Kim Jong Undetectable

Since there's zero Ebola in Korea - or in most of Africa, for that matter - the big hubaloo on the peninsula the last few weeks has been to wonder where Kim Jong Uncle Killer was hiding since it'd been quite some time since he was photographed in public pointing at something wholly unremarkable by non-North Korean standards. The Supreme People's Assembly happened, a parade happened, the 5th anniversary of 1980s technology happened, and even a hamburger happened, but Kim Jong Undescended Testicle was nowhere to be found. Basic chores and public maintenance were left undone because the people who've performed these mindless tasks all their lives weren't given the famed on-the-spot guidance from Kim Jong Underbred so were left clueless about how best to proceed. People, in turn, starved, though I'm surprised anyone noticed since just like every day ever. 

Speculation about Kim Jong Undulant was rampant, much of which focused on his health and whether or not he was deposed in a coup. Reports were that Kim Jong Unibrow had gained quite a bit of weight since assuming power and that he possibly suffered from gout, which is just another way of saying he'd gained quite a bit of weight since assuming power and was now too fat to even walk. The coup talk was because some recent high-level defector said he was deposed in all practicality and was consigned to puppet leadership. The White House said shut up, that's not true, so I guess that leaves us with a fat kid who doesn't want to go to gym class. Still, where was Kim Jong Uncircumcised?

Well, ta da! Just last week Kim Jong Unaccounted For was finally accounted for: 



Turns out that he, predictably, was at home doing absolutely nothing, which also happens to be what he's doing whenever he's spotted in public, the difference here that Kim Jong Unindustrialized recently fired his caption writer so there was no one to explain to the public how a photo of a man standing still was in fact leading the perpetual revolution. Basic necessities for everyone, and maybe even a can of Coke!

But nice to see that even fat fuhhhh glutinous dictators are forced to give lip service to moderation. You can take a doodie all over your people and they'll never say no if you tell them not to, but another bowl of jello before I go to bed and eventually nature will make you carry around a cane as a warning, which I doubt he heeds. My guess is that Kim Jong Undisciplined is out of power within five years.

Today We Are All Doobags

Solidarity is vital to social protest for a couple of reasons: [1] to bring to bear sheer numbers in a populist struggle; and [2] a way for relatively privileged groups to expand awareness of the issues facing marginalized groups. Absent protest, it's a way to demonstrate empathy with the aggrieved.

Back in the day - before the internet, hashtags, and I bought this Che shirt so fight the power - solidarity meant bunking off work so you could join some rando three-mile power walk through traffic, mindlessly parrot the guy holding the bullhorn, enjoy a closed-fist head massage and tear gas facial, then spend a luxurious night in the Gran Palacio del Policia, a Hilton Property. Today it means uploading a photo of your hoodie to Instagram along with a caption saying you're a black kid you wouldn't actually hang out with were he still alive.

From what I can tell, the practice of saying you are someone you clearly aren't began when JFK told everyone he was a jelly doughnut, though he wasn't protesting or empathizing so much as he was telling the Soviets he carried around a brief case with a large red button inside. The next instance of I'm not me because I am you I can find was after Ronald Reagan was shot and his surgeon told him, "Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans." But that was only in response to Reagan joking he hoped the doctors were all Repubz. Whatever makes you feel better, homie.

After Reagan actually died then was reanimated as a robot, not a single person anywhere in the galaxy - I'm meticulously documenting all this with one page of Google results - pretended to be someone else until 2001, when the French newspaper Le Monde ran a headline declaring "We Are All Americans" in grievance of the 9/11 attacks. Since then, the public has made common cause with victims of every tragedy ever: We are all Londoners, We are all Hokies, We are all somebody from the Western world but definitely not Africa. This rhetoric finally reached its saturation point in the 2008 election when John McCain cynically tried to leverage some rando geopolitical issue into the US Presidency by declaring we were all Georgians, to which the voting public responded by pointing out what a worthless franchise the Atlanta Hawks were and then voting for the guy who didn't say we were all Georgians.

Afterward, and in concert with the exponential growth in social media, people have become reluctant to declare we are anybody, possibly because they don't possess the audacity to speak on behalf of a complexly stratified society but actually because they're so caught up in the I that they haven't bothered to ask others what they're thinking about. Basically, "we are" has become "I am," as in I am Malala; or I am hungry; or my favorite, I am Trayvon, in which white folk threw on a gray hoodie as a way of declaring that could have just as easily been me, since I like Skittles and iced tea. Really put things into perspective.

