TAI12 #232 Happy Hallowieners...

THE ANSWER IS 12

#232 Happy Hallowieners...

Welcome to the Show...

10/28/10
     The past month has been maddening.  I finished the massive paper I was working on for grad school.  I have to tack on a few more short segments to complete the overall project, but the bulk of it is done.  The last remaining hurdle is to get to Virginia to give my presentation to my professors.  The problem here is that my company is giving me hell about leaving during the two weeks after the semester ends.  The first week is for entering grades into the university's system (which I always have done on the last day of class); the second is for students to contest their grades (they all have my email address, and I check it every day no matter where or in what condition I am).  The foreign professors were allowed to ignore this in the past, because we had a camp to teach that broke our vacations in half.  Our company lost the camp this summer, so now we have the whole vacation and are expected to stay on the peninsula for those two weeks at the end of the semester.  I have to get to Virginia during that time.  I don't yet know what's going to happen.  I just want to finish grad school!
     Dad had surgery last week.  I was going insane over it during the week between his diagnosis and his surgery.  He got back home yesterday is doing great!  I'm so relieved.  I wish I could have been there for him.  Luckily Cooter was able to get some time off of work and drive down.  I'm sure that really helped morale.  L-Ron and Naureen also stopped by to show some love.  Thanks to all for keeping him in your thoughts!
     I got around to finally buying a new bicycle a few weeks ago to replace the one stolen from me almost two years ago. 
     The Women’s Human Rights Commission of Korea (WHRCK) surveyed almost 3,000 teenagers in June and found that only 66.9 percent of them were against having sex for money.  That's bad news for the 75 percent of men here who pay for sex.  

11/8/10 
     Dad had his staples out last week is doing fine.  I'm trying to wrap up my final paper and confirm my travel plans for this winter.  Talking to Jeffe yesterday, I found that I might be able to meet up with him at the S.H.I.T. H3 (So Happy It's Tuesday H3) after I present my paper in Virginia next month.  I'm going to get off of here and post this, so I can get to work. 

By the Numbers...

11  :  Percentage of Koreans over the age of 65.

12.8  :  Percentage of Korean middle and high school students who call themselves "smokers."

16.8  :  Percentage of Korean student smokers who smoked before entering middle school.  

425  :  Number of native English teachers in Korea who bailed on their contracts last year.

283  :  Number of native English teachers in Korea who bailed on their contracts in 2008.

252  :  Number of native English teachers in Korea who have bailed on their contracts this year as of July.

80  :  Percentage of Korean schools with native English teachers this year.

48  :  Percentage of Korean schools with native English teachers in 2007.

1,552  :  Number of students per native English teacher in Daegu.

778  :  Number of students per native English teacher in Seoul. 

7.5  :  Number (in millions) of unmarried couples living together in the United States.

2,300  :  Approximate number of hours Koreans spend at work annually, more than any other "advanced" nation.  I've learned from many people working here that that doesn't at all refer to the number of hours worked, just the number of hours spent in the office.  I find it difficult to count an hour in the crapper reading the paper and napping as "work."

20  :  Estimated percentage of Korea's economy controlled by Samsung.

130,802  :  Number of Koreans who committed suicide between 2000 and 2009, the highest among OECD member nations.  The article I read this in made a point of including the fact that one among that number was ex-President No Muhyeon.

60  :  Number of foreigners denied entry into Korea since the nation began fingerprinting and photographing "suspicious" foreigners at all 22 international airports and harbors.  The names of the 22 didn't match those given in their passports.

2011  :  The year Korea will start fingerprinting and photographing all foreigners (excluding diplomats and those under 17) staying more than 90 days.  Later in the year, it will change to include visits of any length.

1,500  :  Number of people caught entering Korea using fake passports during the first seven months of this year. 

732  :  Number of people caught entering Korea using fake Chinese passports during the first seven months of this year.

425  :  Number of people caught entering Korea using fake Thai passports during the first seven months of this year.

57  :  Number of people caught entering Korea using fake Mongolian passports during the first seven months of this year.

1.1 - 2.2  :  Price range, in KRW, listed on one website of a Korean tour agency for sex tours abroad.  Most involve sex with minors. 

45  :  Price, in KRW, some Korean whores claim to make monthly in New York City.

3  :  Number of languages used in a current anti--underage-prostitution pamphlet distributed in Cambodia.  The languages are Cambodian, English and Korean.  

12  :  Numbers of years a 47-year-old Korean man was sentenced to last week for stabbing his paid-for, 20-year-old Vietnamese bride less than a month after marrying her.

10  :  Number of years the man will have to wear an electronic tracking bracelet once released from prison.

30  :  Amount, in millions of KRW ($25,000), paid to the girl's family by the government, not the murderer.  

50,001,273  :  Korea's population as of the end of September.  

336,492  :  The number of speeding tickets given to the top 100 speeders in Korea in 2009.  That's almost a ticket daily for a year. 

187  :  Average, in millions of KRW, owed by those 100 violators in unpaid tickets in Korea (the Korea Times says that many of these are embassies).   
42  :  Percentage of American young adults who have earned an associate's degree or more.  
56  :  Percentage of Canuckistanian young adults who have earned an associate's degree or more.  
58  :  Percentage of South Korean young adults who have earned an associate's degree or more.  
70,000  :  Fine to be charged in Seoul for people who don't leash or pick their dog's poop in 17 city parks.  
1.5  :  The number, in millions, of pets owned in Seoul.  
500  :  Amount, in millions of KRW, of 10 won coins a 53-year-old man collected from numerous businesses. 7,500  :  Price, in KRW per kilogram, the man earned for selling the copper coins after he melted them down. 700  :  Amount, in millions of KRW, the man profited in his sale.  
6.9  :  Population, in billions, of this spinning ball of mud, according to the United Nations Population Fund's 2010 report. 
48.5  :  Population, in millions, of South Korea, ranking 26th in the world.  
1.3  :  Population, in billions, of China, ranking 1st in the world. 
1.2  :  Population, in billions, of India, ranking 2nd in the world. 
317  :  Population, in millions, of the United States.  
12  :  The oldest age of a kid Korea will prosecute adults for having sex. 

Not So Classy Class...

9/29/10 

     The week before Chuseok I got to play two of my favorite songs in class:  Ween's "I Can't Put My Finger On It" and the Beastie's "Sabotage."  They weren't overly impressed.  That's what I get for playing them anything that's not shopping mall-assembled boy and girl-band soulless "music."  Today, in a unit about technology, I got to explain "iSheep" to a class.  Ironically, the mindless, following sheep is KNU's mascot...  I'd probably catch hell if any of my students paid attention and/or understood me. 

Weakly Konglish...

9/29/10 

     I teach at a speacial university! 

George Lucas Re-Rapes My Childhood...

9/29/10
     George Lucas raped me.  More specifically, he raped my childhood.  Repeatedly.  And the bearded bastard is at it again.  It started in 1997.  Lucas began releasing the special editions of the original Star Wars movies.  And they weren't pretty.  He used technology unavailable to the world in 1977-83 to update THE trilogy to what was supposedly his true vision.  It was sad to realize that the movie that had inspired so many children of the 70s and 80s would have blown chocolate salty balls had Lucas been able to do what he had originally intended.  It got worse...
     The year 1999 saw Episode I:  The Phantom Menace unleashed upon the world.  The Nearing clan drove to OKC to meet EJ for to see it on opening night.  The theater oversold, and we were denied entrance.  I did see it later and wished I hadn't.  F*ck Jar Jar Binks!  It only got worse in Episode II and III as Lucas expanded on his perverted love story and half-ass political storyline.
     The world breathed an exhausted sigh of relief when Lucas released Episode III:  Revenge of the Sith in 2005.  It was over!  Lucas had raped the original trilogy and brutally murdered two decades of expectations with the prequel trilogy.  As long as you ignored the animated Star Wars (which you should; watching a young Anakin protect a Hutt baby made me long for the sweet release of death), Lucas was done.  This was not to be...
     Starting in 2012, Lucas will roll out 3-D editions of all six films.  Why!?  Converting films to 3-D from 2-D never look as good as the original, if they were any good to begin with.  We were free!  We were done.  I was able to go to my grave convinced that Han had shot first, that one bantha poodoo joke total in THE trilogy was enough, and that Jar Jar was a nightmare I could eventually forget.  Releasing a load of converted crap only allows Lucas to make even more money from the destruction of my childhood and parents to take their children to even worse versions of three movies that had once defined a generation and three movies that destroyed that generation.  It's like comparing the hippies or the yuppies to the Greatest Generation.  We had something good, and everything that came after only served to insult it.  I hate you Mr. Lucas...and I haven't even gotten into the fourth Indiana Jones... 

