Ron Diethrick, R.I.P.

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We just lost a wild and wonderful guy.
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He was my best friend from my youth. He mentored me and others on our climb to Eagle Scout. He taught many of us to truly enjoy life.
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-Zenwind.
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Rock and Roll Music in Bangkok

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Last night, 7 June 8, 2011, was a great night for Rock and Roll in Bangkok. Peter Driscoll and The Cruisers played once again at the Wine Bibber Sangria, aka, Club Bibber, on Soi Thong Lor between soi 9 and 11 and across from the Pet Hospital. If I seem repetitious by mentioning Peter’s gigs many, many times over the last year, it is because I’m a major fan and this music is an invigorating experience.
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Or, as Chuck Berry put it in the definitive statement:
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“Just let me hear some of that Rock and Roll music,
Any old way you choose it,
It’s got a backbeat you can’t lose it,
Any old time you use it.
It’s gotta be Rock and Roll music
If you want to dance with me.”
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It was another night of foot-stomping Rock n Roll music, with a focus on early Rock n Roll and Rockabilly with Peter’s excellent historical comments on the songwriters and the singers who covered any one song. Because 1950s songs were of such short duration (because that was the radio norm in those days), The Cruisers play a lot of songs in one evening.
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Among the songs covered last night were ones sung by: Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Dion (“The Wanderer,” one of my personal favorites), Eddie Cochran, and many more.
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-Zenwind.
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Hot

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1 June 2011: Our weather is still the transition period between the Hot season and the Rainy season. When the sun is out, it sizzles. The clouds and occasional rains are very welcome, and good breezes often catch one by surprise.
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The other day at dusk, the wind suddenly picked up dramatically and the sky got very black. As we brought in the last of the day’s laundry, it was obvious that the temperature had dropped significantly in a very short time.
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Just as it does anytime that this temperature drop happens, I thought of my father’s weather wisdom. He would say, “It feels like it has rained somewhere.” And it had. Within 40 minutes the skies opened on us with a hard rain.
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Blessed coolness,
Zen delight.
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-Zenwind.
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Fifth of May Revolutionary Communiqué

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Cinco de Mayo, 2011. I am now re-reading – after several decades – the great libertarian science fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (1966). Hence the revolutionary consciousness.
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I have been, and plan to continue to be, offline a lot more than usual for the foreseeable future. It is the Hot Season now, our summertime and holiday time, and the hot humid weather does not encourage me to sit in front of a computer for long stretches.
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I’m feeling very well, and I resolve to keep on feeling that way. In the past few years, I have had major illnesses during the slothful days of the Hot Season, so I’m allotting my prime time to exercise and healthy pursuits. Jump-starting a new fitness program, I marched 7 klicks in 100-degree humid heat the other day, and I feel great (after major re-hydration).
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I hereby am liberating myself from mundane technological bondage. This is consistent with my personal history, as I liberated myself from the Boob Tube (TV) back in the ‘70s and never missed it. Today I must limit my time in front of the modern, wired, www version of the electronic teat. Being thus weaned is a wonderful release. Ah, Liberty!
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I am practicing my meditation with new resolve, i.e., in accordance with the Buddha’s last words of advice: “Strive on with diligence.” I am adding Hinayana/Theravadin simplicity of focus on the original fundamentals (Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path) to my decades-long practice of Ch’an/Zen daily aesthetic mindfulness. I haven’t known such clarity in meditation since my teens, in ’67 and ’68. I feel very young.
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-Zenwind.
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April is the cruelest month

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April is cruel for us, although not for the same reasons given by T.S. Eliot. April is the hottest and most humid time of year here (although we have had many unusually rainy days lately which block the sun and cool things off a bit). It is also the month when I must complete my work on my annual visa renewal by the last week of the month.
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I just posted a couple of very short book reviews my Zenwind blog, one on With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge and one on the Earthsea novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.
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I managed to get into town a couple of times for US Embassy paperwork visits, to talk with friends, and to see a couple of movies.
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Winter’s Bone, an independent film that was nominated for an Oscar for Best Film, was very good. It featured a strong teenage girl who must be the care-giver for her younger siblings and also stand up to the threat of death to protect their impoverished Ozark home. The young actress also was nominated by the Academy. It is a low budget film and is a bit of hillbilly noir, dark and ugly at times but ultimately redeeming.
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If I survive the coming ordeal with the Immigration Bureau, I will post again.
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-Zenwind.
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Pit-Viper in Our Kitchen Tree

