And the one reason why she got famous is now a huge, ponderous mess.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Monday, February 23, 2026
whoa—am I ahead of schedule?
If I'm ahead of schedule, it's by only a day, but it still feels good to be on top of things. I want to get back to completing my movie-review book. You may recall the schedule I'd laid out:
This weekend: Work on five weeks' content for The Entertaining (through April).
Also this weekend: Repopulate scheduled posts for the blog.
This coming week, Mon-Tue: Create eight weeks' content for The Creative.
This coming week, Wed-Sat: Create eight weeks' content for The Superficial.
3/1-3/7: Create eight weeks' content for The Profound.
3/8-3/14: Get back to creating the first movie-review book.
3/16-3/20: Walk the Geumgang bike path. (This year's "long" walk, only 146 km.)
3/21-end of March: Finish creating the movie-review book.
I've now gotten through all of this:
This weekend: Work on five weeks' content for The Entertaining (through April).Also this weekend: Repopulate scheduled posts for the blog.This coming week, Mon-Tue: Create eight weeks' content for The Creative.
This coming week, Wed-Sat: Create eight weeks' content for The Superficial.
3/1-3/7: Create eight weeks' content for The Profound.
3/8-3/14: Get back to creating the first movie-review book.
3/16-3/20: Walk the Geumgang bike path. (This year's "long" walk, only 146 km.)
3/21-end of March: Finish creating the movie-review book.
Now comes the hard part—content for The Superficial and The Profound. I may as well take a short break, then start on The Superficial tonight. While I'd love to be done with The Profound before March rolls around, that's probably not going to happen: The posts I do for The Profound are lengthy and detailed. They also contain quizzes, and you can't just write out quiz questions willy-nilly: you have to follow certain criteria to make sure your questions are fair, and that you're quizzing your learners on what they've actually learned.
Anyway, I have to whip up 18 posts each for The Superficial and The Profound. If I do nine posts of the Superficial by tomorrow (Tuesday), then another nine by Wednesday, and if I somehow manage the miracle of creating three posts per day for The Profound, I can be done by March 3, putting me way ahead of schedule. From March 4 to March 14, I can get back to working on the movie-review book, then do my five-day Geumgang walk, then finish the ebook version of the movie-review book a few days before the end of March. A week or so after that (early April, theoretically), the print version of the book (print-on-demand) ought to be ready at Amazon. Fingers and tentacles crossed.
wow—a new paid subscriber!
Starting in March, a lot of my paid content on Substack will include free previews for my free subscribers. But it seems I've already snared an extra paid subscriber, and it's not even March. I'd like to think that this is the beginning of a cascade, but Murphy's Law says otherwise. That said, anything is better than nothing.
And if I do end up moving out of Seoul to pursue university work somewhere, I will continue to post on Substack, but I might have to reduce my volume somewhat. There will still be a ton of content, and for $5 a month, you'll get more than your money's worth.
beware the stink
I haven’t laughed this hard 🤣🤣☠️ Omg 😆 pic.twitter.com/rJ1FbZaXKl
— G-PA (@IndianaGPA) February 22, 2026
did you even notice?
There are things I do on this blog that often matter only to me. For example, I've explained why I defy convention when it comes to how I use ellipses or how I used to use em dashes (back when I wrote em dashes as a double hyphen, i.e., before figuring out em dashes on both Mac and PC). Ellipses are normally supposed to be three or four periods* with spaces in front and behind each of them:
She gave Brent a smile . . . then pulled the trigger.
What I normally do is:
She gave Brent a smile... then pulled the trigger.
This is to avoid the weird, "non-breaking" property that ellipses possess on certain platforms like Blogger. If I didn't put a space after the ellipsis in my version of the sentence, the phrase smile...then would be treated as a single, long word, and at the end of a line, if that "word" was too long, the whole thing would spill over to the next line instead of just the word then. That's why I put the space after the ellipsis. I also write my ellipses the way I do (... , not . . . ) because the "space between every period" convention isn't universally agreed upon. In fact, some word processors, when you type out three periods, will automatically group those three periods together tightly into a single ellipsis "character." Try it out sometime on your word processor: type an ellipsis, then see how many times you have to hit the delete key to erase it. If it's just once, the ellipsis has been changed into a single character. If it's three or four times, then your word processor is a libertarian when it comes to punctuation.
Back when I used to make my em dashes with two hyphens (--), I would put a space after the two hyphens for the same reason: Blogger is weird that way. Now, of course, and for many years, I know how to make proper em dashes (—, for dramatic pauses, etc.), and I no longer insert spaces anywhere. On a Mac, it's a simultaneous keystroke combination: shift-option-hyphen. On a Windows PC, you hold down the alt key and type 0151.
my old way: Frances gripped the heavy barbell-- with her crotch.
my "new" way (for years now): Frances gripped the heavy barbell—with her crotch.
So with ellipses (normally . . . ), I have my quirky, maybe-acceptable way of handling them. And for em dashes (—), I changed how I handle them.
For the longest time, I've also had my own convention for handling movie titles: I surround them with quotation marks. Many news and magazine articles also reflect this convention (see here; I'm not hallucinating this). Technically, the title of any completed creative work should be italicized. Movies, once they're released, are completed creative works. A book of poetry, once published, has a title (Leaves of Grass), but each poem in that collection is cited with quotation marks around the poem's title (a work within a work, like "Song of Myself"). The same would be true for a compendium of short stories, like Stephen King's Four Past Midnight (the collection title) and "The Langoliers" (a story within that collection).
Starting with my recent review of The Last Samurai, I finally decided to bow to proper convention and italicize movie titles. Did you notice? Look at my reviews for The Fall Guy and Nosferatu. The major reason for this is the movie-review book I've been working on: Part of my editing involves stripping away the quotation marks and italicizing all the titles I find. It's a pain in the ass. So as an investment in the future, I'm bowing to convention and italicizing movie titles from now on.
