Up early again perhaps awoken by nagging thoughts of the problems in the world. What the world is experiencing these days will almost certainly be worthy of future rocking chair reflection, don't ya think? Possibly with fondness, or, perhaps more realistically, with disdain for the few people who run this carnival and regret at allowing them to rise higher than roadies within it. I think we could have avoided all of this, and I am not alone.
Pity the alien who visits earth and asks to be taken to our leaders! Look who we'd show them! We have Vlad the Impirialer Putin and Xi Jin Winnie the Ping in a race to start WWIII, Putin poised to invade Ukraine and Xi who will have a choice between Hong Kong and Taiwan to bludgeon back into the Mother Country after he finishes with the Beijing Olympics. "Fake Snow, Real Genocide." I saw a CBC online post about who should carry the Canadian flag during the opening ceremonies in Beijing. Please! Do you think I could help myself? I commented that perhaps TWO people should do the honours. Michaels Spavor and Kovrig should be co-carriers of an amended Canadian flag - this one:
And what the hell is going on in Canada with the truckers? What started as a protest against the vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the Canada/US border is ballooning into a platform for Canadians with a lot of pent up (and absolutely valid) anger against their leadership, to rage against the current bozo, Justin Junior Trudeau who, although he stinks, is certainly not to be blamed for any but a small amount of our country's long accumulated woes. What worries me is that the growing anger will de-legitimize any of the positive change these protests might have lead to.
I like the anger! LOVE it! But I can't help thinking of other misplaced anger that went into other recent protests. March on Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Skolstrejk for Klimatet... ALL great causes that got sidetracked and weakened by the legitimate villains that really should have been the focus from the beginning. As maybe the smartest human being alive today says it better than I can, I'll quote him, or at least paraphrase him here: "Centralization by the few no-goods for the purpose of accumulating all the wealth and all the power for their own selfish desires NEGATES the entire purpose of the universe. We need to shift to a DE-centralization, but the powers that be won't allow such a telic recursion." Chris Langan. Maybe the second smartest human being alive today knows the "no-goods" to whom Langan refers.
I will surely get back to Langan in future blog posts because I believe his Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe to be the intellectual, logical and mathematical equivalent to the almost purely spiritual Zulu Ubuntu, which is sometimes defined as, "I am because we are," and they are the solution to all that crap above, along with most of the other problems we have. I don't pretend to have a firm grasp on either, but I hope to try. Therein lies my hope, however slim, for mankind.
But short of the above, who am I put in mind of when contemplating the situation of the world today and needing a giant upon whose shoulder I can stand and see some truth unobscured by the ever-rising mound of horseshit? Today I choose Ambrose Bierce. The crotchety, alcoholic, sublimely poetic and humourous purveyor of political and social vitriol that was fortuitously saved from anonymity by his mysterious disappearance. Here's an LA Times article that describes the mystery surrounding Bierce.
I think he was a revolutionary not just in his literal American and Mexican military engagement, but like Christopher Langan (and me) he believed a social revolution was necessary, but the people were unwilling. There is a book and a movie about him both entitled "The Old Gringo." Greg Peck plays him in the movie and Jane Fonda plays the woman he's wooing. There's a scene in which a Mexican guy is dying and asks Bierce if he will die. He replies, "Si," then the guy dies. Jane Fonda's character is horrified. "Why did you tell him he would die?" she asks. "Every man deserves to hear the truth at least once before he dies." was his reply. Jane's character says, "You're so eloquent when saying such appalling things!" He replies, "Story of my life. Everyone appreciates the form, but is frightened of the content."
A VERY similar quote that might put Jesus in this group of frustrated revolutionaries from The Devil's Dictionary is, "Christian- One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."
The Devil's Dictionary. Really, do yourself a favour and give that a gander. I'll give you but a taste...
Admiration- A polite recognition of one's resemblance to ourselves.
Air- A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
Alliance- In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Cabbage- a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Cerberus- The watch-dog of Hades whose duty it was to guard the entrance - against whom or what it does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.
Conversation- A fair for the display of minor mental commodities each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Education- That which discloses to the wise, and disguises from the foolish, their lack of understanding.
Hemp- A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.
Litigation- A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Piracy- Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Interestingly, he defines a plague (partially) as Nature's fortuitous manifestation of Her purposeless objectionableness. If you're like me and have been, for over two years now, thinking something like, "Thanks a lot (God, The One, Monad, Allah, Mammon, or whatever you might call God)! Like we didn't already have enough problems," you may take some comfort in this little definition. Sometimes life is cruel. Don't tax your cabbage head by trying to figure out some purpose to it. Consider the epomis beetle or the tarantula hawk. Nature belies the whole idea of a "merciful" God all the time.
I'm not trying to say that cruelty and killing of the disadvantaged is natural, I don't think it is for humans. I think working as brothers and sisters, not competitors and adversaries is in our nature. But I also believe that that behavior is interpreted as weakness by some and it is taken advantage of for personal gain. This is the behavior I talked about last post, and it's the root cause of all that crap above. Ironically, that same "weak" behavior that got us into this mess, if properly defended against the unnatural selfishness of the few, can be mandated by the many. The few will protest when this happens. I'm not saying any of the above are examples. I actually feel for the truck drivers. But I get upset when I hear them saying things like, "I work very hard to bring necessary things to the people of Canada." This is part of that pile of horseshit I mentioned above whether they know it or not. Now truck drivers are rarely used as examples of superior intellect, but I believe they all know in their hearts that the MAIN reason they do what they do is because they have to pay the bills. That is a burden placed upon us all by the greedy people who run this world. Most of us have jobs to do and so few of us like them! And those are the lucky ones. More and more of us don't even have jobs.
I feel certain that the world could and should be a lot better for all of us if we divide its power and resources with the mandate of making it the best world possible for all of us. We are MILES away from this and protest is likely the way to inch our way closer to it, but proper, level-headed protest. The minute the protest gets angry, it is defeated. This is why extremists always seem to insinuate themselves into the good protests rendering them easy targets for criticism. I dream of someday seeing a lot of MLK-inspired action in our future. Clear of purpose and un-highjackable. That'll be when our future can start to get more positive.
Ambrose Bierce, who had a notoriously short fuse, once said, "Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
Now I think I'll do what I usually do to take my mind off this stuff. It's what Bierce did too. I'm gonna drink some beer. See you next time.
Up for some more insanely early morning blogging. It's usually 4 AM, but today I got an extra hour of sleep and it was after 5 before I realized I wouldn't be getting any more sleep, I hauled my arse outta bed and put the coffee on the boil.
It's my last week of work here at Gongju Gongju University. I say that with the assumption that I won't be renewing my contract for another year - an assumption that is becoming safer and safer. Yes, sit back, caffeinate, and strap in for another of Uncle Davey's tales of woe from the Korean education racket.
