Metamorphosism

On the art of painting

You paint so much better than I do.
That's not true. I love the way you paint.
No, no. I'll never paint as well as you do.
Your paintings are great.
Yours are much better. I wish I could paint as well as you do.
I'm 47. I've been painting longer. When I was 9, painting totally frustrated me too.
I don't believe it. You paint so well.
All I do is paint an abstract painting, then when that dries, I paint another one over it, then scrape it off with a knife before it dries. Sometimes it looks cool.
You're such a good painter.
You're actually far better.
No way. You're better.
No, you.
No, you.
You.
You.

[continue ad absurdum]

Little-known facts about the manatee

• Strictly speaking, the manatee is not a fish, although it is often mistaken for a mermaid, which is half fish. Historians think at least one of the three mermaids sighted by Columbus was actually a manatee.
  
• Severely reduced populations excessive hunting yadda-yadda.
  
• Manatees are both diurnal and nocturnal, so logically they never sleep.
  
• They are only weakly social, with few friends. The only lasting bond is between a cow and her calf, and nothing flatters a manatee more than being told that its offspring resemble it strongly.
  
• Manatees are prone to intense lower back pain, and males have been sighted in front of toilets, clinging to the windowsill with tears in their eyes and their dicks hanging helplessly from their pajamas, waiting for a nasty spasm to pass.
  
• Manatee are prone to melancholy, which is okay, and depression, which they usually fight with exercise, although if they have sore backs they're fucked because the muscle relaxants they take for it have side effects including: suicidal depression, irritability, constipation, amnesia, fatigue, insomnia and dizzyness
  
• The manatee often deals with conflict by withdrawing, to the extent that you can enter a house where the manatee lives and yet notice no evidence of its presence even though it's right there talking to you.
  
• Driving to work through 22 degree water at a depth of 6 meters, the only sounds audible to a manatee are Mongolian throat-singing, which provides great comfort, and a high-pitched whistling sound, which could be the throat singing or something wrong with the car.
  
• Manatees crush vegetation with their molars, because molars are the only teeth they have.

Putting the grim back into pilgrim

Another weekend like this last one and I'll have to hire Francis Strand to ghostwrite posts for me. Like,

The Wife, the Pharmacist and I had some delicious penne with porcini mushrooms before visiting the nuns at Maria Langegg. Then, on Monday, Beta and I went to Salzburg where we met the Cellist and had antipasti with her at the Triangel before she snuck us into the opera dress-rehearsal through the stage-door, where we rubbed elbows with the Famous Conductor before all driving back to our house (minus the Conductor) in the middle of the night, where I got the best cello lesson of my life.

The German word of the day is nobel, which means posh.

But, I'm not Francis.

One-sentence version: Penne good, had a vision, nuns less scary than imagined, antipasti okay, opera very, very good, cellist marvelous.

That's not really a real sentence, though, is it.

I'll do it in chronological, yet stream-of-consciousness, order. Saturday and Sunday Alpha, a friend and I walked from the monastery in Göttweig to the abbey at Melk. Most of the way, anyway. I thought I would lose a lot of weight, but I didn't.

Have you ever heard of St. James? That's my father's name. James, I mean, not Saint James. There is this church at Santiago de Compostela dedicated to him, no idea why the Spanish would dedicate a church to my dad, and in the middle ages that was a popular pilgrimage in Europe, walking to that church. The trail from eastern Europe passed thru Austria. The trail in Spain is over 700 km long. Not sure how long it is in Austria. They just renovated (marked?) a 50 km stretch between Göttweig and Melk a year or so ago, and that's the bit we walked on the weekend.

The guide (a brochure, not a person) said 6 hours the first day, 6 the second. Don't know where they got those figures. Not from fucking walking the trail, that's for bloody sure. The first day it took us 8 hours to walk from Göttweig to a monastery in Maria Langegg even though we skipped lunch seeing as how the only inn on that stretch of the trail was closed that Saturday. Nothing but granola bars and water, man. Which is of course appropriate for a pilgrimage. There turned out to be a restaurant next to the monastery, with a very good cook, so we rewarded ourselves richly with goodies such as the aforementioned penne and some nice wine before checking in to the monastery (we all dosed ourselves liberally with breath-freshening spray before facing the nuns).

