Stranger In A Strange Land

Culture Shock

2010-02-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

I find it a very odd to call it "culture shock." That name has some inaccurate connotations. It implies spontaneity. It implies jarring and jolting. It implies that walking downtown and to find live squid on sale profoundly bothers you on the level of a severed arm.

"Shock" implies the suddenness of revelation. This is completely wrong. The effects of the so-called culture shock are infinitely more nuanced and subtle then you're led to believe. I think cultural lingering is a better term for it. It wasn't the new culture that shocked me it was the absence of the old one. It's a sly, tricky master. Found not in the glaring differences but the uncomfortable similarities. It comes wrapped in many garbs and prefers nostalgia and daydreams. Dancing quietly in the background of your daily moods and life. It's the sub-par taste of the coffee and the faint yet distinct taste of sugar in overpriced spaghetti.

So simple and subtle, phrases like "back home we have real meat" or "in America we have Camel Filters" can run wild and construct narratives that seem perfectly plausible and even valid. "Teaching is OK, but delivering pizzas is what I really want to do." Rationalizations and justifications abound. Family and friends who were always there before suddenly won't be. Better jobs that you couldn't get before are magically within your reach now. All the magnificent plans and machinations for one or two years in the future become much more pressing and urgent. Then you look at the calender and see that there's seven months to go. And hope it won't be like this the whole time.

Then there's the slight swelling of anger at the local population. A population that never bothered you before. The strange love for high heels with nine different zippers on them. Blame them for their man purses and guy liner and freakishly tight pants. And find it a moral failing.

That's the real cultural shock, the ghost in the machine. Knocking around daily and keeping you off track. It does have its limits. And it is possible to overcome. But the requirements of time seem like little compensation in the face of the gaping maw opening up before you.

"What have I done?"

Quotes of 2009

2009-12-24T03:40:00.000-08:00

"I'm so bored with the R.o.K."

"Quit distracting everybody with your anal vision."

"What's your favorite drug?"
"Like, LSD, so obviously."

"My office accepts only beauty."

"Dude, how fucking weird is anime porn?"

"You're just tossing my salad."

"He's gotta boner tonight."

"Teacher, teacher, TEA-CHER!"

"Panty Dan 2, I'm Panty Dan 2! Oh my dung is smells bad!"

"Lobster, lobster, law-ob-ster."

"Teacher, there is gum on my pants."

"Let's sleep together."

"Shut your ears, F."
"Shut your asshole!"
"Look what South Park has done to you."

"I can tell by the inflection of your face that you're a dick."

"I've been here for ten hours."
"You win."

"You make them dance for Ho-Ho's?"

"Cow? Like (squirt noise). Ahhhhh."

"Dan 2 teacher you're so handsome, yeah. Teaching all the students that you can, yeah."

"Your face is under attack."

Oh, Iris has such beautiful handwriting teacher. Look how beatific her handwriting is teacher."

"Dan 2 teacher is handsomer than Big Bang."

"Screw you guys, I'm going Home Plus."

"Teacher, my dick is about to burst!"

"Face jizz?"

"Simon says 'write an essay.'"

"So I killed your MA class."

"Oh, sorry. I was going to kill myself but I forgot my pistol."

...more to come.

It's Been almost a year

2009-11-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

5- The Inauguration of Obama- I was never really a detractor of Obama but you would be hard pressed to call me a supporter. I will say that watching the swearing in of the president from another country was something I certainly never thought I'd see.

4- The Celebrity Death Marathon- I was quite happy to see the plethora of second-rate celebrities kicking the bucket earlier this year. It was almost humanizing to see that the sham wow guy was in fact as mortal as I am.

3- The Swine Flu Pandemic- This has been frustrating from a lot of sides, most notably when you live in a country with very contradictory ideas on clean. Several annual events were canceled due to H1N1 panics and some kids were permanently removed from the school because parents feared this dreaded disease was being distributed from my school.

2- The Death of Micheal Jackson- Although many were saddened by the passing of this pop icon, none back home were as shattered as my elementary students, one of whom wept at the passing of this disturbingly funny man.

1- The North Korean Nuclear Test- This was just fucking cool.

The Flu

2009-10-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

"What the hell is this place?" I have asked myself this question before but not in this context.

The walk to work was as dirty as ever. They have an interesting approach to sanitation here. The technology skips are interesting here. Cell phones are so cheap that a Korean child will acquire a new phone once or twice a year yet I have yet to see a dumpster anywhere in Korea, including Seoul. Garbage trucks patrol the streets looking for piles of trash into the early hours of the morning. Food waste has it's own special container and in the summer it in not unusual to see hordes of flies crowding around spoiled kim chi and rotten noodles. Toilets, sinks, and even the occasion bath tub lie in the open lots surrounding my apartment complex. Nature trails are never as pristine as they are back home. I've heard from fellow teachers that we foreigners are to blame for the expired mon-doo and rotting chopsticks scattered around town.

