/Kirk Gibson gimpy fist pump

Whelp, the Dodgers deserved to win.

I'm just thankful that a COVID-era World Series proved to be as entertaining as this one, despite my skepticism.

And once again, the Orioles have rushed out to a solid 0-0, .500 season for 2021.

Dostoevsky Works Both Ways

Not long after Trump got elected I wrote "everything is now permitted."  Referring to an attempted murder by a Q-Anon supporter, I meant it in a very general sense, that of accepted norms and standards being destroyed.  I meant in in a scary-sad way, a "we're well and truly fucked" way.

With Supreme Court justice Amy Coney-Barrett taking less than a day between swearing in and then filming a literal Trump campaign video, I am -- surprisingly -- a little more sanguine and a little more focused on what could be positives moving into 2021.

After four years of this unending avalanche of Republican-enabled hatefulness and stupidity, of dire incompetence, I mean "Everything is now permitted" in a much more Congress-specific sense: fuck the filibuster, fuck the sacred norm of only nine justices, fuck the banal congeniality of the U.S. Senate, fuck the fakey bullshit hypocrisy of a "neutral and apolitical" Supreme Court forever.

You don't need to read Dostoevsky (you should, but you don't need to) to understand this attitude cuts both ways.  It honestly hurt for the past four years.  But now it's time to redirect the pain onto those who actually deserve it.

Biden's first act as president, Spaghetti-Monster willing we also win the Senate next week, is to put up Merrick Garland for the SCOTUS immediately.

And that's just for starters -- DC statehood, Puerto Rico statehood, automatic registration of all US citizens as voters, voting day as a national holiday all come next.

All of that by the end of 2021.  Then we really get down to work making the necessary structural changes to maintain our Democracy, without a damn drop more of counter-majoritarian compromise with a GOP that stands for nothing beyond tax-cuts for the rich and white identity politics.

Is Biden up to the task?  Maybe.  Harris could pull them there.  The outrageous actions of ACB could.  Pelosi certainly seems game.  But if not, he doesn't deserve a hypothetical second term.  Fuck cowardly hypothetical Biden and fuck David Brooks too.

Too Much and Almost Enough at the Same Time

It took over a year, but I finally managed to finish Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games. And like the title itself, the book is simultaneously fascinating and yet maybe a bit much for its own good.

This thing is an absolute door-stopper of a tome -- 698 pages, with copious amounts of both footnotes and bibliographies.  It is dense and academic, in both the best and worst senses of those words.  It is incredibly well researched and easily makes the case for its own existence, i.e., the history of role-playing is worth this type of academic treatment.  The story itself stretches back to highly specific parts of 18th century military history, 19th and 20th century literary history (not just fantasy writers), 19th century applied statistics and probability, and more expectedly the rise of sci-fi fandom in the 1960's and 70's.

And yet, by the end of this virtual Everest of a history, I still felt like I knew less about the two main creators of Dungeons and Dragons -- Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson -- than I would have liked.  Sure, the story is there -- the various basements in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota  that birthed the hobby, the later falling out as the math- and business-minded Gary screwed the more wild-and-wooly creative genius Dave out of royalties -- but it also feels a bit more, well, academic than it should.  The personalities are there, but not brought to life as you'd hope in a history of role-playing itself.

What is of note is that Gygax was a devout Jehovah's Witness who was also a polymath of war, and specifically violence, who had a mind for charts and tables and rules, but Arneson was the guy who let you own and ride a dragon or swing a talking sword if you suggested it.  Their relationship was genuinely symbiotic for a while, but this account is more bloodless than I'd have liked.  (Interestingly, the idea of Gygax as proto-nerd also falls apart when you realize he was actually quite popular with the ladies throughout his younger and middle ages.  Dude liked to party, in fact, and had multiple affairs.) 

Also, it ends where it should more thoroughly culminate, with the rise of video games in the 80s and 90s.  (The MMORPG Ultima Online from 1997 is as late as we go, even though this book came out 2014.)  It's fine that Peterson didn't set out to chronicle the video game side of things, but also stunts some obvious momentum he has developed regarding the "gamification" of popular culture ca. 2020, and the future of virtual simulations using technology.

