Anyway, come late afternoon the Attilas formed an axis of evil with Ferengie Steve and together they took the remote hostage and forced it to tune into ESPN. The rest of the staff of ENN (Always Opposite ESPN) managed, through brilliant military strategy worthy of our warrior blood, to rescue the remote and use it to tune into the BBC World News report, the only TV news program we could find that acknowledged the existence of Other Countries With Newsworthy Things Happening in Them.
Of all the news reports we watched during the day, this was the only one that actually had footage of the giant block party that took place in one of the world's cities that amazingly enough exist outside of the USA. It was a pretty awesome party, with bofires, water games, and people engaging in some major (de)construction work as they sang songs that called for the resignation of some guy who's been doing a very accurate impression of a Turkish rug for a long time.
And then we did a double take as the news presenter began reporting the when-we-say-resign-we-mean-it coup in Thailand. For a moment there we thought maybe we'd had way too much of the fruity wine and the plum juice and were seeing double. So we had a few more drinks to clear our heads and realized that, yep, the Thai military had actually taken over and kicked PM Thaksin Shinawatra out of office. We're still investigating whether he had done any amount of lying or if any tapes were involved.
What's somewhat surreal is some of the parallels between the situation in Thailand and that of the country where the water cannon Olympic trials had been taking place overnight. The similarities are not quite as impressive as those sheets that list the similarities between Kennedy and Lincoln, but they're still interesting. Check it out:
- Discontent among the masses had increased steadily in the past few months, and protestors were demanding that their PM resign, charging that he had undermined democracy.
- The military coup comes just weeks before an election. [The previous election -- in April!! -- has been declared invalid, something which the people of a certain country might want to consider doing].
- The currency traded down sharply as a result of the political unrest.
- The two cities where most of the stuff happened have names beginning with B.
Interestingly, and according to what we saw on the BBC World News, the coup took place quite peacefully -- there were a whole bunch of tanks circling the PM's offices, and many armed soldiers hanging around joking with the locals ("Two Prime Ministers walk into a bar..."). There was not a single car on fire, though irritatingly enough most restaurants had closed early, a very serious situation which might lead to severe riots organized by tourists craving some Thai pad. In the event that lawlessness should descend upon Bangkok, riot police have been deployed and ordered to spray rioters with peanut sauce. The hot kind.
So, the moral of the story appears to be that if you really want something done, you ought to look to Asia for inspiration. And if you crave some Thai pad, you better pack your own noodles.
Got civic discontent? Email the Adopt-a-PM Division of ENN at eza_news @ yahoo.com
