Zephyr 98

Note: Well, the video above has been set to private till further notice, following recent findings that some brands of kombucha, fermented as it is, contains   a bit more alcohol than is probably safe for a child’s consumption. That’s too bad, on several counts–for the industry and for the video which, although it’s an early Broccoli and Banana, has some great lines, including–in our house–the oft quoted plaintive “no more so-da?” Pretend you’ve seen it before reading the following:

At our house we average a liter of “diet brown” soda a day. Debby says it beats the taste of our filtered tap water but she and I know we drink it out of habit. So last Saturday, taking our cue from high-browed Broccoli and his winsome sidekick Banana, Noah, 11, Sophie, 5, and I headed to Winco for some soda-replacement in the form of kombucha. (Debby had left for Dragon Boat team practice and was too far away to question our motivation.)

On the way well read Noah explained that kombucha, as you know,  originated in the 1001 Nights as a magical elixir drank by djinn. “Genies!” squeaked Sophie and giggled, nailing Banana’s voice from the video. And the next ten minutes turned into kombucha Marco Polo, Noah intoning “Kombucha” in his most ominous 11 year old voice while Sophie echoed “Genie!” Yeah, I was glad to see Winco.

We didn’t recall ever seeing kombucha at Winco (our weekly grocery stop with Costco), but when we asked a clerk, he pointed us knowingly toward the back wall of cold beverages, where it bordered the natural foods department. And there it was: the rainbow wall of kombucha. Fellow shoppers, a man and a woman, were scratching their heads over the selection, picking up one bottle after another, swirling the contents around and reading the labels. Noah quickly selected raspberry; Sophie, ginger. “I like ginger,” she proclaimed and set her bottle in the cart. “But not broccoli,” she warned me. “Check,” I said, “no fizzy broccoli drinks.”

“You know,” I said to the other two adults, “I’ve never seen this here before. It’s like it just appeared.”

Noah piped up, “I told you, Dad, it’s a maaagical elixir.”

The man snorted and the woman laughed a little. She said, “I think it’s like when you buy a car–all of a sudden you see cars just like your’s on the road when you can’t remember seeing them before.”

I asked if they’d ever tried it. I told them the Internet had sent us here to try kombucha instead of soda.

“My mom drinks too much diet brown,” Sophie warned them.

“Don’t we all,” said the man, smiling.

I picked a random bottle of plain kombucha–whatever flavor plain was–thinking there should be a control sample in our little experiment. As we turned to go, the woman whispered, “I didn’t want your kids to hear, but when my 8 year old tried it, I thought his face was going to turn inside out. Small sips.”

Great. $9 and 3 bottles later, home we went, my kids innocent to the pickled puckered fate that awaited them. Me grumbling to myself about the hit on our shopping budget. Then remembering the garbage bags of 2 liter soda bottles in the garage. And kicking myself for not returning them to pay for the kombucha. Oh well, being a parent is a constant game of catch up, and shrugging off yesterday to maintain sanity today.

At home I pointed to the label warning that read Do Not Shake Contents Vigorously. “You’ll awaken the djinni,” warned Noah. “Volcano!” squeaked Sophie.

Long story short, we tried small sips of ginger and raspberry kombucha. After I pulled Noah’s lower lip out of his mouth, we decided that maybe kombucha tasted better to grownups. “It smells like beer,” grumbled Noah. Sophie didn’t think she could try it again for twenty years, her current number for a future too distant to imagine. I kind of liked it–a little puckery, odor like fruit cooking, and a smacky aftertaste. I might drink it once in awhile.

So, kombucha, at our house, adults 1, kids 2. But they tried something new. And if we keep it around, maybe they’ll try it again in a few years. Maybe even sooner, they’ll sneak into it with their friends during a sleepover after we’re asleep. I’m all for stealth nutrition.

When Debby returned from practice, red-faced and tired, she was ready for a rejuvenating sip of something. She took a healthy swallow from the remaining bottle of plain-flavored kombucha, screwed up her face, and asked the kids, “So, who’s up for making exploding kombucha bread?”

Noah and Sophie whooped and raced off to the garage. Any excuse to wear safety goggles.

