Good World Citizens · (Friday Five department)

This week's F5 comes from the diabolical, karate-warped mind of Acolyte Of the Way of the Open Hand, aka Marvin of Austin:

What does it really mean to be a citizen of the world? How do you understand the concept, and who are the five people who best exemplify your understanding(s)? They can be living or dead, fictional or non-fictional.

Oh my. Marvin's really outdone himself this time: even he himself had trouble answering this question.

Of course, the whole challenge to this is that first little question, which I would rephrase simply as, "What is a world citizen?" That is a concept I've played with before, but never actually thought out too clearly. For me, in the past, I would claim global citizenship as a way of explaining my lack of strong feeling about my Canadian citizenship. (Not that the lukewarmness of my feelings about Canada remains: positive and negative, my feelings about Canada have grown over the years. These days, I'm finding my homeland quite wonderfully working at becoming more modern, leaving America behind in the dust in terms of social development: legislating gay marriage, leaving the war on pot to the birds, and so on.) But merely disavowing nationalism doesn't really make one a global citizen.

What is a global citizen? As Marvin wrote on his blog, I am tempted to list off friends I know personally, people who have traveled more and/or seem much more like "citizens of the world" than me. I'm not sure it's a totally misguided urge, for they exhibit some of the traits which I am sure are part of global citizenship: Charlie and Ritu and John Wendel all are much more familiar with the news than I am (I tend to get a little behind on news); they're equipped to vote. I think of people who appreciate (to an astonishing degree of depth) the arts not only of their own culture but of others', and of the ancients, such as my far-too-well-read friend Jack; I think of people who slip between languages with such amazing facility, like (once again) Ritu and Jean-Louis in Montreal (who also knows politics well enough to make me feel completely sheepish). I think of people like Joleen and Myoung Jae and Mer whose lives seem to be a continual adventure of adjusting to new localitiesand customs, and truly knowing the place they're in as best they can,

But I see my definition is strange: some people speak many languages but have traveled but little; some people know art of the world so deeply yet know and care nothing of politics. And so, while I have a clear definition of "world", I have no idea what "citizen" means.

Since I haven't managed to install my OED yet, I'll consult the Merriam-Webster online. And this is what I get:

Main Entry: cit·i·zen

Pronunciation: 'si-t&-z&n; also -s&n;

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English citizein, from Anglo-French citezein, alteration of Old French citeien, from cité city

1 : an inhabitant of a city or town; especially: one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman

2 a : a member of a state b : a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it

3 : a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state

Note that the first meaning, a resident of a city or town, is first. According to another spot I looked, the meaning of "citizen" being applied to national allegiance or residency doesn't even exist until about the time of Chaucer.

So when we say world citizen, we're simply expanding the frame of reference from town, to nation, to world. Fine. But this just helps us understand the width of the reference "world" as appended to citizen. That's not much help.

Yet it's in this definition we find something useful. For it says that citizens are "one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman". This, of course, we must remember, is a twentieth-century, and doubtless a modern, construction of the meaning of the word. Historically, in situations where people enjoyed those "rights and privileges of citizenship", we can see that those rights and privileges almost always entailed responsibility. We live in such a rights-and-entitlements society in the West that we've forgotten talk of rights that isn't accompanied by talk of responsibilities is only so much horseshit.

In a democracy, you have the right to live free of kings and dictators. You have the responsibility to educate yourself the best you can on the issues, vote as best you can, and when occasionally absolutely necessary, to fight for the defense and reform of the system. You have the right to free speech. You have the responsibility to use it well, and to try educate yourself to the point where you have something worth saying. You have the right to life. You have the responsibility to do something worthwhile with it, and at times you have the responsibility to lay down your life for something bigger than yourself.

There's something more to it than that, though. To my mind, a citizen also loves his or her city. The citizen treats the city (or nation, or world) with compassion, respect, and dignity. To be a world citizen, one takes on an attitude of love, and stewardship towards the earth. In the seemingly rising battle between business and environmentalism, the world citizen is not an extremist, but there is no question where the citizen's fealty lies. Just as with residents of the city, for residents of the world there are things that are more important than money.

Finally, there is something, to my mind, about engagement that makes someone a citizen. A true citizen, an exemplary one, is one who is in love with that place of which he is a citizen. For a world citizen, he is in love with the world. In Korean, there's a word my girlfriend calls me: "Kaegujengi". It means a kind of child who is engaged with all things around him, is curious and fascinated and wants to engage in play with everything, from ideas to words to other peoples' hands and even his food. (No, I don't play with my food. I quit that a few months ago.) I think that in a world citizen, this feeling of engagement with all things must persist into adulthood. The world citizen is a renaissance person, interested in many things and able to see how they are interconnected.

1. First, looking far back, I'd say that no matter what I think of his actual thinking (some of which I think is crazy, some of which is brilliant), Socrates would be one of the first world citizens I ever heard of. Granted, his world was small, it was really only Athens, wasn't it? And yet I've read he talked with Brahmins in Athens, and like others in Greece at the time he was familiar with the thinking of cultures like the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, Persians, and others. But what's striking is what he chose to do with this knowledge: he taught. He worked to figure out what the world ought to be like, and then he spent his time teaching; and when it came down to it, it was a job he was willing to die for, to teach the young, to hold to his principles, and to be a loyal citizen. I'm pretty certain I wouldn't drink the hemlock, but even so I can admire him for his dedication to teaching, the range of his interests and inquiries, and his seriousness about the task he had taken upon himself.

2. I first encountered the writings of Thai Buddhist activist and intellectual Sulak Sivaraksa in a book called Dharma Rain, about the connections between Buddhism and environmentalism. I was impressed by his writing, and the way that a unity seemed to exist for him between social, political, environmental, and moral/spiritual/religious issues. Sivaraksa took education not only in Thailand but also in Britain, and managed to unify all he learned; he is an outspoken activist, a founder of NGOs, and someone willing to fight even his country's government for the sake of what he feels is his duty to the world.

   His interests range wide (just look at the titles in this list of his speeches—which I just found and which I shall have to read soon, as I am pretty excited at finding this wonderful cache!), and while he's an intellectual, he also is in touch with the poor of his country, and he has, during his life, refused to rest in the scribal chamber, sequestered from the world he is trying to remind us we ourselves should be engaged with. (And with him, I do actually get the sense he'd trying to enlighten me, and you, and all of us. I never feel like he's saying things for the delight of hearing his own voice saying smart-sounding things.)

   Along with Thich Nhat Hanh, he's one of the (famous) Buddhists I respect most, and I think the most important thing about him for me is that while he thinks self-transformation is crucial, he also feels social activism and action are absolutely crucial practices for an engaged Buddhist; I would expand that and say they're crucial to world citizenship as well.

3. Michel Foucault. Isn't it funny, this is the second philosopher I've listed? Yet in Foucault, about whom I've gushed here before, I find so much engagement with the world, so much action (look at his phenomenal output of writing), so much delicacy and care of thought; Foucault was, for my money, not just one of the geniuses of our century: he was someone wise enough to know where to direct his brilliance, looking at how the world came to be as it is. When I read Discipline and Punish, I found the biggest, most wonderful kaegujengi I've ever had the privilege of reading. Foucault touches upon the mystery of how societies come to take the shape they do; he asks questions about the most fundamental divisions and practices in the Western world, of what we make of our sexuality, of our madmen and our "criminals" and our ill and their bodies, and our knowledges. Unlike Sivaraksa, the man didn't come out and give us recommendations for action, but I've long believed that his act of writing was performative of such a thing; that for him, the first and crucial step was to get engaged with the world and really think it through. For what he did for thought in the last century, and the way he did it, I say he is certainly a world citizen.
4. Physicists are funny people to begin with, but great physicists are even odder still. Like in psychotherapy, there is a great duo in post-Einsteinian physics. The Freud is Murray Gell-Mann, stern and difficult and Dionysian, but my choice for world citizen would be the Jung: the jovial, mad, somewhat messed-up, and (in his interests, not his religion) catholic Feynman. This guy was crazy about all kinds of things, and he spent his life teaching. Perhaps, in fact, I mischaracterized my choices above: it wasn't philosophers I chose, not really; it was teachers. In any case, I think the diversity of Feynman's interests, his dedication to his science, engagement to the world through it, and his working so hard at teaching, all add up to him being a great world citizen. (Sagan might have been another example, were I a bigger fan of his work.)

5. I'm gonna cheat in a way similar to how Marvin did, and mention a class of people here, a category rather than an individual. Since coming to Korea, I've met some young people who, while they happen to live in a somewhat insular society, are profoundly aware of what's going on either in the periphery of their society, or in the rest of the world. For example, I knew one young man who told me he liked to read Baudelaire in the French simply because it was, "How do you say? So... decadent!" I'm not kidding, those were his exact words. And this guy was a German major with a thing for Italian opera. Well, he knew politics and history pretty well, too. Another example would be my friend and bandmate Seong Hwan, who experienced a recent awakening of social conscience. He's not one for Bach or Debussy, but he's pretty aware of what's going on in popular music both inside and outside of Korea, and he is also, these days, quite political. I respect and admire him for it. Another friend of mine now living in Seoul, Hyun Hwa, wants to work for an NGO and especially to work in Africa, which she sees as part of her duty as a Christian but also as a person.

   The last example in this class of people is my girlfriend, who is known online (and on this page) as Lime. Our conversations span so many topics, most of which she is conversant in, and her English is so good I simply talk to her normally. She can read my French writing and understand it, too. Well, tonight we talked about her life goals. Unlike so many other young Koreans I know, she has budgeted herself time in her life-plan for all kinds of adventures and learning experiences, as well as for periods of work and experience that are dedicated not to money but to helping people and doing good in the world. I was quite impressed by this and proud of her. The call to social duty, to engagement with the world and the people in it, her dedication to her work and study, and her way of thinking about other people and herself really makes me find her a good example of a world citizen. But she's not the only one. While some foreigners claim that young Koreans are all the same, all apolitical and job-focused, the fact is there is a small underworld of Koreans who care about important things, and who are focusing on important social problems (like the treatment of migrant workers, which several of my Korean friends have talked to me about). Doing so in the face of a lot of passivity and disinterest is something I have to respect.

Finally, a runner-up... Princess Di!

Just kidding.

Blogaholic Quiz · (bloggery department)

Blogaholic Quiz Results (taken at Wannabegirl.org) in:

Are You A Blogaholic? Results

Your Score: 80 / 100

YOUR SCORE 80.0%      80.0 points out of 100 AVG SCORE 42.9%      42.9 points out of 100 12272 people have taken this silly test so far. 456 people have scored higher than you. 11717 people have scored lower than you. 99 people made the same grade as you.

What does this mean? *

80 points is in the 51 through 80 precent You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You're the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!

* These results are just for fun. Do not sue me. Have a sense of humour.

Shout out to Budaechigae, whose blog I am obviously reading these days.

Newsmap · (sci&tech; department)

Here's a cool gizmo that Budaechigae posted about recently: a Newsmap app online that builds maps of the most-focused-on news items that have passed through the Google aggregator.

