There were these two dogs...

Couldn't resist this story. The article appeared in Thailand's 'Nation' newspaper:

Well, that's what you get if you pee on baggage or hump ladies' legs in airports. However, what they never tell you about airport sniffer dogs is that they are deliberately addicted to heroin (or whatever) so they will go to the ends of the earth to sniff it out. That's why each dog specializes in a certain drug.

Now that these 2 pooches have been quietly retired to a nice happy farm, the media will probably forget them. However, they'll continue to cost money to the farmer - dogs must eat, plus they have expensive drug habits to feed. My guess is that Fido may not be there in a few months from now. Where they go is anyone's guess, but here's mine...

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Lots of dogs get transported to Vietnam and China. This one was photographed in Vietnam's Van Phuc province. Tastes a bit like chicken... but not much.

I'm really, really sorry for whatever I did.
Would you like your slippers now?

Manchester City Football Club vs. Thaksin Shinawatra. Either way, Thailand is the loser.

Owning an English football club is Thaksin’s frivolous passion – he clearly doesn’t give a toss about the fate of poor people or AIDs sufferers in his home country.

Have ALL the board members of the M.C. Football Club turned into lemmings with a death wish? FunkyPix2’s earlier warning to M.C.F.C. was clearly ignored. Now that the Thai government has, as expected, frozen Thaksin’s financial assets, the club’s lawyers have asked Thaksin for “written assurances” that he still has the money to go ahead with the take-over of the club.

Yeah sure, the cheque’s in the mail. What’s the point of getting hollow promises from an habitual liar unless the club’s lawyers want to establish legal grounds for a massive compensation claim later? I have to assume they’re not as naïve as they first appear. Thaksin, after all, has more than enough capacity to pay - big time.

Thaksin’s bid for MCFC is a sad little rich boy’s game which, unfortunately, secures the demise of many poor people and AIDs sufferers in his home country. The money could have been spent so much more compassionately.

Thaksin’s only hope is that his account in Singapore’s UBS Bank, which Thailand cannot freeze, can deliver the 90 million pounds. Whether the deal goes ahead or ends up dragging through the courts, Thailand would never see a single baht of it again.

The Thaksin Rescue Express is on its way to help. Uh huh. Thailand’s AIDS victims, unlike you or I, can’t get off the rails without some assistance.

Freezing the assets was therefore morally the correct thing to do. Thaksin has 60 days to prove the ShinCorp sale was legal. If he does so, he can take the money back. Cool. Fair play, I calls it.

My question is this: Has Thaksin's ill-gotten wealth afforded him happiness or progress towards spiritual Enlightenment? His blatant focus on extravagant Consumerism and worldly wealth certainly does no favours to Thailand’s Buddhism in the eyes of the world:

The flame of Thailand’s Theravada Buddhism is beginning to burn cold. Thaksin’s false piety throws a lot of light on his motives. In fact, he puts more faith into non-Buddhist superstitions, Animism, and soothsayers.
(The continued wheeling-and-dealing around manufacture and sales of the “magical” Jatukam amulets by supposedly revered monks is not helping Buddhism’s cause either.)

Fishy football strategies by Manchester City Football Club (in light-blue). Thaksin has promised to spend 50 million pounds on new player contracts to boost the club’s fortunes and commercial value. It’s obvious that he would then sell it off for a fat profit, like he did with ShinCorp. It’s purely an investment, but it would be funny if it ended up legally belonging to Thailand instead of Thaksin. Like these fish biting at a fake food-filled football in Tokyo, Thaksin’s interest in football ‘per se’ is negligible. It’s the money, stupid.

With Thaksin, what you see is not always what you get. How many legs on this elephant? A fortnight ago Thaksin was promising he would never get back into politics, but yesterday he said the exact opposite. Typical. Watch this space.

Update June 20: Here’s a blog in Thailand’s Nation newspaper, which is generally more Left-leaning and anti-Thaksin than the Bangkok Post. Thailand's equivalent of the "Guardian".

Man trapped in computer: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger

Helloooo, is anybody out there? ..Bloggers are free spirits (except in Egypt or Malaysia), but the Internet's impersonalism can incarcerate them behind impersonal glass walls of silence.

I frequently reflect on the fact that there are 800 million blogs whirling through cyberspace. Some even show signs of intelligence. In a good week, we FunkyPixers might get to read (superficially scan?) maybe 15 or 20 (maximum). By definition, therefore, we are well and truly out-of-touch on a percentage basis.

