Eric Vs. The Machines, Part 3

Yup, that’s right folks. I have somehow managed to cause another catastrophic failure with my personal PC. My batting average is currently 3 for 3. 3 PCs, 3 breakdowns/crashes within the first 2 years of acquisition. While every major league baseball player would kill for a 1.000 average, I’d prefer to knock down the average a few points. Im weird like that. At present I still have no idea what’s wrong with it. Came home last Thursday to find that the PC would still whistle, hum and pop when I turned it on, but nothing would display on the screen. Thinking it was just a failed monitor, I tried to run the video through my little TV, but that failed. Course, I may have been doing it wrong. I just prefer to think that machines hate me. Feelings mutual you metallic pieces of shit. Being in Korea has only complicated matters, as if I need to send it back to the manufacturer (who presumably is in the US), that would take forever. Also not being able to speak the language will complicate any discourse with the local repairmen.

No computer at home has left me with a little bit of time on my hands. No PC means no internet (what with all the time I spend websurfing…and stuff….), no music (as most of my music is of the electronic variety and also the PC is my sole CD player), and no movies (again, no CD player). All this extra time would be great for allowing me to finally catch up with the blog posts….cept that also requires a computer to type out. Crap. I guess I could write the posts at the internet cafes, but no thanks. Ewwww. You ever been in one of those places??? While being internet-less really stinks, it’s the lack of music that’s killing me. All I have is silence and drunken yelling from outside my window. Eventually I’m gonna wear out all the CD’s in my mental library and I’ll probably go insane once the music stops. Or does the fact that I already hear music in my head mean I’m already insane? Tough to say.

Now to get to some actual exploits. If my numbers are correct, I have 6 weekends to talk about, including but not limited to, the volleyball tourney, capoeira workshop, marathon, children’s day fun, and A&W Root Beer. And I know you know which one Im most excited about. You’re damn right it’s the A&W Root Beer. Its been a long time. Korea can’t make a good beer to save their souls, so obviously they have no idea what root beer is. But hey, they got that kimchi thing down and that’s working pretty well for them. As you might have guessed, I’m not gonna try and cram all that into one post. Volleyball will be sure to get its own post, and the rest will probably get chopped up into 2 or 3 posts, basically however much I can crap out before I have to go home for the day.

The story starts way back in Mid April (the weekend of 16th-18th, I think). For lack of ideas, Hyemi and I ended up in Hongdae for dinner. She was really craving a hamburger so we looked and we looked and we looked for a burger place and we eventually ended up…….at a Vietnamese Pho restaurant. Huh??? Yeah, I didn’t understand the jump either, but I wasn’t making the decisions, so I kept my mouth shut. After dinner and a brief stop at one of those “Jazz club in name only” Jazz club (one of these days I’m gonna realize that just because the sign says “Jazz club” doesn’t mean its any less likely to play Korean shit pop on the stereo), we settled into the fancy noraebang establishment. Hyemi had previously suggested we go, but when the time came, she was surprisingly hesitant. Methinks she had finally begun to realize that I wasn’t lying when I said I was a terrible singer.

Once there our hero was faced with a dicey situation, namely what to sing. Personal faves such as anything by Tenacious D (but mostly “Fuck Her Gently”) haven’t managed to make the jump over the pond, so already I’m working with a greatly depleted deck. Add to that that I’m on a date and such favs while in Korea, such as “Dick in a Box”, might not go over so well. Gotta know your audience and my usual hits just weren’t gonna cut it here. Hell, my usual songs probably would have had her fleeing the building screaming or in tears, with a call to the police mixed in there somewhere.

