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Are we mixing metaphors here? Melting = Wicked Witch of the West; cross = vampire-stopper.

I want to hear more of this "conspiracy theory."

Not so fast: the net will also catch some Republicans. Probably a lot of the Never Trumpers.

What's the punctuation problem? Why is it a problem? How do you fix it?

Why should the comma be removed?

Zuby's in the UK, so I'm OK with his UK punctuation.

This makes me think of the chick with the floor-to-ceiling closet of purses.

Sage advice no matter what you think of Piers.

We need to hear all the suppressed stories of post-trans regret. (Oh, and add a period.)

Capitalize, add apostrophe, capitalize, add a period. Anything else from the illiterate?

(I think the counterargument is that tats aren't permanent.)

Come on—who hasn't fought police while high and wanking?

"threat to the rule of law"

Are Trump’s deportations a "threat to the rule of law"? A reply to the letter of complaint against Trump by a coterie of predictably leftist and hypocritical Harvard law profs:

Where were the letter’s signatories when federal prosecutors took the unprecedented step of bringing dozens of criminal charges against a former president, who also happened to be the leading electoral opponent of the then-incumbent president? Where were the signatories when Jeff Clark, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and other lawyers were disbarred or threatened with disbarment, and indeed prosecuted, for their representation of President Trump? Was this not a threat to the rule of law? Where were the signatories when radical activists menaced Supreme Court Justices in their homes, or when a mob hammered on the doors of the Supreme Court itself? Where were the signatories when the Senate Minority Leader shouted to an angry crowd outside the Court that “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions”? Were these not also literal threats to the rule of law?

Do click the link. There are other replies.

follow the bouncing titties (or lack thereof)

Cleverly designed AI can create hilarious songs out of tweets and comments.

make your own kadayif chocolate

It's a fad for sure, but I think I'm already over it.

Joerg's "apocalypse bike"

ululate! Poor Richard

Actor Richard Chamberlain is dead at 90. He was the king of 80s-era miniseries, starring in "Shogun" and "The Thorn Birds," and he was a big fixture of my childhood. As I grew up, I came to understand that he was a lusted-after sex symbol for many women, but in 2003, Chamberlain revealed he was gay. Whatever his orientation, he loomed large when I was a kid, and the world is a dimmer place without him. I might actually remember him best for his role as Prince Edward in the musical "The Slipper and the Rose."

another Trek I won't watch

It failed a while ago, but the failure lives on.

bad news from my boss

My boss emailed to say that his attempted deal to get office space at that property we'd visited in Suwon fell through. The landlord apparently had a sudden attack of amnesia about the cheap rental rate he had initially offered the boss; he abruptly wanted about 50% more, claiming not to remember the initial, cheap offer. So the boss, who had been on friendly terms with the guy for years, walked. This probably means that I won't be able to move into that apartment in the same building, which might be for the best since I'd rather stay in Seoul, anyway, even if that means a smaller place that's still bigger than a studio. 

I hadn't said anything to anybody, but I kind of thought that the boss's initial deal, not to mention the offer he'd tried to get me for my apartment, sounded too good to be true. For me, the offer was only a million won down for the deposit, then W500,000 a month for the rent, plus utilities. That would be insanely cheap with Suwon being so close to Seoul. The initial arrangement for the boss was an office space at W300,000 a month, which would have been astoundingly cheap for a space meant for a boss and two underlings.

So I'll be doing my own property hunting when I get back to Korea, and maybe some of my own job-hunting as well.

Democrats: et tu, NYT?

It's a rare scintilla of truthfulness, and it comes from none other than the New York Times, one of the chief propaganda arms of the US left.

Headline:

The New York Times Drops a Massive Truth Bomb on the Democrats

The New York Times editorial board just discovered what conservatives have been saying for years: the Democratic Party is completely out of touch with everyday Americans.

It’s a stunning rebuke from a paper that typically carries the water for Dems. The Times finally admitted the obvious: Democrats' obsession with identity politics and their "scolding, censorious posture" have driven voters straight into Republicans' arms.

“In the aftermath of this comprehensive defeat, many party leaders have decided that they do not need to make significant changes to their policies or their message,” the editorial board writes. “They have instead settled on a convenient explanation for their plight.”

They then point out that Democrats are in denial about their electoral struggles, clinging to the idea that they are merely victims of post-pandemic inflation and poor messaging rather than deeper political failures. Party leaders insist their policies are popular but that voter apathy—rather than a genuine shift toward Trump—led to their losses. DNC Chairman Ken Martin claims Democrats simply need to “connect” their message better, while Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dismisses the idea of winning over Trump voters, instead focusing on mobilizing those who stayed home.

