<< December 2005 | | February 2006 >>
January 28, 2006 >> DanyangDanyang is the worst city ever, but we cruised in here after dark last night and decided to stick around. There are CAVES nearby, you see.
Our hotel room cost only 35 bucks, but it's sorta easy to see why. It's clean - one of the cleaner places we checked out - but there is a big love mirror beside the bed and two more mirrors on the headboard. One of them is broken, presumably a relic from overzealous mass-aj-ee Extra Service. SMASH! The hallway outside is peppered with red lights and a large nudie portrait of Adam and Eve with neon orange lips. I'm writing from a computer in the room, which we figure is generally used to download pr0n. Everything is freaky to the max and our escape is nigh.
Last night we roamed the deadened streets and met some guy who spoke English and used his skillz to constantly apologize for the delapidated state of the nightlife in Danyang. If we stuck around for another day, he promised us, he would take us to a condo party and pay for all our drinks. If we stayed in Danyang for another day.
In a few minutes we're leaving, bombing down the east coast to Pusan before this country slays us.
Posted by Chris at 08:09 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
>> Live from Suanbo (sp?)
So I'm currently sitting at a PC terminal in a hot spring hotel in a Hot Spring Town, waiting for "Frog Head". "Frog Head" is, in fact, Sam but we think Mike accidentally renamed her while enquiring as to her location with his bargain-basement Korean.
The hot spring itself looks suspiciously like a jinjilbang sauna back home: naked Korean men happily bathing themselves and their children. You know, the usual. The one visible Hot Spring Feature was a signboard decrying the many helpful minerals which would soon be boiling our bodies like lobsters, such as potassium and maybe sulfur. I feel mineralized from the waist down.
Now that we're red and soft and ready to eat, it's time to hop back in the car and smear ourselves with tasty butter before forging onwards. So far, traffic is zero and ducks devoured have been one and the hidden mountain fortress was forcefully located and English is 100%!!!
Posted by Chris at 05:36 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
January 27, 2006 >> Away from the heart
Every year, more than 30 million Koreans hit the roads for the Lunar New Year to visit their antiquated relatives in shoddy hometowns. We will be amongst them this holiday weekend, one sad little rental car in the midst of an automotive frenzy. This is the great Korean road trip, part deux.
Posted by Chris at 11:17 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
January 26, 2006 >> Still Learning New Tricks
1. This morning our thespian kindergartners put on a rousing performance for their parents, roleplaying the timeless tales of The Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Who loves papa? Mama loves papa. Who loves mama? Papa loves mama. Mama and papa love baaaaby bear.
It was great and I'm really glad I didn't sneak off upstairs to power-nap like I had planned. But after the closing bows, parents rushed to the stage to bestow great bouquets of flowers upon their prodigal children. I was momentarily shocked because; number one, it was GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS PERFORMED WITH CUT-OUT BEAR MASKS and, number two, these kids are SIX YEARS OLD. With all the camcording and fawning, you would've thought they just opened a Broadway show to great critical acclaim.
Afterwards the parents swept off with great gusto, wonderous offspring in tow. Curiously enough, several of the children were left behind, ditched by their mothers to take the bus home, which saddened me, so together we drew crayon pictures of their fancified roses. The roses were all purple and blue and acid-green thanks to a wide variety of filthy food-coloring diets, and dressed up brashly in silks and gauze paper. Leave it to the Koreans to try and 'enhance' the beauty of something like a flower. The Western teachers decided the effect was very similar to that of an over-painted court jester, all tassles and jingles and sadness in a corner. A rather dismaying example of When a Philosophy of Continual Improvement Hits a Wall and Clambers Over Anyways.
2. Everyone thinks that double barber-poles outside a building in Korea automatically mean that you can find a massage parlour with happy endings within. This is totally false. Urban Korea is riddled with barber-poles. True, there are lots of hookerhouses around and, true, they almost always fall under the guise and sign of a barbershop, but the signals aren't quite as easy as looking for two barber-poles, or barber-poles spinning in opposite directions or anything so simplistic as that.
There's a regional code-word embedded in the name of barbershops that double in prostutition (in Hangul, of course), and such places are always in the basement. Barber-poles on the roof of a building are also a good sign. And if there's a guy at the front desk who looks pissed off when you accidentally barge into his establishment in a drunken haze, you know you've hit the slut-money.
