Once, in a little diner in Iksan, I sat listening with deep amusement as two very enlightened fellows I know, an American and an Australian, bitched about Canadians. They were, of course, fairly justified. They were, I should clarify, complaining generally about a certain kind of Canadian who ends up as an expatriate in Korea. It’s a fairly true stereotype, I find, with myself as one of the exceptions. The other day, the same American friend was asking me why the hell the Canadians around him never bloody well pronounce Korean words properly, but insist on saying them as if …
Author: gordsellar
New Sophistry
Here’s a link to an article I wrote for the New Sophists’ Almanac, titled Rap and the Ghetto. I don’t know much about rap, mind you, but then again it’s primarily an attempt at a parallel with jazz history, and a bit of blabbing about what art is and how we may or may not define “maturity” in an art form. Or something. Go read it.
Child Witches? I Say Again, A War Is Coming.
As I read this report from the Chicago Tribune on children in Angola tortured as witches, I can’t help but feel my blood boil. It’s another case where I think war would be far more justified than in the places where it is happening. Helena Kufumana makes a pathetic witch. Far from exuding wickedness, the 13-year-old schoolgirl is nervous and shy. Her “101 Dalmatians” cartoon T-shirt is grubby and doesn’t fit. She swings her bare feet beneath her chair in the hyper way that all kids do. And she cries a lot. Especially about the torture. Last month Helena was …
Musings On The Smiths
I think the most beautiful lyric on The Smiths’ Singles collection is in “This Charming Man”, the line, “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear… This man said, “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care.” There’s something really desolate in the line, something very Oscar Wilde, something horribly crunched-up inside, something a bit like Tori Amos but less insincere somehow than most of her work… and yet with the same weird feeling that in singing pain, one triumphs over it. With Tori, though, it feels like a therapy session; with Morrissey it feels …
More blossoms sprout underfoot
Is everyone as lucky as I feel on a day like this? The sun is beautiful, the people in my life are gentle and love me, the world is full of so many good things. Even the evil nasty ranting of Morrisey is sweet and pretty. As the poor bastard sang, There is a light and it never goes out… But of course I don’t mean it as he did. I woke to a sweet conversation and a farewell of a kind. I found kind words on my site, and a wonderful invitation spun its way to my through the …
It is, after all, a civil rights issue.
This week, a big news story broke: Martin Luther King’s widow has given her opinion on the gay marriage “debate”. POMONA, N.J. (AP) The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called gay marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban it. Constitutional amendments should be used to expand freedom, not restrict it, Coretta Scott King said Tuesday. Dr. King would be proud, I’m sure. When will these theocrat types stop and realize that their days are numbered? They’re going to look as gauche, backwards, and ugly as people who opposed “interracial” marriage a generation or …
Changing the Past
Laura‘s question this week was a good’un: If you could change five events—historical or personal—from the past, which ones and how? What outcome would you hope for? You know, I’ve posed this question to two very different groups of students during my years teaching here in Korea. The first group was an assortment of adult students whose English was of the highest level in our school, meaning that at least half the students had been abroad. Some of these students were considerably older than me. The second group was a pack of middle schoolers. Now, their answers may have been …
More Evil Accoutrements (aka Made In America, Alright)
Bush and Myanmar are Like This From Yahoo News: A ‘Bush-Cheney ’04’ campaign jacket sold on the Internet has stirred controversy because it was made in Myanmar, whose imports have been banned by the United States. Although the company that shipped the fleece pullover, Spalding Group of Louisville, Kentucky, has said it did so in error, human rights groups blamed President Bush (news – web sites)’s re-election campaign staff for not taking a more careful look at the origin of the products being sold in its name. Bush waves during a campaign rally at the Orange County Convention Center in …
Evil Accoutrements
Does anyone doubt that Satan would wear a necktie? (That is, were he to exist…)
All Quiet On The Web Front
It’s almost 11:00 am. Most days, at this time I’m either cycling to work, or I’m already there, sitting in the office diddling on my computer, or chatting with other teachers. But on Fridays, things are a little different: I teach from 2:30pm until 10pm, and so I find myself at home all morning, sometimes cooking, sometimes cleaning, sometimes just posting to my blog, writing, or reading. It’s a strange time of the day: my friends overseas are almost all sleeping, and my friends in-country are mostly in class or at work. So my friends list on Trillian is empty, …