Far East Cynic

And effective today, I join the ranks of the leisure class-at least for a while. Today was my last full day at work. Clean out the desk, turn out the lights, wipe all the porn files off the computer. Stick a fork in me I am done!

Hopefully, it will only be for a couple of months and during that time one of the lines I have cast into the water will render forth. As I have pointed out before, barring a miracle, it will probably be a line that draws me back to the land of fat women and rude people-at least for a while. Sigh. Still it beats not working and living with my parents. ( Although my mother would like that……..). I’ll be here in Japan for a couple of more months though and will continue to comment, lambast, criticize and otherwise be an obnoxious part of Bloggerville. I actually had someone accuse me of being a misogynist. Can you believe that? I’m offended-after all if any one loves women-its me.  Misogynist? Pshaw-not me. I’m right up there with Camille Pagila-I love women, all kinds of women. For their tits minds and maternal qualities.

So since today is Friday and spring has come, it points out that a young man’s fancy turns to:

BEER!

And of course, with the advent of spring time and the soon to occur blooming of the Sakura, one has to think of:

Now I ask you, how could anyone ever think I was capable of hating that?

Rubbish! I love women!

About the stinking Chinese commie dictatorship.

What are the chances of the world’s righteous, free, democratic, apple pie-munching nations boycotting the Beijing Olympics in protest against China’s crackdown in Tibet?  Imagine the intensely gratifying and entertaining humiliation of the godless Communist tyranny, combined with the relief from the excruciating tedium of diving, formation cycling and medal ceremonies – a coincidence of near-orgasmic quality.  A quick call to Heung Kwok-leung, master of the Mongkok sub-sub-prime loans market and bookmaker to the gentry, confirms my suspicions that it sounds too good to be true.  He would offer odds of 30 to 1. 

The difference between a dictatorship in Iraq and one in China? One gets invaded, the other gets traded with. Moral of the story? Buy American debt and keep the American public from seeing videos like this one:

Yokosuka-20 March 2008. A taxi driver was found murdered. They think it was done by an American. How soon do you think the finger will be pointed at an American Sailor?

My advice? Stock up on liquor for the impending lock-down. 

Update: “Going through the base gate this evening, the whole base is in a frenzy. Cars are literally backed up in nearly every direction, and base police are absolutely everywhere. It looked like cars were being randomly selected for inspection, which only made the congestion that much worse. ”

Update to the Update: Our Asahi Shimbun this morning had a big headline that translates as follows:

“Inside the car was the credit card of a missing American serviceman. Japan and US military investigating”.

Arthur C. Clarke passed away yesterday. Being something of a science fiction buff-but not a full fledged aficionado-it is with great sadness that we note his passing. I read a lot of his books, all of the 2001 series, and many of his articles in various magazines.

1968-yours truly, telling Mom he was going one place then doing something totally different-got on the street car to watch 2001 A Space Odyssey at the Fulton theater on 6th street. If she had known I was taking the streetcar into town, I am quite certain she would have kicked my ass. I was all of 11 years old.

Fast forward 15 years to 1983. USS America had pulled into Colombo Sri Lanka. Not exactly a thriving liberty port- we each had to make our own fun. I mostly spent my days getting drunk by the pool after fighting beggars on the street just to walk around and see what few sights there were to see, played golf on an old British course complete with cows on it, and talked with my friends from the squadron. One of whom-quite by surprise to us I might add-looked up Arthur C. Clarke somehow , unannounced, paid a visit on him. According to him, the author spent about 40 minutes with him. We all thought it was BS-until he produced the autographed book. 7 jaws dropped in unison.

Godspeed sir and thank you for your work.

