The following is a letter recently found at Valley Forge: October 29 Dear Tuesday Night - Tonight we have made camp here at Valley Forge. Scenic enough, but I am concerned. General Washington has said this is a temporary camp. I think otherwise. I ate something that was called steak this evening. Steak of what is a better question. General Washington’s horse hasn’t been seen recently. He doesn’t seem the man to eat his own horse, but more the kind to serve it to his men. There is a large shopping complex here. It is enormous. It even has a Brooks Brothers. I am cold. But thankfully, I have no tentmate. I don’t expect this assignment to be very hard, just annoying. But then again, that is a great deal of warfare… doing annoying things, waiting, and then breaking your back to make it to the next day. Until tomorrow, Okay, so they didn’t really find that letter here at Valley Forge. But I am here. Actually, I’m in King of Prussia next to the mall. Joy! I’m here on an emergency trip. I have been cleared to enter a highly restricted installation. Joy! So I get to spend Halloween with spooks near a shopping mall. (Spooks being the affectionate name for people who work in the intelligence arena.) This ought to be fun.

They’re back. Yes, it’s true. I just saw an ad for Shrinky Dinks. There have been two major innovations in shrinky dink technology: downloadable templates and a shrinky dink crucible. Yes, it seems that Shrinky Dinks (http://www.shrinkydinks.com) have found the web. It also appears that Shrinky Dinks are shipping with a Skippy-esque Eaz-e-Bake Oven, some specialize space heater that cooks the shrinky dinks. (If there is a porn censor on your office’s email system, there’s a good chance that this is going to get flagged. Just for good measure: shrinky dinks, shrinky dinks, shrinky dinks.) Now I always thought that Shrink Dinks were just slightly less toxis than a gas cloud of Bhopal, but I could be wrong… In other news, Ken made this dessert recently, http://foodtv.com/foodtv/recipe/0,6255,15186,00.html . It totally rocks and is totally brainless to make. I suggest you scrap that diet for these chocolate lava muffins.

First, the cooking tips. Well, actually, just a tip, singular. Do not deglaze a pan in which something has been cooking with whole pepper corns. Joe and I were cooking dinner on saturday. (Lamb top round… yummy.) Joe was dealing with the sauce (Bordellos) which used red wine to deglaze the pan where the lamb was searing. The lamb had whole pepper corns on it. Lamb is out of the pan. Wine is poured into the pan to deglaze… and then we come under fire. Literally, the pepper corns exploded. Remember when you were a kid a had a bonfire on the beach? Remember burning that cool seaweed, you know, the kind with the little poppers that pop when you burn them. Take that popper popping noise, make it louder, and then pack a bit of explosives in the seaweed and then you begin to approximate what was going on in the kitchen of Hotel Glazer. These little buggers pack quite a punch. To the point that they spread wine all over the kitchen, and I do mean all over. The wall where my phone is, looks like someone was shot. The ceiling (which is 10 feet from the floor and a good 6 feet from the overn) was not spared. The cabinets were not spared. But amazingly, Joe and I walked away spot free. I happen to discover, during the cleanup phase, that most of the walls in my house are painted with flat paint, which doesn’t repel red wine stains well. Second, the paranoid ponderings. There are two pieces of technology on our horizon that are a bit scary. And if they are merged, they are terrifying. Location information. Your cellphone reports your location to the 911 switch board when you call. Well, it is supposed to, according to the FCC. Phase one, the cellphone reports what cell it is from. Phase two, more exact location info… think GPS. In Europe, location information is just beginning to be tapped in major way. Imagine getting an SMS from a friend when they look at their phone and discover you are around the corner. Think, AIM in the real world… people aren’t online, they are near-by. A more important application, besides chat, is commerce. Imagine that all your shopping preferences, your cookies from all your browsers, walked around with you. Now when you walk near a Gap, you get a digital ad for 50% the boxers you really like. You walk in, beam a little data to the cash register, and out you walk with a new pair (why are they always called a pair, even when there is one of them) boxers having just made a micropayment which will show up on your phone bill. There are two major reasons why location information won’t be a major issue for a while. First, because of the telcos backwater technology and competing implementations, ubiquitous location data won?t be readily available for a while. Second, there are people in the government making sure that our privacy is protected… thank you Dean. The second hunk of technology is nothing new. It’s a database. It’s a huge database that stores demographic info about each of us. It is Larry Ellison’s suggested National ID database, used to issue National ID Cards. Your identity in a nice neat row in a database. Your family is linked to you. Your friends are linked to you. This information is extremely valuable. Scared yet… you ought to be. Now I know that databases like this exist already. For example, I just refinanced my mortgage. I was at my banker’s office today. He got a new credit report on me in thirty seconds. Thirty seconds to gather some rather interesting info about me. On a Sunday no less. Will this become a major issue in the future. Maybe, but I definitely bet that Larry and Oracle won’t be building the database. Oh, what a relief, a private company won’t be in charge of this data… it will be the government, and we trust the government… right?! Let’s merge these two little gremlins together. What do we get? My phone, with all my shopping habits, buddy lists, and such is enabled by a National ID. Now my identity and my location start to merge. Identity theft happens all the time… but now the threat is more real that ever. But let’s add a new twist, theft of location. I fool the telco networks into thinking I am someone who I am not and somewhere where I am not. I think I will stick to leaving the phone at home, turned off, encased in a lead box.

