(A photo from Cosmopolitan Magazine of newly elected Republican Scott Brown, who won the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat held by the late Democrat Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century)

See, its not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It’s that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.

-John Stewart, on the election of Republican Scott Brown and the resulting (probable) failure of the Democratically controlled White House and Congress to pass health care reform

From the 8 December edition of the Chicago Tribune comes this gloriously ironic story, talking about how Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatres have become the new Fight Club. From the story:

in the past few years Chuck E. Cheese’s has developed a reputation as a sort of impromptu fight club, a place where fisticuffs break out almost as often as complaints about the pizza.

It apparently started after a Wall Street Journal story last December reported that a Chuck E. Cheese in Brookfield, Wis., had prompted more police calls in the previous year than any other restaurant in town. Now, The Obscure Store says that “Chuck E. Cheese brawls are so common they’re hardly ‘news.’”

Really, I got nothing. This is the kind of joke that just writes itself. The only thing I’m thinking of are the number of ways to insert the terms ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ and/or ‘Giant Rat’ into various Fight Club quotes. My top 5:

• I see the strongest and the smartest rats who have ever lived… and these vermin are singing happy birthday and waiting tables.
• I am the all-singing, all-dancing rat of this world…. I am the toxic waste by-product of God’s creation.
• Only in death are we no longer part of Project Playtime.
• The gyms you go to are crowded with mice trying to look like rats, as if being a rat means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.
• Fuck Chuck E. Cheese! Chuck E’s polishing the brass on the Titanic; it’s all going down, man.

One of the not entirely displeasing aspects of returning to where I grew up is seeing friends and relatives I haven’t seen in years, or even decades. Under normal circumstances, such visits would probably consist of nothing more than a discussion of who married whom, where whom is working, and other such general blather. However, given where I have been traveling and living for the past few years, such blather usually turns to questions of where I’ve been, where my favorite place is, what it’s like, how did I make the decision to leave my career and the States, and the like.

At times, I wish I could just gather up everyone I know in one room and take their questions all at once, so I wouldn’t have to answer the same questions over and over. At other times, I find myself enjoying the attention far too much, and falling into a self-righteous ex-pat characterture — regaling my audience with grand tales of adventure and daring and just how great things are in Asia.

Almost necessarily included in my description is just how much better things are outside the United States in terms of quality of life, inexpensive cost of living, cheap and plentiful health care, and lacking corporate overlords.

To be sure, most of the time, I’m just telling people what I want them to hear, and probably what we both wish is true. At times, it’s extremely easy to get caught up in one owns bullshit. Plus, I’m still a petty and petulant child in many respects, in that I want to prove how much better things are for me, and how much it sucks for everyone else too “weak” to have done what I did.

Those underlying issues notwithstanding, there are times when I’m reminded of just how true my comments regarding the state of affairs here in America really are. And just how bad things really have become, although most people here either can not see it, refuse to acknowledge it, or simply ignore it.

Chez just wrote a post, “Swine At The Trough”, as did Matt Tabibbi, “Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed” discussing just these issues — the absolute corporate ownership of the entire U.S. economy, its health care system (and associated benefits), and its absolute dismissal of the welfare of America’s general populous.

This is not to say that such things don’t take place in other countries. To be sure, a characteristic of the powerful has always been to hold down those without power, since the beginning of time. But this isn’t the issue.

The real issue, which is absolutely bewildering to me, is how the American public, cattle-like, have been brainwashed and stupefied to such a point that they don’t even realize how poorly they’re being treated. While at the same time, STILL giving their money and power willingly to the very people who have bewildered them into their current predicament. As Chez states, the mass of the American public is expendable. They just don’t realize it.

Once again, I haven’t lived abroad long enough to say this with absolute conviction, but I cannot see this happening in any other developed country in the world. They value their liberty far too much.

Perhaps it’s because Americans have been telling themselves that they are the best country in the world for far too long, that they can’t even begin to fathom just how far they have fallen. Perhaps I’m just a self-righteous asshole, determined to prove my way of thinking is the best. Who’s to say.

All I know is that, while the changing leaves and the brisk weather here in the Northeast are truly beautiful change of pace, I’m looking forward to returning to Asia. True, bribery and corruption may be a way of life over there as well, but at least the people there see those things for what they are, instead of desperately clinging to a perceived reality that no longer exists.

