A Brass Pole in Bangkok

<I>Oprah? I remember her said Uncle Hant reflectively. Looks like five hundred pounds of bear liver in a plastic bag?</p><P></I>So go the essays in <I>A Brass Pole in Bangkok</I> sometimes wildly funny sometimes deadly serious always merciless in their unmasking of the pretenses and charlatans of society. Fred a former Marine subscribes to no ideology (an ideology is just a systematic way of misunderstanding the world) but exuberantly wreaks havoc on practically everything and delights in everything else: the psychotherapy swindle squalling feminists race racketeers damn fool wars red-light districts in Asia and tequila fests in Mexico where he lives.</p><P>Why marry he asks? And answers: As a young man full of dangerous steroids your answer will probably be 'Ah because her hair is like corn silk under an August moon; her lips are as rubies and her teeth pearls; and her smile would make a dead man cry.' This amounts to 'I'm horny' with elaborations.</p><P>Behind the folksy approach lie a great deal of reading and thought by a man who has spent a lifetime in journalism much of it overseas in places like Cambodia and Taiwan where you find the snake butchers.but that is inside.</p>