This, it seems to me, is how we will be looking at the news everyday in twenty years, though by then I'm sure we'll be able to weigh it by keyword references, topics, poltical slant, journos we like, and so on. That's gonna be a fascinating time.

KTX Problems? · (gord's life department)

The new Korean KTX bullet train (which was launched on April 1st) seems to be having problems. A guy died of complications seemingly related to an epileptic seizure brought on while on the train—possibly, though nobody can say for sure—brought on by the fact his chair was facing the wrong direction, back towards where he'd come from. (Chairs in standard Korean trains alternate, forward and backward, and the human body apparently can't handle as many G-forces going backwards, meaning the chair arrangement was, maybe, not such a good idea): as an article in the Korea Times claims,

Police are investigating whether the direction of Lee’s seat, which was opposite to the running direction of the high-speed train and could have caused dizziness, had anything to do with Lee’s sudden death. They are also examining whether the relatively low pressure inside the train compartment, which falls when the train passes through tunnels at high speed, had any negative affect on the patient’s brain.

I'm not too excited to try this train, not for now, and I have very little reason to take it, right now anyway, but I suppose eventually it'd be cool. A bullet train would be worth trying... once, finally, they've got the kinks sorted out.

I Learned All I Ever Needed To Know Reading The Lord Of The Rings · (lit department)

The things some people learn reading Lord of the Rings amazes me. For example, I learned a lot about politics in "naive" localities like Hobbiton—and I do wish they'd included that long epilogue in the film, though I knew they wouldn't—and the tale of Frodo leaving the world he knew on his quest comforted me, as I read it on the plane over the first time I came to Korea. But what others come up with surprises me even more! For example, someone's presented an article where, rather convincingly, you can see the book as a dating manual.

Ah, book geeks. It's a lovely thing.

welcome to korea, where english is different... · (gord's life department)

Lime quipped that the other weekend and realized I hadn't yet posted it. She was commenting on the information sign near a temple, which in Korean was said to have been reconstructed in 1857, while in English it was rebuilt in 1875. "The English is different!" she said, and I extended it to, "Welcome to Korea, where the Englishie is different."

Yes, I think us clever.

Shut up.

Not including travel mishaps (like almost going to PalBokDong instead of my home in JungHwaSanDong), it takes me 40 minutes to get from work to JeonBukDae Old Front Gate; it takes half an hour to get back home.

I just drank some delicious CocoPalm drink, ah, so very sweet. The drink was sweet too.

This is an extremely disconnected post. Still, I am happy anyhow.

But now it's time for bed.

Bikes, Sour Cream, and My Favorite Fruit · (gord's life department)

I had a great night last night, but I'm not going to post about that. Some things just don't need to be posted about, and anyway it's probably only interesting to me and one other person. But I will say that lime is my new favorite fruit.

However, what may be of interest is that I got a huge schwack of sour cream last night, at the OK Bakery. I'm thinking of having a Mexican food party sometime at my house. Does anyone think this is a good idea? They have tortilla shells at the OK too, and I think we could have some tacos or something. Could be great. Only problem is, I don't have any Mexican music. Ah well, rock and Latin jazz will have to do.

I also got my bicycle repaired. The shop owner recognized the bicycle (maybe because there was a foreigner around the last time he saw it too) and asked me if I work at Jeonju University. I told him I did, and he remembered Myoung Jae and that he was Australian. Then he set to work replacing the gear on the front, which was fairly cheap (especially since he didn't charge for labour) and giving me a longer seat post. It was a bit of a struggle, that, but we finally got it right. Now, when I pedal, I can straighten my legs completely. It is a lot more comfortable and it gives me a lot more power.

Going home after meeting fruit de lime last night, I discovered can get from Jeonbuk University, across town, to my apartment near Jeonju University, in about half an hour or maybe 40 minutes. That's pretty damned good, in my opinion. Part of it is having found the right route: over to E-Mart, and then across the river, and over to Jeonbuk Uni. Now that I'm starting to know my way around, I should be traveling much more efficiently in the city. I wanna get to know the bike trails a little better, though, so I can zip along the river and enjoy that beauty instead of dodging cars and being honked at every ten minutes. Would be nice to cycle with a little music, too, which I daren't do on any of the main roads.

The Other Foreigners · (gord's life department)

I'm never going to say my working conditions here are perfect, and I have little faith in the legal system to defend me on the grounds of my contract here in Korea... but you know, I have a hell of a hard time complaining when little reminders of how the other foreigners in Korea live. By the other foreigners, I mean the migrant workers who are outside of the English-teaching niche. Many of them live in Korea illegally, go unpaid, suffer all kinds of abuses from their "employers", and are persecuted by the law. (The same legal authorities who refuse to crack down on the Korean sweatshop owners, of course.) They face deportation to situations just as bad as in Korea, and since they're absolutely dispensable to their employers, they often live rootless, nomadic lives here in Korea. And where even us relatively privileged white/Korean-blooded foreigners experience instances of racism, you can be certain that many Nepali, Indian, and Southeast Asian workers experience a kind of racism most people lucky enough to be able to read this page cannot even imagine. They're among the most used class of people in the country, and yet invisible to most people, who usually mean "white person" when they say the word "foreigner". It's enough to break your heart to imagine living that way, at least it is enough to break my heart.

(In the above picture, a Korean employer says to his Bangladeshi employee, "You bastard, work faster!" and all the Bangladeshi says in return is, "Yes sir." That's about right for a lot of foreign workers in Korea who work in the 3-D jobs: dangerous, dirty, and difficult jobs that nobody else wants to do.)

An article at the Digital Chosun Ilbo discusses the release by the Ansan Migrant Center of pictures drawn by some workers in situations like this; they were drawn in Seoul, during the 40th day of their sit-in.

The center's general secretary, Kim Jae-geun, said the drawing session was organized "to give sit-in participants the opportunity to express, in drawings, their feelings at being chased by the law and what they remember most about their time in Korea."

"It's sad that the drawings portray Koreans as being people who ignore suffering and are egotistical," said Kim.

It is, however, good to see that there is a movement for reform, a movement that is being driven along by Koreans who really care about these issues and are trying to make life better for these people. Maybe we only hear about the big organizations in Seoul, but there is, it seems, a grassroots movement growing all over. Here in Jeonju there's such an organization as well; my band played a fundraiser for the office, that's how I know. (Otherwise, if m band's bassist wasn't getting into social activism, I'd probably never heard of it.) Actually, I think grassroots movements are on the rise here. A few weeks ago I was given a lollipop by a group, and the group, a friend explained later, exists to prevent the sexual abuse of the mentally handicapped. That's pretty specialized, and it's quite surprising. I had no idea such a group existed in Korea.

What's heartening about this is that, in a society that is prone to feeling shame, people are having the guts to admit there are big problems that need solving. The first step is always admitting there is a problem. It's also beautiful to see that people are admitting problems that they themselves don't suffer from. The compassion is there. Foreigners often think compassion here ends at the family's front door, but the hard work that these people put in shows this isn't true, at least it's no more true than in the West or anywhere else in the world.

Here's a shoutout to Joshua at Katolik Shinja, where I found the link to this article.

Upon This Bouncy Ball I Sit, And... · (gord's life department)

I ask you, have you ever tried to put on a sock with one hand? Because I just did. Sitting on the ball, I need one hand holding something like the desk in front of me to prevent myself falling off.

And let me tell you, putting on a sock with one hand is freaking hard. But I've never seen a one-armed man go sockless. Makes me think of Socrates: Be kind to everyone you meet, for we are all fighting a harder battle.

Man, I need to get to the office.

Once Again, eclexys Presents A New Poll · (bloggery department)

The last poll is now closed, with a total of 13 votes. 38% of people, given a choice of ten plot templates, chose as their favorite the following: "Boy (or Girl) struggles with the dilemmas of being human and can offer us no solutions but is damned interesting." Second place, with 23% of the votes, went to: "Boy (or Girl) meets alien. Alien eats Boy."

To see the full results, click here.

Please don't forget to vote in the new poll, which is in the usual place, in the right sidebar. I think this one's a fun one, and it's all about YOU.

My Friend Adam's Post Titles · (gord's life department)

My friend Adam has such a way with titles. For example, on his blog today:

A Friendly Note to the Assholes That Use the Parking Lot at Work

Oh my goodness. And he's also linked to a Reuters article titled "Cambodian cuts off penis to feed spirits". Where does Adam find this stuff?

Hymenaios
(for Isabella and Martin) · (poems: Korea department)

We drank away our doubts, questions, and accidents,

We drank down our doubts, savoured the questions and accidents,
and what's left is an empty cup to be filled, today.
Almost the first miracle in the world, making wine
for a day like this. We know, in this world, our arms
cannot reach forever; we remember Spanish-tinted dreams
spanning whole jungles separating us, heavy nights spent
dreaming one anothers' voices and tongues—of a day
like this. And we seal a pledge bounded by the inevitable,
but look to the boundless; we would pledge it in every tongue
in the world, if we could. But though we cannot, behold
us anyway, dear friends. Today we become our love.

---

Notes: Hymenaios is the name of the Greek god of marriage, as well as the traditional song of the bridesmaids, but in general it's also a general-purpose term for a "wedding song". (The poem I wrote for my other sister's wedding, an epithalamion, is apparently one specific type of hymenaios which was traditionally sung accompanying the bridal couple to the bedchamber. According to what I can find online, anyway. the hymenaios is the more all-encompassing category... but I'm not wholly sure.)

The poem makes specific reference to the circumstances of their past, such as having spent long periods of time separated from one another by circumstance, and their having met in the Spanish-speaking world. Still, I think even if one doesn't know their personal histories, one can still get the drift of the poem. At least, I should hope so.

I am quite pleased with it. It was hard to get from previous drafts to this, and took me far too long, but I am happy with it finally. It's the least of the gifts I can shower upon my baby sister on the occasion of her wedding day.

Thank goodness for wild raspberry wine (bok bun ja ju) which aided me in the writing of this. It's not saké, but then I am no Basho. Thanks be, I'd rather not drown in a pool trying to hug the moon.

*UPDATE*
Changed the first line. Annie was a tiny bit concerned about it sounding like they drank to dispel their doubts, and when she raised the issue, I looked closely and realized that, grammatically, that was exactly what was implied, when I actually meant they drank down their own doubts—experienced them, honestly and without preconception, went through them to the far side where certainty can be found. So the first line is changed. Hahaha.

I can only hope that the mention of doubts, questions, and uncertaintaies is kosher; ie. I hope that everyone at the wedding will be adult enough to know that every relationship has its doubts, questions, worries, and problems, and that a wedding is a moment of Herculean triumph over those things, when two people somehow get past all the maybes and but-hows and are-you-sures and together make something real before everyone who loves them.

