Circles

This horse was chained up in a field, walking in circles.  I feel your pain, bro.  Did some super-solid birding this weekend, four lifers, pics soon.

All dead snakes, all the time

I spotted this unfortunate little guy on a coastal path, just after someone presumably beat it with a stick.  It was still moving a bit, but I hear snakes can do this for 20 minutes after death, I'm pretty sure it was dead.  Looks like it may have bitten itself in confusion as it was dying.  It's a Common Many-tooth Snake, aka Black-headed Snake.  Jeju is the only place in Korea where they can be found, and were only discovered here in 1981.  There is sand in my ears, but it will come out one day.

Sweetieade

         "A refreshing tangy sweetie flavor with slight sweetness"

Holy crap, I just googled this, and it turns out the sweetie, aka oroblanco, is a cross between an acidless pomelo (they love the damn pomelos in Taiwan) and a white grapefruit.  You learn something every day.  So I guess it doesn't sound as dumb now.
  I was watching a riveting episode of River Monsters where the stern and humorless Jeremy Wade is looking for the dreaded 'Ball Cutter' fish that has been mangling the bits n' bobs of African fishermen.  I enjoyed hearing him repeatedly say 'Ball Cutter'.

The (lucrative) destruction of Hwasun beach

Going...(Nov. 2009)

...going...(spring 2010)

...gone.  (right now)

It's fucking ugly and 90 feet tall, whatever it is.

The beach at Hwasun, just west of Jungmun, was always a quiet alternative to the tourist-hell-insanity of a jam-packed Jungmun beach in the peak season.  A nice little beach, if you remembered not to look at the power plant just due east.  There was also a nice large reedbed where a river emptied into the ocean, home to a wide array of reed-loving birds like reed warblers, small herons, and plovers.

  That was way back in sparkling 2009.  Since then, 'they' have steadily been eating up the beach and destroying the reedbeds with a large array of random bullshit associated with making the adjacent port bigger.  I fear that Hwasun is a harbinger of things to come on Jeju.  I think that when I come back to Jeju in 10-15 years, I'll be horrified but not surprised to find that most of Jeju's nicer and quieter spots have been ripped up by super-trails, hotels, speed-boat courses, 'mini' lands, and other hyper-tacky concrete and fibreglass touristy bullshit.  

  Oh yeah, and the 'eco-friendly' naval base they're in the process of building 20 minutes down the road oughta be great.  The 20,000-strong garrison will really boost the local economy.  The whore-house economy, that is.  Welcome to "Peace Island".  The chair-lift to Halla will be a real hoot too.  Ok, all of this bitter quotation marking is making me angry.  Peace out, word to the mom, peace in the Middle East, catch you on the flibbity-flop.

Truckloads of dead tourists

Ok ok, half-dead ones.  You can't fart around here lately without the fart warmly wafting onto at least 37 idling tourbuses.  My old band used to have a song called 'Truckloads of dead tourists', and it was great. The chorus went 'Make meeeeee, happy, happy, happy, happy!'

Early May birds

Curlew Sandpiper

Black-tailed Godwit

Long-toed Stint

Striated Heron

A lot of migrating shorebirds these days.  Also, the Striated Heron that lives next door was hunting, and I watched.  I like to watch.
  I picked up some Australian cheese, and I'm about to eat it up by hand like it's a big shiny apple.

Guitar Wolf - Can-Nana Fever

My new goal in life: to make my life as much like this video as I can.
Lock n' Loll!

Foggypo

Wandered around in a fog today and didn't do too much, which is a decent metaphor for the last few years of my life.  Ha ha ha!  I like fog.

Beck - I've Seen the Land Beyond

I've said it before, well written it before, I guess - One Foot in the Grave is a wicked album.  This song works well on the mando.  Shave my beard and let it grow, then shave it, so I can grow it.  I've started selling off some of my stuff, gotta travel light.  Big changes a'looming.

Where the gravestones never cease

Flowers and whateveriness

Yeah, I'm a bit late on these, but time is relative, innit.  About a month or so ago, the cherry blossoms were out.  They were blah blah blah blah.  Then, something made me angry, and I took a picture of something and made fun of it, making myself feel superior in the process.  Then I went birdwatching, and complained about yellow dust, and about something stupid that Koreans did to wrong me.

A fire tower

From these shores, where we belong...

...I have seen, the land beyond.

Ho hum, lazy day.  The scenic roads of Seogwipo are once again clogged with hordes of buses relentlessly shitting out steaming clots of rude tourists from the mainland.  They're all rude, I talked to each of them.
  In other news, I've recently discovered that my tolerance for bullshit is at an all-time low.

Pig money livestock

Pig Newtons!

Ha ha.  That would be a decent name for a musical collective that features a xylophone.  Near where the 1136 and the 1120 meet just inland from the west coast, I discovered a new part of Jeju for me.  The pig farm part.  It smelled like pig shit, and pig shit smells real real bad.
  Sand spilling out of a broken hourglass, folks.  Geez.

Deathclock!

I also once mentioned Resolute's vaunted Y2K countdown clock.  There it is, on top of the piano.  I forget precisely what he was doing up there, but it made plenty of sense at the time.

Wheels up

Ground control to drunk kids...

The rebar Zero is still at the massacre oreum, but the landing gear has recently been fixed.  Neat.  I've mentioned the life-sized Hawker Hurricane cockpit mock-up that Resolute once built in his living room.  Here's a picture of it when it was 85% finished.  Why did he build it?  The Koreans have a word - 'keunyong' - which translates to something like 'just because'.  We used to do some cool stuff back in the day.

Wee dead snake

Went scoot-wandering through the west coast today, good times.  Came across a freshly dead little snake on a farm road, it looks like a young Dione Ratsnake to me.  It was just laying in the road, no signs of trauma.  Don't think me soft, but it was one of the most beautiful critters I've ever seen, it was perfect.  I whispered it some advice, then flung it into the bushes.

Last week, the skies were wrinkly

And Mount Halla punched through the top.

Mr. LeMew

There he is again, the little bastard.  I see you.

Friday morning, pre-dust

I'm locked down in my hovel.  I've watched way too much tv, and I feel crazy, but I ain't going out into the dust. I think folks think I'm a crazy old man, they may be onto something.
  I have a red belly, because I lay in the sun on Jungmun beach on Friday morning.  I'll miss the hell out of that.  On Writing by Stephen King is pretty damn funny so far.

an off-limits place

There was a massive spider crawling around on the wall at the open mic last night.  It had fat legs and a fat body, a sick-o-tating combination.  I can handle fat-bodied skinny-legged spiders.  This thing was uncool also because it was scampering around menacingly and erratically.  Little bastard.

Yellow dustmageddon

The view from my roof

The unview from my roof

Maroon dots = stay inside and watch the Discovery Channel all Sunday

Whammy!

Sparkling!

Shit in my mouth!

Alert!  Alert!  Freak out!  Ugh, I'm not leaving my apartment today.  The yellow dust from China is the highest it's been all year, maybe the worst levels in a few years.  You can't see Mount Halla, or much of anything else today.  It's creepy-looking out there.
Played mando at a chaotic open mic last night, good times.  Shattered a pick to pieces.