By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
Power politics of all stripes looms large these days in the Korean expat blogosphere. If it isn’t the power of a Taiwanese warship, it is the “power of one,” or the power of the purse in Seoul.
Kushibo writes an interesting post about Japan getting in maritime trouble with yet another one of its post-war “allies.” This time it’s the Taiwanese who may begin writing catchy earworms about islands that they claim is their land, not the Japanese’s.
So it’s not just the Koreans who have maritime territorial disputes with Japan. A Taiwanese warship has been sent to the fishing grounds around the disputed Diaoyu Islands (called the Senkaku Islands by the Japanese) in an apparent show of strength after complaints of harassment by Japanese patrol boats.
Over at One Free Korea there is a great round up of the recent meeting of DPRK dissident Kang Chol Hwan with U.S. President George W. Bush.
I have some bad news for Selig Harrison: John Lennon was wrong, and Machiavelli was right. In Pyongyang, love is not all you need. Fear is.
The always interesting Lost Nomad broaches the subject of Seoul finding itself near the top of a recent survey of the world’s most expensive cities.
Seoul now has the honor, such as it is, of being the world’s 5th most expensive city, according to KBS. But seeing that the number one and two spots are currently being held by the dastardly Japanese, I’m sure Seoul is already working on doing everything possible to claim that top position next year.
Speaking of Seoul being expensive, the fine folks over at What Not To Do In Asia apparently had more than their fair share of fun during a recent trip to Seoul:
Seoul is only about 2 hours and 40 minutes away by bus from my sleepy beach town of Kangneung. I very rarely go though, due to the effects from a previous night and the fact that money seems to fly out of my wallet with even greater haste then my usual willful abandon.
On a personal note, Rick Strong, the British fellow who was one of my successors at my original hagwon, has returned to Korea after being forced out a few months ago due to visa problems that also involved me.
Today my new boss took me to immigration- a rather scary experience for me, having seen the basement of one of these buildings the last time I went (here’s a clue- there are bars on the doors and goons who fingerprint you and take your mugshot down there). This time, it was all smiles and whatever.
At my own mixture of blog and blovel, a flame war suddenly erupted when I casually mentioned it was possible that gyopos’ might soon find it much easier to find a job in the ever-changing hagwon business.
This tempest-in-a-teapot produced this delightful bit of free verse:
you’re a loser
and your girlfriend’s ugly
This week’s “Korea, Assignment of Choice” moment also comes from Ahssa!. An anonymous poster wrote:
Shelton, I have been in news for several years, and in some people’s cases, it’s not a lack of belief in themselves that is their problem, it’s a lack of good, old-fashioned knowledge.
If you ever want to be a quality Marmot’s-caliber writer, quit the hagwon, quit the hagwon attitude, enroll in graduate school here in Korean Studies or International Relations and learn something.
51 Comments
I just had a fantastic bowel movement after drinking about 3 cups of coffee. I felt that this deeply “moving” experience was news-worthy and decided to blog about it.
UP
Pics of the aformentioned fecal matter
That’s nothing. I scanned the expat blogosphere and found this:
http://lostseouls.com/blog39/rory%20fucked.jpg
Could you, in the future Shelton, muck up Marmot’s hole with more links to your god-awful blog? Here are some possible topics for you to consider, as I think you’re mental challenges and poor writing will produce the unintentionally funny posts world weary folks find amusing:
-Why Korean girls make better girlfriends. (Without using the phrase, “I couldn’t get one back home”)
-Why white English teachers have in their blood superior and more profound understanding of Let’s Go 1-4 and 6.
-A sneak peak of someone overcoming the shame of chronic masturbation as he enters into his 30s by projecting his love onto objects of high technology.
-Last but not least, why Shelltonn Baummegarner is a better writer than Hemingway.
-adam
-
i couldn’t agree more but let me add one thing… you guys really need to get laid.^^
Anyone know where to get Argyreia Nervosa in Korea?
hey shelton, let’s make a deal that you only blog on such and such days (eg. wednesdays and fridays). that way i won’t have to pick through your shit looking for a nut of interest.
are you drunk?
That seemed like a drunken ramble to me.
WTF is this nonsense! Some of these links belong to people too stupid to live (not Nomad). If you can’t post better things than this, give it up.
Someone in the Marmot’s human resources department should be fired for this.
Oh, I get it now. This is the sequel to Baduk’s performance art.
Shelton, remember what I told you to tell’em?
