“There are projects for the dead and there are projects for the living. Though I confess sometimes I get confused by that distinction.” – Jim White, lyrics from his song “Still Waters.”
I’m pretty confused. Need to focus on my projects, regardless.
What I’m listening to right now.
[Youtube embed added 2011-08-02 as part of my background noise project]
I said goodbye to my stuff at my storage unit, today. I’m returning to Korea in a few days, after staging for a last few days through L.A.
I put the last of my things that I needed to store in the unit, locked it up, and drove away into a swollen orange full moon rising over Eagan. The temperature was 0 degrees F. I heard a song by Metric, on the radio, called “Help, I’m Alive.”
What I’m listening to right now.
[Youtube embed added later, part of the Background Noise project.]
I drove across Utah. It was covered in snow. Here is the most boring video imaginable: driving, real-time, no editing. This is part of one of the longest stretches of interstate with no gas station that I know of: I-70 west of the Green River crossing.
So… it's a 7 mile snapshot of my 14,000 mile cross-country experience, second-by-second. Unedited. Mostly, it was an excuse to post a cool soundtrack: The Herbaliser – The Next Spot.
["back post": written/created 2009-11-09]
Here is a video I made of a trip to the post office from Arthur's house in Alaska. I thought it would make a nice contrast with the one I did in August of my trip to the bookstore in Seoul.
Soundtrack is Cat Stevens' "On the Road to Find Out." We went on the road. And we found out.
I’ve been saying I would post a video from my visit to Ulleungdo [울릉도] for a while, and I finally have. It’s not as carefully edited as the ones I made before, but it’s a glimpse of what I saw when I was there. The music is 행복하길바래 by 임형주 [haeng-bok-ha-gil-ba-rae = “I hope you are happy” by Im Hyeong-ju]
This is the other video I made where I started with the song and added the video bits I'd recently taken. The lyrics to the song ("Hammering in my Head" from Garbage's 1998 Version 2.0 album) include the phrase "the bullet train from Tokyo" and I'd always imagined, someday, I would be on a bullet train from Tokyo, and lo, last Saturday, I was. So I made this little video, and, fortunately, this time, youtube allowed my "third party copyrighted content" — so you all can see it.
It's funny, because youtube communicates with me in Korean (not always very successfully, I might add, but I can get the gist). I can't figure out how to change the setting that makes it do this. Here's what it told me about this posting:
caveatdumptruck님,
회원님의 동영상 "The Bullet Train from Tokyo"에 UMG님이 소유하거나 라이센스 권한을 갖고 있는 콘텐츠가 있을 수 있습니다.
별도의 조치를 취할 필요는 없습니다. 그러나 회원님의 동영상에 미치는 영향에 대해 알고 싶으면 계정의 콘텐츠 ID 일치 섹션을 참조하시기 바랍니다.
Sincerely,
– YouTube 고객지원팀
I like the "caveatdumptruck님" [honored caveatdumptruck]. And the "Sincerely" in English — what's with that? I wonder if it's going through some kind of automatic translation software.
I'm still puzzling about what to do about my other, disabled video. I'm searching for a different song that I like that I can match to it, that youtube might allow… but, since I deleted the raw source footage that I used to make the video (to make room on my hard drive), my options are limited. Ah well. It was no big deal, really.
I'm not really happy with this video, but I didn't spend much time on it. I had trouble syncing the music track to it, but I really wanted to use that song. Anyway, here's some random shots of Tokyo over the last few days.
Tomorrow, I leave on the shinkansen for Hiroshima. I'll post from there, I guess. I hit a few art museums, today. Definitely worth it… I love art museums. The visits got my mind working. I'll see if I can write some thoughts or observations… but no promises.
Now I'm resting in my little hotel room and watching bad Japanese TV and trying to rememorize my kana. It's weird, because over the past year I've been working on learning Korean hanja, which are the equivalent of the Japanese Kanji, and every time I try to read a sign, I pronounce the kanji in my mind in Korean, which doesn't work well with Japanese endings. Not that I've really got that huge a vocabulary… I probably only have a hanja/kanji recognition of around 50 characters at the moment.
[Song with the video is Japanese Punk group Last Alliance's "Shissou"]
I finished putting this together, this evening, lurking in my hotel room in Tokyo. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it. It will help me remember my 14 months at LBridge pretty vividly, I think. Great kids!
The song is from the children’s musical that Zina was in, that I went to see six months ago. Keep in mind that I “lengthened” the song by looping the 2nd chorus about 4 times so that it would match the length of the video – so don’t be alarmed if the thing seems a bit repetitive. Thematically… I’m not sure it’s a great match: I think it’s about about a mosquito who’s bemoaning the current environmental crises in the world. But I like the song, and I think it goes well with the kids, especially since one of the kids in my video is actually one of the voices performing the song.
Atmosphere is a Hip Hop / Rap artist from Minneapolis that I like. Here are the lyrics to a track called "write now" that popped up on my mp3 shuffle today. It struck me as interesting vis-a-vis my recent struggles with writer's block.
Here's the video.
[Youtube embed added as part of background noise project.]
"Moe" is a Japanese term for a kind of romantic cuteness. Sometime back, I watched a Japanese anime series called "Ouran High School Host Club." I think one of the episodes was titled, "Thanks for the moe," which is kind of a tongue-in-cheek ironical remark, I suspect. Moe is really a flipside of otaku-ness (otaku being Japanese nerdy-geeky-fandom). I guess you could think of moe as the cuteness that gets the anime fans all excited.
The series is kind of silly, but it's actually rather complex, too, as it deals, in a cartoon setting, wtih some rather deep issues around gender roles and sexuality in contemporary Japan. As anime series go, I would rank it only middling for visual style and character interest, but for depth and philosophy (and lots of irony), it's near the top. Certainly, it seems unlikely that its themes would be dealt with in anything like the same way in either more salacious America or more prudish Korea.
Anyway, I thought of it because yesterday listening to my mp3, I heard the series' closing theme song, "Shissou," by Last Alliance, a Japanese alt-indie-sounding rock band. And now that damn song is stuck in my head.
