Recent Kindle Readings

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The Kindle is wonderful – easy to hold, carry, read, and store many digitalized books.  It is especially good for storing free eBooks of hard to find classics in the public domain, via Project Gutenberg and other sites. 

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Recent eBooks read on my Kindle are:  The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner (1844); Manfred by Lord Byron (1817); The Vampyre: A Tale by John Polidori (1819); The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo (1869); Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller (1804). 

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I have scores of other books downloaded and ready to read whenever I get the time. 

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-Zenwind.

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Some Recent Books Read

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I’ve been zipping through paperbacks like crazy, and here are some recent reads of note.  One very interesting one is Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape (2013) by Jenna Miscavige Hill.  Jenna is the niece of Scientology’s supreme leader, David Miscavige, and she defected from the cult as a young adult after growing up in it.  She doesn’t show the church in a good light, and her narrative squares well with other reports I’ve read about it.  (I’m a bit of a cult-watching junky, fascinated by quirky aspects of comparative religion, and I’ve been following Scientology’s meltdown for quite a while.) 

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A Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood is science fiction portraying a totalitarian theocracy in the USA.  It was a nominee for the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award.  Scary. 

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What It Is Like to Go to War (2011) by Karl Marlantes is an honest look at the human institution of warfare, by someone who has seen the hell of war.  He had written the novel Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War (2011), and after reading both I see that his novel had drawn on many of his personal experiences.  Nasty shit, but his thoughts on war are important. 

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I am reading the textbook, Buddhist Religions:  a historical introduction (2005) by Robinson, Johnson, and Thanissaro, 5^th edition.  I had read the 4^th edition before I left the States, and this is heavily revised.  I am also reading, along with it, its companion volume of readings, The Experience of Buddhism: sources and interpretations (2002) by John S. Strong, 2^nd edition.  Both are part of the excellent series, “The Religious Life in History”.  But I get bogged down in the parts about the later mystical sects of Buddhism and their supernatural beliefs. 

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Charles Stross is one of my favorite science fiction writers.  His Halting State was great, and I just read the sequel, Rule 34.  His Glasshouse (2006) won a Prometheus award from the LFS.  He has an under-stated sense of humor somewhere between P.G. Wodehouse and H.P. Lovecraft.  (Was Lovecraft funny??) 

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Last Hours on Everest (2013) by Graham Hoyland dealt with the famous 1924 disappearance of Mallory and Irvine on Everest’s heights.  A good overview of the whole subject. 

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I just finished Ready Player One (2012) by Ernest Cline.  Also a Prometheus winner.  A great read. 

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-Zenwind.

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Rainy Season

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We had a horrendous thunderstorm rage through the neighborhood on Friday evening.  I had to lash the windows shut with rope and stand by with the mop as wind-driven rain sprayed through the gaps. 

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I hope to get my infirm computer into the repair shop in the coming week or two, although I must say that, with all the book and Kindle reading I’ve been doing, I hardly miss it anymore. 

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-Zenwind.

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Tech Failure

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My computer’s slow death rattles are worse than ever, and I cannot get it fixed right away.  So I’m not online much, and I expect at any time to have a tech crash.  I knew it was a good idea to squirrel away piles of old-fashioned paper books!  I also have many classic books stored on my Kindle, which is lower tech and thus more reliable than my computer. 

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We are doing well here.  I want to check in to this site at least once a month.  The biggest news for me is that last night I finished reading The System of Liberty:  Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism (2013) by George H. Smith, and it is a fantastic tour through the history of libertarian ideas.  Amazing, as George’s work always is.  I hope to review it someday, maybe on my main blog, Zenwind, but my computer will have to cooperate. 

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-Zenwind.

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Coolness at Last

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The Hot Season seems to be over – although it is always hot and humid in Thailand’s central plains.  We have been getting some rains, although not heavy downpours, and the cloud overcast is blocking the sun and cooling us off a bit.  I can tell that the worst of it is over because I am no longer applying Snake Brand Prickly Heat Cooling Powder, whereas I had been covering my sweat-soaked body with it four times a day for the almost eight-week period of grueling heat.  

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I always have an electric fan blowing on me, even at night, to keep mosquitoes away and to keep from being drenched in sweat.  But last night, for the first time in quite a while, I wore long pajama bottoms and a top with a hood.  It was so cold that I had to cover my bare feet before morning. 

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Blessed coolness.  Zen delight. 

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-Zenwind.

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Decline of the Soi Dogs

I am not talking here about the excellent band by the name of The Soi Dogs Blues Band.  (They are thriving and are back playing the Blues again, on Sukhumvit Soi 11 on Thursday nights at Apoteka.)  I’m talking about the canine “soi dogs.”  A “soi” means a back/side street, and soi dogs are homeless and always looking for a handout.  They have all but disappeared. 

