86ed from the Buffalo Bar - 2012

From 2012

I first walked into the Buffalo Bar in 1997. The bar on Sai 3 became my local in Pattaya after I moved to Soi Bong Koch in 2002. The beer was cold, the open-air atmosphere was a welcome change from the go-go bars' tobacco-reek, beer lout falangs, and more than a few of the hostesses were desirable. My ex-wife understandably hated the place and didn't buy my excuse for frequenting the bar.

 "I only go there because it's not far from home."

It was less than two minutes away by motorcycle.

Telling a lie would have sounded better, but the truth was much easier to remember.

My constant companion was my little dog Champoo. She sat on the bar and lap at a small bowl of Heineken. The girls loved my Szhi-Tzu. They knew her name, but not mine, but nothing nice lasts forever.

Eddy, the fortyish owner took up with a young Belgium thug. She relinquished the daily running of the bar to Sandy, an old crow from Isaan, Thailand's poorest province. The mama-san's constant cawing grated on the ears and she insulted the best girls like Cinderella's stepmother realizing her beauty had faded for good. They left in droves.

Only Tuk remained, which was enough for me.

She had plenty of salacious stories from her past and present.

One night I sat with Tuk and Champoo. My dog was having her usual. Champoo didn't like Chang. It was either too strong or bitter. She's been doing this over three years. Everyone loves her, but this night Sandy tells me to get Champoo off the bar.

"Dog dirty. Dog smell. Dog not come to bar."

I thought about it a little. I had been coming there for years. Buying drinks for everyone. Never complained when they added a little chisel onto the bar bill.

I wasn't having anyone speak to Champoo like that.

"Just give me the bill. I'm leaving. You know what. I'm never coming back here as long as you work here."

"Good." Sandy didn't own the place. She only worked there.

"Good for me too. Save money. And I tired of hearing you speak."

"Good you go too." Sandy screeched with her eyes wide. She was angry at me and Champoo. "You not special. You same all farang. Come and go. Come and go. One day die.

"And you're the same as all women. You get old same."

The tone of the conversation descended down a slope slippery with expletives in Thai and American. The bouncers rushed into the bar, ready to throw out an unruly foreigner. Seeing me they stopped in their track. I bought them pizza. Sandy gave them shit.

"Don't worry boys, I'm leaving."

"And don't come back." Sandy shouted from behind a phlanx of bar girls.

"No problem."

Outside the bouncers begged me to incite Sandy to a fight.

"You slap her no problem." Dao the head of security winked at me. She was no one's friend, but my mother didn't raise me to hit women and to be honest Champoo was a little dirty, although no more than most of the old farangs haunting the Buffalo or me. At least she never sweats. Not even when she's drunk.

So there ends a beautiful relationship between me and a bar. Funny, not sad at all. Then again there are 3000 other bars in Pattaya. One of them has to be right for me, but in the end I knew Champoo and I would come back to the Buffalo.

After all it was right down the street and neither Champoo nor I liked driving home drunk.

ps THe BUffalo Bar was still there in 2022.

46/30 Mu 9, Pattaya Sai 3 Road, Bang Lamung, Chonburi, Pattaya

Tuk (Buffalo Bar) 2006

From May 2006

Tuk works at the Buffalo Bar. Has been there on and off since 2001. She was 19 then and sexier than a bar filled with go-go girls, mostly because she was crazy and didn't mind taking off her clothes to be groped by older men. She took her revenge by letting them fall in love. They would shower her with gold, money, attest their never-ending love. She would reward them by soaking them for every baht. My friend, Dave, invested in a fashion shop selling sexy clothing. It went bust. He declares now, "She's a nutter."

 A German muscle builder had a kid with her. Thought he could change her ways. Sorry Otto, you were wrong. Tuk is still sexy as ever and more dangerous than a snake in bed. I like her, if only because she is the wildest girl I know in Pattaya.

Gai (buffalo bar) 2006

From May 2006

I've known Gai about 5 years. She's worked at the Buffalo bar on and off. Off when she had a boyfriend. On when she didn't. My cousin went with her once in 2001. My friend AJ in 2002. he dated my friend Fabo in 2004. The number of men in between couldn't be counted on our four hands. Gai is a very popular girl.

She's statuesque for a Thai and reminds me of Jayne Mansfield. She used to get naked a lot of the parties. I think I can remember licking salt off her breasts after doing a shot of tequila. She thought it was really funny. Me too.

Par 4 at the Killing Fields CC - 2008

In a move that might make the late Cambodian despot Pol Pot spin in his grave _ if he had one _ former Khmer Rouge cadres in their stronghold of Pailin have embraced a plan to cash in on the country's tourism boom and build a golf course. Not that they know much about the game. If football is the beautiful game, to the ultra-Maoist former guerrillas, golf is the mysterious one.

Last week, golf fanatic Prime Minister Hun Sen visited the remote area, more than 100km of rugged dirt road from the nearest city of Battambang, and proposed a golf course for the municipality. More...

Pailin is perched on the nation's north-western border with Thailand and is just four hours by road from Bangkok, but up to 10 hours from the Cambodian capital.

Hun Sen is possibly the only country leader in the world to list his golf scores on his website.

Cambodia is so serious about developing golf as an industry that it has appointed a special representative to the Council of Ministers. The former Khmer Rouge are ecstatic.

Once rich in gems and timber, these resources were all but stripped bare by the Khmer Rouge as they tried to keep the remnants of the rebel movement alive by selling them off before the rebels finally conceded to join Hun Sen's government in 1996.

Even journalists don't bother to go there any more since four of its most infamous residents _ former Khmer Rouge leaders Ieng Sary, his wife Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea _ were arrested on orders from the court set up to try them. They are now in a Phnom Penh jail.

Pailin's biggest draw is currently its mainly Thai-owned casinos, which operators say draw up to 10,000 Thais per month. But they lie within a quick sprint of the border and more than 12 rough kilometres from Pailin town, so most gamblers drop their money there and go no further. Nor does Pailin have the attractions of other former Khmer Rouge border strong-holds such as Anlong Veng, which at least boasts the makeshift cremation site of the movement's leader Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge military commander Ta Mok's home, complete with war room. So the former hardline communists, who drove the country to destruction in their 1975-79 failed bid to turn the nation into an agrarian utopia bereft of social classes, which left up to 2 million dead, have joyfully embraced a new ideology _ golf.

''We don't understand this game and at the moment it is just a speech by the prime minister, but it would be great for Pailin,'' says local Information Chief Kong Duong, once a Khmer Rouge propaganda chief.

He says he has never seen a golf ball, except on television. ''We don't know where we will put [the course], or how big it should be, but the idea is good.''

Pailin Tourism Chief So Korng is candid. He freely admits that to him, an iron is for pressing clothes, a wood is something you cut down to make furniture, and Tiger Woods is a place you never go alone or unarmed. But he agrees that the concept is attractive.

''People will have more jobs, and many people inside Cambodia and from overseas will come to visit Pailin and also see our natural attractions like our waterfall, gem shops, mountains and our agricultural programmes,'' he said.

Revenue from the golf course may even pay for a road to the municipality's remote waterfall, which currently offers little more than precarious four-wheel drive access.

A former soldier who fought the Khmer Rouge in the early 1990s says the now-tamed rebels should also make good caddies.

