mixer activity: unmixed

I suppose it was bound to happen. A few days ago, for test design purposes, I made a command decision and restructured my mixer exercise (for background, refer to this previous meditation on the mixer quiz): a student now signs her paper, gives it to her partner, and then keeps that partner for the duration of the activity.

The bad news: what I have is no longer a mixer.

The good news: a much-improved format for testing that eliminates many of the cheating- and confusion-related problems inherent in previous mixers.

The original mixer format is still viable for class activities, but for tests, I'll be sticking to the one-partner concept. I made two other changes as well:

1. Only one partner at a time has a test sheet. This makes it very clear to the students that the speaker must speak and not write anything. When both partners have mixer papers in front of them, both partners also have pens and pencils. Instead of talking, many partners quietly reach across to their test papers and scribble a correction, or even an entire answer.

2. Mixer tests are distributed in two versions: A and B. Yes, it means more work for me when it's time to create tests, but I think it's worth it because it keeps nearby students from eavesdropping.

Again, these changes to the mixer are purely for tests-- not for regular mixer activities, where the ambience is more relaxed and a bit of chaos is actually desirable.

What I absolutely want to avoid is the sort of exam where an English conversation student spends half a semester speaking in class, and then is suddenly confronted with a written exam. My mixer exam has a writing component, to be sure, but the person doing the writing is not the student being tested: it's the student's partner, whose sole function is to take dictation. If the partner makes a mistake in writing down an utterance, it's up to the speaker to tell her partner what correction needs to be made. The speaker can't reach for a pen or an eraser to make the correction in silence.

While the format still isn't perfect (what format is?), today proved that I've hit upon a reliable testing method. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I teach four Level 1 classes. The classes are of different sizes and collective temperaments, which meant, earlier today, that the newly redesigned test would face four different environments. Result: the new test worked like a charm in all four classes. Student questions about how to take the test were few to nonexistent, and now that I've graded the test papers, I'm seeing student results that dovetail fairly well with my own impression of each student's proficiency. (I had a suspicion that, with previous versions of the mixer test, grades may have been somewhat inflated.) This time around, we saw something like a bell curve: a lot more Bs and C, only a few As, and one or two Ds. No Fs, fortunately.

The test also takes less time now. A true mixer involves quite a bit of Brownian motion as students buzz around the classroom seeking partner after partner. By chaining each test-taker to a single partner, we cut down on motion, streamline the process, and introduce a lot more focus to the activity.

An additional benefit of all these changes is that I can finally address one of the most egregious flaws of the mixer format: namely, the absence of a listening component on the test. An English conversation class will inevitably cover all four macroskills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but a disproportionate priority will, as is only proper, be placed on the first two skills. My previous mixer exams allowed a student to speak, but because the speaker's partner was silent, and because the speaker's utterance was prompted by something written on a sheet of paper, there was no true listening involved.

I now have 10-15 extra minutes in a given testing hour, so I'm free to whip out the pre-fab audio test components that accompany our textbook. They're specifically designed for quizzing and testing. The listening comprehension section of my new test involves a dialogue (on audio CD) followed by multiple choice questions. While I normally avoid multiple choice like the plague, I think it's fine for listening comp on the test: not so different from what students normally encounter when taking TOEIC and TOEFL tests.

I might improve upon the listening section in successive versions of my increasingly streamlined exam (perhaps students will hear a question and write a short rejoinder, for instance), but for now, multiple choice listening comp is better than no listening comp at all.

In all, not a bad day for testing.


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say again?

I'll be posting later on about improvements I made to my mixer exam, which ran quite smoothly today (and is, arguably, no longer a true "mixer"). Am currently grading papers, but I ran across one gem. A student wrote, in response to the question, "What is your favorite main course?":

My favorite main course is a lip.

She meant "ribs."

Another student professed her love of "robster."

Good Friday is not a bad time to be eating robster in the name of our Rord.


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this is my PEE-PEE PLACE!

How the hell did I miss Retarded Animal Babies?!? Holy shit!


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your Star Wars fix

It's the fan film George Lucas will never want to see: a hilarious retelling of "Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" can be found here. The production is Polish, if I'm not mistaken, and full of pop culture references that Americans and Brits will recognize right away, including a running gag based on an infamous Monty Python skit, and a very queeny C-3PO. No lightsabers, but plenty of laughs, and lots of dead "Jedi kids."


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it goes to show you never can tell

I played two of my standard "trust" exercises with my Tues/Thurs 9am conversation class today. They'd just been through about 70 minutes of review for their midterm exam next Tuesday, and in the remaining 20 minutes I wanted to do something relaxing.

The second exercise, which I'll talk about first, was a fairly simple Total Physical Response-style activity: we built an obstacle course out of chairs; a student would close her eyes and be guided verbally through the obstacle course by another student, who would have to issue commands like, "Take one step forward," or "Step sideways, to your right," or "Turn left!"*

When it was my turn to go through the course, I loudly declared to the students, who had had a difficult time of making it through the obstacle course, "Now you get your revenge!" We added a few more chairs to make the course more complex, and then I was at the students' mercy. Quite fun.

The first exercise, also based on trust but not really about conversation, produced some surprising results. I don't know the formal name for this exercise, but it involves people standing in a circle, with one person in the center of the circle. The person in the middle hugs herself, closes her eyes, and relaxes-- feet planted, ankles loose-- allowing herself to fall like a felled tree in any direction. The people encircling her have to be standing close, and when the "tree" falls toward anyone in the circle, that person gently pushes the tree away, in another direction. The tree, if fully relaxed, can end up being passed around the inner edge of the circle, or bouncing back and forth among the circle members like a weird sort of tetherball. The exercise continues for about thirty seconds, then another person goes into the center and the previous tree now joins the circle.

People in the circle have to be alert to the tree's approach. Their hands have to be ready, and when they push the tree away, they can't do it with too much force, or they'll cause the tree to topple. The exercise is conducted in relative silence, and when done right, can be extremely relaxing for the person in the center.

Today, most of us were tentative, and a few of us toppled, stumbling out of the circle (no one hit the floor). What surprised me was that the most introverted girl in the class proved to be the most trusting participant, abandoning herself totally to the gentle pressure of various hands on her shoulders, arms, and upper back. She never once stiffened, never once made a sound. She simply went with the motion, a blissful reed in a warm and welcome wind.

I never would have suspected that this girl would be so trusting, but there she was, eyes closed, a huge smile on her face. I was impressed. And I was obviously wrong about her.

(By the way, this is the same group of students to whom I insisted that vinegar was bitter, not sour. Must be my week for getting things wrong, eh?)

---

*As you might guess, this TPR exercise can be modified all sorts of ways to teach very practical verbs. You can make a game of it as one student guides another blindfolded student to a tabletop laden with various objects for her to lift, hand (to someone), fold, roll up, unroll, throw, put on X, slide under Y, put inside Z, etc. Phrasal verbs like "reach over," "pull out," etc., can be practiced this way, and the exercise provides invaluable preposition practice (in, out, under, through, to the right of, next to, etc.).

Although I haven't tried it yet, I think you could do blindfolded TPR exercises where students have to, say, put something together (to make a collage, for example, or to assemble a specific style of Lego house).

I wouldn't advise giving blindfolded students the goal of cooking something, though. Don't bring "realia" like frying pans, spatulas, and gas burners to class unless you're into burnt hair and shrieking.


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Ave, Sperwer!

Check out Sperwer for more mudoblogging, here and here.

I keep hoping that a group of expats will form a mudoblogging circle. There isn't nearly enough martial arts shop talk in our neck of the e-woods.


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is vinegar sour or bitter?

Perhaps I should retire from language teaching. What appeared to be a minor disagreement with my students turned into an all-out war for the universe itself, and I lost.

The question that sparked the war: If, in teaching the difference between the words sour and bitter, you create a two-column chart with "sour" as one heading and "bitter" as the other, where would you place the following items:

taste of lemon
taste of vinegar
taste of unsweetened chocolate
taste of hanyak (often harsh-tasting Chinese medicine)
taste of unsweetened cinnamon
taste of unsweetened grapefruit

?

Me, I would place lemon and grapefruit under the "sour" category, and everything else would go under "bitter." How about you?

My Level 1 students saw me draw my chart and place the above items in each category, but they looked at each other when I wrote vinegar under "bitter."

"We say vinegar is sour," one student from my Thursday morning class timidly offered.

"NO!" I boomed. "Vinegar is bitter!"

Ultimately regretting my outburst, I decided to research the matter at home. It seems I'm wrong-- or at most, only partially right.

Looking up sour and bitter in the online dictionaries proved useless. The definitions in most online resources are unhelpful. The fact that sour and bitter substances produce roughly the same facial reaction is also an unhelpful guide to distinguishing the two tastes.

