Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 163 entries, all of them here in full.
October 7, 2015 · 690 words
Peakéd Oil
I’m currently paying $2.09 per gallon of gasoline, which is the lowest I’ve paid in a very, very long time— and which may, if you adjust for inflation, be the lowest gasoline price ever. Ten years ago, people were saying that we’d met, or even passed, Peak Oil, wherein the supply was just going to go […]
Read entry →September 30, 2015 · 472 words
Nite 2
I saw fewer new acts the second night of Globalquerque, but that’s because some of the first night’s performers returned. I’ll skip over those and get straight to the folks I hadn’t seen before. Tony Duncan is one of the talented Duncan brothers, all hoop dancers, and has won the World Champion Hoop Dancer award [&hell
Read entry →September 29, 2015 · 733 words
First Night of the Festival
More music from Globalquerque, New Mexico’s annual celebration of music from all over the world. There were three stages going on at once, so I didn’t see everybody, and for several of the bands I only saw a few minutes. Here are some of the highlights. Cimmarón was advertised as a cowboy band from Colombia, […]
Read entry →September 28, 2015 · 149 words
A Band of One
I’ve been frantically busy and with little time for posting. I’ve spent the last two nights at Globalquerque, the annual festival of world music, and will post more on that when I have a few free hours But in the meantime here’s a video of Maarja Nuut, who I saw the other night. She’s […]
Read entry →September 23, 2015 · 199 words
Big Bundle, Big Books, Big Savings
So StoryBundle has a deal for you. They’ve bundled six novels, each of them nominated for the Philip K Dick Award, and by Elizabeth Hand, Pat Murphy, K.W. Jeter, Gwyneth Jones, Lisa Mason, and Kathy Koja. These ebooks are completely free of DRM and can be read on any device. And the best part is: you […]
Read entry →September 20, 2015 · 1,025 words
Dragging It Out
Dish Network gave me a free premium channel the other week, and so I watched The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I. Which was a kind of masterpiece, because in a film over two hours long nothing really happened. What’s going on is that the success of the Twilight films, in which the final volume of the trilogy […
Read entry →September 18, 2015 · 308 words
Dreaming of the Lost City
So why am I dreaming of the City by the Bay? Which is to say, Duluth? It’s been over a month since I returned from my childhood haunts in Minnesota. When I was there, I found myself dealing with a tangible, material place, which however pleasant was substantially changed from the terrain where I grew […]
Read entry →September 17, 2015 · 172 words
Room to Roar
This one’s been echoing in my skull all the day. I have to say it’s just the sort of song you need to get you out of bed in the morning. This is “Give Us Room to Roar” by Ruth MacKenzie, from her album Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden. I can’t seem to find out […]
Read entry →September 17, 2015 · 46 words
Staying Busy
I seem to be having a busy week, with little time for posting here or indeed anywhere. If I weren’t actually accomplishing stuff, I’d probably be annoyed. Please enjoy this picture of some 3500-year-old martial artists engaging in their daily practice. Remember: exercise keeps you young!
Read entry →September 13, 2015 · 378 words
Refugee Mario
So when I was a young, callous person, I designed a board game called The An Loc Survival Game. An Loc, for the young folks among you, was a town in Vietnam that was the centerpiece of a 66-day battle of mutual annihilation between North and South Vietnamese forces, the latter assisted by insane amounts of […]
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