Bangkok, Thailand. 13 April, 2023.
สวัสดีวันสงกรานต์ทุกคน!
Happy Songkran everyone!
This is the one day of the year when I think my own Hawai’ian shirts are not loud enough in Thailand. But it’s a tricky week for the GF and me money-wise, so we are not going all-out on travel (with its high risk of road death or even water fights (high risk of having to walk home in the 39C heat because you’re too soaked to get on BTS). Might hop up to Ayutthaya and look at the temples though!
But, I digress! I’m here to talk about the dog that eats your homework.
In 2023, this dog is named Covid – though I don’t think we really know whether it ought to be named Covid 19 or Covid 23 or perhaps Covid Poohbear (credit where it’s due, 💩 for me and Pooh for you).
Unofortunately there will be no such excuse naming our new Insect Overlords, the Generative AIs, because they are, well: generative. The robot ate your homework? Then why did it write everyone else’s?
(As an aside, I hear tell, whispered rumours in the Innernets, that these days every school kid in America is using ChatGPT to write their homework assignments, except for some poor saps who are trying to actually learn something in school, and those are getting the lower grades. Brave new world!)
Having had three shots of Pfizer and at least two bouts of Covid by now, I think I’m where most of us reasonable, vaxxed-up people are: it sucks, but it’s only a week, and as long as your existence is not so precarious that you can’t drop out for a week without losing everything (sometimes it’s close!) then you’re basically gonna be fine. The bigger risk would seem to be this: I was quite sick but if it were a case of work or starve, I could have worked all but one of the days I was sick, plus of course all the days I was being a good boy and staying away from people after testing negative. I’m sure this happens a lot.
To the point now…
(Ha! One of the nice things about a blog-type platform that basically nobody ever reads is you can ramble all you want. But even this ramblin’ man needs to get to the point eventually, if only so he can get back to other forms of procrastination.)
The point is that Several Artists Issue #2 is late, and the main reason it’s late is that I was knocked out with Covid N just when I was about to write it up. And then I was busy with other things, and didn’t have my third artist yet, and had a bit of writer’s block, and the other usual crap.
Therefore, dear Potential Reader, fret not! Issue #2 is coming very soon, if I have a chance I’ll write it up this weekend, and it’s going to feature three very interesting Thai contemporary abstractionists.
And maybe I will try to rush out Issue #3 before the end of April, so I can at least tell myself I’m sort-of sticking to the monthly schedule.
Oh and a final note, into the void, more to myself than anyone else: if you have an art collection, dammit, you should have it catalogued on the web! I’m so tired of people talking up their collections on, say, Art Smack, and not having any way to go look at what the hell they’re actually doing.
Right. Back to work now.