Boots at the fountain of plenty

I Trepidatious I

Soup

What a delightful weekend... sunshine and screamin' cicadas... I'm so @#$%^&' happy my face is melting...

Saturday morning I awoke to some cussin' and hissy fittin' down the hall... and discovered that my neighbors were having their first encounter with this building's little drainage issue. It seems the design of the laundry area drainage system is flawed in such a way that once or twice a year the whole thing backs up, creating an indoor lake which begins snaking its way down the corridor...

One factor making this year's occurrance of the problem so priceless is that it occurred within hours of our bosses, who are also our landlords, hurtling through the air at approximately 260 meters per second to the other side of the Pacific Ocean; they won't be back for another three weeks.

Further, an additional phenomena I had heretofor not experienced was taking place right outside the main entrance in front of my apartment. It seems the drainage had been further buggered to the point that the sewer was backing up, creating a rather undelightfully rank stew in our stairwell.

By Saturday night this stew had grown big enough to choke a hippo, neccessitating some rather graceful acrobatics in exiting and entering the building. I laid down a makeshift bridge accross the morass from a couple of 4 by 6's and emailed the bossman.

Sunday morning I awoke to the sounds of the wetvac as my neighbors valiantly battled the indoor lake, which had grown considerably, and went on to tackle the ill tide outside my door. I was on the one hand grateful it was them, not me, and on the other hand regretting my proximity to the most malodorous part of the catastrophe, as the invisible cloud of reek hovering above the mess invited itself into my home. I gingerly rinsed myself in the shower, using as little water as possible, and vacated the premises. I noted on my way out that the best efforts of the neighbors, while temporarily alleviating the indoor lake, had done little to diminish the reeking pit of misfortune in the entranceway.

I sent another email and prayed for the arrival of the shittruck.

This morning it was evident someone had seen fit to give the laundry another go, or take a lengthy shower, or both, as the lake had apparently returned full force and been subsequently mopped up again. I myself hazily recall getting up at the crack of dawn to piss, which in my semi-slumber I of course flushed, and I'm sure that didn't help...

The secretary was in the hall trying to salvage the contents of a cardboard box which had soaked up part of the surf. She assured me the boss had called and the shittruck was on its merry way, entreating me to hold off on the shit, shower and shave.

The sound of voices and activity outside my door shortly thereafter was soon accompanied by a renewed stenchwave, signalling that the cacacavalry had indeed arrived. An hour or so of choking and gagging eye-watering misery later, it was all over... I hope.

Now I get to go to work... happy glorious Monday...

Meanwhile, some weekend news tidbits:


Philip notes the five individuals arrested by police were black, while a white man who allegedly videotaped the incident wasn't.
"Does what we say really matter to them? It's what Warren Jeffs says that matters, and if he says marry a 16-year-old, then they are going to do that."
Dan uses the T-word
Afghans welcome Koreans... just leave the poor bastards alone...

The Return of Woo

Woo is back. Where did Woo go? you ask me... who the hell do you think Woo are? you say... and rightfully so... Woo have been gone too long. Three months and change... Woo are embarrassed. Woo's ass is bare largely because Woo like to write fresh out of the shower.

The World Cup is nearly done... Woo never cared about soccer or any other sport for that matter, but being in Korea during the world cup, one has to notice SOMETHING is going on.

I watched a few games with Extra Fantastic and her family... it was enlightening. Soccer is understandably obsessed with balls, as is baseball. Both sports keep official tallies of the amount of balls in the game.

In soccer, each team is rated in terms of it's Ball Possession. Ball possession is a very desirable trait in soccer, as the more you possess balls, the more likely you are to win, naturally.

Soccer has much more balls than baseball. In baseball it's better to have the runs than it is to have balls, but a lot of people including Woo's self would much rather have balls than get the runs.

So what have Woo been doing? Woo have been working his ass off and studying Hangoogmal. What is Hangoogmal? It's the one and only official language of Dayhanmingook. All you soccer fans probably know that means "Korea" in "Korean", which is the English word for Hangoogmal.

It's an interesting language. If the novice isn't careful they may believe they are drinking a car, or eating their own belly, or a ship. A ship's belly is called a hull in English, but that word in Korean means "I can't believe you just said that. You're such a knob." If you have a pal on your ship with you, a shipmate, you might call him your ship pal, but if your pal is Korean I wouldn't advise it. It means "18" in Sino-Korean, which seems innocuous enough, but it is an inexplicaply vile epithet.

I learned all of these things years ago, and am now on to bigger and better things, like basic grammar. I logged on to a website to take the Korean Language Proficiency Test (HangoogawNeungnokSheehum)... but it was all in Korean. It seems I'll have to study a few weeks just to REGISTER for the test... At this point I'm a little nervous.

Do you know what makes me the most nervous? Listening tests. I've been doing a little practice with the "Jjikjjiggee" (Sony Walkman). Luckily I can replay the same phrase over and over again 15 times and even slow it down to one fifth the regular speed until the AK47 syllables become semicomprehensible... but I wonder if the test administrators are likely to extend a similar favour to the room on the day of the test.

One thing I must say is this experience has humbled me as an English teacher. I used to get a giggle out of English listening excercises, and still do...

Girl: What are those?

Boy: They're balls.

*The above is an excerpt from an actual English listening excercise audio transcript, used entirely without permission.

Another example:

Boy: Is this a chair?

I can only assume this poor bastard is in a fluffy design class at a froofy art school, where "students are encouraged to explore form over function"...

Anyway, now I have to temper my amusement with new understanding. When my Korean friends speak Korean to me they tend to dumb it down a bit for me so I can catch everything. When it comes to trying to communicate with strangers or people with no knowledge of English, I'm still largely screwed.

For anyone who has tried to learn a second language, this is probably all familiar ground. This is my second such experience... in junior highschool I was "immersed" in French. David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day" has a hilariously well-written account of foreigners studying in Paris, which I highly recommend.

Au subjet d'apprendre le Fran?ais... I occasionally teach my students a few phrases in French just to switch gears and mess with their little minds... and the reactions are invariably interesting. The phrase, "Mer?i beaucoup" sounds like "myulchi bokkeum" to Koreans, which I believe roughly translates to "Dried minnow stirfry".

Myulchi is tasty in rice. And it's got calcium, don'tcha know. And black beans make your hair grow.

It's Hard to Remain Clam

Life of the Big is these days good. The glittery disco fiasco of Big's technicolor history is receding into the cinematic darkness of the past, and life in the witness protection program is full of farts and smirks, turds and guffaws, emissions and hollaring.

Work is... hard to conceive of as "work" in the traditional sense. Teaching kids is
too amusing to be in the same category with cleaning cable, tipping trucks, and fighting monsters from alternate universes. By way of example, take John. I'll use his actual English name, since it's not his actual ACTUAL name, and is a general enough name to keep him relatively safe from public ridicule. But don't confuse him with the other John, who spelled stupid with two O's and an F.

John is a skinny, pale kid who is habitually tired and looks to be on the point of collapse. The one thing that brightens John's face is snails. Big isn't joking around. John is the benefactor and caretaker and all-around god of two pet snails. His best friend (who shall remain nameless) also raises snails.


I first heard about John's molluskoid enthusiasm when I asked him how he was doing one day. As per usual John raised his small skull slightly from the desk, exherting tremendous amounts of energy to do so, and replied, "Bad", before letting his cranium settle heavily onto the desk again.

As per routine, I asked, "Why are you a bad person, John?"

John sat up with a sigh and searched the heavens for a multi-word response to get me off his case. Then suddenly his jaw dropped, he looked at me, and perhaps for the first time since I'd met him, I saw the whites of John's eyes.
"No! Wait! I'm GOOD!"
"How good, John?"
"Very, very good! My snail is eat lettuce!"

It's these little surprises that keep the work fresh for me. My job is to empower children to confuse the hell out of people, and that suits me just fine. I corrected John's grammar, relishing the existential irony in doing so.

A week later, John was looking more or less the same. I asked, "How are the snails?", thanking providence for the unique opportunity to do so and taking a sip of green tea to keep me sharp.

I was once again gifted with the unexpected. John let out an angry sigh and gritted his teeth slightly.
"My snails is eat paper"
I nearly lost my tea.


It turns out John had used a desk calendar to shade his snails from an insurgent sunbeam. The little buggers had coincidentally sampled last December and found it irresitably delicious. One completely consumed Christmas Day, while the other devoured New Year's Eve.

And now for something completely different, a little more weird, and definitely more stoofid:

When you come across something like this, it is hard to remain clam and refrain from contemplating people's ignorance.

