西洋오랑캐

한국어 2, Unit 1
Korean For International Learners p. 261

* 자느라고 도독 들어온 걸 몰랐어요.
I didn’t know a burglar had broken in because I was sleeping.
* 청소 좀 하고 오느라고 늦었어요.
I was late because of cleaning my room.

한국어 2, Unit 1 p. 8-9

1. A: 어제 왜 안 왔어요?
B: 병 걸리느라고 어제 안왔어요.
2. A: 요즘 바쁜가 보지요?
B: 저는 일 많이 하느라고 요즘 바빠요.
3. A: 졸려요?
B: 네, 공부하느라고 졸려요.
4. A: 벌써 용돈을 다 썼어요?
B: 미팅하느라고 용돈 다 썼어요.
5. A: 어제 왜 전화 안 했어요?
B: 저는 너무 바쁘느라고 전화 안 했어요.
6. A: 아이들이 배가 많이 고팠나 봐요.
B: 아이들이 점심을 안 먹느라고 배가 많이 고팠어요.
7. A: 어제 병원에 가서 注射를 맞았어요?
B: 다음 주에 中國에 가느라고 注射를 맞았어요.
8. A: 미안해요.
B: 뭐 하느라고 미안해요?

注射 (주사 / a shot, an injection)

If news stories about Korean guys dying after playing computer games are to be taken as the norm, one could assume that Koreans play a lot of video games. While the first part is not the norm (very few guys die due to excessive play), Koreans do enjoy playing a lot of online games. So it should come as no surprise that game companies include things in their games that will appeal to Korean players.

I currently play World of Warcraft, mainly because my brother and sister also play. Anyhow we recently started a guild and as a guild we were able to design a tabbard. While looking through different designs, I came across this one…

Proof Koreans are important clients in the world of online games.

For those of you not in the know, that demonic face is a 도깨비 (tokaebi) which is a Korean goblin of sorts. “But Wyatt that could be any old goblin!” I’m afraid not, the face they selected is one of the most famous depictions of 도깨비 in existance. See, it’s even on Naver!

Holy crap, yesterday I saw the best show ever, and that show was Robo One! Do you remember when Battlebots first came out and you thought it would be so cool, but when you saw it you were disappointed because it was basically remote control cars with buzzsaws attached to it and not Rock em’ Sock em’ Robots style robots? Oh that was just me….

Robo One in full effect!

Anyhow Robo One is an ultimate fighting league where human shaped robots have a battle to the death…or until the mechanism that makes the robot stand up ceases functioning.

Now I’m not one hundred percent sure on the rules since most of the time I was laughing extremely loudly (since foot high robots attempting to kill each other is wicked funny), but I think they go something like this:

Two robots square off over a three round match. The robot scores points if he is able to knock the other robot to the ground. If the robot is unable to get up during a 10 count he is KO’d. I’m not sure what being KO’d does since in one match a robot got KO’d in the second round and returned for the third round.

But what makes this show the best ever? What doesn’t! First off you have tiny robots attempting to knock each other over. Most of the time the robot on the attack would fall over without toppling his opponent (which looked wicked funny), but when they were successful there would be slow motion replays of a robot getting tackled by another robot…which is extremely funny.

Another thing that was a sign of how totally awesome this show was, was their ref. The ref, for some reason was wearing rubber gloves, like it was an actual boxing match where bodily fluids would be shed. Now I don’t know a lot about robotics so perhaps human contact would mess up the robots…but now that I think of it, the kids manning the robots didn’t wear rubber gloves during the 1 minute rest periods between rounds. I guess the ref just didn’t want to risk catching robot AIDS.

And the other thing that was great was the fact that they had announcers calling all the action…and they were totally into it, and totally serious. If memory serves me correctly there was a certain level of irony with tounge firmly implanted in cheek in regards to Battlebots, but not here. The announcers were so into the battle.

“OH! Nice move from Ggumjjang!!!” (that was the other thing that ruled; they called the action while totally ignoring the human element…it was Ggumjjang the robot who was delivering a nice move, not Hong Gildong, the pasty faced college kid with the remote control).