But according to the online Webster's, vinegar is defined thus:

a sour liquid obtained by fermentation of dilute alcoholic liquids and used as a condiment or preservative

Sour.

Most shitticularly shittical, that.

Not about to give up that easily, I took a leaf from Charles's book, brought the matter to GoogleFight, and got the following results:

"sour vinegar" = 11,300 results
"bitter vinegar" = 378 results

For those of you who don't know, placing your search string in quotation marks forces Google to search for exactly that search string, and not for permutations and combinations. With a mere 378 results to back me up, I am forced to concede defeat: even in the anglophone world, vinegar is generally considered sour. And now, like a grumbling, hissing Gollum, I must return to my nasssty little studentses, head hung low, and confess that I was... disastrously wrong.

FUCK.

Speaking of "fuck," people have been linking to Masamania's hilarious photoblog of a Japanese "dick festival." Try to hold down your lunch when you see the older white dude wearing a Japanese loincloth the wrong way, such that a pair of somethings is visible. Masa's commentary about the whole thing is hilarious.


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postal scrotum: Satan is a Korean woman (?)

Chris writes re: my dad--

Kevin:

I am a long-time reader of your blog.

I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of those wishing your father well. I am an older guy and had the same thing happen to me here in the Land of the Not Quite Right. Since I am writing this I guess everything turned out ok. During the whole horrible event one thing happened that I seem unable to forget...

My wife and the doctor were talking next to my bedside while I was flying on the morphine they gave me and I heard him say, “You’d better prepare for a funeral.” (I guess the doctor thought my white skin precluded me from being able to understand Korean.) Then a few minutes later he opens my closed eyelid and shines a bright white light in my eye!!! First, I hear I am going to die and then the next thing I see is a bright white light. Scared the shit outta me! I thought Holy shit, this is it! Then he took the light away and I saw a very ugly woman (who I later realized was a nurse) standing over me. I remember thinking, Shit! Satan is an ajumma! I knew it! I just fucking knew it!

After I came to my senses, and was assured by the pain in my chest that I wasn’t dead – yet, I was wheeled into the OR and had the same procedure as your father. One thing your dad has going for him is a Korean wife. I'll tell you what, if you want to stay on a diet and have to take care of yourself, there is nothing better than having a Korean drill sergeant - uhhh I mean wife, making sure you stick to the program. I know it helped me get religion about my health real fast.

Anyways, another reason I wrote is that while looking at your latest post I noticed that Hyeon-jeong was next to you in 10 of the photos. It made me go hmmmmmm. Is there something you’re not telling your faithful readers? Hmmmmmm.

Best of luck to you and your family. I hope your dad gets back on his feet in record time. Keep the updates coming. I really enjoy reading about your adventures/misadventures.

Take care.

Chris

I already replied to Chris directly about the student, but since others have written in wondering aloud about the same thing: she's a student, and an undergrad at that. There is nothing between us. Besides, she has a boyfriend.



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DadWatch: home from the hospital

Around 11am today, I called home. That would be about 10pm the previous day in DC. Dad's now back from the hospital, though he'll have to return there for rehab. He's forbidden from lifting anything over 10 pounds for the next week or so. He's under a few other restrictions, too.

Dad sounded strong on the phone, even cheerful. We have high hopes that he'll make a speedy recovery. One thing Dad mentioned was that, psychologically, it's initially hard for a heart attack victim to take seriously that he's just been through a real, bona fide heart attack. I understand: I'm still unable to believe it. We'll have to deal with the crushing realization later, I suppose, when it truly hits us.

This will be the last DadWatch post: I doubt Dad would like for his every move to be displayed on the blog. Therapy-- not to mention dignity-- flourishes when there's a modicum of privacy.

Again, many thanks to all the personal friends and e-friends who've sent us their concerns and well-wishes. Our family appreciates your thoughts, your kindness, your prayers, and all the other good vibes you've sent our way.


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hurray for crazy people!

Last night's trip into a bakery (no pastries-- I swear upon my tarantula's grave) was punctuated by a visit from a youngish, possibly homeless guy. He was wearing some sort of overlarge windbreaker; he had a black beard (a modest Korean-style one, not the kind you'd find on Grizzly Adams) and a wide, dark blue headband. I thought he was a local artist at first, since many male Korean artists distinguish themselves from regular guys by growing beards.

He wasn't an artist. He was a crazy dude. I had apparently walked in on some sort of passive-aggressive confrontation between the bakery's female nighttime manager and Crazy Dude. The latter began hawking up some phlegm, and just as he was about to launch it, the manager yelled at him. Crazy Dude immediately whipped out a well-used handkerchief and gallantly said, "Don't worry-- this will be very clean," or something to that effect. Then he loudly expectorated into the cloth and pocketed his handkerchief.

Crazy Dude then noticed me standing there and, over the manager's commands of "Nagaseyo" (please leave), he addressed me in startlingly good English. At that point, I decided I'd pretend only to speak and understand French.

I can't remember exactly what he said, but I think it went something like, "Please don't mind that lady behind the counter. She has some sort of mental complex. It has nothing to do with me." He also said he was the son of some high official-- again, I can't remember who. For all I know, he could have been referring to someone from the Koryo Dynasty.

I kept my eyes resolutely forward, toward the harassed-looking manager, who was ringing up my purchase. Crazy Dude, tiring of his game, left. I left soon after, and didn't see Crazy Dude anywhere outside. Strange.

You see a lot of unhinged people in Seoul. I imagine the same would be true in a large American city like New York. I'm from the DC area, and we have a substantial homeless problem. A lot of those folks are plain nuts, and in need of help. This dude I saw last night, though... there was something wily about him. I have to wonder how nutso he really was. I got a strange feeling that he was playing for laughs as much as anything else. All we needed was a camera crew from a reality TV series.

More crazies! We need more crazies!


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Kevin pulls a Shatner

According to Star Trek legend, you can tell what time of year it was when a given episode of the 1960s-era "Star Trek" TV series was filmed. How? The key is to watch William Shatner's gut. There were times when the captain of the Enterprise wore a girdle to keep himself from spilling out all over Sulu and Chekov. A slim Shatner meant warm weather. A puffier Shatner meant colder weather. Thin... puffed. Thin... puffed. Thin... puffed. And so it went, right up to the 1970s. A more reliable harbinger of seasonal change, there never has been.

Until now.

Behold:

What you see above is Kevin in April 2005 versus April 2006. I'm doing my patented double-chin-hiding technique in the first picture (and failing), but it's still obvious that my face was substantially thinner last year. Plus: I had a neck. Or at least a neck-like connection between my torso and my head.

A neckoid.

Over the course of time, as our satellite photo reveals, the neckoid has been absorbed in a facial tectonic shift as my double chin makes its move in the battle to dominate my face. And it appears to be succeeding. Note, too, that I've sprouted a dog in the interim. Doctors have informed me that dogs are a normal side effect of weight gain, and they go away once you start dieting and exercising.

In April 2007, we can expect a total takeover-- a face showing nothing but chin. Here, for your edification, is an artist's rendition of what that takeover will look like:



When that day comes... bolt on your titanium jock straps.


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soon to appear on my sidebar

CHAPTER ONE

Although no one's accused me of this (probably because I periodically repeat my refrain about not being either liberal or conservative), I sometimes feel I don't have enough liberal-leaning Koreablogs on my sidebar. I've got plenty of left-leaning bloggers in general slapped up on the gallery, but most of the Koreabloggers listed there skew decidedly rightward, which is, perhaps, a fair reflection of where the American wing of the expat Koreablogosphere leans.

In the liberal spirit of affirmative action, then, I plan to include a blog already noticed and registered by most Koreabloggers: Michael Hurt's leftie Scribblings of the Metropolitician. The blog is well-written, intelligent, and thorough-- reminiscent of Charles's Liminality, not so much in terms of style and tone, but in terms of underlying conscientiousness-- something often missing in the quickly tossed-out posts written by so many bloggers (including yours truly), and therefore a valued commodity among writers who care about the craft of writing as much as they care about the mere act of communicating information.

I'm also eager to blogroll Michael because he shares with me (and Charles, and others on my blogroll) a love of interdisciplinary approaches to questions, and he handles his topics much more systematically, not to mention more gracefully, than I do. Two fantastic examples of what I mean are currently visible on Michael's blog:

1. Why Korea Needs Star Trek, which explores basic differences between Korean and American culture through the lens of each culture's appreciation (or lack thereof) of Star Trek, and

2. The Gates of the Minjok, a post hailed by several bloggers as a "must-read" piece, which it is, not least because Michael gets to put on his historian's cap and show he's actually learned a thing or two.

