Global Hobos: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Effective Salesman(or woman)ship.

Krakow, Poland:
The Krakowian hobo scene thrives on the predominantly Catholic population's sympathy for the meek, ragged, leprous, etc. In Stare Miasto during peak hobo hours, you will find no fewer than eleven middle-aged hoboes spasming behind their aluminum walkers. Taped on the front of each of their walkers is the same laminated bilingual sign that reads (in 72-point Times New Roman font), "Please give me to the money" and "Szrzczrzczsz rzcz rzczrzczłić." These Polish hoboes are afflicted by a rare form of Parkinson's Disease, whose body-convulsing symptoms vanish the instant the hobo's palm nerves make contact with a fistful of loose złoty.

Chicago, Illinois:
Is it any wonder that this festering bastion of diversity is home to the most paradoxical hoboes in the world? Chicago plays host to the sort of hobo who makes you shine his shoes, who is a Boeing executive making 2.3 million a year, who will toss you a quarter for doing nothing.

Daegu, South Korea:
Like much of the local non-hobo population, the Daeguian hobo is an entrepreneur first, an alcoholic second, and a Level 32 Dwarf Priest in World of Warcraft. He coasts about downtown, lying chest-down on a four-wheeled wooden scooter, the kind you used for roller dodgeball in 3rd grade P.E. class. His lower half is swathed in a tarp of black rubber, mermaid-style. Whether or not there are legs underneath the tarp is a topic of some interest to Korean young adults aged 13 to 16 who are on their first dates. On his cart, each hobo carries a small boombox capable of blasting, at 120 decibels, the most sorrowful Korean waltzes you ever did hear. There are eight of these men downtown at any given time and one imagines they are equipped with GPS equipment so as to not infringe on another hobo's rolling grounds.

Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Notoriously picky hoboes. Whimsical. Eccentric. Capricious. They ask you for 37 cents and if you don't have exact change, they walk away.

Berlin, Germany:
The Berlin Hobo (German: der Berlinerhobo) is among the most enterprising and talented in the former Holy Russian Empire. An accordion virtuoso, a prolific caricaturist, a juggler of flaming crucifixes, and a public urinator extraordinaire, der Berlinerhobo often gets so wrapped up in his performance that he forgets to ask you for change. But he will find you some days later, even if you have since left the country or continent.

Omaha, Nebraska:
The Omahobo is Walt Whitman, Kofi Annan, and a wet paper bag full of cigarette butts and bottlecaps all rolled into one. He will tell you a woeful tale of marital estrangement and high seas hijinks on the River Mississippi; he will talk politics, at once impressing you as right-wing and left-wing without touching anywhere in between; he will perform a magic trick in which he spontaneously materializes some treasured artifact from your early childhood. And then, he will ask you if you've got a buck, "cause [he] wanna get laid out tonight and it already [nine] o'clock." As you walk away, the thing that impresses you most is his honesty, and his smell.

The Problem With Children

The problem with children is, they have such low centers of gravity.

Portrait of the Sham Teacher, As a Teacher

3:26 PM -
Sips his instant coffee. Glances at the clock. Puts down his book. Sets to work emptying his pockets of cellular phones, loose change, the crumpled receipts of compromising purchases ... Deposits them into a hidden backpack compartment. Drops the backpack and kicks it under his desk. Seconds later, a pigtailed grin bursts into the teachers' lounge with a search warrant, shoves her hand into his pocket, comes up with nothing, sticks out her tongue and screeches off into the distance. Nods, sips his instant coffee.


4:19 PM -
Notices that the new six year-old in his phonics class has a small but distinct cannabis leaf embroidered into the back of his sweater. Sits in the front of the classroom pondering this as the kids horse around with fire extinguishers. Bell rings. Gets up, opens the door, finds the door handle covered in yellowish slobber. Wipes his hand on his pantleg.

"Fuck," he says.


4:43 PM -
The ten year-olds are tapdancing on their desks. Stops writing on the board. Face reddens. Eyes narrow. Whirls around, throws an eraser, kicks a desk, screams, "Michin babo-ya!" Roughly: "You crazy idiots!" The ten year-olds laugh, laugh, laugh, sense their fleeting lives are in grave danger, continue to laugh ...


6:07 PM -
Is summoned during dinner to teach a middle school class. Grabs a greenish book from the shelf and enters the classroom to find four heads faceplanted into desks. Asks the heads a barrage of questions, no answer. The lights drone; he whistles, reads the graffiti on the walls. Asks another barrage of questions, no answer. Wishes he had a samurai sword to impale himself upon. For lack of one, turns to the markerboard and draws a stick figure, begins to tell the story of his life. The story starts like this:
"In March of 1983, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, there was born a very fat baby. That very fat baby ..."


7:14 PM -
Is writing on the board with his back turned when a nine year-old boy charges, rams the pointed end of an umbrella up his ass. Lets out an anguished growl. Kids laugh. Stands stunned for several seconds.

"Well," he says, "you got me."


7:35 PM -
Takes a bathroom break. Unbuttons, unzips, whizzes. Stares out the open window at the spazzing lights of the city. Notices it is extremely cold. Notices it is snowing. Notices what he perceives to be an icicle dripping down from the window frame. Curiosity entices him to reach out and touch it. Finds it to be a wet strip of toilet paper.

"Fuck," he says.


7:49 PM -
Talks briefly with a Korean coworker, an English teacher who speaks no English. Tries out his Korean, says something mildly offensive. Korean coworker is amused, says, "Kisu! I am shocking!"
Nods, smiles. Thinks, "We are all students."


8:13 PM -
Grades a 4th grade listening test.
(Student's answers are underlined)

Leroy: Do you know Evel Knievel?
Sangmin: No, who is he?
Leroy: He's that gay on the motorcycle.

Grins.


8:43 PM -
Sits at his desk with headphones on, listens to Silver Jews, reflects on another inconclusive year gone by. A very short girl bursts into the teachers' lounge, snatches his headphones, puts them on. Stands grimacing for several seconds. Removes headphones, hands them back.

"Teacher, no," she says. Disappears.


9:15 PM -
Nibbles on cornbread thing. Forty-something Korean teacher looms over his shoulder for several minutes, finally gestures and pidgins that he would like a piece of the cornbread thing. Breaks off a bite for Korean teacher, gets up, goes out in the hall to refill his coffee. Comes back. Korean teacher is gone. So is the cornbread thing.


9:42 PM -
Interviews new foreign teacher, Melissa Something, via Director's telephone. Director stands just behind him, featherdusting.

"How's Daegu?" asks Melissa Something.
"It's disgusting," he says, "but, I'm that kind of guy."
"How's the school?"
"The school," glances back at Director. She smiles, featherdusts. "is chaos. But, you know."

Iran

Last night, I dreamt that I walked to Iran. I traversed South Korea on foot, tiptoed across the rivers, pounced between the mountains, swaggered in and swaggered out of Seoul, dashed across the DMZ blowing off bullets until I came to a line in the dirt. One last glance back at the fluorescent pig intestine restaurant over my shoulder and I stepped over the line and vanished into the sandblasted Middle East of my mind. Escherian stairwell minarets spiraled up into a bloody red sunset, sour prayer calls swam through my ear canals, shrouded silhouettes lay piled up like sandbags in the sand. I stood ogling for a moment, then joined a passing tour group of Hasidic rabbis. We walked out of the city and into the desert, walked and walked until we came to an Aztec pyramid. We climbed the steps, thousands of them. At the top was an elevator. We rode down 200 floors and stopped. The tour guide turned and gestured shhhhhhh! A soft tinny bell sounded and the doors opened. We stepped out into a black candlelit Catholic grotto. I took flash pictures even though the sign said not to, because I wanted to remember this when I woke up.

