sundays are good days to have a boyfriend -
actually, i mean as an adult, when you’re not funtime competing with last minute philosophy papers.
today m-k and i both slept in late but then ate lunch together at this kickin korean restaurant where they give you so many small dishes that they have special table tops that they can wheel from the kitchen and slide onto ridges on your table! it’s amazzzinnnnggggg. ALL VEGETARIAN TOO. and only $10!!!
and then the weather was perfect and we walked up the lil mountain. a lot of people were exercising at the top on the rusty outdoor weight machines and they were all grinning so big while pumping iron in the great outdoors.
on the way down, i wanted to explore the library and GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT !?!?!?!?!-
there’s an entire english floor!!! i almost lost it completely right there in the library jumping up and down and happy-dancing! NO MORE TRIPS TO SEOUL FOR LAME-O AND OVERPRICED BESTSELLERS!!! and this library has all new perfect nice-smelling virginal copies since it’s a new library – amazing art books, sociology, science, textbooks, new novels, classic novels, learnin korean blah blah blah all the latest and hippest choices i’ve been seeing in cool magazines but lusting over with no real chance of gaining access.
i checked out a korean book translated into english and m-k was like “…oh, that’s my friend! actually. not my friend! i hate him! all writers hate him!” haha…writer feud stories are my favorites! apparently the guy’s really arrogant and pretentious and his writing’s not amazing but wins all these prizes because he has a lot of university connections. i thought maybe m-k was just a tad bitter because his work isn’t judged fairly since he didn’t go to college (really, that happens here! even hundreds of years later, people talk about which college writers went to!) BUT i already read the flimsy little novel today and it was pretty bad. i was prepared to say it was terribleawfulhorrible for m-k’s sake even if it was good, but it WAS bad! it’s plot is about a dude who helps people kill themselves. wow, mind-freak(!!!!) it just seemed like a crap short story someone would write in college in their trying to shock their writing groups phase. i guessss it’s an interesting premise, but there was no actual reason for this suicide assistance and it just had that trying-too-hard-to-be-edgy vibe going on that is so tedious and reminds me of pretentious boys in college who would say things like, “it’s definitely harder being a black man than a white woman” or “this style is reminiscent of 1977 bolivian art cinema.” the book included some gems like,”people who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity,” which i thought was kind of intentionally funny, but when i told m-k about that line he said “oh, he said that about me, too! my friend told me he was rambling about how he hates my style. he writes a 100 page book and then says anything longer is overkill.”
this writer gossip is just so nasty and juicy – i love it! m-k kind of sheepishly told a great story about how this other writer dude was the college professor of m-k’s ex-girlfriend. while professor-man was out with some of his lady students (he thought they were all single girls), trying to impress them with 300 dolla whiskey and bold pronouncements about the literary sphere, he started to trash talk m-k. so the girlfriend is like, “well, i actually think he’s quite talented! and really cool!” (i’m betting the “cool” part being the true stab in the heart for a middle-aged professor clinging to hipness). so the professor – probably drunk and also supposedly crushing on m-k’s girl – gets really angry, pounds his fist down on the table, knocking over a drink, and shouts, “BUT I’M SO MUCH BETTER THAN HIM! HE IS NOTHING! I AM THE ELITE!!!” well, at least according to m-k’s story; i don’t really care if it was wildly exaggerated or not. but i guess m-k won that one, cuz he already was dating the up-and-coming writer girl hottie the professor writer was trying to impress. m-k is quite possibly the nicest man ever (at least to me), but he has all these funny little writer battles going on! i never thought writers would be so weirdly competitive, jealous, and petty! it can be such a nasty world of spite and insecurity! (i think part of it has to do with pride and the other part is related to the awards system and how that’s connected to your earning potential. m-k said most writers aren’t even considered for prizes until they’ve been publishing for 10 years. there are a lot of strange rules and codes that when broken can cause a lot of controversy.)
sooooo, yeah, below is the nastyboy writer in question. he is wearing a black turtleneck in ALL of his photos. need i say more?
THIS IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND! PLEASE O PLEASE DON’T SCAN TO THE BOTTOM, SEE THE PHOTO AND ASSUME. THIS DUDE IS THE EVIL WRITER BOY IN THE STORIES ABOVE, NOT M-K!!
