Penultimate

Just that something so good just can't function no more

How often does a night start with eating live seafood, then end with playing impromptu Jenga drinking games? I guess the answer to that question depends pretty highly on whether or not you're in Korea. I've only got a week left in this country though, so soon the answer to that question will be a disappointing 'not often enough'.

I managed to check another fishy item off my 'I'll probably only get the chance to do this while I'm here' list this weekend. Ben and Bora took me out for dinner, and along with a plate of fine fresh sushifishies came a creepy crawly surprise plate. It turns out that the secret purpose of the meal was to eat live octopus.

I'll say that again so it sinks-in a little better: We ate live fucking octopus.

I did so without hesitation. It's actually really difficult to eat. Literally, the tentacles cling desprately to the plate, and it takes quite a tug to pull them off with the chopsticks. Plus they're all squirming madly. Some of the legs actually managed to crawl off the plate and tried to escape across the table.

See, it's actually chopped-up, and you just eat the tentacles, but they continue to move for a good half an hour. Taste-wise, it's pretty much like raw octopus (which I've eaten more times than I've wanted to), just a little more tender and, you know, moving.

Just in case all this graphic talk about eating live octopi isn't disgusting enough, I've got a looping animation of them squirming wildly on the plate. It's mesmerizing, but so quease-inducing that I'll only put the link here.

Click it if you've got a strong stomach. Or if you've got a weak one and you're just in the mood to puke.

So, what can you do after eating live food but get drunk? Well, I guess for most it'd probably be more important to get drunk prior to and during it. For us, darts (magnetic) and booze (non-magnetic, I hope) were the perfect chasers.

The bar actually had this nifty device, which was basically a big tube with a freezer at the top. It created snow and sprinkled it gently down the tube. It actually snowed inside, right onto the beer in the middle of the table.

Somehow, a beer-branded mini Jenga set came with some of our drinks, so that turned into a messily competitive drinking game. Not since Tetris has stacking blocks been so exciting and tense. That and more drinking games followed when the bar closed and we headed to Ben's place.

Of course, being that it was my second-last on the peninsula, I had to get some things done this weekend. I got some flight booking and slow-boat-to-China booking done. Some paperwork so the Republic Peoples don't go all Mao on me at the border.

After the boring important shit was all done, I walked around and looked at flea markets, fountains and other useless junk downtown. Picked up some camera stuff at one stand, while the stands to either side were selling replica machine guns and various pieces of pigs.

But right next to the randomness and shamelessly misspelled counterfeit goods (GaoLanger is supposed to be Go Rangers, which still isn't the right name, of course) there's this nice fountain that I never seem to get sick of photographing. The lucky timing of getting random Korean strangers to unwittingly recreate the cover for Abbey Road is well worth being redundant, though.

I found something in Dongdaemun other than people looking for bargains and shelter from the sweltering sun, though. I noticed a long string of 'medical' shops. Now, these aren't really drug stores, as such; they sell, ahem, medical supplies. The kinds of things that pass as having medical purpose in this country range from hilarious to confusing and probably somewhere near dangerous and every other ineffective level in between.


First, there's these infra-red lamps ("Human Doctor Q" - the Q is for quack). Now, these things are taken so seriously that I can't visit an ENT (an actual legitimate doctor) here without him making me bake my ears for 2 minutes each under a fucking hand-held McDonald's burger heat lamp.

Then there are the foot massage slippers, which are so accurately precise and effective that they've mapped out exactly what part of your foot stimulates what part of your body. If only Western doctors were aware that most bowel diseases can be cured with a footrub...

The Compressible Limb Therapy System looks kinda fun, if not potentially crippling to the poor soul who thinks crushing their legs with awkward balloons is medically sound. The woman on the box is smiling a kind of smile that whispers 'Hurry up and take the picture so I can take these painful fucking things off of my legs.'

To be fair, people go for the magnetic bullshit all over the world, so the "Magnetic Health Hoop" is actually the least hilarious bit of sham medicine here. The wild thing about these fridge magnet laden overpriced hoola hoops is that they're probably more popular than Tylenol here. Why is everyone convinced that magnetic fields from anything useful (cellphone, TV, microwave, alien death ray, etc.) are cesspools of cancer, while the ones from bullshit health products can evidently cure anything but mass stupidity?

To switch gears (considerably) I'll admit that thoughts and emotions and all those other human things are in no shortage on my last few days of Koreana. While I'm sure my finale next week will be full of introspective weepy-ness, I'm trying to get my good-natured digs in at Korean culture while the soil's still soft.

So, that in mind, I've got something to mock that is so steeped in Korean culture that it comes with a 10-second language lesson. See, Korean singing rooms (Kareoke) are known as Noraebang. However, there's something called a Noraeba (no 'ng'). This is also a singing room, but a sketchy one in which women are apparently paid to come 'escort' men to the rooms and 'encourage them' while they sing.

Now this is the symbol for 'bang' (pronounced like 'bong'). That little circle on the bottom is what makes the 'ng' part.

This character lacks, the circle, and therefore lacks the 'ng', so this just says 'ba'.

Looking at this sign, it's obvious that this was once, a Noraebang. However, it seems like the owners weren't satisfied, so they literally just tore the circle off their sign and turned it into a sketchy-ass Noraeba. It's no accident either, every sign outside the door had the same hasty hole from removing both the circle and their scruples. Newer spinning signs were designed without the 'ng' and feature pictures of girls that people are supposed to believe work there, I guess.

The funny thing here isn't that this is a sketchy singing room (judging by the signs, there's no shortage of those), it's that they changed it so lazily and transparently. And really, if you were inclined to visit such an establishment, would you really trust the quality of service provided by a red-light business that can't be bothered to buy a new sign?

And that's the end of my song this week. Next week is my last track. Then a bit of unofficial live records from the road. Maybe even a reunion album I finish my world tour.