Skit

>meow

Why, hello, JoMo. It’s 5 in the morning, what ever could you want? Oh, that’s right! You enjoy taking your meal at this ungodly hour. I apologize for ever entertaining the thought that you were somehow able to eat any time later. Here, let me give you some food so that you may scarf a quarter of it down at once as if you haven’t eaten in weeks. You do that and I’ll make my way back to my comfy comfy bed.

>(10 minutes later) *GZGUH* *GZGUH* *GZGUH*
What’s that noise? A strange, wet pumping sound being emitted from next to the bed. Why, JoMo! What ever are you doing? I thought you were enjoying you….oh….no..no….NOOOOOO!!!

>meow
>Your room now smells like cat vomit.

Al Bomb

Well, I finished working on my album. Maybe I’ll do a little more tweaking to some of the tracks, but nothing major. All I have left now is to get the cover art finalized, the stuff printed, and I’ll be ready to give it to you all. The physical copy will probably be ten bucks a pop, but I’m still mulling over what the price of the online version (with all the *.pdfs of the cover art so you could make a physical copy if you wanted to) should be. In any case, here it is. I’m going to keep it up and streaming for one week and then take it down until I get everything finished and am holding the thing in my hot little hands.

Still

I keep on pluggin away at this track, and It decides that it wants to be more and more complicated. Nucleotide Chain Gang is going to have the most lyrics out of any of my songs when it is finished, I’m pretty sure. My “vacation” (read: two extra days to my weekend) occured right after my last post and I had forgotten to mention it at all. 미녀, her sister, and I decided to go to 비진도, a little island that looks like a pair of boobs (or a figure eight) just south of  통영 (famous for 충무 김밥).

radish, squid, rice, seaweed. Ambrosia

On the first day of my vacation, I woke up at 5:45am in order to catch the bus to 서부정류장 (Seobu Bus Terminal), but diddled around too long before taking a shower and ended up having to catch a cab that really only cost me about 2500 won more than what I would have paid for a bus. I took along with me Kurt Vonnegut’s “Bluebeard” because I knew that the trip would consist of two two-hour-long bus rides and two one-hour-long ferry rides. It’s an interesting book indeed. It pretty much allowed Vonnegut go give his take on all the bickering in the art world between Abstract Impressionists and everyone else.

When we arrived in 통영, we bought all the groceries we would need on the island (Gas, meat, leaves, beer), had 김밥, and took the impossibly tiny ferry over. The captain decided that it would be a good idea for him to get on the sqwaker and jabber on about stuff he saw until his throat gave out half an hour into the ride.

All in all, it was a good trip, we got there, found our 민박집 (a kind of hostel-ish type thing), went to the beach, made dinner and went to sleep. At the beach when I jumped into the water the first time, a surge traveled down my right ear canal and decided to trap water behind a thick wall of wax that I always like to keep built up in my ears. I was deaf in my right ear up until I got to a doctor the next day. It was no matter, though. I was still having fun in that ocean.

I'm an excellent swimmer

Try to do THIS, wicked witch of the west.

The air was warm and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. It was perfect beach weather. I unfortunately stayed out too long/ didn’t have enough lotion on my back and suffered a slight burn.

This is what you get when someone doesn't put enough sunscreen on your back.

Upon return, I headed immediately to 월배 (my former area of residence) because I knew where there was an ear, nose, and throat doctor. When I got to the door of the office, a sign greeted me and informed me that he was on vacation until that Monday (it was a Saturday). Defeated, I started to make my way back to the bus stop, when I looked across the street and saw another one with it’s telephone number under the logo. I pulled out my cellphone and dialed the number as quickly as possible.

[따루릉 따루릉] ([ring ring])

“이비인후과입니다.” (Ear, nose, and throat doctor’s office.)

“언제 문이 닫아요?” (When do you close?)

“다섯 시에 닫아습니다.” (We close at five.)

