I'll be leaving for Incheon Sunday evening, which doesn't give me much time. Since maintaining two blogs at once is kind of a chore, I'll be switching entirely over to Kevin's Walk 4 after I publish this little announcement. Just FYI.
Oh, and... see you on the other side. I'll be back to blogging here around October 28.
Nice:
Ginsburg is dead, now, so the verb tense should be changed from the present perfect ("has been") to the simple past ("was"), and "since 1998" should be changed to "from 1998 to this year." Otherwise... heh.
Grammar note: the present-perfect tense uses a present-tense conjugation of to have along with a past participle. This tense is used when talking about a past event or situation that is connected to the present. For example, when Grandma sees a grandchild after several years and cries, "My, how you've grown!", she's using the present-perfect tense to talk about the span of time from when she last saw her grandchild to the present moment: from then to now. Look at the difference between these two sentences and their respective verb tenses:
1. Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has started no new wars. (present perfect)
2. In 2005, Donald Trump bragged that money, fame, and power could lead to pussy-grabbing. (simple past)
See how the simple-past tense is used, in sentence 2, to describe something that happened in the past and is now over? See how, in sentence 1, the sentence is talking about the time period extending from 2016 to now? That's the difference between the simple-past tense and the present-perfect tense, and since Ruth Bader Ginsburg just passed away, her death mostly severs her connection to the present, which is why the verb in the above meme should be was and not has been. (Ginsburg's rulings from the bench have implications even today, of course, so it's fine to write something like, "Ginsburg's rulings have had a lasting impact on American jurisprudence.")
WRONG: Louis XIV has been the king of France. (implication = he's still king)
RIGHT: Louis XIV was the king of France. (i.e., he once was the king, but is no longer)
The present-perfect tense gets its name from (1) the present tense of the auxiliary verb to have, and (2) the notion that we're talking about a completed action: the old meaning of perfect was "complete," i.e., needing nothing more—an idea that still lingers in the shadows today. In talking about (2), we're talking about the verb's aspect, which has to do with how the verb expresses duration, completion, or some other dimension. A perfect tense is one possible verbal aspect. Other aspects include the simple and the progressive (or imperfect). See this handy chart for more information.
While I won't be sharing my vote with you, Dear Reader, I can say that, after electronically receiving my Virginia state ballot (expats vote according to their most recent place of residence in the US), I printed out the necessary documents (2 envelope templates, 2 pages of voting instructions, and 2 ballot sheets that were probably supposed to be printed as a single-page, double-sided ballot), filled out my ballot, got the outer envelope signed by a witness in our office (a perfectly useless gesture), folded the outer envelope according to the very specific paper-folding instructions, then took the whole thing to a local DHL branch down the street from where I work. AT DHL, a briskly businesslike lady took my envelope, keyed in the address information herself (instead of handing me a form for me to fill out), asked me about this or that shipping option, then charged me a whopping W46,000 to have my ballot arrive in Virginia by Monday of next week, i.e., right as I'm starting my walk. And yes, it's via air mail this time. I told the lady about how the post office basically threw up its hands and said that only sea mail was possible. She laughed. I'll using DHL again. In Korea, at least, it's cheaper than FedEx, and unlike the regular Korean postal service, it offers goddamn air mail.
So, God help me, I've now voted. My vote is but a drop in the bucket, and it's very likely to be nullified by any number of fraudulent mail-in votes, but for good or ill, I've expressed my political conscience. We'll see what happens come November 3. I'll be fresh from my trek and ready for the rest of this awful, shitty year to unfurl the remainder of its stinking, hairy, veiny length, then dick-slap us across the face. Can 2021 be any worse, or is it naïve to ask?
It's not good to be thinking about nasty, unhealthy food right before a big walk, but I can't help myself. For the past few days, I've been brooding about the inadequacy of local convenience stores when it comes to providing me with the junk food that brings me the greatest joy. To be fair, it's possible to find—here in Seoul—some of the items I'm about to list, but you do have to make an effort to track these goodies down. Anyway, here we go—in no particular order, some of the 7-Eleven junk-food items for which I've been desperately jonesing for the last, oh, couple of years:
1. Spicy Jamaican beef patties. I said "no particular order," but these patties are easily my number-one item. Salty, naughty goodness. When I'm in the States, I normally buy two of them to devour greedily while I'm driving somewhere. I've tried making these here in Korea, and although they were edible, they just weren't the same.
