U.S. military action in Vietnam was a piece in the global Cold War struggle. After Vietnamese nationalists overthrew French colonialists in the 1950s, the country was divided between the Communist north and the anti-Communist south. In the ensuing conflict, Washington backed the south, fearing that a Communist takeover could cascade through Southeast Asia. The first U.S. forces engaged in the conflict in secret, by way of Cambodia. As the civil war intensified in the 1960s, the United States expanded its operations in the region, deploying some 3 million American troops over time, but U.S. forces struggled to gain ground as they fought in difficult and unfamiliar terrain against extremely capable guerrilla fighters. As the war dragged on and casualties mounted, opposition to the war exploded. By the time American forces withdrew in 1975 and Saigon fell to Ho Chi Minh's Communists, 58,000 Americans and between 1 million and 2 million Vietnamese had died. It was the longest war in U.S. history and the most unpopular American war of the 20th century, but then again what war is popular? In this 1965 photo, paratroopers cross a river in the rain near Ben Cat, in the south.
June 11, 1963, Buddhist monk Quang Duc burns himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection to protest persecution of Buddhists. 
An unidentified U.S. Army soldier sports the slogan "War Is Hell" on his helmet in Vietnam on June 18, 1965.
U.S. Marines emerge from their muddy foxholes at sunrise after a third night of attacks by North Vietnamese troops on Sept. 21, 1966.
The body of an American paratrooper killed in action near the Cambodian border is raised to an evacuation helicopter in Vietnam in 1966. 
Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon on Jan. 1, 1966. 
A soldier of the U.S. Seventh Marines carries a puppy in his pocket after rescuing it during an operation southwest of Da Nang in Vietnam on Jan. 22, 1968.
South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, shoots suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street on Feb. 1, 1968.
U.S. Army medic James E. Callahan of Pittsfield, Mass., 
A South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband, found with 47 others in a mass grave near Hue in April 1969. .jpg)
Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., on March 17, 1973, after returning home from Vietnam, where he had spent five years as a prisoner of war. This image came to symbolize the end of U.S. involvement in the war for many.
U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon on April 29, 1975. 
1) Arnold and a doll. This man is the governor of a state now. Who let that happen?
2) 
3, 4) How do you think they say WTF is 
Rapture gridlock? 
5) What do you think he jams to? What's his groove?
6) It is against Swiss law to dispose of a large number of urns 
The last place I listen to music is all my own. In my car I can experiment with changing my mood, where I can listen to it as loud or soft as I want, where I can sing in my own voice and not the goofy one I use for Laine. For the two hours a day that I am alone in my car I finally get to have my music. At my volume. Here is where Commandermander the Music Militant comes out. I typically burn a new CD every day, my moods and attitudes change so quickly that usually what I totally wanted to hear yesterday is totally giving me a headache today. I’ve always got CD’s tossed all over my car, and they don’t normally have labels, just a date. It’s fun sometimes to pick up a random CD to see what I was feeling January 8th of last year. I have a monkey head CD case that I toss some of these in and it’s like my own little Price is Right game every time I reach in. You don’t know what you’ll get, could be a can of green beans or it could be a car, you know? The other day I reached in and pulled a CD out of my monkey head and it was out of one of the middle sleeves and it had been doubled with another unlabeled CD and they stuck together a little so I knew it was old. The first song was a happy one, one that made me want to hit the repeat button but I didn’t, I let it play through, the second song was more of a bouncy one, I bounced and flounced where it was appropriate, and then the next song came on and it was THAT song. The one song that works in that moment, no other song is appropriate. It’s the song I needed to hear but didn’t know I was waiting on. It’s the up lifter, the joy bringer, it was what I needed at that exact moment, and I got that feeling in my chest, that bursting from the inside feeling that makes me need to sing, because if I don’t sing I‘ll blow up, literally implode in on myself and die. It’s intense. And every time that happens to me is different, this time it started out normal enough, almost background noise then the beat started to pull me in, the words don’t mean anything but I still want to sing them, the beat isn’t much but still I want to tap my toes, the rhythm isn’t special but I want to dance. I can feel the bass in my chest the drums in my head and the cry of the guitar in my heart so fiercely that pulling the car over and spinning wildly in the median sounds like a brilliant idea. 