I lose something, though, when I do this: I lose the ability to distinguish between a book title and a movie title, as when I wrote this sentence in my Nosferatu review:
One theme of the movie is about how science fails in the face of pure evil, a theme also touched on in both the novel The Exorcist and the movie "The Exorcist."
With everything now italicized, that distinction will be lost, which is a bit sad. On the other hand, I'll have one less distinction to worry about for future reviews.
But sad or not, I'm now sticking with italics for all titles of completed creative works. Come to think of it, I watched the English-dubbed version of Princess Mononoke again over the weekend—a film I hadn't watched in years. So a review for that will be coming down the pipe this week. Another chance for you to notice my newly italicized movie titles.
__________
*Use three periods for sentence fragments and four periods for complete sentences.
Ave, Dr. Gilleland!
Life is one long disease.
And who in this life is not sick? Is there anyone who does not have to drag his way through a long illness? Even to be born here, in a mortal body, is the onset of our maladies. Our needy condition is supported by daily doses of medicine, for the means we use to relieve our wants are like remedies applied every day. Would hunger not kill you if you did not treat it with the appropriate medicine? Would thirst not destroy you if you neglected to drink? Yet your drinking only keeps thirst at bay; it does not quench it entirely, for after that temporary relief thirst will return.
Go over and read the rest. There is no relief from life except death.
...and what are your feelings on this?
Lupita Nyong'o is reputed to be Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan's new version of Homer's The Odyssey. Is this more Netflix-style race-swapping meant to troll rightie audiences? Yet another salvo in the ongoing, tiresome culture war? Before I say anything more, I need to be clear that race-swapping doesn't always hit me the wrong way, and I think a lot of us are still forming opinions about the rightness and wrongness of engaging in the practice. For the most part, my own judgments are more on a case-by-case basis and less rooted in some unchanging, bedrock principle. Sometimes, the race-swapping works; sometimes, it doesn't.
For example, when Dr. Kynes was portrayed as a black woman in Denis Villeneuve's 2021 Dune, Part 1, I didn't see how the doctor's race affected the story being told, so I really couldn't care less. And I had no problem with the decidedly off-white Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho ("Native Hawaiian, German, Irish, and Pawnee"); if anything, I look forward to Momoa's return in the third Dune movie (book review here).
But when race is swapped for a role in an established "canon," that's a very different matter. Think: black Snape in the upcoming Harry Potter HBO series (Snape is undeniably described as white in the books). Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies (but not his later Hobbit movies if the demographics of Esgaroth/Lake-town are any indication) respected the spirit of Tolkien's canon even if the movies radically changed many of the story details, and part of that spirit involved keeping the fantasy story consistent with the northern European traditions that it is/was tied to. So, yes, that meant there'd have to be a lot of white people. And it meant risking the irrational attacks that predictably arrived: "The darker-skinned orcs represent black people! That's racist!"
The counterargument against making your cast "look like Los Angeles," as the Critical Drinker sneeringly puts it, is an easy one: just turn the race-swapping around. Should we make a movie about a cherished African myth in which we portray all of the black characters with white and Asian actors? How about a Japanese movie in which all of the main cast is white? (Actually, something like this may have been tried with the "Chinese" movie The Great Wall. I never saw The Great Wall, so I can't say, but many US critics and moviegoers were shouting "Whitewashing!" at the time. Or a more extreme example might be the "white" remake of the Japanese horror movie Ringu, which got turned into The Ring with a largely white cast.) What if KPop Demon Hunters had been race-swapped in both its visuals and its voice cast?
Here's the flip side of the flip side, though: Nolan's The Odyssey, which stars Matt Damon as Odysseus instead of a more authentically Greek actor, is already racially compromised, so casting the Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong'o as Helen, an Anatolian, may have been a case of In for a penny, in for a pound. And when Zack Snyder's 300 came out years ago, Greek audiences apparently loved the hell out of that movie despite King Leonidas' being played by a toothy Scotsman, and the rest of the Spartans' being played by non-Greeks. Race-swapping—a feature of old and modern Hollywood—and people's attitudes toward it, can't be judged by a simple set of principles or properly viewed through a simplistic lens.
It's also fair to say that the issue of race-swapping didn't suddenly appear with the arrival of Netflix and its version of Cleopatra. White Jesus appears in paintings all over the American South, but he was appearing in European images as early as the 6th century. Black Jesus has been a thing in America since the 1800s. Reasons for race-swapping vary with context. When it comes to religious figures, the common refrain is that "we create God in our own image." I can buy that. Modern Hollywood reflexively inserts people of certain demographics into movies and TV/streaming shows because of an unsatisfiable need to cater to "modern audiences" (the Drinker's much-beloved term) and a desire to have an ethnic- and gender-balanced cast, often referred to as "representation." This isn't always evil. And I fully admit that, when watching older films, I do notice the unrealistic whiteness of certain tableaux—something a less racially aware America took for granted long ago. There was definitely a time when minorities of all sorts were underrepresented in movies and on TV. These days, though, overrepresentation may be the problem.
So while I'm not ecstatic about Lupita Nyong'o's casting as Helen of Troy, I have to be fair and say I'm also not ecstatic about Matt Damon's casting as Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes, at least, came equipped with an aquiline nose for his role as Odysseus). In 2026, we're globally hyperaware of the massive dramatic talent that exists in all countries, so it should have been easy for Nolan to find Greek and Anatolian actors. Instead, he stuck with Damon because, well, Damon is a Christopher Nolan flunky (Interstellar, Oppenheimer). If I have a problem with anything about the upcoming movie, it's less about how it plays fast and loose with history (race-swapped cast, screenplay in modern English) and more about Agamemnon's stupid helmet design which, according to one archery channel that I watch, will simply funnel arrows into one's face. I'm not sure whether I even want to see this movie. I totally missed Tenet, after all, and I don't feel an ounce of guilt about that.
