Rumblings

One morning when I was fourteen years-old, I was jarred awake at five o'something A.M. by a shaking house and my naked stepfather who stood in my bedroom doorway yelling at me.

"Aaron, get over here," and adding when I failed to rouse myself with due haste, "goddamnit, it's an earthquake."

It's always taken more, however, than a violent act of God to send me running for the company of naked men - a lot more - and by the time I reached the doorway the quake was almost finished. But there we stood for a few seconds anyway as the house shook and shimmied all over its foundation. And then, just like that, it stopped and all was quiet again until the neighbor's dog set to barking.

My stepdad, thankfully, went and found his bathrobe and then turned on the TV in the living room. There on KGW was some pretty little news anchoress, all well-coifed and made-up like the producers had just that minute hauled her out of the pantry and set her in front of the camera.

"The reports are still coming in," she said, "but it seems the Portland area has just experienced an earthquake."

Seems?, I thought. What's she think that was, a horse fart? I sure as hell wanted someone to give me a good explanation for why I was being yanked awake by screaming naked men and nothing less than an earthquake was going to suffice.

The station then cut to a reporter somewhere out in the city - "on location," as though where you're sitting right now isn't "on location" - and he looked more human, like he'd just been hauled out of bed by a naked man and a shaking house. This fellow's name was Walden Kirsch, I think, and KGW always seemed to send him out on the most hazardous assignments, like an icy freeway where 18-wheelers would come skidding up and jack-knife right behind him. I always figured someone at Channel 8 had it in for that guy.

"Portland got an abrupt awakening this morning at approximately 5:27," Walden started. "But from where I stand there seems to be no visible damage. This place looks exactly like it did at 5:26."

And the news just kept breaking.

They eventually cut back to the studio and confirmed that Portland had indeed been through an earthquake, though the epicenter was actually down in the puckerbrush town of Scotts Mills. Still, the 5.6 magnitude meant that it had shaken my naked stepfather out of the shower and sent him running for my room. So sure enough, goddamnit, it was an earthquake - my first and, until Saturday at least, my only.

In fact, I wasn't even convinced by the first rumblings of this most recent one. I've been under the boot of a kinghell cold lately and attributed the movement of my chair to either the Nyquil or the fogbank rolling around inside my head. Just ask any cough syrup-drinking, suburban American kid - they've all been through an earthquake. Then I remembered that I hadn't taken any Nyquil and the building began to sway again.

That there's an earthquake, I thought to myself as I went to get the Nyquil. Strangely, an earthquake - like an orgasm or, I suppose, an enema - is a sensation that, once you've been through one, you always recognize. In the absence of DXM anyway.

This particular quake registered 4.8 on the Richter Scale (which was not, as you might imagine, named after Norman Vincent Peale) and centered in Gangwon Province on the east coast of Korea - or, as it's known internationally, the Coast of Japan. Given the structural standards of Korean buildings, I shudder to think what a larger quake - of, say, 4.9 - would do to the Seoul skyline and, more importantly, my own apartment building. So just to be safe, I'm standing naked in my doorway as you read this.

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Gifts That Keep On Giving

A personal and thoughtful gift is probably the worst thing you could give the average Korean person. Well, maybe not the worst. I suppose cholera or a kick to the groin would be less welcome than, let's say, the perfect cookie jar, but not by much. The only truly welcome gift for a birthday or anniversary or other big occasion in Korea is money, filthy lucre or cash on the barrelhead. Folks here are genuinely disappointed when they get a gift perfectly suited to them and only them. The upshot is that this makes gift-giving remarkably easy, if all too uninspired and impersonal. And the opening of gifts, as you might imagine, has lost any suspense it may ever have had, because - let's face it - the contents of all those envelopes isn't too hard to guess.

Owing to this local obsession with money, I've become progressively lazier and uncreative as a buyer of gifts. For my North American relatives, I do my shopping online and, as a result, they usually end up with another generic gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond, which ultimately isn't much different than just handing them an envelope full of cash. In fact, pegging the money to a certain store may be even worse. It sure beats the alternative, though - that is, sending holiday boxes of vaccum-packed dog shanks - and at least they can choose their own cookie jar.

But Na Young and I are headed to the States next month for a short visit and our trip will coincide with three family birthdays, so I'm again in the position of needing to find that "perfect gift" and, as I said, I'm hopelessly out of practice at this sport.

