Nudeviking!

US Happened To Me

2011-06-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

So I went to America last month. It was pretty awesome. I saw guns, big hamburgers, crafted beers, Danny Glover, bro-dudes, douchebags, Wal-Mart, commericals that I didn't know what they were selling, soft-serve ice cream, and my cousins.

Also when I was in America Macho Man "Randy" Savage died which pretty much sucked. I wrote a bunch of more detailed stuff about what I did when I was in America, but I did so in a marble composition notebook and I really don't feel like typing it over again. Maybe I'll scan it later, but until then, that's all I want to write about.

Homeownership

2011-05-07T12:14:00.001-04:00

A lot of really random stuff has gone on over the past few months. I got drunk on red wine and sang in front of a thousand people in China and received a standing ovation for my performance. I went to Germany and ate lots of animals I don't really like all that much but ate because they're unavailable in Korea (venison, rabbit, lamb, etc.) I went to Hong Kong and did stuff that people do in Hong Kong.

All of these things are pretty decent excuses as to why I didn't write anything here in like a million hours. Well, those and the fact that I have an iphone, so all the stuff that five years ago would have been a blog post are now just uploaded from my iphone to Facebook. (ie. "Look at this poorly written English sign. Har har har!")

Perhaps the biggest reason I haven't written, at least during the past month or so is the fact that I now own property. My wife and I rented a small apartment and had a two year contract. That contract was up for renewal this spring. For reasons unknown to us, the price to rent an apartment suddenly became astronomically high in the area we were living in.

I suppose I should explain how housing works in Korea. If you need a place to live, there are three things you can do. First you can pay monthly rent. This works almost exactly the same as renting does in America. Second you can buy. Again nothing different here. You go to the bank get a ton of money give said money to current owner and sign a bunch of papers and its yours. Korea also has something between the two. They call it 전세 (jeonsae). Basically you give the landlord a huge chunk of money (at our last apartment it was like $100,000) and then you live in that apartment rent free for a set period, usually two years. At the end of that two year period you get your giant deposit back and you leave. How the landlord makes any real money under this system I'm not really sure, but it's a good way to make money for the tennant if you can afford that initial deposit.

So we did that for two years during which the price of jeonsae apartments rose...a lot. And a lot of them turned into standard rental properties. Apparently landlords figured that the jeonsae system wasn't really good for them unless they stole that money for the tennants (which was a real possibility and the reason I was not about living in a jeonsae apartment at all), so they all switched to regular rental properties...or jacked up their prices.

The prices to purchase an apartment did not follow suit. So we ended up with a situation where we would have to borrow money to do jeonsae, or borrow a little more money and own a house. Since neither my wife nor I are particularly stupid we decided to buy.

So we now live in a pretty decent sized apartment on the opposite side of the river from where we previously lived. Our house is roughly two times the size of our last apartment so there's a lot of space and everything looks really clean since we don't have to have stacks of stuff. We moved in at the end of April and are just now getting everything organized again. There are still some minor stuff that needs to be purchased like a dining table and curtains in the living room, but all the really major stuff has been attended to.

So there you go...a bunch of half assed excuses as to why I haven't written anything here in a very, very long time. While we're at it, I should probably just give my excuse for why I won't be writing here for the next 3-5 weeks. In 6 days I'm going to America for a business trip followed by a vacation to my hometown. So when all of that is done, I'll come back and write about the awesome stuff I bought at Target or how the Tri-City Valley Cats did while I was in town. And maybe one of these days I'll actually post some pictures of the new pad, though maybe not because I'm incredibly lazy.

LG Twins vs. Samsung Lions

2011-04-13T19:59:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to see a baseball game with some coworkers after work. I haven't been to a ball game in lord knows how long, but it was a lot of fun. One of my minions at work is a huge LG Twins fan and his enthusiasm has been kind of infectious.

He and I along with three other coworkers headed off to Jamsil Stadium after work, arriving at the top of the third inning. We had free tickets so we found our seats and then someone was sent off for food and beers. Fried chicken is the food of choice at baseball stadiums in Korea appearently so that's what we had.

The Twins ended up losing, but it was a pretty rad trip out to the ball park. Watching baseball in Korea has a lot more fan participation than I ever recall baseball in the US having. There's chanting, people have drums and other noisemakers, and there are cheerleaders. It honestly reminded me a lot more of a pro-wrestling event in America than a triple A baseball game in America...which I think made it more fun. Seriously though, when is a sporting event that features hot girls ever a bad idea?

I'll probably go catch a couple more games at the stadium this season. Anyway there's not a ton to write about the fact that I saw a random baseball game other than the fact that I saw a random baseball game, so there you go. Samsung can suck it!

Playing Through The Backlog: Dragon Quest IX

2011-04-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

I know it's been like 354 years since I last posted anything here, and for that I am dreadfully sorry. The first reason which I will get into greater detail at some other date has been a hectic work schedule since New Year. I've already been to China and Germany this year as well as playing host to customers from America and Dubai so the time I have to actually write anything greater than a couple words has been pretty much non-existant. I have been using Facebook to a greater degree as well as my truly awesome tumblr site, Mustaches of the 80s! The other reason I have not written here in nearly 4 months is because of the game pictured to the right, Dragon Quest IX. Every year at Christmas my mom sends a box of gift-like items to my wife and I. I say gift-like items, because usually it consists of food stuffs that are hard to locate in South Korea (taco seasoning and Duncan Hines cake mixes are prenial favorites) and assorted odd items. Each year we usually get one or two items that could legitimately be considered gifts. This year among the haul were the DVD of the back half of R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet, and this DS game.

Back when I was a youth, Dragon Warrior was the first Nintendo game my family purchased (at a Silo if memory serves me correctly) outside of the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt game pak that came with our system. I remember going with my dad to get a game. I wanted Zelda, but we ended up getting Dragon Warrior instead. Both of us were hooked, and for a time getting and playing a Dragon Warrior game was something that would happen over the Christmas holiday (except Dragon Warrior III, which I think was gotten during spring break). The Dragon Warrior series stopped being released in America for whatever reason after Dragon Warrior IV (which was released in such limited quantities, that I never played it until years later when my friend bought it from some used video game dealer). Ultimately the series was superceded in my household by the Final Fantasy series which pretty much continously released games.

I liked a lot of the Final Fantasy games, but around the time they made it to the Playstation 2, a lot of the stuff that had made them great was gone, replaced with angsty teenagers with oversized weapons and shitty haircuts. Dragon Quest IX has none of that, and in fact the game has kind of a retro feel to it. The first enemies you will fight include Dragon Quest/Warrior's iconic slime. The protagonist is a silent, nameless figure, your party starts off armed with bamboo poles, and many of the goals in the game are decidedly small scale. Only as the game progresses does it become clear that the fate of the world rests upon your shoulders.

That's not to say the entire game consists of throwbacks to an earlier age of gaming. Dragon Quest IX also features a lot of uh...features that are seemingly inspired by online games like Everquest or World of Warcraft, mainly multi-player capabilities, downloadable content, and Warcraft style quests.

The multi-player modes I did not have much experience with since it only works with the DS local network, and no one in my neck of the woods was playing. Though from what I've read, it seems like it would be a lot of fun.

The other thing that Dragon Quest IX borrows from more contemporary gaming is its accomplishments list. I don't know what game or system first came out with this, since there was a good 5 or 6 year period where I didn't really play any video games. My first exposure to it came from World of Warcraft, but I have no doubt some other game innovated it first. Anyway Dragon Quest IX has an insane number of accomplishments awarded for everything for achieving a certain level, or killing X number of monsters to wearing a particular outfit or defeating the game in a certain number of hours.

These accomplishments coupled with quests, optional dungeons, and downloadable content really increase the ammount of time one can spend playing Dragon Quest IX. I actually "beat the game" on a flight to Germany back in January of this year, but defeating the final boss was hardly the end of the game. If fact only after beating the last boss do a lot of quests become available. The quests are of the standard MMORPG ilk (kill X number of Y, bring doodad W to random guy Z), but on a portable system allow the game to be played in bite sized bits and still feel a sense of accomplishment. ("Oh I can totally kill 5 magi wyverns using inferno before the train gets to my stop!")

Anyway, the game is a ton of fun, especially if you're a fan of RPGs from the late 80s or early 90s. I've got a ton of writer's rust, so I'm going to toss up a random score for the game and hit the "Publish Post," button and call it a day. Catch you later Bill and Ted!

Rating:

An Aside From Germany

2011-01-29T00:57:00.000-05:00

Nik Kershaw in Grrrmany and also beer going on.

X-MAS 2K10!!!

2010-12-27T23:04:00.000-05:00

So Christmas has come and gone. This year JH and I had a fairly subdued Christmas, which was nice. Several years back we attempted to go out to eat on Christmas Eve. It was a disaster! There were a million people who had the same idea, so we couldn't get into any restaurant, and then when we finally did, they only had overpriced "set menus," so that night on our way home we vowed never to make the same mistake. Since then we have done Christmas at home.

This year was no exception. On Christmas Eve, after many hours of pretending to work at work, I headed home where JH and I prepared steak and assorted side-dishes for dinner. Dinner with wine happened before our outstandingly decorated fake Christmas tree with some festive tunes playing on our stereo. The weather lady said it would snow but it didn't. It was bitterly cold which was lame, but we were inside so it didn't really matter.

The next morning we got up and I baked some muffins and brewed some coffee. JH and I then exchanged gifts. We keep it pretty simple, but I did end up with the 25th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. Collection and Smash Bros. for Wii (I don't know what the English titles are since I have got Korean versions of said games).

After opening presents we watched A Christmas Story, which somehow I'd never showed to JH before, and some sort of Home Alone marathon playing on cable and spent our afternoon thusly. In the late afternoon we traveled to the opposite side of the city to visit JH's sister and her family.

Christmas marked the 100th day after her sister's second baby was born, which for some reason is still an event some Koreans see fit to celebrate even though infant mortality rates are now nearly 0%. So we had some food there and gave gifts to neices.

We stayed for a couple hours which was incredibly draining. Infants and toddlers are loud and tiring, and after a few hours I was more than ready to go home. When we did finally get home we both fell asleep almost immediately, thus putting an end to our Christmas.

Rush & Cash Commercial

2010-12-24T23:11:00.001-05:00

About a million and a half years ago I had a different blog. Somewhere on that blog I wrote about a television commercial for a lending company that was on the air at the time that I found to be slightly odd. Half a million years ago I actually found a video of the commercial (the original post had pictures that I took of my television set as the commercial aired). I figured that since today is Christmas Eve, it would be seasonally appropriate to post that video file I downloaded all those years ago.

As for the commercial itself...well, much like those lovely presents all wrapped up in colorful paper beneath your tree I really don't want to ruin the surprise as to what I found peculiar about this particular commerical. Anyway, it's only like 30 seconds long, just watch it.

Anyway there you go. Merry Christmas!

Playing Through The Backlog: Final Fantasy Legend III

2010-12-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

I have been playing video games since I was but a wee lad. I am also unable to throw away, sell, or otherwise rid myself of any product I own. So I have a lot of video games. Actually that's kind of a lie. In 2003 I moved to Korea and took no video games with me. Sometime during my first year in Korea I got a Gameboy Advance and soon after had my mom send me all my Gameboy games, which she did, as well as games my bro had purchased (sorry bro).

Several years later I purchased a Nintendo DS when it arrived in Korea. My wife and I also purchased a lot of games. I also got my Nintendo Entertainment System shipped from America which stacks of Game Paks, and then this year for my birthday I got a Wii. So while I don't have half the game collection I did while living in America, I still have a lot of games.

Some of these games I've played and beaten multiple times over. Some I have played and abandoned at various points in time only to pick them up later, restart and abandon again, and then there are some I have no recollection of ever even playing. So I have decided to start playing through some of this backlog, starting with Final Fantasy Legend III for the Nintendo Gameboy.

Wikipedia tells me the game was released in America in 1993 but rereleased in 1998, which is probably when I purchased it. I played the hell out of the game around '93 or '94 when my friends got it, but I don't recall actually owning a copy until much later.

Final Fantasy Legend III tells the story of a group of children sent from the future to the present in order to grow up there, so they can go back to the future to destroy the Pureland Water Entity, some Cthulhu-esque being, from totally fucking up the future by flooding everything.

In order to stop this asshole, the heros of Final Fantasy Legend III need to travel through time and to other dimensions in order to get pieces for a time machine/jet type machine dubbed Talon. Having just played through this game, I couldn't tell you why exactly they needed the Talon for all of this beyond getting back to their original time, but gathering pieces for it was what needed to be done, so it was done. Ultimately your heros save the day, and in the process "save every generation that ever lived," (no small feat indeed). That's pretty much the entire plot as I remember it, and I just beat it this morning, and had been playing consistantly for two weeks. The plot beyond what I wrote is pretty weak. There is some dude named Sol (who I'm pretty sure is God) trying to stop the Water Entity too, and some other dude named Juniphar, or some such nonsense, who is appearently the main character's dad, but that plot nugget is revealed after you beat the last boss.

The plot is fairly irrealevant though, because this is an early 90's RPG before every RPG was a railroaded "playable" movie. This makes Final Fantasy Legend III fairly non-linear. I mean there is a plot, and ultimately there are things that need to be done before you go to other areas, but there are entire towns and dungeons that can totally be skipped without consequence. This is basically what I'm looking for in a RPG, and probably why Final Fantasy VI ranks as my favorite game of ever. I hate what RPGs, Final Fantasy in particular have become (or at least became when I last played one FFX for those keeping score). The railroad ride those games became was terrible.

The other thing I like about this game (and the Final Fantasy Legend Series in general) is the ability to change the race or your characters. Occassionally at the end of a battle, the enemies will leave behind meat or robotic parts which you can use on your part members to turn them into a variety of creatures. This hits a major RPG sweet-spot for me. Any game that allows you to alter your characters' classes or races has always scored big points with me. The ability to change your characters into Beasts, Monsters, Cyborgs, and Robots in Final Fantasy Legend III adds a lot of variety and allows for truly unique party make-ups (I personally rock a human, a cyborg, a robot, and a beast).

The game is not all cyborgs and optional dungeons though, there is a lot of stuff that honestly kind of sucks. Perhaps the most black hole-esque aspect in terms of pure suckitude is the translation. I honestly didn't remember it being this bad or thinking much about it in the early 90s when I played. Maybe because I did proof-reading as a job for awhile, or maybe because the quality of translations in video games has improved a ton, but the shittiness of the dialogue is very apparent now.

In most cases it doesn't matter, I mean who really cares if some random old man in a random town tells you the name of that town poorly, but the translation sometimes makes it difficult to know what you should actually be doing.

The other part of the game I thought was pretty poorly handled was the inventory menu. It's probably one of the most awkward inventory screens I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. The thing that makes it terrible is that once equipped ever item looses it's icon that let's you know what it is, so you end up with a screen that says "Diamond" a bunch of times, which is all well and good until you find a helmet better than that Diamond Helmet and have to do trial and error until you find the proper slot so you can equip your phat new loot. Similarly weapons don't actually raise any statistics, so it's hard to know which weapons are actually upgrades for your dudes without some trial and error.

So I guess the most important thing is whether or not the game was fun. It's a pretty short game, compared to games du jour. I played for probably less than an hour a day for about two weeks (minus the weekends) when I beat it, but during those ten or twelve hours I did enjoy myself, showing that you don't need 3-D rendering, color, or even proper grammar to make a game enjoyable.

Rating:

Let Me See That Thong Tho Thong Thong Thong!

2010-11-18T14:38:00.000-05:00

In the course of my business day I discovered I have a business card from a dude who works for a company named "A Thong" which apparently has nothing to do with Sisqó.

The Past Month Or So...

2010-10-16T23:51:00.001-04:00

So it's a random Saturday evening and I'm home alone, chugging wine straight from the bottle and listening to early 2000s indie rock. What better time to remember my password here and log in to post a poorly worded recap of the past couple of months or so. Ready? First up, my trip to Shanghai, China. DO IT ROCKAPELLA!!!

My trip to China was instigated by an expo, and an expo is an expo is an expo. It doesn't really matter where I am, it's the same basic nonsense. The only real difference is when I go overseas I don't have to wear my "I Can Speak Korea!" pin, oh and sometimes when we go overseas we have a translator. Shanghai was one of those times.

My party of adventurers on this particular business trip was a red mage, a fighter, and a summoner...or me, my boss, and one co-worker, and on this particular trip, our translator was a godsend, mostly because my boss and co-worker had way too many meetings with some Chinese company we already do business with and sitting alone in an expo booth for 7+ hours is boring. She was actually really nice and easy to talk to (unlike our interpreter in Japan) which made the time pass much more quickly.

As always (because I don't take anything I do seriously), the true awesomeness of a business trip is the stuff that only marginally relates to business, which on this trip meant one thing. Restaurants! My favorite thing about traveling overseas is eating stuff and drinking stuff that I can't eat or drink back home. So if I end up eating pidgeons or drinking booze that smells like a dirty jockstrap and tastes like burning, so be it. My boss, historically, has been a little less of a college student/contestant on Fear Factor when we travel, so everytime we go to China, or some China dervitive (Taiwan, Hong Kong) I'm a little worried. This time, for whatever reason, my boss was all about the food that we found, though he still wouldn't eat lamb.

Lamb is something I didn't eat often in America, but in Korea where it's all but impossible to acquire, it randomly became my second favorite meat (turkey, which is also impossible to find ranks at number one because I actually ate that a lot in the US and A). China, on the other hand, is all about lamb, so every time I'm there I make sure to eat lamb at least once, much to my boss' shagrin.

When I travel overseas with my boss, we inevitably end up eating at a Korean restaurant at least once (more if we travel with a group of other companies). I don't really know why Koreans can't go three days without eating Korean food. It's delicious food, but when you are in a foreign country, it's less awesome, expensive, and a waste of time. That's my normal way of thinking, but when we were in Shanghai, I finally found a Korean restaurant overseas that was worth paying a visit to. That restuarant was 옥류관, a restaurant that was staffed by North Koreans and served North Korean style food.

I'm going to be totally honest with ya bud, I felt a little guilty going there. I had the same feeling when I went to a strip club for the first time. I felt the same way when I ate dogs and whales. It was that feeling that, "Protestant American society tells me I shouldn't be doing this, but it's awesome, but I shouldn't, ARRRGGG!!!"

Anyway the food was awesome, and the girls working there were pretty amazing. They did everything. They acted as waitresses, cooked food, and then sang, danced, and/or played musical instruments. They were all also at least biligual, speaking Korean and Chinese. I also am functionally bilingual, a fact which our waitress was surprised by. The North Korean dialect is weird, but honestly easier for me to understand than the Jeju-do dialect. That's not to say I could understand it perfectly. If I could the following exchange would never have taken place.

ME: (asking our waitress, who had teeth like Dracula about a dish which I enjoyed, but had never had in Seoul) That was delicious. What is it called?

WAITRESS: Domado shrimp.

ME: Eh?

WAITRESS: Domado shrimp.

ME: Ah...tomato shrimp.

Apparently South Koreans say tomato, North Koreans say domado. Tomato! Domado! Let's call the whole thing off.

The waitresses were all in their twenties, but they had an overlord, a middle aged woman in a communist suit, complete with Kim Il Sung/Kim Jung Il badge combo. On business trips I, for whatever reason, am entrusted with money and company credit cards, so when it came time to pay the bill I had to spring into action, and talk to the middle-aged communist lady.

North and South Koreans are not all that different in that if a white person can speak their language at all they are shocked and must comment on it. The restaurant overlord was no exception.

On our way to the restaurant, my coworker, the summoner, warned me about the restaurant. He had apparently been there on a business trip prior to me starting at the company and offered me this advice, "Don't talk shit about Kim Jong Il, don't talk about America or South Korea, and you'll be fine. The last time I went there I saw some South Korean tourist get roughed up by communists for talking shit."

Like the World War II poster said, "Loose lips sink ships," or something like that. Blame it on the Pyeongyang Soju or the mushroom based alcohol I consumed, but I almost fucked up big time.

While I was paying and chatting up a middle aged communist lady complete with Kim Jung Il pins in Korean she dropped the standard issue, "You speak Korean very well," line that every middle-aged Korean lady will drop if you can speak more than one word of Korean. The only difference was she used the word "조선말," instead of "한국말." Thanks to my weekly viewing of the program "North Korean Window," that turn of phrase did not render me useless, so the following conversation took place.

COMMUNIST LADY: You speak our language very well. How did you learn it?

ME: (~~slightly~~pretty drunk) Oh, I majored in it in college...

COMMUNIST LADY: Here in Shanghai?

ME: No...

Suddenly like the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi or Jimmeny Cricket, the voice of my co-worker rang loud and clear in my mind, "DON'T MENTION AMERICA! DON'T MENTION AMERICA!!!"

I'd painted myself into a corner. How could I get myself out of this situation without needing Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter to save my ass? Suddenly I remembered an awesome thing in Korean, they use "our" instead of "my." So I dropped a, "I learned in 'our country,'" and defused the situation.

Anyway that was pretty much China. Or at least the stuff that was interesting to talk about, since I'm sure few of you care about MOQs or pricelists or "business clubs."

To quote Lavar Burton, "I'll see you next time!"

Oh wait, I should probably mention some other stuff that happened. You know what? Fuck it! I'll see you next time!

한국어가능

2010-09-11T22:32:00.000-04:00

I work for a random company, doing random stuff for my company that usually involves countries outside of Korea. Occassionally I have to go with some of my coworkers to random expos in Korea in the event that people from countries other than Korea visit our booth. Those kind of visitors are few and far between so must of the time I have to deal with locals.

I'm pretty okay at speaking Korean. I can explain the products my company produces. I can give prices. The color of my skin however makes local people very neverous and afraid to talk to me. Some people will hem and haw for a bit before asking me in halting English, "How much?" I give these people an A for effort. I usually respond to them in Korean which causes them much relief, but leads to me inevitably having to explain how it is possible for me to speak Korean. There are also people who will wait for one of my coworkers to become available even if I speak to that customer first in Korean, because I couldn't possibly know more Korean than, "Do you need any help?"

Several expos ago I wrote up some post-expo report for the boss and as I handed him the report he asked me how it went. I told him how a lot of people were nervous about talking to me, and then joking added, "I should probably wear a button that says 'I can speak Korean!' or something like that."

Remember that adage, "Be careful what you wish for?" My boss thought it was an awesome idea, and shortly thereafter, a button appeared proclaiming, "한국어가능," which I now must wear anytime I go to an expo in Korea. The button has done little to improve my expo experience. Now instead of people freezing in fear they elbow their friends in the ribs and point at my button and laugh, or try and quiz me to see if the button rings true, or they merely don't see the button and freeze in fear like the old days.

Such is the life of a random foreign employee working for a random Korean company.

Classic Myths To Read Aloud

2010-09-02T13:25:00.000-04:00

Is it weird that not being in the midst of a possible natural disaster has left me slightly disappointed? Bare with me a moment while I regale you with a tale of a non-event. For the past two weeks or so it has rained heavily almost everyday. I, and probably every other soul in Seoul, are frankly sick of the rain. So you can imagine how we felt when it was announced that a typhoon known as Kompasu was bearing down upon us.

This morning I awoke to howling winds and my wife proclaiming something about forgetting to close the windows out on the veranda. We headed out there to batten down the hatches just in time to see some kind of electricity unit a few houses over explode. Both our cats were huddled in some housing unit that we had, so we liberated them and headed back to our bedroom to check the television.

The guy in a fancy suit told us the typhoon would hit at 8:00 which was awesome because that is exactly when I have to leave for work. I decided it would be in my best interest to leave early so I showered, had a cup of coffee and updated my ipod. As I was doing so my wife alerted me from the other room that many subway lines were unable to move. Fear of the oncoming typhoon had rendered them useless. I was not going to be deterred. I chugged the rest of my coffee, kissed my wife goodbye and told her, "I'll see ya in another life, brotha."

The walk from my house to the subway station was one filled with wind and getting hit in the face with leaves, but it was otherwise uneventful. Taking line two I made my way from Hapjeong to Sindorim. This too was completely uneventful in spite of the fancy suited newsman telling me that that very stretch of line two was experiencing technical difficulties. So uneventful was the trip that I actually was able to read Classic Myths to Read Aloud (though I did not actually do so aloud).