A friendly young nun assigned Alpha and me the St. Francis of Assisi room. Our friend got the some-saint-I'd-never-heard-of-before room. Simple, spare little rooms, like you'd expect.

The nuns at that place were so nice I largely got over my sororophobia or whatever an irrational fear of nuns would be called. Nice and friendly, but still with that steely glint in their eyes that makes you want not to piss them off.

Breakfast the next morning was like, A pharmacist, a nun and a marketing manager walk into a dining room. Alpha, our pharmacist friend and the nun needed about five minutes to 1)invent a cosmetic product (herbal salve for tired, sore pilgrims) and 2)devise an entire marketing and distribution strategy.

It was awesome.

Then we continued hiking. There are these spiritual exercise things here and there on the trail, ten in all on this stretch. They consist of little columns inscribed in German and English with exercises invented by Paolo Coelho, internationally best-selling author. Some struck us as a bit odd. The jury is out on Mr. Coelho. I respect his spiritual journey, but ever since I read Rumi and recognized a story Coelho padded a bit into his international best seller the Alchemist he's fallen in my regard.

But there was this one exercise we did, I won't go into detail but it ended up with me having a vision of sorts that gave me the message, "Let go."

So the whole second day I was thinking about letting go, and have been ever since.

When I wasn't thinking about sitting down and taking a rest. Or soaking in a hot bath. Or having a beer, or a joint. Lots of up and down on that trail, man. We got really sore. Some of us complained. It got cloudy. About five miles from the end, it started to thunder and our friend began to hitchhike. The first car was a black Mercedes SUV driven by an elderly couple. She waved at them and they stopped and gave us a ride. Amazingly simple. That's how cute this friend is. They were out driving around, looking at churches and seemed happy to have a load of pilgrims.

"Sometimes you have to transcend your principles," our friend said.

As soon as we got in the car, it began to rain heavily, making us feel smart for our decision rather than flaky.

We had something to eat in Melk and drove home.

So there was that last weekend. Let go. Then on Monday Beta and I drove to Salzburg which is crawling with tuxedos and evening dresses and silk dirndls there for the Festspiele, and where big silver Audis cut you off in traffic all the time because Audi is a sponsor and apparently that's good advertisement to cut people off in traffic. We were there to see Mitridate, which has gotten good reviews, deservedly it turns out. Beta and I are friends with someone in the band, who got us into the dress rehearsal.

In fact, we also got to see the final rehearsal prior to the dress rehearsal, too, which had the advantage that we were already sitting in the best seats in the house when they let in the rest of the audience for the dress rehearsal. We were sitting there, when we heard this noise in the background, you know? Like rain on a tin roof. Like sitting in Carlsbad cavern watching the bats return at dusk. The pitter-patter of hundreds of pork hooves drawing closer and finally pouring in and scrambling for the good seats. Not that bats have pork hooves. Some people got good seats, some missed out. You know how it is. Sorry, Charlie. Some climbed over rows of seats to get where they wanted to go, tuxedo be damned. And Beta and I sat there thinking, Peasants, show some class. Riff-raff.

Beta and I enjoyed the bug-eyed Mozarts a lot. We kidnapped our musician friend, who managed to keep me awake on the 3 hour drive home, which would have been about 5 minutes shorter had I not exited one exit too soon, then missed the right exit and exited at the next exit. But only five minutes, big deal. We got home around 3 in the morning, talked until 4 and I was up at like 5 to go to work. That was a silly day, believe me.

We made a lot of letting go jokes because after I'd mentioned my vision to our friend, and how when I got home from our hike I'd cracked "The Artist's Way" to a random page and she was talking about "letting go", and all these other funny coincidences started happening until it started to get old, as these things sometimes do. It was like, enough already, subconscious! I get it already!

Then I got the cello lesson, and learned that playing an instrument is a lot about letting go, too. What isn't, right.

Explanation

A secretary, who is pretty in a rather prim way, was standing by my desk as I worked on some text for her.
Blah blah blah, I said.
My iTunes was playing in the background.
Blah, blah blah, I said.
I had my iTunes organized by artist. It hit a patch of Yat-Kha. Their Re-Covers album.
I highly recommend it for any occasion.
I feel obligated to explain my music, I said to her.
Oh? she said.
These are Mongolian throat singing covers of classic rock songs, I said.
Oh, she said. Rock?
Blah blah, blah, I said.

