On days I don’t have class, it’s such a task to get myself ready to go to the library to do some work because I could always just bum around and do it at home. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself before I spiral into the most useless web-surfing and before you know it, it’s time to take a shower and go to friggin’ bed.

So now, I’m at the library and I probably have to “ease” into paper writing by doing useless stuff like this first. Random things that go through my head as I “concentrate”:

My normal ringtone is Taeyang’s “Sinners.” I use Big Bang’s “Number 1” for my brother. But the annoying thing about that is that I didn’t cut a special segment of the song for it, I just used the mp3 I have on my phone. So whenever my brother calls, the phone rings for about 5 seconds before I pick it up, and that’s ALWAYS that point in the song where G-Dragon makes heavy breathing noises. Completely inappropriate out of context.

I’ve been dying to make a fanvid of something. Anything! Ever since studying participatory culture in my Media Crit class, I’ve been looking at those things in a whole new light. I mean, I was always aware they existed when I dabbled in different fandoms, but I never thought that was gonna be “my” thing, “my” medium of art. I always appreciated fan-vidders but now I’m obsessed with the vidding process. And since I’ve looked at so many nicely done ones, I’ve been itching to make my own. Nia also edits all our Seoulbeats Weekly videos and I’m sooo freaking starved to start trying out editing. Summer, I promise, this summer!

Is there anyone else who can’t stand to let their IM windows keep blinking? I have to click on them so they stop blinking or else I go OCD batshit.

Does anyone have a summer booklist they’re going to start working on? Share some titles!

Oh and I forgot to say, I’m a ridiculous huge 2PM fangirl atm. I don’t like their music but I watched so many of their “Idol Army” episodes. Taekyeon is freaking crazy, Nickhun is ADORABLE, Jaebum is so mischievous:

Ooookay back to writing.

A quick post on this just because I wanted to jot down some thoughts:

Drugs are not awesome and my gut reaction to finding out that mah boy was caught doing drugs was a big fat emoticon frown. But, the thing is — and my bias might be showing — what he did doesn’t affect what I’ve always known him as, an actor. My knowledge of Joo Ji Hoon doesn’t extend beyond what I’ve seen of him on screen and in magazines so I can’t really say I’m disappointed in him as a person, because I don’t know the guy personally. Him — and other actors and actresses — are a different breed than the other Kpop stuff I’m invested in, and actors like Joo are really not known for appearing on variety shows, or plugging themselves all over national TV. So what I’ve seen him do professionally, I’ve liked. Wasn’t awesome in “Goong,” was a lot better in “Mawang,” was hilarious in “Antique Bakery,” and was a damn good model.

I think a lot of negative attention has been thrown on this case because it’s not every day a mainstream Korean celebrity is associated with something like this, and Korean legal/otherwise response to drug use is much stricter than what Western response is. I don’t mean to group it as an “Us versus Korea” thing, but drug use is viewed in completely different ways in the West and in the East. The Korean entertainment industry is also so tiny that every little thing that happens is examined on a microscopic level and then there’s nothing to do but talk about One Big Issue over and over until one tiny thing is made out to be the thing of the century (read: Junsu’s hands freaking GRAZING Taeyeon’s hands and thus that automatically equals LOVE SCANDAL).

So all-in-all, I’m kind of sad that Joo’s personal beliefs and mine don’t coincide, but it wasn’t like he’s potential boyfriend material, so I don’t think it’s necessary to view him in a completely different light, and I don’t plan on never keeping up with his career in the future, if he even has one left after this blows over. Him doing drugs doesn’t make him a Bad Person, and I’m not completely justifying his use of drugs at all, he just didn’t use his brain too much on making the decision to do so, especially because he’s a celebrity and such a popular one at that. There is no way he didn’t know the repercussions of his actions, so there’s nobody to blame but himself.

Maybe one of the most heart-warming things I’ll ever read about any president. I dunno, it just seems like such a cute practice to me.

The task of keeping a president in touch with his public is daunting, as Mike Kelleher well knows.

Tens of thousands of letters, e-mail messages and faxes arrive at the White House every day. A few hundred are culled and end up each weekday afternoon on a round wooden table in the office of Mr. Kelleher, the director of the White House Office of Correspondence.

He chooses 10 letters, which are slipped into a purple folder and put in the daily briefing book that is delivered to President Obama at the White House residence. Designed to offer a sampling of what Americans are thinking, the letters are read by the president, and he sometimes answers them by hand, in black ink on azure paper.

Read the rest here.

Just received the spankin’ tweet from NYTimes’ twitter (thankyouverymuch) about this article, J-Schools play Catchup. It’s an interesting topic on the new battle in journalism: print versus new media. It’s a topic that we’re constantly talking about in classes, and as a person who blogs more than enough, I think all journalism students really do have to be familiar with stuff like blogging, YouTube, participatory culture, and just all new forms of mass communications.

Whiiiich is in direct contrast to this, which I watched last night:

State of Play is a political thriller about two journalists’ trek to help unravel a political scandal. “The Washington Globe” is the paper they work for, and Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams play reporters Cal McAffrey and Della Frye. Ben Affleck plays Congressman Stephen Collins.

I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of political thrillers, but this was a good watch for a lazy Saturday night. The way they took this story and ran with it was interesting to me as a viewer, but the story itself wasn’t super original. At the core of it, I saw this movie more as a promo for traditional journalism than a movie about the action and intrigue. The political thrilling wasn’t bad, but a lot of key motifs were kind of advertising for the Good Days of Dogged Journalist Seeking Truth.

Helen Mirren plays the editor of “The Washington Globe” and she represents the fast-paced business world that journalism ultimately resides in — the WG has just been bought by a digital media group and as a result of having to satisfy superiors, she pushes for paper sales over truth seeking; the paper in a way is legitimized by how many people read it, and how fast their paper gets to the dirt first is priority — not whether or not they do political justice with their reporting.

Russell Crowe’s Cal McAffrey represents the traditional journalist — somebody who prefers reporting the old fashioned way. He works at a multi-decade old computer, tapping out stories like they did way back when, and he makes a dry joke about blogging. No spoilers, but at the end of the story, his point is that it is still his job and duty as journalist to get the word out there, and that it’s comforting to know that people still read the paper for the news. Of course, that dialogue was in context of what was going on with the rest of the political wazeehoozits, but ultimately it felt like a chest-thump tribute to print journalism.

The movie just re-confirmed to me that I’d be a terrible investigative reporter, but I had my own chest-thump moment as a fellow rookie journalism student.

When you really need to chill to light music, you can never go wrong with Khalil. Seriously, his voice and his beats are spring breeze, sunnysunnysunny days, lullabies, GOODNESS — all smushed into one.

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Man, “Soulboy” is out of stock on YesAsia and “This Love” & “Wonderland” are out of print. OMG that hurts me. His work should never be depraved of customers! There are only a few artists of mine (yes, MINE!) whose music I will buy, whether or not I’ve listened to them beforehand — and Khalil’s on top of that list.