Meta: About 2Kob

As none of you may know, I live in Seoul. Sweet, blessed, soul-sucking Seoul. A city of four distinct seasons: cold, colder, fucking hot and humid, and bleak. If you're not getting a refreshing elbow to the groin from a 3ft tall stereotype, then you could be sampling any one of the twos of activities the city has to offer, from before-noon-drunkery (now an Olympic sport!) to the 3am stumble derby, the winner of which gets to bask in the admiration of all of the excited-and-not-in-any-way-wanting-to-sleep inhabitants within a one block radius of the 7-11 you're walking into all the time.

And we're doing fine. Just fine.

Don't believe me? Let me break it down for you in a way that is insulting but thinly veiled by an attempt at humour.

North Korea is the white bit on the upper left. Seoul is at the lower right, which is south of the border, because it is in South Korea. South. (I really do get asked this a lot.) As you can see, I live about 44km from the closest part of North Korea. Fun times! I can almost smell Fatty 3 from my house.

He had boshin bacon for breakfast.

Now, you're looking at this and thinking, "Gee willikers, you must be some scared!" Because, well, it's 44km from my house to the most bat shit crazy brutal dictatorship seen this side of the Urals.

But really, let's look at the track record.

Successful missile launches: 1? Did the one that crashed on the way to Australia count?

Successful nuclear tests: 1. Supposedly they did three tests, but the first was a failure, and the third had no radiation signature.

Number of times sabres have been rattled: Once a week for the last 50 years?

Number of battles since the Korean war: 0.

Number of invasions since the Korean war: 0.

Bubkis. A few shells on a small island and a ship aside. You'd think they would have made it the 30km to the edge of Seoul by now if they could have. They're not coming people.

That's not to say that no one in Korea cares. They're not scared, or anxious at all. They're annoyed. Deeply, deeply annoyed. As annoyed as you can be without going on killing spree. And you wonder why Koreans are quick to anger and are surly all the time. They've been dealing with this their entire lives, and the local alcohol manufacturers are taking advantage.

But I digress. The point I'm trying to make is that this happens all the time, and in the end, the world gives them what they want and they go back into hiding for another 6 months. It's a bit more intense now because Fatty 3 has a lot to prove. If he looks weak now, his generals will most likely skin him alive and wear his balls as a hat. He's gotta be large and in charge. In the end though, they don't have the resources to take on South Korea, the US, Japan and probably China and Russia if they needed to. While people are expendable in the North, wealth and position aren't.

And Fatty knows it.

I leave you with the latest offerings from the youth of the city. This particular piece shows the stark interplay between missiled and non-missiled characters.

Striking resemblance.

Even the kids think he's a jerk.

Before you scream propaganda forced upon the youth of the South, take a look at this jazz. We've come a long way baby.

Corrections

Details: Category: Meta; Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2013 11:36; Written by Chris

From time to time, mistakes happen. Most of them are your fault. But sometimes, occasionally, we're to blame. This is our infrequent mea culpa for these unintentional errors (we're not sorry for the intentional ones).

Ask a Duck

In a column with our advice giving water fowl, Cringing Under Nasty Touches asked what she should do about her boss' unwanted advances. The bad economy and the creepy manager's brother being the HR director make it hard for Cringing to report his bad behavior.

Duck replied: QUACK! Quack wuak wuak sqwuak quack quack. Quack quack swuaaak. Quack quack quack! Qua quack wuaaaaak wuak quack. Quack quack. Squaaak!

This was a mistake. What Duck meant to say was: Quack quack quack sqwua wauk. Quack quack quack quack, quack quack quack quack. Quack quack!

Music for Mondays

A number of M4M columns were released on Tuesday. They were meant to drop on Monday, but a Time Goblin had taken up residency in our server, resulting in erratic temporal anomalies. The Time Goblin has been removed and made to sit in the corner to think about what he's done.

labyrinth-jareth-clock1

Thousand Words

Hectare A recent Thousand Words strip only contained 947 words. We apologize for the inconvenience. Here are 53 additional words to make up the difference: zebra, cantaloupe, smegma, taint, notebook, falafel, sniffle, ibex, vulva,"Riajyuu Coat", prostate, Islets of Langerhans, gladiolus, moist, inveteratist, haiku, bukkake, blunderbuss, hectare, doily, chalupa, Kevlar, petabyte, King's Landing, haberdasher, goat, testes, splayed, bache ball, sponge-worthy, honorarium, unknown unknowns, purple nurple, sublunary, bathysphere, coitus, snickerdoodle, Reaganomics, doctrinaire, sanguine, ruthful, xanthic, vigesimation, blumpkin, and casserole.

Earth Is Weird

In our report on the rise of DIY bioterrorism, we referred to Kim Kardashian's nipples. We meant Tara Reid. Sorry for the confusion.

tarareid

Travel Anecdotes

In a column about Doug's trip to Moscow, he made a disparaging comment about Russian President Vladimir "Great Abs" Putin. The rude remarks were meant to refer to Barack Obama. Please accept our sincerest apologies, Mr. Putin. Can you take call off your assassin tigers now? Thanks.

putin

---
Chris is an American writer and educationalizer living in Istanbul. You can follow him on Twitter @crfsanders if you're into that sort of thing

corrections

About: Douglas Vautour

Details: Category: Meta; Published on Sunday, 16 September 2012 13:26; Written by Doug

I grew up in a number of military bases in urban (read: "rural") and rural (read: "so rural they don't have any roads") Canada, few of which, thankfully, still exist today. After university (BSc. Physics, University of Alberta), I got a position in the JET Programme in Kagoshima prefecture, where I tried to teach English for three years, but really just ended up learning Japanese, because it was easier. In 2004, I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I still live today. Currently, I provide content to educational publishers, do project management for mobile applications, and occassionally translate or interpret between Korean and English.

