First question: what is Hilary proving by staying in the race any longer? I mean, other than screwing her rival and fracturing the party to vindicate her ego?
So in my Kimcheerleaders post, I mentioned the Stephen Colbert - Rain psuedo-feud, where ballot box stuffers stymied Stephen Colbert's coronation as the most influential person of 2007 (or was it 06?) He created a video that basically mocked Rain's style, to which Rain responded, "I saw your video. . . don't quit your day job" (Can't find the video. Sorry.) Colbert responded the best way he knows how: by challenging Rain to a dance-off.
Hilarity, of course, ensued.
Other stuff that made me laugh recently:
(soundtrack: Nat King Cole - hit play and start reading)
L-O-V-E
Girlfriendoseyo made these out of Vietnamese Noodle sweet and sour sauce. A case of poor planning: Placing a motion-sensor-activated hand-dryer close enough to the urinal that it activates while a fella's trying to drain his main vein is a bad idea.
One ends up trying to find creative postures which allow for both accuracy and dry footwear. Must have been cold in the mannequin factory that day. Back to sexy soju ads. . . the post-coitality of this smile actually shocked me the first time I saw it. Her name, according to the lady in the restaurant, is Gu Ye-Seon (구 예선), but I can't confirm that. Nerd humour:Wow.
For those who knew him: I don't know where I stumbled across this picture, but doesn't he look just like my old university buddy Jon? The middle school girls in this window saw Girlfriendoseyo and me walking down an alley beside their building and did the usual middle-school-girls-with-their-friends thing: started shouting and caterwauling all the English they knew, "Hello! Nice to meet you! How are you! I love you! You handsome guy! Where are you from!" (hollering those phrases at any white person they see, quite frankly, reminds me of when I lived in Canada and I'd shout "MOO!" out the car window as we drove by a herd of cows on the highway). Then, when they noticed Girlfriendoseyo and I were holding hands, one of them started singing "L-O-V-E" (the song you're listening to right now) which must have been on a movie soundtrack here or something -- it's a well known song and even a popular ring-tone. Anyway, the ballyhoos kind of annoyed me, but the song made me laugh, so I took their picture while Girlfriendoseyo wanted to disappear around a corner as quickly as possible.
There they are: Probably still shouting "Hello" "I love you" or "Where are you from" even as I take the picture.
Nice thought, but that wheelchair ramp needs work. (itaewon) from Feetmanseoul, a fashion style you can ONLY find in Korea: from XKCD, my favourite online comic:
Warning: if you don't like bad words, don't read past this point on the post. Sorry, Opa and Oma. Hoped you liked that comic. (bad word warning--my grandparents think putting swears on my blog is not like me, so I'll at least give them a heads' up. This time.)
A friend pointed out these trees and told me that when she was in middle school, she called them "Fuck You Trees", because the way they grow makes it look like a raised middle finger. I was going to post a picture to help illustrate the similarity, but decided against it.
There's a restaurant behind City Hall called BMF, for Beer Meets Food. The only problem is, anybody who enjoyed the movie "Pulp Fiction" knows that B.M.F. stands for the words embroidered into Jules' wallet in that movie: Every time I see the sign for the restaurant, which I pass on the way to Quiznos, one of my favourite lunch places, I giggle inside.
Also: found an ice cream shop advertising not 31 flavours, like some dumb chains we know about. . . But in the textbook definition of one-upmanship, these folks boasted thirty-two flavours!
Take that, you dirty Buskin Rubbers! I'm trying to imagine the scene where they brainstormed this idea. "What are the two things you love the most?" "Beer and anything." "Try again." "Uhh, sausage and bacon." "Hmm. I think we're onto something. . . "
In case you thought sausage, or bacon, couldn't get any LESS healthy, here comes street food to prove you wrong!
Working on my next substantive post. Until then, I'll be posting pictures from my amazing last weekend and randomness from the weeks before, to tide you over.
(update on my Kimcheerleaders post & "I Was Right" in the title: call me a hater if you want, and nothing against Korea, but THIS does not happen to the world's most influential person.)
