Posts Tagged ‘war’

(Um…right…a nice exaggeration?)

Yep. I was pondering this very thought while straining my muscles at the gym this morning (no hot chicks present, alas): we’ve somehow forgotten what bothered us at this time last year.

But why? Didn’t it really mean something last year? All the lofty pronouncements. All the negative fallout from New Year’s oh-nine. All the epithets cast our way. All your violent threats. Your absurd allegations and accusations. Your gloom and doom predictions of what would befall the ones accused of gross criminal behavior and negligence. The fire and brimstone poop storm which would be the due of those with the such gall to unleash Christmas chaos onto the planet. The waves (and waves and waves, yikes!) of poisonous vitriol. The month-old abandoned Sarajevo grocery store-like putrescence. The knock-knock-knockin’ at the fortress door shouting accusations of the most heinous “atrocities” known to man, saddling them with the most vile and cunning intentions.

What?

What?

What?

Well, summer 2010 is in full bloom. All jiggly and busty and delicious and sexual. So does anyone even remember how bad it was? Nope. Does anyone even remember what happened more than a year ago? Nuh-uh.

They just don’t.

Does anyone remember this?

(you definitely don’t want to send this to mom)

Right. I didn’t you would…

A Yogi-ism would apply here: It’s déjà-vu all over again.

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Unidentified Blogging Location | Liking It, Nevertheless
13:30h CET
So what do those wily North Koreans have planned for us this week?

(weighing in at 130 pounds…standing 4’8” in the red corner…Bam Bam “Dear Leader” Kim!)

The good ol’ boys at new kid on the E-bang block china/divide chimed in this weekend about North Korea’s totally rude sinking of the Cheonan cutter, polling their readership on what China’s next move should be if the temperature along the always-tense 38th parallel rises any higher.

Some really incisive comments beneath Chucky Custer’s post, as per usual over there, though this time with little of that troll-like asskickery care of the Chinglosphere’s hoi polloi typically accompanying some of “the divide”’s more caustic all-about-China pieces.

Still, I was chuffed (did I just use that gay line?), because it gave me a chance to share my views about a country whose strategic intentions I’ve studied thoroughly and who (which?) I know a thing or three about.

But first, them poll results (29 votes, as of this date and time):

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Today’s post is going to be less a straight-ahead book report, kids, and more of a mambsy-pambsy writer’s statement about how this war-era novel, Sarah’s Key made me feel, deep deep inside.

I polished off the read in just a single sitting. Four hours, baby, cover-to-cover (approximately 320pp). I’m not normally that speedy, but the story held me in its vice-like grip from round about page ten and didn’t let go until the very last sentence. No guff. Now would I kid you about something this serious?

Why have I opted for the gushier jelly-like consistency of a “emotional statement” today as opposed to my usual hardboiled prose? Well, I suppose it’s just because I woke up this morning feeling that I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Better reviewers than your not-so-humble blogger here have assembled sensational reviews about Tatiana de Rosnay’s

bestselling French Occupation-era piece over the past couple of years and change, so if you’re keen on a plain vanilla-flavored stepwise plot summary, I’m sure you can click around for one of those.

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I’ve been gunning through the final pages of Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Heavenly Father: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, blowing through the sections about potential wartime scenarios between the two rival Koreas.

Martin’s chats with North Korean defectors have been extremely revealing. His several interviewees, the majority of them former staff members of the DPRK’s million-man army, offer up their experience on why North Korea might have the decisive edge over the more affluent south if push comes to shove and the guns suddenly start to rumble.

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I’ve been religiously following Current.com’s new season of Vanguard dispatches, and this latest one from Mariana van Zeller from Sri Lanka about how the Sinhalese majority crushed the two-and-a-half decade long Tamil insurgency was brilliant.