The Indonesian Army on Saturday finally reached some of the areas worst hit by Wednesday’s earthquake, bringing two desperately needed tractors to unearth people and houses buried in landslides that swept away entire villages here. One of the tractors promptly broke down.

–New York Times, reporting on the extremely slow Indonesian response to the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit Sumatra last week (United Nations currently estimates the death toll at more than 1,000, with thousands more still missing).

After traveling to most of the best surf spots in the world, I know firsthand that guys like this actually DO exist … en mass. And sadly, most of them are American.

Sigh.

I’m in Dili, East Timor getting a new Indonesian tourist visa. After a 12 hour bus ride from Kupang to Dili, it looks like I’m gonna be here a few days. I waited at the Indo Embassy this morning for a couple hours, and now I need to wait another couple days before they issue the visa itself (which I’m told is fairly quick, all things considered).

There’s pretty much NOTHING here but UN and NGO personnel mucking up the place. But apparently, there’s some good diving spots in the area — which I plan on checking out if any places take me despite the fact I left my dive card back in Bali. We’ll see how it plays out.

Other than that, it really is kind of a bizzare little world here. It’s your typical 3d world shit-hole (excuse my Euro-centric judging), but the cost of everything is absolutely through the ROOF. Whereas I can get a pretty nice room in Bali (of all places) for about US$8 per nite, here in Dili, the cheapest I could find was for US$23 — and I’m sleeping in a converted shipping container (no joke — it’s actually kinda cool[ish]). It’s like being back in Hong Kong — only without the style, nightlife, and well … civilization.

On top of that, they’ve got the second biggest Jesus statute in the world here (let’s here it for the Portugese — the first biggest Jesus statue is in Brazil, ANOTHER former Portugese refugee camp).

It’s another one of those places with a really strange vibe going on — the locals still have a kinda ’subservient mentality’ from the many years of Portuse and Indonesian abuses here, and from what I’ve heard, now the UN people have kinda continued with that tradition a bit.

It’s kinda sad to see almost everyone FROM here look away and down, instead of smiling and waving — or even trying to sell you stuff like they do everywhere else in Asia. It’s kinda sad.

I’m still getting my bearings, but I don’t think I’ll be here too long this time for it to make a deeper impression. I plan on heading back to Indo first thing after getting my visa on Wednesday — I don’t think I could afford to stay here much longer.

Today epitomizes one of the many ways Asia is so different to the States.

Today — or rather, this evening — the electricity in the entire towns of Legion and Seminyak — two of the biggest tourist and/or expat locales here on Bali — lost electricity for most of the afternoon and evening. Indeed, it is now about 8:30 at night, I’m at at a coffee shop working off a generator, and the electricity is still not on back in my house.

Chances are, nobody in a position of power (no pun intended) has even been alerted yet to the fact the electricity is, in fact, not working. Granted, the electricity goes out here on a fairly regular basis, but only for 15-20 minutes at a time — most likely due to overloads in the power grid. But the last time something like this happened for an extended period of time (a power pole went down on my street), it took most of 1.5 days for anyone to even START working on repairing the problem (and another 2 days for the power to eventually return — by which time, I was already gone to Bangkok).

Yes, California is also now prone to ‘revolving power outages’. But the outpouring of righteous indignation and immediate demands for assistance I’ve witness there whenever THAT happens is absolutely ridiculous — even by California standards.

In contrast, here in Bali, nobody even seems to notice. Or care all that much … besides us Westerners. To wit, while the local family from whom I rent my villa took the outage as a call to make it an early evening, I simply had to get to a coffee shop and the internet, lest I be bored to death by the presence of candles and silence.

Sure, I like to play Asian, and I may raise my voice in defiance every once in a while, but as soon as the electricity goes down, my true colours come out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to my iced late and the latest episode of The Daily Show — who knows if I’ll have my HBO back on when I get back home.

It’s been widely reported that X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the blockbuster that was supposed to start the wave of 2009 summer movies, is really bad. This, after the unfinished movie was leaked online a month before its world premiere.

The authorized movie trailers do nothing to dispel the buzz that the film is nothing more than a celebrity-packed “B movie.”

And just last night, I saw something locally here in Asia that just adds more fuel to the fire.

Out here in Asia, we’re understandably limited in the number of English speaking television networks, with HBO, Star World and XPN being three (3) of the most ubiquitous. Both HBO and Star have sister networks, with Star Movies being the most popular of the Star networks.