Soundtrack: Mr Brightside
By The Killers
I'm a bit pissy and out of sorts today. Comes of dealing with banks -- not that I enjoyed Canadian banks or anything, but adding a language gap to the already mood-killing combination of money stress + bureaucratic paperwork is a perfect recipe for a headache and a big, glaring grumposeyo. Yech.
However, I have a happy thing to share. After making a random online comment about "that darn song running through my head," I got an equally random message from a waybackdays friend named Sparky (blog here - same topic I'm writing about today), suggesting I try out a site called watzatsong which is basically exactly what you're looking for if you always get songs in your head and you don't know where they're from. All you need is a microphone that hooks up to your computer, and you can sing the part you know (as best you can), or upload the tv commercial jingle or whatever, add all the info you can about the song, and post it anonymously on the site. Then other people will listen to it and make guesses about which song it is, suggesting song titles and artists, until you find the right one.
I hummed into the mike, added some info about this darn song with a catchy chorus that always gets stuck in my head (and for me, a song won't get UNSTUCK until I know where it's from -- that's just my way), which my friends all knew well enough to sing along, even though I somehow hadn't heard it before that night I went to the club, and went to work. By the time I got home that night, somebody had posted an artist and song title, and by gum, they had nailed it! It was the song you're listening to right now -- "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers, one of the more singalongable songs I've heard.
So, if you can't place the tune stuck in your head, go there and they'll help you out. In the spirit of sharing, you can also listen to other people's sound clips and make guesses. It's great!
I had one complaint from my sister that the poll on my sidebar kept sending annoying popups across her browser, and taking control of her mouse, and other obnoxious tricks like that. Did any of my other readers have that trouble, or was it just Becca? If it causes trouble, I'll drop the polls, but if it isn't, I kinda like the interactive thing. Comment -- let me know.
(here's another song that I had in my head, that I finally found.)
Hush, by Kula Shaker
cover of a Deep Purple (who themselves were covering another artist. . . but that's how it goes sometimes.)
then a bunchof otherpeople (including American Idol, who will go to hell for co-opting such a lovely song) decided tosend it up the "most slaughtered song ever" list --
Finally, our sidebar poll winners for next blog topics are "the five things I'd change about Korea if I had a magic wand (that worked)" and "the goofiest urban legend ever" -- stay posted and I'll put those up as soon as I can. Next, you might find "Great Korean Movies you should track down and see" and "the movie I hate the most" combined into one post. . . or maybe two, if I'm just not up to that kind of a mega-post, or if I decide my "movie I hate" rant deserves a post of it's own (it's gonna get ugly, dear readers. Uuuug-leeee).
Way uglier than this.
Uglier than this, too. Turkeys are cute -- come on! Uglier than this.Try harder, Roboseyo! What about . . . Now we're on the trail! Maybe. . .
Yeah, I'm feeling it. What about this one. . . Yikes! Maybe not that bad.
After all that skeezy scary, let's cool down a bit. . . My friend's friend's little sister (above) And my other friend's friend's baby -- just to finish on a cute note. (I hope she doesn't mind I borrowed it.) If anybody's still reading, though -- let me know if the sidebar poll was harassing your web-browsing/blog-reading experience. I'll drop'em if they do.
Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Take that.And that. (feeling a bit cowed yet?) Well, their intimidation tactics worked. Here's my new official line:
Soundtrack courtesy of Monty Python. Don't want to piss anybody off, eh?
Saw history today right out in my face, waving flags, noisy feet forward. Sure, it wasn't Ground Zero, Archduke Ferdinand-level history -- I won't get a book deal just for surviving it, but dear readers, I saw history nonetheless.
It started innocently enough -- I went to a Seoul Writer's club meeting near City Hall. . . but on my way over there, I noticed what looked like a new trend in fashion accessories: red capes with yellow stars on them.
