DITTO

I can really empathize with the sentiments of this prayer written in French on the center tile. These copper tiles were purchased by visitors to a buddhist temple on the side of a mountain in Korea's Soraksan National Park. Money from the tile sale will probably go for more than just keeping the rain out; since monks eat a pretty simple diet (rice and kimchi for the most part) and grow a lot of their own food up here.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

SNEAK PEEP
This is sort of what I'm working on these days - I don't know where it's leading, though.

You'll need to click on the image to see it clearly. What you are looking at is a screen shot of the Wordsmith Concordancing program of the top 30 movie scripts in my database (330 scripts) containing the F word. This is a kind of representation of all the instances of the word in the entire script. On the left you have the names of the movie, sometimes abbreviated for convenience. The plot on the right, looking something like a DNA test, is a graphic representation of where exactly the word appears in the script; dark clusters represent scenes where the F word appears in rapid succession; usually scenes where two or more people fight together.


Kevin Smith (Jay and Silent Bob strike back and Chasing Amy) and Quentin Tarantino manage to fill up quite a few of the top slots. If they aren't Tarantino films, then a case could be made that they are Tarantino wannabees, or very much like Tarantino films. Well, OK, Scorcese was doing that sort of stuff long before him. But the really weird thing is the football film (Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone), in which no one is actually killed or blown to pieces. IMDB describes it as "An aging football coach finds himself struggling with his personal and professional life while trying to hold his team together." - no indication of the potty-mouth level of the film, which comes in at #10 out of 320 films.

I've used charts like this to show my students about language usage, since they all know the F word, and have more than an inkling about it's power and mystery, they should at least have the benefit of knowing how directly, statistically linked it is to the onset of fights and fighting, killers and killing.

At least that's what I think I'm teaching them.

Oh Fuck it!

as you might suspect, this dog is indeed half-wolf. a rather friendly looking wolf, though. I took this shot at an Indian Pow Wow in my home town...
CLICK TO ENLARGE

If anybody can figure out how to 'on dive', please let me know.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Here's a picture of Willem Da Foe at the Bangkok International Film Festival.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

What I found interesting, however, was his choice of footwear - check out these 99-Cent Store Flip-Flops...Way to go, Willie!
CLICK TO ENLARGE

I can never resist aging wood set off by pastel, I'm a texture junkie...
CLICK TO ENLARGE

A Monk peeks from behind a temple in Mongolia
CLICK TO ENLARGE

If you remember the "Spirulina Beer" billboard from Burma a few months back, you'll understand my penchant for taking pictures of weird bulletin boards that we may NEVER understand, even if translated.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

I couldn't find the picture of the arrow shooter, so here's The Hun (and a bloated, squinty-eyed looking one, at that) for you. Or is it more of a Tatar?
CLICK TO ENLARGE

CHEESE PILES

Not an exciting title, I know. But these piles of dried, hardened, cheese piles (most likely from yak or sheep) was about the most you could hope for by way of snack, by way of variety in the Mongolian outback. I found this drying rack near the archery target...I suppose the idea being that when you tired of watching the cheese dry, you could allieviate the tedium by shooting arrows or watching them be shot by tourists like me. * (tomorrow I'll post that)

Trivia At The Airport

"Trivia at the Airport", the man said to me, "That's what you ought to call it".

I had just returned to Chicago from my first trip abroad, a full three month circumambulation of Ireland, where I had picked up a tin flute and learned a few simple tunes on it. I was waiting for the airport bus, and playing Brian Boru's Song, I believe, when this impromptu-commenting man had walked by on the way to his parked car. I remember the initial sting of the 'Trivia' comment (or was it not a sting? Trivia would be a valid name for a jazz improvisational, would it not?) being followed by the thought, "Hey, if you like it so much, why not give me a ride to the subway?"

That was so many years ago that all the emotions I felt at that time are now distant and alien. But I had forgotten that some of my weirdest - and thus most precious experiences - happened to me at the beginning and ending of journeys, and so many times at airports.

