A terrible audio track that my friend Jack posted that WILL make you laugh.

Sunset Grill is a webcomic made by my friend Kat.

Anyone notice that Obama mentioned non-believers in his inauguration speech without calling them unAmerican? That was interesting.

I suppose it was time for a new template anyway, but I’m not really feeling like organizing that now, so for the next few days at least, the sidebar is going to be missing on my main blog page. Which is a crappy solution, but it’s all I’ve got for you right now.

UPDATE (the next afternoon): Okay, so it totally wasn’t the fault of the plugin: it was some stray div tags that got into the post because I copied and pasted HTML into the Visual Editor. Now I know better. It’s a dreadfully newbie error, I suppose, but it’s never happened before, so I didn’t even think of the possibility.

And I should add that the plugin I thought was at fault is a very cool one for WordPress, by the way: Simple Exclude lets you quietly, simply exclude posts from specific categories from the front page, archives, searches, and RSS feed of your website. And since it also won’t screw up your website unless you screw up and stupidly include someone else’s div tags in your content, I can highly recommend it. The plugin is here.

Kudos to Paul Menard, the plugin author, who was very nice as I freaked out and blamed his code for things it couldn’t possibly have been doing.

Or would it be weirder if it were someone else pretending to be this guy were playing passive-aggressive on my website, just to scold anyone with differing opinions about zombie movies? And that, on closer investigation, it turned out to be a politely banished commenter (who’d turned up under at least one pseudonym (see the latter part of this comment) since being told he wasn’t welcome anymore) to turn up impersonating said famous horror movie producer/director? Because, well, Silver Springs, Maryland isn’t so far from the place my old troll lives.

Oh, yes, I suspect I’ve got the drop on him, and it ain’t very pretty. Let this be a lesson, when you start wondering how people are doing while you’re logged onto Facebook: the guy who turned out to be a backstabber in middle school? He’s probably still uncool. Here’s what I’ve got…

This fake Brian Yuzna is posting from the IP 68.33.68.63, which is somewhere in Maryland… possible, as this gadget and a few others seems to think, in Silver Spring, probably near the corner of Caddington Avenue and Whittington Terrace… and a mere 27 kilometers from my troll’s town of residence. Which, you know, is a pretty big coincidence, especially given the email address used by the commenter — — and the fact that my onetime troll is a big fan of the film.

(See here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=W0B&q=Reanimator+site%3Amarkguppy.com%2F&btnG=Search)

This faux-Yuzna’s comment even fixated on some of the same people mentioned in that post.

Even some of the core vocabulary is the same as my troll’s, such as the insistent, and non-ironic, use of the word “auteur,” or his snide dismissal of my thesis as something a “bright undergrad” would demonstrate in a “term paper.” (Sure, pal. Do please show me where sociobiology and the study of literature have been combined. Maybe I missed that in grad school, or maybe some grand synthesis of knowledge has happened since I got to Korea. But nothing’s turning up on the databases I have access to…)

Of course, I could just be seeing patterns where there are none. Does anyone know where Brian Yuzna is living at the moment? I mean, if he’s living in or near Maryland? Wait, this website says he lives in Barcelona. And he surely doesn’t seem to be in the habit of posting nasty little comments on random websites, or so says Google.

And, really, it’s just a little too suspicious. I’m further betting that the IP-address-to-street-location gadget is actually not quite accurate (just as such gadgets all disclaim). Look across the parking lot. See that big building? I wonder whether that’s my troll’s workplace. I wonder if a slightly better check on the IP would reveal the name of the organization that pays for it? Not that I’d complain to his boss about his pissing on my website from a work computer, but… well… maybe I would. If it’ll make him stop posting here? I’ve emailed the ISP for that IP and asked them whether it’s a company using it, a company to which I could complain regarding an employee’s use of their company to post abuse on people’s websites. Because, man, how hard do I have to push to get a troll to go make a nuisance of himself somewhere else?

But I’d prefer he just sees this and stops posting here on his own… under any name. Come on, Mark Guppy, could you just quit it? Enough with the sockpuppets. Go away, and don’t come back. Then I wouldn’t have to ask your boss to tell you not to post little flaming bags of electronic turds on my website.

