Red Right Blog |
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Rants, Rates, Slags, Slates. Manic-depressive posts from Red Wright-Hand. Because there are thousands of worthless blogs out there and who am I not to add to their number?
Total US troop deaths in Iraq to date (09/01/07) since 03/20/03: 3739
From 05/02/03 through 06/28/04: 718 Myeloma (etc.) Blogs
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Saturday, February 26, 2005
WAITING FOR THE NAM: So there's jet lag, and an office job to return to and catch up on, and lots of other excuses for my not yet having posted anything substantial about my trip. Not to mention that the pics I took, and which I still intend to link to, are rather large, and the server to which I want to post them can't host them all as they are, and it takes me a while to shrink the photos down to manageable dimensions, and so forth and so on. But, dearly beloved, that is not what I wish to speak about this morning. No, this morning I wish to speak to you about Vietnamese coffee. It is the strongest and most delicious brew I can ever recall having sipped...and I've been off-shore of South America, I've been to Paris. Oh boy is that coffee effective. You order a ca phe den and they bring you a cup with a small brew-pot placed on top, a glass-and-steel contraption allowing you to watch the hot water slowly seep through the grounds, drip by exquisite drip (first thing you learn is that you always gotta wait), into the cup below. Then you drink the result, whereupon you are fully prepared to mount a singlehanded assault upon the nearest US embassy. I'm afraid I now know what Western heroin addicts have long experienced after travelling through the East, after sampling the uncut stuff right where it's grown on native soil. Jesus God, I'm hooked. I can't drink this watery, round-eye stuff you get in the States anymore! I need the pure C! I got the shakes! Help! Monday, February 21, 2005
FEAR, LOATHING: Hunter S. Thompson took his life yesterday, with one of the guns he was so fond of brandishing on the grounds of his Colorado compound. I had not paid much attention to his writing for many years, and yet his legend is such that I easily recall that period in my youth when I wanted nothing more than to live and write exactly as he did, much to the consternation of those high school teachers who had to read the term papers I handed in at the time. Rest in fucking peace, Duke. Saturday, February 19, 2005
THIS IS THE END: Arrived back home last night a little after 8 PM, EST, or 8 AM next Sunday morning Viet Nam time. We don't want to calculate the precise number of hours spent in and out of planes and airport lounges since waking very early in room 422 of the Chains First Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, because this makes Da-dee cray-zee. But I seem to be fairly coherent at the moment (8:06 AM), with laundry tumbling in the basement, and a row of film cartridges on the kitchen table ready to be taken out for developing later today. I'll post the best shots later. What to say? First, apologies for not blogging from the Southeast Asian road. Internet cafes were easy to find, but connections were very slow, slower even than my home dial-up, and the last thing I wanted to do on this trip was spend lots of time hunched over a keyboard waiting for links to load. So what I'm planning to do is a sort of recreated diary...each post covering a day or so of travel in Viet Nam or Cambodia, with links to attendant photos. We'll see what the photo processor turns up later. For now, let me just say this: after witnessing children begging for empty cans and bottles, well after nightfall, on a Cambodian beach, either for the recycling fee or perhaps in hopes of using the material in some constructive way (strengthening the walls of their shacks, for instance), you have my permission to pound my face any time I complain about my life. I'll be happy to do the same for you. Saturday, February 05, 2005
Item: It is inadvisable to stare down upon Ho Chi Minh City traffic from an 8th-floor hotel bar balcony while in the worst throes of jet lag. Item: Five mg of Valium from the who-needs-a-prescription pharmacy around the corner from the same hotel works wonders with that jet lag. Tuesday, February 01, 2005
BON VOYAGE: I suppose it's not too inappropriate to use French to signify a departure for Viet Nam. Schedule has me airborne just about this time tomorrow, and please don't expect much of volume in the next two and a half weeks. About par for the course around here. Anyway, time for a look at the beautiful and stubborn land whose history is so bound up with ours ("ours" = USA). Photos and notes later, I hope. Will there be similar trips to Iraq in about three decades? |