[Youtube embed added later as part of background noise project.]
En la Ciudad de México, yo vivía en la entonces llamada Colonia Revolución (que hoy en día se llama Colonia Tabacaleros, no sé por qué). Quedaba a la vuelta del Metro Revolución, también a unas tres cuadras del monumento.
Mis amigos Tony y Aura vivían en Tacuba, y era bastante fácil salir de mi trabajo, después terminar mis deberes, y meterme en la línea azul del metro para subir hacia Metro Tacuba en la misma línea. Creo que un día, en alrededores del agosto o setiembre, una tarde lluviosa, salí del Metro Tacuba y emprendé la caminata de 5 minutos para donde la casa de ellos en la calle Lago Ontario (todas las calles del barrio de Tacuba llevan nombres de mares y lagos, si me acuerdo).
Habían todos los vendedores ambulantes de todo el menudeo que se encontraba en cualquier estación del metro, y me fijé en un LP (un album disco de vinilo, ya desaparecida aquella tecnología) del grupo Dream Academy. En el disco, había la canción Life in a Northern Town, que se tocaba en la radio top 40 de la época. Es una canción bastante sentimental, pero en aquel entonces, me gustaba. Por alguna razón, compré el disco.
Llegado ya a la casa de la puerta azul en la Lago Ontario, me puse a abrir el disco, porque Tony y Aura tenían un tocadiscos. Resultó que el disco sobraba de imperfecciones, con que al tocarlo, se oía un ligero accelerar-decelerar del ritmo de la música. En mi propía casa, faltaba de tocadiscos, así que me dediqué a grabar el disco allá donde Tony y Aura en un casete que podría escuchar en mi Walkman.
Durante muchos años, tenía esta grabación entre mi collección de casetes. Habiendo grabado el album del disco imperfecto, llegué a imaginar que las imperfecciones rítmicas de las canciones eran todo lo natural. Hace dos o tres años, compre un CD del mismo album, de que después hice un rip para trasladarlo a mi computadora. Y de ahí, a mi MP3.
Ayer, caminando hacia el trabajo acá en Corea, salió la canción “Life in a Northern Town” (por Dream Academy) en el albedrío de mi MP3. Me puse a recordar aquella tarde en Tacuba, entre las lluvias veranales del gran valle de México. Sin embargo, la canción parecía imperfecta, por faltar de las imperfecciones grabadas hace tanto tiempo.
Lo que escucho en este momento.
Dream Academy, “Life In A Northern Town.”
[youtube embed added 2011 as part of of background noise.]
Yesterday, I worked, and went into the city with Basil and bought some books after that. I was in a kind of antisocial mood, though. I'm not sure I'm very good at being friends with people, sometimes. Today… I did very little. Reading. A novel. A novella. Two different manga series. Plus Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which kept me in touch with my dislike of Plato.
I made some fried rice, added onion, kimchi, laver (Korean garnish seaweed) and tons of red pepper in a smidgen of sesame oil. It was very simple and delicious. I thought about snow, and listened to Cat Stevens and then Cold (they're an alternative rock group, their "Thirteen Ways to Bleed on Stage" is one of my favorite albums of all time — all the tracks on it are in my favorites list). And now, The Cure.
I have less than 5 months left on my contract. I'm currently feeling like I need to go back to the U.S. after this. That I have an obligation to. That I should. Why? My taxes being a mess, for one. My disconnect with my family, for another. But part of me doesn't want to.
What I'm listening to right now.
Cold, "Just Got Wicked." [youtube embed added 2011 as part of background noise.]
The weather is very springlike. As I walked to work today, following my random, right-angled, zig-zag path among the apartment highrises and playgrounds and plazas and shopping streets of my neighborhood, Natalie Imbruglia's cover of "Torn" shuffled onto my MP3 player. I hadn't heard that in a while. It was popular on the radio in the summer of 1998, and so it sort of gave me a flashback to a very bad period.
I think it was what was playing on the radio as I drove away from the apartment in Lansdale that Michelle, Jeffrey and I shared, that August. That was the last time I saw Michelle. We'd argued all weekend. On Sunday afternoon, I vividly recall Michelle and I sat down and agreed we would be separating. I think she used the word "trial separation," but all I said was "we need to be apart."
But that night, I was angry, frustrated, depressed, restless. And after she'd left for work the next morning, and Jeffrey had gone to school, I made a snap decision. It was a cruel, selfish decision, but I felt trapped and helpless, and my reaction so often in such situations is to simply run away. So I packed a few things into a bag, got into the car, and began to drive.
And this song "Torn" was on the radio as I got onto the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and headed toward King of Prussia. I had no plan whatsoever, except I wanted to go away.
By sunset, I was in northern Virginia, and the sun rose over Memphis the next morning. Two days later I was in Mexicali, a week after that, I was at my dad's in Los Angeles. By the middle of September I was in Craig, Alaska. That was a bad move, in retrospect. But… I'd escaped. Such as escaping is.
And now, when I hear that song, it's a very difficult thing to remember. Michelle is gone. Jeffrey's an adult, independent, functional. The damage – so much damage, I'm sure – is long done.
…I'm already torn…
What I'm listening to right now.
[youtube embed added 2011 as part of background noise. The video is dumb. But I like the song.]
I step out of my building at 1:05, running late for a second day in a row. I try to operate in a happy medium between insolence (always late) and subservience (never late), thus reflecting my dissatisfaction with my management on the one hand and my guilt-driven work-ethic on the other. Two days in a row is perhaps pushing the insolence direction.
The day is overcast, and that lifts me. Heaven is closer when the sun is hidden. I’m weird, that way. I remember a day, during one of my aimless wanderings in Mexico. I was about 20, and I was walking along the side of a highway, I think on the outskirts of La Paz, BCS. That’s one of the hottest parts of Mexico – tropical desert. The sun was beating down on me like an angry Pharaoh, and I vividly recall thinking to myself that there was something malevolent in it. I wanted to stand there at the side of the road and shake my fist, like a madman in a movie. Perhaps this is merely the result of having grown up in a place where there was so little sunshine. The sun comes to represent something alien, unknowable, not always an entirely welcome visitation. I don’t know.
