bullets, bullets, bullets

women whom Hollywood keeps trying to market as pretty

I'm gonna be superficially male here and get something off my chest. Here's a list of meh women who really don't deserve the status they currently have in society. And yes, I realize I wouldn't pass any beauty tests, either, so feel free to kick my ass in the comments:

Sofia Boutella... hard no for me

Lashana Lynch—they're marketing her hard, but I'm not buying

Anna Kendrick—great comic actress and singer; her face... "has character"

Queen Latifah—blandly pretty, I guess, but kinda hefty and Hausfrau-ish

Sandra Oh: credit for never getting surgery and for being talented

Meryl Streep, an example of talent trumping surface appearances

the Streisand Effect = hypnotizing people into giving you romantic roles in your heyday

Reese Witherspoon: Someone saw past the surface and decided to give her a chance.

Kyra Sedgwick: Please stop giving her romantic roles.

Bella Hadid: not so bella

Julia Roberts—just why?

Anyone you'd add to the list? Anyone you'd remove?

I could do a lot more cruel lists in this spirit. How about "Women who started off pretty but now look scary after drugs, Ozempic, and surgery"? Megan Fox would probably top that list.

just wait until it rains... or until you sweat

interlinguistic pun done right

The French word for "bread" is le pain.

oh, myyyyyy

Jesus, man, what a night

 

But who, in the picture, is saying the above?

Ave, Dr. Gilleland!

Dr. Mike Gilleland quotes ancient wisdom that could apply to today's Hollywood stars, what with the drugs, the plastic surgery, and now the Ozempic vanity:

Old age, resistless foe, how do I loathe thy presence! Them too I hate, whoso desire to lengthen out the span of life, seeking to turn the tide of death aside by philtres, drugs, and magic spells,—folk that death should take away to leave the young their place, when they no more can benefit the world.

The original Greek is quoted beneath the translation in Dr. G's post. Nothing ever changes.

what could make the great man cry?

The scene from his books that made Tolkien cry:

dog-hating

Back when I was young and impetuous, I went out of my way to eat dog one day here in Seoul. Found myself a boshintang-jip and settled down to a bowl of dog stew. Since then, I've seen the horrific documentaries about what Korean dogs go through before they're eventually killed and served as food. I now regret contributing to the dog-meat industry and will never touch boshintang again. That said, I can't say that Koreans hate dogs, not the way certain Muslims do. Many Koreans keep dogs as pets—usually smaller dogs, but on occasion, I see some larger breeds out and about, especially on my long walks, when I end up getting barked at.

web shooters

His dad put a can of cheese whiz in his Spider-Man web shooter. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/lZF5KdV3fA

— Chad Harrison 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@Texas_jeep_guy) April 23, 2026

an actual uni job ad appears!

Finally, a new university-level EFL want ad is out! See it here.

Native English-Speaking Non-Tenured Professors Needed at Cheongju University, Cheongju, Korea

The pay looks to be... decent. It's about a 50% downgrade from what I'd been getting over the past few years, but beggars can't be choosers.

The main problems, from what I can see, come down to the required documents. I have to dredge up employment certifications from my previous university jobs, which I don't think I have anymore since my previous uni jobs date back to 2014-2015 (Dongguk University), 2013-2014 (Daegu Catholic University), and 2005-2008 (Sookmyung Women's University). So that's one hurdle. It's too bad they won't accept documentation from my most recent job.

Other document problems: I need to get two letters of recommendation. While I know my most recent boss will be happy to write me one, I'm not quite sure where to get my second letter from. There are some former colleagues that I can try, so maybe I'll hit those people up by email this weekend. I'm also going to have to obtain apostilled copies of my degrees (B.A., M.A., and PhD.), sealed transcripts with grades, an apostilled National Criminal Background Check from my native country, and a recent health report. The criminal background check is something I'm going to need to request, and that's going to take weeks. In fact, it might take so long that I'll surely miss the May 12 due date for initial documents submission. Crap.

The whole apostille thing became a requirement after my time. I didn't need any apostilled documents for Sookmyung, DCU, or Dongguk, but from what I've seen over the past few years, apostilling is required everywhere now. So that's going to take time, but it's not a thing I need to worry about right now because, according to the job ad, apostilled documents aren't required until you've reached the second part of the hiring process.

Up to now, I've taken for granted that some university will end up hiring me, but as I've thought the matter through, I've become less confident about that. I'll be 57 come this August 31, and if the university is truly asking for a recent health report, they're going to see that I'm in precarious shape at best, i.e., there'll be even less motivation to hire me.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. So it looks as though I've got my work cut out for me this weekend. I guess the nice thing about apostilling my documents is that I can do it once, then it's done, and any other universities requesting apostilled documents can get them instantly.

Oh, yes: Cheongju University is also requesting a "demo lesson" to be conducted in person in June, assuming I make it that far in the hiring process. Guess I'll have to work on that as well. Pray for me. I'm suddenly facing a lot of paperwork.

