more on kenpo's effectiveness

quick scenes from my May 28 walk

This past Thursday, it was hotter, but not too bad in the shade—of which there was, thankfully, a lot, especially under long bridges—and the predicted rain never showed up thanks to the vagaries of mountain weather. So I ducked out for a 10K stroll out to the river and back. (Yeah, I guess I'm back to sticking with 10K since that's the distance Naver Map has been giving me for a while—see here.) Here are a few pics from that walk.

This building, so close to the bridge, is close to my turnaround point for the day.

Because I'd wanted to stay in the shade, I didn't do my usual route out to the Han; I went a different way, sticking close to the bridge on the west side of the Tan Creek—the one providing me with much-needed shade.

Yangjae Creek. Fish. Plants pushed over by the constant current.

On my way out to the river, I passed the usual confluence of the Yangjae Creek and the Tan; the Yangjae is a tributary. Normally, at this time of year, I always find myself stopping a few seconds to peer over the bridge's edge to see whether I can spot the creek-dwelling carp that come out when the water is warm enough. I didn't photograph any while heading toward the Han (they swam away at the sight of me), but I saw and photographed them while I was on my way back to my place. So take that, carp! You cannot escape my lens!

I have to wonder how they breathe in that water despite all of the particulates.

Here's a chunky one. But I still bet he'd taste like mud.

Lots of bikers out in the afternoon, with about five or six straying into the pedestrian path. I really need to start walking in the early morning. Less crowded.

scene/seen from a bench

There's a bench I sometimes sit at near the beginning of my walks out to the Han River. I can guess that many other people sit there, too, despite the lack of a decent view. The bench, one of two located right next to each other, can be found right after the footbridge I cross to leave my neighborhood and follow the Tan Creek trail. It faces out from the trail and sits at the top of a berm/slope—a pretty typical setup for benches along Korean walking/biking paths.

During my walks, I encounter a good bit of pollution, and as I mused earlier this year, much or most of that comes from walkers, not bikers. Committed bikers, being generally healthier than walkers given their love of straining and huffing and puffing in public, aren't as apt to throw used plastic wrappers and containers on the ground as they bike: Being on average healthier, they also have healthier habits. If anything, I imagine they use the myriad pockets on their unnecessarily tight and revealing cycling outfits to tuck their refuse in and then throw the trash away in a proper receptacle. But walkers, including or especially those with a tendency to stop at and sit on benches, seem to love tossing their trash on the ground, right there in front of them, and it's disgusting.

So below is the view from the bench I rest at. I'm very tempted to come by with a large garbage bag and one of those trash-picker sticks—

(or maybe more than one)

Here is what I see from that bench:

I hate every lazy, slovenly fucker who does this. You don't have to be a crazy tree-hugger to despise people who take no pride in their surroundings, and who expect others to clean up their messes.

very sad, but...

I finally wrote back to Spring (my tee-shirt printing company) and told them to cancel my large order of tees and other merch. I had ordered these items back in March, and I'd wanted to get them in time to inspect them, repack them, and send them off to France for Dominique's son Augustin's July 4 wedding, which I'm supposed to attend. When I'd written to Spring about a month ago, I got some mealy-mouthed answer about transitions happening in the company and supply-chain difficulties, and since then, there's been only silence. No movement at all on the gifts I'd ordered.

So today, fed up, I wrote Spring and canceled the entire order, giving them the specific order numbers. I will undoubtedly receive an automated reply first since that's Spring's standard operating procedure; next, I'll get an email from someone claiming to be a human being, and after that, I ought to see a $300-plus reimbursement on my credit card.

I have a ton of extra shirts here at my place, as well as other merch that I can send along to France in early June. The problem is that all of the shirts I have are sized to me, which means they're all 4XL, but no one in my French family is that size—not even Dominique himself, who is fairly large (but not fat). I'll ask Dom if he knows anyone in his small town who can do alterations. Whoop—the auto message has arrived from Spring.

freaky grapes

They taste normal, but they look like tiny eggplants.

These grapes were on the "reduced price, soon to throw away" tray at my building's basement grocery, so I grabbed them out of sheer monkey curiosity.

first thought: grape emoji

50% price reduction. And I guess they're called "Sweet Sapphire Grapes."

