Chandigarh

Turns out I’m not leaving on the 29th for India, but within the next couple of weeks, I think. We have to sort out visas first, but apparently that’s not a big deal.

Joe and I will fly into New Delhi, and from there we’ll travel north to the city of Chandigarh, which was partially designed by Le Corbusier! I thought it would be cold, but apparently it’s going to be hot and humid, which I’m quite happy to deal with, and it makes packing a lot easier — instead of carrying a big heavy leather jacket and sweaters, I can get away with light t-shirts, cargo pants and my usual combat boots/sandals combo (aside from a business-casual outfit or two). I don’t know if spring is the rainy season or not, so I’m unsure if I really need to take a jacket at all. And my superpower is that I’m relatively immune to all but the most extreme weather and climatic shifts. Also, I don’t get sick traveling ever, which is nice.

I guess we’ll be spending part of the time doing business stuff I can’t really talk about here, but my impression is that we’ll also have some time to do some exploring. We met with the guy we’re working with over there — he was in Vegas for a Microsoft conference — and he agreed to take me up into the Himalayas.

I’ve been wanting to go to India ever since I first read The Razor’s Edge in my late teens, and I’m so excited I can barely stand it. Even though Chandigarh is apparently considered the most “modern” city in India, with the highest standard of living, I’m still hoping to try and get out of town and into the rural areas. Every city is beautiful in its own way, and worth seeing…but man, I’d like to get out into the forests.

And I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help it: visions of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom keep running through my head. If I get to hack through the middle of a decrepit rope bridge strung over a deep chasm, and go swinging across…that would be hella awesome.

I don’t think it’s on our itinerary, though.

Random Thought Of The Day: Global Warming

So there are constantly people debating whether or not Al Gore is full of shit about global warming. (He’s not, by the way, but I’m not going to argue the point with you. His facts are accurate.)

So maybe there is global warming, and maybe it’s caused by man-made pollutants, and maybe not. But whether or not global warming is going to kill us all next summer, or a century from now, or maybe never, I gotta ask the question: isn’t it just a good idea to develop cleaner, greener technology anyway?

And aren’t the stakes high enough that it’s worth going on the assumption that, yes, if we don’t start taking better care of the planet, we’re all going to die, and let’s just fucking do it and quit arguing about it?

Oh, and, uh, don’t give me any of the usual bullshit about putting hippie environmentalism before economic reality. There’s money in green technology. Lots of it — fat government grants, consumer money, b2b money, everywhere.

So really, if you’re anti-environmentalism, you’re simply shoring up aging industries like the automobile industry, at the expense of new, developing markets. If you vote against environmental laws or initiatives, you’re voting to let the government provide shelter for industries that couldn’t survive under the scrutiny of those laws.

You are anti-market. You, sir or madam, are the fucking socialist hippie.

I win.

A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly – New York Times

A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly – New York Times

This is what school was like for me, almost the entire time, from kindergarten up. I took a lot of beatings, gave a few back. My problem was that I never knew when to shut up. Hell, I still don’t.

If I could talk to this Billy kid, I’d tell him: dude, Google these assholes in a decade. They won’t be there. They will have made no impression at all on the world, or any world that matters. They’ll be gas station attendants and video store clerks well into their thirties, married to ugly, stupid women and burdened with a half dozen ugly, stupid children. They will never leave Fayetteville.

You will win, dude. Eventually.

Happy birthday to me.

Nine years ago, I walked into the Double Down and had my first legal drink, at midnight on my birthday.

And here I sit again, alone, with punk rock blaring in my ears, at the Double Down, at midnight on my birthday.

I don’t know whether that’s cool or pathetic. And it would be great to not be alone. But here it is and here I am.

And that’s thirty years done with. So what the hell do I do with the next thirty?

Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead

Truthdig – Reports – Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead

Buckley was a world-class American liar on the far right who would tell any lie he thought he could get away with. Years of ass-kissing famous people in the press and elsewhere had given him, he felt, a sort of license to libelously slander those hated liberals who, from time to time, smoked him out as I did in Chicago, when I defended the young people in Grant Park by denying that they were Nazis and that the only “pro- or crypto-Nazi” I could think of was himself. He sued me and got nowhere. He sued Esquire, in which our words appeared. By then the coming right-wing surge was in view. And so Esquire cravenly agreed to settle with him for a few paragraphs worth of free advertising for his weird little magazine The National Review, hardly the great victory he claimed.

Hee hee hee.