Author Archives: Jerry

Crater Lake

Posted on by
7

Location: Abbey’s Pizza, Bend, Oregon
Miles: 2763.6

The call of the road was less urgent this morning, and I got a good start on the day by going in to Central Weed for breakfast. I missed out by jumping on the first hotel I saw last night. The one I stayed in was nice enough, but in Central Weed there were a couple that advertised much better rates. More important, Central Weed even has a little downtown area with a couple of promising-looking bars. Alas, I will never have a chance to learn the charms that lie behind the door of Papa’s. It didn’t really look like my kind of breakfast place. I was scouting around for a good place for breakfast when someone in a moose costume directed me to a place called the Hungry Moose (or something like that). It looked OK so I went for it. If some poor bastard or bastardette is going to stand around in a moose costume they may as well get something for it. While I secured my belongings several passing cars honked at the moose. Not an annoying honk, just the social beep-beep hello-neighbor sort of honk. I imagine in a town that size everyone knows who’s in there.

After eating more than I should have at the all-you-can-eat buffet, I wedged myself into the Miata and pointed its nose up Highway 97. With Shasta on my right, shining white against an azure sky, a few skimpy clouds clinging to it’s peak, I started a slow climb up into the something-or-other Bluff Valley. The road was already shimmering with heat mirages. I wondered: How many times would I have to drive on that road before I stopped noticing that incredible volcano? Did the truckers I met coming the other way still see it? Did it still take their breath away?

To my right in the distance was another snow-capped peak poking up behind the nearer mountains. I guessed that it was Mt. Ranier, a long way away. That’s the Cascades in a nutshell, beautiful strings of mountains punctuated by awe-inducing cinder cones, improbably stark and jagged against the sky, rivaled only by each other.

crater lake One of the most impressive of these peaks would have been Mount Mazama. The jagged remains are impressive enough, but the top of the mountain is gone. In its place is a ring of peaks and a steep-walled crater. The mountain went from being one of the tallest peaks in the world to it’s current state in a single event.

Humans witnessed this transformation. We have seen cities destroyed in our lifetime. We have seen genocide. We have not seen a mountain cease to be. One of Mazama’s sisters, St. Helen, blew a side of her face off, but that’s simply nothing compared to this. Mazma ceased to be. Perhaps all the power of man combined could rival that, but I doubt it.

While it must have been shit-your-pants unpleasant to be around the day the mountain exploded, and there were people around then, it’s certainly a great place to be now. As I climbed the slope on the south side of the mountain the snow at the sides of the road got deeper and deeper. I was driving next to a deep gorge, and there were some tantalizing side roads that probably led to some nice views, but they were blocked by snow. Only the main road had been cleared.

At the entry gate where I paid my fee I was greeted by a very friendly ranger, who warned me in advance that most of the road around the rim was still closed. When does it usually open? I didn’t ask. No matter. I had been planning to go out the north gate, which was closed, but I’m nothing if not adaptable. I paid my ten bucks and up I went.

At the top it was crowded, possibly because so much of the park was still inaccessible by car. All the visitors were crammed into a small space. I spotted some hikers as well, and even considered going on a ramble myself, but I just wasn’t equipped for it. Hiking up there requires a lot of preparation, since the weather can go from beautiful to deadly very quickly.

I found a spot for the car, secured all my crap, and climbed the small snowy bank in front of me. Judging by the number of footprints in the snow even that part of the park had not been open long. I scrambled up the few feet to the top of the embankment and there it was. For a few minutes I forgot about the camera, stopped the voices in my head, and just looked.

Then I took pictures. You can look at those. Like Yosemite, Crater Lake really is what it’s cracked up to be.

Thanks!

Yearbooks

Posted on by
Reply

I ran across my old high school yearbook while packing up my life for this trip. The yearbook is a tool we use to say goodbye without ever saying goodbye. We press upon our friends to write something special inside the cover that we can always remember that person by. It’s like pre-packaged nostalgia. We were romantic then, all of us, even a geek like me, but for me the yearbook ritual was as horrifying as it was stupid. I think I picked up the whole cynical thing ahead of my time – I was postcocious.