ADDENDUM: The more I think about it, the more I think it'll be impossible to apply for this particular uni job, but the job ad gives me an idea of what I need to do to apply for future positions as they open up. It's now May, so there ought to be plenty of jobs on offer.

UPDATE: I've sent Cheongju University an email asking whether I can just give them what documents I already have ready if they're willing to wait for things like my criminal background check. I doubt I'll get an answer before Monday (if I get an answer at all). Better to ask now, though.

I think everyone can agree

Mr Inbetween: review

Scott Ryan as Ray Shoesmith (the grin is one of the last things you'll ever see)

Mr Inbetween* is an Australian series that went on for three seasons, from 2018 to 2021—roughly the pandemic years. It was written and co-produced by actor/writer Scott Ryan, who stars in the show and writes every episode. Every episode of this crime dramedy is also directed by Nash Edgerton, the older brother of actor Joel Edgerton. The series is a gripping serialization of a feature film from 2005 called The Magician, which has the same main character (Scott Ryan again) but is done as a hand-held camera documentary (doco in Aussie slang). I haven't seen The Magician yet, but if I find it, I might give it a look. Based on what I know about the movie and what I've seen in the TV series, the two stories have substantially different endings, so I wonder if Mr Inbetween should be thought of as a reboot. Maybe.

The eponymous Magician (not named as such until Season 3), and the focus of the series, is Ray Shoesmith (Ryan), a bald hitman with a strangely strict set of morals that are always at war with his highly compartmentalized brain. When Ray kills, it's "just business," and if he gets a job that entails killing someone he considers a friend (or a friendly acquaintance), he generally won't think twice about doing the work. Ray has internal contradictions as well: He always reins in his temper around the women and girls who are closest to him, but he can be easily set off by men who disrespect him, or who unnecessarily act like assholes (in Oz, folks are apparently much more likely to say dickhead, the Aussie answer to the British equivalent bellend). While Ray never gets openly furious at the ladies in his life, he does sometimes lose his cool in front of them. Ray also walks between two worlds: the seedy underworld where there's no end of people needing killing, and the more pedestrian world of his ex-wife Jacinta (Natalie Tran) and tween daughter (a very gap-toothed Chika Yasumura). Ray's brother Bruce (Nicholas Cassim) is afflicted with ALS (known in Oz as MND, or motor-neurone disease); his health is rapidly deteriorating, and although he shares Ray's dark sense of humor, Bruce is edging closer to wanting to die before he becomes totally immobile. Ray's friends all tend to be seedy people like Ray himself. His best friend is sex addict Gary Thomas (Justin Rosniak), who's into golden-shower porn, foot-shaped sex toys, and other kinks. Ray does what he can to keep the darker aspects of his life from bleeding over into his family life, but he's not always successful. Ray's boss is Freddy (Damon Herriman), who runs a nightclub where Ray works as a bouncer, and who gives Ray his various assignments. Ray also gets a girlfriend in Season 1, a woman named Ally (Brooke Satchwell), who works as a paramedic (Aussie slang: ambo).

When Ray has to kill people, and he's driving them to a remote spot to be topped, he can often become almost friendly, asking his victims personal questions or, if he knows his victims well, chatting about old times before taking them out of the car for their final moments ("See you in your dreams," says one old friend). But Ray has no tolerance for certain types of criminal, such as child traffickers. In one episode, we see Ray start to murder a group of traffickers before the basement door closes, blocking our view of the violence. And while Ray does what he can to avoid trouble with the law, he does hit one asshole (sorry—dickhead) and end up in jail for a few days until a friend "persuades" the assault victim to drop all charges.

With his creepy, predatory, Willem Dafoe smile, his cold stare, and his generally calm competence, Scott Ryan is the perfect Ray Shoesmith, a tangle of contradictions. Family man, friend of a perv, hitman for hire, befriender of fellow assassins, Ray occupies a weirdly liminal middle ground and is himself the locus at which his opposite tendencies meet. Only his ability to keep his thoughts and feelings compartmentalized prevents his various disparate worlds from crashing into each other, and one of the big questions haunting the entire series is whether the people in his "normal" life will ever find out what he really does for a living. (Ray usually tells people that he's in "security," alluding to his work as a part-time bouncer.) This is an especially delicate question for Ray and his daughter Brittany ("Britt"), who discovers one of Ray's guns in Season 3 and accidentally fires it inside Ray's house.

Part of Mr Inbetween's charm lies in how well acted it is. Chika Yasumura as daughter Britt starts to grow into a young woman as the show progresses over three or four years; she's a mouthy pre-teen giving Ray a lot of grief by the final season, and Ray has to tell her that he's tired of fighting her. For a child actress, Yasumura is just about pitch-perfect. The hilarious Justin Rosniak plays Gary as pervy and smarmy, eventually finding work as a porn-video director but still proving to be a truly loyal friend to Ray, sometimes helping Ray out on some of his jobs (and receiving a cut of Ray's cash payments). But just as often, he desperately begs Ray for help as his porn addiction and sexual proclivities get him in trouble with his strict, imperious Russian wife Tatiana (Lizzie Schebesta), who ends up leaving Gary for another woman. Rosniak is one of the main sources of comic relief. Damon Herriman as boss Freddy is hard to read (and deliberately so): Will he eventually fuck Ray over, or are he and Ray good enough friends to move past various differences and betrayals? Matt Nable, as stoic fellow hitman Dave, is spared by Ray after having been paid to kill him—a demonstration of Ray's understanding that none of this is personal. But in sparing Dave, Ray makes a fast friend, and the two do some operations together.