On second glance, I realized what they were: Chinese flags. The Olympic Torch came through downtown Seoul on Sunday afternoon, starting at Olympic Park (where I lived in 2003) and ending in Jongno, by City Hall (where I live now.) You may have heard some rumours about protestors hectoring the Chinese Olympic Torch Relay -- over in Paris and London they caused a fair bit of embarrassment, and San Francisco bent so far backwards to avoid turmoil and embarrassment (and a pissed off exporter of cheap plastic toys, clothing, and shoes), that it wasn't so much a relay as a game of hide-and-seek.
Starting a fifteen minute walk from City Hall, the boosters came out in Red. And the riot police buses came out, too. I don't know where they got so many, huuuuuge flags (I know I took my wall-sized flag out of the suitcase when my luggage was overweight at the airport), but they were literally everywhere. Recently, Chinese news sources and netizens have responded to protests and criticism with hurt outrage: the Western Media wants to sabotage our party; like ants at our Olym-picnic, those biased Western journalists want to ruin our fun! And meanwhile, back home, the propaganderthals in charge of the media are playing up the us-vs.-them narrative to stoke nationalistic rage.
(One of my students saw this picture and said, "Are we in Korea?") Meanwhile, anyone who suggests that this kind of hurt-pride defensiveness is less than the best possible way to respond to the attack, is thrown, nay, hurled up against the wall, gored on the spike of nationalistic pride, slaughtered as a scapegoat: a Chinese student at Duke University had her picture and her parents' address in China published on the internet (scroll down after the link to see a youtube clip, and read the poison on the Chinese comment board, too). She was attacked on the net (and her parents house was vandalized) for stepping between a group of Chinese boosters and Tibetan protesters having a holler at each other, and trying to suggest that, in the spirit of free speech, the Chinese boosters ought to stop shouting down their pro-Tibetters. (She should have sided unthinkingly with her fellow Chinese and found something heavy to use as a weapon -- anything short of that proves she hates China and might be a spy, it seems).
Giant flag. Big as my classroom. And blurry. Moving quickly as they shook it. Things are ugly back in the mainland, too, and even paralympic athlete Jin Jing, who protected the torch from protesters in Paris and became a hero to the Chinese nationalists, couldn't talk them out of their "Boycott Carrefour" fervour -- instead, they turned on her, too. It must feel pretty lonely to be ostracized by a 1.3 billion strong nation -- the most I've ever been ostracized by is an elementary school class of twenty-six.
(metal detector to enter the main seating area) There's a new strategy in play with this [debacle] torch relay: it started in Australia, and will rear its head, no doubt, through the rest of the torch relay.
On Sunday, 6000 mostly young Chinese, probably overseas exchange students, descended upon the torch trail in force, wielding huge flags (big enough indeed to block a Tibetan flag from view), waving them, and chanting pro-China, pro-Beijing Olympic slogans loudly (loud enough to drown out any protesters, in fact). This kind of a preemptive napalm-strike strategy works, insofar as it drowns out any voice of dissent in an ocean of unison, marching in lockstep, chanting in time, and they might have needed it: South Korea has its own grudges with China, including a historical grudge about the kingdom of Goguryeo, and (the big one) the Chinese policy of sending captured North Korean refugees back to North Korea (to near-certain torture and incarceration in a death camp). In fact, a North Korean protestor tried to jump in front of the relay route and set himself on fire in protest.
Here are some pictures I took, making a strong case for my need for a better camera. I wasn't getting closer to the scrum than that. Robert "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa I ain't. What you can't see is the torch actually moving along the column of gray-shirted police officers.
More pictures better than mine are here. (like this one: highly recommended link) So many flags. As far as I could tell, the basic goal of the Red Army Escorts was to haul any protester to the ground as fast as possible, hopefully before any media outlets pointed their cameras.
This Tibet protester was beaten down in the lobby of four-star Seoul Plaza Hotel -- I'm told the crowd is chanting, among other things, "Apologize" and "beat him to death," as the police surround him.
