I hate comment spammers. I really do think they all need to be taken off onto some desert island, if not dropped into the ocean. They’re basically taking the best positive invention of the 20th century, and coating it in feces. Okay, it’s a little personal at this point. There was so much comment spam being directed at my site last night that I lost all access to my installation of MT. I knew there was a spam problem, but I didn’t quite know how to fix it, and I was too busy to do any real research into it. …
Month: November 2004
Road Rage Cards
This is absolutely brilliant. I wonder if anyone will ever come out with a Korean edition? They ought to.
Scattered Flurries
No, it’s not yet snowing in Jeonju. It’s just that we had a camp meeting last night and Myoung and I are preparing the documents for the camp. That means a lot of paperwork and preparations. I’m trying to make the worksheets for the kids look a little more interesting, as well as easier-to-read, so it’s a bit of work. But I have it mostly finished now, though having printed them and seen how they look, they need a little more work. Layout onscreen always differs from layout on a printed product. But the hardest thing, I’m discovering, is explaining …
Pollery
Shawn recently informed me in no uncertain terms that it was bloody time I put up a new poll. I suggested, very seriously, that he should write one if he wanted a new poll up. So he did! It’s now up, in the right sidebar. Check it out, vote, but please only vote once. I promise I won’t edit out results I don’t like. But nor do I take responsibility for its content. I wouldn’t have put some of those answers in there, but I’m publishing it because I said I would. However, any Palestinian suicide bombers in Korea might …
Books I read this weekend
I read a couple of interesting books last weekend. The first is a hardcover novel by one of my favorite SF writers of all time, Bruce Sterling. The novel, which is titled The Zenith Angle, is even closer to the mainstream than Sterling’s previous novel, Zeitgeist, which was more of a postmodernist parable about technology and the world. (Or perhaps, though some would recoil, a kind of postmodernist magical-realist representation of the 20th Century.) This novel is more of a geek’s Tom Clancy, or at the very least a geek’s look at the world of spooks, technoespionage, and what internet …
Nathaniel Update
Well, here is another update from the home of my sister Marie and her fine husband Troy. Their son My nephew Nathaniel is now three months old. Quite a bright, active, and handsome little fellow by all accounts, though the doctor said at his last checkup that he was short and fat compared to other kids his age. Well, so was I. There’s hope he’ll be tall and fat, or even tall and not-so-very-fat, someday. Anyway, for now, he’s adorable. They’ve been sending me pics, but I’ve been a bit lax about posting them, just from having so much else …
The Heater
Well, my water boiler (water heater, or geyser, as it’s known in India) was acting up for… well, actually, since about a week after I moved into my apartment. So it’s been off-and-on for about a year, though with a little banging I’ve generally been able to get it to start. Well, on Friday, that finally didn’t work. I punched the heater any number of times, but it just would not start. I ended up hurrying to school after just barely washing a couple of crucial spots and wetting down my hair; but, I fel icky and I was relieved …
The Things You Happen Upon
Here are some interesting pages I ran across during a failed search for a picture of that Korean Liberation Day Cola: CorpWatch, a page that, well, watches corporations. An article about how new drink products are hurting the cola industry. It’s good news, if you ask me! An account by some guy who attended Liberation Day celebrations in North Korea. Apparently there is a book exchange on certain Sundays in Seoul: does anyone know if this is still in operation? The homepage of Santiago Colas, a professor living in Michigan; he has some poems and some essays on the Korean …
Things I’ve learned today:
Well, I learned a couple of very strange little bits of Koreana today from Lime, and thought they were interesting enough to post about: 삼신 할머니 (SamShin Halmeoni, or SamShin Grandmother) is some kind of midwife-deity to whom old grannies would pray in the early morning, beseeching that their grandchildren would be born healthy. The SamShin Grandmother is the spiritual midwife of Korean babies, and it’s her job to whack little kids on the bottom when it’s their turn to pop out into the material world. This, they say, is why Korean babies have a Mongolian spot on their backsides. …
The Hell Of In-Laws
For Friday Five this week, our dear friend Rob, Has asked a million-dollar question, or, I estimate, worth at least thirty bob, If anybody’s keeping count of score. And if they are, please email me a chart, Nothing too fancy. It needn’t be high art. “Name the five most nightmarish in-laws or Events involving in-laws you’ve had to burn Through,” Rob asks, and opens such a door Into the past, that I feel I must spurn The very thought of facing the request For mem’ries cause a sharp pain in my chest. And so I’ll not comply, but plead the …