another blow against Einstein

Are we living in an era in which Einstein's foundational ideas are being deconstructed?

the "girlfriend translator"

"nobody's above the law"

I hope this bitch gets a taste of her own medicine, but I suspect the gears of justice will somehow contrive to grind to a halt.

a most worthy tribute to "A Knight's Tale"

Said more eloquently than I could ever say, a worthy tribute to one of my all-time feel-good movies, the kind of thing I can watch when I'm feeling down:

I don't know whether I've ever written a full review of this movie, but I may have to write one now. I own it, but I haven't watched it in some time. But with today being Easter, my paschal tradition is to watch The Lord of the Rings all the way through in a three-day marathon, so any review would have to wait. There are also a few other things ahead in the queue.

I hope they nail her, but...

UH-OH 🚨

If her residence is in a different state her job is vacated, NY law does not allow you to hold public office

Which means her prosecution of Trump was unlawful, she wasn't the legal AG of the state

Letitia James put Trump on trial for crimes she was already guilty of pic.twitter.com/HwT5gyR7DL

— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) April 16, 2025

Happy Easter

Back in grad school at Catholic University, we had class the Monday after Easter. Not all of us were Catholic, of course. I was (and am) Presbyterian, for example, and one of my classmates was a cheerful and energetic ABC pastor (American Baptist Church). He came into class that Monday and boomed out, "The Lord is risen!" Utter silence from the room full of Catholics. So I was the lone fellow Protestant to reply, "He is risen, indeed!" Catholics have way more ritual exchanges in their liturgy than Protestants do, so it was surprising not to hear anything from my Catholic classmates. Maybe they'd just been caught off guard. Or maybe this really wasn't one of their known exchanges. I'll always remember that confused silence, though, which in the moment seemed to hint at a deep cultural rift.

Happy Easter.

cute

Letting the dogs at the rescue centre pick their present themselves pic.twitter.com/nveOmEICLW

— B&S (@_B___S) April 15, 2025

oh, Gavin

From a month ago:

THIS IS BRUTAL! Gavin Newsom claimed on his podcast that no one in his office ever used the word "Latinx" to describe Latinos, so CNN aired a compilation of Newsom himself saying it REPEATEDLY.

It's amazing to see leftists tearing themselves apart.

Newsom: "By the way, not one… pic.twitter.com/jM1YxiWxeC

— George (@BehizyTweets) March 21, 2025

Even CN-fucking-N.

stand-up comedian versus the woke left

it was pretty bad

Stephen A. Smith on Biden's speech: "Waste of time. Fell on deaf ears. I watched about five minutes of it. I didn't really have much interest in it. Because he’s no longer the president."pic.twitter.com/DI1Ra0LT20

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) April 16, 2025

stupid Karen (but I repeat myself)

Karen gets herself into a bit of a pinch while road raging pic.twitter.com/JIUW7ljxl3

— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) April 16, 2025

"she gonna vote, boys"

Yes! These are the retards who are primed to lead us into the future!

I don't want to hear another fucking word about how dumb our country bumpkins are. Let these urban geniuses try to operate farm equipment for a day and feed the nation. Not another fucking word. And you think American education is doing okay?

really?

“Although Columbia stands among the country’s wealthiest universities, with an endowment of about $15 billion, it wouldn’t take long for it to cease to operate in any recognizable form without government money.”

I’m beginning to see the problem. https://t.co/L74NAw8VNm

— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) March 21, 2025

So... starve the beast a little, and you starve it to death? I don't believe it.

Scott Adkins on JCVD

BochaSweet keto cookies

Keto chocolate-chip cookies by BochaSweet:

Note the rough texture.

See the burned chocolate despite my having followed the instructions?

Among the packs of things I'd bought from BochaSweet while I was in America was this one pack of cookie mix: BochaSweet keto chocolate-chip cookies, chips included, with everything sweetened with BochaSweet. Originally, the company had been batting a thousand with its granular sweetener, a 1:1 replacement for sugar that I very much liked. Then, while I was in the States, I ordered the faux sugar, faux brown sugar, and several other items: a cookie mix, a brownie mix, a pancake/waffle mix, and a vanilla-cake mix. I ended up making the cookie mix Friday night... and while I'm still processing the experience, I can't say that I recommend it.

First, the instructions felt a bit incomplete—something I couldn't have known until I'd tried following the instructions as printed to make the cookies. The package comes with a dry mix of almond flour, sweetener, collagen powder, psyllium-husk powder, sugar-free chips, etc.—only 1 g of net carbs per serving (BochaSweet can apparently be subtracted the way sugar alcohols can when you're calculating net carbs: it just passes through your system, or so they say). You have to add melted butter, warm water, and one egg. That's it for liquids. The result is a clumpy mass that looks and feels more like slightly wet brown sugar than cookie dough.

