November 22, 1997

THE TRINK PAGE

Who cares about the great questions?

At least once a day, I'm struck by a thought - in the form of "Why don't?," "Why do?" - which if not forgotten immediately, slips to the back of my mind only to pop up for no discernible reason.

Often based on an observation, I try to make a quantum leap as from a falling apple to the law of gravity or a bubbling pot to the steam engine. But that's just it. Isaac Newton and George Watt quickly understood the significance of their perceptions whereas hard though I try, I am unable to take my sightings further.

I allow that I don't have profound thoughts. Not only don't I wonder whether there is a god, the place of Earth in the cosmos or the meaning of life, but even if definitive answers were given in my lifetime I would think: "OK, now I know" and go on with my life. It isn't that I'm not well-educated or incurious, yet such questions are unimportant to me. Like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Who cares? From my readings of history, my major at university, human beings have abused one another and the planet most dreadfully. And all too often, in the name of religion. Love thy neighbour? Who's kidding whom?

Men (and women) are a selfish and greedy lot, refusing to distinguish between our needs and wants. With few exceptions (e.g. Mother Teresa), we cut down the forests and deplete the seas for profit. For millennia farmers mindlessly practiced slash and burn agriculture, destroying the environment, no different in Thailand than Indonesia. Now we are asked to believe that they have a spiritual affinity with the remaining trees? It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

Half the globe is subsisting below the poverty level, so the haves contribute to organised charities to assuage our conscience. And a concert is periodically given to feed starving and homeless people (e.g. in Ethiopia, Bangladesh). The Red Cross and Doctors without Frontiers do what they can, which is far from enough. Beggars are something else again, a social evil worth only a few coins. "They can work if they want to. Since they obviously don't want to, why support their indigence with handouts?" so the argument goes.

One per cent - 300,000 - of the maidens in the Realm are demimondaines (my estimate until a comprehensive survey provides a more accurate figure). For 99 per cent, the world's oldest profession isn't an option. The one per cent isn't the poorest of the poor. "Why don't they seek socially acceptable employment?" I asked myself. When I ask them, they reply in almost identical terms: "Because it pays better and isn't hard work." And they are aware, through intuition and experience, that they supply a demand.

"Why do the wealthy, among the richest people in the world, keep grabbing without thinking that enough is enough?" I asked myself. In the US Rockefeller, Carnegie and others established scholarships and cultural activities. Which is unheard of in the Kingdom. Here it is only give me, give me more. A fleet of cars, houses and homes, travel and expensive shopping sprees, exorbitant allowances to their spoilt offspring, ecstasy and trigger-happy bodyguards and an attitude. "Do you know who I am? Who my father is?"

So God, the cosmos and the meaning of life doesn't enter their thoughts - or, much lower on the social and economic scale, mine. Knowing the answers to the great questions isn't going to change our lives or give it new meaning. Buddhism, teaching that happiness comes from giving up desires, is observed in the breach. I follow the Golden Rule myself.

A reader's definition. Beepilepsy - the brief seizure people suffer when their beepers go off. Characterised by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

PATPONG area bar girls/Go-Go dancers, long noted for their 2,500 baht fees for extra-curricular activities (short-time), are now demanding $100 in greenbacks - worth circa 4,000 baht - and are loath to haggle. Cases of "TIT" (This Is Thailand).

VISITORS from abroad are pouring in during the current tourist season, first-class hotels ranging from 70-95 per cent occupancy. Nitery entertainment areas are having an upsurge in trade. With ups and downs, it should last until Easter.

FIVE units on the third floor of Nana Entertainment Plaza (formerly part of the snooker hall) have been sold. Building work has started, with the intention of opening by Christmas. It will have a disco (not A-Go-Go) format and be called Tabasco Charlie's. The owners - American, Australian and a Scot - already have a disco in Bahrain with the same name.

The other units on the third floor (also formerly part of the snooker hall) have been taken by the Crown Group and will be used as accommodations for their lasses.

HEADLINE in the Anchorage Alaska Times: Messiah climaxes in chorus of hallelujahs.

A North Carolina man, having bought several expensive cigars, insured them against... get this... fire. After he had smoked them, he then decided that he had a claim against the insurance company and filed.

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars normally. The man sued. The judge stated that since the company had insured the cigars against fire, they were obligated to pay. After the man accepted payment for his claim, the insurance company then had the man arrested... for arson. Any comment would be superfluous.

HOTELS seem to hire PR girls primarily on their fair command of English. It isn't enough. One sent me a long handout extolling the musical group in its cocktail lounge during Happy Hour and accompanied it with a picture - of one of the cocktails prepared by the bartender. Common sense should be another criterion for employment. Agreed?

REGRETTABLY, Shrimp is discontinuing his highly-rated annual calendars. High investment, low returns, insufficient back-up in marketing the product, his involvement in other projects that have become more time consuming are the reasons. Our loss.

READERS replying to the question asked in my previous column largely agree that a Thai lady divorced from a farang can buy land after she gets back her Thai name and I.D. card. Now we know.

PEOPLE do stupid things, often self-destructive, which is reported in the local Press. True. What isn't true is that all such clippings are collected Down Under and are considered for the annual Darwin Award, given the stupidest. There is no Darwin Award. It's yet another urban myth, regardless of how many people believe it. Cases of "MANURE" (huMAN natURE).

YOU know it's going to be a bad day when it costs more to fill up your car than it did to buy it.

ACCORDING to L.M. Boyd, that bullring cheer "Ole!" dates back to centuries of Islamic rule over Spain. Started out as the shout of the devout: "Allah!"

A reader's oxymoron. Peace force.

ON a bumper sticker: "Keep honking... I'm reloading."

A reader disputes that p's and q's refers to pints and quarts ("No one orders quarts in Britain"). Rather he draws our attention to the printing trade, where the p's and q's were often wrongly set ("The tail on the p and the line on the q, when set upside down in reverse, would often appear in the wrong respective places"). Hence mind your p's and q's. Certainly plausible.

IT'S IN The Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam: "There still persists the notion that gunfighters shot from the hip. They did not. Neither, of course, did they take the careful two handed aim modern marksmen employ in today's peaceful target shooting contests.

"According to Wyatt Earp himself, as quoted in Stuart N. Lake's Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931),the successful gun handler was the one who took the time to aim (time measured, however, in split seconds), not the one who was the first to get his gun out of its holster.

"And the gun was fired at about the level of the waist, arm extended with elbow half bent. Earp maintained that shooting from the hip, and likewise 'fanning' the gun as sometimes shown in the movies, were certain paths to death or defeat.

"Nor did gunfighters ever shoot two guns at once, from the hip or anywhere else. They often carried two: one in reserve. And sometimes the 'border shift' might be employed, which meant transferring the loaded gun to the hand which held the emptied one, though Earp says it was rare.

"Another myth about the Old West is that it was common practice to carve a notch on a gun butt for each victim. Only 'outlaws who killed for the sake of brag,' said Earp, ever did this.

"The myth may have gained much of its currency through Bat Masterson who, like Earp himself, was finally to leave the West for 'civilisation,' Masterson to New York, Wyatt Earp to Los Angeles where he died at 80, peaceful and prosperous, in 1929.

"Apparently a New York collector had pestered Masterson for one of his frontier six-guns. Masterson finally obliged him by buying an old Colt at a pawnshop and then as a joke, carving 22 notches on the butt."

BUT, I DON'T GIVE A HOOT!