My first residence when I moved to Thailand was a three-storey townhouse lit with pasty fluorescent lights that featured bright red, threadbare carpets, wall-mounted bugs and lobsters in glass cases, and enough cockroaches in the bathrooms to populate a new planet. My suspicion that it was decorated by a blind ex-fisherman entomologist was never confirmed, but I’m lucky that I now live in a much nicer place. In fact, over the past few years, I’ve noticed Thai decoration and style trends have been getting markedly more modern and tasteful – with the exception of a few knick-knacks here and there, one of which I photographed a few weeks ago at an ‘in trend’ store at Emporium.

The Mr. P stores, run by a company called Propaganda, sell some rather offbeat stuff, much of it centered around a particularly big-headed naked guy that’s usually screaming and/or offering his mouth for gum, phones, pencils or trash. Yeah, I don’t get it either, but I guess enough people do that they can afford a store in upscale shopping mall Emporium, where I saw the mug you see below. Somehow a guy spewing explosive diarrhea into his own face doesn’t strike me as part of a nutritious breakfast, but hey – it’s a wide, wide world and I ain’t seen but a bit of it.

It wasn't enough to be spewing it across the room - it had to come all the way around the cup and into his own face. "Pass the toast!"

It wasn’t enough to be spewing it across the room – it had to come all the way around the cup and into his own face. “Pass the toast!”

It wasn’t enough to be spewing it across the room – it had to come all the way around the cup and into his own face. “Pass the toast!”Well, at least with this cup the expression “This place has crappy coffee” won’t be too far from the truth.