''I've seen them climb mountains with two B-40 rockets strapped to their backs, so golf clubs should be no problem,'' he says. That would be a whole new revolution for a movement better known for its infamous black pajama uniform than plaid and plus fours. But not everyone is convinced. A spokesman for local non-government organisation Buddhism for Development says golf is for the rich, and he doubts there will be much trickle-down for the impoverished former Khmer Rouge farmers in the area.

''The former Khmer Rouge are poor. They are too busy farming to have time to play golf,'' he said. And then there is the image problem. In a 2006 interview, a senior Pailin tourism official laughingly admitted that the very concept of tourism remained somewhat alien. ''Before, our orders were to kill them, but now we invite them to visit and please spend money,''

Go figure.

DOGE Origins

Doge as an acronym comes from 'doge' as in the Doge of Venice title of the chief magistrate of Venice and Genoa. The word is derived from the Latin word dux, which means "leader. Mussolini adapted the word to 'el Duce'. This unelected non-American is not our leader. He is not even 100% male.

Presently I'm reading WHEN PARIS WENT DARK by Ronald Rossbottom. France surrendered to Germany after a few months of war and the French people accepted the Nazis. They gave up while Britain fought on until the Resistance rose from the ashes of defeat.

Just like the American people waiting for someone else to save them; the government, the democrats, the courts. MAGA people have fight in them. Only because no one is fighting them. Trump illegally won the election thanks to the Supreme Court and $440 million from a non-American. 'My dog can play baseball better than this traitor'. Surrender. That's what people have done.

But like France. Not all of are cowards. We are the Resistance, because we see unlike our left-leaning compatriots watching the SuperBowl on TV and cat memes on their cellphones and munching on the modern manna. Potato chips. Only Potato Chips. Moi?

This morning my rasta friend was chomping on Cape Cods and offered me some. Irresistable. Karl Marx was always amazed how the British proelitariat sold out to the capitalist bosses with their devotion to the Empire, Church, and fish and chips. I understand that ease, but we have to take a stand and now. In STAR TREK the Borg moster cryptoclones tell the conquered, "Resistance is futile."

Not for me. I'm Irish. We fought the 'The Britons' or Sassenach for centuries and we are not done until ALL Ireland is free. None of our generations signed DeValera's treason truce and Trump won the stolen 2024 election by les than a million votes.

ps If they were allowed to lie about 2020, then so may the Resistance about 2024.

During the Eagles' romp over KC at a Clinton Hill bar's Super Bowl party I argumented with a Trump supporter about the Orange Messiah's wig coming from transgender women. He exhaled hatred after I conjectured that there are more than two genders than just male and female.

"There are at last five genders of male. Women seventeen." I liked using prime numbers. they have power. More than the Collective Obese Baldness of MAGA.

"There's only one."

"To your eyes yes, but over the last decades the fast and junk food oligarchies have mutated humans across the globe. People are taller, fatter, and stupider. I can't name all the male genders, but I know yours. You're the traitor male."

The XXXL man from Staten Island blew a gasket and I hauled out my secret weapon.

A bag of Cape Cod Kettle Garlic Chips. I tore open the bag. It was virgin. It's gender. Neutral.

"You want some?"

Like that his anger was quelled, because Big Food was brainwashed the people's hunger with a pseudo manna. The modern food of Moses. No more potato chips. So resist those of you awoken to the danger. Everyone else get some more potato chips. There are only $5.

ps Never trust anyone who lies about their own baldness.

pps Elon Musk's plugs came from dogs. He thought they were doges. Damned Nazis!

ppps The first combatant resistance in France were the 60,000 illegal refugees from Franco's fascist regime. The anarchists of the CNT understood what was at risk. Something more than democracy. Life itself.

Image - The Execution of Marino Faliero, Eugène Delacroix, 1827

pppps I have a full head of natural hair.

JEAN CLAUDE VANNIER strato nimbus

Genius.

Beneath General Sherman's Horse

Anger.

At Anger Management the councilors have claimed that we possess three-second trigger defenses before we pull the trigger. I have always begged to differ. My anger trigger is 'now'. This afternoon I was on a pleasant walk through lower Central Park from my hospital. Exiting from the zoo I strolled to 60th Street listening to Pharaoh Sanders. Bloodwork proved I was healthy and I was wearing a black double-breasted Burberry suit with a leather jacket under it. The weather was warmish after the previous week of sub-zero conditions.

Two young men kicked a football before General Sherman's golden equestrian statue. Duke's front right hoof raised signified Sherman's having sustained multiple wounds and having three horses shot from under him at the Civil War battle of Shiloh. The football players weren't doing anything really wrong other than obstructing my path. Annoyed I veered close to the white boy. Within a foot. The ball hit my ass and I spun on the heels of my Italian loafers. The young man and his black friend backed up fast. THe white boy had a squirrel tail haircut like most of the boys of his generation.

It's called 'the Alpaca' popularized by the Kansas City

"Motherfucker."

His black friend dragged him out my range. About three feet. At 72 I still have some run left in my legs. "You called me motherfucker." White Boy said, as if no one had ever cursed him. Milleniels have a different youth than those young with an unlimited lexicon of profanity.

"Yes, I meant it too."

"We weren't doing anything wrong." Nobody these days, young an dold, recognized ill manners. I was brought up with Emily Post's ETIQUETTE drilled into adolescents at all times.

"Please" and "thank you," holding doors, chewing with our mouths closed, dressing appropriately, shaking hands—these are all manners."

Most Americans dress in gym clothing.

"You weren't doing anything right either. I wanted to walk where I was going. I didn't want to step a foot out of my way. You were oblivious to my space. So I thought to myself, "Fuck you, little motherfucker."

"Can you stop calling me motherfucker and just walk away."

"Now you're telling me what to do, mother fucker."

The soccer ball was at his feet. Three feet away. I so wanted to kick it into the 5th Avenue traffic. I remembered my work at the Anger Managment group meetings. Conflict and resolution. Violence wasn't an option in these days of cellphones. People always record fights. "This is a statue of General Sherman, who brought the Wrath of the North onto the slave-holding Deep South. At the Battle of Shiloh he was wounded three times and his horse Duke also was shot, which is why his hoof is raised for his rider's wounds." "So why you call me a motherfucker?" "Because you kicked a ball in my ass. NOt the same as getting shot three times, but what the fuck. One time I threw a football in the Louvre. You know what that is?"

"Throwing a football?"

"Yeah."

We punched fists and I walked away, as they resumed their play.

And yes, I had caught a thrown football in the Louvre 1983."

Go long, and yes I am a hypocrtite, but there was no one there. Not making excuses, just telling the truth.

Delusional Deja Vu - Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa

In 1988 I spent the summer in Perpignan, France. My good friend, Olivier Brial, arranged my stay with his cousin, Jacques Vial. The family house on the Quai Nicolas Sidi Carnot was in the center of the old Catalan city. The River Basse coursed past the fourth-story mansion east to the sea in Olivier's parents were out on Carnet-Plage, a middle-class beach resort. Nothing special and certainly not the Riviera. Still it was free accommodations and the house was the office for the Vial law firm and every day we gathered a hearty lunch and then sprawled throughout the first floor on the sofas and chairs. Everyone had their favorites.

It was a quiet city that summer.

Everyone was at the beach or on holiday. I was writing a short story collection set in the East Village 1978-1980. I took the train the Colliure on the border of Spain. The Mediterranean waters were warmer than the Rockaways and the rocky beach more pleasant than the wide commercial strand of Carnet Plage. I still went there by bus. It was close and Madam Brial always was happy to see me.

