Korea...again

It's a sensory deprivation of sorts.

Nothing is quite right but it still is. Just shy enough of normal that it's disheartening but not interesting. And it reaches out into everything. Like looking out of a pair of really dirty glasses, you know what everything is but you can't identify it right. It applies to your whole body. All the perceptive gear is muddled.

It began with the food. The first casualty was nutrition. The food here isn't as satisfying. The Subway sandwich's taste stale. The meat tastes slimy. The vegetables are soft. Cokes come in eight ounce cans. Steak is anemic, dry and not worthy of the name. Hot dogs, well the less said about that the better. The pizza is the most tragic casualty as a grizzled veteran of the pizza wars. Twice the grease half the toppings. Th cheese is the Best Choice style mozzarella, only it's suddenly gourmet. Instead of the classic mainstays of pizza (hamburger, olives, pepperoni) sweet potatoes, bacon and tuna take center stage. I dined and dashed at a local Pizza Hut, I have yet to feel any moral shame for these actions.

The ground feels different. I don't feel like I'm home. I'm on foreign soil and it actually feels that way, like my foot steps don't belong. The sidewalks are different, my normal proud strut is interrupted and jammed.

The air is dirty. The sand from the Gobi Desert is picked up and settles nicely into this valley. The sand settles in my lungs and flies through my windows. It settles on my objects from home and erodes them. I sweep everyday but the dust still comes in. The famous masks you may have seen on the news. They're real. This phenomenon I am speaking of is called "Yellow Dust" and it has been the scourge of the Peninsula longer than Kim Il Sung. On a windy day I can't see beyond the block.

It's the sounds that get me though. The non stop chatter of Korean. In bars and alleyways, restaurants and grocery stores. The sound of an American voice would be spectacular. The sound of a good, solid English sentence. Subject, verb, adjective, object. The occasional adverb or present progressive. In their proper order in their proper tense. The correct auxiliary verbs and indirect objects. How I long for such an inexpensive luxury.

After Four Month

After four months in Korea I have certainly noticed a dominant trend in this country toward one gender. I am convinced with out a doubt that the Asian lust for efficiency is leading it to the ultimate destiny of mono-genderedness. This will help to avoid the messy complications of romance and utterly sidestep the sloppy process of duel-parent child rearing.

This is the most popular band in Korea, Big Bang. I did a double blind study to see the effect this picture had upon the local populace. Women instantly went into shrieking fits while men just stared in quiet awe, indicating a desire to follow in their footsteps. Note the fact that their close can work for either gender. Causing women to be attracted to effeminate weirdos while men desire to become that effeminate weirdo. If this trend goes unchecked throughout Korea, the logical conclusion is the greatest merger in history, a continuous gender neutral population. No more drafting half your citizens for a war. Everyone is on the table. No more complicated taxation for single mothers or punishment for dead beat fathers. They will become one and the same.

The benefits of a genderless society are never ending. No more Mens' or womens' rooms. Endless asexual reproduction. Every industry from lingerie to auto repair will see a doubling of it's profits as both sides become one and the same and will need access to both. The disappearance of rape will surely be a hurtful loss to the peninsula, but nothing that won't be forgotten with time. The glass ceiling, the unfair pay advantage and class. This is truly the most efficient way to run a society. The true Worker's Paradise.

A Little Longer

Please--
let me linger a little longer
in the garlic-scented sweat
of my youth,
when fistfuls
of pesticide
were entertainment
for an evening.

Please--
let me linger a little longer
in our bed with Bisquick
and Three Ninjas

driving home drunk
on the ivory asphalt,
laughing into a pile
at the Natural History Museum.

Please--
let me linger a little longer
on a trashcan at the union,
discussing which obscure
American Presidents
Bush should associate with.

Let me linger a little longer--
please.

This is Journalism?

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2009/04/10/costello.obama.fascist.claims.cnn

"You would expect conservatives to compare President Obama to maybe FDR and the New Deal."

A) Why would you expect that?
B) Why can't Hillyar compare Obama to Mussolini?


