CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Caveat: Populists and Nationalists

We were doing an exercise in my debate class this evening, and these four mild mannered middle-school girls were turning into the most blatent populists and nationalists imaginable.

I was having them develop hypothetical presidential campaign platforms (for president of Korea, of course, although I also talked about the neverending campaign taking off in the US this year). They proposed everything from eliminating SAT tests (pandering to students) to providing free massage-chairs to everyone over 60 (pandering to the elderly). They suggested war with North Korea as well as Japan (just for old times' sake, I guess). One girl proposed building a protective dome over the country first, which I thought was clever, but it made me think of Newt Gingrich's moon colony for some reason. Another girl wanted to execute all prisoners. I said... even non-murderer criminals? Oh yes... prisons are expensive. Hmm.

Well, next week, I'll give them a chance to try to come up with rebuttals to some of these outlandish proposals. And I hope I can lead them to some degree of thoughtfulness about these  things.

Caveat: Self Deportation

This concept of "self-deportation" has come to the fore of the political debate recently due to the new law in Alabama (profiled in the radio show "This American Life" recently, for example) and references made by certain Republican candidates for the presidency. But it's interesting that the term was not invented by the right, but rather by the left, in the form of satire: there was a group of Latino activists in LA who formed a sort of social-satire poiltical campaign aginst Californi's proposition 187 in mid the 1990's.  I would credit the term "self-deportation" to brilliant cartoonist and satirist Lalo Alcatraz (sample of his work below).

I'm intrigued by this way that satirical ideas become "real" ideas coopted by the opposite side in political debates. Notably, Colbert has been exploring this, in the a sort of "push" approach with his conservative blowhard impersonation.

Caveat: Then Why?

After learning that I'd been in Korea for more than four years, my new(-ish) student, Sumin, a 7th grader with amazingly good English, only had one question: "Then why is your Korean so poor?"

Indeed.

I'm now plunged into a black, black depression.

Why, indeed, is my Korean so poor? Am I lazy? Inept? Hopeless as far as learning this language?

Caveat: falling down on their own

Yesterday at work was hard. Every time I have that PM2 cohort, I struggle - they are bright kids, including a few too bright for their own good, but they are unruly and uninterested in academics of any kind, as far as I can tell. This is a hard consituency for me to teach toward - I'm one of these people who thinks that if kids don't want to learn, and are clearly smart enough to be making that choice with some degree of self-awareness, then it's not really my role, as a teacher, to try to change minds. That's a waste of my energy, as such changing of minds is difficult and resource-intensive on the part of the  teacher. That kind of mind-changing is the job for parents or other role-models - if they can manage it. And sometimes, adults simply have to accept the kids aren't going to do what you think they should - and be accepting of their choices, even if we believe they're bad choices. As I've said before - sometimes kids have to fall down on their own.

OK, that got philosphical fast.There were other small incidents that left me feeling gloomy about work yesterday: greedy parental demands and irrational complaints.

It's become quite cold. I like this kind of weather. Hopefully today will go more positively.

Caveat: Nerd Aplomb

Am I a little bit like this, somtimes?

Caveat: Cubicleism

I have always had a special interest in what I think of as ephemeral visual-arts media: sandcastles, doodles, graffiti, etc.... and now, office whiteboards. Seeing Bill Taylor's cubicle whiteboard art almost makes me wish I worked in a cubicle, again. I say, almost. Maybe I should just buy a whiteboard for my apartment, instead. He draws these things on the whiteboard in his cubicle at work - a month or more for each one, during his spare time.

Bill Taylor, imitating Picasso's "Guenica," whiteboard and dry-erase marker.

Caveat: 많은 눈이 왔어요

By Minnesota standards, an inch or two isn't much snow, but by Seoul standards it's pretty signifcant. It snowed today while I was at work. It was beautiful walking home, the ground crunching, the air clean-smelling and cold.

Here's a view from a classroom window at work.

I felt good about work today.

What I'm listening to right now.

Cat Stevens, "Sad Lisa." Something that recalls my adolsescence.

Caveat: Thinking Too Much

Several long-time teachers are leaving Karma Academy this week. Yesterday was Lena's last day, and she gave a small simple gift of a can of Starbucks coffee. There was a little note attached, and it said, "I was happy to work with you. Take care! P.S. Don't think too much." This last P.S. was funny - it's weird how even people who don't know me very well, and across cultural barriers, nevertheless seem to understand my neverending, utterly fundamental character defect. I was flattered to be so transparent, maybe.

