HOMELY PLANET

Amazing footage of an African ANIMAL WAR, courtesy of mananath:



A nod to the amateur tourist video cameraman, who steadily captures all of the action.

A teacher in the great state of Idaho recently recently tossed his Mexican student's Mexican flag into a trash can.

When later asked for an explanation, he said that he put it into a garbage can because he "had no place else to keep it."

Ah, Idaho... where the teachers are dumber than the students.

After many bad luck interventions and malignant acts of God, I finally have the internet in my home again. I picked up a decent computer from a friend who is leaving the country, along with a massive flatscreen monitor that was worth the uber-low price alone. So I'm back in the saddle. No longer will I just bang out missives from the safety of my office at work. I can once again stagger to the keyboard at 4 a.m. with a half-finished bottle of soju and bare my soul, charming the panties off of my female readers, inspiring the masses, and infuriating the odd no-life haters that are attracted to this here silly blog like moths to a flame.

Ah. I feel like Superman taking to the sky after the Kryptonite necklace has been removed...

Today is a beautiful morning, if you don't count the film of smog and dust lingering in the sky like pedophiles outside of a Hannah Montana concert. I'm drinking a cup of Batdorf and Bronson coffee (Olympia's best) and listening to a Woody Guthrie compilation (America's best). In a few minutes I go to meet the girlfriend for an overnight trip to Namhae, an island a couple of hours away from here, where we shall walk the seaside, eat raw fish, climb a small mountain, and hopefully breathe in some fresh-ish air.

And did I mention that it suddenly got HOT?

It was loud and predictably messy. A great way to call it quits.



John



Me



Glen



Our Korean female fans.



Rockin'.







Shots from our upcoming "KISS" style solo albums.



Blood on my face.



Blood on the setlist.

The End.

For those of  you here in Busan, my rock and roll party band, F+, is playing our final show tomorrow night down at Ol '55 in Kyungsungdae.  We've been rocking it for two and a half years now, but our drummer is leaving The Peninsula and it's time to shoot the horse in the head.

It's guaranteed to be a fun and beer-saturated event, so come on down and rock with us and watch us stagger around while playing Ramones covers and maybe pee our pants.  

The music starts around 11. 

 

 A couple of months ago I was with The Big Dog down at The Crown, supping turpentinian pints of Korea's premier horse urine.  It was a Friday night, which is "ladies night" at that dank hole of a bar.  O'Brien's is vagina-repellent incarnate.  It's a smoky basement where old paunchy drunk guys play poker, shoot darts, and scream at each other.  Most women would prefer a visit to the gynecologist's than to troll for the prize catches teetering on the bar stools at that french-fry grease reeking dive.  It's so bad that the only way the owners can get a chick to step foot in the place is to give away alcohol free of charge, which is what they do on Fridays.

So we were drinking away  - not yet drunk enough to start abusing each other over the merits of fish farming or the viability of socialism in the 21st century - when in walks a group of women.  One of the women in the said group was of the larger variety, or more accurately, massive.  This girl was HUGE.  Morbidly obese.  When she lumbered up to the bar to order herself six free rum and cokes,  I caught sight of her red and white jacket, which looked as if it was made from a dome tent.  On the back was a giant red maple leaf, with the word "CANADA" emblazoned underneath.

Like we didn't know already.

Blocking.

It's happened to all of us.  You're in a hurry.  You're late to work or for an appointment.  You grab your bag and lock your door, take the elevator down and head out of your building.  You spill out into the hissing city, breathing in dust and bus diesel fumes.  A river of cars chokes the road and you are almost run-down by a Kimbap Chungook deliver ajjoshi riding his scooter on the sidewalk.  A grandmother sells lettuce on a cardboard box next to the payphones that nobody uses, and a wizened old man hocks a loogie out of a taxi window, splattering your work shoes with kimchee-flavored saliva.

