Sugar and Spice and is the Thai Government Nice?
So, for those of you who don’t know (most of you), I am now in a performance of Sugar (the musical version of Some Like It Hot), which means my life has become much more complicated, in a good way. Who I’m playing… well, that’s un poco complicado (I apparently have a minor degree in Mangled Spanish). Right now, though, I’m playing the band manager, which is kind of cool, because I get to spend the entire show hanging around a bunch of girls. Although mostly I get yelled at by the band’s leader… hmm. Anywho, it’s fun to hang with my old theatre friends, and I’ve met one or two lovely new ones, so, huzzah! and such.

Work on Pantheon continues to trek along, at a fairly good pace. The plan is to have a website up and in brilliant condition with lots of people reading it by this spring. And you will all read it and enjoy it. Just not yet.

Yesterday, the Thai government was overthrown (I’m too lazy to hunt down a link, but it’s the most important news story in the world right now, so find it yourself) by a military coup that is, ah, apparently not a military coup. At least according to its leaders. They have publicly stated that they do not want to run the Thai government, and that coups are a thing of the past. They simply want major political reform and the current Prime Minister ousted, claiming to still be loyal to the Thai King (constitutional monarchy and all that).

I’m not entirely sure which side I’m on for this one. If the military leaders are true to their word, I give them points for “new twist on an old routine” and for challenging government corruption. But (as of last night, anyway), they have yet to really explain what they want to replace the current regime with. I’m not a big fan of military interfering with politics (war veterans as presidents usually aside), and I’ve noticed that, historically speaking, most military dictatorships seem to lean to the right. Especially when it comes to human rights.

On the other hand, we have the current Prime Minister. Thaksin Shinawatra comes from one of the richest families in Thailand, and has been said to run Thailand “more like a corporate CEO than a Prime Minister.” That’s not an exact quote, by any means, but there you have it. I have to commend some of his policies- such as vastly improving impoverished rural areas of Thailand (and parts of Thailand are disgustingly poor, we’re talking third world level here) and working to grant universal health care to the country, despite major opposition. However, the man’s policy on drug use and related human rights is atrocious. In an intense 2-month anti-drug police fiasco sponsored by the Prime Minister, over two thousand people were reportedly killed in cases of supposed police brutality. So I’m kind of sitting out judgment on this thing until further notice. If anyone cares…

And finally, I want to laugh in the faces of all those pirates out there. Yesterday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and all day- despite being around theatre nerds and talking with my sister- I heard not one sentence in Pirate Speak. Hahaha!! No one cares about your lousy holiday, you scurvy-ridden bastards! Ninja Power!