"replaced with a bullet casing, much too large"

"The enormous remaining boa constrictor will die in its cage.  I think it leans its ugly head against the wire and has a heartrending air such as you see only in the dying.  I thought it must be thirsty and carefully poured water on its mouth and head, but it merely stared at me from the depths of a loneliness that had little connection left with earthly things.  So we decided to release the boa.  Walter and I shook it out of the cage, because it did not want to budge.  The women watched from a safe distance, not looking happy.  The snake crawled right back into its enclosure, yet when I check later, it was gone, and there was a clear trail in the sand leading toward the jungle.  At night the place where the snake had disappeared was thronged with twinkling fireflies, and overhead a clear, starry night sky.  Andres, our mathematician, was playing chess with his girlfriend, losing most of the games, but he accepted that with mathematical decorum.  A white pawn is missing, and has been replaced with a bullet casing, much too large, which usually becomes the object of attacks early in the game.  For the first time in my life mosquitoes are leaving me completely indifferent, not that I have accepted the superior power of nature.  It is more of a dispassionate scorn with which I am leaving my skin and blood undefended.  God grant us one good day, a single one, amen."

-- Werner Herzog, The Conquest of the Useless

Spooky Daegu

Daegu, South Korea.

"You were chasing me through a dream / origami and gabardine"

 

Bob Mould, "Siberian Butterfly"

Yo La Tengo.  The Sea and Cake (plus side projects).  Bob Mould.

Siri -- name some musicians who are making albums into their 60's that are consistently good, if not sometimes great?

"proper 'worlds'"

"The virtual worlds hosted by Ultima Online [1997] and its many descendants are not real worlds, but they are worlds that can be experienced in a way that seems much more immersive than clambering through steam tunnels beneath a university.  Ultimately, computers largely resolved the dichotomy between realism and playability -- computers excel at the management of the enormous number of circumstantial modifiers that create a realistic game, but since the burden of calculating those factors falls on on human participant, the playability remains unaffected. . . .  This realistic playability does come at a cost -- a computer cannot improvise or innovate, traits that a human referee can leverage to craft a more engrossing world.  For many players, however, that trade-off is made happily.  In a multiplayer game environment, the computer can also fall back to the position of an intermediary, allowing humans to improvise and innovate with one another as players, which can approximate, and in some cases exceed, the imagination of a dedicated referee.  What makes these virtual environments proper 'worlds' is not so much their scenery as their inhabitants, the community that players join when they enter the game.  Like the real world, it is a place where individuals compete and collaborate as necessary to achieve their goals, and the interpersonal dynamics that this involves, as Chapter Four illustrated, lend a depth to the game that no system can model or simulate."

-- Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

"tucks them in with a duvet"

How is England handling the pandemic?  By growing huge vegetables!  To wit:

"But giant-vegetable-growing is about more than machismo; it requires the disciplined devotion of a medieval monk. 'There’s something therapeutic about it,' says Carre. 'You’re trying to keep the vegetable growing, and push it further, and wondering if you’ve done everything right. It’s like how I imagine nurturing a baby, almost.' Short spends two hours a day with his pumpkins, visiting them in the morning and again at night, when he tucks them in with a duvet, to alleviate any sudden temperature changes that might cause them to split."

I mean, why not?  ("I mean, why not?" has pretty much been my mantra since November 2016.)

Also news to me that summer county fairs along with plant- and livestock-contests are just not a thing in South Korea, according to my adult students.

Enter The G-Man

My World Series inclination is to root for the American League squad, but a few years back I adopted the Dodgers are my B-team.  However, Ryu Hyun-jin has moved on to Toronto, and I'm really intrigued by Tampa Bay's first baseman Choi Ji-man.

He's a total journeyman oddball.  Plays first as a rightie (which implies he's a natural rightie) but has until recently always batted as a leftie.  But now, he's also flirting with switch hitting.  (He's only 29, but that's way late to change an entire plate approach.)

Anyhow, I think I'm rooting for Tampa Bay now and hope Choi (known as "The G-Man") gets off at least one decent bat-flip.

Prosecute The Scooter Looter Freebooters

Last month  I was complaining about waves of rental scooters showing up and basically choking the street corners of Daegu.  Turns out I'm not alone in my distaste for these things:

"The number of complaints relating to the use of electric scooters this year reached 1,951 as of end of July, according to data from the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission. For full-year 2019, the number was 1,927, and in 2018, it was 511.

