Author's disclaimer: Despite my best efforts and
good intentions, the following may contain some inaccuracies.
It may even be utter bullshit.
* * *
The truth is I'm lazy. I do the work I have to do,
but seldom anything more. I regularly turn down private
lessons, even very lucrative ones, not because of any
respect for the immigration laws, but simply because
I don't believe in working harder than I have to. After
all, I didn't come to Korea to work.
Well, actually, I did. I teach about 20 hours a week
at a local university, and my planning time and paperwork
rounds it out to about thirty hours. Between vacation
time, holidays, and school festivals, I have about three
months of the year off, which is one of the things that
attracted me to the job in the first place--it was one
big step toward my ultimate career goal, which is to
work about half the year and take the other half off.
I like my job, but I'm trying to work less, not more.
I'm lazy, and in the summer, in the muggy, sweaty summer,
I ride my inertia down to even lower depths. In
July, I can't seem to find the energy to do anything
more than drink beer and occasionally consider doing
some work, and in August, even drinking beer seems a
chore.
I've tried to overcome my laziness several times and
failed, most recently in August, when I walked over
to a local gym (considering the walk itself to be a
pretty good workout), paid for a one month membership,
and never returned. I looked for a self-help book on
laziness but found that there weren't any that were
any good. Apparently the true experts in that field
never get around to writing books, and the books that
do make it to print are written by people who are far
too industrious to be taken seriously.
I work well under pressure, but these days I seldom
find myself under sufficient pressure to work. Anyone
who's ever seen a TV weather report knows that a low
pressure system (like me) needs to collide with a high
pressure system for the really interesting shit to happen.
A few weeks ago I was busy procrastinating in front
of my computer, and I came across a small ad on PusanWeb
asking for people willing to help out with the website.
I don't have any computer skills, but the ad asked for
"regular contributing writers". Hmmm....I'd submitted
a few things in the past months--nothing "regular"--and
I'd always meant to send more, but it was hard to find
the time between naps and PC game marathons. When I
read the ad, I got excited; this could be the pressure
I was looking for.
So I called Jeff Lebow (The Big Cheese at PusanWeb)
and asked him about it. I've never met or spoken with
Jeff, so I didn't know if he'd be one of those hard-nosed
editors, sleeves rolled up, bull neck and hair protruding
from his shirt collar, hounding me to turn in copy or
else. I imagined--and hoped--he'd look and sound something
like Ed Asner or Peter Parker's boss in the old Spiderman
cartoons, a bulldog with a flat-top and a cigar.
But Jeff turned out to be pretty laid-back. The voice
on the other end was cool, didn't sound like a cigar
smoker, and he was saying some very un-bulldoglike things.
He said, more or less, that I could do whatever I want.
"But will there be a deadlline?" I wondered, "some
pressure?"--I happily imagined the yoke being lowered
onto my neck, whip at my heels, like Conan the Barbarian
when he had to turn that big drill all by himself with
the strength of ten oxen--so I asked him.
"I'd like it to be regular, but I'm not pushing for
exact dates or anything. You think you can give me something
every two weeks?"
"Uh, I think I can do that," I said, and with those
seven words I became a PusanWeb "regular contributing
writer".
* * * * * * * *
Regular contributing writer....no, that title just
won't do--doesn't sound important enough. I'd never
been hung up on important sounding titles before, mainly
because I've never had one, but all that has changed
in Korea, the country where taxis are driven by engineers
and the coffee in the office is made by managers and
executive something-or-others. So what to call myself?Columnist
is a nice title. I started imagining how important it
would look on the new business cards I would be printing:
John Bocskay, Columnist. But is it too short? Does that
one word say it all?
As I fished around for a title it occured to me that
if cabbies could make themselves engineers, I could
be anything I wanted. Why settle for mere columnist
when I can be a creative consultant, advising myself
on where the commas should go? Depending on what I write
about, I could be a journalist, essayist, humorist,
or critic. And if I learn to post the pieces on the
site myself, that makes me a computer engineer, a web
designer, an executive editor, and a publisher.