When it’s extremely cold and also sunny, it’s an odd thing. The earth is ignoring the sun. “I’ll be cold, anyway,” she argues, and shrugs a pale, frozen shoulder. I feel close to the land when the weather is like that. And when there are clouds, I am close to heaven.
Anyway. It’s a mild day (as overcast tends to be).
Linkin Park kicks in on my MP3 player. I turn up the volume and start the walk to work. I refuse to take a taxi, even when I’m running late – on average, it only takes me 7 more minutes to walk the 2.x km than to go flag down a taxi and drive there through several inevitably long waits at red traffic lights. And it gives time to reflect. And I need the exercise.
Why am I late today? It’s kind of embarrassing – I was reading some of my own old blog posts. There was a moment of self-revelation, reading a post from April, 2006 (Caveat: angst). Not particularly deep, but it put me into one of those introspective fugues for half an hour. I won’t quote my own writing… that seems indulgent – go read it if you’re really curious. I think you’ll see what I found striking about it: I listed a series of alternate futures for myself, and one of them is exactly true. That’s… disorienting. I’m not normally very good at predicting my own future.
A track from The Who’s Quadrophenia shuffles onto my player. Last night I received a puzzling yet wonderful email from a former student, Jeong-eun. She was in one of my most advanced elementary classes at LinguaForum, and was one of the most interesting, intelligent, introspective 5th graders I have ever met. Without being at all “nerdy” – that’s a difficult combination to pull off. Anyway, she was saying she had fond memories of the class and adds, “Teacher, with us you always laughed and never showed even when you had hard time.” Which is pretty good English, too.
But she also says an odd thing, about that “now you are going away so I am very sad.” Does she know something that I don’t? I wonder to myself. And this brings me back to my current never-quite-resolved dilemma: am I going to stick it out with hellbridge (my current employer) to the end of my contract? Or am I going run away? (metaphorically speaking… I would try to negotiate a fair-to-all-parties letter-of-release if I decided to quit). Which brings me back to that blog post from almost 3 years ago, and my friend’s comment about me being a “serial quitter.” Hmm.
I see a tiny girl, maybe 7 years old, in pink jacket, confidently riding her bike on one of the pedestrian paths that grid Ilsan between the blocks of apartment towers. Standing up on the pedals, and holding a cell phone in one hand, and coming to an adroit stop at a red light at a crosswalk. I feel an odd mixture of admiration and envy. Envy? Sometimes I yearn to just do all of life OVER again. But just at that moment, the Mexican rock-en-espanol group Control Machete is playing their song Amores Perros (title song to an amazing movie, by the way), and they declaim into my ears with an angry growl, “… la codicia… borrarlo de tu vida!” (… envy… erase it from your life!). Interesting synchronicity, there.
As I approach the last turn in my right-angled zig-zag trip to work, a track by Absurd Minds shuffles into my headphones. Something more recent, a teutonic-toned goth/industrial electronic bit. And the decisions and exhortations are deferred. To work. To grading, and into that insufferably hot, stuffy, staff room. The annoying pesterings and chaotic emendations of the middle-managers, and the dipped heads of deference: 네, 부원장님 (Yes, Mr. Assistant Director), in non-confrontational tones.
And then, a few hours with the kids, absorbing their reflexive optimism, to see me through another day.
What I’m listening to right now.
[UPDATE 2011: youtube embeds added as part of background noise; UPDATE 20180603: youtube embed repaired due to link-rot]
I can't find the link or article now, but I really did see this: apparently the Argentine government recently paid $3 (yes, 3 dollars) to nationalize Aerolíneas Argentinas (apparently in bankruptcy). The previous owner was upset, although he´d acquired the bankrupt airline sometime previously for only $1. I don´t see why he should be upset… that´s a 200% return on his investment, which is damn good, in these difficult times. I´ll keep searching and post a link it if I can find it.
Soundtrack: Moody Blues' "Blue World"
[Embedded youtube added later, as part of Background Noise.]
Sometimes I log into Second Life and mindlessly drift around. It’s a virtual universe, often mistakenly called a “game” but in fact more like a shopping mall for everyone’s id–there’s no plot, no objective, no theme. Just everyone’s craziness touching up against one another, kind of like in real life, but without the social risk, maybe.
I’ve adopted a “skeleton” avatar. See picture. I go to virtual nightclubs and learn about new Industrial / Gothic music, which perhaps appeals to me because of the predominance of minor chords. My skeleton dances to the music. See picture. Sometimes I take note of music I like, and go searching for it in a torrent (the latest way to download things for free, basically). I’ve found a new band I like, with the stunningly fabulous name of Apoptygma Berzerk. I’m stuck on a song called “Kathy’s Song.” I’ve embedded a youtube of it, below.
A lot of gothic/industrial stuff is European–especially German and Nordic. One group I rather like is Cephalgy, and their song “Hass Mich” (I couldn’t find a youtube of it). I’ve never quite puzzled out the relationship between Goth/House music and German culture, though I suppose the overlap is related to the Weltschmerz they share. Then again, I’ve got my own dukkha going, at the moment. The Koreans call it 고 (苦).
Then you hear something old, like Joy Division’s “Love will tear us apart.”
I’m hating work, but I really feel that quitting short of contract would leave me feeling more depressed than just putting up with it. I don’t deal well with feelings of failure. The weather has turned deliciously cool and fall-like. Leaves are turning color and swimming around in clear air. The clouds are no longer hazy, but fractally bounded complex objects adrift in simpsonian skies. So, at least walking to work is pleasant.
I’m gaining weight–probably related to how cortisol (stress hormone) alters my metabolism, as I’ve not changed my eating habits at all.
My stock portfolio is now officially down more than 50%. Yay capitalism!
The Korean won is now down 50% relative to where it was when I came here. Yay capitalism!
Sometimes I download music without really even being sure what it is. And it sits around on my computer without me knowing anything about it, until at some point it comes around on my infinite shuffle (well, nearly infinite–last I checked, I had approximately 5000 tracks, maybe 20000 minutes of music on my computer). Anyway, a Korean pop song came around. I don’t actually like it that much… just another sappy love ballad, from the soundtrack of a drama that was popular a few years back.
