Flupdate

Two weeks in and I'm still trying to get used to this work dynamic. This last weekend was mainly uneventful as I spent Saturday at 미녀's work, the market, and seeing Inglorious Basterds in the theatre. We went to a Norebang afterward and got home pretty late. We woke up late on Sunday and didn't leave the house until around 5PM. It was a spectacularly grey Sunday, and we just ate 삼계탕, looked for a portable gas range, had coffee and went home. 미녀 was feeling tired.

This morning I went to the practice room to try to rerecord Untitled (deprivation). It's not the easiest song in the world to perform due to the fact that I have to work the synth with my foot. Many false starts were had. I got something recorded, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not terribly satisfied with it. For lunch I had a shitty burger and then took the bus home where 미녀 notified me that she has a fever. (EDIT: she no longer has a fever and everything is back to normal) I notified my coworkers and am wearing a mask. There is a chance that I could get whatever she's sick with. If I do, it will mean that I can't come into work, but there is no one to cover my classes.

Other than that, 미녀 suggested that instead of having a mask that I put on for my concert, I should wear a nice suit (though, there is an alterior motive because she hates my waldo shirt) with combed hair. It is not a bad idea considering that you don't normally expect noize from a suit. All I have to do is get my victorian coat fitted to me (because it was always a bit big) and I'll be good to go. There is a chance for a show sometime at the beginning of December in Daejeon, so I'm pretty excited for it.

Finally

After so long with dealing with not so perfect websites, I have finally been able to conglomerate all of my Not Jeremy Jones work onto one site. I put the first album up in its original quality (as opposed to ANYTHING else I've given out (since I had to get the original zhi zhi from Jerry a few days ago). I hope you enjoy it. The first and last tracks are noise, the second track is droning ambient that's purely wallpaper music...good to study to:

Nobody's updating

So, in my contract, it says that I have to be at work for a total of 7 hours. Whatever time I am not teaching is to be considered office hours. I've played this game before. I did the same thing when I was the manager of the radio station (if you change the children to CDs and instead of teaching them, I'm spinning them). It would bother some people to have 2 or three hours of time to waste at work when they could be doing something else, but they don't realize that there are plenty of things to do to productively waste your time at work. Updating blogs is a very good example of that. This is the beginning of my 5th day here and I might be a bit presumptuous, but I dare say that I am enjoying this work a lot more than my previous period of employment. The only downside is the fact that I finish at 9:40. That's one of the ONLY downsides There are a couple of nitpicky ones not worthy of my time to waste (and this is my wastin' time time).

Since I get off at 9:40, I get to the practice room later than I wish to, so I figured that from now on, I can head over to the practice room on Thursday mornings or something like that so I don't have to take a cab home every time I want to practice. Also, I won't be dead tired when I get in and I can grab some 도시락 on my way to work. WIN! Now, to get on with the point.

I have finished reading The Gengleman's Privy and am looking at my blogroll (you can see it to the right if you are reading this from my blog), noticing that the last time someone updated was GEORGE FUCKING ORWELL. I mean, come on, people. I added that because it might've been interesting, but it started a while ago. While I am one for readig the backlogged blogs, it can be a bit trite after a while. What's going on, people? Where is your spirit for adventure (and then subsequently, your spirit for sitting down and writing a thoughtful post about said adventure)? Where is your desire to share every little thing you do with the world (oh, wait, that's twitter). What happen to the need for elaboration on the initial thought seeds? I am starving for posts, here people. I'm looking at you, DPP, TBGAFB, AHOT, MC, TGP, and ZMCC to give me what's new and then talk for a long time about it.

Oh, brave new world with such blogs in it!

The working

This is my second shift at work. I have, once again, yet to start. About 55 minutes await my arrival of my first class and in that span of time I plan to write this short entry, eat some of the 김치볶음밥 that I had hastily prepared this afternoon just before tipping the wastebasket and subsequently cleaned up after that. I have spent the past hour going over a few months' archives of Monseur Canard's delightful criticisms and witticisms about daily life and television in his electronic monologues.

