Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,174 entries, all of them here in full.
October 6, 2009 · 304 words
Resting Place
Here I am at my parents’ final resting place. “Resting” being an understatement, since their activities may also include flying, swirling, scudding, and fertilizing giant fir trees. My mom passed away a little over a year ago, and my father twelve years back. His ashes have since resided in a kind of shrine I built [&h
Read entry →October 1, 2009 · 547 words
Nero’s Movable Feast
A few years back, when we were in Rome, we visited the Domus Aurea, the Golden House built by the Emperor Nero during the last years of his reign. This fabulous 300-room palace was the centerpiece of Nero’s entertainment empire— walls were plated with fabulous marbles, or ivory, or frescos. A large part of the [&
Read entry →September 29, 2009 · 620 words
Doomsday Now!
Doctor Strangelove would seem to be my favorite movie. I believe I’ve seen it more often than any other film— I’ve watched Slim Pickens ride that H-Bomb to Laputa something like twenty times. It was Strangelove that popularized the notion of the Doomsday Device. (The Doomsday Bomb was actually conceived by Leo Sz
Read entry →September 29, 2009 · 715 words
Trying Not to Blush
Christian Sauvé says some kind things about This Is Not a Game on his web site: But there’s a bit more at stake than a look at games that bring together thousands of people in a global clue-hunt: As This Is Not a Game begins, our ARG-creating protagonist Dagmar Shaw sees her holidays in Indonesia […]
Read entry →September 26, 2009 · 389 words
Nyckelharpa
I’ve been off at Globalquerque, Albuquerque’s weekend festival of global music. One way of describing this kind of festival is to describe the music I was listening to. (I’ll probably get around to that later.)Another is to just make a list of the weird and/or unusual instruments encountered for the first time.The firs
Read entry →September 25, 2009 · 712 words
Bonnie Brings the Winter
The other night we checked out the BonTaj Roulet tour, featuring Bonnie Raitt and Taj Majal, in the relatively intimate settings of the Sandia Casino Amphitheater— 2000 people in an open-air venue, with glorious views of the mountains. Whatever else you may say about Indian casinos, they have sure built a lot of
Read entry →September 23, 2009 · 107 words
Origin of Stupidity
Brainless religious zealot-zombies, led by Former Somebody Kirk Cameron, are going to be distributing copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species FREE just before this year’s Darwin Day, November 22. The book will be altered to include a 50-page denunciation of the theory of evolution by some Darwin-denying whackjob. Cameron
Read entry →September 23, 2009 · 173 words
Turn the Apple Green
Murderous baby-killing Holocaust-denying nutjob Iranian President Ahmedinejad is in the Big Apple today, to give what will doubtless prove to be an inept, rambling, psychotic, Holocaust-denying speech to the UN General Assembly. (To avoid being Chavezed again, our own President Obama will be hiding in the men’s room ti
Read entry →September 23, 2009 · 226 words
Some Days I Just Don’t Feel Like Sharing
Obligated though I am by the Rules of Modern Publishing to maintain a blog in which I post something intelligent, thoughtful, and wise every single day (or failing that, at least try to be amusing), there are some days when I’m just not, as Richard III said, in the giving vein. In fact there are […]
Read entry →September 23, 2009 · 145 words
Hitler Bunnies and Terror Potatoes
At least one of these Hitler Bunnies is clearly plotting evil. And the potato in the lower photo is either the result of black magic or perhaps an injection of thalydomide. Yes, this means we’ve been to the State Fair. Kathy’s New Mexico Tech had a booth open at the fair, and Kathy got some […]
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