May Babies!

I know a lot of people with birthdays in May!

I tried to make a video but both attempts were subpar. I caught a bug that makes me sound and feel like I smoked a pack of cigarettes right before bed.

Mountain View

This is what I spent Children's Day making.

Weekend Neatness

I love wysteria.




There was a reenactment of the wedding of King Sejeong (inventor of everything). A member of our party stopped him for photos and then a plague of us descended on these poor reenactors.


This tree and thousands of lanterns are all on the grounds of the Jogyesa Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Seoul.


I made a lantern at one of the HiSeoul festival events. It's incomplete because we got there late but I'm pleased with it.

Shittin' Rainbows

Some things that have made me smile (or smirk) lately:

Read a Book
This raises a lot of questions about whether or not certain racial stereotypes are being reinforced with negative consequences. I think that it could go either way but, for me, it's less about race and far more about the hilarity of combining obscenities with good advice.

Flight of the Conchords
A New Zealand folk parody band. Yea, I know, I usually hate music related comedy but these guys are pretty entertaining. Plus...they're Kiwi. It's all good, though, since it's one of those things white people like.

Spam, Egg, Spam & Spam

24 tickets to Crazy Tasty Town (tm) for less than a dollar per ticket!

One of my students wrote (in Korean) on a shelf at school that I am crazy and stupid and have low IQ. I have a good idea of which class it was but I'm not sure which student (high likelihood that it's our arsonist). The more sensitive part of me is hurt for abstract hypersensitive reasons and part of me wants to put the smackdown on whoever wrote it (largely because I work so hard and I really hate graffiti in the school) but most of me knew that this was coming because I remember being an obnoxious teen and I just hope the turdlets grow out of it. I took a note on the graffiti and the students asked who wrote it and I told them I didn't know but that it was a bit repetitive, that the hallmark of good writing is variety and whoever wrote it should work on expanding their vocabulary.

Sunday Update

Last night I watched Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby with my coworker/friend. It is highly likely that it was an illegal Korean copy (they sell them everywhere on the streets). What struck me is that I don't understand why they would subtitle this movie in Korean. The majority of the humor is local to America. Maybe the slapstick and physical humor is enough. Towards the end when one character is behaving like Tawny Kitaen (Whitesnake music video sex symbol) they transliterate it in roman characters as "Tony Cage". A small but, I would argue, significant difference. Also, they simply transliterate "oh my God" into Korean characters rather than using (or perhaps having) a local equivalent. This country may have an obscenity shortage; I hope that our FTA with Korea will rectify this situation, reducing NTBs on vital commodities like cuss words.

Fire: The Absence of Comeuppance

The student who set fire to a quiz received no comeuppance whatsoever. How awesome is that? Because, clearly, punishing a child with discipline problems when he burns something at school would be absurd. I can only assume that if I had actually gotten an Ed. degree I would understand my ridiculous, naive, nay, childish belief that some measure of response from the administration was necessary.

It is a good thing that I'm self-motivated because work is totally failing to provide any measure of positive reinforcement (I know, I'm obsessed). I decided to spend the evening relaxing and am watching a borrowed copy of because [sic] I said so. I assumed it would be a brainless romantic comedy but it is focused very heavily on the search for a husband. So, yes, brainless; but how tiresome and simultaneously depressing.