Scribblings of the Metropolitician

The Metropolitician on 101.3 TBS eFM

For those who've been tuning in on Mondays at 11AM for the past several weeks, you'll know I've been a recurring guest on the Soul of Asia show, with Sara Kim.

Well, we're settling into a regular format now, so I'll be a regular guest talking social commentary and criticism on the air. We should have lots of fun topics -- so be sure to catch me on Mondays at 11 with Sara.

And it's live, so always wish me luck!

Some More Thoughts On the Korean Internet and Cultural Barriers to Content Production

It seems that predictions I've made are coming true. Seems arrogant to say, but I make certain predictions, some people say I'm a blowhard, then when they come true, everyone forgets that I was...ahem...right.

If you read what I said in "Web 2.0 and Korean Media" in December 2006, the summer after they rolled out "UCC" (YouTube-style "user-created content" in the form of embeddable videos) a couple years after YouTube had hit it big, you'd remember I said:

Enter the Korean concept of "User Created Content." Sure, it's probably a term picked up in the communications field somewhere, but it's a Korean concept, deployed in a Korean way. The big companies here are pushing "UCC" to the people as ways they can "get in on the action" and create content (THAT WE'LL USE) with the implied promise of perhaps being able to become as famous as all those YouTube people you hear about in the news, like that guitar kid everyone is talking about and who got on Korean TV because of it.

Problem is, I think it's doomed to failure. The overall trends are going in exactly the opposite direction, and savvy Korean netizens are going to be demanding their real user power, and will resent being crippled by ugly Daum and Naver blog templates, and creating content for portal sites, which is essentially what they are doing.

The biggest sponsors of the UCC drives are, not surprisingly, big Korean media companies. I call this system the jaebeol media model, and it is particularly and uniquely Korean. Make video content and we will let you put it on our site, for the company's commercial benefit. It's pretty much using the content – with limitations, set templates, and rigid feature sets – for the benefit of the company...

...Maybe it's a peculiarly Korean way of doing things, but I don't think it can be sustained for very long, especially since the rest of the world is offering all kinds of free space, open-source freedom, and the ability for the market to grow and expand without control from the top. The Korean model offers – not surprisingly, given this country's style of business and governance – top-down, centralized control, limitations, and lack of a user-centric experience.

I remember people back then laughing at Google's increased vigor in making headway in the Korean market, since Naver will NEVER lose its dominance, right? People laughed and said Google overly-American dedication to simplicity would NEVER go over in Korea, and its little attempts at coloring up the Google Korea site with cute little animations was something akin to pitiful. People also laughed when YouTube Korea rolled out, swearing up and down that they'd be crushed by the better resolution of the domestic sites. Those techheads missed the point.

I've been saying, since that post, as well as in "The Mis-execution of Korean UCC" in April 2007, when I continued criticizing the utter lack of content on Korean UCC, that the Korean Internet is woefully devoid of ideas, and pitifully cordoned off from the rest of the world. Like the Korean economy, this is not just a side-effect, but totally intentional and a key part of how it succeeds.

In the 2006 post, I called the Korean Internet a "jaebeol" system, which I very much think it is. Inherent in the system isn't a core of intensely creative people and ideas that find expression in a myriad different ways, that come together and combine in unpredictable ways.

For instance, who knew how the synergy between blogging, embeddable video, other social media such as Twitter, social bookmarking, and other things would come together? It's led to new forms of media, business models, and ways of disseminating information itself. It's changed pop culture, politics, and so many other fields in a real -- not gimmicky -- way.

The Korean Internet? With broadband that leaves the US in the dust, no real problem of a "digital divide", computers everywhere, a high degree of technical skill with all kinds of programs and electronic devices, and a youth culture that is deeply socially invested in the Internet -- where's the beef? Meaning -- where's the content?

Where are the new ideas? Why didn't Koreans invent YouTube, Digg, or Twitter, or even the concepts of blogging, podcasting, or social bookmarking? Where are the funky new business ideas, new revenue models, or even (and especially) THE CONTENT?

That's the main problem you have with the Korean Internet. It's insular and doesn't think ahead. Take my piece on the stupidity of Pandora TV in "Pandora.TV Suck Rizzocks" in which I point out how ludicrously stupid it was to require ActiveX controls to watch a stinking video, and how dumb it was to require watching a 15-second commercial before EACH video.

Why can a non-specialist see how fucking braindead this was? Isn't the point of being a video portal to have as wide a database as possible? So what was with the labyrinthine registration process, ActiveX downloads, and watching commercials all damn day. I predicted that Pandora would drop that ActiveX shit like it's hot, but that's not even a good prediction; it's just common sense. The point of streaming video ISN'T to go to your stupid website and watch it THERE: YouTube's success was partially enabled by it being able to easily embed video ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE ELSE, fools. Argh. Of course, Pandora.TV switched over to Flash-based video only a couple months after my rant. Could have saved a year of wasted time by just doing what YouTube had already been doing for years -- duh! If you're gonna copy, at least get the IMPORTANT part right, right? And in the fall of 2007, Pandora announced they were switching to Flash-based viewing as if they'd figured out some really cool shit for the very first time. Duh.

Or there's MNCast, which I'd always liked, and was always Flash-based and always easy to embed. The resolution was killer. It was kinda better than YouTube, minus the Korea-only database of content. But still.

WHY NOT MAKE IT AN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA SITE, with menus in English? Keep the Korean ones, too. It's the INTERNET. It doesn't matter where people are. When Metacafe and Revver were trying to do the same thing, MNCast could've been a player. But they weren't. Because it apparently never occured to them to market themselves as a general-purpose media site. After I'd had that ever-so-shockingly-revolutionary thought, MNCast later added some lame-ass English menu for whomever they thought international users were, or to make themselves seem more global...to themselves. Who cares? Too little, too late.

THE PROBLEM
The Korean Internet is completely controlled by conglomerates, called "jaebeol" in Korean. The traditional jaebeol were and are Samsung, Hyundai, Daewoo, peeps like that. On the Korean Internet, they're called Naver, Daum, Cyworld, and other names. But the point is still the same: they control the production of nearly all the content on the Korean internet, their blogs, cafe bulletin boards, and other forms of content are proprietary and territorial. One has to login to Naver to even VIEW certain items for sale on one bulletin board, or open pages of a cafe or blog. Getting listed in Naver's search engine? Unless you paid money or are a Naver blog or other product, you're essentially not going to show up at all. Unless you pay the piper directly. Which is how Naver makes its money.