Another thing to like about Mr Inbetween is the understated nature of Ray's viciousness. Ray is most likely to explode into violence when he's with a target or confronting an enemy who deserves to die; otherwise, he's normally a calm bloke. But Ray, who has army training, and who suffered abuse from his now-aged father Bill (Kenny Graham), isn't portrayed as a cartoonishly precise assassin like Keanu Reeves's John Wick, or a ruthlessly vicious fighter like Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer, or a coldly calculating death machine like Denzel Washington's Robert McCall. Ray moves deliberately and strategically, mainly relying on luck, a bit of strategy, a knowledge of human nature, and plain common sense. He's also not the best fighter in town, a fact that's emphasized when he challenges one of his young female students in a boxing gym to take him down with her Brazilian jiujitsu knowledge, which she does, choking Ray into unconsciousness because he refuses to tap out. But Ray doesn't have an ego about his loss to his student, and he ends up asking her for help when a girl at school starts to bully his daughter Britt (Ray had tried talking to the mother; predictably, she called him a dickhead while threatening to sic her supposed policeman brother on him—a threat with no substance to it). Ray's student, meanwhile, finds the bully at school and threatens to rip her head off, which takes care of that problem.

The overall plot arc of Mr Inbetween doesn't build up to anything; the entire show is more a slice-of-life comedy-drama. The invested viewer will have questions as to who will die by the end: Will Gary? Will Dave? Will Ray's family? And what will eventually become of Ray, who is becoming less and less successful at keeping the darker side of his life away from his family? For a series about a hitman, the violence and action aren't constantly in your face; mostly, the show is about human moments—interacting with an increasingly surly daughter, dealing with the circumspect ex-wife, handling a girlfriend's fear of Ray because her previous boyfriend had been violent, grudgingly reconciling with his abusive war-veteran father. Ray's brother Bruce, early on, asks whether Ray will help him die when Bruce feels the time is right; Ray hesitates to answer yes at first because he truly loves his brother. But when the moment comes, Ray is there to help Bruce, and this has to be one of the saddest, most touching moments in the whole show. Watching anyone with neurological difficulties is hard for me, and the death of Bruce left me with a lump in my throat. Hats off to Nicholas Cassim for an authentic, and authentically depressing, portrayal of ALS.

In terms of political worldviews, Ray (and his friend Gary) seems to lean more conservative. He doesn't believe that being meek and mild pays off: All that does is motivate people to walk all over you. Ray's philosophy is: If you can't make people respect you, make them fear you. Otherwise, if people treat you with respect, treat them with respect. Ray isn't a superhero out to protect the innocent; there are a few victims of his who probably didn't deserve to die, but they were late with payments or had committed some other kind of low-grade offense. But Ray does have a code of sorts, and it aligns with a species of amorality that activates whenever he's on a job. And while Ray is willing to kill certain longtime friends if the money's right (nothing personal), he wouldn't think of harming the people who are closest to him: his daughter, Gary, his brother Bruce, his girlfriend, his ex-wife, or even a war buddy.

So the characters in Mr Inbetween are complex, dimensional, and well written. And honestly, I can't think of a single complaint I have about the series, although I do have to wonder whether the Australian police will ever catch on to the amount of killing and grave-digging and car-burning that Ray does. If Ray were ever to get caught, he'd probably end up serving several life terms for all of his crimes. The series does manage to end on a note that is simultaneously comical and sinister, very much in the spirit of any number of Tarantino films, which usually mix the humorous and the horrific, leaving the audience unsure how to react. In fact, you can probably think of Mr Inbetween as a three-season-long Tarantino film. It's got the occasional bursts of violence and gore, the well-written characters, the lively clashes of attitudes and perspectives, and above all, the random and unpredictable twists of fate that can alter personal trajectories permanently—like when a suddenly appearing kangaroo causes a car crash in the Outback during a drug run.

I highly, highly, highly recommend the well-acted, well-plotted, well-written Mr Inbetween. If this is an example of the quality of modern Australian TV, then I ought to seek out more Aussie material. The series is a fun, riveting watch—very binge-worthy. The show is also a great resource for Aussie slang and turns of phrase, like dimmie (from dim sum) for Aussie-style Chinese-ish dumplings, dunny for toilet (I already knew that one), Jack or dog for cop or informant, He topped himself for He killed himself, the nickname Gazza for Gary, etc. Watch this magnificent—and all-too-short—series with my enthusiastic blessing.

