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Getting back to 2NE1: someone must have realized, while putting together the album To Anyone, that they were making the ULTIMATE EXERCISE CD, right? Surely? I mean, it even sounds like a compilation of hit high-energy songs from 1998. ^^ After a brief-but-intense end-of-semester fling I burnt out on 2NE1, and rarely listen to their music anymore outside of the gym - and definitely never after 8pm - but for this specific purpose it is second to none. Can't Nobody at Seoul Music Festival Tokyo.

Outside of the songs on To Anyone, I think the songs that have the most replay value are Hate You and Stay Together - precisely because they find a groove and are not all about getting your heart rate up - and the songs that have the most explanatory power are Fire (intro), Lonely (down), and I Am the Best (up). Also Try To Copy Me, which is about copycat songwriting/presentation in the Kpop industry. Ironically 2NE1 is a very imitated group!

No matter what, this group will forever and always be my favorites for doing it with pants on.

After falling for 2NE1 I fell for some other Korean pop acts, joining in on what appears to be the third year of this industry's can't-stop-won't-stop rise to chart dominance in Asia. Besides being annoyingly upbeat, though, lots of these songs/groups are kinda exploitative, even the ones that are about girl-power. To give a quick run down, there's the submissive fantasy, the submissive but crazed fantasy, the so crazed they are no longer submissive fantasy, etc - and then there's the girls who skip the submissive part and insult you for being girly or pose while simultaneously calling you out for looking. Compared to which, simply declaring superiority seems like the less ethically compromised position to take, even if this song is really derivative (of 2NE1).

Or, as queen-of-Kpop BoA, says, I'll Eat You Up. ^^;; Making all of these songs actually metaphors for the rise-to-dominance of Kpop in Asia???

(Though speaking of the cute/sexy fantasy: no one exploits this better than e.via aka Happy Evil aka Korea's Best Troll, and no one panders to it more than UI... who I would like to like, because she is talented, but AUGH WHY NO IT'S WRONG.)

Anyhow given how much "crazy" is a part of the fantasy here, and how overused that trope really kind of is (in Kpop), I have a hard time really getting behind this stuff. But I like T-ara and Super Junior - Happy Happy Hurry Hurry Sorry Sorry Cry Cry - because they go just that bit further XD, until it's not so much of a fantasy anymore.

And in that vein, I like Fever's End by Tablo, which is an actual album and not just a singles collection... Well, this is basically American-style conscientious hip hop, right? ^^ The appeal is that it's smart and thoughtful - and moreover, balanced, because he's on a personal mission to restore perspective to his own life and by extension, the overheated Korean pop music industry. No Tomorrow / Bad / Thank You For Breathing.

Then there's the Big Bang spinoff stuff... I already talked about in the last entry but I'm going to talk about it some more, so please, bear with me!

( Here's a cut though, just in case! )

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On Manic Depression in Kpop: US pop music is just as emotionally extreme, but the references are different. There's this Bipolar thing going on in the US - Hot and Cold, Day n Night - or else the focus is on the relationship as the source of the suffering. Well, and also there's more explicit sex stuff and more emphasis on having a good time, tonight, possibly due to more relaxed censorship laws XD. But I kind of like this about (classic) Kpop: not that it's sex-segregated and euphemistic, but that it's more existential or self-reflective and tends to ask, not why have you left me feeling like this?, but why I am the kind of person whose relationships always turn out this way?

Well, although the YG artists I've lavished the most words on are more US-influenced and they do focus more on heartbreak and DSM diagnoses, lol; plus, see Taylor Swift's recent output for something more self-reflective and seasonally-focused coming from the US. The two industries are probably converging, then, from both directions.

Or am I wrong? This is all based on a handful of videos... sorry. >_> I needed to get this stuff down so I could go back to my schoolwork.

BTW, here are some older kpop acts I found trawling Ytube:
OneTwo: Shake Your Booty / Starry Night / Very Good
Ibadi: Chococat / Never Ending Story / Yearning

Ahhhh, that's relaxing. I'll stop there. :D

Back from vacation! I have Things to say, about Amsterdam, about Seville. Now that I have promised this, though, I will probably never get around to saying them. :p Maybe I'll put the pictures up as an album on G+ at some point.