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Spencer tackles some "pretty rough" surfaces
Spencer doesn't just do lawns: he also does power washing! And it's all for free since he makes his money via YouTube. I wish I'd thought of that business model years ago.
I am bechaired
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| See the screw holes for the headrest? |
My new, el-cheapo, made-in-China office chair arrived today. No more scratching up the floor now that I roll on wheels (for office chairs, they're called casters). About those scratches (which appeared only recently): I've lost all hope of getting back whatever damage deposit I'd left last year when I'd made my rental contract... if I'd left any deposit (I'm too lazy to look at my rental contract). More likely, they'll just charge me for repairs.
So far, I'd say the major problems are:
- faulty light sensor (door light got old)
- ruined wallpaper under the A/C (my fault)
- small scratches on the floor by my desk (my fault)
I could probably go out to Euljiro's lighting district, describe my problem, and buy a new light that I would then ask the building repair guys to install. As for the wallpaper... there's a place on the first floor that looks as though it sells housing accessories, so I might talk to them about re-papering my wall (frankly, I hate wallpaper and prefer paint). And as for the new scratches on my floor... I can pray that no one notices them, but they're not exactly invisible. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and pay the cost for reflooring when the building people see the damage as I'm moving out. If only there were a way to buff the scratches out...
Since I tend to ruin whatever chairs I sit in for months and years, I don't expect this new chair to last very long. Assembling it was a bitch, and part of the problem was the poor quality of the factory assembly: I saw screw holes where the screws wouldn't go through because the plastic molding was uneven. As a result: no headrest for uncle Kevin (see above photo). Not that I ever use a headrest anyway. And I made an active choice not to slap on armrests since I never use those, either. I'll accent the new chair with my usual double layer of ass cushions, then Bob will most decidedly be my uncle.
It feels weird to purchase a new chair when I might finally be moving out of this place this coming summer. I've been in this building for almost eleven years; up to now, I've been fine with Costco folding chairs that had cost me only W17,000 apiece. But I guess those chairs have been feeling their age (and my weight) because two of them recently popped out their backs when I sat in them—a sure sign that (1) I still need to lose another 20 kg, and (2) these chairs have been with me for a long time.
In other news: I've done three out of five weeks' worth of Substack material for The Entertaining (games and puzzles). Two more to go. I'll finish those and spend the rest of the day continuing to repopulate my YouTube scheduled posts.
With February ending, temperatures are rising. Today is sunny and windy. I won't be going for a stroll (just ate—a stroll would give rise to angina), but the afternoon sun is shining through my westward-facing window. I do, however, need to start practice-walking for my upcoming hike along the Geumgang in mid-March. That'll begin this week.
Saturday, February 21, 2026
Step 1 half done; that was the easy part
Yesterday, I decided to tackle the easy content creation for Substack first, and I now have four weeks' worth of content for my Wednesday posts (The Entertaining, i.e., games and puzzles). I decided to employ a feature that all Substackers have access to: the "insert paywall" option that allows you to give your free subscribers a partial free preview of coming paid content, a bit like the old gesture of the gorgeous woman in a slitted dress who eyes you enticingly and "shows some leg." Like that gorgeous woman, my goal is, of course, to suck your soul dry (if $5/month is soul-sucking), but I'm hoping you won't notice that as you're being entertained. Today, I'll be generating another five weeks' worth of content (enough to get me through April), and that'll be that for The Entertaining.
The next move is to generate content for The Creative, which normally publishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This, too, should be easy to generate since I'm relying on a lot of old-but-original content from the blog. But unlike The Entertaining, which comes out only once a week, The Creative comes out twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays, as I said), so generating that content will still take up all of tomorrow (Sunday).
Either today or tomorrow, I also have to repopulate my scheduled YouTube posts. I need about three hours to schedule two weeks' worth of posts.
Next week, with The Creative and The Entertaining done, I can concentrate on generating posts for my flagship project—my grammar curriculum/campaign. That means generating posts for The Superficial (a.k.a. Bad Online English) and The Profound. These both come out on Mondays and Fridays. With only a couple of exceptions, The Superficial has no quizzes and isn't really a curriculum—it's just random encounters with memes I find online (mostly at Instapundit) or on my phone (ebooks, etc.). This is why I call that section of my Substack "The Superficial": it's a mere series of glimpses into language, not building up to anything. There's nothing deep, meaningful, or coherent going on. In contrast is The Profound, which is an actual grammar curriculum (quizzes and all), currently being built from the ground up. As of now, this section has around 55 posts that cover nouns, verbs, verb tenses, grammatical mood, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions. Coming soon: punctuation—periods, commas, hyphens/dashes, question marks, and other marks (quotes, asterisks, exclamation points). After that, we'll finally start the sentence-level grammar: types of phrases, types of clauses, types of sentences, and types of discourse. After that, there'll be material on common grammatical/writing errors, rhetorical devices (tricolon, hyperbole, etc.), poetical terms/devices (rhyme, rhythm, meter, iamb, trochee, spondee, anapest, etc.), and language quirks (different from, different to, different than). That should take us to about the end of the year and possibly into 2027, and all of that material ought to cover the very basics of good grammar. I'll have to decide whether to add units on writing technique after that, but I think that that might end up being its own curriculum (if I have the energy to write it). Aside from that, I also need to be generating interactive quizzes for every unit I create.
