chrisjshim's Xanga

The Day the (Pop) Music Died

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:10:03 GMT

Not part of my "weekly weblog" (though all videos lost when my YouTube account was shutdown have since been re-uploaded/embedded in past posts), but just wanted to share this in light of Michael Jackson's sudden death. Enjoy -- the King of Pop's first performance of the moonwalk at Motown 25 in 1983 (for FB users, link to video here):

Nearly two years ago I posted on Pavarotti's passing. This one effects me just a bit more -- Thriller was the first cassette tape I owned; the kids on my block made a MJ music video for an MTV contest; my mom once walked in on me dancing (very badly) to Bad. Say what you will about his personal life (and there's a lot to be said) -- the man was a musical genius. I'd be hard pressed to find Wyclef Jean and Miley Cyrus agreeing about anything, but there you go.

Going to remember MJ for who he once was and what he meant to my childhood, and not for the bizarre anomaly that he later became.

An Open Letter to State Rep. Betty Brown (R, TX-District 4)

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:51:21 GMT

Not part of my weekly weblog, but just had to get this off my chest. For Facebook users, link to the original post here.

*****

The Honorable Betty Brown
Texas State Representative, District 4
108 South Pinkerton, Suite 105
Athens, TX 75751

To Representative Betty Brown,

As an Asian-American, Marine Officer and US citizen, I was bemused, bothered and bewildered to read your comments this morning in the Houston Chronicle recommending that the voters of Chinese descent in your district adopt names that are "easier for Americans to deal with."

You and your office may believe that the negative reaction to your suggestion is just a case of political correctness run amuck, but I wanted to respectfully suggest that the indignation and outrage vocalized by many are not without merit. In a nutshell, your recommendation did two things:
1. Cheapened the heritage of Asian-Americans
2. Implied that these voters were not American

Our Names Represent Our Heritage

Since our personal and family names are representative of our heritage, it was consequently insulting for you to suggest their abandonment for the expediency of those who are ignorant of and indifferent to our cultural backgrounds. Representative Brown, I wonder if you would have dared make the same suggestion to a group of Polish-Americans? Surely Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski -- whose heroism at Gettysburg helped preserve our great nation -- would've deserved to vote under his given name were he your constituent today. Mr. Krzyżanowski was an American who served his country and just so happened to trace his ancestry to a rich, proud and historic culture. So do I. Asian-Americans -- like all other Americans -- help make this country of ours so great not by ignoring our past, but by weaving our proud heritage into the inclusive tapestry of our collective American culture.

We Asian-Americans Are Indeed "American"

Second, by distinguishing between voters of Chinese descent and other Americans, you strongly implied that the former are not Americans at all. I wonder, then, how you would address Fujio Miyamoto and the mostly Japanese-American servicemen of the 442nd Infantry Regiment -- Americans who fought, bled, and died to rescue the "lost battalion" of Texas National Guardsmen that had been cut-off and surrounded by German forces in October of 1944. To refresh your memory, Mr. Miyamoto was conferred the Distinguished Service Cross for his valor -- second only to the Medal of Honor -- on behalf of a grateful nation. His citation reads:

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Fujio Miyamoto (30105618), Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving with Company K, 3d Battalion, 442d Regimental Combat Team, attached to the 36th Infantry Division, in action against enemy forces on 29 October 1944 near Biffontaine, France. When the forward elements of Sergeant Miyamoto's company were pinned down by fire from an enemy machine gun and supporting snipers, he fearlessly worked his way forward toward the enemy emplacement. While so engaged, he was wounded in the forearm by a sniper, but disdaining medical treatment, he continued to advance until he reached a point 25 yards from the emplacement. Exposing himself in order to get better observation, he opened fire with his sub-machine gun, killed the two gunners and thus neutralized the position. In the 2- hour fire fight which followed, Staff Sergeant Miyamoto accounted for five more of the enemy and refused to be evacuated until the initial objective was reached. Staff Sergeant Miyamoto's intrepid actions, personal bravery and zealous devotion to duty exemplify the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States and reflect great credit upon himself, the 36th Infantry Division, and the United States Army.

One can only speculate if some of the sons and daughters of that rescued Texas National Guard unit are now your constituents. Representative Brown, you dishonor the memory of their saviors -- all of whom were Americans, just like you.

