Homely Planet

We leave for China this evening - at least two of us - Sam and myself. Angry Steve won't be joining us until Friday, as he had to renew his passport at the last minute and it's still gummed up in some courier/bureaucratic clusterfuck Stateside. So he'll have to sit out on what's sure to be a few days' debauchery with The Caf in Shangers.

I hear that livejournal, like many other websites, is blocked in China, so I'll be emailing posts to lovely Lucie, my girlfriend, who will in turn put them up on my journal. This will probably mean no photos posted until I return, but the sheer power and vitality of my words will be more than enough to engage my legions of readers, I'm sure.

The immediate plan is to get to Shanghai tonight, where our old friend Lili will meet and greet us at the airport and get us to our hotel, which is the same joint where I stayed last time. Lili is what anthropologists call CHINESE, so she is intimately familiar with the local patois and has already been assisting us invaluably with hotel and ticket bookings. I suspect she might know a few good restaurants, as well. She's a firecracker who is readily conversant not only in her own tongue, but English, Korean, and Japanese as well. Crazy, I tell ya.

We're set to leave Shanghai on Saturday night, where we'll take an all night sleeper train to the city of Xian, which is the terminus of the Silk Road. We'll spend a couple of days Xian, where we'll see the famous Terra Cotta Warriors and walk through the Muslim Quarter, which should give us a taste of what's to come.

From Xian we'll take an interminable train ride to Golmud, a dusty boomtown located near the world's LARGEST ASBESTOS MINE. Aaaaaawesome. I'll make sure to send post cards. At Golmud we'll have to hire a four wheel drive to take us over some GIANT MOUNTAINS, passing through such towns as Charklik and Huatugou, eventually ending up the oasis town of Hotan. From Hotan we'll conitnue all the way to Kashgar, where we'll hunker down for about a week and pick grains of sand out of our butt cracks.

After Kashgar we plan on training it to Umrumqi, where we'll check out the city and hopefully fly back to Shanghai.

That's the sort of itinerary. So if we disappear or are consumed by the vast sands of the Taklamakkan Desert, you'll know where to find us.

I'm almost finished with this book:



It's a thorough and unflattering portrait of Mr. Mao, who was directly responsiblity for the death of over 70 million of his countrymen, according to the authors and countless other historians.

The book paints Mao as a megalomaniac, concerned only with consolidating his personal power. It shows him as man who cared little for personal relations, sacrificing several of his wives and children to the "revolution." This is a man who lived in opulent luxury while tens of millions of Chinese starved to death, not because of drought or crop failure, but because Mao collectivised the farms and insisted on exporting the lion's share of China's harvest abroad, in return for weapons and armaments, from mainly the Soviet Union.

The book is a fascinating portrait of a repugnant man and gives me a much better glimpse into China before I go. I now actually understand what basically went down during the Chinese Civil War as well, a conflict I knew close to nothing about before reading this book.

Mao was a total bastard. He was probably even worse than Stalin, who was his hero and mentor. Though he didn't directly kill as many people as Hitler or Stalin, the mass starvation that occurred during "The Great Leap Forward" was completely preventable, but Mao did nothing to stop it. Is this so different than sending millions to the gas chamber?

Wow. I've been here almost four years. My Korean "anniversary" is August 4, which strangely, I've never actually observed in the country. Nor will I this year. I'll be in some dusty town in the furnace-like rectum of China, trying to choke down fried mutton fat and gristly kabobs made from the meat of unidentified rodentia.

But four years is a decent wad of time to spend anywhere. It's the amount of time most of us spend in college. So I'll look at my time in Korea like a second bachelor's degree.

But what was my major?

Korean?

Travel Writing?

Alcoholism?

Yellow Fever?

Ass Fire?

(I stole this from a poster called guildensterned over at pusanweb.. It's a piss-take on the recent anti-American beef protests in Seoul...)

***
Warning: Sensitive Information
***

FTA Fans Public Opposition
By J. Daniel Daniels
WASHINGTON, July 10. (Reufers) Police reports from the capitol confirmed late last night that approximately one million people gathered for a candlelight vigil at the Washington Monument. The vigil was organized in opposition to the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement for which public concern has grown considerably over the safety of electric fans from the peninsular Asian nation.

According to the Department of Public Safety, a ban on electric fans from South Korea has been in effect since 2003 when a growing number of deaths were linked to Electro Dioxygen Displacement Asphyxiation (EDDA), the fatal exposure to an electric fan in a closed room, more commonly known as fan death. Yet, in an agreement struck between President Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak at Camp David in May, the import ban will be lifted in order to accommodate requests made by the South Korean parliament prior to ratification of the deal.