Yet walking into the old school today was stranger than usual. The swine flu has always buzzed in the background of this place. You know the swine flu with the .42% mortality rate. Well that buzzed like a fly in my ear every once in a while. A case reported here. A school shut down there. Nothing ever direct. Today the flu barged into my life. The secretaries roam the halls spraying anti-bacterial crap. The students visit a mandatory sanitizing hand lotion stand between classes. Masks wait at the door for anyone to take. Some say they mark the sick, other say it wards of disease. I think it just breeds disease as bacteria laden breath is trapped in by the filter and grows if the masks aren't changed or washed frequently. I wore a mask for irony's sake. A child tried to convince me he had a better mask, that I wore a beggar's mask.

So while the school is scrubbed and boiled and bleached into cleanliness oblivion while the streets, even in my suburb, buzz with the last flies of the summer. Munching on old galbi and potato pancakes.

It's almost a secular religion here, the cleanliness. Whether in relation to race, facial hair, or apartment, clean and pure and squared away is how it's supposed to be. It's almost a superstition the way the secretaries parade around the halls spraying the righteous air sanitizer amongst the foul foreigners attempting corrupt the children. The absolute certainty that the masks combat anything except the dignity of the wearer and the flies buzzing around outside are just the work of the white devil.

Ah, Lincoln

2009-10-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

What could ever compare to you, my first geographic love? My first metropolitan love? What could ever truly compare?

Here I am on the other side of the world, with a strange and comfortably tense relationship to Korea. The kids are fun, even inspirational, and the people are nice, even pleasant. We have a community here, now. One I've come to enjoy for what it is. I'm more here in Asia than I've ever been before. I'm better off here now than I was three months ago. Even a month ago. The arrival of the new people has been good for me. And I have come to, dare I say...like it here?

Oh but, Lincoln, Nebraska you were so damned good to me, even when you didn't have to.

I ate at a sushi restaurant, or I should say Korea's absurd take on a sushi restaurant. My co-workers called it a sushi restaurant. I called it what it was, a bait shop. I might be ten months gone at this point but I know fish food when I see it. I know it even better when I smell it. This restaurant, whatever the hell it's name is, presented me for the first time in years with a sincere desire for a fishing pole. After the meal I could have gotten a doggie bag and gone down to the river and caught bass.

What was on the menu?

You know the skin of fish, the outside part that's usually some degree of grey? They just sliced that off and tossed it on some rice. No cooking, as you'd expect. Just tossed it on some rice. They did manage to get a little cooking done, the flash-fried fish was truly horrific. I don't want to feel like apologizing to my meal. There it was though. Dead fish looking at me with a look of unfettered sorrow. The best part being that wasn't the worst. Have you ever eaten food that could play with you? I have. They just got an octopus and cut it's arms (or legs) off and put them on a plate and you eat them. Yeah, still moving and everything. They suction on to your tongue and don't taste like anything. They just squirm there on the plate and in your stomach.

Yes, Lincoln my love. You will always have this place beat. I miss beef, Mexican food and Camel Cigarettes still.

Yes,

2009-08-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

I would certainly go as far as saying I hate summer.

Watching the Summer Wind Down

2009-08-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

And my parents depart for my homeland. With that the contract enters its final phase.

The days are hot here. Intolerably hot. I spend the day in the air conditioning. The humidity is more oppressive than any Nebraskan summer I can remember. And certainly worse than Nebraska's present conditions. I read, I study, I smoke, I write, I drink coffee. I can't go outside. I won't.I never liked summer. I thought I did in the depths of winter but ultimately I'd prefer that to this.

Sunday is the day of intense reflection, mental preparation, buttressing my mind for the upcoming workload. I go over the texts for the coming weeks and plot my lessons. I look at random graphs and maps. I miss the days of the delivery on Sundays. The Sunday safari. The stoned adventures to the tourist traps around town.

Wrong Again

2009-07-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

I guess this is why I travel.

Anyone who follos my facebook knows I have been extremely let down by Korea. It's not a secret, the food is sub-par, the culture is second-rate and the scenary is much blander than the opening credits to MASH lead you to believe.

Under these circumstances I assumed allof northeast Asia to be the same. The constant ads, the perpetual neon, the endless, rude natives drunkenly coughing up phlegm as an ad-hoc pissing contest.

I assumed Japan would be the same. Before you start judging me as closed minded I would like to go on record as saying Korea and Japan have had similar historicak experiences in the latter half of the 20th century. Namely the influx of American dollars and millitary personal making sure that everything in the area is in compliance with the interests of the United States (let's not kid ourselves here). Both have been subject to pressures to forget the glorious past, particularly Japan who's mighty empire once safely cuddled the entire Eastern hemisphere.

Japan didit's own thing though. Using American money as a base they expanded upon what it means to be Japanese in the age of hegemoney. There's something very rewarding about seeing band stickers on a Buddist temple gate. People here sport hair colors of any kind, mohawks aren't uncommon, neither are street performers. Tokyo is amdern city in the best sense of the phrase. Made better by the fact that bideu's are a regular fixture in the restroom scene.