Anyhow if you are in Korea and have the MBC Game channel on your cable system, check out Robo One on Saturday afternoons…and while looking for some pictures I learned of Robo One leagues in Japan and the US….so perhaps you too can see shuffling robots attempting to knock each other over. Check your local listing for time and avalibilty.

오늘, 저는 학생과 학생의 엄마랑 식당 갔어요. 저기에서 우리는 오겹살을 먹었어요. 저는 삼겹살을 먹어 분 적 있으면 오겹살을 안 먹었어요. 그것은 겁나게 맛있어요. 저는 식사시간 중에 한국말 많이 했어요. 저는 한국어 더 熱心히 공부해야 돼요.

熱心 (열심 / enthusism, zeal)

Back when I was in America, my brother got me into the game World of Warcraft. So during the course of my stay I picked up a copy of the game and registered to play.

I returned to Korea a week later, and installed the game on my home computer. The game installed, and works, though due to the fact that my computer is almost 2 years old now, tends to run a little on the slow side.

“No problem,” I think to myself, “when I play at low traffic times the lag isn’t that bad, and if I want to play at high traffic times, I can just head to the local PC 방.”

I’ve seen countless ads for the game on the sides of buses, so I know they had the game here, and if a game exists here they have it at the PC 방. So I headed over to my local PC 방 to test it out today. And to my delight I learned that it doesn’t work.

Since I have an American account, the computer at the PC 방 wouldn’t recognize it. As apparently accounts in America and accounts in Korea are stored in different data bases that have no way of interacting with each other. None of the pasty faced chain smoking PC 방 overseers could get it to work either. So for the time being it looks like I have to deal with lag. That’s what I get for being a geek.

DSC02237
Originally uploaded by wdunn.

I present this picture of a bunch of peppers for no particular reason. I could have just chucked this picture up here and be done with it, but that’s not really my style.

I could alternately explain that Korean cuisine is quite spicy and makes use of a lot of hot peppers, but anyone who has eaten or has any knowledge of Korean food will already know this, so it would be a waste of my time. For those of you with no knowledge of Korean food, it is spicy and uses a lot of peppers (and ingredients derived from peppers).

So instead you get to read about a random Korean idiom / proverb.

Like all languages, Korean is ripe with proverbs and idioms. Today in keeping with the theme of the picture, we are going to talk about an expression involving peppers.

This expression is basically identically to the “good things come in small packages” expression bandied about in the English language, but there is some added humor if you can speak Korean…and are extremely immature.

For you see, in Korean the word “고추 (red pepper)” is commonly used to mean penis, much in the same way Americans use sausage (ie. “sausage party”) or weiner to mean the same thing. So you also get “The small penis is hotter.” Make of it what you will…

Several weeks back I posted a video of my kindergarten students singing some Twisted Sister. Today, they impressed me with their continued bizarre musical prowess. In their classroom is some toy that is used to teach phonics. The toy has the alphabet on it, when the letters of the alphabet are pressed a soothing voice delivers a line like, “G. G says guh…”

Today for some reason, the girls busted this toy and started using it like a sampler. So it was like, “G…G…G…G say H!” “Q..F…F…H…H says huh!!!” And while they were doing this one girl was banging on a tamborine, and another was singing “Jingle Bells.” It was basically a Beck b-side.

Other than that the day was pretty crappy, mostly due to the fact that the day was rainy (or overcast the entire day). Like most people, when it rains, I have no energy to do much of anything other than sit around my house, watch crappy TV / movies, or drink coffee. Couple this with my continued early days, and it is needless to say that I was exhausted most of the day. All I really wanted to do was take a nap, but that wasn’t going on.

Oh also one of the kindergarten student’s mom was totally flirting with me, which was kind of odd. She’d be pretty decent looking if it weren’t for the fact that she sports braces…I’m not even joking. Anyhow after Beck-esque jams, and a Korean mom mackin’ it to me I got on a bus and came home…and typed this, and now I’m going to watch some crappy television and eat 유부초밥. The end.

