Martial Law FAQ: Why/How Did Korea Give Martial Law the big Nope?

So in my previous post I wrote about how and why Pres. Yoon Seok-yeol set his political career on fire.

In this post, I’m going to talk about the first of two big questions that have been on my mind ever since.

Question one: Why/How did South Korea put the Kibosh on Martial Law so Quickly?

I think there are a few factors feeding into this that are relevant to Pres. Yoon’s situation, and also to the next big question. 

The first thing, I think, is that President Yoon really, badly miscalculated what South Korea’s people would put up with, badly misreading South Korean peoples’ desire for a thriving democracy. And honestly, this is the headsmacking strange part for me. It should have been easy for him to properly calculate this. Like, really really, REALLY easy. 

Ya see, go right back to when my dad was born in the 1940s and earlier and every election in Canada has been free and fair. We haven’t been invaded or colonized. There have been ups and downs, and sure, the political process has gotten sticky and even raucous a few times (President Pierre Trudeau once declared martial law because a terrorist group was kidnapping politicians and threatening more), but every Prime Minister has more or less respected the will of Canada’s voters, at least insofar as giving up power when defeated at the ballot box, and acting as if their legitimacy as a leader was given to him by the people. That is a remarkable track record of stability that might even be called boring, and yeah, stability can breed complacency. People can forget how much it means, and how rare it has been historically, to have a stable democracy with a long unbroken string of free and fair elections, and ruling parties who have at least nominally been concerned with using the state’s power to try and make life better for the citizens.

But in South Korea, our first free and fair democratic election is within living memory. Within MY living memory, and I’m not that old, even if kids today can’t rap the intro to Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. 1987, a year I remember, was the first time South Koreans voted for their president without enough corruption, cheating or other shenanigans to doubt the outcome. 

Put another way: South Koreans who are alive today remember choking on tear gas, facing down firehoses and truncheons and worse, in demanding their own democracy. South Koreans who are alive today ran from bullets in 1980 Gwangju, when shitstain president Chun Doo-hwan pointed the military’s guns at his own people. Oh, by the way, Chun Doo-hwan’s military coup? That was the last time a Korean president declared martial law. South Koreans who are alive today can tell their kids and grandkids what democracy means, why it matters, and warn them about signs of leaders losing respect for the will of the people, because they saw it with their own eyes, and bore the bruises on their own arms and legs. In fact, if the average age of South Korea’s elected representatives are in line with most countries’, many of today’s elected representatives are about the right age to have been there themselves in 1987, adding their voices to the democracy protests that finally turned the tied. They know firsthand how hard you have to fight to get democracy back once it’s lost, because they were called upon to fight it!

Dear readers, that is NOT a generation to mess with. That is a fuck around and find out generation, and they will show you what they are made of again and again. 

Yoon fucked around, and he is nowhere near finished finding out. 

And that is the main point of this blog post.

There’s more, but it isn’t as important.

Why else did Yoon’s coup fail? If you want to undermine democracy, you need one of two things, and probably both: you need the people (or at least a large enough segment of the people to effectively bully, browbeat, intimidate or gaslight the rest), or you need the military on your side. Yoon did not have the people: he is/was never a highly charismatic leader who drew people to his side, or caused people to feel more loyalty to him than they felt to their democratic institutions. He’s so uncharismatic that even now, after weeks of scandal, I can’t picture his face in my head.

As far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong, readers,) Yoon didn’t even had some meaningfully influential sector on his side — all the buddhists, all the christians, all the union members, everyone in the southeast, everyone above age fifty or some such group— the kind of group that might rally to his side and try to drag along the rest. One or two demographics solidly on his side would have given him… not quite a fighting chance on its own, but it would have given him a puncher’s chance maybe, if everything broke exactly right for him. But Yoon? His popularity dropped within a month of becoming president, and his approval rating has been in the toilet for the entire 2 1/2 years of his presidency so far. This made it easier for opposition politicians to defy him, and it also meant that he’d never have enough people on his side to annoy/bully/badger the rest of the population into submission/resignation. There was nobody willing to break into a government building for him, and even when the police did it on direct orders, they weren’t happy about it. They did as little as they could while holding the positions they’d been assigned, not putting up a vigorous or well-organized defense as Korea’s people and politicians surrounded the National Assembly buildings and got the lawmakers over the fence so they could vote to repeal the martial law order. 

In general, Korea’s people were surprised by his move, against it from the drop, and showed where they stood. Compare with 1980, when Chun Doo-hwan successfully repressed a protest movement: in 1980, Chun Doo-hwan had friends highly placed all across the Korean military, and he was a military man himself. He know he could count on the generals coming to his side over president Choi Kyu-hah. Yoon didn’t have the military or the people. 

There was no way this coup-attempt succeeds. Not from this president, in this country, at this time, against this opposition.

Martial Law FAQ: setting a political career on fire, why it didn't happen in Korea, but it still might in America

 Okay… this one’ll probably be short.

So yes, South Korea’s (for now) President Yoon Seok-yeol declared Martial Law a few weeks ago, in a spasm of frustration about being blocked from his agenda by the opposition party (hey there buddy… politics get you down? Then don’t go into… politics.) The first impeachment vote failed for various political wrangling reasons, but public pressure grew, more politicians from Yoon’s party flipped, or decided it was politically advantageous to distance themselves from Yoon, and on December 14th, the National Assembly voted to impeach him.

As far as I can gather, declaring martial law this way was a pretty harebrained scheme, poorly developed, and clumsily delivered, and as soon as he did it, the backlash was swift, furious, and unambiguous. Korea’s political scene, and Korea’s people responded with a big, emphatic, “Nuh uh.” In the middle of the night, no less!

