Author Archives: Jerry

The Bookseller of Kabul

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The Bookseller of Kabul
 is a work of nonfiction written by Asne Seierstad, written in a literary style. The author lived with the family of a fairly successful merchant in the months immediately following the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. For four months in the spring of 2002 the author was squeezed into the small, decaying, soviet-area apartment along with eleven family members. There was almost no furniture – if I understand correctly the Prophet Muhammad had no furnishings.

That spring was a time of optimism in Afghanistan, although as yet there was nothing concrete to justify hopes that the country would once again be a peaceful and prosperous nation. The merchant, Sultan, no longer has to fear for his beloved books being burned (those with pictures were most at risk; the soldiers who came to remove contraband material from his shop were themselves illiterate), and he no longer needs fear being labeled ‘capitalist’ as he was during Soviet times. There is still the threat of violence, however, and the city has been ground into poverty by war and drought.

Things were bad under the Taliban, but in 2002 they weren’t much better. Especially for women.

As a woman the author was able to learn of the life of the women in the apartment they shared. Had the author been male, he never would not even have been able to look at the unmarried women of the house, let alone talk to them. Sultan, for all his political modernity (he is very pleased that there are women in the government), maintains an iron rule over his family. It is he who negotiates a price for his daughters, marrying them to husbands they have never met. His youngest daughter is suffering from Vitamin D deficiency because the sunshine never touches her skin – in one of the sunniest places on Earth. His sons work long hours in his shops, so they do not have a chance to go to school or study.

Perhaps there are two sorts of women in Sultan’s world – those who work and wear western clothes, and those who follow tradition. The first group is somehow asexual, their behavior not an issue because they will never be part of a traditional Afghan family. While he respects those women, he is never going to allow that to happen to any of his family.

It is to be remembered that Sultan is a relatively prosperous man, part of the power he holds over his extended family is because of his success. However, on issues like the traditional role of a woman, I suspect if anything he is more liberal than many of his neighbors. It is that way, because it has always been that way. (Although the burka, the all-concealing robe and head gear, was not as common in earlier times.)

Makes me glad to be who and where I am.

The book was a good read, entertaining as well as enlightening. I started slowly, but the prose steadily pulled me in, until I read the last third or so in a single sitting. I am curious how things are going there now, after at least relative calm in the city for a while. Is the family prospering? Has reliable electricity and running water been restored? Are more women daring to show their faces in public? 

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Back in the day, he was Fleeker

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It seems that most places I’ve worked there’s been the designated guy who the rest of the office likes to pick on. It’s a combination of traits that lead someone into this position — an almost contradictory combination of a tendency to take himself too seriously, making sweeping pronouncements that he expects people to instantly see the wisdom of, while at the same time having his own sense of humor and willingness to laugh at himself.

Fleeker was that guy at Binary Labs. He was smart and hard-working, and he wasn’t afraid to make a bet that might end with him wearing a dress to work. Every office needs a Fleeker.

Eventually Fleeker went back to school, got his MBA, and is working now at some big food company in Chicago. The office wasn’t the same without him, but somehow we managed. I fell out of touch with Fleeker, so it was a bit of a surprise a few months ago when another former coworker sent me a link to (I think) a Wall Street Journal article. The article was about using the Internet to find love, and it started off telling about a Chicago guy who had been rejected by a major online dating service — apparently no small feat. In response this man launched his own Web site. I clicked on the link, and sure enough, there was Fleeker, in a particularly unflattering photograph.

That is the first thing you see when you go to SettleForBrian.com. On the site he does his best to lay out both the good and the bad about him, so there will be no disappointment later.

On valentines day this year the online version of the San Diego paper featured Fleeker. Apparently the full-discolsure method has yet to work magic, although there has been some interest.

I think it’s time to pitch in and help the lad out.

A big part of the site is a long list of pros and cons, listing his good points and his less endearing qualities. Looking over the list, however, I see a few omissions. Not necessarily pro’s or con’s but important Fleeker facts. Also missing, and much more needed, are testimonials. Naturally, in the spirit of things, the testimonials should also not sugar-coat the truth. Toward that end I’ll be sending a testimonial to Fleeker, for him to use as he sees fit. I encourage those who know Fleeker (or the new Brian version) to send in your own testimonials. I have no idea if he’ll use them, but it should add depth to the character he presents on his site. If he posts the testimonial there, I’ll slap it up here as well. (I had the testimonial up here for a couple of minutes, but then I decided to take it down until Fleeker had a chance to see it.)

Thanks!

Café Mia

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I find myself in a very small place right now, a new (for me) little kavarna in fuego’s neighborhood. It is a nice place, warm, with four tables and three barstools. While it doesn’t have a fireplace, it does have a gas space heater that would probably be very pleasant to sit in front of in the event that winter were to make another attempt.

