Armchair quarterbacks

I was weak earlier this week. You may know that I read a French blog called Big Pictures. A French journalist based on the East Coast writes it. It gives a French look at U.S. news. It’s quite interesting, if you read French.
The topic of the British sailors and Marines captured by Iran came up and a person nicknamed Diogenes stated that Britain should react properly to what is an act of war unlike Carter had. (Furthermore I am not convinced that either the British government or the Iranian are to be trusted about the position of the sailors when captured. It would take an uninvolved party to provide GPS coordinates for me to believe either of the belligerents. Gulf of Tonkin anyone?)
I flew of the handle and asked in the heat of the moment if he would be willing to partake in an action against Iran, or whether he was a couple of testicles short of following through on his beliefs. I admit that I was a little harsh. He replied with personal attacks, as expected, and avoided giving an answer. That behavior made my point: he is an armchair quarterback.
If I had a bachelor in psychology, as my little sister do, I could probably come up with some scientific names for the condition and I would be able to explain it. Unfortunately I am not and I simply view him as one of those rabid sports fans, overweight, under exercised, yet all-knowing of what each player should be doing at any given time and ready to verbally trash them if they do not catch the pass or sink the hoop. I am a sport fan myself. That is I like to practice sport, to get out there and do it. He lives vicariously through people like me. This thought made me immediately despise him. A feat only accomplished by a handful of people. I simply cannot stand people who see war as a spectator sport.
Now that my mind has been cleared by Aikido practice I realize that I shouldn’t despise him but sorry him. I will never be a sport star but I will have fun practicing. He will always be a wannabe.

Dream Galley

I visited my buddy Chris last weekend and found my dream kitchen. Stone countertops, two wall ovens, Le Creuset pots, All-Clad pans and sauce pans, complete set of ergonomic Henkel knives… I am still salivating about it. Cooking in there meant going from one wonderful discovery to another. I will keep dreaming for a while…

Alberto Gonzales

Let's have a little fun. I replied to Corine's blog with the idea of starting a blog pool on Alberto Gonzales' resignation. I am taking Friday afternoon. What are you people taking? Even if you do not understand the politics involved you can pick a day. I will try to think of something for the winner.

Films and books

As I mentioned earlier we jumped on the Netflix bandwagon about a month ago now. We settled for the unlimited one movie at a time deal. Considering the proximity of their distribution center, Salem, it adds up to two movies per week. Not bad for $10 a month. Before I give you a list with commentary of the recently watched and read, I want to briefly discuss the movie industry because they drive me nuts.
It is pretty obvious that their efforts to stem illegal online downloading are not working. I think there are two reasons for that; price and convenience. I am hardly the only one to think that multiplexes are not delivering on their promises; otherwise their business would be brisker. I find their fare to be both bland and over priced. It is not so much that I am too highbrow minded for action flicks. I have watched the latest James Bond and Pirates of the Caribbean’s. But I waited until they were played at the $3 theatre pub. I don’t think either was worth a twenty to go with my fiancée.
How could studios increase their sales? I think that a business model based on the iTunes store might be a good idea. (I find that 99 cents per song is a rip off because it adds up to the cost of a regular CD with the inferior quality of mpeg.) Being able to download movies and burn a copy for a reasonable price. It could be a flat fee per gigabytes or per movie. I believe that people won’t break the law if a convenient alternative is available. The point the studios miss is that a lot of those downloaders are collector types who want to amass even if they don’t watch right away, hence the necessity for a business based on volume.
I don’t know what the price point should be for the industry but for me it was those 10 bucks. I have to admit that since we bought into Netflix the thought of downloading over the Internet has not even crossed my mind. I have a mediocre connection that comes with rent and I am unwilling to spend more for truly high-speed Internet.

Princess Mononoke: Japanese Anime movie. It has a great story line; credible multi-dimensional characters and the drawings are well done. I would recommend it to people who don’t like anime as a first venture into the genre. It was my second time watching it and I enjoyed as much as the first.

