Far East Cynic

Why the Chinese government is bunch of commie prix………………

H/T to Hemlock!

The guys on Kitty Hawk that is. I’m finally getting around to posting some of my pix from my foray to the fragrant harbor a couple of weeks ago. I sure wish I was there right now! Instead of being here watching people get frustrated producing a report that no one will ever read………….Even the Koreans will turn to the back page.

Anyway. If I were there now I could be seeing again:

The Star Ferry

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Only a moron would thnk that working till 5:30 pm when you have a dinner commitment with Koreans is a good idea……..

As for what we got done today? Well here is the story in three panels:

 You want it bad, you get it bad!

This pretty well sums up my mood:

What’s that you say, Bukowski did not write Peanuts? Well if he had, here is what it would read like:

My female readers can probably relate!

Read some more over here! Its pretty funny-especially when you are depressed about being in Korea! H/T to Spike!

On my way back to Korea, to look for a new job to finish my part of the project. Saying I am depressed is more than an understatement.

However one of the reads that cheers me up every day is from the Canadian Skippy who writes a snappy blog called Enjoy Every Sandwich. I heartily recommend it to you. He writes well and its really funny.

You also learn all kinds of new things.

Such as, I never knew Amy Fisher did a sex tape.

Amy was never one to do things halfway. Not for her the surreptitious schtuppings that most of us who have sex with married partners settle for. Fisher had to shoot Joey’s wife in the face. And that’s where the news – and the fun – really started. Amy Fisher was to be forevermore known as the “Long Island Lolita,” despite the fact that Nabokov’s heroine was only 12. And didn’t shoot anyone in the face. And that the name “Humbert Humbert” doesn’t inspire half as many involuntary giggles as “Joey Buttafuoco” does.

He’s also written a spot on analysis of Hillary Clinton. It is the best dissection of her I’ve read to date.

Just because I think that Hillary Clinton is the next likely occupant of the Oval Office doesn’t mean that I necessarily have to like it. In fact, I loathe that goddamn woman with every fibre of my being. Unfortunately, I’m cursed with the ability to separate what I would to like to see happen with I think actually will.I thought Bob Dole was the coolest guy alive and might have actually gotten something done as president. But I was never crazy enough to think that he was actually going to beat Hillary’s husband. Shit, Mr. Bill was so far ahead that he had actually started dating again. Maybe you read about it somewhere.Anyone who underestimates the Clinton family is either dangerously drunk or a fucking fool. Repeating the mantra that “half the country hates her” doesn’t particularly help your cause, either. Half the country hated her husband, too. That didn’t stop him from winning twice and he was very possibly the most flawed person ever nominated by a major party. If he were alive today, even Bill’s fellow Arkansan, Wilbur Mills, would be aghast at how wrong in almost every way Bill Clinton was.

That sums that up pretty well. Mr Obama here are your talking points for the next debate:

The fact is that over the last twenty years the Clintons have built the most brutally effective political machine in human history. They took an admitted draft dodger and beat not one, but two certified war heroes with him. In the White House, the Clintons could barely get out of bed without doing something so ethically questionable that it invited congressional hearings, but he still left office with an approval rating in the neighbourhood of Reagan’s. And Clinton was actually impeached whereas Reagan merely should have been.

Hillary has been beating all comers within her own party by some thirty points for nearly a year, and she’s been doing it on the basis of the most demonstrably silly argument in the entire history of politics. That would be her “experience.”

I’m of the mind that if your spouse is experienced at something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you are. After all, nobody was begging Gail Zappa to strap on a guitar and make really cool records after Frank died. Rudy Giuliani has been married 36 times and none of his wives are currently running New York City, although one of them did have custody of Gracie Mansion for a time.

But wait, there’s more. Regarding Hillary’s supposed experience:

Let’s not be coy here, Hillary Clinton was elected to the United States Senate for one reason and one reason alone: her husband got a blowjob and a ward-heeling huckster like Charlie Rangel correctly assumed that this translated into an easy senate seat. And it was easy. She was drawing even with Giuliani and beat Rick Lazio by thirteen points in a state where she had never before lived.

