Archive for 'Blog'
Father to a 7-year-old existentialist
Posted on 26. Sep, 2011 by admin.
Last night, we were eating dinner at a stargazing gathering in the Mojave desert. Anatol made a comment about death, and I commented, “That’s my little existentialist.” Anatol: “What’s an existentialist?” Me: “Existentialism is a school of philosophy which was big after World War II… you know, Camus, Sartre… OK, it means that even if [...]
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Book review: Nicholas Humphrey’s “Soul Dust”
Posted on 10. Jul, 2011 by admin.
In an earlier post, I wrote about how the dinner I had at Nicholas Humphrey‘s house while visiting the UK for the London Book Fair. I was so moved that I decided to post here a book review I wrote for his latest masterwork, Soul Dust. Enjoy! Why do people have qualitative phenomenal experiences, and [...]
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Tuli Kupferberg, 1923-2010
Posted on 13. Jul, 2010 by admin.
Tuli Kupferberg died yesterday. While his contribution to the history of punk music, the antiwar movement, the American counterculture and Lower East Side scene of the 60′s is immeasurable, he’s played a special role in my life. In November 1994, a friend of mine liberated a few albums from the vault of a certain [...]
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Happy Songkran! Happy dysentery!
Posted on 15. Apr, 2002 by admin.
F 4/12 In the morning we went to the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute and Snake Farm’s 11AM snake milking. The Institute was founded in 1923 and is one of the largest herpetological research facilities in the world, not a tourist trap at all. Since Thailand has 160 varieties of snakes, 48 of which are venomous, [...]
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Shitbus to Bangkok
Posted on 11. Apr, 2002 by admin.
W4/10 We get reservations in the morning for a bus from Krabi to Bangkok. We find an internet café to make online reservations for the Maxx hotel (their rack rate is $40 but it can be had on the net for $20), but it takes a day to confirm, so we’ll show up and play [...]
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Godless in Krabi and Ko Lanta
Posted on 09. Apr, 2002 by admin.
The longtail boat took us through Phang-Nga bay today, which was wonderful. We saw a cave with thousand-year-old paintings. We saw limestone cliffs, took the boat between them, went in and saw some more caves (at Kao Tapu and Tham Lod), where we walked barefoot through water to see amazing stalagmites and stalactites and got [...]
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A Muslim Fecal Fishing Village
Posted on 05. Apr, 2002 by admin.
Well, we woke up and had a nice fight with Ooi Shie Ching, the manager of the Imperial Hotel. We complained that there was no hot water, brown sewage came up from the tub, and there was rat shit all over the side of the tub, which we hadn’t noticed at 1 in the morning, [...]
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Pai in Sukhothai
Posted on 04. Apr, 2002 by admin.
One of Mr. J’s servants picked us up at the guest house and took us to Doi Suthep, a wat from the 1300′s on top of a mountain. You walk up 300 steps to get to the complex. Very nice views, lovely cloister, but it’s another wat. An Asian tour bus came and its people [...]
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Hating Chiang Mai
Posted on 02. Apr, 2002 by admin.
We hired a tuk-tuk to take us to the ruins around the city. The ones downtown are all walkable, but it was too hot, and we wanted him to take us outside the city to go to the ruins of Wiang Kum Kam. It was hard getting him – he waited for us while we [...]
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The weird Wat Khaek
Posted on 01. Apr, 2002 by admin.
We’re at the Laotian border just ten miles from Vientiane, its biggest city, and we don’t go. I do the math; I want to see Sala Kaew Ku (Wat Khaek, meaning “Indian Temple”) here, and it’s an hour and $30 a person to get visas for Laos, and then there’s transportation to Vientiane, and we’d [...]
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