i shudder in the daylight because i've been sleeping all days. i wake and it is raining. i lay in bed and it is raining. i sleep and it is raining. my timecodes are gone, washed off by a billion drops of rain building and overflowing from my windowsill. where are the days? they seem like twilight. where are the nights?

the midnight water saturated reflecting the stubborn city, resisting sleep, wanting a party, needing the summer drunks, and the university students roving in packs from one Hof to another and another and then a singing room. what is Daehakno without the kids, the midgets peddling gum, the Soju girls with their tiny shots, the SK girls with their discounts, the KTF guys with their ultra-waxed manga hair, or the ajumas and their ever essential food tents? nothing. Daehakno is nothing. Jongro is nothing. Seoul is nothing.

i have come to witness the day Nomeansno warned me about when i was fourteen: The Day Everything Became Nothing. where are the people? inside. nestled in their beds with visions of chupa-chups dancing in their heads.

summer in Seoul means being beaten by the waft of hot, thick air being forced through a tunnel by a speeding subway train. summer in Seoul means being pressed into the street by the thumb of god while walking and to suddenly realize that you may in fact be dead when you enter a building and drown in the freeze of AC. summer in Seoul means laying in bed in front of a fan and listening to an ajosshi roaming your neighborhood yelling, "Ice Cake-ee! Ice Cake-ee!"

what is summer without these experiences? winter.

'i hope these little chats of ours can continue ... ' • July 17, 2006
Rain. is it all lies?
tØmybØt | 06:32 | 1 thing i like about you | Caleb J. Cook

weather has two settings ass hot and rainy. during the week i melt. i reek, actually. at hapkido our uniforms are so rank that the room we change in has the ability to kill rats, snakes, beetles, and small children. my uniform is still sodden with the prior night's workout. friday, 24 hours later, it was soppy wet in effervescence of an hour of kicking, punching, fighting, rolling, and bouncing.

i've been soaking the uniform in the bathroom sink with extra shampoo for the last 36 hours—it is raining too much to go to the laundry mat.

and this brings us to the subjects of rain, fan speeds, ION settings, and my gigantic headache.

various parts of Korea are submerged, people have been swept away, cats have drowned, yet umbrella pushers in the subway are getting rich off it all and it makes me contort—i should quit this silly teaching business and get myself in the ground-floor of 'supply & demand'.

i am notified of these events sometimes by NATE AIR, SK Telecom's gimmicky broadcasting system which occasionally tells me things i don't really care to know. other valuable sources of neurogenic input are garnered from: my Ace-in-the-hole expert, a.k.a. the lovely Grrr; the simple application of logic, "wherever you go, 1+1=2; and my eyes.

a few days since i tattled nostalgia of Oregon Rain, Korea, not to be out-done, is busy teaching a thing or two about how it can rain for days anywhere it likes. point taken, Oh Dynamic One.

i'm giddy. not school girl giddy or teenage prostitute giddy, but nerdy seventh grader who finds a quarter in the street and has it dawn on him that now with this untraceable funding, he can attempt to place a call in a random phone booth to that 1-900 number he saw at the bus stop, with the blonde in the cinched business suit and triple D boobies almost exposed between the great divide of slim lapels, and finally get a handle on what all the fuss is about. that's my giddy. the edge. the edge of ... about to.

rain. it must be the rain. or the drawing close of another contract. that fleeting time of a scant month or two when i fancy myself an explorer, a conquistador, a clerk at a 7-11 in Dhaka, converting from agnosticism to Islam, building a solid-fuel rocket and strapping it to my back in an ambitious bid to secure a post within the ranks of the Russian military for being the fastest man alive.

i have two fans. one has many settings; one has three settings. they are both flawed in the art of acceptable fanning. if they had properly attended to their studies at Fan U, they would have been kicked out for in adequate grades. but instead, they bought their fake Fan U degrees online.

at least one fan tries to make due for its shortcomings by offering ION !!! this 'feature' turns on a blue light and looks pretty cool in the dark. otherwise, i have no idea what this function does and it is not mentioned in the fan material.

i have a headache, therefore i must blog • July 16, 2006
monday is a holiday
tØmybØt | 08:11 | nothing i like about you | Caleb J. Cook

rain, rain ho huway, hum hugan ahutter day. summer rain. warm rain. soft rain. tickling rain. steamy rain. jungle rain. hope rain. happy rain. Oregon rain. sometimes i miss it.

but stumptown rain is cold, sharp, and rude. it jars you awake without an umbrella. it gives you a cold after a few minutes. and it doesn't smell like plants—it smells like the Pacific Ocean.

Korea rain is like cuddling with a new teddy bear and feeling its tears of the end of loneliness slip through the hairs on your head.

any rain will ban the mosquitos for a time and that is always good.

last night i was bit, nibbled, bled, and sucked more than twenty times [and i have the bites to prove it]. after practice i went up to the castle wall to work on my night photography.( i try to do this once or twice a week now). i knew i was being bit from the first shot, but the rain had broken for the evening and a smooth and determined wind had pushed the haze out enough to see the moon and a few stars.

i have finally given up and accepted that my shaking hands can't hold the camera steady for anything less than 60 seconds [in my teens i could hold my Nikon steady for a 1/15 shot]. now with a short timer and bracing the camera on something sold, i am able to take pictures exposure times of one second or longer without any motion blur or twitter.

i filled my memory card for the first time ever, inspiring my Canon to chirp loudly in the street near the wee hours stirring a few ajumas up for early vegetable washing and gossiping about the habits of their neighbors.

a beautiful shot ... • July 7
new session starts tomorrow; no more Adolf!
tØmybØt | 04:28 | 4 things i like about you | Caleb J. Cook