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gobbledonk

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Everything posted by gobbledonk

  1. This little girl wasnt famous, but I hope she finds more peace in whatever-comes-next than she did on this fucked up planet: http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/12462779/us-babysitter-beats-dismembers-girl/ May his time in jail be long, brutal and completely without possibility of parole.
  2. Good point, but Singapore wasn't inherently 'corruption free'. Whatever his faults, I often wonder if Australia could use a benevolent dictator like 'The Father of Singapore'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew Like many countries, Singapore had problems with political corruption. Lee introduced legislation giving the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) greater power to conduct arrests, search, call up witnesses, and investigate bank accounts and income-tax returns of suspected persons and their families. Lee believed that ministers should be well paid in order to maintain a clean and honest government. In 1994, he proposed to link the salaries of ministers, judges, and top civil servants to the salaries of top professionals in the private sector, arguing that this would help recruit and retain talent to serve in the public sector. I found the 'well paid' paragraph interesting - several here have pointed to the low pay that most Thai cops get as prime motivation for ongoing corruption, particularly as the gap between rich and poor widens in Thailand. Somehow I cant see the middle class agreeing to higher taxes to increase the pay packets of the boys in brown.
  3. Jesus, suddenly my life doesnt seem so bad. Good luck with it - I've spent a lifetime avoiding 3 places : courtrooms, hospital beds and jails. God favours fools and drunks, I guess.
  4. I'm tempted to say more about Ali, but you guys are right - this is about Joe. RIP.
  5. Damn - Munchy must have a direct freakin' link to the Obit section at AAP ! I always thought Frazier was under-rated, and I agree that a lot of people lionised Ali while ignoring Frazier and Foreman. All 3 were streets ahead of most who came after them, particularly other heavyweight boxers. I dont remember anyone trying to bite his opponent's ear off, although I will concede that the 'accidental' headbutt seems to have been a feature of the sport for a long time.
  6. 92 isn't a bad innings, and its not as if he lived most of his life perched in front of the telly with a beer and a TV dinner. Now, where did I leave that beer ?
  7. Phew - at 52, I can only manage 2 of your 3 pet hates ! (am I the only one who loses 10 kilos when I start walking the streets in LOS ? Seriously - hit those Skytrain steps on a hot, muggy day and I look a lot better within a week or so)
  8. Yup, some prophetic stuff from Steve, but then he HAD just 'beaten' cancer and was very aware of his own mortality. 56 years on the planet, but I could live 3 times that and still not have a single original idea - you are either born with that kind of creative (and marketing) genius or you arent.
  9. gobbledonk

    Nong Khai Bars

    I don't know if its a reflection on Vientiane (!), but everything I read on expat life in Laos points to Nong Khai as their 'escape valve' when they need a little more excitement in their lives. I've only seen it during the day, but I can imagine myself at one of the riverside cafes at sunset, gazing into the liquid pools across from me and thinking 'I wonder what those poor bastards are doing back in BKK ?'
  10. I saw them in Oz somewhere around late 2002/early 2003 and he was in fine form then. Always felt a bit sorry for him when he had to play the triangle (!) and other simple percussion on tracks that didnt call for a sax, but I'm sure there are thousands of 'starving' jazz sax players who would have given their right arm for his pay packet. They were able to move on when Danny died, but this will leave a huge hole - no doubt there will be a line-up from the Brooklyn bridge to the Jersey turnpike if The Boss holds auditions for a replacement.
  11. Flash, I felt the same way. I love it when they show you a hard luck story about a former high flyer on Wall St (or Hollyweird) who has hit 'hard times', as he leaves the courthouse and gets into a 911. Nothing like slapping your ex around to really put a dent in your ability to stay on top of Porsche's model updates.
  12. Sadly, I think that's true - how the others have lasted this long is a mystery. Maybe they've moved onto 'extreme planking'.
  13. Thanks Bada - as I said, timeless. You could play that in 50 years from now and, Buddha willing, spiky-haired kids will still be blown away.
  14. It is with considerable sadness that I have to pass this on: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/e-street-bands-clarence-clemons-dies-at-69-20110618 No mention on the local news here - I guess the E Street Band arent as well known as their front man - but thats 2 gone from the original lineup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Street_Band If you havent heard Clemons' wailing solo on 'Jungleland', I strongly suggest you give it a listen. Timeless.
  15. Hang on Flash - didnt YOU survive SVN ?
  16. Great - she is gone from a planet short on beautiful women, and Cheney still breathes.
  17. Way to go, Coss - I just think back to where I was roughly two years ago and I know that the day WILL come, even if right now I feel like I'm in a prison of my own making. I have to start counting my blessings.
  18. T Minus 600 days and counting. Stuff it - might as well stay here until I dont have to book a return flight, ever.
  19. Man, this is better than 'The Bold and the Beautiful'.
  20. Way overdue, KS, way overdue. Give yourself a spanking and thank me in the morning
  21. I'm moving to Kota Sorong, simply because no-one has the slightest clue where the bloody hell it is.
  22. I could only live with that kind of boredom if I was making the big bucks, but apparently those days are well and truly over for foreigners in Dubai. Brunei, however .....
  23. Guys, again this is my naivety speaking, but isnt the focus of the FBI supposed to be the stuff that happens *within* the borders of the USA, and the CIA focusses on the stuff outside ? I'm not saying they dont overlap, but I would have thought 'McVeigh - FBI, Bin Laden - CIA' : in a perfect world, they would share whatever each had on McVeigh or Bin Laden, but (correct me if I'm wrong) one of the major issues identified after 9/11 was a 'silo' mentality within each of the intelligence services. For those who feel that I was overly critical of the CIAs actions leading up to 9/11, it appears that I wasnt the only one who felt that way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11#Internal_review_of_the_CIA The Inspector General of the CIA conducted an internal review of the CIA's pre-9/11 performance and was harshly critical of senior CIA officials for not doing everything possible to confront terrorism. He criticized their failure to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States and their failure to share information on the two men with the FBI.[247]
  24. Thanks for the feedback, guys - I know you have no more power to change US foreign policy than I do, but its sad that the CIA have more power than they did pre 9-11, an attack which they failed to protect the US people from. I dont know if its a conspiracy theory, but you will all have heard about the warnings coming out of the FBI in the days before 9-11 : I guess its all history now.
  25. Flash, I freely admit that I watch way too many docos made by lefty types with an axe to grind. Even if 50% of what they say can be attributed to the CIA is fact, its just scary. As the American who spent a lifetime trying to help the people of Laos, particularly the Hill Tribes, put it 'This isnt about body count - they didnt leave any bodies. These people were vaporised, incinerated and torn to pieces in the continual bombardment'. I could insert quotes from Wikipedia on the amount of ordnance that the USAF dropped on Laos, but its all a moot point now - the US lost to both the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao, a generation of young Americans was scarred by a war they didnt need to fight and the US literally sowed the seeds for another unwinnable war : the war on that-of-which-we-dare-not-speak. Don't even get me started on Cambo : thats a topic for a whole new thread.
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