Expat Community: Time to Pitch in.

It's time to get up, get out, and help one of our own.

Brian has more details, including HOW you can help, in the case of a South African English teacher who was burned in an apartment fire.

Read here

Read here

Here is instructions on how you can help the family with donations. I think you should. I'm gonna.

Join the Facebook group for updates.

or this one, if you read Afrikaans.

Prop 8: The Musical

When Obama was elected, California also put gay marriage to a referendum, and it was banned by the voters.

In response, musical theater composer Marc Shaiman wrote "Prop 8, the Musical" and got a ridonkulous cast to join him to film it.

Keep your eyes open for a whole swack of famous people, including John C. Reilley, Jack Black, Margaret Cho (there's our Korea connection) and Doogie Howser himself, Neil Patrick Harris.

Wherever you stand on the Gay marriage issue, it's pretty awesome: go watch it.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Personally, I think the Christian right is in the wrong here: as I wrote in my essay series, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins," part Four, when I was writing a prescription for how organized religion can return to true relevance on the world scene:

9: Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?

Enough pontification for today.

Watch the clip. It's awesome.

Roboseyo's K-Blogs of the Month: November and December

So bein' busy and all, I didn't quite get around to my K-Blogger of the month award for November. My bad.

To make up for it, today I will give you two K-Bloggers worthy of recognition.

The first one is well-known around the K-blogs, but I'd like to take a moment to say something nice about Korea Beat anyway. See, Korea Beat's blog is simple: the layout is simple, the premise is simple, but Korea Beat does something really valuable, by regularly, consistently translating articles from the Korean media into English. Even takes requests.

The article choices range from goofy to noteworthy, celebrity news, stuff relevant to the expat community, examples of horrible journalism, to weird court cases, the occasional (usually bizarre) picture, and serious stuff, and provide a look at Korea, from the horse's mouth. I'm especially fond of the weekly "Most-Read Naver Stories Of The Week" series, where Korea Beat recaps the articles on Naver, Korea's most popular web portal, which received the most hits this week. There isn't a huge amount of pontification (kind of the opposite of mine, where I'm about never current, but always have lots to say about whatever story I'm late to the game on), but I'd have to say Korea Beat is one of the most reliable Korea Blogs out there. Give it a look, if you haven't already.

So, that's November covered.

Next, I'd like to draw your attention to another newcomer.

One nice thing about doing a K-Blogger of the Month series is the same thing that sucks about living as an expat in Korea:

See, there are so many comings and goings that even if you DO know where it's at for a while, people are constantly going home, showing up, losing interest, and such, so that keeping your bearings on where your friends are at here, and staying on top of K-Blogs is a bit like doing a foxtrot on the deck of a sailboat on choppy seas. My second year in Korea was the hardest for this personally, because all my first-year friendships, which I approached the same way I approached friendships back home (on the assumption they'd be around for a while) moved on to wherever else, faded away, lost touch, you know. For building lasting friendships, this sucks. However, for finding new blogs doing interesting stuff that deserve a look, it's great. It's also a bit of hope for bloggers plugging away in obscurity: other than the very few of us who are here for the long haul, eventually, several, many, maybe most of the blogs that currently get more hits than yours, will repatriate or move on, so all you have to so is stick around, keep making worthwhile stuff, and eventually you'll make it on the list. Sure, you're not gonna pass some of the ones who started ages ago, who have been in Korea, and possibly writing about Korea, since the days when people had to know how to write HTML code to have a blog, but other than them, you'll get there.

That said, a blog I like these days is OK Korea. It's a very new blog, only posting since October, with a really nice look and layout. OK Korea posts a lot of photos, and slice of life video clips, with a very "Hey! Look what I saw!" kind of feel. OK Korea isn't (as far as I know) a professional photographer or anything, but does know where to point the camera to get a look at Korea's fun wrinkles and quirks, without feeling the need to add the kind of "Koreans are weird" commentary that some bloggers throw in there whenever they show something different from How Things Are Back Home.  So once again, go give OK Korea a look; won't take you long to read the posts, because they're not text-heavy, so have some fun and add it to your RSS feed.