An Eye for an Eye...

10/2/10

     There's a woman in Seoul I'd like to throw from a tenth-story window.  I'd also like the Seoul Central District Court to follow her.  I want to toss the SCDC for handing Ms. Chae a suspended four-month sentence.  She received the pat on the bottom for murdering her neighbor's cat by throwing him/her from the tenth-story window of her apartment building.  Chae works in a hostess bar and was drunk when she killed the feline.  She also paid her neighbor 1.5 million won in compensation.
     Another cat killer in Bundang is currently in the system.  This tosser threw his/her neighbor's cat from the 13th story of an apartment building after the cat supposedly knocked over a flower pot.  I hope they throw these two monsters off together after spaying and neutering them. 

Tool Times What the F*ck!?...

2/25/10

     "Reality television" has presented mankind with nothing but mind-numbing, tater-tot creating retardation programming since MTV first began to sell out its fan base in the early 1990s.  Reality has dug up a new low, and it is called Tool Academy.  This program takes a sinkable boatload of douche-bags, ass-holes, cheaters, liars, STD spreaders, wannabes,
This train wreck attempts to rehabilitate a group of guys who treat their girlfriends slightly worse than low-grade toilet paper.  Every man on this show should be dragged out into the street and clubbed to death like so many seals, while the girls should be spaded and/or neutered for not only having chosen these tater-tots, but for thinking that their Jerry Springer-worthy sh*t nuggets were worthy of redemption even after they had admitted to the multiple ways they had disrespected them.
     The only purpose these shows serve is to inform police where to go to take care of future domestic disturbance calls.  If you have to go on international television in order to mend your already fractured relationship, you have a relationship that can't work in the real world.
     If you can watch even one episode of Tool Academy, The Bachelor, any of the modeling shows, the nanny shows, or any "reality show" in general and not begin to have an inkling as to why some fanaticals are willing to strap bombs to their chest to take us out, then you should probably hang yourself from your bathroom's shower head, eat a shotgun or swim out into the nearest sea so that you can save the rational amongst us the trouble of putting up with you.  

F1?  F U...

10/25/10

     Korea's Formula 1 track opened this weekend in Yeongnam.  I've lived here for just shy of nine years, have traveled the country a lot, and I have never heard of this southern city.  The Italians were not overly impressed with it.  Milan's Corriere della Sera complained that the previously unheard of city has no lodging, forcing the F1 teams and audience to travel more than an hour to Gwangju where they had to stay in love motels.  The paper said that the rooms were dirty but did have condoms in every room.  A different article in the JoongAng Daily said that Mercedes-Benz employees paid upwards of US$310 to stay in rooms that usually go for less than US$50 a night.  I am a big advocate of staying in Korea's love motels...at regular price!  This is insane.  Thankfully, I'm smart enough not to buy a ticket to watch other people drive, so I won't have to worry about this sick scheme. 

Just Plain Sad...

10/28/10

      If you don't know who Girls' Generation is, then that means that you aren't Korean or live in Japan or that don't like shite manufactured pop garbage.  Girls' Generation is one of Korea's most popular pop groups.  The nine cloned lip-syncers are typical of the mindlessness of K-pop girl and boy bands.  They all wear nearly matching outfits that are slight variations of the same outfit, so that it would almost appear as if they had some form of individual thought.  Now Korean companies are looking at the group as a possible business model due to their popularity.  Only in Korea would people think that constructing a business model around a product whose only qualities are superficial is a wise idea.  I guess it makes sense to have a soulless company market to mindless sheep. 

Bah...

10/28/10

     A few weeks ago, I was teaching a unit on technology and tried to explain what "iSheep" are to my students.  I explained the concept that in the U.S., sheep are seen as followers who can't think for themselves.  Then I remembered that my university's mascot is the white sheep.  How appropriate. 

4:20 Find...

10/28/10

     This week's 4:20 find comes to us via a list from Time of the top 100 gadgets since the magazine went into publication.  http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2023689_2026093_2023751,00.html

At Least They Are Using Them...

11/5/10

     An 80 percent increase in the price of rubber for Korean condom maker, UNIDUS, has driven up the price of condoms and other rubber products by 65 percent.  Hookers and love motels are stocking up.  One pharmacist reported that they were his best selling product, going from selling two or three ten-packs weekly to nearly 30 daily.  This is really surprising in a country where only a reported 17 percent of men use condoms despite the prolific amount of prostitution. 

TAI12 #231 Still here...

THE ANSWER IS 12

#231  Still here...

Welcome to the Show...

9/17/10
    The new semester didn't bring about any real surprises.  Two of our people left, but we had the four hires our school ricetard-edly took on mid-semester this spring to bolster our numbers.  I lost the one class of overtime I had last semester.  The devil still works here.  I still have Friday's off, so the world isn't too bad of a place, this part of it anyway.  
     My final semester of grad school kicked off on the same day as KNU's new semester.  I'm off to a late start, because it took so long to navigate through the minefield of garbage on the course's website, I found myself mired in the second week with nothing to show for it.  I'm just now getting caught up with it all.  I can't wait to be done with this program!
     The semester got underway the day after my 34th birthday.  I have officially entered my mid-30s.  I enjoyed a great weekend.  Unfortunately, I can recall little of it.  It kicked off two days earlier on Friday at the sixth running of the Not Quite Right Hash (NQRH3) down at a wild bar well outside of Pyeongtaek built in the shape of a giant helicopter.  We had an on-after at an apartment.  I slept on Timber and Lucky's floor.  Lucky gave me a six-pack for the train ride north the next morning.  Nobody wanted any, so I had breakfast to myself.  The Yongsan Kimchi H3 and Seoul HHH blurred into one, long tear.  I picked up a room at Sincheon Station (the good one next to Jamsil), got cleaned up and went to dinner at my favorite Chuncheon ttalkgalbi restaurant.  An hour's nap after dinner set me straight for the remainder of the evening.
     I managed to get out of bed the next morning in time to dead hare a truly sh*tty trail for Southside.  I had vodka mudslides for breakfast as I walked and chalked.  Tot and Shitonya introduced me to the magical world of White Dogs as the three of us and Ball Cock Dumper bag-sat for the pack.  The police almost kicked us out of our down-down spot.  I convinced half of the pack to steer away from Evilwon for an afternoon and ate at a nearby Chinese lamb restaurant.  Timber took BCD, Brian and I on a Mr. Toad-style wild ride home in the magic Bongo, a great end for a great birthday.


    

By the Numbers...

1.42  :  Number of movie tickets (in billions) sold in America in 2009.
4  :  Number of movie tickets (in billions) sold in America in 1946.  They didn't have movies on television, videos, DVDs, or evilnet.
63  :  Price (in U.S. dollars) just for tickets for a family of four to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3-D at one AMC theater in New York last week.  Imagine what they probably would have to blow on snacks in addition to that.
3  :  South Korea's worldwide rank in rapes.
70  :  Percentage increase of child rape in Korea over the past three years.
4,419  :  Number of surveillance cameras installed at Korean schools.
10,000  :  Additional number of surveillance cameras to be installed at Korean schools around the peninsula.
23,000  :  Number of pager subscribers in Korea.
12,000  :  Monthly price, in Korean won, paid by Korean pagers subscribers to the nation's last surviving beeper company, Seoul Mobile Telecom.  Even it is expected to shut down next June when it has to reapply for its frequency license.
15  :  Number, in millions, of pager subscribers at Korea's peak in 1997.
8282  :  A popular pager code in Korea meaning "hurry up" if you know your Korean numbers.
1212  :  Another popular Korean pager code meaning "buy me a drink." 

