecheon, the restored stream that flows eastward through downtown Seoul.
Then we walked to 인사동 [insa-dong] where I bought some 보이차 [bo-i-cha = puer tea] I had been wanting – I have it in tea bags but I wanted the kind that I could make in a pot. Then we went over to the 조계사 [jogye-sa] temple which, despite its understatedness, I consider to be the St Peter’s Basilica of Korean Buddhism – it’s the administrative heart of the Jogye Order which is the predominant zen (chan / mahayana) style branch of Korean Buddhism.
Then we went to find my favorite vegetarian restaurant and on a wrong turning we met some cats on a rooftop. They watched us.
Finally we ate dinner at the restaurant. I had sesame noodle soup.
It was a pretty good Buddha’s Birthday hike. Now my feet are tired.
Caveat: Oops! That space worm gobbled up Michigan.
There’s a genre of hiphop called “nerdcore.” This, I like.
What I’m listening to right now.
MC Frontalot, “I’ll Form The Head.”
Lyrics.
[MC Frontalot]Bright-colored robotic space rhinocerithat we pilot — why? ‘Cause they’re in supply.Plus, we heed the cry of our planet’s populationto defend them. We report to battle stations!Split screen — ready! — and our rhinos are rocket shipswith fully articulated tusk, jaws, and hips.They come equipped with individual special attacks,none with a lack (but a couple a little bit slack).I’m not naming any pilot specifically,but we’re all color coded so you notice that typicallyI (in the gold) lead the charge, do the most damageto whatever very giant space invader managedto threaten the globe in yet another of our episodes.This week? Malevolent galactic nematode!Already beat up the squad when we faced him.I’m calling it: let’s form a giant robot and waste him.Monster misbehavingPlanet’s needing savingSituation’s grave andI’ll form the headThe enemy is cleverWe’re smaller but whateverWhen we put it togetherI’ll form the headY’all can do the treadingSwing energy macheteIf combination’s readyI’ll form the headI’ll form the headI’ll form the head[ZeaLouS1]What the deuce, Pink? What’d I tell you last time?Got my agent on the phone, watch it with the worm slime.And watch a star shine. Focus in your cameras.‘Cause it’s a damn crime, being so glamorous.Now pan it, yeah at us, shot of the supremeMister Quoise Rhinobot. Them? My lackey team.You got the nimrod with the yellow laser beamand the other guy’s otaku (and he wants to talk to me).Between scenes, sometimes I feel out of place.Oh yeah, I’m the biggest damn star in outer space.Dear fans, I am powered by your flattery.Love, little old me (not the diva or the daiquiri).Back on track, team! And if you require meto show some pearly whites, I’ll remind you why you hired me.There’s no rivalry, just me instead.I’ll be back in fifteen, just in time to form the head.Monster misbehavingPlanet’s needing savingSituation’s grave andI’ll form the headThe enemy is cleverWe’re smaller but whateverWhen we put it togetherI’ll form the headY’all can do the treadingSwing energy macheteIf combination’s readyI’ll form the headI’ll form the headI’ll form the head[Dr. Awkward]Am I the only one who’s finding this peculiar,that fighting giant aliens is getting too familiar?It’s bad enough, and just my luck, my bot is lightish red,but do we always have to argue over who should form the head?NASA-trained, I’m only overlooked cause I’m the nice guy.I’m overqualified. I’ve logged six months of flight time.Astrophysicist, but still there’s no respect for me.The “Golden Boy” and Quoise couldn’t spell the word trajectory.Now they have me face-to-face and fighting with some fish bait.Ten minutes left? We’ll never finish at this rate.We need a plan, re-running through other enemies,but every battle has two-minute breaks within the memory.All these giant insects, they put the world in jeopardy.I remember MegaMoth as if it happened yesterday.I think it’s time that we combine and rip this thing to shreds,but only if you promise me that I can form the head!Monster misbehavingPlanet’s needing savingSituation’s grave andI’ll form the headThe enemy is cleverWe’re smaller but whateverWhen we put it togetherI’ll form the headY’all can do the treadingSwing energy macheteIf combination’s readyI’ll form the headI’ll form the headI’ll form the head[MC Frontalot]Pink! Turquoise! Stick together! Some sayUltraMegafauna only clicks together one way.If that is apocryphal, might offer you turnsup top, where the view’s at. You can look sternwhile we pose so menacingly, brandishing blade,about to rid us of the enemy with one swoop. Yayyy!Not now! Time’s critical. Don’t debate this again.Oops! That space worm gobbled up Michigan.Monster misbehavingPlanet’s needing savingSituation’s grave andI’ll form the headThe enemy is cleverWe’re smaller but whateverWhen we put it togetherI’ll form the headY’all can do the treadingSwing energy macheteIf combination’s readyI’ll form the headI’ll form the headI’ll form the head
Caveat: Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
For parts of tonight's content, I am indebted to various posts at the Sullyblog. But not these first parts. I was reading some excerpts about Emma Goldman on some libertarian sites. Two quotes:
"The individual is the true reality in life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called “society,” or the “nation,” which is only a collection of individuals. Man, the individual, has always been and necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress. Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against “society,” that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship." – Emma Goldman
"'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect." – Emma Goldman
Not sure how this connects, but I had an insight about cosmopolitanism. It's really the main thing. Cosmopolitanism is the sense that we are all citizens of the world as a whole. When we have this sense, we are able to participate intelligently in the modern world. If we don't, there are going to be problems.
