Sparse Posting

I know I have not written here for a while. The reason is because I actually have two writing jobs and they both take all my creative juices away. My readership has dwindled because I don’t update as often…

Sorry.

It also appears that I’ve gotten a lot of traffic the past week thanks to my Dokdo posts. Leave it up to the controversy over Dokdo to drive traffic to my blog. Not complaining of course, but I think it is high time that people realize that it is time to talk logically about Dokdo. I’ve gotten a lot of complimentary comments that I don’t want to publish because they seem to be very ignorant. Let’s just say I don’t really like it when people say to me “Yeah, Eugene! Stick it to those no good dirty Jerps!” I can’t get down with that..

By the way that’s an extremely mild version of what most of the comments say.

And another thing. If you’re Korean and you’re calling Japanese people monkeys…. how do you think that non-Asians view you? I guess the retort would be “I don’t care what non-Asians think.”

But if that were really the case then why are you trying to convince non-Asians that Dokdo is Korean?

BRAIN EXPLOSION!

How do I make Monopoly fun again?

Actually, Monopoly is still fun, for me anyway, but a lot of people complain that it takes too long and nothing ever happens. Well those people simply do not know how to play. Youre supposed to make deals with other players to get a color group and bankrupt everyone else instead of just going around and around paying 22 dollars here and there.

Another problem is the house rules people play by whereupon the Free Parking space gives y $500 and too much money is infused into the game.

So if you eliminate those rules then the game should just go smoothly.

 

But that’s not necessarily fun.

 

If you want to have a different Monopoly experience, try these house rules.

The everyone is rich game…

1. Start with $2000

2. Get 400 for passing go, 800 for landing on it.

3. Free Parking collects fines and taxes and starts with $500 which is replenished when anyone lands there.

Analysis: With this game, you will see for sure that it really does come down to statistics. The reds triumph over all, but having the reds and oranges while your opponent has the entire rest of the board, you will still have a higher chance at winning.

 

The everyone is poor game

1. Start with $1000

2. No salary for passing go

3. Auction all declined properties starting at $1.

4. No free parking

Analysis: The only way that money can be infused into the game is by chance and community chest cards, thereby necessitating that some things get auctioned off cheaply. I got Boardwalk for $35 when I played this way. Railroads become the best properties. The 4th side of the board is practically worthless because nobody has enough money to build anything over there.

The Utilities matter rule

1. If you own one utility you get 5 percent of all rent collected on properties with houses or hotels. (That’s $100 if someone lands on Boardwalk with a hotel.)

2. If you own both utilities, you get 20% of all rent collected on properties with houses or hotels (That’s $400 if someone lands on Boardwalk with a hotel.)

3. If there are no houses or hotels in play, you get the standard utility fee if someone lands on your utility.  If there is a house or hotel in play then landing on utilities is free.

This rule applies even if you land on someone else’s property with houses and hotels, in effect giving you a discount.

Analysis: It might not seem like much for some properties, but you’re basically getting rent for other people’s stuff.

Actually riding the railroads

1. When you land on a railroad, you may travel to another railroad space owned by the same person. You only have to pay the fare for the first railroad, because you are getting off at the second one.

Analysis: This makes the game a lot less about statistics, because people will ride the railroads to get past dangerous monopolies. Purples become huge in this game, especially if Boardwalk and Park Place are developed, because people will go to Reading Railroad to avoid that one.

 

If I think of more I’ll write them.

The racist MBC video

Okay for those who have not seen it here is a link.

The shocking secret about foreigners dating Korean women or something.

Now when the blackface thing occurred I came off as somewhat of an apologist, suggesting that we can’t view Korea with a moral lens acquired elsewhere, so some readers naturally thought I would defend this as well. While I probably won’t be condemning it as strongly as other people have, I am still appalled by it.

Some would say that makes me a hypocrite, as they perceive me defending Koreans who are racist to blacks (which I did not do.) and being appalled by racism when whites are included.

There is a difference between the blackface incident and this one, however.

