I haven’t sold many poems before, but I have a bunch on my hard drive and, happily, unlike SF, poetry doesn’t necessarily age quickly. I’m very happy to announce that Camille Alexa has bought three of my poems for Diet Soap: “Dadeumie Sori,” “Ode to the Competent,” and “Tian Zhu Jiao.” The first two poems will appear in their (Wage) Slavery theme issue, and the latter will appear in their Sabotage theme issue. These are the first poems I’ve gotten published since before coming to Korea, so I’m very excited! Perhaps now is a good time to spill a couple …
Month: October 2008
If You’ve Emailed Me…
… or left a comment, or tried to call and not gotten a response: Sorry, but we’ve been moving house! This means that right now is my brief and perhaps my last internet connection for the next day or two. The campus network’s security system is allergic to Linux, or maybe to having two computers hook up on a shared wireless account, I’m not sure which (or maybe it’s both), so while I’m going to set up the wireless router upstairs, it may not work for me until Monday when the befuddled internet guys get called in to fix it …
“Soybean Paste Girls” as a Barometer of, or Catalyst of, Consumerization of Korean Society?
I have a cold, so I’m keeping this relatively brief; hopefully it will also be relatively coherent. I was thinking in EMart the other day. (E-Mart, for those who aren’t in Korea, is the big grocery chain here.) Lime and I had just been in a restaurant, and the food had some to the table, well, er, unacceptably cold. I complained, and the server’s first reaction was to tell me, “No, it’s supposed to be a little cold.” To which I responded, “Uh, no, it’s not.” With an implied, Yes, it’s Western food, and yes, I do know what the …
Oriental Medical Pseudoscience Medicine, Sympathetic Magic, and the Consumption of… What?
I mentioned recently that Lime and I are thinking about picking up a second cat to give Peanut/Buffy/Undecided a playmate. She’s been looking at the adopt-a-cat webpages online, and was explaining to me the procedure in Korea for adopting cats. Not an official procedure, mind, just a common one. It goes like this: you adopt the cat. You pay a flat fee of, say, the equivalent of $20, or $30, or even $50. (Sometimes more.) Then the person who gave you the cat will come a few months later and check out how the cat is doing, as well as …
The Lone Ranger, and Tonto
So yesterday I was discussing Thomas King’s “How Corporal Colin Sterling Saved Blossom, Alberta, and Most of the Rest of the World” (from King’s collection One Good Story, That One), which is, well, sort of SF. “Sort of” because it’s not taking itself seriously as SF, but plays with SF tropes about aliens and spaceships. (Which, you know, is better than the kind of thing you see a lot of “mainstream” authors do — writing SF, and claiming it isn’t, because it’s not silly or dumb, or whatever. Yes, Margaret Atwood, I’m looking at you. Come over here and say …