let the countdown begin!

Technically it's already begun—you've probably noticed that cute little widget over on the right. However, the gears have finally meshed. Two days ago I received my passport back from the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, stamped with a shiny new E-2 work visa classifying me as a "foreign instructor," and guaranteeing me a one-year sojourn. This was the last piece of paperwork that I needed. I can flash this little honey in the faces of the Korean immigration officials, waltz through customs, and enter South Korea as a legal immigrant. All of my ducks are in a row. I could leave tomorrow if they wanted me.

But they want me on February 7. After a little jockeying, some back-and-forth nonsense, a glut of vacillation and a smidgen of misinformation, the date of my departure was finalized. I am, needless to say, tremendously excited. The contents of my room (stuffed into way too many heavy cardboard boxes) are safely tucked away in a storage unit in town. My suitcases are half-packed, and all the equipment I'm bringing with me has been inventoried and set aside. Decks of cards (three normal decks and a pinochle set); my grooming kit; shoeshine supplies; hat brushes; journals and notebooks; battery chargers; plug adapters; packs of gum; medicines and taco seasoning; and, perhaps most important of all, books. I've got all my cocktail recipe books with me, and some stuff about card games, and my Worst Case Scenario: Travel guide.

And then are the works of fiction I've selected. Sapsucker that I am, I neglected to choose these volumes before packing up my personal library, so I had to go back through the boxes and mine these buggers out of the tenebrous depths.

They are:

• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, which I'm reading now.

I've read Heart of Darkness before, but that was years ago, in school, and I didn't pay it much attention because I was too busy trying to avoid having my upper body dunked into a trash can. Like Moby-Dick, I have attempted to read Frankenstein repeatedly, but always petered out near the end of the first chapter. The Great Shark Hunt (also known as The Gonzo Papers, Volume One) is Thompson's true account of his adventures as a drug-addled gonzo journalist in a country turned upside-down by chemicals, counterculture, rock 'n' roll, political corruption, and war. (The Sixties, in other words.) Skeletons on the Zahara is likewise nonfiction: a tale of woe, desperation, suffering and privation regarding the crew of the American brig Commerce, shipwrecked off the coast of West Africa in 1814 and sold into slavery by Saharan nomads.  It's pretty good so far. Should be a good read on the plane, if I don't finish it before that.

Speaking of books, I am so far behind on my book reviews that it ain't even funny. Okay, maybe it is a bit funny. But that's beside the point. I'll spare you a long, dull, wordy series of reviews that you undoubtedly wouldn't have the patience to read. Instead, I'll review each book in one sentence:

• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: A breathlessly suspenseful epic and yet also a sinewy and hard-lined analysis of patriotism, military service, war, and human conflict, in the guise of a rollicking good science fiction tale about well-trained space soldiers in powered armor battling hideous alien bugs. 9/10
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: Journalist and inveterate traveler Krakauer details and examines the life, motivations, adventures and ultimate downfall of the ill-fated super-tramp Christopher McCandless. 9/10
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson: An excoriating satire of drug culture, chemically-enhanced ramblings, and late 20th-century vice in the world's most sinful city—sportswriter Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, speed off to Las Vegas in a giant red convertible and a trunk full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. 8/10
• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: A powerful, gut-wrenching, no-holds-barred peek into the lives of black folks in the American South in 1959...seen through the eyes of white novelist Griffin himself, who darkened his skin artificially and set off to the South to find out the truth about the "Negro Problem." The truth is viscerally shocking. 7/10

There. Now you know what I've been reading. Incidentally, I've never read any of these books before. I don't know what took me so long to get around to Starship Troopers. Perhaps it was the awful movie adaptation. Thankfully I set my prejudice aside and read the book, which, as I understand, is required reading at West Point, and a great favorite among the 75th Ranger Battalion (the guys who fought through hell in Mogadishu in 1993). Now if only Barack Obama and the Democratic Party would read it...[sigh]...

And finally, since I will become an immigrant (emigrant?) in ten days, I'll leave you with a little song. Yes, yes, I know. I should be using "The Final Countdown" or something, but I hate that song. So take it away, Zep.