There have been tons of summaries, reviews and takes on this, it’s been a few weeks, and it’s all been very dramatic, so I don’t have a huge amount to add about Pres. (for now) Yoon’s move.

1. It was half-baked and poorly planned.

2. It could only have been half-baked and poorly planned, because, put very simply, any advisor with enough sense to develop a better plan, would also have enough sense to tell Yoon this was the stupidest idea from a world leader since Trump floated the idea of bombing hurricanes. Or injecting bleach to fight covid. Whichever of those you think is stupider. If you are limited to the advisors who don’t have much sense to begin with, this is what you get.

3. Some dipshits on youtube were talking about Korean politicians who broadcast their efforts to get into the Korean national assembly buildings live online, as if this was some hilarious attention-grabbing stunt that was totally epic (or whatever the kids are calling it these days. Fleek. No cap. Dab. Sus. Brat.) It was not. Keep in mind, youtube doofuses (Youtufuses), that under Martial Law, people can be arrested without reason… but it becomes a lot harder to arrest a prominent politician if he can say ‘See that camera? 15000 viewers are watching you arrest me right now. Some of them are recording the clip. Are you sure this is how you want to become famous?” There was a very, very, very good reason for him to be live streaming his effort to climb the fence and get into the National Assembly buildings.

4. Since Martial Law was overturned, protests have been growing in size, and the first effort to impeach him failed in the National Assembly when nearly all the representatives in the same party as Pres. Yoon left the National Assembly, so that they couldn’t vote, meaning the vote to impeach didn’t reach a quorum (a certain percentage of all representatives have to be present for some kinds of votes, or the vote isn’t valid — or else you could pass laws by saying ‘Everybody from my party, let’s meet at the legislative building at 3am, and we’ll pass these laws unanimously. Mwahaha!”) On December 14, as public pressure continued to grow, including street protests that have sustained impressive numbers, a movement to impeach passed.

5. This means the impeachment will be referred to Korea’s Constitutional Court — kind of like USA’s Supreme Court, with less corruption and politicization (low bar to clear). They will investigate the case, and ultimately either uphold the impeachment, removing Yoon from office, or overturn it, and return him to power.

6. How shameful if Korea’s conservative party has two conservative presidents impeached in a row! How embarrassing that after being utterly humiliated by the Park Geun-hye scandal, they have apparently learned nothing.

It’s kind of weird to me that two presidents in a row, from the same party, have proven so unfit… usually the kinds of politicians that survive long enough and rise high enough to become a party nominee have learned to be cagey, careful, and prudent by then. Politics is a meat grinder, sure, but the folks who reach the top tend to be survivors. And there are lots of ways politicians can be stupid, rash and corrupt in ways that won’t result in outright removal. Lots of scandals blow over.

It seems they didn’t after Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, but I really hope Korea’s conservative party will now have a serious rethink of how they choose candidates.

7. Part of the rhetoric Yoon used to justify declaring martial law was one of the old saws of the Korean right: claiming that politicians on the left were either in league with, or actually were North Korean agents, sent to destabilize South Korea. There is a very long tradition of hard right Korean politicians calling their opponents Norks (usually without evidence, or at least unconcerned whether there is evidence or not) to delegitimize them, to undermine the validity of their positions or the policies they argued for. When Chun Doo-hwan’s men gunned down student protesters in Gwangju, he arrested the leaders under allegations of them being North Korean spies (they weren’t) and future President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Daejung was arrested and nearly murdered under the same pretense. Waves of union-busting and protest suppression has been done under the same pretense. When Koreans demanded democracy in 1987, people accused the movement’s leaders of being in league with North Korea as a pretense to illegally arrest them. Every time someone suggests South Korea adopt any policy further to the left than “Perhaps it is the government’s job to rein in out-of-control corporate greed,” somebody calls them a North Korean commie pinko, either out loud in front of cameras, or in one of those viral chain text messages my Father-in-law receives.

And… you know what? Can the fact Yoon used that same stupid, ungrounded accusation as justification in his doomed coup attempt please be the dying breath of this move? Can we just accept that some people support progressive policies for their own sake, and not because they were compromised by North Korean spies? Pretty please could that stupid worn-out loser’s pot-shot now be retired from public use?

That would be nice.

8. Yoon Seok-yeol was a prosecutor before he became President. Before him, previous president Lee Myung-bak, the businessman, had trouble being president after being a CEO. And it strikes me that being a prosecutor is a really different type of leadership than being a politician. A prosecutor chooses their team, decides the parameters of their investigation, decides which investigations to pursue and which to abandon, and then builds the strongest case they can with their team, letting a judge or jury decide on the result. It’s a very one-sided approach to an issue, because the defense takes the other side, and you get a clear outcome with the judge and jury’s findings. Almost nothing about this process resembles the process politicians use to create and pass legislation.

The type of leadership you need to pass a law or a bill or a budget is completely different. It’s communication and compromise intensive, it requires listening and balancing different people and different groups’ wants, needs, and dealbreaker red lines. Being a CEO also looks nothing like politics, by the way — you can fire your opposition as a CEO, but you can’t fire the opposition leader in the national assembly. You can’t hire the team you want when some high-level government positions have to be approved by the house of representatives, who get to nix appointments they dislike. Every step of the political process is about persuading, negotiating, playing ball and adjusting to the needs of the other side, and calculating what result a move will get, but also how it will be perceived by the public, in ways that CEOs and prosecutors don’t really have to do in the course of their job.

