Okay, I haven't been blogging so much lately, and when I have, it's been some drunken ramblings or videos of dumb rock bands or youtube clips from TV shows that you may or may not have see.

I can't blame anyone who may have stopped reading.

So I'll try a post tonight, on this Friday night (Saturday morning, actually). It's sweltering here in the Chez de Showbiz. I've kept the air conditioning off as I generally use it as a last resort. It drives up the power bill and is foul and unnatural. I much prefer an open window, but that subjects me to the din of traffic hissing from the overly busy street below, as well as a dusting of deisel fume grime and toxic worksite dust from the half-formed apartment city across the way.

This is my fifth year here on THE PENINSULA (good Gawd), and July is always the month of wet misery, as the monsoon always hits on the seventh month. This year has been wetter and nastier than any I've yet experienced, with torrential rain and punishing muginess slapping us down on a nearly daily basis. Yesterday morning was the worst I've seen. The rain came as an all-encompassing, grey mass, turning the streets into literal rivers. I limped my motorcycle through the wadis on a crosstown ride, testing out my new rain gear, revelling in the chaos of mother nature. While I do no jig when a Bangladeshi cyclone drowns thousands, I sap a certain satisfaction when mother nature cold cocks us and shuts down our shit. Anytime that school is cancelled and businesses are closed due to weather is a great time to get drunk, laid, or both. Such events awaken our primal instincts. They remind us that all of this concrete and glass and plastic we've constructed are flimsy materials at best; that our systems of economics and government are fragile institutions; that our dependable utilities and well-stocked stores may not always be so.

As far as writing, it's one of those things I do in spurts, like other unmentionable habits. It seems that I've become minorly "discovered" here in Korea, and I'm now being asked to pump out content for a number of semi-obscure websites and low-budget publications. I say "yes" to them all and am even sometimes paid paltry sums, but this all takes away from blogging time, in theory. I now have a backlog of about four articles that I've promised to deliver in the next week. Oops. I made a boo-boo. But this is OK. I work well with deadlines. They're about only thing that really make me work.

But I love this blog. It's all over the map. It's never included in any "Korean blog rolls" - it gets no respect from the K-blogosphere literati. It's silly, angry, irrelevant, drunken, self-indulgent, and rarely ever deals with "Korean issues." But I know that it's well-read and, at times, well-written. I like it because it's pretty much "performance writing." I love writing, but I'm a performer first and foremost. I actually like audiences. I like response. I have no interest in obscurity.

The real truth is that lately I've been teaching my ass off and spend the remainder of my time chilling with my girlfriend (세지야), or getting caned down the pub. That's it, really. Writing is a solitairy venture, and I find myself alone less and less these days, despite the fact that I live solo with two cats, both of whom have the common courtesy not to bite me or claw up my leg when I'm typing at the keyboard.

In more SHOWBIZZY NEWS...

I've been back on the comedy stage, of late. I consider this to be a good thing. Two weeks ago I did gigs here in Busan and Gimhae, and tomorrow I'm doing another show in Seoul, at the Kabinett Wine Bar/Restaurant in Itaewon. This thing has been pimped in all of the English-language press and is sold out, with a 50+ person waiting list, or so I'm told. I'll go do my thing and probably get drunker than a hundred Indians afterwards, which is really par for the course for any trip to Seoul I make, if the truth be told... which is the only thing I know how to tell... truthfully.