A Tasty Traffic Jam

[orang37]

Sawasdee Khrup, TV CM friends,

Sometimes "being" in Chiang Mai, almost in spite of ourselves, turns from mundane to extra-ordinary with an extra-sweet existential sauce : yesterday's traffic jam was one of those times.

If only we could "switch on" that "suspension of inner restlessness and self-absorption" more often

For fifteen minutes, with our car "frozen," straddling the railroad tracks : the background scrim of "ordinary time" was hauled up by the stage managers, and what was revealed was not a dreary backstage full of ropes and pulleys, and old props and scenery, but a parade of humanity.

A "parade" of young and old, the occasional threesome on a motorbike (one sometimes being a dog, sometimes being a child), soldiers coming off-duty from Kawila, soldiers on their way to duty at Kawila, schoolchildren in uniforms returning home, the inevitable tricycle full of junk with cd's on the back as reflectors. A young man and woman pass by, weaving, weaving, on a Honda Wave having an argument rather loudly and publicly (in the context of what we perceive as the norms for public behavior in northern Thailand).

We started singing out of our car window in sheer joy (singing, of course, one of our own original songs titled "Amazing Thailand," set to a melody "borrowed" from "Phantom of the Opera").

It was just the time to relinquish "all care" and make "a joyful noise unto the parade," so to speak.

Smiles happened

Delightful.

The mundane details :

a crossing over the railway tracks near the north-east edge of the Kawila Military Compound, on Thanon Rot Fai (Railway Road) ... first possible left as you drive south on Thanon Rot Fai after passing the railway station main entrance on your left ...

About 5PM there is often a heavy traffic jam at that intersection, but yesterday it was incredible. Sometimes they will have a traffic cop (maybe a soldier from Kawila ?) directing traffic at that intersection, but often, as yesterday, they will not.

It took over fifteen minutes to even get to make the left turn from the street north of the railway station running east-west and get into the actual crossing over the railway tracks !

So there we sat, car straddling the railway tracks with, in front and back of us, monumental face-offs of cars blocking each other from movement in any direction for over fifteen minutes.

best, ~o:37;

[cloudhopper]

Wow I've got to stop reading TV posts while I'm high...

[ThaiPauly]

Me too..I'll have some of what "they" are on !!!

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

Edited January 20, 2010 by ThaiPauly

[chiang mai]

Me too..I'll have some of what "they" are on !!!

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

It's the royal "we", meant to be all inclusive rather than personal, have you never listened to the Queens speech.

[kandahar]

Good job, O37. Nice post. A pleasant read on a mundane day.

[orang37]

Me too..I'll have some of what "they" are on !!!

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun ThaiPauly,

Dear Brother, what "they" are on, is also exactly what "you" are on : Earth. Any imagination they exhibit comes from exactly the same source as your dreams and imagination. No drugs are involved (okay, perhaps caffeine).

We write "we" because : we are often too lazy to write "I and I," and the story of how a dying human farang in the vast under-construction chambers of the Bangkok subway met a dying run-away Orangutan (number #37) who had escaped from the torment of a private zoo owned by a Thai Phu Yai ... his dying moments filled with compassionate bitter regret at his own freedom while thirty-six of his brothers and sisters were supposedly "liberated" from where they had been hidden from the police in the clinic of the private zoo ... which Orang37 knew in his "heart of hearts" was just a propaganda stunt, and realized his so-called "rescued" friends and family were surely headed toward some new gulag, or the posh esoteric eateries where the wealthy Chinese dine on such delicacies as living monkey brains ...

While at the same time the human farang, near death, also, was haunted by his memories of his potential wasted, his loves' lost, his talents thrown away on things he now realized were trifles and ephemeral ...

That story which is punctuated by a cosmic singularity in which two dying wholenesses came to share a human meat-package (the farang's body) through some miraculous transsubstantiation that cannot be described, that also rehabilitated the farang's meat-package, and resulted in essentially two individuals in the same human body, one farang soul-mind, and one Orangutan soul-mind ...

Has already been told.

And we have already spoken of the difficulties of two beings of different species sharing one bag-of-bones-veneered-in-flesh : kind of like a marriage : communication can get sticky and iffy in a hurry, and the "until death do us part" thing, in this case, has a really "literal" meaning.

Orang37 has to send pure Orang thought which is to human thought like the scent of lotus flowers is to the buzz of horseflies on excrement, directly into his human's pre-cognitive processing centers, where the human then translates what he vaguely "feels" into morphemes, then translates the morphemes to phonemes in English, and then, finally, to glyphs.