This point in a contract, the point at which I've pretty much decided it's not worth the effort of even trying any more, usually comes with a night of heavy drinking and option contemplation, sometimes with a good friend, and a blogpost. A blogpost in which details that have been heretofore withheld with an eye toward preserving my employment, are no longer withheld.
The diabolical villains in this story, the powers that be at Gongju Dae, probably believe I am like my predecessor and don't know I'm being taken advantage of here. The weakness in the teaching profession that is so oft taken advantage of in the Korean education scheme is niceness. Who wants their kids learning from a teacher who isn't nice? Right? But "nice" is no different from "stupid" to the cream of the business world who have trod on the "nice" educators and cheated their ways to the top of this racket they euphemistically call education over here. It is with little dysphemism (if any at all) that I refer to it as a "racket" all the time. It might more accurately be called a "scam" if you really investigate the summer-weekend-kimchi-garbage putrid, smelly workings of its underbelly. Which I have.
Take Gongju Dae... PLEASE! Badum - BUM!
I knew it was going to be a slog when I signed on. Being at the school from 9-6 (or in breach of contract 9-7) every day, sitting in the office doing jack shit when there is no teaching to be done; having to BE at the school for teaching even though it was almost entirely online and would more easily have been done at home (which is what the teachers in the regular English program were doing); working virtually 3 months of the semester break instead of visiting friends and taking it easy (which is what the teachers in the regular English program were doing); hoping I wouldn't get any students coming in for the bogus "counseling" part of my job and being forced to playact my way toward the legitimization of THAT scam someone else had put on my plate and offered me exactly zero extra money for doing; living in a shitty but expensive apartment that I only chose due to its proximity to the school knowing I'd be back and forth several times a day once I got the mandatory office hours dropped (which I did); and knowing that I had, without a doubt, the worst paying uni/college job in Korea. I can't even find a hagwon job that pays worse to be honest.
But I originally got the job as a stop-gap source of Covid era employment. I was hoping by the end of the year, or rather the 11 months, we'd be through the pandemic and if I could accentuate the positive and try to eliminate the negative for 11 months, I'd come out the other end in better shape. There WERE positives! No grades, no posting on the LMS or even worse the school portal, no students crying the blues about grades, really GREAT international students, I even made some friends who liked to BBQ and play card games and board games. The walks in the park were great. Gongju wasn't all bad. Here's a post from the very beginning, just before I got the ridiculous mandatory office hours removed.
How 'bout THAT for positive accentuating, eh? Just look at that schedule! What a waste of time! Now, some of you might think I sound like a guy with a Virginia ham under each arm complaining that I don't have any sandwich bread. But if you calculate what I was making for all the hours I was at work, it works out to a little less than minimum wage. Here's the post from when I got thoroughly fed up with the desk warming and decided to do something about it. It has some stuff in there about a problem I was having with my credit card too, but it'll give you the gist. However, since then I have discovered what it was that made this desk warming so important to the person who I'm pretty sure was the main beneficiary of it, a Mr. Park. Boy that narrows it down doesn't it? You see, at the meeting we had to talk about the bullshit "office hours," Mr. Park slammed his fist on the table, stood up and yelled, "They are necessary! They are necessary!" I have since learned why they were so important (and I will superfluously add) and profitable to him.
Much like the SEC, the regulating body for American banks and financial institutes, was down to a single employee at the height of the dysphemistic derivative scam that is euphemistically called the "financial crisis" of 2008, if there is a governing body of checks and balances within the Korean education system, it's gotta be hugely understaffed. For the past couple of generations, nothing has been more important than education to Korean parents. It's a weakness akin to the niceness of teachers that the dysphemistic asshole con artists and/or the euphemistic "savvy businessmen" all see as a veritable BO NAN ZA of cash.
I remain a little optimistic, or perhaps more accurately stupidly positive about the government of Korea. They may actually be trying to encourage a legitimate education system here by routing a lot of tax money into it. But once it's in the hands of the institutions, which, if you remember, are largely peopled with the cream of the business world who've trod on the nice educators and cheated their ways to the top, the funding ends up LOOKING like it's going into beneficial programs like the international department at Gongju Dae, when, in all likelihood, here is what's happening:
Students from countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Cambodia, and other places far behind Korea economically, and their parents, see things like part time employment and English counseling being made available to their kids by Korean schools if they go there. The government of Korea provides a lot of funding to support such programs. The universities that provide these things receive a higher ranking, and therefore MORE government funding, when they provide such things. The funding is assumed to go to the counselors and international students when in fact what you get is a situation like I had this past 10 months. The English counselor was just a teacher with no training, education or experience in counseling whatsoever. But that's okay because he received none of the government money. Even though he was the one expected to fill out forms and make them look like something a legitimate counselor had filled out. Not to mention sit in an empty office for hours and hours every day just waiting for a student who needed counseling to pop in.
As for the students, they actually WERE given jobs. Being from economically disadvantaged countries, it is shocking what they will accept for the part time job as receptionist for the counselor in the International Department. I'm sure it varies greatly from what the Korean government would provide for all the international students who had these part time jobs. Leaving, you guessed it, enough extra to be pocketed by the scamsters in charge of the whole deal that when that whole deal was eliminated, it made at least one of said scamsters angry enough to bang his fist on a table and shout, "It is necessary! It is necessary!"
It also made said scamster angry enough to do whatever he could to make the offending educator regret crossing him. What, you might ask, has been done to make my life difficult as punishment for costing the scamster his nice cottage industry at this supposedly educational institution? Well, the list is what makes me pretty sure I won't be returning for another year here.
To begin with, Hyo Jung, who was a good supervisor and made me a good schedule, was replaced by "Anne," which is only her nickname. She is a young, Korean girl who is anxious to prove that she is tough, competent and smart enough to compete in the savage business world. Only she isn't. The first thing Anne did was give me extra classes at the end of December. Hyo Jung's schedule, and the actual semester, ended in early to mid December. Anne promptly filled that up with extra student classes (made up of students who had actually requested my class) and, you guessed it, "counseling." Not online counseling, mind you! No, I was being irresponsibly forced to go into the office for entire days every Monday waiting for international students who wanted face-to-face counseling at the height of a global pandemic. Of course none ever showed and they knew none would show. It was petty revenge.
I DID get a 10-day break between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2. Unfortunately, Dec. 27th was a Monday. I had to go in to "counsel." Then in January I had to teach some more. I showed Anne the schedule I had during July and asked if she could make a schedule that wasn't so obviously designed to waste my time. Not in so many words, but I asked for something better. I also asked if I could please have the 27th off. She feigned a nervous helplessness and told me that she didn't have the power or importance to ask the higher ups for a day off for me. And she gave me a schedule almost as crappy. Here's the blog post in which I describe Dec. 27th and I include the "improved" schedule Anne made me. It was a tiny bit better, but still included two days a week during which I teach until 7 PM, which is a breach of my contract. Also, I am not just teaching my fellow professors and administrative staff like I was in July. Again, due to demand, I also have several students' classes. The students' levels are far below the faculty and admin making it necessary to create special lessons for them. I mean there are a couple who could use phonic practice. So this pretty much doubled my prep time. And let me remind you, this is all extra work during the semester break. I am neither breaking, nor getting paid extra. SOMEbody's getting money for all of this, just not the person who designs and teaches all the classes. Not a great deal.
