Tag Archives: spam

The Nearer Your Destination…

…the more you slip-slide away. (there’s a song with those lyrics, but I can’t remember the details abut it) I feel this way about my den, for it seems the closer I get to finishing the re-imagining, the farther I get from actually being finished. And this feeling of sliding down a scree slope comes up with my novel (I need to do more revising than I have), with my re-inventorying of the school’s library, with taking Korean fencing 검도 (keomdo), and with staying in contact with all my various friends and family who are several time zones away. I don’t want to be distant and yet I seem to be sliding down the slope.

Perhaps if I managed to juggle my time better, I could get everything done in a reasonable manner, but… I’m distractable and there isn’t much outside incentive for most of these. The library project is closest to completion because it’s my job and I want to finish with what we currently have before all the new books arrive. z.z I’ve come to realize that my self-motivation can only take me so far, especially when I have no definite timeline to work with.

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Death and the Dictator with a Helping of Spam

It feels a little weird being in South Korea in the wake of Kim Jong Il’s death.  This is a major world event that may have far reaching effects and I’m incredibly close to where it happened. O.O   A couple of my friends actually took a tour of a part of the DMZ just a couple of weekends ago; now such tours are probably put on hold until a little more certainty can be found.  Supposedly the South Korean military has been put on alert, though I haven’t noticed much.  About the only thing that has changed for me, personally, is that my ESL students will occasionally break out into a happy song about the dictator being dead.  The rest of life marches on the same as it has.

I imagine it is quite different in North Korea, where he was the “Dear Leader” and rather revered by his people.  Considering the nature of his regime, it’s no surprise; he had an efficient propaganda machine.  I wonder how many of his people realize that the “Dear Leader’s” policies contributed to the famine in the 1990s.  And I wonder how his son will lead North Korea.  Will there be a North Korean version of perestroika and glasnost?  Will there be more of the same?  Or will “two regimes, unalike in dignity / in fair Korea, where we lay our scene, / from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / where civil blood makes civil hands unclean?” (adapted from the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)

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