You, however, are undeterred.  You glance at your watch and pick up the pace, steaming ahead, only to find your way blocked by four high school girls plodding down the sidewalk at the pace of valium-popping tree sloths.  You slam your feet on the pavement, hoping that the sound of someone approaching from behind will cause the uniformed girl-wall to give way, at least enough for you to squeeze by on the side.  But no.  They continue talking in machine-gun Korean and frantically tapping away at their cell phones, their speech and actions in absurd contrast with their painfully slow gait.  They proceed glacially, oblivious to the fact that you are three inches behind them and can now feel their body heat.

You finally have enough and attempt a pass:

"Sillaehamnida...," you say, pushing around.  

Two of the girls, catching sight of your protruding nose and round eyes, shriek in half fear and half amazement.  The other two nearly swallow their tonges.

"Ung!"

As you leave them behind, a shrill chorus of "hellos," both playful and cruel, shadows you...



Sidewalk blocking is an everyday nut chafer here in The Special K.  But nothing kills me more than Koreans on escalators.  The escalators here clearly have a standing and passing lane marked, but as soon as almost any Korean gets on an escalator, every muscle in their body goes into stasis.  I often leave the subway and charge up the escalator, only to be stymied by one obstinate and oblivious ajumma blocking my path.  

Once, in Germany, I made the stoned mistake of standing in the escalator passing lane, and I was loudly castigated by a stern Bavarian woman for my oversight.  The Germans have it right.  They let you know when you fuck up.

But it's as if most Koreans are even aware that walking on an escalator is an option.  Or maybe it's just a general aversion to stairs.  I've seen students at my college wait three minutes to take and elevator two floors down.  I'm talking about fifteen seconds worth of downhill walking.  Tops.

And don't get me started about the pokey ass "exercising" ajummas who block the bike path down at the river bike and pedestrian paths.  That's right.  There's one path for people, and another for bikes, but I'll be fucked if the bike past isn't mobbed everynight with 47 year old ladies who seem to have singularly tuned out the frequency of a bike horn telling them to move their visor-wearing asses to the side...

So I took the TOPIK test, Levels 1 and 2, on Sunday morning. I meant to study all day Saturday, but my Bhopalian booze-induced headache made concentration difficult, to say the least. I did manage to squeeze couple of hours in on Saturday night over three dishes of raw tuna. They have a number of all-you-can-eat raw tuna restaurants over here and I'm ONTO them.   The best part is that they leave the guts out.

The test was a bit easier than I expected, especially the writing part, which beforehand caused me the most consternation. The essay question simply asked us to write a personal introduction - name, country of origin, hobbies, career, etc. This is stuff you do day in and day out in a language class, as well as in real situations. So I had that part dialed in. The listening was a bit more difficult, but I think I nailed most of it. The hardest section was reading. It consisted of thirty questions about reading passages. The last five passages were exceedingly difficult with words and grammar points I have yet to learn, so a bit of dartboard answering was employed.

I need a 70% average or more to pass both levels, with a no less than 50% score in any given section. I think I'll squeak by, though if I do eat a big dick, the reading will be to blame.

Why did I even take this test?

Well, I live in Korea so I'm trying to learn the language, and the test gave me a goal to work toward. My Korean has probably improved 100-200%  over the last three months. I speak it all the time now, and can hang out with Koreans for hours exclusively speaking the language. I may speak it poorly, with grammar fuck ups left and right and an over reliance on a bag of tricks of phrases and verb endings, but I can speak it. I'm comfortable going anywhere in this country and expressing most any basic thing I want to say. That feels good.

I also took the test to prove something to myself, that, despite the fact that I am at times an alcoholic thirty something waster, that I am a super smart motherfucker who can learn any language I put my mind to.   I grew up in a monolingual house and am now facile in two other languages besides English. I think that's cool.   A-fucking-sah!  

If you would have told me ten years ago that in a decade I would be semi-fluent in Korean, I would have asked what flavor of meth you were shooting up your dinkerhole and then asked you for a taste.  But here I am.  This has been a very strange avenue indeed. 

I'll find out my results in about a month.  At risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, even if I don't pass it will have been worth it.   However, if I do pass, it means that the Korean government officially recognizes my mastery of basic Korean and now considers me an entrant in the league of intermediate, which means I'll have to start studying to pass Levels 3 and 4, which now seems like an insurmountable task.  One day I'll pass Levels 5 and 6, and, having mastered this Griedo-like tongue, I'll promptly leave the country and never speak it again.

