Far East Cynic

That’s the understatement of the year.

I was going to post something to explain my rather intense rant about the first Muslim woman space tourist and why, in the long run, it would be economics not kinetics that make the Arab world change its attitudes about women and society. However after the day I had today, that kind of stuff can wait. Its not like the Arabs are listening to me, or anyone else anyway.

Because I got some really s***ty news today. News that shows me again just how brutally unfair the world is. How good people get screwed over while s**theads get away with anything they want.

Oh, and for the benefit of Helen Dunn and the other morons at the US Naval Academy, I’m planning on my BAC topping out somewhere in the neighborhood of risky alcohol consumption and unacceptable use. Boo f**king hoo! Excuse me while I go to the fridge for another beer!

A former boss of mine and a man I count as a friend lost his wife to cancer yesterday. I count this man as a friend and a good guy. Both he and his wife were. They were good to me at a time in my life when I needed it. We did not see eye to eye on many things, particularly the Navy’s ever increasing trend to play big brother, but he never let professional crap get in the way of personal friendship.

Now, he gets to have raise 3 boys on his own. Someone please explain to me how this somehow makes sense. Because for the life of me I don’t see how. Of course this drama gets played out daily, every time a CACO team comes to deliver the news of yet another American killed in Iraq. A mother who dies at 44 of breast cancer. A person awaiting an organ transplant who dies before matching tissue can be obtained.

Regarding the last item. In my beer befuddled state, it seems quite logical that we should start dropping GTMO prisoners through trap doors and harvesting their organs for those who deserve them more. Certainly these Muslim scum are not putting them to any good use. Maybe we can recycle them. The people waiting for organ transplants might think that was a good idea. That’s’ about the only good I can think can come from GTMO………..

Shocked , you say? Yea, I know it violates about 100 treaties and laws, but its what China does every day. And we try to build a “cooperative relationship with them”. Its crap and I know it. However its just another example to me of how unfair this little world is.

Please don’t tell me its God’s will either. It may be, but all that makes me want to do is argue with God. Its the old dilemma of Job, namely why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? According to the Talmud though, Job never really existed. He was a parable to those of us, to teach us all how to perservere. That of course enrages zealots of several faiths. The Bible and the Koran are God’s literal words, they say. I don’t accept that. I believe in God as sure as I believe the sun will come up tomorrow, but he has his own ways to teach us what he wanted us to know. And those lessons are not as literal as some would have us believe. God must surely be like my father in his forbearance, than the thundering tyrant that some would have us believe.

Wow! I must be drinking to get off on a rant about GTMO and God. Lets start this one again shall we?

Before I had come into work today and made the mistake of answering the phone, I slid on over to E @ L and read his thoughts on life today. He does not know it, but what he wrote really spoke to me today. Because his frustration exactly echoes my own:

At a certain point in your life, one day just like any other, you might be stirring a coffee, breaking off a piece of cookie, watching people walking past along Orchard Rd…

You realize you no long think about what you are going to do with the rest of your life.

You are thinking about what you haven’t done with the life you’ve already led. Your life is no longer a tight ball of potential energy, no longer that fireball burst of kinetic brilliance amazing everyone, it is entropic – the dissipating energy of something falling apart. You know this because when family and old friends talk about you behind your back, they use that word: “dissipation.”

The spoon stands still in your cup. But it shakes slightly in your aged hand.

You are old. It has crept upon you. You are well past half-way. Past your peak – and gathering speed towards an ending you can foresee all too clearly, coming all too soon.

You are no longer anticipating building your life into something amazing, special, something to be proud of. You are trying rather to fill in the gaps of an incomplete and haphazard existence. To patch the cracks, make it look a coherent whole. You are thinking about what you didn’t do when you had the chance and you realize the opportunities to redress are fading.

You don’t have a future, you have regrets.

You don’t have ambition, you have have a collection of fading laurels, heavily squashed.

It is the weekend. You don’t know what to do, you don’t know what you WANT to do. You don’t even care WHY you’d want to anything anyway.

One morning recently you saw a sunrise. The number of sunrises you will watch in the rest of your life now seems finite, limited. A handful at most, unless you decide to become a bird watcher or something requiring an early rise. Unlikely. The only sunrise possible for you is when you take your hooker out to her taxi after a mildly embarrassing short-time and she wants to leave at 6am. Your snoring was keeping her awake. Your chance of redressing your drunken inadequacies with a wake-up piss hard-on has faded, of getting your money’s worth.

