Your move, Mr Bond.
“A-hah! Photoshop-within-a-Photoshop. Your move, Mr. Bond.”
Worst Job In Korea
This guy has got to have one of the worst jobs in Korea, I thought to myself.
I woke up this morning full of the vigour and optimism of youth. Happens to me once in a while, unexpectedly. The light of morning seems energizing, rather than withering. I look forward to the day ahead, and the morning cup is a sacrament rather than just a stimulant.
This was the mood in which I left the house. Even the chronic pain in my achilles tendons was barely noticeable, thanks perhaps to my recent acupuncture treatments. I was downright jaunty, and those who know me know that ‘jaunty’ isn’t an adjective that often pops up in descriptions of me. Although the sun was filtering through brownish clouds of toxic haze, there was at least some sun, and it was already fairly high in the sky, and warming me pleasantly on my way to the subway station. Zip-a-dee doo-dah, motherf–ker.
The usual reeking pile of garbage in front of the next apartment building — whose parking lot I normally cut through as a minor shortcut — did little to diminish my jaunty outlook. There was a slight breeze, and I neatly managed to avoid the worst of the stink. I accidentally stepped in a little of it, but it wasn’t terribly viscous, and didn’t adhere to my shoe.
Naturally, the dawn chorus was in full throat, the old sniff-backhaul-and-hork orchestra all around me, tuning up for another day of mucous mining. This annoyed me mildly, as it always does, but I skipped lightly through the multitudes of already-deposited oysters, treating it as a game. Although the scent of the flowering trees that had somehow struggled up through the broken pavement every few blocks was masked by the cloud of diesel fumes from the buses and dump trucks, the colour and shape of them was undeniably appealing.
Outside the station, I was nearly run down by a utility vehicle. It was being driven by a fellow who had perhaps overindulged in the soju last night, judging by the rosiness of his cheeks and eyes as he swivelled to stare at me, bug-eyed and expressionless. I forgave him, as I too have survived many a hangover, even if I may not often have operated motor vehicles under their influence, or nearly run down briefcase-toting professors in the street as a result. My mood was still quite bouyant at this point, inexplicably, perhaps.
As I sat on one of the broken plastic benches on the train platform, trying in vain to see the nearest mountain through the photochemical haze, an old man in coveralls shuffled up, and began pulling the refuse from the garbage can beside me. I actually was quite pleased about this, as more often than not, the very few garbage cans one actually sees for public use are overflowing, and with the warm weather approaching, this means more Stench Zones to avoid on the urban hazard course. Then, with a shudder, I remembered that one of the primary uses for those garbage cans was as throat-oyster receptacles for the smallish percentage of men in my neighbourhood who have apparently been well-brought up, and rather than deposit their little glistening bundles of goo on the train platform, instead wander over and let them dangle and drop into the cans. There are no bags in these cans. This guy’s job was to bend over, reach in, and pull out the slime-coated trash within.
Poor bastard.
The air went out of my balloon. And it wasn’t even 8:00 am yet.
Comments? (old offsite) comments.
OK, so I was grumpy
OK, so I was grumpy.
Everything is bleak.
Everything is bleak.
Itâs the middle of the night.
Youâre all alone and
the dummies might be right.
You feel like a jerk.
My music at work.
My music at work.
– My Music At Work – The Tragically Hip
Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages
Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages.
Hours of Fun For The Whole Family!
New tagline candidates
New tagline candidate #1 : Abandon Hope All Ye Who CTRL-ENTER Here.
New tagline candidate #2 : Lift and separate.
OK, those are just dumb.
Here Be Dragons…err Metablogging
Here Be Dragons Metablogging
FunkyTown
Well, I talk about it,
Talk about it,
Talk about it,
Talk about it,
Talk about, talk about,
Talk about movin,
Gotta move on.
Gotta move on.
Gotta move on.
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown.
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown.
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown.
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown.
(Repeat)
''Better to die"
”Better to die than to live like this,” Jang Gil Su, now 17, writes of a public firing-squad execution he saw in North Korea. By adulthood, many North Koreans have witnessed one; sometimes the charge is as minor as stealing food.
Fresh fruit is a rarity to most North Koreans; electric fences surround some orchards. At 15, Jang saw a couple be electrocuted while trying to steal some grapes. ”We never get a chance to taste an apple or grapes,” Jang explains.
Captions from a slideshow of drawings made by a young North Korean refugee, whose family was given safe haven in South Korea last summer after escaping from the north and taking refuge in U.N. offices in Beijing. Here. [Thanks again, Lia!]
In the twilight
In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
This, via this worthwhile Metafilter thread. Funny old world.
And while I’m at it, via American Samizdat : the Hall of Shame. Not really surprising, is it, how those who raise their fists and call for war so often seem to be those who’ve never actually seen it?
“In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.”
– Ambrose Bierce
– Ambrose Bierce
And for good measure, how about this?