I'm telling you this as a general source of interest, not because I have actually been sampling said brothels... the word is that most well-established prostitutes won't even touch Westerners for fear of losing their regular Korean clientele. Wouldn't wanna disrupt the delightful undercurrent of flagrant adultery and marital muteness that Korea has built for itself, anyway.
3. Koreans think that a tomato is, categorically, a vegetable. No joke. We argued about this over beers for a long time last night, placing incredulous bets and laughing at each others' stupidity until we Googled tomatoes from the bartender's computer and realized that yes, indeed, Korean science supplants Western definition and fully believes that a tomato is a vegetable. And what's crazier, they think watermelon is a vegetable too! We finally settled on a draw for our debate, citing cultural differences and each quietly contemplating a rift in the world so vast as to leave tomatoes and watermelons drifting in the chasm between.
Posted by Chris at 05:51 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
>> ConservaCanada
Even though I'm far, far away from the Nation of the Leaf, I still snooped through the recent election buildup/climax/debacle whenever I had time. It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that Koreans/Australians/Englishes had no interest in the results when I stalked the school with the news earlier this week, except for when I ominously declared that now Canada would be more like the United States. This forecast was universally perceived as a Bad Thing. Noses wrinkled with disgust, but only temporarily - Canada's ideological alignment, sadly, is not high on many lists of import.
I can't say I really believe that Canada's social climate will change much, despite my love for fear-mongering. A minority government is no instrument of unmitigated cultural correction; it's a set of frustrating handcuffs that'll only stay on as long as it takes for someone to find a new key. Gay marriage will survive. Decriminalizing marijuana will take a backbench, but remain leering from the sidelines as it has for years. No amount of votes can change popular consent, and Harper's Conservatives will have a hell of a time trying to operate and manipulate mores within the liberally-minded gouge that most Canadians have proudly pierced for themselves.
The GST cut doesn't bother me much, except that it's stupid and breaking the legs of a key source of federal revenue and opening the door for top-tier corporate tax cuts. Losing social programs and education aid doesn't bother me much because I'm not there to enjoy them (yes I'm selfish... and as soon as I get back I'll be clamoring for my soup kitchen and discounted tuition!).
The military thing is a bit disturbing, because if we build a military then we're going to have to actually use it, and the only real use for a military these days seems to be in slutting around developing nations or giving troops to the U.S. where they are promptly assassinated in a faraway desert without any clue as to why they needed to be there in the first place. Neither seems a particularly appealing use of public funds, if you ask me. I suppose it would be nice to reclaim our fallen reputation as international peacekeepers, but freedom and peace don't really mean what they used to and I have a feeling that any Canadian International Peacekeeping force would soon be abroad raping Islamic goats and feeling up 12-year old girls in saris in the name of democracy and then where would our global reputation be? Right in the toilet bowl along with America's, that's where. Nobody likes a country packed with agitated military molestors bound to serve private business interests, and two such nations would be intolerable. Carefully, Mr. Harper, very carefully.
So time will march on and, for a short time, aging prairie cowboys will walk a little taller, content that Canada is finally heading in the right direction... and then they'll die. And their sons will be drag queens and turn their inherited cattle-ranches into rockin' man-brothel discos and they'll vote Green. The universe (and its pretentious microcosm, Canada) will balance itself out, just as it always has.
Posted by Chris at 12:03 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
January 23, 2006 >> Chinally
It's nowhere near done, but the Very Cherry Beijing New Year's gallery is off to a roaring start! It promises to be an undertaking of enormous length and girth (but not quality) and thus it comes to you in installments of manageable proportions. Portion one tastes like airplanes and streetware and Heaven.
Posted by Chris at 11:23 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
January 21, 2006 >> You Stupid Fuckers!
At first I thought they were funny. But as the months went on and they grew filthier and amassed tenfold, I slowly became more and more afraid of this dark edge of humanity.
I speak, of course, of people who are searching Google or MSN or whatever for some brand of grotesque deviant porn and somehow (somehow!) end up coming to Clemensonline. Accidentally, of course. You won't find any deviance here... I swear. Really.
