Saturday, May 31, 2008

Ick!

As I was walking home yesterday, noticing the lack of mountains (to be seen) and feeling the sting in my eyes and throat, this was what was happening:



That's right baby! Nearly lethal levels of Yellow Dust! My nose is clogged today and my eyes are still grimy.

Friday, May 30, 2008

sCRAPs get flushed

Please feature the vocal stylings of Elvis the Prophet as I recount 2.5 strikes



1) The crap abstract I sent to Fukouka was rejected. I think I blogged this. I had a good abstract on my computer at work, but the deadline was on one of the three-day weekends on which the school was locked down. The abstract I recreated included an imaginary reference (no such author) and a bunch of unfocused crap at the end.

2) The good abstract I sent to Malaysia (by "good" I mean I made up a brand new 'critical' word) was also rejected.

3) The piece Ed and I were working on for Education About Asia was semi-rejected, although a reworking might be possible based on editorial comment.

Ah well, it can't all be beer and skittles and I will rework the Fukuoka piece for a conference here in Daejon in 09. Probably rework the EAA piece as well. The Malaysia one is probably a sign I should hunker down and work on Kim Yong-Ik, which I have foolishly abandoned.

The rest of my day was splendid, however.

Went up to school early to take photos of the Culinary Arts Program's "Food of the World" final exhibit (including thoroughly ridiculous and entertaining dioramas that I will post tomorrow). Then off to Japanese Studies where I was bushwhacked.

Get in there and there's all this weird computer gear.

Whatever.. there has also been two pair of running shoes and three pieces of cooking gear in the corner for three weeks.

I lay out the last week of the course, before the final.

One of the students says, "teacher, what about the movie?"

The movie had been planned for two weeks ago but usurped by the fact that the JS students got the whole week off for a freshman sports event. I mentioned this.

Shoulders went down all around.

About two minutes later another student says, "Teacher, you promised!"

I restate the fact that we have to study for the final. These students, who pretty much ALL got 100% on the pre-final example test I gave, slump their shoulders again.

One minute later, "Teacher, you said there would be a movie."

I pull my trump card, "I don't have one."

Shoulders ALL rise triumphantly, "Teacher, we brought one!"

So that's how I ended up watching the first half of "Jumpers" with my Japanese Studies kids.

Man, I love that freaking class!

Then it was off to Korean tutoring and an attempt to walk home. I didn't have my map, but had a general sense of where I was going, and the signs to the Train Station are always reliable, though they never indicate distance. I crossed the river and finally came across the 220 bus line. I was in work shoes so I walked a few more bus stops and grabbed the bus.

This was good because it turned left on a ramp that went over the train tracks, and I'd never have guessed that.

This was bad because I was really only 15-20 minutes from home and it sucks not to close the walk out. It's like slappin' the ho, killing the snitch, or any of myriad things we pimps (thanks MAF!) do - it really should be completed.

By the time I got home I was comfortably exercised and ready for my evening liver-laving with soju.

Which is where I am now.

Making them Caligula Pimplans....

Yo....

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Full of Scrap

Several things of no particular import.

1) This morning, to my surprise, I achieved my first year weight-loss goal for Korea. Just a shade under 9 months early. This allows me several options.

a) Go on an enormous eating and drinking binge and get about half of that weight back so that I can be challenged, again, to lose the weight

b) Stop worrying about it. “Mission Accomplished” as a far greater man than myself once noted.

c) Adjust that target down a bit more.

Since I am still technically a “Jelly-Filled Fat Fuck” (thanks HYS), I think I shall adopt the third strategy

2) There is another job-opening in administration here at BPU and some administrators are suggesting I go for it. It’s more money, but it is a 9-6 gig, which would completely eliminated the excellent schedule I have that allows me to roam around like a rabid dog. It might serve me well in a job-search in the States (it is something like a dean of student services) but it would be a fall-back position behind my plan to become a world-famous editor and critic. I think it’s too early to be working on fallback plans.

It is tough to not know what you want to do when you grow up… and you’re 30 years beyond growing up. ;-)

3) I was contacted by a University up North, that probably wanted to hire me AND the OAF, but had to bow out due to my contract with BPU. Amusingly, two days after I sent my email saying that I could not accept the job, it popped up on Dave’s ESL CafĂ©.

