someone owes me three weeks of my life

Greetings, sportsfans!

Yes, as you may have noticed, I've been out recently. I intended to keep up a more frequent blog in 2011, but working six days a week caused my entries to fall off sharply in late 2010. And I've sort of spaced out these last few weeks.

Why?

I've been sick.

For nearly three weeks, yes.

First they thought it was mono. Then they didn't. Then they thought it was again. Then, apparently, they thought it was "some sort of viral infection that will probably go away by itself."

Unquote.

Great. That's lucid.

I was prepared to ride it out. All I had was a fever and some aches. No sniffles, no sinus problems, no cough, nothing. I was living large, not going to work, mooning around the house in my bathrobe all day, Moby-Dick in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other. (But please don't ask me how much writing I've done during this sudden unexpected vacation. You're better off not knowing.)

Heck, I thought I was on the road to recovery. I was feeling pretty good. I even went back to work. It sure was grand to be back in the Mooney and flying 6,000 feet above the desert floor. My right ear refused to pop coming back down again, but I shrugged it off.

Then the sore throat began.

It came out of nowhere that very evening. All of a sudden I was wincing as I swallowed. A stabbing whack of pain bolted from my palate to my tonsils every time I did.

Certain people near and dear to me insisted that I go back to the doctor. (Thanks, Ma. Still looking out for me.)

So, one doctor's appointment and a gag-inducing throat swab later, it became apparent that, not only do I have strep throat, but also an ear infection.

Now that's just mah-veluss.

What we figure is that the ear infection came on first, which explains the fever and aches I had for the first two weeks. Then the strep throat bacteria just saw its opportunity (my immune system already compromised) and dove right in.

Oh well. At least I have a definite diagnosis now (and drugs, huzzah!).

I'm kind of glad it wasn't mono. That means I stand to recover from it sooner. Mono would've created an extremely awkward situation, given that my girlfriend doesn't have it.

Speaking of my girlfriend, she's been an absolute angel throughout all this. Despite long days babysitting five rambunctious children and giving her friends rides down to lesser Los Angeles, she's never missed the chance to come up here and look after me. I still get hugs and kisses even though I'm sick and greasy and disgusting. I feel at once fortunate and extremely humbled. Thanks, Miss H. You're a doll. When this is over, you and I are heading out on the town. I'll treat you to the evening of your life.

There's just one last thing left to settle before I can do that, though.

I want those three frickin' weeks of my life back.

Somebody owes me big for this, and I'm collecting.

The hammer-headed cross-eyed lame-brained weevil who gave me this ear infection is dead. I'm going to string him up by his thumbs and burn the epithet "WAX-MEISTER" onto his stomach with a branding iron. He's cheated me out of a fortnight's pay.

And as for the scene-stealing four-flushing irredeemable ass-hat who transmitted the rest of this bacteria unto me...well, if you're there when I catch up to him, I just hope you turn away. Just look in the other direction. You've been given fair warning. It'll put you off your lunch for the next 10 years. It'll make the Spanish Inquisition look like a pillow fight.

Anyway, that's why I've been out. More and better posts should be coming within the next few days. There's exciting news in the offing, on all fronts. Stay tuned...

P.S. Oh yeah, I have a question to ask you guys. Does anybody know how to change the color of your blog title with this new blog editor thingy? I want to make it lighter. Can't hardly see the dark blue print against the control cabin of that B-17...

recommended reading

Call me Ishmael.

Never mind. That's a horrible name. Who cooked that up, anyway?

I realize it's been a long, long while since I did one of these. Last time I was talking about, what, Vonnegut? No, that's right, it was Robert F. Scott and Antarctica and all that jazz.

So, I finished The Escape Orbit. You know, James White's obscure science fiction novel, found in a used bookstore in Lucerne Valley. (Finished it a looooong time ago, in fact. Just didn't have time to blog about it.) Awesome read, really grand. Good sci-fi authors never cease to amaze me with their ability to present a problem (or minor annoyance) whose cause turns out to be so much grander and more sinister than initially suspected. The Escape Orbit, as I've mentioned, concerns a group of human soldiers marooned on a tropical prison planet by their insect-like enemies. The planet is inhabited by monstrous creatures (somewhere between sharks and elephants) who won't hesitate to gore, trample or chomp the unwary. The book's protagonist, Sector Marshal Warren (the planet's highest-ranking officer and newest inmate) arrives and assesses the situation. There are two groups vying for influence among the new arrivals: the settlers, who consist of former military personnel who have abandoned their uniforms and now live peaceful civilian lives in communal villages; and the Escape Committee, a much smaller group of devoted officers who have retained (or manufactured) uniforms, military discipline, and protocol, and who are tirelessly working to effect an escape. Tensions between the two groups are extremely high, nearing open war at several points in the book.