I can't afford to think too hard about the future of my Substack efforts, but if my target audience is younger folks in need of language help and blessed/cursed with a sense of humor, then Substack is, frankly, the wrong platform for me to be on: it's mostly crotchety old people like me, most of whom think they know enough about grammar and writing to get along just fine (which usually isn't true: old people tend to be sloppy, arrogant, passive-aggressive, and immune to correction). All the kids are on TikTok, despite TikTok's having started off as (and still being) Chinese spyware. Do I take the plunge and seal a pact with the Devil by joining the ranks of TikTok? I really don't want to, but if my target audience is there while I'm stuck here, I may have no choice but to hold my nose and do it. My instinct will be to maintain a minimal presence on TikTok because I'm a grouchy old fart with no use for the medium, but there's always the chance that TikTok will prove fruitful.
Meanwhile, with May approaching, I have to consider going back to university work. Yay. For the moment, though, I've got enough on my plate to worry about. Let's just try to get through March and April (oh—I've got a 146K walk in March!) with my sanity intact.
To sum up—
This weekend: Work on five weeks' content for The Entertaining (through April).
Also this weekend: Repopulate scheduled posts for the blog.
This coming week, Mon-Tue: Create eight weeks' content for The Creative.
This coming week, Wed-Sat: Create eight weeks' content for The Superficial.
3/1-3/7: Create eight weeks' content for The Profound.
3/8-3/14: Get back to creating the first movie-review book.
3/16-3/20: Walk the Geumgang bike path. (This year's "long" walk, only 146 km.)
3/21-end of March: Finish creating the movie-review book.
Right. Time to get moving.
lawn ASMR (plus a sidewalk reveal)
I always wonder why this guy doesn't have a heavy-duty lawn vacuum.
Friday, February 20, 2026
when doing God's work gets you injured
This is the Scottish guy who goes by The Hoof GP and takes care of local livestock, with all of their myriad hoof problems. I've learned a lot about cows since then, and while I'm still not planning to become a vegetarian, I've nevertheless gained some respect for the bovines, as well as for the farmers who raise them and the hoof doctors who take care of their kine.
it's life for Yoon
I've been trying to stay away from politics and current events, but this is kind of important:
From a friend in Korea, about the conviction and sentencing of Yoon Suk Yeol:
— Gordon G. Chang (@GordonGChang) February 19, 2026
“Today, February 19 (KST), a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon Suk-yeol to life imprisonment in connection with his December 3 emergency martial law declaration.
The prosecution had sought…
I imagine that that's a pre-arrest photo of Yoon. He hasn't been allowed to dye his hair while he's been detained. My guess is that Yoon will either serve his life sentence or be released early by the next conservative president—assuming that that hypothetical president is the next president because, frankly, I don't see Yoon lasting in jail much longer than a single presidential term (in Korea, a term is five years, and there's no second term).
My unprofessional opinion: Yoon should never have freaked out and declared martial law.
That said, do expand the tweet's text and read it in full. According to the text (which doesn't hide its right-leaning bias), the Korean left took some giant and ethically questionable liberties in how it interpreted law in order to arrive at the conclusion that Yoon had perpetrated an "insurrection" (반란/ballan) Can a sitting government do that? I thought insurrections, by definition, came from outside the government.
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| looking grayer (but better in my opinion) |
"ball towel"
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| Do ladies have a coochie towel? How about a butt-crack towel? |
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I now know I'm not the only one who's dreaming these dreams.
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| "It's the dream again!" |
gifts given, gifts received, and sad news on the relative front
Thursday night visit to my #3 Ajumma's place.
Meeting #3 Ajumma means giving gifts and receiving gifts. She seemed happy to get my two types of cookies (I later texted her a warning that the oatmeal-raisin ones were fairly tasteless; she texted back that the chocolate-chip cookies were delicious), and she seemed delighted to receive my homeschooling book. I know she's a voracious reader: years ago, she grabbed my copies of Hyon Gak sunim's Korean-language book 하바드에서 화계사까지 (Habadeu-eseo Hwagyesa ggaji—From Harvard to Hwagye Temple), the story of the American monk's journey from an American Catholic background to Korean Seon (Zen) Buddhism. I'm hoping she'll read my book with equal zeal.
Being a dedicated Christian and the only relative who talks with me to any extent; Ajumma is my relative through marriage, not a blood relative: her equally Christian husband—one of my mom's cousins—had died a few years back from liver cancer (January 2019). Ajumma is now 82, and just this past December, she moved to a new apartment—one that's actually a couple of subway stops closer to where I am. I didn't ask her why she had moved, but I was worried, at first, that she'd been placed in an old-folks' home because part of her new apartment's name is 상떼/sangdde, a hangeulized rendering of the French word santé, which means "health." But her apartment's name also contained a more pedestrian 빌/bil at the end, the Korean rendering of -ville, a common ending for many apartment-complex names, big and small, in Korea. No senior-home vibe there.
I asked Ajumma whether family had visited her over vacation, and she said her elder son had come by with his wife and son, and so had some of her other relatives. Her younger son, who lives and works in Germany, will be coming by this August as part of a one-month travel plan. According to Ajumma, he'll be spending a week in Korea, then tooling off to Fiji (or somewhere) with his family, then visiting somewhere else, then spending another week in Korea before returning to Germany.
There was little I could tell Ajumma about my brothers because they almost never write back (I write them monthly). Since I hadn't talked with Ajumma since 2024 (when I was employed), I updated her on my current freelancer status and told her I would likely be returning to the university system later this year. I also had no updates on my dad, about whom she remains morbidly curious. I told her I have no idea whether he's alive or dead. She also asked about my aunt in Texas—my mother's ornery big sister. I passed along the sad news that my aunt's mind is going, and that she's forgotten that Mom died of brain cancer. This senility has been the case for a few years now; when my brother David visited my aunt a few years back, she happily asked about how Mom was doing. I don't know how David answered, but I imagine he didn't remind her of the truth. I told Ajumma that my aunt (the Korean title is imo/이모, i.e., mother's big sister), who had been combative all of her life, is probably happier now than she's ever been, now that her mind is going.
