Just found out today that Madeleine L’Engle passed. A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books growing up. I haven’t read it in twenty years, but I still remember that awesome illustration of ants walking on a string in my edition.
RIP
T-minus eight months and counting
This post is basically an errata for the due date I wrote in the comments a couple of posts back. The actual due date is May 11 (not May 15).
I have been mind melding with the baby in between introducing it to Crowded House and Jack Bauer, and his (her?) Majesty says he (she?) will accept the following as gifts, in order of preference:
– 1967 Fastback Mustang
– 1978 Chateau Margaux
– A hundred fawning nursemaids bursting with milk
The only problem is, I don’t know which are genuinely his (her?) ideas, and which are mine…
Who’s your
Took Nam to get blood tests (all good) and find our “steady” obstetrician today. Found one of the only females in the business in this area, and she tuned out to be solid. Only thing is, she called me “daddy” in Thai (as in, “what does daddy do for a living?”). This is the first time I’ve been called that in a non-joking context my whole life, and it felt weird. But she’s right – I’m gonna be a daddy, and it feels good. It just felt weird to be called that.
Just between you and me, though – when the hell did I get so old?
Important announcement about my wife being pregnant
That is all.
Sometimes life is gooood.
Matisyahu – King Without A Crown (Live)
Wow, that’s pretty dope. But I’ll see your violin/turntables and raise you a Hasidic reggae genius:
This live version is actually better than the album one.
Google Earth Flight Sim Easter Egg
I’m going to try this later tonight, if my net connection at home is still up.
Apparently, the latest version of Google Earth has an easter egg: a flight simulator. It’s not quite like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it’s a promising start.
How to see this feature. Make sure you have Google Earth 4.2. Open the application, click on the globe and then press Ctrl+Alt+A. You should see this dialog that lets you choose one of the two aircrafts (F16 “Viper” and SR22) and an airport.
Go read the full post.
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UPDATE: Don’t throw away your dedicated flight sims just yet. My slow net speed means the sim is constantly updating the stream and I’m flying over an endless blob of green and brown.
C. Buddha’s Crystal Ball…
… is really what I should call this blog.
Something I joked about a month ago (link) actually happened three weeks later (link).
My next big prediction is: The upcoming Thai elections in December will be a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Also, somebody important in Thailand will die very soon.
Being a prophet is just so goddamn tiring…
Yellowstone: Get Out of Jail Free?
Yellowstone National Park’s 260 square miles in Montana and 50 square miles in Idaho beckon with recreation, rugged terrain and wildlife.
But as the only place where a federal court district extends beyond state lines, it offers visitors and criminals a potential legal no man’s land.
Closing the loophole would be fairly simple, but the law professor who first analyzed the problem said it will require the political will to act while the crimes are still minor, like poaching elk, before someone tries to get away with murder.
An interesting theory for those not as rich as, say, OJ (was).
Read the full article here: The perfect place for the perfect crime?
1971 Toyota “Kujira” Crown S60
I need another car – just a reliable beater to convey me around town – since I want Nam to drive the Cefiro (and its newfangled safety features) when we move to the new house. The new house is within walking distance of my university, but I need something for rainy days and whatnot. I think I’ve found a good candidate:
Behold the Kuj
That’s an honest-to-god classic car (4th generation S60), with prices to match both in Japan and the states. I think I can get this one for about a thousand USD. There are a lot of classic Japanese cars being driven around on a daily basis in Thailand. One of the reasons is that maintenance and repairs are so cheap. Another is that they often aren’t considered classic here, just old – which is a shame for the cars, but great for people who love them.
The Toyota “Kujira” Crown was apparently not very popular in Japan when it was released, except among Osaka taxi drivers (according to one of the links above). It also got some airtime on TV shows at the time, but the avant garde looks were just too kick-ass for that stiff-upper-lip generation of Japanese sheeple, I guess. Oh, well.
This particular specimen has a secret under the hood that should make it anything but a whale (kujira = “whale”) on the road: A “silvertop” Nissan RB20DE !!! That’s the non-turbo powerplant for a type 32 Skyline!
It also has the matching drivetrain and 5 speed manual gearbox.
I promised myself I would think about it for at least a day, but I’m having a hard time waiting until tomorrow… The first thing I’m going to do is put the wing mirrors out on the hood like they oughtta be… Then I’ll have the body restored (there’s a bit of rust in places, the owner says) to look something like… this.
What say you?
UPDATE: I’ve just talked to the owner and it sounds like he’s taken very good care of it. I told him I want it; now it’s just a question of enacting the sale and slogging through any related paperwork, which I have no idea about. Yay!
UPDATE: This is what my MS-60 Kujira Crown looks like now: http://cosmicbuddha.com/2012/03/the-toyota-kujira-crown-reborn/