'We receive at least 10 complaints a day about electric scooters parked on sidewalks or at subway station exits where lots of people pass by,' an employee from Gangdong District Office’s transportation policy department said. 'When we actually visit the location, the electric scooter is no longer there as it has already been taken by another user. It’s really difficult for us to regulate them.'

Operators of scooter-sharing services are making efforts to tackle the backlash. Olulo, operator of Kickgoing, and PUMP, operator of Xing xing, established 24-hour-a-day hotlines for local district offices so that company employees can clear their scooters within two hours of a complaint.  

 Some critics argue that foreign companies have recklessly increased the number of scooters in pursuit of revenue, to the point that it has become nearly impossible for them to respond to problems."

If they are left on public streets or sidewalks, they are literally pieces of trash.  Treat them as such.

Fuck The Yankees, Fuck the Stros

The rabid hellscape of 2020 is the only possible timeline where I become a Tampa Bay Rays fan.

"just like it said in the encyclopedia"

Fried chicken is heaven, Korean friend chicken especially so.  But many Koreans are unaware of the fraught history of Soul Food in America:

"All this explained my discomfort in publicly asserting my affection for fried chicken. But it did not diminish it. I understood why some African American friends of Momofuku restaurateur David Chang refused to be seen eating fried chicken on camera, as he described in an episode dedicated to the southern delicacy on his Netflix series Ugly Delicious. They didn’t want to be perceived as a cliche.

But while the US was trying to unpick the racist issues surrounding fried chicken, the UK’s Conservative government was stoking the flames. The Home Office’s decision to put anti-knife crime messages on fried chicken boxes perpetuated yet more racist stereotypes about knife crime and chicken shop customers.

It all feeds into that same shame. During a recent podcast recording, I was asked what my final supper would be. As I said 'fried chicken', I couldn’t help hearing an imagined, knowing, 'Of course!' in response.

The US comedian Dave Chappelle got it. In one sketch, he mimics white people watching him as he eats some chicken. 'Look at him,' they say in amazement, 'he loves it just like it said in the encyclopedia.'"

Everything is political, even the crispiest and deliciousist of fried poultry.

Minor Thought

2020 is definitely the year we'll all look back and say, wow, thank God for capitalism.

For Your Enjoyment, Bro

Jakob Bro, "Red Hook" live

I've recently discovered this amazing Danish jazz guitarist named Jakob Bro.

I mean, it's 2020 -- I'm just going to roll with it.  The guys with him are all excellent as well.

America, Fuck No

I'm pretty certain I'll be leaving Korea and going home this February at the end of my current contract, for family reasons.

As I eyeball prices on a new car, health and car insurance, an apartment, and US-priced internet and phone, I'm kind of put off by the fact that I'm already losing money.

And I'll need to find a job in the middle of the Trump Virus.  Hell, I'll need to survive  the Trump Virus.

Good times.

"We're rich."

Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) was two weeks ago, but I still enjoyed this essay by Nina Yun on what it means to celebrate abundance in a time of the coronavirus in America:

"On Chuseok, as my mother and I cooked happily and divided all the food into containers (and then Ziploc bags when we ran out of containers), we’d make the same joke. 'We’re rich,' my mother said every time she poured more oil into the pan. 'We’re rich,' I said when I cracked more eggs. 'We’re rich,' we said in unison as we looked at all the food we packed to give away. After months of pandemic living, we still find it hard to enjoy our meals without feeling guilty, especially when faced with an excess of our own making. But this felt like relief, like a long exhale for a breath we didn’t know we were holding. It felt right. Chuseok, too, is a kind of new year for my mother and her emigration from Korea. I think for many Korean Americans, the tenor of Chuseok’s guide to remembrance expands to their or their family’s immigrant experiences. To account for the struggles it takes to make a life here, to account for what it means to survive here, is to remember a kind of body.

Before I left to deliver the food — face mask on the entire time — my mother poured us each a small serving of sujeonggwa [cinnamon fruit punch]. We toasted. After I drank mine, I studied the emptiness of my teacup and felt grateful."

This is, frankly, a horrible time to be alive.  Splurging on food for yourself, family, and your friends seems perfectly logical to me.

King Sejong Was A Pimp

And a happy Hangul Day to you.

The weather here in Daegu is autumn perfection.  Off to take a long walk around the north part of the city.

"ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else"

When will America finally collapse under the weight of its leadership vacuum and systemic inequalities based on race and class?  Sri Lankan writer Indi Samarajiva says it already has:

"If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like 'this is it,' I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says 'things are officially bad.' There’s no launch party for decay. It’s just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol.

Perhaps you’re waiting for some moment when the adrenaline kicks in and you’re fighting the virus or fascism all the time, but it’s not like that. Life is not a movie, and if it were, you’re certainly not the star. You’re just an extra. If something good or bad happens to you it’ll be random and no one will care. If you’re unlucky you’re a statistic. If you’re lucky, no one notices you at all.

Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is."

Over 200,000 Americans are dead because of Trump's anti-science incompetence regarding coronavirus.

Hong Kong is doomed and neither Trump nor Johnson is lifting a finger to stop it.

A world-wide depression is about to kick in.

I mean, is there even enough oxygen left within American political discourse to remember that a quack government "doctor" has been forcing hysterectomies on migrant women?

Yawn

Kamala did fine.  (Notice a pattern here?)  I might have missed it, but she didn't mention Merrick Garland's name when Pence asked about court packing, which stood out for me as a missed opportunity.  Then again, maybe that's too much inside baseball for most Americans.

Mike Pence is obviously not quite as deranged at his master.  I don't see that carrying much weight in late 2020.

Biden is well within his rights to cancel the last two debates with Typhoid Cheeto.  They won't move the scale one inch either way.

Good lord, let's get this over with.

RIP Johnny Nash, Eddie V.

 

Johnny Nash, "I Can See Clearly Now" live

This might be overshadowed by the equally sad death of Eddie Van Halen.  They both deserve to be remembered for their very different but very excellent contributions to music.  Also, Nash was apparently the first non-Jamaican to record records in Kingston.

Too soon, too soon.

Things Are Still Awful

You can't "go back to normal" as long as the coronavirus is still active.  Even in South Korea, the country with the most success in fighting the virus, things are still in a deep rut:

"A shortage of job opportunities is another unexpected problem. College students who need part-time jobs can’t find any.

 

Lee Joo-yeon, a 24-year-old Hanyang University student, says she's trying but having little luck.

 

'When I had a job interview with a cafe owner, he said he was looking for an experienced worker,' Lee said. 'According to him, he used to have two part-time workers but had to cut one as he can’t afford paying them amid the Covid-19 pandemic.'

 

Mr. Lee, a 28-year-old studying for the civil service exam, said he was recently laid off from his part-time job.

 

'While studying for the exam, I used to work at a pub in front of Hanyang University at night to earn money for monthly living expenses,' Lee said. 'After I lost the job, it’s been really tough for me to get another opportunity.'”

Have I mentioned that I'll probably be moving back to America next year, and that I'm terrified at the prospect of finding work?

"All In" Is A Weak Move, Not A Strong One

In poker terms, Trump has gone "all in."  In moving back to the White House he'll have his bully pulpit back, and some modicum of control over a narrative that is increasingly looking good for Joe Biden after an objectively disastrous debate performance.

Of course, "all in" means you've also played your last move.

Here, it also  means further risking the lives of the White House staffers around him, the Secret Service, White House janitorial and management, and of course, literally all of their family members.

Obviously, this shocks nobody.  There has always been a Jonestown quality to Trump's support, both officially (Republicans cowed into not wearing masks) and unofficially (crowds of supporters herded into indoor arenas).

It's still two or three days before we know just how severe a case of COVID-19 Trump has picked up.  If he goes straight back onto the campaign trail, only to flee back to Walter Reed with inflamed lungs and needing oxygen, he'll look even weaker than the overweight, under-exercised, 74 year-old he actually is.  Game over, figuratively at best.

Republicans are still going to try and do everything they can to steal this election, but Trump's "outs" are growing scarcer and more dangerous by the day.  (Hour?)  Gas-lighting a pusillanimous and easily-led US media is one thing.  Playing games with a goddamn killer virus is another.

Again, this is not at all a call for complacency.  I'm just pointing out that these are the final, desperate moves of someone who knows he's in trouble (politically and physically) and more importantly, knows he has no options left.

Anybody familiar with Texas Hold'em (even rank amateurs like me) knows that moving all your chips in is usually the desperate move, not the strong one.  Nine times out of ten, it signals "please don't realize how fucked I really am," not "recognize my status as a preternatural He-Man."

