Unrelated Segments

On the boardwalk: An interesting post by a Canadian guy covering Canadian troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan. "The boardwalk at KAF [I guess Kandahar Air Field--K] is just about the worst strip-mall you've ever seen." Strangely, reading this got me feeling homesick for Canada.

As a personal aside, I happen to believe that going to Afghanistan was the correct thing to do. It made sense to me, if only for the simple fact that, viewed realistically, somebody was going to get their asses kicked for 9/11. And if you're going to kick someone in the ass, well, it's probably best to kick the right ass. Al-Qaeda was/is in Afghanistan. Right ass, right war. Iraq, on the other hand...

As a Canadian I feel it was the right thing to do for us to support the US in Afghanistan. I think President Obama is entirely justified in reasoning that it's time to re-focus American military efforts. I hope, in this instance, that the Canadian government will follow his lead.

(Although it's generally true that I have an easier time associating with more left-leaning views, I refuse to allow myself to be pigeonholed. My father was in the Canadian Army, and he served with UN forces in Korea and Cyprus. He was a good, decent man, and he taught me more than a few things about the world. Sometimes fighting is the right thing to do.)

[Link via: Daimnation!]

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Moving on to less serious stuff...

The other night I watched the movie The Number 23 on TV. It was the stupidest piece of shit I've seen in a while. (The preceding two sentences, by the way, are to be considered the official Kyklops "review" of that movie.)

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Playing The Beatles Backwards: The Ultimate Countdown: The writer has taken every Beatles tune, rather astutely reviewed all 185 of them, and then ranked them. I (or you) might disagree with some of the rankings but it's still a rather impressive bit of work.

[Via: Cynical-C]

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Some people just don't know how to use the Google. I mean really, if you're arriving at this site looking for English meanings for Japanese words (or vice versa), maybe you need a couple of lessons in an IT class or something.

In the interests of promoting international understanding (or some other equally stupid, vague sentiment), I thought I might write down a few of the more common Japanese words/phrases that have, through the wonders of Google, brought people from all over the world to this humble blog. You'll likely be bored by this list, but amazed that someone actually made it this far in their quest to find out how the Japanese say "penis." Without further ado, ten Japanese words/phrases and/or their English equivalents (in no particular order, because I'm like, just doing this from memory, dig?) that have brought inept users of Google to this site:

konnichiwa: "good day"
kombanwa: "good evening"
chinchin: "penis"
hajimemashite: "nice to meet you"
yoroshiku onegaishimasu: "you have no idea who the hell I am, but please be nice to me all the same" (generally follows hajimemashite)
gambatte: "do your best; try your hardest; break a leg; give 'em hell; etc." (basically whatever hackneyed phrase you personally would use in situations which should be clear from the preceding)
kanada: "Canada"
ohaiyo gozaimasu: "good morning"
hai: "yes" ("that's right" is probably more accurate)
o yasumi nasai: "good night"

I hope that wasn't as boring to read as it was to write...