What I'm listening to right now.
King Crimson, "The Court of the Crimson King." I remember listening to King Crimson a lot a very long time ago.
Lyrics:
The dance of the puppets
The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.
The purple piper plays his tune,
The choir softly sing;
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue,
For the court of the crimson king.The keeper of the city keys
Put shutters on the dreams.
I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes.
The black queen chants
The funeral march,
The cracked brass bells will ring;
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king.The gardener plants an evergreen
Whilst trampling on a flower.
I chase the wind of a prism ship
To taste the sweet and sour.
The pattern juggler lifts his hand;
The orchestra begin.
As slowly turns the grinding wheel
In the court of the crimson king.On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax.
The yellow jester does not play
But gentle pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king.
16 "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." – Matthew 6:16-18 (RSV translation)
Caveat: Post-3000
My friend Peter has adopted a convention of titling each of the posts of his new blog with the post number (e.g. “Post-1: A blog”). It’s similar to my own stupid convention of prefixing each post with the word “Caveat” (e.g. “Caveat: Dumptruck“) – as if that ever even made sense except in the rarest of instances (e.g. Caveat: Emptor).
I like Peter’s convention better than I like my own, but he thought of it and I didn’t. He’s doing well with his new blog, I think.
My blog…. well, looky there: this is the 3000th post according to the blog administrator thingy. I started the blog in August of 2004, but in the first 3 years I probably made about 50 posts, total (most of which were during a 2005 trip to Europe), so that number of 3000 has been built largely since the summer of 2007.
I think it was only in late 2010 that I made a sort of “commitment” to posting at least once-a-day, and I’m pretty sure I’ve averaged two posts a day for more than a year now.
My friends and family were visiting my blog a lot during the era when the blog was automatically cross-posting to facebookland, but a technical problem a few months ago ended that temporarily, and my general, philosophical disillusionment with the facebook has meant that I haven’t worked very hard to fix it. I suppose there might be an element of passive-aggressiveness to this “cutting off,” too – perhaps testing to see who’s really interested in what I’m doing, as opposed to the mindless link-following encouraged by the facebook’s format. It’s not unlike how I bury these little fragments of snark behind a wall of digressive prose.
Regardless, my visitor counts have been declining. This doesn’t, actually, bother me that much. My real-life visitor counts (i.e. social interactions outside-of-work) have been declining lately, too – I’ve been in an antisocial phase, as I’ve already remarked elsewhere.
What I’m listening to right now.
Radiohead, “All I Need.”
Caveat: Loop and Delay: A Song About People And Sasquatches
I've never been that much into the "beatboxing" phenomenon, but this guy, Reggie Watts, takes it to a whole new level. I'm blown away.
He's a comedian too, with a remarkably wide repertoire. Here he is doing TED, with a mix of his "loop and delay" beatboxing bits and some really bizarre, essentially dadaist comedy – it includes, for example, "a song about people and sasquatches and french science stuff." He does these weird mashup riffs of made-up languages, too. I see him as half hip-hop beatboxer working at a high-tech startup company, half Borges on psilocybin.
From another one of his routines, he says, "At one point, innovation didn't exist." His point: someone had to come up with it. How did that work?
