equipment matters

under the bed

I cleaned under my bed the other day. It's a job I'd been putting off for a damn year at least. What a slob. And sure enough, the accumulated dust and hair under the bed were unbelievable. Lifting the mattress to be able to pull out the plastic supports that act as both frame and legs caused some massive bursts of static electricity. Snap. Crackle. Pop. The dust-clearing job required plenty of wet towelettes and a lot of elbow grease (the major reason why I'd kept putting the job off), but it all got done in the end.

If there's a chance I might be moving out sometime over the next few months, I'm going to have to clean up a lot more than this. Schmutz is everywhere.

ugh

I'm feeling kind of depressed right now. 

First, there's the movie-review book problem. I thought making one or two corrections to a nearly error-free manuscript would be enough, but now, Amazon KDP is being a bitch and complaining about how my text doesn't have a sufficient gutter for the 6 × 9 format, how my cover image isn't bleed-to-the-edge, etc., etc. It didn't give me any grief during my first upload of the manuscript, so what happened? I spent all of yesterday trying to get everything perfect, and when I reuploaded my manuscript... more of the same complaints from the Amazon system. So late last night (this morning, technically), I gave up. It was all just too much.

Second, I haven't heard from UNIST, SCH, or Hanyang about EFL-prof work. KNU, for its part, says it won't start replying to potential hires until Monday the 22nd.* My ex-boss, with whom I occasionally commiserate, is in a somewhat similar situation. He's been working various part-time jobs but can no longer seem to secure the kind of high-paying work he'd had in the past. With his fluent Korean, he used to work for local government officials. His last job, in which he was my boss, was netting him over six figures (that's US dollars). He's got nothing like that now, and he thinks part of the problem is his age (mid-60s). I haven't had the heart to ask the ex-boss how sustainable he thinks his current situation is. He's got a wife and two sons, which means he already has to spend plenty of money every month. He lives in the rich part of town, in a very nice apartment, which costs him God-knows-how-much. How much longer can he go this way? If he's saved up a massive amount of money from his previous jobs, then he could theoretically go on for a few more years. But any well that's lost its source of water cannot last forever.

My impression is that the Korean job market is looking for young, fresh, energetic meat, not old fogies like us, to attract students. If you've stayed in one place and made a name for yourself instead of hopping around nomadically, you've managed to put down roots and become a known, respected commodity. If, on the other hand, you've zigzagged around trying anything and everything for years, you've got no roots anywhere.

That reminds me of something. The words of the old CEO of the SsangYong Paper company, where I'd worked for a few months in 1996, come back to me. The CEO's name was Park; he was a temperamental asshole, an old man with dyed-black hair, who started every morning with a long, ranty shouting session in which he would gather his managers and directors in a conference room and harangue them for their perceived failures. My classroom—his employees were required to attend my 7:00 a.m. class for an hour a day—was right next door, and I could hear the shouting through the thin door that separated us. Every day, I would teach for an hour, then spend the rest of the day as an office prole, proofreading English-language correspondence to be faxed overseas (this was right on the cusp of the email era). Despite being an asshole, the CEO gave me some parting advice during my exit interview in the fall of 1996: "Dig a deep well," he said in English. "There are people who dig shallow holes all over the place. They never find water. Stay in one place and dig a deep well." (He was probably referring to my leaving his company only a few months after joining.)

To my shame now, I recall leaving CEO Park's office while sneering at his advice, which reeked of the blind company loyalty that my father—a pre-Boomer born in 1942 like Joe Biden—had shown his whole working life to Northwest Airlines, a company that routinely shafted and reamed its employees despite my father's being in a union (joining a union was an implicit or explicit requirement, at least in the 70s and 80s). Aren't unions supposed to protect worker's rights? Well, as I discovered when Mom started working—and her job required joining a union, too—that's not true at all. Whatever the unions' noble intentions were at their start, they quickly morphed into predatory entities that protected incompetence and indolence while failing to promote merit. 

As I look back now at my own sneering attitude, though, I see clearly how Gen X I was being. My age cohort isn't known for decades-long loyalty to any company; we listened to the Boomer generation's Follow Your Bliss advice and took it seriously. And I also see now that CEO Park, while being an asshole, had the right idea: Dig a deep well. Anyone who succeeds will tell you that the formula is to pick a thing, then plug away at it relentlessly. This means effort, focus, and dedication—not flightiness and zigzagginess.

So because I'm feeling a bit depressed this weekend for the above reasons, I'm going to drown my sorrows in hot dogs. Last night, it occurred to me that I could go downstairs and buy meat to grind for chili dogs, so I'm about to go shop for some meat. I'll grind the meat today, chop my dill pickles into relish, eat regular hot dogs with carnivore buns, then make chili and have chili dogs with the rest of my dogs tomorrow. It won't solve my unemployment situation, but it'll temporarily alleviate the depression. Then starting Monday, back to the damn grind.