But whatevs. Even if the parallels a person has drawn between himself and a victim of injustice aren't exactly parallel, there's still an underlying issue present there that, that person finds compelling enough to take a public stance on. So even if no, you are most definitely NOT Trayvon Martin, White Lady, I still acknowledge her awkward attempt to argue a fairly common item of clothing isn't grounds for terminal profiling. (Though I wonder how many people would have taken photos wearing baggy jeans if those were the issue instead of a hoodie.)

All of that to say:



About this guy at a St. Louis Cardinals game:



That doobag is clearly not Darren Wilson, because if he were he would have gotten his ass beat by a white kid in a hoodie. But rather than wonder who he really is, we must instead ask on what basis he is empathizing with the real Darren Wilson, that cop who so cavalierly shot a black teenager because that teenager was a suspected not suspect. Is it because both he and Darren Wilson aren't allowed to shoot a black kid for something as quotidian as walking in the street? Is it because both he and Darren Wilson regard a kid who is black and fairly large as reasonable grounds to feel threatened? Is it because both he and Darren Wilson both feel that black life is cheap enough to shoot now, say you're sorry later? Or is it because both he and Darren Wilson both professionally discriminate against minorities so why all the fuss? Perhaps the basis of his solidarity is less incendiary, that he's merely concerned about the public flogging of Darren Wilson since the basis of American jurisprudence is a person is innocent until proven guilty, a legal nicety that would have left Michael Brown with six less bullets in his body had Darren Wilson extended that same courtesy to him. But probably not. They're both just white racist doobags.

In summation: I am Barry Bonds. Go Giants!

Back on a Horse Named Blog

It's been quite awhile since I last tended this garden of a blog, mostly because of two very important life milestones:

1. I got murried.

2. Someone gave me a selfie stick.

The marriage thing is pretty cool, BUT OMG SELFIE STICK!! I haven't stopped taking pictures of myself since, which explains the neglect here.

Whatevs. Welcome back to me!

How Not to Talk About Your Privilege While Trying to Convince Everyone You Are Not Privileged

Oh lawd, some white dude from Princeton wrote an op/ed for the school newspaper called "Why I'll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege" that was republished in Time magazine and now everyone on on the Fox end of the political spectrum has printed out hard copies to use as spooge socks while those on the Huffington Post side of things have written countless open letters to a dude who won't even bother. Not that I blame him since I'm about to write an open letter to people who write open letters:

Dear person who writes open letters,

You probably don't remember me but I was the guy checking Facebook when your open letter appeared at the top of my news feed along with my friend's commentary that "OMG this is exactly how I feel!" I forget what you were complaining about but I'm pretty sure it could have been handled in less than a minute had you chosen to confront whomever that one time they whatevered. Instead, you let the injustice pass and then stewed until you could get home to write 32 paragraphs of meticulous explanation as to why you're so disappointed in humanity even though 31 of those are really just rationalizing why you were to afraid to speak up in the first place. Passive aggressiveness is really just code for smug asshole, so next time tell the person to GFOD, throw up your dueces, and stop cluttering our Facebook with your hypocritical moralizing.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Polio
Passive Aggressive Blogger

Anyhow, to save you the hassle of actually reading homeboy's tripe I will just summarize here:

I'm white and don't give a fuhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Homie almost went as far to throw his hands in the air 'cause he just don't care but then he thoughtfully considered cultural appropriation and decided not to.

Aside from that, the basic gist is that his gramps and granny were both Jews who survived the Holocaust, made their way to Amurka, then fell in love on JDate since that was the only website invented back in 1950. Afterwards, grandpa started a small business and sent his four chilluns to college, one of which went to a top graduate school, got a good job, and eventually birthed our unprivileged author, who was forced to endure a hostile world of unprivileged privilege where minorities would share their experiences of actual non-privilege that he would constantly have to belittle because it never happened to meeeeee.

Now, in what may come as a shock to the seven people subscribed to this blog, I totally agree with homeboy that only he, his hard work, and he is responsible for that one A- he got in pre-calc since he is proud of all his personal accomplishments and that's the only one I can imagine an 18-year-old achieving before heading off to Princeton to become an insufferable cock. The problem appears to be solely in the messaging, which is why I'm going to write an open letter detailing how privileged privileged white folk bullshit about not being privileged at all.

______________________

Dear Tal,

You don't know me but I read your article in Time and agree with everything you wrote. I just wish your privileges didn't betray your obvious non-privilegousness, so please allow me to coach you before your next contribution to the right-wing circle jerk of we're all equal since we're all white:

Stop at the Hitler part - Everyone's always looking for a way to introduce figurative Hitler, but you actually get to talk about real Hitler! Awesome, just next time throw in something about him personally punching your grandma before distracting everyone with a bunch of non-sequiturs since it seems kind of suspicious that one generation later your dad was walking around town as just an ordinary white guy, while black folk whose people have been here 500 years still get stopped and frisked because they're also walking around town, only as an ordinary black guy.