This week, Star Movies is advertising that it will be showing X-Men Origins: Wolverine on PAY PER VIEW on it’s Asian release date next week, rather than going to movie theatres. Let me say that again, THE summer blockbuster has been reduced to essentially a ’straight to DVD’ production.

Great news, as I can look forward to seeing a pirated DVD version I can buy for .50 cents (US) in the next few days!

You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.
~William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

Man, I’d forgotten just how delicious an emotion anger can be.

I’ve been working on managing my anger (and other emotions) through Buddhism, meditation, and yoga ever since I first got to Asia. I’ve been doing it for a variety of reasons — in Asia, it’s culturally unacceptable to get angry in public (i.e., everywhere), it’s generally healthier to focus your anger towards such positive outlets (i.e., yoga, surfing, etc.), and because I’m just generally trying to be a nicer, more mature person (i.e., I’m getting to the age where it’s just unbecoming to be angry).

But as I noted in a recent post, pushing those emotion too far away also has consequences. Like letting TOO many things slide without a fight. Like a failure to acknowledge when someone else has been mean or rude or reckless with you. Like diffusing the emotions so often that it becomes emasculating.

Right now, however, I’m over it. Now? I’m just mad. No, strike that — I’m fucking pissed off.

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve felt this way. And you know what? It feels good. Because it is rage justified. And anger fuels better decisions.

I don’t care if it renders my behavior immature, or surly, or what-the-fuck-ever other judgment call is thrown back at me. It’s unnatural to remain smooth, calm, and unaffected by the frustrations experienced in life. And if there’s no slack — either I’m too soft or I’m too surly — fuck it. it’s nice to be happily pissed off again, if only for an hour or two.

It reminds me of who I am, and that I’m still alive.

It’s 3:30 in the morning. I’m sitting in the Darwin airport in the midst of a 3 hour layover before my flight to Sydney.

It’s my first time out of Asia, and back into a western country (effectively), since October 2007 — almost 1.5 years ago.

In all my travels throughout Asia during the past few years, I’ve had to deal with stupid regulations that make no sense, security personnel willing to ‘bend’ immigration rules for the right amount of cash (typically no more than US$20), and all kinds of visas and security checks. But in all that time, despite the sometimes lengthy lines I’ve faced, I never had a problem with the system breaking down.

Until now. I swear, Irony will outlive us all.

I got to the airport here in Darwin about an hour ago. But their computer systems have been down all night, and they’ve been unable to process anyone through immigration all during that time.

It’s no skin off my (admittedly rather large) nose. The immigration folks have been exceptionally magnanimous about the whole situation. And My connecting flight isn’t for another few hours. But I find it incredibly ironic that the first time in almost 16 months that I come back through a ‘civilized’ country, and they can’t even get me through the front door.

Welcome back to the machine.

I’m sure that, by the time I get to it, this story will already be old news all over the interwebs … but fuck it, it’s still one of the funniest stories to come out in recent months:

An Iraqi reporter set off pandemonium Sunday by hurling two shoes at President Bush during a news conference that was the centerpiece of his secret goodbye visit.

The president successfully ducked both throws. Photos show him with his head down near the top of the podium. The embarrassing incident marred a visit meant to show off the improved conditions since the troop “surge” dramatically reduced casualties to U.S. troops.

“This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” the journalist shouted (in Arabic), Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps.

Myers reported that the man threw the second shoe and added: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

When I first heard about this, I actually thought it was a fake article from the latest series on ‘Bush Mishaps’ in The Onion. But then I saw this video. Gentlemen, start your poetic justice …

Man, you couldn’t make up something this funny! Oh wait, maybe you can.

I was just thinking it may be about time for me to go back to the States for a visit.

Yeah, not so much.

(Via Failblog.org)

So apparently, the Bushies are at it again, doing the only thing they’ve ever been good at doing — running a false propaganda campaign.

A few days ago, Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard discussed what is being dubbed “The Bush Legacy Project”, stating that those involved are “looking at how to sort of roll out the president’s legacy.”

In other words, as Chez put it:

“[T]he revisionists are trying to rewrite history, or at the very least spin it deftly enough so that Bush doesn’t in fact wind up looking like what he is: the worst president this country has ever seen.”

Jeeee-suz! Didn’t these numnuts learn anything from Ronald Reagan’s post-Presidency spin machine? You’re supposed to wait until AFTER you disclose your guy had early onset dementia before you start painting him as the next coming of Christ.

After the dementia press-release. AFTER!!