VOICES FROM THE INTERNET “Gus” and Abdullah As a widow who is still pining daily over the loss of her beloved, I never know what exactly will trigger a fresh bout of tears. The other day it was the actor, Robert Duvall, while seeing the movie “Crazy Heart.” My late husband, Abdullah, always loved to watch Western movies and I mean Western in the sense of cowboys, Indians and America during the height of the “Old West.” His all-time favorite Western movie was “Lonesome Dove” which is an epic story of two long-time friends, both former Texas Rangers, who moved a large herd of cattle from the South to Montana back in the days when America was still a wild Frontier. Robert Duvall played the role of retired Texas Ranger, Augustus (Gus) McCrae, a wily and crusty old cowboy who always came up with a solution to every problem. After seeing “Lonesome Dove” Robert Duvall became synonymous with Gus and Abdullah's favorite actor. Any future movies we saw with Robert Duvall, Abdullah would smile and say to me with enthusiasm, “Hey, it's Gus! Honey you know this is going to be a good movie.” It did not matter whether Robert Duvall was acting in a Western or in a modern-day movie, he always remained Gus to Abdullah. Last week I was able to go to the movie theater for the first time in years. I had not been to a bona-fide movie theater in so long a time mainly due to the fact that since the early 1970's movie theaters have been prohibited in Saudi Arabia. The movie I saw was “Crazy Heart.” I knew little about the movie or its plot before entering the theater. I did not know that this movie which was about the life of a middle-aged country Western singer down on his luck had Robert Duvall among its cast. What can I say…as soon as Robert Duvall made his appearance in the movie, I simply lost it. His appearance automatically triggered so many fond memories of me and Abdullah and the many times we snuggled together to watch a movie simply because it starred “Gus.” I sat there in the darkened theater with silent tears falling freely from my eyes while thinking how much Abdullah would have enjoyed seeing this latest film starring his Gus. — american bedu.com A prisoner's life This is the story of one prisoner at Samut Prakan Central Prison near Bangkok in Thailand. His name is Panrit Daoruang and he is known to thousands of people around the world as Gor. This prisoner is no ordinary Thai person. Ever since the age of 12, he has been documenting his life on the internationally acclaimed website thailandlife.com. Over the years he became Thailand's most recognized teenager. Newspapers hailed him as Thailand's youngest ambassador. Others said that he had done more to promote Thailand than the government-run Tourism Authority of Thailand. His forum for his ThailandGuidebook.com website has over 12,000 members. Gor didn't only promote Thailand culture and tourist attractions to the world. His most popular website at learningthai.com has hundreds of free lessons for learning the Thai language. Everyone agrees that this is the number one site for Thai language learning. The website receives over 6,000 unique visitors every day. That is a lot of people he is helping to learn Thai for free. Now that he is in prison, he hasn't stopped helping foreigners and promoting Thailand to the world. Due to his fluency in English, both foreign prisoners and prison guards often seek him out for help. In his spare time, he has also been writing his autobiography. The first volume was published in May 2007. All of the proceeds from this book are being put into the Educational Fund for his daughter, Nong Grace. She started Kindergarten in 2007. When he was only 16, Gor became the youngest columnist at the Bangkok Post (GorsWorld.com). Over a period of two years he wrote honestly about the ups and downs of his life. He wrote about his teenage marriage, the birth of his daughter and his darkest secret. He told them that when he was 15 he became addicted to drugs. This drug is known locally as “yaa baa” or “crazy drug”. Unknown to his readers at that time, he was still struggling to quit. The drugs had affected him more than anyone had first thought. Shortly after his 20th birthday, he was arrested by the police for drug possession. His parents put their house up for the bail and a year passed before he had to go to court. In that time he managed to stay clean and concentrated on raising his family and his Internet work. On Sept. 7, 2006, the criminal court in Samut Prakan sentenced Gor to six years in prison. However, this was then commuted to three years because he was persuaded by the judge at the last minute to plead guilty. Gor has always been honest about his addiction. He has always said that he wanted to send a loud and clear message out to the teenagers of the world. “Don't do drugs. Not even one time. It will change your life forever.” — Thaiprisonlife.com Junk Food: New Drug? Lays wasn't lying when they said you can't eat just one: Eating junk food is addictive, says a new study, “triggering the same sorts of responses in the brain that lead to drug dependence.” The study, conducted on three different groups of rats, found that “the obese rats had to eat more and more of the junk food to gain the same satisfaction,” writes Andrew M. Brown. “It's like saying the rats developed tolerance to their chosen drug, junk food, like smokers or heroin addicts.” The Atlantic points out that “the results also offer a new twist in how we view persistent obesity. If an obese person has to keep eating high-fat food to avoid the psychological crash of withdrawal, losing weight isn't just an easy matter of making better food choices.” “I've been saying this for years: It's a lot harder to quit sugar than drugs,” says Suburban Guerrilla. “And yet, as expensive as it is to treat diabetes and obesity-related conditions, why don't insurance companies send people away for dietary rehab?”