Working on the novel again · (gord's life department)

Yep, I'm finally trying to finish the draft so I can finally, eventually, get to editing the damned thing and sending it out. However, I just realized that one of the plots I was using as background, really, honestly, ought to be foregrounded. It's almost all centered on one character, who is peripheral to a lot of the real action; a Chinese (? or perhaps Indian, or even Croatian, I'm not sure... he needs some more development in my imagination before I write anything about him) bounty hunter who is hunting a group of Kurdish guerrillas (ie. terrorists), specifically one man who is the link between the terrorist group and their suppliers/backers... the identity of which is a big surprise in the story.

This will probably entail adding another fifty pages to the story, but I have a feeling I'll be cutting chunks out later, so it's okay. It'll add enough to the story to be well worth it.

Anyway, I finished a draft of an interview with a Islamic feminist theorist, and it came out better than I planned, for a draft. I'll finish the other two useful news reports in the novel tonight, and then start in drafting the bounty hunter plot. That should be done by the end of the week, thank goodness, so I can turn back to my Taiping poems, and also get this poem and speech for my sister's wedding done. I'll try finish the poem tonight, in fact, as Annie is eager to see it.

Gotta go, class in a bit and I need to visit the little professor's room.

Things We All Ought To See · (sci&tech; department)

Everyone should go look at the images and news at this site every once in a while. I don't much care about strange sounds being heard on the space station but I do think that seeing images of space is about the closest thing we can have to that old story of the Romantic Era when poets looked at waterfalls and clouds and had intimations of the eternal, and felt holy terror at the immensity of nature and the tininess of themselves.

This image, by the way, is of Venus in Pleiades. I remember seeing Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, when I was a childup in Northern Canada. It was so bright in the dark, starry skies above the little town where I lived, and I was out on a stargazing outing with the cub scouts. One of the older boys pointed out something called the Seven Sisters to me, and it just seemed so mythical, that name, that I fell in love with those seven little stars, so far away. Imagine my annoyance at discovering, later, that a bunch of UFO-cultists were claiming that aliens were visiting earth from their home system of Pleiades. I wanted to know the real Pleaides but all I could ever find information about, in those days, was about UFO abductions and alien visitations and the like.

But the Seven Sisters remain as beautiful as they did that night when I, as a child, looked up across space into their tiny, shining eyes. Perhaps someday when I visit my family, I shall talk someone into taking a trip up to that little northern town again, and going out to look at the stars.

Not that I am feeling a shortage; I stargazed on half the nights I stayed in Dharamsala, actually, and it was breathtaking to see so much of them after being in Korea two years... where you can often see only a couple of stars in daily life, thanks to light pollution. But in the country, you can see more. I think it'll be time for a camping and fishing trip as soon as it's a little warmer out. I don't think it'll be hard to convince the rest of the band, either. I'm looking forward to that.

Anyway, I recommend space.com, it's worth checking out.

Arbor Day · (gord's life department)

Life seems still to be all lotus blossoms springing from my every footstep.

Our conversation was long, we laughed a great deal, and we understand one another; honesty, we dare even honesty. She asked me, out of the blue, the one question I didn't expect, and which I was a little nervous to bring up myself at this point (though I would have eventually). And I answered her honestly, and she understood. Even that.

"It's a nice," to use the words of my friend John Wendel. I'm not gonna go on and on about details here, but I will say, it's a nice to have hooked up with someone so absolutely remarkable, and so unexpected in my life at this point.

Now, I listen to the Flaming Lips (some compilation I've downloaded), and write a little more, and then I shall sleep. Happily.

PS: Bulgogi nakshi jeongeol... ah, what wonderful food.

My Superhero Identity · (bloggery department)

And I would have thought my super power would have had something to do with, I don't know, my ability to recall Greek words a decade after last studying them. But oh no...

Your Superhero Persona by couplandesque
Your Name
Superhero Name	Emo Kid
Super Power	Incredible Stamina
Enemy	Frozen Corpse Of Walt Disney
Mode Of Transportation	Shopping Cart
Weapon	Celine Dion Albums
Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0!

It's kind of weird that I found the quiz at Marvin's page, and got a pretty similar answer to what he got in the quiz. Hmm.

What's the most important thing in your life? · (gord's life department)

She squeezes my hand, and lets go. Her hands raised up to her either side of her face—an adorable gesture she does a lot—leaning on the table with a palm on each cheek, as she listens to my answer to her question. I can't help but smile.

"Well," I tell her, "a year ago, or a few years ago, I would have given you a different answer." And then I think for a few moments, and in the end I cannot find a word in Korean (of course, for my Korean is not that good), or in French (that language I am losing, or perhaps already have lost) or even in English for what has become central in my life. I think back and come upon it, the Greek word that I've not heard or said for so long, though I saw it recently on a webpage I sometimes look at: eudaimonia.

That's it. It's eudaimonia. It's that strange intersection of joy (the word that is closest in English to what I wanted to say, though it's not joy as a feeling, but joy as a process encompassing decisions and the experience of the process of those decisions... a way of life, joy as a process), and peace and contentment and choosing virtue and compassion and whatever your deepest self sings to you.

So I smile, and tell her that I don't know of a word in English for what is most important in my life. And I ask her if she knows the word eudaimonia, which of course she and most people on earth don't know. I often ask people if they know something as a way of introducing it into conversation, and some people take it the wrong way, but she doesn't. She knows about mirror neurons and history and she even knows my old haunt in Montreal—it was, by chance perhaps, her haunt too, at a time when I'd long been gone from the place. She knows so many things... but who knows eudaimonia? A few philosophy students and philosophy hobbyists like me. Maybe fifty people in this country know that word, or perhaps a hundred. Perhaps I'm being arrogant and two hundred individuals know it. I'm always asking her, "Do you know about ____?" and she laughs and though maybe she thinks it's always no when I ask this question, the answer is actually more often yes than with most people I know. As I tell her what the word means, how I have this crazy notion that joy is the center of my life, joy and the choice of kindness and compassion as a way of living that joy, she smiles at me with this happy look, her head resting on her palms. The look on her face is... I don't know how to say, except it almost looks like a look of recognition, seeing a face half-remembered from long ago.

And I ask her what's most important to her, and she smiles and tells me that it's about knowing who she really is, what she's meant to do with her life. And it occurs to me, as she explains this, that that is also what eudaimonia means, the flourishing of what you truly are, the most honest being-yourself that is possible; but I don't tell her that. I smile, and listen, and marvel that such people as us should ever cross paths. How much more miraculous than the miracle I reflected on months before: I remember walking down the street outside the little cafe where we sit and talk. Out there in the dark, months before, I marveled at the fact I should even feel the snows of Korean winter on my face at all, this place so far from everything I'd ever known as a child, so far from anything I'd known even as a young man. And this evening, I marvel at finding such fragments of joy as never would have walked into my poems years ago.

And later, as we're walking in the street, I'm hearing Delius in my head, "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring," remembering being told that spring time was coming, to the world and for me. Sunlight pours from the sky, or that's how it feels, anyway, though the day is a little cold and none too sunny. I am touched of course by that sense of calm, that sense of calm-down, too. Patience is like all virtues, difficult yet delicious when one learns it. And I realize life cannot forever be led like poems... but that a life worth leading is one whose poems are honest and true. I am doing what I told her is the key to finding who you are: listening deeply, honestly, without fear, to what is deep inside you, the voice that sings in the soft darkness for only you to hear. The voice that sings who you are, if only you listen bravely and calmly and with the strength to honestly want joy.

And it feels good.

My Ball · (gord's life department)

My ball is big and grey. It's huge and soft and full of air. I am sitting on my ball. I bounce a little and I rock back and forth, side to side. I do all kinds of things with my ball, and it helps my back. This $20 ball I bought at E-Mart is a wonderful big strange grey thing in my apartment, and thank the heavens for it.

But I think it's time to go pay my massage ajumma at the local bathhouse a visit. She has arms as thick as my legs, and the last time I went to the bathhouse, I left feeling really good. My back's been bugging me and I of course deserve a break from that. So why not?

Off I go!

Bad Movie Science · (film department)

You can all thank Charlie for this: a website called Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics that goes through and dissects all the physics mistakes in films, with reviews that painstakingly show how and why Hollywood physics is just too unbelievable to bear, in a whole range of movies that include not only SF but also crime, historical drama, and more.

It's worth checking out, for a laugh if nothing else. Compliments, once again, to Charlie Bell.

Weird Eganesque Brit TV-Show Dream · (gord's life department)

Last night I had this dream that, when I woke, was all kind of still there, present in my mind. I have absolutely no idea what this is all about, but I have this distinct feeling that it's not the first time I've had a dream about this. It's strange, though, because this was the final episode in the dream.

Episode? Yes, episode. Because the dream is a British television series. I don't know how or why I dreamt a British television series, but in any case, I did. The series was about a man. The man wasn't anyone special, not a scientist or a magician, nobody who had the powers to do what he ends up doing in the series. He was just a shipping clerk in some shop like Mark's & Spencer's (as my old man says, Mark's and Spark's) or something. And yet, in the first episode, I was acutely aware, the man had somehow, of his own volition, created an alternate universe into which he traveled. He could orchestrate events of his own choosing, though of course the alternate world threw some surprises at him. He could meet people by accident, by simply willing it. He could walk anywhere, even to another continent, within the space of a ten minute stroll. He was about as in-control of his universe as he could be, the god of his own little virtual domain.

(As I describe it, I realize that it sounds a fair bit like the world that people escape into when they eat Chew-Z drug described in Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch—except of course sans the everpresent Eldritch himself. The virtual world also sounds somewhat like Greg Egan's VR characters in so many of his novels and short stories. And yet there was no tech in any of this, only this shipping clerk stepping into this imaginary world of his own design for the length of a TV-series.)

Anyway, as we all may imagine, the man tired of controlling the world he was living in. For a while it had been wonderful, exciting, but eventually (about halfway through the series) the man wanted out. That was when he began to meet people in the virtual world whom he didn't know in real life, who behaved as more than simple automatons. It wasn't just grocery bag-boys or bus drivers, then... he'd meet old men who would give him advice not to go back to the real world, or who would argue that this world was the real one and what he longed for was an illusion, or a failing memory of a world just like this one.

Well, the clerk pressed on, convinced (if sometimes momentarily hesitant) to return to the "real" world. Finally, last night, I saw the last episode, and it was disappointingly like the ending of the film Abre Los Ojos (or the Hollywood remake, Vanilla Sky). In the end, the fellow realized his simple choice was to leap out of the virtual world into life. He went to a cliffside, and sat by a tree for a day, all not-Buddha-like though of course the sitting-beneath-a-tree reference was clearly made in his posture and the framing of the shot. His friends in the world visited him one by one, and he wished them the kindest and fondest farewells, kissing old lovers and tightly hugging old buddies of his—his "mates", as he called them—and finally, when everyone from his imaginary life had come and gone, he sat and waited, until he realized that sitting and waiting would get him nowhere. Then, he turned, looked at the tree, and at the cliff behind it. Below was water crashing onto rocks on a beach. He leapt down into that. The POV of the camera followed him down toward the rocks, and then everything went silent and dark.

