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There hasn't been any postings in this section for a while, so I thought I would give it a shot. I'm starting my 2nd year of retirement and finally have realized I don't have to be home Sunday night to go to work Monday morning. I have been to Thailand several times for 10 days to 2 weeks. I thought I would give a 1 month trip a shot. I found an apt on AIRBNB. Heard good and bad, but this experience has been about perfect. Have a 1 bedroom, fast wi-fi, pool, little gym. I arrived at 1am so stayed in a hotel as I didn't want to go looking for the place and looking for keys at that hour. When I arrived the protests were still happening, so a 10 minute taxi ride here, took 1 hour. The roads are all open now, so just typical heavy Bangkok traffic. I found the Apt easily. The security guard had the key and it was that simple. Location is about 1/2 mile down Suriwong towards the river. I flew from Miami to Chicago on American, then Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong on to Bangkok. All in Business. Great flights. Had the mini Business cabin. It only has 8 seat, and only 3 were taken. Really quiet and great individule service. 30 hours door to door is a long day. I stayed in my first night trying to adjust a little to time change. For some reason hit me hard this trip. Next night I went up to Soi Twilight. I have a couple of friends that work at Hot Male at the outdoor bar, so I hang out there a lot. When I was last in Bangkok, (July) I met a boy that I really liked. He was from Vietnam and I figured would be long gone. Well I show up and as soon as I say hi to my friends, they all said my friend had gone back to Vietnam and just arrived back in Bangkok the same day I arrived and was upstairs working. Well that helped wake me up a bit. I went upstairs and looked around and didn't see him. Went to take a seat, and before I could park my butt, he was right there. I don't understand how these boys remember everything about every person they have met for years. I don't remember dinner yesterday. I didn't off him that night. At 350 baht a drink, we each had one and then I was out of there. The jet lag was still getting to me and sex wasn't high on my list. Drinks at outdoor bar were 150. He has been with me the rest of the week though. I have lived alone for a lot of years, so I don't need him with me 24 hours a day. So we meet up each evening for dinner, drinks and back to apt for a bit of fun. He really hits all my buttons so fun times for me, though probably kind of boring for a lot of you. Not into topping or bottoming anymore, but living alone the thing I miss the most is affection. This boy is amazing in that department. He is all over the place and I know so many of you like kissing...he loves it. He rams his tounge down my throat so much I am usually asking for a time out. Usually when I get here it's off to the massage places for a little fun, but with my boy, I haven't needed to. Next week I'm going to give him a night or 2 off so I can have a little taste of what else may be lurking out there. He also has promised me a 3 way with a friend of his that is arriving from Vietnam next week. When his friend arrives, that will give me an excuse to go off on my own. Weather has been great. 90 each day and 80 each night. Low humidity has been a big plus with a good breeze. Now that I have lived in Ft.Lauderdale for about 2 years, the weather has been much less an issue for me here. Probably the biggest problem I have with my boy is the A/C. He likes it set about 80 and I like it about 70. We comprise, but I'm still to hot when playing around. For those of you that have been here know what a bustling city this is. Right now it's as quiet as I have ever seen it. So many empty taxis and tuk tuks. Drivers are all saying, people are coming to thailand, but not coming to Bangkok. My flight Hong Kong to Bangkok only had 11 people in Business. This is the only trip I have seen empty seats. I had fast trak for emigration . 1 window open, and I was the only person there. It was 1 am, but airport did seem quite. All the intersections are open now and the protesters are staying in Lumpini Park. So safety not really an issue now. An other sign, every time I have been on SkyTrain , I have gotten a seat. Well my date for the evening has just shown up so it's off to Scozzi for dinner. I asked him if he eats only Thai or does he like some western food. He says he likes food any and all. Makes life so much easier. I'm not the best writer and pretty much seeing only one boy, doesn't leave a lot to write about. But I will see what I can come up with. Till then

Also put in Joke for the Day thread but wanted to make sure everybody sees it. Maybe it belongs in the citiguide! I live in "struggling actors". Can be quite fun helping them out with a little cash here or there...

Looking forward to your letters, Planetime.