Fish guts. Koreans eat them and expect you too as well.

I usually take lunch at the school professor's cafeteria, which serves buffet-style 정식 (jeong-shik), which is the basic Korean meal of rice, soup, kimchee, and a few other side dishes, one of which is usually cooked fish. It's a pretty healthy affair and I love the fish and happily eat it. However, the Koreans can't be assed to clean the things. Each cooked fish comes complete with a belly full of half-rancid guts. So when you pick at the usually bone-infested carcass with your metal chopsticks, you also need to take care not to get gooey-ass brown shit-tube intestinal bits in with your regular fish flesh.

Friggin' naaaasty.

I shouldn't be surprised, seeing as how most Korean supermarkets come complete with a fish egg and innard "salad bar." That's the one station where I skip the samples every time.

I've known about this proclivity for a while now. A couple of years ago I was dining at Mr. Cho's house. He's an older Korean gentleman and a friend. We were eating his wife's massive spread of home-cooked dishes. I pointed one filled with glistening red bits and enquired as to what they were.

"Fish innards," he replied nonchalantly, taking a wet livery chunk between his chopsticks, lifting it to his lips, and chomping away...

This is a country that used to be so poor that it couldn't afford to throw fish guts away. The country is no longer poor, but it seems the national tastes have yet to catch up.

Tomorrow morning I take the TOPIK Korean language test. I was supposed to have studied all day today, but I accidentally got totally and savagely drunk last night (after studying) and found myself at the Carribean stud table at the casino at seven in the morning, drinking coffee and staring at cards which were appearing in triplicate.

I'm supposed to be studying right now, but instead I'm at a PC room, where I've come to download a document necessary for the test. But instead of gettind straight to the download, I'm wasting time by blogging.

But's it's been a CUNT of week, mainly due to Myeolchi, the younger of my two cats. About three weeks ago she started pissing on my bed. It's happened two or three times since I got her, but something's changed, and now she has it in her head that my bed is her big pee pad. I don't think she's even peeing in the box AT ALL anymore. She just wants to pee on my comforter. My laundry machine has been in perpetual spin cycle for two weeks now.

This is a sudden thing. She wasn't doing it before. It seems to have arrived straight outta the blue. So I did some research as to why a cat may start peeing on beds.

*Urinary Tract Infections (had her checked yesterday, the vet says no)

*Territorial Markings (She's not "spraying," but straight up emptying the bladder

*Stress

I believe it's number three. The house move, combined with the heat cycles she's been enduring have stressed her out. Also, I have a girlfriend who comes over a lot and doesn't like it when the cats come up on the bed, so I believe my little kitty is being a jealous bitch.

I was told that once she was spayed this behavior would stop, so I had her spayed yesterday.

She's peed on the bed twice since then. So far, no good.

At this point I'll need to burn my bedding, since the scent is in the fabric and now the cat identifies the bedding with her pee instinct. I may even have to replace the mattress, though I've washed most stains out with bleach water and I don't notice a smell, though I'm sure she does.

But what's the solution here? Is there a solution? I CANNOT keep a cat who continues to piss on my bed. End of. I also can't give her away in good faith, knowing that she'll wreak urinary havoc on her new owner.

I've tried disciplining her puppy style - nose in the pee, loud "NO's", swats to the butt - but this obviously hasn't worked. It's probably exacerbated the problem by scaring her and making her more stressed. Most everything I've read online discourages this method, if only because it produces no results. But when I catch her in mid-squat on my bed with a nasty wet spot underneath, it's hard to resist the urge to hit the fucking cat. You'd think that the cat would put two and two together, would begin to indentify bed peeing and getting the shit slapped out of her, but no dice. Cats don't learn like dogs. Are they stupid? Can they not help it? Or don't they care?