On thinking outside of the box: "As children know, sometimes boxes are very hard to get out of."
What I'm listening to right now.
Reggie Watts, "NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert." Note that his first improv in this bit is a tribute to NPR – at least the acronym and coffee sippers.
Caveat: hasta donde debemos practicar las verdades
Lo que estoy escuchando en este momento.
Silvio Rodríguez, "Playa Girón." Una de la canciones que más me gusta de la música latinoamericana.
Letra:
compañeros poetas
tomando en cuenta
los últimos sucesos
en la poesía
quisiera preguntar
me urge
que tipo de adjetivos
se deben usar para hacer
el poema de un barco
sin que se haga sentimental
fuera de la vanguardia o
evidente panfleto
si debo usar palabras,como
flota cubana de pesca
y playa giróncompañeros de música,
tomando en cuenta esas
politonales y audaces canciones
quisiera preguntar
me urge
que tipo de armonía
se debe usar para hacer
la canción de este barco
con hombres de poca niñez
hombres y solamente
hombres sobre cubierta
hombres negros y rojos
y azules los hombres
que pueblan
el playa giróncompañeros de historia
tomando en cuanta lo implacable
que debe ser la verdad
quisiera preguntar
me urge tanto
que debiera decir
que fronteras debo respetar?
si alguien roba comida
y después da la vida que hacer?
hasta donde debemos
practicar las verdades
hasta donde sabemos
que escriban pues la historia
su historia los hombres del
playa girónque escriban pues la historia
su gistoria los hombres dl
playa girón
Caveat: The Cookie Business
"Now I got 99 problems and Jay-Z's one of them." – Barack Obama, about Jay-Z's recent trip to Cuba with Beyonce (referencing Jay-Z's popular song "99 Problems").
Unrelatedly…
What I'm listening to right now.
"Cookiewaits" [a Tom Waits / Cookie Monster mashup] – "God's Away On Business."
The lyrics (my own transcription, mostly):
I'd sell your heart to the junkman baby
For a buck, for a buck
If you're looking for someone
To pull you out of that ditch
You're outta luck, you're outta luckThe ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
There's leak, there's leak,
In the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.Digging up the dead with
A shovel and a pick
It's a job, it's a job
Bloody moon rising with
A plague and a flood
Join the mob, join the mobIt's all over
It's all over
It's all over
There's a leak, there's a leak,
In the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.[Instrumental Break]
God damn there's always such
A big temptation
To be good, To be good
There's always free cheddar
In the mousetrap, baby
It's a deal, it's a dealThe ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
There's leak, there's leak,
In the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.I narrow my eyes like a coin slot baby,
Let her ring, let her ringIt's all over
It's all over
It's all over
There's a leak, there's a leak,
In the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
Business.
Caveat: Ozone &c.
I love to walk home in a cool rain, just as it's beginning or slackening. In the dark, wet streets, buses or bicycles go zipping past. My perception is that Spring is arriving late but fast this year. Spring always seems to come fast, I suppose: one day, the trees are bare, then another day, there are blossoms, then another day and all is bright greening.
Today the air smelled of ozone – is that Chinese yellow pollution dust, or something local? Or is it the way we get here on rare occasions, when the rain comes from the west and smells of the desert out somewhere near Mongolia?
What I'm listening to right now.
Trauma Pet, "Yearning."
Caveat: Wingdings
An advanced-level elementary student was writing an essay for me in the computer lab the other day. She printed her essay and came running to me in either feigned or real panic. She showed me the printout, below. Obviously, something was amiss.
"Teacher! What's wrong. The printer is broken," she complained.
I went and looked at her screen and then again at the document.
"The printer isn't broken," I sighed. "You need to stop playing around with font choices in Microsoft Word and spend more time writing your essay."
What is this font you speak of, O master?
I have been in a very strange mood, lately. I feel like an old man in a rest home for the mentally deranged. Just a feeling…
What I'm listening to right now.
Harry Nilsson, "Without You."
Caveat: Still Home
Two years ago yesterday, I moved back to Ilsan after my strange year in Jeollanam, and started my new job at Karma.
On this two year anniversary, it’s easy to get nostalgic and think about what I feel about being here. I’ve been much less content about “being in Korea,” lately, as many of my acquaintances know. And my job satisfaction suffers because of that, although even now I don’t think “job satisfaction” is a major factor in my discontent. It’s just that my discontent is negatively impacting job satisfaction.