By the way, it’s pretty pathetic that you have to impersonate a famous horror movie producer to have the balls to disagree with me. Oh yeah, and the potshot about me being an “aspiring writer”? Uh, what is “There Will Be Wind,” pal?

(http://www.markguppy.com/search/label/There%20Will%20Be%20Wind)

Heh, whatever. Better to be an aspiring writer than being an aspiring troll.

Now, I could be wrong. But I doubt it. And after the sockpuppetry I’ve seen, it’ll take more than an indignant protestation to convince me.

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.
  Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

  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.

Anthony Dawkin  | at 2:14 AM | 2008/09/18
| 68.179.147.205

I would like to warn everyone who is thinking about reading the Question of Hu to not read it.

…because it’s all of, what, 200 pages of relatively large print? And so it might take you a couple of hours to get through! Good gracious! Time you could spend on anything from chewing gum and surfing for nudie pics online, to digging out that last bit of mucus way up high in your nostrils. Heaven forbid you read a well-written book instead.

What’s this? Wait? Ah, there’s more…

I was forced to read it for a history class…

Pardon, forced? Where are you going to school, young man? Didst thy teacher whip thee? Else didst he bid thy classmates whip thee?

Teachers don’t force students to read anything. Competent and intelligent students embrace learning and take the bits that don’t interest them along with the bits that do, and indeed read many more books than are ever assigned to them for a given course. Incompetent, lazy, and unintelligent students complain about being “forced” to read 200 page books.

Sorry, young feller, but no matter how dumb as you might be as unfortunate as it might seem to you, we cannot structure all courses around Prison Break, Penthouse Forum, and whatever your favorite console game is this week. One of the prerequisites to the acquisition of the critical thinking and analytic skills characteristic of an educated person is reading. A lot of reading.

You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? Aw, don’t pout…

… and all i got from it was that a dumb ass chinese guy cant act as a sensable human in public.

I can’t decide what’s more embarrassing, that you couldn’t muster any more imagination than to read the book that way, or that your education system has let you get as far as college without your learning to spell a word like sensible. Let alone capitalization rules, or any of the other fundamentals of written English.

Ok throw the fact that they dont go by the same customs and beliefs as the chinese at this time… that is no reason to act like a dumb fuck.

Whereas apparently you have perfectly wonderful reasons to act like a “dumb fuck”… correct? Please do enumerate them for me, preferably with as much cleverness and wit as you mustered in your first comment. I could use the amusement.

He needs to have a little respect if he is going to go into another country and go by what the adherre to.

Rather like you need to have a little respect when you open a book and fix your bleary, red-rimmed, hang-over advertising eyes upon it. (Let alone the necessity of showing a little respect on the blogs upon which you deign to post your ignorant little cuss-laden rants.) I sincerely doubt you could cope with even a week in China. I sincerely imagine you would end up in a Chinese prison if you went there. That you cannot imagine this reflects on your poverty of cogitative ability.

Its like all the spics coming to the U.S. wanting to change the launguage to Spanish…

Or all the morons who get born into the U.S. and start wanting to change the language to the rank MTV crap that seems to be pouring quite naturally from your keyboard. I agree, young Anthony, it’s a tragedy. There’s only one way to avert it, my dear boy: burn your keyboard! Trash your computer! Cut out your tongue! Speak never again, nevermore, nevermore!

ya how bout noo foreigners English is what we go by and if u dont like it go the fuck home.

A walloping finish: you seem to have learned something in school after all, having reserved the most extreme demonstration of your case for the conclusion. And what a wondrously revealing bit of performative utterance it is!

There is the irony — subtle, but obvious and vibrant in its referential potency — that you are posting on the blog of a man who lives as an expatriate in a foreign country, where he teaches a foreign language. (To Korean students; it should gratify such an ardent defender of the English language as you to realize, bold Anthony, that these people who have grown up speaking a very foreign language and mostly acquired English as a second language almost all have better written English than you do!)

There is the demonstration of the powerful and obvious link between racism and idiocy, apparent in the chain of non sequiturs that riddle this last sentence; “spics” want to change the language of America to Spanish, a “laungauge” [sic] with which you, too seem to struggle, and who ought to “go the fuck home” as if home were across a border and not down a street).

