Happy New Year

Here's your good luck blood sausage for 2020, Year of the Rat (Metal).  Notice the paper cup of dirty-water fish cake juice.  If you told me this would become one of my favorite meals in South Korea I'd have called you a liar ten years ago.

I went downtown yesterday and bounced around, enjoying the Christmas lights and still not understanding the appeal of hyper-sexualized high school girls lip-sychning to K-pop.  I met some friends for beers, snacked on blood sausage (I know it doesn't look like a snack, but it only costs $2.50), and finished the night with a not that satisfying vegetable curry.  I came home and played some Judgement (by the Yakuza series makers, and it's predictably excellent) and, well, went to bed.  This is New Year's at 45, kiddies.

Happy New Year, stay safe and healthy in 2020.

"man's testicle alone"

Graphic designer Vaughan Oliver has passed at 62.  And honestly, I'd never heard his name before.  Turns out, he was a titan of 80's and 90's album design:

"His most famous 4AD designs include Doolittle and Surfer Rosa by Pixies, Treasure by Cocteau Twins and The Drift by Scott Walker; he also designed album covers for artists outside the label, such as Bush’s 1996 US No 1 album Razorblade Suitcase, and Crazy Clown Time, the 2011 album by film director David Lynch.

4AD band the Breeders wrote 'you will be missed' and posted concept artwork for their single Cannonball, featuring the image: 'Man’s testicle alone (pushed through a piece of card to ensure its loneliness)'."

 If you design the cover of Surfer Rosa you are forgiven as many Bush covers as you want.  It's science.

Of Landlines and Family Cohesion

Julia Cho makes some strong arguments for how the rise of the mobile phone has "diminished" the closeness of families:

"Over the course of the 20th century, phones grew smaller, easier to use, and therefore less mystical and remarkable in their household presence. And with the spread of cordless phones in the 1980s, calls became more private. But even then, when making a call to another household’s landline, you never knew who would pick up. For those of us who grew up with a shared family phone, calling friends usually meant first speaking with their parents, and answering calls meant speaking with any number of our parents’ acquaintances on a regular basis. With practice, I was capable of addressing everyone from a telemarketer to my mother's boss to my older brother's friend—not to mention any relative who happened to call. Beyond developing conversational skills, the family phone asked its users to be patient and participate in one another’s lives.

Cellphones, which came on the market in the ’80s and gained popularity in the ’90s, rendered all of this obsolete as they displaced landlines. When kids today call 'home,' they may actually be calling one parent and bypassing the other; friends and bosses and telemarketers (if they get through) usually reach exactly the person they are hoping to speak with. Who will be on the other end of the line is no longer a mystery."

So basically, the rise of cell phones has even diminished our social skills in general.  I can't say I disagree.

"as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in meh"

I thought The Last Jedi was pretty good.  It took chances, at least, whereas Force Awakens was just a New Hope re-do.

And there are a lot of dickless fanbois out there looking for any excuse to trash a movie featuring a woman and a black dude as heroes.

That said, Rise of Skywalker sounds like a complete mess.

Can we admit now that J. J. Abrams has always been a bit shit?  I mean, he knows how to make a movie look good but that's about it.  His Star Trek films were completely forgettable.

Anyhow, lurvely South Korea won't get the film until January 8th.  I guess I don't need to hold my breath, but I still want to see it and get on with my sad, nerdly life.

"When you’re waiting for a bus to your second job. . . ."

Amanda Mull on how "Social Media Made America Tired of Rich People," and why that's a Very Good Thing:

"At first, people responded to these kinds of social-media boasts with a mix of fascination and revulsion—plenty of clicks, likes, and guillotine jokes. But the trend persisted, and was even adopted by plenty of adults, as wealth inequality, student debt, and housing costs all soared. Such constant proof of how rich people really live made young people resent them. In a recent poll by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, a majority of people under 30 said that rich people amassed their fortunes by taking advantage of others; the poll also found that the same age group was the only one in which favorable attitudes toward socialism edged out those toward capitalism. When you’re waiting for a bus to your second job while looking at photos of teenagers taking a helicopter to the Hamptons, it might be hard to hold on to the old idea of American meritocracy, or believe that the wealthy really are better than you.

Indeed, the Democratic presidential candidates who stand furthest to the left—Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders—enjoy the largest proportion of youth support, which they gained through promises to do things such as tax the wealthy and pursue universal health care. Buttigieg and his defenders have either failed to fully detect the cultural anger toward the upper class or simply made a calculation and decided that the money is worth it, and that the power they’re tapping into isn’t going anywhere. Either way, the country’s elite will have to figure out how to address those who demand answers. The internet lifted the veil, and now everyone knows what’s behind it."

Say what you will about Marie Antoinette, but even she at least proposed an alternative, however outlandish, for bread.  With our current Silicon Valley overlords, or more traditional fail-spawn of the rich, no such luck.

"stop nudging and begin fighting"

Alex Pareene pulls no punches when it comes to the failures of American Liberalism (including Obama) over the past decade:

"The Democrats’ fecklessness, in other words, did not flourish in a partisan vacuum. It has been, at every juncture, inspired and influenced by the complete failure of the right to self-police. The American right, like the housing market and the banks and the hedge funds and the health insurers and providers, simply could not be induced to check its basest instincts in the face of an opponent that staked its entire political credibility on the promise that it could make Republicans fall in line with realigned incentives or One Weird Trick. If liberals want to get the next decade right, after the previous one in which we repeatedly failed to save the world while telling ourselves we were doing so, we will need to stop nudging and begin fighting."

Obama brought knives to gun fights for eight years as president.  Deep down, he's an obviously intelligent and well-meaning guy who thought, as many left-of-center folks still do, that our inherited "small-D" democratic institutions could (would?) save us.  I mean, if only that kindly Joe Biden becomes president or that Nice Young Man Pete Buttigieg, I'm sure Republicans will ease their stranglehold on the Senate and go back to working in good faith with Dems on a bipartisan basis, right?

And yes, the ACA was an objective, hard-fought victory.  But we either move forward to stronger forms of national healthcare, or simply lose it all the next time Republicans run the House.  There are no longer permanent victories for Democrats.  With an extremist right-wing Supreme Court, a President Warren (still my favorite, fwiw) or Sanders could simply have a relatively progressive agenda go through Congress (with 50 votes in the Senate) wiped out by judicial fiat.

Hoping For Better in 2020 And Beyond

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

I've linked the incredible last Letterman appearance version of this song plenty of times on this here blog, so as we enter 2020 let's go with Phil Spector's original.  Ms. Love's dynamic vocal range actually comes through a bit better here.  (Hell, even Bono is capable of good taste sometimes.)

Grading is finished.  In typical Because Korea style, I was not informed of a pretty significant change to our grading curve policy.  This means next week I'll be getting some angry calls from students who deserved "A"s but will end up with "B+"s.

I'm still planning on going downtown tomorrow night for Christmas Eve beers, with a tentative plan to meet up with my boss and his family for coffee.  I'll call my sister, and then my dad even though it's stressful to think he might ask me about impeachment.

Every year I usually buy myself something nice as a present and this time around, I was honestly stumped.  I'd like to think my recent interest in minimalist survival videos had something to do with it (not kidding!), and I can always use a new pair of jeans or a dress shirt.  But in terms of, say, a 250-400 dollar indulgent purchase for myself, I just wasn't feeling it.  (Last year it was a Freitag messenger bag which honestly I haven't used that much.)

I mean, the world is literally on fire.  Peace on earth and goodwill towards all but Jesus, are we really going to make it to 2030 without major civil wars, resource-based wars, and massive depopulation events, animal, human, and otherwise?  I honestly doubt it.

So Merry Christmas from South Korea, for what it's worth.  We all deserve better than the last few years, that's for damn sure.  Stay healthy, and keep fighting despite the fact that the worst is yet to come.

"not just by guns and the police, by all sorts of structural violence"

Cleveland is home to one of many urban "food deserts" throughout America.  A group of local activists are taking positive steps to change things for the better:

"'People of colour are constantly under attack, and not just by guns and the police, by all sorts of structural violence like corruption, food deserts, educational and health inequalities,' said Amanda King, founder of Shooting without Bullets, an arts and social justice organization in Cleveland.

