Cutting Corners

Another year, another easily preventable public safety disaster in South Korea:

"Jecheon police said sprinklers in the first floor lobby, near the origin of the blaze, had been shut down, accelerating the spread of the fire. 

A fire exit on the second floor of the building, where most of the dead bodies were found, was blocked by iron shelves used to store supplies.

Eight people including Lee were legally in charge of evacuating people inside the nine-story establishment, but only a few -- excluding Lee -- carried out their duties, according to police. All eight managers safely escaped the engulfing fire, while Lee is known to have sustained minor injuries."

29 people, mostly women at a sports complex / sauna, died.

I'm about to re-sign a contract for 2018 at my college.  The thought of going back to Trumpistan still fills me with dred, but these sorts of stories happen way too often in South Korea.

Then again, I won't be shot to death.  Probably just die in a nuclear blast is all.

Good times.

True Fact

I think I make far too little of the fact that my first apartment in Korea was behind the Hooter's Restaurant in Gangnam.

Nerdmas!

Santa brought me new books!

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood, Maddaddam

Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics

Ann Powers, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music

Matt Brennan, When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle Between Jazz and Rock

Marc Woodworth, Bee Thousand (33 1/3 Series)

The Kirby book in particular is absolutely gorgeous – lots of full page plates of great images.

"all the fun we had last year"

Darlene Love, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" live

I wasn't sure if 2017 could be actually worse than 2016.  But it was!

Merry Christmas to you and yours though.

Star Wars! The Last Jedi! Spoilers!

I liked it.  It was long.  The final battle felt kind of gratuitous, especially since the whole point was that the rebels couldn't actually win.  And there's only like, 25 of them left.

But I really loved it when Luke threw away the light-saber.  I think that and the book-burning were really the key scenes -- the Jedi screwed up the universe by trying to codify and reify The Force.  (Luke and Yoda are, not surprisingly, hella down with Zen Buddhism, i.e., direct understanding versus doctrinal memorization.)

It really was Leia's movie.  I'm fine with that.

Phasma was wasted.  (She's not really dead though, is she?)

Rose was likable enough, but her kiss with Finn was forced.  But I did like her line about how fighting for what we love is better than fighting what we hate.  This killed a lot of fan-boi-boners out there, and I'm fine with that.

The casino planet was kind of stupid and too long.

The whole Luke arc from hating The Force to burning up all memory of the Jedi but ultimately sacrificing himself for the good of the rebellion by way of using The Force?  That worked for me and that, along with Leia, was really the heart of the film.

Dare I say it, but maybe this film really should have been "Episode Seven."  I mean, it really should have taken place after the original trilogy as a sort of "Goodbye To All That" of the Jedi and The Force, and stupid-ass laser swords and space magic.  Then you can introduce Rey and Finn and the “next generation” of heroes, because at the end of the day they really didn’t need to be in this one.

Again, it's Leia and Luke's movie, not Rey or Finn's.  It feels out of place as film number eight because in terms of actors and arcs, it is, completely and absolutely.

Come to think of it, I can remember a lot of things I really didn't enjoy about the film.  But then again, I remember walking out of it feeling really happy and uplifted and wanting to see number nine.

So my heart dug it, and my brain not so much in retrospect.  Make of that what you will.  Zen indeed.

K-Pop Is Horrible And So Are You For Liking It

K-pop star Kim Jong-hyun is apparently dead of suicide (singer for Shinee).  Condolences to his family and friends.

That said, if there was ever another good reason to shun the toxic mess that is K-pop and K-pop fandom, here you go.

Aesthetically, it's no secret I can't stand what's supposed to be a musical genre that's defined more by haircuts and choreography than it is actual music.

But that's beside the point.  K-pop is, objectively, a vehicle aimed at young women and men to exploit them financially and sexually.  The contracts alone, signed at an early age, basically ensure that even if you "make it" in K-pop you are basically fucked for life contractually.

No doubt this shit exists in America as well (#metoo, Kesha, R.I.P. Prince, etc.) but if you can write your own songs and hire a good lawyer, you've got a lot of leeway that Korean artists could never dream of.

So yes, get off of my lawn and all that.  K-pop and (kill me now) K-pop fandom have always struck me as bizaro-world parodies of actual music and love of music but rather than end with more of my bile, how about this -- next time you have a chance in South Korea, check out an indie band or singer at a local nightclub, somebody who isn't signed to YG or SM or didn't attend an "academy" for their art.  They're out there, some of them are really talented, and they could use your 5,000 won more than any entertainment agency here could.

It's a small start.