Warren, after some consideration, joins the Escape Committee, along with his staff.

Why?

Because he sees a deeper necessity for escape, aside from returning much-needed personnel to the front lines of the war. If the Escape Committee is not taken off the planet, and tensions between them and the settlers are allowed to mount...

Well, I'll let you read the book and see what a brilliant premise White has laid down.

I'd give The Escape Orbit 9/10. I hardly ever give anything a perfect rating, you see. Ordinarily it'd be 10/10. The ending felt a tad rushed. Nah, that's nitpicking. It didn't really. I just don't want to give this thing a perfect 10 in case another novel comes along that really deserves it.

So, on to Herman Melville's galumphing behemoth of a seagoing adventure story: Moby-Dick.

How far have I progressed across this vast ocean of maritime literature since last we spoke?

Not very.

I read the foreword, the etymology section, and got started on the extracts (Melville saw fit to collect a hundred or so quotes regarding whales or great fishes and stuck 'em in the front of the book; pretty neat idea if you have the patience for it).

Then I promptly fell asleep.

Haven't trucked much with the book since then.

Come on. It's huge. Daunting, somehow. It's only fitting that a book about a leviathan would be leviathan-sized, isn't it? Poetic justice, I think they call it. Moby-Dick is just a little bit intimidating, like a literary black hole sitting on my beside table, sucking all thoughts of lighter reading out of my head.

I was unsure how to proceed. Should I knock the smaller items off my "to-read" list, and then tackle the monstrous Moby-Dick? Or should I wrestle with that one first and put the rest of my library on hold? I was perplexed. Neither choice seemed pleasant. Especially since I had attempted to read Moby-Dick before and found it drier than a year-old soda cracker.

But since I finished up with The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. IIA, which has occupied most of my reading time, I've had an epiphany.

Yes, yes, I know it's two days too early for an epiphany. The Epiphany happened on the sixth of January. But what's two days between you and me?

Here's the big idea.

Since it's the new year and all, and 2011 stretches out bright with promise for 360-plus days, and I've usually got about thirty minutes of free time in the evenings no matter what I'm doing, why don't I try this:

I'll read a chapter of Moby-Dick a day.

(No "dick-a-day" jokes, please.)

One chapter every day, until I finish the dang thing. It'll be quite a span, but it'll keep me from drooling and going all glassy-eyed from trying to read too much at once. I've always wanted to read a book one chapter at a time. You know, get into bed, put on my glasses, take out my bookmark, read a few pages, put the bookmark back in, take my glasses off, turn out the light and go to sleep with a big silly grin on my face. That would be a "novel" way to read books, wouldn't it? (Ho ho ho!) I usually just swallow them whole, gobbling up five chapters at a stretch. Call it an obsessive compulsion. I've never allowed myself time to sit back, relax, take the work one chunk at a time, and mull it over in a leisurely manner.

Well, I'll have plenty of time to mull this over. My edition of Moby-Dick (complete and unabridged, Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.) is 605 pages long and possesses 135 chapters. That means, then, that if I read the first chapter ("Loomings") tonight, and keep the regimen going without fail, then I'll be done sometime in late May.

As my brother so aptly asked, "Are you going to remember what happened at the beginning of the book by the time you get to the end?"  

We'll see, bro. We'll see. Only way to find out is to try it. There but for the grace of bookmarks go I.

And if it does work, then I'll do the same thing with Joyce's Ulysses.

If it happens that I tire of Melville's heavy hand and want to take the evening off, then I've got A Clockwork Orange to sustain me. I picked it up at the used bookstore a while back. Heard a lot about it and decided to see what all the fuss was about. Of course I read some background on the work and its author, Anthony Burgess, beforehand. I was...impressed, to say the least. By all accounts this is a controversial book. I was lucky and got my hands on one of the first versions to have the infamous final chapter put back in. (Previous publishers mysteriously decided that it wasn't necessary.) But beyond that, this book apparently has some rather graphic violence in it. Everywhere I researched A Clockwork Orange, the phrase "ultraviolent" kept jumping out at me—even the author's foreword. So I'll read, and probably wince a bit too. I'll update you lot when I finish. Maybe I'll see the movie if I'm feeling charitable towards Hollywood. (Don't hold your breath.)