"What are they trying to do?" asked Ms. Jones, a young woman in the crowd. "This deal is totally in favor of the South Koreans, and shows [that] the President really just wants to kill us."

Such accusations have gained precedence in recent weeks as a CBS Special Report revealed that American citizens are at least ninety-nine percent more susceptible to EDDA than their South Korean counterparts due to a recessive gene. The report also showed that EDDA poses the greatest threat to individuals who spend time indoors with their windows closed.

Throughout the night the vigil remained peaceful as the protesters blanketed the National Mall with points of light and sang rallying hymns. Painted banners could be seen waving over the multitudes, many adorned with the slogan – Bush Blows – inferring similarities between the deadliness of EDDA and the President.

Speaking before the large crowd, a spirited Jane Fonda declared that she "would rather be sprayed with acid than use a Korean fan" prompting a supportive roar. She then challenged President Bush to use one of the South Korean fans in his office with the windows closed, though the response from the White House has been far more reserved.

"It's good to see the American public so interestingly in issues," President Bush said this morning. "The lights were really awesome last night."

In recent months, President Bush has seen his four year high approval rating of twenty percent dip into incomprehensibly negative digits despite political forecasts of warming public opinion. Still, the White House remains firm on the U.S.-South Korea FTA, saying, "Think of the savings we'll get on their sweet cell phones and LCD TVs."

Capitol Hill insiders have hinted recently that the White House might consider an addendum to the deal prohibiting fans manufactured more than 30 months prior to shipment, as these are generally considered the most at risk models. However, unsatisfied protesters seem committed to continue their haranguing of the FTA, pushing for congressional lawmakers to strike down the proposed agreement.

"If this goes through," said Ima Koonte of Memphis, "we'll have no say over who uses those cheap electric fans. What if they get put in a classroom with them closed windows and one [of] my children get fan death?"

The U.S.-South Korea FTA will go before congress for approval when they return from recess next month.

***
For more information on the perils of fan death, go to http://www.fandeath.net or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
***

After delays and much wrangling on the half of my travel agent, our visas finally arrived.









The plan: Fly to Shanghai and cross the whole of China, overland, all the way to Kashgar on the Krygyzstani border. Then cross again, overland, using the Northern Silk Road route, back to Shanghai.

It's a bear of a trip, utilizing only cars, buses, and trains. We'll be passing through the hottest part of the country during the absolute hottest part of the year.

Are we crazy, masochistic, or both?

Two North Korean guards shot a South Korean tourist to death this morning at the Kumgansan resort. She was apparantly taking a morning stroll, and wandered into a "restricted military area," which is Norkspeak for "pretty much all of the country."

The Kumgansan resort is located in North Korea, just over the border, and is run by the Hyundai corporation, I believe, bringing much-needed hard currency into the Hermit State. I've talked to both Koreans and Westerners who have made the visit, and they describe a modern resort that is completely cut-off from the "real" North Korea, mainly manned by Chinese-born ethnic Koreans, to keep the contact between the Northerners and Southerners to a minimum. When the buses cruise down the roads past North Korean work parties, the parties are radioed ahead of time and turn their backs to the buses, preventing any viewing of their faces.

No doubt this woman strapped on her visor and slipped into a pair of white gloves and matching hiking boots for a pre-dawn hike. Perhaps the guards were well within their sense and prudently shot, as she could could have been concealing a deadly bomb in her ajumma-perm.

Will we see any "candlelight vigils" in Seoul over this? I somehow don't think so. Modern South Koreans are quite selective with their outrage.

We still haven't received our visas. Our passports and alien cards were sent to the Chinese Consulate in Busan, where they "hit a snag." The consulate wanted our travel agent to provide them with 30 days worth of hotel reservations; he only gave them five. But he was told that the actual embassy in Seoul is more lenient and sent our passports there on Friday, where they were received and are currently being processed. We have been told to expect our visas on Thursday.

It's amazing that China is hosting the Olympics this summer and inviting the world to come, but then making it onerously difficult for visitors to actually secure a visa. It's like they're having a party but are afraid of letting guests inside the house.

I've researched this in detail online, and what I've discovered is that each embassy and consulate has its own power to make decisions, so what is a rule at one location might not be so set somewhere else. The Seoul embassy is said to be one of the best places to get a visa these days, so it's probably still a go.

