have you seen this man?

if you have any information regarding the whereabouts of this man, please call any of the following numbers: 080-whafuck or 080-whereami or 080-whoami

as many of you know, there exists here in our little East Sea hamlet of gangneung a watering hole called bar bumpin', which has always been a haven of sorts for expats in this city, a place to convene and listen to good music from the West, mostly from europe and north america.

it has always been a place to sit with a good friend--or even a person--and have a drink or too many while writing poetry, discussing politics, dancing, taking off your clothes, diving into the bar, smoking ganj, nailing a one-night stand, playing poker, listening to the Spoken Word, forgetting your problems (or creating new ones), simply sitting at the bar, mourning the departures of loved ones, experimenting with booze, sampling fabulous cooking from the head drunk/chef/barkeep, staring at your fuzzy navel, and/or passing out.

it has always gone through cycles of popularity with the expats and hasn't always been populated with local koreans because of their fear of us rowdy roundeyes. it probably was at its most popular in '04 and '05 because a lot of the expats during that time could be found on any given day, at any given hour, in any given stage of sobriety or inebration, under any sort of conditions patronising the bar. these were expats who had been in gangneung for several years, not just transient expats, and they had gotten to know the local language, the local culture, the local seasonal vibes, and, of course, the owner of bumpin'. to many of us, he was considered a friend or older brother. he wasn't just the owner of a bar we frequented; we knew about his personal life, his ambitions, his dreams, his dislikes, his issues, his happiness--and he knew the same about many of us. bumpin'--and consequently, the owner--was not just a place to imbibe, it was a part of us, like a ribcage or a spouse or a member of the family or a third nipple or gonorrhea, to name a few.

as the turnover of expats really began to, well, turn over in the latter half of '05--about a year ago now--the bar began to lose itself a bit. other pubs catering to expat tastes had also opened--and still others were yet to open--and these types of pubs found themselves more popular with the new expat arrivals than was bumpin'. bumpin' was a place for drinkers; there were no billiards tables, no dart boards, no rule requiring patrons to eat food or, even, to wear clothes, no Cocktail-type drink-making light shows that are the rage in bars the peninsula over these days, no discrimination against people because of their nationality, gender, sexual preference, or socio-economic status. as the dynamics of a population change, so do the preferences of keeping oneself entertained and bumpin' suffered a bit (or perhaps a lot) from the influx of new expats rolling into town, though some other places found business to be better than before.

gyung-sup had been hinting at quitting bumpin' as long ago as last winter, but kept plugging away at keeping it open. at first, some months ago, the first signs of gyung-sup's discontent came when we'd roll up only to find bumpin' occasionally closed on a tuesday or wednesday, nights usually prime for drinking, hanging out with gyung-sup, making your own song list and cranking them up loud because of the lack of patrons. then, as spring became summer, it became common to hesitate going to bumpin' during the week for fear that the doors would be shut and gyung-sup out on the drink or, even worse, out of town on the drink with no hints as to when he would be back.

finally, about six weeks ago, a vicious rumour swung through the air with all the fuzzy warmth of a rusty but still-sharp scythe: gyung-sup was finally closing the bar and moving to busan, in the south of korea and the nation's 2nd-largest city, with his new girlfriend. efforts on a tuesday night to confirm were met with his drunken slurring that he was leaving town for good the next day. we'd heard such drunken threats before, so we decided to go visit him at bumpin' the following night only to have it confirmed by him in the late afternoon that he already was in busan. there has been much pondering of the situation since that night and, in fact, the first time yours truly has gone back downtown for drinking was just a few nights ago, this past weekend. after a month of spurning downtown's beckonings, and after a few hours of proclaiming that we were staying in the neighbourhood where we lived to drink, we broke down and went chasing the new rumours that gyung-sup hadn't sold the bar, but had given the keys to a mate of his for upkeeping it while gyung-sup cavorts around busan. as it was past three o'clock in the morning when we got downtown, bumpin' was closed and the mystery of when it opens its doors these days, why gyung-sup really bolted and what he is doing in busan, who is going to buy it, is the pub seriously for sale, and when will gyung-sup come back to town all remain. there is a another stilted rumour that he was in town a week or so ago, but it's not yet been soberly confirmed.

so, if anyone sees a gyung-sup lee bearing any resemblance to the man in the above photo, please notify this web site via "comments" section, or email me, or call any of the toll-free numbers here in korea, or just keep the info to yourself if that's how you see fit. many thanks in advance for whatever it is you choose...

a lonely job

it's a lonely, disparate job, trying to keep a gleeblog updated on a point in interstellar internet space.

weeks or days pass by and no words come to the fore to keep either the writer or the reader entertained or informed.

thoughts flag listlessly like a flaccid penis on downers.

ideas remain clogged in the synapses of the brain like phlegm in the throat of a flu-stricken patient.

the web site sits blank, unblinking, like dubya at his desk in the oval office.

lethargy sits mockingly on the writer's shoulders, sweating whispered nothings in his ear, stealing time from the voluptuous muse, who sits jealously in the locked recesses of the condor's nest that is the dormant imagination, waiting her turn to whisper sweet somethings into the writer's ear.

coherence hovers in the ice cream swirl of cottony colourfulness like a rising moon not ready to rise.

if only these things would write themselves sometimes--or at least could be written through the osmosis of passing out on the monitor and just remaining there while the subconscious dutifully transcribed its stream-of onto the electronic vellum.