Far East Cynic

As predicted, by Madame Chiang for something like the 15th year in a row the Hajj has had a tragedy.

Muslims are consistent…………which in this case is not necessarily a good thing.

Subscribe in a reader

Short post because I am tired and pissed off. After I left work yesterday at 8 PM!!!! ( Sorry, overtime is not in my agenda anymore…..), brain fried after looking over transport data and also the backgrounds of the useless idiots I am going out to kill train, I was one pissed off dude. Only one thing to do here. Proceed straight to Stage 5!

Went to my friends apartment, did not even call the S.O. , and proceeded to lower his beer stock from 100 to 50% ( and that’s a lot of beer!). Co-worker came over and we discussed what Eddie calls “Fifth Fleet -esque stupidity”. ( They have a lot of it, trust me.) S.O. called up pissed off, finally went home and passed out fell asleep. Got up this moring to see what more bad news the day could bring.

Plane tickets came back all fucked up. Seems its impossible for the ticket office to get a seat out of Hong Kong on Saturday. I’ll have to try at the airport. The only bennie of this trip was a night in Lan Kwai Fong. If I get screwed out that, those guys in Bahrain are really dead in trouble. I was so looking forward to walking out of the MTR, up the hill and seeing the parade of Chuppies………….

Gonna be upset if I don’t get here!

And as of 3 pm they could not tell me if the hotel was booked. I’m either going to be really happy tomorrow or really pissed off…….stay tuned!

Subscribe in a reader

Yes there is a line in every great movie that would apply to today:

“Sometimes you can just smell a shitty day coming down the pike”-The Paper, Michael Keaton.

“Well let me tell you guys, its a cold world out there and tomorrow we are all going back into it!” -The Big Chill, William Hurt.

“Here’s to you……sucking my..d***………..” Ford Fairlane, Andrew Dice Clay.

Can you tell today sucked? It did, trust me. It started off bad when the boneheads in Bahrain did not do what they were directed to do , then had the unmitigated gall to not own up to their mistake. Not realizing they would get caught on the cargo delivered report and the output report from the terminal, they tried to lie their way out of it. Of course that led to a heartfelt, “What the fuck is going on out there with those guys!?!?” from my boss. That in turn led to a subsequent, ” Get your ass out there and find out what’s going on!” from my boss. Accordingly, I will now be on my way out to hell Bahrain to try to get to the bottom of a mess that never should have occurred. If I were still military, I could just shoot them all, now I have to try to convince them not be so fucked up……….GRRRR.

So on Friday, I’m out of here. One night in Hong Kong trying to buy Spike a beer, or at least meet his recommendations. After that 6 days in hell trying to unf**k the things these boneheads should have known how to do, or could have at least asked how to do. THANKS GUYS! Thanks for nothing! At least I get a night in Hong Kong that I was not counting on. Lan Kwai Fung here I come!

Amazing.

I don’t mind going to Bahrain so much because I get to go to Hong Kong enroute, but I just wish I had more notice. Now I’ll be trying to play pick up football and also trying to stop the bleeding from our activities , who by the way still do not realize how badly they f**ked up. Call the guys in Horn of Africa and ask em….you might not like the answer..” you d**kheads!

On other more pleasant notes today I was able to get a very concise history lesson about Korea from Hemlock, turns out Asian history is still complex:

To take his mind off it, Odell asks me a simple but profound question. Koreans,? What the fuck? I give him the country’s history in a nutshell. First, it was repeatedly invaded by the Japanese, then it was repeatedly invaded by the Mongols, then it was repeatedly invaded by the Chinese, then it was repeatedly invaded by the Manchus, then it got one big, maybe-they’ll-get-the-message-this-time invasion from the Japanese again, and in 1950 it invaded itself. This experience, I explain, has made these people the proud and noble mouth-frothing xenophobes we all know and love today, threatening to send hordes of vicious peasant warriors to Hong Kong if our Government does not honour their birthright as sons of the Hermit Kingdom, namely immunity from laws against assaulting policewomen with bamboo poles. Odell thinks about it. Maybe its the other way around, he suggests. Maybe they kept on getting invaded because they’re assholes.

