My letter to the editor of the Japan Times was a result of my being unable to deal with the issue at hand in any other method. I am not a fan of “Letters to the Editor” writing. In Japan, and especially in the JT, so many of these letters deal with picayune issues that appeal to no one but the writer. Many also claim that the source of their various problems are closely related to being a “gaijin” (outsider) on a mono-racial, monocultural tiny archipelago of exclusive insiders.

My letter deals with nuclear power, safety guarantees, and the state of the truth in media. If you have time, take a look. You can find it at:  Whose nod will reassure us? | The Japan Times Online

Check out our twisted views of the presidential primaries on “BarackPaulforPresident” at 

BarackPaulforPresident 2012-03-31 at 18.29 For Internet.mov – YouTube

and the concept of beating death by just forgetting to die like we are forgetting everything else in “Interview with Self” at

Interview with self on 2012-05-06 at 19.46.mov – YouTube

It seem that Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have been spending  bucketsful of  taxpayers’ hard earned bucks to find out whether torture really works.

If you ask me (although no one ever does), this is just another no brainer. Of course torture works. But it has to be the right kind of torture. If I want my students to pay attention in class, I can scrape my fingernails down the blackboard just once, and it works like a charm. Nobody can tolerate this sound. It’s not only painful, it can cause goose bumps the size of emu eggs. It can twist up your insides and cause your bladder and intestines to cringe. It can elevate the blood pressure of even the youngest, healthiest co-eds in class. And it doesn’t leave any telling marks on the body.

A mere 10 minutes or so arguing with my wife is more than enough for me to admit to anything. “Okay, it WAS me. I was responsible for the damn Lehman shock. I’m sorry! I give! You win! Now let it go, please!” Or, “All right, all right. I spent my entire monthly income on old baseball cards and Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Just leave me alone!” Listening to my wife telling me what’s wrong with my ideas and my logic as she tears me apart from the inside out is more than any human was ever meant to tolerate.

Watching a stupid TV quiz show and knowing the answer, and being interrupted by another stupid commercial just before they let me know that I’m either right or wrong is bad enough. But when they repeat the whole damn Q & A process after the commercial break and draw it out just to save a few production dollars, it is nothing short of inhumane overkill. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just let me have the answer now!”

The problem with Hosenball’s article, and the investigation, was a blatant failure to define and deal with real  torture. Granted, there was the a brief introduction to water-boarding and sleep deprivation, and the forcing of prisoners to maintain various uncomfortable positions for lengthy periods of time. But none of these can begin to compare with the “fingernail screech” or the “raving wife”. Might as well have a mosquito bite the palm of the prisoner’s  hand with our military’s torture preferences.

One unnamed official claimed investigators found “no evidence” that enhanced interrogations played “any significant role” in lengthy intelligence operations. I could have told them that even without being tortured by my wife.

If the military really wants results, I’ll be glad to scratch blackboards for them or loan them my wife, and at prices the US can afford. Other options that work would include having an interrogator with the breath of Mr. Scheidt, my jr. hi. biology teacher, screaming in the prisoner’s face.. The ensuing boredom of having a prisoner spend a few hours listening t0 Prof. Clause, my economics professor in college, talking about free markets should break the will of even the strongest, most pious Taliban terrorist. Forcing prisoners to sit in an over-heated airplane seat in Economy class between two 300-lb middle aged Walmart shoppers is a fate worse than death.

If the Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats would only have asked me about effective torture, they could have saved millions of dollars and at the same time taken a number of Walmart shoppers off of the unemployment lines. But nobody ever asks me anything. Maybe this is the worst torture of all.

  11:00  Windmill Bros.    /    11:40  Match Box     /     12:20  MaMa & Gens  13:00  Girls %      /   13:40  Homan Bros.      /     14:20  Yoshans (ヨーシャンズ)

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=前橋市%20熊野神社

The Homan Bros. will also be performing on Sunday, May 13, at the “Chuo-dori Live” in the shopping arcade in downtown Maebashi. More details to follow at a later date.