At night I wandered through Perpignan. I never found any place to drink. Not in the Gitane quartier of St. Jacques or next to the Caserne Joffre, the Foreign Legion barracks. I was 36. The age limit was 40. I was never tempted to join, even though the Legion offers a place to sleep, a uniform, and food without any questions. I was no longer in hiding.

Thankfully Jacques invited me on two day trips to Barcelona. Lunch with Catalan business associates and stopping in Cadaques to play blackjack at Le Perlata. I never really won or lost. The Vial family owned casinos on the Core de Rousillion, but his one-armed uncle banned all family members from visiting them.

"No one wins at gambling," he told us at a family dinner outside town. Oliver and his redheaded Californian girlfriend Cindy came down from Paris with another friend. It was a good weekend. After they left, I felt stranded. At least it wasn't Lille.

One Friday after lunch Jacques led me outside and said he had to ask me a favor.

"Anything."

At least until I heard the request.

"Tonight my wife wants me to attend a chamber music concert up in the Pyrenees at an ancient monastery. Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa. Part of he Pablo Casals Festival. After the Civil War in Spain the cellist found refuge in Prades. He hadn't play again in public until 1950."

"Fourteen years."

I had heard his LPs in high school." Franco had seized control in 1936.

"They'll be playing Bach Bourrée tonight."

As a revolutionary these quartet concerts sounded like a musical reprise accompanying the ablutions of ancien regime.

"Normally not, but anything attached to him is a go." Pablo Casals was a genius and a revolutionary.

"Please, just come. They'll be playing Bach concertos tonight I'll being a great bottle of wine. plus you'll get into the mountains. I'll drive and you can sit in the front. The women will behind us and we'll roll with the windows open

"Who's the woman?"

A friend of my wife."

"This better not be a blind date."

He didn't understand that expression and I explained its meaning.

"Une rendez-vous à l'aveugle. Would I do that to you?"

I wasn't sure, but he had been a good friend this summer and agree to accompany them.

How bad could it be?"

We met at the cafe in the center of town. Olivier's sister ran the bar. I fortified myself for the ordeal with two Calvas.

"So you are going with Jacques?" Marion's voice confessed that she had refused his offer.

"Yes, he's picking me up shortly."

"Bonne chance."

Jacques arrived on time. I downed by third Calva and ran out to the Peugot 505. His wife and the other woman sat in back. She was my age. Attractive and I politely introduced myself. I was new blood in an old town. Her name was Sylvie. She was blonde and wore a wedding ring. She told me that she didn't speak any English." "D'accord. On parle en Francais." I had taken two years of the language in grammar school. It was my second second language after Latin.

Jacques drove west into the mountains. D615 to D66 folliwing Tet river. Numerous dry riverbeds scored the valleys into the Lac de Vinca, a large reservoir. The women spoke in the back. Jacques and I smoked cigarettes with the windows open. It was a beautiful evening and even more sout turning off onto the D27 leading to Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa. The peak of Canigo rose to over 9000 feet. Higher than any mountain in New England. The smell of pine forests.

"C'est tres belle ici." I was content to have come.

Sylvie smiled back. Conversation was unnecessary with the windows open. It was turning into a pleasant evening, until the monastery hoved into view and I gasped.

Sylvie asked what was wrong and I explained in bad French that I had been here before and that I have seen this place before."

"Vous etes de New York?"

I explained I lived there and she laughed saying in good English, "You have not been here before, but one of your millionaires, John D. Rockefeller bought and transported half of the monastery and a good deal of its art to the tip of Manhattan."

"The Cloisters."

Sylvie explained my mistaken deja vu to the Vials. We had a good laugh. The evening was better than expected. A young woman performed Bach Suite #1. We later drank a good bottle of Cote de Rousillon at the Les Halles du Conflent. Sylvie was fun. A good time for all.

Yesterday I traveled on the A train from Clinton Hill in the freezing cold to visit Professor Bertell Ollman in the far north of Manhattan. West 190th Street. Only 55 minutes. The elevator ascended to street level. I strolled across the Bernard Baruch park. Below the Hudson filled the fiord. No snow in sight, but the temperature was 21 and windy. I walked into Fort Tyron Park. Alone, except for a dog walker. The Cloister tower was far away. I had only been here twice. Once in 1980 a friend and I had walked from the East village to here. The hike took a little over two hours. Today I was satisfied to view the medieval monastery from the Linden Terrace. I tried to recall the taste of wine and the music. I heard Miles Davis' KIND OF BLUE instead. I shivered for a few minutes and walked back to see the Professor. He was in good shape and happy to see me. I told him of seeing the Cloisters twin a long time ago back when wew not so much young, but not as old as now. I showed him a photo of both places."

"They do look alike."

They still do and I only say that shit about chamber music to bug pseudo-intellectual. I never play it in the bathroom, then again I'm not royalty. SA for Perpignan and my family there. One day I will go. And this dream is always deja vu.

Lady Snowblood (1973) 修羅雪姫 - Movie Trailer - Far East Films

From ALMOST A DEAD MAN

The casino at Hamburg's Hotel-Intercontinental was quiet on weekday afternoons. The only action was a solo woman at the roulette table and a Japanese businessman playing baccarat. The head executive in a Savile Row suits displayed no emotion, as his fingers slashed down like samurai sword to take a hit. Win or loss was not as important as his wager’s fearlessness. The money was all black money unspendable in Japan.

After another losing hand the Joshi or boss nodded to his three underlings. The youngest separated from the table and went to the polished roulette table. The low-echelon salaryman did not understood the rules. His boss glared at him and he placed a chip on black, while observing the play of the towering brunette in four-inch stiletto heels.

Her short hair stuck out in punk spikes. Her right eye moved independently of the left. Forces had ravaged her visage. The woman in her mid-twenties resembled Meiko Kaji, if the Japanese movie actress had crashed a Porsche into a wall. There was no beauty in the gaijin gyaru.

The Japanese company man considered Occidental women ugly. This woman was more scarred as a battle-word samurai warrior. irginity was a requirement for a naked sushi body back in Japan. His boss was not so fussy in Germany. His boss was not so fussy in Germany. All the women in Hamburg were whores to them, yet she emanated a defiance rarely displayed by Japanese women other than Meiko Kaji. The pink film star was a goddess. The nameless company man loved the 1973 classic revenge movie THE LADY IN SNOWBLOOD, WHICH TARANTINO LIFTED FOR KILL BILL.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN's gaijin gyaru or western woman is Lotte Wessel, once the leader of the women of the Reeperbahn working women seeking to form a union to overthrow the pimps or Zuhalterai. They almost kill her and now she is seeking revenge.

I wrote this novel in the west of Ireland 1997.

All the cow farmers in the pub beneath the Connemara Mountains asked, "Why yer writing a book about Germany in Ireland?"

"My mother's death wish was that I go to Ireland and marry someone like my sisters or aunts."

"Now that's a death wish. How ye faring with that task?" Mikey came up to my chest and lived in a stone hut on the ocean.

"I'm here drinking with youse." None of the first born farmers had married. Women fled the West of Galway before they could get knocked up by family or friends.

I wrote THE END in December. I returned to New York. Shannon Greer, photographer read it back then in an evening. p>I rewrote it several times without submitting it to publishers or agents.

