Woke up under a rattan lean-to, smelling like damp earth, stale sweat, and something vaguely… herbal. Head felt like a gong convention inside a tin shack. Rod was beside me, sprawled out like a discarded puppet, one eye twitching, the other fixed on some point in the distant jungle only he could see.
The pickup was gone. All that remained were the lingering echoes of gunfire from the night, and the utterly certain knowledge that we had just spent several hours fleeing from a patrol of heavily armed orcs and goblins. Thai? Cambodian? At the time, it didn’t matter. They had teeth, guns, and that unmistakable glint of primal rage in their eyes. The kind you only see when you’ve accidentally smoked weed laced with enough acid to dissolve the space-time continuum.
The Border Blast and the Goblin Brigade
Yeah, the border crossing didn’t go as planned. Rod’s “contact” turned out to be a guy smuggling enough high-grade ganja to tranquilize a herd of elephants. Rod, bless his chemically-addled heart, managed to shatter a vial of pure, uncut LSD right over the motherlode he was perched on. “Waste not, want not,” he’d slurred, eyes wide as dinner plates, as we frantically tried to smoke the affected portions before the whole damn truck turned into a kaleidoscope of regret.
The next few hours were a blur of frantic motion, goblin faces leering in the headlights, the crack-crack of what might have been real bullets or just my synapses firing like a Fourth of July finale. Then, unceremoniously dumped on some godforsaken road, the world tilted and swam. Taxis? Tuk-tuks? Opening doors mid-swerve? Kicking a driver in the back of the head? The details are hazy, like trying to recall a bad dream while still half-asleep. All I know is we were running, running from the goblins, running from the sheer, unadulterated wrongness of it all.
Bangkok’s Backroom Ballad: Uncle & The Generals
We finally found this lean-to sometime before dawn, collapsed, and then, as the chemicals truly took hold, the “conversation” began. Or maybe it was just a shared hallucination. Rod, mumbling, eyes fixed on the dripping condensation from the roof, suddenly blurted, “Heard it on some crackly radio, man, before we ditched the truck. The Prime Minister, Pong Tan Shinowatra? Suspended! Over some goddamn phone call. To the ex-leader of Cambodia, called him ‘uncle,’ apparently. Criticizing the military. Can you believe that shit? While we’re out here dodging imaginary goblins, the real ones are back in Bangkok, playing their ancient, farsical games.”
He coughed, a dry, rattling sound. “It’s the same old song and dance, right? Military versus civilians, the shadow of the palace, those simmering border tensions with Cambodia – the very tensions that probably put those real patrols on high alert, the ones our drug-addled brains turned into something out of Tolkien. Her little ‘uncle’ chat, her jab at the generals, just poured gasoline on a fire that’s been smoldering for decades. Protests in Bangkok? Of course. The whole damn country feels like it’s teetering on the edge, one leaked conversation away from another plunge into chaos.”
The Primal Pulse: Why We Can’t Quit Being Apes
“It’s just… us, man,” Rod slurred, pointing a shaky finger at the shadowy jungle. “The apes with the atom bomb bit. Heard it somewhere. We’re built for this, this whole… fucking it up. Got this ‘proactive aggression’ thing, like those military goons, planning their coups. But then there’s the ‘reactive’ shit, like you kicking that poor tuk-tuk driver, bless his terrified soul, ’cause he looked like he was gonna sprout fangs!”
He paused, then squinted at me. “But then, if we’re so good at bashing outsiders, why are they always fighting each other? The Thais, the Thais… same damn team!” He paused again, eyes scanning the dark, as if looking for an invisible chalkboard. “And get this! Apparently, we figured out ‘self-domestication.’ Like, we got good at not killing each other in the tribe, so we could really go nuts on the next tribe over. But when the ‘tribe’ is a whole goddamn country, and everyone’s got different flags in their heads, then it’s just one big circle-jerk of hate.”