You don’t make plans for new projects, you are too frantic looking for excuses for what went wrong in those enterprises you abandoned incomplete.

The game has played out.

That gorgeous girl, the one you fancied, everyone fancied, once you might done something about that fancy, might once might have made an effort to woo and maybe won, but no, not now; she thinks of you as “avuncular” and presumably asexual. Now you merely lech, go home to masturbate morosely.

Futility.

Now that is writing I can relate to! Smug self assured types will simply laugh and say, “well, its all your own fault!”

To which I respond: “Maybe. However the financial straightjacket you and your moralist lawyer friends put me in does not help one bit. Why don’t you just , to borrow a British phrase, SOD OFF! You are providing no help here.-YOU DICK!”

Becasue its my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

And it still does not solve the root cause of my distess, someone is not in the world who should be. And the world does not care. The world will go on and soon the memory will be hard to retain. A stone somewhere will have a name. And that will be it. No glory, no great fame, just a family’s and friend’s rememberance that will grow colder with time.

” Nobody ever said life was going to be fair. At least no one ever said it to me.”

Yea well it should be. But its not.

I had hope to interject some humor here. However to tell the truth, I don;t feel like it. I do feel like drinking some more though. Thinking all the while. And leaving you with a quote from Albert Camus, one of my favorite authors:

There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God. Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death, the problem of God will be solved–and not the reverse.

Now to let the whiskey spin me on down to oblivion………..A rambling post to be sure. However its the news and its what’s on my mind. Hopefully it says something in its meandering.

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Mike has found another Sun King video………

Bad Bob and others will especially appreciate the mighty War Hummer leading the Air Wing flyby!

This is what happens when you steam in circles for 5 months waiting for the Photo-op!

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This post is dedicated to the management professionals at the US Naval Academy. It seems that they left a few important details out of your curriculum. As a public service I thought I would pass a few of these life lessons.

We get high on life!

For the Commandant of Midshipmen:

For all you guys leaving the Navy in later years to work for the Fortune 500:

Finally for those of you who will end up working in DOD policy shops:

Live long and Prosper!

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Madame Chiang tagged me with a meme:

Seven Songs

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal/blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

This meme has me somewhat at a disadvantage because I don’t listen to music all that much, except when I am out in a bar or four in Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Singapore, and truth be told I don’ get out here as much as I would like to. Plus in Hong Kong, at the bars I go to, they play all the same songs! (See Spike for the list!) The only other time I listen to music for a protracted period of time is driving in the car to play golf. The rest of the time I take the train so all I get to hear is the JR theme music!

Here goes:

In the car I keep 3 CD’s. They are all Jethro Tull CD’s. While of course I listen to the classics (Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, Living in the Past, Passion Play, Cry you a Song), there are 3 of their lesser known songs that I like and have been playing a lot in the car:

1) Flyingdale Flyers- All Ian Anderson songs are hard to get the meaning out of, but this one appears to be about UFO’s. “Keep your hand off that Red Telephone!”

2) This is not love- Most probably a commentary on my relationship with the S.O. -
“How come you know better than me, how come you know better than me, so how come you know better than me-that this is not love?”

3) Kissing Willie- “She’s a nice girl but bad girls are better!”

Moving on…………..

4)I like REM particularly “Man in the Moon“.-”See you in heaven if you make the list….yea, yea, yea!”

5) While in Korea at my favorite watering hole ( the one with the barmaid I lust after…..) they have a video jukebox with a wireless mouse. Its free and I want to play with the barmaid’s mouse anyway. So this comes from that playlist-Paradise by the Dashboard light. I love the play by play in the middle, “Squeeze play at the plate, this one is going to be close-HOLY COW! I think he’s gonna make it!”

6)So does this one- Fleetwood Mac’s “Go your own way“- my theme song.

7) Finally I am a big fan of SMAP, which is an incredibly popular Japanese group. I get to listen to them on FM Yokohama 84.7!- “Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana” is a great song-and a popular TV theme.

There. I’ve completed my task. I know what you are asking about now, “Skippy, don’t you have any music from this century?”. The short answer is, I don’t. Sue me.

I’m supposed to tag 7 people, but most of the people I read have been tagged already. So I’ll just tag the Phibian, Sourrain, and Steeljaw Scribe and let them pass it on!

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Seems like evert third movie coming out these days is a remake of some earlier movie.
Here are a couple of examples of this trend taken to its most ridiculous extreme.

“Open the pod bay doors HAL……..”

These are the kinds of movies you watch when you are not allowed to drink…………

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Like they say in the business world, networking is the key. Get a reference from someone of influence…….the world can be your oyster:

For a little while anyway.

It does prove an old truth though. One nice girl putting her hair down and shaking her butt, beats any amount of well written words any day of the week!

We now return you to my relative obscurity…………………

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Since I did Beer and Babes……….

To tell the truth, when I was in Korea, I just did not have the energy, I was just grateful to have the week be over with. Since then, I’ve been a fitful mood, although I did see plenty of these during my little “side trip” at the end. Can’t wait to go back at the end of this month!

I will of course need plenty of these first:

Especially since many days recently, I feel like this guy:

Sounds like good advice!

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William F. Buckley’s son that is.

Richard the Peking Duck found this little gem of an article in the Washington Monthly by Christopher Buckley. With tightly written prose, he captures the dilemna of today’s thinking moderate:

Read the whole thing here. Then look for the next plane ticket to Pattaya…….”Future is so bright……..Gotta wear shades”.

Funny, I always thought it was a tie between Millard Filmore and Warren G. Harding for the honor of ‘worst president’. However rumor has it that Harding “died in the saddle”, so to speak, so that edges out making California a State…………

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Courtesy of Bad Bob.

A video about real carrier aviation, the mighty Hawkeye in action! Pretty cool even if they are granmola crunchin’, tofu eatin’, sandle wearin’ Butt King, West Coast pukes!

Lex, I am sure, wishes he had had the chance to fly one of these beauties!

I even know a few of these guys…..but none of the girls.

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That’s an abbreviation meaning Big F**king Deal. Used primarily in the sarcastic sense.

Which is my sense when I read the various writings of men who should know better, continuing to cry over and over again about horribly Muslim societies treat women and that as a result of this struggle against terrorism , they will be forced to turn their societies around and adopt the feminist American ideal.

For example, several blogs have waxed poetic about Anousheh Ansari who will become the first Muslim woman in space. I’m so excited! A woman with 20,000,000 dollars burning a hole in her Louis Vuitton handbag, has decided to spend it on a trip into space. That’s not a cultural breakthrough, its a high class version of a shopping spree. All it proves to me is that if you give a woman a lot of money, she’ll find something to spend it on.

If she really wanted to do something culturally relevant she would spend that money on something like Doctors’ without Borders, or other organizations that are trying to stem the drug abuse and other problems within Iran. What? You did not know there was a serious drug problem in Iran? That probably means that you also don’t know that Iranian women are some of the most style conscious in the world. In many ways they have a lot in common with their western sisters:

To my amazement though, after a few weeks, during one of these family parties, one of the khaastegaari girl’s brothers asked me if I considered myself Iranian or American. The party went silent, every one was listening intently: I said in broken-Farsi, “more American, but yet certainly Iranian too, what can I say?” Then, almost like a sigh of relief, his mother asked, “Do you feel a culture shock?” I said, honestly,”No. I feel totally at home, and would prefer to live here if I could make dollars.” They were even happier with me, after that.

They both like men who make money!

I’m just as amazed as those who fawn over the fact that the American armed forces have 15% women in them and so, by their definition, must be superior to those countries who have primarily men in their armed forces. They ooh and awe over the fact that we have female fighter pilots who drop bombs on insurgents. Never mind that for each one of these, we can also see one of these. Which creates as much negative publicity as the former item creates good PR. No, we have to go on and on about how terribly these backward nations treat their women. Then we crow again about how our invading them, in violation of their sovereignty, will bring them truth, justice, and women in the boardroom. ( But sadly not the bedroom….).

Its total and complete crap. What it shows me is that men have become so conditioned to feminist propaganda, thrust upon them over and over again, that they have to parrot the feminist line, even if in their hearts they know it not to be true.

So the myth gets perpetuated. Arab nations treat women like crap so we, the big bad United States, have to save them from themselves. “One woman in a cockpit is worth a whole division” and other such nonsense.

Give me a break!

Now mind you, I am not in favor of wrapping women in black robes in 100 degree heat. And while I feel strongly that there are different roles for men and women to play in society, my ideal world would look nothing like Saudi Arabia. My mother taught me to hold the door for ladies, pay the check on a date, and treat women with politeness. On the other hand, I have no desire to see Arab nations inherit the upheaval that American men have allowed to be imposed upon them. I want to keep them from the peculiarly American curse of “cellulite, nine yards of attitude, and bad manners.”. Plus lets face it, Arab divorce laws are far better than American ones.

I’ll say it again. Its crap. Its all total and complete crap. The bottom line is that it will be economics, not war, that brings change to Arab countries. As the oil runs out and they cease to be able to employ hordes of Indonesians and Filipinos to attend to their domestic needs, but having gotten used to the good life, they will push their women out into the workforce. One man alone cannot make the money to keep up a 4000 square foot house. Its a lesson that has already been learned in America. Buy a smaller house? Perish the thought!

Until then, we would be well advised not to rush the process. Arab societies will have to develop in the context of what is acceptable to a majority of their population. And for now, given the realities of Islam and governing under it, women driving down the road in Saudi Arabia just is not going to cut it.

That does not mean women will be with out power though. They will continue to hold, as they have for time eternal, the power of the puss. Men want sex and they know it. So they will continue to make slow but steady gains until they have neutered Arab men, the same way American men have been neutered. And just like in America, the Arab world will be worse off for it.

As Fred points out:

The United States becomes daily more a woman’s world: comfortable, safe, with few outlets for a man’s desire for risk. The America of wild empty country, of guns and fishing and hunting, of physical labor and hot rods and schoolyard fights, has turned gradually into a land of shopping malls and sensible cars and bureaucracy. Risk is now mostly artificial and not very risky. There is skydiving and scuba and you can still find places to go fast on motorcycles, but it gets harder. Jobs increasingly require the feminine virtues of patience, accommodation to routine, and subordination of performance to civility. Just about everything that once defined masculinity is now denounced as Â?macho,Â? a hostile word embodying the female incomprehension of men.

See your future Akmed. No wonder you guys are raising so much hell………….

BFD.

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Need to lighten up a bit. Today was an interesting, albeit unusual day. It started when I read my horoscope:

Great. I assume this still applies as you are careening over a cliff?

<—————–>

Then, I went on over to visit with Madame Chiang who has found documentary proof of that disturbing observation I made several months ago. Namely that the #1 export of the Philippines is people. Slavery went out of fashion years ago……EXCEPT in the new world of globalization where a an inept government can condemn a whole generation of its people to economic slavery-unless you can meet and marry a rich guy-simply because the government cannot live up to its most fundamental responsibility and provide for its people.Read:

Some would say this a good thing. After all, somebody has to keep me company in Wanchai and in Orchard Towers. Glad to see the government of the Philippines is so proud of itself that after 30 years they still cannot fix this.

It is said that so long as the dollars flow in, and people flow out, the country can be spared the true consequences of the folly of its leaders, the moribund nature of its economy and the essentially directionless and imaginatively bankrupt nature of Philippine society itself. But force the Filipinos overseas to come home, deprive the country’s coffers of their dollars and take away from millions of dependents the income that supports them in their joblessness, self-chosen or not, and the country would break apart.

I have often heard it said, that as long as a world war or serious regional conflict could be avoided, somehow or another, the Philippines would muddle through. Not only that, society at large would be spared the consequences of an increasingly discredited political system at home, and of the lack of anything to really show for generations of sacrifice by Filipinos overseas.

Read the rest of the article here. Me, I think they are way too optomistic. If this is the “salvation of the country” then the country is doomed. The new generation will end up like the old one. Full of ideas, but lacking in money. And so they will be sucked overseas by the economic vacuum cleaner. See you in Hari’s bar and at Neptunes!

Which is sad. Because the people have the skills and willingness to work. They have yet to discard the burden of their corrupt family and governmental system. So they continue to live with the welfare state.

<—————–>

Ah but according to the great economic mantra of the day, since the Philippines is a democracy they should be able to overcome anything right? That’s our creed in Iraq. Just make them into a democracy and good things will follow. My mentor Expat at Large has some thoughts on that. Consider this your economics lesson for the day. Remember this the next time someone tells you how call centers in Lahore help make America great:

People who say things like that have obviously not spent a lot of time in Singapore. Clean Streets-yes. Liberal Democracy with Free Speech?- not a chance. Singapore is about order and obedience, beautiful women not withstanding.

Read here for the full discussion, especially the allusion that GWB wishes he had the power of Lee Kwan Yeu……More from E@L:

Who says us lust filled, beer swilling, overseas denizens never read? Au contraire-Mon Frer!

Then again, a benign strongman is probably just what the doctor ordered for Iraq, since in an Arab country democracy means “who can steal the most”.