Was that all Anne did to make things difficult at the end of this contract? Not at all! One of the last things Hyo Jung did before leaving me at the mercy of Anne was ask me to sign a form indicating my intention to sign on for another year. She told me the school needed it. I told her that I wasn't going to say yes or no until I saw a contract. I wanted to make some adjustments, as you can imagine. She said that was fine.
Well just yesterday, Anne tried to use that against me saying I had PROMISED to work another year. "Everything was settled, you need to honour your promise." You know, the kind of thing the employee, but not the employer, is expected to do. Even if it is complete horseshit. This was after my drinking and contemplation session. It was also after Anne told me that in my new contract I would be expected to provide "counseling" to all students, not just international students. I said to her that day, "It seems like it's always more and more work for me, but no more money. Will I get paid for the extra counseling?" Her answers were so simplistic I felt like I was talking to a child. "This is not extra work," she said. I pointed out that I had reservations about these "counseling" sessions and had asked for them to be removed before. Instead they are being increased. She still pretended to not understand how counseling more students equated to more work. I pedantically explained that to her (eye roll) then she downshifted into "Oh, no, it's not really counseling. It's more just spending time with students. Socializing. Maybe helping correct grammar." So I then asked why I needed the official counseling forms they had given me and why somebody seemed to think it was so necessary to include it in my schedule. Any good teacher does that, it doesn't have to be in the schedule. And why, I asked, was it necessary to block hours of time in my office waiting for the students to come to me? Why can't we give them a phone number and email and arrange online counseling in these times of social distancing? More simplistic responses that didn't even qualify as arguments. It is exhausting talking with this person!
So she ends up asking why I had changed my mind about the contract. Why did I agree to Hyo Jung and not to her? She actually said, "It's the same contract," minutes after offering me an alteration to the contract. It shows you how much actual respect there is for the contract here. Almost everywhere in this industry really. So I went down the list.
"How about this door that has been broken the whole time I've been here and I have asked for it to be fixed and nothing has been done. Sometimes it takes me 10 minutes to struggle with that door so I can get into my office. And what about the OTHER door. The main door to the building. It's been broken almost as long. I've actually been locked inside the building because of that one." I didn't allow any stupid reply. I continued, "How about the extra student classes that require me to make extra lessons? How about the 150 pages of website editing that didn't require editing you gave me to do for no pay? The translation of the same pages into Chinese was paid for, wasn't it? Don't even lie to me, I know it was. How about your scheduling of several meetings, always at times when I was not in the office, requiring an extra trip only to find out you wanted to talk about corrections that you thought needed to be made to those 150 pages, that were complete nonsense? How about questioning whether I did the editing, THEN questioning the quality of it? How about the fact that I've had 3 supervisors in 10 months? Nothing has changed... How about being promised severance pay and then being told I had to work another year if I wanted any? There have been a LOT of changes and if I sign on for another year, I'm sure there will be many more. NONE of them good!"
I wrote her a letter explaining what I expected and why, if I were to work another year here. She said she would give it to the appropriate people a week ago. I asked her why she was trying to negotiate. I said she still hasn't given it to the people who will understand it and who will be able to negotiate. She replied that it was too long. They don't want to read that. I said that YES, they do. Please give it to them. I was saying a lot of this while walking out of my office and being followed by her. It ended with her at the top of the hill going to her office and me at the bottom going to my apartment. She was yelling stupid things and I was yelling, without turning around to look at her, "Give them the letter. Give them the letter." That night when I went back to teach my contract breaking 6-7 class, the door to my building was closed and locked for the first time since the summer. Coincidence? I think not. Luckily, my student cancelled because she was sick.
So you can see why I say the assumption that I won't be working another year at Gongju University is pretty safe. I could probably put the letter into the hands of the appropriate parties, but with the doubt I have of the honesty here, and the certainty I have that another year here would only be even MORE hellish, I don't think I'll even bother. Here is the letter for what it's worth:
Contract
Renewal Requests
It’s that time of year
again: contract renewal time. I first have to thank everybody in the
department for a pretty good year. It is my hope that we have almost
survived the pandemic, and that was my immediate goal when signing on
here at Gonju Dae. My long-term goal is to continue teaching here,
but that will require some changes in my contract.
I agreed to the stipulations
of my original contract with the full understanding that it had major
issues that made it worse than any contract I’d signed to that
point. I was thankful that we could adjust the contract slightly in
July to make it more bearable. We did it once, I think we can do it
again.
I am not requesting any more
salary for the year. The 2 million/month and 300,000 won housing
allowance have been enough for me to pay my bills thought it is the
bare minimum for a university position in Korea. However, during
every other university/college contract I’ve completed, including
Gongju Dae in Cheonan, I have either had the semester break off, or I
have been paid, over and above my regular salary, to do extra work
during that time. I don’t know of any university/college in the
country where that is not the case. The extra money during semester
breaks, or vacation time, have always been my favourite parts of
teaching in Korea. I would like to have one or the other written into
my new contract here. Either vacation during semester breaks, or
extra pay for the extra work. My first contract here included about 3
months of semester break teaching for which I received no extra pay.
I agreed to that last year, but would like to change that arrangement
for my new contract. (If we negotiate and decide on vacation for the
full semester break, I would also request a letter of permission to
work at other schools for extra money.)
My second request is very
simple: I would really like it if we could maintain a relationship of
honesty and reasonableness. In almost every relationship that lacks
these two things, money is the cause. I don’t feel like I have been
openly dealt with in regards to the “counseling” that has been
part of the contract. Now you are requesting an expanded “counseling”
role. I have no problem meeting with students who want to socialize
or ask for help writing a paper in English or even just have a
coffee. That has been an understood and unspoken part of all of my
teaching positions and I have done it everywhere I’ve taught,
including here in Gongju. It seems suspicious to me that it is so
important to somebody here at Gongju Dae to have this written into my
contract. 30 hours a month of it with no extra pay goes beyond
suspicious to unreasonable. We really need to clarify the
“counseling” issue in my new contract.
And staying with reasonable
and unreasonable, I also have no problem helping out with editing
jobs here and there, attending meetings, participating in school
events and things such as these within reason. This is another thing
I have done everywhere I have taught. Coaching the swim team for two
hours after class every day; daily meetings; teaching the head of the
department’s kids for free; editing long theses (or websites) for
free; these, I think we should be able to agree, are not reasonable
things to request or demand from an employee.
