peter young’s listopia

Here's the current satellite image on Google Maps, taken on 31 October, of flooding in our immediate area of the Khlong Sam Wa district of Bangkok. Our house location there is marked with a yellow arrow. Even at a higher magnification than this the roads are still invisible, just plenty of muddy water everywhere instead. So glad I moved valuables upstairs a month ago when we first heard our district was at risk, but I don't yet know the precise extent of the height of the water around our house. Most of the neighbours have moved away for the time being; in fact half the flood refugees are probably now in Hua Hin, two-and-a-half hours' drive south, where the hotels are now just about all full and there's now a water *shortage* as a result. This is probably because Hua Hin doesn't have its own reservoir and the hotels are (once again) getting first dibs on water over the city residents – we had no water supply at home in Hua Hin today, but we do have a large tank although it's now only half full. Hope things improve tomorrow. I'll be back there in a few days, so I can't wait to see what other major and minor hassles November will bring.

As bad as this has become, I'm reminding myself that it's certainly no worse than what happens to Bangladesh every year, and how much have we seen or heard about their plight lately? Here's an IFRC photo essay from Bangladesh in August, which describes a far worse experience. At least our house is made of bricks.

Indestructible Man, 1956, USA   DIRECTED BY JACK POLLEXFEN
Lon Chaney, Jr. plays Charles "Butcher" Benton, a convicted robber and murderer who's sent to the California gas chamber swearing he'll still kill the lawyer and two henchmen who double-crossed him. And he gets his chance, too, after his dead body is secretly used for cancer research and the doctor accidentally revives him with a huge jolt of electricity that turns him into an indestructible killer focussed on revenge. This is almost a silent movie for Chaney, who only gets a few lines at the beginning but the rest of the time is reduced to a glowering intensity as he stumbles around speechless in the manner of Frankenstein's monster. If this story is a bit over-familiar it's still a well told one, being narrated in retrospect by the cop who gets to track down Benton. Apart from Frankenstein there are a couple of other derivations worth noting, too: this bears more than a passing resemblance to Chaney's 1941 horror debut Man Made Monster, and the ending also compares to that of 1951's The Thing from Another World. I don't mind this film at all, despite the fact that it's scripted with every character clichéd to perfection – one minor player, the doctor's bodysnatching assistant, has his few brief lines delivered with casual panache by famed Disney character actor Joe Flynn; in fact it was the audience's unexpected reaction to his serious role in this film that convinced him his forté was comedy. At no point does Indestructible Man have anything original to say, but that's not actually a problem because it's easy viewing, and helped by the clarity of both the screenplay and direction. This is not a particularly memorable movie, but certainly not a bad one either.