Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
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Well, that guy who passed 70 in the video seemed quite youthful, alert, and vigorous (he was 72, right?). Sorry to hear about his heart problems; he seems like someone who doesn’t deserve to be saddled with such problems given his overall health and activity level. But I suppose the Reaper comes for us all.
I had a good laugh at both of your “bakla” photos when I first saw the links.
And there we ran into Kokomo’s owner, Steve, and our neighbors, Jeff and Davina.
In the pic below that, Davina sure seems young-looking. Filipinas are lucky if they can be in their forties and still look five.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/October/2025 @ 9:19 pm
I didn’t see this exchange until just now. The rule is clear: hyphenate phrasal adjectives when they precede the noun they modify. So in your example, “Mom, I’m driving cross-country tonight,” are we looking at a phrasal adjective that sits before the noun it’s modifying? What noun is it modifying?
If you and Brian both grew up seeing poorly written English, that doesn’t make the English any less poorly written. Excuses like, “Well, we learned it as…” or “We never learned that…” don’t cut the mustard.
Brian writes:
Language and grammar usage are always evolving.
As I’ve also written many times. But this doesn’t mean there are no rules and conventions. And change usually happens because of the sloppy people who keep ignoring the rules; their errors propagate, and the erroneous language becomes the “accepted” way of doing things. That’s why splitting infinitives (“to boldly go where no one has gone before”) is no longer considered improper except in the most formal English. Linguistic evolution almost always tends toward the sloppy and curt because people are mentally lazy. Witness text-message English.
See more here.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/October/2025 @ 6:05 pm
If you reread BOE#6, you know what I said about hyphenating “high school.” Yes, when “cross country” is a phrasal adjective, you hyphenate it. You have to stop using non-reasoning like “I never saw it hyphenated back then.” You have to know the rule, otherwise you’ll keep making the same mistake over and over. If people at your high school didn’t hyphenate the phrase back in the day, then they were wrong. Simple as that. It’s not that you’re getting old and forgetful; you’re just lazy and refuse to study. If you made an ounce of effort, you might improve, but I suspect that folks like you don’t make much mental effort unless they’ve got electrodes attached to them. So, no worries—relax and just go back to drinking.
What’d you have for breakfast five days ago?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/October/2025 @ 9:56 am
The grocery shopping excursion went without incident.
Think back to BOE #6. What’s the point of subscribing if you’re not gonna learn?
and in this post, I recount how my brief time on the high school cross country team came to an end.
Same rule broken here.
Leaving high school athletics behind opened the door to me becoming a pothead. Many other bad decisions flowed from that one.
A moment of objectivity. If it’s any comfort, you’re still stubborn and still making bad decisions, but it’s your life, and this only my opinion. God knows I make my own bad decisions.
Paying the rent a year in advance takes a bite out of my savings, but I’m still above water. For now.
I doubt you’ll ever have a financial emergency that requires the price of a US house from you. But you’re ready for that, I assume.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 01/October/2025 @ 7:55 pm
A group of Corona Hashers from Angeles City drove up to join us in their Hashmobile.
I love that artwork despite the ugly beer bottle. That’s really good. The two “totem poles” remind me of Korean jangseung, but Polynesian-inflected. In fact, I have to wonder how far and wide Polynesian influence goes. I know it’s all up and down the west coasts of both Canada and northwestern America, and a lot of more primitive Korean art and sculpture reflects that influence pretty strongly. Things like jangseung look way more Polynesian than Chinese despite China’s outsize influence on the peninsula (and despite the Chinese writing on the jangseung themselves—cheonha dae-janggun on the “male” post [Great General Under Heaven] and jiha yeo-janggun [Female General Under the Earth] on the “female” post).
The Hash cakes for September.
Most of the white guys seem to have no problem putting their bare ass on the ice, but most of the women are kind of prudish, with only a few exceptions.
