Tokyo Two

Tokyo was a blast.  Lots of pics to sort through and post.

I ate takoyaki every day and I'm not ashamed of it at all.

Tokyo

I'm off to Tokyo for a few days for Chuseok.  Stay safe.

Vegas

Ed from Gin and Tacos says it better than I can:

"Mass shootings are to the modern US what human sacrifices were to some societies, but replace the sun with 2nd Amendment and the bountiful harvest with Freedom. If 58 people have to die so that we may enjoy the freedom to own 35 guns – the killer had at least that many – that is a sacrifice white America is prepared to make. YOU are a sacrifice they are prepared to make. You don't matter. Nothing matters is Larry Limpdick's need to feel tough or manly or important or strong or ready for the Race War he and everyone else in the comments section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is certain is coming because BLM or campus libtards or something.

We have so thoroughly normalized a completely demented, paranoid, conspiratorial, afactual right-wing worldview that a man can buy 35 guns and not only are there no meaningful obstacles to doing so but the fact isn't even considered especially noteworthy or out of the ordinary. The very fact that we live in a society where a person can announce that they own 10 or 25 or 50 or 100 guns and the overwhelming, immediate response is not 'What in the living fuck is wrong with you?' followed by a psych evaluation is the definitive proof that this will keep happening over and over and over again."

The NRA will have its blood tax, always.

The Rest of the World Totally Respects Mighty Trump Now

A round-up of Chinese and Korean play-on-transliterations for "Trump."  What Koreans have done with Orange Hitler's name:

"The nickname is 도람프 or 도람푸 — a play on the Korean word that means to be crazy/insane/mad.

Krista Ryu remarks:

돌다 (dolda) literally means to turn (v)

But when you use it after the word 'head' or directly to a person, it can mean you are crazy or 'nuts'.

So it is a combination of this verb and the name Trump

Trump in Korean transliterated would be Teuleompeu 트럼프

(Some one is crazy) dol-assda 돌았다 ('turned')

–> dolampeu 도람프"

 Approve.

It Comes As No Surprise

Plato / Socrates was pretty much 110% about how people who want to rule shouldn't be allowed to, and those who do should but won't.

— Antifa-bulous James (@wetcasements) September 27, 2017

Charity Gone Wrong

"Life Release" is a Buddhist practice of freeing animals destined for slaughter.  While it sounds compassionate, it can actually lead to huge headaches when basic rules of biology and the environment are ignored:

"The ritual dates back to the third century, but has seen a resurgence in recent years. Hai Tao, a champion of animal rights, advocates fangsheng – saving the lives of creatures destined for slaughter – as a way for Buddhists to demonstrate compassion, create good fortune and earn merit.

According to Humane Society International (HSI), hundreds of millions of birds, fish, monkeys, turtles and other animals are involved in acts of fangsheng every year. But these days, it says, 'mercy release has become an industry built on the capture and supply of wild animals, for whom there are devastating consequences of injury, illness or death'. In Taiwan alone, 200 million wild animals are used every year in release rituals, according to HSI in 2012. Fangsheng is also practiced in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Nepal, the United States and the UK.

The organisation says many animals are fatally injured in the ritual, and those that survive release often die soon afterwards from exhaustion, injury or disease, or else become prey to other species. Some are re-captured after the ritual and re-sold. Release can also cause environmental harm, it adds. Animals 'may be released outside their natural habitats and in groups large enough to establish breeding populations, often wreaking havoc on local ecosystems. Some are invasive species that may threaten the survival of the native species.'”

Something about the road to hell and using good intentions to pave it.

Also, won't someone think of the turkeys?

(Hopefully) Get A Job

For young people in South Korea, finding a job -- let alone a good one -- is an uphill struggle.  That might be changing, or not, due to the new process of "blind hiring":

"As companies this season look to hire new employees, many are looking less at GPAs and internships and are instead opting for what is known as 'blind hiring.'

The trend started last June at a meeting of senior presidential secretaries, when President Moon Jae-in said he hoped to see an increase in blind hiring, so candidates can all start 'from the same starting line, with only capability as a determining factor.'

