KenW

OK OK already. I chose badly in mentioning comic names off the top of my thick skull. Points taken.

If you're a reader, and you can cope with literary - as opposed to pulp or best sellers - works, you may be interested in having your sister's grandchildren boast in 100 years that their great uncle had the foresight to have downloaded this. Anyway, amid such boasting, let me say that from 28 march through 1 april there is a 5 day free promotion where you can download to your kindle, tablet, electronic reader or computer this fine but long and difficult novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008324A3A It has something to do with me as author, by the way.

Having spent such a time back in Australia recently, as some of you know already, has meant spending lots of hours with family, including small children. To test little toddlers and others for sense of yuma made me think about jokes and the age we begin to appreciate them. Someone told me once that a finely tuned (subtle) sensayuma and intelligence were correlated. I accepted that without question. But over the jourrney you have to query. I mean are Stephen Fry, Ronnie Corbett and Steve Martin bastions of high intellect? Goodness. Anyway, to the topic. It also got me thinking about when we begin to appreciate humour and jokes. At risk of sounding up myself, I have vivid recall of my Year 1 (age 6) teacher Mrs Matheson ticking off a fellow classer named Gloria Faraway. Mrs M had probably asked a question - I have no recall - of GF only to find her absent in the response area. Mrs M said something to the effect: you certainly are faraway Gloria Faraway. I chuckled, getting the joke. Thought it wonderful. Not one other kid in the class laughed. Mrs M held her reserve, did not wink at me or let me know she heard my 6 year old cackling. But such was the impression, I recall it vividly to this day. That mix of getting the joke and having something up top fascinates me hugely. Any thoughts on your earliest joke recollections?

I've only just discovered this thread, and had time to read the final page or so. I've probably missed a lot, and will have to go back to start and read. But opening comment I can't resist, as what I've read so far seems to be a debate between advocates of the lone gunman idea versus all else, with the former seeming more popular. So many years ago, so many blurs in my brain, so many docos - in fact for a while there in the 90s or so it seemed like somebody was producing a doco a year or thereabouts all to prove or prop up the lone gunman hypothesis - so much transcript. Most of it foggy to me now. But one thing that I saw on the original footage that startled me, shocked me, and drew heavy debate at the Warren Commission too, and that I do remember, almost vividly is: the President slumps forward as he is hit by the first shot or shots (in the neck and/or shoulder?), Jackie reaches to him, secret agents panic, and then suddenly his head rocks backwards as the top of it is blown away by a shot from the front (the grassy knoll?). When I saw that, over and over across the years, with these 90s doco narrators ignoring it totally, it convinced me no shot from book depot or wherever had killed him.

Last evening's maudlin melancholy must have motivated this marvellous morning dreamlet: I'm sitting, in some sort of comfortable chair, watching the scene. Daytime. Ti Na (Bee) is standing a few metres in front of me, a toddler at her feet. She is engaging him in some way; it appears she holds a rice bowl, and spoon, presumably feeding the boy mouthfuls in the VNese maternal manner. She is wearing a tight sleeveless half thigh red number sans underwear. I can see her flaccid doodle lolling about as she moves her body elegantly in interaction with the infant. She is trying to get him to say "me" (mother). She laughs. End.

Coz we luv the Lil Taff.

That's cheered my drab Sunday morning up a little Woofer. Good joke. A human language without grammar - I must remember to use that as a charge against enemies sometime. I'd never thought of that as an outrageous put down before, but it's a beauty, in that "her shit doesn't smell" kind of genre.