Skip the adjectives - I know you're proud of your dad because he is also unprivileged, but next time you mention him you must resist the urge to brag. Instead of saying things like he went to a "top" graduate school and got a "good" job, try something like "he worked his way through night school" and "managed to put food on the table." And definitely leave out the part about doing it for 25 years because that sounds like stable employment.

One or the other but never both - Even though your daddy tearfully left for work every day by the crack of dawn, and even though he hammered nails all the day long while daydreaming about his family and the American dream, you can never ever never mention that he also had the time to sit at home teaching you how to read an entirely separate alphabet from the Spanish one all the privilege checkers want us to learn. But I understand how effective it is when you ask that we visualize your dad educating you at home with just his bare hands, a spool of yarn, and a little bit of moxie since that advances the narrative that all you had was each other and a little bit of whiteness, so if you absolutely have to use that anecdote then edit out the part about pops always being gone since only the privileged can get away with inconsistencies in their sob stories.

Never admit anything - Most of us white people totally understand getting to college, meeting our first women or minority person, and then wishing we had our own "me too" story to counter their constant whining. It's just that your article wasn't the best place to tell everyone you were 19-years-old the first time you went digging for stories of family struggle.

Constantly and forever talk about that one time you were discriminated against - Getting the flux capacitor out of storage just so you can go back far enough in time to find some non-privileging a person you are related to had to deal with is often mistaken for actual privilege, so next time talk about how you wanted to go to Harvard and Princeton at the same time but that a black person who was only a senator in high school student government - you were vice-president! - stole your place at Harvard and now you must mourn your lost potential at just Princeton, all because the color of your skin.

Continuously conflate the idea of privilege with 17 generations of filthy ffffffing rich - I know that your grandpa escaped the depths of hell to create a nice life for him and his family, and that your dad worked extremely hard to maximize his opportunities, and that you, an insufferable dick bag with extraordinarily shallow perspective, are the culmination of their American dream since you may even do a little work yourself one day. But you're definitely not privileged since there are probably like 10 dudes at Princeton who are richer than you, and what people like you and I need to constantly remind the American public of is that privilege is really about being wealthy enough to have a serious coke habit by the end of junior high, not being advantaged relative to other people solely because of demographic luck. I mean, it's totally normal when you show up for a 5k road race with two arms, two legs, and a pair of Asics just like "everyone else," but I suppose it could be a little more difficult of a run for the people with only one leg just so long as we don't use the word "privilege" when describing this scenario.

Don't use your real name and then tell people you're from New Rochelle, New York - Because then someone who's not me and totally thinks you're a dick puncher will Google for six or seven seconds before discovering you really are from the projects:



Prolong your moral victimization by grouping dictatorial campus leftists with everyone else  - The problem with people who think and talk about privilege is that most of them don't actually care that you're from a privileged background, they'd just like for you to step back and consider an alternative perspective to your own before declaring that college is affordable for everyone since anyone can join the military or sign up for a crippling loan; or that you shouldn't actually care if the police stop and frisk you as long as you have nothing to hide; or that you should magically just work harder if you can't afford to heat your home in the winter; or that ladies should wear burqas if they don't want men gawking; or that equality is a real live thing because the law says it is; or anything else, really, that you'd punctuate with "that's what I'd do."

Those people actually sort of have a point, but addressing them would undermine the essay you're passing off as a personal accomplishment achieved through hard work, sacrifice, and the power of one, so definitely only engage the antagonistic, dogmatic thought police you've used to caricature anyone who's even mildly thoughtful in regards to other people since yes, the college gestapo probably do hate you simply because you're white.

Never regret never apologizing - Because I wrote a similar op/ed for my college newspaper when I was a sophomore and totally didn't hate myself while reading yours. 

All the Reasons Donald Sterling Is Both a Real Racist and the Caricature of One while You Are Only a Moderate One

Donald Sterling is a dickbag slumlord who has run an NBA franchise like a shanty town the last 30ish years and been a racist for the last however many years he's been alive. This has all been part of the public record, though no one really gave a shit until probably the most credible US media organization - TMZ - published audio of him doing an impression of your racist grandpa choking down his Thanksgiving turkey. Of course, everyone and their mom's mom has responded with a YouTube video so they could get their blah blah blah in about THAT'S RACIST, but just about every aspect of this story is completely misunderstood. Here's why every opinion you've had about the situation is less comprehensive than mine:

Donald Sterling was a racist the week before last and the week before that - Most people with a public platform and anything to say about this whole shit show have rightly pointed out that Sterling's business empire is far more racially destructive than any of the comical dumbfuckery he spoke slowly into a dictation machine, but they've also completely left out the part about their own tacit approval of homeboy's Uncle Cletus act by not talking about it ever and at all before it suddenly became easy to surf the waves of public indignation since, you know, no one actually says negro anymore, they just don't let any into their universities.

