These days I'm pretty bored because school is on vacation and I find myself waking up very late and going to bed even later.  As a result of my boredom, I've passed the time catching up on hockey, reading the news, and digging through useless information (what I do best).  I've always been curious about obscure subjects, which I guess is a good thing because once we lose our curiousity we're, well, dead.  Anyway, onto a less morbid topic (but perhaps equally depressing), the subject of censorship. 

I had no idea about this next bit, I was reading through stuff on the internet, and I read that after the September 11th attacks, Clear Channel Communications (the largest radio communications company in the US) compiled a list of songs that were deemed "inappropriate" for the country's ears after such a tragedy.  Many radio stations, were told not to play these songs unless they wanted to be reprimanded or even banned from the airwaves altogether.  The list was considered very controversial as any popular song about airplanes or even if they had the word "falling", "fly" and "burn" were cast aside, so this meant that even a song as seemingly harmless as Free Fallin' by Tom Petty was on the list.  As well, any song that was sort of politically charged or could be used in such a manner were also placed on the list, and therein lay the controversy.

Although their lyrics are open to many interpretations and are not necessarily meant to be violent/disturbing/anti-American some of these songs were understandably put on the list, such as:

Queen - Another One Bites the Dust
Talking about another gone and another one biting the dust didn't seem very appropriate after 3,000 people were killed.

AC/DC - Highway to Hell
Not exactly a song that would comfort those who were mourning.

Everclear - Santa Monica
I guess lyrics like "watch the world die" didn't really do this song a lot of favours.

REM (and I guess Great Big Sea as well) - It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Not a lot to explain here.

The Doors - The End
Again, I guess singing about "the end" (beautiful friend), could open the song to a lot of potentially disturbing interpretations (e.g. this is the end of civilization, this is the end of the United States, this is the end of the world... as we know it...)

Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal
It sucks.

But some of the selections made no sense at all and you have to wonder what the executives of Clear Channel Communications were thinking when they added these songs to the banned list, for instance:

The Beatles - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Because we all know acid is responsible for terrorism...

The Youngbloods - Get Together
It's such a nice, upbeat and pleasant song, but I guess when the media was pumping us full of fear that anyone who wears a turban is carrying a bomb or anything written in Arabic says "Death to America", a song about smiling on your brother, and everybody getting together loving one another right now was clearly out of line.

John Lennon - Imagine
I was shocked when I saw it on the list.  It's written by a pacifist who was shot for fuck sakes.  I just don't see how this song is in anyway inappropriate.  Imagining a world full of peace when all hell broke loose? What's so wrong about that?

Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World
I'm speechless.  I guess interpreting the lyrics sarcastically would sort of deem it inappropriate, but what kind of douchebag does that?

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
This is a song you play whenever the world has gone to shit, what the fuck were they thinking?

Other selections were just plain odd, for example:

Rage Against the Machine - ALL SONGS!
I laughed so hard when I saw this.

Nena - 99 Luftballons (99 Red Balloons)
What the fuck?

MC Hammer - Have You Seen Her
What the fuck? People were listening to MC Hammer in 2001?

The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian
um... yeah, I'm still speechless about the whole MC Hammer thing.

For the full list of some of your favourites that were banned from airwaves, go here.  But yeah, sometimes censorship really doesn't make sense, and to use it even in times of great distress may actually make less sense.

So it looks like I owe Lindsay and Hao 1000 won each (calm down, it's worth about a dollar). 

Anyway, life in Korea is going well.  My Korean is coming along slowly, but hopefully it'll pick up.  I realized a few weeks ago that I had sort of become a FOB, if only for a brief moment.  I bought a jacket and when I went to school, all my students were telling me that I look very Korean, on top of that, I hadn't cut my hair in more than a month and the final cherry on the top of this FOB sundae was the fact that I had started to play Starcraft to pass the time at home.  So in essence, it took a little more than 2 months for the FOB virus to show symptoms.  The other symptoms may include:

- drinking incessantly
- smoking incessantly
- listening to really shitty pop music
- watching stupid soap operas that are so bloody predictable and one-dimensional
- drinking, smoking, listening to shitty pop music while watching stupid, predictable, one-dimensional soap operas

I did get a haircut but I'm sure that's no cure.  I'll update you on those other conditions.

But for now, I'll show you something that I found ridiculously hilarious.  It's a segment called "Militant Black Guy" on the English TV show Balls of Steel.  Basically, the guy, the black guy, pretends to be... well... a militiant black guy and accuses decent white folks of racism.  I find it very entertaining.

And now, the long awaited post from Korea... like any of you care, 1000 won says no one will read this. 

It appears that since I've joined facebook, I've sort of neglected this blog and since I'm very partial to things I've had for more than 3 years, I decided I wouldn't abandon the #2 blog and instead use it as my venting site. 

So far, I must say that I really like Korea.  It's a really fun place with awesome food.  The people are generally ok, that is when they're not smoking in front of you and work is going pretty well at the moment.  For those of you who don't know (or perhaps don't care), I'm going to be here in Korea until the end of August 2008 to teach English.  Right now, I'm teaching at Gwangju Science High School (광주과학고등학교), a school for gifted students in science (well duh!) and mathematics.  I was told two thirds of these students will attend KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) once they graduate.  In case you didn't know, KAIST is their equivalent of MIT, so these kids will be designing and possibly leading the next big technological breakthrough in Korea.  I must say that teaching is not as easy as I thought it would be, but it's certainly not as hard as others think it is and so far, I'm enjoying it.

My students rock, here's why:
- they're all amazed that I have a Korean name, it's like... I'm Korean! Whoa! Who would have thought that?
- one chose his English name as Beckham, I call him by his Korean name, but I still think it's funny
- they all love soccer
- one girl's nickname is "God of death", not "goddess" but "god"
- one girl has a re-occurring dream where she's fighting orcs from The Two Towers except the only person defending the fortress with her is Santa Claus
- they haven't noticed a supposed resemblance between me and a certain Korean soccer player, if or when they do, I will no longer think they rock

But yeah, I'm really enjoying Korea.  I'm not having an easy time adapting to the language, but then again, I didn't think it would be easy.  I'm just surprised that I've survived this long with really crappy Korean.  Maybe I won't survive much longer... oh no...

Last week I observed something I had only seen in nature documentaries - cannibalism.

It's a funny story actually.  I was at a park last week for my church's Father's Day picnic.  I noticed that the park had this large swamp, which I kind of like because back in the day, there used to be a swamp in my backyard and I'd go there to catch frogs.  So I decided to catch some frogs so I could scare people. 

After standing around in the smelly swamp for a few minutes I managed to catch a small frog no bigger than my thumb.  So I went around the park scaring people with this little guy.  Why people are afraid of frogs is really beyond me, but oh well.

After a while, I decided to let the little frog go.  So I dropped him into the swamp and sort of splashed him to urge him further away into the swamp.  As I did that, a much bigger frog all of a sudden just grabbed it.  It happened so fast that the next thing I saw was the little frog's legs hanging out of the big frog's mouth (I wish I had a picture, as sad as I was for the small frog, I couldn't help but laugh from the irony of the whole incident).  I felt so bad because I pretty much sent the little frog to its death.  But then I decided, I would save the little guy so I caught the big frog and it let the little frog go.  Here's a picture of the big frog.

 
"If you kiss it, it will turn into a prince."

But yeah, frogs are cannibals.  I thought the whole thing was quite funny.  I got to scare some more people with an even bigger frog.  Too bad an even bigger frog didn't eat the big frog when I let it go.