Now it's late and I'm sleepy.

Have a good one, all.

-rob

By the way: if you want to be a Roboseyo K-Blog of the month, send me an e-mail with your link, and three reasons why I should feature you, in less than a hundred words.  What do you bring to the table?  That failing, I regularly graze at the Korean Blog List and add a few newcomers to my RSS feeds, so get your name on there, and if you catch my eye, you'll be a candidate.  From there: write a good blog.  It's that easy, really.

It's getting to be that time of season.

Here's a cheerful little christmas video for you.



(and here are my real thoughts about what you just watched:)

Snowed this morning in Seoul.

Here are more thoughts about Christmas music, especially ... dum da da dum!

My dream Christmas Playlist!

Photo Dump

More of the cool light show at the Jens Lekman concert.

Ahh hongdae.  How I love you, and not just your one, but your FOUR ho bars.

Odd, vaguely dirty sign of the day.
Obviously they pulled up the sidewalk blocks, and then put them back down in the wrong spots, creating this funny, exploding zebra effect where there used to be parking lines.
Problem with living in the city: when you KNOW there's a gorgeous sunset going on somewhere, but the buildings are just blocking it all up anyway, so the best you get is a gorgeous cloud's edge and some lovely light on the side of a building, and a monster-tease.

This empty house, on the edge of a construction site, probably slated for destruction, and hollowed right out, had a really melancholy feel.  I had to set the lens and exposure time on maximum, and hold the camera perfectly still for eight seconds (harder than it sounds) to get this clear picture: it was actually dark as a mushroom farm out there.  Meanwhile, I had the most melancholy song on my entire MP3 player buzzing in my ears, just to make the whole thing a little sadder again.

My humidifier looked nice in the morning sunlight.


From the Hire a Proofreader, Nimrod! files:
:)

that's all for now.

-roboseyo

Jens Lekman Continues to Make Me Happy

Two topics I intentionally shy away from blogging about are music and food, because if I DO start talking about them, I'll cease to talk about anything else.

But, inspired by Jens Lekman's concert on Saturday night, I downloaded a bunch more Jens, and man, he makes me happy.  The torrent included a whole whack of rare stuff and eps, which is fun, because it means I can go through it all, and my new, super-big computer hard drive (350 gigs is more than I can even imagine needing, unless I decide to download the entire AFI top 100 films or something silly like that), along with an 80 gig IPod, means I can load up on stuff, where I used to have to delete things in order to avoid topping out my old laptop.  And it's fun having music on your Ipod that isn't all already familiar to you: there's the potential something will surprise you.

Plus, when walking around town, it helps to have entire albums, or even several entire albums, from an artist, instead of just the one song you like, because the after hearing a single song, you have to go find another album you want to hear, so it's GOOD to have more by your artists, instead of just keeping the best two or three songs.

Now, I don't have a lot of musical training, other than a semester of voice lessons, two semesters of choir in university, and a lot of hours in the shower annoying my brother, I couldn't really tell you which musicians are using the most interesting time signatures or harmonic intervals: I respond to music primarily emotionally, kind of like a more nuanced Beavis and Butthead: "This sucks.  This is cool."

So, while I respond to poetry and lyrical excellence (strangely enough, in the laced rhymes and rhythms of an Eminem song as much as in a poem/song by Leonard Cohen), I couldn't care much less about Steve Vai's technical skill as he shreds on his guitar, unless those 64th and 128th notes have an emotional impact that creates a feeling in me.  

So, all that said, Jens might not be the best singer or musician, and I don't really care...but I know that, walking around at night alone, I have felt EXACTLY the way this song sounds.

(I've set it to some of my favorite roboseyo photography moments).

Enjoy it.

Recently, 

Elvis Costello: Imperial Bedroom

Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics

Polyphonic Spree: The Beginning Stages Of...

