old Seoul on canvass

Everyone loves old pictures of Seoul, but I especially enjoyed the handful of paintings I found at this site (found while searching for pictures of Seoul's fall foliage): 

Park Tŭksun (1949) — Seoul Landscape 

박득순 — 서울 풍경

Kim Chugyŏng (1927) — Chŏngdong Neighborhood

기주경 — 정동

Seoul's solution to Washington's problem

During autumn, Korea erupts into a riot of fall colors. Sure, this is not unique to Korea, but it's different from other places I've lived in for more than a year or beyond just summers, such as Southern California and Hawaii, both of which merely switch from brown to green. 

One of my favorite places in Seoul to drive in the fall is Sowol-gil (소월길), the road that runs along the southern side of Namsan (which is either a small mountain or a giant hill, depending on your point of view) in the middle of the city. Since I live close to Namsan, I end up driving along that road quite a lot (it was the scene of this post). 

It is lined with Gingko trees (ŭnhaeng namu [은행나무] in Korean) that turn a brilliant golden yellow in the fall, as in the picture above, which I believe is Kyŏngbokkung Palace [Gyeongbokgung, 경복궁/昌德宮]. With the mountain on one side and a panoramic view of southern Seoul on the other, the drive becomes quite beautiful. (In the spring, the area is flush with cherry blossoms.)

One of the hazards of driving along that road, however, is the ajumma (older woman) and occasional ajŏshi (older man) standing in or alongside the road gather gingko nuts. The road is narrow and they are basically playing roadside roulette, with many a driver coming very close to hitting them.

The nuts are used to make tea, and they are quite valuable, which is why so many folks are risking their lives.

Thousands of miles away, in Washington DC, the problem is that there is nobody to pick up the nuts, and those nuts end up emitting an awful smell. The Washington Post describes it thus:

The bouquet of a ginkgo tree's fruit has strong notes of unwashed feet and Diaper Genie, with noticeable hints of spoiled butter.

What a lovely olfactory image. Anyway, the solution to me is clear: Provide the air fare and accommodations for the gingko gatherers and let them take their bounty back to Seoul. They, in turn, will provide Washingtonians with less smelly streets with fewer squishy gingko nuts. It's a win-win for everone.  

Now I can take pictures like the Marmot

I have placed an order for a Nikon D60. Seems like a good camera for dSLR (digital single-lens reflex) novices, but one that also has nice features that newbie can utilize as they become more experienced and proficient. I had also considered the Canon Rebel XSi, but there were just a few things I liked better about the Nikon. 

My first goal is to head back to Korea and do photo shoots of old stuff and cultural stuff and fill this blog with such pictures, just like the Marmot. 

I don't know if I'll be taking many surreptitious shots of women's clothing from waist level like Metropolitician appears to do. How that guy gets away with some of the stuff he gets away with, I'll never know, but I think it may be a clue as to why he keeps attracting angry strangers on the streets of Seoul.

I used to have a Minolta SLR, purchased with money I scraped together in high school. I took photos of everything, limited only by the cost of regular film and developing. 

My Minolta was stolen in Korea. The thief, a native English speaker who left a note thanking me for the camera, had taken it from my cabinet, the lock of which I did not know had been broken open. I replaced it with a Canon digital camera, which I abused enough that I decided to buy a shock-proof Olympus Stylus 720, which is also an underwater camera (submersible to ten feet). 

That camera was stolen in London (lifted from my pocket, I think). I replaced it with an Olympus Stylus 770, which goes as low as thirty feet. Both my Olmypuses (Olympi?) have been put to great use while snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.

As long as I stay away from English people and foreigners in Korea, I think my new camera (and my current camera) will remain safe. I'm going to watch them like a hawk. 

UPDATE (Tuesday, December 16):

I have actually decided that I'm going to take a look at all the Marmot galleries and, when I'm back in Korea for part of this year, try to mimic his prized photos as best I can, at least the ones in Seoul. This is not to be derivative or unoriginal, but I think that it would be a fun way of working through the learning curve as I'm breaking in the new camera, as well as an homage to the K-blogger with such a good eye. 

That's some fu¢ked up sh|+

Any egomaniacal blogger worth their narcissistic salt* will regularly check their blog's Sitemeter stats, which are updated when people click onto their blog. I've addressed this topic before, but it's always fun to do an update. 

Lately, the biggest hits are still are on my signature post, Korea-versus-Corea. The one with the Flash Mountain pics from Disneyland is also a favorite among googlers, some of whom are actually looking for information on working at Disneyland and not boobie pics. 

