Happy New Year Vietnam!

If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.
- John Kenneth Galbrath

Dien Cai Dau, as they say in the slanted land, motherfuckers.

During this busy holiday season, there has been more bad news than days in the week, forcing me to make difficult decisions about which topic to tackle in the daily discourse. Naturally, we must avoid the cliché at all costs, avoiding topic matter such as marketing inflatable floats shaped as Asian children, trading anecdotes about emaciated lesbian hookers, or nearly anything about myself. So on this fine Sabbath, let us forsake our wee prayers of serenity and take a little trip across those wavy Pacific waters to Binh Thuan.

In case any of you potheads or underage porn addicts don’t clearly recall, there once was a war in a land far, far away called Vietnam. Now I know this might be a big red pill to swallow, but contrary to popular belief and the rantings of your drunken father, we got our asses kicked over there. And how. In the somewhat truncated vernacular of DMZ Cliff’s Notes, this beating was suffered in part to incompetent military leadership, and largely to the fact we were facing a yellow-faced adversary who was better-armed, better-acquainted with the terrain, and had no qualm whatsoever about dying for the cause. Namely, the cause of sucking off, robbing blind, and killing every American on the wrong side of the ocean.

One of the many beautiful aspects of writing in America, in English, is the ability to fire high-power from the tower. While a fair share of our traffic flows from the far shores, the chances of any undereducated undernourished fuckhole rice-eater reading these words and coming after me in Jersey is remote to say the least. I mean, these people don’t even have metal-detectors to weave a safe path between the front door and the schoohouse, let alone find a fast internet drop into any computer capable of translating my jibberish into a series of confusing symbols and crazy clown sounds.

Perhaps it was a bit of foresight, seeking vengeance for that Tet Holiday bullshit. Perhaps it was a complete accident, akin to all those half-breed Cambodian bastards who fell out of any woman who was seduced by twenty dollars and a pair of camo fatigues around the knees. In any event, this Christmas Day apparently involved a bit of Baby Jesus and payback, as four children wandered from their cow herd and clustered around an unexploded mortar shell. God and Uncle Sam combined forces to deliver the Christian message to those saffron savages, sending infidel parts flying some 25 years after the fall of Saigon. In fact, between the carcinogenic aftermath of Agent Orange, the VXO scattered across the southern provinces, and strange antibiotic resistant strains of gonorrhea, we’ve wreaked far more damage since our hurried departure than before. If you’re born Vietnamese nowadays, you’re either born deformed or become deformed in short order, and if you don’t happen to blow off one of your legs on a forgotten Claymore, chances are you’ll probably have both of them wrapped around somebody’s waist for the foreign currency.

Happy day, maybe one of you fuckers can explain to me how our asshat government pushes our tax money into the Third World for drought aid, won’t write the check for food or condoms, then drops $350 million to help after the water onslaught? When tons of high-explosive munitions lie between our bootprints across the ‘Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq? Oh, never you mind that depleted uranium or 155mm shell over yonder, just tell the kids to step higher, because you’re FREE, brother! And while we’re at it, did you ever wonder why Mattel didn’t market an Asian rendition of Barbie? Maybe because they’d have to sell four Ken dolls in tattered camouflage and a half-track to complete the set. Oh, look, it’s Gook Pop Barbie! Perfect for the dance floor and the alley out back, offering careful relief to sailors on shore leave, one soldier at a time! Dear God, just the word Hanoi makes my cock twitch. If there was ever a time to grab up Indonesian girl-children from a devestated country, my American friends, that time is now.

Honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to Hell faster for writing this editorial, or comparing those dead kids to the apes jumping around the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I guess the train moves at the same speed, no matter where you sit.

I could make more sense of those fucking apes, though.