I was able to make exactly twelve cookies with the amount of mix provided. The instructions said to bake everything at 325ºF (163ºC) for 12-14 minutes. No recommendations were given as to whether to use a cookie sheet, a cake pan, a glass baking dish, or what. Or whether to add parchment paper. And unlike the almond-flour-cookie recipes I've tried in the past, this recipe gave no recommendation to press the raw cookies down since almond-flour dough tends not to spread much during baking the way regular cookie dough does. Result: by the 12th minute, I could smell something burning in the oven, so I took my thin, metal baking tray out and let the cookies cool. Then I did a second batch (six cookies per tray), with much the same results despite setting my timer for eleven minutes and thirty seconds. As it turned out, the burning was mostly from the sugar-free chocolate chips at the bottom of each dough ball: melting, running a bit, and burning to the tray's bottom. The cookies didn't spread at all, so the result was twelve golf balls (originally laid out via ice-cream scoop). Some people like that sort of thick cookie, but I don't. I prefer mine flat, crunchy on the rim, and chewy/soft in the center. With lots of chips all the way through, preferably unburnt.

While I'm still not sure how much I like these cookies, I can definitely say that the All Day I Dream About Food recipe is a thousand times better. Now that I've used up this cookie mix, I'll stick to ADIDAF from now on. Nah, I don't think I can recommend these.

Thus far, BochaSweet is not wowing me with its pre-made products. The lemon-poppy protein bars were okay, but the chocolate-peanut-butter ones were boring; so was vanilla-almond crunch. The sodas were utterly horrible; my buddy Mike, equally horrified, marveled several times about how somebody at the company had had to sign off on these sodas' taste, and that person really ought to be fired. (It's the same kind of idiot who crows about how a Beyond Meat burger patty "tastes just like real meat.") With the cookie mix also being something of a failure, I'm really losing faith in BochaSweet's ability to create anything other than granulated faux sugar. I now fear how the vanilla cake and chocolate brownie will turn out, and the only thing I'm really looking forward to is the pancake/waffle mix because, after all, how can you mess that up (famous last words, ja?)?

Anyway, if you're considering BochaSweet, my recommendation thus far would be to stick with the faux sugars—table sugar and brown sugar. Stay clear of the other stuff. So far, those things have been reliably unsatisfactory, varying from barely mediocre to actively nasty.

easy SAT math problem

There's a video that comes with this.

Watch the video here for the solution. This took me only a few seconds. You can do it!

good news on the biological front

It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK. @ForWomenScot, I’m so proud to know you 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💜🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💚🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🤍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 https://t.co/JEvcScVVGS

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025

The trans community long ago dismissively labeled JK Rowling as a TERF, a trans-exclusive radical feminist, the scarlet letters meant to show that Rowling is Not One of Them, but really just another way of saying the left eats its own. I don't agree with Rowling, still a self-avowed leftie, on very much, but I respect her brave stance in defense of women on this issue. As for trans folks: as I've said repeatedly, God bless 'em if they really want to try to make their bodies conform to whatever their vision of themselves is, as long as they don't infringe upon the morally dubious area of participating in women's sports and harming biological women.* Meanwhile, they should ponder the irony, pointed out long ago, of wanting people to "accept them for who they are" when they obviously can't accept themselves for who they are.

__________

*Note how this never seems to be a problem for women who become trans men. They know their limits.

keto burger, take 2

Today, I made another batch of keto burgers. I didn't use all of the oh-so-secret method I had hinted at before I left for the States—only part of it: I radically reduced the amount of batter (it's not really a dough) for each bun, taking the time to weigh the buns this time. They were 94-96 g apiece, which meant I could make more buns than just four. In fact, I ended up with seven buns, and they all came out looking a bit better, less rumpled, this time. Had I done the complete trick that I'd been planning to do, I'd have used an oil-sprayed square of shrink wrap to smooth out the top of every bun, with the oil spray preventing the shrink wrap from sticking to the buns. With the diminished amount of batter going into each bun, though, the smoothing seemed unnecessary, so I gambled that I wouldn't need to do that. And I think I was right. The new buns still look a bit lumpy, but they also look way more reasonably sized for each burger. There's much less bread to eat through now. Eating the burgers has become a much more enjoyable experience. Next step: keto hot-dog rolls to make chili dogs, lobster rolls, etc.

six of the seven buns

burger patties and cheese, 'waved and ready for placement

buns prepped with mayo, pepper, and pickles

Avengers, assemble!

a little keto BBQ sauce

The result was damn tasty. I'm about to have another one. And that, plus some diet soda, will likely be my food for the day. It's good to be back to a low/no-carb regime.

riddle me this

I saw this at the airport when I was waiting for my limousine bus on the morning of the 15th. What am I not understanding? It sure looks as though it says, "Ticket" on top, followed by "First Get On" in the white font with the red background. Underneath that, the smaller text says you need to find a nearby ticket booth or ticket machine, get a ticket, then get on. So which is it—(1) get on first, then buy a ticket (presumably from the driver) or (2) get a ticket first, then get on? Well, when I ran 우선탑승 through Google Translate, a possible answer appeared: the phrase, taken as a whole, apparently means "priority boarding." If that's really the meaning, then okay. Otherwise, the sign doesn't make much sense. 우선/useon by itself normally means "first (of all)," while 탑승/tapseung does indeed mean "boarding" (a bus, a plane, etc.), so I took this to mean "board first." A staffer tried to explain the sign to me, but I didn't quite understand his explanation. Lost opportunity.

