Checkered Lounge Pants

Hi you all....Im not drudging down to a southern drawl today. Those US southern conservative backwater politics just abhor me. My sweet lord, they are so out of touch with the American electorate they keep shooting their face off to spite their nose. Repeal affordable care, destroy planned parenthood, bury your head on climate change....like the New Yorker proclaimed, "climate change will only lose the second seaside homes of the rich but it will destroy the only coastal home of the poor". Dumb as a bag of hammers those Conservatives...dumb as a bag of hammers. I got an email forwarded to me the other day demonstrating how they suspect a conspiracy by the Obama democrats to assassinate Trump because he is a threat politically. The only threat the GOP have to worry about is Trump winning the GOP presidential nomination and his racist supremacist phobically toxic diatribe will whip up every center and center left and left of center and right leaning center left American to vote

Texas-based ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, is the present day result of the long and winding history of the oil industry. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, which, after being ruled an illegal monopoly way back in 1911, was broken up into Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and a couple other offshoots. Exxon and Mobil merged in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. As an oil company, Exxon naturally has another long and convoluted history, one that hinges on its relationship with climate change; a phenomenon primarily driven by the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the burning of the very fossil fuels that make Exxon go “cha-ching.” In recent weeks, a new investigation from  InsideClimate News  and  the Los Angeles Times  has shed unwanted light on just how much Exxon knew about climate change, for how long, and what the company did, didn’t do, and tried to stop from happening. This newfound attention has led to an outcr

Canadian elections finished this morning (Canadas yesterday evening). The right wing conservatives were soundly defeated.  No surprises there except the blue-out in Atlantic Canada and the third place thumping they suffered in Quebec and British Columbia. Good old Danny Williams out of "Windy Harbour" really did a number on Harper, (out there eh) profiling the PM as a backstabbing two-faced liar from his dealings as Newfoundlands conservative Premier with the conservative federal ministries.  Harper was a goner long ago. The wall writings were visible when the 3 wise men (in conservative terms)  Prentice Baird and MacKay  bailed on Harper. Prentice mistakenly stayed in politics but the other two were wisely and prosperously sequestered corporately. I initially thought their quiet unheralded departures were, perhaps, scandal management but quickly realized, after the PR hacks from Australia were contracted in (another fatal choice), that it was risk management on their p

I have to do a blog post on this Saturday night to keep my 9 year monthly string from breaking. I don't know what to write. Let's see....I bought some new golf clubs but my game continues to wallow in substandard regard. I continue to run 5k thrice weekly and slowly witness my lackadaisical dwindling body mass that is periodically hindered by a spiking appetite. My year long Asian hiatus has decidedly stretched to 18 months but the next 6 months are strictly mitigating my ever increasing homesickness to see my family by avoiding the Canadian winter. There...post complete. I'll be in touch.

"Is anybody out there".....remember that song. Sweet Jesus... it took about 6 hits on Google before Pink Floyd came up. Typical in todays trash video world. They have 3 video channels here in Thailand and the prerequisite seems to be more skimpy undies than musical talent..but I do favour Niki Minaj and her bootie videos. DMM...just getting old but still uhmmm.. never mind. LOL. I am the lone ranger out here for the time being in Asia. All the  ex-pat buddy's go home for the low-season and my initial travel buddy went home for the fall colours. I don't hang much with having different interests. I got into golf and running and never really got into the ...well I like golf and running. I finished dentist work.....man that took almost a year. I just reluctantly trotted my way through the procedures for repairs. I hate dentists and you know....the guy here and his staff cater to cowards but I still hate dentists. Gym is addictive. I run 5k three times a week an

Hey ....yup birthday all done. 62 is in the books. Woke up this morning to song. "Happy birday to u. Happy birday to u. Happy birday happy birday happy birday to u". I thought why is Ning singing to the birds. Ha ha ha.  I bribed my way out of having bday party at shop. Birthdays are abig deal here. However, They don't drink at the shop unless my good friend Sister2 is in from the Isan village. Then she sucks on a bottle of thai whiskey while I drink beers. No Sister no drunk so I was not fukkin sitting at the shop with all those girls sober. I dropped Ning to work with a $20 bag of vittles  for her to cook for shop girls and I went and had faranges brekky and stocked up on beers. I watched sports and drank beers  and youtubed some skanky videos by Flo Rida and Pitbull and even danced some while I  cooked pork chops and potatoes for my birthday supper. I passed out shortly after I ate. Lol.  I woke up just in time to greet Ning from work bearing me presents.  It