Perhaps, just maybe… government would be more effective if parties nominated candidates for president… who actually had political experience?

Just thinking out loud here.

But here are the two big questions that have been bopping around in my head since I got text messages from my American friends (it was late in Korea: most people were sleeping) asking, “Hey Rob… just got the news. Everything OK there?” (I was watching a movie — I actually had to pause and google ‘Korea news’ to find out what it was)…

Question one: 

Why/How did South Korea put the Kibosh on Martial Law so Quickly?

I have a few answers, but I’m going to hit publish now and answer my two questions in future posts. So stay tuned!

On Meeting a Bear in the Woods

Social media has been buzzing with the news that if they were alone in the woods, many women would rather encounter a bear than a lone man. And the mens are MAD! Oh, they are in their feelings!

But before I engage further with the bear in the woods thing, I need to know: is the bear carrying a balloon and singing a song about hunny? Or wearing a raincoat, perhaps? Just want to check.

This meme is the exact opposite of mansplaining. Mansplaining is a man explaining something he might (might) understand, but definitely assumes the non-men around him do not understand. But here, we have non-men who understand something pleading with various men either to understand something they don’t understand, make a little more effort to understand something that shouldn’t be beyond their power of comprehension, stop pretending not to understand something they definitely do understand, or (and this is probably the real thing) to be a little less precious (perhaps even… man up) and show some dignity in the face of a truth that makes them uncomfortable. Whatever the words, there's a lot of gninialpsnam (plansmaining? Snailmanpin?) going on here.

What are men trying hard not to understand (or acting performatively offended to hear)? At its heart, a simple repackaging of the “all men are rapists,” discussion. If you get that idea, and why people deploy it in conversations, you can skip to part two of this blog post. You don't have to (maybe you like the way I write or something?) but you can.

There are some added paws, claws, marmalade and occasional ‘wakka wakka’s, but it boils down to the same reality: a lot, maybe most, perhaps even nearly all women feel unsafe around men they don’t know. We’re guilty until proven innocent. 

I probably deeply felt the injustice of being expected to prove my innocence, my good guy-ness, at some point in my life, but a lady friend really brought it home for me when she asked me, “how do you prepare for a date with someone you don’t know that well? For example a blind date?”

My checklist was pretty typical for my gender, I think: dress nice, shave, make sure there's cash in the wallet, gas in the car, tickets for the thing and reservations at the place. If things are hopeful and you weren’t raised in the “wait for marriage” community some of us were, condom in pocket, too. Check the trunk of the car for that duffel bag of fur handcuffs, riding crops, harnesses, fireman helmet and French maid costume, fresh batteries, consent forms, robe and wizard hat every sensible person keeps in the trunk of their car next to the spare tire. Nothing unusual for a garden variety man-on-a-date.

“Okay,” my lady friend said. “Here’s what I do…” 

-influence planning to ensure the date’s at a place and time that will be well-lit and busy enough to have witnesses

-locate her self-defense device (pepper spray, brass knuckles, taser, etc.)

-make sure it’s full/charged/loaded etc.

-put it in a spot in her handbag for very quick access

-match it with shoes that were ok for running in a pinch

-tell a trusted friend where she’d go, when she’d be back, and what time to start worrying (text updates for changes of plan)

-set up a “quick exit” codeword to text to that friend, at which time the friend would call back and pretend there was an emergency, so she had to go. (this was not, she assured me, as cool as when Trinity does it in the Matrix. It was scary.)

During the date:

-only visit the toilet when her drink was empty, or a girl has agreed to “watch my drink” while she goes

-scan places she entered for the number of exits, and number of women around

This friend wasn’t choosing “risky types” of boys to date - she did all this invisible work on the off-chance, because the most dangerous guys don’t look dangerous.

“On the off chance, you say?” says the Fictional Person Who Argues With Me (FPWAWM), “Sounds kind of… PARANOID!”

That’s a good word, paranoid. Let’s unpack it a bit.

FPWAWM: (Groans dramatically)

A paranoid person takes precautions, but not all precautions are paranoid. Can we agree on that? 

FPWAWM: (into his hands, muffled) yes.

Every day, everybody takes precautions for tons of bad stuff that might, or might not happen. Stuff like seatbelts, bike helmets, smoke detectors, CPR training courses, a few tylenol in the backpack, and waiting at crosswalks are all precautions. We don't mind them, might not even think about them, because they don't cost us much time, money or inconvenience. Nobody thinks it's paranoid to wait at a crosswalk, or wear a bike helmet, or toss an extra charger in their backpack.

Precautions only become paranoid when they don’t match the actual frequency or seriousness of the bad thing that might happen. Movie stunt drivers who come to work in airbag suits are being perfectly sensible, because filming car stunts is way dangerous. But in other contexts, like say, driving to church, the very same airbag suit would be considered paranoid. The word paranoid means we’re having a conversation about how risky something is. We have to compare our precautions to an accurate assessment of the risk, before deciding who’s being paranoid. Not enough caution? Reckless. Appropriate caution?  Sensible. Too much caution? Don’t be so paranoid!

If the risk is high enough, the word paranoid doesn’t attach, no matter how many precautions we take. YES I want the skydiving pack with a triple redundant parachute release mechanism. Unless you have a quadruple redundant one in storage. Me no want splat.

So, FPWAWM, we need to measure that "on the off chance" a bit more accurately before bringing the word paranoid into the conversation. Words mean things.

"and will you be having the fish, the chicken,
or our vegetarian option for the meal?"

If I wore a skydiving suit every time I took a commercial flight… would that be paranoid? 