Seems to have been a good walk despite the ass-kicking nature of the moderate path you took. How’re the meds holding up?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 30/September/2025 @ 6:49 pm
Dr. Sten Ekberg agrees: beer is the worst. It’s not just a matter of “drinking alcohol” in moderation: it’s drinking the right alcohol. I mean, I realize this is going in one ear and out the other, but there you are.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 30/September/2025 @ 12:19 pm
Dr. Dhand has a supplemental video in which he stresses that the people benefitting from moderate alcohol consumption are already in great shape—not overweight, not insulin-resistant, etc. As he says, this idea doesn’t “apply to people who have significantly excess body fat, and consequently excessive amounts of inflammation and insulin resistance.” These are people who move around a lot, i.e., they’re not spending hours at bars.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 29/September/2025 @ 10:55 pm
I’ve seen quite a few of Dr. Suneel Dhand’s videos myself. He’s been outspoken against a lot of the mask and vaxx nonsense associated with COVID. You’ll note, though, that he takes time to single out beer as an unhealthy exception. He mentions cocktails, wine, and gin and tonic positively—and all in moderation, not to the point of getting falling-down drunk.
I don’t have any tattoos, but this one looks fun.
Welcome to the bush league.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 29/September/2025 @ 10:41 pm
Anyway, call me what you will, it won’t change a thing.
Spot the error, Mr. Old and Stubborn!
What if you did a tour of all the Western, but non-American, restaurants in your area? Like that Swedish place, and one or two of those British places? And then… what if you did a tour of the Filipino restos in your area? With Swan along so she could provide you with recommendations as to what to eat and what to avoid?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 28/September/2025 @ 8:58 pm
Will I remember this lesson tomorrow? Miracles do happen, I suppose.
There’s no point to studying if you make no effort to remember. Whether you make that effort is up to you.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 28/September/2025 @ 5:39 pm
Go to BOE #21 and scroll down to the five sentences at the bottom that are introduced by the words: “In other words, don’t ever do this (these are all wrong):”
Now do you see the problem?
This is why we don’t say, Sheila sat down, and farted.
For your sentence, there are two ways to solve the problem. What are they? For further review, go all the way back to my blog and look at Commas, Part 1. Scroll down to the paragraph about compound predicates.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 27/September/2025 @ 6:38 pm
Before I forget:
I bailed on the group hike, but decided to see if I could walk off whatever was ailing my leg.
Review BOE #21. See the problem?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 27/September/2025 @ 5:57 pm
I see barflies around town drinking to excess, and that’s not my style. I have a narrow window for beer drinking (5 pm-8 pm), and I’m not a drunken asshole prior to being done for the night. That’s just the way I roll.
Getting falling-down drunk, yelling at people, not remembering what had happened the night before… none of this rings a bell?
And didn’t you just call yourself a barfly recently?
I mean, you’re free to live your life however you want, but be honest.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 27/September/2025 @ 3:07 pm
Kevin, no, I pretty much diagnosed myself.
You’re seriously telling me you walked out of the doctor’s office with a prescription for meds but no actual diagnosis? That’s crazy.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 27/September/2025 @ 1:35 pm
I had a four p.m. appointment with Dr. Jo, and she provided me with some meds that will hopefully clear my lungs of the phlegm I’ve been coughing up.
Were you given a diagnosis? Is this the return of the same condition as before? Is it something worse? Something not as bad? Is it COPD-related? How long might the problem last? Is there a chance this condition might worsen, following the trajectory of the previous breathing problems (to the point where you needed an oxygen tank)?
Anyway, my sympathies. Being woken up by your own lungs can’t be pleasant. I hope the new meds work, but I also hope you’ve done your homework as to what this problem is. Just giving meds for symptoms without explaining underlying conditions is less than optimal. I’m no doctor, but if I were, I’d want my patients to know as much as possible, and I’d also want them to be curious about their condition.
I didn’t slip, trip, or fall, so it’s not a classic injury or muscle pull. Hopefully, it goes away soon.
Jesus, dude, see the docs and get a diagnosis. Along with more meds.
I’m not good at spotting AI images. I admit to the agony of defeat.
Looks as though they used Ana de Armas as their model. Gotta hand it to her.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 26/September/2025 @ 6:14 pm
Here’s hoping you see drier paths soon.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 25/September/2025 @ 7:00 pm
Rain! All that water you could have been storing in a tank equipped with a filter.
When everyone had had enough, we billed out.