Big likes Big

An artical in the Korea Herald was recently brought to my attention. Brilliantly written by one Jane Cooper, of whom I know little except that (she? I can only assume...) is possessed of a clever wit. She writes of one Bernard Carleton, who placed an add in a free biweekly rag, for a discussion group called "World Class". Apparently the group conducts meetings in Seoul, for the purpose of promoting cultural understanding and "breaking down prejudices". The clever bit is that the add concludes with the request, "No Canadians, please".

Lady Cooper allegedly contacted Mr. Carleton for clarification, and was told, "Canadians are scum. They are self-loving, welfare supporting, over-taxing, work-ethic hating scum. They are not welcome in our group."

I can only assume that a)Mr. Carleton does not actually exist, and is a clever hoax devised by Cooper for the purposes of rebuking Canadians for their propensity toward anti-Americanism, or b)Mr. Carleton is an Australian.

I am leaning toward the first assumption, since this thing is too patently ridiculous to be true. As for the second alternative, I voice it only because Australians are the only people to take us (Canadians) seriously enough to actively despise us. But I lean away from the second possibility on the grounds that Auzzies never actually SHOW their hate towards Canadians unless they're losing a drunken argument, the girl of the evening, or both.

But let's assume just for fun that Bernie really exists... hmm. Bernard. Definitely Australian. I would like to take this oppurtunity not to deny per se, but at least answer to the charges at hand.

1.I do love myself. You are right, Bernie. Canadians are smarter than Americans AND Auzzies put together. And we're more fun at parties than the Brits. But not all Canadians like themselves as much as Big likes Big. We have more than our fair share of self-loathing wet blankets.

2.I hate welfare. Every time I'm on it, I think, "This sucks!"

3.Over-taxing? Are you talking about Canad-IANS, or Canad-A? Did you mean over-tax-ING, or over-tax-ED? I can assure you, no one hates Canadian taxes more than Canadians. Get in line.

4.I do not hate work ethics. I hate work. I just thought that should be clear. I have deep respect for hard workers. Better them than me.

That said, regardless of whether Mr. Carleton does or does not exist, the Lady Cooper 's article is vastly amusing. Please check it out for yourself. She also provides an email address for the alleged Mr. Cooper, cbicsmd@yahoo.com, for those inclined to respond either to the invitation to join the "World Class" group, or voice their opinions on his attitude toward breaking down prejudice and cultural misunderstanding.

Finally, I would like to thank Jane Cooper for an amusing read. I haven't had this much fun since I beat a drunk Auzzie in an argument.

P.S.:No Australians were actually harmed in the writing of this document... I couldn't find any. Where the bloody hell are you?

Burning Ring of Fire Chicken

Spring is upon us... it's in our lungs, drying out our throats, giving us colds. And it's all over our cars. In Korea spring brings the Yellow Dust. It brings it all the way from the Gobi, apparently, and shares it with us. It paints us with it. Paints us inside out. I've decided to put off washing my car a little bit longer...

Yesterday was St. Patricks Day, and this year it fell conveniently on a Friday. After a day of arming the children with scissors and cutting shamrocks out of paper (funny how there's always one kid who manages to cut it wrong and gets a bunch of half-hearts instead...) Big and Extra Fantastic hopped into our dirty little Juliet and drove out to Anyang for open mic at Bar Rockssin.

Since Big likes driving and not being in jail, I had to go light on the cowboy sippy sauce; Extra Fantastic was having a Bailey's, so I had a Kalua. Then I played the following short set:

She Moved Through the Fair - Traditional
Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
When the Doves Cry - Prince
One More Cup of Coffee - Bob Dylan
Lola - The Kinks

We more or less had to get moving right after I finished, since Extra Fantastic had to work this morning. We decided to get something to eat, and since we were in Anyang, we decided to have Buldak, because Anyang has a restaurant that serves the hottest Buldak in all of Korea.

What is Buldak? Buldak means "fire chicken", and as a lover of spicey foods from all over the world, Big can assure you that Buldak is aptly named. First off, it tastes like fire. Not just spicey. I mean the flavor is actually what you imagine fire would taste like, if you could actually eat it. As you savor the firey flavor, the spice starts to kick in, and triggers a complex bodily reaction whereby all the sweat, tears and mucus your body is capable of producing just then leaves more or less simultaneously, through your face.

