I broke my arm sk8teboarding.

It hurt.

And I'm pleased 2 other people (or Weasels) have chosen to Rec me even though this post makes no sense whatsoever.

However, if events do unfold as hoped, it means I can read the future and stop (small meaningless) unwanted events from occurring!!! In other words I will be all-powerful lord of the blogs and my avatar will no longer by a shameless over-hyped piece of self-promotion. With a smile on its face. Okay, I'll keep the smile. Just for old time's sake. And to worry people.

Oh yeah, the title? All green means of transportation, I guess.

Since Methane is a greenhouse gas, I believe we must remove the donkey from the green transportation list.

You'll pay for this, Desidero Creature. Oh yes, my pretty.

Say Goodnight.

Sorry. Lost in reverie there for a minute. From the early days with the Ice Weasels.

Back in '79, in this Thai brothel. Which, I know, doesn't sound too good. But don't worry, I was still a virgin, 19, and stayed that way for another year. So the virtuous and valiant remained intact.

Anyway. It was just over the border from Malaysia, where'd I been living, paid for by the government, one of those Youth Exchanges. I'd been enjoying it, learning like crazy. Learned how to make batik. Learned Malay. Spent hours in the rice paddy. Learned how to bathe under a sarong. Useful stuff.

Had gotten in shit a couple of times, though. Got called on the carpet by Mahathir, for spreading "communist ideology." As he put it. Funny, all I'd mentioned was that in North America, coops tended to be owned by the farmers, not the state. Funny, smelt like teen communism to him I guess. And another time, down in Singapore. That wasn't so good, that one.

Anyhoo, the local Malay guys we hung with wanted to show off. Thai hookers. Just the thing, they decided. My best buddy and housemate was keen. I wasn't. Gary. But we all jumped on the backs of those little motorcycles they had, and headed off. Only about 15 miles to the border. Once across it, another world. Malaysia'd been paved roads, uniformed cops, no drugs (executed if caught, they'd said), and Muslim. Plus, most of the local girls had been circumcised. Which may have had some slight relationship, we tried to explain, as to why Thai women were more "lively." Dumb fucks. Not that I knew this for sure, but even from my book larnin', seemed pretty likely.

Thailand? Day/Night from Malaysia. Muddy roads. Big old Chevies with their guts hanging down. Guys hanging out of the car windows, shouting at each other and at the girls. And fucking guns, everywhere. Seriously. Like metal tree branches, sticking up out of the windows.

You get out on foot, and it's an endless stream of these foul-faced little pimps, pushing women, girls, on you. "Puan-puan." Right in my face. And grinning. God, I hated those fucks. I was young, moralistic and Puritan as hell, but with good reason I thought. Still do.

Anyway, inside this brothel, another world. Teenage girls, naked, with plastic numbers around their necks. Parading back & forth behind a plastic sheet hung from the ceiling. Must've been some zoning law or building code, I donno. In this little shit-hole building, 3 stories maybe.

My buddy & our local pals each pick a girl inside 5 minutes, and bang... they're gone. And I'm left surrounded by tables of freaks, seriously drunk on Anchor or Singha or whatever their fucking beer was, naked chicks hanging off them, and they all think they're god-damn King Shit. I swear, each guy's the king of the world, cock of the walk. Tools.

As things go on, and they keep trying to dump the local goods on me, and I keep refusing, and my smile more than a little tight, I guess they figured I was insulting them. Which, I was. In my head. It was scum city, and they were scum. I was pretty clear on that.

The best part, really, was the Chief of Police. Sitting at a table up front. Big uniform, big gut, big everything. And he was getting done up every way to Sunday, for free. Whatever the Chief wanted, apparently, it was free.

Me? Well, by then, I'd gotten company. Friends. And Christ they were ugly. No, really. Two guys. Not big, no movie scene kinda baddies. Just little, stinking, I'd say they were ferret-faced, except it was more like ferret-assed. Pinched. Puckered. And the longer I had to stay, and didn't partake, the more insulted they got. One Malay, one Thai, I'd say, and apparently they knew one another. Or at least agreed on what they thought of this snotty white kid who thought he was too good for it all. Which is, in fact, what he thought.