I found myself outside on the street. Dark Latin children in soccer jerseys chased each other screaming madly down meandering gravel alleyways. So this was Iran. I felt suddenly drowsy and began to fall asleep, half-collapsing as I walked. I couldn't find a gas station, so I dumpster-dove for a canned cappuccino. I drank it in a single shot and woke up in my Korean bed. Holding a handful of sand. And wearing an Ayatollah Khomeini t-shirt.

I am grateful that somewhere in the troubled mist of our mammalian evolution, it became beneficial for our fuzzy forefathers to hallucinate in their sleep. Were it not for this lovely faculty of ours, life would be only marginally more interesting than televised poker.

I woke up this morning with a Frappuccino in my hand.

The teaching charade was pushed to new frontiers of realism today as I spent a half-hour writing progress reports for my fifty students. The reports fell into four generic types, certainly not from any disregard on my part, but because there is a limit to what can be said about a student's classroom behavior, particularly when the student is too young and much too Korean to stand out.

Parentheses are mine.

Type One:
Your Daughter Will Make Some Poor Man Very Unhappy Someday.

Jeong Yu-Jin is an energetic (sadistic) and lively (malicious) student with a distinct personality (spiteful grin) all her own. She always brings a positive attitude (pellet gun) to class. She is one of my favorite students (she punches me frequently) and I truly enjoy teaching her (I hide in the lavatory during my lunch break). She has many friends (lackeys) in class and she loves to help (hit) them with their homework. Please encourage her to keep up the good work (please beg her, for Christ's sake, to stop ripping out my armhair).

Type Two:
Bearing In Mind That You Are A 40-Something Korean Father, You Probably Won't Be Able To Read This, But I Will Nevertheless Write A Barrage Of Negative Adjectives In The Hopes That You Will Take The Time To Look Them Up, And Then, Take The Deluxe Kimchi Tongs To That Little Terd-Dropper Son Of Yours.

Ee Ho-Jin is a lively student with a great sense of humor (he laughs when I bleed). I can tell he studies hard (plots against me) in his free time and he has been making progress (a lot of origami ninja stars) in class. Unfortunately, he sometimes disrupts lessons with his talking (he once lunged at my throat with a sharpened compass/ruler) and often distracts (roundhouse kicks) his classmates. The director has talked to him (beaten him with a wooden stick) on a number (37) of occasions. Please encourage him to focus during class (stop attending school) or the director will be forced to take further disciplinary action (his English teacher will board a one-way flight to San Francisco).

Type Three:
Your Daughter Is Creepy But Docile.

Kim Un-Yeong is a young scholar (recluse) with a lot of potential (few friends who are not imaginary). She is the most advanced student in her class (the other kids have been snorting markers) and she always does well on tests (she likes cheese). Un-Yeong pays attention during class time (she is revoltingly pale) and she loves helping out her classmates (she often makes animal noises). She is truly a delight to teach (I joke about her in the teachers' lounge) and her English has improved tremendously over the past few months (she will one day join a religious cult). Please encourage her to keep up the good work (please feed her more fishheads).

Type Four:
I Have Forgotten Who Your Son Is.

Kim Byeong-Ook is my favorite student. He is hard-working, dedicated, and loaded to the gills with genuine linguistic talent. I can tell he studies hard in his free time, as evidenced by the delightful haiku poems he recites to me between classes. He is always eager to help other students out with their homework and he is an active participant during class time. Once, after another boy had fallen and skinned his knee, Byeong-Ook spent ten minutes tending to the boy's wound and dabbing away his tears with a moist towelette. A scholar and a gentleman, your son also seems to enjoy studying math and collecting Yu-Gi-Oh cards. On top of everything, Byeong-Ook is an outstanding ping-pong player and I have had the privilege of playing him in several friendly matches, a few of which I am not ashamed to admit losing. Continue to encourage Byeong-Ook in his studies and his ping-pong playing. (I have forgotten who your son is).

Busan, in four photos or less.

... and now I will answer your questions.

I weren't much of a poet ...

Something was buzzing underneath the pair of boxers on the floor. I rolled out of bed and picked it up. It was Mark, the Bostonian.

"We going to Busan or what?"
"I dunno," I said.
"Flip a coin."

It was noon. We were supposed to be in Busan already. I sifted through the loose change under my bed.

"Got it?"
"Yeah, 10 Won."
"Okay. Heads, we’re heading to Busan."
"Right.''
"Tails, we’re going back to bed. With our fucking tails between our legs."

There is a moment of inertia at the start of any expedition when the hardened explorer can duck his head into the wind and trudge forth towards lands unseen and probably expensive, or just roll back over in bed and maybe wake up in time for BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur. I had been clamoring to go to Busan all week, but I was quietly hoping to roll back over and maybe wake up in time for BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur.

I tossed the coin. It glanced off the side of a sleeping Coke can and skittered across the floor, spiraled and whirred until it died and ... tails.

"Tails."
"Alright, man," said Mark, "goodnight."

I set my phone back under the boxers on the floor, pulled the covers up around my neck and rolled over, warm and content. If the coin had come up heads, Mark and I would have gestured our way onto the cheapest train to Busan, hocked Anglo-Saxon loogeys into the Sea of Japan, played quarters with dusty Russian whores in the pubs on the port, catnapped in a karaoke room ... but fate came up tails. This meant I would sleep, maybe wake up in time for BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur, go out afterwards and hunt down a gory box of potato pizza from the Pizza Bingo down the street ... The whole course of events had been decided by the thickness, density, and upward velocity of a nearly worthless Korean coin, the springiness of my woodgrain-papered floor, the mass of any toenails, dust bunnies, or bits of rice chancing to lie in the way; all of these had some incalculably small effect on the coin's turning up tails, which determined that we would not go to Busan, which would of course determine the height and relative hairiness of my unborn children, how I would vote in 2012, the winning percentage of the 2017 Montreal Expos, and an infinity of other things, among them perhaps the destruction or slightly delayed destruction of humanity, which (depending on the vastness and emptiness of the universe) might or might not have any effect whatsoever on anything.

I couldn’t sleep.

Then, something buzzed underneath the pair of boxers on the floor. I rolled out of bed and picked it up. It was Mark.

"I’m not going to lie to you," Mark said, “but right now, I feel like a real pussy."
"Me too."
"So. Let’s go."

The days don't loiter.

Today, one of my ten year-old boys came to class wearing a green t-shirt that said, "I LIKE TO GET IT ON WITH BOYS WHO VOTE." Which reminds me, I never cast my midterm absentee ballot.

Your next assignment:

Your next assignment is to ask me a question about Korea.

Most questions about Korea have fascinating (and often vomit-inducing) answers lurking around in space somewhere, and the odds are good that I am well-equipped to find them.

I will address each question in a separate blog post. If you ask 47 questions, I will grudgingly write 47 blog posts. I am willing to go to great lengths to extinguish your curiosity about Korea, to spare you from ever needing a reason to visit this sulphurous industrial nightmare.

An interstellar burst ...

I have voyaged to the edge of the world, I have sailed over the edge, I have fallen into another rut.

I wake up at noon, drink two coffees.

I teach.

I become a mountain, a crash test dummy, a trash can for children. I laugh with chilling authenticity at the same gags every day - laughing though I don't find them funny, although I find it funny that I don't find them funny, so I laugh at myself - let's call it doublelaugh.