There is no room for real innovation, no incentive for it. Even the possible incentive would be to make an internet idea good enough for Naver to just buy it. Good, say you? Sure, that's the goal of many a startup. But the reason Korea will never invent a Facebook -- the most highly traveled site in the world -- is because if someone had that particular idea, it would just be bundled into the functions of the existing portal site, be in Korean only, require a Korean citizen ID number, and not at all be open-sourced for other parties to freely make applications for.

You'd just get Cyworld, which is a dying idea, akin to Friendster. Done Korean-style, you don't get a new PLATFORM that is compatible with other Web 2.0 company -- Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, anything can be integrated into Facebook. In Korea, you just get macro-sized monstrosities that simply suck in resources to themselves as Naver-Godzilla prepares for continued battle with King Kong-Daum.

Where's the room for the little guy? The startups? The good ideas that suddenly pop up from a college kid into one of the biggest sites on the Internet?

They get crushed by the jaebeol-monsters, of course.

And that's without having gotten to the cultural environment in which both the actual and virtual jaebeol exist within, but have also helped sustain -- the complacent, consumptive nature of social/Internet participation.

Now, I'm getting into territory that I can't "prove" or quantify materially. You either will or will not feel me on this issue, but I believe in what I'm saying here: there are too many cultural barriers here that prevent the production of "UCC" or the promulgation of innovative ideas. That's on top of the fact that there's a huge, gaping absence of business/capital infrastructure to support such ideas even if they DID exist.

Without getting into totally separate conversations, Korea is now facing a slow, core meltdown that is far different, more challenging to fix, and fundamental than most people tend to consider it. The ongoing failure of the Korean Internet to innovate is just another sign of the problem. It's possilby the best sign, too.

Simply put, Korean Internet infrastructure ROCKS. Korea's a small country with a centralized government that can wire everywhere on the peninsula with fiber-optic, supersonic, pro-bionic, high-ionic, gin-and-tonic Internet supercable in the blink of an eye. It doesn't cripple upload speeds to a fraction of download. Computers are everywhere, as are bootleg copies of Photoshop, Premiere, and Illustrator that are thought to be as automatically present as Clock or Calculator on a given Windoze XP install. The Internet is everywhere you wanna be in Korean society.

Except that every media form or function on the Korean internet was originally invented somewhere else (usually the American Internet) that was researched, reheated, and rolled into a "new" function on one of the Korean portal-jaebeols.

That's the key, and what Koreans are used to. Down even to the style of consumption, as when you leave your Samsung-constructed apartment building in your Samsung-built car and use your Samsung phone to tell your best friend doing laundry in a Samsung washing-drying machine to meet you at the Samsung Plaza to shop for clothes made by a Samsung designer. Isn't that scary?

No. For a long time, that's been very REASSURING to the average Korean consumer. And it's no different from Naver. Although things are fraying a bit a the edges, most people LIKE the fact that Naver is like a proto-god figure here, magically dispensing information with authority, hosting your blog, hobbyist cafe, filtering your news, and doing just about anything you can imagine. In fact, right now, Naver's social/psychological/cultural power simply can't be conveyed in terms that say, Americans, can understand. Because the WAY people relate to Naver ain't nothing but a Korean THANG, baby. Unless you use Naver every day like we over here do, you just can't understand.

But what one should understand is that this isn't thought of as a negative. In Korea, one doesn't use the Internet; ones uses NAVER. Of course, there are others, too. But you get the point.

You don't check the BBC for news. Or go to your favorite (and non-portal) social bookmarking site. Or update your blog at a non-portal, commercial blog service. Or even know what Wordpress is. Open-source? That's for Naver to use and base its private blogging service on -- not for YOU to do the same.

Partially because of the language barrier, partially out of habit, and partially because the portals keep people dependent on them and discourage weaning, the Korean internet is amazing insular. But that doesn't mean it doesn't get influenced from the outside, it just means that Korean Internet users don't often go outside the Korean Internet. Yet, it's those who parse, Koreanize, and implement outside ideas for the Korean Internet who make the big bucks.

Take Naver's recent makeover, for instance. I remember saying 4 years ago that Korean big media is losing touch with its base, and that Korean tastes have become far more varied, complex, and Americanized than Korean media realizes. I said this a lot in reaction to Koreans who often would categorically tell me that "Koreans only like variety shows" or "Koreans don't like American-style media." Then what's with the runaway success of pretty much every major American television show on Korean TV?

The same thing I said to those who would tell me "Koreans like complex things on Internet pages." Really? Or is that the assumption that leads to Korean internet pages always being complex and busy? I think that the Korean consumer -- especially on the Internet -- simply doesn't have many other options, and it's assumptions such as these that lead to a lack of new ideas, a willingness to take risks with any that are there, and help foster a deadly conservative Internet culture.

People laughed at YouTube when it opened here. They also scoffed at Google Korea trying to add a few doodads to its pages. Funny how the new Naver after the New Year has very much simplified and streamlined its notoriously busy front page in a way that I guess few would have imagined just a couple years ago. Because "Koreans like complex web pages."

Uh-huh.

Just like "Koreans don't eat cheese and pizza will never catch on" (80's) or "Koreans just don't use iPods." Uh-huh.

Let me make a 2009 prediction. I've seen the market share of iPods go from 2% in the brick-iPod days to 17% in the single year after the 1st-generation Nano was introduced. During Steve Jobs' speech, I rightly predicted that the market share would jump off the charts, simply because of 1) price, 2) form factor, and 3) aesthetics. iPods were simply too big, didn't have the megabyte-for-the-buck oomph, and simply weren't sexy enough. At that point, I knew they had the Korean market. And I was right.

I don't know what the present market share is, but anecdotally speaking, more than half of the MP3 players I see on public transportation and on the streets are iPods. Definitely at least half.

And there's a very high market awareness of the iPod Touch, and expectation about the iPhone, which should be able to make it to market this year in Korea.

I hereby predict that if the iPhone is released here, along with the opening of an iTunes Korea music store, podcasting will hit the critical mass it needs to take off here, mostly because of the pre-existing content out there, and not because so many Koreans will start producing their own podcasts. Even after the buzz has died down back in the West, I think podcasting is going to help drive iPod sales as more language and other programs recommend the hardware purchases, and as the platform of iPod users grows to the point that people start taking advantage of it.

In short, now's a good time to be podcasting, and I'm going to be restarting Korea's first podcast -- Metropoliticking in Seoul -- under a new name and format, and taking things a bit more slow and carefully. More on that later.