Now, I love books and reading. I try to get through at least two or three books a month; I make time every day to cuddle each of my books and let them know how special they are. I founded the first library in Korea. As you can guess, I also like to give books as gifts, but just because a person loves something doesn't mean that his love is shared by everyone else. A person who enjoys pornography, for example, shouldn't assume that his Grandma Edith will appreciate receiving the director's cut of Wayward Nurses, Vol. 14. Rather, the art of gift-giving requires that you consider the recipient's interests and personality and then select an item based on that consideration. Grandma Edith, to use my previous example, would probably be much happier with a DVD of Up & Cummers, Vol. 83, but it might take a few moments' thought on your part to know this. You can't, after all, just throw smut at your grandmother. You've got to put some thought into it.

Even if you know a person's interests, however, there's no guarantee that he'll like a book on that subject. A man's love of fly-fishing in no way indicates that you should buy him a copy of John McPhee's The Founding Fish. Similarly, an illiterate person may not enjoy a book about a woman who can't read. In my experience, though, everyone enjoys a book about themselves, which will make shopping for Gandhi or Napoleon Bonaparte one the most pain-free experiences of your life.

Suffice it to say, I wouldn't be writing this if I'd figured out what to buy for my Stateside family. No, I'd be basking in the knowledge that I had found just what they wanted, needed or, barring that, what was in the half-price Chinese import bin at E-Mart. As it is, I'm fighting the urge to visit giftcertificates.com and just buy a few Bed, Bath & Beyond cards. I hear they have some lovely cookie jars.

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Southbound & Down

In 1989, when I was ten years old, my mother wedged my younger sister and I and a couple cheap suitcases into her '86 Camaro and drove ten hours down Interstate-5 to Vacaville, California to visit my aunt's family who, because my aunt was an Air Force nurse, lived on Travis Air Force Base. Bush One was in the White House, gas was less than $1.00/gallon, my parents were recently divorced, I'd been forced to get glasses earlier that year, my San Francisco Giants lost to Oakland in the "Battle of the Bay" that October, and the Germans knocked out a certain wall and renovated Berlin.

The best of times, the worst of times. The most middling of times.

My mother - the hardest working woman in show business - was a nightshift nurse on the obstetrics ward of the local hospital where she brought into the world screaming kids who would eventually grow up, get ugly glasses, enjoy the curbs and gutters of shared custody and cheer losing causes. Working nights left her tired most of the time but you wouldn't have known it from the way she drove on this particular trip.

You would have been forgiven for thinking that the local posse was after us, because, in fact, they were. By the time we returned home to Salem, Oregon, my mother had amassed 43 tickets for speeding and fifteen for violations of her choice.

"You seem like a nice woman," one state trooper told her, "so I'll let you choose. I can cite you for speeding, tailgating, reckless endangerment or for your son's ugly glasses. Your choice."

On our drive home, crowds lined the interstate to cheer as we sped past, tailed by a line of riled "smokies," as my mom referred to them on her CB radio. My sister and I stood in the front seat, our heads out the T-top roof and my sister's pigtails flapping in the wind, waving at the adoring masses. Near Grants Pass, two brothers in blue polyester suits - Big Enos and Little Enos Burdette - offered my mother $80,000 to run blocker for an illegal load of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta. She declined, but by then her red Camaro had become an I-5 legend. My mom and the man who eventually became my stepfather have resisted pleas from the Smithsonian and the car now rests, restored and semi-retired, in an Oregon garage.

Amazingly enough, though, the drive itself was the least interesting part of that trip. In California, I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge for the first and only time, ate my first (vegetarian) Vietnamese food in Oakland and dove behind the car seat when I saw a guy with a mohawk in Berkeley. Quite a smorgasbord for a kid with big glasses from Salem, Oregon.

One morning - perhaps even the morning we left for our cannonball run back to Oregon - my uncle drove us over to the Travis airfield, filled with burly C-130 planes being loaded and heading off to Panama to topple Manuel Noriega, which US troops apparently did by blasting rock music at his compound 24/7. So in addition to rifles and MREs, those C-130s were probably being stocked with cassette copies of Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, another high point of America in the late '80s, much the dismay of mothers and dictators everywhere.

Watching the soldiers load those planes was the most memorable part of that trip for me, certainly more indelible than tofu wantons or easterly breezes across San Francisco Bay. My parents, even as they voted, were never what you'd call politically-minded, but I nevertheless have numerous memories of them trying to explain why the US was embroiled in Country X.

"Well," they'd say, with some hesitation, because they didn't know either, "the world will be safer without __________." Wherein I would insert Qaddafi, Noriega, Saddam, Milosevic or whoever ran Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Grenada, Lebanon, Iran or Idaho.