4) Another reason I don’t particularly want to take the admin job (did I mention it supposedly pays substantially more money?) is that I’ve just figured out a couple of aspects of my teaching style that needed fixing and have begun to fix them in this semester. I’d really like to have another full semester in the classroom to get this stuff cemented in my head (fight cement with cement?).

BPU tossed us into the fray so quickly that I didn’t really have a chance to thoroughly check out the textbooks (a different one for each class). They also wanted a weekly lesson plan, so, for the first 10 weeks of the semester, I was pretty much cloning the first one I came up. In the short weeks following the mid-term I took a longer look at the books and decided what in them was useful. Most of them contain pretty pointless skill-n-drill, but each also has a bit more.

I also decided I will scale back the money system next semester, using it only for in-class participation. Finally, that look at the books set me to re-evaluate my blackboard style. I had been using the style – essentially outlining the topics to be taught and modeling one or two sentences – of the guy who developed the money system. It didn’t work that well for me, so I had strayed away from using the blackboard for anything but random points and explanation of things that came up.

Looking in the books I noted that I could extract things in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and meaning and those things would outline the lesson in a more useful way (as well as leave theoretical and practical models on the board for students to study). This seems to have worked much better, and I plan to continue it next semester.

Finally, I did a few things that made the class more interesting for students. I added some competition between the men and women and broke long slogs through exercises with brief spelling games (which the students both love and are good at), and in general tried to break the monotonous pace. This also included adapting some things in the textbooks to be more local. If the textbook had an exercise that requested my students “brainstorm all they knew about Rome,” that brainstorm would last all of 1-second in their heads, as they ransacked them for anything they might know about Rome, and then it would last for 5 agonizing minutes as no one could come up with anything and no kind of prompt I offered would help. So wherever these popped up, I made a “Korean” version, trying to focus tightly on Daejeon. This seemed to help some.

Heh.. all of that will become part of my analysis of my teaching plan, if they ever get around to asking me to do that.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Incheon Ceramics festival, day two...

The next morning we headed off to the festival proper. We had a GS-mart breakfast: I had one of the weird three-half sandwiches (each half a different kind of sandwich and all crusts neatly excised) and the OAF had some hunks of Gouda cheese, which she was happy to report actually tasted like Gouda cheese. Most Korean cheese is pretty tasteless, and makes pasteurized, pre-sliced, individually-wrapped junk from the US taste pretty darn good. Everything tasted better to a man who still had his digital camera!

We got a cab and hopped up to the place. After returning home the previous evening we had mapped out a plan of attack which was simply to go counterclockwise around the place. We had also been told that at noon there would be a performance of traditional Korean music, gongs and drums, and this stuff is always strongly rhythmic, duh!, and quite interesting.

So we set off towards the Art Museum directly on our right. It was surrounded by gardens, one of which commemorated the war dead (Korea and Vietnam) of Icheon. Then it was into the museum, which charges a measly 2 bucks, and two floors of Korean art, one piece of which I have snapped here.


Then it was up to the Ceramics Museum, on the way to which we passed a house that seems to be made out of nothing but ceramics and which reminded us of something that a hobbit would live in.


The Museum had one room of Korean exhibits, one room of Modern Chinese exhibits, and one room of ceramics which had been awarded international acclaim. In that last room we began to see sculptural works, and works with whimsy and/or political content. This was really grand and we jotted down the names of a couple of artists so we could check them out on the web.

All of this was stunning, but a strict no-photography ban was in effect. As we wandered the grounds we heard traditional musicians playing here and there, but we also heard a cascade of tinkling bells. When we headed out of the museum and down to the music performance we discovered the source of the bells – it was an enormous sculpture-tree, whose branches were covered in ‘leaves’ of bells. A really nice piece.

Rocking the Bells

Below it was a sculpture garden in (literally, “in”) which kids played contentedly.


We watched the traditional musicians play and then it was off to the food court for lunch. Two dishes of bulgogi dam-pap, one coke, and two beers, all for 15 dollars. Festivals in the US might want to explore this whole, “affordability” concept that the Koreans seem to have down. Then we wandered to the crafts pavilion where Yvonne made (with the help of a professional potter) a vase. For 15 bucks you make the vase on the wheel, take it to another table to decorate, and finally leave on a table. The ceramics folks then take your work away and glaze it with a semi-celadon glaze and mail it to you. This was a truly nifty little scheme and, again, the price was right.