More Mind Control Evidence

2009-07-24T12:25:00.001-07:00

I ate at the 24 hour place and seem to be experiencing mild visual hallucinations.

I Disagree

2009-07-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

It's been about eight months since I left America and I figured this blog was way too heavy with melancholy homesick bullshit. So I figured I should write about the strange land that I am a stranger in.

I highly disagree with the way children are treated in this country. They are overworked, under fed and education isn't liberating it's programming. Fathers do not interact with their children, they merely pay the bills. Mothers play the both the maternal and paternal roles and utterly dominate their children with constant demands for higher grades, harder work and perfect scores. Children are often broken down, unimaginative and tired.

Anecdotal evidence on the topic:
I teach a really advanced class here with students that are essentially fluent. They're great kids and we've had an incredible and rewarding working relationship as long as I've taught the class. They are eager to learn my knowledge of history, politics, religion, literature and life in general and I never once had a discipline problem. I often find myself looking forward to the class.

However last week things took a change for the darker.

Summer vacation started this week, which only means more school just at different places. Attending school for fifty hours a week is not unusual here nor is Saturday school. And in that set of circumstances, these really bright kids increased their time at my school from 160 to 240 minutes. Four hours with three five minute breaks and I taught the last hour and a half.

It was heartbreaking and ego damaging to watch the kids that I enjoy teaching turn from well behaved, enthusiastic young adults to a gang of screeching children. Two kids broke down crying, one young lady just glared at me. My attempts at jokes were met with scorn and my lesson plan almost became null-and-void.

They had more classes after mine.

The students who have never left Korea are often hyper-nationalistic. These are the students who swear it is the best country on earth and view me as the "white devil." Many times have I had the "this is Korea, we should speak Korean" argument thrown at me. It doesn't even phase me now.

The kids who have left want to leave again and can't wait. They cite Korea as a prime example of how to drive people away.

Education is the religion here. If you don't have an education you are nothing. And I find this tragic. Maybe it's St. Wenceslaus Middle School speaking here but at least Catholicism is bad ass and cool. Gothic architecture, The Last Supper, martyrdom, general passionate stuff that you don't get in a ideology based on atomic weight and laws of motion. Even psychology is down played here. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy empirical evidence but I don't see why it deserves to be devoted to so strictly. It takes away all the color.

And what happens to these kids? They go to school for more than a full time job, they work themselves ragged in high school, get blasted in college and just when their social obligations of the objective are paid our old friend mandatory military service hits the scene rendering the average Korean male 26 before he has a chance to chill out before having a family and starting the cycle all over again.

And don't get me wrong, I'm all about strict obedience to a solid hierarchy. Not like this though. Not without even the faintest chance to reflect on it or reconsider it. I'm all about a healthy amount of pushing your kids but not to the point where childhood becomes a cut-throat competition. And this machine has kept the Korean people more or less a people for a long long time. This is not a machine that breaks down easily but if it does the results could count amount the greatest tragedies of the twenty-first century.

The Food Here Again

2009-07-16T07:39:00.001-07:00

I have reason to suspect that certain restaurants in the Republic of Korea are working hand-in-hand with the government to distribute mind control drugs to the populace.

It is fair to say that I have a strong stomach. About a year ago in the course of 12 hours I ingested 5 packs of morning glory seeds in a successful attempt to induce hallucinations. These seeds were covered in pesticide and despite my chemical binge I managed to circumvent vomiting.

Yet on three separate occasions in this country I have eaten normal food here and experienced deranged states of mind, black outs, and hyper paranoia.

The first time it happened was in early March. I woke up in my usual state of disorientation and stumbled over to a Korean-Japanese fusion restaurant down the street from my apartment. I ate some noodles and sushi and left.

Three hours later I was at work holding a cup of coffee.

What happened and where I went are a mystery. I had never been to the coffee shop who's cup I now curiously sported.

The next two...episodes are directly related. I ate at a bar here, just some standard bar chicken. I went home after a fairly pleasant evening with friends. I arrived at home around three am. The next six hours featured nightmares of the apocalypse, the urge to kill and a level of self loathing that threatened to explode in to a rampage.

Not thinking anything of it I went to bed the next night. I woke up at three a.m. and ate the last of the chicken. The nightmares returned and I woke up at six in the morning and simmered in murderous rage for an hour my dog jumped on my bed. I stood up, put a leash on him and walked out into the morning.

I don't remember what happened over the next hour and a half, I remember muttering "the quickest good byes are best" before throwing the dog in random yard and another blackout before walking into work four hours later.

2009-07-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

Basically I'm just gonna walk the earth.

What do you mean walk the earth?

You know, like Kane in Kung Fu.

Symbol

2009-07-13T13:03:00.001-07:00

Do I miss the girl or just what she represents?

The Be-ach

2009-07-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

It's so easy to forget why I left the homeland. On those nights when there's nothing to look forward to and nothing but memories to look back on. Those nights of crippling isolation. Remembering that I'm forgotten is a drag.

