HARUBBUGGLBUG

Fuck blogs today I'm posting about this strange land.
Oh yeah real blog post from Edie Finds a Corpse look at me being a huge fucking hypocrite.
So South Korea is a strange and arcane land as I said. While your opinion of South Korea might vary from land of hot pop stars to land of about-to-be-nuked-by-North-Korea the reality is this is actually the land of anarchy.
The second you get two wheels laws cease applying to you. I have seen motorcyclists make an illegal left turn to cut across the opposite lane of traffic to run up on the sidewalk and almost hit people.
All this to avoid one red light. And by "avoid" I mean "run without getting killed".
I recommend finding the biggest group of middle age women and always walking with them.
If they go a different direction well that's too bad.
If you were headed to work well I guess today's a sick day for you. You need to stay alive and the biggest threat to you not being dead in South Korea is traffic.
Middle age women have the uncanny ability to not get hit by cars and also obstruct traffic.
They are the screen between you and red concrete, basically.
So if you want a job in South Korea a lot of people will tell you a lot of shit like oh
make sure the hours are good
make sure your apartment has a working toilet
make sure you get paid on time
no fuck that. All that was so 1990s. The first thing you gotta ask is hey is it in a building where a lot of middle age women go for yoga or a co-op or something
because if the answer is no you don't want to work there because you can't follow a gaggle of them into the building to screen you from the people playing Crazy Taxi irl.
The second thing you might hear is how cheap shit is.
That is true. 1 year of internet was 240 dollars.
Total.
This internet is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 times faster down than American internet and 100-200 times faster up.
It's Google Fiber tier awesome.
If I can blink and the website isn't done loading 100% it's too slow.
I downloaded a 250 GB torrent to see how long it would take.
It took 2 hours.
Oh but it's not true about everything. Prepare to buy a bunch of bananas for 5 dollars.
Also bananas are like gold. In America you're charged per pound and you can tear off how many you want.
If you do that in Korea you get yelled at as I learned. Then they make you buy all of them.
There's a lady hawking the bananas at all times. Don't fuck with her.
You buy the bunch, so get a small bunch.
I mean short bananas.
Second issue: cellphone.
Hope you're sociable because without a Korean friend (and even with a Korean friend) that's like a 50/50 proposition.
I'm struggling to get one now and I have like 2 people helping me.
Third issue: holy fuck the lord is it humid here.
Fourth issue: a 5/10 in Korea is like a 7 or 8 out of 10 in America.
Prepare to be jaded and jaded fast.
A lot of people bitch about plastic surgery or whatever in Korea
and it's true they do get some procedures but whatever they're doing it's working for them.
Fifth issue: prepare to be a minor celebrity.
I live in Changwon which has a large western population.
By large I mean I've heard it's allegedly a few thousand people but I think the reality is closer to 250-300.
They don't see many of you.
I've head people ask to take selfies with me.
No fucking shit.
That was a common practice at a few schools I substituted at because I am that awesome but I didn't expect people on the street to do it.
Also prepare to get pulled into situations where they might want you to drink. If you are a recovering alcoholic don't come here.
You have to get good at drinking, too, because "know your limit" isn't part of the philosophy here. Learn how to nurse that one beer if you want to avoid being drunk 24/7.
Also there are no drinking laws. You can buy soju (read: rice vodka) at 7 AM on a Sunday and drink it in front of a cop in a child's park. No laws.
While I'm on the subject: soju isn't clearly labeled if you can't read Korean (and even if you can read those words) so you kind of have to know it's not water which I almost made that mistake once.
You'd think the price would be an indicator but you can buy a bottle that will get you fucked up for like 1,800 won. That's like 2 dollars.
And you can buy this at 7-11.
Basically what I'm trying to say is at any given night out in public there's a good chance someone will try to pump moonshine into you.
If you're new here and don't want to be drunk basically avoid anything in a glass bottle that isn't clearly coffee.
Sixth issue: don't go to Angel-in-Us Cafe.
If you're stupid like me you see "oh Korean knock off of Starbucks let's do it" if you're smart you'll see "oh, pretentious Starbucks knock off with angels and shit in it" and put the two together and realize a bagel and a regular hot coffee is going to run you about 10 entire dollars.
If you like Starbucks frappuccinos in those glass bottles because you're a white woman like I am come here because they're like a dollar.
Don't go into Starbucks though or prepare for sub-Angel Anus prices but not much better.
If you do like coffee go to the local coffee shop you fucking idiot because they're on literally every street corner. Not only will it be better some hot Asian girl will melt actual fresh chocolate into your coffee if you tell her to and it'll be like 3 bucks.
She will make the hell out of that coffee.
Seventh issue: Bread doesn't fit in toasters
Eighth issue: who the fuck designed this shit here why doesn't bread fit in toasters
Ninth issue: Prepare for no safety code. You can just wander into construction sites and there's no man that can stop you.
Tenth issue: in general no man can stop you. There are no laws.
I'm not entirely sure murder isn't legal here. I think just everyone is too polite to murder but if you wanted to you could.
Eleventh issue: there are no cops. When you see a cop you see 50 of them in like a parade. What are they doing? Getting yelled at by drunk Russians, obviously.
But as I said previously there's no law against public drunkenness so mostly they just stand there.
Also yeah 2 of my classes got cancelled again.
Fucking sweet.
Anyway that's my update today fuck off everyone

COCK

Here's me when I found out my 2 hour class was cancelled today:

But then hold on: not allowed to leave early.

But you know that's ok because this gives me ample time to get this bullshit out of the way before Friiiiiday night starts.
So let's do Dear Abby since we did Dear Annie last time. Gotta finish our rounds I figure.

DEAR ABBY: I have been seeing my boyfriend for five months. He still has some of his ex-girlfriend's lingerie in his dresser.

 Wear it for him.
He's hoping to do some fucked up shit while you pretend to be his ex-girlfriend so he can work out some unresolved issues.
I feel a good girlfriend would help a brother out.

Would it be inappropriate for me to throw away these "trinkets" without consulting him?  

He probably just wants to be pegged while wearing them.
What a homo.

DEAR ABBY: I was recently told by a neighbor that if he wasn't married, he would make a pass at me. 

Yeah man bitches will do that in this country and not tell you.
Hey I have a boyfriend is that ok
fucking I dunno what's he like
oh he's in a gang
nope.jpg.avi
that's a true story.

DEAR ABBY: I met a guy four months ago. Our relationship is new and pretty casual for the most part. We like each other's company and spend nights together, but when we're intimate, he keeps his clothes on -- boxers and all. He is only 26, but he has told me about past relationships, so I know he has had experience.
Over the past two years he has lost almost 100 pounds. He looks great now -- healthy and toned. I have seen him get in and out of the shower. (I noticed a little excess skin on his stomach, but not much.) It's really weird. I don't feel comfortable taking my own clothes off when he doesn't.
This isn't exactly a deal breaker for me, as I obviously am attracted to him. I just would like him to be comfortable with me. Should I address this with him, and if so, how? Or should I just leave it be for now? -- AWKWARD SITUATION IN GEORGIA

lol Georgia
kindly tell your cousin to put on a bathrobe and I'll tell you what you should do.
What you should do is
I have absolutely no fucking idea. Who cares? In the real of problems in the world this somehow ranks below my current biggest problem which is there are crumbs in the kitchen I have to Swiffer up tonight.
It must be tonight or the cockroaches will return.
I have spent a great deal of time and effort and some money purging the filth from the apartment.