오늘 비가 많이 왔어요. 그래서 오늘 저는 비때문에 정말 피곤했어요. 저는 비를 싫어해요. 어처피 5시에 맥가이버 (MacGuyver) 봐요. 지금 끝났어요.

불가사리 (Pulgasari)

Occassionally there is a movie, album, television show, book, or other piece of artwork produced where the story behind the creation of the item is far more interesting than the actual work itself. This is the case with 불가사리. The story goes a little something like this…

North Korean ruler 김정일 (Kim Jong-Il) is something of a movie fanatic. Back in the days when his pops was still running the show, Kim Jong-Il was the head of the state run movie house (among other things). The story goes something like this, in the late 1970s Kim Jong-Il had South Korean director, 신상옥 (Shin Sang-Ok), and his actress wife, Choi Eun-hee, kidnapped and brought to the North to jumpstart the North Korean film industry.

After making several films, Shin began work on 불가사리, a giant monster movie in the same vain as Godzilla in the early 1980s. Shin was given use of the North Korean army, and the people at Toho Studios in Japan were responsible for the monster. Kim Jung-Il envisioned plastic 불가사리 toys being sold the world over, but things were not to be.

While in Vienna, Shin and his wife were able to escape from their North Korean keepers and after a taxi chase, fled to the American embassy. For ten years, 불가사리 remained unreleased, in the world at least…who knows what happens north of the 38th parallel. It was released in Japan where it did decently, and later released in South Korea, where it was met with little fanfare.

So what of the actual film? To be totally honest, it’s not anywhere near as interesting as the backstory behind this film. But with a back story like that, and my love of horrible movies, this was a film I’ve been wanting to check out for quite sometime…and I finally have.

After the ending credits (shown at the begining) we get right into the action…kind of. The movie is set sometime during the 고려 period (I’m guessing here), and as the film begins in a small village where we see a woman named, 아미 (Ami) bringing water to some sort of iron workers.

Among the iron workers is an old man (아미’s father) that, due to honorifics in the Korean language, I only knew as 아버지 (”Father”), and a swarthy, headband equipped lad known as 인댁 (Indaek), who I’m pretty sure was getting some from 아미. Early in the film it is revealed that 인댁 is the leader of a resistance movement.

Final a North Korean woman the gives some clout to the 남남북녀 (南男北女) concept…though this movie was made 20 years ago so more likely than not she’s an ajumma now…or dead.

Indek rockin’ it 80’s style. I can’t really mock this Loverboy headband / mullet combo since this movie was made in the 80’s at the height of Loverboy headbands and mullets.

Very early in the film we see why 인댁 would join a group opposed to the government…the government in this film consists of a bunch of assholes. Within the first ten minutes of the film they stroll into town demending all iron in town be handed over in the name of national defense.

“Father” explains that a creature named 불가사리 (Pulgasari) had eaten all of the iron (in reality 인댁 and his posse were hiding it under some straw). The jerkass government officals weren’t buying it.

“We need your iron fool!”

A huge fight breaks out in which 인댁, “Father”, and the other iron workers / rebels are taken into custody. For his outlandish tale, “Father” gets beat down.

Random violence on an old man.

While in prison the guards refuse to give any food to “Father,” while handing over bowls of chow to 인댁 and his homeboys. Since 인댁 is such a filial lad, he refuses to eat unless the old man gets food too, which he does not.

Meanwhile 아미 and her brother, 아나 (Ana…that’s Ah-na not Anna) arrive at the prison with some food for their father, but are manhandled by the guards and ultimately turned away.

“DAD!!!!”

Somehow they are able to throw chunks of rice into their father’s jail cell, but he does not chow down on it. Nope, instead he decides to use the rice to do some sort of arts and crafts project with it. That’s right instead of eating, he uses the rice (and dirt) to craft a crazy looking doll. After a monologue directed to the gods the old man dies.

As the corpse of the old man is being taken out of the prison, 아미 discovers the doll and takes it. Nothing like a rice doll to ease the pain of a dead father. Back home 아미 is engaged in some mending. While sewing she pricks her finger with a needle. The blood from her finger drips onto the doll, who like Frosty the Snowman springs to life. Unlike Frosty, he promptly begins chowing down on sewing needles.

