SOMEONE ONCE ASKED PROSATIO SILBAN his thoughts on “presentation;” i.e., how a dish should look when it leaves his kitchen. The Cook For Any Price thought for a moment before replying.

“I suppose it depends on your notion of what the food’s for,” he said. “In ancient and epicurean Pormaris, more than elsewhere in the Commonwell, cooking is an art like music, painting or courtesanry. There, the current fashion is to pile the food as vertically as the ingredients and imagination will allow. I suppose it accents the dinner setting.

“My own customers range from wealthy banqueters to the bowl-of-beans poor, but they have one thing in common: they’re hungry. So I try never to let the food get in the way of itself. A pretty plate pleases the soul, and that’s important. But people don’t always know what to do with too much prettiness.”

He looked up. “What are you sketching?”

She held out a pad, on which was written:

AWE AND INQUIRY

God is good.

God is.

God.

.

He frowned. “What’s the point?”

She grinned. “Exactly.”

THE IMMEDIACY OF BLOGGING CREATES, for the blogger, a whole new way of looking at the world. It’s not much different from the world of any writer in terms of the compulsion to record, comment on and embroider every living moment; blogging just makes it easier and less private.

Privacy in today’s age of Instant Personal Broadcasting[1] (blogs, vlogs, YouTube, reality TV, chat, texting, Facebook and definitely MySpace) means something different than it did when the cautionary “1984″ loomed in our future, before we collectively became Big Brother for both fun and profit. The aware writer — i.e., aware that his writing is for other people to read — will thus exercise privacy as a form of active self-discretion; despite that he can now tell his readers any thing at any time, he doesn’t want to overdo it and collects a quick pile of unshared observation. Here are a few of mine, at least for now:

Taste Test: Breakfast Cereals — One of my favorite snacks is a bowl of cereal, but as I get older I find myself less enamoured of sweet snacks. Why can’t They make something better, like a less sweet Corn Pop with pecans?

My God Has Balls — Although a staunch brother of my sisters in the struggle, I can’t help but notice that the degenderization of “God,” necessitated for those who confuse Hebrew’s gendered pronouns with sexism, has clunked up the liturgy and made it harder for many to feel less self-conscious about praying — and diluted the Warrior Spirit inherent and necessary to any disciplined spiritual approach.

Elena Kagan Is Hot — If a man can’t see the inherent beauty in every woman, he’s not really a man. (Of course, he might also be gay, but then the point would be that if he can’t see the inherent beauty in every man he’s not really looking. Or so I imagine; I don’t think men have any inherent beauty.) This would also spell the difference between women and girls, and how the latter limit and make the former look as bad as boys do for men.

Tawdry Tidbits From The World Of Small Town Politics — Shame on you. (Besides, the town’s small enough that everyone knows them already.)

I Just Submitted A Story To _______ — Puh-LEASE. Believe me, I’ll post enough when they’re published; if my rejection : acceptance ratio is like anyone else’s, posting each of my many, many subs will make me look (and, inevitably, feel) like a loser. (Besides, the New Yorker frowns on such things.)

Cute Things The Cat Did — There are some things which I simply cannot do. One is ask someone a question without an intimidating bulldog machinegun style. Another is to be less intense. A third is to write anything profound about our little woojums. (Ann can, though — she’s even got a whole category for it.)

Vicious Deconstruction of Modern Writers In An Obvious Bid For Attention — I sort of did that to Douglas Rushkoff’s uninformed and whiny Nothing Sacred, but then felt so bad the next day that I had to apologize. Not only is such behavior rude and transparent, it may prevent me from cadging a beer from the inhabitants of the lofty realm I pretend to despise.

Great Quotes from Star Trek, Star Wars or Whatever I’m Reading Now — Those who know, know; those who don’t, don’t care.

EFT and the Death of Retail Banter — How can we talk weather with the checker if we have to keep pushing all these damn buttons? And would I feel the same if I still worked at the bookstore?

That should do for now. If you can think of anything else I shouldn’t write about, I’ll be right here … waiting.

[1] Phrase copyright 2010, Neal Ross Attinson. Ka-CHING.

Tim Lincecum’s face
Passionate with the sad news:
Strike one. Two. Three. Next!

WE WERE FIVE MEN PLAYING draw poker.

“Ante up, gentlemen,” said R. “Nickel apiece.”

The cards went round once, twice, thrice.

B coughed. T took a sip of his Cuba Libre.

R sent the cards round again. And again.

We lifted our hands.

“Oh! Ghawd! Damn!” said K. “I’m betting TWENTY BUCKS!”

“Fold.” “Fold.” “Fold.” “You idiot.”

“IT WAS AT THIS POINT in the narrative when those skilled in the nuances of the oral tradition began chuckling with anticipation.”

HE WAS DANGLING FROM THE upper corner of my typewriter window, upside-down and scowling, when I first saw the Man from Mars.