A tour around Ajumma's new apartment was part of my visit. The new place seems a mite smaller than her previous one but certainly spacious enough for just her plus whatever guests happen to come over. She even has room to store her many paintings, as well as a room now serving as her studio. I asked whether she was hoping to sell her art, and she said yes. I had to wonder how she planned to do that, especially since she has no computer.
Ajumma also gave me the sad news that my #2 Ajeossi just passed away. #3 Ajumma's husband was my #3 Ajeossi (which is why Ajumma earned the #3 label)—the one who died of liver cancer. Ajumma also told me that #1 and #4 Ajeossi didn't attend #2 Ajeossi's memorial service (he had converted to Christianity years ago—back in the day, a lot of Koreans did this to establish business networks), and neither did #3 Ajumma, who's been in a long-standing feud with #2 Ajeossi's family for years. I asked her why, and she talked about bad things people had done to her as well as money-related problems between and among the four brothers. But now, my #2 and #3 Ajeossis are gone; only #1 (who lost his wife some years back) and #4 (who had lost a son almost thirty years ago) are left. And so it goes in a family with a lot of siblings. You get old, then you drop off one by one, and only the Fates know the order in which you'll be toppling off the ever-advancing conveyor belt of life.
Before I left Ajumma's place, she loaded me down with carby gifts as well as the typical lunar new year's envelope of cash. I got a bag of frozen mandu (dumplings), a bag of frozen ddeok (rice cakes, important for the new year), a bottle of milk, and three big, fat oranges, probably from subtropical Jeju Island given that it's winter. As if she were talking to a teenager, Ajumma told me to keep the cash envelope out of sight, so I slipped it inside my coat.
Here's a partial shot, below, of the soup I cobbled together thanks to Ajumma's contributions. You can see the mandu clearly, but some ddeok is also visible. I have a ton of beef and chicken bouillon (both vegetarian and not), so I made a quick broth out of that, then added two eggs and a big glop of kimchi to give the broth a bit more character. A humble, not authentically Korean, but still rib-sticking late dinner. I pronounce myself stuffed.
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| very makeshift and inauthentic ddeok mandu-guk |
And with that, I think I've discharged my visitation obligations to Ajumma for this year, but I do feel bad when I think of her sitting alone in her apartment—no husband, no kids, nothing but church and TV and her painting to comfort her. At least there's the painting, and she's a talented artist. She may be a relative only through marriage, but I still feel irrationally lucky to have artistic people on both sides of my family (my great aunt used to be a singer/performer, and my great uncle used to be a locally famous painter in Monmouth County, New Jersey). At 82, Ajumma is a year younger than my mother would have been. All of my older relatives and "relatives" (like my French Maman and Papa) are getting up there in years. They'll all be toppling over the edge of the conveyor belt soon. Then it'll be my/our turn.
But I can't dwell on that. It's now technically Friday the 20th, which means I must now switch gears and get back to creating content for Substack to last through April. I hope to finish this content creation by the end of the first week in March. We'll see how that goes.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
post-holiday
The holiday is over. For people who work at a company, today is the first day back in the office. For me, it's another day of work with little to no pay. My Substack account is getting increasingly swarmed by bots that leave "like"s. I get four to nine bot visits per day, even on supposedly inaccessible paid content. There may have been one human among their number, though, because I gained a free subscriber the other day (from Nigeria, i.e., not trustworthy, especially since her photo looks like that of a busty American white girl).
The work on my movie-review book continues; I'm currently on Chapter 40-something, a bit more than a third of the way through the book's content. I have to stop after today, though, and concentrate on generating more Substack content through April so I can have breathing room to continue the book project as winter gives way to spring.
Tonight, though, I'm visiting my #3 Ajumma with cookies and a copy of my homeschooling book in tow—just some goofy gifts to give Ajumma since I haven't seen her since the September after my heart attack in 2024. Once I'm back home, I'll try to get as close to Chapter 50 as I can. Then, starting tomorrow: Substack it is, probably for a week or two.
Work, work, work.
Meanwhile, "Dana Smith" from Nigeria, thanks for subscribing.
Stephen Lang on "Sisu 2"
I might see this someday, but the clips, I've seen on YouTube don't look that promising.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
The Last Samurai: review
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| Ken Watanabe as Katsumoto; Tom Cruise as Algren |
The story is told through the eyes of war veteran Nathan Algren (Cruise), who had fought in the Civil War as well as in the American Indian Wars. Now a drunkard who is part of a traveling festival touting, among other things, firearms, Algren is depressed, suffering from war-related nightmares, and on his last legs. An old friend and sergeant of his, Zebulon Gant (Connolly), persuades Algren to hear out an offer from Algren's old commanding officer, the ruthless and unethical Colonel Bagley (Goldwyn, master of smarmy-villain roles), who had more than once ordered the murder of innocent American Indians during military campaigns. Algren reluctantly meets Bagley who, along with a Japanese businessman named Omura (Masato Harada), offers Algren a large sum of money to go to Japan and help the pro-modernization Meiji government to put down a samurai rebellion (the story is partly based on the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion). Algren, who is destitute, can't say no; he and Gant depart with Bagley for Japan. Though a drunkard, Algren studiously records his thoughts in a journal.
