I just listened to the radio play “Coelocanth” by Ben Moor and it blew me away. You can’t get it online anymore — it went offline at BBC Radio 4 today — but if you email me within a week or two of my posting this, I might be able to tell you where you could download an MP3… it’s just too stunning to go unheard.
Category: ASIDES
Ruben’s Tube
In music school, I learned to “see” music in a different way, but nothing like this. (Via my classmate Caroline, though the link isn’t on her site, not yet anyway…)
Marmot on NK
Two worthwhile posts among all of them over at Marmot’s: A snipe at Security Secretary Song Min-soon, which includes a very cutting, but, according to my recent readings, reasonable mention of the riole of local collaborators in the “comfort women” industry in Korea under Japan. I’ll start learning Arabic and/or Farsi right now and maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll make a killing pimping American women to the Iranian army. Harsh? Yes. Wrong? Hmm… of attempted coups in the North. Not that there’s any hint we should expect one now, but… this is my biggest worry. If there is a coup, …
N. Korean leader regrets test?
According to this report, Kim Jong Il is sorry. Not half as sorry as he’ll be later on. Probably much less than half, since it sounds like the familiar, “Oh, did I do that? Sorry.” I wonder what the original report says — did he say, “pardon this unfortunateness,” version of sorry, or the “I apologize,” kind. Oh, damn. He said it to someone from China. So who knows what language it was said in.
Bucheon (Images From the Past)
In the comments section of this post, bulgasari provided this link to pictures of Bucheon city in the good old days, for several definitions of “good old days”. Very neat. My first comment was that there was less litter in the good old days. But it’s just neat to see this place, that long ago. One of the pictures is about 20 years old, another probably 25, and it looks really different from today. Thanks, Bulgasari!
Melissa on the Death of Freedom
Melissa Lipscomb’s recent domestic disturbance column is well worth reading.
Not Lime…
I really, really appreciate that my girlfriend isn’t crazy about shopping. (Via Julia’s Journey Among the Weird)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Crap Film
I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and I have to say I am happy I wasn’t talked into going to see the sequel while in Seattle. Wait, no, I want to say, I am so happy I didn’t waste a minute of my time in Seattle on the sequel. This movie was garbage. Of course, I suspected that when my friend Shawn[DeLong], who I’m told said of The Hulk, “It wasn’t that bad!”, praised it to high heaven. I love Shawn like a delinquent quarterback brother who’s (mostly) grown up, but the man …
Dasepo Naughty Girls (다세 소녀) Review
This review of the film and the comments combined represent my feelings about it — it could have been quite brilliant, and it wasn’t bad, and it put a lot of things front-and-center that most people around here seem more comfortable not looking at directly — things like teenaged prostitution, for goodness’ sakes, or the “requirement” to have a religion (it killed me to see how many of the high school girls, once ensorcelled, took up Islam and Hinduism) — but it wasn’t quite a brilliant film. The “Bollywood” numbers were more like numbers from any old musical, if you …
The Attack on Human Rights Watch
This piece in The New York Review of Books is worth a look. It’s about how Human Rights Watch criticized Israeli actions in Lebanon, and how a campaign against the organization and its chair have followed. Criticize Israeli policy or actions, and suddenly you’re an Anti-Semite. That defense is getting a little old, if you ask me, but what was interesting was how this response is more notable in America than in Israel itself. In Israel, the IDF took the criticisms constructively, according to HRW. In America? A campaign denouncing the respected organization. (via Dragi on Culturelist)