… I have only a few minor updates to mention. One is that I definitely must get my hands on those Bluiett Baritone Nation CDs that are all easily ordered, but never in stock anywhere I go. Second, I’m almost finished building a website, and I’ll probably link to it this weekend. Third, I heard from Charlie, and it’s all good. He’s off to the Great Sandy Desert tomorrow, which is just nuts, but cool. And he knows way too much for his own good about old, bad Canadian TV. Speaking of which, I’ll give a cookie to the first …
Month: October 2005
Republican Mammonite Haiku
Found a lovely haiku in the comments section of a post at Daily Kos on The Lies & Depraved Indifference of Republicans. It goes like this: every turtle knows Bush and the Republicans worship just Mammon It’s always in verse that the truest truth is spoken. Okay, not always, but this poem’s dead-on.
News From Up North
Found this among a pile of old links I planned to blog. Source unknown, but I’d guess it’s from the Marmot sometime back. North Korean TV really sucks. Trust me. Or see for yourself.
St Paul as a Duped Henchman of Satan?
… [these] are things which Mormon women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in the world to come—and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say anything about that. — Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter XV It’s always struck me as odd that mainstream people–religious or otherwise–laugh at the antics of street preachers, but take the conversions of the members of the early Church seriously. Take Paul, for instance. The guy hunted Christians, till …
Oh yeah!
The Megapass Connection was set up despite the fact that Hanaro’s connection was set up. The technician just flipped some kind of switch down at the control box. And the good news is that my connection is blisteringly fast! Here’s hoping it stays that way.
Well Isn’t This Nice?
I have a feeling that the fact Hanaro hasn’t disconnected me from their system is going to pose some problems later today when the Megapass guys show up to hook me up. And they promised I’d be disconnected sometime yesterday, as long as I faxed them a copy of my alien registration card. The bastards. UPDATE: Weirdly enough, my phone line is cut off, as of noon, but if you’re seeing this, then my Internet connection is still up. And it’s been more stable since my request for discontinuation of service than it’s been in months.
Famous Asexuals sounds like a book by Lytton Stratchey, but actually it’s a link in Wikipedia.
Researching composer Erik Satie, I ran across a note in Wikipedia claiming he was mainly asexual. There was a link on that last word; of course I followed it. Look whose company he shared: Newton; Tesla; Dali; Gould; Lovecraft; and Kant. Wow. But you know, people who like sex have achieved things too. Whatever.
Probably Don’t Need a New Bike Seat…
but this New York Times article makes me want one. (via Gatorlog.)
A Night Off
Since I’m not supposed to have an internet connection tonight, I’m loathe to work on anything online. But I did read a post by Marvin on our shared blog New Sophists’ Almanac, about Jazz in Japan, musical authenticity, and stuff like that. You can read his original post here, and then check out my response here.
The Notion of Customer Service in Korea
This post is going to be full of observations, and questions, but not full of answers. Frankly, although I’m more of a consumer here than I ever was in North America — in the sense that I actually deal with a lot more people in the service industry — I still don’t really have a good fix on the Korean idea of how customer and service provider is idealized or considered. Here’s what I mean: in North America, if you work in the service industry, the adage is that “The customer is always right.” Now, this is an adage, not …