Tom Kim

Remember White Town? When “Your Woman” hit constant radio play, the adolescent versions of ourselves scratched our heads in pomo confusion. “Is he being ironical? Or is he gay? Or is he a she? Or, err…”

But our first hesitant steps into serious discussions of sexual identity were bowled over when the rumors of the guy’s morbid obesity came in. “I hear he can’t leave his house; that he just orders in Chinese and sits in front of his computer all day…”

A few days ago Dana and I heard the song again in our car, and we picked up the same conversations right where our 16- and 12-year-old 21- and 17-year-old [Heh. Heh. I can't do basic arithmetic] selves had left off. Of course, being married, the conversation inevitably circled around my girth and its accelerating course of growth.

This morning, Dana bounced off my abdomen while rushing to hug me.

“Pretty soon you will not be able to wrap your arms around me to hug me.”

“No. I will not let it get to that point.”

Beat.

“Will you still love if me I get so fat that I won’t be able to fit through the door?”

“No.”

Well that’s that, I guess. And I’m sure it will be all my fault.

humor, health, dana, diet, food, music

My goal today is to finish grading all poetry portfolios. For two weeks the 6th grade has been working on a poetry unit, which culminates in a portfolio and recitation. Each portfolio has to feature four poems (published elsewhere) that fall under a theme, four more that the student just likes, and six original poems — hopefully some of which I’ve seen drafts of and had conferences with students about. The portfolio has to also include a small essay reflecting on the unit. We’ve encouraged students to be artistic with their portfolios — to not only illustrate and decorate their poems, but to explore creative ways of presentation and binding. I’m quite pleased with the results, and will post up some pictures soon.

In the meantime, I have some photos of students giving their recitations. If you recall, I was working on mine, with disastrous — but entertaining — results. My students, on the whole, fared much better.

Alex actually played music to accompany his recitation. And he had Max do a dramatic enactment.

More pics:

6th grade, poetry, memory, performance

More at White Boy DJ. Apparently he’s selling more hilarity on DVD to fund a church plant in Cleveland.

humor, christianity, bible, video, youtube

Chef Boyardee wrote:

Mmmm, do you have a husband or a boyfriend who hates to eat their veggies and winces at the sight of a hearty bowl of fresh salad? Just add sausages to it. Seriously. Go buy some turkey sausage (more healthy than the pork ones) and squeeze the sausage out of the casing into little bits onto a frying pan and cook it up. Pat the excess grease onto a napkin then sprinkle over a nice salad. The guy will eat it up, I guarantee.

Regrettably this does not always work. My longsuffering wife makes the most hearty, delectable salads — I once suggested she patent and bottle her improvised dressings for worldwide distribution — and yet I still hesitate to consider them a bona fide meal. Although I almost always have to admit that her salads are healthier and just as good as a cow in a field of corn set ablaze, Dana has to expend considerable energy, time, and ingenuity just to get me to consider something with more than 20% foliage.

So she’s pretty much given up on trying to sell me the rabbit diet and has now focused on merely getting me off the see-food diet. It maddens her to no end that no matter how perfectly sufficient and self-contained (and delicious!) her dishes are, I continue to suggest the inspired addition of a tin of Vienna sausages.

food, dana

Dana and I missed church last Sunday, but ended up seeing The Constant Gardener the night before. Now the latter doesn’t excuse the former, but man, what a movie — it convicted me the way a good sermon would. Easily in my top five for its artistry and moral outrage. Ralph Fiennes gave a very nuanced performance of a tricky role to pull off; I don’t understand why he wasn’t in the contention for an Oscar. And anyone who saw the movie wouldn’t have tsked Rachel Weisz for a little sermonizing during her Oscar acceptance speech. Africa has indeed become the latrine for the “civilized” world, and this jeremiad should shame the multitude of meaningless mortifications we are proferring there as penance for our sins.

Think this doesn’t happen? Think again. Why do you think medical testing is so popular in India?

If you are looking to make a difference, pray for, fund, and support the real-life Tessa Quayle’s, looking to make a difference: medical missionaries like Scott Kim and Helen Tak.

missions, africa, india, movie, health, medicine, business

WARNING: Scatological humor

I’m a morning person. I wake up early and raring to go, which usually lasts about an hour or two, and then I feel I have to go back to sleep and take a nap. My personal magic hour starts when I wake up of my own accord at around 5 or 6. Unfortunately this golden moment is all too brief, and I often meander off to school exhausted or befuddled because I lost track of time. I was in such latter state the other day, rushing to finish all morning rituals, doing a dance of double-takes gather all my pocket knick knacks and gadgets, fighting my garage door, and, on the road, having my daily forehead slap, this time for neglecting to take out the trash. Turns out, though, that there was one more thing I forgot.

