Books Lying Open
¤ The Bachman Books, Stephen King
¤ Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
¤ Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, Stephen King

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Wet fuses.

Answer of the Day:
¤ Because you'll shoot your eye out/burn down the house.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your fingers grow too cold to type, while your legs remain too lazy to get up and close the window.

unday, and Independence Day in the US.  Light 'em if you've got 'em. Even if it's just in your browser. 

I was going to talk about an interesting diet Malaya has been considering, but when I wrote it out, and then shoehorned in some Atkins diet discussion, it got too long, when there's already such a long discussion of recent amusing merchant interactions below. So I'll save the diet thing for Tuesday, and just roll with one news item, and then the long bloggy clerk discussion below.

But first, since one of the two real emails (out of about 270 spam/junk mails) I received on Saturday was from JC, who wished me a happy belated birthday, and followed up that sugar with a request for some more novel excerpts. Since I wrote/edited for about 8 hours yesterday, I suppose I can indulge his request.  This is a snippet from early in chapter 2, when Vena (the thief girl) and Quinoss (the Necromancer who is unnamed in Chapter One) are talking. Vena is feeling a bit testy since Quinoss keeps sparring verbally with her, teasing her, working in backhanded insults, etc.

(Templars are knights, soldiers who fight under the command of the Furies, who are exclusively female, look like Norse goddesses, share powerful mental powers, wield dual magical swords, and hunt mages of every type.  You can see some parallels to the paladins and assassins of D2, but there are really very few similarities in a fuller sketch of the characters. I'm only hitting the most obvious broad points here, since you need to know what I'm talking about to appreciate the excerpt.)

Vena and Quinoss are still in the cave that they escaped to at the end of Chapter One, and Vena is talking.

"If the Furies train the Templars... who trains the Furies?"

Quinoss laughed again, and answered quickly. "Many a mage has died with that very question on his lips, and a glowing red or blue blade through his heart. Be careful you don't follow their lead, Little Thief."

"That's no answer, Necromancer!" Vena retorted, letting her breath out in a huff. "Do not try to hide your ignorance with threats!" Glaring at the Necromancer, Vena felt a cold shiver run down her back as she realized she might have gone too far. What was she thinking, letting him irritate her, and raising her voice in anger?

Quinoss' expression did not change an wrinkle, and he remained silent while raising his arm and pressing his right forefinger over his lips. Vena flushed, snapping her mouth shut while her cheeks burned. Worse than yelling at the Necromancer was the fact that she'd yelled at all. What if someone outside the cave had heard her?

Worried, Vena hid it by steeling her face, wiping away all expression. She knew such an illusion was useless against a mind-reader, but looking calm helped her to feel calm, and she couldn't change the habits of a lifetime in a single day.

At last, after a full minute of silence, Quinoss lowered his finger, and focused his eyes on Vena. She waited for his words, dreading what he might say and wondering if she should apologize. She hated to do so, hated to admit to any sort of error, even if it was just a trick to fool a man. What's more, she did not think Quinoss was so weak as to be bought off or fooled by a few words of apology, no matter how sincere she made them sound.

"Yes, Little Thief, I know how the Furies come into their powers. However, as I spent more than three centuries solving that mystery, I think I will not share the knowledge lightly. Not even with one so worthy as yourself."

Vena nodded, while fighting to hide another flush of embarrassment. Quinoss' words were interesting, even if he was keeping his secret. He spoke of centuries as casually as most men ordered a pint! She'd heard some grandiose lies in her time; thieves who claimed to have stolen from kings; crowns from their heads and queens from their beds. But she'd never heard a man claim to be more than one hundred years old. Not until Quinoss, who had just tripled that lie, and done so with such calm assurance that Vena was half-tempted to believe him. He certainly seemed to believe his claim, but so did all expert liars -- what man could expect others to swallow something he did not believe himself? A week ago she would not have given his claim a second of credence, no matter how smoothly it was made. But a week ago she had not seen a man raise the Godking's spirit from his ancient coffin, or call forth a walking stone monster from the very earth.  Legends told of mages with life spans far outstripping those of ordinary men. Was Quinoss not such a mage?

Rubbing her temples, Vena closed her eyes and turned to face the wall. Speaking to Quinoss was as challenging as besting most men in a knife fight. His words were as sharp as a blade, and his mind was as quick as a stabbing dagger. Despite this, Vena was enjoying it, in a strange way. Quinoss was an enigma; unlike anyone she'd ever spoken with before.  He knew so much, and from even the little she knew of him, he was like a character from a legend come to life. She'd savored adventure stories her entire life, often going out of her way to steal books and scrolls that had little value, purely for the joy of reading them. And here she sat, trapped in a hidden cave with a man who was more interesting than most of the characters in the stories she'd devoured. Since reading was a rare skill, one she'd had to keep hidden, she'd always had to read alone in private. Which made it all the more ironic that here she was, locked away with a man who was like a character out of a book.