"Fascist, autocrat, dictator...most Americans don't buy that."

A) Change YOU Can Believe In
B) Worst economic crisis since the Great Depression

"That's not likely to cool the conservative rhetoric."

A) Hillyar is an opinion columnist. He is paid to have rhetoric.
B) Is anything likely to cool this story's rhetoric?

"Often that extremist rhetoric generates big ratings...and that translates into big money. Another reason conservatives are likely to keep the rhetoric heated."

A) "That's not likely to cool the conservative rhetorics."
B) NUCLEAR CRISIS!

Asian Fetish

Around these parts there are a lot of men who date Korean women. I call them "rice lice." I typically see them at the local white-guy saloons, Road King and MJ's. I see them there, these couples. They tend to be an aesthetically pleasing woman with balding, chubby men. I have decided that I will never trust a man who is in to Asian's, for in his heart he deems himself a god.

notes on Bruce Cuming's North Korea: Another Country

In the book North Korea: Another Country Bruce Cummings goes out of his way to paint a picture of Kim Jong Il as a well meaning, fairly naive prince born in the wrong century in the wrong country. I am afraid I have to contradict this gentleman. I believe that Kim Jong Il is a manipulative despot who happened to become the eye of a perfect storm forming in Northeast Asia.

For the record, I do not believe being manipulative is a bad thing for a Head of State. There is no righteousness in international politics. We pay our leaders to acquire and allocate resources. The job of a politician is merely to get his or her hands on as many resources as possible for the people who chose him to garner them.

However, the wrong-place-wrong-time label for Mr. Kim is completely inaccurate. It is precisely the time and place that allow The Dear Leader to hold onto his power and effectively run the North in whatever manner he sees fit.

The Korean peninsula is a strategic wet dream for the United States and a liability for China. In the event of war with China, South Korea would become the strategic center of a US campaign. A militarily advanced land base for thousands of US soldiers to pour into the region coupled with perfect missile proximity to China. Four of China's six most populous cities, including Beijing and the large port city Tianjin, are within a thousand miles of South Korea and are easy targets for even the average American missile.

China, seeing the obvious ramifications of the situation, has taken the same approach to North Korea as the United States has toward the South, namely propping up the government with resources like food and electricity in exchange for a Treaty of Friendship. It should never be forgotten that China and North Korea have signed a Treaty of Friendship, the most likely reason why North Korean punishments are typically administered through UN channels rather than a direct confrontation between the United States and Kim Jong Il.

As a result the power in the region became balanced. The United States won't push too hard for reform for fear of provoking China and vice-versa. The two Korean states remain today what they have been since the end of Japanese colonial rule; puppet states of the major powers in the world in the event of a larger strategic need. Out of this stakemate, Kim Jong Il gets free reign. Playing the major powers against each other any rattling of the status quo results in North Korea giving up projects it can't possibly complete (nuclear reactors) in exchange for much needed items and technological equipment (food and US reactors from a saber rattling incident in the early nineties).

Further compounding the situation in the region is Russian economic issues. In order to further develop the Far Eastern regions of nation, have invested large quantities of money into railroads, highways and oil lines in the area. An instability in the region is a serious risk to progress in improving the lives of the citizens on the Pacific. Hence they came to the table, multiplying American and Chinese incentives not to push the issue and allow North Korea to pursue any policy it likes as long as it stays within its own borders.

So Mr. Cumings is idea that Kim Jong Il accidentally tripped into his position and is struggling nobly to keep North Korea together is completely false. He is caught between three nations who have a vested interest in North Korea doing exactly what North Korea does. Any case of human rights abuse, wretched poverty, or provacative actions can only and will only be met with slaps on the wrist. For example, after the infamous 2006 missile launch the UN, at the request of the United States, imposed sanctions upon the North. However these sanctions bar nothing more than the import of luxury goods to an agrarian society. So in effect the launch of the missile lead to a ban on iPods but neccessary items like food, medicine and electricity are still allowed in and are given over to the government who rations them out at its discretion.