All of the "world-famous posts" get some hits on a regular basis. The saga of the three-armed baby, where low-key but wonderfully insightful K-blogger Space Nakji talks about ambiguous genitalia, has led to about a dozen people ending up at Monster Island while searching for "ambiguous genitalia island." 

I'd really like to know what they're looking for, but at the same time I probably don't. 

What's also interesting is how folks get here, something that changes as new posts are added. "Thanksgiving photos" with its talk about sex pics and homemade porn, is starting to look like a promising rookie. Today, someone from Birmingham, Alabama, arrived at that post while googling "beatdown drawn sexpics" (hence the title of this post). Someone on the island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia, was looking for "sex island" (could there be such a place in the 17,508-isle Indonesian archipelago? Let us know when you find it). 

I have had a number of people arrive on Monster Island while googling simply "sex." Now, I must admit I haven't checked it out, but I'm pretty sure that Monster Island isn't even on the first page of Google's search results for sex. I'm guessing I'm buried somewhere in the high double digits. Which means that whoever it was, finding sex must be really, really important to them. My advice: Try Sex Island; it's somewhere in Indonesia. 

Someone in Omaha, Nebraska, ended up at the Thanksgiving photos post while searching for "girls in pillories." That's messed up. Messed up, as in, you should feel lucky this blog isn't a ruse set up by the FBI to nab sick fu¢ks like yourself who are searching for pictures of girls in pillories. Or, is it? Bwuhahahahahahahaha!

It's not all bad news. One of my first posts, on lactose intolerance, still gets numerous hits, including today when someone from Visalia, California, googled "lactose intolerance in Japan." Good for you! You have inspired me, anonymous Visalian, to amend that post with details of my own struggle with severe cramping and bloating caused by the inability to break down lactose into glucose and galactose: my convolutedly lengthy journey to discover the source of my ailment and symptoms is truly a homeric odyssey worthy of a "House" episode. 

[above: Main Street in San Joaquin Valley's Visalia, California. Most visitors to California don't know this, but outside of the Golden State's urban metropolises, California towns are mostly backwater communities where people travel around in buggies and the only entertainment is watching drunks hopped up on moonshine fight in the muddy streets in front of the local saloon. Visalia's mayor is a man named Jesus Gamboa; when he's away on business and his staff has to make decisions, they sit down and ask each other, "What would Jesus do?"]

* Narcissistic salt is NaCl. Who knew?

Senator Dodd perpetuates the Big Lie about Korean car imports

During my morning iPod-enhanced jog, I caught the iTunes podcast of NPR's NewsHour. The subject for this particular segment was the Detroit bailout. Speaking in favor of it was Senator Christ Dodd (D-Connecticut), while Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) was steadfastly against it.

Shelby would like to see Chrysler, Ford, and General Motor go into a pre-arranged bankruptcy and reworked. Dodd pointed out that, unlike with an industry such as airlines where the consumer's relationship ends as soon as they pick up their bags at the destination airport, there is a problem with buying a major item like a car from a bankrupt company.

All in all, it was a good summary from both as to what each side of the bailout issue thinks. I even thought of linking to it for that reason alone. But what compelled me to blog about it was when Senator Dodd deflected blame from the Big Three and their supposed mismanagement and put it squarely on the shoulders of South Korea:

The word last Friday was 533,000 jobs were lost in this country in one month. And certainly none of us want to wake up in January and discover that America no longer has a viable automobile industry.

You know, we talk all the time about how well these foreign companies do. Let me just cite one free trade agreement with South Korea. In that one agreement, all we can do is sell 5,000 automobiles in South Korea. They get to sell 600,000 of their automobiles in the United States.

There are a lot of reasons why our domestic companies are not doing as well, a lot of which is their own fault, but there are other factors, as well.

The message is that it's not just mismanagement that caused Detroit's problems, nor a burdensome benefits package for its retirees, nor the drying up of credit which Americans use to buy cars. No, it's also those dastardly South Koreans who angrily wave pitchforks at cargo ships when they bring Cadillacs to Pusan and throw rocks at Chrysler dealerships in Sŏcho-gu. 

The numbers are almost verbatim what President-elect Obama said on the stump and during the debates during his campaign: The trading relationship between South Korea (and Japan) is unfair, and the lopsided car sales numbers are an example. 

Frankly, I wish someone would explain how lopsided trade numbers are a reason to NOT pass a free trade agreement that would eventually remove many of these barriers. 

Anyway, Dodd takes Obama's numbers and suggests that they are not what is the case now, but what would happen if the FTA were to pass: "In that one agreement," he says, these are the numbers.