Perhaps that's just the media's way of responding to grandma calling the nice man on the TV a "darkie" by escorting her to a mountain pasture and telling her to nibble on this grass until it's time to die, but the point remains that absolutely nothing about this man's attitudes have changed, just people's willingness to talk about them now that he's crossed a line even a white guy who has black friends finds offensive. Basically, what people are and aren't willing to consider racism is far more racist than than telling your half-black girlfriend not to bring black people to basketball games.

Complicit victimization is racism too - Donald Sterling was a known quantity before Doc Rivers forced a move from Boston to LA so he could both coach the Clippers and manage their basketball operations. Donald Sterling was also a known quantity before Chris Paul signed a contract extension to play the rest of he career there. But now that Donald Sterling is a known known quantity, suddenly they're victims and don't know if they should represent the Clippers organization anymore. Now, I realize that the NBA is a bit of a cartel that necessarily limits opportunities in the professional basketball world, so there's always going to be fringe types willing to compromise integrity for the chance to play in the NBA, and I don't necessarily blame them, but Doc Rivers and Chris Paul, among others, have accumulated for more leverage in their careers and have traded in their sanctimoniousness for the chance to win. If they truly wanted to protest Donald Sterling, they could have said LA provided a great shot at a championship but the dick stopper who owns that team has destroyed black communities and ergo I refuse to play for him. Instead they turned their warmup shirts inside out so no one would see the Clippers name during the layup drill no one has ever watched before just before wearing Clippers uniforms throughout an entire three-hour national broadcast. Next time just walk off the court and refuse to play since even the tone deaf NBA knows better than to call the game a forfeit under those circumstances. As David Stern once rapped while a member of Wu Tang: PR rules everything around me!

Donald Sterling's estranged wife is also considered a bit of collateral damage and has been invited back to games by Doc Rivers himself as well as given a media platform to claim her "family is devastated by the racist comments made by [her] estranged husband" and that "[her] children and [she] do not share these despicable views or prejudices." Which is why she stood by her man all those years he used racist housing policies to build his fortune and why she just yesterday walked away from all the money and privilege she has as a result of being married to a man who, I'm guessing, most definitely never expressed any of those despicable views to her in private. (Though turns out she has a bit of racist history herself, whoops.)

A circle jerk of we shall overcome - One of the most frustrating things about cartoonishly awful racism like Donald Sterling's is that it allows the media to come down on the side of suffocating righteousness since no one's going to argue when you say "racism is bad" or "we are all equals" as you publish articles about the specter of racism haunting American sports, all the while ignoring your own role in perpetuating that racism. Here's something to keep in mind anytime someone representing corporate America steps onto a soapbox to talk about racism: When MLK and a million other folk marched on Washington to demand their rights, they weren't demanding them from the Russians; they were demanding them from other Americans. When women struggled for the right to vote, they weren't demanding suffrage from our robot overlords; they were demanding it from other Americans. And when runaway slaves had to transit the Underground Railroad from Dixie all the way to Canada, they weren't hiding from E.T.; they were hiding from other Americans. So this "we're under siege" tenor reporting has taken in regards to Donald Sterling is really just a bunch of bullshit since "we" are laying siege to ourselves. More specifically, most people already agree that calling someone a nigger is a definite no no, but if they're a cop they'll be more likely to pull a black person over; or if they're a school administrator they'll be more likely to suspend a black person; or if they're a HR manager they'll be less likely to interview a black person for a job opening even though none of them have a single racist bone in their body. Calling someone a wetback is also a bad idea, but we reasonably suspect that you are an illegal immigrant because you are brown so please show us your papers even though the overwhelming majority of Hispanics are native-born Americans. And yes, I do love the Constitution because it's so full of Judeo-Christian values such as the separation of church and state so we're putting an entire undercover unit in your mosque but won't bother with the church down the two blocks over because they fellate Jesus.

So yes, making your granddaughter cum girlfriend remove photos of black folk from her Instagram is agreeably racist, but it's also pretty simplistic. If you really want to take a stand against racism, then direct more of your outrage toward states passing voter ID laws that coincidentally disenfranchise minorities, or the Supreme Court Justices who have basically codified that racism doesn't exist as long as the white people in charge pretend it doesn't.