In Sindorim I had to transfer to line one. It was here that I ran into some trouble. Line one is a heaping heap of shit on the best of days. Today? (Insert sound of me snarkily scoffing). There were soldiers and police cops all over the station shouting that line one was royally fucked up and to go out exit number one to snag a bus. I and about 9 gazillion other people did just that.

The line at the bus stop was insanely long and the prospects of catching a taxi were slim to none. I had deliberately dressed for this possibility. Sneakers, no necktie, action slacks. I decided I'd walk until another option presented itself, or I arrived at my office, which ever came first.

I spotted a sign pointing me in the direction of the next station on line one and headed off in that direction. By this time there was some rain, but the wind was so insane, that it rendered umbrellas useless. So with only my rocking jams and my wits I traversed a stretch of unfamiliar urban terrain until I came to the next station. Since I had run out of street signs pointing me to a subway station I knew of, I ducked into Guro Station to ask someone there to point me in the direction of the next stop on my pilgrimage.

I asked some lady in a uniform about it, and was informed that they had recently brought a train online that was traveling in that direction. She then let me go through some gate without me paying a second time which I thought was decent. I headed down to the platform and waited...and waited...and waited.

I tried to call my office, to give them a, "Yo dudes, I might be a little late today...apocalyptic conditions and all," but my phone had also been rendered useless by the approaching typhoon. I waited a little longer and the train finally arrived. Now on a good day line one is crowded with far too many unsavory characters. I cannot count the number of times I have been groped on that subway line due to overcrowding, so as the train approached a sense of nervousness overcame me and I thought to myself, "I really should have just gotten directions and continued my hike."

But my fears were completely unwarranted. The train was almost completely empty, as if the train had magically materialized on the tracks between the two stations. So I hopped on and enjoyed a comfortable ride the rest of the way to my office. Fate had been on my side and I was able to time in prior to 9:00. By 10:30 or so the sky had cleared completely and the winds had died down, but for that hour and a half during which I commuted to work I really felt like I was in some bad end of the world action movie, which is always a good thing when you look back in hindsight and realize you were never really in any danger.

Birthday

2010-08-30T23:49:00.000-04:00

My birthday happened a couple of weebacks*. This year I turned 30, which I guess is supposed to make me feel old or something, but since I already fake turned 30** a year ago, this birthday didn't even phase me.

I tried to keep my birthday a lowkey affair, but somehow the word got out and I got dragged into random birthday festivities. The Sunday before my birthday I met JH's parents, her sister, and her sister's husband for dinner. JH's mom gave me an envelope of money which made me feel kind of bad because my sister-in-law's husband never gets anything from them. JH later told me that her parents think I am miserable here and must be lonely on my birthday and miss my hometown, which can apparently be cured with envelopes of money. Perhaps I need to act more Eyeore-esque around them...I could use a new lens for my camera.

On the day of my birth, I went to work like the responsible adult that I am. I used to like having my birthday in the summer, because as a kid it meant I could have a pool party, and I could play whatever Nintendo game I received all day. Couldn't do that any this year. At work I kept my head down and didn't say anything about my birthday, because I didn't want to have people buy me pity cake. I didn't get any pity cake, but I got two care cakes!

I'm guessing girl in accounting has a list of everyone's birthday somewhere and got a cake with company funds. The second cake came from people in the design department that I'm actually friends with (aka the kind of co-worker I would hangout with even if we didn't work together anymore). Two of them studied English with me years before I became an actual employee, so they might have recalled my birthday from that time, which made it all the more impressive.

At home JH made me some rocking dinner. We had some steaks and potatos and random vegetables as well as a bottle of wine. Everything was mad decent. Presents arrived during the weekend, and they were awesome!

First, signifying the fact that I'm 30 now and need to be a responsible adult was a tie-pin. Second, signifying the fact that JH and I make decent loot and should be able to enjoy "frivilous" purchases, was a Nintendo Wii.

The Wii is totally awesome. It's basically the perfect game system for married people who still enjoy each other's company. The amount of "party" games makes it perfect for those nights when the weather is too shitty to go out. The other thing that is awesome is the virtual console deal. I've been waiting for such a thing pretty much since Super Nintendo came out.

I had a lot of games for older systems that I like playing, but I don't like having a million gaming systems crowding up my entertainment center. Wii would have cleared away a ton of that clutter, but since I'm on the other side of the universe it has merely replaced games that I no longer have access to***.

The weather has been a heaping pile of shit, so JH and I have been putting the Wii to good use. We are all about Wii Sports and Bubble Bobble (the 1988 NES version). JH is way better than me at Wii Sports, but I still can rack up way more points in Bubble Bobble. This probably has more to do with the fact that she allegedly never played games before we got married than anything else, and I'm sure in a week or so I will have to hand over my Bubble Bobble High Score Trophy to her as well. When that day comes my friends, the only thing left for me to do will be to download Mario Kart 64 on the Wii, fire up Master of Puppets or Ride The Lightning and rock some Battle mode!

*For those of you that aren't my brother or my friend Pete, "weebacks" equals "weeks back." Back in the mid to late 90s when it was trendy to watch pro-wrestling, we did just that. WCW was our primary drug of choice and on one particular Monday night one of the announcers probably Tony Schivone, but possibly Mike Tennay, attempted to explain some event that had happened two weeks earlier, but what came out of his mouth was, "a couple of weebacks."

**In Korea you are 1 year old upon birth so people have told me I am 30 for over a year now.

***I actually have an old school NES here as well, so I haven't gotten too many NES titles besides a couple that I never actually owned before, or otherwise lost to time/needing money for CDs/guitars in high school.

Tweenage Fan Club

2010-08-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

There was an expo this past week at COEX. Fortunately, Saturday was the last day of said expo, so I had Sunday to chillax, which is precisely what I did.

For some reason or another JH and I became aware of the fact that our satellite dish provides us with some version of the Disney Channel that broadcasts out of Malaysia. Saturday evening and Sunday morning we spent entirely too much time watching said channel.

I can now say I've seen all three installments of High School Musical, a series of films that would occasionally pop up in random Yahoo News stories I was reading, but I had no idea actually existed. The movies reminded me of Saved By The Bell, which I suppose is not a terrible thing.

Reading Rainbow With Geordi La Forge

2010-08-13T18:00:00.001-04:00

One of the things I like best about living in a huge city is the subway. I like this for a plethora of reasons, mainly because I hate driving and am prone to road rage caused by, "idiots," but there are other benefits as well. Perhaps the thing I like best about commuting by subway is it gives me a solid hour and a half or so of reading time per day.

I like reading, but when I was living in America it was hard to make time to do so, because I was either at work, or at school, or drunk, or playing some kind of crappy video game where you either have to beat up prostitutes or save the world from cut scenes or something. I tried to make time, but reading while trying to maneuver a Ford Taurus doesn't really work all that well...and I'm prone to motion sickness in cars for some reason.

Fortunately for everyone I moved and can ride the subway to work everyday, and every day I get my read on just like I did in the summer in elementary school when our town library had some sort of reading event, that I only vaguely remember. This summer I've been trying to mix up my summer reading list so I've read a lot of history books and then every once in awhile I'll read some ridiculous fantasy novel to break up the monotony.

Right now I'm reading a book about Templars, because I saw some deal about them on the History channel and decided Templars would be an awesome thing to read about and added some book to my basket the last time I ordered junk from Amazon. On deck after my Templars book is The Zombie Survival Guide. After that I've got nothing to read besides Koko's Kitten, but I already read that book with LaVar Burton in the early 1980s. So if you got some awesome summer reading suggestions, let me know. I like books about cats, Dantes, zombies, American historical figures who cause me to yell, "Yeah (American historical figure) fuck those British assholes! USA! USA! USA!", infernos, wizards, dwarves, alternative history, conspiracies, Ramona Quimby, and alt. lit. I don't like romance novels that steal my name but make me a goddamn child-saving doctor.

So if you have any books that fit into any of those categories let me know. If you know of a single book that does...well I'm not sure the world can handle such awesomeness.

The Geek News

2010-08-11T12:55:00.001-04:00

It's been awhile since I wrote anything here, but you know how it is...business trip to Japan coupled with apathy and laziness means no interest in blogging. So here's what's been going on during my ~~summer vacation~~ three month period of excessive sweat.

As I just mentioned in passing, I was in Japan on a business trip in July. Sometime during that trip my Warcraft account got hacked, which caused my account to get frozen. While attempting to sort everything out, my account expired. Everything eventually got sorted out, but afterwards I had no real desire to play anymore, so I haven't renewed my lapsed account.

Instead I have hooked up the good old Nintendo Entertainment System and have been playing that. First of all, playing a Nintendo on a gigantic flat screen LCD TV just seems wrong. I really should have it hooked up to a shitty TV with that UHF knob, a pair of rabbit ears, and some sweet artifical woodgrain casing, but it's not hooked up that way because apparently I'm living large.

The game I've been playing is Final Fantasy, because, why the hell not. JH, who claims to have never really played any video games before marrying me, put in some slight contributions in the game. She picked the party: Fighter, Black Belt, Black Mage, White Mage (which I am pretty sure was the party I rocked when I first played the game back in the summer of 1990). She was less than impressed by the outstanding 8-bit graphics, proclaiming, "You can't even see their faces!" I guess the photo-realism of Everquest 2 ruined her forever, because she raised similar complaints about World of Warcraft ("The animation isn't that smooth when they run...especially those gnomes!")

Having played through every Final Fantasy game up to Final Fantasy X (except Final Fantasy II because I don't think that it was ever offically released in America while I lived there, and the ROM wasn't that fun unlike Final Fantasy III which was fun so I played a poorly translated ROM anyway), I'd kind of forgotten how much of grind Final Fantasy I is and how open ended it is. This game is pretty much the opposite of later entries where you got railroaded through the plot, combat was unimportant, and you never ran out of money. If I hadn't played through this game 5 or 6 times in my lifetime, I wouldn't have a clue where to go a lot of the time. Combat is honestly hard, and a couple bad hits can wipe a party out pretty quick if you're not careful. Money is also a problem (at least in the early parts of the game. Everything costs a lot of money, so you have to really make purchases selectively. Do I want the Silver Sword or CUR2?

But lo! Retro-Nintendo games are not the only geeky thing occupying my time this summer. No friends, I am involved with the alpha and omega of geekdom, Dungeons and Dragons. It all started simply enough, I mentioned the game in passing to JH as something that every MMORPG was based on so she said she'd like to try it out. Several months later d20s were rolling across our coffee table and we were talking about "iron rations." Since I haven't played D&D since...probably high school and JH has never played we started with one of those Fast Play modules they released sometime in the late 90s after I had stopped playing.

I modified a couple of the fights to make them solo appropriate, but other than that things went fairly smoothly. JH killed some goblins and saved some merchants whose caravan had been ambushed and ultimately led them to a nearby farming village, which is where she is now. We both enjoyed ourselves and will probably play again in the near future.

I am truly a geek, and have unfortunately turned my wife into one as well. I apologize to my parents-in-law for turning my wife, their daughter, into a person who knows what 1d8+1 is and proclaims stuff like, "Iron Man seems like a good dude in the movies, but he was kind of a dick in the Civil War miniseries..."

Japan, July 2010

2010-07-12T07:32:00.003-04:00

This past week was spent in jolly old Tokyo. My company was taking part in some random expo so I got to spend the majority of my time at Tokyo Big Site which is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. The show itself was pretty successful. A lot of people were into the random product we were exhibiting and we found a distributor so I’ll most likely have to go back to Japan next month.

It’s weird, but at this point in my life, I’ve been to Japan more times than I’ve been to Canada. Visiting Japan is strange, because in spite of being fairly comfortable there (I know how to get around, can read and speak enough for rudimentary communication, and know that Ebisu is better than Asahi) Japan still feels really foreign to me. Oddly enough, America kind of has the same vibe when I go there (“Holy shit look at the size of that bag of Cool Ranch Doritos!”)

These days when I visit Japan I don’t buy souvenirs in so much as I buy supplies. This trip was no exception. Beers, comic books, ramen, and naked lady magazines were purchased in quantities that should tide me over until my next visit.

Lazybone Member Attempts Suicide?

2010-07-03T07:24:00.001-04:00

Suicide comes in waves here in Korea, at least when it comes to celebrities. Normally I don't give these suicides much thought as they are usually quasi-celebrities I feel no strong attachment to one way or another. But the other day I read this headline which made me feel sad.

Lazybone Member, Roh Jin-Woo, Shocked by the Death of Park Yong Ha, Throws Self into the Han River

One day after the death of Park Yong Ha, the attempted suicide of a member of the rock band, Lazybone by jumping from a bridge into the Han River has caused growing concern over the Werther Effect.

The Han River Division of the Seoul Metropolitian Police say that at approximately 3:30 am on July 1st Roh Jin-Woo (31), a member of the rock band Lazybone, jumped from Yanghwa Bridge in the Hapjeong-dong, Mapo-gu area of Seoul.

Police received a call from Roh Jin-Woo's friend, Mr. A, who was with him when he jumped. Police rescued Roh Jin-Woo 5 minutes later and he was rushed to a hospital.

Police investigation determined that after drinking with Mr. A, Roh Jin-Woo suddenly jumped into the Han River while the pair was crossing the Yanghwa Bridge.

The police report stated that, "he had a history of depression and the death of Park Yong Ha caused him to feel suicidal and jump from the bridge."

Regarding the incident, a member of Lazybone's management company explained that, "It wasn't a suicide attempt, but rather he fell into the river as a result of being drunk."

Because I don't trust my translation work very much, and in case some of you would rather read Korean, I've included the original article from Goodday Sports below.

레이지본 멤버 노진우, 故 박용하의 죽음에 충격 받고 한강 투신

故 박용하가 숨진지 하루만에 레이지본의 멤버가 한강에 투신한 사실이 알려지며 ‘베르테르 효과’에 대한 우려의 목소리가 커지고 있다.

서울지방경찰청 한강경찰대는 1일 그룹 레이지본의 멤버 노진우(31)가 1일 새벽 3시 30분쯤 서울 마포구 합정동 양화대교 북단에서 한강으로 뛰어내렸다고 전했다.

노진우는 노진우와 함께 양화대교를 건너던 친구 A씨의 신고를 받고 출동한 한강경찰대에 의해 5분만에 구조돼 인근 병원으로 옮겨졌다.

경찰 조사 결과 노진우는 A씨와 함께 술을 마신 뒤 양화대교를 건너다 갑자기 한강에 투신한 것으로 밝혀졌다.

그는 경찰 조사에서 “평소 우울증을 앓고 있었으며, 故 박용하씨가 숨진 뒤 자살 충동을 느껴 투신했다”고 진술했다.

이같은 소동에 대해 레이지본 소속사 측은 “투신한 것이 아니라 술을 마시다 들어갔던 것”이라고 해명했다.

So there you go. Perhaps all of us should have seen the signs a couple years back when all the dudes who had been in Lazybone were replaced except for Roh Jin-Woo and the band stopped playing quasi-ska and started playing circa 2005 "emo."

Note To Myself RE: World Cup Soccer

2010-06-23T12:57:00.001-04:00

Dear Self,

What the hell were you thinking? Have you forgotten the fact that you are an American citizen? Have you also forgotten that you are no longer 21 years old anymore and therefore are unable to do things like drink until 4:00 in the morning and then go ace a Chinese history test at 9:00 am? I ask these things to make a point. You have no business staying up to watch a soccer game with a 3:30 am kick-off time on a random Wednesday morning, especially when the game is Korea vs. Nigeria.

But against your better judgement you did just that and stayed up to watch the whole thing, and by the time the game ended, the sun was coming up and the trash-eatin' stinkbags who collect the garbage were banging around noisily outside, so even getting an hour or so of sleep before heading off to work was out of the question. So it looks like the only thing that is going to get you through this work day is copious amounts of coffee and the best alterna-rock 1996 had to offer.

I want you to remember exactly how tired you feel right now so the next time you are looking at the schedule for some sporting event that you should not care about at all you won't say some dumb shit like, "But it's Croatia vs. United Arab Emirates in the World Cup of Men's Field Hockey!" Instead, you'll do the sensible, responsible thing and go to bed before the crack of dawn.

Sincerely,
Wyatt Dunn

1996 Revisited

2010-06-22T18:20:00.000-04:00

The Seoul Metro is apparently a time machine. Today while on my way back to my treasure-filled lair I saw my dream girl circa 1996. She had shoulder-length hair, dyed Claire Danes Red and was wearing one of those three quarter sleeve two tone baseball jerseys and Airwalk skater shoes. I'm not sure what she was listening to on her headphones, but logic would dictate that it was either some band involving Juliana Hatfield or it was the Gigolo Aunts.

1989 Revisited

2010-06-18T18:25:00.001-04:00

En route back to the homestead. Need to check in with this brief fashion report. Outside my random office building I saw a guy wearing an "Underachiever and proud of it, man!" Bart Simpson t-shirt. A mere ten minutes later a young woman sporting a Beverly Hills 90210 t-shirt with Brenda and Dylan got on the subway. I'm waiting for a dude in an Al Bundy shirt to pop up and complete the Fox '89 trifecta.

Business Manners: In Which I Learn "New Product's" Name

2010-06-18T13:08:00.003-04:00

A few weeks back I was doing some sort of random work in the random office where I am employed when the vice-president of the company randomly stopped by my desk to inform me that on the 15th of June I had to attend some workshop for training.

"Is this a workshop* or a real workshop?"

"A real workshop about business manners."

"Oh...so who else is going then?"

"Uh...that new girl...and 'New Product.'"

"Fuck."

I wrote about New Product and her inability to mail things a couple times before. Even before those postal screw ups there was something about her that irked me. Maybe it was that she tried too hard to be cute. Maybe it was her airheadedness. Or maybe it was just that she is ten years younger than me and made me feel really old. I not sure of the reason, but I wasn't really a fan of her, and now I was going to have to spend a day with her learning about whatever this workshop was about. It was surely going to be unbearable.

In my random office, it was pretty common knowledge that I disliked New Product. There is no way that she couldn't know that I hated her...oh wait she mailed a package to Israel accidentally...maybe it was possible. Hearing about this workshop filled me with a sense of dread. These workshop things can be hell if you don't have someone to mock it with, and with our "I hate you,"/"I know you hate me," relationship that wasn't going to happen, so in the weeks leading up to this workshop I set about trying to make things right with New Product, which turned out to be neither particularly challenging nor time consuming.

The same week that I learned about the workshop, our office held a going away party for one of the girls in the sales department who was going back to school. The party also served as a welcoming party for the third person who had to attend this workshop with New Product and I, a girl named Hyun-Ah. As anyone who has worked in South Korea (or other Asian countries it seems) can tell you, dinners with co-workers ultimately are excuses to get sloshed. Here in Korea that means copious amounts of soju.

I'm not particularly fond of soju. It reminds me of someone I'd rather not remember. I've also cut back on beer as of late (you know, trying to get ready for bikini season). So I randomly ordered bokbunja (복분자), a type of raspberry based liquor and proceeded to get my drink on. Randomly ordering stuff that I want is probably not proper etiquette at these events, but my boss lets some of that shit slide with me either to make me feel more comfortable or because he thinks I am culturally unaware of such things...or because he's a nice guy who tries to meet the needs and wants of his staff. Let's go with that third one.

So I ordered up bokbunja and set to work like I was part of the Tennessee Valley Authority and rebuilt some bridges. I took a bottle of booze over to New Product and we had a glass together...then another...and then another. Pretty soon it was time for a venue change and my co-workers and I moved from a restaurant to a bar to continue the drinking.

I still didn't want to drink soju or beer and apparently neither did New Product.

"I don't want beer or soju, how about some makkoli (막걸이)?"

"Yeah!"

So I asked the bossman if I could have makkoli instead. He gave me his patented response of, "Oh no problem!" in English, that he gives whenever I ask for something (which in spite of what it seems like here honestly isn't often), and makkoli appeared. My boss even partook in it, so I felt even less guilty about feigning ignorance of cultural norms.

After a few bottles of makkoli, my boss looked at me chatting with New Product and proclaimed something along the lines of, "What is going on tonight? I thought you hated each other?" Somewhere on the road towards intoxication we had been able to put aside our differences...or maybe I realized that I really had no good reason to hate this girl. I even learned her name.

Fast forward a week to this past Tuesday when Su-Jin (the employee formerly known as New Product), Hyun-Ah (the new girl who we had a party to welcome), and I headed off to some workshop about "business manners." I had been given a flier about it so I was a little bit annoyed that I had to attend a workshop where I would be taught how to answer phones, greet people and dress professionally. I've been employed nearly constantly since 1997 or so in a variety of fields. I can rattle off a, "Thank you for calling Leslie's Pool Supplies. This is Wyatt speaking, how may I help you?" telephone greeting like no one's business, and ever since I've gotten married I've not been allowed to leave the house without a pressed shirt. Also common sense has taught me that I can't say, "Fuck you, you're an idiot!" to customers...or co-workers for that matter.

So I was a little less than enthralled to go, but it got me out of the office and the word on the street was the workshop would end before my normal workday, but late enough that it would not be possible to return to the office...so early dismissal. The three of us got to the education center which was located in some random office building and unbeknownst to any of us, actually took the elevator up with the woman who would be teaching the class. I was glad I did not mock the class while riding the elevator.

The class was pretty much what I expected it would be. We learned how to bow and answer phones and how to smile. Basically I didn't really learn anything that I hadn't already learned at other places of employment or from being alive for 30 years (since a great deal of it was just common sense). I did learn one awesome thing though, and that is if you want a killer smile when you take a picture you should say, "Whisky!" instead of "Cheese!"

The class, though mostly stuff I knew already was not terrible because the teacher was ok and because Su-Jin actually turned out to be kind of fun(ny). At some point (probably around the time I accidentally shot a business card into the back of the skull of the lady sitting in front of me) I started to feel a weird sort of kinship with her. Both of us are kind of outsiders at work. That's kind of a poor word choice. Both of us are clearly different from everyone else in our company: her because of her age, me because of my place of birth, and for that reason, I felt a strange kind of camaraderie with her, but as I told another co-worker the next day, she is like cake...a little bit once in awhile is ok, but it's not the kind of thing you want everyday.

The conclusion to all of this I guess could be best summarized by the conclusion to the report I had to write about my experience at the workshop, which I suppose was like those one page reports you had to write after your fourth grade class visited Ann Lee Pond and the Shaker village. Basically, as I wrote there (in only partial bullshit mode), I've worked since I was 16 or 17 years old so I had learned most of the material covered in this workshop already, but never really gave it much thought. This workshop made me, at least for those four hours, think about business manners, but perhaps even more important than causing me to rethink "business manner," this workshop was important for me because it caused me to rethink and improve my relationship with one of my co-workers.

*For some reason people here refer to mandatory events where you and all your co-workers drive to the mountains or the sea or an island and get drunk together for a couple days as "workshops."

Album Review: The Shouts of Reds, United Korea - Various Artists

2010-06-13T07:45:00.003-04:00

Various Artists - The Shouts of Reds, United Korea
Rating: D+
Label: KT Music
Release Date: 2010
Relevant Links: Mediafire

Oh yeah, 2010! Has it been four years already since the last World Cup? I wouldn't know since I'm American, and not the only American who cares about soccer. I guess it has been four years, since here in Korea we are currently under an auditory onslaught of soccer propaganda songs. Today I'm going to crack open the CD I got for free at the convenient store on the first floor of the random office building I work in.

The CD, poorly titled, The Shouts of Reds, United Korea, is a compilation album filled with a bunch of bands I actually like a little bit so maybe it might be a little awesome. I figure the best way to do this would be to write about each track, since it's a compilation.

Track 1 - "Intro" by JJ
I have no idea who JJ is. I'm pretty sure it's not the creator of Lost, but I could be wrong. This song basically sounds like some kind of Final Fantasy I or II music when you get an airship with soccer chants bellowed over it. Oh and there's also what my friend, Pete, dubbed a "white room solo," aka a schlocky 1980's power ballad guitar solo (in the video the dudes playing these were always in a white room). It's a pretty cheesy song, which as an intro does not bode well...

