Journalist Schmournalist

Just a quickie to point out this story about blogger journalists who refused to out their anonymous sources to a California court after publishing information about upcoming Apple products and gettin' their pants sued off as a result. The judge ruled that people who out company secrets are not protected by California's shield law, which protects journalists from outing their sources. I wonder if by that rationale the Pentagon Papers would have been deemed "company secrets" ... anyway, my point: Judith Miller was heralded as a hero (before it came out, of course, that the whole thing was orchestrated) but these bloggers ain't exactly New York Times journalists, so no one was too interested in THEIR staunch refusals to out their sources.

When that "Free Judith Miller" online petition circled around last summer long before we had gotten Chapter Two (or was it Three?) of the ongoing degradation of the Kingdom and the Power I just passed it on without signing. I figured a) it's great to have professional ethics, but there is no guarantee that the law is going to mirror those professional ethics, so you'd better be ready to suck up the legal consequences if you choose to stand by them and b) no one was ever likely to forward a petition in support of bloggers and National Enquirer journos going to jail for refusing to out their sources and as such, the whole exercise just felt too hyprocritical.

A brilliant trail of logic which finally led me to c) the whole pseudo-heroic thing made me want to barf.

Trolling

Just trolling the internet for fun Christmas Crafts!! for the kids on Saturday. Their idea, not mine. They also want us to teach them Xmas carols with accompanying dances. Demanding children. Anyway, I found this site for crafts for kids! And then they have a whole section on making candles for kids! I'm like, if I recall correctly, as a wee one I was actively discouraged from playing with fire. There's no way I'm giving those little stinkers the ability to burn themselves in their beds. On a lighter note, this reminded me of one of the few actively naughty things I did pre-high school -- when Tameka and I furtively played with matches in Tracy C.'s playhouse out in her backyard one afternoon. It was Tracy's idea, she was a bad influence. In honor of my pre-adolescent badness, I would like to present a list of the top ten naughtiest things I did before ninth grade hit and I had bigger fish to fry:

1) playing with matches in Tracy C.'s playhouse (see above)
2) Running across US 19 with my eyes closed during an eighth grade slumber party at Tracy S.'s house
3) Truth or Dare, seventh grade, in the back of the short bus on the way back from the Rennaissance Fair in Sarasota. Or the "Tard Cart" as my friend Hersch so eloquently puts it. It was the annual gifted kids field trip, and since we shared the same budget with the other end of the spectrum, we shared the same bus. Actually, if I remember correctly, we also shared some of the same students.
Hmm, maybe "gifted" doesn't mean what I thought it meant, come to think of it now.
4) Listening to a girl talk dirty about boys in the treehouse slumber party we had at my Christian best friend's house
5) Pooping behind a tree after telling my dad I didn't have to use the toilet. Well, I actually don't remember that, but I'm told. But that's bad. And I'm running out of fodder.
6) Slapping Melissa in my one and only cat fight.
7) Systematically emotionally and physically abusing my brother for more than a decade until he was big enough to beat me back, at which point I reverted soley to emotional abuse.
8) Drawing pictures of a nekkid lady in kindergarten while my boyfriend Tyrone looked on. He turned me in.
9) Willfully eating a chocolate bar in math class, for which I was severely punished.
10) Telling a girl in home-ec that her fake Keds were "bo-bos." God I was such a little bitch yech.

Okay that's it, the rest are lies told by lying liars!

On the way down by sleeper train with Wendy (the fellow card shark) and Nancy to visit the family of Wendy's girlfriend Bah in Trang Province in the south. Wendy is one of Nancy's former bicycle guide students (Wendy quit her job) -- the two of them took about two seconds to recognize each other as big ol' lesbians. Anyway, I am busy winning at Spoons and looking forward to our long weeked of meeting Bah's family, touring their rubber tree plantation (unfortunately it rained that morning so we couldn't see it in operation but I am still blissfully unaware of this fact in this photo) and a beautiful island snorkeling tour in the nearby Andaman Sea. We stayed overnight on Koh Mook, which consisted of a tiny fishing village on one end and three bungalow resorts full of Germans on the other end.

