My Self-sabotagery

 I feel that a brief invocation of the muse called Arrogance may serve me in good stead here. Oh we're familiar. With age we have become more so. I find increasingly often that knowing literary devices and strategies, human nature and the difference between valid syllogisms and spurious arguments with faulty or missing premises, is not satisfying enough when Arrogance is your muse. And I find this muse to be more easily invoked in tandem with another of my inspirations - alcohol. 

I've developed a kind of grumpy, old mannerism of a Friday or Saturday night during which I go online and poke holes in people's annoyingly happy logic, be they friend, family or complete stranger. I've never been one to gain pleasure in others' discomfort. I never felt compelled to join into teasing of peers who were different in some way, having been the victim of such childhood cruelty myself. I've always hated waking people up preferring to allow them to remain in the safety of slumber as long as possible. But as I grow older and closer to (but not yet fully acquainted with) that ultimate of muses, Wisdom, I have found the advent of strength, or at least the lack of patience, to overcome my kindness and shake people awake.

Reality is tough. It's cruel. The young and the foolish build their defenses against these truths for half a life only to spend another half dismantling them. And if we're all honest (which we're not) we can admit to contributing more than a brick or plank or length of rebar to the construction of youthful palisades in the guise of kindness and protection only to render the construction more solid and difficult to demolish. Is it kindness or protective to tell youngsters to save their money in banks so they can be rich and successful, or that honesty is the best policy in a world in which rich and "successful" people get that way through fraud? 

When those children get credit cards and shop online with them they'll find unexplained charges being deducted regularly, charges the bankers tell them cannot be blocked according to their co-conspiratorial policies. They'll find eventually that they're coming from a website where they shopped for Christmas gifts, or a campaign donation page for a candidate who promised to root out corruption, websites that contained, carefully hidden in jargon and sententious small print, automatic re-billing either monthly or weekly. 

Are we consoling the young and innocent when this part of their defenses comes crashing down while at the same time losing a piece of our walls in the knowledge that we could have prepared them to deal with the destruction better or not have to go through it at all? 

We teach the young to value their votes, obey the laws and respect the legislators and members in all aspects of the legal system. Then we they find out about SLAPP lawsuits and leaders and legislators creating laws with the apparent purpose of protecting scumbags like Bob Murray (and Donald Trump) by allowing them to just sue people and cost them lots of money for telling the truth about them. So again, is honesty the best policy? Should laws be obeyed? If the dishonest are protected and their protection is actively entrenched in the laws of the land, are we lying to the young?

I hope you watched both episodes of "Last Night Week Last Night Tonight." It's a great show! And I can't think of anything better to do when learning about such despicable (but successful) assholery than laugh about it. Indeed, it's often how I choose to point out weaknesses in logic exhibited online. Take this example for example:

 When I saw this posted on a friend's Facebook page, I couldn't contain my desperation to add to it, "Yup. Sad what a lifetime of being lied to does to people. But the artist forgot the speech bubbles for the other extreme, the militantly positive. "We're not sinking. Everything is A O K!" "This is supposed to happen." "The ship isn't bringing us down, YOU are with all your negativity!" "What are you one of those anti-techers?"

Yes, that IS a reference to the term "anti-vaxxers" a term I think has been bandied about during flu seasons and now during the Covid 19 pandemic, a bit too peer-pressurishly. Flawed logic has been a weapon used in this pressuring of the public to get their jabs, and before you get worried, I intend to get mine as soon as I can, but I can't help but point out the harm people are doing to the cause of attaining herd immunity through immunization with the peer-pressure tactics and spurious arguments. What they are doing to those of us who recognize their faulty premises, is causing us to question whether people are purposely misleading us or whether they are too stupid to realize that that's what they are doing. In either case, it makes us LESS likely to do what they are trying to get us to do: get vaccinated.

Here's one example I've been given multiple times: Whenever anyone mentions the AstraZeneca vaccine and its link to blood clots, out come the experts who tell us that when you get Covid 19 you are 300 times more likely to get those blood clots. This is a stat a friend was given, not me. Unsupported and un-linked, but given with confidence nonetheless. I looked it up. Something people are far too unlikely to do before agreeing with stats they'd like to agree with, which my friend did. I found this study, which shows that in a study of half a million Covid patients, 39 per million got CVT, cerebral venous thrombosis - a rare kind of blood clotting. Now "cerebral" means the brain, so I'm assuming it's blood clotting in the brain being measured here, which means it's different from what happened to THIS guy. But this was the story being commented on. At any rate, the Oxford study showed that in 480,000 patients who had received the Pfizer/Moderna vax, only 4 per million got CVT. In AZ, which I guess were the other 20,000, it occurred in 5 per million. So you're about 10 times less likely to get the clots with Covid than after being Pfizerized, and about 8 times less likely than after AZ. Far from 300 times. So I continued searching.

I found the 8-10 times stats reinforced by the University of Minnesota, who also cited the above study. However, what I like about this study is the "cautions and context" section in which they mention that the authors could not verify the accuracy of the CVT diagnoses because scanning the veins in the brain can be time-consuming and challenging. They also said that the risks of blood clots in relation to the AZ vax were NOT looked at. Hmmm... interesting. THEN, Kevin McConway, a doctor from the UK says something that muddles this information even further, while at the same time bringing up the very point that was being avoided by all of the people citing this study. He says, ""The researchers are not claiming that vaccines do not increase the risk at all compared to the risk in people who have not been vaccinated and have also not had COVID-19—but they say the CVT risk in people who have had COVID-19 is about 100 times the risk in the general population," he said. "I do think this puts things into context."

So he somehow ??? goes from 8-10 times, up to 100 times more likely. I guess he feels this exaggeration is excused by previously mentioning the syllogistic weakness, and the thing that has everybody smart enough to understand it, mistrusting it, the fact that the study doesn't show that people WITHOUT Covid are less likely to get blood clots when vaccinated. What he doesn't say is what we all know: they're NOT. They are less likely to get the blood clots if they don't get Covid and if they don't get vaccinated. But I guess a lot of people felt they needed to be purposely misleading and present the spurious argument that people WITH Covid are more likely to get blood clots than are people who got the vaccine. It's not wrong, it's just beside the point. Perhaps it's because of that that people say, "What the hell, blow the stats up a bit."

Are they really doing the efforts at herd immunity through vaccination a favour with this behaviour? I don't think they are. What they are doing is making people FURTHER mistrust the medical profession, the scientists, the doctors as well as the people who are aggressively pushing the vaccines. And I have to mention THAT as well here. I've heard a LOT of people intimating or even overtly saying that if you don't get vaccinated, you're stupid. Really? If anything, the above information shows that even the doctors DON'T KNOW. They hate admitting that, but it's true. It also shows that they are okay with misleading the public. Probably because of those vacations and other free shit Pfizer paid for when the doctors chose to recommend their products. The science is not yet on the side of the pro-vaxers, even though they are fond of claiming it. Nor is the history, as I outlined in my last post. I hope eventually it will be. It looks positive, but rushing it does not help.

Once again, I understand the desire to be positive. I too wish I could give all my friends and family, and even strangers nothing but good news, but I question whether this is the best course of action. It may sound arrogant and elitist, but sometimes I think a dose of reality, not kindness, is the best medicine. And I, for one, would appreciate it if people tried to be more honest regarding the general corruption in the world rather than trying to shelter me from it with obviously flawed information and arguments. I think there are a lot of people like me and we're not well loved by a lot of easily convinced cheerleaders of unresearched information. Maybe when I can learn to access the muse of Wisdom, I'll stop arguing with those people, but until then, I guess I'll continue with my self-sabotagery. 

Today is Saturday. I'll probably have a few beers tonight and go online. Anybody who hasn't already blocked or de-friended me wanna chat?

The following are a couple of cartoons I've seen that don't really tell the whole story. I guess they're accurate for some, but not all unvaccinated people are stubborn, stupid, red (MAGA?)hat-wearing, fat assholes. Maybe characterizing them as such isn't helping? This isn't the worst I've seen either. I saw a meme with the inference that since some people are not doing what the government tells them they should, I guess they won't be obeying traffic lights any more. Those were installed by government and are also suggestions. Another was a meme with a "doctor" holding up a picket sign that says, he's a doctor and he sees a lot of people refusing Covid19 vaccinations. What he DOESN'T see is polio and measles (or two things that vaccinations have wiped out via herd immunity). Vaccines work! Well, yes, they do! Assuming people who don't want the Covid vax yet are anti-every other vaccine doesn't work though. Reign in your enthusiasm there, "Doc." That's not the best bedside manner I've ever seen. 