“As comforting as these explanations may feel to Democrats, they are a form of denial that will make it harder for the Democratic Party to win future elections,” they warn.

I don't think the right should be all that satisfied with or gratified by this admission by the NYT. The admission doesn't guarantee that the NYT won't say something stupid and/or manipulative in the future, and it certainly doesn't signify a sudden swing to the political center from an organization that's been so reliably leftist. And yes: because politics is pendular, the left will one day inevitably regain power, perhaps sooner than one thinks. Why? In part because so much of the voting public is fickle and stupid. Just enjoy this rare NYT moment and move on.

GogiGo: a somewhat surreal experience

I don't have any photos of last night's dinner, but I went out to GogiGo, a new, Korean-ish restaurant in Fredericksburg, with my buddy Mike, his wife, and their eldest daughter Rachael (my goddaughter). I was all prepared to try to banter with Korean staff in Korean, but as I should have expected, all the servers and hosts and other staffers were non-Koreans. Mike ordered a rather steeply priced ($31/person!), all-you-can-eat option for all of us; we had to select which meats we'd like to have, so Mike did pork and beef while Rachael did squid, which was sauced up and cut into calamari rings (no tentacles).

Our table was done in the Korean-resto style, i.e., the middle of the table held a round, heated griddle that used gas instead of the more typical and traditional lumps of charcoal (to be fair, some Korean restos in Korea use gas). The gas didn't burn quite as hot as it does in a Korean resto in Korea, I noticed, but the proteins cooked up just fine. The all-you-can-eat option came with a bowl of gonggi-bap (standard scoop of rice in a small, metal bowl; you can get seconds, and even thirds); Mike gave me a bibimbap-sized bowl, and while he cooked the meats, I transferred my gonggi-bap to the bigger bowl, went over to a "bibimbap station," and ringed my rice with assorted veggies. The bibimbap station was laid out like a salad bar, with most of the usual ingredients there, including sesame oil and liquidy gochujang (Korean-style chili sauce). The only weirdness I saw at the station was the inclusion of shredded lettuce (is this a thing in Korea with bibimbap? I don't think so) and shredded cabbage. I ignored those in favor of the more standard, familiar bibimbap items. Oh, yes: at no point did I ever find a fried egg, which is normally a bibimbap topper, sometimes being the only protein in an otherwise-vegetarian dish.*

The menu showed this wasn't a purely Korean restaurant, but rather a fusion place. Appetizers included such non-Korean items as spring rolls, mozzarella-cheese sticks, tempura-style calamari, etc. The entrées and à la carte selections included non-Korean novelties like "Hawaiian bulgogi" and teriyaki chicken, further confusing and conflating Korean and Japanese culture in people's minds.

To be fair, Korea does its fair share of attempts at fusion, too, and as I've said before on this blog, most of them are unsuccessful—either in terms of popularity or in terms of my own opinion. Just as I was sitting there in the resto noting how This is isn't Korean; that isn't Korean, I wouldn't be surprised if a Westerner were to come to Korea and be aghast at the way Western food is, even today, often misinterpreted in creative and uncreative ways. 

Well, you can't push the boundaries of food if you don't try, but that thin layer of success (e.g., budae-jjigae) sits on an ocean of failure (e.g., cheese ddeokbokgi and its cousins).

In all, GogiGo was a good experience. Since I prepped my own bowls of bibimbap, I knew they'd be good, and they were. Mike (in charge of the beef and pork) and Rachael (in charge of the squid) both cooked their proteins to perfection, and I piled the beef and pork onto my bibimbap creation. My blood sugar, which has been suffering for days, was at its worst this morning, but that was also partly because of a regular Dr. Pepper I'd had last night (some sort of strawberries-and-cream flavor that was a lot better than the awful blackberry one).

Fusion is a thing wherever you go in this postmodern world. Cultures that probably shouldn't be slammed together get slammed together in strange combinations, especially in the context of a third, surrounding culture. As I'd noted earlier, in the US, you can find Japanese-Korean restos as well as Indo-Pakistani, Indo-Nepali, Sino-Japanese... I can add Vietnamese-Thai and all sorts of other combinations. Korea's becoming just as pastiched, following America over the postmodernist cliff. This isn't inherently good or bad; syncretism is how it's always been, but along with the jumble, it's good to have the more traditional holdouts as well.

Would I recommend GogiGo as an "authentic" experience of Korean food? I can say that the food I ate was perfectly Korean, but the menu offerings contain enough non-Korean items (probably necessary for culinarily timid Americans) for me to hesitate on the question of authenticity. As for the more basic question—did it taste good?—well, yes. It did.

