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[17 Feb 2009|06:42pm] |
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3 more days to RL...
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[11 Jan 2009|08:08pm] |
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Know what tomorrow marks? 1 month to go.
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| FUCT |
[24 Oct 2008|08:33am] |
Eric,
Just a quick note to tell you we are moving to Virginia.
Things aren't good here with my employer and they offered me a job.
It all just happen yesterday.
Give us a call when back in port.
It will be easier to explain on phone.
Love, Dad
So now....I go back to Idaho homeless, or I fly to Virginia and stay with them until I go a college, all of which are located in california or vancouver, so moving everything back in that area... Plus I start my separation package next week, so I need to know when they're moving so I can tell the navy where to fly me to after I process out. Great timing, but I don't know if that makes me selfish or not.
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[04 Sep 2008|07:52am] |
"I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11.Well, I can't let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000.The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000 all the way up to $4.7 million.
If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.
Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a screeching halt.
Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough.Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers.
We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.
You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?
However, our own US Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system. If some of the military people stay in for 2 0 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.
I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now fighting."
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| TDK passes 500 million domestically. |
[01 Sep 2008|04:02pm] |
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I need everyone to go to your most expensive theater and see Dark Knight like seven more times, and forcefully make everyone else see it too. I love James Cameron, but who wants Titanic on top...not even him.
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[26 May 2008|10:16pm] |
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Nice relaxing three day weekend. Watched Prince Caspian today for the second time. I love drifting away into fantasy.
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| scrap a little oregano on top and this hamburger helper might have a fighting chance... |
[15 May 2008|01:02am] |
with less than 2 hours previous day, i'm much too awake for this hour. might have been the frosted flakes, excitement of the unwatched episode of the office i had found, or 2 BLT smelling half drunk/all drunk roommates returning at 1215am. take your pic marmaduke. there's something i wanted to share with the 2 maybe 3 people that still read this, and that's
I got to see the torch in hong kong. i saw them pass it along and everything. everyone was thrilled, china flags waving proudly. navy personal actually wasn't supposed to be there, due to recent douches with ignorant opinions. whatev though, i'll probably never witness it in RL again.
Next we'll be heading to Busan to observe the Starcraft Nationals after a short birthday break. Man...almost 23...where did it all go. All I have to show for it is my borderline erotic taste.....
( in womens' business jackets )
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| dear japan |
[09 May 2008|10:33pm] |
My loyalty! For nineteen years people have been waiting for him! People who know how. Now do you think that’s because my dad was an Archaeologist? Or do you think that's because I'm an Indiana Jones fan? Go fuck yourself, you fucking child!
I changed some things, but that quote from charlie wilson's war sums it up.
Unlike the rest of the world, Japan never premiers movies on time. I just found out Indy isn't coming out here till June 21st. All I've cared about since January is this movie. Ironman? Good thing I saw it in Hong Kong, because no one here is going to see it till September 20th.
If fucking Morocco can get its movies ready in time, why can't you. Stop advancing technology on your god damn toilets and get your fucking movie priorities straight.
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| holla at the lj- |
[16 Feb 2008|11:47am] |
Paul van Dyk will be here next week. Doesn't look like I'll going, as no one seems interested, or even knows who this guy is. Coheed and Cambria will be here in march, i'll be getting tickets tomorrow with some friends.
In other news, Almost down to a year left baby...then I'm free. Wooowaaaa! I also have plans. Plans to get out of douche turd Idaho and move back to my homeland of cali, look into a contract job with the navy, since I'll be in San Diego. Government jobs love people with top secret clearance, due to how much it costs for a civilian to get one. I can finally get a motorcycle...ooo. haha, hey, I'm laughing! I haven't laughed in years!