Post-racist racism is still racist - A birther movement full of white dudes sympathetic to Donald Sterling has actually emerged, because America is post-racial or something. Basically, they suspect a black dude, Magic Johnson, of facilitating the secret recording of Donald Sterling saying Donald Sterling things in order to force sale of the Clippers to the team of rich guys he has conveniently positioned to buy by virtue of (1) being Magic Johnson and (2) being an extraordinarily rich partner in an even more extraordinarily rich ownership group that also happens to own the LA Dodgers and LA Sparks. If true, then good for Magic Johnson, because if he were white all we would do here is lament how hostile corporate takeovers are before giving that same corporation like 9 million tax breaks, since freedom.

Is human decency even a thing anymore? - While anyone reading my enlightened blog probably doesn't have any friends who would publicly defend Donald Sterling's remarks, they probably noticed a good 30% of their Facebook posse holds a fairly nuanced view that, while repugnant, it was still a violation of his privacy to secretly record and then broadcast the horse's mouth saying horsey things. To these people I say fuck off, partly because oh ja, you were so concerned about this racist dickbag when he was doing racist things rather than just saying them; but mostly because this dick puncher had established a pattern of behavior where he dates a lady born 10 presidents after he was, buys her a bunch of shit, and as soon as he's bored with her has his "estranged" wife sue to recover those gifts. Whether or not you regard homegirl as a gold digger, good on her for hustling a hustler, or at the very least protecting herself from a litigious bully.

There is also a completely different brand of Donald accounting for yet another 10% of your social media feed who blames homegirl for baiting Donald the Sterling into all that incisive racial commentary of his, to whom I offer the leftover fuck offs from my previous fuck off since that's the same as blaming Chris Hansen for pedophilia.

In conclusion - Donald Sterling has cancer and will hopefully die soon.

Korea vs. Japan

Lunar New Year last week set off the Year of the Horse, which happens to be my Chinese zodiac sign. Fitting considering I have to pee like a race horse every 12 minutes. It's also fitting since my lady was born a Chinese horse too, so we felt justified celebrating in a place that doesn't even observe Lunar New Year: Japan.

Even though Japan is the exact same country as Korea, you'd be surprised to learn there are, in fact, stark differences between the two. And since I now have four days of generalizing about the Japanese to go along with the four years I've spent generalizing about Koreans, I am probably the most qualified to explain those differences to you:

Boys and their makeup - In Japan, young men wear makeup because fashion recycles itself, and they are Boy George, Cyndi Lauper's brother, and The Cure circa 1980s England. In Korea, young men wear makeup because they have had more plastic surgery than their lady counterparts. Oh, is that a puddle in the middle of a busy street? Excuse me while I hold up traffic admiring my reflection.

Dirt - Tokyo is far dirtier than Seoul. Also, Seoul is far dirtier than Tokyo. It depends on whom you're talking to and how racist they are. Otherwise, both are very clean but for different reasons: Japan because everyone will carry used Kleenex or dirty syringes around in their pockets until they find a proper trash bin; Korea because the army of 90-year-old women who, out of civic duty, wake at 5 am every day to sweep the trash all their coddled sons just drop wherever they're standing since they, for some reason, have come to expect an entirely different human to clean up after them.

Volcanoes - Korea has like four that sit around doing nothing all day. The only one of note isn't even famous for being an actual volcano; it's notable because some guy somewhere made up a story one day about how Kim Jong-il was born there and 20 days later three wise men rode by and had a piss. In Japan, there are over 100 active volcanoes, and they all spit sulfur but only after someone lays down a sick beat:

 

Fighting - I know this is going to be controversial with my non-racist readership, but Koreans and Japanese are both Asian, which means I'm the only person on this continent who doesn't know how to karate fu. Needless to say, I don't go looking for fights since it's a given that I won't win. Now that I've cleared everything up with a bit of I'm not racist but, I will say it's not often I run into a Korean dude who, judging from appearances, could beat my ass. I'm sorry, but half a can of BB cream and the 15 minutes you just spent tweezing your eyebrows doesn't intimidate me. Japan, on the other hand, oh ai ai. Dark hair, real live facial beards, tattoos, and far less bowing. I'm pretty sure I was pick pocketed even though I still have my wallet, phone, and everything else I've ever owned.