I really love (as anyone idiotic enough to have had me shoot their wedding knows) the hand shots. Even without the rest of the body they have a kind of intimacy.

We wandered through tent after tent of ceramics on sale, almost all of it stunning. My favorite piece was a vase that was NOT celadonic, or red with white (these were the main approaches). It was also interesting to note that we didn’t see one piece of sculptural ceramics work for sale.


We also walked through the Icheon City Museum, which was a bit bland compared to the other two museums, although it did have some nice picture of Seolbong Mountain Fortress which persuaded us that we needed to come back and have a go at it on some other weekend.

Tuckered out (well, me, the OAF kept agitating for us to try to make it up the hills to the Fort), we sat by the lake and watched some Royal Marines practice their falling out of boats.

Then it was back to the bus station, ice-cream for the OAF and ham cheese toastuh for me, and a ride back to Daejeon.

Which we now both agreed was boring. ;-

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Great Ceramics Fest Must Wait!

Since I went out and visited the OAF today and we took a big sweaty walk up to a temple-like resting place on the hills. Then, as I walked back from the "World Store" (I was picking up some decent beer for a meeting later with TSR, the God of Garbage chose to shine his benificence on me, and so I walked home from the Bus Station with a small tea table and a backpack full of 15 pounds of beer.

The table was rather grotty and that first picture of it is as it sits in the bathroom waiting for me to join it in the shower. Once there, I stripped down (I imagine you all have a mental picture of this) and cleaned it rather extensively.

Then I cleaned myself rather extensively.

It dried in a few minutes and looked absolutely wondrous in its new role as "Piece of furniture that ties the entire room together."

Soon it is off to Academic Writing, and then a quick return to have dinner with TSR. And also pick up, if he has completely downloaded it yet, the complete discography of Queen (I am currently downloading the complete discography of Elvis Costello).

Home early, alas, as I teach at 9, and with days waning in this semester, I can't eff up (student evaluations are just around the corner!)

BTW.. Yvonne's apartment pics should go up soon at her new blog:

www.elkwoman.net/bulgogi.html

Monday, May 26, 2008

Finding Icheon; Losing my Camera

So this was the weekend to visit Icheon, which I had narrowly averted missing the previous weekend as I traveled up to Incheon to pick of the OAF. OAF came over about mid-day on Saturday and watched me frump around and not get much done towards moving in the direction of the Bus Station. Finally, with some sub-nagging, she got me going, and we headed to the office to get my long-lens, to the bank to get some big bills, and to the barber’s because I was beginning to look like some kind of hideous savage. The barber ajumma was asleep on her couch and it took a couple of seconds to wake her up. Certainly something unlikely to happen in the US. She gave me a pretty nice haircut and then a post-haircut shampoo in cold water. Because it was over 30 degrees outside, the cold water served as a tonic for this troop.

Then it was back home to pack our stuff up, and a taxi-ride to the bus station. The bus was scheduled to leave at 2:20 and we made it with at least 10 minutes to spare. We both napped a bit on the way up to Icheon, and as we finally pulled into town I could see the Hotel Miranda, which is the “western” style hotel in the town. “Western” style typically means that you pay more than three times as much as you should. We got to the bus station and bought our return tickets for the next day, just in case there should be a stampede of people returning from the Ceramics Festival to Korean Home Town. Then, it was out the back door of the bus-station and on that street, as is normal, there were a fistful of hotels. We went to the HillPark and got an adequate room for 40 bucks.

There had been no maps or information at the bus station, but I suspected the Hotel Miranda would have some. We tried to grab a cab, but the cabbie gestured to the other side of the bus station and when we walked around it, lo and behold, the Hotel Miranda was three blocks away. We walked over, past 5 barbeque joints, including at least two whose specialty was bulgogi. The Hotel Miranda is also a water park, so on the left side of the Hotel entrance there were families of Korean sitting on the sidewalk eating lunch and drinking beer. We went into the hotel and, as I had hoped, there were tourist maps and pamphlets.

We grabbed one of each and then headed back for an early bulgogi meal. This was the first time that I had ever eaten bulgogi without the BKF and I felt like even more of a cheater when I ordered a lovely icy bottle of soju to wash the thing down. There was only one bad moment, when the OAF ate a piece of garlic and hollered, “oh, that was terrible onion!”