While I was in Australia recently it was my Bee's birthday. I say somewhat mysteriously my Bee, for I still think of him that way, the One That Got Away. Or, more correctly, the one who trashed me till I had to run away. Never mind. We survive and get on with it. I searched back through this long written and anguished thread to check the dates. Mid year 2007. Goodness gracious me. My Bee is now full grown. I wondered and wonder how he's travelling. What catastrophes have soured his difficult and troublesome life. My beautiful boy. My gorgeous arminarm LB. The most magnificent physical creature I have ever known on planet Earth. Am I pining? No, just wondering. Many of you must have struck such an "if only" situation. If only he had turned out to be nice. If only his mother wasn't Bitch #1. Etcetera, ill met it were. Never mind. Drunk now I thought I'd write a few rambling comments to share with you the thoughts I have had recently, sparked by his birthday. Isn't that, as he often said to me, a beautiful set of numbers? Yep, sure was. And so much more was beautiful as well. Never mind. I saw the thread about favourite LBs, and pondered over dixon's perceptive comments, the like of which he has said to me in the flesh many times. Nevertheless, I'm not shy about admitting my folly, nor about admitting I regret things. And I do wonder how he's travelling.

Thank you technicians.

Thanks again bb for moving post #65 above to here where it belongs.

Thanks bb, well done mate.

Damn! I was trying to click on the Eating Out in PP thread. But the screen must have moved as I clicked (or am I just too drunk?) and I've ended up here in an irrelevant thread. Mods, can you help? Can you move post # 76 above into EOinPP for me please?

I have been enjoying pasta and pizzas back in Australia recently. I also have to say, with modesty, that I cook a bolognese sauce which suits my tastes to a tee (lots of garlic, ginger, black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, as well as the usuals of onion and tomato paste). I ate that two days ago, a kind of welcome home to myself now that I'm back in Saigon. Not that you can't get good Italian here. You can. There are good pizza outlets, and one or two very classy VNese Italian places downtown. As well as some ordinary ones in tourist areas. But I have to say, at risk of bringing on a slanging match debate, I still think La Dolce Vita in Phnom Penh is the best pasta joint I have sampled in the southeast Asia/Australasia region.

In some ways one would have to be into self deprivation not to include Lulu in any PP plans. Despite her pitiful lack of English (and of course the almost total lack of Khmer among most of us), communication can be difficult. Once I dealt with that through a waitstaff interpreter. Other times I merely sighed when the "I want fuck you Ken" statements issued forth with the same lumpy smoothness as the cum that would eventually dump in my arse. Ah Lulu... "How I missya, how I missya, My little Lulu..." I have to say that after all these years Lulu remains my favourite P4P LB, albeit given the impossibility of going any further with her due to language barriers. But be warned Readers, if you don't know already, to take Lulu on is to open yourself up (ha!) to serious fucking. She doesn't have a huge cock, but it's big enough to hurt. (Sorry Tel, that's rephrased as: big enough to hurt some of us.) And, being so young and fit, she has endless energy for flogging your body dead or alive the whole night through.

Angkor is one of the cultural wonders of the world. No matter how much we go on about cocks and deep voices, boys in dresses, one has to realise sometimes there is a world out there that is much larger than sex. The human story is one of amazing triumphs and sadnesses, much of which can be felt in those vast hectares of stone blocks brilliantly conceived, planned and engineered outside of today's Siem Reap. The only other museum I've been to there is the National in PP. Fascinating. I had a quiet lone learning morning there and will go back again.

As back up, for those who read, if you make it to Cambodia any time, there's a heap of good literature on this topic for sale as photocopy copyright violating cheap books on the bookstands along the Phnom Penh esplanade drag (for example). The two world experts on Cambodian history, David Chandler & Ben Kiernan, are at Monash University in Melbourne. Between them they have written 10 or so books on this.

Well done. I'll have to try to catch it next year or whenever.

Yes Sam, in 5 weeks in Oz I added about 5 kg to my bloated belly. Things do not indeed stay the same. To myself in my mind's eye I still see this naive teenager about to embark on life's fascinating journey. But in the mirror I see each day a fat jowled ugly old codger with wild eyes, straggly hair and Shane McGowan's rotten broken teeth all over the place. Who is he?