“고맙습니다.” (Thank You)

“내.” (You’re Welcome)

I went up, waited five minutes and then the doctor looked into my ears (as the nurse grimaced when she saw the wax inside) and then took a suction tube and sucked out all the wax obstructing my tympanic membrane. At last! I could hear again. I put infrared lights to my ears for two minutes and then paid 7,000 won and left the building to go home. At home I showered and was amazed by the extra “crispiness” every sound had. It’s gone now, but o! how delightful it was.

Uppitydate

So, first and foremost: at the moment, I am not going to write a song called “Shit Whip” in the near future as that idea ran out of steam as soon as it left the station. Another ideological train has slammed the rusting metal of “shit whip” into a twisted pile of rusting metal on the side of the railroad. This new idea is arguably more awesome than the first and will hopefully allow me to get it sounding good and not half-assed. The track shall be dubbed “Nucleotide Chain Gang” and it will be more along the lines of “Corpse Generation” sound-wise than anything else. I’ve got some pretty sweet guitar riffs for it and I’m working on the bass and drum tracks right now. I had a little scare a few weeks ago because I thought my mic was going bust, but it turns out that I forgot to set the program to recognize it.

Now, if you think this blog is going to be very interesting, let me tell you, buster, you are in for disappoint (and comma splices, apparently). Now, I, for one, love commas. I think they make a piece of writing, how should I say it, stand out so much more, as well as allowing the reader to pause for a breath or allow his/her mind to catch up to the flow. It got really quite fucking balls-stuck-to-any-sort-of-possible-surface hot up in Daegu this month. The humidity was nothing to laugh at, either. It was like breathing water for about two weeks. Showering was almost pointless. Doing any sort of strenuous activity outside your house (ie: walking) was out of the question. Doing anything but sweat your life away in front of a television or computer screen while shoveling cold noodles down your throat; letting the ice-filled bowl sit on your stomach, making the heat on your legs feel that much more intense would be case for suspicion of you being an alien life form (or maybe you don’t know you’re dead).

All that while, my poor Ibanez RG series was sitting down in a murky basement with only one exit/ventilation shaft. I rescued it from that fate last week, but only after the rains had begun to drown this city. My first encounter with the practice room was met with guards. The door was wide open, which was already suspicious. The first guard was in the form of a spider’s web, which I dashed with an old umbrella. The second guard sent me screaming. Three roaches, bigger than Andre the giant’s thumb were crawling down from the ceiling and reaching for me with their hungry feelers. I vowed revenge. The next day, I was armed with a large can of RAID: triple action, a mask, and over a dozen roach motels. Perhaps they felt my presence, perhaps it was just blind luck, but only one of their members was visually laid out by my chemical fist as he was escaping to the walls. After watching the entrance for five minutes, I determined it was safe to proceed and engaged the lights. The ventilation fan was in the off mode, so I fired her up and felt the nice, (relatively) cool air from the outside flow in as I sprayed around the perimeters, depositing motels on small, dark corners. I walked back to their fallen comrade and laughed. I left his corpse there as a reminder to those who opposed us.

Later on, I had a terrible show at Sucrose Joseph’s where I had no assistance with my setup, no one who could tell me if the levels were fucked or not. So, after a 45 minute rendition of 90′s alt pop hits from a guy becoming progressively drunker with his guitar, I took the stage and sucked more than the suckiest sucks who ever sucked. It sounded fine at first because I had indeed set my computer to the right levels. The second song in, something was amiss as my guitar was painfully loud (I realized later that the dude had used that same amp and fucked with the levels and I was too stoopid to check). Enter in tall guy who usually plays painfully long cover sets in another cover band. A few knob turns later in the middle of my set and my guitar is at an okay level, but my computer has been all but muted. I fumbled through the rest of my set with some guy attempting to ironically/ drunkenly dance to Sunday Drive and Danse Panse, and walked off the stage without putting away my stuff, and had to put up with another hour of his repulsive renditions of Radiohead recordings and  awful Oasis orations. I’m going to pause here to note: if you are a cover guitarist, and you have run out of songs to cover, DO NOT under any circumstances REPEAT ANY SONGS. They aren’t yours, give them back. Just stop, put your guitar back in the case, and play some darts. The reason I pause is because he did the exact thing that I warn you good people against. He had repeated an Oasis and some other 90′s shit back to back. After I had left, he had apparently repeated Wonderwall three times that night. No one should be subjected to that horror. The horror.