Hawaii's equivalent of a snow day

Today is supposed to be the last day of class for me. Yesterday (Wednesday) I did a mini-presentation (which the cool texters in Korea would no doubt call a minipu, while the day before (Tuesday) I did my major fifteen-minute presentation on the social origins of the Korean health insurance system and how it affects the economic model that has been chosen. Sound exciting? You, too, could become a grad student and have the same kind of fun day in and day out! Ask me how!

My major presentation (mejŏpu?) turned into twenty-five minutes. I thought it was brilliantly laid out, replete with pictures of Korea's first Western hospital, Korea's first imperial hospital, royal Japanese troops marching through Inchon, Park Chunghee talking about setting up the first health insurance system, Korean labor unionists marching through the streets demanding health insurance (or demanding that the non-taxpaying self-employed not be included in their plan), etc.

When it was all done, there was thunderous applause, but that might have been because it was finally over. 

So now I must spend the next several days finishing up the paper that goes along with these presentations. A daunting task I might be able to get done were I not blogging and reading other blogs.

But blogging is not the only time-consumer or annoyance today. For the first time in a while, the weather here in Honolulu is a factor in my daytime troubles. 

We are under a severe weather warning. Here's Yahoo! Weather's take on it. The University of Hawaii warning system that's supposed to tell us if a Virginia Tech-type incident is taking place also tells us if we should expect severe weather (not a small concern, since there are a lot of commuters). 

Flash flooding is a big problem here, where typical terrain is steep mountains with only small stream beds for drainage. In heavy rain, water quickly rushes down into the populated areas. The University of Hawaii was severely flooded in 2004 when the adjoining Manoa Stream overflowed.

Here's what they said yesterday:

FYI: FLOOD WATCH AND HIGH WINDS Update from 

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI

300 PM HST WED DEC 10 2008

FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR NIIHAU KAUAI AND OAHU...
HEAVY RAINS ARE EXPECTED TO REACH OAHU ON THURSDAY MORNING.

..FLASH FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM HST THIS EVENING
THROUGH LATE THURSDAY NIGHT... 

WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM HST THURSDAY...
SOUTH WINDS OF 20 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 50 MPH WILL DEVELOP TONIGHT OVER NIIHAU...KAUAI AND OAHU.

THESE WINDS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THURSDAY...THEN GRADUALLY TAPER OFF THURSDAY NIGHT.

It's in all caps because they have to yell: the winds are up to 50 mph and thus quite noisy (see video below). Last night it was bad enough that I had trouble sleeping. 

Then this morning my smoke alarm goes off—four times! Apparently all the wind coming in through the lower vent in my room kicked up enough dust that it keeps on triggering the smoke alarm. Nice. I'm sitting in my room wearing earplugs, which make it tolerable, but I'm slowly getting very cranky and irritable. Not quite bite-the-head-off-a-live-chicken irritable, but enough that I might bark at someone.

The rain has created some horizontally traveling wind, which made it all the way across our large kitchen. In the picture at left, I'm standing only a third of the way into the kitchen, so you can see how far it traveled. A good question might be: Um, close a window?

You see, in Hawaii where they tend to use natural air conditioning (i.e., the open air), a lot of buildings have an open plan with no walls, or at least giant open windows, just overhead cover that is extends far enough out that regular vertically dropping rain won't get into your home. I think this is called a lanai. 

I don't think a whole heck of a lot of people will be in class today. For me, now, the question is whether to do my typical daily 5K run or not. This is one of those days when—with the sun absent from the sky—it is actually chilly for the first five minutes or so of the run.

Anyway, just to give you an idea of how loud and rainy it is, this is the first homemade video I have ever linked to this blogged. I took it with my Olympus Stylus 770, which is an underwater point-and-shoot. The video capability is passable, and when you're swimming behind a sea turtle, it's pretty much the only way I'll ever capture it.

By the way, Hawaii doesn't quite get snow days per se, but it does get snow in the high elevations of Maui and especially the Big Island, where all the telescopes are. It can get bad enough that the people there have trouble getting in or out. 

And, yes, people really do ski and snowboard there, but it's totally impromptu and disorganized; there aren't any ski resorts or lifts or anything. In fact, I think people do it for bragging rights more than anything else. Must hurt when you fall on a jagged volcanic rock poking through the snow.

sex picsThanksgiving photos

All my regular readers know at least one thing about this blog: There is little rhyme or reason as to why I post about those things about which I post (Ha! A non-preposition-ending sentence! In your face, 12th grade high school English teacher Mr. Gechman!).

This post you're now reading was inspired by two utterly unconnected events: a news story from March and something that happened to me late last month.

The facts were these: Baek Jiyoung [백지영, 白智英; Paek Chiyŏng in M-R] is an uber-cute singer who was enjoying a promising career when a tape of her naked and having sex (naked and having sex are not redundant; the two don't always go together) was leaked onto the Internet. It was rather clear from the video that she had no idea that she was being filmed, and it was sex with her boyfriend (who was also her manager and who, it later turned out, was the one who had leaked the embarrassing footage).