Then their are nights like this. And I remember, I came here to not be like the others. Challenging the British to the traditional American Roman Candle war, watching the sunset with North Korea within the range of sight. Salt water. Lying here on a real, ocean beach. Crabs scuttling around, what might be egg sacks.

The tide here goes out a mile and a half. Something to see, a beach double in size in forty minutes. Some rocks were uncovered, a granite formation. I had to check it out. To my delight it was covered in sharp seashells. So I climbed on it. I cut my foot several times and my hand. I'll probably lose one or the other as I walked to the ocean with blood pouring out of my wounds.

They sell bug-zappers shaped like tennis rackets.

The Bus Stop

2009-06-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

I like it here, this dirty bus stop. I like this area of town. It's probably the dirtiest. There's a traditional market not too far from the steps and the smell of livestock is constant. I like it here more than anywhere in Cheongju. It's quiet. Just the hum of the buses and the shuffle of travelogues. The occasional taxi horn. The muted chaos of life moving around.

I'm the only white guy here, again. All my friends went to the beach. I'm broke. I spent my last hundred dollars fixing the eyes of a dog I didn't want in the first place. So I sit and watch the sunset with my hot coffee in the muggy evening. Watching the yellow dust settle in.

I liked the bus stop since beginning of my tour here. This area represents the edge of my universe and the gateway to Seoul. Being here in the shadow of departure. Playfully kicking around the idea of just leaving. I can't go any further west than this location.

Days like this it's hard not to be morose. Saturday night alone. No money, no company. Just Billy Bragg in your ear. Where are my friends? A show at Duffy's? A pool? A grill out? Make the best of it, I guess. Try to look forward and take another drag. You're an alien, boy-o, stuck on the peninsula.

My co-worker is a wise lady. She dresses and carries herself with the demeanor of a madame. She's running this whorehouse. She scares me when she says Korea isn't the culture shock. The real culture shock is going home. They're expecting "Their Dan" to get off the plane, she tells me, but he's dead and gone. You're someone else now, she tells me, but you can't see it now. You're expecting "Your Friends" but they'll be someone else, too. And all you can communicate is your past not your present.

Maybe it's not too late to salvage this. Here at this dirty bus stop. Where the coke is warmer than the fries. Maybe it's not too late to get on a bus and just fucking go. Maybe it's not to late. Maybe.

And take another drag.

Sometimes

2009-06-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

I pack all my bags put on my coat and enter my credit card information. Just to be a double-click away from home.

Maybe I'm too Romantic

2009-06-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've been in Korea for six months now. Slowly but surely I am forgotten as I will be when I die. A quiet whisper for maybe a decade and then nothing more than a tombstone.

A consistent question amongst the white people is "Why did you come to Korea?" There are a variety of answers that any number of people. Which one you believe depends on how cynical you are on the day in question.

Some would say its fear. There are a lot of burn outs, stoners, slackers, nut jobs and general garbage from the various English speaking countries of the world. Running away from their lives. One guy lived with his parents until he was 32. Another girl is divorced and wants to binge on the nihilistic promiscuity raging over at the local majority-white bars. Trying to forget while they can what they can.

And in my cynical moments, the painfully loud solitude of the other side of the globe. I can find that in myself. But those moments fade and the good times come and I remember why I'm hear.

How could I resist the proud tradition of the young man leaving his homeland to seek his fortune and adventure in a foreign land. From the Iliad to Barry Lyndon it's a classic theme in art that I couldn't resist. This is my right. This is my due. It's practically my duty.

So in the middle of the night, with five days notice I picked up my life, said good bye to those most important to me, and hopped on a plane without blinking. Was I sad? Yes. It had to be done and it was and I couldn't regret it.

2009-05-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

By the lights of some 45-story condos, finished in 2007, I watched two jet fighters practicing maneuvers at elven in the evening. I can't help but salivating like the dogs of war that might be forthcoming.

Everyday now for the past week more air patrols, more missile tests, atomic tests, diplomatic strangleholds and trade embargoes. It wasn't the ballistic test in April that piqued my curiosity. It wasn't the captured journalists or the anti-aircraft tests. Not even the nuclear test pushed me up to the line. It was the Quesong Industrial Complex that raised my eyebrow. It is my stated opinion that there cannot be war until trade relations break down.

Maybe I sound like a broken record of cliches, but the state acts solely out of self interest and the blood of a nation is found in trade. This is how economies expand and contract, imports and exports, tariffs these are the keys which open the door of friendship. South Korea and Israel offer strategic advantages near resources and benefit from the fruits of American labors, Chad and Mali have nothing so they are devastated by civil war and lack consistent access to medicine.

...to be continued.

And then

2009-05-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

there's that day when you realize "my god. I am actually in Korea."

These are the doldrums, 208 days remaining

2009-05-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

And so it was determined that contract would be honored above all else. There would be no early return home. There would be no warm summer in Lincoln. There would be seven more months on the other side of the planet. The subtle longings for home would have to be dealt with. The isolation would have to be dealt with. The time would have to be filled.