Skin

You're not very wrinkly at all, she said.
Is that right? he said.
Most people seem to get more wrinkles when they get old, she said.
Hrm, he said.
I mean, you have these fat rolls around your throat, but otherwise..., she said.
I see, he said.
I mean, not that you're getting old. I don't mean to suggest that, she said.
Getting old beats the alternative, he said. It's my goal to get old.
I don't mean like you have this really fat neck or anything. I didn't mean like rolls of fat, she said.
I see, he said.

Relationship Tip #3

One of the main advantages of the modern cylinder lock is the fact that it is not necesary to alter the boltwork to change the cylinder. In fact, changing your average door lock requires the removal of exactly one screw, removal of the cylinder, going to the hardware store or the lock guy with the cylinder (best) or measurements of said cylinder (if you want to lock your door while you are absent) showing the length of cylinder and the distance right and left from the moveable pin part so you get the right replacement. Depending on the cylinder, it costs (where I live) between €30 (for example, for my cellar door where the key broke off in the lock) and €150 (for the posher front door the lock of which decided not to work).

You get, usually, a set of 3 keys with the new cylinder. If you need more than that, have them made right away, otherwise you forget and it's a hassle. If you get the cylinder directly from the key guy (which I fear is more expensive, but unfortunately the hardware store doesn't always have the most expensive models in stock) have the key made right there. Otherwise, run to Mr. Minit or whoever is closer and have it done. Don't procrastinate.

Then you take the new cylinder straight home and stick it in the hole and with a minimum of fiddling about it should be possible to replace the screw you removed from the original cylinder and you're done, except for testing all the keys, especially the new spares you had made, to avoid, say, your daughter coming home late at night while you are still out and spending, say, three hours in the back yard because her key won't fit into the lock.¹

Changing a lock is that easy. It makes you feel handy, and could be a simple and relatively inexpensive way to, for example, change the dynamics in a relationship. Secretly changing the host's lock is also a good icebreaker at parties, so make a habit of carrying a philips screwdriver and several of the most common cylinder locks with you every time you go out.
_______

¹ On the other hand, such a misfortune does make a good story -- especially when you return to the Mr. Minit three weeks later without a receipt, and ask to have the spare keys made properly, which Mr. Minit, who turns out to be a nice guy, does without protest, even listening to your story of the Defcon lockpicking seminar you read about and totally agreeing that kids make far better lockpickers than adults and showing no surprise at all that the article mentioned that an 11 year old girl at the seminar was an expert lockpicker after 15 minutes (at which point an image of Gamma fencing loot floats through your mind) -- an even better story than, say, "my nearly-grown daughter spent 15 minutes waiting one afternoon..." which would more closely correspond to the "objective facts".

Getting things done

1. I was chatting with a friend and mentioned a problem that plagues me, an inability to get things done, either due to never starting or starting but not finishing. She recommended a book about "how to get things done" and within 30 seconds, I had ordered it from Amazon. Impressed by my speed and decisiveness, I wondered whether I needed the book after all.
2. About a week later, Amazon sent me an email informing me that it was going to take longer than the 4 day estimate they'd promised to deliver the book to me, a week or two longer in fact, but they hadn't forgotten and were working on it, but in the unlikely case that they would be unable to ship, they'd let me know.

The Booze Locust

They were in the neighborhood, drinking wine at a local Heuriger, a wine tavern, really good wine they said, and since they were in the neighborhood they thought they'd drop by and ask when the rowing club Heuriger was.

It was last weekend, we said, but come in and chat for a while.

Oh, we couldn't, they said. They apologized for bothering us. Just for a minute. Then they have to run.

Would you like something to drink? Some wine? Glass of water? Juice?

I'd like some of your good single malt, if I may be so bold, she said. He had some wine, but mostly mineral water, since he was driving.

In a generous mood, I fetched a liter bottle of my second-best single malt from the library. It was two-thirds full. The best single malt, my vat-strength Macallan's is locked away. This was still good stuff, Macallan Elegancia.

I got two Riedel single malt glasses.

We sat and chatted about various things. I couldn't get over how fast our guest was putting away her whisky. It was impressive. After a while, I felt like saying, why don't we just insert a valve into your side and pour it straight into your liver?