Convenience stores - While they abound plenty in both countries, there are far more in Koko. This is because Koreans smoke like 43 cigarettes for every 1 in Japan. The Korean economy would actually collapse overnight if any smoking regulations were actually enforced and the only thing people could buy in the 7-11 was banana milk and squid, which is why people need to diversify their vices here. A little coke never hurt anyone, right, aside from all the poor folk growing, manufacturing, and distributing it who end up dead. Anyhow, this lady and her Korean livelihood:



Driving a taxi - Japanese taxi drivers are straight up rich, party because it's like $900 just to hail one but mostly because drunk businessmen will get in, tell the driver where they live, then stretch out in the backseat they've mistaken for a queen-sized bed while the driver sits in traffic watching the meter tick up, up, up exponentially. Korean dudes, on the other hand, will use all of Seoul as a hammock and just spend the night wherever they've collapsed into a drunken pile of soju vomit, be it an alley, the street, or even your lap as you ride the subway home. Couple the lack of customers with the $3 basic fare and that man you see sleeping underneath the stop sign isn't actually drunk, he's just a taxi driver who doesn't make enough money to afford rent.

Height - Koreans are much taller than the Japanese, but only because Korean women wear heels more often, and the extra 3 inches of lift has actually found its way into the genetic code.

Students - If you want to see what a Korean teenager looks like in a school uniform between 10 am and 2 pm, you will have to go to a Korean school. If you want to see what a Japanese teenager looks like in a school uniform between 10 am and 2 pm, you can just go about your daily business because you will run into them everywhere but school.

Dancing - Japanese folk technically aren't allowed to dance:



That makes them better than Koreans by default since the Korean version of dancing is to stand inside a club and stare mopey-eyed at the table they aren't allowed near because they don't have $300 for the bottle of Jose Cuervo + two mixers it requires to sit there.

Shorthand - If you are making notes about Koreans, you can shorten Korean to Kor, no problem. If you are making notes about the Japanese, you most definitely cannot shorten Japanese to...you know. Thanks a lot, racists.

Potty time - I once mentioned the most glorious tinkle in all of East Asia, but that was before going while watching the sun set over Mt. Fuji:



I don't know; guess we'll call it a coin flip. 
  
Women's fashion - Japanese ladies dress all sorts of sexy, but apparently they don't like to have sex. Korean ladies are branded with a scarlet 아 if they even think about leaving their collar unbuttoned just so they don't choke to death, but oh hey, why are you skulking away towards that love motel?

Cost of living - Japan is far too expensive, the end. 

Bath houses - In Koko they're called jjimjilbang; in Japan they're called get naked rooms since the Japanese use more English than Koreans even though you'd never guess from the lack of English writing anywhere in Japan ever. But whatever you decide to call it, it's just a large room where you take your oui oui out and then endure all the staring. There are a few notable differences you should know about, though, the obvious being who's the everybody in "everybody wang chung tonight." So, to answer your question about who has the bigger pair of underoos...I don't actually know, because while Koreans have no observable issues modeling their junk for anyone who paid the 7000 won exhibitionist fee, Japanese men walk around holding small wash cloths in front of their dingalings as if they were little penis kimonos. So if you'd really like to know who wins the tale of the tape, you'll just have to set up a Grindr account and cruise both Tokyo and Seoul neighborhoods. Otherwise, the only other notable differences between Korean and Japanese bath houses are having to bring your own towel to the Japanese baths as well as being tatted down rather than tatted up. Me, I was forced to wear a large band-aid since soaking in a communal bath with an ostensible knife wound was socially more acceptable than the small drawing on my back. Here is a photo of the bath house:

 

Food - Japanese food would be better than Korean food if Japanese food were called Korean food, but it's not so Korea wins this one hands down, so much so that Japanese food in Korea is actually better than Japanese food in Japan. Except for the beef. Japan has that on lock down.

Similarity to Michigan - The only time Korea reminds me of Michigan is when Japanese cars come up in conversation and I learn a bunch of new curse words in both English and Korean. Japan, on the other hand, has the whole Michigan vibe down pat:



That was exhaustive list of contrasts between the two countries. If something wasn't mentioned it's because same same.

Richard Sherman Called Michael Crabtree a Sorry Receiver and You a Mediocre Not-Racist

In the final moments of the NFC Championship, Richard Sherman was left alone on an island with the best mediocre receiver in the NFL and made this play:



Had his hand vaporized in the split second before the ball arrived then an entirely different team would be in the Super Bowl, and the football world would have to deal with two weeks of Jim Harbaugh's face. We instead got classic race baiting five minutes later AKA a black man giving a post-game interview:



Now, there are only two reasonable reactions to this: (1) All post-game interviews bore me; or (2) 'Zounds, ol' boy is jolly well excited, innit? Any other reaction means you're a dirty, racist dick bag. That or you enjoy snacking on sand buried about head deep, though probably for the first reason and not the second. 