I am at the smallest table, with my laptop in my lap to leave room for beer on the table. (The tea was excellent, but I am starting to twitch.) In the wicker chair opposite mine, the bartender also has a notebook open in her lap. The only other customers are a pair of the bartender’s girlfriends; the very tall brunette is drinking espresso while the blonde sips her dark beer.

That’s it. Me, three pretty girls, and beer. This is a very good place to be.

Thanks!

My lucky day!

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These things I know:

I will be in Dallas on March 7th. I intend to go straight from there to San Jose. There’s a Polkacide concert on the 10th in Oakland that I don’t want to miss. Jet lag and punk polka! Yowza! I need to be back in Dallas on April… um… 8th, I think. Road Trip Day will indeed be celebrated on the road.

I will be in Catania, Sicily, on June 19th.
I leave from Catania, Sicily on June 26th.

I missed out on the 50-cent round trip fare from Prague to Sicily and had to settle for the $5 rate. Of course, after all the airport taxes and other crap were piled on, the tickets ended up costing quite a bit more than that, but still it was just too cheap to pass up. I’m crossing my fingers that Mt. Etna erupts while I’m in the neighborhood (current status is orange, whatever that means). Syracuse is not far, and I’d love to hear other suggestions for places to visit as well.

When booking the flight to Dallas, I looked at the price, decided I could handle it, and went on to make the reservation. On the next page a notification came up. “This is your lucky day! We found a lower fare for that flight!” The amount saved: almost exactly what the tickets to Sicily ended up costing with all the fees and stuff. My lucky day, indeed.

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Thanks!

You gotta believe!

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Believe In Me, a film built around the themes of values, commitment, and personal growth, will be coming out in a limited release soon. fuego worked on the film, and he tells me that when shooting wrapped the movie had a decent chance of being good. It’s a sports movie, based on the true story of a girl’s basketball coach in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It was a small-budget production, shot mostly on the plains of Eastern New Mexico.

The initial release is scheduled for March 9th and will be in markets where the distributors think that basketball, values, and Bruce Dern will play the best. If it does well in these locations, then a larger release will be scheduled.

The planned release cities are (copied from fuego’s blog):

A R K A N S A S
+ Bentonville/Rogers

I N D I A N A
+ Indianapolis

I O W A
+ Des Moines

K A N S A S
+ Kansas City

K E N T U C K Y
+ Lexington

N E W M E X I C O (in April)
+ Albuquerque
+ Clovis/Portales
+ Other cities TBD

N O R T H C A R O L I N A
+ Raleigh
+ Durham
+ Chapel Hill

O K L A H O M A
+ Oklahoma City
+ Tulsa

T E N N E S S E E
+ Knoxville

T E X A S
+ Austin
+ Lubbock

If you live near one of these towns and occasionally find yourself lamenting, “whatever happened to good family entertainment?” now is your chance to vote with your pocketbook and give the little guys a boost at the same time. I don’t know how much marketing will accompany the movie, so watch for it and fill those theaters! If you see it, and like it, don’t hesitate to tell the world.

In the interest of disclosure it should be noted that some of my brother’s associates will benefit from the success of the movie, and therefore my brother might realize some intangible benefit, as well. That, in turn, could somehow remotely help me some day. I just wanted to be up front about that.

Thanks!

AiA: Prologue

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Before we get started: This story is imagined as a sort of Galaxy Quest conceit — someone travels to a distant land and quite unexpectedly finds herself in a world where conventions of anime are real. You should still be able to enjoy the story even if you don’t know anime; you will be no more confused than Allison is herself.

Don’t worry about learning all the names in the first episode; you will have a chance to meet the characters later. At first I didn’t even bother to give many of the characters names as they are just voices in a crowd. We will all learn to remember the names together.

Allison Crenshaw walked up the nearly deserted street toward her new school. She felt awkward in her uniform; the skirt seemed shorter on her than it did on the other girls. She walked alone, clutching her books to her chest, practicing her Japanese under her breath.

“Hey, watch out!” Allison turned just in time to see the kid on the skateboard before he crashed into her. She fell, books flying, conscious of her short skirt.

“Watch where you’re going, stupid!” the kid said. The boy was perhaps twelve years old, and he wore the uniform for her school. He had added a backwards baseball cap to the standard issue.

“I’m sorry!” Allison said from where she sat on the concrete.

The kid brushed himself off and recovered his skateboard. “Jeeze, the dummy doesn’t even know which side of the sidewalk to walk on,” he said to himself. He smiled at her, his grin large and toothy. “Well, see you.” He hopped back on his skateboard and continued down the street towards the school.

Allison pulled herself together. Her knee was scuffed, oozing blood slowly. “Oh, man,” she moaned, “my first day.”

