Thailand Is Burning

Fire is a popular tool in Thailand, and in Uthai Thani is seemed to be used even more than usual. While we were driving down the road I noticed lots of smoke up ahead, and it turned out to be a sugarcane field where they were burning off the leftovers after a harvest. Turns out that they give the fields a good burn BEFORE the harvest too, because cane is easier to cut if you burn it a little, go figure.

Freda Payne - Cherish What Is Dear To You - [STEREO]

Some of these songs have great lessons in them. That's all I've got to say about it.

I love the CKLW promo at the start of the record too. That's "C" for Canada, it was (is?) a Windsor, Ontario station. They reference the "Motor City" because Detroit is right across the river, that's their market too. I could listen to the station in New York but only at night, later was better. That's a function of the form of AM radio waves. It was great in the Sixties, CKLW played lots of English Invasion stuff that didn't get played anywhere else.

It's Good To Have Friends

This is me with my buddy Suksa and his wife and daughter. Another daughter is studying in Bangkok. Suksa is a retired Thai Marine and a young lawyer (the Common Law euphemism for someone who has been a lawyer for fewer than five years). He's also an ex-student of mine. He's a very nice guy. He's one of those Thai's who realized early on that English was good for just about any career. In the Marines, his facility in English got him choice assignments with UN and ASEAN deployments around Asia, which meant extra pay and more medals (inter-service cooperation!).

He's a real get-along guy and I'm happy to know him.

Temple Fish Feeding

Everywhere you go in Thailand there's a river handy, and many cities have temples located at riverside, and some of these temples feature fish feeding. You can buy bags of bread or fish food, and as you can see the fish are lined up and ready to eat. This is one of the fish temples, a nice one that is in either Chainat, Suphan Buri, or maybe Uthai Thani. We traveled around a lot that day, I'm not sure.

Those are some big cat fish, and they make an interesting flood story too. During the floods last year, the canal near my house was full, full, full. It never overflowed, but there was a lot of water flowing through, water that came down through rivers from the north. While the canal was high I noticed that guys were fishing, quite a few guys, and they were catching some big-ass fish. At the temple, my friend told me that during the flood the catfish disappeared, and I said oh! I know where they went! The flood had carried them down to Bangkok and my canal.

Second Cool Vehicle Alert Of The Week: Fifty Year Old Honda Dream

Just a nice mall display, a 1958 Honda Dream that really looked great. Probably a 175 cc, a big bike for Thailand. Within five years similar bikes were on sale in the US. The American "Dream" was a 250 cc much in the style of this one, a little on the cushy side. The hot set up was the 305 cc "Super Hawk." They were nice bikes, and they could keep up with much bigger bikes without much trouble. Then there were the "Scramber" versions, lower gearing and easy wheelies. They were all nice bikes.

phil manzanera - big day (w brian eno)

Yeah, forget about Bruce Springsteen, this shit was the bomb in the mid-Seventies. Phil was the guitar player in Roxy Music, and this was a side project that Brian Eno (fellow Roxy) was involved in. The both of them were interested in sound in a very new way for guys in their genre. They were essentially rock guys, pop guys, but they were focused on textures and tones, and lyrics that went way beyond moon/spoon/June. (Like those colossally overrated Beatles, the Kings of old fashioned Moon/Spoon/June.) It was a great time, people were taking chances. These guys, their frame of artistic reference was much broader than the average bear today. Remember Television? Tom Verlaine? Any of you young people know where the Verlaine came from? I didn't think so.

But I understand, you young people today are very knowledgeable and intelligent in your own way. It's cool, I'm cool with it. I know that I can't work an I-Phone, so what do I know? Who gives a shit who the Vice President is? Or where Ghana is?

This modern world is just not our game anymore, we so-called seniors. The important things for us cranky geezers to remember are that nothing is important anymore; giving a shit about anything is stupid; all information is bullshit; reality is overrated; and empathy is counterproductive, totally girlie, and lame.

But some of this geezer music still makes it. Deal with that, youngblood!

U.S. secrecy system “literally out of control”

U.S. secrecy system “literally out of control”

I don't do politics, generally, but I do a certain amount of moon directed howling about the national security apparatus's takeover of the executive branch, if not the entire Federal Government. Welcome to year sixty-one of the permanent state of emergency that began with Pearl Harbor. Here's a little bit about the state of your security, from the people at Salon.com.

So, do you feel more secure?