White boys are so pretty! Hair like Chinese silk…
So for the four months I was in Denver, I rented a room from a 60-ish Vietnam vet who practiced Religious Science and sold organic steak for a living. He was a great person to get to know during my short stay in the US and we had quite a few late night chats in which my new friend dispensed advice without ever really seeming to.
One of the things he said was that a great way to see a new city is to go on dates. When he first moved to Denver as a young man, he invested in a very creative personal ad (this is pre-match.com) and got to know the city by going on a series of low pressure dates with, as he says, “the women of Denver”.
This sounded like a great idea, so shortly after moving to South Korea, I set up a few new online dating profiles on sites that seemed focused on, y’know, actually meeting people to do stuff. I steered clear–I thought–of the hook up sites and the “let’s text and or message each other ad nauseum until we don’t want to meet anyway because you are A BORING PERSON” sites.
I set up the profiles, let them marinate, and came back to check. What interesting, new and/or devastatingly handsome guys awaited me, ready to show me the sights and sounds of Seoul?
Dear GOD. Say it with me, boys and girls…creep city!
Now, ALL online dating has a slight creep factor–how could it not? But honestly…I’ve had an online dating profile in three different countries and nowhere has been as creepy as South Korea.
There are way too many race fetishists and neo-colonial greaseballs floating around this here 인터넷, y’all. Every single profile and ad I’ve seen so far has had an oddly specific racial desire included and a lot of them start with asinine things like “Hi, I’m _____. I can be your white (insert horrible noun here)!” or “If you ever want to try a chubby black girl, I’m here for you.”
Say it with me again, boys and girls…creep city! EEEEEK!
Koreans aren’t exempt from this, by the way. Despite what the apparent legions of Korean culture fans who seem to be constantly asking if it’s possible for Koreans to be attracted to non-Koreans on every single Korean culture website I go to(especially this one) would have you believe—Koreans love them some everybody. Or at least return the fetish favor. (I got a message from a Korean guy asking if I’d ever worn a weave and if not, would I wear one for him. Yeah. It’s like that.)
Jesus be a matchmaker. I can understand having racial preferences(I certainly have a few) as long as you’re not an exclusionary self-hating asshole about it. (As in; “I am a black woman and I prefer black men.” is okay. “I am a black woman, and I only date white/Chinese/Puerto Rican men because black men ain’t about my life!!” is stupid and you just look like a heffa. Cut it out. And really, do you think there are no black Puerto Ricans? Like what you like, but don’t be a douche about it.) I can’t understand creating a dating profile just for the purpose of dating XYZ group of people. I REALLY can’t understand folks who answer that kind of ad. Do you think weave boy got a response from me? NO. That message got deleted, which is the same direction I think that my online dating profiles are going to go.
I haven’t been on any dates here facilitated by the internet yet…but I have been on a few with folks I met in this strange thing called real life. (6 weeks in Korea vs 6 YEARS in England has been extraordinarily good for my mojo. I’m just saying…) They haven’t all been black. And I find that, even though you don’t get the extensive backstory of an online profile, I’m seeing just as much of the city that way as well…without having to side-eye anyone because I’m wondering if they found my profile by checking the “black” box when searching. And it’s nice not to know too much about a date–after all, it gives you something to talk about.
Love to hear your comments on the racial preference thing and online dating sites if you have a moment…please. Remind me that people are still actually reading this blog…pwease…
Today’s title vid is below…and because I know you might be wondering, my racial preference is…
…none of your business unless you are dating me.
Peace, beautiful people!
Ask you what your interests are, who you be with? Things to make you smile, what numbers to dial…
Dear men of the world;
Kindly cut the following three things all the way out;
1)Honking at me while you drive by in your car.
What, exactly, is supposed to be my response to that? Am I supposed to step out of my heels and sprint behind your hooptie in gratitude?
2)Offering to put a smile on my face with any object other than a joke.
This happened today. My response, to paraphrase, was to ask if the gentleman in question actually owned one of the objects in question, and if so, did he actual know how to use it in company or only solo?
3)Not bathing.
Seriously, soap is cheap, water is free. And if you don’t use them, you are nasty.
None of the above will get you my phone number. Seriously, what are you even thinking?
I’m not much of a feminist but y’all are for damn sure trying to turn me into one.
Sociopolitically,
Mel
P.S.; for today’s song clip, we have the one and only Notorious B.I.G. Say what you will about the way he referred to women in his songs, but at least he knew he had to have actual conversations with us in order to get anywhere.
What I’ve got you got to give it to your momma, what I’ve got you’ve got to give it to your poppa…
Another quickie for today because, well, it’s just been that kind of life lately.
It occurs to me that most art is simply the act of finding something so beautiful/powerful/transcendent/important within yourself you have no choice but to share it with the rest of the world, and in doing so, transform a bit of it. Like I said in a song once, it’s loving what you have so much you have to give it all away.