“Are you all right?” The male voice was smooth and resonant. “Let me help you.” Allison looked up into the large, almost violet eyes of the young man as he knelt down next to her. With great care he began gathering her books and stacking them neatly. “Don’t mind Daisuke. It’s always someone else’s fault when he crashes.”

He stood with her books and offered his hand. She took it and rose to stand next to him. His skin was smooth and cool, and even when she stood he was quite a bit taller than she was. He looked at her with his odd-colored eyes, eyes that seemed as deep as the ocean.

“Thank you,” she said. She could feel herself blushing under his gaze.

“You are going to the academy?” he asked.

“Uh, yes, I am. It’s my first day.”

“Ah, of course. That explains it.” He handed her books back.

“Explains what?”

“Why you’re late.”

“Oh, my gosh! I’m sorry, I have to go!”

“I understand.”

Allison took three quick steps and turned back to him. “It was nice to meet you.”

“I’m sure we’ll run into each other again. Goodbye.”

“Bye!” Allison ran up the street. “Oh!” she said and turned back once more, “My name is… Allison?”

There was no one there.

As Allison ran down the empty hallway she practiced her Japanese. “Please excuse me. I am sorry I am late.”

She reached the door of the class and composed herself as well as she could before cracking open the door, still out of breath.

“Ah, here she is now,” the teacher said.

Timidly Allison stepped into the room, feeling awkward in her school uniform. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.

The teacher glared at her fiercely. “I will overlook your tardiness this once,” he said, “but you are not in America anymore. We expect our students to be on time.”

Allison glanced around nervously. The rest of the class stared back at her with a strange intensity.

The teacher turned to address the students. “Class, please allow me to introduce our new transfer student…” He scowled at the paper he was holding as he tried to pronounce her name. “Arrisawrn…”

It didn’t matter what he said. Upon his utterance of the phrase ‘transfer student’, the class broke into pandemonium.

“Transfer student!” called one student as he dove under his desk.

“We’re doomed!” shouted a panicky girl, cowering in the corner. “So young… I’ve barely lived at all.”

“She’s so cute…,” said a boy holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“Everybody stay calm!” bellowed another girl over the noise.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” huffed a pretty blonde.

“Don’t turn me into a monkey! Please don’t turn me into a monkey,” sobbed another boy.

The teacher seemed unaware of the bedlam. “Allison has come all the way from America. She may not be familiar with all our customs, so be sure to do your best to help her feel welcome.”

The girl who had shouted for calm addressed the teacher. “Sir? She can sit next to me. There’s no one at this desk.” Allison watched as the girl dumped the previous occupant of the indicated desk onto the floor.

“There’s no one here, either!” said the blonde girl as she kicked the boy who was cowering underneath the desk next to hers. “She can sit next to me!”

“I’m class president! She will sit next to me!”

“She should sit by me. I’m the most popular, and I can explain to her who everyone is. Someone has to tell her.”

The boy under the desk just sobbed. “She’s going to turn me into a monkey. I just know it.”

“So young…”

Another girl, near the back, spoke quietly. “It would be most harmonious if she sat there.” She gestured toward a desk, its previous occupant impossible to determine in the mayhem.

“Good suggestion, Hitomi,” the teacher said. “That desk has been empty ever since…” The class fell silent. “Is that all right with you, Ruchia?”

The girl at the adjacent desk nodded. She was pretty, her long black hair glinting almost bluish in the light. “Yes, I would like to have someone there. Miss Allison, would you honor me by sitting in the seat next to mine?”

Allison stood at the front of the room, paralyzed with confusion and fear.

“Monkey, monkey,” the boy sobbed.

“Oh, cruel fate! So young, so much life ahead of me,” wailed the girl in the corner.

“Transfer student,” mumbled a girl who wore thick glasses, recording the event in her journal. “Commence observation.”

“Miss Clrensharwl?” asked the teacher.

Allison snapped out of her state. The class seemed to be settling down. Numbly she went to her desk and sat down.

The teacher said, “Now, if you will turn to page 143 in the text…”

“Hello,” said the girl next to her. “I’m Ruchia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Allison.”

“You’re from America?”

“Uh, yes, that’s right.”

“I have a brother in America. He went there to play baseball.” The girl’s bright face clouded for a moment. “I haven’t heard from him in a long time. Not since the time of the giant explosion in Kyoto.” She brightened again. “But I’m sure he’s just busy. I bet you have lots of questions.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but shouldn’t we be listening to the teacher?”

Ruchia laughed. “You’re pretty funny.”

“But…”

“This is Seiji,” Ruchia said, gesturing to the boy on Allison’s right.

