Argh

Blogspot keeps eating all of my pictures, so I'll post them some other time when this website isn't being such a wankbot.

"Canadian faggots!"

Yesterday Jimmy and I went into the American part of Seoul to try and find him a pair of shoes. While we didn't manage to find any size 14's, we did succeed in getting laughed at for being freaks. Koreans have small feet, and you know what that means, don't you? That's right: small shoes.

Then we went to get something to eat at this place called Gecko's, where the burgers are good and the GIs are in abundance. They seated us next to five or six soldiers. One immediately said "Gee, I wish I had a purse," an apparent allusion to the fact that Jimmy and I carry messenger bags. We ignored him. Then, he called us Canadian faggots. Jimmy said that he is in fact an American, and that this guy talking at us is a douche bag. He didn't like that. His friends apologized, but he said that he had nothing to apologize for. The rest of the soldiers seemed pretty cool, and a few sat with us and chatted about what our respective jobs are like, but that one idiot continued to lip off at us. Jimmy said that he ought to shut the fuck up, and said that if he wouldn't get deported he wouldn't be sitting there letting this guy talk to us like that. We learned that this idiot has a history of beating the shit out of Koreans and getting written up and having his pay severely docked for it. A cool dude if ever there was one.

Then we went to the artsy part of the city called Hongdae, where a big university is, and did some more shopping but had no more luck finding shoes for Jimmy's mutant feet than in Itaewon. We then headed to a bar called Tin Pan, where tequila shots are a buck and a half (Mexico only rips off North Americans for tequila) and Jack and cokes are about three. We drank there until going to a show at Drug Club (which unfortunately only serves one kind of drug) where eight bands played until about 3:30 in the morning. One band's lead singer is from Kitchener. They're called Sun Radio, and they're pretty good. Check out their MySpace thingie. Suck Stuff is one of the best punk rock bands I've ever heard, and they put on a ridiculously good show. The Waking Party made me very, very happy, especially when they played an up-tempo, rock and roll cover of TV On The Radio's "Staring At The Sun". One of the bands was all-Korean, and most had at least one Korean member, but the music was distinctly Western, which is good, because Korean music sucks really bad.

I've got some pictures off of Jimmy's camera. Some of the breakdancing show from awhile back, some of our coworkers, one of a cool Irish guy wearing a Beat Happening shirt, and some of the puppies downstairs. (They're giving them away for free, but I don't have time for a dog, much less a dog that will soon be rather large and in need of food and exercise.) We joke about eating them, but that's not very common here anymore (although a friend's dog was once chased down the street by a drunk construction worker brandishing a hammer and licking his lips). There's also a cool picture of Jimmy (180 cm tall) standing next to a Thai kickboxer (they're all midgets!), moments before he ate him.

Bye!

Sweet!

600,000 won (about 700 bucks) to fix my laptop! Looks like I'm shopping for a new computer. Anyone want to buy a 10 pound paperweight with Toshiba emblazoned upon the cover? Five hundred bucks! Anybody?

It's Wednesday at 1:10 p.m., which means I'm fighting my fourth hang over of the week. I met a guy who just got here from Brooklyn named Akram. He asked me if the women are easy, and I said no; and he asked me what there is to do for fun, and I said drink. He doesn't drink. Have fun, Akram! Heh.

So I'm not going to the Philippines anymore, but will instead spend my Christmas vacation on a beach in Thailand. Apparently it's a very remote spot, popular only with scuba divers and those freaks who think it's okay to smoke the reefer (may the lot of 'em burn in hell). The change of plans is due to the insane cost of flying to Manila--over a thousand dollars. This is about three hundred cheaper.

I'm going to post a few pictures of certain students once someone lends me a camera for a day. This one kid Andy says things like "Ah teacher, what the shit! So much homework! So shitty! F. U.!!!", and this girl Michelle speaks only in the orgasmic tense: "AHHHH, TEACHER!!! GRAMMAR TEST TODAY???!!!" "Yes, Michelle. Grammar test everyday." "OHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!" And when she's writing test answers down, she's swinging one arm around and yelling "YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!! OHHHHHH YEAH!!!!" I'd like to know what her mother is feeding her--my guess is lots of oysters and white zinfandel.