MECCA, March 22, 2005 — President Osama B. Laden today called for a “regime change” in the United States, saying the military dictatorship led by unelected strongman George Walker Bush “is an ever-present threat to world peace.”
Speaking in Mecca at a rally marking his first year in power, the Saudi president said that “issues of national sovereignty are beside the point when the civilized world is faced with the possibility of untold carnage. Bush has long been developing weapons of mass destruction. He has announced his willingness to use them. He refuses to abide by international treaties to curtail these tools of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. We must act.” [more…]
Speaking in Mecca at a rally marking his first year in power, the Saudi president said that “issues of national sovereignty are beside the point when the civilized world is faced with the possibility of untold carnage. Bush has long been developing weapons of mass destruction. He has announced his willingness to use them. He refuses to abide by international treaties to curtail these tools of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. We must act.” [more…]
*Life is good.
*Life is good. Rich, poor, together, alone, happy, sad, drunk or f–king sober, life is sweet.
Eulogy for Rob
It’s just not possible to trace the fractal-chain of cause-and-effect back to a single Prime Mover moment in your life, usually. Trace the branches back, navigate around the random events, the decisions made or just taken, and hope to find any kind of actual reason for the way you are today, the way you think, and you’ll drive yourself f–king mad with might-have-beens.
Decades ago, Rob Beitel introduced me to a few of the chemicals I’ve enjoyed in my long and bumpy history of self-medication, ones of which, along with all the rest, I no longer partake. I haven’t seen him in nearly two decades. He was found dead recently, in the snow, within sight of his home in Northern BC, half a world away from here, a couple hours away from the town we grew up in. I talked about it a bit on my buddyblog with the Bearman, who knew Rob as well, way back when. Mirrored here because I’m drunker than hell, and sentimental, and having a little one-man wake for Rob tonight.
Na-na-na-na na-na-na-na Blogtank!
“Where else could a global reach consulting team, with offices in more than 10 countries, staffed by 20+ experts in a variety of fields and professions, with round the clock continuous operation come into being in under a day with next to zero infrastructure costs?” : I am proud in a preliminary sort of way to be a part of the soon-to-be-more-famous-than-Jesus
Blogtank Global Consulting Group
Something Meta This Way Comes ‡
‡not an officially sanctioned tagline. Void where prohibited. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Some settling may occur during shipment. Seek medical assistance if condition persists. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Red Sky All Day
“Experts warned that the dust storms carry harmful chemicals, such as sulfate, as well as compounds containing cadmium, aluminum, lead, nickel, copper and arsenic. To protect themselves from the sandy winds, people are advised to stay indoors and keep windows closed, especially the elderly and children. While outdoors, they should carry umbrellas, and after returning home, they must wash themselves and gargle, because the particles in the wind could trigger irritations in the eyes, skin and respiratory organs.”
Seoul is enshrouded, enfolded, entombed, in a choking cloud of dust from the growing deserts of Northern China, the Hoang-sa, the Yellow Sand. This, to put it bluntly, sucks major ass. As if the clouds of reeking industrial effluent weren’t enough, now we’re left squinting through veils of yellowish dust to boot. Elementary and middle schools are closed, parents are being warned to keep their children in the house, old people are being advised not to breathe for a few days. My nose, as I sit here, is streaming, as it has been all day, my eyes red, throat afire. If the swirling clouds weren’t so irritating to my mucous membranes, I might enjoy them, in the same shivery, mock-fearful way that I enjoyed fog banks as a child, staring into them, alive to the potential mystery and the sheer strange wonder of it all.
But I’m old, and cranky, and I just want it to go away. Now. But at least my students were amused when I stopped at 15 minute intervals in most of my classes today, shook a mock-tragic, operatic Shatnerian fist at the sky, and roundly cursed China for even existing.
They just said on MBC news that’s it’s going to be worse tomorrow. Thrillsville, daddy-o.
THIS IS THE FUTURE
Ah Korea…
Ah Korea. Even though the constant parade of Really Weird sh-t™ continues apace, I find that I’m so inured to it that any response rarely reaches the level in my mind of being consciously noticed. My mental DJ, enjoying his perpetual party up there in the locked-off booth at the top of my skull, is usually busy playing a Mojo Nixon song, or some half-remembered one hit wonder from the 80’s, drowning out the hacksaw sniff-backhaul-and-hork of the Throat Oyster Launchers, like some nauseating avian mating cry call-and-response, that surrounds me as I walk the dirty streets to the University and back.
I really need an mp3 player.
