On the road with Wally

Part 42: Signs of Soda
by Wally

We were one sunrise away from watching the reddish glow of the evening sun color the rim of the Grand Canyon, and one sunset away from the first light of daybreak over Zabriske Point, in Death Valley. We were smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada.

Not to say there isn’t much of anything in Nowhere. Au contraire. George had been enlightening me to the wonder of the alluvial plains that exist here in Nevada. With no rain to wash it all away, all the material that sheds from the tops of the mountains here falls to the bottoms. And stays there. It creates a nice, gradual, slope of residue, once seen (and identified), never forgotten. In fact, on the way out of Death Valley the next day, we were basically driving straight up the alluvial slope for 45 minutes, avoiding tarantulas that darted across the road. But that’s another story.

No, here in the middle of Nowhere there was two-lane blacktop, lots of sand, and some scrubby desert vegetation. (and probably Wile E. Coyote, although he was much too wily to be seen. Unlike Wile E. Tarantula — again, another story.) And Sky. Big Sky. Sky that made Montana jealous. Big, dramatic, desert but-it’s-lookin’-like-rain, and not wimpy pacific northwest micro-rain, but slam it down, cats and dogs, southern summer thunderstorm rain.

A Sky that was so dramatic that George pulls over and comments, “Man, will you just look at that Sky.” Which is one of the things that makes George a good travelling companion — he’ll stop and smell the sagebrush. We hop out and stand agog at the beautiful sunlight spreading through the high dark cumulus. Menacing, yet beautiful. Alone, we appreciate.

An unnatural sound clatters through our meditative silence as a lone Coca-Cola can rolls down the highway. We stand even more amazed, because we’re in the middle of nowhere, almost back to nature, soaking up the desert landscape, the gorgeous almost-sunset and are jolted back to reality by a singular token of civilization, intruding on the road-runner-esque landscape. Our heads both swivel comically to the right, as the can, seemingly out of nowhere, rolls down the double yellow line in the middle of the blacktop. It almost feels like we’re in some weird commercial, but lacking the requisite camera crew and pretty graphics.

Then an even more unnatural sound blasts us both from our left as an 18-wheeler thunders unexpectedly around the bend and thrusts itself into our view before our startled inhales are completed. Its mammoth wheels roll over the can, crush it, suck it up and around, crush it again and fling it out behind, a crumpled, flattened token of what was once the perfect shape, the wheel, the cylinder, the rolling reminder of civilization… now just a flat piece of aluminum on a lonely Nevada highway.

As fast as it came, the juggernaut is gone. We both stare dumbly in stunned amazement at the coincidence of us, the can, and the rig. A collective “Whoa” settles among us.

“Let’s roll”, sez George. I couldn’t agree more.

Moving time

Does it bother anybody else out there that after you mess up your room, the next thing you do is clean it up? You see the problem: they both go up. This means the room keeps going up and up forever, as though rising on an endlessly telescoping hydraulic lift. Eventually something has to give way and topple. It’s unnerving.

The signs of millennial collapse are everywhere.

For Paracelsus this year, spring cleaning is giving way to summer moving. As the new owner of a house (he’s upgrading), he has to clean up the old apartment, pack up his belongings, and then set them up in the new place. He’s not sure if he’s up to the challenge. “Cheer up!” you may advise him, but a mild fear of heights has him wondering if things will ever calm down again.

To help us all stay down-to-earth, Wally, a great good friend of Paracelsus from Way Back When, tells us a story this week about rolling down the highway.

Advertisement


By the way, were you aware that you can now read your favorite Star Chamber pieces on a PalmPilot?

Peanut Press is now selling a compilation entitled

The Star Chamber, Writings from the Web which can be downloaded for convenient reading on a palmtop platform. Check out our exciting
excerpts from the book, and then take home a few copies today!

