More Whizz-Dumb Than You Can Shake A Stick At!

Whizz-Dumb

Google Images

A big fish in the smallest room in the house divided against itself cannot stand the heat.

A Tongue Fit To Betide the Times

Lucy of the Lounge, Photo of Richard Perry's Photo for the NYT

Gene Simmons proves he can play not only music but also baseball by stealing home on a sacrifice single, much to the catcher's disgust as he retches his guts out while Simmons ramps up the antics for fanatics, breaking into song and dance and prancing away from the plate with the apparent intention of blowing the raving crowd a totally wild French kiss!

The NoZe Comes Knocking

NoZe Logo

The Noble NoZe Brotherhood of the Universe, Inc. -- a satirical fraternity of funnymen at Baylor University who dress up in tuxedos and Groucho Marx noses and go by such pseudonyms as Brother AgNoZetic (my own moniker) to remain anonymous while still attending school -- must be in decline.

Why?

Whaddaya mean, "Why?"

Oh, wait . . . that was my own, rhetorical question. Must've had a senior moment. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. I was asking "Why?" I meant why do I say the NoZe is in decline? Well, because the current Noble NoZe Disorganization has implicitly recognized its unfortunate inability to judge the quality of its own satire, for the NoZe Brothers in charge of editing The Rope -- erstwhile parody of Baylor's student paper, The Lariat -- have apparently had the official editor send proofs of The Rope via e-list to us Brothers-in-Exile, asking us to check the quality of their humor:

Hello, exiles.

Here is [an attachment of] the latest copy of the award-winning Rope. It's not 100% done, but almost. I'd really appreciate any advice, edits, or any amount of funny you still possess to make it a little better.

I didn't vote for any of you,

Bro. Edgar Allen NoZe

I took this request very seriously -- even though Bro. Edgar Allen NoZe never used his power of transcending space and time to visit 1976 and join the other Brothers in unanimously voting me into the Brotherhood -- so I did my utmost to help:

I haven't bothered to read the attachment, but I don't need to because I already know it's not funny. My advice (based on a close non-reading): make it funny . . . like it used to be, back in the glory days of '76-'79.

Brother AgNoZetic

Exiled Since '79

Another Brother-in-Exile -- albeit some whippersnapping young graduate of 2006 -- couldn't understand my plain English and commented:

Somehow, AgNoZetic misspelled "2003-2006." Can somehow check on him?

I skimmed the Rope, and my favorite thing is the bright colors and the many, many punctuation errors.

Enjoy finding them all . . .

This Exile wisely neglected to sign his NoZe name but did use an infidel surname that Beggs to be baptized into NoZe lingo. Let's therefore avoid his infidel name for anonymity's sake, but lest he get off entirely Scott-free, call him "BumNoZetic." Brother BumNoZetic fears for my orthographic wits and has thoughtfully asked an aquaintance he calls "Somehow" (albeit uncapitalized) to check on me. I expressed my gratitude:

Thanks for the thoughts well-meant, BumNoZetic, but '76-'79 is no error in spelling 2003-2006, rather an abbreviation for 1976-1979. What are they teaching at Baylor this new millenium? If a BU degree has declined this much in value, the parousia must be near!

Compensate Elmo,

Brother AgNoZetic

Brother BumNoZetic responded . . . if one can call this a response:

Leave the Grape ad intact. They'll love the millenniumalist lack of contact info.

I'll parousia the paper some more, but everything looks good.

Except the words . . .

It's almost as if he isn't talking to me. But I see that he picked up some new words from my email and attempted to use them without even the minimal effort of checking a dictionary. Just peruse what he's written, you'll see.

But enough of this brouhaha, for a real brew or two -- ha! ha! -- awaits me later today if I can just finish my more legitimate work . . .

Cultural References in "The True Origins of Pizza"

Messieurs Pizza

A recent advertising campaign for the Korean pizza chain Mr. Pizza created a satirical video, "The True Origins of Pizza," making the tongue-in-cheek claim that pizza originated in Korea and was 'stolen' by Marco Polo at the same time that he 'stole' pasta from the Chinese. The video is funny, especially the more one knows about Korean nationalism and its sometimes far-reaching claims, e.g., Confucius was Korean. The most surprising aspect of this ironic advertising campaign is that it seems to have originated in Korea! Actually, that shouldn't be surprising since irony was invented by the Koreans, but this invention seems to have been forgotten in the land of morning calm, where irony, especially self-irony, is nearly always misunderstood.