It's not as though Michael needs any hits from my blog; if the guy writes this well and is also being invited to "virtual parties" for Lap-POP events, then he's probably rakin' in the numbers. I'm blogrolling him, as always, for my own selfish reasons.

I should note that I don't necessarily agree with all that PoMo jargon Michael uses (or, more precisely, the jargon doesn't agree with me). I used to use those terms, too, after I'd taken a scriptural hermeneutics course. Didn't realize how much I'd been brainwashed. But the PoMo jargon's presence isn't enough to distract me from the fact that Michael runs a good, solid blog.

[Note to Michael: once you're more than a few years away from academe, you'll suddenly snap out of it and start using normal English again. Terms like alterity and totalizing metanarrative and différance* and all that other Derridean, Lacanian, Baudrillardian, Foucaultian, blame-the-West bullshit to come out of the academic Left's sphincter-- those terms will all fade into the recesses of distant memory.]

So: coming soon-- a sidebar image for Scribblings of the Metropolitician, a sturdy alloy of blogological style and substance.

CHAPTER TWO

Little did I know that the formerly mysterious author of Sound of a Dog Eating Grass was none other than Todd Thacker of OhMyNews International (OMNI), the very same gent who interviewed me back when the MIC censorship was going on (see that article here).

Todd's an extremely busy man. His blog, of necessity, gets the short end of the stick because, well, Todd's journalism is what pays the bills.

He is, however, looking for encouragement to continue blogging. If you've read Todd's articles in OMNI, you know he's a fine writer. You may also be aware that Todd's an editor at OMNI. With writing, editing, deadlines, and travel, Todd probably needs a good verbal ass-kicking to pick up the blogging pace. That, after all, is the Korean way: Show no sympathy for the overworked. Instead, make them work even harder.

Jerjerrod: The Emperor is coming here?
Vader: That is correct, Commander. And he is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress.
Jerjerrod: We shall double our efforts!
Vader: I hope so, Commander, for your sake. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.

So go visit Todd's blog. Read his latest post about home being where the heart is. Leave a comment. Command him to continue posting. Threaten to shove a splintery broomstick up his ass if he slacks off with the blogging. Todd's a calm, seemingly laid-back guy, so he needs to be confronted with something dire, like the prospect of a bloody asshole, if we're to get him moving.

Todd's blog will also be on the sidebar soon.

---

*Deliberately spelled with "-ance" at the end and not "-ence" to make a semantic point, which I won't get into here, but which I think I've blogged about elsewhere.


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DadWatch: talked with The Man Himself

I finally got hold of Dad in his room at Alexandria Hospital, and we talked for about 20 minutes. Dad sounds like a man who's been in bed a while, which I suppose is normal when you have been in bed a while. But he seems happy with how the cardiac procedure went: he was even able to witness part of it. Dad says there's no pain now, and earlier on, Mom conjectured that this procedure might allow Dad to sleep better at night (he'd been breathing with difficulty, a sign that things weren't good). Dad'll be leaving the hospital on Monday, but he and the docs have to discuss rehab in detail.

Sounds already like Dad'll be on a fairly strict regimen in terms of diet, exercise, and stress reduction. I don't know the particulars of the regimen (am not even sure they've been fleshed out), but I'm hopeful that Dad, who claims to have "learned his lesson," will follow it faithfully.

As Mom did, Dad has asked me to lose weight and take care of my body. Getting fit was one of my four major resolutions for 2006, and it's still early in the year. My friend Max has occasionally and politely mentioned fitness issues, as have my coworkers-- the Korean women in particular have been blunt with me about perceived weight gain (I'd have to agree: my time at Smoo has been good to me). My French friend Dominique, who saw pictures of Saturday's picnic, skirted the issue of weight by emailing:

Au fait, je trouve que tu n'as pas changé, toujours aussi jeune le Kevin, c'est bien!

Translation: "By the way, I don't think you've changed-- still the same young Kevin, that's great!"

What a polite guy. This same Dominique, who is a nearly pro-level tennis player, once told me years ago, during a less sympathetic moment, "Kevin, on ne voit même pas ta mâchoire!"-- "Kevin, we can't even see your jawline!", which was a reference to my double chin and the padding around my cheeks (facial cheeks, I mean).

So-- outpourings of concern seem to be flowing in every direction. It's just like Dad to express concern even as he's lying in bed, post-heart attack. I guess those of us not taking care of ourselves should take all of this as a big hint that Something is Not Right and that Something Should Be Done About the Situation. While it's easy to realize, intellectually, that Something Should Be Done, moving from intellectual realization to true, from-the-heart action is a difficult thing.

Maybe it's time to review those New Year's resolutions once again, time to hold myself to certain promises. Now there's something I've never done before: review resolutions.

Here they are.

And on that note, we now-- somewhat tentatively-- edge into the new week.

Night, all.


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DadWatch: good news(plus picnic pics)

Once again, many thanks to the people who have called and emailed and left comments expressing care and concern. My family and I appreciate your kind thoughts.

Because I don't want to tease the drama out, I'll be direct and start off with the good news: it sounds like Dad's going to be OK. I haven't spoken with him directly yet, but I've been in regular phone, email, and IM contact with my mother, my brother David, and my buddy Mike, who is acting as a surrogate Kevin because I can't be in northern VA.

There was some question, at first, as to whether Dad had had a heart attack. The official answer, after a stress test and catheterization, is yes. Dad did his stress test at Mount Vernon Hospital, and was then moved to Alexandria Hospital for the catheterization. Two 90% arterial blockages were discovered, which is scary, to say the least, but not unique to Dad: other folks have been through this problem. Two stents were inserted into Dad's arteries after the blockages had been removed.

Dad's no stranger to surgery: many, many years ago, he went under the knife to remove a mess of varicose veins (a direct result of his ticket counter job at Northwest Airlines, a job that required Dad to be on his feet most of the time). That left him with 91 stitches, and freaked me out as a kid: it was weird to see string woven into skin. Dad also had to undergo surgery after a nasty car accident in 1997, when his Toyota Minivan was struck by a drunk driver's car going in the opposite direction. That accident cost Dad a small chunk of his knee and the ability to run. So Dad's something of a surgery vet.

His latest hospital encounter is somewhat baffling to us, because Dad's not fat, nor does he drink, nor does he smoke. I've been assured that even apparently healthy 64-year-olds can suffer arterial blockages, perhaps in part for genetic reasons. We carry our inheritance with us wherever we go. Both of Dad's parents had heart issues, I think.

Mom has been a real trouper. Along with taking care of Dad and his insurance paperwork, she's coordinating a huge, 1000-person event happening on Sunday, DC time: a concert being sponsored by the Korean women's society of which she is president until June (it's been a long year for Mom). Remember my previous blogs, long ago, about trying to find Ahn Ik-t'ae's "Korea Fantasy"? That event. That's what Mom's been working on. Many people, including Dad, had been pitching in to make the event happen. And with Dad's heart attack (I still can't believe I typed that phrase-- Dad's heart attack... sounds so unreal), Mom is deprived of a crucial aide-de-camp. Luckily, my brother David has taken up the slack.

David has also been great about calling me with updates on Dad. He's given me various phone numbers to call, and managed to keep his head during a crisis. David is the one son who decided to remain in the northern Virginia area; I went to Seoul and Sean, the youngest, is a professional musician in Toronto.

I'm feeling guilty about being far away, especially because I remember a conversation I'd had with my Korean buddy about a year ago, in which he said he could never consider working outside Korea. Why? He'd be too worried about his parents' needs. Many Westerners can't relate to this attitude (to be fair, many others can), but it's a perfectly natural Korean sentiment.

As I mentioned earlier, I have yet to talk to Dad, but will try to do so this evening, which will be Sunday morning, DC time. Dad's supposed to remain in hospital until Monday. He'll have to go back for followups, of course. We're not out of the woods yet.

While there are other issues going on, I won't blog about those right now. Instead, I'd like to show some pics of yesterday's yellow-dust-tinged picnic (and stroll) at Seoul Grand Park. It was a good day. I decided not to tell the students about Dad; it would have killed their own joy, and their joy was something I really needed yesterday.

I think just about everyone in our group had brought a camera (Asians are now genetically engineered to be born with them), so literally hundreds of pics were snapped. Some of my students tended to focus on the people; others focused on the zoo animals at the park (Seoul Grand Park has a fairly large, spread-out zoo; not as big as the National Zoo in DC, but pretty impressively sized and stocked). The pics I'll be showing you come from a more people-focused student, so Nathan will have to wait for pictures of the Siberian tiger. (I don't think anyone got a good shot of it, anyway, Nathan.)

First picture:

Above: me and the irrepressible Hyeon-jeong. The girl's a nut. She's heading off to China for a year-long study program after she graduates from college (she's a senior). She's looking for a career in business, but I think she'd be great as an actress.