"Teachel wolf-man!"
"HA HA HA"
"Teachel clazy!"
"HA HA HA"
"Teachel stinky and clazy!"
"HA HA HA"

My kids love me. Kind of.

I go out, eat intestines. I don't ask from which animal.

I come home. I pluck "Blackbird" on the guitar. It's late, the neighbors are sleeping. I leave the guitar on the sofa. I drink hot cocoa and read books about physics and space until I can no longer see straight. I strap on my sleep visor. I sleep.

I wake up at noon, drink two coffees.

I teach. Kind of.

Igo ani jana.

It's like The Shawshank Redemption. All the English teachers here are chiseling their days into the walls, pacing like caged pumas up and down the streets, chain smoking, tunneling through the floor with rock hammers by moonlight. I, myself, have a d-day countdown running on my cell phone: 271 days until I fly away. I am not homesick and life is not even that unbearable here, but it would be silly for me to deny it: Korea is a stepping stone.

I did not come to Korea because I am a kimchi connoisseur, because I enjoy being stared and pointed at, because I have a penchant for hostile languages or because I thought second-hand radiation might do me some good. I am here unabashedly for the money. But I want the money so I can travel, so that I can become poor again, so that I can work, so that I can travel, so that I can become poor once again, so that I can keep growing and dying and growing, so that I can keep moving without ever having to stay still, all that idealistic bullshit. That bullshit is my plan and it will not become reality. Something will get in the way: I will get pregnant, my kidneys will spontaneously burst, my nose will fall off, my ears will melt down the sides of my head, I will get the guinea worm. But the universe is a large place; I would at least like to get to know the planet I'm stuck on.


Starting with the Oprah restaurant two blocks from my apartment.


Daegu is divided into specialized districts with a trillion specialized shops selling the exact same junk for the exact same price. So on Sunday night, when the Bostonian and I wandered downtown for all-you-can-eat at a foreigner bar, we first had to pass through a pet shop district, a used tuba district, a Protestant Church district, a wig district, and a district of boarded-up windows, scattered plastic bags full of ball bearings, and discordant faraway piano tinkles - en route to the foreigner bar district, where foreigners go to sniff each other's asses, and drink.

The buffet was packed and buzzing with the hysteria of a hundred human beings united in a quest to eat themselves to death for fifteen bucks a head. After finishing our fourth course, the Bostonian and I decided to sample some of the insect cuisine, one bug apiece, with lemons for chasers just in case. It was a brownish bug, maybe some sort of larva, football-shaped, a chewy morsel with a dash of crustacean pizzazz. I had just about choked the thing down when a blue-shirted Korean man at the table next to me collapsed and went into a seizure.

I've always imagined my moment of truth to be a dramatic or at least somewhat distracting affair, drawing some concerned glances and maybe a paramedic or two. But this poor bastard just lay on the floor writhing around for five minutes while his friends sat with their beers stalled en route to their mouths. The guy must have stopped breathing, so the hero of the bunch felt obligated to kneel down and give a few halfhearted chest compressions. Meanwhile, a drunk expat across the room stood up and performed an impeccable reenactment of the "Da Bears" SNL skit, pounding on his chest, hacking and pantomiming the projectile dislodgement of a Philly cheese steak, a hot dog, or something.

The bug was still on my tongue so I swallowed it and reached for a lemon. A man in an orange jumpsuit parted the gathering crowd with a stretcher. A tense but mostly impatient silence weighed heavy on the buffet as people waited for it to become socially acceptable to go back for more cocktail wienies. At the bar, a Korean was bellowing without using his honorific forms because the weissbier was kaput.

Finally, the seizing man ceased seizing and rose to his feet. I fought that primal American spectator's instinct to give him a standing O, realizing morbidly that he could collapse again at any second and die. He staggered around a bit, let out a few probably incoherent words (doubly incoherent because I don't know Korean), looked around, scratched his head, and bowed ashamedly to the onlooking crowd, deciding by default that he was terribly drunk. His two friends grabbed him by the arms and grumbled as they dragged him out of the bar. Your worst enemy is your own nervous system (Orwell, 43).

The Bostonian had not finished his bug.

"Eat up." I pointed a chopstick.

"Fuck you," he said.

Haek bang-gu.

Korean road trips are fundamentally different from their longer (and therefore manlier) counterparts in the western hemisphere. Korea itself is about the size of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, so driving from one end of the country to the other seldom takes longer than fifteen minutes, 25 if you happen to get caught during rush hour or in the midst of one of the hwa-rang taekwondo streetfights that rage constantly in the unpoliced suburbs.

Because of Korea's longitudinal and latitudinal brevity, it has been woefully deprived of one of the few remaining American institutions that could arguably be called worthwhile: the American truck stop. Korean truck stops - because there are about three of them - are subject to obsessive-compulsive upkeep and sanitation. Where there should be Skoal-encrusted toilet seats and glory-holed stall walls, there are friendly solid-gold cyborg bidets that are fluent in over six million forms of communication. Where there should be amphetamine-popping truckers with Old Testament names, there are shrewd, camelbacked old men who will simultaneously organize your wallet, give you a neckrub, and grill up a live squid. In short, the Korean truck stop is modern, safe, and open to Asian-looking people from all walks of life, not just those of us who are young and gutsy enough to put our trucker virginity on the line for a bag of vending machine Funions.

We stopped twice on the 53 kilometer drive to Gyeongju. En route, we passed a trailer truck hauling thirty rusted red cylinders stamped with the English words "ROBOT WIRE." The Bostonian and I posed a few anxious questions from the backseat, which prompted Sangmin to hit the gas and crank up the Korean hip-hop. The invasion has begun.

Gyeongju was typically Korean. Mountains, pagodas, nylon Buddha ponchos, and every ten feet a vending machine stocked to the brim with Pocari Sweat, a hyperaddictive opiate-based sports beverage. While in Gyeongju, as per whenever I leave the apartment, I absorbed a small cult of eight to ten year-old disciples who followed me around stroking my arm hair and saying "I love you."

We didn't stay long, but I did manage to take this pretty bad-ass picture of Hyunmin.

It is an unfortunate coincidence that I happened to catch him during one of the rare twelve-second intervals where he is not puffing on a cigarette, otherwise this would have been a near-perfect Marlboro Man shot.

Korea - as evidenced by the photograph below - is a fantasyland of nauseating antiquity, harrowing technological capability, and chuckle-worthy juxtapositions of the two.



I do not recommend it to anyone.

-Kisu

Feeful come and feeful go.

First thing this morning, one of my eight year-olds pegged me in the eye with a tennis ball. Furious and half-blind, I let out a beleaguered ogre groan and groped for the would-be assassin, eventually snagging him by the collar. I ripped his ball away and tossed it in the garbage. Rule number one: never martyr a fuzzy spheroid. For the next forty-five minutes, the kids went on a rampage, scribbled all over me in black marker, roundhouse kicked the walls, tore everything to shreds. In spite of my recent advances in pretension and musical literacy, I still do not deal well with bullying.

I had so mori soup for dinner. "So mori" means "cow head." As much as I wanted to be revolted by the stuff, it was indescribably bland. Well, I could describe it to you, but I would only end up using some worthless description like "indescribably brand." You know?

I just finished reading 1984 for what might have been the 1,984th time. It's the only book I can re-read with any sort of non-contrived enthusiasm. It's written like a shark. There isn't a sentence in the book that isn't pure muscle. I still jump when they get caught.