Some readers might be less aware of these issues concerning Korean nationalism, humor, and related stuff, but if anyone is interested, Stephen Epstein and Rumi Sakamoto have published an entertaining piece, "The True Origins of Pizza: Irony, the Internet and East Asian Nationalisms," in The Asia-Pacific Journal (Vol 9, Issue 44 No 5, October 31, 2011), which analyzes these things. Among the things analyzed are the images above:

[I]n one of the clip's most inspired strokes of marketing acumen, the voiceover asks "Then is there anyone still in the region making pizza the original way?" and introduces us to Woo-Hyun Jung, the "owner and CEO" of Mr. Pizza. Jung, indeed the genuine head of the corporation, has recently been designated one of the top businessmen in Korea for 2011, and his refusal to take himself too seriously is not only amply demonstrated in what follows, but on the Mr. Pizza website, where one of his titles is given as CLO: Chief Love Officer. The camera first shows him standing with a warm smile on his face, hand on chin. He then beckons his interviewers to a table, leaving visible behind him a portrait of himself in exactly the same pose -- in sunglasses. Jung tells us that his father, grandfather and all of his ancestors made pizza and we see a succession of portraits of such ancestors posed in similar fashion, hand on chin, and all, apparently, photoshopping Jung's features onto images that draw on Korean portraiture styles in accurate reverse chronological order.

Epstein and Sakamoto "thank Frank Hoffmann for the image and references to some of the other pieces of artwork that seem to be drawn upon humorously" in the video. Undoubtedly, Hoffmann is right to note the Korean portraiture styles (or is this the authors' contribution), but I have another suggestion that might also be a reference, that scene near the beginning of the animation Kung Fu Panda in which Po's 'father' tells him:

You are almost ready to be entrusted with the secret ingredient of my Secret Ingredient Soup. Then you will fulfill your destiny and take over the restaurant! As I took it over from my father, who took it over from his father . . . who won it from a friend in mahjong.

As these words are spoken, a series of images are shown. We see Po's father speaking, then a portrait of Po's father's father, then a portrait of Po's father's father's father -- followed by a gag portrait of Po's father's father's father's friend looking decidedly unhappy. I strongly suspect that the Mr. Pizza video is making an allusion to this scene. Both scenes -- in the video and the film -- are ironic, humorous presentations of culinary traditions that aren't much of a tradition. Po's 'family' has been in the noodle soup business for only three generations prior to Po, and Jung's family hasn't been making pizza for generations, either. So . . . there may be a connection. Unfortunately, an internet search this morning failed to turn up the images from Kung Fu Panda accompanying the dialogue above, the sight of which would better make the connection that I'm suggesting, but if any readers can locate a website showing those images, I'd be grateful.

Otherwise, we just have to rely on our memory of that scene in the film . . .

NoZe Brotherhood: Exterior Decorating of Baylor University

Some photos landed in my emailbox this morning from my old frat club at Baylor University, the Noble NoZe Brotherhood, Inc. For readers unfamiliar with the NoZe, just think of it as a satirical fraternity of secret members who adopt outrageous pseudonyms like "Brother AgNoZetic" or "Brother NebuchadNoZer" and wear Groucho Marx nose-glasses, along with wigs, false beards, and tuxedos, all to protect their identities since they're often at odds with the Baylor administration for some of the satirical articles that they publish in The Rope -- their satire of the campus paper, The Lariat -- and some of the stunts that they pull on Baylor's very religious grounds. For some reason, Baylor dislikes the NoZe's attempts to beautify the campus through exterior decorating.

For instance, consider the Burleson Quadrangle in this photo from Wikipedia:

Nice enough . . . but it can surely be beautified with a bit of NoZe aesthetics:

In case that's too obscure to see clearly, perhaps this detail will help:

The towering spire on Burleson Quadrangle is graced with a super-sized version of Groucho Marx nose-glasses and thereby unofficially . . . indicted . . . abducted . . . inducted into the NoZe Brotherhood.

But the administration of Baylor, for reasons obscure to me, doesn't want Burleson Quadrangle known as a NoZe member, and often threatens to "kick the NoZe off campus," at times even following through on the threat!

The NoZe thus too often suffers the consequences of its irrepressible mischievousness, hence the collective lament: "Nobody NoZe the trouble I've seen . . ."