I had to go pick up Beta at her summer job so I didn't drink but a glass at the start. When I got home with her, our guests, especially the one drinking whisky, were more cheerful than they had been when I left, which is the way it's supposed to be I guess.

I heard somewhere that with English men, you can see in the faces of grown men how they looked as boys, and with the French, you can see in the faces of little boys what they'll look like when they grow up.

As we sat there and talked, and poured (for a drink or two I had matched our guest, but lost the desire and began giving her full refills, and taking symbolic ones myself) I noticed I could see clearly how handsome and how pretty our guests had been before they entered middle age and got heavy and so on.

It is one of my favorite super powers, being able to look at people and see how beautiful they are.

Our whisky drinking guest stopped making sense with about two inches of whisky left in the bottle. Beta was, by this time, also tasting a bit of the Macallan, just half an inch in a glass. Gamma sniffed it and wrinkled her nose and asked how we could drink it. Both girls, though, were mainly observing the woman beside me. They found it both interesting, in a slightly clinical way, a slightly anthropological way, and entertaining in a we don't usually get to see this stuff way.

Alpha sometimes had to remind me to refill our guest's glass; sometimes it was empty so fast I didn't notice right away.

I was getting slapped on the back a lot and that sort of thing, to which I usually said something like, "heh, yeah, hm".

She declared she wasn't leaving until the bottle was finished. I thought she was kidding but she wasn't. I poured her a big glass. She asked me if I were trying to get rid of her. Well, I thought. No, no, of course not, I said. We're all having a great time, I said.

I half expected her to sit on my lap at some point, but she didn't.

When I was a kid, a friend's mom went crazy and climbed my uncle's pear tree and threw pears at him when he asked her to get out.

They left after several hours of fun, our guests. The husband was fairly sober, having drunk mainly water the whole time. They marched their beautiful selves out to their car and drove off into the night. Come back soon, we said.

Guest post, Mig's turtle #4

The Secret of All Things
Look into her eyes with your patented special look and she, it's as if she were tired and staring at a generic work of art in an airport waiting room two hours into a five hour layover. Surrounded by cranky babies.
Or, you try to strike up a conversation with someone and you're so hoarse with trepidation they keep saying, What? What?
Or they're mobbing you at work.
Or you go into a bookstore, killing time, getting out of the rain, and you start opening books, looking inside, looking for a book the reading of which will cure you of being an asshole. You remember the feeling, you used to get it all the time when you were younger, but none of these books give you that feeling. They hang limply from the shelves, like Dali clocks.
Or you beg someone to do something important and they keep saying, No. No.
Or your habitat is getting boring, or confining, or you can smell a potential mate around the corner and you want out but it's escape-proof.
The secret is this: there are three things you must do - try, and try, and try.
Don't stop trying, ever.
There's no hurry, not necessarily.
It's not about doing it fast, it's about doing it.
You must know what you want. Once you know this, you do it. That is the secret of all things.
Say you want out but they have placed an empty planter to block the only exit.
It is unclimbable. It is over your head. And if you were to climb over, you'd fall inside and be stuck again, only worse.
So here is what you do: you fucking climb over anyway.
Think Steve McQueen bouncing that ball, baby.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
You scale the outside of the planter a hundred times, and fall back down a hundred times. They laugh at the persistent turtle.
Tortoise, assholes, you think. Persistent tortoise.
Then, one day, they find you inside the planter. They pick you up and put you back into your habitat.
Some might think, All for nothing. But not you. That is part of the secret.
They find you inside the planter a few more times. Every time, they gently pick you up and put you back into your high-security flowerbed.
Until one day. The day you finally taste freedom. Because you never give up climbing. It's beyond hope, beyond persistence. You just know what you want to do, and you do it.
Climb over the planter. Maybe you fall in, but you climb back out on the hundredth try, or the thousandth. And you're free! You are outside!
Or, you would be, if they hadn't plugged the hole under the fence with the concrete pig. Goddamn it.
But, in principle, the secret always works.

Superspy: Evco Report Part III - The Search for the Czar's Testicles

This is how the day went, from my vantage point in my secret vast limestone cave hideout; I also wandered around a bit between some of the stations of the hunt (there were a total of ten). I encourage any other Evco participants to post their observations in the comments to this entry. I am minimizing mention of other participants because I of course want to hog credit for this
production, and also for reasons of privacy - maybe someone doesn't want to be mentioned by name in a public forum like this. Again, if you do, you're encouraged to comment.

