2019 - Year Of The Cripple

2019, January and I was bed bound for six weeks as the most crippling of pains burnt, pierced, scraped, smashed, needled and electrocuted their way through the path from my neck to my left arm and finally my hand, leaving me with a half-paralysed grasp when it finally subsided after a chiropractic visit that took away the perma-pain.

This was my welcome into a brand new year.

6 weeks in bed, ditching the complex-care work I was doing and now up to my neck in bills with no occupation.

The neurologist was succinct. 

Half an hour of electric needle tests and he said you've got brachial neuritis and we don't know what causes it.

Six fucking weeks and I got a name to call it by, and nothing else except bouts of pain for the rest of my life and a gammy typing hand after decades of effortless writing.

That's when I realised I'd fucked up and not written the book I'd mulled over for half a century, while I could still touch-type.

Too late buster.

Had it...

Lost it....

Serves you right. 

Som nom naa (gala hua jok) as the Thais say. 

Anyway that's why I haven't written anything substantive for a long time.

So here I am, 2019... year of the cripple and bashing something out before I throw an iMac through the window to keep the neighbours entertained.

Ya hear me?

Good. 

I'm just beginning.

Toxic Prurience

Freer & Blue in Cambodia

It's been a few years now so I don't mind publishing these private emails as the lesson still applies today for those with ears to hear, and eyes to see.

My good friend Peter Doran in Bangkok was a self made multi millionaire. He was striking to look at, tough as hell and stricken with the most aggressive bouts of violent depression.

He was a dangerous man to be around, but he was also one of the most generous, funny and clever people I ever met. I considered him to be an older brother, but from time to time it came at great expense.

I recall once he was pissed off with his brother Johnnie who had left for New York and decided to stitch him up by finding out some hotel details of a client/friend who was staying at The Conrad in Bangkok. Earlier that day he had tried to overdose and I was starting my new job as Planning Director at Dentsu Bangkok. It was literally my first day and so I could only help by calling another friend (Frank Duvi) to go check up on Pete or Blue as we called him. 

As there was no answer from his bedroom, I instructed Frank to break down the door, a job he was capable of as a former French foreign legionnaire and Muay Thai boxer.

Anyway after work I headed over to Blue's and that's when he decided to take me for a drink down the Conrad. At the Diplomat bar, a place I frequented regularly, he pulled out a scrap of paper with the room number of his brother's friend, and proceeded to order a 1500 pounds sterling bottle of champagne on that rooms tab.

I was frozen with fear, as it was clear Blue was in a mess from his earlier suicide attempt, and he didn't look particularly credible with a scrap of paper reading the room number out to the bar woman. Anyway, she took the order and delivered the champagne in an ice bucket wrapped in immaculate white napkins. We drank it and then we left to head over to Patpong GoGo bars. I only breathed a sigh of relief when we got in the cab, and my next visit to that bar was very uncomfortable, as she recognised me, but didn't say anything. It was not my order but I was complicit.

In any case the reason I am bringing up Blue is because he had access to a mutual friends email account and he had made a habit of reading all his private emails on a regular basis for a couple of years. That is until, as you can see above, he forwarded me an email one day, thinking I'd work it out, but instead I blew his cover by responding to our mutual friend as if the email was meant for me.

Blue was very angry with me, our friend Tim Ramos the owner of the email account who was a multi-millionaire retiree from Hawaii was mad at me, thinking I'd colluded with Blue although I had done nothing but respond to that forwarded email which was quite insulting and so my reply was caustic to say the least.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to share that when the dust had settled, Blue admitted that having access to Tim's email had been corrosive and had fed an obsession that had become toxic to him in the end, as any addicted snooper and peeping tom will reveal when asking how and why their prurience had affected them.

I live a fairly open life and try not to have any secrets, because I know that it's your secrets that kill you in the end. 

I eat, shit, fuck, smoke, fart and wank like the old bachelor I am who prefers not to copulate with ladies just for the sex, as I feel it's damaging to be in a fake relationship, (although I'm always on the look out for someone special). Lady luck is always a possibility.

I have found that those who obsess over me, are always the same, and have recurring observable traits. 

Insanely jealous, insecure and inveterate liars who have no grasp that some of us don't lie for convenience. 

Snoopers are the meconium of the universe, and that applies to Pete's email 'hacking' and to anyone else who lives vicariously.

Get a life. 

Mine is already taken.

Blame It On The Muslims

I was noodling around and came across Kay Griggs. 

She claims to be the wife of the Chief of Staff to the U.S. Marine Corp (Semper Fi), in.. I guess it was recorded in early nineties going by granularity of the video? I might be wrong...

If what she says is true, or even just half of it...it's an exposé and no doubt. 

I'm assuming Marine' chiefs of staff (and the long-suffering wives)  are documented and at worst available by FOIA request.

Over the years, I have listened to criticism that Kay Griggs is nuts. 

I kind of see it, I wouldn't date her just because she drove a Saab convertible... oh alright I probably would....but don't blame her. The failing is entirely mine, and anyway, she fell for her husband because they both had Saab convertible cars and parked next to each-other. 

That's how she ended up married to a psychopath. 

The extent of her story is hours-of-recording-long, and even the best bullshitter is unable to Improv longer than 20 minutes, unless it's true.

Anyway, make your own mind up.... if it hasn't gone down the memory hole yet.