Track 2 - "국가대표팀의 테마 (우리는 하나)" by HAM
"Korean National Team's Theme (We Are One)" by HAM...I don't know who HAM are, but they are boring. They sound like a bargain basement version of Davichi...oh there's a dude too. They sound like a bargain basement version of 8ight (that's pronounce Eight for those of you keeping score). The song's a power ballad I guess...only with a part that sounds like that Cher song that was all about Autotune or a vocoder or whatever the hell she used. This song is pretty terribly, but I know as soon as I finish listening to it I won't be able to remember anything about it, which I guess makes it more forgettable than terrible.

Track 3 - "태양은 있다" by 부활
I actually know who these guys are and know what to expect from them. They are all about rock ballads and tasty guitar licks. So far the rock ballad part has been check off. I'm still waiting on a tasty guitar lick. Fuck! There's not a tasty guitar lick yet, but there are some 1980's Van Halen "Jump," synths going on. This song is kind of awesome in an ironic hipster way. Gang vocals! Alright! Still waiting on a tasty lick guys...you better not let me down. One minute left...where's my solo dudes? Oh there it is...it's totally buried beneath gang vocals. I guess this is a song dudes in a stadium are supposed to be able to rock along with so I can kind of understand emphasizing gang vocals over guitar heroics. A little disappointed though...there are enough quasi-punk bands on this comp., that it's a little pointless for 80's hard rock bands to do gang vocals. Maybe Copy Machine will rock some tasty licks...though I doubt it.

Track 4 - "우리는 이긴다" by 제8극장
This song is really weird. I saw Phantom of the Opera last week. It reminds me of that...mixed with Queen...mixed with a bar band. The lyrics are also pretty great since unlike every other soccer jam that's about "WE ARE CHAMPIONS!!!" this one talks about sitting on the couch watching soccer on TV with your buddies before yelling about being winners. It's actually a little bit awesome. TASTY LICKS!!! YES!!! Theater #8 you are my new lord and savior! This song alone is worth the price of zero won that I paid for it. Well I'm going to have to check those dudes out. Thanks The Shouts of Reds!

Track 5 - "The Shouts of Reds" by Transfixion
I've actually heard this song...a lot. It's in a bunch of TV commercials these days. Plus my wife is all about this band. I think she downloaded this track already. I've written about Transfixion before. They're kind of old school pre-cornrows Guns n' Roses-esque. Really anthemic hard rock that's kind of punkish. The lead singer is a good looking guy which I guess why most of the people who are at their shows are ladies. Anyway this song is pretty much what I would expect from these guys on an album about a soccer team. I'm not disappointed.

Track 6 - "대한민국 No. 1" by 리쌍
One of the better mainstream rap groups in Korea. I like them because they have a guy with a really low voice that raps/sings really slow. I can do a decent imitation of him. The other guy with a normal voice seems to be more heavily featured on this track, but it's still pretty decent. I would not be annoyed if I heard this song on the radio or saw it on some kind of music video channel a bunch. Shit! They have TASTY LICKS TOO!!! Alright this track gets an A+!

Track 7 - "일어나라 대한민국" by Crying Nut
The begining of this song reminds me of early 80's MTV rock...and now it's time for a punk rock guitar solo and pogoing. I liked the early 80's MTV rock part better. It reminded me of Big Country. The rest of the song reminds me of being sweaty at some all-day rock festival and wanting punch people in the kidneys that were trying to do crowd surfing. Big Country > Wanting To Punch Strangers Who Kicked You In The Head As They Randomly Passed Over You

Track 8 - "대한불패" by Kingston Rudieska
Less than 20 seconds before someone commanded me to "pickitup! pickitup!" Ah yeah it's time for ska. I don't know why, but most ska annoys the hell out of me. This is even worse than standard issue ska because of the lyrical content. Basically every song on this compilation is super patriotic. Imagine taking the lyrics from the most bullshit piece of shit country song you've ever heard and sticking them on some other musical genre without any irony at all. That's what's going on here. This song like is Skankin' Pickle playing "God Bless The U.S.A." without any of that snarky sarcasm that seemed so prevalent with ska bands of that ilk. It's bad.

Track 9 - "승리의 노래" by Burning Hepburn
Fuck this shit! These fuckers jacked "When the Saints Go Marching In," and turned it into a shitty song that yells "Ole," a lot. Were Burning Hepburn always this bad? I thought I liked them before.

Track 10 - "우리의 한국" by Copy Machine
More trumpets (or keyboards pretending to be trumpets). This is a little bit better than Burning Hepburn. For some reason this song makes me think of "America Fuck Yeah!" Which I guess is lyrically similar to most of these songs. This particular song basically consists of the following lyrics, "Ole Ole Republic of Korea! Ole Ole oh Our Korea! Korea! Korea! Korea!" That's about it...

Track 11 - "아리랑" by 이은미
"아리랑," is not Korea's national anthem. I guess it's like the Korean version of "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Everyone knows this song. It reminds Korean of Korea. It's not particularly difficult to sing. It's a very similar jam (in terms of meaning). This particular rendition has more record scratching and porno wah-wah guitar so it's awesome. This is another track I could listen to again from time to time. I probably wouldn't skip it every time it came on my i-pod.

Track 12 - "승리 위하여 (2010 Version)" by Transfixion
I guess Transfixion have made a career out of crafting soccer theme songs. This is an updated version of their 2006 World Cup theme song. So far it doesn't sound all that different from the original. I'm waiting for some kind of guest rapper to pop up or random techno drum machines or something, but so far it seems almost exactly the same. Oh, spoke too soon...unexpected orchestra/harpsichord happened. That was not really what I expected the update to this song to be. It was not terrible I guess.

And I guess that's it. For a free CD it was not that terrible. Most of the songs were pretty average. Some were below average. 제8극장 was awesome and now I have to go track down their discography. Thanks a lot The Shouts of Reds...thanks a lot.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Wrap Up Show

2010-06-11T20:29:00.001-04:00

Wow, I'm surprised I actually accomplished it. Though I should probably do some Dogme 95 confessional about rules that I broke.

I confess that on several occassions the posts were written days in advance and merely postdated. This happened most frequently prior to weekends and on June 2nd which was Election Day here in Korea so I didn't go to work and my wife and I went somewhere else so I didn't have time to type crap at that particular time.

I also confess that I actually know what the Nickelback jackoff's name is, but it was funnier to bestow really wrong names upon him. I guess those are my only confession. Everything else was totally on the up and up.

So what did we learn from this whole experience? We all learned that all my most memorable music comes from 2004 or earlier. We learned that I have pretty mediocre taste in music. You learned that I can't dance (though some of you probably knew that or assumed that already). But perhaps the most important lesson learned was that sometimes memes can save a failing blog relationship.

Blogging had become kind of a chore for me, so when I actually did write, it was kind of forced. This little experiment has kind of revitalized me to write again. For the past few years I had been keeping it old school, so I have a bunch of notebooks filled up with random half-written journal entries about stuff, so I think I might go back and type some of the better ones up and post them here.

I will also resume posting here more regularly than I have over the past couple years. I'm not going to post everyday, probably not on the weekend at all unless my wife happens to have to work that weekend and I have nothing else to do. My goal is 3 or 4 times a week, but we'll see how that goes.

Also in the works is the long, boring task of moving all the posts from an older blogpspot blog to here. If anyone happens to know of a quick easy way to import from blogspot (wordpress) to blogger that they want to let me in on that would be outstanding.

I also am working on redesigning my template because blogger made it a lot easier. I might have to redo some headers and footers to go better with the new template colors, or I might scrap them...I'm not really sure yet.

Anyway that's it. Like I said, I'm not going to be writing on the weekend, especially because today is my fake wedding anniversary (as I think I mentioned in a post about music at my wedding I got married in January but had a wedding ceremony in June). I guess I have to make another Dogme 95 confession...this post was written during my lunch break and postdated so it would pop up in the evening. I'm at a restuarant as we speak...

Anyway thanks for reading. Check back in a day or so for some new posts.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 30 – Your Favorite Song At This Time Last Year

2010-06-11T20:01:00.000-04:00

Were it any time of the year this would probably have been incredibly difficult to write about, but fortunately it's the begining of summer, so this is an incredibly easy topic to write about. My favorite song at this time of the year last year is easy to remember and write about because it has been my favorite song at this time of year for over a decade.

Everyone knows that there is music explicitly for Christmas time. No one is going to blast "Frosty the Snowman," or "Hark Hear The Bells," in the middle of August. Everyone knowns that around October 31st is the only time a radio station is going to play, "The Monster Mash." For me I also happen to have a song that I associate with this time of year. No, it's not "Summer Time," by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. The song that signifies summer for me is "Rock Lobster," by the B-52s.

Even now, when I hear that song I feel like I just finished my last final exam for the year. It makes me want to drink beer and grill some kind of meat on a patio. I want to go swimming. It is a perfect song for summer.

It's also an awesome song to cover apparently. All kinds (two) awesome bands have covered this truly awesome song which is also awesome.

Sleater-Kinney & Calvin Johnson cover "Rock Lobster."

Botch covers "Rock Lobster."

So there you go. My favorite song from this time last year. My favorite song from this time in 1997. My favorite song right now. "Rock Lobster." And always remember kids, it's not offically summer until Fred Schneider screams, "Let's Rock!!!!"

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 29 – A Song From Your Childhood

2010-06-10T05:55:00.000-04:00

I was born in 1980 which means I grew up with MTV. It was always there, so there are a ton of random jams I could select from that time period that would fit the bill. I have vague recollections of my parents threatening to cut my hair like that guy from Flock of Seagulls if I was misbehaving. I remember Michael Jackson videos from a time when he wasn't a punchline, and he wasn't dead (which for some reason caused him to stop being a punchline). My parents also were ex-hippies so late 60s early 70s jams were a part of my youth as well.

There was a lot of music around, and the first song I recall liking...fuckin' "Ghostbusters," by Ray Parker Jr. Wikipedia tells me that it came out in the summer of 1984 which would have made me all of four years old, but I recall being all about it. Remember I mentioned growing up with MTV? Well, I liked, "Ghostbusters," so much that I taped the song off the TV with the ubiquitious Fisher Price Boom Box which I am certain every child in America who grew up in the 1980s had.

So it was "Ghostbusters," and then I don't recall listening to music again until the early 90s when I like every boy in my age group became obsessed with M.C. Hammer, an obsession that lasted the remainder of my childhood...until I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Who ya gonna call?

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 28 – A Song That Makes You Feel Guilty

2010-06-09T20:26:00.000-04:00

A song that makes me feel guilty? I don't really understand. Does this mean a song that's a guilty pleasure or a song that actually fills me with regret like that "Take A Bow," video which used to fill me with post-maturbatory regret even when I did not masturbate? Oh now I'm embarassed...let's assume that they mean a guilty pleasure. Fuck! We already did that one. I guess it's time to talk about middle school masturbation mix.

I envy the youth of today. They can turn on the internet and find all kinds of gnarly porno if they feel the need to enjoy a little personal time. People my age were not as lucky at least until the mid to late 90s. Before that time we had to find other masturbation fodder. If you were lucky you had access to some Playboys or ~~Cinemax~~ Skinemax. Those of us who were less fortunate had to make due with sources such as Victoria's Secret catalogues and MTV.

I grew up in a time when MTV was still willing to play a music video from time to time, and these videos fueled most of my early masturbatory outings.

"Take A Bow," was not the only video I used for perverse purposes, it is the one I best remember...maybe because it was a hit song and on TV all the time. Anyway the only probably with this video was that there was a lot of that gladiator guy...matador guy, which is kind of a boner-kill. Other than that it's an outstanding video for mid-90s masturbation.

Wow, I've really embarassed myself here today. Thank God there's only like two more days of this to go. Tomorrow will be a lot less inappropriate, I promise.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 27 – A Song That You Wish You Could Play

2010-06-08T13:04:00.000-04:00

This is "Dawn Metropolis," by Anamanaguchi. It's not so much I wish I could play this, but I wish I wrote this. This is the most awesome music ever. That is all.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 26 – A Song That You Can Play On An Instrument

2010-06-07T23:07:00.000-04:00

I got my first real six string bought it at some music store in Clifton Park. Played it 'til my fingers bled, was the summer of '94. Or something like that. I got a guitar the summer before I entered high school and promptly started a band with a couple of my friends. Actually there were two bands. One was serious and played serious music. The other started out as a goof (it involved an echo mic and other assorted trash used as musical instruments), but ultimately became the more awesome of the two bands.

The first, more serious band was called Tritone. We were pretty terrible, probably because we were trying so hard to be serious, which makes it hard to make awesome music I guess, but we could play a lot of cover songs, which we did. Over and over and over. I think we wrote three or four original songs before I got kicked out of the band so the guy who played bass could switch to acoustic guitar and keyboard and create some sort of Days of the New / Ben Folds Five hybrid. I later got reinvited into the band because I owned a bass, but the magic was gone.

The second band was called Tanglevines and basically started out, like I said, as a goof. The concept behind the band was they were the best Australian death metal band in spite of the fact that we were neither Australian, nor death metal. What kind of music did Tanglevines create? In the beginning it was crap. Combine the most discordant Sonic Youth song with the most annoying Weird Al joke song concept and that's what Tanglevines was, but we were prolific! Give us a boombox and an afternoon and we would create 45 minutes of insane, noisy songs about Star Wars characters, jokers we went to school with, and random stuff that was in the room with us.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the shoot out. Somewhere around 1998 or so my friend Pete and I turned Tanglevines into a real band...or at least more real than it used to be. Pete played drums in Tritone with me, and had been my primary partner in crime with Tanglevines (my brother Zack and sister Ailinn were also frequently involved). We began writing songs that actually had verses and choruses and used actual chords. Drums were actual drums as opposed to blast beats played on pots or Casio keyboard bossanova beats. The end result of our efforts was a tape called Stuck In The Gutter which reeled in the insanity of our earlier work like Bubblegum Monopoly or Paintbrush Untitled while still allowing us the freedom to record a song about a guy on cops who had a "possible moustache."

Almost immediately after we began working on even more jams. The new tracks were alright, but seemed to be lacking something. We recorded maybe seven or eight tracks on a 4 track, but ended up abandoning most of them. Months passed and we got busy with school. During Christmas break we started work on some new tracks again, this time using some sort of decent recording equipment. The songs we drafted were awesome and included a three song trilogy of tracks written when we decided to have an ironic Super Bowl Party and then decided it wasn't that fun. The end result of all this was the album, Laughing At Trauma.

But I'm sure all of you care a lot less about this than you do about the fact that I can play "Pure Massacre," on guitar. I can play "Pure Massacre," by Silverchair on guitar.

Psst...I can also play the hell out of this song called "Keep The Fist," off Tanglevines' last album, Laughing At Trauma.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 25 – A Song That Makes You Laugh

2010-06-06T23:23:00.000-04:00

I was pretty busy this weekend, so this one will be short and to the point so I can get it in under the wire. I'm a big fan of unintentional humor. A guy telling someone on the Montell Williams show that they need to get "power smacked," will make me laugh, but Saturday Night Live usually will not. Following this same line of reasoning, it's not going to be a novelty song or a music video that's "funny," that's going to make me laugh, it's going to be something that most people would probably find completely normal.

In this case you would probably only find it to be completely normal if you were a 14 year old Korean girl...the rest of you will be undecided as to whether it sucks or is the funniest thing ever (correct answer is C - Both of the Above).

Throughout history, Korean pop groups have been raping the English language, but the video I am going to present unto you rapes not only English but Yiddish! Hurray! Or perhaps I should scream, "Mazeltov!" instead. This video abomination is by a crew of guys known as ZEA (or 제국의아이들 or Empire Boys). The song, shockingly enough is called, "Mazeltov," and it is one of the funniest songs ever. If you want a snapshot of how terrible music can get here, this is it. Enjoy!

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 24 – A Song That You Want To Play At Your Funeral

2010-06-05T13:45:00.000-04:00

Nothing says Saturday afternoon fun in the sun like writing about my funeral. Seriously, what kind of sick, morbid asshole came up with these questions? Well I will play along, and lay out some very detailed funeral arrangements just in case I happen to get hit by a bus when I take out the trash this evening.

I don't want a big, fancy funeral. I don't need it. It seems like a waste of time and money. So if you are my friends or family, it's probably better if you just buy a case of brew or a couple bottles of wine and talk about how awesome I was. That would be better.

If you decide to play some music during this event might I recomend the following track by At The Drive-In?

Also if you decide against my wishes to bury me, I don't care what kind of box I get put it (cardboard seems reasonable), but I have one request regarding a tombstone: make sure that shit is glow-in-the dark, or maybe has some L.E.D. lights on it or something that makes it stand out from all the other tombstones in the graveyard. Also if you can hide some sort of masterfully crafted sword down there it would be pretty bad ass.

I guess that's about it. So if I die that's what I want to have happen to my rotting corpse, just please don't let me come back as a zombie...

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 23 – A Song That You Want To Play At Your Wedding

2010-06-04T21:06:00.001-04:00

Way to make me feel old you stupid internet meme! My wedding was held almost exactly four years ago today (coming in one week short of exactly four years), so there you go. I broke this meme because it was way too presumptuous. So I already got married and had a wedding and there was music. So let's all go back in time to the magical year of 2006.

George W. Bush was in the White House. Every nation in the world except America was struck with World Cup Fever. On Lost Michael had found his son. Michael had found Walt. And somewhere in South Korea I was about to get married.

Well, that's kind of a lie. I actually had gotten married in January. My wife and I got hitched in January, but put off having an actual wedding ceremony until the early summer so my family could actually attend. So six months of married life actually passed before I had a wedding, and what a wedding it was.

My brother and sisters have jokingly complained to me that no matter what they did, or who they married they could never top my wedding in the mind of my mother. My wife and I, decided to be awesome and have a traditional Korean wedding. We had wedding pictures taken in a studio during which my wife got to wear a wedding dress which was apparently good enough for her, and I have a strong aversion to the normal weddings that are held here. Those things are like a speed run through Super Mario Bros. (they are fast and all exactly the same).

So we got married like they did a hundred years ago. It was a decent event. I got to wear a crown and drink alcohol during the actual wedding ceremony and there was a chicken and my wife got put in a box at the end of the ceremony and carried off.

As for the music, that too was of the traditional sort. There was no "Eternal Flame," or whatever the crap people play at weddings. We had pansori (판소리). There's a DVD of my wedding but it's at my parents' house, so I'm not entirely sure what song those ladies sang at my wedding, but it doesn't really matter since pretty much all pansori sounds the same to laymen. So I'm going to youtube up some random song and that will serve as an approximation for the song they actually performed during my wedding.

So there you go, a reasonable facsimile for a song that a couple ladies (one of them in drag pretending to be a dude) sang during my wedding. Awesome.

Random Work

2010-06-04T18:05:00.000-04:00

Waiting in the office to head out to some company dinner and just realised that during the course of my workday I googled, "Japanese Bathrooms," which oddly enough was work related.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 22 – A Song That You Listen To When You’re Sad

2010-06-03T20:15:00.001-04:00

Once again I feel like I'm revisiting material covered in the early part of this meme-periment, but I'll give it the old college try and attempted to write something that doesn't involve the suicide mix again.

For some reason, the thought of driving fills me with either rage or depression. I did not have the same, "I'm 16 today! Gotta go get my license!" reaction that every teenager on a sitcom seems to have. I mean I got my learner's permit shortly after my birthday and my actual license several months after that, but I was never in a huge rush to get behind the wheel of an automobile.

Now, I don't mind riding in cars (except I do sometimes get nauseous on long car rides). There's something fun about riding in a car. You listen to mix tapes. You play stupid games (red punch-buggy no punch-backs, original owner*, that fucking license plate game). It's a good time.

Driving is different. It's a responsibility. It's work. Think about that same road trip. While you and your brother were in the backseat eating Frito Lays snack packs and smacking each other and playing Final Fantasy Legend II on Gameboy, your dad was dropping lines like, "Be quiet back there or I swear to God I'll turn the car around right now!" Driving isn't so fun.

For me personally, I understand the rage behind driving. When I was in elementary school they put me in an "enrichment" program. The only thing that program enriched was my sense of self-worth. For a long time I thought I was better than everyone (and still fall into that trap from time to time), so for me to get behind the wheel and have to deal with "idiots," "morons," and "assholes," was infuriating.

The sadness or depressing aspect of driving is a little harder to pinpoint. Some psychologist would probably say some shit like in my mind driving represented the end of my childhood which brought me sadness. Others would link it to stuff like breaking up with some girl and then having to drive back home. Still others might try to tie it to jobs and classes that I hated.

Apparently I am not alone in associating driving with sadness or depression. The Cars had "Drive." Pearl Jam had both "rearviewmirror," and "mfc." But for me the song that I think best represents my relationship with automobiles is "Be Quiet and Drive," by the Deftones.

Internet tells me that Around the Fur came out in October of 1997, and I'm pretty certain I picked it up around Christmas of that year (though possibly after New Year's). That song became the driving soundtrack for a long time. There was something about it that captured all of my feelings about driving. The music was angry, the lyrics were sad, but there was a slight undertone of happiness to it, just like there was in my attitude towards driving. As much as I loathed it, there is something freeing about being able to go anywhere without having to bum a ride from my parents.

It seems like this is a pretty specific sadness, but that song has transcended car-based depression and now serves as my go to track when I am gripped by sanger (sadness coupled with anger). If my wife and I have an argument that she starts (anger) but I ultimately take to far (sadness or regret) it will be Chino and the boys on my headphones while I walk along the river to calm down/think about what I've said.

So there you go. Deftones. "Be Quiet and Drive." Original version only.

* Original Owner was a game that as far as I know was invented by my sister. The game worked like this: while driving on the highway if you spotted a wreck of a car, say for example a Yugo or something like that, you would have to declare whether the person at the wheel was the original owner of that vehicle. It's not really a game with a winner or loser...actually I take that back. The people playing Original Owner all win, while the people in the van with a wizard painted on the side are the clear losers.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 21 – A Song That You Listen to When You’re Happy

2010-06-02T10:32:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty sure this was already covered early on in this project...oh wait, that was a song that makes me happy. Huge difference!

I suppose this is a good day to be answering this question since I am currently happy. Am I supposed to put some smiley emoticon at the top of this post if that's the case? Can I just put one here instead? Oh yeah, it's my blog...I can do whatever I want. :) Why am I happy? I'm happy because today is election day which means I have a day off, and since I'm not eligible to vote, I don't even have any civic duties to attend to. Awesome!

So I guess that means I need to find myself another upbeat song that I enjoy and pretend that it's something I listen to when I'm happy, when in reality I'm just as likely to listen to depressing songs, or shitty hardcore when I'm happy as I am when I'm sad or angry.

Let me check my most played songs on my i-pod and find the most upbeat, happy sounding jam among the lot of 25. We'll be back with the results after these brief commercial messages from our sponsors.

We're back. For those of you just joining us my topic today is a song I listen to when I'm happy. After a brief 30 second inspection of my top 25 most played songs on my i-pod, I've determined that one of the songs I apparently listen to when I'm happy is "Ice Life," by Eagle and Talon.

I don't really remember how I came to find out about this band, but every article compared them to Sleater-Kinney, who I really liked, so I checked them out, and really liked them as well. There are some similarities to Sleater-Kinney (two girls singing, parts of songs where the afore mentioned two girls seem to be singing completely different songs), but Eagle and Talon feature way more Casio keyboards which makes them even more radical, because as everyone knows, shitty keyboards and synths are awesome! Anyway enjoy "Ice Life."

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 20 – A Song That You Listen to When You’re Angry

2010-06-01T20:21:00.001-04:00

If for some reason I Hulk-Out over some shit and decide that I need to listen to music it is usually a two phase process. The first phase is the phase during which I intentionally make myself angrier. I listen to jams that make me want punch a guy in the mouth, and hit someone in the dick with a crowbar. Music in this phase is almost exclusively metal or hardcore (some exceptions are made for metalcore). For whatever reason dudes in my highschool were all about mid-90's hardcore. Everyone had Victory Records hooded sweatshirts and played Integrity cover songs. So to this day my "I wanna punch fuckers in the skull," mix features a lot more of these kind of jams than it does Slayer or S.O.D.

YEAH!!! EARTH CRISIS!!! STRAIGHT EDGE HARDCORE!!!

