Hi-Tech Two Buttons

America's basic introduction to computer came via sci-fi movies and TV shows. The man-made brains had blinking lights and whistles. Worse they disobeyed Isaac Assimov's primary commandments of robotics.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

HAL is Stanley Kubrick's 2001 was a killer and Toyota's racing accelerator is another example of machine hate man. I've discarded many modern technological devices. No TV. No stereo. No vacuum cleaner. In fact my apartment is devoid of almost any machine sheltering the possibility of a malevolent intelligence, except for my Mac Ibook G4. It's white. It has a pleasing shape. If it had a hole I might even have an affair with it. It doesn't even mind my cheating on it with porn, which is almost worrying considering the hours that I've malingered on sordid websites.

Oh the inhumanity.

The machine is smarter than man.

But I have a plan to beat them, because the first rule of computers is that all mistakes happen someplace between the fingers and the keyboards, so my strategy is to reduce the keys. Less keys. Less mistakes. Less danger from the Judgment day of the Exterminator.

Awaiting Armaggedeon

Watching the natural disasters on CNN, Fox, and BBC a TV viewer could surmise that the West is on the brink of disaster. My friend the ex-model from Paris has converted from agnostism to christian fundamentalism and has been predicting 12-21-12 as the End of days. I beg to differ with her belief, for I was born with the placenta wrapped around my face. Celtic beliefs bestow psychic powers on those infants 'wearing of the veil'. I have dreamed the winners to three races at Aqueduct. They came in winners. Ghosts have appeared to me three times and respected my wishes to leave a drunk alone. My deceased mother regularly visits my dreams, but she has never mentioned the Days of Days.

Could it be because I'm living in Pattaya?

Or that there is no apocalypse coming?

No one in Pattaya seems to care.

Not the Thais.

Not the lager louts.

And certainly not the middle-aged men fulfilling their sexual fantasies, but 17% of Americans believe that Christ is coming in their lifetime. I hope he arrives on 8/22 and takes them to heaven or anywhere else so that the inhabitants of the Last Babylon can proceed with our lives of sin in peace.

Pattaya offers the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust) plus a few perversions for the those libertines stricken by ennui.

Is Pattaya Sodom?

Or East Gomorrah?

Will fire and brimstone rain from the skies on 12-21-12?

My Magic 8 Ball (Just a temporary aid to divine the future when my seering powers have been short-circuited from too many kamikazes) says, "Not likely."

I asked if Pattaya would be spared Armageddon.

"Seems likely."

In the 1830s a New England preacher foretold the end of the world at a specific date. The only course of salvation was for those convinced of the Day of Judgment to jump from the highest building they could find at noon. Hundreds leaped from church steeples and barns, resulting in scores of broken legs and hundreds of sprained ankles. One person died and that was the preacher, so for him the prediction was true.

Pattaya may be world renown for sin, but we are a peaceful community, if you discount the shooting, robberies, and suicides. No one really fights unless it's over girlfriends, boyfriends, or spilled drinks. Religion and nationality never matter except when you're really drunk.

Doomsday 12/21/12

Bring it one.

We'll be in Heaven Above.

Counting our blessing.

If you want to contact the President of Iran, go to his webblog.

He has a poll asking if Israel and the USA will trigger a new world war.

Yes 37%

No 63%

Considering the USA is fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd say the answer is more like 100% and it might be time to head to Pattaya to wait out the End of Days. After all it is the Last Babylon.

Elephants on Acid

What happens if you give an elephant LSD?

On Friday August 3, 1962, a group of Oklahoma City researchers decided to find out the whys and hows.

Warren Thomas, Director of the City Zoo, fired a cartridge-syringe containing 297 milligrams of LSD into Tusko the Elephant's rump. With Thomas were two scientific colleagues from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce.

297 milligrams is a lot of LSD — about 3000 times the level of a typical human dose. In fact, it remains the largest dose of LSD ever given to a living creature. The researchers figured that, if they were going to give an elephant LSD, they better not give him too little.