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[28 Dec 2007|03:07am] |
in san francisco now. oh man is that penn the magician?...no, penn wouldn't flip me off for yelling his name. But yeah, I stayed in a best western last night. The flight from boise to here had problems, so I missed my flight to japan. I called radio and told a co-worker my situation and hopefully he passed that on so I won't have to deal with BS later tonight. The good thing is I'll arrive friday night and roll into the weekend. The bad thing is we're in 3 sections, so I think I have duty on sunday...
uh, leave was pretty good, way too short though. Barely enough time to hang out with friends. I had a good time in michigan. My PS3 got damaged in my luggage so I had to ship that off to gamerepair911.com.
movies I saw
-dewey cox
-national treasure 2
-charlie wilson's war
-avp2
movies I still need to see
-juno
-beowulf
-i am legend
flight's about to board soon, so everyone enjoy the rest of the holidays, but whenever the wind blows, I will hear the whisper "ignacion..."
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| two months and all you get is this crappy post |
[10 Sep 2007|11:38pm] |
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so like I left my train card in my shorts and washed them and I doubt that works anymore, so I had to buy a new one today. I tried to buy a pasmo, but the guy said I have to go to yokosuka chuo to buy one, and I was like "no way, ja ne!" so I was already low on money, but now I'm seriously low on money, and friday is still a ways away. I have...some bagels...two boxes of velvetta shells, cereal but no milk, spaghetti and ramen. Should probably throw away the provolone. Someone said it's green in the middle, and I'm too scared to look. So of course this leaves me with one option this weekend. Construct the ultimate strawberry banana julius. Only the finest ingredients. Strawberries plucked from god's armpit, milk from the breasts of elf princess arwin, ice cubes from the Southern most region of Tasiilaq, Greenland, and most important, bananas that hail only from the establishment of wal-mart....cause they're like 30¢ a pound there.
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[14 Jul 2007|04:16pm] |
SEOUL: On Nov. 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp's torture compound, and Shin assumed they were among those to be put to death.
Instead, the guards brought out his mother and his 22-year-old brother. The mother was hanged, the brother was shot by a firing squad.
"Before she was executed, my mother looked at me," Shin said in a recent interview. "I don't know if she wanted to say something, because she was bound and gagged. But I avoided her eyes.
"My father was weeping, but I didn't cry," he said. "I had no love for her. Even today I hate her for what I had to go through because of her."
Shin's story provides a rare glimpse into one of the least-known prison camps in North Korea.
Shin, now 24, was a political prisoner by birth. From the day he was born in 1982 in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon until he escaped in 2005, Shin had known no other life. Guards beat children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin's, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed everyone lived this way.
He had never heard of Pyongyang, the capital city 90 kilometers, or 55 miles, to the south, or even of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.
"I didn't know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea," he said. "I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors' crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair."
Since 1992, about a dozen former North Korean prison camp inmates have fled to South Korea. But most were held in the "revolutionizing zone" at Camp No. 15 in Yodok in eastern North Korea. This means that the emphasis was on "re-educating" the prisoners. If they survived long enough to complete their sentences, they were released.
Shin is the first North Korean who came south who is known to have escaped from a prison camp. Moreover, he was confined to a "total-control zone."
According to a report released in June by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul: "Prisoners sent to a total-control zone can never come out. They are put to work in mines or logging camps until they die. Thus the authorities don't even bother to give them ideological education. They only teach them skills necessary for mining and farming."
Thanks to the stories of former Yodok inmates, the camp's name has become synonymous with human rights abuses. But there are at least four other prison camps in North Korea, including Camp No. 14 in Kaechon. These others are far less known because so few have emerged to describe them.
Shin "is a living example of the most brutal form of human rights abuse," said Yoon Yeo Sang, president of Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, where Shin is taking temporary shelter. "He comes from a place where people are deprived of their ability to have the most basic human feelings, such as love, hatred and even a sense of being sad or mistreated."
A North Korean named Kim Yong who came south in 1999 and now lives in the United States said he spent two years in Kaechon, but some refugees have questioned his claim.