I would very much like to
avoid including a “reasonableness clause” in the new contract.
Please tell me this will not be necessary.
I am hoping we can come up
with a way for me to work a third year at Gongju University. If you
have a counter offer, we still have time to negotiate. If you choose
to offer me the same contract as last year, I will understand. Either
way, it would be best to come to an understanding soon, so that we
can either begin the visa process for another year of work here, or
so that I can accept other offers of employment. My preference would
be the former, of course.
I hope we can come to an
agreement in a timely manner.
It's pretty hard to look at all the facts, knowledge, points, and interesting data there is (are) in this world and to say that you know it all. This is something for which you probably couldn't even get a Dunning/Kruger disagreement. Nor would the person of genuine superior intellect argue. Nobody knows everything. In fact, nobody even knows MOST of everything. We are all stupider than we are smart. If you look at quotations from some of the greatest minds that ever existed on the planet, this is one concept upon which they seem to be unanimous. The more we learn, the greater understanding we have of how ignorant we are.
"The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know." That was Einstein. How about "The more I learn, the less I realize I know?" This was Socrates. He also said, "The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing." Tolstoy said that we can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. To know everything is to know nothing, but to know nothing is to know everything. Confucius was supposed to have said that.
To calculate with any accuracy the comments, conversations, papers, novels, even doctorate theses that have originated from the same three-word phrase, "people are stupid," would stump Pythia, the great oracle of antiquity. Only last week I was in the Top Mart choosing between spaghetti and premium spaghetti. The ordinary spaghetti was 1700 won, about two bucks for a 500 gram packet. The premium spaghetti was 2,300 won for the same amount. On the premium spaghetti packet, it was written that the finest semolina was used to make this pasta. I think the regular stuff said it was made from durum wheat. Durum. It sounds like a mass produced wheat from the wheat belt of North America. But semolina conjures up a small private farm in Italy that has been handed down through many generations upon which the modest and hardworking Italian wheat farmer nurtures the grain that feeds his family and the families of his brothers. I can almost see him wearing a grey newsboy cap and white tank top emptying a handful of wheat into a storage bin and giving a sweaty, mustachioed nod of satisfaction at its quality. I bought the premium spaghetti.
With a little brain power, I could have learned that semolina flour is made from durum wheat. There was probably no difference in the quality of the two packs of spaghetti. In fact, I've tried both brands and can taste no difference. Pasta is nothing more than crushed wheat mixed with water then made into sticks. Yet, there I was treating myself to what I thought would be a superior product and even spending a little more on it. I was doing something dumb and thinking it was smart.
Did you know that people who were part of the Jan. 6 riot called Nancy Pelosi to ask if she'd seen belongings they'd forgotten there? "Yeah, if you could go ahead and mail them right back to our insurrectionist asses, that'd be great." They were asked their names and numbers and were assured their belongings would be returned. Idjits.
Or how about this one. I'm afraid I probably won't be able to post a video judging by my previous post, but there was a point in the Cincinnati vs Las Vegas NFL wildcard playoff game in which Cinci scored a TD, but there was some controversy. The QB for the Bengals (Joe Burrow) appeared to have maybe stepped out of bounds before throwing the TD pass. Well video confirmed that was not the case. TD? Right? No! Someone heard another official blowing his whistle. So even though the call was correctly made, when a dumbass official makes a dumbass mistake and dumbassedly blows his/her whistle, well that just becomes more important than the whole rest of the game and what is right in the world. Evidently. The official who fucked up has remained virtually anonymous and blameless, but the ref who was probably trying to cover up his/her mistake, make the right call, maintain the integrity of the game, well he needs to be drawn and quartered! He's the anti-Christ! He's what's wrong with the NFL by golly!
Oh, okay, I COULD post a video! When a rule is all that separates us from right and wrong, we're not allowing ourselves to climb to Kohlberg's 5th or 6th stage. Rules are made for the idiots who can't think. They need rules. The people who can handle stages 5 and 6 of morality are the people who should have the whistles. Jerome Boger is a smart person surrounded by dumbasses. And as is so often the sad state of affairs, he's in danger of losing the position he deserves because some people who can't understand that he's smarter than they are, PROTESTED VERY LOUDLY.
I am sorry but this smacks of LV Raiders fans to me. And you know what other smack I get across the face from this? I think maybe Donald Trump's infliction of the never-accept-defeat plague across America has made people think that if they lose, but refuse the blues, they can choose to accuse. What I mean is, they are My Pillowing the game. It didn't turn out the way they wanted but fuck losing with dignity, maybe if you accuse some other entity for causing the loss, you can escape the reality that you are a loser. If you do it long enough, maybe you can make enough people believe your bullshit to ease the pain of being a loser. It doesn't work, but if you try hard enough and really believe, it'll work for you! And YOU are what matters, aren't you? Stupid is a pandemic!
I recently read that lobster, up until sometime in the 1800's was low class food eaten mostly by the poor and by prisoners. Even in the harsh penal environments of early America they had rules. Lobster was fed to inmates no more than once a week because it was considered cruel and unusual. They kind of ARE just giant sea insects after all. Then I suppose two Hans Christian Andersenesque swindlers sold somebody of considerable influence, an emperor, king or Kardashian, on the idea that lobster is the most magnificent food imaginable and that's why we now pay an average of 45 US dollars for lobster thermidor. Just like the king who wanted his hasenpfeffer and was convinced by Bugs Bunny to eat carrots, a lot of "fine dining" is just people being stupid. I mean, look what they've done to SPAM in Korea, Japan, Hawaii...
"If I didn't know this was hasenpfeffer, I'd swear it were carrots." Good old Saturday morning cartoons. All we really need to know in life. I'm not going to get into how suggestible people are (stupid) and how very often we pay too much for things that are not premium, just sold as premium by the very last people whose opinions on their quality we should trust: the people selling them. You know as well as I do, THAT list is endless. You can pay 7 million dollars for a bottle of vodka for God's sake!
Rather, I'd like to write about a couple of areas in which I believe the refusal to admit our own stupidity, or perhaps less harshly, our own ignorance, has proven a bit of an obstacle. These fields are, in my opinion, quite important to the development of mankind. Science is one I've blogged about before. I've had conversations with people in which I've basically said that some cherished and beloved branches are the hasenpfeffer of science. I'm not Neil Degrasse Tyson or even schooled in the sexy sciences like quantum physics, so a lot of the things I've found in my personal studies, I'm convinced, are taken with large grains of salt by the people to whom I tell them. But I don't think I'm wrong and I'm beginning to see more people who are starting to say some of the things I've been saying.
Here's a Ted Talk by a guy named Stuart Firestein called "The Pursuit of Ignorance" that made me stand up and shout "YEAH!" in several spots.