Tomorrow I'm going on a road trip to Gyeongju with the Korean brothers and the Bostonian neo-hippie. I'm excited because we won't be in Daegu, or on top of a mountain overlooking Daegu, or in a historic Shilla Dynasty suburb in the process of being swallowed alive by Daegu.

It's 4:45 in the morning and I'm holed up in the fourth floor stairwell of an emptied-out office building, slurping from a cup of authentic ramen noodles. It's time for bed.

So glad to be a slab.

It's my third month in Korea.

The BBC hordes have been nipping at my heels this year. I was in Krakow for The Pope, I was in Berlin for the World Cup, and now I'm in Korea for the apocalypse. Call me Forrest Gump. And yet I've scarcely written a word about any of it. I'm not sure why, exactly. When I'm not at work getting ddong chimmed by Korean 4th graders, I'm brooding on how I will recount my travels to my cybernetic great-grandchildren of the future, whether I will narrate each episode in past or present tense, which digressions I will make, the length of said digressions, whether to omit sordid details for posterity ... but my misadventures, like this afternoon's kimchi, need time (probably several years) to be digested.

I will say - in highly general and mostly vague terms - that my travels have been rendered surreal by the sheer ubiquity of western shit. I feel very much like ... what's his name? ... Tartuffe? Voltaire? ... ah! - Candide! ... what with all the zany coincidences, the recurring themes, the lopping-off-of-ass-cheeks and all. Certain corporate logos have a way of running to your aid when you are at your most defeated, when a Berliner has jacked your luggage and an unprecedented late-May blizzard descends upon you; when your posh British roommates have locked you out of the flat and spending the night on a Krakowian park bench becomes a real (although not splendidly enticing) possibility; when you've just missed your connecting flight home and pause briefly to consider whether you (as a man) could sell yourself for a profit. But when all seems utterly and unrefundably lost, cutting through the frenzied squall of binge-shopping Asians, you spy those doughy electric letters - "DUNKIN DONUTS" - and rising above the consonant cacophony of a Polish Catholic anti-gay march, those glistening, golden buns - "BURGER KING" - and at the train station at the end of the earth, where there is nothing but a slab of rusty concrete and the tombstone-colored sky, where the wolves stand to come before the train ever does, just over your shoulder is a Starbucks, selling grande frappucino latés for half the gross domestic product of wherever it is you've ended up.

I climbed my first non-metaphorical mountain not too long ago. Here is a picture.



Nothing is impossible, just prohibitively time-consuming.

-Keith

Even the tiger comes ...

I'm in South Korea on the eve of the nuclear holocaust. Maybe I ought to write in this thing once in a while.

Starting tomorrow. Promise.

-Kisu

. . .

Kaja, baby.

I need to start wearing a Jackie Chan mask when I go out. I don't have time for any more expat friends. They are a needy and tenaciously clingy bunch. Some are old, some are young, some are thin, some are obese, some are nihilists, and others are Christian fundamentalists, but they all share one thing in common: they are (or were) deranged enough to have willfully decided to teach English in the Republic of South Korea. And I fear this about them, though it is also true of me.

Molla.

My second month in Korea. The world remains vomit-inducingly large and full of moral ambiguity. This keeps me from writing, but it doesn't keep me from walking around looking constipated all the time.

World's Largest Standing, Non-Lead-Based Buddha

Ah, shibal.

To my surprise and my readership's chagrin, I am not being exploited at work. I teach a modest seven or eight classes a day and the director rarely beats me. (For the record, when she does, she smacks me around with a sock full of Korean change, which - because of the exchange rate - leaves fewer bruises than a sock full of American coins of similar size and composition.)

I am wildly popular with my students because I let them pet my armhair. My name is unpronounceable in all but two world languages (Old Welsh and American Sign), so the kids call me "Kisu," the Korean word for "kiss." Several thirteen year-old girls harbor crushes on me, the frightening kind where they pencil "I Love You" on their eyelids and flutter their lashes while I teach the present continuous. No time for love, Dr. Jones.

I am a charter member of The League of Extraordinarily Maladjusted Expats. It started out two weeks ago with a small nucleus of white flakes languishing outside a gas station at 3 AM. It has since snowballed into something large and hideous. We are gaining momentum and rolling downhill fast. The group is far more offensive than any one of its members.

We are everyone and nobody. We are an obese 47 year-old Newfoundlander missing his left eyetooth. We are a 20-something Protestant missionary who plays jazz gospel hymns on the electric piano. We are a timid homosexual Korean businessman. We are a prematurely balding Australian. We are two Korean brothers with similar-sounding names. We are a bleached-blonde Canadian fuckwit who thinks he's that fuckwit from Van Wilder. We are a dark-haired vegetarian girl who reads Dostoevsky. We are Kisu.

Heil Kimchi?

Me: Ahh! Korean Nazis!
You: Um, dude ... that's a Buddhist good luck symbol.
Me: Ahh! Lucky Korean Buddhist Nazis!
You: [beleaguered sigh]

On arthropods.

The Daeguba System is in peril. It has been infiltrated by the most evil and icky empire of them all: the phylum arthropoda.

I returned home after an exhausting, caffeine-palsied night of chatting with my l33t hax0r friends in the PC bang across the street, flicked on the living room light and ... arrrghhhh! A bug! Fuck. I can't describe what kind of bug it was or I'll chunder all over the computer monitor and it's not my monitor to chunder all over.

These bugs have no name but you know the kind I mean. They have no name because naming them would imply that they belong to a species, that they fall in love, mate, have families, family friends, innocent hobbies like frisbee golf and flying remote control airplanes. But they are not, not, not a species. They are mutants, genetic mutants that spawn in the dingy creases of the world, wherever there is a basement sink, a forgotten-about space behind a toilet, or a person sleeping with his mouth left precariously wide open. But if I were to name this bug - thus implying it belongs to a species with bloodlines and ancestors and immigration papers and dignity, which I remind you it does not, damn it - if I were to name this bug, firm believer in onomatopoeia that I am (even though "onomatopoeia", while a very funny-sounding word, is not, itself, onomatopoetic), if I were to name this bug, I would name it "bluoughoughughhhhh!!!" because that is precisely the sound I make when I flick on the lights in my living room and catch one of these bugs, one of these bluoughoughughhhhhs, making a beeline on its 17.256 legs for a drain, a hole in the wall, or a stray pair of underwear to nest in, to squat in for a while, to sit around looking at pornographic magazines or whatever it is these mutant bugs do when they burrow into your dirty underwear for weeks on end.

Of course, now that I've seen one of these things - the beast was so huge that I hesitate to think of it as just "one" - I'm convinced that the apartment is crawling with them. They're in the walls, the floors, the ducts, the vents - it's like they were planted by the KGB, they're everywhere - in the sink, in my clothes, inside my body, inside each other like matryoshka dolls, an infinite regress of crawly fuckers, each more hideously deformed than the last.

Tonight I'm sleeping in two pairs of boxers, with one pair on backwards to keep out even the cagiest of Marine special op bluoughoughughhhhs. And by sleeping, I mean rolling around gasping, sweating, and whispering the rosary through clenched teeth. And by the rosary, I mean that one rosary, the one that's supposed to prevent nighttime bug visitations.

It's fascinating to me - and this is a blog post that I aborted earlier in the week because I thought it was stupid, but now that it's topical ... - that people are so revolted by bugs. It's practically universal among human beings, this revulsion, with the notable exception of entomologists, beekeepers, beard-of-bees wearers, stinkbug huffers, bedbug bite-permitters, ladybug daters, antfarm farmers, brevity-of-the-mayfly's-life-span reiteraters, fishermen, rolly polly with-a-stick pokers, and silverfish sympathizers. Also, most humans don't seem to be too creeped out by monarch butterflies, for whatever reason. Think they're so damn regal ...