There are PC rooms here, nearly always full all the time, where kids can go play online video games, but there are also board game rooms, where kids play Risk (or Korean derivatives thereof) or chess or whatever. There are hard plastic hammers all over the place in these rooms. They are used for smashing the loser of the game across the face and head until he or she is crying like a baby. I'm not joking. These people are messed up.

Korea!

If you think I'm too hard on this back-asswards country, consider that Korean people believe that:

a) sleeping with a fan on will kill you (a phenomenon known as "fan death");
b) drinking Coke while eating ice cream causes foam to erupt from your mouth and nose; and
c) those "exercise" machines which consist of two belts that reciprocate across your stomach actually burn calories (and can be found in every single gym).

We Westerners have our own stupid superstitions, but they can usually be traced back to religious silliness (and most people don't take them seriously); whereas Korean superstitions are taken very seriously, and are supposedly scientific. Wheeeeeee!

I've decided that this is a friendlier way of inundating you with useless information and lewd photographs than through e-mail. This is my first blog ever (don't tell any of the kool internetz kids!), so expect things to be done quite poorly around here.

I've got lots of photos from my four day Chuseok holiday to show you, spent near Mount Seoraksan, as well as non-event-specific photos of myself and my colleagues making a mess of this crappy country. Some will be displayed below, assuming this Blogspot fellow doesn't eat 'em. (But likely not tonight--it's late, I'm tired...) Our trip was okay. I didn't climb the mountain, as it was hazy, and also, mountains are tall and steep and I'm lazy and perpetually hung over. The people who climbed it seemed underwhelmed, although they have some cool photos. Four hours up, three down--not Mount Everest. We stayed at a mimbak, a sort of hostel where you and some friends (16 of us) rent large rooms (we needed 2) and they give you comfy floormats, a gas range, and a mini-fridge. We baked clams outside on a grill; played tons of poker, Euchre, and Taboo; and had a nightly quiz contest, like on episode 6 of The Office (British version). The night that my friend Jimmy and I were quizmasters was by far the best, as our categories had to do with 80's cartoons, movie deaths, famous people's sexual misdeeds, and religious stupidities. The latter two were mine, and I succeeded in offending nearly everybody, of course. Later that night, without warning, a crazy drunk-assed Korean ajima (word for upper-middle-class lady who is married, doesn't work, drinks all day, and thinks she's hot shit--I'm not joking, I think that's a fair description, and anyway they take it as a compliment) stepped out onto her front porch and started screaming at us in surprisingly grammatically correct English: "WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?! WOULD YOU DO THIS IN YOUR OWN FUCKING COUNTRY?! HAVE SOME COMMON COURTESTY! GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM!" So I said that, yes, we would do this in our own country, and that we didn't like being sworn at. My American friend Andrew said that of course he wouldn't be disruptive back home in San Fran., because that's what Mexico is for. We had a big laugh about it and stayed up listening to music and playing cards until 7 a.m. so we could watch the sun come up. Man, Koreans are psychos. Well, not all--some bring us sushi, or sign our paycheques.

"Waygook" originated as a derogatory term for foreigner, but foreigners have coopted it as a term of solidarity--think "nigga", as a somewhat inappropriate but delicately relevant comparison. It used to bother me that lots of Koreans treat us like shit, but now I just think that in the future, I'll be living in a better country (i.e., any country but this one), and they'll still be stuck in this stank-pool. Heh. Makes me smile.

My co-worker Tim, from Boston, starred in a movie called "Die You Zombie Bastards!", which was released within the past few years. A bunch of us watched it tonight: it's a sublime tale of a cannibalistic psychopath tracking down his wife who has been kidnapped by a zombie overlord intent on taking over the world--with zombies, duh! It's pretty fantastic. Tim won a Best Actor award at some campy horror movie awards ceremony in Germany earlier this year, and the flick sold out regularly at screenings in NYC. If you're able to, rent it or buy it or download it--for those in the know (Dave and John and Robot), it's better than most Troma films I've seen.

I'll post on this blog whenever something interesting happens, or whenever a friend or I take some interesting photos. Until then, please leave comments on this blog, or otherwise stay in touch.

Bye!