And there is the subtle but forceful send-up of the single-mindedness of the right-wing side of the American media, and its apparent ability to mimic George Romero in somehow zombify vast numbers of your countrymen so that every discussion — even a rant about a book regarding an 18th Chinese man’s misadventure in France — must inexorably dovetail into yet another inane rant about the pseudopolitical distraction de jour: abortion, illegal immigration, Bill Clinton’s cigar, and so forth.

But there’s one problem, young sir, and that is, that it’s all far too unbelievable. It beggars belief that anyone as moronic as you could find his way across a campus, let alone into a college classroom; it’s an insult to American education that one such as yourself could actually get into the post-secondary system at all. If you were, indeed, a real person, you would have only one course of action by which to maintain your dignity and do your social duty. That is, for the sake of higher education, for the sake of your less Neolithic classmates, for the sake of your poor (and certainly awestruck) teachers, I would undoubtedly insist that — at the very least — cease to waste the energies and resources of your school and your society by dropping out of your educational program and seeking out a line of work more suited to your meager cerebral resources. Driving trucks cross-country, perhaps, or working in a high school cafeteria. If none of those appeal, you could always risk the dangers of a life of crime, or simply end the misery that it must be living as you, by finding yourself a secluded train bridge or bathtub and, plugged-in radio in hand, doing the inevitable.

But obviously, nobody as stupid as this persona you have put on for the purposes of this comment could actually have made it through high school, let alone getting into college or reading a whole book, even one as short and readable as Spence’s. Surely the American education system has not fallen so far. Surely a character as egregiously moronic as this Anthony Dawkin fellow could not exist in reality. You are, logically speaking, impossible, and thus I must urge you, dear cleverly anonymous commenter, to attempt again, try harder, try once more, and perhaps you may mount an argument that, thought not creditable, is at least a smidgen more credible. I am sure your frustration is great, and so I offer these words of Samuel Beckett’s to you: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” There is hope, even in that.

If you have any questions, come and see me during my office hours.

Sincerely,

Prof. Sellar

PS: You really should try to spell your email address correctly, if nothing else.

Anon | 98.218.151.45 | 2008/09/16 http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/?cp=46

I have a couple of things to say about that.

First, if I’ve misinterpreted your intention in your cunning comment, dear Anon, then I apologize. Feel free to attempt to explain your non-trollish intention. The anglo-Korean blogosphere has many unbalanced trollkin (ogres, trow, haugtrold, even the odd ogre magi) who go about leaving flaming baggies of feces on the doorsteps of anyone who writes anything remotely analytical or critical, and while you may not be one of them, I think you’ll need to explain how and why that is the case.

Hell, if your explanation is good enough, I’ll even post the comment. Of course, if it isn’t, I’ll probably just ignore you. Or invite anyone who feels like it to spam you at will.

Second of all, I think most Koreans would be either mildly amused or exhaustedly annoyed at the persistent ignorance necessary to believe that South Korea is still “poor.” When I wrote, “Poor students,” I was reflecting on the assignment that lies ahead for them.

You’re a few decades out of date, and in Korea, that actually counts for a lot. Yes, the economy will possible melt down here in the next while (… is that so different from the USA right now?), but the people I teach are solidly middle class on the global scale: the vast majority of them have air conditioners special fridges for kimchi in their homes, they nearly all dress impeccably (by their own standards, which ain’t cheap here), and not one of them is without at least two, three, or even four pieces of consumer electronics at *all* times. Their phones cost more than mine, their MP3 players are often fancier than mine, they mostly have electronic dictionaries or could have them if they wanted them, and so on.

Does poverty exist in Korea? Yes. Is poverty the explanation for the poor sex education in this society? (A poor sex education that has resulted in a high rate of [illegal] abortions, a frightening explosion of HIV, and low rates of safe sex practice here?) No way in hell. It’s institutional resistance, and a desperate desire by the older generation — who are the predominant consumers of the sex trade, incidentally — to bolster the idea that Korea is a “conservative society.” It’s not poverty.

And since this affects the lives of not only my students, but also a huge number of people I care about here — people whose spouses or children may contract AIDS, people who are likelier to be sexually or physically abused, people whose recourse to professional medical legal help in these cases is less than it realistically could be, people whose respect for their own bodies, and for their own sexuality — and that of those around them — is sadly choked off by embarrassment.

