If it isn't Scottish, it's CRAP.

“It’s shit being Scottish! We're the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization.” At least that’s the view of Renton in Trainspotting. Having never been a disadvantaged, drug addicted urban youth in Scotland, I’m not in much of a position to refute his claims. Although I will say that the fact that he gets to nail that hottie Diane in the movie does point to a certain amount of hyperbole in his statement… but I digress. So while I cannot, in fact, say whether it is or is not shit being Scottish, I can tell you that pretending to be Scottish in Seoul fuckin rocks… at least for one night of the year anyway.

Last Saturday night was the St. Andrew’s Ball, a night for the patron saint of Scotland and one of the best social events in Seoul. It’s basically a night of food, scotch, and lots of Scottish country dancing… yeah Scottish country dancing that’s what is said, clown if you must. By way of a quick description, Scottish country dancing is about what you would get if you took line dancing, cross bred it with a bottle of scotch, and dressed the offspring in a kilt. This is of course preceded by an excellent dinner, a few speeches that leave those of us how are mere Scottish posers at the dance entirely mystified, and of course, the address to the haggis.

Let me take a second here to dispose of an old myth. Haggis is actually pretty friggin good. So anyway the address to the haggis is a poem by Robert Burns about the virtues of haggis (basically that those who don’t eat it are spindly legged momma’s boys compared to the Scots). Told properly, as it was by our Chieftain (who is definitely not spindly legged), it makes for a very entertaining performance.

Then, of course there is the dancing. This can involve a bit of directing of traffic, as not everyone is able to get to the practices and large amounts of Scotch are not generally conducive to activities requiring coordination. That said, we made it through the evening with no injuries and everyone had a good time.

Back in the Arms of the Big J-man

After spending all of my adult life as an atheist, I have finally been brought back in to the fold of Christianity. The agent of my miraculous conversion? The New York Times, which ran a story of a church in Monroe, Ohio which has erected a 62 ft statue of Jesus made entirely of plastic and Styrofoam at an expense of $250,000. The pastor was apparently motivated by the desire to outdo a 35 ft statue worshipping that false idol Paul Bunyan in Bangor, Maine. HARK YE SINFUL BUNYANITES! REPENT THY SINS OR BURN IN THE FIRES OF HADES!

Anyway, when I read this article, it was like the Lord was speaking to me, and I said “Finally, someone gets it”. You see the problem with Christianity in the 20th century is that it has had such a weak assed sales pitch. I’m mean “Jesus loves you” is ok for a slogan, but its kind of milk toast as an entire sales campaign. And that bit about redemption and love your fellow man? I mean come on fellas, you can do better than that. So finally, a pastor comes along with just what I needed to bring me back into the arms of the Church, some slick assed advertising. A 62 ft Jesus made entirely of petrochemicals? Who isn’t gonna buy into that? I only pray that the rumors I’ve been hearing of a 100 ft Vishnu made of gummy bears prove false, or I’m in for a serious crisis of faith.

Of Skull Fucking and Eaten Mothers: A scholarly essay by your's truly.

Having lived in two seperate societies now and having the usuall boyish penchant for naughty words, I've come to notice that different societies have quite different methods of cursing, especially when we begin to discuss fighting words.

Now in America, most of our curse words center around the sexual things you will do to your enemy, or the perverse and unusual things that your enemy is into. A quick example: "I'm going to fuck you up, you motherfucker" Ahhh the classics. Now here we have a fine example of both parts of American cursing. Still a better example would be from Full Metal Jacket, where the drill sergeant claims that he will "Rip out your eyes and skull fuck you". Now in this case, we have both violence and sexuality (although the man who is into skull fucking is a strange bird indeed... I don't know, call me provincial). In any case, you get the point... lots of sex in American curse words.

In Korean cursing, however, its all about the violence. I learned this one from a good friend of mine and it still amazes me every time I think about it. When I asked this friend what the worst thing you could say in Korean would be, he replied "I'm gonna grind your eyes to powder and drink them" Well friends, what can I say? THAT'S some violent shit. So naturally I thought I had heard the granddaddy of all insults at that point.

Then, last week, I was reading a book by Jared Diamond called Collapse (good book by the way). In any case one of the chapters of this book deals with Easter Island society and why it collapsed. Towards the end of society, when agriculture went to pot and there was no food left, the islanders turned to cannablism.... You know, based on my ability to weave skull fucking and cannabalism into the same scholarly essay, I got to say I'm pretty damn talented.
So in any case, the most cutting insult in the Easter Island language at this time (I swear I'm not making this up) was "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth". I'll just let you marinate on that for a second.

Now, if we examine this, we see that not only is it incredibly violent, and not only does it bring someone's mother into the insult (basically an effective strategy in any language), it also implies that the person' s mother was mostly gristle! Now that is an insult! I mean really, Dr. Lecter's fava beans and chianti really don't amount to shit compared to that.

I'm not suggesting that we should abandon our time honored skull fucking tradition, but maybe we should consider adding to it.