THE ANSWER IS 12
#235 Better Nate Than Lever...Welcome to the Show...
6/23/11 The first semester's over! I can't believe I survived. Several sh*tstorms of varying subject matter and intensity ensured that this semester tested me like no other before it. I am glad it's in the can. I finished all of my work at 1748 yesterday afternoon and handed in the final papers this morning before a staff meeting which gave new meaning to the word "ricetarded." My biggest concerns are that the summer break is just that, and that the second semester will pick up right where this one left off in all aspects of my life upon my return from wherever the heck Brett and I end up going. We have a ticket to Bangkok on July 6 and a ticket from Ulaanbaatar on August 25. We haven't really begun to fill in the blanks yet, especially the part where we get from Thailand's capital to Mongolia's. I guess we'll just nuke that whale when we come to it.
By the Numbers...
20,000 : Price, in won, of a gram of heroin in North Korea where people are serving it to house guests, because you don't have to serve side dishes with it like custom dictates you do when serving alcohol. 12,500 : Number of divorce suits filed in Korea in 2010.
12,400 : Number of divorce suits filed in Korea in 2009.
12,100 : Number of divorce suits filed in Korea in 2008.
5,300 : Number of divorce suits filed in Korea between husbands and wives of different nationalities in 2010.
6,500 : Number of divorce suits filed in Korea between husbands and wives of different nationalities in 2009.
5,600 : Number of divorce suits filed in Korea between husbands and wives of different nationalities in 2008.
10,277 : Number complaints received by the Korea Consumer Agency regarding plastic surgery between 2006 and 2010.
338 : Number complaints investigated by the Korea Consumer Agency regarding plastic surgery between 2006 and 2010.
9-10 : Amount, in millions of KRW, paid by a restaurant in Seoul to two brokers each to have the restaurant featured on an MBC and SBS show about "great" restaurants in Korea. A new documentary, “The True-Taste Show," also states that these shows pay people to be "customers" at these featured restaurants to be seen enjoying their fare and giving thumbs-ups.
3 : Amount, in millions of KRW, paid to Kim Hye-sook in 2009 by the Korean government as compensation for being given scissors while serving a prison sentence. He used the scissors to cut off his penis and flush down the toilet, claiming that he was a woman. Read more on down.
30 : Amount, in millions of KRW, for a man to subject themselves to unnecessary surgeries to become a "woman."
100 : Amount, in millions of KRW, for a woman to subject themselves to unnecessary surgeries to become a "man."
25,000 : Number of Big Macs Dan Gorske has eaten over 39 years. While the number is disturbing, it's not as disturbing as the fact that he documented most of them. He has many of the boxes and receipts from his Big Macs and kept count on calenders he's kept over the years.
531,929 : Number of Korean "drinking bars and clubs" nationwide in 2005.
580,505 : Number of Korean "drinking bars and clubs" nationwide in 2009.
25,393 : Number of bars in Korea in 2005.
31,626 : Number of bars in Korea in 2009.
93,576 : Number of people employed in Korean bars in 2005.
103,387 : Number of people employed in Korean bars in 2009.
2.8 : Revenues, in trillions of KRW, of Korean bars in 2005.
3.5 : Revenues, in trillions of KRW, of Korean bars in 2009.
29,857 : Number of room salons (karaoke bars that hire "hostesses") in Korea in 2004.
30,466 : Number of room salons (karaoke bars that hire "hostesses") in Korea in 2009.
590,000 : Number of foreigners who have stayed in Korea for more than three months as of 11/1/2010.
238,000 : Number of foreigners who had stayed in Korea for more than three months as of 2005.
299,000 : Number of Chinese living in Korea.
59,000 : Number of female and male Vietnamese in Korea for marriage and work, respectively.
26,873 : Number of car accidents caused by drunk driving in 2008 in Korea.
969 : Number people killed in those accidents in 2008.
650,000 : Size of South Korea's active military forces.
1.19 : Size, in millions, of North Korea's active military forces.
3.2 : Size, in millions, of South Korea's military reserve forces.
7.7 : Size, in millions, of North Korea's military reserve forces.