And now, to finish up, please enjoy one of my very own de-motivational posters! Straight from the heart, folks:

waiters, vampires and booze

Otherwise known as "Edinburgh, Day Two."

(To recap, Canuck friend Jeff and I are in the capital of Scotland, taking a three-day side trip from a visit with our English friends down in Newcastle in June 2010. Let's see now, it's...June 20, to be exact. All this happened a while ago.)

CHAPTER ONE: A FEW WORDS ABOUT WHISKY

Now I suppose you're thinking "Hey, wait a minute. This is the Postman we're talking about. That erstwhile blogging bartender. And he's in Scotland. What the heck? Where's the booze? He's been tipsy most of the time he's been in the U.K., for Pete's sake. He spent the first two days in Newcastle soaked in beer (watching the World Cup in the pubs), and then greased his gears with whiskey and Guinness when he went to Ireland. So now he's in Edinburgh, swimming in Scotch and Scotch ale, and there's been no action. Sure, yeah, he had a little Ardbeg yesterday afternoon with his haggis, but that's the lot. What's the deal here?"

Well may you ask. Don't worry, I'm getting there.

I'd crossed Islay off my list. So far I hadn't tried any Campbeltown or Lowlands whiskies.

Oh, goodness me. Have I told you about the Scotch-distilling regions of Scotland yet?

Ahem...

As you can see, there are five: Highland, Lowland, Speyside, Campbeltown, and Islay. (The Islands is not an officially recognized Scotch-brewing region, and is lumped in with Highlands.)

Now, before I went to the British Isles, I'd had both Highland and Speyside whiskies. Thought they were dang good, though. The first step to becoming a connoisseur, however, is to familiarize yourself with the many different incarnations of your oeuvre.

If you're reading this from an American standpoint, you've probably only ever had Speyside or Highland whisky. Those seem to be the most popular over here. Glenmorangie and Glenlivet are from the highlands, for example; Glenfiddich and Speyburn are both Speyside whiskies.

I'd never tried Lowland, Campbeltown or Islay whiskies. Thanks to the Ardbeg I'd sampled the previous day, I could knock Islay off the list. There are hundreds more Islay whiskies to sample, and someday I'll get to them, but at least I can say I've at least tried an Islay whisky now.

But I still needed to assay Lowland and Campbeltown, see?

And Jeff and I still needed to climb Calton Hill.

So we decided to get that stuff done on June 20, our second full day in Edinburgh.

CHAPTER TWO: IN WHICH I MEET A VAMPIRE ROMANIAN WAITER

Sometime during the night (during which my mysterious bug disappeared completely) our roommate came back. I had no clues as to the man's nationality, race, or even age: it was pretty dark in the church. I might've been more curious about the matter if I hadn't been concentrating so hard on getting back to sleep...hard enough when you're feeling sick and there are 18 people nearby sawing logs.

I got a better look at him when the new day dawned, and the sky turned from black to purple to blue outside the big window. He was a balding man, stubble ringing his head from ear to ear, dressed in a white polo shirt and black slacks. Yes, those were his pajamas. He looked to be in his thirties, and quite exhausted.

I bumped into him again on the front stoop of the church. (If there's a fancy word for "front stoop" in church lingo, I don't know what it could be. I don't even know what a "nave" is, for crying out loud.) He was smoking a desperate cigarette. Or rather, the cigarette itself wasn't desperate, but the way in which he was smoking it seemed to be. He smoked silently, with quick, furtive, darting movements of his lips, hands and arms, like a nervous bird taking a drink. It looked as though he was accustomed to rushing the action.

"Cold," he said. "It is always so cold here."

He rubbed his arms.

Noticing his thick accent, I asked him where he was from. (Of course I couldn't tell. I'm an American.)

As it happened, he was Romanian.

You'll never believe this, but guess which part of Romania he was from?

You guessed it, folks. Transylvania. (That was the only part of Romania you knew the name of anyway, right? Besides Pennsylvania, obviously.) And to make it even more awesome, the guy pronounced the word "Transylvania" exactly like Count Dracula. Turan-seel-VAY-nee-ah.

Not for the first time, I thought to myself:
The folks back home are never going to believe this.

I wasn't the least bit concerned that I'd been sharing a room with Nosferatu all night. I was intensely curious, rather. What the hell was a Romanian doing in Edinburgh, anyway?

I put the question to him, omitting certain key phrases.