Not sure that makes sense.
More later.
What I’m listening to right now.
GOSSAMER, “Her Ghost.”
Caveat: The Most Moronic Fraternity
“Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing.” – Vladimir Nabokov
What I’m listening to right now.
Scorpions, “No One Like You.”
Caveat: Where Are We Now?
I was huge fan of David Bowie when I was in college, oh so many years ago.
I remained a fan, if not a super enthusiastic one. Once I saw him in concert, while I was in graduate school and Michelle and I were living in Philadelphia. I think it was one of the few concerts I went to during that epoch, in the mid-1990's.
Sometimes I can go for a long stretch without listening to anything by him, but recently I had a chance to hear one of the songs from his new album, which has gotten a lot of rave reviews. I'm inclined to agree – he's aged really well.
What I'm listening to right now.
David Bowie, "Where Are We Now?" That's his new one.
Here's an old one, that I used to listen to almost every day for a few years in the late 1980's.
David Bowie, "Life On Mars?"
Caveat: a nightmare on the brains of the living
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." – Karl Marx, 1852.
Marx is writing about the memory of the period of the French Revolution, which is 50~60 years old at that point.
It's a bit like us remembering the Korean War.
What I'm listening to right now.
Animal Collective, "Today's Supernatural."
Caveat: háblame solo de nubes y sal
Lo que estoy escuchando en este momento.
La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros, "Cómo mata el viento norte" (1976). Es difícil de creer que esta canción surgió de la Argentina de la época de dictaturas y desaparecidos. Se quisiera buscar significaciones secretas…
Letra:
Como mata el viento norte
cuando agosto está en el día,
y el espacio nuestros cuerpos ilumina.
Un mendigo muestra joyas
a los ciegos de la esquina,
y un cachorro del señor nos alucina
háblame solo
de nubes y sal
no quiero saber nada
con la miseria del mundo hoy.
Hoy es un buen día
hay algo en paz,
la tierra es nuestra hermana
Marte no cede,
al poder del sol
Venus nos enamora,
la Luna sabe de su atracción.
Mientras nosotros
morimos aquí,
con los ojos cerrados
no vemos más que nuestra nariz.
Como mata el viento norte
cuando agosto está en el día
y el espacio nustros cuerpos ilumina.
Señor noche, se mi cuna,
señor noche, se mi día,
mi pequeña almita baila
de alegría, de alegría.
Caveat: If language were liquid
I am writing a lot, these days. Well, "a lot" is a relative term. More than usual.
But I'm not yet putting it out there in blog land. I might not, ever.
What I'm listening to right now.
Suzanne Vega, "Language."
The lyrics:
If language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever beThese words are too solid
They don't move fast enough
To catch the blur in the brain
That flies by and is gone
Gone
Gone
GoneI'd like to meet you
In a timeless, placeless place
Somewhere out of context
And beyond all consequencesLet's go back to the building
(Words are too solid)
On Little West Twelfth
It is not far away
(They don't move fast enough)
And the river is there
And the sun and the spaces
Are all laying low
(To catch the blur in the brain)
And we'll sit in the silence
(That flies by and is)
That comes rushing in and is
Gone (Gone)I won't use words again
They don't mean what I meant
They don't say what I said
They're just the crust of the meaning
With realms underneath
Never touched
Never stirred
Never even moved throughIf language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever beAnd is gone
Gone
Gone
And is gone
Caveat: Ideologues and Hipsters and Enablers, Oh My
I want to make three short, unrelated observations about life right next to North Korea.
1. Ideologues. I have been reflecting that perhaps all the ramp-up of tensions (per the media, anyway) doesn't really worry me because I am a child of the latter half of the Cold War, when we all lived under an umbrella of irrational ideology-driven nuclear oblitaration, all the time. Having grown up under the paradigm of Brezhnev v Nixon, Park v Kim doesn't feel that weird or uncomfortable to me. It's like the mini cold war. All very nostalgic. Heh.
2. Hipsters. Day-to-day life in South Korea doesn't really seem to care about what's going on. For the South Koreans themselves, there's PSY and his latest antics (exhibit 1):
Clearly it's just about decadence and the self-indulgent, half-ironic denunciation of decadence, with little regard for broad ideological or geopolitical concerns.