Don't MAKE me change these cartoons! Because I can...

I think it's time. The handle, "Anti-vaxxer" was invented for unreasonable people against certain vaccines, so it's only fair to call unreasonable people IN FAVOUR of certain vaccines "Pro-vaxxers," isn't it? If Pro-vaxxers keep treating the 39% of Americans and the other people who remain undecided about the Covid19 vaccinations, and others who haven't yet gotten the shots, like children or stupid people who need to be sheltered from the facts, the altered cartoons might be more accurate. 

This may not be a popular opinion, (so what's new?), and I may be giving the general public too much credit for too much intelligence, but I feel like I'm seeing a lot of people who need to recalibrate their approaches toward the unvaccinated and this is NOT excluding members of the medical profession, scientists who are trusted to give facts, not opinions and hopes, and leaders who are also trusted (for some reason). It'll STILL be a slow slog toward herd immunity, for reasons outlined in my last post, but I feel like the truth will get us there faster than the salesmanship and overzealousness I'm seeing.  

The Medical Racket Part II

 I didn't even mention in my last post the many times pharmacies here have tallied up my drug costs and given me the price without asking if I have insurance. I produce my alien card and sometimes they STILL feign ignorance. Then I tell them I have insurance and, "Oh geez, yeah the total is one tenth of what we were trying to charge you. What do ya know about that?!" That's how I found out I didn't have insurance. Twice while I was working for Carrot if I remember correctly. What I'm saying is people are constantly on the con in every phase and every level of the medical profession. Everybody knows this, am I right? Even the most outwardly positive of people. 

We all have our versions of reasonable. It's the most important word there is legally speaking and I don't think there is much difference from one person to the next. However, it is rarely if ever fixed. We have variance in our reasonable-meters and it is affected by many things. I don't have any kids, but I constantly hear people talking about how they change a person's thinking. Race, age, culture, there are hundreds of examples. Here's a little clip I love from one of my favourite comedians that includes a few of these things:

Beat your kids so they're not social outcasts! lol Time is also a great reasonableness affecter. Throughout a person's life, reasonable is like a pendulum swinging back and forth depending on current trends, social situation or life events. I've never met anyone with a totally static reasonable-meter. We all develop biases and I think if we're honest, we can probably remember times when subconsciously or even consciously our biases overcame our reasonableness. 

I have biases too. We all do. Every job I get swings my reasonable-meter in favour of this FINALLY being that fabled perfect job and maybe the job I'll hang onto until retirement, though I know it never is. When a member of the Vancouver Canucks gets a penalty, I might find myself arguing the call even if I know it was fair. That bias swings even further during the playoffs. When the whole Vancouver Canuck team (except one player) was on the Covid list not long ago this NHL season, I may have hoped they'd come back before the minimum of two weeks they should have been quarantined. I was very surprised when that was exactly what happened! They were back on the ice before I thought they would (or should) be. And to be honest, I wasn't sure the NHL did the right thing. I had said to several friends and students (I taught a lesson on it) that I'd be perfectly fine with the Canucks season being cancelled in the name of safety. Even though they're highly unlikely to make the playoffs, I must admit I am happy to be watching them play the season out.

I say this because I can relate to the many people I'm hearing of late who are trying to hasten the end of the Covid pandemic. I am SO with you! I miss the phrase, "going outside for some fresh air!" Aside from all my online teaching, which isn't ideal, I currently teach 6 hours a week with a frigging mask on. One stretch of four hours in a row! I can't tell you how chock-a-block full of SUCK that is and it's just going to pack on even MORE suck when the summer, the hot and humid Korean summer settles in. I want this pandemic to end as much as the next person, but I'm hearing some who are being overly optimistic about the whole thing. It has me suspecting the toxic positivity crowd again.

Most famously, the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris presidency has set a goal to give 70% of Americans at least one Covid vaccine shot by the 4th of July. I'd like to pause here and steer off my course slightly to say that I haven't seen anything to be negative about yet from the first 100 days. They're crushing it! I particularly like the way they're dealing with the pandemic, crankin' out over two million vaccine shots a day in the US, 1.9 trillion relief plan, the infrastructure plan, taxing the rich and maybe best of all (definitely most on point) waiving the patent on the vaccine so it can be reproduced legally and cheaply even in poor countries helping fight the pandemic worldwide. I've got to admit I've found myself actually CHEERING for politicians a few times recently. That represents a swing in my reasonableness pendulum. But then it wasn't long before it swung back. For example, I love to hear those wonderful three words you so rarely hear from the mouths of purchased politicians: tax the rich, but I try not to get too excited unless I also hear a plan that goes with it to make sure the rich actually PAY those taxes and don't just offset them with price hikes for those products which make them rich, thus rendering taxing the rich in actuality a deferred tax on the usual tax payers. Indirect tax is no better than direct tax.

Which brings us to the first point, I would love to see 70% of Americans jabbed by Independence Day but it ain't gonna happen. This is not going out on much of a limb, but from what I've read, I don't even think it'll happen by NEXT Independence Day. I know it's harsh, and people like to avoid negativity like that, but I believe in facing up to harsh reality, not accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. It allows me to prepare better for the suckage. 

I'm not going to just put that out there without citing reliable sources. People often question why they should believe ME when I'm talking with them about stuff I've read. And to be fair, I don't have a very quick mind for referencing all the ideas that are rambling around in my noggin. There's a guy named Iain MacLeod who is co-founder and CEO of a novel viral diagnostics company currently dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic. He's also a research associate at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Here's a summation of what he says about the 70% prediction:

First of all, I learned something new right from the get-go reading Iain's stuff. The term "herd immunity" was one I knew, but I always thought it just referred to people exposing themselves to germs or viruses to catch them and develop immunities to them. You know, the way people whose kids had measles used to tell their kids to play with other kids in the hood to get it all overwith in one go. And like the Swedes tried to achieve in the early days of Covid. But this was natural herd immunity. Sweden, a country of 10.1 million, just recently topped a million Covid cases and over 14,000 deaths, so I don't think it worked. 

What the US is trying to achieve, and what Iain writes about is also herd immunity, but it's achieved through people catching and recovering from Covid 19 as well as people attaining immunity through vaccination. The 70% figure was not chosen randomly by the Biden administration it turns out. It's the percentage of immune people "in the herd" calculated to be necessary in order to make it so difficult for a person with Covid to pass it to someone who isn't immune, that the virus will eventually die out. 70%. It doesn't seem so hard, does it?

Well, there are many things to consider. First, the efficacy of the various kinds of vaccines have been measured so far to be 90% for Pfizer, 70% for Astra Zeneca, 66% for Johnson and Johnson. I don't know about Sputnik or Sinovac or any of the knock-offs that will soon be produced all over the place, but let's take 90% as the most efficient. The fact that none of the vaccines are 100% means, according to Iain Macleod, at least 80% of Americans must be vaccinated to attain herd immunity. 

Add to this the results from a recent Kaiser Health survey in which 13% of Americans say they'll never get the vax, 7% will only take it if required and 31% are taking a wait and see attitude. This already makes things impossible unless people change their minds, but let's continue.

People under the age of 16 can't yet safely be given the Pfizer vax, Moderna people under 18, and pregnant women are advised against it but can get it if they choose. We can assume the other vaxes are not yet safe for young folks either. That's over 74 million people as yet ineligible to receive the vaccine. About 25% of Americans are still restricted from getting the vaccine, but have proven to be efficient asymptomatic spreaders. 

The durability of the Covid 19 vaccine is, as yet, unknown. It may persist, it may wear off and require booster shots like tetanus or diphtheria. Public acceptance, making it safe for kids, durability testing, these are some of the things that just take time with vaccines and no amount of positivity will speed them up. And this is not to mention the usual problems every vaccine development runs into, or the variants, which we've already seen. For instance the P1 variant, that has been called the Brazilian variant, was not what the Covid vaccines were designed for. It is believed they will be less effective in fighting it. Pfizer and Moderna are showing promising results against variants, but nobody knows the exact figures yet. 

Iain MacLeod states that Covid 19 is going to be part of American life until after 2022. Herd immunity won't be achieved for years yet, but the outlook is positive. He believes it will be achieved. 

Development of a vaccine often takes 10-15 years. Coronaviruses have been with us a long time. Some were identified in the mid '60's. But Covid 19 was first reported on the last day of 2019, which means we've had it for a bit less than 16 1/2 months. That's not enough time to go through all the stages of vaccine development. Again, thinking positively is not going to change that.

Stage one of vaccine development is called the exploratory stage and often lasts 2-4 years. It is when researchers identify natural and synthetic antigens that help prevent or treat a disease or virus. Sometimes antigens include substances derived from pathogens like in the case of the flu shot.