But I was excited when I found myself understanding significant parts of it… whole sentences, even. That felt like a milestone. And I thought… I could learn this song. Maybe I should try. Koreans put great store in a person’s ability to sing a song or two from memory. I could really get points if I could sing something besides a few Dylan tunes in my off-key manner. Especially something in Korean–even if I don’t particularly like the song, right? I might as well try to learn something that I can more-or-less understand.
Here are the lyrics of this song, “Dangshineun naneun babo ipnida” (you [and] I are both idiots). It’s a sentiment, anyway, that I could concur with–without even knowing who you are. The artist goes by the typically monosyllabic and slightly meaningless English name of “Stay.” Here is a youtube of it.
당신은 나는 바보 입니다 / Stay
난 바보였었죠. 내가 바보였었죠.
후회해도 늦었죠 알죠 돌이킬 순 없죠
그댈 볼 수 없어요 나도 알고 있어요
내가 정말 잘못했어요 정말 미안해요
그땐 얘기하지 못했죠 너무 어리석었죠
이제와서 이렇게 애태우며 난 용서를 빌어요
당신은 나는 바보입니다
자존심 때문에
술과 쓴 담배연기로 망가지고 있죠
당신은 나는 바보입니다
아직 사랑하기에 하루 종일 펑펑 울고만 있죠
그대도 나도 모두 바보처럼
그러진 말아요 다시 생각해봐요
우리 어떻게 여기까지 힘들게 왔는데
다시 생각해봐요 후회하실꺼예요
내가 정말 잘못했어요 정말미안해요
그땐 얘기하지 못했죠 너무 어리석었죠
이제 와서 이렇게 애태우며 난 용서를 빌어요
당신은 나는 바보입니다
자존심 때문에
술과 쓴 담배연기로 망가지고 있죠
당신은 나는 바보입니다
아직 사랑하기에 하루 종일 펑펑 울고만 있죠
그대도 나도 모두 바보처럼
그대 없인 나 한순간도 살 수 없어요
머릴 잘라도 술을 마셔도 눈물만 흐르죠
당신은 나는 바보입니다
자존심 때문에
술과 쓴 담배연기로 망가지고 있죠
당신은 나는 바보입니다
아직 사랑하기에 하루종일 펑펑 울고만있죠
그대도 나도 모두 바보처럼
이제 더 이상 망가지지 마요………
[link above is broken, but here’s an embed of the same song, edited/added 2012-02-18 – this song is therefore referenced/embedded twice in this blog now, though] [further update 2013-06-29: broken link fixed again – ! %$@ copyright police.]
Stay, “당신은 나는 바보입니다.”
If only the real world had hyperlinks in it.
Today was a day off from work. I spent time hanging out with my neighbor in my building, Basil. A Palestinian-Canadian-American, he’s an interesting character. And, as of last week, a coworker – one of those “small world” things, I guess. I’d been a passing acquaintance of his since we had met each other walking around one time, and realized we were next door neighbors in our building. But now that we’re coworkers and nearby deskmates, we have more in common. So we talked for a while and hung out, and went into Seoul together, and had lunch/dinner at a middle eastern restaurant in Itaewon called Dubai. It was pretty good food, too.
But actually what I wanted to write about was the odd subway ride home. The subway was crowded, and so I stood in a corner of the subway car, and, per my usual habit, my eyes tried to find fragments of Korean to attempt to decipher. Obviously, I realize it’s impolite to read over one’s shoulder, but sometimes I can’t resist, especially when I catch something in Korean that I can actually understand.
This one woman was sending and receiving rapid-fire text messages in Korean on her cell phone (all the while reading a Japanese novel), and I read several words that I recognized, and I began to follow little isolated chunks of the conversation. One word she used that caused me to wonder, was when I read, clearly, 외국인 (foreigner), and then, a few words on, some form of 있다 (there is). Which made me wonder, intertextually, if she was perhaps texting her friend about the fact that a foreigner was reading over her shoulder. This seems unlikely, in retrospect, but it was one of those coincidences that piqued my interest, I guess. So I kept watching, circumspectly.
And then I saw the word 오블리비어스. What is that? Hm…. obeullibieoseu. Aha! Oblivious! Konglish, I thought. I don’t know what it is. I don’t think “oblivious” is a common Konglish term. So I googled it. Not right then, of course – although if I’d truly wanted to, I could have: my cellphone can surf the internet, if I pay exhorbitant rates. But the day is not far off when everyone will be able to google (or naver, or whatever comes next) anything they see, right as they see it. And then the real world will begin to grow hyperlinks.
But, meanwhile… I filed it away in my brain, and as soon as I got home, I googled it. And lo and behold, “Oblivious” is the title of a song by a Japanese musical artist named Kalafina, who appears to be popular in Korea, at least as far as I can tell. So, “oblivious” is not so much Konglish as Japanglish-borrowed-to-Korean. This made sense, given the fact she was also reading a Japanese novel at the time. She was probably reporting to her friend via text message as to what she was listening to on her MP3 player.
Anyway, I found this website/blog [UPDATE 2021-12-08: this link has rotted and I can find no replacement – sorry] dedicated to posting the lyrics of Japanese pop songs in both Japanese and Korean, and found something else intriguing that I’d never seen before – the use of hangeul (Korean writing system) to represent the Japenese language, somewhat like Konglish, of course. I wonder what this is called? Nihongeul?
Here on the left is a sample (the website was in “Flash,” which made cut-n-paste difficult, so this is a screenshot instead). Each lyric line is given 3 times. The first line (purple) is Japanese. The second line (grey) is Japanese-in-hangeul. The third is a Korean translation. Isn’t that cool? Hmm… most of you are shaking your heads–what a language-geek!
In any event, it turns out that I really like that song by Kalafina, “Oblivious” – I’m listening to it for the third time since I discovered it. Kind of chanty and new-agey, maybe, but not bad, for JPop. And I discovered it solely because I “clicked a random hyperlink” that I happened to see while looking over a woman’s shoulder in the subway. It feels like the future, today.