Speakeasy

I’ve got a problem. My problem is with a certain group of people. These little buggers are insufferable. They come in and try to talk to my friends in some sort of horribly butchered version of the English language that suggests little to no education in the subject and then speak to me in their native tongue and expect me to know it better than my friends. It’s easy to see these guys from a mile away, lurching, leering, lecherous beings that have the smell of beer and soju hanging around them like an oil-stained apron on a chef crying in front of a wok-like pan. As soon one of them opens his gaping maw and utters 5 words of incomprehensible garbage that would make George W. cringe, I just get the urge to lay the verbal smackdown.

I'll be the next Robert Downey Jr.

It’s a pattern of horrible speech that must end. You should learn to speak the damn language or just go home. If it isn’t obvious already, I’m referring to a minority of English speaking foreigners in this country that don’t know what the word egalitarian means. These people assume that since they hear everyone else around them misplacing articles, occasionally deleting verbs and speaking in a jerky manner that that must be the way English is to be spoken in the presence of non-native speakers. They think they are helping. They think that it will help them be understood if they leave out the verb “to be” in their sentences and use a ridiculous amount of hand gestures. Unfortunately, they end up sounding like jackasses:

“You….Korean….right? You….family….North….Korea live?”

“I need….cup….and…..cup in water…..put.”

“Do you English-ee…..speak-uh?”

All of these phrases are paraphrased from actual things I have heard and I know I shouldn’t put quotes around them. Now, I’m not saying that changing speech patterns is inherently wrong. I, in fact, slow my speech down a little when I’m speaking with people and even unconsciously change my accent if I’m speaking with someone that has a heavy British or Scottish accent. Everyone changes their speech patterns, even among people they know. Most likely a person is not going to talk to his/her mother the same way that s/he would talk to his/her boss. Don’t even get me started on the girlfriend/boyfriend voice. Speaking like something has suddenly been damaged in your Broca’s Area is offensive and flat out unacceptable, and here is why in my humble opinion:

1. It’s insulting to everyone else who speaks the language. This holds true, especially if you are located in a foreign country. It’s very easy to judge a group of people by the loudest one in the room. Stop it, you are making me look like an asshole and I’m not even doing anything.

2. It’s insulting to whoever the hell you are speaking to. (Yes, I finished my sentence with a preposition while I’m trying to argue against the use of improper English. Sue me.) When you actively handicap yourself in attempt to benefit another person, that is a form of pity, and what is pity, but a nice way of saying “I’m better than you.”

3. It harms the person’s study of English. The fact that they grew up in a country where English is not an official language means that they had to actively study it in order to acquire it (as opposed to passively as infants). In order to keep understanding, it’s important to be exposed to it quite often (go ahead, ask me something in Spanish or Russian, I guarantee I couldn’t tell you a damn thing). To speak a language, you should imitate its native speakers. If they imitate you, the cycle of broken English will continue.

4. It takes much more effort to break your language than it does to speak it properly. You are wasting your time and energy in doing that. I’m willing to bet that the caloric expenditure of saying something and then explaining it is less than that of the crap you spew.

So, stop it. Stop speaking this horrible broken language despite the fact that you hear the clerk at Lotteria saying the same damn type of stuff. He’s only been speaking it for three years whereas you have for at least 20.

Wakeup Breakup

The past couple of weeks have been quite strange. Quite strange, indeed. I do believe that last time I updated you guys, I had not yet played my show in Daejeon and was practicing for that. From what I remember, my practice sessions went pretty well. I had to stop on Thursday, however, because The King Khan and BBQ Show had come into town and had to use our PA for the show and then it was impossible to get it back since the owner of the club where they played left for the weekend and locked the PA inside his club. Now, a sensible person would ask, “Say, why didn’t you just bring it back to the practice room after the show?” That would indeed be a good question, and I shall supply that good question with a very good answer.