That barely qualifies as enough experience to host a daytime talk show let alone become leader of the free world. But she’s doing her best to convince you otherwise.

“We have so many issues to deal with,’’ she said. “I’ve traveled the world on behalf of our country. I’ve met with countless world leaders and know many of them personally.”

That’s just a touch misleading. Point of fact, her husband travelled the world and met countless world leaders. Hillary just happened to be on the plane and ignored Bill’s extracurricular activities. The only things that she negotiated in the White House were a disastrous health care plan that nearly destroyed Bill’s presidency and the terms under which she wouldn’t get a divorce.

Read the whole thing!

I go back to Korea tomorrow and I am not looking forward to it.  Posting may be intermittent for a few days. I’m behind where I should be because I deliberately let it slip this week. I just did not feel like doing it.

Which,  has gotten me to think about how much I have changed over the last 10 years or so. My values and beliefs are very different than they were in 1992, or for that matter 1982. Some would say I’ve lost my way. You’ll forgive me if I entertain the notion that it’s them that has gone off the tracks. I’ve found my way to a better place. ( This is my story-I’ll write it as I see fit.  :-)  )My only real regret is that it took so long to get here. If I had known 20 years ago what I know now-I’d have more money saved and I’d probably be a lot happier overall. Certainly a lot more women would have known the joy of loving me.

Which is their loss……and mine.

Whenever I am in the states, I try to get to listen to NPR. They used to run a series called “This I believe”. Here in no particular order are things that I believe in. Argue it if you must, but these are mine. You have to get your own. 

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No, not the KY that the Korea project leader forgot to use when he dreamed up the plan for the project I’m going back to on Sunday……………….

KY is a new Japanese slang term. KY is short for kuki ga yomenai, (”can’t read between the lines” or “can’t sense the atmosphere”), which is used to describe indelicate or unperceptive people. Example: That guy is so KY.

Come to think of it, maybe it does describe the guy running this Korea project.

Anyway, a blog called Pink Tentacle has published the top 60 buzzwords for Japanese this year. They reflect the news that has occured last year and also they make for some interesting alliteration when spoken in Japanese. The entire list can be found here.

Some of the ones I really liked:

Child-bearing machines [umu kikai ]: Health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa sparked a controversy when he referred to women as “child-bearing machines” in a January speech about Japan’s declining birthrate. In reference to how Japan might reverse the population decline, he said: “The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed. Because the number of child-bearing machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head.”

Bottom-biting bug [oshiri kajiri mushi ]: Oshiri Kajiri Mushi (”Bottom Biting Bug”), the popular song about a dancing bug that likes to bite people on the butt, became a huge hit on Minna No Uta, a daily NHK program featuring original animated videos for family-oriented songs. Oshiri Kajiri Mushi became the featured dance number at this year’s school athletic meets, cultural festivals and other events nationwide.

“Status-gap marriage” [kakusakon ]: A “status-gap marriage” is one in which there is a clear gap in income, pedigree, social status, etc. between the husband and wife. The phrase usually refers to marriages in which a woman marries “beneath herself,” such as the marriage between actress Norika Fujiwara (who I’ve lusted after since I got to Japan) and her husband, the lesser-known comedian Tomonori Jinnai.

Akachan post :
Akachan post (”baby post”) refers to the controversial drop box for unwanted babies set up at a hospital in Kumamoto this year, which is designed to provide parents a safe and anonymous way to abandon their babies. Similar baby hatches have been set up in the past, including one at a foster home in Japan’s Gunma prefecture that was used from 1986 to 1991.

