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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