Rid-All’s ethos is community building through education and experience: over the past decade, hundreds of Clevelanders – mostly African American men – have completed its urban farming training programmes, including most recently a group of veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Aided by an army of volunteer sustainability converts, the farm has become a community hub, hosting vegetarian food festivals, weddings, cooking classes, school visits and guided tours."

There's a lot to cheer for here, obviously.  And this was a relatively tough article for some of my students, since one of the great things about Korea is that you can find fresh, cheap produce being sold on sidewalk corners easily, or even in roving blue Bongo trucks.  (The stinky ones sell fresh seafood, even.)  The idea of a blighted neighborhood with no fresh produce options is simply unthinkable throughout the developed world, except America.

Nobody should have to struggle for access to reasonably affordable, fresh produce, especially children who are developing eating habits (good or bad) for life.

"Can't Get Started With You"

Oscar Moore, Presenting Oscar Moore

I just taught my last class of the semester.  Next week I have to enter grades into the college computer system, then work up hard-copies of those same grades Because Korea.  I'll continue teaching adult student classes through January.

I have zero plans for Christmas next week, but I'll probably make it downtown to Slightly Above Average Korean Foreigner Bar (it's actually quite good) and drink some beers.  My boss said he'd be downtown with his family (two grown sons, one of whom just completed military service) so it might be nice to bump into them.

Trump has been impeached.  I mean, it was the right and necessary thing to do but let's face it -- Republicans exist in a separate reality now, and there's no going back to pre-Trump.  (And let's be honest -- they were just as nutty and racist and anti-majoritarian back then, they just were afraid to say the quiet parts out loud.)

The new Star Wars apparently won't come to South Korea until January, which is some bullshit.

Somehow, I shall endure.

"unpredictable in so many ways as to almost constitute its own genre"

Scott Bradfield on classic American science fiction and its "wonderful mistakes":

"The science fiction novels of the 1960s—as this two-volume collection of eight very different sci-fi novels testifies—remain enjoyable because they got everything wrong. They didn’t accurately predict the future of space travel, or what a postnuclear landscape would look like, or how to end intergalactic fascism. They didn’t warn us against the roads we shouldn’t travel, since they probably suspected we were going to take those roads anyway. And they definitely didn’t teach us what a neutrino is. But what ’60s science fiction did do was establish one of the wildest, widest, most stylistically and conceptually various commercial spaces for writing (and reading) fiction in the history of fictional genres. Each book is unpredictable in so many ways as to almost constitute its own genre."

There were some really terrible arguments against the perspicacity of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale because Gilead wasn't a 100% accurate portrait of 2010's America.  Of course not, stupid, that's not and never has been how great dystopian fiction works.

Similarly, it's absurd to judge great speculative works of literature on a scale of did / did not happen.  To broadly paraphrase Samuel Delany, good science fiction is more about our present circumstances, scientific or political, than anything else.

Watchmen (The TV Series, With Spoilers!)

I tweeted out my feelings regarding the finale of Watchmen and I guess I'll replicate most of them here.

The final episode was good.  Visually, the series has been great all along.  Thematically, working race into the mythos has been rewarding, and the acting has also been good.

But the writing?  Not the dialogue, but specifically the world building and plot structure?  There are just a lot of things that didn't fly with me.

Off the top of my head, Sister Night seems way unmoved by the fact that so many of her fellow police officers were just murdered with frozen squid-creature babies.  While Doctor Trieu is problematic, why do we have to take Veidt's word that she'd not help save the world from war and global warming?  Why does it take until the last episode to remind us that we're supposed to care about Sister Night's three kids?  Why is Looking Glass still a nothingburger of a character?  Why does Laurie seem to not care that much that her dildo model / past boyfriend is being disintegrated?  In a series based on the white terrorism of the Tulsa race riots, why do we so quickly gloss over the inherent racism of a U.S. occupation of Vietnam?

I never watched Lost but I get the feeling if I had, I'd have many of the same feelings.  This show was the product of some amazing brain-storming sessions, no doubt.  There are great ideas here, but also mediocre and problematic ones.  But hey, let's throw everything together and see what sicks, coherency be damned.

In a TV world of endless seasons, and a movie world of endless sequels, you can get away with this but only for so long.  Then you get shit-canned, and all those "interesting" plot threads turn into a heap of unfulfilled pretension, overnight.

The last two episodes move the dial over into "interesting but heavily flawed, and not worthy of a second season" territory for me.  I'm glad I followed through with all nine episodes, because around episode five I honestly wondered whether I could be bothered to even finish watching the series.

Make of that what you will.

USA! USA!

The next time somebody asks "How can we possibly afford universal health-care?" or even, god forbid, free lunches for poor kids, remind them that America has occupied Afghanistan (and Iraq) for two decades now, trillions of dollars were flushed, and every bit of "progress" made was a complete fucking lie:

"What’s more is that this military-industrial-congressional complex is largely insulated from public accountability, so what’s the incentive to change course? The Pentagon’s entire budget operates in much the same way: unprecedented amounts in unnecessary appropriations resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. Yet Congress continues to throw more and more money at the defense department every year without ever requiring it to account for how it spends the money. In fact, the war in Afghanistan is small potatoes by comparison.

The bottom line is that the Afghanistan Papers clearly show that a lot of people were killed, injured and subject to years, if not lifetimes, of psychological trauma and financial hardship because a bunch of men – yes, mostly men – in Washington didn’t want to admit publicly what they knew privately all along. If we don’t start holding these people to account – and it’s not just about Afghanistan – the DC foreign policy establishment will continue to act with impunity, meaning that it’s probably more likely than not that in 50 years there’ll be another batch of 'papers' revealing once again that we’ve failed to learn obvious lessons from the past."

I'm old enough to remember when any criticism of the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were met sincere, doe-eyed questions to the extent of "Why do you hate America and our freedoms?"

Trying Not To Be A Grinch This Year

Christmas Songs, ranked:

5) "Silver Bells" but only Slayer version
4) "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) any Darlene Love version
3) "Little Drummer Boy" but only Bowie/Crosby version
2) any GG Allin song
1) "My Humps" any version

— James-A-Claus (@wetcasements) December 10, 2019

Five Great Movies From 2019! (With Spoilers!)

I'm often happily surprised by the quality of English-language movies which make it over here to lovely South Korea, but then again I do miss a few "artier" ones. (The Lighthouse, Jojo Rabbit, and The Last Black Man in San Fracisco to name three.)  Anyhow, here are five movies I saw in 2019 that I think everyone should see at least once.

5.  Midsommar -- If you witnessed a brutal ritual human sacrifice, would you run the hell away and contact the authorities, or stick around for a bit?  Midsommar asks a lot of you to "buy in" to what's going on, but throw in the Platonic ideal of a shitty boyfriend, overly competitive Ph.D. candidates who have stumbled onto the ideal dissertation material, and the disconcerting spectacle of preternaturally gorgeous Swedish people engaged in heinous depravity, and oh what a movie you've made!  One that I admire, but never want to watch again!

4.  Parasite -- Obviously this Korean film winning the Palm d'Or was a huge deal here.  It's at turns dark as hell but also hilarious, and there's a certain matter-of-fact quality that stuck with me, a sense that class-based cruelty in as inevitable as bad weather.

3.  Us -- I had some serious Twitter-fights about this one, because I think it's better than Get Out (which was truly excellent).  Granted, I'm an 80's kid who actually participated in Hands Across America, so maybe that made the difference for me.  Not sure why so many people mentioned that having an underground "mirror" all of humanity would be impossible.  Symbolism, people!  Symbolism!  And about class, not race this time.

