Let Me Ramble

walking in downtown seoul is like walking in a rave. the people are shoulder to shoulder and getting pushed is a way of life. you just cant get mad or annoyed by it. people gotta get through to where they gotta get to. its the same on the subway. constant crowds, constant pressure, constant activity. i cant seem to figure out how people can sleep standing up and get nudged, but ive seen it. its not like everone sleeps standing up, but when i think of it i think of horses. ugh, horses.

there is a thick smog in this city. im sure it doesnt compare to the smog people see in larger cities in india, or iran, but the smog is there and hangs like semi-transparent kleenex over the sky, diluting the sun during the day and the moon and stars at night. i dont think ive seen a star yet in seoul. ive looked, but the only lights in the sky i see flash.

the walk up the hill towards my house reminds me so much of telegraph hill in san fran. while i walk up and down the hill everyday, and have only walked up and down telegraph hill once, the comparisons are clear; it sucks. perhaps the walk wouldnt be so bad if after ever turn; every new house, a new definition of rank didnt waft into my nostrils. shit, fish, and garbage. the smell is everywhere in the neighbourhood i live in and while im sort of used to it, it fills me with visions of huge dumps and rotting flesh.

ive been reading a lot of news lately and well things look grim on the diplomatic front through and through. the middle east is anything but stable, even in countries known for stability. iraq is worse off now that it ever has sending saddam into a religious revival like never seen before. secular nationalism is almost gone; new mosques and religious papers being allowed day in and day out. its the only thing people there can use to cope. the word of god. poverty drives people towards religion and in an area of the world so poor and devastated i find it so hard to even listen to the europeans and americans speak of anything positive with regards to the situation at this point in time.

when will the majority cast aside their undying belief in past philosophies regarding the state and the individual? when will the majority think of "good" in terms of "the whole" and less on personal gain and personal stability at "home"? why didnt september eleventh strike a chord of change instead of a chord of defence?

the big stick doesnt always win, but what about the big tv?

i want to goto the rishi valley in india one day and revel in its revolutionary ideas and its positive outlook on problems. they dont look at problems as impossible. they look at them as challenges the whole community has a say in changing.

optimists of the world unite.

idealists of the world unite.

but to unite isnt the whole answer. the answer is reasonable and realistic means of change and promise. not election campaign promises, but hardcore ideas that strike a nerve and create change and action. the kind of action the rishi valley is producing. not dividends. not efficiency. just positive change. realistic ideas create realistic endeavours, from which people can look at and smile.

smile!

to quote billy brag. 'just because youre better than me, doesnt mean im lazy. just because your moving forward doesnt mean im moving backwards'.

i hate the stock market because its a purely individualist endevour with only one end result; the aquisition of funds. im all for individual art, individual expression and individual activity, but when that activity is for the pure gain of making more money i feel hurt and exploited. when the pentions of so many are hurt by the actions of so few, the idea of stocks become so barbarian to me.

stocks are barbarian

cant sleep as of late. been killing the time reading fiction and books about red flags and corrupt regimes. so much is corrupt in this world and we cant even begin to make changes in places so in need of them when at home we sweep them under the rug like they were peices of confetti or dust.

lets just blame it all on lack of attention span. nintendo generation. coffee. bling bling. i blame myself. life is marginalized and divided at a span i cant even begin to understand.

its 2002 and we still arent fucking driving electic cars. who is to blame. fucking capitalism. fucking communism. fucking arms race. fucking oil tycoons who avoid change because change means new and costly investment. investment in the future is what i hear from all the oil companies, but all they tout is a "cleaner", "safer" product. why is it when i call up an oil company they have no answers with regards to my questions pertaining to investments in renewable resources, or investment in electic energy. why is it i read about the canadian government cutting its funding for wind energy but then handing over millions to help harvest oil in the tar sands of alberta. when will this end? when will i actually have a say in this 'democracy'.

Geumho Pussy Crew

dont fuck with us. yeah we know english. most korean pussy knows english. living in the streets will do that to a cat. very few koreans trust felines. its our eyes.

recently met a couple of english teachers up in the geumho hills. me and my recon squad of about twelve cats were shading under a parked car on the way to family mart, just before you get to the great staircase of geumho.

one of them. ill call him plumpy actually had the nerve to initiate contact with scratchy, the fysty cat we found just outside the hanyang university subway tunnel. he was wounded. apparently he had faught for over three cat hours trying to defend his freshly killed rat dinner, but the yaksu half tail posse invaded his killzone and fucked that feline up. so we picked him up. we were on our way back from an assembly of cats up near Cheongnayanni. what a trip that turned out to be.

while the rest of us got up and ran like the pussies we are, scratchy stood his ground hissing with his arched back that didnt really arch all that well because of his encounter with the half tails. plumpy backed off and headed for the stairs.

scratchy hated humans. he had been thrown out at a young age, growing up dodging the fuckers on the scooters who made it their pleasure trying and run over cats. geumho is littered with the bodies of our comrades in fur.

while he is somewhat justified in his hatred of humans, he also has to understand that their waste is our feast, and that without those beautiful blue bags of slop our lives would be harder, and would require more hunting and less sleeping.

there are two kinds of waste. there is the solid slop and the liquid slop. we can eat both, but our new tactic is to wait until the mice arrive. its like taking candy from a baby. once and a while we'll get a real treat. a big sewer rat will emerge, and all of us will pounce and play and then circle the kill before we ravage its carcass for that protein we need to keep our fur silky smooth.

in recent months geumho has become quite the stopover spot for cats on the move. the open fish market makes it a magnet for cats who are for one reason or another down and out; looking for a nice place to call home.

geumho has its fair share of hiding spots. the labrynth of alleys makes it an ideal place to hide and lurk about without much notice, but up on the hill its more dangerous, with kids and scooters all looking to kill. kill kill kill! thats all thats on the mind of most koreans. how frustrated they are with life.

perhaps the best place to hide and rest is the abandoned building across from the english school. its been a concrete shell for over eight years now; the developers running with the loot before completion of the project. the open shell of the building provides us with a good place to sit out the rain storms and winter wind. humans dont go there because its a hazard. the elements have made the concrete weak over the years and so it is a cats paradise, free from the dangers involved with living on the same land as humans.

a few weeks ago i got word from some of my runners that plumpy was seen trying to make contact with other cats from the geumho posse. he was different. he didnt try to kick or catch us. could he be trusted? i still didnt know, but i had three of my best cats keep an eye on him.

in a few cat hours, me and my gang of about three hundred are going to go camp out the back of the crustations depot. every thursday afternoon the trucks arrive with their open styrophome containers of shellfish. we are planning an all out raid of the facility. we've got delta paw on the roof ready to go down through the staircase, and about a dozen other squads ready to take the sides and front door. its a daring raid, but its something we have to do to prove our capability.

the idea came to us after meeting a ragtag group of cats that had smuggled themselves over on a japanese textile tanker. they called themselves the catnips. they offered to join our crew if we could prove to them we were the shit. me and their leader kenji came up with the idea while sunning on the roof of plumpies apartment. you could get a good look at the depot from there and we noticed that every thursday they got their shipment of gold.

if the raid is a sucess, we'll be the most powerful of all the seoul cat gangs. no one will step! the moment of truth is coming fast. wish us luck.