__________

*In UK, Aussie, and NZ English, you don't normally put a period after abbreviations like Mr, Mrs, Ms, and Dr. Something for my American readers to remember: We Yanks do use periods. Don't pretend you are who you are not. Remember what country you come from. Neither style is wrong from an objective standpoint, but each style is proper to a particular culture. If you don't belong to that culture, don't ape its style with the technical stuff. That's pretentious, and Ray Shoesmith would probably kill you for your presumptuousness.

AI cats cooking

This cracked me up!! 😹😹😹 pic.twitter.com/cORpm9v5wu

— Lucy (@TheLucyShow1) March 25, 2026

a Jew encounters Mark

The term christology refers to thought and discourse about the nature of Jesus Christ. In my field—religious studies—and in cognate fields, there's an -ology for every Person of the Trinity: there's theology for God (theos), christology for the Christ (xristos), and pneumatology for the Holy Spirit (pneuma). Christology subdivides into two categories: high christology and low christology. In high christology, Christ is spoken of in language that affirms his godliness and divine nature. In low christology, Christ is portrayed as frail and human, subject to "the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to." The best contrast between these christologies is Jesus on the cross in the gospel of Mark versus Jesus on the cross in the gospel of John. In Mark, Jesus' final utterance is a scream: "With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last." (Mk. 15:37) Compare this to John: "When he had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." (John 19:30) The Jesus of Mark is shown suffering and dying the way any mortal would die in such a situation. In John, however, we're faced with an exalted, deific Jesus who has participated in and witnessed the fulfillment of a divine plan, as one might expect from a powerful, transcendent being. 

In the video below, a Jew named Rebecca talks about her encounter with Mark's gospel. Rebecca doesn't talk in terms of christologies, but she has obviously understood Mark's gritty, human tone, so I think she's sensitive, in her own way, to what's going on in that gospel.

In theological academe, Mark's gospel is often jokingly referred to as "the hasty gospel" because the adverb translated as immediately (euthys) keeps recurring throughout the book. Another bit of Mark-related trivia: Chronologically speaking, it's actually the first of the four gospels and the source of many of the same verses seen in Matthew and Luke. There is another as-yet-unknown source of verses that appear in Matthew and Luke that do not come from Mark; this mysterious source has been designated Q for the German word Quelle, which means "spring" or "source." So much religious scholarship is, by the way, German.

Further New Testament trivia: The first writings of the New Testament aren't the gospels at all but rather the epistles of Paul (from roughly the early 50s to the late 60s).

scenes from walks

Monday, April 17, 1.57 pm

Friday, May 1, 3:25 p.m.—Yangjae Creek, which flows below the bridge I'm on, meeting the Tan Creek.

Just some pics. 

The second pic is from today, walking back from the closed bank. 

characterization

You've heard the accusation: "That [male] author can't write women." Or: "That [female] author can't write men." The videos below might just provide a fix to those problems.

they celebrate May Day here, and I once again forgot

Useless trip out to the bank today, which of course was closed. Today is May 1st, i.e., May Day for much of the world—a national holiday that is both a springtime festival and a day to honor workers. In the States (and in Canada, too, I think), we have Labor Day, but that's all the way in September and is usually a last-gasp holiday for students ending their summer vacations and looking with dread toward the new school year.

So... Monday, then, I'm once again off to the bank to transfer a few hundred bucks to my US account. I also have to sign my new rental contract. Yay.

UPDATE: In the comments, Charles tells me this is the first year that May Day is also a bank holiday. See what I mean about how, in Korea, things seem programmed to thwart me?

how exactly does that work?

So he stops after the first bit of cash, and... he sits there silent the rest of the day, not receiving any money? Or does he wait for a break in the passersby, then resume playing? How often do such breaks occur? I am really overthinking this joke.

drunken master

When a drunken man falls from a cart, he may be hurt but he will not be killed. His bones and joints are no different from those of other men, but the degree of harm done by the fall differs radically, for the spiritual in him forms one intact whole. Having been unaware that he was riding, he is now unaware that he is falling. (Chuang-tzu)

 

awesome cookies, with the help of an icosahedral die

Snickers, Kit-Kats, pretzels, and sriracha nuts

Some pretty awesome-looking cookies made thanks to several rolls of a 20-sided die. Man, I can feel myself jonesing for those.

poor horse

 

Gary explores Booth's

My verdict: Looks okay, but damn, it's bread, bread, bread.

test yourself

Olly Richards—I like his ideas for foreign-language teaching; he favors a story-oriented approach because narratives put language into context, which makes everything you learn more meaningful. I could learn from that.

the anthropic principle, explained by a kid

I think I used to sound this smug and self-assured when I was that age. I was a creationist through part of high school. The above kid, in talking about how "fine-tuned" the universe is (we should note that he's obviously memorized a script), is essentially articulating what is called the anthropic principle—the idea that the universe is "tuned" in exactly the right way for life to exist, a set of circumstances so improbable that it's more likely (some argue) the result of conscious intention than of random forces. The anthropic principle subdivides into strong and weak forms. The AI god explains this fairly well:

Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP): Proposed by Brandon Carter, this argues that our location (time and place) in the universe is restricted by the need for observers to exist. It implies that we shouldn't be surprised to find the universe is "just right" for us, because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here.
Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP): This suggests that the universe must have properties that make life inevitable, arguing that life is not just a fortunate accident.

