A Fool in Korea

Entropy

Last night, I went to the chicken house with Rice-Boy Larry. I ordered a platter of fried bird and two bottles of soju. The total price tag came to thirty bucks. 

We struck up a conversation as we shoved poultry into our mouths.

I said, "Have you ever heard of a novel called Things Fall Apart?"

He shook his head from side to side. "I've never been a big fan of fiction."

"It's about an African chieftain whose life hits the skids."

He chomped on his vittles and took a sip of Seven-Up. "And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?"

"Sometimes, I feel like that African chief."

"Why?"

I swallowed a shot of soju. "I never thought in a million years that our family would have been destroyed so completely. I knew your mom was nuts right after I married her. Yet she was good to her children until Chicken Ken went to middle school. Then she turned into a snarling abusive beast. It's as if a switch went off in her diseased brain."

"You're being awfully negative."

"Negative?" I sighed heavily and pounded another shot of booze. "And now your brother hates me, too. Am I keeping you in Korea against your will? That's what he's accusing me of."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I'm fine living in Seoul, but I'd also be OK moving to Texas. It's really your choice."

"Those public schools are for the birds. They're filled with drugs and criminals and pregnant sluts."

Larry laughed out loud so violently that he almost choked on his soda. "Pregnant sluts? Isn't that a little judgmental."

"The truth is the truth." I paused for dramatic effect. "When I was teaching in America, the class president was a pregnant slut. The librarian just about had a conniption. She screamed so loudly in the teacher lounge that I thought she might have a stroke."

"Did the principal remove her from office?"

"Who? The librarian?"

"No. The pregnant slut."

I took a healthy bite out of a chicken leg. "He couldn't. We're talking about the States. The students voted for the little trollop, so kicking her out of political office would have been a breech of democracy."

"Wow, that's great. Kids have a lot of rights over there, don't they?"

I nodded in agreement. "Too many fucking rights."

We got home at 9 p.m., and I walked to my room. Then I watched several episodes of The Sopranos as I relaxed in bed. There was a scene between Tony and his son A.J. which brought tears to my eyes. The gangster was playing Nintendo with his kid in the living room, and he cheated in order beat his boy at the game. A.J. went nuts and kept trying to slap his father's hand away in a playful manner. It was A.J.'s thirteenth birthday.

Time flies. James Gandolfini died years ago from a heart attack. My 85-year-old Mexican stepfather is probably on death's door. And my mother is a wrinkled old bag. Oh well. Nothing lasts forever except the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I fell asleep at one a.m. and had a dream about driving down a dimly lit road. I almost hit a possum and screamed like a girl. Then I woke up at nine a.m. and drank a cup of instant coffee. After that, I read the headlines on my smartphone while taking a nasty shit. The video for Gangnam Style has over five billion hits on YouTube. K-pop is huge across the globe. I've uploaded the song for your enjoyment.