Short version: Amsterdam was cold and wet and expensive, but the museums were excellent and I got pretty alarmingly high on whatever it was Mike was sharing, lol, at which point I 1) became really fascinated by lights that were International Klein Blue, 2) realized that everything in Amsterdam that was not-fun and shitty, like the chain fast food restaurants and gaudy Christmas lights, specifically appeals to people who are high, 3) wondered if this was why we have so many chain restaurants in the USA, 4) wondered why pot is not legal in the USA, because it allows you to be okay with terrible shitty boring things, since even getting to the end of a thought brings that "I did a something awesome!" feeling of accomplishment, 5) became convinced that whenever I'd seen Mike around the campus in a strange mood, he'd been high ("No, but I was probably drunk"), 6) became convinced that many famous US celebrities are often high in their TV appearances, 7) felt good about everything, despite also feeling like I was being ignored like in middle school.

That was the first time (psychedelic/paranoid). The second time, I thought I could read everyone's minds, that I had a glow around my head making me especially charismatic and attractive, and (after I realized I'd been so busy thinking about how awesome I was that the conversation had moved on without me so in fact, it didn't matter whether or not I was awesome, because no one would ever be able to tell), thought I had a special insight into how various historical figures and members of bands must feel. Or in other words: shifted from an extrovert's to an introvert's version of feeling really insightful. :p

What I take away from this is that my worst fear is apparently to be socially snubbed, and my greatest desire is apparently to know what other people are thinking. >_> Oh, and I also felt a bit guilty - even at the time! - because Mike and his friend were at peace with universe, and meanwhile I was thinking about how much better I was than them. Ahaha...

I will say, before this starts to look like a "reefer madness" advert: none of the regular (pre-rolled because I don't know how to roll a joint) stuff in the cafes, or the brownies, or anything I might or might not have smoked before, made me feel this way. Just the colors thing, that was all. You hear that in Amsterdam it is stronger, and I guess that is right!

Woah, I ended up accidentally saying everything I wanted to! Strange. o_O The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam was very moving, by the way: you know, you think that compared to others they didn't have it so bad, because they had an entire two floors to themselves and Anne even (almost) had her own bedroom, but then you go up there and you see the windows boarded up, and you realize that this sixteen year old girl lived without seeing the sunlight for two years. Not to mention the stuff that happened afterward. It was really, very sad, and I left feeling a bit calmer

...because I'd left my bag with a my passport in it in a shop, and had been walking around for hours trying to find the shop again, only to eventually end up right back where I started at the museum, at which point I said fuck it, paid my fee and went in. Afterwards I felt like my petty problems weren't so bad, and was able to find the shop where they still had my bag, so all's well that ends well. (It wouldn't be a Sonya-vacation story if there wasn't a narrowly-averted disaster.)

Here's a video from Seville, Spain: this really was, honestly, the best Christmas of my life. Sorry, family!

In Seville there is also a big Cathedral that looks, no joke, exactly like the Castle in Ico. That picture isn't retouched! Same light and everything. I am convinced there is a direct link. :p I took a lot of pictures of this place to prove that it is a direct inspiration, so look for those later.

Next up: Kpop!

Japan's Railway Bazaar:

"And it is this very framework of male fraternization that pushes sex towards being a voyeuristic activity. Heterosexual sex for male bonding must be rebuilt and reconfigured — from its original conception as a private act between individuals — for the purposes of group male entertainment. Hence violence and sadism are likely to become core thematic principles, as alternatives like romance, love, and tenderness directly project man’s private bonds to women — thus creating a conflict with its new context."

Reasons to Teach What We Teach:

"Where a topic appears on this list affects the way it should be taught and tested. Memorizing algorithms is an entirely appropriate approach to problems that fall primarily under number one... If, however, a problem falls primarily under four, this same approach is disastrous."

Why Conservatives Can't Get People to Work Hard:

"So there are tons of reasons why simply smashing the welfare state doesn't instill poor people (or anyone at all) with good values. The beatings may continue, but morale will not improve. To conservatives, I say: If you really want people to value hard work and discipline, you've got to come up with a real, workable plan for achieving that goal."

Or, books I have been reading for class, Part 1.

Ethics: I think I should probably have read this after Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson, because it is a stab at a solution to a problem I hadn't known existed. XD Namely, the problem of the paralysis felt by philosophers in a world in which philosophy can only be used to critique, all attempts to claim universal relevance by philosophers are savagely torn apart, and no one can think of a way to put philosophy to use for the purpose of imagining and then creating a better world for us all.

Lurking behind this is the idea that the best time to be alive was during the modernist era, particularly the 60s, when there was a sense of wide-open-possibility, that the world could be a better place, that collectively we could accomplish something. To not have this sense of possibility is "nihilist".

Badiou's solution to these problems, at least in Ethics, is to invent a philosophy that is actionable for individuals, that is "universal" because it will lead to the creation of new truths with universal relevance, but that avoids (he hopes) the pitfalls of 20th century totalizing philosophies that had huge human costs, like Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism.