Ah, I see that Naver Dictionary goes even further, giving us some etymological clues. There are two 우선s! The first 우선 is one set of Chinese characters, 于先, meaning "first of all/above all," while the second 우선 has a different character as the first particle, 優先, and it specifically means "priority/prioritize." See here.

aggravating

There's a thing that happens with some of my Apple TV purchases, usually with TV/streaming series, and usually toward the end of those shows: the video will suddenly hitch and freeze for no apparent reason. I'm partway through Season 5 of "The Expanse," and around Episode 3, the glitching started to happen. Luckily, "The Expanse" is available for "free" to those who are on Amazon Prime (it became an Amazon series after Season 3, after all), so I switched over to Prime to watch the rest of Season 5 (I'm about halfway through). This glitching doesn't happen so often with movies, but you have to watch out for series. Now that I have my PNC Bank Visa debit card, which can also function as a credit card, I'm finally able to purchase Amazon movies again (well, purchase the license to watch them), and I can now pay the extra monthly fee (like gangsters' protection money) to have ad-free viewing of Amazon movies and series. So: viewing of the remainder of "The Expanse" will continue unimpeded. The episode length of each season has varied: Season 1 was ten episodes; Season 2 was thirteen; Season 3 was thirteen; Season 4 was ten; Season 5 is ten, and Season 6 is only six episodes, indicating flagging ratings. I'll soon know for myself whether the series went out with a bang or a whimper. Meanwhile, Amazon videos don't generally glitch on my computer, but we'll see. Oh, and I know some of you are wondering why I'd purchase on Apple TV something that's "free" on Amazon Prime Video. Because Apple lets you download and store your own movies. Maybe Amazon allows that now, too, but I'd need to check. Last I'd seen, they didn't.

maybe the extremism is under a rug somewhere

Just to recap, we’ve now had a CEO murdered, two assassination attempts against a now-president, a governor nearly killed with his family, and businesses burned to the ground…all by left-wingers.

But CNN just can’t find any examples of left-wing extremism.

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) April 16, 2025

One thing I know about many lefties is that you can say something to a general audience, not directed at any particular person in your circle, and they'll feel obliged to give you a direct reply as if they'd been personally attacked. They don't know how to leave well enough alone, which is a fundamental difference between the left and the right. Try practicing Live and let live, guys. Stop with the infernal meddling. Don't feel obliged to take everything personally.

Filipino pancit sounds awesome

do it and don't stop

🚨 BREAKING🚨

Tulsi Gabbard declassifies President Biden’s secret plan to eliminate the Second Amendment in the name of “counterterrorism.” https://t.co/MYeIPX9K4W pic.twitter.com/g6Jv75esiS

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) April 17, 2025

Korean SEAL reacts!

the double-barrel brush gun

Tolkien vs. CS Lewis

I heard that Aslan is about to be recast as female. Yay! Divine feminine!

the woman who taught martial arts to find a husband

A fascinating tale from old Japan.

oh, no! the black Snape is coming!

I think reflexive race-swapping and sex-swapping for the sake of what the Critical Drinker calls The Message is a stupid thing, but studios refuse to learn any lessons from sagging ticket sales, and their faith that The Message will one day penetrate bigoted minds is almost admirable in its moronic tenacity.

That said, it's becoming tiresome to report on this topic over and over. The current irony about the potentially race-swapped casting of Snape is that no one complaining has any personal problems with the actor (Paapa Essiedu) himself: even rightie critics speak of his talents with respect. No, the problem is that this so-called "TV adaptation" of the Harry Potter series has been billed as a book-faithful rendering of the story, and making Snape black, when so much textual evidence suggests he isn't, marks yet another dumb decision by studios in their constant yearning for political correctness.

As one of the videos below notes: "blackening" Snape will actually create more controversies than it solves by applying an unnecessary racial subtext to things like how Snape had been bullied in the past, Harry Potter's immediate dislike of Snape, the incident in which James Potter hanged Snape upside-down in a tree, etc.—all of these encounters and interactions become racially tinged, and if they're cut out of the new story to avoid these racial undertones, this will be another blow to the claim that the new series is somehow book-faithful. Fucking with the canon is never wise, and that basic complaint, from LOTR to Potter, has been with us since forever. Wake up, lefties: this has never been about racism.

12 Years a Snape!

ADDENDUM: it's official, they say. I hope the studio loves losing money.

the real strategy

Chuck Schumer admits the quiet part out loud— Democrat-appointed judges are really activists who are there to stop Trump:

"We did put 235 judges, progressive judges, judges not under the control of Trump, last year on the bench, and they are ruling against Trump time after time… pic.twitter.com/WDoaBnUW1H

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 20, 2025

more Karmelo Anthony fallout

Wow. A guy kills supposedly in self-defense, and he (or his family) gets a mansion and an expensive car. All this in the country I just visited.

