Just Wanna Talk About

Hi, there~ :)

[11:13:10 PM] Spark: Jesus.
[11:13:17 PM] leon: wat?
[11:13:19 PM] Spark: Leon is such a bitch.
[11:13:29 PM] Spark: Oops, this isn't Kennan?
[11:13:30 PM] leon: Huh?
[11:13:32 PM] Spark: :P
[11:13:49 PM] leon: I don't think that's a joke.
[11:13:53 PM] leon: You mean it
[11:14:05 PM] Spark: Hey, I'm just kidding.
[11:14:31 PM] leon: You're not kidding. You should be adulting! :P
[11:14:39 PM] Spark: Punny.
[11:14:51 PM] leon: TX!
[11:15:39 PM] Spark: I feel like I'm at XXX. Even when XXX is next to my desk, she types on Skype if she wants to ask a question.
[11:16:17 PM] leon: I think I am prettier than you.
[11:16:33 PM] Spark: I think I'm handsomer than Yoo.
[11:17:39 PM] Spark: I can hear Yoo typing.
[11:18:00 PM] leon: I know, and I like doing it.
[11:18:01 PM] leon: 재밌어~
[11:18:17 PM] Spark: Why so long time?
[11:18:28 PM] leon: 아니야~
[11:18:34 PM] leon: 오빠~ 사랑해.
[11:18:59 PM] Spark: Yoo know what I like? Being with Yoo and having time to spend with Yoo.
[11:19:33 PM] leon: You are the only one who is heard I LOVE YOU by me that much.
[11:20:11 PM] Spark: My mom said it a lot when I was a child...
[11:20:28 PM] leon: kk
[11:21:08 PM] Spark: And Jikko can't speak, but I'm sure she says it, especially when I give her 개밥.
[11:21:30 PM] leon: You're just funny!
[11:23:01 PM] Spark: Ara. Na gaegeu man iya.
[11:23:18 PM] leon: Tell me about it.
[11:23:38 PM] leon: You're very funny gay. That's why I fell in love with you at the first time.
[11:23:41 PM] Spark: OK. I'm a funny man who likes to tell jokes.
[11:23:46 PM] leon: You're very witty!
[11:23:54 PM] Spark: I'm not gay!
[11:24:25 PM] leon: Seriously, you know how to make senteces look funny.
[11:24:33 PM] leon: Funny 포브스.
[11:24:44 PM] Spark: I'm very talented, yes.
[11:25:03 PM] Spark: And I'm pretty good at foosball, too.
[11:25:42 PM] Spark: But I suck at cooking, math, and competitive eating.
[11:25:43 PM] leon: I know!
[11:26:08 PM] leon: You can cook. you just don't try.
[11:26:58 PM] Spark: I can cook Papa John's and McDelivery. 1) Call, 2) Place order, 3) Yum!
[11:27:15 PM] Spark: Bon Apetit!
[11:27:36 PM] leon: 인스턴트 왜캐 좋아하니?
[11:28:12 PM] Spark: I'm lazy, Pineapple, and we don't have any counters.
[11:28:43 PM] Spark: I cook like you play badminton.
[11:28:45 PM] Spark: :P
[11:31:00 PM] leon: Your body will not go bad after you die. You're preseverd.
[11:31:28 PM] Spark: Preserved with what? 술?
[11:31:53 PM] leon: 인스탄트 푸드!
[11:32:39 PM] Spark: Alcohol and preservatives is why I look so youthful. Like a frog in formaldehyde.
[11:33:48 PM] Spark: Yay, I spelled formaldehyde correctly!
[11:33:57 PM] Spark: 100 bonus points!
[11:34:04 PM] leon: 굿좝!
[11:34:26 PM] Spark: 땡큐

PMP - On the Prowl

The Postmodern Monkey Patrol is searching for someone even as they're unable to figure out who that person shall be; regardless, the odds of the aforementioned individual carrying some bananas (or banana-flavored donuts) are quite high indeed.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

I've been away for quite a while, Inaba, but rest assured you're the town that's always in my heart.

Scalene

Had to teach a lesson about Geometry today, and if there's one thing I hate...

I Ran Like a Cheetah with Thoughts of an Assassin

I was sixteen.

Burlington, Ontario might be a high-class, now city these days, but in 1994 it wasn't easy to cop the newest hip-hop releases in my burg. Pre-Internet, pre-adulthood, I had to go to Mississauga or Toronto via my mom's car or the Go Train to pick up albums, on cassette or CD*. I will forever fondly remember visiting Square One in Mississauga and buying, with my allowance plus some motherly generosity, Das EFX's Dead Serious. And I will also forever remember going there a year prior, when my brother (Hercules) chose Brand Nubian's One for All and I chose...hell, time is not on my side with that reminiscence, and it matters not, because One for All would prove to be the mold for which my youth was shaped, for better or worse. An insomniac in middle school, I would stay awake nights listening over and over again to Brand Nu's seminal aural accomplishment. Because you can't truly appreciate great music unless you're bugfuck tired and young.

The year was 1994. The Simpsons was hitting its stride, and I was wrapping up my sophomore year of high school. A bevy of hip-hop releases had already flooded my young brain the year prior and had leaked into that year**, and it appeared that hip-hop music was, at the time, on steady ground. Things couldn't be better.

