- How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy: “…he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain.”
- Iron Giant: One of America’s great machines comes back to life.
- MURK AVENUE: I FOUND ICE CUBES ‘GOOD DAY’
- See how Japan has rebuilt in the 11 months since the earthquake and tsunami
- And Max’s favorite link this month: color, a color matching game
Month: February 2012
explosion!
So we went out for a family dinner last night, to a place we used to go a lot for crusted garlic fish, but stopped visiting for no reason in particular. Mina was acting kind of funny, not scarfing down everything in sight as usual. Finally, she really stated acting up and did something that merited a spank on the bottom, so I put her over my lap and wound up for effect.
I knew something was wrong by the sound of impact: SCHLOP!!
Baby shit splattered all over my hand and a stinky mist expanded from the area of impact.
Mina looked at me in defiance.
Nam thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Max just shrugged at me.
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Of course, I already had shit on my hand so I had to change Mina’s poopie diaper as well.
84 likes, 130 dislikes
In October of 2010, I uploaded a video about bringing a cockroach back to life with a bug zapper to YouTube. It only had a few thousand hits for the first year, but then suddenly took off probably due to the pop culture zombie phenomenon, plus a hundred 12 year olds on YouTube calling me stupid and explaining that what was shown in the video wasn’t really reanimation (thanks for clearing that up you little shits).
Anyway, this is my first YouTube vid to go over 100,000 hits, so I thought I’d brag about it. Check it out to see what our front yard used to look like.
Cockroach Reanimation with Electro-stimulation
Study level: Bad Asian
Me: Your speaking topic is about something you would like to own. Please speak about this for one minute.
Student: I would like to own my hair.
Me: … What?
Student: My hair.
Me: WHO OWNS YOUR HAIR NOW?
Student: I want to color it red.
Me: Well, I guess you should own your hair first before you dye it.
Student: …
A Visit to Baan Tha Klang Elephant Village
On December 31st of last year, we went to visit Max and Mina’s great grandmother in Surin. This is the second year we have stopped on the way at Baan Tha Klang Elephant Village on the way.
This is the affordable elephant village in Thailand for mainly Thais, as compared to the overpriced one for foreigners in Chiangmai. Prices for everything are much cheaper here, especially for high ticket items like elephant rides and elephant paintings. Also, the experience here is raw – you are closer to the animals and may even get into slightly dangerous situations (if being molested or trampled on by an elephant could be described as such). For these reasons, I recommend Baan Tha Klang in Surin Province as the best place to go see elephants, except for the faint of heart, or people who don’t mind paying $150 for a Dumbo painting.
These villagers are descendants of the Suay or Kuay Ethnic group, who have a long history elephant husbandry. Unlike northern Thailand where elephant is kept for labor, Ta Klang people consider elephant as their friends who can share the same house.
Insofar as they are all living in the same dusty village, this much seems to be true. The mahouts in Chiangmai are probably told not to speak with all the thousands of guests they see every day. The mahouts here openly ask for money to buy the elephants food. It’s just a more genuine experience, as exploitation of large mammals on a large scale goes. Anyway. Elephants!!
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Looking back through our photo archives, I found that I’d never had time to blog about last year’s visit. I found footage of the main show, where we almost got trampled by Jumbo and Baby Dumbo:
New Google TOS & Privacy Policy
Quite a few people have asked what I think of the new, unified Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. The short answer is that it’s nothing to worry about.
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If you are smart, you use Gmail above all other free email services because it works the best. You probably use a bunch of other Google services as well. However, Google is a successful corporation that does not place your interests above their company interests. It is entirely conceivable that they may screw you some time, in some way. Until it happens, just enjoy the amazing shit they provide to you at no charge.
Besides, Facebook is already screwing you much harder than Google could even dream of.