Folks, no offense to marmot, but this ain’t no New Yorker. Chill out.
I’ll have to agree with the other comments. That post was a big waste of time. We’re all able to scan the Marmot’s Korean blogroll to see what other foreigners are drinking in Korea.
Hell, I used to be one of the drunks rolling home at dawn. Although I’d at least like to think that I did it with more style and grace than those featured above.
But I like to see Shelton sucking up to Kushibo (who has been one of his largest detractors) with his first link. Very gracious Shelton.
And perhaps you should take the advice of your anonymous poster, or at least just stop boring here.
From “Ahssa!”
“I have every intention of continuing to write for The Marmot’s Hole for the forseeable future.”
And that’s my cue to finally stop spending my time reading it. You suck, dude, and if I were the Marmot, I’d contain your ass. I am amazed that my favorite Korean blog has somehow made an unholy alliance with an ass who refers to Americans as “Miguks” and Koreans as “Wayguks”. How did it happen? I was in South America….I’m just waking up to this new (and shitty) reality.
Seriously, I thought the Marmot was one of the only bloggers on the scene who wasn’t completely freaking hagwon. And now this butt (who exemplifies hagwon) is pooping all over one of my more frequently-visited sites. Well, no more. I say thee nay, hagwon.
Count me out, Marmot. And color me disillusioned.
Baumgartner, you stay the hell away from Kevin Kim, or I’m coming over there. Bitch.
Also, you have shitty spelling. They’re not typos. You just suck at spelling. Hang it up, loser.
I officially give up.
I really don’t want to add to this negative chorus, but Shelton is just in some way not getting it. I have been supportive of Shelton and even criticized his critics in the past, but no more.
There are other semi-active posters besides his Furry EminenceHamel and Robert Neffbut they do not engage in Shelton’s sophomoric navel gazing.
I was reading along and enjoying this post until the end of the third section (Lost Nomad’s writing about Seoul’s being an expensive city). The experience of Shelton’s acquaintance with immigration authorities could have been spun into an interesting post of its own, but the other stuffnot going to Gangneung due to a hangover, and the “flamewar” at Ahssa!is not for this blog.
As for the “gyopo flamewar,” I wouldn’t even mind so much, but for the fact that the original Ahssa! article is completely out to lunch. Gyopos taking your jobs? Give me a break. Gyopos usually can’t set their foot in the door of most hagwons, because for some reason owners prefer a Caucasian face. (And I say this as someone who does not have a drop of gyopo blood in him.)
Is there some kind of elitist exclusivism here on the part of the Marmot’s regular readers? No, I wouldn’t say that. But there is little tolerance for sophomoric tripe, excessive self-referencing, and a pointless hyperlink from “assignment of choice” to a Wikipedia article on journalistic style.
For me personally, this has nothing to do with the fact that Shelton is an English teacher. I do very much enjoy reading a number of English teachers’ blogs, but perhaps they buck the apparent trend, because these are people who, even if “fresh off the boat,” are making a sincere effort to learn Korean and understand in some non-superficial way the society in the midst of which they are living and working. I even enjoy reading about such bloggers’ discoveries about the culture (the sort that come across as commonplace truisms to the more jaded), because they remind me of my own experiences (though not as an English teacher).
But all this is not grist for the Marmot’s mill, regardless of who the author is. The Marmot, mercifully, does not write at length about the previous evening’s drunken exploits, or his latest shopping experience in Itaewon. I don’t even mind reading such stories on other peoples’ blogs, but not here.
Oy, well I hope I haven’t pissed too many people off, but I’ve said my piece. And hi to all the English teachers whose blogs I do enjoy reading (you know who you are).
…And I know my comment above compltely contradicts what I’ve written before in support of Shelton, and the laissez-faire side of me just wants to let Shelton write whatever he wants to write, but screw it.
Sorry, Shelton. You’ve been getting a rough ride on this blog, and I (and others) have said before that you should ignore your critics, but your detractors may have a point after all. I was just willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t know, something about this post just turned me off.
???, ?°€??´??´ ????????´.
did i mention that you all very obviously need to get laid.^^
This is what I’d call a “Gong Show Moment”.
“…not going to Gangneung due to a hangover…”:
Sorry, returning to Gangneung with a hangover….
…And, er, at the risk of negating everything I wrote by coming across as a complete idiot, what the heck is “OOB” anyhow? Google turns up a number of unlikely possibilities, and the most germane meaningmdash”out of blogging”would by definition not appear to apply here.