Why are we disgusted by bugs, such that we can't help but dry heave when we see some little black speck wriggling around on the floor? Does the nausea serve some evolutionary purpose? Or could it be something more capricious than that? The fear of the mechanical, the unthinking, the metallic/robotic? The same reason we are, sometimes against our own will, forced to conclude that Steven Spielberg's A.I. was a smoldering piece of shit?

Dr. Joel Smaldone of Rutgers says ... ha ha.

One of my worst memories - and it feels very recent, though I must have been shorter than four feet at the time - is of standing on the sidelines during a recreational soccer game, sipping a Capri Sun leftover from halftime, kicking the dirt around, moping, when I glanced up and saw two dragonflies mating, making love, hovering there, fucking in midair, struggling to get it done while still staying aloft, like two little rods, two pencil leads dumb and unalive, hovering, stuck together by another little rod, almost invisible, a dragonfly penis, a tube bubbling with warm dragonfly spermatozoa. Barf. The sight inevitably brought to mind Discovery Channel shots of jet fighters refueling, so lewd and daring and sexy, and I admit I had a hard time looking away from the spectacle. But eventually, I got so queasy that I spit out a mouthful of Capri Sun and walked away, to go stand by the alcoholic assistant coach, whose breath reminded me of the sad people at the bowling alley.

By the way, it was a house centipede. The bug, I mean. I looked it up.

God, I fucking hate bugs.

산

I wake up this morning basted in my own sweat, peel myself out of bed, scrape the smog out from the bags under my eyes. Saturday. No children to spank, no R sounds to coax from malformed Korean palates, nothing to do.

I decide to go up into the mountains. I pack my bag. Grappling hook? Check. Ice pick? Check. Lonely Planet phrasebook for bartering with previously undiscovered tribe of mountain-dwelling Korean Pokemon? Check. Ziploc bag containing four bansai bananas and one diagonally sliced peanut butter (no jelly) sandwich? Check.

Walk down the street, past the pig intestine restaurant, past "Fanta Land," whatever the hell that is. Walk past the crappy Korean burger joint, the Paris Baguette, past about sixteen English language schools - one is called "Oops!"; I don't know why anyone would go through all the trouble of founding a language school only to call it "Oops!" - and down to the end of my street. Stand there for five minutes waiting for the light to change. Seven in the morning. Little tyke on roller blades next to me starts singing "miguk, miguk, miguk!" and stomping his blades on the sidewalk. Do Korean children ever sleep? Stay up way past midnight, up stomping around in their rollerblades by seven ...

Light changes and I cross. Two guys in dress shirts and ties stand dumbstruck as I walk by in my shorts that don't fit, my shirt that doesn't fit, my scraggily fledgling beard that doesn't fit. On top of it all, I'm white. I give them the chin pop. I imagine that there are English subtitles underneath the guy on the right. "You don't see that every day!" he says, except it's in Korean, so I have to read the subtitles - they are bright yellow - and assume that he's talking about me, like everyone else I pass on the street.

I walk up two blocks, over two blocks, I walk down two blocks, down two more blocks, pensively walking now, down two more blocks - maybe I've gone the wrong way? - but I swear this is where - but the mountain's right ... how could I miss a mountain? - maybe I'll just take this gravel path up the hill here, it should get me - um, dude, this is definitely a farm - did that farmer just say something? better turn back - up two blocks, up two more blocks, two more blocks up - gas station, soju bar, seafood joint, Buddhist temple, gas station, pile of garbage - ah! there it is! - nature trail, up around some mucky brown pond frosted with lichen and mossy stuff, into the forest and ostensibly, to the top of the mountain.

9:32 AM:
Two hours have elapsed since I left The Daeguba System. Is this a good name for my apartment? Let me know.

Two hours have elapsed and I have found the mountain trail. The trail is only two blocks from your apartment, if you are not a jackass. I am already tired. My legs ache. My stomach eyes the peanut butter sandwich in my satchel. But no. I must conserve, I must conserve energy and foodstuffs, especially foodstuffs. It will take me months, years, perhaps the better part of an afternoon to reach the summit - I see myself, first as a set of frost-blackened fingers appearing suddenly from below, gripping the rock like some sort of spider; I grip, lose my grip, grip again, pull myself up with my teeth, heave my body onto the summit, lay there like a pile of rubber, retarded from lack of oxygen, technically dead, but still strong enough to rise to my feet, to do some pelvic-thrust-oriented dance on the peak, to lob a pine cone grenade-style dropping 21,392 feet down to the earth below, to scream something triumphant and insulting, something like "Eat shit, people down there!" That moment will come. But first thing's first: where does a guy find a shirpa around here?

10:21 AM:
The ascent is slow, tedious, annoyingly character-building. My foot comes down on something crunchy. I glance down and see a skull, a skull with nerd glasses and a shitty haircut straight out of 1986. This is a circa 2006 Korean skull. Male. Also, it occurs to me that I really have to piss, but there are too many Real Live Koreans nearby for me to piss anywhere but in my pants. I'm not sure what the Korean stance on public urination is, but I suspect pissing on a mountain is punishable by death or by some sort of ironic pee-related torture, possibly resulting in death. I hold it in.

10:22 AM:
Wait a minute! What are all these Koreans doing up here? Why, that fellow's got a bum leg and ... and ... and she's like 83 years old ... and that one's fresh out of the womb and he's toddling right up the ... they're all passing me by! Here I am, doing my little happy dance up the slope with a bladder like a pumpkin, a beard of sweat spreading down my t-shirt, and I can't keep up. Koreans from all walks of life - some of them can't walk, others are barely alive - are leaving me in the dust. Say, is that Kim Jong-Il?

11:05 AM:
My ascent up the hill ... er, mountain! It's totally a mountain! ... is facilitated by a miraculous natural staircase, complete with smoothed, splinter-free wooden handrails, stairs of a cement-like consistency, and occasional cabanas for smoke/tomato-eating breaks. Some might view such natural complexity as evidence towards an intelligent designer, or at least an indication that the untamed mountain I had planned on climbing is in fact little more than a glorified bluff with a hiking trail meticulously kept tidy by the Daegu Jaycees. But that is foolish. Korea does not have Jaycees.

11:12 AM:
The walk ... hike ... climb? ... grows steadily steeper. We're talking incline level 3 on your treadmill, with resistance set at "medium". The staircase crumbles under my feet, is dodgy, is covered in little jagged rocks and sometimes acorns. Scuffing my Pumas becomes a very real possibility. I consider turning back. But I dig deep and summon the courage to go on, the tenacity to keep pushing upwards, upwards t - what the fuck? I'm at the top already? What the - and who are these people, lounging around in this cabana overlooking the city, these old women chatting in their pink jogging suits, these men with visible fillings playing with their iPods? Who are these people? Reinhold Messners, they are not.

I plant my Nebraskan flag and go sit down in the cabana. The man with visible fillings playing with his iPod stops playing with his iPod for a second to greet me and ask me a question. (He's speaking Korean. I'm in Korea, remember?) I stare at his fillings and nod slowly. He laughs, revealing more fillings, and says something else. I point to myself and say, "Sonsaengnim." Teacher. Me teacher. Booga booga. He nods. "Hanguk aju chal mothaeyo." I don't speak Korean well ... yet! But just you wait! He nods. The old woman next to me offers me a tomato. I take the tomato. I hate tomatoes, but I take a big wet bite out of it anyway, like an apple, hoping that this is the Tomato of Korean Fluency. But it tastes just like a shitty tomato. I want to vomit all over. The Koreans forget I'm there and resume staring out over Daegu, like a little cartoon city down below, its colors washed out so that it looks like it's on a TV screen, like it's printed on a giant tarp, two-dimensional, flat. It's nice, I guess.

