Zombie Lapdance

Let’s get some more Conestoga-related content in here while it’s vaguely topical. In this entry I’ll go over some of the more interesting food I ate while travelling to and attending the con.

As part of a series of vaguely questionable decisions, I took the Greyhound up from Austin to Tulsa. Around 3AM I found myself in the Dallas Greyhound station. Every seat in the building was occupied by bleary travelers and their bags. And as it happened, the food counter was still open.

The dollop of grits, its greasy butter film freshly stirred by the cafeteria lady, had a texture entirely unlike anything I had experienced. It was a sort of foamy sludge, but it cut cleanly under a plastic fork as if it were a solid. The hotdog was also a mass of contradictions. It had been the last dog on the rotisserie rack. Presumably it had spun in place against the heater rollers for at least a shift. But it was merely lukewarm and the flesh had assumed the grey complexion of a long-dead earthworm. When I bit into the meat, I was struck both by its low density (I think it would float like balsa wood) and its near complete lack of taste. The hotdog bun on the other hand was almost too hot to hold.

The grape soda did an excellent job of washing it all down, and provided me with some much needed throat moisture for the long bus ride ahead.

By the time I had a layover in Oklahoma City, I was once again hungry and decided to buy a hotdog out of the vending machine. They had one of those machines with a spinning carousel inside and plastic windows you have to slide open to retrieve your selection.

According to the label it was no mere hotdog but a sausage. It certainly tasted unusually spicy, and the cheese had a weird European twang. Unfortunately, the bus station microwave (every surface of its interior splattered with long-dried goop) heated one side of the hotdog to a scorching temperature. The cheese essentially burned through and fried the bun. Meanwhile the opposite side of the hotdog was bone cold.

Oddly, the Conestoga booklet mentioned the Appleby’s and the Arby’s within walking distance, but neglected to mention the taco cart that was closer than either of them.

Like all good taco carts it only opened after dark. Most of the selections looked the same as its Austin counterparts, but the prices were at least double what we would pay here! I ordered a torta de pescado, a spicy-fried tilapia filet on a piping hot bun.

You will notice that it came with a garnish of a radish.

Crazy! That’s just the sort of amazing thing one encounters when one travels.

You ever get that sinking feeling that you’re the only guy at the con wearing a utilikilt? You’ve gotta wonder about an article of clothing that even con-goers will slyly mock.

Which is to say that I will be wearing mine for the next Space Squid party.

In the meantime, let me give you a glimpse of the non-stop party and excitement that is Conestoga.

For instance, in Tulsa they are very concerned for their health. Here’s some con-goers engaged in cardio-pummeling.

I hear that pirate groups are the new Norwegian death metal.

Here’s a fun fact, Capt’n Black’s Sea Dogges average 3.6 limbs each.

My favorite panel so far was paper-airplane making.

Whooosh!

I’ll be in Tulsa for Conestoga over the weekend. Did you know that if you google "conestoga", the Tulsa sci-fi con is the fourth hit? Is there nothing else in America named after the eponymous wagon, or is google just anticipating my web-browsing needs?

At any rate, as is the tradition for con excursions, here’s my schedule:

Fri 3pm: Hacks Anonymous vs. The Art Police … What we do to sell.

Sat 9am: Is literacy in decline?

Sat 6pm: Speed date the author.

If you see me at the con, and I’m sure you will, because this is the happening place to be this weekend, I’ll be handing out copies of Space Squid. And don’t forget, I sign body parts.

Tulsa is at an awkward distance from Austin. It’s just a little too far to drive alone, and a little too close for air travel to seem reasonable. Since the Amtrak line only goes through Oklahoma City, I have opted instead to take the Greyhound.

I’ve never taken the Greyhound before, and considering that I’ve crossed the country on a motorcycle and in a canoe, this ought to be the next great travel adventure. I have a 2am layover in the Dallas Greyhound station which I think will be super exciting. I’m going to pack a roll of duct tape and a six-inch knife.

In other things to look forward to, the con hotel has a waterslide!