Yesterday I was at Taipei airport (officially CKS airport) in Taiwan, coming back to Korea after two weeks in Thailand (at "Resort Khao San" , as a friend likes to call it). I had a layover of about three hours, so I changed back to winter clothing, cruised around and checked the layout of the place, and finally went to my gate, where I immediately ferreted out an electric wall socket, plugged my laptop in, and started to do lesson prep for this upcoming semester.

Before long I realized that the people I had previously assumed were not interested in this little corner of the waiting area, where they had some luggage scattered about, were actually incredibly interested in it, and in fact started stretching and doing warmups over there. Before long there were all kinds of people going in and out of this corner that I had cloistered off with my power cable, and each time someone stepped back and forth across it, I anchored my laptop and prepared for the worst; that someone might trip on it, ruin the laptop and sue me for damaging their face when they belly flopped...

But each and every time, they gracefully lifted their foot without looking, like they were some kind of ballet dancer...

After a while, I found it impossible to ignore the constant stretching, and warmups, and before I knew it, I found my self trying to type in the middle of a full-blown yoga class. The instructor was this big, buxom n blonde california type; the rest of the people looked like your basic Weekend Workshop crowd; hardly Republicans. So I unplugged the computer, put it away, pulled off my shoes and soon found myself obeying commands like reach high, feel the energy in your sternum chakra, just sort of let that foot come around and rest on your thigh, if you feel comfortable with that... and actually loving every minute of this high energy, high pace bhakti yoga class in the departure gate.

Only then did I think about gurus, India, turbans....hey wait a minute, howcome everyone, or nearly everyone, on this flight to Korea were wearing turbans? Holy Shit! I'm in the wrong gate! I hurriedly gathered my things which were scattered over three chairs and the floor, hurriedly made a gift of some fresh-squeezed Khao San Orange Juice to my new yoga guru, and ran off to the right place.

When I got there they were just boarding, but I couldn't help noticing the big change; there were no people stretching, and it even seemed like no people smiling over here. Suddenly I felt like I was in the wrong gate, that somehow like I had been unnaturally, preternaturally separated from my family....

Windows on the World

This gilt window was apparently a work of inspired genius


Look carefully at the upper left hand corner, however, if you want to delve a little deeper into the Thai Psyche.


Unrelated Conspiracy Theory : today while watching CNN, they had a special report from a Rolling Stone reporter who had infiltrated the Church of Scientology. She was in mid-revelation of their innermost, most carefully kept secrets when the entire segment was yanked off the air, apparently pre-empted by the phony Phillipines coup, of which there was really nothing to report. Weird. Do they have people working at CNN as well? She was about to get into the churches strange creation myth, which truly rates as a work of science fiction (no surprise, considering that was L. Ron Hubbard's true calling)

MORE EFFECTIVE THAN IT LOOKS

Here was the 'Asian English' find of a lifetime. Apparently the word for 'staple' in Korean is pronounced 'hipi', sometimes spelled in this delightful way. How does it remove hippies? Just look at the bottom of the package.

Riders on The Storm...
CLICK TO ENLARGE

a drying heap of bellflower root (to be made into kimchi for winter months) contrasts plastic with wood outside of a temple in Sorak San park.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

found this one among my ....electronic belongings....wow, guess I'm old, just looking at this convinces me like nothing else...
CLICK TO ENLARGE

A random sign from Kangnam in Seoul, for the amusement and possible mock horror of my semitic friends around the world - honestly I'm not sure what this word construction is intended to convey- the 'free' is obviously borrowed from English, but the second part is just a phonetic spelling of a korean syllable cluster ('J' plus 'you' sound equals 'jyou')
CLICK TO ENLARGE

walk on it
CLICK TO ENLARGE

A young boy is all ready for the morning Burmese sun, his face paint is a powder made from a kind of tree; Burmese believe it not only protects from UV rays, but also softens the skin and looks 'beautiful'. It's great to occasionally warp the whole magazine image of beauty.