Mugison: Mugiboogie

Camper Van Beethoven: Key Lime Pie

David Byrne: Grown Backwards (especially his duet with Rufus Wainwright, Au Fond du Temple Saint)

are some of the albums/releases that have been bringing me much joy since I revisited them, or gave them another try.

(Yes, David Byrne, from The Talking Heads, founder of "The David Byrne School of Dancing" [where you dance as weirdly as you can] features on that list.  Give it a try.)

Here's david, weird dancing in what might be his most famous song.

More from Korea's Favorite International Journalist

Joo Hee Cho, known for smearing English teachers on ABC News with the kind of junk that's usually reserved for the local media (profile here), is back, with this hard-hitting report on road safety in Korea.

(warning: innocuous puff piece ahead)


Good to know when she isn't bandying about stereotyped retreads (read her article, "English Teachers Bring Drugs to Korea"), Ms. Cho is asking the tough questions about Korea's domestic issues as well.

ht to Rate My Hogwan

I'm trying to think of a way to link the story above to this next one without being rude...but I got nothing.

What a headline, though:

Survey: Korean Men World's Most Selfish In Bed

naw. not gonna say it. too easy.

Where's Kim Jong-Il?

Kim Jong-Il lives! Kim Jong-Il is alive and well! I have photo evidence! I have documentary proof! (My favourite new internet meme.)

OK. Here's the deal.

Kim Jong-Il sightings have been popping up ever since reports about his deteriorating health made headlines in August. This is funny to me, because I actually used to teach him back in my Kindergarten Teaching days.

It's time for a repository.

3 Alley Pub hired a new bartender.

RateMyHogwan reports on a Mr. Kim who opened a new English school near Kangnam.

An official photo.

The latest official batch.

Theme Magazine

Photoshop contest from SomethingAwful

More.

From Worth1000

My personal favorite: the first documented evidence that Kim Jong-Il is a disco demigod!


If you have seen Kim Jong-Il, please fire me an e-mail, or post it in the comments. Dang, that video was great!

Jens Lekman at Freebird

Yesterday night I saw Jens Lekman sing at Freebird in Hongdae. It's rare enough that the kinds of artists I like play in Korea, because I generally go for the indie, undergroud, DIY songwriter stuff that doesn't show up on a noraebang playlist, so when Jens came, I had to try and catch him.

He was good. First off, if I can rock a receding hairline as well as he does, I'll be in good shape if I ever lose my hair. Second, that mopey crooney voice, along with fun arrangements, some bouncy twee pop and a light touch, made for a night of good music, if not the kind of thundrous arena rock which has people spinning out their car tires in the concert hall parking lot.

Finally, I swear, two thirds or more of the females there had epic crushes on this cat... which goes to show what you can do if you have a moon-spoon-croon kind of voice. If you don't know Jens Lekman, you should give him a try: his last two albums have both been listenable, clever, fun music that isn't too intrusive on your Sunday afternoon tea.


It was fun; I for one, particularly enjoyed the light show, and of course, I made a video.


He's playing again tonight at 7pm in FF Club, a few doors down from Jokerred, in Hongdae, if you're in the area. Catch him if you can: who knows when the next time a sensitive but fun hipster whispery white-bread crooner-songwriter my-girlfriend-has-a-huge-crush-on-this-pop-singer-with-widows-peaks-who-wears-plaid-collared-t-shirts-in-publicity-photos will come to town. (Sufjan Stevens, anyone?)

Ssomi and Roboseyo

For you, Joe. I liked this one a lot.

You probably got here by googling "Robosayo"

But my name's "Roboseyo"

Regardless, enjoy the website.

:)

The final say on How To Order Takeout In Korea

So Tuesday's Borrower and her fiancee sent me a video breaking down the "ordering takeout" conversation that is very informative, and funny, and I edited it to be a bit less chatty, and added a bit of roboseyo spice, because DB don't do that video editing stuff too good. (She's a very good writer, though).
Watch it. It's cute.


then they did a final run-through of the conversation, so you can hear what to expect.


