The North Korean women's soccer team was kicked out of the women's world cup for steroid use. The reason given for the postitive tests for steroids was the fact that some members of the team were taking oriental medicine made from some kind of deer gland. The reason why they were taking this medicine was because they were struck by lightning.
Let's review, not one but five women were all struck by lightning at a training camp on June 8th.
To treat their wounds they were given musk deer glands.
A month after getting struck by lightning they compete in the world cup.
Two very plausible scenarios seem to be at work here. 1. North Koreans are the worst liars ever.
I remember when I was in my teens, I worked as a Taekwondo instructor. We had a kid who had some problems. The kid was very smart, but he had a hard time keeping control of himself. One day he went into the locker room and knocked over a row of lockers. I asked him what happened, and he told me some story about a camera appearing out of nowhere and taking a picture of what happened. It actually sounded like the plot to the "Goosebumps," book Say Cheese and Die. Somehow I feel like this kid went to work for the North Korean sports association. I can see the conference.
A: "Oh shit we got caught doping, what do we tell them?"
B: "I know, they ate musk deer glands."
A: "Genius, but why did they take musk deer glands?"
B:"Ah, I know because all five of them were struck by lighting at once."
A:"Good idea. I was struck by lightning seven times today on my way to work. Luckily my wife packed me a lunch with some deer glands in it, or I would have been hurting all day."
B: "Your wife is such a fox."
The second plausible scenario is that they are just that unlucky. They are from North Korea after all. Who else would make a lightning strike victim play in a soccer game a month after their accident? Where else would you get a crazy bolt of lightning that takes out five people? Also besides South Korea, and China, where else would you get doctors crazy enough to think that a deer gland would help people who had been struck by lightning?
And then to compound everything on top of that massive shit storm of bad luck, it turns out that deer glands make you test positive for steroids.
It would be nice if this were the book of Job, and these women can just put their faith in God who will heal them and pay them back, but they have to go back to North Korea and live with a crazy ajuma and her spoiled fat ass son.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
On Getting American Citizenship for a Baby
I went to Seoul last month with my wife and son. We went there to get the little guy some American citizenship. It was pretty easy, you just fill out some papers and prove that your kid is eligible for citizenship.
If you have a Korean wife or husband it works like this: You have to be an American. You have to have lived in America for five years. Two of those years have to be after your fourteenth birthday. You can prove that by showing the people at the embassy your high school transcript.
Dear recent high school graduates, don't throw your transcript away, you never know when you might need that thing. Thanks to my record showing that I got a 40% on my ninth grade algebra final exam, my son is an American.
Barrack Obama was born in Hawaii. That's kind of a bummer. Birth certificates from American hospitals are some of the most lackluster documents I have ever seen. Mine looks like a fax. My sister's looks like an x-ray. My son's consular report of birth abroad is one of the most beautiful government documents that I have ever seen. It runs red white and blue pastels along side one of anti counterfeiting strips that you see in 100 dollar bills. My heart has never been as full of apple pies and purple mountain majesties as when I saw my son's proof of citizenship. Unfortunately, he can't be president, but he can be the secretary of state.
According to the movie 50 states and 50 days America has had two secretaries of state that have been born abroad. Henry Kissenger I knew, but I didn't know that Madeline Albright was born in Czechoslovakia, and she met big daddy Kim up north.
In sum...cherish your high school transcripts.
If you have a Korean wife or husband it works like this: You have to be an American. You have to have lived in America for five years. Two of those years have to be after your fourteenth birthday. You can prove that by showing the people at the embassy your high school transcript.
Dear recent high school graduates, don't throw your transcript away, you never know when you might need that thing. Thanks to my record showing that I got a 40% on my ninth grade algebra final exam, my son is an American.
Barrack Obama was born in Hawaii. That's kind of a bummer. Birth certificates from American hospitals are some of the most lackluster documents I have ever seen. Mine looks like a fax. My sister's looks like an x-ray. My son's consular report of birth abroad is one of the most beautiful government documents that I have ever seen. It runs red white and blue pastels along side one of anti counterfeiting strips that you see in 100 dollar bills. My heart has never been as full of apple pies and purple mountain majesties as when I saw my son's proof of citizenship. Unfortunately, he can't be president, but he can be the secretary of state.
According to the movie 50 states and 50 days America has had two secretaries of state that have been born abroad. Henry Kissenger I knew, but I didn't know that Madeline Albright was born in Czechoslovakia, and she met big daddy Kim up north.
In sum...cherish your high school transcripts.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Mailbag 2
Dear Sir:
It was pretty much obvious that the previous post was a troll of some sort. Why did you respond to it? Also, why don't you write more about your experiences in the classroom?