Out front of Bah's family's house. Her mother runs a little convenience store in the fron, a popular m.o. in Thailand I've noticed. People's houses are usually their restaurants, their stores, their hardware shops. No, I didn't steal any chips.

Our apartment. Just kidding! (sort of) The Family Hogs. Did I ever tell you about the story I did on hog cholera in Thailand?

Hangin' with the piggies ... Me, Bah's sister, Wendy holding a little 'un and Bah. We're all wearing these wraps that originate in southern Thailand but are popular all over the country; you can wear 'em like a skirt or you can wear 'em like a dress ... they are awesome and since Bah let me keep the one I was wearing I live and sleep in it when I'm at home ... Okay, I look hideous here by the way, but wanted to show off the couture ...

Bah's sister and one of her twin two year-old daughters whose names I can't remember (and to be honest, was never quite able to pronounce correctly) ... They are bathing outside, which people do sometimes, although not necessarily naked. You can bathe while wearing one of those wraps I have on above (called a "patung") and just try to be really coordinated. I opted for the indoor shower, which was also a well of cool water that you splash over you.

You see those giant earthenware pots or whatever they are called (urns? no that doesn't sound right) all over Thailand -- in Bangkok and in the countryside -- outside of people's homes. They use them to store rain water to bathe in or to save up for times of drought (apparently it happens a lot). They are also prime breeding ground for the mosquito larvae that carry dengue fever -- I'm so thrilled I know that now! But if you sprinkle it with some special kind of sand or buy little fishies, no problem-o. Did I ever tell you about the time I followed a bunch of insectiside-spraying government officials around a Bangkok elementary school as they fumigated away? It was gross -- the photographer and I were dizzy for the rest of the day.

Anyway, what I was most fascinated by in Bah's household was how little they used resources at hand and they are, from what I understand, a relatively well-to-do family who own some nice cars and have a big rubber tree plantation with plenty of workers. No air-conditioning -- the house is open in the front and back during the day and you can have a fan at night if you really need it. Very little running water -- you bathe with rainwater or do the bucket wash indoors which uses little water as well (actually I'm not sure where that water comes from). Of course, there's the big television that sucks up power like the rest of us!

Nancy's photo of dismembered pig limbs that she insisted taking at the local market. Or I guess it was the nice man and his dismembered pig limbs were part of the mise-en-scene.

Bah and the Quiet One!

Enthroned.

It's funny to put adult-sized things onto tiny little kids.

Nancy and the Quiet One. Or is it the Spoiled Center of Attention Princess One? No wait, that's me.

Nieces and nephew? What nieces and nephew?

Wendy and Bah are in love. Bah is driving the relationship.

Nancy revvin' it up! This is by a pond near Bah's home ... we were just hangin' out, playing with motorbikes you know, the usual lesbian thing. Later some neighborhood boys came by and we threw rocks at them. Notice the cart at it's side, a reoccurring theme in Trang Province. The next day I would squeeze into one of those with my three travel companions, two half-grown children and an adult man. Plus the driver. And did you know that Nancy, I and a slightly intoxicated Thai man can all fit onto a motorcycle seat at the same time?!!

Child trafficker

Nancy carving up squid in the kitchen where she belongs! Later we barbecued everything we had picked up at the market and chowed down! It was yum ... Also, Nancy played with Bah's father's cow, who nailed her in the thigh with his horn and ended up being a bull. Oops. Apparently they enter him into bullfights (bull on bull) about once a week. And Nancy wanted to pet him while he ate his dinner. Silly Nancy. Of course that stupid cow chased me around my own yard last summer. But that's another story.

Secrets. Or possibly Being Annoying. Hard to tell.

How do I stop posting photos of these two? Maybe mother and father can pretend they are grandchildren ...

Wendy kicking it ... Nancy and Wendy want to start a tour company for lesbians coming to Thailand. Sign me up baby!