Alan Dershowitz says the quiet part out loud regarding the Karmelo Anthony case:

"If the racial factors were reversed, if a white man had killed an unarmed black man, everybody would be on the reverse side of this."pic.twitter.com/WCHORbs3dx

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) April 15, 2025

how could the "Brave New World" disaster get worse?

shaved yesterday, thank Cthulhu

My electric razor died on me right before I'd gone to the States. It gave me one last shave just before the trip, then it literally fell apart in my hands, almost as if it were a frail, living thing performing a final service. I knew I'd have to get a new razor, so a day before I was to step on the plane to go back to Seoul, I went on Coupang and ordered myself a simple beard/mustache trimmer. It arrived the day I did, just very late in the afternoon, after the IT guy figuring out my internet-connection problem had come and gone. I looked over the trimmer, its tiny comb (for mustaches), and the brush meant to clean the thing, and after fiddling with the beard-length adjuster, I went to town on my hairy face, beating back the foliage and trimming myself back down to a more reasonable, less deranged look. I'll be having this battle again every two weeks, but for the moment, it's a huge relief not to have to stare at my wild, overgrown fur.

Meanwhile, I still need to order my new ceiling lights. There's always something.

images

Period(s).

Brings the stats. A source would also be nice.

Because it's Trump. He drives them insane. He was one of them until not long ago. And they hate apostates.

Who lives in a bubble? Fix the English.

Scandinavia's not as socialist as you think. See here and here.

Yeah, but there should've been more of this during COVID.

Very Starship Troopers (more the novel than the movie).

Need at least one hyphen.

People are stupider in groups.

There's always an asshole who lacks common sense. (Don't capitalize a fragment.)

You can't handle the... never mind.

things I remember consuming in the States

I did try to stay toward the keto/carnivore end of the spectrum when I was in my Manassas hotel. I ate a lot of deli meat, and while I'd bought a package of fat sausages to cook, I hadn't eaten them by the time I'd moved over to Mike's place, so I gave them to his family.

• deli meats (shaved, sliced)—ketoish
• sliced deli cheeses—ketoish
• Walmart premade salads—barely ketoish
• Jamaican beef patties from 7-Eleven—not keto at all
• a big ole hot dog—not keto
• Mexican food—not keto
• Chinese food from an old favorite resto—not keto

The Chinese food consisted of fried dumplings, fried wontons, and crispy beef. That was pretty much the end of my blood sugar. Then I moved over to Mike's place

• home-cooked proteins and salads + carbs—not keto, but normal
• Moroccan-inspired chicken with couscous—not keto
• gyros—not keto thanks to the flatbread
• bibimbap—not keto thanks to the rice
• Tim's II seafood (mostly fried: calamari, shrimp, omnibus plate)—so not keto
• Foode "Fredericksburger" with tater tots—definitely not keto
• Pimenta: curried goat, plantains, mac & cheese + beef patties—antiketo
• various diet sodas (2 versions of Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke Zero, Goslings, etc.)
• a lot of random grapes—not keto
• oatmeal cookies with Craisins, made with BochaSweet—not keto (oatmeal, Craisins)
• snacks from the pantry (nuts, cookies, trail mix, etc.—not keto)

By this point, my blood sugar has been thoroughly Guatanamo'ed. It's curled up in a fetal position in the dark corner of an unlit cinder-block cell, bloody, beaten, whimpering in misery, ranting incoherently, snot and saliva coming out one end, shit and piss coming out the other. I probably spent two of my three weeks at a blood-sugar average of over 230. God only knows what my arteries look like on the inside.

I would have liked to take cases of Cherry Coke Zero back with me: the American version is more strongly flavored than the Korean version, something I couldn't have known without the ability to compare the two. I'll eventually get used to the Korean version again, but for the moment, sucking a bottle down produces more disappointment than satisfaction.

There were a couple of things I'd contemplated eating but never got around to: an ever-dwindling slice of lemon cake that had looked promising, plus some blueberry muffins that smelled divine (both Mike and his Missus are talented cooks). I just might have to make those things for myself. Those and other, more human things are aspects of America that I'll miss.

catching up on sleep, but the circadian rhythm is all messed up

I need to get back into a normal rhythm... whatever normal means. Three weeks in the States, on the other side of the planet, has left me a bit discombobulated. They say that flying east is less of a problem than flying west, and that seems to be true. I'm back on Korean time now. I tried staying up all of yesterday before dropping off into slumberland around 1 or 2 a.m. last night, but all I accomplished was to oversleep. As a result, today has been a lazy nothing of a day, and I have plenty I need to be doing, including starting to sniff around for income streams. I did have an idea or two rattling around in my head; we'll have to see whether those thoughts can be enfleshed and possibly monetized. Sorry to be vague and mysterious about this, but the answer to the future may lie in the past. More on this as it develops.

"Munchausen by proxy"

White Liberal Women in a nutshel pic.twitter.com/0N4WUU87Er

— MERICA MEMED (@Mericamemed) March 17, 2025

Can't spell "nutshell"?

Just how creepy is the AI now?

I wrote the following comment:

The content of the AI discussions, and their flow, seemed fairly natural, but in looking at the "text" of the dialogue through the mind of a scriptwriter, one can sense the machine-like tendency to balance the dialogue, to make the discussion somehow both fair and blandly neutral—cold and lifeless. I'd heard one of these AI "exchanges" some time ago (as you say, this isn't exactly new), and I recall coming away with that same creepy feeling. Even the "um"s start to feel like machine-generated attempts at naturalism. Neither interlocutor has any real "punch" or personality; neither is trying to provoke or otherwise antagonize the other; there's no sense of a potential personality conflict or a wabi-sabi imbalance between the two, e.g., he's the impetuous one while she's the more quietly logical one. Instead, it's just two robots clothed in naturalistic voices, interacting in a way that's ultimately banal, milquetoast, and dead.

