Some light relief – drunks and nuts

My last five posts have all been about ICANN and frankly that’s not enough for any man. So I thought I’d interject with some humourous light relief. Well, sort of.

First up is what can only be described as one of life’s individuals, a man called [tag]Christian Kim[/tag], who is American-Korean, lives in Cambridge and appears to have a very significant sense of his own importance. He is also the author of one of the best book titles I’ve heard in a long time. It is: “Why Did Cambridge University Law Faculty Push Me Out Of Their Library? Reflections On Color, Justice, And Due Process.” And you can buy it on Amazon.

Disparity

What is intriguing about Why Did Cambridge University Law Faculty Push Me Out Of Their Library? is the very wide disparity of views people seem to have about it.

In the official blurb, Christian Kim, we are informed, “has delivered highly advanced academic papers at leading academic conferences around the world”. And the book itself is “an indispensable guide for all who are serious about human rights, justice, and civil rights” as well as showing “the injustice that leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled against still exists today” and it will apparently “open the readers’ eyes to how injustice and violation of human rights can creep into even the most respected of institutions in the world”.

That institution, as the title makes clear, is Cambridge University and the violation of human rights appears to be Kim’s removal from the Law library. Why? Christian Kim explains it is a widespread racist conspiracy. And an extraordinary number of people agree with him, including Steve Leong and Ling Ling Tan from California, Thomas O’Neill and Jay Sanders from Ireland, Ron Hash from my town here in Oxford, Jen Nguyen from Vietnam and, perhaps my favourite, Hans Kim from Berlin.

All of these people give Kim’s book five stars and all of them seem to be similarly energised about the racism of the English system, as well as highly impressed with Christian Kim’s personal attributes. Donald Howerwas from Pennsylvania even suggests that “Christian is a Christ-figure who deserves to be lifted up as our example to follow”. Rather peculiarly, this vast array of figures from across the world have only ever commented on one book on Amazon, except for a few that have also felt the need to review Christian Kim’s other books. Oh yes.

Dissention

But there are dissenting voices and remarkably they all comes from Cambridge itself, and they all give the book one star (you can’t give no stars). These reviews paint a slightly different story and are surprisingly precise in their details.

Louise Razall (from Cambridge) seems to have personal knowledge of Mr Kim and explains: “Christian Kim was quite correctly expelled from the library because he constantly harassed girls, including myself. I made the mistake of assuming that he was a decent overly friendly American and gave him my email address. Christian sent me a series of emails containing disgusting, sexually explicit and weird poems.”

“Female Student” tells a similar story: “I am shy and find it difficult to deal with pushy people like Kim. In spite of my not returning his messages, not turning up to occasions to which he had invited me, and running in the opposite direction whenever I saw him, Christian Kim could not take the hint, and refused to leave me alone. He has also made unwanted advances towards several of my friends at King’s.”

The truth

So does Oscar Runeland from Trinity College, Cambridge, England. “I would like to point out the real reason for Kim’s ejection from the Law School. Kim continually harassed 1st and 2nd year female Law undergraduates as they queued to pay for their goods at the Squire Law library canteen. Kim would ask them out on dates and when they refused, he would pester them until they changed their minds or complained. Some of these girls felt sorry for Kim so they went on a date with him so as not to hurt his feelings. In doing so, they made a grave mistake, for that encouraged him even more. He would bombard their inboxes with emails proposing to marry them etc. The girls had finally had enough and complained en mass. The Law School had no choice but to act and eject Kim, who posed a major nuisance to the women.”

Challenging the orthordoxy, many suggest different titles for the book. “Why did I stalk women in the Squire Law Library? Reflections on how I failed to resist the temptation to touch up girls,” suggests Louise. ‘Why Didn’t Cambridge University Law Faculty Push Me Out Of Their Library Sooner? Reflections On Why I Am Unable To Keep My Hands To Myself,” argues Morag Forbes.

Christian Kim, also writing under the name K.C. Kim, is by all accounts a prolific writer penning such classics as My Time As the President of the Cambridge University Korean Society 2002-2003 and Cambridge University Student Union International 2003-2004: International Students Struggle for Representation in the United Kingdom.

Disturbing

What’s bizarre though is that the more you dig into this, the more disturbing it gets. There are two recurrent themes running through his work: rabid anti-Semitism and pathological pursuit of completely depersonalised women for sex. There are several books of appallingly bad poems which are presumably the same “disgusting, sexually explicit and weird” poems that a number of reviewer complain about.

And then countless books about Jews, including odd ones like Romeo and Juliet in Jerusalem and Other Short Stories. And a travel novel called Five Nights in Amsterdam, which combines the anti-Semitism and bizarre pursuit of women.

A review: “The story was very frustrating as it became very repetitive and predictable. The general theme is Johnny meets a girl, attempts to seduce her, fails and moves on to the next girl using the same strategy and so on. There were some distasteful anti-Semitic views displayed by some of the characters. Johnny did little to dispel them and seemed almost to endorse them.” Of course there are countless positive reviews, all of which are yet again written by Kim under an assorted of pseudonyms.

I find it remarkable that this man can be so driven by the same two issues time and again and that his outlet is publishing books that cover every possible angle of them. It’s a very odd world online but what’s stranger is that I know a hell of a lot about this unpleasant and most likely very mentally ill man, including his home address and mobile phone number.

Some good has come out of it though – researching the publisher behind some of Kim’s book, the very peculiar Hermit Kingdom Press (which also publishes such titles as Why I Hate Israel and I Am A Big Thai Male Prostitute – both of which I very strongly suspect are Kim writing under different names), I have learnt how incredibly easy and surprisingly cheap it is to become a publisher, get hold of ISBN numbers, and get your book featured not only on Amazon but right across the Internet because everyone take Amazon’s data feed. I might experiment with self-publishing.

From Russia with love

Leaving Mr Kim aside, the treasure trove of You Tube has turned up another gem.

This time, I am told, the clip is from a Russian news programme. There was an accident at a coal mine and in the subsequent review people were accused of drinking on the job. The media turned to see if there is any truth in the rumour, and the interviewer is asking a worker about the allegations when one of the other workers turns up unannounced… (Thanks to Sean for finding this one.)

You’ll have to follow this link for the moment – YouTube won’t embed into WordPress, although I am experimenting with some plugins, so soon…

Fixed! Video below. For any users of WordPress, the best plug-in that I’ve found for adding videos (produces a simple button for YouTube, Google Video, Quicktime and the various other formats AVI, Mpeg etc in the editing windows) is Viper’s Video Quicktags.

[youtube]EB36kasif6g[/youtube]