Anyway, once upon a time, I snickered at the stats. "Ed Belfour drunk sex barnyard"?? "Nipple handcuffs"?? These gems were few and far between, so I tolerated them with the benevolence of some guy who has a website and has delusions of being its king and ULTIMATE POWER MASTER. I ruled my cyber-non-brothel with open-armed leniency.
But now it's all "teen fuck" this and "fuck teen" that. Those aren't even funny; they makes me feel like I am the twisted king of some kind of sordid slut palace, a gateway to statutory rapeville. The beauty of search has fled and now "spanking" and "nicole richie" rule the roost. There are still occasional oddities like "mean shetland pony photos" and "downing grease spinner display", but generally it's Korean girls here and young virgins there and fucking whores everywhere.
So at this point I can either give the masses what they want, which is evidently and overwhelmingly 'teenage sluts', or I can stop using this distasteful kind of language altogether in a desperate attempt to shoo the pervs away. This would be a shame, as I rather enjoy being distasteful, and anyway, it has occurred to me that I have just written a post which is entirely comprised of the phrases and words which will attract even more misguided pleasure-seekers.
So basically you can start looking for teenage sluts in a few weeks: never before seen on video, and all here at Clemensonline! Hundreds and thousands of trillions of them!
And today at the Clemensonline cybersite we have reached our donation goal of 75 000 visits!! This means that over 73 000 people have come here looking for sluts!!! The rest were looking for a blog or some stupid thing.
Posted by Chris at 11:35 PM >> Commentations (7) | Permalink
January 15, 2006 >> MM
My throat is sore and the sun is hidden behind clouds hidden behind mountains hidden behind rows and rows of dull white apartment buildings. The neon goes away in the mornings, here in Korea; the endless battle for an eye's attention hibernates until the dark creeps in again. In ten minutes the elevator doors will rumble open and dozens of childrens' voices will scream "Good morning!" in unison as they run down the hallway to their classrooms. They are the fourth trumpet of the apocalypse and I am planning on having the trumpet collective draw me a picture of their favorite animal today. Teacher, teacher! I like tiger!
Monday Morning.
Posted by Chris at 07:41 PM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink
January 14, 2006 >> Comical Indignation
I don't like to write about love, at least not in a tangible Real Life kind of way. I can't name names, won't chronicle relationship ups and downs in anything more than abstract splashes of emotion. This has gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion, but I firmly believe that spewing the gritty details onto the Internet cheapens them, cheapens everything.
I think that maybe people face-deep in codependance lose their grip, their understanding, of what their friends and readers want from their blog. When you sit down and gleefully write a post about what you and your boyfriend ate for breakfast, you aren't doing anyone any favours. You're wasting everyone's fucking time. I can understand that surely this topic was worthwhile to you, or you wouldn't have taken the time to log into Livejournal. Or maybe you just noticed that you hadn't updated in a while and forced out an update that unfortunately turned into a tragic synopsis of your meals, or an uncouth blast-pack of your latest woes:
OMG i am so sad right now i loved this girl and now she's gone. she walked out of my life and I didnt want to touch Shelly her friend but i was drunk and shes a slut and KELLY IF UR READING THIS I NEED YOU <3
ps i wont push you down the stairs anymore we can have the baby i promise
It's just not working, it's not evolving at all. If I am going to have any kind of faith in this exploding blog movement, this Frankenstein blogosphere of expression and public living, I need some reason to believe that valuable insight and beautiful prose will burgeon out of even the most mundane lives. I need to know that we'll eventually step beyond Dear Diary and into the questions Why? and How? and glorious, sobbing text that tells a story deeper than Wheaties in the Mornings. Everyone starts at the bottom but there's no excuse for staying there forever.
I can't tell you what to do with your blog - well, I guess I can but you don't have to listen. You probably won't and I don't blame you - who am I to judge? I suck. You have as much right as I do to vent and hate and overflow with joy. But a million fingers typing a million unskilled sentiments is bound to impact our culture. A million uninspired blogs about a million clumsy closet loves will inevitably, invariably, take our conception of love and shred it into a million tiny paper pieces. The Internet is not harmless; it traffics ideas, negotiates definitions, defines our ideals. If the romantics could see us now, they'd burn our world to cinders.
