Ari's Planet

Today is a day for random thoughts.

Chang Mai is blessed with many things. Many Wats (temples), covered in glittering mirrors and jewels, staffed by numerous monks in orange robes. Many good places to eat. Tons of guest houses. Lots of cockroaches, alive, running, squished. It is the duty of every person in Chang Mai to drive at least 5 Suvs to the local hospital. The local hospital is shiny and neat inside, but like every other spot in Chang Mai it doesn't stock the antimalarial Malarone. The residents of Chang Mai are not to be outdone by stallwarts like the US. They will do their part to bring Bangkok down, to help her sink under the weight of all the people they send her way and their sweating bodies salting the earth, to make Thailand a bit warmer, and in the process they will have a nice looking hospital, perhaps to care for the refugees, or tourists injured escaping the bullish roaches.

I wasted another 40 minutes messing with my USB drive. Some asshole program on one of the computers I plugged it into decided that every ".exe" on the drive was "suspicious" and threw them into folders called "ardv_suspicious_file(s)", without warning, without trial. Again, Thailand is not to be outdone by the US, if only by having its computers imitate that bastion of liberty where criminals too dangerous to be convicted or named are made to disappear. Suddenly none of my programs worked, just as my government betrayed me, the dollar a weakling at the cash register. At another Internet shop I am unable to download software because the computer is locked-down. If this keeps up, might my ideas be made to disappear as well, like wikileaks? Notice, we cannot use DNS, since a judge thinks bankers should be allowed to shut such muckrakers down, their filth, the running roaches they pointed out to you, splattered on the ground, the dead citizens killed by some merciless vehicle of greed.

Traveling for 6 months my brain is feeling addled. Huh, what was that? Sorry, it was the sound of my loud Nikon clicking away. Too bad my ass isn't big enough to go with that Hawaiian shirt. My beard and glasses, glimpsed in a car window, sometimes make me think I could be a badass, tearing up the outback on my wallaby, chased by those frenzied koalas. To remedy this state of affairs, what better solution than to imagine myself being studious, learning the math I was supposed to have learned back in college, high school. Thankfully, google has the answers to all questions, even if those answers might involve hair regrowth and body-part enhancement. A free, yes, truly free, math text precisely designed to address my mathematical deficiencies, Basic Concepts of Mathematics by Elias Zakon is online right now--get it before some judge deems it subversive, as all free ideas are found guilty. Only missing is a study guide and worked solutions manual. This book is more useful than any standard dead-trees book. For one, it is free, not a $100+ ripoff. Second, it is available to me wherever in the world my not-so-fat ass may find itself, like stuck in town instead of climbing that pretty mountain. Third, I can print it real cheap-like in Chang Mai, if only I can get it onto a memory card. Yes, I have my dreams, of wallabies, reason, free(dom).