Representative Brown, please understand that your suggestion -- however benign it may have seemed to you -- evokes painful memories of second-tier status and abject racism experienced by many Asian-Americans throughout our nation's history, from the Chinese coolies of 1800s San Francisco to the playground taunts of today. I respectfully urge you to recognize the offense taken by your constituents and Americans everywhere, correct your office's unapologetic tone, and prove your genuine commitment to ending voter disenfranchisement in your district's Asian-American community.

respectfully yours,
1stLt Shim, USMCR

P.S. You'll have to forgive me for peppering this letter with allusions to military history. We jarheads can sometimes be a bit single-minded.

"The Feeblest Species of Humor"

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:18:19 GMT

Arlington, VA
at the kitchen table

Estimated average time to read this post: six minutes. For Facebook users: link to the original post found here.

Goodness, I had forgotten how much time it took to write a weekly blog. Needless to say, I must postpone until next Sunday the Iraq missive I've been sitting on for nearly two years. Instead, wanted to share with all of you this wonderful "op-ed" from the New York Times that extols the virtues of puns (and reminded me of this post long ago). The piece is hilarious, charming, insightful -- and I'm crushed that I wasn't asked to write it instead (perhaps because I am none of the above....)

"Pun for the Ages"
Joseph Tartakovsky; March 28, 2009

The inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” [Ouch] To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. [Humph -- I laugh!] It is said that Caligula ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. (Some believe he was inclined to extremes.)

Addison defined the pun as a “conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but differ in the sense.” “Energizer Bunny Arrested! Charged with Battery.” No laugh? Q.E.D.

Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. Most resemble mathematical formulas: clever, perhaps, but hardly occasion for knee-slapping. The worst smack of tawdriness, even indecency, which is why puns, like off-color jokes, are often followed by apologies. Odds are that a restaurant with a punning name — Snacks Fifth Avenue, General Custard’s Last Stand — hasn’t acquired its first Michelin star. [Who cares what Anton Ego thinks? Those restaurant names are BRILLIANT.]

How have the great comic writers regarded puns? Jane Austen puns once, in “Mansfield Park,” and it serves to impeach the moral character of the offender. Mark Twain’s first book, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” enamored reviewers with its punlessness. There are “no contortions of words,” said a London paper. “His fun is entirely dependent upon the inherent humor in his writings.” The 20th century’s finest humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, doesn’t use them.

Shakespeare, however, does. Many are bawdy: puns operate, after all, on double entendre. Yet the poet is guilty less of punning than wordplay, which Elizabethan taste considered more a sign of literary refinement than humor; hence “puns” in seemingly inappropriate places, like a dying Mercutio’s “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”

The true punster’s mind cycles through homophones in search of a quip the way small children delight in rhymes or experiment babblingly with language. [Um...guilty.] Accordingly, the least intolerable puns are those that avoid the pun’s essential puerility. Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was a specialist. He could effortlessly execute the double pun: Noah’s Ark was made of gopher-wood, he would say, but Joan of Arc was maid of Orleans. Some Whately-isms are so complex that they nearly amount to honest jokes: “Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.” [I'm in awe.]

Whately shows us that it is the punner himself who gives his art a bad name, by so frequently reaching for the obvious. Nothing vexes so much as a pun on a name, for instance. Yet even these can rise to wit if turned with finesse. Jean Harlow, the platinum-blond star of the 1930s, on being introduced to Lady Margot Asquith, mispronounced her given name to rhyme with “rot.” “My dear, the ‘t’ is silent,” said Asquith, “as in Harlow.” The writer Andrew Lang asked his friend Israel Zangwill if he would take a stand on an issue. Zangwill wrote back: “If you, Lang, will, I. Zangwill.”

Why do puns offend? Charles Lamb, a notorious punster, explained that the pun is “a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.” Surely puns silence conversation before they animate it. [Oh dear. Guilty once more. I've heard more crickets than a bayou frog.] Some stricken with pun-lust sink so far into their infirmity that their minds become trained to lie in wait for words on which to work their wickedness. [I should repent of...pun lust?] They are the scourge of dinner tables and the despised prolongers of office meetings, some letting fly as instinctively as dogs bark and frogs croak, no longer concerned even with drawing applause; they simply can’t help themselves. [Hey, I'm holding back these days....]