The secret to eating Buldak is macaroni salad. Followed by Nurungji Tang, a kind of burnt rice soup made from burnt rice from the burnt rice factory, and water. Big isn't joking.


Why do Big and Extra Fantastic eat food that makes them cry? Because Buldak is the perfect food. It makes you experience so much emotion. Joy. Sorrow. Pleasure. Fear. Laughter. Pain. We tried to get ice cream later, but the DQ was closed. Treacherous bastards. Ideally Big would have preferred Pat Bing Su anyway, but it's still too early on the year for it.

What's Pat Bing Su? Sweet bean paste on shaved ice, usually augmented by fresh or sweetened fruits, gummy candies, corn flakes, and/or milk or ice cream... then there's the fancy Red Mango chain which does the same thing, but with frozen yogurt instead of ice cream. Essentially the same thing as Halo-Halo, for those of you who've ever eaten Filipino food. Yummy. Out of season yummy. Big had to forbear the absence of Pat.

Big's dad and brother outdid Big... instead of driving to the next town for St. Paddy's, they apparently traversed half of Canada on a spontaneous roadtrip from Winnipeg to Nova Scotia, representing approximately one twelfth the circumference of the Earth. Smartasses... last I heard they were up to no good, terrorizing the East Coast drinking community.

Cut... Pulleeeeze...

Recently my friend Chris quite justifiably lambasted Peter Jackson in his web log, for forgetting to edit King Kong. The movie had its cinematic moments ("I'm just an actor with a gun, and I've lost my motivation") and looked great (the sunset which so vexed Mr. Perlow, and the scenes atop the Empire State Building). But I wholeheartedly agree, Mr. Jackson forgot to wipe and flush.

It would seem, however, that this is not an isolated occurrence. I have only one word to mention as a case in point:

A..................L..................E..................X..................A..................N..................D..................E..................R

That movie came out nearly two years ago, and was nearly three hours long. I figure that's at least twice as long as it needed to be. Oliver Stone was at the peak of his powers when he did "Natural Born Killers"... back then he still new how to edit... or at least hire editors... Natural Born Killers had 10 editors; Alexander only had four. Those six could have argued Alexander down to a viewable hour and a half.

Of course, to concede a point to Mr. Perlow, King Kong had only ONE editor. Which might explain why it exeded three hours in running time... time the audience could have spent... running... screaming...

What ever happened to the good old days when one editor was enough? Oh yeah, Star Wars. Platoon. Lord of the Rings. Success. Ego. Full metal marketability. Who cares if it's good? Everyone's going to see it ANYWAY...

Mr. Belly and Swim Get Married

Write something, says Woo Big's noggin to the fingers that lie like stupid meat, inert on the keyboard.

The stupid fingers don't respond. They are like the roasted squid legs you can buy at the rest stop. Sort of salty and pink... but totally stupid.

Korean rest stops are huge. They are gigantic. They are like malls. You can take a piss, eat noodles, buy stupid art or a hat, play a video game, make a phone call (if you happen to be one of the fifteen Koreans that DOESN'T own a cellphone), and fill your tank with gas.

I was at a rest stop the weekend before last. We were on our way to see Mr. Belly and Swim get married.

Korean weddings take place in the matrimonial version of the Korean rest stop; the wedding hall. Only the way it's spelled in Korean, it gets pronounced "Wedding Hole"... hahaha. Imagine a gigantic building with six weddings going on all at once in separate rooms, and a dining hall big enough for all six receptions to occur simultaneously. Just beware when you go to the can, as some of the guests will overdo the soju, and this may result in a premature ejaculation of the vomitus... all over the entrances to both the men and women's facilities, making it impossible to relieve one's self unless one is indifferent to skiing through slippery swamps of upchuck.

Swim looked so nervous I thought she would pop like a grape. The Korean ceremony tends to vary from one wedding to the next, but is generally moderated by a trusted older gentleman who knows both the young'uns. Then the two mothers come up and light candles with them fancy long-stemmed barbecue lighters. Then the dads come up and sit by the moms. Then the couple comes up and bows low to each set of parents, with the groom actually down on the floor. I heard of one Western dude lucky enough to marry a Korean girl, who actually refused to bow to the girl's father. Oops. I mean, if you're in, you're in, no?