The garlic was such a terrible piece of onion that the OAF sat, stock still, for 5 minutes, sweating and trying to will herself to vomit. It was one of her oddest restaurant performances, and I was lucky enough to be present. In a few minutes she was back to OK, and since it was still early, suggested we head out to the farthest-away site on the tourist map. We grabbed a taxi and headed to Icheon Ceramics Village. This was half-closed, but still had plenty open. We wandered in and out of shops and bought a few gifts for folks in the back-home.

Then we walked back towards town until a taxi could find us. There was still daylight, and the OAF was keen to explore, so we decided to go to the lake. The lake was also the front of Seolbong Park, which contained the Ceramics Festival and a couple of museums. We hied hence to the Festival and wandered around figuring the layout, watching the “make your own pottery” site, and then back to the traditional Korean kiln that was on the right side of the entrance. It was in full flame and I took some pictures of the mouth of the thing. This required me to lay full out on my stomach, and when I got up and brushed off my shirt, a man walked up to me and waved me over to a table surrounded by other Koreans, a few in traditional kit. He offered me a cup of Makgeolli, and I’m never one to turn down a drink. I had read about this drink, it’s just a bit above beer in alcohol content, so it was good to taste it. We sat around and talked about the kiln, ceramics, and Icheon in general, until it was time to go back. It was a good thing the OAF had us drop by, as the next morning the kiln had been shut down to cool the ceramics inside. Since one of the reasons I had come to Icheon was specifically to get a shot of a functioning kiln, this would have been a bummer.

Not as big a bummer as losing my camera with the chip inside. Which was what I immediately proceeded to do!

We grabbed a cab to the Bus Station and got out to wander around. I wanted to take the OAF to see a building with lit sailing rigging. So we walked over to it, but there wasn’t a good spot to take a picture. Finally, all the way around it, there was a break in the trees and I opened the backpack to get the camera….

…. Which of course was not there. Logically, of course, since I had left it on the back seat of the cab. ☹ Wonderfully, I had no identification on the camera or (and I only figured out that I should do this right at that moment) file on the camera-card saying how to contact me.

I had this crazy thought the cabbie would swing past the place again, looking for me. So we headed back towards the Bus Station and, a little bit down the way, both realized that we hoped

a) The cabbie had got into the cab queue at the station (once in, you can’t get out until you pick up a ride) and

b) No buses had arrived.

We got there and searched all the cabs in the queue… about ¾ of the way through the line (which I idiotically did from the back of the line) the OAF said, “don’t look in that one, the cab was white.”). And this made things quicker as I ran up the queue and only looked in white cabs.

None of which had the camera.

But the time saved.. ah.. the time saved. ;-)

The cab stuck at the traffic light, turning left? It was our white cab and two Korean guys and one very confused cabbie were trying to figure out how the hell they would track down the stupid Waegukin who had left the camera in the cab. The guy in the front seat spotted us and started waving the camera out the window. We rushed up and grabbed it, exchanges some heartfelt Kahmsamneeda’s and parted.

You get 200 Koreans together and god knows what you’ll get – it could be a party and it could be an anti-free-trade riot. As a group Koreans will believe most anything: Say, fan death, or Mad-Cow in the streets. But any individual Korean (or group small enough to make a conscious moral decision)? You will have some of the most honest people in the entire world. This is the second trip I’ve tried to lose something quite valuable (passport and money two trips ago) and in each case it was returned to me. Try being that forgetful in the United States (or any of the countries BAX has put his camera down only to find it gone in a trice).

In celebration of the loss of the loss, we headed to the WA bar where I had two San Miguels, the OAF had a coke, and we shared a lovely plate of iced peaches and orange slices.

Which left us with one more day at the Ceramic soiree.

Friday, May 23, 2008

But of Course....


Synthetic Positronic Unit Normally for Assassination, Nocturnal Gratification and Efficient Learning


Get Your Cyborg Name

Rounding Up the Week..

I've been an uncertain blogespondant this week. With the OAF landing and the first five-day work week in a few, I've been kind of busy.

I'll start with that photo over there on the left. This is courtesy of Koreabeat. It is a picture one of many low-income elderly couples, who were too poor throughout their lives to afford a wedding ceremony. So this week, in Seoul, they were given free wedding ceremonies. Couples had to be at least 65 and married for at least 20 years. Weddings in Korea are expensive and have a lot of mandatory "procedures" and these folks couldn't swing it.