To say that the video was widely viewed would be quite an understatement (let's just say that the manager wasn't the only one doing some leaking. Oh, I wish I could promise that will be the crudest comment I make today, but it won't be). Baek Jiyoung was humiliated and her career seemed at an end.

She was a victim of several bad actors or things: an evil, egomaniacal boyfriend-cum-manager; a relatively new form of media that spread gossip and embarrassmentos (embarrassment through mementos... please circulate this neologism so it gains currency and I become a famous footnote in some urban dictionary somewhere) like wildfire; a prudish media run by antsy people who were afraid of offending anyone so they were in the habit of axing people (figuratively) who would come out of the closet or get caught on tape having sex; and a moralistic group of finger-waving Netizens who have nothing better to do than pillory some poor girl who did nothing unusual but whose success they are insanely jealous of.

[left: My dictionary's depiction of the noun pillory. Frankly, I think the guy looks like he's in a deep, comfortable slumber. In fact, this looks like it's some sort of 19th century sleep aid: maybe the guy, suffering from restless leg syndrome, is finally able to catch some restful Z's because this device is preventing him from kicking himself in the face all night. They had no drugs for RLS in the 19th century. They didn't even have a name for it other than "dream dancing." Some people would say that RLS is a creation of an overly medicated society led around by Big Pharm which now has the ability to advertise on TV and induce us all into hypochondria. But in fact RLS/DD has been around since God gave us legs. Exhibit A: Go to the glossary of any book on Native American history and count how many chiefs were called "Kicks While Sleeping." Go ahead, I'll wait. I've got some coffee and a Blockbuster DVD; I'm in no hurry. Hmm... maybe the pillory guy is dead.]

So where was I? Oh, yeah. Back to Baek. So her manager flees Korea to escape charges of defamation, and nothing happens to him. Eventually, she did make a comeback, but the sex scandal is forever a blot of a footnote on her career.

And then her erstwhile manager gets arrested earlier this year (the event in March I spoke of earlier), in Los Angeles. What did this paragon of virtue get nabbed for? Having sex with underage girls. After his legal troubles (and incarceration?) are done in California, he may be extradited to Korea to face charges of defamation. He's a scumbag and should get what he deserves (unless it's being shanked in prison; most people don't deserve that. Or forced anal rape for that matter. I could argue that he deserves a good beatdown).

[Does the word pill come from pillory? Maybe I'm really onto something here. I should look into whether pillories were used for other medical conditions which had no name, like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, or SIDS.]

So back to Baek again: What exactly was this fallen star actually guilty of? She was having sex with her boyfriend. And plain-old vanilla sex at that. I've never seen the video, but I've heard that it's actually pretty boring to watch all the way through, because it's normal sex and you can't see all that much nudity anyway. The video is widely viewed only for the same reason some people are so outraged: the subject is a celebrity.

I heard she even says "sarang hae" (사랑 해; "I love you") to her slimy boyfriend/manager during the act. [Oh, God help us, now all the dirty yellow fever boys who peruse this site are going to have ammunition they can use the next time they latch on to a suspected Korean girl. "Hey, baby. Sarang hae."]

So why would she be considered a slut? Maybe the answer is that she isn't actually considered a slut. The antsy media elites were afraid the public would despise them for keeping her on the air, but just like with out-of-the-closet-and-into-your-living-room Hong Sokchon (who himself made a comeback), the majority of the public didn't really care. Nevertheless, those clueless media suits ended her career, because they thought that's what the public demanded.

The girl deserves sympathy, not reprobation. She wasn't doing blow*. She wasn't shooting up drugs. No animals were harmed in the making of this film. All she was doing was having normal vanilla sex with her boyfriend.

Let's face it, this could happen to anyone. Even if you've never knowingly consented to a significant other or sex partner photographing or videotaping you in flagrante delicto, are you 100% certain nobody has ever surreptitiously pixelized you naked or in the act? After all, it's easy to hide a teeny tiny camera in a cluttered room or in a closet with the door ajar. The only safe solution is to have sex with the Amish and only the Amish, in the home of one of the Amish.

A few weeks ago, I had a real scare that my computer had gone missing. I spent a frantic day retracing my steps from the last time I had seen it several days earlier. I talked to numerous people to help me in this task, finding out if they remember seeing me with it.

One friend, who assumed I would never see my computer again, asked me in a low voice, "Was there anything... valuable on there." Well, I thought, there are my papers I'm working on... some other stuff... but it's mostly backed up.