Sincerely
Booger T. Batshitbottoms
Okay Mr. Booger. I'll do that. I'll also include the pictures and home addresses of all of the little ones whose lives I affect every day.
No seriously. Writing about experiences teaching English in Korea is boring. Writing about finding Doritoes at Homeplus is boring. Having the thousandth blog complaining about work is boring. Making blanket statements about Korea and Koreans is boring.
You know what is more interesting? Hot air balloon pirates and music bank. It's okay to bitch about K-pop and K-pop stars, and how fake they are, but they are doing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Much the same way that people who teach ESL expected their lives to work out.
It was pretty much obvious that the previous post was a troll of some sort. Why did you respond to it? Also, why don't you write more about your experiences in the classroom?
Sincerely
Booger T. Batshitbottoms
Okay Mr. Booger. I'll do that. I'll also include the pictures and home addresses of all of the little ones whose lives I affect every day.
No seriously. Writing about experiences teaching English in Korea is boring. Writing about finding Doritoes at Homeplus is boring. Having the thousandth blog complaining about work is boring. Making blanket statements about Korea and Koreans is boring.
You know what is more interesting? Hot air balloon pirates and music bank. It's okay to bitch about K-pop and K-pop stars, and how fake they are, but they are doing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Much the same way that people who teach ESL expected their lives to work out.
Mailbag
I got this email from a reader:
Dude, why are you posting so many K-pop videos. I used to come to this site to learn about exciting places to eat in Jinju's Geumsan Myeon. I have been to the Kimbab house like fifty times since you mentioned it the first time. I also drank like three hundred cappuccinos from Ring Pang Donuts. I totally filled up enough punch cards to fill up my cupboard with Ring Pang Donuts cups.
I also love the Lotteria in Geumsan. They should rename Geumsan to Milf Island.
I hope you have a nice summer
Jazzy K. Jones esquire
Hot Air Balloon Pirate.
Well Jazzy, I'm glad that you have taken an interest in my blog, and thank you for taking me up on my Geumsan eatery recommendations. Let me explain to you how it is a few months after you have a kid.
You don't do anything, you stay home and watch T.V. In my case I watch hours and hours of Music Bank, Music Core, and Inkigayo.
Secondly I have to take issue with your choice of career. I have lost about three hot air balloons to pirates in life time. My current balloon has lasted for five years, and that is only because I have been able to best the many intruders through swashbuckling.
Jazzy, I hope that I don't have to ever cross swords with you.
Dude, why are you posting so many K-pop videos. I used to come to this site to learn about exciting places to eat in Jinju's Geumsan Myeon. I have been to the Kimbab house like fifty times since you mentioned it the first time. I also drank like three hundred cappuccinos from Ring Pang Donuts. I totally filled up enough punch cards to fill up my cupboard with Ring Pang Donuts cups.
I also love the Lotteria in Geumsan. They should rename Geumsan to Milf Island.
I hope you have a nice summer
Jazzy K. Jones esquire
Hot Air Balloon Pirate.
Well Jazzy, I'm glad that you have taken an interest in my blog, and thank you for taking me up on my Geumsan eatery recommendations. Let me explain to you how it is a few months after you have a kid.
You don't do anything, you stay home and watch T.V. In my case I watch hours and hours of Music Bank, Music Core, and Inkigayo.
Secondly I have to take issue with your choice of career. I have lost about three hot air balloons to pirates in life time. My current balloon has lasted for five years, and that is only because I have been able to best the many intruders through swashbuckling.
Jazzy, I hope that I don't have to ever cross swords with you.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
How K-pop Boy and Girl Groups are Pushing the Genre of Boy and Girl Groups
Okay back in the day there was Menudo, then there was New Kids on the Block. That was the early era of boy bands. In the late nineties I got really pissed off the first time I saw the "Backstreet Boys." I have poor vision and and I thought that the MTV2 music video said "Beastie Boys."
I was like hell yeah Sabatoge 2 mother fuckers, but to a tenth grader the Backstreet Boys turned out to be like the corniest shit ever.
Fast forward to 2004. I lived in a dormitory with some Korean high school kids for five weeks. I had a hard time believing that they were serious when they asked me if I liked the Backstreet boys.
Fast forward again 2007. I tried to teach some middle school delinquents some English, but they would act...well like delinquents, and then when called out they would say "So sorry." This was all thanks to the Big Bang song about being so sorry about loving someone and then it was all a lie.
