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
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
Khao Phansa—roughly, “Buddhist Lent,” also known as the Rains Retreat, a time of spiritual renewal—began yesterday.
Sara came home late from a post-workday shopping excursion with Ms. Kook, her chief mentor in all things consumerist. They went to Siam Paragon Center, where many items were “70-80 percent off.” And what did she buy? A bunch of leaded crystal balloon glasses from the Czech Republic.
“Just look at all the money I saved,” she says, with a knowing … Read more
I made the mistake of going into an iStudio shop yesterday and sitting in front of a lesser version of this Uber-computer I could buy for half price, which is so sophisticated the iStudio staff not only didn’t have one, they found it hard to believe that Apple had let one escape into the wild. Never mind, even the lesser version, with its acres of screen space, the entire computer built into the monitor’s frame, already had me thinking. 
But … Read more
We’re afflicted, here in Bangkok, by an atmosphere of foreboding. The messy events of April-May might appear to be behind us. But this surface calm, in some ways, resembles a moonlit pool on a still night. You’d never suspect this pool is full of big sharks just waiting to erupt in a frenzy. All they need is for someone to toss them a nice chunk of something bloody. Yesterday’s bomb was the mere slice of a dorsal fin, a wee … Read more