Where is David?

thought this video would be an interesting conversation starter………

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Saw this in The Nation and thought it was interesting……but two questions:

#1. Does this mean I now have to follow 20 commandments?

#2. Doesn’t the Culture Ministry have anything better to do?

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Loving by the rules

The Culture Ministry has launched the ‘10 Commandments of Love’ in an attempt to prevent teenagers getting too carried away on Valentine’s Day. They are:

1. Love with patience, so as not to become a premature parent

2. Truly love only one person

3. Love with mercy, trying not to hurt the one you love

4. Carefully love to avoid taking risks that might lead to contracting sexual diseases

5. Love with honour, waiting until the proper time to have sex

6. Love in accordance with custom

7. Love reasonably, not taking sexual advantage of your lover

8. Love permanently, without defaming the one you love

9. Love honestly, believing in your partner

10. Love with understanding, forgiveness and without anger

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I have never met a Thai person that doesn’t believe in ghosts. And I’m not talking about, “Yes, I feel a spiritual presence all around me” kind of soft belief in ghosts. No, Thai people believe in the poltergeist type of ghost, where they can come back to the world and cause all sorts of havoc here. I saw this article in The Nation and thought it deserved further publication out of sheer amusement.

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Villagers gang up to cast out Phi Pop

Frightened of evil spirits known as Phi Pop - a demon believed to posses a person to eat his intestine while also forcing him to seek and consume raw animal organs and meat at night-time - villagers at Kalasin’s Sam Chai sub-district raised Bt35,000 to exorcise the ghosts allegedly dwelled in two female villagers.

The Nation arrived at the ceremony at the Ban Nong Kung Noi community hall yesterday morning while spirit doctor Paithoon Sommitr, 63, was chanting magic words and spilling water over the absent-minded Thong who laid down on the floor, screaming and crying.

Village headman Suwit Phaitecha, 53, said that, following four mysterious and sudden deaths of villagers late last month feared to cause by the evil spirits, some 1,000 residents raised about Bt35,000 - each of the 760 households contributing Bt50 - for an exorcism of Phi Pop allegedly possessed Thong and Pai (not their real names), both in their 40s.

Local health official Juthamas Wilasri who rushed to the ceremony and later conducted a physical check-up on Thong found that the woman was weaken from fasting, absent-minded, had occasional seizures thus submitted her to Khammuang Hospital.

Juthamas said she had checked about the four “mysterious deaths” and initially found that they were all elderly persons aged around 65 to 80 and some were said to die of heart disease, heart failure and strokes.

Yutthana Kietdamnoenngam

The Nation

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Then I don’t know what is.

Saw this funny quote in The Nation newspaper here in Bangkok.

It’s from the leader of the coup who ousted Thaksin, talking about why people are grumbling about how bad a job the military dictatorship is doing, and why they thought Thaksin did a better job of running the country.

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General Sonthi Boonyaratglin said, “It is because the government has taken its time to act.

“It is because the government has taken measures to do things properly and ensure transparency. It is different from the dictatorial administration of the former prime minister,” he was quoted as saying in the Japanese-language daily.

“I believe the public will come to understand that,” he added.

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I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the $3000.

Find out what I’m talking about here

This article is for Americans who use credit cards outside the U.S……it’s about the annoying “Foreign Transaction Fee” that many banks add to the charge. I think it’s time for some consumer action…..who shall we choose….Ralph Nader or David Horowitz?

Ripoff: Visa/Mastercard’s “Foreign transaction fee”

from Boing Boing

I was over at a friend’s house on the other side of Bangkok a couple of days ago, and he and some of his buddies were playing basketball on a hoop they set up in front of their house.

“Nice shot, nigga.” “Watch out, nigga” “No way, nigga”. It seemed every other word out of their mouth was “nigga.” These guys who were playing basketball were 4 Asian-Americans from the U.S., all quite into hip-hop culture. I wondered to myself if a black person were here, would they still be using the word “nigga” as frequently?

The cultural irony of people using a degorative slur amongst themselves as a term of endearment amongst themselves is something I assume has been studied before, and beyond the scope of what I am trying to write about. The strange fact to me was how grown men (25 years old or so) would imitate this, and whether or not other minority groups have the right to use this term amongst themselves.

