Okay, just a short note (although nothing I write ever ends up short) just to let my millions of fans know that I am still alive and dodging bullets in Bangkok!

The photos and adventures have been piling up which, of course, makes me want to avoid posting ... but there really is so much to tell and document from our trip down south to visit an area that has been virtually ignored by the government in its much-publicized tsunami recovery program to Song Kraan, the Thai New Year, four days of water cannons (think Civil Rights protests in the early 60s) and heavy drinking, all in the name of New Year fun!

I am also taking a Canadian immigration test as we speak! Just read in the NYT that the Republicans are planning to put gay adoption bans on a bunch of state ballots in 2008 as part of their new strategy to flush the Crazy Christian Hater Worms out of their holes and into the polling stations. Whatevah ... they executed a coup de grace (is that the right term?) with the gay marriage bans, so I'm not stinking around for whatever is next on their stinkin' agenda. It always pays to have an insurance policy (not that I've ever had insurance on anything but that's what people like to say in these situations).

Okay I'm going through a slightly paranoid stage of my life. But come on, AT&T has been wiretapping our phones and emails! Cleverly I switched to Sprint for my cell phone plan while in NYC. Hopefully the terrorists didn't as well (as my lovely partner pointed out during a pause in one of my rants)!

In other words I've started studying Thai in earnest. Sa wa di kaa! Okay I already knew how to say that, but "I have a pink eraser" (Di chan mii yanglop si champoo ka!) didn't seem pertinent to the online conversation.

This just in: Thaksin resigned. And he cried, the big baby. Probably from happiness because a) his party swept up the elections b) he is totally a billionaire and c) all of this means he can resign while saving face and he is rich to boot.

The papers are saying his DPM will probably take over. Thaksin's like, I don't care, I'm a billionaire! Later people!

This is fairly random but I have to get it off my chest so I can stop ranting about it to Nancy every time I pick up a newspaper. Every article I read these days about the ongoing student protests in France starts off with some stupidly glib lead about how the French really know how to protest, how it's a respected part of their culture yadda yadda and then at some point the article goes on to list the major protests in French history starting with, of course, 1789, then 1968, then other protests throughout the 70s and 80s and then ... nope, they never mention last autumn. One article I read the other day did mention the "riots of disaffected immigrant youth" last year, but they, apparently, were riots, not protests. Meanwhile the current wave of (white) French youth romping through the streets are, indeed, wreaking havoc ... not on beleagured cars this time but on storefront windows. So WTF??!!! I mean these are NEWS WIRE stories from the AP and articles by newspapers like the South China Morning Post and other mainstream Western and Asian news outlets. I mean, the French Revolution doesn't count as a RIOT??!! BAH!!

I keep thinking that there MUST be something that I'm missing, some key difference besides race that would make one youth's protest another youth's riot. What-evah ... oh and one last thing. Those disaffected "immigrant youth" are the CHILDREN of immigrants by and large if I remember correctly ... at what point are you no longer an immigrant youth? I guess not until you wash all the race taint out seven generations later. Okay I am in a foul mood about this. Frogs and the journalists who cover them. They are not cool enough to get the extra "e" at the end. (see my profile description)

Oh yeah, so the rally last Wednesday night was fun, Bangkok is much nicer with all the shopping malls closed down. Anyway it was the last one before the election on Sunday, which Thaksin and his party won of course, since everyone cast blank votes. Bring on the Constitutional Crisis baby! A bunch of district have to revote because the winner didn't even get 20 percent of the vote.