Archive for the 'Random Stuff' Category

Crazy Korean umbrella hat thingy

孙智谦 on 29 May 2008

 
UFO Cap/Umbrella
So your kids won’t scratch their ears?
 
Well, all the news coming out of China right now is either depressing or politically charged (or both), and I’m tired of posting about Magibon, so I’m back to looking for random stuff about Asia in general. I came across this South Korean product on Alibaba, and it’s so goofy looking that I thought I’d post about it. It reminds me of one of those lampshade cone things that you put on your dog so it won’t scratch its ears or bite its fur off when it’s having skin problems or something. I can’t help but imagine any child wearing this getting blinded by random raindrops splashing into her eyes as she walks through the rain. I also foresee any kid wearing this in America getting made fun of. But I’ve seen some pretty crazy fashion in Asia, so it might just fly there (no pun intended). Regardless, it’s a clever invention, so I have to give the guy or gal credit for coming up with it. Click here to check out its page on Alibaba, with Korenglish goodness.
 

Korea and Random Stuff | Comments (0)

Magibon explains why she makes Youtube videos

孙智谦 on 23 Apr 2008

 
I swear I need to start a Magibon category. This is the third or fourth post about her. I really didn’t plan on making any more posts about her, but in the interests of answering the biggest question about Magibon (WHY?!?!), and because I’m way too busy lately to look for anything else interesting to post about, I’m posting these two videos. They’re the entire interview from her debut on Japanese TV, complete with awesome Engrish subtitles.
 
She she talks more in this short appearance on Japanese TV than she does in all of her Youtube videos combined, I think. And that’s great! And she finally explains why she started Youtubing in the first place: just to see what she looked like on her new web cam. Things just kind of took off from there. Here it straight from her. Two vids below:
 

 

 
My heart goes out to her for being so worried about showing her teeth on camera. She’s a very pretty girl otherwise. Hopefully she’ll get some braces out of this whole thing at the very least so that she’ll feel better about herself. Although I suspect there’s a lot more to her lack of self esteem than just her teeth. Poor girl…Here’s the link to the GyaO news page about Magibon that’s referenced in the second video.
 

Pan Asia News and Random Stuff | Comments (4)

Nobody concentrates harder than old Chinese ladies

孙智谦 on 02 Apr 2008

 
I found the video below on blog.howma.com and had to post about it because of how awesome it is. Yeah, it’s pretty cool how well the guy in the video dances, but the real story is the old lady on the couch behind him…
 
If you had a guy in your living room wearing a suit coat with no shirt, pajama bottoms, and slippers, and he was dancing all up in ya face like MC Hammer, you’d probably laugh hysterically, right? Or you’d glance up once in a while to watch for a few seconds, right? At the very least, you’d giggle or something. I think most Westerners would. But not old Chinese ladies! The one in the video just keeps on knitting/sewing/doing-whatever-she’s-doing and pays absolutely no attention to the guy whatsoever. It’s like the he isn’t even in the room! I don’t think it’s possible to concentrate any harder than that. And that’s why if I ever find myself in a tag-team Operation competition, I’m taking an old Chinese lady as my partner.
 

 

Culture Clash and Entertainment and Random Stuff and china | Comments (7)

Is Magibon an android?

孙智谦 on 31 Mar 2008

 
Magibon's Inspiration or the other way around?
 
Ok, the picture above may not look like Magibon when you just see a still frame of it, but trust me when I say that this little flash cartoon’s mannerisms are eerily like Magibon’s when you see it in motion. So I wonder which one was the inspiration for the other. I’m feeling way too lazy to actually write an e-mail and find out, so you’ll have to do that yourself. But it’s definitely freaky how much alike they are. I wonder if Magibon is an android.
 

Random Stuff | Comments (0)

Mariah Carey’s “Ken Lee”

孙智谦 on 24 Mar 2008

 
I hate American Idol and just about any other “Idol” show, especially the failed auditions. I hate seeing people who think they can sing make fools of themselves in front of a public audience. And I hate seeing people who can sing decently get severely criticized by stuck-up, arrogant judges. But this is pretty awesome. I’m not sure what the language is they’re speaking, but I think it’s Bulgarian? And that’s Eastern Europe, which is close to Asia, so there’s your connection. Plus, Ken Lee sounds like an Asian guy’s name.
 

 
Painfully funny, eh? Now I recognize that English isn’t her native language, but seriously…if you’re gonna try to sing a song in a foreign language for any kind of TV show, at least make sure you can properly pronounce the words, especially when they’re pronounced so clearly by the original singer. She gets an F for her overall performance and an A+ for inventing that awesome cockamamie dialect thing…
 

Culture Clash and Language and Music and Random Stuff | Comments (6)

Japan is the weirdest place on earth, and that (mostly) rocks!

孙智谦 on 20 Mar 2008

 
Japan is totally weird
 
What the heck is up with Japan? How did it get to be so incredibly weird and hilariously amusing? What’s in the water there that makes Japanese people so concerned with showing just the right amount of deference to each other while at the same time whacking each other in the crotch with sticks on national TV? What is it that makes them the world leader in coming up with useless inventions (it’s an actual art)? What is it that makes them advertise using bizarre, pointless commercials? What makes them want to combine firearms and cartoons? Appointing cartoon ambassadors? Sexualizing noodles?! Ok, that one freaks me out, and it only scratches the surface of all the weird stuff going on in Japan in that area…no comment there.
 
I have no idea what the point of this post is (or anything I throw up on this site, really), other than to say that bizarre Japanese stuff is really cool (just not the weird sexual stuff - I’ll pass on that). If I hadn’t already invested so much time in learning Chinese, I’d probably have my face buried in a Japanese grammar book right now. Here’s a cool Japanese commercial:
 

 

Culture Clash and Japan and Random Stuff | Comments (2)

Cutest. Kid. Ever.

孙智谦 on 26 Feb 2008

 

 
This has absolutely nothing to do with Asia, but it’s too entertaining not to post. It’s an adorable little three-year-old girl sort of giving a synopsis of Episode IV of Star Wars (that’s the original Star Wars for you non-geeks). Comments from the author below:
From www.fistofblog.com

Here is my daughter, age 3, explaining the plot of Star Wars Episode IV.

She explained the whole movie to me in much greater detail but unfortunately I didn’t have the camera going. When I finally caught her talking about the movie again she delivered this truncated, but still funny, version.

Edit: Thank you all for the nice comments. Maybe I will print them out for her and someday and when she’s all growed up she’ll get to read them herself.

A little more about the video: She wasn’t coached to say anything, nor was she forced to make the video. She rarely stops talking. Those of you with children understand this: sometimes it’s harder to turn the faucet off than to turn the faucet on.

Believe it or not, she has the seem the movie only once, and I spread it out over 3 days so it wouldn’t be too much all at once for her.

The video was edited to make it shorter, more cohesive and hopefully funnier. I did move some of the lines around so it would make more sense.

Please visit the mother blog at www.fistofblog.com.

Entertainment and Random Stuff | Comments (1)

Things the Chinese invented…

孙智谦 on 22 Feb 2008

 
I’ve joked before about how many things the Chinese invented, but I didn’t really know what all they had invented. I mean, a few things I knew, but for the most part, I was clueless as to what all we use in our lives that the Chinese came up with. So I did a little searching and found that Wikipedia has an incomplete but pretty good list. Here it is, for better or for worse…
 
  • Battens in cloth
  • Belt drives
  • The blast furnaces
  • Bituminous coke
  • Cast iron
  • The chain drive
  • The repeating crossbow
  • The escapement mechanism
  • The exploding cannonball
  • The fire arrow
  • Firearms
  • Fireworks (not Adobe Fireworks, the real thing)
  • Gun powder
  • The horse collar
  • Hulk compartments/Bulkheads
  • The kite
  • Land mines
  • The lottery
  • Noodles
  • Paper
  • The pound lock
  • Woodblock printing and movable type
  • The multistate rocket
  • The rudder
  • The sailing carriage
  • The seismometer
  • Silk (ok, technically they didn’t INVENT it, but you get the point…)
  • The sluice gate
  • Stirrups
  • The toothbrush
  • Toilet paper
  • The trebuchet
  • The trip Hammer
  • The wig
  • The wheelbarrow
  • The winnowing machine
And here are some inventions that, according to Wikipedia, “are considered by various authors to have been first discovered, discovered contemporaneously with other civilizations, discovered separately after other civilizations, or simply used by the Chinese:”
  • The abacus (first appearance: Mesopotamia, 2400 BC. First certain appearance in China: 12th century AD) - Is it just me, or is this a pretty huge difference in time???
  • Armillary sphere (invented by the Greek Eratosthenes), with the world’s first water-powered armillary sphere by Zhang Heng
  • Various automata
  • Bellows
  • The compass (wet and dry)
  • Camera obscura
  • The cannon
  • Chain pumps
  • Crossbows
  • Drydocks
  • Flamethrowers
  • Flash locks
  • Early explosive grenades
  • The Odometer (also by Archimedes and Heron of Alexandria)
  • Paddle wheels for boats
  • Paper money
  • Parachutes
  • Pontoon bridges
  • Porcelain
  • The postal system
  • The saw
  • Segmental arch bridges
  • Star catalogues
  • Tea
  • Teeth (I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t belong on the list, guys)
  • Collapsible umbrellas
  • Vaccinations
  • The water clock
  • The water wheel (also of Greco-Roman tradition)
  • Windmills
That’s a lot of stuff…
 

Random Stuff and china | Comments (4)

Another cooler-than-American-stuff Japanese product

孙智谦 on 22 Feb 2008

 
Check out this beast of a motorcycle available in Japan. It looks like it was taken straight out of a Japanese manga, which is cool enough in itself. But even cooler is that it’s street-legal (Japan only). The company’s website doesn’t give any English specs, so I have no idea how fast it goes or anything like that. But they DO give the price in American dollars: $21,500. Even if it were legal, at that price I wouldn’t buy it. Still, it’s another example of how cool stuff in Asia is compared to stuff in America.
 
sweet motorcycle
 

Random Stuff | Comments (0)

Magibon = site traffic

孙智谦 on 15 Feb 2008

So I was checking the stats on the site and saw that the search query that has brought the most visitors is one word: Magibon

Apparently, the whole world is either smitten by or disgusted with her, and somehow my site managed to become (as of this posting) the #2 link on Google when you search for her name. I have no idea how that happened, but it’s kinda cool. The only site above mine is Buzzfeed.com, which actually references my site. So in a way, I’m kind of number 1. Sweet!

Yes, it’s the little, completely unimportant things that excite me…If I had any business sense whatsoever, I’d find a way to capitalize on this. I’ll have to comment more on her videos until I can figure something out.

Random Stuff | Comments (0)

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