Professor Ann Yong-geun on Western Prejudice Against Dog Meat

Ann Yong-geun

Public Face of Dog Meat Advocates

(Image from Korea Herald)

Professor Ann Yong-geun, faculty member in the Department of Food and Nutrition at Chung Cheong College and president of The Korean Society of Food and Nutrition, has an article in Tuesday's Korea Herald responding to a column written by Stephen Bant, a Western expat living in Korea who argues against the consumption of dog meat.

Professor Ann, who has previously "written six theses, two books and one comic book related to dog meat," counters that "It is a part of Korea's culture." He characterizes "criticism of Korea's long tradition of eating dog meat" as "absurd" and concludes his fascinating list of ten ridiculous Western beliefs about dogs by offering an unnumbered eleventh point, his revelation of the real, fundamental cultural reason that Westerners are prejudiced against eating dog meat:

The reason Westerners do not [eat] dog meat is not because they love dogs, but because eating dog meat is forbidden in the Bible.

The Middle East, where the events of the Bible take place, is largely desert. Corpses buried in the sand in the region were easily uncovered by the wind, exposing them for dogs to eat. Hence, eating dog is forbidden, as dogs are considered filthy and wicked animals.

According to Hosea chapter 13, First Kings chapter 14, 16, Second Kings chapter 9, and Jeremiah chapter 15, dogs eat humans. According to First Kings chapter 21, 22, the St. Luke chapter 16 dogs lick human blood. According to the Book of Exodus chapter 22, dead animals are to be fed to dogs. According to the Epistle of St. Paul chapter 3, the Book of Psalms chapter 22, and the Book of the Apocalypse of St. John chapter 22, dogs are as wicked as wicked men.

According to Leviticus chapter 11, eating dog is forbidden, as a dog is a wicked being.

According to the sayings of the Lord, man becomes as filthy and wicked as a dog if man treats it as a human-being.

Professor Ann Yong-geun demonstrates unusual hermeneutic skill in revealing the underlying reason why Westerners don't eat dog meat. He really ought to write up an entire article providing complete scriptural quotes with his expert exegesis and publish it in a scholarly journal on scriptural interpretation.

I'd do so myself, but he has precedence on this issue. I might, however, employ a similar hermeneutic to explain why Westerners don't eat pig meat, and I feel confident that Professor Ann won't mind if I borrow his wording above to offer a parallel cultural argument on this other Western culinary prejudice:

The reason Westerners do not eat pig meat is not because they love pigs, but because eating pig meat is forbidden in the Bible.

The Middle East, where the events of the Bible take place, is largely desert. Corpses buried in the sand in the region were easily uncovered by the wind, exposing them for pigs to eat. Hence, eating pig is forbidden, as pigs are considered filthy and wicked animals.

According to Leviticus 11:7 and Deuteronomy 14:8, pig meat is unclean. According to Isaiah 65:4 and 66:17, eating pig meat is an abomination.

Proverbs 11:22 compares a pig to a loose woman.

Isaiah 66:3 warns against offering pig blood as a sacrifice to the Lord.

Matthew 7:6 warns of the ingratitude of pigs.

Matthew 8, Mark 5, and Luke 8 all tell a story of pigs possessed by demons.

Luke 15 tells the story of a man who descended even below the level of pigs.

According to the sayings of the Lord, man becomes as filthy and wicked as a pig if man treats it as a human-being.

I can hardly wait to work this interpretation into a longer article and submit it for publication in a reputable journal! I feel confident that I can show definitively why Westerners don't eat pig meat. It's against the Bible!

Concerning such a culinary prejudice, I'll have to deal with Mark 7:19 and Acts 10:9-16, but based on what I've already learned from Professor Ann Yong-geun, I feel certain that I have acquired sufficient hermeneutic skills to do so.

At any rate, I believe that I've adequately demonstrated that Westerners don't eat pig meat for the same reason that they don't eat dog meat, i.e., scripture forbids it!

These two related prejudices no doubt also explain the origin of that typical German term of abuse: "Schweinhund!"

Islamism: Extremism at the Core of Islam?

Die Welt Online Logo

I recently posted a blog entry in which I suggested "that discussion in Europe of Islamism has shifted from seeing it as extremism at the margins of Islam to seeing it as extremism at the core of Islam."

