O’er the way there, at Liminality, La Shure has written a good post about writing and blogging, and being open to the outer world as a writer/photographer/person… Reminds me to get back to work on my damned novel, now that my fingers are all functional. And yeah, I had the sam experience with my digital camera that he describes regarding his. He just put it better than I would have.

My finger is out of the splint, and functional (enough to be used in typing and for enough for me to be going to Seoul Wednesday for recording work). The last poll is therefore now officially closed with the following results: the top two votes claiming my broken finger was a blessing gave the following reasons: that (a) I could give the finger with impunity, and that (b) I could get away with more typos. These two options took up 50% of the 12 votes received. You can see the fine details here. My next poll is all about eclexys, …

I suggested to Lime that once the “honeymoon phase” of our relationship dwindles down, we may find that occasionally we’ll have arguments, like any couple. But, I reasoned, using either English or Korean would be unfair, as it would give one of us an unfair advantage. Given that we’re both quite smart, and both quite good at our native languages, and at arguing, I think we need something to even out the playing field…

I’m expecting a few days of very low-content posting here. Why? I’m gonna finish writing my essay “Waxing Fanonical” on the forces that shape relationships between Koreans and white foreigners in Korea sometime this weekend or next week. I’m working on a post for New Sophists’ Almanac as well, about genre and art. If you’re curious to see what I’ll be responding to, see Marvin’s recent post over there now. It’s worth a gander. I’ve got to do some sax practicing this weekend, a little anyway in order to prepare for the studio sessions I’ll probably be doing on Tuesday …

Myoung Jae surprised me the other day when he came into the office bearing the following tidings: “You have a letter waiting for you in the office.” I was delighted, upon retrieving it, to find it was from Men-Tsee-Khang, which is the Astrology Department of the Tibetan Government-In-Exile. While in Dharamsala, for entertainment value more than anything else I went ahead and got my Tibetan horoscope processed to see what kind of news it offered me. The page begins with an invocation and homage to Lord Kalanchakra, whomever that might be, and gors on to tell me the following: I …

WOD (World of Darkness) was a roleplaying game I used to play back in undergrad in Canada. While I had the main books for each game in the series, I usually ran the ghost-stories game, Wraith. However, it seems that according to these quizzes I completed, I am more naturally tuned to a different game in the series: Changeling: You are one of the forgotten ones, thekeepers of dreams that spread light and joy ina world of darkness. You are a fairy caughtwithin a human shell, using your body to keepsafe from the cold disbelief just outside yourdoor. Your kind …

This is almost too unbelievable to be true. I was at the hospital to get a new splint because the one I’d had on for two weeks had begun to smell a little. After a conversation or two in the waiting hallway with some ajummas and halmeonis and ajeoshis (listed in order of interest), I finally got in to see a different doctor than the one I’d seen two weeks ago. Well, when I did get in to see him I told him explicitly that I just wanted a new splint, and would return in a week for an X-Ray …

There are a lot of wonderful things to say about Christianity and Christians. I’ve said some of them before. So now I’m going to sternly warn a small segment of the population that is not-so-wonderful. For its own good. Among the many sane and normal and wonderful Christians of the world, there is a specific group of Christians who are mad. They are insane. They seem like the average sort who are concerned with keeping up with the Joneses, meaning they’re not especially pious or concerned with that scripture actually means. They’re almost never antimaterialist, they’re almost never anticapitalist, though …

Not sure to what degree any of this is true, but here are a few lines that occurred to me and I may (or may not) use it in that essay I’m writing about interracial relationship politics in South Korea. Criticism of this is welcome and invited; and I am thinking I need to borrow those Camus books about the Rebel from John so I can write this properly. Anyway, here it is: In Korean culture, it often seems as if nonconformity must take on a form of guerrila warfare in order to survive the generalized pressure to conform. By …

You’re sitting in the theater waiting for the Turkish movie to begin and the two Korean guys sitting next to you hear you talking to one of the film festival volunteers in simple Korean and decides to strike up a coversation with you, and it’s actually mostly comprehensible both ways. One guy’s a waiter and the other, the one more into it, is a farmer. They stumbled onto this Turkish movie by chance, knowing nothing of the film festival, and decided to give it a go. They’re amused by the fact a Canadian foreigner doesn’t mind being mistaken for an …