One thing that did stick with me yesterday was a new advertising campaign on the subway. Korea, you see, is owned, lock-stock-and-two-horking-barrels, by the chaebols (similar in some ways to the Japanese keiretsu). Samsung, LG, Daewoo, Hyundai and perhaps a score of others own everything. I live in an LG apartment building. Our TV is a Samsung. LG makes the blank CD’s on my desk, here, and the soap that my wife is currently using in the shower, as well as the grocery store where we buy our food. Subsidiaries are responsible for the production and distribution of that food. Daewoo made the elevators in my building, and the steel comes from Hyundai steelworks. The huge new apartment beehive going up next door is a Daewoo buidling, and is being built by Daewoo Construction, with Hyundai machinery, mostly. All the cars and buses on the streets are Korean-made, of course, by one of the chaebol. Electronics are sold in LG shops, or Samsung shops, depending on who made them. Pretty much everything you touch or see during your day was either grown, processed, created, built, shipped, imported, sold or in some other way touched by one or more of the chaebol. Each chaebol also has an array of banking interests, and a staggering array of credit cards on offer to the public. When I say that they own this country, I actually mean that literally. It could be forgiven to think that they own the people, as well, but this might be arguable. There are pockets of dissent.
So, me, on the subway. A shiny new plastic proto-banner-ad above my head is touting the Samsung Christian Card. Big black letters emblazoned across a golden Visa card, bigger even than the Samsung logo, saying “CHRISTIAN“. In the soft-focus panorama, the card lies beside a wooden crucifix, atop an open Bible. The tableau is somehow as erotically charged as the close-up food-porn fried chicken ad beside it.
Now, even though I do groove on their funky metaphors of death and rebirth and all that, I’m not especially Xian. Still, that ad struck me as deeply f–ked up. Like hardcore porn performed by people in full clown make-up, complete with big red noses and fright wigs. Like the voice of Henry Kissinger coming out of my wife’s mouth : “Richart, Richart, you’re drahnk agayn.” Like a Friday evening without any delicious beverages at all. Just plain wrong.
Somehow brings to mind one of my responses back in University to the ‘Jesus saves!’ grafitti that was everywhere around Vancouver at the time : ‘Buddha spends!’
I really need an mp3 player.
One thing that did stick with me yesterday was a new advertising campaign on the subway. Korea, you see, is owned, lock-stock-and-two-horking-barrels, by the chaebols (similar in some ways to the Japanese keiretsu). Samsung, LG, Daewoo, Hyundai and perhaps a score of others own everything. I live in an LG apartment building. Our TV is a Samsung. LG makes the blank CD’s on my desk, here, and the soap that my wife is currently using in the shower, as well as the grocery store where we buy our food. Subsidiaries are responsible for the production and distribution of that food. Daewoo made the elevators in my building, and the steel comes from Hyundai steelworks. The huge new apartment beehive going up next door is a Daewoo buidling, and is being built by Daewoo Construction, with Hyundai machinery, mostly. All the cars and buses on the streets are Korean-made, of course, by one of the chaebol. Electronics are sold in LG shops, or Samsung shops, depending on who made them. Pretty much everything you touch or see during your day was either grown, processed, created, built, shipped, imported, sold or in some other way touched by one or more of the chaebol. Each chaebol also has an array of banking interests, and a staggering array of credit cards on offer to the public. When I say that they own this country, I actually mean that literally. It could be forgiven to think that they own the people, as well, but this might be arguable. There are pockets of dissent.
So, me, on the subway. A shiny new plastic proto-banner-ad above my head is touting the Samsung Christian Card. Big black letters emblazoned across a golden Visa card, bigger even than the Samsung logo, saying “CHRISTIAN“. In the soft-focus panorama, the card lies beside a wooden crucifix, atop an open Bible. The tableau is somehow as erotically charged as the close-up food-porn fried chicken ad beside it.
Now, even though I do groove on their funky metaphors of death and rebirth and all that, I’m not especially Xian. Still, that ad struck me as deeply f–ked up. Like hardcore porn performed by people in full clown make-up, complete with big red noses and fright wigs. Like the voice of Henry Kissinger coming out of my wife’s mouth : “Richart, Richart, you’re drahnk agayn.” Like a Friday evening without any delicious beverages at all. Just plain wrong.
Somehow brings to mind one of my responses back in University to the ‘Jesus saves!’ grafitti that was everywhere around Vancouver at the time : ‘Buddha spends!’
Famous last words
Famous last words : In the spirit of refusing to get involved (as I have nothing to add) in all the gonads and strife floating around lately (eek! floating gonads!), and striving for a laugh or two, I present to you the dying words of two great poets :
Walt Whitman : “Hold me up; I want to sh-t.”
Dylan Thomas : “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskeys. I think that’s the record.”
Dylan Thomas : “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskeys. I think that’s the record.”
I can but hope, in my terminal moments, as I lie (-in a feather bed, on pure white linen, surrounded by my loved ones / drunk and drooling, unnoticed on a barroom floor, in a puddle of my own urine-) that I can come up with a legacy for the world as touching, as illuminating, as perfectly revealing of the deeper nature of our existence on this planet.
[via this amusing Metafilter thread]
Your famous last words? comments.