DEAR ABBY: I met a guy online. We have been dating for some time now. We have a wonderful connection and have our dates on Skype. The problem is, we have never met in person.
Every time we plan on meeting, he shuts up for a time, isn't reachable, then suddenly reappears and makes excuses, asking me to forgive him and plan another meeting. Should I still believe this will happen anytime soon? -- LEFT HANGING IN NAIROBI

They have the internet in Nairobi?
Listen, baby, get on an airplane and come here. I'll take care of you.

DEAR ABBY: Lately I have been having problems with my live-in boyfriend, "Ethan." We fight about everything, and he refuses to admit when he's wrong. Ethan has been sleeping on the couch for a week waiting for me to take the first step and reconcile.
He isn't working and I am, and that is probably what has him so mad. I pay all the bills, and he thinks I feel superior because I'm bringing in money and he's not.
We argue day and night, swear and scream at each other, and he does not appreciate everything I'm doing so we can survive. I have two daughters, he has one, and I'm supporting all of us.

Top lel
Sounds like
sounds like you're pretty fucked.

Do you think it's a good idea for us to have a baby? Ethan is desperate for a child with me

Do I think it's a good idea for you to have a baby?
No I don't.
In fact I think you should have your existing children taken from you and airlifted to Africa to be raised by gorillas.
They'd probably have a better chance at a normal life.
The fact you even need help making a serious decision like that tells me you're not emotionally responsible enough to do it and that's really shocking considering the fact you already have two children.
The other amazing thing is your boyfriend is somehow less responsible than you.

DEAR MARY JANE: Not only do I think it's not a good idea, but I think it's a terrible idea. Babies are expensive, and you're already carrying a heavy load. I suspect that Ethan thinks a baby will fix what's wrong in your relationship, but he's wrong. Don't do it! It would be a huge mistake.

At least Abby got the right idea.
Not passionate enough of a response but ok.

DEAR ABBY: I have an attractive friend who was bypassed for a front-office promotion. "Miranda" is pleasant, clean, efficient, energetic and had the same qualifications as the individual who was promoted. A management team member confided that the reason for Miranda's lack of advancement "might" be due to the numerous tattoos -- difficult to cover -- on her arms and wrists, which the manager said isn't the image the business wants to convey.
Is this discrimination?

Yeah totally. You're not allowed to discriminate just because she's retarded.
God in my brain I can hear how this bitch asked this question.
"Is this, like, discrimination?" with too much upward inflection her voice.
God I want to murder her.

I think it's unfair because Miranda is a good worker. She keeps asking me if I have any ideas why she was bypassed. Should I tell her? I don't want to violate the manager's faith in my confidentiality, even though I will be retiring soon.

The corporate image doesn't include prostitutes with finger tattoos and tongue piercings.
Sadly.
Anyway I am done with this bullshit
fuck blogs
I'm going to go buy bread and snacks then I'm going home and playing video games.

FUCK

Sorry I've been busy with things and stuff.
Work could be an excuse but that's really just 8 hours a day.
The real excuse is the Steam sale and vidya gayms.
Also like
going out sometimes
but not too often because let's not go crazy, ok.
Anyway let's do DEAR ANNIE.

Dear Annie: Please print my pet peeve. I am a senior citizen and dislike the terms used by waitresses, waiters and others serving the public. I feel that I'm being patronized when they call me, "Sweetie," "Honey," "Darlin'," "Angel," etc. These words are not endearing and make me want to decrease my tip.
"May I take your order, please?" is all that is necessary. If you know my name, use it. Otherwise, please stop speaking to me as if I were 5 years old. — B. 

I'd like to point out the letter above this that I skipped is about a veteran with PTSD.
Talk about a jump in seriousness of the problem. This guy might be trying not to freak out and murder everyone around him but meanwhile, you know, diner waitresses say shit you don't like.
Like if it bothers you that fucking much don't go there. Go to McDonald's where they don't say shit.
Or hell come to Korea where there's a weird BDSM vibe. The waitresses won't even speak to you unless spoken to first.

Dear Annie: A co-worker of mine sent a wedding "Save the Date" card addressed only to me. I've been married for eight years. When the invitation came, my name was the only one on the envelope, and the response card was already filled out, marked for one person attending. Obviously, my husband is not invited. After speaking to a few other co-workers, I realized I was not the only one. All of the other invitations were the same: no spouses.
My husband has decided it is too awkward for him to attend this wedding.
The consensus among my co-workers is that this is quite rude, and a lot of people's feelings have been hurt. The bride is only 24. She's been here a year, and I have to continue working with her. I'm not sure how to proceed. What should I do? — Minus One

lol weddings
white girl getting to be a princess no one's feelings matter

Dear Annie: I have been married for four years. In that time, we have split up twice, and it wasn't pretty either time. We have kids together. I pushed getting married when I became pregnant at 19. Then he claimed to fall out of love with me, stopped coming home after work and began treating me like his maid. So I left and took our child. He followed me and swore he'd do better. The second time we split, we fought so much that things were being thrown, and our throats were sore from screaming at each other. For the (now two) kids' sake, I said we can't keep fighting and left again.
Here's the problem now. While we were separated, I fell deeply in love with a married man.

Now that you're 24 you're so much fucking wiser.
I'm glad children are injected into this situation.
So let me see if I have assessed this situation correctly:
pregnant at 19 so you push him into a marriage he's obviously not ready for because he's a fucking idiot and 21
in 4 brief years of marriage you've split up twice
started an affair with a married man
oh but wait it's not "we have a kid" it's "we have kids" so this mistake has been repeated more than once--

We would talk about our troubled lives and build each other up. Every time I see him, the feeling is like thunder in my heart. But for the sake of our marriages and our children, we went back to our spouses. That was mainly his choice, and although I hung on his every word with disappointment, I agreed. It's been a year since my husband and I reconciled, and I stopped speaking to the other man. But I wake up with him on my mind, and he's in my thoughts 24/7. What's wrong with me?

The problem is you're stupid.

Dear Annie: People seem to have difficulty unfriending others on Facebook. I'd like to share with your readers how easy it is to avoid that.
You can limit Facebook friends by making some friends "acquaintances." You can elect to share posts with "friends except acquaintances." That way, not everyone will see what you post, but the people in your network won't know whether they are "friends" or "acquaintances," and there won't be any hurt feelings.
You also don't have to "unfriend" someone you aren't that close to. There are other categories, as well. I have a special list called "family." I think sometimes Facebook users are too quick to add everyone who asks to their "friend" list. I also believe it is a good idea when posting pictures of kids to make sure they are not tagged "public" so that you limit who can see them. — Facebook Extraordinaire 

Orrr you could do what I do: add everyone then never use Facebook.
Fuck social media.
I mean who the fuck thinks anyone gives a shit about you going to the store?
CHECK OUT THIS DINNER I BOUGHT LOL
literally 0 people care.
 I'm living halfway across the planet which is a lot more fucking interesting than your dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Know how many Facebook posts I've made about it?
FUCKING ZERO.