Darkness and silence continued for a few seconds, and then, slowly, the sound of the shipping office grew louder and louder; typing, phones ringing, stamps being stamped onto invoices. And I heard a slight, but familiar, chuckle from, yes, the man, I was certain of it. Then the credits ran with some very striking soundtrackish music, and I felt as if I'd seen a whole TV series.

And then I woke. What a dream! I'm not even sure it would make a good TV show, but as far as dreams go, it was very entertaining. It's too bad I don't remember my dreams more than once a months, because I think they would be pretty interesting.

Whatcha Wanna Know? · (gord's life department)

So I'm working on an about page for this site. I'm compiling things and I'm not sure what readers of this page want to know about me. Here's your chance to ask me some questions. I'll probably answer, as long as your questions are reasonable... so here's your big chance!

Marvin's Versified Response To The Ogle · (gord's life department)

My friend Marvin read my post on "Male Sexuality and the Ogle" and came up with a poem titled Doggerel on a Theme from Eclexys.

My Crazy Day · (gord's life department)

Today was a day of relentless little disasters; shoelaces tearing on the way out of the house, dropped containers, stubbed toes, malfunctioning CD-burners, a whole restaurant mysteriously torn down, a surprising lack of cherry blossoms, foolish restaurant orders, dangling jacket buttons, all capped off with a shocking movie experience.

And it was also wonderful, and happy, and good.

Exhaustion and Relief · (gord's life department)

It's funny. Yesterday morning I met one of my cool friends downtown for a coffee before work. I normally never meet anyone before lunch, partly because of my work schedule, and partly because nobody ever seems interested in meeting in the morning. So it was something different, anyway. But our conversation is a clue to something: one of the first things we talked about was how we both felt incredibly tired.

Well, after coffee and lunch, I headed to work. Work was alright, I suppose. My classes were mostly okay. The theology/travel-tourism kids tried a little harder this time, and I changed my teaching method with them a little, in a way that seemed to help them get into things. The music students were about the same as usual, which means they were pretty good, albeit with an annoying tendency to yap when they should be listening.

Then I went out for dinner with my LEC class. It was an interesting experience, though fun in the end. Some of the students are really relaxed and cool and just try to make their class situation work, while others seem continually distracted, or continually vigilant against metaphysical corruption by those who do not share in their particular theological outlook. People like that make relaxing and having fun a little difficult, because they really suck at conversations even in their own language. They either spout programmed lines that they've heard other adherents say, or they close off and neither listen nor react to what others say. And at my school there are a lot of kids who seem to think Christianity means viewing 95% of the world as sinners by whom they can be corrupted by the contagion of sin and unbelief. It's saddest for them, since they tend to seem very unhappy, and tend not to learn very well, at least not from what I've seen...

But of course the dinner thinned out to a few cool people and they we had a funny, relaxed talk. After that, I headed back to JinLi Hall for my evening class. It's still, in my opinion, ridiculous that a Friday night class should be held at all, and I think many of these students are doomed to fail this class. They won't be practicing outside of class, they won't be speaking any more later than they are now, I predict. And when it takes them 20 minutes to learn how to ask simple questions like "Is my pencil near you?" "Is it under your book?" "Is it on the floor?"—when my other classes get the exercise in about 3 minutes—it doesn't move me to feel much hope.

After the class, I was dead tired. But could I go home? No.

Why? Well, you see, I like talking with the guy who runs a little coffee shop on campus. He's a nice guy, and I always enjoy our little 5 minute chats when he makes me coffee. He's figured out that my Korean is a little better than his English, and lets me speak in Korean to him. So a few weeks ago, he invited me out for a bottle of soju. Due to a miscommunication, he thought that I would be coming for sure on Friday night, though I'd told him we'd only go out if I came in by Thursday and told him that it was on.

He thought it was on no matter what, so on Friday night, while I was elsewhere having a very good conversation, this guy was sitting in the coffeeshop waiting for me. So when I next saw him, he told me in a rather hurt tone that he'd been waiting for me. I therefore made another appointment with him and promised to show up... on Friday night, after class. So dead tired or no, I had to show up. Luckily, he could see how tired I was, and we just had a few beers and some kebabs, and then ended the night. He's a really nice guy, as I said, but it was less like a conversation and more like a lesson, and after teaching all day on a day when I am already exhausted, the last thing I need is to be giving another 2-hour lesson... least of all on a Friday night. Sometimes I've given friends lessons, gratis, or for the price of the coffee we sip as we study, but I'm not this guy's friend already, and I don't plan on hanging out every week with him.

Which means, probably, that going to the coffee shop is going to be ever so slightly awkward from now on. Ah, the situations I get into because I'm too friendly and white. I envy Myoung and Thai sometimes, that they can pass for any Cheolsu Lee (the Korean version of John Smith). It's always to me that the weird gangster at the bank wants to talk to, and it's always me that people want to extract English lessons from during my free time. I'll just have to be firm; teaching is not my whole life, and if I spend all my free time doing that, I'll never write any more novels.

Anyway, this morning is a fine morning. I'm listening to Medieval Baebes, on my friend Lynn's recommendation. I was a little worried about the group—an early-music group with the word "babes" in the name? It would have been a bad sign a few years ago, I think—but they're actually quite good, from what I can tell having only been able to get one track (The Alba is a traditional poetic form used to tell the story of how secret lovers feel about about the coming sunrise which, when it comes, means that the lovers must separate unwillingly for the day... you can read an Alba that I wrote once, here... though this alba of mine has nothing to do with the parting of lovers, but instead is about the parting of a man from his innocence in the face of a coming war.)

This afternoon, I will go to the mountains with another good friend to see the spring blooms (this one's the same one who was the second to try that April Fool's trick on me, actually). I've been looking forward to this all week, and it'll be nice to get out of the city, especially with such good company. We're going to a place that's apparently famous; a mountain with a Buddhist temple beside it, I assume, from the name. But until then, I'm going to try get my room tidied up, listen to some of these Flaming Lips albums I've downloaded, and see if I can make more coffee—the last pot I made, a few minutes ago, I spilled, losing all that precious coffee in a single instant. Ah well, it just means I need to make more.

Well, off I go, to get to it.

More April Foolery · (gord's life department)

Gord: "Hey Dad, what time is it there?"
Dad: "Uh, 4:30am."
Gord: "Oh, damn, sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."
Dad: "It's okay. What's up?"
Gord: "Well... I don't know how to say this... uh, I'm going to just come out and say it. I guess."
Dad: "What?"
Gord: "You know how Marie's pregnant? And you thought Marie was gonna give you your first grandchild?"
Dad: "Yeah."
Gord: "Well... wrong."
Dad: "What?"
Gord: "Um... she's not the first. It's me."
Dad: (serious tone)"When?"
Gord: "Um... last week. I didn't know."
Dad: "I see."
Gord: "I don't know what I'm going to do, though, because... there's another one."
Dad: "Another what?"
Gord: "Another baby."
Dad: "How?"
Gord: "Different girl."
Dad: "When?"
Gord: "Couple of months from now."
Dad: "Mmm."
Gord: "Hey Dad... what day is today?"
Dad: "Um... it's April 2nd."
Gord: "Are you sure?"
Dad: "No, wait, it's the first..."
Gord: (evil laughter)
Dad: "Damn." (laughter) "You got me."
Gord: "Happy April Fool's Day, Dad."
Dad: "Right. I have some questions about your plane ticket..."

The rest of the conversation wasn't that interesting... not enough to post. But, I did get him, and good. Unfortunately, he warned my Mom, so when I tried to pull the same stunt on her, she already knew what was coming. Ah well... I'll go try my sisters if one of them is online...

A Conversation I Had In Class Today... · (gord's life department)

Translated from Korean:

Gord: Why is your homework the same as his?
Student: It's not.
Gord (from one book): "I live is by red house and one is sister. I live near The World Cup Stadium. My house so is very good." (from other book) "I live is by red house and two is brother. I live near The World Cup Stadium. My house so is very good."
Student: It's different. One sister, two brother. Different.
Gord: Do I look stupid to you?
Student: No.
Gord: It's the same homework.
Student: We're neighbours.
Gord: So you did your homework together because you're neighbours?
Student: No, no. Our homework is the same because we're writing about the same place.
Gord: And your mistakes are the same?
Student: Yes. Because English is hard.
Gord: Especially if you don't try.
Student: We're neighbours...
Gord: ... well, neighbours. Yes, you are well-nigh boors. (*)
Student: Well-nigh boors? No, neighbours.
Gord: Yes, you are well-nigh boars. Only pigs would show me this homework.
Student: Neighbours.
Gord: Yes, nigh-boars.
(Other students are cackling by this point.)
Student: Okay, but we didn't cheat.
Gord: Fuuuuuug. You did your homework together, didn't you?
Student: Yes.
Gord: That's minus one percent each for you. Everybody, unless you are a boar, you will do your homework. If you want to learn, you must try. If you won't try, you should get the #&$@! out of here right now. Got it?
Students, in unison, serious looks and only a little laughter: Yes.

(*) The actual pun was far more elegant. The Korean word for "neighbour" (yeopjari)sounds enough like the word yeobgi which apparently means curious, bizarre, weird, freaky... which was, to my students, a very amusing pun, but also one that conveyed my annoyance at being lied to you in such a stupid and bald-faced way. The student said, "I am his neighbour" and I said, "You are a freak? Yes, you're a freak!"

Baewugoshipneun geotdeuleun (Things I Want To Learn) · (Friday Five department)

The Friday Five for this week comes from the fingertips of the illustrious Adrienne:

If time and money were infinite, what are the five things you'd love to learn how to do? Which of these do you think you'll do anyway, no matter what the economic and temporal restraints are?

It's a tough question, because of course there are zillions of things I would like to learn. I hope I'm not cheating by the way I answer this. I'm going to assume a couple of things:

• that sets of things are acceptable, like languages categorized in one set, since I think that language learning is basically all one kind of learning
• that only things I believe are possible are acceptable answers. I'd love to travel out of body, astrally project, have OOBEs, whatever you might call it, for example... but I believe that's not possible, so I will not spend one of my five learnables on something like that.

Given those points, I'd choose the following five things...

1. About five or six languages, beginning with attaining fluency in Korean. I find the language an endless struggle to use, but it's getting easier day by day. More and more words stick in my head, and are available to me; more and more grammatical and logical constructions become expressible to me month by month, and I'm at the point where I can flirt in written or spoken Korean, I can berate students and make mocking puns at them on the fly, when I am lucky—today, one guy was trying to explain to me that his homework and his friend's homework was identical because they are neighbours (I think that's what he was saying); "You're freaky alright!" I retorted punnishly, because the word for "freaky" and the word for "neighbour" that he used sound quite similar. What was funny was that one or two of the students thought I was mishearing him, until they realized I was punning on purpose and that I was quite annoyed and mocking the student, who originally claimed that they'd done their work individually. I read identical (warped) sentences from the two workbooks and told him he was lying to me. Once his classmates caught on that I was understanding close to everything said to me, and responding not only in annoyance but also in mockery, using the student's language, they were laughing and laughing about the poor student's plight. I then reprimanded the class about how they have to do their homework individually, if they want to learn; and that if they don't want to learn they should get the hell out of the classroom right away. All of that was in Korean so clear and comprehensible that they didn't even comment on my saying it, they just all shamefully agreed and said they would do their work alone in the future.

