News From Bangkok

THE NEW RELIGION

2007-11-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

I think I have been blessed with a small vocabulary. Why blessed? Because I have a driving need to be understood. It frustrates me when I am misinterpreted. Because my vocabulary limits me to simple words, I must keep my language plain and simple. Sometimes it is frustrating not to have the exact word I need immediately available, but I make do. If I had a vocabulary like William F. Buckley I would be tempted to show it off, just as he does, and leave many readers baffled, just as he does.

I mention this because a few weeks ago Scott Adams did a couple of essays on cognitive dissonance. Now I know he needed to have a name for the ailment he was writing about and perhaps that is a label others had put on the ailment before, but it left me, and I would guess 90% of his readers, scratching their heads. The few who were in the loop were delighted to write in and dispute the label. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

But the two essays were an excellent job of reporting and observing. Note that Adams does nothing more than report and observe:

Recently I saw the best case of cognitive dissonance I have ever seen. It was on Bill Maher's show, Real Time, which I love. Bill was interviewing Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, who has a book about global warming, called "Cool It." The economist made the following points clearly and succinctly:

1. Global warming is real, and people are a major cause.

2. When considering the problems that global warming will cause, we shouldn't ignore the benefits of global warming, such as fewer deaths from cold.

3. The oceans rose a foot in the last hundred years, and the world adapted, so the additional rise from global warming might not be as big a problem as people assume.

4. Developing economical fossil fuel alternatives is the only rational solution to global warming because countries such as China and India will use the cheapest fuel, period. If only the developed countries who can afford alternatives change their ways, it’s not enough to make a dent in the problem.

The Danish economist’s argument doesn't fall into the established views about global warming. He wasn't denying it is happening, or denying humans are a major cause. But he also wasn’t saying we should drive hybrid cars, since he thinks it won’t be enough to help. He thinks we need to make solar (or other alternatives) more economical. That’s the magic bullet. His views don’t map to either popular camp on this issue, and it created a fascinating cognitive dissonance in Bill Maher (a fan of hybrid cars) and his panelists. Here are their reactions after the interview:

Rob Thomas said the interview "...confused the shit out of me." (Yet the economist was completely clear and communicated well.)

Salman Rushdie said, jokingly, that what he heard was "There's no connection between smoking and lung cancer." By that he meant the author was denying that fossil fuels contribute to global warming. (The economist said exactly the opposite, and clearly.)

Bill Maher said, "...20 years later, this guy is going to say, 'You know what? Yeah, there is global warming." (The economist already said exactly that during the interview. In fact, his entire book is based on global warming being true and hastened by fossil fuels.)

You can see the full transcript for yourself here. The interview is about 60% into the show.

http://billmaher.com/?page_id=209

Bill Maher is a brilliant guy, whether you agree with his views or not. Salman Rushdie is brilliant too. I don’t know about Rob Thomas, but he looks bright enough. Why couldn’t these three people hear anything the economist was saying? It looks to me like a classic case of cognitive dissonance . They literally couldn’t recognize that the economist was on their side because he suggested considering both the positive and negative effects of global warming.

And then here is an excerpt from his second essay a couple of days later:

But here’s the most interesting part. My blog on how Bill Maher and his panelists misunderstood Lomborg has caused a new round of cognitive dissonance. I have now been labeled a supporter of Lomborg’s arguments simply because I said I understood what he said on a TV show. Check this out. It’s somewhat jaw-dropping:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/28/21480/1840

Now let me opinionate. Global warming has become the new religion. Like all religions, if you don’t accept all the dogma, you are labeled a heretic. Not to pick on any one religion because they all have these faults, in the Catholic religion you can accept the father, the son and the holy ghost, but if you doubt Mary was virgin you are ladled a heretic and excommunicated.

Lomborg was labeled a heretic by the panel and excommunicated because he did not buy into all the dogma. It is a fascinating story for many reasons one of which would seem to be the need for humans to latch onto unthinking dogma and treat it with reverence. And, as Adams says, these are brilliant guys. There must something in the human makeup that makes religion, any religion, a necessity.

In the highlands of Vietnam they believe in wood spirits and build their houses in a manner to thwart their entry. But that is another story.

A-ROD

2007-11-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

If I were ever to get into a fantasy baseball league I would go for all middle range players. I’d never go for a super high priced super star. If you avoid the high prices you can fill your bench with competent, productive players. Some would be busts, but odds are some would have breakout years. In the end, you should have a competitive team.

I think the same thing works in the real world of baseball. Fill every position and the bench with competent players and hope for a breakout year from some. If you give one player a third of the team budget you must get deadwood fill-ins (replacement level) players for some positions.

Player agent Scott Boras is asking 35 mil a year for the services of Alex Rodriquez according to reports.

NEW YORK -- The Yankees were told by agent Scott Boras that they could not meet with Alex Rodriguez unless they presented an extension offer that guaranteed the star $350 million "as a floor."

That seems like a lot of money taken by itself but let’s see what that much money could have bought in the past season.

Miguel Tejeda SS with 18 homers and 81 RBIs made 14 mil.

Jose Guillen RF with 23 homers and 101 RBIs made 9 mil

Mike Lowell 3B with 21 homers and 120 RBIs made 9 mil

One had an off year, one had a good year and one had an excellent year based on their career statistics. Combined, filling three positions, they hit 62 homers and knocked in 302 runs. Combined, filling three positions, they made 32 mil. Two will be free agents and Tejeda is reportedly available for trade. All three shouldn’t cost much more than 35 mil for next season.

That’s what money will buy and that would be my druthers

WINNING THE WAR

2007-10-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve written about the Bier Garten in downtown Bangkok before without identifying it by name. That is the big, barnlike joint that is my favorite hangout/office where most of this stuff is written. It’s my kind of place, lots of hookers, no pimps, and a bunch of old farangs hanging around. It’s one of the few places in town in which I can be inconspicuous. It’s also one of the noisiest joints in town.

One time, on the way back from the can, I passed behind this cute chick trying to enchant an older guy (what else?) at one of the many bars. As I passed behind them, I let out a huge fart, drowned out by the noise, and kept on quickly. My only reward? She skewed up her noise and gave the old guy a disgusted look.

That was enough reward for me in my little life. At the time, with more than a couple of beers in me, I thought it might have been the funniest thing I’d ever done.

On reflection, I still think so. Am I pathetic or not?

But think about it, if we can’t do jokes involving farts, the terrorists have won. I am just doing my share to win the war.

On that subject, Thai women wrap the clothing around their butts as tightly as any I have ever seen. They almost wear armor around their breasts but they make sure every curve of their asses is on display. That’s the way I would have it if I had to choose.

The other day I was on an up escalator in the subway when I noticed some Muslim women just above me. They were wearing the Muslim headscarves but their asses were wrapped very tightly in silk, showing off every curve. That was a first. I had never seen a Muslim lady dressed like that before.

Maybe we’re winning.

THE BEST PLACES TO LIVE-2

2007-09-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE:There are some pretty ladies here but that has nothing to do with my decision to live here. No, really.)

(You can read the article referred to *HERE*.)

Okay, on that last piece I was mostly funnin’. But think about it. If the sun comes up at 3AM on June 30 in Copenhagen, what time does it come up on Dec. 30? I’m not going to research this. Why research when guessing is so easy? So I would guess the sun comes up about 9AM and goes down around 6PM. Just the thought of that depresses me. And Copenhagen is the southernmost of the Scandinavian major cities. Why the hell would anyone want to live in places like those?

But The Reader’s Digest has decreed, based on U. N. statistics and the Environmental Sustainability Index drawn up by Yale and Columbia universities and the World Economic Forum, that these are the best places in the world to live. They must be right because they have the statistics. How dumb can research get? They never cease to amaze me.
Also in this “valuable” study they rate the major cities of the world. Here’s some of that:

European countries -- again, led by Scandinavia -- also top the Reader's Digest assessment of 72 cities for their quality of life. The criteria for this include public transport, parks, air quality, rubbish recycling and the price of electricity.

The winner is Stockholm, followed by Oslo, Munich and Paris.

Asia's mega-cities fare the worst. At the bottom is Beijing, preceded by Shanghai, Mumbai, Guangzhou and Bangkok.

Again this is based on statistics. Why go look around when statistics are so available and you don’t have to get out of your comfortable chair? (Hmmm, sounds like me.)

Here’s one point, when I traveled my work usually required me to live far from population centers. That taught me that major population centers are the worst places by which to judge the people of the country. Would you want The United States to be judged by the inhabitants of NYC? Well, I found the same to be true of almost every place I’ve been. If you want to find friendly people, get away from the population centers.

Another thing, when my company sent me to a large city they always booked me into a nearly first class hotel. I got pissed off in Tokyo because, except for the size of the room, there was no way to tell what town I was in. I got out of there and into a hotel with all those sliding panels and the rest of that Japanese stuff.

In Hong Kong I didn’t change hotels because there were a few great restaurants very near. But I did go to the docks and eat with the workers just to get a feel of the place. Can you imagine a U. N. researcher doing something like that? The food down there was pretty good by the way.

So when the realization that I was finally retired sank in, I began exploring for the best place to live. I did not look into statistics. I knew how to truly find out about a place. Bangkok was far from the first place I visited, but after only two days I knew this was the place for me.

Isn’t it odd that number one on my list would be near the bottom of The Reader’s Digest’s list?

THE BEST PLACES TO LIVE

2007-09-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

The Reader’s Digest has done a valuable (valuable meant to be sarcastic) study to rank the best places to live on earth. For this exhaustive study they used most of the politically correct (that means dumb) statistics they could find.

The ranking combines environmental factors, such as air and water quality, respect for biodiversity and greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as social factors, such as gross domestic product, access to education, unemployment rate and life expectancy.
They probably weighted all these dumb statistics and gave them point scores and added everything up and there you go.

I have traveled a lot and came up with my own criteria for finding the best place to live which I will write about later. In the meantime here is their partial result:

Nordic countries take the greatest care of their environment and their people, according to a ranking published on Thursday by the publication Reader's Digest.
Finland comes top of the 141-nation list, followed by Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and then Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Australia.

Well sir, let me say something about that. The Scandinavian airline, SAS, put me up in a Copenhagen hotel when I was enroute to an even worse place. The date happened to be June 30. What does that have to do with it? Well I didn’t bother to close the window curtains and the goddamned sun came blasting into my room at three o’clock in the morning, local time.

I called downstairs to find out what was going on. “The sun is shining in my room,” I told them, “and it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

The guy on the phone spoke pretty good English as everyone should. “Did you try closing the curtains, sir?”

“What the hell does that have to do with the sun shining at 3 in the morning?”

“Sir?”

“Can you do something about it? I mean, is the world coming to an end or something?”

“The sun always comes up at 3 this time of the year, sir. Would you like someone to come up and close your curtains?”

Well there you have it. How can you deal with people like that? The sun comes up at 3 and they treat it like an everyday thing.

Who would want to live in a place like that?

GAYS IN IRAN?

2007-09-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and friend.)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made this statement at Columbia:

'In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who has told you that we have it.'

I think this may be a problem of defining our terms. He may mean “flaming” homosexual. I spent eighteen continuous months in Iran and never saw a “flaming” homosexual. On the other hand I would estimate that over 90 per cent of the adult male population has had homosexual relations, many, if not most, on a regular basis. When contact with unmarried women is banned, what would you expect?

It’s funny when a man is brought before a judge for having sex with another man. The verdict is easy. “Of course he is guilty. We all do that.”

HERE IS IRONY

2007-09-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is from the Boston Globe:

Weight-loss surgery extends life spans by years

New research could spawn major shift in who is eligible for surgery

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff August 22, 2007

For the first time, researchers have convincingly shown that losing weight through stomach surgery can extend the lives of severely obese patients, dramatically reducing deaths from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Physicians said the findings are so persuasive that they could spawn a major shift in who is eligible for weight-loss surgery, a procedure once relegated to the most dangerously obese because of fears about complications. Now, patients typically have to be at least 100 pounds overweight before doctors will consider the operation and before health plans will pay the bill, which can exceed $30,000 a patient.

So here’s the plan: We eat like m****r-f****rs, get morbidly obese, our health plan will then pay for an operation to staple our stomachs, and then we live longer.

What could be more perfect than that? It’s foolproof.

The full article is *HERE*

LADY’S CHOICE

2007-08-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

In looking over the stories I’ve written it has occurred to me that I may be seen as a womanizer. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have always been envious of womanizers. Something in my upbringing or in my inherited genes has always made me awkward around women, especially American women. It’s probably because I fear they can read my mind and know how much I want to get them naked in bed.

That mindset defeats a would-be womanizer.

There’s one sure thing about American women: if they know you want it bad, there’s no way in the world you’re going to get it.

Study that last phrase. It is the secret to life on earth if you believe, as I do, that sex is the most important thing in life. If you want it, you must pretend that you don’t. That is an act that I never perfected.

However glorious things happen in man-woman relations that make it all more than worthwhile. Sometimes an honest woman might come along who shows she wants you as much as you want her. Trust me, that is something to hang on to. Pursuing that avenue of mutual attraction resulted in my two decade relationship with my sexy American lady.

What could be more natural than mutual attraction? That is pure animal instinct. If the lady is attracted but hides it, she is a game player. Some game players might work out but that is a red flag.

In addition to game players, there are those who consciously narrow down their field. Read Cereal for Breakfast (below and in Best Of and at letterfrombangkok.net) for an example of this aberration. In that story there is a large, over forty lady living in the Midwest who only has interest in meeting Jews. That is sad. But wait a minute. The cute little blonde that I mention in the same story had her own exclusions. Now we had one thing in common. We were single parents of 8-year-olds whom I was managing in Little League. Not quite enough for a lifetime bond.

She told me on our first date, in my car, just after I had picked her up, she told me, “I could never get serious with anyone who didn’t love Elvis Presley and Neil Diamond.”

I kept a straight face, I swear, and I didn’t even glance at her. I didn’t want to upset her in any way because she had that marvelous treasure between her legs that is the trump card in any relationship. Is that comparable to the “Jews only” preference above? Damn right it is.

The irony struck me of the similarity in the closing scenes of Smiley’s People where George Smiley (played by Alec Guiness) has his philandering wife tell him, “Poor George. You haven’t a clue, have you?” (Or words to that effect.) This after Smiley has crushed a Russian spy network.

I don’t compare myself to George Smiley. But I had been in a couple of wars, an occupation and several other adventures. Trouble was there was no way I could make any of that interesting to that cute blonde. I was doomed to be a boring person. Like Smiley’s wife said to him, I hadn’t a clue.

SOME JOKES

2007-08-24T03:26:00.000-07:00

This one I heard somewhere:

A priest, a rabbi and a parrot go into a bar.

The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of a joke?”

This one I made up:

The sweet young girl was asked how she got pregnant. She answered, “We were in bed and I thought we were playing spoons but he was playing forks.”

I’m not sure about this one:

Researchers in Germany are raising alarms about the newest threat to the environment: belches and flatulence from people over 70.

There are millions of people in the world over 70 and scientists say every one of them gives off an amount of methane gas equal to more than 4,600 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. That is more than twice the amount of CO2 emitted on a round-trip airplane flight from Oslo to Santiago, Chile. And, because methane is stronger than carbon dioxide, it is considered even more harmful to the environment.