On the Road Again...

6/10 

     I've got a few minutes between Manila and Kuala Lumpur to spit out a quick update.  It has been one wild week.  The wedding has kept me non-stop busy since Mom and I arrived Tuesday night and found an Ascott doorman who gave us an envelope with the details for a quick trail to the Outback.   I had already gone through some wine in Incheon and a half-dozen San Mig Pales on the flight.  That was to be par for the course until last night. Voice and I helped Cheeri prepare for the wedding for the next week between getting ripped. 
     The wedding was an experience.  The Catholic church was hundreds of years old and not air-conditioned.  I sweated like a Hasher in church throughout the ceremony in my special wedding barang.  I was best man, but not having done a rehearsal, none of us knew what to do.  I guess that Catholicism is popular enough and that time is short enough that they don't have to do rehearsals.  Luckily, I just had to stand, sit or kneel when the rest of the crowd did.  It was a beautiful ceremony, especially considering that I didn't have to wear a tux! 

6/30/10
     Cooter should be on the ground in Kuching if his flight arrived on time.  I woke up with a fever.  A two-hour walk with Mom and a couple of aspirin will hopefully fix whatever is wrong with me.  My guess is rabies or scurvy.
      Mom and I met with a lot of old and new friends yesterday.  We found Voice, Countess, Jeffe, Thanx, and Silicone.  We plowed through five cans of Tiger and 40 of Tsingtao at a street vendor's eatery.  I'm loving Borneo!

9/15/10
     This summer was amazing!  I attended my first InterHash and added a new country's stamp to my passport, Indonesia, for the first time in several years.  I saw so many old friends and made several new ones.  I spent weeks with Mommagram and Cooter.  I saw Cheeri get married.  I married Cheeri and Tarsier at the InterHash Red Dress Run in front of more than a thousand Hashers. 

      I even picked up a new job as Director of Worm Hole National Park in the great nation of Asskrakistan, conveniently located between Mexico and Africa.  Cooter brought my ped dead squirrel, Stinky Hayes with him and took Stinky to climb Mt. Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia.  Cooter and Stinky met Mom and I in Bali for another wild week with Kartika, Deep Fly Diver, Doggy Style, Gag Order, Ian, and Kevin.

     Cooter went home.  Mom and I relaxed for 12 days in Bangkok.  She was worried about the Red Shirts, until I explained that all of that mess had ended in the spring.  I Hashed.  We Hashed.  I got to do my second Nonthaburi H3.  Mom got insanely lost on trail in the dark on a Monday night with Cowboy.  I had to go out on a search mission and lucked out when I found them very near the on-in.  Mom was happy to get massages and eat some great food.  We returned to my place for a week.  Mom flew back to Oklahoma, Dad and the animals the following Monday; I lit out for Bali later the same afternoon.  Thanks to the devil I work with, my department lost the camp we've been doing for at least a decade.  This gave me another two weeks of unexpected vacation. 
     Life has been fairly mellow since I returned.  The exception being my third weekend back on the R.O.K.  I made the short hop over to my favorite city, Qingdao, for the 10th China Nash Hash.  It was a fast and furious weekend hosted by some of my old friends.  I was the lone representative from Korea.  We had the brewery to ourselves Friday night.  Thanks to Cheeky for saving me from myself (which is no small task).  I ran most of the 14.2km running trail the next day.  Our hares had set up a beer stop for us at the TV Tower.  The buses dropped us off at a German/Chinese buffet brew and grill restaurant.  The hostesses and waitresses all wore cute, old-style German dresses.  We jumped around the usual cracker haunts:  LPG and Lennon.  I got my fill of street food Saturday night. I was well on my way to getting plastered at the on-after lunch Sunday when I remembered that I needed to check out of my hotel and catch my plane.  I grabbed a shower and a taxi and reserved the same room at the Ibis Hotel for my next visit this upcoming Monday.  The taxi stopped off for fuel along the way; I stopped off for a cheap bottle of Chinese brandy to stuff in my checked bag. 

#230 Boiling Over...

THE ANSWER IS 12

#230 Boiling Over...

Welcome to the Show...

6/13/10
     This semester has dwindled down to its final week.  I couldn't be happier.  This semester has been a long pain in my bottom. I have never before had students who displayed such a lack of respect and manners.  Many of them are in for unpleasant surprises when they get around to finally checking their grades.  This has been the single most difficult semester of my eight-year career.  It doesn't help that I'm pretty certain that the school made a mistake when placing most of our students this semester.
     Mom gets in on Wednesday to kick off a seven-week vacation.  We've got Seoul, Manila, Kuching, Kuala Lumpur, Bali, and at least one more, as-of-yet-unnamed city on our itinerary.  Dad is going to hang out with the Brights and Cutitz while she's gone.
    The trip starts with six days in Manila with Cheeri, Chelo and the Voice of Reason.  Mom, Cheeri, Chelo, Voice, and I will meet Cooter in Kuching for the 2010 InterHash.  I'm also expecting to see quite a few Korean Hashers (past and current) in Malaysia.  Mom and I are going to take a few days to relax in KL after the madness of InterHash's alcoholism, nudity and dirty ditties.  Cooter is going to climb a mountain.  We'll see him again in Bali.  He leaves for the U.S. a week later.  Mom and I have another two weeks to kill after he departs, but we haven't exactly figured out what we're doing yet.
    I'm ready for the insanity to get underway. 

By the Numbers...

8  :  Number of Koreans found dead after successfully completing a suicide pact today (5/13) in two groups.  They were all in their 20s.  One note left said they felt bad for their parents and blamed it on their inability to find a job.
26  :  Number of suicides per 100,000 people in Korea.  
1  :  Korea's rank in number of suicides among the 33 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
200,000  :  Fine, in KRW, to be imposed on drivers caught not pulling over or getting out of the way of firetrucks by cameras to be installed on firetrucks here in August.
16  :  Number of screens at the Megabox theater which opened as the largest multiplex in Asia at Seoul's COEX Mall in 2000.
4,218  :  Seating capacity of the COEX Megabox.
50,000,000  :  Number of total moviegoers who have visited the COEX Megabox.  They hit this milestone in January.
32,617  :  World record for most moviegoers in a single day, hit on July 31, 2004.
4.5  :  Number, in trillions, of cigarette butts that "find their way into the environment" annually, not that we needed yet another reason to hate smokers.
300  :  Number, in millions, of smokers in China alone.
60  :  Percentage of Chinese men who smoke.
15  :  Average number of cigarettes smoked by those Chinese men.
1,500  :  Price, in U.S. dollars, of female North Korean refugees being sold in China. 
75  :  Price, in U.S. dollars, paid by marriage brokers in the 1980s for North Korean women.
150  :  Price, in U.S. dollars, North Korean women sold for in the 1980s. 
50-100,000  :  Estimated number of North Korean refugees in China.
80  :  Percentage of North Korean refugees in China who are women.
90  :  Percentage of female North Korean refugees in China who end up falling victim to human trafficking.
500  :  Estimated number of kidneys stolen from day laborers and homeless people at a hospital in Gurgaon, just outside of New Delhi over the past decade.
50,000  :  Profit, in U.S. dollars, made by doctors for each kidney stolen and sold.
1,000  :  Profit, in U.S. dollars, made by unlicensed doctors for each kidney stolen and sold.
98  :  Percentage of Koreans aged 15 to 24 who believe their parents should pay for their college tuition.
86.7  :  Percentage of Koreans aged 15 to 24 who believe their parents should cover the costs for their wedding.
75  :  Percentage of elementary, middle and high school students in Korea receiving some form of private education.
242,000  :  Average amount, in KRW, spent monthly by Korean families on private education in 2009.
10.8  :  Average number of hours Korean teens spend online weekly. 
85  :  Percentage of Korean college students who have blogs.
39  :  Percentage of Korean elementary school students who shop online.
20,000  :  Average, in KRW, spent monthly online by Korean elementary school students.
11,680  :  Number of foreigners with permanent residency status in Korea who are eligible to vote in the June 2 elections.  In 2006, Korea introduce a new law giving voting rights to foreigners with permanent residency status for three years.
255,501  :  Seoul's foreign resident population in the first quarter of this year.  
266,268  :  Seoul's foreign resident population in the first quarter of 2009.  
164,960  :  Number of ethnic Koreans making up Seoul's foreign resident population.  
26,277  :  Number of Chinese making up Seoul's foreign resident population. 
13,277  :  Number of Americans making up Seoul's foreign resident population.  
10.46  :  Total population, in millions, of Seoul in the first quarter of this year. 
10.49  :  Total population, in millions, of Seoul in the first quarter of 2009.  
23,230  :  Number of lost items found on Seoul's subway lines 1 through 8 during the first four months of this year.  
6,220  :  Number of lost bags found on Seoul's subway lines 1 through 8 during the first four months of this year. 
4,181  :  Number of lost cell phones found on Seoul's subway lines 1 through 8 during the first four months of this year. 
1,276  :  Number of people who lost cash on Seoul's subway lines 1 through 8 during the first four months of this year, totaling 84 million won ($76,000).  
47.7  :  Percentage of Korean adults who smoke.  
21  :  Percentage of Korean second-year male high school students who smoke. 
3.03  :  Percentage of Korean women who admit to smoking while pregnant according to a recent survey.  I hate smokers.  
1.16  :  Number, in millions, of foreigners living in Korea.  
910,000  :  Number of foreigners in Korea with a cell phone subscription.  There should be more, because if you're a teacher who's been here for more than a year, you shouldn't have a pay-as-you-go phone.  
14,579  :  Number of Koreans who committed suicide in 2009.  
12,270  :  Number of Koreans who committed suicide in 2008.  
 186  :  Average amount, in millions of KRW, needed by Korean couples to get married and begin their post-wedding life together.  The majority of that usually goes towards the gigantic "key money" deposit required to rent apartments here.  
444  :  Estimated sales for 2010, in millions of US dollars, of condoms in America.   
38.5  :  Percentage of sexually active American high school students stupid enough to have sex without condoms.  