Thomas, West, and Pierce later explained that the experiment was designed to find out if LSD would induce musth in an elephant — musth being a kind of temporary madness male elephants sometimes experience during which they become highly aggressive and secrete a sticky fluid from their temporal glands. But one suspects a small element of ghoulish curiosity might also have been involved.

Whatever the reason for the experiment, it almost immediately went awry. Tusko reacted to the shot as if a bee had stung him. He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD."

In the years that followed controversy lingered over whether it was the LSD that killed Tusko, or the drugs used to revive him. So twenty years later, Ronald Siegel of UCLA decided to settle the debate by giving two elephants a dose similar to what Tusko received. Reportedly he had to sign an agreement promising to replace the animals in the event of their deaths.

Instead of injecting the elephants with LSD, Siegel mixed the drug into their water, and when it was administered in this way, the elephants not only survived but didn't seem too upset at all. They acted sluggish, rocked back and forth, and made some strange vocalizations such as chirping and squeaking, but within a few hours they were back to normal. However, Siegel noted that the dosage Tusko received may have exceeded some threshold of toxicity, so he couldn't rule out that LSD was the cause of his death. The controversy continues.

Karl Rove's Infallibility

History is written by the victors and for the greater part of the 21st Century the GOP claimed the 2003 invasion of Iraq to be a pivotal act to establishing modern rule in the Mideast, however that utopian vision seems to be metamorphorsizing into a mirage, for even the eminence gris of the last presidency has been humbled by the Pentagon's not finding 'weapons of mass destruction'.

In his new memoir, "Courage and Consequence,"Karl Rove still backs his boss' preemptive strike, while ruing the damage caused by their non-existence.

As my boss Manny says so often, "I believe you but my friends think you're lying."

And at his station in life perjury is a crime.

"Book 'em, Danno."

Peter Beard in Paradise

Peter Beard defies the ages. Not only has the photographer survived an attack by an elephant, but even the ravages of his own excess. Bravo for life in St. Tropez.

Here's an elephant attack joke:

This tourist returns from Africa and calls his doctor.

"I was raped by an elephant."

"Raped by an elephant?" The doctor is alarmed having once seen an aroused bull elephant at the circus. "I want you to come in right away."

An hour later the man walks into the clinic. Each step misery. Once inside his office the doctor tells the patient to pull down his pants and is astounded by the size of the man's distended anus.

"I know elephants have big penises, but this is huge."

"Well," The tourist lowers his head. "The elephant first fingered me."

photo by randy koral 2010

Arret de Fumer - France

France is well-known berets, nasty waiters, and cigarette smoking. While rude service remains a footnote to many holidays, few frogs sport berets unless they're in the country far from the prying eyes of tourists and cigarette smoking is under a new attack from the government, who has launched a very suggestive anti-smoking campaign linking tobacco with sexual abuse.

"Smoking makes you a slave to tobacco."

Feminists have railed against the ads for their shocking images of sexual exploitation, but teens are chimneying in France as never before.

Of course the tobacco companies are silent on the subject since their researchers know that there is not such things as bad press.

3-Day Hiatus

Sometimes the best thing in life is to do nothing. I wish I had done nothing for the past three days, except on Sunday I bussed north of Fungwah to Boston. My father's 89th birthday. My ass ain't made for long travel anymore, but it was good seeing the old man. 4 hours up, 4 hours down.

Monday right to work. Manny's birthday. After we closed the exchange straight to a restaurant for Italian food and wine. Drinks for all my friends. I ended up at Frank's Bar on Fulton barking about how Kobe Bryant wasn't shit.

Tuesday morning woke with a hang-over.

I spend the rest of the day wishing for 6 to roll around faster. I was supposed to attend a Hassidic wedding in Great Neck. Sorry, but couldn't make it. Back to my apartment in Fort Greene and sleep. I almost feel my age now instead of a 100 like yesterday. Thanks to doing nothing.

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Oscar Wilde