It's now on page 289 of the 2025 rewrite.

Good then, better now.

Wintah Maine 1959

Walking on a back road
From school
No sign of the sun
Leaden clouds overhead
Fields frozen by deep snow.
A northerly wind from Montreal
A long slog home___
Grey slush underfoot
The wet seeping
Through boots
Cold wet feets
Another mile to Grandmother’s house
Where waits
A warm pot belly stove
Dreaming
Pull off boots
Peel off soxes
Stick frozen toes
Under the heat

Aaah

A cup of tea With milk and sugar

Aaah

No more the cold
Grandmother’s house
Only another half-mile
To go
Till
Grandmother’s house

Spring
Another four months away.
Till then
Counting the days.
To April
Flowers
And no snow.

Aaaah

I spent my early childhood on Falmouth Foresides, Maine, sledding winters on Blackstrap Hill. It was over 400 feet high. There were really winters then, still are in Fort Kent. There are two season in Maine. The season of good sledding and the season of bad sledding. - Doctor Frank A Smith, who rode a sled on his visits around Gorham, Maine, when wintah was truly wintah.

Culiacan, Mexico 1975

In the winter of 1975 I rode a train south from Mexcali. The journey was slow on the sun-warped rails. Our stops included towns without names as well as bigger cities.

Hermosillo-Guaymas-Los Mochis.

I got off in Culiacan at dawn and hitchhiked to Matzatlan. Route 15 ran through the Sonoran Desert. The temperature rose with each hour. Winter was very hot in Mexico.

Matzatlan lay on the Pacific. After a few days of hanging on the beach, I took a bus a short distance to Teacupan, a small village on mangrove estuary. I traversed the town and bought three tacos and six beers. I found an abandoned hotel on the beach. The sheltered ruins echoed the waves crashing on the sand. I pulled out my transistor radio and listened to Mexican rock, watching the stars cross the evening sky to a destination before the dawn. After the fourth beer my eyes closed for the night and the universe tugged my soul not to the cosmos, but oblivion. It does give a good sleep.

The next day was Sunday. Families came for a break from the heat. The women cooked food, the men drank beer, the children played in the waves. They paid no mind to a lone gringo.

I went for a swim. The water was rough. I was a good swimmer. A young child was caught in a riptide. His mother screamed from shore. I was chest deep and snatched the boy from Neptune‘s grasp.

Ashore the locals toasted my heroics.

“It was nada.” Only stepped a few feet.

Not to them. I had saved a life. They invited me to eat and drink with them. Later I played soccer and fucked up my knee. They left at sunset. I drank my last beer and watched the sun drop into the Pacific.

Never lonely just alone.

Foto by Jocko Weyland

Lost Baggage Singapore 1990

From 2020

The Bugis people were great voyagers from Sulawesi. They sailed small crafts from Padang Padang to many ports of the Far East ranging from Burma to Northern Australia. Many practiced piracy and as Thomas Forrest wrote in A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago, "The Buginese are a high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage...They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises."

Most westerners are unfamiliar with the Bugis and especially their complex five gender society.

Men and women are joined by 'bissu' which combined all five genders, 'calabai' a false woman, and 'calalai' a masculine female.

Thriving Bugis communities existed throughout the Orient, although few as famous as Singapore's Bugis Street on which calabai transgenderettes gathered in the 1950s to sexually entertain randy sailors and curious travelers. According to legend the easy way to discern which working girls were female and which were trannies was that the calabai were beautiful and the female hookers were ugly.

Singapore banned wanton behavior in the 1980s to transformed the tawdry area into another worthless shopping mall.

In 1990 I flew from Sumatra to Singapore. Back to the modern world away from orangutans, volcanos, jungles, and cannibals. My bag wasn't in the carousel. I informed the airline of my loss. They gave me money for a hotel and food and said to come back tomorrow. I had the shirt on my back. I exited from the terminal to discover a elderly Chinese man sitting on my bag. He didn't understand a word I said, but surrendered my bag. Lucky and I took a taxi to stay at a cheap Chinese hotel on Bugis Street.

The trannies were few.

The sidewalks were clean.

The Long Bar at Raffles was undergoing renovations.

I left the next day for Penang.

Each time I returned to Singapore, I stayed for enough the time to catch the train.

Singapore has nothing to offer anyone looking for a walk on the wild side. Not anymore.

It's the most boring big city in the Orient, but not in the 60s.

It swung with the best of them.

Bugis Street selama-lamanya.

Forever.

Hashish Farts 2008

I smoke pot.

I started smoking pot at the age of 18. It was the summer of 1970. I stopped while during the government poisoned the marijauna crops of Latin America, then resumed with the advent of home-grown sinsemilla, although the potency of that reefer called 'killer' rendered it less user-friendly than the lightweight grass of 1970 and I refrained from inhaling the herb in the modern age. Either I went comatose from a few puffs or consumed the entire refrigerator even if it meant eating mustard and carrot sandwiches.

In Thailand I smoke a little at my brother-in-law's farm. He was cultivating a patch in the banana trees for personal consumption and gas money. It was a little milder than the chronic joints of America. A little more laughy but not cheap. $5 for about a fifth of a ounce.. I could make millions exporting it to Koh Samui. Go to jail for eight years too, so I remain destitute, since hard crime is a young man's game.

The White House, America's ultimate expert on marijuana, has released a report warning the nation that the THC percentage has increased to almost 10% in 2007, posing new health risks to smokers.

"Marijuana is not harmless." The White House director of Drug Control contends that the twicing of marijuana's intoxication ability further heightened 60s survivors' misconception of the herb's danger, although proponents of marijuana counter that the strength has transformed smokers from three puffs to one puffs nor is there any proof to the allegation from 1600 Penn Ave.

The White House wasn't available to comment on that view, but was quick to point the finger at Canada for potentially addicting millions of Americans to marijuana.

"They will no loinger able to just say no. Think of the children."

Better pot than Ritalin, except for mass murdering psychopaths.

Keep them on Thorazine.

I tested reefer on the crazy dog I'm taking care of in Palm Beach.

Put Pom Pom in heaven.

In 2008 on Koh Samui a middle-aged English tourist arrived at the local emergency ward with complaints of severe stomach and intestinal cramps. The ER staff fought for several hours to extract a long plastic bag from the Englishman's intestines. They were surprised to discover the bag's contents werea nearly a kilo of hashish worth approx. one million baht. The Thai police arrested him on charges of smuggling the Class 5 drug onto the island, which sold for 1,500-2,000 baht a gramme. In custody the UK resident explained he had been in pain for over five days and panicked upon his farts starting to smell like the drug, indicating that several of the sealed packets might have burst in his stomach. None of his customers wanted to take a bong hit from his butt and now he will be subject to the full measure of the law for his folly.

Provincial governor Vinai Buapradit suspected Mr Jones swallowed the drugs when he was overseas so he could pass through drug detectors and sniffer dogs at airports and at the pier on Samui where boats leave for Koh Phangan.

Pinyo Thongchai, the deputy chief of the Department of Special Investigation, said trans-national criminal groups were rampant on Koh Samui.

As well as the Bandidos motorcycle gang, which recently faced a crackdown by authorities, there were also international mafia gangs doing illegal businesses in drugs, land and property deals and extorting money from foreign businessmen.

