I guess this is life after being an undergraduate.  I am a bit stunted because I was an undergraduate for far too long, and then I moved to Korea and did not have what is considered a real job or a real life.  God, how lonely I was sometimes!  To be back with my mom and dad is just wonderful.  The town my parents live in, and now where I live, is a bedroom community of Raleigh.  It’s less intimidating than Chapel Hill, my college town, because I don’t have to force myself to be anybody.  Also, I managed to make myself so god damned miserable in Chapel Hill.  My first time back there was overwhelming.  It’s a tiny place littered with my failings and insecurities.  Hey, what are you going to do? I have foibles. 

My parents and my cool Aunt Peggy (as she has always been known) have a membership to this sweet ass gym.   Aunt Peggy has taken me to my first yoga classes.   They are a little bit ridiculous, like the stance they call downward dog and saying Namaste at the end, because at least the Namaste part is such an exploitation of the foreign or pandering or something, but anyway, I like it.  I like the idea, even if I fail over and over, of getting into better shape, and the novel.  God how I love the novel.  I thought how great it would be, while in Thailand, to backpack for months and months.  To have everything you need in an 80 gallon bag and see new things over and over and over. 

I don’t really know what I’ll do with this, ahem, blog (what a nasty word).  I can just change the name, I suppose, and keep on keeping on.  After all, to change the name would be new to me, and that is all I really want.  A changing, interesting landscape.

I’m leaving Korea on the 28th and will be back home in March 1st.  Let more packing commence!

Rhie Won-bok’s best-selling Monnara series isn’t much loved by me. And for numerous reasons.  It’s so riddled with bigotry and alarmist exaggerations that I’m torn between derisive laughter and the earnest desire to write him and his publishers.

I’ve got more for you.  He has a few panels about the 1995 Mitsubishi sexual harassment lawsuit. The EEOC (The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – a US agency) sued Mitsubishi for widespread sexual harassment in a facility in the strangely named Normal, Illinois. I am not familiar with law nomenclature, so forgive me if I have or will misuse the vocabulary.  It was a really big case, a very important step.  Legal Zoom lists it in it’s five biggest sexual harassment cases.  For those of you unfamiliar with it like me – hell – I was eleven when it was making headlines, here are some highlights taken from The Multinational Monitor (the emphasis is mine):

• The EEOC claims that Mitsubishi’s cultural ethos encouraged U.S. managers to “engage in a pattern and practice of sex-based discrimination which poisoned the atmosphere of employment” at its Normal, Illinois production plant.
• The EEOC’S case describes the creation of a “working environment conducive to sexual harassment” which began at Mitsubishi at the time of hire, when female employees were oriented towards Japanese culture by being told that the Japanese did not believe women should work in factories and that they should not make eye contact with Japanese managers.
• The EEOC’s filing asserts that Mitsubishi “creat[ed] and tolerat[ed] a sexually hostile and abusive work environment. The magnitude and scope of sexual and sex-based harassment at Mitsubishi, and the degree of managerial complicity therein, are unprecedented.”
• Illinois management personnel (including line supervisors) often received training in Japan. Those trips included visits to “audience participation” bars where members of the audience engaged in sexual acts with prostitutes on stage. The result of this kind of “orientation” was a “hyper-sexualized” work place back in Normal, Illinois, according to the EEOC. Women there were allegedly subjected to a barrage of unwelcome physical and verbal abuse, obscene graffiti in public and private areas of the plant (including on the cars as they came down the line), and physical incidents where men exposed themselves to women or grabbed the women workers’ breasts. Common forms of “horseplay” allegedly included taping notes on women’s backs which read “Blow up Doll,” “Sexually overactive” or “Sperm bank, deposit here,” with an arrow pointing towards the women’s buttocks.
• EEOC investigators claim that the environment at Mitsubishi “became frightening and dangerous,” especially for women who lodged complaints. Male associates used threatening words and actions against women, particularly those who complained of sexual harassment. One woman was accosted by two men in the plant who taped her hands and feet to a cart and pushed it up and down the aisles while people laughed. In another case, a male associate forcibly cut the hair of a female worker. Women were subjected to threatening phone calls, the threat of rape and stalking and assaults off work.
• According to the EEOC’s investigation, the company doctor was notorious for making anti-female remarks. One employee recalled him telling her, “You have the 3 F’s against you — you’re fat, female and forty.”
• Many of the sexual harassment victims did not complain because it was their supervisors who were doing the harassing, the EEOC alleges. Many supervisors considered new employees fair game, and made unwanted sexual advances with impunity. One supervisor allegedly told a new female hire that “she belonged to him” during her probationary period, and retaliated against her when she rebuked his sexual advances. Another supervisor’s sexual harassment of new female employees allegedly earned him the nickname: “Chester the molester.” These were the same supervisors to whom, under the company’s sexual harassment policy, women were supposed to complain.
• The next step in Mitsubishi’s policy was to complain to the company’s Employee Relations Department. But the EEOC alleges that Employee Relations managers typically responded with skepticism, indifference or outright hostility, and an inability or unwillingness to address the problem. In those instances where males were found by the company to have harassed females, the company’s standard “disciplinary” measure was allegedly to require the harasser to watch a 30-minute sexual harassment video and to place a memo in the person’s file which usually did not contain a finding of harassment. Watching the sexual harassment video allegedly became a company-wide joke, a badge of honor.
• Inaction and a lack of confidentiality allegedly deterred many women who feared retaliation and ostracism from complaining about harassment through prescribed channels. EEOC allegations lend credence to this claim. When one victim dared to complain to the EEOC, the agency alleges Mitsubishi permitted defamatory statements to be posted on bulletin boards and advised employees that the complaints were “vicious lies.”