Now the rules have changed. The five month mark has produced unforeseen difficulties. Looking down the barrel of seven more months causes one to draw new conclusions. The first, the novelty has worn off. The thing that made the first third of this adventure fly by was the newness of a fresh environment. The constant new information was refreshing and exciting but the strength of routine is back and now information has a cognitive schema to fit into.

The second, I am not quite halfway finished. Close enough that I can consider my next move after Korea but far enough that attempts at gathering information are met with a polite we-don't-know-our-situation-yet form email. Stuck in the zone of a closing semester and a tantalizingly close downhill slide leads to conclusion three.

I am stuck on the peninsula now. There is no other option for the following two hundred and eight days. While all my friends enjoy the fruits of a traditional Nebraska summer I have a duty to perform and it will be discharged. Sometimes it fun. Sometimes I genuinely enjoy doing this work, connecting with kids and transferring knowledge can be very rewarding. Other times the constant yelling, touching and running around lead to panic attacks and crippling loneliness. The nights where three a.m. walks to Russ's and a cup of coffee at midnight become sacred moments in a past life.

With new resolve and hopeful optimism I prepare for the change that is always going to come.

October 21, 2008

2009-05-05T11:25:00.001-07:00

There won't be another one of her for a long time.

The Tragedies of Northeast Asia Tour

2009-05-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Ever say to yourself "I'd love to relive some of the blinding atrocities of imperial expansion, but I just don't have the time" well come to picturesque Northeast Asia and in one glorious week you can relive the past hundred years of Kafkaesque brutality in the comfort of your own shoes.

First you will be whisked away to the fabulous Demilitarized Zone where you can feel superior to the people just ten miles away gouging desperately to carve out a living under the cockeyed glare of the world's most insane head of state. Be thrilled as soldiers march, endlessly guarding a border that allows goods to go across it daily to one of two North Korean free trade zones. But fear not! Capitalist brainwashing can't infiltrate THIS workers' paradise thanks to the one-size-solves-all-problems wall surrounding it!

And just when you thought it was over you're off to Tienanmen Square where you can lie on the ground under a statue of a tank. It's so much fun you'll wish your government was violently cracking down on the right to assemble.

The fun doesn't stop until you visit beautiful Nagasaki where the haunting ghosts of the thousands of flash-dead still haunt the McDonald's, Starbucks and Radio Shack that gently surround a memorial like a string of delicate pearls. And what's that? Is it graffiti? No! It's the last remnants of a child walking down the street one day seventy years ago.

And like all things, this has to end. Your final destination will be Dokdo Island where you can sip margarita's safe in the knowledge that this island's sovereignty and fertile fishing waters were paid for with Korean blood so that their Japanese masters could remain satisfied and rested while they plotted a brutal genocide of Koreans on yet another ill-conceived expedition to the Chinese mainland.

All for the low price of 3,000,000 won or $200 you can be thrilled by the abject horror of three nations eternally locked in a competition for honor through mass-murder. Don't forget to sample the local food of fermented (rotting) cabbage called kimchi, soup featuring fish heads and beef proudly cut from cattle strung out like a bay area junkie.

Korea...again

2009-04-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-12T08:55:00.001-07:00

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?

2009-04-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Perhaps

2009-03-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

The ultimate question everyone must confront is what makes life worth living?

I for one was never keen on labeling Christians or Muslims or Jews or Democrats or Republicans for their hard line beliefs. I personally found them both to be equally absurd and shrugged it off because if believing in Jesus or Muhammad or universal health care or a balanced budget make life worth living, making getting out of bed worth the effort, then go on with your bad self. I have geared many of my intellectual undertakings toward developing rational arguments for when these types of ideas go unchecked. I am a big believer in checks and balances.

What makes life worth living for me?

I don't mean to suggest that countering religious types or being a permanent Devil's Advocate makes life fun for me. Well, that's not 100% true, but there's more and it's simple.

I miss Lincoln with all my heart.

I spent a year of my life worried I would never escape and now I'm worried I will never come back. I love Lincoln because it is what it is. A dingy college town in the dullest state since North Dakota. And that situation created a vacuum filled with an underlying need to escape that formed the people I love and the situation comedy that made life fun.

Korea has no soul. These people enter life rushing through this imaginary pissing contest to muster up some kind of racial pride. The Napoleon complex of Asia. A child is born here, instantly rushed into school. Drilled in math, science, English, music, geography, spelling, and logic then forced into a university for the most realistic of professions. Once all the work to your superiors is paid off, just when it's time to live for yourself, you join the army. Putting the average Korean at 26 before he or she can start making adult decisions.

Few of my kids know the simple joys of creativity. Only numbers and hypothesis. Music is not an expression of longing or a call to rally. It is a mechanical, orderly process which is to be completed in a timely manner. When I give my kids free reign to be creative, they opt to fill in the blanks from a previous page over inserting words like "dung" or "ass".

