"Your first girlfiend, a mule"

"If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it," said Neal Horsley.

I had planned to stay away from news commentary on this site. What, afterall, can I really add to to the public discourse? But to be fair, this isn't really "news," first because it comes from FOX and secondly because Horsley is a man of no consquence to most people.

Horsley has been a candidate for governor of Georgia and, more famously, a proponent for posting the names and addresses of abortion doctors on the internet. He must be coming at us from some plot of high moral ground, then, right? That's what I thought, too, until I read about his appearance last May on Alan Colmes FOX News radio program. Based on an earlier Horsley comment that he'd engaged in bestiality, Colmes tried to get the truth out of his guest:

AC: "You had sex with animals?"

NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

I swear I'm not skewing the context of that quote. In fact, Horsley went on to state that, "if we had a warm watermelon in the field, I might give it a name."

Mules: that's cruel and ought to be punished. Watermelons, like politics, make strange bedfellows, though, and I suppose Horsley wasn't hurting anyone with such dalliances. If Gallagher can build an entire comic repetoire on smashing the things, why can't Horsley nail one from time to time?

All that said, I'm officially recommending that the pro-life troops distance themselves from Mr. Horsley. Abortion? That's evil. Homosexuality? Satan's deviance. Watermelons and mules? A night out with the boys.

Bill Hicks once observed that people too far to the political right must be hiding a deep and dark secret: "When Jesse Helms dies...his wife'll be on CNN, saying over and over, 'I always wondered about his collection of little shoes.'"

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From Lagos, With Love

I enjoy getting spam email. I should clarify: I like spam from Nigeria. Sure they're outright scams, but they're irresistable, with tales of greed, death and unfair sackings. Whoever writes these should be considered for the next O. Henry Short Fiction Award. These writers are masters, so good in fact, that according to Salon magazine Americans lose $2 billion a year to Nigerian-based money scams.

I received one of these yesterday and, while no two letters are ever the same, they usually begin with a plea for your sympathetic help:

I am Barr. Donald Akintola Martins of the Martins & Associate Chamber, a legal consultant. I write to you this all-important mail wtih due sense of humanity and with some awareness that you will give it favorable consideration. This mail is written and intended to solicit your consent/assistance to be presented as next of kin to my Late Client, Eng. Smith who most unfortunatetly lost his life in the Hafun area of Somalia, East Africa following the December, 26, 2004/January tsunami waves that hit the Indian Ocean coastline of Somalia. May his gentle soul rest in peace.

The letter goes on to promise that if I pose as Mr. Smith's next of kin, I will be rewarded with half of his $8 million estate. Easy money, no? Not being one to turn away fortune, I decided to write back to this kind sir who had so generously thought of me in his time of need:

Dear Mr. Martin,

I am indeed interested in your proposition and would like to speak with you further. I hope we can enjoy a fruitful working relationship. At present, however, I must ask one small favor of you.

Yesterday I was out walking in the glen with my irish setter, Vermillion, when she suddenly took off through the trees after a wild pig.

"Vermillion," I called after her.

But the rascally pooch paid me no mind.

"Fucking dog," I muttered as I set off after her.

I must have walked for half the day, wandering hither and yon, calling for Vermillion and stopping periodically to crap in the underbrush. I walked so long and so far, in fact, that I'm now lost. I haven't the faintest notion of where I might be, which is where you come in.

If you will kindly come find me and help me back to my house I would be willing to help you defraud whatever system it is you're trying to defraud, even if that system is me. Hell, I'll even let you have a go with my wife. Just come get me.

Right now, I'm sitting under a tree, probably a box elder, but it could be a fir of some sort. Not much of a tree expert, if you must know the truth. The last place I recognized was the clearing where the old McDougal place used to be. That ought to give you a good start.

To be honest, I didn't really read much of your email, but those friends in need are friends indeed, right? Well, mate, it looks like we're both in a right tight pickle. Perhaps we can help each other.

See you soon, friend.

Aaron

_______________pic from Salon.com

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Chalhaesso

Mice and rats had the run of 1950s Korea. Schoolchildren were thus assigned, as homework, to rodent detail and were to bring the tails to school as proof of their kills. How's that for ingenuity? If only we could do the same for nuclear weapons on the peninsula.

I mention this because, in my previous post, I expressed my distaste for Korean groupthink. To be sure, the uniformity of this place can be dispiriting, but that same trait - coupled with a brawny profit motive - helped transform the country from a vermin-infested homework assignment into the world's tenth largest economy.

