A Non-Political Trump Post For Reals

1) Storytime re: the Old Post Office in DC, now home of Trump Hotel

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

2) My first job out of college was working there, at the National Endowment for the Arts

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

3) It's a beautiful, huge, old building with a hollow interior -- like an amazing ten-story pavillion

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

4) Not sure about now, but back in my day at lunch various high school bands would perform on a stage in the pavilion / food court

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

5) So I'd eat lunch with friends and you pretty much had to listen to some high school band from Malaria Creek, Alabama

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

6) This was around the time of a movie called "Mr. Holland's Opus," about an inspirational high school music teacher (yes I'm old)

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

7) Never seen it, but I gather it's a terrible, cheesy "Dead Poets' Society" rip-off (which is also a terrible, cheesy film)

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

8) So basically for a year out of college I ate lunch listening to these horrendous, screeching high school bands

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

9) And without fail, the (almost always male) music teacher /conductor would be on the edge of tears, if not bawling, when the music stopped

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

10) By any objective measure the music had been a train-wreck but I think the real lesson here, folks

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

11) Is that we all get moments where we get to shine and really, who gives a fuck what some shit-head like me thought of yr performance?

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

12) You and the Malaria Creek marching band rocked it

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

13) Haters always gonna hate

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

14) The End

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) October 2, 2016

"Prepared"

Jessica Valenti on "Why the Mediocre Male's Days May Be Numbered":

"For women like Clinton who are advised to tone down their intelligence lest they come across as unlikeable, the debate and its aftermath mark a promising shift in the way that smart women are perceived. Finally, a man who was markedly less prepared and talented than his female opponent was called out as such. Finally, a woman who has spent her life doing her homework wasn’t made out to be a condescending shrew. Clinton’s best line of the night, in fact, was that unlike Trump, 'I prepared to be president.'

And on Wednesday morning, with multiple polls showing that Clinton dominated the debate, former Virginia senator John Warner, a Republican, endorsed her. 'She has always throughout her life prepared, done her homework, studied,' he said.

It’s a winning time for any woman who has ever been called bossy – the 'bitches', the know-it-alls, the Tracy Flicks and Leslie Knopes. Being studied and nerdy is almost never considered an admirable characteristic in a woman, but this week it was."

Well, there goes my promise to step away from political blogging.  But this whole article deserves to be repeated.

I'm fine with criticizing HRC.  I happen to think she'll be a very good president despite lacking the natural speaking gifts of Obama.

But the election is 40 days away.  And at this point, you're either voting to prevent fascism via a capable, competent woman or you're directly or indirectly going to enable it.

And voting to elect our first female president is an honor.

Life On Planet James

Sometimes I finish a tube of Pringles and then "drink" the little broken bits at the bottom and wonder why am I still single?

— Autumn Is My Jam(es) (@wetcasements) September 28, 2016

It's Like They Expect Me To Work Around Here Or Something

I just did my first batch of case study surveys and interviews for the research paper.  Four solid hours, after three hours of teaching my usual stuff.

I think we're on to some interesting data but jeebus, I'm tired.

I did manage to watch some highlight clips of the debate.  And it's clear to me now that I really don't appreciate sharing a planet, let alone a country, with Trump supporters.

Righteous Nomz

Korean-American food truck mastermind Roy Choi has now moved on to doing healthy-ish, fair wage fast food joints in working class neighborhoods.  Welcome to "the People's Cheeseburger" at Locol:

"Here’s the story you may have heard about Locol: In 2013, Roy Choi spoke at the MAD Symposium in Copenhagen, the TED Talks of the food world, and called on his fellow chefs to think beyond feeding the rich. He stood in front of the audience of culinary luminaries, including Patterson, and asked them a question: 'What if every high-caliber chef, all of us in here, told our investors as we were building restaurants, that we leveraged it [so that] for every restaurant we would build… it would be a requirement to build a restaurant in the hood, too?' Three months later, Patterson called up Choi, and, long story short, the duo were back in Copenhagen the next year, an odd-couple pairing of the lanky, studious fine-dining chef and the hip-hop- and weed-loving food truck king. Together, they unveiled their plans to launch Locol, and a revolution.

With its burgers and fried chicken sandwiches, Locol is recognizably a fast-food restaurant, despite the absence of counter-service standards like soda and French fries. But the greasy paper wrapper of the Locol 'cheeseburg' is deceptive. The patty is not all beef, as other chains may proudly advertise: Thirty percent of it is composed of cooked grains and tofu. It’s served on a whole-grain bun leavened with koji, the fermentation culture used to make sake, soy sauce, and miso, which is designed to reproduce the soft texture of white bread without sacrificing nutritional density. The dishes served are punctuated with various Korean and Mexican touches, like breakfast sandwiches loaded with carnitas, or a noodle bowl flavored with ginger and lime."

 If you haven't read it, Choi's biography -- pretty much the confessions of a self-admitted first-generation Korean-American fuck-up who was rescued when he discovered his passion for cooking and bringing together the various flavors of southern California -- is a great, quick read.  It also contains a recipe after every chapter, which is kind of brilliant.

(Possibly Quite Boring) Research Paper Update

It's near the end of week four of the semester, and my research project continues apace.  Me and my two foreigner co-workers have collected data on foreign language anxiety (F.L.A.) in the form of a peer-reviewed survey, and we also collected less formal voice and video recordings of our students telling us what they like or don't like about studying and using English.

The real fun begins next week when we bring in sample students for longer interviews.  Half of them have been studying in classes which have employed Socratic-style seminars, and half of them have been in control groups without the seminars.