   Wait, I got off-track there somehow. Well, anyway, I'd learn a whack of different languages, one by one, until I was fluent in all of them. As I am now, I'd choose the langugages in this order: Korean, Chinese, French, Spanish, Latin, ancient Greek, Arabic, and Russian. A lot of my choice has to do with my interests—I'd like to be able to read the Quran and enjoy the poetry of the book, which Arabic-speakers assure me is untranslatable; I'd love to be able to walk about Korea speaking transparent, perfect Korean and understanding everything said to or around me; I'd like to be able to use the little French I have, and appreciate all those Frenchpoets in the original (and that goes for the Latin and Greek poets who penned the classics). Spanish and Russian would be solely for traveling purposes. I leave off Hindi as you can get by with just English in India, as far as I can tell, but I wouldn't mind learning Sanskrit as well.



2. I'd love to be able to code software. I'd probably settle down and learn C++ or something, as that's what most people seem to use. I don't know if I would use the skill much, but it'd be nice to truly understand the way that people go from algorithms (which I'm naturally quite good at building) to the final implementation.


3. I'd love to learn how to fix all kinds of mechanical stuff, like bicycles and cars and such. My bicycle gears crank at totally inappropriate times, like when I am going up a hill, or when I turn—I mean when I am not changing gears at all, and the chain keeps slipping off when I go into 3rd gear on the big front gears, and I haven't the faintest clue of how to fix it. Which means I need to go to a bike shop on the other side of town to get it fixed. Which is a pain in the ass. I'd much prefer knowing how to fix it myself. I think it's another thing I'd naturally be good at, as I'm usually good with fiddling with simple things that seem to confound others around me, and making them work, but things that are a little more complicated usually baffle me in the same way; I don't clearly see the logic inherent in gears and posts and chains and levels, and I would like better to see it.


4. I'd love to learn all about the way ecologies work. I'd bloody love to take five or eight years off during this hypothetically infinite lifespan and devote the time to learning about our scientific understanding of ecosystems and how the various species interact, how genes work at different levels shaping not only our bodies but the world our bodies inhabit, how climate and weather and food and all are interrelated.


5. I'd learn to play the piano at least to the level I can play the sax, I think; I know enough people who can play the guitar, and there are always wonderful guitarists, but there are never, it seems to me, enough people who can competently improvise on the piano. More realistically, I'd learn to play a bunch of wind instruments... which is something I am, slowly, working on doing. I've got saxes, at least sort of, mastered, and I am working on the flute now; next on my list is bass clarinet, and then maybe the TaeBeyongSeo, a kind of Korean shawm (or oboe... forms of which can be found all across Asia, actually, and all the way into the Middle East). Shakuhachi would be nice too, but I'm not sure I have the lungs for it.

There are other things that crossed my mind: sculpture; playing the guitar as an added bonus; writing pop songs and fugues with equal skill; the art of seduction; and one mentioned in the Peter Brook production of the Mahabharata which I remember from my youth, a knowledge referred to as "the science of dice." But if I could learn the above five things, I'd be more than content with my abilities and knowledge.

Funnily enough, of the five, I am working on only one (the Korean language), or perhaps, if you count slowly trying to teach myself how to make Flash animations and working on getting good at the flute, three of the five I listed above. As for the science and the mechanical stuff, it's very haphazard and piecemeal, my way of learning. I know some stuff, but not so much as I'd like, and right now I'm not pursuing it all. But then, I don't have infinite resources and time.

One Hour Doesn't Seem Enough · (esl department)

Not for my LEC class. Ah well, the exercises do at least result in some interesting discussion. But I am working on ways to streamline the exercises to make sure students spend more time practicing useful structures and less time constructing way too complicated structures wrong in an attempt to "speak really well".

Ah, the endless challenge. I think I also have this problem in Korean. I guess I need a teacher to kick my ass into following simple useful structures when I sray, to get me into the habit. At least for now... Ah, the endless struggle of study...

Two April Fool's SMS Conversations · (gord's life department)

Some of this is translated from Korean.

My sorta-ex-girlfriend messaged me first:

"Gord! Guess what! I'm going abroad in one month!"
"Really?"
"Yeah. I will go to Australia."
"How long?"
"Maybe one year, or two. And Gord... I miss you. T.T" [T.T is a sad face—tears streaming down from eyes on either side of a little closed mouth]
"Ah! That's great! It's good for you!"
"But don't you miss me?"
(Awkwardly, somewhat obviously saying a white lie to spare her feelings:) "Um... uh... a little, I guess."
"Gord, I'm disappointed with you. Do you know what day it is today?"
"Huh? Oh... Damn! It's April 1st! You lied to me?"
"Yep!"
"Damn! So you're not going abroad?"
"Nope."
"And you don't miss me, either?"
"Shut up! Hahahaha."

Ten minutes later, no kidding, another girl—a very cool one I met not long ago—messaged me saying,

"Gord, I've finally decided today that I'll immigrate to Canada."
"Really? Me too!" I replied. This time, I saw the prank coming. Haha, because I am a clever one.
"Um... are you sure?"
"Are you?" I reply, a grin on my face. Myoung Jae and Gordon Williams and I are eating lunch at the Professor's Cafeteria and Myoung grins at me craftily, guessing it's another April Fool's joke but that I won't be fooled this time.
"Oh, it's just... T.T"
[in Korean:] "Today is April 1st... GOTCHA!"
"Ah, damn, you got me alright."

I had to call her up to see if she was also joking. She was.

I shall spend the rest of the day feeling rather clever.

Life This Week · (gord's life department)

Life's been so busy lately, and I forgot my computer plug at the office last night so I actually got something approaching a decent amount of sleep. But I didn't get to post.

So last night, I taught until 6:30pm. Then, I killed time at the office waiting to meet a student who wanted to get some help revising her speech for a speech contest. It's not something I do everyday, but this kid is a really good student and I want to encourage that kind of thing, so I agreed to meet her. We worked until about 8pm, and then I quickly cycled home, changed out of my work clothes, and cycled downtown. I arrived at the practice room too late (again) and practice finished a little after I arrived. It seems that the structure of Myoung's new song, "Green Leaves", has changed, but not so radically that I couldn't find my way through it. I think I'll play soprano on the song, but in the studio I'll also record some small bits on flute to thicken out the instrumentation... especially in the verses and during the third progression of the solo, where I'm playing in a high register and something new needs to be added to the accompaniment. (I thought Thai was laying back in the third progression but he wasn't... it's just the sparseness of the solo and thinness of my tone in the upper register on soprano sax that made the whole thing seem as if it was losing energy.)

After practice, Thai and I were on the way to catch a cab to his place, when we met a very strange man. He looked a bit like a low-level gangster, and came into the bank machine room to shake my hand and speak to me in really bad Korean. I acted like I couldn't understand what he was saying because the grammar was all wrong, and because I kind of found it ridiculous for him to address me with a sentence that is the equivalent of "Country person?" instead of "Where do you come from?" It was quite weird, especially since I was speaking to him in proper sentences, so I told him I had to leave and then we went and caught a cab as quickly as possible.

Then I went to Thai and Kathleen's place and watched the new Cohen Bros. movie, Intolerable Cruelty. I'll probably have more to say about it once I watch it again—and I amplanning on watching it again—but I will say now that it's a really great film. I slapped my knee while laughing hard several times, and I also really appreciated the construction of the characters and their relationships. To me there was something utterly Shakespearean about the whole story, the performances by Zeta-Jones and Clooney, and about the characters they played. The dialogue was sparkling and full of funny reversals and inversions; the characters transformed before my eyes; there are a couple of great speeches, including an impassioned speech about love, and characters do things that are completely against their better nature, but also realize it, eventually. It was extremely well done.

After the film, I took a cab back to the practice room to fetch my bicycle, and rode home, which took about 15 or 20 minutes. The hill going to downtown is horrible but the hill on the way back isn't quite so bad. I needed my bicycle because I'm cycling to work everyday, as well as everywhere else I can. I find it unacceptable to sit on a bus for 40 minutes to an hour waiting to get home from the University when I can get through all the traffic jam and to my house in about 5 minutes on my bicycle. (I'm not exaggerating, either. The road is horribly clogged at the time when my Language Centre class finishes, at 6:20pm.)

So here I sit, four more classes ahead of me, listening to The Smiths' "There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out" on repeat, the sad strange adolescent beauty of that song with all its obsessive sweet love and homelessness and simplicity and complexity all twining round and through this sweet high voice that sings just almost exactly how I once felt, long ago, as a kid. Ahead of me, a little farther, is an excursion out of town to a beautiful temple to see the flowers of spring... and more blossoms underfoot.

On Male Sexuality and the Ogle · (aesthetics department)

Ah, the work for an aesthetician is never ever finished.

So the other night, I finished reading a great big chunk of a story a friend is working on. The story is kind of about this guy who, because of childhood experiences, develops a kind of obsession with retro pornography that was popular during his youth. The climactic scene (pun unintended) is when his girlfriend walks in on him masturbating with some of this retro-porn on playing on his computer screen right in front of him.

This might sound like bizarre, nasty fiction, but actually, I find it to be quite honest, and it's extremely funny in parts. While it's never happened to me (as far as I know), it has happened to people I know, this kind of situation. Men do this sort of thing a lot, and it's no surprise they sometimes get walked in on doing it.

Well, I'm going to go neither here nor there about the complex mesh of feelings that are involved when a woman beholds her man's lustful gaze directed at some porno chick on a computer screen; nor am I going to go into the indignation and frustration a man feels when a woman complains about his gazing at other women that way, because, of course, he can't really understand why she can't understand that this is something separate from real life, and doesn't in the least (to his mind) infringe on his love for, or attraction to, her. All of that is complicated enough that not even a short story is potentially big enough to work through all the complex nuances and effects of mens' and womens' minds being so radically differently wired.

But I will go to a much milder scenario, to illustrate a point I think women don't quite understand. That is, that a perfectly balanced, decent, devoted, and loving man is probably also somewhat of an ogler, though he is also likely to do it less, or at least more subtly, when his girl friend, or other female friends, are around.

People use nature as an excuse far far too often in this life. Far be it from me to fall into the same trap... I refuse to do that. However, I will tell you women—and the men who feel sheepish about this—one thing: we're wired to ogle. We're wired to be continually on the lookout for potential mates. Some men are sometimes more monogamous than others, and plenty of us are adult enough not to cheat on the woman we love; but few (or probably none) of us would ever commit to never looking at another woman. It's something we just do, we find ourselves doing it, and it's not a bad thing.

