Item #1: Thai politics

No, it’s not. It’s “The Sweet-talking Monkey before a Large Swans and Ducks’ Audience”, a watercolour by Alexis Peyrotte (1699-1769) and currently for sale at Sotheby’s Paris for about 5,000 euros.

I hasten to add that I am in no way trying to imply that that’s a royal parasol. Just put any Thai politician you wish under the umbrella, though, and it’s a near-perfect likeness of modern Siam.

Peyrotte was by title Painter to the King and Designer of Furniture for the Crown, basically in charge of the interior decor at Versailles. How he got away with this picture is anyone’s guess. But his flora-and-fauna-intensive paintings did find their way into the London home of Europe’s wealthiest family, the Rothschilds.

Item #2: The American presidential election

Don’t be silly. It’s part of an engraving by Theodorus de Bry of Liège (1528-98), who travelled a great deal around Europe but never laid foot in America. He made this from a watercolour by John White, who actually lived in Virginia colony among the natives he depicted, albeit not particularly well. Sotheby’s New York is selling this one for perhaps $50,000.

I really should keep this stuff for my art blog, Dali House.

“As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.” How ironic that the authorship of these words should spark a slugfest in court. Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that “the estate of Max Ehrmann” ended up in litigation over “Desiderata”, the inspiring essay he supposedly wrote. These are cynical times growing more argumentative by the year.

I recently came across the copy of “Desiderata” that I’ve been dragging around since the late ’60s. Reprinted below, it’s just as fresh and compelling as ever, as crackling in its elegant simplicity as a winter morning. I wanted to get a little background on it before posting it on the blog for the record, and that’s when I discovered that its origin remains perennially undecided, frozen in cryogenic confusion.

“Desired Things”, as its Latin title translates, was first copyrighted in 1927 by Ehrmann (1872-1945), a lawyer and part-time poet in Terre Haute, Indiana. As his descendants like to point out, he evidently wrote in his diary, “I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift — a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods.”

He wrote “Desiderata” and started passing copies around — without his signature. Circa 1959 the rector of St Paul’s Church in Baltimore, Maryland, included the poem in a collection of devotional passages he distributed to his congregation, and at the top of each page was the inscription “Old St Paul’s Church, Baltimore AD 1692″.

That was the year the church was founded, but at some point this was altered, deliberately or by accident, to read “Found in Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore: Dated 1692.” That’s what it says on the copy I have.

Any confusion that may have arisen was tolerable until 1965, when Adlai Stevenson died and a copy of “Desiderata” was spotted next to his bed. Evidently the former presidential candidate had planned to put it on his Christmas cards.

Stevenson being nationally popular, the story was widely reported, and the poem became famous, particularly among the peaceniks who had always championed him against Eisenhower’s war machine. Now the anti-Vietnam War crowd adopted it. In 1971 Les Crane’s spoken-word recording of “Desiderata” reached the Billboard Top 10 and won a Grammy. There’s more!

Cleaning up the Not-Actually-Junk-Believe-It-Or-Not Drawer and came across a few websites I used to toy around with that must be recorded here for posterity … assuming that this blog represents “posterity”. It’s a philosophical point.

For awful fun, this hilarious trio of sites is crowned by Wagenschenke, which I always referred to as “the drunken German” site since everything seemed to be in German, but I see by the address it’s actually Swiss.

The drunken Swiss guy wants to get home, and the point is to see how far, in metres, you can escort him using your mouse. He prefers to fall over a lot. Anywhere will do.

For simple-minded giggles, the award goes to the gleeful baby at CoffeeCup.com. You just bounce him around with the mouse and try not to laugh out loud.

And in terms of outright ingenuity, ScreenToys.com is packed with technical wizardry. It’s badly in need of an update, since Enron, John Kerry and Tony Blair are among the targets, and of course George Bush is prominent, but maybe they’re waiting to see who moves into the White House next.

Among the Java-driven visual treats are world leaders who are “rubberised” (a stunt you can also do with your own photo) and a squad of “economists” who can’t take their eyes off the stock market graph, plus “Hunt the Lawyer with Dick Cheney”, a Bush to whom you can feed words to mangle (”pre-dorseylandificate” is how he pronounces this blog) and a couple of adults-only-style recent additions.

That darned old truth is such a slippery sardine that it sometimes takes the news media quite a while to get hold of it. While the rest of the world watches the big American newspapers and TV news channels comically chasing shadows and holograms in their reports on President George Bush’s trip to the Middle East (hilariously described as “historic” and “aimed at restoring peace”), here in Bangkok we have plenty of chuckles too. Maybe more.

There was a rather humongous fire last Wednesday at an office tower on Ratchadaphisek Road, damage from which was first estimated at Bt100 million and then downgraded by the owner to “minor”. This probably doesn’t include the cost of fixing 10 BMWs and Jaguars sitting in a car dealership below.

Cyber World Tower is actually a pair of 40-something-storey towers owned by TCC Land, an arm (or possibly a leg) of Charoen Sirivadhana- bhakdi’s Thai Charoen Commercial Group, which flogs liquor and Chang beer.

Nation photo

Version 1 in the press: The towers were the horns that grew out a complex that contained the long-closed Tokyu department store and, under TCC’s stewardship, were being renovated ready for reopening, um, last month. Version 2: The former Srivara High-Tech Tower, home of the long-defunct Tokyu department store, had changed hands several times and, under TCC’s stewardship, the towers were being built ready for opening, um, last month.

Renovated and/or built for what? Well, the newspapers couldn’t say, and it would have perhaps been egocentric of my paper, The Nation, to mention that its shareholders were recently looking at this very site as a potential new home. It would have been a little embarrassing to report this, too, since The Nation has been backward in coming forward about the sale of its existing headquarters in Bang Na to — guess who? — Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi.

Well, what started this “towering inferno” and/or “minor fire”? An investigation has been launched, so we’ll just have to wait and see. If it’s the kind of investigation I think it is, we’ll wait forever. Not to worry: The Nation had the cause nailed down within 36 hours — bad feng shui.

Ah, yes, the ancient Chinese geomancy system. No, says The Nation, which knows a thing or two about the subject, feng shui is based on the ancient Chinese art of geomancy. Anyway, Panuwat Panvichartkul, profiled in the paper in 2004 as “seemingly the busiest and richest” of Thailand’s feng shui “masters”, said Cyber World Tower was doomed by its physical positioning.

Panuwat, whose office is called the Science of Life Institute, blamed “two large turn-offs”, although it probably sounded better when he said it in Thai. The “turn-offs” are a convergence of two other thoroughfares into Ratchadaphisek Road, which he said steers “bad luck” and “negative forces” in the towers’ direction.

“The location is just not good,” he said, “even though there used to be a waterfall in front of the complex and two giant red balls were placed on the mezzanine floor to act as dragon’s eyes to protect the surroundings. Still, the mishap took place … There’s more!

Season’s greetings. Maybe. Passed on by my buddy Sam.

The following seasonal greeting has been through our internal compliance process.

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the solstice holiday, practised with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practise religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that our country is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

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This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Kind Regards,
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