Metamorphosism

War is peace

How conservatives use language to dominate politics.

On an unrelated note, happy Protection from Pornography week. Or, as the President says, "IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand."

"The recent enactment of the PROTECT Act of 2003 strengthens child pornography laws, establishes the Federal Government's role in the AMBER Alert System, increases punishment for Federal crimes against children, and authorizes judges to require extended supervision of sex offenders who are released from prison."

Of course, if you're a prominent Republican fund raiser like Richard Anthony Delgaudio, you can film yourself having sex with underaged women and not go to jail at all, because getting caught is "humiliating enough."

Sigh. The news article linked in that post is no longer online. It is in their archives here, that's nice to know, but I'm too cheap to pay the $2.95 for an article. The Democratic Underground mentions him, though, in a story on scumbags. Mentioned other places, as well, such as here, here , shows up a few times here, article here, or you can just do your own search.

Happy Halloween

You know that hysterical screech where you wonder, is a cat getting its ass kicked out on the porch, or are women of two generations having a big fight?

Sometimes you think, it's hard to be a man, and sometimes you think it's a good deal.

And sometimes you're glad Hallowe'en comes just once a year. The kids decided to have a party and 45 people got invited, somehow. Luckily some can't make it. But the cellar is scary now, and the fakey spiderwebs are stretched in the kitchen, and four jack-o'lanterns have been artfully carved. The big one, I thought, this pumpkin would look good with a Buddy Hackett expression, and I managed to give it one. At least, it reminds me vaguely of Mr. Hackett. I doubt that many trick-or-treaters are going to make that conceptual leap. "Trick or treat! Hey, Mr. Living, great Buddy Hackett jack-o'lantern! I enjoyed him in 'God's Little Acre'."

€150 million

So according to today's newspaper, Austrians spend €150 million on diets, annually. Which is dumb, seeing as how since the point of a diet is to lose weight by reducing calories, it should save you money. Like me at breakfast this morning - all I had was some nut-chocolate protein concentrate with milk.

Likewise, 4'20" into the studio recording of "Whole lotta love" is, today at least, the crowning moment of if not Western music, rock and roll.

Wrinkled piggy

"These blasted people feel every damn beach down here is for them to run around with they piggy and they tut-tuts hanging out. "

Metamorphosism Challenge Participants

These people have signed up for the Metamorphosism Challenge.

Nanowrimo is for sissies. Any hack can finish a novel in a month. I once wrote a novel in three days, on a typewriter, while drinking only coffee and gin, seated at a small table next to the kitchen. In a revolving restaurant.

This year, next month, that is, November 2003, take the Metamorphosism challenge and write two 50,000-word novels. In a single month. 100,000 words. Under hardship conditions, naturally.

Rules and other information on the Metamorphosism Challenge.

Entrants:
These people have signed up for the challenge:

1. Jennifer, who has a second website here, says, "Mig, insanity is the first word that comes to my mind when I realize that I actually want to do your challenge and survive. But here I am, registering, wondering if this will either make me stronger or make me run very far away. One novel is currently somewhat plotless and untitled for the time being, while the other, not really a novel, more of a study of sorts is based on a few years of research I've been doing for a book and is, for now, being called The View from the West. What better way to start a book you've been putting off than to jump in head-first and in a hurry? Hardships? An iBook I'm not used to using, a sloppy word program with no spell check, a short attention span and too many books piled up high around me, begging to be read and the fact that I'm not going to do anymore research while writing this first draft, Oh and the fact that it's already November 3rd."
2. scott says, "my special circumstances: no idea what I'm going to write about; a laptop as rickety as a tuk-tuk in bangkok with only occasionaly-functioning "p" key and an "o" key that is like an M-16 set on 3-roound burst (see!); I, too, have the > cat dooing the cat thing on my lap, noo budget for single malt scotch and a head that has been soo defiled by bullshit technical computer crap that I've no capacity left for "writerly" stuff. I'll also have a hectic work schedule and a tivo addictioon to overcome. Novel 1) -- working title: Declining Empire: Can a fairytale romance ignited on foreign shores survive meeting the families? Novel 2) -- working title: (none) The members of a rock band who have seen everything and overcome all obstacles struggle with the murder of their bassist.
3. Anna, whose blog is called Anna Overseas, writes: "My novels are "Sword Goddess" (set in mythic fantasy China. A legendary sword has been lost after its owner was killed in battle. Can the God's chosen heros find the sword before demons find it to bring about destruction of the world? Based in no way upon Chinese history or myth.) and "Spirit of the Bear" (set in World of Darkness - www.white-wolf.com. A follow up story about Mages in the Umbra, each trying to find their own truth about the World.). Hardship: For the first time in my life, I'm living alone. In order to accomplish this, I had to move to another country. China, in fact. They don't turn on the heat until Nov. 15. I don't speak or read any Chinese at this point, so I can't even go to the store and buy brandy. Hell, I can't even find a liquor store! I'm suffering from culture shock. Oh, and I have to plan a curriculum for 32 classes, each with about 60 students. Occasionally, I remember to eat."
4. Mig has already registered with Nanowrimo, and will be writing in pen on paper notebooks or on a cheap, buggy laptop if he can talk his wife into letting him get one, in crowded limousines shuttling between boring UN conferences, also while taking notes in those conferences, as well as at work while the boss is not looking, and on a buggy home PC when the family is asleep, sometime between the hours of midnight and four AM with a cat doing the claw thing on his lap trying to get comfortable, drinking only coffee and single malt whiskey. The novels will be about 1. a pain suit and 2. a tiger eating a guy.

Want to be added to the list? Mail your preferred name, URL, novel titles/subjects and your special hardship conditions to mig at metamorphosism dot com

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

He: "I beg your pardon?"
She: [repeats]
He: "I'm sorry, I still didn't get that."
She: "What are you, deaf?"
He: "Um, increasingly so, yes."
She: "You just don't listen."
He: "You were talking fast and mumbling, and there was background noise."
[Later]
He: [shouting downstairs] "Bye honeybunch, have a nice day. By the way, does it bother you when I call you 'honeybunch'?"
She: [shouting from the bathroom upstairs] "I beg your pardon?"
He: [shouting a little more loudly, repeats verbatim]
She: "What?"
He: [Changes angle of head so he's pointing mouth as directly as possible towards bathroom upstairs] "Does. It. Bother. You. When. I. Call. You. Honeybunch???"
She: [aside to daughter] "What's your father saying?"
He: [at slightly reduced volume] "Glorkblerggagangblerk."
She1 and She2: "We can't understand you."
He: "Glorkblerggagangblerk!"

Disc

This is no one you know. She tells me she is afraid of dying lately. And me, I feel as if it's the end of the world, as if these are the end times, just unreported and not brought to you by any particular sponsor; but I don't tell her that because it has nothing to do with her feelings, first of all, and second I always feel like this so it wouldn't be interesting.

Not afraid of death, afraid of dying; she said dying.

Sometimes I feel like that. As if some great peril were passing through. Something invisible not necessarily because it's invisible or undetectable, but because I'm blind to it, or we are. And sometimes, like this morning, the world is so beautiful that it nearly inspires grief.

Things were very simultaneous again and equidistant this morning.

The fog was to blame, primarily. It puts you in that mood. But also, friends grieving because someone killed themself or someone else tried to, meanwhile that crazy appendix goes over the Niagra Falls "because he's depressed" and survives, meanwhile an ambulance full of dynamite blows up in front of a Red Cross office somewhere, if I understood right, meanwhile the sun looks like a cold piece of asian candy shining light peach-yellow through that fog and we have four seasons at once - cold and white like winter - it looks as if the fog would freeze in tiny splinters on the trees and powerlines and fences if it were a degree colder - and autumn with the trees changing color and spring because things are still so green and seem to be thawing and summer because my heater is so fucking hot. The fog mutes colors, and I nearly hit a pedestrian dressed in the color of fog, but miss him, the trees are light brown and fade magically into the distance and traffic is not so bad but heavy enough that I can't be looking for deer this morning but they're probably hiding out from hunters deep in the woods anyway today.

The sun hangs there like a piece of cold, light yellow peach Asian candy but as the fog thins it gets brighter without changing its color until it's a hot yellow peach flare and you don't look at it directly anymore. I am safely ensconced in my little capsule of peace, smelling of aftershave, my daily hour of solitude as the sun grows brighter.

Today I'm not afraid of dying, I don't know how my friend is feeling; I'm not fearless, but not afraid of anything special.

Penal colony

I found a copy of Kafka's "Penal Colony" online yesterday, in German, and printed it out, intending to read it before going to bed. I left it laying around the foyer and Beta apparently read it while I was at my cello lesson because when I got back she was curled up in a little ball in the far corner of the living room, behind the curtains down next to the radiator where it's warm.

Live and learn. Never leave Kafka strewn about where kids can find him! Or they'll be all like "Dad! What's this skinny dead guy doing in the library!" and you'll have to explain.

