Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
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Well, I will once again spare you any commentary about the situation; it is, after all, your life to live. But I will offer up this joke, which a buddy of mine told me years and years ago:
A man comes to a farm looking to buy a rooster for breeding purposes. The farmer he speaks with grimaces and says, “Yeah, we got ourselves a rooster, but we cain’t sell ‘im. Wouldn’t be proper.”
“What’s the problem with him?” the man asks.
“You don’t wanna know,” says the farmer. “But I’ll give you a look at ‘im if you want.” The man assents, and they move into the farm to see the rooster.
The man is treated to the sight of a powerful-looking, amazingly healthy rooster that would be perfect for breeding. It stood, proud and alone, in its own sequestered part of the farm, like a deadly weapon that gets taken out only in times of emergency.
“Good God!” the man exclaims. “You have to sell him to me!”
“Ain’t fer sale,” says the farmer. “Wouldn’t be proper. All’s I can say is, that thang is dangerous.”
The man grated, “I’ll offer you—” and he named an utterly exorbitant amount of money. The farmer considered.
“Okay, then,” said the farmer. “He’s yers. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya’, though.”
Giddy with delight, the man trucks the rooster back to his own property and, impatient to get things moving, tosses the rooster into his own henhouse. Humming to himself, the man retires for the day.
The next morning, the man walks over to the henhouse and opens the door. He screams in horror. Every single one of his prized hens is dead, and the rooster is standing among the carcasses, breathing hard and staring at the man with crazed, bloodshot eyes. The man moans, “Good Lord, he… he fucked them to death! Jesus, I’m gonna have to figure this out…” And with that, the man takes the rooster out and places him in a barn with a bunch of other farm animals—cows, pigs, horses. “Lemme think about this,” the man mutters to himself, and he goes back into his domicile.
The next morning, the man wakes up and has an idea of what to do. He strides purposefully over to the barn and opens the door… and screams in horror once again. The rooster is standing in the midst of a pile of animal carcasses, looking insanely triumphant. All the cows, pigs, and horses are dead, blood trickling out of their nether regions. “No!” shouts the man, searching around the barn for what he needs. He finds a chain with a spike on one end and a metal collar on the other. Grabbing the chain and the rooster, the man angrily marches out into his pasture, far away from any other beasts. He claps the metal collar around the rooster’s neck, hammers the spike deep into the ground, and stomps away, growling, “That’ll teach you to fuck my animals to death!”
The next day, the man tromps back out to where the rooster is… and as he nears the rooster, he sees that it’s still on its chain, but it’s dead. Its eyes are closed, and its tongue is hanging out of its open beak.
“What in God’s name happened here?” the man blurts out. He approaches the rooster carefully, having seen his share of horror movies. The rooster doesn’t move; it really seems dead. The man gets right up to it. He stares down at the carcass.
One of the rooster’s eyes pops open.
“Sshh,” says the rooster, pointing at the sky with a sly wingtip. “Buzzards.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 26/July/2020 @ 6:22 pm
Looks to have been a great hike. Good luck tonight, I guess. Just make sure you aren’t being played. She may be only twenty, but she also may be a lot more worldly and wily than she’s letting on.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 25/July/2020 @ 6:00 pm
Heh. So much for Rule #1. Well… good luck, man.
As for this:
After this very brief exchange, I crossed the highway and continued homeward. And the next thing I knew, he was walking a few steps ahead of me!
