I’m crushed. It seems that Norika is getting married. And I was (sort of) saving myself for her.
Who is Norika? This is Norika:
And so is this:
Norika was the first Japanese pop star I became familar with after I came to Japan. She was on TV a lot then and all over the magazines as well. She is practically her own industry-kind of like Paris Hilton but with a lot more class (and morals….). She even has her own web site.
So I am mystified why she is passing up a great thing like me just to be with this loser.
You never forget your first crush and I’ve been in lust love with her my entire time here. And this is the thanks I get……….. Sigh.
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Speaking of rewards, or lack thereof, there was no evidence of gratitude present from the Nihonjin sharing my little world. And to add insult to injury, she decided that yes, she did want to play golf today-so the tree remains undecorated. And I played in a medicore fashion only finding a putting stroke on the last 4 holes. She almost beat me! Women just don’t get it. Men are simple creatures. So ladies here is the lesson again: When men do something that costs a lot or rocks your world-its not asking so much to get a little something for the effort…………..Wakatta?
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Meanwhile in Iraq, its the same headline-just a different day. Tell me again that we are making progress, I’m not sure the insurgents picked up on that message.
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Speaking of Iraq, I am suprised the recent speech of General Conway the new commandant of the Marine Corps has not created more of a stir. Basically, the General is reaffirming something that a lot of people have been saying and Rummy kept denying-this back to back deployment stuff is getting old:
The Marine Corps may have to grow to keep up a
tempo of operations that has caused individual and institutional stress in the
force, the service’s commandant said here today.At a roundtable discussion with the Pentagon press corps, Gen. James Conway said working to alleviate the individual and institutional strain on the Marine Corps is hismajor goal as commandant………..If the current deployment trend continues, Conway said, Marines and their families may leave the service. “The young families, Marines (and) sailors may say it’s more than they are willing to bear,” he said.
The Marine Corps would like to see a seven-month deployment followed by 14 months at home station, the commandant said. In peacetime, the deployment tempo is six months deployed, 18 months at home.
In addition to the stress on individual Marines and their families, Conway said, the Marine Corps as an institution is also strained. “Progressively over time, our Marine Corps has become a good counterinsurgency-capable force, but we’re not providing to the nation some of the other things we should be able to do,” he said. “We are not sending battalions like we used to for mountain warfare training, the jungle training. We’re not doing combined arms exercises that we used to do for the fire and maneuver. (These are) activities that we have to be prepared to do.”
Conway said the Marine Corps mission includes these contingencies, but the training time is not available. He said the Corps could do whatever mission it is assigned, but there is an increased risk. “We may not deploy as quickly as we once did, we may not have quite the training that we once had, but we would be able to do the mission,” he said.
The Corps can ease these stresses and strains two ways, Conway said. “One is reducing the requirement,” he said. “The other is growing the force for what we call the Long War.”
This is good-its about time a service chief banged on the table and pointed out the civilian masters that you don’t do more with less-you do less with less and more with more. It would be nice if Admiral Mullen chimed in right behind him. At least someone in the USAF has:
It’s a problem, because I’m spending money to train my troops in skills I don’t maintain in the U.S. Air Force,” Gen. Ronald Keys, commander, Air Combat Command based at Langley Air Force Base, Va., told reporters at a Washington breakfast meeting.
Keys was referring to a phenomenon the military calls “in-lieu-of,” or ILO, taskings, which are duties servicemembers are assigned that fall outside their normal service specialties.
First in a trickle, then in larger numbers, both the Air Force and Navy have been sending ILO personnel to assist the Army.
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“We are fine with doing that in order to give the Army the opportunity to reset their force,” Keys said. “They are in a situation where they are trying to modularize their Army in the midst of a fairly huge war …. They need to break loose some headroom.”But it has been four years now, and there is no end in sight to the use of airmen in such unconventional roles, Keys said.
“We ought to discuss it, and decide where we’re going to draw the lines, so we can allocate that precious budget we have in the right places and not duplicate,” Keys said.
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Can I have an amen brother?
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And finally this has to rank as one of the dumbest things a man can do on a date:
NEW YORK (Wireless Flash) — Dating experts agree: Using a coupon for a two-for-one meal on a first date is a surefire romance killer.In the words of dating expert Laurie Graff, author of the upcoming book “Looking for Mr. Goodfrog” (Red Dress Ink), “Not the first time.”
She says if you use a coupon early on, “You send a message about your finances.”
There are exceptions. Graff knows of one guy who won a restaurant gift certificate in an auction who used it on a first date because he told his date, “I never would have bid on this thing if I didn’t know I had you to take.”
Meanwhile, love advice expert David Coleman, who calls himself the Dating Doctor, says a “two-fer” is a bad move on a first date, although there are ways around it.
He says it could be an ice breaker if you say, “Hey I have this coupon, would you like to use it together?”
After that, he says the Entertainment Guide can be an incentive to plan future dates.
When I think two-fer, I’m certainly not thinking about food……………..