I cracked open the yearbook not really knowing what to expect. There were warm words from people that I have not thought of in years, and far more empty paragraphs that from this distance were obviously rote statements made for those you had no strong affinity for but you had to write something. Then there was one from someone who I still know and count as one of my best friends. Much of it was in code. “Don’t forget Maynard,” it said. “Don’t forget Edgar.” Maynard and Edgar were not acquaintances, they were words that had special meaning for us. Maynard was, um… and there’s the thing. I don’t remember. I have forgotten Maynard. I have forgotten Edgar.

I do remember thinking that I would never forget those things. I remembered the first time I read that passage and thought that those things would always be a part of me. I remember lots of other things about that year. Many of them I would prefer to forget. I remember stupid things I did that only hurt other people. I didn’t learn from those years, I’ve kept right on dong those things. I remember small triumphs and big disappointments.

I remember the person who gave me that crazy list of things to remember. Even back then it was pretty widely recognized that remembering things was not my forte, but he asked me to anyway. Had I studied the list, well, ever, I might remember what all that stuff was about. Instead I remember moonlight frisbee golf, Mars 2021, and guerilla brass caroling in July. Those really were good times, no matter what the yearbook says. Sorry, Maynard.

Another thing I don’t remember is what I wrote in anyone else’s yearbook. That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think I signed that many, but I’m sure the ones I did I took just as seriously as everyone else and said a lot of dumb crap. Somewhere out there someone has pulled out their yearbook in the last couple of years, perhaps for the 20th reunion (if there was one), and looked at what I wrote and asked the air, “Who’s Jerry?” Better, probably, if we ever meet again, that my name is never associated with what I wrote. “We will always be friends,” or something like that. Nothing like reading a note from someone you haven’t seen in 22 years and only vaguely remember saying what a special time this has been and how you will always be friends.

My advice to any kids out there who are about to be put in the position of trying to say something sincere and lasting and flattering and intelligent: Write “elevator ocelot rutabaga” and sign your name. Learn calligraphy so those three magic words seem all the more important. The people that matter, the ones you really will be friends with forever, will look back on that oddity and say, “Yep, that’s Martha, all right. What a character.” (Assuming your name is Martha, of course. OR – better yet – sign as Martha no matter what your name really is. If you’re female, sign as Maynard.) Then they’ll go right on remembering you for who you are and why they like you so much. The others, the ones who don’t remember you at all, will have a mystery to puzzle over when they blow the dust off their yearbooks every ten years or so.

Elevator Ocelot Rutabaga. I’m pretty sure that’s not what I wrote back then.

1

Thanks!

Weed

Posted on by
11

Location: Silva’s Restaurant, Weed, California
Miles: 2470.2

I skipped breakfast this morning – I didn’t want to take time out to eat and delay my departure any further – plus I was out of food. I took care of a last few things for work, hung around long enough to say goodbye to Mark and Leza and took off. I’m not good at goodbyes; I’d prefer to simply vanish. I would be disappointed, however, if someone simply vanished on me. Disappointed an relieved. I know, however, that most people want the opportunity to say that one last thing. The appropriate thing. Let’s face it. the things you say between hello and goodbye are what matter. I had a great conversation with Leza in the shadow of goodbye. We pulled out our best stories and we both told them well. Ask her about Venice some time.

It was past noon already by the time I left. That was OK, I have a couple of days to burn.

I left the house hungry and thirsty. I had decided to go down through the legendary Carson City (“The Capital of Nevada”, the welcome sign reminds you) although I knew that none of the old west character would be left. As I rode US 55 into town I was assaulted by every fast-food restaurant even invented. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Not even the drive-through. The road had me once again, and my blood was singing. I opened a bottle of Coke and put on sunscreen at traffic lights.

The highway took me straight through the heart of Carson City. I was looking at an interesting-looking bar simply called “Jack’s Bar” when I noticed that I was driving past the Nevada State Assembly building on the other side. I bet a lot gets done at Jack’s. I bet they have a back room. Rolling through Carson City is slow, but speed’s not the issue, motion is. I am on the road, and I’m not leaving it. Through Carson then, and picking up speed as I head North to Reno. As the car moves faster I push up the volume on the tunes. (Drill, their self-titled – and perhaps only – album. One of my favorites.) I’m rolling, hunger forgotten.