Since I didn’t want to a Beatles song or a pop song pre 1970 (trust me, they have every single one of those), I had to dig deep. Thank god they’ve heard of Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana. Although the Santana one boggles the mind. The dude is Latino and plays the guitar, neither of those things being especially popular or well-received here. But sure enough, when I did Santana’s “Smooth” off the Supernatural album, Hyemi knew all the words. Somehow, somewhere, that song made it through the cultural wall around Korea that allows only things of questionable quality in from foreign lands. My thinking: Korea did its research on Santana and found out that he did a song with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. Well, its common world-wide knowledge that Nickelback is utter wank, so the Koreans probably just assumed that anyone that associated with musicians such as those must also be utter wank. Thanks Nickelback. Thanks to you guys, I didn’t have to sing just Michael Buble or Josh Groban or Frank Sinatra.

Well, that’s one weekend down, 5 to go. More soon, I promise. Really.

Why I love volleyball

Now, first let me say that volleyball is by no means my favorite sport. Far from it in fact. Hell, most aspects of the game I couldn’t really give two shits about. But spiking???? SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. I’m still trying to figure out just why the act of spiking fills me with such joy and I shall try to extrapolate the answers below.

My thinking at present goes something like this: I like to win. At anything. I believe the word is “competitive”. And I always want to win and win big at that. Close, hard fought games are fun to watch, but I imagine most (if not all) competitors want to win convincingly, to definitively show that they are far and away better than their opponents. For me, I’m not talking just winning big, I’m talking embarrassingly big. I want to embarrass whoever I’m up against. Does that mean I have no honor? Probably, but that’s a strange, somewhat antiquated concept anyways.

Now outside of winning by some huge lopsided margin like 60-0 for football or 5-0 for soccer, etc, etc, how can one go about embarrassing their adversary? How can you do it in game, rather than just on the final stat sheet? Every sport has them. Soccer has the nutmeg, basketball has crossing somebody up, and football has where you run somebody over. Volleyball has spiking it at someone.

Why is that so embarrassing to the opponent? Cuz you are basically saying to the other team, “I’m going to hit this right at you because I have so little respect for your ability and you still won’t be able to return it”. Demeaning in itself, but add to that the physical pain suffered by having a rapidly moving volleyball hit you in the head, face, junk, and other soft tissue areas and then you have a deadly combo. The other sports are lacking in this physical pain aspect. The nutmeg? No physical pain unless you can manage to bounce the ball off the players groin before hitting through the legs. If so, then you are a god among men. Crossing somebody up? Unless you literally broke their ankles, no physical pain. And running somebody over in football? Probably leads to a fair bit of pain for yourself, as colliding bodies always hurts. With spiking, its all give and no take in regards to pain. What can I say? I’ve got a big heart. I love giving.

Another advantage is the frequency in which you get to attempt this maneuver. The nutmeg is humiliating, but it can be very easily defended and rarely works after the first time, as the other team will be expecting it. Not to mention that you can give the ball away really easily this way. Times per game: 2 or 3. With crossing someone up, it is entirely dependent on your defender. If they are decent, they won’t follow the ball and thus won’t be faked out, even the first time. Even a bad defender could wise up and just play further away from you, thus rendering the move useless. Times per game: 3-5 (bad defender) or 0 (good defender). With football, you are naturally going to want to avoid contact rather than inviting it. That’s basic rules of the game as you are not going to break tackles every time you are hit by somebody. Plus getting hit by somebody hurts. Times per game: a couple. But volleyball? Ideally, the spike is your goal every single point. As the primary spike guy, the idea is for me to smash the ball at the other team every single point of every single game. That’s a lot of points. We play 3 sets, with 21 pts per game. So realistically, we are looking around 10 smashes per game, maybe more, maybe less. 30 > 3. Sure my arm is tired by the end, but its so worth it.

But can’t they return the ball if you hit it at them, you say. True they can, but hopefully they get a little “deer in the headlights” syndrome and freeze up just enough to mess up the return. Plus, actually controlling a spike is hard enough when its not aimed at your head. Then once you’ve got them flinching every time you wind up, you can pretty much hit it anywhere and they won’t be able to return it.

Now we just need to actually play the real game and quit having it postponed. My teammates are tired of my bloodlust.

And that was my treatise on why spiking is wonderful. My name is Eric, and yes, I’m a bad person.