Whatever. Korea still does not provide the requiste “nookie” opportunities I need!

And then there is the whole cloning thing!

I’m scared!!!

Subscribe in a reader

Is suckful even a word? I read it in blog which described 2005 as a suckful kind of year. I agree , but for me 2006 is starting off on a “suckful” note.

The S.O. was sick Saturday. As in sick as a dog sick. I was so concerned about her I cancelled my golf game and stayed home because I was afraid I was going to have to take her to the doctor. She finally was able to keep some liquid down long enough to get some hydration back and fall asleep for most of the day. That meant I had nothing to do but watch TV, surf porn blogs, and sleep.

Its been bitterly cold here. On Sunday the S.O. was feeling better but still wanted to stick close to home, so I went and played golf by myself. “Suited up” and broke out the winter golf gloves. Actually was not too bad until #17 where the ground below the surface was so hard I could not get my tee to go all the way in…….Pulled out my 7 wood and smacked the s**t out of it just barely avoiding going out of bounds………….The Kanto plain (area around Tokyo) has received none of the snow that has been falling in record levels at places like here:

By yesterday the S.O. was strong enough to complain about me not cleaning the bathroom, so I am taking that as a sign she is going to make a full recovery. Sigh, I was just getting used to the peace and quiet.

Some of the things I noted while strolling around Bloggerville:

Stopped by and congratulated Mrs Bacon!

Envied Phil, who brought in the new year as I always wanted to, drinking beer and chasing hoon in Phuket.

Watched as Ariel Sharon’s condition got worse., then better.

I also got pummeled over at several blogs both left and right after naively trying to insert myself into the vain practice of self congratulation and patting one’s self on the back. Soundly ignored I sulked on back to my hole and dreamed of better times, wishing I was here:

Oh the places we could go!

After being challenged here on my own and another blog to grow up, I thought about writing a long witty reply trying to explain exactly what the appeal was of the overseas, expatriate, not so conventional lifestyle was. Then, quite by accident, I discovered that Fred has already done it for me:

We who live thus have our critics. They say that we have dark moods, that we drink too much, that we do not behave as we ought. …….. Yet perhaps they do not drink enough. The virtue of vice is everywhere underestimated. Something is wrong with those who are always proper, careful, and as they should be. I would rather talk to a bourbon-swilling correspondent in a bar in Manila, with a cigarette in his hand and a barmaid on his knee, than to the cleverest chemist at Yale, tamer of ketones…….

We are not always a happy lot, being restless, easily bored, and unable to bear routine. We have our good days when we sense the rightness of things on a sunny morning in God knows where for that is where we have spent much of our time. We have passed days without end in roadside diners, atop boxcars late at night on the seaboard rails, in honky-tonks in Austin. We have heard the Greezy Wheels. We knew BC Street in Koza, the street of the snake butchers in Wan Wha, in Taipei where the workers brothels were. We have hobnobbed with hookers, drunks, geniuses, psychopaths, mercenaries, transvestites, and the men of the fishing fleets. We have seen fresh squid draped like glistening pink gloves on fish carts.

Some will say that our lives constitute a sordid cohabitation with the ungodly. I hope so. Detritus we are, and detritus we will be. It suits us. The world, the part worth knowing, lives in the alleys. We have known the smoke and dimness of a thousand Asian bars, known them till they run together in the mind, and found the hookers morally preferable to the expensively suited criminals of good society, more engaging than the liars of the press conferences. There is more of life and humanity in the driver of a battered Ford who picks up a hitchhiker in the darkling valleys of Tennessee than in the moral fetor and vanity of Washington.