I fervently hope that’s a typo.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/July/2020 @ 8:06 pm
Reverend Spooner apparently had a condition that caused him to flip parts of words around, especially when he was under stress. One of his classics: “Mardon me, Padam. This pie is occupewed. May I sew you to a sheet?”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 25/July/2020 @ 10:52 am
Sounds almost like a spoonerism. I think I’ve mentioned spoonerisms before on this blog, but those usually involve switching out parts of words, not entire words.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/July/2020 @ 8:21 pm
Whoops. Rule #1 should be, “Don’t BE A sucker…”
Ah, senility and dyslexia.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/July/2020 @ 6:09 pm
Well, that final pic just about sums up 2020. Sorry to hear that your gesture seemingly went unappreciated, but if Jhen has any maturity and character, she’ll at least send you a note of gratitude sometime before Christmas. If she doesn’t do that, then remember Rule #1: don’t a be sucker when women come a-pleading. You won’t be making any real difference that way; you’re just a corpse being plucked at by crows. Making a difference should be about proceeding from a sense of self-worth, i.e., from a position of strength and dignity; it shouldn’t be about trying to find a sense of self-worth. You’re already worthy, good sir, so don’t turn your gestures of charity into a subtle form of begging.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/July/2020 @ 5:33 pm
May the influx of tourists resume soon, then!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/July/2020 @ 3:14 pm
Boy, the authorities sure are playing with your emotions, aren’t they. Yeesh. I hope the situation stabilizes soon. Yoyo-ing back and forth between “open” and “not open” isn’t good for anyone’s mental health. Was also sorry to read, in your previous post, about the death of Arizona. That place was definitely a fixture in past blog posts. But I guess we knew that some places wouldn’t be hardy enough to survive the current troubles. So just hunker down and hang on. Maybe some reincarnation of Arizona will appear someday.
Based on one of your captions above, I think you may already know this joke:
Jesus was hanging off the cross, slowly dying. A weeping half-circle of his followers stood around the cross. Jesus, in agony, looked down and saw John, one of the faithful disciples.
“John,” Jesus rasped, “come closer.” John, lips quivering, obediently shuffled forward a bit.
“Yes, Lord?” he sobbed.
“No—closer,” Jesus quietly urged.
“Yes, Lord?” said John through his tears as he inched forward.
“No—closer,” insisted Jesus. John got right up to the foot of the cross. He looked up at his teacher.
“What have you to say, my Lord?” John asked.
“I can see your house from here,” Jesus said.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 22/July/2020 @ 8:58 pm
Thanks, Brian! I’ll check it out.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 22/July/2020 @ 5:17 pm
While I’m at it, the Wikipedia entry on “hiking” makes for fascinating reading. There’s a lot of great vocabulary in that entry. Different English-speaking countries use different terms to describe the ways in which we take walks. I got curious about this because the NZ videos kept mentioning “tramping” and “tramping boots”—something we just don’t say in the States, even though the verb “to tramp” (e.g., “tramping around in the rain”) is known to us (US Eng.: to tramp = “to stomp about”).
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/July/2020 @ 10:11 pm
It’s called Te Araroa.
Hope this doesn’t get caught in your spam filter.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/July/2020 @ 8:42 pm
The world keeps on a-turnin’.
The turds keep on a-turdin’.
The girls keep on a-flirtin’.
And the heart keeps on… a-fartin’.(Yew thawt ah wuz gunna say “a-hurtin’,” didn’tcha’?)
Sorry to hear about the retrograde bar situation. Have faith that the ship will right itself eventually.
Respect to your mom and her sacred memory.
I started watching a bunch of short videos about hiking in New Zealand. That’s some badass terrain. I’d love to do the end-to-end national trail (you have to catch a boat between North and South Island), but everything over there looks daunting.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/July/2020 @ 6:50 pm
At least you’ve got loyal dogs and loyal fans. None of whom will have sex with you, of course, but still a comfort to the soul.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 20/July/2020 @ 2:22 pm
A very nice walk, indeed. Is it still the rainy season over there?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 19/July/2020 @ 5:52 pm
Your charitable efforts are well-intended, without a doubt, but if you match those efforts up against the “fish” proverb (“Give a man a fish, and you’ve fed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for life”), you can see how your kind gestures might end up turning sour. Rule #1: don’t a be sucker when women come a-pleading.
