No, I’ve never been, but I have dreamed about visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most recently, last night. And since I rarely remember my dreams on waking, I thought I’d set it down. In which dream I apparently was seen writing poetry (something I don’t do much anymore) somewhere in Moscow, and this was enough for some organization above both the SVR (international intellligence service) and the FSB (the domestic one) to track me, watch me, and strongarm me by visiting my short-term rental apartment in the guise of a plumber and rendering the toilet unusable. Later, when waiting for …
Tag: weird
The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban
Sometimes I think that we’re forgetting a certain kind of creativity in the hothouse world of genre fiction — a sense of freedom, actually, is what I mean. Yes, among us number the people who write the really weird stuff — audacious time travel narratives that turn all the tropes on their ear inteligently; stories of terror rooted in, well, something weird out the window — and a harrowing tale that one is (I’m thinking of Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber); stories imagining how, yeah, we are flushing the planet down the tubes, and what might happen to us …
Kim Jong Il: Middle-School Fangirl
You know those crazed Korean middle school girls who are fans of big famous idol groups, who hate the idea of their favorite popstar dating some other girl so much that narratives of gay love among those idol stars are popular in their circles? Yeah, well, I don’t know if Kim Jong Il ever put up a lesbian-fantasy website about Yun Hye-yeong, but if he did, he has certainly taken it down now. The young woman in question was in one of North Korea’s assumably few rock groups, Bocheonbo Electronic Band. So, Kim was in love with her, but she …
On This Day…
I have a friend who was born on the same day Elvis died. I think it was actually on the same exact day that the King shuffled off this mortal coil. I can’t brag of any such simultanaeities, but I discovered a while back who I share my birthday with: On March 4th, the following people of interest (to me) died: William Carlos Williams, the modernist poet Gary Gygax, the creator of the RPG game and specifically of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG game Meanwhile, the following interesting people were born on my birthday: Antonio Vivaldi (yes, the guy who …
Alley Kat, Screen Golf, and Hookers, All in One Place: Only? in Bucheon
Alley Kat Pale Ale is pretty much the only decently hoppy beer available on tap in most of Korea, and while I’m not really a hophead, I like a few glasses of it now and again. Well, earlier this evening Miss Jiwaku and I happened by a place in Yeokgok that had a big poster showing off the availability of this very fine brew, and we decided to mosey on in and try it. What we found was beyond our wildest imaginings. Miss Jiwaku described it as a “playground for ajeoshis” and that was a pretty fitting description of the …