These are a nice companion to the stuff I posted earlier, found by Otto, and done by Mr. Ed.

FIle under WTF: Toys in Dongdaemun Market, Bum Jokes in Korea

Bum and poop jokes are a refined art here in Korea:

see Zenkimchi and Brian for more.  (Especially this one.)

Knowing this makes it no less surprising to come across something like this.

Found in Dongdaemun Market.

Uhh... yeah.

And that's all for today, folks.

Stay warm.

-Rob

Uhh...that's weird.

Blogger analytics tells me that two people found my page by googling "Roboseyo nude" today...

uhh...weird.

Now Brian has a feature on his page where he checks the google search keywords that brought people to his page, and sometimes writes about the things people typed in to learn about, and found their way to his site instead -- to fill in the information gaps, if you will.

I thought I'd be similarly obliging, for my (creepy) fans.

Here you go.  A Roboseyo nude, for whoever that was that wanted it.

Have a good day, weirdo.

*special note: no, just because I obliged this one time, I still will not post photos, no matter how often you google "Roboseyo bestiality gay foot fetish tentacle porn"  Sorry, Evil Jennifer.

-Rob

Dec 2: Update: Somebody googled "Roboseyo Bestiality" three times yesterday. Not gonna do it. Nope.

Making Your Way in Korea: Ordering Food: "Tell Me That's Not Awesome!"

Under the "Awesome Things about Living in Korea" file, Otto Silver, at "I, Foreigner" has a helpful, informative video about ordering food to your home in Korea.  Takeout Delivery is a wonderfully cheap, and convenient part of living in Korea, and it's not hard.

**Update/correction: I am told, by the Otto himself, that it is not him in the video, but simply a video he found online.  My bad.**

Here is Otto's Video [correction: the video otto found], which goes step by step through the process of ordering food, and even tells you what to do with the dishes afterward.

Here's all you need to know:

1.  Enough Korean to read the restaurant menus they stick on your door or hang on your apartment door handle.  (And you have ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for not learning this much Korean, when the Korean lettering system is so easy to learn.  Go here.  Or go here to do it by video.  It's a bit "Golly gee, this is SOOOO simple!" but it's well laid out.  It doesn't take very long, especially compared to how long it took you to read English: King Sejong, the guy who helped design them, said, "These twenty-eight letters are so simple and precise that the wise can master them in one morning and even the fool can learn them in ten days."  So quit your whining, quit procrastinating, and learn them, before we have to get Mr. T to pity you.)

2. The address of your apartment, in Korean.  Get your Korean coworker or your boss to help you with this if you're not sure.

3. The numbers, so you can tell how many of each thing you want.

4. The Korean names of a few foods you like.

Here's all you need to have:

1. A phone.

2. A flyer from a restaurant.

3. A little cash.

4. An appetite.

Otto uses the phrase "Hangug-eo chogum arayo"  "한국어 조금 알아요" which means "I speak a little Korean."  To Otto's very helpful video, I want to add two phrases that would also be useful in this situation (and many others):

"Hangug-eo chal moatt-hae-yo" "한국어 잘 못 해요"= literally, "Korean well can't speak" -- I don't speak Korean well.

and 

"Cheon-cheon-hee mal-hae-juseyo"  "천천히 말해 주세요"= literally, "Slowly speech-make-please" (juseyo actually is the polite form of "give," so it literally means "give me slow speech please" or paraphrased, "please speak slowly"... I'm not sure if that's grammatically perfect...but when you're telling someone you can't speak a language well, bad grammar might help you get the point across more emphatically, anyway.

Here's Mr. Ed, to help you with those two phrases.  The pronunciation is Roboseyo-CanucKorean, rather than perfect Seoul Korean, but it'll get you through.

Have fun ordering your food!

Plus, Otto has a kind of funny address: there's a little squeaker noise in there.  I wonder what neighbourhood he's in: maybe this guy lives nearby.

