What's the difference between a blog and notebooks that you fill up and then keep in a box somewhere?
Not too bloody much, but at least some people read the blog, and that's a start. (And I guess it's easier to find than a box in someone's closet, and harder to lose.)
Monday, February 28, 2011
It Wasn't My Bus
The day I returned from Buriram was a very, very good day. Mostly because it wasn't my bus in the ditch.
Traffic stopped at one point. I thought it was some kind of police or military check point, there are a lot of those now, what with all of the Yellow Shirts, Red Shirts, and good, old fashioned meth smugglers. They usually don't detain the buses, but they snarl up traffic pretty good. When we got to the intersection though, I noticed all of the emergency vehicles, and finally saw the bus in the ditch.
It was a perfect fit, so it was hard to see until you were right on top of it, until I was looking right down on the blue, orange and white side of the bus with the windows staring up. Lots of guys with back-boards were crawling down to the bus. It didn't look like they'd opened it up yet. That was a real mess right there.
But it wasn't me, and I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Regular readers may know that I am not a conventionally religious man, probably I seem more like a blasphemer. But I do pray sometimes. No, I never ask for anything, I'm absolutely certain that there is no God that answers prayer. But God . . . who knows? It's so hard to be certain. So maybe I'm hedging my bets, but I do say a prayer of thanks on occasion, thanks for some blessing, some good luck, like this time, it not being my bus in the ditch.
Traffic stopped at one point. I thought it was some kind of police or military check point, there are a lot of those now, what with all of the Yellow Shirts, Red Shirts, and good, old fashioned meth smugglers. They usually don't detain the buses, but they snarl up traffic pretty good. When we got to the intersection though, I noticed all of the emergency vehicles, and finally saw the bus in the ditch.
It was a perfect fit, so it was hard to see until you were right on top of it, until I was looking right down on the blue, orange and white side of the bus with the windows staring up. Lots of guys with back-boards were crawling down to the bus. It didn't look like they'd opened it up yet. That was a real mess right there.
But it wasn't me, and I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Regular readers may know that I am not a conventionally religious man, probably I seem more like a blasphemer. But I do pray sometimes. No, I never ask for anything, I'm absolutely certain that there is no God that answers prayer. But God . . . who knows? It's so hard to be certain. So maybe I'm hedging my bets, but I do say a prayer of thanks on occasion, thanks for some blessing, some good luck, like this time, it not being my bus in the ditch.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
My Grateful, Respectful Students
This was my classroom out in Buriram. A little grander than most, the stage and the ceiling a little higher, the room a little nicer. I gave them my usual four-hour lecture for the class, "English for Lawyers." The lesson was just about typical. A nice bunch, very respectful. Some of them, designated by the group no doubt, took me and another ajan out to a nice dinner. It was delicious, and they were fun to hang out with.
All of the aspects of status in Thailand work in my favor, it's great. High education is high status, and I have a doctorate. Lawyers are high status. To be "mature" is high status. The more mature the better. Teachers are high status, and I am a university teacher. My job pays well, and to be prosperous is high status. Not to mention that everyone assumes that I am rich in America, and rich is very, very high status. My good works count for nothing. Form over function, as usual. It's a little frustrating, but I'll take the status any way that I can get it.
Let's Hear It For Unions!!!
I was raised in New York City, so it may come as no surprise to you that I am a Yellow Dog Democrat and a Blue Collar union fanatic. When I was a boy, a Republican couldn't get arrested in New York, and most of my friends' fathers were in unions. I've been in lots of unions myself, in amongst my fifty-odd jobs. Some of those unions even did me some good.
There's a lot of pressure on unions now, a new round of union busting. Funny stuff, though. Recall that the great communicator, Ronald Reagan, was a big time union buster. Those air-traffic controllers and etc. Strange, he was also the only president in United States history to actually have been in a union, the Screen Actors Guild, of which he was the president for six terms. He was so flexible, that one, so situational. Hypocritical, you might say. While he was acting to destroy unions in our own country he was saying things about Solidarity in Poland like, "the most elemental human right . . . the right to belong to a free trade union." Slicker than Slick Willie, that one.
