by Peter Rodman
Probably the best thing about this flu is that it knocked the stuffing out of our young professionals. A doctor whose name I'm too lazy to make up thinks that the yup was hit especially hard for two reasons.
First, his or her body had been worn down and had its immune system crippled by excessive aerobic exercise. And secondly, the natural sloughing action of the body's mucus membranes had been paralyzed by Feta cheese, leaving the body unable to throw off the attacking viruses.
For a while there was even a rumor that this flu was killing yuppies and that the hospitals would not take them because they always died. The hospitals figured that children are our hope for the future and the old had worked hard all their lives and deserved some consideration for their efforts, and so chose to admit those groups rather than the young professionals, who produce nothing, serve no one, and never will.
To my knowledge the U.N. hasn't issued any global alerts about an impending shortage of white, money-hungry 30 year olds, so I suspect the danger was a bit exaggerated.
That rumor was false, but it did seem there were an awful lot of yups in expensive cars on the freeway using their car phones but not talking. They just sat and stared, listening and weaving from lane to lane in broad arcs in their delirium.
They didn't say anything because they were all on hold to Kaiser.
The sight of these shining men and women of business being betrayed by their bodies was better than anything on television. The wielders of power were powerless over their bodies. Even doubling up on oat bran, olive oil, and calcium supplements had no effect. There was nothing they could buy to make them better.
The flu bit hard and held on, without paying attention to anyone's schedule. The movers came back to work too soon, a fact obvious to everyone except the sick bigshot.
A sick well person would write a note asking to have addresses put on gummed labels. He'd get as far as "gumbd," but have to stop and ask someone how to spell "labels."
A sick well person would forget the names of things, but try to bluff his way through. "Put it in one of those little white paper things you put letters in and lick," he would say with a wave of his hand, then turn around and stride five steps across the room, carom off the door frame, and be gone. After a brief staff meeting, the secretaries decided that what he wanted is an envelope.
Finally, after two or three days of this, the manager just sort of wanders off one morning and someone discovers him in an empty office or sitting on a step stool in the storeroom trying to remember everything he'd ever learned about standing up. He gets packed up and shipped home to be sick a while longer.
And that is the fundamental value of any disease. A toothache, a nose zit, an ingrown toenail, or the flu, all show the sick person something important. No matter how long we can go between meals or without sleep, how far we can run, or row, or swim, we are not in control of our bodies. They are in control of us.
It takes humility to admit I can't run my body. I don't like doing illness, but have no choice. And when I have no choice and just give in, I see new things. I notice (as Jane pointed out) that all the puddles have petals.
Soviet-Swiss Spaghetti Scheme
I'm indebted to my friend Buzz for pointing out a small, almost unnoticeable snippet in a recent Engineering News Record. I had to let my subscription to the ENR lapse a while ago, so I never would have seen it without her help; yet the information is international in its import.
The Russians have signed a $63 million (104.6 million Swiss Francs) contract with Buehler Brothers Limited of the city of Uzwil to build 19 pasta-making plants in Russia.
Buehler Brothers is an old, family-owned firm, but it isn't an Italian family and Uzwil is in Switzerland. The Russians are buying their spaghetti factories from the Swiss. This isn't as odd as it seems.
Although the Italians have been making pasta for 800 years (having acquired the technique from the Chinese, who learned it from the Timor Islanders), they've made very few innovations in all that time.
They've come up with various shapes such as mostaccioli ("little mustaches"), linguine ("tongues"), and vermicelli ("baby worms"), but really haven't advanced pasta technology much in the last eight centuries. The Italians prefer making their pasta the old-fashioned way with the best fresh ingredients, cooking it properly, and eating it promptly. This is evidently not a process that transfers well to the Soviet Union.
The Swiss are expected to develop specialty noodles for the Russians, and little hammers and sickles seem a pretty safe bet, but the Soviets aren't buying shapes, they're buying state-of-the-art noodle engineering. And the Swiss are just the people to give it to them.
Some may argue that the Japanese are more state-of-the- art than the Swiss, but that depends upon the art. Americans esteem Japanese products (except talking cars) because both Americans and Japanese like exotic technology and electronic gizmos. The Russians lean more towards technology you can repair with a wrench. The Soviets manufacture a 35 mm camera you can drive nails with in a pinch.
American fighter planes are laser-welded of rare-earth alloys or superglued of carbon-fiber composites. Russian fighter planes are still held together with rivets. Both countries fighters fly very fast and are capable of much human misery. But each country prefers its own path to the same end (human misery).
So it isn't surprising that the Russians choose to do business with the Swiss, who make manual watches (they have hands), rather than the Japanese, who make digital watches (meaning digits as in numbers, not fingers).
The Russians respect Swiss mechanical ability and research. They probably also admire Swiss secrecy. Years ago, the Swiss invented the water method of decaffeinating coffee, and after all this time no one has been able to duplicate or steal the process. They probably keep the details in one of their banks.
And unlike the Italians, the Swiss haven't been sitting around making pasta the way mom used to for 800 years. The Buehler Brothers have spent their time researching and experimenting with pasta. If not the whole 800 years, certainly the last dozen or so, and now have pasta patents binding in most countries. The patents are binding, presumably the pasta is not.