That Thursday night was the night that Korea was scheduled to play their second match of the 2010 world cup against Argentina. It started at around 8:30PM in Korea, so it was going to end around 10:30. We were outside of the venue at half time cooking hotdogs and hamburgers for the show and good times were had by all. Unfortunately, Korea lost that game, and I subsequently got punched every time Argentina scored a goal, but things were still looking up since there was a damn good band getting ready to play. After getting into their costumes, the screen came up and they came roaring out with a great opening track. The concert seemed to go pretty well, King Khan was dressed eccentrically and kept walking into the audience and interacting with the people. BBQ was, stuck behind the drum kit with his guitar in his lap. They seemed to be having a good time with the occasional stink eye from BBQ to Khan when Khan did something wild or crazy. As the concert went on, however, Khan was drinking quite a bit and started to get a little angry with the audience because it wasn’t dancing enough for his tastes. He poured a bottle of beer on the shiny black floor and said with a sarcastic and bitter wind, “There, now you can’t dance if you wanted to. Not like it’ll make much of a difference anyways.” The show systematically broke down from there.

They were down to two songs left and Khan asked if we wanted a slow song or fast. When he got a mixed reply, he asked again, only louder and angrier. Mixed replies were popular replies of the night. He grumpily talked to BBQ and they started to play a song, but then stopped about 20 seconds in because Khan’s guitar was out of tune. He turned his back to tune and BBQ walked off stage. I walked upstairs at that point and then came back down after that song was over. When I came back, I saw my friend Yoohoo walk from the stage back to the seats and then slip and fall in the beer that was previously spilled on the floor. We helped her up and I got her some ice from the bar. Someone helped her into the bathroom so she could see if she was bleeding or not (she wasn’t). While that was going on, Bama was looking for BBQ, because he just kind of disappeared and I guess found him soon after. At that point the screen was pulled down in front of the stage and suddenly we started hearing screams of rage from Khan. I look over and see BBQ just sitting and smiling. It wasn’t a happy grin, it was an “I told you so” relative. Khan burst out from behind the screen and walked out. All eyes were on him and all throats were still. He was out the door and everybody started talking about what the hell just happened.

Now, I wouldn’t say their breakup is 100% the fault of BBQ or Khan. Hell, I don’t know the band, but it seemed like they were just two different dudes. They apparently had almost broke up in Australia a few weeks prior, but were able to patch things up. Korea was the last leg of the tour and They apparently had had enough of each other. All in all, the antics of BBQ and Khan ended with BBQ going to Busan by himself , Khan staying in Daegu and walking around with a Buddhist monk for a few hours in Mancheon, and my friend Bama losing a night’s sleep and a cooler with the leftover hotdogs.

Doin’ Thangs

Times have come and passed and once again, I find myself sitting in a cafe downtown drinking coffee and eating an onion bagel with cream cheese while surfing the internet before I go to the practice room on a Tuesday morning. I updated you about stuff last time and that stuff was cool, but probably a bit overwhelming at around 1400 words. I promise this one will be shorter.

This was the week for me to practice my show that I was to have at Sugar Joe’s, a Daegu cozy foreigner bar next to one of the universities where everybody knows your name. I asked for a show and I got it on the 12th of June, right after the Korea vs. Greece match. Overall, practice went pretty damn well, and I actually didn’t have to really practice all that much. 미녀 was sick, so I had more “free time” I guess you could call it. I as recruited to create a banner for the upcoming King Khan and BBQ Show concert on Thursday, but my computer didn’t have enough ram and when I got my hands on a faster one, it was still didn’t have enough (even at 4 gigs) and didn’t have the GIMP (of which I am quite used to), so we ended up scrapping the project.