A pattern of sexual harassment and a system wide failure to address the problem.  And this is how Rhie Won-bok treats it in his beloved comic series:

If that wasn’t enough, here is the next panel, which I’ve already posted, but out of context.

Mr. Rhie portrays this lawsuit as the result of a cultural misunderstanding where women were themselves intolerant and cruel toward a ‘warm-hearted’ manager.  The subtext of this is that Western women will use the law to wantonly punish men.  Subtext is probably too gentle a word.

This is disgusting, Mr. Rhie.   I don’t have the vocabulary to describe how appalled I am at you and your terrible book.  I should sue you, I suppose.  But really, you are either deliberately misrepresenting the facts, or you are incompetent and do not know what you’re talking about, and in you’re line of work, that isn’t a compliment buddy.

Nice cover, you hapless dick.

The following photos were taken from my English copy of…whatever this bullshit book is called.  The following is, at best, misinformed, at worst, bigoted.  I’ve selected the atrocities that can be contained and explained in one or two frames.

If one loses his job, no one in American society, including parents and siblings, can really help out.

It's rarely safe for anyone to take a walk after sunset in a major U.S city.

Panel 1: In America, you should never put your hand inside your pocket when asked by a police officer to present ID Panel 2: because he might think you're reaching for a gun!

One of the most common phrases in America is... Woman: I will sue you!

Panel 1: A basic principle of American society where everyone puts up a protective shield Panel 2: is that 'distrust' is a fundamental premise. Left Man: I can't trust you. Right man: How am I supposed to know who you are and what you are.

It's difficult though for people to trust each other in this multi-racial society where all sorts of people live.

Even though it heavily advertises the 'harmful' cigarettes overseas

The author is obviously an enraged smoker. He spent several pages of this book complaining about not being able to smoke in offices and at restaurants in America. Ahem, I’ve been known to indulge as well, but my proclivities don’t make me ironically consider the effects of cigarettes on my health.  Shoot – why elaborate? It’s obviously ridiculous.

Panel 1: Even though American society tends to be very conservative and strict on free sex, Panel 2: the frightening AIDs disease rages throughout society due to the unhealthy sex habits of many young Americans.

Panel 1: Whether true or not, it's commonly said that only a small percentage of Americans hold passports. Panel 2: People who make this assertion are probably suggesting that America is not very open and global, at least not as much as it's held out to be.

Whether true or not, a writer should use a fact checker.  People who make this assertion hold author’s accountable for what they write.

Panel 1: Understandably, other racial groups found the close-mindedness of Koreans to be very offensive. Panel 2: Left Man: Koreans are diligent and tough, Right Man: and whatever business they do, they are almost as successful as Jews.

