• I saw Osama Bin Laden.

He was going to the bathroom.

• An old hobo came in, sat down at a table, took his ear muffs off (it’s not that cold yet) and proceeded to eat a small packet of dried biscuits. Like in the West, the manager kicked him out. He squarked exactly like Dita the hobo in geelong west.
• There was a lightbulb above my head. It was switched on. When I got up to leave I hit my head on it and glass went everywhere. I don’t know if I should take this as some sort of concrete metaphor or not…

I seem to be losing favour around here. And things are getting weirder by the day.

They used to say I looked like nicholas cage. Initially I found this highly amusing. Apparently most foriegners are compared to someone rather unlikely. I wanted to complain that I looked much more like Bruce Willis, but whatever – at least cage did Wild at Heart.
The local speech contest went down yesterday. My kid lost – or that is came equal third among three – in a field of 13. Personally I think we was robbed because the ‘winner’ was pronouncing ‘th’s as ‘d’s—but what are ya gonna do. If the management had taken my suggestion and used a year 7 instead of a year 8 we may well have fared much better.
I tried psychological tactics against the likely stronger competition – some kid from a school that has the word ‘bong’ in its name. But the strongest words I know only translate to ‘fool’ - and in my opinion the term fool and space cadet are completely different.

Anyway, now I’m being compared to some nazi I never heard of called Donitz. He can’t have been a very good nazi because he hasn’t been in any doco I’ve seen.

Perhaps in an effort to cut down on bills, this place has it’s own nurse in what I would normally call a sick bay. She’s an older woman. Nice enough I suppose. I’ve never really spoken to her. Once she asked if I’d had lunch-I had—it was near the end of lunchtime. Another time I had a piece of rubbish in my hand and I was looking for somewhere to dispose of it. There’s no bins around. I popped my head in the door to see if it was okay for me to use that bin – and she seemed to facial express that it was.

A similar thing I was about to do today at lunchtime except that when I opened the door I saw some kid – a student laid out on the bed/table and they were dead-set operating on her. The nurse had a scalpel in her hand and was incising into what I imagine was the abdomen. The student was screaming quietly. I kind of let my jaw drop then quicklystepped back out of there.

In T2 the villian was made out of a liquid metal. On occasion some of this quicksilver-like material would be seperated from the mass and sit still in small, single droplets on the ground. When the main body got close, the smaller parts would be consumed by the larger, inevitibly drawn to it. There’s nothing in between these two states.
I’m like that.

crop circles 2005.

I came out of a hole in the metropolis the other day to find that my tailor’s shop had been completely gutted by fire. “But what?!”, I thought. “I just gave him 100 000 dollars a week ago as a down payment on a soup jacket!”
It’s definitely not good news, but I’m sure the joint’s insured. Although all those photos of him and whitey businessmen and senators won’t be rematerialising again anytime soon. I was getting measured for it and deciding the specs. He’d say things like, “double breasted or single, two buttons or three, two flaps at the side or one at the back?” and each time I’d think ‘what’s normal?’ and try and go with that. I was hitting the mark because he’d say, ‘yes, conservative’. But there was this parallel visualistion of what the other would look like—and I’d really like to try it one day, but then I’d have to wear one of those frilly scarves and a yacht captain’s hat too.

Sadly, the genuine hair club hairshop next door was obliterated also. Infact I think it started there. I used to go there because they spoke english and it’s so much easier than learning how to say, “one length all over!” which I never get anyway. Hairshop means hair dressers.

Oh and before I forget it, Happy Apple day!

Apparently they’re saying things like, “let’s make up”. “Let’s kiss”, and it gets more lurid from there; things you’d never imagine apples doing to eachother.

Do you think it’s possible that the deity that chooses the random songs in iTunes on windows is the same one that is in XMMS in Linux? If it’s the one and same then how come the selections is always crap in iTunes?
Do you think that perhaps the live in the same area? That they know each other? Do you think that the former tries to copy the latter’s acts of randomisation but always comes off as seeming contrived?

There was another day-long song contest at work today. I’m happy to say the beat boxers won it. The 5th element. The rest was just all chicks waggin their booties about in formation, which is all well and good but it’s getting a bit old. Correct me if I’m wrong but michael jackson was doing that 20 years ago in the ‘thriller’ video clip.

I highly recommend having a listen to Boards of Canada’s new album, The Campfire Headphase, whic can be done here.

From here: a refreshingly frank tourist bureau.

For the last week before I split for work I’ve been boogying to the 2005 white label remix of the KLF’s What time is love? It’s super-bassy and super. For two weeks, here it is. It’s gone.