Dear F.E.: Many people don't bother looking into the more complicated aspects of using Facebook and other social media sites, but it's worth the extra effort to avoid unpleasantness down the road. Thanks for your expertise.

"Thank you for your expertise on this incredibly useless subject."
One day someone will thank me for my expertise on the Elder Scrolls plot or the background fluff to Warhammer.

Dear Annie: The reader from "Baton Rouge, La.," said she wishes she could bottle the innocence she enjoyed on TV back in the 1950s. Well, this innocence has been bottled, so to speak. 

Yeah those were simpler times when people were more innocent.
Remember that episode of Gunsmoke where Matt Dillon had to solve a rape and murder?
Or that episode of The Untouchables where Elliot Ness ended an opium ring by setting their warehouse on fire and mowing them all down with a Thompson submachine gun?
Simpler, innocent times.
Or the entirety of the show "The Westerner"?
Innocent times.
No, stupid, what you remember was when you personally didn't know as much. Times were never more or less innocent than they are now. It's just you were less aware of how shit life is.
See I'm in a unique position. I watched the TV my parents watched but unlike most people I genuinely enjoy the TV they watched so I get a rare perspective of being a modern person but I still know a lot about the TV of yore and I can tell you objectively it was no different than TV today.
Sure they might not have shown as much gore or sex but it was all implied.
If not showing it constitutes innocence then I'd call you a bit of a hypocrite because clearly the idea is there and we're just adhering to some sort of bizarre "don't ask, don't tell" policy that doesn't confront any of the underlying issues.
I think TV was better back then from a purely storytelling perspective. Most of the stories relied on the viewer actually thinking or knowing the first thing about anything.
But I would hardly call it a more innocent time.
The Twilight Zone's weird, schizophrenic paranoia about communism--
yeah TV was definitely more interesting back then.
You can view all shows from the 1950s and 60s as a moral play. The eternal tug of war between our own existential crisis of life in a post-WW2 society with its increasing technology and social obligations and the enemy from without that is communism and the average, middle class American white man in the middle.
Why yes I did write a thesis on this in college and this is my one chance to shoehorn it into something I did after college.
In fact it was published, thank you.

I loved the television shows of the '50s, and a lot of them are now available on DVD and on some of the cable TV stations. I regularly watch "Leave It to Beaver," "My Favorite Martian" and "Mr. Ed." Someday I want to buy "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" and "The Patty Duke Show."
If she does not have access to cable TV stations that run old TV shows, she can easily pick up DVDs from local stores or online and give them to her grandchildren. — Schenectady, N.Y. 

Yeah I conveniently skirted that issue.
Much like any other time in history most of any media you can consume is shit.
I forget how I pulled that intellectual cartwheel in my paper. I seem to recall finding some kind of research that says most TV shows don't last more than a season and so therefore are just background noise in the greater point I'm trying to make, like a great song on a poorly tuned radio station.
I'm not sure why I'm making so many similes today.

Dear Annie. A young female member of my family has gotten fat, and I asked her the reason for the change. Now she won't speak to me. Everyone says I made a mistake, because no one should ever ask a woman why she is obese. I care about this young woman, and that is why I put the question to her. I don't want her to grow as big as another member of my family, that's all. — Concerned Old Man in West Hills 

Man I fucking love hearing fat Americans bitch about their persecution now.
Come live in my world for five minutes if you want to see real fat persecution.
You're the majority in America. No one cares if you're fat because everyone is fat.
Come to South Korea and hear how people talk about fat people here.
Also America has the benefit of that American independence. In Korea it's considered a moral obligation to do right by your society and if you're fat you're a burden.
So not only are you disgusting and lacking in self control you're possibly a bad person too.
Fat people in America, to me, are like Christians whining about persecution.
YOU ARE THE FUCKING MAJORITY. YOU CAN'T BE PERSECUTED.
I also discovered I still need to check my privilege in South Korea.
You know that was going to be a thing I could use when one of these snowflakes get uppity.
"Oh well I lived in a country where white people were a minority" but in fact most South Koreans consider Koreans and Americans white and that's kind of the end of it.
Koreans, Americans, English people, Australians (they don't really differentiate the rest of the English speaking world as a different country), most of Western Europe (not former Commie nations) and sometimes Chinese people are white.
This does create an interesting situation where black Americans are white.
Basically in South Korea the "enemy without" is SE Asians, Indians and sometimes Japanese people.
You can see how they treat people, too.
Like if I go to Daiso people are friendly.
I might be a foreigner but I'm a productive foreigner doing an important job.
Really, I work hard, I'm educated so I'm just like them.
But if you're Indian or Filipino?
You can see the change in behavior.

Dear Annie: I have two adult daughters, both married now. "Beth" lives nearby, but "Gina" moved across the country.
Beth was diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder when she was in her early 20s. I think she suffered from it during childhood, but was undiagnosed. When they were children, I spent a great deal of time trying to calm Beth down and was aware that Gina did not get the same degree of attention. I tried to make up for it by doing things with Gina outside of the house. I became her Brownie troop leader and went on her class field trips. I made it my business to see that we had calm times together. 

I'm trying to imagine how the issue of ADHD would go down here.
I think it's safe to say they wouldn't consider it a real issue.

Dear Annie: I would like to respond to "Different Gods," the Pagan who doesn't want to attend church with her boyfriend's family at Christmas. 

Lol snowflake syndrome ahoy
We all know the hateful followers of the corpse god are just worshiping Aten under a different name anyway so you might as well go and pay your dues to the Sun Disc in the weirdest, most debased and alien way possible.
That was a point I tried to make to a Korean friend last weekend.
Like hey do you think it's kind of a problem you've replaced a lot of your traditional views with ours and your traditional gods are now anime caricatures to sell Tae Kwon Do lessons to children?
He kind of agreed with me but the problem as I saw it was he hadn't thought of that before.
This was after there was an attempted conversion at a park.
I swear I've run into more religious people trying to convert me here than in America.
I guess in America they already assume you're a Christer but here there's a good chance you're some form of heathen.

 I have been a practicing pagan for 30 years. Though I am devoted to my religion, I am still able to celebrate with family and friends. Holidays are about the season, the sharing and the joy in being alive. "Different Gods" should embrace the holidays as a way to show her love for her boyfriend and his family. Maybe then he might be more interested in attending some pagan festivals.

No, she's a girl and doing it for attention instead of some genuine philosophical view she holds so I wouldn't worry too much about this.
Or maybe I'm a massive hypocrite because I learned in years past the school I work for was unaware how important Christmas was (usually) to Westerners so they didn't strictly get it off
now it's like a few days off and I was like YEAH MAN THAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO US WESTERNERS
APPARENTLY
I NEVER MADE A BIG DEAL OF IT EXCEPT WHEN I WAS LITTLE BUT YOU KNOW A DAY OFF IS A DAY OFF

Dear Annie: I sent my children to a Christian school so they could get a quality education along with faith and good values. Sadly, it hasn't been the experience I was wishing for. This school has more bullying than a public school.  