Including myself, there were about ten Evco conspirators and associates involved in providing logistical support to the scavenger hunt on site in Vienna throughout the day. Beta and her friends, how many of them were there... seven, I think, on the day of the hunt.

1. The kids met at the first station, a certain university library, at 9.15 AM. There they went to the information desk and asked for a certain gentleman, Dr. Cosma, who was summoned and arrived in the form of Evco conspirator H. wearing a white lab coat, I believe dark glasses? and an odd accent. He took a couple of the kids into the library archives, which I had inspected beforehand and can testify were suitably dark and scary, with steel grate floors between the bookshelves enabling one to see three floors down. H.P. had selected a perfect starting place. The kids had found the reference number of a book in their online search, and looked for it on the shelves. H. had however made it more difficult for them by selecting a book at random that was too large to fit on the shelves and was stored in a secondary location elsewhere in the archives. So after the frustration of not finding the book where it should have been, they finally got it and found a postcard of St. Stephen's cathedral inside, and a key to a locker.

The locker contained several red herrings, I believe, including a tin can of herring in tomato sauce. Dr. Cosma also gave the kids a brightly colored rucksack; the kids argued the rest of the day over whether it was neon green or neon yellow - it was in any case visible at a distance, making it easier to see them before they saw us (I thought) and for strangers to recognize them. The pack also contained €100 for expenses like food and drink, and various objects that might be useful on their hunt (lighter, magnifying glass, map) and more red herrings (rubber bands, rubber gloves, large squirtgun).

The kids did not immediately deduce that the blank postcard had a message written in invisible ink (lemon juice) on it. The message said "go to the top of the tower, wave out the window and dial tel. #XXXXXXX". When they finally started roasting the postcard with matches a passerby gave them (they did not immediately find the lighter in the pack) the first thing they found was the telephone number, which they called.

Station 2 This was the first mistake of the hunt. A design flaw, my fault. The full message would've sent the kids up to the top of the tower, which has 444 steps, I think. Over 200 at any rate. Quite a climb. The instructions to "wave out the window" were intended to ensure that they actually went to the top.

Agents N., S. and I were loitering around outside St. Stephen's Cathedral, well-hidden, joking about how funny it would be if the kids came from an unexpected direction and unmasked us. N.'s phone rang - it was the kids calling. No way could they have made it to the cathedral that fast! We assumed they were cheating, not knowing about the postcard problem yet. H. showed up on his bicycle. Actually, I think he had been standing there for a long time observing me - some superspy - before I noticed him.

At any rate, when the kids dialed the number, they got the Evco Clue Helpline, a recorded imitation voicemail hell on N.'s mobile phone. The original script was too long, taking over 5 minutes to read, so N. had shortened it to roughly the following:

Welcome to the Evco Group Clue Hotline

1. If you have found your clue but are unable to break the code, press "one"
2. If you are lost outside the city limits, press "two"
3. If you are lost within the city limits, press "three"
4. If you are in a submerged vehicle and unable to find your clue, press "four"
5. If you are trapped in a burning building and are unable to find your clue, press "five"
6. If you are trapped in a pilotless aircraft plunging to earth and are unable to find your clue, press "six"
7. If you are about to be launched into outer space and/or trapped in a rocket about to self-destruct and are unable to find your clue, press "seven"
8. If you are at a secret underground location and are unable to find your clue, press "eight"
9. If you are at the top of a cathedral tower and are unable to find your clue, press "nine"

You have pressed "nine".
You are at the top of a cathedral tower and are unable to find your clue.
This is because your clue is not located in the tower. To find your clue, please return to the church and look under the fifth row of pews on the left side. Your clue is inside an envelope taped to the underside of the fifth row of pews on the left side.

Thank you for calling the Evco Group Helpline.
If you have another problem or would like to hear your options again, hold the line.
If you are in mortal danger and need an emergency extraction, type in your GPS coordinates.
If we have answered your question, please terminate the call.

So their next clue was under a pew in row five in the cathedral. I had placed it earlier that morning. Of course I ran into two snags: one, the first 17 rows were roped off requiring me to place it under the fifth row from the rope, and two taping an envelope underneath a cathedral pew turns out to be very suspicious-looking, and they had "security" people walking around.