The early portion of chapter two serves as exposition. Vena thinks a lot, she talks a lot with Quinoss, and you learn more of her character from her thoughts and questions, more of Quinoss from his answers, and a great deal more about the state of the world they live in from what he says, and from what he leaves unsaid. The above, and the rest of early chapter 2 are far from final, but I don't see much editing, other than work jockeying and smoothing and such, to make it flow better. I'll work more on Quinoss' speech as well, since I want his dialogue to be very individual and idiosyncratic throughout the book; all the better to reflect his extreme wisdom, age, and lifetime of bizarre experiences.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and if you've got any feedback feel free. And no, I won't send you more of chapter 2, no matter how nicely you ask. I will send you some of chapter 1 if you have made a site donation in the past, but since no one leaped at that offer when I first made it a couple of weeks ago, I'm not expecting a flood of offers this time.  Not that enough people have ever made a site donation to qualify as a "flood' even if everyone one of them wrote in at once, but let's not get semantical here, please.

#1 on the list?

1. Acacia Technologies' digital media transmission patent, which the company defines as covering "the transmission and receipt of digital content via the Internet, cable, satellite and other means." The EFF is worried that Acacia, which has already sued several large communications companies, is unfairly targeting small audio- and video-streaming websites.

Basically, they've got a patent that's broad enough to cover virtually every sort of streaming media online. So they're busy suing CNN, ESPN, Amazon, all companies that use tons of streaming media, right? No, of course not, since those companies would fight back and destroy them in court. Acacia is spending their time harassing hundreds of smaller companies, largely porn sites, by threatening them with legal action if they don't cough up a small licensing fee. A fee that's basically extortion, but is a lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer.

If you're wondering just how silly and frivolous some of the patents are, here's a quick overview from the EFF page:

Every year numerous illegitimate patent applications make their way through the United States patent examination process without adequate review. The problem is particularly acute in the software and Internet fields where the history of prior inventions (often called “prior art”) is widely distributed and poorly documented. As a result, we have seen patents asserted on such simple technologies as:

• One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.)
• Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.)
• The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.)
• Video streaming (U.S. Patent No. 5,132,992.)
• Internationalizing domain names (U.S. Patent No. 6,182,148.)
• Pop-up windows (U.S. Patent No. 6,389,458.)
• Targeted banner ads (U.S. Patent No. 6,026,368.)
• Paying with a credit card online (U.S. Patent No. 6,289,319.)
• Framed browsing; (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,933,841 & 6,442,574.) and
• Affiliate linking (U.S. Patent No. 6,029,141.)

This tactic has been used by numerous other online patent-holders in their attempts at digital shake downs, often with substantial success. You can read a couple more examples on my Ridiculous Patents Archive page.

have been collecting odd human interaction stories for several months, and adding them to my notes page. Since I'm in the mood to type some this afternoon, but not in the mood to do more editing on my ongoing novel, here we go.

I took an overnight trip to Lake Tahoe in January. Malaya and I went with two of her best friends, and we all got a 2 bed cabin and split it 4 ways, went snowboarding, saw some casinos, etc. I blogged about it briefly at the time, but I never got into a whole Tahoe trip discussion. I'm not going to do that today either, but there was one very amusing interaction Malaya and I have been cracking each other up with remembrances of ever since.

If you've ever been snowboarding, you know how tired your legs get. My quads always get it the worst, where after a couple of hours I have to start kneeling down and bending over backwards to stretch out the front of my thighs and be able to continue, with pain and wobbily legs. The quads are just sore though, and feel okay after a day or two. When we were in Tahoe, for whatever reason, my lower legs were killing me, even worse than the quads. They didn't hurt that much while I was riding, but that night and the next morning I could hardly walk with sore feet, aching shins, and especially my calves. I had to go up or down stairs like Frankenstein's Monster, all stiff-legged and crashing.

Lucky for me, the hotel we were staying in had a poor man's spa on the second floor, and they offered massage. I would have loved the full body, 90 minute one, but I didn't feel I could afford $90 for that, so when Malaya was up there with her friend, inquiring about facials and other such stuff (which she ended up not partaking of) she asked about me getting a leg massage, and since business was slow, they agreed to give me a 30 minute/$30 dollar rub down. Legs only.

It was performed on a normal massage table with nice warm sheets, mood music, plenty of massage oil, etc. Very nice massage, and it was a pity it only went 30 minutes due to me being poor (and Malaya ended up paying for it as a special treat for me anyway). Since it was just a quick massage, and Malaya and I are always giving each other rub downs and looking for new techniques, she stayed in the room and watched while the lady worked on me. And no, it wasn't some sort of jealousy thing, to prevent me from scoring a quick hand job. Trust me, if you'd seen the massage lady you wouldn't be thinking that. Short, squat, and weird.

She was a good masseuse though, and her rubbing hands covered every bit of my legs and feet below the knees, and helped me quite a bit. The funny thing, the reason I've been saving this story up, is that with three of us in the room, there was conversation the whole time. If it had just been me and the masseuse I wouldn't have been talking, since it was too relaxing and anyway, I had my head down and my face through one of those cut out openings in the table, so my nose was stuffed up and I was harbdly undersbanddubu andyway.

The masseuse's contribution? The worst analogy ever.

At one point in the conversation we were talking about skiing. We'd been up to Heavenly that day, which is the biggest and best known ski mountain in Tahoe. The most expensive also, and I said I wasn't all that impressed by it. The masseuse agreed, and said that she thought Heavenly was overrated, and that some of the other mountains were better; just less famous. And then she said, paraphrasing:

"It's like going to Kentucky... to watch a horse race... and then... going to Hollywood... where they're making a movie... and you're watching..."

What? Both Malaya and I were quiet for a moment, waiting for her to say something more; to make her metaphor make some sense. Nope, she left it there, naked. Dead. And kept on rubbing my feet.

*chirp chirp... chirp chirp*

You really had to hear it to get the full impact, since her spacey, slow-motion delivery was half the fun. The woman was either on heavy drugs, or more likely just permanently slow and drifty. Very aging-hippy in her look and attitude. The worst metaphor ever probably took her 15 seconds to get out, and had far more "um" and "ah" pauses in it than my paraphrasing from memory version.

She was one of those people, like you grandparents for example, who talk so slowly, and ramblingly, that you can see where their thoughts and words are going long before they get there, so you're either finishing their sentences all the time, or just gritting your teeth and praying they spit out the rest of their banal observation before you die of boredom. You never realize what a blessing a fast talker is, until you're stuck listening to a boring, slow-talker.

Anyway, while she was wandering through her metaphor, we were thinking she was trying to contrast the Hollywood version of a horse race, such as the ones in Seabiscuit, which was still in theaters at the time, with the experience of attending a real race. And that she was making that analogy to compare the hype of Heavenly to the mediocre reality. (Which wasn't really a bad mountain of runs; just painfully overcrowded and too spread out.)

That wouldn't have been a good analogy, but at least it would have sort of made sense. What she finally managed to say was both nonsensical, and incoherent. But very, very memorable.

We did hit the casinos one night, for a few hours. I got very bored, very quickly. We watched people play cards, Malaya won $20 on a $5 slot machine on one pull, and we got headaches in the noisy, smoky air. And after a while, I realized that was what was bothering me the most. The smoke. California banned smoking basically everywhere several years ago. You can smoke outside, or in your own home, but not in any restaurants or other public places. And if you're a non-smoker like me, and you hate the stench of cigarettes like me (and Malaya to a far greater extent) you come to take for granted that you can walk into a business and not be assaulted by stinking clouds of cancer. Which is why it's such a shock when you go into a casino in Nevada, and the whole place smells like the inside of an old man's trachea, and the smoke in the constantly moving, high oxygen air makes your head spin.  I had the worst headache of my adult life after less than an hour, and I wasn't even sitting at a table full of screaming drunks. Though we passed several dozen while walking around.

Which reminds me of something else I've had on my notes page for months. I saw part of Nova, a science program on PBS, a few months ago, that focused on science in tobacco. One of the things they're working on is a way to make cigarettes non-cancerous, or at least greatly reduce the risk. My thought at the time, long before the Lake Tahoe trip, was to wonder about them succeeding. What if they really did come up with a strain of tobacco, genetically engineered or otherwise, that didn't give you cancer? Or heart disease, etc, just for the sake of the argument. Would smoking increase in popularity? Would all of the people who gave it up start again?  Or have we reached a critical mass in the US, where most people don't smoke, and most who don't have grown used to not having it in their faces and lungs all the time, and would therefore not be willing to go back to the old days of smoke everywhere?

How would things shake out legally? If second hand smoke was no longer such a deadly poison, would the laws preventing it from being belched forth inside public places be overturned? Or would people fight to keep it illegal, for nuisance type reasons, if not health reasons?

Since my primary complaint about smoking is how bad it smells and how sick I feel when I'm breathing it, I know I would fight to keep it illegal, and that I wouldn't patronize restaurants or businesses that allowed it (assuming it became legal again, and it was up the to business to decide if they'd allow it or not). But since I'm hardly the biggest customer of any store on earth, and I never go to bars or taverns or other places that smoking seems to be popular in, I'm hardly representative of the voting public at large.

I don't have any real conclusion, it's just something I've been idly wondering about.

This one makes Malaya laugh like an evil witch.  We've been getting Jamba Juices regularly for a few months, and enjoying them, for the most part.  They're basically frozen fruit smoothies with essentially infinite variety, since you can substitute any ingredient for any other ingredient. My current favorite is a peach pleasure with raspberries instead of bananas (I hate bananas in smoothies.)  As a bonus, you can order a "boost" which is basically a shot of vitamins or supplements of some kind.  Some are free, others with more stuff in them cost fifty cents. I mostly stick to energy boosts, while Malaya gets a femme boost, since after all, she's a girl.

The amusing story came about when I tried a vita boost for variety, in an orange berry blitz. It tasted okay at first, but by the time I'd slurped down about 1/4 of it (I drink them very slowly, usually saving at least half, freezing it until late at night, and eating it almost like sherbet) it was starting to taste very odd. Chalky, and there was a big visible residue of green dust stuff on the sides of the cup as the jamba level decreased. At home I stuck it in the freezer, and when I got it out a couple of hours later the entire thing had turned bright green, and was simply inedible. Like drinking chalk.

I threw it away, the first (and so far only) jamba I didn't drink every drop of, and when I next went to the local Jamba Juice store in Lafayette I brought up my last one, and how the vita boost turned it inedible.

Me: Last time in here I got an Orange Berry Blitz with a vita boost, and it was really chalky.  Like undrinkable.

Jamba guy: Oh?

Me: Yeah, I've never gotten a vita boost before, and it was like a full scoop of green chalk.  Turned the whole drink green and I had to throw it out.

Jamba guy: Yeah, the vita boost is pretty large and it does that. Especially with the orange juice flavors.

Me: Uh huh. I couldn't even drink it; just threw it out. Only time I've not consumed the whole thing.

Jamba guy: Yeah, that happens sometimes.

Me: With vita boosts? 

Jamba guy: Yeah, they'll do that.

You'll notice his complete and total lack of concern for my complaint, and how he at no point makes any offer of restitution. I was somewhat annoyed at the time, especially since I was in the process of buying a $25 gift card to send to my mom as part of her Mother's Day gift, but since I got a free jamba with the $25 card (that's their usual policy, which is why Malaya and I now buy a new $25 card every time we use up our old one. Since Jambas are $3.75 for a medium, if you go with a free boost, you're basically getting one free for every 7 you buy.) I couldn't complain about the last one that much. I don't know if I got an especially large viti boost that time, or if they really do render any jamba you buy with one a chalky stew, but I've certainly not tried another one since then.

What cracks Malaya up so much about this story is that the guy's response to my problem is exactly what she envisions me response would be if I were in his position. That's not entirely true, since I was much better at feigning concern when someone came to me at the stadium with a problem, but she is correct in that I never gave a damn if someone actually got what they wanted. I'd say the right things and point them the right place (which was a lot more than most of the employees there did) but did I personally care if their little hopes and dreams turned out okay? No, of course not.

My revised version of events when Malaya asks me to tell her again what the Jamba guy said when I complained? "I don't know what you're talking about, sweetie. I went in, I had a complaint about the last jamba, and I walked out with a free jamba."

Which is true. Technically.

Moving right along, there's a fast food chain in this region called Nation's. It's basically an old style hamburger place, with low prices. They also do diner food, eggs, French toast at breakfast, etc, and it's fresh and cooked there; not like the processed shit at McD's. Nice chicken sandwiches, which come with cheese, several thick slices of tomatoes, a huge slice of onion, lettuce, etc. Like a sandwich you'd make at home, rather than the typical fast food sliver of wilted greenery. They also have fresh baked pies, and the cheesecake is divine. Very good pie, with a lime sauce on top. About the best cheesecake I've ever had, and since I'm very picky about my pie, that's a high recommendation.

The funny story came about when we went in there to get a slice of cheesecake, for a special dessert treat. It was night, there was one guy in line ahead of us, and he was ordering cheeseburgers, etc. When our turn came I told the guy at the counter that we wanted a slice of cheesecake. He looked pretty blank, but came to life enough to figure out what it was going to cost, and asked for money. I paid him, and he asked "here or to go?" I said "to go." Of course; like the two of us were just going to sit and eat a slice of pie without any food or drinks?  People probably do, come to think of it.

Anyway, he gives me my receipt, and I stepped to the side and let the guy behind me make his order. The counter boy took it and then sort of stood there, so I stepped back over in front of him (I'd moved like 3 feet, tops). He looks at me and says, "Can I help you?" as if he's never seen me before in his life.  Bear in mind that it's been maybe 15 seconds since I ordered my pie.

I blinked, and said, "The cheesecake I ordered?"  He looks blank.

Now this whole time Malaya's standing over to the side, hiding a smile, since as she often says when it's time to talk to minimum wage slaves, "I can't deal with this. You order it." They're not all clueless, but the percentage is high enough that it makes her unhappy.

So I added, "I just ordered a slice of cheesecake..." at this he perks up, remembering... but what to do now?  He turns around and gets out the cheesecake from the glass display case and puts it on the counter... then looks lost. There aren't any tiny styrofoam containers for single slices of pie (even though a slice is a quarter pie at Nation's). So he casts about, ignoring the huge stack of large styrofoam on the counter beside him, and finally moves over to ask the other employee, who is busy cooking the burgers and stuff.

Cashier: "What do I put the pie in?"

Cooking guy: "What?"

Cashier: "He ordered a slice of cheesecake! To go!"

Cooking guy: *pauses, annoyed* "Put it in a 'to go' box."

Cashier: "Oh."

So he puts it in the big styrofoam and hands it to me, still looking confused.  Total elapsed time for what should have been a 10 second transaction? Four minutes.

The last and most recent such merchant interaction occurred at Home Depot, when we were doing all of our back patio gardening a few weeks ago. The day before we'd been there, and we were back to get more potting soil, bark chips, and some pots. Malaya was staying inside the store, since the day before she'd had a huge allergic reaction to something out in the nursery, and spent the next hour sneezing. This left me on my own to pick up the stuff we needed, and look at wood for stakes, wood slats for trellises, etc.  I had the bark and dirt, and was looking for plant food. They had a lot of different kinds of it, so I hunted down an orange-apron'ed employee and asked him what type he recommended.

Me: "What type of plant food here is best for house plants?"

Home Depot Guy: "In pots?"

Me: "Yes, some indoors and others on our back patio, where it's pretty shady."

Home Depot Guy: "They're all pretty good. Scott's is fine. The others too."

Me: "How about those time release pellets? Are they better to stick into the dirt and leave them, or should I go with the blue water stuff every time?"

Home Depot Guy: "Eh, it depends."

*pause*

Me: "Okay, so I guess I'll go Scott's.  Do you have any suggestions on the best type of climbing vine for a shady back patio?"

Home Depot Guy: "No, not really. It depends."

Me: "Because I've had plants that look gorgeous for a month and then die in a week, or grow great in one room and then die in another."

Home Depot Guy: "Yeah, they'll do that."

Me: "Too much water or too little or too much sun?"

Home Depot Guy: "Yeah. Can be most anything. It happens."

At this point I gave up and just left. I wanted to ask him, "You work here, right? I mean they pay you money to do this?" but I thought he'd be unimpressed. He wasn't rude so much as he was entirely indifferent. He had no tips, no hints, no suggestions, and no opinions. I suppose that's what you're reduced to after about 10 years of a shit job like that, but it's still somewhat depressing to encounter. He reminded me of the Jamba Juice guy. Not active hostile or anything, just completely blank and unhelpful. Both of the "They don't pay me enough to care, sir." school of getting through the day.

I don't have any snappy conclusion or larger meaning to draw from these events. I've had plenty of other interactions with employees who were perfectly competent, even occasionally good at their jobs. I certainly don't mean this collection of several idiot encounters over the past 5 months as some sort of referendum on the state of the American working man/woman. Not even those in low-paying jobs.  This article page is a much better representation of that sort of thing, if you wanted one.

I don't write about normal merchant interactions for the same reason newspapers don't report on successful plane landings, and you don't tell your friends about all of those normal, unmemorable people you know at work. Not everyone working a crappy job for low pay is sullen and foolish, and even most of those who are aren't so far gone to display it in their every interaction.  Plenty do though, and if I ever talked to people, I'm sure I'd have more such stories to blog about. And now you know why I don't.