And some art is simply the act of filling your own world so thoroughly with the products of your own imagination that it starts to leak out onto unsuspecting passers-by.
It really gets interesting when the two collide.
Peace, beautiful people.
P.S. NONE of what I wrote up there explains why on earth I thought this was the epitome of genius for five minutes when I was 16.
Would you marry me, marry me? 그대와 함께 하고 싶죠…
Yeah, I’m still listening to Korean music. Love this song though…but the dancing in the video?. Um. Well.
Does Sung Hoon have eyes? Or are those glasses covering up bottomless wells of luv? Anybody know?
Okay, so moving on…
…only when I stop to think about it…
So I’ve come to a strange point in my expatriation journey, and that is the realization that England is not my last country after all. When I moved here in 2006, it was with the the tacit internal understanding that I was not going to move again. Old Blighty was going to be my home, I would work towards settling here, and here I would stay. I’m a nester, not a nomad–or so I’d like to think.
6 years on, I’m starting to think about it very differently. It’s a bittersweet process. I’ve realized that my destiny is not irrevocably linked to England no matter how much I might love the place at times. I’ve realized that there are new and exciting places out there, and that I have the capability and the opportunity to go there and live life just as fully as I have in the US and the UK.
But underneath all of that? I’m thinking about the things I’ll be glad to leave behind.
Look, I’m not trying to be the harbinger of doom…there are just things about England that I really dislike. There’s a few I love as well. Without further ado, here are some of those things.
Sometimes love comes around and it knocks you down…
So let’s get the song of the day out of the way first. Not all that related to today’s posting(or is it?), but the chorus lyric has always gotten to me a little bit, and it’s the song that’s playing right now.
So, to briefly recap the last post…my crisis of faith came to a slimy little head a few years ago. I was working–volunteering, really–for a Christian charity, and the “team” that I was working for began to treat me quite shittily, only with a shiny religious veneer, so it all seemed OK. Some bad things happened that mattered enormously to me, but very little to anyone else. I blamed myself, mostly, and after leaving and having even worse things happen, I apparently developed a hateful bitter little core which showed up this week when I said, without thinking, that I hated someone.
I’ve never said that I’ve hated someone. Ideologies, things and The Man all catch it in the neck from me, but generally speaking, I don’t even dislike people, let alone hate.
This worries me, as does the fact that God doesn’t really seem to care very much about all of this and has pretty much left me to my own devices. And all of this has led friends, one in particular, to ask me just how and why it is that I am still a Christian after all of this?
Here’s why, after the jump…
I-HATE-YOU, so much right now, AAAAAAH! I hate you so much right now!
Yeah, so it’s official. I am a terrible person(personne/사람). A terrible person who is hanging on to my attempts to become trilingual because that may be all that redeems me. Excuse the vocabulary practice, then, please..
So what happened was this. I was speaking to someone on the subject of another person, who happened to be in the first person’s house(maison/집). First Person said, “Oh, Other Person is here…didn’t you two have an um, thing?”
I didn’t even think about my response. It just fell out of my mouth. “Yep, I hate her.”
What? What! WHAT!? “I hate her”? I hate her? WTF! I’m me. I don’t hate anybody, except for maybe The Man, and I don’t really even hate him…I just want him to go down because I stuck it to him.
(Cheer if you get my un-necessary and anachronistic 70's blaxploitation reference. Even if you don't, let out a little holler...you'll feel better, I promise.)
Needless to say, me saying that I hated anything, let alone another human being, really disturbed me. I don’t do hate. I don’t even do nasty. I am the original annoying lily-throwingpacifist. I have literally let someone hit me with small noxious projectiles rather than fight back because I believe just that much in passive resistance(or at least, I used to). So how is it, that all of a sudden, I just casually hate folks? And mean it, too?
Well, if you ask some folks, it’s Jesus’ fault. And that brings me, however indirectly, to the topic of today’s post.
The story so far, after the jump…
Science fiction double feature, Dr. X will build a creature…
So this blog is really nothing more than thinly veiled record of hippie nerd consumption. Socially conscious or not, I’m a big fat capitalist at heart…
Number one; If you haven’t been keeping up with the effects of cyclone Nargis in Myanmar you should be. They can’t refuse assistance forever. Neither can they seize and misappropriate it all. To that effect, I’m pointing out mercycorps.org, a charity that provides aid/relief/improvement. I’m pointing them out for a couple of reasons but primarily because they work with root causes of problems when they can, and in instances such as Nargis, they often help by working with/through existing local aid organizations whenever possible instead of creating new ones, basically letting the developing world develop with the assistance of, instead of reliance on, “developed world” workers. Seems to me as though this ups their chances of getting into really unreliable places. So check it out.
If all the women were independent…throw your hands up at me…
Apparently I’ve finally reached the age.
I don’t know whether to laugh or to go hide under a quilt for a few days.
Oh. My. God.
...nothing but water... 