It is March after all and that means that we are suffering throughobserving Women’s History month. In keeping with the tenure of the recent book I recently finished, The Nine by Jeffery Toobin, it seems only appropriate to take a quick look at one of the Supreme Court’s really bad decisions. Now a lot of people are fixated on Roe v Wade or decisions on school prayer. You will forgive me, if I stick with the view that the decision of the Supreme Court in 1996′s United States vs Virginia Military Institute case, which effectively destroyed two of the greatest colleges in America, ranks as one of the most disgusting cases of judicial misinterpretation of the constitution. I may disagree with Justice Scalia on many things-but in this particular instance he showed remarkable understanding of the law and common sense.

Brought at the urging of the National Association of Whores Women, the United States Justice department-not having really important criminal matters to attend to-in 1990 filed a discrimination lawsuit against VMI for its all-male admissions policy. Over the next six years the legal drama played out and the present era gloomily dawned.

The similar destruction of the Service Academies was accomplished through congressionally directed suicide in 1976. VMI and The Citadel having watched the continued erosion of standards at these institutions and the subsequent decline of their cadet systems were resolved to avoid the same fate. Both colleges got along just fine during the 1980′s making substantial improvements to their curriculum and to their physical plant. They were repeatedly ranked among the best small colleges in the South.  They were just minding their own business doing what they had been chartered to do:

“to produce educated and honorable men, prepared for the varied work of civil life, imbued with love of learning, confident in the functions and attitudes of leadership, possessing a high sense of public service, advocates of the American democracy and free enterprise system, and ready as citizen soldiers to defend their country in time of national peril.”

The most important word in that statement is MEN. The key to that accomplishment, just as it had been at the service academies- before they abandoned the principles they were founded on- was an “adversative” (that means painful and in-your-face) system of training methods which had produced many successful leaders. VMI’s 150-year-old tradition held that female inclusion would destroy the military culture that allowed the use of those methods. Of course, destroying that culture was the feminist lobby’s real goal. To obscure their real purpose,  they wrapped up their argument in a flawed interpretation of the 14th amendment-one that was never intended or envisioned by the drafters of that amendment.

Detailed texts of the decisions and the dissent by Justice Scalia can be found here, here, and here. Justice Thomas, sadly, had to recuse himself because his son was attending VMI-seeking a proper liberal arts military education, as any smart young man should.  In the interest of brevity I will not re-hash all of the legal arguments except to point out that the Justice Department’s case was based on 3 things: 1) That there were a few women who could meet the college’s physical standards; 2) Because the college accepted public funding,  having different programs targeted at the respective genders ( VMI had started a rather innovative Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership (VWIL), located at Mary Baldwin College, a private liberal arts school for women. ) somehow did not provide adequate constitutional relief ; and 3) that by admitting women into VMI and the resultant accommodations to the program that would be required-did not result in a diminished educational experience for all the students of VMI.

It is important to note that the lower courts including the 4th circuit had actually upheld the VMI position or at least important parts of it.  The Supreme Court cut the legs out from those judicially sound positions.

Now there are some alumni of my own alma mater and of VMI who have drunk the kool-aid;  I have several class mates who have had their own daughters graduate from the college and have been present to watch them cross the stage. Good for them-however I count myself fortunate to not have had to follow them into that great good night. Like women at sea, it is not a position I am ever going to agree with, much less support. All male colleges are perfectly legal and having all male ships is in the best interest of combat readiness. The results of the last 15 years and the problems that have been created by the slavish insistence on accomodating the diversity bullies should be self evident.  Guys like me were right. I’m glad that my daughter wanted nothing to do with the place.  I had already resolved to help her financially with any college she wanted to go to-except for VMI or the Citadel. If she wanted to go there-well obviously I could not prevent it-but I sure as hell did not have to assist in it. Fortunately I never had to cross that bridge.