There is no midday drunkenness. There is no underground marijuana trade. There is no hero of the anti-establishment. Where are your Sartre's, Piccasso's, Bukowski's and Nabakov's, Korea? This is why I truly cry for you. Where are your punks, goths, hippies, ravers, mods and indie kids? Where are your idols who would be considered a menace to society if not for the ability to sum up life in a sentence?

Where is your soul?

Suggestions Welcome or How to Kill a Substantial Amount of Time

2009-03-21T05:23:00.000-07:00

1- Develop obsessive, even pornographic, fixation on North Korea

2- Follow a baseball team with all my will

3- Escape into World of Warcraft when I am not teaching

4- Increase cigarette intake through a newfound devotion to Linux

5- Keep journal featuring the classic "I must ___________" theme

6- Invent backstory and personalities for all my furniture

7- Alcohol problem

8- Construct giant map of Lincoln using 8 x 10 sheets of paper printed on the company's dime

9- Analyze security risks to Northeast Asia and use said information to start fights in bars

10- Become competent at math

11- Watch DVD commentary to all 11 Star Trek movies

12- Rubix cube

13- Find a size 12 pair of shoes

14- Impose bizzare tricks upon my dog

15- Purchase firearm

16- Wander around city in stupor during socially unacceptable hours

17- Give self series of intricate tattoos

18- Do number seventeen to dog

19- Assume the identity of Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino

20- Break up side walk and grow weeds in cracks to alliviate homesickness

21- Concoct subtle ways to use racial slurs in everyday conversation

22- Break away from Catholic Church and form underground religious movement

23- Build structures out of random garbage strewn on street corners

24- Eat entire box of instant-coffee sleeves in one day

25- Break record for most days awake

26- Attempt 24 hours of only darkness

27- Watch all Ken Burns documentaries

28- Figure out the appeal of bright colors to the natives

29- Start religious franchise

30- Use Korea's garbage to form an underground art movement

The PZO

2009-01-31T10:04:00.000-08:00

How could I not derive comfort from remembering the pizza joint which I dedicated three years of my life to.

For that matter I have difficulty remembering my life before Piezano's. Classes, future plans, grades, girls, drugs, and college came and went but Piezano's stayed with me. From the day I turned on my application (written on a piece of scratch paper) to pilfering the picture of Pizza Mannnn which hung in the store for two decades I have seen just about everything a driver can.

So hard to believe that I will not drive a car for the next ten months.

I can say with great confidence (no hay dudo que) I left it better than I found it. I didn't do it alone. I didn't do it all. I did make a contribution that lasted.

The week I left the dining room was in disarray. I walked down the stair I'd walked down a thousand times before. The dead leaves and spiderwebs exactly where I left them. The carpet still bunching up by the door and the handrail pulling away from the wall as I used it to stabilize my flight. Everything seemed muted. Quieter. The ringing of the freezers and refrigerators dulled by the news. In five days I'd be off to a foreign land to learn a professional trade without anyone familiar.

First to find me, which meant first to know, was Kylie. The little blonde girl with aspirations of superstardom. She reacted with a mixture of excitement and loss. "What will we do without you?" she said. Half out of congratulatory teasing, half as an eleventh hour attempt to convince me otherwise.

The news spread like Jenna Haze from there. Some reacted with sarcasm, such a classic defense mechanism. Telling me I'd be back before my contract ended or I'd be caned within hours of my arrival or (my personal favorite) I'd be deported for saying "something stupid about Communism." The year is young.

A group of young 'uns were chatting by the destroyed dining room before they found out. I walked up to them to give the news, which they already knew. Drop clothes on the floor, a drill on the table, a paint roller running over the exposed walls which once held an odd paneled mirrors which reflected me in so many mindsets and moods. The plans on the way, new paint, new art, new ceiling tiles, new chairs, new tables.

I remember the rickety chair that collapsed under my weight two years ago. I remember the day the "Weasel Jungle Gym" (a lattice octagon reaching from floor to ceiling completed by the vines of a long dead house plant creeping up the side before expiring) was thrown in the garbage. The ancient wood cracked and flaking at the screws which barely held it together. The checkered table clothes stained with the oil of a decade's use. The New carpet to be installed after my departure was the most crippling part.

"When do you leave?"
"Five days."

Perhaps the real Piezano's came to me that day. This was really happening. This was the end of an old life. The florescent lights did no reflect well off the dried pizza sauce and drain cover oozing the orange grease I identified with so many late nights and freshly awake afternoons. But it was never about the job. It was about the people.

Driver's Wanted:
Local restaurant is looking for car owners to stand in raw sewage for five to nine hours a day for minimum wage. Must have middle school education or equivalency degree. Pot smoker preferred. Benefits include gas compensation, free uniform, unrestricted smoking on deliveries, and all the refuse of the elite you can eat.

What will become of you, my first occupational love?

