"how dominoes connect"

Trevor Noah on George Floyd and Amy Cooper

So much to say about the madness created by police violence against black bodies.  This video does as good a job as any.

"And I'm thinking about the way things are / And I'm thinking about the way things were"

Yo La Tengo's "Tom Courtenay" covered by Lucy Dacus

Yo La Tengo's Electr-o-Pura just turned 25.  Yikes.

In a pinch I'd take Painful over E-o-P but I have a lot of college memories wrapped around both these discs.  I remember absolutely loving this song but having no idea what it was about.  Best I could tell it was something to do with some obscure (to me) British actors.  Years later, Genius says I was pretty much right.

And what a lovely cover performance.

Project Herzog

Project Herzog continues apace.  Last night I saw what I considered to be that rarest of things in a Herzog film, a dud -- The Wild Blue Yonder (2005).  But even when's he's not at his very best, WH is still riveting.

Here he re-contextualizes film stock (aboard the Space Shuttle, under the Arctic ocean) to tell a fairly straightforward sci-fi story.  (Something he started doing in the amazing 1992 Lessons of Darkness, which is by no means a failure at all.)  But the technique just doesn't work here.

That said, like pizza, bad WH still delights.  Here, it's the stunning soundtrack.  He recorded music concurrently for this project along with music for The White Diamond (2004), which I'll get to soon.

Tree Of Liberty Watered By The Blood of Yadda Yadda

It's like the ruling classes of America and England _desperately want_ us working assholes to build as many guillotines as possible, ASAP.

— Your Little Ray of Sunshine James (@wetcasements) May 27, 2020

Summer

Since I moved to South Korea in 2008 (!) I've been travelling back to America every summer starting in 2010.  I have February and August off, so summer is a good time to get back in touch with my awesome sister near Baltimore and my FOX-addicted dad north of Seattle.

I contacted sis last night and told her I couldn't make it back this summer for the annual visit.

For starters, South Korea expects a 14 day quarantine for all people coming into (or back into) the country.

Then, two days ago, new requirements were announced, including the need for a coronavirus test 48 hours within the time you re-enter Korea.

It's my understanding that in America you can only get a test in most places if you're already symptomatic.  That would make it impossible to actually return to my job.

South Korea has done an exceptional job with this plague, so they get to make the rules.

The quarantine I could probably deal with (although it certainly wouldn't enhance my current level of mental health).

But needing a CV test that I might not even be able to get?  That's too much.

And that sucks.

I miss crabs.  And my nephew.  And the dogs.  Especially the hyperactive black one that seems to like me very much.

His name is Periwinkle.

U.S. Grant

I took a break from my Werner Herzog quarantine binge to check out the first episode (of three) of Grant (as in, Ulysses S. Grant).

It was excellent.  A genuine American hero who was willfully slimed by the racist twits of Confederate "Lost Cause" ideology.

"an incredible step in the right direction"

I am not an optimist by nature, but in a world clogged with so much shit and misery it seems to me that some things -- actually, many things -- are going to have to shift, transform, or simply disappear in global wake of Covid-19.

So here's your ray of sunshine for today -- California (and it's enormous public university system) is getting rid of the SAT (American college entrance exam).

This is very good news:

"Critics of the standardized tests have long argued they disadvantage students of color and those from low-income families because test questions often contain inherent bias that more privileged children are better equipped to answer. Wealthier students are also more likely to have access to expensive prep courses that help boost their scores, which many students can’t afford.

The UC’s governing body, the Board of Regents, voted 23-0 Thursday to approve a proposal by the UC president, Janet Napolitano, that phases the tests out over five years, at which point the UC aims to have developed its own test.

The regents met in a teleconference that lasted several hours Thursday, with expert presentations and lengthy debates that echoed a national conversation about whether the tests discriminate against disadvantaged students or help admissions offices find the most qualified applicants.

'I think this is an incredible step in the right direction,' said the Regents chairman, John Perez."

Yes, the SAT is racist.  Rich folks can send their kids to prep courses, and poor folks can't.  And those courses are primarily how to game the test -- more specifically, when should you guess and when should you leave an answer blank?  This alone can significantly increase your score, and it has nothing to do with an improved command of vocabulary or math.