Anyway, Mr. Belly and Swim are both Korean, so no worries there. And they seem ridiculously in love; always a plus if you're getting hitched. After the bowing the parents and the couple all stand up together, along with a couple more relatives, and the moderator keeps talking. The whole time there's some chick in jeans with a video camera and a dude with a huge still camera, and they tag team blocking the guests from getting any good shots.

The wedding is also attended by a crew of young ladies in matching Sgt. Pepper-style vinyl red and white outfits with miniskirts, holding trumpets, swords, and the backend of the bride's dress as various occasions arise.

I'm happy to say that by the end of the ceremony, Swim's characteristic grin was back, and she was glowing. The two of them are now somewhere in Bali on their honeymoon. Best of luck, you crazy kids.

Sweet shit, scam artistry and bloody murder...

I know I promised to tell you all about GoStop... well, in a nutshell, it seems it may have originated in Japan, and was originally called "Go Dori" (five birds), after one of the high-scoring hands that can spell a victory. Instead of the familiar four suits of 13 cards found in Western cards, this deck has 12 suits of 4 cards apiece. The suits are flora-based, though one has gotten the Korean name "Ddong" (turd) based on the turd-shaped black blob from which it's little blue or purple flowers grow. The most interesting card of this suit features the prerequisite life-giving turd, and in the background, what appears to be a flaming rooster or turkey flying out of the setting sun - a phoenix?

The cards are tiny, and made of some type of stiff plastic - much thicker and heavier than Western cards, and ideal for throwing one on top of another to produce a satisfying "Ddak" sound. The sound is so satisfying it is even mimicked in the popular on-line versions of the game played by many Koreans for virtual cash. Follow the link above to see one Western dude's interprestations of the rules. I'll refrain from trying to explain the rules here; you'll just have to swing by my place with some beer and cajole me into teaching you first hand.

One question that continues to nag at and puzzle me, what's with the deepset cultural phenomenon of the Korean fascination with turd? It appears in their games, in their childhood doodles, in their children's books, and in their folktales. Yeah, we have our Hankie the Christmas Poo, and children everywhere get guilty giggles out of mentioning or depicting their poopoo...
but a card game?

And then there's Kwon Jung-Seng's touching childhood tale, colorfully illustrated by Jung Seung-Gak, "Puppy Poo", which tells the story of a lonesome puppy-turd's enlightenment as to the meaning of life. I am not making this up. Then there's the deeply disturbing traditional tale of the sweet shit, scam artistry and bloody murder recorded as "Sweet Dung, the Cake-Tree, and the Bugle of Life" by Jung In-Sub in "Folk Tales From Korea". Who'da thunk a poor man finding a honeycomb while out cutting wood could result in a local nobleman blowing a bugle up the ass of his brutally slain wife?

I wonder if the omnipresent doo-doo has anything to do with the high concentration of farming (now in decline) on such a small amount of fertile land - most of Korea being mountains. Anyone who's smelled a rice paddy in mid-summer might back me up on this one. Wash those carrots reeeal good.

Now, just so I don't leave off with the wrong impression. I love it here. The fact that the adults share the childhood fascination with poo, especially in the form of a card game, tends to make my facetious self feel deeply at home. The love of drink and grilled meat tends to enhance this warm fuzziness.

Joweun Sullal Bonaessaw...

Woo Big is exhausted. Last weekend he met Extra Fantastic Girlfriend's mom for the first time, and had dinner with them and Extra Fantastic's two older sisters. The oldest sister's boyfriend, Shy Decent Fella, was there too. This occasion was made more singular by the fact that last weekend was also what Canadians know as "Chinese New Year". This holiday falls around the end of January or beginning of February, according to the new year on the lunar calendar. Koreans call the holiday "Sullal" and it is one of two major holidays one spends with one's family. Woo Big brought Mom a bottle of Shiraz, since it's hard to go wrong with Shiraz.

In Korea, the meeting of a girl's family tends to be a big deal. This didn't worry me so much, the heaviness of it. I could deal with that, since I've got long plans for her. I was however, frightfully nervous that I would say or do something that would come off wrong. Woo Big's Korean is as yet in its infancy, and the chances of misconstruction, or dipping rice in the soup, were immense. Woo Big has never in his life been so worried about making the right impression.

