The Chronic Intro

Ok, so I'm fairly certain that I don't have much to offer as a blogger.

I haven't bothered looking, but I'm positive that there are no less than ten people currently blogging about being an American in Thailand. At least one of them is smarter than I am (but no more than one of them). Another one is a better writer than I am, and all of them are more motivated than I am. You see, for an English graduate, I am an incredibly lazy writer (this is actually a fairly common syndrome among us). It doesn't matter what it is--fiction, poetry, emails, texts--I'll manage to find a way not to write it. The notable exceptions are academic papers, which I'm pretty much forced to write. I try to justify this character flaw all the time; my primary argument is that I expend so much energy when I do write, that writing becomes one of the least appealing activities when I am not required to do it.

And then I decided to go Thailand.

Suddenly everyone I knew--friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances whose names I may or may not know--told me, "Be sure to write me." "Fuck me," was my first thought, "am I going to have to write all these emails?" William Faulkner wrote, "I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and stopping." Writing emails to fifty people, that's a lot of starting and stopping. I told myself that if I were to get set on [writing], I might as well write a damn blog. If nothing else, I can just make them read this, instead writing a bunch of emails.

So here it is, Pad Thai & Chocolate Jesus, an (occasionally) fascinating blog written by someone who hates to write. I don't claim to be more interesting than most bloggers, but I have a few things going for me: a flawless memory for random pop culture tidbits and an eclectic taste in music ranging from Lil Wayne to Bonnie Tyler. I am interested in damn near everything, and I'll sometimes blog about living in Thailand. Once every week or two, I will post a semi-academic essay (minus references). I can't promise that I won't block quote myself like an asshole, but I can guarantee that at least one essay will be dedicated to sexual confusion in Disney Channel Original Movies. If that isn't enough to entice you to check this website obsessively for updates, then you're dead to me anyway. Here's my man Tom Waits, who is my everyday inspiration: