Crossing the Street

If you have a friend crossing a busy street and after he has committed to going and started his crossing, let me give you a piece of advice: don't yell "watch out!" or "wait!" at him, because very, very little good can come of it. Yes, I know you are worried about him and you probably think that you are acting in his best interest, but chances are that if your friend is smart (why would you have a dumb friend), he is keeping his eyes on the cars. Telling him to wait or stop, in addition to probably not providing enough warning in the first place, is only going to break his concentration and awkwardly wrong-foot him in the middle of a busy street. What does that get you? It gets people killed, that's what.

So, do yourself and your friend a favor. Trust him when he crosses the street. If you are going to give him warnings, do so before he commits. Once he commits, just do what you can do to make sure he gets across the street, because even if he should never have crossed to begin with, it is much easier to come back after already reaching the other side than it is to try to double-back in mid-crossing.

Where has Halloween gone?

I am back home in Kentucky now, a place where I haven't been during Halloween for nearly 15 years. What the hell happened? I made a special trip out to get candy this afternoon, but there have been all of four trick-or-treaters come to the door tonight. They came together. They came in their parents' car. It was a drive-by. I really just don't understand it. One of the reasons I rushed home was to be here on Halloween. Halloween was once a fun holiday. What happened?

On the flipside, the absolute lack of trick-or-treaters has allowed for my sister and me to sneak out other doors of the house and ring the front doorbell only to have other members of our family be disappointed as they open the door. It's all in good fun.

Who is Goo?

Goo is me. More accurately, goo is a Thai first-person pronoun and one of the genius aspects of the Thai language. You see, by referring to oneself as goo, one is actually being offensive to other people. Think about it for a second, what can you say about yourself in English that is offensive to other people? Nothing really. It's almost as if you were using the normal English pronoun "I" but with a silent "motherf*cker" appended.

But goo is more than that. Goo is a pronoun you use with close friends to show your familiarity, goo is how you can refer to yourself when fate and karma have mocked you, goo is often someone who is really pissed off. Goo can be so many things. So, Goo is me. I am Goo. And this is where Goo will talk about Goo.

Below is goo written in Thai. The character on the top is the "g". The character on the bottom is the "oo". Thai is a beatiful language that makes so much sense, more than anything else in the country.