Next up--




Splendor among the flowers. The apparent cloudiness is the result of hwang-sa, the yellow (and possibly radioactive) dust from China. It originates in the Chinese deserts, blows across the country, sweeping a good bit of atmospheric filth along with it, and blows across the Korean peninsula. Yesterday's bout with hwang-sa (reported by all manner of Koreabloggers) was apparently one of the worst in collective expat memory. Quite a few expats said something along the lines of, "This is the worst dust I've seen in ten or fifteen years." I was, strangely, unaffected by the dust, but my students eventually began complaining of nose and eye and throat problems.

Moving along...




Seon-hyae and me. She's a few years older than her classmates, perhaps around 30. The students joked that we looked like we were on honeymoon. This became something of a running joke during our day together. You'll see why.

We're standing close to the park's entrance. Seoul Grand Park is a large, sprawling affair. Seoul Land, an amusement park (or t'aema p'a-keu as they say in Korean, bowing to the pronunciation of the original Greek word for "theme"), is next to the Grand Park, and not far off is the National Gallery of Modern Art. There were a lot of people at the park yesterday, which surprised some of the students. I merely commented, "Bleh... it's the weekend."

And now--




The picnic itself. Above you see (left to right) Sae-ra, Eun-jeong, Ji-su, Hyeon-jeong, and yours truly. Seon-hyae took the pic. Another member of our group, Seon-ju, arrived too late to eat: she somehow got it in her head that we were meeting at Seoul Children's Grand Park, which is... very much elsewhere.

Observant people will note how staged the above picture is. Sae-ra, who's in the foreground and wearing glasses, is holding one of my Euro-sandwiches to her mouth, but the sandwich is completely wrapped in plastic.

The sandwiches got generally good reviews, though poor Ji-su (pink cap, above) was overwhelmed by the butter, cheese, and salami.

Which reminds me:

Simple Euro Sandwich (serves 6)
(based on sandwiches I've eaten in Switzerland and France)

2 full-length baguettes
1 package thinly sliced Genoa salami (about 500g)
2 large wedges of brie cheese (250g total)
butter

Allow brie and butter to achieve room temperature. Cheese purists often insist that all cheeses are best eaten at room temperature, and I generally agree (strangely, American cheese is the grand exception for me; I prefer it cold or melted in a grilled cheese sandwich).

Slice baguettes into thirds (or make your sandwiches and then slice into thirds) across the long axis. Split each chunk of bread along the long axis and peel open (don't slice all the way through).

Spread soft butter over one slice of bread in each sandwich (not both! are you nuts?).

Spread the brie over the other slice.

Layer in a modest number of salami slices (I used six slices per sandwich, which is puny by American standards, but quite normal in European sandwiches). Fold sandwich closed.

Eat.


Next pic:




Above: Seon-hyae and Sae-ra. Girls are so good at making themselves look shy and cute.

And then--




I wonder whether American parks feature a ha-t'eu (heart) for couples and families to take their pics. It's such a tacky thing to stick in a park, but I have to say it provided lots of comedy for us, not to mention another "honeymoon" shot. See the next pic:




Above: it's all over but the signing of the marriage certificate and the "I do"s.

In the next picture we see...




Hyeon-jeong, me, and our three children: two humans, one pachyderm. The elephant and I have a lot in common. We're large, we eat a lot, and our shits come out about the same size.

The girls were very turned off by the smell of the zoo animals. Some of the girls who had been sucking on lollipops had to stop until we'd walked to an odor-free zone. I was loving it, quite enjoying both the odeur champêtre and my students' discomfort. Having worked on a farm in France and knowing what's it's like to be splattered by runny shit from a nearby cow, I have no trouble standing around animal stench. While I'm not at my best around farm animals (unless we're talking farm dogs... I love those), I'm at peace with nature's brutal smells.

Next up:




A tiger weighs me and finds me wanting.





Above: the rest break. Although the park is fairly level, with only a few hills, the girls claimed they were pooped after a couple hours' walking, so we plopped down on some benches.

Now, here's something strange:




After a review of the shot on the digicam's miniature screen, the students labeled the above photo "Psycho Photo" because we're all (except for Hyeon-jeong, who looks uncharacteristically serious) doing something goofy.

Et ensuite...




Above: the ski lift ride. When we first came up to the park's entrance, we bought the 7000-won "package," which includes (1) park admission, (2) one ski lift ride, and (3) zoo admission. I'm still not sure I understand the distinction between the park and the zoo, but we crossed through a ticket barrier somewhere, so I suppose the distinction is real. The ski lift trundled along at a safe, leisurely pace; we even had safety netting beneath us. Hyeon-jeong and I talked about her immediate, after-graduation plans, then we had the above pic snapped by Seon-hyae, who was in the car with Sae-ra, behind us. I'm giving my best "I'm in the lift with a madwoman!" look. The huge panel ad on our butts reads, "Uri (Our) Home Shopping."

What follows is a pic taken at the giraffe area. No giraffes in this shot, but you get to see us. Note that tiny little Ji-su is gone: she had to leave early to go meet some other friends. Sadness.




The above photo reminded the girls of a tree-- me as the trunk, the girls as the branches. An interesting metaphor for teacher and students.

And now, a subway shot:




It's the end of our day together. Sae-ra is on the other side of the tracks, waiting for a train in the opposite direction. We've had fun looking at all the animals (maybe another student will send me pics of the tigers and one hilarious bear, who at some moments looked as if he were about to give a speech) and just being together. For me, it was therapeutic, given how emotionally draining the weekend has been. And as always, it was good to be with my favorite group of young ladies. I wish them all well.

One final shot of Hyeon-jeong shouting something across the tracks to Sae-ra:




Hyeon-jeong's a nut, and I mean that as a compliment. She's got enough personality for any five women.

---

Again, many thanks to all of you for writing in and/or calling. It looks as though life can move forward again, though perhaps now at a more cautious pace. My mother focused some of her anxiety on me, too: she commanded me to take better care of my body. So yesterday's picnic might represent the last time I enjoy baguette sandwiches. At least for a while.

Wish my Dad luck as he recovers. Along with helping Mom in her capacity as Korean women's society president, Dad's been taking night courses toward certification as a civilian paramedic (he'd already done the training through the military). On Wednesday evening, despite a lot of knee pain (from his 1997 accident), he passed his midterm practical and knowledge examinations with flying colors. Unlike some students in the class who are half his age, Dad hasn't washed out yet. I don't know how he's going to handle the rest of his semester, or even whether he'll be allowed to continue, but we'll take events one at a time for now. It's enough to think about the next moment, let alone the next month.

Wish Mom luck, too, as she gears up for her big day. This is the culmination of her presidency (she finishes in June, but this is the last major event), and we're all very proud of her. To have the strength to do what she's doing now-- what with absent sons and a husband on the mend-- is nothing short of admirable.

Mom's only an occasional reader of this blog, and while Dad's a regular reader, he's laid up right now and not able to access the Net. Nevertheless, I just wanted to say:

I love you, Mom and Dad.

What a way to begin the 40th year of marriage, eh? There'd better be a huge celebration planned for next year's 40th on April 6th.


_

Dad in hospital

[NB: This blog is on hold as far as other types of posting go. Check the bottom of this entry for brief, periodic updates.]

I've been hesitant to write about this, given the (for once) truly personal nature of the topic, but will do so as a courtesy to explain why future blogging might be erratic to nonexistent, at least for a while.

Last night, a bit before 1am, Seoul time, I received a call from my little brother David that our dad had experienced incapacitating chest pains. Tough guy that he is, Dad apparently wanted to drive himself to the hospital, but it was too much. He gave up in the middle of putting on his shoes and called for an ambulance.

I spoke to Mom on the phone last night; it was about lunchtime in the northern Virginia area, and she was at the hospital filling out insurance paperwork. Dad's staying in hospital and will be undergoing cardiac catheterization on Saturday. There is a less-than-1% chance that the procedure might go wrong and even be fatal, so I'll be focusing on the 99-plus-percent chance that everything will be fine. The catheterization will determine whatever heart abnormalities there might be.

Am reluctant to say more right now. It's Saturday morning in Seoul; I'm supposed to go out with students today for a picnic, and I don't plan on telling them about Dad. Instead, I'll be wearing my game face.

Thanks, Dear Reader, for understanding.

---

UPDATE, 4/8, 6:30pm: The day at Seoul Grand Park went well. It's a huge place, and there were a lot of people, especially kids. We saw ostriches, monkeys, apes, lions, deer- and antelope-like creatures, tigers, leopards, a hilarious bear, well-trained flocking flamingos, (literally) necking giraffes, and a camel with some nasty breath. We missed the dolphin show, but that was fine.

