Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Kim Jong Un is out of line.

I remember when his Daddy, crazy old Kim Jong  Il, kicked  the bucket, and young Kim Jong stepped into the job.  I was optimistic.

He’d gone to college in Europe, it was reported that he liked Western things, and I’m generally an optimistic sort of guy.  Also, I was encouraged by a couple of silly little things, like allowing women to ride bicycles in the city, and having Dennis Rodman over for a visit.

But, then, there were the rumors that he’d had an ex-girlfriend executed, so nobody would get any ideas, and they screamed and yelled for a while about how it was all a scurrilous lie by the Western powers that hate him, and everybody  forgot all about it.

However, if there’s somebody who everybody says you executed and they weren’t actually ever executed, there is a very easy and effective way  to disprove the allegation.  They just need to go on TV and say “Hey, look, everybody, I’m still alive.”

Jang Song Thaek

Now, he had his uncle executed, and its looking more and more like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree and Kim Jong Un is just the next crazy Kim in line.

Of course, I don’t know what went on behind the scenes, maybe Uncle Jang Song Thaek was trying to have  young Kim whacked, but we’re never going to hear his  side of the story.

Instead, we  have the official government press release saying Jang had been tried and executed  for “attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state.” It called him a “traitor to the nation for all ages” and “worse than a dog.”

No real specifics, though.

Prediction: this is going to get worse.  He’s already in deep, and he doesn’t care any more who knows he’s a bad guy, if he  ever did.

The Huffington Post has apparently been taken over by the spiritual descendants of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller, as evidenced by their new comments policy.

recapcha THIS

Or maybe it’s just me, technotard that I am, because there are still comments below all the articles, presumably by people who have managed to get through (or paid shills, a possibility which cannot be entirely discounted, but that would be a boneheaded business move on their part seeing as how they can get unlimited content for free), and if any of my  readers have managed to get through the maze I would appreciate your helpful hints.

Anyway, I went to leave a smartass reply to someone preaching inter-party civility (leave the poor Republican child molester alone) and got a pop up window saying (I’m paraphrasing) “In order to promote an atmosphere of civility….” and my first thought was “How the fuck did they know what I was going to say?”

Then, I went to leave an original  comment and got the same notification.  So, realizing that I was not being specifically targeted, and realizing that I had no choice, I clicked on the thingie to re-verify my account.

Apparently, Huffpo is now owned by facebook, because in order to sign in you have to agree that they get access to your friends list and all that.  Still, we all know that there is no privacy left on the internet so I was just clicking yes, yes, yes, whatever, of course I’ve read the terms of agreement (has anybody every actually read the terms of agreement? on anything?), I accept everything, just let me back in, please, I’m lonely out here and having commenter withdrawal, but then there was a little reddish  brown triangle thingie next to my e-mail address box saying “this address is already taken.”

Well, of course it is.  It’s taken by me.  That’s why it was listed there.  It’s been on file with them for as long as I’ve been commenting there.  6 years? 8 years?  I don’t know.  If it’s taken by somebody else, then they took it after me, and I’d like to know how they managed that.  It’s not impossible, I suppose.  Willie Watson is not an unusual name.  If I google it I find tons of us.

So, I tried another e-mail address I sometimes use which, unless somebody who shares my name is also running a language school, is probably unique, but they weren’t having that, either.

So, I found the article where they talked about the new system and there was a link to send an e-mail direct to HP, so I followed that, again, diligently filling in all of the boxes which had the red asterisk meaning “obligatory,” and I got to the end and clicked “submit” (this is why I think artificial intelligence has already arrived, an extremely malevolent artificial intelligence, intent on making human beings subservient and dominating the world: submit.  Any time you want to apply for anything, or make a complaint or a comment: submit.  Yield.  Surrender.  Say uncle. Submit.

And I got back a reply saying “your recapcha did not match something or other” which disturbed me for 3 reasons. First, I hate those capcha thingies.  It’s a robot asking you to prove you are not a robot.  How insulting is that?  It’s like putting a 12 year old at the door to check your ID and make sure you’re 21.  Secondly, it wasn’t marked as an obligatory box.  Third, there WAS NO FUCKING RECAPCHA WORD.  They were asking me to copy something that wasn’t there.

So, I found the twitter account of the guy who wrote the article, some fucking worthless piece of shit moron named Tim Macdonald, and sent him a note.  But, you know, twitter.

Marshall McLuhan said “The Medium is the Message” and, at the risk of Woody Allen pulling Marshall Mcluhan out of the line to tell me I’ve totally misinterpreted him (one of my favorite movie scenes of all time), I’d like to present these two examples of that phenomenon which I saw today.

JeeYoung Lee

The first was the work of this young Korean artist, which was posted on my facebook page by my friend Eric, who once said to me at a poetry  reading “It ain’t about the stage, it’s about the page” and that has stuck with me.  I’m not so much knocked out by her artwork or her message. On the one hand, I thought the white mice, the pipes, and the attack of the crows were kind of boring tales of post-modern angst or whatever, first world bitching about the lack of meaning in life.  On the other, I liked the more childlike stuff, the giant paper flowers, the cotton wool clouds, especially the  one with the rocking horse. (pictured here)

What knocked me out was that it was a different form of art.  Some people paint.  Some people sculpt.  And, I suppose, some people view interior decoration as an art form, and certainly stage setting, but she’s taken those to a higher level, using her room as a medium and then photographing  it.

It’s the medium that’s the message, and I hope this  woman has copycats.

The other story was kind of humorous, in a haha, look at how the government is spending millions of dollars paying people to play video games and calling it national security, kind of way.

Seriously, the NSA (National Stupid Agency) has people playing World of Warcraft and other games full time, because they think they might find some terrorists there, but the only people they’ve ever busted are each other as they trip all over themselves trying to entrap somebody.

Still, it shows how the medium is the message and it’s a harbinger of the future.  Video games will become more and more sophisticated, more and more popular, more and more interlinked with real life.  Of course, the government is spying on them.