Reno is just a bunch of buildings next to the highway. There’s a quick shot of adrenaline when the truck in front of me loses a load of wood. They were thin strips, maybe for wood flooring, but in a convertible that kind of thing is extra-exciting. Fortunately with lightning reflexes and catlike grace (and plenty of time to react and room to maneuver) I avoided the crisis and the adrenaline just added to my exhilaration.

Along the way were several tiny towns, most of which had withered up and were about to blow away. The first place that even tempted me to stop was a barn with the classic red roof and Burger Barn written across it in big white letters. It was the kind of place that used to line all America’s highways, before sameness became a virtue and people began to only take 2-lane roads as a luxury. Burger Barn also was closed up and gone. A shame, but so it goes, and so I went. Up on the high plains traffic was sparse, the grass was green, and the world was big.

Somewhere along this stretch of road I started to wonder if I could get someone to pay me to just keep going.

Susanville, the first town of any size, was a very pleasant-looking place. It’s there my route turned alpine again, and it was there I picked up my shadow. It was a primer-gray sedan of indeterminate American pedigree which followed as I turned from 36 onto 44. For the next 50 miles or so it was always there in my rear-view mirror. I was going just fast enough so he didn’t pass. When I passed another car he would pass it too, but he never passed me. I took the corners much faster than he did, but on the straights he was right there again. For a while I was mildly annoyed. I tried to get him to pass and leave me in peace. Later I passed a truck and he couldn’t get around it, and I was alone again, and I missed him after that. I almost slowed down to let him catch up again.

I came to an unexpected intersection as I cruised highway 44. There was a pullout right before the intersection, but I was moving, my shadow buddy was still behind me, and there was to be no stopping. I chose wrong.

“Wrong” is a difficult word to apply when any choice is going to lead to a great drive. Indeed, my wrong choice today was not bad at all. Highway 44 is for most of the length I drove today in excellent condition and passes through spectacular scenery. After the wrong turn the speed limit slowed to a more sane 55 for a road like that, and the pavement was almost silent. With almost no tire noise, and no engine noise as the car slid along effortlessly at that speed, there was only the modest wind noise. I turned off the tunes and glided through the forest.

One section I went through was being actively logged. There were areas that were clear-cut, but not the vast tracts of yesteryear, instead they were strangely straight-edged clearings. From above, it might have looked like a checkerboard pattern. Hopefully after the chewed-up ground recovers they will be strange, square meadows. (Who am I kidding? they’ll be replanted with trees soon enough.) Also there were large areas that had been thinned rather than clear-cut. The ground was pretty chewed up there also, and the trees that were left were pretty scrawny, but today I chose to be optimistic and recognize that those trees now had the space to grow into the great trees whose stumps were still all around. The timber industry is a topic for another day, or perhaps another blog. Today I was burning gasoline, not wood.

Onward and downward. I started to get the feeling I was going the wrong direction, but the road was a twisty one and a pleasant one. Finally I slid down out of the mountains into Reading, at the northern end of the mighty central valley, and about sixty miles farther south than I had intended. No matter; as Interstate highways go, that section is pretty sweet. There is only one reason I say I took a wrong turn, and that is base solely on my map. the road I meant to take dances around the base of Shasta like a drunken bridesmaid. I would have enjoyed that drive.

Now I’m in Weed. “Weed”, in these parts, is generally not a reference to an unwelcome plant in your garden. For all I know, the term when used in reference to pot has its origin here. I am in Weed, CA. I met not one single person in this town that would validate my innuendo. It was your typical small town.

My paranoia about finding a room was completely unfounded. Rather than go into Central Weed, I got off at the South Weed exit because there were hotels advertised on those “Gas – Food – Lodging” signs. Now I’ve talked to a couple of people, and Central Weed sounds pretty cool. That’s all my imagination, of course, like that highway I didn’t take. But as your faithful reporter from ‘out here’, wherever that is, I will get to the bottom of Weed. Helpful is the back of the menu at Silva’s, where I had my Lunchdinnerfast, only a tiny portion of which I reproduce here:

Weed on weed:
The city of Weed is nestled on the western slopes of Mount Shasta in Northern California at an elevation of 3,467 feet. Located right at the intersection of Interstate 5 and Highway 97, it marks the beginning of the Alaska Highway… Weed is surrounded by national forests, high desert plains, and volcanic formations of geological interest. The central city in Siskiyou County, it is just fifty miles from hte Oregon border.

There was a lot more. I stole the menu so if you want to hear more, I can hook you up. (There is a council-manager form of government here, and a bowling alley.)

Mount Shasta is 4317m high. I would really love it if someone would calculate how much of the Earth’s atmosphere is between the top of my head and the top of that mountain. It’s probably half or more. Looking up, I couldn’t help but think how thin the layer of life is on our planet. The top of that mountain may have a little life, but not much. Below the crust life does not go so deep either. We, all of us, are a membrane on the surface of a rock. We are a thin film of particularly exciting molecules that are pretty fragile.

Thanks!

Free at last!

Posted on by
5

And boy, is it about time. I’ve been thinking about the difference between being alone in a friend’s house and alone in a hotel room. There were days I saw almost nothing of my hosts (Mark is in San Jose most of the time anyway), so I really was on my own. I explored the town, met people in bars, and all the stuff I would do if I was a total stranger in town. But it was different, no doubt about that.

Something about belonging. I’ll work something up from the road, which calls louder with each passing minute.

Thanks!

Kilgore Trout

Posted on by
3

Tonight I had a really good idea for a techno-thriller. A really sweet idea. A tantalizing idea. It would make a good movie as well; the idea could be treated at varying depths. The idea itself is not important right now though, the problem is it’s crowding my other work out of my head. You know how when a toddler sees something they want they forget they’re even holding something else? Whatever had been in their hand falls to the floor unnoticed. My idea is like the new toy, shiny and exciting, and I can’t stop playing with it.

Maybe that’s what I’ll write in November. I was going to write My Life: An Autobiography (revised edition) but this new idea is better. I really, really need to get a good solid draft of what I’m working on now done before November, no matter what I write about then. If history is any guide, my November novel becomes my next year’s project.

The Fish was supposed to be a vehicle for me to pack up a bunch of the story fragments flying around in my head and scribbled on bar napkins. At first each chapter was going to have one of these little story snippets, either as a song lyric, a report on the radio, or as an argument at a bus stop. The it was most chapters, then the occasional chapter. It’s just not working as well as I thought it would. The main story is starting to outgrow all those little ideas, turning them into distractions from the flow of the narrative. I need Kilgore Trout.

Kilgore Trout is perhaps the most prolific fictitious writer ever. For every novel Vonnegut wrote, Trout wrote piles. (I use the past tense perhaps prematurely, but if you read Timequake, it comes off a lot like a retirement speech.) Trout allowed Vonnegut to make use of the dozens of ideas he had that he simply did not have time to develop fully. Vonnegut could say “Trout had written a story about a race of beings…” and his little distracting idea could rest in peace. I need someone like that. Someone who can let my fragments be fragments.

Thanks!

Not a ramblin’ day

Posted on by
1

Today I was never farther than 15 steps from where I am now – in bed. Refrigerator and microwave: 6 steps. Bathroom: 14 steps. Workplace: 3 steps. The good news is I got my work done, so unless things go very wrong tomorrow I’ll be heading out Friday. It was going to be tomorrow but there are some things I want to take care of first. That means I’ll be right in some of the worst traffic and highest hotel rates of the year. Can I plan or what?

Not much going on in my head right now but the song “Let’s hear it for the letter W,” so I’ll just STFU.

Thanks!

Be the Google – updated!

Posted on by
3

I keep telling myself that I’m not going to do this anymore, but I just can’t help it. It’s just strange what people search for, and when those strange searches lead here, well, I have to tell you about it. Sitemeter took a powder the last couple of days- we’ll never know who the true visitor 1000 was – but what it has collected is pure esoteric Web arcana!