In fact, a balanced man who is somewhat in touch with his own mind is someone who can note that he is, instinctually, attracted to someone. It's something that presents a complicated problem for aestheticists, I suppose: it's a kind of beauty that men can appreciate in other women which women perhaps cannot appreciate in women. (Though they have their equivalent in relation to men, I am sure. I also suspect the parallel is not an exact translatable one, but I don't know for sure... I do know, though, that it seems a lot of womens' attraction can be couched in all kinds of other conditions and facts, while mens' seems more ephemeral, more visceral, more directly related to the eye.)

A man who is in control of his life does not chase every skirt that appears in front of him; that much is certain. If he does that, he is doomed to a total mess of a life. He doesn't even necessarily pursue every avenue open to him. But, he also is in a wonderful position to appreciate life, to appreciate beauty all around him, of the kind that he's absolutely designed to enjoy. His gaze takes him through a veritable landscape of attractions, and the tug inside him toward so many beautiful women can remind him of that deeper tug towards life, towards happiness. That is how sexuality is a gift: like in the title track of the Belle&Sebastian; album, Storytelling:

I'm in love with every girl I meet...

which so many people think is absentminded blabber; it's not. It's a way of being in love with the world.

Does this mean that every man must objectify and sexualize women? No, it means that on some level, men are wired to see women as sexual objects. They also see themselves as sexual objects in relation to women. If men never did this, women and men would probably never get together. And of course, a man who lets this tendency determine his relationships with all women is an idiot, a mess. But the in-between is something women often don't understand, and don't want to come to terms with: a man who looks at other women, enjoys that "beauty" that is more than just passive appreciation of something "pretty" like a painting or statue, is not really doing anything wrong. It's much better than being the man whose attraction to other women is experienced as the nexus of guilt, or sadness, or even pain. The healthy man, who ogles without being a jerk or a letch, is likelier to have a joyful relation to the world, and to the one woman with whom he is "with" at the time. After all, the tendency to look about is simply there. It's best we're all adult about it, come to terms with it, and find the best way to make it work. And that's good for everyone.

Of course, I could be wrong. What do you think?

*UPDATE*
Some thoughts crossed my mind after having written the above. One of the points occurred to me as I walked about the campus, being that too many women actually worry about their attractiveness to men. Of course, men and women should be a little concerned about this; it's a nice feeling when people are visibly attracted to you, but it doesn't make your life complete. The makeup and fashion industries cash in on this misperception, and women do all kinds of things to themselves because of it. Western women seem to go in for breast implants, but I know a Korean girl who listed off to me a shocking list of modifications she wanted a plastic surgeon to give to her, including double-eyelid surgery, breast reduction, and more. It was sad, because the girl is actually quite pretty. But it seems it's never enough. The ridiculous standards that women impose on themselves are something men seem to accept and follow, but note what I said—I think it is often women imposing it on themselves, in the hope that men will find them more attractive. Our real-life standards aren't anything like what you might think, ladies. No matter what we like on the screen, in pictures, in bars where we ogle incessantly, in real life, chances are you yourself fit whatever bill we're thinking about when we look at you. You're probably more than beautiful enough for us. So cool off and enjoy our company, and quit it with the makeup and fancy clothes and plastic surgery. Most of you really just don't need it.

Cox & Forkum · (politica department)

I linked to this in a previous post, but I think it's worth highlighting by itself anyway... actually, I find their politics repugnant at times, but at other times I can't help but think they're not completely wrong... here's a blog of political cartoons by Cox & Forkum.

Article on Life In Canada, Plus Nasty Thoughts on (Many, But Thankfully Not All) Canadians in Korea · (politica department)

Once, in a little diner in Iksan, I sat listening with deep amusement as two very enlightened fellows I know, an American and an Australian, bitched about Canadians. They were, of course, fairly justified. They were, I should clarify, complaining generally about a certain kind of Canadian who ends up as an expatriate in Korea. It's a fairly true stereotype, I find, with myself as one of the exceptions.

The other day, the same American friend was asking me why the hell the Canadians around him never bloody well pronounce Korean words properly, but insist on saying them as if they were English words, or use English stresses on Korean phrases. (There is a noticeable difference, and average Koreans tend not to be able to figure what the hell you're saying if both your stresses and your pronunciation are messed up... just as, even now, I sometimes mistake English for Korean when it's spoken by someone who makes little or no effort to use the sounds and stresses particular to English and which are not found in Korean at all.) This friend finds that of all the people who knows who can't speak Korean to save their lives, not even a few words, not even a word in some cases, that they more often than not are Canadians.

And I had to admit, as we went through the list of people who can't pronounce worth a goddamn, a great deal of them were Canadians. It was a little discouraging.

The other charges levelled against Canadian expats in Korea, in the aforementioned conversation, were that they're the likeliest to be jingoistic (and extremely idiotic about it when they are called on it, in a way Americans rarely even dare to be, and often know better than to be regardless of their personal opinions), and that they tend to be among the dumbest of the dumbasses (of which, in the expat community in Korea, there are oodles).

So please don't think me jingoistic for posting a link to this article where an American writes about life in Canada as comparatively better than life in the USA, please please don't.

Really, the only reason I wanted to post the link, which I found on Kassandra's blog, is because of the following comment, which made me spit out my drink in amusement, and then, on second thought, I found was actually pretty astute (even if the comparison is a tiny bit of a stretch):

Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to polls. As a result, Canada's government isn't influenced by large, well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with those of Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran.

As a straight white man who's never had to live in America at all, I think there is a difference between the theocratic depredations of the Republicans and the depredations of the Iranian theocracy (here's more on that); but the fact that there's any room to compare theocracies, the fact that it's true there are relative theocracies being compared at all, is stunning. And as I find Bush not only ridiculous but saddeningly rotten and foul, I think the difference is less important than the similarity. It's not just oil that the American and Middle-Eastern theocrats share in common.

And on that note: political cartoons on Iran, from a year back... and this page, which claims to be all about bringing death to the Iranian theocracy... can't find a thing by an Iranian on the front page, though. Which gaffe is the only reason I'm posting it... the arrogance, which is what I assume is at work, is quite astounding.

New Sophistry · (music department)

Here's a link to an article I wrote for the New Sophists' Almanac, titled Rap and the Ghetto. I don't know much about rap, mind you, but then again it's primarily an attempt at a parallel with jazz history, and a bit of blabbing about what art is and how we may or may not define "maturity" in an art form.

Or something. Go read it.

Child Witches? I Say Again, A War Is Coming. · (politica department)

As I read this report from the Chicago Tribune on children in Angola tortured as witches, I can't help but feel my blood boil. It's another case where I think war would be far more justified than in the places where it is happening.

Helena Kufumana makes a pathetic witch.

Far from exuding wickedness, the 13-year-old schoolgirl is nervous and shy. Her "101 Dalmatians" cartoon T-shirt is grubby and doesn't fit. She swings her bare feet beneath her chair in the hyper way that all kids do. And she cries a lot. Especially about the torture.

Last month Helena was accused by her parents of sickening two of her nieces with evil spells. In retaliation, the bewildered girl says, one of her small hands was burned on a red-hot stove. Her meager possessions, including her clothes, were torched. She was choked. And finally, to destroy her reputation in the community, she was beaten in front of a large crowd. Her mother and elder sisters administered these punishments.

"They tell me that if I try to come home they will kill me," sobbed Helena her tears spattering the floor of the church shelter where she has run for safety. "They say I'm cursed."

The article claims that one of the causes people strongly suspect to be linked to this rise in sickening, violent child abuse is the spread of evangelical churches that cash in on superstition and have created an exorcism industry in the area, as well as in the Congo.

I've not thought it through very far, but you know, I am beginning to think that these religious nuts are eventually going to make themselves the target of a future war. I mean, the decent, kind-hearted, patient secular-humanists are going to finally give up on these bastards eventually.

The thing we should have learned by now is that the mass of people are basically simple-minded, but not quite evil. Simple-mindedness can be excused, and in fact must be excused... it's simply the way most people are. Most people are too busy trying to put food on the table and trying to keep themselves in one piece, to worry about whether their religious beliefs are sane, whether their politics make sense, whether they are crazy to follow the herd.

But people who think about the state of the world, we're given responsibility. We're just as weak and fallible as everyone else, and often enough we know it. We bow out of saying things when people talk their ridiculous shit; we don't knock people flat on their asses when they start problems that could hurt many people. We try to keep up hope that people in general are smart enough not to go along with crazy, evil shit... Not this time, we say to ourselves. Not after all we've learned... not this time, please.

And what do they do? Another porgrom. A genocide, again. Bloody again and again.

Eventually, I imagine we're going to succumb to village logic. When someone's dog birtes someone, we're willing to let it go, as long as the owner smacks the dog. When the dog starts killing people, we kill the dog. And when the master tries to stop us, we do whatever it takes to get that dog dead. If I'm a villager and it means the difference between a dozen people dying, or a hundred people dying, or just that idiot and his dog, it'll be the idiot's problem, not mine.

Now, the transposition always follows. Does this mean war is necessary?

No, of course not. Absolutely not. Anyone who thinks that war is justified by this argument is crocked out of his head.

And the thing is, even smart, decent, responsible people get crocked out of their heads sometimes. They do it when they watch decades of crap happen, over and over. They do it when they see how absolutely pathetic it can be to hope people will wise up and get their shit together. It takes longer for them to get to that point, usually, but they do arrive there: they're only human, after all.

And then what? What will they do? I first imagined that it'd be surgical, simple assassination strikes against people who run evangelical exorcism businesses, people who use the Bible for profit, people who tout religious texts in general for their own political or economic agendas. But I don't know how successful that would be; eliminating the exorcists in Angola, and the snake handlers in America, and the psychic surgeons of the Phillippines, seems to me only to create more job openings for those who are greedy and desperate enough to lie to people for cash or for the power to force society to obey their wishes—and goodness knows the world is full enough of those people.

Further, it's a little hard to imagine people like myself, like those I am close friends with, stomaching the idea of using actual force against people like Jerry Falwell; it's the kind of joke we love to make, but when push comes to shove I think we'd not really be willing to spill blood over it. Take the gay marriage issue: I know many people who make jokes about drowning/stabbing/cooking the Republicans who oppose it, but I don't think I know anyone who'd actually do it. (Apologies for doubting your zeal, Adam, but I respect you all the more for it.) So I'm reticent to buy into a model in which direct force is used, in which an actual war is fought against these leeches and scum of the world.

Which makes me wonder what kind of war the reasonable people will resort to when the time comes. It will have to come—the nutcases, loonies, and maniacs are a group that seem to manage to replicate their insanity in others' minds more quickly and fervently than us sane people, and they also seem to have a total inability to let the rest of us live in peace. But I do wonder what kind of war it could be that we, the relatively sane, will wage. Because voting carefully, acting locally, and doing our little bit doesn't seem to be anywhere near enough to keep us free from far too much of being pushed around by these louts.

I'll be thinking this over some, and maybe posting my ideas unless of course I think they warrant inclusion in my next novel. Hm. Now that's a thought.

