Everyone likes Rap!

Ok, squid is getting a little old. It's all fun and games until a beak gets stuck on your tongue, or they forget to remove the stomach. Seriously, the beak is like a bird's foot - it naturally snaps shut, and muscles have to be flexed to open it. Getting it off a taste bud is equivalent to digging a popcorn kernel out of your gums, and about as appealing to watch. And if you think eating squid is gross, imagine eating what squid's already eaten. Yuck about covers it.

Been here about two months, and I've eaten pretty much every food this country has to offer. Scale of 1-10, nothing really gets above a 7. Somewhat disappointing, but we've finally figured out how to get hold of most of the things we need to cook what I no longer feel chauvinistic calling "real food". If that sounds bad to you, consider the fact that these guys go nuts for "Italian" food that would send Chef Boyardee into an apoplectic Gordon Ramseyesque fit. I've made it my life's goal before I leave to teach one Korean how to make a half decent tomato sauce. I'm just payin' it forward, it's what HaJO* would have wanted.

Learing about the ups and downs of living in Korean Mayberry. Plus side, there are so few foreigners that everyone knows everyone and you need to be open and friendly if you ever want to speak your own language. Went to Seoul two weekends ago, and when I warned a lady that her beer, which she had placed on the felt of a pool table, was about to be smashed by a smashed Korean girl trying desperately to count to fifteen so she could finish racking the balls, she replied with "Why are you talking to me?" followed by a brief tirade in an ugly accent that, since we were watching the rugby world cup, I pegged as South African. Might have been British, but my mental meanness Venn diagram has a lot of overlap between "asshole" and "White South African".

Downside to a small community: You're stuck with what you get. White Seoulites might be 90% pricks, but that still leaves more cool people than the entire foreign population of Iksan combined. And with a small group, the one or two turds will float right to the top of the bowl. For our Halloween Party, I spent about three days working on a Halloween Mixlist for the Saturday night party at the bar.

Brief background: I've always said the most amazing thing in the world would be a soundsystem hooked up to a computer hooked up to the internet. Bar quality sound system + stealing all the music on the internet = my own personal Shangri-La. Pick 3 songs, sit your butt down and enjoy the Everyone's Favorite Song Musical Gumbo all night. Too bad the RIAA would shut you down in a hot second right? Not in Korea, where the international copyright laws are not so much played with fast and loose as used to line the cages of a dog farm. And if I can go off on a tangent, dog farms are the most depressing things in creation. Ever see the deer hunter, or Missing in Action? Imagine the prison cells from those movies, filled with cute fluffy dogs. I've got no problem with eating the poor bastards, but dogs might be the only self-herding livestock on the planet. For crap's sake just name them and pet them once a day and they'll never run away!

Anyway, we find a bar where the jukebox is limited only by your imagination, Zombo.com style, and me and my buddy mike proceed to go so hog wild on the thing that the bartender buys us a mixing board. Fast forward about two weeks and the thing has become a microcosm of America. Democracy doesn't work people, Hamilton was right! I can handle the random Korean broad coming up and playing Toxic/Let's Get Retarded/Crazy in Love. Despite the fact that those are literally** the only western songs they know, I just accept it and move on. But when a random American jackass comes up to the DJ booth, refuses to budge the entire night, clears the entire playlist, plays 3 Outkast songs in a row, ending with Wheels of Steel(?!) has so many people screaming at him that he stops the music cold and consults with his friend about what to play next (Play some rap. Everyone likes rap.) and demands anyone with an idea about how to make things fun again write their request on a slip of paper and hand it to him. It's a very lucky thing for everyone involved I broke my homemade cricket bat popping balloons on the bar.

So anyway, things don't all suck, but I've written about the fun and cool, needed to vent a bit. All done.

*Haley Joel Osment. We're bosom buds.

**Literally literally, not literally as in "I laughed so hard I literally shit my pants." Literally as in, any time a Korean asks to hear a song, it will always be those three. No more no less.