Category: Photos

Impossible Fish


Why not ride on the coattails of the Impossible Fish Tank? (See that? That’s how to give credit, bitches…)
We somehow acquired a small fish tank at the house and went out to buy some fish to keep as slaves (not slaves in the sense that they will work our land for a share of the crops, but in the sense that they exist only to amuse us, since freshwater fish make such shitty companions/rescue animals).
We went to the local pet shop and found mostly a bunch of fat, quivering goldfish and mollies, which I detest, as I like my slaves skinny (and preferably, forlorn/amusing). In a tank wedged between the goldfish, however, we found the fish pictured above. Rather than thinking about how I’d never seen fish like these before, or how unnatural their coloring looked, I instead thought about what a stunning resemblance they shared with some fishing lures in my tackle box at home:

So you may understand that I reacted with some surprise when the worker at the pet shop, while scooping these specimens into a bag for us to take home, told us that they had in fact been artificially colored. And I do not mean to say that they were painted or dipped in some kind of dye, either. It was INJECTED into their bodies!
…………..
Fucking third world!
Poor fishies!
I no longer think of them as slaves; they are my babies and I shall care for them tenderly (feeding them processed food pellets once a day) until the time of the Big Flush.

museumr

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Go play, if you have a flickr account.
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Here’s the original:
http://flickr.com/photos/cbuddha/433197026/
And there’s a story behind it: Went fishing in crazy hot weather a few weeks ago on a ghetto pontoon boat; caught a few fish and saw this little guy hit the water and start drowning. Fished him out with my Thai “fish hell” rig just as he stopped struggling. Put him on my finger and blew on his wings, and he came back to life! It was pretty cool.

Nam’s ducky cowboy hat


We came across a roadside vendor selling cowboy hats at the end of last year, and this one just stood out.
In related news, I found a hidden horse ranch on the dirt road behind our house.
Now all I need is a good set of spurs!
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UPDATE (transcribed from Google Talk session with Adam):
me: oh wait i just realized something
it’s not a duck is it
Adam: no
chicken
me: oops
always thought it was a rubber ducky
Adam: nah, dude, its like a chicken in a biscuit
me: godammit
oh well the name stays
this is nam’s ducky hat godammit
Adam: cool

What is this blossom?

Note: This is an update post to What is this tree?.
Click on any of the photos to open an enlarged version in a popup window.

The tree.

The vibrant variation in color is one reason why I call this tree the “super sakura.”

Pistil porn.

Note the fig-shaped buds.

I had to cheat in order to get a good frontal shot since the trees are so tall and the blossoms face upwards.
What is this tree?

karma karma karma karma karma



The thing is, it looks like an iguana. Could it be a false chameleon? A quick Google search shows that opinion is split as to whether iguanas can change colors on the spot or not. Whatever the explanation, this particular lizard changed the upper half of his body bright red when he climbed up this tree, right before my very eyes. I had just parked my car (I park under this tree every day) and remembered that my camera was on the back seat, so the timing was lucky.

Secret Stacks of Silk

A couple months ago we visited a famous silk shop on the outskirts of a nearby town on behalf of a Japanese buyer. She wanted samples from this area of Thailand because of the Khmer and Laotian influence that provides the Isan region with a special mix of so many things, including silk patterns. Basically, this was one of my biggest fantasy scenarios of all time – shopping for stuff I like, unrestrained, with a huge budget – and we attacked this job with zeal.
We started by having the staff crack open the glass cases containing the good cuts of choicest silk, and buying a sample of each. We then moved on to the (merely) high quality stuff, then the normal quality stuff. Eventually, lost in a sea of conversation between my wife and the shop’s owner in a language I still don’t understand, I got bored.
I wandered to the back of the shop, where the shopkeeper’s mother was sitting perfectly still in a wicker chair and just getting older, and noticed a door that was cracked open just enough to see the goldmine…

Like thumbing through old vinyls…
I conveyed to the old lady that I wanted to enter and she gave the signal OK… I stepped in to find a storage room filled with unsorted silk sheets stacked from floor to ceiling…
I had died and gone to heaven; it was a silk junkie’s Nirvana.
I spent an eternity in there…
I was in there so long, my wife urged me to hurry up because she was tired… I had done the impossible!
I had outshopped my wife, shopping for girly stuff!
THE END

The First Element of Pimp (Thai Dub)

First step: Take your ride to get hand washed and waxed (approx. 100 baht / $3).

