Jokes and Stories from this months issue.

*A GRIM TALE of life in Moscow from the BBC's Foreign Affairs correspondent John Simpson: “Sometimes, every aspect of a news report seems to be hedged about with moral difficulty. In the winter of 1990-91 I took my daughter Eleanor with me to Moscow when I went to cover the increasing hardships caused by Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist economic policies. Eleanor was studying Russian at Bristol , and was acting as my (unpaid) translator. Everywhere you went in Moscow at that time a disturbing new phenomenon was appearing on the streets: old people were begging for a few coins. Having spent so much time in the Soviet Union , I was shocked by this, as were ordinary Moscovites.

“We decided to find an elderly beggar, film him or her, and follow them later to the places where they lived. We didn't have to go far to find our first candidate: a woman in her seventies who seemed to be suffering from Parkinson's disease. She was standing by the corner of the National Hotel at the foot of Gorky Street , her head deeply bowed, her right hand shaking uncontrollably as she extended it to passers-by in the hope of receiving a few kopeks. They were other beggars around, but they were gypsies and clearly belonged to one of the professional gangs which had recently been springing up. The old woman suited our purposes far better.

“So we filmed her, at first without her permission. Then Eleanor went up and spoke to her, asking if she would mind if we met her that evening and filmed some more. The old woman agreed. She lived rough at one of the big railway stations, she said. We fixed a time to meet her that evening. ‘Tell her of course that we will pay her.' I said. ‘How much?' asked Eleanor. ‘Five dollars.' I could see that Eleanor thought that this was meanness on my part, and disapproved. ‘Okay', I said, ‘twenty dollars'.

“The old woman's seamed face lit up with joy as I gave her the money, and she tried to kiss my hand. Twenty dollars was an enormous sum for a poor Russian at that time. I thought it was too much, under the circumstances, but I wanted to impress my daughter with my generosity.

“We went to the station that night. It was a vision of hell. Crowds of poor people seethed around in the gloom, taking advantage of the relative warmth of the place – it was a few degrees less cold than the streets outside. The place was also crawling with pickpockets. The floor was awash with dirty water from melted snow, and the only alternative to standing up all night was to find a seat to sleep on. But there were only a few of them, and if you got up your seat would be taken instantly. The stronger, tougher-looking beggars occupied the seats. The elderly ones had to choose between sleeping standing up or lying in the freezing water.

“Eventually, wandering around in the half-light, we found the group the old woman had told us she was with. No, they hadn't seen her since the morning. It was unusual, they said; she was always there, every night. The next day we revisited the spot where we had filmed her begging. She wasn't there, and the gypsies had taken over her place. In the evening we went back to the station, but she had never returned. It was then that I realised what must have happened. The gypsies had murdered her for the twenty dollars I gave her and dumped her body in some remote place. By filming her, we had drawn their attention to her. And by paying her so much, I had brought about her death.” (‘News from No Man's Land' by John Simpson, Macmillan 2003)

*NEWS EVENTS are sometimes blatantly staged. To this day you can find books about the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 which are illustrated with stills from Sergei Einstein's film ‘Oktyabr' made ten years later. The movie was much more convincing than the real thing, which was something of a damp squib. In reality, columns of armed Bolshevik volunteers queued up to get into the Winter Palace through a kitchen door, which someone had left unlocked. These men then forced a garrison composed almost entirely of cadets and women soldiers to surrender. That was it – the triumph of Communism in Russia in October 1917.

In the film, it's all much more exciting, with a wild bayonet charge across the square and all sorts of heroics before the capitalist system finally falls. There was no one on hand to take photographs when the event actually happened, but the stills look so impressive that you assume this is how a genuine revolution must be. Some people wouldn't have it any other way.

