Deadbeats

South Korea has notoriously week child support laws.  Some women are stepping up to change things:

"For instance, if the noncustodial parent transfers their legal possessions and assets to someone else’s name, then the court cannot order them to pay because they have no money to their name. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family can request the Commissioner of the National Tax Service or the head of the local government to 'garnish the estimated amount from [their] national and local tax refund' - yet, if the official amount of money they earn is zero or close to zero, then there’s nothing that can be done. Another step could be to file for the court to seize the tangible properties from inside their house, but again, the court cannot track anyone down if they flee their house or change their address.

In total, there are seven official legal steps that one could take to get the noncustodial parent to pay up, but there is a way out of each of them.

'Protesting outside your ex-husband’s house is difficult and even terrorizing,' said Kim. 'But we do it, because it’s the only thing we can do. If anyone says that they are going to hold a protest, we make time to help each other out.'”

As Grumpy Cat would have said, Good.

Weekend Political Post

A Warren / Harris or Harris / Warren ticket would make me a very happy boy.

Luddite

My first honest-to-jeebus smartphone arrived in the mail today (Sasmung 5S, used of course).  I have to walk over to my local SK (Korean telecom) shop and get them to put a data plan onto my current phone-and-text only plan.

In my defense, I do own an iPad so when I go out I generally use that if I need Google Maps or information or what have you.

I've just been quite content with my (ahem) 2G flip-phone for so long (also used) that I've resisted moving into the 21 century like the rest of you.

I guess the only thing left to do is send my first dick pick.

Settle down, settle down.  I'm only going to send it to Santa.

Sound Science

My college classes are over but this week I need to enter grades.  So I'm kicking off this muggy Monday morning with Nick Mason (of Pink Floyd) giving a BBC podcast on the history of music and technology.

Open Culture never disappoints.

Attacking Iran Is A Bad Idea Not Only Because Iran Will Win

Not only is a war with Iran a Very Fucking Stupid Idea, but here's a hot-take for ya -- given how spread-thin and exhausted US forces are globally, Iran will win rather easily.

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) June 21, 2019

To be more specific, after two or three US pilots are shot down, and die or are captured (Iran is a huge country with much better anti-air than Iraq ever had) The Orange Pussy-Grabber will inevitably fold like the cheap suits he loves so much.

There is no good that will come of this but then again, a healthy one-third of Americans think electing Trump made the country stronger and not, in fact, dangerously unstable and unhinged.

Orthogonally, I think Pelosi has made the right moves on (not) impeaching so far, but this would change all of that calculation overnight. If a half-dozen Republican senators start to sweat after gruesome US deaths (they won't give a single shit about Iranian casualties, of course) then game on.

"no signaling necessary"

As a true-blooded American, I'm a fan of fake Chinese food.  (Fake Mexican as well!  I miss you Chipotle, bacteria and all!)  And while the history of Chinese restaurants in America is long and winding, it's also quite dark and often driven by racism:

"Chinese restaurants in the U.S. date back to the first wave of immigration from China, predominantly from Guangdong (then known as Canton), in the mid-1800s. It was spurred by the Gold Rush, and then work on railroads, farms, and in laundries. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act as white Americans increasingly blamed Chinese immigrants for low wages and a lack of jobs. 'Out of sheer necessity, Chinese had to find or develop forms of self-employment because most forms of work were denied to them,' writes John Jung, a professor emeritus in psychology and a historian of Chinese-American history, in Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants. Restaurants popped up both as places for the predominantly male Chinese population to cook their own cuisine for each other, and as a business opportunity — especially since Chinese immigrants were often unwelcome or segregated from other communities.

'You see early on… the menus are pretty standard,' says Piccoli. They were black text on white paper, no illustration or design, just a list of food. These restaurants were typically located in Chinatowns, and because they were run by Chinese people for Chinese people, there was no signaling necessary.

The rise of Orientalist design in Chinese-American restaurants begins at the turn of the 20th century. By this point, Chinese restaurants were at least a familiar sight to non-Chinese people, and some diners who fancied themselves adventurous began to pop in — the way the bohemian class always prides themselves on their willingness to eat at a 'hole in the wall.' Chinese business owners realized they could capitalize on, and expand, this new consumer base, and 'courted business from tourists and the curious with remodeled restaurants designed with a typical Oriental motif both inside and out,' writes Jung. They brought in bamboo shoots, the dragons slithering along menu spines, Buddha statues sitting on windowsills. By 1903, there were over 100 of these Chinese-American restaurants between 14th Street and Times Square in Manhattan."

When it comes to food history and culture, nothing is authentic.  Everything is authentic.