To help you understand which reaction is which (hint: probably racist), I have developed a primer telling you why every criticism you have of Richard Sherman is completely wrong:

He's a ghetto thug - Like 412,000 articles have been written in the last three days detailing why Richard Sherman is most definitely not a thug: high school salutatorian with a 4.2 GPA, 1400 SAT score, Stanford grad with a 3.7 GPA, never been in trouble with the law, doesn't curse, willingly addresses youth groups exhorting them to make wise decisions about their future, started a non-profit organization to give underprivileged students materials for school, and once kept the USC coach waiting an hour and a half because his AP class was more important than being recruited by the best college football program in the country. Former coaches and teammates have even gone out of their way to testify about what a great person he is. But who really gives a shit? Lots of idiot douchebag athletes graduate from Stanford, though I suppose Sherman finished so quickly that he's halfway through a master's program right now; and Jim Tressel once told the press that Terrelle Pryor was one of the most intelligent, empathetic players he'd ever coached, which tells you everything you need to know about a coach's propensity to protect his own even at the expense of the truth.

But again, all of that is irrelevant since he can be a completely irresponsible, self-entitled prima donna dick stopper and that still wouldn't make him a thug. Why? Because "thug" is contemporary polite white society's way of saying nigger, and you can stop pretending otherwise right about...now. No, it isn't completely synonymous with the N-word, which is why the same people dropping "thug" all over the place will also run you that line of bullshit about zero racist bones - an aside: there are over 200 white bones in your body; at least one of them is racist - but the next time you hear a whitey use thug in an actual sentence, ask yourself this: Did they grow up on Tupac and Biggie and are now mocking their adult suburban lifestyle; or could they use "thug" and "nigger" interchangeably and whatever point your interlocutor was making wouldn't change a bit?

And just because you think slavery and Jim Crow were wrong, have requisitioned MLK's message about the content of character but nothing else he ever said, and are possibly even cordial with a few people of color doesn't mean you have nuanced ideas about what a thug is. If "thug" even flittered through your mind while watching Richard Sherman then you need to ask someone to set you up on a blind date with your subconscious biases so you can begin to understand what a racist cretin you truly are.

No respectable player would ever give that interview - Fabulous logic, partly because you can definitely use a half-minute post-game interview to assess a person's character, but mostly because the inverse of interviewee I don't like = thug is interviewee I do like = quality human being, which, er, uh, this guy...



...who manipulated sideline interviews and other forms of media interaction so effectively that the entire inner solar system was absolutely shocked when they found out he'd much rather let his friend rape small boys than risk any PR damage to the brand he worked so hard to cultivate. And Richard Sherman's the thug?

As far as respectable people who follow boilerplate interview protocol but don't go so far as to oversee child rape culture, what difference does it make whether someone like Tom Brady claims they win with graciousness if they also happen to win by cheating? And even if I couldn't dismiss rando respectable interviewee as a rule bending dickbag, that still doesn't mean anything other than "we played hard, they played hard, but Jesus loves us more" counts as a lack of respect. Some of us call that gamesmanship, since real respect for an opponent shows in how you prepare for that opponent, not whether or not you take a personal beef public afterward.

White damsel in distress - Erin Andrews is an attractive enough lady who for some reason has hit critical bro mass, so when Richard Sherman started calling out half the WWE in front of her, every pudgy loser who's ever worn a football jersey as part of a normal, everyday outfit felt their defensive instincts tug at their Neanderthal sense of manhood, and since they couldn't actually protect the pretty white lady from the big scary black man, they graffitied Facebook and Twitter with "ghetto thug" instead. Us non-racists, however, gave her job the two seconds of thought it takes a person of normal intelligence to realize this is a woman who's built her celebrity by braving all that testosterone and all those steroids to interrupt the heat of the competitive moment with banal questions about team and effort. I'm pretty sure she can take care of herself, especially since the guy she was so scared of not only prematurely ended the interview himself AKA walked away from her mid-question, he also began the same interview by hugging the very lady everyone wanted to protect from him:



Me, me, me, and oh ja, the team - Richard Sherman glorified his individual play at the expense of the team, which although isn't a valid criticism, at least it's not racist. Unless you called him a thug. Which you probably did because you're a racist. Otherwise, a 30 second interview tells you precisely zero about locker room dynamics, especially one that wasn't as me, myself, and I as people have made it out to be considering the question posed was basically "tell me about that final play" and not "who was individually responsible for your team's victory?" What followed was analysis mixed with personal animosity toward an opposing player that his teammates probably hate as well, so kudos to Sherman for reinforcing team chemistry. And even if that interview was entirely too self serving, the only reason it would be a problem were if it put further strain on issues that already existed, but judging from how coherently the Seattle defense plays, that's obviously not the case.