Delight And Instruct

This was a strange semester.  My students, for the most part, did a good job on their midterm and final.  But for the life of me, I could not get them to speak in a relatively spontaneous way in class.

I'm happy their ability level is decent, but it was like pulling teeth (moreso than usual).

Hot Alabama Take!

Defeating a pedophile bigot is awesome.  Electing a true national hero like Doug Jones, who successfully convicted the white terrorists who blew up four little black girls, is even better.

Beyond that, we win by expanding and motivating our base, not by pandering to so-called "White Working Class" (actually, White Upper Middle Class) voters.

Sorry, Bernie.

"SAVOR THIS FINE CRANBERRY LOAF"

Another year, another "Hater's Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog" by Drew Magary:

"Price: $299.95, plus $40 delivery

Copy: 'For dedicated cheese enthusiasts'

Drew says: You better be at that price, holy shit. I like cheese as much as the next heart attack candidate but when I pay $300 for six months of cheese, that better amount to 9,000 pounds of cheese. I want a truck parked outside and tubes of liquid cheddar on tap in my basement. If you’re just sending me a stupid cheese platter every four weeks, that’s not acceptable to me. That is not six TRUE months of cheese. To me, six months of cheese means I can strip naked and tape the windows shut and live off that cheese for half the year, shutting myself in like a heroin addict. I don’t give a shit if Farmer Merle aged it in coffee and beeswax. I want quantity, otherwise I consider the Boska legacy sullied."

It's nice to know what our betters will be enjoying this holiday season.  Also, sign me up for the cheese fountain.

Buying (Bought!) A Computer In South Korea

Regarding this previous post on how to buy a computer in South Korea when you're a bit wary of the meatspace "electronic malls," I found this site: englishpcsales, apparently run by an ex-pat college English teacher like myself.  Their selection isn't quite Amazon-level, but it's good, and it seems to focus on high-quality, reputable brands.

Anyhow, I've ordered a new laptop and should get in by the end of this week (3-5 day free delivery in South Korea).  The price is, unfortunately, "Korea price" but with free shipping and no tax (that is, tax already included in sales price) it's not that bad.

Using Amazon U.S. for the better sale price and sucking it up to pay the import fee was a bit tempting, but I'm more comfortable knowing I've got a Seoul to Daegu delivery in place (for an "in stock" laptop) rather than a god-knows-what delivery chain from America, and from Taiwan before that.

Honestly, there's no perfect way to buy a computer in South Korea.  You can get deals at the big electronic malls, and apparently they'll haggle with you if you can show them a better price online.  But chalk it up to a bit of fear of the language barrier and a greater fear of a hard-sell, where a guy tries to offload something lame on me.  That certainly happens in America as well but ordering online from a reputable English-language dealer in South Korea felt like the best option, even if it wasn't the cheapest.

Oh, and I paid via Korean bank direct transfer, which has become my go-to method for big purchases.  Getting a Korean credit card is a pain, so I don't have one.  Getting a Korean bank card (not only easy, but mandatory for foreigners) and doing very fast money transfers is really awesome.  The service fee is no more than you'd pay for getting cash out of an unaffiliated bank machine (maybe 1,500 won at most).

And South Korean shipping is generally quite reliable.  If my new computer has any problems I'm chalking it up to the manufacturer.  (I got a free one-year warranty, natch.)

All that's left to do now is set it up and download Civilization VI to make sure I never have a social life again.  (But a little birdie told me Civ V with expansions is better.)

Peng, Rudeboy

Pengest Munch episode 13

A nice meta-piece of food writing, Navneet Alang asks "Who Gets To Be A Restaurant Critic?" and analyzes the work of Youtube sensation Elijah Quashie -- aka, the "Chicken Connoisseur."  The interesting thing being, a dapper and pleasant Mr. Quashie only reviews London chicken shops -- pretty much the cheapest and most deeply fried eats in the country.

I'm making it all sound a lot more complicated than it really is.  Navneet gets to it:

"That, however, is just the trouble with standards: They don’t translate well across types of people, or the group divisions that help define those standards in the first place. The tension between haute cuisine and populism, a Times review and Yelp, is about competing ways of deciding what’s good — of whether chips should be fat and soft like in a chippy, or thin and crisp like bistro frites. But when the public discourse around food is so overwhelmingly dominated not just by highfalutin critics, but those who are often white, middle-income, and left-leaning, the assumed standards by which food is judged tend to reflect and replicate exactly those values. If critics these days seem to most value food which presents a vision, highlights the ingredients, or inventively mixes influences, it’s because those are the values of upwardly mobile, culturally omnivorous eaters who believe in conscious capitalism.

