Waiter, another order of randomness, if you please?
ㅁ My adult student works for McDonald’s. He doesn’t make the burgers, he works in the head office down in Jongro. He was in accounting when we first met, but now he’s in resource management. I asked him how many Mickey D locations there are in Seoul. He said he didn’t know.
“Don’t you think you should?” I asked. “How can you manage resources unless you know how many restaurants you have.”
“I’ll find out. I’m still new at this job.”
He consulted a file during the break. “Seventy-eight,” he said.
Now we know. And now you know, too.
ㅁ This is in the category of come-on-tell-us-what-you-really-think. Sometimes reading a negative review of a book is fun, even if you never had any intention of picking up a copy. It’s a review of Irvine Welsh’s novel, Filth, written by Gary Marshall and published in Spike Magazine, back in March 1999.
There’s a tradition in reviewing where you make sure you don’t give away the ending of a novel for fear it will prevent people from reading it. Hopefully, then, the news that Robertson committed the brutal murder he’s supposed to be investigating throughout the book and then kills himself at the end should prevent people from wasting their hard-earned cash on this pathetic attempt at a thriller. Maybe then Welsh will stop recycling past novels and will attempt to write something that’s actually worth reading. To describe Welsh as the greatest writer in Scotland is a huge insult to talented writers such as Jeff Torrington, William McIlvanney, James Kelman, Iain Banks and Janice Galloway who produce novels which combine well-drawn characters with empathy and social conscience.
Although the title works on several levels – Filth as slang for policemen, or as a description of the world in which Bruce Robertson lives – the publisher was too restrained. A more fitting title for this shambolic, scatalogical mess of a book would have been Shite.
Spike is a U.K.-based lit and pop culture review publication, and you can read the anthology they put together from their first 15 years. You don’t have to pay anything for it, either, and you don’t have to steal it. They are giving it away to download and pass around. Look here.
ㅁ I did download a book the other day, and I’m not going to say if it was legal or not. It was the recent bio of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson, which you can probably get on iTunes but I found it someplace else. I remarked to an acquaintance via email that I plan to put it on my Galaxy Tab and read it a bit over the weekend.
I honestly didn’t think of the wheels-within-wheels of tumbling that is involved with this. (Apple’s lawsuit with Samsung over the Galaxy, reading Steve’s bio on it, ignoring iTunes to cop it for free – I confess, none of this ironicality occurred to me until quite a while later.)
ㅁ By way of a friend at FB, here’s a bit from the Wall Street Journal’s pages focusing on Korea. Seems there’s a middle-aged woman who goes around whacking politicians upside the head, only the ones on the left, it seems. Everybody’s being real tolerant about her – imagine if some loon tried it on an American pol – and the article says it might be because politicians knock each other around a lot here, also. You should see some of the brawling that takes place in the National Assembly …
On Tuesday, she walked into an event in a subway station where Seoul’s new mayor, Park Won-soon, was speaking, got right up behind him, then hit him on the head and called him a “communist.”
“Step down,” she yelled before being dragged away by some other city workers. He ducked and continued with his presentation.
I was thinking the left here needs their own politician smacker, but instead of hitting ‘em, give ‘em a great big kiss. “I love you, 2mb!!” But, like, you know, really ironical, see? Sarcastic smooching … and why not? I don’t think it could be classified as assault, though what this Ms Park is up to certainly does amount to that.
As an aside, I’ve tried this as classroom disciple tool over here and it seems to work, especially with elementary and middle-school kids. I just let them know that if they don’t start doing their homework I’m going to keep on saying ‘I love you’ right out loud in front of everyone.
“Jimmy, if you don’t stop kicking little Billy – I’m going to KISS you.”
Works like a charm, and they straighten right up. Fortunately, I’ve never had to actually do it …