“Hello,” said Allison. She held out her hand for Seiji to shake, then remembered where she was. She bowed awkwardly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Seiji narrowed his eyes and studied at her, his eyes partially concealed behind his long hair. “Skilled at Japanese, but unfamiliar with our customs,” Seiji said as if she wasn’t there. His voice carried a rough strength, and an unnatural intensity. “Are you here with your parents?”

“Seiji!” Ruchia said. “That’s no way to talk to someone you’ve only just met!”

“Please excuse me,” Seiji said, suddenly stiffly formal.

“Don’t mind him,” Ruchia said. “He doesn’t know how to act around anyone.”

Seiji returned his gaze to the desk in front of him. Allison half-expected it to catch on fire. He looked back up and caught her watching him. Allison blushed for the second time that day.

“Your knee,” he said.

“What?”

“Your knee is injured.”

“Oh! Yes, I fell on my way to school. That’s why I was late.”

He nodded slowly. “So, it has started already.”

“Wha…?”

She was interrupted by a poke on her left arm. “Hey, Ruchia, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Allison turned back the other way, but she still felt Seiji’s gaze burning into the back of her neck. Standing next to Ruchia was a pretty girl, slender in an athletic way. She had spiky black hair and an open smile filled with teeth. She poked Allison in the arm once more. “Wow. So lifelike.” She turned to Ruchia. “You always said Mika would make a good transfer student one day.”

“My name is Allison.”

“Riiiight. From America? No parents around?”

“I, well…”

Ruchia came to her rescue. “Tasuki, I don’t think she knows who Mika is.”

“Ah, that’s how it is, then?”

“Allison, this is Tasuki. She doesn’t mean to be rude. She thought you might be… friends with Mika. We all live in an old monastery together. I kind of thought you might know Mika, too, but then I saw your knee.”

Tasuki winked. “You don’t think Mika could do that?”

“Oh, no,” Allison said, finally understanding something. “This was an accident. There was a boy on a skateboard—”

“Daisuke!” the other two girls said together. Behind her she heard Seiji mutter “Daisuke. Of course. He shall answer for this.”

“I don’t know what his name was.”

Ruchia said, “It was him. Anyone who mentions ‘injury’ and ‘skateboard’ in the same sentence is talking about Daisuke.”

“The guy’s a rolling disaster,” Tasuki agreed. “So you really don’t know Mika? Let’s hope she doesn’t try to dismantle you, then. Oh, look, it’s lunch time. My favorite time of the day. Come on!”

“How do you guys learn anything?” asked Allison.

“We study all night, of course,” said Ruchia.

Kouta leaned against the railing, looking down into the courtyard below, where Allison was enjoying her lunch. Tasuki had a huge bag of food, and was throwing it back with abandon, while Ruchia nibbled demurely. Allison’s eating habits seemed perfectly normal.

“Too normal,” Kouta said to himself. Out loud he said, “All right, let’s call this meeting to order.”

Kaneda snapped to attention. “Yes, sir! Meeting number one of the Emergency Committee is now called to order!”

Kouta surveyed the knot of his classmates who had gathered for the Emergency Committee. Most seemed excited, but Seiji, leaning against the railing off to the side, hands shoved in his pockets, was trying to hide his worry. He understood what was at stake, at least. “We have a transfer student.” Kouta began. “She seems normal, but we know that’s impossible. We need to learn her true nature and figure out what to do about her.”

“I think she’s a robot,” said Shinta.

Kaneda looked skeptical. “Maybe. Her knee was injured, though.”

Shinta was not to be dissuaded. “That’s convenient. What better way to allay suspicion?”

“You could be right, but she didn’t seem, well, roboty.”

Bando spoke for the first time. “Yeah, you saw how confused she was. Totally clueless. She’s an escaped lab experiment for sure.”

“Maybe…”

Kouta looked over at his friend. “You’ve been awfully quiet, Seiji. What do you think?”

“I think we need to get a good look at her teeth.”

“You think she’s a demon?” The eyes of some of the younger students went round.

“It fits the facts.”

Naota paled. “Oh, God, you’re right. She’s going to turn me into a monkey for sure. Why’d she have to transfer to our school?”

“Relax. Not all pretty transfer students who appear out of nowhere and don’t understand the local customs and have no parents bring untold destruction.”

Naota was not reassured. “Name one who didn’t. You read about that one in Osaka, didn’t you? They’re still rebuilding.”

Seiji spoke up. “She’s not living at the old monastery, is she?”

“No, she’s staying with distant relatives of some sort,” Kouta said.

“Let’s at least be thankful for that. If she was at the monastery with all those other girls…”

“What?”

“It would change everything.”

Shinta’s eyes glazed over. “Hot springs… towels slipping…”

“The only thing worse would be if she was secretly sleeping in someone’s closet,” Seiji said.

“She could sleep in my closet any time,” Shinta said.

“Don’t even think that!” Seiji said. “You may as well kill your mother yourself!”

