hit me

It's a rare, rare day when I get more than 200 unique visits (as reckoned by SiteMeter), so hats off to the crowd coming over from Steven Den Beste's site. Feel free to snoop around the blog, take a look at old essays I've written (scroll down the sidebar to the "Sacred and Profane" section), or email me (bighominid@gmail.com) with comments, questions, vitriol, logo-feces, or whatever strikes your fancy. If one phrase could sum up what this blog is all about, it's this:

seeing Jesus in a pile of cowshit
If you're a Zen practitioner or a student of religion or preternaturally perceptive (or one of my close friends), then you get it. If the above phrase offends you, keep reading if you want to be even more offended, because on this blog we say stuff like "Jesus" and "Buddha" and "enlightenment," and two sentences later we're saying "scrotum" and "fuckhead" and "life is like a box of chalk clits" and "gay marriage isn't a bad thing." This blog is also a temple of scatology, so-- as you would in any cow pasture-- tread carefully.

SEOUL NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UPDATE

I'm back at the Go-dae PC-bahng. My day out at Seoul-dae netted me a few photos, which I hope to slap up on the blog soon. I found out what building I'll be teaching at-- it's one of the older, dilapidated science buildings, not the snazzy, new-looking foreign language education center. I also know that a local bus goes almost right to that building's doorstep, which is cool.

I think I did the right thing, after my meeting, by walking around the long perimeter road that circles most of SNU's main campus. It's a decent short hike, taking you past some campus buildings, but also past basketball and tennis courts, and even some small hiking trails. Most of SNU's buildings are tucked inside the perimeter road, sort of huddled together and surrounded by mountains. Still, the campus is very large, and reminded me at times of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. I kept expecting to see the Lee Iacocca Center at the top of one of the low mountains. Luckily, it wasn't there.

SNU's buildings are numbered on the outside, but the numbering seems almost random at times, as if a crackhead had been told to just go nuts and number the buildings as he saw fit. When I was standing at the main gate next to a huge map of the campus, I was able to look over and see a building with a big "67" on one corner; I turned back to the campus map and couldn't find the fucker. Some map.

One interesting sight-- and I'm glad I took a pic of this-- was a poster that showed a cartoon of George Bush's face. In Korean, the title said something like, "True feelings we send to Bush," and handwritten messages were scrawled all over Bush's face. Some were in English, my favorite being "BUSH = SAURON," which might not be a bad thing if you agree with sci-fi author David Brin that Sauron really isn't all that bad a guy.

[NB: Salon archives are accessible to all, if I'm not mistaken. Otherwise, I wouldn't be linking.]

There's a lot happening at SNU right now. Another message board showed all sorts of classes I'd like to join: Chinese calligraphy, low-level hanja (Sino-Korean characters), hapkido. I keep coming back to hapkido, because it seems to be something of a Koreablogger trend now: you have to take up a martial art and/or befriend a cat.

Of course, befriending a cute animal might end badly, especially in combination with martial arts training. I just read a great post by Justin Yoshida regarding his taekwondo experience, in which we learn, at the end of the post, that Justin's former TKD sensei, a Korean man named Shin, used a wittle bunny wabbit for target practice.

Haw haw. I've eaten rabbit before, while living in Switzerland. It was good. I'm sure, Justin, that that rabbit didn't go to waste after Master Shin blew its brains out. It probably ended up in a crock pot, "Fatal Attraction"-style. Or maybe Master Shin ran up to the still-twitching corpse and ate it on the spot, because, well, that's what a man should do.

OTHER HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS

The dude from Jeonju University wrote back to say they weren't hiring right now. Balls. My contact at SNU says that SNU might be hiring new English teachers soon, which would be cool. My July-August stint at SNU is being done through the ULS agency, but if SNU were to hire me directly, that would rock. I like hiking Gwanak-san (right next to SNU), despite the damn crowds. I wouldn't mind living in that part of Seoul for a while.

Right now I've got something of a headache, so I think I'll stop here. Here's a good link for you: Visualize Using Your Turn Signals. I know how Dr. Vallicella feels.

_