It begs the question: why continue to slave so diligently on this blog? It merely brings the total to 800,000,001. What drives me to continue it? Ego? Creativity? Getting a message over? Yes, all the above. Although FunkyPix2 is officially an Ego-Free Zone (see the header message), it was never a 'John Howard' core promise [*grin*]. Secondly, blogging is certainly an outlet for creativity… in my case, it’s aligning cool pictures with text in a semi-coherent manner. A fabulously funkylicious photo can sometimes explain SO much more than words if you choose it well and paste it in just the right spot. And lastly, I have things to say which I do (personally) think are worthwhile putting out there (ibid 'Ego').

Sometimes I feel eerie isolation behind the Internet’s walls of soundless glass, like a mime artist trapped in a silent suffocating nightmare, desperate to feel his way to an exit.

It’s all too easy not to connect with real people, or even other bloggers, from inside the cosy comforts of your own home page. In a zoo, who is the observed, and who the observer? Who the potter, and who the clay? Both them and us are trapped in mental cages of other people’s making:

Being a Progressive Left-leaning Humanist Atheist Cynic, there is no shortage of insane moral issues presenting themselves to me to bong on about - the world is a crazy and unfair place. For a start, it contains John Ducklips Howard.

I'm not trying to imagine that any blogger can single-handedly save the universe…

…but I'm more about shaking people out of their apathy and unquestioning acceptance of 'normalcy'. Presenting compassionate alternatives. Logic. Fairness. Re-fashioning the world using nothing but your own bare thoughts. I am a product of the Enlightenment, patriarchy, and the hippie movement. I blog, therefore I am. OK, OK, I confess... I am a BABYBOOMER... there, I said it. Most people I meet have been ruthlessly taught to believe what they’re told, to swallow propaganda, obey, obey, obey.....

Sure, the world could do with a little assistance in becoming a better place, but sometimes even FunkyPix2's great mentor Batman can’t produce the goods on demand when Gotham City Hall beams up for help:

I can sympathise with the condition known as Blogger Burnout:

We bloggers can’t pretend to be more than we really are…

...you know, One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Spring, etc. But on the other hand, many swallows make a flock, and lots of small raindrops can become a mighty river. I can contribute just a little: my glassful makes a tiny contribution to History. It might influence the thinking of a few people.

Consider the moral fable in this sequence of 4 quite remarkable photos of the construction of a large dyke wall in Dubai. Note the outcome of the tiny leak (bottom left):

Ooops. I often wonder what bloggers could do if there were some kind of web service which could allow us to team up, join forces, submit articles under categories. It's easy to snap a twig, but much more difficult to snap a bunch of twigs bound tightly together. But - oh dear - that might compromise individuality... and whose criteria to use for categories?

And so to blogge, perchance to dream...

AMANDA VANSTONE’s Christmases Past and Future: Careers, Affairs... we tell it all

Ex-senator Amanda Vanstone had a moonlighting second job in a lesbian jelly-wresting all-girl band, and never paid any tax. She was "Man van Rock" to her unsuspecting fans - both of them.

Amanda Vanstone’s life has been a rumpled quilt of many patches. Now she’s ended up with a sideways promotion from John Ducklips Howard and will live bitchily ever afterwards in Italy [read: “Well-away-from-Australia-where-she-is-less-likely-to-cause-trouble-to-Howard-before-the-election”].

And what an opulent Golden Handshake it was!! Howard ain’t confessing anything much about numbers, except that Vanstone’s getting the same salary as the former ambassador – who got quietly bumped at 3 hours’ notice… quite co-incidentally, of course. But wait, there’s more. Vanstone has been allocated an outfit allowance so she can buy a whole new wardrobe (if local tailors can ever find bolts of material wide enough). Clearly she’ll need a striped Gondolier’s t-shirt for her weekends in Venice. Me-wonder what she’ll wear for her début in the Colleseum… hmm, a lyin' costume, maybe?

Ex-minister Vanstone will also receive an overseas allowance, a transfer allowance, a head-of-mission allowance, household assistance, and a vehicle. She’s also getting Italian language training worth about AU$5,000 (Gosh, I wonder if refugees or migrants were ever offered that much free language training when she was Minister at the Deportment of Immigration. I bet Vanstone already knows Italian words like foccacia, canneloni, ravioli, parmesan etc. Vital words for survival in such a dangerous and remote un-Australian environment).

In Rome (quite close to the Vatican),Vanstone's personal domestic staff of 5 will comprise a butler, a maid, a gardener, a chef, and a chauffeur. Then there’s also all the staff of the Australian Embassy to help her to cook the books and to deal with all those - ugh - "persons of foreign appearance"... ewww... she tells herself to resist the urge to lock them all up in detention centres. There may also have been a quiet payment from Uno-Hoo under the table in exchange for "shutting-the-f*ck-up"... who will ever know? The lesson I take from this is that being a complete arsehole pays off.

