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                        Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
                     Club Notice - 8/31/90 -- Vol. 9, No. 9


       MEETINGS UPCOMING:

       Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon.
            LZ meetings are in LZ 2R-158.  MT meetings are in the cafeteria.

         _D_A_T_E                    _T_O_P_I_C

       09/12   LZ: STAR MAKER by Olaf Stapledon (Formative Influences)
       10/03   LZ: MICROMEGAS by Voltaire (Philosophy)
       10/24   LZ: THE WORM OUROBOROS by E. R. Eddison (Classic Horror)
       11/07   MT: WANDERING STARS ed. by Jack Dann (Jewish Science Fiction)
       11/14   LZ: WAR WITH THE NEWTS by Karel Capek (Foreign SF)

         _D_A_T_E                    _E_X_T_E_R_N_A_L _M_E_E_T_I_N_G_S/_C_O_N_V_E_N_T_I_O_N_S/_E_T_C.

       09/08   NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
                       (phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
       09/15   SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: TBA
                       (phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)

       HO Chair:      John Jetzt     HO 1E-525   834-1563  hocpa!jetzt
       LZ Chair:      Rob Mitchell   LZ 1B-306   576-6106  mtuxo!jrrt
       MT Chair:      Mark Leeper    MT 3D-441   957-5619  mtgzx!leeper
       HO Librarian:  Tim Schroeder  HO 3E-301   949-4488  hotld!tps
       LZ Librarian:  Lance Larsen   LZ 3L-312   576-3346  mtunq!lfl
       MT Librarian:  Evelyn Leeper  MT 1F-329   957-2070  mtgzy!ecl
       Factotum:      Evelyn Leeper  MT 1F-329   957-2070  mtgzy!ecl
       All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

       1. It is desperately important when you  are  walking  a  tightrope
       that you do not look down.  You put one front in front of the other
       and you keep walking.  You restrict your reality to  just  you  and
       the  tightrope.   If  your reality includes the ground beneath you,
       just the knowledge that it is there can defeat  you.   I  had  this
       morning  one  of  those  disastrous  experiences.   I looked at the
       ground, Well, not literally.  I am  speaking  figuratively.   Every
       day  I walk various figurative tightropes in which it is imperative
       that I do not look at the symbolic ground or I  might  fall  on  mt
       metaphorical face.













       THE MT VOID                                           Page 2



       What happened was  that  I  "looked  down"  both  figuratively  and
       literally  while  I  was eating my breakfast.  In my younger days I
       liked to put catsup on my eggs to liven them  up.   Later,  when  I
       discovered  the  joys  of  Tabasco  sauce,  I  would put catsup and
       Tabasco on my eggs.  This disgusted my mother,  for  whom  a  spicy
       dish  was  one  that had a little black pepper that had been ground
       the previous year.  And of all the hot spices, black pepper is  one
       of  the least interesting and, if it is not freshly ground, you may
       as well forget it.  Spiciness in our house ran the whole range from
       foods  as  bland as cream of wheat all the way up to foods as spicy
       as cream of wheat with a teaspoon of sugar.  My  mother,  I  think,
       confused the concepts of "piquant" and "carcinogenic."

       When my mother saw me putting catsup  and  Tabasco  on  my  morning
       eggs her reaction was much the same as it would have been if I were
       putting flea powder on my spaghetti.  "Actually there is a  Mexican
       dish  that  is hot sauce on eggs," I bluffed.  "Not for breakfast,"
       she replied with a certainty that came from never having  heard  of
       such  a dish.  My mother bluffs well, too.  "Yes, it is!  They have
       it for breakfast," I lied.  Years later I  first  heard  of  _h_u_e_v_o_s
       _r_a_n_c_h_e_r_o_s  and  discovered I had made a lucky guess.  In fact, when
       we went to Mexico that was my preferred  breakfast  for  the  first
       half  of  the  trip.   Then  halfway  through  the trip I developed
       virtually simultaneously a taste for cream of wheat and a  case  of
       Montezuma's Revenge.

       Well, I'm recovered from that now, and I still like a  spicy  sauce
       on   eggs,   but  now  I  am  concerned  about  silly  things  like
       cholesterol.  Now if you are watching what you eat and  are  clever
       about  it,  you  don't  have to sacrifice flavor.  You just have to
       look for things of roughly the same flavor.  An omelette is  loaded
       with cholesterol and yet it has very little flavor.  What it really
       contributes to a dish is a sort of  a  patty  of  a  certain  chewy
       texture.  I can create a nearly similar flavorless, chewy patty out
       of oatmeal.  I just take three coffee scoops of raw  oatmeal,  just
       enough  water  to  dampen thoroughly, and microwave for 90 seconds.
       Then I douse it in catsup (that has a bit too  much  sugar  perhaps
       but  it otherwise is reasonably virtuous), and throw on the Tabasco
       (a little too much sodium but not a whole lot either).

       So there I was.  For a week I was enjoying something  pretty  close
       to  the  great taste of my beloved _h_u_e_v_o_s _r_a_n_c_h_e_r_o_s and at the same
       time I felt reasonably virtuous.  I was proud of my cleverness  and
       of  my  ability  to  eat  a healthy breakfast that at the same time
       tasted pretty good.  Even if it wasn't  _h_u_e_v_o_s  _r_a_n_c_h_e_r_o_s,  it  was
       virtually the same great flavor I'd learned to love.  I was walking
       my figurative tightrope  and  impressing  the  metaphorical  crowd.
       Then  today  I  looked  down,  realized  I'd been eating catsup and
       Tabasco sauce on oatmeal, and threw up.


                                          Mark Leeper
                                          MT 3D-441 957-5619
                                           ...mtgzx!leeper