"No," she explained. "I mean something you wouldn't want someone else to get their hands on."

A low-energy GE lightbulb went off in my head: valuable was a euphemism for Do you have pictures of yourself and/or a loved one naked and/or engaging in a sexual act?

"No." Then another lightbulb: Just what the hell does this person think of me? Mental note: Lisa thinks I'm a man-whore and she's planning to steal my computer.

[False alarm about the pillory used as a cure-all medical device. But it was used on occasion as a punishment for SIDS.]

Throughout East Asia, the scandal of playboy movie star Edison Chen is well-known. If you've been living under the sea for the past eighteen months (because who lives in caves anymore? Besides troglodytes, who by definition live in caves, so they don't count. If you want to escape from the news, under the sea is where to be), Edison Chen is the philandering Hong Kong star who filmed himself having sex with a number of other stars.

He left the pictures on his computer, from which they were snagged by someone at eLite, an Apple repair shop in Hong Kong when he brought his "cotton-candy Mac" in for repairs. They were quickly splattered all over the media. (I'm tempted to say, "And that's not all that splattered!" but I have more class than that.)

To help viewers at home follow along with all of Edison Chen's sexploits, here's the handy-dandy "Edison Chen sex partner flow chart":

Y'know, if the anti-HPV crusaders ever need ideas for a Gardasil™ ad, they could use that poster.

The pictures of oral and vaginal sex were not the only thing that raised eyebrows. A couple of Edison Chen's famous partners, by the looks of their red eyes, were having something of a Visine™ moment (that's my euphemism for having used drugs that make your eyes red. Please circulate this phrase so it gains currency and I become a famous footnote in some urban dictionary somewhere.)

[left: Hong Kong-based actress and Cantopop singer Gillian Chung wishes she'd gone to church that day instead. The other pics were nowhere near as tame.]

Fingers were wagged, tabloid pages filled, contracts ripped up, careers torn asunder. In the end, it was all a bloody mess, and the Chinese-speaking world is still reeling from the sex scandal to beat all sex scandals. [Heh heh. I said beat.]

To Edison Chen, the lesson was clear: Don't bring your computer to the eLite Apple repair shop for maintenance.

To everyone else, the lesson was even clearer: Don't leave dirty pictures of yourself or loved ones on any media—including your computer hard drive—that could easily fall into the hands of the wrong person (which, in the case of salacious photos or videos of you or your loved ones, would be 99.999999985% of the world's population).

If you must keep nekkid photos/videos of yourself or loved ones, burying them in a folder deep inside the hard drive will not work, because a thief could find the photos or movies by searching for all media of a certain type. Yeah, that means they have to sift through other photos of you and your friends getting wasted at a variety of social occasions in search of the randy shots, but eventually they will find the boobie pics.

And once they've succeeded, do you expect them to show some decency and NOT try to get some money off of those pics (by selling them to a boobie site or even blackmailing you)? Come on, these are the guys who stole... your... computer!

So if you must hold on to such stuff, store them somewhere else. Perhaps make a DVD full of all your personal steamy photos and/or love scenes, but label it something quite mundane and boring, just in case someone breaks into your abode and is looking for something that might be personal steamy photos and/or love scenes.

Take advantage of the fact that burglars don't usually know how much time they have to burgle, so they need to work quickly. Computers, external hard drives, and thumb drives are a treasure trove of potentially delectable files. Personal CDs and DVDs, on the other hand, tend to have things that people wish to store but not necessarily look at frequently: In other words, that wouldn't be where you'd look for personal steamy photos and/or love scenes if you were in a hurry.

So my advice: put them on CDs or DVDs and label them "Thanksgiving pics." Because no one really wants to see someone else's Thanksgiving photos, so it's one of those things that's valuable only to you. Just don't get cute and label the disks "PSP" (for personal steamy photos). Thanks to Sony, those would the first things the burglars would grab.

If I were to have a CD or DVD with such explicit media on it, I'd probably label it "wart removal procedure." Only a sick fu¢k of a thief would go after that one.

Another option is to upload all the photos into Photoshop or some such software and put a black bar over the eyes so that the person can't be identified if the pics end up in the wrong hands. Sure, that's not as aesthetically pleasing when you need to look at them, but if you're keeping the photos for self-gratification purposes, I mean, you already know who it is and you've still got most of their face and body showing... how hard is it to fantasize about the rest?

Just be neat about it. If your attempts to blacken out the eyes are a bunch of mouse-drawn scribbles, you're in for a buttload of trouble if your loved one ever becomes the victim of a violent attack and the police get a hold of your computer. "See the way he went at her face with such anger? Looks like we've got our perp right here."**

Another alternative would be to wear masks every time you have sex, like the Italians do.