The chief researcher, Hans Blizer, said they are discussing a solution to this problem.

ANOTHER SINGULARITY

2007-08-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

This is embarrassing. A young lady gave up her seat to me today on the subway. That is a first and it tore me up in several directions. For one, as my reader knows, I am a graduate of MIT which, as we all know, is the Massachusetts Institute of Toe Dancing. Even though I haven’t performed in years, this incident pretty much told me my career was pretty much finis. It was a melancholy moment.

On another level was the moral question of whether you should check out the ass on a lady who has just given you her seat as she walks away. That one wasn’t even close. Of course I did.

The toughest one was whether to accept the seat. I hesitated for that one but finally took it. Not to accept a gift diminishes the giver. I showed my respect by taking the seat.

I hope that doesn’t happen too often. All those decisions wore me out. I needed a nap.

BROWNIE PANCAKES

2007-07-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Some foods are tremendously flexible. Bread is an obvious one. Pasta less so. I wrote before about cooking an entire package of pasta at a time even if not using it all immediately. The remainder I refrigerate. Many toppings work very well with it and not just tomato based toppings.

Pancakes are also a flexible food. Try cooking a sausage with the batter or separately. I prefer that to any hot dog bun. Mustard blends in with the whole much better than you might expect.

Here’s another invention from the kitchen of the Guest mansion. We had a box of pancake mix and a package of brownie mix sitting side by side on a shelf for weeks. What would happen, I wondered, if I combined them? I thought about it for days. What held me back? The fear of failure, as usual. But then early one morning, long before anyone was up, I went ahead and did it. It turned out great.

Here’s how I did it. I mixed the pancake batter (400G nearly a pound) according to the instructions on the package. I added two tablespoons of vegetable oil and one egg along with the brownie mix and blended it all.

Plop some down on a heated, oiled skillet.

Here’s the tricky part. Chocolate scorches relatively quickly. As soon as the bubbles get solid on the top, turn the pancake over. It will still be a little runny on top so use a firm stroke with the spatula and flip it. The other side will cook quickly.

It made a couple of dozen large, delicious, brownie pancakes. I served them with nothing but gobs of melted butter on top but I can imagine how strawberry syrup would work.

Not for everyday but, what the hell, you deserve a treat.

TWO SINGULARTIES

2007-07-27T01:15:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Hey! Wouldn't she make a great weather lady? Call CNN.)

I had two firsts here in Bangkok on the same day. This after I’d lived here for 3+ years. After taking hundreds of cabs I got picked up by my first female cab driver. The picture on the license was a guy. “He drives at night,” she told me. “I drive by day.” Okay, I didn’t pursue it. What the hell.

The other first thing was at the subway turnstiles. I’ve gone through these turnstiles, and those on the elevated trains, hundreds of times. For the first time today I saw someone who couldn’t fit through. She had to be let through a gate at the side.

Now these gates are kinda narrow, by American standards. In the States the ACLU would be on these stiles like lions on a newborn buffalo. A large proportion of the population there couldn’t fit through them, so maybe they would have a point.

But I got to thinking. I’ve been here in Bangkok well over three years and saw only one turnstile challenged person. By contrast, on American TV I would guess there is a “too fat for turnstiles” person on half of the shows. That is not a narrow sample. We get American TV 24 hours a day on 8 channels. I think they go out of their way to put fat in our faces. CNN has an immensely fat weather girl. I think that is absurd but I could be wrong.

Am I prejudiced against fat people? Well of course I am! Almost everyone is. Even fat people prefer skinny people.

I don’t feel contempt for our fat brothers and sisters. OK, maybe a little, but it is more sadness. You only have one life, why live it in a fat suit?

As I wrote somewhere else, “Obesity is the weakness you can see.”

In the meantime, I live in Thailand, the land of skinny people, except for that one person.

SINGERS

2007-07-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Paul Potts.)

On the subject of singers, a friend emailed me a video of a phone salesman, Paul Potts, who has become a sensation in England on their version of American Idol.

Before I get into that let me break rules by making some totally disconnected comments.

I am writing this in that barn-like structure I described in Fifty Hookers (below). The moment I got here the rain started pouring down on the corrugated metal roof making a thunderous racket. I see no leaks in the roof despite many exhaust fans up there. There are no more than 20 men in here and the girls outnumber them 3:1. Just saying.

In other news, I was in a massage parlor once where I observed a time clock right next to a Buddhist shrine. The girls would punch in and then pray to the shrine. I thought that was interesting.

Okay, back to that singer. I had heard about that performance and tried to get it on You-tube but You-tube is one of the many things censored here in Thailand. In this case, something to do with insulting the King. You can hear and see the performance *HERE* and *HERE*. It is great. The audience was enthralled as was the “evil’ Simon Cowell. Many might wonder why this operatic performer hasn’t been discovered before; surely he did auditions.

Here is my evaluation. The guy has the Mario Lanza disease. He has a great voice but limited range; limited for an operatic tenor. I don’t think he can reach the top notes required of a lead tenor as written. Opera is closed to him unless they will lower the key to fit his range. They did that for Lanza but I doubt they will do it again.

This is to take nothing away from his voice or his performance. He is good and I enjoy hearing him. I’m just putting it into perspective.

BARBRA STREISAND

2007-07-21T00:02:00.000-07:00

I read Roger Simon everyday. He’s an interesting writer and we have similar views and backgrounds in that we are both disillusioned liberals. Today I had to take exception. Here is part of what he posted:

But I had a good guffaw when I read the following in an Evening Standard review of her recent London concert:

Then, such is the magic of music and music sung by probably (if we forget Ella Fitzgerald) the 20th century's finest female voice, before she had finished caressing the first line of the opening Starting Here, Starting Now, everyone had forgiven her everything.

Say what?

"The 20th century's finest female voice"? Let's be kind to the reviewer - one John Aizlewood - and assume he was referring to popular singers only and disqualify the likes of Callas, Sutherland, Sills, Tebaldi, Norman, etc. The thought of Streisand doing La Traviata sends me into a fit of giggles.

And if you're talking about Broadway singers, Streisand never came anywhere close to Ethel Merman when it came to belting out a song.

Say what you want about la Barbra, she is a great singer, without doubt in my mind, one of the greatest ever that it has been our privilege to hear. So I had to post a comment:

Of course it's all a matter of taste. To my taste Barbra was the best, airhead that she is. And I'm sure she could easily sing La Traviata. Hell, I can still sing some of the male arias from that. I never would have thought that Linda Ronstadt could have sung in Pirates of Penzance but look at the great job she did in that.

Don't talk about Ethel Merman in the same breath. Barbra has the greatest ear I have ever heard from any singer. (Ear meaning pitch.) Merman never hit a note on the nose in her life. She sang everything sharp. Some of us couldn't bear to listen to her.

That pretty much says it all.

FATHERHOOD

2007-07-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

So Al Gore’s son got caught for a lot of stuff. (Read about it here). If the American pattern holds true, Al Gore will now be put in charge of preventing a lot of that same stuff. The rule seems to be, if you fail in your immediate family, they put you in charge of the whole country.

Some years ago Art Linkletter’s daughter died of what he claimed was a drug related problem. (It looked more like suicide, which is worse.) He was immediately put in charge of drug prevention for the country. I’m sure there is some logic in all of that.

Some news reports are editorializing by saying that Gore’s kid was an adult and, therefore, it did not reflect on Mr. Gore. I take exception. I can’t believe that anything the offspring might do does not reflect on the father and the father’s situation. (Of course if he was in jail during the entire raising of his children, he is probably innocent in a case like this.)

Is there a time limit of parental responsibility? Mr. Gore and his defenders would go to the law, of course, and point to the legal definition of adulthood. But how about in the real world? How about in the world in which the rest of have to live? Is there a time limit? Yeah there is. But I don’t know what it is. My oldest son is 40 now and I still feel responsibility for what he does. A favorite of mine, Richard Farnsworth, killed himself to avoid a painful death. He was 80. His father is innocent in that case, or maybe he gets some credit for raising such a strong person.

On the other hand, in youth, what the hell does age have to do with it? That is nothing but a legal argument. 17 or 23, isn’t he still his father’s kid? When does the father wash his hands of his product? I suspect it is when the kid becomes a liability.

In some cases when the kid falls the parent becomes a crime crusader. Guilt drives him to apprehend those responsible for their offspring’s death, forgetting, I suppose, to look in the mirror.

The news media will alternately excuse or accuse in those situations, depending on how they want to slant the story.

I seem to have a big advantage in these happenings. I remember my childhood where no one else seems to remember theirs. The kids I was raised with who turned out bad did not surprise me. They had crappy parents. When a kid offs himself there has to be some reflection on his family life during his upbringing.

The guys with decent parents never turned out bad or did themselves in. OK, this is anecdotal testimony, but it is a hell of a lot more accurate than the slanted angles of the news media.

JEWDAR

2007-07-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: The Germans did not have Jewdar so they had to put markers on their friendly, neighborhood Jews.)

Any man who is not aware of “gaydar” is pretty imperceptive or one ugly SOB. Who hasn’t experienced another guy staring with that hooker look?

Well I’ve been watching several movies and TV shows that reminded me of that. The viewer is carried along in a romantic story and suddenly it culminates in a Jewish wedding.

Wait a minute. Go back a bit. When did the couple find out they were Jewish? How come the guy doesn’t say at the ceremony, “What? You’re Jewish too?” It could happen as far as the viewer is concerned because there was no hint in the story they both were Jews. It was kept a secret from the viewer.

I wonder why.

No, I’m being deliberately obtuse. I know why. Lenny Bruce did this routine about being approached after a performance by a couple in the Midwest. After some verbal sparring the old man asks hopefully, plaintively, “So… Are you Jewish?” When he responds, yes, all barriers are down. He’s invited for a meal at their house and introduced to a young woman. It’s a funny bit.

The writers of these screenplays have devised a way to avoid that awkward, hopeful, plaintive question. They have invented Jewdar. The couple just knows even if the viewer does not.

It’s a way to sidestep that, “Jews don’t assimilate,” problem. No need to point it out.

THIS IS FOR MY ONE READER

2007-07-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

I have to share this with my one reader (assuming he/she is in Thailand) as a reward for being here. I have discovered one of the best pasta sauces ever. And, on top of that, it couldn’t be simpler to make.

I am an experimental cook. I like to inventory the cupboard and try to imagine what would work. The experiments seldom fail. Actually they never fail although some might not turn out to be memorable. I may have created dozens of dishes that worked out great but then I forget about and never repeat. I’m going to start putting them in here so there’s some record.

There are only three ingredients for this pasta dish:

A 6 Oz +/- can of red pork or chicken curry. (Thai brand)

A can of Thai spaghetti sauce.

And the pasta of your choice.

You simply combine the curry with the spaghetti sauce and there’s your miracle. Use all the curry and the all little can of spaghetti sauce, or half the large can, per person. The serving size of the pasta is up to you.

This should be served in a bowl because the sauce is a little watery. You could thicken it I suppose but, what the hell? Provide a spoon so as not to waste the sauce.

There you go. There’s your reward.

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

I’m sure you know this:

Always cook the entire package of pasta. It refrigerates very well.

It’s OK to use tap water. The boiling removes all that bad stuff.

Bring water to a rolling boil before tossing in the pasta.

Stir the pasta extensively right away. I use a plastic spatula. Stir again about half way through. You don’t want that crap to meld together.

Never overcook pasta. Every package has a cooking time but give it a taste test. There is less than a one minute window between just right and overcooked. When it’s nearly done turn off the burner. The pasta will cook slower and give you a better chance to get it just right.

2007-07-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: This is a husband seeker but not the one in the story below. Sorry about that. I tried.)

FAKE MORAL OUTRAGE

The original title of this piece was going to be “A Generic Woman” but then I got into it and came up with a better title.

Some people over here in Thailand think I have a pipeline to American men looking for Asian wives. I get pictures sometimes that I post on the internet, but I have no connections and not much interest in the subject.

A friend of my wife visited us dragging a husband seeker along. This friend was pretty interesting. She was a Vietnamese living in Laos married to a Chinese and she spoke passable English along with 4 other languages. As someone who has trouble with one language, I am in awe of multilingual people. So she had my attention and respect.

The Husband Seeker, she explained was 30ish, never married and wanted a man who was not too ugly and no more than 50ish.

“How about someone like me?” I asked. “Someone older but rich?” (See, I can make jokes. Who said I can’t make jokes?)

The Husband Seeker dodged the question by saying he did not need to be rich, so I gathered old was out.

But the Husband Seeker was serious so I gave her a serious evaluation. A makeover would do wonders for her. She was plain by Thai standards. She had Angelina Jolie lips and a little fix-up would make her quite pretty by American standards. I told them this except for the plain part.

But her best asset, I told them, was her figure. She was tallish, slim and had an attractive body. “Let me take her picture in a swim suit,” I proposed. “I will put it on the internet.”

Well sir, you would have thought I said, “Let her suck my you-know-what.” The VN-Laos chick got all uppity and offended. She explained to the Husband Seeker what I had said (though I’m sure there was something added or lost in the translation) so that the HS was totally pissed with me too. I was told they were not interested in men who would want to see her body. How much of the male gender does that eliminate?

Of course I knew exactly what was going on. I had witnessed it many times in Vietnam and America (but thankfully never in Thailand until now). She was faking outrage at one thing because something else was bothering her. What was it? Probably envy. I suspect my entire setup there where I lived in my house bothered her. I think the bitch saw it and didn’t like it and wanted my wife to think there was something wrong with me. She was trying to sow discord.

I could be wrong but I can’t think of another reason for that fake moral outrage. You guys be warned, if you ever see it, get the hall out of there. Dump the bitch. She is trouble.

Anyway, back to the Husband Seeker. She is a generic woman which might be great for someone out there. She is shy, diffident, and I’m sure, obedient. Along with the previous physical description, she might be the perfect woman for a large percentage of the men out there.

One caution: You probably couldn’t bring her to the States for fear she will learn that fake moral outrage trick, not to mention having her “rights” explained to her.

CHESS IN THE FOG OF WAR

2007-07-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: The queen is not pleased with the increased power of the king.)

I learned in my many writing classes not to criticize unless I could suggest an improvement. And so it is with chess. I trashed the game in I Hate Chess (Apr. 11 scroll down) because to be a good player you have memorize many openings and variations reducing the first eleven moves or so to rote; a mere memory challenge. Who the hell wants that?

Here’s my idea on how to improve chess: Introduce the fog of war. Make the opponents invisible until one of your pieces are close to them. There go all the openings out the window.

Here’s how it would work:

All the pieces have the same strength as before and move the same way.

A pawn can “see” in the three spaces in front of it, the one straight ahead and the two diagonals.

All other pieces can “see” one space in all directions except the king.

The king can “see” 3 spaces in all eight directions. This elevates the king to a super offensive piece instead of the passive piece it has been.

The rook, bishop and queen can move as far as wanted in open lanes but can be moved one space at a time during a turn until the player is done. Once the piece is advanced it cannot go back (hands on or hands off is not required). The knight must complete its move once started but may be paused before moving diagonally to finish the movement.