First, though, some background:

President Park Chung-Hee ascended to power in 1961 through a military coup and subsquently enacted a new constitution that allowed him to "suspend the freedom and rights of the people." It also removed limitations on the number of terms he was allowed to serve. And what if you disagreed with such policies? Park also instituted "emergency measures" making any criticism of the new constitution a crime. Dissenters, as Kim Dae-Jung learned, were punished severely. Park used this authority to push his policies of modernization for Korea: he ordered roads and ports and brought the Chaebols (conglomerates) along with him by giving them the contracts to do the building.

Lucky for Park, Koreans have an innate sense of the Three Musketeers. When they do something, they do it together and they throw their whole being into it - body, soul and mind. You have only to look at their protests, impeachments and World Cups to see that I'm right about this. Korea doesn't do things half-assedly, at least not insofar as gung-ho vigor is concerned.

In the sixties and seventies, however, Koreans had extra incentive to keep their mouths shut and hands busy. And that's exactly what they did. With hard work, long hours and their own brand of loyalty, the workers brought Korea out of the stone age and into the world economy. That same Uri mentality that dictates hairstyles and hobbies also helped Koreans work together for a goal greater than one person. The vision may have been Park's, but the success belongs to the people.

PJ O'Rourke, from the same 1987 article quoted previously, remarked on the local work ethic:

"Gianini and I tried to find the slums of Seoul, but the best we could do was a cramped, rough-hewn neighborhood with spotless, bicycle-wide streets. Every resident was working - hauling, stacking, hawking, welding, making things in sheds no larger than doghouses. Come back in a few years, and each shed will be another Hyundai Corporation. We felt like big, pale drones in the hive of worker bees."

But if Korea hasn't entirely lost its devotion to national progress it may be slowing shedding it. Employees, while still at the whims of bosses who demand long hours, now demand more time with their families, more private time for themselves, more time to browse porn sites on their work computers.

Koreans haven't exactly grown complacent, but they are beginning to relax and enjoy the luxuries they've earned. And you'd be told to get buggered if you asked schoolchildren to catch rats and mice instead of playing Warcraft and studying for the TOEIC test.





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Photo 1 by H. Edward Kim. National Geographic, September, 1975.
Photo 2 by Neil Mishalov

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Border Collies Wanted

I was rifling through an antique store with my grandfather a few years ago in Smalltown, Idaho when we ran into a Mennonite woman he apparently knew and with whom he chatted briefly. He and I then headed to the car.

"Wish I could remember who that was," he said when we were underway.

"Sure looked like you knew her," I said.

"Well, I think it was Patrick's wife," he said. "But all these Mennonite women look the same with their clothes on."

* * *

I spend a lot of time riding buses nowadays and there's no better place to consider the tides of society. Buses in Korea aren't the same cultural trainwreck in Korea as in the United States. Everyone rides public transportation here, traffic being impassable, and in riding you need only about fifteen minutes to see what's percolating in the public mind - which is to say, not much. Nevertheless, one of the chief concerns of these bus riders is the desire to look different from the other passengers. But not too different. This is Korea, afterall.

Homogeneity, the Confucian quality of sameness, is a virtue in Korea (though, I assure you, patience is not). The columnist PJ O'Rourke commented on it when he visited Seoul in 1987:

"...and I was thinking, "Oh, no, they really do all look alike," - the same Blackgama hair, the same high-boned pie-plate face, the same tea-stain complexion, the same sharp-focused look in 1 million identical anthracite eyes. They are a strange northern people who came to this mountain peninsula an ice age ago and have kept their bloodlines intact through a thousand invasions." ¹

Koreans are One, the same, together in everything and damn proud of it. Whereas in the West we use singular pronouns like "you" and especially "I," the Koreans make every effort to kill uri (we/our/us) through usage. Everything is uri: Uri Bank, uri country, uri Dokdo, though not, presumably, uri underpants. As such, Koreans are expected look, act and think exactly as the next person on the bus. Any obvious difference is eliminated through breeding and everyone looks the same with their clothes on.

But a claustrophobia has developed in the minds of younger Koreans. They're not sure this prefab system has much to recommend it. Unfortunately, their solution doesn't involve the removing clothes. Rather, many Korean women have taken to dying and perming their hair in rebellion. This is a double shame, really, first because Korean women are at their most fetching in a natural state (in all that implies) and, secondly, when one person does something in Korea, they're sure to be followed by a stampede of others. Individuality is acceptable provided you're not alone in it.

