Jewelry, you're no wondergirls...

damn.

really though, this song is pretty catchy.

its like if every pop star in America came together in some sort of Asian fetish super group... (Alicia Keys, what?)
which frankly, might not be a bad idea.

But how the hell are you going to knock Wonder Girls out of the top spot unless you have an infectious dance to go with the song? What were they thinking????
(i've become way to involved in this... which is why it's good that i'm leaving in THREE DAYS.)

Also note when "alicia keys" says "together" and drops the "th" sound... so good.

Travel as a study of The Trajectory of Pop Music in a Globalized World

Once I sat in a Pizza Hut in Nizwa and they were playing White Town's "Never Be Your Woman."
40 years ago Nizwa was a rebel Omani city without paved roads or electricity. Now... White Town (...and pizza.)

Last week i heard Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping" on a public bus into Pusan.

I don't know how many times i had to defend my distaste for Michael Bolton/Phil Collins/George Michael while living in Egypt.

IN OT Meta-blog 7th day [sunday] wtf

Maybe this is a painfully banal and obvious post topic, but I've been thinking about how the process and value of thinking something is a lot different than saying it out loud. How you can imagine 'conversations' in your head that couldn't possibly pan out in real life, which points to not just a 'disconnect' but more precisely the existence of two distinct separate entities of personality. And if they are maybe 2 separate and distinct entities than maybe its also best for us to name them as such.

labels:
Internal Narrator (IN) and Outgoing Talker (OT).

examples:
1a. The way when you're at home later and replaying a conversation in your head it sometimes sounds horribly stupid.
(IN has different values/ideas from OT)

1b. The way 'conversations in your head' can never be replicated in real life and always sound trite/grandiose/staged when attempted.
(conflict of IN attempting to 'put words into the mouth' of OT.)

2a. The way most communication is focused around one Personality Half sharing the experiences of itself i.e. we talk about conversations we had/things we did (OT on OT) and write about our ideas^[*] (IN on IN) and when we do try to have some sort of cross over and say 'talk about our feelings' (OT on IN) it 'comes out all wrong' or scares someone away or is 'a downer' or 'cliché' or see 1b. (likewise when we try and imagine dialog or write fiction (IN on OT) it similarly sounds trite or contrived because what the hell does the IN know about what the OT would say anyway. see 1b.

3a. The way when you are alone extendedly and interacting rather exclusively with one sided stimuli (like movies/books/music/old diary entries) the character of that stimuli and its effect becomes noticeable to the point where reading can be seen as a dialog-al opportunity for the IN and 'watching' the corresponding opportunity for the OT. So that sometimes when you're alone, reading is counterproductive because it grows the IN making it harder for the OT to function properly if/when it is [will be] used again. So that sometimes watching TV is healthy not because 'it makes you feel less alone' but because it nurtures the OT/shuts up the IN.

3b. The way when you read something profound but also maybe painfully sad/nostalgic it is effecting because the 'reading' has handed it directly to the IN, but if you were actually taking part in same said situation you might write it off as phony or whatever. [This thought experiment might suggest a descriptive labeling of the IN as sappy/emotional with the OT being sociopathic/unreasoned. I dunno.]

4. The way using someone as a 'sounding board' to 'bounce ideas off of' is just a safe way for the IN to communicate or share with the OT.

5. The way you can catch mistakes in writing by reading out loud.
(OT can sometimes serve as copy editor for IN.)

other thoughts:
There has to be communication and balance.
If the IN is given autonomy (either due to circumstance (like living in a country where you can't communicate with almost anyone/ where all background chatter is white noise and therefore completely undistracting) or due to choice (person is a recluse anti-social) ) then the situation snowballs and you can get 'trapped in your head' and then when you do finally get to talk to someone the OT is so starved and pent up that he just spews his [your] fucking guts and won't shut up and talks about himself forever until its boring and you^[†][‡] wish you could stop but really have no say anyway.
Or maybe the dominant IN causes the opposite to happen and you start to live in the IN and see the OT as epiphenominal and become so detached from your experiences that you don't even notice that you're distant or needy or anything, in which case the effect becomes indistinguishable from the reverse situation of dominant OT dormant IN,
which is when if for whatever reason the OT is so strong as to eclipse the IN then you become unhinged and unable(unwilling) to moderate yourself as projected through interactions to the point where you are repetitive and shallow stagnant boring but also possibly more entertaining in small doses.

Thats all for today

^[*]Of course some people use their journals only to record conversations/experiences and not to offer commentary in which case the diary is just a police blotter or archive and no real interaction between OT and IN takes place anyway. And does this mean that people who keep these sorts of journals have dominant OT's since even writing which should be the domain of the IN is instead used as an extension of the OT?

^[†]I (as a Person with an imbalanced heightened IN who can't help but think of Myself as The IN, with the OT being a possibly External Interloper/foreign agent/savior) wonder if someone with a reverse imbalanced heightened OT when they do think worries that it is the 'thinking' that is off kilter and feels more comfortable/'Himself' only when talking.