As support for my suggestion, one of my regular readers, an Islam expert who goes by the handle "Erdal" and who resides in Germany, posted his translation of selected passages from an article in the January 8th issue of the German newspaper Die Welt. This article,written by the philosopher and literary critic Daniele Dell'Agli, bears the provocative title, "They can't stomach Mohammad's true face" ("Sie ertragen das wahre Gesicht Mohammeds nicht").

Dell'Agli argues that the violent reactions within the Islamic world to the publication of the so-called Muhammad Cartoons in Denmark about five years ago stemmed from the fact that Muslims (but not only Muslims!) can't 'stomach' the true face of Islam's founder. Dell'Agli was moved to write this piece now, five years later, because controversy over the cartoons has again broken out. On January 1 of this year, the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, infamous for having sketched Muhammad wearing a turban designed as a bomb, was nearly attacked in his own home by an irate Somali Muslim who was wielding a large axe and chopping at Westergaard's bathroom door. The enraged Somali man didn't manage to break through the reinforced door before the police arrived and apprehended him, though they had to shoot the man twice to get him to drop the axe.

So much for the background, Now, along with some bracketed summaries and remarks supplied by Erdal, here's what Erdal translated from the article, in which Dell'Agli explains that the cartoons were satire and what that implies:

They can't stomach Mohammad's true face.

by Daniele Dell'Agli

[Intro walks through the recent attempt on the life of the Danish cartoonist Westergaard and some typical reactions.]

Now, there may be many definitions of satire [. . .] but it is always conceded that it is trying -- in a polemical or entertaining way -- to get at a kernel of truth of a scandal or a commonly known grievance. More, the common knowledge of the historical, political or biographical background is prerequisite for the satirical cause to work, it would dissipate uselessly otherwise. What's the attack's target in this case? Very simply that the founder of Islam started his career as a raider of caravans and a murderer who, as the ruler of Medina, ordered his political opponents' assassination and the genocide of the local Jewish tribe. These are undisputed facts among Muslim scholars ever since, and should also be sufficiently known among at least the educated of the northern hemisphere.

[A paragraph about how the discussion is instead steered toward issues of free speech and religious feelings follows.]

Both parties are thus not yet able to face up to the underlying issues of the caricature (which, for this reason alone is anything but "stupid" or "crass"): that Islamic assassins are not only well in tune with the spirit of many Koran suras and most of their commentary body, but can also claim the antetype of Mohammed for their bloody deeds.

For the rest of his religions's adherents who still try vainly -- together with liberal apologists -- to beat the drums of Islamophobia to veil this fatal connection, this has consequences: As long as they are not ready to critically qualify the historical authority of the prophet as they will qualify his teachings, they cannot claim for themselves a difference between Islamism and Islam, without being theological nonsensical. And as long as they think that they ought to live in 21st century Europe according to 7th-10th century Oriental rules, they should not lament that they, too, are thought capable of suddenly obeying the warlike commands of their religion's founder, or of endorsing such behaviour in others.

Strong words from Mr. Dell'Agli. In short, he argues that there is no difference between Islamism and Islam if the majority of Muslims implicitly accede to extremists' violent protests carried out to frighten non-Muslims into submitting to Islamic rules. According to Erdal, the debate over Islam within Germany (and presumably throughout Europe) is growing rather heated:

I've not seen this myself, but I've been told by people who live there, that there is a graffiti campaign, presumably by students or high schoolers, with the motto "Allah, go home!" in several southern university towns. Nothing in the media yet. Actually, a Google search for the phrase comes up with the tiniest of results. Strange that not even hardline blogs appear to have used this rather obvious line, ever.

The feuilletons of the papers and magazines are at each others throat, daily. Alliances are shifting in surprising ways and fronts harden: You can now regularly observe opinion leaders in even Die Zeit, Süddeutsche, Spiegel and FAZ call each other "imbeciles", "criminals" or "insane". The viciousness of the tone is unlike anything I've seen here since maybe the big fight in the early 80's over the nuclear Pershing-II rockets to be stationed en masse in Germany. Maybe it's the weather -- there hasn't been a winter that hard for about the same time.

Well, it certainly bespeaks a climate change of sorts. The atmosphere has definitely altered since the late eighties to mid-nineties, when I lived in Europe. I'm grateful to have Erdal as reader and commentor to keep me informed.

In my opinion, either this debate over Islamism as extremism at the core of Islam will be handled responsibly by European governments through treating the issue very seriously, or it will it will devolve into something very nasty in the streets.