Last night, we had hwehshik (business dinner+drink), but I'm trying so hard to not drink alcohol, which makes me a definite killjoy in the Korean cultural context at events of this sort. I tend to just sit very quietly and listen to the conversation and banter, viewing it as an extended listening comprehension exercise in the Korean language. Sometimes I can earn some respect and/or surprise from my coworkers by interjecting some short comment or question, generally in English, that's appropriate to the current topic - which shows that I'm understanding, at least sometimes.

Well, I always come away frustrated and slightly depressed after these things - because I refuse to drink because of my health (and because I'm such a depressed, unhappy drunk), and that makes my coworkers see me as "too serious" and strange, and that makes me mad that I can't just be taken at face value. Sigh.

Life goes on.

Caveat: 똥먹었다

Here follows an actual conversation with one of my favorite seven year old students:

"Hi. How are you?"

"I'm happy!"

"Good. What are you doing?"

"Water. 물." He was translating - for himself, or to make sure he was getting the right word with me. He was standing at the water cooler, putting water in one of those envelope-shaped paper cups. Children seem to find drinking water this way endlessly entertaining.

"Did you have a good weekend?"

"Yes."

"Good. What did you do?" I was going out on a limb in asking this question, because it was somewhat beyond little Jinyong's level of English ability.

Without hesitation, and with a straight face, he answered, "똥먹었다!" As cheerful and as pleased as can be.

I burst out laughing. You see, "똥먹었다" means "I ate shit." Seriously.

On the one hand, I was very proud of the kid - he'd understood a question I hadn't expected him to (past tense, open-ended), and answered it (although in Korean) with communicative competence. The whole conversation showed a higher level of comprehension than I'd expected from him - he's probably my lowest ability student. So I felt proud.

At the same time, it was a rather disgusting answer. He's what you might call a potty-mouthed kid. He's a Korean version of a character from South Park. So his answer wasn't exactly unprecedented. It was funny.

I was laughing too much to continue the conversation. And I unintentionally reinforced his disgusting sense of humor by laughing at his statement. Ah well. Life goes on.

Caveat: 백지장도 맞들면 낫다

blank-sheet-EVEN lift-up-together-IF improve
Even a blank sheet [of paper], if lifted together [as a team], [things] improve.

Wow that was difficult! Why do I even try these proverbs. The key to making sense of this was understanding the verb 맞들다, which seems to mean "lift up together, join forces, cooperate as a team." But even then, the syntax seemed fragmentary, missing too many elements.  The proverb-to-proverb translation would be "Two heads are better than one."

I had to cheat in order to make sense of this. My first draft, pre-cheat, was "if one hundred hinderances are tasty, things improve." I thought it might be something weirdly Buddhist. I had carelessly mis-read (and mis-re-typed into the dictionary) the subordinate verb as 맛들다 [to be tasty, to become delicious], which would have the same pronunciation as 맞들다, but a slightly different spelling. And I had mis-parsed the noun phrase at the beginning as 백-지장 instead of 백지-장, hence the "one hundred hinderances" - but I'd made a mistake too, since that's not really accurate given the need for a COUNTER particle if you're going to count things.

Caveat: Jabberwockaptcha

No explanation really necessary. See this interesting story, below.

Captcha from Gabrielle de Vietri on Vimeo.

Caveat: 22 años de soledad

Music and experience become intertwined. This is the principle of one´s life having a "soundtrack."

22 years ago, on a late January day, I finished reading the last chapter of Gabriel García Márquez´s Cien años de soledad. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was bleak and white and snowy outside. I was listening to Peter Gabriel´s So album, and the song "Mercy Street" was playing as I read the last paragraphs of the novel. As a consequence, whenever I hear that song, even these many, many years later, I am thrust back into the dissolution of the world at the end of that novel, despite the fact that the song and novel bear only a distant thematic relation - perhaps something on the axis of dreaming and perception and subjectivity.

What I´m listening to right now.

Peter Gabriel´s "Mercy Street," in point of fact, is dedicated to the poet Anne Sexton, and treats some aspects of her biography. Here are the lyrics.

looking down on empty streets, all she can see
are the dreams all made solid
are the dreams all made real
all of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head
she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
she pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam
let's take the boat out...
...wait until darkness
let's take the boat out...
...wait until darkness comes
nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
nowhere in the suburbs
in the cold light of day
there in the midst of it so alive and alone
words support like bone
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your inside out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
...swear they moved that sign
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms
pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
tugging at the darkness, word upon word
confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
to the priest - he's the doctor
he can handle the shocks
dreaming of the tenderness - the tremble in the hips
of kissing Mary's lips
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your insides out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
...swear they moved that sign
looking for mercy
in your daddy's arms
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Anne, with her father is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea.