Sense of Adventure

Emma and I were walking back down the ditch on the return leg of our walk this afternoon when on the far bank I saw an older Latino guy in a white straw cowboy hat, jeans and a Western shirt coming the other way. That type isn’t superabundant here in the central RGV, but up in northern New Mexico everybody’s grand-dad looks like that. Behind him tottered a four-year-old boy in red shirt and blue shorts - and also a black cape, a Batman mask, and, somewhat inexplicably, carrying a plastic sword.

I did a double-take. It ws so incongruous at first I thought the kid was wearing a black devil mask. Then the older guy said, “I found this caped crusader wandering behind me along the ditch.”

That was so splendid I had to laugh with delight. I’m afraid the lad misinterpreted that as showing disrespect, for he held high his sword and declared, with fierce conviction, “I’m Batman!”

Yes. Yes, you are. Emma stared at him as if he were Ziggy Stardust complete with the Spiders from Mars. I had to hustle her along lest the caped crusader wreak dreadful retribution on us.

A little farther on I tawt I taw a Harrier flying over the ditch. Not this:

But this:

Not pictured: Gamera

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So the other night I went to dinner with some of the usual ASFS suspects (you know who you are.) As a couple of us sat at India Palace, a fine Burque eating establishment, waiting for the rest of the party to turn up, we really liked the music playing over the speakers. It was jaunty, clearly Eastern with more than a hint of Western rock and pop. So we asked what it was.

The waiters, who seem, huge surprise, to be East Indian themselves (a necessary distinction around here, for what should be obvious reasons) were bemused by our question. We were not hugely surprised when they told us it was the soundtrack of a Bollywood movie called Fanaa.

I was pleased to find it available on eMusic, the DRM-free music download service I subscribe to, which has a great selection if you don’t insist on the current chart toppers. (Another huge surprise: I don’t.) So I went ahead and used seven of my monthly DLs to snag it.

Having downloaded it overnight I just put it on WinAmp on my notebook PC, as I sit here on the couth in the living room. Emma lay snoozing on the floor by the other sofa - she’s usually outside this time of day; I think the wind bugs her. Me too.

No sooner did the music start to play than she lifted her head, gave me a reproachful look (which she does really, really well) over her shoulder, got up, and took herself off to the office and the sanctuary of her pen. So much for Indian music!

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Yep. How anti-Pythagorean of me. (Or not; although as is so often the case, the “debunking” on the linked-to site seems to rely largely on flat assertion. Meanwhile the whole “favism“ thing, claiming Pythagoras’ supposed injunctions against beans were meant to avoid bad medical reactions, strikes me as pretty post facto, mapping modern outlooks onto ancient beliefs, like attributing all vampire legends to porphyria.)

So … where was I? If “digression” ever becomes a marketable skill, Bill Gates will be doing my laundry (I was going to say “windows,” but we all know how that turned out, don’t we?)

Anyway … had a rough night last night, losing sleep to attacks by various forms of the Fear, now fortunately rare but rough when it hits. As a result I slept way late. I was wondering what to eat for my late lunch/super-late breakfast when I realized I wanted beans.

I know. I’m as surprised as you are.

So I went and chopped up some onion, dumped it into a can of black beans, and heated that on the stove. Then I defrosted me a Kosher hot dog and heated that inside a low-carb tortilla. Out of mad inspiration I added the beans’n'onions, creating a sort of weird impromptu burrito.

While the first bite was a disappointment, it actually turned out pretty well. YMMV, as always. And as a side I had some walnuts, making this small meal SuperFood-intensive. Also low on starch and not liable to cause much glycemic loading.

For some time now I’ve tried to reduce my intake of starches and things which would spike my GL (which is a much more useful indicator than glycemic index.) It’s a good way to lose weight as well as head off all kinds of potential nasty health complications. For more information I strongly urge you to read The Glycemic-Load Diet by Rob Thompson. Especially if you have diabetes or think you probably wouldn’t like to.

Indeed it’s often occurred to me to start a blog devoted to the concept called La Vida Low-Starch to share what I learn, from research and doing (which is to say, “cooking and eating.”) Which I might yet.

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So when I finally hauled myself out of bed, hot upon the crack of noon (despite my determination to regularize my sleep schedule - which I will do - inspiration hit me late on the current Rogue Angel book; and while I never wait on inspiration, when it strikes, I don’t dodge) I glanced out the wind-blown front curtains to see my little calico pal Clarice trot by up the sidewalk, intent upon her Important Cat Business. I resolved to go out and say hi; haven’t seen her in a few days.

What with my usual routine I got distracted. I sat down on the sofa by the coffee table to drink my cocoa and ice my left arm, which seems afflicted with tendonitis. And I managed to upset my Giant Red Mug o’ Ice Water with the power cable to the notebook PC.

This was aggravating but fortunately I didn’t let my blood pressure spike over it. Nothing really got hurt; and it’s the desert, for gods’ sakes; the humidity’s like 9%. I did sop up as much excess water and ice cubes with a bath towel as I could. And when I went to toss ‘em out front Clarice reminded me she was in the area by getting up from her comfortable spot in the neighbor’s yard and hopping the fence.

I took the towel and bowl I’d used inside and fetched out some treats, of a kind my cats currently spurn. Clarice and I have been friends for a long time - a lawn-design sketch I did for the front yard several years ago features a depiction of her lying in a corner of the yard - and it really got cemented when, in emulation of my friend Larry, I started giving her treats.

So anyway we hung out a while. I left the inner front door open and TJ came to the screen. And Clarice hissed at him.

(Yes, there really is a prehistoric monster in here. We’re getting there. Seriously.)

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Time to take this one off my Amazon Wish List (where I’d just placed it) …

… and time likewise for you to put it on yours.