Suffice to say, I am at my WIT'S END. This cat has driven me crazy. She has totally disrupted my home life, as well as my relationship with my girlfriend. There is a chapter of the SPCA here in town. I may have to give her to them, which would likely mean euthanization, since there aren't a lot of Koreans chomping at the bit to adopt cats, especially pee-y ones. The other option is to drive her back to the alley I found her in and return her to her urban feral roots. It would be a rough existence, but she may be able to readapt to life as a streetcat. I know some people will be horrified by the fact that I'm thinking of abandoning my cat, but maybe if she pissed on your bed ten times in the last week you'd think differently. I just ain't havin' it.

But she's still recovering from her surgery, so I can't do anything with her for at least ten days. But I'm trying one last thing at home...

Cats are notorious creatures of habit. Their lives are defined by routines. Myeolchi has somehow settled into a routine of peeing on my bed, so perhaps I can break her of the habit. So what I've done is bought a collar and a leash, put them on, and tied her to my TV stand, right next to the litter box. She has about five feet of length on the line, so she gets a modicum of mobility. I've included a pillow for her bed, as well as food and water (with medicine for her recovery.). The idea is to get her back into the routine of peeing in the box. I plan on keeping her there for at least a week. At least this way I know that she can't get to my bed.

In the end, I'm pretty convinced that this is a behavioral thing on her part and it must be broken.

Any advice, cat people?

It's rainy here in the Peninsula's second city, a welcome purifying mist that takes the poo out of Pusan. Yesterday we were blanketed in smog and evil Chinese dust, so I'll take warm spring showers to give my ailing lungs a break.

I still have no computer at my place. My computer guy is utterly blowing me off, which wouldn't really bother me if he still was not in possession of my hard drives, which makes me want to drive spikes through his kneecaps. I don't like being jerked around.

As a result of no home computer, I've pretty much ceased blogging as of late, which is of course a cause of utter consternation to my hordes of adoring fans and the one or two hating droolers. I do have a computer in my work office, but I don't really like hanging out here after hours, and I'm so busy these days that I really have little time to blog about how much soju I drank on Saturday or what flavor of fire burst out of my ass this morning.

My main concern this week is my upcoming TOPIK Korean test, which I will endure this coming Sunday morning. I'm feeling that I'm getting close to possessing all of the mad knowledge needed to pass the test, though I'm still a bit deficient. So it's study study study all week long.

In other news, I may have found my new band last night. F+, my glorious punk rock cover party band, will be breaking up soon, as our drummer is returning to Canuckistan. So I'm shopping for a new project. I hit an open mike/jam last night in PNU and played with these two new American guys who rock balls and want to start a band that plays - gasp - ORIGINAL tunes. Really really evil sounding heavy ones at that, which is how all rock and roll should be played.

Who would you rather see lose in a knife fight, Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews? I'd personally opt for mutual neck stabs.

My travel story, "The Worst Motorcycle in Laos," just won a Solas Award over at Best Travel Writing, a major publisher of travel writing books. I won the Gold Certificate in the category of "Men's Travel: The best account by a man of a testosterone-fueled encounter or experience on the road."

There were a lot of categories and awards given out, but I won first place in mine and am totally stoked. The story is now being considered for publication in their annual Best Travel Writing compilation, and in any case will be published online at their site.

This story has had a lot of traction. It's alread been published at Travel Explorations and will come out soon in a new online subscription-based travel magazine, which I am actually being paid for.

Shit. This inspires me to get back on it and crank out some more writing.

I need to get a new computer, first.

I just got out of a meeting with the department chair and yesterday's thief.  The thief is indeed a student, one of my students, to be precise.  He arrived at the meeting with his head down, staring at the floor.  He delivered to us two handwritten notes of confession and contrition - one in English and one in Korean.

Here's the English version.  I'm known by "John," my middle name, at the college.