Next comes the pre-clinical stage. This is the stage in which tissue, cell and animal testing is performed to assess safety. Commonly mice and monkeys are the unfortunate animals. Sorry to NEG you all like that, but it's the truth. The pre-clinical stage often takes 1-2 years. 

The IND (Investigational New Drug) stage is when a company submits an application to the FDA showing their research. If it's approved, the next stage is moved onto. 

THIS stage is called Phase 1. Small group trials of between 20-80 people are performed.

Phase II - Larger group trials like thousands and even tens of thousands of trial subjects.

Phase III - Assessing safety in large groups and licensing accordingly.

I don't know enough about this to be sure if the Covid 19 vaccines were hurried through these stages, and like the Canucks hurrying back from quarantine and playing again, I'm happy we're here, but I can't help having some nagging doubts that this whole thing is being rushed. This is why I can relate to the people who are on the fence, those 31% of Americans with the wait and see attitudes.

I would really love to be as sure as a LOT of people seem to be that the vaccines are totally safe and we should all get them! I would love to be sure enough to call people who DON'T get them stupid or antivaxxers or science-deniers, but I don't think that's the case. I also don't think this is the most effective way to convince those people to change their minds. In fact, if anything, it might make them harden their stances in defiance of peer pressure. 

Science brought us the Yellow Fever vaccine disaster in 1942 when thousands of US soldiers ended up getting injected with Hepatitis B and jaundice. Talk about yer friendly fire! It also brought us the dengue fever vaccine disaster in the Philippines that actually increased people's chances of getting what they were being vaccinated against. It was called the Dengvaxia vaccine and it was given to school children. This was 2017 folks. 

Mistakes happen. They seem to happen more when large amounts of money are involved. We've been effectively socialized to trust our medical system even though they constantly lie to us. It's much like our political system and I don't think the two are as separate as we may believe. Remember when Pfizer and other vaccine makers promised not to profit from the Covid 19 vaccines? They wanted to help humanity! Those well-known philanthropic people of Big Pharma! Well we thought it was horseshit then and we KNOW it's horseshit now. Pfizer - 15-30 billion. Moderna - 18-20 billion. J&J up to 10 billion. Astra Zeneca - 2-3 billion. 

And what did these altruistic humanitarians say when Biden waived their patents on Covid 19 vaccine production? They cried danger of course. They're claiming things like the supplies of ingredients will now be subjected to worldwide rushes and this will create dangerous shortages or something like that. Yeah, sounds more to me like competition will be dangerous to THEM and their bottom line. I've even read criticism to the effect that other vaccine developers will rush to produce the vaccines maybe cutting corners to come out with theirs first and cash in on the profits. Oh, you mean like YOU guys did?

Okay, no, I can't say that for sure. I don't want to act like I'm SURE about something without the facts. But if you find your reasonableness-meter swinging toward trust in Big Pharma on a wave of non-profit and new American government and positivity these days, I just thought I'd give you something to think about that might limit that swing a little bit. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm getting the vaccine as soon as it's available. And I hope people will safely achieve herd immunity worldwide as soon as possible. But I think there are some people being a little overpositive and hopeful out there. I'll tell you the brightest hope I have in all of this just so you don't think I'm completely negative, and I'll give it to you in meme form. It's a nice way to conclude this post I reckon.

The Medical Racket Part I

 Well, let's put that filth behind us. Onward and upward to some good, old fashioned Korea bashing! And before I start, let me say this: I don't whinge about any countries I don't love. If I hated Korea, the rantings herein wouldn't bother me much. But it seems every time I see attempts to overcome the crippling xenophobia at the heart of all the worst evils of Korea, like the school where I work or the Global Korea Scholarship I'm honoured to be helping choose recipients of at this moment from probably more than 25 countries, racism rears its ugly head again. I'm not even gonna start this one. I'll let the Korea Times do it for me: Check this out! I mean of all the nerve, nay the temerity, nay, nay I say, the unmitigated GAUL for those foreigners in Korea to start businesses with the permission of the government without knowing the government would change its mind in the future even considering retroactive punishment for the unforgivable crime of being non-clairvoyant! Come on man! Flag on the play!

You might think the Korea Times is the Korean equivalent of the Onion, but I assure you there are no satirists at the Korea Times. This is just one of a bazillion examples of what I have been calling, on and off this blog, for years, "foreigner fuckery" or "foreign fuckery." Either or. You can't get away from it. Even with Covid shutting us away from the majority of our exposure to the locals, we gotta go out sometime and, BAM, it'll getcha! Why, just last week I opened up a bill from the government insurance of Korea, the NHIS or National Health Insurance Scheme (you gotta love that name! "Scheme." That sounds so much like scam, I don't need to make jokes!) and it was for about 400 bucks. I think I explained on this blog before that my previous contract ended at the end of Feb and my new one started April first, so I went uninsured for a month. I knew the new rule about charging foreigners for insurance while they are here, whether they want it or not and if they are not covered by their jobs or don't have a job. I only found out about this because of my dealings with the NHIS that I didn't have and found out I wasn't covered by making a doctor's appointment only to arrive and be charged full price because my employer had not paid my insurance. So you can be uninsured, evidently, if it's your employer who's trying to save a buck hoping you don't go to get your teeth cleaned or some hemorrhoids removed or whatever. That's fine and dandy. But if the foreigner is the one in default, hunt it down and commit fuckery.

I knew they were gonna get me for my missing month. Even though I got no bill in the mail at my last apartment, I was sure they'd track me down. I told my new supervisor, Pyung Hwa about the situation and she said they probably sent something to my old place too late. But they'd find me. And they did. Four hundred bucks! For a month of insurance? I was pretty sure it didn't cost that much. It's just bare bones insurance. In fact, the hospital I was going to for my blood sugar treatments and meds, St. Mary's in Pyeong Taek, doesn't even TAKE people on NHIS. They only took me because my blood sugar was really high! Dangerously high. Gravely dangerously high! Is there any other kind of dangerously high? So why 400 bucks? Well this I DIDN'T know - the national insurance scam charges foreigners for mandatory insurance THREE months at a time! Foreign fuckery. 

I have been wracking my brain all day trying to recall the confluence of events from back then, just over a year ago, and can't remember exactly. I know I had to go to Soon Chun Hyang hospital near Itaewon to get the E-2 visa health check for immigration. I had been getting treated by an old doctor who, I gather, is quite a celebrity in these parts. He's the face of the SCH Hospital. If you go to their website, there's his mug. Well he had me eating boiled eggs and taking a couple of pills to try to get rid of frequent urination I was experiencing. I had a couple of incidents on buses where I didn't think I was going to make it. I can't tell you how traumatic that was! "Should I just whip it out and piss on the bus floor? Should I go in my water bottle? Should I wrap a towel around my wiener and let 'er rip?" Those thoughts didn't help things, let me tell you. I thought maybe the stress sweat would dehydrate me enough to ease my urge, but that didn't work. Sleeping was impossible. I got off the bus a bag of nerves, sprinted to the nearest urinal and didn't really have to go that badly by then. I'm still a bit scared on buses even though things are under control. Now it's just psychosomatic. 

At any rate, the guy was testing me for everything, (including blood pressure and blood sugar) and he said my numbers were high, but getting better. Our goal was to avoid the use of insulin. I thought we were doing fine. The meds he was giving me caused some issues and we had to change a few times, but I didn't have pee problems as badly. I don't think it fully went away though. I guess I wasn't eating enough hard boiled eggs.

Well then I changed jobs. When you change employers in Korea, you need to undergo a physical examination for general health and illegal drugs. Used to have to take HIV tests too, but a gal from NZ who was teaching over here sued the Korean government for violating foreigners' rights in that way. She won and now we don't have to take the HIV tests any more. I'm telling you this now because it comes to bear later in our story.

I decided rather than searching through the long list of hospitals on the webpage HiKorea that I have found to be very unreliable in the past, I'd just go to SCH Hospital, my hospital, to get my E-2 visa health check because I asked my doctor and he told me they do them there. I'd be working in Cheonan, but I didn't want to waste time looking all over the place for a hospital in Cheonan that did the checks. And don't even bother to ask at the Cheonan Immigration Office which Cheonan hospitals do the health checks they are requiring from you - they won't tell you even though they absolutely know. Foreign fuckery.  