Except, Beta wasn't curled up, she was in my face as I tried to get some of Alpha's good pumpkin soup in the kitchen. "What was that story?" "Oh, you read it? That was classic literature, pal." "That poor soldier!" "That poor soldier was all of us, in Kafka's opinion. Our verdict is never revealed to us, just written into our flesh. What a view of life, huh?" "What a downer. I thought he was going to strap the traveler onto the bed at the end. But..." "He got in himself. Yeah. I haven't read that story in like over twenty years."

I didn't finish it last night, either. In that article I link down below, Kafka is said to have written most of his stuff in bursts, believing that was the way literature should be written. He would have loved the metamorphosism challenge.

"My name is Franz and I will be writing a story about a man who jumps off a bridge and another about a man on trial only he doesn't know what for. My special hardship will be I'm dying of tuberculosis and have woman trouble and live with my parents and trying to write while my dad insists I get some fresh air and why don't you eat some meat finally and Max is always nagging at me to put these short stories together into a novel finally, 'Franz,' Max is like, 'Franz who's gonna pay good money for parables? And are you gonna date Milena or not cause if you're not, give me her number cause she's hot.'"

Web research

Poll at D's. Everyone go there now and vote. Highly scientific.

Kafka on the novel

"Kafka makes novelists nervous"

Food and time

Survived the cottage cheese on Saturday. My family voted for me to just throw it away and, if necessary, claim that I'd eaten it, but a vote is a vote. My theory that my car was as cold as a refrigerator seems to have held up, because I didn't get sick.

I made a pizza on Sunday. I make a bread dough for the crust, which is thick and I mix sliced black olives into the dough so it's extra tasty. Gamma doesn't like cheese, so one corner is without cheese. A different corner is here on my desk right now. It's currently about 8.30 am, or 9.30 am body time, and I've already eaten half the cold pizza that was for my lunch. It's not going to make it to lunchtime.

If you give someone $100 in the spring, and they repay you in autumn, traditionally they give you a little more than the original $100. This is called interest. If you take just the original $100, or less, or nothing at all, you are a sucker, under normal circumstances.

Yet we are supposed to think it is perfectly normal to give them an hour of our time in the spring, and receive nothing more in the autumn than that original hour. Has it occurred to you what a ripoff this is? Every autumn, we should be setting our clocks back not one hour, but a little more. 65 minutes, say. Someone has been amassing a huge hoard of time at our expense. It's time this scandal was rectified. We need to file a class-action lawsuit for, say, eight weeks of paid vacation for everyone who's been living under a daylight-savings regime, plus institute the practice of time-interest from now on.

Let it snow

Let it snow.
Let it snow.

The key to a happy life

People often ask me why I'm so happy all the time, so I'll tell you. The key to a happy life is negative thinking. If you are able to expect worse than the worst, then anything is a postive surprise. It works like this:

• Taking a shower: Expect boiling acid to squirt out of the showerhead when you turn it on. That way, when you turn the whatever it's called and freezing water comes out, or scalding water, or rusty water or just a trickle, or a gecko you're all, Yay! No boiling acid! Geckos are so pretty!
  
• Driving to work in the first snow of the year that takes everyone by surprise so they're risking it with their summer tires and having wrecks right and left: Expect to get in a pileup yourself, then sit for hours waiting for a tow truck until you pee your pants because you're trapped inside your crushed car and can't get out to take a leak. That way, when you're stuck in a traffic jam for half an hour until some car gets towed away, you're all, Yay! It wasn't me! I mean, poor crunched SUV!
  
• Job interview: not sure about this one yet. Job interviews seem to be as bad as it gets.
  
• PTA meeting: same with this one. Although I have exercised my negative imagination for decades now, I still can't come up with anything more mortifying than meeting with the anserine parents of the little savages who attend school with my wonderful little girl, especially combined with meeting with her blockheaded teacher and the patronizing school principal. One could go in there expecting raving space monkeys wearing red-hot battle suits to come swarming out of the blinking fluorescent lights in the ceiling atop rabid foaming flying fanged robot ponies with angle grinders for phalli fucking everyone there in the head and after five minutes, only five minutes of "well of course I don't know what I'm talking about with the poking pencils in the eyes, if they really poked them actually in the eye then there'd be blood wouldn't there? but I have two boys of my own and boys will be boys and if they get out of hand maybe someone needs to I heard of a principal in one school who locked a naughty kid in a broom closet and spanked him maybe kids need to know who's boss I think the teacher is doing a marvelous job" and "now, now, now of course the kids can't go anywhere on recess they're still landscaping the playground that problem will solve itself they'll just have to sit motionless in their seats for a few more weeks that will take care of itself let me illustrate the situation with this children's book about a school where all the animals learn things, see here's a picture of what's this a picture of can you see it it's a picture it's a horse trying to climb a tree now what's that tell you and here's the owl..." and "well maybe your kid needs perfect silence to learn something, my kids are robust" and after only five minutes of this, although of course you're subjected to over an hour of it, you're thinking, "What's taking the goddamn space monkeys?"

Convergent evolution

There has been some discussion of late about the convergence of technological doodads such as um e-mail, instant messaging and blogging. Or, as I mentioned to Beta in the car this morning, telephones and television. "Who would ever want that? Why would anyone want to do that?" she said. "Like, call-in shows, you know. Used to be you wanted to make a call, you used the phone screwed onto the wall in the kitchen or went to a phone booth. Now they have that personality test show where people call in with their cell phones." "What people?" "You have a point, don't they have an internet connection?" "Right. Like, I'm an armadillo." "No fooling?" "Yep. And some African love-goddess." "Alright."

But what I'm really wondering about as regards this trend towards technological convergence is when all the blue gels I use every morning will become a single product. Toothpaste, hair gel, shampoo, shower soap, shaving cream and non-dairy creamer in a single environmentally-friendly pump can. Technology is my friend.

Live from a glass box over the Thames

Exit polls at the cottage cheese vote indicate a strong likelihood that I'll be eating the cottage cheese tomorrow. In order to prepare my stomach for possible food poisoning, Beta and I listened to a cassette we found in the clown car while driving into Vienna this morning. Said cassette has a picture of the band on the front, four or five grown men in Lederhosen, and is filled with music to match. Mucho accordeon, yodeling and a clarinet doing klezmer-style scales.

My throat is still sore from going "yee-haw" very loudly, and repeatedly, in traffic, to Beta's apparent shock and amusement. That is what you do when you hear that sort of music, you see.

Bring on the cheese.

Fast

[Setting: small office lined with files, some so old that they have housed generations of insects. A man sits at a desk, eating a tangerine.]

Man: Gosh, I like tangerines. [Takes a sip of some fancy new water-like beverage with herbal essences that swear they'll perk him up]
Slow woman: [Passing in hallway, stops and parks herself in doorway] Not taking a lunch break today?
M: Oh, no, no, I'm taking a break. I walked down to the store and bought some stuff. [Thinks: In fact, I left the office after you, made it to the store, completed my shopping and got back here before you even arrived at the store...]
SW: Ah. I'm not eating anything today.
M: Ah.
SW: Yep. Just water and tea.
M: Water and tea.
SW: Yep, I have a doctor's exam this evening after work.
M: Ah, exam.
SW: Yep. Having a gastroenterological endoscopy done.
M: [Desperately trying to rein in his visual imagination, which discovers to his dismay is far more vivid than he'd thought] sigh [stops peeling next tangerine]
SW: Yep. [Pats stomach] Been having a little trouble.
M: ...
M: Ah. I see. [Phone rings. Man thanks Alexander Graham Bell] Hang on a sec.
M: Hello? [dial tone. Man wonders if desperate thoughts can trigger electrical devices, briefly considers faking a conversation, hangs up]
SW: [Who had been getting ready to leave] Gastritis, maybe.
M: Gastritis, of course. Hope everything is okay, anyway.
SW: We'll see. Sure am hungry, boy.
M: Well.
SW: Better get back to work.
M: Have fun!

Fiction blog

As mentioned below, I'm gradually moving fiction over to another place, although I'm still not sure whether this (both the move and posting fiction at all) is wise or necessary. I've also changed the name of the place from Lügengeschichten to Pain Suit, because it struck me that a long German word, even one I like, is maybe not the best choice for an English-language site, especially if the German word includes a character, the u-umlaut, that might not display right on everyone's browser. "Metamorphosism" is bad enough.

Diet poll

Increase the protein intake, I was thinking when I bought the cottage cheese for lunch. Cottage cheese, and some peanuts, and a little can of coffee product to drink. Then I got back to the office and wouldn't you know it, no spoons.