This was a “Voice of Dad” blog entry written for broccoliandbanana.com. We’re rethinking some of the site’s features, so I’m reposting some of my entries here.

I’m 49 this year. Two and a half years ago my doctor told me that my HDL (aka “good”) cholesterol was borderline low (39) and my LDL (aka “bad”) was borderline high (140), and that even though my triglyceride count was low, she was concerned about the trend. I could improve those numbers using drugs or through diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes. I don’t like creating a permanent change with drugs unless necessary, so I chose option B. A cardiologist I know said he wouldn’t settle for an HDL count of lower than 75, and I’d read that 60 is the recommended minimum (even though 45 is considered acceptable). So my 12-month goal was to increase HDL to at least 60 and continue the upward trend, and to get LDL under 100 and protect it with antioxidants (via supplements and foods).

My homework said the best way to increase HDL, short of prescription doses of niacin or newer cholesterol-effecting drugs, was through regular vigorous exercise, with some minor help from diet–some of the foods that help boost or maintain HDL also may lower LDL, so my new diet could work toward both cholesterol goals.

I was already reasonably fit, so it wasn’t too hard to boost exercise to an hour a day, 5 to 6 days a week—for me that meant running outside or on the treadmill, or using the handy elliptical machine at work. I dug into the oatmeal-for-breakfast routine, cut all but the occasional meat and starches out my diet, and ate more plants and soy and nuts. It wasn’t so bad, and after awhile I felt better and was able to stop coveting what my kids were eating and stare down the monthly pizza lunches. (I might have been brainwashed by then—I mean, turn down pizza?)

After a year, I’d dropped a bunch of weight (reaching a healthy BMI), lowered my LDL to 90 and raised my HDL to 60. My doctor’s office told me I was their new poster child for diet and exercise.

I figured it was the exercise that gave me the boost—the HDL molecules do the hard work and if I kept my diet high in antioxidants to protect the LDLs, I could start eating more of what I’d been missing.

Yesterday, I received blood work results from his year’s checkup: HDL, 45; LDL 120. Heart like a lion, but a bloodstream leaning toward a buttery scone. I swore a little, but suspected those results were coming. Our biochemistry is too complex to get away with staying healthy via a single solution like exercise.

So, it’s back to plan B, that combo of exercise and, more importantly, dietary changes, for the rest of my life. I’m glad I have a chance to supersize of the “rest of my life” on my terms. Luckily for me (in so many ways), my wife has independently made the same decisions about her diet. I hope I can stick with it. If you’re making similar decisions, I hope the same for you.

This entry will also appear in my employer’s upcoming “tell your wellness story” blog.

Hormonal zombie spies in India during the Napoleonic era. (How the hell do you think the East India Co was so successful?) More anon.

(The problem: to write more on this or a more important topic would consume time I can’t spend right now. But zombies are, ironically(?), keeping more than one genre of publishing alive, so I thought (while considering scenarios for a background project), I could splash them here, too.

Back to creating and undoing Celtic knots of data–my day job. If any zombies approach, I’ll be able to keep them tied up for several software releases, at least.

Followup: Hmm, looks like zombie spies in general are nothing new. However, googling “zombie spies of the Punjab” yielded no direct hits (although plenty of hits for spies in the Punjab, including the expected references to Kipling’s Kim).  Also, no results for zombie spies of the Kalahari (not even in HD), zombie spies of Minneapolis (Garrison Keilor is safe–for now), and zombie spies in Basque Country.

Bonus: Everyone on my blog roll is a certified zombie spy. Unfortunately, the identity of the certification board is a closely held secret that I cannot reveal here except under pressure of currency.

Have not abandoned the blog, just very very busy. (I have a wife, you know.)

In the meantime, be kind to your smart mouth broccoli and don’t ignore the gentle simple banana–yellow with a natural smiley shape, it’s just the thing to perk up your day.

Watch their careers take shape on YouTube and befriend them on Facebook.

More later.