I love his joke about Marie Curie and her glow. I like his quotes too. "Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science." James Maxwell. I have literally read and seen on video, influential people in science talking about the "new" science that doesn't need the rigid proofs of old, transforming theory into fact just by calling it fact, virtually ignoring this ignorance, or as Firestein phrases it, "controlled neglect" of that ignorance. I even liked the quote from Schrodinger. "In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period." I haven't seen enough of this in many areas of science. I think it has been detrimental. I think this has contributed to the beating all interest in science out of kids by grade 11 or 12. And I think he hits on the cause of this detriment when he says that with a puzzle, the manufacturer has guaranteed a solution, with science, there is no such guarantee. Indeed there are many of us who aren't so sure about the manufacturer.
I've blogged at length about how I, and some far greater minds than I, consider the secularization of science, the forced removal of the mystical, spiritual, abstract and unexplained to have stunted science somewhat. "Making better ignorance" might be a less arrogant approach to science that would advance it significantly. Admitting ignorance, and admitting it exists all over the place in science and we find more of it every day, is the best place from which to begin a journey of discovery in my opinion. The example of the pear and banana smell is a good one. How the hell does that happen? It's like trying to explain instinct, or how the eye sees. We can fake it with some fancy quasi explanations, and we DO know more all the time, but the actual answer is nobody really knows.
Leaving the spiritual, mystical, abstract and unexplained on the table, not discounting them, but admitting we just don't understand them, just might do what Nikola Tesla said it would do when he said, "The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than all the previous centuries of its existence."
However, until recently, I haven't thought much about the effect of this same phenomenon on literature. I recently brought up Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" to a curious, young listener.
"A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, a scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners that we may see and remark and say, Whose?"
James Wood, a staff writer at the New Yorker, professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard, and one of the most esteemed literary critics alive wrote in his novel, "The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief" that the modern novel is "the enemy of superstition, the slayer of religions, the scrutineer of falsity." Not so much fact as a way for a powerful maker or breaker of literary careers to bully authors into the acceptable topics and styles, or more to the point, the topics and styles that would keep them from starvation and obscurity.
This is but one example of how, I have read, but not yet read all the details, that even literature, a medium hyper-dependent upon emotional, even at times the absolutely sentimental, has been relegated to the stiff and I'm sorry, but, Hemingwayan prose when it comes to anything with an association to God or mysticism or spiritualism or things non-concrete.
A quote taken from David Foster Wallace, who was considered one of the atheist bullies, but whose apparent atheism may have been assailed by a Russian said, "It would probably be better to call our own art's culture now one of congenital skepticism. Our intelligentsia distrust strong belief, open conviction. Material passion is one thing, but ideological passion disgusts us on some deep level."
Making a living is more important than writing from the heart. It IS to a starving author sometimes. Wallace, like myself, was fascinated by an unnamed protagonist from a Dostoyevsky novel. The Underground Man as we will call him. His review of Joseph Frank's review (an extensive, nay compulsive volume of work I intend to tackle someday) of Dostoyevsky begins with a quote that I like. "The citizen secures himself against genius by icon worship."
Bear in mind this was long before the state of ubiquitous icon worship we have today. Soothsayer stuff from Edward Dahlberg. The Underground Man was no icon and he probably received no worship. He was a character blended from the universal and the particular and a lot of the particular was decidedly un-heroic. But in his universal, whether we want to admit it or not, we all see some of ourselves.
For example? Okay, how about this: "Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to SEEM like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself morally speaking?"
Try to tell me that's not universal. I can think of about 10 times today I contemplated exactly this! When I'm teaching, am I speaking to my students the way I would if I didn't care about maintaining employment or am I just tolerating people I want nothing to do with? An even more extreme example is when I meet with the scumbags for whom I work. They are using me. How can I smile and play nice when I want to stretch the edges of their fake smiles to arm's length and destroy their lying mouths?
Never had these impulses before? Wait a while. You will. The universality is so beautiful! Yet so violent. Maybe that's because we've been encouraged to hide our true natures since we can remember following rules.
If you don't know the most famous thing about Dostoyevsky, beyond his writing, I'll retell it here. It comes to bear. He was subjected to a mock execution for his ideological anti-government activity. He was linked to a subversive group and sentenced to death by firing squad. They got to "Ready.... Aim...." and then the firing squad was called off and his sentence was commuted to 4 years in a Siberian work camp. Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Raymond K. Hessel of "Fight Club" had the best breakfast of their lives the day after almost being killed. And every breakfast after that was a bonus breakfast.
A bit ironically, what this did to old Fyodor was it turned the guy who was not afraid of writing politically deadly things, things that brought him within seconds of death as it were, into a guy who was suddenly able to face the BIGGER fear and start writing from the heart. He loathed things with the passion that only Dostoyevsky could loathe with. It gave him the passion to write as passionate a character as the Underground Man. In the words of Wallace, "What seems most important is that Dostoevsky's near-death experience changed a typically vain and trendy young writer - a very talented writer, true, but still one whose basic concerns were for this own literary glory - into a person who believed deeply in moral/spiritual values... more into someone who believed that a life lived without moral/spiritual values was not just incomplete, but depraved."
Wallace concluded that fiction writers under the yoke of secular bullies dare not try to advance ideologies. People would laugh or be embarrassed for them. Dostoyevsky presented by Joseph Frank, gives a model of how it is possible to do so even today, though in its instructivity, it IS terribly iconic.
I write this not settled on one side or another. I have much to read to solidify my decision. But it is inspiring. I will need to review authors like Alice Walker (I think it pisses God off when we pass by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it), Toni Morrison (Life lessons are a free Bible to living life knowing and acknowledging who you are.) Chinua Achebe (A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground, it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.") James Joyce (Shut your eyes and see.) George Eliot (What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?) Salman Rushdie (We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.") William Faulkner (It's always the idle habits that you acquire that you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.")
I believe that geniuses have sneaked (or snuck) brilliance that is of a spiritual nature past the Great Literary Firewall of Secularism on more than one occasion. But it had to be packaged in a way that would mostly reach the literarily enlightened and those number but a few. We have no more Uncle Walts who proudly declare their discovery of the handkerchief of the Lord in blades of grass or natural phenomena. We have no more William Paleys who stub their toes on watches and assume (and rightly so (more and MORE rightly so)) a watchmaker. We have to backhandedly at best express ideas that might have religious or spiritual implications lest the mighty bullies of literature strike us down. Yet sophists who are taking popular stances they may or may not even support, like Richard Dawkins, who simplistically and spuriously mocks Paley in his book "The Blind Watchmaker," are OVERpublished.
It's a crazy world! And I am now setting my sites on studying a great many works of literature that I need to study in order to determine to what extent spiritualism and such has been forcefully removed from literature through a kind of literary peer pressure, specifically the novel, in modern times. As I said, I haven't studied it, so it is a curiosity I will endeavor to pursue with relish. I will keep you up to date on my blog as I read the literature that is pertinent.