Fog

2009-01-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

What happened to my homeland? It seemed so clear yesterday.
It seemed so eternal. It seemed so mine. Where is my homeland? It must be here, somewhere.
The art of losing isn't hard to master, I'm told. My homeland, my native soil is dimmer and dimmer. The maze of memory dead ends for you for now, my country of origin.
Where is Able Hall and Air Park's gossamer twilight, oh nation of mine?
Those landscapes and portraits that once belonged to me in such vibrant colors and compelling hues. First they turn sepia, then grey before fading to black. My sweet, sweet homeland.
I left you on such natural terms. We'd seen so much. You're five dollar packs of cigarettes and one dollar coffees couldn't keep me for long. A year of aimless degree went so fast, my homeland. And then I knew I had to go.

I had a friend named Levi. He hung around the gas station. A good guy and a quiet guy. He liked car. No shame in that. He joined the marines, to defend my homeland, where is he now? I had a friend named Travis who I called Lurch. He went off to Boston, is he still there, my homeland? You have a new President soon, my homeland, how will you handle this change, can I believe in you now, my homeland?

I left you behind weary and unpopular. Too powerful for your own good, I suppose. Wishing for something new, but perhaps to blindly. But I love you, my homeland. You'll always be beautiful to me and will always perform my duty to you. Do what you will.

I walked into the dining room for the hundredth, thousandths, millionth time. The restaurant I loved. The Mexican gentlemen carting carpet out the door. The faded, bunched up red and blue rolled up and hauled off. The dining room closed for the day as new paint and ceiling tiles took the place of the mirrored panels and yellowed skylight which stood there for twenty years without shame or repair. I didn't get to say good bye. My little pizza joint grew up. The time went too fast.

My homeland, my pizza you're on your own now, but you always were. I watched you change these years with only minimal impact. An impact none the less which I can take pride in.

"What will I come home to?" is the question hanging over 2009. Who will still be there? Where will the others go? Who will be in school? Who will drop out, vomit, smoke or die? As I sit halfway around the world I hope I did the right thing and I know I didn't do the wrong thing.

The Food Here

2009-01-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I decided it was a good idea to gain some weight before Peace Corps.
My goal was to gain twenty pounds before being shipped off to Russia based on the assumption I would be in mortal peril if my current frame became any leaner. So I ate and I ate. Even when I didn't want to. When stressed or lethargic I crammed something down my throat.

Slowly but surely over the course of a month I added an extra five pounds. I was quite elated by this. I was on the road to filling out six years after puberty. I kept on eating until the Avalon offer came on the table.

Within a week of my arrival I lost those five pounds.

Things were leaking out of me for days. If I can expel a liquid I have done it in this nation. First it was the cold. Snot coming out of my nose, snorted up and spit out. On my bed, on my floor, on my clothes. Then it was the diarrhea. The food initially reacted poorly with my Americanized digestive track. Every time I took a shit there was some bizarre concoction in the toilet. More a kin to fireworks than human waste. I still have yet to make a completely solid deposit over here.

But my favorite was the food poisoning. Some subway green peppers incapacitated me for a day. After a night of drinking and drunk food I expelled the contents of my stomach in too desperate bursts. The pink slime of the former Southwest Sauce burns. More than the vodka, the sandwich sauce expulsion was pure, unadulterated agony. When it was all said and done I think I threw up about seven thousand calories.

My precious bodily fluids have been affected profoundly by the food even in this very westernized country. Me, the man who ate four packages of pesticide-coated morning glory seeds and didn't vomit.

I leave you with the words of the prophet:

"If we have learned anything in this life it's that the more drugs you do, the better time you have."
-The Hon. Matt Moore

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

For a decade now I found this trite, sentimental claptrap . Just part of the over-capitalized bullshit that mutilated my pristine memories of the classic childhood Christmas. At best it earned a scoff but mostly it played unacknowledged. Part of the soundtrack to something puerile. Something to be endured for three months than thrown aside to be picked up by a lonely garbage man still walking the beat while the rest of the world stays warm. A bland aesthetic experience shoved into a month of bland experiences, appearance makings, and super-structure demanded activities. Yet here I am, freshly twenty-four years old, humming this song under my breath and holding back tears as I speed walk to teach the disconnected children of the South Korean elite.

Cheers, reader, to my first Christmas away from home.

I sit here with my rattling cough. I am not the first of my DNA do spend Christmas in this nation. I had a great-uncle who was here sixty-some years ago. But he was a lot further north. And I'm sure he'd love to trade Christmases with me. Clutching an M1 in a ditch probably isn't as fun as moping on a laptop.

I believe the technical term for it is “taken for granted.” After such reliability those relationships that were so important to me became important for me. Like the mountains around me in this growing nation, I thought they'd be there to mark who I am forever. Sure, telling my Godmother I wanted to be Jewish because I'm old school was fun, but I didn't know that it got me through the year. I didn't know the astounding growth spurts of my younger cousins made for such gripping information. I didn't know Christmas actually meant something.

And here comes the reflection.