I asked a friend of mine, an inveterate punster, whether he punned while on dates. “Sure, I pun on dates,” he replied. “On prunes and figs, too.” [One wonders whether he gets second dates....] And well he might, considering the similitude between puns and fruit flies, both of which die practically the instant they are born, but not before breeding others.

But low as puns may be, they have been known to appeal to the loftiest minds. [Preach it brother!] Samuel Johnson hated puns, but his friend Edmund Burke, whose intellectual powers daunted even Johnson, was notorious for pun-making (e.g., “What is [m]ajest[y], when stripped of its externals, but a jest?”) Still, Burke was conscious of his sin, revealed in an incident recorded in a friend’s journal: “Lord Mulgrave called to Burke one day at our table with a ‘so, Burke, you riot in puns now Johnson’s away.’ This made good sport for my lord and for the company, but Burke changed color and looked like Death.”

With Burkean contrition, I confess that in a Thai restaurant not long ago, following my company’s attempt to order three curry dishes, I suggested that we not get “curried away.” Punning, it seems, like every non-deadly sin, is easier to excuse than to resist.

Joseph Tartakovsky is a student at Fordham Law School.

*****

Link(s) of the week: Why has there not been more attention paid to these two Asian-American journalists detained in North Korea? Now granted, folks warned them -- I for one would've paid special heed to 천기원 -- so maybe some are thinking Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling got what was coming to them. Even so, I can't help but wonder what would happen if two Jewish-Americans were detained by Hamas in Gaza -- I doubt I would have to search for five minutes at nytimes.com to find a week-old update to their story.

Sigh. Queen Victoria, where are you? We need a modern-day Abyssinia campaign....

*****

Next week (for realz!): John Nagl and "The War On Terror"

Reason #11 I'd Make a Good Husband

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:11:00 GMT

Arlington, VA
at home

Estimated average time to read this post: two minutes. For Facebook users: link to the original post found here.

The weekly weblog resumes! Boy my timing sucks -- I get back to writing just as everyone has fled from Xanga. Well, I'm a sucker for lost causes, so here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again: Reason #11 I'd Make a Good Husband*: I know how to (cheaply) manage a household's shopping and cooking.
* Part of an ongoing, tongue-firmly-in-cheek series to be continually refined -- just like me

This week's grocery bill:

- 1 jar Peter Pan peanut butter; 18 oz -- $1.99 (with Safeway card)
- 2 huge jars of Prego spaghetti sauce with mushrooms; 8 lb 6 oz -- $8.00 (with card)

- 1/2 gallon of fat free milk -- $1.99 (with card)
- 1 package 92% lean ground beef; 1.08 lb -- $2.15 (with card)
- 2 huge coils of Kielbasa sausages -- $5.00 (with card)
- 2 huge packs of skinless boneless chicken breasts; 6.58 lb -- $22.97 (with card)

- 7 Fuji apples, 2.75 lb -- $2.72 (with card)
- 4 green bell peppers, 1.26 lb -- $2.63
- 3 broccoli crowns, 1.30 lb -- $2.59 (with card)
- 1 bag of potatoes, 5 lb -- $3.49 (with card)
- 1 bag of yellow onions, 5 lb -- $4.49
- 1 carton sliced mushrooms, 8 oz -- $2.00 (with card)
- 2 bags of baby carrots, 4 lb -- $5.00 (with card)

Already at home: curry and 짜장 (black bean sauce) powder, eggs, a few onions.

Total bill: $65.02 (total card savings: $23.19)

*****

And now we get to the cooking. All chopped with no place to go, rounds one and two:

The results below. From left to right -- my (in)famous chicken, broccoli and egg stir-fry; 짜장 (with carrots, chicken, potatoes and onions); pasta sauce (half with bell peppers, ground beef, and onions; half with mushrooms, onions and sausage); (non-South Asian) curry (with carrots, chicken, potatoes and onions).

And! Since I cleaned as I went, by the time I was done, I only had this awaiting me in the sink:

All told, if I supplement today's labor with the occasional restaurant outing/take-out and tuna/PB&J sandwiches, I probably won't have to cook for a good three weeks. Think of it, future wife! Three weeks of lunch/dinners for $65.00. That'll leave us more money to...pay off our student loans.