Well they'd try, with their torches and furious righteousness, and then some F-16s would bomb them impassionately. But at least they'd try. And I realize, even now, that I'm ridiculously doing the same thing; shouting about a bunch of idiots riding the blog-train ruining love and I'm not making any real sense. There's no logic in a Save Our Love campaign. The only conclusion is to fall apart.
a a;lkO lkajfF.kgs
crushed against the traffic light
the best thing you could've said
is that you're fucked up
Posted by Chris at 10:53 PM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink
>> Chronicles of a Conference
This is the worst conference I have ever attended. I am not an avid conference-goer, nor do I consider myself an expert in the art of informative speaking. I do, however, give myself enough credit to identify a large room full of English teachers, fidgeting uncomfortably with cell phones and fingers and god knows what else, as victims of a decidedly uninformative lecture. Something is broken here. A Saturday is slipping through our fingers, wasted and murdered most foul.
Anna Song, Anna Song, your voice drones and drones and kills seconds painfully, torturously. Your song is an aria of verbal slaughter. Already heads are starting to nod under your knives, eyes close in somatic resignation. Read the slides, word by word, articulate the obvious and turn the unpredictable joys of teaching into a litany of broken-English boredom. The new curriculum is a mirror-image of the old, with, of course, the addition of in-book Korean translations of new English words which is suck a clear fucking necessity that I can't believe nobody thought of it sooner. But of course, you're not talking about that, Anna Song. You're reading the slides.
This room breeds cynicism and my heart is bitter and my face is peeling off and - WHOOPS! - I was writing and not paying attention and Belinda evilly volunteered me for a silly demonstration and I had to find the flashcard that was the opposite of good (BAD!) up on the stage, which was difficult because I teach French and not English, but I won a free T-shirt anyway. The massacre continues and the T-shirt is white.
Now Anna Song is gone and now we're singing the 'Color Song', a sea of hands slowly flapping in the sweet stagnation. Belinda is on stage, looking thoughtfully at her stack of color cards, hoping beyond all hope to win a T-shirt of her own after enthusiastically and accidentally headbutting the lecturer's assistant in the boob. Where does the green go? On the dinosaur! Green and Purple and something and Red. Turquoise and Yellow and Blue. Nobody trusts Turquoise - it's sandwiched and guarded by Red and Yellow to ensure it doesn't try to start any shit on its own. The Color Song is a particularly filthy bit of subversive racism and I won't stand for that sort of thing. The Color Song will have no place in my classroom. The Turquoise children will roam and learn in peace, free and unmolested.
My temperment has shifted from bitter to ludicrous by now, in case you haven't noticed. Just like foreign teachers in Korea go through a series of stages - the honeymoon period, the fatalist regression, the comfort of settling in and routine, the declining race to the finish line - the bored conference-goer experiences a similar timeline of ups and downs. Right now I am hopeful, past the halfway point of the schedule, halfway incredulous that any loving God could level this kind of Saturday upon his children. On my left and right, Belinda and Sam are mooing and clucking loudly, making animal noises along with Alyce Chong. A cat says "meow." A horse says "woof woof." A Chris says "chants are for chumps." A Sam stage-whispers "Steak!", trying to secure some kind of well-earned reward from Sue for these long hours of maligned punishment.
It's break time now, a slim mercy, and I sit outside smoking a cigarette. Impossibly, this is a Saturday with better weather than we've seen in weeks. And predictably, we're spending it in a conference hall (this is predictable because I've just spent the past hour writing about conferences, and how much they suck. I thought I would explain this since the theme of the day is 'pointlessly rediscovering the obvious'.). Perhaps I am swinging back into bitterness now. Perhaps my mind is sinking into the sweet blackness (black! That's a color... or shade) of oblivion.
Now we are learning how to be Herald Leaders. "Introduce this puppet to the class. Cover your face with this puppet and talk with a different voice!" Leaders apparently need to exhibit the warning signs of multiple personality disorder. This is a leadership skill I can identify with, right here, right now. I don't have a puppet so I think I'll talk to my clenched fist, Mr. Clenchy.
Chris: "Mr. Clenchy, do you want a drink of water?"
Extra emphasis on each syllable of each word. We're leaders of teaching, after all.