I've still got to piss. I get up, tell the Koreans goodbye, and shuffle back down the mountain. When I'm far enough away, I disappear into the brush, lower my pants, and pee. Oh, yes. The pee rains down. I jiggle, zip, button. Then I throw that fucking tomato as far as I possibly can, into the woods. Swishhhhhhhhh, thok!

On the next episode of Daegu Days: Professor Kisu Talks Glibly About Cultural Differences.

Dirty Daegu

Hagwon.

I am in Korea. I'm too tired to write an authentic blog post, but I will gladly regurgitate the mass e-mail I sent out to everyone.

Daegu is a soul-crushing monstrosity swarming with small men in grey suits. The city has a pervasive stench that smells like a combination of garbage, fire, body odor, and kimchi. (Kimchi, for the record, smells like a combination of garbage, fire, and body odor.) From what I can tell, 98% of Daegu's inhabitants live in the horrifying 36-story filing cabinets that line the brownish river that drools through the middle of town. I would describe these apartment megaplexes in detail, but they don't really have any details to describe. You must believe me when I say they are horrifying.

I'm still like a skittish kitten around here - as opposed to a Scottish kitten, which anyone with good sense would name Seamus McManx - and I am constantly shocked and a little nauseated when I turn to find myself staring at a wall in my own apartment that I have never seen in my life. Everywhere here is unfamiliar. I woke up this morning and had no idea where I was. That much isn't unusual, but in any case, I'm not used to being woken up by a turnip vendor screaming into my window through a megaphone.

Everyone stares at me as I walk down the street. I do not expect this to cease when my 'fro grows back. Or when I grow out my beard. Or when I start walking around with my fly down and my gargantuan caucasian penis dangling out. But I'm not too bothered by it. The staring, I mean. They aren't doing it to be rude. The Koreans stare at me the way you might stare if you saw a flaming kangaroo hopping down the street with Buzz Aldrin sitting in its pouch playing "Mister Bojangles" on the mandolin. In short, I have caused more moped fatalities than I am worth.

Little kids point at me and yell "Chogi! Chogi!" (Over there! Over there!) in horrified voices. I wave at them and they run away screaming. Now I know how Bigfoot must have felt. No. Nobody knows how Bigfoot felt.

Hardly anyone here speaks English, but everyone wears Engrish. Let's face it: regardless of what our language is actually saying, it looks damned good when it's printed on a t-shirt in comic sans font. A few of my favorites:

(as worn by a dumpy 40-something year-old man) "MAKE A NEW KIND OF LOVE"
(picture of Snoopy smelling a heart) "UMM, TASTE OF LOVE"
(as worn by a teenaged fellow, in sparkly letters) "WORLD WITHOUT STRANGERS"
... and (as worn by a ten year-old Korean girl) "PUREFUCKING CANADIAN"

I finished my second day of classes today. Some of the students are bashful, quiet, absolute angels. Others are punk pubescents who are more interested in the woodgrain of their desks than the English language. I've got to learn to not give a shit, to take it all in stride, to not get hurt by indifference, hostility, or cruelty. That is the only way to survive school, the hagwon.

Tonight, I came home after a long day of classes and I drank a few rotten Cass beers. Then, I held a solitary dance party to The Beatles. When I got tired, I just sat around thinking about how fucking wonderful they are. That was today. Tomorrow might be better or worse or the same. I hope it's better.

Americanadickcissel

I received this in my e-mail today. I thought it was something by Lewis Carroll or William S. Burroughs, but it turned out to be the preamble to a penis enhancement ad. Either way, it's the best thing I've ever read.

and woodlotpawtucket the convoypowell not petroljack as ploughashes or unreasonablegulf the dehydrateooze or categoriesramey

as catalysisgroin in servedcontacts when syrupfrescoes but gasworksfewer but punicfoist but linklost the baublehibernate it backgroundpublished when betterblessing

but peregrineshenanigan or obligedportion when habitpracticename as markovianshatterproof and thatscarelessness what hadntgathered may excursiongigabyte in paraphernaliaawe or americanadickcissel

that selectioncomputer and fibersdetailed it's portlandwere was fertileeurasia that overnightporter it's overseasfarmers but recordworkhouse

or decodeabstracter not osteopathoutlandish in forbesneck it midshipmencroatia in privatelyparty the rawhidegospel in signedremaining

some butterscotchfactors it's whisperedprogram on boxesrepay on perfectlyseesaw it's seaseatacres may permitopponent

it killedloser when harborembarrassed was andeangigaherz it's watercolourengagement was ovumchorus may happenedenjoy

the staredinstruments when succeedupgrade it's underclothingmeans what representgasworks not epicureangoverness in racedelivered when englishlargest not waveformmasonic or crowdeddoing

when gunboattrousers or ducattitanate was reviewbeating the chaplainhobbyhorse that estimatessurroundings when plasmapalfrey that mawrfelicity

it daydownriver a coughingpassages and homestaxes but unfairetching and poopdifluoride it's walteremotional not jensenbaseband

some speedhealthful it blinkgasify some kissallowed when longhornjitterbugging when hayesbarnes it's josephinechristianson

was unfoldgunmetal on bylawkittenish not saltmaterials what eggsrapidly as bowlorganization what teherancable

or urbanadesicate in givessighed it roomscircumstances or bluntid but distalbindle what silencestriped as namedinternet was unloadann as vijurisprudent a artsjustice a occasionsbelow was tragedianminsky

on contributionsunfairly or flavorfactories it's votesgrandmother but manhattanagency some policeheads was neapolitanorchestral in itssweetness when revoltcaste the dollsalvage a beltedit some relationshipoutdoors was recognizepru what downwardsleaned it overtakebother

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as jewlamp the historianspermanently it's towardscolored it's wideheating on umberyoure was versituation some anywherelaos not soremelon

Super Mossimo Brothers

Yesterday evening, in a sudden flourish of nostalgia for the suburban squalor I'm about to leave behind, I set off on a photography run. My first stop was the King Kong Burger on 13th Street. I had gotten about ten steps from the car with my camera when a passing SUV slowed to a halt and a guy in a backwards hat - sensing an impending moment of emotional vulnerability - craned out from the passenger's side window and screamed, "FAG!"

In times like these, you wish you could push some sort of instant vengeance button, a biblical plague button, a button that would unleash the locusts, the frogs, the backwoods sodomites, a button that would wreak instantaneous karmic suffering upon the backwards-hat jackass who has just drive-by-fagged you. I reached for that button, but all I found was my middle finger.

When I was seven, my friend's creepy evangelical dad told me, "Never seek vengeance. Silence is like feeding your enemies burning hot coals."

There's an idea. I should just feed my enemies burning hot coals. Maybe this Christianity thing isn't so bad after all. That is probably the reason why religion exists in the first place: the promise that the drive-by-fag artist will get his come-up-ins.

Anyway, I flipped the guy off and took my faggy monkey pictures.


My wardrobe these days is all Mossimo all the time. I would be considered unhip if people didn't already infer that at first glance.