Ah -- this has been a truly Metropolitical rambling. The overall point was that the Korean Internet faces some huuuuge content-production problems, as does the overall "information economy." Korea's slowly coming up against a wall, and it's mostly determined by authoratative systems of control and education reinforced by top-down modes of social interaction and consumption, atop a social rigidity and risk-averseness seldom seen in other countries and cultures.

Korea, I think, is faced with more cultural/social rigidity that results in hardware being bereft of good software, to use that metaphor. The problem in the US seems to be just the opposite, as we let the "hardware" of our education system, science and math programs, and other aspects of the educational environment rot away; Americans are culturally/socially all about self-expression, high self-esteem, and a "look at me" culture in general -- that's not our problem. It's the hardware machine that's breaking down.

But if I were to pick between the two situations, I'd choose the latter. Hardware's easy to fix, especially if money and commitment can come; however, deeply-ingrained cultural/social patterns that refuse to budge even after infrastructure has seems to be a pretty nasty problem, especially when competing on a global level.

I hope all this gabbing and prognosticating has resulted in some ideas worth chewing on. I apologize for the length, but hey -- it's me!

My Stomach Hurts, Or Why Cho Jin-sil's Suicide is Business-As-Usual

Here's a response I wrote to Web 2.0 Asia's post about the death of Choi Jin-sil:

Well, one thing worth thinking about -- I think the nastiness is partially enabled by 1) lazy moderators on sites, and 2) the particularly extreme nastiness of the Korean internet.

Now, before people go off saying this is "racist" or whatnot, I'll say that I place this all squarely within a framework of causality -- not just "Koreans are essentially, genetically X."

There is an extreme amount of competition for scarce resources in this society, ranging from less space-per-person, how standardized tests rule everything, the extreme militarized hierarchy of society, and the general amount of mental trauma that has not at all been dealt with throughout the entire 20th century.

Take a country ravaged by invasion and colonization for 36 years, forced labor and military conscription through World War II, then "liberation" by a new set of neo-colonizers, then a devastating war that ravaged the nation and rent family ties asunder, which was then followed by dictatorship, torture, and the constant threat of force by the government on labor unions, activists, and anyone else who bothered to question authority, coupled with the crushing of organized labor and the democracy movement (within a nominal democracy, right? the irony) in Kwangju, and the constant "scare" and suspicion that one's neighbor was a "Commie" -- and then suddenly, the economy is great-n-the-80's, people are toting Prada bags and Beamers (or wanting to), and busy enjoying themselves -- or trying not to think about the massive collective trauma inflicted upon them.

It's like this: you female coworker who sits next to you in the office is kidnapped on Monday, invaded and abused on Tuesday, gangraped and beaten to within an inch off her life all day Wednesday, cruelly tortured and humiliated on Thursday, before being "liberated" in a violent commando raid with guns and explosions and tear gas bombs on Friday, taken home quivering and catatonic on Saturday, then given Sunday to rest and collect herself.

Then she returns to work on Monday, prim and proper, smile on her face, ready to work at her desk and take calls and send memos. And you're sitting there, staring at her in disbelief because you heard about all that happened to her on the news, thinking, "What the hell are you doing here? Are you OK??!?!?!"

And she answers, "Why, of course! Silly you! Why wouldn't I be?" and goes on cheerily typing a memo as if that entire previous week hadn't happened.

Would you not think her absolutely off her rocker? Sure, every nation has had trauma, but Korean society was so rocked and shocked and blocked and knocked again in soooo many fundamental ways throughout the 20th century -- and has the acute problem of still not being able to properly deal with its history, the huge and lingering social consequences of all that history that is apparent to anyone who looks objectively at Korea's uneven and rapid development.

Not only has that experience created the TRAUMA that filters down from the national to the individual level over the past century, it also is a source of the extreme distrust, negativity, and competitiveness that the system created by that trauma now engenders.

In short, to me, an American, envy takes place on a level here that truly perplexes me. The saying "when a cousin buys a piece of land, my stomach hurts" was a phrase that I found nearly mysterious, at least in terms of an emotional logic that I am used to. But once I came to understand it, once I saw that logic applied to people's lives here in case after case, it was one of those "cultural differences" that I just had to chalk up to not being able to surmount. One is, inevitably, the product of one's circumstances, education, and socialization.

Here, when someone has something you don't -- or even when a friend has something good happen to them, as in winning a prize, getting an opportunity, etc -- it is often very tricky to navigate. And from a management point-of-view, very real.

Illustrative Case 1:
In the 90's, our American director of a Korean-American joint office once implemented an "employee of the month" policy, where an employee was picked, and after 12 months, whomever got the most points or whatnot received a small bonus of something miniscule like $200 or something. After a couple months, the normally quite passive Korean workers signed a petition and demanded an end be put to the policy. They said it was eroding good relations and creating too much tension in the office. Even though the reward was minor, it loomed over everything.

Illustrative Case #2:
I knew someone who was hired as a personal assistant and translator for the director of a company. She had a desk near his and was expected to handle all the English correspondence, phone calls, and translate key documents. She was explicitly hired for that reason, and occupied a different job description than the many uniformed "office girls" who worked the front counters. From day 1, the girls hated her, and demanded that she be forced to wear the same blue uniform that they had to wear. The director explained that it was a different job, that she was an assistant, and that he wanted her to wear a normal suit. What really grated on them was the fact that she spoke English so well, and she could see them sneer and snicker at her every time she answered the phone. She quickly quit.

Illustrative Case #3:
Also in the 90's, I once was invited to play a cello solo with a girl from a local middle school for the Christmas/Winter school festival. Back then, foreigners in the countryside were rare, and playing a musical instrument was rare. The girl was shy and seemingly reluctant to do it, but many adults in the affair thought it would be good theater. What I found out was that it had made her, contrary to what I would have ever thought, a social pariah. The other girls in the middle school, it was reported to me through teachers, hated her for getting special time with "the foreigner" and thought her playing with me was "bragging." I responded that the girl seemed quite shy and quiet, quite far from any braggart -- the teachers replied that they agreed, but that's just the way things were. This was "Korean culture" at work, I was told.

Illustrative Case #4:
I made a UCC interviewing Korea's first astronaut before she had been chosen as the final candidate and uploaded them to YouTube. Before YouTube opened in Korea. Overwhelmingly, the response and comments from all over the world were positive. She was a woman, she was going to space, she was the first in her country, the selection process was truly different and democratic, etc. Great, right?