And for those of you whose moral code urges you against lying but does not stop you from taking nekkid pictures of your loved one and saving them on storable media, the fact is that "Thanksgiving pics" is sort of truth in advertising: During the act you might in fact be thanking God. Or at least talking to God, praising God, or giving God a shout-out. I'm not sure how you'd describe it, but God's name frequently comes up in conversation during sex.

Could this be the root of God's unconditional love for humanity?

So, in conclusion:

1. Baek Jiyoung: not a whore
   
2. Edison Chen: total di¢k (I was going to write big di¢k, but then it might be unclear that I'm chastising him). In fact, I can't think of anything good that begins with ED: Edison Chen, Edsel, Edward Scissorhands, edumacation, and E.D. ... they all suck!
   
3. eLite Apple repair shop in Hong Kong: Everyone hates you but secretly loves you.
   
4. Dirty pics and movies: Store them on something thieves won't want to steal.
   
5. God: He loves us, but he's a dirty perv for constantly watching us have sex. But since we're his ongoing elementary school science project, I guess it's his right.
   

* I'm not actually sure what drug "blow" refers to, but "doing blow" is cool to say.

** Every Law & Order episode from seasons 1 through 13 contains this line.

UPDATE #1 (February 22, 2009):

Oh, you sick fu¢k! Someone from Florence, South Carolina, came across this site while Googling "pictures of animals sexual pleasing." And Jimminy fu¢king Christmas, I'm listed at #3! Damn you, Google! Damn you!

UPDATE #2 (February 28, 2009):

Sh¡t! By writing "pictures of animals sexual pleasing" in order and in quotations in Update #1, I have pushed myself up to the top position for that particular Google search, ahead of even those sites that actually have pictures of bestiality! Damn you, Hawthorne effect! Damn you!

Khaaaaaaaaaan!!!

Right-wing Japanese politicians have been using North Korea's own saber-rattling as an excuse to scrap Japan's post-war pacifist constitution, the very thing that has earned Japan considerable good will since the death of tens of millions and the massive destruction of World War II. 

North Korea's occasional habit of shooting missiles over Japanese soil and now Kim Jong-il's push to get nuclear weapons are fueling this drive by the Japanese right. (Note to self: Praise the Lord! We finally have a leader who can pronounce nuclear properly.)

Enter Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who allegedly helped Iran and North Korea develop their nuclear programs, those very weapons programs being used by some Japanese politicos to justify a change in its own defense planning toward an aggressive outward approach (as opposed to a truly defense-oriented posture while under the protection of the United States security umbrella).

Well it turns out, according to the Japan Times, that the Khan had "visited Japan in 1984 and obtained key components essential to Pakistan's nuclear program." The JT's source, a friend of Khan, didn't say what types of components were bought during the trip.

A different source says another component, an "uninterruptible power supply," was purchased in Japan in 1977. At the time, US and European companies "had reportedly refused to sell such systems to Pakistan."

Japanese were not the only dupes; Khan dealt with people in thirty countries. I think this is noteworthy more so that Japanese helped put together the nuke program that is now being used by some Japanese to justify a more aggressive stance. 

Whoops.

I wish I had some nice little joke to end this with, but this isn't funny at all. I am a firm believer that the Pax Americana has brought peace and stability to Northeast Asia, and I do not welcome efforts to undermine or dismantle it, especially when there is so much lingering tension between the former belligerents. Some might say it is the United States presence itself that allows these players to remain belligerent, but such bellicosity and hostility predates heavy American involvement in the region. 

Fed cuts rates...

ㅋㅋㅋ

Cleveland rocks

Okay, so the Los Angeles Times had an article last week on the dearth of families on TV that look like the Obamas. My whiskey-tango-fu¢k* moment came when the article talked up the Family Guy spinoff "The Cleveland Show" as one of the few remaining Black families on TV:

Though the development season is in full gear, there does not appear to be on the horizon a series that would take up the cultural torch of "The Cosby Show," the groundbreaking comedy featuring what conservative commentator Karl Rove on election day called "America's First Family." The only African American family that would anchor an upcoming major series is animated -- "Cleveland," a spinoff of Fox's " Family Guy."

Again, I reiterate: Whiskey-tango-fu¢k?!

Never mind that anything coming from the culturally corrosive Family Guy is not something to hold up as a role model of anything. Instead, let me point out that Mike Henry, the guy who voices Cleveland, is White. 

Having a White guy voice a Black character on Family Guy isn't quite Amos & Andy, since the Cleveland character doesn't really rely on a stereotypical or caricatured Black image, and all of the White characters on the show are just as obnoxious and/or clueless.

But holding this up as as successor to The Cosby Show? Come on! Did LAT writer Greg Braxton even bother to look this stuff up?

[above: The cast of "The Cleveland Show." The daughter, by the way, is totally hot. For a cartoon, that is.]

* WTF

Setting up Obama for embarrassment

Obama smokes. No, I don't mean to say something along the lines that he rocks or he's hot. I mean he puts tobacco products in his mouth and lights them up. Sometimes. Rarely. Less than before. Or so we are led to believe. 

The thing is, there's a no-smoking policy in the White House. Fine, as President, he could get around this, but now President-elect Barack Hussein Obama has gone and told NBC's Tom Brokaw, during Meet the Press, that "you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House."

Great. This is after he admitted to having "fallen off the wagon" a few times. 

President-elect Obama is shaping up to be a very good and thoughtful national steward. He is surrounding himself by qualified people who know their shitstuff and are basically scandal-free. The biggest criticism of his appointments so far is that there are so many from the Clinton administration. (And since when did the Clinton administration become the bad administration? Have people been asleep for the past eight years?). 

You see, the problem is that Obama's squeaky cleanness is going to make us forget how bad an administration really can be (invading another country on trumped up evidence, botching emergency preparedness and letting a thousand die in the aftermath of a major hurricane, mishandling post-hostilities occupation of another country because you failed to listen to your own military people, ignoring evidence of a major terror attack, eroding civil rights and Constitutional guarantees of freedom, stripping away environmental protections to aid big business, failing to give proper oversight to the finance sector of the economy who you let write legislation you later signed, etc.; or that other guy who lied about getting a blowjob—what a horrible president!). 

Instead, sometime in the next two or three years, someone somewhere will reveal (in pictures or in book form) that Obama is actually smoking in the White House, and we'll come down and say what a terrible hypocrite he is and his popularity will plummet—even if he's doing an excellent job. 

By the way, it was then-First Lady Hillary Clinton who set up the no-smoking ban in the White House. And it is an object lesson about how bans and restrictions can have unintended (and often unforeseen) consequences: Once Bill was no longer able to light them up, he had to find other uses for his cigars. 

[above: Yeah, it looks pretty stupid even when he does it. Well, at least he's not a coke head anymore (or a drunk driver). Boy, it really sounds like I don't like this guy, huh? But I do! I think he's great! Just stop smoking! I'm in the medical field so I have to say that! It's the law! Why am I using exclamation points?! By the way, there is no truth to the Internet rumors that his cigarette always points toward Mecca.]

"Whopper Virgins": Offensive on so many levels

You know, Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel 

so gradually, I didn't even notice. Yeesh!

— Marge Simpson, "Lisa's Wedding"

In pop sociology there is a term called "McDonaldization," referring to the trend toward homogeneity and sameness brought about by factors such as globalization, mass production, or even cultural hegemony. Hey, cut that out! I can hear your eyes rolling!

The thing is, you don't need a McDonald's to have McDonaldization. It can be brought about by other global corporations, like Coke™ and Pepsi™, General Motors and Toyota, Apple™ and Microsoft™, or even Burger King.

So I'm noticing on television lately these BK commercials where they go into some remote part of the world where the villagers there have supposedly never ever seen a burger, much less eaten one, and they have those beef patty neophytes do a taste test between a McDonald's Big Mac™ and a BK Whopper™. 

The neophytes are called "Whopper virgins," which is also the name of the website to which the viewer is directed. If you go there, you are shown a Discovery Channel-style documentary showing how they ran the taste test (objectively, apparently, since some of the "virgins" chose the Big Mac over the Whopper or they had no preference; the majority of those with a preference chose the Whopper. Surprise! D'uh).

Above is a Mickey D's in Thailand, which is close to a Burger King. They brought the villagers to a taste test site that was within fifteen minutes of both a McDonald's and a Burger King so the burgers would be fresh. (I like how Ronald McDonald is doing a Thai greeting... that's "localization of globalization," kiddies!)

The villagers featured in the commercial (from which these scenes were captured with EyeTV) are all from a remote Thai village, but the faux National Geographic special shows the same effort in Romania and in Greenland. 

Frankly, I am troubled by this. First, it's bad enough that American corporate hegemony has eroded the cultural and dietary practices of people all over the globe, but do we really need to find some of the last no-burger holdouts and force them to participate in a corporate-sponsored taste test designed to boost consumerism among a largely overweight customer base back home? [Burger King, I hate you for making me sound like a freakin' leftist!]

I mean, do we really need to contaminate the palate of the few that are left who have never let a bleached flour bun cross their lips? Sure, there's something to be said for trying new things. I'm a resident of Seoul, where gutsy visitors try to steel themselves to try kaegogi [also gaegogi; 개고기, dog meat] or pŏndegi [beondegi; 번데기, silkworm larvae, a favorite of kids for God only knows what reason], but with hegemonic fast-food it's not the same.