The weak anthropic principle sounds a lot like the argument against my constant griping that people in Korea seem programmed to get in my way whenever I'm walking anywhere. Here are a couple of examples of what I see all the time: I'm walking in a crowd, and the Korean in front of me just stops for no apparent reason or does a U-turn for no apparent reason; it's 2:00 in the morning, and I'm about to cross a bike path when, out of nowhere, a bike whizzes by and forces me to wait before I cross. Thwarted yet again! Or if I'm walking on a pedestrian path next to a bike path, at least one oncoming cyclist will obnoxiously swerve onto the pedestrian path. This sort of shit happens to me so often that I've begun to think Koreans are programmed to deliberately get in my way. Another example: On a wide path, a Korean walking toward me (imagine that I'm walking on what is to me the right side of the road/path/whatever) will swerve, for no apparent reason, until he's almost brushing by me. This happens to me a lot on subway platforms. Why? Because Koreans are social and love human contact? Because the guy is deliberately being annoying? So the counterargument to my observations and pet theories is this: You need to be there to observe and experience these things, so if people are "deliberately getting in your way" or "deliberately thwarting you," it's in part because YOU happen to be there! So in a way, you're partially the cause of your own problems! That's a cousin of the weak anthropic principle.

Of course, things like the anthropic principle and intelligent design aren't evidence that it's the Christian God who has done all of this. Maybe it's a gigantic, Men in Black-style alien who created our cosmos. The kid is also making the hermeneutical faux pas of treating the Bible as a scientific text, spelling out cosmology long before modern science ever did. I'd argue that this sort of genre mistake will only lead one down a path of self-delusion, and that a sacred text like the Bible has value as a way of reckoning with axiology and possibly certain other types of philosophy; it has little value as a scientific text or as a reliable historical text.

Another thing to note is that, if the probability of my meeting Korean cyclists on an otherwise-empty path is vanishingly small, and yet these meetings keep happening without the aid of divine intervention (i.e., naturalistically), then why should we take the anthropic principle as anything other than a law of nature, i.e., simply a function of how matter behaves? Why involve God at all? Maybe there's just some mathematical rule that explains the situation.

And why would a religious viewpoint that already takes nature-violating miracles for granted even want to take the "scientific" route, anyway? Bizarre. You can't argue science out of one side of your mouth while quoting scripture out of the other side. If your purpose is to persuade atheists, citing scripture isn't going to help you at all, no matter how well that tactic plays with the home crowd. You have to speak your opponent's language to persuade him.

Anyway, the kid seems pretty smart. I'll be curious to see how his views evolve over time. A lot of those religiously motivated This can't just be coincidence! arguments usually stem from a lack of understanding of deep time, which is a factor in how random processes can lead to successful self-organization, which in turn ratchets upward toward increasing complexity and sophistication, but always within thermodynamic constraints, i.e., never violating physics.

caught brown-handed

be free!

the only thing they're good for

the safety factor

I'm envious of this guy's business model. I wonder how long it took for him to get established.

when I complete this ms

When I finish the manuscript for my movie-review book, I'll still have some things to do: final editing/formatting, figuring out a title, cover design, writing a foreword/preface and an afterword/bio, then converting everything to Kindle format so I can upload it to Amazon.

But before I do any of that, I might take a few days to walk the 120 km from Incheon to Yangpyeong along the Four Rivers trail. This is partly to prove I can still do such a thing. And I want to do this walk before it gets too hot, so it'll have to be soon.

Let's just hope there's no rain. That could get ugly.

well, he's no Mark Strong

I recall watching one video of an English-fluent German chick rating the German skills of non-German actors and actresses. She gave high marks to Sandra Bullock, who is fluent, but she reserved her highest praise for British actor Mark Strong, about whom she said that she couldn't even tell he wasn't German. Alan Rickman was a great actor, but in terms of German skills, he was no Mark Strong.

Years ago, I got the same compliment about my French ability, but lately I think my stroke and my overall lack of practice have eroded my French skills, so I won't be hearing Parfois, on oublie que vous n'êtes pas français anytime soon. I am, in fact, a little apprehensive about how things are going to be when I go to France this July for a few days. I realize that being back in France will instantly help me to remember my former high-level fluency, but I'm going to be there for only a few days before returning. I really ought to make a habit of visiting Seorae-maeul, the francophone district in Seoul that's not far from Express Bus Terminal. It's almost down the street from where I live, about 10 km away.

Meanwhile, enjoy the interesting video about how German Hans Gruber sounds.

deal-breakers

I'm almost 57 years old. In the States, someone my age in a white-collar job ought to be making close to $100,000 a year on average, assuming a reasonable cost of living. Here I am, though, about to start all over from Square One. 

So I'm back to my deal-breakers as I look for work:

• no kids
• no weekends
• no split shifts
• nothing under W3 million a month

W3 million/month is around half of what I'd been making at my previous job, but at this point, I can't be too choosy about my salary.