As for how the human communicates with Orang37, that would be difficult to put in words, but we'd refer you to the story of Alice's game of chess with the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carrol's book for a clue : Flamingo Croquet to get to the gist.

But greater than all of these mysteries, is when you look in the mirror in the morning : and there you are.

best, ~o:37;

Edited January 20, 2010 by orang37

[BLUEEYEDTHAI]

Me too..I'll have some of what "they" are on !!!

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

It's the royal "we", meant to be all inclusive rather than personal, have you never listened to the Queens speech.

Not the royal "we",but rather his alter ego.I find it rather endearing.

[greasemonkey]

Keep taking caffeine man. Thats about the best of your posts Ive read. havent laughed so much for a long while. Anyone got any idea why i cant get the emoticons to work?

[Ulysses G.]

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

orang37 is a Orangutan possesed by a human being - or vice versa - and both contribute to Thai Visa. Many people enjoy his posts, but some don't. If some of you don't want to read them, may I suggest either not opening his threads or using the "ignore' button, rather than giving him shit.

I know him personally and I think his posts are pretty cool if you take the time to think about them, but if you don't and you keep it to yourself, I don't think that he will mind.

[ThaiPauly]

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

orang37 is a Orangutan possesed by a human being - or vice versa - and both contribute to Thai Visa. Many people enjoy his posts, but some don't. If some of you don't want to read them, may I suggest either not opening his threads or using the "ignore' button, rather than giving him shit.

I know him personally and I think his posts are pretty cool if you take the time to think about them, but if you don't and you keep it to yourself, I don't think that he will mind.

UG....where did I say I DISLIKED what Orang posted or anything he has posted in the past ?

Where in my post was I giving him shit? It was a lighthearted comment, which YOU seem to have taken as a personal insult, the OP did not appear to do so

I just posed a question which has been puzzling me . I know perfectly well how to use the ignore button thank you.

But you are right, a lot of what he posts goes right over my head as I have not as much time as you appear to have, nor obviously your level of intelligence to work them all through....and of course I do NOT know the gentleman personally. But I do not deny him the opportunity to post whatever he likes, if I read them or not is my decision...as it is yours.

Sponser or not , I think your response was badly thought through

[Ulysses G.]

Actually, I did not mean to direct any of that post at Thai Pauly. I just answered his question and then started thinking about some other posters who seem to have it in for orang37 and started running my gums - so to speak.

I should have separated the two answers and been specific that I was directing the second part towards other unnamed posters. Thai Pauly is almost always respectful and nice to everyone.

When I look at the post, I can certainly understand why Thai Pauly took it personally, but I promise that I did not mean it that way. SO SORRY!

Edited January 20, 2010 by Ulysses G.

[Tywais]

Relax guys. I'm still looking for the Google translate option Orang37 > English. If language could be psychedelic, orang37 has it down pat.

<Just teasing, orang>

[WaiWai]

That story ...

Has already been told.

Where?

I logged in to ask .

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Does anyone actually read through that?

[ThaiPauly]

Me too..I'll have some of what "they" are on !!!

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun ThaiPauly,

Dear Brother, what "they" are on, is also exactly what "you" are on : Earth. Any imagination they exhibit comes from exactly the same source as your dreams and imagination. No drugs are involved (okay, perhaps caffeine).

We write "we" because : we are often too lazy to write "I and I," and the story of how a dying human farang in the vast under-construction chambers of the Bangkok subway met a dying run-away Orangutan (number #37) who had escaped from the torment of a private zoo owned by a Thai Phu Yai ... his dying moments filled with compassionate bitter regret at his own freedom while thirty-six of his brothers and sisters were supposedly "liberated" from where they had been hidden from the police in the clinic of the private zoo ... which Orang37 knew in his "heart of hearts" was just a propaganda stunt, and realized his so-called "rescued" friends and family were surely headed toward some new gulag, or the posh esoteric eateries where the wealthy Chinese dine on such delicacies as living monkey brains ...

While at the same time the human farang, near death, also, was haunted by his memories of his potential wasted, his loves' lost, his talents thrown away on things he now realized were trifles and ephemeral ...

That story which is punctuated by a cosmic singularity in which two dying wholenesses came to share a human meat-package (the farang's body) through some miraculous transsubstantiation that cannot be described, that also rehabilitated the farang's meat-package, and resulted in essentially two individuals in the same human body, one farang soul-mind, and one Orangutan soul-mind ...

Has already been told.

And we have already spoken of the difficulties of two beings of different species sharing one bag-of-bones-veneered-in-flesh : kind of like a marriage : communication can get sticky and iffy in a hurry, and the "until death do us part" thing, in this case, has a really "literal" meaning.

