Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
“My girlfriend, the skipper’s wife and myself were standing atop a steep-sided limestone islet poking up just off a beach on Horseshoe Bay, Rinca Island, Komodo National Park. And more company was on its way. A hundred metres down the beach the way we had come, a 2.5m dragon was following hot upon the flick-flick-flick of its tongue, moving toward us as though it were very late for lunch indeed.”
Read the whole story: “Dragon’s Dinner Manque.”
Graham … Read more
One way to feel better, in these troubled times, is to buy an outrageously expensive computer for half price (see “Make yourself feel better and save $200,000 to boot”, 26 July; “No iMac for me, no siree!”, 2 August; “Let me explain” 4 August 2010). You can thereby save so much money you feel pretty rich.
Having thus propitiated the Great Gods of Consumerism and Mammon, and finding that you still aren’t feeling as … Read more
Remember what I said last time about Bibi Bulambowitz and all things New Agey? Yeah, well. I have a confession.
It’s as though Stephen Hawking has admitted he uses a Ouija board to explore black holes. So shameful is this admission, in fact, that I wouldn’t post it here did I not know almost no one visits my blog anyway, and one of the regulars calls himself Osho. Are you ready for this? I drink a magic potion every morning … Read more
The flu season is here.
I was coming down with a massive cold yesterday. The signs arrived the night before—a fluey muzziness, a cough, soreness in the chest. Past experience suggested I’d have a ripping head cold and sinusitis by morning, fever and a sore throat the next day, and a fine honking case of bronchitis to follow.
My old friend Bibi Bulambowitz is a vastly intelligent, worldly, emotionally volatile individual who has been living too close for too long … Read more
There’s a new and especially antibiotic-resistant bug on the loose, threatening to spread worldwide. As though we needed another new epidemic, not to mention all the floods and earthquakes and rising seas and so on. In fact the suspense is killing me, as I await the plagues of toads and suchlike falling from the skies (Exodus 7-12).
But the near-universal spread of the consumerist virus doesn’t get enough press. (Maybe that’s because governments around the world have every … Read more
I’m not going to buy the iMac. (See my earlier post 26 July: “Make yourself feel better and save $200,000 to boot“.)
I recognize the syndrome. The world is going to hell all around me, and I haven’t won any literary prizes this week. My girl don’t love me and my chickens all ran away, not to mention my cotton won’t grow (© Mad Max iMac McGinty), and I sit here singing the blues and wondering … Read more
I saw a letter to the editor in yesterday’s *Bangkok Post* that raised the question of whether exploration oil drilling could do any more harm to Samui’s natural environment than mass tourism has already accomplished. Same old story, wherever you go–the same scenes that are being “spoiled” for the old hand, are often “just wonderful, so natural!” to the first-time visitor.
Here’s a take I did on this notion years ago (first photo from www.phuket-trips.com):
The silence boomed. At … Read more