The weather was a bit cool for some of my underdessed girls, and the hwang-sa (yellow dust) was especially bad today. Aside from that, we had fun noshing on one student's kimbap and banana-on-toast sandwichettes, my homemade Euro-sandwiches, and various drinks. It was a very good day, all in all. Just what I needed, even though I didn't tell my students about Dad.

I'll be calling Mom again this evening; Dad'll be about to undergo his procedures. My sincere thanks, in the meantime, to people who've written in with expressions of concern and hope. Your words are appreciated.

UPDATE, 4/8, 10:30pm: I spoke with Mom, and it sounds like Dad might be coming home on Saturday afternoon (DC time) if his stress test turns out OK. Catheterization is, according to Mom, something of a last resort given how invasive the procedure is. We'll see what happens next.


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what is environmentalism?

Just what the hell is environmentalism? This post will examine the topic and come to a conclusion arrived at years ago by no less a wisdom figure than George Carlin.

Regarding what's really happening to our environment: I'm willing to let the agenda-driven scientific types battle it out as to whether we're going to be entering Dante's hell in the next few years, or whether we're merely seeing inevitable statistical hiccups in the current climatic trends. Personally, I think there's a lot we can do to clean up our act. We don't want to suffer the curse of Roseanne Roseannadanna, who once groused about how goldfish basically spend their lives swimming around in their own toilet. If we're truly fucking things up for ourselves, then yes: it's advisable for us to clean house.

I think, however, that the environmentalist war cry of "Save the planet!" makes for a ridiculously wrongheaded slogan. Biodiversity, to take one talking point from the enviro agenda, is not inherently good. It's not inherently anything, which is what the Darwinian conception of life is all about. Values don't enter into it: values are a human imputation. So-- along with George Carlin, I suggest we get real about why we like biodiversity and beautiful green things and intact food webs. It comes down to this: the survival of the human species. We're not trying to save the planet. We're trying to save ourselves.

Here, then, is my definition of "save the planet" environmentalism (STPE):

STPE is a movement whose tacit goal is the arresting or otherwise controlling, on the global level, of human and nonhuman macroprocesses to maintain an environment congenial to human existence for an indefinite period, all while claiming that the movement's actions are performed in the service of the planet and not merely of human life.

I wanted my definition to capture the disingenuousness that is central to STPE. I have no problem with the superficial layer of the movement: if people want to, say, preach that our vehicles are polluting the atmosphere, then fine: I agree! When I lived in the Chongno district of Seoul in the mid-1990s, I used to get black boogers from the horrific traffic exhaust. There's no doubt that things need to change, and radically.

But to argue that we're doing this for the planet, or that this should be done in the name of some twisted vision of bogus eco-harmony (which has never existed-- just ask the Indians who, even to this day, get eaten by tigers), is sophistry. Empty rhetoric. Farting out of one's mouth. Environmentalism is speciesism, no less selfish than greedy consumption and pollution of the environment. As a member of the human species, I have no trouble with the idea that we should keep the environment friendly to us, but let's not bullshit ourselves about what we're really aiming to do, which is to maintain the status quo as long as we can.

The earth has other plans, however. History shows us this. We can try to lock the macroprocesses down or channel them to our ends, but the earth will find a way to confound our puerile attempts to bend it to our will.

If, ultimately, the environmentalist argument boils down to some form of "Humans make dirt, and dirt is bad," well... I got news for ya': dirt ain't bad; dirt is dirt. The planet used to have an unbreathable atmosphere and a barren landscape. So what if we reduce all life to the much-feared "gray goo"? It's only bad for living things; it makes not a bit of difference to the planet as a whole.

Here's George Carlin's rant on environmentalism (found here; I've edited the text for purposes of flow), which is your required reading for the evening. Carlin says this so much better than I can:

We're so self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, and we're gonna save the fucking planet?

I'm getting tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists-- these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages... And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans, are going to make a difference? The planet... the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia-- or a hundred other places-- buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"

Plastic... asshole.

Carlin points to the same bullshit I see in the environmentalist movement: the underlying romanticism that gives rise to dangerously false notions of natural harmony, coupled with the avaricious speciesism to which many (or perhaps most) environmentalists do not wish to admit. Where I differ from Carlin is that, if said environmentalists were to drop their romanticism, actually dialogue with more scientists than those who agree with their agenda, and wholly advocate an aggressively speciesist project (e.g., "stapling" fault lines to keep them from moving, weather control, and other sci-fi dreams), I'd be all for their movement.

Michael Crichton's controversial 2003 speech titled "Environmentalism Is a Religion" also expresses how I feel. The speech seems to have been designed specifically to piss environmentalists off, which might not be the most constructive approach to dialogue. Also, as certain critics of the speech have noted, Crichton doesn't name sources for some of his facts and figures (perhaps he has done so elsewhere, in which case I'd appreciate an email from you, with relevant links), especially when he claims that second-hand smoke is harmless and that "environmentalism" (never fully defined in his speech) has already killed off tens of millions of people, particularly among the poor, through the banning of substances like DDT, which are not toxic as has been claimed.

Crichton also makes the mistake of saying "religion" when he really means "Judeo-Christian religion." He calls environmentalism a religion because, in his view, the environmentalist worldview depicts us as having been thrown into the polluted wilderness after having enjoyed an Edenic, harmonious past, and that divine retribution in the form of an apocalyptic eschaton will engulf us should we not change our sinful ways. Environmentalists are also religious, Crichton contends, in the sense that they are rarely amenable to scientific facts. Perhaps Crichton has a point, though some critics quite fairly point out that (1) environmentalists are far from a monolithic bloc and (2) many are scientists themselves.

Carlin, Crichton, and Kevin: the latter two agree that working toward cleaning up our own messes is all well and good; all three of us see environmentalism as a movement shrouded in far too much romantic self-delusion and speciesist arrogance.

When I go hiking, I don't drop trash on trails. When I camp, I pack out my trash. I hate seeing pollution, whether in the Shenandoah Valley or on Korean mountains. In America, I often pick up the odd scrap of refuse while hiking; here in Korea, in the mountains ringing Seoul, there's simply too much crap to pick up. I hike because I do appreciate nature's beauty, but I also know that beauty is something my mind reads into the landscape. Should all this beauty disappear along with humanity, I know for a fact that the earth won't give a shit. It doesn't need saving. So let's stop kidding ourselves. When I pick up pieces of trash, I'm doing it for me and other people, not for some romantic quasi-deity called Mother Nature.

Not for the earth.



UPDATE, April 7, 2010: In 2008, I also wrote on this subject at my other blog, Kevin's Walk.

UPDATE, February 15, 2014: From 1880 to 2012, the average global temperature went up—wait for this—less than one degree Centigrade. See here. Are you frightened yet? Terrified? Are the polar ice caps melting away? Are the coasts flooding? Is global geography being reshaped à la Al Gore's computer model in "An Inconvenient Truth"? Strangely enough, the ice caps have been enlarging in recent years. Fancy that.


_

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

(As of this posting, it's still April 6 in the States, so I'm not late. Had a nice phone conversation with the 'rents, too; they're way busy with huge projects right now, so the actual celebration of their anniversary won't occur until sometime next week.)

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resident Enos

Some porn-downloading asshole in my dorm is gonna get his ass kicked for constantly blocking up our dorm's LAN from about 11PM to midnight. Lately, I have had no Net access during that time, and it's pissing me off.


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a very strange photo shoot

I was walking off Smoo campus yesterday when my pants started vibrating.

Cell phone.

It was my boss. She needed me to do her a favor on Thursday. "Long story short," she said, "could you show up at 5:00PM in a suit? You're going to be an actor tomorrow." Bemused but curious, I said OK.

I had a stomachache this morning, so I went home not long after my 10:30AM class and came back in the afternoon at the appointed time, dressed in my monkey suit. The boss's office was open and filled with people, including the boss herself, my colleague A, and a certain Mr. S, who is running for election in the Map'o district of Seoul. There were photogs and lighting guys there; the idea was that we foreigners were to listen attentively while Mr. S gave some meaningless spiel in English, and the shutterbugs would snap pictures of us. The photos were purely for PR purposes: Candidate S Shows Off His Skills at Handling Foreigners.

My colleague A was having none of it, and while he kept a smile on his face, he decided to ask Mr. S uncomfortable questions about scandals (golfing, groping) involving GNP party members with whom Mr. S associated. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. For my part, I simply asked meaningless questions to keep Mr. S talking, because his discomfort was plainly visible.