Mental Midgets in the Middle East...
or
Should Have Let Saddam Stay...

4/15/10 

    CNN.com posted a story that proves we have lost Iraq.  We didn't lose to Saddam, poor planning or WMDs.  We lost to the ignorance and vanity of the masses.  Plastic surgery is becoming the voice of freedom for many Iraqis.  The story mentions a 15-year-old who was unhappy with her first nose job and is ready to under the knife again.  Iraqi doctors have honed their skills for decades helping people mutilated during the violence and wars that have ravaged the ancient lands for so long.  Now they are wasting their talents on uppity people with mental health issues projected onto their bodies.  Yeah freedom!  Welcome to the douchepacalypse. 

People Getting What They Deserve...

2/25/10 

    Korea has arrested five Koreans teaching at hagwons for a variety of offenses.  The five routinely met up in Gangnam, Sinchon and Hongdae to do meth and hit some reefer.  They sold the drugs to each other according to police for 850,000KRW ($756) a gram.  Worse than that, these geniuses all had fake graduate certificates in English literature or education they'd bought from www.phonydiploma.com for $240-300 each.
    Korea is going to extradite a 24-year-old kyopo to the U.S. to face murder charges.  The former L.A. gang member was arrested here on drug charges while using a fake diploma to work at a Suwon hagwon.  The U.S. says he is accused of stabbing a man to death in July 2006.  He was arrested with a second fomer kyopo gang member.  Korean police booked them both on drug charges and for using fake degrees. 

How Stupid Are You?...

5/11/10
     Police in Seoul arrested a 16-year-old girl with the family name, Choi, in March for selling sex to adult men online.  The girl was held for 23 days in a cell with five women in Uiwang City.  The police moved her to a cell for men when they realized that she was actually a boy after fingerprinting her/him.  He was soliciting men online, meeting them at love motels and then running away with their wallets as they showered.  He wasn't fingerprinted until late April because he had told police that he was a she.  Korea doesn't issue resident identification cards until people turn 18, so fingerprinting is the only way to identify minors.  I still don't understand why they didn't fingerprint the little cross-dressing thief when they first caught him. 

One of America's Greatest 
Embarrassments...

5/13/10 

    Richard M. Nixon was president during portions of two wars the United States of America should never have gotten involved and have lost.  The first was the Vietnam War.  The second, America's War on Drugs.  He didn't start 'Nam, but he did start America's budget busting propaganda war against marijuana in 1970.  During Nixon's first year, he wasted $100 million attacking the pot-smoking hippies protesting the Southeast Asian nonsense that can be traced back to the Woodrow Wilson's warlord rule.  The current budget is $15.1 billion.  This is still 31 times more than Nixon's first budget even after adjusting it for inflation.  Interdiction and law enforcement consume $10 billion of the current budget. 
    America's War on Drugs has made a difference.  It has imprisoned millions of ganja smokers.  It has destroyed families.  It has done almost as much damage as the drugs themselves and probably more.  It hasn't affected decades of doctor-enabled prescription pill addiction.  It hasn't helped the children of lazy parents who are more than happy to have doctors drug them after giving them a half-assed diagnosis of being a kid.  It hasn't helped glaucoma, AIDS, HIV, migraine, or cancer patients who could use marijuana to improve their quality of life. 
     Here's some other facts about the past 40 years that should drive you street angry enough to hoist pitchforks and torches while demanding every member of our government resign:

• We have given $20 billion to other countries to fight the war on drugs on their own turf.  
• Columbia received $6 billion to fight cocoa production, which rose during that time.  Although it did move the trafficking and violence to Mexico.  
• American children have suffered from the effects of $33 billion dollars of "Just Say No"-style b*llsh*t propaganda marketing.  I can't help but wonder how many millions of young Americans began distrusting and disliking their government the moment they discovered that smoking marijuana and doing heroin are nothing alike whatsoever. 
• $49 billion has gone to our borders to unsuccessfully prevent the influx of drugs. 
• 25 million Americans will use illegal drugs this year.  
• 15 million Americans used illegal drugs in 1970.  
•  We have spent $121 billion to arrest 37 million nonviolent drug offenders. 
• Of those nonviolent drug offenders, 10 million of them were arrested for pot.  
• We have used more than $450 billion to imprison just those nonviolent offenders in federal prisons.  
• Half of America's federal prisoners last year were nonviolent drug offenders.  
• 330 tons of cocaine are sold in the U.S. annually.  
• 20 tons of heroin are sold in the U.S. annually.  
• 110 tons of methamphetamine is sold in the U.S. annually.  
• Nobody knows how much marijuana is sold annually.  
• The global drug industry makes up one percent of the world's commerce being worth $320 billion. 
  

     What can we do?  Being honest with our children would be a start. We put so much focus on marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and meth, we almost completely ignore the more common dangers of cigarettes and alcohol. 

More People Getting What They Deserve...

5/13/10 

    Korea is a pop band factory.  Management companies piece together and churn out soulless, uncreative, cloned girl and boy bands faster than I can crap out good Mexican food.  A scandal has emerged thanks to an underpaid tutor in the U.S.  Korea sent the Wondergirls to the U.S. in hopes of breaking into the market.  Daniel Gauss tutored them in English from October 2009 until this month.  He claims that their management group, JYPE, mistreated them through the course of their failed attempt to gain popularity in the U.S.  JYPE and several of the girls claim his accusations are incorrect.  I don't really care either way.  The next part, however, is interesting.  
    Korea crapped its pants when the five girls' single "Nobody" became the first Korean song to get onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart; it debuted at 76.  How did this song that you probably have never heard of (unless you live in Korea) manage this feat?  JYPE sold the girls' CD for $1.00 at clothing stores around the country.  Losing money on the disc gave the Wondergirls the claim to fame in Korea. All it takes to get onto Billboard is to sell your music at a loss! 

Movie Time...

