What happened to you, man? You used to be beautiful...

I've alluded, in one way or another, to how little I was enjoying the last third of 2008. And you know what? It was my own damn fault. It was my job, my life, and my own damn, dumbass choices that put me there. Did I make mistakes? Oh hell yes. Maybe I'll put up some details of the worst parts later, but not today.

It occurred to me that parts of my past seem, in retrospect anyway, to have been jam-packed with fun, high-jinks, wacky misadventures, the odd comedic scrape, and more than a little learning. Especially in comparison with the last year or so. But it also occured to me that while I haven't been to a parasite museum in a couple of years, last year I did see the largest collection of pre-anaesthetic surgical tools and preserved pieces of syphilitic human anatomy I've ever heard of. Did I almost get run down by a forklift carrying a frozen 800-pound tuna at the world's biggest fish market? No. But I did visit one of the greatest collections of plundered antiquities in the world three times. Did I get to spend time with a bunch of interesting and intelligent people, including my wife, my parents and my brothers? Did I eat like a real, historical king? You damn right I did.

Today, like all days, is for getting on with it. I've got things to do, and not so much time to do them in. But I'm going to keep my eyes open, 'cause shit matters.

Seriously, who cares about this sort of thing?

Should anyone at all care about the fact that some jerk running for congress had his face put on a thinner body for a campaign photo? It's just a little bit of advertising sent to voters to present an image of himself, which obviously has no bearing on his policies, right? And the fact that the people putting his ad together felt they were doing him a favor by making him look better than he may actually look in real life doesn't really matter, does it? And since the people are clearly too smart to care about anything other than the real issues of the day, there's no reason to give a damn about any of this, is there? The truthiness will come through in the end.


Incidentally, doesn't democracy rely on an informed populace to function? No? Sorry, I must have been thinking of something else. I, for one, welcome our new, composite-imaged leaders. Long may their photoshopped visages shine.

Do they have milestones in metric system countries?

It's been about 554 years since the death of the last Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.

It's been around 72 years since the Hoover dam was completed.

It's been almost 18 years since the Tienanmen square massacre.

It's been almost one year since I left Japan.

Two steps forward, one step somewhere else.

Second verse, same as the first:

A little bit louder and a little bit worse.