Well those snot nosed punks in Big Bang are now super mega famous along with Girls Generation. Girls Generation doesn't really have that much talent but if you get nine hot girls to assemble in any place, you sure can sell the shit out of anything from cell phones, gasoline, nasty chicken, and even dominoes pizza.
Then you have the Wonder Girls who really suck. Park Jin Young tried to pimp the shit out of these girls in America just for the sake of having a Korean band make it big in a big market like America, only to make it to a 70s position on the billboard charts and then get forgotten about in Korea.
Where did the Wonder Girls go? Who the fuck cares? They suck? If a girl band is going to make it big in the states it would probably be 2 ne 1. I'm not a big fan of Korean rapping since, Korean rappers rarely rhyme, and when they do it is usually with a word that they already said. Korean rappers are usually about as talented as the black guy in Rebecca Black's, "Friday." However, C.L. from 2 ne 1 has some talent. She also has tude. You need some swag to be taken seriously as a rapper in America, you can't always be like an emo Eminem.
In the English version of the song "Can't Nobody," C.L. says something about being Asian and taking over. I don't think that would hold true for many Asians, but I think that 2 ne 1 could at least have a hit song in the states, or at least be a one hit wonder. The wonder girls....no...absolutely not.
In the domestic market though, the progression of boy and girl bands is kind of interesting.
These days there are girl bands out there who are doing some weird shit. Take Sunny Hill for example. They released a "goth" girl band song. Check out this video, it is pretty fucking weird.
It's like leather marionettes meet twin peaks. The song is pretty annoying but it is pushing the art in a different direction.
Another example of this is the creepy eyes wide shut stuff going on with Raina's Masquerade. Someone give these girls a cold shower please.
But, don't really find that much wrong with this. They can sing okay. What does offend me is the direction that "Secret," has taken. Secret came out last year with "Magic," and "Modonna." Both of those song were pretty high energy and they showcased some real talent for singing and dancing.
But now the Secret girls are back. They decided to become a 1950's doo wop band with, "Shy Boy," and then they decided to make them selves look like total retards with "Starlight, and Moonlight."
Starlight moonlight doesn't seem like a cutesy dootsey love song, it seems like a bunch of pretty girls pretending to be nice and then trying to do everything they can to keep people out of their country club. Kind of like the plot to High School Musical 2.
I've spent too much time on Girl Bands. I should mention some boy bands. I would love to be the lead singer of F.T. Island. That guy probably has a bunch of kids that he doesn't know about. F.T. Island is also a band that has consistently been a kind of dark horse. Also they seem to actually play their instruments.
Also Shinee is pretty good. Compare Kpop boy bands to like the backstreet boys. Just look youtube some bsb videos and compare the dancing. They backstreet boys look like they would hurt themselves if they tried some of the dance moves that shinee does.
Back the girl artists.
Jang Jae In. She was on "Korea Idol," or whatever the hell that show was called. She was kind of billed as an indy singer, because she wore petuli and sat on the ground while playing the guitar. What evs. Her toy soldiers song is annoying. Dear Fiona Apple, Cat Power, and Tori Amos, your shit is safe your jobs won't be outsourced to Korea.
Dear people who try to sell stuff by saying that it is "indie." Sometimes there are reasons why record labels don't go ape shit over hippies with guitars.
There are many good Korean indie artists though. Check out Gukasten, their shit is tight. So is Moomba trap. Also go back in time. Kim Choo Ja is pretty sweet.
I'm out.
I was like hell yeah Sabatoge 2 mother fuckers, but to a tenth grader the Backstreet Boys turned out to be like the corniest shit ever.
Fast forward to 2004. I lived in a dormitory with some Korean high school kids for five weeks. I had a hard time believing that they were serious when they asked me if I liked the Backstreet boys.
Fast forward again 2007. I tried to teach some middle school delinquents some English, but they would act...well like delinquents, and then when called out they would say "So sorry." This was all thanks to the Big Bang song about being so sorry about loving someone and then it was all a lie.
Well those snot nosed punks in Big Bang are now super mega famous along with Girls Generation. Girls Generation doesn't really have that much talent but if you get nine hot girls to assemble in any place, you sure can sell the shit out of anything from cell phones, gasoline, nasty chicken, and even dominoes pizza.
Then you have the Wonder Girls who really suck. Park Jin Young tried to pimp the shit out of these girls in America just for the sake of having a Korean band make it big in a big market like America, only to make it to a 70s position on the billboard charts and then get forgotten about in Korea.