Some of the craziness of the characters and the situations shifted to the other side of the equator. This review is from: A Confederacy of Dunces (Hardcover) This book is quite simply a comic masterpiece, a novel brimming with original characters, absurd situations, and at its heart a blustery, vulnerable mama's boy named Ignatius J. Reilly. He is one of the most startlingly original characters in modern fiction, and his efforts at hitting the job market after his mother smashes their car will leave you in stitches. A word on the history of the novel is worth mentioning here. The author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969, and his mother found the hand-written manuscript in her son's papers. She brought them to a publisher, who dreaded having to read even a portion of the work and to notify Toole's mother that it stunk. Instead, he was blown away by Toole's draft, and the rest is history. The novel earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, and it is universally hailed by critics. Trying to summarize the plot is impossible - the book cannot really be categorized. Ignatius is an over-educated oaf who stays home filling his writing tablets full of his offbeat musings on ancient history, which he plans to organize and publish some day but which presently reside all over his bedroom floor. Rome wasn't built in a day he reminds himself. He cites in footnotes, as authority for some of his offbeat opinions, papers he had previously written and hand-delivered to the local university library for inclusion into their archives. He watches dreadful tv shows and movies, howling at the screen with a mixture of delight and loathing at the teenybopper drivel, and in the privacy of his room his self-gratification is performed while imagining visions of the old family dog. And wait til you see him out in public, getting a series of odd jobs, including a filing clerk at Levy Pants (with very innovative filing techniques to avoid crowded file space) as well as a costumed hot dog vendor wandering around the French Quarter in a pirate costume. All the while he begins work on his latest opus, The Journal of the Working Boy. There is a latent sadness to the plot, for while you are laughing out loud at Ignatius, his bowling-addicted mother, and the motley crew of skillfully drawn supporting characters, you sense that he will never really belong anywhere, and that he realizes his outcast status with his innate intelligence. Perhaps the author felt the same way in 1969, leading to his own suicide. However, at least Toole did leave us A Confederacy of Dunces, a novel which reveals more with each rereading. Keep it on your shelf, and every now and then pick up the book to any page and marvel at the absurdity of Ignatius's grandiose ramblings, read exerpts of his bizarre historical writings, and revisit his comic efforts to organize a worker's revolt at Levy Pants. The list goes on and on. There is no work of litereature like it I know, and my only regret in reading Toole is the sorrow felt in knowing the tremendous body of work that was lost when he ended his life.

I don't understand those comments about brides. It all seems reasonable to me. Best regards. RA1

Only on a Dr. Strangelove situation. Best regards, RA1

I always try to remember to do this but sometimes I don't know what it might mean. After all, a conservative cock might be just as desirable, no? Best regards, RA1

Should I be rethinking moving to the south to escape these winters? These 9 Maps Should Absolutely Outrage Southerners MORE: Maps of AmericaThe SouthMapsPoverty Poverty in CanadaAccess to Health CareObesity RatesObesityObamacareMaps of the SouthHappy StatesBusiness News Look, there are lots of things to love about the South. It's clean and quiet. There's delicious food, good people and often amazing weather. But that's exactly why it makes us so sad to think about all the ways in which the region is struggling today. First off, poverty rates are a lot higher in the South. Source: USDA In fact, as many as one in four southern kids lives in poverty, compared to the national average of one in five. In the map above, red shading indicates a poverty rates between 17.9 and 22.8 percent. Orange indicates 15.9 to 17.8 percent; light orange, 12.2-15.8 percent; pale yellow, 9 to 12.1 percent. As you can see, there's a lot of high-poverty red in the south. And minimum wages are much lower. Source: Department Of Labor Virtually no southern states, with the exception of Florida, have a minimum wage higher than the federal floor of $7.25 an hour. Many southern states do have relatively low living costs. But they are not dramatically lower than costs of living in other states, such as Ohio and Missouri, that have set minimum wages at least slightly higher than the national limit. The southern states are doing the absolute minimum for their poorest citizens by keeping the minimum wage at the lowest levels possible. And people living in the South are a lot less likely to move up the economic ladder. Source: Equality Of Opportunity Project If you want to achieve the American Dream, don't move to the South. That's because states in the South have extremely low levels of economic mobility. In the map above, pale yellow represents places with higher mobility, while red indicates low mobility. Many living in poverty in the South are being denied access to affordable health care. Source: Urban Institute States that didn't choose to expand Medicaid under Obamacare are highlighted in lighter gray. ...which is costing these states a ton of money. Source: The Huffington Post This map shows how much money the 19 states that rejected Medicaid expansion will lose by 2022 as a result of doing so (assuming all other states participate). This is particularly troubling because the South has several health crises on its hands. Like obesity. Source: CDC Obesity rates are too high across the U.S. But they're particularly high in the South. Southern states also have a higher percentage of cigarette smokers. Source: The Huffington Post Most southern states have a higher percentage of smokers than anywhere else in the country. Incidentally, most southern states have relatively low taxes on cigarettes. And a much higher rate of teen births. Source: Zara Matheson + Atlantic Cities The map plots birth rates among women ages 15 to 19. In states shaded dark blue, there are more than 50 births per 1,000 teenage women. Perhaps all this is why some southern states are among the least happy states in the country. Source: Gallup That's according to Gallup's recent "State of American Well-Being" report, which surveyed thousands of Americans and ranked states based on an average of six measures: "life evaluation," emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors, work environment and basic access to things like food, water and shelter.

Insurance Companies as We Know Them Are About to Die And here's what's going to replace them BY EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL Read this copyrighted article at: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116752/ezekiel-emanuel-book-excerpt-end-health-insurance-companies