Some days from now, after I've fasted a while, I'll be chowing down on some "inauthentic" pizza. As an old priest-professor of mine once said, "It's all syncretism."

__________

*Let me clarify: bibimbap comes in a million different variations, so a lot of what I might think of as strange has doubtless been done somewhere. In other words, bibimbap, varied as it is, isn't inherently vegetarian; you can use marinated ground beef, or strips of marinated beef, or seafood, or whatever protein you desire. I'm sure some French-run resto has done a frou-frou bibimbap using a high-grade lobster topped with the best caviar. But my point is that even the simplest bibimbap, which would otherwise be vegetarian, will often have a fried egg on top. Of course, hardcore vegetarian bibimbap won't have the egg.

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Daughters! What say you?

She is, in fact, a relative (cousin) of Chuck Schumer.

I need to find this restaurant. Sounds great for a date. And where does the comma go?

canine version of the Sisyphus problem

Go figure. And capitalize "Earth" if you're specifically naming it. If there's a the, then just earth.

Periods. Vocative commas. Quotation marks.

I wonder what a real 23rd-century Enterprise would be like.

Top line: I'm not drunk!
Bottom line: You're talking to a cat.

There's a "taste the wood" joke in there somewhere.

What eponymous means.

must be related

Bruce Wayne's pad after Wayne Manor burned down.

Chaya needs a hyphen. So does Lisa. Otherwise, Chaya is clever in a lawyerly way.

I love how the lefties turned against MSNBC. They do love to eat their own. And... hyphen. Comma.

roaches

My first night in this hotel, I saw a huge cockroach. It furtively disappeared under some furniture. A night later, I saw a second roach and lightly kicked it. It skittered across the floor and lay on its back, legs flailing. Lucky shot on my part. I grabbed some toilet tissue, wrapped the roach in it, and squeezed. Problem solved. I then resolved to go back to Walmart to buy that can of Raid I'd mentioned earlier. I saw a third roach the next day and went for my Raid. As happens in horror movies when you look away for an instant, the bug disappeared, but I was lucky enough to see it as it disappeared, and to find the nasty hole into which it had gone (at the bottom of my bathroom's door jamb). I sprayed that hole, soaking it with chemicals. The day after that, I saw two roaches in the vanity area (where there's a sink and a mirror) on the other side of the floor from the roach-hole. Both were on their backs, dying. The spray had worked its evil magic. I spray that entry point twice a day now in an effort to keep the beasties at bay. Haven't seen a roach since. But they could be out there. 

dying roaches, now dead after another spray for good measure

 one side of the roach hyperspace portal (bathroom door)

the other side of that same jamb—bigger hole

a wider shot

As the fake Mad Eye Moody used to say, Constant vigilance!

The Drinker reflects on the Oscars (3/5)

Almost a month has passed, but the pain lives on.

pro female boxer knocked out by by "nobody"

As they say: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Hollywood is out of ideas

It's all about recycling old IPs now.

"IP" means "intellectual property." Examples: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, etc.

walking uphill

I went out to Front Royal and Skyline Drive again, this time to walk the 2.5-mile stretch at the very beginning of the Drive and up to the first overlook, called the Shenandoah Valley Overlook, elevation 1390 feet (about 424 m—not very tall, and the starting elevation was 600 feet, or 183 m). The Blue Ridge Mountains have a lot in common with Korean mountains. They share with Korean mountains that same low, rounded quality produced by time, erosion, and other forces. These sorts of mountains are ancient. By comparison, the Swiss Alps and other alpine ranges like the Jura, the Vosges, and the Himalayas are mere teenyboppers.

It was another cloudy, cool morning, but the weather forecast has been saying that temps today would be around 80ºF (about 27ºC). I got sweaty as I ascended the relentlessly upward-slanted road, so I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist, bringing me one step closer to how I sometimes look on a trans-Korea walk. The only thing missing was the bandanna on my head. I was using it to mop up the sweat, but in the end, I decided not to wear it on my head. It was a short enough walk, and there was no reason to go full-on with the regalia.

There was a timid doe at the very beginning of the walk, but it was the only one I saw the whole time. She held her ground until I got very close, then she suddenly snorted and bolted back a few yards and went still again. I did my best to remain as inoffensive as possible, but I did snap the following shot:

a skittish doe (click to enlarge)

Otherwise, the walk was about what I thought it would be. I do think, however, that I added some distance by parking as far from the ranger station as I did (Mile 0 starts at the station itself, I think), so the ascent was closer to three miles than to 2.5, making this closer to a 10K walk than to an 8K one. As a walker, I still had to show my ID and park pass (acquired just the other day) at the station. The ranger—the same long-haired guy as yesterday—wished me good luck, and I rambled onward.