After working myself into a frenzy of rage, someone (usually a woman I know) will tell me I'm being an asshole and to calm the fuck out. It's hard to calm down when One King Down is bellowing, "BLEEDING!!!!! FROM THE EYES!!!!!! AND EARS!!!!" so I need to switch it up and listen to something that will calm me the fuck down. But you can't make a full stop and go from Earth Crisis to Elliott Smith. You have to detox. So maybe I'll listen to some At The Drive-In and then some pop-punk and then some mid 90's "college rock," and then some testosterone free beard-rock, and I'm calm again...

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 19 – A Song From Your Favorite Album

2010-05-31T19:44:00.001-04:00

Early 1999 was a weird time for me both musically and personally. I bought Silverchair's Neon Ballroom on the day it came out. Along with it I also purchased Sleater-Kinney's The Hot Rock which had come out a week or so earlier but was slightly harder to track down than the major label release, Neon Ballroom.

Both albums served as the soundtrack for my life during that last month of winter. I was attending a shitty private college that I hated and those jams helped me endure it. Today one of them ranks as one of my favorite albums of all times. The other is an also ran who will forever in my mind have this weird association with the other (in my opinion) superior album. Sorry Silverchair, you're a good album and I'm gonna let you finish, but Sleater-Kinney's The Hot Rock was the best album of March 1999.

Below is the video for the Sleater-Kinney jam, "Get Up." I have a weird story about this video too. To my knowledge it was played once on MTV 120 Minutes at like 2:00 in the morning on Sunday...well, I guess actually Monday (which seems to be the source for this particular youtube clip). I found out about it on some sort of internet and stayed up until it was on to tape it. So somewhere in my parents basement I have this video on a VHS cassette along with Nirvana Unplugged and assorted 90s alterna-rock videos.

Anyway if you haven't before, check out The Hot Rock. It is awesome and probably my favorite album ever. Sorry Neon Ballroom...

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 18 – A Song That You Wish You Heard on the Radio

2010-05-30T10:25:00.000-04:00

1997 was the in which I began to decrease my consumption of radio-rock. I mean I still had a pretty steady diet of it, but 1997 was the year I started getting into Sleater-Kinney and the Pixies.

For all the shit I gave them a couple days ago, I really have to give Pearl Jam credit for introducing me to Sleater-Kinney. I taped Pearl Jam's Monkeywrench Radio deal when Yeild came out and wore that shit out before I could actually track down a copy of Dig Me Out.

The Pixies had been on my radar slightly longer. I'd seen the name in random Nirvana interviews, but the real credit for introducing me to the awesomeness of the Pixies should be given to my dad.

My dad went back to college in the late 80s, and ~~for whatever reason~~ because he is awesome he became all about late 80s/early 90s college rock (aka indie rock) and upon his graduation came home will all sorts of R.E.M. and Pixies and Temple of the Dog and so on and so forth. But I was still a dumb middle school student and still figuring stuff out. It would be another few years before I stole my dad's Pixies CDs.

So here's a song I wish was on the radio. This song is called "Velouria," and it is by the Pixies. It is an awesome song that should be on the radio more than the zero times I have heard it played on the radio.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 17 – A Song That You Hear Often on the Radio

2010-05-29T08:58:00.001-04:00

i-pod and living in a city has all but eliminated radio from my life. The i-pod part requires no explanation, as for living in the city, because I take a subway to work as opposed to drive, no longer do I have to hear Wakin' Up With The Wolf or whatever other drive time commute shit I would listen to if I forgot to take my discman with me and hook it up with one of those weird cassette tape looking deals that let discmen work in a car that was made in the early 90s.

Wow that was a nice run-on-sentence! Anyway like I said those two things have all but eliminated radio from my life. There are some occasions when the radio is played in my presence. As I mentioned before my wife and I will listen to the classical music station during the evening or on the weekend to class up the fact that we are eating Honey Nut Cheerios while wearing track pants and Salvation Army t-shirts.

The other place I hear the radio is in my office. My random company is pretty chill about those kind of things. Usually if I'm doing random Excel or Powerpoint work I'll listen to some bitchin' early 90's alterna-rock on my i-pod, but if I'm doing some that actually requires me to listen, then I don't rock my i-pod and instead get treated to the communal stereo which usually blasts assorted Korean pop jams. I usually hear "Hip Song," at least 2 or 3 times a day, but I already wrote about that so I guess I need to pick another jam. So the jam I guess I'll talk to you about is some new piece of crap Wondergirls song.

I liked Wondergirls better when they were in other countries and I didn't have to hear them. Actually I take that back. It made me sad that Wondergirls went to other countries, because they are terrible. Korea has some decent singers and musicians, but who goes overseas? The shittiest group around, and they aren't even hot, not that such a thing should matter but when you're talking about disposable pop music the girls better be hotttttt and the dudes better have haircuts and maybe some classy facial hair.

But I digress. For those of you who forgot who the Wondergirls are, they had some dance a couple years back which I suppose went to some song. They disappeared several years ago much to my delight. The entire time they were gone they were going from country to country singing their one song to the delight of whatever Korean exchange students happened to live in that country.

I had all but forgotten about them until my recent trip to Taiwan. It turns out that they arrived in Taiwan the same day I did and apparently in Taiwan the Wondergirls are serious fucking business so it was on the front page of the news paper and on the morning news that was playing in the hotel restaurant when I ate breakfast. Well they were big news until some local kid who is ugly but can sing good appeared on the Ellen DeGeneris show and then the next day a mountain collapsed. But the damage had already been done. The Wondergirls were once more etched in my mind.

I came back to Korea and got busy doing random work for a random company related to my random business trip to Taiwan and once more forgot about Wondergirls until one awful day when the DJ told me that he was going to play a new Wondergirls song. I imagined it would be "Nobody (Hindi Version)" or possibly "Nobody (Yiddish A Capella Remix)" but it was a legitimate new song...and it was fucking awful.

The song, "2 Different Tears," is probably the worst fucking song I have ever heard in my life, and that's not even hyperbole. It's worse than that fucking Limp Bizkit or Yanni! It's impossible to explain exactly what makes it terrible. Basically it's something you just have to experience for yourself.

I'm going to post the video for it. Did you ever see the movie 300? Remember kind of in the beginning 1/300 gets sent into the wilds to slay some kind of beast (I think a wolf, but the only time I watched that movie it was 2:00 am and I was kind of drunk so it could very well have been a sabre tooth tiger or a unicorn or a Snuffleupagus) to prove his manliness? Attempting to listen to this song is 3,534,234.39% more heroic. If you make it to the end of the video feel free to take your shirt off and scream, "THIS IS (insert the name of the town you are in here)!!!!!!!!!" for you have truly earned it my friend.

I see some of you didn't make it. You fought like a true (insert the proper noun used to refer to people from your hometown) and your heroism will be missed. I promise tomorrow will be way more awesome.

New Product vs. The Postal Service Part II

2010-05-28T20:09:00.002-04:00

So I told you about my random co-worker, New Product, and her lack of postal prowess, so I got very nervous today because I needed to mail something to yet another random company, this one in Japan. This time I was in my office so I addressed the envelope myself. It was beautiful. Whatever my Japanese professor's name was would have been so proud (although she probably would have been prouder if I actually remembered anything she taught me besides what an OHP is and the fact that 臺 is the counter for giant robots).

So anyway it was with great fear and reservation that I handed over my beautifully addressed envelop to New Product. The following is a translation of the conversation held between New Product, New Product's Supervisor, and I.

ME: I need you to send this to Ilbon¹ (Japan)...not Israel...not Illinois...Ilbon (Japan).

NEW PRODUCT: (Stares blankly at the envelope)

NEW PRODUCT'S SUPERVISOR: Where does it need to be sent?

NEW PRODUCT: Japan.

NEW PRODUCT'S SUPERVISOR: Where?

NEW PRODUCT: Japan.

NEW PRODUCT'S SUPERVISOR: Okay. Send it on Monday morning with the rest of the mail. Let the mailman know it needs to go to Japan.

NEW PRODUCT: Okay!

New Product's Supervisor and I leave New Product's desk.

ME: She's going to send it to India isn't she?

NEW PRODUCT'S SUPERVISOR: Probably...

¹Ilbon is the Romanization of 일본 (日本) which is the Korean word for Japan. I used the Romanization because the alliteration it had with Israel and Illinois are what made it even funnier.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 16 – A Song That You Used To Love But Now Hate

2010-05-28T19:21:00.001-04:00

At age 10 or so I, like most of my white, middle class suburban peers, was knee-deep in Hammermania. We tried to wear insanely oversized Aladdin pantaloons like he did. We watched that cartoon he had. We got our parents to tape that episode of Saturday Night Live that he was on.

But then Nirvana happened, or for others of us Dr. Dre happened, or because I lived in upstate New York Phish / Dave Matthews Band happened. Suddenly none of us wanted anything to do with Stanley Burrell or he's comical slacks. We threw darts at MC Hammer posters, blew up MC Hammer dolls with illegally obtained fireworks (again I lived in New York), taped over episodes of Hammerman with Rage TV.

But a funny thing happened and irony became the norm and suddenly we were reevaluating things that we had long since dismissed as worthless, stupid, or retarded. Irony was awesome because it let us enjoy stuff that we had previously been forced to hold in contempt.

"Dude are you wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt and listening to Amy Grant?"

"I'm doing so ironically. I don't really like Amy Grant..."

So in my early 20's I suddenly was filled with waves of regret for destroying my MC Hammer tapes and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Fortunately Lars Ulrich had not yet Hulked out on Napster so I was able to get most of those jams back and play them on Winamp alongside whatever really obscure indie-emo-punk I was also listening at that time, and Mountain, "Mississippi Queen," because that song is always balls-awesome.

So MC Hammer trajectory was love-hate-love ironically when your friends call you out on it, but actually in your heart of hearts really really love and think is totally awesome, particually "Gaining Momentum." Most songs from my youth and youth during which I looked older than I do now (aka middle school) follow this same path to redemption. There are a few that have yet to redeem themselves and find themselves in the purgatory of my CD collection. Let's examine some of these lowlights.

First up is your pal and mine, Marilyn Manson. I jumped on the MM bandwagon probably around the same time as everyone else, when his (their?) cover of "Sweet Dreams," was all over the place. I stayed on for Antichrist Superstar, downloaded a couple of the singles from the next album illegally, and by that point had, had enough.

Most of his jams that I listened to back in the day haven't really stood the test of time and of the three albums and CD single I own, there are only a handful of tracks I would even consider listening to anymore ("Tourinquet," "Wrapped In Plastic," and his...their? cover of "Down In The Park.") That's not to say I hate the other songs, it's just that Marilyn Manson epidimizes angry music for surly teenagers, and since I'm now a surly adult it's not really stuff I need to listen to anymore.

Throughout my long hair, flannel shirt career, Pearl Jam always played second fiddle to Nirvana (Alice In Chains played second fiddle to Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots played second fiddle to Alice In Chains, Candlebox played second fiddle to pretty much everyone else). I don't really know why since in all honesty Pearl Jam probably wrote I higher number of awesome songs. I think some of my ill will towards Pearl Jam comes from the fact that they also had a higher number of total bullshit songs than Nirvana did. What's up "Bugs?"

These days even some of those total bullshit jams make for a good listen (isn't irony awesome?) and I don't hate all Pearl Jam songs. Basically I hate all of Pearl Jam's early singles (and most of the non-single tracks from Ten...except "Porch," because that shit is stellar). Pearl Jam seemed to fall victim to radio/MTV overplay far more than Nirvana. Among the Nirvana singles, the only one I really can't listen too anymore is "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but all the rest are still alright. Pearl Jam has a much longer list of track I can't really stand anymore:

* All of Ten (except "Porch" and maybe "Black," but that fucker from Staind kind of ruined that too...)

* "Elderly Woman Behind A Counter...aw fuck this." That song with the crazy long title from vs. is basically the anti-"Porch," in that it's the only song on vs. I skip every single time it pops up.

* "Immortality" - An entry from Vitology which ruined the "Tremor Christ," "Spin the Black Circle," "Not For You," three pack of singles from that album.

* "Yellow Ledbetter" - I don't know how the fuck this song got overplayed, but it did. It was a fucking b-side to a single. B-sides never get played, but radio played the shit out of this song. It was even on Friends. Fucking Friends?! What the shit?

* "Last Kiss" - One of those fucking dead teenager songs, again it was a non-album single that somehow got the shit played out of it. It wasn't that awesome to begin with, but after hearing it a bajillion times, it was even more annoying. Which means that this one doesn't really count.

Actually besides some jams off Ten, none of these songs really fit the strict guidelines laid out in the phrase, "a song that you used to love but now hate," since none of these were songs that I ever loved. Most of them were among my least favorite songs on their respective albums, which leads me to the conclusion that for the most part Pearl Jam had really poor decision making skills / advice when it came to selecting singles, but then again the songs I think suck the hardest tend to be the most beloved among their discography, so maybe I'm just really out of touch with what people think is awesome.

Anyway I suppose we need a song that I used to love but now hate. I guess we're going to have to make due with a song that I liked, and now skip if it happens to pop up on my i-pod. "Jeremy spoke in Cla~~~~~~~~~ass tod..."

That makes me feel sad. It reminds me of the fact that I had a crustache. Thanks a lot Pearl Jam. Thanks a lot...

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 15 – A Song That Describes You

2010-05-27T20:21:00.003-04:00

This is pretty laughable. Never in my life have I heard a song and been like, “Dude, that song describes me to a t!" I'm going to head off on a vision quest to try to find a song that describes me. I don't have peyote or crazy spicy chili to assist me, so I guess this herbal tea is going to have to suffice.

My first stop is Youtube. Let's pop "Wyatt," in the search engine and see what pops up. Lots of clips from Tombstone...hold on a second. I think I found it! That was easier than I thought.

Oh shit, that's not really a song now is it? Well that's too bad because it basically sum up every fiber of my being. I guess it's back to Youtube we go. Lots of Robert Wyatt, and some Sheryl Crow(e) jam...none of that really captures my essence either. This is harder than I thought it would be, and also a pain in the ass.

Fuck this shit, I'm just going to put an Ozma video here because they are fucking awesome. Does it say anything about me as a human being besides for the fact that I have awesome taste in music? Not really, but I saw them in concert with Saves the Day and Weezer in 2000 or 2001 (EDIT: Oops, just checked some seriously old school post and it turns out this show was actually in 2002) and it was totally awesome. In fact I'm going to say Ozma has been more consistently awesome than the similar Weezer.

That particular jam is called, "Immigration Song," which I suppose says something about me, kind of. Anyway that about does it for me here. Oh yeah, with this post we're halfway through the thirty days. I'm pretty pleased with the results thus far. I've updated the blog consistently, and unlike experimentation with threesomes or pegging, I think this meme experimentation has saved our relationship. I've actually written some non-music related posts that are saved in draft form just waiting for me to get some pictures off my camera and/or cell phone. I've also gone back and uploaded a lot of older content that was chilling on older blogs/webpages I used to run as well as actually re-reading some of my older posts and fixing spelling and grammatical errors. The sad thing is due to my inattentiveness the only people who probably read this blog anymore are Chinese spammers and to them I say, "我将是你的朋友，如果你带回我原来的观众。"

New Product vs. The Postal Service (שלום)

2010-05-26T21:40:00.001-04:00

I work for a random company in Korea doing random stuff. Anyway a couple months back some new girl started working at the same random company as me. She was born in 1990 which is disgusting, so I decided I hated her. It was just the same kind of pointless hatred I usually reserve for mediocre pop rock groups, but a couple days ago my hatred got real real, real fast.

I'm honestly not sure what her name really is because I just call her 신상품 (New Product) on account of her being new and made out of plastic, so that's the name I'm going to use for the rest of this tale.

The random company I work for needed to send some random products to another random company located in Illinois. It wasn't like a huge shipment or anything, just a medium sized box, so we just needed to send it via EMS. I wrote down the address for New Product's handler because the following day I wouldn't be in the office.

That day I'm not really sure what happened because I wasn't in the office, but several days later, New Product's handler came into my office and asked me, "Can you call Israel and ask them about this shipping number?"

"What did we send to Israel?"

"That package for that random company in America."

Apparently Illinois' postal abbreviation is the same as Israel's and New Product neglected to write USA anywhere on the shipping papers. So for the past couple of days I have been trying to track down this missing package which is somewhere in Israel and with each passing moment my hatred for New Product grows, devouring my soul.

The upside to all of this is I learned the mascot of the Israeli Postal Service is some kind of jumping deer thing, and in English he leaps towards the right, but in the Israeli version he leaps towards the left. Also knowing random Yiddish words that have entered the American lexicon doesn't help in trying to track down a package lost in Israel.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 14 – A Song That No One Would Expect You To Love

2010-05-26T19:23:00.002-04:00

The first concert I ever attended that featured nationally known artists was Our Lady Peace, Sponge, and Candlebox. At the show there was a dwarf who had polio crutches and kept yelling, "PUT ON CANDLEBOX!!!" There was also some girl in a She-ra t-shirt who had really giant breasts there, and I got pneumonia the next day. The most recent concert I attended featured a bunch of Korean punk bands. There was some really fat kid in a hooded sweatshirt that had a skeletal ribcage printed on it.

If one were to logically fill in the middle section between those two events, it would be safe to say that I enjoy rock music of some sort or another, and also pay attention to random people in the audience more often then the guys on stage. This is true, but there is another realm of music I thoroughly enjoy.

I'm not going to come here and be like, "I like pop music!" because that's not really interesting. Everyone likes some pop music...that's why it's pop. It's popular. No friends, I like me some classic music.

I was a geek throughout much of my life (and probably still am). In elementary school I played the clarinet for a year. I really wanted to play the French horn for some reason, but the band/orchestra teacher wouldn't allow it so I picked the clarinet. I later figured out that the reason the band/orchestra teacher wouldn't let people play the French horn was because it was too awesome and his was a total dick. Like I said, I ended up quitting because the band/orchestra teacher was a total dick. The following year the band/orchestra teacher disappeared from my elementary school (I believe his dickery finally got him canned) and a new, much nicer lady took his place.

Like I said, I'm pretty sure the previous dude's dickery got him shitcanned because when the new lady came we had some assembly for all the kids who quit (and there were a lot of us) where she offered all of us a chance to return to the wonderful world of Breeze Easy. I took her up on her offer simply because she not only would allow me to play the French horn, but seemed genuinely excited that I wanted to play it.

So I began my career as a French horn player. I was the only one in my school, which made me feel like I was awesome, but really just made me the dork who had to lug a French horn to school 2 or 3 days a week. Throughout the remainder of my elementary school days I learned all the hits: "The Happy Little Donkey," "Pomp & Circumstance," "A Bunch of Whole Notes..."

In middle school...shit I always do that...junior high, I continued down the righteous path of French horn playing, but it wasn't the same. There was another French horn player, a girl named Christine something or other, who was way better than me. I wasn't that special anymore.

In elementary school I had been able to walk to school, so carrying a French horn case wasn't that big a deal (it's basically on of the most awkwardly shaped instruments ever), but in junior high I had to take a bus, which was not an awesome thing to do if you had to carry a French horn. Also grunge/alternative rock had gotten it's flannel clad claws into me and suddenly the French horn wasn't so cool anymore. I finished out band in 8th grade and that summer bought an electric guitar and began learning all the hits all over again: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "A Bunch of Whole Notes..."

Years later I kind of regret giving up the French horn because it's way more unique than guitar. Yeah Christine might have played it in junior high, but how many douchebags play guitar? Way more than one girl I went to middle school...shit! junior high with. Plus if I still played the French horn, I could still bust out my favorite song ever the way it's supposed to sound.

This is "In the Hall of the Mountain King," by Edvard Grieg. It is an awesome song. I could totally play this on the French horn. I can play it on guitar now, but it sounds a bajillion times more epic on the French horn. So there it is, a song no one would expect me to love...that was it.

Why do I love this song? Did you not just listen to it?! It is amazing! Also it sounds like dwarves¹. Not the kind that yell, "PUT ON CANDLEBOX!" but the kind that smelt gold and do battle with cave trolls while wielding battle ax(e)s and wearing horned helmets.

These days at home my wife and I rarely watch TV. We do listen to the radio a lot and frequently listen to the classical music station during dinner or on Sunday morning. It makes us feel classy and richer than we actually are. From time to time this jam gets played, and let me tell you it is far more epic than 90% of the shit on my i-pod. I think only At The Drive-In makes me want to run faster or punch more than this does. "In the Hall of the Mountain King," is great in that not only does it make you think of dwarves, but it makes you want to get in a bar fight, and isn't that what music is all about? Dwarves and fisticuffs?

PUT ON CANDLEBOX!!!

¹The spellcheck thing here tells me dwarves is incorrect and dwarfs is the proper spelling. Fuck you Blogger did you never read J.R.R. Tolkien or play D&D? It's dwarves assholes! Dwarves!

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 13 – A Song That is a Guilty Pleasure

2010-05-25T21:01:00.001-04:00

This is actually pretty easy since I've talked about it before. I am a 29 year old American man and as such have no business what-so-ever liking Korean pop music. Yet I do. I don't like all of it (see the K-Pop Krap series of posts at this very blog), but there is enough stuff that I genuinely enjoy and am ashamed of enjoying. But from this day forth I shall no longer feel any shame or guilt. I will climb to the top of Mt. Internet and bellow loud words of truth from on high.

"I LOVE WORLD STAR, RAIN'S HORRIBLE DANCE POP JAMS!"

I have fought it for a long time. A long, long time indeed. Now don't misunderstand me. I still think the guy's a horrible actor, and a bad singer, and think his songs are of extremely low quality...but there is something about them that is over the top and insane that they actually turn out to be fairly enjoyable.

I suppose I like 비's jams for the same reason I listened to Wesely Willis songs. There is a demented quality to them (though 비's catalogue is less schizophrenic and more narcissistic).

His songs are constantly stuck in my head. If I hear a 비 song chances are I am going to have that song in my head all day long. It's never the whole song either. It's always just one line, again and again and again until I want to smash myself in the skull with a meat tenderizer in an effort to forget.

Case in point, the dude's latest jam, "Hip Song." Something you need to know, "hip," does not refer to either "cool/awesome," or the body part made famous in lyrics such as "I put your hand up on my hip when I dip you dip we dip." For some reason (perhaps the lyric I just mentioned) Koreans use the word "hip" to refer to an ass (not the animal). So this dude's jam is literally "Ass Song," so it's got that going for it right off the bat.

What is it about songs about the ass that make them so damn catchy and embarrassing? "Rumpshaker," "Baby Got Back," "Da Butt." Each and everyone of those songs are awesome, yet hella embarrassing if you get caught listening to them...or worse, singing along. Like I said, no longer will I feel shame in listening to these songs.

MY NAME IS WYATT AND I LIKE SONGS ABOUT ASSES!!!!

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 12 – A Song From a Band You Hate

2010-05-24T19:23:00.002-04:00

I hate a lot of music. While there are some bands I hate for very specific reasons, most bands that I hate fall into that nebulous, "I just hate them, okay?" kind of hatred. Dashboard Confessional...I just hate them. There's no particular reason for my hatred. Dude seems alright. Songs aren't terrible. But anytime they came on the radio, the radio station would be changed by yours truly. Nickelback, on the other hand, falls firmly into that first group. I have very, very specific reasons why I hate them.

During the course of this essay I will outline the key reasons for my hatred of Nickelback as well as delve into the deeper ramifications of Nickelback not only being allowed to record music and tour, but to live has on 21st century society.

1. That Fucker's Hair
What's that fucking asshole's name anyway? Chad Kroeger. Thanks Wikipedia. Anyway, I had that dude's hair. Why is it always wet? He looks like The 1-2-3 Kid (or Syxx from the NWO if you prefer). No human being's hair should constantly be that wet and greasy looking.

That was some decent hyperbole I just laid down there wasn't it? Chad Krager's hair isn't always wet or greasy looking, but after seeing his dry hair post-Pert Plus scrub down, I kind of wish it always was wet and greasy like a mid-1990's WWF superstar.