The misty mountains of Trang Province, land of rubber plantations and frisky fighting bulls!

Our beauteous boat for the day, sans charming driver who ripped us off later on. Then felt guilty and gave us a ride halfway to town on his dirtbike ... all four of us and our luggage. Well okay there was a little cart on the side. But still.

The Last Meal ... see my lunch leavings scattered around me? That was the last time I would eat for two days. As my mother once tried to explain to me (following her colorful, action-packed 24-hour flight back from visiting me in Beijing) if it kind of seems like seafood but you're not quite sure ... then for GOD'S SAKE DON'T EAT IT!

That's me singing in a popular Thai nightclub. Okay, no it isn't I can never be as hot as a Thai drag queen. Nancy snapped this while we were going undercover in some out-of-the-tourist-way gay bars in Bangkok that I was doing a story on. By "undercover" I mean we were the only women and the only whities for miles around. But we fooled them!

I have to post two more super cute photos from our trip to Singapore (see way below for the full, sordid story). Here is my love framed by a garland of marigolds and orchids ... I'm sure she hates this picture for some obscure reason that I will hear about later.

I note that you can never, ever use the phrase "super cute" too much. Really, try it for yourself.

Zac, Nancy, Grace and Jen in a bazaar in India Town ... Where am I? I can't remember. Okay I'm lying, that's our apartment.

Poop Bomb!

Someone threw a poop bomb at Thai Day!

The drama continues ... six government lawsuits against my former boss Khun Sondhi at Manager Media Group, two warrants for his arrest, a hand grenade lobbed at the office and now this: 11 bags of human and/or pig poop thrown at the office (actually at the HR office, which makes me giggle since they were such a serious pain in my tuckus during my whole visa and work permit debacle) and smeared all over some poor security guard who, I am sure, is in no way making enough money to put up with that kind of ... crap.

On a more serious note, a Thai Rak Thai MP (Thaksin's party, this is, of course, all because of a feud between Sondhi and Thaksin) said on Friday that anyone who attends one of Sondhi's talk shows (the government cancelled his show but he's taken it on the road and it's becoming increasingly popular) will face charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government. So the next one is scheduled for this Friday in Lumpini Park and you can bet your booty I'm going! Not going to miss the revolution no sirree!

Poop out.

"Situations of War"

I just came across this interview with Giuliana Sgrena, that Italian journalist who was accidentally shot at (we hope and believe) by American soldiers after she was released from her Iraqi kidnappers last February (one of her Italian escorts was killed if I remember correctly). The article, which I found on Womens eNews, says that she's back to the front lines, this time in Kabul, Afghanistan ... anyway, I like what she says about war journalism:

"I refuse to be a war correspondent," she said. "I am not a reporter of war; I report on situations of war. I reject this because I hope in these countries there will one day be peace. These are countries which I am interested in and I hope to go back to them when there is peace."

Lord, how many times at j-school did they truck in "war correspondents" to regale us with their stories of imprisonment and unexploded mines in Afghanistan and Iraq. People were drooling to go to Iraq ... I knew an editor during my short stint at the RNC Convention last year as the AP's Head Coffee Maker and Trash Collector (I am in no way exaggerating btw although I did get to write a couple of stories -- and at least I got paid $20 an hour, unlike the unpaid interns from Northwestern, HAHAHHA! Plus I now have Michael Moore's cell phone number) who threatened to quit the AP in order to finagle his way into a Baghdad posting ... it worked.

People are obsessed with covering war. There's glory to be had I suppose. I know the feeling, I'm not going to lie. But those countries will completely fall off our radars as soon as the U.S. loses interest in that region ... I mean, Afghanistan isn't the glory post it once was, for example. And who ever begs to report on Vietnam? I suppose if there isn't a war there isn't a country.

Nancy working her magic at Rainbow House, this home for disabled kids in the suburbs of Bangkok. We've been going there every Saturday for a couple of months now ... that's Hun in the front, he's 12 and a big sweetie. Getting good at English too. Nancy just goes so she can practice her Thai on them but I go because I'm a good person and want to give back. Just kidding! The paper mache thing was not my idea -- I did it once in third grade and remember it as difficult and boring. I remembered correctly. Later I snuck off with some of the older kids and played Scrabble in English. I totally beat them.

Tan and Pet (which means "duck" he would like everyone to know) doin' their paper mache thing. Pet is one of those kids who is the smartest and the fastest and the best at everything. It's weird because you totally forget that he only has one working leg (the other one is propped up on his crutch) and every once in awhile you're like, oh yeah, he's "disabled." Like when I played Simon Says with the kids and told everyone to jump in place and lift one leg. I freaked out right afterwards, but he totally did it AND won the second round. Of course. That's one of the fascinating things about hanging out at Rainbow House ... you forget most of the time, in the thick of things, that these kids are disabled. It makes you wonder what the word means, or our relationship to it. I mean, the kid with cerebral palsy, yeah, you don't forget. Although he's super bright. Shockingly so. And the blind girl (who Nancy is in love with and wants to adopt), you can't forget for too long, even though she's really smart too, because if you forget she gets left out of everything. But in general, it's just like hanging out with any kids, although they're better behaved. I think it's a much bigger deal that they live in an institution, even one as well managed as Rainbow House, than the fact that they are disabled somehow. Some of them have parents or families and I don't understand why they don't live with them. I don't know if it's because their families don't want them or hope that Rainbow House with all of its classes and occupational therapists and resources can take better care of them. I am slowly becoming a firm believer in family first, however. I mean, unless the family is abusive or rotten of course. But I think any of those kids would trade English class and computer class for a home and parents. Some of them have such a vast and bottomless need for attention, a need that I feel like I can't even come close to meeting in my few hours there once a week. With 26 of them. Okay, so I cry sometimes ... and I also over-dramatize! I mean, one day I was helping out the cerebral palsy kid with a puzzle, helping him push the pieces together with his feet and silently crying and I look up and he's having the time of his life. I'm sure he's like "wah wah you freak, push that puzzle piece over here already! We gotta finish Pooh's head!" I know people have said it so many times that it may not mean anything, but kids are so RESILIENT. It's eerie.

Singapore's Raffles Hotel, aw yeah. If you're going to do Singapore (and by "do" I mean "visit" you filthy person) do it right baby. Stay at the Raffles for I won't tell you how much money a night ... It's an ancient hotel that dates from a thousand years ago when the horsey set of colonial-era England needed a "no-Asiatics allowed" type of place to cool their heels during their colonial tours-of duties. The place is GORGEOUS and has totally cashed in on its literary reputation -- it has a Joseph Conrad room, a Somerset Maugham room and a Rudyard Kipling room. Nancy and I checked in and were assigned our own PERSONAL ROOM VALET named Faisal. We even had a buzzer in our room that would call him to us when we needed him. We had no idea what to do with a personal room valet, but later that night we were inspired and ordered him to bring us dancing girls, which was nice.

Space age chairs in the Singapore airport. That place is not to be missed, seriously. It's got a SWIMMING pool!

Nancy in her pod.

Jennifer, second from right, graduated from Columbia J-School last year with our guide to Singapore, Zac, far right. He met us at our fabulous hotel and took us to India Town, which was in the final throes of three weeks of Diwali, Hindu festival of lights, which there is called "Deepavali" if I remember correctly. We were actually too busy to go with him that night so we sent our spirits instead.

From the left is the spirit of Nancy, the spirit of Grace (Lay Out Guru at my former job), the spirit of Jen (Copy Editing Mistress, well until she quit that hellhole) and Zac, a reporter for the Straits Times in Singapore. He likes it even though Singapore just recently ranked 140th out of 167 countries this past October in terms of press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders.

Wow, Singapore is so clean.

Me at Raffles, posing near the crystal chandeliers. Well ONE of the crystal chandeliers. Right afterwards this guy came up to us and asked if we were staying there. He wanted to kick us out. Well, wouldn't be the first time. Bet they're regretting they ever took money from such rabble.