>good values
>Christianity
choose one

Bullying is not just saying horrible things to each other or hitting. It also is being left out and not feeling welcome. Kids at this school who are not sports stars or whose families don't have money are outsiders. The saddest part is that it is not only the students. There are also parents who refuse to acknowledge the less well-off parents at school events.
Many children have transferred out of this school because of the bullying.
I was taught that you treat others how you want to be treated. Each child is an individual and should be respected as such. I am sure other parents have these same concerns, but no one speaks up. I ask that all parents set a good example for their children and pay attention to what they may or may not be doing. Is your child being a bully? Are you teaching them to judge others by what they look like or how much money they have? Is this your school? — Sad Parent in Nebraska Dear Nebraska: No school comes with a guarantee that the behavior of the parents and children will be exemplary. Bullying occurs everywhere. It is important that you teach your child how to deal with intimidating behavior from others and that school administrators and teachers are aware of the problem so they can address it.

Yeah
turn the other cheek.
Puss.
Look just because you're weak doesn't mean you need to instill that into your children.

Dear Annie: My husband and I are both in our 60s and have had a mutually loving and enjoyable sex life. We were intimate once or twice a week. Until now.
"Bill" recently was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and we have elected to do nothing aggressive. The doctor suggested "dutiful watching." Bill has some erectile dysfunction, and so he has all but eliminated sex from our bedroom. What used to be once a week is now less than once a month.
All I need is the cuddling we used to have and the touching and caressing. But I can barely get him to hold my hand. Sometimes, I wake up during the night and find that Bill is also awake. But he won't respond to my sweet caresses.
Bill refuses to talk about it. How do I assure him that I love him from the inside out? I don't care if we don't have sex. I just want the affection he used to show. — Sleepless in Seattle 

THE MAN HAS CANCER LET HIM FUCKING HAVE SOME SPACE
Bill, man, I say Lone Wolf it. Just go into the woods in a few months.

Dear Annie: Thanks for printing the letter from "Saddened." I am so relieved to know I am not the only husband with the same dilemma. It's hard for a male to confess he has these feelings and needs without sounding like a nag. I wish there was an answer.
Everything the writer said is the same at my home, including my deep love for my very uninterested wife of 44 years. I would show her this column, but it would only start tears. If she would just initiate holding hands or give me an occasional kiss, that would be so cool. I know she truly loves me, but she feels no need for physical intimacy. — O. 

"That would be so cool"?
You've been married for 44 years. Can you try not sounding like a 12 year old?
Also your uninterested wife?
More like uninteresting wife. Your own fault for marrying a boring cow with a heart of granite.
Emotionally needy man hooks up with withholding ice queen.
Sounds like a Lifetime special.

Dear Annie: I had to respond to "Not a Prude" and "Another Woman Speaking Out," who said they are disgusted with the appearance of females on national news programs wearing low-cut blouses and short dresses. All of my male friends and I have our own opinion on this subject.
There is nothing more attractive and sexy than a smart, knowledgeable professional female in today's business environment.
If that female happens to be good-looking with a nice figure and great legs, it is an asset she needs to use. I suspect most of us guys would not watch a news program if the women, regardless of their abilities, were fat and ugly or wore only long pants and suit jackets. That's just the way it is. — Bob in North Carolina 

>2014
>attractive women in the news
>watching the news
what is happening
Dude even Korea can't get hot women on the news.
This is a country of 7s and 8s.
Can't get one 8 on the news.
I walk by like 20 on my way to work in a given day.
I think it's safe to say news casting, collectively, needs to get its fucking act together.

Dear Bob: Well, we give you points for honesty, but your attitude is the very definition of sexist. Women in the media are role models for young girls and should look professional — just like the men. Preferring a newscast that presents women as sex symbols indicates a mindset that hasn't evolved since the 1950s. 

Oh yeah some vacuous slut just reading a teleprompter is a role model. If my daughter took that as a role model I'd fucking kill her.
I WOULD MURDER MY CHILD.

Women have spent decades trying to banish such old-fashioned thinking. 

Yeah the fucking hypocrites.
Don't look at my tits and ass even if they're on full display and I have writing on my ass but if Captain America goes shirtless that's just some good old fashioned fun.
Fuck off all of you.
Have you heard about this Anita Sar--Keesian something bitch?
She's whining about video games.
Really she's just stealing peoples' money but she's also bitching about video games--
because Tumblr feminists have identified this as more of a problem than rape in India or female illiteracy in the Middle East and Africa--
And her latest complaint is there aren't enough female protagonists in gaming.
By sheer coincidence, I'm sure, one of the things you could vote for on the Steam sale is "games with female protagonists" and that has been an option for like 3 days and it's always different games.
But anyway, like, if that's such a problem for you how about you make a video game with a female protagonist.
Most games you can make your own character anyway.
Make it a bitch if it's that much of a problem.
I usually do.
In fact when given the choice I always do.

Today's parents would not appreciate others judging their daughters' professional capabilities by whether they also are eye candy. 

I would be.
Because I know. People like pretty people.
I'd say oh good
at least she won't be checked by that.

The fact that some women are willing to debase themselves in order to be hired and admired by men like you does not make it appropriate or acceptable and only underscores the pressure many women still feel to conform to such outdated attitudes. 

Debase themselves?
Are you joking?
The news is a fucking joke anyway. It's entertainment.
No one wants to be entertained by an ugly bitch.
And if you are naive enough to think the news is serious or this isn't the case then you probably shouldn't be in a position to offer other people advice.
They're looking for worldly people who won't piss up their own nose and I'm noticing a dangerous pattern of that not happening with you, Annie.
Does it occur to anyone that you can turn a profit on some of these Steam sale games by buying them, letting them idle while you do something then selling the trading cards?
I just made 37 cents selling duplicate cards I have from "Long Live the Queen".
Long Live the Queen, incidentally, looks like a game for faggots or pedophiles but is in fact a simulation of what it would be like to be Machiavelli.
This company has a bad habit of doing that.
Oh this game?
Yeah looks like an anime game for 6 year old girls but is actually a cutthroat stock market simulator.
Thanks for that.
Now I get to explain to all my friends why I'm not actually gay.
Long Live the Queen?
Oh you have to raise an underage girl who has no parental guidance to be queen?
I'm sure that involves a lot of molestation you fucking ped
Yeah you'd think that until you're negotiating royal houses trying to kill her and war and civil war and peasant uprisings and plots to have her assassinated.
Suddenly it's like no time for molestation bitch you gotta take lessons in foreign policy immediately because that diplomat from the country stronger than ours is coming and I can't have you sassing off.
It is kinda bullshit though because sometimes you'll get skill checked in a category you didn't expect and the only way to prevent that is to have that happen and then know it's coming so you can avoid it.
The one especially egregious example that stands out to my mind is a box of poisoned chocolates halfway through the game where, if you don't have her trained in production or trade, poison, dogs or divination she'll just pop one in her mouth and keel over.
The ridiculous thing is teaching her about dogs is useless as far as I know because that's the only time it comes up.
I've never trained her high enough in poison to stop her from dying so your options are divination or production + trade and there are other production + trade checks so I hope you trained that early on or you're kinda fucked now.
Like how am I supposed to guess she was going to get a box of poison chocolates and without the trade skill she'll just eat them?
If there was a prompt I could have told her not to eat it because I'm paranoid enough an hour into this game to just assume they're poison.
Yeah good game otherwise.
If they made a sequel I'd suggest maybe less bullshit random skill checks and maybe have you raise the loli for more than a year.
It's less satisfying getting her from year 14-15 and then just have her become queen.
It'd be way better to take her at like 7 and then end at 15 so that way I can fully appreciate the Machiavellian nightmare I've created.
Anyway what was I talking about?
Oh I inadvertently discovered the greatest way to make toast recently.
Bread here is longer than toasters so I end up putting it on a low setting and putting it both ends in for twice as long
goddamn that's good toast.
Crispy and toasty with no burn.
And people speculated I'd have been starved by now.
Fuck anyway I gotta go.
Want to play vidya before work.

