LD50

This morning I woke up at 10am.  Well, no.  I woke up at 6am like I always do, then fought another limp-hearted battle with myself regarding my motivation to arise.  This time, however, I hit the canvas rather hard and put in another 4 hours (give or take the minutes spent I waking up, assessing my cyclic situation and ultimately deciding there was nothing I could do about it).  This put me behind my preferred schedule for the day.  So what did I do?  I hustled.  I drank my fruit slop, did my homework, did my workout without wasting a single moment and--HOLY HELL!--I was right on schedule again!  This showed me that in my day-to-day, I have the ability to waste an immense amount of time in the morning, which is something one should not do.  This life necessitates constant analysis, it does.

So finding myself right on schedule again, I trotted downtown in the beautiful 20º weather and lobbed myself up the stairs to Café Maybe.  This will be the sight of Jeomchon's first ever Open Mic Night, hosted by Jonno and myself.  I got my Americano with an extra shot of motor oil (I was talked out of 2 extra shots by the lovely barista who already feared for my health given my hyperactive demeanor) and jaunted home, talking out loud the whole way (I marveled at the notion of a junkyard rooster).  Having not had enough coffee yet, I accepted Melissa's offer to pick me up another.  Free coffee?  Hugh Betcha!  So she fed me fulla another and so started my morning with the li'l muppets.  Now see, they have a tendency to trump me in off-the-wall antics as I am a grown man and they are wound up sugar frosted hedgefoxes.  But not today, Gladys.  No sir.  I bulldozed their entire little world from start to finish.  I got right in their faces, danced, mimed, slapped my belly, played games with my voice, renamed them all, pretended to disappear, swung them by the wrists...more or less maintained no control over what was happening with my body.  It was a ridiculous display of losing your head on coffee, but the children-though perplexed-seemed pleased with their drugged up 선생님.  The crash was a little brutal, though...

I have said many many times that I am never _______ again.  Smoking, drinking, drinking coffee, partaking in the recreational use of any variety of intoxicans and intoxican'ts, tossing off first thing in the morning, eating a calorie, saying something, saying something else, etc.  But none of these have held true.  But I don't want them to.  I don't want a life of restrictions and limitations.  What I should investigate is a life of moderation.  Some self-control without denial.  Some will-power.  Small battles, Lucaseu.  Small battles.

Facebook account gets deleted this weekend.  My ol' chap Chris made the plunge this morning, and I thought that was a pretty smart train to hop.  I spend an embarrassing amount of time cruisin' The Book and I have nothing to show for it.  Sure, now some people know I like Mike Patton  Wahoo.  If you love me, you'll find me.  And if you don't, I don't want you sniffin' around my shotgun shack anywho.

This morning I was informed I don't have to work tomorrow.  With the caffeine, my heart literally exploded into a catastrophic mess, painting the entire West wall of Little Fox Learning Center in my blood and veins, emotionally scarring the children for years to come.  I decided not to go out though.  'Cause I got my new guitar.  And it's amazing.  And I named her Yu Na.  And she's lovely.

Okay, time to go give her some love.  I leave you now with pictures.

Be eggcellent to each other.

-LS^2

Yu Na.

Some of my best mates:

Jonno loves his peace and his homemade bread.

James has been here for 5 years and will drink if you ask him to.

Jürgen is infatuated with lenses and says "Tasty Treats."

Chris is never getting his jean jacket back. 

Be there.  It's gonna be SWEET.

You luck Ju Hee up.

My birthday is in 8 months,

but try tellin' Soo Hyun that.

Fryday

"Everyone gets 'fried' on 'Fry'day!"   -Boone Barton.
Get 'em, Boone.

But it is Friday, and the heart of the sentiment still holds true: love it 'cause it's Friday!  I've always been a massive fan of Fridays.  In all of my school years since 3rd grade, the moment school let out on Friday, I would be singing a song.  Loud and proud, audible and rememberable.  More often than not is was this little James Brown ditty you may have heard before.  I would do this to commemorate the moment-to hold it up to it's own glory and give it the joy I was feeling.  But there was a dark, masochistic reason as well.  Come 4pm on Sunday, when the Sun started thanking you for the excellent day and pulling on it's windbreaker to head home, a cloud of depression would begin to form in my blood.  The leaves halted their brilliant reflection of light from the sky, the cars were now zooming home instead of to their chosen festivities, and shitty shitty network television began it's weekly alarm that Yes: the weekend is over.  I would sulk and cry under a chair in the living room or on my bed in private as I cursed the weekend for it's tease.  "I am fortune's fool!" the bellow would tumble from my latched quarters.  And all the while, I would reflect back on that soulful JB moment and look upon my old Friday-self with disgust.  "You don't know how good you had it, Salazar..."  I've since grown up and matured, but that's not to say I haven't crafted my adult versions of this exact tradition.  These days it's virtually the same save for the abundance of alcohol, the absence of Skittles and the lack of 4-hour basketball games with Mark and Marco.