It was a black day for VMI and by extension The Citadel. I’ll sum up by letting Justice Scalia explain why:

The all male constitution of VMI comes squarely within such a governing tradition. Founded by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1839 and continuously maintained by it since, VMI has always admitted only men. And in that regard it has not been unusual. For almost all of VMI’s more than a century and a half of existence, its single sex status reflected the uniform practice for government supported military colleges. Another famous Southern institution, The Citadel, has existed as a state funded school of South Carolina since 1842. And all the federal military colleges–West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and even the Air Force Academy, which was not established until 1954–admitted only males for most of their history. Their admission of women in 1976 (upon which the Court today relies, see ante, at 27-28, nn. 13, 15), came not by court decree, but because the people, through their elected representatives, decreed a change. See, e.g., Pub. L. 94-106, §803(a), 89 Stat. 537-538 (1975). In other words, the tradition of having government funded military schools for men is as well rooted in the traditions of this country as the tradition of sending only men into military combat. The people may decide to change the one tradition, like the other, through democratic processes; but the assertion that either tradition has been unconstitutional through the centuries is not law, but politics smuggled into law.

And the same applies, more broadly, to single sex education in general, which, as I shall discuss, is threatened by today’s decision with the cut off of all state and federal support. Government run nonmilitary educational institutions for the two sexes have until very recently also been part of our national tradition. “[It is] [c]oeducation, historically, [that] is a novel educational theory. From grade school through high school, college, and graduate and professional training, much of the Nation’s population during much of our history has been educated in sexually segregated classrooms.” Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 736 (1982) (Powell, J., dissenting); see id., at 736-739. These traditions may of course be changed by the democratic decisions of the people, as they largely have been.

Today, however, change is forced upon Virginia, and reversion to single sex education is prohibited nationwide, not by democratic processes but by order of this Court. Even while bemoaning the sorry, bygone days of “fixed notions” concerning women’s education, see ante, at 18-19, and n. 10, 20-21, 25-27, the Court favors current notions so fixedly that it is willing to write them into the Constitution of the United States by application of custom built “tests.” This is not the interpretation of a Constitution, but the creation of one.

Well said!

It is St Patrick’s day. What I SHOULD be doing is jumping on the train into Tokyo, and then drinking pint after pint of Cafferey’s ( Never have been much of a Guinness fan-it is just too heavy; but I do like a good Black and Tan.). I’ve celebrated St Patty’s day in Singapore, and in Korea-but for some reason I could never get to a celebration in Tokyo. ( I did go to a blow out at the Atsugi O’club once-does that count?).

Which makes it all the more tragic that I am cooking chicken and potatoes, salad, and drinking Sam Adams beer. And that will be the extent of my revelry for the evening. I will of course greet the S.O. later with traditional greeting of the day. I’m not optimistic about my chances for success though.

I’ve always found my enthusiasm for this particular day hard to reconcile with my personal beliefs-which are that 26+6=1. 1 part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain that is.

Complete and total rubbish!

I will of course, watch The Quiet Man-its one of my favorite movies. But that still does not mean it makes any sense for Ireland not to be a part of the British Isles. I realize among westerners that is not a popular viewpoint. Having romanticized the struggle to be independent of the British over the years. Big deal-its still all terrorism if you ask me. Britain and Ireland would be a lot stronger though if the British Isles were one political entity. Then again, I’m something of a romantic. In my perfect world. the world map would look something like this.

Since its not-I’ve got a reason to drink tonight.

Like they say-save electricity. Take the stairs.

It is 5:30 in the morning. I should be sleeping but I just cannot sleep. Probably means the booze wore off-but on the other hand we were home pretty early last night all things considered.

Yesterday was the first time I played golf in about 3 months. It was a glorious day-sunny and warm. The grass was still in that beat down winter mode-so the ball got a pretty good roll when you hit it. Which is good because I certainly was not going to get the ball down the fairway in the air! Suffice it to say my score showed the effects of a 3 month layoff.

Then, last night, we went to a sort of a farewell party-for the S.O. and me. Farewell in the sense that I am leaving my current job and moving on to a new one. However it was also so our hosts could have a party at their house. Whichever was the primary driver-I’m grateful to them.