Ahn Myeong Cheol, who worked as a driver and guard at four camps before reaching South Korea in 1994, has no doubts that Shin was in a total-control zone. Ahn said that when he met Shin in June, he immediately noticed the telltale signs: the avoidance of eye contact and arms warped by heavy labor from childhood.
"An instruction drilled into every guard's head is: Don't treat them like humans," Ahn said.
According to Shin, the prison authorities matched his father, Shin Kyong Sup, with his mother, Chang Hye Kyong, and made them spend five days together before separating them. This sort of arrangement was known as "award marriage," a privilege given only to outstanding inmates. An exemplary worker might be allowed to visit the woman chosen as his wife a few times a year.
Shin's brother was born in 1974 and Shin in 1982. Young children lived with their mothers, who worked from 5 a.m. to midnight. Once they turned 11, children were moved to communal barracks but were allowed to visit their mothers if they excelled at their work.
"I got to visit my mother only once or twice a year," Shin said. "I never saw my whole family together. I don't think I saw my brother more than a few times."
There were up to 1,000 children but no textbooks in the school at Valley No. 2, the part of the camp where Shin lived. Pupils were taught to read and write, and to add and subtract, but little more. After school, children worked in the fields or mines. In most of North Korea, villages are decorated with Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong Il. Valley No. 2 had only one slogan carved into a wooden plaque: "Everyone obey the regulations!"
Inmates were fed the same meal three times a day: a bowl of steamed corn and a salty vegetable broth. They scavenged whatever else they could find: cucumbers and potatoes from the fields, frogs, mice, dragonflies and locusts. Shin said he once ate corn kernels he found in cow droppings. When a teacher found a girl had hidden wheat grains in her pocket, he beat her on the head with a stick. She died the next day.
Shin's life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground torture cell about a suspected family plot to flee the camp. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.
During the interrogations he learned for the first time that his father's family belonged to a "hostile class" - a category that entailed punishment over three generations - because his uncles had collaborated with the South Korean Army during the Korean War.
Shin owed his unusual escape to two friends: an older cellmate who helped him recover from his torture wounds, and a man he met in the garment factory where he worked in 2004 who told him about life beyond the camp.
"Everything he told me about the outside world - the food, China - was fascinating," Shin said. "I loved his stories. Once I heard about the outside, I thought I would go crazy. I wanted to get out. I couldn't focus on work. Every day was an agony."
On Jan. 2, 2005, when Shin and his co-worker were collecting firewood near the camp's electrified fence and could not see any guards, they ran.
Shin is still struggling to understand what happened next: his friend fell against the high-voltage fence, his body creating an opening.
"I climbed over him, through the hole," Shin said. "I ran down the hill like a madman. I looked back and he wasn't moving."
In July 2005, Shin reached China. In February 2006, a South Korean helped him seek asylum at the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai. He arrived in Seoul last August.
Today, Shin bears burn scars from the torture and the electrified fence, and walks with a slight limp. He says he has recurring nightmares about being back in Camp No. 14. Awake, he wonders what happened to his father and about the man he left behind at the fence. Did he sacrifice himself to help Shin escape?
Now in Seoul, he said he sometimes finds life "more burdensome than the hardest labor in the prison camp, where I only had to do what I was told." His limited vocabulary has caused him to fail twice the written driver's license test. And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother.
"However I try, I can't forgive her," he said. "She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn't she think what would happen to us?"
Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, "without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea."
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[14 Jul 2007|09:58am] |
We’re pulling in next week. Tung is underway and won’t be back till October, so I’ll be home alone. I’m actually pretty excited. I have a lot of amazon items on the way. I’ve also decided to start a zombie dvd collection. I’ve got a three page wish list already. We pull back in on a Friday sadly, and probably won’t get off early. I’m trying to get that Monday off though.