This is just a sampling of some of the gut busting, jaw dropping, outrageous crap this guy espouses.  You’re a dick, Mister.

I researched (cough googled cough) him and found out that a couple of years back he generated a righteous shit storm for including in this series conspiracy theories about Jews in the United States.  He has since apologized to the KOREAN AMERICAN community for endangering their relationship with the all-powerful Jews and deleted those sections.  If you’re thinking that I don’t have excerpts from this, you’re right. But this guy does.

You look so sweet. But guy, really, you suck.

My point (let’s pretend there is one, yes?) is that I’m in love with these videos these guys (they call themselves DJO) have made where they overdub episodes of Star Trek.  It fucking kills me and allows me to enjoy Star Trek stuff from a safe distance. I grew up with The Next Generation Star Trek series and harbor an affection for it, which is one thing atop many which will limit my chances for successful sexual reproduction.

Anyway, watch these.

Icicles in the stairwell of my apartment building. I thought I photographed this thing thoroughly, but I only ended up having one picture, this one, which is crappy. Anyway, proof that there are icicles in my apartment building.

Store fronts along the Chungyechung River

Hyewhamun and yours truly

Traditional Korean wall and winter trees in a park in Hyewha

Hyewhamun

Hyewha-dong, Seoul

Sunset out over Hyewha-dong and the great expanse of Seoul (left Namsan Tower)

Koreans don't drink much water when the eat. Someone told me that they think water interferes with digestion. Large cups are wasted on them. A waitress brought me this cup of water, not even half full. Ridiculous.

This store sells jewelry. Obviously the proprietor's are not familiar with this song's double entendre.

I satiated the nervous and reasonable part of myself which worries about what I will do when I leave Korea by browsing grad schools which offer a masters degree in writing.  That route, if feasible, sounds quite appealing.  It also could severely bruise my ego if I encounter a lot of rejection, or, if accepted, I encounter a lot of criticism.  Granted, the point of such an education would be to whip me into acceptable shape, but still, I am a frail human and would like to have my vanities validated.  That I’ve had my vanities encouraged this far may be reprehensible.

I know that if my intelligence lies anywhere, it lies in language.

If I am financially able to afford grad school, and, knock on wood, a grad program would like to accept me, then I figure I cannot lose.  If my pretensions to writing are nothing more than that, than I suppose I should learn so as soon as possible.  Grad school, I hope hope hope, would be a good place to learn such, and equipped with a master’s degree and connections I could insinuate myself somewhere in the industry.  Or, if not there, then I could teach abroad in a university.

But in the part of myself that doesn’t adhere to diffidence, I hope and think I could do well.  If not well, than at least I could really enjoy myself for a couple of years.

I had so much fun in my creative writing classes in college.  The work I had to do for those classes took over a large part of the time I should have devoted to other courses, which was both delightful and brutal.  Though I can’t, in all honesty, say that my heart was in it entirely for the writing, I hope I will be wiser, and that I’m not more self-deluded than others.

I snapped off one of the offending icicles just to show it who’s boss.

This week, as I was taking a box full of clothes to the post office to ship back to the states, I saw that a pipe running up the side of my brick apartment building was vigorously gushing water.  Within a few hours the path in front my building was a cruel ice slick.  Today I saw one of the many delivery men on mopeds aim his vehicle right through a patch of that black ice in front of my building.  His moped skidded.  I stopped and watched. He braked, and right when you’d think he’d have fallen off, he kept upright and without, and this is the important part, running sideways into the corner of a brick building with his body.  He looked back at me, and I tried to think of how to say “Are you okay?” in Korean, and could only remember “Good job” and “Really?”  We shared a moment though, both mutely relieved, and he kept going, I assume, to bravely deliver fried chicken.

Ice: my foe.  This validates my caution not to walk in front of my building as a person on a moped rides pass.

Why isn’t their a word for a person who rides a moped? We have cyclist and biker for people riding bicycles and, most annoyingly, also for people riding motorcycles, though you can attempt clarity if you say motorcyclist. We also have skater and rollerblader, but how often do you have to refer to someone on rollerblades?  Mopeds are prolific!  What would this new, missing word be?  Mopedist?  I suppose that answers my questions.  Who wants to be a something-pedist?