There's also a certain relentlessness to the conversation, an artificially unflagging energy displayed by both "interlocutors." It's way too peppy to be real, but this isn't something you can figure out immediately. As you listen, though, it becomes more obvious, at least on a subliminal level. This kind of thing could get really entertaining as regular people start to write their own crazy dialogues using AI voices, changing up accents and cadence and adding all sorts of random, "human" sounds to the dialogue (coughs, hawking, simple nose-breathing, etc.). We'll all become playwrights. As another commenter said, "When AI gets good enough, the actors' guild will be destroyed."

Of course, when everyone jumps in and participates in a thing that's been democratized, we'll also see a distinct jump in the level of banality and mediocrity—which is, ironically, something the AI is already good at. Most humans will simply follow its lead. You have only to look at how internet memes, with their constant display of stupid language gaffes, have promoted the pulverization of English into its most retarded form to see what I'm talking about.

just how stupid are we?

Kyle Rittenhouse:
-Shot rioters to save his life
-$2 million bond, not reduced
-86 days in pre-trail detention

Karmelo Anthony:
-Brought a knife to a track meet
-Got insulted, kiIIed someone
-Bond is reduced to $200k
-12 days in pretrial jail
-Buys new house pic.twitter.com/CvvSTvwilb

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 15, 2025

keto diet and saturated fat—myth(s) debunked

Tyler Fischer does his own bad lip reading

images

Lots of drinking, though. "Diversity-free" is hyphenated.

Anyone notice an imbalance?

Kill it with fire.

Comma. Comma splice.

(Comma.) The era of bases is over. Pull out of Asia, too. We can force-project if needed. Been saying this for years.

Where does the hyphen go?

That a lot of garlic.

You still feeling safe in Peru?

My kingdom for a period.

Those moronic paddles at the SOTU.

What would a spanking look like?

Hyphen. Comma.

Damn. He's all of the Village People!

more 'Murica thoughts

a new friend appears

along with a possible second

Diet sodas in the States have proliferated explosively. Korea can never hope to catch up. While my BochaSweet sodas ended up being so bad that I poured them all down a sink and recycled the cans, I did find one new (to me) variant of zero-sugar Dr. Pepper that I liked: Strawberries & Cream. I like cream soda, which makes me nostalgic for an era I never lived through (namely, the 1950s), but I admit I was a bit trepidatious about diet cream soda. When I tried the Dr. Pepper variant, though, I thought it was pretty good, and the goodness didn't wear out after a few cans. I also enjoyed the American version of Cherry Coke Zero, which ended up being a lot better than the thin stuff they sell here (what a contrast! I'd never have guessed there'd be such a difference). And Mike got me to pay attention to Gosling's Goslings Diet Ginger Beer, a lighter alternative to Bundaberg.

While I stayed at Mike's house during my final nine or so days, I was using a relatively new bed in a bedroom that had belonged to one of the daughters. When I first encountered the bed, I saw that it had been made (made as in "make your bed") in a rather specific manner, so I took some time to learn what was folded into what, what was tucked into where, so as to be able to make the bed myself. In my studio here in Seoul, I rarely bother with making my bed: I have a mattress cover, no sheets, then two blankets to which I'd added a third last month when I stopped with the ondol. I align these covers and throw them onto the mattress; none of the covers droops over the bed's side—only over the bed's foot. So it's not bed-making, per se; what I do amounts to little more than tossing and quickly arranging covers.

The bed at Mike's house, though, had four pillows—two large (for slumber) and two small and decorative; there was a pair of sheets that went underneath the pillows, but done with a frilly fold-back that went horizontally across the bed. The cover was next, and this needed to be both neatly tucked under the pillows and draped over them, with the sheets and the blanket both being tucked at the foot of the bed. It was a lot to remember, and I didn't do a very good job of making my bed every morning (plus, I had to allot myself extra time to do this now-foreign ritual), but I may have gotten better at it as the days passed. On the day I left, though, I asked about whether the bed covers were to be washed, and Mike told me not to bother making the bed; he and the Missus would take care of everything. I shrugged and left a rumpled mess for my hosts.

It was a great bed to sleep in once I convinced myself to crawl under the sheets. I had a few cold nights from sleeping only under the outermost cover, but that was my fault, not anyone else's. After that, though, I slept comfortably.

Using an axe to cut wood in an abortive attempt to get a fire going in a fire pit (it rained that evening, so no fire) showed me how much I'd forgotten about wood-splitting. Playing fetch with the older dog, Penny (my brother David's dog is also named Penny), showed me how weak my throwing arm was; to get any sort of distance, I had to throw sideways. I hope that, as I improve with the heavy clubs, my throwing ability will increase. Club movements are, according to Mark Wildman, based on ancient throwing patterns and rotational movements, all strengthening the core. When I next meet Penny, I hope to be able to launch a ball into the stratosphere. Or at least across the yard before it bounces.