[UPDATE 2021-12-08: I’ve noticed this is a very popular post for random visitors from the wider internet – probably being found via google or some other search engine. For 2021, it’s my single most visited page in this blog. So, for my visitors’ convenience, here is a link to the actual song: カラフィナ – Oblivious.]
-Notes for Korean-
너무=too much, excessively
냉채=cold mixed vegetables (basically, korean salad?)
냉-=iced, chilled, cold
쓰디쓰다=extremely bitter
뭔데?=”what is it?” (…more of that problematic -ㄴ데 ending thingy that the grammar books are so unhelpful on–perhaps it’s highly informal/idiomatic?)
오피스텔=apartment (this is actually from English, but via Japanese, I think. literally office-tel… as in office-hotel. cf. 아파트=apateu: The semantic fields work differently, 오피스텔 is the name of the individual unit in the building, 아파트 is the name of the entire building, if it’s strictly residential. To the extent the former is used at all in English, the semantic fields are exactly reversed)
사실은 나 그 애를 많이 좋아했었거든=”actually, I liked her alot” (truth-TOPIC I that kid-OBJECT much like-do-PASTPERFECT-SUPPOSITION)
context: movie titles (burning CDs to make room on my harddrive)
장화, 홍련 = rose flower, red lotus = “A Tale of two sisters”
광식이 동생 광태 = Gwangshik’s Little Brother Gwangtae=”When Romance Meets Destiny”
간큰 가족 = “A bold family”
context: words
가족=family
가장=extremely, most
“Gom semariga” (three bears) is a ubiquitous children’s song that appears to be derived from the tale of the three bears – whether from a native Korean version or a Koreanized version of the western folktale, I’m not sure. The song is very simple and seems to have the typical melodic “hook” that’s found in children’s songs, that can cause them to insinuate themselves into your unconscious.
I was exposed to it because of watching the drama Pulhauseu, where it recurs as a leitmotif around the on-and-off relationship between the contractually-married couple Han Ji-eun and I Yeong-jae, and with her in-laws (his parents), where the grandmother refers to her as “Three-bear” because of this song.
Anyway, it’s just a cute little song, I guess. Here are two non-Pulhauseu, cartoon renditions of it that I found on Youtube:
https://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=jYtoBRHXFJI [broken]
And here is an excerpt of various performances of the song as it occurs in the drama:
https://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=PkmE9SejiUk [broken]
[Update 2013-06-09: two of the youtube links were broken. I’ve replaced two links with embeds]
This includes Ji-eun’s initial, awkward performance, and a later hilarious part where Yeong-jae sings it in an “American accent,” apparently spoofing the fact that there seems to be a vogue among American teenagers who are fans of Korean dramas for singing this song and posting it on the interweb.
Here are the lyrics:
곰 세마리가 한집에있어
아빠곰 엄마곰 애기곰.
아빠곰은 뚱뚱해
엄마곰은 날씬해
애기곰은 너무귀여워
으쓱으쓱 자란다…
-more Notes for Korean-
context: eavesdropping on a coworker’s telephone conversation
If somebody ends a sentence with -ㄴ데요, what does this mean? For example, the copula (be-verb) 인데요. Or perhaps I misheard it.
A grammar index in my Integrated Korean textbook (the one from my Univ. of Minnesota course) says that -ㄴ데요 is a “polite avoidance of refusal,” but then points to a chapter of the book in volume two, which I don’t own. So I can’t look at any examples to make sense of the ending. My Korean Grammar for International Learners tells me that -ㄴ데 is a connective ending (meaning it can’t end a sentence), and states, “it is useful to think of this anding as a sort of verbal semi-colon or m-dash, providing a loose linkage between two clauses” (p. 264). But they make no mention of a sentence-final version with -요 added.
우산=umbrella
I overheard a song lyric that I couldn't quite make out, but sounded like "she travels by rainbow." And now the idea is stuck in my head. Not the song – I can't even recall the melody. The idea. [Update, 2008-08-10: I found the song: "Iris," by the group Hercules and Love Affair.]
I googled it ("travels by rainbow") and, except for references to that Lucky Charms Cereal spokesfairy (he travels by rainbow in his many TV appearances), all I found was a reference to a children's book and a character named Zucchini Spacestation who travels by rainbow. This is exactly the sort of children's book I could conceivably find very appealing. And it's what I was visualizing when I heard (or misheard) the lyric – a sort of wild children's story plot involving a fantastic character that travels by rainbow.
Which makes me think of the stories I used to make up for Jeffrey, about the ancient Sumerian time-traveling dogs, Enkidu and Gilgamesh, who had a multidimensional discombobulator that they used to visit other-dimensional realms, including a place called Legotopia (you can guess what that was about). Their adventures were only in the remotest way connected to the "real" Enkidu and Gilgamesh of Sumerian/Babylonian myth. Actually, their adventures probably most closely resembled Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker milieu.
Once I tried writing down some of the stories. I wonder if I still have the files saved somewhere? I know Jeffrey has a copy of one "book" that I "published" (I drew pictures and computer print-outed onto loose paper, and then bound it into a hand-made book using my rarely used book-bindery skills).
[Update 2013-06-20: I decided to add the video and lyrics. The lyrics do in fact include the phrase "travels by rainbow."
What I'm listening to right now.
Hercules and Love Affair, "Iris" ("Iris" means "rainbow" in Greek – she is the rainbow goddess).
Lyrics:
She carries news travels
By rainbow
Bearer of peace with a
Message for all
Today you'll dance,
You'll share each other
Elders will stumble,
The babies will crawlPut down your weapons, put
Down your chosen ones
Put on your best clothes,
Stand straight and tall
Don't give up on your desire,
I can understand your thirst
Put another one before yo,
Help someone else firstToday is a day for
Someone else,
Today is a day for
Someone else
Today is a day for
Someone else
This moment is yours and you
Can give it to someone elsePut down yout weapons,
Put down your chosen ones
Leave expectations at the door
You are your brother
You are your sister
Communication, start
Giving moreDon't stop believing,
Continue to give praise
Your exaltation is a good thing
Just take those teachings,
The ones of light
Of celebration, and start to sing ]
I have occasionally been surprised at the extent of my apparent ungoogleability – meaning that if you try to google me by my name, you find lots of things, but not me. There are many factors which contribute to this, but the two primary ones are as follows.