So I went to Seoul to SCH Hospital to get it done. There I was met by a team of nurses who hustled me, cattle-like, from station to station doing eye test, blood pressure test, height and weight measurement, blood drawing, urine taking and at the end of it all I was told my blood pressure was high. They asked me to sit down for 5 minutes then they'd test again. After the second test, it was still high. I think we did three tests before I met with the doctor. He was a young fella and his English wasn't as good as my older, more famous doc, but he did okay. He said he was worried about my blood pressure and my blood sugar. I told him I knew about the blood sugar and was seeing a doctor AT THAT HOSPITAL, who was okay with both my blood pressure and sugar. Well, that didn't satisfy him. In the country where they use phones more than any other country, I suppose it was too much effort for him to ring up my doctor and check with him. He said he was going to fail me on my health test. I told him that in order for me to get medicine to treat the symptoms that worried him, I'd need health insurance and I will get that from my new job, but in order to get my new job, I'd need him to pass me on this health check. He eventually relented due to my Catch 22 situation, but only if I promised to see a doctor as soon as I got settled in Cheonan and get my blood issues under control. I said I would, took my test results to Cheonan immigration, got my new work visa and worked my first year for Gonju University. While there, I started seeing a new doc in Pyeontaek because for the first time, I found out what level my blood sugar was at. It was after a big kalbi feast, but my good friend Heather happened to have a blood sugar testing kit on her and we tested me with it. I was over 500. Well over. That's bad. Like emergency bad. So I managed to get an appointment at St. Mary's Hospital in Pyeongtaek even though I only had NCIS. So for a year we've been working on my blood and a few other things. My blood sugar is consistently 150 now. We're still trying to get that down, but it's by no means dangerous. And blood pressure hadn't been an issue all year.

This year I renewed my contract with Gongju University, but I'm based in Gongju now instead of Cheonan. If you renew a contract, you don't need to do a health check. But at Gongju's immigration office, which isn't in Gongju, we have to travel to Daejeon, the worker looks at me funny (I believe I saw a "gotcha" glint in her eye), prints out my health check from last year and points to a Korean word on it that means "fail." She says, "You failed your health check last year, you need to get a new one done." I was shocked! But then I asked the obvious question, "If I failed, how did I work last year?" I could see smoke escaping from the worker's ears, a common result obvious questions to immigration workers tends to bring about, but she remained unshaken in her pursuit of foreigner fuckery. "You need to get a new health check."

While sitting there in confusion I wondered if that young doctor had actually failed me or if he had given me a conditional pass or if there was a note included with my health check from him or if maybe Gongju University in Cheonan had swung some sort of a deal with immigration to get me working even though I had failed my health test. I hadn't been told any of the above if they had been the case. I also thought, since I had already been asked to supply my rental contract, which I had foolishly forgotten to bring, and was allowed to call Pyunghwa and get her to email it to me, then print it out and give it to the immigration worker, why couldn't we just call up the SCH Hospital and get that doctor to send an explanation? Again, in the country that uses the phone more than any other...

The only thing the immigration worker did was asked why I had failed. I told her I was pretty sure I hadn't failed, but I DID remember some concern about my blood sugar. I told her I had a complete physical printout from my doctor in Pyeongtaek that was from about 2 months before that shows my blood sugar at 140. There wasn't any confusion or language barrier, but even though immigration office workers deal with a LOT of foreigners, most of whom speak English, and most of the workers speak English just fine, they are very reluctant to use it. Foreigner fuckery. So I called up Pyunghwa AGAIN and the whole time they're talking on the phone I'm getting angrier and angrier because I know I'm not going to finish immigration, I know Pyunghwa's not going to convince the immigration worker that my blood sugar is fine, and I KNOW we could settle the whole thing with a phone call to SCH Hospital. I also started wondering if there actually WAS some note in the files at immigration and on the screen this worker was looking at that explained how I could have worked last year without passing my health check. She was just ignoring it so she could do what in all of my experience at Korean immigration offices throughout the country I discern to be the primary function of immigration agents: to make sure NOBODY visits a single time without being sent on a wild goose chase to get some additional, superfluous file or certificate or letter or stamped/apostilled pile of dogshit, or several, before they are done with immigration. 

I get the phone back and sure enough, Pyunghwa tells me I have to get a new health check done. But I went to Costco in Daejeon so the day wasn't a complete waste.

Not long after, like maybe a day later, Pyunghwa had set up an appointment for me to get a health check at a clinic just around the corner from where I live in Gongju. I was allowed to bring Aminur, a student at Gongju U. from Bangladesh who speaks Korean well, as my translator. We get to the clinic and he's explaining and I'm trying to make sure we get the right thing. I had kept the printout of my previous health check the Daejeon Immi worker printed out for me while I was there, showed it to the receptionist at the clinic, told Aminur to make sure they were told it was an E-2 visa check and the nurses were all saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry, don't worry," which I know has a tendency to mean the exact opposite. 

This is us in the Gongju U. Global Language Clinic, my office. The WHOLE THING! At any rate, I was poked and prodded and ex-rayed and tested and such. Blood pressure was given a hearty thumbs up by the nurse who took it using the stethoscope and airball, which I think is more accurate than these damn machines. A coupla days later I went to Daejeon to meet my NEW doctor, an endocrinologist, or diabetes specialist, who gave my blood pressure AND my blood sugar the okay and I got three months more medicine. When I arrived back in Gongju, I picked up the results of my visit to the clinic. I am assured by everyone that I don't have any health problems, but I AM hemorrhaging MONEY! Even with the insurance, this is costing me a lot of dough! Like over a thousand bucks. I know if you're American reading this you're saying, "That's nothing!" but it's a lot to me! Being Canadian, I'm used to getting sodomized at TAX time, not hospital time.

I think it was the next day Pyung Hwa and I got into her car and drove back to Daejeon to hand in my health check. I was worried that it was loose in an envelope that wasn't sealed and I was able to read it, but I assumed Pyung Hwa had things under control. In the car on the way, Pyung Hwa mentioned that it'd be nice to get this over and done with. I told her not to count those chickens just yet. I said immigration likes sending people to get extra papers and things. They LIVE for it! What they like even better is sending people to get extra shit TWICE. I told her what they'd probably say is that this was not the right kind of health check and I had to go to a special hospital to get an official governmentally sanctioned E-2 visa check and it had to be in a sealed envelope etc. etc. etc... and you know what's coming - that's exactly what we were told. Now I was REALLY mad!

I said to Pyunghwa that the only difference between the real thing and the one we had shown her was the drug testing. That makes it slower and more expensive as well. But I said that drugs were not the reason I was marked as having failed my last health check. If they were, I would have been deported. If I failed due to drugs and somehow worked an entire year, I would be deported and the doctor, or whoever allowed me to work after testing positive for illegal drugs, would lose his/her job. And now I had a shiny NEW paper from a hospital in Daejeon no more than a couple days old showing that I was in good health including blood pressure and blood sugar. Well guess what immigration said. Even though there was obviously no need for it, they took distinct pleasure in sending me on another wild goose chase to waste more of my time and money and bark, roll over, and play dead for my waegooky treat.

It was a dismal drive back to Gongju. I was seething. I am pretty sure Pyunghwa thought I was mad at her for setting me up at the little clinic where they lied to her, lied to me and lied to Aminur and said they'd give us an official E-2 visa health check. But I wasn't. I was mad at the utter futility of getting this health check, the time it would waste and MY money I'd be flushing down the Korean Immigration Shitter AGAIN! I related several of my past visits to the throne of the almighty immigration bullshit costly task. I couldn't tell if she was getting mad at the stories or getting mad at me for telling them. Sometimes Koreans don't want to hear how shittily their country treats people. But I gave it to her both barrels. 

It was a Friday so we were off for the weekend after we got back to Gongju. But even though she was off, Pyunghwa looked on the stupid HiKorea list of hospitals, which I had told her was shit, and found one in Gongju where I could get the E-2 visa check done. She called them up then called me. She said they had told her that I'd first have to go to another place in Gongju for the psychological evaluation, then bring that with me to their hospital where I could get the health check done. Pyunghwa had asked me earlier about psychological tests being part of the visa health check. I had already told her they weren't. I think I had softened my answer by saying that possibly a coherence check might be done like you might do if you are administering CPR. Ask the person's name or just check if their answers to questions are normal, but there's no psych eval. I then mentioned how the old health check form had a square for the HIV test, but the new one didn't have that square. I told her about the Kiwi teacher and the lawsuit and told her that only a judge can order a psychological evaluation in civilized countries and even then only in extenuating circumstances. Having one on the visa health check would be considered and invasion of rights and freedoms like the HIV check had been. But I guess she wanted to take the hospital's word for it, not mine. I can't blame her for that, it's how we're all socialized isn't it? Doctors don't lie. Hospitals won't cheat you. The medical profession is not just out to get your money.