My dad had taught me one specific way to chop wood: with one foot in front of the other, and with the practice swings of the axe always falling short of the target because the actual swing would have enough momentum to carry the axehead into the wood. Mike's wood-chopping posture struck me as wrong (both feet equidistant from the target wood, with the axe carried over and behind the head/back to deliver the blow, executioner-style), and I was all ready to express disagreement, but I kept my silence; while I was in Atlanta between flights, I looked up "proper wood chopping posture" on YouTube and found this from one of my favorite wood-splitters, a painfully cute Canadian lesbian named Nicole with muscular arms and great form, who split wood in exactly the posture Michael was using. So he wasn't wrong, and neither was I. Score another one for pluralism!

At this point, I've done most of the paperwork I'd wanted to do this year. I now have a new US passport, a new US driver's license (with the REAL ID symbol on it), and a new PNC Bank debit card with a US billing address (so I can go back to purchasing movies on Amazon). All that remains to do—and I have to wait until July before I can do it—is to re-renew my F4 visa. You'll recall that I'd renewed it last year, but because I was still on my old US passport at the time, and because that passport had an expiration date of 2025, I was unable to renew the F4 visa beyond the passport's expiration date. Now that I have a new passport that's good for another ten years, I can renew my F4 properly, this time, for its full, three-year term. So that's the last housekeeping item on this particular agenda.

America is not done with me yet.

Ben Shapiro analyzes Trump's address to Congress

March 6:

Some people have been miscalling Trump's speech a State of the Union address (SOTU). It's not; those don't usually happen until a year has passed. This was just "an address to Congress." If it has a more formal name, I'm sure my buddy Mike will pipe up and school me.

the subway has exited the tunnel

It took two or three zesty sessions, but the vile, brown subway did eventually exit the tunnel. I had texted the IT guy around 8 this morning, and I never heard back from him, so I was pretty sure that his visit would happen right as I was lustily squeezing one out while on the throne. And sure enough, there was a knock on the door around 11:45 a.m. while I was in flagrante. Mind you, I live alone, so I have many of the bizarre, difficult quirks of people who live alone. Practically speaking, this means I launch my stercore missiles without closing my bathroom door: I leave it wide open despite its proximity to my apartment's front door (the smell!), not even blocking myself off with a shower curtain. After all, how often is it that I have visitors?

So this dude comes a-knockin' while my ass is a-rockin', and I shout out that I need a minute. I wipe just barely enough to be able to stand like a proper Homo erectus, then try to flush... but I'd forgotten that I had shut off the toilet valve before my trip, so I needed to open it up again. I did that, flushed, then dumped a glug of bleach into the toilet water, but I knew it wouldn't be enough since so much of the bog gas was ambient. I then pulled up my pants (yes: envision the preceding events as happening with my trou around my ankles), closed the bathroom, went over to the door, and let the guy in.

I apologized for having been in the bathroom, but the guy waved it away. His hair, glasses, and posture clued me in that he was a nerdy type often hunched over electronic equipment, so it could've been that my miasma was just a minor circumstantial detail. He got to work on my computer as I explained the problem: I seemed to be connected, and the computer's WiFi-hotspot feature appeared to be functioning because both my laptop and my phone were receiving signal and performing as usual. The guy expressed confusion as he tapped away at my desktop's keyboard: everything seemed to be in order. He opened one of those esoteric windows displaying code and expressed further confusion: everything seemed to be fine, yet my desktop browser's tabs weren't showing any websites. He eventually decided to leave and to come back with his own laptop, saying he'd be back around 3:30 p.m. I thanked him as he left, then immediately went back to the throne to finish what I'd merely begun. While on the pot, I texted my brother David about the incident since he's one of the few people in the world who can appreciate my travails (David own turds have always been of mythical dimensions and proportions). His replies were cheerfully derisive in tone, as I would expect.

I finished, took a shower, and the IT guy called me back around 2 p.m. to ask whether I was using a VPN. I said yes; he said to turn it off and see what happened. Sure enough, the problem cleared up. The man hypothesized that the problem had been with the VPN, not with the computer, and that he no longer needed to make a second visit. I have since turned the VPN back on (I'm trying to hold back all of the evil spirits), and everything still seems to be fine. So if this specific problem ever returns, I'll know to turn the VPN off, then on again.

It can therefore be said that coming home has afforded me at least two types of fulfillment.

everybody loves beef tongue!

I actually really do like beef tongue, at least when it's cooked tender. It's basically a huge hunk of muscle like any other muscle group. It's just the anatomy that's a bit different: there's some peeling involved when you prep it. I had canned beef tongue in France years ago; it came in a nice brown sauce. I'm dying to try some lengua de vaca tacos, with the tongue done up like carne asada. I can't imagine that tasting bad.

home since 7:30 a.m.

