This article pretty much says (with the exception of a little half-assed caveat at the end contradicting the rest of the article’s message) that the higher incidences of murder and rape in Yeongdeungpo and Guro can be explained, according to “experts,” by the increased presence of “foreigners” in those areas. Never mind: that these are relatively poorer areas. that poverty and lower education go hand in hand, and both go hand in hand with more violent crime. that these neighborhoods are (like most neighborhoods in Korea) saturated with places to get shitfaced drunk, in a cultural setting where getting drunk …
Tag: idiots
Happy Chuseok, or, “If I Were White, Would You Beat and Abuse Me?”
While the holiday still registers on my own radar as little more than some time off work, I know some people out there might excited about Chuseok tomorrow, and I hope people do enjoy it as much as possible. (Though in my experience, Chuseok is viewed with dread by women of all ages, and young men, as the time when family tortures one another; when women are stuck doing insanely intensive kitchen duty, and where young people are constantly grilled about when they will get plastic surgery, get more plastic surgery, finish school, get a job, get a better job, …
Land of the Evening Nutter
So the other night, at the Bupyeong Subway Station, Miss Jiwaku and I were waiting for a train when some weird guy stalked up and sat down beside us. He immediately stared at her, glancing at me for a moment and then staring at her wide-eyed. It was obvious he was not right in the head, and I figured I had two options: Ignore him and hope he’d act civilized. Ask him what he wanted. I was wrong, of course: there was a third option, which is to get up and move away from the obviously crazy person. The thing …
Two Three Annoying Things
The two girls who politely excused their way to the head of the line at the taxi stand tonight — past a bunch of us who were waiting, and assumed they were just walking through the stand but not going to catch a taxi someone else had waited for the right to take, when… yeah, they turned and slowly got into a cab. Everyone was staring, but nobody said a word till I shouted, “What? What the f*ck?” Then a few people mumbled and so on — about the crazy girls, not me. The second girl didn’t mind, as she …
“… For Your Nation…”
Okay, so, imagine you’re a trilingual Korean. When you’re interviewed by a certain nationalistic, ridiculous TV station — not that I’ll name it specifically, ahem — and they explain the ridiculously low pay they’re offering by explaining that you are, in being offered this job, given a chance to do work “for your nation,” which of the following do you do? (a) laugh in the their face (b) politely ask for more money knowing you won’t get it, and say, “Well, I can make more money teaching in a hakwon, so I think that would be wiser for me.” (c) …
Woo! Woo! I am the Woo-rus!
The one thing that will always, always make someone less intimidating is when you realize they’ve been seduced by woo. I don’t mean, like, “The Woo of Lost” as a recent essay by Adam Roberts is titled. I mean full-on Deepak Chopra, Derrick Jensen, Shakti Gawain, Shambhala publications woo. The obvious stuff, when you realize someone is woo-sceptible. (Disclosure: I do, myself, own a couple of Shambhala books: both are related to Buddhism, one of them a present from a friend in high school — which is in some box in Canada, I think — and the other primarily about Buddhism …
BP, Chickens, Roosts
I’ve been reading about the BP Oil Spill down in the Gulf of Mexico, about how people discussing where in the litany of biggest single oil spills ever the current one fits in [1], about how it might hit the Gulf Stream and spread all around the Atlantic, about how painful it is to see it. Well, I’ve held my tongue, but I’ll be honest, folks. When Malcolm X said that thing about chickens coming home to roost, maybe it was impolitic. It’s probably impolitic for me to use his words now… but that’s because it’s true. This is what …
Hotlinking Bastard Scum Retaliation… What Do You Think?
So, I just got myself a hotlink blocker, after noticing a few websites that have been pirating bandwidth off this site. (I got busy/lazy, and didn’t update, and the old plugin didn’t do enough, I guess.) Should I display this image (which I’m currentl using)? Or should I get the old goaste.cx JPG and add a caption about how only assholes hotlink? What do you think? On the one hand, it’s a punishment to the hootlinker that seems fitting — but on the other hand, I guess it punisher’s that hotlinker’s readers more… especially, for example, in forums where the …
“Jazz? Yes Please… As Long as There’s No Actual Jazz or Colored Folks!”
UPDATE (17 April 2010): I feel I ought to clarify one thing, but if I put it here, it won’t make sense, so I’m adding it to the end of the post. ORIGINAL POST: There’s isn’t quite a sign up at the Incheon Airport saying that, but there might as well be. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I was talking with a student I know about this. He was scrambling for a topic to do with Korea reception of Western popular culture (past and present) and I asked him who the most famous American rapper is in Korea. Who is it? …
Addendum: The Gorbals Vampire & More
This is an addendum to a previous post. I recommend you go read that first, and then follow the link at the end of the post to read this one. However, if you’ve already checked that out, then have at: