Korea vanquishes looming obesity pandemic!

What's the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic? I think the word pandemic simply replaced epidemic, and we can never go back.
Anyway, Korea has followed New York City in banning trans-fats. Korea, long known as "the sixth borough" and referred to by other East Asians as "Little Flushing", Korea has taken a very bold stance in following New York City's precedent. The move is especially bold considering that Korea is basically a gastronomic wild west, where no food regulation seems to be actively enforced. This is another example of Korea sticking a weather vane into the dirt and having a grand opening ceremony.

How to lose faith in mankind at Christmas

Go to Kazaa or Limewire or the like and do a search on the word Christmas, and alongside your holiday favorites you will find (among others:

Afroman's "the 12 drugs of Christmas"
Kevin Bloody Wilson's "Just a Little
Christmas Blowjob"
"You ain't gettin' shit for Christmas"
Jeff Foxworthy's "The Redneck 12 days of Christmas"
Bob Rivers' "Santa's Whore"
"I farted in Santa's lap"
Larry the Cable Guy's "Christmas Songs for the 90s"
"Suck on my cock (Jingle bell rock parody)"
Parody Eminem's "The Real Slim Santa"
"White Pussy (White Christmas parody)"
Barking dogs' "We wish you a merry Christmas"
"Frosty the Pervert"
Cheech and Chong's "Santa Claus and
his old lady"
"Puff the Magic Tampon"
"The 12 Guido days of Christmas"
"Grandpa got run over by a beer truck"
"The Retarded Christmas song"
"White trash Christmas"
"Horny Porny Christmas"
"O.J. Simpson Christmas"
"I'm dressin' up like Santa when I'm out on parole"
"I saw mommy fucking Santa Claus
"Who put the dick on the snowman?"
"Rudolph
got a DUI"

Just reading the above list makes me cringe to be an American and a human being. Can't the hoopleheads leave anything alone, or must they simply sully everything with their filthy, sardonic lowbrow shit?

Finally, someone I don't think is racist

Rosie O'Donnell is not racist, despite what Youtube might say. Her umpteenth rehashing of the classic "Yackity yackity shmackety Hostess Twinkie gibbety gibbety mish mash" joke is only being posited as racist because of a) Michael Richards and b) the continued existence of Youtube in a post-Michael Richards world.

Rosie could have substituted 'Chinese' and 'ching chong ching' with 'Spanish and lots of 'rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' or German and 'glochen Schprockfluschensproinkel" with no repercussions. In a Youtube free world the joke would have passed unnoticed.

I almost hope that Youtube and its ilk are sued out of existence, because in the event that it does not disappear, Youtube presents two possible courses for the future of our society. Either people are going to get a little more thick-skinned and reasonable in their responses to things that offend them (not gonna happen) or people are going to have to remain extremely guarded all the time for fear that a captured faux-pas will cause them to be banished for ever (almost certain to happen).

I've been pulled into something ugly

So thanks to my good work, my little English school is set to expand in March from 5 classes a day to 9 classes a day. That means we need a new part-time teacher, and I've been charged with hiring them. I know my students' parents have high expectations, as I think I have set the bar pretty high. So yesterday I put two help wanted ads up on English teaching websites. I got my first respeonse last night from an oddly accented fellow. He lives far away from where our school is, but he said that was not a problem. He didn't have the experience or Korean skills that I was looking for. Finally he asked me what nationalities I was looking for. I said any was fine, and he said that's good because he is British Gambian. From his accent I would say he was heavy on the Gambian, light on the British, and just from the accent I knew I would not hire him. North American accent is a must. I briefly thought about the controversy that would erupt if I hired an African teacher. many parents would probably complain, and the woman who helps me run the school, as well as my wife, would probably veto the choice, should I make it.
An hour later I got a call from a woman. She had a very good American sounding accent with a hint of something else. She had the experience and Korean skills I was looking for. She sounded like a good fit all around. Then finally she asked the same question about nationality. Turns out she was from the Philippines. Again, I thought, that might raise some eyebrows but if she's really good it wouldn't matter.
I got home and told my wife about the two calls, and her reaction was "Hire an American or Canadian, you can't hire someone from any other country, it just won't fly." And I knew the was right. But I hate it all the same. I think too often in this country people make these simplistic racist decisions based on what other people's reactions are likely to be. The students' parents won't like it or people will think we hired a Philippine woman because they work cheaper or a non-Nroth American will teach the children a bad accent. There are so many fears, all about what other people will think, that people never address what they themselves actually feel.
I don't like it, but I can't pretend it's not true, so I feel like I'm becoming part of the system. You know what I mean?