How 16 years of debunking right-wing lies exhausted the last honest man Stewart is stepping aside because he's exhausted by our petty, dangerous politics. Now we're really screwed SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN Post AP/Reuters/Comedy Central/Salon If you are feeling withdrawal after the first week of Jon Stewart’s two-week break from “The Daily Show,” then consider how you will feel after his run ends on Aug. 6. As he explained on July 2 before vacation, he is off for two weeks only to come back for a three-week sprint to the finish.  Ever since he announced in February that he was stepping down, many of us have wondered how our dysfunctional political and media culture will operate without the hard-hitting satire he has offered us for over 16 years.  There is little doubt that Stewart has not just played a role as a powerful public intellectual able to critique the media and politicians when we need it most; he has also redefined satire in an era when most media and politi

Deadly dish: the dinner that can give you cancer By Jonathan Head BANGKOK: -- A local delicacy in north-east Thailand, made from raw fish, has been found to be behind a high incidence of liver cancer in the area, and doctors are trying to educate people about the risk. The Isaan plateau of north-eastern Thailand is poor, dry, and far from the sea. Home to around one third of the country's population, most of them ethnic Lao in origin, it is renowned for its spicy and inventive cuisine, using whatever ingredients are available. Where there are rivers or lakes, they use the smaller fish they catch in a pungent dish called koi plaa. The fish are chopped up finely, and mixed by hand with local herbs, lime juice and live red ants, and served up raw. It is very popular, but also dangerous.

Life’s Work: Garry Kasparov APRIL 1, 2015  · BY  ALISON BEARD  · IN  COMMENTARY From Harvard Business Review – Garry Kasparov was the world’s top chess player for 20 years. Trained in the Soviet system, he’s become a mentor to younger players, an ardent promoter of the sport and a vocal critic of corruption in both the World Chess Federation and the Russian government. Q: What can people in business learn from the best chess players? A: In chess, soccer, baseball, business, politics – God forbid, war – we make decisions. Some are good, some not so good. The way to improve is to look back and analyze them. Many people think that if something worked yesterday and is still working today, it will work tomorrow. That’s wrong, because people on the losing side will come up with a new strategy. I stayed on top for 20 years because I knew that even if you win, there are things to learn. There’s no such thing as a perfect game. Not resting on your laurels is a very important lesson.

Malaysia and Indonesia will soon be dealing with an influx of migrants, as search and rescue operations get under way. About 7,000 migrants - Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims - are stranded in the Andaman Sea. Governments in the region were unwilling to bring them ashore until now, afraid of encouraging more to arrive at a later date. Under international pressure Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to give them temporary shelter. The US and others have offered to help resettle the migrants. But how do ordinary people in countries around the region see the Rohingya, and the current crisis? BBC correspondents have been finding out. seeing the suffering of the migrants who had been stranded at sea, the majority in Malaysia feel it was the right decision to offer them temporary shelter.  One local newspaper, The Malaysia Star says: "We've accepted refugees from Bosnia and Vietnam, why not Rohingya?"  But there is also fear that this decision will open the floodga

House of Secrets: Who owns London’s most expensive mansion? BY  ED CAESAR Witanhurst, London’s largest private house, was built between 1913 and 1920 on an eleven-acre plot in Highgate, a wealthy hilltop neighborhood north of the city center. First owned by Arthur Crosfield, an English soap magnate, the mansion was designed in the Queen Anne style and contained twenty-five bedrooms, a seventy-foot-long ballroom, and a glass rotunda; the views from its gardens, over Hampstead Heath and across the capital, were among the loveliest in London. For decades, parties at Witanhurst attracted potentates and royals—including, in 1951, Elizabeth, the future Queen. In May, 2008, I toured Witanhurst with a real-estate agent. There had been no parties there for half a century, and the house had not been occupied regularly since the seventies. The interiors were ravaged: water had leaked through holes in the roof, and, upstairs, the brittle floorboards cracked under our footsteps.