My plane arrived in Incheon at around 3:15 this morning (Tuesday the 15th, back on Korean time). There was no trouble connecting in Atlanta, and I had plenty of time between flights; my bags were checked to Incheon, and I didn't have to pass through another layer of security before boarding the flight to Incheon. All I had to do to board that flight was to stand for a biometric photo right at the departure gate. They didn't even look at my passport. I think everything's going to go biometric soon, with China's repressive technology leading the way, and with the West meekly following it. The flight back was uncomfortable as always (one of the hazards of being a big guy in economy class), but I survived just fine. One hitch as I was boarding was a Chinese woman who had planted herself in my seat, 49G. Turns out she was 49H, the middle seat (GHJ, going aisle to window). Luckily, she was nice about the mixup, but she did want to confirm that "H" was in fact the middle seat, so I had to look again at the seat markings to be able to say that, yes, H marked the middle. After landing in Incheon, I had a massive urge to pee and poo while we all stood inside the aircraft and waited for the front-row people to start vacating the plane, but when I finally reached an Incheon Airport restroom, I only peed and farted for whatever reason. I guess the Number Two is saving itself to surprise me later in an unsuspecting moment. I'm currently eating a salad to help the food along the old Peristalsis Railroad. The subway will exit the tunnel in good time.

I've been frustrated by computer problems since my return to my apartment. My desktop Mac paradoxically doesn't have internet, but it's doing just fine as a WiFi hotspot. Go figure. So my laptop (upon which I'm typing this entry) and my cell phone are both fine, siphoning WiFi goodness from the desktop, which itself is not allowing me to see any websites (except for cached images from March 23, right before I'd left for the States). I've contacted the guy who'd set up my internet; I hope he comes by soon. I'm also waiting for a new electric razor to arrive; several things died right before I'd left for the States, including my razor, which literally fell apart on me (the other two casualties were/are my ceiling lights; I need to order two new lights, then call the building repairpeople to come over and install the new LED panels). 

This being a slow day of recovery, I haven't even begun to unpack yet. I do know my current button-down shirt and pants will need a thorough rewashing: on the Atlanta-Incheon flight, we were served a "snack" of "Mediterranean pizza twists," each of us being given a single twist that was mostly pizza crust with a lump of herbed, seasoned cheese in the middle. Bite the cheese, and chunks of it can fall out and roll gleefully down your shirt, as happened to me when the crust ripped unevenly in my Frankenstein-monster teeth. So I arrived in Incheon looking bedraggled and besmirched, but I imagine the Korean passport-control staffers have seen worse. (At least, I hope so.) After passport control and an attempt at a poop in a nearby restroom (alas, as mentioned above, it was only pee that made an appearance), I went down and got my two bags, which came out fairly promptly instead of following the usual Murphy's-Law pattern of being the last ones out. I then got a ticket for the limousine bus out to the Dogok-dong area; it was a bit after 4 a.m. when I got the ticket via a muin (mu + in, lit. no person, i.e., automatic and unstaffed) ticket machine. What I'd really wanted was a destination of Daechi-dong, one stop down from Dogok, but I didn't see Daechi anywhere (as it turned out, the bus did announce the stop). This ticket was for the 6009 bus, the same one that Mike and I had taken together to the airport last year; it actually goes all the way to Gaepo-dong, my precinct, but the one time I got off at the Gaepo stop, I was unable to get a cab in that area, so I ended up walking back to my place, almost two kilometers away. What a slog. That sucked, and I learned my lesson: get off at Daechi or Dogok, then take a cab the rest of the way or, if I'm feeling strong, walk underground and take the subway to Daecheong Station.

The three weeks in the States now feel a bit like a dream, and I'm back in my element despite being jobless. It was good to see my buddy and his loud, chaotic family, all manifesting the American value of ebullient self-expression as opposed to the Korean/East-Asian values of deference, respect, humility, and conformity. It was a treat to feed the Missus' aging mom twice (she'd lost her husband—a very smart, talented, and friendly gent—to pancreatic cancer and its effects not so long ago), first with the Moroccan-inspired chicken, then next with the gyro-thingies (or almost-gyros or whatever). Everyone in the family has quirky taste preferences; my goddaughter hates mushrooms, and Mike's son doesn't like feta cheese or tomatoes. He told me that, the following day, he'd made his own gyro from leftovers, but he'd added pesto, which sounded like an awful clash of flavor profiles to me, but who knows? Maybe it'll be the Next Big Thing. Not that I can afford to complain given my own hangups about onions (more of a texture thing than a question of taste).

Given my limited outings and interactions with the greater Amurrican populace, I didn't get to see any culture-war drama up close, but then again, there was plenty of minor drama always percolating in my buddy's household when the family got together to, say, watch hockey (the Washington Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky's goal-scoring record while I was in America). I go back and forth on the question of whether it's better to be obnoxious but honest or to be politely quiet but constantly backbiting. I've heard Koreans describe themselves as rough around the edges but sincere while the Japanese are urbane but insincere. Is that true? I don't know enough Japanese people to say. The Japanese vlogger Sora the Troll does have a few videos about things the Japanese find distasteful, as well as how they react to outré situations. The Japanese do seem to labor under a lot of social rules.