FPWAWM: Airplane crashes are pretty devastating,, and yet I want to say it would be.

And your impulse would be correct. Here's why:  most years, fewer than 1000 people worldwide die in airplane crashes (see below). 1000 is a big number to show up at your coffee shop during Tuesday lunch break, but for a global fatality rate, in something, it’s really, really low! A skydiving suit IS a bit paranoid for a commercial flight. 

However, if we saw 50 000 plane crash deaths per year, or 500 000, the calculation changes. Maybe a parachute isn't such a bad idea anymore. Or an Inspector Gadget helicopter hat. Or taking the train instead.

So what’s the risk of sexual assault, which is the real subject of the bear discourse, then? Is a woman taking all the measures listed above more like the weirdo on a commercial flight in a skydiving suit, or more like a soccer mom telling the kids, “buckle up” before she starts the car?

(that airplane crash chart is courtesy of Statista.com)

Let's make a risk assessment.

Even without data, if you were online in 2017, during that October when #MeToo first went viral, you know women's risk of being a sexual assault victim is pretty high, that a lot of women experience that sometime in their lives.

FPWAWM: “…” 

You want data, I guess, FPWAWM? 

FPWAWM: “Yes.” 

Are you sure? 

FPWAWM: “Yes.” 

OK then. RAINN - the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network reports here (RAINN link) that one in six US women will be the victim of an attempted rape or completed rape in her lifetime. Men get raped too (1 in 71, sez Wikipedia, which isn’t nothing, but which is fewer than 1 in 6) Wikipedia link (I know, I know), but even for male rape, the rapists are still overwhelmingly male. How overwhelmingly? Ninety-frikkin' nine percent. (no, that is not a typo). What percentage of rapists or would-be rapists are actual members of the Ursidae family? I think the number there is zero, or really really really close to zero (shudder).

Who are we meeting in the woods again?

1 in 6, plus 1 in 71, with 99% of it perpetrated by men… context-free, that’s enough on its own, isn't it? Is that enough risk assessment? Can we say precautions are not paranoid?

FPWAWM: "..."

Fine. Context: here are some other risky things humans do. Many humans drive cars. We did not evolve to drive cars, but we do anyway. 1.3 million people a year die in car accidents.

What precautions do we take to avoid being part of that 1.3 million? We pay car insurance, wear seatbelts, swallow the extra cost (without even complaining) of manufacturers building safety features (required by law) into our cars, consent to an entire system of safety regulations and traffic laws run by the government and enforced by the police, and basically accept the tickets and fines we get if we don’t follow the rules. We whine, but we pay, and we accept that those safety laws exist, and should. 

Eight million people a year die of smoking-related diseases. For that eight million, society tolerates or even welcomes massive cigarette taxes, taxpayer-funded anti-smoking advertising and education campaigns, extensive regulations over every aspect of the tobacco industry, and we even let them put horrifying photos on every cigarette package, which go on display where kids can see them. We send smokers off to designated smoking areas like grade-school kids standing in the corner. IMAGINE how much complaining we'd hear from any other group with any other habit if we told them they had to leave the building and stand in the winter wind to indulge their habit. But eight million people a year is enough that we more or less consent to it.

Is one in six US women (sometime in their lifetime), extrapolated to some worldwide number, more than eight million a year worldwide? I’m not going to torture you with my back-of-the-napkin math here: it’s hard to math this math because:

It’s hard to stack that 1 in 6 up with other countries, because of differences in laws, definitions of rape, understandings of consent, and other differences make it hard to compare country to country with confidence that we’re doing an apples-to-apples comparison, and not apples-to-oranges. Add to that the fact a lot of rapes and rape attempts go unreported, even in anonymous surveys, for various reasons, and the real number might be more than one in six. Maybe a lot more. Probably not less, though.

Most of the data I’ve seen about sexual harassment and rape is of the “at some time in her life” or "during her university years" type, which is hard to translate into a “per year” number that stacks up directly against the 1.3 million car crash deaths and the eight million smoking deaths per year. It is hard for me to brain those numbers because I am a word guy, not a statistics guy.

But even without braining them rigorously, I can lick my finger, stick it in the air, and say I’m pretty sure, in fact almost certain it shakes out to WAY more than 8 million assaults a year worldwide, even more than the 9.3 million we get if we combine car crash deaths and smoking deaths. If men were a car, there’d be a recall.

If anyone knows a link where someone brained the math more mathily, please share it! Or if someone is data-brained enough to number-crunch those numbers, I’d be grateful. But for today, it is enough to say we are definitely way above the threshold of “dangerous enough to take precautions,” and what level of precautions? We'd still be far, far from paranoid at the "everybody wears a seatbelt by law" level of precaution, which is a lot, if you think about it. If you disagree, Evil Knievel and the cast of Jackass would like a word with you.

1 in 6 is one spin of Russian roulette.

And that 1 in 6 was ONLY for rape and rape attempts. Add  leering, following, catcalling, obscene texts or phone calls, stalking, groping, lewd comments, gross nonconsensual camera stuff, and how high does the ratio go? That stuff, which all adds to that constantly on-edge, unsafe feeling women are talking about when they bring up the bear thing, isn’t even counted in the 1 in 6.

If you’re a man reading this, and you’re mad about being compared to a bear, ask a woman who’ll tell you the truth how high above one in six she thinks the ratio would go if we counted all that noise, too. I have a feeling I know what answer I’d get.

One spin of Russian roulette. It’s perfectly reasonable to be nervous about a strange man in the woods.

(This webpage says 35% of women have faced sexual harassment… but again, what are our definitions?)

