September 2007 Archives

This week is the final week for both my regular and weekend classes; the last final for my last class is tomorrow and I just threw a pretty good one together.

I will make a rather blanket statement here and say that Thai students are pretty bad cheaters. Not only is cheating rampant, it's so rampant that I suspect it must be ignored or even allowed by some of their other teachers*, hence the students are quite bad at it.

I was a pretty good cheater when I went to school(which is not to say I cheated a lot, just that I never got caught - except once when my dad busted me with a "borrowed copy" of a Teacher's Book for pre-calc in high school), so I know what I'm talking about. And (hold on, let me get on my high horse here) since I'm here to give these kids a well-rounded education, I basically throw down the gauntlet by telling them: I don't care if you cheat. Cheat all you want. But don't get caught. It will end badly for you.

To date, I've caught two.

They've never been seen or heard from again (I sent them to the cornfield, yo).

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*Not only do I suspect it; a teacher was apparently found to have helped a large number of students cheat last term... and wasn't fired.

They appear with no warning

When they sense the rain coming (and they are never wrong about it), ants can move an entire colony inside the house overnight, as happened here. I sat down to type out some morning emails, and a thousand little dots erupted from under the keyboard, spreading out in all directions. I flipped it over to find this - it was pretty much one of the creepiest things to wake up to, ever. Previous infestations have sprung up in laundry pilers on the floor and in my inkjet printer - I was printing out sheets with little black ants embedded in the paper for weeks after that (it was actually a cute stationery effect, although no one actually asked me where I bought the paper).

Somebody at work gave Nam a Mozart for Babies type CD (perhaps this freely downloadable one) - and I cannot state this lovingly enough - but it's driving me fucking insane. It's basically Mozart on Valium, and I didn't exactly start out a Mozart fan anyways. Nam plays it on the Pioneer system I have next to the bed every night, and it's so babyishly cute I want to pour baby powder in my eyes and watch Happy Tree Friends reruns all night.

On the flip side, though, maybe the baby will be a genius, so I guess it's worth a try.

Still, maybe I can convince her to switch to the String Quartet's Tribute to Led Zeppelin tomorrow night.

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Of course, the best fetus song of all time is Yellow Ledbetter.

And I'm immensely happy that we'll soon be able to experiment on the efficacy of the infamous Takemoto Piano ad (the second video in that post).

Oh, Tilapia, how versatile thy be!

You are on my plate nearly every week, and my favorite New Years repast.

In fact, you are farmed in such numbers, so misused for pest/plant control, and just so damn tough that you threaten every natural environment you visit.

Some even call you the farmed fish of biblical fame.

However.

Now they can make your skin into leather.

... And can hence be used for bust control.

THE END

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Link to the online retailer of tilapia skin products mentioned in the latter Reuters article linked above: angie&penny

I finally found the video most of the graphics used above were pulled from (the others are mine or from Google Images):

woot.

I thought I'd have enough of LOLcats approximately three seconds before seeing the 3,764th one in an email from my 13 year old cousin, but apparently not. This variation was pretty funny: retelling the greatest story ever told, LOLcat style

I swear these are the ugliest, trippiest looking things you'll ever see... Here's my previous post on them, with facts aplenty.

From one of my student's speeches this year: "I much prefer the wide open rice fields and simple homes of my country village to the confusion and chaos of Bangkok, where the skyline is broken up by ugly skycrappers."

...Another proud graduate of the School of Justin.

A clothes hanger company. No web presence AFAIK.

Do you know Hanuman? He is so kick-ass that they named one of the most devastating Muay Thai moves after him - behold the hanuman thayarn! (actually, that's a poor example because he missed and didn't keep his guard up - but it's the best photo I could find)

Check it out: Wizardry

The first couple times it was, indeed, indistinguishable from magic. I felt like my monitor was looking at me.

(thx s)

...and I can't take them back, so I might as well make them public:

"If you make my wife cry again, I'll make you cry." * **

So this is what it feels like to be Jack Bauer...

________________________
* This offer expires never.
** Get yours while supplies last!

I saw a two-ton water buffalo almost get hit by a speeding two-ton pickup this afternoon. I couldn't help but wonder who would have walked away from an accident like that. Maybe Luke Cage. Of course, if Luke Cage drove in Thailand, he'd be getting out of the car every five minutes to smash the shit out of people who cut him off, suddenly decided to pull a U-turn in the middle of the street, or some other unthinkably dangerous shit. Homeboy would be poppin' off like firecrackers, yo.

Note: It seems that John Singleton is making a Power Man movie called "Luke Cage". (The gem on that page: "This plot synopsis is empty.")

Just found out today that Madeleine L'Engle passed. A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books growing up. I haven't read it in twenty years, but I still remember that awesome illustration of ants walking on a string in my edition.

