Read here for more explanation of the title.
I am sure all of you have read yesterday’s post - bbb is joining the team. I am pretty stoked about this for a number of reasons. Technically bbb has already helped us to perform a blog upgrade and will be on hand to share the burden of running a blog. Contrary to popular belief - there is very little money to be made in this game and it takes a certain amount of hours per day to keep it running. Not only is bbb a WP guru but he is a great writer but I am sure most of you already know that. So many thanks to bbb for joining the blog. Let me talk about some other ideas we have.
We want to keep pushing for decent reader submission material. Contrary to popular belief - writing a decent post is not easy. We only publish maybe a 1/4 of stuff we get emailed to us. Most of it is too short, too opinionated or is just not entertaining. However I encourage people to keep trying since I know there are other writers out there.
One idea we are going to push is the notion of allowing readers to donate money to writers that can then be used as credit in the bar. The blog is about the bar and what better way for all of you readers out there to show your support. bbb will be working on this functionality over time. Stay tuned. This should be fun.
Everything in life evolves. Myself included and with that the blog. Most people probably don’t even know the origins of the blog but one night I was so frustrated with my life in HK that I stayed up all night to register this domain, start a typepad hosted service, and bang out my resignation letter. Got everything done by the morning, took a shower, grabbed some coffee and went to work. First stop was my boss’s office to let him know and second stop was my work computer so I could email my managers in the states. Done. I never felt so liberated in my life. It was a scary but exhilarating time.
Here we are in the present. The blog is a much different beast, so is my life and so are things in Thailand. The world is undergoing some notion of a global recession and it has arrived in Thailand. There is no doubt about this. We press on though.
The first freelancer party will be this friday. Not much to announce here. For customers there will be happy hour all night long and hopefully a chance to ogle girls playing pool. How bad can that be? This is the beginning of the push for freelancers. We had to get a couple months of the bar under our belts first. Plus we needed to perfect the Mango McMuffin - which is pretty damn tasty I would say. The freelancer thing won’t be easy - we never thought it would be but this is the first of a party devoted to attracting freelancers to the bar.
That is it for now.
Here am I floating
round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.
Well, as long as you’re into Bowie for a while….sounds like the theme of the first party will be:
“Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma’am!”
(From “Suffragette City”)
Let us know how it turns out.
BTW…thanks for the BBB archives.
View all comments by The Asian Badger
I was thinking of writing a note to the boss to tell him what a shit boring job I had then realised that the boss was me. I had a brief meeting with myself to try and inject some motivation but I stormed out half way through
View all comments by doctorbond
Yeah, I like that whole “donate money to the bloggers” idea.
I’ve got twenty baht for Young Penfold… where do I send it???
View all comments by Werewolf
I was “rumbling stumbling” into the Mango last Friday and Saturday nite and hemorrhaged cash two nights in a row. Had an absolutely great time doing it - getting my ass whooped in pool by In and Oh, etc. Really my mission was to buy any of the bloggers a beer as this site along with Werewolf, Ghost, etc, are my daily readings online.
And then its flush cache on work PC :-).
My postage is marked as “return to US” so not sure when I can get back to Bangkok and Mango but an ability to fund a beer for these bloggers here and there would be something I would enjoy doing.
View all comments by fugu
As an occasional submitter I think that idea is fantastic.
View all comments by bkk22
ab - have to thank bbb for deciding to place them here
dbond - sounds painful
ww - dare I say england?
fugu - well at one point u will be able to do just that. good stuff.
bkk22 - everyone can use beer money I think.
View all comments by smitty
We have to figure out the b2b link to Lolita’s so a BJ can be donated, and to Eden for a 3some donation, and Tulip for a porn star massage experience, and the list can go on. Then folks can say “What a great post. That made me laugh and it made me cry. That dude deserves his balls massaged. Click.”. This can work.
View all comments by pmmp
@PMMP: Web 3.0 - PornPal! Allowing you to pay for your buddy’s nut since 2008!
You would probably have to host the company in Tonga or something but its doable…
View all comments by fugu
smitty, forgot to ask, did you invite Georgie over tomorrow for a McMUFFin?
View all comments by pmmp
fugu: Excellent, and another example of how technology is saving this planet. Is Tonga where they have natives running around wearing nothing but coconut shells?
View all comments by pmmp
p - i invited him for friday but he said he gets plenty of mcmuff.
View all comments by smitty
WW - “I’ve got twenty baht for Young Penfold” - you took him long-time, then?
View all comments by Pants Elk
@PMMP: could be but what I know about Tonga is that I think you can host just about anything there…
View all comments by fugu
pe - man YP is getting expensive. bbb told me he was free.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
sideshowBOB: I believe by “free” he meant “available”. Penfold needs to get paid… he’s saving up for another tattoo if he can find any available un-inked skin.