(Embedding disabled: Hugh Laurie in "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" - a sketch called "Your Name, Sir?"  Watch it.  It's really funny.)

Want something to get mad about? How about this abortion of justice.

 Extended family members look after handicapped girl, repeatedly rape her, get suspended sentence in order to take care of her in lieu of parents.

HT. to Brian in Jeollanamdo, who continues climbing the "Must-read K-blog" charts.  Me, I got nothing.  If I say more then twenty words about this I'm going to lay down a rant so vitriolic that unicorns and elves will be killed by all the evil will and poisonous bile pouring out of me.

Saturday Night Fun-Times

So on Saturday night, The Hub Of Sparkle's first Sparkledown was held near Hansung University, and it was hella fun.  Cheesy McCheesington was there, and her happy, shiny review of the night is more joyful and excited than anything I could write, so I'm just gonna quote from it, as a pretty good reminder of why it's important to expand one's circle of friends and connections while living in Korea, and how much being connected and putting oneself out there (for more than just drinking binges in Hongdae, if possible) enhances one's experience here:

Last night was probably one of my best nights in Seoul. For the past nine months, I've been lugging this sense of isolation and loneliness and un-bliss around inside The Belly. And last night, I feel like the ol' uterus of my soul gave it up and I birthed friends. A community, really. A community of like-minded and beautiful people who drink good beer and have deep, authentic conversation and at the same time have ridiculous non-conversations and laugh really hard at each other because we are happy and not alone. Well, at least, I was happy and not alone.

You should read the rest, too.  In fact, the post before that, where DreamoMcDreamington decides to attend the Sparkledown in the first place, is quite the read as well (skip to the second half).  Wanderchomp Korea, another new K-blog, also attended, and has a similarly great time.  His post was titled, "A Night of Awesome" and it kind of goes from there.  Here's his closing:

Home isn't about a building or a location, it's about the people in your life. I've got my family, and now I have friends. I'd like to think that the Night of Awesome is the start of something special, perhaps a new home for all of us to build together. I hope so.

So, between Danielle's birthing uterus of joy, and Wanderchomp's sense of home and connection, I'd say the night was a success just on that alone.  FatManSeoul took pictures of the whole thing, and I'm looking forward to her finding some new wireless internet to steal in her building, so that she can upload the pics at the Hub Of Sparkle or something.  Until then, here are the pictures I took, which probably won't be as good as hers.  These are also available at the Hub of Sparkle's facebook page.  There were some good conversations, some great laughs, some tasty drinks and side dishes, and then some more great laughs, and some smart people really worth talking to and listening to.

[Update: Kimchi For Breakfast also attended, and finally blogged about it.  You can read here.]

Enough bloggers attended that there was occasional confusion about whether to introduce or address each other by our handles or our real names, exacerbated by the fact Roboseyo really IS my nickname.

So to everyone who came out, Thanks for coming out!  It was really nice to see/meet/hang out with/talk to you (again, where applicable); to everyone who didn't come: whatsamattayou?  Ya missed out, but we'll see you next time, when we choose a larger venue, right?

-rob

Update: FatManSeoul has photos and incriminating evidence up on Flickr and at the Hub of Sparkle.  The flickr album has a handful of good ones, so go see it, and visit FatManSeoul, Korea's best new food blog which updates regularly and actually talks about food.

Korea Goes Viral; Hub of Sparkle Get-Together

Anyway, this video of weirdly dressed dancers in pink spandex, doing their odd performance in various venues around Seoul, was up on Collegehumor.com today.