Ms. Palin, along with her heavily-armed entourage, spent a chilly weekend in the luxurious NRA lodge 41 miles northwest of Slackjaw, and enjoyed two blustery days of hunting for whatever moved in a nearby private NRA hunting preserve (approx. 1.2 acres).

An accompanying photographer captured both critters during the hunt. The left rear leg of the adult female had been tied to a post. As she fell after Ms. Palin’s 4th shot, her calf tottered near her dying mother and waited for the inevitable. One unidentified member of her group claimed that it took 12 shots for Ms. Palin to kill both animals.

Ms. Palin called for a helicopter to fly the game back to the NRA lodge where the carcasses were cleaned and turned into mooseburger patties. After she and her group finished their meal, we were able to approach Ms. Palin for a brief interview. When asked for a comment, she picked up her order-made Accuracy International AS50 with both hands, smiled and said, “Guns don’t kill. I do!”

Before moving on, I believe a definition of the term “drivel” is called for. According to Merriam Webster, “drivel” is a noun that is defined as “nonsense”. According to the dictionary that came with my MacBook Air, a dictionary referred to only as 辞書 (dictionary), “drivel” is a noun that is defined as “silly nonsense”. The thesaurus in this same dictionary, named “thesaurus”, lists the following synonyms for “drivel”: nonsense, twaddle, claptrap, balderdash, gibberish, rubbish, mumbo-jumbo, garbage, poppycock, piffle, tripe, bull, hogwash, baloney, codswallop, flapdoodle, jive, guff, bushwa, tommyrot, and bunkum.

I believe that a few samples of what I feel constitute drivel are worthy of inspection:

1)    From RJH: There’s just no mature way to hit somebody with a dildo. In a little less than one hour, this has already generated 50+ retweets and 28 favorites.

2)    From VV: So you think you’re really drunk right now? I just whispered, “I’m your huckleberry.” to my phone. In one hour, this has generated 9 retweets and 50+ favorites.

3)    From PD: My poor razor. It’s on its last leg. 42 retweets and 50+ favorites.

4)    From DD: Might eat a whole box of ice cream sandwiches while I stare at my family through the crack of the bathroom door. 16 retweets and 50+ favorites.

Furthermore, I believe that a definition of “humor”, in the face of all this drivel, becomes a dire necessity. According to the PRec Heritage Dictionary, “humor” is “the writing of drivel and collecting “favorites”, “followings”, and “retweets” like lonely folks collect “faces” and call them “friends” on FaceBook”.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a firm believer in the freedom to say or write anything that may ever come to mind. And I would never, never, NEVER, try to regulate “favorites”, “followings”, and “retweets”. But those who collect faces or seek support designed solely to increase their own celebrity status on social networks ought to be bound to cold toilet seats and beaten maturely with dildos while someone whispers “huckleberry” into their iPhones until flakes of rust begin to appear on their razors and then slams the cracks in their bathroom doors on the knuckles of their right hands!

FOLLOW MEEEE!

We could save a lot of time just by giving the presidency to the guy who scrapes up the most money and keeps his ass out of trouble longest. 

Gimme an M, gimme an O, gimme an N, gimme an E, gimme a Y! Whaddya got? A presidency!

Is America really ready for another one-syllabled president named Mitt, Newt, or Rick?

In the 60s our Republican HS principal, FL, kindly pointed out that Jesus’ leather sandals were faggot shoes. Sorry Jesus, no diploma for u! 

… and people still ask me why I live in Japan … ’cause we don’t have any GOP boys makin’ fools of themselves on national TV! 

Elections: of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy!   Debates: of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for us common folks!

For me, this is what Twitter is all about. It’s not about accumulating followers or making friends, it’s not about accumulating obligations by retweeting things that other folks wrote so they can scratch my back sometime. It’s just tweeting, making noise, humoring myself and giving others an opportunity to smile. As with all of my posts, this is pretty much all I had in mind. But when I reread these things this morning, it started to get serious.

