Month: December 2008

Válka s Mloky

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“Nowadays we simply cannot wait a few hundred years for something good or bad to happen in the world. Take the migration of peoples which used to drag on over several centuries: today, with our present organization of transport, it could be accomplished in three years; otherwise there would be in profit in it. The same is true of the liquidation of the Roman Empire, the colonisation of the continents, the extermination of the Red Indians, and so on. All these things could have been accomplished incomparably more speedily if they had been put in the hands of entrepreneurs with …

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Korean Who?

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No, Korean Rush. You know, the horrid prog-rock band? Actually, I haven’t sighted a Korean version of the whole band, though, doubtless, somewhere on the peninsula, such a thing exists. But I have sighted a Korean doppelganger of their lead singer, Geddy Lee. (Incidentally, I know someone who saved Geddy Lee’s life, by the way. They were driving along in a van, if I remember right, and they sighted Lee up ahead, crossing the road with his arms full — with boxes, I think. This person I know stopped his friend from driving over Lee for his sins against music.) …

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Five Essays, Calculating, and Some Paperwork To Go

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Final exams are over, but I’m still grading essays and need to update the tracking sheets for the assignments in a couple of my classes. I have five essays left from my Essay-Writing course — someone failed to submit a final essay, I suspect — and I need to tabulate how many people completed how many homework assignments in that course. (I’ve skimmed them all, just as I skim the discussion board where the students were supposed to be writing regularly, but I haven’t tabulated the work yet.) My Listening & Speaking course, which was essentially a Conversation course with …

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OVER~~!

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I find myself wondering why overacting — vast, wailing reactions of protestation, incredibly fake outrage, and the like — is the norm in comedic “acting” in Korea. (EDIT: Actually, it also seems the norm in movies, but in a different way: long brooding shots, action scenes five minutes too long, and hyperemotional crying is something we see both on TV melodrama and in films, but I’m particularly thinking of comedy at the moment.) Or, rather, not “why” but “how it became the case that…” One example is the various gag TV shows like Uchassa and Gag Concert. These are, roughly …

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