2.  High Life -- Wiki says this came out in 2018, but it's being included on a lot of 2019 lists and that's when I saw it, so there you go.  I saw this after the kind of interesting but also very dull Ad Astra and found it a compelling "answer" of sorts to the same questions regarding the infinity of space travel versus the claustrophobic nature of human relationships, family or otherwise.  But High Life, not an easy film to watch by any means (TW for violence, rape), takes a group of condemned criminals and roils and shakes in violent, chaotic waves where the former film sees fit to give trite little reassurances.  High Life blooms into a finale that's as disturbing as it is beautiful.  This is a sci-fi classic as far as I'm concerned, up there with Annihilation in terms of movies that didn't get nearly enough credit or attention.  Also, a great soundtrack.  Robert Pattinson has a great voice.  (Not joking!)

1.  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- QT's best film, hands down, bringing together his long-time obsessions with violence, pop culture, and the act of  film-making itself into something approaching pure allegory as washed up star Leonardo diCaprio seeks, struggles, suffers, and ultimately earns a passage into the Hollywood version of salvation.  (That last few minutes of the film, getting invited "up the hill" to still-alive and still-pregant Sharon Tate's mansion?  Yup, that's Rick Dalton ascending into heaven at the invitation of Mary, mother of unborn Hollywood Hills Jesus.  Duh.)  Also, another great soundtrack.  Also, the "Easy Breezy" sequence with the female child actor, and Leo breaking into tears?  Pure genius.  The hippies tried their damnedest to kill "Old Hollywood," and at least within this powerful vision (revision?), they've failed horribly.

The Taste of Freedom

Choco Pies are ubiquitous Korean confections, consisting of a marshmallow core surrounded by cookie and chocolate.  I've always found them a bit stale-tasting, but not too bad if you dip them into hot coffee or tea.

Anyhow, they also helped win the Cold War (slight hyperbole):

"Choco Pies have been manufactured in Tver, which is north of Moscow, since 2006. Orion later opened a second factory in the country in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Both make pies, biscuits and chocolates, and Orion is expanding the Tver plant for the European market.

The company sold 700 million Choco Pies in Russia in 2017, and its sales there were 60.6 billion won ($54 million) in 2019 through October.

The arrival of Choco Pies coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The country lacked a developed food sector, and the snack was one of the foreign products that met the pent-up demand following 70 years of communism.

Localized marketing is seen as a major contributor to the lasting popularity of Choco Pies in Russia."

Of course, Choco Pies got nothing on the story of Gorbachev and Pizza Hut.  And nice to think of them as "Korean Burgers," as Russians apparently do.

Impeach, Of Course

Obviously the Senate isn't going to turn against Trump.  But I see two tactical things that are definite victories for Dems lately.

One is that, while Cheeto Hitler is going to again invite Russian help to rat-fuck 2020, at least it's more or less an open secret now.  Facebook is still right-wing poison, but at least nobody will be shocked -- shocked! -- that Mark Zuckerberg is a Trump supporter (since it's better for his bottom line).  And Twitter will continue to Twitter, too, but I'd like to think the law of diminishing returns will be in effect.

Second, the Dems had to move forward with this.  To do otherwise (and remember it took longer for Pelosi to get to this point than a lot of us wanted) would be to surrender.  And if there's any lesson to be drawn from the last three years, it's that you fight a bully -- you punch back as hard as possible -- you never show weakness.

I'm still thinking it's 50/50.  And it's really not even worth guessing what's next until Iowa and New Hanpshire, other than that Buttigieg is pretty much all of Obama's worst neoliberal impulses with none of the inspirational upside, Biden is too old and creepy, and Sanders will never motivate non-whites in the numbers necessary to get him across the line.

I'm still with Warren, fwiw, and hoping her ground-game will help her surprise us all in two months.

At the very least we'll have a bit of clarity, and that's got to count for something.

The Future Is Here, And It's Buggy As Hell

The first fully automated convenience store has opened up near Seoul.  The article refers to it as an "A.I." store, which is a popular term in Korea but also over-used.  (The store can have a Turing-level conversation with me?)  Anyhow, it's going about as well as you'd expect:

"AI is changing the landscape of the retail industry and consumer behavior, but the technology is not perfect. To enter this store in the first place, a customer must sync a credit card or a debit card to the SSG Pay app and get a QR code.

However, on the day of the visit, a QR code couldn’t be generated on the reporter’s iPhone for an unknown reason. We could finally enter the store using the Shinsegae I&C PR manager’s QR code on her smartphone.

According to Shinsegae I&C, these limitations will be overcome after AI sharpens its technology over time through deep learning.

The AI failed a number of stress tests. It was unable to conduct a proper checkout twice when it was given eight unusual checkout situations. In one case, the reporter took a sip of water from a bottle and left it in the store. No charge was registered."

Obviously the bugs will be worked out, and in a country with many avid early adopters this is probably what the future looks like -- no cashier, no cash stores where angry machines will beep at you and then lock you in just because fuck you.

Good times.

(Is it clear I'm really not a fan of any of this dehumanizing, anti-labor bullshit?)

Gold Spoons, Dirt Spoons

In South Korea, "Gold Spoons" are what we Americans would call "Silver Spoons," and "Dirt Spoons" mean "no spoon at all."  Anyhow, younger Koreans are fed up with a society where neither right-wing nor left-wing politicians are interested in helping them achieve a better future:

"'If I try hard enough and get a good job, will I ever be able to afford a house?' said the 25-year-old, who lives in his small, cluttered room where clothes were piled on the bed. 'Will I ever be able to narrow the gap that’s already so big?'

The concept of dirt spoons and gold spoons, as those from better-off families are known, have been around for many years but exploded onto the political scene in recent years, undercutting support for liberal President Moon Jae-in.

Moon came to power in 2017 on a platform of social and economic justice. Yet halfway through his five-year term, he has little progress to show the country’s youth who have borne the brunt of deepening inequality."

Is there any wealthy country these days where people are generally optimistic about their economic futures?  I can't think of one.  Something something "lives of quiet desperation" something.

Thanks, Capitalism!

"Honey don't you know we too will pulse in through this light"

Hiatus Kaiyote, "Nakamarra"

As my body and mind sink further into decrepitude I guess you could describe my musical tastes these days as "pleasant-sounding but slightly subversive shit."  Also, this song is gorgeous.

Happy Thanksgiving from sunny and slightly cool and always lurvely Daegu.  I've got a few more weeks of college teaching before the final, and next week I'll begin a new session with my adult students.  I'm about to finish N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series and I'll probably say a little something about it soon.  (Beyond, it's pretty good stuff.)  I'm officially no longer following football, but my sister says I have to root for the Saints and I mean, how can I say no to that?

For you Americans, enjoy the long weekend.  I'm sure Trump will do at least five different things to spoil it but hey, nobody said Late Capitalism would be easy.

"a moody teenager hilariously incapable of remembering or articulating why he’s moody"

Phil Christman on the importance of -- the joys of -- bad movies:

"My most memorable experiences of art include A Brighter Summer Day, Jules and Jim, Only Angels Have Wings. They also include Robot Monster, Glen or Glenda?, Godzilla vs. Megalon. The love of bad movies has made me both more observant, and more tolerant, of the little inadvertencies that crop up even in the greatest works. If, as a child, I loved Hitchcock’s Notorious because it was an exciting adventure story, a lifetime of watching incoherent, ideologically-at-war-with-themselves movies has made me appreciate the way Notorious is also far too sunken in its own weirdness to notice how conflicted it is about women.

My father and I still regularly talk about bad movies we’ve seen. During our Sunday phone calls, when things turn contentious, our mutual interest in bad cinema serves as a hedge against topics we’re better off not discussing, chiefly politics. Regarding which: I am disappointed in him, he is disappointed in me. To put it this way is to frame the thing liberally, as though I were to say, We are the same on the inside, but kept apart by meaningless ideological preferences. But I don’t want to frame the thing liberally. I believe that I am right to be a leftist and that he is wrong to be a conservative. I have worked very hard, as has he, trying to be right about things. I learned from him that ideas matter, that it’s worth trying hard to be right about them. But one of the ideas that I believe matters, one of the things I believe I am right about, is that the pain he has when we fight is morally significant, not only to me, because he is my dad, but in some abstract moral sense, because he is a person. And I know from bitter experience that I cannot bend him to the left, which means that when we discuss politics we both suffer pointlessly."

Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

"the fact that they are getting improper help makes me angry"

Moon Jae-in, the liberal South Korean president who replaced the conservative (and impeached) Park Geun-hye, is having a hard time keeping his election promise to make it easier for younger Koreans to find quality full-time jobs:

"I can’t complain that we have different starting lines,” said Kim Jae-hoon, 26, who also lives in a goshi-won [short-term rental apartment] cubicle.

'But it makes me angry that there are people who are getting help improperly. It’s OK that someone was studying when I had to be working, but the fact that they are getting improper help makes me angry.'

Kim works as a part-time waiter at a bar near his school and gets by on 400,000 won a month for rent, food and allowances.

Most meals are 'cup rice' he prepares in the shared kitchen, menial fare of rice and basic toppings - eggs, half an onion and sauce.

Young, low-income voters like Kim have deserted Moon in record numbers."

It's always problematic to draw parallels between Korean and U.S. politics but I'd only add that as an Elizabeth Warren / Kamala Harris supporter, the fact is that without taking back the Senate almost nothing of true substance can occur with a "Moscow Mitch" still in charge.

The point being, politics is all about making promises, but they can bite you in the ass even if you do manage to win.

Deep Political Thoughts, On The Internet Of Course

the one thing Capitalism is really good at is making you and everybody around you as fucking miserable as possible

— Mellowy Fruitful Autumn James (@wetcasements) November 26, 2019

"pay so much for a little bit of pleasure"

Could a sin tax on sugar, like the ones levied on alcohol and tobacco, prevent heart disease and childhood obesity?  Or is it ridiculous to compare candy to smokes and booze?  Norway and Sweden are engaged in a min-trade war to find out:

"'A lot of products are cheaper in Sweden than in Norway,' Bergland said. 'Alcohol, tobacco, plenty of stuff. Cross-border shopping has happened for decades. But candy and soft drinks are a lot cheaper. A whole, whole lot cheaper.'

Matilda Nordholm, 24, who drove to Långflon, two hours from her home near Lillehammer, for her most recent sugar fix, spending about £150 – 'Not all for me, though' – was critical.

'It’s not right, what these products cost in Norway,' she said. 'It’s not normal, and every year it seems the price goes up again, and there’s more tax. People here are more and more unhappy they have to pay so much for a little bit of pleasure.'”

It's hard to imagine there was a time when sugar was actually quite expensive.

Three Simple Truisms Regarding American Politics And Gender

One:

We exist in a media environment where obviously intelligent and accomplished women like Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton before them are to be faulted for being "too shrill," "too smart," or even (dear fucking god) "too prepared."

Meanwhile, obviously near-senile men like Joe Biden can make gaffe after gaffe and remain "likable" and "relate-able."  Smart but objectively less experienced men like Buttigieg don't even have to take the same "approach-able, not a total bitch" test that women do.  They pass automatically, because the son of academics is somehow always, at all times more "down to earth" than a woman who grew up actually working class and entirely self-made.

And really, let's revel in the pure wisdom of our David Gergens -- to dare to be a smart women in America ca. 2019, to be "too prepared" so to speak, is to really mean you're a shrill "hectoring" bitch who needs to shut about it and everything else.

Two:

And of course, we Democrats must always bend our ear to Republican men (well, Independent since 2017) telling us who our best bets are against Cheeto Hitler.  Oh, and Megan McCain too of course, because the Princess of Arizona will not be ignored!

It may come as a shock that the inverse of this -- Republicans must always listen to advice from Democrats -- is not ever true !  Never, ever!  (To the fainting couch!)

Three:

There aren't enough vomit bags and / or bottles of Jameson for me to make it another 12 months.

"mass panic there for a good hour and a half"

At Syracuse University, students are literally fleeing due to a toxic combination of racism and gun-nuttery:

"'In those two to three minutes, students had already gotten a hold of it,' Hatchett said. 'We started getting panicked messages from students, who again, want to know, "Are we on lockdown?" "Do we need to evacuate?" "I called my mom, she wants me to get on a flight, like, right away."' So it was almost mass panic there for a good hour and a half before we finally figured out that everything was calm and safe.

'There wasn’t any concern that there was an active shooter in the building, but there was a concern that it would be happening sometime today. At that point, a lot of people just wanted to get as far away from here as they could.'"

This is a quality university in what is usually known as a fairly safe area.  This is life in America ca. 2019, where a mix of racism and racist ideology masquerading as "muh free speech" and the ability of anyone, regardless of criminal or psychological background, to buy a military-grade assault weapon on a whim, has allowed its citizens to have such unprecedented "freedoms" and "rights."  (To be shot in the face by an angry white guy, perhaps.)

Other countries simply tremble in envy of us, I'm sure of it.

Political Thoughts, On The Internet

becoming pretty clear America was a huge mistake...

— Mellowy Fruitful Autumn James (@wetcasements) November 20, 2019

Animal Welfare In South Korea Is (Hopefully) A Growing Trend

I'll be blunt -- one of the worst things about living in Korea is the lack of awareness surrounding issues of animal welfare.  Obviously debates about dog meat are a thing (IMO it's a bad thing, but relatively minor compared to large-scale factory farming in America) but I'm talking more about the common treatment of pets.  I've seen dogs kept on extremely short leashes for entire weekends, all alone.  I've seen poodles tied by the collar to the door handles of chic cafes, having to stand on their toes just to breathe properly.  And if you think that's bad for the puppers, stray cats are treated with the same level of contempt as rodents here.

Anyhow, things might be changing for the better as "Animal Rights" are a growing concern, especially with younger South Koreans:

"In many cases, the organizations or police are sent away from the abusers’ homes as they remain adamant, arguing for the ownership of their pets. But the organizations persist until they relent.

'Taeyangi’s owner was indignant because he really didn’t think there was anything wrong with abusing his dog, as it is his property,' said Ahn. 'So we had to guide him along a step-by-step process to rationally convince him that what he did was wrong. I asked him, "If I slap you on the face, would that be right? and he said No." So I told him that’s basically what he did to his dog, and that he abused Taeyangi.'

'The number of tips about animal violence are increasing day by day,' said Ahn. 'Based on our experience, the reason behind owners abusing their animals lies in the fact that they resolve their rage upon a weaker being, not because they hate animals.'

The animal rights organizations are all calling for one thing: stricter enforcement of the legal punishments for animal abuse so that abusers will face a degree of punishment that correlates to the level of their cruelty. Moreover, they want the law to become stricter so that people will recognize animals as living beings instead of as their property."

Obviously, this is a trend that I can only hope will continue to grow.

Yawn

Four episodes into a nine episode run, and I think I'm done with Watchmen.  Using the Tulsa white supremacy riots of 1921 as a backdrop offered an intriguing start, but it's been downhill since then.

Glancing around at various sci-fi review outlets I see that I'm in a distinct minority.  What they see as a slow and thoughtful reveal of facts just seems pretentious and dull to me.

More bluntly, I just don't like any of these people.  I don't understand what motivates any of them.  (Even as horrible as Rorscach and Ozymandias were in the comic book, you can at least understand why they do what they do.)

And given that we're almost at the halfway mark, it doesn't help that we're still introducing main characters.

Boo.

New Books!

New end-of-year books!

N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

Trina Robbins, Last Girl Standing

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Wild Shore

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt

This was my first time with Book Depository, and they're fine.  I still do miss What The Book? if only because they were a few weeks faster but something about beggars and choosers.

"it's more like people just don't know what it is"

Can a highly traditional and orderly society like South Korea's develop a thriving graffitti / street art culture?  Maybe!  To wit:

"'Honestly, graffiti is just as much of a part of subculture in Korea as it is in other countries, and there are people who don’t like it in other countries too,' said Jay Flow. 'But in Korea, it’s more like people just don’t know what it is. We’re not welcome, and it’s hard. I keep doing it to make an appeal to Korean society, as if we’re having a go at people.'