5/17-6/11/10

    I've been getting out to more movies since I finished my classes.  If you haven't seen it yet, Kick-Ass is one really good movie.  I saw something I have never seen before in Korean subtitles.  For those of you who don't know, the Korean words for f*ck and 18 sound almost identical.  In the past, the subtitles always read "젠장", when somebody says most any curse in English.  It is a light curse like "hell" or "darn."  The people who subtitled it actually put the number "18" in the movie for one of the F-bombs dropped.  It was hilarious! 
     The problem is that not too many decent flicks have came this way since then.  Iron Man 2 wasn't quite as good as the first, but the way they worked towards setting up the upcoming ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers was pretty interesting.  Book of Eli had too much religious garbage, but was otherwise a good movie, if not a little predictable.  The Crazies was an incredible remake!  I wonder if we'll see a sequel.  Timothy Olyphant is bad-ass.  Robin Hood wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, but there are many worse ways to kill two-and-a-half hours.
     I saw The A-Team yesterday.  After G.I. Joe and Transformers 2, it was great to see a movie that didn't take a steaming crap all over my childhood.  It was a little bit over the top (especially the tank and then the container ship at the end), the obvious double-cross was obvious and Murdock's small roll in the final plan felt awkward.  Other than that it was incredible.  The new team had great interaction with each other.  I can't wait for a sequel! 

Weakly Konglish...

5/19/10 

    I saw the following on the back of a student's t-shirt today:
    "Make Ear bike and girl lower Looks damn cool And Ride fucking easy you know Supplier make you hot"

6/8/10
     This great Konglish is currently plastered on buses in Seoul.  I think it's an English hagwon for people wanting to learn sex talk.

6/13/10
     I'm continually amazed by the horrific language on the clothes people actually wear out in public.  One of my students last week wore a t-shirt that said:
EAT
FUCK
KILL

Yummy...

5/19/10 

    Last night I ate at my favorite local all-you-can-eat tuna restaurant, when Mr. Jeong offered me a shot of a strange booze I hadn't had before.  He handed me a shot glass of brandy, gold flecks and the ocular fluid collected from many tuna.  It was a little syrupy but surprisingly good.

Two More Reasons to Hate the Olympics...

5/19/10
    People who know me know how much I don't like sports in general and the Olympics specifically.  It's sad to see people quadrennially pretending that gymnastics, synchronized swimming, equestrian dressage, ping pong, curling, and figure skating are real sports.  London is hosting the 2012 summer games.  The city unveiled its mascots for the games.  I hope they were only joking.  Wenlock and Mandeville are two horribly creepy cyclops creatures.  The male monster has some sort of flipper-claw appendages and a blue crotch.  I've heard of having blue balls, but never of having it evolve into an entirely blue crotch.  The girl wears colored bracelets banned in some public schools, because students have worn them to signify sex acts they have done.  The two weeks we lose out on real television programming is bad enough without having these androgynous demons on our screens.  Wenlock and Mandeville have taken the title of "Most Disturbing Mascot" from Atlanta's 1996 Izzy. 

Police Pick Up...

5/24/10
     I got to hang out with the Beaver this weekend.  It was a typical weekend for us.  Unfortunately, that means it was absolutely insane.  If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was a Buzzard or part of the K-Town Mafia.  Beav's job had him up in Seoul for two weeks conducting interviews. I went up to hang with him on his last weekend.  We bounced around random bars and makgeolli joints all afternoon.  We met a friend of his for dinner at a restaurant that does a Korean take on Chinese lamb.  It was very interesting.  It wasn't quite as good as the original, but it was really good.  We left his friends and decided makgeolli time had come.  We couldn't find a makgeolli joint, but we did find two police officers.  We asked them for directions and to take pictures with them.  They decided to drive us to a place in their cop car.  First they let me take pictures of the Beav in the back seat and in the driver's seat.  It was crazy.  They put us in the back of the car and drove us to a makgeolli joint near the Times Square Mall.  We shocked the bar's patrons and owners when our police car pulled up with its lights on.  We shocked them further when our two officers had to get out of the car to open the back doors to let our stumbling, cracker butts out for more drinking.  I love this country! 

Rice + Booze = Korea...

5/26/10
     Korea's Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MOFAFF) held an event to invite potential nicknames for the nation's milky rice wine, makgeolli (막걸리).  Makgeolli has gained much popularity in Korea and the region in past year.  The country has decided that because "makgeolli" isn't the easiest of words for foreigners to pronounce, it needed to devise a nickname for it.  Entries from 3,910 people included Makcohol, Koju, Kori, Soolsool, McKorea, and Rainydaywine.  But were any of those good enough?  No.  MOFAFF chose the most straight to the point contender:  Drunken Rice.  

Please Don't Feed the Stupid...

6/10/10
     Because obesity isn't a big enough problem in America, Donna Simpson is doing something about it.  The 42-year-old mother of two from New Jersey crushes the scale at 600 pounds but has heavier goals.  She wants to waddle her way into the Guinness World Records.  She'll have to double or possibly triple her current weight in order to get the record.  She's not doing it alone, mostly because it takes $750 a week to feed her.  Sadly, she's not alone in her endeavor.  She has a website where people can watch her like a modern-day freak show.  She has videos of her packing in greasy foods and walking to her car.  She has a fiancee seven years her senior who fathered her youngest daughter and finds her near-planetary status "sexy" and supports her large dream.  Being morbidly obese with a goal of getting heavier doesn't make Donna lazy or stupid enough.  She wants to perpetuate her ignorance by getting her own reality television show so that all of the non-thinking masses have more televised garbage to ingest.
     She says that she wants a reality show "so that people can see a woman of size having a regular family."  She's not a woman of size; she's a woman of many sizes.  She's not trying to send a positive message.  Carrying around a few extra pounds isn't a bad thing, but she's trying to eat herself to death.  As the matriarch of her "regular family," she has Type 2 diabetes and has difficulty cooking the tonnage she consumes and showering the filth off after.  Her message includes denying that morbid obesity isn't a factor in heart problems, diabetes and joint pain.
    The only positive aspect of this story is that for as crazy as Simpson is, she is against gastric bypass surgery.  A friend of hers died from the dangerous, unnecessary surgery.  At least we won't have to worry about her show lasting more than season or two if she does wedge her way onto television. 
     I don't want to hear anyone out there saying that I'm being hateful towards obese people, because I'm not.  I'm being hateful towards one ricetarded b*tch who wants to eat herself to death while attempting to convince others that she's not only normal, but also a good example to be followed.  I hope that she has it in her will that she will be fed to a school of piranha at a zoo in front of people when her heart throws in the towel. 

Population Control...

6/10/10

     Kim Kil-tae could very well get what he deserves if Busan prosecutors have their way.  They have demanded the death penalty for Kim.  He is accused of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl in March.  He has already confessed after they found his DNA in the girl's body but subsequently denied everything during the trial.  Prosecutors have also asked that he wear an electronic monitoring device for 30 years, the maximum currently allowed by law for sex crime and murder convictions.  I hope that he is killed off long before any electric bracelet ever touches his leg. 

More Population Control...

5/19/10
     I'm hoping that Seoul prosecutors can follow in Pusan's steps.  Kim Su-cheol got drunk, took a box-cutter to Usin Elementary School in Yeongdeungpo District, wandered the halls for an hour, and then abducted an eight-year-old girl from the playground.  The 45-year0old took her 500 meters to his house where he raped her.  He passed out after, because he "felt good."  The girl escaped the sleeping monster and ran back to school.  She was taken to a hospital for a six-hour surgery to correct the damage Kim had done.  The police arrested him at his home nine hours later.
     It's no surprise that Kim was on out on the street stalking victims.  After all, he'd only served 15 years starting in 1987 for rape and has had only a dozen other convictions since he was released eight years ago.  The 12 convictions include physical violence and hit-and-runs.  Yes, hit-and-runs with an "s."
     I hope that his time on this spinning ball of mud are extremely short.  

Dae Han Bandwagon...