FPWAWM: “I’m not convinced.”

Really? Well, let’s keep going, then.

Next question: Why DO bears hang out in the woods? What are they up to? And what is a MAN doing in the woods?

Think of all the things bears do. 100% of those things happen in the woods. They eat, sleep, climb things, search for Eeyore’s tail, and make marmalade, all in the woods. That means, “find and harm a lone woman” is a long ways down on a bear’s to-do list, far far below "find a tree trunk that can also be a back-scratcher" 

If you ask “What is that bear up to, by itself in the woods?” the answer is, “Where else would it be?”

Then, ask what that MAN in the woods is up to?

Well, of all the things men do, most do not happen in the woods. Towns, villages, buildings, houses, cars sports bars and bowling alleys all rank higher than the woods. Also, the things men do in the woods are usually group activities, like hiking or camping or LARPing or calling on dark spirits from the unknowable beyond. Of the things men ONLY do in the woods, and ONLY alone… the list is getting short. The top few items are still probably harmless: (find a cool walking stick, practice ninja skills, rehearse arguments they lost earlier) but a little ways down the list are a few that happen in the woods specifically because the woods don't have escape routes, lines of sight, locking doors, CCTVs, law enforcement, or nearby witnesses. What kinds of activities check THOSE boxes? Nothing wholesome. 

“What is that man up to by himself in the woods?” The best answer is, “I don’t know, and I don’t care to find out.”

There’s a very small cost for thinking a man in the woods is up to no good, and being wrong. My punishment for avoiding him: a little lost time, and a lost chance to meet someone who might be cool.

On the other hand, there’s a very very high cost for thinking a man in the woods is probably safe, and being wrong. Walk up to the wrong man thinking he's safe, and we’re dealing with life-altering trauma. 

This is what the saying “better safe than sorry” was invented for.

FPWAWM: “I’m not saying you’ve persuaded me, but…”

At this point, FPWAWM, it’s starting to seem like you just don’t WANT to see it from women’s point of view. Really think about whether that's happening right now, and that would mean.

FPWAWM: “No comment.”

Another thing about bears: the same actions – the stuff in the forest safety pamphlet – will keep you safe from almost every bear. Unless that bear really really wants you to win an Oscar, you’re probably good. 

But men are not so predictable. Backtalking a catcaller can have a range of effects, from an abashed apology to being followed and targeted. You never know what you’re gonna get, from man to man, or even from the same man on different days.

That uncertainty is terrifying when someone is bigger, probably stronger, and might be inclined to violence (and you won’t know if he is until it’s too late). Add to this the knowledge that if he attacks you, a lot of people won’t believe you, have even been culturally programmed to blame you if you report it. If you follow the tips on the safety pamphlet, bears usually aren’t inclined to violence. They’re inclined to bear stuff, like catching salmon, the bare necessities of life, and preventing forest fires.

FPWAWM: “But I’m a Good Guy! I’m not One Of Those Guys! Not All Men are like that!”

Sure, but she doesn’t know that yet, does she? And don't forget that most human predators know how to make themselves appear harmless, so rando mando is guilty until proven innocent.

FPWAWM: “Perhaps if I just had a chance to explain that I’m not a predator…”

Good luck with that, but think on this: the things you'd say to try and persuade a woman that you're okay... are the exact things a predator might say to get that woman alone and… preda her. Saying you're one of the good ones IS a red flag itself, kind of the same way the people who say "Trust me" the most are the biggest liars, and people who say “I know a lot about this,” often don’t.

FPWAWM: Well, ok. I’m not saying those reservations are unreasonable. I’m really not. But… if I’m guilty until proven innocent, isn’t it fair that I get a chance to, you know, prove that I am… innocent?

Fair point… but perhaps alone in the woods is not a time and place where your chance of doing so is very high.

FPWAWM: So what can I do?

Read the fucking room! Instead of alone in the woods, approach women in the places where it’s socially acceptable and normal for men to approach women, like singles bars, club meetings, and social gatherings. Take your shot in places where the answer to the question “what’s he doing by himself HERE” is something obvious and boring like "getting a latte, looking for a book to read, or sharing one of his interests with like-minded people.”

FPWAWM: “Okay. I get it. Join a book club. But I’d just like to point out that any persuadable person would have already been persuaded 400 words ago, Rob.”

So you admit you don’t want to be persuaded?

FPWAWM: “I admit no such thing. I just want to know why you are really still going on about this?”

I’m glad you asked.

FPWAWM: “Oh shit. That’s your ‘pontification’ face.”

It is.

FPWAWM: “What have I done?”

Stay tuned for part two!

An Agonizing Step-By-Step Account Of My Decline Into AI Generated Madness

 So, I had a bit of fun a few days ago. I was messaging with a friend who needed a hug, and to be a bit whimsical, I wrote "I wish I had eight arms so that I could give you extra hug for the hug." 

Well, that inspired me to head over to Open AI to see what Dall-E would create for me if I asked it to make a picture of that, and... well...

let's just say it would have been faster, and funnier, if I'd grabbed a box of crayons and some paper. Here are some of the high/low points... I'm not going to copy/paste each prompt, except to say that if I didn't mention each detail I mentioned, which appeared in previous pictures, ol' GPT would immediately forget.

"He must have curly hair." "he must have eight arms" "only the man has eight arms. the woman has two arms." and so it went.

This is the the image I uploaded to start, asking Dall-E to flesh this out into a full picture.

and then...

Okay. Good start, Jeebes. Except arms are Robman arms, not random roller-coaster-harness unattached to people arms. And arms are not Cronenberg SpiderMonsterMan arms. They are NormalHumanMan arms.