Jay Flow started spray painting on walls in 2001, when graffiti was not well known in Korea, while Royyal Dog rose to stardom in the United States in 2016 and is known for adding a unique Korean touch to his works. The two close friends collaborated on the main piece of this exhibition, a mural of singer Billie Eilish and Jay Flow’s signature shark humans."

I mean, if you've got Billie Eilish in your corner you're off to a good start.

"some of us grow up instead to be Bari Weiss"

Alex Pareene on the death of "rude media," (e.g., Gawker, Deadspin) because being rude means being honest about the overpaid cretins who run the world:

"But writers whose insufficient deference to power rendered them unemployable by The New York Times still had, until recently, hope of finding employment elsewhere. When I was growing up, every major American metro area had both a polite press—the local dailies—and a rude one: the alt-weeklies. The alt-weeklies were funded by advertisers the family-friendly media wanted nothing to do with. Craigslist put a large dent in that revenue (and the government has now effectively banned much of it), and Facebook vacuumed up the rest of it, leading to the alternative press’ rapid decline. But it was not merely the market speaking: In the end, many of these publications were also simply killed by rich idiot owners or corporations that routinely purchase publications and ruin them out of both greed and incompetence. And so we (mostly) don’t have alt-weeklies anymore.

Still, we thought as we watched this process, it was fine, because, after all, we had blogs! Blogs were a refreshing novelty in the rapidly constricting world of print because they were allowed to be rude. This made many people—primarily people whose most consistent belief is that they are owed deference because of their social or professional status—outraged. David Denby, America’s worst living film critic, actually wrote a book about how much he detested this rhetorical mode he couldn’t even accurately describe."

I'll be the 1,000th person to point out the obvious as well -- Deadspin was actually profitable, but got killed by suits who had no idea that plenty of sports fans actually care about the larger world as well, and happen to vote for Democrats.  But he's right that the larger problem is that calls for "civility" have really come to mean "never criticize the powerful or the privileged."

Also, this kills:

"Rudeness is not merely a tone. It is an attitude. The defining quality of rude media is skepticism about power, and a refusal to respect the niceties that power depends on to disguise itself and maintain its dominance. It’s often hard for me to imagine that anyone can grow up in this era and not end up doubting the competence and motives of nearly everyone in charge of nearly every American institution, but some of us grow up instead to be Bari Weiss."

Enough said.

Vegan Doshirak!

I know, it's a terrible picture.  I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to get decent low-light pictures on my new (used) smartphone.

One of the questions I ask during my first week of classes, our Introductions unit, is what my students' favorite foods are.  A common answer is "meat."  Then I explain that "meat" sounds strange in English, like you're a dinosaur.  You should instead say "beef" or "steak" or "pork."

The point is, Koreans love meat.  Being a vegetarian or (god forbid) a vegan here is pretty much impossible unless you're willing to do all of your cooking at home.

So anyhow, I'd heard that meatless products were making inroads into the country, and last night after work I picked up my first vegan box-lunch.  (Koreans call them "doshirak," ready-made convenience store meals basically.)

And guess what?  It was pretty good.

Here we have some chunked up roasted squash, and then penne pasta with a "bean meat" (콩 고기) meatless flourish.

I thought it tasted fine cold, but 30 or 40 seconds in the microwave would also be an option.

This cost me three bucks and, to cut to the chase, I'd eat it again.  Not bad at all, and I'm curious to see if companies are actually going to make profits in this notoriously meat-centric country.

"adjusting to each other’s lagom, while using nunchi"

An interview with the Swedish ambassador to South Korea, and the similarities between the two cultures:

"Lagom, a way of striving for balance, is a concept that many Swedes apply in their daily lives without even thinking about it - it could be during their dinner conversations, in the way they consume and design products or even in the way of diplomacy.

'Not the middle. Not average. Not complacency. Just right,” wrote Lola Akinmade Akerstrom in her book, 'Lagom: The Swedish Secret of Living Well' (2017).

Nunchi is the Korean art of listening to and gauging other people in social settings that makes one a master of unspoken communications.

Korea and Sweden celebrated 60 years of their diplomatic ties this year. The ties have never been stronger, Hallgren said, and that may be attributed to the fact that many Koreans and Swedes grow up adjusting to each other’s lagom, while using nunchi."

My Korean adult students told me that nunchi is usually a good thing, but can also be a passive, shut-up when elders or seniors are talking, thing.

Watchmen, So Far -- With Spoilers

I'm absolutely flummoxed by the new Watchmen series.

It had an intriguing start, setting up a universe where the effects of the Tulsa white terrorism riots of 1921 would reckon with the events of the Watchmen comic series (1985).  Episode two was kind of dull.  Then episode three brings back a major character from the comic with little to no explanation of what's been going on for the past 35 years, other than that she's an ex-superhero who hates superheroes (or, properly, "vigilantes.")

I don't expect a good series to hold your hand at every turn, but I found myself scratching my head in sympathy for anybody who hasn't recently read the comic.  And no, seeing the Zak Snyder film (2009) only goes so far, because in the TV universe the "canon" ending has occurred, not the Snyder plot change.  (Spoiler: the comic ending saw the US and USSR reconcile, but only after the horrific death of half of New York City, as opposed to Snyder's "Doctor Manhattan is gonna kill us all we must be friends now!")

So I'll watch the rest.  I think.  I don't know.  The latest episode swayed quickly between pretentious and tedious.  It's hard to care about these characters when the whole series so far is premised on the fact that you've "done your homework," so to speak.

That's annoying.

And the big blue dildo thing wasn't clever, it was very stupid.  Silk Specter would have moved on by now.

What's In A Flag?

With the Tokyo Olympics coming up in the summer of 2020, passions are high regarding a penchant for some Japanese people to continue waving the Korean Imperial ("Rising Sun") flag:

"Japanese athletes and fans regularly sport their national flag – a red ball centred on white. The rising sun symbol is different, however. A red ball with 16 red rays, it is sometimes used by companies in advertisements, yet it is technically a military flag: from 1870 until the end of the second world war, it was imperial Japan’s war flag. Since 1954, a renewed version of the rising sun has been the banner of the Japanese navy, known as the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force.

South Korea, which was under Japanese rule from 1910 until 1945, has asked Japan to ban the flag from Olympic stands next year. Tokyo has so far refused, explaining that the flag is 'widely used in Japan' and is 'not considered a political statement'. But it is not Japan’s national flag, so the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has the authority to exclude it from the Tokyo Games. The leaders of the IOC, together with athletes and their supporters from around the world, should take note of the flag’s history, and how it is, in fact, used to make a particular political statement in Japan today.

For the Japanese right, flying the rising sun flag is part of a collective effort to cleanse the history of imperial Japan’s aggression during the second world war. It appears in the promotional literature and on the websites of groups such as the Zaitokukai, whose members march with signs reading, 'Koreans should be massacred!', and the Nippon Kaigi, which counts the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, among its members, and has described the second world war in Asia as a 'holy war of liberation'."

The article touches on the fact that South Korea should hardly be alone in being angry at Japan, considering the damage wrought against pretty much all of Asia (even Australia) during before and during World War II.

Second, if you tried waving a Nazi flag in Germany today you'd be arrested.  The same thing should go for waving the Rising Sun in Japan, or the Confederate flag in America.

Your hateful ideology lost.  Get over it.

"'discovered' by adventuresome white diners"

"Chinese restaurants changed or evolved over time.  Chinese immigrants from Guangdong province started 'chow chows' around the mid-1800s to serve familiar Cantonese dishes that fit the tastes of their countrymen.  These restaurants were located in 'Chinatowns' near large populations of Chinese, their primary source of customers.  They held limited appeal to most non-Chinese when they first appeared.

In the transition to the industrialized society of the last half of the 19th century, a restaurant industry grew rapidly as more people lived in cities than in rural areas.  However, most whites did not patronize Chinese cafes frequently, if at all.  They generally viewed foreign foods as strange and odd.  Few had any interest in eating dishes served by Chinese cafes and restaurants.