RIP

Nam remarked on how long it's been since we've had proper tacos, and it reminded me of this clip:

This post is basically an errata for the due date I wrote in the comments a couple of posts back. The actual due date is May 11 (not May 15).

I have been mind melding with the baby in between introducing it to Crowded House and Jack Bauer, and his (her?) Majesty says he (she?) will accept the following as gifts, in order of preference:

- 1967 Fastback Mustang

- 1978 Chateau Margaux

- A hundred fawning nursemaids bursting with milk

The only problem is, I don't know which are genuinely his (her?) ideas, and which are mine...

Took Nam to get blood tests (all good) and find our "steady" obstetrician today. Found one of the only females in the business in this area, and she tuned out to be solid. Only thing is, she called me "daddy" in Thai (as in, "what does daddy do for a living?"). This is the first time I've been called that in a non-joking context my whole life, and it felt weird. But she's right - I'm gonna be a daddy, and it feels good. It just felt weird to be called that.

Just between you and me, though - when the hell did I get so old?

That is all.

Sometimes life is gooood.

Wow, that's pretty dope. But I'll see your violin/turntables and raise you a Hasidic reggae genius:

This live version is actually better than the album one.

I'm going to try this later tonight, if my net connection at home is still up.

Apparently, the latest version of Google Earth has an easter egg: a flight simulator. It's not quite like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it's a promising start.

How to see this feature. Make sure you have Google Earth 4.2. Open the application, click on the globe and then press Ctrl+Alt+A. You should see this dialog that lets you choose one of the two aircrafts (F16 "Viper" and SR22) and an airport.

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UPDATE: Don't throw away your dedicated flight sims just yet. My slow net speed means the sim is constantly updating the stream and I'm flying over an endless blob of green and brown.

... is really what I should call this blog.

Something I joked about a month ago (link) actually happened three weeks later (link).

My next big prediction is: The upcoming Thai elections in December will be a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Also, somebody important in Thailand will die very soon.

Being a prophet is just so goddamn tiring...

Yellowstone National Park's 260 square miles in Montana and 50 square miles in Idaho beckon with recreation, rugged terrain and wildlife.

But as the only place where a federal court district extends beyond state lines, it offers visitors and criminals a potential legal no man's land.

Closing the loophole would be fairly simple, but the law professor who first analyzed the problem said it will require the political will to act while the crimes are still minor, like poaching elk, before someone tries to get away with murder.

Read the full article here: The perfect place for the perfect crime?

I need another car - just a reliable beater to convey me around town - since I want Nam to drive the Cefiro (and its newfangled safety features) when we move to the new house. The new house is within walking distance of my university, but I need something for rainy days and whatnot. I think I've found a good candidate:

That's an honest-to-god classic car (4th generation S60), with prices to match both in Japan and the states. I think I can get this one for about a thousand USD. There are a lot of classic Japanese cars being driven around on a daily basis in Thailand. One of the reasons is that maintenance and repairs are so cheap. Another is that they often aren't considered classic here, just old - which is a shame for the cars, but great for people who love them.

The Toyota "Kujira" Crown was apparently not very popular in Japan when it was released, except among Osaka taxi drivers (according to one of the links above). It also got some airtime on TV shows at the time, but the avant garde looks were just too kick-ass for that stiff-upper-lip generation of Japanese sheeple, I guess. Oh, well.

This particular specimen has a secret under the hood that should make it anything but a whale (kujira = "whale") on the road: A "silvertop" Nissan RB20DE !!! That's the non-turbo powerplant for a type 32 Skyline!

It also has the matching drivetrain and 5 speed manual gearbox.

I promised myself I would think about it for at least a day, but I'm having a hard time waiting until tomorrow... The first thing I'm going to do is put the wing mirrors out on the hood like they oughtta be... Then I'll have the body restored (there's a bit of rust in places, the owner says) to look something like... this.

What say you?

UPDATE: I've just talked to the owner and it sounds like he's taken very good care of it. I told him I want it; now it's just a question of enacting the sale and slogging through any related paperwork, which I have no idea about. Yay!

Don't watch this video if you have trouble admitting to masturbation:

This has to be one of the best drunk co-translations on the back of a moist towelette I've ever done (see how we stayed faithful to the original and got the message across? - of course, we somehow got the very first line wrong, but don't hold that against us). Certainly one of the proudest moments, posting it here.

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Band info:
Formation Date: 01 January 2002
Record Label: CHINPOCHINPO製作委員会
Label Type: Independent
Band Members: ウィーゼル寝屋川・リッチー○○・○○社長・レッケージヒデキ
Influences: 色々
Sounds Like: 王道の70年台ハードロックの真髄
Country: Japan

Classic!

(thx t)