OH BOY

So I've been living in South Korea for a month and I haven't gotten my regular dose of insane white girls because of it.
Instead I get my daily of Korean insanity.
I dunno girls here seem saner over all. They just carry their intensely homsexual dogs in slings like the dogs are little babies.
At least this doesn't come from them.
How do I know this?
When was the last blog you saw in Korean?
Defense rests.

STICKY POST: About Me, Policies, Other Stuff

You know you're in for quality reading when your blog has a post about policy making and isn't related to what the fuck it is your government is doing.

I'm M, or Marwen, but I'll probably remember to answer to "M" more often. You'll see other names pop up places from people, but these are the tags I'd rather people use.

You'll probably remember to answer to M?
If I'm posting on your blog (har har not gonna happen) I'm probably addressing you, dipshit.

I'm mid-twenties, Canadian, queer, single, cis-female, Gifted, ASD, and possess the pure joy that is MDD (major depressive disorder) for which I am in treatment, and a fun case of PTSD.

You know what gets me about these people? They'll bitch about you labeling them but then their entire life is spent endlessly affixing labels to themselves. It's part of the special snowflake disorder. You can't just be a fucking person. You have to be special and unique and you can do that by saying you're Canadian.

I'm also a polytheistic pagan of a private bent, which is to say I am religious, I don't talk about it in specifics very often, and you wouldn't recognize my gods if you met them. 

... Have I reviewed this blog before?
Or is it another one of these?

Which is, I think, all of the necessary warning labels: if you've a particular objection to any of the above, you might want to toddle away. 

I object to you being Canadian.

I'm a writer, and have a BA with a double-major in English and History. I write original stuff, but I keep that kind of locked up on an outside chance of publication. I do a lot of secondary world fiction, which means a lot of worldbuilding, especially since being a history major with an interest in anthropology/etc makes one very picky about such things. I have, at this count, more than half-a-dozen completely secondary worlds, along with a couple of urban fantasy worlds; it's crowded in my brain. 

Sounds like a bunch of shit.

Additionally, I work with tarot, and I do a monthly three-card draw, and am also available to do readings with one of my three decks (7$CAD) or from all three interacting (16$CAD) month-round.

Do you know what 7 Canadian dollars would buy you in South Korea?
It's like 1950s pricing here. That's a ludicrous amount of money to piss away.
You could buy like a week's groceries, a taxi ride to get it back to your apartment and still have enough money left over to go to the movies and buy a popcorn after.
Speaking of, here's my first picture from Korea.
A great picture of the cityscape or something?
No fuck that look at how faggoty this dog is.

- I have a general blanket "dark and ugly content" warning. That means that dark and ugly shit is under the cut, and that it's designed to be disturbing, caveat lector; I'll use this warning when a) being more specific would wreck the story and/or b) when I'm really not sure how to warn for what's there, but am pretty damn sure it's going to be distressing

- I'll generally warn for non-con, under-sexual-maturity*, graphic harm done to the human body
Bitch I read Warhammer books I think whatever you can cook up as "dark and ugly" pales into insignificance. 
Also in my down time that isn't the weekend I've gotten back into Skyrim and I've modded the game to be an apocalyptic nightmare of difficulty and maddening survivalism.

However you are at all times welcome to email me and ask whether your trigger is in a fic. I don't care if it's clowns, rape, daffodils or haircuts, you don't have to explain all about why, all you have to do is send me an email or a PM saying "does X fic contain Y?" and I will say "yes, it contains Y" or "no, it does not contain Y" or, in rare cases " . . . possibly. Does [explains situation as delicately as possible] count as Y? If so, yes, if not, no." 

You know this whole trigger warning thing stemmed from some kinda psycho
ylogy convention that was being attended by victims and they decided it would probably be polite to warn the rape victims that what they're talking about might trigger some kind of flashback. This isn't supposed to be you attempting to monopolize my ability to speak with your incredibly sensitive feelings.
Does anyone remember that blog where there was a trigger warning for a picture of a gun but the picture was so huge there was almost no conceivable way to have the trigger on screen without at least part of the gun on screen too?
To me that summarizes this shit perfectly. Like that's all you have to know.
Also of course in her attempt to placate all of her childish women reading her blog (all none of them) all entries are hidden beneath cuts so it makes actually predicting what's "offensive" and what's banal nonsense impossible.
You might as well not have any cuts at all since it's all just hidden beneath the same bullshit.
You want a trigger warning?
Here's my trigger warning:
grow the fuck up.

- it maintains no real traceable connection to him as an actual person, but Bucky's tumblr-persona gains a reputation as "this guy who mostly reblogs art, history, some news and random photographs, and every so often goes into a truly epic rant".

Yeah this is the character from Captain America branded the "Winter Soldier" who fought Hitler and then was kidnapped by super Nazis, had his arm turned into a robot and was brainwashed to fight against Captain America.
I don't think this guy would have a tumblr.
This is literally the dumbest shit I've ever seen. These aren't complicated characters.
Captain America is free as fuck. That's the entire character.

Maybe more later. I should do some housework.

Yeah maybe stick to that.

Also oh wow do I have a bad knee-jerk reaction right now to the implication that complex trauma shit is a "stage" that can be "moved past" and does that ever mean that I need to stop trawling my network and cut down on the tumblrs I elect to read. 

Look I know being Canadian is impossible to move past but you can get over trauma. You don't have to spend your entire life as a victim.
I know feminism tells you otherwise and simply by being born with a twat you're a victim and oppressed and raped daily but that's not actually true.

4. Two people (one anonymous, the other knows who zie is) were sweet enough to send me DW points! So now I have all my icons back for six months or so. Wheee. *spins* OH I CAN UPLOAD MORE NOW. 

Who zie is get the fuck out.
Christ all mighty.

2. The baby is almost walking. I want her to walk so bad. She's already as fast crawling as she could be walking and right now she's a serious impediment: she HATES being in her stroller or carseat if we're still at all, but she's only crawling which means I can't just let her out and slowly pace behind her because she will eat EVERYTHING. 

You have a kid?
Why is that allowed?
Here's a post entitled "I normally love Sephora" which man.
If only she also said "I also love the iPhone and pumpkin spice lattes and Victoria's Secret clothing" that would round out the white girl stereotype.
Oh and uggs.
and yoga pants. Not that I'm complaining about yoga pants.
I am disappointed to report the yoga pant fad hasn't quite caught on here.
Those tiny shorts that are kinda split up the side have so I'm fine.
Maybe it has. It's been too ass humid to wear any of that shit anyway.

if people came with warning labels, what would mine be?

Remember that fake label that used to come on Cheetos?
DANGEROUSLY CHEESEY!
That'd be yours.
DANGEROUSLY CUNTY!

