Yongho Kim

Category: a

  • Tactical adoption of ethnic identity to overcome side vulnerability

    I often try to avoid recognition/downplay their weight, in reaction to how much generally (older) people I know seem to have come to cherish recognition to the level of fetish.

    When the OITs gave the BRU campaign award, I realized that despite my efforts, recognition was successful in stirring my emotions (ie: I couldn’t control my face expressions), which could become problematic in later, smaller meetings. So maybe it’s better for my long-term growth to just admit that I have a person/al part that desires recognition and accept/enjoy recognition when coming from our side of the trench. Repressed desires can become a major vulnerability, esp. if outsiders find out.

    So enjoying recognition may be a viable tactic (short-term plan) with the ultimate goal of preserving a stable/immune personality.

    Similarly, I may sometimes get swayed more easily by political touting, because I chose to not identify as anything ethnic. (I don’t have a problem with labeling myself with the biological/political “asian”) In other words, there may be psychological grounds for which I started name-dropping with people, who partially got the point that I am prone to an environment of confabulation. My intellectual background is weak in anything beyond non/lean-ideological direct action, so it works a lot more in the direction of “oh, you are red too! ho ho!” than an actual discussion.

    Because I have more grounds to start with (cultural and racial) when I pick up “korean”, and won’t feel as insecure with even something like “activist”, I may be taking the right steps towards making myself less vulnerable to ideological play. I mean, as long as I can swallow all or part of the nationalistic bullshit that comes along. (It’s faster to take part of it for granted, than to trying to prove wrong to those who claim I’m not “korean” because I don’t do X or believe Y) . Which path, it doesn’t really matter.

    Because after being in the field a few years, I’ll drop the korean; that’s why it’s (personally) tactical.

    But naturally I won’t be the same person a few years from now.

  • "patents" can't "back" drugs

    So on channel USA (DirecTV #242), Leptoprin (obesity pills) ads claim that this is a “USA-patent backed product”.

    Now, a patent can’t “back” a drug. The FDA “backs” (approves/proves) drugs. All a patent does is assuring the pharmaceutical corporation has exclusive rights over the drug as an intellectual property. You can’t get away that easy, na na.

  • sticking around a house with no heating in…

    sticking around a house with no heating in the middle of LA winter may be the shortcut to tuberculosis. it’s in my best interests to run away to my uncle’s. soon.

  • identifying the sin

    A: Teacher what’s this paper?
    YoKim: it’s the circle of holiness. Who can recall what 전도사님 talked about today?
    T: Oh me me!
    YoKim: no someone else besides T… hmm E can you tell everyone what was the message today?
    E: Nah..
    YoKim: ok then let’s have T answer it. Silence! Everyone listen to T.
    T: she showed how our heart gets dirty with sins, and that Jesus’s blood makes us clean.
    YoKim: good! It’s also important to remark that Jesus’ blood makes us holy, because we are all holy persons to start with, so when our sins are forgiven, we become holy again. Here we have… the circle of holiness! We’ll all go around and talk about our sins from last week or the week before that. Alright? Let me give you two examples. Hey A! Stop yelling at J.
    YoKim: So I like playing computer games. Last saturday, the one before yesterday, I was playing a game and I was so excited that
    P: what’s the game’s name
    YoKim: oh it’s in korean so you may not know – it’s 대항해시대, you travel in ships and to trade and stuff. Anyway saturday morning I was so excited about the game that first thing after I got up was to run to the computer. And I should have had a time for God, like praying and reading the bible, but I didn’t!
    T: Is the game fun?
    YoKim: Yeah real fun. Now why was what I did a sin?
    J: because you didn’t have breakfast.
    YoKim: No, not having a breakfast is generally not good for you.. but it’s not a sin. I sinned because I put the game before Jesus! That’s why it’s a sin. Silence! T stop cussing at A.
    T: but she started it!
    A: No you started! u-g-l-y ugly!
    E: u-g-l-y ugly!
    T: you are stupid!
    E: ugly!
    YoKim: hey guys, stop! Ok let me give you the second example. You all know President Bush, right?
    T: oh he’s a failure~
    YoKim: you all know he started a war with Iraq, right? He says he sent troops to help the Iraqi people out, but we all know that’s a lie! He wanted the oil, and because it’s so expensive, he wanted all the oil for himself. E, quiet! So why is the Iraq War a sin?
    J: because he went for the oil
    YoKim: exactly! He put the oil above Jesus, and went into war without really asking God what she wanted him to do!
    P: Hey teacher do you like Bush?
    YoKim: no, that’s not what we are talking about right now. So let’s go back to my sin – I think my sin can be summed up as “game addiction”, that’s the core of my sin. Now for Bush, his sin can be summed up as “capitalism”! Got it? Now let’s go around and tell our sins from last week.
    T: well last week I..

  • my thought process doesn't seem to follow a fully rational path (re blog layout)

    I like my design. A lot. In particular there are some gimmicks here and there I could use for various related (but not the same) purposes – some of them are technically possible, some of them are possible but not semantically correct (from the point of view of WordPress PHP flow) and some just don’t work. Yet.

    On the top left corner I’ve got a position:fixed; DIV item that shows the “post” icon and “Private Notes” link (when logged in) plus the left arrow and right arrow to turn pages while browsing categories. This section is outside the loop. When viewing individual posts, I would like these arrows to instead function as the next post, previous post links (and have the post title as ALT) that currently sit on the bottom of the left column, which are kind of ugly right now.

    Also, I would like a tiny print icon for printing mode, when the post is a “paper” category. (shows an alternate CSS set with double spacing etc, which I used for actual papers later in my senior year)

    But both features need to lie within the loop.

    One way of making it work would be handling separate sidebar.php files depending on is_single() but that will be a heck lot of work, and most importantly, it’s not elegant and any changes in the future will cost tons of time.

    Hmm.

  • revolutionary trotskyists supporting state intervention?

    there were at least 5 groups sellings newspapers and handing out flyers at tonight’s gulf coast resistance movements solidarity fundraising.. wow. One guy handed me this flyer about an event this saturday afternoon (Rally to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lynne Stewart, and Assata Shakur, Imma Presb Church 4pm) and I heard Mumia’s name before, probably from Joy James or andrè carrington. I felt so sorry to the white dude talking to me while I was skimming the flyer and thinking about where I had heard of Mumia, because he was going 180km/h about communism and revolutionary internationalism and the prisons and this and that and I was paying scanty attention.. but sir, you need to wait a bit while I’m not looking at you! Anyway, towards the end of it I heard something to the order of the USSR communist experiment having failed because it had stayed isolationist, satisfied at the revolution within the nation (Stalin’s line), so I commented, “but on the other hand they relied too much on state power to bring about the revolution”, and he went on about states being necessary to fend off imperialist aggression, so I asked him if he belonged to CPUSA, and he goes no, they betrayed the revolutionary marxist analysis a while ago, so maybe it’s a branch of the SWP? and he goes no, we split from them a while ago.. so who are these guys? and how can trotskyists or any branch thereof argue in favor of state-based defense against imperialism?