More Classic Dick (10)

All things being equal, a bigger brain is going to produce better results. Even children know that. In fact, it takes nearly two decades to beat it out of them. That process starts with Sesame Street telling boys it’s okay to play with dolls and ends with an MBA.

Men, being larger than women, have brains that are approximately 10-17% larger than those of women. Men’s brains are also 100% less full of shit.

Human beings use 100% of our brains. Forget anything that your high school English teacher told you about the bio-mechanics of your head. We do not use 10% of our brains and I don’t want an overpaid babysitter talking about advanced neuroscience. Stick to what you know: babysitting.

If it was true that humans used only 10% of our brains, our heads would be the size of racquetballs and 90% of our brain would have fallen off with our gills, tail, and inability to pretend we give a shit about the women we’re talking to. Evolution is why men can pretend to care.

Thailand’s war on drugs

For anyone unfamiliar with the history or current state of Thailand’s war on drugs, the link below leads to a very well-written and clear article on the subject. Good reading for anyone new to the subject:

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=2040

from the Prachatai.com website

This article is about two months old now, but I tripped across it today while researching something else. I thought I’d share it with you.

ICT to ‘hack & crack’ foreign websites offensive to Thai supreme institution

Prachatai
17 March 2008
News

The Information and Communications Technology Ministry is to ‘hack and crack’ foreign websites deemed offensive to Thailand’s revered institutions.

A March 15 report in Krungthep Turakij newspaper (www.bangkokbiznews.com) quoted a source at the ICT that the ministry could pursue legal proceedings only with websites registered in Thailand, and is now planning a ‘hack and crack’ programme to hack offensive websites hosted abroad and delete their contents, because the legal process would take too long.

“This approach may be somewhat illegal, but sometimes it might be worth it, if [the websites] are really unacceptable,” the source said.

Love Potion #9

A small bottle, claimed to contain the local version of Spanish fly and known as `namman prai’ oil, was posted on the internet by a seller in Lampang who claims it can solve family problems.

(This story appeared in today’s Bangkok Post online)

Some users not seduced by love potion

Costly ‘namman prai’ sparks complaints

Thailand has its own black magic love potion called namman prai (prai oil), but its magic has never been proven. Consumers have been warned about the oil after a consumer laid a complaint.

The woman, whose name was not released, lodged a complaint with the Foundation for Consumers against a trader who persuaded her to buy the oil over the internet.

She transferred 20,000 baht to his bank account as he requested.

lunch & a movie

I haven’t written anything about my crazy ex-girlfriend lately because there hasn’t been anything to write.

For a month or two around new year she called me daily… in fact, many times daily. She was living outside of Bangkok, so I didn’t have to deal with seeing her, just manage the phone calls. Over time I managed the calls down in number and frequency, but it was still hard work. She came to visit me about two months ago, and she cried, telling me she loved me and wanted things to go back the way they used to be; living together happily.

angry

I don’t watch soccer, or ‘football’ as the English call it. I don’t really hate it; I’m just indifferent. But for some strange reason the English seem attached to watching a game that generally ends in a 0 - 0 score. Probably because so little of interest actually happens during the games, the English have developed their own special type of fan: the soccer hooligan.

True Academy Fantasia

I think most TV sucks. America probably leads the world in the quantity of bad programming produced, and I would suggest that between the US and Japan, the very worst shows of all time are filmed and sold. In Japan it’s likely to be three salarymen with ducks on their heads dressed in orange wetsuits running a race through a swimming pool filled with Jello. In America it’s Sally Jesse Raphael or that Springer guy.

irritated

I use trains and taxis daily. I rarely have a problem. Today was an exception.

I had the day off from work, and I went with a Thai friend to Sapphan Thaksin. She had to be at work in Sukhumvit at 5:30, and at 4 pm we decided we had just enough time to grab a quick beer at the Duke of Wellington before she had to head to work. I was hoping to catch Nick or Mike at the Duke (though I had no appointment) so I planned to stay there after she left for work.

We had a quick discussion and decided that it would be both quicker and cheaper to take a taxi rather than the train, so we hopped in. I heard my friend speak to the driver in Thai as we got in the taxi, saying that we wanted to go to Silom Road near Sala Daeng BTS station.

Just a few minutes later we were waiting at a red light, about 200 meters from the Duke. When the light changed, instead of going straight ahead to our destination, the taxi driver inexplicably turned right towards Sathorn Road.

Politics 101

I sometimes wonder if the 73 year old prime minister of Thailand understands anything about being a political leader. Here are two related articles from the Bangkok Post about a banking crisis that seems to have been created by the Prime Minister’s careless words.

The weekly “we’re not going to have a coup” article from the Bangkok Post

Air Force chief Chalit Phukphasuk
The following article was written in the Bangkok Post online today.

I become increasingly puzzled as to why the newspaper keeps writing and printing these articles in which senior military people say that there will be no coup. Maybe it’s just so that when they (inevitably) have the next one, the journalists, historians, bloggers and commenters can point to how recently the military said there won’t be one.

I mean really, is it news?

no substitute for CNN

I have let the past six days go past without mentioning the cyclone in Burma that has been so destructive there. I hate to admit it, but I was unaware of it as a current event when it happened. I was enjoying a couple of days of self-indulgence and didn’t watch CNN or read the newspaper on line.

The first I knew was on Tuesday morning when I went to my Thai class. For some reason, the teacher started to discuss it; it may have been just to teach us the word for cyclone (paayoo = ’storm’, paayoo fon = rain storm, paayoo hima = snow storm, paayoo saai = sandstorm)

In any event, a student commented that there seemed to be 3 or 4 hundred people killed. My teacher corrected her, saying that the estimate had been raised and it was 3 or 4,000. We all tut-tutted and shook our heads, thankful for a moment that the tragedy was 1000 or more kilometers away.

The Kingmaker

I’m home alone tonight and thought I’d see what was on the cable movie channels. The internet listed a movie called The Kingmaker, with the following summary.

A Portuguese adventurer uncovers a plot which could lead the kingdom into war when the King of Siam is poisoned.

Wow. Sounded like an interesting Thai movie.

An effective way to learn Thai language

As so often happens, I was reading theFARANGspeaks2much website and ran across something good.

Smitty offered a link to a website with ten free Thai lessons. He said that he would check it out and report back.

Being the impatient type, I tested it myself this morning and I am happy to recommend this site as a great way to learn the basics of Thai.

word pictures; real pictures

The girl was a tall-ish 43 kg spinner from Soi Cowboy. She was slender and attractive, with a lean body, white skin, long arms & legs and… had a large mouth with full lips….

Last night she looked better than I’d remembered from Thursday night…. She had on a sexy black dress, and her hair was styled differently. She had her bangs brushed down to her eyebrows and she had used a blow dryer to give it a full shiny look. Her eyes were bigger and brighter than I remembered, and that luscious mouth, now that I knew the way she could kiss with it, appeared to have lips that were fuller and softer than I remembered. On Thursday I thought she was attractive; last night she looked stunning.