1. I was going to write tonight but then I managed to have a bunch of little triggers all heap together into a larger one and had to deal with feeling like a bear was trying to eat me alive for a couple hours instead.

I need a trigger warning in Skyrim now for "sabercat has been stalking you for a mile and a half and is about to maul you and startle the fuck out of you"
This isn't like vanilla Skyrim, either. A two ton sabertooth tiger mauls you and it's not like oh you take 5% damage.
That's it, man. Reload from previous save.

1. Current adventures in goalpost moving attempts by my brain: "it doesn't count if [popular person] or [other popular person] or even [person I just see a lot on my network] hasn't read it/liked it/recced it, because clearly then it's not as good as the other stuff they have." *throws up hands* REALLY BRAIN, THAT IS JUST FUCKING RIDICULOUS. WE ARE WAY TOO PUNK ROCK FOR THIS SHIT AND WE'RE NOT EVEN THAT PUNK ROCK.


2. In the car after work I realized that the brain-resonance to "Abraham's Daughter" by Arcade Fire is actually for Herself, which makes everything including the iconography make a fuck of a lot more sense. Because one of her themes/domains is sacrifice, but she's intensely hardline: sacrifices cannot be demanded, or taken, or owed, or even asked for. They are given fully freely or they're just theft/murder/whatever. Which: if you trace her storylines, it's an element, greater or lesser, in all of them.

You'd better let young Isaac go. 

These are words arranged in an order resembling the English language but much like the papers I grade daily I imagine they were either translated from a foreign language using Google Translate or possibly just a complex algorithm that outputs words in a pattern resembling what a real person might say.
Like I try to tell them don't use Google Translate.
I even give the Google Translate demonstration.
Here's a news story in English
Here's what it looks like in Korean
no human
not even a complete new speaker
will say shit like this
so I can tell instantly so don't do that
THEY DON'T GIVE A FUCK
CALL THE COPS

4. Ugh there is World Cup stuff everywhere. One only barely escapes hockey to be hammered by the World Cup. 

Yeah that's been fun ducking around here.
British people and Korean people pissed at me simply because my country 1. doesn't give a fuck about soccer and 2. is obliterating all the world's nations at it.
FUCK YOU, WORLD. AMERICA KICKS ASS.
In fact, world, you're welcome America doesn't care about soccer. If it did they might as well rename the World Cup to the America Cup because that's apparently who would take it every year.
Apparently England is sucking hard and Korea is doing better than anticipated but still pretty shit.

1. Guys, I love Natasha as much as anyone, but: that moment she fakes out the Winter Soldier with the phone and then jumps him? No. No she's not even remotely an actual threat. The thing that impressed me and is scariest about that moment is how unfussed and comparatively leisurely his movement to block her garrotte is and how easily he throws her off. (And that he's by no means convinced it IS her on the other side of that car: note that he rolls a grenade over, as compared to later when he knows EXACTLY where she's hiding and just goes for the shot.) Natasha is incredibly impressive in that scene, don't get me wrong: she is fighting with the equivalent of a knife at a gun-fight, and she's amazing (the actual REALLY amazing and actually-posed-a-threat moment is when she fires based on his shadow and nicks his glasses) and still completely, terrifyingly outclassed.

Seriously, he's like "ah, a garrotte", blocks it, and then tosses her like a doll into a car. Then shoots her through the shoulder while running with a relatively inaccurate firearm. Until the moment Steve breaks out the Psychologically Compromising Recognition, both he and Nat were totally gonna die. 

That movie was pretty sweet but can we please stop talking about it?
Also of course he shrugs her off like a bad cold. She's a 110 pound woman and he's like a 180 pound man WITH A ROBOT ARM.

My sister said this morning, "What's a Deadpool?"

The last Dirty Harry movie.
Or a comic book character retards will not shut the fuck up about.

I have a migraine, the kids are whiny,

PAY ATTENTION TO THEM YOU SELFISH CUNT.
FUCK.
I'm going to eat lunch.

FUCK

Took a little longer to get the internet than I expected.
I was supposed to inherit the guy who owned the apartment before me's internet contract but he decided to be a standup dudebro and sold it to a friend instead.
Fortunately I managed to break into a neighbor's router because they didn't change the default router password and they were blockbusting it anyway.
So between the jet lag and adjusting to not being a citizen of Freedom anymore and doing other shit with my time there has been a lull in updates.
But it's okay because I made a hiatus post so there's no problem there.
So here I am sitting in my underwear at 12:30 in the morning just in South Korea instead of America now.
How much changes and how little changes.
South Korea is quite a trip, too. I could spend an entire post just talking about that instead of some bullshit blog but I imagine people come here for blogs so let's just do the thing where I post around blog entries and barely acknowledge them.
Yeah this'll work.

Guys, I can't even tell you how much I love Speed. I watched it every night for a month when it came out on tape (yes, VHS). I have what you might call a Keanu Reeves situation and this movie only exacerbated it (I also watched The Matrix every night for a month and also every time HBO showed it when it first came out). I mean, I still think the extra bit at the end with the subway is overkill and unnecessary, but generally speaking, it is an excellent action movie, and while not quite at the top tier of the pantheon with Die Hard or the Terminator movies, it's definitely in my top five. Also, I kind of totally ship Keanu and Sandra Bullock because of this movie. I am just saying. 

Yeah you go ahead and ship the hell out of that movie you fucking weirdo.
So anyway I left the US of Freedom on the 21st I think of May and proceeded to ride on an airplane for what I understand to be the next 127 years.
First I left at 2 AM with my dad to drive up to Raleigh Durham International Airport. This was after not sleeping at all, so already I'm down about 24 hours of sleep.
I proceed to fly to New York which takes, what, an hour and a half or so?
Then there's a five hour layover at JFK.
Then I fly the next 13 hours from JFK to Incheon-Seoul International.
I catnapped what I suspect is 5 hours but when you're flying over Canada, the North Pole then down into Russia and China and around North Korea and you cross about 17 timezones and the international dateline time sort of stops having meaning.
This wasn't all at once, of course. I'd sleep about an hour then wake so violently one time I actually found myself standing up before I was fully awake.
Definitely not a nervous reaction, or anything.
So I land at Incheon.
At this point I'm so delirious and not thinking I see a distant island and assume it's Japan.
It's technically possible to see Japan from Busan but, of course, Incheon is on the other side of the country.
So then I meet the lady what got me this job.
She's pretty much my first introduction to what Korea really be like.
So we chit chat, catch a bus ride where I thought we were going to die about ten times (turns out it was very tame compared to later trips in transportation)

- I've been thinking a lot about Bucky lately (um, even more than usual I guess?), because the thing is, the thing is, Bucky's recovery should be hard and it should be heartbreaking at times but it should also be hopeful. The whole point is that he comes back from what was done to him. He's not the same person he was, but no one who lives any significant amount of time remains exactly the same person they were at 18 or 24, even if they haven't been sent off to war or had unspeakable things done to them, and it's not that Bucky is 'fixed' or whatever, it's that he survives long enough to be able to start living again,