“Ouch…my finger!”

The “blood” from her finger hit the doll her father created…

and it sprang to life, a lot like Frosty the Snowman!

아미 and 아나 think nothing of this and are enamoured with the tiny bizarre creature, which they think is rediculously cute. During the night, 불가사리 escapes the house by chewing through the lock. Outside, the beast continues to chow down on metal, growing in the process.

As the pair stand there admiring the awesomeness that is mini 불가사리, the government officals return to put 인댁 to death by beheading.

인댁’s gonna catch it when Mom gets home. Off with his head!

불가사리 returns to the scene and eats a sword before they can slay 인댁. He then eats shackles…and a face.

PUPPET ATTACK!!!

The governor hears of these antics and is very amused. He then send troops to go investigate. They discover 불가사리, now roughly midget sized, chowing down on a weapons stronghold. The soldiers are unable to do anything against this unstoppable beast. 불가사리 flees of into the woods with some tools and is not seen from again.

At some point after this, the government officals capture an old woman known throughout the film as “Mother.” She is beaten, as is a small child. This does not sit well with 인댁 and his homeboys, so they head over to the prison to break some people out. When they discover “Mother” is dead things turn into a battle. During this battle, 인댁 slays the governor.

A king.

A king is not pleased with this turn of events and wants the rebels crushed. A general with a super low voice (you can tell he’s evil by this fact alone) offers his services to the king.

Evil general enemy with super low voice.

From here we are treated to a battle scene in which the peasant army partakes in some Ewok-esque tactics. A lot of boulders and logs are pushed down hills into oncoming soldiers. The battle scenes in the movie are fairly well done, if one is willing to overlook the obvious styrofoam boulders and logs, and the cheesey toy sword sound effect noise.

Styrofoam boulder assault.

After the battle we get to see how bad the peasants have it. While the king and his men are living the highlife, the peasants are shown eating horses, grass, and bark (not to much of a stretch from what is happening there now).

Eating horse.

During this period, the army returns and is about to capture 아미 is about to be captured but 불가사리 returns and makes the save. He is now man sized, though not for long.

The other rebels are shocked to see the creature, but 아미 delivers some of the greatest dialogue ever uttered: “He got this big by eating iron. Don’t worry, Pulgasari is kind!”

And he is kind! We are then treated to a montage from hell. There are battles, 불가사리 eating weapons, and some of the worst use of blue screen ever.

Worst use of blue screen ever…

The rebels now have the advantage, so the evil general hatches an evil plan with his evil cronies (one of whom has an evil eyepatch). The plan goes something like this: if they are able to capture 아미, they will have 불가사리 in the palm of their hands.

This plan works out perfectly, and the evil forces are able to capture 아미 as she is getting water. I find this unbeliveable, since while all the other rebels are having party time, the woman who controls 불가사리 is made to fetch water….damn you Confucius! Damn you! But I digress.

Come on! You think that can hold 불가사리?! Get real!

The evil general has 아미 and a big cage (pictured above). He tells 불가사리 to get in the cage, or 아미 will get it. 불가사리 goes into the cage, which is set on fire. But these dudes are mad stupid since apparently 불가사리 not only find metal extremely delicious, but is apparently made out of it as well. So instead of dying in this inferno, 불가사리 just turns red, hot, and really pissed off. The general and his men realize that they made a huge mistake and attempt to haul ass in some boats. 불가사리 jumps into the water, which boils due to his intense heat.

Shortly after this rebel victory, there is another battle. During this battle, the evil general has ballistas that are a lot more like rockets that huge crossbows. During the rocket attack, 불가사리 catches one in the eye.

It’s all fun and games until someone gets a ballista in the eye.

This does little to stop the fury that is 불가사리, and we are finally treated to the one thing people look for in giant monster movies (aside from an Asian kid in really short shorts), buildings getting smashed! This time it’s not Tokyo being destroyed, but a Korean style palace, which is pretty awesome.

