Venti, nonfat caramel chai, please.

Toby Keith is singing about half a mile from my house. Right now.

I don't know if that "does it" for any of you, but I'm kinda on the fence. I'm just not the type of person who thinks going to musical concerts is a big deal. I mean, I've been to some concerts before; once I saw Vince Gill and Reba McEntire, and one time I saw Aerosmith, and one time I saw a third group/person (apparently that made such an impression I cannot even manage to remember who it was, and no, I wasn't on drugs at the time, I only did drugs when I was pregnant). And I will say the Aerosmith concert was one of the best things I've ever seen, and to this day they are my most favorite group in the whole wide, wide world, and Stephen Tyler is so freaking awesome that I can't even talk about him in front of Scott because it feels like ADULTERY. But to be the type of person who camps out for tickets, who feels like if I don't get to go a piece of me will be lost forever? Hmmm.

So here's the deal. They started putting up posters all over post that TOBY KEITH IS COMING about a month ago. And boy oh boy did tongues start wagging. Suddenly all the people here in this craphole had something to live for. OH THE ANTICIPATION. It was like pure heaven. Toby Freaking Keith. Here. In Korea. For all of us to go see!

And then. Then the S Korean navy had to go get blown up by the N Koreans some unseen something or another floating independently of the ship.

Let me take a second to say that I am truly, deeply, sorry for all their losses. Their Army is not a voluntary army, so the government makes these young guys serve a tour. And for them to take these young men, and make them serve, and promise their mamas they were going to be fine, and then put them on a ship and lose them, not only to death, but to the sea (as some were not recovered)? It's very sad. The whole country is in mourning. Right now, when Toby Keith is here to sing to us.

I am not saying this in any way to take anything away from any soldiers/airmen/sailors/marines the US has lost in combat. It makes me all kinds of angry when people dismiss the hardships of a military family by saying "Well, they signed up for this."

"They chose to be in the military, so it's their problem if they have to live in Korea where it smells like wet cabbage."

"They chose to be in the military, so it's their fault their kids will be brats."

"They chose to be in the military, so if they are worried about their Daddy/Mama never coming home from Iraq/Afghanistan, well, they chose that life. It's their problem. Don't feel badly for them."

Ahem. At least we didn't choose to be asses about it.

Anyway, I totally understand that when a tragedy of this magnitude occurs it's kind of hard to cement a timeline into place that will appease everyone. Heck, they were still looking for bodies, and here all us ugly Americans were, shopping for what we were going to wear when we all went to see Toby.

So someone from Korea stepped up like, on Tuesday or some day ridiculously close to the concert, and decided that it was totally inappropriate for all us Americans to have an outdoor concert full of good times while S Korea was in mourning. I've heard people ask, and I have even wondered myself about, just how long the period of mourning is going to last. I know realistically you cannot put a time period on grief; each person moves through grief at their own speed. But because there could be no outdoor singing and whatnot, the USO moved Toby from the golf course to the inside of the gym. And the seating accommodations went from "there's room for everyone" to "1200 people can come".

And my goodness did it hit the fan after that.

So people took to Facebook, and it was ugly. And the page I frequent on there, the one I like to read to Scott in the evenings because people get on there for no reason other than to stir up crap and it's hilarious, it literally crashed. They even started to police the site, and you could watch it in real time, and comments would pop up, and when the page refreshed they would be gone, blamed on some "facebook glitch".

Then, someone decided there should be tickets. You must get issued a ticket to get into the concert. And somehow, someway, 1200 tickets are going to be equally distributed between units and companies made up of 25,000 soldiers AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS. But it would be fair, mind you, so there could be no complaints. Let me tell you something: "fair" is a state of mind, not a state of being. That's what I think, anyway. There's NO WAY this is going to come close to working. You want to know what would make this fair? Lower enlisted get to go. Period. Those guys, the ones who live in the barracks and don't have a car, that you see at the mini mall at night eating tacos and watching basketball on the big screen from two days ago that everyone already knows the final score to? Letting those be the ones who get to go. THAT would be fair. Only, guess what? The Army didn't ask me what I thought would be the best way to handle it, so instead they just gave out tickets.

And what do you know, it turned out kind of badly. And people went on Facebook and trashed the system, while others said they didn't know what they would do if they didn't get tickets, because their life would be over if they didn't get to go see Toby because he was their favorite and they had waited their whole life to see him and they had gotten a babysitter and everything and NOW WHAT? WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?

And little by little people started getting tickets. People who had been trash talking suddenly came up with tickets. There were units that were given a total of 10 tickets, and suddenly there were people with 4, 5, even 6 tickets. Today people were actually UNFRIENDED on Facebook because of this. I am not even joking. Lines were drawn, people were called names, bad names, and insults were hurled and the poor moderator of the Facebook page kept pleading "Remember the fallen Koreans!" and it didn't matter. Everyone had moved past the "why" of it all and were too busy feeling cheated to care anymore.

This afternoon someone decided to give out "space-A" tickets. I sincerely hope all 10 MPs here are hanging out near the gym when THAT has to be dealt with. Because I'm sure no one is going to get pushy over who was in which position in line. This will be talked about for months. Months. Not the fallen S Korean sailors, but the fact that so-and-so didn't get to go to the Toby Keith concert because a: the S Koreans were being unreasonable, or b: someone hogged all the tickets because they're in good with so-and-so. And it's a shame, because it's such a small, small thing. Or maybe I just feel that way because I've never seen him in concert, so I don't know what I'm missing. Or maybe it's because I'm just not a concert type person. I'm not sure. I just think it's a big overreaction. I don't feel in any way that my not going to this concert takes anything away from my quality of life. A month from now Toby will be a distant memory and you know what? I'll still be living in Korea. And it will still stink like wet cabbage.

I mean, let's talk about shutting down the Starbucks here if you are concerned with quality of life. (shudder)

Gawd.