Ja ne! Thus endeth the lesson for today.

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We will.

There is a line in a Tom Clancy novel, Red Storm Rising that goes something like this:
“The whole world seemed like it had caught fire, and because of them[the hijackers] the world literally would.”

I hate the fact that this day happened. I hate the members of Al Quaeda. I hate Mohammed for starting this useless nonsense some 1300 years ago. I hate Arabs for having harbored and allowed such evil to have prospered in their midst. I hate Afghans for being wedded to ancient useless concepts of tribalism, that should have died out long ago. I hate the Iranians for continuing to forment trouble in a country that could achieve so much more. I hate them all, Arabs and Persians, for having squandered the great gift, that God in his inscrutable wisdom, gave to these useless human beings who in no way deserve it.

I wonder how I would have reacted in a similar situation. Would I have had the courage to do something? Or would I have simpered silently? Every time I fly, I look at the people around me. Could one of them be plotting a similar evil?

I see Arabs on the train and I assume they are up to no good. I watch the news and marvel that after 6000+years man cannot yet live in peace with his fellow man. I look at the names of the dead, and wonder why they had to die. I hate the fact that my nice little world has been so screwed up. I hate the fact that my children will still have to be dealing with the results of this day, long after we are all gone.

I wonder again why, if God is so powerful, does he allow such evil to continue in the world. Evangelicals will continue to spout drivel about free will and that good will triumph in the end. God could not intervene? I ask why not? He’s God.

I hate myself for harboring such anger. For questioning He who cannot be questioned. Also, I find myself unable to understand those on both sides of the aisle who will politicize this day, despite their assertions that they mean no such thing.

And finally I pray for the dead. ALL the dead in this great catastrophe that has engulfed the world for the last five years.For it is in death that all are equal. 2996 died on September 11th. Since then almost 3000 Americans have died in the wars that sprung up in its aftermath. 30,000+ by any reliable estimate have died on the Afghan and Iraqi side of the tally. And still it goes on. The end is no where in sight. Dear God in Heaven, I wish You would make it end.

I remember again the words of Herman Wouk, “Either war is finished, or we are”.

And finally, we remember their names: Names that were once lives, with love, hopes, and dreams. And we vow that no matter what happens in the future, we shall never forget that they once walked the earth. Were a part of us. Lived among us. Now they are gone. We remain behind. For how long we do not know. The summons to duty could come at any time.

Remember!

Links to names:
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/victims_list.htm

http://icasualties.org/oif/

http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

http://www.icasualties.org/oef/

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We will. 9-11 was more than just an American tragedy, because of that day literally the entire world was set ablaze. The following story shows just how interconnected this world of ours is.

(24 of the victims were Japanese……..).

For Yuko, 9/11 was only yesterday

Yukiko Furusawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

Monday marks the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that killed about 2,700 people. However, for those who lost loved ones in the tragedy, the emotional scars still run deep.
Yuko Clark, 39, who lives in New Jersey with her four children, is one victim who cannot erase her sense of loss.
Her American husband, Greg, 40, was working for a bond trading agent on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Yuko, originally from Kanagawa Prefecture, met Greg at a U.S. military facility in Yokohama when she was a junior college student working part-time at a shop there.
They married 16 years ago, and Greg worked late every day to build a home and was a gentle father to their children.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he left for work as usual, but never returned home.
It was hard for Yuko to accept the fact that her husband had died in act of terrorism. She did not know on whom to vent her anger.
Like many others, his body was never recovered. But three years ago, a DNA test identified a piece of a left arm bone as being his, and Yuko could finally accept that her husband had died.
“I was sad, but at the same felt relieved. It was a sort of mixed feeling I had because I learned he really had died,” Yuko said.
The emotional damage to her children also is deep.
Her eldest son, John, 16, said: “After dad was dead, I stopped doing everything. I did not talk and stayed in my room. I struggled in that year. Next year, I got to accept what had happened.”
Having watched the war on terrorism unfold in Afghanistan and then the Iraq war on the television, John said, “I’m sure they don’t like Americans,” and added that anger circles the world.
Younger son Matt, 12, drew a picture book in which the father of the main character died while the boy was in a class.
The youngest child, 10-year-old Julie, refused to go to school at one stage.
Recently, Julie ripped off the arm of a father-character doll and applied a bandage she had made out of paper saying he was injured.
Although things are difficult, Yuko has found some joy.
Her eldest daughter, Sarah, 14, has been caring toward her younger brother and sister. John, who is attending high school, has taken up golf, a game that Greg liked.
As Yuko realizes how much her children have grown, she said she often asks herself, “Why is Greg not here?”
Greg played an active role in raising their children, changing their diapers and doing other things to help.
Recalling that, she says she finds it sad that he cannot see his children grow. She laments that these are the best years of child rearing, but he has missed out on it.
To receive compensation from the U.S. government, she had to fill out a mountain of paperwork.
Although she will have no trouble getting by for a while, she is worried about the future and sending the children to college among other things.
Some women she knows from an association for bereaved family members of 9/11 victims have remarried, but Yuko said she cannot imagine doing so.
On Monday, a memorial ceremony is to be held at Ground Zero.
One of her friends, who also lost her husband, suggested that Yuko read her husband’s name out with others on the day to mark a turning point, but she refused.
She has not visited Ground Zero for a long time, “Because I feel as if my feelings go back to the past.”
Recently, she started playing the piano again. On Monday, she said she was planning to attend an event at a hall in New York to sing Mozart’s “Requiem” in remembrance of her husband.
(Sep. 10, 2006)