Then, when YouTube opened, Koreans came in. You couldn't believe the language and pure levels of rancor the comments held. It got to the point that whenever an email came that a new comment had been posted, if there was a Korean-sounding ID, I simply assumed I had to delete it, since there would almost always be a comment like "they shouldn't send that ugly fat bitch to space, it's a shame to our nation" and some such. I only include that kind of example to drive the point home:

Had there been an Internet at the time, would Americans had written that way about Sally Ride?

My point? I think there's something deeper and more complex going on in the Korean internet, as an extension of Korean societal norms and values. And when it comes to that peculiar sensation that Koreans describe in their "stomach hurting" when even a cousin gets something good, I think those subtle feelings of jealousy (that we all, as humans, can have) mix with the extreme frustration that a LOT of people are constantly forced to swallow in a culture of soul-breaking tests, long lines, too little space, cramped and overpriced housing, etc.

When my friend back home is the first one to get a 61" HDTV with surround sound and has a Super Bowl party, inviting all the friends over and enjoying it, there is just SOMETHING DIFFERENT about it than if it's the Korean case.

It's not academically "provable" or reliably quantifiable, but it's there.

I enjoy my friend's TV and may just think of some ways to come over and enjoy it more until I can get my own. I may envy him the OBJECT, but I don't experience negative feelings toward him. I don't get the feeling he is "bragging" toward me, and I don't return that with unspoken hostility that must be covered up and accounted for.

But we Koreans or those who've lived here a long time KNOW that this is different here. We all KNOW that you have to carefully navigate one's own good fortune or change in status against many eyes that can interpret things in negative ways. I still remember instance after instance of being accused -- only half-playfully -- of "bragging." Whether it was me using a white Mac notebook (yes, simply using an "expensive" and "luxury" Mac), or inviting Korean colleagues for a movie on the home theater (which even college kids back home buy in $300 mini-packages), or simple pronouncing English words properly when ASKED to (and greeted with a teasing "Oooooh! You sound so smart!") -- there are so many ways to incur envy, and to receive the benefits, as well as the negative consequences of it.

So imagine being a Korean "star." How much more must they deal with? How much more hated are they by the public, as much as adored? The fact that in the case of Yi Soyeon, several "anti-Yi Soyeon" cafes were created for doing nothing other than merely existing -- it's telling. The "anti" culture alone here is something to behold, and it goes far deeper, all the way to the core of that peculiar Korean envy.

It's my bit of armchair anthropology, but in a society so concerned with the fate of others vis-a-vis oneself, and where the net has allowed the most vicious of thoughts and sentiments to find expression without consequences -- for the frustrated to be able to vent with impunity -- it's no surprise that stars are killing themselves left and right.

I mean, the #1 cause of death for Koreans in their 20's and 30's is suicide -- so the fact that stars are killing themselves is statistically not at all unusual. They just garner more attention.

But the causes are apparent. It goes deeper than a real name system. Actually, that would tend to fix the problem, since the social consequences for venting the unventable would return; yet, this isn't best for freedom of expression and other issues. And yet, I think this is a peculiarly acute, Korean problem.

It's pretty much only in Korea that 1) it's so particularly nasty, and 2) where the recipients of abuse take it so seriously, for the same cultural reasons. So of course you're going to get consequences as these.

You either change the socio-emotional system, or you address it by changing the rules of the Korean Internet. Frankly, the latter is simply the easier choice, although not the more desirable. But realistically, what are people going to do?

Getting back to Choi Jin-sil and her profession, this is a country where it was scandalous for an ACTOR/ACTRESS to kiss onscreen only a decade ago, so let's not kid ourselves with being surprised by any of this.

Until the disparity between in-person and internet behavior is solved in Korea, this will continue to happen. That's as good as guaranteed.

And in terms of mental health, embarrassing deaths, and suicide, denial is the norm here.

When suicides happen in schools, the reaction is generally one of complete indifference. No time is taken away from classes, no memorial services or remembrances offered, no counseling services given -- nothing. One school a few years ago had two suicides nearly back-to-back, and the school forbade the students from even TALKING about it, let alone officially acknowledging it. The students were so angry, they actually staged a protest and refused to go to classes, conducting their own memorial service outside. You hear many stories like this from colleagues like mine working all across the countryside in public schools. I personally knew of about a suicide per year amongst the Fulbright ETA's for several years of their ongoing training -- it's quite sad to hear the stories, and the shock of the American teachers who have a student one day, then dead the next. And no memorials.

The way of dealing with shame, embarrassment, and envy is to bury it in Korean culture. Mental health services are nearly unheard of in this country, a place that perhaps needs it more desperately than many others. Even cases such as rape are not pressed by the parents of victims because the social repercussions are potentially far more embarrassing than those of pressing charges and demanding an investigation. Only here have I heard of the high-school age victims of a group of high school boys who committed repeated gang rapes against them receiving DEATH THREATS for daring to press charges. Or the recent case of the elementary school kids raped by other elementary school kids, whose parents stopped cooperating with the investigation because they just wanted to forget about it.

The cases are many. Most are anectdotal, so what to do? Guess they're not true. Subjective. Nothing to see here. Move along.

And that's the least prickly way to handle it all, right? Until you snap, or get the chance to snipe at someone you've never met but is the symbol of all you don't have, right? So "fuck that bitch for getting plastic surgery," right? "Fucking dirty cunt. She should die. She should be ashamed for daring show her face in public, because she's such a freakish monster. Instead of mutilating her face, maybe she should use the money for charity? Bitch." (But the celebrity YOU like is an angel, right? And HER plastic surgery was medically necessary because her eyelashes were hyper-angled, and national health insurance even paid for it...blah, blah, blah).

Sound harsh? Just be glad you don't speak Korean and cruise around the many places that don't take down comments JUST like that.

And in a far-flung, faceless society that still operates on the rules of a close-knit, face-to-face one that regulates social relations through in-person sanctions on violations of social rules and roles, one can see why this is an especially pernicious problem.

Is it any wonder the world's first true case of cyberstalking was right here, in the case of the infamous "dog poop girl?" Things have changed a lot since then, and as any old Korea hand knows, the society completely changes at the rate of every decade. It's hard to believe that just 12 years ago, most people didn't even know what the WEB or EMAIL were. Fast-forward a few years, and it's the country of cyberstalking.

Again, that ain't no mere coincidence, people.

And I continue to be, unfortunately for me and the hardened heart one must develop to live here, completely unsurprised by suicides such as these.

Because they happen every day, and will continue to. The only logical to wonder -- who's next? I just hope it's not someone I care about, and try to carry on with life. That's all an individual can do. Unfortunately, Choi was far from the first, and far from the last.

RIP, Choi Jin-sil.

Bomb English #16 - Mad about Mad Cow!