I’m not saying they have to talk about it with me. I’m not a sex educator, I’m a professor of language and cultural studies. I’m saying that it’s unfortunate they don’t get to talk about this anywhere, and I’m saying that it’s so very clammed up as a topic here that it took me a while to re-realize that this wasn’t marginalization of women, but sheer trepidation at the idea of discussing, in a co-ed setting, the changes bodies undergo in adolescence.

By the way, I’m not speaking as a “superior” white man who thinks “inferior” Korea should follow the West in every way. There are things that Korea needs to really resist following the West (ie. America) in doing, because it’s unlikely to work well for Korea. (Neoliberal economics, anyone? Increased militarism? Greater dependence on automobiles and faster guzzling of oil? Extremist Christian Protestants dominating politics?) There are other things that Korea handles better than my own culture does. But I am speaking as someone who lives here, who has a stake in the place, who cares about the implications of these things, and who is affected by them. Profoundly in some cases.

Could I finish out my contract and leave? Well, yes, I suppose I could. My fiancée is Korean, but beyond that and my work agreement, I’m not tied here legally or anything. It’s not as if I have to live under the Korean government, subject to its laws and to whatever developments Korean society undergoes. But I have done so for what is fast approaching seven years — woah! — and I will always have a degree of personal stake in it, fiancée or no: I have many good friends who live here and will remain subject to this society’s ups and downs, positives and negatives alike. Ex-effing-scuse me for giving a damn.

Third of all, what the hell? I highlighted how my own reaction as an undergrad wasn’t as different from my male students’, except in terms of social setting. I pointed out a social condition that, believe it or not, a number of the non-student Koreans I know find really problematic, sad, depressing, or counterproductive.

(Yeah, some female Koreans actually do object to the idea they need plastic surgery to compete in the job market. Imagine that! And imagine students being not quite worldly enough to get why that might be! Imagine university being a place that challenges assumptions, rather than just getting you a better job!)

And fourth of all, come on, don’t be a coward. Pseudonyms, even, are okay. But Anon? If you can’t be bothered to sign up with a username, then please don’t bother commenting. Anon is almost always the first sign of the stink of a troll’s passage.

And I don’t let trolls nest on my chunk of Internet-land.

It could have happened.

Responding to protests, the Ladies Professional Golf Assn. announced Friday that it would back down on suspending golfers who do not speak adequate English, reversing a controversial decision that had thrown the organization smack into the nation’s long-running culture wars.

The LPGA Tour had announced last month that it would suspend golfers who could not speak English in media interviews, acceptance speeches and tournaments by 2009, saying that language fluency was critical to the sport’s promotion and marketing efforts.

The action occurred as foreigners have increasingly come to dominate women’s golf, with 121 players from 26 countries outside the U.S. — including the LPGA’s top-ranked player, a Mexico native, and three of the last four winners of women’s majors, who are from Asia. The largest foreign contingent is from South Korea, with 45 players.

But what began as an internal marketing move quickly devolved into a raucous debate over culture, ethnicity and language. Partisans on both sides weighed in, with some saying the golf brouhaha underscored how foreigners refusing to learn English are endangering the nation’s core traditions, a charge commonly made against Spanish-speaking Latinos. Others accused golf officials of using English to keep out foreigners, particularly Koreans.

(You can also check out a video on the story here.)

Particularly Koreans, why? The video above helps to answer that. Anyone want to bet all those Asians decrying this move in the video are Korean-Americans? (Hint: you’ll lose your money.) Well, it turns out someone in the LPGA specifically took aside Korean players to discuss the regulation. Whether that’s because they’re worse at English than other foreign players is anybody’s guess, of course.

Probably unlike some bloggers who come to mind, I’m happy that the rule was abolished. Personally, I can do without the whole new wave of tirades and recriminations in the media about American bigotry and racism.

(Which I really wouldn’t class this as, since people of any race can learn English enough to be functional in an interview. Yes, even Korean superstars golfers in their teens! I also suspect it’d be helpful for them to learn some English in terms of, you know, adjusting to life in America.

(But I would call barring them from the league stupid and discriminatory, mostly because hockey, basketball, rugby, and other players — and male golfers! — needn’t be fluent in English to play in the big leagues. Protectionist? Well, yeah. Provincial? Oh, yes, indeed.)