War, What Is It Good For? A Cultural Adaptation
“And war?” Rod continued, his voice gaining a strange, manic clarity as the acid chewed through his remaining brain cells. “Apparently, it’s not some ancient curse. It’s like… a thing we invented. Like agriculture, or bespoke artisanal coffee. Popped up when we got all settled, started drawing lines in the sand. Before that, apparently, we were just… chilling. Hunting, gathering, not nuking each other over a rice paddy. And get this! There are ‘peace systems,’ actual places where people figured it out. Like, they just didn’t fight. Crazy, right? Like the hippies won! For a bit, anyway.”
Shadow Play and the Phantom Foe
“But the goblins, Rod,” I whispered, the images still fresh in my mind. “The fucking goblins. They felt real.”
Rod nodded, slowly, gravely, his face illuminated by a sliver of moonlight filtering through the leaves. “They are real, man! But they’re also… us. Heard this wild theory, ‘shadow projection.’ You know, all the shit you hate about yourself? You just slap it on someone else. Turn ’em into a monster. So whoever’s causing all the trouble back in Bangkok, they’re probably just seeing their own ambition, their own fear of being weak, in the other side’s strut. And those military clowns, they’re seeing their own paranoia, their own lust for power, in some poor politician’s ‘loose tongue.’ We make our own demons, man. We dress ’em up in fatigues and give ’em AKs.”
The Ghosts We Carry
“But what about this whole place?” I asked, feeling the weight of the humid air, the ancient jungle pressing in. “It just feels… heavy. Like there’s ghosts.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Rod sighed, rolling onto his side. “‘Intergenerational trauma,’ they call it. Like a bad trip, but it just keeps looping through centuries. Wars, coups, massacres… it’s all in the air, man. People carry that shit around. And then they project that too. It’s a goddamn recursive nightmare.”
A Glimmer of Sanity (Or Just More Acid)
“So… no hope?” I mumbled, maybe more to myself than to Rod, who was now snoring softly. “Just endless goblins?”
But then, I remembered Rod’s final, almost whispered thoughts from the depths of his own trip. “Nah, man, there’s always a glimmer. This same brain that conjures up goblins, it also does… compassion. And cooperation. Little babies, man, they’re born knowing how to be cool. And all those old spiritual cats? They all said it, right? We’re all connected. It’s called ‘realistic hope.’ Not like, ‘everything’s gonna be sunshine and rainbows,’ but like, ‘it’s possible to not be a total goblin, but you gotta work at it.’ Heal the trauma, figure out your own shadow, make friends with the next tribe over. It’s a ‘shift in consciousness,’ man. A big one.”
He’d almost whispered, “And it starts in here, man. In the head. In the heart. External peace? That’s just a reflection of what’s going on inside us. So the work of peace, it’s not just some UN bullshit. It’s… it’s like meditation, man. It’s the most practical, spiritual thing you can do.”
Squatting here, covered in dirt, probably still hallucinating slightly, that felt like the biggest ask of all. A shift in consciousness? When the world is run by people who get suspended for a phone conversation, and the border guards look like they just crawled out of Mordor?
The Only War That Matters
So, here I am. Lost somewhere near the Thai-Cambodian border, possibly still tripping balls, contemplating the dual nature of man and the political downfall of a Prime Minister over a phone call. The goblins might still be out there, or they might just be in my head. But Rod’s acid-fueled ramblings were right about one thing: the real battle isn’t on the border, or in the courts, or in the streets of Bangkok. It’s in the twisted, paranoid, occasionally brilliant mess inside the human skull. And judging by the state of things, we’re losing that war badly.
The immediate imperative: some goddamn vehicle. A bus, a truck, a stolen elephant, anything that points back to Bangkok and isn’t actively trying to induce another vision quest or spark a goddamn border war. Because frankly, I need a proper drink. A strong, brain-numbing torrent of liquid oblivion. I hear there are watering holes in Bangkok – the kind tucked away in humid alleys, or lurking in the shadows of five-star hotels – where the ice is melting faster than your last shred of sobriety, and the morals… well, let’s just say they’re negotiable. My kind of place. A place to forget the goblins, real or imagined, for a few blessed hours.
For more dispatches from the edge of sanity and civilization, check out my previous report on the Paranoia in the ‘Dam: Is Social Media Watching? Truth Decay & Big Tech.
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