So I had peanuts and coffee. Come that evening, I found the cottage cheese container in the pocket of my coat when I got into my car, so I placed it down underneath the emergency brake lever, which is a flat, enclosed and cool space where the little container of cottage cheese wouldn't slide around if I took a curve too fast. Then I did what? What day was this... This was Monday, so I hurried home, got my cello and my daughter's harp, rushed to the music school, dropped her harp off with her harp teacher (she had a rehearsal the next day, don't ask, logistics) and went to my lesson. After my lesson, I don't know. Had a lot on my mind, stuff like, Am I wasting everybody's time with these expensive cello lessons or not? Then the next day I had the little clown car and my wife the Dobló and when I got home she asks me, "What was with that cottage cheese in your car?" And I said, "Oh, yeah, the cottage cheese, I was going to eat that for lunch." And I think, it's nearly winter, the car must have been colder than a refrigerator inside, most of the time. And my wife says, "And by the way, you're sounding really good on the cello." My daughter said the same thing yesterday after I'd practiced. "Nah, the second part of that Offenbach is busting my chops," I said. But as you can imagine, it really perked me up to hear that. But I have a question for you:

La vita e bella

Good hair day *and* the borrowed car both started *and* neither crashed nor conked out on the way to work, what more could a man ask for?

My father-in-law, the greatest FIL of all, fixed the car we borrowed from my wife's aunt after a lady crashed into my wife's car a while back, "totalling" it. The borrowed car, a diesel, had been really hard to start. After fixing it, he told me, "I was amazed you were able to start it at all." I told him I'd driven my share of beaters, was all.

That's one nice thing about getting older, I thought this morning while driving that little red Fiat piece of crap (like the little cars at the circus where clowns start climbing out, and more and more clowns keep climbing out, more and more and more clowns, clowns everywhere; except this morning only one clown climbed out) to work. Maybe you get older, but the cars get better. More storage space, they start even on cold mornings, maybe air conditioning or power steering or anti-skid systems and other doodads.

Cause it doesn't start out that way for some of us. My first car was a 1958 Chevrolet Apache half-ton pickup truck, a beautiful, beautiful vehicle. I fixed a rusted-out exhaust system on it with a tin orange juice can and two pipe clamps; my dad and I replaced a blown gasket in own carport with, like, a wrench. It had the bad habit of veering sharply to the right when you applied the brakes forcefully, so after the first time you learned to counter-steer when you slammed them on.

Then there was the Volkswagen Rabbit where the alternator burned up the day after I'd paid $500 to have the fucking alternator rebuilt and my wife, who at that time was my girlfriend and I had to hitchhike back to civilization, and Swiss tourists laughed at us.

Beaters continued long into my adulthood. Japan was nice, I had a one-speed bicycle there.

But here in Austria. There was the little green Peugeot 102, I think, or 104. 103?Something like that. On damp days we had to spray something into the distributor to get it to start. I knew it was time for a new car the morning I looked into the back seat and saw Beta, then about 4, folding her hands in prayer as I tried to start it.

There was the other Peugeot, bigger, better, I wrecked that mother good. Twice, my fault both times. The last time, I drove it home from the wreck site but don't ask me how. The other guy nailed me soundly in the passenger side, the car was C-shaped. Driving straight ahead the car was positioned diagonally on the lane.

The Mazda after that wasn't too bad. It went good. Radio worked. Sold it, bought the Dobló, my dream car. 65 HP. Like a riding lawnmower without the blade, with more funk and storage space. And a decent stereo.

Small change

I am beginning to move the fiction to Lügengeschichten which can also be spelled Luegengeschichten, if your computer does not support umlauts. Rough drafts may continue to bob up here from time to time.

Hanged Man: Author's Disclaimer

"Hanged Man" is a work of fiction, and as such the usual disclaimer text that 'any resemblance between the characters herein and real persons living or otherwise is purely coincidental' applies. Allow me to stress that this applies especially to the character of the wife, who bears no resemblance whatsoever to any wife I have ever known, especially my own. While my own wife is as dedicated and loving as Mrs. Ron, the wife in Hanged Man, this resemblance is purely coincidental and she most definitely lacks both Mrs. Ron's murderously vengeful streak and her inability to listen to reason.

Likewise, the primary male character, Mr. Ron, has nothing in common with anyone I know, including me. He is a perfect example of the Nice Guy, whereas I am more the weasely, sneaky type. His kidneys fail, mine are, so far, just fine. We both do happen to be exhausted and in great need of naps during the day (much to Ron's eventual chagrin) but, as with my own wife and Mrs. Ron, this is purely coincidental.

Like all the characters in this story, or in any other story of mine, these characters are complete and utter inventions, fictional constructs. Even in the rare instances where I do violate this principle and use details I have gleaned from observing persons with whom I have come into contact, such details are invariably taken out of context and combined with other details, real or imagined, such that my characters cannot, absolutely cannot, be said to bear any resemblance to any real persons, much less be based on them.

It might help illustrate the extreme degree to which every single detail in this work is invented to insert a word about from where, when inventing said details, I get my inspiration: the characters were developed largely in the same way I develop all my characters, in this story and anything else I write: they popped into my head pre-formed while I was taking a shower one morning. Showering is, for me, creative activity number one.

If this fails, I do sometimes shuffle through a deck of tarot cards (which I how I arrived at the title of this piece) or look through a random selection of color chips in search of chance inspiration. For example, it was precisely by means of this latter technique that I arrived at the character of the hit-man Mussini, the ultra Marine. Along similar lines, details such as the Native American motel cashier White Glove, and even minor descriptive details of setting such as the “frosty morning” when Mussini first tries to murder Mr. Ron, the “clear view” he has of his intended victim through the telescopic sight of his sniper rifle, or the “frosted juniper” where he discards his disguise following his attempt were originally the names of interior paint gleaned from decorating catalogues; the same is true of more important details of location et cetera, from the “little pond” where Mr. Ron went skating as a boy to the “tropical pool” and “mystic harbor” he encounters while running and hiding from his pursuer with his hot secretary “Tawny Port.”

In the interest of full transparency, it should also be pointed out that no other aspects of Hanged Man are based on anything occurring in reality, either: not places, buildings, roads, automobiles. Neither consumer items nor durable goods, works of culture popular or otherwise; not even geographic details. To illustrate, let me point out that I have not only never been to New Caledonia, I haven’t even read anything about it. I couldn’t even say with confidence which hemisphere New Caledonia is located in, although I would guess Southern, and perhaps Western, due to the “New” part of the name. So don’t expect anything said about New Caledonia in the story to actually have any similarity to the real place. This is a work of fiction, after all.

Other details and “facts” cited or demonstrated in the story are just as invented. It is unlikely that Mrs. Ron would have been able to acquire sufficient knowledge of the Italian language from two weeks of listening to “Parliamo Italiano!” Italian language cassettes for beginners in her car during her commutes to and from work to enable her to actually carry out negotiations with an Italian hit man in his native tongue. This is due both to limitations of human language acquisition, as well as the nature of Italian hit men.

Some other instances where I’m pretty sure I’ve taken artistic liberties: I’m not sure that someone who is still recovering from a kidney transplant could, even with knowledge of yogic breath control methods, hold his breath for five minutes or shortly thereafter robustly engage in sexual activities bordering on the acrobatic. Likewise, it is doubtful that someone could have a telephone conversation immediately after firing six shots from a short-barreled .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver inside a locked Ford van, since his ears would no doubt be ringing for at least the next half hour.

Another place where I relied on pure inspiration, another name for guesswork, was in the question of whether or not a hotel, or motel, would rent a room for a short space of time, several hours say, to a sick, exhausted man who just wanted to take a nap. My guess: they would. Especially motels such as the Bide-Yer-Time where Mr. Ron naps in Hanged Man, which I would assume do not subject their clientele to especially detailed background checks beyond verifying the validity of their credit cards, and which are, to my knowledge, in the habit of renting rooms out for periods shorter than an entire night, especially during the day, to couples intending to engage in clandestine trysts. This, I stress, remains pure conjecture and was never researched or tested, neither by me nor by any assistant, neither in person nor by post, telephone, e-mail or any other modern technological means of communication.

In a similar vein, medical details such as the disparate rates of recovery for a kidney donor, and a recipient were pure invention; in fact, I have no way of knowing whether Mrs. Ron would be out of the hospital within a few days while her husband would remain inside for weeks. This was simply necessary for the mechanics of the plot. While I hope it was believable, I cannot vouch for its medical accuracy. This goes for the way, in the story, gradual kidney failure causes such exhaustion in the protagonist that a nap becomes an obsession with him: pure guesswork.

On the key scene where a devoted wife, at home after recovery, discovers a credit card charge for a hotel booked for several hours during the day shortly before the transplant: while it should be common knowledge that cheaters normally pay their philandering-related bills by cash, Mrs. Ron’s streak of paranoia has, I hope, been sufficiently demonstrated by this point for her extreme reaction to be plausible; on the other hand, I rather doubt that a credit card bill would really specify the time of day a room was booked, or the duration.

