21 March 2011

St. Patrick’s Day 2011

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St. Patrick’s Day was also the day of our monthly libertarian meet up, and I got a late start, getting on an express boat in late afternoon. It was the coldest daytime temperature I have yet seen in Bangkok, in the low 60sF. Everyone was bundled up against the cold wind, including me. It was the only day and night I can remember here when I did not sweat.
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The meet up was great, with very good conversation and camaraderie. By 01:30 there were only me and a longtime buddy left. We closed down the Bourbon Street bar and walked to the nearby Dubliner Irish pub to see if their St. Patrick revelries were still going on. The Dubliner was quite empty and not serving any more drinks. There were still bottles breaking on the floor, and the whole place looked as dysfunctional as a battle zone, so we exited the back door. Once outside we had to carefully push our way through a crowd of milling, staggering, wild-looking fellows – most certainly all Irishmen.
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We walked to another venue where we could talk some more. Our conversation covered all topics from Man and God and Law to movies and books. Finally we closed down that place and went down the street to find some munchies at an all-night store. We stood on the street eating and talking until we could barely keep our eyes open, then parted ways.
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I arrived back in my home neighborhood at 04:00, and the streets were quiet and empty. Must be there are no Irish here. The only one showing any holiday spirit was a local soi dog who spotted me and trotted along with me to my gate. I threw out some food to her, making her very pleased. It was a great day for the Irish.
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-Zenwind.
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Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On

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I’ve finally found my niche in the Bangkok nightlife, amongst somewhat ageing Rockers – with a lot of white hair and beards in the crowd – who are diehard fans of the old-time Rock and Roll of Peter Driscoll and the Cruisers. They played last week at the Wine Bibber Sangria in Bangkok, and they really rocked the joint. I have written before about how I’m a big fan of Peter’s performances. I try my best get into town when I know he’s playing a gig. I am one of the only regular Americans at these gigs, for all the accents I hear are English, Scots, Irish, or Australian.
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Peter is a walking historian of early Rock. As a lad growing up in England in the 1950s, he got into all the music coming in from the States. As a teenager there he recorded “Paralyzed,” a song from Elvis’s second album. One thing that continually amazes me is Peter’s brief historical prefaces to most of the songs he covers, little bits of info about who wrote it and various performers of it. He is up to date on those people of early Rock, often mentioning that such-and-such a person involved with the song “died just last Friday,” for example.
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His band, The Cruisers, has a partially new line-up, and they are getting really tight as a group. The crowd was not as thick this time as it was for their performance last month, but it was because of a heavy rain that day that thinned out the crowds everywhere in the city – even the evening Skytrain was un-crowded.
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Peter and the Cruisers did songs by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins (“I’m a lone poor boy, and I’m a long way from home”), the Everly Brothers, Rick Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and His Comets, Dion and the Belmonts (“I’m a wanderer, yeah, the wanderer/ I roam around, around, around”), Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, etc.
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At the stroke of midnight they started up a new set with a powerful version of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny Be Good,” and we all rocked on until late.
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-Zenwind.
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13 March 2011

Anniversary of a Cult Founder

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[quote] It is an anniversary for the late Mr. Sell Bond Blubberd. Blubberd was a genius, the greatest of all the 20th century intra-galactic seers and cosmic historians, and he was a magnificently successful religious profit [sic] and a brilliant scam artist. [/quote]
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[I am quoting this document exactly as it was written and forwarded to me by a Ch’an friend by the name of Han Shan, who was once briefly acquainted with the cult mentioned here. –ZW.]
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[quote] Blubberd is best known for founding the incredibly lucrative Church of the ScienceFictionist, a religion of wide international following to which many high-profile celebrities and other notorious zanies flock. Many are expecting Charlie Sheen to get on board very soon, if he can muster up the required cash.
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Blubberd is also famous as an absolutely hilarious cosmic jester, a laugh-out-loud-funny, hold-your-gut-and-roll-on-the-floor-gasping-for-breath satirist and prankster. For instance, after a typical ScienceFictionist Church newbie is lured into many years of studies, continual browbeating, and tens upon tens of thousands of dollars of contributions to the church, he is finally given access to the promised secret documents underlying the holy metaphysics of the entire religion. I.e., one must achieve the church’s official higher status of the level of an “ID-e-OT DCLXVI” – and this costs a lot of money to buy into – before earning access to the secret documents.
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Surprise! When you are finally given permission to read this cosmic history and theology of the church in these secret sacred documents, it all just seems like something out of the more seedy science fiction scenarios or cheaper comic books. You read about the cruel galactic dictator, Zeranhu, and his atrocities millions of years ago, e.g., “The Twoth Affair,” revealing the Flaming Buttocks story that involved massive turmoil, death, destruction and terror on earth and its near environs. What a prank! Blubberd always had promoted his persona as that of a high-seas pirate, and you can see from photos of those days that he was laughing his ass off all the way to the bank. A genius of joke and scam, rolling merrily in the money. What a guy!
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Blubberd’s business model here is incredibly successful, even improving upon other similar traditional religions’ scams by orders of magnitude. What a dude. He was a cynical opportunist with a great sense of humor and a genius for talking people out of their gold. It is sad that his church’s heirs today have no such sense of humor at all and are mostly concerned with both controlling their sheep and filing lawsuits against anyone who insults or threatens their holy cash cow.
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Mr. Sell Bond Blubberd was a really funny guy – a modern pirate with incredible audacity – and we will all miss him. [/quote]
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-Zenwind.