Mug Meme

I saw this at RevDrMom's. Coincidentally, these are the only 5 cups I own:

a gift from a student

another gift: "Have good health"

courtesy of my friend smell

i think that's a penis~ it came from a GLBTQ group in Korea

"another little priend~ Toto and Mimi. I watch them."

"Thinking of Mimi, Toto pick up acorns. Toto and Mime like sweet mushrooms."

Best Gift. Ever.

Today I received my first Christmas gift. That's right, Christmas. And it was the Best. Gift. Ever. If I were talking to you, I would want you to guess about what it is just so I could say, "Nope." "Not that." "Try again." So you want a hint, right?

Does that help? Well, I had to use my dictionary to figure out what it was. I mean, it looks like it might be a pot. And it kind of is. 고급 means high class. And 요강? That one means commode or chamber pot. So you see, I got a high class chamber pot. Amazing, right? Here's what it looks like out of the box:

The best thing about it (besides the fact that it is a classy chamber pot, of course)? It's stainless steel.

Definitely gonna use that one...

Bonus Conversation

WW: "Ew! look at the air!"

Co-worker: "Oh my god, I can see the air!"

WW: "I know, isn't that gross?"

AnyBand "Talk Play Love"

Goes with the post below.

AnyCrap "Music to Save the World"

Last night as I lay sleepless in my bed, I flipped through the television channels hoping to find something that would bore me into sleep. Instead, I found something which was utterly irritating and disturbing. On MTV after hours, I saw this:

It's Called Talk, Play Love and hosts a plethora of Korean pop stars under the name "AnyBand."
So what's wrong with that? Well, if you live in South Korea, you know that anything with "Any" in front of a name is owned by Samsung. I, for example, have an "Anycall" phone; there are advertisements for "AnyCar" all over Seoul. Samsung in ubiquitous in South Korea. They own everything from sports teams to life insurance, electronics to construction. They have a banking/credit division and they even own a university. There is nothing that Samsung doesn't do in South Korea. They are the largest conglomerate here and perhaps the largest employer (although I'm not sure about that one).

They are also vehemently anti-union, and anti-worker in general, backing an irregular worker law that allows them to hire a majority of their workers on a contract basis, which in turn prevents the workers from securing basic working rights such as the right to form a trade union, suppresses wages and means that most Korean workers exist without any job security at all.
As I'm sure you can imagine, a company with as much capital as Samsung also exerts and enormous amount of political power. They are, in effect, untouchable here. Most people suspect them of being corrupt, buying favor in parliament and in courts, being involved in mafia outfits and in using thugs to suppress workers who dare protest against their policies.

So back to this video. Why does it piss me off so much? Because it was on MTV. Shown smack in the middle of legitimate music videos. As you can imagine, it was chock full of Samsung products- from computers to speakers and phones. And if you watched the video, you would see that the plot of the story is about rebels in an authoritarian state. A state where everyone is forced to wear the same clothes; where loving, playing and talking is banned. Where there are big brother TV screens monitoring the every move of the people walking in lines on the streets. The message: Samsung's technology will set you free. The irony of this message was a little too much for me.

The implications of this kind of music video worry me. This goes beyond the disgusting product placements that we always see in sitcoms, dramas and movies. This is all about co-optation. Am I being extreme? Well, it should worry us that commercials are being passed off as music videos because it won't be long until other kinds of art and entertainment follow suit.

Halloween

I made about half of the kids cry on Halloween because I was so darn scary. They don't really have Halloween in Korea and most people think it's for looking pretty. So all of the little girls came in dressed like a princess, Belle or Beauty and most of the little boys came in dressed like spiderman. That's alright I guess, but we only had about 3 kids who actually tried to be scary- a werewolf, a devil, and a... well, there were a lot of cute witches I guess. It was an awful lot of work so such an unimportant holiday. We had an all day party. I never want to do Halloween again! Check it out:

Pucca choco chocco

I feel like I've deprived my American breathren of Funny Korean things. So today I am paying tribute to Korean Music an Animation...

Enjoy a day of pure asian weirdness...

I love Pucca!!

Baek Ji Young - Sarang An Hae

"I Don't Love You"

'Sorry. I Don't Like You.'

I ATE DOG.

That is not a euphemism or a metaphor. I really did eat dog soup last night- willingly. Before I had ever eaten dog soup, I looked forward to the day when I could write on this blog: " I ate dog. And I liked it." But I have to be honest, I didn't like it and I don't think I'll ever eat it again, unless of course I get stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but dogs.

Eating dog soup is kind of like eating dog breath. That's what it smells like. And this dog was well prepared. It was quite tender, but also stringy. The fatty bits were really really disgusting because they tasted more like dog breath than the rest of the soup. Maybe that was because they took longer to chew and the spicy sauce disappeared from the taste long before you could swallow it.