2. Chad Krangerler's Shitty Collaberations
Sometime collaborations are a good thing. Eddie VanHalen popping up on "Beat It," makes that song way more rocking. Eddie Vedder's vocals on Mike Watt's, "Against The 70s," or those Temple of the Dog tracks he does vocals on make all those songs epic. Chad Krandler is not named Eddie and does not have a last name that begins with the letter V, and is therefore apparently unable to be involved in awesome collaborations. Let's take a look at some of the whack bullshit Chad Kanlonger has lent is greasy mane and sweet, sweet Layne Stanley knock-off pipes to.

First off there was "Hero," which I thought was probably about New York firefighters but was actually about Spiderman. Why is this terrible? Besides the fact that it features Chad Kruggler, it also features that dude from Saliva (the band, not the bodily fluid). Saliva makes me sad because the popped up at a time when radio stations were all about, "the return of rock music." I liked rock music and was glad it was coming back, but when I heard Saliva and Puddle of Mudddddd and Lincoln 박 I decided I didn't like rock music anymore and that made me sad. Fortunately Pitchfork Media told me that the Pixies and Sleater-Kinney and Death Cab For Cutie weren't rock, but indie, so I was glad I could still listen to those bands in spite of my departure from Team Rock.

Anyway that wasn't the only terrible shit Chad Carlonk took part in. Wikipedia told me he was also involved in some sort of 2000s Carlos Santana suckfest, which caused me to be like, "Oh yeah I forgot about 'Smooth,'" but then I remembered "Smooth," had that asshole from Matchbox-20, which is also a pretty bad band, but not anywhere near as vile as Nickelback, so I headed over to the Youtubes to try and find Chad Kullins + Santana.

Wow, that was some epic level shit. Unfortunately that wasn't the end of Chad Kenya's career as a featured vocalist on other dudes jams. Aw hell no. Chad Cocksmuggler also appeared on the Travis Tritt album, The Storm doing a cover of a Nickelback song. Seriously, what the fuck?

For those reasons and many more, only people named Eddie V. who pack much slack should be allowed to be involved in collaborations with other musicians. Rodent-esque greaseballs from Canada need not apply. Which brings me to my third point.

(AWESOME TRANSITIONAL EFFECT!)

3. Canada
In my travels I have met a handful of awesome people from Canada, but in general I have ill feelings towards Canada. I keep with me at all times a list of things that are awesome and come from Canada. That list is as follows:

* Trailer Park Boys
* Poutine
* Sully (see this post)
* The Kids In The Hall
* Degrassi (Junior) High

Nickelback, I'm glad to say, is not on that list. The get relegated to my other list about Canada: Things I hate that come from Canada.¹ That list unfortunately is a far longer list than the things that are awesome and come from Canada list. So voluminous is the things I hate that come from Canada list that I only have time to present some of the highlights.

* Celine Dion
* Cube Zero
* Mike Meyers
* Canadians in Korea who think they are better than me because they have a small Canadian flag on their backpack and I have neither a Canadian flag pin nor a backpack to put it on because I have a real job and carry a briefcase.
* Canadian coins in America
* The Canadian Flag²
* Rush
* Molson Canadian...or any Molson beer for that matter
* Nickelback
* Alanis Morissette
* Dave Couliet
* Anne of Green Gables
* Quebecois
* Z (zed as opposed to zee)

4. Now That's What I Call Music? Really? Music?
I briefly mentioned Saliva and loathing them for reviving rock³, whatever the crap that actually means, but in saying that I gave Saliva way more credit than they deserved. Saliva and Puddle of Mudddd were but peons in the great rock revival of the aughts. The real generals were bands like Creed...and Chad Chobomal and his Nickelbacks.

I hate(d) all that fucking bullshit music. I hated it for being total lowest common denominator music posing as rock music. It was no different than Celine Dion in that Nickleback was music for people who hate music. It was soulless music for secretaries to listen to during their drive time commute.

If you ever asked someone to name their favorite musicians and Nickelback was among the groups and artists listed, chances are the other singers included Avril Lavigne, Emeniem, and/or Christina Agulieriagulara. In other words, Nickelback is "rock" music for people who buy the Now That's What I Call Music series. Who the shit buys those things? All those songs on one CD? How is that shit any different from top 40 radio? Sweet a Mariah Carey song and Kid Rock! Awesome!

Fuck Now! and fuck Nickelback and fuck secretaries who listen to that weak shit!

Conclusion
I guess I should actually put a Nickelback song here shouldn't I? Something that will serve a evidence as to the atrocity that is Nickelback.

Exhibit A

So there you have it, irrefutable proof that Nickelback is awful and when Chad Chuckler and the rest of those fools die they will inevitably end up in one of the lower levels of hell as outlined by Dante. I hate these jerkoffs with a passion. I hate everything about them: their songs, their look, their fans, their country. I hate the fact that fucking Nickelback get to be all over the fucking TV and radio but MTV played a Sleater-Kinney video once at 2:00 in the morning. I hate that these fucking jokers release album after album of mediocre bullshit but awesome bands like At The Drive-In and Unwound have ceased to exist. I hate that people think that's what rock music is. Fuck you Nickelback, we want our genre back!

----
¹There is a third list, things I am impartial to that come from Canada, but that list basically is composed of Broken Social Scene and Tim Horton's so I didn't mention it.

²Canadians don't feel bad about this, your flag actual ranks higher than the American flag, which I think is the gaudiest flag ever, and the Japanese flag which looks like a used maxi-pad. Yours is third worst though. A maple leaf...no one else has those! There aren't maple trees in every European country, the Americas, and half of the countries in Asia are there? You know who has a rad flag? New York State! I have to give mad props to Virginia as well. I like Maine's also because it has pirates on it. Shit this footnote is way to long and rambley. Wouldn't it be rad if footnotes in text books were actually like this?

³http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_The_Return_of_the_Rock

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 11 – A Song From Your Favorite Band

2010-05-23T09:02:00.001-04:00

Much like my favorite song, this is something that changes quite frequently. On any given week my favorite band will be totally different. This week we'll say my favorite band is ART-SCHOOL.

ART-SCHOOL is a band from Japan. They are a band that I would have never knew existed if I hadn't turned on the TV in my hotel room in Osaka in 2003 at exactly the moment that I did.

I had turned on the TV and there was some sort of top ten jams countdown on TV where I saw a 20 second clip of the band playing before the countdown moved to the next jam. Somehow I had the wherewithal to write down the name of the band and the next day I picked up one of their albums.

Over the past 7 years that I have been listening to them, they have been consistently awesome. Anyway, here's their jam, "Black Sunshine." Check it out yo!

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 10 – A Song That Makes You Fall Asleep

2010-05-22T13:34:00.001-04:00

I can't fall asleep if there is anything besides complete darkness and utter silence, so I'm coming at this from a figurative rather than a literal sense since no song actually makes me tired. There are countless songs that I find incredibly boring though. Let's look at one of them shall we?

In Korea, ballads are a genre of music as opposed to everywhere else where it's just a kind of song that other artists do once in awhile. I mean not even Celine Dion sang (sings?) ballads all the time, but here there are a lot of artists that do, and just like American ballads 90% of the time they are incredibly dull, uninspired turds.

Among the ballad singers of Korea, I will have to proclaim SG Wannabe the most boring. SG Wannabe (short for Simon and Garfunkel Wannabe...there's a champion name right there) specialize in three-man ballads where someone always goes, "WOoooahhh wooah woah!" towards the end of the song.

I can't stand any of their music, but their videos are awesome for the game I invented many moons ago. Other than that, I think SG Wannabe are boring and ballads in general are for people who hate music. Think back to ballads in the good old US or Canada, or the Czech Republic or wherever you're at. Who listens to that shit? Secretaries in mom jeans. That's who. Anyway if you want to play the K-Pop cause of death game check out the following video.

OH SHIT I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THIS! SG Wannabe are not only totally boring, but they are totally pretentious too. Here is a video for their song "아리랑." Shit is 22 minutes long. The album cut is 1/5 that length. So check this fucking crap out.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 09 – A Song That You Can Dance To

2010-05-21T08:47:00.002-04:00

I am white. And suburban. And a male. And liked rock music. Basically that combination of conditions have rendered me with the inability to dance. I do have a funny story about dancing though if you'd like to hear it.

At some point in my later college career 2001 or 2002, I went to Buffalo, NY to visit my friends who went to school there. Pretty much the entire purpose of this trip was to hang out and drink, which is precisely what we did. I arrived on Friday and we pretty much drank straight through until Sunday morning.

On Saturday evening I was pretty drunk, but it was decided that we would venture to nearby Allentown and continue drinking there. We went to some sort of bar. It was a two story affair. On the bottom floor there was a stage where a band was playing. We saw some band called Sully there, and on that night they were my favorite band ever. They were from Canada which makes them one of the five awesome things to have come out of that country. Anyway after Sully played we went up to the second floor of this bar/club/concert hall which was apparently some sort of dance club.

It wasn't your normal, "Y'all ready for this? DOO DOO DOO DOOT DOOT..." dance club. This was a dance club for alternative dance fans. By this point of the night I was pretty out of my mind so I couldn't even tell you what the shit was playing, but it was probably something like Bizarre Love Triangle (Extended Dance Mix)," (which is a real thing by the way).

Anyway like I said I was pretty wasted by this point. I'm pretty sure my friends had cut me off of rum and coke and were making me drink water at this point...that doesn't sound like my friends...they were probably giving me more rum and coke. Anyway for whatever reason I ended up on the dance floor of this venue. Now I wasn't so fucked up that I don't remember what I was doing. I was the kind of fucked up were I don't remember why I was doing what I was doing.

So I hit the dance floor while some sort of 1980s British new wave (dance remix) is blasting on the stereo and went up to some sort of goth chicks (or is that chix?) and began dancing near them. Now these chicks were not the overweight, acne scared, Marilyn Manson fan goth chicks ~~you~~ I went to high school with. These goth chicks were pretty hot chicks in black garb who were probably witches in real life...or maybe I was just so drunk that they seemed to be hot chicks.

Anyway I approached them, ready to bust a move with them. They were dancing ethereally, like they were pixies or Tori Amos or something like that in their flowing black gowns. I was clad in a yellow t-shirt proclaiming something like "Capital Region Girls Field Hockey," and was wearing a battle damaged Milwaukee Brewers hat. The girls were already not impressed. They were even less impressed when I began to dance. The way in which I danced could only be described as looking like a ninja on speed trying to assassinate a shogun. If that is not descriptive enough I suppose it looked similar to this.

Only people were not impressed by my moves...and Will Smith wasn't there. So I bust out some outstanding moves, but the girls were unimpressed. I think they shook their heads at me in disgust and vacated the dance floor. I continued to dance for several minutes but I think at that point my brain was like, "Fuck this," and I left the dance floor and sat at the bar with my friends where I think I put ice cubes in my hat, but I don't remember really.

So anyway, a song that I can dance to? Apparently no song, but because it could very well have been the song I danced to, and it's an awesome song anyway, here's "Bizarre Love Triangle," by New Order.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 08 – A Song That You Know All The Words To

2010-05-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

As every travel guide written by a two bit hack will tell you, Koreans love to sing. They are all about karaoke or noraebang (노래방) as the locals call it.

I, on the other hand, am not all about singing. I am neither particularly skilled, nor do I happen to enjoy doing it all that much (unless I am in my car and something awesome is on the stereo). However, I have made my home here in Korea, and that means I am coerced into singing at least two or three times a year.

Fortunately unlike karaoke in America, karaoke in Korea happens behind closed doors so only your friends, family, or co-workers can see you make an ass of yourself, as opposed to a room full of drunk secretaries who went out for 2 for 1 pitchers of margaritas.

Anyway since I am required by law to sing when I go to karaoke, I decided it would be in my best interest to develop a set list of two or three jams I can sing well enough that I would be able to pull off some awesome singer moves while performing so that hopefully people would be so impressed by my rock theatrics that they would forgot how bad I was at singing. My set list basically consists of a couple Korean jams, which also make people forgot I'm bad at singing because "He's singing in Korean and he's white!" and "Hello," by Lionel Richie.

Why "Hello?" The answer is simple my friends. I was not always a married man. "Hello," by Lionel Richie is the ultimate song to use to mack it to a girl. It's easy to sing, plus it has the phrase, "I love you," in it, so even if the girl doesn't speak English at all and doesn't understand things like, "I long to see the sunlight in hair and tell you time and time again, how much I care," she'll understand "I love you," and if you couple that with some rock moves she will swoon.

At least that's the idea. Unfortunately for me most of my rock moves I learned from shitty punk/hardcore/alternative bands so my rock moves basically consist of strangling myself with a microphone cable, various jump kicks, and floor punching, which pretty much counteracts the panty moistening potential of "Hello."

So there you go, I know all the words to "Hello," just don't ask me to sing it unless you don't mind me swinging the mic like a lasso and punching at the floor.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 07 – A Song That Reminds You of a Certain Event

2010-05-19T13:10:00.000-04:00

It's not an important event. It's not a special event. There exist, countless songs, that remind me exclusively of comuting. Sponge's, "Molly," and "Rooster," by Alice In Chains remind me of taking the bus to school in 1993-4. "Bleed American," by Jimmy Eat World and "Enfilade," by At The Drive-In remind me the drive to my university in 2001. "Natural Anthem," by the Postal Service is riding the 7 train to go see some girl I was dating who lived in Flushing.

Pretty boring huh? Well that's not all! The entire Repetition album by Unwound reminds me of jogging in my neighborhood! Master of Puppets/And Justice For All remind me of playing Mario Kart 64! That's all pretty boring too isn't it?

Well I guess I'm just boring. Here's "Bleed American." Hey does anyone remember when they changed the title to something like "Salt Sweat Sugar," or some such nonsense after terrorism happened? If emo bands have to change song titles then the terrorists have truly won, and speaking of terrorists and Jimmy Eat World, I listed to this album on my way to school that morning (I had a Korean class at 8:00 or some such ungodly hour).

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 06 – A Song That Reminds You Of Somewhere

2010-05-18T19:42:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's, today's, and tomorrow's songs all kind of overlap for me because it's hard to seperate people, places, and events. Pretty much every track I've listed here reminds me of a partcular venue. The afore mentioned, "Blind," by Korn reminds me of my parents' backyard, but only by way of the event of mowing a lawn. Tom Waits reminds me of my friend's basement. "Get Well Soon," reminds me of 서대문구, but those songs also remind me of people and events.

The only song I can think of that reminds me of a particular place first and foremost is "Sideways," by The Sheila Divine (well actually that and a bunch of other jams by them). Their jams remind me of Buffalo, NY because that is where I first heard them. UB campus to be percise.

I had friends that went to school there and would on occassion visit them for various alcohol related adventures and everytime I was there Sheila Divine was blasting from every stereo and car radio (again pre-ubiquitous mp3 players). In the dorms it was the same: Winamp pumping out "Sideways." They were unescapable in Buffalo, but a mere 4 or 5 hours away in Albany, where I went to school, no one knew who the hell they were. It's something that is even mentioned on the band's Wikipedia page.

"The band had a large die hard fan base in what was often called "the three Bs": Boston, Buffalo, and Belgium."

So The Sheila Divine, thank you. Everytime I hear your jams with their, "loud/soft musical dynamic and Aaron's Perrino soaring vocals, screaming in key one moment and howling a falsetto the next," I am reminded of Buffalo and all the awesome shit that happened when I went there.*

* The awesome shit that happened there is outside of the scope of this particular blog post, but includes the following in no particular order: El Niño Burritos™ at Might Taco, seeing Queens of the Stone Age and then leaving when Zwan started playing, Candyland as a drinking game, dancing at a goth dance club and having goth chicks look at me with disgust, some guy dressed like a gladiator, giving a random indie girl a piggyback ride, Mike McCreedy, loosing an hour of drinking at the bar because of daylights savings time, etc.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 05 – A Song That Reminds You of Someone

2010-05-17T18:56:00.001-04:00

This song is called "Get Well Soon," and it is by Reggie and The Full Effect. This is a song that reminds me of someone. Someone I wish I couldn't remember. It also reminds me of being drunk for a week. It reminds me of walking alone for hours at night. It reminds me of a lot of shit.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 04 – A Song That Makes You Sad

2010-05-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

Back around the turn of the century things were bleak. In the evening my friends and I would huddle in someone's basement and drink cheap beer while watching crappy TV and listening to random records/CDs/mp3 (like I said it was the turn of the century and we were into less than mainstream music so all three formats were totally viable). These evenings gave birth to many outstanding creations: there was my suit of armor crafted out of Natural Light boxes, an album of insane quasi-rock jams (the now out of print Tanglevine's album Laughing at Trauma), probably another albums worth of jams that never were recorded ("Smuggler's Grin," "Don't Call The Medics (For David Blaine)," "Elephants Are Better," some of which I remember, some of which may have just been titles without music or words), and assort scams, legends, and bullshit.

But perhaps the greatest thing ever to be devised in those dark recesses of Beck LPs, Natural Ice, and Cinemax porn was the Suicide Mix. Like I said we lived in a wild time when mp3s existed, but pretty much only existed on your computer. If you wanted to listen to them in your car or as you walked around campus, then you were going to have to burn yourself a CD to play on your Discman. Napster coupled with cheap blank CDs gave rise to some outstanding mixes during this time. The last time I was at my parents' house I looked through one of those CD cases filled with CDs I'd burned. Of course there were the full albums by random bands I liked a little but not enough to actually go purchase the CD, the live CDs of concerts I downloaded from skeezey websites, and compilations I made of B-sides and unreleased stuff from bands I did like.

And then there were the mix CDs: "RAP JAMZ!" (title is pretty self-explainatory) "i can't drive 55" (songs that made me drive too fast) "Y'all ready for this?" (mainstream pop/dance music from circa 1990), and then there was suicide mix. I'm sure every single person has made that mix or that playlist that contained all the jams you only listened to when some foul shit was happening in your life. My friends and I took Lord of the Rings, "one ring to rule them all," approach to crafting our mix CD of depressing music.

It was bleak. It was depressing on a level you couldn't even begin to imagine. To this day I don't think I've listened to it all the way through (which is fortunate because to do so would have caused me to commit suicide) and there are only a handful of tracks I clearly recall being a part of the mix: Radiohead's "Pyramid Song," "Stupidly," by Dan Cray, and the Tom Waits tune "The Piano's Been Drinking," all of which were at the top end of the disc...the less depressing songs.

To this day if I hear any of those three songs, I am reminded of heartbreak and cheap beer and dudes telling me, "Forget her! Drink this!" and stealing a parking sign from the Ground Round. Since Dan Cray's "Stupidly," is nowhere to be found on the internet, here's Tom Waits.

Wait a second...people were laughing. What the fuck was wrong with 1977? That song is hella depressing! It's not funny you idiots from '77!

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 03 – A Song That Makes You Happy

2010-05-15T07:29:00.001-04:00

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 03 – A Song That Makes You Happy

Can a song really make someone happy? I mean when I'm happy there are a ton of happy sounding jams that I listen to. Some bands that start with the letter B that fall into this category are The B-52's and Bis (from Scotland...not some fake Japanese version). But what about when I'm upset? Recovering from a soul-crushing break-up or death of a loved one? Am I going to blast "Rock Lobster," and be on the road to recovery? Of course not. That would be ridiculous.

On the other hand though if you're having a kind of bad day and on the way home from work, you happen to hear, "Doin' The Butt," on the radio, you really can't help but crack a smile can you? While certainly not as ludicrous as "Doin' The Butt," the afore mentioned Bis kind of fall into this category for me, particularly their earlier work.

For those of you unfamiliar with Bis, they (as I mentioned above) were from Scotland and played a really weird blend of dance music and quasi-punk. The are the group responsible for recording The Powerpuff Girls theme song, which is a pretty fair representation of their sound to be honest. A lot of their music seems tailor made for cartoons. Poppy. Dancey. Big guitar hooks. Boy-girl vocals.

However, as is probably the case with most, "happy" music, a lot of people probably find their jams annoying. I don't. So here's the video for Bis' tune, "Tell It To The Kids," replete with an intro from Matt Pinfield. Remember that dude?

Check Out This Death Knight

2010-05-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

If you don't care about video games and think that I am a person who only engages in erudite, intellectual pursuits, please skip this post.

A few months back my wife and I switched from playing EQ2 to playing World of Warcraft. Last year I started a job with regular hours that precluded me from playing as long as I used to. WOW seemed far more solo/duo friendly which caused us to make the switch. Well that and the fact that Blizzard set me an email that basically begged me to come back because they missed me so much that they were willing to give me free gaming time.

So we headed over to WOW together. We played some alliance guys first because I already had an alliance dude from before who was in their 60s or something and could spot us cash to get us rolling. My wife decided she liked Blood Elves because they were prettier than Night Elves, so we made some Horde mens. That lasted awhile until everyone else we knew who played (read as my brother and sister and dad) decided Horde men were gross and went back to the greener pastures of Alliance. We too followed suit and my wife, instead of going back to the 20ish night elf druid she had made the least pretty race/character class combo in the game, a male Draenei shaman. I helped her out with the hunter I had (whose cash had purchased us bags and mounts when we first started) and got her into the mid-40s intending to stick with the double Draenei two-pack of a shaman and a hunter, but my dad, who had been playing a paladin, switched it up and came on like gangbusters and got a hunter to level 50 when were weren't looking (aka when I was in Taiwan).

I decided that rather than have a double hunter group when we hit up dungeons I'd make another character. I decided that in order to save myself time I'd make a death knight since they pop out of the gate at level 55 (which was close enough to the level my wife was at) that we could pretty much quest in the same areas (as opposed to me dragging her through zones I'd already finished), and thus my female gnome death knight was born. It seemed like an assinine enough class/race combo for me so I went with it. If they had hobbits in WOW though it would have been a hobbit.

So we've been doing some quests. We finished up the quests Tanaris and have moved on to Ungoro Crater, which was a zone I enjoyed a lot the last time I was there. I hit 59 the other night and the wife got to 50 last night, so we are slowly catching up with my brother and sister who are both rocking level 80.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 02 - Your Least Favorite Song

2010-05-14T20:00:00.000-04:00

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 02 - Your Least Favorite Song

This is probably the second hardest topic on the list after picking a favorite song. Again, there are a lot of songs that I dislike. There are a lot of songs that I even hate, but picking the one I dislike the most is hard. Most truly awful music is fairly easy to avoid and I tend to do just that. I mean I dislike the idea of Nazi-punk, but it’s not like that kind of music get massive radio airplay, so I don’t ever have to listen to it.

The song I dislike the most would have to be one of those omnipresent jams that you hear everywhere, but again this proves difficult. I hated Creed pretty bad in the early 2000s, but even then the music videos were fun because Scott Stapp was such a pompous asshole that my friends and I ended up making a webpage devoted to the random asshole poses he struck. Unfortunately that webpage has been lost to the annals of time, but the memories will live on in my heart forever. So even though Creed songs were lowest common denominator bullshit, I have fond memories of drinking Natural Ice and busting on their videos ("Dudes, he's just pulled a Reelin' 'Em In into a Releasing The Doves!!!"), so again Creed doesn’t really fit the bill.

Fifteen years ago this would have proven much easier since I would have written something like, "Any rap song," but that's no longer true. Thinking about that now actually makes me a little angry at myself, because when I listen to it now I realize that early to mid-90s rap is ridiculously awesome on so many levels; it makes me mad that I missed out on it back in the day. Seriously, go listen to "Deep Cover," and tell me it's not awesome.

I guess for me the worst song is "Blind," by Korn. Hear me out on this. I don't even think it's a bad song. In fact there was a time when it was my lawn mowing jam (it was featured on mix tapes that also probably had Earth Crisis and Stone Temple Pilots on them, so make what you will of that). No, I don't hate, "Blind," because it was a bad song. I hate, "Blind," because of what it begot. Without Korn, there wouldn't have been a Limp Bizkit, or a Staind, or a Trapt, or an Ill Niño, or any of those other bullshit nu metal bands. 1998-2003 (and possibly later, I escaped from America in the summer of that year) was a dire time to watch music television or listen to “rock” radio. Every single video had chunky dudes dressed in black with chugga-chugga guitar riffs and some douchebag asshole white guy who grew up in the suburbs but braids or dreads or a shaved head screaming some fucking bullshit lyrics about pain or bitches (or both).