Lost pawns must be replaced immediately at the rate of one for one but only if each side is down a pawn. The pawn is placed on any space in the second row that is vacant. If no space is vacant then the prisoner exchange is postponed until there’s a space vacant.

The king can be put in check by any piece that “sees” it and threatens it. When the king is put in check by any piece out of sight of the king, that piece must exposed. The player with a masked piece that threatens the king has the option of declaring “check.”

This is all off the top of my head and much of it has been envisioned only as I wrote this so there are probably bugs. But doesn’t it sound interesting in not intriguing?

I would require two boards with a partition between and a very sharp person to umpire. That is until a computer program is written.

DIRTY TRICKS 3

2007-07-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

I may have done worse dirty tricks but this one was both mean and hilarious and, in part, unintentional.

I had to take a bonehead English class when going back into the school system at San Francisco City College (OJ’s old school). The students were almost all male. We had failed the Basic English exam required for entrance to the school. The instructor was a lady close to my own age. She was the best teacher I had at any level of schooling. A couple of weeks into the course, she explained how to structure an essay. I absorbed every word.

We were given an assignment to comment on a Russian short story. Using her rules, I wrote a nearly perfect criticism of the story, using brief quotes to prove my points. The piece had a strong beginning and a good summing up. But, scamp that I am, I put a bomb in the middle for her eyes only, never expecting she would read it in class.

She read it in class. When she started I hunkered down and closed my eyes. This was a sweet lady who was reading to a bunch of bonehead males. It is not for nothing they call the course Bonehead English.

Near the middle of the piece she read, “…there is this intercourse between the couple.”

Now I could have used “exchange” or “communication” or other words, but I deliberately used that word to shock or titillate her and to show I knew the alternate meanings.

Well the bomb exploded. To my surprise, it only caught one guy. A goofball at the back lets out a loud guffaw before he realizes he is the only one and he has really, totally screwed up

The teacher gives him a cold stare.

That is one for the ages. Sure, I may have screwed up one guy’s life, but think how happy I made the other 25 boneheads in the class because they didn’t laugh with him.

“ARREST ME”

2007-06-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Wow! What a clever disguise. Who would ever suspect this guy was a criminal?)

This is one for the books. It would be hilarious if he hadn’t just killed a guy. This has to me one of the dumbest criminals ever. I wonder how long he planned his escape. I wonder how many facial tattoos he got while his escape was in the planning stage.

He killed a guard and made a run for it. Was he hoping to blend in with the general population? Is there someplace in the world where he would go unnoticed? The only phrase missing from his face is, “Arrest me, I’m a criminal.”

I read one report that he has “KICK ME” tattooed on his back. I don’t believe that.

I had always believed that tattoos, along with body piercings, were a sign of elegance and good taste. Maybe I’ll have to rethink that.

(The full story here.)

THE FOOD OF CHOICE

2007-06-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: 'What does taste have to do with it?")

When we were camped in northwest Iran we were near the Caspian Sea. Caviar, which comes from there, was plentiful and cheap. We could have it every meal if we chose. I chose not. I know there are different grades of caviar and we were getting what the French might call the “street variety.” But what the French call “street wine” is pretty good wine to my taste. This Iranian caviar was not to my taste.

Much of the Iranian food was pretty good though. They dry roasted pistachios, leaving them coated with salt crystals. Many time I made a meal out of them alone. American protective regulations boost the price of pistachios quite a bit and they are not as good as the “street variety” in Iran. Their kiln baked bread is good, although you might find an occasional rock imbedded. It’s baked on heated rocks.

Throughout the world available supply has a lot to do with people’s preference in food. Rare food is often more prized than plentiful varieties. If you had lobster 10 days in a row, what would you rather have, lobster or chicken? Most people would go for the chicken.

Even further, if lobster were 10 times more available than chicken, then chicken would be regarded as the delicacy and lobster the mundane. I bought a “milk roast chicken” at our local Bangkok super market. (I have no idea of the process involved in “milk roasting” a chicken although I tried to find out.) The product of this preparation was at least equal to any lobster I have ever tasted. Luckily, in my mostly Buddhist household, the entire chicken was left to me. (They will fudge their Buddhism when certain delicacies like pizza are brought in the house.)

On the subject of Thai food, the garlic here is not very good. I have tried using it in different ways, even raw. When raw it only a little hot but still not garlicy enough. I have never gotten a garlic burp here and that is what I’m going for---that garlic aftertaste.

Two ways to judge a meal are how it tastes when eaten and how it feels afterward. Some great tasting meals do not settle well. The other day, looking for a quick meal, I opened a 190 G (6.7 Oz) of mackerel in tomato sauce, poured it over bread and microwaved it. Well sir, I’m here to tell you, my stomach came up and shook my hand and said thank you. I’m thinkin’, my stomach is like a cheap date. Why go through all the trouble when it’s so easily pleased?

That’s all for now. I’m off to get a two day supply of Subway spicy Italian sandwiches. They may not please my stomach but they sure taste good.

DIRTY TRICKS 2

2007-06-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

When my American ex-wife was single and raising a little boy (not mine), she had a terrible dirty trick played on her. Her sister brought over a cute, cuddly, little puppy as a gift. She had seen it in a window and just couldn’t resist she said. Of course the little boy was hooked at first sight. Of course he made all the usual promises about taking care of it. Of course the cute little puppy grew into a large dog. They do that sometimes.

It was impossible to keep this friendly monster in her small apartment. There was no one she knew who could or would take it. Finally, she put an ad in the paper offering to give up the dog for free.

I took no part in this but was there for the final chapter. Only one person answered the ad. A sleazy looking guy came by to pick up the “free” dog. I never told her, even to this day, but I was pretty sure he only wanted the dog to eat it.

If you have no conscience, that is a trick you can play on a relative with little kids.

WHAT DOES LOVE HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

2007-06-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: She’s probably not perfect. She’s probably not as kind as Santa Claus. But life is a series of compromises.)

The Perfect Woman essay below got me to thinking. Back in the 70s I was committed to stay in America because my son from Vietnam had to stay. There was nowhere else he could go. So, at the advanced age of 40, I started dating American women. I have described many of my experiences in this blog in essays with the subtitle Dating After 40, but most of those were of the longer term variety. There were many “one date” happenings that could only occur in America.

One lady told me firmly that I must begin every sentence with the phrase, “In my opinion…”

Another, after finding I had spent many years in Asia, said, “Bring those women here. We’ll straighten them out in no time.”

“I know,” I replied. “That’s why we can never bring them here.”

That pretty much ended that date.

American women are fixated on romance. I had a very brief affair with a lovely (approaching 40) blonde. We got along very well and all of our peripherals seemed to fit for a more permanent arrangement, which I suggested.

“But,” she said, “I’m not in love with you.”

I replied, “What the hell does love have to do with it?” To be honest, at that point I started suspecting she was not all there. I won’t go into details, but she had more negatives in those aforementioned peripherals than I. The reader may suspect that this is sour grapes but I had no hard feelings. I only offered a convenient relationship. They are generally stronger than a bond of love because a perceived betrayal is easier to take.

I quit seeing her because I started thinking she was a flake and I was looking for a more permanent relationship. She called me a year later and we met again but I didn’t renew the offer. I had become convinced she was a flake.

Sometimes it takes a while so see beyond the great body.

THE PERFECT WOMAN

2007-06-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: I got to thinking, playing the perfect woman wouldn’t seem to take much acting at all. It all seems so natural. I could probably get in drag and do that although I wouldn’t be much to look at. I wonder what makes it so hard.)

I saw Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe movie, yesterday on Thai cable. This is an interesting, almost fascinating movie for many reasons, not the least of which, it caused me to write this (which is not a review). How good was it? It held my attention 85% of the time and I did no channel surfing while it was on. The average movie or TV show ranks less than 50% on my attention rating.

The movie is mostly about a young man (Orlando Bloom) who has suffered a career disaster and is trying suicide when he learns his father has died while visiting his home town in Kentucky. The family orders him to go there and take care of things. He meets a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) on the way who comes on to him like gangbusters.

From there it all develops to an interesting ending. On the way, the widow (Susan Sarandon) does an amazing eulogy at the wake. Not one reviewer that I read understood what was going on there. How shallow those people are. How frustrating it must be for someone like Cameron Crowe to be writing so far above the heads of the reviewers (72% of whom hated this fine movie). What the widow had done was come to grips with the fact that she had lost her whole life (her husband) and she was trying desperately to save herself, which she was in the process of doing right there in front of our eyes. For the critics it was ridiculous and showboating. For me it was meaningful, deeply touching, and mesmerizing. The lady was trying to save her life. Rent the DVD and see who is right.

One thing I take issue with in the movie is the Kirsten Dunst character. She is like the friendly, intelligent little puppy dog that followed you home with a wagging tail (literally). In other words, she is a perfect woman. Women like that are not around in America. They are grabbed up by men like hogs snuffing out truffles, and they are just as hard to find. A 30ish, unmarried woman like her is an impossibility.

In real life, after high school, I have met two women like that. One I describe extensively in My Nympho (scroll down if you activate that link). We only got together because she was very recently wounded in her divorce. We only split because I knew that her Playboy class nympho daughter would be delivering a multitude of babies to her doorstep and I couldn’t handle that.

The second perfect woman I probably shouldn’t mention because it tells too much about me. I met her at a party. She had that intelligent puppy dog quality. We wound up at her place and talked the night away. We drank a great deal of white wine in her living room and then talked some more while cuddling in her bed.

We seemed perfect for each other. The only thing out of my natural range was that I have a preference for small breasts and the lady had extra large natural boobs. I’m not complaining. I just mention that. Only a fool would complain.

So what happened? Well this is the embarrassing part because we seemed so perfect for each other, almost like she was my alter ego. She turned out to be a complete wack job in social situations. I would look at her and not believe this was the same woman. I won’t go into details and you can believe me or not, but she caused me to start wondering about myself. If we were perfect for each other and she was nuts, what did that make me?

See, that movie caused me to think.

Beware the perfect woman.

A DEMOCRAT VICTORY IS NECESSARY

2007-06-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

I’m sorry but these are the facts that make a Democrat victory in ’08 necessary:

America must be united to fight a worldwide war against Muslim terror.

Democrats, for the most part, and for their own reasons, will not support Republican leadership in that war.

Republicans, for the most part, would support Democrat leadership in the war.

So to get unity, a Democrat must be elected.

In my opinion, the election of a Democrat would result in a disaster. But this is going to be a long war, so it is best to get the disasters out of the way quickly. Mollify the far left by getting one of their own elected with an agenda of conciliation and rhetoric. Let the left, with their one world philosophy and utopian dreams (“It Takes a Village”) take the reins. Let them deconstruct the counter-terrorism structure, such as it is, let loose everyone from Guantanamo, and let freedom rein.

Is there someone on earth who would not view this as a great victory for the Muslim extremists? Okay, that is not a fair question. Gallup and the other pollsters would never couch it in those terms. But certainly those Muslim extremeists would view it as a great victory. And then would come the next offensive. And then will come the next disaster for America. It will put 911 to shame.

But that disaster is inevitable because the left in America will not, for one reason or another, recognize we are at war. Because of that, the disaster is necessary. It is the only way to unite Americans in the war, and America can only win if it is united.

FIFTY HOOKERS HELP ME OUT

2007-06-03T01:53:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Just a pretty lady who has nothing to do with the story below.)

I enjoy the writing part of this blog. Posting what I have written is a chore. Right now I have seven little essays written, but posting them is too much like work.

When I started this thing I wondered what I would write about after the first few subjects were done. Now there are more things to write about than I have time for.

Why are writing and posting different? Because I seldom compose directly to the computer. The atmosphere in front of the keyboard is a bit stifling. I like to write longhand in massage parlors and other disreputable places.

My favorite location is a barn like, fan cooled structure in downtown Bangkok. It is not a cat house although it is usually populated by 50 or more ladies of that persuasion. The “house” gets nothing from them except they seem to draw many male customers. The ladies are independent contractors but there is no sex on the premises. They have a nearby hotel that rents them rooms by the hour. The energy level (noise) in this place is high and I absorb some of it. It’s fun to be flirted with even if I know it’s only for the money. The ladies are 2s thru 8 ½. Some are here because of the color of their skin. Massage parlors only hire light-skinned Thais. But the hot looking women probably make out better here than they could in a massage parlor. Everything is negotiated.

It’s stimulating to watch the proceedings although it would be better if all the ladies didn’t wear bras. I hate that Thai fixation with bras. You’ve heard the joke about wearing a bra with a strapless dress? I see them do it here.

The hormone level is pretty intense here. As the afternoon wears on it gets higher and the girls get prettier (and that’s not the beer talking). The ladies keep coming in, more than go out. I’ve never been here after 4PM. Maybe the 10s come in in the evening. I bet they do.

What is truly a taste of reality is that the some of the top looking ones won’t give me a second look. That sets up the prospect of being rejected by a hooker if I were inclined to go that way, which I’m not.

No, really.

DIRTY TRICKS

2007-05-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

I’m going to write 2 or 3 things on practical jokes. If my reader has any examples please feel free to put them in the comments.

I really don’t like practical jokes. Okay, short-sheeting a guy in the barracks was funny now and then but not too often.

Here’s a trick I did that wasn’t very dirty. There was a guy in our barrack who liked to kibitz when I played solitaire on my bunk. He would hang over my game and point out every play before I had a chance to look. I completed the game and told him, “You won that game.” He walked off proudly, completely missing the sarcasm.

Next time he came by I cheated by getting a card from the bottom of the deck.

“You can’t do that,” he protested.

“Sure I can,” I said.

“That’s against the rules.”

“No it’s not. That’s the game I play.’

“But it’s cheating.”

“No in the game I play. It’s different. You’re allowed one wild card. That was my wild card.”

That stopped him for a moment while he stared at me, thinking about it. Then he exploded. “That’s bullshit!” He walked up and down the bay, exposing me. “He’s cheating,” he told everyone who would listen. I thought he might call the cops.

He looked at me differently after that. It was a sad look he gave me with a sort of slow head shake, as if I had disappointed him greatly.

On my part, I wondered why anyone would want to appoint themselves The Commissioner of Solitaire.

WAS IT WAR?

2007-05-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

I am not a make laws and jail ‘em guy. But the problem is that the laws and imprisonment are always a couple of decades behind what is happening to civilization. For instance, I think all non-violent drug offenders should be freed. Not all at once; there are probably more than a million of them, if you can believe that. But it pisses me off that internet vandals are let go with just a slap on the wrist. Perhaps *THIS* will result in alarm for our lawmakers in 20 years or so:

Look, for example, at what happened to Estonia last week. Ever since the government of the Baltic state decided … to remove a war memorial to the Red Army from a square in the capital, Tallinn, Russian outrage has ensued.

This took the form of demonstrations and even riots. But then something extraordinary happened: quickly, and wholly without warning, the whole country was subjected to a barrage of cyber-warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, banks and newspapers.

Techniques normally employed by cybercriminals, such as huge remotely-controlled networks of hijacked computers, were used to cripple vital public services.

Nato has sent its top cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn, with western democracies caught on the hop over the implications of such an attack.

