Month: February 2009

Writing exercises

While researching for an extended writing class, I stumbled upon this list of exercises at McSweeney’s: THIRTEEN WRITING PROMPTS
Sample:

“A wasp called the tarantula hawk reproduces by paralyzing tarantulas and laying its eggs into their bodies. When the larvae hatch, they devour the still living spider from the inside out. Isn’t that fucked up? Write a short story about how fucked up that is.”

That’s so fucked up.
The end.

You say Dokdo, I say Takeshima (or the Liancourt Rocks)

The Big Picture captures the Dokdo/Takeshima (Takeshima/Dokdo) debate through big news shots: Dokdo or Takeshima
They should just take one island a piece and turn them into penal colonies, or breeding grounds for the next generation of Godzilla.
Actually, the best way to handle this situation is probably for the UN to evacuate the islands and then nuke them into oblivion. That way, neither side loses face, and that’s really what this is all about, right? A 500 year old Japanese-Korean pissing match about some rocks in the middle of nowhere… And yet, this issue even springs up in articles covering race relations at Little Tokyo senior care facilities.
When will we all learn?
– Koreans must embrace their kimchi funkiness
– Japanese must accept their well-deserved reputation for snootiness
(And of the two, I’m personally guilty of the former more often than the latter)

Someone turned the heat up…

…it was probably that big, feral, omniscient monkey in the sky.
In two weeks it went from the high 70s (F) to over 100 degrees during the afternoon. It was hot. I decided to walk home since Nam dropped me off this morning. I walked a few miles and emptied the bottle of water I carried along. People drove by in/on all sorts of motored conveyances, and wondered where the hell the crazy Japanese guy was walking. NOBODY WALKS IN THAILAND.
I’m the walking dude.