Dried-fish woman [himono onna ]: Himono onna (”dried-fish woman”) is an expression used in the movie Hotaru No Hikari to describe the main character, a woman in her 20s who has renounced the pursuit of romance. She spends her evenings reading manga and drinking at home alone, and she spends her weekends lazing around in bed. She’s a dried-fish woman. Like more than a few American women these days.

Ogushio ]: .Ogushio is the nickname (abbreviation) given to the women’s doubles badminton team, Kumiko Ogura (Ogu) and Reiko Shiota (Shio), who also happen to be rather good-looking. Their official photo collection, called “Road to Beijing,” created a stir when it was released. Okushio are aiming for gold in the Beijing Olympics

Tetsuko : The unhealthy obsession with trains has long been a predominantly male pursuit, but the numbers of female train otaku — known as “Tetsuko” — are on the rise.

Motepuyo: Motepuyo, a term that means something like “chubby cute,” describes women who are plump, small in stature, and cute. With a fine line between motepuyo and chubby, some say the only difference is whether or not a woman has a cute face.

Otona-kawaii : Otona-kawaii (”adult cute”) refers to the fashion style of women in their late 20s to 30s who wear girlie outfits like jumper skirts and mini-dresses adorned with lace and ribbon. Otona-kawaii became the special catchphrase of AneCan magazine.

So there you have it-more ways to insult your boss and co-workers without them know what you are saying-unless you are in Japan of course!

I’ll bet there are more than a few people pissed off here. Including every bar owner in Wanchai:

U.S. aircraft carrier denied access to Hong Kong

HONG KONG 21 Nov 2007-(Reuters) – China has refused permission for a U.S. aircraft carrier and accompanying vessels to visit Hong Kong for a long-planned Thanksgiving holiday visit, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.The Kitty Hawk group and its crew of 8,000 U.S. airmen and sailors had been expected in Hong Kong on Wednesday, but will now spend the holiday on the South China Sea.

Hundred of relatives of crew members of the USS Kitty Hawk had flown to Hong Kong to celebrate Thanksgiving with their loved ones. Hong Kong has been a regular port of call for U.S. sailors on “R & R” (rest and recuperation) since the Vietnam War.

The Chinese move comes as a surprise just weeks after a visit to China by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, which he said he hoped would lead to a long-term dialogue.

“At present, it appears the USS Kitty Hawk strike group will not be making a port call in Hong Kong as previously planned as a result of a last minute denial by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said.

The United States was pressing China for an explanation and to reconsider its decision, she added.

There are several possible sources of discontent that may have prompted the decision — including U.S. plans to sell Taiwan a $940 million upgrade to its missile system and a meeting last month between President George W Bush and the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who Beijing considers a traitor.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing declined to make an immediate comment.

UPDATE! The Chinese have now changed their mind and agreed to let the ship in. Might have had something to do with the Wanchai Bar owners threatening to host a pro-democracy demonstration if they did not.

Still means the Chinese are just stinking commie bastards!

Update to the Update!:  From Spike and confirmed through other sources: ”UPDATE 2: The Kitty Hawk decided not to turn around and come back to HK; it’s continuing on to Japan anyway. The NY Times notes that in 2006 the US Navy spent US$32 million while on shore leave in HK. The article interviews the manager of Coyote who says US Navy visits typically bump bar revenues by 60 percent and that they’d booked a table for 60 for Thanksgiving dinner and that, understandably, morale on the ship is a bit low at the moment. Morale is probably low among HK bar owners, bar managers and, ahem, bar girls as well.

Kitty Hawk is going to go give the carrier based equivalent of flipping the Chinese the bird. This ought to be interesting over the next few months…………….

Under the premise of, “That’s not funny! That’s sick!”

The Muppets celebrate Thanksgiving in the alternate universe:

I went out running this afternoon. Had spent the day in work trying to get some non-Korean related things done before I go back to the killing of trees in the name of allied unity. When your children are deprived of oxygen someday, and the sceptics have finally woken up to the reality of global warming, you may rest assured that I did my part!