It’s true. The participation of Shelton Bumgarner has been a horribly negative addition to the content of the Marmot’s Hole. Shelton clearly doesn’t know anything about Korea, and this is the place for knowledgeable blogging. There are a million places for the prattling of ignorant hagwon teachers, including their own blogs, but that’s not why we come here.
a lot of folks seem to be on the same page with respect to quality assurance we come to expect from the marmot as well as the type of information usually posted on this site.
i’d like recommendations for similar quality discussion groups/blogs related to korea/northeast asia. you guys are probably the best to ask as i won’t have to actually go through all the shit out there first. thanks in advance.
Let noolji maripkan be a guest blogger
c’mon people, lay it off
bumgarner is a fine young american, just you wait until he makes it to the presidency
Or is it? I *am* a drunken newbie…
Geez, you’d think that these guys get paid to blog. Come on people, do what I do, skim through each entry and click on what’s interesting. Then surf to another blog and do the same. Whatever. I skip the boring stuff and check out what’s interesting.
Well, at least his name (however he feels like spelling it) is written largely enough that I can see it and skip it.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=.....00t=khl=en
Check it out, you can see the Ryugyeong hotel smack in the middle of town.
A correction: Checking the email from my blog, I realize that Kushibo posted the comment on my blog that I wrote was
anonymous.
I regret the error.
I am starting my own Marmot-esque blog in the near future if anyone is interested in helping me out. I need photogs, writers and other creative types.
The sociology of blogs and the internet doesn’t particularly interest me but I’ve got to believe this would make a good case study for someone.
I myself don’t like Mr. Bumgarner posts. It’s annoying that he ends up being the ultimate focus of so much of what he says. It’s annoying to have to be reminded of the fact that 80% of all the white American twentysomethings working in some capacity in the English industry in Korea thinks they are poets, that so many want to be writers but have nothing to say that is any different from the rest. It’s annoying that he posts so much….
However I think the quality, or tone, of Mr. Bumgarners posts are a secondary issue. Frankly I find some of Marmots posts unhelpful (the expectations being high because they usually are), too, and sometimes I go back and look at my own blog and wonder what I possibly could have been thinking wasting bytes like that, but not every post can be or needs to be timeless. I think people would be less annoyed by Mr. Bumgarner’s posts at Marmot’s if there WEREN’T SO MANY OF THEM!!!
My suggestion, then, would be perhpas that he be posting a little less frequently. Sometimes he posts more than once a day, but always at least once a day, and even really well written posts by anyone other than the Marmot appearing with that kind of frequency would be skipped by a lot of readers… which is fine if the guest posts are rare. The feeling you get lately, however, is that Marmot’s blog has been hijacked, and instead of being able to skip the guest blogger’s posts you have to search for the Marmot’s. I’d try to read these posts about Skype and whatnot if, for example, they appeared on a weekend when the Marmot does not usually post.
I think another part of the problem is that Marmot doesn’t realize how seriously people take his blog. They read it at embassies in Seoul and thinktanks around the world, and I think it really does have an influence on views about Korea. Mr. Bumgarner’s post about Skype and NPR and whatnot would be really helpful in a different format, but when it’s here it is probably damaging to the Marmot’s ????????? (as used to be the case with his comments section).
I haven’t told Marmot about this story but in May of last year I was visiting the East Asia secion of the UK foreign commonwealth office in London with OhmyNews and someone introduced me as a “famous” (??) English language blogger from Korea. I was asked, “are you the so-called ‘Marmot’”?
The standard Marmot posts are somewhat entertaining and very informative. Marmot also seems to attract a certain breed of highly articulate well informed commenter (plus just enough nuts to keep it interesting). This combination creates something that is rare in the world of blogs, an interesting, entertaining, and educational site.
Unfortunately Sheldon?€™s posts?€?.well, the previous 31 comments covered it pretty thoroughly
you guys have addressed most of the issues but… my sympathies go to marmot and sheldon. sheldon, because he’s been boot fucked mercilessly by his own community. marmot, because he’s yet to weigh in and i suspect he feels like he’s facing a difficult choice.
“Baumgartner, you stay the hell away from Kevin Kim, or I?€™m coming over there. Bitch.”
That shouldn’t be a problem: judging by the numbers, people stay away from my blog in droves.
