So, apparently, I live in Liberia now.

Further updates as events warrant.  Like you, getting settled in, unpacking, figuring out what the hell I'm doing and well... living in Liberia.

Off to Liberia...

And go!

Bye Max!

Training.

GUTS - PU15 SU25 HS45 SU20 PU10 MILO 20/15 + Bridge20

LA Boxing, Alexandria... gym where I got to train the better part of this last week.  Nice facilities.

Webcomic-y goodness.

The crazy is just mind-boggling.

Edited, to be sure, but holy moley...  the dumbness burns, I swear.

Watched - August.

So despite traversing from Japan to the US, and running up and down the East Coast while jumping State Dept hurdles and visiting family, through the magic of the internets and my trusty laptop I was duly entertained.

The Daily Show, Burn Notice, Penn & Teller - Bullshit, Eureka, Sherlock, The IT Crowd, The Boondocks, Leverage, Lie to Me, The Closer, Louie, The Next Iron Chef [even though I already knew who won, I love me some Iron Chef America when I can find it], Breakthrough w/Tony Robbins, Pioneer One & Better Off Ted.

In the theaters - The Expendables, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World - both of which rocked pretty hard.

Lord of War - I'd watched this years ago and remembered it as pretty good and for some reason had been jonezing to catch it again.  Been on my radar to do it for a while now...  And having rewatched it - still a really good flick - but the kicker, maybe subconsciously I remembered it, but a good portion of it is about running guns in Liberia, featuring pastiches of former Liberian president Charles Taylor and his son.  Watched it today...  and I leave for Liberia tomorrow.

True fact.  Crazy.





Conquest of Hawaii - excellent documentary on the history of the islands...  wow, did they get screwed over by the US.  American imperialism, maybe not at its worst, but still...

Missed it by less than a week - "Delta Airlines... will resume direct flight and services to Liberia for the first time in 20 years on Sunday..."

Instead I get the far more meandering Dulles=>JFK=>Ghana=>Liberia. Ah well, at least in the future it'll be simpler.

African Press Agency - Item:

"APA-Monrovia (Liberia) - Delta Airlines, one of America’s leading carriers, will resume direct flight and services to Liberia for the first time in 20 years on Sunday, APA learns here Tuesday.

Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Badio confirmed to APA Tuesday that Delta Airlines is expected to fly between Jacksonville International Airport in the United States and Roberts International Airport about 45 kilometres from the Liberian capital Monrovia."

Smackdown of DOD nonsense by Dept of State; or, how General Odierno [unknowingly?] is talking out of his ass.

The Skeptical Bureaucrat spells out, point by point, how the Pentagon blew off State Dept advice on Iraq pretty much every step of the way. That's pretty much the very definition of hubris, I'd think.

The Skeptical Bureaucrat: Odierno: "We Came In Naive":

"The New York Times has a brief item today in which General Raymond Odierno, the departing commander of American forces in Iraq, reflects on the U.S. military's fundamental lack of understanding of Iraq and it's societal problems back when the invasion occurred in 2003...

...I guess General Odierno didn't get the memo about the Future of Iraq project. Too bad. That huge report would have filled him in on those issues he says he didn't understand. The Defense Department is a big place, after all, and he's only one man. It isn't like the Pentagon deliberately rejected those 13 volumes of exhaustive planning advise.

Oh, wait. I forgot. It did. In fact, the New York Times reported exactly that back on October 19, 2003..."

"You're a Fucking Human Being" - I still want Joe Rogan as my Philosopher King.

Brilliant. All day.
You're a Fucking Human Being - Joe Rogan and Daft Punk by user4584371

At some point you're gonna have to go with "BP=Evil."

I mean, what the hell?

With Neighbors Unaware, Toxic Spill at a BP Plant - NYTimes.com:

"While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery here released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until many saw their children come down with respiratory problems.

For 40 days after a piece of equipment critical to the refinery’s operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery.

Rather than taking the costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into the air, according to state environmental officials."

And you wonder why we are so wildly screwed up as a society...

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." - Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921

Via Did You Know? (War on Drugs Edition)

Terry Crews FTW.

The Expendables was awesome, btw.

Last USA food indulgences - Outback & Trader Joe's.

While still watching carbs and training. I'm awesome.
Outback Curbside Take-Away is genius.


3 days worth of supplies... good stuff.

Relaxed Max is relaxed.

Didn't have the heart to move him come bedtime, so just shifted him and crawled in around him.

Ron Paul [almost] knocks it outta the park.

Missed it by *that* much, methinks. I'd argue most Tea Party folks put military/foreign spending in the same "that doesn't really count 'cause America's the best & the brightest and the most awesome so of course we should lead the world with our mighty military" category that most conservatives do. IMHO, I've found most folks that argue about government spending, and rightly so, never connect up the dots to figure that military expenditures are our highest costs. And even with all the spending, we always spend to fight the last war, to support unneeded and unwanted platforms, and fail to provide our troops with the simple, necessary tools to fight effectively.

If most Tea Party or conservatives owned up to those facts, then he'd be spot on. But they don't, so his common-sensical approach to foreign policy and spending remains the territory of a limited # of independents and libertarian minded folks.

A Tea Party Foreign Policy - By Ron Paul | Foreign Policy:

"..As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.

Our foreign policy is based on an illusion: that we are actually paying for it. What we are doing is borrowing and printing money to maintain our presence overseas. Americans are seeing the cost of this irresponsible approach as their own communities crumble and our economic decline continues..."

Yes. It is.

Texts From Last Night:

"(508): Giving me the bigger bowl of ramen isn't considered 'romantic'"

Training.

30m heavy bag/thai boxing/2m rounds
5m footwork
situps/back x/rotations/neck nods/halos