Advertisement

The Star Chamber Answer Man

Spring has come at last to the editorial offices here at Number One Star Chamber Place, and not a minute too soon. We didn’t have a particularly tough winter here, but the thinly rationed sunlight of winter can cast a seasonal affective pall over even the mildest weather. Once the sun gets a chance to smear on the light in great thick greasy slabs again, it’s amazing how cheery the old place gets.

This week we turn to one of our regular features, the Star Chamber Answer Man, in which curious readers of the Star Chamber from all around the globe try to stump the indefatigable and eponymous man of answers.

Continue reading “The Star Chamber Answer Man”

Meeting the Little Man

The Ides of March notwithstanding, Paracelsus has some happy news to share. For the tax year 1999, he gets to claim a dependent, along with the corresponding deduction.

Meeting the Little Man

My son was born at 11:33 PM on March 3, 1999, and I had a front row seat. He emerged, after two and a half hours of painful pushing, spindly and blue and remarkably quiet. Not quiet enough to worry any of the medical professionals in the room, but quiet enough for me to say, “Come on, let’s hear you cry, little boy! Make some noise! Let’s hear you cry!” And he did cry, small surprised yelps between what seemed to me long silences.

Some hours before, while my wife was in the middle of her labor, we had heard the sudden sound of a baby crying loudly coming down the corridor from another delivery room. That child’s powerful anguished crying stirred my emotions as I anticipated the imminent birth of our baby. It also served as a benchmark for the noise I expected my child to make. But when his time came, he didn’t make much noise. I was certainly amazed by the event of birth, but when I looked at his face, he seemed even more so. Who can blame him?

Here’s something that was on my mind a lot in the weeks leading up to the birth: I had no idea how I was going to handle labor and delivery. I’m pretty squeamish when it comes to blood and I’m somewhat inclined to get vertigo. I go completely pale and limp when I give blood. I was, therefore, visited by embarrassing visions of me passing out right as my wife needed me to support her leg or encourage her or massage her back or cut the baby’s umbilical cord. This is the canonical image of father as comic relief. Sitcom dad.

As the labor progressed, I could see that I was doing okay, which was an enormous relief. (Note to other expecting dads with similar concerns: don’t let your blood sugar drop. A strategically consumed PowerBar works wonders). I had expected everything about the labor experience to be utterly surreal, as though the air were going to be a different color and the people were going to move in slow motion. But for the most part, it was a long boring day. Cinematographers spoil us by having us believe dramatic moments are necessarily accompanied by music and lighting effects. In truth, everything looked normal—the sky was blue, the Cambridge traffic surged steadily by—except when I looked at my wife flat on her back trying to push a baby through her pelvis. That part didn’t look normal.

At the moment of birth, my attention moved rapidly from the baby to my wife to the doctor and around again. It was hard for me to focus on anything very clearly. I was prepared for, in fact I was expecting to feel, an overwhelming rush of love for the infant to engulf me, since I had so often heard this to be a part of other parents’ birth experience. But that’s not what happened to me. The experience of watching my wife go through so much pain, the detachment that came with watching the agony and the bloody viscous messiness of birth, and my watching the nurses and doctors for cues about things kept me preoccupied. I was still acutely aware of my own performance; was I a good father? Was I upholding my part of the deal in the delivery room? Would the nurses think of me as a goofy sitcom dad? I was glad I hadn’t keeled over, but I was still monitoring myself to see if I was asking the right questions, observing the things that needed to be observed: episiotomy, vacuum-assisted extraction, placenta, umbilical cord, stitches, intravenous Pitocin drip. Fascinating stuff, really.

It took a long time to come down from the heightened tension. It took a while for me to realize, in a direct visceral sense, that this was indeed my own child.

small-foot

He landed in my arms first, immediately after being weighed—his grip reflex was strong enough for them to have a hard time prying him off the scale. Even with the baby in my arms, he didn’t feel like mine yet. He felt like a strange little visitor, an alien who, having stopped by, seemed just as likely to go back where he came from. He was bigger than I expected, long-limbed, and his startle reflex was an awkward unhappy buglike dance. How could he possibly have fit inside my wife’s belly?