These past 5 weeks in Australia, in Melbourne's southeast suburbs, have been fascinating for a listener to Asian & other foreign languages. This area is now severely multicultural. On the 2 or 3 occasions each week I had reason to go to the nearest big shopping complex cum market, I was fascinated to sit, silently, in a centrally located table complex, and listen to what was going on around me. This is Australia, my native country. But nothing like the Australia I grew up in. That one was Anglo (Irish etc too), English speaking to a fault. The only languages available to us in curriculum at junior high school were German & French. (Those at the posh upper class private schools got Latin as a third alternative.) Indonesian? Nah. Thai? Never. Vietnamese? The commie enemy. Now I would sit, eating a pie or having juice or cold water, listening. Around me I could hear Cantonese, Vietnamese, Khmer, and subcontinental speak, other Asian speak, African speak, and behind me, every day, a group of aged coffee drinking Caucasian men speaking something that was most likely Bosnian or Serbian or somesuch. Fascinating. Made me realise once again the enormous value of language learning, and what advantages it brings to cross cultural interaction and understanding.

Coincidentally last evening's Paddy's Day drink at my local bar in Saigon turned, among 4 or 5 of us, into a Dylan memory lane chat. Don't know why; somebody just mentioned him and it got going. All oldish or seriously old, we could each come up with some bits of info on songs, albumn titles, dates, tours, when we saw him, who he played with, etc. Everybody in the discussion a fan. Dylan has been my favourite pop star for 40 odd years. Can't sing, but boy as others have said, can he write. Pacman's posting of the Mr T words an example. Last night in Heineken talk I raved on about classics such as Shelter from the Storm, Chimes of Freedom Flashing, Buckets of Rain, others went on about other tracks. I don't think there's been a pop star like him, so uniquely creative, with such depth of feeling to the words. As I said, he couldn't sing, but so what. Someone in a post above generously stated that he sang counterpoint. No. He sang off key and often flat. With nothing but a nasal snarl for a voice. Bing Crosby sang counterpoint, And he had a voice. Poor old Bob had to make do with being a creator of fashion. By virtue of great words and his inimitable style. He has already been awarded a special Pulitzer award (they virtually created a new category for him). By what I'm hearing, he has also been nominated a couple/few times for a Nobel Literature Prize. Hopefully the future will bring that.

I saw there was a festival coming up. Needless to say azza, none of the adverts I saw mentioned anything about LBs.

Well lets all hope the interior police or whoever it is in that country don't delete her.

O my! Who said oils aint oils? She gets my engine going. Just my colour.

Indeed. Sounds like Tel's kinda gal. I'm not into boots myself. OK in images, a bit erotic there. But in the flesh I suffer from foot fetish sindrome, so like to see them lil toze bare, and taste the taste and smell the smell.

During my 5 weeks stay in Australia I saw but one LB. At a street crossing of all places. I was in company so could do nothing about it. On the opposite footpath I thought to myself: is it, I wonder... Sure enough, when the light went green and the noise maker went durr e durr e durr and we all began to walk, I made sure I was on her side of the crossing. Adams apple givaway a standout. She was as tall as me, in jeans and a top, with some GGs. She was so dark, perhaps Cambodian, maybe Burmese; I will never know. I was in an area of Melbourne they call multicultural, dominated by Chinese (Cantonese speakers mainly), Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indians, Africans and burka wearing cultures (Balkans?). Fascinating place modern Australia. I was taken to a VNese pagoda. A Cambodian one is being constructed next door. Eateries are interesting by definition. The local library has book and magazine sections in all the above cultures and languages, and more. The banks and other such institutions all employ speakers from such cultures. The house/flat for sale/rent signs all gave contact details for real estate agents, not one of whom bore a Caucasian name. So vastly different from the bleak Anglo suburbs I grew up in, where white bread sandwiches were school lunch, and evenings offered meat and 3 boiled veg. Then last evening, second night back in country, I get dragged out to a new venue by a VNese drinking mate of mine. GG waitstaff, with one extremely attractive femboy who, fortunately, was assigned to tables 5 metres away from ours. I say fortunately, for my mate is 100% straight, and things might have got embarrassing had my tongue wagged if the waitboy came closer.