Thai Thoughts And Anecdotes Part 239

A NATION'S SHAME

I first became interested in the fields of health, and fitness, and nutrition, and medicine forty years ago when I started reading the books of Adelle Davis in college. I was not smart enough to get into medical school but I could read.

In the following forty years an interest in medicine, health, fitness, and nutrition was one of the constant threads in my life. You can't spend forty years trekking through the jungle without sometimes a snake crossing your path and
so it was with me. With more regularity than I would have wished for the subject of massage came up.

Practitioners of massage and customers for the service say that it feels good (makes you happy), eliminates pain, and has positive medical benefits. Listen very carefully. If you believe that massage makes you feel good (it does not), and
that massage eliminates pain (it does not); that is your delusionary belief and you are welcome to it. However, this becomes a serious issue when it is claimed that massage has medical benefits. All massage places in Thailand (and the world) with
not one exception will tell you that it has positive medical benefits. Many times a list of these benefits is posted. Uneducated country bumpkins with no knowledge of anatomy, nerve pathways, internal organ placement, or the cardiac system pontificate
about the medical benefits of massage. Then they take your money. This is a nation's shame. Thailand is down in the gutter with this ignorant crap and will never become a great nation until they prohibit by law this conscienceless predatory
behavior. The only real value and positive feature of the massage experience is when your massage lady (oh excuse me, masseuse) asks you if you want a 'special' massage. Add prostitution to massage and you've got something.

Let us further review the medical benefits issue of massage with examples and stories:

1. Rural community? Limited opportunities for hygiene? Hey, massage will eliminate head lice. Sure it will. Of course it will. Many happy customers. People exclaimed "My head lice problem just disappeared with massage. It was medically
scientific. My sex with my goat improved also." Ridiculous? You'll have a hard time convincing millions of stupid humans that.

2. Hey, that was fun. Let's do another. Poorly educated community? Insufficient level of nutrition and food preparation awareness? Poorly cooked pork? Trichinosis? Billboard quote — "My mysterious illness seems much relieved with
daily massage of my feet. It's all about ancient oriental pathways."

3. A more modern example? Ok, sports physician Bif Bartley says — "Recognition of time tested non-traditional treatment modalities will give a professional sports team that extra edge." Really Bif? So if a track star keeps slamming
his nuts in the 440 hurdles you massage his nuts? Do you put the professional athlete's legs in stirrups while you roll those testicles around with your sports physician's hands? You know Bif — oh, excuse me, Dr. Bartley; if I was having
a nut massage I'd love to hear some Thai music — 'cause you know, massage is so Eastern and everything."

4. Letter from Esther Cohen, anthropologist, to Mother General Carmelita Lopez of the Sisters of Mercy, Montgomery County, Maryland, U.S.A. — Dear Sister Carmelita:

"Yesterday the witch doctor of the Big Namba tribe here in the Solomon Islands gave me a massage. During the medical procedure he got an erection (boy did he have a big namba). Anyway, I took a lot of notes and chanted Hebrew nursery
rhymes to stay calm. I have never felt so at one with nature.

Could you please have one of your sisters research the Bible for me and find out if Jesus (I'll bet he had a big namba) and that little town tramp Mary Magdalene ever benefited from the medical aspects of massage and if they were ever
in Thailand? Particularly, did either one of them have any spontaneous holy emissions that released tension in the muscles?"

Virginally yours,
Esther Cohen

Yup folks, this massage thing is everywhere like the teredo worms in the planking of a ship eating away at the dignity of society and the evolution of mankind towards a more intelligent species.

5. Example: 1968 ad in Paris-Match magazine for the Mothership Massage Emporium, Bangkok, Thailand.

"I got the 'special' massage from Ling. She said it would clear my head. It not only cleared my head, it also cleaned my tubes. Ask for Ling and the Oriental scientific 'special' massage. The medical benefits are
unbelievable."

Monsieur Monger Mongahelia from Minnihaha, French Mongolia

6. Ever heard of the Cobra Gold military exercises in Pattaya? Lots of young military men — lots of commercial sex. Overhead in a massage waiting room in Jomtien:

Receptionist: Yes?
Boardwalk Cruiser: Well, I just got through servicing a lot of guys off of ships and I have an aching quivering quim? Is the doctor in?
Receptionist: Well, normally Tuesdays and Thursdays are pussy massage days
but I'll see if he can handle you now.