For two reasons: 1) the food was good and the sake and beer plentiful. 2) It helped crystallize in my mind why I need to move on and do something else.

The people there are all fine people. However the conversation kind of re-iterated to me how much I’ve changed in my attitudes and ambitions in the last 8 years while I have been overseas. Many of these folks are still deep in their Navy climb-they will be going where they must to compete for the really “good jobs”. Whenever they asked me the inevitable “What are you going to do?” question I just sort of mentally cringed. Since I’ve not totally decided what I am going to do, and I am at heart suspicious, I kept my responses very generic. I do have a game plan and barring a miracle, I will probably make a decision to execute it in about a week or so. However it was hard to get folks to understand that at this point in my life it is not so much about “what” I am going to do, but “where” I do it. And for me the “what” just is not the most important thing. Most of these people just did not understand that logic.

I understand it perfectly. At this point in my life a job is just that-a job. A job that facilitates the right location however, is a means to an end. I’ve pretty much outgrown my ambition. I have not, however, out grown my desire to experience new and wonderful things.

This makes my planning for the upcoming weeks and my decision process all the more frustrating, since my most probably game plan is : a) not in the location I love and b) creates as many complexities as it solves. It is just one of those dissatisfying compromises that one has to work out because several things you count on happening-don’t happen. Plus the bills don’t pay themselves you know. And since my ex-wife still has not done me the decent favor of throwing herself off of the Sixth Street bridge-well those bills are still there.

I’ll let you know what my plans are when I figure them out for myself.

I am certain that making a change and leaving the current work vehicle is the right thing to do.  However now that it is finally here, there is a sense of lost time and missed opportunities that hangs over my head. There is never a big sign out there that says “THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS IS THIS WAY!”. I wish there was. However life never works that way. You make little decisions and the arc of the possible continues to narrow until you either reach the destination or you run smack into the big sign saying, DEAD END. Like that scene in Stand and Deliver, ” You never see the end of the road when you are at the turn-all you see is the Y in the road.” Something like that. And of course,  it does not help that I have 128 pounds of Japanese baggage sleeping quietly back in the bedroom. That is where that “what I want to do” vs “what I need to do” problem rears its ugly head every time.

I do think it is important to keep it in perspective though. These are the decisions one should have on their plate. What should not be on anyone’s plate and is a sign of just how truly unfair the universe is, are having to make decisions like Patrick Swayze  is having to make. My little dramas are chump change compared with that. I read that news on Friday with sadness. He’s only a few years older than I am.

When one remembers that,  life is pretty good after all. Time to go make the coffee. I probably should hit the delete button on this ramshackle post-but its the news today. So have a good day.

Snark will be back on the menu tomorrow.

The dollar dropped below 100 yen today. It has not been there since 1995.

What is significant about that? It represents the 1-1 ratio point where when you pull out 5000 yen you are spending 50 dollars ( plus those G0dd**m ATM service charges!). Since, the powers that be that compute cost of living allowances have also decided that the inflation rate in the US has gone up-this does not necessarily trigger an increase in COLA to match it. Either way I’m screwed because I am leaving my job at the end of the month.

Maybe it is time to go back to the US. Maybe…………..

H/T to Japan Probe for the graphic!

With John Cole’s assessment.

Doable.

Yea she’s OK-but for 5 grand, there better be more than an hour and more than one shot on goal included – and gymnastics and a hot tub would need to be involved.

She does pass the Lewinsky threshold though.

A better view here-which also answers the “rack” question.  (Slightly NSFW).

Looking at the campaign in computer terms:

IS OBAMA A MAC AND HILLARY A PC?

Makes a good point. However if Hillary is a PC,  she is running on Windows 95 if you ask me………….