For some reason, that downward spiral into idiocy makes me a little sad, but I really shouldn't have been surprised, since it's happened before. In the 1990s, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," begot all manner of shitty later-day "grunge" bands (Puddle of Mudddd, Creed, Days of the New, et. al.) It makes me wonder how far back this trend goes. Were there Limp Mozarts or Puddle of Bachhhhs? Did they get massive play on whatever the 16th century version of Much Music or MTV2 were? Something to think about the next time a shitty song comes on that makes you hate a band you used to like.

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 01 - Your Favorite Song

2010-05-13T19:31:00.000-04:00

The 30 Day Song Challenge Day 01 – Your favorite song

Of all the questions on the list, I think this one is probably the hardest to answer. There are a ton of songs that I think are outstanding, but which among them would I rank as my favorite? My i-pod tells me that I listened to the song, "Illmatic Baby," by ART-SCHOOL more than any other song I own, but that number is slightly dishonest as it doesn't account for plays before the two times I ended up wiping out all the data on my i-pod, or the 25 years of my life during which I had no i-pod (also that album was purchased slightly after I lost most of my mp3s in a computer freak-out so there weren't a lot of jams for me to list to). "Smells Like Teen Spirit," was a song that was important to me in my youth as it kind of shaped my musical tastes, but I wouldn't call it my favorite song either. Hell, it wasn't even my favorite song on that album when I bought it back in '91 ("Drain You," holds that honor, as well as being one of the few Nirvana songs I'll still listen to, but again, not my favorite song).

I suppose if I really had to pick a favorite song it would be "Reprobates Resume," by Les Savy Fav. There's not really any reason for me to pick it other than the fact that it's a song that I never skip if it comes on my i-pod while on shuffle mode. There's something about it that powers me up. It has been heavily featured on mixes made for riding bikes, or working out. It's the song that I blast when I'm home alone and have to do housework.

But like I said, this question is the hardest one to answer. Four years ago, my answer would have been different. Four years from now it will probably be different too. For now though, Les Savy Fav, "Reprobates Resume," is my favorite song.

The 30 Day Song Challenge

2010-05-13T19:30:00.028-04:00

Notes

2010-05-03T08:15:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks have been kind of a blur with trips overseas and skank filled photography expos, so I figured I'd take forty-seven seconds and mentioned some of the news stories that would have otherwise fallen through the cracks.

Thursday was Hani the Girl's birthday, so JH and I went over for dinner and cake which was fairly decent.

Also on Thursday a package arrived from America containing two copies of Wrath of the Lich King among other things. Because of the afore mentioned birthday party I didn't get a chance to play until the following day. I made a death knight, which I might start playing instead of my hunter since my dad has been playing a hunter a lot.

The Photography Expo finished on Sunday.

The Breakup

2010-05-02T08:50:00.000-04:00

Beer, can we talk? I don't know how to tell you this, but this isn't working anymore. Please don't cry. Nothing, you didn't do anything wrong. It's not you, it's me. I've changed. You and I had a lot of good times together, but like I said, things are different now, and I want different things in my life.

Yes, I remember the night I let you talk me into partying with that Mexican girl with you...Tequilla...stop trying to change the topic, it's not going to make me change my mind.

Look, I don't know what that has to do with anything, but if you really must know, I am seeing someone else. Her name is Exercise. I didn't want you to find out this way. I never meant to hurt you. I hope we can still be friends and maybe hang out once in awhile. Don't cry Beer...I'm sure you'll meet someone else.

Whoredom

2010-05-01T20:32:00.008-04:00

This weekend was just like the last. Another boring trade show at a random expo center. I spent the past four days with people staring at me for several minutes before asking, "How much?" in halting English. I would answer their questions in Korean, but ultimately became bored with the, "Wow you can speak Korean!" reactions, so I created a "I can speak Korean," tag for myself. I hadn't had to wear a tag like that since the summer of 1999 when I worked at Leslie's Poolmart and the powers that be made us all wear oversized buttons commanding customers to, "Ask me about algae."

So why do I do it? Why do any of us endure this kind of mindnumbing bullshit? I pondered it for a long time and came to the realization that we're all whores. All of us are willing to sell a part of ourselves. Some of us sell our bodies. Some of us sell our skills or our knowledge. It's all the same thing. I'm as much of a whore as the rest of them. The only difference between me and them is that I don't get to wear skanky clothes. Certainly none of this is really a cutting edge line of thought, but it's something I thought about nonetheless this weekend.

"Objectification"

Hey dudes! I had some long, overly dramatic piece of wankery written about how everyone is a whore, but fuck that shit! Here are a bunch of pictures of models in skimpy clothes! Let's get objectifying!!!

There you go dudes!

ㄊㄞˊ ㄨㄢ

2010-04-28T19:30:00.001-04:00

So I just got back from a five day business trip spent in Taipei, Taiwan. Here's a run down of the particulars without any frills or extras.

This trip was the first time I was in charge of making all the arrangements for an overseas expo so I was a bit nervous during the flight and ride from the airport to the expo center, but once we arrived and found our booth, all my fears were alleviated. All the stuff we had shipped from Korea was already in our booth, as were all the display stands we had rented. The only thing missing was tape, which I had apparently forgotten to pack, but that was remedied with a quick trip to Family Mart.

Anyway the boss and I set up our display with a quickness and then drank some Taiwan Beer (also purchased at Family Mart when I bought tape). With the booth taken care of we went and checked into our hotel. After dropping off some suitcases, we went outside and wandered around for an hour or so looking for food and drinks. We finally found a place and got our eat on and our drink on. It was pretty decent because I got to eat lamb on a stick which is all kinds of awesome, but hard to find in Korea. It also didn't hurt that the waitresses who worked there were very cute. The next day was expo time so we called it a night and headed to the hotel.

The expo happened for the next four days. A lot of people visited our booth which was good and we had an interpreter so the work was pretty easy. Taiwan is all about lunch boxes...or at least seemed to be all about them when in the midst of an expo. I decided to be all about them as well. They were pretty decent and I thought it was a good way to try out a lot of different kinds of food in a short period of time. My boss is a picky eater. Not about ingredients, but about seasonings. He did not eat lunch boxes because they smelled weird, so he went across the street to a mall and ate lunch there. I'm not sure what he ate because I didn't go. It kind of made me realize how much I have changed. 10 years ago, I was far pickier than even that, but now I'll eat just about anything. Of course there are things that I don't like (oysters I'm looking at you), but I'm way better about food than I was in the past.

Speaking of food, each day after the expo we had some awesome food. One the first night the translator took us to Din Tai Fung...the original version. The menu was slightly different from the branch I'd eaten at in Seoul so that was pretty good. We had some dumplings and some noodles and other stuff which was excellent. On the second day of the expo we went out with our interpreter and had some grilled meats. I ate lamb because lamb is awesome, and like I said before, it's hard to get in Seoul. After dinner we had "pearl tea."

Before we arrived in Taiwan, I was under the impression that I didn't know about any Taiwanese food, forgetting that both "pearl tea" and Din Tai Fung are from Taiwan. After a mere two and a half days I was of the opinion that Taiwanese food was far better than the food in Southern China.

On the following day we went to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and took some pictures, but it rapidly became dark and all the cameras we had sucked so most of the pictures came out pretty poorly. Following dinner we rode a subway and went to a stationery shop. The subway was super clean. It was cleaner than the subway in Seoul, but I guess it's younger than the subways in Seoul, which also are far cleaner than any subway or light rail train I'd ever ridden in America. The stationery store was far less clean. It was a mess of people and stationery and video games. Warcraft seems to be popular as do sexy mahjong computer games.

After our trip to the stationery store we went out for dinner. It was Chinese food, but as I have come to realize, Chinese food is not the same in any two countries. The Chinese food I ate in Taiwan was unlike Chinese food I had eaten anywhere else. We ordered an assortment of dishes, but for my money, the superstar dish was some sort of ham dished cooked in a honey sauce with lotus seeds that you ate wrapped in some kind of pita-esque bread that reminded me of 화권, but was shaped different. It was awesome.

For our final meal we met with a distributor who took us out to eat. We had spicy as all get out Chinese food, which was also awesome. It was a pretty good time.

Besides food and business, alcohol and tourism also happened. As I mentioned, upon our arrival we sampled Taiwan Beer, but were underwhelmed. Later samplings proved Taiwan Draft Beer to be slightly better. One night the boss and I drank Jack & Coke at some fancy bar with a DJ who randomly played "Lithium," by Nirvana which I thought was a pretty awesome move.

On the morning of our departure, we went to Taipei 101. It was ok. There elevator there is crazy fast. I think I got the bends while riding in it. At the top of Taipei 101 is a giant ball which apparently prevented wind from blowing the building over. We could see most of the city from the top, but it was a little cloudy so visibility was not that awesome.

A couple hours later we were on an airplane...and that was Taiwan!

Jerry Springer-esque, "Final Thoughts?" I liked Taiwan better than mainland China. It was cleaner, the people were friendlier, and riding in a cab didn't remind me of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Also I thought the food was better there than in China. Taiwan also reminded me that not knowing how to speak Chinese is a pain in the ass, but unlike China also reminded me that studying 漢字 (as opposed to 汉字) was a good move.*

Anyway, I was glad to go, but I'm even gladder that I don't have to go on any business trips until mid-July.

* China uses simplified characters which I cannot (for the most part) read. Taiwan (and Hong Kong for that matter) use the traditional characters which I learned while studying Korean.

K-Pop Krap: Cyber Star Adam

2010-04-20T22:41:00.011-04:00

I consider myself to be fairly well versed in Korean pop culture, but until fairly recently I was largely unaware of the existance of Adam. Adam is or was Korea's first "cyber star." What pray tell is a "cyber star?" A "cyber star," is basically a computer generated character who for some reason becomes a celebrity. Apparently Korea learned nothing from Max Headroom...

The internet informs me that like most seemingly insane pop culture phenomena, "cyber stars" originated in Japan, and as was the case with Peppero, the Koreans saw "cyber stars," and were like, "Hey that's a pretty good idea! We should totally rip that off!" Only it isn't a good idea. It is a very bad idea. A very bad idea indeed.

Honestly I'm being kind of unfair. When Adam first came out he probably looked pretty bad ass, but the CGI now looks laughable. That's why I'm really worried about most of the movies that have come out in the past 10 years. All that CGI shit is going to be so laughable ten years down the line, but I digress.

Information on Adam is scare (probably because it was a fucking terrible idea) but I was able to obtain the following information from the internet. Adam made his debut in 1998 and ultimately released two albums before the people of Korea came to their senses and asked themselves, "What the fuck are we doing here?" Unfortunately before that mass awakening, a slew of other "cyber stars," were released upon the public.¹

It's easy to look at Adam or any of the other stars and laugh at how crappy the animation looks, but in doing so we would be overlooking what Adam says about the state of pop music in Korea. Everything about it is fake. Everything is manufactured. Singers aren't allowed to have boyfriends or girlfriends. They can't partake in normal, age appropriate behavior. Remember when that cock smuggler, MC Mong got in trouble for smoking even though he's like 34 years old? The singers today might be flesh and bone (and plastic), but are they really any more real or genuine than a guy who's ones and zeros?

In the end I'm actually going to cut Adam some slack because at least with Adam there wasn't any pretense of realism. When Adam didn't sing live it was because he wasn't real, not because like Lee Hyori he was unable to actually sing. And in a country where the average career span of a pop star is measured in weeks rather than years the concept of a "cyber star," has other obvious benefits. Adam would never get in trouble for punching dudes out at a strip club, or drugs, and fucking some other celebrity and he'd never get old or get fat. Fortunately as I said before, the stupidity of the concept seemed to outweigh the apparent benefits and Adam and the other "cyber stars," vanished.

I wrap the sorrid tale of Adam up with this awesome video. It says more about Adam and cyberstars than I could ever care to write about.

¹http://myigs.com/igs/pigeons/pigeon1893.htm

Sunday Morning 10:00 a.m.

2010-03-28T10:30:00.000-04:00

Walked to the subway station this morning. At 10:00 a.m. as I neared the station a couple, probably in their early to mid-twenties walked towards me. Suddenly they doubled back and entered a seedy looking motel they had just walked by. What kind of conversation were they having that caused that move to go down?

WOMAN: What do you wanna do today?
MAN: Well, there's a hotel with hourly rates right back there, you wanna fuck?
WOMAN: Okay...

Check Out This Picture I Had Saved On My Hard Drive

2010-03-26T20:48:00.000-04:00

I remember when I first learned of Google. It was like the Renaissance bringing a close to the Dark Ages. Prior to that we all used shit like Lycos or Altavista...shit no one even mentions anymore. Anyway, I became a fan of Google almost from the get-go due almost entirely to Google's image search feature. My friends and I thought this feature was fantastic. We would type random things in and up would pop page after page of semi and quasi-related imagery which would scourer and find the most rediculous pictures to send each other via AOL Instant Messenger.

In this manner the robocop970 (my AIM id or yore) folder quickly became filled with countless assinine jpeg files and animated gif files (no porn...that had it's own folder). Somehow, against all odds, this folder has survived almost completely intact through three countless computers and an international move. The same, sadly, cannot be said for my turn of the millenium mp3s and porn.

All of this introductory bullshit is leading up to me revealing this amazing picture. This file is a late entry in the folder of randomly downloaded pictures. Saved off the internet sometime after my move to Korea (and if I'm remembering correctly even after I got married), I present Alien Wrestling Predator While ET Watches and an Ewok Sells Snacks.

I like this picture for a variety of reasons. First off, it's a damn picture of aliens wrestling which is awesome. Second off, this particular piece of awesomeness is based on a legit work of art named, 씨름 (Wrestling), by famed Korean painter, 김홍도. I guess I like this particular illustration for the same reason I like the work of Brandon Bird.

Am I still writing crap here? Whatever. There's an Ewok...that's all you need to know.

On People With Cameras

2010-03-25T15:30:00.000-04:00

So it's another day of the week and I'm at yet another expo. This particular expo is kind of embarrassing because it's about interior design and my company doesn't make or sell linens, furniture, dishes, or lighting fixtures, but it wasn't my decision to go there and I'm getting paid like the good little corporate sell-out that I am so I haven't complained aloud about how stupid it is. Since our products don't really fit the needs or desires of most of the customers I haven't been particularly busy which means I have a lot of time for one of my favorite pass-times: people watching.

The booths at this expo all have pretty artsy set-ups that young women seem to enjoy. The booth across from ours has been particularly good at attracting young ladies who all take close up pictures of random dusty, old bottles, and lamps. There has been a steady stream of them all day, and I was perplexed by their behavior so I asked my co-worker about it since she happens to be a young woman. I asked her what they did with the pictures after they took them and she informed me that many of them post those pictures on their blogs and write some crap to accompany the pictures that is as deep as the dusty jar itself.

Then it struck me...the new direction for my blog that I have been looking for these past few days: take pictures of random shit that I see and then write reviews of it! I mean, I like reviewing crap, but I am not actually skilled or patient enough to review book, movies, or music, but maybe I could review a mug...or a moustache...or a jar covered with dust. So stay tuned for the first exciting installment of "Check Out This...!" tomorrow*.

* "Tomorrow," may not actually refer March 26th. Dates and times are subject to change. Must be 18 or older to play. Offer void in Alabama.

Descending Into The Realm Of Self-Parody

2010-03-22T17:45:00.000-04:00

When I started this post it had the title of Expo Happened, but as I typed the words I gave pause and looked at what I had written, and thought about what I had written over the past year or so. It was all garbage. There was nothing insightful or interesting about any of it. I've been posting this kind of crap on the Internet off and on for over 10 years now, which made me think, how long can someone do something before they slide into a bottomless abyss of awfulness?

People like Steven King or Danielle Steele crank out novel after novel of ever decreasing value. Is that the route I want to go down here? Not particularly. I also don't care to venture into the world of politico-blogger-wankery. So what does that really leave me with? I'm not entirely sure.

I sometimes wish I were a better writer, or a more motivated human being. I have some ideas about things I'd like to do here, but I neither have the skill nor the wherewithal to successfully pull them off. So I guess for the time being this blog exists purely as a means for me to remember the asinine occurrences that constitute my life.

Expo Happened. I went to COEX for an expo. It was really boring there. Many people visited our booth and bought crap but they were not that awesome. I wanted to listen to Life At These Speeds, but instead I had to tell people about injection molding.

Cafeteria Happened

2010-03-16T23:04:00.001-04:00

We have a cafeteria at work. I think I mentioned it before and how working for a company is pretty much like being in high school again and how I eat with the weird kids. Anyway, due to random business trips, expos, and people saying stuff like, "Hey Wyatt you wanna go out for lunch today?" I hadn't been to the cafeteria in something like 3 weeks. Today marked my return.

Much like the cafeteria at high school, I grabbed my tray and walked down the line while lunch ladies put ~~slop~~ delicious and nutritious food on it. As I was collecting my food, a funny thing happened; they lunch ladies all said stuff like, "Oh it's good to see you again," and "We haven't seen ya in awhile hon..." It warmed my heart to learn that the concept of older women serving lunch and calling people "Hon," seemed to be a universal truth.

Incas Happened

2010-03-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

Friday after a trip to Japan happened, I had a day off from work, so JH and I went to the museum to see Incan artifacts. It was the same museum where we saw mummies some months ago, but lacked the awesomeness that the mummy exhibit featured. Anyway I learned that the Incan way of life met its end as the result of halberds and sexually transmitted diseases from Spaniards.

The exhibit was pretty good. There were a couple mummies and some cups shaped like dicks. Holy fuck are Inca mummies creepy! Maybe they weren't as creepy as Spirit Cave mummy or those fucking bog mummies that I saw on Discovery channel a million years ago, but they are like 4,234,835 times creepier than Egyptian mummies. Mummy hair has got to be the grossest thing ever...even grosser than dickshaped cups.

So there's some Inca stuff at the National Museum in Yongsan until the end of the month, if you miss it, your only chance to see Inca stuff will be downloading some The Mysterious Cities of Gold...which doesn't sound like a bad idea at the moment. I wonder if Esteban gave Zia syphilis in the Japanese version. They always cut that shit out when it's shown on TV in America.

Japan Happened

2010-03-14T09:13:00.000-04:00

I went to Japan last week on business. I've been there several times before, but it's always a good time for me when I go there. For some reason my trips to Japan usually involve a trip to some sort of supermarket where I stock up on random Japanese junk food. This time was no exception. I bought some Yebisu beers, cup ramen, Pocky (the strawberry kind), Calbee potato chips. Also some robot models were purchased.

Oh also we met with some clients and that seemed to go pretty well, so I think in the near future I will have a chance to go back to Japan to buy more junk food.

This Is Something That Happened To Me Today

2010-03-03T23:03:00.001-05:00

So there was an expo that I went to today. People kept giving me coffee. I kept drinking it. Before I knew it the expo was finished for the day. I watched some Cosby Show on my I-Pod on my way back home. I saw the episode where Theo and Cockroach try to listen to MacBeth on a record but can't understand it so they go and buy some fake version of Cliff Notes in order to pass a test. That happened to me once...but I think it was Moby Dick. Tomorrow I have to go back to the expo. I hope people give me more coffee. I hope I can watch more Cosby Show on my I-Pod on my way back home. I hope I don't have to read Cliff Notes about Moby Dick again.

Notorious

2010-03-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

JH and I watched Notorious last night. It told the story of Biggie Smalls. When Biggie was alive and releasing jams I was all about rock music, that being said I knew like every song in that movie...and was amazed at how awesome they were. I think I need to go score a copy of Ready To Die posthaste.

Musical Theatre

2010-03-01T09:32:00.000-05:00

On Friday evening JH and I went to go see Hedwig and The Angry Inch. The last 40 minutes of it that we managed to see were pretty good. What caused us to miss the rest? Uncreative naming.

We bought tickets a few weeks back, knew what time the show was. We were set. JH has a tendency to almost be late for any event that has a set starting time which results in a lot of mad dashes to concerts and boats and movies, but this time we were set...only we weren't.

In Hongdae, which on foot is about 25 minutes from my house, or 5 minutes by bus, there is a theater named, 상상극장 (Imagination Theater). When we reserved the tickets we made note that the show was at 상상극장 and planned accordingly. About 45 minutes before show time it was time to head off.

JH: Lemme just check the map online really quick. We've only been there once and I don't know what floor the show's on anyway.

ME: Ok, I'm gonna brush my teeth and take a piss real quick.

So I'm in the bathroom when I suddenly hear JH yell something like, "Oh no!" or "Oh shit!" or some other exclaimation reserved only for when something's messed up...badly.

"What is it?"

"It's not in Hongdae...there's another 상상극장 in Samsung."

Now Samsung (beside's being a major corporation) is a subway station on the other side of the city. It's about 50 minutes by train which plus the 10 minute walk to the subway station from our apartment would make us late even if we didn't have to wait for a train. Shit. So we went with option number 2: a taxi.

So we ran outside and about 3 minutes later were in a cab. Unfortunately the forces of nature were against us. It was the last weekday of the month (payday fools), rush hour (get home suckas), a Friday (nah, don't get home...get crunked up), and a long weekend (get hella crunked up), so the roads were basically parking lots. The taxi drive played some soothing classical music, I think to keep everyone in the cab for going apeshit. It helped. If I had my driving mix that I used to keep in my car when I drove in I would have probably driven the car into the Han River.

"There aren't any cars down there...it will probably be faster!"

Man I miss that tape (and later CD version) made me drive like more of an asshole than I did anyway. I miss you At The Drive-In, but I digress. The cab driver put forth a Herculean effort but ultimately failed. I did learn two very important things. The first was that a cab ride from one end of the city to the other during rush hour costs less than 20,000 won (the total was like $15). The second and perhaps more important thing I learned was that apparently I look like I'm Indian (like from India) or perhaps Pakistani.

Allow me to explain. We got in the cab, and JH barked some directions and we took off. A couple minutes into the ride the cab driver asks in English, "Are you Indian?"

"Who me? No..."

"From Pakistan?"

I laughed and then told him I was American, but it made me wonder, do you look like I'm from that region? I had not eaten curry, my hair and skin are pretty lightly colored, so I wondered what it was that made the dude confuse me for someone from that area.

Needless to say everything conspired against us and we arrived 35 minute or so after the show had started. The lady at the ticketing counter knew almost immediately what had happened, "Thought it was in Hongdae huh?"

We were let into the theater, but forfitted our more gnarly seats for seats that were less disruptive (aka the cheap seats in the back). I guess that's the price you pay for tardiness. The show itself was pretty decent, though the actor playing Hedwig spoke crazy fast and whispered a lot, which made it kind of hard for me to comprehend sometimes. It was alright though because I walked in with a rough understanding of the plot.

The jams were beyond decent, which is probably why famous bands like Sleater-Kinney and Type-O Negative(!) cover them. The whole show had less of a theatre vibe and more of seeing a band at a shitty dive bar vibe, but since we were actually in a theatre and had to abide by the laws of the theatre it was a little weird. We sat in chairs when we should have been pogoing.

I guess in that regard for me the concept of a rock musical fails. It's like a liger I suppose. Both parts on their own are decent. A lion and a tiger are pretty much the most badass animals that exist. You can force them together, but doing so is against nature, and the end result is usually sterile.

For me the money would have been better spent going to see a real rock concert or a real musical. But anyway there you go, I went to see some musical theatre and a cabbie thought I was an Indian.

The End

History Channel HD Is The Greatest Channel I Have

2010-02-26T09:46:00.000-05:00

My wife and I live a life of faux upscale metropolitanism. We live in a penthouse suite with a view of the Han River and have random object d'art in our apartment. We also have a satelite dish that gives us all sorts of upscale channels such as the classical music channel, the opera channel, and assorted National Geographic channels, but all of those are crocks of crocodile shit compared to the balls to the wall awesomeness that is History Channel HD.

I remember in America, History Channel was basically the World War II channel. They showed ever event from World War II in chronological order. It was a good channel sometimes, but other channels were more awesome. I don't know if History Channel in general improved, or it's merely that History Channel HD has different offerings, but the shows they show are so much fun to watch.

The programs about dinosaurs are pretty good as are the random specials about the secrets of Christianity (lost biblical texts, the Templars, etc.). The American Revolution series is pretty good, but it sometimes turns me into an anti-British asshole. "Ha ha! Get those fuggin' Redcoats Green Mountain Boys!" All of that stuff is good, but my absolute favorite show is Life After People.