2. Cherry Coke. This does exist here in Seoul; I've bought cans of Cherry Coke in Itaewon. But I don't like visiting Itaewon all that much, and the expat-infested district is out of my way, given that it's in the center of Seoul while I live in the southeastern corner. I need to find a service that sells Cherry Coke by the fucking crate.
3. Slim Jims. More salty nastiness. I very much want to snap into a Slim Jim, but the closest thing I can find in local groceries and convenience stores is expensive yukpo, which is beef or pork jerky. Korean stores overcharge for a bag that contains maybe a grudging ounce or two of dried meat, and while I generally like jerky of all types (even the jerky-adjacent products like dried squid and dried fish), these foods don't fill the hole in my soul.
4. Ho Hos. (Yes, I believe that's the spelling.) Looking like neat, cylindrical cat turds and tasting like every refined European's nightmare, Ho Hos date back to my childhood. This is often the way in which shitty food hooks you: it grabs you early in life, and then the nostalgia factor keeps you coming back. I've never once seen Ho Hos in Korea, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out they exist.
5. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. One of my all-time favorite noshes, Reese's are awesome when served cold. About an hour of fridging will suffice. They do sell these in Korea, but they're not to be found everywhere. The grocery in my building used to sell Minis a few years back; like everything that I love, though, they eventually disappeared from the shelves, never to return. If I remember correctly, I blogged, during my 2017 walk, about randomly finding Reese's in a convenience store somewhere along the route to Busan. (Ah, here we go.) Every time I find these in Korea, it's an endorphin rush.
6. Honey Buns. The term "honey bun" is as much a generic name for a pastry as it is a well-known product name put out by several different companies, including that old standby, Hostess. I'm specifically referring to the honey buns that are covered in that gloriously thick, white glaze, looking for all the world as if they've just escaped from a basement where people were filming bukkake porn. God, Honey, I miss you.
7. Hostess fruit pies. These. Another powerfully evocative symbol, totem, or spirit animal from my childhood. I would sell my soul to Cthulhu for an armful of these.
8. Shasta Black Cherry soda. As I blogged in 2017, I stumbled upon this soda quite randomly, and it immediately took me back several decades. I have a reputation, among those who know me and work with me, as a Coca Cola acolyte and addict, but Shasta can easily seduce me away from the righteous Cola path. Many berry-flavored sodas can.
9. RC Cola. O Canada! Maybe this is heresy; maybe it's not, but I like RC much better than Coca Cola. It's a bit lighter and more refreshing, but without being thin and watery. Give me a choice between Coke and RC, and I'll pick RC ten times out of ten. I have never once seen RC Cola here in Seoul. Maybe it exists somewhere (like on a military base), but as far as I know, I have no easy, direct access to it. And that kills me inside.
10. Real, actual Doritos. Doritos chips are sold everywhere in South Korea, but they don't seem quite right. It's laughable to pose as some sort of junk-food connoisseur (after all, who's proud to be an authority on Doritos?), but I'm pretty sure I can taste a difference between peninsular Doritos y los Doritos americanos. Again, a trip to a military base might be the answer to this craving, but I have no way to get my own base pass. When I get back from my walk, one thing I plan to do is make my own corn chips. God knows I've got the ingredients.
11. Diet sodas other than Coke Zero. South Korea seems to think that only one brand of diet soda exists. Although the makers of Chilsung Cider (Korea's version of Sprite or Seven Up) put out a low-sugar version of their top-of-the-line clear soda a while back, it's not a zero-calorie drink by any means. Where's the Fresca? The Diet Dr. Pepper (regular Dr. Pepper is, bizarrely, available in most regular stores)? The Diet Cherry Coke? Hulk smash!
