Category: WTF

New Korean SF Movie(s)! 인류멸망보고서 / Doomsday Book

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This entry is part 52 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

I haven’t added anything to the SF in South Korea series, in part because I’ve been consumed with other things, but also because I haven’t heard much of the doings about town. However, last night Miss Jiwaku and I took in the newest Korean SF offering —  titled 인류멸망보고서 (and Doomsday Book in English) and despite our worst fears from the advertising and marketing, the film is actually pretty good! (Miss Jiwaku even went so far as to say she felt it suggested a “way forward” for SF cinema in Korea. More about that later.) The reason we were worried was …

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Interesting Homework: Service Center Calls

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I just got myself caught up on the “Challenge” homework submissions for my Listening & Speaking course, which is essentially an English Conversation course. Now, there are a few things to consider about English Coversation courses in Korea, and my students in particular: Leveling is nonexistent. This seems to be common in Korean universities: for some reason, administrators (and some professors) seem to be hostile to the idea that a student’s learning experience will be better if he or she is instructed with other students of the same level. This is something I’ve experienced even when it would be trivially …

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Seven Deadlier Sins

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Mark broke the 11th Commandment, and mentioned the Vatican’s new list of seven deadly sins, which apparently are the following: Drug abuse Morally debatable experimentation Environmental pollution Causing poverty Social inequality and injustice Genetic manipulation Accumulating excessive wealth Some of those are cute, by the way. One could very easily argue that Social Inequality is at the center of Catholic hierarchy, for example the sex-apartheid of the clergy and the, ahem, easily arguable sexism of their employment opportunities.  (I mean, forget glass ceilings. This one’s painted by Michaelangelo!) Injustice? Church history’s full of that. I mean, massacres at the behest …

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Write-a-Thon Week 3

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Off to a good start this week, in a way. I decided to take a break from To the Happy Country for today, and I started work on a new ghost story set in my home province of Saskatchewan, called The Empty Slough. It’s meandering, but that’s fine: I fully expect to draft it to roughly 5000 words and then cut 30-40% of that in the end. It’s a weird ghost story, but I’ll say nothing more about that until I find out whether it works or not, since the “twist” in the story is metaphysical, and by “metaphysical” I …

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Write-a-Thon, Week 2

gordsellar2 Comments

Well, I’m off to a slow start — I got not much writing done today, but a lot of reading/research and planning. Of course, I have NO idea what’s happening next, as well as having a strong feeling I may need to skip ahead to Book III and come back to work on Book II once I have a better idea what goes on later in the story. I think the main problem is that I’m so close to the research right now that I’m having a hard time being imaginative enough. A lot of the stuff I’m writing is …

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