If they were really savvy, Seoul City would be silently encouraging these kinds of groups to make these kinds of goofy videos featuring Seoul, and sending them out viral-wise on the InterWebs, instead of taking the heavy-handed "Press Release Names Seoul New Hub Of Asian Tourism; Seoul Mayor Expects People to Flock Here on Sheer Power of his Declaration That it Will Be So; Releases Advertising Video that Resembles North Korean Propaganda With More Cellphones" tack.  (OK, it's not QUITE that bad...) Tourism Korea ad 1: come to korea, where everyone has a cellphone, and you can eat side-dishes; Ad 2: Come to the Computer Generated Land of Korea, where Hangeul Characters float around like clouds, and people play traditional instruments over disco basslines, and we're going to try and fit EVERY SINGLE THING we think is cool about Korea into one five-minute ad, while white people make faces of bliss, tasting Korean food; Ad 3 (after World Cup '02): Come to Korea, where Soccer Fans wear traditional masks; Ad 4: Let a star who's famous here, but you unknown to you, convince you to come to Korea.  Ad 5: We can't decide what's the best thing about Korea, so we're going to throw it all up against the wall, and hope something sticks.  (Which, according to Dale Carnegie, is bad sales.)  OK.  Sarcasm off.

An ACTUAL "Tour North Korea" ad, date unknown.

I know what you're thinking: How can I get these guys to pitch MY product?

(I don't know: maybe the Tour Israel people could think of a better way to sell Korea.  They sure know how to raise bloodline pride.)

Of course, everyone knows by now that this Canon Rock-playing baseball-cap-faced Youtube Legend is also a Korean...for a country that loves the internet so much, I wonder if Korea could savvy up to the fact the internet could be a really effective way to increase its visibility in the world through videos and content...and create an image a little more flexible and varied than what people get from official, imperious sounding press releases, newspaper ads, TV spots, and the world news (where Korea always seems to come off looking bad, between associations with North Korea and the economic troubles these days)  It would help if the entire Korean internet, and almost all content about Korea were not sequestered behind Naver and Daum's gilded cage bars (not showing up on google searches), so that my blog comes up higher on Google than most of the content created by citizens of the most wired country in the world. Anyway, ranting about the puzzling techno-ass-backward-ness of Korea (it's a really odd contradiction...) is more Chosun Bimbo's turf than mine, so go there if you want to read some really great vitriol about Korea's addiction to Windows and ActiveX programs.

Second thing:

The Hub Of Sparkle is down with server problems right now (we're working on it), which is a pain, because there's supposed to be a Hub of Sparkle Get-Together tonight, and people might be wanting to check for directions, so I hope they find this instead.

If you're looking for instructions to hang out with the Sparkly People, here's how: 1. you can check for detailed instructions on the Hub of Sparkle's Facebook Page. At six we'll meet at a great spit-roast-barbequed-stuffed-chicken place near Hansung University Station (Seoul Metro, Line 4, exit 6, walk five or seven minutes, look on your right), called Cham Namu Dalk Nara (Gingko Tree Chicken Country), that looks like this. We'll start there, and from there, at 8 (or whenever the crowd gets too big for the little restaurant,) go farther down the road in the same direction to Song's Kitchen (Fatmanseoul wrote about this, but Fatman is also down right now, so here are some pictures I took of it.) You have to go down some stairs into a little hanok gully beside the road, but once you get in there, it's pretty darn cool. This is what it looks like (though it looks much nicer when it's lit up at night, or photographed on a pretty day). Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3 It's a bit of a walk from the station: you have to follow the road around a corner, so don't be worried if you've gone a little ways. You'll know you're close when you pass a bank on your right, and then a spot where the road starts going up, but to the right, there are some Hanok (traditional Korean style) houses whose roofs are at or below the level of the street. (On the left there's a big church.)  If you have trouble finding either spots, there's emergency contact information at The Hub of Sparkle's Facebook page.

Hope to see you there!

-Rob

Ssomi & Hobo is a Very Unfunny Comic

I was on the SeoulPodcast again a little while ago, in a big ol' double-down party podcast loaded with a whack of cool K-bloggers and other assorted Korea personalities.  Go check it out.  It's shorter than the last one, and everybody's a bit giddy, because we recorded it the evening after Obama was elected, but I enjoyed listening to it, and maybe you will too.

Next item: so, some people looked at some of the very unfunny comic strips out there, and decided they needed to be mercilessly mocked.