And suddenly there he was, swaddled and laid up in my arms. To look at him, I could see that he didn’t mean to be the cause of so much drama and pain. He looked dislocated, surprised to be pulled from his comfortable lodging. He must have had a throbbing headache. His left eye was swelled shut like a prizefighter’s. With his right eye he gave me an unfocused questioning look: what did I mean to do with him? He squealed and snuffled softly.

A vivid image came to my mind, an image of a lonely railway station late at night. I was meeting, in the shadow of an empty departing train, this scared disoriented little man. He clutches a spent one-way ticket in his tiny fingers. He has absolutely nothing else. He can’t go back where he came from. He doesn’t speak my language, he is shivering with the cold, and he needs so much help. This is when the tension and detachment finally begin to melt away. This is when the tears come pouring. Come with me, little man. I can help you.

Y-No-K

TIME: 2 BC, late Wednesday afternoon

PLACE: The house of Gaius Tullus DeGustibus, in the northern suburbs of Rome, near the new Circus Maximus Mall.

[the phone rings]

ANTONINUS: Hello?

PROBONO: Hello there… am I speaking to Mr. Gaius T. DeGustibus?

ANTONINUS: [haughtily] No, this is his slave, Antoninus. May I ask who’s calling?

PROBONO: Yes indeed, my friend. Tell Mr. DeGustibus that Claude Probono is calling with some very important news about his future.

ANTONINUS: Certainly, sir. One moment. [he exits and returns with DeGustibus]

DEGUSTIBUS: [pulling on a robe, talking to Antoninus] I don’t remember anyone by that name. [picking up the phone] Hello?

PROBONO: Greetings, Mr. DeGustibus. My name is Claudius Probono, but please, call me Claude. I’m wondering what plans you have to deal with the impending Year Zero problem.

DEGUSTIBUS: The what?

PROBONO: The Year Zero problem, sometimes known as the Y-No-K problem. Do you have any plans to mitigate the vicious effects of this calamity on your lovely household at [sound of shuffling papers] 23 Pantheon Path?

DEGUSTIBUS: What on earth are you talking about? I’ll have you know I was just getting an olive oil rubdown from my slave when you called and—

PROBONO: I certainly understand your annoyance, Gaius. Can I call you Gay?

DEGUSTIBUS: You may call me Mr. DeGustibus.

PROBONO: I certainly understand your annoyance Mr. Gaius, and I wouldn’t bother you if I wasn’t trying to save your household from ruin and despair. Now isn’t that worth an interrupted salad job?

DEGUSTIBUS: I beg your pardon! What’s all this about ruining my house?

PROBONO: Gaius, let me begin with a simple question. What year is this?

DEGUSTIBUS: This is the year 2.

PROBONO: And what year comes after that?

DEGUSTIBUS: [impatiently] Why, the year 1, of course. Where are you going with this line of inquiry?

PROBONO: And what’s the year after that?

DEGUSTIBUS: Hmmm. Well I… [genuinely puzzled] Hmmm. I suppose no year at all. The year naught. No year. Hmmm. Yes, I suppose I never thought of that before. I’d gotten so used to counting down the years, I never gave much thought about what would happen at the end.

PROBONO: [triumphantly] EXACTLY! Do you think the Roman Federal Credit Union will pay you interest that year?

DEGUSTIBUS: [beginning to show some doubt] I expect so… it’s probably nothing that a public sacrifice wouldn’t fix.

PROBONO: I wouldn’t count on it, Gaius. Their tabulation systems are going to Hades in a handbasket. How long is the year zero, would you say? And how would you write a zero, anyway?

DEGUSTIBUS: Well it’s a matter of… I would… [giving up in frustration] it’s this damned numbering system! All X’s and V’s! This country can put a man in Britannia; you’d think we could figure out a way to write zero.