Amanda Vanstone has apparently instructed her gardener to prepare some delicate diplomatic topiaries in preparation for meeting-and-greeting her new neighbours in Rome.

This family-size symbolic frisbee was Amanda’s parting fling to John Howard for being so kind in finding her a new job. A security man intercepted the hot pizza just in the nick of time. Neapolitan with double anchovies and diced razor-blades in the crust, he later remarked.

Howard had hedged his bets on sacking Vanstone. It was a delicate political balancing act. But, like most of Howard’s bright ideas, it eventually backfired (spot the incoming pizza).

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FunkyPix2 now takes an exclusive peek through the keyhole of Amanda’s lurid life-history. Did you know she married when she was younger? Can you imagine that? Here’s a rare photo of her as a young woman:

Amanda Vanstone is introduced to her future husband Clancy
for the first time on Channel 9’s “Blind Date” programme in 1965.

It was a rather unbalanced marriage. This was the day she had lost her puppy.

A year later they separated. Clancy got literature and love-handles.

Amanda found her next heart-throb while on holiday in a Japanese winter resort. It was immediately after this that she applied to the Public Service in Wollongong – and the rest is history - all downhill.

Don’t hug trees – embrace the PAPERLESS OFFICE to demonstrate that you mean eco-business

Marie hugs trees by re-using the reverse side of discarded printer pages.

Australia consumes 1.5 million tons of paper per year. This incurs a relatively higher environmental cost than most countries because of Australia's reliance on fossil fuels in the paper-manufacturing process. However, the greatest waste-paper offender of all is, as usual – you guessed it – the USA.

America’s 300 million people (only a quarter of the size of China) represent only 5% of the world’s population, but gobble up a whopping 25% of the world’s paper. That, from the hypocrite country which refuses to sign agreements on carbon-trading. Sins of Emission.

McTree burgers? Each American consumes 740 lbs of paper per year.

Here in North Thailand, we’re trying our best to minimize unnecessary paper wastage at home, but FunkyPix2 Headquarters still resembles a “paper office”:

Our paper office.

As you can clearly see, we’re rapt in conservation principles, but are still finding it difficult to change long-ingrained patterns of paper wastage. Laziness is a big factor, but re-using printer paper as scrap note-paper is a fine start – the obverses are mostly blank. And why not buy 70gsm paper instead of 80gsm? Nowadays we’re also reading news online more often (stage whisper: ...but I confess I do still enjoy that indefinable ‘something’ about a paper daily with coffee in the morning). History is the sum of individual actions, however small.

Abundance of paper is an illusion maid in Hell. It’s all too tempting to sweep the problem under the office carpet out of sheer laziness. Ah, the flesh is weak…

Vanityfair.com published some interesting maps in its recent Green edition, one of which highlighted countries where plant species were risking extinction. Guilty countries were represented as proportionately enlarged, viz:

Note that almost all of Equatorial America, Saharan Africa, and Malaysia are stand out. It's red-face time for Ecuador. Also culpable are Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, the Phillipines ...and Sri Lanka, surprisingly. Australia comes off quite well by comparison, but it must be remembered that it contains a mere 20 million people (the same as the tiny island of Sri Lanka).

Wood as a cooking fuel could return to use as electricity from fossil fuel begins to run low. Char-grilling will take on new shades of meaning.

Paper hat job? We’re so used to infinite amounts of paper being conveniently available at a moment’s notice. Things might change when we have toilet paper priced by the individual sheet.

An Ancient Geek Temple. Archeologists from FunkyPix2 were excited to discover this Roman-style arch buried under the Parthenon at Athens. This suggests the possibility that the Acropolis was denuded of trees not by goats as previously believed, but by wood-chippers manufacturing paper for Ancient Geek printers. Finally - evidence that printing pre-dates Gutenberg.

Trees are the ecosystem’s quiet unsung heroes. We all sprook on about environment issues, but generally reserve the spotlight for the human race. We tend not to accord trees their rightful status as superstars of the wooded stage. Today, FunkyPix2 spotlights trees' extraordinary talents in a mini-gallery. We give them 15 seconds of fame.....

…and finally, if YOU don’t respect trees by using less paper, we’ll send in FunkyPix2's Ghastly Grisly Geekman to haunt your office and drop gremlins into the photocopier…

I have published many more posts on green issues. Look for "Browse by Category" in the right-hand margin of any FunkyPix2 screen, then click on the "Environment" link.