I’ve started a minor paid blogging gig (really, just rolled it into my day job), supporting a skunkworks project that promotes health and wellness for kids via in-house videos of talking produce (filmed by our Creative Director, also a standup comic). The blog entries will be responses to the videos, mixing in vignettes from life (real and imagined), my voice mixed with a handful of other in-house bloggers representing different voices and demographics. Following a spoof entry I wrote as Abraham Lincoln as a gypsy fortune teller (robbing the Gettysburg address) that I sent round via email, I’ve also been encouraged to try writing as different characters. We’ll see how that works or if it just turns out to be self-gratification.

I’m also providing web site support, for now.

More later when the project goes live. So far, it’s been a lot of fun, when we’ve had time to work on it.

I posed this rhetorical question recently on Facebook (because I was mindlessly tired and thus in a perfect Zen state to communicate via FB). The context, while sounding general, is Loading the Dishwasher.

Tell the truth, brothers, it’s good to be right, isn’t it?

Here’s the unedited response from my sibling brother. Remember, this is for posterity:

Of course it’s good to be right. The more serious moral question is how to act towards others when they are forced to admit you are right.

For instance, is it “bad” to victory prance laps around a person who just admitted you are right and while looking with puzzlement at the big foam hand you are thrusting in the air ask in a loud sing song voice why they don’t make giant foam hands that say “We’re #2,” then slapping yourself on the head and saying, oh yeah, that’s right, because when it comes to being right, there is only one number that matters. BIG foam hand in your FACE! IN. YOUR. FACE.

Struggling with this question I did what any reasonable person would do. I invoked the Dalai Lama in a dream and asked him,

“Your Holiness, I know that Buddhism holds that there is no life without suffering and that enlightenment can only happen after travelling the Eightfold Path, which if I understood Wikipedia correctly, is basically about how to be right all the time about everything. Which I am. As obvious as this is to me, less-informed people around me still struggle to accept that I have transendenced the wrongness from which they still suffer?”

Sensing the truth in my view, the Dalai Lama closed his eyes and breathed in slowly through one nostril, then the other, considering how to make his answer acceptable to me. Finally he answered.

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Even when you are battered by the shrill winds of the less-informed.”

Bringing his hands together, he then bowed and continued into the hotel as an aide handed me this cool publicity headshot:

The next day I left my big foam hand in the dumpster area and resolved in the future to temper my disrespect for insufferable ignorance and baffling absence of taste by ending all debates I win with a statement like, “Not that anything matters,” or “Being right is nothing compared to all that hair. Man, you’ll never be bald.”

I think this is what Buddha would do.

I haven’t written for a week till now. Nothing came to mind worth writing: no story to tell or coerce. I spent two days hiding out in a borrowed copy of the computer game, Dragon Age (not an entirely terrible place to hide). I mowed the lawn (usually, a satisfying task–we have terrain and, in the spring, daffodils that I carefully cut round but not down). At work I wrote confusing e-mail and gave directions I’d rather forget. I scowled–I have a magnificent scowl–if scowls were charming, my scowl would be Cary Grant or William Powell. It was a depressing week–except for the daffodils (and perhaps the animated slaying). I was edgy, hard on people, chalking it up to allergies and minor intestinal crud.

I woke around 4 this morning and thought, that’s it, I’m done before I’ve done it. Might as well die right now, posterity’s already putting double quotes around, “He mowed a nice lawn.” I don’t pray, but in my head I started reaching out for advice. And in the unreal clarity of pre-dawn, a pragmatic voice answered right back: You can write. It didn’t shrug and it didn’t rub my nose in anything. It just said, between the lines, You couldn’t for a bit, and now you can. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Just write. You want permission, call it permission. Just don’t call it late for dinner.

This isn’t about mojo* (which is more of a filterless cigarette or a chic manly body spray than a creative groove). It’s simpler, more like a light switch flicking on. Or a circuit breaker reset. Or a great ZOT! followed by bell chimes. Or a simple gift I’ll finish unwrapping later tonight.

* Also the simian nemesis of Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup, the Powerpuff Girls

Sometimes solutions to writing problems show up unexpectedly. I was reading a chapter in Half The Sky (unless you’re a caveman, read Half The Sky–now–or especially if you’re a caveman, first world or otherwise) about sex trafficking in the slums of Nagpur, where members of the Dalit (Untouchable) class, especially women, have almost no social or legal rights or protection, other than those they create with the support or leadership of social activists. (I won’t go into details–read the book: it’s smart, easy to read, hard to take–even when you’re already aware of its subject matter–and almost impossible to put down.)

