Pink Tentacle has a report on a Japanese man, who after his relationship with a silicone doll had run its course after several years, tried to dispose of the body in a wooded area. I guess he never saw Shallow Grave.

On August 21, the 60-year-old unemployed resident of Izu (Shizuoka prefecture) wrapped his 1.7-meter tall, 50-kilogram silicone girlfriend in a sleeping bag, drove to a remote wooded area, and dumped her. A nice, clean break, he thought.
But nearly two weeks later, on September 1, a couple alerted police after discovering what appeared to be a corpse while walking their dog. The body had been wrapped in a bag and bound around the neck, waist and ankles. A head of black hair protruded from one end of the bag.

Apparently a plan to move in with one of his children put an end to the relationship.

Incidentally the title comes from a text message a friend of mine in Seoul sent his ex-girlfriend over the weekend. They more or less broke up two weeks ago, but had agreed to talk after a month break. However, my friend quickly understood he’d made the right decision, and when she sent him a text message asking him to tell her whether or not there was any chance to get back together he replied with the above title.  

I mention this ancedote  not to  make light of the situation, or to celebrate my friend dumping a woman. I didn’t care for the woman much and think my friend made the right decision. My “friend” doesn’t read East Windup Chronicle because he has no interest in baseball.

In fact he met her last summer at a food cart while teaching at a Korean university. It was his second day in Korea. After  six weeks he went back to the states and  kept in touch with the  woman  for eight months before getting offered a job at the same university and moving to Korea. I don’t think his decision to move here was entirely based on being with the woman, but it probably played a small part. During those eight months he more or less acted as if they were still together, even though she rarely contacted him, I think,  because she assumed  the situation was too good to be true.

But once he’d moved here he eventually realized how different they were. She’s an activist, does two volunteer jobs, and delivers juice to offices from 6-12 in the morning to subsist. Noble? Perhaps on some level. However, from my own experience, activists  can easily put whatever cause is occupying them at the moment  ahead of anything and everything. I think being in a relationship with an activist could be tyring and over time my friend lost whatever romantic notions he’d held about her occupation/hobby. At one point he’d even rationalized her being  hit on the head by a police baton at an anti-U.S. beef demonstration. But at some point he  began to realize he was lying to himself. That he was continually trying to get back to those initial six weeks. To get back to that night  at the food cart in downtown Seoul. As it turned out, the food cart was  owned by a woman whose husband  is in jail for murder of a policeman.  He’d killed the policeman at a demonstration during the 1990s and the food cart is a regular watering hole of radical Korean activists.

My friend had just happened upon it one night.  

Mostly I just wanted to commemorate the text message.