“I’m just saying she’s cute, that’s all.”

“Careful,” said Kouta, “or you’ll give yourself another nosebleed.”

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Thanks!

A few words of introduction

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Late one night I was watching anime (it could have been any of them), and the Mysterious Girl was introduced to the class as a transfer student. I found myself thinking, man, you’d think by now students in Japan would know that transfer students always mean trouble. The following story is based on that thought. In this Japan, just about everyone has a mysterious past, parents are rare or nonexistent, little girls can build killer robots, and transfer students mean trouble. A lot of trouble. She might be a killer angel, a robot with a cat brain, or a demon hunter who has lost her powers, but one way or another the transfer student’s arrival heralds untold destruction.

Of course, this would be disorienting to anyone visiting Anime Japan from a more rational part of the universe. Enter Allison, who has no idea that in this place demons are real (although difficult to tell from angels), someone on the faculty of every school has a secret lab stashed away in the basement, that the government regularly experiments on the most innocent of schoolgirls, and a house filled with girls wearing only towels isn’t complete without a clumsy geeky guy somehow living among them.

Allison expected to have some difficulty adapting to Japanese culture, but nothing could have prepared her for this. Perhaps through some cosmic mix-up she got on the wrong plane in Los Angeles; it would have meant nothing to her that everyone else in line had spiky, colored hair. Perhaps some greater force decided it was time to blur the line between that world and our own. Allison has never seen an anime in her life, and now she is living in one.

That would be difficult enough, but of course she’s a transfer student as well.

Before you start

There are a couple of things that might make reading a little more pleasant: First, Don’t worry about the names. I sure can’t remember them, so I don’t expect you to. (I’ve never put the database in Jer’s Novel Writer to heavier use.) The names are Japanese so you don’t have preworn grooves in your brain for them; I don’t even expect you to recognize gender by the name. I tried to pick names that weren’t too similar. Still, there are a lot of names that come at you right off the bat. Just relax and go with it, they are just voices in the crowd; when those people come back in any significant way I will be sure to remind you which archetype is being referred to. Don’t worry if you don’t understand the anime references, you’re no worse off than Allison.

Second, writing things like this is what I do when you would watch TV. It’s a brain-switched-off activity, when I need to relax and not take myself so seriously. While I’ve been making a little bit of effort (very little) to raise the quality bar for the fiction here at Muddled Ramblings, you’re not going to find any Pulitzer-quality prose below. This is just recreational writing that I have decided to share with you. (You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.)

As a final note, the icon that appears next to the titles of the episodes is Club-To-Death Angel Dokuro-Chan, a sweet little angel with cute wings, a halo (which turns out to be wicked sharp), and a deadly spiked bat that complements her short temper. She, is, of course, a transfer student.

Thanks!

Sick as a Dog

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This will be a short episode, since I have to use my eyes to write it. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. My lungs hurt. My muscles ache, especially my back. The only time my back is happy is when I’m standing up, but I’m just not up for that sort of exertion. I spent the day tossing and turning, watching the sky become gradually brighter and then watching it get darker again.

I’ve made a couple of half-hearted attempts at doing something useful, but no, there will be none of that.

I made a comment earlier that most of the time I enjoy being single. When I’m sick may be the only exception to the rule. I thought about it this afternoon and it’s not so much the pampering I miss but the sympathy. I just want someone close by who can listen to my complaining and feel sorry for me. Somehow that makes the suffering much more tolerable.

Tomorrow will be better.

Thanks!

Half-Burned Cigarettes

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A while back fuego and I were in a little pub, enjoying food from the bagel place next door and working on our respective projects. At a table nearby there was a group of film students working on a project together. On that quiet afternoon a new phrase entered our lexicon.

The students were from all over the place, so of course they were holding their conversation in English. I found the discussion tantalizingly irritating, like a rash you can’t help but scratch. I had to listen. fuego was eventually compelled to put in his headphones to block out the others’ conversation. We were both annoyed by the students, but it turns out we were bothered for different reasons. It’s funny how strongly the students affected both of us.

They were discussing, with great intensity, things like how far down the Nurse’s cigarette should be burned in one particular shot, considering the different things that the cigarette could symbolize. “If it was almost all gone it could represent…” Absent from their discussion was the story. You can pile up all the symbolism you want, but if the story sucks none of the rest will matter. Let the critics find the symbolism. If the symbolism is an important part of the story, well, then, that’s different. In that case worrying about the symbolism is synonymous with making the story as good as possible. These kids were just looking for extra depth to pile on top. You see the problem with that, yes? Depth has to be underneath.