Note: My Fa makes so much money during Cobra Gold exercises that she takes two months off afterwards to visit her family. When she finally returns her pussy is so tight from post-Cobra Gold trauma we have to use Joy dishwashing soap as a
lubricant and the hotel maid has to push me from behind.

8. Hey, would you like to get your veins straightened? Ah, forget it; I'm not even going to go into it. It is just too stupid.

9. Ok, how about using massage to balance your chakra while you have a crystal shoved up your rear? Just asking. Not everyone is ready for alternative health care eastern medicine modalities. Note: don't worry, they knock the edges off
the crystal.

10. And what about your pet? Mammals are mammals right? You say your German Shepherd dog just got a nose full of quills from a porcupine? Well, what better time to put those massage skills you learned at Adult Education night classes to work.

Step 1 — pull the porcupine quills out of the dog's nose with a pair of pliers.
Step 2 — exclaim to Goering, your little German Shepherd poopsie woopsie, that massage is a non-traditional health care modality as per Dr. Bif Bartley,
sports physician.
Step 3 — grab your dog's big black bleeding German Shepherd nose and start squeezing.

Hear those howls? That's a happy dog benefiting from the medical modalities (?) of massage.

Lastly: ever notice a cute girl studying a chart with stick figures? She just got off the bus and she is learning massage. Sure she is.

More examples? Well, I don't think that is really necessary but I did have one question for Dr. Bif Bartley:

"What's a modality? I'll bet it's a Thai massage thing right? I tell ya Doc, sometimes when I spend too much time sitting at the computer my modality hurts like hell. I think I need a modality massage from Ling at the
Mothership Massage Emporium."

But why pick on Thailand? Not counting the Vatican there are approximately 188 countries and the 'massage industry' is in every country like a cancer. There is no country in the world that will not take your money (cash please)
for the so-called medical benefits of massage. This makes massage possibly the largest criminal enterprise in the world. Larger than the drug business? Maybe. It's a mostly cash business–try and calculate the hundreds of billions of dollars
in untaxable revenue. Think about that the next time you are lying face down on a bed in Kanchanaburi and a massage practitioner (criminal) tells you your back muscles have 'knots' in them from too much tension (stress) in your life.
Bullcrap. She wouldn't know a knot if it was on the end of a rope and she got whacked in the face with it. An excellent idea by-the-way, and something I would like to see at next year's elephant roundup in Surin. And don't worry
about negative repercussions to all this knot whacking–we'll just say it is medical and ancient.

In the United States we are currently engaged in a decades old war on drugs. Why? Well, it is felt that drugs accomplish nothing, encourage the wrong sort of behavior, and divert citizen energies from sixty hour weeks in mills, mines, farms,
and factories. And worst of all, there is no way to tax money spent on drugs. Hence, drugs are bad. Substitute the word massage for the word drugs and little changes. The only difference is that, worldwide, money spent on massage may exceed the
money spent on drugs. You have to give the massage industry credit for genius subterranean criminality on a science fiction scale. This not organized, not sophisticated, barely visible business is sucking up money like a vacuum cleaner.

Anyway, I propose that the resources currently being used and misused on the war on drugs be directed towards massage. International bribes, assassinations, money laundering, serial government lying, helicopter gunships, secret jails, unregistered
weapons, slimeball agreements with foreign slimeball government leaders, crooked prosecutors, selective legislating, moronic public moralizing, hi-tech support apparatus; everything is already in place–just move the scope and put the crosshairs
on massage.

If you have read this far let me present a challenge to you that you can work on instead of me. Can't quite wrap your brain around the massage industry being a revenue generator in the same category as the drug industry? Ok, you do the
numbers. There are 188 countries. Now multiply 188 times however many massage places you feel exist on average in each country. Now multiply that number times however much you imagine the average massage place makes in a day. Well, what's
the total? And remember, you did this–not me. And do not forget that when you are looking at that number on your calculator that it is only per day. How many days are in a year? Hey, how do I sign up to get some of this lucre? Oh, I forgot–there
are absolutely no requirements at all. All I have to do is say things that are not true and charge money for it.

Over the last forty years I have developed some fine tuned opinions on this subject. I believe, starting with Thailand, that all massage places of business should be destroyed (I'll drive the first bulldozer), all massage ladies should
be sent back to their villages to make road kill stew, and massage customers should be neutered to keep them from breeding. Naturally, this would be a worldwide effort, but starting in Thailand would send a good message because massage in Thailand
is a nation's shame.

Other than that, I don't really have any strong feelings on the subject.