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One of the things that keeps me with the S.O. is her innate ability to find a way to cheer me up when I am down. She never does this in an obvious way, Japanese women are not that blunt, but she knows when its time to coax me out of my shell. Reaffirming for you uninformed out there that anyone who thinks Japanese women are submissive, has obviously never, ever, lived with one. They get their way just as surely as their western sisters. They do, however, make you feel better while you are being used.

So Saturday morning starts when the S.O. wakes me up a lot earlier than I thought I should be.
(This conversation may or may not have occured as relate it……..nonetheless the meaning is still there).

Me: ” Can’t you just let me wallow here in my self-pity? ”

Her: (Thinking to herself in Japanese). No you can’t you stupid Gaijin. Now get your lazy foreign ass out of bed. Why the hell did I ever get involved with this guy?
” Come join me for Yoga……”.

Me: “Yoga? I meditate while drinking, thank you very much. Its too early to start drinking.”

She: Explains again about her Yoga class.

Me: ” Thanks but no thanks. Real men don’t eat quiche, watch Oprah, and they don’t do Yoga. I will however, go with you to the gym and do treadmill.”

Her: ” Fine. Hayaku!”

So off we go to the gym. Which actually turns out to be a good thing. I get about 40 minutes on the treadmill, which is a great chance for me, as the endorphins kick in and TV headphone volume goes up, to retreat to my own little world. Where I am the star. (Kind of a poor man’s holosuite-more on that some other time).

Work out complete we go home, shower, change go shopping, eat lunch. She then suggests that we go to see a parade that was going on in town from 4 to 5. Sounds like a good idea. Turns out to be a competition between school and other marching bands, some as young as from the 6th grade. Crowded streets, pretty girls and beer vendors selling Asahi for 200Yen a pop. The flag waving Kanagawa Police women in their short skirts and high heeled boots got my attention!

Which in turn lead to me making her a nice dinner over which she asked me if I wanted to play golf today.

Which we did. Don’t ask who won and I shot a pretty good game for me. Remember what I said at the start……..Nobody rides for free!

But I do feel better—-for now. And not one word came out of her mouth that directly referred to my emotions….it was all done very subtly. That’s a lesson some other women should learn!

I’m lucky enough to count Steeljaw Scribe as a friend of mine. He’s someone I really respect. He’s passed along to me his idea for observing 9-11.

The 2996 project was started as an attempt to have individual blogs host a remembrance of each of the victims of the attack — those from the WTC, Pentagon and on each of the airliners (hence the 2996 label ). No politics, no discussion of the killers, just a remembrance of those who were taken from us. As of two weeks ago, 2,996 blogs have signed up and are participating.
What I’m doing is posting my retrospective esterday/today) of the Pentagon attack and this weekend will be putting up memorial postings, first for my shipmates from N513 and N3N5 who were killed and also for Colin Arthur Bonnett who was killed at the WTC. Monday will be a silent post @ 0937:25, the time of the Pentagon strike. I invite you to my website (http://steeljawscribe.blogspot.com) and the 2996 Project site (http://www.dcroe.com/2996/) to view the homegrown observances being posted.

Scribe was working in the Pentagon that day. He survived, but many of his co-workers did not. Go over to his blog to see his account of that terrible day.

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