Mr. Clenchy: "Shut the fuck up and pour a whiskey into my drink-hole!"
Chris: "MR. CLENCHY! That isn't Herald appropriate language at all! Repeat after me: 'No, good sir, water is not my libation of choice. I desire the sweet nectar of the South, a Jack Daniels on the rocks. Now, if you will, noble educator, please to be pouring an alcoholic beverage of favorable repute into my drink-hole.'"
Mr Clenchy: "......."
He is gone, vanished. He is a hand again, a hand whiskeyless and alone.
People are ditching the auditorium in droves. They sneak out, they strut out unashamedly, they leave for greener pastures. The fields here are wastelands, strewn with the corpses of bright-eyed idealism and the husks of shells of people who used to be teachers. Dispair is softly setting in. This, my friends, is the nadir of human accomplishment, the crux and the triumph of senseless bureaucracy. We've built ourselves up with machines so we have more time to brutalize in conference halls. The drone continues.
And, sweet love, merciful rock of the ages, we're leaving early! Sue is a flagship in these dark ages of human tragedy, a beacon of hope against the sharpened spires of ineffectual seminars. As the Station Wagon of Glorious Escape flees the unspeakable crimes of Saturday, I only have eyes for the Outback Steakhouse. True retribution is cooked medium-rare.
*********************************************
I wrote this across four pages of my conference programme, scattered paragraphs reaching deep to pass the time. The reader will be depressed to hear that Sue did not respond favorably to our Outback Steakhouse plugs, which I read to her passionately from the backseat of the car; she laughed and then drove us all to a cheapo Galbi place instead.
Posted by Chris at 05:37 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
January 13, 2006 >> AniSaturday
One of the more hateful things about working in Korea is giving up your Saturday to go to some useless training session with no pay. The deal with Korean ESL is that your written contract means nothing; any stipulations about not working on weekends or overtime hours are purely lip (text?) service and the sooner you get used to that idea the less you'll cry into your pillow at night. There are always catches to that "no more than 30 teaching hours!!" carnival claim. You'll be doing extra intensives when the kids are on vacation from public school, and you'll be choreographing interpretive dance segments for the kindergartners' graduation day. You'll do "just one favor," time and time again. You'll be doing bonus work... oh my, yes. You'll do it for the kids, dammit!
So today I am headed into Seoul to listen to some corporate droning and hopefully some music (if I can hide it under my hood) and maybe if the gods are smiling on me today, I will devise a plan to escape out the back door and spend the afternoon wandering around the streets aimlessly, like a drug addict. I'll do it for the kids!
Posted by Chris at 09:34 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
January 10, 2006 >> Birthday Sap Comes From Christmas Trees
My Korean birthday was most excellent.
I feel somewhat guilty going there, to the commonplace birthday, falling into narcissistic self-indulgences when there are a million and one flashes of Korean (and Chinese... urgh) culture I haven't captured yet. But what could be more suited to narcissism than a blog I named after myself? Maybe a blog called Chris Clemens: Hitler's Heir Apparent, I suppose, or Chrissy The Champion of the World or Clemensmania: History Creeping Thru the Back Door With a Sackful of Doorknobs.
And so, with great effort, I will try to pull myself away from naming my official biography to talk about Birthdays and Good Times and Good People Who Are Not Me.
But first, necessary introductions. If you know me well, you're probably well acquainted with my Expect the Worst and Be Pleasantly Surprised outlook on life. It's not pessimism; it's simply a reactionary stance to the thread of disappointment I see woven into every strand of the world. I believe that my life is hardwired to follow some twisted inversion of desire: the more I want something, the less likely I am to get it. I have thusly, and with great success, thwarted the universe's evil designs by training myself not to want fiercely. Forced indifference is the lynchpin of victory.
I reek of stale cynicism and yet, happily and miraculously, I have not been shorn of the ability to recognize the subtle heroics of others. However dark and strange my own outlook on life I have somehow, I think, retained the cognizance to appreciate goodness elsewhere. This is a mercy for which I am eternally grateful, and probably has something to do with years of Sunday School or reading sentimental drek when I was a kid, or maybe caring for magical creatures in video games. Whatever it was, I have somehow acquired a profound admiration for the positivity I see all around me, even if I can only see it from the distance.
