provocative lunacy

was a band name my dad thought up. he thought any band with that name should be a supergroup. we all made jokes about naming a band "attila and the hun-eys" (that's julie's baby), but then dad blurts out, in all seriousness, "provocative lunacy." okay, dad. but then he also says things like "egg fu neil young" so similar outbursts are to be expected.

i'm at my country school today and i already made my lesson plans about christmas. today we're going to make christmas cards, write letters to santa, learn the words to jingle bells and disrespect the teacher for 3 hours. i can't wait.

i suppose i could kill some time by discussing korean driving culture, as with each passing day it seems less and less extraordinary to me and more and more routine. and it would be downright tragic to let the novelty that is korean driving evade my memory! so let me first say, my impressions of korean driving are based only on suncheon, because apparently i didn't pay attention when i was in chuncheon for four months.

besides people driving like maniacs, merging and yielding at will in intersections lacking in the areas of discernible rules and/or traffic lights, there are several other contributing factors that make the way dese here asians drive notably unique.

the first thing is a very liberal use of the buttons in the car. god made those hazard lights, so fuck it, we're gonna use them! normally en los estados unidos, we only use our hazards when we're double parking, or when our car is a piece of shit that is on fire and stopped in the middle of an intersection (usually in close proximity to wal-mart or dollar general). occassionally inclement weather will induce some hazard usage. but here, any time a taxi driver slows down, the hazards are on. then they speed up, off. slow down, on. just to get to work, dude will turn the hazards off and on 15 times. and this doesn't just happen occassionally, it's the norm. they also have a lot of fun with headlights, turning them on and off at will.

another car feature seeing frequent use in the orient is the emergency brake. if a taxi stops where there actually is a light, the emergency brake goes on. it's just a rule. yet when they park, no emergency brake (this gets more interesting in conjunction with the next coupld of nuggets of driving culture).

in the window of basically every car in suncheon is the driver's phone number. a lot of times it's a cross-stitched pillow with little bears or hearts on it. darling. it's common knowledge that the number of cars needing to park outnumbers the amount of spaces available. so it's perfectly acceptable to block one, two, three (if you're driving a truck or van) cars in their parking spot. most people don't leave their parking brake on when they park, so you are expected, even encouraged, to just push the offending vehicle out of the way to get out. on the off chance that a person did put on their parking brake when they parked, this is where the pillow comes in. give a ring, have them move their car. it's quite funny to see this sort of large scale game of tetris going on in the morning. maybe tetris isn't the right analogy, but i couldn't think of anything else that reminded me of moving actual vehicles around.

one last tidbit would be that koreans like tacky decorations. this is not limited to cars, but cell phones as well. there's all sorts of shit dangling, smelling (okay, only in taxis), displaying photos. nothing screams masculinity like a guy holding a cell phone that has little charms dangling off it. charms and ringtones are like status symbols, as though the fact that the phone probably cost at least $300 isn't enough.

but enough about cars.

it's christmastime, but it doesn't feel like christmas. there are obnoxious christmas decorations here, just like back home, but there's doesn't seem to be any sentiment. just "happy fun time christmas party days" which really means, "hey, a sale!" not that it's different in the states. but it is and it isn't. i guess the closest it's gotten to feeling like christmas was when i went to this annoying buffet christmas dinner this weekend. it felt cult-like, there were annoying white churchy types, i won an orchid (?) and i felt awkward. i guess that's familiar, but not necessarily exclusive to christmas or the states. i dunno. i watched home alone last night, alone (go figure) in my apartment. and i was appalled by the fact that this movie with the now has been (huh?) macaulay culkin was the one thing that has made me weepy and sentimental. i guess it don't take much...