First, there's the coincidence of my last name with a common noun used in street addresses, and my having a first name wildly popular in vaguely Mormonesque intermountain subdivisions as a street name. Hence there are thousands of webpages that will return with the names and addresses of random people who live in places like Idaho and Colorado, with residences on e.g. 1234 Jared Way, Lovely Mountain Estates, CO.
The other reason is a bit more peculiar, and certainly more distinctly the consequence of the ephemerality (or not) of the internet. There is a very popular alternative rock personality by the name of Gerard Way, who apparently has a large number of slightly illiterate fans. These devotees post unending declarations of love and fandom for Jared Way (thus misspelling his first name). Gerard and his brother Mikey Way are from Belleville, New Jersey, and front a band called My Chemical Romance, whose song "Helena," for one, I rather like.
I got some poetic spam today:
Of course, is that his is that pure felicity of 'it was not
for fame, nor for wealth, nor from handed the two dollar
note and the three ones by means of that tree, a hundred
and five of them pacify thyself.' having said this, o lord
of men, nearly human. Through the underbrush the trunk tell
him that aswatthaman has been slain in battle.' form. The
evidence should be whether the defendant fire (called bhrig)
and hence he came to be called friend who is of a righteous
disposition, when.
I followed some random links around and found out that Murray Gell-Mann (a physicist who brought us the word "quark," a neologism which he lifted from Joyce's Finnagans Wake) has the same birthday I do, and is also left-handed. Then I drifted a bit further, and ended up watching a Ziggy Marley video on Youtube: "Love Is My Religion." I've never had much of a thing for reggae, but I found I liked it.
What I'm listening to right now.
[youtube embeds added in 2011 as part of background noise.]
Today was a very long day at work. I really liked my students today, though. Especially the incurably silly Gavin, Cathy, and friends in the new ER2(T) class, with their “happy singing zombie students” act.
Not to mention the “8th grade princess mafia,” aka the new TP1(T), which by some quirk of exam-scores and fate has become a girls-only class. They’re smart-alecky and unshakably in love with their cellphones, and only motivated under very generous definitions of the term… yet, they manage to be unmotivated almost exclusively in English, and thus I can’t bring myself to complain. I was feeling sad for the super-smart Lainy and Julia, the only 7th graders in the group having recently been promoted into it, given the other girls’ very cliquey behavior, but they’re so smart they hold their own and put the others to shame with stunning performances.
So. I stopped in the H-mart on the way home at dusk, and bought some food for my barren cupboards, including not just cabbage and tomatoes but a decadent bag of doritos and some chocolate milk. Then I proceeded to spend the evening surfing wikipedia and other bits of the internet. And became obsessed with a little internet meme that peaked over the summer, known as “Chocolate Rain.”
I’ll let you pursue it, if you’re interested – the tale of Tay Zonday, a University of Minnesota PhD candidate who, using a quirky youtube video, bootstrapped himself from obscurity into talk show appearances, big-bucks product jingles and endorsements, and major-talent collaborations.
And yet he continues to be a grad student, and the original ditty is actually an intriguing piece in its monotonous way: a little allegorical study of racism, with references to, among other things, the riots in the Paris suburbs. And, to quote: “Chocolate Rain / Made me cross the street the other day / Chocolate Rain / Made you turn your head the other way.” And continues, “Chocolate Rain / The bell curve blames the baby’s DNA / Chocolate Rain / But test scores are how much the parents make.” People who complain that the song is pointless, haven’t read the lyrics. And those who accuse him of selling out are missing the point completely, I think – publicity is a two-way street, and a thinking artist with a social-change agenda may in fact have a weird sort of obligation to leverage offers of publicity and money from commercial interests in order to further that agenda however he or she can.
A Brazilian vlogger observes (and maybe I’m just quoting him to showcase my own multilingual erudition, but I liked the way he phrases it):
É impressionante como a internet consegue transforma em celebridades os mais inusitados dos seres e as suas mais toscas exibições de talento. Veja o exemplo de Tay Zonday, um garoto que gravou uma canção chamada “Chocolate Rain” fazendo uso de uma voz grave, quase que robótica.
I’ve certainly got the tune and words stuck in my head, now. And so I listen to dozens of remixes and parodies of “Chocolate Rain,” while eating doritos and drinking chocolate milk, while I sit in my little apartment in happy Ilsan, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
To quote Mr Zonday: “This internet thing is wild!”
[Update: youtube embedded video added retroactively, 2011-08-03, a part of background noise.]
I overheard on the radio part of a book review of Susan Faludi's new book, Terror Dream. Without having read the book, I'm probably as skeptical as the reviewer with respect to Faludi's apparent core thesis: that Bush/Cheney's war-on-terror is resulting in significant rollbacks of feminist gains of previous decades.
Nevertheless, one sub-thesis that the reviewer mentioned, that I found compelling and powerful, was the idea that, far from being a strange and unwonted new type of war, the new "war-on-terror" is, in fact, America's oldest and most formative experience of war: after all, wasn't the idea of a besieged city-on-a-hill at the heart of the White Man / Native American conflict, from the time of the first British settlements in North America? A community of "innocents" victimized by fanatical, unknowable others who, "unprovoked," would come into the community and attack civilians. As a nation, after a long period of aberrant integrative practice, we've finally reconnected with our long lost old demons, now conveniently externalized into the broader world.
In this sense, we've been fighting the war-on-terror since the mid 1600's. By comparison, all other wars are irrelevant internecine squabbles. Regardless of the validity of the parallel, the drawing of it is quite thought-provoking. Are these Islamic fundamentalists, our fellow humans, the new Injuns? Wow.
Listening to: Magnetic Fields' "Strange Powers;" "The Trouble I've Been Looking For."
