A Guy Called Harold

A cleaning lady that doesn't like to clean up after other people: one of life's great contradictions.

Anyway I'm not here to write about her, she clearly has issues that needs solving, and I'm not the person to help. Mainly because I am a foreigner in his mid-twenties who can't speak Korean, and she is a middle aged Korean housewife who can't speak English. Ha! Look at me, writing about her and everything. One would suspect me of harbouring some Harold and Maude-ish love for her. I think about it sometimes, but she has a high pitched whining voice, a piggish nose suiting her flat face, and a stoop accentuating her humpback. It just wouldn't work out, we're too different, from backgrounds too far apart. We would walk down the street hand in hand, and people would stare back at us, horrified by how far modern times has come, society would just laugh at us, throw our love back in our faces, turning something of joy into pain and misery. And if our personal trials of cultural disparity would not be our undoing, then the pressures of social conformity would surely break our backs. Pioneers we will not be, doomed to spend our days apart, bowed by the weakness of our wills, the strength of social appeasement forever haunting our mourning thoughts, as we watch others hand in hand, walk past, free from such torments. And we will say to ourselves, "why us?"

And you will say to yourselves, "what's this?"

And then next week will be the G20 in Seoul. "The first summit to be held in Asia", so the slogan reads. It will be quite exciting to see what happens. I'll try and head to the centre of town when it's on. A very clever place to hold the summit though, the level of political naivety here reducing the risk of large protests. Such things if they ever did happen would happen in countries where there's a sizable population of liberal youth with time on there hands to consider global injustices, and less of a money-orientated career drive. And if such out of control protesting never does happen, much to the chagrine of the media, they will no doubt find a way to make a bloody riot out of a peaceful march. Police waiting at the lines, ready to follow suit. Then the grand act it filmed, photographed, written about for the whole world to see. The images that will fall on the eyes of all will be spoken about from the mouths of few. And to these people we listen? One can only hope that the cycle is regurgitated with a touch of derision.

And we will say to ourselves, "it's all shit!"

There's too much fun to be had I suppose. Last weekend was a face-fuck in good times, a little too in your face. I mean I enjoyed myself, but no matter how much you enjoy yourself, when you're surrounded by drunk North Americans dressed in costumes ranging from Lego men to more topical bloodied-up Mexican Cartel gangsters and Federales (it seems that no social or national tragedy is out of bounds during Halloween), no matter how much you enjoy yourself there is always a relative diminishment when bombarded with such debauched revelry. By the way, since when was it acceptable to dress as the KKK now? One shouldn't have double standards, as people can dress up as Nazi officers, serial killers, terrorists and other such orchestrators of horror, but there is something still not quite right about the KKK (not "right" in the obvious sense, there was never much "right" about them to begin with), something still not quite safe about the comedy the KKK uniform can quite emit.

There's a great level of fulfilment a gaming geek can sometimes get from Halloween. Occasionally I found myself exclaiming, "you're Ling Xiaoyu!" (Tekken), "hey, you're Squall Leonhart!" (Final Fantasy VIII). Whether it was the fact that I stated the characters first names, the titles of the games, and their release dates, but the people never stuck around for too long. Still I was smiling, "I'm off home to listen to the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack now." So I got to thinking how I would dress up next year, how esoteric or mundane you can be? "Fuck Nico Bellic, I'll be his cousin Roman", or eschewing the distinctive shaggy-haired, bearded features of Peter Sutcliffe I'd adopt the inconspicious facade of a friendly country doctor. Harold Shipman certainly didn't look the part. I suppose that's what helped him be so successful.

And then I'll say to myself "can I say that?"

And then when all the protesting and partying is over we can go back to our routine again, whether that routine is part of the big machine or a wholly independent cog, we're all good. That is to say, if you believe it... and you're not Harold Shipman.