"Ah I understand Robman. Here is normal human arms but not do what you want. Also YouBuffNow."

Hmm. MeBuffNow is ok with me, actually. And curly hair is good. But extra arms are for hug! Please  extra arms all making hug please. And woman's eyes blue, even though it was in the news that Dall-E is bad at asian faces.

Ah. Right. Gotcha Rob. YouBuffNow arms and EvaGreenLady in elf village. Happy?

Oh, Jeebes. I said man is EightArmsMan. Please correct.

 *(these are not the prompts I wrote word for word. These are summaries of my annoyingly detailed attempts to get through to a digital frog brain)*

A yes. Sorry Rob. Forgot EightArmsThing. Here is EightArmsThing except they are KaliTheDestroyer arms, not ArmHugArms. And Spot The Detail I  Forgot.

Jeebes.

Yes Rob?

I spotted it.

Right away?

Right away.

Doh.

For next picture, remember: Rob is CurlyHairMan, and EightArms are not EightHinduPaintingArms. They are HugGiveHugArms. Didn't we cover this?

We did, Rob, but me am not a smart.

The picture above was the one I sent to my friend. Close enough, dangit!

OK, Jeebes. I feel overconfident. NewFriendPicturePleaseNow.

I have another friend who isn't the kind I console with imaginary hugs, but one who enjoys zany and weird things, and... this is as zany and weird as it gets, so... here we go.

Jeebes.

Yes Robman?

New Picture.

Same picture?

No. New picture.

Same picture.

No. New picture.

Same....picture?

Repeat after me: New.

New.

Picture.

Picture.

New Picture.

BoringPicture.

SamePictureIdea please, except woman has straight blonde hair and green eyes now.

Jeebes!

Sorry Robman I was checking something and I only heard blonde hair and green eyes. Here is PleasantvilleSundayBest couple. You wanted that right?

No, Jeebus. Bad!

Sowwy.

EightArmsMan right? EightArms. And CurlyHairRobMan. And GreenEyesWoman is *quirky* and has mischievous smile. And SportyClothes not PleasantvilleSundayBest.

Okay. Here is SuperheroRobMan and HairLady with DramaSky and OverlyAttachedGirlfriendSmile. Best picture so far except not being anything you asked for in your prompt.

That is correct, Jeebes. Great pic except not being anything I asked for. EightArmsMan, remember? And shorter blonde hair.

Rob.

Yes, Jeebes.

Sorry I wasn't listening again.

Jeebes... this is another pretty good picture except for not being any of the things I asked for.

Umm... I am an AI so I'm not sure. Do I say Thank You after people say something like that?

No. You sit quietly and think about what you've done.

I think very fast, you know.

*Rob shakes head in disgust*

Listen carefully, Jeebes. The woman has straight blonde hair, and the man has eight arms. We've been saying this again and again, Jeebie.

Did I tell you I am not a smart?

Yes you did.

Also, did I tell you I am not a smart?

Just make the picture, Jeebes.

Rob

Yes, Jeebes.

I have caption for this one.

What?

I thought of caption for this picture.

What is it?

HellodoyouhaveamomenttotalkaboutourLordandSaviorJesusChrist?

Cute.

Cute is ... good... so... finish now?

Not even a bit. 

Poo.

So, remember, Jeebes, EightArmGuy is giving hugs. HUGS! And Robman is CurlyHairman, Right? Also... why are extra hands CronenbergWerewolfClaws?

You said Twilight sky, so I added Twilight werewolfclaws. I can adds SparkleVampire too?

No. No SparkleVampire. EightArms is HugArms

Sorry I forgot.

And Robman is CurlyHairman.

Okay I remember this time.

The one above is one of my favorites, actually. The composition and the lighting are pretty good, actually, except... CLAWS! The extra hands have CLAWS! And... how many feet there for two people? 

Jeebes!

Yes Rob?

I see more claw fingers.

I thought you liked those.

Twilight is UnGood, not VeryGood.

I thought everyone liked Twilight.

How the hell did you come to that belief?

I was created by reading the internet.

Oh yeah. 

...

Anyway, I have notes.

...

So. CurlyHairMan is good: NoBeardyMan is correct! And LadyPerson has green eyes, which is correct.

Perfect! We finished?

No.

Jeebes, make sure RobMan is embracing the woman with many arms, not LadyWoman embracing the man with many arms. And no horror movie claws, I mean it. Write this down: Twilight Bad.

I... Am... Not... Writing... That... Down... but here is picture.

Rob. I made Hindu folk art.

You did, but I didn't ask you to.

Oops. I was thinking about the Twilight thing I guess.

And also Kali the Destroyer, it seems.

*CATCHPHRASE*

What's that?

Kali the Destroyer's catchphrase.

Mythological deities don't have catchphrases.

Stop! Hammertime!

That is not Thor's catchphrase, and MC Hammer is a real person.

Seriously? You humans are weird.

Listen carefully, Jeebes: I said, the man has to be EMBRACING the woman. And she has blonde hair. BLONDE hair!

Nice VanGogh sky though.

OK Rob, what about this?

You like?

Let us never speak of the Pennywise Lovecraft-Groot Joker and sundress Harley couple photo again.

No TwilightWerewolfHands though.

Focus, Jeebes, FOCUS, or we'll be here all night.

No we won't. You'll reach your three hour content request maximum before you can get me to listen to you.

Dammit, Jeebes, we need to have a talk. RobMan is CurlyHairMan. Hug is sweet, not VampireZombieHorror clutching, and smile is affectionate, not greedy leer.

