Because they dared to name the area, I guess. If they had just had all the booths with no name, there'd probably be less of a fuss. Sad.

It seems to be a struggle between two schools of thought, that I've seen.

Seriously, even in a poll that shows they are the vast vast majority, they find a way to make it about their oppression and how mean people are to them.

I'm convinced that the main purchasers of these album are retail stores who license them to play during the holidays.

I'm okay on the crutching around, it's just stairs that do me in. My room is upstairs so I rarely venture down, because coming back up is so much work. I feel so lazy, but it's hard.

So it's been a week since I injured my knee, four days since I left the house, and three since I found out I've lost my job. I really don't know what to do anymore.

The short answer is that they like Beyonce, so that somehow excuses it or explains it away. It's the typical "my favorite is different!" defense, honestly. I'm not a Beyonce fan, and I honestly think she very much caters to the male gaze, just as many other female singers.

Maybe I'm just too low brow for all this, but it just seems like she's trying to be every other female popstar only with outfits modified to show her butt.

I know this is probably stupid of me to throw my two cents in as a white woman, but I've noticed that a lot of non-Asian women (and men) get pegged with "omg you have YELLOW FEVER" if they find an Asian man attractive... Like apparently it's so "out there" to some people to find them attractive that they have to…

How do you write a short story in two single-spaced pages (roughly 1000 words)? I am atrocious at word economy, but my professor for this class demands it be this length or less. No one else had any problems with this limit, only me. I've written several in attempt of being under this limit, and I just utterly fail.…

As a note, the e-reader only (aka only does books) version of the Nook, the Simple Touch, is $39 this weekend only as well.

The unfortunate thing with these two sides is, you have to make a choice between them. If you "abstain from choosing" you are effectively siding with those who want the culture 100% separate, even though there are many who want to see their own culture take a place in the growing global culture. And vice versa as well…

I was trying to give a little context as to why the response from actual Japanese people on twitter wasn't complete outrage. It's a normal-ish thing to see. Honestly, shouldn't we defer to people of the actual culture in situations like this? Otherwise it sounds like a bunch of us Americans are sitting around telling…

As much as I dislike defending Katy Perry, what she did with the kimono isn't something terribly out of the ordinary in Japan (other than changing the clasp top part). Pop stars wearing kimono in "sexier" ways isn't terribly uncommon in Japan.

Not the best, but a quick search of her name in Japanese on twitter reveals mostly positive reactions (and some posters being annoyed that American media think it looks like a qipao— I saw a couple "it's so obviously a kimono are they blind?!", and lots of anger towards western media calling her outfit "a sexy geisha"…

It's a boyband thing, these days. Pretty much all the ones I know are really clingy and touchy with each other

Nah. If they keep rebuying it from us, then it's only the same people who ever know they buy it. If they lose it at work, or on the train, or at a restaurant they like, then suddenly it's people they know or will see repeatedly.

I work in a bookstore, and we still go through them like crazy. Part of it is that people lose them, then are too embarrassed to try to find them. So they just rebuy them.

I know he's not really the type that's popular around here, but I adore Zhou Mi

I saw a shitload of that sort of "reasoning" on an article here recently. Pretty much any article about Asia is flooded with "Asians are all X. I am black/Latina/nonwhite&nonAsian, so I'm not racist, but stereotype_X is totally true, sorry Asians!"