And so, when I tell you that I didn't expect my birthday here in Korea to amount to much, you shouldn't be surprised. But the sheer greatness and lifting force of everyone in my life right now blew my face right off, leaving my fleshless, 24-year old skull chattering in shock.
The kids made cards and wrote letters. The parents sent me scarves and shirts and handcrafted play-doh birthday cakes and a sunflower ornament featuring a hyper-gay pink bear. The teachers pitched in and bought me a sweet book on Korean culture and a decorative plaque depicting two monks wrestling amorously.
I blacked out halfway through Saturday night, having fallen victim to a devilish plot by Mike to spike my drink with threefold soju. Apparently my body raged onwards through the darkness, dancing and molesting and talking shit until it finally fell victim to a double-whiskey (which someone had to help me drink) and a long cab ride home.
Chad and Jen bought me din-dins. Mike got me 1984. Belinda mixed me a Korean Donkey CD. Sam threw a Chicken & Beer gathering. The family sent cards (which are still on a boat somewhere in the Pacific Ocean). The friends from back home emailed me out of the blue, in wonderfully unceremonious fashion. Text messages. Day-late phone calls - the International Date Line makes lateness okay! I swelled up like a blowfish; I couldn't help it. It was more than I could've ever hoped for, had I ever hoped at all.
This list shouldn't read like a boast. It shouldn't look like a "See how popular I am, look at all the birthday presents I got, motherfuckers" piece of grandiloquence. I only carry on because I appreciated everything so much, because I didn't want to leave anything out. Unabashed thanks is a rarity in my life. It doesn't take much to make just one day in someone's life memorable, but it does take something and I can't (won't) let those little fragments of effort go unacknowledged. I'm still a narcissist but I can learn from this; I can give back with equal fury. One day I will be finished with killing and not caring. Not everyone is a walking carrier of embryonic disappointment.
But then again, if I had hoped for all of this would I have gotten it?
Philosophy is for donkeys.
Posted by Chris at 05:15 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
January 08, 2006 >> Old Boy
If I had my way, I'd crush your face in the door.
I am deeply, passionately hungover right now. Itaewon the culprit. The infatiguable Johnny Five character, whom I have only just introduced, will shortly be on his ambling way out of the country after being unceremoniously dumped by his hagwon. Job security here in Korea, especially for a foreign teacher, is often a frail and easily broken mirror.
I am also suffering the effects of gaining (or shortly gaining, anyway) two years to my age in the space of 10 days. See, Koreans calculate age in some strange manner somewhat related to the solar calendar and how many raw squirrels you've eaten since you were born. I won't go into details because I don't know the details but the long and short of it is that however old you were back home, you're automatically one year older the second you arrive in Korea. Additionally, everyone magically gets one year older with every new year... so 2006 turned me 24, and January 9th will turn me 25. Or something like that, now I'm confusing myself. WHAT IS TIME?? WHAT IS REALITY??
Anyway, the whole age dealie in Korea is pretty fucked. I may stay in this country and rapid-age myself for a few years until I can come home and collect retirement pensions and sit on my porch and complain about punk kids driving their hovercrafts over my lawn and listening to that infernal hologram pop music.
Posted by Chris at 01:41 AM >> Commentations (7) | Permalink
January 04, 2006 >> Jamie Opso
I'm almost done my writeup of our New Year's trip to China... by which I mean that I haven't started at all. I've been drinking instead. As a tantalizer, I'll just say that China is nowhere near the Red State that everyone envisions. China is more like visiting your Asian friend's backyard where he unscrupulously cajoles you into buying his eight-year old bicycle with a rusty, broken chain and no handlebars. And when you take it for a ride it explodes in a fiery maelstrom of rabid consumerism and sexy dead pigeons. Then you buy a T-shirt to commemorate the experience. Wheee!
China was fucking rad.
On the home front, the topic of discussion lately has been "dealing with Korean girlfriends when they can't speak very much English and you can't speak any Hangul and all you ever do is punch each other like kindergartners and flirt by calling each other stupid or babo and these crazy bitches thrive on sexual inactivity." I have top operatives working on this cross-cultural mystery as we speak - stay tuned for a special expose report whenever Korean girls become more than a dualistic mystery of puritanical angst and schoolyard playfulness.