The show on Saturday was great success, what with 박지성 scoring that second goal, Korea winning and whatnot, I got up there and played one of the best shows I played yet. The violin player from the other band even asked if I wanted to collaborate sometime. It was a good feeling. So, now I just have to prepare for the next show at Kwangdae, which should be quite promising.

Now for something completely different, but related so very much. So, occasionally, I go through bouts of times where I’m staying a steady course in life and not doing or aspiring to much. Right now is not one of those times. I currently have a couple of projects on my mind that would be swell if I could see them realized. I know that sometimes I get the initial energy to do stuff, but never end up doing it because I wait too long, but we’ll see how these go.

1. First and foremost, I want to finish my album and have it printed. This is something that has taken me about a year and a half to write or something like that. All the official songs are written and somewhat mixed, I just have to write one more bonus track for the physical CD (no download except if you have the CD, sorry) that I want to call “Shit Whip” about that horrible smell that rises from the open storm drains here in Daegu in the summer (It’s rotting food). I also am very close to finishing the design for the inside cover. So, what more has to be done with this? Well, I have to write up the liner notes (excluding the lyrics, that would take up too much room), price and order the paper, price and order the CDs, and order the little rubber hubs that the CDs are going to sit on. I then have to set up a paypal account for people overseas and whatnot as well as figure out how much it costs to send an album to the states. It’ll be worth it in the end.

2. The show I played on Saturday was played on acoustic guitar because I like the way it sounds on most of my songs (except for Dickin’ Around, which requires a whammy bar). Unfortunately, I do not have an acoustic guitar equipped with a pickup, and I do not want to drill a hole in my current setup or buy a crummy factory soundhole pickup. I figure, most pickups I can buy for under $100 will give a shitload of feedback or noise due to the fact that most of them would be unshielded, so why don’t I do a DIY project? When I visited the states last summer, My friend, Slew showed me his 3/4 acoustic guitar and also the pickup he made himself. It was a simple single coil pickup that looked pretty and apparently had adjustable poles. He attached it to the soundhole using two pieces of plastic held together with a screw and plugged it into his cab that he and his dad build a while ago. The sound was bright and awesome. I know that I probably would not be able to get the same sort of success that he had with his, but I can sure as hell try. There are several DIY websites out there that give a plethora of information on what to do to get a pickup that’s bright and leaves out all of the noise. All I need to do is figure out where to get the wire, magnets, plastic, wax, and all the other junk that I need to do it. Just a weekend with that stuff will hopefully produce a working pickup that I can use with my guitar.

Hanging by a nail

My right index fingernail is broken, but I’m happy.

I’ve been trying to fix it ever since Thursday. But, that is around the end of various events. Last time I updated you, The DAT Politics and Round Robin shows were still up in the air. I wrote that update in the afternoon before work. After work, I was asked if I could babysit HEXLOVE because he was bopping in from Seoul by bus to check out the DAT Politics concert the next day. Machu had to practice and Bama was working until late. Morrison was able to meet us and we went and ate chicken and drank makkoli. Bama was hosting him, so we all retired at around 1:30 or maybe earlier. I don’t usually have to work until 2:30 on Thursdays, so I said that I would show Hexlove around Daegu such as showing him the Vintage Shops and whatnot. He got some pretty sweet finds there including a big red jersey that said on the front: TAXES. Quite a fun and laid back guy to hang around, I must say. I dropped him off at a 찜질방 (Read: Sauna/bathouse) before I went to work so he didn’t wander around lost all day. Later that night, at the DAT Politics show, people were dancing pretty well, but there just weren’t that many people there.

There were several factors that I think went into it including the fact that it was the weekend of Buddha’s birthday and the end of Fashion week in Busan, so people were flocking away from Daegu faster than a fat kid from celery. We all had a fun time, and there are pictures indeed to prove it. Flash forward to Saturday with the Round Robin. Still Buddha’s birthday, and now it’s Raining all day. When the concert started, there were probably about 20 people in attendance MAX. Factors: Shitty weather, Holiday, Shitty poster. People had a good time, but it was disappointing for the organizers. I bought one of Hexlove’s albums and am still digesting it.