But fear not, animal lovers! For those of you who are outraged and disgusted (finish reading this before you call PETA, please) there has been karmic pay back. This morning I puked up little chunks of dog and had dog breath myself. And now it's coming out the other end. It seems as though I was never really meant to eat dog.

*I guess I should add a few cultural notes here to put the experience in a little more context:
Koreans have been eating dog for a long time. It's a dish that is eaten on the hottest days of the year (to help cool you down) and it is supposed to increase male virility. In Korea, people don't eat pets or strays off the street, but instead there are special farms that breed dogs for the purposes of eating. I can't speak to the treatment of the dogs that are raised on the farms because I really don't know. I've heard rumors that the dogs are beaten before they are killed to stimulate the flow of adrenaline, which is supposed to be really good for the male endurance, but I don't know if that's true. And well, actually, I don't know too many people who actually consume dog meat...

This is what I found about dog meat in wikipedia:

Gaegogi literally means "dog meat" in Korean. Gaegogi, however, is often mistaken as the term for Korean soup made from dog meat, bosintang. It is made from a specific breed of dog that differs from those breeds that are kept as pets. The distaste felt by dog lovers, particularly from the West, with respect to eating dog has made this dish controversial in recent years. About two[27][28] to three[29] million dogs are consumed in South Korea every year that corresponds to more than one trillion South Korean won[28] ($1 billion at a rate of 1 USD per 1000 KRW).
The consumption of dog meat can be traced back many years. Dog bones were excavated in a neolithic settlement in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. One of the wall paintings in the Goguryeo tombs complex in South Hwangghae Province, a UNESCO World Heritage site which dates from 4th century AD, depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse.
Use of dogs for meat and the methods of slaughter used have generated friction between dog lovers, both Western and Korean, and people who eat dogs; the conflict occasionally breaks out as headline news. During the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea's capital city, the South Korean government asked its citizens not to consume dog meat to avoid bad publicity during the games. The controversy surfaced again in 2001 when the 2002 FIFA World Cup soccer games were held jointly in South Korea and Japan.[30][31] The organizer of the games, under pressure from animal rights groups such as PETA,[32] demanded that the Korean government re-address the issue, but little changed. Another part of the controversy stems from the methods of slaughter, which include beating to death by clubs (common in the countryside) and hanging (offenses in Korea under the Animal Protection Act 1991[33] although it does not include dogs as animals for human consumption[34]), in order to get more adrenaline into the flesh to make it taste better. However, such methods are no longer common in industry, where generally instant electrocution is employed because of economic reasons.[29] In 2007, a South Korean online dog meat retailer opened in April but closed in July due to a flood of demands to the local officials to "shut down the site for illegally selling dog meat."[35] A government official said, "Under the food sanitation law, animals that are not examined according to livestock processing regulations are not allowed to be sold as food... However, we will not be taking strong measures to regulate the practice since we have a tradition and culture of eating dog meat and many people enjoy it."
Today in Korea, a segment of the population enjoy bosintang, literary “invigorating soup”, for its supposed "medicinal" properties. Dog meat is also widely believed to keep one cool during the intense Korean summer. Dog meat is also believed to improve male virility,[34] although there is no medical evidence to support these claims. Many Korean Buddhists consider eating meat an offense, which includes dog meat. Unlike beef, pork, or poultry, dog meat has no legal status as food in South Korea, which has caused the industry to go underground, with no official guidelines to address concerns over hygiene and animal welfare.[34] Some in South Korea and abroad believe that dog meat should be legalized so that only authorized preparers can deal with the meat in more humane and sanitary ways,[36][37] while others think that the practice should be banned by law. During the FIFA World Cup, in the face of foreign pressure to ban the sale of dog meat, a group of prominent South Koreans wrote an open letter in support of dog-eating.[38] South Korea's top soccer official said that FIFA had no business interfering in his country's eating habits.[31] Supporters of dog-eating held rallies against FIFA[39] and launched a campaign to promote dog meat.[40][41][42]
Many younger generations of Koreans are starting to abhor the practice of eating dog meat, and instead are treating dogs as pets rather than a source of food.[43][44] According to a 2006 survey, among 1025 South Koreans,[28] 81% of those in their fifties, 67% of those in their forties, 64% of those in their sixties, 59% of those in their thirties, 60% of teens, 46% of those in their twenties, and 55% on average have ever eaten dog meat. 64% eat dog meat 1 to 3 times per year, 17% 4 to 6 times, and 11% 7 to 10 times. This amounts to an average of 4.6 times per year, at 300 grams per incident. 75% think dog meat should not be banned, and many demand the improvement of the sanitary conditions rather than animal welfare.

pollution update

i have been wiping greyish dirty looking stuff from the inside of my nose for two weeks.

my snot has a black-ish tint to it.

just imagine what my lungs must look like.