"Yesterday, I went to your room to be given sam professor's lesson print.  There were no professores, then I thought print is on the desk.  I looked at deskes accidentally, I saw Bike' key.  Ordinary time, I have thought Jone professor's Bike is great.  As soon as, I saw the key, I though I'm very wish for riding the Jone' bike.  I knew that casue big trouble.  with no scared my, my hands went to the key.  I stolen Jone's bike keys, as soon as out of room I went down riding the bike, but starting was difficult, I put the bike in an apartment parking space.  not catch sight of the bike.  Next I ran back to the college.  I repented all along from when I stolen bike key and go out of the room.  My big troubles scared me keeping up.  then I knew mistakes.  When I met Jone that stolen the bike, I couldn't tell you the fact.  keeping up I was scared when lesson next lesson.  I repented keeping up when lesson in the middle.  then I got a calling from breaking I gave the key to breaking I know my fault.  I beg forgiving to you.  stealing professor's precious bike, that I told you the lie sincerly I beg pardon.  I'm sorry you."

The verdict?

He flunks my class, his parents are contacted, and some other "punishments" to be admistered by the department.

I argued for expulsion, but the department chair insisted that it was impossible to expel the kid without pressing charges with the cops.  Having a criminal record is a huge stigma here, and the kid's clean, so I didn't want to involve the cops.

Do I buy that it was an impulsive joy ride?  Or was he stashing the bike next door to take home after class?  And why did he turn himself in?  Guilt?  Or did he learn that he was caught by CCTV?  

Who knows...

I'm just glad to have it back and happy that it's in one piece, though I still may make him toss my salad.  I could use a good twenty-minute ass eating.

I just got my bike back.  It was parked next to the school in the lot of a huge apartment complex.  An ignition key was mysteriously delivered by one of our security guys two minutes later.

The student captain for the English Department figured out who it was, evidently.  Or the thief got cold feet.  I just met with my two bosses and they said we'll continue tomorrow, though they're already pushing for leniency.

Was this just a prank?  A thief who chickened out?

What should I do?  Press charges?  Insist on him being expelled from the college?  Accept his apology, if offered, or offer him the justice of the baseball bat?

As if this spring hasn't already shat upon enough so far, someone stole my motorcycle today from the college.  It was parked and locked in front of the building where I keep an office and teach all of my classes.  I was teaching a class one floor and left my keys on my desk in my office, which I share with Sammy.   During that time someone entered my office, took the lock and ignition keys from my keyring, and made off with the bike.  I didn't discover it until later, when I went downstairs to take my bike.

It was unregistered, so the police probably can't track it down, but I just received some good news:  Supposedly the campus CCTV capture the image of a student riding the bike out of the front gate and then walking back onto campus.

He's fucking toast.

Today is April 1st - April Fool's Day - a day for jokes and pranks and merriment.  It's also my father's birthday.  He would have been 67.  And no - this isn't some April Fool's prank I'm pulling (JUST KIDDING!  HE'S ALIVE AND WELL IN CENTRAL FLORIDA!).  I wish to Hell it was.  During his illness I had repeated dreams of my father miraculously being healed - no more oxygen tanks and blood transfusions - visions of my father in a state of vigor and health, his old self, as it were, readily joking and slapping backs and filling the room with his huge laugh and sheer force of his presence.  Last night I dreamt I held him as he died - which isn't too far from the reality of it all - but in my dream it was just him and me, a complete and sad intimacy.  

Losing parents is something many of us must go through, and that's what I'm doing now.  I'm going through it.  It still seems unreal, as all death does, and I expect to ring up and get him on the phone.  But that's not going to happen now, and I constantly have to remind myself of the fact.  Meanwhile I'm back in Asia living my life much the same as I did before, despite the fact that I do feel different, that what I went through - what the whole family went through - has left me permanently changed.  

So April 1st has changed for me.  What should be the silliest day of the year takes on an unwanted gravity, but these are not the type of things that we get to ask for.  This April 1st,, today, is a day of little joy, though I can only hope that in the coming years I'll be able to find the mirth that is inherent in the day and spin a good lie or pull a good prank, only to reveal the punchline with a big booming laugh.

Because that's how dad would do it.

Happy Birthday, pops. 

Check out the latest the latest addition to the Busan blogosphere. She's been entertaining the Big Dog and me all week.

My computer guy emailed me today.  "Bad news," he said, like a solemn-faced doctor removing his bloody gloves and speaking to the family after losing a patient on the operating table.

Motherboard?  Completely fried.