Mikhail Bulgakov: A Vision of Hell

Mikhail Bulgakov

Unlike Varenukha, casting a shadow...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Hell in The Master and Margarita is depicted as the otherwise mundane paradise of the jazz-bar restaurant in the Griboyedov House, the meeting place for Moscow's offially recognized literati. Here's the scene of that hellish restaurant as translated by Mirra Ginsburg from the original Russian in her 1967 edition:

Dripping with perspiration, the waiters carried sweating beer mugs high over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred, "Sorry, citizen!" Somewhere in a loudspeaker a voice commanded: "Karsky shashlik, one! Zubrovka, two! Tripe polonais!" The thin high voice no longer sang but howled, "Hallelujah!" The clashing of the golden cymbals occasionally covered even the clatter of the dishes which the dishwashers were sending down the chute into the kitchen. In short, hell. (Chapter 5, New York: Grove Press, 1967)

Hell, is it? Then, this world seems none so bad. Let's compare it to Michael Glenny's translation of hell's kitchen, also from 1967:

Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously 'Sorry, sir!' Somewhere a man bellowed through a megaphone:

'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King!' The vocalist was no longer singing -- he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the scullery. In short -- hell. (Chapter 5, London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1967)

Clearly, the two translators have made some stylistic choices in rendering the Russian into English, but this hell seems a liveable one . . . almost, were it not for the sudden, unexpected death of the house director, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, whose unfortunate, or perhaps fated, decease will soon be rumored throughout the crowd and temporarily disturb those gathered in this pandaemonium.

Bulgakov's hell, in both translations, appears very worldly, too worldly -- but that's his point, I gather. The world has lost its reflection of transcendence and exists only as it is, solely an earthly paradise, guaranteed by the Communist Party's inner-worldly providence. But there is a slight problem that arises with mortals in charge of planning, a problem in the workers' paradise noted halfway into the first chapter by the mysterious professor and expert in black magic, Woland, to the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov, who writes under the pseudonym Bezdomny (i.e., "Homeless"), and to the soon-to-expire Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz:

'But this is the question that disturbs me -- if there is no God, then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order?'

'Man rules himself,' said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an obviously absurd question.

'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?'

'In fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, 'imagine what would happen if you, for instance, were to start organising others and yourself, and you developed a taste for it -- then suddenly you got . . . he, he . . . a slight heart attack . . .' at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure . . . . 'Yes, a heart attack,' he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat,' and that's the end of you as an organiser! No one's fate except your own interests you any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was incharge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and his fellow men, realising that there is no more sense to be had of him, incinerate him.

'Sometimes it can be even worse: a man decides to go to Kislovodsk,' -- here the stranger stared at Berlioz -- 'a trivial matter you may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter. (Michael Glenny's translation, Chapter 1)

This, as one might expect, is precisely how Berlioz dies later that day. In fact, the good Professor Woland even goes on to predict in precise and clear detail exactly how Berlioz will expire, his head chopped off by the wheels of a tram, thereby establishing two things. First, human beings have plans that "gang aft agly" -- oops, I meant to say, "go often askew" (but inadvertently slipped into a Scottish brogue!). Second, there is a plan, apparently, for Woland knows what will happen to Berlioz, but it's a plan that obviously runs counter to mortal intentions. In that sense, it "rules the life of man," but can one say that it "keeps the world in order"? The accident that kills Berlioz brings disorder to his little literary world, so any maintenance of order would have to be understood on a larger scale -- a bit like an anti-entropic principle of the universe. Disorder on a small scale . . . but a larger order sustained, a larger-than-human order.

Professor Woland refers to this as the "seventh proof" of God's existence! But what sort of proof is a death foretold? There seems to be something of the contingency variant on the cosmological argument for God's existence. Or perhaps there's something of the teleological argument here. Yet, Woland has agreed with Berlioz that the five traditional arguments for God's existence prove nothing, and he has also rejected Kant's 'sixth' argument, the appeal to morality. So . . . what is this seventh argument, exactly? I'm not certain that it is something that can be precisely worded, but I'll reflect further on what Bulgakov might have meant. Keeping in mind that he's an ironist and satirist, of course . . .

Anyway, one can easily see how such a novel -- and such a novelist! -- would offend the Soviet orthodoxy of the 1930s, but on Stalin's whim, Bulgakov was allowed to work as literary consultant to the Moscow Art Theater until his personal experience of the seventh proof at the age of 48 in 1940.