The Swiss have a process for making and drying pasta at high temperature that not only finishes the product in half the usual manufacturing time, but also gives a pasta that stays firm, glossy, and elastic even if overcooked. The process is also very forgiving and will make good noodles even with inferior ingredients.
That probably doesn't mean you can make it with rye flour and sawdust then cook it for a half hour and expect al dente semolina spaghetti, but a stolid and forgiving noodle would have definite advantages in the Soviet Union.
A Russian noodle has more to put up with than the standard Italian noodle. Climatically, Red pasta would have to be equally at home at high-altitude deserts and arctic tundra. The Russian space program would require a rugged noodle that can tolerate several gravities acceleration, up to a year of weightlessness and possibly even the heat of reentry.
Obviously a sensitive Italian noodle requiring careful manufacture and delicate cooking would not work with the Russians. To my mind, the Soviets chose carefully and correctly.
Finally, I'd like the point out that the pasta produced will be metric. In fact, all pasta currently manufactured in the world is metric, including American-made. Although the package may say "one pound," if you measure the thickness of the noodle with a micrometer and its length with a good meterstick, you'll find you can only buy metric spaghetti today.
Stub-ends and Remains
So I went around the house, checked the top of my dresser, and my coat and jacket pockets, and the mass of paper I keep transferring from the dirty shirt to the clean one without looking at it (doing so I found Danny's name and phone number, but I can't remember who Danny is or where I met him), then I checked the bathroom wall above the tile for any faint notes I might have written myself when I had no writing paper. And I got it all together in a pile and sif
ted it, then sat down to get rid of it.
It was like when you run errands all day and you start with $80 and go from store to store, buying little things with big bills because that's easiest--you don't have to count out ones and dig for change--until your wallet is so crammed with the paper money you got back as change, and your pocket looks like a growth of greed on your thigh from the mass of coins, so that you just have to reach in your wallet, grab a handful of bills and throw them on the ground for the wind to spend, and reach in your pocket, grab a handful of coins and scatter them in the street for the car tires to press in the asphalt when it softens come summer, all because you just plain have too much money and the damn stuff causes unsightly bulges in your clothing.
You just have to get rid of the excess stuff or it builds up and it starts to own you. That last paragraph was the first scrap of paper I found, and now it's used and gone, like Danny's phone number is gone and unused, but I have so many scraps of paper, so much of it unfunny and borderline cruel, like--
Why, besides the fact they got off the plane with the name, are they the Sacramento Kings? Granted that professional sports teams don't have to have reasonable names--the Bay Area is hardly the Golden State and what we have in California is a National Guard, not Warriors, and I doubt Pittsburgh would be all that happy with real pirates nudging the womenfolk in the spleen with cutlasses--but the Chicago team does wear white socks (and newspaper sports writers are given a certain latitude in spelling), and at one time Sacramento did have some Solons to play alongside the legislators.
Can't we rename them, make them ours? A name that reflects Sacramento, and yet also the team. Perhaps the Sacramento Secos? after our limping nuclear power plant (the records are similar.) Or maybe we can find a name that reflects the driving force behind the region, as New York named its team the Yankees and Cincinnati commemorated its communists with a team name. We could call them the Sacramento Developers.
People are unhappy about having buildings loom over and glare down at them. In the heat of emotion they say graphic things about what developers are doing to Sacramento's skyline without even thinking about the silly picture they suggest. However, with this latest construction we can rest at ease knowing that the developers are at least having safe sex with the skyline. I am naturally speaking of the Renaissance Condom, the only building in town with a reservoir tip.
Space aliens control our women through the needle in their pierced earrings. That's all. I don't know what it means, don't even know who "our women" are. I'm just trying to use up these scraps of paper so I can throw them away.
Now something really disturbing. Suppose there are three identical triplet brothers, named Nguyen ("Nit"), Rolf ("Half"), and Dmitri ("Dim") Witt. Individually, none of the three could hope to fill a humor column, but together they might be able to. They all look the same, so they only need one picture at the top. To hide their shabby little deception, they pick a pseudonym, a grotesque phallic joke name for all three to write under: Peter Rodman. And for years they write nonsense, each column seemingly done by a different madman, until Grizzell (not his real name) spills the beans.
Is such a thing possible? If so, would the triplets be interested in ghost-writing an exposé on growing up in the Japanese film industry entitled, "Mothra Dearest"?
And if mushrooms, turkey and tofu all taste just like the foods they're cooked with (as I'm assured they each do), what does roast turkey with mushroom and tofu stuffing taste like?
What is modified food starch, and how can I get some? Does it taste like whatever it's cooked with?
If there was a mandatory work day when no one could be sick or on vacation but had to report to his workplace, would there be enough offices, enough chairs where you work? Where I work, if everyone showed up at once, we couldn't all sit down. Would Elvis show up? I've suspected he was an employee for some time, just out sick.
Mom's Copy Shop. "We Fax The Old-Fashioned Way."
