Welcome to the New Moo

And greetings from the second-most densely populated place on Earth. Taiwan, that is. Specifically, Pan Chiao, Taipei County, where I now reside... Wen Hua Road... Sec. 1. Unfortunately, my digital camera died shortly after I arrived here in late August (fell into a squat toilet and drowned). I’d show you a picture of the squat toilet but, well, you know.

I see him every day

So we’ll have to make do with the photos I took in those first few, harried weeks, when I stayed in a neighborhood of Taipei County called Yung Ho. Those first several weeks I stayed in a place without air-conditioning, but hey, I had it a lot better than this poor dog, condemned to spend life in a pet store near my apartment as a multicolored display trinket.

They eat this stuff...

They eat food here that seems alien to me. Chicken feet is mundane. I’ve unwittingly eaten jellied pig blood in their ‘hot-pot’ meals (which, apart from the jellied pig blood, are pretty good). I’ve also seen tons of stuff for sale on the street that I just would never eat: lots of mammal entrails, chou dofu (stinky tofu) which, you will agree from blocks away, well deserves its name.

Click photo for larger view

But I think my favorite oddity from these early photos is this poster promoting something or other using the catchy phrase, “Iron Penis.” Click the photo for a larger shot.

I’m here in order to survive. That is, to teach English, since Web-development jobs all-but disappeared in my beloved San Francisco Bay Area, and I just couldn’t make it anymore on unemployment benefits and occasional work. Here, at least I have health insurance.

Sorry for the long delay in updating this site. Things were moving slowly, literary-wise, even before I left SF. But it’s taken me 6 whole months to get set up here with my old computer, a new (used) monitor, and (A)DSL (they call it ‘ADSL’ here). So I’ve taken the opportunity to upgrade the site as well as update it. In addition to the usual new batch of poetry, essays, travelogues and whimsy, I’ve made the following changes:

• This new home page! I’ve forgone the random-page-loading function that I thought was so cool in favor of a more conventional ‘home page,’ to ease site navigation by providing a central base from which to navigate.

• Made it harder to submit work. “This is an improvement?” you ask? Well, you see, in addition to the expected large amount of novice poetry and essays from what appear to be high school students, a lot of submitted work has been suicide notes. Not worse than that, but still bad, I’ve begun to receive bad writing from PRISON INMATES! All of the above apparently submit on the erroneous belief that they can ‘get back at’ their rejecting boy- or girlfriends / uncaring parents / imprisoners by instantly publishing their ...words... on the Internet without the intervention of a human editor (which has never been the case on this site).

• Bios! That’s bio’s as in ‘biographies,’ not bios as in BIOS, the computer term. Initially I thought I’d present everything without bios, letting the work stand on its own. But then again, nahhh.

This edition also features new material, including:

• A fascinating piece about a UFO hoax written by the hoaxer himself;
• Great new poems from Susan Borie Chambers;
• An amusing fluffy kitty piece from new essayist contributor Byron Vassar;
• Maurice Martin’s hilarious spinning of Cajun mythology, Krawkawkaw Gives a Little;
• All-new sound files from the very limited release of the classic comedy CD, ”Radio X: Sixteen-Year Reunion,” and of course;
• More travelogs from my 1996 Southeast Asia sojourn.

Now that I’m out in SE Asia again, I’m sure I’ll have more to write about after those old travelogs are all posted.

Enjoy! And please submit some excellent writing!

— The Editor