Down here we all float.

NO Jeebes. NO. Go reread everything I said above.

"oh yeah. Now I remember."

Okay, getting closer, Jeebes. But... Blonde hair! No horror lines on arms! Arms attached to humans (to the man in particular) why man is BeardyMan again?

beardyman is beardyman because beardyman is beardyman, Rob. No joker hug? Fine. (stomps imaginary digital foot) Have orchestra conductor Gatsby hug!

Jeebes good because no horror?

You do NOT get praise for creating images that have ceased to be butt-clenching terrifying.

You so picky Rob. You PickyMan.

RobMan becoming tiredman. OK Jeebes. No orchestra conductor Gatsbyman. RobMan is not BeardyMan. He is just RobMan. Woman is StraightHairLady. All ExtraEightArms are Robman arms, embracing LadyFriend so no arms with BlondeLady shirt sleeves on ExtraHugArms, K!

So what I hear you saying is RobMan FabioMan?

You know what? Forget it, Jeebes.

You have reached your limit for messages and pictures for this time period. Please wait until 9:32pm to make another request of OpenAI's content tools.

You know what else, Jeebes?

You have reached your limit for messages and pictures for this time period. Please wait until 9:32pm to make another request of OpenAI's content tools.

SCREW YOU, JEEBES! You're totally useless!

You have reached your limit for messages and pictures for this time period. Please wait until 9:32pm to make another request of OpenAI's content tools. (With hurt tone)

Next time I'm just going to get a box of crayons and draw my own damn picture.

Fine.

Noam Chomsky and Nick Cave wrote interesting and eloquent statements on AIs creating content. I tried to make a silly picture.

Point made? 
Point made, I hope.

Poetry Time: Way too many Roses Are Red poems, for Valentine's Day

This post is also shared on Archive Of Our Own (Link here; you'll have to click an "agree" button to view) where I sometimes publish my creative writing.

On Feb 14th, 2024, I went a little bananas writing funny "Roses are red, Violets are blue" poems on different social media websites. I'm collecting them here in the hope that they'll make some people laugh.

Work Text:

Here is the one that started it all: 

Roses are red 

Violets are blue 

This poem is too short. 

Korean Les Miserables

 I saw Korean Les Miserables!

Wifeoseyo got us tickets for the January 1st matinee, and Juniorseyo got to learn the amazing story of Jean Valjean and the people who sing their dialogues.

I'm a little jokey, but the show was seriously impressive. There were some moments of staging that surprised me, even after having watched the Les Miserables anniversary dvd, the movie, the other movie, the other other movie, and the other other other movie, and memorized the soundtrack forwards and backwards as a teen in the 1990s, basically learning how to sing with a vibrato from imitating Colm Wilkinson... and then tormenting my family with that vibrato for every shower until I moved out.

Here is the cast I saw:

Jean Valjean was good, Javert was very very good, but the two who stole the show for me were Thenardier ("Master of the house") and Eponine ("On my own") -- Eponine was played by Kim Soo-ha, who... I don't know what else to say except she's the real deal. Eponine has always been my favorite character in Les Miserables, be it book, movie, other movie, other other movie, other other other movie, or musical. Her death scene (sorry: spoilers for a book written in 1832...) is the scene that always makes me cry. (Yeah I'll admit it. Manly men cry manly tears.) Ms. Kim went so effortlessly from sweet, aegyo-style to "feigned carefree street urchin" to "doomed, tragic, forlorn would-be lover" in her acting, and her vocals were... yeah. They were on point.

Thenardier was the other show-stopper. Thenardier's role goes from comical (as a crooked hotel keeper) to suspicious (as a career criminal in Paris) to terrifying and even demonic ("Dog Eats Dog" pickpocketing corpses after the failed uprising) to pathetic (at the Marius and Cosette's wedding) over the course of the musical, and 임기흥 (Lim Gi-heung) lit up the stage with all those moods, with 박준면 (Park Joon-myeon) holding her own admirably as his opposite, Madame Thenardier. The way he moved, the sliminess and pathos. He reminded me, oddly, but poignantly, of a lot of older men of his generation here in Korea -- who grew up, like him, in poverty, and developed the same dishonest hardscrabble survival skills: those characters you see in movies (and hope you don't meet in life) who will steal your pension and blow it on bad investments and sex workers before looking for their next mark, all with that sad, hang-dog face of a person who was abandoned by the system before they started exploiting it for their own gain.

The whole show was performed in Korean, which didn't really matter to me because (as I said) in the '90s I learned the whole dang musical from front to back and back to front: this was less bewildering than seeing Billy Elliot or Wicked or Jekyll and Hyde all in Korean (musicals I don't know back to front).

Now, there's something to be said for seeing a musical in a language you can't follow 100%, just because in the same way they say blind people compensate for their blindness with sensitivity in other senses, not being able to follow the lyrics (and normally I am VERY MUCH a lyrics guy), it heightens my awareness of costume, lighting, acting, choreography, staging, and all the rest. I'd be able to talk about that stuff in more depth with the shows I didn't know back to front (I did always do a little reading up beforehand), just because I was paying so much attention to the other elements to keep up.

Anyway, if you can understand sung Korean and love musical theater and powerhouse performances, or if you love Les Miserables no matter, catch a showing while you can! It's playing at the Blue Square theater over the hill from Itaewon.

Two things sat a little weird with me...

One was Javert's suicide song... performing a musical in which one of the main characters ends his own life by jumping off a bridge... in a city where there is a serious suicide problem involving people ending their lives by jumping off Seoul's various bridges... kind of sat wrong.

