Been quiet the last few days; not in the mood for writing or taking photos for some reason; thyroid misbehaving perhaps.

This afternoon I headed into town to purchase a portable hard drive for she who must be obeyed, something to do with needing to carry her work stuff home, I wasn’t really listening. On the way through the mall I made my inevitable stop at a camera shop to mock their DSLRs and ogle their Micro Four Thirds collection. I have already promised myself that, once my toy kitty is sufficiently replenished, I will be “investing” in an Olympus OM-D. I sure as hell don’t need it, but I do desperately want it and have justified the purchase to myself based on my own warped set of criteria. In medical terms this is known as GAS, or Gear Acquisition Syndrome, and it is an affliction I have suffered from most of my adult life.

Anyway, I was just looking, no harm in that. Oh, and they had what I planned to buy in stock, fancy that. Oh, and they would offer a rather appealing discount for cash, how tempting. Such a shame it will be next month before I have sufficient funds. Just walk away Spike.

It wasn’t until I arrived home and inspected my purchases that I realised I had forgotten all about my wife’s hard drive. Still, can’t afford to buy it now.

In the brief time we have been together, I have rather fallen in love with my Olympus 60mm Macro.

Adopting a long-term foreign policy of fucking around in other countries for your own strategic interests has no doubt served America well over the years; and it has also provided a fertile background for movie makers. Two of the better films from last year are based on stories from that hotbed of alternately propping up and then blowing up shitty regimes, the middle east.

The problem with these stories can be that, unless we have been living under a stone or in North Korea, we already know what the ending will be. The challenge for the film maker is to create entertainment and tension even when the audience knows what is going to happen in the five minutes before the credits roll.

Rain overnight resulted in a damp start to the day.

It’s National Children’s Day in Thailand. I know this because the Google home page told me so this morning, and it even flashed up the slogan for the day: “Uphold discipline, enhance knowledge and bring Thailand towards Asean”. A bit of a tall order for a five year old.

“Daddy, how can I do my bit to bring Thailand towards Asean?”. “Shut up and have a balloon”.

Not included in the slogan is “spend the entire day being spoiled and behaving like an obnoxious little prat”; which is what actually happens. It’s best not to stray from home on this day, because all public places are rammed with parents desperately trying to find something to do with their expectant offspring. I received a text from she who must be obeyed, who has the misfortune to be working today, which read “stay away from town, it’s full of little shits”. And so it will be. Thousands of kids ignoring any minimal discipline their weary parents might be trying to uphold, enhancing their knowledge of eating sweets and whining for toys they don’t need, and bringing themselves closer to Asean on the way home by vomiting over the back seat of the car.

It’s not that we need a children’s day here. Children in Thailand are already spoiled rotten, especially the male of the species who is treated like a little prince until he is old enough to discover his genitals, alcohol and weaponry; at which point he turns into a feckless, lazy, spoiled, adult brat; impregnating without responsibility and generally behaving like an arsehole while his parents wonder what went wrong. “We gave him everything he ever wanted”. Precisely.

I may be giving the impression that I don’t like children and that’s just not true. I hate the little buggers. Of course there are exceptions. We all love our own children, it’s biology. But I must admit I found The Son to be something of a disappointment initially. As any good father should, I had installed a massive Scalextric track in anticipation of his conception. Sadly, once he arrived he seemed to be only interested in sleeping, eating, shitting, making impressively noxious smells for one so small, and crying a lot; especially when his father became angry because he refused to grasp the functions of a Scalextric controller. By the time he was old enough to appreciate my magnificent gift, I had broken it. Still, once he started talking and attending to his own toilet, he became a delight and continues to be so.

There are children I can tolerate for limited periods. Here’s one I snapped yesterday:

This is a wonderful time of year to catch up on the latest movies. Studios prepare copies of their best offerings, watermark them every twenty minutes or so with the slogan “For your consideration”, and then send them out to those whose job it is to vote for the Oscars and any other awards that are in the offing. Somewhere along the distribution process, copies disappear and end up on the internet as torrents for evil stealing bastards to download. People like me.