*****

Now I feel a bit silly boasting about such lowest-common-denominator food preparation in light of the culinary wonders displayed by joyosity and over at dappldthings. But I say: quantity over quality! Be it cooking...or bad pirate jokes.

[painful pirate puns edited out]

Whoa. I restrained myself -- guess the past two years have changed me.

Next week: (Nearly two years later than planned) John Nagl and "The War On Terror"

Bovine Idiots

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:58:16 GMT

Sing it, Ms. Jones! Sing of bovine idiots and oxy morons....

i've had to think of a way to survive
since you said it's over told me good-bye
i just can't make it one day without you
unless i pretend that the opposite's true
rivers flow backwards
valleys are high
mountains are level
truth is a lie
i'm perfectly fine
and i don't miss you
and the sky is green and the grass is blue

how much can a heart and a troubled mind take
where is that fine line before it all breaks?
can one end their sorrow just cross over it
and into that realm of insanity's bliss?
there's snow in the tropics
there's ice on the sun
it's hot in the Arctic
and crying is fun
and i'm happy now
and i'm glad we're through
and the sky is green
and the grass is blue

and the rivers flow backwards and my tears are dry
swans hate the water and eagles can't fly
but i'm alright now that i'm over you
and the sky is green
and the grass is blue
and i don't love you
and the grass is blue

©Sugarhill Records, posted in good faith under the fair use doctrine, 17 U.S.C. § 107

I L-O-V-E...the Intertubes!

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:48:15 GMT

If you're a fan of Nat King Cole, ukulele's, singer-songwriters, post-partisan bipartisanship* or cutie-patooties, you'll like this one.

Julia Nunes' YouTube channel available here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

*offer not valid in the United States House of Representatives; void where prohibited by political expediency, presidential aspirations and -- on occasion -- actual principles -- in the United States Senate; contact your local office for details

A Mystery Solved

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:23:09 GMT

Eat your heart out, 30 Rock (1:06 excerpt ©NBC Universal Television, posted in good faith under the fair use doctrine, 17 U.S.C. § 107):

*****

"New Yorkers stuck with syrupy smell, but can breathe easy"
By Jason Kessler, CNN
February 5, 2009

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The source of a mysterious maple syrup-like smell that has periodically blanketed New York is not a particularly aromatic pancake house but a New Jersey factory involved in the processing of fenugreek seeds, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday. The source of New York's sweet-smelling aroma has been identified as a food-flavoring firm in New Jersey.

The sweet aroma first descended upon Manhattan and northern New Jersey in October 2005, initially triggering several building evacuations as well as concern the scent was physically harmful. Authorities from the Office of Emergency Management soon concluded it posed no danger to the public.

The odor made several return appearances in subsequent years, each time confounding nostrils before vanishing as perplexingly as it arrived.

Comparing information about local wind speed, wind direction and air humidity against the locations of citizen complaints about the smell, officials from the city's Department of Environmental Protection narrowed down the potential source to four factories in northern New Jersey that produce food additives and fragrances.

Last week, when several dozen residents of Upper Manhattan called to complain about the smell, the environmental department, having developed a new evidence gathering procedure, gathered air samples from each suspected source in canisters. Tests revealed the pungent perpetrator of that incident was a Hudson County facility owned by Frutorom, a company that develops and manufactures flavors for the food, fragrance and pharmaceutical industries.

The specific chemical agents responsible for the scent are esters, compounds "created by the reaction between an alcohol and an acid" during the processing of fenugreek seeds, according to Bloomberg.

Toasted fenugreek seeds are often used in the production of artificial syrups and in the cuisines of a number of cultures.

The mayor said New Jersey officials, who cooperated with New York in the investigation, had concluded that Frutorom had not violated any rules. He said New Yorkers will have to tolerate the syrup smell's occasional return, noting that it's a relatively benign odor.

"All things considered I can think of a lot of things worse than maple syrup," he said.

General Eikenberry: Our Ambassador to Afghanistan

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:15:30 GMT

Another non-weekly weblog.

With the exception of Leon Panetta, I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised with nearly every one of President Obama's national security picks, especially Secretaries Clinton and Gates and National Security Advisor Jones.