The Estonian defence ministry said: "We've been lucky to survive this. If an airport, bank or state infrastructure is attacked by a missile, it's clear war. But if the same result is done by computers, then what do you call it? Is it a state of war? These questions must be addressed."

Estonia has blamed Russia, predictably enough - which, if true, would mean this is the first cyber attack by one sovereign state upon another.

There are good questions there and they will be addressed by lawmakers some time in the future, after another million or so users of relatively harmless drugs are imprisoned.

If such severe hacking can be compared to an act of war then your every day computer hackers should be declared to be terrorists. Penalties for that stuff ought to be severe, in proportion to the damage they do. No more gentle slaps on the wrist. Get the bastards!

But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

GETTING SMARTER

2007-05-24T02:28:00.001-07:00

I’m getting a lot smarter. That doesn’t keep me from being just as big an a-hole, but I realize it sooner. It used to take me years to realize what an a-hole I’d been. Now I realize it in only days or even hours after the fact.

The other day a sweet old lady visited us. She spoke decent English and was quite polite. When I found that she was three years younger than me, I started bragging on my age and preening for her, hoping to get her to say how young I looked. I could see I hurt her feelings and there was no way out of it. I made an ass of myself.

I wonder if I’ll ever get smart enough to keep from being an a-hole in the first place.

Probably not.

THE FLAT ASS SYNDROME REVISITED

2007-05-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE; Just a pretty Thai lady who has nothing to do with the story below.)

I wrote a year ago, in the archives from July 2006, about the “flat ass syndrome” and how it seemed more prevalent among women living in colder latitudes. That is something that is rare in Thailand, but the other day I spotted a lady with a flat ass on a Sky Train platform. I asked her if I could take her picture.

“Why,” she asked, not displeased.

“Well,” I explained, “it’s your flat ass. That is so rare in Thailand, I wanted to capture it on film. You are unique.”

Well sir, you’d have thought I’d insulted her or something. I thought she was going to hit me with her purse. What’s the matter with people nowadays?

(NOTE: The above is meant to be humor. The only part that is true is I did see a lady with a flat ass. The rest took place in my head. But the fact is that flat asses are extremely rare among Thai ladies. Yes, I do check them out. On the other hand, they wear clothing so tight that Stevie Wonder would notice their bulgy buns. And why not? It looks good so why not show it off?)

WHEN RANDY JOHNSON SPEAKS…

2007-05-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: "He got that name in the shower room? Does that mean...?"

Did you notice that Arizona manager, Bob Melvin, took Johnson out in his next start after six innings and 79 pitches? You’d think he got smart but then Melvin said before the game he was comfortable with a pitch count around 100 for Johnson, but he changed his mind after watching him work six spectacular innings.

“Feel comfortable?” What strange phrasing. Either he hasn’t learned a thing or we are hearing the words of Randy Johnson coming out of his mouth. I suspect the latter. How does a manager argue with a hall of fame pitcher?

(UPDATE: Johnson did throw 100 pitches in his next outing without much problem. It was reported that manager Melvin was so “comfortable” during this outing that they had to use a jackhammer to reopen his sphincter.)

(OBSERVATION: Knowing the humor of baseball players, I would guess that the six foot ten Randy Johnson got his nickname, The Big Unit, in the shower room. In fact I would bet my house on it and I love my house.)

…

Going back to my complaint about the Giant manager sending Russ Ortiz out there for that 9th inning. It may be a coincidence but Russ Ortiz never had another quality start and wound up on the disabled list. But then you have:

BARRY ZITO AS NO. 5 STARTER

On the subject of starting pitching, how would you like Barry Zito as your No. 5 starter? Here are the five San Francisco Giant starters and their earned run averages:

Lowry 2.69
Morris 2.93
Cain 3.30
Lincecum 3.44
Zito 5.13

THINGS THAT DON’T PISS ME OFF YET

2007-05-16T22:15:00.000-07:00

(Note: As usual I'm having a hell of a time navigating through all of this entry stuff which is all in Thai that I don't understand. That's why I can't post the picture I had set up of this essay. maybe later.)

(PICTURE: JOE TORRE. One of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard: A ball player went out on a blind date. He was trying to explain that his date wasn’t very good looking. His friend asks, “What did she look like?” The first guy replies, “Picture Joe Torre in a dress.”)

I’ve got to write something positive so here goes. Everything in the world fits into two categories: Things that piss me off and things that don’t piss me off yet. This is some stuff from the latter.

Rudy La Russo, the long time manager of the Cardinals, for instance. Some years ago half his team went down with injuries. So what does he say about it? He says, ‘This is a great opportunity to see what the players look like that we’ve got coming up,” or words to that effect. Now that’s a guy with character.

Then there’s Joe Torre, the Yankee manager. This is a guy who is admired by almost everyone who’s come in contact with him. People say he’s a poor handler of pitchers, especially relief pitchers, but look how long his pitcher’s careers last. If he’s so hard on pitchers, how come so many are still around?

Mike Scioscia, the manager of the Angels, may not have a clue about on base percentage or the value of a stolen base but he may be the best handler of pitchers around.

And then there’s Billy Beane, the Oakland General Manager. Who could help rooting for him? The way he rebuilt his outfield after injuries took most of them is incredible. He deserves Executive of the Year based on that alone. The wild thing is, he may have improved it. But whether or not, that was amazing. I’m glad he’s a part owner of the team so no one will grab him away. (After I wrote this, Oakland had to play Scutaro, a weak hitting infielder, in right field because 4 outfielders are sitting out with some sort of injuries in addition to all the others on the disabled list.)

Of course Bill James will never piss me off even when I think he’s wrong. I wonder if they’ll ever have a sabrematician section in baseball’s hall of fame. They should have and of course the first enshrined will be Bill James.

And speaking of the Hall of Fame, Lefty O’Doul should be in there. Not because he was one of the premier hitters in the National League from ’28 to ’34, winning two batting titles, but because he was the guy who introduced baseball to Japan.

This is just the baseball section of things that don’t piss me off yet.

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

2007-05-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

I was going to write something positive because I have been so negative recently. Then I realized I wasn’t finished being pissed off. At what? Hell, I don’t know. Do I need a reason?

It pisses me off every time Seattle wins a game because that guy, Bavasi, runs their team. Even when he does something right it pisses me off because he’s screwing up my reasons for being pissed off.

I love it when Adrian Beltre goes 0 for 4 because of that phony big season he had in his walk year.

I love it when Shea Hillenbrand goes hitless because of the two ships he sank last year and what a loser he is and he’s getting 6 mil this year.

Every time Pedro Feliz comes up with two runners on base I’m afraid he will hit a homer and they will keep him in the lineup another month because of it. This is a guy who will hit 24 homers, knock in 80 runs and make 500 outs in a season. Then someone says he’s a great fielder. They say that just to piss me off.

That brings me to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (Isn’t it ironic that just when blacks are getting over that profiling for being black, they are getting profiled for having A-rab names?) I tried to never miss the beginning of a Laker game just to watch the players stand on the court and disrespect the national anthem. I’m sure they had good reason. They were probably only making 10 mil that year when they deserved 12 mil. What a lousy country to do that to a man.

I never watched a Laker game, just the opening. (In fact I never watched a pro basketball game since. The NBA is the only sport that allows open disrespect of the country. But I guess that’s my problem.)

Then I heard that Kareem was getting these terrible migraine headaches. See, who says prayers don’t work?

Now Kareem is disappointed he can’t get a job in the sport. No one wants him as a coach or an analyst. That’s just more proof of what a lousy country it is.

GOOGLE “IMPROVES” BLOGSPOT

2007-05-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

Yeah, Google has improved Blogspot. They improved it so much I and thousands of other bloggers couldn’t get on it. They bragged about how many languages they’ve added to the system. That’s great, but they also turned my English language blog into a Thai language blog. Everything except what I put in there is now in Thai.

I am not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. When it comes to computers and the internet, I am a maroon. It has taken me weeks to figure it out. When I tried to go to their “help” departments there was no place to tell them about “wrong language.” They had a comment type blog that I’m sure they never read. Everything on there was about the “wrong language.” An English language blog in Germany was now in German. A guy from China wrote that everything was now in Chinese.

Just to add to it, when I try to comment on another blog all that is also in Thai. My comment is always erased.

Wouldn’t you think they would give us some way to choose what language we want to use? If that option is on the page I can’t read it because it’s in Thai.

All I ask is please Google, please, no more improvements.

AMBITION

2007-05-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: The author finally finds a room somewhere with one enormous chair and no worries about cold night air.)

All I want is a room somewhere,

Far away from the cold night air,

With one enormous chair,

Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?

Those lyrics from My Fair Lady hit my ambitions as a youth on the nose. They are an amazingly accurate description of the lowest class English. My family, having come to the US illegally from Birmingham England, is perfectly described in those lyrics. But we had a lot of company in America. The rednecks, so accurately portrayed by Jeff Foxworthy, come from the same roots, as do the hill billies of Al Capp. Perhaps half the population of the US comes from lower class English stock.

I can relate to Foxworthy’s one liners about his relatives. Almost all my relatives have abandoned cars in front of their houses. My brother, for years, kept a used commode on the porch alongside his front door. My relatives think there are only two kinds of wine: sweet and sour. When a kid visits they only want to know one thing: does he get up early in the morning? Early rising kids are pariahs.

So when I was a kid it was in my blood to only want a room somewhere with one enormous chair. The only problem was I would have to work for that room and chair. And so I did. My basic ambition actually never changed but there was one problem I hadn’t counted on. I had a low threshold of boredom. That has plagued me throughout my life.

I’ll tell how I coped later.

A FUN TEAM

2007-04-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

(MAP: Tampa Bay. Just because I like maps.)

Tampa Bay beat the Yankees 10-8 today. They will play a lot games like that, losing most of them. But the starting eight players in the field are nearly as good as any in the game. If you consider cost (salaries), they are by far the best in the game. I wouldn’t trade them for any eight. Their pitching will keep games close but that’s the fun of it.

It’s early in the season but, what the hell. Here are some developments. Ben Zobrist, their shortstop, was hitting .167 in 56 plate appearances including two sacrifices. He had drawn NO walks. That gave him an OBP (on base percentage) of .161. Have you ever seen an OBP lower than a batting average? That is quite a feat. He was batting second in their lineup. Can you say, “Automatic out?”

He has been replaced by Brendan Harris. After going 2 for 4 today, Harris is hitting .364 in 33 at bats. Right, it’s early in the season and can he play shortstop? If he can hit like that he can play SS for me. That will part of the fun watching them.

Assuming Harris is the real thing, that gives the Devil Rays the most solid lineup in majors. The rookie center fielder, Elijah Dukes is struggling somewhat and Ty Wigginton I doubt will ever hit enough to be more than adequate at first base, and the catcher is not yet hitting up to par, but any manager would be more than happy to have those be his most serious problems. Several of the others are potential super-stars.

It will be a fun team to watch.

THE TEAM LEADER

2007-04-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid we had a “team leader” on our football team. He was the guy who out-hustled and out-yelled everyone else. He was always encouraging everyone. He was pretty much an assistant coach. They made him team captain.

But on the other side of the coin, he was one of the dumbest football players I’d ever seen. He just didn’t have a feeling for the game. He’d knock aside our tacklers to get at the runner, allowing the runner to get away. I once saw him, when a runner was held up on our goal line, hit him from behind and push him over the goal. He once lined up alongside me as a wide receiver. Our instructions were just to go down the field and catch a desperation pass. We started down the field. I cut and he cut with me. I cut the other way and he went right with me. He was on me like a defensive back. It only took one defender to cover two receivers instead of the other way around. At the end of the unsuccessful play, the defensive backs laughed at us.

The point is, the guy who yells the loudest and hustles the most might be a few beans short of a full burrito.

Which brings me to Darren Erstad. He was acknowledged as the Angel team leader for years. But after an incredible, historic 2000 season, he became pretty much a minus for them. The reason was he never mastered the strike zone. That is something that smart players, team players, do.

The best example is Brett Butler. He was a player with similar skills to Erstad. When Butler broke in I didn’t think he had a chance with his low ‘on base percentage.’ But Butler worked at it and learned the strike zone and made himself valuable to every team he was on. Another great example is Ozzie Smith, now in the Hall of Fame.

Erstad defenders say his performance fell off because he hurt himself after the 2000 season with his all-out, hustling style of play.

OK. Take that to a doctor. 99 out of a hundred doctors will advise, “Don’t do that.” A guy with all the beans in his burrito wouldn’t do that.

And while I’m on the subject, I wonder how Erstad’s philosophy of hacking away at anything near the plate influenced the Angel teams over the years. They have been notorious as a hacker’s team, eschewing the walk. Can we lay any of that at Erstad’s, the team leader’s, door?

If so, his dynasty continues.

BETTER THAN CHESS

2007-04-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

There are computer games that are far better than chess. I’m not talking about live action games which, at my advanced age and diminishing motor skills, I consider to be childish. No, there are many ‘turn’ games that are far more complex and interesting than chess. All of them that I know of are based on that ultimate real life game: War! These ‘turn’ games do not sell nearly as well as live action games because they take a lot of thought, so many will only work on older computers.

The game I mentioned in my previous essay, About Depression 2, is called The Lost Admiral. I play against the AI (artificial intelligence, we always used to say “playing against the computer”) every day. I did poorly against it for a short time and worried that my mental faculties might be failing. Not to worry; I have made a comeback.

This game has 11 levels of difficulty. Because I ply it to relax, I only play at the lower levels unless I feel like a serious challenge. Even so, I occasionally resign when I’ve gotten into a bad spot.

It is a naval game. The object is to capture ports, each of which is worth various numbers of points every turn it is held. Each port also gives the holder raw materials with which he can build new ships. But the player must capture a port with a shipyard in order to build new ships.

You are given 2 or 3 ports at the start of the game and a budget to build ships. Transports are very important. You cannot take a port unless you can occupy it with a transport. Beginners will always be short of transports.

Carriers are important but very expensive. You never know where the enemy is. A carrier is the only ship that can “see” beyond the space it is in. PT boats are very fast and can scout beyond where a carrier can see but they are easily destroyed.

The meat of your fleet should be subs and destroyers. My tactics are simple. I use a flock of destroyers to go in and reduce the enemy’s anti-sub defense, sometimes at great sacrifice, and then send in the subs to attack his capital ships, meaning carriers, battleships and cruisers. If his formation is too strong, I retreat and look for the formation to change. Sometimes I have to retreat until reinforced.

The AI puts too much money into battleships and cruisers and not enough into destroyers. A battleship is mostly useful in reducing a fortified port. Other that that, it is too expensive. However, the AI varies its tactics enough to make the game always interesting. It doesn’t get any smarter at the higher levels of difficulty, but it gets stronger and you get weaker. It is always aggressive, so when it comes at you in level 11 with twice your strength or more, it can be worrisome.

This game is better than chess.

(This game only works on my older computer. A newer version is out, The Lost Admiral Returns. I downloaded a tryout version on my newer computer but I could never get it to work properly and I didn’t like the looks of it.)

ABOUT DEPRESSION 2

2007-04-20T15:40:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: The author with happy juice at a Bangkok river.)