I went meditating at the seoul intl zen center today. It was an hour gig with ten mins of stand up and follow the leader at half time. During the hr I felt in danger of falling asleep and a bit monkeyish, but going back outside after I got that familar brain-burn slo-mo feeling, so I suppose it did some good. Nice area up there on the northern outskirts of the metropolis.

Saw the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate factory yesterday. I have to say it was not fantastic. I mean, there were some neat sun glasses in it. And the exterior shots of the factory were ace – modern era factories give me a horn. The musical numbers were pretty alright but why oh why couldn’t they hire more than one midget? There must be literally 000’s of midgets in hollywood alone.
I think the military-industrial entertainment complexxx is trying to prepare us for some sort of large-scale insertion of clones into the public sphere. There’s this movie and the star wars movies too.

I don’t know if I’m that keen on the frankenstienian approach of taking dead books and reanimating them. It resembles the book plot, (or so I’m told) but is missing something – the effect of cross-pollination with some new ideas. Like with the Gene Wilder version – it had all those great lines from literary classix e.g. “We are music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams”.

• It was like that time in work for the dole art classes when this guy Eustice submitted a piece of consisting of what looked like someone going through a huge barrell of old pens and pencils to check what worked and what was binnable. A page full of unconscious scratchings in red fine-liner, blue biro, half washed-out thick black texta, jelly silver sparkle pen, the odd red pencil, black blue and red pen markings alongside eachother like real estate. Intense little jabs, that if you were so inclined, could probably tell you a thing or two about the jabber—not quite straight lines a cm ‘n a half long lined up – near paralell but never fully. Three in a row the another perpendicular underneath. Four in a row and one diagonal striking them out. A two-dimensional cage of mesh 2X2cms in thick red pen.

• The mouth had a dimple on either side but it was all so vague, so almost not there; it looked like the back of a knee – a few wrinkles and curvature where ligaments folded.
• After waking I stumbled into the kitchen and found M___ the Uzbekki, spreading a piece of toast with a stanly knife, box cutter, if you will. He flicked wide-eyed looks up at me from what he was doing. Of course it didn’t occur to me then, but thinking back, it was the same facial expression as Dinero in Goodfellas when he’s sitting at a bar, smoking, drinking, looking like … nothing in particular, but it was right before he started knocking guys off left right and center.
  

  See the thing is – us whiteys whinge because the conventions here are so radically different to the west. It can be like swallowing a boiled egg whole; sometimes it gets stuck.
  The crux of of it is I think – the confucian idea of respecting elders. Eccentric behaviour takes root and no one puts it in check – because it starts with the eldest doing these things. There are no young punks terrorising the oldies, keeping them humble and grateful that you’re not taking their wallet.

  I reference today – a by all accounts run of the mill day for me. I happened to be in a shower block, dechlorinating after a swim at a pool. It’s one of those block shower joints with a bunch of nozzles on the wall and that’s it. There was some guy up the other end.
  I’m showering, minding my own business and out of the corner of my eye I notice the guy has dropped onto the tiles, all-fours—he’s arching his back and rocking back a bit, pointing his arse out and letting the water hit his back.
  This evening I was having dinner and there’s this older couple on the table next over. They get their meal and as the guy slups on the stuff he starts making these groaning/throat-clearish noises. In any western country if you did that in a restaraunt you’d be asked to leave because u r subhuman.
  And so it is this kind of thing that can be challenging to the whitey, but I imagined my invisible twin sitting opposite me. We’re talking in unhushed tones about whatever the hell we want because no one can understand us anyway.
  The old bastard keeps hhuurrggh-ing.
  “I’ll give you ten bucks if you make that sound right after him”, I say.
  “But he’s almost certainly going to offended by it”, says my twin.
  “ten bucks”

  “hhuurrggh.”
  “Hheeuuurraaghhh!”
  I slam dow the note on the table top and laugh raucously. With plenty of dirty looks but nothing said, we leave and go spend it on icecream.

It’s not that I’m having some crisis of writing. Partly, am there’s less room in my head for some reason, partly am going out more or something like that—or the days are getting shorter because of the sun railing south. It gets to 12:30am and I realise I have to sleep if I don’t want strange things to happen the next day. Partly also I can’t access this site at work anymore – I suspect some kind of deviousness on the part of the employer because I can hit other places one IP number up. Additionally – webproxies don’t allow one to interact with a webpage – i.e. no ‘forms’ like the one I’m typing into.

