Progress Report 17.1

Annyongh hasseyo, sucker.

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PLEASE NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond my control, this report will be interspersed with a quiz on The A-Team. A prize will be awarded to whoever gets the most questions right, though I am aware that only Christopher 'Cursed-with-Ginger' Laity is the only person with a weak enough work ethic to respond.

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How are things with you? Excellent. Me? Pfft. Older. My birthday was a thoroughly pleasant affair, thank you, but was marred by the fact that now that I'm 30, almost every aspect of my life has become caked in a rime of tragedy. Where my failings were previously rock-n-roll, now that my age starts with a three, they're just pathetic. It's not pleasant and I don't like it. I realise that my new age brings gravitas and authority, but when I want those things, I'll be perfectly capable of demanding them. I now have to forgive failings in others on account of them being younger than me, which is not a pleasant exercise. And I'm now defintely not too young to settle down. And people younger than me now have to respect my opinion, cos I'm in a whole different decade to them. I don't want it to be that way! I much prefer just being an opinionated, argumentative, immature arsehole.

However, last Wednesday, I managed to stop worrying about my changing circumstances and the continuing expansion of my forehead to go out and celebrate. Myself and Michelle (aka the Jew) started the evening by quietly reflecting upon the irreversible falling away of time, before joining the various jeering gloaters and doomsayers who'd come to see my youth step up to the gallows. After an appropriate amount of alcohol and birthday cake had been consumed, the hardcore decamped to the norae bang to shout along to midi rearrangements of Led Zeppelin classics, then went and drank outside a convenience store until it started hurting. Then my youthfulness was taken down, its head put on a spike for the crows to pick clean, and its decapitated body covered in tar and set alight as a warning to age-inappropriate behaviour. Which is all a wanky way of saying that I had a really good birthday and I would like to sincerely thank everyone who wished me well.

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What do the initials 'B.A.' in B.A. Baracas' name stand for?
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I know I had said that I would devote this report to citing the Top Three Things That Koreans Do That Are Cool, but I'm afraid that will have to be postponed til next time. This is because I'm too tired and hungover to summon sufficient goodwill to be nice, and would much rather be nasty. In light of this, I should rather like to talk about losers.

Losers. There's lots of them here. Of course, some of them are Korean, but the losers I'm more concerned with in this instance are foreigners.

Let me expand: Pretend you're a loser. You're not well respected in your home country, your social life is lacking, you're bereft of certain graces, and you're probably a bit of an ugly sucker too. People tend not to seek out your company. Your chances of depositing your seed into anything other than a sock are slight. What ARE you to do?
Well, the solution in a good deal of cases is to come to South Korea and teach English.

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What was the crime of which the A-Team were wrongly convicted?
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Now, I want to make it clear that in no way do I want to suggest that all teachers here are losers. Some of them are very fine people indeed (myself included), but even the most warm-hearted of assessors would have to concede that there is a heady percentage of teachers here who are not exactly, ah, 'socially dynamic'. And in no way do I want to suggest that there's anything fundamentally wrong with being a loser. Some very great figures from history have been losers. Like Sir Clive Sinclair. And, er, that King that got an arrow in his eye - Henry the whatever. I'm merely making the vaguely plangent observation that losers seem to be drawn here like Germans are drawn to big sausages and oompah music. It's just a quality of loserdom.

And it's perfectly understandable. Why? Well, Koreans don't seem to have any concept of loserdom. They're innured to it, immune to its insipid effects, protected from its cloying dampness. They fail to recognise it as a social handicap. Losers here are embraced as equals, and treated with respect whether they deserve it or not (which, of course, they don't). I think we should all take a moment to salute this inclusive and charitable approach to dealing with condition. After all, why shouldn't a person be treated with generosity and warmth even if they are a loudmouthed, know-it-all prick? Or if they're a humourless, self-regarding arsehole? Or even if they're Canadian? Certainly no reason I can think of.

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Which character's real name is Templeton Peck?
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Particularly free from the bigotry that makes losers' life a justified misery in the West are Korean women. Whereas back home, these losers might have been shunned by the opposite sex on account of their complete lack of presence and irredeemable repugnance, here they can land themselves a prize catch without so much as a penny changing hands. It beggars belief. I can walk around Itaewon or Hongdae and be left repeatedly speechless by the utter asymetry of the mixed couples walking the streets there. There'll be some perfectly presentable Korean lady on the one hand, and then, attached in some distasteful manner, will be some whitey who's clearly, obviously a complete loser. I just want to go put myself between the pair, tell her of her error and send him home alone. 'Sorry, pal - the jig's up. You've had your fun, but you didn't think you could get a away with it for ever, did you?'

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What are the ranks of Hannibal, BA, Face and Murdoch?
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But it's not just the white male who can get away with murder here. Some girls here get absolutely crazy with the power that eminates from their position as vagina owners. Let me clarify: There are only a limited number of Western girls here, but a lot of Western males. Being Western males, they are constantly on the sniff. The increase in the attention these girls receive leads a small percentage of them to believe that they are thus elevated to a much higher social position to the one that they occupied back in their own country, and therefore behave as such. Also compounding matters is the fact that they must compete with a nation of pliable, servile females whose average in the looks department is significatly higher than their own. The result is that rather than augmenting their attractiveness by improving their attitude, these girls go in the opposite direction. The consequences are not pleasant for anyone, especially when they have to be brought back down to earth.

This duty unfortunately fell to me on Sunday night. It wasn't nice and I didn't enjoy doing it but it had to be done nonetheless. A girl I'd just met was boasting to the assembled company that she had 'great breasts'. I felt obliged to point out to her that rather than having 'great breasts' as she claimed, it was much more likely the case that she was, in fact, just fat.

No-one likes facing painful truths and this revelation was not received with gratitude, but I hope that by presenting her with this particular truth, she is able to abandon her state of denial and live in a more positive mental state.

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Which of the four main characters is not, in fact, an actual member of The A Team and why?
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I tell you all this not in order to condemn these various losers, for they are all perfectly aware of their failings and it doesn't really need me to pile more misery upon them by sneering at their lack of social skill, but rather to increase your awareness of what I must tolerate here, and to disassociate myself from their ranks. I know I scarce need to do this, but with each new pathetic, stinking, whiney loser I see here, I feel a growing sense of guilt-by-association. Please accommodate me when I assure you that this is most defintely not the case.

Anyway, that just about does her for now. I don't think I've got anything else to tell you, except that not happy with merely using my toilet roll at a prodigious rate, the Jewess contrived to soak a whole roll whilst in the shower. Consequently, it is not possible to say with any amount of certainty whether I shall have enough toilet roll to last me the rest of the year. I shall keep you posted.

Right, take care of yourself. There will be a prize for the A Team quiz, so get cracking. Answers next week, if I remember.

Anyonghi kasseyo for now, fool.

S