I didn’t want to make that piece on Richard Jeni (About Depression 1, below) about me. He was a great comic and deserved to stand alone. So I’m putting in this second article about my recent depression. Depression is something that seldom hits me. I seem to have been born with the good humor gene. Or perhaps, since clinical depression has been blamed on a chemical imbalance, perhaps constant good humor is also a chemical imbalance. Having a constantly high blood pressure (around 150) all my life might contribute to my good humor; it has certainly helped my sex life.

Then about a month ago I got hit with a period of depression. Three things happened at once. First I was having trouble with a computer game I joust with daily. I worried, at my advanced age, if my mental faculties were beginning to fail. (I will write more on this.)

Second, unbeknownst to me, I was coming down with a cold. Colds used to be something I experienced once in a decade. Here in Thailand I seem to be getting them once a year. Usually I can tell in advance when one is coming on but this one snuck up on me. It was a bad one.

Third, I discovered that this blog was ranked below 4 millionth in popularity. The estimated readership was one per day. That after more than two years work. Can you say “failure?”

Believe it or not, that is not what depressed me, although even I thought so. What depressed was the thought of ending this blog. It seems totally pointless to continue when there is practically no readership so ending it seemed logical. I considered the pros and cons for a couple of weeks.

So this is what I came up with; this is the bottom line: Writing this blog makes me happy! And just like that, my depression was gone. It’s somewhat like Anna Wang in that piece Interesting People below. She tried to live on $400 a month although she was a multi-billionaire because it made her happy. I will continue writing this blog that no one reads because it makes me happy. Neither decision makes sense, but so what?

So now compare me to Richard Jeni. There is some area of similarity there in that we both strive to be creative. He, if not the greatest comic in America, was certainly in the top ten. He recently won the comic of the year award. But, plagued by chronic depression, he kills himself because his calendar wasn’t full.

Depression is a terrible thing.

I, on the other hand, continue with this failed blog because, even if no one reads it, writing makes me happy.

Good humor is a marvelous thing.

ABOUT DEPRESSION 1

2007-04-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

RICHARD JENI

Richard Jeni was one of the best comics in America. After rewatching one of his HBO specials, he may have been THE best. He killed himself at the age of 45. He suffered, it is said, from depression.

I don’t understand that. How can someone so creative suffer from depression? Creativity thrives of inspiration which sometimes means exaltation. It does not compute.

A friend of Jeni’s said he was making good money but he was disappointed his career was not doing better. His calendar was not filled up. So he put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Here is part of a statement that his family put out:

"Rumors have been circulating as to the cause of his death and have included speculation of Richard being depressed over the state of his career or a physical ailment. His career was not even addressed by his specialists when they were trying to diagnose Richard's illness. In fact, he had just enjoyed one of his most financially rewarding years to date. He was consistently creating new material for his busy touring schedule, and during the last week of his life, he had meetings scheduled with CHRIS ALBRECHT, Chairman and CEO of HBO, to discuss future projects following his last HBO special. In actuality, the past few years had been more prolific than ever. As his agents can attest, prior to his illness, Richard only missed one engagement in over twenty years, and that was due to weather.”

I must be wrong. Depression does not inhibit creativity.

My bad.

THE DON IMUS STORY

2007-04-19T16:52:00.000-07:00

I wrote long ago how Don Imus got around the law to virtually steal money from children with cancer. He was the most mean spirited person I’ve ever heard on a national medium. Some others faked being mean spirited but Imus faked civility. Even the laughs on his show sounded forced.

I did listen to him and watch him on MSNBC because some of the bits his writers came up with were genuinely funny. Plus he was a good interviewer, much better than Larry King. Imus knew how to ask a follow-up question and sometimes challenged a liberal guest. Those things are beyond the range of Larry King.

Some of his interviews were completely worthless. Paul Begala was a regular guest. Who, in their right mind, would interview Paul Begala about current politics? He is a paid propagandist for the DNC. Anyone could predict his answers.

Imus kept some credibility by interviewing prominent conservative politicians and he did a good job at that. But the only analysts he allowed on the show were left wingers. Almost never would he allow a non-politician commentator from the right on the show.

I once challenged him to be a man and stand up and say what his politics were. So he did it. He stood up on his program and lied in order not to lose listeners. He said he was a Republican (although, he added, all his friends were liberal). Then he pushed for Kerry’s election as if his life depended on it. (Which is the main reason Kerry is supporting him now.)

I wonder who advised him to go on the Al Sharpton radio show to ask forgiveness. That is priceless. It brings great, mean-spirited happiness to me just thinking about it. He goes to one of the most opportunistic racist demagogues in the world as if he were the Pope. Of course Sharpton rejects his pleas. What in the hell did Imus expect from that clown?

Now Sharpton, in a much coveted and unexpected spotlight, steps forward to be America’s arbiter on moral and racial issues.

It keeps getting better.

BASEBALL TODAY

2007-04-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

BASEBALL TODAY

I was going to take another day off but happenings got my ire up. In the catalogue of good things to get up, ire is not one of them.

I can monitor, pitch by pitch, as many eight games at once. The Phillies were behind by two runs in the eighth and got their first two on base with their big guy coming up. Ryan Howard, their big guy, singles to right. Shane Victorino tries to score from second but gets thrown out at the plate. That is amazingly dumb. No outs, runners on first and second, a single to right, and the guy tries to score an almost meaningless run. Thank goodness it happened in Philadelphia. The fans there are probably still booing. The Phillies, the preseason favorites, fell to 2 and 8.

Here’s one even dumber. The Giants have this pitcher, Russ Ortiz, who is a prodigious rebuilding project. This poor guy hadn’t won a game in almost a year. His last team, on releasing him, advised him to retire. He had been that bad. But the Giants gave him a shot in spring training and he made the team. Ortiz got kind of clobbered in his first start, but it wasn’t devastating. Today, in his second start, he pitched well after giving up two runs in the first inning. It comes to the ninth inning and he’s leading 8-2. In the top of the ninth, the Giants get the bases loaded with two out and Russ Ortiz scheduled to hit. I’m thinking (not an afterthought) perfect, get a pinch hitter in there. He’s thrown a great game. Let him leave with unquestioned success and all is right with the world.

But the manager isn’t satisfied. He hasn’t given Ortiz his full chance at failure. He lets Ortiz bat in the ninth (he strikes out, big surprise) and puts him back out there in the bottom of the ninth. Of course he gets clobbered, giving up three runs and has to be relieved. There you go, when failure is an option why go for success? The Giants will probably finish last in their division and deservedly so.

I HATE CHESS

2007-04-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I hate chess. It’s not because I’m a bad player. I can kill the average player. I was a big fish in my little pond. I could go months without losing a game. My best friend called me a butcher. There was no finesse in my game. Cut off their arms and legs and taunt them before killing them off. That was my style.

But then I moved up in class and met players I could never beat once in a lifetime. That knocking on the door is reality. Don’t answer it.

But that’s not why I hate chess.

What happened was these Russians “modernized” the game. They reduced all the openings to rote. They analyzed the best response to every move in every opening and memorized the whole thing. *HERE* is a partial list of chess openings from Wikipedia. There are hundreds of openings and variations there. It would take years for me to memorize all that crap.

Well excuse me. Is that what I have to do just to get an even break? Is it just me or does that take a lot of the fun out of the game? Doesn’t that seem like a lot of work just to play a stupid game?

I wonder why they bother playing out the openings at all if everything is memorized. One guy can just say, “I’m playing the Center Game with such and such variation on move 7.”

The other guy says, “I will play so and so response in answer to that.”

So instead of setting the board up at the opening, they can set it up at move 14, since both players have agreed on their moves, and play the game from there.

That’s why I hate chess.

WHERE IS VITO CORLEONE WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

2007-04-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: al-Sadr)

This fat guy in Iraq has put out a “hit” on Americans. He has gone to the mattresses. Here is part of the article from Forbes:

The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen on Sunday to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy." The U.S. military announced the weekend deaths of 10 American soldiers, including six killed on Sunday.

You can read the full article *HERE*.

Vito Corleone would know what to do. Even John Kennedy, an alleged head of an Irish mafia, would know what to do. He once put out a “hit” on a president of an allied country for a lot less (Ngo Dinh Diem). What are the odds the Americans running things in Iraq will know what to do? Pretty slim I would guess.

Let me try to explain things to them. You see, this guy has declared war on you. You must now take him out (for those of you who might be parsing the definition of “take him out” that means kill him, end his life). If you want to remain regarded as a serious presence in Iraq, you have no choice in this. No, you don’t want to arrest him, that would be worse than doing nothing. You must kill him.

Would Iraqis object to this? There will be some demonstrations when he is gone. But Iraqis understand better than Americans that he must be killed. Al-Sadr, in effect has challenged the Americans to kill him. There really is no choice in this if the Americans want to be regarded as a serious people.

The alternative is to be regarded lightly and even mocked. The Americans cannot afford that. The choice really is to kill this guy or leave. There you have it.

INTERESTING PEOPLE

2007-04-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Nina Wang in her trademark miniskirt and pigtails. She put out a comic book with herself as the lead character.)

The richest woman in Asia died recently. Nina Wang. You can read one of her obituaries *HERE* but to get the full flavor of an interesting person, Google her name. She had 4 billion dollars but it couldn’t keep her alive. She was “only” 69.

I put “only” in quotes because today it’s less than the average lifespan. When I was a kid, the life expectancy was about 65. I believed statistics so I planned my life pretty much to live for 65 years.

“Let’s see, should I brush my teeth tonight? Aw hell, they’re not in bad shape; they should last to 65 if I skip one night.”

But they (they being the guys who figured the odds) were wrong. I’ve gone way past where I should have died. I’m now at death plus eleven and still going strong. I shouldn’t have skipped brushing my teeth those times. I should have taken better care of myself. But they misinformed me when I was a kid.

I guess that tycooness, Nina Wang (remember? The opening paragraph?) was kinda quirky. Her favorite meal was American fast food. Do you think Dr. House might raise his eyebrows at that?

Once, when returning from a long period overseas, I decided to try one of those McDonalds burgers I’d only read about. It gave me indigestion.

Many years later, if I occasioned to pass a Burger King near meal time, I would be sure to get a “Whopper.” That, I thought, was one of the best sandwiches ever. But then when I happened to live near a Burger King I discovered that the “Whopper” was best when taken with some considerable intervals in between.

My favorite American fast food became the Chinese take-out. You know, that stuff that they just pack into the Styrofoam folders. The irony is that I haven’t found anything like that here in Bangkok. I think Chinese-American food is unique to only one country.

Meanwhile, back to the subject. The tycooness was reputed to live on a budget of less than $400 (American) a month.

Now I am cheap in most respects and quirky. There are some things that I do that defy logic. For instance, I don’t like to throw out a sliver of soap. When a bar of soap gets thin, I will meld it into a larger bar by using them together until they are one. I doubt if that saves me a penny a month, but I always do it.

But why would someone worth billions of dollars limit their spending so severely?

They do it because it makes them happy.

I will write more on that subject.

In the meantime a cautionary note. Nina Wang’s husband was twice kidnapped. It was said he was too cheap to hire bodyguards. After the second kidnapping, he was never seen again. Nina Wang died of ovarian cancer. It was said she suffered the symptoms for three years but was too cheap to seek medical help until it was too late.

WOMEN IN COMBAT

2007-04-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

(PICTURE: Okay, there's one space left on the last evacuation chopper. Which one of these gets that seat? Case closed.)

I have written on this subject before. Putting women in combat is dumb. That is carrying “Political Correctness” to its ultimate ludicracy (that’s not a word but it conveys my meaning). If women cannot be treated equally, they should not be there. It’s as simple as that.

There’s an article in the Telegraph *HERE* about two women soldiers who were killed in Basra. Please read it. It is an important piece.

It says, in part:

While they cannot join a unit where the primary duty is "to close with and kill the enemy" - for example the infantry or cavalry - women undertake a number of hazardous postings.

I would go far, far further than this. Women should never be in a zone in which there is the chance of evacuations. Why? Because they will always be evacuated first or if not the very first, certainly not the last. That is not fair to men in the same position.

I was in war zones for YEARS! Many years. I always resented the presence of American women there because I knew that their presence cut down the chances of my survival. They would always be taken out first if it came to that. And indeed, in Saigon it did come down to that, and the women were taken out first.

You might say, “Of course they were taken out first.” Then I say, then of course, they should not be put in that situation.

That seems perfectly logical to me so I must be missing something.

BIRTH

2007-04-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

There has been a spectacular Hubble image of a barred spiral galaxy just released. Here is some of what the news report says:

NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy’s strong galactic bar. NGC 1672 is a prototypical barred spiral galaxy and differs from normal spiral galaxies in that the spiral arms do not twist all the way into the centre. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus.

Astronomers believe that barred spirals have a unique mechanism that channels gas from the disk inwards towards the nucleus. This allows the bar portion of the galaxy to serve as an area of new star generation. It appears that the bars are short-lived, raising the question: will non-barred galaxies develop a bar in the future, or have they already hosted one that has disappeared?

In the new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, clusters of hot young blue stars form along the spiral arms, and ionize surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas that glow red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them. NGC 1672’s symmetric look is emphasised by the four principal arms, edged by eye-catching dust lanes that extend out from the centre.

I wrote about these things years ago. Read my, The Case of the Missing Water on Mars, which I wrote in 2004. I wonder why the scientists can’t see that they are witnessing the miracle of creation. Why can’t they see that the matter is all outbound and not inbound?

The dust? That is matter that has not coalesced into a star yet. Just not dense enough.

It’s all pretty obvious when you can look at it through the eyes of a child, which is my vantage point.

LITTLE LEAGUE FOLLOW-UP

2007-04-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

Why anyone could view sweaty, bed-wettin’, little boys as sex objects is beyond me, but those people are around. I’m sure there are no more today than there have been, but we are more alert to the threat today. There are always childless men hanging around Little League activities. They can adopt the guise of “regular guys,” but I was always suspicious. It doesn’t hurt to be suspicious.

A marine captain came to one of our games as a volunteer umpire. His first question to me was, “Are your players wearing athletic cups?”

Without missing a beat I replied, “Of course.”

Now I had no idea if even one was wearing a cup and seriously doubted if even one was. (It’s in the LL rule book that they must wear cups.) But what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to tell him I didn’t know and let him do his own examination? I couldn’t have cared less if they had cups. That’s just a CYA thing for LL anyway. The only time I wore a cup when I played was when I was catching.

…

I didn’t manage again.

My kid as an 8-year-old showed no promise whatever. That didn’t bother me, he was a good kid. What more could you ask?

Then I saw him run in the outfield as a 9-year-old. What a change a year can make. Have you ever watched the graceful, swift movements of a natural athlete? Well that’s what I saw.

To make a long story short, after he graduated from college (the first in my family) I sent him 30 pounds of press clippings I had collected about him.

Needless to say I was proud. He had experiences in sports that I dreamed of for myself but never came close to achieving.

…

And then there’s that weird assimilation thing. The irony is that he assimilated much better than I. He’s married to a beautiful lady from the Midwest and lives in the Midwest with her and their three kids. Here I am in Thailand with a large, extended Thai family.