There was one rotten grape in the package, but partially rotten food has never been a deterrent for me. In another life, I'd have been an inveterate dumpster diver.

lunch outing

I baked a batch of Toll House cookies yesterday and took 21 of them (the other nine were under-baked) to my ex-boss and his family today. My ex-boss lives right on the border between Yongin and Suwon, but his address says he's technically in Yongin. That area is pretty built up; I'm not sure that I'd want to live there. I'm lucky, I think, to be in a quiet, southeastern corner of Gangnam—the old, beaten-up part of Gangnam, that is, not the modern, ritzy part that everyone associates with the name Gangnam.

Getting to my ex-boss's place is a bit of a chore since I don't have a car. I had to walk up the street to Daemosan Entrance Station (대모산입구역/Daemosan-ipgu yeok), then take the Suin Bandang Line down to Sang-gal Station. Luckily, there were escalators up to the street level, so I didn't have to risk a heart attack getting to the surface. I had wanted to take a shuttle bus to my ex-boss's place, but when the tiny bus arrived, it was chock-full of elderly people, so I said Fuck that and got a cab, which took me straight to my ex-boss's apartment complex, and even right up to his building.

We won't talk about the crowded subway ride or my problems trying to get into the destination apartment building's front door. It's enough to know that nothing in Korea is ever straightforward; nothing ever goes smoothly from A to B. Anyway, the boss let me in. The apartment was quiet, and the ex-boss's two sons still act like quiet, shy, awkward teens around me despite being large enough to tackle me to the ground (half-Korean, they take after their big, beefy dad). Once I was inside, the ex-boss gave me some cold iced tea, and we talked about where to eat lunch. Turkish? Amurrican? Korean? I picked Korean, which was kind of an expensive choice since meat has always been at a premium in this country. But Amurrican food would've been expensive, too, and Turkish as well. Nothing is cheap in a rich country.

concrete design at the bus/taxi stop by Sang-gal Station

the front door of the building where my former boss lives

the resto: Yangshim So

I joked that Yangshim So could mean "Conscience Cow" or "Cow with a Western Heart." I confess that I'd confused yangshim with yangji, which means "brisket."

Humble smile promising deliciousness or smug smile promising the last laugh?

We were told there'd be a few minutes' wait because a large group had come in. In the end, though, we were served relatively quickly, and the food was good. The boys talked with each other and their dad a bit, but otherwise concentrated on their cell phones. I offered several times to help pay for the meal, but the boss insisted that I was on his turf and had brought cookies besides, so I shouldn't contribute anything.

before we were seated—a peek through the slats

meat selection at our table, L-R: the Yangshim So platter, half-platter, ribs, skirt steak (really?), sirloin, tartare

one son

In Korea, you pay at the restaurant, but you often end up grilling your own food. By strict Texas standards, what we do in Korea is grilling, not barbecuing (which is low and slow).

the other son (fraternal twin)

the ex-boss and his Pepsi Zero

I had ruined my blood sugar the previous night by eating a bunch of deformed, under-baked cookies (horrible texture, but delicious as hell), so I got a regular Coke. In Korean restaurants, when you order a Coke, don't expect refills. Only certain very Western restaurants do that, and only grudgingly. So save your Coke for the end of the meal.

the vacuum-tube setup

Because this sort of meatateria gets smoky, most such places have a vacuum-tube setup that gets extended until it's just above the flames of your grilling meat, and from that position, the tube sucks up most of the smoke. Plenty of smoke still gets away, and diners usually end up smelling pleasantly smoky when they leave a meat place. It's all part of the experience.

In the end, the ex-boss and I didn't talk about much of substance. He says he's teaching part-time in various locations, and he's got some adult classes coming up. Part of the reason why I'd even bothered to visit him was to get his letter of recommendation for my current round of university-job applications, but he hadn't written it, so he says he'll be sending it to me via email, along with a photo or scan of his signature. I had originally suggested that the boss write the letter, send it electronically, and send his signature as a scanned or photographed image, but over the phone, he'd insisted on doing things the old-school way (he's in his sixties, which may factor into his thinking; to be fair, I do a lot of things in old-school ways, too), i.e., physically writing and printing out the letter, signing it, then physically handing it to me. I, of course, deliberately didn't remind the ex-boss about the recommendation letter because I wanted to see whether he'd make it a priority. He obviously didn't. I guess I can't be too hard on him, though; I've lost track of things before myself. On the bright side, lunch was a good meal, and and my ex-boss had been a decent (if often difficult) boss. And I'm pretty sure he'll send me a recommendation letter soon. So today was basically just a chance to step out, have lunch, then come back to my place to keep on toiling in obscurity.

On tap to do:

1. two more short stories for next week
2. finalize cover of dead-tree version of movie-review book
3. finalize content for dead-tree version of movie-review book
4. mock lessons should I be called in for an interview
5. sample lessons to show to KMA people next week (PPT + MS Word packets)

The work goes ever on and on.