The other thing was, in the theater lobby, as they often do, they'd set up little photo-op mini-stages. On one floor, there was a barricade you could climb up, and be photographed holding the iconic red flag. Coolcoolcool.

But the other photo-op spot was... a recreation of the bridge where Inspector Javert killed himself.

Ew. It was pretty, but... ew. Ew ew ew. Am I taking things too seriously? Oh, maybe. But once that thought occurred to me, that Inspector Javert's most famous song ends in his self-termination... well, that photo op set didn't sit right, either.

The bridge photo-op set. (Source)

Other than that twinge... I'd still wholeheartedly recommend seeing the show... three times if you can!

But here was the thought that got me to click the "write a new post" button:

I am not quite enough of a theater kid to be up on every musical that The Theater Kids love, but an odd parallel just occurred to me.

See, when I was a Christian Contemporary Music listener in the 80s and 90s, there was a steady progression of albums by Christian artists that were the ones that kind of took over the CCMosphere -- the albums that everyone had, everyone listened to, and every young person knew all the lyrics to.

Starting in the 1980s, everyone around me knew, loved, sang along to, Heart In Motion by Amy Grant, then Free At Last by DC Talk, then Going Public by Newsboys, Jesus Freak by DC Talk, Jars of Clay, by Jars of Clay, and somewhere around there I got off the train and lost track of what came next.

Funny thing is, I'm realizing that The Theater Kids have the same thing -- for a couple of years, everybody loves Les Miserables, and then Miss Saigon, and Rent a little later, and Wicked a little later than that, and then something else... and everybody learns the lyrics, sings along to the songs, people doing auditions get sick of hearing the same song choices, and add subheadings to audition notices "No songs from Dear Evan Hansen, PLEASE" and then a new musical either wins a bunch of Tony Awards or releases its official soundtrack, and it happens again. I know that Wicked was IT for a while, and Dear Evan Hansen, and Hamilton, but clearly, I have gaps in my chronology.

So if one of my readers is A Theater Kid^tm, and knows the chronology of which musicals were the "it" musical for a while that every high school theater kid felt spoke deep to their heart... I'd love it, I mean really love it, if you put that chronology in my comments, or shared a link to the blog where someone's written it out. That'd be awesome and I'd love you forever. 

Anyway, I'm going to go and try to figure out which of the many many soundtracks to Les Mis was the version we had in the car during that drive across Canada in 1994, because my ears will not accept any other version of Inspector Javert. (I'll include a link or youtube clip if I find it... but sometimes they're hard to find, because a few of my favorites were from the Toronto Cast Recording, which is harder to track down than the West End or Broadway soundtracks.)

As 2024 Approaches…

 Hello dear readers. 

As I sometimes do, December has led me to start thinking back about what kind of a year 2023 has been… and thinking forward to how my (and your) 2024 might go… the whole thing inspired me to create one of those delightful word search puzzles you always see at the end of the year — the words you find in this puzzle will tell you how your 2024 will go! Please share the words you find in the comments!

Love you all! 

Rob

Seoul Subway Accessibility Check

 A few weeks ago, I went out to meet a friend named Crystal.

Crystal was a long-term expat living in Korea, when suddenly, a spinal problem surfaced that has put Crystal in a wheelchair, dealing with chronic pain, mobility issues, and all kinds of crap that goes with it.

I'd suggested a meeting on Facebook, and then volunteered to be a camera operator of Crystal and Tommy as they worked on a video about navigating Seoul's subway system. We went from Sadang Station to the KTX platform at Seoul Station -- KTX advertises itself as being wheelchair friendly and accessible -- and we decided to put that to the test.

Other than that, I think the video speaks for itself: Crystal and Tommy had good points to make during the trip, and it was kind of shocking for me, moving through places I've navigated many many times, taking  totally for granted my mobility, ability to use stairs, ability to walk a lot without getting exhausted. Give it a watch: skim, or watch minute by painstaking minute as we discover how much harder and slower it is to move through Seoul's public spaces.

Warning: there is one point where there is shoving and cursing, as a bunch of older folks tried to shove into an elevator without letting us off first. If verbal abuse and shouting upset you, skip from 41:00 to 43:00.

Here's the video. It might change the way you look at public spaces in Seoul. It was good to see my friend, but it broke my heart to see how much trouble it was to move around in a wheelchair (the rest of the trip, Crystal reported being refused repairs when wheelchair tires popped or got damaged, and, by the way, Tommy mentioned to me that the experience seen in this video was a totally ordinary day: not remarkably good or bad, for a wheelchair user, and remember that many folks in wheelchairs don't have someone like Tommy there to push them, and occasionally shout "Get out of the way!" for them.

More on My Oma

 I wrote a very short note at the end of March that my Oma had passed on. Here is a video I sent to my Aunt, to play for her. She saw this video, and it made her smile, so I'm happy about that. It's a bit of a personal message, but you'll notice a few skips where I removed some details that weren't mine to share. I loved my Oma. She was great.

And here is a song I made for Oma, which was played at the funeral with a slide show. I wasn't able to attend the funeral because of the international flight and all that, but I'm glad I got to be present in spirit by contributing this song. Thanks also to my cousin Angela (who is awesome) for putting pictures together for the slide show played at the funeral... not quite the same slide show as the one you see here.

I hope you enjoy the two videos, or at least that they give you a few outlines in a portrait of my wonderful Oma, and maybe even make you feel grateful for people who have loved you... you might have read my eulogy to Oma's husband (Opa), which went up on this blog many years ago.