A woman called me at work with a strange and wonderful question. She wanted to know if I had anonymously sent her a single red rose. I had to say, "no." Roses don't occur to me. She said, "just thought it might be you," and hung up to call another possibility.
At first the call was just strange, but as I thought about it, it became wonderful. What a beautiful compliment. She thought I was a person who might send a secret rose. And she thought it strongly enough to test her hunch by asking. And I was such a good possibility to her that she called me before she happened to find the real person, the person who thinks to send roses and doesn't need to sign the card.
Occasionally that happens. I accidentally discover that someone thinks more highly of me than I do myself, or thinks I am capable of more than I think I am. At those times I feel blessed. I feel it.
I wanted to keep that last scrap of paper, that last story, because it's private, and it's mine, and I can be selfish. Besides, I could always point out that it isn't funny, so doesn't belong here. But you can have it.
The state capitol and the Renaissance Tower
Kitchen Carnage
A grindstone salesman gave me one of my favorite statistics: "85% of all accidents with knives are caused by the blade being dull."
These accidents can be as simple as leaning into a ripe tomato with a dull knife, rupturing the pomme d'amour and swearing, then walking into the dining room with the knife in one hand while covered with the gore of a crude catsup and so alarming the guests that one of them slides silently to the floor and chokes to death on an improperly swallowed sourdough french roll because no one knows the Heimlich maneuver. Happens all the time.
Less likely is the wrenched back while trying to cut through an avocado and the dislocated shoulder from sawing away forever at a beef roast with dull knives, but they also happen with some regularity.
I first used that statistic to justify sharpening every knife in the house, and later as a reason to periodically sweep through, test edges, and dress those that have dulled with use. People can always tell when I've sharpened the knives. My wife and I start wearing more bandages.
And naturally that's the other part of the statistic-- that the remaining 15% of accidents with knives are due to the blades being sharp enough to cut.
I daresay that accidents with sharp knives can be divided into three sorts.
1) Picking up the knife. Very risky if it's sharp.
2) Putting down the knife, including by dropping it.
And,
3) Doing something stupid with the knife while you have it in your hand.
Personally, I do stupid things with sharp knives, usually to myself. Most recently, I decided that a slice of turkey was too thick. With care and a sharp knife (one of the two which I had), I knew I could cut the thick slice into two thinner pieces.
The following paragraph is the only gory one; the squeamish can skip. I would, but I'm writing it.
I lay the slice on the cutting board (so as not to cut anything I didn't intend to), anchored the meat to the board with my left hand (so the knife didn't skitter all over and cut something I didn't intend to), and began slowly and carefully (ever so carefully) cutting the piece of turkey along the thinnest surface of the slice. The knife came out the top of the turkey and to rest in my left index fingertip. Where I didn't intend it to. Wrong turkey.
After the initial shock, I quickly composed myself and insulted the knife's parents. Looking back now, that probably didn't accomplish much, but it seemed a proper and necessary thing to do at the time.
Which left me standing with a clean, deep cut on my finger that caused quite a leak in my body fluids (mainly blood).
I didn't want to go for stitches. I know how that works. I bleed and bleed and bleed, get driven to the doctor/emergency room/Kaiser, use up a whole roll of paper towels just sopping up my precious body fluids, and by the time the doctor shows up I've either clotted or run out of blood. I feel like a fool, and the doctor looks at me like I've just unplugged some guy's
iron lung so I could use the outlet to power my television. I feel like asking for a couple of stitches just in case the spigot reopens.
I really don't have a very good idea of when I'm hurt bad enough to see a doctor. My rule of thumb is that if someone else is worried and willing to take me, I should go.
I already felt stupid, didn't want to show up at the doctor's with a cut well on its way to invisibility to look stupid again, where I'd probably have to explain the boneheaded thing I was trying to do when I cut myself in the first place. (I'm telling you, but you are understanding, and I trust you won't spread it around.)
So I considered superglue. It will glue skin, and I figure that if it will glue that television guy's head to that biiiig steel girder, it'll certainly seal up a flesh wound. But I couldn't get the superglue tube open (I think it had hardened), especially with only one hand. I had to leave for work, so I wrapped the finger in a new paper towel, took along some bandages, and got going.
Probably because the wound mistook the car ride for a trip to the doctor, by the time I got to work the bleeding had stopped.
There is a period of time between when the injury isn't alarming any more and when the injury is healed that is awkward for the owner of the injury. The busted part just bangs around uselessly and gets in the way.
I suppose it's helpful to realize how much one relies on the useless part. For instance, I never knew I used the index finger of my left hand to peel hard-boiled eggs.
I eat a hard-boiled chicken egg for breakfast every workday morning, and have for years. I don't know how I learned to peel eggs, but I do it with my left index finger, and suddenly I couldn't anymore. Relearning to peel hard- boiled eggs was pure hell. Using a new finger was like peeling an egg with my elbow. Or my nose.
It is also the finger I used to dig around in my left ear with. (Please note: this is a humor column and exaggerations sometimes creep in. Medical folks warn against inserting anything in the ear canal. This includes injured or uninjured fingers, cotton swabs, pool cue tips, voles or other rodents, and matches.)