I'm in a time hole today. I walked downtown, walked around for a bit, went to kyobo to buy a cd, and then took the train back to susung-gu, and the whole venture only killed an hour. it felt like ages, what with the weekend crowding downtown. I don't know if I will ever again be as frustrated with new york crowds, after having known the horror that is downtown daegu on a beautiful saturday afternoon. it's basically impossible for me to function under such circumstances. so I came to the pc bang, and I feel like I've been in here forever, but it's only been an hour and a half.

I may have sucessfully scared off my air force admirer. we exchanged a few emails for the purpose of him giving me feedback on my writing. I was annoyed, because after I sent him the story (one that I'm not partucularly attached to anyway), he sent me this long disclaimer about how his feedback would be completely honest, he doesn't gloss over things, etc. "not that your story is bad," he said. at the end he said "if you still want my feedback, let me know." I was annoyed for a few reasons. for one thing, I wouldn't be asking for feedback if I didn't want honesty. I resent the assumption that I'm fragile enough to be bothered by an honest critique. also, when we discussed books at the bar last friday, his description of his literary tastes was something along the line of "I read everything from Tom Clancy to Nora Roberts." not word for word, but the idea was the same. this is where my literary snobbery comes in. I'm sorry, but I am just not going to be crushed if someone whose preferred form of reading is mass market paperbacks thinks that my story is bad. so I sent him an email back saying "bring it on," mentioning the fact that I've taken part in many a writing workshop and that I have a lot of writer friends and I'm used to critiquing. so he sent me his feedback, and surprisingly it was actually really helpful. he articulated a few problems in my writing that I was vaguely aware of but wasn't sure how to pin point. but I couldn't shake the annoyance from his original disclaimer. I mean, I guess it's a good idea. there are plenty of people running around calling theselves writers, pulling that card out in a bar to impress people but not actually engaging in the nuts and bolts of writing and revising. those people might be offended by an honest critique. and I suppose that since I deliberately sent him something unpolished, he had no way of knowing whether or not I was one of those people. but still. you read tom clancy. come on.
at the end of the feedback email, he asked me tell him something about myself, saying that he found me intriguing and wanted to know more about me. he added that he felt like a sap writing that, as though it was something sensitive...that kind of annoyed me too. so I wrote him back and condensed my last few years in new york into a paragraph...the break-ups, the couch hopping, jack's death, everything that has affected me the past few years. basically saying "hey, I'm a huge walking heap of issues, you should probably run the other way." which may or may not be true. I don't really think it's true. it's just that I don't want to deal with trying to date anyone right now, especially not a 34 year old who's in the air force, spouts semi-racist generalizations, and reads tom clancy. I don't care how good his taste in music is.
so yeah, I haven't heard back from him since the last email, which is why I say I may have successfully scared him off. I'm probably a bitch, and this is probably why I'm going to be 40 and not married, but I just don't want to waste my time when I am annoyed by someone off the bat. I know what I don't want, and I'm not going to compromise.

we won't talk about my recently-developed crush on christopher meloni (who plays detective stabler on s.v.u.). this seems to be a pattern, my attraction to prematurely balding men with nice arms. go figure.