The general has had enough of the rebels and their man in a rubber suit monster, so he comes to the conclusion that the only thing left to do is call in some 무당 (mudang). For those of you that did not study Korean history and culture, 무당 are for lack of a better word a shaman. These women were traditionally involved in exorcisms, fortune telling and other spiritual needs in traditional Korean society…but again I digress.

Bring in the 무당!

The general has a huge pit dug, and then using 무당, causes 불가사리 fall into this pit. The pit is quickly covered with rocks, and it appears that 불가사리 is done (the monster, not the movie). To make matters worse, 인댁 is captured and hanged for his crimes. Things seem pretty dire for the rebels.

아미 is not going to let the rebellion end like this, so she sneaks into some off the hook party being held on the site where 불가사리 was trapped. Plying some guards with alcohol, she goes onto the rock pile and slashes her arm. When her blood hits the rocks, 불가사리 is released from his rocky prison for more ass kicking action.

The general builds some cannons to end things once and for all. The cannons really rock the peasant army, but have little effect of 불가사리. The shots that get in his mouth just seem to piss him off more. 불가사리 then partakes in some more Korean palace clobbering time, and during this rampage, the king gets stepped on.

Godzilla style wreckage.

The rebels have won, but things are not right in the world. 불가사리 still needs to eat. There is a shot of towns people loading up a cart of iron goods (very similar to the beginning of the film) in order to feed the monster. 아미 realizes that unless something is done, 불가사리 will lead to more suffering and war.

아미 summons 불가사리 to a remote mountain area by ringing a temple bell, a bell she then hides in. 불가사리 then proceeds to eat the bell, and in the process eats 아미. He the (for some reason that was lost on me) turns to stone and explodes. A tiny 불가사리 is shown turning into a ball of blue light and flying into the corpse of 아미…the end!

The end.

The movie was kind of all over the place. For starters it was kind of odd that a North Korean film had the government portrayed as the enemies. I know in “real” communism this would fly, but the perverted form of communism the North Koreans have is all about respecting their leaders. The other thing was what exactly 불가사리 was supposed to represent. First he was good and then he was an unstoppable fury that needed to be destroyed, but when destroyed he came back to life…or did he? I’m not really sure.

Anyhow if you are a fan of giant monster movies, or Korean cinema check out 불가사리 for sheer kitsch value alone.

Korean Gas Prices
Originally uploaded by wdunn.

Back while I was in America, and any time I happen to catch an American news broadcast or any late night TV hack (cough cough Leno cough) on AFN I am hit with news stories / jokes with taglines / punchlines like “pain at the pump” / taking it in the ass at the gas station.

Well now that I’ve lived overseas for some time I going to say to America, “Welcome to the rest of the world.” Every joker interviewed on every “outrageous” gas price story comes off as a pompous ass, “Over $2 for a gallon of gas?! That’s outrageous!”

To those people I say, don’t bother living in any other country. I took this picture this afternoon at the gas station near my house. The prices here actually seem a little bit lower than other gas stations I’ve seen here in Korea, but it gives you an idea of what’s going on.

The price of gas at the gas station near my house. The 1499 gas is “volatile oil” the 1210 gas is “light oil.” I don’t know what the difference is between the two since I don’t own a car here. I’m going to assume that it’s like premium and regular back in the USA.

For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to say that 1,000 won is equal to $1US. Prices look pretty good don’t they? Oh wait, you’re probably forgetting that America is the only country that actually uses gallons. This is the price per liter. For the uninitiated, 1 gallon is approximately 3.79 liters (way to make me do math people…god I hate you so much).

Say what?! That means that gas would be around $4 a gallon, and like I said, these prices are pretty low compared to other places I’ve seen, so America quit yer bitchin’! And if the price of gas is such a problem, trade in your tank of a SUV vehicle for a bike or a bus pass.

While back in America, I ended up playing a lot of online games with my brother. For those of you outside of Korea (or the world of online gamming) a great deal of Koreans are fans of these games. A lot of them also don’t like to get killed in the games. They do, however, like to use “profanity” after their defeat.