One more thought: I seem to have focused on certain forms of religion here, but there are things which I regard as religious belief of equally offensive nature, which are often called by other names. A lot of mainstream economics and politics fits my definition of wicked and evil religion. Anyone who is willing to see innocent people (including children) die for the protection of a patent or of incredible profits in a given market, is a sick and evil as someone who is willing to let children die because of a load of horseshit beliefs like that of witchcraft. Maybe that's offensive to suits and to the superstitious alike. I don't give a damn, because both enforce their ridiculous beliefs onto others at a price far too great to imagine they're exacting only mere tolerance from us: they are asking far too much more, and we're not going to continue giving it to them forever.

Musings On The Smiths · (music department)

I think the most beautiful lyric on The Smiths' Singles collection is in "This Charming Man", the line, "I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear... This man said, "It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care." There's something really desolate in the line, something very Oscar Wilde, something horribly crunched-up inside, something a bit like Tori Amos but less insincere somehow than most of her work... and yet with the same weird feeling that in singing pain, one triumphs over it. With Tori, though, it feels like a therapy session; with Morrissey it feels more like a drunken knight slaying a dragon and then standing around in his armor smashing it in the face, making comments on its crappy treasure and gloating that he won the battle... except of course he's not sure the dragon isn't just playing dead and waiting till he leaves, at which point it will roast him with a simple, quick exhalation of breath.

In any case, This Charming Man isn't "my song", by any means. I think the songs I like best are "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" (for bleakest humour), "William, It Was Really Nothing" for the singing—he really croons on it, and as John Wendel and I mentioned today, the bit about "how can you stay with a fat girl who says, 'would you like to marry me?... and if you like you can buy the ring!'..." reminds us of someone we both know here in Jeonju; "How Soon Is Now" reminds me of how I used to feel, say, in Montreal, and "Shoplifters Unite" just for dark, evil style. Also, for a little while there "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" was my theme song, but no more. Hahaha.

I have a couple more collections and albums from the Smiths, and The Flaming Lips, queued up and I hope they come through soon. Wheee.

More blossoms sprout underfoot · (gord's life department)

Is everyone as lucky as I feel on a day like this? The sun is beautiful, the people in my life are gentle and love me, the world is full of so many good things. Even the evil nasty ranting of Morrisey is sweet and pretty. As the poor bastard sang, There is a light and it never goes out... But of course I don't mean it as he did.

I woke to a sweet conversation and a farewell of a kind. I found kind words on my site, and a wonderful invitation spun its way to my through the wirelessness of my phone, drawing a promise of wandering among the flora a week from now—something to look forward to; I read pages of a brilliant book, and the tendrils of my words reached out to Europe, to North America, to Seoul. I got a call from an old, old friend in Iksan, who spoke of the blessing of the sunlight.

It's time for me to go out into the springtime, too, and enjoy what is as much mine as it is any of ours. There are at least a few more hours of light out there for me to cycle through. Maybe I'll get some in saxophone practice, and some reading, downtown? I don't know yet. I'll decide in the shower.

Off into all of this... later, all.

****UPDATE****

I binned the plan to practice, and simply took the long way to Deokjin Park. If I take the Sam Jeon Jeon Ro (almost definitely misspelled, sorry) it's only a half hour ride to the Park, though I have to navigate being on a semi-freeway like road with people trying to pass me without swerving into the middle lane. And honking at me. And trying to drive me into the ditch, on rare occasions. But it's fast! That's how I got home.

But to go to the park, I went via downtown, which is rather circuitous and involves a really nasty stretch of hill just before the Protestant Hospital (Jesu Byeongwon). On that road, people were cheering at me as I rode up the hill doggedly. Well, except the people who saw me stop halfway and let the blood return to my legs. They didn't say anything. I am hoping in a few weeks I'll be able to do that hill without stopping.

Anyway, I stopped downtown at the Tap Bookstore but found nothing to my liking. Still, the owner gave me a copy of Time Magazine, perhaps in hopes of my returning, which I'll only do when I need to pick up some "classic" literature, as that's almost all they have (and I figure I can get some of that cheaper in used shops in Toronto and Montreal this summer). I did see a really nice Korean cultural-history text that looked fascinating... but it was damned expensive!

Anyway, after that I found my way to the park, and sat about reading the magazine and chewing on some dried fruit, sipping green tea, and saying hello to the odd kid who had the guts to cry out, "Hi!" to the Pink Unicorn (that is, me). There were lots and lots of couples and families out together, and it really felt like spring, sitting there in the sun and relaxing. Gotta do that more this summer.

And now I'm home in one piece. I'm gonna make some Thai chicken curry soup and run some over to Heather, who seems to have a bad cold. Aigo...

It is, after all, a civil rights issue. · (politica department)

This week, a big news story broke: Martin Luther King's widow has given her opinion on the gay marriage "debate".

POMONA, N.J. (AP) The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called gay marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban it.

Constitutional amendments should be used to expand freedom, not restrict it, Coretta Scott King said Tuesday.

Dr. King would be proud, I'm sure.

When will these theocrat types stop and realize that their days are numbered? They're going to look as gauche, backwards, and ugly as people who opposed "interracial" marriage a generation or two ago (and those who still do, and for doing so seem downright Neolithic to so many of us residents of the 21st century).

Changing the Past · (Friday Five department)

Laura's question this week was a good'un:

If you could change five events—historical or personal—from the past, which ones and how? What outcome would you hope for?

You know, I've posed this question to two very different groups of students during my years teaching here in Korea. The first group was an assortment of adult students whose English was of the highest level in our school, meaning that at least half the students had been abroad. Some of these students were considerably older than me. The second group was a pack of middle schoolers.

Now, their answers may have been a little influenced by the movies that were popular at the time: the very reason I posed the question was because I'd recently watched a Korean SF movie featuring time travel and the righting of a wrong that the Japanese caused by traveling back in time to kill one of the famous assassins who helped destabilize the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. In the film, the Japanese occupation had continued, uninterrupted, into the year 2009, and Japan had sided with the USA in World War II. The movie, the English title of which was 2009: Lost Memories, was fascinating, albeit with a regrettably cheesy ending.

But anyway, the way each group answered differed in a way that fascinated me: the kids responded citing historical events that they would like to change, while the adults spoke much more personally about mistakes in their past. Perhaps this was a function of experience? I imagine that my adult students had a lot more to regret in their pasts than the kids, and therefore were more interested in the subject of regrets, unlike the kids who, lacking a lot of time (but also freedom and power over their own lives) in which to have done things that are highly regrettable, turned to historical events to speak about what needed to be undone in the past. The kids, needless to say, had a lot more interesting things to say than the adults... in my opinion, anyway.

So I'll take a cue from my middle-schoolers, and avoid just talking about personal mistakes. After all, most of them only involve women and goodness knows I through with complaining about that half of the human species, for now anyway. I realize, of course, that changing major historical events is a big deal, that all of history can be altered, and sometimes when it happens, it's for the worst, far more than for the best. Still, I think that some events would be worth changing, either because of their immense horribleness, or because it'd be worth seeing what would happen in history afterward.

Here's the thing, I don't have any parameters about how I can go about changing history. So I'm going to assume I have fairly free access to the past. I'm going to assume I can bring tools, weaponry, gadgets of any kind, and numbers of people along if I want. Why the hell not? Still, I'm going to assume I have significantly fewer people than, say, the standing army of a small country. I'm gonna assume, if I have a time machine, I have a small group of trusted specialists and some cool gear, but that's about it.

1. I'd warn (or, ahem, convince) Ralph Nader not to run in the election he ran in, and see if that blocked Bush from the White House. I have a feeling Gore would not have fucked up as badly as Bush. That's just a slight tweak in the direction of a more decent recent history. Who knows, though, maybe Gore was a worse madman. One never can tell... but I'd be willing to wager he wouldn't have been.
2. I don't know if I would (or even could) avert the Holocaust—doing that would be tricky, considering that not even World War II, an event with huge numbers of very powerful participants, managed to avert it. I don't think it'd be possible to carry it off just by assassinating Hitler, either. But, there was another mass-death that could easily be averted, with proper medicines, and that's the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. That thing killed more people than the First World War, according to what I've read. It was the worst plague in human history as far as total casualties, though of course there were a hell of a lot more humans to die off by 1918 than in any time before that. If I could go back with medicines and doctors, we could halt that thing, enamour the world of vaccines, and start the whole biotech revolution maybe 20 years earlier with all the manpower we had. Yeah, that's it. Or, wait, maybe we only got so interested in vaccines because of the Spanish flu? Oh, man. I dunno. But still, it'd be interesting to see what might have followed if the flu hadn't killed all those people.
3. I'd hire a bunch of people to convince the crowds to let Jesus of Nazareth go instead of Barabbas. I've read a fascinating essay on what might have happened if this had occurred (in this book), and while it might be heretical to Christians round the world, I'd like to know what might have happened if they'd let the man go, and he'd died of natural causes. It's a fascinating thought, isn't it?
Okay, and a couple of personal ones now:
4. If I could, I not given up the saxophone for all of those years I was in graduate school. I did it because I thought that I "had to focus on my main thing" and now, when I see kids doing that here in Korea, dropping out to school to play in a rock band, I am shocked because it looks so profoundly self-limiting. And yet, that's what I did, in reverse. I decided I couldn't be John Coltrane, and so I might as well give up music altogether. How stupid. And even now that I sometimes practice, I still after two years of regular playing haven't regained what I once, long-ago, used to have in terms of tone, technique, and the quality of my improvisations.
5. Marie. If there is one personal event I'd eradicate from my past, willingly taking the risk that my life would have gone in a totally different direction, it is getting involved with her. I don't mope about it, it's in the past and I cannot change it, but that episode was the most misguided, hurtful, expensive, and stupid thing I've ever done in my life. Perhaps I'd be a jazz music prof in Toronto with three kids by now, or maybe I'd be working with the poor in Calcutta, I don't know. I'm relatively happy with my life as it is, mind you, but I'm telling you: I would go back in time and warn myself if I could. I would totally change that.

Of course I have runners up, one personal and one historical:

6. In Thailand, I would not have slipped those travelers cheques into my wallet, nor would I have kept too much of my money in it. I would have been more careful with my wallet, too.



7. I had a long discussion with a very cool friend of mine last night about alternate histories of Korea. We were discussing the reign of Park Chang-Hee Jeon Du Hwan and how he took control of the Korean populace by setting up a baseball league which, according to my friend's readings, distracted the populace so shockingly that civil society's growth in Korea was stunted for a long time.