So take that with you today, heathens.  Mark your territory in time and space with a message of love and enthusiasm whenever you feel it necessary.  And use that as an anchor whenever a Great Sunday comes to stain your fabric.  Or, conversely, torture yourself with your temporary flare up of positivity like I used to.  Whatever you want to do, I will support you with all my heart.

And now, WE SKA!!!

-LS^2

Happy St. Patty's Meltdown!

You can take the boy out of the party, but you can't take the party out of the boy.  Excuses to drink really needn't exist in today's society.  But they do, so God bless.

It's another Monday morning in Jeomchon, South Korea and I'm your host Rockin' Ricky Rack 'Em.  You just heard some Creedence Clearwater Revival and before that a bonus Ozzy 2-fer.  Comin' up at the 12 o'clock hour we're gonna be comin' at you with some classic Joplin and stay tuned for your chance to call in and win with the Manic Monday Moneybags.  But don't go anywhere 'cause up next we've got your fix of Bob Dylan's latest catastrophe, this is your SoKo Radio: KQRA!

When it boils down, I only work a 6 hour day.  Tack on the extra 90 minutes of homework and factor in an hour for a workout every day, I really shouldn't be complaining about not having any time.  I should be fixing the way I use it.  But alas, when I stay as light in the pockets as I do, the inclination to shut in only to waste time grows.  Hath I learned nothing from all my former complaints?!

Saturday morning I woke up at 4am and stayed up.  As I trolled around my apartment, I heard a horrible crunch which turned out to be an SUV t-boning a taxi cab.  It was pretty rancid.  One man taken to the hospital, 2 vehicles destroyed.  But soon after that, I began drinking, which lead to a day that I won't exactly look back on with reverence.  Good day, though.  I wish I had an English accent sometimes.

Hiking is great.  Do it all you can.  Even if you're tired, hungover, cranky or sore.  It's so worth it.  I went hiking on Sunday (with a proper hangover, no less) and it was a lovely lovely sight through and through.  I didn't take a single picture either, because I read somewhere that you can enjoy an experience without documenting it and posting it in a public forum.  Wouldn't you know it, that's true!

Okay, that's all for now.  I have to get to livin'.  I offer you-My Babies-my sincerest gratitude, appreciation and apologies.  Please take them as you feel fit.

Chelsea Wolfe singing You Are My Sunshine.  Dig it.

-LS^2

The Auto-Carnage.

Mad respect.

Legit.

I do find this outstanding.

How you kill time on a Friday.

Creating False Memories (part 55)

"Creating false memories."  That was a sentence snippet I cut out of a psychology book in college and taped in my Journal.  In fact, I taped the majority of my surroundings into my Journal in college.  I would stay up all night at Matt's house and he and I would cut, glue, tape and wrench away.  Sometimes until morning.  Sometimes until the next morning after that.  Eventually I'd have to go back to school and he'd have to go to work.  Or vice versa.  Excellent times.

But anyway...

