Collin still evolving: Surgical revision rools, OK!

“Does this mean you’re going to live to be 125?” my Sara asks. Her voice remains carefully neutral, non-accusatory.

The good news: All I need to do is drop a few kilos, I’m told, and I’ll have an overall fitness age somewhere in my mid-20s with personal training in Los Angeles. (“Fitness age,” I have to imagine, refers to something like “health-span,” which is enjoying some currency among transhumanists and their ilk. More on that in a later post.)… Read more

Flu season in Bangkok

Jack here.

The fever’s gone. I’m still sick, though. Never mind I’m sitting here like a fool—more like a two-bit hooker, actually—editing a massive, near-sadistically impenetrable document for money, not enough of it.

But let me tell you about my blissful, antihistamine-enhanced sleep last night. A serial dream—it bridged multiple pee breaks—had me much excited at a book idea. I’d decided the combination of the world’s longest palindrome (several long paragraphs) and a brand-new concept of time I’d come up … Read more

Qubital worlds save Pyramids from erosion by camel crap

Leary here. Wherever that might be (not to mention when).

Current affairs written on the wind (“mere ephemera,” according to my editor, which I didn’t ask). Right now, many of you folk back in 2011 will be fretting about political events in Egypt. The papers should be full of it. (You could still read newspapers back then, and they were often full of it.) No doubt the TV networks will be talking it up like they discovered Egypt only last … Read more

Mel Brooks rools the universe, OK!


From the man who brought you The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein–his latest comic blockbuster:

Reality!

Reality keeps changing. Before passing on the latest hard evidence for that proposition, however, let me tell you how I first tumbled to this interesting fact.

Authorities progressively less authoritative. Remember when you were a kid? Back when you believed your parents knew everything, and could always be relied on to give you the straight goods? That was back in a time … Read more

More greed is good

I recently saw Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with Michael Douglas doing a job of personifying greed for the first time since the first Wall Street, which won relatively more favorable critical notice, came out in 1987.

Critical opinion on Rotten Tomatoes seems about evenly divided. But I tend to be a-critical when I’m in the mood for escapism, and I reckon this film did the trick very nicely. I’d recommend it for fans and enemies … Read more

Writerly occupational hazards: Addictions, spinal deficiencies, and disciplinary infinite regresses


One writer, however much tongue in cheek, has actually expressed admiration for addicts:

I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster, or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of death from being a total surprise.     ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Overall, though, even Palahniuk would probably concede … Read more