What if you gave of your time and effort in other ways? I don’t know what there is to do, charity-wise, in the Philippines. I’d recommend becoming an English teacher, but that’s just my Korean bias showing: Filipinos already speak some degree of English, so the EFL market is probably pretty small. Can you get involved in helping to build new houses? Could you volunteer to teach business- or personnel- or management-related courses at local colleges? I’m sure the local schools would be delighted to have someone knowledgeable on their side, doing pro bono work. (Or, if you hate working for free, maybe you could negotiate a modest under-the-table salary for your efforts.)
The point is to help people in a way that’s immediately tangible and not easily corruptible by all the shysters out there. Poverty gives rise to pity among those with means, but poverty also breeds malicious cleverness among the poor, which is, alas, a good fit for generous ignorance. You don’t want to get caught up in that vortex.
I’ll confess something: I have this romantic fantasy that involves going around Korea with a trusty axe and volunteering to spend a whole weekend somewhere in the boonies, just chopping wood. (One of the few things I can be thankful to my dad for is teaching me how to chop wood.) I have no idea how to go about realizing this fantasy, but maybe I’ll start asking around. You know—put my money where my mouth is so that I’m not merely dispensing advice that I myself am unwilling to take.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/July/2020 @ 6:02 pm
Sweet “lola” wins the Prominent Forehead Prize! Is there room in that noggin to store extra candy?
Continued good luck with your recuperation!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/July/2020 @ 2:06 am
Does your choice of song reflect certain unspoken fears or something? Yikes.
Anyway, get well soon. I agree: if there’s no fever, and your cough isn’t dry, then it’s almost certainly not COVID-19. Dry cough and fever are the two biggest symptoms. That said, it’s annoying to have difficulty breathing when you’re trying to sleep. How do you say “strong expectorant” in Tagalog? Meanwhile, taking a hot, steaming shower for thirty minutes can help loosen anything that might be deep in the lungs. Try it: you might end up coughing up all sorts of nasty green chunks into your shower’s drain.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/July/2020 @ 5:52 pm
Aside from that gaffe, it was a fun article, although the conclusion was rather abrupt.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/July/2020 @ 9:45 am
A comma after “minutes,” indeed. Here’s an analysis so this doesn’t feel like a guess.
The quoted text shows that Schulz wrote three clauses and strung them together with commas as if they were list items. Normally, you’d separate independent clauses with comma-conjunctions or semicolons, but stringing together three clauses like this is possible: it’s a form of tricolon, in which three grammatically similar items are listed in a series. “Of the people, by the people, [and] for the people” is a tricolon, and so is the three-clause string “I came, I saw, I conquered.” So, what are Schulz’s three clauses?
1. It’s 1a.m, …
2. …you’ve got…
3. …you’ve been deliberating…Schulz put in just enough commas to separate those clauses, but her third clause also has the introductory phrase “for the last twenty minutes.” There needs to be a comma after “minutes.” To see why this is so, lift the third clause out of Schulz’s long sentence and treat it as its own sentence:
For the last twenty minutes[,] you’ve been deliberating about the use of a semicolon versus a period in a single sentence.”
Et voilà. Obvious. If you’re British, though, you might disagree because, these days, the Brits hate commas and revel in making comma-related errors by leaving commas out when they need to be put in.
Schulz remarked that George Lucas ought to have added a comma to his famous introduction:
A long time ago[,] in a galaxy far, far away…
That’s the comma she meant: a comma that sets off the introductory phrase “A long time ago.” So that’s how I know that Schulz knows you’re supposed to use a comma to set off introductory words and phrases. She focused explicitly on that point, but only after having made George Lucas’s mistake herself. Naughty, naughty!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/July/2020 @ 9:41 am
Kathryn Schulz (from that punctuation article) writes in the very first paragraph of her essay:
“It’s 1 a.m., you’ve got a 5,000-word piece due the next day, and for the last twenty minutes you’ve been deliberating about the use of a semicolon versus a period in a single sentence.”
