Ever since the Recent Unpleasantness I’ve committed myself to an absolute media blackout of audio and visual of George W. Bush. That doesn’t mean, however, that in 2005 I will cease criticizing and demeaning him. So, to kick off the new year I created a “W the Dumbass” bumper sticker, which I plan to use. [...]

How can one not talk about the massive tsunami that has so far killed about 150,000 people around the Indian Ocean Basin? (Answer: if you are George W. Bush lollygagging at your ranch in Crawford, Texas). Wikipedia has a very useful entry on it. The New York Times has also put together an shocking set [...]

I intend this category to follow my readings and writings on Okinawa. I just submitted an article for review and I’m currenly working on chapter one of my book project, Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa.

Tonight we went on a “safari” for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in Nashville. This is the third time we’ve been there (once in L.A.). It’s a themed environment gone way way overboard. While Cracker Barrel, with its “country” theme seems “natural,” Rainforest Cafe is an unabashed Disneyland Jungle Cruise turned into a restaurant (and [...]

Okay, so I’m starting with a book that I started reading months ago and probably won’t finish for another month. So much for my 43 book goal this yearl. Given its 1152-page length, Neal Stephenson’s masterful super-sized epic Cryptonomicon should count for at least 4 books. At the moment I am on page 365 and [...]

Parallel to Yoshi Igarashi’s “100 Books” goal for 2005, Japanese literary scholar Michael Bourdaghs does a “100 Films” annual goal. Now that’s something that I can imagine accomplishing, but it would likely mean watching a lot of crappy new movies and/or re-watching old ones. I’ll still give it a shot, but again at the modest [...]

Yoshi “Millions of Books” Igarashi has inspired me to set some kind of goal of reading in 2005. He does 100(!) books a year (Japanese and English), but there’s no way I could even approach that and hope to write my own book (see Resolutions below). So, I’ll set a modest goal of 43 books–that’s [...]