Another fan-death disbeliever!

Fan Death in Korea

The pain is horrific to bear!

(Image from OhmyNews)

Despite my best efforts, I seem to be fighting a losing battle against those who doubt fan death. Why do I say this? Because another fan-death skeptic has visited my blog, and this one is a Korean!

The infidel's name is "Julia," but we cannot blame her loving parents, for the accursed disbeliever tells us that her own dear mother:

...used to wake up EVERY night at 3 am to open my brother's bedroom door because he slept with the ceiling fan on. Because Richard would never heed her advice about leaving the bedroom door open if he was going to have his fan on, she was horrified that the fan (in a closed room) would SUCK the air our of the room and leave her with an empty shell of a human being as a son...

Such loving care -- careful love that only a Korean mother could bestow -- was wasted on this ingrate, who laughed at a sad song titled "Fan Death Suicide Pact Cult" that she heard in some bar and then returned home to Google the internet so that she could laugh at the sad stories of others who have posted warnings about fan death.

She even happened across my blog entry of warning about fan death and reported back on her own blog:

[H]ere's what one crazy ex-pat professor of English Literature says about fan death (it's just too insane to NOT share):

How can people doubt fan death!? Fans kill thousands of people each year, but most of the deaths go unreported because the fans were in a different room. It's a little-known fact that the whirling blades cause disturbance in the ether that pervades the universe, and the ripple effect impairs organisms up to 500 feet distant.

This summer, fans killed several of my son's pets. First a stag beetle died when our cat, driven mad by ripples in the ether, overturned the beetle's plastic terrarium and fought the poor beetle to its death. Miraculously, the cat survived. Our eel was not so lucky as the cat. Driven insane by the whirling blades' insidious disturbance of the ether, it managed to flip itself out of its aquarium -- through a tiny hole in the top!! -- and die. We found it on the floor ... shriveled and dry. That could happen to you, too. Since then, two other stag beetles have died. Snails as well. And a goldfish has turned deathly white! Scary.

Miraculously, our cats and children have survived, but we're taking no more chances, especially now that our two fans have begun to alter weather patterns in our apartment. In the past two days [this September 2006], they've actually been blowing cool air at night -- even though there's no air-conditioning unit attached! We think that the fans are now trying to freeze us to death, so we've put them away in a closet, completely covered in a bag zipped carefully shut to prevent them from doing even more damage.

Fans are killers. Why do you think that they're called fans? The word "fan" is short for "fanatic." You can't trust fanatics. Don't trust fans, either.

If you want to see the original post, check out his lunatic rants here.

As if her own scoffing at the truth weren't bad enough, Julia is in league with others opposed to fan-death theory. A certain Jennifer comments:

Wow, I'd be speechless, except I suspect the English professor is being satirical. If he isn't... well, then I really am speechless.

I think "fan death" will make it into a blog post, oh yes indeed! :)

Jennifer's skepticism even extended to doubts about my very sincerity, but Julia at least believes that I'm sincere (an important Korean virtue):

I would have thought that as well, seeing as how ridiculous his claims are, but if you read the rest of his blog entry... I don't know. I think that he believes in fan death...

At this point -- seeing that I needed to certify my sincerity -- I posted the following comment:

Yes, [Jennifer,] do blog on fan death:

"I think 'fan death' will make it into a blog post, oh yes indeed!"

Call attention to its dire threat!

Not only does it cause death, but even in small doses, it will make one ill.

Why, it's already driven me insane ... as duly noted in this blog entry [by Julia]. (Thanks for noticing.)

Indeed, I am so mentally disturbed by the etherial effects of those whirling blades that I even believe this nonsense about fan death.

I realize that this belief is crazy, but ... well, so am I.

That's the sad part, of course: I'm truly insane. Those whirling fans have driven me mad, forcing me to scribble all sorts of egregious nonsense. Yet, even my "nonsense" has more sense than non. I count five letters to three, which implies that sense wins out.

Need I remind you, therefore, that fans drove the brilliant Hwang Woo-suk to utterly destroy his illustrious career in cloning? Recall how Hwang's fans made the poor doctor look even more ridiculous?

Or note how fans are also responsible for the disgraced Shin Jeong-ah, the disgraced Lee Ji-young, and the disgraced Lee Hyun-se. How, you might ask, are fans responsible for their false academic claims? A moment's sober reflection will answer that question.

Koreans are such fanatics about obtaining higher degrees from elite universities that each year, high school graduates even kill themselves for failing to score high enough on qualifying exams for admission to Korea's top three universities. Although Shin Jeong-ah, Lee Ji-young, and Lee Hyun-se escaped almost certain death by academic disappointment, they did glimpse the abyss gaping at their feet. They faced a stark choice: either die or lie. Thank God they made the right decision, and we should respect them for choosing life.

Besides, it's not their fault that they lied. Academic fanaticism drove these three to deceive everyone! Read the authoritative words of Thomas R. Ellinger and Garry M. Beckham ("South Korea: Placing Education on Top of the Family Agenda," Phi Delta Kappan, April, v. 78. no. 8, p. 624) for what they tell us about this sort of fanaticism:

South Koreans view education as they view the rest of life: a process of winning and losing. They have no concept of a game played well for its own sake. The family emphasis on educational achievement is so strong that it has been dubbed "education mania." (quoted in Paul Robertson, "The Pervading Influence of Neo-Confucianism on the Korean Education System," Asian EFL Journal, June 2002, Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 1, paragraph 8)

And what is "education mania" but insane fanaticism? Indeed, such fanaticism made academic fanatics of Shin Jeong-ah, Lee Ji-young, and Lee Hyun-se. In short, they were themselves, literally, turned into academic fans!

But it's a fate that they share with all Koreans, for each and every Korean is secretly an academic fan for whom education -- like life itself -- is a process of winning or losing! Most, of course, lose out and grow self-destructive. I think that Korea's current, unsustainably low birth rate can only be explained as the collective suicide of all those failed educational fans. In other words, fans are killing the entire Korean nation.

Fans are truly insidious...