My wood nymph.

I found these nice Christmas presents for Nancy's nieces and nephew at a Singapore department store.

Me n' Nancy in India Town. We were the only women there that night, it was weird. At first I thought we were breaking some kind of Dewalii taboo -- there were literally thousands and thousands of men everywhere and no women. So I asked Zac and it turns out they were all recent Bengali migrant workers who live in construction camps on the other side of town and come here without wives or girlfriends etc. The original Indian immigrants came from Southern India as workers under the Brits and spoke Tamil, so that's the lingua franca of India Town. (I want to stress I am doing this all from memory, not notes, so take it with a grain of salt.) But these guys speak Bengali, so I wonder if that will change, the way fewer and fewer people in NYC's Chinatown speak Cantonese because all the new migrants are from Fujian Province (so they speak "Fukkinese" I'm not kidding, that's what people in NYC's Chinatown call it). Okay I'm rambling.

Raffles Hotel, birthplace of the Singapore Sling. In case you forget, there are little signs and reminders everywhere, and you get a free recipe when you check in. If you go upstairs to the Long Bar, where the bartender who made it worked, you see tables and tables of tourists grasping identical pink drinks. At 11 a.m. Here we are, enjoying ours. Well, Nancy's and mine are virgins. Because we are too. We're in the Writer's Bar. Where Somerset Maugham and Jospeh Conrad had their virgin Singapore Slings too.

This pigeon is eating people's leftover peanuts outside the Raffles bar that gave birth to the Singapore Sling. Nancy insisted on taking this photo. Once again our aesthetic differs wildly. Shriveled up dead monk; trash-picking vermin. I wonder how our wedding photos will turn out if she's in charge. I'll probably look fat in them.

Two graceful -- and rare -- black swans sailing outside my bungalow at a Khao Lak resort where I was covering the reopening of the Khao Lak Meridien, one of the many places destroyed by the tsunami in Phang Nga province. Later I found out that one of the swans went missing and hotel staff found its barbecued carcass nearby -- some workers had eaten it! Now there are armed guards patrolling the grounds, protecting the swans which cost some ridiculous amount of money to import. One of those swans got eaten. I think that's funny.

In case you were wondering how the rebuilding efforts were coming along in the tsunami-affected areas of Thailand. This is from a reporting trip I took in October. Most hotels, hostels and guesthouses along this strip of beach didn't have their own private insurance or, if they did, they were so horribly destroyed that they haven't started to rebuild yet. The Thai government pledged loans to some of them (the bigger ones) but the money didn't come through until August or September, making it impossible for them to rebuild in time for this year's high season -- December through February/March -- which is tourism's cash cow in Thailand.

Some Chinese journalists I tagged along with during one of my many trips down to Phang Nga province. Behind him is one of the hotels that was totally totalled by the tsunami in Khao Lak (an area of Phang Nga that's popular with paradise-hunting Europeans). Most hotels won't say how many people died. One resort further up the coast, the Sofitel, lost 250 guests and staff members.

The future site of Thailand's official Tsunami Victim Memorial. It's being built on national park land, even though that's illegal -- yeah right. Like that makes a big difference, since the guy in charge is also the Vice-Minister of Natural Resources! HAHAHA! He's also the once behind the brand new Chiang Mai Night Safari which, according to a recent AP article, will be serving exotic animals on its VIP menu. I love Thailand! Anyway, three park rangers dressed as scary commandos. They're under orders to shoot on site if you pick a leaf off a tree or step off the designated path ... unless you're planning to build a tourist monstrosity the size of two soccer fields. Did you know you can buy honest-to-God taser guns off a blanket at Bangkok's Thieves Market (it's in Chinatown)?

Nancy at her first puppetry/clowning gig at an international school in Bangkok. She's telling the little ones to shut the f*** up or she's going to have to let the evil, drooling Boogie Clown out of it's invisible cage.

She's naked behind there.