Bullying and intimidation, friends. When you don't want to listen to criticism, making a fist and snarling "shut the hell up" will do. It was kind of disgusting.
8000 Seoul police came out to keep order. The lump of red in the middle of the picture are Chinese flags thrown up to mask a bunch of Tibetan flags that had just appeared. Before the police got there, all the Tibet protesters had been hauled to the ground, overwhelmed by rabid China-boosters. Vehicle escorts: a big bus gives protesters another obstacle to get around, and increases the chance they'll be intercepted before they can reach the torch.Coke led the procession in a shiny float. Write a letter to Coke and tell them you won't buy more Coke products until they withdraw their sponsorship of the Olympics. Ditto for Samsung. In the hotel lobby again. The ugly, disrespectful (to Korea, to Korea's police force, and to Korea's laws about freedom of expression), disruptive behaviour of China's own citizens in Seoul and other cities is more embarrassing to China than any protest could be.
Some of the facts in this video montage are off base -- it's not a policeman stabbed, but a journalist hit by a projectile in the picture of the guy in green bleeding from the head, and I can't vouch for the text that goes with the footage in the other countries. . . but just look at the footage!
The Propaganda Olympics will go on -- really, whether they go smoothly or tank doesn't even matter to China anymore. Either they go badly, and China can use the embarrassment to stoke the "West hates us" resentment for their propaganda purposes -- a powerful, angry country full of rabid nationalists is just perfect if China decides to go expansionist, or the Olympics go well, and China can use it to strut and preen, declaring they're "arrived" as a major world player, and fuel the nationalism that way.
Last word goes to this kid: a sign held by a college-age student with big old glasses, standing quietly (but confidently: he has 1.3 billion brothers and sisters standing behind him). It reads: "Respect the Olympic Spirit, All men -- are brothers! Interfere with China's internal affairs, Annihilate -- in the far distance."
Somehow the first and last two lines don't quite match, eh? And how does the threat of annihilation fit with the proclaimed wish for a peaceful torch relay? Dunno.
Not that I was going to ask him: don't care to be wrestled to the ground and sat upon by 6000 angry China-boosters. Yup. The intimidation worked.
One ends up trying to find creative postures which allow for both accuracy and dry footwear.
Back to sexy soju ads. . . the post-coitality of this smile actually shocked me the first time I saw it. Her name, according to the lady in the restaurant, is Gu Ye-Seon (구 예선), but I can't confirm that.
Wow.
For those who knew him: I don't know where I stumbled across this picture, but doesn't he look just like my old university buddy Jon?
The middle school girls in this window saw Girlfriendoseyo and me walking down an alley beside their building and did the usual middle-school-girls-with-their-friends thing: started shouting and caterwauling all the English they knew, "Hello! Nice to meet you! How are you! I love you! You handsome guy! Where are you from!" (hollering those phrases at any white person they see, quite frankly, reminds me of when I lived in Canada and I'd shout "MOO!" out the car window as we drove by a herd of cows on the highway). Then, when they noticed Girlfriendoseyo and I were holding hands, one of them started singing "L-O-V-E" (the song you're listening to right now) which must have been on a movie soundtrack here or something -- it's a well known song and even a popular ring-tone. Anyway, the ballyhoos kind of annoyed me, but the song made me laugh, so I took their picture while Girlfriendoseyo wanted to disappear around a corner as quickly as possible.
Probably still shouting "Hello" "I love you" or "Where are you from" even as I take the picture.
from Feetmanseoul, a fashion style you can ONLY find in Korea:
Warning: if you don't like bad words, don't read past this point on the post. Sorry, Opa and Oma. Hoped you liked that comic. (bad word warning--my grandparents think putting swears on my blog is not like me, so I'll at least give them a heads' up. This time.)
and told me that when she was in middle school, she called them "Fuck You Trees", because the way they grow makes it look like a raised middle finger. I was going to post a picture to help illustrate the similarity, but decided against it.
Every time I see the sign for the restaurant, which I pass on the way to Quiznos, one of my favourite lunch places, I giggle inside.
