An early piece of advice many starting writers hear is to read Stephen King’s On Writing. He is best known for his horror and fantasy writing, selling more than 350 million books (putting me only about 350 million books behind him), but writers know this short book of his as one of the most helpful books on writing. Ironically, In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed On Writing 21st on their list[…] Keep reading →

If you want to see the most amazing kids, you might be surprised to find some in this country schoolhouse in North Korea. Yes, we only see what the government lets us see, and the government seems to have learned showing off its kids shows off a part of the country the world will love, but this did happen and it’s part of North Korea. Watch this video. You won’t[…] Keep reading →

Another reason visiting North Korea became one of my most educational and thought-provoking experiences, as well as of my travel-mates. This experience was too incredible not to include it on my blog’s main page (if you haven’t been reading my North Korea posts, click to see the videos I’ve been posting of my trip there last April — some inspirational, all educational). Our tour bus took us to a kids[…] Keep reading →

We discuss seeing North Koreans seeing Kim Jong Un speak for the first time, which he did while we were at a hotel the night before. They were utterly transfixed, some cried. His father, Kim Jong Il, spoke publicly only once in seventeen years in power. Now he spoke within the first weeks in power. Here is a quick view of a North Korean roadside entering a modest-sized city. We[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday’s post was post 1,000, making this post 1,001. Feels good. I like the feedback I get on this web page. I’m still improving my style, or at least I feel like I am. I’m still following my friend’s model for never missing a day: “If you miss one day you can miss two. If you miss two it’s over.” One book came out of it already, which sells, on[…] Keep reading →

Why do I show fireworks from North Korea when the whole world does fireworks? For one thing, the whole show was bigger, longer, and more awesome than probably any fireworks show I’ve seen. Sorry you can’t see everything from just the videos here. Second, people typically think of how much the government spends on the fireworks when it’s people are starving. Is North Korea the only country that puts on[…] Keep reading →

Our guides took us to see the children’s performance palace (I forget its official title), where they put on display groups of children whose performances were incredible. I wrote and posted images of them before. Who knows what training they’ve had or what motivates them to get to this level. I think the usual first guess of people who are critical of North Korea is that the government coerces them[…] Keep reading →

I just realized I never posted this video of me getting the block and game-winning goal in North Korea’s first Ultimate Frisbee tournament in August 2011 (actually, I posted it on a site I since enjoyed leaving.) I consider it one of the highlights of my Ultimate career not for the level of competition but for living out Ultimate’s Spirit of the Game clause “Spirit of the Game. Ultimate relies[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I wrote about the quintessential I’m-right-you’re-wrong-and-I’m-going-to-convince-you-of-it-no-matter-what-it-takes situation with extreme escalation by Walter in the Big Lebowski. The last edit I made was to add the parenthetical comment in “What makes this clip so funny and brilliant (besides the movie’s running jokes, like the Vietnam references) is…”. I couldn’t help but notice, if you don’t look too carefully, that you could understand the Vietnam conflict from this perspective, with the[…] Keep reading →