Oh, and of course who could forget Johnny Five, the new Deadhead teacher from the East Coast. I have talked to this man at least five times about what it would be like if "we had no skin man, just think what it would be like if only we didn't have any skin!" Every conversation is a bizarre amalgamation of spirituality and bat-shit freaking insanity and sometimes I have to make sure nobody's slipped something in my drink. I have seen Johnny Five dance slowly by himself, staring at the rusting ceiling of a basement bar, for at least forty-five minutes. I have seen his eyes gaping wide open, staring eerily as he enthusiastically imparts his wisdom, and I have seen his eyes riveted shut as he mumbles about pussy. It's a binary system - open or shut, no compromise or quarter given. Johnny Five is hilarious and I have no skin.
I've been reading Nabokov's Lolita in the sad absence of a new Harry Potter meganovel, and so far I have to say that I feel like a pedophile with every flip of the page. It's a poor feeling. It's not that I want to feel like a pedophile, and I'm sure people have read this book without feeling like a pedophile, but the ironclad fact remains that twelve-year old girls should not be fucked by scheming old men. End of story. I don't care how prose-y the telling of the story is, how rabidly emotional the language of love comes through. It's some awkward shit to plow through and I'm very glad that I'm not listening to the audiobook of Lolita in a room full of elderly women, as read by Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger would so do something like that too. Just to spite me. Anyway, watch out for Lolita or at least make sure you are not a burgeoning pedophile before taking it up. Read something edifying instead, like Margaret Atwood or Dr. Phil.
Today I wrote "Under the Sea" stories with the class I hate the most-est. As a sample story idea, I told them the basic plot outline of Disney's The Little Mermaid, except at the end the prince was killed by a gigantic robot and King Triton tried to avenge his death but accidentally impaled Ariel with his trident. It was well received by the boys, but the girls knew the real score. Everyone loves Disney over here. Then the kids got to work, crafting masterful tales of robot sharks and underwater zombies.
I used the time purchased by their silent scribbling to sketch a fearsome image of a murderous octopus named Dr. Timmons. The Legend of Dr. Timmons states that, once upon a time, the octagonal menace thirsted everlong for human blood and one day went on a quest to Sanbon, Korea to reap the torsos of a certain class of would-be authors. Dr. Timmons crept down the hallway of the fated school... further... further... almost there... silent... slithering... and then the final bell rang. His dinner would come to him, once they finished packing their bags and donning their jackets. He could wait, hidden outside the door. He had been waiting for years. Reveling in the lull, Dr. Timmons used one whiplike tentacle to adjust his eyepatch (oh yeah, he was an octopus dressed like a pirate) and grinned darkly - insomuch as an octopus can grin. The class was over. The feast was nigh.
Posted by Chris at 10:30 AM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink
January 02, 2006 >> So this is the New Year
2005.
2005 was the year I lost more than ever before: stability and security, the last vestiges of my teenaged angst (long overdue), and my pants. Many pairs, many times. 2005 was the year that tossed me out in the streets with a degree and a crudely sketched roadmap of the ten thousand places I might go without any real direction at all. 2005 was the year that I finally started throwing myself into things instead of just talking about them.
This time last year, I never would've dreamed that I would get so desensitized to leaving. I never thought I would become so accustomed to watching the people who drift across my path drift away again, and still walk stolidly onwards, always walking, round the bend and ever onwards. Nowhere is life more temporary than in Asia, where the foreigners and teachers you meet today are, inevitably, tomorrow's goodbye. And goodbyes come fast and furiously.
Nic and Jac, I hope you're well in America. This is a good picture of you guys on your last night, at the Green Place. We are still too afraid to clip your hell-rabbit's teeth. Caroline, you were wonderful to meet and you sang through the Korean sickness and sounded great. One day you will rule all the other filthy Australians and I want a free VISA. Josh and Brighty, you were weird in the only way that I respect and am slightly fearful of. No complimentary Chinese blowjobs - that takes willpower. And the goodbyes come on and on and on and on until all faces melt into my mind, a past that doesn't tell stories but sings a song of a thousand voices that makes no sense.