I mean, it's not like pŏndegi is taking over the world. It's not like Big Beondegi is producing silkworm larvae en masse with hormones and excessive antibiotics all the while polluting the local water supply with manure runoff (or are they?) and you consuming one is just one more nail in the coffin of some ecosystem somewhere. 

I love me a good burger. I'm thankful to be living in a place where I can go to Carl's Jr anytime I want, and I don't mind getting a double cheeseburger every now and then. But do we need to push it on the locals in Thailand, Romania, and Greenland? Sheesh.

Now, call me a prude, but I'm also not terribly happy with their word choice. I realize "virgin" lately been used in place of words like neophyte, novice, rookie, or even newbie, but I see this as creative laziness. By using a word that clearly has a meaning intrinsically related to sexual activity, they're subliminally trying to give their campaign a bit of an edge.

"Whopper Newbies." Couldn't they have gone for cute over edgy? Sheesh. [Anyone back in Korea able to tell me if there is a similar advertising campaign going on over there and, if so, what term they're using in lieu of "Whopper virgins"?]

This is part of a disturbing trend of pornification of mainstream culture. Raise your hand if you heard Alaska Governor Sarah Palin referred to as a "M.I.L.F." Now, when did you first hear that term? Better yet, where did you first hear it? I first encountered it in porn spam. Then I noticed people were starting to use it in everyday conversation. 

Okay, fine. We're adults. But then I started hearing people use it in conversation in front of children. In other words, it has become so engrained in our heads that we easily forget (temporarily) that it means "Mothers I'd like to fuck." (I'm assuming cyber nannies are blocking kids from reading this blog due to the profanity; if so, kudos on their mom and dad for their mad parenting skills.)

Mothers I'd like to fuck... said in code in front of kids. Sheesh. 

BK's contribution is to introduce the term "Whopper virgins" on cartoons watched by millions of kids (these stills were lifted from a recording of The Simpsons). Great. I don't have any kids of my own yet, but I have nephews and nieces and young cousins from infants to very early teens. Their parents fear letting them have email addresses in part because of unsolicited spam mail talking about MILFs and links to "Nailin' Palin" or bukkake or all kinds of other crap that I'd never heard of just a few years ago (nor cared to see). 

It's pervasive. On the radio here in Honolulu, 101.9 was telling listeners in evening drive-time to go to their website to see "Nailin' Palin" pictures. Drive-time is when some parents might actually be taking their kids somewhere. Good way to show corporate responsibility, Star 101.9. 

BK is a willing player in all this. They have chosen to further perpetuate this pornification of culture solely for the purpose of making a profit. It's just too much. Burger King, you've lost a customer. [And I hate you for making me sound like a leftist prude.]

UPDATE: 

More weird or borderline offensiveness from Burger King. How about a paper placemat depicting a de-pantsed onion about to get probed very uncomfortably. 

Or an ad (frankly, I have no idea where this one is from) depicting the Burger KreepKing obviously trying to prove he's a red-blooded male, after some obvious questioning (including this disturbing parody):

William Jefferson Clinton, okay. William Jefferson, not so much.

Voters in Louisiana have elected Ahn Cao, a Republican lawyer, to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Vietnamese-American to be sent to the U.S. Congress. 

The district had been safely Democratic for quite some time, so much so that the incumbent, Representative William Jefferson felt at ease enough to get himself into a corruption scandal. White voters didn't like that too much, and thanks to the population-clearing effects of Hurricane Katrina, their strong turnout was enough to elect the 41-year-old Cao, an immigrant who arrived on American shores at the age of eight. It didn't help Jefferson's case that the Obama team didn't really give him much support. 

Although Democrats enjoy high support amongst many minority groups, there are three notable exceptions: Americans of Vietnamese, Korean, and Cuban descent. What do these three have in common? Their community's identity since the Cold War has been heavily influenced by strong anti-communist sentiment (which, historically, seems to jive more with Republican policies), even after the Cold War ended (since Hanoi and Havana are still communist, while Seoul is routinely antagonized by Pyongyang). 

Younger VAs, KAs, and CAs may have less fervor against the reds, something reflected by changes in the motherland: South Koreans have been pushing for engagement with North Korea, Vietnam has opened to the United States, and relations with Cuba edge closer toward reconciliation. Nevertheless, animosity toward the communist rulers of North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba can remain strong among older voters. 

Among younger voters, though, the Republican party's pro-business stance has great appeal to the entrepreneurs in the Korean-American and, I believe, the Vietnamese-American communities.