This clue sent the kids to

Station 3 Zanoni's ice cream parlor, with instructions to buy ice cream. The clue was partially written backwards and partially in ROT-13, which the kids had grown good at decoding. So they went there for ice cream and waited and waited for something to happen and nothing did and Beta finally called me and I told her to wait.

They finished their ice cream, stood around impatiently and were accosted by an American tourist who was asking them directions to a particularly uninteresting sight in Vienna, the Basilisk House, home of Vienna's historical monster the Basilisk, a cross between a frog and a chicken, only with realllly bad breath. The tourist, brilliantly played by an Evco associate, somehow managed to convince the kids to go to the House and gave them another clue, a sheet of numbers they "would need for Octopussy".

Station 4 Basilisk House. Here, hidden by a large flower pot, the kids eventually found a menu from the Mocca Club with a cryptic message indicating there was a table reserved for them for noon. The idea was, they'd have lunch there. So they walked over towards the Mocca Club, which is near the Naschmarkt, Vienna's largest public market.

Station 5 Mocca Club. After talking to the waiter at the Mocca Club (N. had reserved the table earlier) and explaining the situation to him and giving him the clue (a package of sugar N. had tampered with sending the kids to their next station) I stood around the Naschmarkt, well-hidden, observing the door of the Mocca Club with my binoculars and ignoring the curious stares of passersby. I met my wife, Gamma, my cousin and her husband who were visiting from Seattle with their son, who was on Beta's team. I met N. and T. and we got something to eat. Then I stood around some more with N watching the coffeehouse facade again. The kids, it turned out, were ahead of schedule because they had saved time by not going up the tower. So they went to the Naschmarkt to get something to eat, in order not to arrive at the coffeehouse too early. I stood there watching the door of the club intently when N. elbowed me in the ribs and said, "ahem". I lowered the binoculars and there stood Beta and her team, about two feet away. "Hi, dad!" she grinned. "Hi, Mr. Living," the rest of the kids said. I do not remember ever seeing that happen to Jim Phelps on Mission Impossible on TV, and I saw every episode.

The kids and N. eventually stopped laughing at my spy expertise. The kids went to the coffeehouse. We checked the next station and proceeded to the station after that for preparations.

Station 6 Flea market. The sugar package at the coffeeshop told the kids to go to a certain stand at the flea market and buy a book, Octopussy. This they managed to do quickly. The problem arose when they had to decode the message, consisting of a series of groups of three numbers indicating page number, line number and number of a letter in the line. It had taken me hours to write, and it turned out to take the kids hours to decode, because it was a hell of a lot of counting. Also, they made mistakes and re-encoded their own message. This proves our theory that one should put any really hard or time-consuming codes in an online phase of such a hunt, and make the scavenger hunt part more kinetic and running around and task-oriented. Which we largely did. For example, at most stations they had to ask someone for the Czar's testicles.

Station 7 Schönbrunn palace, Gloriette. The emperor's summer palace. The Gloriette is up on a hill behind the palace with a nice view of Vienna. Here they found a crossword puzzle. Solving it required detailed knowledge of the entire conspiracy story Evco had woven through its various websites, blogs, MySpace pages, etc. Being Beta, Beta had printed all that out so they were able to solve the puzzle quickly.

By this time, I had a pretty decent sunburn. I had neglected to apply sunscreen that day, and it was hot hot hot. I stood around talking with N. and another Evco associate, a friend of T.'s, wondering where the kids were, joking about them coming from an unexpected direction and busting me again. In fact, they did come from another direction. They took a bus instead of climbing the fairly steep hill up to the Gloriette.

The crossword puzzle sent them to

Station 8 Schönbrunn Palace, Hedge Maze. There is a hedge maze there, and a labyrinth and we had been concerned that there might be some confusion so we tried to make our clues as explicit as possible. The kids claim there was a second hedge maze as well, or a second labyrinth we didn't know about, and it took them some time because some of them went to the wrong maze, and the others had to wait for them, and their mobile phone batteries were beginning to fade making organization harder for them. Meanwhile, my sunburn wasn't getting any better and I think at this point, all of us were looking forward to the hunt finally being over.