Korean adherence to all brands of Normal is pervasive: everyone gets married in the same wedding halls, takes the same honeymoon to Bali, buys apartments of the same design, and drives cars of the same color. Hobbies appear and disappear in waves as everyone and then no one takes them up. So do you think we could find a bowling alley last weekend? Hell, no. We were ten years late. We really must be the local wongda (outcast).

I'm reminded of one of Gary Larson's Far Side comics, where one sheep stands up among a grazing flock and declares, "We don't have to be just sheep!"

I'm waiting for someone to do that in Korea.


__________
¹ "Seoul Brothers," by PJ O'Rourke. From Holidays in Hell.

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The Hazards of Contrast

FUKUOKA, Japan - I'm sitting here wondering, as many Americans must when they visit Japan, if at least a few Japanese don't resent me for what the United States did to end World War II. Without getting into a strategic or politcal debate, we can all agree that bombing the place wrecked more than a few of their Sundays. Given the local senitments, though, most Japanese people would probably think that living in Korea is punishment enough for the sins of my country (if sins they be).

Korea, as I've mentioned here before, is to Japan what Mexico is to the USA: a ratty-ass collection of dark-skinned, uncultured shitkickers, good only for their food, films and as a low-cost shopping destination. Apparently, though, the Japanese and Americans don't realize - or don't care - that there has to be a human force behind these contributions to mankind, in this case a Korean or a Mexican.

No doubt some of you are now thinking that any comparison between Japan and Korea is specious at best. Japan is a much wealthier country and has been for longer than any of us have been around. Korea was a third world nation thirty years ago. Japan is a world power and has been for some time. Korea's brush with world domination came in being sacked by a new imperial force every week. But put all those differences aside. You can't really compare Japan and Korea because one is Japan and one is Korea.

You can't, but I can and I will.

__________
pics by Aaron

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Japan: Woman and Tranquility

Fukuoka is so damned quiet. Even on a weekday afternoon in the business district, with salarymen and secretaries and taxis bustling about, I could swear I was going deaf.

The place is serene, bordering on eerie, owing to an absence of car horns, squawking fruit vendors, banging construction, and yappy ajummas. Being ignorant about Japan, I have to assume that this quietude stems from the reserved nature of the Japanese. They're not screamers like the mothers of Long Island, New Jersey, and Korea. They don't lay on the horns like the Vietnamese. Hell, even the Japanese cicadas are more restrained in their buzzing.

What isn't quieter in Japan, however, is the knocking of the girls' high-heeled shoes on the sidewalk. Japanese girls cannot walk in those things. They look like knock-kneed drunkards, trying their best not to fall on their asses. I don't like the look of high-heels anyway - they make women look weak and vulnerable: what if they were to be chased by, say, a tiger? - but if you're going to wear them, at least learn how to walk so you don't look like a ninny. Japenese women, take note: Korean women walk in those shoes and maintain their grace.

In addition to locomotion, Korea has Japan whupped on the female front. There are far more beauties in Korea, where at every turn you'll encounter a knockout. That said, some laws hold true in all countries, such as the one governing the type of girls who work at Starbucks and those who work at Burger King.

_________
Pics by Aaron

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Loos of the World: Fukuoka

Let me know if you're planning to visit Fukuoka International Airport and I'll tell you where the bathrooms with the bidets are located. This won't be inconsequential if you'll be eating sushi on an August evening and it may save some fretting that the Fukuoka Airport doesn't have a transfer lounge with showers.

I mention this because I notice that, scrawled on the top of one of my notebook pages, are the words 'loperamide' and 'diarrhea,' meant for a Japanese pharmacist who spoke no English but, god bless her, taught me my first Japanese sentence: gary o imasu ("If I don't get something to cork this right now your tidy apothecary's shop is going to smell worse than a Forest Service outhouse.").

In principle, I've always been pro-bidet, but I've never owned one and they've thus been merely an abstraction, something the girlfriend claims we're going to buy before any other household appliance. A few more midsummer sushi meals, though, and she'll have me at the store with her, helping to select the blessed thing.

The woman has been right on occasion. A few weeks ago we went out for dinner in Seoul. I wanted sushi, as I often do. She said it's August, bad idea. We ate beef. So what's the first dinner I eat upon escaping her grasp? Yeah, raw fish.

Now I'm faced with the fact that Sweet Thing's been right about two things in the span of a month (though, given their connection, I'm tempted to give her just a point and a half) and we'll probably have to buy a bidet before we get that commercial-grade blender.

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Most Assuredly

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