While reading The Asia Pages, I had a thought. It’s not the first time I have had this thought. In fact, I have this thought quite often:
Do you ever get the feeling that Korean really, really WANTS to be the victim of a terrorist attack, if for no other reason than it would somehow legitimize Korea as a really significant and important country?
I have commented before on Koreans’ endless need to compare its places and people to OTHER places and people, seemingly in an effort to give some validity to the Korean situation.
But THIS… This has just crossed the line well into absurdity:
“Park Jin, a two-term lawmaker of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), might as well be called the Joschka Fischer of South Korea.”
WHAT?
“Only, Park hasn’t experienced the yo-yo syndrome Fischer did _ and doesn’t intend to, either.”
HUH?
“And the 49-year-old politician confessed that the German foreign minister of the Green Party, who is also well-known in Korea for the translated version of his book, “Nanun Dalinda (I Run),’’ gave him constant food for thought while on his diet program.”
Whatever.
Heaven done called another PC gamer back home.
From Reuters:
S.Korean man dies after 50 hours of computer games
Tue Aug 9, 2005 11:44 AM BST
SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe, authorities said on Tuesday.
The 28-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, had been playing on-line battle simulation games at the cybercafe in the southeastern city of Taegu, police said.
Lee had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play on-line games on August 3. He only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed, they said.
“We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion,” a Taegu provincial police official said by telephone.
Lee had recently quit his job to spend more time playing games, the daily JoongAng Ilbo reported after interviewing former work colleagues and staff at the Internet cafe.
After he failed to return home, Lee’s mother asked his former colleagues to find him. When they reached the cafe, Lee said he would finish the game and then go home, the paper reported.
He died a few minutes later, it said.
South Korea, one of the most wired countries in the world, has a large and highly developed game industry.
As we approach the 15th Anniversary of the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan, we mark the passing of a blues legend who never really got the wide-spread respect and attention that he deserved. Milton Campbell (aka Little Milton) died this past week at the age of 70 following a stroke. To quote from Art Neville’s tribute to Stevie Ray, "Heaven done called another blues stringer back home."
To read more about Little Milton, visit my blues blog.
My thanks to Joseph Steinberg for drawing my attention not only to the NPR page, but to the fact that Little Milton had passed on.
About 2:30 am, I awakened to the sights and sounds of an impressive thunder and lightning show going on outside my window. As the storm got nearer, the thunder crashes echoed through the parking lot and the concrete buildings of my apartment complex. After nearly continuous, multiple flashes over the space of 15 minutes, I decided that I would try to take some photographs of the lightning bolts contacting the earth somewhere behind the hill behind my apartment.
My strategy was simple. Put the camera on a 2-second shutter speed and click…I was bound to get something every time I hit the shutter. What I was not expecting was to get an incredibly massive bolt of lightning slaming into the hillside on my side of the hill at just about eye level and only about 40 yards away. The multiple images of the trees are the result of me jumping back and nearly giving birth to litter of kittens when the lightning struck. Here’s the picture:
This picture from the Korea Times illustrates why I have no desire to go anywhere near Pusan beaches during the Summer.
Joining 1,000,000 people on a small strip of sand does not sounds like a relaxing way to spend the day. ONE MILLION PEOPLE!!!
No thanks.