Vadim Kruglikov on the North Korean 'Audio-Gadget'

Flag of Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Proudly Waving at the Peaceful Ballistic Satellite

(Image Liberated from Bourgeois Wikipedia Site)

The imperialist forces that occupy the lower half of the great Korean peninsula run an open-source military gang for seizing information about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and using it for nefarious purposes. Recently, this hegemonic gang has translated a column by Vadim Kruglikov that appeared in the Russian paper Novaya Gazeta. Originally written to honor of the DPRK's peaceful ballistic satellite, the militarist barbarians have translated it in their vain scheme to pirate the North's gloriously advanced technology:

"Korean Wonder: the Incomprehensible, Malicious Reaction by the United States, Japan, and South Korea to the Launch of a Large North Korean Audio-Gadget"

By Vadim Kruglikov

On 5 April 06:32, Moscow Time, the many centuries of hope of the North Korean people was realized -- a Kwangmyongsong-2 satellite was launched into near-Earth orbit. According to the reports of the Korean Central Telegraph Agency, the flight is going according to plan. The "Song About General Kim Il Sung" and the "Song about General Kim Jong-il" is being played in real-time from the satellite throughout the universe. In addition, the space messenger is carrying North Korean measuring devices -- a ruler, a Slava wristwatch made in 1952, weights for scales, and a medical thermometer. All devices are working normally.

The Kwangmyongsong-2 wonder did not come from nowhere. The history of North Korean cosmonautics has rich and ancient traditions. The great primogenitor of all North Koreans, Dangun (24th century B.C.), felt love for the interstellar spaces and plowed the expanses of the Universe in his dreams. The 10th-century educator Chkhol Su [transliterated] overcame the Earth's gravity by thought and penetrated the depths of space with his fearless vision. He more than once tried to throw a stone up there and closely tracked its trajectory. In the 16th century the Confucian monk refugee Khon Khvanpkho [transliterated] built the first North Korean rocket in the world, hand-launched and of unpolished slate; it had a length of 18 meters with base. Structurally and based on the food stocks taken onboard, the rocket was supposed to go into near-Earth space, but in light of there not being a powerful engine in the development of technology at the time, it was unable to break away from the Earth. The North Korean Gagarin himself was condemned to death by the Japanese occupation for his audacity. Khon Khanpkho's feat breathed new life into the dream and stirred up the people's masses. Throughout North Korea simple ybeny* and peasants built interplanetary flying machines from hand-made materials in order to overcome the horizons of the unknown. But the lack of professional skills and ignorance of how to calculate the ablative effect led to tragedies, which nevertheless did not kill the traditional indefatigable reach of the North Koreans for the interplanetary roads. But now finally that centuries-old dream has been attained.

The Taepodong-2 launcher, which put the Kwangmyongsong-2 into orbit, is a strong, 45-meter, one-stage structure of types of wood native to North Korea -- Manchurian walnut and Korean and Chosen pine. The structure is covered in decorative weavings of bamboo reeds and decorated with a native mosaic of lobsters. The missile operates on the accumulated energy of the love of the North Koreans for the Great Leader. The satellite itself is made of ceramics in the form of a 7-meter bottle of punchkhon [transliterated], which is traditionally ornamented. A powerful 0.5-meter loudspeaker is installed in its neck, which broadcasts the songs about the Korean leaders to all of the Cosmos visible to the eye. The satellite functions autonomously and is designed for several million years of active operation.

Because of this, the hostile reaction on the part of the United States, Japan, and South Korea to the launch of the large North Korean audio gadget is completely incomprehensible. They accuse the satellite of being military. Of course, one could somehow attach a nuclear bomb to it. But the matter is that a nuclear bomb is heavy, and the satellite would not be able to take off with it. And this is why the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry has called on the world community in its official statement to view the space odyssey of our friends in the DPRK with understanding and sympathy, especially since the North Korean cargo ship sent out to track the rocket was forced to return because of a breakdown.

*Ybeny -- Korean partisans of the 14th (sic. 16th?) century who fought against Japanese invaders. In the journal Korea Today, these poetic lines were published:

The ybeny hide in the mountains
They inflict losses on the enemy
The enemy will never catch the ybeny
But mother waits for the ybeny at home."

They were well-known in MGU [Moscow State University]. One of the professors of the Nations of Africa and Asia Institute would not give a five in exams on Korean history if the students did not know "The Ybeny's Mother".