Next, let's kill the GRE (graduate school entrance exam).  It's absurd to think an MA or PhD program can't judge your potential based off of a 20 page writing sample and two letters from your college professors.

New Quarantine Books!

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Gold Coast
                                      Pacific Edge
Joanna Russ, The Female Man

"it's a clean kill but it's not clean"

Coriky, "Clean Kill"

Ian played a baritone acoustic with The Evens.  Not sure what he's playing here.  It would be nice to hear his screaming Gibson SG again but hey, we can't have everything.

This is Ian MacKaye and his wife Amy Farina's new band, where Ian regroups with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally.  If I understand correctly, the full album release and tour have been delayed / denied due to the coronavirus.

I like it.  I mean, it's basically The Evens with more low end and The Evens deserved more attention than they got.

Why I Love Living In Korea

What a country:

"South Korean football team FC Seoul has apologized after fans accused the club of using sex dolls to fill empty stands at its second game of the K League season.

On Sunday, the club played at home against Gwangju in South Korea's top football championship, which was due to start on February 29 but was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic."

Click through for pics.

To paraphrase an old South Park, "He's not the chicken fucker -- he's the chicken lover."

And that's all I got.

Me And Werner

One of my goals for this plague is to watch all of Werner Herzog's documentaries.  Like a lot of folks, I was entranced by his 2000's masterpieces -- Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  There's a lot of great, weird stuff from his earlier career though.

So far I loved La Soufriere, which in 30 minutes pretty much encapsulates his major themes -- the indifference of nature to man's suffering, the inevitability of death (probably a horrible one), and modernity's deluded attempt to stave off all these things.  But I'm also enjoying what I'd call the curveballs -- Little Dieter Needs To Fly is really hard to even describe, and the ending shot is truly subversive in the best sense of the word.  The Dark Glow of the Mountains is worth it just to see Reinhold Messner, perhaps the manliest of manly men ever, breaking down into tears remembering the death of a friend.  Ballad of the Little Solider, about child soldiers in Nicaragua, is just brutal in its unflinching, naturalistic approach to the sheer insanity of proxy wars.

So I'm no closer to running a marathon or writing my first novel, but I'm pretty content to see this though.

Good Times

The big kerfuffle in South Korea now is that, while on the edge of shutting down the spread of the coronavirus for good, over 100 new cases have emerged centered on the Seoul neighborhood of Itaewon.  Anybody familiar with the capital knows Itaewon is kind of a shitty, dingy strip of foreigner bars and western restaurants.  (Some good ones, I'll admit, but a ton of truly unfortunate clubs and bars too.)

So there's talk of a single super-spreader, foreigners going out of control on drugs and booze, and a few gay clubs where orgies were hosted.

Just your perfect mix of xeno- and homo-phobia, which are always lurking just under the surface of the South Korean national dialogue.

Another 2020 Loss

Was there any Little Richard song that wasn't about fucking?

(That's a whole-hearted compliment by the way.)

R.I.P.

— Your Little Ray of Sunshine James (@wetcasements) May 12, 2020

"little more than contempt for those whose lives are at risk"

Adam Serwer on how America's history of racism is a feature, not a bug, when it comes to why black and brown folks suffer more than whites do under a pandemic:

"The frame of war allows the president to call for the collective sacrifice of laborers without taking the measures necessary to ensure their safety, while the upper classes remain secure at home. But the workers who signed up to harvest food, deliver packages, stack groceries, drive trains and buses, and care for the sick did not sign up for war, and the unwillingness of America’s political leadership to protect them is a policy decision, not an inevitability. Trump is acting in accordance with the terms of the racial contract, which values the lives of those most likely to be affected less than the inconveniences necessary to preserve them. The president’s language of wartime unity is a veil draped over a federal response that offers little more than contempt for those whose lives are at risk. To this administration, they are simply fuel to keep the glorious Trump economy burning."

The whole thing is worth reading.

Plenty of other folks have pointed out that the mystical Trumpian "open it and they will come" idea is bullshit.  A large majority of Americans prefer to stay in than take a risk on their health or that of their kids, despite what white terrorists would have you believe.

One Step Forward...