This weekend I went on a temple stay in 대승사, which is Daesungsa.  For those of you not currently in the know on temple stays, you pay a little money and live like a monk for as long as you like.  We chose a modest 21 hours.  We arrived at 4pm (4:20m actually, 'cause we ran stupid late) and got our cool lookin' duds.  They were like brown jammies.  Comfy as hell.  We immediately went to our rooms and had nothing scheduled until our first meal, which ended up the meal we ate every time we ate: vegetables and rice in a bowl.  What Korean cuisine lacks in variety it makes up for in dependability.  Then we worshipped.  This was a long 70 minutes or so.  We listened to the man chant and tried to follow our cues, but having only one Korean speaker in the bunch (who did not herself speak ancient Korean), it was difficult to be sure we were doing it right.  But do it we did.  Then we went on a night time hike wherein we were told by a monk that blindness was simply a stereotype of the dark-you must train yourself to see without light.  Crucial on so many levels.  We went to sleep (some quicker than others as some of us were up until 4:30am the night before screaming and drinking) and awoke at 3am for more prayer.  This round consisted of the same prayer as last time as well as the dialy 108 bows.  I got to hold the stick that noted when we bow and when we rise.  This stick was also the stick used for thwapping those who doze off.  And did I doze off?  No.  Hell no.  Not because I wasn't tired, but because we had been informed that the monks on the grounds had been awake for twenty-one god damn days!  Whether this was a misinterpretation or not, I don't know.  But every way I tried to ask, I was met with an affirmative: Yes, twenty-one days.  My God.  After that, it was naps, then a long hike and more prayer.  Another meal, some tea, and by 1pm, we were off.  I then slept the rest of my Sunday away.  The temple stay really made me thin about how empty some of the things (read: most of the things) I do with myself are.  Not that I want to be a monk, but being around that much devotion and meditation had better rub off on you a little.  If not, you're being pig-headed.  But the empty feeling was what lead me to Korea.  I follow signs, though not always all the way through.

These last few days have been pretty nice at school.  I've had to put a shit load of work in as I have some new classes and new students and have to write report cards and update sticker plans and discipline my mutants and entertain my muppets and all the while find a way to think I'm doing good for the universe.  But overall it's okay.  I still have decisions to make as far as my inclusions on Korea's future, but I have time to make them.  And with that time, I hope to go to Seoul soon and see the Tim Burton exhibit I was cheated out of in January because there were too many white people there already (or something).

I feel like there were other things I wanted to say, but I'm blanking.

-I love Bryan Burgess.
-I love John Frusciante's early albums.
-I love nice guitars.
-I love pineapple.

Two of these things I have, but I left my ax with Marco and Bryan passed away a couple years ago.

Okay, I'm drinking a beer and kinda tired.  I really gotta finish Bill's book or else he'll never forgive me.  In closing, Koreans are very pretty and very quiet (not all of them, but many of them).

Be excellent to each other.

-LS^2

Marco, Mallams, Robert Downey Jr. and myself, circa 2001.

The outside of a temple in which I did not stay.

Inside of an adjacent temple.

Me, according to the 2nd grade sketch artist at the
Mungyeong City Police Department.
Above my head says Lu-lu-ca-ca-seu-seung.

Selfie on Coffee.

Showing the kids some American games.

Seriously...

...all these kids with cell phones.

Keepin' up with Jones, right?

-LS^2

"Bring me his fingers."

Phourth of July

It's 9:48am on Sunday and I'm in bed.  Still.  I went to bed at 8pm.  Friday.

Ooooh yeah, the flu.  It hurts to cough and it feels like there is asphalt in my lungs.  And I'll bet I smell, too.  I was going to try and join a baseball league today, but I'll have to waylay those plans.  It's been 31 years without playing organized baseball, so the great American pastime can wait another week for my crippling left-handed juke smash and kitty-like speed.  I will cough and baseball will wait.  What's new?

I want to learn more about space.  But where to begin?  Where would I start?  I feel the same way about contacting Morgan Freeman for some freelance voiceover work (for him, not me).  I think it'd be easier to forge a relationship with the Big Black that is space than the Big Black that is Morgan Freeman.  But who knows?  Maybe he's dying for a project to mix it up.  And with enough SBTB video, we could rule the comedy world.  Yeah, space is more far-fetched.  Morgan will be fish in a barrel.

I work.  I work work work and then I get home and I get a head start on tomorrow's work so that tomorrow I'll have a little extra time...to get my work done.  It's a 6 hour gig at work, but it's about 1-2 hours of homework each day.  Then each week there are sticker plan updates.  And 5 times a month there are report cards.  Then the 2-3 hours I've been devoting to handing out folders in the morning to parents to spread the Little Fox gospel.  Then there's printing on this awful, awful machine we share.  All in all, I'm spending all my time on the thing I was told would be the least of my livin' here.  I understand fully that that's not how one should expect taking a job to go, but I was hamstringed into believing it.  Oops.  But salvation of that lies within my resourcefulness.  How to make a dollar stretch, an hour sing and a moment appear.  Joining a baseball team seems like a logical step.  Another would be to block every site from my computer that isn't work.  And maybe one that teaches you how to train carrier pigeons.

