No Christian, just a curmudgeon

My favorite song of the month is “St. Jerome the Thunderer,” by Dion. I’m not even a Christian, only a curmudgeon, yet I find this piece uplifting. Plus I can’t stop grinning every time I listen to it.

Yes, Dion is that same Dion DeMucci who recorded such ancient hits as “The Wanderer” (1961) and “I Wonder Why” (originally in 1958)—then and more recently). Now in his 70s, he rocks, totally—better than ever, an inspiration to anyone approaching … Read more

Starbucks and the social construction of reality

Sara and I are having breakfast at Starbucks. Being a kee niaow species of curmudgeon, I’m complaining about everything from the prices to the clonish docking of people and their digital devices. Discerning impatience in her manner, I eventually desist.

“Give me a break,” she says, going on to explain that Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee; it sells a lifestyle experience, and I should dummy up about it, she’s trying to relax.

Ah, I reply. So we’re banking some sort of … Read more

Pretty good sandwiches. Questions of relativity and quantum theory

The other day I went to meet the charming Ms. Weow at the new Dean & Deluca coffeeshop, a glitzy branch of the New York deli in what’s to be the ground floor of the Ritz Carleton Residences, still under construction.

On my way over, I phoned her to check that I had the correct location.

“Right at the Chong Nongsri BTS Station,” she said.

“West side or east?”

“Which way are you facing now?” she asked me.

“What do … Read more

Graphically engaging: The sequel

Has anyone else noticed what’s happening with skirts and short-shorts around Bangkok? (Or are writers just unusually perceptive?) Are there such things as benign epidemics?

Haikus are so much easier to write than novels. Of course the commercial prospects, including their chances on the Big Screen, are even more uncertain. Whatever. Here’s what I’m going to call a mixed-media haiku.

A spiritual (to be sung with full chorus)

God is there in the hemlines

Ascending, praise be,

Heavenwards. Oh, Lord.

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Sometimes just graphically engaging is plenty

Some years ago, while exploring caves in the southern Thai province of Trang, I came across stalagmites that grew on larger stalagmites like thick boar’s bristles, extending this way and that with apparent disregard for gravity, as though maybe seeking the exit. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how these things had formed.

Back in my hotel that evening, parked in front of the TV, I’m gazing in wonder, caveman-wise, at the moving picures. (I didn’t have a … Read more

Um… (attention-span failure)

Kindle Singles. Score one for iPad enthusiasts. Soon there’ll be no time to suffer the unfortunate effects of backlit screens. Kindles are better for extended reading? Yeah, well. Whatever.

Savage Chickens cartoon used with permission. Read more

Terminating terminal preposition bloggers

And another stereotype bites the dust. The language mavens are getting feistier, siccing hit squads on people who annoy them, in this case those who post items saying how ending a sentence with a preposition is okay, pace gangs of tsking grammarians from another age roaming our streets. The problem is, say the Language Log hosts, they get the same darned thing, again and again, and they’re sick of it. From now on, in fact, offenders will themselves be … Read more

Exploding apathetics and the mob rools, OK!

I wouldn’t normally bother commenting on this sort of thing, besides which I gather lots of other people have already expressed horror for a variety of reasons. (Though plenty of others applauded it, and that’s what alarms me.)

I believe exploding people can be funny; and, given the popular taste for gory entertainment, it’s hard to take offense merely on that score. What I do find disquieting is the blithe assumption, at least implicitly, that we’re all on the … Read more

Rx for rejected writers

Steve Van Beek, prominent local writer, film-maker and river specialist has just sent me the following encouragement to get off my lazy butt (interview with Philip K. Dick’s daughter) and do more to promote my series of darkly comic futuristic novels (underway) that will clarify most important features of reality in rippingly entertaining fashion. (Some opinion has it that I  write better novels than I do blurbs.) Certainly, Philip K. Dick is one of the most successful

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