I have henchmen characters, the shamblers, in Sea of Tigers whose origin has always been a little vague–one of those problems I knew I’d eventually resolve, although hopefully not with clichés. As I read the chapter described above, a voice–you know the voice–whispered, “The shamblers are Untouchables.” I don’t always trust that voice, even if it’s right–it’s also impetuous, a trait it shares with me. But the whisperer is right. They are Untouchables, although not from a single culture, and their leader organizes and runs them according to her complex (but not opaque) moral agenda. They’re not role models, they’re more privateer than criminal, but they are sympathetic and, in their ragged way, are working for a better world.

The shamblers’ origin wasn’t nagging at me when I read Half The Sky–I hadn’t thought about their origin in months–but it was clear that deeper parts of my creative conscious–that black hole where most of the real work happens and from which things can escape–had not forgotten about them and was actively seeking solutions.

That’s the beauty of eureka–it never gets old, it never stops being a surprise, it’s almost always a gift. Even when it’s a curse.

Dear Western Writers of My Generation,

I’ve been reading Anil Menon’s The Beast with Nine Billion Feet (see here and here). It’s the intellectual SF adventure novel I would write if I had an encyclopedic brain and no day job, and an IQ that was at least 20 points higher. It’s both deliriously engaging and an exercise in sadomasochism (for the writer as reader). I don’t have enough years left to gather that much knowledge and synthesize it on the page and entertain readers at the same time. So I’m giving up–Anil has defeated me and, probably, a whole generation of writers. We need to stop his book from being published in the US now. Join me in my efforts at www.corralmenon.org. If we can keep him locked down on the subcontinent then generations of weaker minded western writers like me will have a chance.

Your’s in defeat,

~ Kurt

P.S. Seriously, if you think there’s no market for jam packed smarty pants SF for young and adult readers, get your hands on a copy. Publishers will have a hell of a time categorizing it (they already have in India, where it’s tagged “young reader”–but it’s no more young reader than LeGuin’s “YA” work. It’ll either wither in obscurity or, my bet, grow a long spidery set of legs.) I read Vandana Singh (her speculative fiction and other stories) and she shows me unique paths to tread. Then I add Anil Menon to the mix and the paths fork. We really need more SF writers of non-western origin who can write for multicultural audiences to provoke our expectations as readers and show us new ways to grow as writers (and, in my case, remove self-imposed limits). In the past, I’ve said a lot of nice things about Vandana’s work–partially out of encouragement, but mostly out of admiration born from exposure to new insights (or remembrance of insights I’d buried to properly mold my thinking). But never out of reverence. Not till she’s at least 90 and still churning out short stories, novellas, and someday the novel.

These have been developed spuriously and sometimes out of desperation at my daughter’s bedtime since last Thanksgiving. I usually tell the stories in mad lib style, leaving blanks for her to fill in and guide the plot or character actions. She’s five and is not short of ideas or decisions.

Main characters:
Four quadruplet (but not identical) late teen Princesses opening a chain of teashops in usual and unusual locations

Recurring or single appearance characters:
A King, who builds transdimensional zoos and swings through trees at night (thanks to night vision goggles)
A Queen, admiral of the fleet
A ne’er do well enchanted Prince, asleep in a tower
A guardian tiger spirit fond of disguises (and comfortable in forest and urban jungles)
A temple dragon named Tien Lung fond of tea and conversation
A Chinese emperor worried about dragons
Madame Minus-One Pound, worried about gravity, and an expert in tea
A reformed Ogre, now tea shop manager
A leprechaun constable securing against illegal fairy ring gateway use
A quirky scientist, Professor Adams, and his submarine-based lab
Professor Adams’ alternate (bizarro) personality
A polar bear and grey whale in an interspecies romance on the ice pack
Dread Pirate Bawb and, following a devastating battle with the Queen’s fleet, Former Pirate Fred