Where did the Wonder Girls go? Who the fuck cares? They suck? If a girl band is going to make it big in the states it would probably be 2 ne 1. I'm not a big fan of Korean rapping since, Korean rappers rarely rhyme, and when they do it is usually with a word that they already said. Korean rappers are usually about as talented as the black guy in Rebecca Black's, "Friday." However, C.L. from 2 ne 1 has some talent. She also has tude. You need some swag to be taken seriously as a rapper in America, you can't always be like an emo Eminem.
In the English version of the song "Can't Nobody," C.L. says something about being Asian and taking over. I don't think that would hold true for many Asians, but I think that 2 ne 1 could at least have a hit song in the states, or at least be a one hit wonder. The wonder girls....no...absolutely not.
In the domestic market though, the progression of boy and girl bands is kind of interesting.
These days there are girl bands out there who are doing some weird shit. Take Sunny Hill for example. They released a "goth" girl band song. Check out this video, it is pretty fucking weird.
It's like leather marionettes meet twin peaks. The song is pretty annoying but it is pushing the art in a different direction.
Another example of this is the creepy eyes wide shut stuff going on with Raina's Masquerade. Someone give these girls a cold shower please.
But, don't really find that much wrong with this. They can sing okay. What does offend me is the direction that "Secret," has taken. Secret came out last year with "Magic," and "Modonna." Both of those song were pretty high energy and they showcased some real talent for singing and dancing.
But now the Secret girls are back. They decided to become a 1950's doo wop band with, "Shy Boy," and then they decided to make them selves look like total retards with "Starlight, and Moonlight."
Starlight moonlight doesn't seem like a cutesy dootsey love song, it seems like a bunch of pretty girls pretending to be nice and then trying to do everything they can to keep people out of their country club. Kind of like the plot to High School Musical 2.
I've spent too much time on Girl Bands. I should mention some boy bands. I would love to be the lead singer of F.T. Island. That guy probably has a bunch of kids that he doesn't know about. F.T. Island is also a band that has consistently been a kind of dark horse. Also they seem to actually play their instruments.
Also Shinee is pretty good. Compare Kpop boy bands to like the backstreet boys. Just look youtube some bsb videos and compare the dancing. They backstreet boys look like they would hurt themselves if they tried some of the dance moves that shinee does.
Back the girl artists.
Jang Jae In. She was on "Korea Idol," or whatever the hell that show was called. She was kind of billed as an indy singer, because she wore petuli and sat on the ground while playing the guitar. What evs. Her toy soldiers song is annoying. Dear Fiona Apple, Cat Power, and Tori Amos, your shit is safe your jobs won't be outsourced to Korea.
Dear people who try to sell stuff by saying that it is "indie." Sometimes there are reasons why record labels don't go ape shit over hippies with guitars.
There are many good Korean indie artists though. Check out Gukasten, their shit is tight. So is Moomba trap. Also go back in time. Kim Choo Ja is pretty sweet.
I'm out.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
After School, and Why my Son is Awsome
My wife and I like to imagine that our one month old son is a fan of the K-pop band After School. Brian in Jeollanamdo has often described After School as being the Korean Pussy Cat dolls. If you look at their entire song catalog, nothing could be further from the truth.
My son has recently taken to smiling. He does little smiles every once and a while, but Friday my wife was telling me about how she was watching music bank, and how he was kind of calm during After School's performance.
I started ribbing the small boy about how he missed the good old days when the song "Ah," came out and and how the After School girls were kind of slutty back then. When I said "slutty," he opened his mouth and did the biggest smile. Now I already thought highly of the kid before then, but now I can say that my son is pretty cool. He smiled at the word "slutty."
Now I don't mean to call the After School girls a gang of sluts. I think they are pretty good dancers, and their first song "Ah," was pretty exciting. The music video had the girls attempt a gang bang on their teacher. Not that gang banging is cool, but the video was kind of funny and edgy.
These days though, After School is all emo. Their newest song, "Shampoo," is about how love can be like getting shampoo in your eyes. The video is also kind of weird too. A girl walks into a dance studio. She falls down a lot when she spins around, and then she is finally accepted too the pack when she dyes her hair blonde. As a blonde man, I could have just walked into the studio and owned the audition damn.
The beats don't even make you nod your head. This song feels like it is some kind of hippie dance performance. Anyway, enjoy:
My son has recently taken to smiling. He does little smiles every once and a while, but Friday my wife was telling me about how she was watching music bank, and how he was kind of calm during After School's performance.
I started ribbing the small boy about how he missed the good old days when the song "Ah," came out and and how the After School girls were kind of slutty back then. When I said "slutty," he opened his mouth and did the biggest smile. Now I already thought highly of the kid before then, but now I can say that my son is pretty cool. He smiled at the word "slutty."
