"The Electric Mule" will be a regular posting to our front page and our  "Global Studies" People section.  The author is on a 5 month travel of Asia with his wife.  He will write from his unique perspective of his travels and offer non-sequiturs to current events in the world.

Hello Again to Everyone out there in Radioland:

The East is Red (especially when the sun rises in the morning!).  And to coin a phrase:

'it's a long, long way from the green, green grass of home'

Tomiyo and I are now in our 3rd day in Bangkok (I remember a childhood joke which I heard sitting around waiting as a caddy at the Country Club- Confucious say: Man who rush thru airport turnstiles bound to... you fill in the rest!).  'Thailand, the Land of Smiles' has been engaged in political bickering since we were here last year.  Remember?  300,000 tourists were stranded at the international airport for about a month!  The 'yellow' Bangkok elites are still engaged in a confrontation with the countryside 'reds', who accuse the military and royalists of usurping democracy by installing a new prime minister (without elections!). Whinemeal, the on-the-lam former Prime Minister Thaksin is sitting somewhere in an Arab country sending telephone and video messages to rallies of his followers, attacking the current government and complaining about his current cuisine of camel meat and camel milk (and probably heated over camel dung!).. Who knows?  In Asia, nothing is as it semms- everything is wheels within wheels within wheels (on the road and in the mind!).

Speaking of wheels, Bangkok traffic is as clogged as ever, however because of the downturn in the economy, the taxicabs will now use their meters.  On our initial trip to Thailand, many of the taxis refused to use their meter, so we tried taking the ubiquitous tuk-tuk scooters. However hoovering exhaust at street level is not a pleasant experience- leaving one with clogged nasal passages, tearing eyes, and a carbon-induced headache. Therefore, we have reverted to taxis. The average ride costs about $2-$3- which is fairly reasonable for a 1/2 hour trip (which usually involves sitting in traffic for half the time, watching LCD clocks over the intersection tick down from 2 minutes).  When the light changes, it is off to the races in pink, lime green, sky blue, yellow, and other exotic tropically colored Toyota Camry family-style dragsters.  Tonite, our driver was flagged down by a policeman for some innocuous infraction, and after greasing the palm of the gifted one with a few baht, in the matter of 15 seconds, we were on our way.  Perhaps this method of avoiding marks one one's license might be considered in the West.  After all, what is a few baht (or dollars), between friends who just met?

If you recall, on my last missile from Bangkok last year, I described a visit to Platinum Plaza (a huge Japanese-owned 6 story department store filled with hundreds- if not thousands, of designer boutiques catering to junior high, high school, and college aged Thai females- which is why I refered to it as 'Panty Plaza'). The only males one observes in attendance are usually dutiful boyfriends and house-trained husbands (like yours truly!), and a few Indian male tourists buying jewelry for their wives, daughters, and secret girlfriends on GB Road in New Delhi and on Falklands Road in Mumbai.  There are also usually a few 'beefy' Australian/Russian/European/American male sex-tourists with their Thai call girl 'friends'. These 'ladies of the evening' are getting 'their pound of flesh' by making the foreign males supplement their 'skimpy' wardrobes before the males fly out of the country back to their girlfriends, wives, and mothers.  There has got to be a house trailer, a shotgun and some dogs somewhere in this picture, judging by the type of males one sees with these ladies.

Last year I described a boutique in Platinum Plaza which functioned under the operating name of 'Who Flung Poo'.  The shop sign depicted the logo of a monkey flinging something, and the tag on all of the items in the boutique stated 'this is a genuine handy crap item'.  Thais are very influenced by 'kawai' (cute) Japanese culture- which is usually very scabrous, is verbally and visually audacious, with a hip-hop culture jamming sensibility.  Yesterday I saw a T-shirt at a shop entitled 'White Cat' (Shiroi Neko), which combined Japanese samurai and Buddhist images with Mexican skulls, Day of the Dead, and Posada images in a wild hodge-podge of Photoshop layering.  The store also had clothes which combined Catholic Madonna images with playing cards and biker images.  At another shop nearby, I saw a T-shirt which read: 'Global Warming- You Make Me Hot', and another which said: 'Giraffes United Against Ceiling Fans'. You get the picture.  At another boutique nearby, I saw a T-shirt which ingeniously combined Mickey Mouse and Che Guevera's images into a kind of 'Mickey Che'.  Mickey Mouse and Che? Is nothing sacred anymore?

In any event, I went back looking for 'Who Flung Poo' to see if their marketing image had survived.  To my amazement, in its place was a shop entitled: 'Handi Crab' by Khun Poo. In place of the monkey, a crab scuttled across the back lit store sign and store tags.  Perhaps Sarah Palin had been in town ('I can see Thailand from my back porch') and had complained about the previous monkey image and logo and the lack of a moose in the picture.  Perhaps the boutique decided to try a new, less confrontational tactic (I just read that a chimp in a zoo somewher demonstrated 'organizational pre-planned cognitive thinking' by gathering a pile of rocks in advance to throw at zoo visitors- which means there is still some hope for me!).  Perhaps I missed the real 'Who Flung Poo' shop on another floor.  Whatever the true facts are, this anecdote symbolizes for me that for the Westerner in Asia, seeing is NOT believing!  The Rashamon effect is always operating, and one cannot ascertain the the truth- even after polling everyone in the immediate surroundings- including Poles!

Today, in a store called 'The Loft', I saw plastic sushi attached to pen drives- complete with a menu such as one might order at a sushi bar!  All of the drives were 2 gigs, however the prices reflected the price of the various pieces of sushi.

The mind reels at all of the verbal, visual, physical, and mental possibilities of existence (even fishing 'Poles' are possible!).  As Picasso and Einstein and James Joyce realized 100 years ago, everything in life is relative (including ones relatives!).  Which is why the only travel book I will ever need on the road is 'Finnegan's Wake', which is Joyce's dream of the dream of a dead man.  What better guide to interpret what one sees than the musings of a madman/deadman (we are all mad and we will all be dead). Wikipedia describes the book as:

'a work of comic fiction, which is recognised for its difficulty for the reader and its experimental style. The entire book is written in an idiosyncratic language, consisting of multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Due to its expansive linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and its abandonment of conventions of plot and character construction, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public'

Sounds good to me! Who wants to be a member of the great unwashed anyway?  Not I!  In a recent 2-year study on 'who is a cultured individual' which took place world wide, and which polled professors, diplomats, writers, artists, etc., the conclusion was reached, that 'a cultured individual' is a person who can hold two opposing thoughts in their mind at the same time, and argue the virtues of both'.  There goes 95% of the world's population- including our own!

 

Still kicking in my stall,

The (highly) IBM Selectric Electric Mewl

 

copyright Ernest Gusella 2009