This is the preface to a show I went to tonight that involves break dancing, interpretive dance and lots of wacky antics. The night itself was rather chilly and since I have no phone, as usually I found myself finding my way around via friends. Always a relaxing situations since not having sole responsibility for getting lost is rather relaxing. So I came home from a usual day of school, though I was assigned more homework in an attempt to better my understanding of Korean writing. My speech and comprehension are getting better, but my vocab still suffers and grammar at times bewilders me, particularly particles. I suppose that’s mostly a matter of not having them in English though. Back to the subject at hand, B-Boys and Ballerina and how these rather unlikely candidates come together in a dance fusion show. After getting ready with my friends, we ride on yet another episodic cab ride to the destination. I merely refer to it as episodic because getting into a cab is sort of like jumping into a twilight zone with your friends, even more so when you’re speaking a non-native language. What does that mean? Well essentially that people tend to talk about stuff they really wouldn’t otherwise talk about. Certainly things come out that are not merely casual conversation. Perhaps that is also why some people find taxis relaxing.

After getting out of the taxi we are ushered in by yet another friend into an underground theater that’s very limited on space. In that space however a rather electric performance takes place. While the plot is non-existent due to the virtual lack of voiced dialogue, there’s lots of interpretive dance and enough set pieces to help you understand where you are and what’s going on. In a lot of ways, it’s what a Korean Drama would be if the characters couldn’t talk. A lot of spectacle without a great deal going on. This isn’t to say that the show itself wasn’t impressive, the show itself showed the rather amazing ability of the body to bend, morph and push limits of human physicality through forms of dance. Many types were represented as well, which was rather refreshing. Hip-hop, ballet, jazz, techno and many other forms of music are represented with respective styles of dance. The fused nature of these elements made them perhaps a bit awkward inside the context of a developed narrative, but then this show is mostly meant to entertain the audience and the show’s goal is most definitely achieved in that regard. It was one of those shows that made me wish I had become a dancer, if only to be able to bend and shape my body in a way that shows, at times, how I feel about things. The body becomes an expressive tool that these people are truly professionals with and there’s a definite familiarity that’s very enjoyable and energizing. While I could try to remember all the different types and plot points in detail, it’s probably best to summarize it as a simplistic but fun look into styles of dance. I’d definitely recommend the show to anyone in the area. The name of the show is either B-Boys loves Cinderella or the other way around. I’m not honestly sure, though I don’t think it’s terribly important as a title. Had mandu-solangtol for dinner, was a rather delicious end to an evening of… well, deliciousness.

drumming grey matter on splattered asphalt,
pools of constant sound despite my deafness.
ears plugged with mp3s that phase my world
away to where boredom dwells and inspiration.
I come to strange conclusions staring sleepily
outside a plastic window on a chilly bus to usher
me to the place I’m supposed to be. The place
I’m supposed to be, so I can stare and drum
grey matter.

Is the name of the “Halloween” celebrated at Yonsei. Though, it’s celebrated a day early. Don’t ask why, I’m not sure there’s a good reason (it’s certain that no good answer has been given to me yet). Horrorween is basically the same as Halloween, an excuse by college students of course to have another party. The party I had the chance to partake in was at Club Volume, a techno club which was certainly louder than the previous clubs I’ve attended in Korea. People were a bit more cordial as well, though maybe that’s because I kept running into people I knew. I had no costume so I basically just put on some nice clothes and ran with it. Even with this though I eventually ended up with a strange white mask and got to do some fun dancing here and there. Overall I had fun but the noise and size of the party was a bit ridiculous. I spent an hour waiting in a line which apparently, as Mentor’s Club members, we had no obligation to wait in. So there was basically just a table you went up to in order to receive tickets and that was pretty much all you had to do. Inside it looked pretty typical, lights everywhere, loud bass system and cute “halloween” decorations. Despite all this, Halloween is not really a “city” celebration like in America, it’s just in the nooks of society. There’s certainly no one giving out candy to kids on the 31st, regardless where the day falls.

Well, Japan is indeed a very strange place. From the people singing on the streets trying to become the next pop star ripoff, to the McDonalds, to the palaces everywhere you go, to geishas and other odd things, Japan’s definitely a unique experience. Not the place for me to live certainly (seafood is not my thing), but certainly a place I’d encourage anyone to go if they’re feeling adventurous and have a week off. No, I didn’t get to go to Tokyo, land of electric everything, but I still saw a lot in Nara, Kyoto and Osaka. I believe the first place we went in Osaka was a brewery, where they made sake (Japanese rice wine). Basically we learned the “history” of making sake, though I’m not really sure it’s as much history as it is them telling you how they made alcohol. It should probably be briefly mentioned that most of the shrines I’m writing about (later on) are Buddhist or Shintoist temples.
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I can’t really understand gaming addiction. Is it like a smoker’s addiction where you feel obligated or just downright get angry when you haven’t played a game? A coffee drinker’s addiction? An Apple nerd’s addiction? Is gaming addiction unique in its strange behavior?

I’m not honestly sure that playing games can actually be an addiction. I suppose that also assumes that online games don’t really count as games, since I sorta feel obligated to count them as pretty ways of wasting time. Which is to say, I’ve never heard of a person going on a Super Mario binge and dying as a result of it. Only the recent introduction of online games has this phenomenon started happening. So I do find it to be a rather unique situation, yet I also observed that online games aren’t really games as much as they are chat systems dressed up. In which case I’d question as to whether or not the danger is games or the internet and the contextual creation the net can have on certain people, such to the extent that they lose track of life outside the context established by online games.