I learned a new phrasal verb today: to bill out.
re: video
So she’s suggesting that Filipina women are generally not money-grubbing leeches, that they have their pride and feel pressure instead of simply feeling thankful. Well, I’m glad she’s fighting for her sistas’ dignity, but from what I’ve read on your blog and from what I know about my friend in Korea who’s married to a Filipina, a lot of these women are money-sucking vortices (my friend’s wife is fine, but her family in the PI is another matter). That’s why these vampires hook up with (old) foreigners to begin with. I’m not saying that’s true of Swan, who seems radically different from all the other women you’ve been with, but the PI does often seem like a place of Lovecraftian horror.
re: classroom-dialogue meme
Some of those were cute (if fictional—most kids don’t have that level of wit), but “Clyde” and “Harold” deserve to have the shit beaten out of them.
Speaking of money-sucking vortices: Do you ever feel that your candy rounds are becoming more and more expensive, elaborate, and ambitious? Not to mention just physically heavier as you carry more and more candy?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/September/2025 @ 8:49 pm
So one wonders: why order beef stew from a Swedish restaurant? Google “popular Swedish main meals” and discover:
• Köttbullar (Swedish Meatballs): Small, flavorful meatballs made from a mix of ground beef and pork, typically served with gravy, mashed potatoes, and tart lingonberry jam for a comforting meal.
• Janssons Frestelse (Jansson’s Temptation): A rich and creamy potato and anchovy gratin that is a classic dish, particularly popular during Christmas.
• Ärtsoppa (Pea Soup): A hearty yellow pea soup often served on Thursdays along with pancakes, a long-standing Swedish tradition.
• Falukorv (Falu Sausage): A savory, often children’s favorite, dish consisting of sliced Falu sausage (a type of red sausage) served with mashed potatoes and gravy.
• Pytt i Panna: This dish is a way to use up leftovers, combining diced potatoes, onions, and meats or sausage into a savory hash, often topped with a fried egg.
• Raggmunk: A savory Swedish potato pancake, similar to a latke, made from grated potato and served with fried pork and lingonberries.
• Kalops: A traditional Swedish beef stew made with meat on the bone, carrots, and a rich broth, often served with potatoes and pickled beetroot.
• Smörgåstårta: A festive “sandwich cake” made with layers of bread and various sandwich fillings like shrimp, herring, and vegetables, making for a celebratory and impressive dish.
• Kroppkakor: A type of potato dumpling, typically filled with minced meat and onion, that serves as a comforting main dish.Ah, I see that Kalops, beef stew, is in fact a popular Swedish dish. But yes, served the Swedish way. Now that you know the above, you might either avoid the beef stew next time or order extra helpings of veggies to mix into the stew (assuming you don’t want it Swedish-style).
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/September/2025 @ 7:50 pm
I hope there are no more power or water outages for the next little while. Hang in there until this thing blows over.
Why would they serve you beef stew with the taters all separate like that? Weird.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/September/2025 @ 9:04 pm
So, you’ll be doing the hunkering down, I gather. Who’s the lucky guy?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/September/2025 @ 1:21 pm
Batten down them hatches! Enjoy hunkering down!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 22/September/2025 @ 5:50 pm
Still, it’s always the “but it’s low-alcohol beer!” defense.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 22/September/2025 @ 4:00 pm
Maybe because I was a bit tipsy, but after leaving Cyclone, Swan suggested we give Cloud 69 another chance, and I agreed. My waitress friend once again served us, and I told her about my meeting with the owner. She got a look of concern on her face, but I assured her I had not accused her of wrongdoing. I woke up during the night with a sick feeling, wondering if my words were going to result in my friend losing her job. I hope not; that was certainly not my intention.
But let’s keep on drinking, anyway, and damn the consequences! And if, as you say, you drink only low-alcohol beverages, then wow—it doesn’t take much to get you to the “loose lips” stage!
I’m a big LOTR fan, but I don’t get this joke. Does anyone have a clue?