Of course, my position was certainly preferable to that of a kid in Beirut, Managua or Tripoli, where parents had to explain why, for better or for worse, US troops were coming ashore. Mine merely had to explain why they were leaving. All I had to do was watch them load up, move out and then I could go home and watch the invasion - with its "Welcome to the Jungle" soundtrack - on CNN or Good Morning, America. Knowing the good guys from the bad guys was always a lot easier when Slash and Axl Rose provided the backing music.

And so, here we are, seventeen years later. Another Bush is in the White House, embroiled in another war that started against a familiar face from my childhood. Gas is $2.50/gallon. My eyewear has improved only marginally. The Giants, even with a cranked up Barry Bonds, are hopeless. And that red Camaro is still in the family, but my mother no longer works nights and hasn't had a speeding ticket in at least fifteen years. Some things, thankfully, do change.

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Of Objective Boogers

This is getting out of hand.

In today's issue of the International Herald-Tribune, I counted at least seven articles or op-ed pieces - all of them scathing - on George W. Bush and what is now his war in Iraq. This number jumps toward ten if I include the letters to the editor and an article or two on the most recent outings of the FBI and CIA - balancing your checkbook - but the tone remains similarly negative.

Living on the precipice of Asia for five years, I've slowly come to look at the United States as a foreign country - albeit as the foreign country that issues my passport - more than as my own motherland. I read the news everyday - online, in addition to the IHT - but I long ago concluded that my view of American events is basically objective, and clearly lacking the subjectivity I'd absorb if I still lived in the States.

Here in Korea, I read the news: This, more or less, is what happened.

In the States, I would read the news and then, if I turned on the TV or radio, I'd be immediately ambushed by Hannity, Colmes and O'Reilly as I entered Scarborough Country: "This may or may not have happened, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you're going to die and the Mexicans will steal all your spatulas if we don't use Viagra to cure the bird flu. Melanie will be right back after these beer commercials with some creative ways to style your nose hair."

I simply mean that outside of the IHT op-ed page, I don't ingest much direct opinion with my my daily news. I don't have a TV. I don't read the pop pundits, as I call them (and you know who you are, Ann Coulter and Michael Moore). Or, as in most cases, I just don't care (Donald vs. Rosie). Further, my Korean language ability is shamefully poor, but even putting that aside, Northeast Asia has been surprisingly indifferent on issues like Iraq, for example. All of this leaves me to make up my own uninformed mind on a whole range of issues that, in other parts of the world, are downright contentious. Gauging overall American - and more broadly, Western - sentiment on such matters as Iraq (that subjectivity) has from my vantage point been a tough task.

But it's getting easier all the time. After 9/11, statistics showed that Bush had about a 90% approval rating in the States. Reading that, I could infer that folks were at least trying to like the guy or, more likely, were just scared shitless. But then those numbers settled back into toward a more normal 50% and I again found it hard to discern much from my cave in Korea. Even from here, though, "scared shitless" seemed to be the number one explanation for the lack of opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Now the statistical pendulum has swung off to the other extreme: Bush's poll numbers make clear that he'd be about as welcome in your home as Uncle Vernon, the incontinent alcoholic. In other words, even I can see that this guy is alone on the proverbial swingset, with only Bill Kristol and James K. Polk to give him a push once in a while. You've got to give Bush credit, though, because it takes a hell of an effort to be hated this much.

Right now, most American politicians - even the Republican faithful - are just trying to get as far away from Bush as possible, as schoolkids do with the kid who picks his nose. Before long, though, those same children, once so repelled, overcome their revulsion and just start beating on the poor nosepicker. So, while I'm no expert political strategist, I'd advise Bush to get that finger out of his nose, wash up, and start shaking hands - if anyone will touch him - because at this point, even kids in far-off school districts (me, for example) have gotten wind of his predilection for boogers. That's when you know it's gone too far, when even I know about it.

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Yaar, Blogger

File this one under "Blogger Done Me Wrong."

I was listening to an interview with Korea's preeminent blogger, Robert Koehler (of the Marmot's Hole), the other day and he mentioned using Blogger when he first started doing the blog shimmy back in ought-3. Amongst other words, I vaguely recall him using the word "amateur" in his descriptions - whether in regards to his own writing or to Blogger, I don't remember. After this evening, though, I believe it must have been the latter. And no, I'm not going to go listen to the interview again, check my sources, or follow-up. You people don't pay me enough to do all that running around.

