And you thought Valentine's Day was crassly commercial...

Happy Pepero Day, everyone! Pepero Day? What? Well, you can read the wikipedia article if you want, but I can summarize it just as well: Pepero is a type of candy/cookie thing. It's a cookie, shaped like a stick and coated in chocolate. Pretty yummy. Pepero Day is actually tomorrow, November 11th, as 11/11 resembles four Pepero sticks. Today, like on Valentine's Day back home, friends and lovers exchange Pepero candy as a sign of friendship and/or love. Wow. Talk about a killer marketing strategy for Lotte (the company that created Pepero). Even though Pepero Day is technically tomorrow, as it's Friday and not everyone goes to school on Saturday, many of the students were celebrating today. Nearly everyone carried bags stuffed full of Pepero and Pepero-rip-offs, and we teachers were given large stashes of candy as well.

Pepero!

Yum!

I enjoy some Pepero.

One of our students said it best in her essay on fall:
Autumn is snack seller's trick.

It's a good day to be a Democrat :-)

I don't really have anything of substance to write.... surely you all know what's happened: The Democrats have taken control of the House and Senate (well, assuming there's no Allen-originating trickery in the next few days), Nancy Pelosi is now Speaker of the House, the abortion ban in South Dakota has been defeated, and Rumsfeld has been sacked. Oh, fraptious day!

Happy Anniversary!

Five years ago today, Melissa and I left South Korea under duress. I for one never expected to return to Korea, much less twice, much less to teach English at a hogwan. Thankfully, this time around is exponentially better than the first (thank you Gwen!). If you're interested in reading all the sordid details of my very first trip to South Korea, you can buy the book :-) Just click the image below!

Prisoner of Wonderland $7.99

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Pardon my profanity, but this is infuriating. I have heard a lot of scary shit since the Bush administration took office, but given my choice of lifestyle, this is one of the scariest fucking things I have heard yet:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a system which will in essence make it mandatory for you to have permission before leaving or entering the country, effectively putting everyone on a no-fly list unless the government says otherwise. Interestingly, the proposal does not seem to cover personal travel, only that on some sort of carrier like an airline or cruise vessel. [read more here, here, here and here]

Permission to leave the country? Are you kidding me? Leaving the country is what I do. It's what I've been doing as frequently as possible since I was sixteen (well, twelve if you count the family trip to Ireland) - and now I'm going to need some bureaucrat's permission?

This comment from Crooks and Liars just about sums up where this new bit of "security" is leading:

When I was fourteen and we were getting the hell out of the Soviet Union, I remember the two-year so-called "permission" process to get the Soviet government to allow us an exit visa. [link]

Yummy, yummy, there's a stingray in my tummy.

Okay, I lied. There is not now, nor will there ever be, a stingray anywhere near my tummy. There was, however, stingrays (and fish) being sold off the back of a truck parked in front of the school today. Take a look:

Mmmm.... stingrays.

Dried, gutted fishies!

Take a closer look - eerie.

This is the reason the hooligans were out of control today.

Instant Crack for the Russophile

Misha, wondrous man that he is, thought to search YouTube for Vinni Pookh (Russian Winnie the Pooh) - and he found them! I can't believe it didn't occur to me to do this. Anyway, I just thought I would share the following videos with you. They make me laugh - and make me feel unbelievably homesick for Russia. (And they make me crave beer cheese like mad. If anyone in Russia can figure out how to get beer cheese to Korea without it spoiling in transit, I will love them forever.) Anyhow, if you speak Russian, you'll love these. If you don't, but are familiar with the Winnie the Pooh stories, you should be able to follow along. Enjoy! (The endings and beginnings tend to run together, so if one seems to be missing an ending, simply click on the next one!)

The Honey Tree ("I'm just a little black rain cloud.")

Pookh and Petachok (piglet) visit Krolik (rabbit),
and Pookh gets stuck in the door.

Eeya's (Eeyore's) birthday / Eeya loses his tail (Part 1)

Eeya's (Eeyore's) birthday / Eeya loses his tail (Part 2)

Gwen and I went in search of fall foliage today....

...and we found some!

The reds were so brilliant.

This was me getting creative with the camera.
(No photoshop - simply spun the camera while shooting)

Mmmmm....

I climbed one of the trees.
(I mean, Joanna wasn't around, so someone had to...)

Some of the trees along the roadside were strung with lanterns.

More lantern goodness.

We spotted this last vestige of summer,
in the process of fading away.

Halloween in the Hood: Dispatches from Waycross

Oh, the things I'm missing out on being here in Korea, slaving away (okay, not really...) in order to pay off my house. I got the following email from my mom today. Oak and Effie are the neighboring streets. At least for once my block wasn't hosting all the action.

Was just talking to a police officer (a sergeant I think) who was here to talk to someone else. He was telling me about a drug bust on Effie St., and shots fired on Oak St. on Halloween nite. I said, 'THAT'S my neighborhood.' Told him to keep an eye on [your house].

BTW, on the Oak St. incident, when the police got there they found an empty car, doors open, crack cocaine, and a loaded sawed off shotgun.

Lesbian Konglish

This shirt isn't so much "Konglish" as it is simply amusing, considering the general homophobic nature of Korean society. Obviously neither the wearer nor her compatriots understood anything regarding the shirt, other than that it is pink, and pink is cute.

The latest edition of WTF?! from back home

Have you heard the latest news out of Maryland? If you are having consentual sex, and then decide for some reason that you want to stop - for example, if your partner starts doing something you really don't want any part of - and you ask him (or her) to stop, and he (or she) forces you to continue having sex against your will... apparently that does not count as rape. WTF?!

An appellate court said Maryland's rape law is clear -- no doesn't mean no when it follows a yes and intercourse has begun. A three-judge panel of the Court of Special Appeals Monday threw out a rape conviction saying that a trial judge in Montgomery County erred when he refused to answer the jury's question on that very point. The appeals court said that when the jury asked the trial judge if a woman could withdraw her consent after the start of sex, the jury should have been told she could not. The ruling said the law is not ambiguous and is a tenet of common-law. [article]

Discussions on this can be found here, here and here.

In other news, the Bush administration has changed restrictions in order to encourage sex-segregated public schools. Because separate but equal has always worked. Sheesh. [article] [discussion]