From "Quote of the Day," for flag-wavers these Olympics:

Thanks, Quote of the Day


A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors.
- William Ralph Inge


"Let them all go to hell, except Cave 17."
- Mel Brooks (From The Two-Thousand Year Old Man)

Haven't done a picture post in a while. . .

Which is odd, given that now I finally have a nice camera.  And even a flickr account.

A camera which takes pictures like this. . .

and (when I remember to use the "night landscape" setting). . . like this, too.

My step-mom MaryAnna and my Aunt Greta are in Korea now, travelling about after finishing an English camp.  They're both teachers in Canada, and spent five weeks in Naju, and now they're up in Seoul for a bit to see me and hang out downtown and make Girlfriendoseyo happy.

My Aunt Greta is the younger sister of my deceased mother, and Mary-Anna is my Dad's new wife. . . and the fact those two get along so darn well speaks volumes, about how open and loving my mom's family is, looking out for Poposeyo, and even welcoming his new wife into the fold, and also about how cool my step-mom is.

On Sunday, we walked around Jongno and Insadong, and Chunggyecheon with Girlfriendoseyo, and had a capitol time.

There was a big olympics thingy going on at the top of the Chunggyecheon.


I believe the sport of the day was table tennis, on the big screen.

We saw "Jump," the comedy martial arts show running in Jongno.  It was fun as anything, and you know how these comedy shows always pull some hapless schmuck up on stage. . .

well on Sunday, I was Schmuckoseyo.

MaryAnna snuck a few (contraband) pictures while I was up there, and Girlfriendoseyo laughed until she cried.

They made me do a somersault and some other silliness. . . but I don't want to give away their surprises or jokes, so I won't go into too much detail about what happened. . . but it was fun, all my old comedy improv experience from university rushed up to mind. . . as soon as I sat back down in my chair.  But yeah.  If I went there again, and they called me up on stage again, I would have gotten a few pretty good laughs, eh?

After Jump, we walked around a bit,

and then caught a cab down to this restaurant south of the river where they serve roast duck, and dear readers, this place is just ridiculously good.  They stuff the duck with all kinds of healthy beans and berries, and roast it for three hours or so in a brick oven and stuff, and when it comes out, it's tender as anything, and yummy as . . . uh. . . something really yummy.


here's the full spread:

And a bit closer up:



And here are Aunt Greta (left) and Mary-Anna (right) doing Korean poses for the camera.  They were both real gamers, ready to go and have adventures in Seoul, and all over.  They toured Busan and Seoul all by themselves during this trip, and had great old times.  Not too shabby, I say! 


After that, stuffed to the gills, we headed up and strolled around Hyehwa for a bit, because it's a pretty neighbourhood, but we were getting tired (stuffing up on duck will do that).

There's a park in Hyehwa that's one of my favourite sites to sit and people-watch; street performers turn up there a lot, and all of Hyehwa is a bit artsy and fun, loaded with Theatres big and small.  The park here was great until the wind shifted and carried garbagey smells to our schnozzes. . . but I played around with my camera's night scene setting and got these pictures, which I like.




And one of the ladies, lady-ing.

There were off-and-on spatters of rain from time to time, and every spot where  a rain droplet (barely larger than mist) spackled onto my black umbrella, the street-light shone through the droplet and through the the black umbrella, making the inside of the umbrella look like one of those Star-Trek night skies.  The picture here doesn't do it justice, but it was a little moment of beauty in keeping with the quote on my blog header, and bud, ya gotta pay attention to those, and write them down, or shoot them, or point them out to somebody -- not that you need to; you can stuff it in your pocket and keep it to yourself like a love-note from God just to you. . . but those gratuitously lovely morsels of universe taste better when shared (even clumsily, like this barely-even-manages-to-hint-at-it picture.)



The pictures catch about as much of the full day as a freeze-frame of a diver. . . but brothers and sisters, it was a lovely day indeed, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Holy Crap! Usain Bolt 9.69

(nbc keeps pulling down the ACTUAL Bolt world record run. . . but it looked SOMETHING like this)

Here's bolt on youtube.

How did they even do that?

Memo to 7-11: If you manage to get one of Korea's loveliest faces signed for a photo shoot. . .

Hire a makeup artist and a photo-shop guy, too.

And she comes to the set looking like she didn't sleep, or has a hang-over

Send her home to sleep, and reschedule.

They say she's probably had reams of surgery. . . and it's not that I'm suddenly approving of the whole male gaze/beauty image thing



. . . but if they dropped a lot of coin to get a silly-hot star to appear (and in case you doubt she is. . . here)

You'd think they'd have protected their investment a bit with an airbrush.

(they could have called the soju people and asked for tips:)

And these aren't even "X-star at home/taking out the trash in sweatpants" pics, in which I wouldn't criticize a star for being human -- these are for an ad campaign, so I'd have thought 7-11 would try to make their star look nicer -- I was just startled to see pics of a normally ridiculously pretty star looking so un-gorgeous.  (Gorgeless?)

  It took me five seconds to recognize the familiar-looking fifty-year-old as actually being the 20 (or so) year old 김 아중.

(more Kim A-Joong)

(or is that just how quickly plastic surgery faces age?)