My good and beloved friends L. Neil and Cathy L. Z. Smith found themselves taking an unexpected trip to Tucson, which brought them through Burque today. I got an email alert from El Neil a couple days ago. I’ve not seen them for a couple years, which is that long too long, so I was happy for the chance to see them.

Early this afternoon Neil called to let me know they were on the road. He’s suffering laryngitis and asked if I did text messaging. I told him I didn’t. He said, too bad, since he used it all the time and it would save his voice.

So after I hung up I got out the User’s Manual for my Tracfone to look up how to do this here new-fangled texting thing. Yes, as I told Steve Kubica in my reply to his comment on my keeping stuff straight post, I’m boldly striding forward into the past and finally learning!

This delighted me. The upshot being Neil and I whiled away the afternoon texting each other like 12-year old girls.

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I had to share this with you.

The following is an email I got just now purporting to be from “The lonely woman from Russia [SuzyQ]“. I’ve changed the correspondent’s alleged name to [SuzyQ] in order, I suppose, to preserve the sensibilities of whatever halfwit Russian spammer ginned this up.

Anyway, I think I can promise you this makes the most befuddled Nigerian scam email you have ever imagined seem like Tolkien.

Appended were two photos of a vaguely pretty, putatively Russian young blonde woman, which to my annoyance Thunderbird loaded in the message. I excised these, as well as the return email address, for the protection of my readers.

By the way, the phrase in bold below served as both the email’s subject and its first line. (I’d say, “somewhat surreally,” but if you read on you’ll see that description is just full-spectrum inadequate.)

Now, for your delectation and edification, after the jump (click if you dare! click but beware!) behold the splendor and the glory of:

Hello not the man familiar to me!

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Lately, thanks to the low company I keep (i.e., my fannish friends) (hey, their tastes are low enough they hang out with me) I’ve had a ditty stuck in my mind from an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that featured a Gamera movie:

Gamera is good to eat,
Gamera is full of meat!

Now while the first contention is at best unproven, the second is surely true. Yet I wonder how well advised one would be to sing that song in the actual presence of Gamera:

(thanks to: http://markvine.com/Photo_Kaiju.htm)

I mean, look at him. Looks a bit, well, cranky, doesn’t he? And never forget, he’s over 200 feet tall. Mightn’t singing such a song remind him that you yourself are full of meat, good to eat, and nicely bite-sized?

It’s important to think of these things. Yes? Yes?

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On what I hope’s a more serious note, anyway, I have a plea for all my friends and readers who are also writers – I know some of you are lurking out there. Really.

Which is: how do you keep straight the proliferation of facts – well, facts within your ficton – which you generate in the course of writing a book? Your characters, primarily: their histories, their traits, their interactions, their loves and grudges and weird little habits?

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There’s never a bad time to learn more actual history. What better day than Memorial Day to cut through some of the propaganda we’re inundated with from birth onward?

Thanks to Sheldon Richman.

Back from a flying trip, in sundry senses of the word. Some fun stories to tell. Some not to.

Tired now.

When I left it was 90°. Or more. Naturally I left the swamp cooler running so as not to bake the cats. It gets cooler at night usually, of course, but I figured it was no big deal. Especially as opposed to making the cats endure potentially lethal daytime heat.

So I’m flying back this morning and they announce that in Albuquerque it’s 49°. Whoa! 49! And when we arrive, it’s like 48°.

My friend Larry gave me a lift home. Also he drove way to hell and gone north to Corrales so we could retrieve the Em. He’s a pal.

(My car is … not reliable right now. So I had to plea for help.)

When we walk in of course the cooler is churning away. Out come TJ and Squeak. And they look at me and are like, “Dad? FREEZING!”

Oops. I mean, the damn heater was on. Took me a minute to figure out what was making all the noise, once I hastened to get the swamper off.

Oh - I also contrived to get to the kennel without Emma’s retractable leash and X-harness. The kennel guy lent me a leash to get her to Larry’s car. We got in the backseat; she seemed pretty eager.

The plan was for me to sit in back and hold onto her - usually I cinch her in with the shoulder belt through the harness. Which I lacked Also I figured that was less hassle on Larry. I was hoping Emma would be okay with the proximity to Uncle Larry as it was: even though he’s a close friend, and official External Member of the Milán Pack, he hasn’t spent a lot of time around her. So I wasn’t altogether sure he had yet graduated to the Official Emma List of Approved Persons. And if you’re not on that list, you’re on the Watch List.

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Or maybe, not so holy.

Just went out, daring the early rush hour traffic, to do a little grocery shopping. Coming out of the store I saw a headline on the local paper about an “animal” attacking a local boy in the Sandias. The unspecified “animal” reference intrigued me; looking a little closer (which sadly entails my reading glasses - they’re a reason I wear ‘em constantly on a lanyard around my neck when out and about in the world) I saw that while the parents claimed it had been a big cat, “authorities” discounted the possibility it was a cougar.

Whoa! A mystery cat sighting of Burque’s own? Not to mention an actual attack?

Here’s MSNBC on the subject; for a local report, go here.

Yes, you can just about be sure that if NM catches national ink - and especially international - it involves something discreditable.

NM Game and Fish has narrowed their scope to a bobcat, a cougar, or a small bear. Yet it claims the injuries match none of them. Indeed.

It’s most likely a bobcat, although I know of no previous bobcat attacks on humans. But we never know. And of course the official explanation may or may not bear any resemblance to the truth…

Just another day in NM. That’s why I love it here. Well, not kids getting eaten; that’s a Bad Thing - although the child appears to’ve pulled through. What I love is that something goofy or weird is always going on.

In other news: I’m hoping to get the swamp cooler - evaporative air conditioning: it’s a desert thing - going before the pets and I melt. The problem: I’m terrified to go on my roof.

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