^[‡]Of course this suggests that there is actually a Third Person hiding out back who chooses to dwell in/watch from the vantage point of one particular location/mode of interacting [these being either the OT or IN] at any given time, or that OT and IN are more like tools that this Third Person uses to communicate with either the Self^[§] or the Outside World, in which case it is not so much a conscious 'choice' but rather a natural unconscious usage of the most apt tool, like how you hear with your ears and see with your eyes, in which case this entire entry is pointless and stupid.

^[§]which means the Self itself has to be split off again to become a 4th part that the Third Person is communicating with vis a vis the process/instrument of the IN.

(linguistic) insecurities

The first time a student in Egypt explained to me that Arabic contained every phonic sound from every language on earth, i was a little taken aback.
After all, Arabic contains no V, P, or CH sound, nor a grouping of 3 or more consecutive consonants (like in spring).
And this is only the English sounds that Arabic lacks.

But in the Middle East, Arabic is more than just a language. It is first a signifier of purity - the Koran was revealed in poetic Arabic, and unlike the Old or New Testament, it cannot be sacredly translated.
It is also a symbol of unity.
Though the Egyptian and Moroccan dialects are as different as Spanish and French, their definitional sameness acts to represent (maintain/produce?) an analogous unity among Arab countries. When you speak the same language, you implicitly share values and responsibility - and as differences in culture, politics, and economy have decimated any notion of pan-Arabism, Language has remained the one true bond. The exclusion of Shi'a Islam in Iran and 'secular' Islam in Turkey from the broader Middle Eastern concern is no coincidence - they speak a different language.

While living in Egypt, I saw this linguistic myth as nothing more than the language component to a host of myths meant to reify Arabic/Islamic superiority through 'empirical' examples.

And then I came to Korea.

And sure enough, identical story. Only here the claim is expanded to include Hangul, the writing system, which can supposedly reproduce any 'foreign' sound.

While no language can make the claim to umbrella all others, at least Arabic was sort of close. I mean, Egyptians are shockingly fast language learners, and they actually don't have strong accents.

But Korea? Aside from lacking phonemically differentiated L/R, B/P or G/K, there is no F, Z, V, or voiced dental fricative TH (as in 'the'), nor many short vowels. Also, any consonant sound must be followed by a vowel, even if it at the end of the word. (thus max becomes maxuh.) Koreans are shockingly bad language reproducers.

But the 'fact' of Korean lingual superiority is so ingrained (mythified) that it goes completely unchallenged. The adult students i have confronted about this obvious untruth have either laughed in realization, or frozen up, like being told God didn't exist.

But their is more to this bizarre convergence of mythified Linguistic Exceptionalism.
The direction towards which this myth is used varies greatly between the two countries. In Egypt the linguistic superiority myth served to unify a diversified Arabic culture and reify Islamic superiority. Although it was to an extent used as an in-group creating example, (demonstrating superiority over the European out-group) this "in-group" included many countries, and in a sense expanded and defined the group beyond an equally plausible "Egyptian exceptionalism."
But in Korea, the Linguistic Superiority Myth serves an almost opposite purpose. Korea doesn't share its language with a broader region, and so the bolstering effect of the myth does not expand the group. Rather it exclusively serves Korean Nationalism, which unapologetically accepts Korea as the Best Country on Earth.

Of course, there are a billion examples of how this myth is hypocritical. Just as Koreans claim their language is superior, they also rely on English catch phrases as an economy of 'cool' more than anywhere else I've ever been. Korean advertisements regularly use nonsensical English phrases to bolster their images.

(the usage of 'story' in store names will be the subject of another post)

Furthermore, a large portion of the Namdaemun disaster coverage here has focused on Foreign coverage of the incident, to the point where it feels like The Korean Media is over-emphasizing foreign concern as a way to demonstrate the true importance of the disaster. Like the news is saying - "If the New York Times and CNN are covering this, than you know it is important."

As always, i'm not sure what the point of these observations are. In English, I feel like we're more proud of the words we absorb than anything else - knowing the definition of schadenfreude, or that the word for 'tariff' is of Arabic origin, is a sign of sophistication, and any notion of linguistic 'purity' only comes up when confronted with the idea of Ebonics as a legitimate linguistic whole.

But if we weren't so confident about our economic/political/moral superiority, would things like linguistic nationalism start becoming more important?

Max-uh

This commercial speaks for itself i guess.


And this is a popular TV show with a regular panel of foreign women who speak Korean. (notice the same girl from the commercial, here speaking fluent Korean, though in the commercial she says "max" instead of "max-uh")

Post on linguistics on the way...

You've come a long way, baby. (video edition)

This was my job in Egypt...


And this is my job now...


And i'm the asshole who misses Egypt.

A personal contribution to the "tell me" universe.

I know it sounds like i'm badgering her, but she sings it constantly...

(Some background info here.)

from my myspace 'homepage'

Choosing a religion.

Which religion should I choose to believe in?

www.peace-of-mind.net



I'm just going to point out that this sentence is logically impossible, and leave the commentary about how 'shopping for religion' is retarded to someone feeling a bit more motivated.

Putting that aside, the site is kind of amazing.

And wouldn't you know it, but the 'rational,' 'logical,' 'secularly deducible,' choice is Jesus.
You can't argue with science.

our quest is at an end.

Haeundae beach

technomythonoia update

a genuine cause for concern.

(original post here.)