Australia was wonderful. I felt more at home there than I have in a long time. The people there also had a more natural look, especially the girls. A nice break from all the Paris Hilton wannabes back in the states. Also got to catch up on movies, and also got to grace the greatest theater ever. There was a large gap of carpet between the front row and screen. So we laid down and watched POTC. Fantastic Four, I knew would suck, but it really skull fucked your sockets. One of the baddest marvel characters Silver Surfer just stands around and looks at people for most of the movie. A budget well spent. Transformers on the other hand, was enjoyable. As an action movie it was entertaining and the humour didn’t feel forced. I’m kind of a fan of Shia Lebouf, and I’m glad he didn’t play the annoying kid with robot friends. I can see how fans of transformers would be disappointed though.
Also went to an amusement park called Dreamworld. Overall, it’s not a bad park. It only has two big thrill rides, which each last approximately 6 seconds. It’s also a zoo though. We got to see a tiger demonstration show, and pet the kangaroos. They just had them out in the open so you could walk up to them and stuff. They’re very gentle, and smaller than I thought. There were another type of roo’s that were caged. One of them had a baby in its pouch. I’ll provide pics later. You could also get your picture taken holding a koala, but I didn’t like the setup, and it was pricey. We saw pretty much all the native aussie animals, even the dingos…who just dig holes all day.
The last night there was this guy painting pieces in the plaza area. It was an artistic skill I’ve never seen before. He spray painted several layers onto paper, then used a putty knife to scrap away layers to make a picture. It was literally a 10 minute masterpiece. There was this guy going around explaining the art form to people. Said it takes around 7 years to learn it. Spray paint art is the best ever.
Not much happening homeward bound. My hair’s finally grown back from the super short cut I received weeks ago. It’s grown in all weird though. The left front waves off to the side. I wish my hair would behave.
Oh yeah, I’m going to A school. Turns out that it’s required, and I have to go by June. The good news is that it’s in Florida, and I’ll be getting a new command, which means I could get something a lot closer to home. The bad news is….well I don’t see it. I’ll be leaving my friends here, and probably won’t see most of them again. Going to a new command always sucks too, but I’ll have a year left by then. They better not fuck this up and say I have to extend either. If I do, I’ll refuse and just stay here.
That’s all for now. They’re building a chili’s on base, that’ll be hot.
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[29 Jun 2007|05:31pm] |
Lots of stuff happening since last update. Been underway for about a month now, shortly before my birthday and the release of POTC sadly. We’re still heading for Australia. Looking forward to it. Still have almost a month to go before we pull back in. I am now also a petty officer! I don’t really care about that though. The big thing is that I’m no longer in deck. I’m now an IT. Basically a network admin for the ship. Going around fixing people’s computers and other computer/radio related jobs. My goal now is to learn as much as I can about administrating, and get certificates. I’m also going to look into college when I get back.
In my free time I’ve been reading and watching samurai jack. I haven’t felt like gaming this whole underway but it came back to me yesterday. Super Paper Mario is fun, but not as great as the previous Paper Mario titles.
Everything’s pretty much the same though. I dunno when I’ll be home though. I’ve got some leave days racked up, but I probably won’t be taking leave till Dec/Jan. Already looking into that.
Been buying a lot of stuff off of ebay. Bought the latest 2 novels of waking the dead, a bowser plush, Z-day, this other book, and a 5gbmicrodrive. Also been looking at Sega Saturns. Only an l33t pwn junkie or something along the lines would know the reason to wanting one.
Was just messing around at www.songtapper.com You tap the rhythm of a song via spacebar and it comes up with a list of songs. It’s gotten it right with some popular songs, but that’s it.
Gah, broke another external. This one fell and the drive won’t even spin. My last one broke underway as well. Might be telling me something. Oh well, I’m about to buy another one. Nothing serious was lost, just a bunch of media that won’t take more than 2
weeks download.
June-29th
Did even more shopping today and last night. Thanks to amazon 1-click shopping, I bought a sega Saturn, nights and a 3d controller. Today I bought a memory unit for it.
We’re about to have a Drill in 10 or so minutes. Does anyone want something from Australia?
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