Seon-Hwa Lee and Se Ri Pak. Image from Getty Images, click for source.

On the other hand, it’d be nice if Korean golfers would be required to enter their Social Security Number in order to buy golf accessories, enter into tournaments, and so on. If they don’t have that, they can fill out forms in triplicate, fax them to every service they want to use, and wait six to eight weeks for clearance. That’s what non-Koreans need to do just to do internet shopping, or join any of the (growing) number of registered-users-only websites in the Korean internet.

And if they could install ActiveX controls in their clubs, and design the gold courses to work only with American-langauge clubs, man, then I’d be happy.

But, okay, expat whining aside, forcing golfers to speak English fluently? Seems pretty silly to me. Especially when it’s only women’s golf. It’d be as silly as making a rule that the only people allowed to do graphic SFX work on Korean movies are those who are fluent in Korean. Just don’t map, do it?

(Hat tip to Julia, who emailed me about this…)

Apologies; it didn’t mean to misconstrue. It’s just your haircut.

It knows better now. Won’t happen again. We promise.

UGK
| 90.198.56.254

To the dumbass f@ggot [my edit] who wrote this article. Evolution is the most racist theory that was ever created. Why? because Darwin and all the other f@ggots who believe in Darwinism reckon that white people are the most superior form of humans on the planet. There is no denying this. I have done science at university and when i found this out i was disgusted.

Human beings were created by reptilian humanoids. Sound stupid? Read about David Icke. That makes more sense to me than saying thats blacks are a bunch of primitive animals and that the glorious white race evolved from them.

From Deepak Chopra: Who Is This Idiot?, 2007/12/03 at 9:09 PM

Clearly, this commenter is a person of superior intellect. Here I am, sitting at my computer and trying to think of what to say, but you know, it strikes me that I don’t need to. This hoser mocks himself. I will throw in a link, though, full of quotes from Darwin that show his attitudes on slavery (he was against it) and criticizing other racist behaviors and policies of his time. Darwin was actually among the English liberals who repudiated Edward John Eyre for his excesses in suppressing the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica. Who was against punishing Eyre, and following the Kim Il Sung-like law he created in Jamaica rendering it illegal to punish him for those same excessess? Ah, there’s a surprise: Dickens? Tennyson? Ruskin and Kingsley? Damn, why so many literary types? That’s an embarrassment.

But then, as some say of the poor, I say of bigoted dorks: the wicked shall always be with us. (The subject of Buckell’s post, not Buckell himself.) Being bookish, and SF-bookish, even, doesn’t make you good, or decent, or even particularly smart. There are many rooms in the mansion of SF, including some with poo smeared on the walls.

Which, by the way, reminds me of this article on David Icke from last year, up at Strange Horizons, asking what he’s doing that mainstream SF isn’t. Short answer? Preying upon the mentally and emotionally vulnerable for make a fortune. I like to think that good SF does the opposite: in singing the praises of intelligence, of human adaptability, and so on.

But that dichotomy is problematic, isn’t it? Where’s that line between good SF and “the other stuff”? Maybe a better analogy is types of alcohol: someone like Ted Chiang or Maureen McHugh puts out a fine, wonderfully-aged cognac rich with flavours, or a lovely, textured, and heady wine, and it’s a thing to savor and celebrate, not to get hammered on. Bruce Sterling? A bourbon you know from years back and can have fun with, though it does funny things with your head. (Especially in the stories collected in A Good Old-Fashioned Future and Globalhead.) Greg Egan? Absinthe, my friends, absinthe. (But didn’t you know, it was never the absinthe that killed people anyway. Or so they say.) Scalzi? A dependable, smooth, and surprisingly tasty hits-the-spot microbrew, the kind of thing you enjoy more because you know he’s just making it seem easy to brew something like that.

I could go on, but you get the point. If this is the analogy we’ll work with, David Icke (like L. Ron Hubbard and very few others in the world of SF) is the malt liquor factory boss, putting out what I think I remember Spike Lee calling, somewhere in the director’s commentary on Bamboozled, “liquid crack” — stuff that builds dependency, that distorts minds and lives deeply, and that finally and fully screws up any and all partially-screwed up people who come into contact with it. People can get screwed up on the bourbon, the microbrew, the wine or cognac; people can do absinthe till they’re in the gutter. Hell, there’s a million ways to skin yourself. But malt liquor has no other purpose than to make money, and no other effect than screwing people up and turning them inside out.

