Hands up who likes M*A*S*H?

Ok, the rest of you can piss off.

Philistines.

Now we have sorted that out, one of my very favourite songs, and song videos, is Out in the Fields by Gary Moore and the late Phil Lynnott Man, those guys were HOT, especially the gorgeous Gary and his tight jeans and the way he stroked that guitar...



...er, anyway, what they sang about was sort of how no one ever really wins in a war. I always felt, when I listened to this song, that war was in a way forcing people to commit suicide, cos the whole point is that someone is required to die.

"...There'll be no prisoners taken when the day is done. No flag or uniform ever stopped a bullet from a gun..."

Another of the songs I always liked was the theme from M*A*S*H. Those guys were in a war - the Korean War. The tune was written by Johnny Mandel and appeared in its full form in 1970 as the theme song for the M*A*S*H movie. Its a much darker song. Tuneful, mournful. And that Hawkeye.. so deep, so dark, so tortured ...

I like tortured.

"...'Cause suicide is painless, it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please.
...and you can do the same thing if you choose."



But it had almost a passive belligerence about it, an "I can do what I want to and you can't stop me" attitude. But it was still war, and people were still dying.

Not so geographically far away is Japan - a country that played a more brutal game of war, a culture that took suicide to a whole new level, made it a thing of honour, of ceremony, of retribution and repentance. Japan has the highest suicide rate among industrialised nations. More people die by suicide than by traffic accidents. Seppuku, or Hara Kiri existed legitimately for the better part of a thousand years and though it was finally outlawed in 1868, it was last publicly performed in 1970 as an act of anarchy. It reared its head again in 1990 when a 58 year old worker used a very sharp wee fish knife and dealt to himself as a protest at forced retirement. They even gave it a name. And don't forget the Kamikaze pilots, the "Divine Wind" in World War II - they died for the Emperor in the name of a 700 year old historical occurrence.

Nothing really changes. Except there are more wars. And people write new songs.

And Im still eating oranges.

I have a very sharp knife. I think I'll go order one of those Sunkist oranges to jump on it.