In June last year police on Koh Samui arrested Frenchman Pittet Pasca Maorica, 53, who was also admitted to Samui International Hospital after suffering from stomach pain.

Doctors found one kilogramme of heroin in his stomach. 

He was lucky his bag had not broken.

The Police might have caught these two, but the real drug dealers are the banks laundering oney for the ja bah and heroin trade, controlled by people whose name can not be said in public.

Not if you want to live.

ps No one's farts smell better than your own.

pps What kind of French name is Pittet Pasca Maorica?

The Gulf of Naha

The Maga president had been out of the White House fighting criminal lawsuits and the prospect of prison. His 2024 presidential victory assured that the Orange Messiah had redeemed himself in the faith of Religious Right. It was not a landslide. Only 58% of the eligible voters participated in the electoral process. Trump received 28% on the actual vote. His Democratic rival lost by 1,500,000 votes. Roughly the combined population of of North and South Dakota. North Dakota is one of the two states to which I have not been. Kentucky is the other. Both came out for Trump in a big way.

Judging from his first month in office Trump had spent the last four years making lists and his slurry of executive orders has revealed the depth and breadth of his spleen. No one or thing is safe and last week he forced the US Government and Google to erase the Gulf of Mexico from existence. That body of water had been so-named since the Conquest. Almost five hundred years. Poof. Gone. Wikipedia's search engine still responds in the old fashioned way, but it wasn't always called the Gulf of Mexico.

In the Aztec religion, the gulf was called Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl, or "House of Chalchiuhtlicue", the deity of the seas. The Maya call it Naha. The big water. Believing that the sea and sky merged beyond the horizon, they called the seas Ilhuicaatl, meaning "sky water. The Aztecs were landlocked, the Mayans on the sea. I go with The Gulf of Naha. I have tried to annunciate the Nahuatl version and Naha is much easier. Fuck Trump.

Mile High Club 2011

Ever since the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk man has been attempting an endless assortment of tricks and risks in flight. Most aviators and passengers are content to get from points A to B. Up and down without ragheads hijacking the plane for an unscheduled landing in a prominent building or getting arrested for drinking too much duty-free liquor.

Of course a safe flight doesn’t exclude a little fun such as joining the ‘Mile-High Club’ or MHC. This society is open to those passengers who have experienced sex on an airplane. I surveyed twenty male friends. Five professed to be members. Three of those were lying for sure. One of the remaining members said his girlfriend satisfied him manually under a blanket, which along with fellatio isn't consider sex according to the President Clinton Rules of Engagement.

The act of sex on a plane is considered contrary to British Law, but whipping is regarded as okay. Those Brits are strange birds. Singapore Air banned sex in the Airbus A380 for first-class passengers. Coitus in the beds of the deluxe cabins is off the menu. No surprise, since Singapore is the least sexy city in Asia. Laws and regulations are damned by those libertines seeking a thrill.

My friend Dean explained that his moment of glory came in university.

“I was young and agile, which are required skills for accomplishing this deed in a tiny bathroom. It was sort of like having sex in the back of a VW Bug, but those diaper changing tables are much stronger than they look. At the moment of truth I flushed the toilet which caused atmospheric havoc and gave my companion a thrill.”

Several years ago I myself joined the club as an honorary member, having abused myself during a trans-Pacific flight. I know it’s not the same thing, but it’s not like the airlines have a go-go bar in the cargo hold, which isn’t such a bad idea, unless you’re traveling on an Islamic airline. Strippers in chadors are as much as turn-on as a fat lapdancer.

Everything has its place.

Guilty Single Male On the Planet 2017

This photo of Al Franken mock-groping Leeann Tweeden on a C-4 to Iraq has convicted the Minnesota senator of sexual harassment. A New Yor Tims opinion writer demanded his resignation. Do I think his behavior was off the mark?

100% yes, but I have to reflect on my past.

Nov 18, 2017

Khang Noi, small elephant, and I had been friend for over ten years in Pattaya.

I remembered her being thin.

Noi had a good appetite.

Like most Thais.

And recently I had to ask myself if I had sexual harassed her.

She was still working Soi 6.

I asked her Paypal account.

She was still a working girl.

"Is it busy?"

"Yeah, แน่น."

You mean naaen? No. Not have farang." She ran down the litany of ills of the times.

Basically the rich have money and we are all slaves.

"I have a question."

"Farang have many questions. Not like answers."

"Most men don't, but did I ever guean jai khun."

"You?"

"Yes."

"What Thai people like most?"

It was an easy answer.

"Sanuk."

"And the love of a elephant."

"Not tonight."

Not gra san."

Lust.

"I love you as a friend."

"Phom lak khun samur."

Forever.

I thanked Noi.

I know nothing purer than the clean waters of Samui in 1990.

The purity of life and women are life.

Albeit we are the seed.

ps Elephants are not monogamous, but given the change Noi would be.

But Al Franken is still a shit.

But better him than 45.

Pattaya GO-GO Deadline 2/18/2010

Diamonds sales were non-existent on Manhattan's West 47th Street during the run-up to Valentine's Day 2010. At least for the masses. The wealthy were splurging on big ticket items. 6-figure purchases of watches, diamonds, and jewelry. The good items were still rolling for Wall Street. None of these sales trickled down into my pocket and I was entertaining a tempting offer from Sam Royalle to run his go-go bar in Pattaya. Working papers and $2000/month.

"I'll be your first customer," said, Russ, my favorite cousin at Winter, where we tucking into Dover Sole and a very expensive bottle of French wine. He had regained his position in high finance. Money was once more no object. Only something to be moved here and there. How never made sense to me, which was why he earned the big money.

"Be only happy to serve you." Nightclubs, diamonds, and road trips were my forte. "It's only the first of many and one day we'll open one here."

"You open a Thai go-go bar in Manhattan and there'll be traffic jams in New Jersey of lonely guys trying to get there."

"All wanting to hear that famous cry "hey sexy man'."

"And no to mention 'love you love time'."

"Ah, the classics."

We clinked glasses. My cousin lived the Pattaya experience through me. He was faithful to his wife and so was I. Him fifteen years. Me three. It seemed like only yesterday I saw Mem and she would always be young. Especially since the mother of my son, Fenway, was three decades younger than me.

"Have you told Richie Boy about this move?"

"Not at all." I still held out hope for making a big score plus working night at a bar was a deadly proposition for a fifty-seven year-old man. I liked to drink and Mem was more than a little 'hueng' or jealous.

"Try telling your wife that you're not fooling around with go-go girls."

"I do and it's the truth." Once I had two two gin-tonics, I was faithful to my drink.

'I can be strong too." About the women it was easy. Drink was my one unforgiving vice. "Another reason is that the police have announced a crackdown on Pattaya Go-Go Bars to arrest foreigners backing sex bars.

The news came from the Pattaya Times 2010.

Interpol was reportedly opening an office in Pattaya to nab farang fugitives. I had met several of their officers at the Buffalo Bar on 3rd Road. They always joked that they were on duty.

The Pattaya Times advised bar owners to clean up their act, although Sam Royalle said this was the same story every time the Thais change the head of police. More tea money for the Police Benevolent Society. I told none of this to my cousin and I certainly wasn't mentioning to Richie Boy, at least not until after the February 18 deadline.

It's only five days away.

Will Plan B survive to save me from plan A?

"It's not the despair I mind so much as the hope." Woody Allen.