While we were playing, one word kept popping up again and again. So for all online gamers outside of Korea, I’m going to unlock the mystery that is:

Now this is not really Konglish per say, but this is my webpage, I’ll do what I want to do. Allow me to explain, “KIN.” In Korean there is a word, 즐 (jeul), which to the best of my knowledge is a low level insult. It is used in the same way a kid in middle school might call someone, “fag” or “asshole.”

But how do they get “KIN” from a word that is pronounced as “jeul?” Look at 즐 and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise. ㅈ becomes a K, ㅡ becomes I, and ㄹ becomes an N. So you have “KIN,” which shares the same meaning with it’s real pronunciation. However for non-Koreans this word is completely meaningless (aside from talking about family or ancestors), so here is a note for any Koreans that happen to be reading.

한국여러분, 외국사람들 “KIN” 이해못하면 “KIN”대신에 “sun of betch*” 말하세요.
(Korean, since foreigners don’t understand “Kin” use “sun of betch” instead.)

* Someone actually called me this in a game, the person might have actually been European though.

As this summer’s appearance of “jelly shoes” as a fashion trend proves it takes awhile for western fashion trends to get across the sea to Korea, so it is only fairly recently that Korean men are getting into the “real men wear pink” trend in hip-hop fashion (I know this fad started earlier back in the good old US of A).

Allow me to state right off the bat that I think this is the most assinine fashion trend ever…even more assinine than the Ugg He-man boots thing from this past winter or Co-ed Naked shirts (you know that shit got whack when it would be like “Co-ed Naked Being Naked. We Got Nothing Left Guys.”)

“What Wyatt, you think pink is a girl color?”

No, it’s not that at all. I own a couple of pink shirts. I don’t think pink is a “girl color” or a “gay color.” The thing that makes this trend rediculous is how overkill they take it. Take for example the buffoon I saw this morn on my way into work. He was equipped with the following items (all in the same New Baby Girl shade of pink): baggy clown pants, shirt that would have fit K-1 fighter Akebono, Nike sneakers, messenger bag (containing a pink umbrella…though the umbrella was a slightly different shade of pink), and flat brimmed hat worn at a 37 degree angle to his face. Also he had an mp3 player hung around his neck that was shaped like Hello Kitty’s head.

It was way too much. Dude you want to wear a pink shirt for fat guys when you weight 120 pounds? Go for it, but maybe wear some blue jeans. Feel like sporting pink pantaloons? Go with a different color top. Wanna wear a baseball cap with a flat brim at a stupid angle? Go throw yourself on a train track…

The point is when it comes to pink clothing, like everything in life, moderation is the key. Sitting two seats over from this pink hip-hop mook, was a guy clad in jeans and a pink shirt, and to look at him it wasn’t “Holy shit that’s a lot of pink,” it was more like “Look at that gay guy in the pink shirt,” since his shirt proclaimed, “Hot Stuff Coming Through,” and everyone remembers that episode of The Simpsons.

“We work hard. We play hard!”

Happy birthday to me! That’s right sports fans, August 19th is the day I entered the word some 25 years ago. “Um, Wyatt if the time and date stamp on this post are to be believed it’s 9:33 pm on a Friday night in Korea, and it’s your birthday. Shouldn’t you be somewhere well on the way to drunkeness consuming cake with tomatos on it?”

Yes Dear Reader (not to be consumed with Dear Leader), I should be somewhere else getting my drink on and eating cake, but due some scheduling snafoo (sp?) at work I have to go teach tomorrow (Sunday) at 9:00 meaning I have to leave my home at 7:45 am…meaning I have to get up before 7:45….meaning it would not be a good idea to party it up too much this eve. So I’m sitting here doing some laundry and watching Con Air (this movie is on all the time here in Korea).

I’m not really complaining that much since I can party tomorrow evening, and I’ve had three quasi birthday events already. First in America I had a fake 1986 birthday party where I got a Star Wars action figure (like it was 1986 again) and ate a Fudgey the Whale cake. Then yesterday my girlfriend, U-rim (yes it is the same U-rim), took me out to dinner and gave me a birthday present. And then earlier this evening I had dinner and drank the most heinous alcoholic beverage I’ve ever consumed with the middle aged lady I tutor. In case anyone cares about the brew I consumed it was known as 인삼주 (人蔘酒 / Ginseng “Wine”). To quote Ralph Wiggam, “It tastes like burning.”