Same with my graphics card.

He couldn't access data on either of my hard drives, either, and has since sent them to a recovery specialist.

The monitor is at a monitor specialist, but is likely a lost cause.

All I want, at this point, are the contents of my hard drive.  I have some writing there that I neglected to back up.  When I think of all the writing I've done over the years and lost - short stories, sketches, even a couple of one-act plays - it makes me shudder and want to launch my lunch over the keyboard.

I took the whole bohemian few possessions thing pretty seriously for much of my life, but now I wish I at least could have hung on to my old notebooks and works that I did manage to bang out.  Luckily most of the Piece of Meat stuff survived, thanks to the diligence of two of the other members.  If I were left in charge of the archives, they would have all been lost in last year's fire.

Fuck I hate colds. I am bedeviled by them. I get them often - so often, in fact, that I am sadly used to them. Functioning with a cold has just become de rigeur.  Why I am so prone to colds is of no great mystery.  We all know that I spent years battering my immune system into sand by the use of drugs made from acetone and road flares and later from alcohol.   I've also always been prone to respiratory problems, thanks to a chain-smoking mother who no doubt huffed one after another down while breastfeeding me.  Then I moved to Korea, where apart from having to breathe in carcinogenic Chinese desert factory smoke dust and diesel fumes, I regularly teach children, who sneeze and cough in my face and smear their nasal mucous all over their textbooks which I subsequently handle.  And the Continuing Education Center here at the college (where the kiddy classes take place) has NO SOAP in the bathrooms.

No soap.

The cheap baby eaters.

Despite the fact of rampant Peninsula-borne illness, I've yet to miss ONE class because of sickness in three and a half years of teaching.  I've never canceled a class or called in sick since moving here.  Not once.   I believing in sharing my misery with others.   And the Koreans wouldn't be having it, anyway.  Sickness is not considered a valid reason to miss work or class.  Rumor has it that a friend of mine once worked a language institute where a mother carried her sick kid, wearing a hospital gown, into class.  She wasn't going to let little Min Ho miss his English lesson just because of a little chemotherapy.  He was going to learn some English that day, and no childhood cancer or kidney disorder was going to stand in his way.

I actually blame this cold on my girlfriend.  She got it first.  She let me kiss her, so it's her fault.  She made me all disease-y and will be lucky I talk to her again.  At least for the next ten minutes as I bang out this missive.

The lame thing about this cold is that it has come around during one of the extremely rare periods of my life in which I'm abstaining from alcohol.  Sam and I are both in the midst of a two-week sober streak.  I actually cheated last Tuesday and supped two cans of Japanese beer in my new house to celebrate the move (quietly, with cats), but other than that I've touched nary a drop, and will continue until next Saturday.  So while I've technically failed in my endeavor (I've made no bets nor solemn promises, so I'm okay), I feel I've been successful in the overall goal, which has been to stay sober.

But what good is a nice clear and energetic sober buzz when dampened by a nasty cold?  How can I "get high on life" when I'm blowing tacky gobs of green sludge from my nose?   Yesterday was Sunday and I'm usually horribly hung over on Sundays.  If there's one day where you can guarantee a nuclear hangover for yours truly, it's Sunday. Now on Saturday night I didn't drink, despite playing a solo show at O'Briens (aaaaaaaaaah, I love cranberry juice), but on Sunday I STILL FELT LIKE SHIT because of this assey fucking cold.  Such was my Easter.

Thankyou, Jesus, for pissing on my campfire.

I have decided where I want to go during the summer break this year. I'd like to travel overland across China, starting in Shanghai, and make it all the way into Kyrgyzstan (if I survive the pollution), where I would do a mountain backpacking trek.

I've just done a little research, and it appears that it is impossible to cross from China into Kyrgyzstan by road. So I would either have to fly, or go through a part of Kazakstan, which could be interesting.

I'm just in the beginning stages of planning the trip. I have no idea what it would cost or if I can even pull it off in the time allotted, but from all reports Kyrgyzstan is gorgeous, relatively unspoiled, as well as unvisited.

Hell, I may even get kidnapped by some bearded mountain people.