Please, China. Stop jerking us around and tell us come in or fuck off already.

Damn. It's hot. Like this hot:









Can't wait until we get to China, since it will be so much cooler in the middle of the fucking desert (Visas still pending, should get them tomorrow though).

This is the fake trailer before Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," which is currently released here in Korea. It's my favorite part of the film.



The trailer was so popular that Rodriguez is actually making it into a feature film.

I can't wait.

"They just fucked with the wrong Mexican."

Over the last year or so, the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been shedding light on the anti-communist massacres that took place here during the opening months of the Korean War. While extrajudicial killings of suspected leftists were known to have taken place, it now appears as if the government of Lee Syng-man murdered over 100,000 unarmed citizens over the course of a couple months, with the tacit approval of the U.S. military.

Lee was a fierce red-baiter/hater, and was concerned that the hordes of communist/socialist political prisoners he put behind bars would join the forces of the North once "liberated" by pressing North Korean forces. So rather than risk this reinforcement, he and his government ordered all of them shot and thrown into mass graves.

Of course the North operated similarly, summarily executing thousands of citizens who sympathized with the South, but it appears now that the latter was much more vicious in carrying out the task, at least in the early days of the war. Desperation produces blood-chilling results.

I'm reading a fascinating book on Mao Tse-Tung right now, and haven't even gotten to the point where he seizes total power in China. But during his ascension, he oversaw purges within the Chinese communists that resulted in the torture and executions of tens of thousands of people.

To say these actions boggle the mind does not pay service to the real impact of them. But I often think of these mass killings when I ponder my own relative happiness; they make me aware of my own absolute insignificance, how unlucky historical placement can end in a statistical death. But so can an earthquake, for that matter. But at least nature is amoral

I love history, but it's really fucking depressing most of the time.

I went to the gym on Friday, only to discover that someone had STOLEN MY RUNNING SHOES. Like most other customers of the particular gym I frequent, I keep my shoes in a communal shoe-storage area outside of the locker room. I always place them in the same spot, but alas, when I went to get them, they were nowhere to be found.

A subsequent search of the collective shoes of the gym turned up nothing.

Who steals running shoes at a gym? Mine were Nikes, a decent pair, but I've had them for over a year and they were well-worn. They wouldn't even fit properly over someone else's feet.

Low-down, I'm tellin' ya. Low down.

My fellow Americans, both at home and abroad, let me wish you a great Fourth of July. I'll be celebrating by going to a baseball game tonight with Lucie, Sam, and Angry Steve (He's baaaaack...). We'll drink beer and sing that time-honored American favorite, "부산 갈매기."

To my fellow unAmericans: Kiss my Yankee ass or I'll nuke you.

A woman in the US is charged with trading sex for gasoline.

My impulse was to erase my last post because it was written in the witching hours of the night under the influence of obscene amounts of alcohol, but what the hell? I'll keep it up.

But why do I get all nationalistic when I'm hissing drunk on booze? Why do I care about what passport I hold? Why do I give a piece of coyote dung whether Canadians are having a Canadian party?

Despite my lefty tendencies and history, I have a weird patriotic streak in me that breaks to the surface with more frequency these days. Perhaps it's me living abroad and grasping for an identity. Perhaps it's a result of my own frustrations with my country and the need to feel proud of it. Perhaps it's just hardwired - childhood conditioning that erupts and flows when I'm so drunk that I'm in a childlike state.

Hmmmm...

A confession: I'm cunted, listening to Nusret Fateh Ali Khan, who always makes me want convert to Mohammadism. I believe he was a Sufi, albeit a morbidly obese one (his kabab intake was rumored to be close to 20 a day), the type of Islam which attracts me: tolerant, and involving lots of spinning. I think they even sneak some hash. Sound.

Tonight is July 1st, which is Canada Day. Props to my one or two Canuck friends inspired, even though I spent some of the night in a bar full of folks on white and red celebrating their inherent "Canadian-ness" by getting hammered and jumping to the sounds of a red-and-white decked out band playing American classic rock cover tunes. No BTO songs to be had, though I marched far before the conclusion of the set.

I've been to Canadia on several occasions and have nothing but praise for the country itself, but I find the majority of Korean-living Canucks tedious, to say the least.

Please throw your darts this way.

Plenty of Koreans claim to love Canada, as it's "American without the baggage," but I've met scores of others who claim them to be as boring as we generally find them.

And I'm not just talking about Yanks.

