Late-night Bohemians

Am I the only person around here who goes in for a late-night Breakfast?

Having celebrated her 18th birthday last night, my niece, who is staying with me while she does a course, set off for the tube station to attend her college. A rather forlorn phone call has just told me she is on her way back: her Oyster card for reduced rate 16-17 year tube travel has expired overnight and she hasn't got enough money.

Welcome to the world of the adults.

b/c BCUK just deleted an Ace bolge of mine.

Anyway, a late night over here & about to push off to bed.

Positive developments on the YouTube front!

This is the funniest thing I have seen for ages.

http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/gordon-browns-downfall-prequel.html

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/today_now_how_to_pretend_you_give

Enjoy.

Has anybody else noticed how the guy on the left doesn't just have yellower teeth, but the grey hair in his mustache is yellower too? How does whitening his teeth lead to the bristles in the picture on the right looking whiter as well?

Harry Nicolaides is in big trouble. A time of heightened political tensions in Thailand, with rumour, political censorship, strikes, protests, a state of emergency and the government barely functioning is not a good time for this rather odd fellow to be arrested on charges of offending the Monarchy, the one Thai institution all sides claim to be loyal to above all else. Talk of a nationalist military coup in the air does not help.

The Australian writer and blogger Harry Nicolaides has managed to get himself arrested, apparently oblivious to the extreme peril he'd placed himself in after the publication of his book Verisimilitude, which contains a trenchant commentary on the political and social life of contemporary Thailand. His own publisher's press release describes the work as an 'uncompromising assault on the patrician values of the monarchy'

An excerpt quoted says:

“From King Rama to the Crown Prince, the nobility was renowned for
their romantic entanglements and intrigues. The Crown Prince had
many wives “major and minor “with a coterie of concubines for
entertainment. One of his recent wives was exiled with her entire
family, including a son they conceived together, for an undisclosed
indiscretion. He subsequently remarried with another woman and
fathered another child. It was rumoured that if the prince fell in
love with one of his minor wives and she betrayed him, she and her
family would disappear with their name, familial lineage and all
vestiges of their existence expunged forever.”

Executing a warrant which had been secretly issued in March, Thai police lieutenant-colonel Boonlert Kalayanamit said comments in his book were deemed defamatory to the royal prince. Nicolaides, reportedly unaware of the warrant's existence, has been denied bail and is being held at the Bangkok Remand Centre. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in jail.