I originally started school with an eye toward becoming a lawyer. I altered my goals after meeting a lawyer and confirming that I would not and COULD not do what he did. I may have judged the legal profession harshly. I still love the law and believe there MAY be some positions in the legal profession in which a person could retain dignity and maybe even morality and ethics. But I just don't think I would have had the luxury to land in such a position if I were to undertake the long and expensive journey toward the legal profession. I am very happy in my second choice. I love teaching and although it has provided the bare minimum for survival, I believe I've chosen my profession well. And as such, I think I may have the literary balls, if you will, to tackle this arduous task upon which I set myself.
An Aussie friend of mine asked me if there were any big games this week, (meaning last week, the final week of the NFL season) and I gave an absurdly curt, "Not yet." I told her that since many of the teams had nothing left to play for, they'd be benching their bigger named players. And since there were many teams who had no chances of making the playoffs, they might not give their best efforts although at least those teams would not be benching their better players. It is my opinion that a team that has no playoff position to play for AND a team that is already in the playoffs and has nothing like home field advantage to play for, should BOTH play their best players the entire game if nothing else to exhibit fan appreciation. But this rarely happens on the last week of NFL season... I told her this week would be shyte and the NEXT week would have all the big games.
Well, as it turned out, the week that just passed will be the best week in the NFL this year and I'm calling it now. NO WAY can another week top this! NO FRIGGIN' WAY!
So there you have the topic sentence/intro, if you don't like the NFL, you might want to continue on with your surfing, but I warn you, you won't find anything so dramatic even if you are watching previews of the Bachelor. And if you are... he was a football player anyway, so there!
But seriously, I may have never wished more to be unemployed than this past weekend. And only after the fact! That's what's so crazy about this. I was asked by my erstwhile Aussie pal Amber if there were any big games last weekend. I said there were only two. Two! The only two meaningful games I thought were the Chargers/Raiders and the Ravens/Steelers. We all KNEW those two were win or go home. But I was sadly mistaken. There were many big games. The Saturday games went as planned. The Chiefs beat the Broncos as they should have, though it was a bit closer than I'd have thought and the Cowboys beat the Eagles as they were supposed to, though it was a MUCH bigger blowout than I'd have thought. Still, the expected results made me think all would go as planned for the weekend games. Boy was I wrong!
One of the things I hadn't planned on was one of the worst teams in the league, maybe THE worst... the Lions (3 wins and 13 losses) pulling out all the stops and basically going full on Madden NFL '22 on the top seeded team in the league (13 wins and 3 losses) the Green Bay Packers, AND BEATING THEM 37-30! I mean they were faking punts, running stunts and flicking all the fleas on the field! It didn't always work for them, but THEY WON! Now Rodgers was taken out and replaced by Love, as we all expected, but Love did well! And STILL the mighty Packers lost! This game was an absolute PLEASURE to watch! For an all or nothin' guy like me, it just proved what I've always thought, that if you just pour on the offense, the defense won't be able to take it. Even the worst team vs. the best. I encourage you to watch the game, or at least the highlights. It's about as entertaining as you can get.
But did it end there? Oh no! The only team WORSE than the Lions this year was the 3 and 14 Jacksonville Jaguars. And they were playing the 9 and 8 Colts with by far the number one rusher in the league, Jonathan Taylor, who has 1811 yds of rushing this year (2nd place is Chubb with 1259) vs. the 23rd out of 32 running defense. Slam dunk, no? Well... NO! Taylor still got his yards but the QB for the Jags, a guy I think will be a STAR in the NFL, big nose Trevor Lawrence had his best game ever. Probably cuz he just didn't give a shit. Much like the Lions. Running, scrambling, throwing where it wasn't "safe," he lead his team to victory and gave them (and the fans) something to look forward to next season. 26-11 Jags.
Right there two of the best games I've seen all year. But wait! There's more! I'm a big fan of the New Orleans Saints. This season they lost the guy that made me a fan - Drew Brees - but I still root for them after all these years. And they won their game. They had a shit year because they lost Brees, but it woulda been great to see them get into the playoffs without him. Winning gave them a chance. All that had to happen was for the 12 and 5 Rams to beat the 10 and 7 49ers. Seems like a good possibility... Well watch this:
Cooper Kupp had been carrying my football pools all year, (one of the three WON) and he was set to bust the all time records for a receiver set by Megatron, Calvin Johnson. Kupp was a lowly 3rd round pick in 2017 though. Could he surpass all expectations? And more importantly to Saints fans like me, could he help the Rams win and could the Saints sneak into the playoffs? Now, "sneak" is not the correct word because they HAD beaten the Falcons 30-20 earlier in the day with the scary defense that has become their calling card since they don't have the offense Brees provided. Cam Jordan is now the man!
Well, I have to be honest, the Saints did much better than I thought they'd do without Brees. Just the whiff of the playoffs was better than nothing for hard-hit Saints fans like me. The best part of the season was when Drew Brees was on the panel of an NFL broadcast and was the only one to correctly predict the Saints to beat Brady and the damn Bucs. That alone made this season a good one!
Shoulda listened to him. Look at his record!
So how did the game go? Well, Cooper Kupp had a great game! He was sensational! But not quite enough to break all those records we were hoping for. Although, the Rams kept my hopes for the Saints hanging on until overtime... but eventually lost. I'm still pretty happy with the Saints' season.
On to the two games I thought would be the ONLY two games that were meaningful. Steelers/Ravens had the look of an old time slobberknocker and it lived right the fuck up to that! These two clubs were evenly matched. I have relatives who are die hard Steeler fans, so I was cheering for the black and gold. But the Ravens were a team I had respected all year long only losing by a little if the lost at all. It was a probable Steelers win (9-7) against a Ravens 8-9, but I knew the Ravens were MUCH better than that. I also knew that the Steelers were not as good as that. This, I predicted, would be a good one. And I was right. It went to OT. A play by TJ Watt early EARLY in the game may have been the diff. How the hell did he come up with that fumble recovery? Unbelievable!
It was a defensive slash boring as shit affair except for Roethlisberger to Claypool, but... the drama here was Ben Roethlisberger being in his last game (probably). And he won it. In OT with a field goal the Steelers won it.
However!!!! I use the triumvirate of exclamation points to draw attention to what I thought was probably the most interesting of the games. You couldn't guess if you even tried to guess the reason it was the piece de resistance of this already highly entertaining weekend of football!
Because of the usual ridiculousness of ifs ands and buts associated with every final week of every NFL season, there are some miniscule scenarios that can sometimes bring high drama to a game. The last game included one of them, although it was highly, highly, FUCKING HIGHLY unlikely to happen. I would never have placed a bet on it happening. Ever!
The scenario to which I am referring is the super incredibly highly unlikely, never in a million years scenario for the final game of the season, which had everyone in the NFL football world watching it, ending in a tie. How often does that happen? I mean really? Do you want to know? I know the answer. Let me mix another drink before I tell you. Cuz you probably know what I'm going to tell you here. Why would I go this far to set up something if I wasn't going to tell you exactly what you think I'm going to tell you?
