Oh for fucks sake !!

It would seem our fundemental (emphasis on ‘mental’ as opposed to ‘fun’) friends in the Middle East have no sense of humour and could use a geopolitical lesson.

Honestly if you take anything (especially something as fucking pointless as a religion) that seriously you need a hobby, might I suggest truck dodging ?

It’s high time the religious fanatics of the world took a long hard look at themselves and their religions so they can realise it’s all a crock of shit and give up fighting about it.

But I don’t suppose anybody will listen to me on this one either - oh well.

hat tip to The Marmot (can he still be called that ?)

Just stumbled across the Dram Man’s new blog over at blogspot. I get the feeling it has been around a lot longer than I realise (never read it until this morning) but it is cool (particular if, again, your interests are similar to mine).

you should all look at http://dramman.blogspot.com

in other news
The Marmot’s Hole seems to have changed it’s name to ‘From Nakdong to the Yalu’. It looks as though our good friend is still playing around with his layouts and such (as is a bloggers wont every now and then I guess) and his archives do not seem to have migrated to his www.rjkoehler.com URL, but new content is till arriving regularly and the comments section(s) are still in open season.

It really is impressive what can be done these days.

She smokes fag after fag. It’s not perhaps the best thing she could be doing, but it’s her choice

and equally amazing how fucking stupid people can be, she was probably flicking ash in the dogs eyes to start with (read the article - you’ll get it).

The bench ruled the performance was purely commercially motivated and had no artistic merit whatsoever. It said the show, in which three nude models sprayed each other with yoghurt, was obscene and sensational, adding it could find no justification for using nudity to achieve the goal of the campaign.
from the chosun ilbo

I don’t like yoghurt, but I’d have bought a tub that day.

hat tip to the Marmot

… or it is ?

This article from the Chosun Ilbo gives an interesting insight into the workings of the Korean legislature/judicial system with regard to equality of the sexes (and it doesn’t end as one might assume).

For anyone who has spent any time in Korea it’s no secret that, so far, womens lib has not hit the country in any huge way, although the legal codes have been fairly current in keeping up with the concept of womens rights. However we now find that the Korean legislature has been a little tardy in keeping up with the rights of men under their protectorate.

Could the clown in the current hit movie “The King and the Clown” sue the King for raping him? Not under Korean law he can’t. The penal code limits victims of rape to women.
from the Chusun Ilbo

It’s interesting (and to my mind a little difficult) to think of men as downtrodden in Korea, but it gives certain pause for thought (at least if you’re as interested in society and law and their interactions as I am - and I’m sure you are)

Things I didn’t know about Korea pre this article;

- 15.4 percent of soldiers experienced sexual abuse in the Army (according to the Human Rights Comission, it doesn’t say which one but I assume the UN - and they want to being national service back to my country).

- ‘visible scarring’ qualifies one as diasbled under Korean law (though there is a sliding scale and I shouldn’t think you get much for your pains either way).

… or words to that effect.

The Lost Nomad gives us an article from Ohmynews, along with an interesting little cartoon for our ‘reading/fisking/commenting pleasure’.

The commentary is, in true Nomad style, entertaining and enlightening and worth the read … assuming you’re into that sort of thing.

Read the full story of that picture here.

Read the story at the link above to find out why it took all the following forces to cut down a tree.

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If they were donated voluntarily is this really such a bad thing ?

Dr Andrei Lankov is a professor at the Australian National University currently teaching (on sabattical ?) at 국민대학교 in Seoul. His resume list his main research interests as;

North Korean political and social history, with a special emphasis on the state’s formative periods (1945-1965) and the Soviet and Chinese policy toward the Korean Peninsula; the Modern Korean city and social and cultural aspects of modernization in Korea.

Last night he gave a lecture at the Royal Asiatic Society’s Correspondents Club lounge entitled, “The Death of North Korean Stalinism“. I was there with a few friends and I was most impressed.

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ok so I have actually never met the man but I just read the Metropoliticians latest scribble and, while I had been aware of a certain ‘less then flattering letter’ being written to the Korea times re: one of their articles I had not been able to find the original texts and as such did not really realise the true extend of the mans asswipeness (I’m sure he’d take umbridge at my poor use of idiom/grammar there).

The Metropolitician serves the full texts up in his latest post and I can only say I am nothing short of astounded - what a fucking retard this J.B. Toddsttoe is, he’s lucky INTS are playing in a tournament starting in about 20 mins or he’d be getting a much bigger mouthful from me.

What an ass.

Oranckay admits to being not so good at adding witty speech bubbles to interesting political photos and I was about to prove I’m not any different by trying to put a few on some of these pictures … until I saw this one - it’s an amusing speech bubble unto itself.

photo courtesy of Yahoo! news

As I’m preparing myself to leave this lovely country in but 4 short weeks (exactly, as of today in fact) I’ve come to reflect a bit on some of the more precious moments of my time here and, aside from the obligatory nights on the soju with pretty girls and the like, I’d have to say some of my fondest memories of Korea will be the times spent on the rock with good friends in all manner of overpopulated Korean crags (save for Chuseok, when we had the entirity of 선운산 to ourselves).

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