I forgot to flush the toilet. No. 2, not No. 1.

Yes, indeedy. My poor long-suffering wife, who’s not a morning person but a light sleeper, who is started out of dreamland every time I stumble out of bed and every time I forget there’s a second alarm, who must occasionally drag herself out of bed to aid in a particularly frustrating bout with the garage door, who then struggles to go back to rest and respite for the next few hours, who finally comes to at around 9 (or 10 or 11), was stopped in her tracks in our narrow hallway by a disturbing odor.

“Surely that is not what I think it is.”

Her mind now rapt and alert, considers the possibilities. Is it possible that Tom now wrought something so foul and potent that it has continued to linger for this long? Or…surely not.

Oh, but it was. Later, I profusely apologized. Later still, this exchange was heard in the Kim household:

D: “Does your stomach hurt?”

T: “No. Why?”

D: “Because you’ve got the nastiest poo.”

T: “It’s like that all the time.”

D: “How can it possibly be like that all the time? … It’s not proper.”

But it could have been worse. I’ve had some piles that… well, let’s just say that not only do I look pregnant, but I’ve already given birth to a pair of repulsive twins. There was a run when, for several mornings, it looked like a meteor had landed in the toilet bowl, still steaming from re-entry. Easily a 3, 4, 5 flusher. And I’m sparing you the gory details.

I had one of those suckers while I had ‘roids, and I literally ran screaming out of the bathroom, tugging at Dana to protect me from the unholy abomination I had ejected.

gross, humor, dana-ism?, morning

WARNING: What follows is somewhat morbidly funny. As many of her old friends know, Dana is not a very deliberate conversationalist, and so she’ll occasionally say a spoonerism, malapropism, yogi-ism, or straight up inappropriate comment. I’m a big fan of her Dana-isms, but this particular one, if you weren’t familiar with the tone of the exchange or the character of the speaker, might be construed as somewhat tasteless. Please try to take it in good faith and humor. If you can’t, I encourage you to buy a Tony Thomas t-shirt in protest.

The following takes place while eating chatting over cheese steaks at the U. Penn food court:

Me: “…Oh and $15 to buy a Tony Thomas t-shirt.”

Dana: “But he’s dead.”

Me: “…uh, the Leukemia Foundation.”

Dana: “Oh. Okay.”

dana-ism, humor

From the March 17, 2006 issue of Life magazine. By Charles Coxe. A sidebar to the article, “X Marks the Spot.”

These six legendary treasures remain unclaimed. Maybe one has your name on it.

1. The Unbroken Code
   Adventurer Thomas Jefferson Beale claimed that he and some friends uncovered 3,000 pounds of gold out West, which they then buried in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1819 and 1821. Beale left behind three papers — written in a complex code — that are said to lead to the booty. One document has been deciphered, using the Declaration of Independence, but any treausre is still at large.
2. The Knights of the Golden Circle
   This secretive group (rumored to have included bandit Jesse James) is believed by some to have stored caches of gold and weapons throughout the South to finance a southern resurgence after the Civil War. Though some gold has surfaced, no mother lode has yet been discovered.
3. The Lost Dutchman Mine
   According to legend, a Mexican family had unearthed a fortune in a gold mine in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains… but then its members were ambushed by Apaches in the 1840s. Thirty years later, a mysterious “Dutchman” (actually a German) reportedly found and buried some of this stash, which hunters have sought ever since.
4. The Czar’s Fortune
   In 1909, the RMS Republic set sail for Russia — possibly carrying five tons of gold coins (now worth as much as $1.6 billion), intended to prop up the regime of the soon-to-be-deposed Czar Nicholas II. A collision sank the ship 50 miles south of Nantucket. The wreck was located in 1981, but no gold has been salvaged, so far.
5. The I-52
   This Japanese submarine, carrying two tons of gold to buy military technology from Germany, was sunk in the Atlantic in 1944. It lies 17,000 feet down — a mile deeper than the Titanic. A box hauled up from the wreckage in 1998 contained only opium.
6. Crater of Diamonds
   It’s not undiscovered, but this ex-commercial diamond mine — now run as an Arkansas state park where anybody can dig — still harbors choice chunks of ice. In 1977, a man with a shovel unearthed a 4.25-carat rock, which Hillary Clinton wore to her husband’s two presidential inaugurations.

writing, inspiration, story, archaeology, history, adventure

You think you know, but you have no idea…

Link: The Asian Success Formula

humor, video, youtube, asian-american, grade