6/13/10
     Millions of Koreans shouted "Dae Han Min Gook" this weekend as Korea beat Greece in its first World Cup 2010 game.  It was strange catching glimpses of the first World Cup since 2002.  Yes, some of you are arguing that there was a World Cup in 2006.  If you lived in Korea in 2006, then you know that this isn't true.  Eight years ago South Koreans went crazy as their national team far exceeded their expectations as they co-hosted the Cup with Japan.  Millions of red shirt-wearing Koreans poured out into the streets to watch their games on large screens across the nation.  People in smaller neighborhoods gathered outside of buildings to watch games projected from LCD projectors set up in a window onto a weighted bed sheet hung outside of a building across the street.  The excitement was enough to all but bury the story of the bloody naval battle between North and South Korea that took place during the Cup. 
     We didn't see any of that in 2006.  I've asked several people here about why the last Cup failed to generate any fervor among the populace.  I received the same answer from everybody so far.  Nobody thought Korea was going to do well, so there was no reason to support their national team.  Korea's soccer fans are all fair-weather fans.  This year they think their team stands a chance, so the entire nation has jumped on the bandwagon to show its first iota of support in eight years.  

TAI12 #229 Multiple Ends in Sight...

THE ANSWER IS 12

#229 Multiple Ends in Sight...

Welcome to the Show...

4/23/10       
    The half way point of this semester has come and gone, and I can say that I have never been more happy to see a semester work its way towards its demise.  I have the worst batch of students ever.  I have one class that, had this been my first year of teaching, it would have also been my last year of teaching.  The majority of my students show far less respect than they have in the past.  The have gotten lazier.  They sleep more.  They put less of an effort into the small amount of work I ask of them.  I have never more desired the beginning of a vacation.  I'm ready for Mom to get here.  I'm ready to see Cheeri and the rest of the Manila folken.  I'm ready to meet up with Cooter, Countess and Voice in Kuching.  I'm ready for the three weeks of Bali, Bangkok and Cambodia or Laos to follow InterHash.  I'm ready to put this wretched semester in its grave!

4/30/10
     Wednesday night I completed the two of my final three grad school classes.  I should finish with an A and a B which shouldn't hurt my 3.33.  These were my two most stressful classes to date.  Now I get to relax until mid-August.
     I had two very tall girls show up to one of my classes yesterday.  We are half-way through the ninth week of our 16-week semester.  It was the first time they had made an appearance.  One of them wasn't even on my attendance sheet.  Despite showing up to the second-highest of our five levels of class, they couldn't speak more than a couple of words of English.  One of my other students explained that these giants had been playing volleyball.  The season is over, so now they are in school.  I wish them luck with that.  I know that the school is going to try to make me give these lumps a pass.  That will officially throw away the last little bit of credibility I thought this company had.  If they try to force me to give them a pass, it will prove that I work for a degree mill.  This is why I hate sports in schools.  These athletes aren't contributing anything, but they receive a larger budget than any other program at most schools, and they get free grades for not working.  Schools should divide their budget equally between their extracurricular programs.  Let the parents and local communities make up the differences for programs requiring a larger budget if they feel the need.  Don't make other school programs suffer.  Don't freely give out grades to someone just because they can hit or throw a ball. 

By the Numbers...

95,266  :  Number of Koreans who had their credit card information stolen by a single Romanian man who in turn sold it all to four Malaysians.
300,000  :  Amount (in KRW) paid by four men for the information from 51 of those credit cards.
943  :  Number of credit cards cloned from this stolen information.
49  :  Number of countries these clones have been used in.
677  :  Amount (in millions of KRW) charged to those 943 cloned cards. 
2,377  :  Number of registered foreigners living in Evilwon. 
706  :  Number of registered Africans living in Evilwon.
100  :  The minimum number of texts a third of American teens send daily.  Don't these ricetards know how to call each other?  It's quicker.
75  :  Percentage of American children aged 12-17 who have cell phones.  I can't imagine that one percent of them actually need phones.  I hope their parents are at least responsible enough to make them pay for them.
87  :  Percentage of American teens who sleep with or next to their cell phones.
18,000  :  Number of North Korean defectors living in South Korea.
2,000  :  Number of North Korean defectors living in 20 other countries.
?  :  Number of North Korean defectors who are actually North Korean spies living in South Korea.
2  :  Number of North Korean spies posing as defectors arrested in an assassination plot focused on the highest ranking North Korean defector to date, Hwang, Jang-yop.  He once tutored Kim Jong-il and authored "juche", the North's ideology of self-reliance. 
?  :  Number of Chinese-Koreans living in South Korea as North Korean defectors.  They lie to Korea's National Intelligence Service (Korea's CIA) in order to get settlement money, job training, medical benefits, and to be treated as second-class citizens by South Koreans.  They use fake North Korean identities to achieve this. 
8.63  :  Annual tuition (in millions of KRW, $7,765 as of 4/23) of at my university, KNU, the third highest in the nation for a single campus in 2008.
41  :  Alcohol percentage of the world's strongest beer, Sink the Bismark!, from BrewDog, a Scottish brewery.
60  :  Price (in U.S. dollars) of one 11.2-oz. bottle of Sink the Bismark!
60  :  Percentage of Korean actresses who have been propositioned for sex by "influential figures of TV stations or other 'big shots' from all walks of society."
30  :  Percentage of Korean actresses who have been sexually molested. 
7  :  Percentage of Korean actresses who have been raped.
55  :  Percentage of Korean actresses who have been offered "sponsorships" from wealthy men.  A sponsorship is a secret contract where a rich asshole hires his favorite as a whore for a period of time to screw him regularly.  The report listed that the offers came from "wealthy businessmen, TV and movie directors, and politicians."
84,000  :  Number of foreign students currently studying in Korea.  
17,023  :  Number of foreign students studying in Korea in 2004.  
7,288  :  Number of foreign students studying in Korea in 2002.  
10,000  :  Number of foreign students violating their visas by overstaying them or working illegally.  
4,519  :  Number of foreign students caught by Korea's immigration authorities in 2009 for violating their visas.   
5,113  :  Number of nuclear warheads in the United States' stockpile.  
22,000  :  Estimated number of nuclear warheads in the world.   
12,582  :  Number of Korean office workers who subscribe to E4u Telephone English, a English education website.
73  :  Percentage of the office workers who are junior office workers.
27  :  Percentage of junior office workers who study on the site for more than three months.  Most quit after only one month. 

Hypocrites...

(Photo property of me!)

4/12/10 

    I took this picture in Insadong.  These three were trying to gain support for the 20 million North Koreans kept in poverty and ignorance.  It would also be helpful to try to save them from the South Koreans.  reunification isn't a big goal of the South.  While most southerners will say that they desire to be reunited with their cousins to the north, most of them say that they want it to happen after they die.  Current estimates put the financial damage it will cause the south at ten times worse than when East and West Germany came together.  Many of the 20,000 defectors here frequently complain about their lives here.  Their southern "cousins" view them as second-class citizens.  Despite job training from the government, many have trouble finding jobs, because their northern accent forever differentiates them.  Southerners also resent the money defectors receive help them survive in the south. 
     The problems North Koreans have with the South extend beyond the borders of both countries.  South Korea arrested one of their own this week for hunting and returning North Korean defectors in China.  The 55-year-old man had lived illegally in China and gone to North Korea for spy training. Before asking the rest of the world to remedy the situation, maybe the South should first work on fixing their own issues with their cousins.

Piss Poor Pee Plan...

4/15/10 

    Irish airline, Ryanair, has announced that it is considering installing coin-operated doors on its planes' toilets.  Passengers could be charged one Euro or one pound.  Airlines have gotten out of control.  I can promise you that if I ever find myself on a flight that charges to use the bathroom, I will wet myself in my seat like a two-year-old and laugh about it all the while.  I hope you're not sitting next to me on that flight.  Don't even ask what would happen if I had to chop a brown tree down...

SNL Does ICP Again!...

4/21/10 

    Those Killer Clownz from Murderous City D-Town released a new video from Bang! Pow! Boom!  The cast of Saturday Night Live was quick to do a parody of "Miracles".  Watch them.  They're great! 

No Sh*t Sherlock...