Part of me wants to have an American party on Friday, since it is the 4th of July, the third most important holiday in the MiGook cannon (after Christmas and Thanksgiving). I may sport the colors in the face of worlwide hatred. I may wear a T-Shirt loudly proclaiming "These Colors Don't Run." I may grow a mullet, despite the fact Eastern Europeans took over the 'do long after us. I may flash the flag and urinate on a Brit.

What is for sure is that I've had it with Canucks chest-banging their patriotism. Or any other of you bastards, for that matter... I just watched many of the matches of the European Cup, and it was nothing but a litany of colors and flags and nationlistic bluster.

And while all of this may be detrimental to humankind and sports - while we should all just gravitate around the magnetic pylon of internationalism - I get a bit nationalistic from time to time.

And so does the rest of the world... I

But despite the fact the GW Bush is our retarded head of state, and despite the fact of our religio-fascist tendencies, and despite the fact that we're basically hated worldwide for being warmongering assholes (policies that I, and countless others have fought against), the USA reinvented reality. It has been both for the good and the bad, but our influence has been felt globally. From airplanes to the internet, the USA is to thank. This is an is.

Yes, we consume way more than our share. And we're loud assholes. And a lot of us are dumb. But guess what? A lot of us are smart. That's why we've had the most inventions out of any nation in the history of mankind. That's why we've won the lion's share of Nobel Prizes, not that we care what uppity-pretentious Europeans think to begin with.

But the dollar's sinking into the depths of assyness. Iraq is a clusterfuck, and Afghanistan's not much better. Our national goodwill is pretty much used up. Everyone hates us.

Have we overextended ourselves? Where the WWII years our peak, when we literally outproduced the world? Have we grown fat and lazy on our own hubris? Are we too sheltered?

Perhaps.

But to count us out at this point of the game is to underestimate our nation. I am quite happy to let others take over the mantle. Please. China #1? Okay. Have at it. Seeing your torch attacked this spring only made me smile, as an American. Call it empathy. Everyone hates the big cat.

I feel your pain.

George Carlin is dead.

Carlin will go down as one of comedy's greats. He had an unflinching style and was willing to take on any subject, no matter the taboo. His career had a proper arch; he went from square to hip in a heartbeat, transforming himself into "the voice of the counterculture" and reigning as such for many years. He was one of the big ones.

I'm sure he's in the club in the sky, kicking it backstage with Lenny and Bill.

Here's to you George, you motherfucking dead cocksucking son of a cunt.

Let's declare today international profanity day, in honor of Carlin.

How many languages can you be nasty in?

I'll start it off: 씨발 개새끼야!!!

We submitted our Chinese visas today.

Wish us luck.

It's summer in Busan, which means that it's hot, wet, and muggy. As a result, I keep my front window open as much as possible, to circulate fresh-ish air and to cool me off (I hate air conditioning and use it only as a last resort). But in front of my building is a busy street that has seen nightly scenes of loud, sewer-replacing construction. There's also a car garage - a sort of Korean "Jiffy Lube" - that is open late six nights a week, subjecting me to a constant racket of air hose hisses and metal-on-metal banging. Along with these is a massive construction project - a malignant dirt pit, in which they are building a new "apartment city," to be finished in two or three years. Add the random drunk ajosshi staggering home from one of the neighborhood's many bars, karaoke joints, and room salons, and you have NOISE - tons of it. This on top of an already decibel-busting city.

This constant barrage of NOISE brings to mind a piece by one of my favorite poets, the late Steven Jesse Bernstein. Bernstein was a poet/spoken word perfomer in Seattle in the 80's and very early 90's, until his untimeley death, in which he slit his own throat with a very large knife. He was a kind of Poet Laureate of the Seattle scene, and I will hereby reprint his piece, "MORE NOISE PLEASE," without anyone's permission. I actually lived a for a few weeks during a particulary loser-y period in the building where he wrote this poem (The Ontario Hotel, Georgetown).