Now this isn't necessarily as lamentable as it sounds - I overdramatize, of course, because it's so fun - because 2005 was really a year of unmitigated hope. I begin the new year awash in possibility and I've always felt that it's better to have too many options in life than not enough. It's better to leave than stay. I remember the graduating business students back at Laurier, frantic for stable employment, desperate to extend the rail of safety they'd clung to so long, and I always knew there was a better way - I just never saw it until I came to Korea. As much as the ESL game takes away from you, it enriches equivocally.
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Last week I had dinner with my privates. That's private lesson, not my balls, although they came along to dinner too now that I think about it. I spilled hot soup on them actually. Anyway, the husband of the well-to-do family that I tutor usually stays low-key and hides in the bedroom during lessons. I know that he's the president of some big company, and I know that he frequently stays at the office overnight: "work so much sleep there", as the wife puts it. Now, in Korea, this means that Mr. President is probably fucking a hooker somewhere but it's a taboo subject. I wouldn't have mentioned it, actually, except that he turned out to be quite a dick at dinner and I hope he gets Type-A herpes.
Mr. President presided haughtily over the grill like some kind of Cookery Nazi, distributing galbi with grudging flips of the tongs. I didn't think much of this because he was, well, The Man and a Korean Man naturally has to show his attention-starved boys how to act like The Man so they, too, can be misogynist bastards in the future. And who am I to interfere with a well-oiled patriarchy? But then came the soju and Mr. President evidently thought he had to one-up me because we drank about five bottles between us with him scowling at me the whole time. He filled my shot glass over and over and over and we drank. We drank without any cheer. He drank to impress and I drank to survive, and by the end we were both smashed and visibly still didn't like each other.
So the wife is looking frightened because we're both gasping and having trouble getting up off the floor (you eat on the floor in Korea, baby!) and she pays the bill and they shovel me into a cab. Mr. President leans drunkenly into the taxi and says something in Korean to the driver and we're off, me trying rather fervently not to puke in the backseat.
Well, I don't know what Mr. President told that old cabbie but he definitely did not drive me home. He drove and smoked and drove and smoked and drove to all kinds of neon places that weren't Sanbon, and when I started asking questions like "Where the fuck are we going?" he got pissed off and started yelling at me something fierce. I didn't like that much and decided to roll, army-style, out of the cab while it was moving. I was heavily intoxicated, remember?
But before I could put my brilliant plan into action, the cabbie, perhaps anticipating my escape, reached over and tried to thieve my wallet! Mr. President's mercenary was willing to stop at nothing. We had a tussle while the cab wobbled into roaring traffic and I punched the flunkie driver in the face, somehow got the door open and fell backwards into a gutter. Everybody knows gutters are dangerous, so I crawled up onto the sidewalk. The enraged cabbie screamed curses at me from inside the taxi, covering his eye (which I had punched pretty hard), and I clambered to my feet, ran into an alleyway around the corner and immediately threw up about two litres of soju. BLAUUUUUGHHH! When I came out, my nemesis was gone, his mission to fleece me failed as I hadn't paid him a single won. I was gross and vomitous, but I had beaten Mr. President's malicious design somehow.
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Now I know you're thinking that this experience probably wasn't enriching, but you're wrong because weird stuff like that happens all the time in Korea. I wasn't even going to blog this story initially, but Michelle and Sam thought it worthwhile. The sheer wealth of storytelling you can glean from ESL is astronomical; experiences pile up like a treasure horde and I know I'll be able to draw from Korea for inspiration for years to come. And that's just what I needed in 2005, as my heart finally began to falter and fall away from documenting trite university life. I needed change.
At the same time, I reach back for the dear ones at home because I know that one day I'll come boomeranging back with all I've acquired, ready to start spending some of that treasure. I'm collecting right now, gathering pieces and fragments, but it's the thought of those at the end of Travel that hold me together. You can fall into a hole in Asia, a great chasm that tears years off your skin and leaves you an ancient relic in a temporary world of rote education. You can live so well out here that you lose all your motivation to make something of your life, to build your personal legacy. You can Get By, but since when was Getting By enough?
So here's to 2006. Here's to finally getting something done, to fond memories and mid-twenties and not updating resumes. Here's to swelling ambition and crazy dreams and question marks that dot the landscape of next week. Here's to the precious change that the new year will hopefully bring you.
Here's to 2006.
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