The grind. See, that's the funny thing: All of this time, since the beginning of 2025, I've remained extremely busy. I started off by learning some new video/photography skills through Skillshare. Then I got onto Substack, where I had vainly hoped to "break out" as a writer. On Substack up to now, I've produced massive amounts of (utterly unappreciated) material, and I've been diving deep into writing projects that I had put off for years, one of which is my series of movie-review books. I haven't moved the needle at all on Substack; I did, however, get an initial and fairly committed group of free subscribers (some of whom may be bots), plus a very small handful of paying subscribers. And I haven't broken out beyond that. But I'm trying. And trying. Maybe something will come of all this.

And maybe that's the "deep well" that I've been at pains to dig all of these years. I've always been a writer, and I've long been an educator. While I'd like to think I've improved over the years, I am, unfortunately, still too mediocre to break free of the Don't quit your day job! cohort, but I'm going to keep plugging away at my projects until I finally keel over, shit myself, and get found only when the neighbors complain about my smell. In the meantime, I have a parachute in the form of hagweon work. If I hear nothing from any university by mid-July, I'll look up local hagweons (of which there are plenty in my area) and get a part-time job at one, thus following my boss's template, but without having a family to feed and a hellaciously expensive apartment to pay for. And I'll play things by ear from there.

__________

*Your quick glossary:
UNIST = Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, known for tech
SCH = Soonchunhyang University, known for medicine, in Asan, about 90 km south of Seoul
Hanyang = Hanyang YK Intercollege, known for interdisciplinary work, in Seoul
KNU = Kyungpook National University, known for agricultural science, in Sangju

I can relate

Since at least 2010, when Mom died, I've tried not to be like my father—a liar, a coward, and an idiot. I don't think I've succeeded, and I think the seeds of my dad's character lie within me. So yeah, there's some self-loathing on my part, and I despise these traits when they pop up in others: a tendency to avoid reality by constantly distorting it and reinterpreting it instead of aiming for hard-nosed, scientific empiricism; a desire to be liked and to ingratiate oneself with whatever crowd one is hanging with at the time, even if this means sounding conservative when you're really a liberal or vice versa (also known as getting along to go along); being evasive and passive-aggressive instead of being open and honest about what one does and doesn't want to do; a tendency to make the same mistakes and to commit the same sins over and over and over, never once learning anything; weakness and neediness and lack of self-discipline; spinelessness, lack of courage, and lack of intelligence.

But I know I've done idiotic things, and that I've been a moral coward in situations that called for backbone and conviction. As Dr. House likes to say, Everybody lies, and I've done my share of lying, too. So without getting too specific, I've been a liar, a coward, and an idiot, too. The apple didn't fall far from the tree. I'm not saying that the sum of who I am is defined by my father's faults, but I can't deny that those faults, and others, exist in me.

love, Larry Correia

trolling George

troo dat

practical and CG effects

frustration update

Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing, for ebooks and paperbacks) isn't even letting me upload my revised manuscript right now, so I'm going to cool off for a bit.

I had ordered a hard copy of my book, which arrived yesterday, as you saw. Everything looked great, but I did find one, and then two, little mistakes. The newest manuscript—the one I currently can't upload—contains corrections for those mistakes. The whole thing is very frustrating. Normally, uploading a manuscript is a fairly straightforward process. But something is glitching right now, so I'll have to just calm down and figure out what to do.

Dave Cullen on franchise challenges

Star Wars, Star Trek, DCU, MCU, and Doctor Who. Is there anything left after the woke cancer? Personally, I doubt it.

it's just a game

and what a surname to boot

Comment I saw: "They replaced beauty with the feral kid from the Mad Max movie."

please hold off on buying the paperback

The ms of the paperback version of Sights, Sounds, Words, my movie-review book, had one single mistake in it when I did a review after coming back from my walk. But when I corrected the mistake in MS Word, saved the file as a PDF, and reuploaded the PDF to Amazon, there were suddenly tons of formatting errors as text spilled over "bleed" lines. I'm in the midst of making changes, and this might take a while, so in the meantime, please do not try to buy the paperback version of my book.

The ebook version, by contrast, was corrected and reuploaded with no hitch that I could see. If you've already bought the ebook version, the updates to the manuscript will appear automatically in your ebook... unless something disastrous occurred, and we're all about to find out what that might be.

For the moment, though, I'm cross-eyed with fatigue, so I'm gonna take a nap. I've been running on less than an hour's sleep, and it's no use trying to work on manuscript formatting when you're dead tired. I think an hour or two in bed ought to solve the problem. Stay tuned.

today's walk (3:45 a.m. start)

Let's just get right into this morning's 10K walk. I was out of the building at 3:45 a.m.

3:53 a.m.—walking for eight minutes and now going up the footbridge ramp

3:55 a.m. The electric light show turned off before midnight.

Looking southeast. Lotte World Tower looms in the distance.

This part of the top of the berm parallels this on-ramp/off-ramp above me.