And that’s just like David Icke, as the comments above clearly demonstrates. You should thank your lucky stars I’m not quoting the email correspondence that followed.

(Do three or four emails constitute a correspondence? maybe it’s an exchange… no, wait. It was flaming paper bags of feces on my electronic doorstep.)

The appropriate response, of course, is pity. But every human heart has its limits.

Here’s a very odd video that I’d like to briefly unpack for y’all, as an example of very neat, strange, and utterly Korean cross-fertilization of pop culture that goes on here, and especially as an example of Korean pop culture as a product of imported and “remixed” genres, materials, content, and more, a subjet of increasing interest to me because it seems that Korean pop culture is, currently, in a state of, well… pardon the kimchi reference, but it’s in a state of ferment. That is, when I look at pop culture here, from the weirdest to the most tame, what I find is that a great deal of it still consists of derivative creativity.

I want to be clear by saying what I mean by “derivative,” because music and art critics and creative people in general use that word in a pejorative way a lot of the time. We call music like, say, Britney Spears’ music “derivative” in a negative sense, meaning it adds nothing to pop music, but simply repackages what’s already out there to generate more money from the same content. Doubtless, we could also say the same of a lot of Korean pop acts, including those accused of stealing from the derivative work of Americans.

But that kind of discussion is much less interesting than looking at how derivative creation here can be seen as a positive. I’m even more leery, after having seen some older Korean films at PiFan last week, to make pronouncements about the history of pop culture in Korea, but I will say that certain things — like the Korean Western I’ll be mentioning below — seem “new” to the young people I know here. New, not because Koreans have never seen Westerns, mind you, but because Koreans have not seen many (or maybe any) Westerns with Korean characters in them.

Which makes sense, when you consider that Westerns are a kind of American mythology. But if Italians could make it their own — and if Hong Kong could do it — why not Koreans, too? For all the snideness with which some people might criticize this as Koreans copying Western entertainment genres, I see copying as the first step in mastering a creative form. Writers, when they start out, often write stories based on the books or movies they’ve seen. Composers and songwriters start out by imitating the songs they like most. Yes, a point comes when people move beyond that. I suspect it will take a while here; as many old-timers have said to me, all kinds of interesting, unique pop culture stuff was simply killed off after the financial (aka IMF) crisis here. (Though according to author Ch’oe Yun, the worst affected was literature.)

Bits and pieces of foreign culture have been flowing into Korea for hundreds of years, of course… a book on my shelf, titled A Korean Storyteller’s Miscellany, translated by Peter H. Lee, is essentially a literary collection of bits and scraps collected from all kinds of sources, many of them recounting stories set in China. Buddhism, (Neo-)Confucianism, Taoist, and Shamanic beliefs — if you’re talking about the form they have taken in Korea, you’re talking about remixes there, too. The Korean language has been remixed, too, with vast amounts of foreign (Chinese) words injected into it. They remixed themselves an alphabet.

I’m not sure if this is especially characteristic of “crossroads societies” — societies which exist in crossroads points between different, bigger cultures that meet and mingle in their lands — but I can say that, in terms of creative development, ripping off foreign creativity is a well-entrenched stage in the development of a pop culture.

On top of that, whatever the rate influx of foreign pop culture was thirty, forty, or fifty years ago, the realistic thing to consider is that, the internet’s influence on all this probably amounted to little more than a trickle influencing the cutting-edge few back in 1994 or 1995, but by around 1999 or 2000 (according to the people I’ve talked to, including many college-aged students who tell me that’s when they first went online), the trickle had turned into a full-on gush — a sloshing firehose of foreign pop culture and content that people could access with almost as much ease as any domestic pop culture. (Almost, except for the language barrier.)

The implications were profound for fashion, for youth identity, gender politics, the demands made of the domestic entertainment industry (and the offers made by it), and much more. And I think it would be remarkable if we didn’t see a massive increase in derivative creative works in the Korean entertainment industry — all that raw material to be remixed into a Korean form! All that stuff just waiting to be explored, now that both poltical and infrastructural barriers to accessing everything in the rest of the world’s pop culture are gone.