We did a few minutes sitting around a conference table. For once, I was enjoying the fact that I was sweating: I knew it meant Photoshop work for the crew later on. We did a few standing shots as well: Mr. S standing over us and talking; all three of us standing up and pretending to engage in witty repartee; the three of us shaking hands. The photogs seemed not to mind that I was constantly facing away from their cameras. After all, I've got a good face for radio, as they say. They may have caught me in a couple shots, but I think most of the shots will show A.

We did some photos in the hallway as well, pretending to relax at a podium that was dragged out for us to stand around (I have no idea why three grown men would be standing around a podium placed at an awkward angle in a hallway). Smiles had, by that time, become frozen to our faces-- or at least to mine.

The whole thing was over in about twenty minutes, but that was a painful stretch of time. I wonder whether the photog crew will send us copies of some of the pics from the shoot. If I get a copy, I'll be sure to blog it: a memento of my twenty minutes with some politician about whom I care nothing. Maybe the Yangban knows this guy.


_

Ave, Jeff!

Check out Jeff's post about the Hell's Angels and why you shouldn't fuck with them.

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what is theology?

[NB: Some time ago, I wrote a post titled "What is Religion?", to which Charles of Liminality provided an articulate, meaty response. Go give those posts a gander and then come on back here. No rush.

By the way, I am indebted to Charles, who helped me flesh out some of what follows in a lengthy email exchange we had many weeks ago.]

---

What is theology?

The online Merriam Webster defines the word thus:

Main Entry: the-ol-o-gy
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -gies
Etymology: Middle English theologie, from Latin theologia, from Greek, from the- + -logia -logy
1 : the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God's relation to the world
2 a : a theological theory or system [Thomist theology] [a theology of atonement] b : a distinctive body of theological opinion [Catholic theology]
3 : a usually 4-year course of specialized religious training in a Roman Catholic major seminary

Meanwhile, the indecipherable Catholic thinker Bernard Lonergan defines (I use the word loosely) theology this way:

A theology mediates between a cultural matrix and the significance and role of a religion in that matrix.

Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Note that, in the above, Lonergan treats theology as a countable noun, and not as "the general activity of theologizing."

One of my professors at Catholic U., going back to the root words "theos" and "logos," defined (or maybe I should say "translated") the word "theology" thus:

Ordered discourse about the deity.

I would rework the phrase slightly to express what "theology" means in its most interdisciplinary sense:

Ordered discourse about ultimate reality.

Many academics use phrases like "Buddhist theology" quite without irony, because "theos" has been interpreted to mean something more than God in the classically theistic sense. The godfather of religious pluralism, Raimondo Panikkar, speaks of the cosmotheandric nature of reality, by which he means perichoretic* relationships among the world (kosmos), the divine (theos), and people (andros, aner). In Panikkar you see that "theos" is not confined specifically to the God of the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

My above definition isn't quite complete, though. I'm of the opinion that theology is an activity engaged in primarily by interested parties. While I'm open to the notion that normally disinterested parties might make claims that are theologically relevant (e.g., an atheist who claims "There is no God," while not doing theology per se, is certainly saying something of theological relevance from the point of view of a theist), these claims usually do not add up to a systematic picture of the divine.

So I would contend:

Theology is ordered (i.e., systematic) discourse about ultimate reality, created primarily by people who acknowledge and cleave to that reality.

Despite having pondered Fr. Lonergan's definition for years, I'm still not sure what the hell it means. Lonergan seems to be associating theology with both culture and religion, and to that extent he sees eye to eye with his peers in academe: many scholars take theology to be what happens after the initial human response to the "eruption of the sacred" (Eliade) into the milieu of the profane. Theology is the rational, intellectual order that emerges from the initial emotional chaos resulting from an encounter with the divine. Huston Smith, in talking about how ritual precedes theology, notes that people "danced out their religion before they thought it out." For Smith, theology is the thinking-out of religion.

This rational order can arise and coalesce quickly or slowly. Modern biblical scholars view the four gospels, for example, as theological in nature-- they are not merely bits of narrative "data" to be harvested in the service of constructing a theology. Given that the gospels were likely written within mere decades of Jesus' death, this would indicate that early Christian thinkers were hard at work interpreting Jesus' life and words, communicating what they felt to be his message, aware (or unaware) of their own theological agendas. Christian theologies thus began forming quickly, probably thanks to mental skills acquired from a long tradition of Jewish theology.

Theology can include a number of sub-practices, with scriptural hermeneutics (interpretation) most notable among them. While I imagine that theologizing can occur without scripture, I don't know enough about scriptureless traditions to speak intelligently to the question of whether such traditions have theologies. My general feeling is that theology is an activity most likely to occur in urbanized or urbanizing societies. The religious traditions that flourish in such societies will likely have some sort of scripture, either in open- or closed-canonical form.

As logos in the word "theology" implies, theology is a rational activity. It might have faith or some other religious impulse as its motivation, but it is at heart an attempt to explain religious experience. Theology can serve a variety of purposes. Among those purposes: establishing and reinforcing religious authority structures; aiding and encouraging scholarly contemplation of core religious questions; defining one tradition against other traditions (synchronically) and/or against other eras (diachronically).

Last of all, it should be noted that theology, while rational, is also very much a creative endeavor, which to my mind implies that it keeps one foot in the realm of the irrational or nonrational. The basic impulse that nourishes the construction and refinement of a given theology is sourced in the Unspeakable, the Formless. While the tree of theology has a definite form, that form is rooted in the soil of Emptiness. If it is a living and robust tree, it must constantly grow and change. And like any other sort of tree, a theology must eventually die to make room for other, newer theologies.

---

*From perichoresis, a Greek term that translates literally as "(the) dance in the round" (Gk. peri = around, as in "perimeter" + Gk. khoreia = dance, as in "choreography"). The term is normally used by Christian theologians to refer to the way the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity relate to each other: unitary yet separate, moving about and in and through each other. Panikkar, a Catholic priest with deep background in Hinduism, Buddhism, and of all things, chemistry, likes constructing tripartite structures and relating them perichoretically. His Asian background (he's ethnically Spanish-Indian) allows him to view perichoresis as analogous to the form/emptiness nondualism referred to in documents like the Heart Sutra. As you might imagine, some Christian thinkers take issue with this reinterpretation of an important term in Christian theology.

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the things that turn me on

There's a philosophical question that's been making the rounds in recent years, and it goes something like this:

A man buys a whole chicken at the grocery store with the intention of cooking and eating it. Before he places the chicken in the oven, however, he decides to have sex with it, and he does so when no one else is around, quite in the privacy of his own home. Morally speaking, are the man's actions right or wrong? Discuss.

I'm not sure I have a moral quibble with the man's actions, but I do have an aesthetic one. Heh.

I never took that question seriously because I was certain that no dead chicken could possibly arouse me. Then my brother emailed me the following picture... and now I'm not so sure:



Should this post be chalked up as foodblogging, or not? Discuss. While you're at it, discuss the various senses of "eat" that apply to the above picture.


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hearts afire

My Tuesday/Thursday 9am class is happy to have acquired a new classmate: a guy. The reaction to his presence was a muted version of the reaction of the nuns to Sir Galahad in "Monty Python's The Holy Grail": "Spank me!" "No, spank me!" "No-- spank me first!"

The guy is a college freshman, but he's also a swimming instructor, a taekwondo and judo practitioner, and a general lover of sports. Oh, the women want him.

What's funny is that this is the first time I've seen such a reaction in a mixed class before. We sometimes get male students during both our intensive and our non-intensive semesters, but they rarely elicit such amorous responses. Maybe these ladies are just... starved for something. Heh.


_

100 Below: Volume 20

The Chinese dragon popped his snout into the cave. He saw Smaug the Western dragon and rumbled, “If I were that fat, I’d hide in a cave, too.”

Smaug boomed in reply, “You know nothing about me! I’m a victim! This is hormonal!”

The Chinese dragon, incensed, said, “I suppose your fat rolls have nothing to do with chomping on masses of hobbits and dwarves, yes?”

Smaug howled, “What would you know about eating, Mister ‘I Lick Kelp All Day’?” He bared his fangs and belched flames.

The Chinese dragon roared, “Come get some!”

With that, the battle was joined.


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postal scrotum: chop wood, carry water

I mentioned before that I'd like to be out chopping wood.

Curtis S. emails me:

Subject: Chopper

Big Ho,

Here for your chopping fantasies is #3 at our cabin in the sky prepping for the past winter at 7000ft somewhere south of Winslow AZ.

Enjoy,


-Curtis S.

And here's one of his photos of what I'm missing:



Damn you, Curtis. Damn you.



_

memories of a day in June

I doubt you'll remember a Humbert Humbert-style post I blogged last year in June (ladies, if you're offended by an honest account of how the male mind works, don't click the link). I was grouped with a knot of very pretty students and had my picture taken with them in two venues: the first-floor cafe of my particular building, and outside on the Smoo campus grass.

