A Telling Bizarro Comic
I ran across this online and had to put it up. As anyone who is new to blogging can tell you, it often becomes a bit of an addiction, although I can’t help but feel a bit pretentious when I say to a friend “Haha, I’ll have to blog about that.” This great panel by the usually awesome Bizarro sums it up nicely, if a bit pathetically. I wrote about comics in an older post, although I failed to mention Bizarro… it’s one of the better comics out there in the wasteland of humour that passes for the funny pages these days. Big version below.
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The Simpsons Hits Twenty. Twenty!
I never thought I’d see the day. The Simpsons, possibly the most consistently funny show on television, has just started its 20th season. I remember watching the first episode back on December 17, 1989 when I was 14 years old and thinking it was pretty stupid (you may have figured out that 2008 - 1989 = 19, not 20, but the original Simpsons shorts started airing in 1987). If I had told myself that I’d be giggling my ass off at the 421st episode in Bangkok in my 33rd year, I’d have thought I was crazy; but that’s what I did today. Despite the fact that most people have seen every episode five times and we don’t go as nutty for every new episode as we used to, you have to hand it to Matt Groening and the gang… 20 years is a hell of a landmark. I got to thinking… what was happening in the world when the Simpsons first aired?
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The Bare Minimum You Should Know When Traveling
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the seven years I’ve lived in an entirely different culture where people who look entirely different from me and speak an entirely different language, it’s that things are different here. I know, I catch on quick. But after seven years, you build up a repository of cultural credit, as my friend J likes to say. What he means is, the longer you spend in a different culture, the more right you have to say you know said culture. After seven years, I can speak garble the language, order the food, get around on my own and basically survive as a pale shadow of a local. But take me out of Thailand, and my cultural credit drops to zero; I’m a stranger in a strange land. So, inspired by my cousin L’s recent move to South Korea (warning: very odd link) and her initial nervousness at how things will work out, I though back at what I’d do if I found myself living in entirely different culture yet again.
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Biking Around Bangkok
Biking around Bangkok is something I really like doing, which freaks a lot of people out. Most automatically assume that it’s nothing more than a date with death, but I Greg to differ (ha!). If you’re patient, know how traffic works, and keep your wits about you, city riding can be really rewarding, especially if you have an all-terrain bike like mine (pictured at left). Indeed, there are several companies that exist solely to take people on rides through Bangkok’s twisting, labyrinthine alleys. I’ve written about biking before on this blog, but recently, I made a DIY camera mount on my handlebars to see what some video would look like. I know I’m not the first one to do this, but I’m happy with the nascent results, as you can see below.
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Underrated Things: Lucky Number Slevin
One of the few rewards of the much-maligned visa run (which I’ll write about later) is that maybe you’ll get to see a not-bad movie on the bus ride to the hell-hole that is the border with Cambodia. I found myself stuck on one of these runs a while back and saw a movie that made me wonder just how the hell I missed it during its theatrical run. The movie was Lucky Number Slevin, an incredibly smart, stylish, funny, violent flick with one hell of a cast - Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, and more. It suffered from middling reviews when it first came out, but I say bah! to that - check it out.
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A Welcome Lull in the News
Because I’m a nerd, the first thing I do when I wake up is roll out of bed and into my command station computer desk to check what’s going on the world via my Netvibes RSS feed. When I checked things out this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see no screaming headlines about protests, killings, emergency decrees or tanks rolling through the city. In fact, I was relieved to find that things were relatively boring. I immediately thought back to a fantastic article from The Onion in October of 2001 with the headline “A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullshit Again” which sums up my feelings pretty perfectly.
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A Few Words on Thailand’s (latest) Protests
Thailand has a funny way of ‘re-educating’ those of us who didn’t grow up here. From opening our eyes to Asian history to shattering preconceptions about race, food and poverty, every day that you live here teaches you something new. Since the continually developing protests have started, I’ve gotten a few emails from friends asking if everything is okay, to which my reply probably sounds a bit lame. The bottom line - unless you’re right down near government house where the protests are centered, you’d be hard pressed to know there was any disturbance at all. Thais have a remarkable resilience to factors that would make the rest of us quake in our boots.
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Chatuchak - World’s Biggest Market?
With friends in town, a trip to Chatuchak Weekend Market (or Jatujak, or simply ‘JJ Market’) is usually on the menu. While a visit to this sprawling covered flea market from hell (apparently the world’s biggest) is usually done as a last resort for expats living here (or unless you want some particularly unique things), tourists love it. Everything from used Van sneakers to antique doorknobs to a menagerie of strange animals are available (although the last few times I was there, I couldn’t find that section any more), and it certainly makes for an interesting - and hot - day out, usually resulting in a taxi full of bags on the way home.
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I Wish I Was a Yank
I guess I should probably be pretty ashamed that I’ve only ever voted once in my life, and that it was for a person in a race that I can’t even remember; it must not have been that important. My reasoning was that as soon as a politician comes along and inspires me or interests me or says anything even remotely involving, I’d sit up and take notice. Well, it never happened - until some guy in the US showed up and started saying things that not only got me interested in him, but in politics in general. This might be the first time in my life I wish I was an American, just so I could cast my vote for Barack Obama.
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Back to the Motherland
Well, it’s time for me to head back to the Great White North to say to friends and family, do a few double-takes at the prices, have just enough fun to last me another couple of years and get the hell back to Thailand. The lovely T and I will be heading to Vancouver and Victoria, driving to Calgary via Penticton, and then back again. We’ll be back near the end of August and hopefully, Thailand will still be here. Although… it is Thailand, so you never know.
