It must be the weather. Last time I felt like this it was the peak of the April heat. This time I think it?s the dreariness of rainy season wearing on my soul. Okay, what I?m trying to say is, I?m in a mood here. And when I?m in this kind of mood and I, as is my custom, peruse the morning papers, items that might slip by unnoticed at other times tend to draw my ire. So here I go.

Now, don?t get me started here, but, did any of you see that picture on the front page of Monday?s paper of the Dear Leader, Mr. Mue Teu himself, down in Yala presiding over the opening the ?T****** League?? And did you see that 25-foot-high billboard with a towering of photo of, guess who, in his wrinkled red toggies stumbing over a surplus football from the 1998 Asian Games?

Well, say this for Dear Leader: he does have balls. I mean, we all caught his act a week or so ago on the evening news when he was in the starting lineup in that exhibition match between the Thai government and the diplomatic corps. Talk about embarassing. There he was navigating his way through midfield with all the agility of a 75-year-old, coke-addled Joe Louis pumping his wheelchair to the front doors of Ceaser?s Palace so he could great the Vegas high rollers. What a scene it was as he waddled and wheezed his way toward goal with all the speed of the Burmese junta marching towards democracy, controlling the ball with all the skill of how he controls, oh, say, problems in Yala?, taking a futile, limp-ankled stab of a shot before finally being pulled off the pitch so that his pounding heart and soaring blood pressure couldn?t swell that big square head of his to even more unimaginably dangerous proportions.

Doesn?t Jerry Lewis have a telethon for guys like this?

Amazing that there wasn?t a defender in sight when he let loose with that cotton candy kick. Of course, who was gonna block this guy?s shot? Only someone who wants his tax returns pored over by the Anti-Money Laundering Office. Or someone who wants to find his name on a list of ya ba dealers down at the local police precinct.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines, all the loyal retainers were bowing and scraping and going Great Job, Boss, You looked just like Michael Owen. Thus the 25-foot-high billboards of Dear Leader with his mottled knees and cellulite calves inspiring the masses. Now why would all you ladies out there be lusting after David Beckham or Ronaldo when right here in your own backyard you?ve got this bristling hunk of manhood?

Did you notice that his baggy, polyester kit was all red? Still longing for Liverpool, I guess. What gets me is that nobody figured out why he wanted to buy Liverpool in the first place. The answer is simple: football hooligans. Just as the election campaign starts heating up he was going to get them all free flights to Bangkok on Air Asia. Then, as he gives them a personal tour of parliament he was gonna whisper in their ears: ?See that good-looking guy over there? His name?s Abhisit. He?s crazy about Arsenal. Teach him a lesson.??

Now national leaders strutting their athletic stuff is almost never a pretty sight. Remember Bill Clinton? Big Bubba bouncing his blubber on his daily jog around the White House lawn, Big Mac and coffee in hand. Didn?t exactly conjure up images of FloJo, did it? But at least the man put in his own miles. And as for Bush, well, I?d tell him to keep jogging -- Go chief, go! Give me one more mile, Mr. President -- because we?re all hoping that cardiac arrest is lurking just up around the next bend. But then that would leave us with ****(tator) Cheney. So, hey, GW, kick off those Nikes and kick back with a Budweiser, for all our sakes. But Dear Leader on the football field was almost as funny as Boris Yeltsin flailing at a tennis ball while stewed up on Stolichnaya. Have you ever tried that, Vodkaholic?

So this new league is going to cover Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. By the way, isn?t this the same guy whose troops RPG?d a mosque in that neighborhood a couple of months ago? Didn?t those guys wipe out an entire local football team that day? That?s a good indication that there already was a fully-functioning league down there. Guess whose league it is now? Talk about a hostile takeover.

So kids, forget about wielding machetes, burning down schools or joining your local al-Queda cell. Let?s play ball. And if you?ve got enough talent and bloodthirsty ruthlessness to win, someday you might have your own monopolistic concession you can list on the stock exchange. Someday, just like for Dear Leader, they might be putting up billboards for you.

Now I don?t know about you, but the whole thing was just a bit too Kim Jong Il for me.

Of course, that?s just how I feel about it. You probably feel different.