So they're asking me questions, broken English, because at least by then I was smart enough not to let on that I could speak some Malay, right? Learn more keeping some things to yourself, and just listening. But the more I answer, in nice slow polite English, the more they don't like it. Or me.

Meanwhile, it's been hours now since I've seen my buddies. Nice guys, they didn't bother telling me they'd finished their business, and were now off chasing the dragon in a back room. Guess they knew I wouldn't like that either, being Puritan and all. Good call by them. Anyway, the fucking Chief of Police, I see him get up and disappear. Which made me more nervous about these asswipes around me. And only afterward do my buddies tell me they'd been chasing the dragon with HIM. Guess he'd considered it part of his ceremonial duties, to go back and hang out with my buds. I tell ya, they were freaking clueless.

Anyway. Buddy has a knife out now. Which made me unhappy. A Keris. One of those wavy bladed things. You know, the ones with spirits in them. Some good, some bad. Mr Bad Company's taken it out of its sheath, and placed it all dramatically on the table. He's asking me about it -- Have I seen them before? Do I know what they're for? What they can do? What's in it? He asks. Yeah, I knew. He keeps up all this shit talk, sneering the whole time. Cocky. Our guy was definitely cocky. Playing to his buddy, the tables around. Maybe some white guy had pissed him off at some point or other. I donno. In the right town for that.

But I get the picture. In fact, listening to the two of them talk, I get the message. "Cut." that's the kinda word that jumps out at you, repeated often enough. They're laughing, pumped, debating how much cutting they can do and get away with it. Clearly, the consensus opinion was... quite a lot. Which also kinda caught my attention.

On the flip side, I was wondering how much cutting I could get away with. And clearly the answer was none at fucking all. At least, if I wanted to get out of there. Which I did.

One way out. I'd learned it as a kid, time to test-drive it again. Reached across the table, slowly, asked the guy, in slow English, if I could look at his knife. He smiled... thought about it... chatted with his buddy... said... sure. I picked it up, admired it, ran my thumb down it. Then took it and put it at my collarbone. Just down from my shoulder. Stuck it in. Slow. Make it dramatic. Then slow dragged it down, through my shirt, through the skin, nice and deep into the flesh, then pulled it down my chest, just left of the heart, along my stomach, a good two foot strip in all. But deep. No sense playing around with these guys, it was important to make an impression. And didn't say a word, just looked straight at Mr Bad Boy, and smiled.

Shit, I'd learned back when I was a kid, a weird kid, that for some reason, blood never bothered me, nor cuts, and pain didn't even seem to raise a whisper until we were well into broken bone country.

Funny, but it worked. I sat there and bled like a dog for the next 15 minutes, while the one guy ran to get my buddies. Bled everywhere on that bike for the 20 minutes after that while we raced back to the kampung. And then, til I got bandaged up.

But I gotta tell you, what I really enjoyed, was the look on that one prick's face. Me smiling, and his face getting more and more twisted the further I went, as the shirt, the skin, the flesh coming open, and the blood just going... everywhere.

And when his buddy ran off to get my friends, I told him, in nice slow single syllable Malay, exactly what I thought of him. And precisely how much I'd enjoy....

My... how we laughed. Afterward. Me and the Ice Weasels.

But no, sorry, no gunfights, no beheadings, no basements, no bones left to bleach, a story not quite the stuff of movies, but certainly amusing enough to tell round our fire. The one from Singapore, that one was bad. Nothing funny in that one. The guy from that gang that caught us, in that alley off Bugis Street? Fuck. I had NOT been prepared for that one. That one went too far. But at least, it helped get me ready, thinking ahead, for Thailand. You gotta learn from these things, say the Ice Weasels. Don't make the same mistake twice.

Shut up and pass the pork, says I.