2013-04-14

koganbot: (Default)
2013-04-14 08:12 am
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"Instead of solidarity from our European partners we have been served poison"

It's out of the U.S. headlines, but news from Cyprus keeps getting worse.

Cyprus forced to find extra €6bn for bailout

This is all a stratosphere beyond my understanding, but is there any reason whatsoever for Cyprus to stay in the eurozone?* All the banking disruption that such a move would precipitate has already happened anyway. If the country exits, it can devalue its currency and at least maybe become a real cheap destination for tourists. At least that's a theory. Otherwise, where does its economy come from? The equivalent "devaluation," if Cyprus stays in the eurozone, will be through major unemployment, and drops in wages too. Right?

By the way, if you're curious, last month I was updating my previous Cyprus thread whenever I noticed a new idea or analysis. Not that the analyses are mine. I provided links.

Meanwhile, warning flares are shining in the sky above Portugal.

*By "eurozone" I don't mean the European Union, rather just the members whose currency is the euro.
koganbot: (Default)
2013-04-14 04:15 pm
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More Angry Than Funny

I'm only two views in, but so far this seems way more angry than funny. I wasn't expecting it. The jokes appear mean, deliberately, like tacks on a chair, electric-shock handshakes. Maybe Psy's attitude is that the decorum he's throwing raspberries at is mean in itself, so he'll be mean to decorum.



Nine comments down I see:

cjua2803 6 seconds ago
PSy is such a troll lmao
The music is relentlessly nondevelopmental. Intentionally refuses to give us any release.

As a dance track, it isn't as compelling in its maddening repetition as "Harlem Shake," but maybe that's beside the point, if there is one.

Btw, Ga-In, his partner in mischief here, the one who gets him back with the chair trick, was in the best K-pop video I've seen ("Irreversible"), and another that's in my top ten ("Abracadabra").

*Maybe I should've been. The only Psy track I knew other than "Gangnam Style" was "Right Now," which maybe isn't just about getting the commuters to shake and the secretaries to feel better; maybe it also harbors background dreams of giving a wrong time, stopping a traffic line. The gag in the "Gangnam Style" vid is something of a "what am I doing here?" in relation to the posh life of Gangnam; in this one the answer seems to be "I'm fucking everyone up."