  • Google: photo of squirrel passed out with bottle and cigarette – I wonder if he found it. Squirrels seems to avoid the paparazzi pretty well.
  • Google: pics to look at well baked – not sure who is baked
  • Google: national poetry slam ideas for
  • Google: space vehicles and what they do
  • Google: Mad Crazy Death Cults
  • Google: squirrel trainer – you know, if Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds were to happen today, perhaps the only trace of the town would be some fruitless Web search for “bird trainer”.
  • Google: regularization
  • Google: squrrel death – yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all about that before.
  • Google: half baked wallpaper – riiiiight.
  • aol: red hat pary ideas – a most brilliant convergence between the searcher misspelling “party” and me misspelling “part”.
  • Google: mythical energy
  • Google: feminine beer names – I’m hoping we have a new regular from that one
  • Google: amazon women in the avocado jungle of death – you can’t keep a good movie down
  • yahoo(?): “how to cook an egg” over easy – I hope they read it carefully

There were others even less interesting than those. Also, “jerry for president”, “I want to go to the moon”, and things like that, but they have been forever lost in the sitemeter abyss. I left out some squirrel-related search hits, and there was an “elevator ocelot rutabaga” hit but I wasn’t sure if I had already reported it last time. It’s good to know, however, that people are still concerned about classic movies and the important trends shaping our world today.

Thanks!

I want to ask Peter Jennings a question

Posted on by
13

I came up with a question tonight, a question about freedom and responsibility – specifically, about the freedom of the press and the responsibility of the press. Most of this episode will be devoted to why I want to ask Peter Jennings this question. Precious little will be about the question itself. The question has nothing to do with 9/11, but my singling out of Peter Jennings is entirely about that day.

I had been watching football the night before. Ed McCaffery, the indestructible wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, had had his leg shattered. He was the guy that could take any hit and still catch the ball. I don’t remember whether he held on that time as his leg was being smashed into a kajillion pieces. If he caught it, and I think he did, he would have been an american legend. But that was 9/10.

Most mornings I wake up to the radio. I wake slowly. I fade in and out as the stories fill me. That morning I heard about a plane hitting the world trade center. That woke me up. I thought about the B-26(?) that had once hit the Empire State Building. Then I heard that another plane had hit the other tower. The radio reports I heard said the second plane had been a smaller one, but that didn’t matter. Two planes meant intent. I went into the other room and turned on the TV.

It was the same on every channel. Smoke billowing from the towers. Replays of a 767 smashing into the south tower from every angle. Flames billowing. Somewhere in those flames were people. People who, like me, thought of terrorism as a far-away thing. I sat on my comfy chair and watched in horror. As I did so, I found another outrage. Every station had across the bottom of the screen a graphic. They all featured a cross-hair, and said something like “America Under Attack” or “Attack On America”. The major news outlets were competing to brand the tragedy even as it happened.

There was only one exception. Peter Jennings sat at his desk, his tie a little off and his voice a little hoarse, and there were no exploitative graphics. I may be wrong, but I think the anchor still has control over that kind of thing when it really matters. Whether it was Peter or his boss, that news organization showed far more class that day than any other. So it was when the south tower fell I was listening to Peter as he saw it the same time I did. “Oh my God,” he said, or something like that, maybe one of those three words, but his voice caught and it was real and it was the full tragedy.

That day he stood in front of all with courage and compassion, without taking shelter behind slogans and marketing gimmicks. Since then I have afforded Peter Jennings with a degree of credibility I deny the rest of the breathless “journalists” of today. He could say a lot of things I disagree with, and he has, but I will never forget that day.

So that’s why Peter Jennings. I think he’s a journalist. I don’t think there are many others who make the national scene and remain journalists. So now, after that big emotional gush, I will leave you with the question, a hard intellectual nugget that you have to diagram before you digest. But it’s an important question to me.

So, Peter: Responsible journalists try hard to not tell lies. They check the veracity of the statements given them. If the president were to release a statement that research showed to be untrue, would you a) not print the story, or, b) print a story saying the president had lied?

I’m talking to a responsible journalist here, so “run the lie, it’ll sell papers” is not an option.

Thanks!