When I was in 2nd grade, I moved to Waterloo, Iowa.  I learned right away that Georgia Trovas was a bitch.  Cute.  Popular.  Bitch.  Deadly combination.  Then you move forward in my timeline to college. I'm 22.  A man.  Purely awesome and radiant.  I meet Georgia Trovas again.  She goes to my school for about a week.  I approach her.  "Hey, I'm Lucas Salazar.  Remember me?  Been a while, huh?"

"So?"

Some things never change.  I hear she has a sarcastic greeting card business now.  I hope she squanders the profits on a fatal cocaine habit.

Got any music to suggest?

I'd really like some NyQuil and a steak right now.  I think I'll get the medicine from the store and murder a cow on the way back.  Rumor has it there's one in town and happens to be close personal friends with James.  Sorry, James, but your Mr. Ed's goin' down.

Face forward, y'all, and keep your hands on the warmth of your loves (their genitals),

-LS^2

My mission work.

Aint seen you in a while, Tootie Fruity 2x4.

PC Road Retter--the fuck does that mean?

"Teacher finished!"

Garbage Booty

I am known here as a "waygookin."  That means "foreigner."  I like it.  It sounds derogatory (and maybe it is), but when I hear children secretly ask their parents "Waygookin?" and the parents then hush their children (for it's not polite to stare), I smile like a Dutch boy.

Last weekend I went bowling every waking hour. On Sunday, I bowled a 166, which I believe is in my top 3 scores of all-time.  I have no form and only an antiquated sense of fundamentals, but I do enjoy a good bowl.  It's not too big in Korea, which would explain the NO DRINKING rule and the fact that there were never any other bowlers there save for my company.  Yep, I spent all my money bowling.  And a Friday night of whiskey and gizzards.

I'm still duckin' and bobbin' and weavin' with my job.  It's a never ending pinballing 'twixt hoping they enjoy themselves, cramming lessons into their faces, pleasing the bosses and not punting a child down the hall.  I had to assign one of my more unruly classes a seating chart.  There are 8 students and 12 seats.  The goal is to keep the sleepy ones engaged, the hyper ones at bay, the ones with grabby hands away from appliances and windows and stop them from fighting.  And, you know, to teach them English.  When assessing this, all I can think of is the riddle with the rice, the cat and the wolf (or whatever evolutionary hierarchy you learned).  You gotta get 'em across the river, but you can only take one at a time,  you can't take the rice with the cat 'cause it'll eat the rice, you can't take the wolf with the cat 'cause it'll eat the cat, and you can't shoot them out of a cannon.  In my case, this girl can't sit by these two girls, this girl can't sit by the window or the light switches, this boy has to sit in front, this boy can't sit next to any of the talkers, these two girls are good and must act as buffers between the baddies, and the back row is too far away for the myopic and the perpetually fatigued.  I plot it out like Napoleon, but invariably I find flaw with it.  Right now, "Ooni" keeps turning on and off the heater.

Wait...why wouldn't the wolf wouldn't eat the rice?  Or you for that matter? And why such a small boat if you've taken the responsibility of domesticating a wolf?  Or have you not domesticated it, in which case what the hell are you doing with it anyway?  And is the rice cooked?  Could you put it in tupperware?

I am on my 3rd week of the Insanity workout.  It's a mother fucker, but I'm getting somewhere, which is very encouraging.  My goal is to get down to 75 pounds.  But as I just discovered Nutella, this may be unrealistic.

I have to thank the light and life around me.  Through the extremely gracious karmic whathaveyou, I am living in Korea, financially above water, healthy, sitting in a nice chair and loaded with fresh veggies and lemon juice.  All this thanks to help from others, good friends, unsecured garbage dumps, love from my family and some good ol' dumb luck.  With all the advantages I've had, I could be much further along, but I won't dwell on that (yes I will).  I'll simply continue forward.  I'll see you when I'm emaciated, world.

And Happy Birthday, Brett Loudermilk.  Yesterday to me, but Today to you.  Much love, Freakazoid.

As for the rest of you: Happy Birthday (when applicable).

Love you like FNM,
-LS^2

Edging out England in a nail-biter.

Hey kid, c'mere...

...that's right.  Now smile!

Atta boy.

Rapping HS boys beget screaming MS girls.

Some of my Garbage Booty.