Now I don't mean to call the After School girls a gang of sluts. I think they are pretty good dancers, and their first song "Ah," was pretty exciting. The music video had the girls attempt a gang bang on their teacher. Not that gang banging is cool, but the video was kind of funny and edgy.
These days though, After School is all emo. Their newest song, "Shampoo," is about how love can be like getting shampoo in your eyes. The video is also kind of weird too. A girl walks into a dance studio. She falls down a lot when she spins around, and then she is finally accepted too the pack when she dyes her hair blonde. As a blonde man, I could have just walked into the studio and owned the audition damn.
The beats don't even make you nod your head. This song feels like it is some kind of hippie dance performance. Anyway, enjoy:
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The Power of Loci
Last week was the last week of adult education classes that I had through my university. The subject for the last week of classes was based on an article that I read in the New York Times magazine called "Secrets of a Mind Gamer." The article is an excerpt from Joshua Foer's book called Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.
The article describes a memory technique called "The Method of Loci" The Method of Loci uses spatial associations to help memorize things like lists of words, people's names, or lists of numbers. You can visualize a room or your route to work and put the things that you want to memorize in the locations of things on the route.
I asked my students to give me a list of Korean words to memorize as I gave them my own list of words for them to memorize. None of them did the homework, but I was successful in memorizing the list of words that they gave me.
On my bike ride home I took the list of words and associated the words with buildings and things on my route home. I was able to memorize a list of 21 Korean words in about 15 minutes...or the time it takes for me to ride my bike home. I found that the method worked quite well.
I plan to use this to memorize Korean songs to help me study Korean. I figure if I remember a song by associating things line by line I might be able to memorize songs for singing in the 노래방. I figure that if I have a good song library I can impress Korean strangers that I might find myself in a 노래방 with. My first song will be 이승기's 내여자란니까.
This song haunted me the first time I came to Korea.
It was the summer of 2004. I found myself living in a high school dormitory for an elite Tae Kwon Do team. These kids lived at their high school. They woke up at six, ran around for an hour and a half, went to class, then in the afternoon they would kick the air as fast as they could for two hours. Later in the evening, they would have night training for an hour and a half. I trained with them for about five weeks when I was 23 years old. I had a hard time walking when I wasn't training with them.
At that time 이승기 was just becoming popular. The male students loved him. 내여자란니까 is a love song about a boy who falls in love with an older woman. I think that the song exemplifies everything K-pop. In addition to being a power ballad, the video is both cheesy and violent as Lee Seung Gi falls in love with an older girl who works in a 다방. His friends make fun of him, and the girl is strong enough to fight them off. When he goes to the 다방 to help his 누나 out; gangsters kick the shit out of him.
This is the song that I'm going to memorize:
The article describes a memory technique called "The Method of Loci" The Method of Loci uses spatial associations to help memorize things like lists of words, people's names, or lists of numbers. You can visualize a room or your route to work and put the things that you want to memorize in the locations of things on the route.
I asked my students to give me a list of Korean words to memorize as I gave them my own list of words for them to memorize. None of them did the homework, but I was successful in memorizing the list of words that they gave me.
On my bike ride home I took the list of words and associated the words with buildings and things on my route home. I was able to memorize a list of 21 Korean words in about 15 minutes...or the time it takes for me to ride my bike home. I found that the method worked quite well.
I plan to use this to memorize Korean songs to help me study Korean. I figure if I remember a song by associating things line by line I might be able to memorize songs for singing in the 노래방. I figure that if I have a good song library I can impress Korean strangers that I might find myself in a 노래방 with. My first song will be 이승기's 내여자란니까.
This song haunted me the first time I came to Korea.
It was the summer of 2004. I found myself living in a high school dormitory for an elite Tae Kwon Do team. These kids lived at their high school. They woke up at six, ran around for an hour and a half, went to class, then in the afternoon they would kick the air as fast as they could for two hours. Later in the evening, they would have night training for an hour and a half. I trained with them for about five weeks when I was 23 years old. I had a hard time walking when I wasn't training with them.
At that time 이승기 was just becoming popular. The male students loved him. 내여자란니까 is a love song about a boy who falls in love with an older woman. I think that the song exemplifies everything K-pop. In addition to being a power ballad, the video is both cheesy and violent as Lee Seung Gi falls in love with an older girl who works in a 다방. His friends make fun of him, and the girl is strong enough to fight them off. When he goes to the 다방 to help his 누나 out; gangsters kick the shit out of him.
This is the song that I'm going to memorize:
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