Norko Attacks!

oh shiz...

blet blet blet

in lieu of explaining why it's taken months to post, a pic from gangwon province's daegwalleong sheep ranch to sum it up. thanks to dan phan et al for the prompt!

oh, and i got me a one-eyed pup! more to come... sooon? xo

dear sassy

who introduced me to at least three illegal substances, who taught me how to steal, and who only laughed (but then quickly forgot) when she noticed her 15-year-old brother was wearing leopard-print/military green thong underwear.

the king's personal effects

the toiletry bag.

henceforth when asked to describe him, i will simply say, "fancy lotion + candy."

baby it's cold outside

i love this time of year (click for larger)!

taking off for a 2-week stint in jesusland tomorrow.

but before i leave, here's a lil 'tis the season pic. whenever it gets really cold (and it's been really cold), korea's armed forces take their shirts off to show how tough they are. as a fervent leg fetishist, i think really tough guys take their pants off, too.

maybe next year!

so, which one do you like best?

remember this time last year?
or the good ole days of 2007?

happy new year!

hark! it's the first sunrise of the year! the decade!

a few days on korea's southeastern coast without a rental car or kaopectate proved a disastrous combo. that said, highlights included taking in a very pretty 1st sunrise with his majesty just south of gampo, and lots of good historic sights and one good meal in gyeongju...

on that note, while they can take credit for being the first to unite the korean peninsula, the home of korea's shilla dynasty cannot claim the land's finest cuisine. geesh.

oh, happy new year to you and yours!

goodbye world!

hark! after spending a bizzy morning doing things totally unrelated to my job here at the tourism cubicle, i'm leaving town in 6 minutes to meet the king and head on down to gyeongju and then gampo to watch the new years sunrise tomorrow AM in typical korean jan. 1 fashion.

so, in lieu of a proper new year's post, wishing you all a safe and fun eve and it's really ominous to start the next decade wretching and confused so drink plenty of water tonight. xo

yeouido park is cold.

kiddie pool in the off season.

a water feature in the off season.

a mini golf course (not to be confused with a miniature golf course) in the off season.

riverside stage contraption in the offer.

funky visor.

it was a bitter cold day, but i took a walk around yeouido island (where kbs and most of seoul's big financial services bldgs live) the other day to check out the new park that wraps around its edge. this was the huge park that they totally dug up to make a... new huge park (it's really obvious that korea's current prez is a former construction executive).

there's a curious lack of trees and the extensive concrete work looks pretty shoddy up close, but there are some OK features, too. but it was also a reminder of how managed korean public design is these days. e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g--- m-u-s-t--- b-e--- m-a-n-a-g-e-d-!-!-

happy hanooka!

do you celebrate hanooka?

i love america's military footprint

the american military is almost like magic!

let's say the king isn't the world's best planner. and maybe he means well but is a bit of a procrastinator. imagine his shock when he couldn't get dinner reservations at a nice place for christmas when he called on christmas eve!

on! and judy doesn't live here. that's when the u.s. military saves the day (he and i have re-enacted mcarthur's incheon offensive many times! ... huh?) anyway, thanks to america's military occupation of korea, in a clutch with christmas almost in the shitter, i called my new friends at the dragon hill deli, and after placing an order for real down home fixins' at 10:30, they were ready for pick up at noon at gate 17 of the yongsan military garrison.

who ate this meal for 10? just us, but leftovers were always the best part of t-day and x-mas, no?

'tis the greetings!

born again!

i love you, the song.

it's a song!

awww look what the king made for me!

just kidding. but part of you believed it. actually, it's a birthday song from the 4.5-yr-old baby einstein, sent back during the birthday days. she's clearly a genius. and it's special because it's perhaps the first time the "i love you" isn't followed by "i want a snack" or "buy me a puppy." no, buy ME a puppy!

puppytime

he's older than me but hair covers wrinkles.

here's me awkward with my dog, big red.

actually, no. i'm at the hongdae puppy café with the king. but mark marsha's words, come january travels back from jesusland, it's puppy time!

i'm preparing the newspaper for patricia the rescue shitzoo as we speak!

snapshot #24: yangsuri (and jeolla thieves)

yangsuri: where two han rivers become one.

let's not talk about neglected blogs today. instead, let's talk about expensive cameras being stolen on the train from south jeolla province and slowly nodding one's head religious zealot-style when that thieving jeolla-man develops multiple sclerosis or a painful chronic pissing disease in karmic retribution.

shasta may no longer be with me, but iphoto has 16,305 snapshots by the entry-level nikon dslr that made daddy proud!

mother always told me not to trust jeolla people... (not really. it was prolly was one of them de-sensitized seoulites, anyhow.)

when people make maps lie

that's a mighty big park!

i think map lies are the worst kind of lies. do you agree?

in the top right of the satellite image is the southern reaches of nam mountain park, which rises out of the city's center and is perhaps the massive city's best known greenspace.

and yet, based on the naver (most popular koko search engine) map, it appears that there is a much larger park with dramatic mountain slopes to the southwest of namsan that are probably home to korean tigers and maybe even mountain cheetah. upon seeing this heretofore unfamiliar (and massive) park space in the middle of seoul, i was confused.

hath i know not my home?

now take a look at the google maps version. it appears that korean search engines can place a retractable park hat atop the entire yongsan military garrison to nature-camouflage sensitive installations from view by the crazzies to the north. because, you know... they don't have google in north korea...

snapshots #22+23: guro-gu

pretty in orange and beige.

when you're feeling overwhelmed by seoul's urban revitalization projects, i suggest heading over to guro district, where dilapidated housing doesn't get razed and where freeways still stand in the middle of polluted stream beds. still makes for pretty, eh?

for better or worse, this ain't no cheonggyecheon.

delicious cool piss.

a chaser of choice while at a daejeon bar.

i'm not the first anglophone to enjoy this delicious plum juice, whose name sounds an awful lot like "cool piss."

thanks, shilla.

thanks to language barriers, the king and i prefer to communicate via espresso art.

a birthday is a great excuse to do the shilla lunch buffet, a 60,000-won ($48) date with painful gluttony. ma tum feels permanently stretched. happy birthday queen abby! xo

new book: portraits of half-closeted, half-korean, mexican pretenders

pardon the indulgence, but decent pix are getting harder to come by.

proving my point, this one by mike tauber is from 2006 or so. it was taken as part of a goofy picture book of people who were mixed race based on 2000 u.s. census-approved racial categories (that's right, you white half-latinos or chinee-bangladeshis don't count!). much like coffee table pictorials of albino africans or green-eyed chinee, there's something pretty 1990 about it... or maybe i've just got an especially acute case of hybrid malaise. who buys this book, anyway?

the book (available for preorder on amazon.com), came to my attention while on the impromptu jesusland tour last week. pops' wife's daughter, who is also featured, came on by and gave me the head's up.

sure they didn't get my permission to publish the pic, but i don't care. besides being reacquainted with my old boobs and a time and place when i could wear holed jeans in public (aka not seoul), it's funny to see how quickly i've become a super flamer. clearly, this photo was in the waning days of my mexican identity dynasty.

snapshot #21: pimatgol fare

yum.

in lieu of actual content, another pix.

a coupla weeks back, a new friend prospect and ate us some fried fish, bindaetddeok (빈대뗙) and some delicious makgeoli rice wine in pimatgol, a lil stretch of 600-year-old alley that's being rapidly destroyed. created to avoid the main drag, where commoners had to stop and prostrate themselves every time a fancy man rode on by, today's seoul apparently has no room for ugly and wonderful "avoid horse alley"s. r.i.p.