PROBONO: Think of the aqueduct running dry because of faulty calculations, Gaius. No Roman Meal bread at the Pigglius Wigglius. No water at the bath-house, the vomitorium shuttered and deserted—

DEGUSTIBUS: [growing increasingly horrified] Please stop it! Oh what can I do?

PROBONO: [urgently] Well, if you act today, I might be able to put you on our Zero Risk Survival Plan. I can set you up in a lovely gated compound in the mountains near Switzerlandium. We’ll bury a year’s supply of wine and freeze-dried olives on your property and provide you with some board games and a highly-trained security force to drive off the Flintstones and Visigoths.

DEGUSTIBUS: The who?

PROBONO: You don’t read the paper very much, do you Gay?

DEGUSTIBUS: What board games do you have? And what about my art supply store in Capitolium and my cat, Nero? Oh, it’s making my head spin.

PROBONO: You’ve got to stop thinking about clinging and start thinking about cashing out and saving your skin! And by the way, we offer a wide assortment of popular games, including backgammon, Candyland, Nails and Crosses, and Gladiator, the new hand-to-hand action figure combat game.

DEGUSTIBUS: Oh! I’d better start packing now. [loudly] Antoninus! Antoninus! Is my good toga still at the dry cleaner’s?

PROBONO: Gaius, I’m going to call you back with the details tomorrow. In the meantime, if any Centurions should ask you what’s going on, let’s just keep this our little secret, okay? [He hangs up]

[Cut to the offices of Veni Vidi Fleeci, Year Zero Consultants. Probono, hanging up the phone, turns to his co-worker Edwardius Pluribus Unum]

PROBONO: [shaking his head] I’m telling you, Ed, this Y-No-K gig is going to make us rich. You just call them up and reel them in. Year zero indeed. Sweet Jesus!

UNUM: Who?

PROBONO: Nothing.

UNUM: [after a pause] Tell the truth, Claude. Are you worried about this stuff really? You know, that whole world-is-ending mass-hysteria thing?

PROBONO: Naah, not a chance. But if there is any trouble, I’ll be ready. I am going to take all this money and buy myself a great big country estate south of here and watch the whole big mess blow over.

UNUM: Oh yeah? Whereabouts?

PROBONO: Sweet little beach spot called Pompeii.

Published by Peanut Press

Newsflash: You can now read your favorite Star Chamber pieces on a PDA.

Peanut Press is now selling a compilation entitled

The Star Chamber, Writings from the Web which can be downloaded for convenient reading on a palmtop platform.

Check out our exciting

excerpts from the book, and then take home a few copies today!

Why Y2K?

Why indeed. Some say that, after centuries of fretting needlessly about these regular rollover dates, the human race has finally given itself a problem worth worrying about, that we’ve manufactured a terrible reality from our own nightmares. Some say that the Y2K problem is itself a biological software glitch programmed into our brains by some overworked demigod ages ago. Some people positively salivate over good apocalyptic omens, and this is the likeliest suspect that’s come along in a long time.

Temporal chauvinism tells us we’re special, but Paracelsus has the distinct feeling that we’ve seen this all before. And as in all times of great human crisis, there’s someone waiting to profit from the situation.

Read the story Y-No-K

What I miss

by St. Frank

The other day I was walking back to work at lunchtime in downtown Oakland. This being California, it was sunny and mild, and I caught sight of a guy in front of an office building enjoying a cigarette. Now, as I said, this is California, so it’s a tough time to be a smoker…and it ain’t cheap either. At any rate, I looked at this guy as I hurried back to my job, and I felt a pang of nostalgia. I am an ex-smoker.

What I miss about smoking is just standing around, watching the world go by. It’s nearly meditational, as you rhythmically breathe in and out, all the while checking out the scenery. As a non-smoker, I’d look foolish standing outside a building, huffing and puffing and gazing mindlessly at people.

I also miss the rush or buzz you get from having waited a little too long between smokes. For me, this would have been something like ten minutes. But that first drag! You can literally feel the nicotine course through each vein and capillary as it goes about its business, feeding your body’s craving. You might get a little light-headed and let out a giggle, as passersby glance at you to make sure you’re not dangerous.