So that’s it. It’s my birthday and I’m doing laundry. If you want to send me gifts, feel free to do so, or if you live in Korea and feel like buying me drinks this weekend or next let me know.

It’s too hot and I’m getting up way too early these days. It’s summer school time again, which means my classes are all shifted to the morning hours. Not that I really mind since I’m still waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning due to my rocking American vacation.

Still at 7:50 while walking to the subway station I end up sweating…well, my balls off. By the time I get to the subway station, my clothes are drenched with sweat…and this is at like 8:00 in the morning, I don’t even want to talk about the conditions on my walk home from the subway station.

For anyone who lives in Hong Kong, or has visited Hong Kong in the summer, the weather these days is a lot Hong Kong in July (only without the sudden rains). It’s hot. It’s sticky. It’s fucking disgusting.

It’s the kind of weather were all one wants to do is stay inside with an air conditioner, a cold beer, and MacGuyver reruns. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some beers to get back to. Oh also in case anyone cares, I have about 7 more days of American madness still to type up, but the weather is hot, and I’m lazy and want to watch MacGuyver. Leave me alone! 메롱!

Hey kids, it’s your pal Wyatt live and direct from Seoul, South Korea. That’s right my friends, the American vacation has come to an end…and over the next couple days I will be posting the random tour logs I wrote will I was back in the US of A.

These tales will be posted as if I was posting them here instead of writing them in a marble composition notebook, like I’m a second grader. For those of you who are interested in my American adventures, those posts begin on July 30th.

New Korean material will come once I’m back in some sort of routine and after I’ve finished writing up 2 weeks of being drunk in America, and attempting to make it interesting.

“Seriously, This Is About Hamburgers And Me”

Today my long time friend, Pete Turner, arrived in Albany, NY after traversing across the state from beautiful bankrupt, Buffalo. Pete and I headed out to get some lunch and catch up on old times. We met up with Shane Jones and headed off to Red Robin, home of some big hamburgers.

On the way to Red Robin, we were driving in a minivan, as I don’t have a car, Pete’s car stayed in Buffalo, and Shane’s car had a wheel that was tilted. So we’re driving in this minivan blasting Led Zepplin and basically freaking people out. At one point we stopped at a red light. There was a jeepcar of two middle aged women next to us, and they were pointing and laughing at us…until the light turned green and we did drag racing against them….they weren’t laughing after they at our dust! (so not serious).

Anyhow we arrived at Red Robin and went inside to score some big hamburgers…and big they were! All the hamburgers were monsterous. Additionally the resturaunt had some gimmic about “never ending” French fries. Oh and they and draft beer in a size known as “mondo,” which you know we obviously ordered.

Needless to say we came out of the venue, totally destroyed by beef, fries, and beers. During the ride home I was sweating hamburgers out of my sweat glands…it was horrible.

Fairly uneventful day. Today found me at home with everyone else in my family at work, save for my dad. So I hung out with my dad for the afternoon. Among the awesome lines uttered was this: “Your sister is an idiot.”

And she is…

Later in evening my siblings and I went out for a night swim which was good fun. Since my childhood, pool toys have become much more sinister things. Among the “fun” items we assaulted each other with were the Toypedo, which is a hard rubber torpedo that you throw at each other under water. If it stays under the water the toy is good fun and is a lot like tossing a football around. If it pops out of the water it becomes much more dangerous, in that it weighs about 3 pounds and is hard rubber. Awesome!

The other toy was a foam ball that absorbs water and they splashes when you peg someone with it. Only it doesn’t splash…it just gets really heavy and knocks people out. So it was good fun with the whole family attempting to maim each other.

On Saturday afternoon I met up with my friend, Shane Jones. Since I came here he moved from the suburbs into the city (I use that term loosely) of Albany. So we picked up a case of beers (a variety pack of random Vermont brewed…uh brews), and drove out to his new place.

