Sunday, April 25, 2010

I've lost a good friend...

His name is: Peanutbutter

Much to my great dismay, it has become painfully (literally) obvious that I can no longer eat peanutbutter. I'm crushed. Although I've been in denial for the past few years, I can no longer recoil from the fact that PB has become my enemy.

I'm terribly surprised. Since my earliest childhood, PB has been a good friend. He has always been there when I needed him. Through crunchy times and smooth, whether the jam or bread on my plate failed to live up to expectations, I could always count on PB to pull me through. We laughed together. We cried. With a cold glass of milk we celebrated victories or commiserated in defeat. But those times are gone.

PB has betrayed me. His evil, oily nature has risen to the fore. Like Nightshade, he is beautiful to look upon but terrible to consume. He torments me at night with red hot iron in my stomach and Drano in my intestines. His evil chuckle can be heard as I toss and turn in fitful sleep. That chuckle becomes a howl as I dash to the temple of salvation to exorcise his demonic presence. When the possession has ended, I often look balefully at the shelf where he sits and curse his benign, comforting appearance. PB sings to me, but like the Harpies of old who lured unwary travelers to their deaths, I must ignore his siren song.

I will mourn the loss of my friend, but there comes a time in every man's life where they must cut the ties that bind.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Dirty thunderstorm over Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.

You simply have to check out these photo's from the volcano in Iceland. Spectacular!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

This has got to be an "Only in Korea" thing...

For years now, internet gaming has been THE activity in Korea. From Blizzard Inc.'s Starcraft, Warcraft, and World of Warcraft to Korean titles such as Lineage and Dragon & Fighter and many others, gaming has consumed Korean youth culture. There are at least three TV channels dedicated to online gaming, and pro-gamers are treated as heroes often making up to 300,000 won (approx. $3,000 US) in tournaments.

Recently, the Korean government has tried to introduce laws limiting the late night availability of online games to minors in an effort to stem the tide of internet addiction sweeping the country. This effort has been sparked by stories over the past year or so of a number of people dying in PC rooms after prolonged periods of time playing games, and a particularly shocking story of a young couple so wrapped up in their gaming that they let their 4 month old baby starve to death.

Now, it seems that internet gaming in Korea has taken another downward turn. According to a report from Geekosystem, current and former pro-gamers and team managers (who knew a pro-game team needed a manager?) have been accused of intentionally throwing games and selling game tapes to gambling organizations. Oh my!

I'll have to do a bit more research on this to find out what is up and the fallout that comes from it. Stay tuned!

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Photos from Taiwan

View from my apartment. Banciao by day.

Love this. Got it from a doctor for a cough: Brown Mixture Liquid (with Opium).

Rebecca, her sister, niece and nephew.


Cool detail from the temple. (I'll edit this once I find out what the name of this temple is)





Giant Buddha.




Simply can't get enough of the detailed carvings on some of these temples. Extraordinary.


Rebecca, her niece and nephew, and me.

View of Taipei from the Temple.


Temple (can't remember the name) during Chinese New Year.


Klaus the Exploding German.

Carnegie's.


Rebecca and me at Sun Moon Lake.


Sun Moon Lake


Taiwan has seven (?) major tribes. This is a performance from one of them. Think this was a hunting dance.

Totem poles. The similarity of Asian aboriginal art and pacific Coast Native American art constantly amazes me.


Ancient Aboriginal rollercaster!




Gondolas at the, you guessed it, Formosa Aboriginal Cultural Village.


Rebecca.

Some random shots of Beipu.




Random shots from Beipu.

Detail from the Beipu Temple

More detail from the Baipu Temple


Prayer wheels at Beipu


Taiwanese one-man band



Temple at Beipu


Fishing boat entering Danshui Harbor


Danshui on a cold, grey Sunday


Banchiao at night.


Food Stall at Raohe Night Market


Samshong Temple


Raohe Night Market

A front row seat to history in the making.

Eugene Allen died yesterday at the age of 90. Who was Eugene Allen you may ask? Well, Mr. Allen was an unassuming African American who happened to be able to witness the often troubling history of America from a rather unique vantage point: as butler to 8 presidents; Truman through Reagan (see this story). Mr. Allen's period of service coincided with the great turmoil of the Civil Rights era to which he had a front row seat. He was a man who served the president but couldn't walk through the front door of a restaurant in his native Virginia. That he lived to witness the inauguration of President Obama, to be able to vote for a black man for president (his wife of 65 years died the day before the election), must have been an experience that I could not even begin to imagine.

I write about Mr. Allen because I often fnd myself thinking about the people of his generation; the generation of my grandparents. I don't think of them in terms of monikers like"The Great Generation", but I do look at them in terms of history: mainly I think of the history that they, as a generation, witnessed. Think about it for a minute. Mr. Allen was born in 1919. My mother's mother was born in 1910. Think of the changes that have occured not only in the U.S., but in the world in that time. Air travel, which most of us take for granted today, was in its infancy. The automobile was only starting to become the transportation of choice. The Golden Age of Radio hadn't begun, and television was still a whisper in the subconscious of its inventors (my students laugh when I tell them that I was the TV remote when I was a kid). Can't live without the internet, you say? How about living with no refrigerator, air conditioning, or a washing machine? My grandparents and their contemporaries survived the Great Depression and two world wars. They watched the rise AND fall of communism. They witnessed first hand the civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s and watched a man land on the moon. And some of them, like Mr. Allen, got to witness an event that I wasn't sure would happen in MY lifetime: the election of a black man as President of the United States (race issues being what they are even today, I was always pretty sure a white woman would be elected first).

This litany of immense historical change always leaves me to wonder what will happen in my lifetime? Will the generations that follow be witness to change on the scale of the last hundred years? Time will tell.