We are not entirely without ambition. Often I have seen a young lovely in Bangkok, on Patpong or Nana Plaza or Soi Cowboy, revolving without excessive clothing around a brass pole in a dim club with disco thumping in the murk and almond eyes watching for a flicker of interest. I do not want to be president, nor a Rothschild nor a computer magnate. But a brass pole in Bangkok, that I could be.

We are what we are. We can’t help it. In moments of desperation we have taken jobs in places with names like the Civil Service Federal Computer Week, and sat in horror, muscles tensing in uncontrollable despair, waiting for lunch and a drink or a joint or something to get us through four more hours of USAF AMC bulls**t federal contracts. I did that. A friend was a mortgage broker for a bit, another tried graduate school. One day it hits: fuggit-I’m-outta-here. We buy a ticket to Mexico City, or Kuala Lumpur, or Istanbul. Decide on the way to the airport. What the hellÂ?s in Mexico City? Find out when we get there. Somebody will know.

Here is to the road less traveled. See you in Phuket someday………..

Skippy-san

Subscribe in a reader

I came across this when I booted up my computer this evening. The shallow and unremitting reader will tell me that Michael Yon prints this thing all the time and I should be reading that. Well I have a news flash for all of you, I do. But there’s more than him telling stories is all……This is the one that struck a chord with me:

SATURDAY, Jan. 7, 10:30 a.m. local
BEIJI, Iraq
It was candor you don’t expect to hear over coffee in the morning – a soldier talking about a dead comrade, a man he knew well and will never see again.
I had the conversation in the logistics center with a group of men who receive the bodies of soldiers in the unit who die in roadside bombings or insurgent attacks. They wait as the bodies come in and help gather a soldier’s belongings.
Last week Sgt. 1st Class Jason L. Bishop, 31, of Williamstown, Ky., was killed. The soldiers talked about the media coverage of his death, and they couldn’t understand why his life was not as important as his death in the news reports.
Why does America seem so fascinated with the death of soldiers, they asked. They are at war, and soldiers at war die.
The flag-draped coffins that arrive in the United States aren’t the untold story of the war – it’s the lives of soldiers that need to be remembered. Sadly they are rarely told, the soldiers say. The soldiers carry green books to take notes. They are government issued journals with white-lined pages. Bishop had written a letter to his infant son on some of the pages, and the soldiers in Iraq wanted to ensure his wife got the book.
That’s what the people at home need to know, they said.

Now the people who are so inclined will blame the MSM for not reporting this soldiers life. I disagree. Here is an MSM outlet reporting. Its just that the dead and wounded are the “metrics” of this war, just like dollars saved or people screwed are the “metrics” of our defense budget. We need to remember when we cared about other things, besides metrics. In the “better business” military I doubt it………

Read this. There is real pain here……..

Subscribe in a reader

This would be funny if it were not true. What I especially love about it is that the women get to drive the train here instead of common sense and “the reasonable man” theory.

Read here for the full and amazing story.

The U.S. Naval Academy has ordered a court-martial for a faculty member who made a “crude” remark in the presence of female midshipmen, even though an investigating officer recommended only administrative action. The three criminal charges against Lt. Bryan D. Black come as the Annapolis school’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, has announced a “zero-tolerance” campaign to rid the campus of sexual harassment. Lt. Black says he is being unfairly prosecuted as a “poster child” for Adm. Rempt’s campaign. The academy filed criminal charges days after the school’s board of visitors criticized Adm. Rempt after a Defense Department sexual harassment task force scolded the school. Adm. Rempt’s anti-sexual-harassment policy includes urging midshipmen and staff to view for the third year straight a play called “Sex Signals.” The language is so graphic that Adm. Rempt recommends that children should not attend any performance of the three-day run on campus, starting Monday.”The two-person show explores how mixed messages, gender role stereotypes and unrealistic fantasies contribute to misunderstandings between the sexes,” Adm. Rempt said in a message to staff.
An academy spokeswoman declined to comment on Adm. Rempt’s decision to court-martial the officer.