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Last week I saw a pit-viper at close range, slithering up a tree in our courtyard which supports our outdoor kitchen’s small tin roof over the propane stove. A beautiful light-green in color, it crawled with reptilian leisure and disappeared between several tin sheets making up the roof. One look at its triangular head told me it was a poisonous snake.
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I was sitting outside in my lawnchair reading in the shade of this tree, and I only noticed the snake because one of our cats alerted me to it. This cat, Silly Willy, also alerted me several years ago to a huge monitor lizard who was basking in the sun about 10 feet behind my chair. Willy may be silly, but he is a good hunter, and I can always tell by his eyes if he is looking at either prey or predator.
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Willy was sitting high on the wall on the other side of this tree, and I noticed him looking quite attentively at something with his look of apprehension. Following his gaze I saw the pit-viper move slowly up the tree at a height of about 7 feet from the ground, camouflaged very well against the underside of the leaves when one looks upward. I got up and stepped closer to look at it, and all my old Boy Scout training told me it was venomous.
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After it disappeared between the layers of the kitchen roof, I went inside to consult my Guidebook to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Thailand and Southeast Asia. That and some web searches narrowed it down to a couple of pit-vipers: The white-lipped tree viper or the large-eyed pit-viper. I didn’t have a long enough look to tell if its lips were white or its eyes big.
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I alerted my wife and her family, but no one seemed to be impressed. I’m sure they believed my sighting, but it just didn’t seem to be a big deal to anyone. Although living here for 5 years now, plus doing a year’s tour in next-door Vietnam 40 years ago, I guess I’m still a bit of a boot to tropical life. But I’m still watching my every step and every branch above me.
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-Zenwind.
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Express Boats on the Great Chao Phraya River

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Again I sing the praises of my favorite transportation in the tropics. Sorry if I’m repetitious and have written this before.
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Taking express boats to downtown Bangkok is slower than going by taxi and much hotter, although sometimes river breezes give a bit of relief. But the boats are much cheaper and are an adventure in themselves. One gets to see Bangkok at water-level, at its roots.
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Sometimes the boats are so crowded that there is standing room only. If that is the case, I like standing in the back squarely in front of the engine-box. Let me explain:
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An express boat is about the size of a bus, an aisle going up the middle with pairs of seats on both sides. The pilot is up front. The forward two-thirds is seating; the aft third is engine-box plus steps up to the deck in the stern where folks embark and disembark as the boat briefly hitches to the piers along the way.
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If I have to stand during the voyage, I prefer the times when the standing customers are not too packed together, so that I can pick my spot, standing squarely in the center, just in back of all the rows of seats and immediately in front of the engine-box. To me, that is the boat’s center of gravity, its very soul. Standing there, I can feel every bit of the boat’s flex as the wooden structure twists and bucks with the waves. Looking up the length of the vessel from this spot, I can watch the pilot turn his wheel and then feel the slight delay of the craft’s response. It is the organic center of the ship.
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On those days when it is not too crowded, this standing spot is also the coolest place on board because the breeze funnels right back to you.
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Blessed coolness. Zen delight.
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-Zenwind.
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St. Patrick’s Day 2011

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St. Patrick’s Day was also the day of our monthly libertarian meet up, and I got a late start, getting on an express boat in late afternoon. It was the coldest daytime temperature I have yet seen in Bangkok, in the low 60sF. Everyone was bundled up against the cold wind, including me. It was the only day and night I can remember here when I did not sweat.
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The meet up was great, with very good conversation and camaraderie. By 01:30 there were only me and a longtime buddy left. We closed down the Bourbon Street bar and walked to the nearby Dubliner Irish pub to see if their St. Patrick revelries were still going on. The Dubliner was quite empty and not serving any more drinks. There were still bottles breaking on the floor, and the whole place looked as dysfunctional as a battle zone, so we exited the back door. Once outside we had to carefully push our way through a crowd of milling, staggering, wild-looking fellows – most certainly all Irishmen.
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We walked to another venue where we could talk some more. Our conversation covered all topics from Man and God and Law to movies and books. Finally we closed down that place and went down the street to find some munchies at an all-night store. We stood on the street eating and talking until we could barely keep our eyes open, then parted ways.
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I arrived back in my home neighborhood at 04:00, and the streets were quiet and empty. Must be there are no Irish here. The only one showing any holiday spirit was a local soi dog who spotted me and trotted along with me to my gate. I threw out some food to her, making her very pleased. It was a great day for the Irish.
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-Zenwind.
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Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On

