Thoughts and such by Joshua Tong
I’m spending the long weekend in Yosemite National Park. Since half the fun of living in Southern California is being able to drive out to National Parks on weekends like these. Nothing pithy or meditative to say, just that the park is gorgeous and that the National Park Service is easily in my top-two US… Continue reading Yosemite
The aforementioned busy weeks are upon me. Here are thoughts on Three Quick Things: Movie: Mickey 17 A delightfully weird movie — which is basically what you’d expect from a movie directed by Bong Joon Ho. The comedic science-fiction movie dabbles in farce and satire with a healthy dose of existentialism, somehow bouncing around themes… Continue reading Busy Weeks
I am, once again, on the verge of a busy few weeks. Or have been, if the fact that I missed last week due to being slammed through Sunday. And now I’m about to be away again, gallivanting for a bit and I still have to finish packing. There’s an eighteen-hour flight ahead of me… Continue reading Midflight Occupation
When New York went into Covid lockdowns nearly five years ago things got… odd. Beyond being stuck at home for months on end there was that anxious malaise that seemed to permeate everything while we waited to find out if the bad situation was gonna get worse. Seemed like every time I checked the news… Continue reading Small Rituals
What a week, huh? Refreshing the Associated Press’ election coverage while at the office in Tuesday night was… crushing, to say the least. It wasn’t so much watching the person I wanted to win lose that hurt, it was seeing a majority of the electorate condone a leader with an agenda of blatant racism, misogyny,… Continue reading Still In This Fight
So, next week, huh? It feels like we’ve been having the same discussion for nearly a decade now, ever since blatant misogyny and xenophobia became part of regular American political discourse. And here we are, waiting with bated breath to see if the United States elects a man who longs to be a dictator, to… Continue reading I’m Tired Of This Fight
Well that was another week. Maybe by Wednesday after next the everything of it all will have finally subsided and we might finally be free of this hanging specter of doom and able to focus on the other specters of doom that haunt this world. And if all that sounds vague, then please enjoy this… Continue reading Just Another Two Weeks
The high in my part of Los Angeles has hovered around 40ºC this week and cracked it a few times. To say things have been hot feels like an understatement. It’s a heat that’s exhausting, a heat that strains my poor aircon (and the city’s power grid, if yesterday’s rolling blackouts were any indication). There’s… Continue reading Heat Wave
I got a couple rolls of film developed and decided, you know what, I’m going to post some of them here. Because it’s my blog and I can do what I want, and if that means sometimes it becomes a photoblog, so be it. Besides, photoessays are still essays, aren’t they? Death Valley, lford Delta… Continue reading Photoblog
So I finally made it to Venice where I undertook what can best be described as a walking tour heavily influenced by Assassin’s Creed II (with a smattering of Civilization VI). Did spending hours exploring a virtual simulacrum of a (historical version of a) real-world city have any bearing on a visit? Frankly? Yes. Look,… Continue reading Venice in Person
Essays, Not Rants! 