Cold War 05/24 Korea 1949 - 1953

A particularly depressing episode of the cold war. Excellent documentary making though if you can stomach the savagery on all sides.

Old Boy

The moving gif at the header is from the epic fight scene of Old Boy. One of my top ten movies. Almost perfect apart from a few continuity issues in the script. Easily forgiveable.

DreamHub - Korean Architecture

I think most people who are informed by what happened on 9/11 would gladly see the DreamHub Korean high-rises project secure the green light and financing required if it encouraged those who willingly choke on their ignorance to do a couple of hours research into the false flag attack nature of the twin towers attack. 

The architecture is by Dutch firm MVRDV and the DreamHub website is so data intensive I'm rudely reminded of the extraordinarily fast broadband capabilities of the Korean internet.

Is this a good excuse to remind you to take a look at Dr Judy Wood's explanation for how the towers were reduced to a dust cloud? You bet. Click on the appropriate tag below.

Pigs Buried Alive

Is this who we really are? How long can this kind of thinking continue? Indeed how long can we continue to daily wrestle our consciences away from the important matters under the pretence that we have no other option?. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? At least watch it and have a clear moral position.

Inside North Korea - Everything Is Connected

Transparency at the underhand and manipulative state department is just as important as the transparency emerging from North Korea on cell phone videos. Actually there are cables regarding North Korea which directly impact on this shockingly malnourished girls life. 

The responsibilities of globalisation are such that it's no longer a moral option to disconnect from the actions of one's government. 

The girl above is in her early twenties. Watch it and grok it.

How Great Thou Art

This work filmed in New York reminds me of a conversation I heard repeated recently between an American and a Pakistani sometime in the late 60's or early 70's I guess. The American, squashed in the back of the pedal powered cab  listened as the Pakistani driver said.

"You see, we here in Pakistan understand the problem. Progress he exclaimed! Progress is the problem".

It sounded funnier in audio but it touches on a some thoughts I've had recently and which I've no answer for. However this is the second piece of art in a week which gives me permission to hope that maybe our artists are emerging from an understandable but frustrating inertia of everything goes, compounded by never quite leaving when its time was up.

Too early to call but this work is not inconsequential is it?

The flip side of the progress coin is a dawn shot of New York that someone tweeted the other day, and which left me in no doubt of the city's prowess as the definitive skyline of progress. 

It's this that awes me about New York. On weird days the abstract creativity of Wall Street spits in my gravity cautioning face. But for the record. I'm anti gravity. 

Sort of.

Digital Necrophilia - I Like To Fork Myself

Now I think about it there's a lot of outstanding posts percolating in my head and which I've made rushed notes to in various places, though this is one post I feel like writing and which was originally sparked by some of the excellent conversations I had with Teflon John, before his Goldman Sachs girlfriend discovered I'm a Metrosexual Marxist. 

Well... (dot dot dot) I'm sure he's got a different perspective but as he was in the rest room during the chilly silence that descended before his return, I can only say that I was admirably unfazed by the inappropriate but not unique assertion of bi/curious sexual preferences that the monologue drifted onto after a long soliloquy on Goldman culture. But I think my conversation switcher of  'let's talk about me' may have closed the deal.

Unlike Goldman Sachs of Hyenaville, money isn't my main driver. Though I hasten to add I don't know if I'd be any better a pack dog if fate had slipped me into that alpha male club instead of the ability to write about it with a mixture of candour, humour and disgust. But we don't really know that stuff until we're in the context itself though having lost all my possessions and money recently I'm pretty happy with what I don't have as well as what I do. Which is a reality tunnel topic I'm dwelling on since discovering Robert Anton Wilson over at the Media squat through the increasingly funny and brilliant Douglas Rushkoff.

Anyways (as the Jamaican bad boys say): 

Digital Necrophilia. 

Like so many subjects in accelerated culture (and it's so fast I'm in my element) the early thinking has been superseded by this podcast I listened to and then followed by Neil's post on learning to forget which is quicker to read though I recommend you check out The Forum on BBC radio to listen to Victor Mayer-Schoenberger if you didn't attend the talk Neil did.

But the reason for resurrecting this topic is twofold. A few years ago I was asked to write a presentation about beauty on the net for Unilever regionally in Asia, and despite having 300 slides chopped down to a very primitive 150 I did pick up on some of the themes in blogging and internet culture including discovering Daul Kim's blog which I predicted would be a taste of the intimacy of reading into the lives of people who inhabit the trillion dollar beauty business. 

This has come back to haunt me like an Ave Maria curling round a cathedral choir during a requiem mass. 

Depressing.

She was seventeen ish when I discovered her blog, and died in Paris on Friday, at the age of 20. Here's her last blog post where she says 'hi to forever' with Jim River's "I go deep". One thing we had in common was our love of British minimal tech. See you on the other side Daul.

K - POP

I've been pompously sniffy about pop music and especially so when I grasped just how easy  it is to package the stuff that makes the young salivate so easily.


So I really much more enjoy anything from (unclassical?) Classical and say Minimal Tech - The good stuff mind but then I would say that as I haven't really paid attention to anyone of significant pop music popularity with mandatory good looks and maudlin lyrics, for more years than I can remember.

However, I've had an enforced loss of music. Some 30 Gigs or so of quite choice and select music that went with the cab driver. To make up for this I've been swiping peoples music off mobile phones and I've had an epiphany about Korean Pop music. Yes it's often formulaic, yes it's all about pretty boy bands, or (but not and as they dont mix) girl bands that are too hot for a middle age man to gawp at for more than a second or so, but the facts remain.

About 5-10 percent of K-Pop is top notch pop. The productions are flawless, faultlessly lavish, choreographed cleverly and lastly the music is obviously Korean though frequently with often an English chorus deployed, so we (including the rest of Asia) can all join in or get the gist of the usual teen themes of love that could never spin off tangentially into gender dysphoria issues or handicapped sex because which I just cranked up the imagery deliberately for emphasis rather than any fixation with amputee sex or what not.
In any case as far as K-Pop goes, the music is kick ass in sections and this compensates for the relentless parade of pretty boy good looks and skin that I don't see many women able to match without recourse to traditional concealment techniques. I wont mention the K Chicks because they are stunning, and a charming conclusion to the topic is beyond me right now.

Here is 2PM's "Again and Again" and it's worth more than one listen because there's something heartfelt in it apart from the preternatural pretty boy band expectations it's difficult not to prematuraly conclude.

I'll go as far as to say that K-Pop has something going on right now that has the potential to go really global. I am also currently blown away by the production of Britney Spears who is clearly lacking in talent but a blindingly scary showcase for how good music can be if the best of the best in production are involved. Style over substance? Yes. But then so is moisturiser, lipstick and nail varnish even though I've written at length about cosmetics recenty and I'm not what the Germans would call part of "die brutale emanzipierte frauen" brigade.