4/22/10 

   The Korea Times printed an article today that might as well have told us that they sun was going to rise in the east and set in the west today for all the surprising information it provided.  Titled "Koreans Swayed by Herd Mentality", it reported what everyone who has been here for more than five hours already knows.  Sales of mosquito nets and insect repellents spiked 50 percent this week after hearing news reports last week that mosquitoes transmitting viral diseases causing brain inflammation.  The problem is that they were only found on Jeju Island, hours away from the mainland.  
     By no means is this the first time the country has had spasms upon hearing news be it true or false.  We saw it two years ago when the whole country became more anti-American than usual upon a batch of lies reported by the television news show, PD Notebook.  The story reported that Americans had died of the human form of mad cow disease, when in truth only three Americans had ever died from from mad cow disease, and those had contracted it from beef eaten in the U.K.  It also fabricated information about the quality of meat being exported from the U.S. and said that Koreans are 2-3 times more susceptible to mad cow disease than other ethnic groups.  The country rose up as one to protest America and then their own president.   
     Other past occurrences of this lemming culture include the long history of regionalism (most frequently arising in elections and sports), the death of two middle school girls who couldn't be bothered to move out of the way of a slow moving tank, the Dokdo issue, the Sea of Japan issue, and Korean comfort women paid off by Japan in 1965 and screwed by Korea' s government ever since.  The current worry is that this lemming effect will have negative consequences on the nation's economy as it struggles to climb out of the current global recession.  

Banality in 140 Characters or Less...

4/23/10 

   Twitter is one of the most useless ideas of all time.  The twatters who use twitter manage to find simpletons who follow their 140-character messages of what they are eating, where they are at or the condition of their most recent bowel movement.  Facef*ck is bad enough as it is, and twitter is nothing but Facef*ck boiled down to its single most useless feature.  Twitter has come to Korea and brought with it one interesting story.  The third most followed twat is that of Soranet, a Korean porn website shut down by police in 2004 with 60 arrested in association with it.  The website had 600,000 subscribers; its twatter account has 100,000.  Soranet's twats have gained popularity because they give information on gaining indirect access to its porn site.  The government is also looking to block political-themed twats in upcoming elections.

Vegetables, Adultery and Lawsuits...

4/27/10 

    Korea's Supreme Court has ordered a woman to pay her mother-in-law 10 million KRW in damages for cheating on her husband.  Her husband has been in a coma since 2005 when a truck ran him over.  The court has also upheld a lower court ruling that the man's mother can seek a divorce-by-proxy, seeing the wife's cheating as her giving up her right to be his legal guardian. 

Get Out While You Can...

5/3/10 

    Korea is giving an option to illegal aliens here.  Illegals who voluntarily leave the country between May 6 and September 31 won't be subjected to fines, and their offense won't be taken into consideration if they decide to return legally in the future.  There is one problem:  September only has 30 days.  If employers of illegals come clean during this semi-imaginary grace period, they can avoid paying the usual fine of up to 20 million KRW and being barred from replacing them for three years.  The Ministry of Justice estimates that there are 178,163 illegals currently on the peninsula.  That's 15.1 percent of the 1,180,598 foreign residents in the country.  It's also slightly higher than the number of illegal Koreans living in the Los Angeles area. 

Arizona Makes the First Move...

5/5/10 

    Arizona's new immigration enforcement law is over the top, slightly fascist and long overdue.  America has long needed to take a stand on immigration.  We know that there is 12-20 million illegals in the country, but we don't do anything about it.  Arizona has gone too far, but it's a good start.  Look at California's medical marijuana laws.  The state is way too liberal with its plan, but it has given other states a blueprint with which to work.  Other states can look at Arizona's method and tweak it and implement it with improvement.  Of course I still think we should go with the plan I devised many years ago for illegal aliens:
First time caught:  Fingerprinted, photographed, given a warm meal, and put on a bus or boat back to their own country.
Second offense:  Sent to jail for a year to do hard labor.
Third offense:  Electric chair.  Problem solved.
We have laws.  Obey them or convince voters to change them. 

Break Dancing Brain Buffoons...

5/5/10 

    Korea has caught nine break dancers who faked mental illnesses in order to get out of their national duty to serve in the military.  They read up on mental health issues and then faked symptoms.  They faked hearing voices, depression and wouldn't go outside.  They managed to fool their families and doctors.  They weren't too smart, though.  They were caught authorities learned that they had gone overseas to break dance.  These fakers will now have to serve out their military service.  I'm not so sure they were faking it.  Anybody attempting to make a living by break dancing 25 years after it reached its popularity must have mental problems.  I'm surprised Korea doesn't have any disco dancers.

TAI12 #228 Almost there...

THE ANSWER IS 12

#228  Almost there...

Welcome to the Show...

4/13/10
      Fifteen days stand between me and the end of my second-to-last semester of graduate school.  I don't have much time to write.  I'm far behind in everything I have been meaning to do.  I haven't booked tickets yet for this summer for Mom and I.  She booked her ticket to Seoul this morning.  Dad's doing much better this month.  I hear Cooter moved.  Other madness is in the works.  I'll have more time to explain the universe to you when I drop the next issue in early May.  It's snowing today. 

By the Numbers...

9,000  :  Number of buses in Seoul.
72,000  :  Number of taxis in Seoul.
2010  :  The target year Seoul's current mayor, Oh Se-hoon, aims to have all of the city's buses and taxis switched over to electric or hybrid vehicles.
178  :  Estimated cost (in KRW, or $156 million US dollars) to make Seoul's bus and taxi changes.
20  :  Percentage of the reduction of pollutants in Seoul's air since Oh took office in 2006.
20  :  Percentage of the size of the battery used run Seoul Grand Park's new electric tram cars compared to regular rechargeable batteries.  
2.2  :  Length (in kilometers) of Seoul Grand Park's new electric tram car path, the first in the world.
370  :  Number of meters of recharging strips installed along the four segments of Seoul Grand Park's new rechargeable tram's path.
400,000  :  Cost (in KRW, or $351 US dollars) per meter of the recharging strips for electric vehicles.  
20  :  Percentage of Seoul's roads that would require rechargeable strips in order to allow every car in the city to run off of electricity.
2  :  Number of additional nuclear power plants South Korea would need to power every vehicle in the country if the entire country went electric. 
5  :  Number of websites currently posting information about North Korea collected from cell phones smuggled into the closed-off nation. 
8,400  :  Number of South Korean agents sent to spy on North Korea from 1953-1994.
2,200  :  Number of those agents who returned to South Korea.  Some defected; most were reported or assumed to have been killed.
92  :  Number of clothing and accessory shops in Seoul caught selling fake luxury goods in a March 24 and 25 crackdown.  The government hit Dongdaemun, Express Bus Terminal and Sinchon Station. 
40  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of erectile dysfunction drugs in Korea in 2002.
77.9  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of erectile dysfunction drugs in Korea in 2008.
86.2  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of erectile dysfunction drugs in Korea in 2009.
360  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of oriental medicines in 2002.
170  :  Sales (in billions of KRW) of oriental medicines in 2007.
5,811  :  Number of hagwons located in two of Seoul's 25 districts, Gangnam and Seocho, 20 percent of the total in Seoul. 
9.2  :  Percentage of hagwons that have gone out of business in Seoul.
11.3  :  Percentage of hagwons that have out of business in Gangnam and Seocho.
94  :  Number of North Korean refugees admitted to the U.S. since it granted them refugee status in 2006.  One of the first six admitted to the U.S. in 2006 hung himself.
32.3  :  Percentage of Korean high school students who sleep in class according to a recent survey.
45.1  :  Percentage of Japanese high school students who sleep in class.
20.8  :  Percentage of American high school students who sleep in class.
4.7  :  Percentage of Chinese high school students who sleep in class. 
33,000  :  Number of miles of expressways in China. 
9  :  Number, in millions, of new cars to hit the road in China this year. 

More People Getting What They Deserve...

4/2/10 

     Scott Roeder is going to spend the remainder of his life in prison, unless he is paroled in 50 years.  Roeder assassinated Dr. George Tiller in a Kansas church last May.  Roeder felt that he was following God's law.  This whack-job murdered Dr. Tiller, because he operated a clinic in Wichita, KS that performed late-term abortions.  I love it when insane people go around murdering upstanding citizens who perform a necessary, if not unpleasant, duty.  I hope this madman never steps another foot outside of his prison.  If there were truly any justice in the world, the judge would've ordered an extremely late term abortion to be performed on Roeder.  Rot in peace, you animal. 