This is why the Chicken Connoisseur feels so pleasantly unusual. It checks off all the boxes for what modern food criticism looks like, self-reflexively paying attention to its own status as criticism, but instead of taking you to places with small plates, or omakase, takes you to chicken shops in Hackney or Tottenham or any number of other London areas that haven’t been entirely subsumed by gentrification. Those shops are, in a simple empirical sense, the kinds of places where millions of people eat, but that people concerned with food as signifier of cultural capital would rather ignore — perhaps because such places don’t represent change or novelty, the necessary fuel of the media, but also perhaps because the change they might stand for isn’t considered relevant. In putting a critical vocabulary people were already using into a polished, appealing YouTube show, however, Quashie ends up providing a model for what a food criticism that speaks to a broader, browner, less-wealthy audience might look like. It’s fast food, framed as a product of its place and time, by someone who is winning and funny in front of a camera, and who happens to be young and black."

The politics are significant, and the humor and positive energy are infectious.

First World Problems

Blogging will be a bit light-ish for the coming weeks.  I actually took some great hikes recently and snapped up a bunch of great pictures of the fall foliage, but in addition to having to enter final grades soon my home-based laptop just died.  So I get to know the joy that is shopping for a new computer in South Korea.  It's far from impossible, but the problem is that consumer electronics here are really over-priced compared to America.  (As in, nearly 200% what you'd pay in the States in many cases.)

If it was closer to August and my annual summer trip back home I could make do with my ten year-old (!) VAIO (!!) for a few months, but alas, I'm going to have to suck it up and buy one here.

Not the end of the world or anything, but I've already looked online at Korean  e-sources and the selection is absolutely horrible.  I'd be O.K. with one or two particular Samsung models, but a lot of their stuff is terrible.

Also, it's freezing.

Winter Is Coming

It's kimchi-making time in lovely Korea, and my adult students basically loaded me down with a few packages of the stuff when I left class tonight.

I do not think this is a bad thing

Just Ask Susan Sarandon To Write You A Check?

I’m guessing there’s no small number of pro-Stein / pro-Bernie / anti-HRC folks currently in graduate school for an M.A. or Ph.D.  And soon, thanks to the GOP / Trump tax plan, none of them will be able to afford their programs (tuition wavers will be taxed as regular income).

It sucks that anybody can’t go as far as they want, academically speaking, but at the same time I sort of don’t fucking care if you got on the Stein-train to crazy?  Because, like, you literally voted for this?

Anyhow, November 2018 is coming fast – if you’re a USian, register to vote and try to undo just a bit of all the damage Trump is inflicting on higher education.

Your Favorite Band Sucks. And So Does Their Name.

The AV Club has its 2017 year in band names up now, and as usual it does not disappoint.

Some personal favorites:

1) Donna Bummer

2) Abhorrent Decimation

3) The New York Review of Cocksucking

4) Hans Gruber and the Die Hards

5) Grim Streaker

6) Demonfuck

7) Shitizen

8) Steal Shit Do Drugs

9) Strawberry Fist Cake

10) Drug Pizza

Sleepy Time

The next super duper trend coming out of totally overworked South Korea?  Sleep cafes!:

"Nazzzam, a sleep cafe located in Jongno, provides a beverage and offers an hour of rest for 6,000 won. Here, the guest is given a choice whether to sleep on a bed, a sofa or a hammock. No one should worry that they won’t be able to wake up on time because the staff will wake guests up if requested.

Roh Woong-hyun, the owner of the sleep cafe in Gangnam, said that on average, approximately 50 to 60 people visit each weekday - most of whom are office workers in their 20s and 30s.

'These days, people in their 40s and 50s also visit the cafe often. Since we are open for 24 hours, workers who stay up all night stop by the cafe and teenagers that visit Seoul for concerts from other cities also visit the cafe,' said Roh. He then revealed his plan to open up another shop. The cafe first opened in September 2016."

I'm lucky to live within walking distance of my job.  And I've been told I drool in my sleep.  So I'll pass.

Red Devil Blues

With the US out of the World Cup for 2018 (the less said about it the better), I was hoping a weak-ish South Korean squad might get lucky with their own draw.  Well, here it goes -- Germany, Sweden, and Mexico.

I can't imagine them winning a single game in that group.  I have a hard time imagining them scoring a single goal.

As for predictions, it's hard to go against Germany isn't it?  Teams I'd also be willing to bet five dollars on to win it all -- France and Brazil.  Obvious picks I realize, but Belgium and Argentina never seems to put all the pieces together when needed.  I really can't stand Portugal Ronaldo, but they are coming off an impressive win in Euro 2016.

And Spain is way too old, right?