posted: June 7, 2002
Faced with a challenge, what does one do? Run and hide? Jump out and scare it to death? Wrestle it to the ground and make it squeal? Some challenges seem easy to meet or obvious that you will at least try to wrestle them. Others present an ambiguity. Or cold-sweat inducing terror.
There's always a scary moment once I've committed to something. That "oh, shit, what if I screw up?" moment. But, it's sort of like riding a bronco, I guess. Just hold on tight and be prepared to dodge the trampling feet if you fall off.
Maybe this should be a rodeo event: challenge-wrangling.
You're all set in the stall, astride your trusty challenge-steed (in my case that will be a deceptively mild, six-legged computer--four legs for the CPU and two for the monitor).
The alarm sounds.
The gates swing open.
The rampaging Challenge charges into the ring! It's a wild, intimidating creature, snorting and tossing its huge, frightening head and making the ground tremble with the thunder of its hooves! It has the head of a dragon, or at the very least a giant sort of frilled lizard, on a snake-like neck. Its mouth is filled with venomous fangs and razor-edged teeth and a forked tongue which spews legalese. Its body is rawhide and smoke with a cat-o-nine-tails on the rump-roast end. And Gad, does it move fast! Eels have nothing in this guy for slippery.
I know that if I just leave it alone, it will leave me alone until the "what a wimp" buzzer sounds. But I'm in the ring now, and anything I do may attract its attention, not to mention the attention of all my friends and detractors who are sitting in the stands eating popcorn.
I kick my trusty computer into a trot and head for the Challenge.
It whips around at my approach and paws the ground. Small continents drown in the tsunami caused by the disturbance. It lets out a fearsome bellow and begins to charge!
Argh! It's attacking! Run away!
But, no! I must wrangle the rampaging Challenge. My stalwart computer quivers, but holds its ground. I grip my mouse and prepare for the Challenge. I spur my computer forward. "Heigh-ho, Linux-box!"
The keyboard cord sings across the distance and loops around the neck of the Challenge. My CPU rears back on its legs, holding the Challenge still as I leap off its back and head for the beast, mouse and cable in hand. The monitor gambols about on the other side, attempting to distract the monster.
I run to the creature as it pauses a moment to watch an amusing mpeg of my ferret dancing. I use my cordless mouse and double-click the Challenge on the head. While it is dazed, I leap upon it with my faithful keyboard and wrestle the monster to the ground. I must type very fast to outpace the flood of legalese from the creature's mouth and shut it up and tie its flailing, knife-shod hooves. A handy ethernet cable does the trick.
And the Challenge is on the floor. Hah! It's really just a kitten. It was nothing!
I laugh and wave to the crowd. Victory is mine.
But the Challenge shrugs off the cables at the last minute, leaping to its feet in rage.
Oops.... Maybe I should have plugged the stupid computer in, first....
posted: June 21, 2002
She places it down between us: black-brown and both as wide and as thick as an industrial door-stop. Three cream rosettes rest on the crumbling edge of the wedge. We stare at it in trepidation.
"Is there anything else I can get for you?" she chirps.
"Uhhmmm... yeah: two starving orphans with their own forks."
The waitress giggles and leaves us alone with the killer cake. I suspect her giggles are on account of our dismay at realizing we have just made a pact with Pure Evil. Is that a pointed tail I see flirting under her uniform? This cake may be the death of us....
This is the sort of dessert which one hopes for in childhood dreams of avarice. It is the chocolate cake from Hell, the contract-sweetener which induces the gluttons of the world to sign in blood, the camel-breaking calories of Faustian nightmare.
We stab it with our steely forks and hope it will remain inert. One never knows with a cake of this type; it might become ambulatory at any moment, in an effort to ensnare other victims. If it had eyes it would be looking lust and promise at us (of course what it is lusting for is our souls...). The pastry equivalent of bedroom eyes from a femme fatale (gateau fatale?).
In spite of valiant efforts, we just can't kill the beast. Half of it remains on the plate after much forking-off.
Childhood memories of "starving children in China" make us wonder if we should ask for a to-go box to be shipped to some deserving country. Or possibly we should take it with us until accosted by a hungry homeless person, when we could turn it over to the needy. But is anyone really in need of chocolate cake?
But, in the end, we leave it behind. It is a far, far better thing to leave such temptation aside. After all, it might entrap less-hardy souls than our own and enslave them to an eternity of Chocolate Damnation. And what would they do to fight against it if they don't have either milk or coffee? It's straight to Sticky Chocolate Hell for them and we can't be responsible for that.
Of course, I feel terribly guilty about not eating all of the cake, in spite of the constant battle to keep my waistline significantly smaller than my bustline (which is a considerable measurement). Should I have had the cake in the first place? Probably not, but that's sort of the nature of sin: you shouldn't have indulged in it in the first place. But, on the other hand, if I never indulged in any sin at all, I'd be a terribly dull person.
Maybe I should just eat cake and skip dinner... and guilt. Hmm....
Oh, demoness--er, I mean waitress... about that cake....
posted: June 28, 2002
Well, we're heading for our particular National Holiday. Last year, someone said they found it significant that Americans were the only people he knew of who celebrated their national character by blowing things up. Apparently, he doesn't know the French, the Mexicans, or the English, come to that, and certainly not the Chinese. (Letting aside the "Irish question," please.)
But I will admit that there is often a sort of naivete to Americans about this weird holiday. I overheard a guest at a party asking a visitor from Canada "Do you have the Fourth of July up there?" Well, duh! Unless they bounce right from the Third to the Fifth without a pause (a sort of backwards leap-year-day thing) I suspect that the Canadians do have a fourth day of July, too, since most Westerners use the same calendar. I suppose it might be a rather more interesting calendar if only the nations who celebrated something on a particular date "had" that day. Think of the holes!
July looks pretty bad for most people. Non-Canadians will please recline for the First of July. Obviously the Fourth is a loser for anyone not American. Bastille Day (the Fourteenth of July) is out for anyone who isn't French.
August is a bit punctuated, too. Outside of Jamaica, there will be no Sixth day of August. The Fifteenth of the month is out if you are anywhere but Korea or Congo. August Nineteenth will be a day of rest for anyone outside of Afghanistan (and here's hoping it will be one for everyone inside it, too).
September, October and November don't look much better than July and August. Any place which is not Qatar will be very quiet on the Third of September. Non-Mexicans will please siesta for the entirety of the Seventeenth of September (and also May the Fifth, just for fun). And please keep on sleeping through the week of September the Nineteenth, unless you are in St. Kitts or Nevis. The entire month of October will be a blank for everyone who isn't Communist Russian (except for Hallowe'en, which will be celebrated in shopping malls), ditto November Fifth (Guy Fawkes Day) for those outside of Britain, and the Eleventh for all non-Poles.
Randomly, the Fourth of April will be too busy with parades and canoe races in Senegal to be available anywhere else, June Tenth is a non-starter outside of Portugal, the Sixth of December will only be active in Denmark, everyone who isn't Norwegian is required to sleep through the Seventeenth of May, and if you were planning on doing anything outside of Greece on the Twenty-fifth of March, you can just forget it.
And on and on. By the time you're done counting up the days which will happily drop from your calendar into oblivion by reason of being "owned" by another nationality, you'll hardly have to work at all. "It was a National Holiday... somewhere" will become a viable excuse for non-attendance at almost anything. Personally, I plan on collecting the whole set....
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