MORE NOISE PLEASE

(Posted for Harry Pierce)

I live on a street where there are many, many cars and trucks and factories that pump and bang and grind all night and day. It is a miracle that I can write poetry or sleep or talk on the telephone or that my lover will visit me here. There is so much noise. Every few minutes a jet in comes in low or a prop job swings down like a kamikaze. There is an airport at the end of my street. The New Age people say that you choose all these things, choose the cars and trucks and airplanes, me and all of my neighbors. Well, maybe this is true, maybe we can't live without all this God damn noise. Maybe I need the noise to write poems, make love, and eat. I'm going to hang a sign out my window that says More Noise Please, or Thank You For Making Noise! Maybe we are the kind of people who need to have what we don't want just to get along, to do the basic things. Myself, I could not sleep last night and I could not close the window, either. I tried to tear the window out of its frame and put it in a closed position, banging and ripping with a hammer and a screwdriver, standing on the window ledge in my socks, three stories up. But the window wouldn't come out, the factory was screaming and the trucks were rumbling and the whole world was praying for silence and it was up to me to shut the window and I couldn't get it down. I was just making more noise. A jet went by and all the people waved. "Thanks!," I yelled as the shift changed without a lull in production at the big plant across the street. The workers lined up at the bus stop, watching me with my hammer in the window. I put sponge stoppers in my ears but I can't stand those things for more than a few minutes. Finally I put my head between two pillows. It is the same every night. I love it. I need it. "Without you I could not live! I would not have written this poem!," I yell, the window dangling half on, half off.

Happy Sunday.

This weekend was one of the most mellow in ages, one which I passed largely within the confines of my own four walls. This is mainly due to the summer cold which descended upon me last Friday, sapping my energy, extracting the essence of my ass and injecting it into the rest of my system, resulting in fatigue and a feeling of general hatefulness.

Despite this negativity, I managed to make up with my girlfriend, a last minute deal that averted our relationship from mutually-assured destruction - a kind Cuban Misslie Crisis played out micro-cosmically. Yes, it involved some brinkmanship and bluffing, but in the end both sides backed down. So she spent much of the time at mine, warming up bags of traditional Korean herbal medicine (한약 - the stuff works), cooking me soup, rice, and marinated pork, while we listened to music, watched movies, and edited subtitles for a short film script.  Not a bad way to spend a weekend, really. I should do it more often. 

I talked to my mother today, who, despite her harrowing situation, is maintaining good spirits.  She leaves physical therapy for her house tomorrow, which, thanks to the intervention of some family friends, has been made wheelchair-friendly, with a new ramp and remodeled bathroom.  Also, her Hitler Youth dogs have been deported to their own private Auschwitz, something that I'd normally mourn, but if you knew these dogs you will too privately rejoice in the fact, as they were much more of a burden than a boon.  My mother seems to have accepted this fact un-sentimentally, which is good, since she is in no position to care for dogs at this point in her life.   I believe that in the distance, you can hear the sounds of champagne corks popping in the respective homes of the Brothers Tharp.

Tonight was the first time I really got out of the house at all. We strolled through the sleepy monsoon-soaked streets and settled into a raw tuna restaurant around the corner, where we talked and ate delicious slices of fresh fish, washing it down with warm sake and 눈물주 - literally "teardrop alcohol" - which is made from soju and crushed tuna eyeballs. It was as slimy as you suspect it might be. The dinner was punctuated by the baseball game playing in the background. The Busan Lotte Giants won 10-0. You gotta love Korean baseball, especially The Giants.  It's been a terrific season so far.  Watching the K-League makes me realize how much MLB has been ruined by money, steroids, and fascist stadium rules.   Going to a game here in Busan is ten times as fun and ten times as cheap as its American counterpart.  It's a shame, really.

We ended the evening by coming back here and watching Woody Allen's "Manhattan," a lovely and often laugh-out-oud funny film, if you can get past him perving all over Mariel Hemingway, who was only 17 at the time.  When you think about his marriage some years later, his films make more sense.  Or do his films make his marriage make more sense?  Does the artist reflect life or does life reflect the artist?  Fuck.  I sound like a character in one of his movies, only with no real career and a seriously diminished bank account.

Now I'm home alone, listening to the sounds of boiling eggs and the odd car driving through the rain, watching my cats try to ambush each other.  My cold is still here, but a few days of constant rest has got it on the run, and the little bit of booze I've had  warms my center and amplifies a real night of peace.

May I have many more to follow. 

We've decided to go to China after all. My travel agent is willing to pull some rabbits out of hats and insists that the visa should be no problem, though it will only be single entry.



This means that Kyrgyzstan, the orginal destination of this whole adventure, will have to wait.

But China is what scientists call "really really big," so I'm sure there will be plenty to see and do over the course of a month. Here's our proposed route, taking us on both the southern and northern Silk Road.



We are going to the unpopulated middle part of the country. It's going to be savagely hot. There will undoubtably be moments of true suck, but that makes it more interesting, no?

We fly into Shangers on July 23rd. Gonna in be in town, Caf?