When was the last time we had a poor president? By “poor”, I’m not talking about “dirt poor”. I simply mean someone who has never had to use 6 or more zeroes when he talks about his personal fortune, or annual income. Why have we continued to vote for all these guys who have personal fortunes larger than the national budgets of some countries? And why are we now planning to vote for these multi-millionaires who freely quote one of the poorest of the poor, that simple carpenter we called Jesus, but would refuse to vote for him for any number of reasons, including his “faggot” shoes.

For me, as an ex-pat, I could easily ignore all this nonsense. But I cannot tolerate the ignorance of the American voters who continue to support these guys who can’t even calculate their own personal wealth on their own. Nor can I tolerate the typically American mindset of the 99% who equivocate wealth with intelligence and the suitability to serve as the leader of the U.S. In a world that is rapidly loosing its sanity over issues such as wars, petroleum, drugs, debt, terrorism and racial problems, how can a candidate’s religious preferences and his feelings towards the rights of women who have been raped by a brother or father to have legal abortions carry so much weight?

If I could, I’d like to take back these tweets of mine and claim that they were nothing more than humor. That was my intent. But the more I read them, the less they entertain me. I can’t see the humor any more. I can’t see voters caring solely for their man’s religious and sexual preferences when they vote. I can’t see voters voting for men who wouldn’t even miss a misplaced million or so. There is no “trickle down”. There is no good life waiting for us at the end of any rainbow. There is only a presidency of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy! For the rest of us, the uninsured, unemployed 90-odd% of us occupying debt-ridden homes and watching debates on TV, and refusing to think rationally about our future, there is only (                         ). Fill in the blank yourself.

1) Comment:
Simply desire to say your article is as surprising. The clearness in your post is simply great and i could assume you are an expert on this subject. Fine with your permission allow me to grab your feed to keep updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue the gratifying work., <a
(From a reader with a URL for “Harvey ejaculation command”)
You try to grab my feed and do something with a forthcoming post and I’ll put my size 13 virtual boot so far up your virtual ass, your tongue will have an LL Bean impression on it.

2) Comment
Hi there. I found your web site by way of Google at the same time as looking for a related topic, your website came up. It appears to be good. I have bookmarked it in my google bookmarks to come back later.
(From a reader with a URL for “forever body transformation)
Thanks for the compliment, dawg, but my body is beyond transformation!

3) Comment:
It does substantively dentate all  about nexium delayed-release capsules.
(from a reader living in outer space selling his nexium delayed-release capsules for heartburn and whatever else ails you.)
I’ve done quite a few things in my life, but this is the first time I’ve ever been substantively dentated.

 4) Comment:
So will be the green tea i buy in cans exactly the same as the regular tea you’d buy to put within your morning cup? I’ve been told is just normal green tea produced to be cooler, but does it have any affect as far as not speeding up your metabolism as quick as normal hot green tea?
(from a reader with a scam.com/ member…URL)
Personally, I’m comfortable with my laid-back metabolism, and I’m also a coffee guy!

5) Comment
This is really nice Post. really gooda.
(from a reader with a URL for herpes cures)
I’d like permission to quote your “really gooda”. What a great way to put it. BTW, can your drug cure jock rash, too?

6) Comment:
As a website owner I believe the material here is reallywonderful.  I appreciate it for your efforts. You should keep it up forever! Good Luck…,
(from a reader with a URL for premature ejaculations)
I’d love to take your compliment at face value, but I don’t have any problems with, uh, oops!

7) Comment:
Hello there. I found your website by the use of Google while searching for a related matter, your web site got here up. It looks great. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks to visit later.
(from a reader with a URL for diet drops)
Are your diet drops guaranteed to make me lose weight? I’ll bet they are.