I got my sea legs back with all of the driving I did—freeway driving, and even some dangerously slalom-y highway along some woodsy, suburban back roads. I did plenty of walking, and while I tried to rein in my baser tendencies to snack, I fell off the wagon many times, with my morning blood-sugar readings over 200 during most of my days in the States. My A1c must be about to commit seppuku. From now until my May doctor's appointment at Samsung Hospital, I'll need to be positively monastic to even hope to get my ruined A1c average down, but I don't have much hope, both because I know I'm still an undisciplined ape (which is most likely what will kill me) and because I know there's only so much a person can do in about a month (my next appointment is on May 23, then there's another on July 11).

Insight: we Americans are generally the pachyderms that the rest of the world makes us out to be. We've learned to get used to a life of overabundance, and we complain that that's somehow insufficient. Our bathroom towels are huge; our food portions are out of control, and the sheer availability of every machine-made food product under the sun is astounding to behold. It really is l'embarras du choix—the burden of choice. I admit I sometimes pine for American-style variety in Western products when I'm browsing through a Korean store's "foreign" or "imported" section, but being confronted with the real thing up close after seven years away was quite an experience. I mean, how many fucking varieties of goddamn trail mix can one convenience store or Walmart have, for Chrissakes? And don't even get me started on varieties of soda and other drinks. It's all carbs, all the time in American stores.

This isn't to say that the American shopper has to buy these bad-for-you things. Plenty of great-quality fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meats are also available in most stores. But purchasing those unhealthy, processed items is very, very easy, and like water, the human character tends to take the easiest and quickest path downhill. If anything, I'm surprised that we as a people aren't fatter and more bovine. As a country, though, we're in a huge rut, and I think we're only beginning to reap the karma of what we've sown for ourselves, even as we hide behind the old "it's a disease/epidemic" shibboleth, as if we weren't actively choosing the path we're collectively on.

From what I saw, Mike's family, at meals, tends to eat pretty healthily. I had plenty of proteins (e.g., thin pork chops) and plenty of salads with leafy greens and oil-vinegar dressings. Yes, there were also carbs in the form of pasta and potato salad, and when I cooked for the family, I added my own carbs to the equation in the form of couscous and flatbread. In terms of drinks for us teetotalers, the house's fridges were stocked with diet drinks and flavored waters, but Mike likes his alcohol, and he's got a bar downstairs featuring mostly the non-carby, distilled drinks. All of these alcohols, though, distilled or not, can contribute to fatty-liver disease (look up "distilled alcohol consumption and fatty liver" on Google). Meanwhile, we teetotalers aren't off the hook: as long as we over-ingest carbs and keep snacking, we too can eventually suffer from NAFLD: non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease. According to Dr. Sten Ekberg, scientists decades ago were startled to discover this phenomenon in carb-consuming children, then they turned their attention to adults and saw the phenomenon among them, too.

Americans generally remain more polite to strangers than Koreans are. In Korea, a lot depends on social roles. Today, for example, after I got off the limousine bus at Dogok and walked closer to Daechi to a taxi stand, the taxi driver who stopped for me turned out to be a very polite, solicitous individual who helped me both stow my bags in the back of the cab and take them out at the very end—all with a kind smile. Our social roles were clear; politeness and solicitude were called for. It felt good to return to Korea with that sort of treatment, and to know that kindness is possible wherever one might go. But when it comes to the usual questions of, say, holding doors or saying "I'm sorry" or "excuse me" or not walking in front of someone else's line of sight, Americans win hands down because Koreans, like most East Asians, just don't give a shit. It's not that East Asians are being actively rude; it's more that these considerations just aren't on their radar. The result, though, looks and feels rude on balance. But I've heard complaints about American rudeness from Koreans who've lived in America; Americans do things that Koreans find rude quite without realizing it, so this discussion of rudeness isn't going to be over any time soon.

All in all, though, post-COVID, Trump Round 2 America felt more like a foreign country to me this time around. That may be more a result of my own internal changes than anything else, but the net effect is that I'm increasingly coming to see South Korea as my home. Yes, this is despite my complaints and my rants and my neverending misgivings about peninsular life and culture. What keeps me in Korea is that the good generally outweighs the bad, and maybe it's also partly that I enjoy my outsider status whenever I find myself in Korea or France or Switzerland. Upshot: it's good to be back in the world I know, however strange or off-putting it can be at times. That said, there's still sadness about leaving a friend.

Here's a pic that kind of represents the sad mood I was in when I took it:

my buddy Mike's empty seat at his office desk in Historic Fredericksburg

It occurred to me that I hadn't thought to take pictures of Mike's family: his wife, his two daughters, and his son. Mike did, however, get the idea to take one last selfie at Dulles Airport on the day I departed, so here it is (sent from Mike's phone):

friends since third grade (초등 3, for my non-Yank peeps)

Mike and I have both had minor strokes now; on top of that, I had a miraculously survived heart attack last year, and I've been diagnosed with heart failure, so I have no idea how long my personal party is going to last. We're both planning to walk the final 100-some kilometers of the Camino de Santiago, the French Way (el camino francés), when we turn 60 in 2029. If I'm still around then, of course. I've told Mike of my intention to walk the entire 800-some kilometers of the camino francés later on; we'll see whether I'm in any shape to keep that promise. Meanwhile, there are other paths to be walked, and when one road ends, another begins. For as with friendships, the road goes ever on and on.