Oh, yeah: My cheap-ass Sony headphones are dying. If I can't figure out how to repair them, I'm going to have to replace them. Another expense.

more comfort food from Sam

Comfort food is Sam's thing. That's his lane. Hey, at least he's not pretentious.

home safe

oops

Ultra-Man faces his greatest challenge

45 years... of wanking

Meanwhile, in Cartagena, Colombia:

風に吹かれ倒れた風船人形、これはさすがにアウトすぎる。 pic.twitter.com/1Tci6ekZuo

— 最多情報局 (@tyomateee) April 25, 2026

looks familiar...

We've got some Toyoko Inns in Korea, but they're obnoxiously persnickety about check-in time... as I found out during one of my earliest walks ending in Busan. I think I'd arrived before 2 p.m. on the final day of my walk, and the Toyoko was where I'd planned to stay for my final night. The receptionist said check-in wasn't until 3 or so (I can't remember). I smiled, nodded, and found a different place to stay. After a month of walking across the country and being allowed to check in early at various motels, Toyoko's policy felt like a slap in the face.

more dude-versus-cops stupidity

coming Monday (a teaser)

Starting this coming Monday on my Substack, I’m doing a literary sprint: 5 Stories in 5 Days. Every weekday next week, there’ll be a new short (often very short) story. This sprint will be free and open to the public, but the following sprints will be nestled in my Creative Stuff section, which is part of my paid Substack (only $5/month or $50/year!). So be on the lookout. Here are some quick sample passages to give you something to expect.

Monday—"When Mr. Fusion Finally Arrived":

But people soon began to realize that you didn’t have to throw just garbage and filth into these drives. True to their original name, Pantophagos, the drives ate everything. If a neighbor didn’t like another neighbor’s dog, that dog might quietly disappear down the gullet of a larger drive. And gangs soon realized that, if a neighbor didn’t like another neighbor, that neighbor could also disappear. And the drives, with their perfectly efficient matter-energy conversion, left no evidence of anything. People with massive amounts of incriminating paperwork or electronic data could simply dump their evidence-containing hardware into the drives, supply the greater community with energy, then feign wide-eyed innocence when authorities came looking for evidence. Construction teams began to recognize that they didn’t need to worry about scraps and debris anymore. Everything got vacuumed up and eliminated.

Tuesday—"A Tale of Ass":

Minho, a sullen and scrawny boy, had been sent to the nearby mountain temple weeks ago because no one in the village knew what else to do with him. Minho had no family, no purpose. He hung around the village and made people nervous. Whenever someone tried to talk with him, he always acted angry and insulting. At the temple, the shiftless ten-year-old had met the scowling old abbot, the juji-sunim, known by his dharma name of Dae-gak, or Great Enlightenment. The boy secretly called the abbot, who was surly and stern and intolerant of laziness, Dae-ak, or Great Evil. The abbot always made Minho work in the modest plot where the temple grew some of its vegetables. It was a small temple in the woods; a stream ran around the front portion of the temple while Ggachisan, or Magpie Mountain, rose up behind. The boy wasn’t sure, but he thought the temple’s name was Horimsa—Tiger Forest Temple. There was likely a sign somewhere to confirm this. Wait: were there really tigers around here? Minho couldn’t imagine there would be, but he could wish and hope.

Wednesday—"Telekinetically Yours" (diacriticals added to avoid censors):

And it wasn’t just the street-crossing thing. In dense crowds, people in front of Marv would stop for no reason, forcing him to stop. More thwarting by the capricious, malicious gods. Or there were people ahead who would do a sudden 180 for no reason, which was just as obnoxious. Then there were the bastards who ignored the signs everywhere, the signs telling people to WALK RIGHT. Marv would be walking along on the right side of a path, minding his own business, then some rude, ignorant shit would appear directly in front of him, walking toward him on a collision course. And the fucker wouldn’t budge, either, when he got up to Marv, and Marv would feel obliged to be the one to move while this idiot, walking on what was his left side, would continue cluelessly on, utterly ignoring basic courtesy, probably because he was thinking Everybody does it or some retarded shit like that. Or maybe the idiot was so stupid that he was unaware he’d done anything wrong. In Marv’s experience, most people were like that.

What might Thursday and Friday bring?

See you at my place on Monday. Oh, and think about buying my new book.

the effectiveness of Shaolin kung fu

And right after an assessment of kenpo, we have this:

UNIST now says...

