So when we talk about overturning California's ballot initiative system is it because we are progressives? Also, after reading Xinran's The Good Women of China I did try to come up with what my tenets would be if I ran a Cultural Revolution. Because you know, I wage class warfare like a church mouse.

From Populism and Progressivism as ( Read more... )

A teenage orphan with a preposterously retentive memory and a knack for detailed explanation will naturally turn to tutoring to make his way in post-war Korea. For a while in the 1960s, my father taught the children of the head of the Seoul Customs office. Japanese cultural imports were all definitely illegal then, but a little wiggle-room for ( Read more... )

from Girls and Warzones:14: ...Yasushi Akashi's statement when he, as head of the UN mission in Cambodia, was approached by various governmental and NGO representatives about the physical and sexual violation of women and girls by UN troops. He responded he was 'not a puritan'; that 18-year-old, hot blooded soldiers had a right to drink a few beers ( Read more... )

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

Love Songs from Chris 'The Falcon' Han on Vimeo.

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Amis on the morning after: “He stood brooding by his bed… The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then ( Read more... )

“Excursions into the literature of a foreign country much resemble our travels abroad. Sights that are taken for granted by the inhabitants seem to us astonishing. ... In our desire to get at the heart of the country we seek out whatever it may be that is most unlike what we are used to, and declare this to be the very essence.” -Virgina Woolf
I ( Read more... )

at 11:44pm, the fellow in #303 fumbles his key into the lock, the coda to the 6:50am overture of plumbing. at 9:27am, the male half of the couple in #301 coughs, sneezes and the coughs again (the wall in my bedroom is rather thin). the barking section was introduced into #101 last week and now yips follow the chinese deliveryman as he shuffles up ( Read more... )

if not unvarnished (we wrap our personas 'round ourselves like pashmina), the documentary A Complete History of My Sexual Failures does nudge one to think how a thorough accounting of the past might help with the present paralysis.

I've got a circa 1996 Bon Jovi on the computer wailing about how he'll be there for me, how he'll be the air for me, while I finally finish up grading essays on the failures of the Korean education system. (yes I'm assigning my students paper topics that will serve as the cannon fodder for my educational revolt ( Read more... )