Why am I watching Deep Space Nine? It's not because it's particularly good Star Trek. It's somewhere between the hokey feel-goodiness of The Next Generation and the one-worldiness of Voyager. With none of the intermening charm.

Episode 13: "Battle Lines." Kira Norice, I CANNOT DEAL with your feelings. Or your horrific fake crying. In this one, our intrepid Commander, Major Kira, and a joyriding Dr. Bashir take the Bajoran Lady Pope through the wormhole for reasons that I assume are completely logical. They crash-land on a moon where everyone who dies immediately comes back to life, including Bajoran Lady Pope. Nobody thinks to just take away everyone's weapons while they're dead, proving once again that I would make the best Star Trek captain in future history. This deathless moon thing doesn't explain why two eternally warring races, the Ennis and the Nol-Ennis, are still trying to kill each other, except maybe as an extension of the Bajorans-as-space-Arabs metaphor... except that the two violent tribes aren't Bajoran; they're dirty, mostly silent red shirts in greasy wigs and fairly decent scar makeup. How they got these scars when they heal every time they die is a mystery to me. The Bajoran Lady Pope wanders around looking popey, babbling about a prophecy and consoling Kira, who's extra emotional about her natural tendency toward violence. Commander Sisko debates everyone into the ground and plays fast and loose with the Prime Directive in classic Picardian fashion. There's lots of strangely bloodless stabbings, grunty fight scenes and things on fire, which I guess indicates that this is a Super Serious War Zone. Dax and Chief O'Brien make incredibly boring crosstalk on the rescue mission. Bashir does science and experiences the ensuing moral conflict, which he tries to solve with genocide but eventually gives up on. Bajoran Lady Pope decides to stop the war single-handedly and takes the last spoken line to let us all know that she's going to be coming back for a cameo later in the series.

In other news, I went to Itaewon for the first time today! It was weird; somehow I was expecting the streets to be filled with foreigners, like in Chinatowns in the US, but the foreigner population was just increased from 1% to maybe 10%. I bought a ton of clothes that will actually fit me from OKBT, a women's plus-size outlet. Thinking about going back for some shoes.

I also bought KFC, my first real Western meal since I got here a month ago, and it was incredibly delicious. I never had it in the States, so I can't tell if it's authentic, but that didn't stop me from wolfing down an entire box of it in the subway station, trying to ignore the vaguely repelled not-stares of various Koreans around me. (Koreans never stare or make a scene in public, despite being a [generally speaking] highly emotionally charged people. They are capable of ignoring just about anything on the subway, including, a couple weeks ago, my uncle drinking a plastic cup half-full of Scotch after a Christmas party.) Halfway through said box of chicken, a Korean man who spoke English made awkward conversation with me. After a few comments about "world-famous chicken!" he left me alone. Usually I like it when Koreans talk to me out of the blue, but this time I really just wanted to stuff as much chicken into my face as possible.

Some Koreans think all Americans are adorable, even fat, unattractive ones eating chicken in the Line 6 subway -- I get a lot of random stares from children and old people because I look very Caucasian with my blonde (for Korea) hair, blue eyes and fair skin. In a culture where just about everyone has the same coloring, a huge leap out of the normal order of things shows up a lot more than a single Asian person in a room full of white Americans would.