So I told her I would not be going to that hospital. She argued that it was on the HiKorea list and it was closer and would take less time. I argued that if they think a psych eval is part of the E-2 visa health check, they DON'T do E-2 visa health checks. They're lying, like the other place did, and I will just be wasting MORE of my money while taking MORE time than if I just go to a place where I know I can get a proper one done. I think she took this a bit hard because she was trying to help and I was getting mad. Again, not at her, at the lying, thieving medical profession. But I wasn't going to shell out more dough to spare her feelings. I told her I knew some places where other people and I had had these things done before and I would figure it out myself. She said something like if I don't want her help, fine. I know fine doesn't mean fine sometimes.

I arranged to go back to the source of all the problems, SCH Hospital in Seoul. I had to go in Sunday night and stay over while fasting for the blood test for the third time in a week! That SUCKED let me tell you! I stayed in Itaewon where I had NEVER fasted in my life! Quite the opposite. Good eating and lots of drinking is what's best about Itaewon. It was tough, but I managed. I went to the place to get my health check and again it was performed in production line fashion. I had to go back a few times for the blood pressure check again. I even showed them that my blood pressure was fine like TWO DAYS AGO! But the first reading from their stupid machine was something like 190/100, the second one was 150/90 and the third was 130/81. Those were within about 15 minutes. I think their machine is broken. There were several OTHER people who were sitting down to get their blood pressures re-taken too.

 Wouldn't it be just the quintessential Korean immigration/health scam story if all this shit had been caused by a broken blood pressure machine?  

It's quite possible. That should scare everyone here. To make a long blogpost short, too late, the results were fine and immigration accepted them. They didn't send me or Pyunghwa on any further wild goose chases and I'm done with immigration for 10 more months.

In a way this is a positive blog post, or as positive as it gets from me, but consider it a set-up for what's coming next. I've ranted here before about toxic positivity and I'm going to blather on about it again in my next post along with another pandemic.

All The Breast To You!

Boobs are great! I think I've been way too negative on this blog. Some other people do too. And some have suggested I write about something I like. Well, I like boobs. And before you go thinking I'm being a misogynistic creep here, the main suggest-er was a girl. So let us contemplate the female breast, at the request of someone who has two of them, shall we? 

Maybe the best thing anyone ever said about breasts was said by Conan O'Brien when he said, "The first thing men notice about women is their eyes. Then when their eyes aren't looking, they notice her breasts." I can't argue with Conan on that. Another funny person, Rita Rudner, said, "Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. It's quite the opposite. A woman having large breasts makes a man stupid."

You may be able to see from the lists I am about to provide (genuflect) against my better judgment and the general content of this blog, but in accordance with a request I received, from a woman I'll have you know, that I don't always agree with Rita. I like small breasts sometimes. I like breasts of all kinds of shapes and sizes! To me, breasts bring me back to the days of my childhood in a way. Freud would go crazy with that statement I'm sure, breast-feeding and all. But what I meant was they remind me of candy. They are the candy of old age for me! I want to peel off their wrappers and suck on them all day, but, alas, I don't have enough money to buy them. 

Okay, if that offended you, you probably shouldn't read on. While I post this as an homage to the beauty of the female form, this may come off as an affront to women, the Me Too movement, objectivity and you name it. So proceed with caution. I hope you don't think less of me, but this was literally suggested to me as a blog subject by a female friend of mine. I will not disclose her name in the interest of maintaining her plausible existence. NO REALLY!!!

I thought about the suggestion for a while. Then I thought about boobs for a while. Then I realized that I'd been down that road a thousand times, only without any encouragement. The female in question, whether you believe she exists or not, asked me if I had any preferences as to size, shape, equality (because women rarely have two boobs the same size, in fact 90% of women have 15-20% diff), and other factors. I gave a non-committal answer, but she pried. She asked about celebrity boobs. Just to get an idea. Which were my fave; which were surprising; which weren't surprising; which were disappointing; and then we got on the MOST interesting subject of which celebrity boobs we'd like most to see. Because, you see, she TOO wanted to see some boobs that she hadn't. It's a strange, but wonderful thing about some gals, but THEY like seeing boobs too! I haven't met a dude, aside from gay guys (and even some of them?) who like seeing dicks in movies. Or in washrooms, showers, videos, popcorn buckets... Dicks aren't generally well accepted when they're waved around. If you disagree, why is it then that a guy who does so will almost always get a fine or a ticket or even get hauled into jail? Whereas, a girl who lets her girls get some sunlight will generally receive bashful reprimands from the police, if not standing ovations, then instructions to put them away. 

Me and my friend, who owns a couple of fine breasts herself, chatted about this. Then she, being a reader of my blog, said, "You should post about this." I didn't resist for long.

And so, crediting/blaming my friend for this, I'll happily type on, devoid of any political or moral recourse. Don't try to pretend you aren't interested. If you weren't, why are you reading this? This is going to be a super-objectifying listing of celebrity boobs and cleavage. You've been warned.

Okay, I'll start with the boobs I've seen (and we've probably ALL seen) that I thought would be great and they really WERE. Let's go backwards from 15. The other categories won't have 15 entries, but this one does because a lot of famous women are, bless their exhibitionist hearts, okay with boobie baring!

15. Tanya Roberts in "Beast Master." I'm old. She was not just Charlie's angel. And I think maybe during her time on "That 70's Show" she was packin' a little extra. She didn't need it. Her nude scene in that movie was legendary in my books.

14. Amanda Peet in "The Whole Nine Yards." Just WHAM! There they were and there they stayed for a while! She was not shy, bless her exhibitionist heart!

13. Julie Andrews in S.O.B. Yes! Her hills were alive with the... okay, too soon. Maybe I should save stuff like that until we get deeper into this.

12. Brooke Burke is someone you might not know. She was the host of a show rating beaches around the world and she was a bikini model. But she never got naked even though her show SHOWED some folks getting naked around her. Finally, she posed for some nude shots and it did not disappoint. Because you may not know who she is, I post the following pic:

11. Kate Winslet. I don't need to post any pic here because the whole world saw her boobs in the Titanic. And they were lookin' pretty noice!

10. Uma Thurman was in a movie with Glenn Close and John Malkovich early in her career called "Strange Liaisons," and there was a quick glance of her boobage that must have worn some VHS tapes out rewinding, pausing and so forth.

9. Denise Richards in "Wild Things." Nuff said.

8. Angelina Jolie in "Gia." And if you doubt the stats about uneven boobs, there's plenty of footage here. You don't need micrometers to see, but... who cares? These are some of the nicest boobs I've seen ever!

7. Halle Berry in "Swordfish." It was contrived and not important to the plot, but who cares? Not me!

6. Heather Thomas in the movie "Zapped." I still don't know if this was a body double or not, but the poster of her in her pink bikini gave me a pretty good idea... and the movie was what I expected.

5. Emma Ratajkowski has been shot nude in lots of mags. Her nudity in the music video for "Blurred Lines" she says she regrets cuz it might not have been as artistic. Again, who cares? Not me!

4. Alexandra Daddario was nude in "True Detective" but I didn't see that movie until I saw some movies she WASN'T nude in like "The Layover" with another person who will appear in this post. She is freakishly perfect and even though Conan O'Brien might argue with me, the first thing I WOULD notice about her would be her eyes. But, of course, he's right about what would happen after...

3. Jamie Lee Curtis was topless in a very good movie from my movie-going days, "Trading Places." I watched that recently and was shocked at its impropriety! But still, what a rack!

2. Nicki Minaj is always "accidentally" showing her spectacular boobs. I don't mind that a bit! 

1. It may not surprise anyone reading this that my number one boob flash on this list is the number one pause point in video history, "Fast Time at Ridgemont High." I think Phoebe Cates was one of, or maybe the most gorgeous women of the 80's. I, for one, (of millions) will be eternally thankful for her swimming pool, "Living in Stereo" scene from that movie. I can't hear that song or watch that movie without thinking about her knock-out knockers! And, as mentioned before, they're not very big, just, as the French say, "enough to fill a wine glass." 

All right, I already feel like a bit of a heel. This seems like something I might be writing for a skin book or chatting with a horndog friend. Getting a little uncomfortable here. But it's what my imaginary friend wanted, so I'll keep on going. Please don't hold this against me but we'll now get into an even MORE judgmentally evil category: the boobs that I thought would be good, but were disappointing. Now... let me say this: just because boobs are disappointing doesn't mean I don't like them. In fact, I'm pretty sure most guys will say the same. Boobs are like pizza, even when they're bad, they're still pretty good. I've never said, "Oh, shame on her for showing her boobs!" while watching a movie or music video. I wouldn't even say that to a 99-year-old woman! I've been to nude beaches before and I've seen topless AND bottomless women who were not exactly rockin' fantabulous funbags. But to me they brought a smile to my face and a tingle to my crotchal area anyway. I'm going to say that even though the next entries to this (unusual) blogpost are entitled "disappointing," I still got a boner for every one of them! 