Woo Big pulled it off... Extra Fantastic's oldest sister, Funny Sister, kept asking Woo Big questions in Konglish. She is a Konglish genius. Finally she asked if I had any questions for them. I asked the middle sister, Pretty Sister, why she always crops her face out of the frame when she posts photos for her online fashion business. This prompted some teasing from Pretty Sister's siblings about her skinny body and big head. Woo Big told her, "Mawriga ankaw... yepbawyo" meaning I don't think she has a big head at all and that she is pretty. This coming from a foreigner with a narrow cranium prompted sidesplitting laughter from the entire family and made Woo Big a lot less nervous.

That same night Woo Big's coworker and neighbor, Giddy Mamacita, had a party planned at our place, so Extra Fantastic and I bid the family farewell and rushed off to prepare for the occasion. Unfortunately, Big and Fantastic were trapped for hours in one room by a Christian couple, while the rest of the party raged on elsewhere. As I politely tried to explain why I will never be a Christian, the raging chaos finally spilled over and mercifully aborted the attempted conversion.

The next evening, Extra Fantastic's sisters and Shy Decent Fella came over for Go Stop with Big, Fantastic and Giddy. What is Go Stop, you ask? To be continued...

The True North, Woo... Big.

Korea has become Woo Big's home. There are things about this place I may never know... things so hard to know I may never even know I never even knew... And yet...

I came from Canada, where there were likely as many unknowable things, if not more. In Korea, there is one very difficult language to learn. In Canada, I saw streetsigns in Sushwap, college courses in Halkomelem, films in Kwakwakawakwa, house parties in Tagalog, bus conversations in Mandarin, Bollywood movies in Hindi, Junior High classes in French, Christmas parties in German...

The thing I like about Korea that marks it as a superior living experience in the Life and Time's of Woo... is that when I meet other white people here, most of them have a pretty good idea just how out of touch they are with the culture. By contrast, the wonderous land of my birth is filled with ignorant honkies that have no clue just how much goes on around them.

Every time I go back to Canada, I walk down Broadway in Vancouver and realize how many of those "Asian" restaurant signs I can actually read - because they're in Hangeul, which I can now distinguish from the ones that are in Chinese or Japanese.

Don't get me wrong. I love Canada. It has a lot of potential. One suggestion I have is that, anyone who is born on Canadian soil should be sent abroad to work or study in a non-English environment; preferably somewhere in Asia or Africa. This is the only way they are going to realize what the first-generation immigrantas already know, which is just how much they DON'T know.

Of course, some people will never learn. They're THAT content to remain... well, STUPID. I know an Auzzie who was married for about a year to a Korean lady, and barely knows any Korean. But he LOVES Korea. He studies the history and the art and architecture voraciously, as though his life depended on it... or more specifically is life WERE it... which it is... that is... life is what you make of it. He's making much of his life. On the other hand, I've met people who spent a year here, learned even less Korean, and wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a pagoda and a pavillion... sigh.

Then there are the soldiers. What good could possibly come from putting a gun in the hands of someone that STUPID? Most of these kids don't appear to have finished highschool. I am reminded of a kid I once knew in Vancouver, who had made a career of being a thief. He was very competant in dealing with contingencies and company in which such a path tended to land him, but he stalwartly thought I was lying when I tried to explain that Christianity was not the oldest religion in the world. Yet he was still marginally more intelligent than most of the soldiers I've met.

So. What is Woo Big's point? I guess my point is, if you were born in Canada, and you love your country, and you want it to fulfill its potential of becoming one of the best places in the world... stay in school. Then, get out of Canada. At least for a little while...

Wheel Bugs and Eye-coo

Woo Big is drunk now. Drunk on special Korean plum wine. Maechwisun... sweet and sour, with a 14% undertow. One little bottle is all it took, because Woo Big does not drink like he used to. It used to be that only vast amounts of alcohol could sooth Woo Big's rampant insomnia... but now Woo Big has Extra Fantastic Girlfriend, who blows his mind and makes him sleep the sleep like lettuce.

Woo Big's girlfriend is 200 proof - we are secret cockroaches. When Koreans see an annoyingly cute couple, the kind with matching outfits, or that talk to each other in those cuddly-wuddly voices that are best confined to the apartment or other semi-private situations... like any other culture, Koreans find this pukogenic. They call such ignorant morons "Pakwi bollae", which is the Korean way to say "cockroaches".