2 : Estimated number, in millions, of South Korea's military reserve soldiers who don't have a rifle.
30 : South Korea's annual defense budget, in trillions of KRW.
110 : South Korea's annual military reserve forces budget, in billions of KRW, (0.35 of the total defense budget).
322,473 : Number of unmarried 30-somethings in Seoul at the end of 2000.
656,814 : Number of unmarried 30-somethings in Seoul at the end of 2010.
5 : Number of cases of cannibalism mentioned in a 791-page report on crime issued by by the North Korean police force in 2009 giving "guidance on how to deal with criminals."
47,682 : The number of hours a person has to watch pornography before it becomes boring, according to Deadpool.
255,403 : The number of Koreans who died in 2010.
172,276 : The number of Koreans cremated in 2010 (67.5 percent of all deaths).
33.7 : Percentage of dead Koreans cremated in 2000.
200+ : The number of Koreans arrested for prostitution on the U.S. East Coast in the last five years, partly credited to the 2008 visa waiver program that allowed Koreans easier access to the U.S.
33 : Percentage increase of reported rapes in Korea over the past three years.
15,819 : The number of rapes reported in Korea in 2007.
21,116 : The number of rapes reported in Korea in 2010.
8,772 : The number of expats in Seoul in 1960.
13,793 : The number of expats in Seoul in 1980.
61,920 : The number of expats in Seoul in 2000.
262,902 : The number of expats in Seoul in 2010.
1.51 : The number (in millions) of animals used in Korea in 2010 for cosmetic and pharmaceutical testing.
78,905 : The number of Koreans of over the of 65 without a registered residence.
679 : The number of those elderly Koreans without a residence currently receiving a regular monthly government pension of up to a mere 88,000KRW.
4 : The number of Americans receiving medicinal marijuana from the U.S. Government.
892 : The number of people who have jumped off of one of Seoul's Han River bridges between 2006 and 2010.
375 : The number of people who successfully ended their lives jumping off of one of Seoul's Han River bridges between 2006 and 2010.
I Get Smart...
4/26/11 It took a lot of internal debate, but my dumb ass bought a smart phone... for free. I signed a two-year contract and switched phone companies from SK to LG to get a free Samsung Galaxy Tab. I decided to go large considering that I don't own a car and spend a so much time on subways and buses here. It hasn't been a big of a pain in the keister as I thought it would be, although I have had several problems. The first issue to arise was when I tried to access my Gmail account. I unwittingly checked a box that allowed my Tab to sync with my Gmail account. I suddenly found a couple hundred extra contacts in my phone book that I had no intention of putting there. I am glad, however, that I did my Gmail before my Yahoo account, which has 800 contacts, the majority of which I have no contact with.
Update
9/27/11 Having spent the summer traveling with my new phone/flatten brick, I can up my level of infatuation with this strange device. The wi-fi was extremely useful. I got plenty of use out of it watching old blacksploitation and kung-fu videos. My newest favorite use of my Tab is the Kindle application. I was enjoying occasionally flipping through some comic books on the Perfect Viewer, but having a tiny device with 90 books (so far) loaded onto it is a wonder! I have knocked out King's Under the Dome and Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and currently working on Craig Ferguson's American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot. Declan's Word of the Day programs are fun, too.
Worst Mother of the Year...
5/26/11
This award goes to Jang Hyu-hee for screwing with her daughter's face and mind. She had the 12-year-old undergo plastic surgery to "fix" her eyes. What was wrong with her eyes? Nothing, except that they were Korean. Her mother westernized her eyes so that she would be "prettier." It's unnerving that a mother would plant these kinds of thoughts into her daughter's mind. They should have accompanied the unnecessary surgery with a complimentary lobotomy for Mrs. Jang.