So says the guy who fancies himself a writer. I was at one point tempted to say something, they were so damn intent on their cigarette. I wanted to shake them awake. “Let it go! Put your energy into the story.”

fuego, it turns out, was contemplating intervention as well, but of a different sort. After an hour of cigarette burnage and other minutia, he wanted to beat them with his chair. It is fortunate he had his music. Later, this is what he said to me as we walked down the street: “I’ll tell you how long the cigarette will be. It’ll be however long it was when you got a good take.”

So says the guy who makes a living turning scripts into movies. In the practical world, all your half-burned cigarettes will be lost in the heat and rush of making the film. Worrying about that stuff doesn’t just waste your time, it wastes the time of the crew who has to try to deal with it, and in the end will come to nothing. “The nurse is smoking.” That’s about all you need to say about that. You can put in that she pulls on the cigarette at a certain point, to help establish the pacing of the scene as you imagine it, and there’s even a possibility it will happen that way. You could even call for an ashtray-perspecttive shot of the nurse — if it helps the story.

Now, when we are working on something together and we get hung up on a point, one of us will point out that it is a half-burned cigarette. Since our definitions of the phrase are slightly different (mine: it doesn’t help the story; fuego’s: it will be lost in the heat of production no matter what we write here), we invoke it at different times. It works, though. No matter what qualifies it as a half-burned cigarette, we know it’s time to drop it and move on.

Which at last brings me to the reason I’m writing this. I have found myself mired in half-burned cigarettes lately. I’m getting bogged down in details that ultimately don’t matter. Better not to mention them at all. (A corollary of the half-burned cigarette: inconvenient minutia is better ignored than explained. This principle does not apply to people doing really stupid things, like cops not calling for backup.) So now I’m staring at a scene that is a veritable ashtray, and I know the answer. It’s difficult to do after all the time and sweat I’ve spent on it, but it’s time to delete the whole damn thing and tell that part of the story an entirely different way. I hate when that happens.

Thanks!

Travel Plans

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I’ve been talking for quite some time about spending some time in the western hemisphere. This morning, full of resolve once again to sit down and just book the dang tickets, I dialed in the travel Web sites and tried to piece together an itinerary. An hour later I was staring dumbly at the screen, having found a very good London-New York flight, but to and from the wrong airport in London to hook up with the cheap european airlines. Somehow it seems wrong to spend more to go between airports in London than it does to go from Prague (or, cheaper yet, Brno) to London.

That’s about when the fizzy sound started coming out my ears and my eyes began to scan deep discounts to Odessa, Calcutta and Bejing. Once again I failed to book my tickets. I’ll make another go of it later. At least I’ve figured out the requirements:

1) Start in Prague in the early Marchish time frame (unless substantial savings can be realized at another time).
2) Long layovers should be in places I can meet up with people.
3) Multi-day layovers acceptable (and even good) but I won’t be renewing my driver’s license until I get to California, so renting a car is not an option.
4) Through some conveyance, I must end up in Cupertino.

5) Then follows a less structured period of driving around. I would like to visit (not necessarily in this order) western Washington, Colville (rhymes with smallville), Bozeman, the Sacramento environs, Scotts Valley, San Diego, and various spots in New Mexico. Weather may alter the list. Alaska, once again, will have to wait.
5a) I suppose I should warn some of those people that I’ll be in the neighborhood.
5b) The last time I drove around the continent for “about 3 weeks” it took more than seven months. I don’t see that happening this time; I’ll be paying rent over here the whole time.

6) Leave from Albuquerque.
7) Long layovers etc (see above), although now I will be able to drive a car legally.
8) Return to Prague late Marchish/early Aprilish. Road Trip Day on the road? It might work.

It seems there are (at least) two ways to travel. Book tickets to fit specific requirements, which is what I’ve been trying to do – although I suppose if my requirements were more specific things would be much easier. Too many choices. Alternately you can just say, “what the hell, I’ll go there”. Just pick some place that sounds cool, and go when the airline tells you you can do it on the cheap. You have to commit fairly long in advance, but it is possible to do what I have dubbed “impulse planning” – you read a list, make a choice, and off you go.

Anyone want to meet up with me in Bali?

Thanks!

Been Writin’

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The words, they are coming right now. It’s fair to say that I’m writing most of the time anyway, but there’s a difference, sometimes. Eighty percent of the time I’m working on the ninety-five percent perspiration thing. Then there’s the sixteen percent of waking moments that I’m not writing. That leaves only four percent of my life for inspiration.

These numbers skew dramatically from week to week, and there are certainly moments of inspiration when I’m working on the software as well. In fact, recently I’ve really had some good ideas about improvements to JersNW. The thing is, I’m writing right now. The words are there for me, scary in their nakedness.

I wrote a bit a while back, my hypothetical advice to hypothetical students, an essay about writing essays. The message was to write without fear. I was (and still am) pleased with that work. There are times when I put something down that is just a little too close to the bone, sometimes here in the blog, sometimes elsewhere. There is a moment of commitment, and I hesitate. Secrets. Demons. Shame. Rambunctious offensiveness. I tell myself at those times, “Write without fear.”

