#31 - asian rim of terror.

please note that for the duration of this entry, all uses & offshoots of the word terror should probably have quotes around them. you can thank dubya for that.

hey, remember his 2002 state of the union address? it was his first one, four months after 911, the one where he took occasion to throw down the gauntlet to iraq, iran & north korea. AXIS OF EVIL BITCHES!!! Y'ALL ARE GOING ON THE TERROR LIST!!!

we all know what happened to iraq & well, if w just had a little more time, he'd get to iran (fingers crossed for mick & the pale in a few weeks! maybe mccain can co-opt more beach boys songs for the cause!). as for north korea, when we began dragging our feet again about removing them from the terror list & began trying to change our negotiated terms, they raised a stink that eventually led to them deploying missiles to their west coast last thursday. as a result, we up & took em off the terror list two days later, just before your beloved college football squads took the field for their saturday competitions.

you see, back to june, north korea very publicly destroyed a water cooling tower at their nuclear facility in yongbyon & in exchange, it was expected that they'd be taken off our terror list, leaving iran as the lone remainder in the axis. you may remember that in recent years, we removed libya from the list after they made "amends" for some of their terrorist actions, which included blowing up a pan am flight over scotland.

as for north korea, they kidnapped anywhere from 16-80 japanese citizens in the late 70s & early 80s & used them to teach north korean spies how to be japanese. in 2002, after denying for a long time that they had done so, north korea eventually admitted to & apologized for kidnapping 13 japanese. they've abducted south korean citizens as well & their more notable act of terror was in 1987, when north korean agents blew up a korean air flight, the largest act of terror ever against south korea. pretty sure they never had to apologize for that though...& then there's the whole nuclear proliferation thing.

...so north korea, congrats. you're off the list. that's how it works round here. themz dubya rules.

#31 - asian rim of terror.
snack: newton's naturals wasabi blazing peas
drink: 22 oz. sapporo reserve

whew, boy do i love wasabi peas. these ones are made in malaysia, which means they might have been made with love by a 10-year old...although "newton's naturals" does seem like a pretty harmless company, at least in name, so i should probably avoid the needless slander. wasabi peas are awesome at clearing you up. i need to learn how to apply moderation to them though. many a time, i've found myself continuing to shove pea after pea into my mouth even though i'm past the point where my eyes & nose are leaking in unison.

luckily, i have a tall can of sapporo reserve to wash them down with. the sapporo can & its inordinate weightiness intrigues me to no end. it makes it so that you think there's a bunch more beer left down there in the can & then out of nowhere, you've got no more beer, sucker. sapporo was the first japanese beer i ever tried, back in my freshman year of college, when a few of us discovered a sushi restaurant in kenmore square that would serve us plucky 18 & 19 year olds. it was also the first time i tried sushi. it's probably a mall now. i mean, kenmore's pretty much one big mall now anyhow.