In this 16th episode of Bomb English, Jennifer and Michael talk about mad cow madness. Have we eaten too much American beef? Are we crazy? Or are we just the only ones remaining calm? Wait -- did they say they ate American beef? Run! Run!

Let's Make a Point...

As someone always up for making creative points, would anyone with artistic skills like to assist in making a satirical cartoon illustrating the folly of making racism-tinged generalizations? Here's one that comes from a Korean blogger (HT to the Marmot):

I wrote a comment on his blog asking how Koreans would feel if American newspapers and bloggers started making cartoons based on sweeping generalizations of certain minority groups appearing in the news, as in the Koreans such as Cho Seung-hui or more recently, Choi Kang-hyuk.

A cartoon of say, a sweat-drenched, crazed Korean man clutching a knife dripping with blood in one hand, and a Tech-9mm in the other one outta do it. It would go in a mock post, and the point will be made that this is a shoe-on-the-other-foot kind of thought experiment, and not our actual opinion.

Of course, certain netizens would try to lie and say that we really believed in this, but those idiots would just spread the word, while hopefully the Korean press would get ahold of it. Who knows? The worst that'll happen is that it'll go unnoticed. The best is that it would be.

I'd do the illustration myself, but I can't draw to save my life. Anyone care to collaborate and make a point with me? Rather than phone calls that go unreturned, or online petitions/protests that go unnoticed, let's get creative.

And turnabout is always fair play, especially when the other guy is even more sensitive than you are to low blows. Playing to the Korean sense of national pride and "image" just might be an effective strategy in this case, methinks.

Bomb English #15 - Being a Lesbian in Korea

In our 15th episode, Jennifer and Michael talk with a Korean lesbian who tells us what many people want to ask, but never get the chance. "Are there REALLY gay people in Korea?!"

For those of you who don't know, our Bomb English project is going pretty well, where we provide good conversational English content along with a transcript for free. We keep it frank, honest, and real as can be. No Arirang, EBS English here -- recommend it to your Korean friends for their intermediate/advanced study, and listen in yourselves as native speakers, since we treat the topics as real topics and not just awkward, superficial conversations about things we don't care about.

This is real English, with Korean content. So there's something for everyone.

Check us out!

A Voice of Rationality

CORRECTION: An astute reader pointed out an error in this post, which is pertinent to what I'm saying and should be noted:

"김 교수는 자신의 논문에서 밝힌 광우병의 위험성을 적극 알리지 않았다는 이유로 '분뇨 테러'까지 당한 것으로 전해졌다. 광우병 논란 사태가 불거진 후 몇몇 사람들이 집에 찾아와 욕설을 하며 동물 분뇨를 뿌렸다는 것이다. "

which describe that the shit terror occured prior to him making the statement revealing the truth, not after the fact. The actual reason for the shit attack was because he did not actively spread the word of danger to the public as 'described' in his research paper, not because he turned around to say 'no thats not what it says.'

Duly noted, although I still don't think it says much for the rationality of the protesters in attacking an innocent researcher, it is an important point. I just skimmed through the article and trusted the summarized translation of others, instead of fact- and error-checking myself. I stand corrected. Thanks, Greg.

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I love being right. I really do.

No, I'm not a scientist, as certain irrational people point out -- I love when people point out the obvious -- but I am a reasonable, educated person who has the ability to discern substance from, ahem, bullshit. (Yes, I am trying to be "punny.")

So -- as I've been saying from the beginning, when I have been taking people to task for 1) not really knowing what the actual source was for the "Korean genetic predisposition to mad cow disease" argument, and 2) for misinterpreting what even the apparent meaning of that statistic is -- the media and the general populace has been freaking out over nothing. Let me repeat:

It has not been established that American beef is any more unsafe than any other country's beef.

And so says the author of the scientific paper being (mis)used by PD 수첩, crazed netizens, petrified students, and anti-American FTA activists (who must be complimented for an amazing PR coup, since this was, admittedly, a master stroke of political theater and manipulation):

국내 광우병 사태를 촉발한 ‘한국인 광우병 취약’ 논문의 저자인 김용선 한림대 의대 교수는 자신의 논문이 일부 언론에 의해 과장 보도됐고 정치적으로 악용됐다고 주변 인사들에게 말한 것으로 확인됐다.

김 교수는 4일 한림대 의대 학장 자격으로 핀란드의 헬싱키 의대 등과의 업무 협의를 위해 윤대원 한림대 이사장 등과 함께 핀란드로 출국했다.

6일 헬싱키 시내 호텔에서 만난 윤 이사장은 기자에게 “김 교수의 논문은 일부 미디어에 의해 부풀려졌고 이를 다시 정치권이 마녀사냥 식으로 악용하고 있다”고 말했다.

I put it in Korean so it's clear to the several commenters who seem to take my critique of the poor critical thinking skills of the media and political groups as proof of my arrogance (guilty as charged, since I consider the rantings and ravings of stupid people, umm, stupid, and I don't consider myself stupid), or proof of me, once again, "hating" Korea. (You can read the English-language breakdown of the article quoted above at the Marmot's Hole.)

Well, it's not surprising, since the author of the study has had his house attacked by shit-throwing idiots. And I don't mean that in the rhetorical sense -- I mean that people have actually found his house and thrown shit at it. If even the author of the study in question gets shit on, is it surprising that anyone with lesser authority (ohhh -- I'm not a scientist!) would get the same treatment? Because we all need to be scientists or other specialists to make critical judgments of obviously faulty logic or specious claims, right?

We should be a clear expert or authority to make any claims? Kim Yong-seon has that authority! "He said Koreans are 94% more likely to...umm...I don't really understand it, but...anyway! He said it! See!"

But then that very authority turns around and says, "No. That's not what it says. You're wrong."

So people start throwing shit at his house, and he's afraid to even come back to Korea from his research trip. The man's nearly in hiding. And what did he do to deserve this? Umm, absolutely nothing. Lovely.

What is more obvious is that PD 수첩's research is shoddy and unprofessional -- I've said it before. And I'm right again: obviously, they never even contacted the professor to discuss the meaning of his paper. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made it the center of their claims, linking it with other specious claims.

The point is -- to those of you getting on my case for pointing out that the statistic looked fishy and taken completely out of context -- you need to ask yourself why it was so obvious to someone like ME that the "94% genetic predisposition" claim looked very suspicious, and NOT to someone like YOU. What separate us? Nationality? Genetics? What neighborhood in Seoul I lived in? Or perhaps my school names?