I like to travel, but I can't travel enough to become a proper "travel blogger" so I try to make each trip count by travelling to places that are not easily accessible and yet still are not war zones. With the world the way it is, it's getting more and more difficult to get off the beaten path, but there are still some good places out there left to explore. Going to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in 2007 was by a long shot the furthest I've been into the wilderness, and probably a bit adventurous for my first solo trip.

Everyone looks hot by craterlight.

Calling on the fire gods, Darvaza, Turkmenistan

When I am not travelling, which is about 90-95% of the year, I like to dabble with photography, audio editing, HTML5 animation, ePub creation, as well as language learning. There's always a project on the go, most of which in the 15%-20% finished mark. The rest of the time is spent planning the next trip or two, and annoying my current travel partners with irrelevant details.

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Milestones 1: First 5 Articles Past the Threshold

Details: Category: Meta; Published on Wednesday, 25 July 2012 12:58; Written by Chris

"Suppose you were a heartless bastard, and suppose you were a Republican, but, .....I repeat myself." No need to edit that to make it work.

In perhaps his most oft-repeated quote, Mark Twain said that there are lies, damn lies, and then there are web stats. I may be paraphrasing a bit. Regardless, it is a fool's errand to put too much stock into hit counts and bounce rates and mean visit times and triangle graphs. Whenever we sit down inside the state-of-the-art, NASA-esque command center here at the Breadome, we turn a jaundiced eye to our monthly stats and Google analytics reports. They picture they paint is could as easily be a Pollack as a toddler flinging ketchup at a canvas.

Yet we still look at them every month.

One stat that I am particularly obsessed with is the read count in our administrative back-end. I make mental charts of which articles get more reads and how quickly. I refresh every few hours after Tweeting or Facebooking a link to one of our precious writings. And though the read count is perhaps one of the most suspect of stats, it nevertheless has a role in my decision-making process. The read count played a decisive part in choosing to ax the Essential Listening series, for example. The readers just weren't there, drawing in a third the reads as any other series.

metatrianglegraphs As I scan the read counts, I've noticed that we were nearing a completely arbitrary but still cool milestone: five articles passing the 200 read mark. Maybe this sounds like a small victory, and indeed, it is nothing compared to a major, well-established site. Thing is, we aren't a major, well-established site. We are the epitome of a minor, still-finding-its-footing site. So, suck it.

Without further ado, the 5 most popular articles on Two Kilos of Bread.

#5) This: 20th Week of 2012

Almost from the day it went up, this This shot up the charts. Why? No idea. It's not my cleverest writing, it has relatively few links, and none of them a necessarily earth-shattering. Based on the web logs, the best I can figure is that a lot of people are looking for the Zelda 8-bit fireplace screen and Epic Nguyen.

nguyenyearbook

#4) Mornings Are Awesome: Knots

Another mystery. This is absolutely not the funniest or most poignant MAA. Google fail?

20120412 everytime

#3) The Elusive Turkmen Cougar

Doug's moving tale of partying with his government-mandated tour guide in Turkmenistan. You know, the story where she tries to push her teenage daughter on Doug's random travel buddy and herself onto him, while rocking out to remixes of 50 Cent's In Da Club.

She's dead now. True story.

#2) Music for Mondays: Rasputina

Music for Mondays is arguably the most read series on Two Kilos, and the champion of champions is my write-up of Rasputina. Which is terrifying, as it is also one of my poorest in terms of writing acumen. Its popularity speaks more to the dearth of Rasputina coverage on the web more than anything special I've done.
I will absolutely do a re-dux of this in the near future.

#1) Top 30 Airports on Top 10 Lists

This one is a no-brainer. Two Kilos is ostensibly a travel site, and people search for airport info almost as much as they look for French maid bukkake. Maybe even more. Also, it is a well-established fact that numbered lists are catnip for websurfers.

So, get ready for more Top X Things lists.

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Summer Vacation!

Details: Category: Meta; Published on Tuesday, 24 July 2012 16:26; Written by Doug

Hello my fellow breadren! Good yeast?

Yes, it's that time again when some of the members of 2kob take off for adventure! Where will it be this time? The moon? Iraq? Afganistan? The moon? Is it the moon? THE MOON!?

No no my little bunlets, this time, Doug is off to sunny.......

Australia!

Wait, what? Isn't it winter downt there now? Why yes, yes it is. I hate summer in Asia more than I hate Australians, so once every year or two I take the plunge down under and throw some shrimp on a barbie doll.

I doubt much travelling will be done, but good times will be had by all. And by all I mean me. The rest of the 2kobiates will hold the fort while I am gone. Mostly because they all post more articles than me anyway.

I'm like the 5th Kid in the Hall, but that's okay. I don't have to take care of Great-grandbap when he gets older, but I still get 1/5 of the Breadm...breampi...pumperpire...breadempire..brumpire..yeah. brumpire, when he's too stale to know that we are taking his brumpire.

Well, ta for now! Back in two weeks!

Australia