http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2012/03/30/lady-gagas-bad-romance-with-korean-rating-board/?mod=WSJBlog

And it is part of a very long-running battle between music fans and the Korean government regarding censorship and ratings:
http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2011/08/30/government-tries-to-be-less-square/?mod=WSJBlog

A battle which is at times both frustrating and absurdly funny:
http://youtu.be/HlNEzJOdEYU
(Pop group ‘Phantom’ thumbed their noses at the censorship board by releasing a medley of 19 songs banned by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family)

Love your blog, but you make some rather knee-jerk contextualizations at times.

Unfortunately, for those who want to live and let live in close proximity, the Krazy Korean brand of Kristianity is a unique and terrible monster. 
Honestly, I didn’t think anyone could give fundies a run for their money until I had to deal with these fanatics. If you see a red neon cross in Japan, these are the folks who are running it. Not surprisingly these fanatics then abuse their tax exempt status on a massive scale to fund criminal enterprises both inside and outside the country… all the while merrily skipping through customs with a revolving door visa while those of us who vie for legitimate visas are put through the red tape ringer.

Why religion – especially these hate mongers – get special entitlements I will never understand. 

Mind you, if they’re upset about Lady Gaga, it is of course very good and healthy to lay that before God. Just don’t expect him to come down and do your bidding.

But then again, nobody ever saw any devout Far Orient Christians protest the arrival of John Coltrane back in 1966.

I shudder to think about what my life would be like today, if certain things were erased from my trajectory and experience.  One of them is John Coltrane in general, his album “A Love Supreme” in particular.

Anyway, YouTube audio link, Coltrane live in Japan, “My Favorite Things”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOPsiaPaf9w

Religious people are bigots when they claim their belief in the supernatural is somehow better than our secular world view, and then claim persecution when the holes in their faith are pointed out.

I think it is very important to point out the ridiculousness of religion when religious people try to stop others from doing what they want just because of their belief in the supernatural.

In this case they are saying “please god take this lady Gaga and all the gay things that bother us away”, it could sound awful even to them if they took off the please god bit.

Yes, they try to indoctrinate you, like the woman who approached you. One time in high school I went with a couple of friends to find our Korean friend at his house. He’s atheist, but the rest of his family (including his sister who is also a good friend) are crazy Korean Christians. For some reason he wasn’t there, but his mother invited us in to wait. She gave us snacks and sat us down on the couch and started talking about God and invited us to church… in a very surreal manner. 

Anyway I’m getting sidetracked, what I mean to say is that they’re extremely sincere but also very naive and completely ineffective. I get the sense that they don’t learn the whole cultural history of Christianity, and that their devotion to it is both very deep but also very superficial.

And it really bothers me because it’s not their religion. It’s an artifact of the bad old days when Christian missionaries were actually somewhat effective at spreading Christianity. “Somewhat” effective because it feels so, so, much to me like something you’d see in a movie where the locals take the idea of Christianity from the missionaries and embrace it despite not understanding it at all. This despite their own local beliefs being much more suitable to them and their culture – at least until they’re ready to abandon religious beliefs altogether (according to Wikipedia South Korea is certainly heading that direction). It’s particularly a shame in this case because Buddhism is partway there already.

Robertson went at it again:  “We thank you Lord for your less-than-stellar job recently, but we need a real opening on the Supreme Court.”  Soon after, Reagan appointee and swing voter Sandra Day O’Connor retired, replaced by shithead Sam Alito, so chalk one up for the conservatives.

Now Obama has replaced conservative Souther and liberal Stevens not with two more WASPs, but with two females, one of them a Latina.  And still that court is skewed to the right, but anyway…

Take heed, Jesus freaks:  the god of the desert does not care about your petty petitions stemming from political viewpoints and saccharine moralisms.

Also I think that time has arrived, this is the first I’ve heard of her in months tbh. Still far longer than the 15 minutes she deserved.