My work experience was nothing special. The classes were small, and there were only four of them (any other day, I have five). The childeren were mostly well behaved. The older classes don't like to speak much, but that's very characteristic of middle schoolers it seems. All of the children have english nicknames that they use while in class (as well as the teachers). It seems less crazy than my previous place of work. I might enjoy it. Today is Tuesday, which apparently was not a very good day for Josh. I will see how this endeavor fares.

New Address

For those of you who still use my old address, it will no longer go to me, rather it will be in the hands of some Korean person who will be slightly annoyed that they are getting a foreigner's mail. My new address will be available upon email request only (this includes facebook).

I got back from Japan two days ago and it was a pretty sweet trip which I will blog about the highlights a little later. My partner in crap is about to leave the country for his native frozen wasteland of Canadia (That's right. CanadIa. Deal with it). I have seized control of the fort and managed to settle in about 75% of the way. I still need to sweep a little bit more, unpack about two more boxes and toss some things that just don't belong, but other than that, it's home. I will post pictures when I am finished.

I am currently sitting at my work computer, waiting to start my very first class in 13 minutes. I was given a crash course in what I'm supposed to do but it doesn't seem terribly terrible. Hopefully I can do these next four hours without screwing up too much.

That's it for now. I apologize for my ever present absence in the blogosphere. I have internet (wireless!) at my house now, so it will be a lot easier from now on.

Summer is Over ㅠ_ㅠ

I'm not terribly happy that summer is over, but so far, life isn't going too bad. I leave my current job in three days and then subsequently jet off to Japan for a day after that. Again, I shall reinstate the tired old introduction to my blog as I have not posted in over two weeks. I do always seem to have an excuse albiet not a very good one. I've been packing and moving all of my stuff over to Bobbo's (this is a nickname for him based off of him naming one of his students "Bob" and then always calling him 'Bobbo' and instantly remembering that it means 'stupid' in Korean. All in good fun.) house by way of bus. I've been moving a few boxes at a time because in the long run, it's still cheaper than a moving truck, and I don't have enough stuff to justify a truck (save for the piano that I will move with quickservice). I only have a few items left to take over there, and I plan to take those on moving day. I've been working on this moving thing for about two or three weeks. I spent 추석 cleaning my apartment and throwing shit out. I've never once cleaned under my bed or behind my piano. YEEAASCH!

In any case, I got everything set for Japan so that I don't lose my ID on the way. Bobbo will take care of JoMo for the week since Leaf has ear mites and I will come back and be roommates with him for two nights and then I will take over as lord of that manor. Soon after I get settled, I hope to throw a nice housewarming party (hopefully before winter sets in).

I've done a bit of recording. I've gotten Dickin' Around With the Michaels almost finished and have started on others. I still need to figure out how to get the actual recordings louder. Compared to other files, my recordings are just not that loud. In any case, I was able to find out about a great site called Bandcamp where I was able to put up my simple site and host music. I only have one song up there now, and I plan to keep it kind of that way (until I can get the master versions of the tracks from 3rd Wave Ska... off of my old computer) until I finish my new album.

Speaking of music and stuff like that, I've been thinking that it would be great if I was able to walk around on stage able to play my keyboard and guitar without being stuck at a keyboard stand and a table. The way to do it would be a keyboard stand that wouldn't get in the way of the guitar, so it would be positioned waist level or below the waist. Originially I thought of some sort of stripped down bicycle frame that I hacked the top bar off of and strapped between my legs with some sort of strong belt... but then I realized how cumbersome and heavy it would be and gave up for a couple of days until I had the revelation that it could just come from the belt and swing out from the side.
Again, I wasn't thinking in the right direction and kept thinking about a curved bar that would be attached to some sort of belt that would come out and hold the keyboard at just the right position. Then I thought of my old desk. The desk that I had when I was a child had a blue lamp attached to it. This style of lamp is known as a Luxo Lamp, and is just the type of arm that I need for this type of project. It moves on three axises (but I could restrict it to two), it's lightweight, and the arm is not affixed to any specific mount, so I could potentially design or find a mount that would have a belt clip. This would allow me to play it and move it around and whatnot to accompany whatever I'm doing. I could even have someone else play it while I play guitar.
This all sounds good in theory, but there are still a few problems with it.