There’s an asterixed note that says the waterpark is for children under 14, but I think it unlikely that anyone will be able to stop me.

Also, this will be my first public appearance in a utilikilt.

Expect plenty of pictures.

In a comment recently, Chris brought up "Dinosaur Comic", one of the web comics that I happen to follow through my google-reader.

Today, I was reading Xkcd, another web comic I follow, and the current comic had me laughing like I was in elementary school and Dan Bradley was licking the velveeta out of the cheese puffs. I mean, it’s a joke circuit diagram. How dorky can you get? A few years ago, if I had looked at a joke circuit diagram, I wouldn’t have understood it at all. But I actually cried a little, I was laughing so hard.

So I don’t know. I just wanted to share that with you. See if it happens to anyone else, or if it’s just me.

I’m one of those people who makes to-do lists. At my current advanced age I have found that I have quite a large number of these lists and a large number of items piling up.

A year ago it got to the point where I put all of my intended tasks on an Open Office spreadsheet, with ten data fields describing every chore. That way I could organize my schedule according to the priority of the task, the resources I would need to complete it, and the amount of time I estimated it would take to complete.

The original list had 86 items, and now there are only 12 of those original items left. All of which are long-term, time-intensive projects that I’ve wanted to complete, but haven’t really wanted to start.

As it is with lists, they tend to grow at about the same rate as they shrink. Over the course of the year I finished 854 tasks for a total of 52,000 minutes or 36 days of work time.

In the major categories of tasks, I spent 333 hours doing normal household chores, like laundry, cleaning, shopping, or returning library books. 58 hours were spent doing odd projects like fixing electrical appliances or building beer-cooling devices.

On the more professional end of things, I spent roughly 191 hours sitting at the computer and actually writing. Another 316 hours were spent in various pursuits intended to facilitate my writing career. Things like editing Space Squid, critiquing other people’s work, podcasting, and updating webpages. Oddly enough, writing this blog wasn’t routinely included on the list because I enjoy it so much I don’t have to remind myself to do it.

Combining the statistics from the list with my 2009 tax returns, I have concluded that writing fiction pays me about 1 cent an hour.

I’m still not certain if the list is a useful organizational tool or the symptom of a much larger problem.

…but you don’t.

I was biking through the Oakwood Cemetery the other day. It’s one of the older Austin cemeteries, dating back to the first half of the 19th century. It’s a good place to see old mausoleums and tombstones that are badly weathered slabs of Texas limestone. I had seen a fox in that area, so I biked through at sunset hoping to see more.

The foxes weren’t out yet, but I did pick up the Oakwood Cemetery walking tour guide. A few of the graveyard residents had names recognizable from local buildings or roads, but mostly the dead of Oakwood Cemetery are the footsoldiers of history, people who live out their lives making their community better, but not scratching the paint job on the national destiny.

One such individual is Peter Heinrich Mansbendel.

He was an immigrant who studied under the master wood carvers of Germany, and then ended up in America. While a part of the art scene in New York, he met and married the daughter of flamboyant Hyde Park developer Monroe Shipe. Then he came to Austin where he practiced his 19th century art. Unfortunately there was only a modest market for decorative architectural wood carving during the Great Depression.

The booklet gave the address of his house in Hyde Park (only a block and a half from his father-in-law’s house at the edge of what had once been the local horse-racing track). I must have biked past this house a hundred times, but I had never noted much about it other than the particularly tasteful landscaping.

Here’s a photo of the house from a French genealogy site.

The photo must have been taken in the 70s, because the trees have veritably enveloped the house since then.

I felt a little awkward about taking surreptitious photos of a stranger’s house, so I didn’t get close enough to highlight the details. But you can get a feeling for the decorative flare that Mansbendel put along the eaves.

There’s some philosophical musings that I want to put here to wrap up the blog entry.

Something about how people can leave their mark on the world, or how there’s all this residue of careers that were hard fought and diligently pursued, but all the signs of those herculean endeavors are lost in the background noise of the present.

Or maybe I want to use this example to make the exact opposite point.