Maybe I'm just blind from reading so many of those blurry Mossimo t-shirts in the mid-90s, but what's there not to love about Mossimo? From the arbitrarily preppy lion insignia to the athletic fit that lets everyone know that yes, I do fifteen push-ups every morning - as a world-weary, formerly bearded man who is simply unwilling to buy decent clothes, a six-dollar pair of cicada-damaged Mossimo jeans is like a breath of fresh, Laotian sweatshop air. Somewhere, Giovanni Mossimo himself is sitting in a California caviar bar, chortling a mighty Italian chortle at the thought that his little fledgling fashion line - the one Versace said was too brash, too wild, too sexy to succeed - is now the envy of the clearance aisle at Target.

A scanner dorkily

Tonight I'm seeing A Scanner Darkly. That's right: I italicized a movie title. Fuck MLA format, I'm just that excited. It's like my cinematic libido is back for one night and one night only. And to think, all it took was a rotoscopically animated cast of deadbeats.

Robert Downey, Jr.: Yo ... who ganked my stash?
[Downey and Woody Harrelson turn and glare at Winona]
Keanu: Whoa.

Bellevue by night, via crummy cameraphone:

Humid humid humidity.

Nebraskans don't talk about the weather, they talk about the humidity. Nowhere else in the world is water vapor so revered.

Feel free to use the following dialogue in your English class if you happen to be TEFLing in Sarpy County.

Speaker 1: Muggy today, innit?
Speaker 2: Shore is.
Speaker 1: Ain't that hot out, but shore is humid.
Speaker 2: 's Nebraska for ya. Don't get hot like some places, but it shore gets humid.
Speaker 1: Down in Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas ... gets hotter down that way, but you don't feel it so much.
Speaker 2: Yeop. It's a dry heat.

thebomb.org

I'm looking forward to teaching and getting lost somewhere. Somewhere will probably be Korea. Sorry, Kazakhstan.

My Nebraskan life is broken up by little reveries - in the car, in my bedroom, in the queue at Target - where my ego pools up and festers like old bathwater. The TEFL life affords no reveries. There is no time for an ego. Every moment finds you teaching, learning, or standing in a convenience store fumbling through foreign currency as a building crowd of murmuring natives shakes fists behind your back. It's a straight line existence and that's what I need right now. I've been reading too many books, enough to know that books alone won't teach you much of anything.

Auf wiederscheissen!

The Flaming Lips are playing at the Harrah's Casino Concert Cove in Council Bluffs on August 25th. In terms of absurdity, this by far surpasses Ghostface Killah's merely riot-catalyzing performance at the Sokol Underground. The last band Harrah's hosted was Sister Hazel. The last show The Flaming Lips played was probably somewhere in space. This is existentially shattering. This is Kafkaesque. No, this is downright Latkaesque. If I woke up tomorrow morning having metamorphosized into a giant insect, I would put on some pants, scurry downtown to the Old Market, pick up a copy of the Omaha World-Herald, use my two frothing mandibles to flip the paper open to the Living section, and standing on my hind legs, hissing and screeching in the middle of the 11th and Jackson intersection, I would chomp incredulously on the "FLAMING LIPS TO PERFORM IN SKOAL-ENCRUSTED IOWAN SHITHOLE" feature until I had motivated at least seven hipster short-order cooks to quit their jobs out of sheer disillusionment.

Speaking of Council Bluffs, I saw Superman last night at the esteemed Star Cinema: Where Internet Pedophiles Take Undercover Police Officers Posing As 12 Year-Old Girls On Their First Dates. Some super-troglodyte in a unitard and cape started hooting during the opening credits and an upstanding Council Bluffalo kept the peace by yelling out, "Shut yer goddamn mouth!" As a haughty Niles Crane aside muttered mostly to myself, I said, "Oh, right. I forgot. We're in Council Bluffs." This remark penetrated much more audibly than I had intended, and lest we forget: well-timed quips directed at the status quo are redneck kryptonite. The seething, incestuous rage was palpable. Luckily, there were some minorities in the audience. Otherwise, it could have been me getting lynched in the parking lot.

Tomorrow marks the Bi-Millennial Petit Family Yard Sale. This means that a lot of expensive electronics equipment will sit outside in the rain while an obese woman in an Atlanta Falcons jersey and a shower cap price haggles with my mom about the Danielle Steel novels in the 10 cent bin. I, meanwhile, will be lurking in the background, slipping He-Man figurines into my pockets when nobody is looking. It seems like I have to do this every time we have a yard sale. They're collectibles, mom.

Petit ion

I worked for six hours as a petitioner, but then the company I was doing the petitioning for started petitioning against their first petition. I've retired from politics.

I think I know where I'm going next. Melodramatic updates will follow.

Biker rash

Oh, what an emolicious treat! I've arrived just in time for tomorrow night's free Bright Eyes show at Memorial Park. Maybe I should bike down there right now and camp out in front of the stage, so I can personally shake Conor Oberst's amphetamine-palsied hand for recording the most sublimely political (and not at all whiny) country poseur album of 2005. Or maybe I will tell him he's Dylanesque. Please, somebody tell Conor he's Dylanesque! Or perhaps I will ask him to spot me ten bucks for the show I saw four years ago, where he was so utterly mindfucked on coke and Quaaludes that he babbled into the microphone for five minutes before smashing his guitar and tramping off stage.

I haven't been this excited since The Pointer Sisters were in town.

Also:

To the Curbsmiths of the City of Omaha,

Thank you for rendering intracity travel nigh impossible for anyone who isn't driving a car, hovering on a hoverboard, or riding a bicycle furnished with an Ikea chaise lounge for a seat. The next time my back tire hits the pavement and my prostate gland drops out the bottom of my pantleg, rather than caterwauling miserably and screaming several nonsensical profanities at the thirty-foot plateau at the end of the last sidewalk, I will instead quietly pay homage to the cement-laying drone who put down an additional strip of rock to ensure that no bicyclist will cross Saddle Creek without compromising his or her ability to have children, and that the handicapped will traverse Dodge Street in a hot air balloon or not at all.

Der Zahnstocher

Raccoons On A Bus

I went to the theatre to catch the late showing of Snakes On A Plane only to find that it isn't coming out until August 28th. Slither me timbers. Snakes On A Plane was the only reason I came home in the first place. I don't care what A.O. Scott says - no matter how many times you watch The Lake House, it will never turn into Snakes On A Plane.

OMG, HAS ANYONE TOLD YOU THAT ... !

If one more crucifix-necklace-wearing drive-thru coffee shop barista tells me that I look like Chris Martin, I'm going to have to punch myself in the right eye until I more closely resemble Thom Yorke.

The next step

... which way should I go?

Changing customs

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Robbed

I am back in Krakow, 120 pounds lighter. Some Scheisskopf in Berlin stole all my clothes and personal thoughts. So it goes.

My bag contained:

everything I wasn't wearing at the time
a tube of toothpaste
a toothbrush
some dental floss
a bottle of shampoo
a bar of soap
a bottle of one-a-day vitamins
four notebooks full of writing
Being and Time by Heidegger

I'm not sure what he's going to do with all of that junk. Sit around in my underwear reading Being and Time, probably. At least Scheisskopf won't be making any money. The only person in the world who would pay him for all that shit is me.

But I'm zen about it. It's a fresh start. I've bought some thrift store button-fly jeans that are too tight and an argyle sweater that is too big and a snowboarding t-shirt that I hate wearing. All and all, I look like a circa 1984 Krakowian snowboarding bureaucrat. I am undergoing Polefication. I brush my teeth with myrrh-flavored toothpaste and wash my hair in goat tallow. Maybe I'll even start going to church. When in Poland, do as the Roman Catholics do.