Koh Samui Paradise 1991

From 2008

My annual visits to Koh Samui throughout the 1990s consisted of a train ride down from Bangkok to Surathani. There was no plane. A ferry ride over to the island. Booking a beach bungalow at Coral Cove and renting a Honda MTX 125cc motorbike to get round the island. Chaweng Beach was the prettiest stretch of sand in the Gulf of Siam. There were no hotels and the fanciest bungalows were located at the Jungle. The only nightclub was the reggae bar, but there were plenty of places for drinks.

One night I met two French people at a fish restaurant. We went to Chaweng Beach for drinks. They had some speed pills. We did two each. The effect was almost immediate. To counteract the jitters I downed a Valium. The combination of speed, downers, and Mekong defied my usual excellent sense of personal chemistry.

I recall going to the bar and ordering drinks for everyone.

After that I vaguely remember someone telling me I couldn't drive.

Then lights out.

Well past midnight I woke up on a sagging table in the alley behind the bar. It was raining. I was dry. My bike was in the sand. My keys were in my pocket. So was my wallet. The only thing missing was an 18K ring, which might have been given to a girl. Something like that.

I was lucky.

I could have gotten on the bike and driven back to the Coral Cove.

I don't think I would have made it.

That was my one drug experience on Koh Samui.

It was more than enough.

Toujours Siam

From 2011

Thirty-five years ago I sold a 5-FSI1 Round Brilliant Diamond to a woman from Florida. She was purchasing the ring for her mother. When asked to ship the present to Miami Beach via Fedex, my boss refused to accommodate the woman's request, fearing the diamond might get lost in transit. The customer was driven to tears by his harsh manner and his son, Richie Boy, berated his 62 year-old father for his intransigence. The sale was on the line. My commish was $4000. Manny finally relented after several hours, cursing us out and saying once the woman left the exchange, "You guys are soft as shit. She was only crying to get her way. Women are good that way."

Manny's harsh assessment was the direct descendant of Cato's famous quote, "When a woman weeps, she is setting traps with her tears."

I had seen enough women cry to know both Manny and Cato were right, but decided to celebrate the sale with a trip around the world. I had read an advertisement in the Sunday NY Times from PanExpress Travel.

$1350 for flights from JFK to LA to Honolulu to Biak to Bali then travel by train to Jakarta and fly to Sumatra across the Malacca Straits to Malaysia to catch a train to Thailand and then up into Nepal for a trek in the Himalayas before straight-lining through Paris and London to New York.

"How long you going for?" Richie Boy asked a week prior to my departure.

"Five to six months." I was planning on writing a book on pornography in LA. It was based on my cousin Sherri's life in film. She had starred in over 2000 XXX movies. Every male in America knew her name.

"There's no way your job going to be here when you get back." Richie Boy and I went back to my years as a doorman at a punk disco on West 62nd Street. Our friendship of twenty years meant nothing on 47th Street. He had a business to run.

"I wouldn't expect it to be." The title of my novel was NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. It was bound for the NY Times bestseller list. I'd never have to work as a wage slave again.

I sublet my apartment to a Swedish male nurse. Scandinavians were very dependable and my profit on the sublet was $300/month. I bought a Rough Guide book for South East Asia on the way to JFK. The Lonely Planet travel books said that a backpacker could live on $10/day. My budget was $40/day. The money from my subleasee was my beer budget. The guidebooks said beer was cheap out East.

And they weren't wrong.

I bought big bottles of beer for everyone on the route. A $5 a day backpacker in Bali said I was living like a pasha, an Ottoman noble. I added the letter sea and became Pascha. Nothing like a new name on a voyage. I celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Bali with a marching Legong band. Dawn on the rim of Mt. Bromo. Smoking pot on the shores of Sumatra's Lake Toba. Drinking whiskey with Chinese whores in Malaysia. The entire trip had been an eye-opener and I boarded a train north for Thailand opposite Penang in Georgetown. A German woman was my company. We were just friends headed for the fabled beaches of Koh Samui.

Palm trees, white sands, and gin-clear water.

Ilsa and I got off the train in Surathani around midnight. The last ferry had left the harbor thirty minutes earlier. Most of the backpackers were sleeping on the pier. Ilsa and I taxied off to a hotel. We planned on catching the next cargo ferry tomorrow.

$20/night for an aircon room with TV.

A host of beautiful bargirls greeted my entrance to the lobby with cries of 'hey, handsome'. They sounded like they really meant it and I abandoned Ilsa who wanted to catch the dawn ferry to Koh Samui.

"I'm just going to have a beer." I was 38. My wallet was filled with baht. Three of the girls looked like Suzie Wong. I went upstairs with one of them. Her name was Porn. We stayed together five days. She actually cried when I finally headed over to Koh Samui .

Thailand really was a paradise and I wish I was there now.

With my wife, Mem, and our son, Fenway and the rest of our family and mine, because I have two wives. Nu and Angie and my grandson, Sunsun. I will asked Mem if I was handsome.

"Sure, you handsome, like your son." She loves her kids and me some of the time. Same as Nu. Mostly when I'm here, even if it's for a short time, because Richie Boy and Manny are waiting in New York. For all their talk I always have my job and Thailand is always paradise.

The Thai word for Eden is sa-wan. Of course na-lok is the word for hell. And I've been in hell here too, but not today.

Singapore NO NO 2013

Back in the 1950s more adventurous western travelers to Singapore frequented Bugis Street to view the Pearl of the Orient's notorious cavalcade of beautiful transvestites. The laissez-faire atmosphere of the sex entrepot was an affront to the city-state's puritanical President and by the late 1980s Bugis Street had been sanitized of perversion and by the 1990s Singapore was considered the least sexy city is Asia.

Tai-pei came in a close second.

In 2004 I missed a connecting flight in Tokyo. The passengers from my 747 were transported to a Narita hotel. We were given drink and dinner chits. I dined with two attractive Singapore business women coming back from New York. We drank several beers in the bar and I asked the about their lives at home.

"We work and ship. That's what Singapore girls do?" Suzee had lines growing in the corners of her eyes. She was pushing 35.

"What about boyfriends?"

"No boyfriends." Suzee shook her head in disgust. "We work too hard and Singapore men work too hard to have time for us."

"Do you go to clubs or bars?"

"No, we shop, we eat, we sleep and in the morning we go back to work." Suzee's friend was in her late-20s. Something about her thin lips said that she had never been kissed by a man or woman.

"And what about when you were in New York?"

The two laughed together and Suzee fingered the rim of her beer glass. "We worked, shopped, and ate, but not too much, because we don't want to be fat like Americans. Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about." My countrymen were verging toward a majority in obesity, but even the fat people were having sex. "What about another beer?"

"Sorry, no, we have to go work a little before we sleep."

They excused themselves, giving me their extra drink chits. I went to bed with a good buzz and in the morning caught an early bus to Narita to catch my flight to Bangkok.

Singapore gained further attention for their inherent prudishness when Singapore Airlines announced that sex would not be tolerated in the luxury suites of the new Airbus A300.

"Passengers will be asked to refrain from sex," an official explained to a press member examining the double beds in the giant jet's 12 luxury suites. "All we ask of customers, wherever they are on our aircraft, is to observe standards that don't cause offence to other customers and crew. Nothing different applies for our Singapore Airlines Suites customers."

This proclamation must have disappointed sexual adventurers seeking the thrill so eloquently described in Erica Jong's novel FEAR OF FLYING.