Orang37 has to send pure Orang thought which is to human thought like the scent of lotus flowers is to the buzz of horseflies on excrement, directly into his human's pre-cognitive processing centers, where the human then translates what he vaguely "feels" into morphemes, then translates the morphemes to phonemes in English, and then, finally, to glyphs.

As for how the human communicates with Orang37, that would be difficult to put in words, but we'd refer you to the story of Alice's game of chess with the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carrol's book for a clue : Flamingo Croquet to get to the gist.

But greater than all of these mysteries, is when you look in the mirror in the morning : and there you are.

best, ~o:37;

Dear Orang 37

Thank you for the lengthy response...none of which I can make any sense of, but thanks.

One thing you do state though that I find a contradiction is that you say that you use the word "we" instead of "I" as you are often too lazy to write "I"...this puzzles me as I= 1 letter and "we" = 2 letters, so you could well be wasting about a day a year typing that extra letter

I am sure you will feel obliged to respond with what will be no doubt be once again lengthy and be incomprehensible to a man like me with limited brain power.

But you could instead put all YOUR brain power to better use by counting the leaves on your favourite tree and report back just how many there are today, and keep us updated on a regular basis

Now that I would apprecaite

Best

TP

[WaiWai]

Winnie, yes.

We read and we appreciate.

[walt]

Sawasdee Dear Esteemed Orang37,

I couldn’t help but notice that you guys have apparently confused phonemes with morphemes since morphemes are composed of phonemes rather than morphemes to phonemes, and then to glyphs to relay inner thoughts. I know it must be difficult for you, having internalized two beings – it’s probably the orang part that prompted that small glitch since he might have a conceptual problem distinguishing between the two.

In any case, keep up the good work, and best to all of you.

Walt

[Thakkar]

Does anyone actually read through that?

Every word.

Where do I find the time? I do not watch Television.

Do I understand everything? By no means, but that's part of the attraction—I'm made to think.

Some of Orang's posts have led me on edifying and scenic internet detours for which I am thankful.

[orang37]

... snip ... One thing you do state though that I find a contradiction is that you say that you use the word "we" instead of "I" as you are often too lazy to write "I"...this puzzles me as I= 1 letter and "we" = 2 letters, so you could well be wasting about a day a year typing that extra letter

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun ThaiPauly,

Dear Brother, writing "we" only costs two keystrokes, but writing "I and I" costs seven.

We apologize for inaccurately describing "Flamingo Croquet" in "Alice" as a game of "chess." My human's mind is currently re-reading Eco's "In the Name of the Rose" : some footnote in the preface there mentioned an archaic manuscript source whose title included the word "chess," and there was some "bleed through" amongst his synapses resulting in the egregious error.

Thank you for the lengthy response...none of which I can make any sense of, but thanks. ... snip ... I am sure you will feel obliged to respond with what will be no doubt be once again lengthy and be incomprehensible to a man like me with limited brain power.

Dear Brother, we appreciate your kind thanks, and, please, do know : we do not confuse brain power, or intelligence, with vocabulary, and we pray you may also may not suffer that confusion which gives birth to the tyrant twins of arrogance and self-absorption, under whose despotic rule the collection of entities which collectively comprise the "soul" suffer terribly, the heart becomes jaded, even horripilated, and the beautiful ever-renewing miraculousness-in-ordinary of life becomes indeciperhable boring platitudes embedded in smudged ink on discarded newspapers.

But you could instead put all YOUR brain power to better use by counting the leaves on your favourite tree and report back just how many there are today, and keep us updated on a regular basis

This is a very interesting idea, and we see, here, your own creativity coming to the fore, in which we rejoice : for every spoonful lifted from that artesian well of the human warehouse of archetypes, and given form as metaphor, simile, conundrum, adage, idiom, analogy : is one step (the height of a lotus blossom) up from the muck of complacency, certainty, and boredom in which breed the maggots of bitterness, unkindness, and sloth.

But, for us, in this somewhat strangely delayed "bonus" tango, where Death has been cheated temporarily of two over-ripe specimens, "quantity" in all its lovely variation is not our focus, but, "qualia" is.

regards, ~o:37;

Edited January 21, 2010 by orang37

[orang37]

That story ...

Has already been told.

Where?

I logged in to ask .

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun WaiWai,

The story is in every flower, as well in previous posts on TV CM : it is even in the name you use here : "WaiWai."