It's critical thinking skills, people. Link that with a little basic understanding of logical and statistical fallacies, a rudimentary understanding of the science we all should have learned in high school, as well as not being beholden to a slavish belief in "authority," or the petty maneuverings of a self-interested few of what is clearly a highly-politicized issue -- and you get the ability to not be driven into irrational hysteria over a minor trade dispute.

Does this make me arrogant? If so, I guess I'm arrogant, then.

Does pointing this out make me an asshole? If so, I guess I gotta be an asshole, then.

Does this make me anti-Korean? Again, I'm just pointing out what I consider to be the overreactions of the irrational. By some people's standards, that makes me "anti-Korean," I guess. Hmm.

But then again, by "some people's standards," this innocent professor who did nothing but write a paper on an issue that people not only didn't properly understand, but actively misused for political gain, and when he simply clarified the actual meaning of the research being misused by intellectual brownshirts (and I use the term "intellectual" hesitantly), a completely innocent academic who literally has been dragged into a political shitstorm now has cow dung being thrown at his house and fears for his physical safety.

I guess that makes me, him, and anyone else who raises a voice outside of the mass-mind of the angry crowd, "anti-Korean," right? But to the mob, what does the truth -- nay, even mere rationality -- matter? "You're either with us or against us." Or, as the great Captain Jean-Luc Picard once ominously warned while under the assimilative mind control of cybernetic alien nanoprobes, "You WILL become one with the Borg."

"대~한민국!"

This Just Takes the Cake

OK -- I just about popped a gasket when I saw this. The important points (where they chopped together "negative" things she said) are where she jokingly said the facilities in Russia were old and the bathrooms smelled, but then she went on to say how not upgrading keeps things safe, how that's different from the accidents that happen at NASA, which always upgrades with fancy and expensive, new equipment, and how much she respects those who went up and died before her is a point she emphasizes in two videos, if memory serves. And it's also about two years ago and before she was chosen as the final candidate. Before even that, they take a snippet where she said that she'd buy her mom a house if she got rich and famous, but that was 2 summers ago, and she also happened to say she'd give to science programs and help fund one at KAIST as an example to other Koreans of how to use that power. But that's not what you get in the video. And that's just where they abused MY footage. They've got more.

[If you can't see the video, click here to the direct link.]

OK, I'm not sure how the Korean law applies here to attacking a person and what defines the Korean equivalent of "defamation", I can't be the one who would sue them for that, even if that's possible. But I could get them for copyright violations. As far as I understand copyright law, you can excerpt segments for educational purposes as well as for critique, but my understanding is that you still have to attribute. Hmm. I'm foggy on this, and any help would be appreciated.

As for the legitimate suggestion that I should just let things like this pass, I'd suggest you do a Naver search for 이소연 (Yi Soyeon) and look at what comes up in the video section. It's ridiculous. Or, you could check out the "Anti-Yi Soyeon Cafe" on Daum.

Link here.

It's amazing how much energy certain Koreans are putting into thinking about the monetary value of the space program all of a sudden, or are so eager to believe the ridiculous assertions that people are putting up. And now, they're even blaming Soyeon for the stupid questions SHE'S being asked by reporters, for example, how much she has swollen or gained 5cm in height. Those were stupid "issues" brought up by the idiotic Korean press corps, and now she's being attacked as if she was speaking out of vanity.

Here's the article that will be up on Ohmynews.com either today or tomorrow, as it's getting translated. I think it says what I need to say, although my English version is a bit rough. They edited my repeated points down a bit. Hence, the advantage of having an editor.

I'll link to the Ohmynews story here when it goes up. My goal here is to get the other angle on the Soyeon-attacks out there -- that it's totally misplaced, dishonest, and just vicious -- and look at the other issues that I think are mixed in here: how Soyeon's trip is actually stepping all over some very touchy Korean hotspots, as she violates certain rules of her gender, age, status, and even region, her being from Kwangju.

This, on top of the intense levels of intense jealousy that one often sees displayed whenever someone receives something more than the rest of the group (I think it's important that she won a spot in an open contest, rather than come out of the Air Force as a test pilot or something equally elitist). I think a lot of things are coming together in and around Soyeon that would make for some very interesting international press treatment.

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Wow. As the maker of the "UCC" interviews of Yi Soyeon that have been going around the Korean Internet, I am a bit shocked and disappointed to see some people twisting Soyeon's frank and honest words made in a Shinchon coffee shop in 2006, before the marketing term "UCC" was even invented in Korea. Made by a foreigner (me), for a foreign audience (such shows are called "podcasts" in the US), she was far, far from being an "우주인." She was just my friend who had done well in this interesting contest, since she had made it to the final 30 in Korea's Astronaut program.

Who could imagine where she would be 2 years later? At the time, I was interviewing interesting people in Seoul, and I had found her insider experience with this program interesting. If she made it to the final 2, it would be so great that it would be nearly unimaginable -- I just thought it was really cool to have made it as far as she had. And she herself said so. She was humble, and was so surprised and happy to have made it that far. She talked about her dreams, why she became interested in science, and how the process was affecting her life. And as she progressed through the process, of course we made another video, after she had made the final 10, and what was interesting to notice was how quickly she was maturing, how well she was growing into the role of great responsibility that was now becoming all the more real.

By the third video, shot after she had made it to the final two, she had become much more serious about her role, because now, it had now become her reality. She would go through the training, and it was just as likely as not that she would go into space. I never interviewed her after the final decision was made, since I never had the chance and now, this was SBS's territory; I just found it poignant and fascinating to watch an everyday person grow into a public figure before one's eyes.

But that's not how certain Korean netizens took it. Partially based on sloppy journalism as found in the in the Donga.com article called "우주인 이소연의 솔직한 지구인 이야기", her words were misquoted, twisted, and taken completely out of context to a point that even I had never even imagined. The DongA.com article merely misquoted her, emphasized certain aspects of what she had jokingly said in 2006 with the headline “돈 벌어 엄마한테 아파트 선물”, and did so did so without properly attributing the source of the video, which was readily available, so that people could judge for themselves. To just read the DongA.com article or the words of some Korean netizens after that, Soyeon had joined the space program to get rich. Or perhaps it was to promote this "UCC" -- a concept that did not even exist in Korea at that time (remember that the large media companies started pushing this marketing term around Auhust 2006) Or perhaps she was going to space just to promote my web site, which Soyeon also jokingly said she would support? But if you watch the interview from the beginning, you would know she didn't even know about which site that was.