For those of you who don't know, Life After People, is a show that explains what Earth might be like...well, after people cease to exist. The show never explains what sort of event might cause such a situation, but each episode looks at what might happen to various aspects of human civilization after it ceases to exist. It's kind of post apocolyptic, but different from shit like The Omega Man, or Mad Max, because there aren't any people at all. So instead of that last man on earth, wandering through the ruins of human civilization you get, cat civilization living in the ruins of human civilization and learn how quickly everything humanity has done will fall apart. It's kind of awesome and unsettling at the same time.

Anyway, History Channel HD, I love you the most...even more than I love Midnight Channel or Viki...

WTF Is THAC0?

2010-02-24T07:44:00.000-05:00

Have a nice summer.

Creeping Coins?

2010-02-23T09:07:00.000-05:00

CREEPING COINS!!!!

"These Scones Are Firmly Attached."

2010-02-21T15:41:00.000-05:00

"I think you mean sconces..."

Frankfurt, Germany

2010-02-05T14:19:00.000-05:00

So last week I flew half-way around the world to Frankfurt, Germany. The actual purpose of the trip was business related, but I had my own objectives which were as follows:

1. Drink German Beer.
2. Eat Sausages.
3. See A Guy With A Handlebar Mustache.

Thankfully I was able to accomplish all three within hours of arriving in the country. Anyway here’s some other stuff that happened when I was in Germany.

My boss and I traveled to Germany to visit a tradeshow known as Paperworld. We accompanied a group of Korean businessmen as part of some package tour. So after arriving and going through the clusterfuck that was the immigration “line,” (in reality it was just a big pile of people of all nationalities who would randomly walk up to the immigration counter when they got near the front of the mob) we got onto a bus with the afore mentioned businessmen.

The guide informed us that we were going to go to the hotel, but first we would stop for dinner. Awesome! Time for some real German cuisine, right? Nope. Time for some Korean food, because I’m sure none of the people in the group who had just flown on Korean Air from Korea had had any Korean food in forever. Don’t get me wrong, I like Korean food. I eat it almost every day, but when I’m in a foreign land I want to eat indigenous foodstuffs. When I was in Vietnam I didn’t seek out McDonalds, I ate pho. In Canada I ate Tim Horton’s and drank Molson.

Anyway, we had Korean food, and not even good Korean food. The rice was pretty shitty and there were olives in the kimchi, which is fucked up. At least we were served legit German beer, though when beer was first mentioned I was nervous it was going to be Cass or Hite. After dinner we headed to the hotel. The hotel was outside Frankfurt proper in some kind of suburb. It was not that awesome. The hotel room was ridiculously small; far smaller than any hotel I’d ever stayed at in Japan. In the bathroom there was this one wall-mounted pump bottle which was labeled, “Hand Soap, Facial Scrub, Body Wash, Shampoo.” Now that’s efficiency!

I cashed out pretty early that first night by Germany time standards, but late by the standard of time I live in most days. In the morning I woke up at 2. And 3. And 4. And at 5 I decided I was up for the day. My boss and I headed down to the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. The breakfast was German style, which means it was exactly the same as breakfast in America except Nutella was involved. I was happy about breakfast because they had turkey cold cuts which I gorged myself on since turkey is pretty much the only food item that I am unable to access in Korea.

After breakfast it was off to the trade show we went. Once more there was a clusterfuck lineup that put rush hour pushing onto a train in Seoul to shame. During this lineup I learned that I either look German or Germans these days are not as good at telling nationalities and ethnic groups apart as they used to be. In the line there was some problem with our tickets so we had to go over to the ticketing counter and change them. The guy kept talking to me about what, but I couldn’t understand what the shit he was saying. At first I thought he just had a really bad accent until he uttered one of the 4 or 5 German phrases I learned from reading X-men comics featuring Nightcrawler, “Sprechen sie deutsche?” I told him I did not, which I thought would have been clear since I had told him what the problem was in English. He then switched to fluent English and fixed our tickets.

Inside the expo center we saw a lot of office products. It was not all that interesting after 20 or 30 minutes. I was more interested in the random people walking around. It was here that I saw my first handlebar mustache, though it wouldn’t be my last. I also noticed that German women all seemed to have ridiculous lesbian-esque haircuts. They either sported Joan Jett 1983 mullets or spiky, Susan Powter shortcuts dyed in a wide array of odd colors. At the expo we also encountered some people that we do business with. I had met them before in China last year so it was nice to see them all again.

My boss and I wandered around the expo center looking at pens and pens and pens, until it was almost time to leave. We ended up making plans to go out to dinner with our business partners so I avoided another trip to a Korean restaurant for dinner (since that’s what the tour guide told us was on the menu that evening when we were on the bus to the expo center). Before we went out to eat we went back to the hotel where they were staying so they could change out of suits. When we walked into the hotel lobby we were handed flutes of champagne. I felt like royalty or at least one of the Hilton girls…no, I had pants on, I felt like royalty. Randomly sitting in the hotel was one of the Chinese guys who works for the company that makes some of our products for us. It seemed like some video game and he joined our party. So we had some champagne and some beer at the hotel bar and then headed out to dinner.

The place we ate at was amazing. It was outside the city a bit and in the snow (it had been snowing since we arrived) looked like something out of a Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tales book. The restaurant served food that can only be described as ridiculously fancy. There were a million courses, and with each course a different type of wine. The waiter would pour some wine in a glass for the Frenchman who was with us and he would swirl it around in the glass under his nose before deciding if it was acceptable or not. Like I said, it was a classy place. I started with something like 5 different forks at my place setting. We ate all kinds of food: noodles, rabbit, salmon, frog legs, soup, salad…it went on and on. I was so full by the end that I fell a course behind on my wine. The waiter was awesome too. He was possibly Eurotrash, and he definitely held the majority of my party in utter disdain. Roughly half of us were North American and there was significant contingent from the United Kingdoms who were as loud as the Americans and Canadians.

Anyway after dinner we all piled back into taxis and headed to our respective hotels. That night I didn’t wake up until my alarm rang at seven in the morning. Thanks too much alcohol!

Day two was spent much like day one. We ate the same German food, and then went to the expo. This time we spent more time over where all the Asian based companies were displaying their goods, so we talked to some Korean companies that my boss knew about, but I didn’t really know about. I got to confuse a few people by speaking to them in Korean. It was good fun. Dinner was much like it was the day before, only the size of our party was bigger and the food was even better. We went to an amazing restaurant that must have cost a fortune. I am glad that I didn’t have to write that one down on the expense report I had to submit when I got back to work.

Once again there were a million courses, and wine. Our waiter this time really was awesome. He was like an artist, planning the meal out as he went: “I’ll start everyone off with a light salad…NO! Carpaccio!” The meal was outstanding as was the company. The people we went to dinner with were all cool people that were fun just to hang out with, regardless of the business aspect of it. Once again the night came to an end and we all headed back to our hotels.

Monday morning rolled around, and it was to be our last day in jolly old Germany. Today there would be no trade show. Monday was all about being a tourist. We checked out of the hotel and got into a bus head for Heidelberg. Heidelberg is a town about an hour and a half from Frankfurt. There was a castle there. We went site seeing at the castle, which once again looked like some sort of fairy tale with all the snow. Inside the castle was the world’s largest keg, which was bigger than my apartment. We drank some ice wine there and then headed down into the town. The town looked like all those fake German villages that every amusement park in America has, only it was legit.

In town we had some lunch. It was more mediocre Korean food, which made me a little disappointed. I would have rather eaten pretzels or different kinds of sausages than food I can make at home with fresher ingredients or that I can get as a free lunch any weekday in my office cafeteria. I guess that’s why I loathe package tours. There’s absolutely no freedom. I must be back to the bus by 1:25. I have to eat at this particular restaurant. I have to spend 20 minutes in some shitty shop that sells “명품” items. Anyway after lunch we got an hour to walk around the town which was nice. I went to some shop that only sold Christmas ornaments and got a few nice hand-made ornaments as a gift for JH. After that it was back to the bus and back to Frankfurt.

We picked up some people who had been dropped off at the tradeshow and then made our way to the airport. When we were getting our boarding passes, I asked if I could have our seats in the front row for additional leg room. The woman at the counter told me they only had seats in front of the emergency exits, but if we understood the responsibilities which came with those seats we could have them. I agreed, and my boss and I got to sit in the “hero seats” as I dubbed them.

Somehow getting our boarding passes and going through immigration took almost no time at all, so we had a lot of time and very little to do. We bought some stuff at the duty-free shop and then had “one last German beer,” (which was actually “two last German beers,” in my case) and some sausages. From there it was time to board the plane.

We got our seats and the stewardess who was assigned to our section came over to us and introduced herself and asked us if we understood the responsibilities associated with the seats. In my most heroic voice I told her we did, and she then gave us some instruction pamphlet about how to open the emergency exit and deploy the escape chute thing in the event of an emergency.

After sitting on the plane for 15 minutes or so, the pilot came on with an announcement: we were waiting for some people making a connecting flight. Another 15 minutes passed and those people boarded the plane, but still we didn’t take off. The reason: while waiting for those delayed people, too much snow had fallen on the wings so they now had to be de-iced.

Have you ever seen a de-icer? I had not before this day. They look like that eyeball robot thing from Flight of the Navigator that sounded like Pee-Wee Herman and they blast some sort of material out of themselves that cleans snow off the wings of the plane. This took about 20 minutes to accomplish, so when all was said and done we took off about an hour late.

The plane ride was pretty uneventful. I slept for most of it, only being awake for one meal plus watching Where The Wild Things Are, which by the way was a pretty depressing movie, unlike the life affirming “LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!” of the book. Some 10 hours later or 18 depending on if you are going by actual time or looking at watches, we were back in Korea, and a short bus ride later, I was back home where the wild rumpus quickly began.

So Close, Yet So Far...

2010-01-25T22:27:00.001-05:00

I spent this evening drinking cheap domestic beer, eating Doritos, and watching Oz. If I was in my friend's basement, the beer was Miller High Life, and the Doritos where purchased at Hannaford, I would have thought it was 2000, but Oz was on my computer, the beer was Cass, and the Doritos were smuggled back from Alaska by my co-worker who went there for a month to study English.

My Life Is A Bad Sitcom 001

2010-01-19T14:38:00.000-05:00

Today I was unloading some crap from a truck. A bunch of small boxes fell off the back of the truck and hit me in the head. Also my sweater was on backwards, but I didn't realize it until two hours later.

2010 The First Week

2010-01-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

So a week of 2010 has happened. Happy New Year and all that junk. I don't know, but ever since I started my new job, I've been less and less motivated to write here, which is a shame, because I think way more rediculous stuff happens to me now than did two years ago. I think it is mainly because of my work schedule now, I have less free time than I did when I taught, and the time I do have I'd rather spend with my wife engaged in some other activity than typing on a computer.

I could come up in here saying something like, "My New Year's resolution is to write here every day," but I'd be lying to all of you and to myself, because I know I wouldn't actually write here everyday, and anyway I already have too many resolutions (study Japanese, be less negative and judgemental, stop biting my nails).

If something funny happens and I happen to send someone an email about it that happens to lend itself well to being cut and paste here I'll do so. So there probably won't be more than a a few posts here a month tops. Anyway this will give me a chance to finally finish moving all my collected works to this site for the multitude of other blogs and websites I have had since the late 90s.

This Stupid Year: The Worst of 2009

2009-12-31T18:52:00.000-05:00

My desk calendar which I wish was a Far Side calendar, but isn't informs me that today is the last day of the year, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to finish up my year end summary. Last time I wrote about 5 things that were awesome and quickly realized that I am a negative person. So here's a list of shit that was most foul in 2009.

Worst Random Celebrity (Korean Version): 황정음
Alright, she is...or maybe was a member of the singing group Sugar who were like Jewelry, but had Ayumi in it. This year she showed up on that 우리결혼했어요, show where she pretended to be married to one of those jerks from SG Wannabe. Because of that show she somehow became super famous. She and her fake husband/real boyfriend recorded some duet about how much they loved each other which made me wanna fucking puke. She had a super annoying voice and a face that must of have cost a ton but looks totally unnatural.

Worst Song: "Bo Peep Bo Peep" - T'ara
This was a really hard one to pick from, since in any given year there are piles and piles of shitty tracks released, so I decided to ignore they ignorable shitty tracks and award this award to a track that sucks copious amounts of ass, yet was somehow well liked by the general public. Even though this monstrousity was unleashed upon the public mere weeks before the year ended it stood head and shoulders above all the other shitty shit that had preceded it in the first 11 months of the year. It has the trifecta of shitty song components: stupid lyrics, caveman level musicianship, and a retarded accompanying dance. I'm going to post the video below, but if you are prone to violence I'd pass on "Bo Peep Bo Peep," and go watch something less grating, like...I dunno grindcore videos on Youtube.

Worst Alcoholic Beverage I Consumed This Year: Maotai
I went overseas a couple times this year on business, which in Asia is apparently the same thing as going to college, because it involves a lot of drinking followed by trying to pay attention to important junk the following day. I liked drinking in Vietnam. People there seemed to favor beer over hard liquor (though the out ice in it which I thought was odd), and on the rare instances were liquor was involved it was something called Vodka Hanoi, which tasted like soju, which is one of the few liquors I can stand drinking straight (Jack/rum + coke is the only other way I drink liquor) so it was ok.

In China on the other hand it was all about the maotai. Maotai was so replusive that even my coworkers who pride themselves on their ability to fuel themselves on alcohol found it replusive. It smelled like dirty socks and tasted like a fireball. Not the fireball candy because that might be a little bit delicious, but a fireball like the kind Ryu might throw at you or a dragon would spit or would come out of Braveheart's ass. It was Loki awful!

Worst Movie: Ninja Assassin
I didn't even have high expectations, but it was awful. Read more about it here if you want to know why 비 is a terrible actor.

Well, the clock on 2009 is running out for me, so I'm going to close it out there. It doesn't seem like there was too much truly awful stuff this year either. I guess this year overall was pretty average, at least in regards to popular culture. Personally it was an outstanding year for me. JH and I got a much nicer house. I got a real job (no more "native speaker" position for me), and in the last few days of the year got promoted and now have underlings which I think is kind of funny, but at the same time totally awesome. So, if you like music or TV, 2009 was just kind of "Meh..." but if you were me, it was a pretty good year. So here's hoping 2010 is more balla for both music and myself.

Happy New Years!

This Stupid Year: The Best of 2009

2009-12-21T13:16:00.000-05:00

Well, the end of the year is fast approaching and every website I look at seems to be featuring some year in review list bullshit, so I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon and throw together some sort of hastily assembled best of the best list like everyone else under the sun. This list is completely subjective and in one year will probably embarass the crap out of me, but what the hell?

Best Korean Pop Group - 2NE1
This was the year of 2NE1 in the Korean pop universe. They were unavoidable, and for the first time in a long time, they were a pop group who didn't annoy the hell out of me. They first hit the scene in the spring with the best advertising jingle/music video ever when they appeared with Big Bang to shill cellphones via the insanely good "Lollipop."

They really hit the big time over the summer with their jam, "I Don't Care," dominating the "Girl Group Summer," which I think was the Korean version of Revolution Summer only with more mini-skirts and less Ian MacKaye. Week after week they dominated the music charts, putting the other far sexier (though far less talented) girl groups to shame.

Late fall they parted ways for some solo work. Well, that's kind of a lie, 박봄 and 산다라박 released solo tracks; CL & 민지 teamed up for probably my favorite track to come out of the 2NE1 camp, "Please Don't Go."

This jam racked up serious kills on my ipod in the month or so since it came out, cementing 2NE1's spot in my ever so important year in review wrap up.

Best Jam - Math The Band "Why Didn't You Get A Haircut?"
For whatever reason, the stars aligned and I found myself listening to a ton of bands that made music that sounded like something you would have heard while playing Rygar or Master Blaster in an artifical wood panneled basement in suburbia circa 1989. While a lot of the jams were decent for pretending the commute to work was a side scrolling beat 'em up or imagining that you were in Excite Bike while riding a bicycle, only Math The Band had the pop sensibilites that made me want to listen to their jam again and again and again. Now you're playing with power!

Best Foreign Country I Visited This Year - Vietnam
I visited a pair of foreign lands this year, and sorry China, you were a good foreign country, but Vietnam was the best foreign country I visited ever this year. Vietnam won out by having more delicious food, greater ease of communication, and a lack of maotai.

Best Chinese Expression I Learned - 加油
This one.

Best Movie - ? 애자
I bought a house this spring, so I didn't really see many films this year. I know I saw Transformers 2 and Ninja Assassin, neither of which come close to being the best movie of the year. Transformers 2 was moderately better so let's give it the victory. Oh wait, I forgot I saw 애자 on an airplane. 애자 was better than both of those other two movies so let's say the best film of 2009 was 애자, if only because 최강희 was in it, and I think she's rediculously cute.

Wow, it's really hard to do these kinds of lists. I suppose it's because I'm not a very positive person. Maybe I'll have better luck coming up with a list of the worst of 2009. Check back sometime after Christmas, but before 2010 for my Worst of 2009 Spectacular. It's going to be spectacular!!!

It's Begining To Look A Lot Like...

2009-12-17T09:03:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I got most of my Christmas shopping done and wrote some Christmas cards. The tree went up on Tuesday evening when I got back from work. Athur Feidler & The Boston Pops' Christmas Party has been on almost infinite repeat. Now if it would only snow a little bit. It's cold enough for it.

Flashback To Summer 1999...

2009-12-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

My company did M&A on another company. Today we had to go to that company's warehouse and loot a bunch of junk from them. Good thing I had warehouse experience from my summers of schlepping five gallon buckets of liquid chlorine and diatomaceous earth (or as most people called it Demetrius earth or diplodocus earth.)

There was too much stuff for us to take so most likely we'll have to go back and move more boxes. I suddenly wish I still had my chlorine faded Leslie's Foolmart polo shirt.

Movie Review: Ninja Assassin

2009-11-30T20:51:00.000-05:00

I saw Ninja Assassin this weekend. Ninja Assassin stars 비 (or Rain as he is known elsewhere in the world) as some sort of ninja who is also an assasin who targets ninjas for assassinations therefore making the seemingly redundant title less redundant.

The film kicks off with some sort of gangsters getting tattooed in Japan. I guess they were supposed to be yakuza, but they were all speaking English and none of them really looked Japanese, so who knows. Someone sends them an envelope filled with black sand, which scares the shit out of an old man tattoo artist. Why? Because envelopes with black sand in them equals ninja attack...which happens about 2 seconds after he explains it. The ninja(s) cut a dude's head off at the jaw, slice off arms and legs, cut a dude in half. There is more computer rendered blood than the last time you and your friends played Mortal Kombat. Then it yells "NINJA ASSASSIN" on the screen. I'm pretty sure it was either written in blood or that cheesey "Asian Font," or maybe some combination of the two.

With the cold intro out of the way, the movie proper begins. The remainder movie alternates between 비 and some Europol lady running around in Germany for some reason and footage of 비 in his youth training to be a ninja. The Europol lady, whose name I can't for the life of me remember, is obsessed with ninjas. She reminds me of some dude who was in a Japanese history class who proclaimed he was an expert on ninjas because he watched Ninja Turtles. The professor called him an idiot if I'm not mistaken. Europol lady's boss pretty much did the same thing...for about two seconds, and then gives her the go-ahead to chase after he ninja assassin obsession.

Her research pisses off a lot of people. She is awkwardly questioned by Europol's internal affairs about having lunch with her boss for some reason. And then...ninja attack! Europol lady gets attacked in her apartment by a ninja, but luckily 비 was there to make the save. It's never really explained why 비 was in Germany. He was living in some shitty apartment where he had suitcases (a plot detail that his landlord mentions, but is never explained why it was important) and does his laundry at a laundrymat where the owner watches KBS, and he kills some kind of cute girl ninja and puts her in a dryer. Why? Because 비 is an asshole and wants to fuck with the laundrymat owner. He could have just killed the girl and left her on the floor, but he had to put her in the dryer, throughly fucking it up...

Anyway, 비 was in Germany. I'm not sure what he was doing there, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was how many limbs he chopped off. He chopped off a lot.

비 and the woman escape from her apartment and drive somewhere. 비 tells her that the other ninjas are following her, because like dogs they can smell the person they are tracking even if they get in a car and drive far away. Cigarette smoke throughly fucks up their tracking skill however.

The movie at this point (or maybe before this point) began cutting between crap happening in Germany and 비's secret ninja training from some time during his youth. 비 had some quasi-love interest in a girl who later tried to escape from ninja training camp, but was caught and executed by some dude, who at the time I thought was supposed to be 비's character, but really was some other dude 비 would kill later on by making him stab himself in the face, which is a more ninja-fied version of grabbing someone's wrist and making them smack themselves in the head while asking, "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"

These training scenes didn't really caused me to feel any compasion for the character of 비, perhaps because I couldn't tell which of the young ninjas corresponded to which adult ninjas. All I know is that 비 wasn't the white kid ninja. I later found out (thanks wikipedia) that young ninja 비 was played by a dude from the Korean pop group, MBLAQ, a group I am sure will be featured in an upcoming K-Pop Krap feature because they're just that good.

Anyway, Europol lady's boss jukes her and captures 비. They put 비 in some sort of bunker that looks like a random level in a FPS video game. Her boss seems to be on her side, but some other Europol guys are not and think 비 is an enemy. Suddenly ninjas invade the random FPS level and fight all sorts of Europol guys dressed like Sudden Attack counter-terrorist. Counter-terrorists suck and get hacked to pieces by ninjas who are never seen. That's one of the shitty things about this movie. Half the fight scenes are way too dark to see anything that's happening. Anyway Europol lady frees 비 who kills a bunch of ninjas. Europol lady escapes in a car that gets riddled with throwing stars.

If you like "Chinese stars" this movie is for you. They were the most fully developed characters in the movie. They were in almost every scene! In all seriousness, they were fucking rediculous. They were faster and more deadly than bullets from automatic weapons.

Anyway 비 escapes from first person shooter level by jumping out of a plate glass window onto a highway. The other ninjas chase him and have a noisy ass fight on the middle of the Autobanh while Mercedes drive by. Aren't ninjas supposed to masters of stealth and be super quiet? These ninjas fight louder than Hulk Hogan or Macho Man Randy Savage, it's terrible.

비 is seriously injured so Europol lady and he check into a motel where she puts a GPS device in 비's mouth or something and lets him get captured by the other ninjas. This allows Europol to follow 비 back to the secret ninja lair which I suppose was supposed to be in Japan, but dudes in Germany were able to get their in what seemed like 30 minutes to an hour in terms of the pacing of the plot.

Europol beats down ninjas and 비 beats down his former master and everyone lives happily ever after, except for the ninjas who died in the assault on their secret lair, and the Europol guys who died, oh and the audience...we were not happy either.

Anyway, Ninja Assassin, was pretty much what I expected: violence porn. It was about 2 hours almost completely devoid of plot during which I felt absolutely no connection to any of the characters. At the end of the movie Europol lady gets shot, but I didn't even care. I once watched a movie about some famous Japanese dog named Hachiko. In the end of that movie, the dog dies. That movie made me feel sad, which makes me feel sad about Ninja Assassin. In that movie I felt no emotion what-so-ever when Europol lady got shot or when 비's kinda ninja girlfriend got executed, but some dog who died of old age died...I almost cried. If you want some stupid non-stop violence I guess it's ok, but even in that department there are tons of way better movies.

As for 비. I'd seen him in Speed Racer a couple month back. He really hasn't improved as a actor. One review I read said he was robotic, which I think is the best way to describe his acting. Just like when Wondergirls hit the road in America, 비 being in these movies makes me sad. There are a ton of really talented actors and singers here, but only the worst, lowest common denominator stuff gets sent abroad. So anyway, fuck Wondergirls. Fuck 비! And fuck Ninja Assassin!

Dragon vs. 龍...Who Deserves The Belt?!

2009-11-26T19:08:00.003-05:00

Over the past year or so I have acquired a new guilty pleasure: 무협소설 (武俠小說), or to translate roughly into English "heroic novels." Let me hit you with a little personal history.