   We discussed at length possible alternate histories for Korea, including one where, after the Korean war had commenced, for some shared reason the USA and Russian (as backers of North and South Korea) might have dropped out of backing the divided peninsula's halves in the war... perhaps some kind of major disease outbreak, for example, or a "more pressing outbreak of hostilities in the West", perhaps. The possibilities we worked through were quite fascinating, and I realized just how little I actually know of Korean history because my friend kept reminding me, "But you have to remember, this was because of that..." and so on. I think it could make an interesting alternate history novel, but I think it'd be far better for a Korean to write it than for me to attempt it. Ah well... but it did aid me in confirming that what I told one arrogant American guy is at least true: the American notion that American involvement "saved" Korea is not really realistic. American involvement and Russian involvement combined pretty much screwed Korea up in some pretty drastic ways, from which it's still far from recovering... and the political life is a good example of that. But if you want to know more of that little mess, I'd recommend you go look at some great Korean blogs like the Marmot's Hole, Flying Yangban, and Don Park's Daily Habit, and Oranckay.

But, ah, the difficult decisions, the trouble and confusion of it all, is alas closed to us; for we cannot change the past, not one whit.

Hmmm. Perhaps it's a good thing. Leaves us free to figure out the future instead.

More Evil Accoutrements (aka Made In America, Alright) · (politica department)

Bush and Myanmar are Like This

From Yahoo News:

A 'Bush-Cheney '04' campaign jacket sold on the Internet has stirred controversy because it was made in Myanmar, whose imports have been banned by the United States. Although the company that shipped the fleece pullover, Spalding Group of Louisville, Kentucky, has said it did so in error, human rights groups blamed President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election campaign staff for not taking a more careful look at the origin of the products being sold in its name. Bush waves during a campaign rally at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida March 20, 2004. (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Oh yeah, man. Vote for Bush!

I'm shaking my head now. Can you see it? Of course you can see it.

Evil Accoutrements · (gord's life department)

Does anyone doubt that Satan would wear a necktie?

(That is, were he to exist...)

All Quiet On The Web Front · (gord's life department)

It's almost 11:00 am. Most days, at this time I'm either cycling to work, or I'm already there, sitting in the office diddling on my computer, or chatting with other teachers. But on Fridays, things are a little different: I teach from 2:30pm until 10pm, and so I find myself at home all morning, sometimes cooking, sometimes cleaning, sometimes just posting to my blog, writing, or reading.

It's a strange time of the day: my friends overseas are almost all sleeping, and my friends in-country are mostly in class or at work. So my friends list on Trillian is empty, and my email traffic for the morning has already come in and no more will come until the afternoon or evening. It's a kind of not-alone aloneness, this quietude on the Net.

So here I find myself, balancing my body on a physiotherapy ball, rocking my pelvis back and forth to help sort out the pain in my lower back, while cheapo techno streams though. I'd rather be listening to BBC News but I won't change the web radio station until it's time for me to finish tidying my flat up. I don't expect any visitors which is a load off my back; I can get the place tidy, without getting it perfect, and that's good enough for today. By about 1:30pm I'll be on my bike, headed for the office, computer in tow because I'll be there until 10pm tonight, but I'll only be teaching 4 classes in that time.

I'm still thinking about a major restructuring project for eclexys, an experiment in how layout and page style affects our sense of continuity and narrative and unity of voice. But it'll have to wait till the Dabang Band web page is up. Which has to wait till Seong Hwan registers the URL for the site. I don't know why that's taking so long. But anyway... maybe I'll try get a student to help me with that today, between my 2:30 and my 4:30 class... the latter of which may be empty, because one of the theology students emailed me saying he was going on a department retreat (MT) and that all his classmates are in the same department as him. At least, I think he's a theology student... who else would use a web nickname like "elohim"?

Anyway... that's that. I'm off to tidy some more and make grilled cheese sandwiches. Mmmmm. Cheddar.

Okay, this was unexpected... · (bloggery department)

I expected Han Solo or maybe Han Solo, but look what the Infinitely Wise Internet says:

You are Rhett Butler. Dark and brooding, you will
do anything for the woman you love. You are
extremely sexy and know how to make a girl feel
like a woman.


Which Sexy Rogue Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Uh, okay. Sure, that's cool...

All Marriage Banned in Oregon · (politica department)

In the midst of a bid for theocracy in America, nobody knows what is a right and what is a privilege and what to do about all these fucking morons screaming that gay marriage violates their rights as pathetic bigoted heterosexuals. So until it's all sort out (and hopefully the bigots shut the fuck up) Oregon county has banned all marriages.Nobody's going to the chapel till there's a clear answer. Nobody, I hope, is going to the chapel until everyone can go to the chapel. Sounds fair to me.

Though of course, the State line ain't oo far away. Would be better if it were a, "See, do you like how it feels not being allowed to marry?" kind of a thing. Ah well...

It's time for Post #700 · (gord's life department)

Oh yes, my friends. I've reached post number seven-hundred, and I could write about so many things. I could write about my new superpowers. I could write about thw two Korean movies I've seen in the last week. (Or is it three?) I could write about the inflatable stick-plastic ball in my flat that is going to help me rehabilitate my back. I could write about the Greg Egan book I am reading, or my plans for the week. Or about the talk I had with my friend Heather today, or the taste of Irish whiskey I had last night. Or the sound of the miserable dogs in the streets near my flat, which sound like the hounds of hell when they call out at 1am. Or the tribulations of a band that suddenly finds itself short of both songs and time.

But no, what I have cued up is a rant. It's a rant about a road and an attitude that underlies it.

The road leads from my neighborhood to my workplace. The sole purpose of the road is to allow thousands of people everyday to get to educational institutions such as the university where I work, and a gaggle of high schools that surround it. Let me reiterate, the road exists for the traversal of thousands of people per day.

Which is why it's one-lane each way, ending in a bridge with a slow traffic light on the far end.

This is why a ten minute bicycle ride takes an hour—and I am neither exaggerating nor kidding—today it took a full hour to get from school to my apartment, just on the far side of the bridge. An HOUR.

Needless to say, someone who rants about this kind of thing regularly will become bitter soon enough. That's not my plan, and I have concocted a coping strategy which will only benefit me in the long run: I am going to cycle to work, which will let my bypass all the automotive suckers who spend an hour a night stuck in the insanity which is the traffic on that road.

Joy to me. But I am not finished.

The problem is, not everyone can cycle on this road. Many people live more than a ten-minute bicycle ride from school, and many people must take the bus. There will always be thousands of vehicles on that road every weekday at around the same time. And every weekday at around the same time, the road will be locked, at least the outgoing traffic will be.

And what's happening to fix this problem? As far as I can tell, what's being done is not solution work, but work that reinforces the problem. There are development projects all over the area that now stands as rice fields between my neighborhood and my workplace. Sure, within a year or two, many more people will live in that area, meaning hundreds more cars will have to pass out of the area.

And the road remains one lane each way. And the sides are more and more often crowded by properties, buildings, ditches.

Once I told a civic engineer I knew that one of the architectural problems of the Korean transit system was that it didn't truly account for cyclists. Many people cycle here, but do you know what passes for a bicycle path here? Red-colored sidewalk. When I told the engineer that this was inefficient, he disagreed. On what grounds, I asked, and he told me, quite simply: "Because the red sidewalk is a bicycle path."

"But," I responded, "there are always people walking around on it, sometimes even crowded onto it. You have to swerve dangerously sometimes to get down onto the street; and people can put up any obsctruction they like, with impunity." (Okay, it was phrased differently, but...)

"But it is a bicycle path," he insisted.

"No, it's not." I was serious by this point: "It's a red-colored sidewalk."

"But red-colored sidewalk is a bicycle path."

"It's not treated as one! It doesn't function as one!" I replied, but I knew I wouldn't get through to him. For this young man, the definition was everything. If I call it a work of art, it's a work of art, even if what you see is just a toilet plunger with tinsel glued onto it. It's labeled, therefore it is.

Last night, I nearly slammed into a banner stretched between two trees on the "bicycle path" that leads from my home to E-Mart. I didn't notice it right away, but there it was, a trap on the ostensible "bicycle path".

Similarly, it seems to me, the "road to the university" is adequate because someone out there thinks it is adequate. If you bring up something like the fact that the whole thing is bottlenecked so badly it takes an hour to pass over the same distance that a bike can travel in 10 minutes, you meet a defense so weak it's useless: "But it's the road we have." Meaning: the city isn't gonna replace it. The city isn't even gonna note the problem and ensure that roads throughout the new development area ought to be wider to facilitate easier movement into and through the city.

I don't know whether it's just older engineers, or younger engineers, or Korean engineers, but whosoever is making the crucial decisions about roads, sidewalks, bicycle transport, he or she is not doing such a good job.

On the bright side, cycling is good. I finally got to OK Bakery, as well as E-Mart, and found my way home as well! In one piece.

For now. Check in with me tomorrow.

Jongno · (lit department)

Another Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries piece...

This one I found rather moving: Jongno. This, I have a feeling, I actually get.

And yeah, for lack of an appropriate category, this is gonna go under "lit" in my archives.

Korean Blog Buffet · (bloggery department)

Budaechigae has been kind enough to post a nice collation of recent posts by bloggers in English in Korea. I'm not in the list, but I won't whine.

Much.

Weird Spooky Art · (aesthetics department)

And some more disturbing art by Margot Quan Knight. Brrr. This is weeeeeird stuff.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries... · (politica department)

Once more. Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES PRESENTS. I found Metablast interesting. Lots more I wanna see but you know, I can't sit through more than one in a day.

I disagree with chunks of this woman's politics, but her art is still fascinating, and I'd love to have a beer with her sometime.

Empty Bottle Man · (bloggery department)

I've peered over there a few times before, and been impressed, but been to lazy to blog this site before. But today, when I had a look, I was pleasantly surprised. Someone else who feels how I do about people here,

to be honest, the vast majority of waeguk-in (foreigners) I meet in Korea are damaged, ranting weirdos, with whom I'm happy to have minimal interaction.

and yet engages with the place deeply enough to actually have intelligent, interestng things to say about Korea.

You should go check out Emptybottle.org now. I mean, while you're killing time looking at my silly blog.

I'm off to go put away the real bacon and real cheddar cheese I got at OK Bakery. It's funny what you get excited about a few years out of your home country... ah, cheese. Bacon. They have burrito kits too. I gotta be careful. I think it was more as a reminder to myself that I told the ajuma I wouldn't often come back, because I'd lost 40 kilos and become thin and handsom(er) living off Korean food for two years. Don't wanna slip into old habits. Except cycling, that's a good old habit I've taken up again. Ooops. I didn't mean to blab about this here. But I have. Too late. I'm not deleting it. So there.

Kassandra and Walking in the Rain · (oddities &c.; department)

Today I got a comment from a blogger who wanted me to link to her site. I was surprised, for when I loaded up her main page, it felt like recognition... that banner, man? I remember when my banners used to look like that too. But no, that's not it. It's that feeling of recognition you get when you run across someone of the same tribe as you, or even just an artifact left behind by such a person.

And if you feel that about my page, then you definitely should check out Kassandra's blog over at walking in the rain. She seems like one of those polycultural, multilanguaged, thoughtful, literary, poetical, and otherwise interesting people I'd hang out and drink coffee with if we were on, you know, the same continent or something. Hm.

The world abounds...