That’s what he was, no doubt about it. He was three feet tall, emerald green where the spacesuit didn’t cover him, and with more-than-vestigial antennae sprouting from a large bulbous head. His expression mingled disappointed with disbelief, as though his worst hopes had been realized about a minute before he appeared.

“I cannot believe you people,” he was saying. “Just can’t believe it.”

“I’m not sure I believe in you either,” I said.

He climbed down around the sill until his scowl was level with my eyes. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Would you mind opening the window?”

“I would,” I said. “How do I know you’re, you know … not part of some invading force?”

“Because I can’t even open the window by myself,” he said. “The latch is on your side.”

“So it is,” I said, and raised it.

He stepped into the room. The spacesuit was ribbed silver and sans helmet, although a tubed canister on his back suggested its existence somewhere nearby. Most likely in a flying saucer, of course.

“This is why I contacted you,” he said, looking up at me with hands on glistening hips. “You remember.”

“Remember what?”

“Remember me. Remember us. The little green men from another world. Few do these days. I mean, you still use a typewriter. And not for irony.”

“I like to pound the words into the paper,” I said. “It feels like I’m sculpting them.”

“Whatever. You still remember the Old Ways.”

“I thought I was the only one who used that term. You mean, of course, when the future was shiny and worth a damn?”

“When there was a future. These days it’s all zombies, and mutants, and vampires, which are by the way the most pretentious of all the undead.”

“No question there,” I said. “But what do you mean?”

“What was the first post-apocalypse you remember?” he asked. “Mad Max, wasn’t it?”

“No, Road Warrior,” I answered. “I missed the first film somehow. But I had a subscription to Heavy Metal. The Church of Moebius.”

“Whatever. Remember the world situation then?”

“Sure. 1980s. Ronald Reagan and the Evil Empire. We kept expecting nukes to drop every evening.”

“Right. Sure did take off, though, didn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Post-apocalypticism. It’s a very seductive look: dead cities, mutants trading in the wrecked underbelly, black trenchcoats, green lighting. It’s very easy. Not like futurism — optimistic futurism, anyway. See the connection now?”

I didn’t, and said so. He looked at me with patience.

“You weren’t expecting the future anymore…” he began.

My heart froze.

He looked at me in sad silence.

“My God. What happened to us?” I asked. “This is why there’s no jetpacks – we’ve torn down all the launchpads and replaced them with franchised dead things.”

“That is about the size of it,” he said. “That’s why I’m here — to say goodbye, to someone who’d miss me.”

“But wait! What about Roswell?” I asked. “Flying saucers are still part of the brain politic.”

He stepped to the window, put a leg up. “But those saucers crashed,” he said. “And you people autopsied the occupants. See?”

Then he was gone.

I hope he comes back.

from a pre-Blogger blog

Attending a dinner for the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, as a co-recipient of their annual James Madison Freedom of Information Award, I’m in the presence of real journalistic heroes: men and women quietly doing their jobs in order that their fellow-citizens can be better informed about their world. Some of those people, like the person who enabled us (by which I mean, my former employer and myself) to write the stories which lead our reception of the award, are bigger heroes: someone who risked a job (and security) in order to do the right thing — by blowing a badly-needed whistle.

As this is an online scrapbook, here’s my half of the acceptance speech (after my ex-boss introduced me by telling everyone that I had quit the news biz to attend rabbinical school):

“They say this job will drive you either to drink, or religion. I seem to have chosen the latter…
“When I was a kid, I was crazy about Don Quixote: knight-errant, defender of justice and the innocent, tilter at windmills which he thought were fierce giants.
“As a result, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I never thought I’d do it while working as a reporter.
“But when we first broke our story, after years of anonymous — but unproven — allegations that all was not well at SDC, my wife sent a bouquet of flowers to my desk, with a note: ‘You knew they were giants all along.’
“In a different way, this award says the same thing. The quest continues. Thank you.”

The evening is inspiring. It’s enlightening. It makes me really, really miss the news business. But it doesn’t make me miss it enough.

The old woman sat, softly singing, on a blue wooden chair in the middle of the vast cobbled square, rippling a carpet of birds with each cast of her hand.

Tall jagged buildings loomed on all four sides around her — blocky and black-windowed, granite-yellow in the light of the dying sun, their shadows not quite lengthened to cover her frail red-shawled form. The air was cold and redd’d her cheeks as the birds fought for dried corn and cracker crumbs.

A tall man strode toward her — dark blue and broadshouldered, a cap visor shading all but a dour mouth.

“Leave.”

“Why?”

She rolled with the blow which sent her sprawling.

“Now.”

“No.”

Fluttering clucks roared the birds swept round and round him. He raised his arms, alarmed; they were wings and he dwindled, his voice a querulous chirp among hundreds.

She felt herself, sighed, and satisfied, arose. She shifted her shawl and sat, singing softly and scattering seeds.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF any story is the point at which it’s attached to the reader.