Geeks

Oh, a hot night of… reading books together!

Yes, my honey came over and we sprawled on the floor, reading books together. Not the same book: she’s reading some kind of mystical adventure in Korean (퇴마록, it’s called, which I’d roughly translate as “The Exorcism Story” if you use the word exorcism in a more general sense than it has taken on since the advent of the Christian us of that word…the banishment of evil). It sounds fascinating, some kind of pitched battle between people all over the world and ancient forces of evil that they’re fighting to banish and overcome.

And me, I’m still reading the wonderfully dank, smelly, vulgar, dark, scatological novel Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. I’m not sure Lime would like this book much if she were to undertake the heroic task of reading it in English; unlike her, I don’t have a very vivid visual imagination. When I read about insect-headed women sculpting art with regurgitated paste from their head-stomachs, I just go, “Weird!” But she actually sees that kind of thing in her head, visually. I guess most people have a better visual imagination than me, but Lime’s is really quite amazing. Which means it’s easy to shock her; gory details really are gory to her.

Anyway, it was nice for the two of us to spend time in that way, sprawled together and just reading, digesting the nice (well, it was okay) Thai coconut-milk chicken curry I’d made for us. I know that for a number of people, that sounds like a perfectly geeky way to pass an evening. Well, we’re perfectly geeky who’s to criticize the happiness of geeks?

Unfortunately, it looks like she’s less of a geek than me when it comes to movies; Neither Antitrust nor Juon nor some Korean opera nor even Jack Nicholson’s classic potboiler Chinatown are very intriguing to her. Ah well, I suppose that’s why I download episodes of E.R. and that sitcom about medical interns, Scrubs.

But she’s still a geek, and my geek. And it looks like my geek is almost finished with the dishes… she’s taken to washing them whenever I do the cooking, it seems. And so I think she’ll want to watch E.R., and I’d best keep this entry short enough to finish now.

4 thoughts on “Geeks

  1. Lime saw this comment before I did, and confirmed it. Apparently the books were immensely popular, so someone or other trotted out a dreadful film that has little or nothing to do with the novels. Too bad, as a movie along the lines of the real novels would be interesting, especially one done from a Korean perspective.

    Have you seen 화산고, Blinger? I think it’s one of the funniest and most interesting Korean films I’ve seen, a kind of deeply-Korean campy kung-fu Harry Potter lost somewhere in high school. I think it’s my favorite Korean movie of all time.

  2. Hsven’t seen that one. Unfortuneately there are no DVD rental shops within 3km of where I live. How can this be? I live in a large apartment complex and no video or dvd rental shops unbelievable. If I can find a pirate copy at yongsan next week I’ll pick it up.

    Have you seen Teach Me English? or Silmido? Those are two of the best that I have seen – other favorites include 친구 and 쉬리, with 8월의 Christmas close behind – all of these I own.

  3. Yeah, I thought ����������� was hilarious. Haven’t seen �ǹ̵� but it’s in the mental queue as Lime also wants to see it. I haven’t gotten around to ģ�� but I saw ����… maybe it was the frustration of watching it without subtitles, during my first few months here, but I didn’t care for the latter. And I’ve never even heard of this 8�� Christmas thing.

    I think these came out outside the range of the time period when I was aggressively pursuing Korean film, watching it in the theater without subtitles and not minding, and I’ve never gotten around to them on DVD. But you’re the first person to mention a string of films I’ve not seen.

    I think the first one I saw in the cinema was 2009: Lost Memories, and one of the last was Samaria. Lots in between, like ������, ����, �ٶ��� ����… and more, but my memory is dwindling. Ha, I used to get so annoyed when I’d go to cinemas in Iksan, ask for a ticket to some Korean film, pronounce the name of the film carefully, and get given a ticket to whatever one foreign movie was playing. I’d argue that no, I wanted to see the KOREAN MOVIE ____. All of this in Korean, mind you. And the clerk would finally change the ticket, and then I’d try to find the right screening room, and the damned clerks would assume the same thing and tell me where to go without asking which movie I was seeing. I’d tell them the name of the film and they’d ignore me the first time or two, and then when they got my meaning, would warn me that it was in Korean. And no matter how often I went, it happened every damned time, because the staff turned over so often in the local cinemas.

    Ah, Iksan life, I miss it so!

    And hey, you can still get pirated Korean films at Yongsan? I heard that was all shut down (like the pirated Korean films stand at Itaewon was) and that all you could get anymore were pirated foreign films. If you do manage to find some pirated Korean films, let me know and I’ll have to stop by Yongsan myself when I am next in Seoul.

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