"a crisis of liberal democracy is really just them not getting exactly what they want when they want it"

Adam Serwer has the last word on the "argument" between so-called "Never Trumpers" (who seem to always be defending the Orange Menace) and the conservatives who have bought into White Ethno-Nationalism hook, line, and sinker:

"Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of 'Operation Wetback,' or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic. This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them. But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.

Undetectable in the dispute on the right is any acknowledgment of the criticisms of liberal democracy by those who have been fighting for their fundamental rights in battles that are measured in decades and even centuries; that the social contract implicitly excluded them from the very rights white Christian men have been able to assert from the beginning. Perhaps to do so would be to acknowledge the fundamental immaturity underlying the American Orbánists’ critique: that what they describe as a crisis of liberal democracy is really just them not getting exactly what they want when they want it."

It's hard to believe these assholes have actually gotten angrier since Trump won.

New Books!

Samuel Delany, Times Square Red Times Square Blue

N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

Don McCullin, Unreasonable Behavior

Ed Piskor, X-Men Grand Design

2019 Is Almost Halfway Done

Wetter, "Just Stay Like This"

Absolutely love the vocal harmonies going on here.  Bit of a Blur vibe maybe?

I graded all of my final exams in two days.  That's definitely a record for my procrastination-prone ass.

Also, I've said it before but Onstage is absolutely the best resource for finding non-K-Pop Korean music.  Indie rock, jazz, hip-hop, experimental  -- they've got you covered.

"the waiter dropped forks in front of them, and chopsticks by me"

Vanessa Hua is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents.  She didn't learn to use chopsticks -- resisted using them! -- into her 30's:

"In the suburbs east of San Francisco, we were one of a handful of Chinese families, and my classmates teased me and snubbed me from early on. I tried to fit in, getting a perm and donning Guess jeans, Esprit canvas tote bags, and other signifiers of suburban girlhood in the late 1980s — and I’d no sooner use chopsticks than bind my feet. At home, and at Chinese restaurants, I insisted on a fork, in a muddled form of protest, of patriotism, to claim that I was truly American. My parents must have tried to teach me how to use chopsticks, in the murkiness before my memories begin, but eventually, they had to let it go. They had demanding careers in science and engineering, and it must have taken everything in them to get our family through the day, let alone try to stem the tide of assimilation.

In college, I started taking a tentative interest in my heritage, but knew no better than my non-Chinese friends where to go for a late night bite in San Francisco’s Chinatown. We ended up at a dive with paper napkins and Formica tables, the air heavy with grease. Without a word, the waiter dropped forks in front of them, and chopsticks by me. My friends protested. I felt pleased, but then almost immediately like a fraud — hyphenated, never quite American or Chinese enough. Most likely, the waiter had decided he didn’t want the hassle of coming back to deliver forks. Maybe, more often than not, tourists didn’t know how to use chopsticks. And I didn’t either — at least, not correctly, not then and not years later, despite my father’s renewed efforts to teach me."

What a beautiful piece of writing.  Absolutely read the whole thing.

I'm reminded of a passage in Roy Choi's great autobiography about his life as a first-generation Korean-American, L.A. Son, and how his father would hit him if he ever caught him speaking Korean.  (The idea being that excising Korean would hasten his learning of English.)

Chernobyl Was As Good To Watch As It Was Brutal To Watch (Spoilers)

Like most everybody I thought Chernobyl was great, despite many liberties taken.  Its greatest strength was how it moved, almost flawlessly, between "small" and "big" points of view -- the poor bastards inside the plant, the first responders, the local political committee who decides to try and keep it all secret, all the way up through the lead scientists and party bosses.  Hell, even Gorbachev was believable in his shock and frustration.

I actually had to look away during the animal culling scenes but again, it was incredibly effective to move from "big picture" strategy and planning down to the level of the grunts who had to do the very awful, very shitty actual work of cleaning and razing.  (The dudes running out to shovel up blocks of deadly irradiated graphite seemed to have easier jobs in comparison.)

And so maybe the conclusion was all a little too cut and dried.  Legasov never had a "final confession" moment, and maybe a bit more ambiguity would have served the show well.

As for Russia wanting to make their own "correct" version, it's hard to imagine them doing a better job at showing so much sacrifice on the part of technicians and soldiers who did their jobs knowing they could die horribly.  The whole point of the series is that bureaucrats lie -- it's their job, after all -- and poor bastards, including children, die.

I'd like to think that message comes across in any language.

How I Roll

Never had sex dreams or riding freakin' dragon re: Game of Thrones.

But radiation burn dreams and Chernobyl? No problemo, says my brain!