A few days ago, I was given a framed picture showing one shot from that photo session. I decided I wouldn't try scanning it, because the thing is too damn big. Instead, I've snapped a photo of the photo. Here it is:

Here's a closeup of me and the girl who (probably without her knowledge) consumed my attention:




This in turn got me wondering what I might look like without a double chin (none of the girls had one, so maybe I shouldn't, either). Behold the magic of Photoshop:




That was a pretty amazing day.


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no hungry ghosts here

The thing you didn't eat (with whole-seed Dijon mustard) two nights ago:

Rear view of a strangely processed Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (again, many thanks to Abel Magwitch):




The cup looks like it got sliced in half by the machine before being packaged. Very strange indeed.

Front view of same:




Now, the important question is-- did I eat it?

The answer is...

DO YOU THINK I'M FUCKING STUPID!?

OF COURSE I ATE IT!


Finally, the following pic is a shot of a soda called Millennium Cider, which is Korea's impressive simulacrum of cream soda. I like it. You will, too.








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bloggers mentioned in the Chosun Joongang

Many thanks to Jason for emailing to point out that the Marmot has linked to a Joongang Daily column about Koreabloggers (or, more popularly, "Korbloggers" or "K-bloggers").

I had no idea that there are around 270 Koreabloggers now. It makes each of us that much less special.

Particular kudos to Baduk, who is noted in the article for his prophetically dogged pursuit of cloning phony Dr. Hwang Woo-seok. Could Baduk be our Delphic Oracle?

Now, the question is: does this article appear in the Korean version of the Joongang? That's where it would do the most good and bring in the most hits.


[Thanks to EFL Geek for alerting me to my Chosun/Joongnang mistake.]


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the Dalai Lama

A Breitbart.com article about the Dalai Lama offers up some interesting quotes from the world's most famous bald guy (aside from Telly Savalas*):

On Bush:

"He is very straightforward," said the monk.

"On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn't mind when I was blunt about the war.

"By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism."

On Bin Laden and the terrorist/fundamentalist mindset:

"Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence," the 70-year-old monk said at the seat of his government-in-exile in the northern Indian hilltop town of Dharamsala.

"It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world.

"This new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful on television. Leaders in the East use religion to counter that, to bind these countries together."

Terrorists, he warned, must be treated humanely.

"Otherwise, the problem will escalate. If there is one Bin Laden killed today, soon there will be 10 Bin Ladens. Awesome. Ten Bin Ladens killed, the hatred is spread; 100 bombed, and 1,000 lose members of their families."

I like how he said "Awesome." Very Keanu.

The article mentions that the Dalai Lama also spoke out against homosexuality (his metaphysical treatise, The Way to Freedom, gives you a glimpse of why: His Holiness' vision of the bardo makes homosexuality something of a difficult proposition), but provides no quotes. Enterprising guy that I am, I did some research, and found a 1998 article by Steve Peskind for Shambhala Sun titled "According to Buddhist Tradition." Give it a read.

I've mentioned it on this blog before but feel it worth mentioning again: Master Shin Go Seong of Hanguk-sa in Germantown, Maryland feels the Dalai Lama "should have stayed in Tibet." I think he should have, too. I have mixed feelings about his relationship with the media, with politicians, with commercialism, and with Hollywood elites** like Richard Gere. The Dalai Lama might be a nice guy, but an immutable cosmic truth is that big religion means big business.

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*If you remember nothing else from this blog post, remember this: you absolutely MUST not-- ever-- click this link.

**Don't laugh, asshole. Richard Gere is more powerful than GOD.


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où sont les profs d'antan?

Gérard-Zai -- Syntaxe française

de Reyff -- Littérature française du 17e siècle

Corbat -- Culture et civilisation françaises

Nayak -- La quête de l'Absolu (hindouisme)

Friedli -- (1) Science des religions, (2) Religion rwandaise

Piérart -- Religion gréco-romaine

Giraud -- Oeuvre poétique de Louise Labbé


I found myself trying to remember the names of the profs who taught me, and the courses they taught, during my year in Switzerland at the Université de Fribourg. That really was a fantastic period in my life. I was a college junior, living with a Swiss family, hiking every day... no job, no pressing responsibilities, no inkling of the crushing weight of college debt... Oh, for a return to those times.

I turned 20 in 1989 and went to Europe, first to Nice, France, for a présession at the Université de Nice to get us French majors somewhat accustomed to the European way of doing things. I spent a month in Nice. September is a great time to be there: the heat isn't oppressive, and at night you can walk the city's pebbled beaches, find a rock outcropping among the waves, and stare out at the brooding Mediterranean. Afterwards, I went to Fribourg, Switzerland to study at the Université de Fribourg. My courses went toward my French major and theology minor. I completed the minor while there.

In November of '89, I went to Berlin a week after the Wall was opened and watched as nameless people hammered away at it. Some stood atop the Wall; others hacked at it from either side. Just normal citizens caught up in an extraordinary period in history. Korean Berliners were there, too, and they saw the Wall's fall as a hopeful analogy for the Korean situation: simultaneously sharing the Germans' joy and giving voice to their own anguish, clusters of Koreans danced about with banners reading "Korea ist EINS!" (Korea is one).

I had the chance to witness Carnaval (Fasnacht) in the city of Basel (a.k.a Bâle in French). A fantastic, dizzying experience that was, as we students wandered the streets at 4AM and watched ranks of costumed fife and drum players cut random paths through the city.

Switzerland is a strange country. Politically neutral, still using its own currency, proud of its land's beauty and its multifarious cultural heritage. It's shot through with hiking trails; if I'm not mistaken, you can almost hike the country from end to end on these trails, no matter where along the border you start. The people are, as they say in French, a bit renfermé, somewhat closed to outsiders. Making friends with the Swiss can be difficult. The Swiss share some traits-- good and bad-- with Koreans. Along with a general concern about hard work and physical fitness, as well as a love of family, the Swiss evince a "mountain valley" mentality: people take pride in their local culture and can be suspicious of outsiders. There are about as many cantonal dialects as there are cantons in Switzerland (26). Cantonal rivalries remind me of how Koreans from one part of the country make fun of the behavior and accent of people from other parts of the country. It's hard to see beyond one's own valley.

Unlike Koreans, the Swiss are, individually and socially, an orderly people. This character trait produces its own weird calm and beauty that color your perception of both the land and the people. Nature is often left to speak for itself. Swiss hikers greet each other with a quick "Gruetzi," but never yell "Yaaaaaaa-hooooo!"-- Korean-style-- into the distance. It's hard to find obnoxious architecture in Switzerland (in France, such architecture abounds). The downside is that the country sometimes seems to lack spice and unpredictability, two things you find in spades here in Korea. Also unlike Koreans, the Swiss aren't as fiercely and openly nationalistic, but make no mistake: they often do see themselves as an island of order in a sea of chaos. If you think the French are bad for how they rail against American culture and politics, you should listen to the Swiss go on about... well, everybody. They know they have it good, and they're interested in keeping it good.

I lived in the very tiny town of Bourguillon, about a 35-minute walk from the university. Every day, I would walk way downhill, cross two bridges, then walk way uphill to reach the uni. The campus was small but cozy, and I enjoyed most of my profs, except for Dr. de Reyff, listed above at the beginning of this post. That woman was a stone-cold bitch, and she hated Americans. Imagine Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter series, minus the compassion.

I had a lot of free time in Switzerland. Most of my classes met only once or twice a week, and our homework was generally reading. So I hiked. A lot. One of my favorite hikes took me down into the Altstadt (old city, la vieille ville in French), which is a common feature in most European cities. After descending a zigzagging set of steps, I would hike through the edge of the Altstadt to les Gorges du Gottéron (Galterental), a narrow, imposing valley that saw very little direct sunlight throughout the day. A trail that began at the mouth of the gorge ran through a neighborhood with barking dogs, then switchbacked upward, ever upward, past eldritch streams, fallen leaves, and plenty of trees, until I found myself behind Bourguillon, at which point I would simply walk back to my "home," that is, to where I was housed.

Home.

My Swiss Papa died a few years ago. Cancer. Maman has moved out of the house in Bourguillon and now stays in an apartment somewhere in Fribourg proper. The house felt so empty, she said. Her kids, all grown, all moved out, three of the four now married and with families of their own, seem to be doing well in the wake of Papa's death.

I'd been hoping to go back to France and Switzerland this summer, but it doesn't look as though I'll have the money to do so. Perhaps I'll be able to go in the winter. If I do get back to Switzerland, I'd like to check in on my Swiss family, as well as my old profs. I looked at the university's website today, and saw that quite a few of them are still there, teaching away.