Landing at Yokohama, Algren is met by British writer, scholar, photographer, translator, and interpreter Simon Graham (Spall), who fills Algren in on Japan's recent history: the country is opening up to Western powers, wanting to be exposed to various aspects of Western culture, and from the Americans, Japan wants modern weapons technology both for national self-defense and to help put down rebellions like the one currently being led by Lord Moritsugu Katsumoto (Watanabe). Algren and Gant are given troops to train in rifles, formations, and battle tactics, but as Algren quickly discovers, the Japanese trainees are far from ready to see battle. Bagley, once again Algren's commander, nevertheless orders Algren to take the troops into the field to defeat a group of samurai who are impeding the operation of Mr. Omura's new, modern trains. Algren takes the untested troops into a forest where the samurai were last seen; the samurai attack and, predictably, the troops break ranks and prove unable to fight. They are slaughtered, and even Sergeant Gant is killed. Algren is the lone survivor, viciously fighting despite several serious injuries. Algren kills several samurai, including one who thinks he's gotten the better of Algren. The samurai leader turns out to be Katsumoto himself; he's impressed by Algren's ferocity and grit, and he orders Algren spared and taken prisoner. Algren is brought back to Katsumoto's home village, where he convalesces and slowly recovers from his alcoholism. He is allowed to wander the village, always with a minder (whom he humorously calls "Bob"), and he begins to learn about (and write in his journal about) Japanese culture. Algren is awed by the fanatical dedication to perfection that he sees around him. He begins to learn the Japanese language, as well as some of its fighting arts as taught by the stern and initially scornful Ujio (Sanada). He also learns that he is housed with Taka (Koyuki), the wife of the overconfident samurai he had killed. Her sons take an interest in the strange-looking and bad-smelling Algren.
The rest of the movie is devoted to Algren's education as he learns more about Japanese culture and the family he is housed with. At the same time, he knows that Omura, ostensibly acting on behalf of the emperor (a young, impressionable man who has become Omura's puppet), has plans to eradicate the rebellious samurai led by Katsumoto, who sees himself as being loyal to the emperor (he was the emperor's former teacher), and loyal to feudal tradition. As you might imagine, this cannot end well, but Katsumoto has Algren at his side—formerly a prisoner, but now Katsumoto's trusted friend, and a veteran who understands the modern tactics that will be used against the samurai.
Is The Last Samurai in fact a white-savior narrative? I'd say no: The samurai aren't saved by the end, and neither is Japanese culture (an issue that is relevant even today). Does the movie fetishize Japanese culture? I'm not educated enough about Japan to say, but the movie certainly takes a positive attitude toward the society and makes the potential loss of Japanese identity through Westernization a central issue. Algren, who is our lens through which to see late-1800s Japan, proves to be tough but also smart, and he begins to learn the bushido philosophy as he's learning the language; he also engages in what Katsumoto likes to call "conversations": Katsumoto wants to understand Algren's culture, initially for "know thine enemy" reasons. (While Algren is recovering from his wounds and his alcoholism, Katsumoto, who speaks, reads, and writes in fluent English, flips carefully through Algren's journal, learning of Algren's thoughts on war and his encounters with American Indians.) The dialogue we hear between these two men and the developing friendship we see are at the core of what this movie is all about.
On the level of politics, The Last Samurai can be read in both a left-leaning and a right-leaning way. On the left side, we see the corruption of a culture through Western influence (West = bad), but paradoxically, since the left is also currently pro-globalization, Japan's acceptance of foreign trade and foreign values as it "joins the civilized world" can be interpreted as consistent with the globalizing spirit. Algren's partial rejection of his own culture and his admiration for Japanese culture can also be viewed as appropriately anti-Western. The villain Omura can be seen as a plump, well-fed symbol of the rapacity of businessmen who care only for comfort and nothing for their own culture, so willing are they to become Judases for the sake of modern conveniences. A modern, right-leaning interpretation would focus on the Japanese emphasis—especially at the end of the film—on retaining national and cultural identity, not because the West is inherently bad but because nationalism and cultural integrity are net goods that should not be lightly thrown away. Algren's openness to Japanese culture also reflects the currently in-vogue idea that foreigners who enter a different culture should respect that culture and not expect to be accommodated by it in the spirit of what many conservatives call "suicidal empathy." The flip side of The Last Samurai is that a Japanese person who spends a long time in the United States should acquire the language as well as a level of respect for American values. So all in all, I think the movie is fairly balanced in how it can be interpreted.
All of which makes the political discussion surrounding the movie irrelevant to me. A more important question is: Is it a good story? It is: it's well written, well acted (except for Tom Cruise's annoying, buck-toothed mouth-breathing in almost every scene), and thrumming with profound emotion—almost melodramatic in the way of so many East Asian films, with plenty of flowing tears. At the end of the final, bloody battle, with Algren and Katsumoto lying together on the battlefield, Algren tells Katsumoto that he will miss their "conversations," which were the verbal exchanged bonds of friendship between two men who understood war and therefore understood each other.
Other aspects of the movie were good as well. Hiroyuki Sanada as Ujio the fighting master is perfectly cast for the part. Koyuki, as the wife of a samurai killed by Algren who at first wants revenge, then later develops mixed feelings for him, plays her role soulfully and well. The film's beautiful cinematography evokes old Japan, with images ranging from busy streets to Buddha statues to blossoms. This is also one of the smarter screenplays I've encountered in recent memory, with plenty of satisfying setups and payoffs.
I can only imagine, though, that The Last Samurai was mocked, when it came out, for being a Japan-inflected version of Dances with Wolves. The parallels are obvious: former US soldier goes native, keeps a journal, then turns against his own people, etc. Even in recent years, this trope appears in films like the Avatar series of movies or the Shōgun streaming series. Maybe it's a trope that's destined to appear and reappear in modern, industrialized cultures that deal with their own guilt. Or maybe it's destined to reappear in a specifically American context given America's unique historical circumstances.