"Joo" at UNIST emailed back right away (she seems very prompt) to say my paperwork had been "successfully received." So... will I make it to the next round? Odds are that I won't. They're looking for someone with a Master's in linguistics and/or a CELTA-like certificate, or someone with a Ph.D. and research/publishing interests that could heighten the university's level of prestige. I've got none of that. And I'm in no shape to write a research paper.

I got a tip about another uni job at Soonchunhyang University (순천향대); the ad started life as a Facebook-only thing that I wouldn't have seen, and now, the same ad is on Dave's ESL—the first ad there not to be for a children's summer camp. The university is located at the very ass-end of Line 1, the oldest subway line. Commuting there would mean 2-3 hours in transit, which means up to six hours of my day could be spent just shuttling back and forth. That's not going to work, which means I'd have to move. But with all of my accumulated stuff after a decade at the Golden Goose and over 20 years in Korea, moving is a pain unless the move might be worth it. Soonchunhyang is offering not even W2.5 million/month salary, with opportunities for overtime work. That's a nasty pay cut after a few years of working for over twice that amount per month. UNIST, down south in Ulsan, would be a longer move, but the pay is 50% higher, i.e., still not up to where I'd been at the Golden Goose, but a damn sight better. So I'm waffling over whether to apply for a job at Soonchunhyang.

Upshot: the search continues. And I need to get my KMA shit together so I can visit it next week. Ah, June. And today's a fookin' hot one. No walking until maybe tomorrow morning if I get up in time. Then off to Suwon/Yongin to devour lunch with my ex-boss and his sons. (Their mom got a gig, so she won't be joining us.) 

Tonight: Bake more cookies to take to the ex-boss tomorrow.

don't do it, Rachel!

Rachel Kramer, volleyballer, standing with potential love device

fun with boxes

holding me by the hand, leading me by the nose

A staffer from UNIST wrote me back today to reject my application as sent yesterday. Her email rather unimaginatively stated that applications not submitted in the required way will be rejected. She also attached three documents to her email; I think the assumption is that, if I submit these documents in the required way instead of putting the information into my email text (as I'd done yesterday, plus PDF attachments), then all should be hunky-dory. So I'm working on that right now. I have until midnight tonight to submit everything. I want to be done working on this stuff in an hour. If "Joo" rejects my submission after that, well, I ain't tryin' again. Start the clock. And wish me luck.

If I don't make the cut at UNIST, should I blame the "Joo"s?

core strength

a tiny island of sanity in a sea of crazy

Yale fully reinstates its pre-pandemic SAT/ACT requirement in admissions.

“These test scores are strong predictors of a student’s future Yale academic performance, and there is evidence that they are less subject to bias than other elements of an application.” pic.twitter.com/nQUCIHDai9

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 28, 2026

Smart people do dumbass things. Smarter people learn from their mistakes. I would love to see places like Yale claw back some of their respectability. As things stand, almost everyone in American academe is on my shit list.

but is it real or AI?

Air-gapping has never been so entertaining.

Normal: one-paragraph review

Bob Odenkirk as Sheriff Ulysses

Normal, directed by Ben Wheatley, released early in 2025, then generally in 2026, stars Bob Odenkirk in another unlikely-action-hero role (the movie has some of the same writing and producing DNA as Nobody), this time as a disaffected sheriff doing interim work in the snowy town of Normal, Minnesota—a town that had recently lost its sheriff. The citizens of Normal strike Sheriff Ulysses (Odenkirk) as bland but a mite strange. Ulysses himself is a bit detached and uncaring after having separated from his wife, but he becomes increasingly suspicious that something is not normal in Normal after several encounters with shifty townsfolk, the dodgy mayor (Henry Winkler), and strange details about the previous sheriff's death that don't add up. The town turns out to have made a deal with the devil: A branch of the Yakuza is storing a huge amount of gold and munitions there; in return, the Yakuza has rewarded the town handsomely for keeping silent. The previous sheriff had gotten too close to the truth, though, leaving behind an emotionally devastated daughter named Alex (Jess McLeod). A desperate couple of drifters (Reena Jolly, Brendan Fletcher) try robbing the town's bank, and all hell breaks loose as Sheriff Ulysses has to decide whom to side with and how to get out alive when almost everyone wants to kill him. A Yakuza member in town calls for reinforcements, and things get a lot worse before they get better. All in all, the film struck me as a poorly put-together turd (if such turds exist), but it's hard to fault the actors, who all did good work in their roles. Odenkirk's Sheriff Ulysses rediscovers his ability to care when he starts to pay fatherly attention to Alex and one of the robbers; Ulysses proves to be both affable and competent when faced with multiple chaotic threats, but I would've liked to see his relationship with the two young women, both in desperate need of guidance, explored in greater depth. Instead, the movie went for the easy gags and broad comedy when it could have gone for depth. In all, I wasn't even sure that this movie was worth writing about: It's lighter-than-light entertainment at best, but here you go—I managed a paragraph for you.

