Asshole in Seoul 2:Naked Presbyterian Women in Chains!

No, not a pretty thought, but if it made you look, then I did my job.

It's cold here in Seoul. Nipple-twistingly cold. Cold enough to shrivel the scrotes as effectively as a pink laser blast of Hello Kitty mojo to the crotch. As if that weren't enough: Ed Koch is still planning to vote for Bush (via Tacitus)!

A quick recap of the half-disaster that was my trip back to Seoul. (But first allow me to distract you with Cobb's take on Arnold-as-governor. I'm in a distracted mood this evening; sue me.)

As you recall, I was stranded in Seattle because God was busy sprinkling cocaine over the entire state, which got buried under several inches of it. On Tuesday the 6th I was in SeaTac Airport, standing at one of those panel displays of the local hotels, scanning around for the cheapest place to stay (as any good Korean or Scotsman would). I chose the SeaTac Inn, whose "distressed rates" for bumped customers--

WHOA! Annika's behind!

--sorry.

As I was saying before I got sucked into the aesthetic vortex of Annika's posterior, the SeaTac Inn's "distressed rates" were pretty low at $40/night-- much better than the $60-75/night demanded by the likes of Doubletree, Holiday Inn, Hilton, et al.

The SeaTac Inn offered me a large room furnished with a rug, a bed, a TV, a sink, a couple mirrors, and a bathroom (toilet and tub/shower). Along with this it graciously provided a broken telephone, a missing drawer, a missing toilet paper dowel (rolls were rather cleverly stored on top of the toilet tank), and a curious pattern of cigarette burns that added character to the already-charming walls and furniture of my "non-smoking" room.

I'm sure you'd like to think I spent my three days of motel isolation rutting with Seattle's finest whores (my brother David jokingly speculated along these lines, shouting "FERTILIZE! FERTILIZE!" over my phone after it had been repaired), but I'll have to disappoint you: no paid female tongues were probing undisclosed locations. I received no visits from a busty Dingleberry Fairy. Perhaps this is my loss. Instead, I spent my time reading and watching TV. My few attempts at walking around outside led to soggy shoes and the urge to shuffle back into my motel room-cum-burrow. Luckily, my room heater was up to the task of keeping the place livable.

My flight on Friday the 9th was to leave SeaTac at 1PM. I checked out of the motel and got to the airport with almost two hours to spare. As I was riding the escalator up to the ticketing level, I happened to glance downward into the baggage area... and saw my two check-ins sitting there on the floor.

I'd been promised, on Tuesday, that my check-ins (one suitcase and one cardboard box) would be arriving in Seoul long before my own arrival. I scrambled downstairs, caught a Northwest staffer, and started quizzing him about why my stuff was still in Seattle. The upshot: the ticket agent and the baggage folks weren't communicating the whole picture, either to me or to each other. This became even more obvious when I took my check-ins upstairs with me to re-check myself onto Flight 7: the ticket agent (a different one this time) shook her head. In her opinion, my bags should have gone on without me.

So it's a damn good thing I happened to catch sight of my possessions, or I'd've ended up in Seoul with no baggage to claim.

The line in front of the Northwest counters was already longer than Milton Berle's elephantine penis, and my delay in recovering my check-ins had cost me a lot of time. Luckily, I got through the line with time to spare and made it to the gate just as Flight 7 was boarding.

Seattle was having a string of bad hair days, I think, and once again we have God's liberal cocaine-sprinkling to thank for all the goofiness. I'd like to visit Seattle again someday, and maybe get a look at what cultural marvels lie beyond the tourist-infested skankiness that is International Boulevard.

The flight to Narita was pleasant; I continued to read The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity and talked with fellow passenger John Eckerd (am I spelling that right??) about Steven Pinker, bad 'shroom trips, beatific visions, Zen, and interreligious dialogue. The short hop to Seoul was also hitch-free, as were the subsequent bus and cab rides that ferried my hairy ass chez moi.

[NB: KBJ at AnalPhilosopher has posted a list of references on the question of religious diversity. (Has Herr Professor been reading my blog?) His post is disappointingly short, but then again, the man's an atheist, so he probably doesn't find the question interesting... and we should note that his rather narrow definition of "religious" is biased in the direction of boilerplate theism-- an atheistic reaction to theism or another example of the pervasiveness of the Jesus meme?]

Anyway, I'm back. In Seoul. Where it's colder than a dead polar bear's frozen clit. The heated ondol floor is on at my place; I spent most of today cleaning the floor of two months' worth of accumulated dust and grunge (in a city like Seoul, filth happens-- and fast). My cell phone is now reactivated, and all is right and good with the world. I planned on calling some people this evening, but sleep is catching up with me, so the calls will have to wait (sorry, folks).

I hope to be commenting on The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity soon; it's been an interesting read, and I'm almost done. I might also have to lumber over to Brian's game cafe and Drambuie Man's bar this week, even though I'm a damn teetotaler and won't have more than a series of Cokes.

Ah, yes: I've decided not to do any major trimming of the blogroll quite yet. I'm reconsidering some of my choices (by the way, I was never considering removing the blogs of people who're simply on hiatus), and might actually be adding some new entries to the blogroll soon. We'll see.

OK... it's about time to step back out into the pube-crackling cold. Since I'm back in Korea, I suspect my blog posts will once again assume a more Korean-affairs tenor. Ayez peur. Ayez très peur.

UPDATE: KBJ gets publicly fisked here (no, not about religious diversity; link via Satan's Anus).

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