I'm in my office on a beautiful Monday afternoon completing my online midterm.  It's frustrating writing tests for students you have literally never met or taught.  My boss said keep is as simple as possible and that's fine, but also kind of underlines the point that online teaching of a foreign language just isn't ideal.

Anyhow, the big news here in South Korea is that over the weekend a huge Covid outbreak took place up in Seoul centered around Itaweon, a known foreigner / nightlife hotspot.  Apparently one of the vectors is centered around a gay club, giving just enough ammunition to the usual suspects to blame gay / foreign sybarites for all of this mess.

I mean, it is a shame.  South Korea was within weeks of shutting this thing down in my opinion, and now we start over.  It could have been the gayest of gay bath-houses, or the most holy of Christian churches.

Stay the fuck home, people.

"defined more so by games than by stories"

"The impact of Dungeons & Dragons on the fantasy genre, however, was felt less in these details than in its formal structure.  Dungeons & Dragons conferred to the genre something that mere stories could not deliver: a way for fans to involve  themselves personally in fantastic adventures.  Where previously, the fantasy genre could only tantalize readers with the visitation theme, [e.g., A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, John Carter of Mars] allowing them to experience second-hand what it would be like to enter a fantastic world, Dungeons & Dragons offered its players the ability to direct the action in that world, the responsibility for the triumph or shame of the hero  and the watching over an author's shoulder as the protagonist's fate unfolds.  Naturally, authors of fantasy genre fiction quickly incorporated Dungeons & Dragons into their visitation stories [] to appeal to the tastes of this new audience, but those narratives still lacked that critical interactivity with fans, that ability to transcend the static page and improvise, to truly explore a fantastic world.  Once Dungeons & Dragons entered the equation, the possibility existed that the fantasy genre would one day be defined more so by games than by stories."

--Jon Peterson, Playing At The World

Since Nobody Asked I Went Ahead And Ranked All 10 Korean Baseball Organization Uniforms

Korean Baseball Team Uniforms Ranked:

1) Kia Tigers (Gwangju)
2) Kiwoom Heores (Seoul)
3) Lotte Giants (Busan)
4) Samsung Lions (Daegu)
5) Doosan Bears (Seoul)
6) LG Twins (Seoul)
7) SK Wyverns (Incheon)
8) Hanhwa Eagles (Daejeon)
9) NC Dinos (Changwon)
10) KT Wiz (Suwon)

— Your Little Ray of Sunshine James (@wetcasements) May 7, 2020

"Fortsätt fortsätt å va rebell?"

Ebba Gron, "Vad ska du bli?"

As my unexpected move to the woman's dormitory comes to an end, I've been watching a ton of movies lately.  I'll probably write a bit more on some of them, but the quarantine highlight so far, hands down, has been 2013's We Are The Best (Vi Ar Bast!).

Three middle school girls decide to start a punk band in Stockholm, 1982.

Really, what more convincing do you need?

One of the most honest films about being a teenager ever.

Great soundtrack too.

"shoe-leather public health"

As awful and anxiety-inducing as pandemics are, they're aren't rocket surgery.  That is to say, countries like the US and UK are needlessly suffering from something that, with enough will and appropriately applied resources, could have been mitigated to points approaching "back to normal."  I'll never shut up about how excellent South Korea's response was to the virus, but Vox walks us through some other "success stories" in much poorer countries:

"From Slovenia to Jordan to Iceland, governments took early action to impose lockdowns, test and trace thousands of people, isolate the sick, encourage social distancing and preventive measures like mask wearing, and communicate honestly with the public.

Those interventions curbed the number of new confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths, allowing leaders to reopen schools and businesses and reintroduce a sense of normalcy into everyday life. Some are now reporting no new confirmed cases or deaths.

In effect, they followed the prescribed playbook for such a pandemic, and — surprise, surprise — it worked.

'At the end of the day, it’s not magic. It’s shoe-leather public health,' Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told me. Nothing is a better substitute for speed and aggressive action, he said."

To expect no deaths in America, given its status as a global hub of travel, would be ridiculous.

To see the US president basically throwing his hands up now and telling us the death of your grandparents is worth it as long as shareholders don't lose their shirts is completely is pornographic.