The Confederate States of America: it's a mock documentary about the history of the U.S. after the South won the Civil War. It’s hilarious but in a very dark, wry kind of way. It’s interesting because it forces you to realize the extent of the influence of slavery well after the Civil War ended. The filmmaker points out that even though the North won the war and slavery ended, many Southern behaviors moved to Union states in the form of segregation. Any bona fide history buff must watch this movie.

March of the Penguins: we watched the U.S. version with commentary by Morgan Freeman. The photography is absolutely marvelous. I would like to watch the French version from the point of view of the penguins. I highly recommend it as well.

The Simpsons Season 1: ok maybe not a classic but they are consistently funny and interesting. The drawings are a little sketchier than current episodes but the humor is intact.

Now that I am driving buses again and am out of college I have been knocking a few titles off my reading list as well. My “waiting to be read” shelves are actually diminishing for the first time in years.

The art of war (Sun Tzu). A military classic if there ever was. Having read it I now wonder why I waited so long. It is very nicely translated in English, has tons of footnotes and extensive appendices. Even for those of you who are not interested in military matters it should be on your reading list because it’s a classic of Chinese thought, and the rules in it are applicable to any kind of endeavor that forces someone to show leadership. (Business, raising kids, sports,…)

Les dimanches d’un bourgeois de Paris (Maupassant). The Sundays of a Paris’ bourgeois are Maupassant’s often funny take on Parisian society of the mid 1800s through the portrait of a lackluster civil servant. The critic is often acidic and the reader has many good laughs. It’s a fairly short read.

L’éducation d’une fée (Didier van Cauwelaert). The education of a fairy. If you have ever read van Cauwelaert you will readily recognize his style and humor in this slim volume. He aboards the same themes than in Cheyenne: love between adults, loss of innocence, etc. It unfortunately isn’t translated in English. Powells has it in English. I would recommend One Way (Un aller simple) for those of you who are unfamiliar with him. I obviously don’t know how good either translation is but I would hope the charm of the original French is kept.

And currently I am reading Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu and What color is your parachute?

Adulthood and the PDX school district

You may know that I am, like most people in our country, of European descent. The chute was fairly brutal as I am my own first generation immigrant. (If you are a minuteman you’re welcome to try and grab me, I need trigger time…) I went to primary and secondary school over there and I am used to class being an organized event with the teacher firmly in charge.
Hence you might understand that I have been leery to send my, as of yet unborn and unconceived, children to public school in this country. My fears grew worse today after my latest trip for work.
I took children from Sunnyside Middle School to a tree farm and back. The trip down was acceptable. A bit to noisy for me but I not only have European but Marine standards for behavior. On the way back it was a different story. I was already a little upset because the kids had littered the bus in the morning. Before they even boarded the bus I had to break a fight between a male and a female in front of my stairwell. Those two, which I forced to sit together in the front seat, then proceeded to scream, stand, turn, twist, slap and pinch one another for the remaining of the trip without the teacher sitting right across from them ever looking up from her magazine! Other kids were standing up right in front of the five other teachers without one ever attempting to bring order to the mayhem. Some of the screams were so sudden and shrill that I stomped my brakes a couple of times thinking there was some kind of an emergency. It would seem to me that 6 teachers should have been enough to bring a semblance of peace and manners to a busload of kids. Adulthood might be determined by age but those, while all significantly older than me, failed the test miserably. The only lesson those kids must have remembered is that rules do not matter because no one cares enough to enforce them. Strike one for private school.

Ups and downs

On the down side I got screwed at work. Not physically. By the admin pogs, as usual. I was doing a school trip and was supposed to go back to the yard between drop-off and pick up. Traffic was so bad this morning in our fair city (don’t be mad car-talk) that it took me an hour to reach my destination. I figured an hour to the shop, an hour back to the park and I would only get a fifteen minutes break. So I just stayed put and pulled out the economist. When I got back to the shop they told me that I could only count 30 minutes for each trip I didn’t do, no matter what the reality on the street was. I should have driven…
Yesterday I finished the diagnostic test in my GRE workbook. 22/30 for both sections. I have a lot of work ahead of me if I want to be a contender for grade school. Mostly since I want those people to look at my app and then start throwing money at me. If you read this and have anything to do with admission at Columbia please be nice and contact me.
On the plus side I am applying to a job in Seaside to a paper whose editor I have met. Keep your fingers crossed…

Presidential Candidates, blah!