"So they'll sell you a double bed, and give you privacy and endless champagne and then say you can't do what comes naturally?" Tony Elwood said while flying with his wife with aboard the inaugural flight from London to Singapore. Julie Elwood added, told The Times of London. "They seem to have done everything they can to make it romantic, short of bringing around oysters. They shouldn't really complain, should they?"

People have been having sex in airplanes without the luxury suites.

Mostly in the bathrooms, which are very cramped quarters like the backseat of a VW, only you can't stand in a Bug.

The ban is useless, because people will do what they want and the beds in Airbus A300 have already been baptized by Airbus employees.

They are French and Paris is tres sexy.

If Singapore Airlines is serious about the sex ban, then they will have to hire sky marshals to enforce their edict.

Impossible?

Not for a city-state that requires everyone to wash their hands after going to the bathroom and where the police have dogs to sniff out violators.

The canines could easily be trained to sniff out something else too.

The crime of high-altitude sex.

Bad people.

Woof-woof.

Other Singapore laws

No chewing gum

No spitting

No jay-walking

No gay sex

No bungee jumping

So obviously no chewing gum to work up a spit to lubricate your gay partner's nether gate before engaging in sex whilst bungee jumping.

Very bad people, but they were fun and sexy too.

Maybe one day the past will catch up to the future.

Paradise Now 1990

In 1990 I got on the Bangkok train and caught a midnight cargo barge from Surathani to Koh Samui. The rising moon reflected a shining path to the warm horizon and dolphins sang a swimming song in our wake. At dawn the ferry docked on the palm-covered island. I rented a motorcycle and rode through coastal coconut plantations to a coral beach south of Chaweng. My simple bungalow was sheltered by the shade trees. There was no electricity during the day and a slight sea breeze wafted across the shore at sunset. The beer was cold. Food was a delight. We swam in the sea by moonlight and washed off the salt with buckets of monsoon rain. Sleep was to the music of gentle waves caressing the sand.

Photo of the W resort on Koh Samui.

Thirty-five years ago there was no need for a fucking swimming pool. The sea was as cleasr as gin, but things change, except in our memories.

Loneliness On The Day Of Love

The snow fell with silence
The clots of flakes feathered the sidewalks
Snow shovels scrapped on the concrete
I threw out no salt___

Drifts collected by the bottom of brownstones
No one came to shovel away the floes
That was an old man's job
Mine___

Snow loves the cold
I have good gear against winter
I wish I had a warm body waiting for me
Sadly my wife awaits around the world__

Thailand
Sriracha
Hot
No snow. but the shops in Sri Racha sell snow beer
The bottles covered with frost
Even at dawn___

It's Valentine Day 2021.
I stayed home without a love in sight.
A lone man content to hold hands with a glass of wine, but
I will be complete Planes will fly again
Soon I will be with my families
One day even stranded sailors will find a ship home
It is our calling___

The Unforgiving 2011

The pizza boy and babysitter are icons of pornography with good reason. A well-hung teenage boy with a pizza fits most American women's fantasy of a cheap fuck, while a sexual encounter with the neighbor's young daughter is the dream of most suburban men.

I had a thing for my babysitter. Addy Manzi was the prettiest girl in my hometown. She let my older brother and me stay up late. Kissing her was the opening act for a wet dream. I never got to bat in my teenage years. My Italian-American neighbor was 15 and I was 12.

I never stood a chance.

Over the years I driven home friends' babysitters. They arrived home intact and without having to listen to my old hippie music. The older I got the more these girls seemed to be children and I'm was happy to bask in the beam of the youth from the passenger seat.

Some men are not so circumspect and in July of 2011 an Oregon Democrat, David Wu, admitted to having 'consensual' sex with his eighteen year-old babysitter. The girl was a daughter of a friend/donor. His version of 'consensual' ran contrary to the message the girl left at his congressional office.

In my mind no always means no, unless it's a sadomasochistic relationship in which a safety word is substituted for no.

Faced with the growing outrage the congressman announced his resignation, although he waited for after the contentious budget vote to fulfill his promise.

What he did was wrong.

The man is a mess.

He was into oxycodin.

The people of Oregon will be better served by a new representative, however reading the comments from the National Review's online site once more revealed the severe schism between Americans.

The comments started off fairly innocuous. Attacks on democraps and calls for his immediate resignation, but it didn't take long for the vitriolic rancor to summon up deep-rooted prejudices against Asians.

"The Chinese don't have the same values as Christians."

Thank the stars for that.

I agree with them about this congressman being a scumbag, but he was Korean, then again every Asians looked slant-eyed to Americans. Somehow all of Asia is related to the dirty Japs. He resigned within the month.

Forget never.

Forgive never.

Not in this nation, despite of George Bush's wish to create a kinder gentler nation.

Now we know what he meant, but what can be expected from a family who laundered gold for the Nazis?

Adolf Hitler was very good to his dog.

His name was Blondi.

Arf Arf.

Photo of Dino's Pizza in Boston's Combat Zone

Collection #0244.001, City of Boston Archives,

$55 Million For Rubbers In Gaza

The other day the Orange Messiah signed an executive order to cut all finances to US AID, the principal U.S. agency to offering assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms according to the website.

"I want to shut it down."

The only exceptions were Zion and Kemet aka Egypt. Billions and billions. Palestine no longer exists for Trump, who has asked surrounding countries to absorb the 1.8 million from Gaza.

"I want to end Palestine."

Prior to October 7, 2023 the population of the Gaza Strip was 2.4 million. The MAGA leader's math means that Zion has killed over 600,000 people in its war against Hamas, the militant force of the Strip.

Zionist supporters have told me, "They're cockroaches. We have to exterminate them."

Palestine and the Arab nations were the only safe havens for Jews during the reign of the Thousand Year Reich.

"Not a single Arab worked the death camps of Buchenwald and Treblinka. It was Germans and yet you buy BMWs and Benzs."

"They build good cars." I heard that answer from many of them.

"Shame. I'm Irish. We will never forgive the British for their stealing Eire for eight-hundred years." Of course the Irish watch British TV and buy British. Everyone practices hypocrisy at their own pace.

Back to US Aid.

A fellow American complained to me that US AID provided $50 million in condoms to the Palestinians after hearing President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt announced that Trump had prevented a “preposterous waste of taxpayer money.” Trump’s team, she said, used the president’s pause on foreign aid to thwart a plan in which “there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.”

None of this was true.

The Guardian on Tuesday printed that the only Middle East contraceptives provided or funded by USAID during that three-year period went to the country of Jordan in fiscal 2023. This was “a small order of injectables and progestin-only contraceptive pills” totaling about $46,000.

As always whoever says it first is the truth for MAGA devotees.

An Iraqi Christian friend complained about the condoms' expenditure.

I defended US AID by saying, "In 1837 the British invaded Afghanistan to replace Emir Dost Mohammad Khan with the former King Shah Shujah as a more pro-Raj king and counterbalance the Russians in the Great Game. The Afghans weren't happy with this arrangement, but business was good at first, but the greed of the British led to higher prices in the Kabul market. Te situation worsened when in 1841 the East India Company's first political officer William Hay Macnaghten cut subsidies to the Ghazi tribe controlling the Khyber Pass and they joined the Jihad. How many of the 8000 East India troops escaped from Kabul?"

My Iraqi friend had no idea.