12. Good ol' Amurrican hot dogs. Korea has hot dogs up the wazoo; they're an important ingredient in that iconic fusion stew, budae-jjigae. But finding legitimate American franks is harder to do, and the Kirkland beef and pork "dinner franks" once sold at Costco seem to have gone the way of the dodo—at least at the Yangjae Costco, which I frequent. I miss my Hebrew Nationals. I sort-of miss Kirkland franks. But since this post's focus is on 7-Eleven, I'm going to risk losing three-quarters of my readership by admitting that I miss 7-Eleven hot dogs. They're big and juicy and salty and absolutely bad for you, like everything on this list. But damn, do I miss them.
I can think of several more items I miss, but it's past 4:30 a.m., and I need my ugly sleep, so I'll leave off here. In the meantime, feel free to drop me a comment in which you wax rhapsodic about food items you might be missing. This is definitely a case of "the grass is greener," but now and again, it's therapeutic to vent about what we don't and can't have.
Remember this?
And now, Joe thinks 200 million Americans might die of COVID-19:
Instapundit reaches into Twitter and dredges up a 2016 statement by Hillary Clinton:
What are you waiting for, guys? Fill RBG's seat NOW!
Apparently, the time to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's now-vacated Supreme Court seat is now, and both the left and the right are keenly aware of this. The timing of Ginsburg's death couldn't be worse in terms of national harmony and stability: should the GOP ram through another Supreme Court Justice hated by the left, we will see rioting that will make the rioting up to now look tame (driving more voters to Trump). Here's Tim Pool:
NB: your pardon for a very random post.
One thing I prep before a month-long walk is my toenails. For whatever reason—probably my clumsiness—I have less luck clipping the toenails on my right foot than I do on my left foot: I always end up with bleeders. I know from experience that, if I'm going to go for any sort of distance walk, I can save myself unnecessary pain by clipping my toenails several days before the walk so they have time to heal. Walking with wounded toes can be irritating and even painful, plus there's the inconvenience caused by the slowly seeping blood.
I still haven't bought myself an extra battery for my cell phone, and time is running out. Technically, I can do the walk with the equipment I already have: I've got a portable power pack to charge the phone while I'm on the road, and since I'm motelling my way across the country, I'll always have access to electric sockets in the evening with which to recharge both my phone and my portable charger. I may have mentioned before that my charger—which is fairly new—doesn't have quite the capacity of the one I used last year and in 2017. It's good for maybe one full charge of the phone, but that may be enough: this time around, I'll be camping for only one single night.
Interesting development: my buddy JW has invited himself along for part of the walk. He says he has a bunch of vacation days that his company is requiring him to burn off, and I've turned him into a distance-walking addict, so he and I are in the midst of arranging the when and the where and the how of JW's segment hike. I don't want JW doing a segment during which I have a rest day: that would be boring to him. We also have to think about whether he'll be driving to our meet-up location or taking a bus/train to get there. I've suggested the latter to him: if he insists on driving, he'll have to double back, at some point, and go back to his parked car. Far easier to bus over to a meeting spot, walk with me a few days, then bus back to Seoul from the bus terminal in whatever town we find ourselves in.
I admit I'm a bit worried about having JW along. He tends to have his own ideas when it comes to agendas: he prefers to set his own, and when he does that, his agendas tend to wreck whatever plans I've made. I told him very clearly that I'll be following a strict schedule during my walk: wake up at 5, be out the door by 5:30. I won't be deviating from that schedule except on rest days. Will JW be okay with following my lead, or will he insist on coloring outside the lines? We'll see.
This is one of the reasons why I normally prefer not to hike with anyone else: the clash of intentions, however benign. Don't get me wrong: JW is an awesome walk partner when we do our segment hikes along the bike paths at and near the Han River. But this hike is different, and it's become rather personal (and private) to me. The fundamental difference between me and JW is that he's a typically sociable Korean whereas I'm a dyed-in-the-wool introvert: JW would never do any of these hikes on his own. It wouldn't even occur to him to do so. In fact, I asked him about that one time, and he replied, "No, too boring." So from the get-go, he's missing the point about the silence I enjoy when walking alone. For him, the hike is fundamentally a social experience. For me, it's my chance to shut up and listen to the world preach its sermon in its own arcane language.