Life imitating the Onion

I just laughed out loud for the first time in a very long time when I woke up and was greeted with the news that Time magazine has declared everyone person of the year. That was the headline at the Drudge Report, anyway. Reading the above article, of course, not everyone is person of the year, just anyone creating content on the web, which includes everyone I know except my mother and father-in-law. Here is a choice quote from the article, one "local man" away from being ripped from the pages of the Onion:

"If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."

That's one of the more ridiculous things I've ever heard. Stengel said that if they had chosen a single person, it would have been Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but that felt "a little off". While I agree, I still say it's a bit of a cop-out. It's like saying you don;t have a favorite child or everyone's your best friend.
The worst part is, it worked. I really want to read that article. It's about me.

Monoracial nation inexplicably racist!

That's right, Korea, a country with one racial group and an identity based almost entirely on eating food nobody else likes and shunning outsiders, is racist and doesn't even know it. I'm talking about an incident (dealt with in English on The Marmot's Hole blog) on the asinine KBS TV show "The Beauties' Chatterbox". The show features beautiful young foreign women (mostly exchange students and dancers from former soviet satellites) who speak fluent Korean discussing Korea and how great, unique and interesting it is (eventually: being an acquired taste, it takes a looong time to grow to love Korea). One of the young ladies, African-American Leslie Bensfield, was singing a Korean song when singer Cheon Myeong-Hun appeared on stage in a rasta wig and began doing Korea's own version of the classic American blackface, chanting "shickamunce!" (transliteration mine and mine alone), roughly translated: "I'm really black!"

None of this should be any surprise in a country where I've had grown men approach me child-like and either grab my belly and go "Fat" or touch my head and say "No hair!" with a strong sense of wide-eyed wonder. The shock is KBS's reaction to large amounts of criticism from viewers, both Korean and foreign: nothing. They have said it is not racist and that Cheon will continue to appear on the terrible show, despite the incident and being even less talented and attractive than the average Korean pop-star and having crooked teeth.

I hope he tells us to burn our pants!

These things are driving me nuts. Indeed if you're in America, you may slowly be coming to learn of an alarming development that has been bugging/enriching me for a few years. The dollar is depreciating like crazy. When I came to Korea in 2003 the exchange rate was 1,200 won to the dollar. The average salary for a young mush-brained recent college graduate teaching English was 2,000,000 won, or about $1666 a month. At the beginning of 2006, the rate had fallen to 950 won to the dollar, making the same 2,000,000 won salary worth $2,105. Think about that, that's $500 of free money for the young English teacher to spend on cheap cigarettes, camera-phones and Karlsberg beer.. In the last week or so the exchange rate story has finally started to get some press in the U.S., as if it's some sort of new story, and that has driven the rate ever downward. On Monday the rate was 930 won/$, and as of this morning, it is a shocking 923 won/$.
My wife Miyoung and I have been so happy about the exchange rate that we've been taking some of our savings and exchanging it every time the rate hit a new low. We've run out of available money to exchange.
If the exchange rate continues to fall at this rate, our move to the U.S. will be very similar to our honeymoon in Thailand. I'll be taking limousines to and from school and Miyoung will be at her wits end trying to wrangle the four maids we'll be legally obligated to hire when we rent our four-bedroom house downtown. We'll probably even have to hire on the former tenant of the house, an advertising executive, as my driver after his job is outsourced to India.
Imagine all the headaches that'll cause.