about kenpo

Speakman made it look impressive.

hello and goodbye

I've just sent off an application for a job at UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology), a university based in Ulsan (located in the southeast, above Busan and just south of Gyeongju) that focuses on business and science—the practical stuff that I should've gotten into had I had any brains when I was younger. The UNIST website had a page for submitting job applications, but one drop-down menu at the very beginning refused to show me any menu items, and after I'd filled out the rest of the form, that one thing prevented me from sending the application. So since the job ad provided an email address, I very nicely put together the file-attachment packet of PDFs that UNIST was asking for, apologized in my email for sending my information in an alternative format, told the school I had tried to fill out their online form several times with no success, then thanked them for their patience. Along with the PDF attachments, I sent all the other information that the online form had asked for—name, address, employment history, education history, etc. So the UNIST app is now in the hands of the gods. I suspect the lady who receives my email will just trash it because it didn't come in the proper form. The bureaucratic mentality at work. But to be fair, it's easier for her to do things that way. Meanwhile, my thanks to Daniel for letting me know about Unijobs.kr, the site where the UNIST job appeared. So that was my hello to UNIST.

As for my goodbye, well... my ad in my building's lobby got taken down, so I guess I hadn't misunderstood when the admin guy had said the ad would be up for only a week (not 1 month + 1 week as I'd surmised after seeing the date he'd stamped on the thing). I don't really feel like putting up another ad right now, but I might in a few days. We'll see. I'm actually thinking of making a different ad to pawn off some of my current possessions, especially now that I know how to print QR codes that can lead people to emails or web pages or whatever. I can take photos of all of the items I want to sell (and I'll be selling them for very, very cheap), then instead of listing those items on a sheet of paper, I can list them on a particular webpage (probably just a webpage from one of my blogs... I never use the webpage feature for anything, anyway), then set up a QR code to print on the ad so that people can go to the webpage, figure out what they want to buy, then email me about meeting up to buy the desired item. Meanwhile, I can easily update the webpage as items sell and as I adjust prices.

I'm going to have to get rid of stuff, anyway, if I end up accepting a job outside of Seoul. I seriously doubt the above UNIST thing will result in a job. But one never knows.

In other news... I've had six ebook purchases since advertising the new ebook on both Instapundit and Substack. I think I'm becoming a bit of a known quantity on Instapundit; my comments there never earn me huge "like" responses (i.e., in the 50s and 70s; I usually get 6-10 upvotes) such as what happens with the big-time commenters, but I've apparently got enough people who know and trust me (and who trust that I can write) to have the tiniest of audiences now. So this new book is starting small, but it's already selling better than both versions of my homeschooling book (English-only ebook and English/Korean dead-tree book). We'll see what comes of all of this. I've been advised by some commenters to keep on reminding people of my new book; I had originally intended not to bother everyone with constant, in-your-face adverts in the comments, but I was told that many people hadn't even seen the first or second time I'd left a book-arrival announcement, yet they'd caught the third one, so more advertising is better if I want to be seen. Instead of going quiet, then, I'll keep shilling the book, albeit modestly.

As always, I've got several things happening at once. What a life, eh? Always in motion is the future. One person on Instapundit asked me when I was putting out a walk book. I guess I'd better get working on that, too.

they never learn (and by the way: it's over)

Just die already.

pics from yesterday's walk

a spray of flowers across the street from the doctor's office

Petunia Opera Supreme Raspberry—what a name!

On the walk I did after the doctor visit, I finally saw a pheasant after it had squawked. (10X zoom)

Pheasants are dull, clumsy, lame birds—except when their wings are folded, and the birds are just standing there, looking majestic. At that moment, and only at that moment, they possess a special beauty and dignity. Otherwise, when they make that awkward clucking/squawking noise, or when they deploy their stubby wings to glide clumsily at low altitude (I've never seen one fly high), they're some of the stupidest, most useless birds I can think of.