I'm not just looking for work on Dave's ESL Cafe (which is still showing only a single university job); I'm also looking at places like Craigslist as well as directly on university sites. Craigslist is filled with ads for hagweons; average offered salary is W2.7 million/month, and you have to work with kindergartners and grade-schoolers. No, thanks.

So next week, I'll be developing some presentation packages and getting in contact with my old employer, KMA, whom I had left when they stopped giving me steady work ten years ago (and when I had gotten employed by the Golden Goose). I have some ideas, and we'll see how all of that goes. KMA normally doesn't hire you unless you're already working at another job. I assume that's for legal reasons, so I'm going to try to pull the old F-4 trick on them. In theory, with an F-4, I don't need to be sponsored by a university or whatever to get another job, so I'm hoping there's no legal problem. Let's find out together shall we?

I bet the ladies like the extra finger

 

I would love to make these

Homemade brown-sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts. Why am I still such a creature of appetites? You'd think I'd've learned a lesson by now. Recipe here.

I admit I laughed

bug: fixed

I didn't think she needed any fixing back then, but these days, our aesthetics are ruled by the sensibilities of Japanese anime bois and their obsession with huge asses and gigantic breasts.

this late in April, it's practically summer in Korea

make the connection

She has spiral-shaped buttocks?

2015—finally there

Movie-review book manuscript (ms): It's been a long slog, but I'm finally at my 2015 reviews, having started with 2005-era reviews. From 2005 to 2015, my writing improved a good bit. For 2015, there seem to be about 32 movie reviews. Both the length and the frequency of movie reviews have gone up over the years; I had a lot of one-paragraph and two-paragraph reviews early on. These days, I do those sorts of reviews only when I don't have anything of substance to say about a movie that I either disliked or merely found uninteresting. Nowadays, most of my reviews are longer, more in-depth, and (I hope) better written.

So in a few days, I'll finish compiling the ms, then I'll work on final formatting. I still need a title for the movie-review book, which will be Volume 1 in a series, so it's got to be a title that can withstand the testicles of time. Your thoughts are welcome if you have something catchy in mind. I also need to write the book's preface and maybe an afterword or a bio.

At a rate of about five or six movie reviews per day, I ought to be done with the ms in about five or six days. In theory, anyway. Assuming life doesn't throw me a curve ball. Final editing/formatting, the writing of the preface and the afterword/bio, figuring out the title, designing a decent cover, converting the ms to Kindle format, and slapping everything online ought to take a couple weeks more. After that, I need to create the dead-tree version of my book. That ought to be relatively easier and quicker to do.

yay, fight choreography!

And I like the Schola Gladiatoria guy.

linguistic kissing cousins

Why do I keep thinking "Skurli burli"? Because I'm a retarded American is why.

wisdom comes out of the strangest places

 

my salad screams in horror

For years on this blog, I've argued that scientists will eventually make the case for the existence of vegetal sentience—plant consciousness—and that that will signal the end of ethical vegetarianism. While I don't think the following article is a knockdown blow for vegetarians, it's definitely a move in that direction.

Headline:

Scientists Discover Plants “Scream” – We Just Couldn’t Hear Them Until Now

Scientists have discovered that many plants emit faint ultrasonic clicks when distressed.

It sounds like something out of a dark children’s story. Hurt a plant, and it “screams.”

Not in a way humans can hear, but in a newly documented study, stressed plants were found to release bursts of ultrasonic sound that resemble faint pops or clicks, similar to bubble wrap snapping. These signals, described in the journal Cell, are produced by tomato and tobacco plants when they are dehydrated or physically damaged.

The sounds are as loud as a normal conversation, around 60 to 65 decibels (about 60 to 65 decibels), but they occur at frequencies far beyond human hearing. That means the world around us may be filled with plant noise that goes completely unnoticed.

The ontological fact is that we have to kill to live, and to phrase it in Buddhist terms, killing entails suffering. This is as true for plants as it is for so-called "sentient beings." Plants, as it turns out, may have their own species of sentience. It is the nature of life to create suffering. Just deal with it. And yes, by that logic, you may as well add tasty, tasty meat to your diet.

for you, Nathan

I doubt my friend Nathan reads my blog anymore, ever since he went left-liberal years ago, but this sort of thing would be right up his alley. And no politics!

Ancient Greek Coins With Octopuses 🐙 pic.twitter.com/qZtdmCzkXc

— Art Encyclopedia (@artenpedia) April 6, 2026

how we change

more fitness checks for us old guys

The algorithm knows me. It knows what's going to interest me. I belong to the algorithm.

you wanna do it right?

Because it's becoming painfully embarrassing to watch these people work as they fruitlessly try again and again, here are some pro tips to help out our bumblers:

1. Don't work alone. Work in coordinated teams with a command structure.
2. Have a plan that's more complicated than "just charge on in" or "lie on rooftop."
3. Have a Plan B.
4. Rehearse.
5. Understand that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Have a Plan C.
6. Either know your escape routes or plan to off yourselves.
7. Understand that, if you're successful, you'll probably have initiated a civil war, and there will be no mercy.