You know I haven’t seen or talked to him since the 30th of May… is he actually still alive?
View all comments by Werewolf
Is Tulip really that good? Walked by it a thousand times but never ventured in.
View all comments by bkk22
It can be. Check out the reviews: http://guide.2thebigmango.com/thailand/bangkok/massage/shops/sukhumvit/thong_lo/tulip-massage/
I’ve only heard of one average experience.
View all comments by pmmp
@ bkk22 - There is only one good reason for ‘walking past’ Tulip and that is, for example, if you were an random englishman, lets call him ‘Doc’… who took on face value the Big Mango Guides assertion that Tulip opens at 10.00 a.m. and turned up at 10.30 only to find he had to walk past it a few times until it’s real opening time of 11.00 a.m.
View all comments by doctorbond
doc - try to do the world a service and they bitch.
that’s just mean.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
Tell me about it sideshow… ungrateful bastards - dontcha just hate em?
View all comments by doctorbond
After reading “Maid Service Required” and noting the racy banner ad you may need to establish a BBB post rating scale similar to that of the motion picture industry; the newbies should be given fair warning.
I’m not happy about missing the 8-8-08 party but after 2 months in Bkk I’m due for a liver detox and need to breath the dry Southwestern USA air to rid me of the Bangkok crud cough (the drugs did not help smitty…should I be concerned?)
View all comments by Bubba
A bad shag at Barons is right up there with the best you’ll ever have!
View all comments by Moo Uan
b - u should be down right ashamed u are missing the party. U need to take the full dose baby and the whole pack. dont pussy around with it. we can’t censor here. It would not be right and google banned us already anyway.
gai yang - what is barons?
View all comments by sideshowBOB
The former name of Tulip’s or part of it, isn’t it?
View all comments by mart
Tulips is the illegitimate offspring of Barons.
Back two governments ago, the superstars of Barons jumped ship and started their own operation called Tulips.
You’ve gotta love girls who take their job seriously!
View all comments by Moo Uan
Tulip Massage = great value
http://bargirlsrpeople2.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/tulip-massage/
View all comments by Werewolf
penfold you are taking a hammering here,maybe your reputation?
tulips i can reccommend ,i stayed at the rex hotel which was very ordinary but walked past tulips and afer reading about it,thought bugger it(a penfold saying for sure) i walked in and picked a nice lbfm and she lived up to her title ,3 times in 1.5 hrs -could hardlt walk out and went back to the rex and slept for 3 hrs and had a quiet night -love a girl who takes pride in her job-and the fact i tipped her 1000 bht if she would do a special job on me..
keep up the good work guys ,its great,ill chip in for the bloggers,maybe do a storey on nightlife in samui one day.-if anyone needs an update anyway.
View all comments by zepplin
I think it’s only fair to note that fugu made the recommendation for the Big Mango Blogger Beer Bank a few weeks ago:
http://bargirlsrpeople2.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/embarrassment/#comment-4205
But the real credit goes to an anonymous doner (MSB) who made the initial deposit:
http://bargirlsrpeople2.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/embarrassment/#comment-4194
Great minds on the cutting edge!
View all comments by Werewolf
It should be a 2-way street. If we donate to what we consider good blogs or bloggers then it is only fair that BBK pay us readers for all the unessasst time we that we have to waste because he cannot get to the point.
Fair enough!
View all comments by 8 ball
It must be nearly a week since someone gave BBK a slating, is this a record - give him a break guys! BBK IMO your contributions are always informative, accurate and well worth the time taken to read and no I don’t play or give a f*** about poker. If I ever meet you I would be happy to buy you a drink in the big mango and that goes for most of the regular contributors.
View all comments by Riodon
zep - we would love a samui update post or some notes we can roll into a weekly. bring it on.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
Anyone who has never written a submission that has actually been published really has no grounds to slate BBK. I find his stuff all very informative, of a definitive style and good basic primers to things and areas I’ve never tried or been in.
View all comments by Pattaya Ghost
pg - u describe how I feel about anyone getting on anyone here if they have not written anything - seems unfair given it is not easy to do and take some time to do it right.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
Tulip Massage, only been once and it was an average experience carried out on a knackered bed, and the waste bin full of used condoms and tissues was, shall we say,less than appealing.
I’d rather spend my baht at The Ring Fashion Massage in Soi 7/1.
BTW the Mango Blogger Beer Bank is a great idea.
View all comments by Jaiyenyen
PG & sB: So if you’ve never played football you can’t cheer or boo the players? C’mon you both know better than that. Do we all write only for other writers?
Aren’t you happy to hear praise from non-writers?
Why not criticism?