8) Comments
Its like you read my mind! You appear to grasp so much about this, such as you wrote the guide in it or something. I believe that you just could do with some p.c. to pressure the message home a little bit, however other than that, that is fantastic blog. A great read. I will certainly be back.
(from a reader with a URL for recover HYIP investments)
Thanks for the tremendous compliments on my fantastic blog. Thing is, even I don’t think it’s fantastic and I’m writing the damn stuff. One question, in your second sentence you use an ambiguous pronoun “this”. I’d sure like to know what I grasp so much about…

Why do all these readers assume that I am a physical, mental wreck? Actually, I’m doing pretty good for a guy my age.

I’ve always loved comedy. From the time my dad bought our first TV back in 1954, I was hooked on the laughter this amazing device brought into our home. The TV became my laugh generator. If I could have had my own TV in my room as a child, I might have locked the door and withdrawn from the rest of society way before it became trendy. Back in the 50s there simply wasn’t all that much laughter in the hills of southern Ohio. Life was good (in an oddly American way) for most of us, but nobody spent much time laughing. People might tell a joke or two on occasion, and we would all smile and chuckle, but there was something artificial, something forced, about this laughter, and the humor was unrelated to our daily lives. But I was hungry for laughter. I can still recall searching in vain through each new issue of Reader’s Digest for something that might make me laugh out loud.

Eventually, I realized what was missing. We were faking the language, turning it into a vernacular that only the most pious of the pious would ever use, for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. After my introduction to DCJ, I am now free to laugh at the things I find to be funny. Now anyone can say or write anything to anybody anywhere, and nobody turns blue in the face any more. The problem with the humor of the 50s and 60s was its prudeness and excessive moralism. And I still can’t shake it off. More often than I care to count, I probably should have had my mouth washed out with soap as a child, but I found cussing (or swearing) to be extremely expressive form of communication when I couldn’t find the word I was looking for. It was also the way a lot of real people talked. In spite of my Quaker upbringing, I also enjoyed a certain sense of rebellion through the use of foul language. But even in the 21^st century, even as a rebel in my own right, I still recognize certain linguistic limitations with regard to the TPO.

For example, there are a few words that I would still refrain from using in front of my mother if she were alive today. I’m still not totally comfortable hearing young women with no tattoos or pierced oddities say “fuck” or “shit”. But I realize that these issues are my problems. I’m fully aware that things are different today… Or so I thought.

Two days ago, major news networks started dealing with a video of young American marines shown “urinating” on corpses of some of the Taliban rebels they had just killed. But let’s face it America (with your linguistically pristine media), these boys were not “urinating”. That’s something that patients with bladder problems do in a hospital. They were “pissing” on dead boys who had died for what to them had been an entirely just cause. In death, these boys were being soaked in the piss of other boys, their killers, who had killed for an entirely just cause of their own. America was quick to claim that this abominable act had been based upon some unfathomable reasons, and that it should not affect any relationships that may exist between the US and the Taliban. Others were claiming that the videos had been edited or forged, since American boys don’t do this kind of thing. Still others claimed that “US Probes Claim Marines Urinated On Taliban”. Is this meant to imply that the US actually questions whether our Semper Fi-nest really piddled on the Taliban corpses, or to simply pretend that it cares enough to “probe” for the truth and then deal with it once it becomes apparent?

Open your eyes America. Our grunts are fighting for a country that won’t even let a citizen call a spade a spade. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, we continue to pretend that certain words do not exist. Everyone knows that every second or third word of these grunts of ours is probably “fuck” (or “fucking” or “fuckin’” or “motherfucking”). That’s the way grunts talk. Yet these same grunts, with their limited vocabularies, can somehow justify pissing on the faces of other humans in the line of duty, and they can’t even say “piss” or “pee” because these are still “dirty” words and they might offend somebody’s American mother, or her fucking apple pie.

Marlon Brando had it right when, as the mad Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now”, he said, “But their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”

What is obscene is supporting an army of young soldiers who lack the freedom of speech but maintain the freedom to kill and piss, not urinate, on any damage that they may have caused in line of duty. I only hope that the mothers of these animals feel some shame in their failure to having raised their boys to be men of compassion.

