China didn't allow singer onstage, hired a lip-syncing ringer.

Aside from the obvious statement on body-image in young women, didn't the chick they decided to put up front look kind of freaky? She looks too mature, not really childlike. I think the "real" singer was the cuter kid. Their choices suggest more disturbing things about self-image than the fact that they hired a ringer, I think.

Palm trees, and the other icons of tropical life, all tiki-ness, are incredibly cliched. Not only has the novelty worn off and they became a cliche, but their use as ironically cliched has be come cliched, and even the post-ironic, return to innocently un-cliched-ness has become cliched. They are the post-modern Ur-cliche from which all banality springs.

Ievan Polkka Miku Hatsune. From my friend whose hobby is finding music that causes insanity.

It will be a while before I get to posting regularly, now that I'm transferring to a new country, trying to find housing, and getting ready for grad school.

I thought I'd mention an interesting linguistic note I observed in a student. A Korean-American high school kid who grew up in the US mentioned to me that he and his sister often add '-ing' and '-ed' tense markers to Korean sentences. For example, "I'm studying" could be "난 공부해-ing".

Apologia on Tibet.

The tricky part of colonial studies is dealing with claims of development. The imperial apologists always make a point of showing the Signs of Progress, or how the Advanced Nation helped it's lesser brethren, albeit by the barrel of a gun. And, they usually are able to produce evidence of postive change.

Animation project, with freaking awesome soundtrack from Cytosoul. The drums are especially great.

Leopard vs. Crocodile.

It could only get better if there were ninjas, too.

While I was floating around the internets I found mention of "Teenage Hooker Became Killing Machine", or "대학로에서 매춘하다가 토막살해당한 여고생 아직 대학로에 있다", by Nam Ki-Woong. It's primary claim to fame seems to be the fact it has the longest title of any Korean movie.

[The Korean title literally translates to, as near as I can tell, "The high school girl who was dismembered while prostituting in Daehangno is still in Daehangno".]

Odd experience.

I was studying Korean in a coffee shop when a Korean guy sitting nearby asked me for a moment of my time. It was pretty obviously a "whoa, white man" thing, but I was in a good mood so I talked with him.

A lot of the expat bloggers in Korea have been bitching about the lack of South Korean uproar over the shooting of a South Korean tourist at the special tourist zone.