The blackface incident (which I still don’t defend or condone in any way) was carried out by two comedians who likely didn’t know what they were doing was offensive. The video above is attempting to present itself as serious news. Moreso than the content or aim of the piece, I am more appalled by the severe lack of journalistic integrity. Here’s why:

1. All if the foreign people filmed are probably drunk and are being asked questions in such a way that they don’t understand the purpose of the piece… Which is obviously pre determined before they got their sound byte.

2. The taxi couple may well have already known each other. They didn’t bother interviewing them and their take on it (that seconds after their first meeting they are already engaging in skinship) can’t be verified.

3. The girl that they call on the phone said what they asked her about isn’t true. The narrator says she’s not telling the truth. How do we know she isn’t telling the truth?

4. The dude at the coffee shop is talking about a woman that might not even really exist.

It’s one thing to make a bunch of racist claims and back them up with evidence, but these people can’t even do that.

This isn’t entertainment. It’s supposed to be serious journalism that people trust. But it is terrible excuse for journalism and the editor ought to feel ashamed for letting it get through.

I also like the double standard of how Korea wants to portray itself to foreign people, but stuff like this slips through the cracks.

I want to see MBC respond to this in a responsible manner but I think it won’t be. Too bad.

Dear SK Broadband.

I suppose it is my own fault for not understanding Korean enough but I received a phone call from SK broadband yesterday about upgrading my Internet or something. I thought someone was going to come to my house and give me some new hardware.

Instead I got a call the next day. They asked me to turn on my computer and connect to the Internet. So I did. Then she told me to go to this website and download that thingamabob. Open this and click that. Suddenly she had gained control of my computer and wanted me to type in my Alien Registration Number to allow her to “check my hard drive for viruses.” I immediately became suspicious and told her that I did not have any viruses and I didn’t like that she had access to control my computer.

She said it was a temporary thing and that she was going to only check for viruses and delete any files that are not necessary.

I told her again that I used to work in IT and that I knew that I didn’t have viruses.

She replied that I couldn’t know that unless she could check.

And that’s where I drew the line. I told her thanks but no thanks. I appreciate that SK wants to eliminate the spread of viruses by scrubbing down every computer, but I found the process invasive and somewhat insulting.

Now I’m no expert about computers, spyware, viruses, or any of that, but I have enough knowledge about computers, networking, and troubleshooting to know that I don’t have viruses. Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter because I have everything important backed up on an external drive and I am pretty sure that if my computer were to be overrun with worms and spyware I could just reformat it and there would be no problem.

The point is, I know more about that than the average person, so telling me that I can’t know unless I give her remote access so she can check is like a car mechanic telling the lady who works at Jiffy Lube that she can’t know if the car needs an oil change unless she allows the him to check first.

(I know most people working at Jiffy Lube are men. Changing the gender helps make that last sentence more understandable without me having to make names for the two. )

I wonder how many SK customers just blindly follow the instructions? Not that I would suspect the company of anything, but it would be easy for someone to pretend that they are from SK and make a webpage that looks legit. Giving the faker access to your computer would allow them to check your computer for bank account and credit card numbers or nab any file of yours or plant illegal files on your computer.

Be careful everyone.

A little more perspective on the blackface thing

John Lennon, the most progressive guy ever, right?

I know it’s tired by now. The blackface thing has been talked about to death by this point. I didn’t really have much to say about it though.  It’s not because I don’t care, it’s more because other bloggers have basically said practically everything I want to say.  But in a previous post I heavily criticized the sheer amount of condemnation for Korea or Koreans emanating from the K-blogosphere over the issue.  I must reiterate again, that I don’t in any way approve of what happened.  I think that it was and is wrong to make fun of other races of people, and ignorance is not enough of an excuse, especially when this is not the first time it happened, and there was a high profile backlash the last few times it happened.

So if this is your view, then why were you so critical of other bloggers and their judgement of Korean society based on this incident?

I said what I said because I learned about the incident from a Korean who hasn’t spent a long time overseas, who was outraged over it.  I said that you can’t make a blanket generalization of the whole society based on one incident alone, without proper context.  Saying that Korea is a racist country because this kind of thing is tolerated isn’t really fair.  Anyone who wants to say it is just can’t see things from any point of view other than their own.