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I’ve finally found my niche in the Bangkok nightlife, amongst somewhat ageing Rockers – with a lot of white hair and beards in the crowd – who are diehard fans of the old-time Rock and Roll of Peter Driscoll and the Cruisers. They played last week at the Wine Bibber Sangria in Bangkok, and they really rocked the joint. I have written before about how I’m a big fan of Peter’s performances. I try my best get into town when I know he’s playing a gig. I am one of the only regular Americans at these gigs, for all the accents I hear are English, Scots, Irish, or Australian.
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Peter is a walking historian of early Rock. As a lad growing up in England in the 1950s, he got into all the music coming in from the States. As a teenager there he recorded “Paralyzed,” a song from Elvis’s second album. One thing that continually amazes me is Peter’s brief historical prefaces to most of the songs he covers, little bits of info about who wrote it and various performers of it. He is up to date on those people of early Rock, often mentioning that such-and-such a person involved with the song “died just last Friday,” for example.
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His band, The Cruisers, has a partially new line-up, and they are getting really tight as a group. The crowd was not as thick this time as it was for their performance last month, but it was because of a heavy rain that day that thinned out the crowds everywhere in the city – even the evening Skytrain was un-crowded.
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Peter and the Cruisers did songs by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins (“I’m a lone poor boy, and I’m a long way from home”), the Everly Brothers, Rick Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and His Comets, Dion and the Belmonts (“I’m a wanderer, yeah, the wanderer/ I roam around, around, around”), Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, etc.
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At the stroke of midnight they started up a new set with a powerful version of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny Be Good,” and we all rocked on until late.
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-Zenwind.
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Anniversary of a Cult Founder

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[quote] It is an anniversary for the late Mr. Sell Bond Blubberd. Blubberd was a genius, the greatest of all the 20th century intra-galactic seers and cosmic historians, and he was a magnificently successful religious profit [sic] and a brilliant scam artist. [/quote]
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[I am quoting this document exactly as it was written and forwarded to me by a Ch’an friend by the name of Han Shan, who was once briefly acquainted with the cult mentioned here. –ZW.]
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[quote] Blubberd is best known for founding the incredibly lucrative Church of the ScienceFictionist, a religion of wide international following to which many high-profile celebrities and other notorious zanies flock. Many are expecting Charlie Sheen to get on board very soon, if he can muster up the required cash.
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Blubberd is also famous as an absolutely hilarious cosmic jester, a laugh-out-loud-funny, hold-your-gut-and-roll-on-the-floor-gasping-for-breath satirist and prankster. For instance, after a typical ScienceFictionist Church newbie is lured into many years of studies, continual browbeating, and tens upon tens of thousands of dollars of contributions to the church, he is finally given access to the promised secret documents underlying the holy metaphysics of the entire religion. I.e., one must achieve the church’s official higher status of the level of an “ID-e-OT DCLXVI” – and this costs a lot of money to buy into – before earning access to the secret documents.
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Surprise! When you are finally given permission to read this cosmic history and theology of the church in these secret sacred documents, it all just seems like something out of the more seedy science fiction scenarios or cheaper comic books. You read about the cruel galactic dictator, Zeranhu, and his atrocities millions of years ago, e.g., “The Twoth Affair,” revealing the Flaming Buttocks story that involved massive turmoil, death, destruction and terror on earth and its near environs. What a prank! Blubberd always had promoted his persona as that of a high-seas pirate, and you can see from photos of those days that he was laughing his ass off all the way to the bank. A genius of joke and scam, rolling merrily in the money. What a guy!
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Blubberd’s business model here is incredibly successful, even improving upon other similar traditional religions’ scams by orders of magnitude. What a dude. He was a cynical opportunist with a great sense of humor and a genius for talking people out of their gold. It is sad that his church’s heirs today have no such sense of humor at all and are mostly concerned with both controlling their sheep and filing lawsuits against anyone who insults or threatens their holy cash cow.
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Mr. Sell Bond Blubberd was a really funny guy – a modern pirate with incredible audacity – and we will all miss him. [/quote]
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-Zenwind.