Log-out, turn-on, tune-in ?

best, ~o:37;

Edited January 21, 2010 by orang37

[orang37]

... I couldn't help but notice that you guys have apparently confused phonemes with morphemes since morphemes are composed of phonemes rather than morphemes to phonemes, and then to glyphs to relay inner thoughts. I know it must be difficult for you, having internalized two beings – it's probably the orang part that prompted that small glitch since he might have a conceptual problem distinguishing between the two.

Sawasdee Khrup, Esteemed Brother-in-Linguistics, Walt,

We thank you deeply for pointing out a possible fundamental error in our use of language !

As penance, we are going to read Chomsky again, and make our thinking about language more kinky by an order of magnitude. Right now, we are already in a state of depraved intoxication where "lexeme," "sememe," "morpheme," "phoneme," "grapheme," "chereme," etc., are echoing in our heads with the sound of some gigantic buzz-saw.

Actually, we are going to "cheat," and just re-read Steven Pinker's magnificent "The Language Instinct" as soon as we can get it back from the friend we loaned it to : since, for us, he's the only one who has ever come close to making sense of Chomsky's esoteric linguistic analysis.

By "glyphs," of course, we do refer to the letter-forms, the written characters.

Hope you will post here on linguistics !

best, ~o:37;

Edited January 21, 2010 by orang37

[Donnyboy]

Wow I've got to stop reading TV posts while I'm high...

dear O'37

looks like you should belt out out few tunes from Bob Marley next time, to connect with some of our other CMTVers

[jdinasia]

BTW...I may have missed the reason bit just why does the OP write "we" instead of "I" in all his posts.....something I have been meaning to ask for a while

orang37 is a Orangutan possesed by a human being - or vice versa - and both contribute to Thai Visa. Many people enjoy his posts, but some don't. If some of you don't want to read them, may I suggest either not opening his threads or using the "ignore' button, rather than giving him shit.

I know him personally and I think his posts are pretty cool if you take the time to think about them, but if you don't and you keep it to yourself, I don't think that he will mind.

I choose option number two

[realthaideal]

Howdy Orang.... Sorry to be a stranger recently.....

But we were cosmically connected in a juggernaut of confined and clustered Thais as were you yesterday. We'll leave it up to Sir Meadish to chime in with any Thai spelling, but yesterday there were a couple Kabuan Sadej's (Royal Processions/ Motorcades) holding up traffic around the barracks and train tracks. Quite the undertaking of the BIB's clearing the path and bringing calm, quiet, and smokelessness to the streets of Chiang Mai. At least for a few minutes until the caravan whizzes by at speeds worthy of contemplation.

Word has it that HRH Prathep is/was in town, no doubt looking after some of her many proejcts, and maybe even some graduation ceremonies that have been taking place Mor Chor this week.

Donnyboy... I know the duality of the Orang does not partake (which makes his intergalactic and lyrical musings all the more scary!), but dang you scored with that photo ! Worth more than a 1,000 words, that one.

[IanForbes]

I made the mistake of riding out to the Nimmanhemen Road area yesterday afternoon and ran smack into one of those processions where all traffic is diverted elsewhere... and usually in a direction you don't want to go. I didn't think Royalty was still in Chiang Mai. I never did get to my intended destination and had to return later in the evening. Oh well... TIT.

[Tywais]

I made the mistake of riding out to the Nimmanhemen Road area yesterday afternoon and ran smack into one of those processions where all traffic is diverted elsewhere... and usually in a direction you don't want to go. I didn't think Royalty was still in Chiang Mai. I never did get to my intended destination and had to return later in the evening. Oh well... TIT.

CMU Area - heavy traffic

[walt]

We thank you deeply for pointing out a possible fundamental error in our use of language !

As penance, we are going to read Chomsky again, ...

Sawasdee Dear Esteemed Orang37,

First of all, I must thank you for not disclosing the backwardness of my trial argument with both of you – the statement regarding which comes first, phoneme or morpheme, in our consciousness. You made no error at all.

But since you mentioned Chomsky, I can’t help but add the remark that I am sure you will remember one of his first publications (before he found his true calling), that infamous blue-colored monograph of 1957 titled, “Syntactic Structures,” in which he utterly demolished the Skinnerian model, S --> R, s -> r, (you remember those days, don’t you?) of language analysis. After many pages of devastating logic that had one absolutely convinced that he was speaking from “On High,” he said something like, “But in case you don’t believe me, that’s OK, because the real reason Skinner had it all wrong is the following. … And then he did it again!

Ever since then, I keep getting things mixed up, like which comes first, phoneme or morpheme, since it might not make any difference anyway.

Again, thank you for your thoughts and much appreciated discretion.

Best to you,

Walt