Yesterday morning I felt I should blog a little about the French presidential election. I was about to say that the candidates produced little more than a blah feeling and I was going to argue that the center right candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, was in reality more of an extreme right candidate. Then I dropped by Liberation’s website and realized that Mr. Sarkozy was having no qualms positioning himself near the neo-Nazi fringe . If elected he is intent on creating a ministry of immigration and national identity. Besides the chill down my back it brought to my attention an interesting difference between leftists and conservatives. The former usually view the transnational journey of goods and services with a weary eye while they don’t mind the people while the latter often blindly support the transit of goods and services while opposing the (e)immigration of people. I do not think that either position is defendable. If globalization means that buying goods from China because it is cheaper is right, why would employing Chinese immigrants be wrong? The principle behind both is the same: the lowering of cost for the producing of goods. The leftist candidate besides being gorgeous does not seem very attractive to me. Part of the reason is that I believe that Socialist parties in Western Europe have idiotic agendas that do not reflect economic realities. I think that a fiscally realistic government would do much good to those countries. Note that I do not say conservatives, as the last few congresses in the U.S. have left much to desire about fiscal restrain. I also think that her latest comments about military personnel needing to be afforded full freedom of speech were, well idiotic. To me it shows that Miss Royal clearly does not know what she is talking about. The military has to remain subordinate to the political power and that includes losing some freedom of speech. The more so in an all-volunteer force as is the case in France. The people who join know what they are getting into (or at least they should) and if curtailed civil liberties are such a problem no one is forcing them to re-enlist.

Body Fluid Kit

Oh yeah, we had a pucker today. Nothing quite like cleaning vomit to make you appreciate birth control and not feeding the little monsters before a field trip. On an unrelated matter we started preparing for the GRE.

Le rire du Sergent - Sgt B. No More

Last weekend was my very last drill. I never thought six years could blow by so quickly. As usual, all the important people told me that I would miss it and be back soon. I am not so sure about that.
It is a bittersweet parting. I know a lot of people fail to understand it when I say that. Reactions I have encountered on other blogs ran along the line of why-don’t-you-reenlist-and-go-kill-babies-in-Iraq if it is a bittersweet parting. This comment revealed the person’s obvious lack of intelligence. Only a minority of choices in life is clear-cut. Those usually aren’t important ones. (Which kind of OJ am I buying today? Oh oh oh Tropicana is on sale.) No point in trying to explain that to him. I doubt he ever partook in anything as painfully hard, yet as satisfying as being a jarhead. I do not believe in the cliché that you have to be one of us to understand how I feel. I do believe you must have worked through hardships, and yet have felt satisfied to understand my position.
In no particular order this is how I feel about this parting: I will miss leading my platoon, taking care of them, planning events. I will not miss the last minute disruption caused by the brass, or the complete clusterfuck that is getting dates set for an AT. I only once went on the AT that I had first been assigned to. I will not miss the chicken shit of people being all kinds of happy because I am not wearing socks with my sandals during a MC function or some other silly bullshit. I will miss the camaraderie. I will miss speaking my mind without caring about PC crap. I will not miss a certain Major in S-3 scolding me for refusing to work full days for ½ pay because somebody fucked the fund request in the training plan. I will not miss that I have been waiting for several hundred dollars worth of pay since August.
Quite possibly the hardest part was handing over my platoon to a man that I utterly despise. I know him to be a cheat, thief, and a liar. I prevented him to be promoted several times for varied reasons: clear lack of intelligence, no initiative, being overweight… The brass I complained about earlier decided to give him his third stripe because he re-enlisted. How fucked up is that? I was utterly disgusted. I picked up Sgt in three years and three months and I had to hand out my boys to someone who could not get there in eight years.
Semper Fi

Quick and Dirty

This is just a quick and dirty post before going to work. I found that some of you might get a laugh or two out of the two links I am including here. I will edit this later today and add content.

Squirrels are mating too much

Somebody invaded the wrong country here

Ok, I lied I never added to this. Sorry.