What I can say for sure is that "the last samurai" is not Tom Cruise even though he's prominent on the movie posters. Online critic Chris Stuckmann offers up the idea that samurai is being used in the plural here: The samurai whom Cruise meets are the last of their kind as new laws forbid the carrying of swords and the wearing of topknots. In fact, some 2003-era Japanese viewers apparently felt the movie glossed over how corrupt and selfish the samurai had become by that time. In other words, some modern Japanese think that what truly motivated the real-life Satsuma Rebellion was not the passing of a noble age but rather the loss of power and influence for a certain class of people as Western egalitarianism began to filter into Japanese society. Then again, how's that battle of the values going, really? How successful has the infiltration of new values been? Is Japan now totally egalitarian? Is societal hierarchy no longer a thing? Anyone who believes that about today's Japan is woefully naive. Many of the old societal structures and concepts still exist in Japan, just as they exist in China and Korea. Modernization can't change everything. Old values persist.
Regarding those old values: Just this year, Japanese conservatives recently won a sweeping parliamentary victory in their lower house. In the future, we may see a Japan that is stricter about the presence of foreigners, foreign culture, and globalization in general. This new Japan may decide to rearm itself more fully against the looming threats of China and North Korea, and the influx of conservatives into the Japanese parliament may have been at least partially inspired by the heretofore-tolerated proliferation of obnoxious streamers like Johnny Somali, who wreaked havoc while he was in Japan and is now trapped in South Korea as his trial plods slowly onward. The Last Samurai is, if nothing else, both a heartfelt meditation on cross-cultural friendship, the clash of civilizational values, and the tension between old and new. For a 2003 film, it remains remarkably relevant in 2026, a reflection of the times we live in. See it with my enthusiastic blessing.
one reason why I'm not against the occasional vegan dish
Because vegan can look and taste damn good!
another subscriber
Wow. After about eight months of being active on Substack and gaining twenty subscribers within my first week on board, I finally got my twenty-first subscriber, and there's no guarantee that she'll stay. For the time being, though, I'll just keep chipping away, slowly building the sculpture whose final form is unknown even to me. At least until May.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
I kind of like these
AI might not be good for much yet, but it's not bad when it comes to the ridiculously surreal.
ululate!
The Reverend Jesse Jackson, who gained fame as an early civil-rights leader alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, has passed away at the age of 84 after "a long illness," which may mean complications from PSP, or progressive supranuclear palsy. Jackson's legacy as a firebrand is intact, but his legacy as a man of integrity is debatable given his deep involvement in politics and his race hustling (which Dr. King would not have approved of). I imagine there are many who will say, over the coming days, that Jackson impacted their lives. For me, the man became little more than an unpleasant footnote, a mere shadow of leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X. "You either die a hero [or live long enough] to see yourself become the villain."
That said, RIP.
cookies, distributed
The cookies have been distributed. Some joy has been shared. I doled out two types of cookies to the people I saw: at the downstairs grocery, there were two people, so I gave those cookies out immediately. I asked one lady at the grocery how many staffers there were in total, and she said there were about fifteen. I grimaced and told her I could afford to hand out ten pairs of cookies (one ketoish, one standard American Toll House), so in theory, if some staffers get only one cookie, then fifteen people can receive cookies. I hope those people are happy with whichever cookie they end up with, be it almond flour or Toll House.
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| almond cookies, stored for the night before placement into plastic sleeves |
This morning, I ended up having to bake another batch of Toll House cookies (remember the previous batch?): like an idiot, I had forgotten to add the damn butter last night. The wages of senility. I had warmed/melted the butter in the microwave, then I had combined all the other ingredients to make the cookie dough, and I had somehow forgotten to take the butter out of the microwave to add in. The lack of butter affected the cookies' texture and taste: the cookies, once baked, tasted familiar yet bland, and I recall thinking that the cookie dough, when I'd put it together, looked too sturdy—too much like the almond-flour dough that I've made over and over lately. Later last night, while I was stewing about the cookies' strange taste and texture, something prompted me to open the microwave, and voilà—there in the 'wave was the goddamn butter that I'd forgotten. Fuck. My mind raced through alternative scenarios, and I almost settled on blitzing the baked, butterless cookies up, then adding those crumbs and chunks into a second batch of cookies. The result would have been way more cookies: a superbatch. But in the end, I simply made a second batch of cookies and was extra careful, this time, to include the butter. And this time around, with the butter in place and nothing else forgotten, I had enough dough to make thirty regular Toll House cookies. Softened butter makes all the difference in the dough's texture, and as you see below, I must've been generous with how much butter I'd used: the cookies obviously spread a lot during baking, which was fine by me. My perfect cookie is flat, crunchy around the outside, and soft/gooey at the center. I have no regrets about the recipe or the baking method.
Enough dough, I wrote above. Ah, the perils of pronouncing -ough.
Farmer Brown's plough churned through the field while he coughed and hawked out a massive loogie. His breath soughed in and out, and his thoughts drifted to last year's drought, which had crimped his budget, meaning he hadn't had the dough to pay all of his bills. This year was going to be rough, too.
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| my buttery Toll House cookies, not ensleeved yet |
The new batch looked distinctly different from the butterless batch (which I still have but will never give out to anyone else). And depending on how many cookies were in any given tray, the cookies came out either a bit lighter or a bit darker in color. Personally, I loved the taste and texture after the cookies had had a chance to cool down a bit.
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| almond cookies, ensleeved and labeled "almond" |
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| sleeves for the regular Toll House cookies, label "regular" (ilban) |
The two ladies at the grocery store seemed happy, and after I had dumped ten pairs of cookies onto the skeleton crew, I went up to the lobby and gave the security guard/concierge enough cookies for him and his staff of four people. More smiles. The concierge was there when I had come by with cake at Christmas.
