I have a huge list of links marked “to post” which, to be honest, I find kind of daunting. I used to post links a lot more, but lately my blog is mostly devoted to housing my ongoing project, Blogging Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, along with occasional posts on SF or Korea-related issues.
But I have had a few tabs open on my browser for over a week, which seem worth posting to me, and having been delayed for my critique group’s meeting by an annoying fridge-related disaster (though less delayed than another member), I am now sitting in a coffeeshop. While I’m taking a break from reading Bulfinch’s Mythology for the course I’m teaching, I figure I’ll post those links, and a few more while I’m at it.
Korea-Related
- Lately, a group named Mannam has been trying to host supposedly foreigner-friendly events. Why? Who are they? What do they want? Believe it or not, some expats have even asked me, not that I’ve ever heard of them. But Zackary Downey has a series of posts up at his blog, Scroozle’s Sanctuary, worth reading if you want to know more. (Especially the last few posts.) Short version? They’re linked to some kind of religious, er, “group.”
- Marry My Asian Daughter. Saw on Facebook. Funny, sarcastic responses from the daughter’s perspective.
- If you think your workday is tough in Korea, you should read what it’s like working as a driver for the Seoul subway system.
- Speaking of the subway system… box-cutter-wielding sociopaths are not an everyday occurrence, but you never know when they’ll strike. And since society here really doesn’t want to talk about mental illness or alcohol addiction seriously, people like this wander freely. When I talk about narrowly evading assault a few times a year, I mean avoiding people who try to start fights, spit at me, shout, come at me. No idea whether they have box cutters. But the possibility of escalation is real, and this is one reason bystanders don’t act: they might end up stabbed, even just for speaking to someone harshly. Maybe it’s true in all big cities, but I never saw fear of that like I have here. (Nor have I seen people so quick to fly off the handle. But maybe Canada’s unusual. I don’t know.)
- The Boolean Gate by Walter Jon Williams: want.
- The First Knight of Ramadan. An amusing video by a Muslim geek struggling to balance religious obligations with his geek identity. It interestingly connects with the idea I’ve posted about here before, about how the early formulation of SF fandom was really a vehicle for something we take for granted today: a social space for formulating identity on grounds other than those of race, religion, or homeland which dominated in America until SF fandom appeared, but which had begun to be either unattractive or unworkable for young, urban Americans by about the 1920s and 1930s.
- Check out this trailer for my friend Tina Connolly’s upcoming fantasy novel, Ironskin:
- Lurker on the Bookshelf: some scholarly resources for those studying Lovecraft. I’m thinking of following up my study of Ezra Pound with a study of old HPL, in fact, though I might go for Heinlein instead. For reasons I’ll explain in a post coming soon…
- Speaking of which: here’s a free MP3 recording of the complete Fungi from Yoggoth. Poetry by Lovecraft.
Most of those SF links are dated: I have things to say about the more recent goings-on in SF — the Readercon thing, the reevaluation of bigotry in the work of early authors, and so on — but that’s all in this huge post I’d like to edit down to non-huge size. So… more on that soon.
And now, with people messaging me to meet and have dinner, I should end this.