Even with my high distrust of organized religion and my disgust at people who practice a religion but cannot explain to you what the religion is about, I still look forward to Yom Kippur. I like fasting. I need atoning, and lots of it. I think that publicly admitting your wrongs is a good thing. “We lie, we cheat, we steal…” However, there are some concerns to Yom Kippur. Hunger and hunger management are primary. From sundown to sundown, you can’t eat or drink. (I believe the deep sniffing is allowed but that only works against you.) So what’s a person to do? 24 hours, no grub. Add to this that you have to eat before sunset of the first night and then get to services, where you stand and stand and stand. (That actually might be the biggest difference between Jews and Catholics. Jews stand; Catholics kneel.) You end up eating at 5 or so… when you are not hungry. I have the solution. It needs a little tuning but the basic idea is sound. Simply, you eat one pound of something the first night. I ate about a pound of pasta. It also helps if you eat it really quickly to hoodwink your stomach. A stomach will realize if you try to force feed it. You have about a seven minute window in which you can eat as much as a whale and after that the stomach catches on to what you are doing and makes you stop eating. But in those precious seven minutes, you must eat a pound of something. The next day… no food. No nothing. It’s best not to do anything other than dwell on the screwy things you did the year before and pledging to do better the next year. Face it, fasting goes hand in hand with atoning. And then, after services on the second night… that’s right, you eat a pound of something else. I ate a pound of pepperoni, black olive, and mushroom pizza. (Nothing like starting out a whole new year in which to sin by breaking the Kosher rules and eating pork at home. But then again, I didn’t use a plate, which was the loophole my dad and I leveraged back home.) Then, after consuming a pound of pizza, I immediately, went to bed. That is the part of the diet that needs a bit of tuning. Moral of the story: If you need to go without food for 24 hours, be sure to eat a pound of something before and after you fast.

