yazza yazza yazza!

i just got the best job.

i'm now the official blogger for Live Earth! In case you haven't heard, Live Earth is hosting concerts on all 7 continents (yes, that's Antarctica, too!) to raise awareness and build a foundation to combat climate change. It's sponsored by Al Gore,...

hallelujah!

i have been born(eo) again!

now i am all filled with the healing light of jebus and, oddly, strongbad. you would not peg those two to run together, but man, jebus likes him some teen girl squad and can you blame him? no. who could cast the first stone at jebus? besides some romans,...

i've been remembering a lot lately. i lean my head against the mini-van window and recall how it felt to say goodbye to susie, gail, and fil seven years ago in port blair. how we had all taken the dusk ferry from havelock and found a completely grungy room with extra spiders and two beds and somehow...

it's been a typical few days. i've been drenched to the bone, covered in flour, charcoal and lipstick, and i got macked by a tranny wearing a sadaam hussein mask.

it's Pee Mai Lao.

that's new years laos style. no stupid dick clark. no dropping balls. no awkward midnight kiss. instead, it's a...

the other night i met a guy named Jules. he was a helicopter pilot in the Territorial Army in North Ireland. shot down by the IRA. the crew of SAS with him, all killed. "they set the dogs on me," he whispers. "i talked."

he holds no grudge now but he won't go back to the UK. lives in Thailand,...

there are many many things i could tell you about sri lanka. many.

i could talk about the way 4' monitor lizards run when you try to grab their tails. i could get misty about waking to the pre-dawn sound of monks giving it up for the buddha's tooth. i could mumble about the lurching train and the...

i haven't got much time. i need to get back to the beach. to the rolling waves, from gentle sweeps to tumbling bruisers. which will come next? i need to find out.

i've left israel. the weird enclave of jews in the desert. where they so obviously belong and don't belong simultaneously. i've left...

we are in jerusalem.

after slogging through africa for four months, we're now somewhere that's familiar in an unrecognisable way.

i've been here before three times. when i was fifteen i came here for six weeks with a jewish youth group; i had my first real girlfriend, got drunk for the first...

i just heard it's supposed to snow in jerusalem. this isn't such great news as we're on our way there tomorrow.

of course, it's colder than frozen eskimos in cairo so whatever. new country! israel! whoop! whoop!

not only do we have friends (FRIENDS! people we KNOW!!!) in jerusalem, but we also...

here in luxor, it's luxorious. despite what the guide book says (renamed the Lonely Bollocks by Bilge Pump Bob), luxor is not any more a-swarm with touts than the rest of egypt.

that title would go to dahab.

what luxor is a-swarm with is hieroglyphs of cow buttocks, giant pillars carved with...

it's not really disappointed. that would imply that things have let me down. it's more misappointed.

disappointed would be showing up for a blind date to find out the woman in question favours electric pink and has bought you tickets to a yanni concert. that's disappointed. misappointed is like...

we're just happier, that's all.

after being frustrated and exhausted for months, and frustrated and exhausted to find that we were frustrated and exhausted (instead of sipping the bubbly of life whilst lounging on the barcalounger of contentment) we are, in Cairo of all places, kicking it old...

in the beginning, there was nothing. no people, no desk attendant and no plane. we were in Nairobi, at the airport, intending to fly to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. but there was nothing. and so god created free room and board at the Nairobi Hilton on Ethiopian Airlines' tab to apologize for the cancellation....

white:

i've watched it all tumble over; this stretch from lake vic to lake al known as the white nile. i know why. at murchison falls the entire river rolls snake eyes and takes a hard dive, hitting the floor like a drunk fresh off the tilt-a-whirl. so much water, so much force, so much falls....

they say, "you have come to see the mountain gorillas?"

we say, "hell no. $300 for an hour spent harassing large primates? we can harass large primates for free by throwing eggs at the kids on the overland trucks. we're here to see the pythons."

they throw their hands in the air and cheer.

we're...

1. Zebra

we saw it there the day before, under a tree, seemingly dead of natural causes. a zebra carcass, lying on its side untouched.

the next morning it does not remain untouched. it has friends. lots of them. vulture friends. something has eaten away it's rump during the dark and the...

it's a long flight. the second flight is a long flight. they are long flights. when we disembark in Dar es Salaam, i feel like i've been thrown from a train. i'm still rolling, unsure if i'm hurt or not. waiting for the motion to stop so i can check myself. we are shepherded through immigration --...