However, from the late 1890s to the early 1900s, a surprising reversal of fortune took place for Chinese restaurants. . . .  Even with little or no promotion by the Chinese, their cafes were 'discovered' by adventuresome white diners and the ensuing publicity widened their popularity among non-Chinese.  Prejudices against Chinese immigrants were still strong, but their cuisine was gaining favor.  Restaurants soon became one of the primary forms of self-employment among Chinese.  In Chinatowns, newer, larger, and more elegantly decorated dining facilities were built to attract and accommodate the growing demand.  Partnerships involving both active and silent investors raised capital for the expensive startup costs of remodeling and refurbishing existing facilities or building new ones and for the expenses of hiring numerous cooks, waiters, kitchen helpers, and other staff."

-- John Jung, Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

As an American in South Korea I definitely get strong hunger pangs or cravings once in a while for things you might expect -- stinky cheeses (Korea only does sliced American singles), great pizza (you can find good pizza here, but never great), and purely local memory-foods like Maryland-style boiled blue crabs, served with drawn butter and cans of cold beer, never bottles or pitchers.  I miss American style barbecues as well, either Carolina or Texas versions.  (But if I could only eat Korean style barbecues the rest of my life I'd still die pretty happy.)

What's strange to me are my monthly or so craving for fake-ass, deeply inauthentic Chinese-American food.  I'm talking chicken wings atop greasy fried rice, beef over egg noodles, or oily egg rolls that have been sitting under a heat lamp for half-a-day too long, lathered in packets of hot mustard and duck sauce.

Brains and stomachs and human memories are curious things.

Oh, and on certain weekend mornings I'd probably murder your grandma for a good bagel with cream cheese and unctuous lox.  That's just a complete non-starter here.

Anyhow, Sweet and Sour was a surprisingly good read.

Congrats

I think it's clear by now I'm a conflicted Orioles fan, but goddammit if the Nationals didn't fight the fuck back every step of the way.

Congrats DC!#WorldSeries

— (I Ain't Afraid of No) James (@wetcasements) October 31, 2019

"a real ajumma"

An interview with Korean-American internet sensation Maangchi:

"For years, fans have been tuning in for her. She’s a comforting presence in her consistency, giving viewers the things they know to expect from a Maangchi video: her signature greeting, 'Hello, everybody!' in her thick, endearing Korean accent. Glitzy outfits, complete with elaborate headpieces. The occasional text that pops up on-screen to give personalities to the ingredients she cooks with. ('Oh, we are good looking anchovies! :)') But most importantly, it’s the fact that she’s an authority figure on Korean cooking — a real ajumma, a term of affection for middle-aged Korean aunties — that makes her so appealing.

It’s a relief when I meet Maangchi at a Starbucks in Manhattan and discover that her real-life persona is pretty much exactly as we see her on the internet. She walked in wearing white platform stiletto heels, and after giving me a warm hug, she ordered a caramel Frappuccino with whipped cream. When her drink came out, I regretted not living with the same vigor for life, looking pitifully at my watery iced latte."

Her videos are cute and funny even though I've never cooked (or plan to cook) a Korean dish in my life.  Also noteworthy that her name (Korean word for "hammer") comes from her days as an obsessive City of Heroes player.

Poor Little Dictator...

Take your pick with regards to Cheeto Hitler getting booed at a World Series game in DC.  Let's go with Roy Edroso for now though.  Or Matt Ford.

I'm from the DC area.  And yeah, it skews liberal but not just because it's a historically black city.  It's also because it's filled with Federal workers, and Trump has done nothing but shit on them (not just the "Deep State" FBI and CIA) since he came into office.

Of course he was going to get booed, and the sheer hubris of thinking his one and only foreign policy success ever would change that is, like everything about him, laughable.

And I'm still rooting against my better senses for the Nats, but it looks like the Astros and their shit-headed management have this thing won.

Halloween Growth

When I came to Korea 10 years ago Halloween parties were only to be found in 1) foreigner bars and 2) kindie hagwon, or private academies catering to kindergarten and elementary students.

Things have changed, I guess.  Even in this little suburb of northern Daegu I've noticed a few Korean bars, specifically the bars catering to my college students, setting up for Halloween parties.  (I know for a fact foreigners don't go to the places in my neighborhood, because other than my foreigner co-worker there aren't any.)

There's even one place, a fried chicken joint, that closed down recently.  It was strange to see it hadn't transmogrified into a noodle restaurant or coffee shop or even (this being Korea) a new fried chicken joint.  In fact, it's been gutted and is being turned into some kind of Halloween haunted house with stupidly expensive tickets (like 40 bucks or so).  Not that I'm going, but I'll be disappointed if it's not all-you-can-drink at least.

So I think it's fair to say Halloween has "made it" as an adopted Korean holiday.  (If you're wondering, Christmas is actually an official Korean holiday, with a real day off and all that.)

The Debate Over High / Low Culture In Movies Is Kind Of Stupid But Also Kind Of Important

There's far more stupid in the world today than necessary, so can we put the whole "Marvel and Star Wars movies aren't really movies" thing to bed?

Yes, they are trite and formulaic.  But there is world enough and time to appreciate "easy" movies as well as, say, the latest Yorgos Lanthimos or Claire Denis.

Same thing for books.  Or music.

I think what's really going on behind these arguments (remember Roger Ebert and video games?) is just territorial marking.  And it's mostly harmless.  Stay in your lane, nerds, and don't taint our supposedly superior cultural norms and forms.

It is elitist as hell to say only critically accepted directors (almost entirely white men) are allowed to create something called "art," and I'm fine with those arguments getting Twitter-mobbed by the nerdly, neck-bearded masses.  (I have little bad to say about Scorsese other than he's slightly over-rated but woo-boy, Coppola has made some genuine crap in his career.  I'll take B-level Marvel over Jack any day.)

At the same time, so much nerd and sci-fi culture has been bought up by Disney now that what used to be healthy, enthusiastic, and sometimes subversive fandom is now basically rooting for Mega-Corporations.  And these corporations can never be criticized for putting out tepid, obviously soul-less shit, but god forbid they write in a chick or a black dude or a gay couple.

Blindly self-identifying with corporations is always dangerous, even if they happen to put out the more easily digestible comfort culture that you love.  But not being willing to recognize that nerd shit has broken through to a wider audience of people who don't always look like you, who identify differently than you, is also dangerously stupid.

And to bitch and moan otherwise makes you look like the entitled bigot you may have been all along, not so much the misunderstood cultural outsider you wish you still were and can never be again.

Why Bother?

It takes a lot for me, a life-long Orioles fan (stop laughing) to root for the Nationals in this World Series.  But lo and behold, an overpaid douche-bro sexual violence apologist managed to do the trick!

Go Nats!

(Ugh.  Why do I bother with sports at all?)

"a badge of professional failure"

Adriana Gomez-Weston is a published writer trying to make it in Hollywood.  She also works at McDonald's to support herself.  Why does this bother, if not infuriate, so many of her fellow Americans?  Because:

"Unfortunately, the fast-food job has been pigeonholed as a badge of professional failure. Social media has further pushed this narrative through memes, viral videos and a culture of instant gratification and clout-chasing. Fast-food workers aren’t harming anyone, and we’re just doing our jobs. What’s so wrong with that? Working a fast-food job to make a living isn’t something to be ashamed of, but to many people, it is. To some, fast-food work is a last resort and implies that I didn’t make the right decisions in life. Due to the assumptions, it’s easy to not think about the people behind the counters. What people don’t know is that I went to college, left my hometown and decided to pursue my dreams in the entertainment industry. So riddle me this, what if you made all the right choices, but still don’t end up exactly where you want to be and work in fast food for stable income while you are still pursuing your passion?

As a society, we love to demand goods and services, especially greasy, unhealthy food. Yet we make fun of the people delivering those things. In the past, the fast-food job was seen as a launching pad to the American dream. These restaurants were havens for character-building and for social mobility. In some ways, they still are, but not like they used to be. The likes of Jeff Bezos, Jay Leno, Keenen Ivory Wayans and Lin-Manuel Miranda, among many others, worked at McDonald’s before becoming wildly successful."

One of the greatest con jobs ever pulled was convincing the majority of Americans that class doesn't matter, not in the land of bootstraps, grit, gumption, and a laughably inadequate minimum wage.