Probabilities are that any pheasant you see will be a male (M/F comparison here), loudly declaiming its desire to fuck. I used to think that springtime was their mating season, but male pheasants (a.k.a. COCK PHEASANTS!!) will squawk three out of four seasons of the year (and Korea has four seasons!*).

pheasant, 3X digital zoom

__________

*This is a thing Koreans proudly say, but which most Americans find bizarre. Except maybe those Americans who live in Florida or the desert.

le bilbo

In the 1989 Branagh movie Henry V, there's a humorous interlude where Emma Thompson's Princess Katherine, who is French, is asking her attendant Alice (played by Geraldine McEwan) how to say certain body parts in English. Katherine learns hand, fingers, nails, elbow, etc., with very strange French pronunciation, but when she tries reciting the parts back to Alice, she mistakenly calls the elbow a bilbo.

Below are some shots of my normally beleaguered bilbo, basically just to show that, this time around, there was no major needle-bruising from the blood samples taken out of both of my arms. I had both arms done during my recent hospital visit (the second time was to check insulin resistance), and I had my right arm done again during my visit to the doc just a couple of days ago. Normally, the bruising I get forms within just a few hours, but this time, there's been almost nothing, so I salute (not literally, not physically) the professionals for their rare exactitude. I normally come away from these visits with tiny war wounds.

right arm after visit to local doc

right arm's needle mark, exposed (hospital-visit needle mark not visible)

left arm: no trace of anything after the hospital visit

I hope you enjoyed this intimate look at my bilbo.

book vs. movie

I can't remember how much I concentrated on this issue in my review, but as this YouTube Short points out, the movie dumps most of the science in favor of the feelz.

Dad...?

frustrating

sweet memories

When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I got placed in a GT (gifted and talented) program, which meant leaving my normal class and going out to a trailer next to the school building. Young as I was, I didn't question any of it and never considered how it felt to the poor young lady who had to spend her day in that quiet, relatively cramped space. I do remember she once misspelled the word vicious as viscous (a word I also happened to know), and I caught her out on that. She was gracious in accepting my correction, and I now wonder whether she'd misspelled the word deliberately in a sort of "Who's smart enough to catch this?" spirit.

cute little air-puppy

there's a Venezuela reference in there somewhere

this is awkward

I'm putting this video up months late, so it's less of an "anticipated movies" list and more of a "How're we doing so far?" list. As always, mea culpa.

cool either way

Wives- “did you have a productive day today?”

Husbands- “Watch this.”

Wives- “How much time did it take you to plan and execute this?”

Husbands- “Time?” pic.twitter.com/nDg1VOgH0x

— Tandy (@dantypo) May 26, 2026

I'm just envious that he was able to print the image so high.

health report

I got my health report, and when I get back from my walk, I'm gonna scan it in and create a PDF, then add it to my collection of PDFs. The report includes information about the Unvarnished Kevin, including a note about my enlarged heart (cardiomegaly or cardiac hypertrophy—I've had that for years; it's a symptom, not a condition in itself). One interesting thing: My height is apparently now under six feet: The report says 181.5 cm, or about 5.95 feet. I'm used to thinking of myself as 6'1.5", but I guess I've been stooping and shrinking. My weight, even while clothed, is listed as under 110 kg, which is nice: 109.4. Just 19 more kg to my goal weight, which I'll likely never reach until I'm a corpse leaking fluids all over a metal table. I guarantee, though, that I'll be feather-light after they cremate me.

Will interviewers wonder whether I'll croak in class? Well, I kind of wonder myself, but I think I can last at least an academic year and start building my savings back up.

And now, I'm gonna go for a walk.

raspy tongue feel good, don't it

pic.twitter.com/Q0PBB3FBPH

— No Cats No Life (@NoCatsNoLife_m) April 25, 2026

Hilarious comment beneath this embedded tweet:

Likes the taste of silicone...

good for you?

Before I visited the doc yesterday, I measured my blood sugar and discovered it was low at 108 (still not ideal). The night before (i.e., Monday night), I'd had only one evening snack: Anytime candies, which are marketed as sugar-free in Korea. They're honestly good. Maybe a little too good. Here's a look at the front and at the nutrition label:

"crisp and relaxing"... "mint flavored"

Mint flavor works well with sugar alcohols like erythritol, which also has a "cooling" effect inside the mouth. Some keto-heads don't mind it; others complain that it makes erythritol annoying to use in coffee or keto-bread recipes. (Erythritol has lately come under fire for stroke- and heart-attack-related problems as well.)