I miss the paraphernalia and routines: Getting ready to get out of the office to “burn one”; the smell of the sulphur from a freshly lit match. These things usually accompanied the first one of the day, or one of the ones you’ve waited too long for.

Mostly, I miss the camaraderie of smokers. Actually, it was less camaraderie than it was a Bunker Mentality. Yes, even a few years ago, being a smoker in California was about as popular as being a Young Republican at UC Berkeley. We knew we were hated, but that merely strengthened our resolve to smoke more! To Hell with the “Health Nazis,” we’d say, give me another Menthol.

Now I’ve turned the corner. Now it’s me casting disparaging looks at them. I have become the enemy; worse, I am an ex-smoker. I am reformed, so I preach to the unenlightened about the horrors of their pastime. I have recently become more of a danger, as I have entered to race in the Sea Otter Classic Mountain Bike Race in Monterey this March.

Still, there are those times…

Confederates in the Attic

I’m reading a book called Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz.

Its subtitle is “Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War,” and in it the author travels through the modern South talking to people about the Civil War, what they know of it and what it means to them. Horwitz, who spent years as a war correspondent in places like Bosnia and Iraq, is surprised to find so many people (eccentric and otherwise) who are intensely passionate about that ancient conflict. They aren’t interested in seceding anymore so much as they are interested in remembering and romanticizing the Lost Cause of the Old South. I admit I’m a sucker for Civil War books, but this is a great read.

I am a Southerner, and I’m glad the South lost that war. It fought for the wrong reason and lost for the right reason.

But what a story!

It’s damn near impossible to read about the run-up to Gettysburg or Grant’s campaign against Vicksburg and not be swept up by the drama of it. And I’ll tell you one thing the South has that the North does not: we know what it means to have lost a war. And I’m not talking about any Vietnam did-we-lose-or-didn’t-we ambiguity. We were whupped fair and square, invaded, defeated, and occupied. Strangely, there is a perverse comfort in that. The South stood up for what it believed and was pinned to the floor. The burden’s off. All Southerners, eccentric and otherwise, are welcome to relax in the warm and weathered lap of humility. It makes it a little bit easier to kick back and live a life.

You want some bourbon? Drink some bourbon. You want a smoke? Light up a goddamned cigarette. A little blustery Uncle Sam is all well and good, but it helps to be able to chuckle.

The Cause is Lost, but the memory endures. I’m glad the cause lost, but I’m glad the memory endures.

This week, we are grateful to St. Frank for sharing a word with us about cigarettes and enduring memories.

Mr. Nym Goes Adventuring

A palindrome, you will recall, is a word that can be read both forwards and backwards, like dad, or the language name Malayalam. But we needn’t stop at words; entire phrases can be palindromed, as for example, in the phrase: Otto made Ned a motto. And why stop there? Why indeed. In the entire history of humankind, no one has ever been able to fashion an entire coherent story in which each and every sentence is a palindrome. Everybody knows those lame one-liners like Able was I ere I saw Elba, and A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. But how far does that get you, after all? Today, on the Star Chamber pages, history is made. Herewith, we present you with that most remarkable of remarkable creations, the wholly palindromic story.

Mr. Nym Goes Adventuring

(Editor’s note: I know that’s not a palindrome; it hasn’t started yet)

My name is Siema Nym. Once I went to the city of Foyticeh tott New Iecno. There I met a magical dwarf named Deman-Frawdla Cigamat E. Miereht.

“Eciovy reeh canie mot diase!” he said to me, in a cheery voice.

“Huh? Em etib,” I helpfully read from my phrasebook, but he said, “Dias eh tub, koobe sarhpym morf da erylluf plehi, bite me!”

“O no!”

“Ecanem ta ergh tiwdna reduol diase!” he said, louder, and with great menace.

