i rarely get too personal with this blog. 2 reasons - 1. i don't care what people think about what i really think, and wouldn't want to open too many of my 'wacky' opinions up to conjecture by people with less awesome brains than mine; and 2. there are precious few people whose opinion i respect re: me.

shawner - a korea/china expat blogger named shawn, his blog was one of the first i'd ever read regarding korea. he was living on geoje-do, the first place i was planning to go to, and i found his musings to be rather wimpish, and that the gripes he had with the place were that of someone who hadn't travelled much or even had many real experiences.

i re-read his blog a while later and he'd acclimatized a little better i guess. he left korea and moved to china. he then ran into some bad shit that he couldn't deal with and he took his own life this week.

http://chinavlog.typepad.com/

first - i understand what life can be like when you move to a different country. you're almost completely separated from your support systems. you have to be tough.

second - when shit goes bad here (remember the "women... crazy!" post from a few weeks ago?), it can go REALLY bad. distance, cultural difference, general indifference... it can suck.

but hear this - suicide is wack. i understand. i totally understand, but killing yourself... why steal yourself from your friends and family?

shawner, i understand. and suicide is theft, but i'm not going to talk shit about the dead.

champion broke up. the joke band that was named after a sportswear line that eventually became one of the biggest hardcore bands of the last 10 years...

people loved them. here's evidence, their show in nagoya, japan. i hadn't seen them in just over a year, and they blew up the spot.

this post has been edited. new photos have been added.

ryan was reading a book awhile back about japanese folks and their obsession with "cute". for example, porn mags with schoolgirls as the female object, hello kitty fans older than 9, grown men with teddy bears...

the book went on to say that the reason for this is somewhat of an arrested development - a sort of second childhood to make up for the fact that so many asian students are pushed so hard that they don't ever get a decent childhood.

it is the same here. "oh, teacher... sunday is my favorite day. my mom lets me PLAY for an HOUR on sundays!!!" - and i wish that was a joke.

anyways... asian kids often don't get to fully experience childhood, toys, the "cute" years. the asian obsession with cute - and the fear of any dog larger than a squirrel (i remember walking sasha for derek and all the middle school kids - even the "tough guys" screaming in terror) is something that simply drives me fucking mental. just buy a gun, eat some raw meat, read some camille paglia and let's play cards.

there's this "cute" girl in one of my classes. i'd rather just call her a bitch but she's fuckin' 7 years old and hasn't come to realize that her mother is grooming her to be a bitch. she is obsessed with this one hello kitty character "cinnamoroll". a sort of morphed quasi-dog character with a tail that actually looks like a cinnamon roll.

ryan and i started doing these mutated versions of cinnamoroll because it 1. disturbed the kids who needed to be disturbed and 2. made the cool kids laugh. the idea was to take the head and then replace it with a different body. here are the results:

first off, the only one i didn't show my students... CINNAMAPIMP!


of course, the book is better than the movie, but monsignor cinnamapriest is still a little frothy at the mouth... MARY MADGALENE WASN'T A PROSTITUTE?!?


the korean in the word balloon is "aaiishi" which just means "ah, shit!" or "rats!"


and it wouldn't be an art project unless norwegian black metal was somehow represented... imagine that those flames are a shade of red, this is a photocopy.


sponsored/manufactured by the LG corporation - here's ryan's robotic scorpion:


"eh, spare chaawnge, s'il vous plait... ah, tabarnack et fuck-you, prick!"


and perhaps my favorite... the mutated cinnamablob. note scientist checking meters.



E.C. - the extra-cutetrestrial


cinamamummy?


cinnamadolf? hitlermaroll?



yeah... CUTE!

oh shit. my memory is addled. well not really since i did remember, only i woulda woken you up at 2am...

happy birthday patricia. hope it was a good one.

plane ticket purchased.

i will be in vancouver from july 1 to sept. 10.