*QUOTES FROM the famous: “Once, in the wilds of Africa , I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days on end.” (WC Fields, 1880-1946, from ‘My Little Chickadee', 1940)

“No part of the body gets harder wear than the wishbone.” (Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900)

“It is time for the American people to look their government straight in the eye and say, ‘No more! We will make the decisions that affect our lives. You protect us from foreign aggressors and domestic criminals, give us a stable currency and a court of law, and we will do the rest ourselves'”. (Gerry Ford, President from 1974-1977)

“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not – this is knowledge.” (Confucius)

“Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.” (Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, 1912-1977)

“If I ever meet the man who invented Novocaine, I will personally get down and kiss his butt right on Hollywood and Vine.” (Burt Reynolds in ‘Hooper', 1978)

“Lovemaking has not changed. Thousands of years ago Greek maidens would listen to a lyre all evening.” (Woody Allen)

“Life is just one fool thing after another. Love is just two fool things after each other.” (Jay Leno)

“Nancy Reagan has had so many face-lifts that her belly-button must be located up by her throat these days. At night-time, mosquitoes use her cheeks to trampoline on – her face cheeks, that is.” (Joan Rivers)

“The human brain is a wonderful thing. It never stops functioning from the time that you are born until the moment that you stand up to make a speech.” (Paul Merton)

“I reckon that I'm now at the pimple of my career.” (Kate Moss)

*A JAIL sentence of 865 years imposed by a court in Bangkok on an embezzler was cut to 576 years because his statements to police after his trial had “proved useful.”

*A MAN was dining in an expensive restaurant. The waiter came over the inquired, “How did you find your steak, sir?”

The man replied, “Purely by accident. I moved the potatoes and the peas aside, and there it was.”

*THE AMERICAN comedian Groucho Marx (1895-1977) freely admitted to making a fortune out of insulting people. But in spite of this he was a popular man. As Irving Berlin put it, “The world would not be in such a snarl/If Marx had been Groucho instead of Karl.”

*ON THE bulletin board of a church in Ohio was this announcement: “This is a segregated church – for sinners only. All welcome.”

*FORMER OLYMPIC sprint champion Linford Christie has always been touchy about the subject of performance-enhancing drugs. Once, when he lost a race at Birmingham , a witty heckler yelled at him from the stands, “Hey Christie! The steroids aren't working! Get your money back!” Christie went ballistic and tried to vault the stalls into the mass of spectators and assault the heckler just like ex-Manchester United footballer Eric Cantona (remember him?) at Selhurst Park back in January 1995. Christie's tormentor was not fazed. “Oh dear,” he said as Christie, still shouting obscenities, was bundled away by two security guards. “I seem to have touched on a raw nerve old boy.”

*THE SIEGE of Mafeking , where 1,000 British troops were besieged by 8,000 Boers in what is now South Africa , ended on 17 May 1900. The British commanding officer was Sir Robert Baden-Powell, who went on to found the Boy Scout movement in 1908. His wife, Lady Agnes Baden-Powell, founded the Girl Guides organisation in 1910.

*THE THAI definition of a careful driver: One who looks in both directions as he/she passes through a red light.

*THE RE-ELECTION of Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan is hopefully a good sign for the country's future, for this is one of the poorest nations on earth. John Simpson (BBC) writes: “When Soviet forces invaded in 1979, there was much outright condemnation from the West. This was seen as Communist Imperialism of the worst kind, and rebel forces opposed to the invasion were supported by covert agencies of the West. After ten years the humiliated Russians hastily withdrew in 1989 just as the British had done in 1842. Moscow left a puppet ruler behind: a man named Najibullah, who strove courageously to unite the country and leave the irrelevancies of Marxist-Leninism behind.

“Now the foreign politicians who had made the most noise about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan started to grow silent. We no longer heard anything about the horrors that were taking place in Afghanistan from Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George Bush (senior) or Helmut Kohl. Suddenly, because the Russians were no longer there, it didn't matter. It was just a faraway Third World place of which we knew little and cared less.

“Najibullah was imprisoned by the combined forces of the mujaheddin in 1992, and for the next four years corruption, civil war and covert foreign intervention reigned in Kabul, and still nobody cared. In 1996 the last, worst twist of the downward spiral brought the victory of the Taliban militia and the cruel public lynching of Najibullah. The Taliban imposed 7th century Islamic law on Kabul, reducing women in particular to a sub-human species. Even now few in the West cared. Afghanistan had become the worst and most lunatic state on earth, but no one did anything about it until the USA was attacked on 11 September 2001.”