The fact is, Americans are some of the biggest class snobs on the face of the earth.  Most Republicans hate people who actually work for a living.  And at the end of the day, work is work and there is no such think as "unskilled" labor.

Also, if you can't leave a good tip don't go out to eat.

Always Be Hating

Halloween is stupid and over-rated and if you're over 13 you shouldn't participate.#discuss#constroversialtweet

— (I Ain't Afraid of No) James (@wetcasements) October 22, 2019

"failing upwards"

Nick Cohen on what links the sheer incompetence of men (almost always men, white men) like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump as they drag us all down to a hell of their own making:

"Johnson’s career of failing upwards since he left Eton illustrates that overconfidence is class determined. In politics and so many other British institutions, you see mediocrities take jobs for which they are not remotely qualified, because wealthy families and a private education have emboldened them.

In all spheres, catastrophic men and women are united by an imperviousness to the suffering they cause. Even on the most optimistic assumptions, UK in a Changing Europe found Johnson’s 'deal' will take £16bn from already dangerously underfunded public services and all who depend on them. (The pessimists believe £49bn will go.) The PM’s lack of concern for them is typical. Dixon described the siege of Kut in 1915 in what is now Iraq: an operation that led to 30,000 British and Indian army casualties. It distinguished itself, even in the First World War, for having no military purpose whatsoever."

Arguably, England is screwed even worse than America right now, because Brexit will last for generations.  Not that Trumpism is going away any time soon (there is no difference between Trumpism and Republican ideology), but at least we can start to turn things around next year, given some exceptional luck in the polls.

Swimmingly

Apparently What The Book? (I know, I know) has shut down -- the best resource for English-language books in South Korea.  So, I just gave Book Depository a shot for the first time.  They offer free delivery to Korea, so we'll see how it goes.  I'm ordering paperbacks, and nothing too obscure (N. K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson), so it should go swimmingly.

Clowns

BernieBros remain adorable.

An old man's recent heart attack doesn't matter!

Me: So let's vote for Kamala instead?

BernieBro: Hey, whoa, slow down there fella....

— (I Ain't Afraid of No) James (@wetcasements) October 16, 2019

Lunchy Munchy

I love Korean food, and I've been lucky to experience almost all of it in 10 years in lurvely Daegu.  But I'm also fascinated by Korean food culture -- the tendency to eat together, a drinking culture where food is always consumed with alcohol, the (too?) noisy bustle of almost all Korean restaurants.

So this a is a roundabout way of getting to lunch culture in Norway, via Vox:

"'Norway doesn’t have a warm lunch tradition,' explains Andreas Viestad, food writer and host of the public television series New Scandinavian Cooking. With the exception of employees at some large companies that offer hot lunches, he adds, traditionally everyone from the lowest-level worker to upper management would eat their own individually wrapped, brought-from-home matpakke.

So what exactly is it? To borrow from the architect Louis Sullivan, matpakke’s form follows its function: The point of these open-faced sandwiches is to provide a quick, easy, somewhat nutritious lunch-time meal that provides sustenance without leaving you too full. They typically consist of two or three slices of bread, smeared lightly with butter, each topped with a single slice of cheese or meat, or perhaps a thin layer of jam, liver paste, or tubed caviar.

And that’s ... basically it."

Not having a "warm lunch tradition" jumped out at me, because Korea has got to be the Disney World of "warm lunches."  While I have lunch with my boss every Monday at any number of local restaurants, for the rest of the week I tend to do the "American thing" of bringing my lunch to work.  (Usually a sandwich and some fruit, and a can of coffee or some juice, or even some convenience store sushi, and maybe a cookie if I'm feeling like Kanye.)

My boss, Doctor Kim, thinks I'm insane for doing this.  No, really -- the expression on his face is one of pure disgust if he catches me eating lunch at my desk.

And he's right to do so, in a lot of ways.  I've mentioned before that South Korea is one of those rare countries where it's actually cheaper to eat at restaurants than it is to cook at home.  For the equivalent of five to six dollars (well, maybe seven to eight in Seoul) you can eat a huge, relatively "from scratch" meal that will last you most of the day.  Play your cards right, and you can find "self service" or "refill" places with unlimited rice, kimchi, and pickles if you're really trying to stretch your won.

The point being, there's no need for frugal, American-style bag lunches here because for the same cost as a sandwich and chips and a drink, you can sit down and eat a real meal -- and not just fast food, mind you.  (Strangely enough, a Burger King or McDonald's set menu order can run for more than a local mom-and-pop, non-chain joint.)

So anyways, the next time my boss catches me munching a sandwich at my desk I'll let him know about Norway, and how really my lunch is an extravagantly fancy feast compared to what our Nordic Cousins are having that day.

High Life -- What I Thunk

High Life  soundtrack, "Willow"

Yes, Robert Pattinson is singing here and it's amazing.

Recently I took in Ad Astra and didn't think much of it -- dull, slow, but with some interesting ideas.

So this past weekend I finally got around to High Life.  I'll be the first to admit it might not be for everyone -- extremely violent, an intentionally confusing time line, and featuring "The Box" where crew members can frequently and violently masturbate at will.  And the crew members?  They are all convicted criminals who have chosen a final suicide mission to a black hole rather than prison on earth.

But strange as it is, it ultimately manages to offer a meditation on family, death, and infinity that's much more engaging, provocative, and original.

It soars and disintegrates weirdly, fiercely, whereas Ad Astra kind of plods along and manages to do a few things right in spite of itself.

The soundtrack is great too.

"Life is tenacious"

"The Canada lynx?  I call it the Manhattan lynx.  It feasts on New England cottontails, on snowshoe hares, muskrats and water rats.  At the center of the estuarine network swims the mayor of the municipality, the beaver, busily building wetlands.  Beavers are the real real estate developers.  River otters, minks, fishers, weasels, raccoons: all these citizens inhabit the world the beavers made from their version of lumber.  Around them swim harbor seals, harbor porpoises.  A sperm whale sails through the Narrows like an ocean liner.  Squirrels and bats.  The American black bear.

They have all come back like the tide, like poetry -- in fact, please take over, O ghost of glorious Walt:

Because life is robust,

Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism,

Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it,

So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons,

O you dark pools of money and law and quantitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand,

Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks,

Life!  Life!  Life!  Life is going to kick your ass."

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140

Late Capitalism Is Adorable

It's as if, under Capitalism, companies care more about profits than they do human rights and Democracy.#obvioustweet@apple@blizzard

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) October 10, 2019

Trumpism Can Never Fail, It Can Only Be Failed

Matt Ford calls it like it is, regarding Cheeto Hitler:

"What we’re witnessing is the birth of a lost-cause mythology for the Trump presidency. His supporters are being told that if he is impeached and removed from office, it won’t be due to the fact that he violated his oath of office by inviting foreign governments to interfere in the American democratic process. His downfall will instead be precipitated by a shadowy cabal of partisan Democrats, bent on overthrowing him—and American democracy, by proxy—through corrupt and illegitimate means. The risk here, as with the original Lost Cause narrative, is that it will encourage far-right groups to assault and murder Trump’s political opponents."

You say "Lost Cause," I say Dolchstoßlegende, but we're treading in the same dangerous, fascist pool here regardless.

But I'm sure Mitt Romney's measured tweets will protect us all from actual right-wing violence.

R.I.P. Ginger Baker

Ginger Baker's Air Force, live in 1970

If you're looking for a classic rock god with a ton of great deep cuts beyond their main gig, look no further that Ginger Baker.  Also, he was fucking crazy.

R.I.P. Ginger Baker, who has probably pissed of God more than a few times since he got upstairs to that great band riser in the sky.

Joker -- What I Thunk

Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor, but putting the camera on him for two hours and letting him exude his inner Travis Bickle does not a complete film make.

I enjoy watching the dude act, but I wish they'd created the rest of a functioning movie around him.  Deniro falls flat as the antagonist.  There are some nice mood moments, and 1981 New York City is incredibly, starkly believable.  (Yes, kids, Manhattan used to be the ultimate shit-hole.)