Go figure.

MANAGING IN LITTLE LEAGUE (PART 2)

2007-04-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

(After winning our first game 31-7).

Then the criticisms began, in a pseudo-friendly way. “Why do you call all the boys by their last names?” “They all have first names, you know.” “They are just little boys.” “Do you know their first names?”

I ignored those remarks. I called all the kids, even mine, by their last names because I knew it would make them feel older, more mature. I didn’t want them to feel like little boys. I made it a point not to get friendly with any of them. I was the boss and I ordered them around and they did what I told them. That was our relationship.

But it had started. The parents, who had walked out on the team, had seen success and now wanted back in. At our next game they brought a huge dispenser of iced orange Gatorade and hung it in our dugout. Have you ever tried to keep a dozen 8-year-olds focused when there was unlimited orange drink around? The kids were constantly lined up for a drink. It was a severe distraction. Despite that we won the game easily. Drinks were banned from the dugout.

Then they complained that my kid was playing second base when better players were in the outfield. That was true but I didn’t respond. That is the manager’s prerogative. Little did they know, I would gladly have stepped aside to let anyone else manage so they could then play their kid wherever the frack they wanted.

Then came the killer complaint. I HAD SWORN IN FRONT OF THE KIDS! This was my golden opportunity. I couldn’t remember having sworn, but I immediately resigned as manager. Unfortunately they launched an investigation and found I had once said “shit” when a ball hit me in the shin. They came to the conclusion that this was not only pardonable, but understandable. They talked me into coming back.

I carefully kept the batting averages of all the kids. After a few more lopsided wins, I noticed that our poorest hitter was hitting better than Stan Musial did in his career. Not by much, .333 to .331, but it was enough to make me proud. (For those who might not know, Stan Musial was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. He was usually called simply, “Stan the Man.”). I printed out the averages of all the kids, including Stan Musial at the bottom, and passed the list to all the parents.

I don’t think any of them had any idea what it meant. They looked at them as if they were test grades from school. One hysterical mother phoned me to tell me her kid had been crying all day because of where he placed on the list. (This kid was hitting over .500! There were no errors in that league. Getting on base by batted ball was a hit.)

My team parents went to league headquarters and got a rule passed that no batting average would EVER be printed, mentioned, or referred to in any way. That was the perfect time for me to resign. I was replaced by another parent who immediately made his incompetent kid the shortstop. The team went on to lose two games after that during the rest of the season. I don’t think they would have lost any had I remained in charge. But I don’t take a lot of pride in that because I had been handed, in the luck of the draw, three stars and six decent players at the beginning of the season. That would be a good team at any level of baseball.

What I did take tremendous pride in was bringing our three lousy players to the point where they helped the team considerably. To see those three nerdy little guys accepted and sometimes celebrated by their teammates made me more happy than I can express.

That was my point in showing everyone how good they were hitting. It was really a brag on my accomplishment.

MANAGING IN LITTLE LEAGUE (PART 1)

2007-04-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Managing in Little League? My advice is: Don’t do it!

That might be some of the best advice you get in your life.

When my kid turned 8 he was anxious to get into Little League. Anything to blend in, to be one of the group. I had brought him home from Vietnam when he was 4. So at 8 I signed him up for Little League. On the sign-up form they ask you to volunteer for something. Strictly out of guilt, it didn’t seem fair to ask everyone else to do the work, I checked, “Coach.” Well it turned out no one else checked anything so I got appointed Manager. There was no player draft. They just gave me 12 kids at random, like you deal a deck of cards, except for my kid of course who had to be on my team..

At our first practice almost all the parents turned out. Many helped chasing balls and hitting flies and picking up fallen kids and such. At the end of the first practice they had all given up on the team. It was doomed. They wished me a smirking good luck. I hardly ever saw any of them again. Not one parent helped with or even watched another practice.

I didn’t know why they wrote off the team. Three of the kids were really good, three were pretty bad, and the other 6 were so-so. (My kid was in the middle.) To me, it had the makings of a pretty good team. Most teams would be glad to have that level of talent.

But the effort required of me, both physical and mental, was enormous. As usual when getting into a project, I threw myself into it with complete psycho-tinged abandon. Which meant abandoning regular work and most everything else for the three weeks of our pre-season training.

During our pre-season, in addition to our regular practice, I emphasized two things. After a ground ball was fielded and thrown to first, I called out a random base to throw to, and then another, and then another. It was like working with an empty slate. They did it without thinking. The kids got expert in this. That turned out to be a devastating weapon when playing against wild-running 8-year-olds.

The second thing I emphasized was extra batting practice for our 3 weakest players. Some days the practice would be for them alone. I did not want an automatic out in our lineup.

When we came to our first game, I didn’t know what to expect. We hadn’t played any practice games. I just hoped it wouldn’t be an embarrassment for us. All the parents showed up, most likely expecting the worst.

What surprised me most was the intensity of our players. In the top of the first inning we scored 15 runs. The opposing team came off the field in tears. My job then was to keep our team from losing its concentration. It’s hard to keep an 8-year-old focused when his team is leading by a couple of dozen runs. It didn’t help that our parents had started rooting for the demoralized, tearful opposition. We won that first game 31-7. It would have been more but my guys let up.

NO FREE WILL?

2007-03-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

Scott Adams, at his Dilbert blog writes occasionally about free will. He doesn’t believe it exists. (Then I wonder what the hell I’m doing living my retirement in Thailand?)

Here is his most recent argument. Notice how similar his reasoning is to Clinton’s rationalizing about not having had sex. To prove there is no “free will” he must narrow the definition so that it matches his argument. But if you’re going to do that you must establish what you mean by the phrase first and then get at it. It’s not fair to do it the other way around. Then it should be clear that he is not writing about “free will” as it is understood by most people.

I must apologize to Mr. Adams for the cruel piece I wrote about his speech problem, The Idea of a Lifetime, just below this. I am a failed humorist so when I get a funny idea, I just must run with it. It was wrong to put it out for many reasons, but few can deny it is funny. The weird thing is that it would work, most likely.

I don’t think there will be many reverberations though. When last I looked, this blog was rated below 4 millionth in popularity, and deservedly so. The world will not be laughing at him.

GREYHOUNDS

2007-03-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

Roger Simon has a sick greyhound. You can read the sad story *HERE*. It has cancer at a young age of five and a half.

It reminded me of a curious experience I had when living among the Kurdish tribes in Northwest Iran. The tribesmen had the most fierce, fearless dogs I have ever seen or even heard about. I don’t know the breed and, thankfully, I never encountered one on foot, but they would attack our vehicles. (Motor vehicles were extremely rare then and there.) One jumped off a bank and landed on the hood of my jeep. Another ran full speed, jaws gaping, into the grill of a jeep that was coming towards him.

I was surprised that the tribesmen also kept Greyhounds. These dogs were extremely friendly and gentle. They loved to run and would challenge our vehicles to a race by running down the road 20 feet or so and looking back to see if we were coming.

The contrast between the two breeds, living side by side, was memorable.

I hope the best for his dog. They are charming animals.

AN AFGHAN VILLAGE

2007-02-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

Afghanistan: This is a tribal village SW of Kabul. It is surrounded by farms which grow stuff the Americans want to destroy.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME

2007-02-22T15:06:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that was me that wrote that. Bring the troops home. Not from Iraq but from Afghanistan.

That is a war we can never win now. Incredible bungling in Washington has blown that entire campaign. When they combined the war against the Taliban with the war on drugs, it made the whole thing unwinnable. So now American and allied troops are being killed over there because of the idiotic decision to combine “crusades.”

It’s sad. Americans will never understand the tribal mentality that exists in that part of the world.

Some are now suggesting we just buy their opium crops. That would be a laugh. The altruistic Americans would never know who to pay. In their sense of “fair play” they would insist the farmers who grew the crop should receive the money.

Sorry. Wrong guy. The war would continue.

Would the right guy come forward? Fat chance. So the Americans could arrest him? No way. The war would continue.

If the Americans ditched the war on drugs at this point, would that help? No way. The Americans have shown their colors. Once they subdue the Taliban, they would restart the war on drugs. That is their nature. The war will continue.

Face it.

Washington has lost this one.

Bring the troops home.

SCOTT ADAMS' CREATION, "DILBERT"

2007-02-21T15:31:00.000-08:00

THE IDEA OF A LIFETIME

2007-02-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert cartoon, has a vocal problem. He cannot speak in his normal, conversational voice. His voice works okay when he lectures in front of audiences, or when he sings, or sometimes when he recites poetry. But he cannot speak over the phone or in normal conversation.

There are thousands of people with that problem. Doctors say it is incurable.

I think I found a cure. This is the idea of a lifetime. How about Scott Adams hires a hip-hop backup group? There are a lot of them around, broke and hungry. When Adams wants to speak, he signals the group. They start with that mouth sound. The guy with the drum sticks starts beating on something and Adams does a rap. There you go.

When the phone rings, the backup guys just start automatically and Adams can answer the phone doing rap. It that perfect or what?

Adams describes himself as a “minor celebrity.” When news of this gets out, and it will, he will still be on the minor celebrity list but with a bullet.

Not everyone with this affliction can afford to hire a hip-hop backup group. I envision a charitable foundation that will hire backup groups to join these voice challenged people. Everyone benefits. Broke and hungry hip-hoppers get jobs and these poor unfortunates get a voice.

This idea is so great I’m sure I’ll get some kind of a prize. Probably not the Nobel Prize because this malady only affects a few thousand people and is not life threatening. But maybe someone will give me a ribbon I can wear sometimes.

BOMB DAMAGE IN THE SOUTH

2007-02-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

MORE BOMBS

2007-02-19T18:31:00.000-08:00

According to the Nation, in the two days of attack in the south of Thailand, there have been 38 bombs, 33 arson and ambushes, resulting in 72 casualties including 7 dead. The attacks continue.

A headline reads: UTTER MAYHEM IN SOUTH. The Thai military government wants to pursue talks in an effort to mollify and appease the “separatists.” They want to find out what the Muslim radicals desire. I can save them the effort. They can ask me. What those Muslims want, Mr. Thai military man, is you and everyone like you dead. Do that for them and they will be appeased.

There’s a summary of the recent happenings *HERE*.

Thailand is called “Land of Smiles” for good reason. These are a friendly and beautiful people. But get their ire up and they are capable of some pretty violent things. When the Muslims killed a Buddhist monk in one incident last year, there was some bad stuff done in retribution. The Muslims are still complaining about that. I can picture some more serious balancing of the books coming if the Muslims do not rein in their own. It is, after all, the Muslims themselves who must police their own ranks. No one else can do that for them. But they appear to be unable or unwilling to do that.

Call me a cynic or a pessimist but I see a great deal of escalation down the road. This stuff will eventually lead to border clashes and perhaps war between Thailand and Malaysia. It is only the border provinces adjacent to Malaysia that are heavily involved in this. Those provinces have most of the Muslims in Thailand. Malaysia is more than 90% Muslim. Can you see a pattern here?

In the meantime, there are fears that Thai tourism will take a hit. As my Mexican girlfriend used to say, “No sheet.” You can read about tourism fears *HERE*. What they don’t say is how it will affect overall tourism. To a potential visitor, a bomb is a bomb. It doesn’t matter that it could be a thousand miles south of his would-be destination. The bombs are going off in Thailand so all of Thailand will pay with loss of the tourist dollar.

Also in the meantime, the G..D…ed Thai baht keeps getting stronger, screwing this farang who lives on the exchange rate. What has to happen for that damned thing to go the other way?

I know it’s not all about me but I can’t win.

A BANGKOK SKYLINE

2007-02-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

BOMBS IN THAILAND

2007-02-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

Many bombs, more than 30 and counting, have been set off in the three southern provinces of Thailand. Contrary to some reports, only a few bars were targeted. 22 bombs were set off in banks. Thus far there is one death reported and more than 30 injuries.

That does seem strange that there was so little damage to humans. There are several reasons according to the reports. None of the bombs was larger than a kilogram. No metal enclosed the explosives. They were left in places where extensive casualties were not likely to occur.

The bombs were carried in hollowed out books.

One result is that this attack is being linked to the string of bombs that were set off in Bangkok a while ago. Previously, the military government was linking the Bangkok bombing to the previous, deposed administration.

There are reports *HERE* and *HERE* and *HERE* and *HERE*

One difficulty in reporting this is CNN is off the air here. They have been off the air for a couple of months. This was because of coverage they were giving the deposed Prime Minister Thaksin. The military government did not approve of that. That void in English language reporting has not been filled. The BBC is pretty lame.

MORE EYE CANDY

2007-02-18T15:23:00.000-08:00

AIRPORT PROBLEMS-2

2007-02-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

The previous post reminded me of a problem that got dumped in my lap in Vietnam. I worked for the general contractor which was Morrison Knudson. Supervising and inspecting and authorizing our work was the US Navy, Bureau of Yards and Docks. That was our boss. That is the Navy version of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

I was living in Saigon working at Tan Sun Nhut airport. I was as happy as a flea on a fat, furry dog. Saigon was a great town.

Then they sent me to Nha Trang because there was a problem. Nha Trang was about halfway up the coast between Saigon and Da Nang. To call it a “problem” was an understatement.

They were building a parking apron at the Nha Trang airport. It was 150 meters wide by 300 meters long (to the best of my memory). After they put down and compacted their base rock and added a seal coat (a coat of heavy oil) they had a rain and discovered it didn’t drain. They sent me to fix it.

The American engineering staff had disappeared. The OICC (Officer in Charge of Construction) didn’t have a clue as to what had caused the problem. Finally, the Vietnamese surveyor told me the crown of the parking apron had been lowered two meters to save base rock. The job had been completed a month ahead of schedule but the apron was flat. Two meters of crown was the entire slope in the design. They told me to fix it. It seemed impossible. How the frack do you drain a flat apron?

My first idea was to scarify the surface and blend in some base rock to give it some sort of a crown, even if not all the designer intended.

That was objected to by everyone. I think there was an embarrassment quotient involved such as completion reports and payments. Some people were stressed out.

“You will fix what is there,” I was told.

I had no idea how to do it until I started talking to the paving superintendent. This guy, it turned out, was super-competent. We were supposed to put a 10 Cm (4 inch) layer of asphalt (also called black top or tarmac) down as the final surface of the apron. The superintendent explained how he could vary the layer depth so maybe, if we could find existing swales, we could increase improve on them.

Base rock can never be laid completely flat, even if that were the design. That’s why they put in a large crown to drain it, so uneven areas of the base won’t matter. It was worth a shot so I painted dots on the parking apron in 5 meter intervals, the width of the paving machine (12 ft.) apart. Each dot had a letter and number. That gave us nearly 2000 points. We shot elevations on them. Then I made a contour map with a one Cm interval.

Now some people are gifted at one thing and some at another. I must confess that, as a lifetime engineer and surveyor, directions confuse me. I cannot get off the Bangkok subway and go up the reversing escalators without getting totally disoriented.

Ah, but contour maps are another thing. The making of those things was one of the gifts bestowed on me. When I went through surveying school, I did the maps for the entire class of 12.