Training at military colleges has come a long way from the days that I was a plebe, running in place with a rifle over my head, being told what a f***ing p***y I was. Or when the squad sergeant stuck his face in mine and told me get my f****t eyes off of him and to hit it now. I could have filed a grievance for that and gotten him court martialed? .

Or maybe I should gone home and cried last Friday when my boss told me, “I don’t care what you have to do, or who you have to bl**, but get the USAF off their ass and get that damn cargo moving.” Poor me, and here I thought the only correct response was,”yes sir” . Wow, I could have filed a grievance…….

Only one correct response here.

Subscribe in a reader

Yea Riiighttt!!!!

Madame Chiang shows us that just the opposite is true, even among an environment of “believers”:

…it seems that each Hajj season there is something that will go drastically wrong and lives will be lost…this year is obviously not going to be the exception to the rule.

Read the whole tale of woe here!

Subscribe in a reader

Came across this Letter to the Editor in Stars and Stripes today. Probably as good a summary about Iraq that I can find, and far better than what has been with the talking heads ( or some blogs…) lately:

Personally, I hate this country. I hated it the first time I was here. I will despise it and most of its ungrateful people until the day I die. Regardless of the reason we are here — weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to al-Qaida, or whatever — the BLUF is that we are here and have a job to do.

From a Staff Sergeant serving there…….

Subscribe in a reader

From the Japan Times online:

The United States agreed to transfer the suspect, William O. Reese, 21,
after the Kanagawa Prefectural Police obtained a warrant for his arrest. According to police sources, Reese admitted to Japanese police Friday to killing Yoshie Sato, 56, on Tuesday. The sailor had been held at the U.S. naval base in yokosuka. “Transfer of custody is absolutely the right thing to do in this case, and it is symbolic of the outstanding relationship that existed between our two governments, the close cooperation that has been the hallmark of this ongoing investigation, and the relevance of the Status of Forces Agreement,” Rear Adm. James Kelly, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Japan, said in a statement.

Eddie has some very insightful commentary on this over at his blog. Also there is a spirited debate going on as to whether turning him over to Japan would get him the severest punishment. I agree with RADM Kelly here, turning him over to the government of Japan is the only correct thing to do here and quite within the tenants of US law. That he might not get the sentence that some think he should get is beside the point. It shows the Japanese we respect their laws and sovereignty. Besides in theory he could get the death penalty, but most folks doubt that will happen.

Still leaves the root question to be answered though. Who goes out and in his right mind thinks its OK to rob a woman on the street? Where in the hell are they teaching that in America these days? That is what I don’t understand. How do you get to thinking that way at 21 years old?

Subscribe in a reader

Lex pointed me to this latest item about John Murtha. :

Appearing at a town meeting in Arlington, Virginia, with fellow Democratic Rep. James Moran, Murtha said, “A year ago, I said we can’t win this militarily, and I got all kinds of criticism.” Now, Murtha told the strongly antiwar audience, “I worry about a slow withdrawal which makes it look like there’s a victory when I think it should be a redeployment as quickly as possible and let the Iraqis handle the whole thing.”

Many people have gone on to excorciate the Congressman. The Useless woman (there Bob, you happy now?) took him to task and pointed out an interesting sidebar where a Soldier took on the Conrgessman saying he had his facts wrong:

Like yourself I dropped out of college two years ago to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, and I went and I came back. If I didn’t have a herniated disk now I would volunteer to go to Iraq in a second with my troops, three of which have already volunteered to go to Iraq. I keep hearing you say how you talk to the troops and the troops are demoralized, and I really resent that characterization. (applause) The morale of the troops that I talk to is phenomenal, which is why my troops are volunteering to go back, despite the hardships they had to endure in Afghanistan. And Congressman Moran, 200 of your constituents just returned from Afghanistan. We never got a letter from you; we never got a visit from you. You didn’t come to our homecoming. The only thing we got from any of our elected officials was one letter from the governor of this state thanking us for our service in Iraq, when we were in Afghanistan. That’s reprehensible. I don’t know who you two are talking to but the morale of the troops is very high .