There are the bones of a great film here, but not nearly enough meat, moments of ultra-violence notwithstanding.

Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood -- What I Thunk

I saw Tarantino's latest, Once Upon A Time. . . In Hollywood last weekend and did some Very Serious Tweets about it.  I think it's his best film so far, and would recommend it to anybody with a specific caveat -- the ending will make or break it for you.  Without saying too much, I think your reaction will be similar to whatever you thought of the ending of Inglorious Basterds.

The performances were excellent.  (I think Leo is actually becoming a better actor as he ages.)  The music was amazing.  (It's difficult to fault QT when it comes to any of his soundtracks.)  And it was just quirky enough in the right places to move the story along without winking at you too much.  (Lena Dunham is fine and unassuming, the Bruce Lee stuff goes by pretty fast but yeah, QT thinks he was an arrogant asshole.)

I might have more to say about it later.  I think there's a ton of symbolism going on in the last three minutes of the film, and not so much through the rest of it.  It's smart, at many times laugh-out-loud funny, and very much a love letter to old Hollywood, both as a place and an industry, both of which are long gone by now.

Your Scary Thought Of The Day

Over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, a perfectly cromulent question is asked -- if Trump loses the presidential election in November, 2020 (I'd put it at a solid 50/50 as of now) will he step down?  Will he physically walk out of the White House and fly back to his gold-plated toilets in New York?  More specifically, will his Republican enablers deny the will of the Electoral College?  (They obviously don't give a shit about the popular will, c.f. Gore 2000 and Clinton 2016).

In this great experiment known as American Democracy, the answer is clear -- Who the hell knows?

Canon Schmanon

Hephzibah Anderson on popular books (mostly written by dudes) that are actually awful:

"We’ve taken a blushing look back at some of the formerly hip tomes now shelved in that spectral section of the bookshop reserved for the irredeemably dated, the hopelessly irrelevant, the plain offensive. Their fate tells us a little something not only about why cult novels fade but also about how they’re made in the first place.

If there’s one lesson to be learned, it’s this: stay sceptical, dear reader. Don’t, for instance, rush to empty your home of anything that doesn’t ‘spark joy’ at the behest of a book that may yet turn out to be our own era’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. (Then again, if you do still have a copy of that particular avian-inspired title lurking in your bookcase, now might be a good time to pay a visit to the charity shop.)"

I'm always up for a good hate-on against classics, and I agree with some of this list while a few selections just fly over my head (nobody, including ultra-leftists I knew in graduate school, has ever recommended that I actually read Mao's Little Red Book).

Also, while some of these are pernicious examples of Dead White Male Worship in action, a few are harmless moments of books that are very much "of their times," i.e., dispensable.  I know my mom and dad owned a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and I never read it.  I'm not sure if they did either, but it seems like something you had to own in the 1970's.

The Catcher In The Rye?  A perfect example of a book we assign to high school freshmen due to a lack of imagination.  There are so many better coming-of-age stories out there that don't focus on neurotic teen New Yorkers, that have a broader appeal than smoking cigarettes and hitting on grown women.  Not an awful novel, but certainly not a necessary one.

The Old Man and the Sea?  I like it!  I like Hemingway, drunken Sloppy Joe excesses and all!  But how about the Nick Adams short stories instead, given the context of impending climate disaster?

Atlas Shrugged?  Nobody reads this shit except for Republican congressman, right?  I desperately hope so.  I mean, just a single page is headache-inducing.  Rand hate-wrote for conservatives wanting to hate-read about how poor people deserve it, good and hard.  I guess you could argue it's worth a read, if only to plumb the necrotizing pathologies of Republicanism / Trumpism.  But just a few pages will do, thank you.

No Joy In (Rainy) Daegu

I made it to my final Samsung Lions ball game of the season last Friday night.  With a rain delay adding insult to injury, we lost 3-0 to the SK Wyverns from Incheon.  SK are actually the best team in the league right now, so they'll be moving on to a traditional four team semi-final / final playoff series.

As you can see from my not-so-great picture, it was pretty damn empty.  The ultras behind the Samsung dugout were there though, and they were singing and dancing through.

See you next spring, Lions.

Update:  The KBO actually does a five-team format, with four and five doing a one game wildcard.  Overthinking it, if you ask me.

"We Have To Get Along"

As tensions rise between the governments of South Korea and Japan, no small number of Koreans living in Japan are caught in the political squeeze:

"Young Japanese devotees of South Korea’s most successful cultural export still flock here to buy posters, DVDs and miniature figures of BTS, Tohoshinki and Big Bang, added Choi, who moved to Tokyo from South Korea two decades ago. 'But I hope Japan and South Korea can sort out their differences. We’re neighbours, so we have to get along.'

Relations, however, are far from neighbourly. Seoul has called on the International Olympic Committee to ban Japan’s rising-sun flag – seen by some Koreans as a symbol of Japanese militarism – from next year’s Summer Games in Tokyo. A recent poll found that South Koreans trust North Korea more than they do Japan."

I guess I'm admittedly biased here, but c'mon -- there's a reason Germany long ago outlawed the Nazi flag, but in Japan it's still O.K. to wave the "Rising Sun" battle flag.

"well it's the biggest thing in my life, I guess"

The Replacements, "Talent Show" (Matt Wallace Mix)

Don't Tell A Soul divided Replacements fans at the time as being "too pop" but I dunno, I was listening to this on cassette pretty much non-stop in high school along with (ahem) Appetite For Destruction.  My hormone-addled teenage brain saw no contradictions in this.

Dead Man's Pop is a new Replacements box set, and it's a doozy -- in addition to rarities, a hard-to-find jam with Tom Waits (!), and a smoking live set from Madison, Wisconsin in '89, the highlight is a "pre-mix," or a re-imagining of Don't Tell A Soul after it had been "polished" for radio by Chris Lord-Alge.  If I've got it right, original engineer Matt Wallace sat down with the original tapes, pre-Lord-Alge, and pushed them into rougher, more intimate terrain.

Given that the entire project seems to have Paul Westerberg's blessing, it really is a must-have.  Also, the idea for the re-mix came from Bob Mehr, who is the author of the fantastic Mats biography Trouble Boys.

Honestly, there's a lot going on here and all of it is great.

I actually really like Don't Tell A Soul and have since it came out in 1989.  But being outside the Minneapolis scene, it was easier for me to just appreciate the album for what it was and not get caught up in the "Paul is selling out for mainstream success" stuff.  Mind you, this was only two years before the neutron bomb of Nevermind, and already lines were being drawn that would pave the way for the capital-I Indie Rock movement and the inevitable backlash against, well, success.

If anything, I'd argue DTAS is really a try-out as Paul's first solo record.  We all know his first real solo record was All Shook Down, which of course was The Replacements' last record.

Simple.

As for the sound, it's definitely rougher in a good way, and more ragged.  The acoustic guitar doesn't disappear once the hook of "Talent Show" kicks in, but kind of fills and warms the whole thing.  I'm willing to bet the drums aren't synced to a click track -- there are some interesting little fills, if not minor mistakes.  The whole sounds more like it's recorded in a mom's basement than a real studio.  The outro keeps in all the warts and all, which seems about right.

Anyhow, I really can't wait to get my hands on this and do a track-by-track comparison.

Pitchfork review here.

Sock It To 'Em, G.T.

Esther Wang on the obvious misogyny (and general creepiness) of the older men who criticize Greta Thunberg:

"'Climate change disproportionately affects women and girls around the world—they are more likely to be displaced, more likely to be living in poverty and thus more vulnerable to climate change’s destabilizing effects. It is also women and girls who are leading the global movement to ensure a livable future.'

Yet to conservatives, climate change activism has become wrapped up in the so-called 'war on men,' and Thunberg, as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her championing of the Green New Deal, have come to symbolize all that they fear to lose. But for all their whining and their rage, as Thunberg said on Monday before the United Nations, 'The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.'”

And let's be honest -- "shut up and put on a dress, little girl" isn't criticism at all, it's the desperate plea of men who can't handle strong, smart women.  (Of any age.)