Take a look at that guy in the picture.  He’s a pretty famous guy.  (John Lennon for those who are too young to recognize him, though honestly that would be hard for me to believe).

WTF does John Lennon have anything to do with this?

Is John Lennon a racist?

Huh?

You heard me…. Is John Lennon a racist?

You’re kidding me right? The guy who wrote the song Imagine?  The guy who wrote Give Peace a Chance? Basically one of the most influential figures of the 1960′s and the civil rights movement? The self-proclaimed feminist? The man hated by “the man?” You have got to be kidding!  No way! John Lennon was not a racist! He was the personification of peace, tolerance, and brotherhood of man! Did you ever listen to his music? Come on Euge, what the F are you talking about?

Woah woah!  Slow down! I agree, John Lennon was not a racist, and stood for the end of racism and peace and love between all men and women.

What’s your point then?

I’ll get to my point after the jump.

I’m Superman. Well almost

I had a dream yesterday. I was walking up a hill toward my previous apartment. I guess walking up the hill didn’t feel the right way gravitationally as suddenly I was flat on my face on the ground. Since I didn’t fall, there wasn’t any explanation as to how I ended up this way. But it felt right for some reason.

It was then that I realized that I was dreaming and that nothing around me was real. I couldn’t stand up but I could move up the hill by crawling weightlessly using only my hands. There was a bird nearby. I made myself identify the type of bird. I looked directly at it. It was fuzzy. I kept staring at it and slowly it came into detail, but not to the point that I could distinguish it from any other bird. It wasn’t specifically any defined shape. But it looked like a bird. Since that doesn’t make any sense I knew I was dreaming for sure.

I pointed at the bird and thought to myself that I wanted it to be gone since it didn’t make sense. After two or three tries it exploded into many tiny pieces but there wasn’t any blood or bird pieces left over.

So I tried to stand up. Even though I could still feel gravity to my front, I tried to concentrate and ignore that.

I jumped. It was about three times my height. But I slowly descended back to Earth.

None of this is real! I should be able to fly, I thought.

I jumped up in the air again, this time I was slowly rising above the ground… It was getting smaller. I looked forward but I guess dreamworld hadn’t yet decided what that was supposed to look like, so I was again falling to the ground.

I looked all around me to make sure I knew what my surroundings looked like.

I jumped up in the air. I was floating!!! I did it. As I moved upward everything looked as it should. I was rising ever higher. The houses below we’re getting smaller. Suddenly, my back knocked against a tree branch (somehow 500 feet off the ground.) The pain woke me up.

I tried to go back to sleep and renter the dream… It didn’t work… Or if it did I don’t remember.

About Blackface

The K blogosphere has been up in arms about blackface. Apparently some Koreans took it upon themselves to paint their faces up to look like some cartoon character who is himself questionably offensive. If that character himself isn’t offensive, then the cartoon itself is, because it depicts Africans with bones through their noses.

Here’s the obligatory picture via asianjunkie.com

We didn't know it was offensive!

Now, why am I writing this post? Plenty of other K-blogs have condemned the Korean media/Korean education/Koreans themselves for this action. I’m not going to do either of those things. I in no way support or condone what has happened and I am thoroughly disappointed, but this post is about the other bloggers.

My good friend Roboseyo was probably the least vitriolic of the bloggers who wrote about this issue.

Other bloggers took the chance to point out that this is proof that Koreans or Korea is racist.

I’ll have you know that this particular blackface incident was not learned from a fellow blogger or fellow expat… A Korean person who has never lived abroad and who doesn’t interact with foreign people on a regular basis pointed it out to me and was very distraught about it. “How on Earth could something like this happen!” were more or less the exact words.

So my friends, this may only be one example out of many, but we have to realize that not everyone in Korea feels that this is not a problem, and that Koreans themselves are not a hive mind.

Are there racists in Korea? Yes.
Are all Koreans racists? No, and far from it.

Express outrage over the issue and boycott the station or organize a campaign to promote awareness of this issue.. but don’t make it worse by stereotyping an entire nation of people.