I found this gem on The Korea Herald's ever-incorrect website:
6/22/11
The Herald scored again with:
My old phone finally crapped out on me in late March. It wouldn't take a charge anymore. I had to bite the bullet and score a new piece of ignorable machinery. It was time to go for a smartphone. I weighed the options of getting a regular-sized phone, but decided against it and went with something different. I am now actually a proud owner of a Galaxy Tab. I have always hated cell phones, but I love my Tab. Of course, I like it for all of the wrong reasons. I refuse to sync my new phone with my Yahoo!, Gmail or Facef*ck accounts, although I did accidentally sync my Gmail when I first started playing with it. It took me a good long while to manually delete all of those contacts from my phones memory. I do, however, like the applications I have been able to find for it.
This award goes to Jang Hyu-hee for screwing with her daughter's face and mind. She had the 12-year-old undergo plastic surgery to "fix" her eyes. What was wrong with her eyes? Nothing, except that they were Korean. Her mother westernized her eyes so that she would be "prettier." It's unnerving that a mother would plant these kinds of thoughts into her daughter's mind. They should have accompanied the unnecessary surgery with a complimentary lobotomy for Mrs. Jang.
Weakly Konglish...
6/2/11I found this gem on The Korea Herald's ever-incorrect website:
Queens may can Korean-only signs in K town
6/22/11
The Herald scored again with:
Security fuards accused of animal abuse
This one really pissed me of because it involved some security guards who chased a cat through the 13th floor of an apartment building until it "fell." They went downstairs and beat the still-breathing cat to death with bats. Because this wasn't enough, they dumped the poor feline's body in a food waste disposal. I think we would be completely within our rights to do the same to every malicious animal involved. As I've said many times before, the world is way overpopulated and sh*tstains like these wouldn't be missed. Damn these security fuards (whatever that means)!Tab A...
6/20/11 My old phone finally crapped out on me in late March. It wouldn't take a charge anymore. I had to bite the bullet and score a new piece of ignorable machinery. It was time to go for a smartphone. I weighed the options of getting a regular-sized phone, but decided against it and went with something different. I am now actually a proud owner of a Galaxy Tab. I have always hated cell phones, but I love my Tab. Of course, I like it for all of the wrong reasons. I refuse to sync my new phone with my Yahoo!, Gmail or Facef*ck accounts, although I did accidentally sync my Gmail when I first started playing with it. It took me a good long while to manually delete all of those contacts from my phones memory. I do, however, like the applications I have been able to find for it.
Goodbye and Good Riddance...
9/13/11
Janet Hardt is dead, and the world is a better place for it. The 63-year-old woman died after injecting melted beef fat into her mouth and chin. The article said that she died in Homewood, Illinois of an unrelated infection in her colon wall. The idiot had done this multiple times in the past and had undergone numerous plastic surgeries as well. Goodbye and good riddance.
I have said this many times before: I love The Korea Times. I'm certain that it's Korea's version of The Onion. It published these two articles on the same day:
If they hadn't published both of these articles, I wonder what people would have thought if they had only read one of them. I can see people here thinking, "Wow, three-fourths of our elementary school teachers are women, but what are the other 25 percent?" or "If a quarter of our elementary school teachers are men, then what the hell is teaching the majority of our kids!"
I didn't know that "Organic Sound" meant pedophilia. This is truly disturbing. The person who designed this flyer shouldn't be allowed within 100 meters of schools, churches and crack houses.
Janet Hardt is dead, and the world is a better place for it. The 63-year-old woman died after injecting melted beef fat into her mouth and chin. The article said that she died in Homewood, Illinois of an unrelated infection in her colon wall. The idiot had done this multiple times in the past and had undergone numerous plastic surgeries as well. Goodbye and good riddance.
Redundancy, Saying Things Twice and Repeating Yourself...
9/26/11 I have said this many times before: I love The Korea Times. I'm certain that it's Korea's version of The Onion. It published these two articles on the same day:
and
If they hadn't published both of these articles, I wonder what people would have thought if they had only read one of them. I can see people here thinking, "Wow, three-fourths of our elementary school teachers are women, but what are the other 25 percent?" or "If a quarter of our elementary school teachers are men, then what the hell is teaching the majority of our kids!"
Disturbing...
9/29/11 I didn't know that "Organic Sound" meant pedophilia. This is truly disturbing. The person who designed this flyer shouldn't be allowed within 100 meters of schools, churches and crack houses.