Okay, I'll tell you. It's 7.2%. That's how often NFL games since 1920 have ended in ties. So why do I make such a big deal? Well, as is always the case, there is a very complicated and complex possibility of outcomes of the final week of the season that is HIGHLY unlikely, but possible, and at the same time very intriguing. You see, if the final game of the year, 9-8 Chargers vs. 10-7 Raiders, played in Las Vegas, the home of the Raiders were to end in a tie, then all hell would break loose and both the Chargers and Raiders would make the playoffs and the victorious Steelers would be out. After ALL THAT EFFORT!
I have to be honest, I was voting for a tie in this one since both the Chargers and Raiders were more exciting teams than the Steelers, but I didn't think there was any chance of that happening. I actually thought, based on what I'd seen from both teams during the season, that despite their records, the Chargers were a BETTER team and they'd beat the Raiders even at home! So this one had some drama for me, for my Steeler fan family members and for all the football fans watching the final game of the season. It didn't disappoint.
Probably the most dramatic game of the day in fact. You know what, I can't even. I'm going to just give you the highlights, though if you don't know, they will still be super gravitas!
BOOOOM! That was the best game of the year I think! Even though I wanted the Chargers to win it and wanted Cooper Kupp to set all kinds of records, the Raiders were the better team! What a great game!
And so ends the NFL regular season. I am licking my chops at some of these post-season match ups!
It's the new year and I thought I'd better start off the year with a good 3 or 4 posts in Jan. I slacked off a bit toward the end of last year. I guess when the biggest problems in the world boil down to only a few things, it's harder to come up with new topics. Not that my only blog topics are the problems of the world, but they ARE the juiciest posts in my opinion.
Started the year off right with my third jab even though I was stopped (not to say accosted) on the street the day before by a fellow foreigner in Gongju and told in these exact words, "You're fucked!" that having already gotten the first two shots was a YOOOOOGE mistake.
The guy's name was Scott. I think I might have made a mistake shaking his hand out of habit when we introduced each other. I'd seen him coming out of the grocery store I was going into, then after finishing my shopping, saw him right across the road from that grocery store. I was preparing to do the polite nod... maybe. I always feel weird doing that. The only thing we have in common that we know of is our non-Korean heritage. Is that enough to warrant a greeting or am I being a bit elitist? In most cases, when you get to know a foreigner in Korea, if you speak a common language, you generally find a LOT of common experiences. The experiences of being a foreigner in Korea, though largely negative, have been at the heart of many a fine conversation, and even long term friendship for me over my many years here. Korea is nothing if not consistent in its treatment of foreigners.
There are probably a couple million foreigners in Korea. Most of them work in the manufacturing industry and I'd bet at least half are Chinese. They don't get treated or paid very well, but it sure beats staying home! This most likely has a lot to do with Korea declining to participate in the political boycott of Beijing 2022. The next largest group of foreigners in Korea are migrant workers from the economically less advantaged countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, etc. Same story. They do the jobs Koreans don't want to. There are some Russians and Uzbeks in there but Korea employs about 300,000 ESL teachers and to this date, if I'm not mistaken, the largest employer of white, male foreigners in Korea is the ESL industry. The guy walking toward me was a white dude. When that is the case, in my experience, it's pretty safe to assume the person can speak English and you will be able to HAVE a conversation, and the person has had dozens of the same adventures Korea provides to visitors. So in that way, I suppose it's not very racist to say hello to certain fellow foreigners over here, but I still feel a bit dickish about it.
To be clear, I don't just say hello to foreigners. I said hello to a couple of Koreans yesterday. But it's chancy. If they are young and in a group, you expose yourself to the mooing cow reaction and the whole group just laughs at you. I don't just say hello to white, male foreigners either. Why, just the other day I saw two black ladies who looked confused, so I said hello and offered my help in English. It turned out they were from Nigeria and were looking for the bus station, which is directly across from the grocery store I first saw Scott exiting. As luck would have it, I was going to that very store on that day and offered to walk the two ladies there.
Nevertheless, the choice of to greet or not to greet this white guy was not left to me. Scott said something like, "Hey, you are a foreigner too!" so I did what Larry David might call a "stop-and-chat." When we introduced each other we shook hands, exchanged first names and workplaces and I sort of hesitated when going in for the handshake. We shook hands, but I said, "Whoops, sorry. Not a very Covid friendly thing to do." Well I guess this set him off. He launched into this long and emotional anti-vaccine diatribe... with me, a total stranger. I don't know if I give off an antivax vibe or whether that mattered one iota to old Scott at all. He just told me how "we know, we FUCKING KNOW" that these fucking vaccines are killing hundreds of thousands of people. One was his neighbour. He got a bit emotional about her. Called her beautiful and I think he had a tear in his eye when he said she died shortly after receiving a Covid shot. He told me there are websites all over the internet with facts about this, but we're all being brainwashed. So I brought up Covid deaths and asked if he thought there wouldn't be more deaths from Covid than from the vaccines. Out came the co-morbidity argument. He didn't say that, I was the one who used that term because I'd heard it before. Then I dangerously played the Devil's advocate and asked if there were co-morbidities that caused a lot of deaths credited to Covid, couldn't there have been co-morbidities that might have contributed to the deaths that he and these websites are crediting to the shots? I saw him give it a short think, (likely prepping a defense more than considering the argument) then tried to mitigate my standoffishness a bit by saying that I thought even the experts are still learning an awful lot as they go. This is a new thing and they are often asked to speak in certainties by media, when really they shouldn't be doing that if they are. In a lot of cases, the best answer is we just don't know yet. But media, and a lot of people, don't like that answer.
But he then told me he had HAD Covid and it was nothing worse than the flu. He had not received any of the shots, but FUCKING Korea was mandating it and if he didn't get them, he'd lose his job. I brought up the early vaccine passports in Israel that were for people who had received the vax OR had contracted Covid and recovered. The fact that they are not like that any more is a good example of the fluid nature of this pandemic. Since then, studies have shown that you are more than twice as likely to get Covid if you had it and recovered than if you had the vaccine. I then told him I had 2 vaccines and was going for my third the next day. That's when he told me I was fucked. He said that within about 20 years my heart would give out. So I said, "Meh. By then if I'm still alive, I probably won't want to be. So no biggie."
Oh yeah, it was about this time that an old Korean cardboard collector pushing a cart down our sidewalk was coming from behind Scott so I motioned that he should move to the side of the sidewalk and the cardboard guy said hello to me as he passed, and I said hello back. See? I'm an equal opportunity helloer.
