Quick Hit: The Grand Narrative in 2012
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Sorry for the slow posting everyone, but my daughters are off this week, and indeed one’s even sitting on my shoulders as I type this (“Whee! Happy woman Daddy! Why’s she smile?”). I’ll start writing again once they return to kindergarten next week.
When I do, every week from then to the end of the year I’ll be posting longer analytical pieces on Mondays, the Korean Gender Reader on Wednesdays, and translations on Fridays, either of K-pop songs or (more likely) gender issues-related news that would otherwise never see the light of day in English. I realize I have a terrible track-record of posting when I say I will, but hey – it is a new year after all, and for a variety of personal and professional reasons I’d really like to stick to my commitment this time.
If anyone would like to help me with that, I’d very much appreciate any donations via the “donate” button at the end of every post, no matter how small. Don’t worry, I won’t be making a habit of asking, and in fact will make the request just two more times this year: when my $17 domain renewal comes up in March, and my $30 no-advertisements renewal does in August. But it’d be really nice if I could break even with those at least! :)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about The Grand Narrative…
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Well, not quite everything, but I did indeed just get interviewed about blogging by Gwangju Foreign Language Network (광주영어방송), which you’ll be able to listen to here at 6:15pm on Tuesday (I’ll add an MP3 file when it becomes available). It’s very short, but I’d be happy to expand upon anything mentioned in the interview here, or answer any other questions that readers may have.
For anyone that does listen to the interview, here’s the post about criticisms of Korean female – Caucasian male relationships that I mentioned, as it seemed to resonate with a lot of people.
Update - Unfortunately, WordPress.com doesn’t allow me to upload the WMA file that I was sent. Sorry!
Open Thread #16
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As this post goes up, I’ll be at Gimhae Airport picking up my father, then taking him and the rest of the family to the Daegu 2011 IAAF World Championships this weekend and next. We’d like to stay there for the entire nine days (he will!), but unfortunately next week we have to move apartments on Wednesday, and then I start teaching again the next day. Needless to say, I’ll be too busy to write again until he leaves on the 7th of September.
Until then, please feel free to raise and discuss anything sociological, gender, advertising, K-pop, and/or athletics-related here, and sorry for not being able to complete any song translations this month. But I do have five that I’ve been working on, which I’ll put up as soon as I’m back!
Update, September 7th: I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m afraid my “comeback” with have to be pushed back to Monday the 12th. Sorry!
The Grand Narrative’s Facebook Page Launched!
For about a year now, I’ve been tweeting about all the interesting Korean gender issues, advertising, and pop-culture stuff (and much more) that I don’t get a chance to blog about, but a lot of readers have suggested that it’s high time I created a Facebook page also. With apologies for the wait then, here it finally is, and I definitely hope to make it a site in its own right, not just a glorified RSS feed for the website proper.
To that end, I’ll not just be providing cool stuff that you won’t see here, and taking advantage of the opportunity to interact more with readers, but I plan to let my hair down and be a little less intellectual on Facebook too.
For instance, as a dispassionate critical commentator on Korean girl groups K-pop, normally I would never ever reveal that there’s something about Love Alone (러브얼론) above by Miss A (미스에이) that has me smiling radiantly almost every time I listen to it. Indeed, although I was initially very disappointed that there wasn’t a proper music video produced for it, now just seeing the members being themselves in it has me smiling all the more!
(2:29)
Granted, all of them being attractive women certainly helps, but I genuinely think that some unique combination of the music, voices, and lyrics makes this an incredibly warm song, especially for what can often be very tinny and artificial-sounding K-pop.
Any other fans?^^ Call me naive, but I’ll be investing 660won (US$0.61) in the MP3 as soon as I finish typing this!
Update: See here for some high quality screenshots of the video.
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