Oh, Kathryn, Kathryn, Kathryn. You’re missing a comma, my dear. And now, I’m going to sic my top student, John McCrarey, on you. He’ll figure out where to insert that comma… right before he tears you a new asshole.
Remark: interestingly, Schulz later writes, regarding the Star Wars opening crawl and its famous ellipsis: “…and which I admire even while wishing George Lucas had seen fit to include one more comma.” So she’s aware that commas set off introductory words and phrases. (That’s a hint re: where to find Schulz’s error, my friend.)
OK, Jedi John—have at it!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/July/2020 @ 10:36 pm
“I know that last time I ranted about one of Günter’s trails I said ‘never again!’ And this time I really, really mean it.”
When, oh when, will Current John learn to listen to the wisdom of Past John? Pretty much all of your existential questions about life and love have already been answered, I’d say, and you have a blogful of wisdom to consult. Heh.
About that “enjoy the beach views” picture… I’m paranoid now. Is that a lady? Can we be sure? Or is it that, when you’re in Southeast Asia, you just let go and admire anything that looks pretty, whatever the actual reality may be?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/July/2020 @ 7:43 pm
re: “I Started a Joke”
The song’s history is as sad as the song’s tone. See here.
From Wikipedia:
Barry laughed, “There was a lot of psychedelia [in the late 60s,] and the idea [was] that[,] if you wrote something, even if it sounded ridiculous, somebody would find the meaning for it, and that was the truth.” Robin Gibb told The Mail on Sunday on 1 November 2009 about “I Started a Joke”: “This is a very spiritual song. The listeners have to interpret it themselves[;] trying to explain it would detract from the song”.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/July/2020 @ 8:11 pm
No video of you and your singing? Well… maybe the world just isn’t ready for that yet.
I saw that Harry Potter meme a while back. Hilarious!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/July/2020 @ 1:37 pm
There’s a Taoist maxim hidden somewhere in that story:
“Problems are not always located where you initially think they are. Sometimes, fixing your air conditioner is as easy as closing your window.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/July/2020 @ 6:57 pm
Well, since you’re an eternal optimist like Sam Axe in “Burn Notice,” I imagine there are other fish in the sea.
The climb looks to have been harsh. I would’ve hated it. On the bright side, with all the watering holes opening back up, life seems to be returning to your locale.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/July/2020 @ 8:53 pm
John,
Well, as I’ve contended, 95% of your punctuation-related problems would be resolved if you read and mastered Parts 1 and 2 of my “Commas” series. If a subordinate clause comes first (as in this very sentence), use a comma to separate it from the main clause. E.g.:
If you do that again, I’ll kill you. (comma; sub. clause first)
I’ll kill you if you do that again. (no comma; sub. clause second)» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/July/2020 @ 6:12 pm
“And when you are surrounded by nature’s beauty whilst out walking[,] are you ever really alone?”
Words of wisdom. Colin Fletcher would approve.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/July/2020 @ 7:01 pm
A most capital day! Sincere congratulations. Joining the Hash House Harriers is easily one of the best things you’ve done for yourself since moving to the Philippines. Your fellow Hashers motivate you to constantly better yourself, and the duty of Hare-ing keeps you in the mindset of always looking for something new and inventive. Hats off and much respect. No stagnation!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/July/2020 @ 4:19 pm
«« Back To Stats PageIt won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange
When I try to explain how I feel
That I still need your beer after all that I’ve drunk
You won’t believe me
All you will see is a dude you once knew
Although he’s sauced up to the gills
And puking and pissing on you
I had to let it happen; I had to change
Couldn’t stay all my life here at home
Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun
So I chose freedom
Running around, trying San Miguel’s brew
But nothing impressed me at all
I never expected it to
Don’t cry for me, Filipinas—
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/July/2020 @ 6:22 pm