We eventually ended the convo. It was 4:00 PM and I had to get my groceries home and go back to work for a class from 6 to 7PM. I didn't ask, but since Scott works for a university, I assume he's on semester break now and was just bumming around town. He went back toward the grocery store and I went the other way and as he said good bye he added that he hoped he wasn't in such a bad mood if we should run into each other again. About half way home I was walking down the street and saw Scott cross my street about a half block in front of me. I guess he had done a U-turn and was now going in the same direction as me. I reached the street he was on and he was ahead of me. I crossed the street, then immediately he looked back and also crossed the street. He continued on the street and I took a right hand turn off the street and didn't see him again. When I told him where I work, he asked about a guy I know and if he's still working there. I should ask that guy about him because when I told him I knew him, Scott said that he is, "no longer a member of that social circle."
Aside from that intrigue, the reason I bring him up is that he has a better job than I do. He probably makes more money, he probably gets the semester break off, or gets paid extra to do extra work during semester breaks, and he probably isn't forced to do bogus "counseling," which is Gongju U. code for desk-warming. He doesn't have to work till 7 either I bet. That's against my contract. I established that at a meeting with all of the deans and heads of all of the English departments. But they couldn't give a hunk of shit. I'm doing it again for a month.
To be fair, I DID bring it up as a breach of contract they had committed when they tried to use the contract as a reason to have me sit in my office even when I didn't have class. I said that even though it's against the contract, I'd still do it, so even though going home between classes might be against the contract, could I do it anyway? They've been good about that, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I'm working till 7 two nights a week this month.
I have ANOTHER new supervisor too! That's 3 in less than a year! Her name is Anne and she has only been doing it since the end of the semester about half way through December. Her English is better than my 2nd semester supervisor, Hyo Jung, but not as good as my first supervisor, Pyeong Hwa. I already miss Hyo Jung. I liked her and her English was not THAT bad. She was the only one who made me a decent schedule. I actually LIKED the schedule she made. Here's the sched I have now:
This may not look so bad to the untrained eye. "Why, you don't teach until 10 AM!" one might exclaim. "Golly, it's only 16 hours a week!" one might interject. "It's a swell schedule! Why, you finish at 3 on Thursday and Friday!" one might ejaculate. And those points are all fine and dandy - until you find out that I'm doing this all pretty much for free. You see, university teachers in Korea are paid with funding from the government to teach during the semester. The semester break is sometimes filled up by the universities, but (and this is the best part about teaching at universities here) you get paid over and above your regular wages. Extra pay for extra work. I did teacher training at Hankuk Uni of Foreign Studies for extra pay. I did teacher training at Mokpo National U for extra pay. I did kids classes and adult classes at Chonnam National U for extra pay. I did lots of extra teaching at universities that I didn't even work for with permission from my employer during semester breaks FOR EXTRA PAY. Usually really GOOD extra pay. Average was almost a million a week. Dongshin U, Konkuk U, GIST, Wooseok U, Myeongji U, Dongguk U, and maybe some I've forgotten. I have browsed employment offers from probably 100 universities in Korea and they all offer extra pay for extra work during semester break. If not, you get the break as paid holidays.
I was even offered extra pay for extra hours judging English speaking contests during the semester break AT GONGJU UNIVERSITY! That was last year at Gongju Dae in Cheonan. But Gongju University in Gongju gives me no extra pay. What's more, because I have been teaching so well here, and students have been requesting my classes and giving them high evaluations, I am doing MORE free teaching! Let me splain...
First, if you will notice the schedule above there are three categories of classes. One is faculty, which means my fellow professors. They are very good at English and most just want to practice by talking about news stories and current events. Administrators are usually lower level, but I can get away with using the same lessons. However, during July, which was summer semester break, but I had to teach, I only had faculty and admin. I just had to do one curriculum. Easy peasy Japanesey. Now that I have been teaching almost a year, the students are requesting classes during the break. Most of the students are very low level. I like teaching low levels, but I have to create lessons that are different for them. Which doubles my prep time and, you guessed it, I get paid zero extra.
This is not to mention the time between the end of semester and the beginning of the full month of free teaching I do. For instance, the last half of December. They gave me classes AND counseling. And even though everybody everywhere in Korea is doing online teaching, one of my classes at that time, though Anne didn't tell me, was face-to-face and so was the "counseling!" I had opened the Zoom room and was awaiting my student when, to my shock, she knocked on my door. I taught that one class, and didn't catch Covid, but changed the classes to online immediately afterwards. As for the stupid, bogus counseling, I was going in all day Monday and sitting in my office watching hockey or just pulling my pud. Nobody was even at the uni let alone coming in for "counseling." But I hacked it all just so I could get renewed and maintain employment through this pandemic.
The worst of it? I had Dec. 23 to Jan. 2 off. Well, except for the "counseling" Monday. I asked my new supe, Anne if the school could see its way to giving me just ONE (extra?) day off. It's a completely useless day anyway. We all know that. Or even, instead of irresponsibly encouraging students to come to my office and expose themselves to possible Covid 19 contraction, (DUUUUUHHH) how about put my email, phone number and Zoom room link on my office door and anyone who needs some bogus "counseling" from me can set up an appointment and I could have a Zoom session with them. I was in Pyeongtaek with friends through that whole time, but I had my computer, this could have been done. Well she hemmed and hawed and said she's just new...
I think my best Christmas present of this year was when Heather, Kelly and I jumped in the truck and Mike drove us ALL to Gongju for my day of "counseling." Heather and Kelly spent their time in the office with me. I had a lesson to make for January classes, Heather had some studying to do for her umpteenth masters, and possibly a test, and the Kellster played games. Some Ipad and we even played a game I have in my office. Mike went to a museum, but it was closed on Mondays. They could have done some outdoor exploring but the temp was pretty low. So mostly, we drank coffee, ate pizza and played a few games in my office. Of course nobody came in for fucking counseling. Nobody ever has. My goal for next contract is to have that stupidity removed or at least offered in Zoom form.
But what an awesome Christmas miracle that day was for me! Here's a pic:
Sniff, sniff. My eyes are sweating. I made out like a bandit otherwise at Christmas with these guys again this year. Got the socks and gotch on my wish list. AND lots of other great stuff. But I'd say this was my best gift of any Christmas in recent memory.
At any rate, I've already signed, and I'm told the school has too, an intent to work for another year here at Gongju Dae. I'm hoping that like last year when I talked to them about not making me stay in the office while I wasn't teaching, maybe they can give me some extra money for extra teaching I do during semester breaks. SOMEBODY'S getting money for it. I'm sure the classes aren't being offered for free. And since I make the curriculum and teach the classes, there really oughta be something in it for me, no?
But, baby steps. I may have to settle for just having the "counseling" removed. Counseling. HAH! I have no training and no experience. As I told Hyo Jung, I'm sure half these students could counsel ME! I have a far more intricate and diabolical pathology than they.
So those are my biggest problems this year so far. All in all not a bad deal. I'm hoping for a good 2022. And I wish the same to all my readers.