Before concluding with this disclaimer, I must also point out the unlikelihood that Mrs. Ron’s defense – she could not have arranged for Mussini to carry out the crime because she does not speak Italian – would fail in real life, because it is doubtful first of all not only whether any test could establish the ability to speak any certain foreign language in a person as determined and tough as Mrs. Ron if she were determined to hide this ability but also that someone like her would fall for the old trick of placing her alone in a room with her husband’s purported mistress Tawny Port until she breaks down and starts screaming Italian obscenities at her, not least of all because it is doubtful that, even if she did acquire a functional Italian vocabulary in two weeks, expressions such as battona and bocchinara would be included in said vocabulary.

Finally, although there are rumors in certain martial-arts circles that this can be done, I have no real knowledge whether it is possible to inflict wounds with bare hands such that an adult could bleed to death within sixty seconds.

Thank you.

Kite festival

The local town threw their first kite festival, and they got everything perfect. We drove past early this afternoon when it was just getting started: crisp, sunny fall day. Lots of wind. Dozens of colorful kites of all different sizes and designs just beginning to ascend.

Thirty meters away, massive high tension power lines.

The World Analgesia Association

It was late, Clark the Orderly With One Leg Shorter Than The Other had just wheeled out the last client of the day, into Recovery and I was spraying air freshener around the evaluation room when Professor K. came onto the intercom and asked to see me.

“I’m next door in the control room,” he said. Strictly speaking he could already see me, since he was sitting on the business side of a floor-to-ceiling one-way mirror, but I couldn’t see him so okay, I went next door. He was alone in the room.

“You did the evaluation all by yourself?” I asked.

“Short on staff today,” was all he said. See, the rule was pilot and co-pilot to keep an evaluation from getting out of hand. None of the controllers had gotten carried away, but we’ve all heard of the studies where mild-mannered psychology students discover they get a charge out of inflicting pain on other students. It was a strict rule at the DQI, but here was K. all alone. It was very flaky.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“The World Analgesia Association is having a conference in Seattle in a few days and I want you to attend. The focus this year is ‘New Approaches in Pain Assessment’,” he said.

I asked why he didn’t attend himself.

“The WAA and I haven’t, eh, seen eye-to-eye in the past. All I want you to do is report on things, collect the documents and handouts. Who knows, maybe I’ll go if I have time.” Then his voice sort of faded out., because I was remembering the conversation, retracing my steps, wondering how I’d ended up at this convention of pain experts. I was in a huge hall. It was warm, too warm. The speaker droned on and on. Something about kangaroos and a swing. Then my head bobbled down to my chest and I woke, jerking my head back up so fast someone must have seen.

I looked around and sure enough, one person, a woman about eighty, was observing me with an amused look.

Jesus, kangaroos, I thought. How’d they get into my subconscious?

I looked at the notepad in my lap. My handwriting, I had written about three lines at the top of the page – today’s date, the name of the conference, subject of the lecture, and what the person seemed to be talking about – My handwriting sort of devolved into an illegible scribble as I’d fallen asleep. My notes seemed so childish as I looked around at stuff other audience members were writing, highlighting stuff on handouts, scribbling in margins… I turned the page and tried to take more legible notes. I doodled a little graph.

The room we were in, as I’ve said, was very large. It was the largest hall at the conference center, with gigantic Dale Chihuly glass sculptures standing here and there and enormous textile-art-not-badly-done-tapestries of salmon and Indians and other Northwest iconic stuff, bears drinking espresso possibly. And this hall was full of pain experts from around the world. Who would have thought there were so many. About seventy-five to eighty percent had white hair. It was like being on a cruise, only better because no failed singer/actors were running around trying to cheer you up and make sure you enjoyed yourself.

“Every year,” the speaker droned, “more than seventy million visits are made to doctors’ offices because of pain.”

Wow, I thought. Big business.

“The quantification of pain is one of the great challenges of our profession,” the speaker went on. “Pain is complex and subjective, which makes this difficult. Its various dimensions include intensity, time course, quality, personal meaning and impact. It is subjective and different for each individual and…”

The most interesting part, I thought, was how a kangaroo managed to hold on to the ropes from which the swing swung with those little upper arms it has. But this one was doing a great job. It used not only its powerful lower legs to swing, but its large tail as well, which was cool. It received a warm applause.

“Lunchtime,” the kangaroo said.

Not sure what I said. Huh? Or, What? Someone was shaking me awake. It was the old woman who’d been watching me battle sleep. “Get something to eat and some coffee. Stabilize your blood sugar.”

She stood up and marched out of the hall, never turning around to check if I was following her.

We ended up in one of the restaurants at the conference center, at a corner table. She was watching the other diners, I was alternating my gaze between her and watching an office building on the other side of the street.

Her eyes were the brightest blue I had ever seen. Her thick, spiky white hair made them seem even more piercing. Very um influential eyes. Very persuasive. She asked me a question and I answered it. “How long have you been involved with pain?”

“A year now,” I said. “I’m studying the psychological aspects, quantification, that stuff.” I asked her where she worked. She rattled off some acronym. I tried to decipher it. “International Analgesic…”

“International Atomic Energy Agency,” she said. “I am a physicist. I worked in their physics research lab. Half-lives. Good work – very precise.”

“But you do pain research?” My gaze drifted above and to the right of her shoulder, out the window, to the office building across the street, where a woman about thirty years old stood alone in an eighth-floor office, looking out the window and removing her coat.

“As you age, pain becomes more of an issue for most people. When I retired, I needed something to keep busy, I got involved with a research project using radioactive markers. One thing led to another.” She turned her head to peer out the window, trying to see what I was looking at. The office I’d been watching was empty, though, and her attention shifted to her baked grouse with pasta.

I watched her eat. She had an unusual aura. She did not seem tired or in discomfort, as other old people I’d known always had. She was actually paying attention to her meal. She attacked her food with interest, as if it were her first meal, rather than with greed or nostalgia, as if it were her last.

She was also beautiful. I glanced over at the office building again. The woman was back in the office again, naked to the waist, standing with her back to the window. I must have reacted somehow, because my table partner looked out the window again, but the other woman walked back into the office away from the window before she was spotted.

Where was I? Beautiful. This woman at my table… what was her name, anyway? “What is your name? I’m Greg,” I said.

“I’m Elisabeth,” she said. “I told you before.”

“Sorry, I’ve been distracted.”

“I noticed.” Anyway, we exchanged business cards.

Beautiful. Erotic, actually, in a sensuous way. I won’t say sexy, because that involves actual physical sex which implies reproduction, and Elisabeth was, as I think I’ve said, at least seventy-five years old. At that age, you can’t rule out sex, of course, but the eroticism and sensuality of her charisma was born more out of a love for life, including but not limited to the body. I found myself attracted to her in a way I could neither quantify nor qualify.

Two tables away, two old guys began shouting at each other. Jesus Christ, I thought, what is with all this white hair. It went like this: they’d been arguing under their breath for some time, until one lost his cool and began shouting, and the other was sort of yelling for him to quiet down. “You have absolutely no idea,” was all I could understand at first, and, “it’s okay.”

“The data is entirely spurious,” the first man shouted. “The accusations are entirely groundless!” He knocked over a pitcher of water and waiters swarmed his table.

The day had started out sunny, but now a light rain was beginning to fall. The office building across the street had totally changed color and was now more of a dark green than grayish as it had previously been. The sky was darker and the lights in the building seemed to shine more brightly. The office containing the woman was empty, but as I watched she walked briefly into view, now completely naked, and apparently hit a switch because her lights went off. The rain picked up and water ran down her window first in individual droplets, then in countless rivulets. I watched as she pressed herself up against the dark pane.

“Dessert?” a waiter asked. He was a short Mediterranean type. He was pushing a dessert cart covered with various cakes and pastries.

“Have you got fresh fruit?” Elisabeth asked. Before a waiter could clear her lunch, she removed a full-sized roll of Saran wrap from her bag and carefully dissected the remains of her grouse, and tightly wrapped the thighs in the Saran wrap. "Waste not want not," she said.

“The cheesecake is very good,” the waiter said.

“I’ll have that,” I said. He was right, it was very good. It was an orange-themed cheesecake, with grated zest on top and it had little slices of tangerine in it.

Elisabeth finally decided on a pomegranate, a fruit I disliked because they are so hard to eat without making a mess, and I find the taste of that pulpy membrane holding the seeds disgusting. Elisabeth tucked a napkin in her collar like a bib and ate the pomegranate like an apple with one hand, juice running down her chin.

She picked up my business card and re-examined it. “Who runs the DQI, anyway?” Her eyes narrowed when I told her Professor K. ran it. “How much pain can you stand?”

“What?”

“I’ve heard of you. What an absurd idea. Wait until you’re old, you won’t need any test to discover your pain limits.”

It was only two in the afternoon, but outside it may as well have been sunset, rain was falling so hard. No one appeared to be in the office, but it was had to say for sure on account of the rain.