Another Czech story

Posted on by
14

Those of you who have been around me at all have heard this story before, but it bears repeating. I first met Marianna when traveling to Prague with Triska a few years back. We had flown into Munich and after spending a day there we hopped on a train and popped on over to The Czech Republic. My brother and his girlfriend met us at the train station.

My first impression was of a very attractive woman – slender, with dark hair and blue eyes. She has an elegance to her. She was quiet, not confident enough of her english to try to make conversation right away. She was efficient, though. She had our metro tickets ready to go and herded us down the escalator, past the ticket police and onto our train. She showed us how to use the tickets and how to read the metro map.

Ahoj! Once we got settled in their little apartment, it was time to go out. Naturally, that meant having beer. The weather was beautiful and we strolled around the neighborhood. Marianna was a dutiful tour guide, pointing out the sights. “Good beer here,” she would say as we passed a bar, or “Nice to sit, but not good beer,” gesturing at another. Marianna, I realized, was a beer snob, and she took her role as beer tour guide very seriously. I was definitely starting to like this girl.

Eventually we found ourselves parked at a little beer garden, Marianna and Phil facing Triska and me. The first round of beers arrived. A nice color, a rich head, and very tasty. I had another sip. Yep, Good stuff. I set my glass down and looked around the table. Marianna’s glass was empty.

“The czechs,” My brother explained, “Use the first beer to quench their thirst. After that they slow down and sip them.” Another beer arrived unbidden. The waiter was just walking around with mugs of beer, and when it looked like someone was running low he’d just plunk another one on the table. There was no asking for another round here, it was up to you to tell them when to stop bringing more.

Marianna’s second beer lasted longer than her first one did, and before long we were all feeling jolly. Her English was plenty good enough to hold up her end of the conversation and teach us a few czech words while she was at it. Then it happened. This strikingly attractive woman who my brother has somehow managed to fool into dating him leans over and gives him a great big hug. “I’m so glad you love beer,” she said.

If you put that in a beer commercial people would laugh. Why? Because it could never, ever happen in real life. It’s a fantasy. A dream. The kind of image they use to make you buy more beer so a beautiful woman will love you. But it happened.

three troublemakers I have had the pleasure to get to know Marianna much better since then, and some of you have met her as well. I have the little book she gave me where we write in Czech phrases for me to practice. I have eaten her cooking and admired her inventive handicrafts. We have talked about politics into the night over pivo. She has been always a window onto czech culture and the music and events going on in Prague.

Now I’m heading back, for a longer stay this time, long enough that perhaps some of those language lessons will stick, and long enough so they can get really tired of me. But what can I say? I like it over there. I’ll tell you more about why some other time, but if it weren’t for Marianna I wouldn’t have seen the side of the Czech Republic I find so cool.

All of this, really, is my way of saying, “welcome to the family.” Congratulations, guys.

Thanks!

American Road Myth, part 2

Posted on by
5

I’ve touched on this already – that solitude is a big part of the American Road Myth, so forgive me if this repeats some of what has been said before by me and by you. In part one, I described the road as a path to personal wholeness, or the myth of wholeness, at least. Implicitly, those on the road will never know that wholeness. The road is a place for the unwhole. They just keep moving. They are the drifters.

The road myth is all about the drifters; they are the frame that the myth is hung upon. People with no place. They go everywhere and belong nowhere. The heroes of American legend are drifters. The road has shaped our heroes and our old heroes did much to build the road myth itself.

It’s the classic story – a stranger comes to a troubled town. He knows no one, owes nothing to anyone, and has nothing to lose. He understands evil, though. He knows how it works and he knows what to do about it. His separateness from the rest of the people gives him a power they don’t have, a mythical energy that comes from strength of character and moral certainty. At least, that’s what the townsfolk see. We know that any American hero has demons as well, ghosts that drive him mad even as they give him strength. It is the evil he fights within himself that gives him power over the evil he meets. The road looks like the path to escape the demons, bit it isn’t. The road is where the demons live.