Also, the Erin Andrews interview wasn't the only post-game interview he did, so stop pretending he didn't mention the team, the team, the team to all the other sideline reporters that asked him similar asinine questions. That Fox Deportes video where he's hugging on Erin Andrews, por ejemplo.

My criticism isn't a racial thing - Perhaps in a world where this was an isolated response, but in this lifetime, whenever a black player is interviewed immediately after a game ends, social media tends to blow up with "lol, is this guy speaking English?" which really just means homeboy is using either (1) Ebonics or (2) Standard American English but happens to be black. In either case, pretending you don't understand is just your racist id accessing your Twitter account because I'm pretty sure whoever's speaking is using English words you yourself use every day; you're just being an asshole. Take, for example, Jameis Winston after an amazing finish in the college football championship:



If you had difficulty understanding any of that, it's probably because I've gone worldwide and you're part of my Spanish-speaking audience. Or you're a racist deeb a la this lady, whose niche fame is entirely predicated on looking really good for a woman who birthed someone old enough to be the previous year's championship QB:



Yes, you are most definitely listening to English. But here, let me transcribe that for you so you can read it in English as well:

I said, "Guys, we didn't come here for no reason." I said, "Guys, this is ours, man." This is, all the adversity we went through in the first few quarters, it was ours to take. And like I've been saying, we controlled our own destiny, and those men looked me in the eye and said, "We got this, Jameis."

I'll save you homegirl's standard "I'm not racist, I just do racist shit" explanation yet another troglodyte got away with, because the media's defense of Winston was even more not-racist than the actual racist. Basically: "It wasn't the most eloquent of speeches, but blah blah blah" even though his comments were perfectly fine in every other non-racist parallel universe. All dumbshit qualifiers like "yes, no one's going to mistake him for Shakespeare" do is validate the initial racism by conceding there was actual justification for even having that thought in the first place. (Seriously, mistake him for Shakespeare? You know who's been mistaken for Shakespeare? NO ONE WHO WAS BORN AFTER 1600!)

And that's the response to someone speaking the Queen's English. Imagine when someone actually drops proper Ebonics on poor Erin Andrews and people need more words than just "thug" or "ghetto" to express their racism. The pejorative they predictably turn to is "uneducated," because it takes an especially uneducated person not to notice that the uneducated black athlete from New York just happens to use the same grammatical structures as the uneducated black athlete from Florida, who uses the same grammatical structures as the uneducated black athlete from California. If they were properly stupid and uneducated then they'd all just throw out words in whatever random order came to mind. But since they're speaking a linguistically-recognized dialect of American English, you can continue with the moderately disguised epithets since you obviously won't mind whenever I interrupt you to correct your grammar, n'est pas?

Setting us back - Some people in the black community decided to bring their own racism to the par-tay as well, which, gah, means white people are now going to say "I'm not racist because my black friend said so too." Thanks, this guy:



I live in Korea, and while my life is in no way besieged by racism, I do encounter the occasional hostile racist dick stopper who will make a scene about me talking "too loudly" with a friend on the subway, meanwhile there are 14 Koreans to my left and 47 to my right, all screaming into their phones, not to mention the 4 older men watching TV at max volume on theirs, yet I'm the inconsiderate foreign wanker. This scenario happens to just about every expat, and some of them believe the best strategy here is to engage with the dickbag's racist affirmation bias by acquiescing to his petty demands, as if that will transform him into an okay guy. A load of shithorse, obviously, because it's not your run-of-the-mill human's responsibility to conform to a racist's narrow standard for model minority behavior, it's the racist's responsibility to not be a racist asshole.

So if you're black, hyped on adrenaline after making the game-saving play that got your team into the Super Bowl, and just had a mic shoved into your face, say what you want to say; because who gives a fuhhhhh about all the heirs of Dixie sitting at their computers waiting for a reason to wear out the T, H, U, and G buttons on their keyboards. They're the only people setting us back 500 years.

In conclusion - You're racist and Richard Sherman is my new favorite player because his mouth could have played shooting guard for the Fab 5.

Acting Debut of a Haitus

Wow, this blog has been neglecting itself. It's because I was busy filming for The Wolf of Wall Street.



Totally just redecorated my home with a bunch of red carpets and now have champagne for brekkie, lunch, a second lunch, and finally dinner. Burrrrp.