 Now that I have my I-pod, I have discovered that I actually don’t mind running so much. The music helps take my mind off of how really lousy I feel while running, plus the little jaunt-accompanied by some hard hitting rock and roll helps me to channel my anger. Lately there is a lot of anger flowing through my consciousness.

Which was going to lead me to writing a good old fashioned rant filled post. However after a couple glasses of this:

Don’t usually drink Scotch, but tonight I felt like it!

I was in a much mellower mood. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving. A friend has been kind enough to invite us over for dinner. I’m excited because like the dad in A Christmas Story, I am a turkeyholic, and I don’t get a lot of turkey over here. ( At least not without the prefix ‘Wild’ in front of it!). So its time to have some fun.

Which leads to the following video, courtesy of Japan Probe. This is from a Japanese TV show and the subject of this broadcast is that of finding beautiful women. The idea behind the show is “to find a pretty girl and have her introduce the host to a friend she considers better-looking than herself, repeating the process until that country’s most beautiful woman is found” . Seems to have worked. This was shot in Taiwan.

Speaking of pretty women, I still have not figured out how this site-somehow got linked to me. However I am not complaining. (NFSW).

Happy Thanksgiving!

They are called Shindaisha in Japanese. It means “sleeper train”.

A couple of days ago, in our morning Asahi Shimbun, the paper ran a front page article about diminishing ridership on these train lines. The trains which, with the exception of the opulent Casseiopea Train which runs from Ueno to Sapporo, are normally blue. Thus the name “Blue Train.”

Significantly slower than the more famous Shinkansen, or bullet train, these trains nonetheless have a certain ambiance to them and were, in earlier times,  the way the working Citizen Sato saved some yen when trying to go from one end of this long country to another.  The lines ran between the major cities in Japan , and as you can probably guess,  ran at night. The two I have ridden on left Tokyo at 6pm and 10:30pm respectively.

The article, in Japanese, noted that ridership has dropped 80% since 1989.

(Translation of the caption-North Star line Tokyo departing trains. 1987 represents 100%. Figures from JR East….).

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In my current funk, I’ve been coming to a slow realization. I’ve known it deep down all along, but the romantic in me has always wanted to suppress the reality of it.  Because when you accept the fact that relationships are not about sex-but about power and whose dreams get mortgaged for the future- that future becomes depressing indeed.

Even if you take matters into your own hands and send the mortgage broker packing.

If relationships were about sex, and one partner providing the requisite quantity of that commodity, then the divorce rate would be a hell of a lot lower than it is today.  You can take the word sex and substitute just about anything else of value: money, companionship, sympathy, support and its always the same. The other partner is always using it to get her way. Pat Benatar wrote a song about it.

Women, because of their history as the supposedly disadvantaged member of the partnership,  learn this reality at an early age. Its taught to them subtly and subconsciously by their mothers and sisters- as well as the girlfriends they hang with, who willingly serve as the background for their attempts to use sex and emotion as a weapon to render the other partner powerless and subject to their desires and needs. Thanks to the rise of feminism and its denigration of the need for men to play the roles men were meant to play,  women have acquired some powerful allies in this drama of emotional slaughter. The law and other men.

Miles (telling Jack how he believes romantic relationships work for males approaching middle-age): “If you don’t have money at my age, you’re not even in the game anymore. You’re just a pasture animal waiting for the abattoir.”

This by the way is why single men may not live longer, but they smile a lot more along the way. The only person to deprive them of what they want is themselves.

“But wait”, you ask, “the whole point of any relationship is to get bonded with someone who shares your dreams and together you go forward along the same path”.

YEA, RIGHT!

Any relationship may start out that way, but over time the women quickly figure out ways to welch on the deal. As Herman Wouk said in one of his books:

“The girl you marry, and the woman you have to live your life with, are two entirely different people.” 

Maybe Katherine Hepburn had it right:

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Either that or have the resources and the emotional strength to just keep recycling relationships so that you stay in the excitement zone. Of course that gets expensive. Or does it?