4:09 a.m.—down at creek level

Tan-cheon to the right; the narrow ramp above me is almost complete after years of construction.

4:26 a.m.—burd, just chillin'

As bright as the above photo looks, it was actually still pretty dark.

Here, too, the camera picks up way more light than my eyes do. But dawn is here. 4:33 a.m.

Samseong Bridge (Samseong-gyo)

I've jumped away from the walking path next to the bikers so I can enjoy my alone time by walking the long parking lot that parallels the creek. There are occasional walkers and bikers here, but very few.

I get a Mines of Moria vibe whenever I walk this section. Thanks, Peter Jackson.

Sunrise will happen soon to the northeast (on the left in this photo).

old guy sitting where I wanted to sit, close to the U-turn point

U-turn point, 4:50 a.m.

turning around, walking back, almost at my chosen rest stop

I didn't have any angina today, but as I get older, I've been giving myself more rest breaks.

vaguely nigiri-shaped benches

This is where I decided to sit for 15 minutes. I always set my cell phone's timer.

the wastebasket cum cigarette-butt-tossing place

man walks by giant thigh bone

neverending construction

This part of the parking lot is too crowded with construction equipment and activity for parking.

The fences all say 안전재일/anjeon jaeil, or "safety first."

This dude was here very, very early compared to his tardy mates.

5:19 a.m. and fully daytime, but the marauding sun isn't shining its rays at me directly yet.

Lotte World Tower greets the dawn.

Today, I decided to become a crack addict.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back! Step on a line, break your mother's spine!

See the buses in the distance? The lot was full of them when I'd passed by on my way to the river.

Above, only two buses remain to stand guard.

5:32 a.m. I wonder if this is the same bird I'd seen an hour earlier (4:26 a.m.).

burd, in context

surprisingly un-skittish

and a surprisingly un-skittish magpie (ggachi/까치 in Korean)

It decided to show me its better side.

When I loomed over to take this shot, the caterpillar stopped, either posing or accepting that I might squish it.

I don't squish insects anymore. I've developed a superstition that the bad karma affects my angina. So I stopped randomly killing tiny creatures years ago.

planter boxes that I pass all the time and never photograph

"No unauthorized use of this route" or something like that.

safety rules for bridge inspectors

the fat pylon where those signs are located

along the top of the final berm before the footbridge back to my neighborhood

some kind of top/bottom-diagram chart, maybe for record-keeping of damage and repair of the bridge...?

the fence that has always blocked my view of whatever lies down the slope of the berm

Today, I used my phone camera to have a peek. Parking lot. For garbage trucks?

The garbage trucks I normally see in Seoul aren't white. I wonder if these are really garbage trucks. Maybe they haul cut branches and grass clippings and other plant debris.

The Rexa Gang leaves its tag!

Yeah!

The sun! It burns!

The longer-established DOEZN Gang, which can't seem to spell "dozen." (DOEZMY...?)

a tower, towering

a biker passes me

another DOEZN Gang tag

guardian cat, also unwontedly un-skittish

the other guardian, maybe waiting for a can of tuna

the two cats in context

looking ready to go somewhere but not moving

the quiet chaos under the bridge

yet another DOEZN tag

getting close to the footbridge

the benches near the footbridge where I rest for five minutes when I'm feeling chest pains

the footbridge and one of the ramps up

a less obstructed view

6:05 a.m. Contrast this with the previous photo at 3:55 a.m.

Don't fall through that hole.

the ramp down, my building in the distance

the final, shaded stretch

the white gaura

yellow Asiatic lily

If I have a daughter, I'm naming her Yellow Asiatic Lily. What, is that a problem?

6:20 a.m.—at my building

So... 3:45 a.m. to 6:20 a.m. = 2 hours and 35 minutes. Take away 18 minutes (15 minutes' rest + 3 minutes stopping and shutterbugging along the way), and that's 2 hours, 17 minutes. For 10K, that makes my speed 4.37 kph, which is positively vigorous by my pitiful standards (these days, I'm happy to range between 3.8 and 4.1 kph).

But I'm still getting hit by the sun even when leaving at 3:45 a.m. So I might have to pull a Jeff Hodges and wake up at 2:30 a.m. so I can end the walk before sunrise.

This become much less of an issue in the fall and winter, of course. At that time of year, sunrise happens significantly later, and ambient temps are much lower, making direct sunlight more tolerable. But Korean summer is what it is.

Huh... I just noticed that my building has a tax office. I didn't earn any income last year (unless you count the less-than-$100 I've earned through Substack and self-publication), so I'm not bothering with taxes this year.

Right, well, that's this morning's walk. Much cooler than the previous one. This week, I'm walking only MWF, with no walking over the weekend. On Saturday, I'm going to try to make carnivore hot-dog buns so I can eat some dang dawgs. That reminds me: I need to buy dill pickles to chop into relish. No ketchup, but I do have sriracha. And mustard. The 'tard.