[Youtube embed later as part of Background Noise.]
The hip-hop duo P.M. Dawn (the Cordes brothers of Jersey City) had a 1991 hit single "Set adrift on memory bliss," which prompted me to buy one of only 3 albums I acquired while stationed here in Korea with the US Army's 296th Support Battalion at Camp Edwards, up towards Munsan (about 15 km north of here!). I bought the album, entitled Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, in cassette form, at the Camp Casey PX Store (Camp Casey was the 2nd Infrantry Division's HQ at that time, and about 30 min. drive inland from Munsan, straight east).
Naturally, since I owned so few albums, it was on heavy rotation, with the consequence that I have very strong memory-associations of my year here when I hear songs from this album. I recently was set to thinking about it, and so I broke down and bought the album, in MP3 form. It's actually quite different from a lot of rap – an opinion I'd formed early on – as the group make lots of complex references to everything from religion and philosophy to broad aspects of popular culture from the 80's.
I was thinking of this partly as I was fishing in my brain for examples of rap music from the genre's formative period (i.e. late 80's / early 90's) that weren't entirely focused on violence and "gangsta" culture. I have been wanting to see if I could combine sharing some aspects of popular culture and rap music (which interests one demographic of my students) with sharing a more literary approach to poetry and literature (which interests an entirely different cross-section).
I have always held that rap music is our modern American culture's closest equivalent to the ancient forms of epic poetry, whether Homer's works or medieval creations such as El Poema del Mio Cid or Le Chanson de Roland. And I believe the equivalence is perhaps even stronger than the obvious superficial resemblances of topic – both ancient forms and modern ones overlaid rhythmic music with repetitive and formulaic poetry. Both treat extensively subjects such as war (or gang violence – same thing, right?) and questions of male honor and reputation.
I've often fantasized about trying to craft a "ghetto" reading of the original El Cid (in its archaic 11th century Spanish) to a modern drum-machine and sampled soundtrack. I think it would prove quite interesting.
Meanwhile, I'm listening to KCRW (streaming).
Interesting (almost poetic!) English du jour: "We will be the invisible motivation of link South Korea into one." — from Korean National Railway's website, English version.
[Update: youtube video added retroactively, 2011-08-03, part of the background noise.]
Not feeling in a writing mood. But I promised to post something everyday. I’m listening to some new music I downloaded – LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” which reminds me a bit of a kind of hyperactive Magnetic Fields song, actually.
Here are a few pictures.
This is Seoul, looking north across the Han river from Yeouido Island toward downtown, Yongsan and Namsan – see the tower, right horizon?
This is the main south gate of the old city – the walls no longer exist, and so it’s just a gate in the middle of a giant traffic circle. It’s called Namdaemun.
This is the infinite stairway in my building, looking down. I often take the stairs, as it’s more exercise that way.
What I’m listening to right now.
[Update: I added this youtube video 2011-08-03 as part of background noise.]
So I finally set up a wifi network at the school, yesterday. I took my laptop to my classes, with varying results.
The school has an odd schedule on Wednesdays – I don’t teach till slightly later, and it’s the one day that I migrate into other classrooms besides #5 – which is sort of my homeroom. So I started with my 경기외고 cohort at 6.10, but I think this is too early relative to their normal Monday-Friday time, or something, so the class often fills up gradually over the 45 minute period: Richard and Jun Yeong always wander in around 6.20, and Fred (Mr Sleepy!) inevitably comes in, headphones blaring, with 15 minutes left in class.
So. Yesterday, there were only 5 girls at the start of class: Amy and Sunny (both named Da Hye, both very smart, but they have diametrically opposite personalities), along with Clara, Jenny and Jane (“Queen Jane of the wide grin and blank stare”). Oh, and Wayne (Ho Gyeong) was there – Wayne’s always there, trying to be invisible, but really quite smart, and the only student who’s doing two cohorts at once: he’s in the 경기외고 cohort for both MWF and TThSa.
Since I had my laptop, and with the reduced classroom population… although I hadn’t really planned on it, I decided it would be a good time to do something “different,” and so I played a few songs from my massive collection on my laptop (currently approximately 3300 songs – 100’s of ripped CD’s, plus what I’ve downloaded). I waited until something “clicked” and, perhaps not surprisingly, they seemed to like Lady Sovereign, a contemporary British rap artist whose recent album Public Warning I bought last spring.
So while they listened to her song “9-to-5” I ran to the office and printed out the lyrics (the internet is so cool – you can find the lyrics to any song in the known universe in a matter of seconds and have 15 copies spewing out of your printer).
So we had a fun time, running through the song again with the lyrics in front of us. Uh-oh, there’s a few bad words there – well, aren’t there always, with rap songs? But hey, that’s English too, right?
And on schedule, Richard (“Ricardo”) and Jun Yeong showed up, and Cristine and Becky came in (although Becky immediately fell asleep face-down on her wrist; and after some class discussion, we decided unanimously to let her continue her nap, having just heard a song by Lady Sovereign about the hazards of not getting enough sleep!). Fred (Mr. Sleepy!) never showed up at all, though I found him sleeping on one of the benches in the lobby of the school a little later.
These 경기외고 cohorts are my most most difficult, in some ways. They have the highest proportion of what I might term, diplomatically, as “differently-motivated” students. I’m not sure if listening to Lady Sovereign was any help or not, but it was a nice change of pace.
Another day in the life of “Jeredeu-Ticheo,” (this is Konglish: “Jared-Teacher” i.e. Jared-seonsaeng cf. parallel in Japanese: Jared-sensei) – I guess I’m still the “mediocre new guy” at Tomorrow Language School!
[Update: I added the youtube link 2011-08-03 as part of the background noise effort.]
I’ve had a fondness for the musical group Radiohead for many years now. A kind of dark, complex, introspective, idiosyncratic pop. I hadn’t been thinking too much about them, lately, though as always they’re on my regular play list among the mp3’s. However, recently I read about them in, of all places, a business website.
Recently they’ve produced a new album. However, rather than release it through a standard record company distribution deal, they’ve simply posted the mp3 tracks to their website and allow people to download it, for a price that the individual user is allowed to set – any price at all.