Now there's Mike Huckabee, the most dangerous man in America. He doesn't seem to know anything when they ask him questions in his many TV appearances. Asked: what would you do in Afghanistan, he says, "I don't know." He says that a lot, the poor guy doesn't seem to know shit from shoe polish. He knows about unions though. He told Greta Van Sustren last week that "unions have broken the bank . . ." and need to be knocked down a peg. He believes that the current asshole governor of Wisconsin is on the right track.
So who's done more for you in your working life? Unions or Mike Huckabee? Down south, how's that right-to-work stuff working out for you? Like that forty-hour-week? That overtime? How many sick days do you get? Remember your health benefits? Want them back? Retirement, wow, that's some nostalgia right there. Remember who your friends are. The unions are your friends.*
*If you make over $100,000 a year, please disregard this post.
There's a lot of pressure on unions now, a new round of union busting. Funny stuff, though. Recall that the great communicator, Ronald Reagan, was a big time union buster. Those air-traffic controllers and etc. Strange, he was also the only president in United States history to actually have been in a union, the Screen Actors Guild, of which he was the president for six terms. He was so flexible, that one, so situational. Hypocritical, you might say. While he was acting to destroy unions in our own country he was saying things about Solidarity in Poland like, "the most elemental human right . . . the right to belong to a free trade union." Slicker than Slick Willie, that one.
Now there's Mike Huckabee, the most dangerous man in America. He doesn't seem to know anything when they ask him questions in his many TV appearances. Asked: what would you do in Afghanistan, he says, "I don't know." He says that a lot, the poor guy doesn't seem to know shit from shoe polish. He knows about unions though. He told Greta Van Sustren last week that "unions have broken the bank . . ." and need to be knocked down a peg. He believes that the current asshole governor of Wisconsin is on the right track.
So who's done more for you in your working life? Unions or Mike Huckabee? Down south, how's that right-to-work stuff working out for you? Like that forty-hour-week? That overtime? How many sick days do you get? Remember your health benefits? Want them back? Retirement, wow, that's some nostalgia right there. Remember who your friends are. The unions are your friends.*
*If you make over $100,000 a year, please disregard this post.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Countryside Temple In Buriram
Just a little sherbet to clear my pallet after the post below.
This is the working temple for the community that grew up around Prasit Wat Muang Tam, the thousand year old site appearing in pictures a page or two down. I didn't go in, but it appears typical. It's a small community surrounded by huge rice fields, so almost certainly most of the attendees of this temple are farmers. So this is the real Thailand. I recommend it highly.
What Planet Is This?
The news from America makes me physically ill almost everyday, but some days are worse than others, much worse.
I teach my Thai law students the Disney version of the American system, the dream version, and when I speak of Americans themselves the picture is equally rosy. You know, like, the laws are applied equally, and for most people race and religion are not issues. We all get along fine. If only it were so.
I know, re-posting is so declasse, but bear with me:
Courtesy of the Daily Kos:
Fox Nation's Gorilla Story Stirs Racist Frenzy
Today on the Fox Nation web site, they posted a story on the popularity of some new videos of a gorilla walking upright like a man. That seems like it should be an innocuous little animal tale with a precocious jungle creature imitating human behavior. But this is Fox Nation we're talking about.
This is the sort of item that Fox Nation posts fully aware of the dog-whistle effect it will have on its readers: a community of dimwits that is simply incapable of masking the open hostility and racism that is at the core of their putrid souls. Here is a sampling of the comments to be found attached to the article:
1preacher: Yea, I could see where this Gorilla evolved from obama's family.
amveteran: This is a true knuckle dragger. Reminds me of Al Sharpton.
winterhawk: Just as I thought, that's buckwheat's daddy.
flyinjohn23: Not only that....He got himself one of those Hiawian Birth Certificates over the internet all on his own too.