I can't believe I'm writing this! I hope you are happy, my female friend that everyone will think I made up. Only 10 in this category and they were really hard to think of. Cuz I like all boobs when they're set free!

10. Reese Witherspoon was topless in a vampire thing I didn't watch. But I saw the clips. I gotta admit, I thought her boobs would be different. This is NOT to say they weren't nice, just not as perfect as the rest of her. And sue me for saying her boobs were not perfect! They were still great! :-)

9. Same goes for Demi Moore. I think I would have preferred to see her girls BEFORE they got all blown up and fake before she showed them to us in "Striptease." Probably would have been nicer. But this is not to say they weren't nice, just, you know, not real.

8. Cameron Diaz has some nice boobs! But after seeing "The Mask" I just thought they were bigger. I wish I didn't have such heightened expectations.

7. Maggie Gyllenhaal is as cute as a button! I absolutely love her! And her acting is as good as her brother's. I have a crush on her. Even after seeing her naked on screen. Again, even if my brain wasn't as impressed with her as with the list above, my weiner still was. Ugh, I KNEW this would be the hardest category! But I promised.

6. Teri Hatcher said on Seinfeld that her boobs were real and they were spectacular. I don't know if I'd go that far after seeing them in a B movie with Julia Robertses bro. I forget the name of it. Down south, in the Louisiana swamps. Anyhoo, nice, but not thrilling.

5. Marilyn Munroe was a blonde bombshell and looked great showing cleavage, but when she finally got naked, her bod wasn't as great as I thought it would be. Now, she was from an era long before I had testosterone, so that might be why this phenomenon occurred. But when compared to another blonde bombshell from her era (on my next list) I don't know how she was more popular. Different era, different ideas of beauty I guess.

4. Not surprisingly it was in a movie when she was portraying Marilyn Munroe that Mira Sorvino first bared her boobage and it was a let down. I have to say again, ABSOLUTELY not bad boobs, but not as good as I'd hoped for. 

3. Meg Ryan was the Alexandra Daddario of my day. Only with blonde hair. Her eyes WERE the first thing I noticed. I am not lying! I hardly even thought about her chesticles. In "When Harry Met Sally" when she's wearing that blue gown on New Year's? Oh my GOD Magnum! Her eyes were POPPIN' and I fell in love! But I gotta admit, in the Doors movie when she got topless, she fell off that pedal stool I had her on. (IT crowd joke)

2. Okay, I feel like such a humongous heel for the last 8 entries, but the next two... not so much. Tara Reid in the "Big Lebowski" was HOT! She was hot for so long! What the frig did she do? Her and Lindsay Lohan! Like watching a priceless wax sculpture melt.

1. Janet Jackson during the halftime show of Superbowl 38. Even though it was totally not a "wardrobe malfunction" and even though it was probably done to increase her popularity, that was not the best boob in the world. So many pics of her while clothed hinted that she had some dynamite knockers underneath! She shoulda kept us thinking that. Crazy sun nipple covering or not, that was a CAREER malfunction.

Okay, now that I feel like a complete asshole, I'll try to bail myself out with a list of boobs I haven't seen, but I'd like to. The first one and the last one could be shockers.

Take a look at this:

Queen Elizabeth II was a stone cold beauty! And don't pretend you can't see the bosom that's bustin out of that dress. She's probably got the best hidden bazooms of all time! Back then or even right now, I don't care, I'd throw her some beads at Mardi Gras! 

9. Scarlett Johansson had some shady, blurry pics circulated, and she's been in a few movies with "muted" nudity, but I bet to see her boobs clear as day would be like looking straight into the eyes of Medusa! You'd probably turn to stone. Or at least part of you would...

8. Kate Upton is one of those gals that just has IT. She is probably the Marilyn Munroe of our times. She's not as gorgeous as a girl from her time who shows up on this list at number 5, but she was WAY more popular! Kate Upton gets S.I. Swimsuit edition covers over girls with "model" figures while she's considered kinda fat. I love her for that and even more for her sense of humour. And then there are two other assets she has...

7. Jessica Alba's boobs are not big but all natural and from what I've read and heard, nourished with only the healthiest of foods and drink, so they're EXTRA special! 

6. Winona Ryder was popular for a time and she did a lot of movies in which it seemed like she, or the movie makers, did their best to hide her, uh, femininity. Finally, when Brahm Stoker's Dracula came out and we saw the unforgettable scene with white top in the rain running... well you know. It was mamor... I mean memorable.

5. Jayne Mansfield was just a hard body that made all the other sex symbols of her time jealous. Sophia Loren for example: beautiful! Here she is looking sideways in a very famous picture at the assets that Jayne has but she didn't. She might be thinking how much more famous she could have become if she was the lucky one in this picture. Or maybe she was admiring those beauties like we all can't help but do!

4. Katy Perry if we stick with what Conan said, has the eye of the Tiger but when that eye isn't looking at us, we tend to check out one (or two) of her other formidable features. She too has some magnificent eyes! I could get lost in them if she didn't have such a distracting pair of, well see for yourselves...

3. Jennifer Love Hewitt. JLH. She's a mistress (some of you will get that) of mystery. What do those glorious golden orbs look like? She's been majestic in her presentation of them leaving the horndogs disappointed and the regular guys thirsting for more. There is no third category there. No guy can look at her, no matter what age, hormone level, or possibly even sexual preference, without lusting after her. Even when she's not even trying! But in some films and TV shows, she has been trying. Yet, alas, we have no confirmation of what we fantasize is hidden beneath her sweaters or her skimpy workout clothes. 

2. We're almost done this post that makes me feel creepier than I've ever felt here before. I kind of regret agreeing to doing this now. Please don't hold this against me. But, on the other hand, I'm kind of going with the flow here and it IS fun to share my preferences on my blog. We all have crushes on famous people, and these are mine. Number two is only second to Phoebe Cates. 

Those just might be the best boobs in the whole world! And I haven't seen them. That's what keeps them up there on the list. 

Number one probably is a downgrade from number two, but the mystery is a great deal more. This is only to see her tits, mind you, I don't feel like I'd have any connection to her on a personal level. I'm sure I'd love Tyra. She's more untouchable, number 10 on this list, probably. And for some reason, she's the one and only person on this list I don't feel too bad about objectifying. Probably because she has already shown her own inhumanity in so many ways. But that still hasn't distracted me from the one (or two) and only thing (or things) that interest me about her: 

Here she is getting her vaccine. I guess the fact that she sometimes does stuff her father wouldn't like interests me too, but it's mostly the boobs. I confess to total shallowness here: by FAR the thing I like most about Ivanka is her boobs. And they're probably fake, bought by Daddy, but they top my list. 

If you are as shallow as I am, and you have made it this far, share with me your agreement, or disagreement with my opinions. I know only one person I'm sure will be interested in this, but I bet some others will be, even if they're not supposed to be...

I apologize to anyone who needs the apology.  

The Con of Don

 I didn't think it would be long before the High Shade Grifter, The Fartful Fraudster, The Don of Con, The Abortion of Extortion, (I think you know who I'm talking about) made it back into my blog. What's it been three whole posts without him? Last time I was talking about how he needs to be impeached. Well, that didn't happen. He is embroiled in about 3500 lawsuits, here is a list of just a few of the latest (14 actually, but that's just a few for 45). And like Teflon, these charges likely won't stick to his oily hide either. But he remains relevant in the news, at least to me, while I cheer for the prosecution.

Occasionally, aside from his horse that he's flogged way past the point of decomposition, the "Somebody cheated ME" gambit he constantly brings up about the election that he says was fixed, he says or does something else so the world doesn't forget about him. Like complaining about "cancel culture" then throwing shade on all kinds of companies and telling his groupies to boycott them. MLB, Delta Airlines, JP Morgan Chase, Viacom (CBS), City Group, Cisco, UPS, and Merck, which is the company that makes it so he still has a few remaining strands of hair to arrange on his bald noggin. The best, of course, was when he was drinking a Diet Coke while condemning Coca Cola like the High Shade Grifter he is. 