Kevin
c?€™mon people, lay it off
bumgarner is a fine young american, just you wait until he makes it to the presidency
Comment by lux bearer from Netherlands ?€” June 23, 2005 (Thursday) @ 9:57 am | Edit This
What?!?!? Looxie Poo is back? Yowza! Break out the tar and feathers…
As even the eminence grise “oranckay” jumps on the bandwagon, I feel as a prophet.
A lot of people think Shelton sucks like those Korean kiddies think Japan sucks, so everyone stop gumming up Marmot’s Hole and take the “stinks versus doesn’t stink” argument to the venue Shelton has set up himself here (text below) or write Marmot yourself.
By Shelton “Lee” Bumgarner
Ahssa! Creator and Author
What is this thing, a blog?
The more I post at The Marmot’s Hole, and the more I enrage the readers there simply by posting, the more ponder the concept of “sociable media.”
As I understand it, “sociable media” believes that due to the interactive nature of the Internet, the very concept of media has become a two way “sociable” activity and people who study it should get book deals and be on MSNBC a lot. (Did I say that last bit outloud?)
Sociable media is most often discussed in the context of Friendster-like sites, but my problems over at The Marmot’s Hole are an obvious example of how the interaction between the content producer and the content consumer has changed dramatically.
Modern readers can become so emotionally connected to a Website that even if the person who runs it wants to do something, they feel they have the right to second guess him/her and and become personally offended that any change took place.
It’s like that annoying post-modern idea of the “Death of the Author” applied to blogs — it’s “the death of the blogger.” If a blog becomes popular enough, the blog isn’t really theirs anymore — it’s the readership’s. And so just as with the Death of the Author, the reader is given the right to pull just about any theory on the text out of their ass, so, too, does Death of the Blogger give readers the right to presume there is some sort of immutable social contract between the content provider and consumer. [Damn, too bad I have problems concentrating, I might have been able to get all hipster bobo and go certain School in The San Francisco Area.]
I will admit that I’m significantly different The Marmot and that I am much more likely to zig when he zags, but I am pretty pleased with my writing on the site to date. I am who I am, I write how I write and I am bending over backwards to grab the brass ring and become Shelton Bumgarner, International Man of Marmot Mojo.
This big is just too rich:
marmot, because he’s yet to weigh in and i suspect he feels like he’s facing a difficult choice
That is a prime example of The Death of the Blogger taken to its logical conclusion.
If I wasn’t getting some serious and continuous personal support on the part of The Marmot himself, I would be getting pretty nervous right about now.
But anyway.
It’s just a blog.
…[T]ake the ?€œstinks versus doesn?€™t stink?€? argument to the venue Shelton has set up himself here (text below) or write Marmot yourself.
Doesn’t seem there’s much of an argument.
A whopping 38 posts about nothing. In my most humble of opinions, it might serve everyone’s interest better to not respond to Mr. Shelton’s postings and vent their frustrations directly to the Marmot via email. I too find my self disapointed to not find anything of interest from time to time. I have always enjoyed the mental stimulation that most of the posts here have provided and sadly it seems that there are more posts than there used to be that fail to interest me and judging by the comments here, others too. Now that my opinion has been expressed, I will refrain from comments on the quality of the posts here choosing instead to let the Marmot manage his own blog and me to express satisfaction by participating.
thank you brendon.
Despite the fact that the verdict on Shelton is out, it is my opinion that Shelton should be given a little more time to adjust or acclimatize to the feel of marmot readership. Let’s not all kick him while he’s down. Let’s show the Marmot a little bit more respect. Our criticism I’m sure has been duly noted and maybe in the near future Shelton will exert a little more quality control over his posts and adjust his prose to fall in line with Marmot standards. The guy obviously enjoys blogging?€? put yourselves in his shoes… Constructive criticism is one matter but cyber lynching (or should I say terrorism) completely another. He’ll obviously make the required changes or piss off elsewhere. Enough said.
Well, I have written a GreaseMonkey script that removes his posts from the page. A spam filter of sorts for HTML
Interested fellows can contact me to get a download link… 
That’s hilarious dda, but that would also eliminate being able to read the scathing attacks on the Big Bumgarner, and that’s just too much fun these days.
Luke, actually, no. You can still see the comments ?€“ but don’t have to read his prose
Best of both worlds 
I humbly suggest those of us subscribing to the “stinks” position in the raging “stinks vs. doesn’t stink” so-called “argument” effect a statement by refraining from comment altogether in any post authored by Shelton Bumgarner.
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