At the end of every story, the hero is presented with a choice – stay in town, put the demons to rest, settle down with the prettiest girl, or return to the road. Return to a life of haunted solitude. The choice is always the same. (Although there is the occasional story where they have to shoot the girl to get him back on the road). Big trouble in Little China did it best: “Aren’t you even going to kiss her?” “Nah.”

Many countries have adopted our loner-hero character, and the Australians may have improved upon it, but it is still a peculiarly American myth. A hero in a story is only allowed to have a social life if an equally prominent character demonstrably does not. Bad guys are surrounded by people, Good guys go home to empty apartments with chinese takeout cartons overflowing the trash can. They have no furniture but a lazy-boy and a small TV on a milk crate with a coathanger for an antenna. They like it that way. Jackie Chan has a family to nag him, Nick Nolte probably never even had a mother.

I have certainly embraced the idea of the hero as a loner in my writing. The main character in The Monster Within is about the most solitary person I’ve even seen written down at the start of the story. The Fish, while still in its infancy, is a story directly about the search for solitude. By disconnecting from the world, the narrator is able to see the nature of ordinary things through many different layers, and hear the stories going on around us all the time.

Which brings me back to the drifter. When he finds a new place, he sees the things that everyone who lives there has learned not to see. He sees the truth. His power is to show the truth to others. He may be the best with a gun, or perhaps Kung Fu, but his real weapon is truth. It is why the town appreciates him so much, and why they don’t try too hard to make him stay. Too much truth, all the time, would be scary. It’s better for everyone if he just… vanishes. As if he never was.

He shows them the truth and makes them free, but he never shares the truth about himself. That is for the drifter and his demons alone.

Thanks!

Pop Quiz!

Posted on by
7

A hunter leaves his camp and walks five miles due south, then turns east and goes five miles, where he shoots a bear. He drags the bear five miles straight north back to his camp.

What time is it when he gets there?

Thanks!

Be careful what you ask for…

Posted on by
5

Why looky over there! It’s a poll! Just like pL asked for. Well, except for the dumb question. I decided since it’s free, what the heck, I’d give it a try. Unfortunately Pollhost does not think stuffing the ballot box is cricket, so at most you can vote once a day. Remember, it’s not just a right, it’s a responsibility.

I’ll try to come up with a new question every week or so. Whenever the whim catches me, really. If you have ideas for a poll question, let me know! If you think polls are a frivolous waste of valuable Internet resources, well, be sure to let me know that, too.

Thanks!

Eggs Over Easy

Posted on by
34

Note to visitors: I am passionate about my eggs. It’s funny how many people wind up here from searches in Google and Yahoo, looking for the Answer. Read on; the key to the perfect over-easy egg is only paragraphs away. This episode was written to entertain, but clearly there is a pent-up need in the world for advice on getting those eggs just right, and by gum I’m happy to give my opinion about anything. For that reason I have now written another episode: Eggs Over Easy – The Definitive Step-By-Step Guide. I would recommend you read here first, then go over to the step-by-step page. If you find this information helpful or entertaining, please leave a comment; I’d love to hear from you. Then you can invite me over for breakfast. Mmmmmm… breakfast.

I’m not a gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, nor does Iron Chef have to worry about being unseated by me. But I do like my eggs. Thus it is not an unusual morning when I venture out to find someone to cook some for me. Now that I no longer have a kitchen, this happens with even greater regularity. Alas, my fried chicken ova* are almost never cooked right. Oh, I eat them, and I still enjoy them, but there’s that little part of me that says, “doesn’t anyone know how to cook an egg anymore?”

I’m here to put things right. You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.

There are four generally recognized ways to fry an egg:
Sunny-Side Up: The egg is never flipped. The yolk is a bright yellow hemisphere sitting in the middle of the pristine white. The yolk is liquid, and some of the white around the yolk may have a jelly-like consistency.
Over Easy: The egg is flipped briefly. The yolk does not stand out as strikingly, but is still liquid. The white is no longer liquid.
Over Meduim: The white is cooked to a firmer texture, and the yolk is solid around the edges, and oozy in the middle.
Over Hard: The white is firm, the yolk is a lighter color and flakey.

Then there are those who intentionally break the yolk before the flip. We won’t talk about those people here.