“I have to run an errand,” Elisabeth said. “Save me a seat in the conference hall, will you?”

“Sure,” I said. She got up and left, I stayed at the table finishing the largest espresso product the restaurant had on its menu and staring out the window at the rain.

Power

Recently in a bookstore I was thumbing through a handsome book about something about 48 rules of power or something, 48 compulsions habits of powerful people or I don't know what. It was the German translation, but I found a link to the English original (?) at Amazon. Save your money, although I only glanced at like one chapter and the table of contents, it's clearly a bullshit book. The rules could all be boiled down to "don't get caught being a sneaky, venal weasel" and if that was all there is to gaining power I'd be president. If that was all there is to it, then why is the author of that book writing - let's face it - self-help books for unethical bastards instead of, you know, having power lunches with someone famous?

In fact, if you have time and need a laugh, it might be worthwhile to click on that amazon link. I suppose the content of that page is dynamic, but today, it includes a "Better Together" tip (save money by buying this book together with "Get Anyone to Do Anything"); as well as a nice list of People who Bought This Book Also Bought (The Art of Seduction, Never be Lied to Again: How to Get the Truth in Any Conversation or Situation in Five Minutes or Less, Get Anyone to Do Anything and Never Feel Powerless Again...).

Come to think of it, it might be fun to attend a reading of one of these books, just to check out the audience. One says, in the readers' reviews, "This book is based on historical research going back 3000 years!" In a way, every book is. And this very blog post is "based on a writing system five thousand years in the making."

Ike & Ng

The first time you lose one, it is a surprise. Then you get used to it, and develop of a routine as far as reanimation goes. Flat-line, get out the defibrillator, et cetera. When a client went into cardiac arrest, it was usually the combination of Shooting, Stabbing or Sharp (few made it to Splitting) with Fearful or Punishing-Cruel, and it usually happened around Distressing or Horrible. Stress and fear seemed to play as great a role in cardiac arrest among clients as did the actual intensity of pain. Most clients hit the panic button before they even made it that far.

So the first time someone actually died the entire situation was so atypical that we weren’t expecting it at all.

Klaus was a drummer for the German metal band PainGarten. Imagine a black CD cover with a picture of your average contorted guy screaming and the band name in the usual flaming Blackletter script. That was Klaus on the cover.

Like most clients, Klaus heard about the DQI 1999 in some basement and the question, How Much Can I Really Take? wouldn’t leave him alone after that.

Turns out he could take a whole lot. The Seattle sky was caked shut with low clouds the color of a salmon belly when Klaus showed up for his session. It was drizzling. He took off his boots et cetera, showered, depilated and was helped into his discomfort suit. He received the usual briefing from Veronica. He was strapped to the bed and went through the initial tuning procedures with me.

The session lasted longer than most, a lot longer. As much as some of us liked to make fun of rock star poseurs and phony Goth pain gurus, Klaus took a lot. He didn’t even scream much, although there was some impressive contorting going on towards the end.

Splitting-punishing/cruel-horrible finally killed him.

When I say “killed him” I don’t mean he just went into the typical cardiac arrest. I mean his heart stopped and wouldn’t start up again. You can imagine the flurry of activity there for a few minutes until his death became obvious.

Electric shocks from the defibrillator did not help, nor did heart massage, the hitting him on the breastbone stuff, nor adrenaline injections.

Prof. K. finally had to admit it. “Klaus is dead,” he said. "As in doornail."

Maybe Klaus’s soul left his body and watched us standing around the bed and looked at a dead German guy for a while. See, look: our big problem, it turns out, was not that Klaus was dead, but that he was German. Or, more precisely, the combination of “German” and “dead under unusual circumstances”. Whereas the DQI had solid waivers and releases, it was not entirely clear whether the German government would be too enthusiastic about them.

“There could be consular repercussions,” Prof. K. said. While an international incident would be excellent advertisement, he pointed out the danger of Germany pressuring the US authorities to close down the DQI.

Prof. K. turned to Veronica. “Get Ike and Ng.”

Ike and Ng.

Of course, I thought. I’d always wondered what those two really did for the Institute. They were listed as “drivers” in the organigram, but there wasn’t enough driving done in the course of the day to justify those two on our payroll just for that. Of course. They were who we turned to when the attorneys raised their hands above shoulder level, flapping them while shaking their heads in resignation.

Ike and Ng were our average-looking ethnic males of last resort. The Disposal Team.

“Greg,” Prof. K. turned to me after Ike and Ng showed up and began stripping the suit off Klaus and carefully putting him back into his clothes. “You’ll be driving the van for Ike and Ng.”

I was naturally totally enthusiastic about driving two shady criminal types through King County in a van with a dead German rock drummer in the back, but Prof. K. insisted.

Ike, I couldn’t tell you how old Ike was. Ng either. That was one reason they’d been hired – it was really hard to give a good description of them. Ike could have been between thirty-five and fifty-five, Ng might have been slightly younger, or maybe it was just he was more or less Asian instead of more or less Black. Hair dark. Average build. Up close, like sitting next to you in the front seat of a white van lumbering down I-5, they both looked stronger than you’d think at first glance.

Ike calmly explained things to me. “When Prof. K. has a situation he thinks the legal stuff might not get him out of, we drop the client in a park somewhere, in a mall, whatever. The scenario is different enough each time that no one notices a pattern. One time Ng tells a lady in a parking lot outside Nordstrom’s, ‘excuse me, this woman just collapsed, would you please get help?’ and when the ambulance arrives, and the police, it’s just the one witness, the lady, who tells cops about an unidentified Asian man helping a woman who clearly died of heart failure. Another time, they find a man outside a Starbucks, Latte Grande still warm in his hand, tipped off by an unidentified black gentleman. Cardiac arrest.”

“So where’s a good place to find a German rock star?” I asked.

“I was thinking Ivar’s down on the waterfront. They have tables outside, we can park the van to block the view from the restaurant so no one sees us unloading him. Someone can find him later, beer flat, clams gone cold, you know? They’ll vaguely remember him talking to someone. Rock stars, their hearts stop ticking all the time.”

I never knew whether Ike and Ng had known each other before they started working for the Institute, nor how the Professor found them in the first place. Ng didn’t talk much, but Ike spoke with such candor he may have well as been holding a gun to my head. He was friendly and polite, but deep in his expression, somewhere in his eyes, was something that made it clear I was expected to keep this information to myself. It was like in the movies where the bad guy has Batman or James Bond tied up and is telling him everything because he expects the sharks or the lasers to get him in a couple minutes; the difference was that I didn’t see myself eluding these two.

When we got to Ivar’s, though, it was closed. There was a big sign in the window, big black letters reading "CLOSED" and smaller type beneath that, too small to read from where we parked, something else, and medium sized type beneath that reading, "King County Department of Public Health".

“Ivar’s is closed,” Ng said. In time, I noticed that although Ng was a man of few words, he could in fact have gotten by with even fewer, because whenever he did talk, it was usually to say something totally obvious.

Ng looked at the digital clock stuck to the dashboard of the van. We all followed his gaze. “Almost four o’clock,” Ng said.

“Seattle Center,” Ike said. So I turned the van around and drove to Seattle Center. We parked, loaded Klaus into a wheelchair and rode the elevator up to the top of the Space Needle. It was the perfect day for it – cold and drizzly, we had the platform all to ourselves, and there was hardly anyone eating at the restaurant inside either, it being such a crappy day and too early for dinner besides.

Ng ordered a couple hamburgers at the restaurant inside while I took pictures of Ike and Klaus standing at the fence around the platform. Klaus was looking towards the camera, more or less, while Ike turned his head away to look off towards the water and the mountains in the distance. He was good at this – in that position, you couldn’t tell anything about him – race, age or even gender.

It was at this point that the large family appeared. Ike's quick reaction really impressed me. My pulse accelerated, and my blood pressure must have also because I could hear my blood rushing through my head, but Ike stayed totally calm while two harried parents tried to keep five small children from climbing over the railing and falling many feet to their deaths, or at least getting entangled in the safety net below. He inclined his head slightly, signaling me to come over to him and Klaus.

We stood like that, three guys looking out at the water. Three guys having a tremendous argument.

“You crazy motherfucker,” Ike said loudly. “I never fucking said her pussy was worth a goddamn.”

“Oh fuck you,” I said. “Klaus here told me different. What a fucking liar.”

“Eat shit and die white boy. What does he know. Fuck you.”

We went on like that, arguing about fucking and pussy and ass and cock and fuck this and fuck that, getting louder and louder until the parents finally rounded their kids up and ushered them into the most remote corner of the restaurant for hotdogs or something.

Then we wiped prints off everything, hung the camera back around Klaus’s neck, propped him up in a corner and got out of there, me pushing Ike in the wheelchair. “One nice thing about the Space Needle,” Ike said, “is that there are no security cameras here yet. But I’ll never understand people who want to eat food in a revolving restaurant. Makes me seasick.”