I am a geek. I don't know how or when exactly it happened, but for as long as I can remember I've been kind of a nerd. I had tons of Star Wars action figures (Hammerhead mofos). I played Dungeons & Dragons (the kind with d20s as well as those Champions of Krynn Gold Box games). I collected comic books. I know what a BBS is.

Like all good geeks, I read more than my fair share of "fantasy" novels. Of course I read stuff like Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia (aka stuff even non-geeks might have read), but I read a lot of shit too (Iron Tower Trilogy I'm looking in your general direction). Fast forward a few years and I learned Korean.

For a few years, my reading level was that of a third grader, so I read a lot of comic books and books about poop, but eventuall I learned how to actually read, and have been doing so. My poison of choice (for the most part) is the afore mentioned "heroic novels."

Now there are some parallels between western style fantasy novels and "heroic novels," here. First off, they all take place in some quasi-medievel time period. Everyone has swords or spears or bows. These are not stories about modern gun toting champions. Second off, the heroes are more often than not on some quest to save the world from almost certain destruction, but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

In spite of their seemingly endless similarities, there are tons of differences between the two types of novels. For starters, there are no elves in the "heroic novels." Apparently Asian cultures in the middle ages did not have any interaction with elves. They do, however, feature Taoist immortals and other lesser Taoist dieties, which have some of the same powers as elves, but lack bows, green clothes, and pointed ears. Come to think of it, besides the gods, I don't think I've ever seen any sort of fantasy creature in one of these books. No dwarves. No halflings. And while there were 놈s there were no gnomes. Everyone was human...or a ghost of a human...or sometimes an immortal. I guess in some regards they might be closer in spirit to Conan and his ilk than "high fantasy."

Another key difference is the lack of dragons. Every shitty fantasy novel has a dragon on a rampage, "burninating" something or other, and then the next 243 pages revolve around some sort of goddamn dragon warrior and his elf trying to kill said dragon and save the princess/universe/gold treasure. "Heroic novels," don't have dragons but they might have 용 (龍) in them. I've studied enough Chinese characters to know that in translation that would be "dragon" in English, but really they are completely different. Wikipedia, the keepers of all our lore and knowledge, agree with me and have seperate entries for "Oriental" Dragons and European Dragons. Why? Because they look different and act different and have different powers. European dragons are total pricks. They exist solely to kidnap sexy babes and get killed by heroes. "Oriental" dragons on the otherhand tend to be seen in a more positive light. They might be arrogant as fuck, but they're more likely to help heroes out then breath fire on them (which they can't even do anyway).

The character names are also very different. While fantasy novel characters will have fantastic names like "Arthwin," "Merlin," or "Sam," the heroic novel dudes will all have really insane names that are easy to translate and have actual meaning to the people reading them. They all have names like "Black Tiger," "Steel Heart," "Rock Fist," and "Iron Eagle." Again, 90% of the characters have names about how tough they are and how easily they will kick your ass. "Glydilas," doesn't scare me, but a dude named "Bear Ripper," does...

All of those are merely stylistic differences, but there are key thematic differences in fantasy novels and the "heroic novels." While there are a fair percentage of "heroic novels" that follow that, "Let's go save the world guys!" formula, perhaps an even greater percentage of the plot lines seem to be cribbed from Charles Bronson flicks (Death Wish...I'm looking at you). Some hero's family/teacher/love interest gets wasted by some sort of local strong men. The local strong man is probably a warlord, or maybe even a governor, but he's basically a gangster. The hero embarks on some sort of quest that involves training montages and getting some sort of devine weapon and then ultimately kills the local strong men and his gang winning his vengence.

Anyway, this has been a long, pointless, rambling piece of writing, so I'm going to wrap it up here with this. Going back to something I wrote about in the begining (that's good writing, right?), I said that I initially read the classics of the fantasy genre, before reading all the Bloody Sword of the Elf Moon bullshit you could buy at fucking B. Dalton Bookseller. With these "heroic novels," I'm pretty sure I started with the crap. The first series I read (because they are always series) was called 黑龍 (Black Dragon) about some dude named, "Black Dragon," on a quest for revenge...or some shit like that. So I guess I am wondering what would be the Lord of the Rings of 무협소설 genre? You can't say 三國志 or 西遊記 because both of those were from antiquity and would be more comparable to something like Beowulf or Arthurian legend. Is there a semi-modern heroic novel that's better than the crap getting printed now?

P.S. Bloody Sword of the Elf Moon is not a real work of literature...though I'm kind of tempted to write it myself now. Such an awesome name for a shitty fantasy book.

M-net Asian Music Awards

2009-11-25T16:37:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I furthered my descent into my transformation into a Korean middle school girl and totally spent Saturday night watching the M-net Asian Music Awards. For those of you who have lives/aren't Korean middle school girls/don't live in Korea, M-net is Korea's version of MTV...well, that's kind of dishonest, because there is MTV Korea which is probably closer to MTV. Anyway, M-net's a music channel. They used to play music videos, but these days they just seem to play some shows where a random singer goes to college or some American Idol-esque singing contest show...which is why I said they were like MTV.

Anyhow, once a year or so they, like MTV in America, pretend they are still a music television network and host a music awards show. Nothing particularly Earth-shattering happened. I predicted the winners in each category with 100% accuracy, which wasn't surprisingly difficult. 2NE1 and G-Dragon won a bunch of awards. That group that told me about being supervisors always won some awards. There was no Korean version of Kanye West interrupting people which is a shame, but 3/5 of the recently disassembled 동방신기 showed up and awkwardly recieved some award. But that's not what's awesome. This is what was awesome!

"What the Christ is going on there?"

Well outraged reader screaming at me, what you have there is way too cute girl group, Kara, busting out a rock version of their hit, "Honey," with Dr. Core 911, a (insert something here)core band with double singers that I've seen perform with the likes of Rux and Johnny Royal in tiny ass clubs and "rock festivals." I'm really curious how this pairing came about. Kara is, well, pop music for tweens and middle aged perverts like myself. They are pretty famous. They appear on stupid game shows and are in commercials for tween related products. Dr. Core 911 is not super famous. Even among rock groups in Korea, they are not particualy famous. Last year(?) Big Bang released some jam with No Brain. This kind of made sense to me. No Brain had gone from being 서태지 reviling punks who covered Sex Pistols to being in popular movies about aging rock stars, writing songs for shows about kids playing soccer, and appearing in sneaker ads with pretty boys. No Brain ~~was~~ is pop music, so it's fitting for them to team up with another pop group. Dr. Core 911? Not so much, and that makes it all the more awesome!

Korea loves dubbing stuff (particularly people) Korea's X. For example, 비 is Korean's Michael Jackson and someone else whose name I can't remember is Korea's Madonna, and 휘성 is Korea's Michael Jackson...well, you get the picture. So I'm going to dub Kara Korea's Debbie Gibson. Why? Because of this...

That's right dudes, "Electric Youth" Debbie Gibson, rocked out with the Circle Jerks. So Kara, you rock on with popularly unknown rock outfits and continue down the path of Deborah Gibson. I and the other middle aged perverts in my office can't wait for the nude photo phase. Until that time I will continue to act like a middle school girl. Excuse me I need to go purchase a gray skirt and matching jacket.

K-Pop Krap: All Apologies Edition

2009-11-24T15:00:00.001-05:00

Dear 4 Minute,

I may have been a little harsh in my criticism of your jam over the summer. Your song is simplistic enough that even I can bust it out at karaoke with my limited Korean skills. I won some loot at an office singing contest last week thanks to your jam (and my outstanding mid-90's hardcore band vocalist posturing), so for that I should thank you. But that is beside the point. I believe I called you the single most bogus, crappy group in Korea (or something like that...do you think I ever re-read any of the crap I type here?) Well whatever I said to that extent I would like to take back. 4 Minute, you are not the worst singing group, maybe you were over the summer, but some fucking shit called "Rainbow," has usurped your title...

FUCK! Where can I even begin? There is nothing about that that doesn't make me angry. There's tons of horrific Engrish pronunciation. There's Paris Hilton calibre shallowness. Shitty "rapping" that does not fit the song at all. FUCK!!!

So Rainbow, you are now the worst girl group in Korea...worse even than Tiara, who I never actually wrote about because they appeared and vanished during one of my month long, "I hate writing on the internet," periods. Tiara was really fucking bad though. There were two shitty rappers and some girl that looked like a munchkin. Fuck...just check them out too.

Shit, I don't know who's worse. Tiara...oh sorry T-ARA, is really terrible also. I'll leave it up to you, the general public. Who's worse: T'ARA or Rainbow...or do you still think 4 Minute is the worst singing group of all. Let me know with some hot comments in the hot comments section of this bossanova blog.

Saw This In My Newspaper This Morning...

2009-11-23T12:30:00.001-05:00

If there is a god, he's a fucking asshole for making us live in a world where shit like this gets created...

你好吗!

2009-11-22T07:40:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned a couple weeks back, I recently was in China on a business trip. What follows is an email I sent someone detailing the report, therefore it may seem a little in-jokey. Tough rocks. The only changes I've made are excising the names of the companies involved. Without further ado, my trip to China.

---

It's been quite some time since I last touched base with you. Work has been extremely busy since the tail end of last month. As you may or may not know (since I know JH is better at sending you emails than I) I spent my Halloween (and the days following it) in China in a city called Guangzhou. Apparently it's the third largest city in China, but I don't really know. My boss (Mr. Lee), the other dude in the international sales department (Mr. Kim) and I boarded a plane at the crack of dawn on Halloween. For some rediculous reason, the three of us we placed in random spots on the plane even though there was a row of 4 seat with one woman sitting in the middle of it. I apparently drew the short straw and had to sit on the landing gear next to an old man who alternated between rotten egg farts and hocking up lungs coughing (which after sitting for an hour in an airport listening to announcements about how swine flu is going to kill me if someone coughs is a little disconcerting).

Upon arriving in China I passed through no less than 3 security check points that checked my temperature. I quickly realized that in a country with over a billion people, people need jobs, so there was a lot of inefficient, redundant jobs. It was a trend that continued throughout the trip. We were met at the airport by a driver from the company who makes some of our products. He did not speak English...or Korean, and between the three of us we knew about 12 words of Chinese. So the driver did a lot of hand gestures to lead us out of the labriyth of an airport that we landed in somewhere in Southern China.

From there we drove to Guangzhou proper. We dumped our luggage at the Holiday Inn and then were ferried to some sort of trade show. The show was held in a venue that was the size of two Madison Square Gardens. Next to the expo center...another massive expo center. Across the street...another expo center. It was insane. There were people everywhere. The rest of the afternoon was spent looking around at a stationery and office supply trade show which is about as exciting as it sounds. Pens! Staplers! Waste Paper Baskets!

We were not the only foreign guests attending on behalf of the Chinese company who makes awesome stuff for us. So at dinner time we ate with the president of a company (who was a dude from Wales who looked like "Mr. Hargravers"). Here's a cultural tidbit my Chinese history prof. never taught me: Chinese people order way too much food when they have guests...even more than Koreans who also order way too much. We ate all kinds of stuff: meat, dumplings, rice, noodles, soup...and more kept being brought to the table. When I visited Vietnam, JH gave me the warning, "Don't talk to pretty girls!" When I went to China she ordered me not to eat anything strange. So I therefore passed on the bird feets and heads though I did eat the bird which our host told us was "not chicken," but some other fowl she didn't know the name of in English. Welsh Mr. Hargravers leaned over and suggested to me, "Pigeon?" It probably was, but it tasted pretty good.

The second day was much like the first. We went to a trade show and looked at pens and then had dinner with Chinese hosts and assorted westerners. I had to play translator again which is pretty fun. Everyone in my party decided that when traveling Korean is a great language because no one else in the world speaks it so you can talk about people in front of their fronts and they don't even know. Anyhow it was Sunday evening and we were in China, so of course you know that means I went to church. I'm not even kidding, my boss is kind of a holy roller as is the Chinese lady we were with and the dude from New Zealand. Mr. Kim and I wanted to drink beer, but we went to church. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do in church to begin with, but when it's in Mandarin...forget about it. Fortunately I had studied Chinese characters in my lifetime, because with them I was at least able to check stuff off on the checklist they gave me when I went into the church...that is a checklist, not a program isn't it?

It may have been the first time my knowledge of Chinese characters proved useful, but it would not be the last. Later that evening...I think it was beer o'clock, we were in the Holiday Inn. We needed some ice, so I went out into the hallway with my ice bucket. I couldn't find an ice machine, so I asked the girl guarding the elevator on our floor (again a job that exists solely because there are a billion people in China) where I could get some ice. She was dressed like some sort of Bruce Lee clone...only a girl. The exchange went like this:

ME: Where can I get ice?
HER: Ice cream?
ME: No, just ice.
HER: Iceee?
ME: (Using my finger like a pen and my palm like a pad of paper draw the Chinese character for "ice" [氷])
HER: Ah...(says some word which I assume is the Chinese pronunciation for the character I just wrote). One minute please.

One minute later there was a knock on the door and two men handed me a bucket of ice. I don't know why it took two of them to deliver it.

The next day we paid a visit to the factory where our products are made. The factory was outside of Guangzhou in the sticks or boondocks or whatever they have in China. Before arriving at the factory we stopped for lunch. Again, there were other random westerners (Canada and the US this time). The restaurant was kind of weird. Have you ever been to a fancy restaurant where they have the lobster tank and they you point at some rubber-band clawed lobster and they pull him out of the tank and cook him? This restuarant was like that only they didn't have lobsters. They had ever other creature ever to walk, fly, or swim on Earth. Some of my personal favorites: cage filled with snakes (poisonous snakes were more expensive), bucket of frogs, giantic turtle that looked like a dinosaur (it had all sorts of spikes on it's back and horns coming out of it's face), a huge swan. Probably due to the fact that there were real westerners there (unlike the 63.3% western I was considered during these adventures) the "weirdest" thing on the menu was eel...deepfried so you wouldn't even know it was eel at all.

Following lunch we paid a visit to the factory. I met many Chinese people with outstanding English names. People with English names in Korea all seem to be of the suburban kid with Biblical name mindset: David, Daniel, Mary, Grace, etc. Chinese people are of the "here's an awesome English word I know, I'm using that as my name." I met Runner, Orange, Spring, Icy, and um...Christine. I asked Icy where her name came from. Her response, "Because I like ice cream..." She must have been related to the girl at the hotel.

On the following day we went to a different kind of factory because Mr. Lee wanted to import some kind of hooks to sell in Korea. At that factory we met a girl who had hair like a Lego man. Other than that it was pretty uneventful. We then went to some old school retail area and walked around on a street that sold sign products. It was not a very action packed afternoon.

In the evening we met up one last time with our hosts for another feast. This time the feast featured a beverage called maotai. Maotai is some sort of Chinese alcohol. It smells like dirty socks and tastes like burning. Chinese people liked it a lot. Westerners did not. Koreans (who love to drink) apparently have more in common with westerners than Chinese when it comes to dirty sock-esque liquor. After dinner we bid our new friends farewell and headed back to a hotel.

The next morning it was back to Korea. At the airport I bought a stuffed panda, because I think there is a law about that. It was stamped into my passport and everything. "When you are in China, you must buy a stuffed panda." The flight back was a lot less annoying. I got to sit in an aisle set next to some dude who looked Mexican but was really Korean. All the flight attendants spoke to him in English much to his chagrin. "Why does everyone keep speaking to me in English? I am Korean...can't they tell?" "No dude you look like the dude who plays Carlos on Desparate Housewives." At least he didn't fart.

Ironic?

2009-11-14T09:07:00.001-05:00

Is this this ironic or legit? I can't tell anymore.

P.S. I'm not dead.

EAS301

2009-10-30T16:50:00.000-04:00

Yo! I'm going to China tomorrow morning...D-Blaze would be so proud of me. I'm sure my vast stores of knowledge about the Tang and Sung Dynasties will come in handy.

The Clique

2009-09-22T16:28:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime in my office is just like high school. There are cliques. The management (rich kids) eat together. So do the secretaries (hot/popular girls). Me? I eat with the design department just like I did in high school.

A False Promise of Autumn

2009-09-06T12:29:00.000-04:00

I love the fall. Last week the weather was seemingly starting to cool down. This coupled with the fact that now I eat lunch in a cafeteria really made it feel as if autumn was upon us. It made me want to buy marble composition notebooks and TI-85 calculators or ride in a 1994 Ford Taurus and listen to Jimmy Eat World or drink Samuel Adams Beer.

My feelings of exuberance were short lived however, because yesterday God of Willard Scott once again cranked up the heat to spite me. Yesterday was sweltering and locusts or cicadas or whatever 매미 actually are were buzzing all night long.

I'm sick and tired of the summer. Sure summer is awesome if you're twelve years old and it consists entirely of ride bikes, swimming, and playing Super Mario Bros. 3, but in the real world summer is a vile, repugnant season. If I had a time machine and could go back to the summer of 1991, I'd tell the 11 year old version of myself not to complain about there being nothing to do and to enjoy the summer because 18 years down the line he'd have to stand on a crowded subway filled with the smell of sweat drenched people.

Here's hoping that summer is in its death throes! Especially since next week I have to go spend some time in the tropics...

Emancipation In Chains: Business' Greatest Hits

2009-09-03T22:41:00.000-04:00

All it took was six years and getting married to a citizen, but I'm no longer a ~~native speaker~~ English teacher. Earlier this week I started working full time for a regular, non-English education related company.

A million years ago when I studied French in high school, we had to make some sort of stupid collage about our lives in the future. I wrote I wanted to be a business man, not because I had any interest in business, but because I thought "homme d'affaires" was a funny expression. Apparently the old addage, "be careful what you write in high school French class, you just might get it."

So far, being a business man is pretty fun. I get to say all kinds of really rediculous things I could never imagine saying:

"Sorry, I'll need to reschedule, I'm going to be in Vietnam on business that day."
"Here's my card, please e-mail me with the information when you get back to Japan."
"전팀장님..."

I guess technically I work in the international trade division of the company which is nice because I get to meet random people from Japan (yesterday and today) and go on business trips to Vietnam (next week), but I also get a lot of random other assignments because of my years of experience of being from America. Basically when I don't have to go to Vietnam or drink with businesswomen from Japan, I get to do stuff like translate a catalog into English and spell check promotional information. Awesome!!!

Anyway, the only hard part is the fact that I actually have to get up and be in an office from 9am to 6pm everyday, which after a summer of working 2 to 4 hour days is a little rough, and with that I will leave you, because I'm tired...and have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

Neon Hammer

2009-08-29T13:00:00.000-04:00

In a subway station somewhere in Seoul, South Korea. I just saw a random Korean dude walk by wearing a t-shirt proclaiming, "TOO LEGIT TO QUIT!" in gigantic neon block lettering. It's going to be an amusing afternoon.

K-Pop Krap: MC 몽 - "Indian Boy"

2009-08-26T11:38:00.001-04:00

After seeing MC 몽 prance around on "live" music programs all summer long singing his latest song for 11 year old boys, "Indian Boy," I was finally going to get around to writing about how it's probably the second most racist Korean pop concept (after Bubble Sisters), but in my research I saw the music video for the first time and quickly changed my opinion.

While it had not been fully obvious in the "live" versions I'd seen, the music video made it abundantly clearly that MC 몽's jam was not a racist pile of bullshit, but rather a brilliant social commentary on American society. For sake of simplicity I've decided to look at this commentary in a systematic and thematic fashion, examining how MC 몽's depiction of two aspects of America, landscapes and people, reflect the core values of American society.

Landscapes

America is a large country filled with diverse and varied environments, both natural and man-made. MC 몽's choices as to which environments to include speaks volumes about American culture. The vast parrot filed jungles and expansive deserts so commonly associated with America share time with high school bleachers, sewers, and a black room. All of these choices reflect the loneliness and desolation of life in America. Furthermore, the scenes featuring the desert also illustration how American expansion and suburbanization is analogous to desertification, with strip malls and Starbucks taking the place of sand, dunes, and camels.

People

Travel to any country in the world and they will be more or less the same (depending on your latitude). What really makes a country unique and different from other nations are the people living there. What makes Columbia Columbia? Colombian people live there. The same holds true in America, which is why MC 몽 filled his video with American people...or at least Koreans pretending to be American people. I'll assume that this was primarily due to budget constraints. So what kind of people are featured in this video? A fairly wide range of people that symbolically represent American culture and values.

The video begins with a midget dressed in a pith helmet like his name is Dr. Livingston I presume. This character represents the pioneering spirit of the American people. This unnamed explorer is a stand-in for all the brave men who boldly went where no (white)man had gone before and stole land from the native people who lived there already. This is an important aspect of American society as is clearly evident by the fact that America still celebrates Columbus Day. Stealing land for indigenous people is what America is all about.

The second main character is an Indian chief depicted at his desk deep in his jungle lair. The fact the the Indian chief is portrayed as a CEO or CFO or AFI or MDC or (insert any three letters here) is a reflection of the entrepreneurial mindset that dominates American society. Bill Gates, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Nike all come from America. Why did they spread across the globe? Because of hardworking American businessmen and women and cheap overseas labor. America respects honest, hardworking people like Donald Trump and looks down on people who waste their time being unproductive and doing things like volunteer work. This video shows that even people like Indian chiefs, who were traditionally the elite of society, must become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies if they want to remain relevant in American society. The treasure chest in his office represents the fact that Indian chiefs are more powerful than pirates and are able to steal their loot. I'm almost 83.5% sure this is some sort of commentary about the war in Iraq.

The other characters who are featured heavily in this video are a football team and a marching band. The football team symbolizes America's over emphasis on sports particular at the high school and college level. The marching band on the other hand is a symbol of hope for the band geek in all of us. While the football heroes are popular now, in the end they're just a bunch of guys alone together with shoulder pads. The band geeks on the other hand are shown partying with ladies in gold leotards, which is pretty much how society in America works. Eventually the band geeks get the money which leads to sexy ladies in gold leotards being all over their jocks.

Wait a second...everything I just typed was complete bullshit. This video is full of really stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans. I can't believe they seriously did that "Wawawawawah!" thing. Seriously the only thing missing would have been the Indian chief proclaiming "How!" at the end and scalping that midget dude. While it's not really cruel or mean spirited, it shows a level of cultural insensitivity and ignorance rarely seen beyond the playground where dumbass white kids distort their eyes with their fingers and go up to one of the Asian kids and say some fucking bullshit like, "Ching chong bing bong. Huhhuh...what does that mean?"

It's the same shit as when any of those fucking late night talk show hosts make a joke about Kim Jong Il eating a dog, and it's gotta stop. Anyway, what the world needs is more girls in gold leotards and less quasi-racist bullshit.

P.S. Is that tiny rapper the Korean version of Joe C. from Kid Rock or the Korean version of one half of Kris Kross?

just write something already

2009-08-25T10:57:00.000-04:00

I've got writers block which isn't a really a problem since I'm not a poet or novelist or playwrite or any other profession which actually requires me to write anything more creative than, "Dear Mr. Ma, We still have yet to recieve confirmation on the order we place on August 3rd. If you cannot rectify this situation we will be forced to cancel our order and take our business elsewhere." However, when writer's block strikes, the piece of crap blog suffers hard. So there you go. That's why there haven't really been a lot of posts as of late.

Yesterday JH and I went to Itaewon in the afternoon for some Thai food at lunchtime. It's really amazing how dead that place is on a Monday afternoon. The streets were completely devoid of merchants, drunk English teachers, and transsexuals. It was kind of disappointing.

After lunch we went to some sort of foreign import food market. It was the weirdest market I've ever been in. You know how that Asian market in Yourtown, USA has Chinese, Japanese, and Korean food products in it regardless of the nationality of the shopkeeper? This shop was like that only it was every nation besides Korea. So there were cans of Campbell's Tomato soup (the kind Andy Warhol liked) on the shelves next to weird eastern European pickles, which were next to packages of chapati from India. It was kind of a chill place. We picked up some Thai curry and a couple other things and then headed back home.

*JH just reminded me of one of the awesome signs we saw while out in Itaewon. In Korean 이 sometimes means 2, it just doesn't happen to mean that in Itaewon. We saw a sign proclaiming 투태원...Twotaewon. Someone needs to review their Chinese characters before making clever signs.