I returned the book to the library -- also it was tricky reading for me because it referenced a lot of philosophers I wasn't familiar with and used mathematical terms I didn't know (as a physics major!) -- so I might be misrepresenting some of the author's arguments. But I think the basic idea was:

--Truth is found in lack (see: Lacan), meaning at times when you recognize that your existing philosophy is inadequate.
--These times are "truth-events".
--ethics (small "e") consists of devotion to a truth-event. And by devotion, Badiou means lifelong devotion.
--Through devotion to a truth-event, you instigate a "truth-process" whose goal is the creation of new "truths".
--A bunch of qualifications to keep this philosophy from having unforeseen bad consequences.
--Something about 'subtraction', which is a concept I found very hazy. I think it means that instead of trying to demolish the current order so that you can build a new one in the flaming wreckage, you find the smallest change that can be made which will still completely change the whole.

Generally I found this book to be really invigorating reading, which I am sure is the entire point of the philosophy in the first place! My specific reservations with it were:

( Numbered for your convenience )

The section of this book I enjoyed the most, and thought was the most illuminating, was Badiou's discussion of the difference between opinion and truth. Briefly:

There is something called disinterested-interest -- the pursuit of truth for its own sake -- and something called brute interest -- the harnessing of invention toward concrete aims. All disinterested-interest eventually turns toward brute interest, at which point, new "knowledges" will come into being on the backs of a few truths. "At the end of which the human animal has become the absolute master of his environment – which is, after all, nothing but a fairly mediocre planet", sez Badiou.

Knowledge, therefore, is a byproduct of the pursuit of truth. Opinion, on the other hand, "is the necessary language of the everyday. Truths should not attempt to do away with the space for opinion" lest evil 4c, the unnameable, result -- the example here is the May 1968 riots in central Europe, which were riots not against Communism, but for a public space free of the meddlesome interference of the Party. "Truths have the power to change the language of opinion, and this is the power that, when abused, results in an evil."

Well, anyway, that's a short and probably very inscrutable summary, but if anyone is interested I will try to excerpt the whole thing in a comment later. Good stuff. The basic point is that we shouldn't always try to make every conversation about Big Ideas, chit chat is very important as well, but Big Ideas are still important because they define the scope of what the chit chat can be about. The more stuff like this I read, the more I kind of want to meet Alain Badiou, he seems like a passionate guy. One more thing I will point out about Ethics is that it was written in two weeks - two weeks! - over the summer. You learn stuff like this and you wonder.

***

Still to come: Badiou's The Century (which I enjoyed more than this), Zizek (briefly, because he's still very difficult for me to read), Jameson's Postmodernism (the source of many opinions I have seen floating around the net! :D), Foucault, and Zygmunt Bauman.

This is a webcomic I started reading thanks to persistent fanart bombing by vikki. It's 4,107 pages and 326,796 words long (so far). That's half as long as Atlas Shrugged, only counting page titles and captions.

So yeah, don't start this one unless you want to read the War and Peace of webcomics.

Granted, the majority of those words show up in chat logs, which are how the characters talk to each other because duh. How else would they communicate while playing a computer game with their geographically dispersed friends, each of whom will eventually (spoiler)preside over a separate, custom-built planet?

Though there is some gimmickry involved, let me just say that the fact that every player has a unique and distinguishable chat-writing style is really pretty impressive. Also, it makes sense to me that (spoiler)the trolls speak the way they type, because trolls - at least the high-caste ones - are raised with a lot of physical space separating them due to their passionately destructive natures, and so the primary way they communicate with each other is through text over the internet. (Well, and also the trolls in the story are the equivalent of troll nerds.)

If I had to sum up the comic, I'd say it is about creation and destruction. The reality-altering computer game the characters are playing revolves around building - building up another player's physical space and building up your own stats - but with greater power comes greater ability to break stuff, and that's without counting all the meteors and falling rocks and ticking time bombs and insane homicidal maniacs who now and again will randomly - except that nothing is random in a comic which revolves around prophecies (of doom), time travel (proving you are already doomed), alternate universes (which are doomed), and (spoiler)malevolent omniscient aliens who reside outside the flow of time - destroy all the stuff you just built with your awesome godlike powers. Which isn't to say that doom lasts forever, XD.

BTW if you are reading this comic, the end of Act 4 is a good resting point as Act 5 is twice again as long as all of the proceeding acts put together. It's also the point where the comic becomes much darker, following the pacing of the Harry Potter books (or, if you like, ICP's Dark Carnival).

Speaking of dark themes, it was always clear that this comic was gonna deal in some way with depression, but I really wasn't expecting (spoiler) to read in-comic chat logs about it. Pretty brave of the author, I think.