Usain Bolt again. . . wow. 19.30

Thanks, Youtube, for letting me post this smackdown on the rest of the field:


(still no embedding allowed)
You can watch Bolt's run here. You knew. KNEW, that he was gonna break the record. Took a bit of work -- Michael Johnson's previous record was a gobsmacker of its own. . . but wow. Again, as I wrote before about the allure of sports and the potential of human ability. . . you just can't look away.

Here's Michael Johnson's previous World Record run. 19.32


By the way: a kinda naughty (unintentionally) but extremely funny picture that made me laugh out loud. HT to I, Foreigner. I can't quite bring myself to posting it, but I'll link it with giggling enthusiasm.

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.