Category: Bitching

  • A Cranky Travelogue, Part I : Amsterdam

    We have another entry which is sort of outside the blog’s raison d’etre, a little travelogue about a recent trip I took to Amsterdam, Tilburg, and Copenhangen. It was fun to write about, so I did so. With that I present “A Cranky Travelogue, Part I : Amsterdam”. There’s a brief “what I am reading”…

  • The Death of ‘Sironia, Texas’ and notes about this year’s reading.

    So, “Sironia, Texas” didn’t happen. I got through 100 pages or so, and it wasn’t all that good. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least from a blogging perspective. We could deconstruct the text, see what’s working, what isn’t, and why; analyzing what’s bad can sometimes illuminate what’s good. But “Sironia, Texas” also indulges…

  • Just Over 500 Words About Dying

    Cormac McCarthy died today. He was old, and I can’t imagine it came as a surprise, except in the way death always is. At some point, all of us are going to end our time here, and if we’re lucky, we will be old when we do it. Coincidentally, I had read the first 15…

  • Dog is Life/”Hell Hound”/”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance/More on Authenticity

    I I got a dog a few months ago, and she’s taken a bit of my focus and attention. She’s also brought with her a bit more of a regular structure to things. Dogs are strange, in that they are creatures of routine, but also creatures who very much seem to live in the moment.…

  • Authenticity/”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”/Other ephemera

    I- Moaning, the ukulele, and podcasts The reason I haven’t written anything in a moment is because, well, I haven’t been inspired to. It’s a kind of failure: if you’re writing, you should write.  I play the ukulele, an instrument that gets a lot of crap for no particularly good reason. I’m an intermediate player,…

  • Firing the Engines.

    Ok, so, it’s been a minute. There are a few reasons for this: 1) I got a dog. She has taken up a fair bit of my time– walkies and training and just generally vibing are things that the dog life has given me. I read, and started work on an entry on “Hell Hound”…

  • Mardi Gras/ What I am Reading

    Mardi Gras puts to waste a lot of plans. The annual celebration starts in January, and just kind of… goes on until Fat Tuesday. During this time, I’m busy drinking and parading and dressing like Elvis, for reasons not particularly relevant to this blog. However, it also means I am *not* doing what this blog…

  • On not Finishing a Book/”The Luminous Dead”/What I am Reading

    I want to talk a little bit about not finishing books. My last didn’t finish was “Angkor and the Khmer Empire: A History of Cambodia’s Legendary Temple Building Civilization” which wasn’t a history of anything, but rather a poorly written guidebook which looked like it had been translated via google translate. It was awful, and…

  • Dread Process/Kindle Scribe vs Kindle and Remarkable/What I am Reading.

    A little more about dread process; a quick look/review of various gadgets.  We’re going to get extra nerdy and picky here. As I have mentioned, I’m a bit of a gadget hound. It’s something I have inherited from my father, I suppose. But I have come to see the value in ‘single use’ devices; I…

  • Back at It/ “Angkor and the Khmer Empire”/ What I am Reading/ Next Entry

    I have returned from our soujourn to Thailand and Cambodia; it was a lovely trip, but this isn’t a travel blog. Unfortunately, on the way back, I had some sort of stomach issue, and so I didn’t really get much reading in. While I was there I attempted to read “Angkor and the Khmer Empire”…