Tuesday, September 29, 2009

i dare you not to write.


nothing has been going on.

i almost got fired because i didn't have a song in my heart while doing something. did the "right" thing though and apologized to my boss for caring so much about the contract that we both signed.

lloyd and kay visited from japan. they brought me scotch.

i still don't have the internet at my place.

anki software is amazing. flashcards but without the waste and time.

i swear i was in a better mood like 2 days ago.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

another night in 홍대 and thoughts on black metal politics.

dear blog, how are you? this week has been relatively uneventful. jon's girlfriend, tara, went back home after a couple of months spent in korea. i got a package. that's about it.

last night, i made plans with a girl i met in jeju (not those kinds of plans, she has a boyfriend who just doesn't like to do anything). we decided that we would find mexican food. so we went to sinchon to go to an on the border there. it. was. amazing. needless to say, there's not much in the way of dirty tex mex in south korea. so i got flautas and enchiladas with black beans and rice. it was phenomenal. it was really hard to order because this restaurant is easily an hour and fifteen minutes from where i live, so i doubt i'll make the trip that often.

after that, we went to hongdae in an attempt to find the ice bar. the attempt failed. we wondered for a good hour and asked a lot of people and even though this place is in every travel guide, no one seemed to have heard of it. she ultimately had to leave because it was 11 and the subway was about to stop (because while great, the public transportation system doesn't understand why anyone would stay up past 11pm on a saturday night). so i waited for kai in hongdae. she was with 3 japanese friends that she had studied with. they took an hour because the subway train they were on stopped (see parenthesis above). we then met up with another one of her friends from japan whom she was sure i would be in love with. i really wanted to be like "you don't know me, you don't know what i like!" but she was right about me all along.

we went on our own excursion to find the ice bar, which again failed. we settled on a restaurant and everyone but me and some greek guy and his girlfriend drank a lot. because the subway had stopped, i made up my mind that i was going to stay awake all night and one must pace himself. if you order a lot of food or whatever at a restaurant they give you "service" which is just more stuff, but for free. we had two pitchers of kiwi soju smoothie stuff and about 6 bottles of soju and two big plates of food. it was only 60,000won (about 44$?) and we were there till about 3 am. we then had to say goodbye to 3 japanese friends. me, kai, and her wet dream of a friend then went to a club. this was not some lounge, this was like a really loud scary club. it was several floors below street level and it was just deafening music and lots of creepy people standing around while slightly moving (this was dancing). i got a call from my friend verve and decided i should leave.

i met him in the park and got a drunken lecture on the history of black metal. he basically retold the Lords of Chaos book. it was intense. he loves black metal and all, but every time i hear about it, i've just got no real interest in these incredibly f*cked up people. a lot of these black metal bands he was telling me about were these horrible nazi/white nationalist bands...like full blown "eradicate the jews" nazis. i know he's not a racist and he just likes the music, but whatever, i've got no interest in it. this got into a big debate about nationalism in general and how i think that it's messed up, especially from the black metal perspective. consider the senseless murders, church burnings, racism, suicides, and general misanthropic qualities that are contained in black metal and i think it's clear why i don't think these people have anything valid to offer in the realm of politics or social philosophy. it's odd though because to some extent i believe in certain kinds of nationalism ("kashmir for the kashmiris" etc.) but it sort of falls apart when you talk about the west/america. he started talking about spangler and his philosophies/theories of why societies fall apart (they lose their core values and thus their own sense of their culture), but i don't understand america to have a solid culture. maybe there is and i just don't see it because i don't belong to it. all the same...you can go to korea and see there is a korean-ness to the place or england and see the english-ness. of course that's too simple and there is a broad spectrum across any society. what it comes down to is that i prefer the mixing of culture instead of the preservation of it. if culture was all it's cracked up to be then we should all be living it up in utopia by now...but the fact is that people needlessly cause each other grief because of their culture and own self-inflated sense of superiority. and that's what i think about the current state of black metal.

we left the park and i saw kai's friend again at 6:30 in the morning on the street. kai was out drinking with some guy she said. her friend spoke very little english and i only remember a little japanese, but we pinched each other's cheeks and parted ways. i fell asleep on the subway, woke up and looked out of the train and saw it was my stop. i ran through the doors as they were closing. i went to krispy kreme and had two donuts and a milk. caught the bus home and then again i fell asleep only to wake up at the right moment yet again. so here i am, i slept from 8:30-3:30 and i don't know what to do...i will take sleeping pills tonight. sleeping pills are the only answer, ever. below is a picture of me and kai's 4 japanese friends. see if you can figure out which one i liked. i'm sure it will be difficult.




Wednesday, September 2, 2009

i got a package

i got a package today from home. it contained:

2 boxes of tazo zen green tea
1 box of tazo china green tips tea
1 bag of fun size butterfingers
1 bag of peanut butter m&m's
1 bag of reese's peanut butter cups
3 .005 micron pens, black
4 boxes of kraft macaroni and cheese

so a box of contraband items...i can't find any of this stuff over here...it's disappointing...but i'm excited i got it! i'm eating mac and cheese tonight...maybe hot dogs?