The administration's new ambassador to Afghanistan -- former Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry -- also gets a thumbs-up in my book. He's a soldier's soldier: a career infantry officer who's not only Ranger-qualified, but served in the 75th Ranger Regiment as well; Master Parachutist Wings; Combat Infantryman Badge; a battalion commander in the 10th Mountain Division; the former commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan, etc. Yet General Eikenberry would also be right at home in Foggy Bottom: two masters degrees from Harvard and Stanford and an advanced degree in history from Nanjing University (he speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and is married to a Chinese-American).

I tell you, if President Obama keeps hiring all these intellectually facile, technically competent, decidely non-partisan and pragmatic realists to serve in his cabinet, it's going to make me regret all that I once said and thought about his lack of foreign policy experience.

Now, if only his domestic policy picks would pay their taxes....

*****

"Obama picks army general to be ambassador to Afghanistan"
By Eric Schmitt, International Herald Tribune
Published: January 30, 2009

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has picked Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, a former top military commander in Afghanistan, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Kabul, an administration official said Thursday.

Tapping a career army officer who will soon retire from the service to fill one of the country's most sensitive diplomatic jobs is a highly unusual choice.

But Afghanistan specialists say that Eikenberry, who served in Afghanistan twice, including an 18-month command tour that ended in 2007, knows the players and issues there well. That is a valuable commodity in a year when the United States will send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan and the country will hold presidential elections.

The administration official spoke anonymously because the appointment had not been made public.

Eikenberry has a track record for spotting problems in Afghanistan early. He sounded some of the first alarms about a resurgent Taliban and the need to keep the country from backsliding into anarchy.

He was also an early and vigorous champion of building up the Afghan Army to combat the Taliban, a top priority for the Obama administration. And the general repeatedly warned that the United States could not prevail in Afghanistan and defeat global terrorism without addressing the havens that fighters with Al Qaeda had established in neighboring Pakistan.

The appointment indicates that Eikenberry has the backing of Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Eikenberry not only has good relations with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, but in his current job as deputy chairman of NATO's military committee in Brussels, he has also developed close ties with European allies that could be useful in coaxing them to offer more support for the Afghan mission. NATO has not met its pledges for combat troops, transport helicopters, military trainers and other support personnel in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has openly criticized the allies for not fulfilling their promises.

If the Senate approves Eikenberry, it would mean that four of the new administration's most influential voices on Afghanistan policy will be active-duty or retired generals, fueling the concerns of some critics that the Pentagon has too much sway over America's foreign policy.

General David Petraeus, the head of the Central Command, General David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, and General James Jones, a retired Marine Corps officer who is Obama's national security adviser, are all expected to play important roles in carrying out Afghanistan policy.

Eikenberry, a West Point graduate with master's degrees from Harvard and Stanford, would replace William Wood, who is finishing a two-year tour as America's chief diplomat in Kabul.

Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul.

"Goosebumps"

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:59:26 GMT

Wow -- it's been a long time. Short update: living in Chicago, waiting for active duty orders (if all goes well I should head to TBS in June). Life is full and blessed, and though I occasionally feel guilty about being so behind on all manner of "social responsibilities" (wall posts and voicemails and the what-not), I've resigned myself to the fact that I will never be the "put-together" guy who always manages to keep track of birthdays, posts weekly blogs and responds to emails within 24 hours.

"A man's got to know his limitations."
Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Magnum Force

Sigh. I suppose so. But may I never fail those closest to me.

*****

Just had to share this -- 40 inspirational cinematic speeches in two minutes. Goosebumps.

*****

Favorite movie from the first half of the year: WALL·E

Favorite movie from the second half of the year: Slumdog Millionaire

"Define Dancing"

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:40:33 GMT

Not part of my weekly weblog (which will return, really...perhaps post-Bar exam [along with all those ubiquitous Xanga comments]), but was wondrously enchanted the other day (3:02 excerpt from WALL·E ©Pixar Animation, posted in good faith under the fair use doctrine, 17 U.S.C. § 107):

(168.)

Self-sacrifice moves me so. Is that why I am so devastated by what Christ did on the cross? Or is it the other way around? In any case, this deceptively-child-like tale of a robot's single-minded, ever persistent, selfless devotion just struck a chord in me. To love like this...!

To love like this.

To love:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV)