Here’s a photo wot I took — from a riverside bar, just west of Taisho-bashi, Osaka. I think it catches some of the surrealism of this city — the duck-like pedalo against the industrial background, the old railway bridge and the bizarre tin-cushion of Osaka dome. I like the light and colours — I took this at sunset. And if you look at the bridge, you can see a green and white streak, which is a passing train, rendered like this because of the slow shutter speed.
The flock of pedalos permanently moored here are not allowed to go out on the water for saftey reasons. No swanning about permitted. How very this country.
Thinks: I think I might have become rather keen on this photography thing.
Another thinks: No movement in the Weed department. What are they up to?
I am intrigued by the title of this book I came across on Amazon while considering cannibalism:
Sinisterism - Secular Religion of the Lie: The History of the Nazis Who Were Marxists Who Were Fascists Who Were Cannibals And Are Leftists Today — by Bruce Walker
Obviously a fair read from a well balanced intellect.
In the interests of historical accuracy, I include a link. Ha ha ha!
I just wrote a wonderful blast of invective but deleted it in favour of this mature and dignified mein. Thing is, neither Weed nor Shorts have appeared on the ebook lists despite news from the distributor that they were going up this weekend. I have now bitten my my nails so badly I am down to the last knuckles and will never be able to type another novel again.
Well, Weed and Shorts are due to be published Friday, North American EST. After all the false alarms, delays and non-events, I shall believe it if it happens. I will also scream so loud I won’t need a blog to broadcast the news. And despite a week off the bottle, I will likely get hog-swaggling drunk.
Here in Osaka, Japan, Christmas has arrived. Today, October 14, the supermarket local to my office had a display today featuring: one Christmas tree, a selection of Christmas cakes, tinsel, gift ideas of colouring books for kiddies.
This display was placed across the aisle from a Halloween display of what appeared to be hollow, plastic Jack-o-lanterns.
My employer had its first Halloween decorations up on October 1st but the country generally waits until November 1st before festooning in Crimbo garb.
The record for putting up Christmas decorations goes to a love hotel in Namba which I once spotted with trees outside in September, though I suspect they had not actually been taken in from the previous season.
With traders in Britain reportedly exhorting shoppers to think ahead to Christmas as early as July it is time for all sensible people to set fire to festive decorations wherever they appear.
Right. Let’s wassail: Jingle Bollocks, Jingle Bollocks …
I just found this among the spam comments piling up in the back room here and I have to share it:
I’ve had a quick look at your site, it looks vastly interesting. Maybe you’d like to send a outline toe pro us to publicize by reason of you? Please manufacture it as bona fide as viable and include a knee-pants bio of yourself and a link to your site at the end.
A knee-pants bio, eh? Well, my knee pants are kind of old and have creosote stains and they were probably born in China or Indonesia. Is that bio enough?
Well, it seems that Kalamazoo has disappeared again. The damn place is blinking in and out of existence. Actually, on a quantum level, all matter does appear to be blinking in and out of existence (or perhaps winking in a ‘come on’ kind of way.) Kalamazoo, however, is taking the existing-not existing thing way too seriously. I bet if I were to check out the place on Google satellite photos, I would find a big brown indistinct sort of blur.
The alert reader (hi!) will remember that Kalamazoo is where the chaps are based that are putting out my ebooks of Weed and Shorts. Except that last time I checked, they were not listed with the ebook outlets. Perhaps the guys in the office are too engrossed in reading the stories and laughing their bottoms off.
On the brightest of bright notes, I learned last week that Kindle is finally coming to Britain — Kindle being, as I am sure you know, Amazon’s ebook reader device. It has been available in the States for months and months and months, but inexplicably, nowhere else. In the meantime, Amazon UK suspended selling ebooks, presumably until they have their own Kindle store and Kindle machines to read on. Well, Amazon has yet to open a UK ebook store so customers in that country will be buying their ebooks from the US, where happily, my publications are due to be listed. Amazon’s release of the Kindle in the UK is serendipitous indeed, or perhaps they just like me very much indeed.
Right. Back to staring in the e-windows of the e-book stores and waiting for Weed.
Well, it seems like Michigan might exist after all. The files for Weed should be listed with the major ebook outlets soon and a collection of my short stories are soon to follow under the title Shorts.
Witty title, witty cover image, eh?
I still don’t know the exact release dates but you’ll hear the hullabaloo when it is all finished without having to check this blog because I’ll be jumping about and yelling like an expert at hullabaloo.
Well, it has taken years and years and aeons, but we are getting there. If it all happened instantly, it would still be too slow, so I shall just have to take up a hobby to fill in time while I am waiting — a hobby like weeding, for example.
I will never win the Nobel prize for literature, but if there were a Nobel award for lame last lines of blog entries, I might clinch that.