"I am a waiter," he said. "I have been here for months. The money is good here."

I felt like giving him a black cape and saying "Here, whirl this about yourself whenever you speak. I'll stand over here and get goosebumps."

But I didn't have a black cape.

Foolish cinematic fantasies aside, I was amazed. Months! Months living in that tiny bunk in that cramped room with no ceiling, no lock on the door, and a communal bathroom down the hall. Why? Why would this man subject himself to that? Why would he come all the way from Romania (which he had earlier described as green, beautiful, muggy and warm this time of year) to Scotland, to work late nights as a waiter, and come home to a lumpy bunk and unfamiliar roommates and tourists blowing chunks into their wastebaskets half the night?

(Make no mistake: by this point, I wanted to live in Edinburgh too. I'd have preferred something more comfortable than a hostel, though.)

Yeah, sure, he'd said the money was good in Scotland. But Scotland is part of the U.K., and the British pound ain't that far ahead of the euro, or at least it wasn't when I was there. I was still stumped. Seemed a damned difficult way to get a little extra cash.

After I got home, I related the story to my parents. Dad took a swig of his martini and then a guess: "He was probably an illegal immigrant."

I was bewildered. It was an angle I hadn't considered before. It made sense, though. Service job. Cheap, low-profile, low-impact accommodations. Night work. Nervous habits. I didn't really understand how a European could be an illegal immigrant in Europe, though. The U.K. is part of the E.U., and so's Romania, as far as I'm aware. But maybe there was some paperwork or visa that this Transylvanian maître d' had skipped out on.

What a profound effect it had on me. It was possible that we were wrong, of course; the fellow might just have been a good honest immigrant living as cheaply as possible, sending all his hard-earned moolah to his little Romanian grandmother back home in the castle (uh, I mean, cottage).

But if it was true, and my tall-pale-and-mysterious friend was illegal, it shifted my worldview around a little. I knew there existed poverty, hunger, strife, and deprivation in Europe, as anywhere else. But being completely ignorant of Romania in all respects (except fangs), I was shocked by the notion that things might be bad enough there for some folks to emigrate. To be forced to emigrate.

Some things do not change, no matter where you go.

It wasn't the first time I'd had that thought. Nor will it be the last.

We passed the time of day, the chelner and I. He smoked in his twitchy fashion, staring up the street; I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet and soaked it all up. The people you meet, I thought to myself. The people you meet.

The operative word here being "people."

CHAPTER THREE: CLIMBIN' DA HILLZ

So then, after my encounter with the Romanian Alien, Jeff and I—

Oh, hell.

This post is getting kind of long.

I'll tell you about Calton Hill some other time. You'll have to content yourself with the deluxe transient vampire and my little whisky refresher. Hope it was didactic.

Good night, and good luck.

a dearth of eggnog

Dear Readers,

     I'd just like to point out (with no little pride) that not a single drop of eggnog touched my lips during the entire calendrical year of 2010.

     Honestly. The carton just sat there in the fridge. I promised myself, "Yeah, sure, tonight I'll grab that sucker out of there, add a nip of brandy, sprinkle some nutmeg on top, and have at it." But nothing materialized. Always I'd pass the nog over for something else, like a whiskey sour or a Bloody Mary or even a margarita, for Pete's sake. (Is this any time for a margarita? I mean, I know I'm in Southern California, and the nearest snow is halfway up the mountains in the distance, but hey, margaritas in winter? Ain't that some kind of alcoholic faux pas? A deplorable lack of sympathy for the poor saps up in Minneapolis huddling by their fires, trying to keep warm on Irish coffee and hot buttered rum?)    

     All the long days of the holiday season I let that carton of eggnog lie. I didn't touch it after a hard day's night of Christmas shopping; I forgot all about it for those three hours I spent actually writing during the month of December; I left it right where it was on Christmas Morning, Christmas Day and Christmas Night. Entire football games passed with the eggnog unmolested. I saw San Diego lose their place in the playoffs for the first time in five seasons without a sip of eggnog to soothe my heartbreak. I passed the stuff up on many happy evenings with Miss H, assembling that 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle (a nice painting of Nantucket with five identical hillsides and a huge rock pile and a lighthouse that could be the beach if you turn it on its side and eighteen square miles of goddamn ocean).

     When did I finally polish off that eggnog?

     Why, tonight.

     January 1.

     2011.

     After Yule. After Christmas. After New Year's Eve.

     Have I committed some kind of cardinal sin?


Your Sententious Correspondent,


Postman