1preacher: Because I said that this was obama's mother, that is racist? Not following that one.
hawk1052: Shelia Jackson Lee, comes to mind.
armed: is the one in the background carrying a teleprompter and throwing tater tots at the other one.
And if that isn't bad enough, there were at least 13 comments that the Fox Nationalists "flagged for review." If the examples above made it past their decency filter, we can only imagine how disgusting were the comments that were removed were. And in addition to the overt racism, there was also an abundance of derogatory and idiotic remarks regarding evolution and the intelligence of liberals.
These people are sick and beyond pathetic. And Fox News knows exactly what they are doing by throwing this chum in the tank. This isn't the first time that Fox Nation's readers behaved so atrociously. Last year they posted feverishly about how they wished the President were dead.
The bigots at Fox are surely comfortable with this sort of hatred. We learned last summer that only 1.38% of Fox's audience is African American (compared to about 20% each for CNN and MSNBC). So they probably don't think they have much to lose by being racist jerkwads. Just their humanity, and they don't have much of that to begin with.
End of Kos re-post.
I checked those comments on the original site, it's true. The greatest minds of our time should immediately devote themselves to the question: what in God's name is going on here?
I teach my Thai law students the Disney version of the American system, the dream version, and when I speak of Americans themselves the picture is equally rosy. You know, like, the laws are applied equally, and for most people race and religion are not issues. We all get along fine. If only it were so.
I know, re-posting is so declasse, but bear with me:
Courtesy of the Daily Kos:
Fox Nation's Gorilla Story Stirs Racist Frenzy
Today on the Fox Nation web site, they posted a story on the popularity of some new videos of a gorilla walking upright like a man. That seems like it should be an innocuous little animal tale with a precocious jungle creature imitating human behavior. But this is Fox Nation we're talking about.
This is the sort of item that Fox Nation posts fully aware of the dog-whistle effect it will have on its readers: a community of dimwits that is simply incapable of masking the open hostility and racism that is at the core of their putrid souls. Here is a sampling of the comments to be found attached to the article:
1preacher: Yea, I could see where this Gorilla evolved from obama's family.
amveteran: This is a true knuckle dragger. Reminds me of Al Sharpton.
winterhawk: Just as I thought, that's buckwheat's daddy.
flyinjohn23: Not only that....He got himself one of those Hiawian Birth Certificates over the internet all on his own too.
1preacher: Because I said that this was obama's mother, that is racist? Not following that one.
hawk1052: Shelia Jackson Lee, comes to mind.
armed: is the one in the background carrying a teleprompter and throwing tater tots at the other one.
And if that isn't bad enough, there were at least 13 comments that the Fox Nationalists "flagged for review." If the examples above made it past their decency filter, we can only imagine how disgusting were the comments that were removed were. And in addition to the overt racism, there was also an abundance of derogatory and idiotic remarks regarding evolution and the intelligence of liberals.
These people are sick and beyond pathetic. And Fox News knows exactly what they are doing by throwing this chum in the tank. This isn't the first time that Fox Nation's readers behaved so atrociously. Last year they posted feverishly about how they wished the President were dead.
The bigots at Fox are surely comfortable with this sort of hatred. We learned last summer that only 1.38% of Fox's audience is African American (compared to about 20% each for CNN and MSNBC). So they probably don't think they have much to lose by being racist jerkwads. Just their humanity, and they don't have much of that to begin with.
End of Kos re-post.
I checked those comments on the original site, it's true. The greatest minds of our time should immediately devote themselves to the question: what in God's name is going on here?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Yet Another Yamaha 250
For my money, this is still the hot set-up over here. It's a Yamaha 250 single, done up in fine, 1960's Cafe Racer style. This one was in Buriram, the provincial capitol. The "pudding bowl" helmet is a nice Sixties touch.
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