One of the books I picked up in Sihanoukville was a slim plastic-wrapped volume entitled Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies. The cover artwork is a nineteenth-century caricature of the West as a grotesquely fat capitalist in the center of a spiderweb, surrounded by piles of lucre. I didn't think too much about the plastic wrap, assuming it had some innocent purpose. That now seems unlikely. Because unless Penguin Books has seriously let down their standards, I bought a pirated book. The paper is of decent quality and the pages are all aligned properly, but the whole thing has visible artifacts and a lack of clarity that suggest a low-resolution scan, or outright photocopying. It's unfortunate that I am now in possession of a work of copyright infringement, as under the DMCA I think that Penguin Books is legally authorized to throw me in jail, expropriate all my property, and send professional assassins after my family.

At any rate, Occidentalism is about, well, the converse of Orientalism. For those that don't recall their literary criticism classes, count yourself lucky. Orientalism is the irrational love of things Eastern and/or "uncivilized", and the assumption that the Easterner/primitive people and customs are good, pure, and superior. Classic examples of Orientalism are John Locke and his Noble Savage, and the Beatles and their silly quests for Indian gurus.

Occidentalism is the distorted view of the "civilized" West from the West's enemies. The West is generally the United States, UK, France, and sometimes all the rest of western Europe too. The Occidentalist view is that Westerners are greedy, shortsided, non-heroic, idolatrous, prostituting merchants, without souls, and not even really human. Being without souls killing them is a non-evil act; and while Westerners may have some temporal success at the moment, God will surely lead the believers to triumph, as long as there is suffient faith and willpower to rise against the evildoers.

The books traces these ideas through different cultures and philosophers, elucidating how most of the same steriotypes can be traced backwards from current Islamofacists to early twentieth centurn facists and nationalists in Germany and Japan, to Russian revolutionaries at the turn of the twentieth century, to German nationalists in the mid-nineteenth century.

It's written in an academic style, so the prose is rather dry. But the index and references are quite good, and although it's short, it suggests quite a few other things to read to fill in the ideas further. Students of international relations or anthropology should certainly be interested in this book.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Near the end of every float, the cooks get mushroom-happy. Sliced mushrooms are included in almost every dish, even if it's wildly inappropriate. I have two theories on the reason for this behavior:

(1) The Navy cooking manual consideres mushrooms a vegatable. Mushrooms keep better than other vegatables. So having used up all the stuff that perishes, they're just substituting mushrooms for whichever veggies the recepie originally called for.

(2) The food storage rooms are belowdecks. There's no light down there. So we didn't set sail with mushrooms... they grew while we've been out.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:01 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The final layouts of the cruise book have been turned in to the guys that will ship it to the printer. My work on the book is done.

Which is why it's unfortunate that someone pointed out on one page I used a nickname for a senior officer without checking to see if that officer doesn't mind said nickname. And I put my name in the book, so it won't be hard for him to find me if he is not amused.

Ah well, no sense worrying about it, I'll be out in six months anyway.

Posted by: Boviate at 04:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The last event in our port visit to Sihanoukville, Cambodia, was a formal reception hosted by the Navy and the US Ambassador. There were probably fifty American civilians, fifty Navy and Marine officers and SNCOs, and a hundred Cambodian visitors. A live band, fresh catered food, and a substantial selection of ethanol-based lubricants completed the picture. It was all held down in the hangar bar, and off limits to hoi-polloi such as your humble author. My staff sergeant was "voluntold" to attend, which he did with poor grace. Apparently the food was good, but the lines to the bar were very long.

Although I couldn't go to the party, I did have a funny encounter. I was going to the evening maintenance meeting, in the squadron ready room. That's where flight briefs are held, so it's full of comfy furniture. Anyway, I walked in, and there was a Marine major and a lady. The Marine was a groundsider, so he didn't have any business in the ready room. The lady was probably embassy staff, and young and lithesome. I gave them the eye and said "Can I help you, ma'am, sir?" The major gave me a gimlet glare and said "We're fine, corporal." Then the lady asked why I was wearing a colorful patch on my uniform, and hey, I need to be polite and answer. I started with a simple explanation of it as a squadron symbol, but the glare of the major was amusing me, so I extended into a discussion of unit pride and the organization of naval aviation. The major was transparently desperate to get rid of me, and the lady seemed amused by that. By the time I wrapped up my exposition, the other guys were arriving for the meeting, so now there were twenty Marines and a couple of senior staff NCOs in there, giving these two the hairy eyeball. The meeting was about to start, so I wrapped up, thanked the lady for her time. She thanked me politely, the major thanked me rather impolitely, and he dragged her away. I even invited them to watch our meeting.

I guess I'm a small-souled and cruel person. But the way I read it, that officer was trying to use our squadron ready room as the site of an assignation with a cute civilian. And if I can't get any on this boat, I'll be damned if I make it easy for some groundpounding officer to borrow my spacees to get his!

Posted by: Boviate at 11:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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