Note: carbs 90 g out of 92 g total, but 87 g sugar alcohol

Normally, a keto-head can safely discount the carbs in sugar alcohol and calculate net carbs only. If you read Korean and look about two lines above the nutrition information, though, you see the breakdown of the "sugar alcohols" inside Anytime candies. Note the #1 sugar alcohol is maltitol, which isn't considered keto because of its unusually high glycemic index of 52. Table sugar is 65, and erythritol is 0. BochaSweet (which I'm running low on after more than a year) is also 0. Maltitol is often touted as a "low-calorie" alternative to sugar, but instead of acting like its sugar-alcohol brothers, it goes rogue and acts more like regular sugar.

That said, the candies I ate (before I'd looked at the label and done all of the above thinking) didn't spike my blood sugar. Monday night, my blood sugar was looking good at 117. In the morning, I took my meds, waited almost two hours, and got a reading of 108. No blood-sugar spike (or it came and went while I was sleeping).

So while Anytime candies should be treated with caution given all of their maltitol. The other sugar alcohols listed in the above parenthetical include xylitol (GI of 7) and D-sorbitol (GI of about 4). The candy is still 77% maltitol, though, so don't eat fistfuls of it.

for a sec, I thought that wasn't her hand

a second recommendation letter!

My Korean ex-coworker sent me a very nice, if somewhat strangely formatted, recommendation letter. I didn't alter the PDF's contents, but with my PDF editing tools, I did make the document look a little less slipshod and a little more tightly arranged. When the PDF arrived, it awkwardly spilled over to a second page despite having only about a half page's worth of content. Basically, I widened the column of text and pulled the top and bottom design elements closer together (signature was its own design element, so I moved it up about an inch). And that's it. Problem solved. No more spillover to page 2. My only worry is that my ex-coworker's letter overstates my linguistic competence: In the letter, he calls me fluent in both French and Korean as well as English, which is not true. I'm a native English speaker, a fluent French speaker (I used to be able to say "near native," but no longer), and an intermediate-level Korean speaker. I'm very tempted to attach an electronic note to the PDF protesting my coworker's exaggerated claim. But the rest of the letter was very nice in tone and spirit, and since I can't ethically alter the letter's content, I'll just deal with the issue of fluency should it arise in an interview. Another one down.

Job stuff:

✓ 1st diploma copy, converted to PDF & apostilled (arrived)

✓ 2nd diploma copy, converted to PDF & apostilled (arrived)

☐ FBI criminal background check, apostilled (no word yet)

✓ 2nd letter of recommendation, converted to PDF

☐ 3rd letter of recommendation, converted to PDF (coming soon)

✓ copy of 4th certificate of employment (2005-2008) (SMU)

☐ sealed transcript from Catholic U. (grad school—on the way)

☐ sealed transcript from Georgetown U. (undergrad—on the way)

☐ health check; scan form and convert to PDF for job hunting (receiving 2moro)

Personal stuff:

☐ colonoscopy scheduling

✓ completed (& uploaded) first movie-review ebook ms

☐ get listed on Soomgo

☐ sample lessons for universities that prove interested in me

☐ sample lessons for KMA (which probably won't hire me)

☐ lessons for private tutoring (lower priority)—test prep & various subjects

☐ more Substack material to last through September

☐ more interactive quizzes for Substack (w/different question formats)

✓ ebook version of the first movie-review book, published

☐ dead-tree version of first movie-review book, ms prepped

☐ dead-tree version of first movie-review book, cover prepped

☐ dead-tree version of first movie-review book, published to Amazon

☐ ms for the second movie-review book (long-term project)—start working on it

I also found a few more errors in my book's manuscript. No stress; I've published the updates to the ebook version, which will show up while I'm still asleep. One person has bought the new ebook thus far, so that person will reap the benefits of an improved manuscript.

yes, exactly

hey, whatever chips away at the evil mouse

what... a... bitch

This is incredible. As in the Latin roots for unbelievable (in + credere = not + believe, same cred- root as in credit card, a card that operates on the trust that you will pay a borrowed sum back). As in I find it hard to believe this is real. If this is real, this woman is a soul-sucking bitch. And she's the witchy impetus behind the woman-rejecting MGTOW movement.

In happier news, I caught the wifely half of the husband-and-wife team that I'd wanted to catch yesterday (didn't see the husband anywhere), and I handed over four cookies her—one last almond-flour chocolate-chip cookie and three Toll House cookies. That felt nice. But after watching the above, I want to take a shower. Jesus.

I'm torn

This sketch is cute, but it contains all of the awful, low-hanging-fruit puns that don't require any cleverness or deep thinking to arrive at. That said, I want to like this video because, even though these are some truly lame puns, they come at the viewer in a barrage, which gives them some comic momentum. What do you think? Watch the video and tell me whether you found the sketch clever or just facile.