This article by Vadim Kruglikov appeared in translation in the Korea Open Source Digest (Volume II, Issue 73, Thursday, April 16th, 2009), and I admit that I had to peruse it twice to make sure that I wasn't reading a serious paean to the glorious achievements of the North Korean state, for Kruglikov's article captures rather well the tone of radical-left screeds scribbled in praise of North Korea's 'achievements' . . . but then takes that praise several steps in directions weird enough to signal to the reader that this article is satire. e.g.:

"The missile operates on the accumulated energy of the love of the North Koreans for the Great Leader."

Doubtless, that explains the rocket's great success in putting the 'satellite' into near-Earth orbit (though possibly so near as to be subaquatic).

My wife checked the transliterated terms but couldn't figure them out. Perhaps they are Russian terms, not Korean, but if any experts read this (e.g., Andrei Lankov) and can identify these obscure words, we'd all be gratefully in somebody's debt.

Nota Bene: I'd credit the translator if I knew the person's name, but it's some linguistically gifted individual in the US Army, I suppose.

Nevertheless, fan death is real!

Fan Death? Not Really.

Let's try to be serious...

(Image from Encyclopedia Dramatica)

Yesterday, an unnamed fellow from the great, wide internet discovered my blog entry of September 12, 2006 on fan death: "Fan Death is Real!"

Long-time readers may recall that entry for the logical reasons that I offered and the empirical evidence that I supplied to prove the scientific reality of fan death. If not, then allow me to jog your memory:

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, 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.

How could anybody deny such a cloud of witnesses? Nevertheless, disbelievers abound, especially outside of Korea.

Such as the anonymous skeptic who visited my blog yesterday. Unconvinced by my arguments for the truth of fan death, he signed on as "Anonymous" and posted this comment:

Lol, you are stupid.

Along with this attempt at a well-reasoned refutation of my views on the reality of fan death, Anonymous added a link to support his own views. I discovered that the link leads to an fan-death article on a website called Encyclopedia Dramatica, which looks rather like Wikipedia but isn't.

Initially, I was confused because the site appears to confirm the truth of fan death, yet Anonymous calls me "stupid" for my princely and valiant efforts to warn non-Koreans about the great danger of sleeping in closed rooms with fans left blowing their virulent breezes. Indeed, the Encyclopedia Dramatica article had some excellent, scientific information on how fans kill:

An electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside.

The fan uses up the oxygen in the room and creates fatal levels of carbon dioxide (i.e. more carbon dioxide is magically created simply by blowing air around).

If the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing (you'd think it would actually blow air towards the person).

Fan blades chop up oxygen molecules Tae Kwon Do-style so that the air is no longer breathable, thus resulting in suffocation.

Fans cause hypothermia, which can only be caused by freezing the guts, not merely the skin's surface like fans do.

All of these very likely factors combined can also cause fan death.

But along with this excellent evidence, the article began to trouble me. Why, for instance, does it add such a remark as "carbon dioxide is magically created"? We're not talking magic! This is science!

Moreover, the article undercuts some of its own evidence by noting that fans suck up oxygen but then explicitly calls this point into doubt by suggesting that fans don't suck air but blow it. Now, I ask -- is there really a difference? Making such a distinction might lead some fan-death believers to question the truth of fan death, so this sort of indecisiveness about how fans kill people should be avoided in public discussions.

At length, I came to see that the article is not supportive of fan death but is actually critical of people who believe in fan death!

No wonder Anonymous left this link along with his ridicule about my intelligence.

As I read very closely, I came to see that the article is satire. Maybe not entirely satire, though. The arguably racist remarks about Asians, especially in another cross-linked article, don't sound especially satirical. But that point aside, the article is satiricial and only pretends -- albeit without consistency -- to be defending a belief in fan death.

Well, let me just state my views very clearly. Despite Jonathan Swift's assured position in the Western Literary Canon, I think that satire has no legitimate place in reasonable discussions. Satire is inherently offensive because it pretends to be what it is not and is therefore no better than lies. Indeed, satirizing is worse than lying because not only is it unethical deception, it compounds this immorality by setting up as objects of ridicule those who fail to see through the satire.

Therefore, given the profoundly serious faults inhering in satire, I for one refuse to put up with it on my website.

I hereby declare Gypsy Scholar to be a satire-free zone.

Oh, and just in case anybody is still wondering ... I also hereby declare that fan death is real.