A Work in Progress

Thanks for the comments and well-wishes about the pending nuptuals.

Someone - commenting on my previous post - claimed that their wedding had been hijacked. If anyone has hijacked my wedding thus far, though, it's been me. Na Young went to the florist the other day to check prices (because I didn't like what was on offer as part of the wedding hall packages) and the florist was appropriately floored that I, the male, was worried about the flowers. Na Young had to explain that my concerns for this event know no limits.

Micromanagement: we do it best here at Idiots' Collective.

As for being creative - thanks, but perhaps you've forgotten that this is Korea, where creativity will get you locked in the booby hatch. Few can understand why I'm not giddy over the stained carpet, chipped paint decor of the local wedding halls (to say nothing of the ground chuck main course). I have ideas aplenty for this affair, of course - including a Prussian-themed circus with all the fixins - but, true to form, no one wants to hear them.

Read More

Plan of Attack

Front page news from Idiots' Collective this week: Na Young and I are now planning a wedding, our wedding. You heard it here first (unless, of course, you didn't).

With any luck, the ceremony itself will be a smoother affair than the planning of it (not that I've ever met anyone who had an easy time planning a wedding). I haven't been to a great number of weddings in Korea, but the majority of the ones I've seen have had about as much soul as Dick Cheney. As a result, I've been irritating Na Young to no end with my desire for something different or anything creative. She keeps reminding me that I'm in Korea. Point taken. But I refuse to give up so easily, so if anyone has experience in the Korean wedding department, please leave your suggestions below.

Read More

Refugees and Deer Urine

The offices of Idiots' Collective have been lacking in manpower lately - the guns, such as they are, have been unmanned. Get me a secretary, a researcher and a staff writer and I'll bring you daily updates. For now, though, you get what you pay for.

Needing the company of a better class of losers, Ed (from Juggertha's Hall) and I went over to the Seoul Club last weekend for Kang Chol-Hwan's lecture. Kang is the author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a memoir detailing his ten-year ordeal in Yodok, a North Korean prison camp. I'll leave the summarzing of the event to Ed because he's already got that covered on his site. but I do have a complaint about the cover charge for the event: 36,000 won (about $36US). I had hoped that a significant portion of this would be earmarked for, say, charities helping North Korean refugees. According to event organizers, though, we paid exactly what they'd paid to the Seoul Club in order to stage the event there.

Now, if I'd been the Seoul Club and someone came to me and said, "hey, we want to have a benefit dinner for North Korean refugees. Care to help?" I'd have just donated the space for the evening, or at least gone cut-rate for the sake of karma. At all events, I was irritated that I'd paid 36,000 won for a mediocre buffet spread when the subject was starving North Koreans.

Conscience, it'll get you every time.

Speaking of irritations, I noticed a new coffee shop near my house this week. The name? Buck's Pizz. No joke. I have to wonder if those Nork claims about the South being a Capitalist hell aren't true: "They don't even have good Korean green tea. They've been reduced to drinking deer urine. Let's give thanks to our Dear Leader." Why don't the proprietors of these businesses check out their names before ordering the neon? It's not like there's a shortage of foreigners roaming the streets of Seoul. Just grab one and say, "hey, how does this strike you? Would you drink Buck's Pizz coffee?" Simple enough, but if there's one thing Korea doesn't want, it's an foreigner's opinion, and so we're left to drink Coolpis peach juice and Gut yogurt.

Read More

The Fabled Return of a Lost Idiot

Another extended hiatus and, as usual, the customary excuses. I was in Oslo for the Nobel ceremony, but despite my groundbreaking work in the field of timewasting, I came away awardless (though I did receive "officially mad and meritorious props" - to use the jargon of the Academy - for my invention of new words). Just as well I didn't win, though. My mantelpiece is already packed end-to-end with awards and citations of years gone by. Emmy, Oscar, Fields Medal, third place in the fourth-grade armpit farting contest - you name it, I've probably won it. What the hell would I have done with one of those trinket Nobel medallions? Paperweight for my thesis on the Grim Dynamics of the Season of Impending Yule, I guess.

"So," my Canadian friend asked, "ixnay on the Nobel, eh?"

Brighter days are coming, though, because NBA training camp is officially underway, which means I'm happily facing another seven months of frustration and disappointment at the hands of the Portland Trailblazers. Zach Randolph's coming off microfracture knee surgery, Theo Ratliff has one good shoulder, Darius Miles is Darius Miles and most of the team can't even buy a beer. My only consolation is that being a Lakers fan would be even more depressing right now.

In other news, my girlfriend recently informed me that Johnny Cash's version of "Everybody Loves a Nut" is better than mine, to which I can only say, "what the hell you talkin' 'bout, woman?" Johnny Cash is a legend but let's face it: Even when he was alive, he was no Aaron McKenzie. Plus, he's dead and I'm not, so I reckon I could whip him in a songfest anyday of the week. Bring it on, Man in Black.

The whole world loves a weirdo.

Read More