Honestly, I don't want to shit on this. The young lady made an effort to put together a fun little skit. But maybe because I traffic in language all the time, I'm just not as blown away by this as I should be. Am I just being an asshole?

'nuther gimmick?

vindication

I had to wait a bit for Foundation Day and the Buddha's birthday to be over with, but as she'd promised, Miss Cho at Sookmyung Women's University wrote back to me today... and her email included a PDF copy of my employment certificate, which I'm sure she simply typed up on the spot given the vagueness of the dates on the certificate: It shows only "2005 to 2008" and not "April 2005 to April 2008." Whatever. The document seems to have all the official trappings and stamps, so I can now say that, in the eyes of Sookdae, I did in fact teach there. It's nice to have confirmation that I existed.

Getting this document was like pulling teeth, but none of this would have happened had it not been for British my ex-colleague Zoe, now living in England, who had made the suggestion to dig up my tax documents as proof of employment. So thank you, Zoe!

That's one more piece of the puzzle.

Job stuff:

✓ 1st diploma copy, converted to PDF & apostilled (arrived)

✓ 2nd diploma copy, converted to PDF & apostilled (arrived)

☐ FBI criminal background check, apostilled (no word yet)

☐ 2nd letter of recommendation, converted to PDF (coming soon)

☐ 3rd letter of recommendation, converted to PDF (coming soon)

✓ copy of 4th certificate of employment (2005-2008) (SMU)

☐ sealed transcript from Catholic U. (grad school—on the way)

☐ sealed transcript from Georgetown U. (undergrad—on the way)

☐ health check; scan form and convert to PDF for job hunting (receiving 2moro)

Personal stuff:

☐ colonoscopy scheduling

✓ completed (& uploaded) first movie-review ebook ms

☐ get listed on Soomgo

☐ sample lessons for universities that prove interested in me

☐ sample lessons for KMA (which probably won't hire me)

☐ lessons for private tutoring (lower priority)—test prep & various subjects

☐ more Substack material to last through September

☐ more interactive quizzes for Substack (w/different question formats)

✓ ebook version of the first movie-review book, published

☐ dead-tree version of first movie-review book, ms prepped

☐ dead-tree version of first movie-review book, cover prepped

☐ dead-tree version of first movie-review book, published to Amazon

☐ ms for the second movie-review book (long-term project)—start working on it

I also went in for my health check at the local doc today; I can pick up my report tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be by around 2 p.m. for that. My BP this morning was low at 97/67 (123/63 at the clinic, a few hours after having taken my meds this morning), and my blood sugar was down to 108, which is a lot better than it had been. At the clinic, they did a blood draw and got my urine sample; I also got a chest X-ray that required me to remove my shirt and wear a smock. The nurses were all very friendly. Unlike the last time I'd done a health checkup at this clinic, I didn't have to fill out a long patient history, thank Cthulhu. They weighed me, took a measure of my height (I think I'm shrinking as I age), and gave me an eye test with my contacts still in. I think I did okay with those tests. I think. I'll know more tomorrow when I read over my health report. All that really matters is that I be healthy enough to teach.

Some universities require that you get a health check from a specific clinic, so we'll see whether I have to go through this rigamarole* yet again. I hope not. I hope this health report will be enough. One more document for the repertoire.

__________

*I grew up with riga-marole. The first time I heard rig-marole, I did a double take, then looked the word up. Apparently, both are legitimate—rigamarole and rigmarole. Which do you say? I think rigamarole rolls off the tongue more easily.

"Hurt": the story behind the Johnny Cash cover

I had heard this awesome story years ago, and I'm happy to see it retold here so I can share it. You may have to click on the tweet to see the whole story.

"Hurt" is not an original by Johnny Cash. The song was written by Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) in 1994 for the album The Downward Spiral. Rick Rubin had to insist several times on Cash recording his version, at first Johnny found the idea completely insane because the original… pic.twitter.com/nDP2BqIvzn

— Ladytron Fan Account (@Lady_FanAccount) May 25, 2026

This story is a reminder that, however goofy and misguided so many artists are, they can also be examples of great collegiality, openness, and humility.

"cobra chicken"

is this a trend now?

Is this a trend now? People being snotty to each other at the grocery store?

There’s always a bigger brain… this cashier proved it! 😂 pic.twitter.com/R2kVcI6Yc1

— Be Believing (@Be_Believing) May 25, 2026

I really hope this was scripted and meant just for clicks.