Firstly, it's amazing to see how little respect major UCC media companies and Korean bloggers have for copyright and intellectual property. Instead of taking my video and cutting into chunks that totally eliminate the context of much of what Soyeon actually said and how she said it, people should have just left the intact video as it was, so people could at least see for themselves. And I think, "Why cut out parts, especially when the other parts make the point you're trying to prove silly?" My point is, anyone presenting an excerpt from this video is suspicious. Simply watching the video, knowing when it was shot and why, you can see that the assertions being made by certain netizens are patently ridiculous. I shouldn't need to convince you. Just watch the video from beginning to end.

Then, you would have seen that any comments about "what would you do if you make it?" were no more real to her than if I asked any of you "What would you do if you became President?" when you were a child, but then upon becoming an adult, it really happens. I'm sure if one does become president, one's choices and sense of responsibility would be far more serious than when you were just an everyday person. And this is just what Soyeon was when she sat down with me for a cup of coffee that day in Shinchon in 2006.

If people didn't cut the video up into little pieces, you would see that this was a conversation between a FORIEGNER and her; you should also notice that the entire video was subtitled -- it's made for FOREIGN audiences, made BY a FOREIGNER. No one was interested in "UCC" in Korea at the time. No one was interested in Soyeon, either. In fact, most Koreans weren't even really interested in their own space program. But a few foreigners like myself found it interesting, and I decided to record her experiences in it. So the stupid conversations about "how will this look overseas?" are simply just that -- stupid. That firrst video was up on YouTube for about a year-and-a-half, and making very positive impressions about Soyeon as well as Korea far, far before the Korean audience learned about it, or cared.

Perhaps this is telling: I put it on MNCast and Daum, and there was nearly no reaction. No one cared, and I didn't expect them to. Almost no one watched it.

And the reaction on YouTube? Overwhelmingly positive. People remarked about what a great sense of humor she has, how humble she is, how intelligent her answers are, and how mature she seemed -- even from the beginning, far before she was actually chosen. The fact that she was a woman was a sign to most foreigners that Korean society was becoming more liberal and fair towards women, and even after the other candidate was initially chosen to go to space, all the foreigners I knew were rooting for Soyeon. Especially Americans, we like the underdog. Before Soyeon had even arrived in Russia, I had learned from the blogging community and people linking to my site that the NASA astronauts and people from other space programs had already seen Soyeon through the videos even before they had met her.

What continues to both surprise and disappoint me is that Koreans are still so worried about "what foreigners will think" and still so steeped in 사대주의 that people wring their hands over a few words spoken in passing well before the fact, despite the fact that Soyeon has shown nothing but respect for the people who have come before her at Soyuz, whom she mentions as having died so she can go into space safely, who have developed technology that she has dedicated her life to helping develop back in her home country.

Yet, context doesn't matter when you can simply attack someone out of spite or jealousy, right?

It seems to me that Korea is still so caught up in the psychological scars of bitterness over 사대주의, the national humiliation of having loss its sovereignty, the destruction and horrors of the Pacific and Korean Wars, followed by loss of freedom under dictatorship, rapid development and urbanization, along with the social problems created cutthroat competition for scarce resources, which has manifested in the education system, women feeling the social pressure to define their self-worth primarily through their appearance, and the drive to be first, first, first no matter what the cost, as we saw in the cases of the Sampung Department Store, Seongsu Bridge, Taegu gas explosion, or finally in the case of Hwang Woo-seok.

But in the case of the typical "national hero", he was from the establishment, old, and a man. He "deserved" his fame, right? He fits the image of the national hero. It doesn't matter that he violated ethical protocols to do it. Who cares where the eggs come from, right? When it comes to the nation, it's still "하면 된다" right? And when he's a Seoul National University scientist, an older man with connections, and wearing a white coat, he is names "hero" before the ink even dries on the textbooks. And then "Korea" embarrasses itself.

[Source]

There's a huge unspoken message behind the attacks on Soyeon, and how my videos are being used (stupidly, I think, but they are, nevertheless). It bothers a lot of people that she got into space through a process that had been open to anyone, and that she won it fair and square. It bothers a lot of people that she's a woman. It bothers a lot of people that she's a YOUNG woman. And for certain people, the only place for a young woman is in high heels and behind a cake of makeup, shaking their shoulders and calling them "오빠!" These are the people who seem to be the most offended by Soyeon's mere existence.

For Soyeon, I'm glad she wasn't chosen initially, and it was Ko San's own mistakes that got him disqualified. If she had been the first choice, I think the netizens would have been even worse: "Woman are too powerful" or "She was just chosen for PR because she was a woman!" Ridiculous, in a society that treats men like veritable kings, and a woman I know with a Ph.D. in the sciences was told by her mother-in-law to not work because it "would make her husband look bad." For certain people in Korea, for whom it is still the Joseon Era, Soyeon's success is very, very offensive, indeed.

If people are really concerned, as some say they are, with Korea's national image, then they would stop behaving as they are, for the obvious reasons that they are. It is absolutely shocking to see how eagerly and viciously so many of her fellow Koreans try to tear her down.

When YouTube came to Korea and opened its site, you know what appeared for the first time on Soyeon's videos? Statements appeared for the FIRST time attacking this nanotechnology engineer going up into space for "being too fat" or "having a big head" or just for the apparent crime of being a woman. You know what was the real "나라 망신?" It wasn't Yi Soyeon, but the negative and vicious words of her fellow Koreans, made in front of beweildered foreigners on YouTube. And I sometimes can't keep up with the 악풀, since I delete them. I wonder what the foreigners think of that?

The problem isn't really anything Soyeon said -- it is really the fact that no matter what, so many of her fellow Koreans (especially men) are eager to attack her, eager to tear her down. The content isn't important; vicious netizens would have found something. I think Yi Soyeon represents some very sensitive points in Korean modern society, and is the point at which public notions about ability, fairness, and relative success converge with older notions of traditional related to age, gender, scholastic background, and yes, even regionalism. In short, Soyeon is young, female, outspoken, and obviously articulate about expressing herself frankly. Honestly speaking, how are such women generally regarded in Korean society?

Are Americans perfect? Nope. But I think we have a sense of fairness about the people who become figures of public ridicule. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or any popular entertainers who make their own scandals, Americans tend to criticize, too. But do we attack Condoleeza Rice because of the gap between her teeth? She has one, you know. It's very apparent.

[Source]

But is that important to her job, though?

When Sally Ride became America's first woman into space, I can't remember -- and I can't even imagine -- people talking about how she needs to be prettier, or "fix her face" or "she should get rid of her freckles" or something like that. Yet, the Korean media asks the dumbest questions possible on the short and expensive time communicating in space. When I heard about this question, "Which star would you most like to travel to space with?" I just shook my head in embarrassment. This is the level of the broadcast media? Korea should be thankful that Soyeon handled such an obviously stupid question politely when she replied that she would rather take someone qualified to perform experiments with.