But none of that was what brought him to my attention most recently. Read this article and watch the video. Go ahead. I'll wait. I recently talked with a Trump supporter about how money should be kept out of politics. He agreed and said that the best thing about Trump was that he was rich and therefore incorruptible, at least by money. A LOT of Trump supporters felt that way and have repeated this as at least part of their reason for voting for the Fartful Fraudster in 2016. Inconceivably, more than four years of cheap chicanery later, many STILL believed he was not completely corrupt and voted for him again! The corruption was so obvious, they didn't see it!

The person I was talking to, the Trump fan, used the Clintons as an example of why money shouldn't be in politics. "Where did they make all their money?" he asked me. He gave the figure of 120 million. That's Hillary and Bill and that's, as he said, "all their money." Now let's remember Bill was prez 8 years, governor of Arkansas 11; Hillary was First Lady 8 years, Secretary of State 4 years, and a senator for 8 years. That's 39 years in office between them, not to mention the fact that they are both lawyers and successful authors. With the average senator's salary at 174,000 and president's salary at about half a million including travel and other expense allowances, plus whatever money they made when they were not in government, you total that up and it's not gonna be 120 million. Not unless they got in on Apple stock on the ground floor.

I don't doubt the Clintons made it killing during their time in office. Everybody does. That's the root of all political evil. But in comparison, let's look at Jared and Ivanka, shall we? They profited from working in the Whitehouse to the tune of between 172 and 640 million. Dollars. American. In 4 years. Hello? Kettle, this is Pot. Come in Kettle! But wait! There's more! Here's an article that says Trump made 1.9 BBBBillion while he was in office. Uh, and oh yeah, that was just the first 3 years. So that's not including the scam for contributions allegedly to aid in his fight to, (irony cough) STOP THE STEAL.

But this is what it's like trying to reason with Trumpsters, isn't it? They'll point out Biden poking you with a needle (and I use this metaphor purposely) while Trump is impaling you with a jousting lance. You talk to them and they don't believe you. You give them news stories and it's fake news. I showed the Trumpster I was talking with the article from the NY Times and he immediately said that publication was on his "do not trust" list. EVERY publication should be on EVERY person's "do not trust" list, but there's something in legal jargon that has been used to constitute legally binding proof that the Trumpsters as a whole seem to be missing: it's called preponderance of evidence. It is, admittedly, the lowest standard of proof, but it is of common usage particularly in the courts Trump is the king of: (or at least head jester) the civil courts. To sum it up, if there is a pile of evidence so high that it becomes obvious that something is better than 50% likely to be the case, preponderance of evidence meets the burden of proof. Here's a more thorough explanation if you're interested.

Don't trust anything, question everything, but while reading with sufficient skepticism, keep track of the piles on both sides of the issues you're particularly interested in. Chances are good that if you try to remain as objective as possible, weeding out the obviously biased articles, the bigger the pile, the closer to the truth it should be. That's what I've found and as long as our world remains on the good side of 50%, which I still maintain it is, this method should work. Just don't let somebody else do your thinking for you. This is why, toward the end of our conversation on money in politics, I told my Trumpy buddy to check some of his preferred publications for the absolutely hilarious Bitch BlockConnell doing his best "I know you are but what am I" argument in support (need I say blind?) of the Abortion of Extortion saying, "Corporations need to stay out of politics." He was referring, no doubt, to the afore-listed corporations that have spoken out against the new legislation (361 bills in 47 States) that make voting more difficult. One of the ways voting is limited is by requiring ID. Passports and to a lesser extent, driver's licenses require proof that you are who you are and you need to fill out application forms. Questions on applications are about your background. Essentially, the new legislation is requiring background checks for voters.

Now, let's examine some different legislation, shall we? Soon, Joe Biden will be trying, again, to pass some restrictions on guns in response to recent, and let's face it, NOT so recent, mass shootings in the US. One of the main issues will be the HIGHLY popular universal background checks. About 90% of Americans support this idea. Slam dunk, right? Not so fast Kimosabe. Any gun legislation is a tough sell for the Republican party because - you guessed it - money. Financial backers of the Republican party, like the NRA, have gotten any legislation to do with guns blocked in the past 20 years. This same legislation was passed in the House before, but senate majority leader, Bitch BlockConnell just buried it. It was never voted on. McConnell, the top recipient of corporate funding in the 2020 election cycle, and 4.3 million in the last 5 years, is not the senate majority leader any more. So he's worried his benefactors may be disappointed, particularly in the state of Georgia, which is virtually neck and neck between the two parties. So he momentarily bit the hand that has been feeding him for years by telling the corporations who don't support voter suppressing legislation and are taking action and speaking out against it, to stop acting and shut up. But that was on Monday. On Tuesday, he went back to licking the hands (and other body parts) of the money-grubbing, soulless corporations that have pulled his strings for a price his whole career by saying something to the effect of it is fine for rich big shots to purchase politicians to gain unfair power and influence in America, just not to try to influence things when average Americans would be helped. 

The above is a GREAT depiction of Mitch the streetwalking whore McConnell taken from an article in Rolling Stone magazine entitled, "Mitch McConnell, The Man Who Sold America." It's a long article, but if you want to read how politicians "earn" so much money, there's no better example than Moscow Mitch. His campaign funds of 4.3 mil were a mere drop in the bucket. I encourage you to not get pissed off while reading this article. If you read the article, you'll find that as far back as '73 this jagoff was railing against corporate interference in politics even writing an article about it in the Kentucky newspaper, the Courier-Journal. Then in '87 he actually proposed a bill to end the ability of wealthy Americans to spend limitless cash on their own campaigns. McConnell didn't become one of the richest politicians by sticking to his guns on issues (and again, I choose the metaphor carefully) or having any discernable principles or allegiances. He went where the money was. Just read about it. It goes without saying that if you're a Trumpy, don't bother reading it - fake news!

They're scam artists. Crooks. Grifters. Guys like Mitch and Don ARE the proverbial swamp Trump claimed he would drain. Just like the mobster is the criminal element in your neighbourhood he says he will protect you from. And the reason they're so powerful and they've clambered their ways to the top of politics is money.

You may be thinking, "Yeah, this may ALL be right, but it really doesn't affect me." You couldn't be more wrong. Remember the days when politicians were honoured and revered and you didn't sound like a schmuck if you told your kid that some day he or she could grow up to be President (or Prime Minister)? Those days aren't gone. They've just changed. Presidents and Prime Ministers are still revered and honoured. Just not for virtues like honesty and ethics. They're now honoured and revered for modern virtues like acquisitive business "savvy" (greed) and moral relativism (spinelessly fluid principles). Money changed those virtues. And now those are the virtues that are imitated by regular folks.

Just the other day I was at Costco and I was at the checkout counter. I had a 6-pack of onion bagels. I was already going to store it in the freezer because I can only eat a bagel once in a while for a treat. Six would last me half a year. But the cashier said they were on special, one-plus-one. Well I wasn't going to walk back and get 6 more. I certainly couldn't use a dozen for myself, but I was there with a friend so I said to her that I could just give her six if she wanted. We asked and they don't have anyone who can run to get you something. You know, like every grocery store USED to have. So I said, "Whatever, just ring them up. I'll take six for the price of twelve." A nice deal for Costlyco! But even THAT was not possible! Two bags of bagels or none were my only two options. I find it hard to believe that there was no way I could have been accommodated there. It probably wasn't a scam but because of the ubiquity of the scam in this day and age in which scam artists are the heroes, I was SURE I was being ripped off in some way!

I've also been the victim of a similar scam to the Trump fleecing of his contributors. I don't know what I bought or when I bought it, but I'm being billed 29 American dollars every month for something I either wanted to pay for once or never wanted to pay for at all. Only thing I pay monthly is storage in Canada and my phone. It's probably one of the places I did my Christmas shopping at. But I've talked to my bank and they can't put a stop payment on things like this. The fucking banks are IN on these scams! Why could you not put a stop payment on something like this? All I could get was the company name and it means nothing to me. That's by design so I can't return to whatever website scammed me and uncheck the monthly payment box. I've looked up the company name on Google and it is listed as a scam site. It's attached to many websites evidently. But I couldn't find a list. The only thing I can do is cancel the credit card. Which I've already done twice in the past 6 months. For the same reason. I'm sure that's what I'll end up doing but then I'll have to give my new credit card info to everybody plus I'll have to go into Seoul and the bank isn't open after my working hours and even if it were, I'm farther away and there are fewer buses, I wouldn't make it on time, also I might have to be quarantined if I go to Seoul since there is now mandatory testing in the area for foreigners, I think...