Nice photo!

As to me, Monday was "Senior English Test Day" at BPU. BPU claims that all it's graduates can speak English, so at the end of their tour, graduates must take the test that proves it.

That the test is 5 minutes long (that is our upper limit) and contains such questions as, "what is your name?" is irrelevant. I did my time and it was ok. The Korean professor I was working with was a good guy, and he completely stone-faced the one or two students who tried to ask him about the questions I was asking in English. The unspoken rule of this test is, of course, you absolutely cannot fail someone and I was lucky enough to be working with Korean students who, despite being clearly scared, could work out reasonable answers.

A couple of the kids were even gamers. We asked them a question like, "what sports are absolutely horrific?" Not a single one knew the word "horrific," but about three of them figured out that all they needed to do was fit a sport into their answer ("I find soccer horrific.") and they'd be good.

Other English Profs had the students being fed answers by the Korean profs, and at least one English Prof failed multiple students. An unwise approach, and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on that. Some English Profs (EP from now on) here are unable to lose the model in their heads of English in musty halls contained in brick buildings covered with ivy. This is NOT what the Korean education system is about. The English requirement is largely a symbolic one (this result is a tangle of Korea's conflicted interest in English, it's focus on test scores as rubric for achievment, and the fact that Korea does not target those students who need English, rather it tries the shotgun approach).

Anyway, all my kids passed and it made me so happy that on Thursday I tried to teach my students some things. This resulted in my re-working my blackboard style.. mostly successfully... and that will be the topic of my next post..

.... after I take a quick shower.

In beer and soju!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Scrapple



Which video, besides its complete awesomenosity, is there because I have purchased a wireless router and consequently have the web at home. I will now slump into a completely productionless search for bits of the good porn on the intarwebs. It's ok at the moment as I've sent off my last bit of writing, a piece BKF and I did on proverbs in education (yeah, a slender reed, but it might get published, so...). Next step is, I suppose, to buy the second hand TV that TSR is flogging.

I should note many things, but probably won't.

OAF is in town and that is a happy event. We're a bit separated by the entire town, but anyone who knows me knows I don't hew close in most cases anyway. She is doing well (day 2, of course) and her apartment is in a part of town that reveals my neighborhood as the slum it is. We have figured out the good news that there is one bus that pretty much runs door-to-door from our houses.

We have each had a major walking expedition to each other's house, the only difference being she found mine and I got rather majorly lost and then, just as I was about to get home, saw the bus I KNEW went to her place running by me. With my stupidity sorted out, we now know the trails.

I should also note that my optimistic analysis from last Saturday, that the OAF had been picked up by her director at Daejeon Station, was... well.. optimistic. Even though I ran through the place twice, I didn't see the OAF and neither did her director. So he headed to every other train and bus station in the town.

One of the charms of Korea is its comprehensive public transportation system, and this is partly (as is every thing else here) the result of many nodes. So the OAF was in the train station (dwarfed by her luggage, I believe) for several hours as I and the director swept past her.

They finally got her, and the word is she works in a lovely hagwon..

I have been through the farce that is "Senior English Exam" as well as the "Sports Festival." I hope to blog both of these in the next two days, but this weekend it just may be off to Icheon (and there is a story of my epic stupidity in that, as you know) for the ceramics festival. Sunday looks to be the key day of the month, and both the OAF and I should be off on that day.

My last note is that I caught myself, with the iPod on, walking down the hill hollering Led Zeppelin lyrics and smiling. It occurred to me that this was an unlikely scenario only three months ago. I am still convinced that life is useless, the 49ers may not win another Super Bowl in mind, and that palliatives are weak. Eventually it will come down to a hammer and a knitting needle with a wire attached to a bare light-socket. It always does.

Til then? It's nice to be singing on your way home. ;-)

Monday, May 19, 2008

Bones, Borders, Korea and Korean Literature. Being Part Two.

So you get to Korea and you notice something odd. Everything social/political/national/ethnic is demarcated. There are sides, and if you are on a side it is your social responsibility to take that side and take it hard. Koreans are, the classic “one handed economist” that Harrry S. Truman prayed for. And associated with all these borders, like train tracks in the Sierras, are ecotones (a lovely word given to me by James Turnbull down in Busan – from whose "Grand Narrative" I have also stolen the picture/text format for this thing) and the skulls one associates with them.