So Scott Meets Family Circus, and makes it funny again.
Garfield Without Garfield is an incredibly sad portrait of Jon's actual loserness...and it's funnier without its titular character than with.
And Marmaduke explained is awesome too. At least, it was a year ago, when I first came across it.

Well, Ssomi & Hobo is a comic that appears daily in the Korea Herald.  Now, whether it is actually funny in the Korean language in which it was obviously originally written, before it was translated into dull, lifeless, unfunny and just weird English, I don't know.  But in English, it is mostly proof that either some types of humor don't translate, or what Koreans think is funny is very different from what Koreans do.  The kindest thing I found said about it in English (on the only page of google hits) was from spunangel, who blogs, "It's a good cartoon to read when you're hungover and nothing makes sense."  The unkindest things were...less kind.  Dave's people didn't like it much.

Over at Zenkimchi, Joe has been posting SoSueMe & Hobo comics, parodies made by a guy named Karl.  I like them, but I wanted to take a crack at Ssomi & Hobo myself.  Here is a sample of the sheer unfunniness of Ssomi & Hobo, followed by two attempts by moi to improve them.  The text is small, so you might have to click on the picture to see a close-up.

Hope ya like it.

The original:
My first crack at improving Ssomi & Hobo:
And, in what might become a recurring send-up here at Roboseyo (if you like it), I thought I'd start a parody of my own, and try to make this thing funny for you, my dear readers.  Without further ado, I present: Ssomi and Roboseyo. 
Have a good one, all.

-Rob

Ji Man-Won... Korea's Ann Coulter? How To Shoot at Someone Who Outdrew Ya

Post subtitle explained at the end.

Soundtrack: "I'm An Asshole" by Dennis Leary (uhh... warning: some bad words in this song)

so then, to balance out that unrestrained joy-down from the previous post...

Conservative Critic Ji Man-Won, and a bunch of netizens, actually attacked Moon Geun-Young for anonymously donating to various charities.

Add another item to the list of things to call "Korea's X" -- things in Korea that are like more famous things elsewhere.  Korea's Ann Coulter. (picture stolen from The Korean's site, but altered here at Roboseyo)

This goes to prove that many pundits, and (not all, but certainly enough) netizens are dicks.  I've written before about how too many netizens are dicks, and bring the dialogue down to the level of the lowest common denominator, instead of trying to raise their own level.  Here in Korea, where netizens have to use their actual ID numbers, and so the things they say can be traced back to their real identities, even that isn't enough to dissuade them from being duh-icks (read it out loud) online, and pundits will always be jerks if it can make them more famous. (photo stolen from Brian's write-up on the topic, but altered here at Roboseyo.)

Matt from Popular Gusts has a really great write-up about Moon Geun-Young's grandfather (one of the reasons she's being attacked is because he was affiliated with the communist party), and Ji Man-Won, the obnoxious conservative pundit who led the attack on her.  He also directs our attention to Mike Hurt's article, "My Stomach Hurts" where the Metropolitician talks about how envy at others' success brings out the worst in Koreans.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Moon Geun-Young, like Tiger Woods before her, when somebody said something stupid and ignorant about him, has responded in the only appropriate way: by remaining silent about the whole fustercluck.  Now she has doubly impressed me as a class act, rising above a whole bunch of ugly with grace.  I might even start liking her TV spots, and forgive her voice for being so. darned. cute.. 

Post subtitle explained: this is a line from the lovely Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah, as sung by John Cale:

"Maybe there's a God above, all I ever learned from love

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya"

Which is exactly what these petty parasites are doing, for fame, or for release of the frustration at their own unhappy lives, or for the sheer lulz of being a dick anonymously.  They're taking aim at someone who outdrew them, who accomplished more in life, lashing out in spite, rather than taking aim at the kinds of accomplishments that Ms. Moon has been achieving with her success.

To all such netizens, and the pundits who sic them on classy people trying to make their way as best they can:

Go fester.

Now here's something beautiful, to put you (and me) back in a good mood.