L’shana tova. May we all be inscribed in the book of life. First off, birthday wishes to Fitz who is headed to SF. He will be spending his birthday with Tuesday Night West. The nice part about Tuesday West is that they are simul-cast with a three hour delay. So Tuesday West does a happy hour while we go out late. Supposedly, they are going to call Toledo… something to look forward to. Second, I have put new photos up on tuesdaynight.org. Go to the Overseen section and see what’s there. I haven’t scanned the deep fried turkey pictures yet, so stay tuned. Other than that, I’ll see you Tuesday at Toledo. i PS I just wrote the following piece. Lemmie know what you think. So, Tuesday morning I woke among evil. It’s happened before and I’m sure it will happen again. But like I said, I woke among evil. I could tell. It wasn’t the dull throbbing behind my eyes. It wasn’t really the ache in my gut that tipped me off. It was the smell. There is no smell quite like a Grey-side doctor’s office. “Awake,” asked the doctor as I wheezed into consciousness. “No.” “Good,” he responded putting down the newspaper, “I hate to lose a fare.” “Just meat and money to you?” I asked. “Yup. Just a fare.” I had paid off my place. Covered my debts. And had found myself will nothing particularly to do. Idle hands. Idle hands. “You’re lucky.” It certainly did not feel lucky. I’ve been shot before. You never feel lucky waking up from being shot. You feel like shit. Simply, like shit. And I, apparently, had been shot and was now waking up. Like shit. I coughed. “Yup, very lucky,” the doctor continued, “I don’t get it. Ever time you end up here it’s a frickin’ miracle. Like your vital organs just hop out of the way when a bullet hits you. Maybe you’re made of jello or a nasty fart that won’t go away. Someone somewhere must love you.” I coughed. Oddly, I didn’t feel to talkative. “Yup, no hydrostatic shock. No bone or organ damage. A slight tear in the upper intestine, but nothing major. Damn lucky.” I coughed again. It’s odd feeling like your insides are on fire. I’ve felt that way before. It really hurts, but after a time… after a time you get used to it. “Am I covered?” I asked. I wondered if my employers had extended my medical coverage. In the company I keep, health benefits were at a minimum. There was slight laugh from the door to the room. A gaunt figure leaned like the dirty part of a shadow there. “Covered?” I asked again. Slim at the door nodded his head. I could barely make it out as I tried to hold my head up. Seeing his nod, I put my head back on the pillow I assumed to be both stained and threadbare. I chucked as best I could with fireguts and passed out. It was Tuesday afternoon when I awoke. Threw up a bit of blood. Sat up, found my shoes, and checked out. It must have taken me a half an hour to put on my shoes. Checking out was a bit easier once I found how to stand. It always amazes me how fast people forget how to stand, how to walk. I’ve been doing it for a while and I still have trouble remembering some days. I limped past the river, staying on the south side. I smelt like the doctor’s pillow. Found a rickshaw near 50th and South River. Slumped in and off we went. Amazing the doctor hadn’t gone through my coat; I still had some cred on me, enough to go home, stop at a liquor store on the way, get a bottle of something that would probably eat its way out of the hole that recently developed in my gut, and tip the kid running his heart out in front of me. As I lay on my silk sheets, I wondered. About nothing in particular. The usual before-bed and shot thoughts that one has. I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a while. Need to pay paperboy. Who won the game last night? The usual. So Tuesday I awoke among evil. Maybe Wednesday I’ll wake up on the beach.

We are numb. We are hollow with grief and panic and a fear that has not been seen in this country in a long long time. We get goosebumps when we hear a survivor’s tale, or learn that a friend of a friend was late to work and thus not in the World Trade Center when this all happened. The Internet is full of emails asking people to check in, websites (www.helping.org) collecting money for victims, and words of peace. I am so worried that this is going to get worse. That the gloves are off, the brass-knuckles are on, and that the US won’t stop until it is too late. Is there a “Them” in this war? In World War II, it was simple: Hitler was Them. Mussolini was Them. Hirohito was Them. And now? Osam bin Laden is Them?… but there is no real army to fight against; there is no real installation to fight for and win; there are no beaches to land on. Them is Hydra: cut off a head and a new one grows back stronger than ever. Them is an army of ready-made martyrs willing to trade each of their lives for the lives of American citizens. I have spent the last few days attempting to lead a normal life. Calls to friends. Drinks with guests. Laughing at jokes. But it all still feels so wrong. We tried deep fried turkey therapy last night. The turkey was good… Fitz was right: deep frying a turkey is a great idea. Skippy, Kwame, Joe and I made a flag… that’s the real way to do it. But then we saw planes flying overhead, and at least to me, felt wrong, felt dangerous. I am still unsettled. So far as I have heard everyone has checked in okay. There are two and three degrees of separation people that are unaccounted for, but all in all, I feel lucky. There is no difference, in my mind, between what Robertson and Falwell said about the liberal media, homosexuals, and pro-choicers causing “God” to punish us than bin Laden saying that America caused the wrath of Allah to befall it. Roberston and Falwell are treasons snakes, and the poisonous vemon that they spew belongs nowhere in this world. This kind of institutional hatred makes Falwell and Roberston compatriots of bin Laden. It just fuels my deep distrust of organized religion even further. The following is an exerpt from Bruce Schneier’s monthly computer security email called the Crypto-Gram. I believe it neatly sums up a lot of the fears I have.