I smiled when I read the meme, and I would guess the joke is nothing deep. When we meet the guy in the Peter Jackson films, he’s always giving people a suspicious eye, so he could be the type who has an eye for detail or a constantly niggling notion that something is up, hence the joke that he’d be a good detective on a detective show. That would be my guess, anyway.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/September/2025 @ 5:16 pm
Since I grew up with a Korean mom, moving to Korea generally wasn’t a culture shock for me. But there was this one time when I conversationally asked my Korean EFL students how long a woman was pregnant for, and they all confidently replied, “Ten months.” I was floored. Later on, I realized that they’d been thinking in lunar months, not solar. Do the math. It’s close.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 20/September/2025 @ 5:50 pm
Sorry, “chalut,” then. Bawk bawk.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 20/September/2025 @ 5:44 pm
these crates full of baby chicks
Free-range balut.
Yes, we Kevins are everywhere. Check under your bed.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 20/September/2025 @ 8:07 am
(Damn—that was supposed to be “Oh, yeah.” My typing has been deteriorating over the past year. Maybe something is slowly leaking in my brain.)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/September/2025 @ 9:55 pm
Oh, yah—has Swan made you a Filipino burrito yet?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/September/2025 @ 9:54 pm
Gud fotoz uv di 8K wok.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/September/2025 @ 7:04 pm
«« Back To Stats PageThe biblical concept of heaven (or at least the way it has been depicted) of spending an eternity in a garden paradise, petting lions, always seemed to me to be hellishly boring. Hence, I like to come up with my own version of a heavenly afterlife. The “do-over” concept is my current favorite.
Seems just as fanciful and fantastical to me. An eisegetical heaven.
For what it’s worth, deeper, more philosophical Christian thinkers don’t believe such childish nonsense about heaven, either—the rainbows, the clouds, the flippy-flappy angels, the corny harp music. Whatever the heavenly, beatific state is, it’s beyond definition and well beyond human, mortal reckoning. If it does, in some sense, involve finding oneself before the divine Presence, and if it involves retaining one’s own consciousness as a separate thing still capable of experience, then it can’t like anything we can possibly understand. A child’s idea of heaven might involve favorite foods, beloved pets, and loving friends and relatives, but a sophisticated adult’s heaven will be more of a plunge into blissful Mystery. Whatever that might mean. Besides, that childish imagery probably is meant more to be a metaphor for what makes one happy than to be a literal image of heaven. So, who knows? Maybe, when a child dies, the child experiences heaven as the literalization of those metaphors if that’s what makes the kid happy. And when an adult dies, perhaps heaven is something much more incomprehensibly grandiose. Assuming heaven is subjective, and assuming that one somehow retains one’s subjectivity after death.
Zooming back a bit, I think part of the problem, for those who reject religion, is that they attack a straw-man idea of what religion is and what it purports to sell. This is partly the fault of silly biblical literalists who treat the Bible as if it were a history book instead of a jumbled, not-always-well-edited tome of metaphorical and symbolic wisdom meant to lift up, comfort, and challenge us. But in rejecting this straw-man vision of religion, these same people turn to even sillier things like crystals and astrology, and Chinese medicine and whatever crap they pull out of their own asses. And that shit is no better, no more sensible, and just as full of the same, self-indulgent mumbo-jumbo they thought they were rejecting. Better to just become an atheist or an agnostic.
You already know my opinion on what happens when we die, and I’m reconciled to that point of view even if it doesn’t mean an eternity of bliss with the Divine. Your own wish for a do-over life strikes me as suffused with regret and a kind of quiet desperation. And even if you did get a do-over, with all of your supposed wisdom intact, ported over from your previous life, there’s no guarantee that your primitive urges won’t stifle that wisdom at the first opportunity, forcing you back into the samsaric cycle.
To me, reincarnation is a hell. I wouldn’t want to relive my childhood—all the messiness, the stupid fights with other kids, the parents yelling “no!” and punishing me, the crying, the pissing, the shitting, the puking, the ignorance. Most Hindus and Buddhists would agree that remaining trapped on the wheel of samsara is a kind of hell, which is why both religions seek release or liberation as their goal: moksha in Hinduism and nirvana in Buddhism. You, however, seem to want to remain on your do-over wheel, constantly chasing after something that can never be yours. How many lives will it take before you realize that this way of living is a stupid waste of time?
I guess some people need to smack their heads bloody against the maze wall until they finally, dimly realize that the way out of the maze isn’t by using their head to break the walls down. Good luck as you figure this out.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/September/2025 @ 6:57 pm