It'll be a long wait until Chuseok, when I might spread some more culinary happiness again, but there's a good chance I'll have moved by then, assuming I go back to regular work.
something to look forward to
🚨: The most important sky events of this decade is occurring on February 28th. 🌌 ✨
— All day Astronomy (@forallcurious) February 16, 2026
Six planets will align and put on a show of our lifetime. Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn will be visible to the naked eye from almost anywhere.
Uranus and Neptune will be visible to naked… pic.twitter.com/oBhcwUu8aT
The 28th is a Saturday. Nice.
ululate!
Let's Get Harry
Apocalypse Now
The Judge
Jack Reacher
The Natural
Sling Blade
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
THX-1138 (incredible film)
The Apostle (another incredible film)
I have Secondhand Lions in my queue; I might watch it today in tribute. I also need to see The Great Santini, a movie that was more for my father's generation.
Duvall was a font of acting talent, and he died the way I'd prefer to die: at home, not in a hospital. All of my childhood mainstays are dying off now.
RIP.
Happy Year of the Fire Horse (丙午)!
I would've guessed 火馬 (hwa ma, 화마, fire + horse) as the characters, but it's 丙午 (byeong oh, 병오), a label that's more about the sexagenary cycle.
So it's the year of the Horse (once every 12 years), but more specifically, it's the year of the Fire Horse (once every 60 years). The AI god says this:
The Fire Horse (丙午, Bǐngwǔ) in the Chinese zodiac represents a rare, potent, and 60-year cycle, with the next occurrence running from February 17, 2026, to February 5, 2027. It symbolizes immense energy, independence, passion, and ambition, combining the horse's natural speed with the element of fire.Key Aspects of the Fire Horse:Chinese Name: 丙午 (Bǐngwǔ), representing Yang Fire (Bǐng) and the Horse (Wǔ).Significance: Known for bringing significant change, dramatic transformations, and intense, fast-paced energy.Cultural View: While viewed as a time for great achievement, it is sometimes considered too intense or volatile in traditional East Asian cultures.Traits: People born in this year are believed to be independent, charismatic, and adventurous, but potentially impulsive or rebellious.The 2026 Year of the Fire Horse is regarded as a time to break old patterns and act with confidence.
My dad was born in 1942, which most people would say is the year of the Horse, but Dad was actually born on January 17, which puts him at the end of the previous lunar year—the year of the Metal Snake.
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| I said "year of the Fire Horse!" |
I think this year is going to see some radical changes for me.
If you're not tracking the lunar new year, then Happy Shrove Tuesday (go to confession!) or Happy Mardi Gras! May your Lent be an arduous one.
"The Fall Guy": review
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| Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt as Colt and Jody |
The story focuses on stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling), who is dating Jody (Blunt), a camerawoman who aspires to be a director. For years, Colt has been the stunt double for pampered-asshole movie star Tom Ryder (Taylor-Johnson, who gets to do two American accents), and he breaks his back when one stunt goes severely wrong. Feeling like a failure, Colt leaves the business and disappears from Jody's life. Eighteen months pass, and annoying film producer Gail (Waddingham) calls Colt and claims Jody is now directing a movie—her dream project—in which Tom is starring, and she needs a stuntman. Tempted, Colt goes to Australia, where the movie—a science-fiction action picture called "Metalstorm"—is being filmed. It turns out that Gail has manipulated Colt into coming to Oz, not because the crew needs a stuntman, but because she and Tom need a fall guy to take the blame for a fellow stuntman's death (Tom had accidentally killed him during a drunken party). Once Colt realizes the situation he's in, he'll need the help of people like his close friend, stunt coordinator Dan Tucker, to figure out what's really going on.
The main problem with "The Fall Guy," which was billed as a love letter to the stunt community, is that it can't decide which major plot line is the A story. Is it Colt's attempt to mend fences with Jody, who is still furious about Colt's sudden disappearance eighteen months previously? Or is it solving the mystery of who really killed the fellow stunt guy and then taking down the guilty parties? I suppose an optimistic interpretation of how the film proceeds is that it takes a "balanced" approach to both plots. I, however, say the movie means well and has some funny moments, but it's a confused, indecisive muddle. The John Wick tetralogy of films, despite its flaws, is a far superior tribute to stuntpeople, and director Leitch (who also directed "Deadpool 2") should have demanded a clearer, more coherent story from writer Drew Pearce. Along with being a mess, the film misses a lot of opportunities to be funnier, smarter, and more heartfelt.
Does "The Fall Guy" do anything right? I think it gets the tone and feel of the original series more or less down pat: in the movie, as with the TV show, it's often hard to tell whether we're supposed to be looking at self-aware stunt work or just plain old action. The film could've leaned a lot harder into the What is real? aspect of the original show. Also, the easy chemistry between Gosling and Blunt keeps their scenes from turning into bland mush, and the friendship between Colt and Dan—who is always challenging Colt to remember certain movie references—is a nice touch. Hannah Waddingham is also easy to hate as the movie's ultimate baddie. But none of this is enough to pull the movie out of the mire.
So in the end, I can't really recommend "The Fall Guy." It's not the worst thing you can watch, and it does feature an uncredited appearance by Jason Momoa, as well as mid-credits cameos by original-show stars Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, both of whom are looking over-surgeried, as is apparently the fate of most American actors who get sucked into the malign Hollywood vortex. I guess we can't all be natty (bodybuilding slang for "natural") like Emma Thompson or Ian McKellen. At the same time, "The Fall Guy" might be fine if you're bored and have a yen for a throwback attempt at the "zany" comedies of yesteryear. I just wasn't in the mood for zany. Haven't been for decades.
Monday, February 16, 2026
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