Klaus, The Motorbike Dork

My last night in the youth hostel in Darmstadt, I came back from a long walk to find a motorcycle helmet on my desk where there was no motorcycle helmet before. The bathroom door was shut. My armpit hairs stood on end. I sat down on my bed and listened. I could hear the sounds of a man taking a crap where there were no sounds of a man taking a crap before. A few grunts and a decisive flush later, the door opened and out walked a babyfaced, bespectacled man wearing a black IBM t-shirt tucked into the front of his black highwater jeans. He dried his hand off on his crotch and extended it. My name is Klaus, he said.

This was my new roommate. Klaus was a 35 year-old motorbike dork from Essen with an internet job and a Maltese internet wife. He asked me if I wanted to go see The DaVinci Code and I said sure. He adjusted his tube socks, pulled on his royal blue synthetic biker jacket, and we walked downtown.

As we passed through the main square, we were swept up by a relentless current of fauxhawks and soon found ourselves watching some crummy Europop concert along with a couple thousand German tech school students. Neither of us really wanted to see that damned movie anyway. Klaus offered me a concession stand cocktail. And so it came to pass that Klaus The Motorbike Dork and I sat for several hours with our knees touching ever-so-slightly beneath a small plastic table, drinking mai tais in the shade of a plastic palm tree. For one night (and one night only), I was a traditional German homosexual. That I do not have any pictures is my only regret.

What is it good for?

Colon City

Lody, lody - am I glad I got out of there.

Now I'm in Darmstadt. I have spent the past 24 hours on trains or in train stations. All the while I have been lugging around my body weight in dirty underwear. I feel a bit like Sisyphus except I'm beginning to think that I am Sisyphus, I am the rock, and I am the hill.

The day before I left the States, I got a coffee in the Old Market. I read this quote on the wall while I was taking a crap on the coffee shop crapper:

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."
-Franz Kafka

Alles in Ordnung.

The Fabric of the Cosmos will be the last spacey pop-physics book I read for a long time. I have spent the past year devouring one after another and it has been rewarding. But so many of these 500-page tomes reach the exhausting conclusion that we may never understand what the universe is made of, where it came from, or how it really works. By and large, I'm optimistic about it. We might never understand the universe, but I'm sure that computers will figure it out within our lifetimes. And if they're friendly computers, maybe they will do us the courtesy of explaining it in simple terms, like we're a classroom full of pre-intermediate Polish students.

An understanding of the fundamental structure of the universe is not something that is likely to reveal itself to me on some bleary random morning while I'm taking a dump. It's much more likely to reveal itself to some string theorist while he or she is taking a dump. And even if I did chance upon the fundamental structure of the universe easily explained and diagrammed in a little yellow leaflet handed to me as I passed through the Stare Miasto for a kebab, I would still have to live with myself, wouldn't I? I'd still have to clip my fingernails and tie my shoes and fumble with the keys every time I try to unlock a door. Cosmology collapses under the mundane weight of existential baggage. Tomorrow, I'm going to get on a train and curl up with some Kafka.

But on my field trip into the lonely realm of stoner physics, I have learned much about practical thermodynamics. Entropy is the way of the world. If you let things go to shit, to shit they will go. If you tear the binding off of your copy of The Brothers Karamazov and toss the pages up into the air, they will not land the way Dostoevsky would want them to, and never in a billion billion years would they sort themselves out. Fabric unravels, but it doesn't ravel. Likewise, eggs don't unbreak, people don't undie, and when you cheese off your British flatmates by leaving a festering bottle of grapefruit juice in the fridge for two weeks, they will not spontaneously start acknowledging your existence on the last day of your CELTA course. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall ...

"Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against nature ... the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worthwhile."
- Nathaniel West

They even want my chitterlings!

Provided I don't snap in my next lesson and start bellowing "Deutschland Über Alles" as I goosestep up and down the aisles, I will pass my CELTA course tomorrow and leave Krakow the day after. I'm anxious to get out of here. Krakow has been kind to me, but I am ready to step onto a train and go someplace else, to drink coffee and brood on my own for a few days without the company of a stumbling gaggle of British lechers.

Thursday morning, I am taking the train to Berlin. I might stay the night there. Over the weekend, I have a job interview in Darmstadt. It is possible that I will be living there. Then again, a lot of things are possible now that were just a daydream yesterday.

Poo-tee-weetski?

Walking home through back alleys late Monday night, I chanced upon the most encouraging graffiti I've seen since I've been here. Spraypainted across the side of some eight billion year-old mini-mall:

KILGORE TROUT PREZYDENT

I'm not sure how Jean-Jackets-and-Jesus Poland would respond to their first fictitious American pulp sci-fi writer/president, but it is nonetheless heartening to know that at least one person in Krakow possesses something resembling a sense of irony.

Wednesday night, I watched the UEFA Cup final with a cacophony of Brits. Changing the channel here is a kinesthetic art. I've never seen someone play the theremin, but I imagine it looks a lot like a drunk Englishman screwing around with the cable, trying to pick up a football game on his vintage Polish TV. After Barcelona knocked two goals past Arsenal in the last 15 minutes, the urge to riot was palpable - I readied my crowbar - but cooler heads prevailed and the Brits walked home with their coattails tucked between their legs, occasionally stopping to swat sidewalk trash with their umbrellas.

Krakow is the only place I know of where jazz is alive, if only in a semi-vegetative state. Back in the States, jazz exists as a depressing reenactment of something that will never, ever be hip again, and in that sense, it is more dead than ever. Here in Krakow, it's happening for the very first time. Poland has never had jazz before - i.e. they have never had black people before - so it's still new and exciting to them. There are dumpy little jazz clubs all over Krakow. Of course, there's nothing less cool than a tenorman with eight syllables and more than six Zs in his last name, so fat chance you'll ever find me in a Polish jazz hole.

Kod DaVinci is about to make its debut in Poland. I'd like to be far, far away from here when this bombshell hits. I've seen a few previews on TVP1 and, for a film that's supposed to incur the wrath of God upon man, it looks pretty dull. I don't know what Ron Howard was thinking when he decided to overdub the whole thing in Polish, but I guess when you've starred in American Graffiti and More American Graffiti, you're entitled to some artistic liberties.

Gdzie są toalety?

I got my hair cut today and it looks damned good for the time being. I told my Polish stylist to take a little off the top and she proceeded to straighten my hair and give me a kicky postmodern do. I look like Falco. When it was done and I'd forked over my four bucks, she asked, "You have all things at home?" I assume she meant all of the equipment that was involved in the styling of my hair, which included:

designer shampoo
designer conditioner
designer gel
designer hairspray
designer mousse
designer hair putty
designer water
an electric hair straightener
a Polish hair stylist

I shook my head, no. I do not have any of those things.

"Oh," she said, "then hairs will change."

So, my fleeting Polish sex symbol status has already been dealt its death blow. At the stroke of midnight - when I take my midnightly Suave For Men sponge bath - my straight hair will frizz up into its usual high-entropy state and my seven hours as a slavic heartthrob will come to an end. It's almost like Flowers for Algernon. I'd better walk down to the square and make the most of this precious time. Veal kebab and coffee it is.

The Jesus Zoo

Across from a kielbasa stand down the street from my apartment, the Poles have crucified Jesus three times. They've put up a fishnet to keep The Three Messiahs from escaping and mauling the passersby. When I walk past on my way to class, I am sometimes tempted to toss in a few peanut shells or some popcorn, but there is a sign in Polish that I suspect is advising me not to feed the Jesuses.

NIE KARMIĆ JEZUSÓW

Obligatory artsy-fartsy photo post