I also tried to think if there’s any other term similar to “nigga”, and the only ones I could come up with were situations where friends will use words like “dumbass” with each other, but in a more playful way if one of them does something stupid. The word takes on quite a different meaning than when someone you don’t know calls you it.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was in a musical in Japan. I had planned on forgetting about this (not because it was a bad experience, but people just got the wrong idea about me when I told them I was in a musical), but someone managed to put some video of the production on the internet. I’m just singing backup in the scene, so you have to wait until the last minute to see me, but I’m the tall, lanky cowboy on the left…..you’ll see. Also, us backup singer cowboys usually sounded much better, but this probably wasn’t our best performance they filmed……judge for yourself.

For those of you interested, the production was “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, which was an original Broadway production that was turned into a movie starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds. The production I was in followed the Broadway version mostly.

It’s official, my favorite band of the month is Cold War Kids. I know I’m pretty late in finding out about them, but I live in freaking Thailand, dude, give me a break.

Unfortunately, they were on Letterman on the 21st, of December, so that means I have to find a new favorite band soon, real soon.

As usual, the record company completely F’d up when choosing the first single for the album (or maybe it was iTunes, but someone F’d up). “Hang Me Up to Dry” was iTunes single of the week, when it clearly should have been either “Hospital Beds”, “Passing the Hat”, or even “Saint John”. Take a listen and you’ll see what I mean.

I think it was Frank Zappa who said, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, so I’ll quit writing now, spare you my impressions of the music, and let you decide for yourself. (free music on their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/coldwarkids )

Not that I’d expect any less from UBC (Thailand’s cable Monopoly), but they’ve been kowtow-ing to the military regime lately and banning CNN completely in the run-up to former Prime Minister Thaksin’s interview scheduled for this Saturday. I guess they’re even afraid of a single sound byte from the Thaksin interview being able to affect people here. The wierd thing is, I did a google-search (Yes, I’m a Google-searching guy, sorry Yahoo) yesterday and couldn’t find anything about the ban. I even searched thaivisa.com, a hangout for old, balding white guys, and no one there was even complaining about it, which was strange because it seems like all people ever do is complain on that site.

Anyways, my point is, for all you non-in-Thailand livers out there, if anyone could record the interview from CNN and upload it to YouTube, I’d like that….that’d be swell.

UPDATE:
After looking for a picture to use at the top of the article, It seems the entire transcript of the interview is available on the CNN site, which I’ll paste here in case you’re too lazy:

SINGAPORE (CNN) — CNN’s Dan Rivers spoke to ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The following is a transcript of the interview. Rivers began by asking Shinawatra about his alleged involvement in New Year bombings in Bangkok.

Shinawatra: It’s baseless allegations. No one believes so. Because everyone knows who is, who am I. I come from election, I come from the people. I owe gratitude to our people. I do everything for the good of the country and the people. I don’t do something that’s stupid.

Rivers: So you had no involvement.

Shinawatra: Not involvement at all. But I would like to express my deep sympathy, deepest sympathy for those who lose, lost their loved ones and also all those who are injured. And the individuals who are involved must be brought to justice.

Rivers: This is the first time you’ve spoken since the coup of September the 19th, first of all, you were in the United States, in New York at the U.N., when this happened, how did you find out that this was going on?

Shinawatra: Well I find out just about four, five hours before, before it happened, but I trying to get into the television station but it’s very difficult at that time I cannot get into it until I can get into channel 9 briefly, but you know, which I, it’s a rumors at that time but I don’t believe that this can happen again in the 21st century.

Rivers: So it was surprise when it happened?

Shinawatra: It’s very surprise because you know, but anyway 70 years in Thailand, 17 coup happened is very unfortunate but it’s, it’s an event that happened here in Thailand.

Rivers: Will you go back to, back to politics?

Shinawatra: No. No. (DR: Go back as a private … ) Enough is enough. Six years you serve the countries. You been working hard. You sacrifice your time even your life. And, even your family life. So it’s, it’s time for me to go back as a private citizen. And contribute to the Thai society outside political arena.

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I assume there’s more to the interview that will be shown on Saturday….if this is it, then it’s quite sad the military government would feel threatened by this.