In a way, sex scandals are a retarded and a uniquely American thing to end a career over. You don’t see this sort of thing anywhere else in the world, and you certainly don’t see it with the frequency you see it in the United States. Barring some kind of official corruption, politicians are embarrassed by sex scandals, but they generally survive them.I also don’t think that prostitution is all that big a deal. Like drugs, most of the harm caused by the practice is due to criminalization. Most of Europe and Australia has the right idea about it and we in North America are wrong.-Skippystalin

Dear Silda, 

Sorry to hear you are going through a bit of a rough spot right now. I’m quite sure you enjoyed the perks that went with being Mrs Governor and all. To have your husband appear on national TV and admit he blew 4,300 dollars on a hooker who would not even take it up the poop chute must have been a real blow to your self esteem.

However, I would like to let you in on a little secret: Just because he nailed a high priced hooker may not mean he does not love you. In fact I’ll venture the idea that it proves he does. After all, he did not go out and get in a complicated love triangle, with all the messy emotional involvement that entails. Quite the contrary-he showed up for work on time, obviously provided for you, and still found time to run the state.

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, he was not getting what he really needed:

What every man really needs! 

I mean after all, it has always mystified me that no ever asks the 64,000 dollar question whenever this type of thing happens, namely: “What was the little Mrs. doing at home to keep NY-1 satisfied?”.   I mean if you want to portray yourself as a victim, the answer to that question is paramount.

No one ever explores that angle. Especially here in Bloggerville. The Moral Majority out in the blogosphere simply whines about what a reprobate your husband is.

Meanwhile what is left for him? As he walks around the Governors Mansion and you and he encounter each other in the dining room-after a long period of official obligation-and he whispers a discrete suggestion. Was your response like this?

“What? Have sex right here on the dining room table? You want to bend me over and do what? Not a chance!”

So what is a high powered guy to do? Sulk off to the private office and watch porn? Not likely-the number of people watching his Internet hits is probably immense.

Especially when you have made as many enemies as your hubby has.

You have a right to be angry about the money he spent. 4,300 dollars for a piece of ass? Hell for that money he could have flown to Bangkok and been serviced for a week. He could have written it off as a “trade delegation” , had the women delivered from the Eden Club. They sure as hell would not have talked to the press.

Maybe you were hacking the program behind the green door. If so let me introduce you to fact of life #2. No matter how nice the woman-somewhere, someone, is tired of f**king her.

Harsh? Yea probably, but also true. Unlike women who wake up each morning wanting emotional value out of life, for men there comes that inevitable day when he wakes up, looks down at his nether regions and realizes that “this could be the only woman I am ever going to have sex with. For the rest of my life. While there are single and divorced men out there nailing upwards of over 100 different chicks-in a year.”

And he is just supposed to “deal with it”.

That’s a lot for a high powered emotional man to deal with. And the only one who can fix it is you.

So put down that phone and stop talking to your divorce attorney.  Rather, I encourage you to learn to compete.  A man has needs after all:

Later, the agent told “Kristen” that the client would “ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe — you know — I mean that … very basic things. … ‘Kristen’ responded: ‘I have a way of dealing with that. … I’d be like, listen dude, you really want the sex?’ … You know what I mean.’”

By “you might not think is safe”, I can only assume that Spitzer wanted some buttsecks. Probably some ass to mouth play, which is something that all loving relationships should entail. Obviously, Kristen is not only a whore, but a cold-hearted one to boot.

So take the man back. And cough it up-it could be the greatest service to the people of New York.

And if not him, well I’m available to console you…………………….

Love and kisses,

Skippy-san

He’s got a good job, he lives in a cool place, and he has a great view from his kitchen window!

Plus he can kick more young ass than I.  :-( 

15

Then again-I still have no tattoos. I still think that means he comes out on the plus side.

H/T to Spike!

I’ve never tried it, but maybe we should ask Danny Choo

After all, if 20 women slap you-but #21 says yes-is not the night still a success?

About the recent elections in Malaysia and that nation’s always complicated relationship with Singapore can be found over at Sourrain’s place. Get on over there and read it NOW!

There will be a test at the end of the week.