In the hedge maze, they found a clue (heavily guarded by Evco associate M.) directing them to their penultimate

Station 9 at the MuseumsQuartier. Here they found a message in a bottle, constructed by N. The message consisted of a wine bottle full of little paper boats, each with a letter on them. They retrieved the bottle (anchored by a second bottle full of water, attached by a ribbon), got it open, got the boats out, unfolded them and arranged the letters to spell their final hint: PICKWICKS. This is a pub and English used bookstore and video thing not far from where they started in the morning in Vienna's central first district.

I was told there had been a slight problem at the fountain before the kids arrived. N. had placed the bottles in the water, and a curious stranger had tried to swipe them, oblivious to all the disguised Evco agents surrounding him, watching his every move. Instead of using lethal force, N. just yelled at him (agents positioned a hundred or more meters away later told me they clearly heard her say "Finger weg!") and he put the bottles back.

I missed this, unfortunately, having proceeded to

Station 10 Pickwick's to place the Czar's testicles in the hands of the waiter there, and, frankly, to get some shade and have a beer and some food, man. It was about four in the afternoon at this point. The kids eventually showed up, asked the waiter for the Czar's testicles, he gave them to them (a pair of those esoteric metal balls that ring and kling and klang when you roll them around in your hands? for meditation I think? with yin/yang stuff painted on them?) and the kids squirted me with the squirtgun and the game was finished. We debriefed the kids, discussed the mission among ourselves and relaxed in the knowledge that our conspiracy had been successfully implemented, with a couple small snags, which are to be expected, that's why you have a Plan B and so on.

Overall, I'd give it a high fun rating. What did everyone else think? Evco people? Beta? Beta's friends?

PS: Sorry to Pickwick's for all the squirtgun squirting that went on in your bookstore! It won't happen again!

Superspy: Evco Report Part III II

This is all very complicated and I am in a rambling mood inconducive to concise portrayal of complicated structures. In this part I will try to list a few parameters:

• Company name: Evco Group
  
• Company website URL: http://evcogroup.com
  
• Company focus: 3vil 1nternational c0nspiracy
  
• Company project: Scavenger hunt

Project parameters:

• Location: Vienna, Austria
  
• Duration: 8 hours on 15 July 2006
  
• Project theme: evil international conspiracy involving mass-hypnotic object(s)
  
• Planning start: April 2006
  
• Targets: Half-dozen or so very bright teenagers
  
• Staff: Nearly two dozen participants, conspirators and contributors world-wide, half of which were heavily involved
  
• Name of project: "The Czar's Testicles"

Motivation: Combination of two ideas: a love of treasure-hunts, which I have put on for my daughters before, on a much more modest scale, and the idea that if one could only harness the vast creativity out there, around the world, then one could do something fun. And it worked.

Backstory: The idea of the hunt was to find the Czar's testicles while avoiding Czarist assassins. The Czar's testicles were objects that enabled the holder to hypnotically influence masses of people. Conspirators came up with a narrative involving a sort of good guy who had hidden the objects from bad guys, who wanted them, in 1918. The guy eventually disappeared, his son took over, then his grandson, and now his great-grand-daughter. The same bad guys - neo-Czarists - were still after them, as well as some new ones.

Execution: Two phases. Phase one: online, started a week prior to the hunt proper. Beta given clue in real life, at work, wends way through internet sites, blogs, and a wonderful chatbot written by D that provide clues, background information and code-solving practice (while receiving cryptic and/or creepy postcards from around the world; note: target's mother not entirely happy dad gave out daughter's home and work addresses to weird strangers, so maybe it was a good idea the hysterical Russian lady screaming things in Russian hysterically mobile phone calls didn't pan out). Phase two: the hunt. By solving the online codes etc., kids participating knew where and when to meet on the 15th. They visited about ten locations throughout Vienna, in all.

Feedback: Staff seemed to have a lot of fun. One of the targets said it was the most fun he'd ever had. Beta also approved. We all got together for food and drink at a pub after the hunt, and the kids were interviewed by Evco staff, but I haven't seen the film yet. The project seemed like a success to me, though. I want to do this for a living.

Tomorrow: Play-by-play description of the actual scavenger hunt, during which I get a serious sunburn, discover my limitations as a superspy and depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Official T-Shirt: Designed by Bauke, produced by TH. Available here.