if it slapped him with a silicon spatula in a moose stew pot

A PERSON could know South Korea for a long time without knowing Wanju, an obscure county 112 miles south of Seoul. And, at least until recently, a person could know a lot about Wanju without ever hearing of Cha Sa-soon, a 69-year-old woman who lives alone in the mountain-ringed village of Sinchon.
Now, however, Ms. Cha is an unlikely national celebrity.
This diminutive woman, now known nationwide as “Grandma Cha Sa-soon,” has achieved a record that causes people here to first shake their heads with astonishment and then smile: She failed her driver’s test hundreds of times but never gave up. Finally, she got her license — on her 960th try.

For three years starting in April 2005, she took the test once a day five days a week. After that, her pace slowed, to about twice a week. But she never quit.

Hers is a fame based not only on sheer doggedness, a quality held in high esteem by Koreans, but also on the universal human sympathy for a monumental — and in her case, cheerful — loser.

read the rest of this hilarious article.

also fun:
An extended Vanity Fair article trashing Sarah Palin.

and a rebuttal from a Palin friend. I love it because it kinda starts off reasonable, and then she gets crazier and crazier ("we talked about the gentle touch of a child with Down syndrome that feels almost like the wing of an angel... She spoke from a tender, mother’s heart, one that Mr. Gross wouldn’t know if it slapped him with a silicon spatula in a moose stew pot!")