All - So far as I can tell, everyone is safe and sound. Obviously, there’s no Toledo tonight. Be safe.

You never what you’ll hear at Toledo Lounge. Simple as that. So I was sitting at the bar, with my new camera, playing around, taking pictures, carrying on. At any rate, a guy comes up to me and starts talking about the camera and if I am a photographer. Simple, idle banter. And then he asks me if I take people’s pictures… okay this getting a little odd, but nothing too bad. He asks me for a card, which I don’t have on me. He says he’ll be by tomorrow and I can give him a card then. He says that he has women who will pay me to take their picture… this gets stranger. I’m not really sure if I want give him my card… call me crazy. At any rate, I am in the midst of training. The CEO, the two founders, and a host of other corporate types are here brainwashing us. So much fun. The long and the short of it is that I am unsure whether I will be at Toledo tomorrow.

So a good number of Tuesdaynighters are in Rome right now. That’s right… it’s time once again for Oracle Club Excellence. Kinda strange. Oracle employees (or at least, me) use Clubs as a measure of time. It has been almost a year since I worked for the Big O… time flies. At any rate, there is at least four List members running about Rome right now. I think the best song I can think of about Rome is “When I paint my Masterprice” by Bob Dylan and performed by The Band. Here are the relevant verses: Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble, Ancient footprints are everywhere. You can almost think that you’re seein’ double On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs. Got to hurry on back to my hotel room, Where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece. She promised that she’d be right there with me When I paint my masterpiece. Oh, the hours I’ve spent inside the Coliseum, Dodging lions and wastin’ time. Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see ’em, Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb. Train wheels runnin’ through the back of my memory, When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese. Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody When I paint my masterpiece. I think it is a damned fine song. I am still trudging through Bowling Alone. The book is amazing. I want to share a quote from it which is actually attributed to T.S. Elliot: “It [television] is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.” Yes, apparently TV is one of the top causes of the atrophying social capital in this country. In fact, with the increasing number of channels with increasingly targeted content, TV serves the individual and not society as a whole. TV can keep us isolated, and not bring us together. I’m back from Montgomery. I am a little scared of that place. For instance, the locals refer to the town either as Monkeytown or The Gump. Yikes! Needless to say, Ken and I found a decent place to eat and drink: The Olive Room. We almost spent more there for dinner for two than one of us did on a hotel room for three days. Lodging is cheap… finding somewhere to eat is impossible. Well, that’s no really true. If you want to eat big ole cheesebuggas or waffles, you can find hundreds of places. If you want to eat something that might, just might, be fresh… you have a long search ahead of you.

That was a quote from one of the waitresses in The Smokehouse in Pine Apple, AL where I just finished dinner. I’d like to take this opportunity to quote Bugs Bunny when he gets stranded on the moon after defeating Marvin the Martian, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!!!” Because of “mistake” made by my travel agent, Ken and I, are staying 40 some miles south of Montgomery. To compound matters, because of an Air Force floorshow, there are no hotel rooms in the entire area, which means that we have to stay in the sticks. And even more fun, Ken and I have a white covertable Mustang. Nothing like a damned ferinner (say it out loud and you’ll figure out what it is) and a Jewboy with a goatee driving through the Deep frickin’ South! By the way, the Montgomery Airport and Swimmin’ Hole does not exactly inspire confidence. It is a glorified high school gym with a small tower. ARG! I, presently, am here (http://www.mapquest.com/cgi-bin/ia_find?link=btwn%2Ftwn-map_results&random=565&event=find_search&SNVData=&address=&city=Greenville&State=AL&Zip=&Find+Map.x=18&Find+Map.y=9) I think that the aerial photo is a lot better (http://www.mapquest.com/cgi-bin/ia_find?link=btwn/twn-map_results&aerial_photo_tab.x=1&aphoto=1&uid=uexehbq8m105w6od:zwh01g5ar&SNVData=3mad3-g.fy%28a2g1fr_%29rz09zy%3bah7-%3d%3a%16%18JDLBK%12%13M%3d%17%13_%3dGG_luylhw%28.5yzn0r%28l%241w-u.wf7%3bxcx5sf7.grfe%7cs&pcat=) Thankfully… wait, there is nothing to be thankful about on this trip.