He taunted me… he threatened to poke me in the shoulderblade with a candlestick, all the while growling in a low voice, “Eciov wol anig nilworgelih weht; llakcit seldna cahtiw edalbred-luoh seht nieme kopot denetaerh… tehem detnuateh.”

What a terrible mistake to come to Foyticeh tott New Iecno; I wish instead I had gone to Tenog da Hidaet-Snihsi Wionce Iwent tothe Cityo’Fo Temoco Tekatsim el-Birret a Tahw!! At least there they will offer you a tasty plate of the local delicacy, caciled lacoleht foe talpy-tsatau oy reffolli wyehte rehtt saelta. Mmmm.

“Look over there!” I shouted, hoping to draw his attention away from my increasingly desperate situation by pointing out a low-flying fruitbat native to his country whose name is quite long and complicated and which I will abbreviate here (if you will forgive me) as a saem-revokool*.

No luck; he glared and gurgled, “El grug d’na deral gehk culon…”

“Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?”

He paused and tapped his finger thoughtfully on his long nolsih-noy llufth guoh tregnifsih deppat d’nad esuapeh.

Aha! I left and never went back to the city of Foyticeh tot Kcabt New Revend Natfeli.**

My name is Siema Nym.

The end neeht.***

  • Its full name is Saemev igrof-lliwuoy fier eh etaiverbba lliwihcihw d’nadetacilp moc d’nagnol etiuq sieman esohwyrtnuoc sih ot evitan tabtiurf gniylf-wol a tuo arey ouchec kingt his gnitniop yb noitautis etarepsed ylgnisaercni ym morf yawa noitnetta sih ward ot gnipoh detuohs Ierehtre vokool. Wow.

** A law came into effect during the course of the story that actually changed the city’s name! Hah!

*** I accidentally typed the word “neeht” at the end of this sentence. It was an honest mistake.

A trip to Mexico

As the noble Coffee Czar confided in our last installment at this site, the board of directors for Star Chamber Consolidated Heavy Industries went adventuring in Mexico last month (see our
helpful phrasebook on the subject if you plan on visiting). It was a delightful excursion, made all the more pleasant by the fact that one of our number, zaP, speaks the language and is intimately familiar with the sights.

I found the place names in Mexico almost as arresting as the visual splendor: Xochimilco, Ixtaccihuatl, Teotihuacan. Some of these names defy pronunciation by the typical gringo (such as myself), but if you keep at it and tame the sounds, you are rewarded with gemstones on the tip of your tongue. Once you’ve captured the volcano name Popocatepetl, once you can conjure it up at will, you can practically see the steam belching from its dark conic peak. Cuauhtemoc, Kwau-TE-mok, was a warrior, and if you see his likeness and hear his name properly pronounced, that stressed second syllable falling forcefully against the front teeth, Kwau-TE-mok, you can sense the repect he commanded (it’s no accident the current mayor of Mexico City has the given name Cuauhtemoc).

Whereas the Coffee Czar amused us in the van by carving tiny animals out of soapstone and scrap wood, I entertained my fellow travelers by reading all the place names aloud as often as possible. I’m told it can be annoying, but it had the curious effect of magnifying my there-ness. Even now I can cook up a little Mexican there-ness by pushing my finger across the atlas pages and reading aloud: Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Iztapalapa, and Iztacalco. To my mind, the conquering Spaniard’s names (San Miguel, San Luis, Santa Ana, repeat…) don’t have nearly the same staying power as the solid Indian names. Fortunately for Mexico, the old place names survived more often than they were lost. Good place names reek of earthy there-ness, and Mexico is blessed with an abundance of good place names. And I don’t know anybody who doesn’t need a good dose of there-ness every now and again.

Reversals of fortune in placenames and prose figure prominently in our contribution this week. It may seem a matter of no great importance, but zaP spelled backwards is Paz, which is the Spanish word for peace. In this season of darkness becoming lightness at long last, may peace, and an abiding sense of here-ness, be with you all.