I attempted to ask for a show over there at Heavy, but Heavy누나 said that I could have a show if I find similar bands to play with. Essentially it’s a roundabout way of saying no. I was crestfallen, but not defeated. I messaged my friend G.T. Arpe in Daejeon with an SOS, and He got me a show for the 19th. I also emailed Sugar Joes and got a show scheduled for the 12th.

In these past few weeks, I’ve been attempting to record a version of my untitled track, which is fifteen and a half minutes long, that is satisfactory. I think it probably took me 10 tries to get it right over the past few weeks. There was always something I didn’t do right: The pedals weren’t loud enough, the pedals were too loud, there was a weird buzzing sound coming from the computer (it was plugged into an ungrounded socket), the amp was too loud/quiet, or I just fucked up on the timing or attacks. When I got it to a point I liked, I sent it over to my friend The Spookfish to see what he thought of it since it was the first thing he’s ever seen me play. He liked it and suggested I double track the beginning since it sounded almost sloppy. I did so, added a bunch of reverb to it, and it sounds really good with nice overtones. I have just one more song to record for the physical version before I can set out to release it.

Now, last Thursday was not very special in particular. It felt like any other Thursday until the end. I saw a concert. When I checked out Moools on their myspace, they didn’t really strike me as very interesting. I had read that they were together for over a decade, that they were indie gods, and that they had done a lot of house concerts and whatnot…but that really just kind of washed over my head like so much yellow dust in the springtime.

The concert, however, blew me away. I mean. God Damn. Of all the bands I’ve seen in Korea, I think this one would have to be one of the most energetic and fun. It’s three Japanese guys, a bald drummer who’s about my height; a tall bassist with a buzzed head and buzzed goatee; and a lanky guitarist who has hair akin with the dude from At The Drive In, except longer. The guitarist, Yas, was also very bendy, for example, on the first song, he was playing the guitar and then collapsed to the floor where his knees were pointing out and his feet were level with his butt and he was lying flat on his back. In the middle of the concert, he took a small break to introduce the band members in Korean despite the fact that it was obvious he had only studied that day. It took him about a minute and a half to introduce the band and say that they were happy to be in Korea. The audience helped him a lot with it. It was quite fun. Now, remember that point about me breaking my nail? Well, that was because of this band. Before the concert started, I was standing outside, playing my guitar to try to lure people into the concert (rather unsuccessfully), when the band comes walking up with Morrisson and the Manager, Drummer, and Bassist introduced themselves to me. During one of the last songs of the concert, they were going on this noisy jam and the guitarist waltzes over to me and then puts the guitar strap around my neck and hands me his pick. I didn’t even have to think for a split second what I had to do. I took that pick and began to shred like so many documents in a 1970′s Watergate Hotel room. I had no notion of what I was supposed to be playing, so I just went based on what I was hearing from the bassist and drummer. As for the guitarist, he went dancing and jumping around the room for the next minute or so and then took the guitar back from me and finished the song.

This is the type of concert that always sticks out in my memory. Ever since I was in High School, I’ve always preferred  small concerts to big ones. There are many artists in this world that see the barrier between the stage and the fans as an actual barrier that should never be crossed. The entertainer is supposed to be held up high as a god, where the fan is not worthy, and for some entertainers, this is due to the fact that they would turn to dust if anyone touches them. IMHO, a band that puts itself on a pedestal AND does not interact with the audience should have a pretty good stage show or whatever to go with it (for the love of god, don’t take me out of context on this one, it’s impossible to asses the stylistic choices of every single fucking band out here, so if I’ve offended you, sorry, maybe your favorite band is a golden god). And now, I know I’m going to get a bunch of hate for this, but, I really didn’t care for Xiu Xiu when I saw them. They play damn good music. In fact, it’s a type of music I originally aspired to make with my project, but was just shunted into obscurity by playing the wrong venues/ not having my shit organized among MANY other problems. When I saw them, however, the wall between them and the audience felt so fucking thick despite the fact that we were able to stand a foot away from them. It could have been because I was Jetlagged, however. In any case, all of the shows where the audience was able to participate have been my favorites. That’s about all I have to say about that.