He’s living with a lady, but she was out of town for the weekend, so the evening was ruled by testosterone…oh wait it wasn’t. We listened to way too much indie rock and drank beers while talking about life…but I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Since the beers were warm, we put a bunch in the ice box and decided to head out to get our chow on. My friend, Shane Jones, told me of an outstanding Mexican place near the pad so we headed out to go eat Mexican food on a balcony. After a short walk we arrived at a venue named, El Loco.

“I don’t think this is the place,” my friend, Shane Jones, proclaimed.
“Hi guys inside or patio?” the friendly host asks us.
“Patio,” we answer in unision.

After being lead out to the patio, and given some menus, Shane Jones informs me that this is definately not the place he thought it was, but it was too late now, we already had Corona’s on the way. So we ordered up some Mexican food (I know chimichangas and enchilladas were involved), drank Corona’s and talked about life in the hood.

After getting our grub on we headed back to his homestead to drink some beers and listen to jams. Shane played me a couple CDs that he claimed were awesome (note to self, get myself Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah, and Death From Above 1979) and then we moved on to random mix CDs.

Both Shane Jones and his lady friend are all about creating mix CDs…they are not however all about labeling them, or puting them in any kind of case, so we had no idea what we were going to get into. Like all mixes these all started off pretty strong, but went on too long and kind of lost their steam by the end of the disc. Among the CDs the song, “Maps,” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was the most frequently featured jam.

Anyhow after listening to tunes, we watched some mid 80s Frank Zappa on a debate show verbally beating some dudes down about censorship, and drank more beers. The we drank more beers, and drank more beers, and got a slive of pizza, and then called it a night.

The End. And Drank Some Beers.

“A Friendly Game of Beer Pong”

Earlier in the week I had been in contact with my friend Ryan. Ryan and I had worked together several summers back and later he was a T.A. in some classes I took. We used to get together for random alcohol based adventures back while I was living in America. These adventures were awesome and included such hits as “Wyatt falling asleep on the hood of a car in a snow storm,” “Puking In Front Of The Cohoes Mastadon,” and “A Cheap Trick Concert That Never Went Down.” Needless to say, Ryan was excited about the prospect of my return to the US of A, and planned an evening of beer pong and other random drinking at his pad to commemorate my arrival.

Ryan and I met up around 8:30, got some pizza and wings and watched Team America World Police: Unrated Version while awaiting the arrival of other people so we could get the game underway. First off Team America World Police is an insane movie. Ryan was all about the theme song from it, which basically bellows, “America…FUCK YEAH!” a lot and decided that he needed to use it as his theme music on the first day of class (he’s an American history professor at a couple local colleges). I was all about the fact that the Korean spoken went back and forth between stereotypical, “Ping pong ching chong,” bullshit, to actual Korean (야 새끼야…너 죽어라!” with no rhyme or reason.

Anyhow I digress. Around 10:30 Ryan’s lady friend and one of her friends arrived, and after a couple drinks it was time for some beer pong. These girls used some really odd rules I’d never heard of in my life.

At one point during the match, “Danger Zone,” from the Top Gun Soundtrack started to play, so I powered up Tom Cruise style (jumping on a couch, pounding my fist on the floor, and bellowing about my love for Katie Holmes). Thanks to the powers of Tom Cruise’s insanity (and the fact that I’m not on Ritalin…though I probably should be) we were able to beat the ladies hands down, but then they said there was some kind of extra innings rule where if they both got ping pong balls into the same cup that they won. They did get them both in the same cup, and for some reason the same extra innings b.s. didn’t apply to us. Whatever it was some decent crap. And in my heart of hearts I know that we won.

Following that there was a dart game and then some of Ryan’s relatives who were in town for some sort of wedding stopped in. They had some pizza and drinks and then took off. At that point we called it a night. I got to sleep on some half deflated air mattress and listen to Ryan and his girlfriend have an extremely mumbley conversation.

(LOW VOICE): MREMEMEMMMEME?
(HIGHER VOICE): mmemremremm.
(LOW VOICE): OK. MMEMEMMSME. MEMREKKMS?
(HIGHER VOICE): emmmemr.

The next morning…or later in that morning, I got dropped off at my house, ready for more nonsense.