The Hyphenator!

"After 26 Years, Dawson Meets Dad"

"A DNA test conducted with the help of the KTO confirmed that Kim Jae-soo, a 53-year-old bus driver in Pusan, was Dawson's father."

"Kim said he lost his son in a crowded street market near his home in 1981."

Other articles:

"Olympic Skier Reunites With Family"

"Dawson was 3 when he was lost in a market by his mother in the southern port city of Busan, Kim said. A truck driver at the time, Kim said it was too late when he got home to start searching for his missing child, whose original Korean name was Bong-seok. Over the next few days, he said he scoured local orphanages but was unable to find his son.

"'I went to many orphanage houses only to hear that they didn't have anyone like him. They wouldn't let me come inside and look for him,' the 53-year-old Kim said, adding he would search orphanages whenever he had time but eventually gave up."

"Dawson meets father after 26 years"

"Dawson's mother, who is believed to have started another family after her divorce from Kim, has been located but has yet to reveal herself publicly, according to Dawson's Korean lawyer."

"Dawson to Reunite With father"

"Dawson, however, was sentimental for a moment as he talked about what he has been through as an adoptee, which eventually led him to begin his quest for his parents.

"'It's kind of been uphill for me ever since the beginning,' Dawson said.

"'(I) really struggled with the fact that I never looked like my parents... It's kind of always like the Bolds and Italics.'

"'Everyone could definitely tell the difference and it was tough for me because all I wanted to do was just to look like average (with) brown hair, blonde hair.'

"'I was a little bit shy, and I didn't want to have all the attention. I wanted kind of just to be somewhere in the middle.'"

I had a dream last night
But it looked unlike a dream

The Butthole Surfers song keeps playing in my head since this morning.

I tend to have very vivid dreams, which I usually remember in the morning.

Last night I dreamed that I was at this beach house in California with a group of friends for the weekend. In the house, I saw a childhood photo of one of the women who lived there, but the odd thing was that I recognized her from the photo.

The woman and I started talking, trying to figure out how we knew each other. She told me she was just two years older than I was.

I realized I recognized her from a photo that I have from my early years in Korea. In the photo, I'm sitting with two other children. I'm the youngest based on my size and there's another little girl who looks to be just a few years older than I am.

We discovered that we were first cousins, and that we would play together whenever our families got together for a visit in Korea.

I woke up after that, but I had a picture of her as a grown woman in my mind.

The strange thing is that I actually have the photo from my dream. I've always wondered who the other children are in the photo, if they are my cousins or just friends I used to play with.

"After custody battle, Chinese girl set to be united with birth parents"

It seems that the Bakers have taken their case to the media, releasing photos of 8-year-old Anna Mae and inviting ABC News and USA Today into their home to film video segments.

"After years of being 'very careful and very protective' in shielding Anna from the spotlight, they decided to open their home to USA TODAY and ABC News in hopes of drawing public attention to their case. 'We're obviously more desperate,' Jerry says."

"The Bakers are candid about their strategy to show Anna to the public now. 'We want people to rise up and say this is not right,' Jerry says. What difference could that possibly make at this point? Perhaps, he says, a court will rehear their case and let them keep the child. Losing her, he says, would be like suffering a death."

Uh, so it's OK to make the Hes feel that way?

The USA Today article has a sidebar on the left, "All Eyes on Anna Mae," which I find disturbing. If the Bakers only care for her best interest, then why are they exposing her like this and asking her to answer questions such as "What do you want your last name to be, Baker or He?"

That's just not right.

Updated (3/2/07):

Found this disturbing article ...

"Adoptive Parents Lose Eight-Year Custody Battle"

"'She doesn't understand that it's very likely that she will be put into a car and taken to strangers. She doesn't understand those things. All she knows is the family that she's known since she was 3 weeks old,' Baker said."

Uh, maybe that's because you wouldn't let her biological family visit her while this was all being worked out?!

Read this Reuter's article this morning ...

"South Korea seeks to curb rising suicide rate"

"In 2004, South Koreans killed themselves at a rate of 24.2 per 100,000 citizens, making suicide the fourth leading cause of death in the country, ahead of traffic accidents. There were 12,047 deaths by suicide in 2005."

"One reason behind the increase in suicides may be a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in South Korea, with poorer citizens more likely to kill themselves than the affluent, according to government data."

Another recent article ...

"Suicide surges in South Korea, fuelled by economic development, online boom"

"Lee said he recently won agreements from Internet search engines to link the keyword 'suicide' with centres providing counselling, instead of sending the people to sites that would help them devise ways to kill themselves."

Back in October I posted a brief note about the AP misusing "loose" in an article.

But it seems that the incorrect use of "loose" is everywhere.

I've seen it incorrectly used a lot lately. I recently saw it again in an article about the Anna Mae He case on the Nashville City Paper Web site: "'Basically what's going to happen is that we're going to have to file paperwork to start the appeals process, or we're going to loose that right,' Baker said."

Folks, in that sense as a VERB, the correct word/spelling is "lose" (pronounced with a long "O" and a "Z": looz) -- one "O"!

Now, I realize that the long "O" sound may confuse some of you into spelling it with a second "O" -- but it is WRONG!

The word "loose" (pronounced with a long "O" and an "S") can be used as verb (meaning to let loose or release, to free from restraint, untie, to make less tight, etc.), but it is often used as an adjective.

Here's a phrase to help you remember that "loose" is not pronounced or used as "lose": Goose on the loose.

Some examples of each:

The little girl's tooth is loose. She's afraid of losing it if she bites into an apple.

Be careful of what you say around her -- she's got a loose tongue.

I'm going to lose my mind soon with people's loose use of these words.

"Tired of Laughter, Beijing Gets Rid Of Bad Translations"

(The WSJ may restrict access to this article to subscribers after a few days. If so, can probably find it by doing a Google search.)

"For years, foreigners in China have delighted in the loopy English translations that appear on the nation's signs. They range from the offensive ('Deformed Man,' outside toilets for the handicapped) to the sublime (on park lawns, 'Show Mercy to the Slender Grass').

Last week, Beijing city officials unveiled a plan to stop the laughter. With hordes of foreign visitors expected in town for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing wants to cleanse its signs of translation nonsense. For the next eight months, 10 teams of linguistic monitors will patrol the city's parks, museums, subway stations and other public places searching for gaffes to fix."

In China, it seems that the pig -- pig images, cartoons or slogans -- has been banned from advertisements.

"Ban Thwarts 'Year of the Pig' Ads in China"

"CCTV has ordered major advertising agencies not to use pig images, cartoons or slogans 'to avoid conflicts with ethnic minorities.' That's a reference to China's 20 million Muslims, about 2 percent of the country's population."

"'The underlying reason goes to the very core of what it is Chinese government views as its patriarchal responsibility to maintain harmony of the entire society,' said Tom Doctoroff, China CEO for the JWT advertising agency."