No Justice...

4/8/10
     There is a "Newseum" in Washington, D.C.  It has recently made an acquisition of ricetarded proportions.  It will soon display the suit, shirt and tie that O.J. Simpson wore the day he got away with murder as part of a display called "trial of the century."  Simpson's former manager, Mike Gilbert, and Fred Goldman have spent the last 13 years fighting for possession of the Armani suit and the rest of O.J.'s "I got away with murder in style" ensemble.  Gilbert had offered it to the Smithsonian Institution, which rightly turned the embarrassment of the American judicial system down. 

Lowering Your Chances...

4/8/10
     A January survey of 544 single males and 494 single females who had visited the Banobagi Beauty Clinic by the Wedian matchmaking agency revealed the stupidity of the majority of the people surveyed.  Of the women, 53.4 percent said they would undergo or at least think about undergoing plastic surgery to meet a husband.  Minor procedures (double eyelid surgery or botox) were okay with 58.5 percent of the males.  However, they did say that they objected to "serious augmentation of facial bones or other features."  Only 11.1 percent of the women said they were okay with their future husbands having plastic surgery.  100 percent of me would have nothing to do with any woman with enough mental problems to go under the knife for no logical reason. 

A Complete Lack of Priorities...

4/8/10
     A survey from another matchmaking service, Gayeon, revealed even more disturbing trends among single Koreans.  Eighty percent of the men surveyed said that a woman's looks were the most important feature when choosing someone to date.  Personality, academic background and finances came next in order of importance.  One guy who makes 40 million KRW annually ($34,000) said he broke up with his "really pretty and attractive" girlfriend of two years because she was only a temporary bank worker.  He said many of his friends are also looking for women with full-time employment, going against exactly what the figures of this survey reported.  Almost 50 percent of the women surveyed said a man's monetary value was the top quality they sought.  Personality, academic background and family background followed. 

Making Way for the Ignorant Masses...

4/8/10
     The ricetards at Mattel have dumbed down the classic game, Scrabble.  A new version will allow semi-literate players to use the proper names of people, places, companies, and brands.  Now people who limit their input to those god-awful "entertainment news" programs stand a chance at winning a round of Scrabble. 

Changes Coming...

4/9/10
     Korean universities will soon stop looking at the TOEIC, TOEFL and other English test scores of applicants.  The Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) also says that universities will no longer use English interviews or look at applicants' extracurricular awards.  They will no longer be allowed to discriminate against students who didn't graduate from the country's more prestigious foreign language and science high schools or give preference to students who studied overseas.  The idea is to reduce the exuberant amount of money spent by Korean families on private education.  They want to level the playing field.  While this is a good idea, it will probably open the door to more bribery for university admissions officers.  It has the potential to hurt the hagwon market, especially English hagwons, although I doubt we'll see much of an effect from this anytime soon.  Despite the minimal impact the English hagwons have on the majority of students, the emphasis on pretending to learn English isn't likely to dissipate.  Of course this means that English professors could very well see a drop in the already low quality of English in the majority of their students.   

People Not Making a Difference...

4/9/10
     The Korean American Leaders Association (KALA) and BYON International are both Korean-American organizations in the U.S. and are both not making a difference.  They are handing out blue bracelets in New York and New Jersey, eventually going national.  The bracelets say "Dokdo is Korean Territory" and "East Sea is Korea".  This is partly a response to Japan recently approving a history textbook that says Korea "illegally occupies" Takeshima (the Japanese name given to Dokdo).  Dokdo is a group of almost uninhabitable islands (there is one old married Korean couple living there) between Korea and Japan in the Sea of Japan (we'll get to that one later).  Korea and Japan have both produced historical documents laying claim to the rocky outcroppings from centuries ago.  Japan controlled all of Korea when it occupied it from 1910-1945.  An agreement it signed after the war forced it to return all of the territories it had picked up during the war. They both claim it now.  Besides pride, the other reasons for desiring Dokdo is the potential the area has for being fertile fishing grounds and the possibility of oil beneath them.  The other issue at hand is just as simple, but not in Korea's favor.  Korea's call the Sea of Japan the East Sea.  I'm with them in that I know Dokdo is theirs, but everyone knows that the Sea of Japan is the Sea of Japan.  These bracelets aren't the first time Koreans have tried to get Americans to care about these issues.  A full-page ad in The New York Times and a 30-second video on a Times Square billboard preceded this attempt.  The problem is that I doubt they are ever going to get any Americans to care about either of these issues.  If it isn't on a "reality" television, "entertainment news" or from the insane rant of a whack-job like Glenn Beck, then most Americans aren't likely to give two farts about it these days. 

Fighting Darwin...

4/8/10
     PC game developers are beginning to include "fatigue" systems.  These limit the amount of time people can play a game or reward them for taking time away from their PCs.  This is to prevent ricetards from spending a week straight in an office chair in front of a computer consuming only ramyeon, instant coffee and cancer sticks and eventually, and thankfully, dying and thus exiting the gene pool.  It's also to prevent players from neglecting other responsibilities.  Just last month, a Korean couple (who had met online) let their three-month-old daughter starve to death, because they were too busy playing online games at a PC cafe.  I hope those two never step foot outside of a prison cell again.  I also hope they are never allowed to touch another computer or to reproduce again.  Stray dogs and cats aren't the only animals that should be spayed and neutered. 

Adultery Pays in Korea...

4/8/10
     South Korea is one of the few countries left where adultery is punishable by law.  While the number of adultery cases are rising, the number of jail sentences are going down.  Korea sent 47 adulterers to prison in 2007 of the 1,138 cases its courts tried.  Last year only saw 24 go to prison out of 1,157 cases.  A recent trend has emerged.  Spouses are suing their cheating partner and even the person their partner cheated with for damages.  Lawsuits against the partner so far have been more successful.  I'm all for this.  If I had promised to devote the rest of my life to a woman, and then she broke that promise and destroyed our life we had spent years building together, I'd want to turn that heartless bitch out into the street. 

The South Shouldn't Rise Again...

4/9/10
     Virginia's Governor, Bob McDonnell, has declared April "Confederate History Month."  Why would any state want to celebrate having been a part of the Confederacy?  They were terrorists who fought to own slaves.  There is no honor in what they did.  They fought the United States of America.  If we are going to honor them, then we should pull our hypocritical butts out of Afghanistan right now.  Nationality is the main difference between Osama bin Laden and the Confederacy.  Germany doesn't have a holiday for the Nazis.  They even went so far as banning the swastika.  Imagine if the U.S. had banned the rebel flag, the current symbol for all things inbred and otherwise backwards. McDonnell is not alone, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley declared April "Confederate History and Heritage Month." 

Too Little, Too Late, 
and Too Unimportant...

4/13/10
     The Vatican has issued another in a long line of ridiculous messages to the masses.  The Vatican's newspaper, "L'Osservatore Romano", said in its latest issue that the Vatican has forgiven the Beatles.  What exactly did the Beatles do to require forgiveness from the Vatican?  The Vatican once called the Beatles' messages "satanic" and now have forgiven the Beatles for letting them be called satanic.  What the hell?  The Beatles were once one of the greatest bands of all time until that succubus, Yoko Ono, raped the creativity out of them before breaking them up.  Of course none of that matters here.  We're talking about this giant douche-bag move from the Vatican.  What the hell were they thinking?  What could possibly have been the rationale behind this?  I can't wait for the people who used to beat me up in middle school and high school to forgive me for getting beat up by them.  I'm glad the Vatican settled this matter, because it doesn't have anything else on its plate right now.  It's amazing that the Vatican was thinking about this and not the 200 boys we learned were molested at a Wisconsin school for the deaf by one of its perverts in a collar.  I feel reassured to know that the religious equivalent of an evil organization hellbent on world domination from a 1960s or 70s James Bond movie is more focused on forgiving other people of what it has accused them of in the past than on trying to find ways to beg forgiveness for the thousands of childhoods callously stolen by its collared minions.