Koreanish » Uncategorized

It’s Been A While

koreanish — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:04:26 +0000

…since I’ve updated. But sometimes, the events of the world when mixed with my life leave me speechless.

Various updates, about to appear.

The Double Rainbows of Found Lake

koreanish — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:39:47 +0000

Hello from Wisconsin, where I am spending the week with my boyfriend and his family. Tonight after dinner as the sunset started we saw this out over the lake, and it perfectly banded the sky. I hope this all finds you well, and that you are with the people you love. Happy Fourth of July.

Kitsune

koreanish — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:12:17 +0000

Found this staring up at me today from my desk. I think he’s about to start talking to me.

koreanish — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:07:45 +0000

Mary Gaitskill on lost cats, pet psychics, kids who are not your kids but also are your kids, and loss, over at Granta.com. Also in issue 107.
If you also want to write your Senator, your Congressional Rep and your local newspaper in support of single payer healthcare, click here.
If you want to be able to name the corporate sponsors of the astroturf protests at town halls the next time someone tells you it’s “just Americans” protesting, click here.
Get your copy of Asterios Polyp, the new graphic novel everyone is talking about. Yes, I really just said that. Because it is TRUE.
If you work at the CIA, you can write memos and not sign them, apparently, authorizing new kinds of humiliation and torture. How cool is that? Yes, not cool. I know.

The Book Video, Done Right

koreanish — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:23:08 +0000

This is a video of Luis Alberto Urrea, for his novel Into the North. I was taken with how it really moved me. Most book videos are too long as trailers go, clumsy and in many cases painful to watch. But I found this precisely what I might have wanted to know about the author in relationship to his book. Check it out.

Portrait of the United States Conducted in the Salaries of Insurance Executives

koreanish — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:55:51 +0000

I’ve just been staring at these for a few minutes now. From Bob Cesca’s blog, the salaries of the highest paid health insurance CEOs:

* Ron Williams – Aetna – Total Compensation: $24,300,112.
* H. Edward Hanway – CIGNA – Total Compensation: $12,236,740.
* Angela Braly – WellPoint – Total Compensation: $9,844,212.
* Dale Wolf – Coventry Health Care – Total Compensation: $9,047,469.
* Michael Neidorff – Centene – Total Compensation: $8,774,483.
* James Carlson – AMERIGROUP – Total Compensation: $5,292,546.
* Michael McCallister – Humana – Total Compensation: $4,764,309.
* Jay Gellert – Health Net – Total Compensation: $4,425,355.
* Richard Barasch – Universal American – Total Compensation: $3,503,702.
* Stephen Hemsley – UnitedHealth Group – Total Compensation: $3,241,042.

“The Heart of a Female Warrior”: Sam J. Miller Interviews Mary McConnell at Galactica Sitrep

koreanish — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:11:36 +0000

In popular culture, we always imagine that the robots will want to exterminate us. There’s a real fear that as soon as machines become intelligent, they become a threat to us. Why do you think people have that knee-jerk reaction? Because I think that we’re still trying to struggle beyond fear-based culture. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I do think we’re on the brink of it. A lot of what I learned on Battlestar, both through playing Laura Roslin and through being brought out into the culture a bit, through conventions and things like the World Science Festival, is that people are on the brink of giving up their fear. And if we can give up our fear, then the whole concept of the Other as alien starts to dissipate a bit. And if we’re willing to risk perhaps giving up our fear of death at the core of all of this, and we start to see life as an ongoing process, that our nominal death is just a little part of the ongoing process, then we won’t perhaps continue to project, culturally, artificial intelligence as coming to kill us, or something we have to eliminate at our first glance. I think that’s part of where we grew a little bit in Battlestar – the absorption of the alien as the self, rather than the Other or the enemy.

For the rest, click through to Galactica Sitrep.

The AAWW Debut Fiction Vespa Raffle

koreanish — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:33:11 +0000

The Double A, Double W (as I like to call it) is throwing down hard this Thursday with a debut fiction reading and a raffle benefiting the workshop. The top prize is a brand-new Vespa LX50, in the iconic Robin’s egg blue.

One thing I learned in Greece last summer is that I could rent a scooter, put a liter of gas in it and then drive it for two days all over an island. And ever since, I’ve wanted one. Instead, all I have is my 94 Geo Prizm, which gets 35 mpg, but still, is not as slick as this.

They’ll announce winners at the Debut Fiction Night this May 21, Thursday, and you don’t need to be present in order to win. You can support Asian American literature long distance, with just a click at aaww.org/vespa . There you can buy a ticket for just $10, and the winner will be announced on their twitter page at 9pm Thursday night.

For best results, buy books by debut authors Karan Mahajan (Family Planning: A Novel (P.S.)), Rakesh Satyal (Blue Boy), Sung J. Woo (Everything Asian: A Novel), and Paul Yoon (Once the Shore). You can arrange them around your apartment and read aloud from them while you hit refresh on their twitter page and it will be almost as good as being there (okay that’s a lie).

If you want to be there, which you do, because all of these 4 are writers you’ve been hearing about, go to 16 West 32nd Street, take the elevator to the 10th Floor, hand over your 5.00 suggested admission and buy your raffle ticket, maybe in advance just in case. And then mingle. Meet actual people.* If you’re not from NYC, that’s btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue, in New York’s Koreatown. Afterwards, celebrate at Mandoo Bar down the street, and order Kimchi mandoo, which is what I’d do, if I was there, and when I mean celebrate, celebrate being so close to really good mandoo. Whether or not you win the bike.

And now I’m going to buy my ticket.

*At the risk of being crass, the AAWW brings out a lot of really good-looking people to their readings. Did I just write that? Yes. It’s true, though. A lot. Okay, that’s done. Make your choices!

Ways to Celebrate the Year of the Ox

koreanish — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:40:17 +0000

When I was a kid, for Lunar New Year we went and bowed to our parents and received red envelopes full of money to go and celebrate. We also made this soup, which you’re supposed to make and eat for good luck.

For the record we used beef bullion as well.

Other things:

My friend Jagu is reversing the sign-off XO as OX for the year, and I’m thinking of trying it.
Tomorrow, I go to Rutgers to read in their Visiting Writers series, with Tina Chang.
If you live on the coast of any country, between now and 3009, you should probably move.

January 22, 2009

koreanish — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:25:34 +0000

Before I leave to go back to Paris for more research, I have a lunch with my friend Sabina Murray, in which she describes what I think is the perfect method for doing research for fiction: “I read everything I need and then when I start writing I reread the parts that are necessary in the afternoon or evening, and write in the mornings, rereading more research in the afternoons.” She also tells me she plans, on her research trip to Ireland next month, to take long walks.

I fly to Paris on a last-minute discount fare I found on Icelandair via priceline.com. As I sit in Reykjavik, I contemplate a disgusting bottle of flavored vodka I bought in a spirit of tasting the country I visit, something I have as a principle. The Icelandic version of Tab is also not very good. There I decide to try Sabina’s method, in particular the walking.

I bring The Goncourt Brothers journal with me to reread it, the NYRB edition, and read about 19th Century French authors complaining about lack of publicity or running afoul of government censors or sexual content, running out of money, being happy a bookstore is full of just their book—and I think about how it is all basically the same. “I walked into a bookstore filled only with my book,” they write.

And this quote, which is eery, and reminds me of our times, as the Presidency changes hands, a quote from Victor Hugo, from December 30th of 1870: “Yes, this Empire did nothing to provide a defence against foriegners; everything it did was designed to provide a defence against the population.“