2006-07-22 - I am just dull this week:

Hi! Sorry it's been a while. Nothing very exciting has been going on with me lately, though. Just a lot of kind of boring or anectodal things.

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MY UMBRELLA

The other day I had to go to the store for milk or something. Since it was raining I grabbed an umbrella and headed out. Just outside the store's door is a place to put your umbrella so you don't drip water everywhere with it. I was only in the store for a few minutes, but when I came out, someone had ripped off my umbrella. I looked around and saw two people walking in opposite directions that had umbrellas similar to mine. I stood there for a while and was kind of taken aback, because theft is really rare in Korea. People never lock up their bikes, for instance, and lots of people never lock their cars. unless its for overnight. So i was pretty surprised that someone just walked off with my expensive, giant umbrella.

The store owner saw me kind of standing there like an idiot, and told her, "Umbrella's gone!" in Korean, and she very kindly let me use her umbrella to get home.

Anyway, I never found out who took my umbrella, and I'm kind of surprised someone took it at all. Anyway, i gave the store lady her umbrella back yesterday, and she was very nice about it. I go to her store fairly often for one thing or another, so she is pretty nice.

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THE GOVERNMENT

So yesterday I got the afternoon off and went down to Immigration to get my visa extended. The process itself didn't take long, but I ended up spending like 2 hours waiting around at the office because I took a number from the wrong category. And, like any goverment office, the employees kinda fart around a lot and stand there chatting or making phone calls or poking around with the crap on their desk while people wait in line.

Also, there were a lot of families there that either had small children or were preganant. All the small children were cranky. One kid would fuss around and cry for a bit, and then after it got settled down, another kid would start up and fuss and whine and everything. Which is really annoying. But people in Asia don't typically use babysitters. From what I've seen, if one person in the family needs to do something, everyone seems to tag along. So when I run to the store I collide with about a thousand children, for instance, because mom or dad can't do the shopping alone, and needs to take along the spouse and the 2.5 children who enevitably run around and be crazy. Sundays I don't go shopping at all because the stores are packed full of everyone and their mother (literally) doing family shopping crap. Judging by the stressfull looks on the parents' faces, I'm surprised no one has concluded that the whole process would be easier for everyone if just one of them went shopping while the other stayed home with the kids. I mean, come on.

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TRAVEL NONSENSE

So in about a week I will be going to visit the folks back home for about 3 weeks. That is pretty exciting. So I am just trying to get organized for that, as well as finalize stuff for an English day-camp i am doing next week with 2 other people and 36 top students from my 4 schools. So basically I have a lot of stuff going on, but none of it is especially interesting, it is all work-related or travel-plan-finalizing related. And in the meantime I was ill all last week so I didn't even go out and have crazy antics to tell you about.

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POLITICS

I pretty much agree with this editorial cartoon. I mean, come on, discriminiation against gay people is discrimination, plain and simple. Letting gay people get married will not make other people gay, or turn your kids gay, or make your neighbourhood gay. What pisses me off is that a while back people were up in arms about legalizing black and inter-racial marriages in certain parts of the world, and now it is so common place that no one thinks twice about it. But some of the groups/people who were opposed to it are not apologizing for being jerks. They are picking on gays instead. And, to add insult to injury, people who have hateful views often use religious quotations to fuel their hateful fires. You can find a bible passage to pretty much support anything you want, if you look hard enough. EVOLVE, PEOPLE. COME ON. Do you really want to have the same views as people who lived in like 10AD? Really, you are smarter than that, I know you are.

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WACKY PICTURES

In keeping with the gay theme:

IT IS A HYPER WANK DEVICE. HYPER!!!! THANKS, JAPAN!!!!

This is bad news. What will the fairy club do, now? I sure hope this is something for little 5 year old girls, or I am gonna barf.

YESSS. I hate those dumb signs in cars. They are lame. so lame. Almost as lame as putting a suction-cup Garfield on your back window or something. I mean, come on.

Wow, two masturbation-related pictures in one post! THE HORROR.

Watch out for old-timey ninja archors!