Friday Funnies

Hi,
Here we are again, at the end of another week. And another time when I ask the age old question: Who says this is the end of the week? Anyway, that's one for the debate teams.
Bravo/brava to all those who knew/remembered "Shop Around" by The Miracles. If you said it was Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, I'll let it pass, but this song was before his name became part the group name. You youngsters remember don't you?
"Hey now baby, get into my big black car (repeat)...I support the left, though I'm leanin' to the right (repeat)...but I'm just not ready, when it comes to a fight." Hint: These people are all over your news. This group rose to the top. It's a hard one.
So, today we went out into the world. It was a busy Friday in Chiang Rai. We started with the Post Office, in the middle of town. I had to circle the parking lot because the lot was full and the streets were full and it was a one-way street. In every city there's a part of town that one tries to avoid just because of the hassle. This is that place. The downtown market is a bustling mass of everything with wheels and even though most of the streets are one-way, you can get trapped in there and it seems like a maze. Someday it will all make sense. For now, I know how to get in and get out. Parking? Forget it.
After the P.O. we went out to The Place. From a distance, we have a big white house, due to the coat of primer. It makes the whole thing look even bigger. We walked around in the silence and absorbed what would soon be our home. This is a first for us. A brand new house. It's still sinking in, and the excitement is building.
After visiting the house, we went down to what I like to call 'The Strip'. Pahonyothin is the street with the NB, lots of eateries, and the main night time/tourist focus. By day, it's a busy business district. We needed to go by the travel agent and a place we call the pharmacy. It really isn't a pharmacy, it's a warehouse/store with everything one could need to get well or stay healthy. The place is packed to the ceiling with so much inventory that you sometimes have to walk sideways through the place. It's a mess, but they deliver, most of the time.
We did some window shopping at Sinthanee, looking at air/cons, T.V. and U.P.S. devices. The whole ordeal of pricing things can be fun, tedious and scary. Fun because you get to go into the big shiny store and look at all the neat 'stuff'. Tedious because you have to focus on all the stuff and compare and decide. Scary because sometimes the things you really like are the most expensive in the place and you have to let them go and not throw a temper tantrum. Hmm.
We were going to go to Big C but the line into the lot was way down the street. We could just imagine what it must have been like inside. Instead, we stopped and looked at furniture and found a great deal on a living room set. We have to go back tomorrow with a piece of our floor to see if they can 'live' together.
It's time for the 'Funnies', brought to us this week by Cousin Trudye. I can totally relate to this piece. Let me know if you found a connection.
Have a Great WeekEnd.

Peace,
Danny

The Great Forgetting -- By David Brooks – Some excerpts

Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots . . .
This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.

A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.

Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.

Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.

You’re in agony now, praying for an episode of spontaneous combustion. But still she drives the blade in deeper, “That was some party the other night wasn’t it?”

You lose vision. What party? Did you see this person at a party? By now, articulation is impossible. You are a puddle of gurgling noises and awkward silences. After the longest of these pauses, she goes for the coup de grâce: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

You can’t tell the truth. That would be an admission of social defeat . . .



Gettin' Funky, Thai Style

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