Ng was already in the van when we got back to the lot. “Finished,” he said.

I dropped Ng off at Pioneer Square, where he caught a bus, then let Ike out in the University District before driving back to the Institute, where I parked the van out of sight in the basement parking garage.

Veronica was just leaving the building. She talked to me in the lobby for a few minutes.

“They’re good at what they do, aren’t they?” she said.

I agreed that they were. “Do you know anything about those two? Do they like live in houses with pets and celebrate Thanksgiving and stuff?”

“Do you? I think K. knows them from some previous study he did. That’s how they met. That seems to be how he meets all of us, isn’t it? Doesn’t trust anyone whose brain he hasn’t picked first.”

“I think trust is the wrong word to use with Prof. K,” I said.

I went back to my office, showered, changed into some fresh clothes. Found a bagel on my desk and ate that while reading e-mail. Drank something pink from a big-mouthed glass bottle. In terms of my preferences, the only difference between sleeping in my office and going home to sleep was that going home involved going out into the rain, starting my car and driving home, so I stretched out on the sofa.

Kafka at camp: the lost diaries

July 13, 1897—Every morning I wake up, after wet and uneasy dreams to the same horror, a giant bug crawling up my chest, daring me to kill it. One morning, it speaks to me.

"You cannot smash me," the bug said. "I am you."

I go to Counselor K. He is sick of my complaints, sick of having to be creative with his response.

"Franzie! You're not on trial here," he said. "It's camp for chrissakes. Have fun."

Mail-order bride

Like being married to a beautiful woman who's sick all the time.

Like being married to a beautiful Russian woman who doesn't speak a word of English, doesn't like me and lies about the house all day scarfing unusual ethnic food, running up a huge phone bill with long-distance calls then goes out at night for a pack of cigarettes and returns at eleven the following morning hungover with a fresh tattoo ("Property of Vladimir" in Gothic script) on her ass.

Don't mind me, I'm just trying to devise a proper simile for my cello-learning experiences thus far.

Cello is proceeding wonderfully. I still love the instrument; the love remains unrequited. My continuing frustration has been mitigated by several things lately, however. One is simply noticing that despite it all, I am making progress. I can hear notes, whether the intonation is right or not, but beyond that I seem to be rather unmusical. Or I was expecting too much to start with; I know that I am too impatient. I think that after all this time, though, I should be able to figure out a piece without my teacher having to tell me every picky little detail of the tune. You know - where each finger goes for each note. It's in fact not all that bad, but it seems that way. Perhaps the increasing complexity of the pieces I'm learning (currently a few Offenbach duets) makes it seem more static than it is.

Positive cello experiences: Gamma's friend was over. I was practicing. "What's that beautiful music?" she asked my wife. She asked if she could watch.

Another day: another Gamma friend came into the room to watch. "Wow! That's the biggest fiddle I've ever seen!!"

Someday I'll have a positive cello experience that doesn't involve a six-year-old girl. Not that there's anything wrong with them.

Science round-up

1. New study shows men who do more housework get more sex. Independent study at metamorphosism headquarters has verified this.
2. Scientists surmise evolutionary reasons for finicky eating among young children. I read about this in the Japan Times recently. The idea is, babies eat anything, but little kids - old enough to walk around and eat stuff on their own - are finicky; an evolutionary benefit of this would be to protect them from eating dangerous things, such as poisonous plants or spoiled meat, which is why the finicky ones usually avoid green vegetables or meats. Apparently cheese products were toxic back in caveman days, even individually-wrapped processed cheese slices, as well as all spicy food.

   This makes sense. Apparently, it was always safe for cavemen to eat spaghetti or toast with Nutella, especially when carved into teddy-bear or star shapes, which is why young children are more apt to eat such food without protest even today.

   Quick breakfast tip: keep a pair of clean toast scissors in your kitchen drawer. Toast can be cut into interesting shapes faster with medium-sized scissors than with a knife. Be sure to cut up the toast before you spread the Nutella. Breakfast goes a lot faster, with less arguing.

Rules of attraction

When I was young and single there would be no attractive women until I started dating someone, at which point they would all swarm out of their nests and abound all of a sudden, which tended to lead to the complications a sensible person would expect but which always took me by surprise.

It's like that now with ideas for novels. I had ideas for five novels, some which I've been putting off for a long time, some new. They kept coming. I would try to write a short story, and it would insist on being a novel. Could be I subconsciously realize the ideas suck, because while I tend to finish short stories, the novels, eh, you know. To circumvent this tendency to procrastinate, I did the one thing again and even devised the Metamorphosism Challenge to kill two with one stone.

Yesterday it happened again. I tried to write a short story but it says a few thousand words are not enough. The longer I think about it, the wickeder it seems. It seems, this morning, like a wicked, wicked, wicked idea for a novel. I've misled myself on this before of course. I wonder if this is some pretentious self-delusional thing I have going here, you know, brilliant sufficient yet unwritten novels.

What do you think? Here's a short excerpt of yesterday's story.

DQI 1999
by Mig

Professor K. introduced me to the rest of the staff. "This is Greg," he said. "He has no human feelings."

The McGill Pain Questionnaire was one of the first tests we'd covered in class. What it basically does is, it takes a subjective experience -- pain -- and quantifies it. It uses three main kinds of pain descriptors – sensory, affective and evaluative, and can also measure the intensity and other properties of pain, which can then be treated statistically. Normally it is used for good, like quantifying the sort of pain hospital patients suffer from and measuring differences among different pain-relief methods, but K.’s stroke of brilliance was realizing that people would pay to know exactly how much they could take.

(...)

“Greg will be measuring the four dimensions of your pain," she said. "Intensity, mood, relief and side-effects, all on a scale from zero to ten. Try to answer his questions clearly, with grunts, or body language. These are the defibrillators. If your heart stops, you will be reanimated immediately. This is the panic button. When the pain becomes unbearable, hit the panic button. Do you understand everything? Good. Then the test can commence.”

His respiration, blood pressure and heart rate were elevated before the technicians even started, I noticed. Could just be Veronica, I supposed. Then the green light lit up and he jerked a bit as the suit was fired up.

The electrode suit was a tight-fitting neoprene suit, like a wetsuit, only lined with hundreds of thousands of miniscule electrodes. It also had the necessary inserts for all body orifices, said inserts also covered thickly with tiny electrodes Trained technicians could simulate dozens of kinds of pain in any part of the body, and regulate its qualities and intensity.

“The first part of the test requires that you speak, so please spit out the mouthpiece,” I said. The mouthpiece was also covered with electrodes. “We have to make sure you are perceiving the standard sensations. The pain level will be mild, this is just to make sure the suit is transmitting properly.” When the test started up, the technicians could burn him, stab him, crush, freeze or cook him. His hands or feet could be dissolved in acid, stung by jellyfish or wasps. The sky was the limit, basically. At this juncture, though, I had to run him through the list while the technicians calibrated everything.

“What sort of pain do you feel?” I asked. He told me. I checked it off the list: Throbbing. We took him through the rest: Shooting, Stabbing, Sharp, Cramping, Gnawing, Hot-Burning, Aching, Heavy, Tender and Splitting, as well as the advanced group, with their emotional components: Tiring-Exhausting, Sickening, Fearful and Punishing-Cruel.

The suit was working perfectly.

(...)

Web

Reflected in the rear window of a dirty hatchback in front of me: bright overcast sky, and a tangled web of tram wires, telephone lines, cables holding up the lights stretched over the streets. Lasted just a second.

Passing

"It all happened so suddenly."
"He was such a quiet neighbor."
"One day he's as normal as you and me, next they're driving him off in a straitjacket."
"Suddenly he's senile."
"Suddenly he couldn't hear anything I said."

Just now, google gave me 148,000 results for suddenly he and 80,100 for suddenly she.

Usually, suddenly just means that we weren't paying attention. We ignored warning signs of hearing loss, psychosis, senility; anything we'd rather ignore happens suddenly. A google search just now gives me zero results for "suddenly he was slim."

Because we don't pay attention closely, people can pass. For them to pass as what we'd rather see them as, for what they'd rather be seen as. You can pass as white. If you're a guy you can pass as a woman. It works the other way around too. You can pass as a lot of things. We won't mention passing gas, this is a serious post. You can write books about passing. You can write lots of books about it.

Someone I know who has suffered a heart attack recently got me thinking about this. He seemed a little loopy last time I talked to him, but was doing a good job at faking normality. That's why senility seems to happen so suddenly. People can lose large chunks of their memory and still pass for normal by faking it. By employing conversational tricks to cover up the fact that they can't remember your child's name, or even who the hell you are.

This sick relative, who is by the way making a miraculous recovery, appears more confused than before. This is due in part to the fact that he is in a genuinely confusing situation, but also because oxygen deprivation just might have claimed a few more brain cells. When he is under stress, he seems more senile and confused. I think it's because it's harder for him to work around those holes in his head at those times.

