Month: December 2012

If You Wanna Be My 형…

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Yeah, sung to the tune of that horrible Spice Girls song. Ugh. Miss Jiwaku and I talked after she got back from her film program meeting today, about her frustrations. To what do her frustrations mostly connect? Older people who insist on “respect” and special treatment on account of their age, regardless of incompetence, rudeness, or plain stupidity. There’s an older person in her film program who is particularly useless, who apparently was constantly rude to her, who finally warmed up to her… why? Because she poured him soju with two hands and used the magic “term of respect” address …

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… In Which America Learns Something Interesting about Psy (and South Korea)

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After years of South Koreans asking me, “Are you American?” and then acting all relieved or happy when I tell them, no, I’m Canadian, I can’t help but be amused at the newest news report on Psy. Apparently some journalists in America have realized that he’s expressed raging bigotry in his songs performances in the past, to the tune of: 이라크 포로를 고문해 댄 씨발양년놈들과 고문 하라고 시킨 개 씨발 양년놈들에 딸래미 애미 며느리 애비 코쟁이 모두 죽여 아주 천천히 죽여 고통스럽게 죽여 Here’s a more representative translation of those lyrics, by the way: Kill those fucking Yankees who have been …

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Lesson Plan: The Caper!

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Back when I first came to Korea, there was a lesson I created on the spur of the moment, after observing how little security there seemed to be on the little minivans that drove around in Iksan putting money into bank machines. (I had such fun talking over strategies for robbing one of these vans with a group of expats that I thought I’d see how my students fared.) Over the years, the exercise has shifted and changed slightly. Finally, this past year, after a brush with Jason Morningstar’s wonderful Fiasco RPG, I expanded it a little to include an …

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What I’ve Learned About Crises, or How My Vaguest Shadow of a Doubt Died Today…

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It’s been snowing heavily the last couple of days in my area. The thing about snowstorms–like other crises–is that they reveal a lot. It’s difficult to gauge the stability of a system in normal times, though of course you can guess. But a crisis, that lays bare a lot. Now, when I say it’s been snowing “heavily” allow me to adjust that comment: I don’t know what’s fallen so far, but the prediction for was 10cm, which just barely qualifies as heavy. (And today’s snow certainly was not heavy, though it was constant.) So… why did one of my colleagues (wisely) …

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