"Use one hand."

"Five?"

"One."

A surgeon, William Brydon.

"People around the world don't hate Americans. They hate America for the Eternal War. US AID helps millions of people all across the globe. I have traveled and seen the benefits and # 1 is that people don't hate Americans, most of whom have only visited one foreign country. New York. So fuck Donald Trump. Fuck MAGA. The 2024 election was stolen. I don't have to explain." I cut off any further discussion by offering garlic onion potato chips. Lay's, because potato chips are the modern manna for Americans. Crunchy, salty, and only $5 a bag. $7 billion a year. Now that's waste, but fat bald American males, a separate gender of male, love potato chips as much as they loved Donald Trump. Their fat bald Messiah.

Plastic Straws Out Of Government

According to the Guardian The Madman on the Potomac has vowed to reverse Joe Biden’s plan to phase out plastic straws across the US government, complaining that paper alternatives don’t work and that a move is needed to go “BACK TO PLASTIC! Enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth!!!”

A well-known Diet Coke addict their President had a new red button installed in the Oval Office to inform his staffers than the Commandeer-In-Chief needs his can of Diet Coke. No plastic bottles. Woe to the lowly apprentice who fails to please the Orange Messiah.

Personally I don't drink Diet Coke or any sodas, except for Seagrams Ginger Ale from a can and also without a straw. My only advice to Trump. Stop tonguing the straws.

ps New Anti-Trump strategy - mail used straws to the White House - 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500

Return address any known MAGA citizens

It's the small things that add up.

read the article here.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/08/trump-plastic-straws

Seeing Past the Hudson - Poetry 1978

Soft, the West Wind
Blowing visions
Of a continent
From beyond the Hudson River
Jersey to the Delaware Water Gap
The Midwest corn fields
360 flat horizens
The Mississippi
Corn giving way to cattle
The Missouri
High prarie rising from the Midwest
Sighting of the Rockies
Desert
Nevada
More desert
The Sierras
Oh California
Oh, the Pacific.
Stretching west to Asia.
I see it all
All America
From sea to shining sea
Standing on a Hudson River pier
The evening tide slipping to the sea
Holding you in my arms
Your boyish body
Your woman's mind
Tender
Our embrace
I crave us naked
I don't want California
All I want is you.

Oliver Stone Film Stop in Chiang Mai - 2007

My hillbilly girlfriend and I moved to the East Village in 1978. The twenty-two year-old blonde actress came from West Virginia and I hailed from New England. Alice was in the theater like Bill, our upstairs neighbor. I wrote poetry. One day Bill announced that he had been cast in a western called HEAVEN'S GATE.

"A small role."

"Better than no role."

I was happy for Bill and wished him luck.

The opening day I went uptown to see the film at the Paris Cinema of Wests 58th Street. First showing. Michael Cimino's sprawling tale of the West was based on the Johnson County War sprawled across the silver screen. I tried to spot Bill. I didn't see his face once and he later told me, "My scenes ended up on the floor, but I have another gig."

"As what?"

"As a biker."

"A biker?" I loved motorcycles, even though I had only driven a Vespa once.

"Yeah, down in Georgia."

"EASY RIDER country."

Billy and Captain America from Dennis Hopper's road movie ended up badly in Dixie.

"Ill be fine, plus EAST RIDER was just a movie."

Bill starred as Vince in THE LOVELESS.

I like it a lot.

Alice and I broke up in 1979.

In 1983 she was cast as a hapless victim opposite David Bowie's vampire in THE HUNGER. Bill was also in the movie. She died in the first scene. I didn't see Bill's face in that movie either.

I saw the film in Paris, where I worked as a doorman at a nightclub.

New York wasn't my city that decade.

A year later Bill played an evil biker in STREETS OF FIRE.

I had a Vespa 150 in Paris.

STREETS OF FIRE remains my older brother's favorite film and Frunk is a lawyer.

Bill had a feel for outlaw roles.

Over the next few years he played an LA counterfeiter, a Viet-Nam War sergeant, a military investigator in Sai-Gon, the Messiah, a Concetration Camp boxer, and a Viet-Nam War cripple.

"You died three times. How did that feel?" I asked him during a passage through Paris.

"Not so bad, plus I rose from the dead in the Jesus one."

"Only to be crucified again."

"Never felt a thing."

In the 90s I quit the nightlife and worked selling diamonds on Manhattan's West 47th Street.

The Shabbas Goy, but I was a sheygutz to the Hassidim.

A shifty gentile.

Bill and I didn't see each other too much.

He had a wife, a kid, a career on screen and the stage.

Bill had acted in twenty-one movies in that decade. VICTORY a tale from Joseph Conrad had been shot in Java. Each year I spent six months in the Orient writing novels. I had hoped to run into Bill out there, but our paths didn't cross, until we met in Maine.

My family came from outside Portland. Bill had a camp on a lake. We went fishing at night and I realized we had been friends a long time.

In 2000 Bill was nominated for an Oscar a second time. He had nailed the role of an legendary actor Max Schrek, a vampire, in SHADOW OF A VAMPIRE. The stench of the grave wafted through the cinema whenever he was on the screen, but he finished out of the running at the Academy Awards ceremony.

I watched the movie in Thailand. My girlfriend Porn had won Worst Girlfriend of the Year in Pattaya and I thought Bill and her looked the same, even if he had been bald in the movie.

Later that year I escaped her vampire hold, but only just.

After 9/11 I left the USA. Thailand became my home. I had a baby with Nu. We lived along the Gulf of Siam and I ran a fake F1 merchandise website, which was # 1 in Google and this was not a good thing. Too many corporations looking for me. Marlboro sued me for $250,000. I settled for a final phone, saying, "Come find me."

Bill came out there for a film festival with his new wife. Gaida was sweet. Bill knew how to make a scary face.

After all he had been a vampire.

I was scary other ways.

Bill never asked how.

Bill made even more films in the 00s. He was called 'the actors' actor'. I didn't see much of his work. Thailand had its own cinema; ghosts, soap operas, and slapstick comedies.

They liked things simple like the laughter scene in SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS.

The Thai cyper-Police arrested me in 2008.

For the crime of copyright infringement.

Ferrari had hoped for me to do time in the monkey house.

The Thai court fined me $100.

In their eyes I was a good farang.

Bill was no criminal.

He spoke with directors, cameramen, soundpeople, and everyone else in that industry and they loved him for being Bill.

I spoke with everyone. The good the bad and the in-between.

My first wife left me. I found someone else. We had a baby too.

I had two families now.

That April I flew back to the States.

Bill invited me to a premiere at Lincoln Center.

I slept through the entire film.

It was a good film for me.

I liked sleep almost as much as motorcycles.

Work got scarce after the Crash.

Bill was in a bunch of films.

Some of them I liked.

I loved THE HUNTER and said, "It's the first time I've ever seen you in a film."

"Really?"

"Yes."

At least he didn't ask how, but we are old friends.

Never on the screen.

Never on the stage.

Just in real life.

Bill's a grandfather now.

Seems like only twenty years ago that his son was a young boy in Maine.

And my family is ever bigger. My first wife reurned adn our family with my second wife consists of five children and two grandchildren. I left no one, becauase at the end of the day or night only family and friends matters.

It's the way of the world, both here and everywhere.

One more small thing.

Bill looks good in a cowboy hat.

But so does everyone else.

Especially when you have friends in the movies.