Yeah I'm sure you can characterize better than the fucking people hired to do that for their job you fanfiction writing zero.
Anyway so we ride in the bus and chitchat a bit then it's time to go to Gimpo airport.
For the record I like Gimpo airport. It reminds me of the airport I lived by in North Carolina.
As in they built a way better airport not an hour away and it's sort of struggling for a use in 2014.
So you probably know the purpose of an airport is to milk you for as much money as possible so I've officially had to check my luggage twice at 100 dollars a go and I'm about to do it a third time.
I walk up, put my bags on the scale.
The lady looks at the reading and starts saying words.
I don't know what these words mean but I know instinctively as a citizen of the USA that means it's time to get my wallet out.
So I get my wallet out.
The lady who got me this job grabs my wallet from me.
She looks at the lady demanding money and there is a tense argument in Korean for about 3 minutes.
Finally a manager walks over.
He looks at the lady wanting money
He looks at the lady who got me this job
He looks at me with this look in his eye that says "oh God just kill me"
He shrugs and waves my bags through.
No baggage fee.
She hands me my wallet back and I immediately know the gift I bought her for getting me this job was a wise investment.
Like we talked about books and I said you know she's the one person you know so maybe make sure that stays cozy.
I kind of suspected she was an operator but I didn't know--
and that proved a correct assessment.
So she puts me on the airplane to Gimpo and this is my second lesson in how not America Korea is.
After a scary moment of trying to find the baggage check station because they suddenly got suspicious of shaving lotion I go to the place where they put you in the airplane.
But hey wait a second we're going downstairs.
Oh ok now we're just in the airfield.
Oh now we're getting on a bus and driving out to the middle of where airplanes live and they're loading us on it like it's the 1950s. Complete with the stairs.
There's literally no one stopping me from just bolting down the runway.
They'd never find me.

snapshot from the life of a fangirl:

Why is this story so terrible? AND WHY AM I STILL READING IT?

It's funny 'cause it's true. *hands*

Fuck me.
So at this point I realize it's approaching 6 PM some vague time in the future and I've slept maybe 5 hours not all at once in the past--
3 days?
4 days?
For me it has felt like 3 days but it has actually been 4 days going by time changes.
It's slowly catching up to me but the adrenaline is still screaming through my veins at a million miles an hour.
At this point I'm so out of my element that I'm not even sure I had an element.
So I'm on an airplane to Busan and I realize this journey is finally nearing the end.
The pilot spends what I suspect is the entire flight talking about baseball in English.
He saw the entire 30 or so people on the plane. I'm the only round eye so I'm pretty sure he was just talking to me.
About baseball.
I'm 30,000 feet over the middle of South Korea listening to a pilot talk to me about baseball with no way of responding.
I haven't slept in 3 days.
If you notice me saying "I suspect" a lot it's because, well, as I said the entire journey was such a blizzard of insanity, hustle and not fully grasping the situation that it might have been weeks for all I knew.
I'm glossing over the 13 hour flight, incidentally.
Let me back up and say there's a point about 8 hours in where you realize you have to be on this airplane for another 5 hours where you start hoping it just quietly drops into the Arctic.
No survivors.
So I land in Busan and there's supposed to be a man with a sign.
Of course he doesn't have a sign. He just looks for the one American exiting the airport.
So he helps me load my shit into his van and I get in.
It occurs to me this could just be a kidnapper and I could be on my way to North Korea. He just walks up to me and grabs my shit and I just go with it.
At this point I don't care I just hope they make it quick.
So I'm informed Busan is about an hour away from Changwon so I dig in and let the haze settle over me.
It's twilight, there's some kind of 80s music on and this guy seems chill so I'm thinking hey, this isn't so bad.
I need to get a radio and enjoy the smooth sound of 97.1.

Last night, I rewatched "Curahee" and "Day of Days," which I feel make an amazing 2 hour movie, even if you never watch the rest of the series, though I of course highly recommend (re)watching the whole thing, especially since all the HBO shows are now on Amazon Prime for free.

[I might finally get around to doing a Wire rewatch, because I won't have to unplug my Roku to plug in the blu-ray player, which is annoying. Why does my new television, bought in September 2012, only have two HDMI inputs? one of which goes to the cable box, so the other two have to switch out (yes, I could get a splitter or whatever it's actually called, but I'd rather just complain, especially since it's easy enough to unplug on cord and plug in the other when necessary, and also so much is available streaming now that I don't have to actually do it that often.)]

Wow she likes The Wire.
That's not a show you can "ship" easily so I figured it'd be a bit above her.
Also it's really gritty and not at all cute.
It's pretty violent and grim, in fact.
Oh but that black guy who was in Pacific Rim is in it. That's probably why she likes it.
Fuck.
So anyway after about 20 minutes we're just there.
Welcome to Changwon.
This guy is there to meet me. He grabs my shit and we go up an elevator.
I haven't slept in 47 hours at this point, I feel like I've been fired out of a cannon and already I know I don't like this guy.
My legendary snap judgment of my fellow man hasn't failed, at least.
So we go upstairs. I meet the boss who doesn't speak English. He tries to give me food and at this point I'm not having it. I just want to sleep and not die.
Or maybe die.
I don't even know at this point.
So after a weird 10 minutes?
50 minutes?
Who knows?
I get in the dude who I reckon is an asshole's car and we drive to the hotel.
The hotel is like nothing I have ever seen. Firstly it exists on only the 10th floor of this 12 story erection of a skyscraper.
So I take a shower (first in two days wooo) and I realize oh
hey
showers don't come in stalls in Korea.
Whatever.
So I go to sleep and pass the fuck out.
It is 8 PM.
4 hours later I wake up and I'm pretty sure I'm dying.
I somehow go back to sleep about an hour later and I wake up, whamo, at 9 AM.
I'm supposed to meet them at 1 and I figure this is a getting to know you bullshit exercise.
So I dick around until 1. I watch the TV.
The TV is fucking surreal. I'm watching what I assumed was 3rd string girl band Ladies' Code and some flamboyant homosexual watch video of other fags ambushing guys on the street and asking them about what it is they're wearing.
Then Ladies' Code talks about what losers they are based on this information.
It's at this point that time dilates and I have about 10 minutes of thoughts in 10 seconds.

I also wrote 1000 words last night! Shocking! 

So I get hopelessly lost. My phone, naturally, doesn't work.
Despite promises that it would it doesn't make outgoing calls. It can text oh, it can text if you pay.
Thanks a lot, Verizon.
My data was turned off.
Thanks a bunch, Verizon. Sure am glad I paid 100 dollars a month for this wonderful service.
Now they're emailing me about renewing my contract. You could piss up my leg that's how pissed I am over this phone fiasco.
So I go to the phone in the room. It doesn't work.
It just doesn't work.
If it works I don't know how to make it go.
Numbers resemble American numbers. It's a set of three then a set of four numbers.
No area code though, that's weird--
so this shit ain't working.
So I go outside the hotel and I see a guy about my age and through desperate looks and elaborate pantomime I manage to signal my desire to use his phone and he just hands it over.
I can't imagine that happening in America where a basically non-verbal foreigner emerges from a seedy hotel and just asks to make a phone call and the hapless dope roped into this just goes "yeah ok."
So I call them and say holy shit I can't find the place.
OH BUT I SHOWED YOU YESTERDAY says the asshole I talked about before.
Dude you took me in a car
at night
showing a man with severe jet lag who hasn't slept in a week.
Yeah I forgot.
I know it's straight up the road and a left. I don't know which way I'm going though.
Well get a taxi, click.
FUCK THAT GUY.
So I manage to enlist an entire street corner in Changwon--
like 15 people--
to help me solve where the fuck it is I am and where the fuck it is I work.
Somehow through elaborate pantomime and broken English we figure it out and they hail a taxi for me and tell the guy what I need.
Thank the fuck Christ the people on the street are so nice.
That's one thing you learn pretty fast in Korea. People are super nice.
They'll walk up and start talking to you.
You tell them you don't understand and they'll keep talking to you.
I talk back in English.
No one understands shit but we're having a conversation.
It's like Ghost Dog. Ever seen that movie?
Anyway so I get to the job and this manager is a real asshole luckily I don't have to deal with him too often.
Owner seems like a nice enough guy though.
I wind up staying until 9 PM that night because I need trained.
Trained how to give kids a test.
Is this real life?
Yes it is.
So shit goes and goes forever and I think time dilated again.

