Stuff Going On
Posted on November 2, 2008
Filed Under Korea, SF, blogz, history, media, pol, popculture, th'arts, whatever | 7 Comments
Well, lots of things going on… in a personal sense, too, though I’m not ready to blog my recent news.
Instead:
- There’s some great fiction online that I need to link to. For now, just one story: the wonderfully nastyglee party that is Tina Connolly’s “A Day Out, with Stereoscopes” is up at Birkensnake. I’ve a copy of the zine, actually, and it’s lovely. You could do worse than to subscribe. Tina has a talent for mixing the cute with the horrifying.
- Ever heard of Drapetomania? It’s this disease that can be summed up as “longing to be free and a slave no more.” Yeah, they diagnosed runaway slaves with an illness, meant to explain their desire to run away. Which ought to make you think about, say, for example, ADD and the education system a little more.
- Courtesy of NPR, this is kind of depressing.
Maybe I should tell my students to memorize everything beforehand after all, in debate class?
- Here’s the RSS feed for new SF books at Manybooks.net. Come on, you know you want it.
- MrChiCity3 on the advantages of a well-stocked kitchen. Hint, these advantages involve women’s nether parts, and suburban chicks fawning over Snapple.
- The purposeful miseducation of America as political strategy backfires: yes, the infection has spread to the political head. Long ago, but this is just, well… Crack a goddamned book, lady. I sure hope whoever’s elected make book-cracking part of a balanced life.
- Speaking of book-cracking: maybe fundamentalists ought to read the Bible sometime?
American Idol, indeed. Two words for you: Bad Precedent.
Yes, for you viewers at home, that is a golden calf bull (thanks, Charles), with people praying to it. To save the American Economy. More here. You’d think they might have actually read the Bible, sometime before trying to shove it down everyone else’s throat. What can an educated (or even just an intelligent) person do but snicker? (Via plenty of places, but especially Oltheros, who has a rockin’ LJ.)
- You’re young. That makes you suspicious. How could young people support the Republican party? Get out! That’s how to ensure your party is supported in the future, guys…
- James Van Pelt on how to scare a reader, Mike Brotherton on writing as a career vs. writing as a hobby (another reason I’m considering going back to grad school in the medium run), mlawski on the artificiality of “strong female characters” (as opposed to interesting ones – for interesting, read: flawed, human female characters written the way we write any interesting male characters). Also, on io9, several authors give advice about writing good characters.
- Saw some good talks on TED lately, including this one wherein Steven Pinker argues what I’ve been saying for a while: yeah, humans are still a**holes, but we’re actually getting better… quantifiably so:
More good stuff over at TED. I’m not really sold on Susan Blackmore’s notion of temes, discussed here, but it’s an interesting idea. And while I don’t think Ken Robinson is a truly great public speaker — he meanders so much I start to wonder whether he’s gotten lost — I agree with his argument wholeheartedly. And this 3 minute fairytale of emoticons was fun.
Lots more to post about, but no time, so end off the post, a little happy, cutesy Korean indie-pop by Taru:
Maybe I’d hate it if I were listening closely enough to understand the words, but I’m not, so I don’t. Though watching it I wonder if, being in Korea so long, I have just stopped being revolted by cutesiness? Hmm.
Comments
7 Responses to “Stuff Going On”
Leave a Reply
Recently Published Stories
- "The Bodhisattvas." Published in Subterranean Magazine guest edited by Jonathan Strahan, Spring 2010.
- "Sarging Rasmussen: A Report By Organic" in SHINE Anthology, edited by Jetse de Vries, Spring 2010. Read an excerpt online here!
- "Alone With Gandhari." -- Clarkesworld #42, March 2010. Podcast by Clarkesworld (read by Kate Baker), March 1st, 2010.
- "보살들." ("The Bodhisattvas", Korean translation by Kim Chang-gyu.) In 백만 광년의 고독 (One Million Light-Years of Solitude) SOAO Workshop anthology from Omelas, December 2009. (See Forthcoming Publications, below, for English-language original.)
- "Of Melei, of Ulthar." Clarkesworld, October 2009.
- "Lester Young and the Jupiter's Moons' Blues" -- podcast at Starship Sofa, read by JJ Campanella (25 March 2009). Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois.
- "Tian Ju Zhiao (The Teaching of the Lord of Heaven)." (Poem.) Diet Soap #3 -- Sabotage. (1 March 2009). Buy an electronic or print edition here or get a FREE PDF -- see here.
