the game of life

Ge(neal)ogist

June 20, 2011

While talking with my dad yesterday, he mentioned that now that both of his parents have passed, he often performs a Hindu ceremony called Amavasya Dharpanam in their and other ancestors’ honor. This ritual is conducted on the day of a new moon, and to keep a long explanation short, is the equivalent of the [...]

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“Even More Hilarious Than The Day After Tomorrow”

June 13, 2011

On the road this week. I leave you with the latest from a geo-blog which must go in my feedreader once I get back. It seems that Hollywood is putting out another sciencepocalypse (or is that scienceageddon?) film, this one entitled 2012: Ice Age. There’s a volcano. It unleashes a glacier. Don’t ask me how. [...]

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Parental Perfection

May 26, 2011

My friend, Sam Jasper, has an electrifying and crazy forthright post up at Back Of Town about her father’s suicide and parent-child interaction following a family trauma. If you don’t watch Treme, Sam’s post comes from one of the plots in the show: Professor Creighton Bernette jumped off the Algiers ferry in early 2006 (at [...]

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“Neither Bad Nor Good, But It Is Real”

May 6, 2011

Two relatively young New Orleanians I knew slipped, fell and died. As they lived alone, both of their bodies were not discovered for days. One in the Marigny, the other Uptown. One last month, one this month. Death can happen to anyone at any time. Numbers all around me are being called, just ask. But, [...]

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May Flowers In Texas

May 6, 2011

Next year. The (cold) drought here is so bad this desert rat craves rain, heat and its accompanying humidity. Shorts, tank tops, barbequed ribs and cold beer now! How else is a former Kuwaiti resident to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden? Screw that, I’m more worried about the impact of the Mississippi River [...]

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Instead Of Merely Holding Conversation, Hold Me Tight

April 2, 2011

That hollowed-out feeling right after you have thrown up. For a little while, you live in a thin, gray space right between collapse and revival. You’re not happy, sad, tired or revving up. You just are, for really low values of You. In truth, it is. It just is. It goes on. I don’t know [...]

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In Which D And I Move. Again.

March 12, 2011

Today, I took a Taiwanese-British girl who speaks Dutch and lives in Holland shopping for cowboy boots in Houston, Texas. It was only slightly less weird than the time I was standing behind two white boys during a bluegrass concert in a dive bar and they began to speak to one another in proper Tamil. [...]

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HamsterLand

February 27, 2011

We cruised by a store called FishLand today. Me: “So, they sell, um, all fish at FishLand?” D: “Yeah.” Me: “Like halibut and tuna. Fried or blackened.” D: “No, they sell fish as pets. It’s a pet store.” Me: “A whole store dedicated to pet fish instead of a fishmonger. Okay, then where’s HamsterLand?” D: [...]

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Thai Poosam

January 20, 2011

  My mother’s family started and has sponsored the annual celebration of the Hindu festival Thai Poosam in the temple at Vadapalani since the late 1930s. It’s a great thing which I witnessed once – the hustle and bustle of religious activity over days, walking everywhere on the temple grounds and my parents, aunts, uncles [...]

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But If Obama Had Made Jobs We Could Employ People To Install Sidewalks

January 20, 2011

Athenae points us to today’s searing death ray of political brilliance: Michelle Obama’s ‘Get Moving’ Program Linked to Pedestrian Deaths. Ignore my jaw on this keyboard and keep reading. The Governors Highway Safety Association says pedestrian deaths increased in the first half of 2010 and the First Lady’s program to get Americans to be more [...]

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