I have also seen this with my own father, who is losing his hearing. He has been losing it for a long time. Watching him talk to other people, I have seen him fake the ability to understand everything they say. Now and then he'll give himself away with some small thing, an inappropriate response. Most conversations you can get through by just letting the other person talk and acting interested. The worse his hearing gets, the more often I notice his little tricks, since I'm looking for them, especially when he talks to me. With a lot of people, he can still pass for normal hearing; this is usually of no importance, although when he does it with his doctors, say, it's a problem.

I catch myself doing it too. As my hearing gets worse, I fake my way through more and more conversations. People just think I'm a good listener, when I do it right. I pass for a lot of things. When I keep my mouth shut, I can pass for an Austrian. Sometimes even if I speak, depends on how my accent is doing that day. Rarely do they guess I'm American. Sometimes I wonder what else I'm passing for. Am I a good father, or just passing for one? Loving husband?

Does it matter?

The birth of the Colt .45

Person 1: The world sure is beautiful. Isn't the world beautiful? Don't we live in a beautiful world?
Person 2: Mmm.
P1: I just saw a gravel road running into the woods back there. Even in this cold rain it was beautiful. It reminded me of the woods out at my parents' house.
P2: Mmm.
P1: Not that I'd actually want to live there. I'd want somewhere with more of a view. I'd feel too isolated stuck in these dark woods all the time.
P2: Not to mention afraid of robbers.
P1: I suppose so. Although your grandparents have several guns.
P2: No fooling?
P1: Your grandpa has a Winchester 30.30 that I know of, real nice saddle gun, and a Colt .38 detective, you know, snubnose revolver. Except once you have robbers in the house it's usually too late to run and get the guns.
P2: Uhhuh.
P1: The .38, you couldn't hit a damn thing with that short barrel either. A human close up, maybe. But grandpa and I were shooting at rats once when I was a kid. Loud as hell. We hid in the barn, waited for rats to come out, no further away from us as that red car in front of us, took careful aim and BANG. Jesus. Couldn't hear a damn thing for fifteen minutes. Of course the rats all disappeared. We waited another half hour and BANG!!. Didn't hit any rats either time. They didn't come back again that night, though.
[Insert usual gun-control blah blah here]
P1: That .38, though, decent stopping power if you did manage to hit someone.
P2: Really?
P1: Not as much as a .45 of course. That was originally invented, eh, not sure when* but it was invented by some colonial military, British in Malaysia maybe** because they were fighting these local guys who'd go amok and could manage to run clear up to their soldiers and kill one or two even if they took a few shots on the way. The .38s weren't stopping them. In your European wars, you know, shoot a guy, he'd go, "oh, I'm shot, better sit down, medic!" whereas these guys, they'd wear armor or tie vines or ropes around themselves as tourniquets and go amok and shit, actually had to knock them off their feet with something big.
P2: Is that so?
P1: Of course, now you've got even bigger guns, magnum .357s and .44s and stuff, which are handy I guess if you're walking down the street and suddenly have to shoot a moose or something.
P2: What's amok exactly?
P1: Basically go apeshit and try to kill as many people as you can. I saw someone go amok once.
P2: Really? Who?
P1: Um, a maid at work.
P2: Heh.
P1: [Tells story] They finally flew her home. Glad I wasn't on that flight. Screaming babies would be nothing compared to that.
P2: Anyway.
P1: Anyway. Beautiful world we live in, kid.

*end of the 19th century **US military in the Philippines

Marriage Protection Week

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of October 12 through October 18, 2003, as Marriage Protection Week. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies.

Yes, whenever my marriage is on the rocks, nothing helps like a good ceremony. I am personally fond of taking my wife to our favorite cemetery at midnight, where we swing a dead mole above our heads, in a big circle, and chant our secret marriage chant. I suppose a program of placing sleeping divorce lawyers in unventilated garages where Cadillacs are idling could possibly have some benefit. What else would be appropriate for marriage protection week? Your suggestions please.

Guest blogger

My old friend Mig asked me to guest-author a post today since he is suffering from stress at the moment due to worrying whether he'll be able to hack the metamorphosism challenge idea-wise, also his wife just called him all shaky-voiced and told him that she'd just been in a traffic accident but was okay but her car she just forced mechanics to fix yesterday for free is like, whoa, dude, and she won't be going in to work today after all, that feasibility study will just have to wait, and best of all it wasn't her fault; his favorite uncle's heart attack had of course been getting to him as well, frustrating to be so far away and limited to email news and occasional telephone calls; but the old guy phoned Mig himself last night from the hospital bed and sounded good, a little shaky and weak, but you know, he'd just had a fucking heart attack, they'd restarted his heart one dozen times in a single day, you know? Also it was the first time the guy'd been on drugs in eighty years, so given all that he sounded quite impressive. All this worrying - Mig hadn't thought it was affecting him, but his family noticed and he had to admit it when they pointed it out. Disoriented (more than usual), amnesiac and forgetful to a concerning degree. Of course, Mig is a wussy, people go through far more than this on a daily basis, but he decided to take a day off from blogging.

Personally, I support his decision. It's important to give yourself a mental health day now and again, even if nothing major seems to be eating at you. It's the little things that make you snap, after all. The empty gas tanks and the broken shoestrings. The moldy toast bread in the morning when you're out of everything else, the daily grind of a career that didn't take off the way you thought it would, you know, like you're surfing porn in a cubicle instead of writing the great novel you expected, or instead of starring in jungle action films you're fucking jumping through hoops somewhere, Vegas say, for a couple flashy German twats.

We all have our breaking point.

Go find some moss somewhere and lie down before you start forgetting where you put your glasses. Embrace the sublime for a couple minutes. If anyone asks what the hell you're up to, send them to me.

The Metamorphosism Challenge

Take the metamorphosism.com challenge.

Nanowrimo is for sissies. Any hack can finish a novel in a month. I once wrote a novel in three days, on a typewriter, while drinking only coffee and gin, seated at a small table next to the kitchen. In a revolving restaurant.

This year, next month, that is, November 2003, take the Metamorphosism challenge and write two novels. In a single month. A minimum of 93,000 words. Under hardship conditions, naturally.

These people actually fell signed up for the Challenge.

The Rules:

1. Although the Metamorphosism Challenge is in no way affiliated with Nanowrimo, participants are encouraged to register as participants there.
   
2. But you have to write two novels in November, not just one. In 30 days. 93,000words total, minimum.
   
3. The novels must be written under special hardship conditions, of course. Sitting undisturbed at an ergonomically-correct desk in a climate-controlled office environment does not count. Metamorphosism challenge literature is written by winos on the brown paper bags their MD2020 comes in, in dark theaters in pencil on tickets by men in overcoats, on napkins by busy waitresses during their shift.
   
4. You must register with me by email. To do this, send a mail to me, mig, at metamorphosism.com. That's mig [at] metamorphosism.com. In the mail, include your preferred name, any URL you want posted (your weblog, website, a URL to your novels if you're going to be posting them), the titles of your two or more novels, what they are about (if you know), and a brief description of the special hardship conditions under which you will be writing this year. If you can't think up special hardship conditions, you shouldn't be writing in the first place. I will post a list of participants, displaying this information, and will include all entrants UNLESS you tell me in the entry e-mail that you don't want your name and/or information listed.
   
5. You must also link to this post, if possible using one of the fine icons provided below. The best URL to use would be this one: http://metamorphosism.com/archives/000382.html#more Please do not hotlink these icons, save them and store them on your own webspace.

Icons:
Icon #1

Icon #2

Icon #3: You can proudly display this icon after you have completed the challenge successfully:

[Icon credits: all icons and graphics for the Metamorphosism Challenge were kindly designed and produced by Bauke, who is otherwise innocent of any involvement in this silly undertaking.]

Fee:
There is no fee. Participation is free.

Prize:
There is also no prize, besides having two novels when you finish, and the right to give other people a bad time because they can write only one novel in a month.

Is Mig actually taking on his own challenge?
Yes. He has already registered with Nanowrimo, and will be writing in pen on paper notebooks or on a cheap, buggy laptop if he can talk his wife into letting him get one, in crowded limousines shuttling between boring UN conferences, also while taking notes in those conferences, as well as at work while the boss is not looking, and on a buggy home PC when the family is asleep, sometime between the hours of midnight and four AM with a cat doing the claw thing on his lap trying to get comfortable, drinking only coffee and single malt whiskey.

Limousines? That doesn't sound like much of a hardship.
It really is. He'll also be writing at traffic lights. He's very, very busy as it is. Luckily he has insomnia right now, but he's very very tired. It's hard to write in a car, it really is, and those meetings really put you to sleep.