For some weeks now, Blogger has been advertising the beta version of their new platform. To me, though, "beta" is code for "kiss it goodbye," because you know it's going to crash when you're halfway through writing your latest masterpiece. Plus, I had to sign up for a Google account in order to use the service and who needs another cursed internet account for which you'll just forget the password?

Well, today, they removed the "beta" mark of death from the 'update' button and I got suckered into upgrading. I even registered for Google, which means that Hu Jintao will probably be peaking into the bathroom window from now on.

Logging in for the first time, a dialogue box popped up that read: "you have thirty-two unread comments." Turns out, someone's been reading this cauldron of idiocy after all. In fact, two or three people have been reading. And commenting. And then saying "to hell with him" when their comments disappeared into the black hole of Bloggerdom. Here I thought my friends were just a pack of jackasses, saying "hey, dude, like your blog" but never actually reading the damn thing. While they may indeed be a pack of jackasses, they aren't liars: at least they were reading once a fortnight or so.

So to all of you who posted comments, I offer on behalf of Blogger a blanket apology. But you're not getting a refund. You don't pay me enough for that either.

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Sea If Care...

I generally avoid casting my political opinions about on this site. Tried it a few times and I never thought it worked out too well, nor is this bound to go any better. That said, a piece of news in today's papers was, to quote St. Paul, "so farkin' stupid that I damn near soiled myself." According to sources who know more than you and I, President Roh "If You Don't Like Me I'll Take My Ball and Go Home" Moo-Hyun of South Korea proposed to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last fall that they settle through compromise their dispute over the naming of the Sea of Japan/East Sea. Roh's suggestions (and bear in mind, this guy has over a 90% disapproval rating in South Korea)?

Sea of Peace
Sea of Friendship
Sea of Reconciliation

Elementary school kids will curse Roh on spelling test day if that last one goes through. The local media and Korean netizens (aka Napoleon Dynamite's brothers) are already cursing Roh for even suggesting that the body of water be called anything other than the East Sea, despite the fact that it is only directly east of the Korean peninsula. Korea, by the way, refers to the Yellow Sea as the West Sea and the East China Sea as the South Sea. Perhaps, to follow the logic of VANK and other such groups, we ought to rename these two seas as East Seas, as they are, afterall, east of China. Hell, let's rename the Sargasso Sea as an East Sea, too, because it is east of Florida.

Naming things after cardinal directions is - if you hadn't already guessed my feelings on the matter - ridiculous because they never seem to please anyone. Despite arguments to the contrary, I still point out that removing Japan would eliminate the Sea of Japan, as it would all become the Pacific Ocean. This sea, as the advert goes, is brought to you by Japan.

That the Japanese renamed the water - from East Sea - during their Colonial Adventure in Korea certainly has some bearing on the matter but doesn't change the fact that "East Sea" was and still is a bloody silly name. Should the Koreans wish to call it Donghae (East Sea) in their own language, that's fine by me. But just don't be expecting the rest of the world to come along so easily on international maps. Besides, most people outside the ROK couldn't care less, North Korea being far more pressing issue.

In the spirit of compromise, though, I sat down today and did some ruminatin' of my own on this matter. In the process, I came up with a few suggestions for new names for the East Sea of Japan. They are, in no particular order:

Sea of Distraction
Sea of Don't Make Me Stop This Car and Come Back There
Sea of Step Off, Bitch
Sea of Who the Hell Cares?

I'll let you know which one the Koreans and Japanese settle on. I vote for the latter.

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The Worst of 2006

For some reason, we've moved into a new year and I'm left to consider what might have been - but ultimately wasn't - last year. Sure, I got married; the Trailblazers got Brandon Roy and LeMarcus Aldridge in the draft; and Prince Svere Magnus of Norway was christened - by Bishop Ole Christian Kvarme, no less. But I know I didn't play as well as I should have in the World Baseball Classic, and I didn't beat Prince Albert II of Monaco to the North Pole - which means I'll only ever be the second reigning monarch to reach the North Pole - and Fidel relinquished power to Raul, not me. I sure hope 2007 brings better-tasting gimchi.

In the event that you can get the latest CBS Countdown to the New Year out of your head, here are a few of my favorite posts from 2006. Before you read, I want to assure you that there's no greater theme to the collection, nor are they particularly well-written, but they do put a proper perspective on 2006 as it passed through my innards.

Editorial Privilege

This Holiday Brought to You By Ex-Lax

Departures: Arthur McKenzie

Han Delta Disco

Seeds of Destruction

Return of the Dragon Lady

See-Through

Will Work for Rabies

Urine in the Afternoon

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