But that’s not right. What I really mean is “write with courage.” The fear is there. In fact, when I feel the fear, that means I’m getting close to something. No, I never write without fear. I write despite fear. I write because of fear. I look back at my favorite episodes here at muddled ramblings, and they fall into two categories. There are the most entertaining ones, and the ones that frightened me the most to publish.

There are also the gray episodes, the ones I’ve written but pulled back from hitting the go button. Eventually I delete those, and the words are lost until I find a braver moment. In the end I am not as courageous as I’d like to be.

3

Thanks!

The Water Method Man

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Right now I am reading John Irving’s second published novel, The Water-Method Man. The central point of view is that of Fred ‘Bogus’ Trumper, his nickname well-earned through the countless lies he has used to pave his life. He has lied about mundane and inconsequential shit for so long that when the extraordinary happens, when defining moments occur, no one believes him. But in this self-appraisal that slides easily from first person to third, from present to past, we must admit that while Bogus is an accomplished liar, a man adept at verbal sleight of hand, a captain of obfuscation, he is honest with himself.

Bogus, it seems, works for an independent movie company in search of a project. His boss has decided that Bogus will be the subject of the next film. The name of the film: Fucking Up.

As I read about Bogus I feel the Bogus in my soul, and I wonder how I managed to go so many years without fucking up (more than I did). Recently I’ve reclaimed the Bogus, grasped my God-given ability to fuck up, clinging to what must be a basic human right the way a rodeo rider holds the rope tied around the neck of the angry bull beneath him. The beast is quivering with rage, wanting nothing more than to send me to the dirt and put a hoof between my shoulder blades. In rodeo it’s eight seconds. In not fucking up, it’s a lifetime. For a long time I was doing a good job not fucking up, except now it feels like the whole time I was fucking up.

I’ve not read anything by John Irving that I didn’t like, but I have to say that there’s something in Setting Free the Bears and The Water Method Man that resonates better with me than his later works. Bears has some rough spots that I’m sure Irving would like another go at, but the voice is there. It’s a great double-feature with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with a lesson in Czech history on top. (I was not living here when I read the story, but it did inform my perception of the country.)

Maybe it’s Irving fighting against the pulp establishment, but in this story and in A Prayer for Owen Meany, which I also recently read, he has gone out of his way to say, during the course of the novel, that there will not be a definitive end. It may be in his other stories as well, but I wasn’t looking for it back then. Now that I’m aware of it, it seems a bit unnatural, a self-justification where one isn’t necessary. Either you understand or you don’t. Either you like questions or you like answered questions. With Irving there is no happily ever after, there’s just ‘and then we all kept on’, or, ‘and then I continued on the vector of my life, a tightrope act with despair on the right side of my balancing pole, and reckless optimism on the left. Ahead are the other acrobats, waving me on, beckoning to me, and on that narrow path true redemption and true damnation both lie.’

Irving’s gonna wish he said that.

Stories don’t end. Episodes might come to a close with a boom or a sigh, but the story continues. The brilliance of Owen Meany is not the grand convergence of Owen’s knowledge of what is to come, it is about the hinted, not ever written and perhaps periodic reclamation of the narrators soul, his return to the passion of teaching. Irving has a way with words, spare except when he isn’t.

Cells divide and sperm meets ovum. The sperm come carrying heavy suitcases, and the ova have baggage of their own. Somewhere in this convergence of crap is the magic we call life.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

My favorite job

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I met Belladonna on a movie set, so it’s only natural that she thought I knew something about movies. From the start she was a better conversationalist than I was, more open and sincere, but she eventually tired of trying to reach me through cinema. ‘Do you remember in…’ she would ask, only to be confronted by my apologetic shrug. The list of movies I haven’t seen is immense, and finally she got tired of saying “I can’t believe you haven’t seen…”

There was a period when I felt very comfortable with Belladonna, when there was a mutually understood vast gulf between us. In fact, even now she is one of the few members of the XX set that I can just chill with, although I haven’t seen her for quite some time.

She would be surprised, I think, to learn that once it was my job, my paid profession, to watch movies and talk to people about them.

Once upon a time there was a video store. This is not a David and Goliath story; this little video store had managed to carve out a big chunk of the Southern California market. The way they accomplished this feat was remarkable, however. Get this: they succeeded with two crazy gambits. They offered bulk discounts (if you rent a lot of movies you don’t pay as much), and they offered good customer service.

In each store, much of the time, there was an extra person on payroll whose job was to hang out and talk about movies with the customers. That was it. Much of the time customers would approach that person for recommendations, but other times the movie whisperer would simply strike up a chat with indecisive renters. Did you see X? What did you think? If you’ve got a big sound system, you’re hurting yourself if you don’t see ‘Mission’.