Disclaimer:
The Metamorphosism Challenge is in no way, shape or form affiliated with Nanowrimo. Nanowrimo is great, we did it last year (and are still rewriting that novel, having a little problem with the focus right now...), run by fine people, we're doing it again this year, donating the money, all that. But they are completely innocent of any connection with the Metamorphosism Challenge, which is also not intended to disparage that fine contest in any way.

The day it rained cupcakes

Like many of you, I have on occasion received unsatisfactory service from auto mechanics, so when my wife took her car into the Fiat dealer because she had to turn off the engine whenever she wanted to shift into "first" gear or "reverse", and expected them to do it for free because they had just done a general overhaul for the annual sticker you have to get here and gave her a clean bill of health, I just laughed to myself and wished her luck.

Turns out when I wish someone luck, it actually works. They fixed it for free, because they'd just gone over her car and gave it a clean bill of health.

Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to be the new governor of California. On the bright side, some Americans seem to be getting over their fixation on candidates' private lives; this could mean that, in the future, qualified candidates will no longer stumble over past fun. On the dim side, etc etc.

Arcanum

Person: All the stores are closed, we'll have to try the gas stations.
Other Person: Thanks.
[Later]
Person: What about these?
Other Person: No, I want the ones with wings.
Person: Okay. We'll get these little cans of coffee, though, so the cashier doesn't think we're weird.
Other Person: Does it taste good?
Person: Not sure.
[Later]
OP: You're the best dad.
P: How come?
OP: I bet other dads wouldn't drive to so many gas stations looking for them.
P: I bet they would. Sure they would.
OP: No way.
P: Your average dad is way underrated, man.
[Later]
OP: I really hate it when they don't have a trash can in the bathroom, you know?
P: I suppose so.
OP: I've seen them stuck to walls.
P: EW!
OP: I mean, it's easier to flush a baby down the toilet than one of those.
P:!!! [Thinks: That has a biblical ring to it.]
[Later]
P: Look, wings. Yay.
OP: Yep.

And another thing

And while I'm on the subject, there are three kinds of drivers that bug me on the freeway:

1. those who want to go faster than I'm going, although I'm going perfectly fast enough and tailgate although they could easily pass in most cases and sometimes flash their goddamn lights the assholes;
   
2. those who insist on going slower than I am and it doesn't occur to them to do that in the slow lane and they poke along in the fast lane no matter how close I get to their bumper or blink my lights;
   
3. and worst of all those who start out going slower than you, but then speed up to match your speed when you try to pass them, resulting in you driving perfectly parallel to them with a driver from group 1 on your bumper, flashing his lights at you. An entertaining sub-class of this latter group are those who you finally pass, then they get mad at you and pass you again, and usually slow back down. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Does not play well with others

Do you ever have days where you just don't know yourself? Where you find yourself doing things you thought yourself incapable of? Of which you thought yourself incapable, I mean? I am speaking of driving, and overreacting at the minor stupidities of others, and finding yourself in your car afterwards, shaky with the aftermath of an adrenaline rush, wondering what *that* was all about and what exactly did that demonstration achieve and am I as evolved as I thought I was?

So if you were driving in Vienna today, and a man in a Dobló caught your eye, a man flashing his lights and using sign language at you, I'd like to take this opportunity to say, Learn to fucking drive, you moron. How the hell did you ever manage to get a driver's license? Is this the way everyone on your planet drives?

WWGD?

What would Gamma do is a good question to keep in mind when dealing with life's vagaries, whatever the hell a vagary is. Ah, caprice, impulse, whim. Okay. I'd been worried about her in school, you'll recall. In particular, boys poking her with pencils and a dumb teacher.

My wife does have an appointment to talk with the teacher again today ("Stop letting boys poke Gamma with you!") But in the meantime Gamma (it's too cumbersome to keep calling her "the youngest one".) seems to be adapting well. The principal of the school told us a while back she'd been observing the kid, who she figures is sneaky enough to survive. For example, the way she circumvents the recess rule. They have several recesses, but are allowed out of the classroom for only one. It works like this: all kids can run around in the school (they don't have much of a playground) during the big lunch recess. Then, during the other shorter recesses, they have to stay in their rooms, except for one class each time that gets to go out through the school (they can play with toys etc lying about). This is to minimize chaos in the school, I think.

So what Gamma does is, during the main recess, she makes appointments with her girlfriends from other classes (although in the first grade, she hangs out with older kids from second and fourth grade) to meet in the bathroom during the smaller recesses, where they smoke cigarettes or whatever. That way, she gets to play with her friends during every recess, not just one. I think she figured this out on her own.

120 min

Drank too much coffee yesterday. After just two hours of sleep don't expect coherence from me today. Not that you ever do. Found, scrubbed and reactivated old espresso machine on the weekend, you see. And visited friends, who brewed coffee strongly. They have a nice, new white dog which I manhandled. "Hey, ya giant white fucker c'mere" and all that. I miss having dogs around, but our yard's too small for a dog. Accidentally inactivated my Nanowrimo account this morning. Family's all doing fine, except favorite uncle had a massive heart attack and we're all keeping our fingers crossed. Lots of overseas calls going on in that connection right now. Lots of anecdotes. He's eighty-something, they jump-started his heart one dozen times after he had the attack, he was in bed sedated, and the nurses caught him trying to get out of bed yesterday.

My mom thinks he wanted to go wash windows. He never retired, you see, and still works as a window-washer.

Take the Metamorphosism challenge

Any hack can finish a novel in a month. I once wrote a novel in three days, on a typewriter, while drinking only coffee and gin, seated at a small table next to the kitchen.

In a revolving restaurant.

This year, next month, take the Metamorphosism challenge and write two 50,000-word novels for Nanaimo. Or Mie Nanamori? Whatever.

Quick, someone design a logo.

Fine Dining

To the guy who got the idea that a rotating restaurant at the top of a humongous tower overlooking the city would be a good idea: dude, what is your favorite movie? Have you ever tried to eat in your own restaurant? Is it your idea of romance to sit across from someone whose eyes keep flitting uneasily from right to left as they try to focus on your face yet keep getting distracted by the horizon rotating slowly beyond your head? In which particular medical products do you own stock?

Etc etc.

Egrunt

Egrunt, the automated Caveman Therapist. Now appearing at Acerbia.

Deer Fog

Well, Chris in the comments below pre-empted my planned post about seeing interesting wildlife this morning, so I'll tell you about the cool fog instead.

It was different today - instead of covering the land in cool sheets 6 feet off the ground this morning, it was this neat shroud 50 feet up. Driving along the freeway through the woods felt like being a geranium in a hothouse, with that big transparent dome above, only going faster and with Lorena McKennitt in the CD player.

Ambience

Relax.

Do this visualization excercise with me.

Now relax. Seriously.

Lean back in your easy chair.

You're not relaxing.

Close your eyes. I'm not going to pull anything.

Seriously, close your eyes. Trust me.

Jesus, can't you relax? Just fucking relax already.

That's better.

You are in a large room full of people in suits.

You are at a United Nations conference.

The room is huge. It looks like a fucking science fiction set. Like wookies should be walking around and Star Wars troopers or something. But no Princess Leia anywhere. Although some of the secretaries are hot. And the ambassador of [deleted] is cute and stylish. And the delegate from Ireland, woot. Look at her! She could be in Playboy [Oh, you know, there's nothing I like better than frolicking naked in a dewy field of heather after a massive fry-up in the morning, that's just grand...] Wasn't she on Riverdance? And her shoes, they must have been designed by an atheist.

Relax, I said.

You are in this room, on a chair in the back, but you have no translation earpiece so you sit there listening to the chairman say something in English, and then when a delegate starts saying something in Arabic or Russian or Chinese or French your attention drifts and you listen to the ambient sound in the room.

Shuffling papers. Muffled conversations.

Snatches of distorted translator voices escaping from vacant earpieces, in all five official UN languages. Especially English, for some reason her voice really carries today.

Doors opening and closing, footsteps on the carpet. Someone clicks their attaché case shut, someone else's cell phone rings loudly - a Mozart ring tone, for Pete's sake (despite the warning sign on the door asking delegates to turn off their phones). Give me a break, man.

The distinguished delegate of somewhere has the floor. Turn on your microphone, that's better. Bzzz bzz bzz.

A hum underlies it all, at first it seems to come from the electrical system in the room - the translation devices, the lighting, the microphones, the translator booths up along the wall but it's deeper than that. It comes from the delegates themselves, the hum of education and privilege, ambition and skill, greed and ability, future and past.

No wait, it's your cell phone, set on vibrate. Hello?

Hello, this is God.

What does God say?

Love poem

You humble bean
You wake me up
You start my heart
With a big hot cup
Fill me with elation
Stimulate my urination
Fill me with delight
Keep me up at night
I know you give me
What it takes
When I drink more
I get the shakes
Coffee, I love you.

Couldn't find any links, but happy International Day of Coffee anyway.

Field

In the fog: three big bucks watching traffic.