Thai Thoughts And Anecdotes Part 389

Hello Dana fans:

Special Note: My birthday is coming up. Stick has my clothing sizes for those of you who want to get me a nice gift. I like faux black armadillo hide pants with cotton linings, crocodile shoes with goatskin interiors, and pleated silk shirts. Cumberbuns, cravats, and spats are not necessary. I do not like to attract attention to myself. There is no need to send me waist length black banged bargirl wigs. I am now getting those myself at the first shop on the left inside Big Mike's Department Store in Pattaya. Just sayin'. Anyway, my birthday is coming up. An excellent opportunity to remember that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

A FRIEND, AN AXE BLADE, A BLADDER, AND A PENIS

"If your hand freezes to your axe blade at 50 below, urinate on it. If both hands freeze to your axe blade, you'd better have a friend along."

— Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Well, at least we don't have that problem in Thailand. But that is not really what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is:

SHARP PREDATORY TEETH

"she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain."

"her face fell apart like a bride's pie crust."

"She worked the smile. I was having the eye put on me. I was being brought into camp. I was going to yell "Yippee!" and ask her to go to Yuma."

quotes from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Hey, wouldn't this Raymond Chandler kat have been great writing about the Thai-farang scene? I think so. Someone should do an article on all the past authors (authors from the past) who would have been great (or interesting) describing foreign men, Thai ladies, and Thailand. Some of these writers might even have done better work. Example: Hemingway wrote about bulls and bullfighting et al and we all looked for high intelligence and gifted writing and special meanings because it was all so boring.

We wasted our time and our emotions and our money on books we could not finish reading. But Hemingway actually believed he was a writer. Maybe the problem was that he had not discovered his place and his subject matter. Maybe a small town reporter and an outsized ego could have made a success of describing the Pattaya boardwalk love games. Maybe Mr. Hemingway would have done better work in Pattaya, etc.

Anyway, I think imagining past writers of note as Thailand scribes would be fun. Poor blind Milton would not have been able to see the offshore restaurants and the pathetic tramp stamps on the girls, but he would have been able to listen. What would he have written back at the A.A. Hotel? And a good/horrific example: Charles Bukowski, with perhaps Chiang Mai Kelly as his guide. I tend to think that Mr. Bukowski was supposed to be in Thailand from the start but there was some kind of scheduling mixup. Imagine Melville taking the scene all so seriously and at such great length. Or perhaps . . . you get the idea.

So maybe this is an idea that some Stickmanbangkok.com reader can follow up on. A new and fun approach to the Thai-farang genre. I would chase this idea around but . . . oops, sweet sufferin' Jesus, look at that woman over there holding up a palm tree. Gotta go.

WORKS FOR ME

"Freeman is an improvement over "Rings" lead Elijah Wood, who turns up briefly as Frodo in the framing story, where the older version of Bilbo (again Ian Holm) relates his youthful adventures. That's when Bilbo was recruited by Gandalf (the wonderful Ian McKellen, who appears throughout) for a quest not unlike that undertaken by his nephew Frodo decades later." — from the movie review of THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY by Lou Lumenick in the New York Post newspaper.

Ok, again:

"Freeman is an improvement over "Rings" lead Elijah Wood, who turns up briefly as Frodo in the framing story, where the older version of Bilbo (again Ian Holm) relates his youthful adventures. That's when Bilbo was recruited by Gandalf (the wonderful Ian McKellen, who appears throughout) for a quest not unlike that undertaken by his nephew Frodo decades later."

Holy Frodo Batman: say that in the Thai language you Thai fluent alpha expat. Ok, ok; probably not 100% fair. I'm not certain all English speakers could say this in English in smooth sounding comprehension the first time. But it should alert you to the complexity of languages and the long odds of learning to speak a language.

It does, however, happily remind me of one of the things about the Kingdom that is welcome to me at my age. To wit: I am not going to have to think like this (white man) or talk like this (white man) anymore. All done. Finished. Retired. Finito. Sitting here on this bed with the TV channel clicker in my hand watching my girlfriend Na hand washing clothes in the hotel sink nobody is saying anything to anybody. Works for me.

And finally a report on:

MONGER THRIFT

On the fascinating subject of practicing monger thrift, you don't actually have to use the rooms at a hotel. Just take your teeruk honey bunny to the top floor in the elevator and walk down the stairs one half floor to the landing. Nobody who lives near the top floor of a hotel ever uses the stairs. Your Essan minx will appreciate your money saving cleverness.

Note: I didn't get this idea on my own. One night Chiang Mai Kelly was showing me how he can place a satang in his butt cheeks and squeeze out a 5 baht coin and he mentioned this great thrift stratagem of using top floor stair landings for lovemaking. In fact, sometimes (many times) he does not even check into hotels; he just camps out on the top floor stair landings. You've go to respect that. He also has a source on discounted used lube if you are interested. You've got to respect that. Monger thrift. A subject that does not get enough attention.

There is a similar money saving technique that involves hanging out in food courts. When a party gets up and leaves you wait until the waitress or waiter is not looking and then you hustle on over and finish the drinks and food. Again, not original but a money saving tactic for mongers that does not get enough attention. I could go on but I think it would be more fun for you guys to send in your own personal ways of saving money. Send them to Stickman. Maybe he will work up a new department for Stickmanbangkok.com or maybe he will work them up into a Weekly. Saving money is important. Every 500 baht you save is 500 baht that you can spend on the boardwalk. I recently gave Fa 200 baht to be spent on those white jeans that she wears that I like. That 200 baht splurge was only possible because of money saved elsewhere. A warning: counterfeit money, egregious lying, and aggressive behavior should not be a part of monger thrift. Just sayin'. So send your personal stories and recommendations and ideas into the Stickmeister. When, after a suitable amount of time, absolutely nothing has happened: send them to me. And, as always; Stay Away From Fa.