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less. ~Brendan Behan

At least in a long term relationship, one person gets to be happy:

The worst part is that while the other partner slowly grinds you down, they all the while insist that they are doing it for good reasons. That there is too much risk involved, that its foolish just to move someplace because that has been where you always wanted to live-for 10 years-and that the simply want to make sure you can survive. They believe in their hearts that its done out of love.

Maybe it is. But the sadness of seeing the thing you want pass you buy because you can’t quite figure out how to get it, and no one around you seems to know how to help you-leaves me more than a bit depressed.

Of course this does not help either.

However that is no matter to her, provided….always provided-she gets A, B, and C. But rest assured its done with a sense of love and whats best for me. Except-and I know this is going to come a shock for you-I know what’s best for me and its not on the menu yet.

Sigh! It is going to be a long winter………………….

Nick: Wise up, folks. We’re all alone out there and tomorrow we’re going out there again.

However as Scarlett always said, tomorrow is yet another day:

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.– Pope John XXIII.

Is finding good quality,  free (e.g. no credit card info required), porn videos.

Fortunately for us all, FOX News has come to the rescue:

Fair and balanced baby!

As I have said before, nothing becomes Korea like the leaving of it. It is good to be home. Even it only is for a week and then I get to go back to the grind in the land of the morning calm, once again. Thank God for the Thanksgiving holiday!

Digging out of my suitcase this evening I took stock of the damage:

Books bought-3

DVD’s bought-2 sets:

Star Trek Enterprise 2nd and 3rd Seasons.

Cash spent that I really should not have spent?-Don’t ask. More than I should have- not as much as I could have.

Wasted days of my life that I won’t get back? Well I don’t believe any day alive is wasted, however some are more useful than others. Using that scale 6 days qualify as more than moderately useless.

Serious blog posts avoided-10

Other blogs not read? Too many to list.

Which, by the way, leads to some quotable quotes I missed this past week:

If I was held accountable for retaining personnel I would shoot every person in Millington and OPNAV. You just can’t find motivators like that without flipping over rocks.-Curtis

If you’re looking for a crazy person to support your campaign, you aren’t going to do better than Pat Robertson, although George W. Bush did rather well with Osama bin Laden campaigning for him in the last weekend of the 2004 race. And Robertson isn’t a stranger to presidential politics. He ran for the Republican nomination in 1988 because Jesus told him to.-the Canadian Skippy.

Concerning Michelle Malkin:
Coming from someone who just got 86-ed/dehired/sacked/ outsourced to unpaid status/ pink-slipped/decruited/laterally transfered to the oblivion division at Fox, I find it admirable of Michelle to go on record as not willing to give up Jesse’s left nut for a real paying job working for the man when she would rather run a shoestring operation out of her basement at a loss. And she doesn’t care at all that Newsweek decided to pass on her after she posted her cheerleader video resume on monster.com . So there. She didn’t want your stupid job anyway.-Tbogg

CNN reporter on Lou Dobbs reporting on increased military desertions:

By the way desertion is a crime, but the U.S. military doesn’t spend a whole lot of time hunting down deserters or prosecuting. If it finds them or they turn themselves in, they are prosecuted, but mostly they get a less than honorable discharge and interestingly, Lou, the Marines don’t seem to have the same problem. Marine desertions show only a very slight increase since 2003. The Navy is actually down and hardly anyone deserts the Air Force.

I wonder why?

This never happens to me.

Note From Experience: not all bar-girls go for the clean-skin look, there are some die-hard no-shavers out there. Sort of nostalgic really. This Brazilian thing didn’t come in when I was married and having regular* sex in the (I’m not kidding) 70′s and 80′s. Still picking curlies from the teeth at breakfast.-E @ L

It is good to be home!

Bullnav has to write a blog post praising a famous Citadel graduate.

The reason:

Citadel 70 -VMI 28