I don’t know how to do webstuff anymore. I can’t even change the typeface on this theme. It’s a modified version of the firefox theme. There. Now let us never speak of it again. I can’t make the links go back into the normal order.

Well partly it’s this: There’s an opportunity going begging for some sociologist type to study and poke at the specimens found on the ‘korean blog list’ – college/university graduate comes to korea to teach english. starts a (blogger) blog whose title wittily puns seoul/soul or mentions kimchi. post pictures of food products with writing on it that is other-than-english. complains.
For the most part I Am One. And dammit Billy I don’t want to be.

Of late I’ve had the odd biblism chat with my friend, and soforth. It’s funny that the two biggest English-speaking heads in catholicism should open up and say that, maybe not all that stuff is true re the bible, . What! But I’ve been arguing blue in the face that it was.
And of course they go straight for the best bits—genesis and revelations.
Where I work we have mandatory chaple first class each wednesday. At first I was horrified but I can pretty much do what ever I want, so I read about ten-headed monsters rising out of the ocean, ridden by evil whorish women and second helpings of steaming hot bowls of wrath.
mmm, wrath.

There’s always plenty of dancing going on, but it’s all strictly above the waist type-stuff. That is, the gyrating of hips and simulated felating of one girl (dressed as a boy) by another is left for a couple of special days per year.
Yeah, it’s kind of a mix of sign-language and that 80’s style of dancing where you’re swinging your wrist/hand by your side like you’re holding both ends of a skipping rope. Lots of making rainbows with your hands.

When it comes time to pray, I go limp, slump forward close my eyes and think about how much of a screwup I am. It beats working.

Occasionally it ramps up into a full multi-media explosion. Actually, it’s most of the time. I’m always impressed by the sense of redundancy – all the spot-lights, the video cameras, the mixing desk etc. is staffed by at least two girls; in case one faints and topples over due to standing in the one place too long.

I thought about doing a big write up on all of this. Dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s—making sure I included all the details and attempt to be partly impartial. But it’s too much work. I also thought about not mentioning it at all. But I can’t let it pass completely unmentioned.

That is – my experience with the “Emperor Linux” company. They sell laptops with Linux preinstalled and supposedly with everything functioning. In short and in hindsight I think it was a mistake buying from them. I should’ve just got the laptop straight and installed Linux myself if that’s what I wanted to do.
Perhaps it was that I chose a Sony; japanese companies aren’t known for their liberal flow of info to do with their hardware, thus drivers are hard for open-source people to write. Maybe it was my choice of distro to be installed; Suse 9.3.
But mostly I think it was Emperor Linux’s half-baked kernel and xorg.conf file. Many things didn’t work—even the scroll-wheel on the Logitec mouse didn’t work. My digital camera wasn’t recognised, (when it had been with previous Suse versions on another computer I once had) the USB key-ring wasn’t recognised. The sound didn’t work. The hibernate button didn’t really seem to work either.
All those kinds of things are (when functional) what you’re paying the extra for.

So I wiped all E.L’s crud and installed Mandrake (mandriva) LE 2005. The mouse, sound etc worked straight up. But I still haven’t decided if I’ll continue using Linux.

Being stuck with Windows XP this last 7 months has been partly a pain in the arse, partly breezy. The old dextop I was borrowing for a good six months was XP – but in Hangul, so I didn’t know what was going on. But pretty much everything you plug into windows works – just like that. All media content on the net is viewable/listenable.
And now on the Vaio – in English, it’s quite stable and usable. I don’t seem to have a bug up my bum about bill gates anymore. Most of the open-source projects that are genuinely successful are also available for windows. Such as: the Gimp, Firefox, OpenOffice, JEdit, (as a text editor) Apache and Abiword. I haven’t given it a proper try yet but there’s even Blackbox/fluxbox (alternative window managers) able to run over the top of the regular Windows environment.

Hibernate does work under Windows, as you’d expect it to, and there’s other stuff too like the repair/restore tool; handy if you’re forever fucking shit up like me. It will take the computer back in time to e.g. this morning, last week or even all the way back to the factory install if you want.

The laptop itself is a Sony Vaio s-series, vgn-s380P. The screen’s fantastic bright – and one of the first things that drew me to it when I was it in the stores. As for the rest of it, it works.
A couple of things I’ve come to appreciate about the old clamshell iBook with OS X are that – the trackpad mouse really was designed to be used. It was comfortable enough to use all the time, in contrast, the Sony’s mouse buttons seem little more than ornimental. Also OS X comes out of sleep when the lid is opened. Windows takes about ten seconds.