Understanding me with all of my idiosyncrasies and my beginner’s Japanese was no easy matter. My wife and I were constantly confronting the perimeters of human communication on a daily basis. My future mother-in-law probably thought that her daughter had fallen for an alien from outer space. But to Atchi-ba-chan, from the very beginning, I was simply another face at the dinner table with hungers and thirsts just like everyone else. Whenever I tried to speak, my halting Japanese would confound the entire family, except for Atchi-ba-chan. She had a knack for grasping the kernel of any conversation, and for cutting through all the fat, gristle, and bone that made normal conversation a constant challenge. Atchi-ba-chan was undoubtedly the most skilled communicator I would ever meet.

But the point of today’s entry is not Atchi-ba-chan’s story; any story that could do justice to such an angel would be far beyond my ability as a writer. Rather it is about a previous visit to her grave. About 10 years after she had passed away, I was talking with my younger daughter about this great aunt that she had never had the opportunity to meet in person. I was telling her some of the funny stories about our relationship and how Atchi-ba-chan could always understand exactly what I was trying to say, no matter how poorly I might say it. It was also a hot summer day in the middle of the O-Bon season in August when Japanese people make their obligatory visits to the cemeteries to pray for their deceased family members and kin. It was really, really hot. And as we talked, Jolene kept looking outside at my green Honda CB250T. Eventually, we started talking about the coolness of the breeze when you’re riding a motorcycle even on hot summer days. And with little hesitation, we both decided to visit Atchi-ba-chan’s grave 40 kms south of our home on my Honda, in spite of my wife’s concerns and dislikes for two-wheeled vehicles.

It is necessary to point out that Atchi-ba-chan became a Christian in her latter years, and as such, her ashes were interred within a small Christian mausoleum in a cemetery just north of Fukaya. It took us about 50 minutes on the bike. It was a pleasant ride for me, with little traffic. Jolene was holding on tight, so I assumed that she was either thrilled, or scared to death. We eventually found a cemetery just north of Fukaya, and it was small enough that we could also find the mausoleum for Christians with no problem. We went in and placed some flowers in front of the mausoleum. I tried to pray, but I was never very good at it. Instead, Jolene and I laughed and talked with the spirit of Atchi-ba-chan as if she were right there beside us, sitting in the shade of a big pine tree, for close to 20 minutes. Then we got back on the bike and ran into town for some soft ice cream and a soda before we drove back to Maebashi. When we arrived, Jolene told her mother all about our experience on the bike and in the cemetery and how she had come to know her own great-great aunt as a wonderful person, even though Atchi-ba-chan had died before she was born.

About 10 years later during the New Year holidays, my wife and I were in Fukaya visiting relatives. On our way back home we decided to pay our respects to Atchi-ba-chan while we were in town. I was driving and heading out toward the cemetery when my wife told me to turn left at the next traffic light. A bit of confusion followed, but I did what my wife told me to do, as usual, and found myself at a much larger cemetery than the one Jolene and I had visited years before. Inside we also found a Christian mausoleum on the south side of the grounds near the entrance. But this mausoleum was much larger and nicer than the one we visited before. When we stopped directly in front of Atchi-ba-chan’s final resting place, there was no pine tree nor was there any shade. But there was laughter totally unfit for a cemetery and according to my wife, my face had become as red as a beet in a matter of seconds.

What else can a guy do? I squatted down in front of the mausoleum and told the spirit of Atchi-ba-chan exactly what had happened 10 years ago. And as I started to apologize, Atchi-ba-chan spoke to me as only a great communicator can. She told me that what Jolene and I had done was totally commendable and that she was proud of us. She pointed out that there is no such thing a mistaking one gravesite for another since it is the effort and intent of the visitor, not the results, which count when you visit a cemetery. So what if we may have been a few kilometers off track? Today, rather than having made any unpardonable error, I was able to confirm that Jolene and I had actually done the right thing 10 years before. And in the process we had probably generated more smiles and laughter into a relatively somber setting than there had ever been before.

RIP Atchi-ba-chan, you’re still in our hearts and we love you.

]]> http://www.rls-j.com/?feed=rss2&p=1471 0