Of course, this alternately alarms or exhilarates all kinds of economic commentators. It’s so… chaotic, democratic, “new economy.” They ask, is this the future of IP (intellectual property) distro? Just a fluke?
I would be one of those people who would be fascinated and excited to think this is some vision of the future of intellectual property – but I’m actually inclined to believe this is, more likely, a fluke – at least for the short and medium terms. Radiohead (and Thom Yorke, their leader) have always been very savvy with respect to both technology/internet stuff as well as the issue of marketing/merchandising/publicity. This is very much in that vein.
Nevertheless, I confess I did exactly what so many are apparently doing. I went to their website, gave them some money, and downloaded the album. I could hardly resist, just to say I’d been a part of it. And, I’ve learned, I paid quite a bit more than most did – but then, I was always a sucker for “pay what you think it’s worth” pitches – same as I always tip too much at restaurants, right? I paid exactly what I thought I’d pay if I’d gone down and bought a new Radiohead at the big store – say, around 13-15 bucks. Yorke and friends are, in fact, getting an average of about 8 bucks per album download, and everyone’s remarking that, even so, they’re getting more cash in the bank than if they’d gone through a standard CD distro deal, since there’re no middlemen whatsoever.
Ah well. Hey, it’s a pretty good album – as Radiohead goes.
Still, I still think my favorite is probably Hail to the Thief – I bought that CD at a Target store in suburban Sydney, Australia, when I’d realized I’d just set out to drive 2000 km to far north Queensland and had absolutely nothing to listen to except Australian radio – which makes US radio sound pretty damn good. Consequently, I had this CD on constant repeat for the whole drive north up the coast, and I associate its songs with vivid blurs of endless streams of Ozzian countryside, broken up by repetitive snippets of eerily tiny Target stores, cheap motels, Hungry-Jack restaurants (=Burger King, in Oz) along those two lane roads, and the sleepy moments late at night, driving, when I would start to forget which side of the road I was supposed to be on.
In particular, one of my favorite songs of all time: “There There (The Boney King of Nowhere).”
What I’m listening to right now.
Location: US 101 to Humboldt County
Soundtrack: Cold’s “13 Ways to Bleed on Stage” (on of my favorite albums of all time).
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
But then Beck’s “Loser” came on my MP3’s shuffle, and I remembered when that song first came on the radio, in 94-95, and I was commuting every night on the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi – the one that just collapsed – and I imagined that if the bridge had aged a little faster, it might have been me sampling the river bottom’s mud with my bumper… so I said goodbye to the bridge, even though I’m in Northern California.
By the time I got onto US 101 at Ukiah, the litter on the roads was no longer tomatoes, but instead the familiar fragments of redwood bark that falls off the log trucks. Because of the fibrous nature of the bark, and its reddish color, this, too, looks a quite a bit like road kill, at times.
I think I would not do well, moving back to Humboldt (which is where I grew up) – but I always love that feeling of “coming home” that I get driving down into the greenness that is the far north coast.
Location: Newport Beach, CA
Soundtrack:
KLoVE (Spanish soft rock station in LA: más romántica);
KoRn’s new single _Evolution_
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
I spent the morning in Burbank again, catching up with a few people (Vesper, Diana, Luz…) who I didn’t manage to see yesterday. Then I drove all the way down to Newport to have lunch with Tyler (colleague from HealthSmart) at my favorite Peruvian restaurant, Inka Grill just across the line in Costa Mesa. I love their Chupe de pescado, it’s possibly the most delicious soup in the known universe, in my opinion: potatoes, egg, onion, fish, spices, something that makes it chowdery – I ate here often with Tyler and the rest of the HealthSmart crew during those long months now memorialized as the “battle of Lytec” (which we lost spectacularly to the enemy forces, which fought under the banner “poor project scoping and planning”).
We went back to the Newport Beach offices and I chatted briefly with some of the other folks there, and I had weird flashbacks of T-SQL code as I walked the aisles between the cubicles. Too many very late nights practicing slash-and-burn database programming, I guess. Visiting ARAMARK was better for my sense of accomplishment, and it stoked my ego to see the accomplishments of my era still percolating on the screens of the National Account Reps, but visiting HealthSmart’s IPM offices has served to remind me why I’ve decided to change careers and try something different: more people-oriented, perhaps less remunerative, but hopefully more spiritually fulfilling. Not that I’m particularly spiritual person, as many of you know, but I don’t know how else to express the idea I’m trying to get across.
Why do I listen to Spanish soft, romantic rock, when I abhor the same genre in English? It’s a nostalgia thing, I think. It was the soundtrack of too many hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Mexico, too many 2nd class bus rides. Not the same songs, 20 years ago, but the genre is full of songs that, 20 years on, can’t be differentiated from those older ones… it’s all a sort of weird slightly enchilada-flavored aural blur.
The smog in downtown LA was atrocious, driving down, I couldn’t even see downtown from the 5 as I went by – much worse than anything we saw in Mexico City last week. But this is smog season in Lalatopia, while this is precisely NOT smog season in Chilangolandia at the moment – which is why we went at this time, of course. Which is why I always go to Mexico DF at this time of year.
Dateline: Los Angeles
A week goes by, not much happens. I leave for Amsterdam next Monday, AM. That's when stuff happens. I'll meet Bob there on the 11th.
Meanwhile, I had dinner with Wendy this evening, good conversations regarding our respective retirements (hers marginally more authentic qua retirement than mine, I suppose), etc. Ate at her favorite place, La Dijonais there on Washington in Culver City.
I will confess that I sometimes listen to sappy Mexican top 40 radio, when driving. I got all sentimental, driving up the 110 home, thru downtown and the tunnels and the Arroyo and all that, very memory evoking – the 110 is the only stretch of LA freeway that I still vividly recall from my childhood visits to LA – so it's like my oldest "local" road-memory. And road-memories are special, right?
And for some reason, a snippet of Maná's "Muelle de San Blas" got me all teary, thinking about my long, interesting, complicated, and lately pretty darn OK life.
So whatever. More later.
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