First, it's called a "bump"...

...then, it's called a "hump." The things you notice when walking, not driving.

The other day, I had noticed that the road to the first overlook was one long ascent, which is what had prompted the thought about doing this short stretch—going up and then back. I was in constant, mental self-check mode as I walked upward, wondering whether the rise would cause me any angina or a full-blown coronary. Nothing happened aside from a slight, faint feeling of pressure that might've had more to do with being out of shape (as I eternally am) than with something as dramatic as a new and dangerous blockage.

uphill, uphill, relentlessly uphill

deadfall (there was a fire warning on display, too)

Plenty of deadfall along the way. I again had wistful thoughts of how much I'd be enjoying myself were I a wood sculptor. Maybe I should look into woodworking when I get back to Korea. I tried to take note of mile markers, but I failed to notice them as I passed them on the way up. Perhaps I had been too lost in my own thoughts. Not the best way to hike mindfully.

The road goes ever on and on...

By walking on the left, I didn't have to worry about cars coming up from behind me—at least on the ascent. On the way back down, it was a different story because "left" put me on the other side of the road, i.e., the side with more cars going up and southward. Most of the drivers were as considerate as most Korean drivers have been in my experience, sometimes moving, like Koreans, all the way into the opposing lane to give me a wide berth (or maybe I'm just—that—big). But going down was a far less pleasant experience, especially as the morning wore on. Skyline Drive remains a very popular tourist/touring spot, and by the time I finished the walk, there was a huge line of vehicles trying to get into the park, ranging from cars to SUVs to loud, blatting motorcycles, all funneled into the one lane of the ranger station, where everyone had to either present an ID and pass or pay for a one-time entry. This traffic was what I'd been encountering.

As I descended to the ranger station, cars kept coming at me in clusters of two or three or more, remarkably like in Korea no matter which mountain road I've been on. I used to think to myself that Koreans, with only a few exceptions, were physically and constitutionally incapable of doing anything alone, so it became a mantra whenever I saw a peloton or pair of bikes or a pair or group of cars: Where there's one, there's always another. But seeing this behavior in America has made me rethink that cynical thought. Maybe the clustering can't be helped because of the nature of how traffic is managed. Anyway, going down was far less pleasant than going up had been: I was constantly forced off the smooth, level asphalt and onto the wildly canted ground next to the road (more ditch than shoulder). It was a relief when I finally saw my car and could walk on level pavement.

Someone didn't have an antilock braking system. Older car?

A pup and a way.

The weather was cloudy and seemed to be threatening rain, but aside from a few drops while I was driving (the same thing happened yesterday), there was no downpour—just a stingy smattering of droplets, and nothing once I got out of the car to start the walk. By the time I got back into my rental, I saw that the dashboard was reading 81ºF (27.2ºC). It sure didn't feel that hot, maybe because the cloud cover was blocking the worst of the direct sunlight.

There was never a dip down, almost like the 5K hill up to Ihwaryeong.

OK, maybe that caption's an exaggeration. The 5K hill up to Ihwaryeong does, in fact, have a few brief points where it at least levels out. If there are moments on that hill where the road descends for any significant distance, I don't remember them. But this Skyline Drive ascent was purely an ascent for sure. No breaks.

almost at the destination

Here's the pull-off for the overlook. People are there (click image to enlarge and see the people).

once again looking out and beyond

a glance at the blighted trees before starting back down

As I mentioned, the cars were more numerous going onto the Drive and heading south than going north. As I walked southbound along the Drive, I kept left, as we do in America for safety's sake. Same on the way down. (Korean signs on paths and public stairs will often say 우측통행/ucheuk tonghaeng or 우측보행/ucheuk bohaeng (roughly, "stay right" or "walk right"), but Koreans obey this guideline only randomly. Some Americans violate the protocol, too, both in Korea and the US.

It was a good walk, but I think I'm going to stick to doing regular trails from now on. Before leaving for the States, I had made a short list of some trails to do, along with their locations along the Drive, so I might start doing those tomorrow. Meanwhile, tonight, I'm meeting my buddy Mike (and possibly members of his family) for dinner at a nifty, new Korean place called GogiGo. Here are some neon quotes that Mike sent me from the resto's interior:

Korean-fluent people: give me your best translations.

PS: GogiGo's menu is here. Note all the non-Korean items. This sort of bizarre eclecticism is common in American restos, where distinct cultures are often mushed together in a weird, postmodern fusion: Indo-Pakistani, Indo-Nepali, Sino-Japanese, Korean-Japanese... and God only knows what we've done to African food.