This came after Murtha was criticized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Murtha’s views had drawn sharp criticism earlier in the day from Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pace said in a briefing that Murtha had sent the “wrong message” and that the lawmaker’s comments Monday that he would not enlist as a soldier today would damage recruiting.

Now regarding the second statement, I doubt that anything John Murtha says will have an affect on recruiting one way or another. The Iraq war is out there and folks either support it or they don’t. Besides my take on what motivates folks is that the reason folks go into the service are generally more personal: a desire to better one’s self, learn a skill (like flying), prove to themselves that they can do the job, earn the respect of their fellows. They realize that will possibly put them into harm’s way. However they have judged that risk to be worth the trade in terms of the things they get back from the experience.

It’s too easy however, to hold John Murtha up as a left wing pinyata and bash him with conservative sticks. There has to be more to this decision to speak out. At least I sure hope there is. People need to read what he actually has said.

The cynic in me believes that Murtha’s stand is part of a not so clever political strategy. Someone somewhere knew that John Murtha had misgivings about the war. The also knew that he is fairly well connected with the military and has generally been supportive of the military:

Judging from his history and close relationships at the Pentagon, Murtha probably was echoing a belief that runs deep within the ranks of senior officers. “He’s someone who’s a strong supporter of the military,” said Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate and one of his party’s leading Senate spokesmen on the military. “People will recognize that he’s got
their best interests at heart.”

Lets walk this dog all the way. By having Murtha speak out, because he has a safe seat and some good credentials, and no higher ambitions, it allows him to say those things that others may feel without going on the record themselves. He gets to be the lightning rod who spoke the unspeakable, namely that while getting rid of Saddam was a good thing, on the whole this little mis adventure was not in the best interests of the United States.

That’s an idea that needs to be debated and discussed, and not simply whitewashed into a box because it is somehow unpatriotic to criticize national policy. I applaud Rep Murtha for getting this out there. And to tell you the truth, I find myself agree with him. Its time for the Iraqis to sink or swim and we need to get moving on. Either that or we need to get more fully engaged as a nation and resource the military properly and put the nation on more of a wartime footing. At its heart that is his real point. The current detachment of the GWOT effort from the overall public just will not do. Neither will trying to do this “on the cheap” while “transforming” the Department of Defense. Do it right, Secretary McNamara Rumsfeld, or don’t do it all.

Murtha needs to be careful though. To be effective, he has to stay on the high ground. That’s why getting his name linked to groups like Move On.org and other left wing nut groups do nothing to help his efforts. The mass that needs to be convinced is the large group in the center, like me, who don’t think there is any easy answer to this really big problem. To agree with Murtha is to tacitly give in to a reprehensible and unspeakable sentiment: “I don’t care about the people of Iraq. I could care less if they get a democracy, because I am concerned about what is good for Americans first and foremost. Take your stupid Islam, Shia or Sunni, and stick it up your……..”.

There! I said it! Even though I am not supposed to. And fundamentally it is an irrational and quite possibly a racist sentiment. So I, of course, being conditioned to want to care, have to do my best to reign it in. ” I care about the people of Iraq. They need more time to get their act together. We’ve come to far and suffered too much, to ruin it all now by a hasty and ill considered pull out. After all, the President told me ‘Victory is right around the corner’….”. Keep repeating and hoping you can really believe it. Maybe if I say it enough it might actually come true.

Or it might just convince me once and for all, that William Fulbright was right and that the United States should remember his words:

Many Senators who accepted the Gulf of Tonkin resolutionwithout question might well not have done so had they foreseen that it would subsequently be interpreted as a sweeping Congressional endorsement for the conduct of a large-scale war in Asia……

Commenting on American Policy:

Throughout our history two strands have coexisted uneasily; a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser but durable strand of intolerant Puritanism. There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably well or as long as our problems seem clear and finite and manageable. But… when some event or leader of opinion has aroused the people to a state of high emotion, our puritan spirit has tended to break through, leading us to look at the world through the distorting prism of a harsh and angry moralism………

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power
is a sign of God’s favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations Â? to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God’s work…..

Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations. As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations. Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations. When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.

Applicable to 1966 or 2006? Or both?

Go John Murtha! But be smart about what you are doing. This is too important to goon up with wacko Democratic politics.

Subscribe in a reader

In Japan after the first of the year, it is customary to express New Years greetings to family friends the first time you meet them in the new year.

????????????????????????????????
(Congratulations on the New Year. In this year too, please continue to favor me.)

Wise words.

Celebrating in the New Year:

With some of these:

While seeking favor(s) from one of these!

Lets go!

Subscribe in a reader

Eddie over at his blog has some more detail on the recent murder in Yokosuka. He rightly heaps scorn on those who may have done this and the dishonor they bring to the US in general……..Good reading.

Subscribe in a reader

Today has been very interesting to say the least. A 56 year old woman was murdered in Yokosuka and an American sailor stands accused:

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) Police launched a murder investigation Tuesday after a woman was found lying in blood in a building in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, and later died. A neighbor found the woman, who was bleeding from the head, at around 7 a.m. on a stairway landing and alerted police. She was taken to a hospital but was pronounced dead, according to investigators. The woman was wearing a black sweater and trousers and appeared to be in her 50s, police said. (Japan Times).

Subsequent to that, using surveillance cameras and tracking technology at Yokosuka, (they have an ID card tracking system there……isn’t that scary…) they figured out who to go talk to.

The result:

Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 18:49 EST

YOKOHAMA- A U.S. serviceman from the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk has admitted killing a 56-year-old Japanese woman in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, informed sources said Thursday, citing investigations by U.S. forces in Japan. More than one U.S. serviceman was taken into custody following the incident, including the one who admitted killing the woman, they said.

The victim, Yoshie Sato, was found bleeding from her head near a building in Yokosuka at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The U.S. forces started investigating the case following inquiries from the local police, who found footage on a security camera near the crime scene showing Sato with a person who appeared to be a foreigner, the sources said.

She was on her way to work when she was attacked and severely beaten, and died from loss of blood and with ruptures to her internal organs, the police said.

Sato’s bag was found in a parking lot nearby but there were no bills in her purse, they said.

Japanese police plan to seek an arrest warrant for the serviceman on suspicion of killing Sato, as he had been found in possession of a blood-stained 1,000-yen note, investigative sources said.

The U.S. naval forces in Japan said in a statement, “The U.S. Navy continues to cooperate fully with and support Japanese law-enforcement officials” in the murder investigation. Rear Adm James Kelly, commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Japan, said in the statement, “I sincerely regret and am deeply saddened by this absolutely abhorrent incident and promise our complete support and cooperation with all authorities.”

This is going to get ugly. And it probably should, but it could not have come at a worse time for the US / Japan relationship. Having put forth a series of bad proposals to “transform” the disposition of forces in Japan, including the highly controversial homeporting of a nuclear carrier in Yokosuka, an incident such as this will be used to inflame opposition opinion.

Plus, to be honest, I want to know “what in the hell were these guy(s) thinking?” Who in their right mind, no matter how much he has been drinking, decides to go out and beat up a citizen and take their money? That’s not an accident, but a conscious decision to commit a criminal act. I submit that the folks who believe that they can do such things are of poor stock to begin with. The US military recruited them, sadly because there are no real ways to predict this type of behavior, except to look at external circumstances, such as education and breeding. I’ll bet if one pulls the string, neither of those factors will come up on the plus side.Wonder how many other psychopaths are out there, because we failed to reach for the other half of society….or the fact that the US does not have a mandatory national service program that cuts across all aspects of society.