So I did a contour map of the apron and found a few windows. The cross-sections and the contour map showed up swales and high spots. Following the instructions of the paving superintendent, on each point on the apron we painted the thickness of pavement needed accentuate the tiny slope. We worked closely together during the paving.

The test came at the first rain after completion. Except for a “bird bath” or two, it drained.

We didn’t say a word; we just looked at each other. No one would ever know the miracle we had performed. We had drained a flat parking apron.

THAI LADY

2007-02-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

AIRPORT PROBLEMS

2007-02-15T15:35:00.000-08:00

They’re having trouble at Bangkok’s new airport. There is a catalogue of things gone wrong. It’s interesting that the two reporters who first wrote about the problems got fired. That was months before the airport opened and the full scale of the debacle was revealed. There was some talk about hiring them back now that their story appears to have been accurate. I don’t know if they have been rehired.

What caused all the problems?

I can’t say for sure but I have a pretty good idea. There were rumors of corruption among the construction management at the airport for some time. Someone wrote into a blog anonymously and said he was a successful bidder on a portion of the construction but was asked to give 40 million baht (a million dollars) as a kickback before proceeding. When he refused he lost the contract. I don’t know if that was true but it certainly fits the pattern of a failed construction project.

A contractor who has to pay a huge bribe in order to get the contract is going to have to cut corners to make money on the deal. The manager who has taken the bribe will not be critical of the work he inspects.

Again, I don’t know if that’s what happened, but it fits the pattern.

I also must say, I have never personally seen corruption in my three years here in Thailand.

EYE CANDY

2007-02-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

GETTING EVEN

2007-02-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

With all the evidence coming forth that Iran is sponsoring terrorism around the world and is now sending weapons into Iraq that are killing American soldiers, I started visualizing “get back at them” schemes. For one thing, why should counter-terrorism be done only in places where terrorists operate? Why not go to the place from which the terrorists come? Why not terrorize the source? In short, we send in our own guys to bomb them.

Since the Iranians seem to be ahead of us in this field, we can even copy their technology and surely improve on it. We can produce bombs of the type needed without limit and for little cost. Adding some innovation might be fun. The old standard of the bomb wrapped in a scarf seems too tame. How about milk bottle bombs along with suitcase or disguised as a baby bomb? They might even have some contests for laughs. The potential variety seems endless.

With our technology we can surely increase the strength of the explosives. We ought to be able to get a much bigger bang with smaller packages. Get the labs working on that.

As for personnel, that would be easy. There are Iranian dissidents everywhere. There was a whole camp of them in northeast Iraq when the war began. Iran asked us at the time to wipe them out because of the threat they imposed. I seem to remember that we did conduct operations against them because they were unfriendly to the Kurds also. Anyway, there should still be thousands upon thousands of them.

On top of that, we control or have access to virtually the entire Iranian border. This is a border across which it is just as easy to get terrorists in as it is to get them out. It is porous to say the least. Iran would have a huge problem with networks of terrorists in their midst. The terrorists could move freely and blend in with the population. They would find refuge and aid in the general population. Sound familiar? It is any government’s worst nightmare.

The biggest problem would be keeping the operation secret from the CIA. If anyone from the CIA caught wind of it, the news and details would be flashed around the world in an instant via the NY Times. For that reason the entire project would have to be carefully compartmentalized. Everyone involved should know as little about the project as a whole as possible. In that way, the CIA exposes would only get a few agents killed at a time and not threaten the entire project.

That’s the reality of the war on terror.

ANNA NICOLE SMITH

2007-02-13T16:32:00.000-08:00

Undimutive Anna Nicole Smith in a far healthier time. She may even have been happy.

I AM NOT THE FATHER, I THINK

2007-02-13T16:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, let me say from the start, I don’t think I’m the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. I was going to deny it outright but then I got to thinking. There is a remote chance that I might be the father.

If she had a normal gestation period (if so it would be the only normal thing about her), she got impregnated last year. I spent the entire year here in Bangkok. I don’t think she came here during that time. I don’t mess with the ladies in the girly establishments but even so, I never saw anyone who looked remotely like her. And I never mess with women who outweigh me anyway.

But then I got to thinking. If she did sneak into Bangkok and sneaked into my house and caught me with the lights out or asleep, who knows? She might have done that so I might be the father.

And now they’ve brought stored semen into the mix. Who the hell can say for sure they’re not the father now that they’ve brought that crap into the mix? I have never stored any of my semen in a bank. (I was afraid of rejection. That would be the ultimate rejection.)

But then I got to thinking. One of my old girlfriends could have stored one of my used condoms with the purpose of implicating me in a rape case sometime (I saw that on a cop show), then she could have shoved it into Anna while Anna was passed out somewhere (which has happened). So I might be the father.

So they’re going to do a DNA test which they think will solve the problem and answer the question. Wrong. The way I understand it, DNA tests give odds of like a million to one that they’ve got the right man. But that won’t be enough in this case. See, there are around three billion men in the world. A test that can narrow it down to one in a million will still leave three thousand men who might be the father.

You see the problem?

TIM RUSSERT ON THE HOT SEAT

2007-02-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

FULL DISCLOSURE

2007-02-12T14:58:00.000-08:00

Tim Russert got caught in a couple of lies when he testified at the Libby trial. In cross-examination, the defense showed on video tape conflicting statements Russert had made. How great is that?

It made me start wondering from whence, politically, Russert came. I had noticed a preponderance of far out lefties on most panels he moderated. Usually only one “token” righty. So I decided to look him up.

In Russert’s biography on Wikipedia it says:

Before joining NBC News, Russert served as counselor in New York Governor Mario Cuomo's office in Albany in 1983 to 1984 and was chief of staff to Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from 1977 to 1982

In the interest of full disclosure that should be mentioned on every program Russert hosts. It is only fair to know a political interviewer’s possible bias.

And while I’m on the subject, full disclosure of the interviewer’s past political affiliations should be a part of every interview show. It’s not fair to the public to pretend neutrality while being a mouthpiece for one side or the other.

IAN RICHARDSON

2007-02-12T14:28:00.000-08:00

IAN RICHARDSON

2007-02-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

This was in today’s Corner:

Ian Richardson, RIP [Yuval Levin]

British actor Ian Richardson passed away this weekend, leaving behind a great legacy of Shakespearean acting, but, to my mind, an even greater legacy for fans of political thrillers. Richardson starred as the fantastically diabolical Francis Urquhart in the 1990 BBC mini-series “House of Cards,” based on the book by Michael Dobbs, and its two sequels “To Play the King” in 1993, and “The Final Cut” in 1995. A very thinly veiled satire of the British Conservative party in the wake of Thatcher, the three are full of intrigue, humor, and wit, and are about the best fix a political junky on either side of the pond could ever hope for. If you’ve never seen them, do yourself a favor and get the DVDs.

I can add that Richardson played Bill Haydon in BBC’s mini-series “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” That is one of my all time favorites. It always gave me pleasure to see his face come up on the screen because I knew it would be an interesting performance.

LI'L ABNER

2007-02-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

Denizons of Dogpatch as drawn by Al Capp in his popular cartoon. The little kid was a late addition. It was borrowed from by The Beverly Hillbillies.

MOVE OVER BEVERLY HILLBILLIES

2007-02-08T15:26:00.000-08:00

The Beverly Hillbillies was the most successful, and some say the best, sitcom in the history of television. What is the evidence of this? Ten of its shows in the first season ranked, at the time, in the top twenty most watched shows of all time. That will never be matched or even approached. It was No. 1 in ratings for six of its nine seasons.

More evidence is the fact that critics and snobs hated it. No, that is not a redundancy. Although all critics are snobs, that does not make all snobs critics. (There’s a lesson in logic.) Critics are a humorless lot. They would have to watch a show with an audience to know if something is funny. And even so, it would have to be dignified humor. A fart joke would have them en masse reaching for the perfumed handkerchief tucked into their left sleeve. A critic’s first goal is to show they are better than the material they are reviewing.

Okay, enough on critics. You get the idea.

So what made The Beverly Hillbillies so successful?

It had a lot of things working for it. One thing was Al Capp’s hugely successful comic strip, Li’l Abner. TBH didn’t plagiarize Capp’s creation, but they did borrow liberally. Max Baer as Jethro Bodine was the personification of Li’l Abner in looks and personality. Donna Douglas as Elly May Clampett was pretty close to Daisy May for looks. Granny in looks and personality was Ma Yokum. Even her given name in the show was Daisy May.

Only buddy Epson as Jed Clampett didn’t fit into Capp’s cartoon mold. But he was a familiar face on TV from other hit shows. So TBH had easily, if not universally, recognized characters.

Then the characters are thrown into a completely foreign, to them, environment. “Fish out of Water” plots work well in all storytelling. The shows were well written to accentuate that situation.

The biggest asset on the show though was Max Baer. He was nothing short of great as the giant, innocent, dumb, Jethroe. His was one of the classic, all time comic portrayals.

TBH is a show that should be studied by would-be sitcom promoters for how to do things right. (Granted, a Max Baer does not come around very often.)

Which brings me to "Two and a Half Men". Believe it or not, this show has many similarities to TBH. Each character is unique and has their own niche on the show. That makes them easily recognizable and distinct. So, although they didn’t have the advantage of a national cartoon as a pre-introduction, all it takes is one episode to sort out who is who.

The “Fish out of Water” theme is followed when Jon Cryer, playing nerdy, P-whipped, Alan Harper, moves into the beach front home of Charlie Sheen, playing his worldly, womanizing brother, Charlie Harper. The writing exploiting this situation is brilliant.

The supporting cast is quite good. I seldom like kid actors, but Angus T. Jones, the kid playing Cryer’s son, is excellent. Holland Taylor, who plays the mother of the brothers, has been a favorite of mine since she appeared on Bosom Buddies.

But the show’s biggest asset is Charlie Sheen. He is so perfect in the role of the amoral womanizer you might suspect he has spent his whole life studying for the part. Beyond that, his comedic talents are flawless. He is one of the best sitcom comics ever.

NOW THAT'S A HAIR STYLE

2007-02-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

Discussed in the story below, this is the Little Orphan Annie hair style. Some women actually wore it in public.

MARRIAGE CRISIS

2007-02-06T18:08:00.000-08:00

I knew I was in big trouble the moment I saw her come in the front door. She had been to her beauty shop. She had one of the wackiest hairdos I had ever seen.

She had a quizzical, unsure expression on her face. “What do you think?” she asked me.

I tried to give a confident smile and I nodded, nothing more. I was stalling in an effort to gather my thoughts.

“It’s the Little Orphan Annie hair style,” she said. “My hairdresser said it looks great. It’s the latest thing.”

This was back when there was a big stage play and movie, needless to say. If I saw someone else in that hair style, I might have pointed it out and laughed. But his was serious business. I had a tough decision to make.

She went to the mirror and touched her hair. “You don’t think it’s weird, do you?”

Do I tell her the truth and have her hate me for a few months or do I lie and have her lose all respect for my judgment? Why do women put you in these positions?

I did what any sensible man would do; I lied. “It looks fine, dear,” I told her.

She was frowning into the mirror. “Are you sure?” She turned to me. “You’d tell me if it didn’t look good, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would,” I lied. “It looks okay to me.”

She stared at me in that ‘lie detector’ way that women have. I tried to look innocent and charming, but not too charming. That would raise her suspicions. She finally turned away and I had passed the test.

Next day she came home really pissed. The hairdo had been washed out or whatever women do to get rid of a bad look. “Why didn’t you tell me I looked horrid?” she challenged me.

“Who said that?”

“The girls at work. They said it looked terrible. How could you let me go out looking like that?”

“Well, it looked okay to me. I thought you looked sexy in it.” See, now here’s a tip to all you men out there. Throw “looked sexy” into a conversation like that and it kinda deflects their aim a little. Women always try to look good to other women. Not sexy, just good. But if you throw a “looked sexy” into the mix, it gives you an excuse for not having the same opinion as her women friends.

“You think it looked sexy?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Men!” she dismissed the whole gender. “I should never have asked you. What do you know? All you ever think of is sex.”

She had me there, but I was off the hook. You have to make choices in marriage. Some aren’t easy.

THAI LADY

2007-02-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

FREE MONEY

2007-02-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

There was a no brainer bet to make on the recent Super Bowl. I thought the Bears would win outright. When the odds were posted making them a 7-point underdog, that seemed like the bet of the century. That was like getting free money. All you had to do was find your local bookie and take your money. It was a cinch bet. The Bears and 7 points. I would have bet my house on it.

Well a funny thing happened on the way to the “free money.” The Colts won 29-17. Good thing I couldn’t find a bookie here in Bangkok. I didn’t know where to look. So I didn’t have a bet on the game.

I’m not much of a gambler.

That’s why.

DINING ROOM, PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO

2007-02-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

Mentioned in the story below. This is a recent photo.

PUTTING ON THE RITZ

2007-02-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

I was raised in the depression and, on top of that, my family was poor. My father always had a job but nothing above janitor or laborer. Our idea of a family night out was to go to a Chinese restaurant on Howard St. in San Francisco. (We never ate Chinese. We always had breaded veal cutlets.) For those of you who don’t know San Francisco, Howard St. is the edge of the tenderloin district. It is the wrong side of Market St. But the Chinese restaurant was clean, the food was good and, most important, it was cheap.

When I started to make some good money I wanted to see how the other half lived. There is a famous place in downtown San Francisco called the Palace Hotel. Movies of old San Francisco mention it and sometimes have scenes in it. The Palace Hotel was a cultural icon to me. I determined to actually see the insides.

I put on my best suit and, feeling like an interloper, went to have dinner there. Lucky me, I got a waiter who spotted me immediately as someone who didn’t belong. His patronizing tone was something to hear. For years after I thought of clever things I could have said to put him in his place, but then is then, now is now.

The capper came when I asked if they had Tabasco. I knew immediately I had made a mistake. A look of glee came over his face. “Tabasco?” he repeated loudly. “Yes sir, we have Tabasco. Just one moment sir.” He went to the edge of the large dining room to a condiment cart. He ostentatiously wheeled the entire cart clear across the dining room to my table. By that time I felt every eye in the room was on me.

“There you are sir,” he said snottily. “Will there be anything else?”

I wanted to stand up and tell the diners I had only asked for Tabasco, but that wouldn’t help. I had been put in my place and my place wasn’t inside the Palace Hotel.

At the time, I was the chief surveyor on a large construction project. This guy was just an a-hole waiter. The knowledge of that comforted me a little.

DENZEL WASHINGTON & FRIEND

2007-02-03T15:51:00.000-08:00

MAN ON FIRE – ACTOR’S CUT

2007-02-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

Some years ago, in an interview, James Colburn was complimented on his performance in one of the opening scenes of The Magnificent Seven. It was a scene that helped make him a big star and the film a big picture. Colburn pooh poohed the compliment. It was his adversary in the scene, he explained, who did all the acting. All he had to do was stand tall, look strong, and react. What a generous thing for Colburn to say. But if you watch the film, he was telling the truth.

I thought about that after watching the “interrogation” scene in the car in Man on Fire. But it is not the same. Although his adversary is doing a magnificent job of acting, Denzel Washington is not just reacting, he is giving one of the top performances in the history of cinema. He is the epitome of cold, professional, fury. I thought he was even better than in Training Day which got him the Academy Award.