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Our neighborhood used to be filled with soi dogs.  They would be around our place in the early mornings to beg food – often at the same time as the Buddhist monks on their alms rounds, soi dogs being no fools – and also in the evenings they would show up for handouts.  When I would straggle home from a late outing long, long after midnight, local soi dogs that knew me would get up off the street, stretch, and merrily follow me home where they knew I’d give them some scraps.  Waggly-tailed neighbors with big smiles.  Cosmic hobos with the wisdom of the streets. 

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But they are gone.  The Great Flood of late-2011 disrupted all street life and the communities in the region.  Soi dogs started to disappear at that time (although cats did not, perhaps because their climbing abilities put them high and dry).  But even since the end of the flooding, soi dogs that survived started to vanish one-by-one. 

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News reports started to tell of organized dog-napping operations, where stray dogs -- and even pets -- were rounded up and illegally exported to neighboring countries (the main one being that in which I once spent an unpleasant year over four decades ago).  Why were they kidnapped and exported?  Cuisine.  Dog meat.  Huge cargoes of closely-packed caged dogs were found by police – skinny, mangy and dying.  Apparently this black market demand for dog meat and the related supplier operations have continued to be quite successful, as the streets now have a conspicuous lack of soi dogs. 

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Here is an investigative account of black market dog trading, Dog-Meat Mafia. Read the full article transcript.  But only view the video if you are strong of stomach, because it is not pretty.  Here in Thailand, the blame goes not only to the villainous traffickers and corrupt officials who expedite this trade, but also to blame are the assholes who are too cheap to neuter their dogs (and cats) and thus allow so many homeless and unloved animals to come into the world. 

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May the karma of these ill-used soi dogs ever improve in their future lives.  If I actually believed in rebirth that would be a more comforting thought. 

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-Zenwind.

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Waiting for the Rains

Early May.  It is still 100*F almost every day; the direct sunlight is brutal and the sweat is constant.  The monsoon Rainy Season will come soon and be of variable intensity.  We hope it comes very soon and with enough intensity to cool us off (just so long as we are not flooded again as in 2011).  Damn, it's hot!  

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-Zenwind.

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Immigration Office Hell

It was the annual immersion into the torture chamber, the dread annual visa renewal.  We had copied and re-copied the required documents and more, rounded up statements from the bank and from the US Embassy, etc., but the Immigration Office always hits us with one more unannounced requirement – and this year it was two new ones.  Bureaucracy is a major stressor, but they are smart to play loops of “Mr. Bean” on the office’s TV monitor; his humor is universal (Thais love him) and doesn’t require language or sound; Mr. Bean’s agonies when waiting in a long queue (as all of us sitting in Immigration are doing) is spot on. 

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I decided while in queue that – if I live through this day of wrath and tears – when I got home I would promptly get wasted on the strongest Thai beer I could find:  Chang Classic!  Ahh!  A giant mug full of ice cubes and Chang! 

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It is a pain to get out into the boonies where the Immigration Office is located, and hard to get taxi service.  We tip the driver very well because he must wait a long time.  Everybody likes Tuk, and so the driver enjoyed a good conversation with her on route and back. 

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There are new buildings going up everywhere, even in the boonies, as greater-Bangkok quickly continues to spread outward.  Condominiums, malls, homes – there is construction everywhere.  (I hope there is not another real estate bubble expanding toward a burst, such as the one that started here in Thailand in 1997 and took down much of Southeast and East Asian economies.) 

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I admit that I do enjoy seeing the countryside, the rice paddies, etc.  We can still see the dirty high-water marks of the terrible flood of late-2011, over knee-high and everywhere.  I am still astounded at the immense area that was flooded.  It is amazing.  One thing I’ve noticed when going on outings like this is that while people are generally rebounding from the floods, rebuilding, there are a few species of trees that were killed by the floods.  Not many trees, but of a certain type.  I will assume, since the 2011 floods were the worst in over 50 years, that these trees were planted since then and are of a kind that is not used to being flooded – hence they die. 

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We are home safe, with major visa headaches a year away.  Now if it would only rain hard and relieve this horrendous heat. 

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-Zenwind. 

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Songkran 2556 BE/2013 CE

Local celebrations for the traditional Thai New Year, aka Songkran, are a bit subdued.  I walked to the store and back without getting wet (except for profuse sweating).  No one threw water on me, and none of the kids with water-guns squirted me.  Maybe they felt sorry for this old man.  Still the pavements and sidewalks were mostly dry, whereas in other years everything is wet.

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It is also the 270^th birthday of Thomas Jefferson.  You are not forgotten, Mr. Jefferson. 

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-Zenwind. 
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Melt Down

This incredibly intense and prolonged heat spell we are having is killing our hardware.  It is over 100*F every day and far worse than a normal April.  Our electric system is getting alarmingly hot, and we are using as few appliances as possible.  Our DVD player is dying, and I’m worried about even using my computer.  As long as the basics work, i.e., an electric fan and the refrigerator, then I still feel civilized; if they stop, then we have slid into true barbarism. 

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-Zenwind.

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