Following his request, 332 public institutions and 149 state-run companies headquartered outside of Seoul and Gyeonggi uniformly applied blind hiring in the latter half of this year. This development has now spread to private businesses as well in areas like retail, IT and finance.

Some of these beneficiaries are able to fully use this potential, which has given them a fighting chance in the job market. Cha Ji-hyeong, 27, is one of them. He applied to roughly 30 companies after facing a series of rejections in 2016 and the first half of 2017, but now he feels confident he can get a job because the companies do not emphasize educational background or other specifications, or 'specs', as much.

'I didn’t attend a prestigious university and my GPA was below average,' said Cha, 'so I have been rejected in the first round of job applications. Blind hiring gives me a newfound assurance as I have done many internships and have a lot of work experience, so if I make it to interviews I have a better chance.'”

"Specs" is a bit of Konglish meaning educational and professional certifications, but confusingly it also means where you went to college and GPA.

As for blind hiring, with nepotism being so rampant in the country,  steps like this seem like a good idea.  But leave it to the South Korean bureaucracy to manage and ignore or forsake its own rules when rubbing up against centuries-long norms.  This is still a country where you're expected to put the names of your parents and grandparents on resumes, and it's not just for show.  Your family is everything, for better or for worse.

Update: In our morning discussion class a student reminded me what's really shocking for Americans about Korean resumes -- the prominent use of headshots, along with numbers for height (!) and weight (!!).

English Teacher Smash

If you show up to my class 20 minutes late with you holding an enormous Frapa-Latte-Chino from one of the cafes next to the building, and your boyfriend with a steaming hot paper bowl of ramyon, yes, I might just kick you out of the room immediately and mark you absent.

My college English class really is quite easy skill-wise, but if students miss four classes in a semester they automatically fail.

Anyhow, I was pissed right the fuck off but I didn't raise my voice.  Still, I think the rage-beams emitting from my eyeballs might have been worse than anything my voice could do.

Not Good

90 degrees today in Daegu, and 90 degrees again tomorrow.

Fall in South Korea truly is lovely but I'm not sure it'll ever get here.

Season Of Mist And Mellow Fruitfulness AMIRITE?

It just isn't September if the Orioles aren't falling to complete shit.

Why We're Doomed

Evan Osnos' long-form piece in The New Yorker is a comprehensive and indispensable account of what's going on with North Korea and Trump, the decades of history leading up to this moment, and why military threats to Kim Jong-un and his regime are pointless.  While there's a lot to take in, there are some definite highlights:

"It is a measure of how impoverished America’s contact with North Korea has become that one of the best-known conduits is Dennis Rodman, a.k.a. the Worm, the bad boy of the nineties-era Chicago Bulls. Rodman’s agent, Chris Volo, a hulking former mixed-martial-arts fighter, told me recently, 'I’ve been there four times in four years. I’m in the Korean Sea, and I’m saying to myself, "No one would believe that I’m alone right now, riding Sea-Doos with Kim Jong Un."' Rodman’s strange bond with Kim began in 2013, when Vice Media, aware of Kim’s love of the Bulls, offered to fly American basketball players to North Korea. Vice tried to contact Michael Jordan but got nowhere. Rodman, who was working the night-club autograph circuit, was happy to go. He joined three members of the Harlem Globetrotters for a game in Pyongyang. Kim made a surprise appearance, invited Rodman to dinner, and asked him to return to North Korea for a week at his private beach resort in Wonsan, which Rodman later described as 'Hawaii or Ibiza, but he’s the only one that lives there.' On his most recent trip, in June, Rodman gave Kim English and Korean editions of Trump’s 1987 best-seller,  The Art of the Deal."

I think the only rational response to this information is Jesus Fucking Christ.

I'd add that only an American person could possibly imagine a world where nuclear conflict could ever be "contained" to Korea and / or Asia.

Kim Jong-un understands this calculus perfectly, as does China.

My fellow Americans?  Perhaps dimly.

Trump?  Literally not at all.