I might also be one of the few holdouts, but I’d still argue that certain older (retro) games are far better than anything made today. Interestingly, if we look at the past generation of games, the reason for that was that there was simply less interest in videogames than there is today, or that there are simply less games from past generations to criticize. Still, I do wonder what the purpose or goal is of creating things like Playstation 3s, other than the “oooohhh shiny” effect that advertisers have on things that are new. Maybe that’s why I’d be a poor salesman, since I don’t see as much point in trying to get “ooooh shiny” as “oooh practical.” I suppose though there’s even a side to that though since every now and then retro becomes the “in” thing again. Games are becoming as cyclical as most other forms of pop culture, which might be a good and bad thing, since the indie industry can develop in a system where mass development occurs and of course your cult classics and just plain old classics. Still, the gaming industry has likely already introduced some of those classics that we simply aren’t aware of yet.

Perhaps one of the most interesting experiences since I’ve been in South Korea is just walking around. There are literally people everywhere but once that effect wore off on me, I began to see why people enjoy walking around here so much. I was walking home last night and I was basically just staring off at the Osiris Tower I see almost every night. The white electric sign is strange in the sense that it’s right before the white electric crosses up on the cathedral nearby, but that’s not really what got me. As I stared at these two electric monument, a large maple leaf fell in front of me. I sort of felt like I “got” living here at that moment. When I saw that leaf, I began to look at the trees and noticed their colors, reds and oranges, delicately framed against the wavy brick sidewalks that are so prolific here. Maybe that’s why they have the wavy brick streets in the first place, and perhaps that’s why there’s so much maintenance of them going on all the time. The commune of extra work is a nice touch perhaps, but maybe there’s more than just the economic factor to people digging up sidewalk bricks every year. Maybe there’s not, but I did find the colors to be rather interesting. Such a natural leaf against such an unnatural street was somehow emblematic for what Korea is. A rather unnatural electric city against the mountainous and integrated nature that they can’t really remove. Whether it’s their intention to remove that nature or not is certainly beyond me, but the experience was beautiful nonetheless.
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I was recently asked why I essentially hate both candidates for this 2008 election. Why both are essentially elitist assholes who continue to be a smear on our society. Well, I say this because McCain and Obama are exactly this. Despite the fact that I originally wrote the following paragraph in reference to Obama, I actually realized it applied to both candidates. Which is ironic and sad.

How can you trust a person who allows himself to falter under the Machiavellian political trends? To say that you’re better and then do the exact thing you say you’re “above?” How do you trust that? I can trust a person as much as anyone, but I can’t trust a person who lies continually facing the American people, no matter whose microscope they’re put under. The problem is that we don’t have any people in politics who even give a shit about people. We have criminals who run our country with a gelatin fist and we praise the fact that they can’t create change while mocking it at the same time. We simply have a farce in the realm of which would impress Shakespeare.

I seem to be spending a lot of time explaining that people have no moral agency and I do so because no one believes it despite an almost endless stream of facts proving my point.

Final Fantasy 8 was, let’s face it, a pretty corny, very J-Pop game. But Uematsu has this very interesting tendency to place things that are absolutely brilliant in the most interesting of places. Fisherman’s Horizon, to my knowledge, is only played in a single town. But I remember leaving my Playstation on for literally hours at a time just to listen to the melody play in the background. It was rather amusing because there were even places in the game’s town where you could just sit down and do nothing. What was sort of disappointing though is that this town is almost skipped over entirely since other than being the first town you visit outside of the Balamb Garden, there’s nothing particularly special about it. Yet, the music fits very well with that sort of “do nothing” idealism. It’s a soothing piece that really invites you to escape reality for just a little bit; it’s a short piece, but it’s very wrought and both the piano and original versions of it are excellent. I personally prefer the original and perhaps that’s because it hearkens back to some of those nights when I would stay up all night playing the game, or would listen to the melody as I fell asleep. What I think was so brilliant about it was simply that it was really placed in a virtual space that fit the tone of the music. The hamlet felt like an oasis from an otherwise fast-paced, angst wrought game. The few people in the town say next to nothing, and there are indeed a couple of fishermen, who talk about… well, fishing.

Thinking about this, I want to say that I think we’ve lost appreciation for exposition. We don’t want games to tell us stories anymore I think, we just want to be inside of a world where we can do things. Which, to me seems a bit unfortunate. Everyone’s aware that narrative is mostly just an excuse to move from point A to point B, but I seem to think that we’ve lost an appreciation for the connections we make through the screen. People deny they do this like the plague, yet if you ever talk with a film or book critic, you know they do this each and every time they go through something. Relationships are important! Games as well as people are losing sight of that. I think the point of Fisherman’s Horizon is just that. We aren’t taking the time out that we should to establish those connections… anywhere. That’s a dangerous complacency to have.

Well, let’s get right into it. World of Warcraft (a.k.a. WoW) is a game made by Blizzard which now has 10 million customers across all parts of the globe, gathered over the past couple of years like a disturbed Power Rangers movie–except the player base probably has a much lower combined IQ than any of the writers for the Power Rangers. The game itself is a virtual environment in which you go around stabbing things with various levels of abilities and such until eventually you reach the end game. Where you… stab things with various levels of abilities. The basic goal of the game is simple, and is actually the same as the goal of Warhammer Online (a.k.a. WaR). Kill the other target, capture their flag, or some other equally pointless goal that gets you to conflict with another group–be it AI or other online players. Warhammer now has over 1 million pre-orders and I must say that I believe players from WoW and elsewhere will flock to it. Not just because the game is new, but because it’s a fundamentally better game.
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PARTAY.
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