Frankly, I hope the people whose job is to prevent this kind of disaster are reading this, too.

a Temu Mr. Plinkett?

I'd been thinking about seeing this movie, which has been praised for its special effects. This review convinced me not to waste my time.

no change

because I am a slim white woman

There's been no change in the Dave's ESL Cafe job ads. That one ad for a post-doc researcher position at Hanyang University is still up. It's probably out of date at this point given that the job is/was for an early-May position, and it's now April 27. There've been no other job ads for university positions since I started looking (I check the boards several times a day). I guess the ads will come flooding in starting sometime in May.

the ginger with the zinger ("jin-jer" with the "zin-jer")

that's a big doughnut

This giant doughnut tempts me as if it were a challenge, but I know that, if I ever tried to eat something like that, it would kill me.

Jesus Christ—only in America

In the old days, I'd've said that that was enough for one Kevin. One stroke and one heart attack later, and all I can say is, Boy, that looks nice. It's like having no dick and going to a strip club: Sure, you can look, but what's the point in ever touching?

but...

Something's not quite right with this joke. If I remember correctly, the massive attack was meant to be a distraction, not a rescue, so that Frodo and Sam could pass relatively unimpeded. No? The joke doesn't quite work. It's disanalogous.

I suppose you could counterargue that the spirit of the attack was the same as the US military's "leave no one behind" ethos: In the LOTR story, armies clash for the sake of the two little hobbits, even if the goal isn't rescue. "For Frodo." (Sorry, Sam—you're chopped liver.)

Goblin Kingdom reacts with confusion as Gondor mounts a massive rescue expedition for a pair of puny Hobbits pic.twitter.com/WwZ8Fg1qN9

— Daily Gondor 📰 (@DailyGondor) April 6, 2026

forgot to announce it earlier

I neglected to announce this the day I found out, but my best buddy's son Iain is now engaged. Best guess is that the wedding will be in 2028. I hope they don't pick a hot season the way my French brother Dominique's son Augustin did: He picked this coming July 4 for his wedding. Sheesh. Things like this make a man reflect: It's been a real up-and-down season of endings and new beginnings for ol' Kevin—death and life, all against a background of borrowed time.

spherical wisdom

another round with the know-nothings

He really needs to try this on some Ivy League campuses.

a penny for your thoughts?

After watching this video, I can guarantee that you wouldn't ever want to be shot by "penny shot." Oh, and just wait for the 2-bore wax slug.

my old job, in case you're wondering

I have to take a break from not talking about politics and current events to note a personal connection to the latest leftie who's attempted to kill Trump: The guy was voted Teacher of the Month at the same job where I was voted Teacher of the Year (totally different branch on the other side of the country, but the same company):

It was all staged!
—most Reddit leftists right now re: the latest assassination attempt

When I used to blog about this job, I always changed the company name to "YB" for Yong-bulal, i.e., dragon testicles. Now, you know the name of my former company. I imagine they're doing a lot of reputational damage control right about now.

Some snarky comments about the latest incident at Instapundit (unedited):

Boasberg is writing up bail terms of CAD$3.75, which Trump must pay.

A Democrat. Who else?

So his plan was to Naruto run past security? And it almost worked? Bold, I'll give him that.

If daydreaming guy at the center counter was watching in the correct direction, he could have tripped him and ended it earlier.

The dude looks like he is one of Barack Obiden’s sex fantasies.

I'm surprised they screwed up and let his name leak.

I am really blown away that the entire leadership of the country would assemble in one relatively insecure location especially after we have taken out the leadership of Iran. As Trump pointed out this is why we need The Whitehorse Ballroom. ["Whitehorse"? —ed.]

Looks like more Secret Service personnel are getting fired.

The video of the incident shows the security detail was just standing around with their thumbs up their butts. Ran right through them. Perp should be dead, at the morgue, not the hospital.

Those barriers at that hotel were as flimsy as our Marines' Beirut ones in 1983.

How soon before someone says that Trump planted the shooter because he didn't want to speak to the press?

The typical nitwits on Facebook are making the typical nitwit comments about the assassination attempt.

Sorry, N.B., but Trump has a very long way to go to beat de Gaulle's horrific record, which, supposedly, was something like 30 different attempts. Let's hope he comes nowhere close.

And just like that, the SPLC is out of the news. See how that works. 

I can't wait for the "turn down the temperature" comments from those stoking the flames. 

sad but true

Don't trust your English to computers. Learn the rules yourself.

launch!

 

psych experiment (h/t John from Daejeon)

Watch this YouTube Short on the topic of learned helplessness.