"underpin much of the bullshit of the past forty years"

If I ever get a chance to teach a course on Kim Stanley Robinson I think one of my questions would be is he fundamentally a pessimist or an optimist when it comes to the ability of humans to think and act collectively (i.e., is society worth it?).  While hardly a wide-eyed wishful thinker, I think his work demonstrates that people can get their shit together once they understand what's truly at stake.  (Governments and plutocrats, not so much, but still.)

Here he is in The New Yorker getting to the guts of our current situation:

"Margaret Thatcher said that 'there is no such thing as society,' and Ronald Reagan said that 'government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.' These stupid slogans marked the turn away from the postwar period of reconstruction and underpin much of the bullshit of the past forty years.

We are individuals first, yes, just as bees are, but we exist in a larger social body. Society is not only real; it’s fundamental. We can’t live without it. And now we’re beginning to understand that this 'we' includes many other creatures and societies in our biosphere and even in ourselves. Even as an individual, you are a biome, an ecosystem, much like a forest or a swamp or a coral reef. Your skin holds inside it all kinds of unlikely coöperations, and to survive you depend on any number of interspecies operations going on within you all at once. We are societies made of societies; there are nothing but societies. This is shocking news—it demands a whole new world view. And now, when those of us who are sheltering in place venture out and see everyone in masks, sharing looks with strangers is a different thing. It’s eye to eye, this knowledge that, although we are practicing social distancing as we need to, we want to be social—we not only want to be social, we’ve got to be social, if we are to survive. It’s a new feeling, this alienation and solidarity at once. It’s the reality of the social; it’s seeing the tangible existence of a society of strangers, all of whom depend on one another to survive. It’s as if the reality of citizenship has smacked us in the face.

As for government: it’s government that listens to science and responds by taking action to save us. Stop to ponder what is now obstructing the performance of that government. Who opposes it? Right now we’re hearing two statements being made. One, from the President and his circle: we have to save money even if it costs lives. The other, from the Centers for Disease Control and similar organizations: we have to save lives even if it costs money. Which is more important, money or lives? Money, of course! says capital and its spokespersons. Really? people reply, uncertainly. Seems like that’s maybe going too far? Even if it’s the common wisdom? Or was."

The powerful individuals and interests who think money is more important than people are not going to disappear without a fight.  But at least the scale of this epidemic has shaken people up enough to realize many of our supposed leaders are, in fact, great big assholes who think you and your family and friends -- especially your grandparents -- are simply the harmless, de rigeur blood sacrifices required by the ever-grinning maw of global Capitalism.

This recognition fills people with terror as much as it does a well-deserved anger.  And it catalyzes our political instincts as thoroughly as it does our ability to imagine future economic systems where we don't have to choose between passably functioning stock markets and mounds of innocent, putrefying dead folks.

"Alienation and solidarity at once" indeed.

A Little Bright Spot

Obviously, I wish the circumstances were different.  But I can never shut up about the glories of Korean baseball and now apparently ESPN has cut a deal to bring Korean ballgames to the US.

As of today, the Korean games are being played without an audience which, admittedly, kind of defeats the purpose.  Then again, with Korean public schools opening up again next week it might not be long before limited numbers of fans are allowed to attend games.

May the cheerleaders, outrageous bat flipping, and beer drinking contests get here sooner rather than later!

No In Person Teaching This Semester

As of last week my boss was pretty confident that my college would open up for in-person classes next Monday, May 11th.

Well, no.  English classes for this semester will now be fully online, continuing as we have before.  English is not a major concentration here, but some students will be coming back for their major-specific practicum.

That's that.

A whole semester without teaching.  Not real teaching anyway.

This Is My Jam

Hi I'm James and like music, long walks on the beach, and hour-long interviews between Nardwuar and Ian MacKaye.

While work-stuff is pretty much under control, a few days ago I was told my building was having water shut off for a week to replace a bunch of pipes.  (I was given one-day head's up about this, because Korea.)

So alternate housing was provided in my college's female dorm (which is currently empty, so don't get any ideas).

Suffice it to say, I do not fit in / on a mattress designed for a 20-something year-old Korean woman.

While catching up on a lot of reading and movies is nice, above all else I'd honestly like to get back to my regular teaching schedule.  I don't feel bored as much as I do kind of useless.