1. First, the weight of the arm and synth would pull down on the belt causing the arm to not be on a level plane with myself. I'd imagine that the fix to that could be as simple as an adjustable shoulder strap attached to the clip.
2. Second, the weight of the keyboard would be pushing down from the front and put terrible strain on the clip. This I don't quite know how to resolve, because if you attatch a strap to balance the near part of the arm, you defeat the purpose of having it so that you can play guitar at the same time.
3. Third, my microKORG weighs 2.2Kg. Normal Luxo microphone booms can take about 1 Kg apparently (I saw a few on ebay, but I haven't researched it heavily). getting into stuff that can take heavier stuff will be heavy in itself (which adds to the balancing issues) and cost a lot more.
   

Overall, I think this is a doable project, I just have to find some junk parts and stuff like that, but it would be really awesome if I could have this thing to use. Right now, I've been on hiatus to record my shit that I've written and I'm realizing that my cables and shit like that are going to shit.

There's more stuff to tell, but I'll tell it later.

Fruits and Vegetables?

I finished Son of Gerald for all those of you who were wondering out there. I actually finished it about a day after the last post. As promised, 미녀, Spooky and I went to 경주 to go hiking up to a temple. At the temple, I saw a Buddhist monk wearing New York Yankees socks. The day after, Spooky and I jammed on our guitars and keys in the practice room. We got some pretty good stuff started, and hopefully will eventually finish them. We started out with a spacey type of jam on keys (at some point, I think it sounded like a pissed off duck in the water), but then started working on more down to earth stuff on guitars in the lobby. So far it's working out very well. On Wednesday, I started to record the Aporkalypse and realized that I have a lot of writing to do for that, so I may just let that rest and record other things such as Dickin' around with The Michaels and Untitled.

On the weekend, I finished GEB and for a day did not have anything to read until my mom's package came with a few books in it. Right now I'm reading books called "A Talent for War" and "Pillars of the Earth". I also read a book called "Nymphos of Rocky Flats" in one night. If this were a movie, it would sit on the cusp between PG-13 and R. What can you expect from a modern day Vampire Mystery novel? A Talent for War is a space mystery novel that gets so bundled into itself that most of the time you don't know who you are reading about or why they are doing what they do. Pillars of the Earth is a novel about building a cathedral in the 1100's written by a guy who normally does thriller novels. It shows very much in his writing. So far, the protagonists are mostly good with a hint of naivete and the antagonists are bumbling oafs and completely witless. Monday night, I got a couple of my books from Choo. I got American Psycho and The Structure of Evolutionary Biology. When I finish one of the other two books, I'm going to get on TSEB and then American Psycho. I should have the other 4 books I ordered to keep me going throughout all of TSEB. If not, I guess I'll order more.

Last weekend, 미녀 and I decided to take a trip to Seoul after much deliberation so that we could see Round Robin. It was at a place called 500 that had a very interesting interior design. It was done up like a fraggle-rock-ish castle of mud and stuff like that. There were seven acts playing set up all around in a circle on two levels. The idea of a round robin is that all of these acts play in a circle nonstop. It was pretty good. Since we had been to many of the other concerts, we got in for free under the promise that we had to buy 15,000 won worth of booze. That wasn't too much of a problem. Around 12:30, 미녀 and her friend wanted to go to a 술집, so I stayed a bit and then went to meet them and then went to her friend's home and I passed out from exhaustion. The next morning, we had bean spout soup and rice and then went out to explore Hongdae so that 미녀 could buy some books. After that, we had tea and read some books at a place called General Doctor which is a nice little cafe run by a doctor. 미녀 has started to teach me a little Japanese for when we go in less than a month. I guess that's it. Sorry this post wasn't very entertaining to read. I'll try to do better next time.