In other "normally very very good-looking stars looking hung over, tired, or raggedy in an ad" news. . . from a while back. . . "Sorry I'm late for the photo shoot.  I was getting, ah, acquainted with your product last night until four."

remind you of anything?



oh yeah. also. something something olympics. something something bla bla blah, China something something lip synch something something TOTALLY UNSURPRISED.

For all your Olym-peccadilloes

You can't embed, but you can link:

http://www.youtube.com/beijing2008

As much as I stand by what I've said before about the Olympic organizers, the IOC, and the way China is using this olympics for their own nationalist propaganda. . . ya still gotta cheer for the athletes.

To know what TV is like in Korea right now, watch this clip. . . forty times in a row.

(P.S. Korea's going gold-medal bonkers right now. . . but it won't last, according to girlfriendoseyo, who tells me all Korea's strongest events are in the first few days of the Olympics -- Judo, archery, shooting)

From an Owlish Angel

From my dear friend Tamie's blog:

Last night I was talking to one of my best friends, someone I've come to trust deeply over years of being in the kind of conversation that is woven into our whole lives. . . .We were talking about self-perceptions, and how they compare to how others perceive us. I often perceive myself to be....all these negative things, but according to my friend, this is not how my friends perceive me. . . . I'm writing about how almost all of us do this very thing all the time, and how just sad it is, maybe more than anything.

If we knew that we were loved, it would change everything, wouldn't it? What if for one day you were granted some kind of supernatural power so that you could feel just how much people loved you? (I feel like I know what so many of us would fear--we wouldn't want to be granted that supernatural power because we'd be so afraid that people are secretly annoyed and disgusted by us. And this is precisely the point.) But people do love temporally and imperfectly. But if we knew that we were loved, absolutely and eternally, that we are always always inside endless love....well, yep, that would change everything.

Why, tell me why, is this so damn hard to really get a hold on? Why are we bumbling around in these illusions, so convinced that we're on the cusp of being cut off, when in fact we're fairly swimming in love? Jesus. In those brief moments when I know that I am loved, through and through and through, then I am completely free. And in those moments it becomes suddenly clear to me just how not-free I am most of the time. How I am missing the joys of my life, missing the glorious cosmic dance. Not because I'm not a part of it, but because I'm deaf to just how much of a part of it I am. I can't hear that the music is everywhere.

And even in this, in my deafness and illusions, I am loved. Oh, but how I wish that I could know it, live it, all the time. Know what I mean, dear readers? Know what I mean?

Okay, enough said for now. Time for yoga.

Thanks, Tamie.

A Few Must-Reads

First: ROK Drop has a piece on the ridicidonkonculous ass-backwardity of Korea's flip-floppy "Listen to what I mean, not what I say!" relationship with the USA that is, all at once, the best explanation I've read so far of why being President of Korea might be the hardest job in the galaxy, an excellent retrospective of the recent US Beef protests, and a great summary of Korea's tortured and conflicted "Why CAN'T we have it both ways?" relationship with the USA.

Second: SeoulLife got in on the complaining expat topic, and brought up the point that almost all the popular K-bloggers are male, and therefore created a site specifically for Korean and English speaking, expat and Korean national, women in the K-blogosphere.  Naked In The Sauna is the name.

Third: James Turnbull of The Grand Narrative (one of my favourite Korea blogs) dropped a few pearls on the expat topic. . . not a full, Grand Narrative Special (those get pretty involved), but worth a look.  Meanwhile, if you have connections with awesome non-teaching jobs in Seoul, or any kind of awesome jobs in Busan, keep your ear to the ground for our blog-buddy James: he's on the market.

Tongue twister I composed on Friday at Work:

re: the Asian delivery-boy who loves his job: I envy the Korean curry courier's career.

For all you indie music snobs, and all you who KNOW indie music snobs:http://xkcd.com/460/

I watch this video two or three times a day. (It's my niece and nephew.)

This pic: when you hand out a student needs survey, and a student just NEEDS to let you know "Hey.  Teacher.  I'm cute as heck, and you better know it."

Rising food prices are hitting the little guy now.  I bet every item on this menu is 500won more than before.

At coldstone creamery in Piano Street, they have mastered "Suggestive Selling" . . . I don't know what that is, but I'd like to see some.  I'm not quite clear on how one CAN sell ice cream suggestively.  Lollipops, sure.  Skin cream, heck yeah.  Ice cream . . . need to see it to believe it.

Two weekends ago, the candlegirl made an appearance at Jogyesa.  I wonder how many bows she made to keep mad cow disease out of Korea.

My favourite anti-government graffiti: (just down from piano street)

that's all for today, folks.

-roboseyo

Super-slo mo is super cool.

this shot of lightning striking is un beee leeee vable

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

ultraslomo.com will eat an hour of your life without even burping.

red drop of water


lighting a match


strawberry dropped into a bowl of milk (hey, whatever floats your boat)


another gorgeous water drop



squeezing an orange slice


and my favourite super-slow-motion: water balloons. From a Schweppes ad.


just weird: karate chopping a brick in super-slow motion.


and. . . the sexy one.

am i the only blogger in Korea who HASN'T seen dark knight yet?

Well. . . I just got a new university job, so I'll have to content myself with having a great job instead. Miles better than my old one. 'till the weekend, then. . .

here are some pictures I'm pretty sure are from the new movie. I won't know for sure until I've seen it, though.