Even Prof. de Reyff.

Nuts.


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the week in review

[Did you miss my Britney Spears tribute? Check it out.]

On the bizarre front, two strange events occurred this past week.

First bizarre thing:

One of my students didn't show up on Friday, which was quiz day. Class had barely started, so, feeling somewhat impish, I decided to break my own "Cell phones off!" rule. I whipped out my cell phone and gave my truant a call in front of my other students. I've done this on occasion in other classes, sometimes speaking in Korean and impersonating the student's grandmother. It makes for good theater. That day, I went for the direct approach and spoke English in a normal voice--

"This is Kevin! Your teacher! Why aren't you in class?"

What followed was astonishing: my student actually broke down in tears over the phone and started blubbering about how much her teeth hurt (she'd just had a few pulled) and how she was so, so sorry for not coming to class, etc., etc. I told her to rest and have a good weekend, but I was a bit nonplussed because I hadn't had an encounter with The Tears since I'd taught high school French.

My mentor teacher back in 1991, Madame Williams (don't be fooled by the surname: she was French and spoke English with a heavy accent), told me to avoid shows of sympathy when girls break down and cry. "Most of zee time eet's crocodile tears," she said, and my ensuing two years as a high school teacher proved her right. Plenty of girls learn early in life how to turn the waterworks on and off, so unless I see a woman who is actually holding her own severed leg in her hands, I'm not likely to be taken in by whimpers and sniffles. Yeah, I'm a cold bastard. Eat my dingleberries.

Most students treat their own truancy as a lark, and most are quite frank about the reasons for their absence from the previous class. "I overslept!" they usually chirp with a coy smile. I often tease the students by speculating that they had spent the previous night bingeing on soju and cigarettes while clubbing in the Hongdae district, and they generally laugh (probably because the picture I'm painting isn't entirely inaccurate), though some will flap their hands and insist, "Oh, no, no, no! That's not what I was doing!"


Second bizarre thing:

A Korean dude living in my dorm knocked on my door around midweek. It was about 9:30 in the evening, and it was a good thing I had clothes on, because I usually lumber about the premises in a shocking state of undress. When you're fat, the best clothing is often no clothing at all! Ha ha!

I opened my door and the guy, who's in his early thirties, sheepishly asked me how to use the upstairs washing machine. He's been living in this dorm for nearly a year, and up to now he's been washing his clothes by hand, then hang-drying them in his room. I understand the latter part: most Koreans don't own a clothes dryer, so it's quite common to see hang-drying laundry. But hand-washing one's clothing in a very nice, modern dormitory?

I told the guy he had to use a 500-won piece in the machine. He said he'd been up to the machines, but didn't know where to put the coin. We went upstairs, and I pointed to the obvious coin slot. He still didn't get it. "There are several slots here," he said. "Which one is the right one?"

"Only one slot can actually hold the coin," I told him. I pointed to the only slot big enough to hold a 500-won coin.

"Ah," he said.

I explained how he should dump in his detergent and clothing, make sure the clothing was evenly spread in the washer, adjust the washer's settings, and then slam the coin home. Then we covered the dryer, which operated according to almost the same principles.

I'm very tempted to complain that Korean men grow up pampered and unable to figure this sort of simple shit out for themselves, but I remember back to my undergrad days and clearly recall American guys who hadn't the faintest fucking clue how to iron a shirt, much less wash anything. While an argument can be made that most Korean guys are woefully unprepared for reality, it can't be said that this unpreparedness is in any way unique to Koreans.

It was a strange incident all the same because this guy was in his thirties, and had been avoiding the washing machine for months. He's lucky I have a talent for keeping a straight face in such situatons. My Vulcan training occasionally proves useful.


On the gustatory front, I have one major event to report, but I have to approach the subject delicately.

An online friend of mine in Korea very kindly offered to grab some provisions from on base-- a place I can't access unless my father happens to be in Korea. I'd been saying no to his offer for a long time, but this time I finally gave in and asked for something I'd been craving for over a year: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

This benefactor (why do I find myself thinking of Abel Magwitch from Great Expectations?), not content to buy me merely a couple packets of Reese's, ended up sending me a fucking boxful of those bad boys. I devoured quite a few on the first day the package arrived, and have been trying to pace myself ever since. I am in this friend's debt, though he insists on not being paid.

I said that I have to treat the matter delicately. This is because, if the mysterious benefactor is named, some of you folks might start badgering him to get you something from on base. I'd rather not put this friend into that position. He's a kind fellow, but there are limits to his patience and his wallet.

Anyway-- a thousand thanks, Mr. Magwitch.


On the academic front...

The only cool thing of note is that I got my student surveys back from our main office, and my own "approval rating" for the end of 2005 was over 97%. I finished the winter intensive (Jan-Mar 2006) with an incredible rating of 99.6%, so now I have to remind my swelling head that scores mean nothing. I have no idea how my colleagues did; I imagine they all got high ratings as well, because they're a talented bunch.

[Full disclosure: students who would likely give us teachers poor ratings usually drop out of class long before semester's end, which is when the evaluation forms are doled out. This, in part, explains the "ratings inflation."]

Among the uncool things this semester is the dismal student attendance in my 7:50am MWF Level 1 conversation class (at its lowest, 5 out of 12 students in attendance). Collective temperaments at that time of day historically break down into two types: (1) classes where the students are alert, energetic, and ready; and (2) classes where the students are barely alive. I'm afraid that, this semester, I'm cursed with a Type 2 class, which means I can expect a good bit of attrition well before the end of the twelve-week term. I see it happening already. Luckily, this is the only class giving me any real trouble, and since it's trouble of a passive-aggressive kind, I'm not all that concerned.

[NB: I do pine for the intensive class schedule, though. Students in intensive classes tend to take their coursework much more seriously. Those classes are also for-credit classes, which provides extrinsic motivation to do well.]

Also of note: I re-signed for a second year at Smoo. I genuinely like the place. It doesn't pay much, but it's a damn sight better than any hagwon. While my 7:50am class might be giving me the shits, the other classes are going swimmingly. My MWF 1pm class is a case in point: near-constant high levels of attendance, and the same is true of both of my Tues/Thurs classes. I've got good coworkers, decent bosses, and, quite often, great students. If the job paid about a thousand dollars a month more, I'd be tempted to stay for life.


I want to finish off this rambling entry by talking about axes, and why I like them. Many years ago, when I was barely leaving the tadpole stage of life, my dad taught me how to split wood with an axe. "Do a trial swing," he said, "and aim the axe a little bit short, because when you really take that swing, you'll automatically swing wider." Sound advice. I've split wood well ever since. It's something I enjoy doing.

I'd love to chop wood here, but I live in Seoul.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it might be like to spend my weekends in the mountains, maybe helping out a temple in need of a wood-chopper. I'm not a woodsman, mind you: I don't have the proper common sense to be one. But I'm good with an axe, and I'd like to do my own bit of hacking. Perhaps this'll be cause to research some local temples and find out if it's possible to, say, arrive on a Saturday morning, chop all day, meditate, do a bit of hiking, eat a vegetarian dinner, stay overnight, eat a vegetarian breakfast, then quietly leave on Sunday morning. Hmmm. Must look into this.


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possible new Pooper logo

Hey, Party Pooper! It's yours if you want it.

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Liminality attacks itself!

Charles's website, Liminality, is currently under attack by a hacker Charles. The site now features a sign in l33tsp33k that reads:

j00 @r3 h4xx0r3d! ph34r m`/ 1337 sk1llz!!!!!!111one!

with love, the Mad Hacker

shout outs to my peeps: M-Dog, B-Bop, TDG, and Ma (Hi Ma!)


Rough translation: You are haxxored (hacked). Fear my elite skills. I won!

Asshole. May you eat the day-old cum of a thousand monkeys.

If you're someone with 1337 H4x0R1n' sk1llz, get in contact with Charles (who is, fortunately, armed with his own computer savvy) and strike back at this punk. I suspect the hacker is barely old enough to shave, and is just looking to fuck around with random people.

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UPDATE: And then something occurred to me...

Charles! This isn't some sort of sick April Fool's joke, is it??

UPDATE 2: In the comments to this post, Joel speculates that this is an April Fool's prank, noting that the message is written too correctly to be from a real hacker. Poisson d'avril! Egg on my face. Now-- where's my monkey spunk?

UPDATE 3: Charles, who doubtless knows of my burning hatred of emoticons, gives me a "wink" emoticon in an email and tells me to "view the source."


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Britney is my April Fool

You've doubtless seen the strange yet wonderful statue (if so dignified a term may be applied to a piece of bad fiberglass pop art) depicting Britney Spears blissfully giving birth to her son, Sean Preston, upon a bearskin rug.

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