Thai car washes have concrete ramps for bidet-style cleaning. Your car will thank you.
The key here is the wax, you’ll see why later.

A cheeky rooster at the car wash is most auspicious, Keanu.
The next step of FEP (First Element, Pimp) can only be carried out at one place:

A central chamber of one of the large temples in Sarakham.
And of course, FEP should only be performed by trained professionals:

We humbly begged for the expert blessings of the head monk who married us exactly one year (and one day) earlier.
A bit of prep:

Nam’s first attempt at hand modeling.
The white cones are made of a white powder which are dissolved in water. This mixture achieves a mud-like consistency, and is normally used for anointing monk’s faces for certain ceremonies. On this day, it was used for something else… I have no idea what the proper name for it is, I just call it “blessing clay.”
In case you are wondering, the following ceremony has no set price. It is proper to give what you can in an envelope, and if you’re like me, worry that it isn’t enough.
On to the ceremony, then:

The artist examining his canvas.

This is the most common pattern of symbols anointed in the area above the driver’s head here in Thailand.

As far as I know, this does not void the airbag warranty. Neither, however, does it lower the cost of collision insurance.

After finishing the besmearification of the interior, the next step is tying a bundle of white strings around the steering column.
A lot of Thai Buddhist ceremonies employ string for some reason. At our wedding last year, we were all connected together by a length of white string (which I haven’t researched the meaning of yet, sis, sorry!), and I’ve seen bundles of string similar to the one in the photo above tied around different things – ceremonial platforms, trees, and motor scooters, mostly. This deserves further study.
Note: Someday, I will find out the exact meaning of each of these steps. I’ve heard several very general ones about how each represents safety and reliability, and that’s good enough for now.

Next, the “blessing clay” is further diluted with holy water. (I think that sentence just made the baby Jesus cry.)

This monk is SO not a vampire.
The head monk likes us; he always has. We didn’t have a lot of money to donate to the temple after our wedding last year mostly because we went over budget on everything else – I felt really crappy about that because he brought out a bunch of brothas from the temple to kick off the morning ceremony with chants and blessings galore… Obviously, he didn’t hold that against us because he went above and beyond the call of duty blessing my car on this fine day. I mean, the normal blessing ceremony is confined to the interior of the car, but the monk just went all out for us… Just watch.

You know how people always blur out their license plates in photos? Yeah, that’s dumb. I mean, just how important do you think you are that someone would waste time actually doing something with that information?
I can talk all the smack I want ‘cuz I got some powerful juju that day.

He finger painted on EVERY door.

Then he painted a really cool pictogram on the hood.

coup de grace

I anoint thee, VQ30DE.

Nam is happy!
Bonus photo:

It appeared out of nowhere…
On the way home, an errant cow was used to test my new powers of invulnerability. Unfortunately, I did not have enough confidence to simply drive through the cow, as my new powers would surely have enabled me to – if I had just accepted the fact that the cow and I were one, and that the cow wasn’t there on the road since I was sitting in the car and hence the cow was also sitting in the car, I would have been okay. But like I said, I wasn’t ready. Yet. Some day I will have the ability to simply drive through the cow, but on this day what truly saved me was ABS.
And maybe, also, that pimp-ass pictogram on the hood.
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UPDATE 2/28/07: In response to a couple of emails I’ve received, yes, the clay does wash off. You are supposed to leave the symbols on the outside of the car on for either 3 or 7 days. I split the difference and washed it on the 5th day because black cars get very dirty out here in the dusty hinterlands approximately every 30 seconds – I couldn’t bear waiting 2 more days. Even though the clay came cleanly off the paint, ghost outlines appeared after washing because the underlying wax coats had been removed. I kind of liked this effect, so I’ve left it for the time being. I’m pretty sure it will disappear completely after a good waxing.
Regarding the symbols written inside the car, I had the ones on the steering wheel removed. Therefore the ones one the ceiling of the interior and the ones written in the engine room are all that remain. The bundle of string around the steering column is also there to stay. The monk gave us a couple of amulets for the car as well, one made of red plastic, with the image of the king, that you’re supposed to hang around the rear view mirror, and another made of some bronzish alloy inlaid with images of revered monks. I’m not down with hanging things from my rearview, even fuzzy dice, so they are kept protected in my dash console.