I learned the term back in undergrad during a course in abnormal psychology, but the scenario I encountered in my psych textbook was a lot grimmer. I recounted that scenario in my homeschooling book Think Like a Teacher. People who care enough to read the entries in that book's glossary will find this:

learned helplessness (n.) Technically, learned helplessness is a condition in which an organism constantly subjected to extremely negative stimuli (say, electric shocks) reaches a point where it simply gives up and stops trying to avoid or escape the stimuli. Before the ethical treatment of animals was a prominent thing, there was one experiment done on some rats that were placed in vats of water. Each vat also had a strong stream of water pointing down at the rat, meaning the rat had to swim to stay above the water’s surface (I assume water was draining out the bottoms of the vats to maintain water level). Naturally, rats in such a situation would tread water for hours. However, scientists discovered that, if one were first to hold a rat in a reinforced glove until it stopped struggling in the hands, and then placed it in the water vat, the rat would give up swimming after only a few minutes, dive to the bottom of the vat, and drown. This example of learned helplessness—aside from being cruel—is rather extreme, so apply it to the homeschooling situation only as a cautious analogy. I may have made a mistake in bringing up the topic at all, but I think it is possible for there to be situations, in a toxic classroom, where students reach a point where nothing can motivate them. Such a situation, while not quite analogous to the rat experiment, is extreme in its own way. (If you have a strong stomach, look up the paper that describes the rat experiment: Richter, Curt P. “On the Phenomenon of Sudden Death in Animals and Man.” Psychosomatic Medicine, Volume XIX, No. 3, 1957, pp. 191-198. You can find a PDF of this article online at this URL: https://www.aipro.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/phenomena_sudden_death.pdf. It’s a pretty morbid read.)

(The last part of the text is formatted slightly differently in the book.)

the binary

troops gotta eat

"nuisance"

 From ROK Drop comes a story about this lovely Chinese lady:

🔥 오늘자 해외에서 난리난 중국인 진상 레전드 난동 사건!!! ㅋㅋㅋ 😂
🇨🇳🇲🇾 충칭 → 쿠알라룸푸르 AirAsia 비행기에서

1. 🇨🇳 중국 여성이 매우 큰 소리로 전화 통화 → 🇲🇾 다른 승객들이 “좀 조용히 해주세요” 했는데 무시
2. 승객들이 녹화 시작 → 중국 여성이 승무원한테 달려가 중국어로 민원… pic.twitter.com/1G4wfcio9R

— FreedomToMars 😎💪 (@FreedomtoMars) April 22, 2026

TRANSLATION: 

Today's legendary incident of a Chinese nuisance causing a stir overseas!!! Lol. On an AirAsia flight from Chongqing to Kuala Lumpur: 

1. A Chinese woman spoke on the phone very loudly. Other passengers asked her to be quiet, but she ignored them. 

2. Passengers started recording. The woman ran up to a flight attendant and complained in Chinese. 

3. When the flight attendant answered in English, she exploded, saying, "I'm Chinese, so respond in Chinese!" + She went into full-on nuisance mode, demanding, "This is an international flight, why aren't you speaking Chinese, the international language!!" 

Eventually, Malaysian police were called, she was forcibly dragged off the plane, and the flight was delayed by an hour and a half. 

What's even more legendary? The Malaysians were grinning from ear to ear while recording, saying, "As expected, the nuisances are always Chinese." Lol. Seriously, they have no common sense regarding international flights, no phone manners... Why do they insist on speaking only Chinese in the age of translation apps?

"International language." Ha! Note, though, that it wasn't so long ago that Americans were considered to be the loud, obnoxious, arrogant tourists. And in the Philippines, Koreans are considered to be among the most obnoxious tourists and expats.

So basically, if you're an American—especially a right-leaning American—with little experience abroad, and you're someone who thinks that only People of a Certain Race are ever this obnoxious in public, think again. No race has a lock on obnoxious, rude, and criminal behavior. I just watched a slew of incredible porch-pirate videos on YouTube in which every single thief was a white man or a white woman. I doubt that that's the result of selective editing; it's just a special kind of stupid that appears in a certain kind of area. Believe me, assholes abound everywhere. Why do you think I'm so antisocial?

when the fish are high

Here's a peek through a keyhole at the implications and effects of giving cocaine to salmon. The more you think about this, and how it affects more life than just salmon, the more disturbing the whole situation becomes.

an interesting apologia for the anti-LOTR

I think I almost agree with this, but I haven't thought it through yet.

date coordination

It's been a few months since I'd bothered to check the dates for my upcoming hospital appointments. For whatever reason, those appointments now occur on different dates—one for the diabetes clinic, and one for the cardio clinic. I'd forgotten that. I have my diabetes appointment this coming May 15 (about three weeks from now), but I've got my cardio appointment in July—the 10th, to be exact. I'm not too worried about the diabetes appointment, but the date for the cardio appointment has me worried: I'll be in France from roughly July 2 to July 6. I'm going to a wedding, which means plenty of eating and celebrating. I doubt I'll participate in much other than the ceremony itself, but I'm going to have to be extra careful about what I eat around that time.

Part of the problem is that the cardio clinic sees me about once every six months while the diabetes clinic sees me about once every four months, which didn't use to be the case. With the two clinics now seeing me on different schedules, there are at most two times during the year when both appointments will be on the same date.

I guess the best strategy is to get my A1c as low as possible before I head to France, then to do a good bit of walking (in the July heat and humidity—joy) upon my return.