The seminars themselves were 30-45 minute exchanges where we arranged the desks into concentric circles and we sat down with the students rather than standing at the classroom podium / computer stand.  The goal was to immerse them into a much more peer-oriented, less teacher-oriented environment than they're used to.

We won't have all our data collected for another two weeks but so far it seems as if we're going to confirm what might have been obvious all along -- the students really seemed to enjoy engaging with us in a more level, egalitarian manner, but given their status as limited English proficient learners (L.E.P.) there was only so far a purely Socratic style, question-based lesson could go.

Still, it'll be interesting to see if the students who did the seminars have more confidence or a more positive take on their own English learning than the ones who didn't.  We shall see!

Barb, We Hardly Knew Ya

"The Synth Sounds of Stranger Things"

Here's a very cool video guide as to how classic 80's synths were used to make the soundtrack to Stranger Things.  Here's a more in-depth guide to the retro tech that was involved.

As mentioned, as much as I liked the series I think it started much stronger than it ended.  I wouldn't say I was disappointed exactly, but for a show going in so many weird directions the last episode felt pretty conventional in comparison to the rest of the series.  (The bit with the sheriff leaving some Eggos in the woods was great though.)

Then again, it was nice to have a tidy eight-show run that actually did manage to answer and resolve some of its own "big" questions with just enough left to the imagination for a second season.

"the worst of America stuffed into a nacho cheese casing"

Drew Magary on Trump:

"Trump is human waste. He is the worst of America stuffed into a nacho cheese casing, and he is emblematic of the kind of arrogant, flag-waving, trashy, racist moron that the rest of us have to DRAG kicking and screaming into the 21st century: Cliven Bundy, Sean Hannity, Kim Davis, and on and on and on. Trump voters are the people who have spent the past decade or so voting insipid obstructionists into office, sending death threats to anyone who even mentions the idea of gun control, demanding 100% tax cuts on millions of dollars they can only daydream about making, and getting suckered in by any Oil Party candidate waving a NO GAYS flag. Fuck them. These are needy hillbilly loons who are just as starved for attention as Trump himself. And voting for Trump is their way of emulating him, of saying FUCK YOU to everyone else as a mission statement, with no regard for the fallout."

One of my favorite bits of conservative "wisdom" regarding the rise of Trumpolini is that if only us sissy-man libruls had been nicer to real, honest-to-Jeebus Americans (meaning, of course, white middle-age and older males) then that nice Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush would have won the nomination.

Obviously, this is bullshit.  Trump is a mere symptom of American conservatism's inherent racist and fascist streaks, not a cause in himself.

And Magary is on to something here.  As mentioned, I won't shed any tears if Trump is elected.  I'm going to vote, and maybe donate some money, and encourage my friends and colleagues to do likewise.

But if a majority of American voters really are dumb and / or cynical enough, then fuck 'em.  It's really as simple as that.  Fuck them and let them reap the whirlwind.

"I Went Into Therapy For A Year"

This is pretty much perfection in the form of pop musical history crack -- an oral history of Starship's "We Built This City."  To wit:

"Member of successful '80s band: Our producer brought the demo to us. It's the most pussy thing I've ever heard. 'Knee-deep in the hoopla'? Well, even Mark Twain wrote some bad prose. Don't quote any of this."

Then, vocalist Grace Slick:

"I was such an asshole for a while, I was trying to make up for it by being sober, which I was all during the '80s, which is a bizarre decade to be sober in."

Vocalist Mickey Thomas:

"When the song went to No. 1, I said to Bernie, 'More than ever, people are gonna ask what "Marconi plays the mamba" means.' He said, 'I have no fucking idea, mate.'”

Bassist Pete Sears:

"In 1987, I quit the band. And I went into therapy for a year. At times, I've thought it is the worst song ever, yes. Occasionally, now, I hear 'We Built This City' in a supermarket, or in some movie, and I'm grateful that it helps renew my health insurance, via SAG-AFTRA."

 The whole thing is gold, my friends.

Korean Diaspora

A nice piece on the complicated and fascinating story of Koreans in Uzbekistan:

"My grandfather lived a relatively successful life in Uzbekistan. He went to study in Moscow and was later sent to work in rural Ukraine, where he met his future Russian wife, a woman who was working in the same town. They returned to Tashkent together in 1957, already married and with my one-year-old mother.

For most of his life, my grandfather worked as a chief engineer in the construction bureau at a major industrial plant in Tashkent. He developed and patented a lot of technical innovations for cotton picking machinery – we still keep all his certificates of achievement at home.

This is how the Korean community is ingrained in our social fabric – as extremely hard working people and quite a prosperous diaspora. In fact, many Koreans – including Nikolay’s mother and my grandfather – have been awarded with numerous state medals for their very hard labor during the Soviet times.

Uzbek Koreans are also known for their indisputable role in the development of Uzbekistan’s national agriculture. Traditional peasants, they passed to Uzbek locals their generations-worth of farming knowledge and techniques. Even now, the best types of rice grown in Uzbekistan and used in the preparation of most representative Uzbek dishes are still lovingly called 'Korean.'"

 Click through for some great pictures and video.

The Little Things That Count

One thing you'll notice if you live in South Korea along enough is that drivers, and especially cab drivers, will violently pull up the parking break at any given red light.  I mentioned this to a foreigner co-worker at lunch today, and he mentioned that he actually failed the Korean driver's license test after being admonished for not yanking it up at every stop.

You learn something new every day.