Suddenly, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden's reluctant hosts (who had actually done very little to support him) were discovered to be an evil bunch. Coalition forces bombed the country and helped the Northern Alliance drive the Taliban out. At last some good had been done, but the avenging angels of America did not achieve their goal and flush out the man who had become public enemy number one – Osama bin Laden.

Simpson continues, “It was hard, even at a time like this, to feel much enthusiasm for the responses of the Western world towards this half-destroyed, half-savage, half-civilised country. There is only one question left. Having discovered that Afghanistan mattered, would the USA forget it once again and withdraw into its shell; or would it, and the other powers that are in a position to help, understand that countries like Afghanistan are not simply adventure playgrounds for geopoliticians, but places where real people live, and where real suffering needs to be averted?”

*CHINESE PROVERB: “He who rides a tiger cannot dismount.”

*MORE QUOTES: “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. A magnificent desolation.” (Edwin ‘Buzz' Aldrin)

“Banking may well be a career from which no man ever recovers.” (John Kenneth Galbraith)

“There is no such thing as a free lunch. Eventually, at some point, you have to pay.” (Milton Friedman)

“Technological progress has merely provided us with a more efficient means of going backwards.” (Aldous Huxley)

“There is more to life that increasing its speed.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

“When you are as great as I am, it's hard to be humble.” (Muhammad Ali)

‘The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed on the same set of scales.” (Aesop)

”You cannot repent too soon, because you do not know how soon it may be too late.” (Thomas Fuller)

“In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.” (Winston Churchill)

“He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all that he knows, nor judge all that he sees.” (Benjamin Franklin)

“The richer I get and the more famous I become, the more ordinary I realise I am, and that my only real talent is luck.” (John Travolta)

*WHAT IS the fastest two-legged creature on earth? It might just be the giant Ostrich. This flightless bird has been clocked at around 80 kilometres per hour, and it can sustain this speed when being chased by predators. Cheetahs, which can reach speeds of 112 km/hour for short periods, rarely trade strides with these birds.

*A LOOK into the future. The year is 2029. Here are some of the news items – Fidel Castro finally dies at age 112. Cuban cigars can now be imported to the USA legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned smoking throughout the country. Ozone created by electric cars is now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia (formerly known as California). White minorities are still trying to have English recognised as Mexifornia's third language. A constitutional amendment is passed that allows illegal aliens to run for the US Presidency. A baby is conceived naturally: both scientists and doctors are stumped. A couple in NYC have petitioned a court to reinstate heterosexual marriage. The last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the ATM (the American Territory of the Middle East, formerly known as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon).

The state of Iraq is still closed off – physicists estimate that it will take at least ten more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels. George Z Bush says that he will run for President in 2036. Miss Nit Vanakorn is re-elected Prime Minister of Thailand. Her party, the Bargirls Association of Thailand is now acknowledged to be the leading political group in the country. The Postal Service in Thailand raises the price of a first class stamp to 1500 baht and reduces delivery of mail to Wednesdays only. A ten-year study costing billions of dollars finds that Diet and Exercise are the keys to weight loss. The weight of the average American male drops to 250 lbs. Japanese scientists have created a camera with such an amazingly fast shutter speed that it can actually photograph a woman with her mouth shut. The average height of National Basketball Association players is now 3 metres (9 feet 10 inches). A new federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036. The US Supreme Court rules that punishment of convicted criminals violates their civil rights.

English soccer fans still have high hopes of their team winning the 2030 World Cup – England has not won this trophy since 1966 at Wembley, London.

davidcox@loxinfo.co.th

The only way is UP

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this . . .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps

has more meanings than any other two- letter word, and that is “UP.”

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the

kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so............

Time to shut UP.....!

Oh...and one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?

U-P

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