Each degree of cooking is associated with a preferred texture for the white and for the yolk. Which brings me to my point. People who order their eggs over easy don’t want runny whites. If they wanted that, they would order sunny-side up. Runny yolk but solid white is why over easy was invented in the first place. It is by far the trickiest egg-frying style – it requires touch and artistry to cook one part of the egg without cooking the other. But it seems most places I go don’t even make the effort to try.

When in egg-cooking school, students must be reminded with great clarity and consistency: Don’t flip the eggs too soon. If one waits until the egg is ready to serve sunny-side, then flips it for just a few moments to sear the last of the white, it comes out perfect every time. Alas, impatient cooks do not wait for that perfect moment. They flip the egg prematurely and there’s no way that much white is going to get cooked post-flip without adversely affecting the yolk. The time to get most of the white firmed up is while the white is acting as an insulating layer between the pan and the yolk.

I have considered explaining to my waiter exactly how I want my eggs. I thought of saying “Sunny-Side Over” to convey my meaning, but I have never tried. Even if the waiter nodded and took notes, by the time it reached the cook I would probably end up with Sunny Side Rubber, so afraid would he be to flip the eggs too soon. That or it would just piss him off. No, we can but hope that future generations will take this to heart, and look with pride at the eggs sitting on the plate, seemingly in defiance of thermodynamics, the yolks jiggling, the whites not.

So mamas, tell your children, when you first hand them the spatula and the carton of eggs, as they stare wide-eyed at the pan in front of them, butter or bacon drippings faintly sizzling in the shimmering heat, that they must be patient. They must wait for the right moment to flip.

—-

* this used to say “fried chicken embryos”, but I got tired of people unfamiliar with the Coneheads explaining Greek to me.

2

Thanks!

Jer’s Novel Writer 0.3.1.0 released

Posted on by
1

Well, most of the changes are under the hood, a big code cleanup in preparation for beta. That means that in the last two weeks I’ve broken almost every facet of JNW at least once.

Jer’s Software Hut still needs some work, but now that I have the EULA in the product, it is no longer a password-protected download. If you have a mac, take a look!

Thanks!

They were the Googliest of times, they were the Moogliest of times.

Posted on by
6

If only anyone else cared about this as much as I.

I’ll start with an aside. Last week was the heyday of the blog, the pinnacle of blogular traffic. The reason is simple: I started getting listed at dodmac.info, and all the regulars had to check me out. Now they’ve bitten on a coupe of lurid headlines and they know better. They have passed back into their little worlds where there is no time for discussions about which comic book heroes are best-suited for playing tag with eagles. Their loss, I say. If they don’t have the backbone to stand up on the issues that mean the most today, I have no time for their sorry asses.

Which leads me to another aside… uh, that’s going to have to be another entry. At this rate we’ll never get to to the search hits.

  • Google: aerodynamic ideas
  • Yahoo: half baked
  • Google: squirrel death – it’s pretty clear that lazy bastards too who just can’t get around to bookmarking are using this to come to the site. You’re my kind of people. Don’t ever change. Also worth mention were searches for squirrel suicide and squirrel death cult. I hope you’re not offended to be lumped together. It’s nice to know that someday when I’m promoting a book I’ll be introduced as the ‘squirrel death blog guy’.
  • Google: “great googly moogly” phrase
  • Yahoo: how do x-ray gogs work – whoever this was, I love you, man. My favorite physics professor of all times would say as he stood at the chalkboard (he was picky about his chalkboards), “Can you see the bosons moving? Put on your x-ray gogs.”
  • Google: la dolce vida
  • Google: listen to great googly moogly phrase – this from an entirely different domain than the other googly moogly search
  • Google: spyware End User License Agreement – as of this writing I rank four on Google for this topic. This is one hit where I hope the reader really read what I wrote. It’s funny (in the sense of odd), but I really believe in what I wrote that day. The whole right vs. wrong thing, and how a few words aren’t what’s really important.

I think the moral of the story is, if you write enough stuff, it’s going to match what someone is looking for. If you give it a catchy title, they’ll bite like large-mouth bass when the flies have all gone home for the holidays.

Thanks!