Staying put at Walter Reed and milking hourly empathy points from FOX, and probably even to a lesser extent CNN would have been the confident move.  "For any American suffering from the China Virus, I know how difficult it is!"

But alas, this is a lifelong loser making what might be his final loser move.

It's only a question of how many actual human lives he manages to take with him before it's over.

"genuinely afraid of where this could lead"

With a new, non-surgical, treatment for dwarfism advancing rapidly, who's to say whether or not it's a "disease" in the first place?  The Guardian takes a look at the medical, ethical, and social issues involved:

"There are, says Gillian Martin, a tutor and chair of the Restricted Growth Association, the British charity that supports people with dwarfism, 'people who are genuinely afraid of where this could lead'. Because about 80% of children with achondroplasia are born to parents without it, some 'adults with dwarfism in the community feel that average-height parents are being an advocate for a disability that doesn’t directly affect them. There is a fear – irrational in my view – that this research is leading the way to eradicate dwarfism.'

This view tends to be stronger in the US, where there is, says Joe Stramondo, a professor of philosophy at San Diego State University and a disability rights activist, 'a more robust dwarf culture and identity. With that kind of cultural context, you’re going to get a very different response to something like this than other areas of the world where people with dwarfism don’t associate with each other as often. We recognise our situation as being one of oppression, and of being subjected to stigma as being the main source of our difficulty in the world. When you have that community, that sounding board, you’re going to have more pushback to a drug like this.' But it’s far from the only view, he says. 'We have people who are very much against the use of the drug, and you have folks who are enthusiastic about it, and say: "Maybe it’s stigma, but it still makes my life harder. I don’t want that for my children." You have a lot of people who are somewhere in between, who are saying: "Let’s wait and see what the drug actually does. Let’s see if it has the capability of dealing with some of these co-morbidities such as sleep apnoea, or spinal stenosis." I think if it were shown to do some of that, there would be lots of people who would be pretty enthusiastic about it.'”

As medical science advances, it's interesting to think about "diseases" that really don't need to be cured.  (Autism as a sign of potential genius rather than an inability to function socially, for example.)  And of course, more conservative societies might even mandate these types of treatment rather than allowing parents and their children to decide if they want to be "fixed."

The future, if we make it past Trump, is going to be complicated as hell.

Thoughts And Prayers

I say we treat a sick and / or dying President Trump with the same respect and deference he has shown to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton.

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) October 3, 2020

Monorail!

Daegu, South Korea.

It occurs to me that after ten years in lovely Daegu I really haven't taken more pictures of my more immediate neighborhood of Chilgok / North Daegu.

It's a perfectly nice area, but before COVID arrived I spent much more of my free time in other parts of the city, either downtown or way to the east at the ballpark.

What's cool here is that you can see a few things that have definitely improved the area recently.  The glass building on the left is Guam Station, on the Line Three Monorail (in addition to Lines One and Two, traditional subway lines).  Getting downtown is now a breeze compared to the bus lines.

Also, they've finished construction on a really nice foot and bike path along this stream.  When the weather is good (like it was today) people flock to the stream side.  I know it doesn't look amazing, but it's a big change from what used to be pretty much an overlooked drainage ditch.

Spam Spam Spam

 

Yes, Spam is a traditional (and expensive) gift here in South Korea for major holidays.

Daegu, South Korea.

Dalmatian Station

Daegu, South Korea.

Happy Chuseok!

It's Chuseok again, Korean Thanksgiving, and the city, or at least the northern suburb where I live, is totally quiet.  There's the occasional shriek of kids playing, but that's about it.  The weather is Platonically ideal at 75 with a few clouds, and I'm in the middle of a five-day weekend staycation.

I had pizza for dinner last night, which I haven't had in over a year if I'm remembering correctly.

For what it's worth, there is decent South Korean pizza out there but the place I ordered from on a bit of a whim was not it.

Insert bad pizza / sex jokes here.

It's already October.  Three months left to ago in this hell-year.  I got an e-mail from Washington State to let me know my e-ballot has been received.

It's something, I guess.

Happy Chuseok to you and your family.

(To get technical, far too often Korean pizza cheese and toppings don't "meld" with the crust.  They sort glide on top and come off way too easily.  The flavors are there, but the marriage between crust and cheese and toppings never seems to come together like it should.  And I'm pretty sure this places makes their dough from scratch, so the problem is somehow in the cooking process, not the ingredients.)