I'm no rocket scientist--though there's nothing stopping
me anymore--but I realized that my already exaggerated
resume was about to take a quantum leap forward. And
if my last resume landed me a pretty good job, my new
one was going to make me, if not God, at least the guy
who makes his coffee, which must carry a very impressive
title.
* * * * * * * *
I hadn't settled in to my new gig for very long before
I realized that--whatever I chose to call myself--being
a regular contributing writer would mean contributing
writing regularly. I enjoy writing, but writing a column
might be like...work. And it would be work I'd be doing
without pay. I've done labors of love in the past, but
they always ended up seeming less love than labor. One
thing I've learned about myself is that I need some
incentive, something to push me. So what, if not money,
would push me to write the column?
Fame. Ah! I started to imagine the people of Pusan,
riveted to their computer screens, alternately laughing
and crying, feeling the whole range of human emotion,
being amused, angered, inspired, insulted, uplifted.....My
articles are translated into Korean and discussed in
the highest circles. At the next inter-Korean summit
meeting, by way of making some preliminary small talk,
Kim Jong-il leans over to Kim Dae-jung and asks, "So..what'd
you think of Bocskay's latest piece on Student Radicalism
and Democracy?" because, being the able conversationalist
that he is, he wisely begins with topics that the two
are absolutely certain to have in common....My students
actually begin to study because they want to read the
column in the original language, because they know it
could very well pop up as a question on a job interview--a
test of how hip and connected they really are--and they
want to have a leg up on the competition.....And here
I am accepting my Pulitzer for my expose on "Inertia
in the Korean English Classroom." Jimmy Breslin is there,
and Studs Terkel, and Walter Cronkite (I don't care
if he's dead, this is MY fantasy), and look! there,
in the front row hanging on my every word, it's a 28-year-old
Sophia Loren! I step up to the mike, "I'd like to thank
my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Frances Amorosano,
without whom I would have surely ended up dangling my
participles in the showers at Attica State Penitentiary...."
Actually, I'd be happy to simply break free of my intertia
every two weeks and have proof of it on the internet.
So much for my motivation.
* * * * * * * *
So, I've got both the gig and the motivation for writing
the column. Now, what to call it? I thought a humble,
self-deprecating title would be good. Something like
Utter Bullshit or From the Horse's Ass, but I discarded
those because I thought it would make it hard to gain
the trust of my readership. The Straight Dope? I like
that--it can be read as the real story, and "dope" also
suggests "drug", contrasting nicely with the "straight".
And dope also means "jackass" or "dummy", which is plenty
self-deprecating but subtle. That's it! The dummy telling
the real story..
Which raises a good question--what story, what will
I write about? Jeff said "whatever you want". Big help,
he is. "Too much liberty is a bad thing". Who said that?
Maybe it would help if I wrote some kind of mission
statement. Yeah.
Whenever I hear the words mission statement, I think
of the intro segment of the original Star Trek ("Our
five year mission...."). It's a good mission statement,
and I think I'm going to make it my own.
-"To explore strange new worlds..."--That's good, and
apropos, considering I live in a strange new world and
occasionally visit others.
-"...to seek out new life and new civilizations..."--Not
exactly new civilizations, but new to me. And I'll interpret
"new life" to mean, not new species, but new ways of
living, which I stand a much better chance of finding.
There might be an undocumented species living in the
DMZ, but unless it's lighter than the minimum weight
necessary to set off a land mine, it has almost certainly
been blown up. If I do happen to discover a new species,
you can read about it here.
-"...to boldly go where no man has gone before"--Okay,
that's stretching a little. These days it's just about
impossible to go where no man has gone before, though
I've had some interesting ideas concerning the women's
locker room at my local bathhouse. In short, we've been
everywhere. And with the exception of the moon, women
have been to all of those places too. (There is even
a woman who works on the men's floor at the bathhouse.
She's a massuese. The men don't seem to mind.) So I'll
reinterpret this phrase to mean "places I've never gone
before". And I'll keep the boldly. I like that.
* * * * * * * *
So, I've got the gig, the motivation, and the mission
statement, but now I see that I've run out of space.
I guess I'll have to start next time.
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