What will I come home to? A year is a long time, especially now. As my friends grow older and gain more direction they will scatter across the country. Some will stay but more will realize the Nebraskan dream of leaving home. Entering this wide world and roaming for a while. Who will go where and will they remember me? And if they do will they want to see me? As usual the future remains hazy.

But more importantly, what did I leave behind? So many friends, I tried my best to see them all.

As a form of therapy I hop onto interlink. They have live webcams there that update every fifteen seconds. Home looks beautiful. The snow covers everything. The cameras aren't wonderful but it looks like Christmas. Like I could reach out and touch it. The life I made for myself. Google Lincoln, Ne and put something as a background. There's a one for 27th and South. I can see a corner of the gas station I spent so many hours at.

If they miss me now it won't last.

Korean Wal Mart

2008-12-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

The soul of this culture is here. It lurks in subtle gestures and back alleys but it is here.

When I first arrived in Korea everything carried the mark of the “Modern” (American) era. High rise apartments, cell phone stores, taxi cabs and grocery stores abound in this nation. At the clothing store the underwear models are white. The mannequins have Asian eyes with blue pupils. Brittney Spears and Jay-Z play in public squares. A few of my kids wear NASCAR shirts.

I can't assign blame to the leaders of this country for embracing the West. For the past sixty years it's been a small nation surrounded by hostile forces while waving the flag of someone else's democracy. Seeking shelter under the world's most powerful nation is only logical in a country still technically in a state of war.

What gets me is the fury, the unwavering force South Korea embraces Western culture. HomeEver, the Korean version of Wal Mart, was my most recent stop in my acclimation tour of 2009. In full force I witnessed the decadence which I comically scorned in my more Marxist moments. Children grabbing for Power Ranger's masks. Mothers on iphones (the sound of nagging is universal) and teenagers slacking by the McDonald's. I flew half way across the world to watch people degrade themselves for cheap crap and status symbols. 'Tis the season, I guess.

But there was an upside in all this. In my futile attempt to find a Starbucks (all the other coffee in town sucks) I found a narrow and unassuming alley. I would have passed it over except it didn't look like anything else around. I followed its cobblestone street and misshapen stone walls. I turned and there it was. What I've been looking for.

I stood in a different part of the city and a different part of history. Before Harry Truman. Before the DMZ. Before the thirty-eighth parallel. The houses were small but proud in this courtyard housed under the shadow of Westernization Incarnate. The slanted roofs and stucco walls of the pre-war generation.

Bonzi trees grew in ornamented pots. There was a small statue of the Buddha in the center. We did not touch this haven. This active museum of a life soon to be nothing but a tourist trap.

God, how I hate the twenty-first century.

Weekend

2008-12-13T19:53:00.001-08:00

Jostled. Jarred. My experience in this country so far is nothing but a series of plane rides, bus rides, car rides and waiting.

Sitting in an IHOP at five in the morning. Warm inside. Safe from the cold. She smiled. But it wasn't for her. She couldn't be selfish if she tried. The warmth surrounded me. Surrounded us. Her hand slowly gaining feeling as I rubbed it for her. We looked at the Christmas tree. Her head on my shoulder.

I try to sleep, quite a feat in economy class. The lack of leg room leads to contortions normally reserved for the circus. I still haven't slept. I nod off. I wake up when the plane changes direction of altitude or bumps. The stern resolve to die with dignity before the information is processed.

"This is the most EuroCentric International List of Crepes I've ever seen." She laughed. A genuine laugh. For just a moment she forgot why we're here: breakfast before I'm gone for a year. In that one, gossimer moment we are together for ever in this spot. This is the epiphany Keates spoke so highly of. To live in this one moment. Forever. Truely that would be heaven.

I'd rather go to hell than purgatory. At least hell is honest. It's cold on the plane. It's freezing in the bathrooms. My breath freezes. My foot aches with the pain normally reserved for full days of hiking over rough terrain. My I nod off, my leg falls asleep. I wake up. I watch Pineapple Express for the third time. I don't understand the plot, i just want something somewhat familiar. I nod off. Repeat.

We are intertwined now. She puts her four foot long legs across my lap. I pretend to kiss her but tell her a secret instead.
"I love you."
And her eyes radiate like a thousand suns and we are even warmer than we were. This is the last time I will be warm for a year. Will she still provide it when I return? These questions are drowned in the elegance of the moment and the only thing is us when she whispers her secret.
"I love you, too."
Our food arrives.

I'm on a bus now. The heat is broken. I wear my trenchcoat like a blanket. This is the last bus out of Seoul tonight. Had I stopped to use the bathroom I would be sleeping in the airport. Everywhere around me there is neon. Lights, colors, clothes. This is an optical assault without at least an hour of sleep. We bounce and jumble down the highway and I hope to the god I don't believe in that someone, anyone can take me to a bed.

I wake up dizzy. I always do. She is holding me from behind. She's been asleep for sometime. There is a wet spot near my shoulders, where he face was at one point. I missed the session but I know the evidence. I roll over to kiss her in the warmth and softness of her bed and our bodies.
"Are you okay, sweetheart?"
"I will be."