[Source]

Korea and the Koreans who live here always seem so concerned with becoming "globalized" or "international" or the "hub" of something. But it takes more than just words and the simple desire to be something in order to make it so. It takes a real change in attitude, a fundamental change in the way of thinking -- not just installing more western-style toilets or sweating bullets worrying about speaking a few words of English to a foreign customer.

What is really embarrassing to the nation? What should Koreans really be thinking about? It's the fact that there is such a strong desire to cut a figure like Yi Soyeon down because she's a woman, or young, or doesn't look like she's had thousands of dollars of plastic surgery. Or insipid questions such as the one noted above, asked in her ISS interview. Is the problem really that Soyeon doesn't take her ROLE seriously, or that really, even the broadcast media sponsoring her doesn't take HER seriously?

[The note at the top of this actual resume reads, "Too old."]

So what is really ironic is watching Soyeon's fellow Koreans abusing her in public on YouTube, while foreigners scratch their heads. These comments call her ugly, fat, a "disgrace to the nation." Yet, our impressions of Soyeon are fine. They are great, actually! In fact, they've been great for nearly TWO YEARS. The only thing that is sad is watching Koreans tear each other down for nothing. This is the only country I know of where netizens drive their stars to suicide. Several times over, in fact.

What is driving this incident isn't anything Soyeon said, but the sheer, pathological desire of certain netizens who have already decided to hate her for no real good reason, other than petty jealousy and traditional prejudices. Really, only in a culture such as this can the old maxim hold true: "If a cousin buys some new land, my stomach hurts."

Now, this is being played out on a national scale, since this was an open competition, and technically, any Korean was eligible. Now, old social prejudices related to age, gender, and region have mixed with new ones related to the hyper-commercialization of nearly everything in Korean society, including the commodification and over-sexualization of female bodies that was embarrassingly pointed out having the South Korean president make his appearance at the space launch ceremony surrounded by young women in tiny skirts, who asked all the questions.

[source]

Is everything in South Korea made more palatable by extremely young women in miniskirts? From a new bakery opening in the neighborhood, the girl selling toothpaste in the grocery store, all the way into space, apparently, a lot of South Koreans seem to think so. Frankly, I think Korea's first astronaut would have gotten less flak if she simply was another plastic surgery toothpick with a magic perm, rather than a nanotech engineer from KAIST with a Ph.D.

[Source]

What is even sadder than a cynical statement like this is the fact that I actually believe it to be true, given a lot of the comments I've read about her, which reveals the deep-seated prejudices and bitter jealousies that many South Koreans seem so eager and willing to display whenever they get the chance. To me, many South Koreans need to think about whether they want to live in the past, along with all the scars and wounds that it has produced, or a future without such petty jealousies and horrible rancor against anyone who seems to be getting ahead of oneself in the hyper-competitive rat race of Korean life.

Until then, the horrible words many South Koreans aim in Soyeon's direction will continue to bewilder many foreigners who see nothing but a spectacular candidate and a great representative for the Korean nation. It's too bad that today's reality is, at least on the global level and Korea's international image, the worst enemies of Koreans are Koreans themselves.

SeoulGlow #10 - Dinner With Soyeon (Part 3)

It's done. Now you can see the much-promised, much-delayed, final interview with Soyeon. I think that when you watch it, you might be able to see why I held onto it for so long -- one reason was that I thought it would be most relevant around the time she went up, and the other reason was because I didn't want to help publicly pigeonhole her into being the backup astronaut well before the decision was made.

For a long time, the video seemed particularly fitting because she indeed became the backup; now that she's sitting in the first chair, it's even more interesting. Enjoy, Marmot's Holers... I posted it there first. I haven't even upped it to YouTube yet, and KBS is coming to my house to interview me and get the original DV files of the vids for broadcast in 40 minutes. But I wanted you guys to get it first. I'll wax wordy and wise about all this on my own blog later.

Enjoy!

A Sad Day Has Come

This is the last time I will post here. My time as the "Metropolitician" is up.

I've realized a lot of things over the last week or so, since falling for a certain young lady of a more conservative persuasion, who has quite literally rocked my world. I realize that a lot of the liberal ideas I had formerly and formally adhered to were largely misconstrued notions I had held, distortions of ideological ramifications that simply had no precedence in either established fact, dilapidated fiction, or even (and not either) the demonstrated dialectics of most people's dystopic desires.

In short, a new kind of love has made me into a harder, more turgid man.

No longer will I carry the torch for a a deluded liberalism, nor be the voice for lefty illiberality. What I truly hanker for is a haughty helping of a hunk of cheese that isn't defined in terms of a mere neo-Freudian kitsch, but the kind of cheese one can count on, like money in the bank; indeed, one needs sustenance so solid and reliable one can literally stick it in a pipe and smoke it.

So I can no longer continue to write here, after having fallen for someone like the one who has learned to call me "oppa." Such is an experience I never thought I could have had, either as a black man, or a Star Trek fan, and her highly-developed sense of what I have previously called here mere "fetishized femininity" has caused in me an emotional rise that is quite epic in its tense and torpedo-like tautology. Indeed, they didn't call Moby a "Dick" for nothing, as they say. Unlike the proverbial Ahab, my little lady has actually caught her whale.

When wondering why I have decided to forgo any further forays into formalism and endorse not Barack "Aladdin" Obama, but rather John McCain, the answer becomes perfectly obvious, does it not?

When you ask yourselves these questions, as you struggle for the answers, yet still can't bring yourself to face the truth, realize that Tom Cruise once said, quite poignantly, that the "truth could not be handled" and that in a similar situation, Al Pacino pointed a finger and said that the entire Supreme Court was indeed, very much "out of order."

In the same way, I was once out of love, and was so lost without her, but believe you me -- I now realize that it's hip to be square. Or did not Huey Lewis not give you that news?

So, it is with heavy hands that I make my last entry here, since the Metropolitician that was me has completely and totally ceased to be he.

For Pak Geun-hye's youngest daughter knows how to hit me where it counts, and to not just do that to me once, but likes to hit me, baby one more time, all the time, if you catch my meaning, number one Negaroni! See, I don't shrink away from saying, loudly and proudly, what needs to be said. And if you didn't get it from the passage above, you need a double dose of dis doubletalk. April mothafuckin' fool's, bitches!

Word to your mother, yo!