Either way, it may be somehow relevant.

Or possibly completely irrelevant.

I have made it a point to avoid going to movies in the theater unless they are Bollywood. Why? Because if I’m going to pay ten bucks to see a movie, there damn well better be three musical numbers.

Prince, was playing down at the local Austin multiplex, and Julia (my food-frakking deputy) and I had the theater virtually to ourselves.

This is simply an awesome movie. As you can tell by the trailer.

Let’s list some of the reasons why this movie is awesome.

1.) In the credit-sequence dance number, the hero is not only dancing on a floating platform shaped like his initials along with a phalanx of chorus girls, he also shouts out "let’s rock this party tonight," which is the most awesome thing anyone can shout ever in any situation.

2.) The hero is an international jewel thief who has wrist-mounted grapple cables and a skin-tight body suit, two things that make it easier to steal things.

3.) While serenading the love of his life, the hero does wheelies on a racing bike, then does wheelies on the bike while the chick is in his lap, all the while singing.

4.) Did I mention that he was doing wheelies on a military airfield?

5.) In his secret lair, the jewel-thief hero has life-size velvet paintings of Batman and Spider-Man, which is an awesome thing to have in your lair because it reminds you of the awesomeness you can aspire to.

6.) Apparently India has a foreign intelligence service that keeps secret underground headquarters in junkyards in South Africa.

7.) Also, India has invented a technique for extracting memories.

8.) Two words that ought to summarize the ultimate of awesomeness: Hang-glider-mounted machineguns.

The winner (and only entrant) of the taco quiz was Thora. This makes the second quiz run on this blog where the winner not only did not get any answer correct, but did not make any attempt to do so.

However, Thora researched her answers heavily and came up with eight replies that directly referenced my writing. Most of the animals are from the When Monsters Attack middle-grade novel, written by myself and Steve Wilson. Number 3 is from "Prey Play," which was published on The Fifth Di… last year. Number five is from Phlegmatic Planet, published here on RevSF.

Here are the winning taco quiz answers:

Meat 1: Eetee Toucheefeelee – Steaks. But lets face it, they deserve to loose it if they touch you with it.

Meat 2: Senescent Cyclopean Butt

Meat 3: Flinnelope Tongue

Meat 4: Reptilicus Pyrotechnis Anal glands. The only truely edible part.

Meat 5: Sleker Beast cheeks. You can tell by the red tinge from the Spector Spice used to cover the gamey flavor from the horsvark that it tends to eat before capture.

Meat 6: Phlegmaticus Gelatinous- You can’t tell what part. It could be the butt, cheek, tongue or haunch. Maybe it is better not to know.

Meat A: Tyrannoxenos Execelsior – floor scrapings.

Meat B: Dentilus Sapienvore tenticles

The Fabulous Taco Quiz is closed, and soon I shall tell you who is the newly crowned Taco Master.

But first, I will tell you the answers, because I know you are dying to figure it out.

Meat number one: Tripas (ruminant stomach)
St. Johns cart

Tacos Rodriguez on Airport

Meat number two: Lengua (or tongue)
La Canaria on Airport

Taqueria Selene on Sixth

Meat number three: pastor (or marinated pork from a shawarma spindle)
Tacos Selene on Sixth

Restaurant Guadalajara in Elgin

Meat number four: barbacoa (or slow-roasted cheek meat, usually from cows)
Taco-Mex on Manor

Tacos Selene on Sixth

Meat number five: chicharron (or fried pig skin)
St. Johns

Taco-Mex on Manor

Meat number six: carne guisada (or stew meat in gravy, this is why they were of two different colors, the gravies were of different recipes)
La Canaria on Airport

Taco-Mex on Manor

Extra credit part A: huevos y chorizo (a common breakfast taco filling using scrambled eggs and Mexican sausage derived from salivary glands)
La Mexicana on South First

Extra credit part B: buche (it’s unclear if this is pig stomach or pig esophagus, but probably the former – no other cart carries this meat that I know of, so there was only this one example)
Tacos Selene on Sixth