Unfortunately, I got the impression that the director, Tony Scott, thought Denzel Washington was stealing the picture away from him. He kept putting in flashbacks and segues to diminish the impact of the scene and to remind the audience that it was his, the director’s, film. (Hey! Look at me! Don’t look at Denzel.) The editing seemed like a flagrant ego trip. What else could explain so many idiotic cuts?

Directors get a chance to get even with studios by putting out a director’s cut on DVD. Of this movie I would like to see an actor’s cut in which the heavy handed editing is taken out.

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes only gave it a 39%. I’m sure the negativity is due to the editing.

Anyway check it out. The “interrogation” scene in the car is one of the greatest scenes in history. It ranks right up there with the Brando/Steiger scene in On the Waterfront. What a pity the director tried to ruin it.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I would like to see Denzel Washington play that character over and over, sort of like Charles Bronson in his Death Wish series. I know it won’t happen. The point is, Denzel Washington brought “tough guy” to a new level and it would be a pity to let that character go.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

2007-02-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

This is the bust of hillary they put in the Museum of Sex (I kid you not). Some say that Jimmy Carter posed for it because she wasn't available. That's just dumb.

HILLARY, TWO VIEWS

2007-02-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

This was on Examiner.com today:

Dick Morris is no fan of Sen. Hillary Clinton, having spent much of the past decade writing and speaking out against her. And he took his always-quotable opinions to the offices of Americans for Tax Reform Wednesday at a breakfast sponsored by The American Spectator.

…

» “It is in the national interest that, if there is a Democratic president, that it not be Hillary.”

…

“Hillary will be the next president, and she’ll be the worst president we’ve ever seen…

You can read it all *HERE*. Whatever else you might think of him, Dick Morris has one of the smartest political minds in the US. But to say he “is no fan” of Hillary is a gross understatement. How much his animus has clouded his mind is hard to say. He is always worth listening to though and very often he is right.

On the other hand, this is what Ron Rosenbaum has written:

…of all the candidates so far, I’ve favored Hillary Clinton. Because she’s a woman and because she’s mean. Even if she doesn’t have a 16 point foreign policy plan, I feel her heart is going to be in the right place when she looks at the aggressive worldwide spread of a vicious and murderous medieval theocratic movement (jihad) that promotes the “honor killing” of rape victims, denies all the hard-won rights of women (not to mention gays, and liberals, and dissidents of all religious and political stripes). A culture that essentially wants to lock women up in the home, deprive them of the right to vote, to an education, to a full life as human beings.

…

…all the reasons the Hillary-haters can’t abide her (the ruthlessness, the aggressive ambition etc) will make her the president we need: she will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies.

You can read the entire article *HERE*. The main objections that came up to Rosenbaum’s points are that all of Hilary’s enemies are domestic. She has not taken firm positions on international enemies. In a time of war it might be better to have ones attention focused on the people who are trying to kill us.

RUSSELL CROWE

2007-02-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

Believable? Sure. Caesar decides to get in the arena with this nut, risking his life and empire. Sure, I can believe that. Where's that turnip truck I just fell off?

GLADIATOR

2007-01-31T16:59:00.000-08:00

(Warning: Spoiler in the text below.)

Movies reach me late here in Bangkok unless I’m interested enough to watch the first run in a theatre. In three years here I’ve gone to a theatre 3 times. Once for King Kong which was a bomb. Then two hits, The Pink Panther and War of the Worlds.

Gladiator is just now appearing on Thai TV. No amount of hype could have lured me to a theatre for that one. The whole theme, if you’ll pardon the expression, sounded gay. And sword fights bore me. One exception was Val Kilmer’s first sword fight in Troy. That was unique and interesting, especially with all the build-up. It was also probably very close to the real thing.

I digress.

Gladiator was pretty interesting though and carried me along. Russell Crowe was convincing. It was, in general, a Class A, half-naked-man, flick until it hit a road block. The road block was how to kill off Caesar and gain Crowe his revenge.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the discussion of that story-line took place. Here is how I imagine it might have gone:

The MoneyMan says, “We have to have Caesar killed in front of the whole populace of Rome. That would be satisfying. That’s the money shot. That will give us a great ending.”

The Writer/Director (a composite for my purpose here) asks, “How can we manage that?”

MM: “Put him in the Coloseum with Crowe in front of everybody. That would be great.

W/D: “But how do we get the emperor to do that? Crowe is the greatest gladiator in the empire. He kills several at a time. He kills lions one on one.”

MM: “Caesar gets jealous of Crowe’s fame and decides to challenge him. Something like that. You guys can figure it out. Just write it.”

W/D: “But we’ve made Caesar to be a coward up to here. He kills people by poison. He’s kind of,” (shows a limp wrist), “you know, weak.’

MM (Standing up, challenging): “There’s prejudice in this room against gay people?”

W/D: “No, no. We’re just saying it’s out of character. It’s not in keeping with all the film we’ve shot so far.”

MM: “Well so what? He changes. People change. Now he challenges Crowe and fights him in the Coliseum.”

W/D: “I don’t know.’

MM: “Well if you can’t do it, I’ll get someone who can.”

W/D (Reluctantly): “We can do it. We just don’t want the picture to look stupid.”

MM: “There’s no such thing as a stupid movie. There are only stupid audiences.”

Well, that’s my view of what may have happened. But what do I know? It went on to win 5 Oscars including best picture.

ICE HOCKEY STAR

2007-01-29T16:56:00.000-08:00

According to the press release, this is the man who led the Kazakhstan ice hockey to the 52-1 victory over Thailand. His name wasn't given. By a strange coincidence, he also fits the description of the man who stole an 8 metric ton coin from a display in downtown Bangkok.

BORAT MOVIE BANNED IN THAILAND

2007-01-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

The movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, has been banned in Thailand. That‘s too bad. I had put it on my must see list. Only a couple of pictures a year get on that list. The rest I wait for them to appear on TV, but if this one is banned, it won’t even make it to TV here. Perhaps someday. I have a hunch smuggled/pirated copies might already be for sale here in Bangkok. But that won’t do me any good. No sir. I’m not going to break the law.

In a totally unrelated story, the Kazakhstan ice hockey team beat the Thai national team 52 to 1. You can read about it *HERE*.

In another totally unrelated story, an 8 metric ton coin was stolen from a cultural display in Bangkok. You can read about it *HERE*. We’re advised to look for a man with a bulging pocket.

In still another totally unrelated story, the temperature got down to 65 degrees last night in Bangkok.

I wonder if the world is coming to an end.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

2007-01-29T15:25:00.000-08:00

Profiling? If you see someone who looks kinda like one of these guys and he appears to be carrying a bomb, you might get a little suspicious. But maybe not.

PROFILING

2007-01-29T15:21:00.000-08:00

I’m an old white guy with a beard. If a bunch of old white guys with beards started killing people I would be pissed off. It would mean that people would start looking at me with fisheye stares. It would mean that I would be subjected to suspicion and searches even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. That would really piss me off.

But I would be pissed off at those old white guys with beards who brought all that heat down on me. I would go to the Old White Guys With Beards meetings and tell those guys to cut out that shit because they’re screwing it up for all of us. I would try to infiltrate their gang or movement and try to find who is doing the stuff and drop a dime on him.

Isn’t that logical? Isn’t that what a normal person would do? Someone makes trouble for you so you go after whoever instigated that trouble?

Well that’s not the way it works today.

There was a rash of blacks killing cab drivers in New York City. What did blacks do? They complained that cab drivers weren’t picking them up. Well, duh. To hell with Political Correctness, that’s about as dumb as you can get. If there was any effort in the black community to stop and apprehend the killers, it wasn’t reported. There was even a dumb law passed that penalized cab drivers for not picking up their potential assassins. Brilliant! That only proves that people are a thousand times smarter than governments. People are better at doing profiling than any government rules.

Since the bombs went off in Bangkok, security has increased on the subway. But before the bombs, I always eyeballed my fellow passengers. Was I looking for a suspicious Buddhist? Or perhaps a shady Confucian? Or maybe a lady in a wheel chair? Who ever heard of a Buddhist terrorist? Of course, I was only looking for Muslim appearing people who might be toting a bomb. Who the hell else but Muslims would be toting a bomb?

So, I would hope, if I were a Muslim instead of an old white guy with a beard, and my fellows were going around killing people and bringing heat down on me and mine, I would have the balls to infiltrate their gang or movement and try to find out who is doing that crap and drop a dime on him.

I damn sure wouldn’t blame the rest of the world for treating me with suspicion.

But that’s just my view from the safety of being an old white guy with a beard.

GROWING UP

2007-01-28T18:15:00.000-08:00

That's our young lady in the center. This was taken at our recent Christmas-New Year's celebration. Someone put makeup on her. That's another first.

OUR LITTLE GIRL HAS BECOME A WOMAN

2007-01-28T18:10:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that’s right, our littlest one has been touched by the “Grow Up Now” fairy and has crossed that threshold. No, she didn’t get a tattoo or body piercing. Those are joys we still have to look forward to. How proud we will be when they happen. What did happen was she changed her favorite treat from roasted cashews to chocolate. There you go. What more evidence could you want that she’s become a woman?

We’re so pleased.

The only drawback to our complete delight is that she’s taken a week to eat an 8oz package of M and M’s. That is worrying me. It’s just not normal. I don’t think it will be a reflection of her sexual preference. After all, Rosie O’Donnell would probably ingest it all in one bite, wrapping and all.

I guess she’s just easing into womanhood.

COME DANCE WITH ME

2007-01-27T18:06:00.000-08:00

What? Dance with you? And you can't do the Texas two-step? Get lost!

TEXAS TWO-STEP

2007-01-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

I had a tumultuous relationship with my first wife. We were married three times and divorced three times. Crazy, huh? We always got married in a fever. We were what you might call ‘sexually compatible.’ In other words, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Sometimes we’d live, or at least sleep, together in between marriages. She was perfect for me. I’d be with her still but she chose not to have it that way.

She never bored me because I never knew who she was going to be at any time. You know that Chinese curse, “May your life be interesting?” Well I suppose you could curse someone with, “May you live with an interesting woman.”

During one of our periods of divorce I worked at a civil engineering firm in Orange County running a survey crew. The title for that is Party Chief. One of the other chiefs kept after me to go to a western bar he frequented with his fiancé. “You’ll meet lots of great looking women there,” he assured me.

I drove by the place often. They had famous western entertainers there which they advertised on their billboard.

This other chief and I had never socialized but we had worked together a few times and he seemed okay so I finally decided to give it a shot. What the hell, I might get lucky.

I found him and his girl friend at a table and joined them. Right away I knew I was in trouble. From the way he had been talking, I had the impression that he and his friend were well known there and would bring female type people to our table to meet me. That didn’t happen. There were plenty of great looking women there. Most of them were out on the floor doing this western dance they call the Texas two-step. None came near out table. He didn’t appear to know anyone.

I stared at him. He gestured with his eyes around the room. Trying to tell me, I guess, “There they are, go get ‘em. I did my job. The rest is up to you.” What an asshole! I looked at his girlfriend. She averted her eyes.

Trouble was, everyone there was a cowboy or cowgirl wannabe. It was like a cult and the worship consisted of this dumb dance called the Texas two-step. The size of your dick didn’t matter or whether of not you were good looking. All that mattered was that dumb, primitive dance. If you could do it, you were in, or at least had a chance of getting in. If you couldn’t do it, forget about it.

Well I couldn’t do it. I looked carefully around the room to see if there were any women who might be beginners like me. No luck. I had been sandbagged. What was I supposed to do, go ask some hot chick to teach me to dance? Yeah, right.

I hung around for a couple of drinks to be polite and then split.

Next day I heard that this other chief, my ‘host’ for that evening, told our boss how I couldn’t score despite having all those beautiful girls around. What a creep.

There were some repercussions. His fiancé split with him. It may have had something to do with that evening. I hope it did.

No, I never did learn to do the Texas two-step. But for all you lonely guys out there, it’s a great way to meet good looking chicks. Weird perhaps, but good looking. There’s nothing wrong with weird.

BETTER THAN EMPTY SHELVES

2007-01-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

This is an aisle in one of our local super-markets. On display is nothing but water. It's a large store so maybe they ran out of products to show. This is not typical of Thai markets. But it looked so odd I had to get a picture.

THE THAI BAHT – UPDATE

2007-01-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

THE THAI BAHT – UPDATE

I’m starting to understand this a little more although I still understand very little in total. This is in today’s Bloomberg on line:

The Thai baht gained the most among world currencies today, surging 1.8 percent to 33.5 per dollar, the strongest since 1997. The currency rose because recent measures to curb speculation in the baht reduced its supply among overseas investors, central bank Governor Tarisa Watanagase said.

So now there is a two tier exchange rate on the baht. The exchange rate quoted at XE.com - Universal Currency Converter Results is the international rate. Meanwhile, the local papers are quoting the in-country rate. That rate is being kept weaker by government rules and sometimes differs by 3% or more from the international rate.

What a strange situation. It’s kind of a reverse black market in money. Usually, at least in places I’ve been, cheap money is bought on the outside and smuggled in. That’s how a normal black market works. Here in Thailand, the money dealers would want to smuggle baht out. And probably do.

YVONNE DE CARLO, BACK WHEN

2007-01-25T17:20:00.000-08:00

YVONNE DE CARLO

2007-01-25T17:17:00.000-08:00

Yvonne De Carlo died a few days ago. Her death reminded me of the huge changes that have occurred in American and western culture since my youth. My youth took place in the 1940s in San Francisco.

In that era getting a picture of a naked lady was rare. A boyhood friend told me he found a nudist magazine which he managed to keep hidden for years. I was never so lucky.

Porn? A couple of times I saw these little eight page, black and white, comic books that showed cartoon characters ‘getting it on.’ They had to be passed on and returned to the owner. That was the limit of porn, although I had heard stories that more existed somewhere.

Archie comic books were popular because you could see the outline of Betty’s and Veronica’s bodies through their clothing. Wild, huh? The movie magazines always had the sexiest pictures. I got a picture of Doris Day in a tight swim suit. I kept it a long time.

But the best was Yvonne De Carlo. She was the most daring. There was one picture in which she appeared to be nude under a sheer nightgown. That was a keeper.

I mention all this because if you hadn’t lived it you probably wouldn’t believe it. The differences today are absolutely enormous. To think that such changes in the availability of soft and hard core porn will not have an effect on everyday life is delusional. I am not preaching anything. I take no position that this is good or bad. What I do say is that these enormous changes are being ignored as possible cause and effect of other changes in western lifestyle.

I wrote a piece called Sex in America last November in which I describe how researchers into diminishing testosterone in men did not even think about the increased availability of porn as a cause. They confessed to being clueless.

Here’s an article from the Denver Post about how Americans spend more time with the computer that their spouses.

Here’s a study about lower birth rates.

Here’s a story from the N Y Times about more women living without husbands than with.

It’s all pretty interesting. I wonder if there’s any connection.

CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR

2007-01-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

This is another shot of the celebration at our local Bangkok grammar school. I though it was great