For the expats such as myself, there's lots of alcohol and fun-with-friends and ain't-this-a-neverending-party (exhibit 2):
The expat club is not a club I really enjoy being a member of, but I accept my membership, and – sans the copious quantities of alcohol and the fun touring around in my own particular case – the above video is a more-or-less accurate and not entirely unsympathetic portrayal of daily expat life in South Korea. At the least, it rejects the alarmism rampant in the international press, if only to replace it with a sort of sentimental hipsterism.
Is that too harsh? I don't really mean to be – maybe I'm just resentful because my life in Korea is more boring than that because I'm feeling old and run down, lately – because hipsterish partying and running around might be fun when you're in your 20's, but in your 40's it just looks silly and vaguely irresponsible. The one cultural value that unites South Koreans and Americans almost perfectly: ageism and obsession with youth culture. OK – that was a bitter digression.
3. Enablers. A foreign policy analyst named Edward Luttwak has an essay at Foreign Policy magazine (the site is "gated" – but registering is free, just very annoying) which places a large part of the blame for the North Korean crisis squarely on the South Koreans' denialism and "enabling." I very much recommend reading this article. I actually agree with him on his analysis of causes, but his apparently "get tough" prescriptions are scary. Here's my amateur response: Of course South Korea is enabling North Korea; but that's OK – it's really better than having a giant war… so, have at it – enable some more!
If you have a crazy, delusional sibling, what's smarter: confronting him such that both of you end up dead or injured, or going along with his craziness because at some level you care about him and you have feelings of human compassion and at some point he may realize on his own he has major issues and will seek help? The parallels aren't perfect, but they illustrate my point, I hope. You might object that the metaphor is broken, because there are millions of innocent bystanders being harmed by this crazy sibling. But in fact, it's also true that millions more innocent bystanders would be harmed by any kind of violent intervention. Let's tweek the hypothetical slightly: yes, it's true the crazy sibling locks his children in the basement and tortures them, but it's essentially guaranteed that if you try to confront him violently, your own children will be killed or gravely harmed too. He's got bombs pointed at your house! So… what course of action minimizes harm?
Caveat: You just need fire and a little faith
The video is better than the song. It's a god operating a touchscreen mechanism, and getting frustrated and messing with his creation – like a guy playing Sims or something in that vein.
What I'm listening to right now.
The Leisure Society, "Fight For Everyone." I couldn't find the lyrics online, and I'm too lazy to write down a full transcription myself. But one line: "You just need fire and a little faith"
Caveat: Count the Seconds
A melancholy day with just a taste of spring.
What I'm listening to right now.
The Ericksons, "Gone Blind."
Caveat: 부두차일
This woman rocks Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” on a traditional Korean instrument called a 가야금 [gayageum].
Note: the term “Chile” in the name of the song should be pronounced roughly /chail/ (hence my transcription to hangeul above) – it is not a derivation of the name of the country “Chile” nor is it related to “chili” peppers. It’s rather meant to be an approximated spelling of the dialect pronounciation of the word “child” without the “-d” sound at the end.
Caveat: Ten Miles From Crazy
I've gotten some messages from people I know, in the vein of "Are you OK?" recently, because of all the wacky threatening and counter-threatening that's been going on here in the Korean peninsula. A lot of people in North America or other distant places don't really understand just how "same as usual" this type of thing is. So just to reiterate: I'm fine.
I live exactly 10 miles, as a crow flies, from North Korea. I checked it out on google maps. But if I didn't look at the news, I'd never know there was a problem. It literally seems to have zero impact on my day-to-day life. If push comes to shove and things go crazy, they will probably go crazy really fast. But if that happens, I'll figure it's about the same as an earthquake or tornado or some other natural disaster. Most Koreans I know look at it that way: it's not something they can control, and it's just a hazard of living here. Just in exactly the same way that living in San Francisco means you have in the back of your mind that there might be a giant earthquake someday, or living in Oklahoma means you have to imagine there might be a tornado at some point.
I know I've written about this before. Probably exactly in the same way – This Here Blog Thingy™ is getting a bit long in tooth – in the blogular timescale of things – and so repetition may become inevitable. But anyway, don't worry. Unless you like to worry about earthquakes and tornados, too.
What I'm listening to right now.
Sixto Rodriguez, "Cause."