Midnight Rambling

Just a few thoughts that occurred while working the night shift and admiring my driver's tan, which means my left arm is slightly darker than my right and which nicely accentuates the gray hairs growing from the birthmark on my left forearm, a blemish which has elicited comment from many a medical professional but which has been unchanged in size and shape my entire adult life.

- First of all, that first sentence clearly demonstrates that I need to buy that laptop and get back on the internet more frequently.

- It didn't take long for the rumors about Michael Jackson's death to start. Naturally the idea that he faked it to get away from financial and other pressures popped up quickly. It may be interesting to see what if anything his estate will contain; from what I read he had borrowed against about everything he owned. I'm reminded of the line in Citizen Kane about the guy who was supposedly wealthy but left nothing but debts when he shot himself.

- North Korea's behavior is somewhat mystifying, even for such an unhinged bunch.. I can understand that they want to be treated like an important country, but it's hard to believe that no one has said, "Look, if we start shooting missiles at U.S. territory they may inclined
to shoot one back, and theirs can end our ability to support life much less be a military power." I would hope China would want to nip this in the bud; it's bad for business. They should also consider the possibility that North Korea might try to similarly blackmail them someday.

The media's coverage is also odd. They sound like North Korea could go toe to toe with the U.S. in a confrontation. You don't hear about it much since the end of the Cold War, so people seem to have forgotten that each of our submarines alone carries enough firepower to hit every military installation they have,and you can bet that the Pentagon has had the spy satellites plotting targets for a long time. Yes, North Korea has a large army, but that would just be a large target for the Pacific Fleet.Certainly such a scenario should be avoided if at all possible, and South Korea wouldn't fare well to say the least, but this is the type of thing for which a large part of our military was designed. North Korea would be lucky to emerge like Iraq after the first Gulf War; barely struggling along as a nation.