(Sort of. I’m still waiting for Korea to figure out how neat Bollywood musicals are, and start producing the Korean equivalent.)

I’ll get into that in later installments on this series — which I’ll get to once I’ve dug away at some of the stuff I want to write about in other series, and once i’ve had more of a chance to research the history of the Net and net culture here — but for the moment, I’ll get back to unpacking that strange little video I mentioned earlier. First, have a look:

Now, if you’ve just watched the video, depending on whether you live in Korea, some of that might make sense. There are a few things mixed in there, some of which I don’t know about, but I’ll unpack the three that are explicable.

The first is the references to the film The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, a recently-released Korean film; indeed, a “kimchi” Western (tribute to spaghetti Westerns, apparently) that sets its tale of three Korean outlaws in the wild west in the lawless Manchuria of the 1930s.

Cannes poster for the film. I haven't seen it yet.

This is where the Korean cowboy footage in the video comes from, along with the “놈놈놈” part of the formula: the word 놈 (nom) is roughly equivalent to “bastard” or “jerk” in English, though slightly more fluid in its range, I think — it can be much less negative than bastard, or somewhat stronger, too — and the title of the movie in Korean — 좋은놈나쁜놈이상한놈 — refers to the Good, the Bad, and the Weird (the three main characters) using this word. Thus the 놈놈놈 (nom-nom-nom) reference. Indeed, the movie’s website is 3nom.co.kr. Anyway, that’s what the very pulp-ish Latin guitar music is supposed to evoke — though as far as I know, [EDIT: a version of -- see the comments section for more.] that song is part of the Kill Bill soundtrack; I don’t know whether it the same version appears in the Korean film at all, but it suits the cowboy imagery very well anyway.

(EDIT: And it’s worth noting that the film itself being a “kimchi Western” makes it a remix of a remix (the “spaghetti Western”) of a genre that was, in itself, very much a remix of older kinds of stories. Perhaps all the good cowboys have daddy issues because the genre has daddy issues: in every Lone Ranger, there’s a Robin Hood, and in every Billy the Kid there’s a pirate or rebel.)

The second source of content — the drum beat at the beginning where the rapper is saying something about “I’m gonna make ya move… I’m gonna make ya cool… I’m gonna make you dance… I’m gonna make ya move…” or whatever that is, is take from a video by a rapper/DJ named DJ Koo, who apparently is a member of the Japanese group TRF a Korean DJ. (With the same name as several other DJs around the world, frustratingly. But the track used in this remix is called 왜 (Wae) and it’s among the tracks offered up for download here, though I’m not sure which mix the sample comes from — or how different the various mixes of that track are…)

The third, and most interesting, snippet is one that the file’s original maker — and many Koreans old enough to remember it from childhood — found to match very well with the Latin guitar music, especially because of the rhythm in the first half of the voice riff. It’s from a really old commercial for a kids’ popsicle called a 빠삐코 (Papico, which sounds like a Japanese pronunciation of “popsicle” and guess what, it’s apparently a Japanese product), which is documented extensively here, and is also pictured in this ad:

Or in this ad, which features a little (black? or blackfaced?) kid making the same goofy faces as a Japanese woman:

Here’s a more recent Papico ad:

… and a somewhat older one, also from Japan:

When the world is annoying you, go to Youtube and search the phrase I used on for the header of this post: “I like turtles” — that should be good for at least twenty minutes of fun.

• Jimi Hendrix made a Sex Tape. And now someone else is releasing it.
• Psychopaths are great correspondents. (Among others.)
• Canadian copyright is about to go nuts. (Hardly a surprise: the USA is exported n even-more-draconian form of copyright law to Korea, and Canada’s much more of a USA-wannabe.)

As someone commented — who needs The Onion? Reality is weirder!

Video pasted in below for you non-LJers.

UPDATE: slightly less odd, but still bizarre, video for the same song:

Thanks for the unwitting heads-up, Tristan!

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(And for you LJ readers, yeah, I embedded the video below on my site, but you’re missing nothing if you follow the link.)

In the meantime, here’s some entertainment for you. My friend Joleen sent me this video (link included for the LJ mirror readers, since LJ hates when I crosspost Youtube clips)

Joleen very aptly describes this video as “a little piece of Heaven.” I agree.