365 Lessons-Lesson 278: No News Is Good News, Unless it's Funny News

My husband has a new habit of wandering up to the Taco Time up the road and picking up the paper in the morning. I know, let's save the trees. But he gets some contentment from it, so I'm going to let it fly.

I don't care for the newspaper. It's full of stories about people getting killed or stabbed or arrested or thrown in jail. The International Section will make you believe that our world is going to hell in a hand basket. Why do people read this stuff or watch it on TV? I don't have TV for that reason. So, I like to go straight for the comics these days. I don't think I could make it through life if weren't for some humor in my day. Forget the mayhem on the front page, the world's got enough of that, give me the Funny Section.

The September 28th Seattle Times ran the comic Between Friends that had me chuckling. It showed a picture of a woman who got sucked into her computer. She was on the screen looking out at the world from inside the computer. She said, "Is anyone out there?" And then a voice came from the computer that said, "No, we are all in here."

I can so relate. I needed that laugh.

I couldn't help but glance over my husband's shoulder as he read the headline in the paper today. It said, "Kimchi Shortage a National Crisis in South Korea," reported by John M. Glionna from the Los Angeles Times. Now I know if you are Korean and you are reading this, this is NOT funny. I lived in Korea for over 10 years. I know that everyone there eats, lives and breathes kimchi, but next to the other news in the paper about all hell breaking loose all over the globe, a kimchi shortage seemed to be digestible somehow (ha, ha). It went on to say that Korea was going ahead with a kimchi bailout plan.

Forget about "these tough economic times" in America, over in Korea there's NO KIMCHI! And as the paper states, "Depriving Koreans of their kimchi, many say, is like forcing Italians to forgo pasta or taking all the tea from China." Jin Hye Run, a 51-year-old housewife in Korea, put it more bluntly by saying, "We can't stand life without kimchi even for one day."

I love the fact that the paper included a little factoid section in the side bar called "kimchi bites." These are the facts:

1. South Koreans eat more than 2 million tons of the dish of fermented cabbage, radish and chili paste in total each year.

2. It is believed to ward off aging, reduce cholesterol and fight disease.

3. There is a museum dedicated to kimchi in Seoul. (I think I've been to it, believe it or not!)

4. Portions of it were blasted into space with the country's first astronaut in 2008.

After reading this article, my husband put down the paper and said to me, "Good thing I'm in Seattle right now. At least they've got kimchi here."

The odd thing is that the cabbage crops in Korea were destroyed by the rain. Here in Seattle, where we are famous for our rain (Seattlites don't tan, they rust!), cabbage seems to be growing just fine.

Anyway, I love kimchi and even though I got another chuckle out of that news today, I do hope the Koreans get their kimchi back, honestly.

So if you have any weird and wonderful news stories to share, send them my way. Because no news is good news unless it's weird or wonderful ^_^!