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

"demented late-capitalist cousin"

As formerly poor nations become wealthier and grow their respective middle and upper classes, are we entering an age of "overtourism"?  Many cities, and not just popular European ones, seem to think so:

"Locals have, of course, complained about tourists since time immemorial, and the masses have disrespected, thronged, and vandalized wonders natural and fabricated for as long as they have been visiting them. But tourism as we know it was a much more limited affair until recent decades. Through the early 19th century, travel for personal fulfillment was the provenance of 'wealthy nobles and educated professionals' only, people for whom it was a 'demonstrative expression of their social class, which communicated power, status, money and leisure,' as one history of tourism notes. It was only in the 1840s that commercialized mass tourism developed, growing as the middle class grew.

If tourism is a capitalist phenomenon, overtourism is its demented late-capitalist cousin: selfie-stick deaths, all-you-can-eat ships docking at historic ports, stag nights that end in property crimes, the live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats, et cetera. There are just too many people thronging popular destinations—30 million visitors a year to Barcelona, population 1.6 million; 20 million visitors to Venice, population 50,000. La Rambla and the Piazza San Marco fit only so many people, and the summertime now seems like a test to find out just how many that is."

When I first started out in South Korea ten years ago, I was a pretty die-hard traveler and made it to some amazing places -- India, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand multiple times.

While there are still some places I'd really love to visit (Australia, New Zealand, parts of Japan beyond Tokyo) I have to admit that for me, getting older is really all about being less patient with all the bullshit.  As a single dude who prides himself on traveling light and getting in and out of airports faster than the average bear, I actually think I'm quite good at traveling but I just have a bit less tolerance for airports and bus rides and standing in lines and, ahem, other tourists than I used to.

So not to go all Ralph Waldo Emerson on you, but I think this article does a good job of linking travel with a sort of habit of conspicuous consumption and a (highly imperialist, maybe even racist) notion that travel is the key to self-improvement.  (I mean really, does any place in Asia need another white backpacker, well-intentioned or not?)

So while I'm far from swearing off travel forever (I'll probably visit a good friend in Tokyo after my annual trip home to America in August), I do think I'm a bit more circumspect about the whole affair, a bit more picky to be blunt about it.

I've never had a bad vacation since I came to Korea, but I have had a few where I probably could have just as easily enjoyed myself exploring, say, one of the many smaller cities or rural areas of South Korea that I have yet to encounter.  (While South Korea is certainly close to a lot of great places throughout Asia, it's also a simple fact that all told it's going to be 24 hours leaving the country, and another 24 hours getting back in.)

All of which is to say, travel is great.  I treasure many of the experiences I've had throughout the region.  But it's also one option among many for spending free time.  And you aren't "missing" anything if you can manage to have quality experiences in your own country, while saving a lot of money to boot.

And hey, flying less is also a good thing for the earth anyhow.

What Are Years?

South Korea has a unique method for determining age -- a newborn baby starts at one, and when the Lunar New Year hits (usually in February) it turns two.  This leads to confusion, to say the least:

"A South Korean MP is attempting to overturn a centuries-old tradition in which every newborn baby turns one on the day they are born and two on the next New Year’s Day.

The unusual custom means a baby born on New Year’s Eve becomes two years old as soon as the clock strikes midnight.

When asked their age by a foreigner, many South Koreans give both their 'Korean age' and 'international age', followed by an explanation that invariably leaves the questioner confused.

The system’s origins are unclear. One theory is that turning one year old at birth takes into account time spent in the womb – with nine months rounded up to 12. Others link it to an ancient Asian numerical system that did not have the concept of zero."

Any foreigner will tell you that they prefer using "International Age" since it's routinely one or two years younger then their "Korean Age."

"I try to search for you / I know I'm not alone"

Unwound, "Eternalux"

Definitely in my top five acts I wish I'd gotten to see live but never did.

Predictably, a mere four days into June, Daegu has become a furnace.  Luckily, the semester is almost -- gah, I hate the word -- over.  This week is for make-up classes, next week is the actual final exam, and then the week after that (way late into June, Korean style) is our "feedback" class.

I've asked my boss many times what the purpose of the feedback class is and I've never really gotten a satisfying answer.  Other than giving the students their final exam grades, and thereby their final grades if they do a quick bit of math, it really seems like a conspiracy among Korean professors and college instructors to just shave a week off the schedule.

So I don't know.  I'll give them their scores, about 70 percent of them will promptly go to sleep, and with the other 30 I can do some music videos or something pedagogically low impact.

Tears of a Pierrot

Korean language fun fact: one word for "clown" in Korean is "pi-e-ro," as in Pierrot.  There are words for juggler and acrobat that are similar, but if you've got a crazy rainbow wig and big red shoes Koreans will generally use this borrowed word.

Update:  A friend living in Japan on Twitter let me know that Japanese uses the same loan word.