More to follow in the coming days. In the meantime, all US Navy personnel have been instructed to be back in their quarters and/or residences by midnight. No exceptions.

“You can build a thousand bridges. Just screw up once though, and that’s all they remember.”

This is terrible.

Subscribe in a reader

This would never happen in Hong Kong or Korea……….(walking away laughing out loud…..).

Guess they could not drink on duty so the “ugly ones” never had a chance to get prettier……..

Subscribe in a reader

The thing I hate about the time after New Year’s is the return to normalcy. That wonderful period between just before Christmas, and after New Years, is kind of an unreal state. Only essential things get done, otherwise people are just marking time at work. Because of the amount of folks on leave, coupled with the desire to give time off for the holiday weekend, its a great time. Then, after all the new years festivities are over, reality comes crashing down and its back to the usual insanity…..

For me that was brought home most pointedly because in Japan, the New Years time is like Christmas in the states. Commerce virtually shuts down for the first four days of the new year (This, BTW is heisei?????, the 18th year of Akihito’s rule as emperor……….)

One of the fun things about the end of one year, and the beginning of the next is the usual recitation of “The top ten things of ….(fill in the blank). This year was no different. I did some research on the top 10 lists of various subjects and came up with some amazing discoveries……..

For example, did you know that among the top 10 list of CD’s in 2005 is an anti-Iraq war song by Merle Haggard? Who would have thunk it? (Kudo’s to Battlepanda for pointing this out.) Look at the this:

Country music isn’t exactly known as a Blue state genre. Yet country legend Merle Haggard, a god-fearing, lifelong Republican who sang one of the most infamous pro-war anthems (“The Fightin’ Side of Me”) of all time, now asks just what the hell our troops are doing in Iraq. Hag transverses the Lower 48 twenty-odd times a year while on tour, and he reports back that our infrastructure is crumbling. He still wants his Ten Commandments in plain site; but in the wake of faulty war intelligence and reneged post-Katrina Gulf Coast promises, honky tonk tunes like “Rebuild America
First” are undeniably poignant, no matter what state you call home.

That’s good enoughto piss the c**t and the rest of the right wing wackos off!

Then there are some other lists. For example from Merriam-Webster Online comes this list of the most-looked-up words of 2005. As the web site I got this from points out:

Does this list prove that scores of people in the land know not the meaning of “integrity”? I don’t think so. I think these people were perfectly confident they knew the meaning of integrity until certain others started throwing the word around like last Sunday’s bagels, and so, head
in hand, people went back to double-check, only to find that integrity was still integrity and in shorter supply than ever.

I like that!

Then of course under the category of , ” We needed to invade to spread democracy…..” are the 10 countries we could not be bothered with even as the US invaded a sovereign nation that had not attacked it……….

There is the list of best movies of 2005…….. why “Brokeback Mountain ” (which I always think of as ‘Bareback Mounting’ ) is there… that is beyond me. Larry David sums the whole thing up best. Movies about gay cowboys just don’t do it for me…..(H/T to CDR Salamander).

Sadly, I was ignored in the top 10 people in Bloggerville lists, but LBFM wasn’t. There is no justice in the world…….I’m the most important person I know, just ask me!

Under the category of “People who owe me money…” are the top 10 richest people in the world. Useless bastards. Shut up and pay me!

Moving to the pruient interest category are the top 10 desirable women of 2005:

I’m number 1 , but I’d still rather sleep with Skippy!

Moving on to the war and politics, Juan Cole gives us the top 10 myths about Iraq…..confirming all of my suspicions why these endeavor is useless…..

There are the top 10 books of 2005, of which I have only read 2………( does porn count as reading….?).

Under nightlife, there are the top 10 places I should have been on New Years eve…(hint: they are all in Singapore…)

There are the stories you missed in 2005……….

And the ones you did not……

Finally , in the category of “Time for a cigarette” are the top 10 sex jokes…….

Man its going to be some kind of year!

Subscribe in a reader