I can't avoid bringing up my pet peeve scam perpetrated without legal recourse on every one of us every day and that is the widely accepted charges banks hang on us regular people to access our money. Bank machines, transfers, paying bills, writing checks, these are charges over and above the charges charged for us to GIVE the banks our hard-earned money so that they can make money with it. You just knew it wouldn't be long before THAT bullshit scam caught on didn't you? And in an area that directly or indirectly affects us all: school books. You can't blame McGraw Hill. If the banks don't get charged or fined or even frowned upon for this scam, why can't we do it? 

The legal fraud is endless! Non-refundable plane tickets should never be a thing. Your flight gets cancelled and you're fucked. People collecting your signature for purchases or refunds. Should be illegal but it's not. In fact, most of us don't know how often we give our signatures when it's totally unnecessary. Email, phone numbers, any contact information is valuable to scumbag advertisers and the collection and sale of it is only just starting to be punished. Here in Korea there are all kinds of scams perpetrated upon foreigners who are depended upon to just avoid the inconvenience of challenging them, in Korean, and pay. Housing surcharges, utility bills, removal of price tags, frivolous immigration documents and processes, hell, my landlord knows I get a housing stipend and used that as an excuse to overcharge me on my rent. My current apartment is worse in every way but I pay the same rent only because the landlord has rented to teachers before and is aware of the Gongju University contracts.

Actual exchange rates on the Korean won are easy to find out but impossible to get. Try using your Korean bank card in another country and see if you don't pay charges that amount to more than the allowable 23% in Canada. Having said that, there's always a loophole for the bad guy. Sometimes up to 60% is allowable. SIXTY PERCENT! What kind of screwjob capitalist wiseguy loan shark law is that? Here's a list of the most common scams nowadays, but not appearing on this list are a lot of overcharges we collectively just sigh and pay without complaint. Well this IS a complaint. I think the main reason we are so thoroughly scammed is because we're perfect chumps. We're the marks every con man dreams about. Socialized to believe all complaining is negativity. As I pointed out to a friend recently who had posted on Facebook one of those toxically positive "avoid negative people" posts, avoiding negative people is awfully negative behaviour! So we're mindfucked. And we're overworked. Too exhausted to bother. Surrounded on all sides by fraud so that it's become commonplace. 

I gotta believe all this wouldn't be the case if we lived in a world in which the con-man mentality was punished, not rewarded. I feel like the US, being by FAR the most represented country in all media, will have to be the country where this change is initiated. I see good signs from the Biden/Harris administration so far, but this is a monumental task I don't know if they're up to. 

At this point, I guess all a guy can do is hope...

Easter in Korea

 Happy Easter everybody! It certainly IS a happy Easter for me! Not because of the chocolate, the Easter egg hiding, hunting or colouring or Easter celebrations with friends and family, (there won't be any of that) and not because of the holiday, (we don't get one here in Korea) but because I'm back to work and all signs point to a better situation. I was getting a bit worried that I'd have to go without work for a semester again, or even worse, accept work in China or Saudi Arabia. But I got this job after the deadline. March 1 was starting day for most uni gigs here in Korea, but I started April 1. And that's no April Fool's joke!

You may be wondering about Easter in Korea. A better place to start would be Christianity in Korea. If you live here as long as I have, or for a month, you will get a sense that Korea IS a Christian country. Statistically, about 46% of people have no religious affiliation. That surprises me! About 20% are Buddhist and a whopping 33% are Christians. Here is a really good article on how that came about. I would also encourage you to read the article so that you don't think the next few things I'm going to say are the products of my imagination/any sort of prejudice, but are opinions shared by many, including members of Korean Christian groups.

Christianity in Korea is a different animal! While Christian Mammonism has always been one of many sources of confusion for me in ANY church, I haven't seen an integral connection between God and prosperity to the extent it exists in Korean Christian churches. You can find many instances throughout history of prosperity being linked to God's favour and even superiority of race, but there are few rags to riches stories like the "Miracle on the Han River." In about 50 years, Korea went from a nation of uneducated and destitute farmers to one of the top dozen economies in the world! It's no huge wonder that the people of that generation were deliriously happy at their good fortune! Short of saying exactly the following, the above article certainly hints at it: Korean pride, (and considerable xenophobia which led to the nickname "hermit kingdom") would not allow them to give full credit to the foreign countries upon which they were more dependent than most nations on earth, so they chose to believe it was their own hard work and God that created the miracle. This gave rise to the only miracle that surpassed the Korean economic miracle: the Korean religious miracle. Churches were filled with zealous worshippers faster than they could be built. 

In a discussion last week with one of my students about culture shock, he said short skirts on the girls and the number of churches were to two most shocking things for him when he first arrived in Korea. There are about 17 million Christians in Korea, which is the size of the state of Indiana. About 81.5% live in the cities, so you can imagine what it's like walking down any city street. There seems to be a church on every corner! When I first came here in 1997 I was asked about once a week if I was a Christian. 

Nowadays the churches are still there, but the zeal is not. The Korean economy couldn't possibly have sustained the trajectory that created that zeal. Things have levelled out and while the beneficiaries of the economic miracle of the second half of the 20th century still maintain their wealth and their belief that somehow God factored into it, the younger generation isn't prospering as miraculously. So here we have identical sentiments among the last couple of generations as we have in most capitalist countries in which unchecked capitalist aggression and greed has created unprecedented wealth gaps and funneled almost all the resources and power into the hands (and bank accounts) of so few. The younger generation here are discouraged by employment and happiness prospects. The term "Hell Chosun" has been created to describe their feelings. And you can bet that some of the tin-eared older generation believe that the youngsters need to work harder and get their asses to church instead of complaining.

As for Easter, it's not even a holiday here! I will work a full day Easter Monday. Christmas isn't big either. With the church being so dominant, and a third of the people I meet every day being Christians, it's just colossally confusing to me how Easter is such a non-entity here! It feeds into the belief, and once again, not just MY belief, that Korean Christianity is first and foremost a kind of socio-economic cartel of like minded people giving each other preferential treatment. How real is the zeal? 

I imagine conversation between the generations might be similar to the meme war we often see around Christian holidays between Christians and non-believers online. The Christians will be all like...

And Easter non-celebrants might be all like...

and maybe they'll refuse to go to church. The miracle generation might think, "Hmmm... that WOULD explain the Easter eggs and chocolate bunny rabbits. I've always wondered about them. I mean, like, wouldn't a phoenix have been a better symbol for Easter? Jesus wasn't really a symbol of fertility or spring or growing or mating and he didn't really get reborn, he rose from the dead." But then they will probably get all up in the faces of the younger generation saying things like, "This is exactly WHY things are going so badly for you!"

To which the younger generation might reply, "Come on Grampa, give it a rest you zombie worshipper!"

And maybe the logic of that might go through the heads of the elder generation. They might even recall chilling, and confusing Bible verses they'd read. Like...

 or...

... but they'll say, "Jesus gave his life for you!"

The young and cheeky will reply, "Well, not really. He was actually only inconvenienced for three days. Then he returned and scared some people."

"Don't be blasphemous! Jesus died for your sins. We celebrate Easter here in Korea, not with a day off, but by thanking Jesus for saving us and washing away our sins."

"Again Grampa, he was dead, but only for, like, two and a half days, and if the wages of sin are death, but those who believeth in Jesus will have eternal life, and if God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are all One, then isn't he technically saving us from himself? Couldn't we have all been forgiven without all that?"

"All that? You dismiss the crucifixion and the suffering of our Lord as 'all that'?"

"It's because I'm not so sure I believe in 'all that.' I think maybe Jesus puts the 'fiction' in 'crucifixion.'"

"Get out of this house!" 

"Fine! See ya later. I'm gonna go out and drink some Cass beer, meet up with friends and maybe commit a few sins... because:

"Yeah, sure, GO! Drink your beer! Do your partying! Coast through life working your measly 12-hour shifts taking advantage of the blessings that your ancestors worked so hard for! I'll go to church and pray for you! Lousy younger generation... mumble grumble... Don't know how GOOD they got it... mumble grumble..."

I'm not saying for sure that this is the way things go here, but I wonder... 

At any rate, I am celebrating Easter and my good fortune this year. The job is going very well! I will get immigration taken care of next week and submit my curricula for both online and face-to-face classes, then the next week is exam week so it's a week off for me! And the Wednesday of that week is my birthday so I'll be celebrating that most likely. 

Just in case it seems like I was favouring the Atheists this post, I will ask if any of the Atheists are going into work Easter Monday. What about Christmas? What do you say during sex? Just asking. And in case any Atheist gets too cocky, here's your fucking soup:

 

So, how 'bout we just get along? All religious and non-religious people? Maybe THAT'S what we could celebrate on Easter. Yeah, right! Happy Easter from Korea anyway!