The proofreading that I'm doing at the office is taking me about eleven hours per day to accomplish. This leaves me with very little time and energy for trip prep. I'm not too worried, though: there's little to prep.
I do plan to leave the office early on Friday, around 5 or 6 p.m., so I can train out to Incheon and grab a bunk in my favorite little motel, the Techno. The walk on Saturday will actually be over 30 km in length: there's a "pre-walk" of 5 km that I have to do to reach the seashore: 3 km from the Techno Motel to the subway at Geomam Station, another 2 km from the next-over station to the seashore and the Ara West Sea Gate, where the Four Rivers Trail officially begins. So Day 1 is a doozy at 35 km, and I won't be taking an extra night of rest as I usually do for over-30K days. Day 2 takes me back to my own apartment for the surreal experience of sleeping in my own bed while on the Busan-bound walk, then I launch myself east and eventually south toward Hanam City, Yangpyeong, picturesque Yeoju, etc. Once I leave Yangpyeong, I have to remember to take a picture of that multicolored, brickwork shwimteo that looks like a bus stop. I'm kicking myself for not having photographed it last year.
Anyway, before my thoughts get any more random (I'm at the office, but you can tell where my mind is at, I think), I'll leave off here. I'll continue to figure out the nightmare that is new Blogger, and who knows? If I come to terms with it by the end of the hike, I might just stay with new Blogger, flaws and all.
PS: I had ordered a bunch of Survival Tabs, but they got stuck in Customs, and I've tried to contact Hanjin Shipping about the problem, but Hanjin's website has an out-of-date phone number. I'm seriously thinking of physically traveling out to Hanjin's facility to talk face-to-face with someone, but I also know that, since I'm camping only a single day, if I don't have nutrition for a single day, I won't die of starvation: I'm way too fat for that.
PPS: it occurs to me that I'll be missing all three presidential debates and the VP debate. I'll be following along on the trail via YouTube and the alt-media, though: Tim Pool, Styx, etc. will have plenty to say. I tend not to blog about political stuff during my walks, so I'll save any commentary for when I'm back in civilized Seoul.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist and cultural icon, passed away on September 18 from complications related to pancreatic cancer. She was 87, having joined the Supreme Court in 1993 at age 60. Over the past year or so, those around her had tried to keep her health status as vague as possible, and her death is cause for liberal anxiety: another seat is now available on the Supreme Court, and Donald Trump—assuming he wins the upcoming election—will doubtless nominate someone whose very existence will raise the hackles of the left. One of Ginsburg's final "fervent" wishes was for Donald Trump to leave office after his current term. I don't think that that wish will be fulfilled. I hope Ginsburg didn't leave this plane of existence filled with the same small-minded, Trump-deranged bitterness that motivated John McCain to be such a stick in the mud before his own demise. Let Justice Ginsburg be remembered for her accomplishments on behalf of women's rights. RIP.
Styx on RBG:They say you should steal from the best, which is why I steal from Justin.
Twitter at its best 😂 pic.twitter.com/VqpUQeU1Ly
— PMSL (@PMSL__) September 17, 2020
Wow. Where to even begin. That was a perfect example of mass retardation. No one did anything right. Not the driver, who was fucking nuts or drunk or high; not the police, who kept blocking each other's movements by bunching up like idiots; not the bystanders, who just stood there drooling. And why the fuck did the police allow the guy to demolition-derby the store interior for several minutes? Neutralize him, drag him out of the car, and get a truck to gingerly pull the car out of the store.
Korean law enforcement is a joke. Not saying I want the sort of brutality we sometimes see in the States, but Jesus, this was an embarrassment to watch.
He’s sleeping right now under Mom’s old Christmas sweater that I’ve kept with me all these years. After he goes later today, I’ll be snipping a piece of the sleeve to send with him on his journey to see her again. He’ll be able to remember the scent faster to find her faster.
I don't know much about afterlife-related matters, but if there is an afterlife, then I hope Maqz is busy chasing after all his favorite things. You guys mentioned Mom, so here's hoping that, when he's done with a good day of running around, Maqz returns to her and gets pampered the way he used to here below. That would be a dog's heaven, I think.