 I have looked at a lot of condo/co-op listings over the past few weeks, and man, people are terrible at taking pictures. Eventually - I don't have a time table but eventually (and hopefully before interest rates go up too much) - I'll progress to looking in person, and the pictures won't really matter, but for now, at least, I've figured out what my priorities are and what would be in my theoretical price range. I'm reconciling myself to leaving Manhattan, too.

Haha cool enjoy sleeping in a hallway in Manhattan with the rats
So anyway at this point they send me home because I was looking a little haggard and a visiting parent apparently took offense that they weren't letting me recover a bit before throwing me into it.
So the first week is pretty uneventful, honestly. Just go to work
see training that I don't need because at this point I'm not even sure what it is I need
Friday rolls around and I go out with one of the western teachers and her friends.
So it's three American, 3 Brits, a girl from Scotland and an Australian girl.
The Australian girl is like 7 foot tall and natural blonde so needless to say she got stopped on the street.
It was quite a spectacle all around.
Had my first drink of soju which is Korea's experiment into how dangerous they can make alcohol.
It costs 1,200 won at a 7-11.
Yeah they sell hard liquor at 7-11 here and you can drink at 7 AM if you want.
There are no laws.
There should be a couple of laws.
1,200 won for those of you who don't know is about a buck fifty.
A dollar and fifty cents.
What does soju taste like for less than the price of a Big Mac?
It must be like motor oil, surely.
The answer is it tastes like water.
It goes down like water.
You are drinking water, basically.
Except it will fuck you up.
So I had to say no to that because that's how alcoholism begins.
That was only later, in fact.
At this point in the story I've already shotgunned a bottle of it.
So everyone is very impressed with my ability to not be dead at this point and I start thinking apparently all that visualization that I'm a space marine has paid off.
So now it's time to go to norebang since it's this one grill's birthday.
What the fuck is norebang?
Well nore is Korean for noise
and bang is room.
It's karaoke.
It is fucking karaoke but we call it norebang because that's just what we call it.
So me and Adam--
this British engineer who has lived here for 3 years--
we get separated from the party and wind up going to the wrong floor.
This is norebang too but this is sexy norebang.
What the fuck is the difference?
It's hookers.
Obviously, come on.
So I'm standing there
at 3 AM on a Friday
after alcohol like water
this hooker is trying to talk to me
I look outside and it sinks in: I've finally done it. I've eversed (that's barely a word fuck off, Firefox spellchecker) and I'm in a William Gibson novel.
The lights
the fact this hooker, in South Korea, is just trying to have a casual conversation with me because we just happened to hit the wrong floor--
I'm here.
So we say no, in fact, we wanted the boilerplate norebang experience and not the sexy norebang so we leave.
Some time later we leave and it's time for sleeping.
It's 5 in the morning.
Anyway great next morning. Woke up around noon.
No hangover because I don't get those.
So then--
Jesus.
Stuff on the weekend.
I spent something like 9 hours trying to buy a radio to listen to that smooth 80s. I finally find a place that sells radios basically directly behind where I was staying so that was good.
I get it.
It's a piece of shit. Picks up like 3 stations including the University of Changwon's station which mostly just plays The Beatles, weird shit I can't identify and English lessons.
So, you know, typical college radio.
I don't remember Sunday. I'm pretty sure I watched TV all day.
Tried to figure out what the fuck Tasty Road was and why those girls were famous.
Working--
get my apartment.
The lock doesn't work very well so I just leave my door unlocked.
Have to clean it because it's been uninhabited for 7 months and wasn't very clean to start with.
Bizarre stain on the floor I can't get out.
Except it covers a lot of the floor.
Basically at least once a day I feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie. Shit is happening around me that's so surreal I can't even begin to explain to you what's in front of me.
Like you can't even make quality judgments about this shit. Is it good? Is it bad?
All you can say is that is a thing in front of me that exists, somehow, on the same material plane as me.
I think I figured out why, too.
It's because if it was totally alien to me I could just call it that.
This is unlike what I'm used to and be done with it.
But no, of course, there's always one tiny detail that informs me that no, normalcy isn't far away.
Like last Saturday I'm going to Daiso to buy bowls and I see a man and a woman having a screaming argument with each other and the people around them are just walking around them not paying attention-
and I don't mean like trying desperately not to stare because it's rude like you've just seen a retard or something. I mean they don't give a single fuck about this. "Yep, same shit as always" seemed to be the general emotion.
So I've stopped to watch this because what the fuck and that's when I notice they're arguing outside of an Olleh mobile dealer (that's a cellphone provider here) and Olleh has a bad habit of playing music that's too loud outside their store.
What's on the radio?
Is it Kpop like it usually is?
No, it's Careless Whisper by George Michael.
Something about the situation, because of George Michael, just made it too weird.
That was the touch that it needed.
So to get away from it all I wander in a direction I hadn't gone yet.
I come across this building.
It's an apartment complex.
But not just any apartment complex.
This thing is like a hab block from Warhammer or Judge Dredd.
The size of this building is fucking mind boggling. I'm going to get a picture this weekend.
Just the sheer logistics of this thing had me reeling. The people that lived just in that building were like a small city.
Then I look down and I see a middle school and I realize that entire school probably only takes kids from that apartment complex.
Then I look to the left of it and to the right and I realize oh
there are three of them.
Then I start to walk to them because I'm still not sure if maybe my mind is playing tricks on me and I see a city map.
There are 26 of them.
I'm sure this is just a big city thing and I'm not used to it because I lived in fucking Maryland and North Carolina but something about those buildings made me dizzy.
So anyway I guess to get to my assessment of the situation I'd have to say so far it has been overwhelmingly very positive.
The job is a job but it isn't so bad.
The people have been very friendly.
The sights have certainly been unique and always interesting.
I handle the surreal elements very well since that's basically my interest and aesthetic but I can see why people might struggle to adapt to a foreign setting like this.
All I can say is about 4 years ago I applied for a job in Japan and almost got it but didn't and I'm really glad because I doubt I'd have been able to hack it.
I needed to know things I didn't know then.
So that is the story so far.
I'll probably go into details about this shit more later--
probably not here, though.
I'll see.
Anyway I gotta go to bed. It's 2 AM.