This is an obvious thing to say politically. The 38th parallel lurks above Seoul as the ultimate proof that even the most homogenous country in the world cannot be unified. Beyond that, Korea sees all of its enemies and allies as, well, enemies.

When I took the tour of Cheogdeokgung it was a tour for English speakers. The guide quickly ascertained that no on among us spoke Japanese and we spent the next hour and twenty minutes listening to a reassuring (for we older anglos) series of attacks on the evils of the imperialist Japanese.

I was reassured for about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, in a break in her presentation, I wondered what the Japanese tour would sound like. I guessed it would be quite similar – beginning with a conspiratorial inquiry that we were all Japanese and then a quite different tour, perhaps focusing on China’s depredations on Korea. Sadly, the temple substantially predated United States’ involvement so Korea’s biggest straw man could not be poked at. Perhaps, somehow, Mad Cows could be brought to bear?

Korea is homogenous, xenophobic, neo-Confucian, or racist, depending on whom you ask. As I note the xenophobia of Koreans, I’m not trying to blame them for it. Instead I’d point out that Koreans have every good reason in the world (and are skilled at inventing bad ones) to distrust the rest of the world. A short primer on history suggests why this might be so. Historically, besides China now and then, Korea has had nothing but enemies.

So there is an enormous and continually defended border, constructed in law, attitude, and culture, against the other. Koreans believe themselves to be just plain, well, different (by which a Korean usually means superior, or more refined). There is an amusing and perceptive, but somewhat alarming, passage in Shawn Matthews’ book, “Korea, Life, Blog.” Shawn lands at his Hagwon and is instructed in, among other things, how to sit down..

“I … followed Mr. Kim to the living room. “Sit here,” he said, pointing to
the green vinyl sofa. Incredibly, he demonstrated how to sit down and stand
up.
“I’m from America,” I said. “Not the moon.”
“TV,” he continued, ignoring me. He turned it on and off several times with
the remote control. ….
“On, off, on, off.” He handed me the remote. I set it down. He picked it
back up.
“He wants you to try,” said Mrs. Kim.
“But it’s in English.”
“On, off,” repeated Mr. Kim.

I can’t say for certain, but I imagine that if a Korean adopted this kind of approach with another Korean, it would be considered daft or insulting. I’ve had similar experiences with the most friendly, and in at least two cases brilliant, Koreans assuming that I was utterly helpless in the face of Korean society/reality. In these two cases I also know that this was an absolutely heartfelt desire to make sure that I could navigate Korea. Similarly, if you do manage to do something that Koreans believe can only be accomplished by a Korean, you become one of two things: You are either “almost Korean” or “more than Korean.” This is the reverse of the frog ecotone on the railroad tracks – Instead of being trapped inside narrow boundaries you can never exactly land within them. The boundary is 3d with super-repulso power. ;-)

Part of this reflects a reality. I won’t ever be “100% Korean,” whatever that might mean, because I will never know the language well and have to the land far too late. Nor do I aspire to being “fully Korean.” But the phrase “fully Korean” is one loaded with borders of race, culture, skin color (which does not always work entirely as you might expect), education level, age, religion and language. To which I might add the comment that I know ethnic Koreans in the United States who are “fully American” and would be thought of as such in most of the United States (I’m not naive enough to think that people and areas would be resistant to any Asian being “American”)

With all of these Korean borders you’re going to find your metaphorical ecotones and skulls. In the next couple of weeks, as I discursively follow this, I’ll talk about some of those skulls. Expatriates, Mad Cows, and I swear, down the line, how this affects Korean literature and its translation.

Or not.

I’m a fickle bitch. ;-)

NOTE: And as I type this some yahoo at the WAPO actually says, proving racial essentialism and stupidity are no foreigners to the United States, this about Obama (whose father fought in WWII):

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won
American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically -- and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century -- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are.
But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

I hereby invoke Godwin (and it's "loser" corrolary) on this crazy biatch... and note that the "last century" she so nostalgically invokes is just 8 years past. And, hey, them Injuns should be running things if it's all about the longest bloodlines... Absolute stupidity and insanity...
I hate everyone.....

Double Godwin - that first word in that Korean advert is, in fact "Hitler."
Text is "Even Hitler could not take over the East and the West at the same time."