And then, Illmatic. The Source -- back when it was the hip-hop Bible -- gave it five mics, devoted an entire article dedicated to its inception, highlighting its recording process (Premier! Pete Rock! Large Professor!), Nas's poetry, and its instant-classic status.

Still a virgin, I wanted Illmatic more than I wanted to get laid. DJ X played "NY State of Mind" on CKLN's Power-Move Show, and I was hooked, like a burgeoning junkie catching a whiff of powder. ("Rappers I monkey flip 'em with the funky rhythm." You had me at Hello!) Luckily, my mother was at the time working near Mississauga, and I asked her to pick up the(e) album on her way home. She did.

My mom is like Santa Claus.

Coincidentally, the cassette was a dud, cutting out just after Nas's line, "Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes." A day later that was sorted out, and I listened to the second coming of Rakim's opus, one which Nas will never trump but which I hold him no ill will for failing to. Nas is hip-hop's Harper Lee: he crafted an album so incredible, so perfect, that anything afterward is crap by comparison.

Because how do you follow up perfection?


PS - Shame on the Internet for not creating an Illmatic-Me application.

* Mobb Deep's The Infamous was the young me's equivalent of switching from DVD to Blu-ray.

** Enter: the Wu-Tang, Hard II Earn, 등

Preordered

For my beloved students* this coming Halloween, I shall spare no expense.





* Alright, alright: only the teenaged ones.

All Ye Faithful

As I walked -jauntily I might add, assuming you won't cringe at the thought- down the street this fine afternoon I came across the oh-so-familiar sight of a proselytizer exercising her god-muscles to the utmost allowed by propriety. For those concerned with my own decorum, let it be said that I am nothing if not faultlessly cordial in any and all situations, be they public, private, or professional in nature. Longtime friends and readers alike would defend the preceding assertion staunchly (to the death, if need be) so let's just accept that fact and move onward. Anyway, as I was saying, the apostle was out doing her thing* and foreigners were, predictably, of particular interest to the dainty Virgin Kim and thus she darted forward to intercept me. I'll spare you the grisly details of the affair but rest assured it included such snazzy buzzwords as god, alcohol, gay, money, and happy; in short, the stuff every foreigner deems important. All things considered, her English wasn't too shabby though she nevertheless did a poor job of selling me on the numerous pamphlets offered save one written entirely in Korean. That one, folks, was especially alluring and here's what it contains:

(Phase 1) A baby boy is brought into this world.

(Phase 2) Whimsical childhood? Check. Dutifully sweating through the night to achieve academic goals? Double check.

(Phase 3) Moving up the corporate ladder is only natural for a true go-getter, as is marrying a foreign woman. Sipping coffee outside a castle is merely icing on the cake.

(Phase 4) At the end of a long, fulfilling life one should rest easy in the knowledge that the scorching flames of eternal torment await! Bummer. Unless...

(Bonus Round!) ...An individual accepts the one true path to salvation, in which case a citadel made of solid gold is the final destination. Rock 'n' roll.

As a sage once said, "Shit. Fuck. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" and that's just the way I like my leaflets.



* Annoying others is a full-time job, after all.

Níðhǫggr

Once upon a time, I tossed a globe comprised of misplaced wrath toward the heavens. During its ascent, the globe lengthened into a hungry beam and, subsequently, pierced the loins of that which presided above. For my witless transgression I was pierced by a poisoned rock and nailed to the gnarled trunk of a tree unfathomable in its proportions. Upon this hallowed Tree of Mystery my pale, living corpse was besieged by the denizens of pestilence for forty days and forty nights all told. True story.

That I once gnawed upon the roots of said tree for nourishment is also true, but this took place well before the advent of pizza, wine, chili fries, 만두, lagers, club sandwiches, bagels, and bite-sized chocolates, so I can only hope you wouldn't fault me terribly for having derived sustenance from such worldly flora as it seemed like a grand idea at the time.

Truest of all, perhaps, is that I sporadically exhibit an irksome tendency to celebrate the forest at the expense of the trees.

Paulie

"Just when I knew what I wanted to say, a violent wind pulled the wires away."

-- Arcade Fire's Win Butler, "Month of May"

I'm moving on. Five years, two or three great ones. Thanks for reading, Constant Retards. God bless.

Pass the Syrup*

Yes, that time of the year has befallen domestic and expatriate readers alike once again and by 'that' I mean Canada Day. In honor of such a positively sacrosanct holiday I elected to scour the internet for pictures befitting the occasion, utilizing keywords like Canada, Canadian, drunken Canadian, Canada Day, drunk Canadian girl, Canadian holiday, maple leaf madness, Canadian mysticism, Canadian superheroes, intoxicated Canadian superheroes, etc. to locate nothing but the very best Google had to offer and the results were, to say the very least, interesting, so without further ado, I give you, Desensitized Reader, Psychedelic Kimchi's Canada Day photography exhibit.

The routine:

The nationalistic:

The so ridiculous it has to be satire:

The inappropriate:

The divergent:

And finally, the I haven't the foggiest idea of how this relates to Canada and while it simultaneously disturbs and confuses me it came up during a search so:

...


Happy Canada Day!


* "Hand me dat dere syrup, b'y"