Remembering

I was on the bus last night and I saw a man get on with his grandmother. This man acted very much like a child and his motor skills were not quite honed. He had a smile everpresent on his face. Immediately my mind flashed back to the summer after 5th grade, the summer of 1996 where I was at a summer day camp. This was the place where I first got into music (Bad Hair Day), first did something of larger scale “creativity” (helped recreate the big explosion scenes from ID4 with blocks and a video camera), got my first injury on a bike (I think), and had my first kiss (spin the stick out in the back part of the field). Unfortunately the memory I selected from that summer was not very pleasant.

My memory flashed back to the face of one of the fellow youngsters. I was 11 at that point and this kid, let’s call him Aaron, was 12 or even 13. I remember it coming as a shock to me when I found out he was older. This was a child who was taller than average, quite thin with a long face. His dark hair was cut short, buzzed on the sides and fading into slightly longer hair on the top, not a crew cut, but something else. He would wear polo shirts and shorts. It was very rare to see him very active. For the most part, he sat by himself. His face was, for the most part, devoid of very much expression and his hands were often intertwined together always with digits and elbows at sharp angles, as if forming a cage around himself. The only person that associated with him in the entire daycamp was a boy named Brian. This boy was younger than us and he had Down Syndrome. I’m not speculating, it was quite obvious. He had a very round head, was slightly overweight with loose coordination, and his tongue was too big for his mouth. He, in stark contrast to Aaron, was a quite energetic and vociferous fellow. He would often be seen running around with a smile on his face and snot running from his nose. I don’t know that I’ve seen him upset even once. Many of the children would make fun of him, (because many of the children were indeed children and, as we all know children can be very cruel) but it would all roll off of his back and he would go on playing with the blocks. He would often have Aaron help him play, Aaron would always move a lot slower than Brian, but in retrospect, it seemed to make Brian focused and a bit calmer.

Aaron’s fingers were constantly in a state of disrepair. As I said, his hands were quite often intertwined with one another. Many times he would be picking at his fingers around the fingernails to the point where they would become raw, the skin would turn white and he would bleed. I don’t think there was one day where I saw him without at least one bandage on one of his fingers. He never spoke very much, and when he did, it was always in a soft, barely audible whisper; seemingly only wanting to communicate with those that wished to hear. I have seen him happy many times. He would have an enormous grin on his face and he would clap his hands softly and his body would move as if supported by strings. Laughter would not come out of his mouth, so it would appear as a silent movie. Brian never cried, and I had thought the same about Aaron until one day.

Now, my memory is not the greatest, and I don’t know if I remember the exact reason, but I clearly remember the result. Aaron was sitting on the wooden ramp in front of the door to the center. His left leg was stuck out straight, parallel with the doorframe, while his right leg was propped up, displaying a skinned knee, fresh with blood in tiny droplets oozing from the ashen grey skin, parallel with the open door. His hands were hanging in the air, fingers moving as a sea anemone in high tide on the shore. He looked at me and his mouth was hanging open, but his face was tight with fear. I could see his pain in his eyes. He was crying. His eyes were wet, but the only thing that managed to leave his throat was a small squeak of agony. The counsellors were around, but they were preoccupied and unaware of his affliction because no sound was heard. I could analogize this with some sort of metaphor about trees and the middle of the wood, but I won’t.

This image has stayed in my mind for these past nine years. It’s not that he was crying. It’s not that he was hurt. It’s not that he had special needs. It was the sheer amount of sadness and helplessness that I saw in the eyes of a boy who was unable to do what seems to be a basic and primal ability for most mammals and several other members of the animal kingdom. A scream, a shout, roar, or wail. These, he could hear every day from the other children, but when it was his time of need, a mouse’s soliloquy could drown his sorrowful siren.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

At 5:15AM, on Friday, April 30th, I woke up. I went to sleep at roughly 10:30 or 11PM that night. This sounds like a long day, right? Well, add 13 hours to that and you’ve got my day on April 30th, 2010. As soon as I woke up, I hopped in the shower, made sure all my stuff was ready and then hopped in a cab that took me to a bus for me to jump on that led me to an airplane to spring into only for that to lead me to a bigger airplane to gingerly step into to fly me to yet another airplane I drug my sorry ass on that led me to a shuttle bus that I was lured into. Daegu to Boston is not a journey for the easily bored.

On Flights:

I had prepared myself well for the endeavor. I had two books, two video games, and my laptop computer. I’d flown the flight a couple of times before and It got better every time. My only worry that it was an American carrier this time. My first flight was with an American carrier and it was right miserable. Needless to say, this journey was not much different. I was seated in the middle row with two seats on either side of me from the aisle.  The inability to move in any direction but forward can become quite nerve racking after 12 hours. Something about these American companies doesn’t feel right when traveling over the Pacific/Arctic (depending on the rout chosen) Ocean. Last time I had flown I had taken an Asian Company, and the 12 hours just flew by. I recall being able to sleep, to listen to whatever I wanted, watch whatever I wanted and still be comfortable. I mean, I was able to listen to all of the recent Pet Shop Boys album on that flight. The interior color scheme was set up quite well, a nice warm beige dotted with white and some other color throughout, creating a relaxing atmosphere. The two American Carriers I have been on decided to choose cool colors as their color scheme, which works okay for short trips, but on long treks, the cool colors make the plane feel like a dungeon. The difference is THAT noticeable.

Flights and the people therein:

As it turns out, the flights back were much more bearable. I had a window seat for two of them and I sat one seat away from the window on the cross Pacific trip. The first plane from LaGuardia to O’Hare, I sat next to two Eastern European mothers who were on their way to see Oprah. They talked with me a bit and shared [read: insisted/guilt tripped me into eating] their oranges and figs. They even had wet naps to clean up with afterwards. The flight over the Pacific was nothing special, except I was much more comfortable. On the flight to Busan, I was able to plug in my computer AND they didn’t charge me when I asked for a beer with my Donburi. The guy next to me asked if I could speak Korean and we started talking and he asked if I would like to share a cab with him since I had to go to the train station and he had to go to Haeundae. I figured that would be a good situation for me, I would be able to help him out with cab fare and it would definitely get me to Daegu a lot quicker. Well, when we got to my destination, I asked him how much he wanted for the ride, handing him a 10,000 won bill, and he handed it back to me and said that he would pay for the cab since he was planning to go to Haeundae anyways and it was on his way. I thanked him profusely and was on my way to the train station and home.

Airports:

Gimpo airport in Busan is the way to go. From the country that took many good steps in getting internet access to a VAST majority of its citizens (despite being one of the more notorious in censorship), It has one of the best things they could offer: free internet in the Airport terminal. I did not pay one red cent for that internet. Narita, O’Hare, and LaGuardia, on the other hand are much different stories. I had a 5 hour layover in Japan, and I figured I was going to be able to work on music and surf the net that whole time. Unfortunately, circumstances ended up being different. Those three airports as well as many others across the world decide to whore out their wifi to wireless and cellular companies wanting to charge chumps to use their internet for however long they are at the airport for seven bucks. I mean, goddamn. That’s almost half my internet bill right there. What did I do with these adversities staring me in the face? I did what any self-respecting cheapskate would do. I sat there and I took it. I did not touch one bit of internet until I woke up in Boston at 5:30AM.  Aside from the internet situation, Narita has a very nice design with very nice places to stop off and rest and those jet dryers in the bathrooms, O’hare will always seem like just a bus station, and the same goes for LaGuardia. This post will be too long for the whole trip, so I will post more as I write them. Toodles.