View all comments by Werewolf
ww - fine point but there is a difference between decent criticism and people taking the piss. I personally dont like it when people take the piss but have never offered up their own submission. MOst people will have an attitude change when they try doing their own. BUt yes - u have to take the bad with the good indeed.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
ssB - aside from politics I don’t often disagree with you, but I do on this point. According to your view a person who writes scathing remarks about style or content isn’t justified if they haven’t written a blog themselves. On the other hand, with upwards of 500 blogs to my credit I have the bona fides to be able to write those same scathing remarks and have them considered valid?
I can’t buy into that.
Not everyone is a blog writer, but that doesn’t invalidate their opinions of others’ writing.
And being a blog writer doesn’t validate the opinions of others’ writing that you may choose to express.
There was a blog and a long string of comments on this site back around the beginning of June that I saw for the first time last night. It was a piece authored by BBK about the Library. He was heavily criticized by PMMP in the comments, and was under an attempted artillery barrage of comments from Bangkok Bad Boy. BBB in particular was direct, somewhat personal, and attacking.
These are two of the most prolific bloggers in Bangkok over the past three years. Now, if they go on the attack (pmmp was calling BBK “creepy”, and he was the one who was being polite!) then because they themselves have written we are allowed to accept the criticism as valid.
But under the rule proposed by Ghost, someone who hasn’t written a blog but expresses the same attacking opinions against the same blogger would be out of line.
Hmmmm…..
I don’t buy it.
If you post a blog on the internet, and at the bottom there is a COMMENTS box, then I figure you have to be ready to not only take what comes your way, but welcome it.
If you can’t, then I figure your only choices are to stop blogging or turn off the comments box. It’s part of what comes of expressing yourself in a public forum.
And me? I sometimes criticize other people’s writing, especially if I don’t know them, but more often if I find that I usually don’t like someone’s ideas, opinions or style I just stop reading them when I see their name on something.
View all comments by Werewolf
I should clarify my point.
I’m fine with people saying they didn’t like a particular post. But tell me why. Don’t just wave your hand and say, “that wsa bollox.”
And, most certainly, don’t lump 29 articles into the same category that “everything he writes is bollox.”
Also, personally attacking his style, rather than simply saying you don’t personally care for it, is not acceptable. Neither is denying that his types of primers / essays are indeed a style.
Critics are fine. I read book reviews. But critics cite the reasons why they beleive a piece of written work is good or not. You wouldn’t pick up the N.Y. Times Book review and see a 2-sentence review stating “That book sucked. The author can’t write at all.”
View all comments by The Ghost
PG: Your comment followed on very shortly after 8-ball made his post at 7:46 a.m. Aug 6th. I have assumed that you were triggered by that particular comment, so I will use it as the basis for my next thoughts.
If it was not the trigger,then I apologize for assuming too much.
(a) 8-ball qualified it as an opinion (indirectly) by bringing up the idea of contributing to people we CONSIDER good bloggers.
(b) He made a very specific criticism — that BBKs blogs are too long.
He wasn’t personal in his criticism, addressing the blog, not the blogger.
It had the added benefit that, due to his presentation, it was a pretty funny comment in the context of the string.
Let me quote from one of pmmp’s recent comments (29 July 888, housecleaning, etc):
I thought 8-ball’s comment was concise, pithy, amusing and objective, fitting neatly into pmmp’s description of a “thoughtful” statment.
As for lumping BBK’s 29 blogs together — I think its okay to do it. BBK certainly does. He footnotes and cross-references his blogs. He writes them all in the same style, and, in my opinion, offers them as one body of work. Even you seem to recognize that in describing “his types of primers / essays”.
BBK has a style, for sure. I don’t understand why it’s unacceptable to attack style. Style and content go together. Writing is art as much as anything. A painting or a sculpture must be consistent with the medium used to present it. The subject of a blog must be presented in a way that is appropriate and effective. At times a writer may succeed and at other times he may fail, but we will only ever judge success and failure one person at a time and we will never all agree.
Thank God for that.
I agree that criticism should be specific, focused on the subject and not the person. In my mind, 8-balls short comment met those criteria.
View all comments by Werewolf
WW — It wasn’t really 8-ball I was replying to, although it did prompt me to write my initial comment. But the comment was really a reflection of my disapproval of a number of recent comments about BBK.
I can agree with most of your post, but the last part:
again prompted that gut feeling that, if you’ve never tried to write a blog piece, you don’t know how difficult it can be to construct something consistent with the medium and presented appropriately. If you have no experience doing it, then your credibility as ac ritic is diminished in my eyes.
Mostly, though, I was put off by generic and sweeping condemnations. Even saying “all” is work is “too long” is a weak excuse. The length, in my mind, is irrelevant if the content contained merits the length.
Critics may be trying to say his pieces don’t merit the length, but, if so, tell me why. Even better, write a post showing you can do it better. Just saying “it’s too long” is weak, IMHO.
View all comments by The Ghost