You hit a couple of good recommendations, people are looking for you later. You miss, people are almost apologetic that they didn’t like it, but when they explain why you can nail the next recommendation. My job, even though I ostensibly was in management, was to watch movies at home and to talk about movies at work. I did that job well.

Some of you, the ones who have bought whole-heartedly my craftily-constructed image as an antisocial recluse, capable only of communicating through grunts and belches (and when confronted with a female simply losing consciousness), might be surprised to learn that I did very well in this role. Here’s why: It was a controlled transaction. I can deal with strangers, I can even deal with surprises. It’s uncertainty that’s tough.

Log jam in my head. So many metaphors, so many moments.

Back to Video Library. It was easy work, pleasant work, and almost none of the other people there wanted floor duty. Even people who loved to talk movies with coworkers dreaded going out and talking movies with strangers. So I would do it. It was better than working. It made it easy to go into the office each day. Working with Wendy and Maryann didn’t hurt, either.

Wendy. For a long time she thought I was gay because I didn’t hit on her. I wasn’t gay, I was just afraid. When I dropped a semi-truth to establish my heterosexuality I became a curiosity to her, a science experiment. Had the stars shifted a little bit one way or the other, placing me at the top of the stairs at a party rather than at the bottom, putting me in the back seat rather than in the front seat, I would have come to know all that lay behind the promise that was Wendy. Oh, stars! Still you taunt me so!

Wendy’s friend — I’ve called her Maryann, but as I sit here and remember it seems like there’s been a awful lot of Maryann’s in my life. More than is natural; I suspect I’m painting old faces I remember affectionately with a name I also like. None of them will ever touch the real Maryann, young and poised with dark hair and fair skin and, yes, buxom — she sat at the back of the bus, her stop beyond mine. She sat three rows behind me when I told the lie to Suzie (Susie? oh, please forgive me I don’t remember), the horrible lie that would have been nothing but I repeated it, and again; there was no cock to crow but the betrayal was just as real. And three rows behind was Marianne, cool and perfect and unaware. I never felt as alone as I did at her birthday party.

Which all leads up to Michelle. Susie introduced us; I think she was relieved to divert me. Michelle liked me. I didn’t really understand that, then, and even now it mystifies me. Michelle. To me she was (and still is) some unattainable thing, and I considered myself a dalliance and treated her the same way. We did not share our dreams. We did not reveal our secrets. But now, much too late, much too late, I realize that she liked me. At night, sometimes, I wonder what might have been, even though I know the answer. There is a little echo of her in every strong, intelligent woman I write. I miss her, and hope she is well. I doubt we shall ever speak again. I don’t think I’d have anything to say, even if we did.

That was before Wendy, before this particular Maryann, before Video Library. It was all a long time ago. It was a good job, though, talking about movies.

Thanks!

Mind Share

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I’ve been stretched lately. Not for time; I’m busy but no busier than usual. Concentration seems to be the scarce resource. There are a couple of things that are eating all that my head has to offer, so when it comes time to answer emails or preside over the message forums at the Hut, my good intentions glance off the task like an Apollo capsule bouncing off the atmosphere and condemning its occupants to being the first interstellar humans.

I know that to run a successful business I have to be there for the folks, and I know that to run a successful blog I have to be here. I haven’t the slightest idea what it takes to be a successful writer, though. Sucks that that’s what I want to be.

Thanks!

Zima!

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The phrase “since the communist era” is an overworked one when discussing the weather; it’s as if the weather patterns were affected somehow by the Velvet Revolution. My first winter here was the coldest winter since communist times. There was a period of almost a month where the temperature never got above freezing. Not even once. The mercury never so much as poked its head above the zero line, groundhog-like; it stayed in the cellar. That winter, it was a notable event when I stepped in mud one day, simply because there was mud to step in.

Last winter was the snowiest since the communist era. Memories of the flooding a few years ago had locals looking pensively at the deep snow in the mountains, and when spring rains accelerated the melting process there was a feeling of held breath. I expect there was as much water this time as last, but the powers that be managed the potential disaster much better this time. (Thanks, Austria, for not screwing us over this time!)

This winter is only two days old, so it’s hard to characterize. The temperature is finally below freezing, and I pulled out my winter coat (thanks, Mom!) last night for the first time. Somewhere in Ireland my gloves, my beloved hunters gloves lie, and I miss them right now. (They are fingerless, but with a mitten flap that can be folded over the digits when they’re not typing. MaK dethumbed them for me, making them the only harsh-weather typing gloves on the planet.) Although I am ill-equipped this year, I welcome the cold. It’s one of the things that has forged the national character of the Czechs, an active character in the story of life here.

Thanks!