- "Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands." 
Apex Magazine (3 Feb. 2009). Now available in Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol. 1 edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth.
- "Like, Stabbed by a Love Triangle, Dude," "The Xanax King and his Wife's Painted Hoo-Has," and "Homeless Bob and Lester the Black Guy" (creative nonfiction) and "Groan" (a poem) -- Outlanders zine published by Scott Burgeson.
- "The Country of the Young." Interzone 219 (Dec. 2008). Fictionwise eMagazine edition available here.
- "Dhuluma No More," read by David Munger. Podcast by Starship Sofa. (5 November 2008.)
- "Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang," available in the annual Canadian SF anthology Tesseracts Twelve, edited by Claude Lalumière.
- "Dhuluma No More." Asimov's SF October/November 2008. (Fictionwise eMagazine edition of the magazine available here.)
- "Lester Young and the Jupiter's Moons' Blues." Asimov's SF, July 2008. (Fictionwise eMagazine edition available here.)- "Pahwakhe" -- Fantasy magazine, 21 January 2008. Or listen to the Podcastle Podcast here (from 2 May 2008)!
- "The Egan Thief" -- Flurb #4, Fall/Winter 2007.
- "Junk" -- Nature, Vol 448: 2 August, 2007. (PDF also available.)Recent Articles
- "Parasites in the Human Ecosystem." Cahoots, Summer 2009.- "SF in South Korea Today." The Shine Anthology weblog, 9 April 2009.
- "Men, Women, and Internet Trolls" -- the Winter '08 installment of my column "XY" for Cahoots Magazine, 15 Dec. 2008.
- "How Candle Girl and V Took on 2MB." Clarkesworld, October 2008.
- XY column installment: Why Are Women More Religious? at Cahoots Magazine. (Fall 2008)- "Fending Off Discontentment." The Korea Herald, 25 September 2008.
- "Another Undiscovered Country: An Analysis of the Effects of Culture on the Reception and Adoption of the Science Fiction Genre in South Korea Through The Examination of 21st Century Korean SF Cinema." (Alt. link for those without Hangeul on their PCs.) Presented at the 4th International Congress of Korean Studies.
-
- "Planet Crazy" in Cahoots Magazine, Spring 2008.Grab Some Music
Korean indie rock with lost saxophone in tow:
- Product by Dabang Band (2004)
- Pig Over Seoul by Dabang Band (2002)Live acoustic/electronic ambient chillout:
- Live 1998 by ApocryphaCrusty, weird modern classical student compositions: - an assortment of compositions I wrote as an undergrad from 1995-1996.
If you're one of those people who is into owning the physical CD, Dabang Band's 2nd album, Product:
... is still available via YesAsia. I won't see a
centwon either way, but it's a pretty nice, ahem, product.-
If Only I Were Part Robot... - August 27, 2010
I'd have time to post constantly. But since I'm not: Here's some vintage Korean SF action... [...]-
What The Zen Cowboy Said - August 27, 2010
Caveat: I know zilch about horses. But I think this says something worth saying, just the same. [...]-
Recommended Books on Korea - August 26, 2010
So, I was recently asked for a list of my top ten books about Korean history/politics, for someone [...]-
"Hakwon Teachers" - August 26, 2010
In a recent post, I made a disparaging comment about being talked to like some hakwon teacher: And [...]TwoThree Annoying Things - August 26, 2010
The two girls who politely excused their way to the head of the line at the taxi stand tonight [...]
It’s actually a bull, not a calf. ;)
It would have been too poetic had it actually been a calf.
Charles,
Good correction, I’ll indicate it above. But the detail doesn’t make it any less poetic for me. :)
We’re they really praying to the Wall Street Bull, as opposed to praying over it?
The Taru video is great. Here’s a response, straight from Montreal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqTo2XSGqog
oops “We’re”
Rhesus,
Given the fact that Catholics are expressly prohibited against praying to anyone but God, yet I’ve known Catholics who described what they did as “praying to Mary” or “praying to St. Peter” (etc.) I sort of think the distinction is, well, mostly more academic than this lot would grasp.
As for the video… aie!
Thanks, Gord! Yay on your new pubs coming out!
Thanks, Tina. I think I should have linked the story in a post on its own, though… I may amend that. It deserves to be read! :)