I don't like vomit, and neither does Extra Fantastic Girlfriend... so we keep it on the down low, hushhush, incognito... Woo Big is conspicuous enough, being a honkytonk superhero, and Extra Fantastic Girlfriend also has a rough time avoiding a legion of stalkers... so we do the eye-coo. That's where you get to say all the boldly giddy romanticisms one's heart can muster, but conveyed through the secret language of the eyes. Only people who know eye-coo can understand it - like Zulu or HTML, so it is a pretty safe way to speak. And since each couple tends to have it's own dialect of eye-coo, secret cockroaches can eye-coo without fear of eavesdroppers... birds, for instance, show very little interest in cracking eye-coo.

Reaping the Benefits

They kept saying to me, just accept it Seonwu (except my name wasn't Seonwu then so they called me something else); accept that you are Woo Big. I don't want to be Woo Big... why didn't you cut out the closeup with the disco mask and the shiney pucker? Why you make me look like greasey-lipped pegboy? I hate you.

So now I'm in Korea and it is a funny place. I like it because there are very few white people. I don't hate white people. I am in fact white. But you know how you feel when you eat the same goddamned leftovers day after day? I needed a break from the turkey stew... it had grown tiresome.

I like Korea. I can't understand what anyone is saying, so I just pretend they all like me. I feel so loved wherever I go. And I am not a big slow-moving whitey, so I am able to sneak under the radar and surprise the Koreans. I find the most amusing way to do this is... learning Korean. The best part is where you actually pronounce the words like a Korean, instead of like Billy Bob Thorton playing the character of an inbred uncle-raper TRYING to speak Korean. It's not that hard... it's like imitating Yoda or Prince... you have to get outside yourself a little... feel the Force... because Prince definitely feels the Force.

Sometimes Korea is scary, like on the bus, or in a cab... or even worse... OUTSIDE of a bus or cab that's headed straight for you. And sometimes it is just strange. Like after the first freeze when you see the man in the frozen rice paddy with the pruning saw making the fire. What are you doing, Mr. Man? Out there in the icey ricey, sipping the smoke, swingin' the sickle? I wonder if you're a cereal killer... but seriously, what are you burning? I chuckle my cityguy chuckle and chalk it off... chalk it off to Farmer Business, which is a collection of archaic practices practiced for the sake of, well, bread and meat... by Farmers. But who really KNOWS? He could be burning his porno collection or photos of his ex-wife or a box full of GI Joes.

Korea has Tradition... which is a thing that you accumulate when your country is more than a few hundred years old. That means that they get to pretend that problems like broken marriages and affairs with one's spouse's relatives and homosexuality are a Western inventions. Really Korea is FULL of broken marriages and affairs with one's spouse's relatives and homosexuality... but just like in North America and other parts of the world, people act really horrified when they find these things, and cry and pray and carve their skin with sharp pointy objects, or booze up and wrap the Kia around the front end of a bus.

Mostly what I like is, Korea has JOBS; jobs for over-educated lazy whitey slobs like me, where I get paid better than I EVER did in my own country, despite the fact that minimum wage is less than HALF what it is there. If you are a native English speaker with a Bachelor's degree in ANYTHING, and you are waiting tables in Vancouver or washing cars in Ontario or wiping windows in Quebec, then you are STUPID. I hate to be mean, but sometimes Woo Big must be mean. Don't be sad; Woo Big was once stupid too.

Greetings. I am Woo Big. I was born in an art school video project gone horribly awry, and rose to unwanted notoriety following an unfortunate closeup of me in a glittery mask puckering my lips like a disco pegboy. I wish I was making this up but it's all so horribly true.

To escape my horrible checkered (and paislied) past I've fled to Korea where I live a secret life as an English teacher. Again, I can assure you, I'm not making this up...????... I can't promise that I'll never pull your leg, but I do promise that everything I say COULD be true if reality conformed to the rippling idiosyncrasies of my imagination. I also offer the tenuous guarantee that I am highly unlikely, at any time, in this web log or any other of my emissions (nocturnal or otherwise) to make any real sense. There is little likelihood of any regularity, pattern, or reliability emerging or becoming discernable by any means from within the muck that I am heretofore likely to spew.

Huh-huh... "horribly true" and "likely to spew" kinda rhyme...