Sotto Voce.

"Qui plume a, guerre a." — Voltaire

Thank You for Being Part of the System

So a couple weeks ago we moved to the very cool city of Annapolis, into a house that had been unoccupied for a couple of years and needed almost all new appliances — the 35-year-old washing machine in the basement was sliding around on its own pool of rusty, watery grease and the lid snapped off when the home inspector tried to open it. (Not to fear, though; the house itself is in great shape, and the only issues were little cosmetic things.) The kitchen came with a nice new electric range and microwave, but no fridge.

No problem, we thought. We’ll just run across town to Trusted American Department Store and get us a new washer-dryer and fridge. We picked TADS in part because it has been spraying the tube with commercials about how it has reinvented itself and is no longer That Stuffy Old Store With The Legendarily Abysmal Customer Service, and we figured that, because in America everyone deserves a second chance, we ought to give it a try.

You can probably figure out where this is going . . .

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From the Sotto Vault: BSG Haikus

Sorry, loyal fans of The Terror From The Other Dimension! (all four of you), the serial will return tomorrow in its regularly scheduled blog slot. I and Mrs. Sotto Voce have been moving our two Sotto Kitties and all our accompanying Sotto Gear from the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore (motto: “I See Drunk People”) to Annapolis. Now that the first round of empty boxes has been hauled to the curb and all the framed artwork is lined up ready for hanging by the chimney with care, I can begin returning to the more leisurely pursuits.

In the meantime, to tide you over, here’s something that I found in a dusty corner of my computer.

Battlestar Galactica Preamble Haikus *

45,197 survivors
Same as last week
Quick, write a battle scene

44,154 survivors
Four story lines
Wanted: more writers

43,320 survivors
43 minutes per week
Two words: deleted scenes

42,642 survivors
Not much of a gene pool
Can controls be flipper-operated?

41,247 survivors
Missed last week’s episode
Now hopelessly confused

40,583 survivors
Looking for Earth
Are we there yet?

There are many copies
And they have a plan.
And the writers have no idea
What it is.

There are many copies.
And they have a plan
To make you watch The Plan.

Twelve Cylon models
Seven are known
Six guns a-shooting
Five go-old rings

Twelve Cylon models
There are many copies
Yet they are all boring

_____

* = Yeah, I know they don’t follow haiku meter. Sosumi.


The Terror from the Other Dimension! – Part Three

The wire services soon picked up the story of the missing men, and it made the inside pages of several big metropolitan dailies, the reporter typed on his battered Remington. But since the event appeared to be an isolated incident, after two days the people quickly lost interest and returned to their box scores and scandals and small-town gossip.

Perhaps those responsible for the mysterious atomic ray felt they were being slighted by the slack press coverage. We’ll never know for sure, but three days later the mystery beam returned — and those responsible for it made sure that, this time, everyone paid attention.

* * *

The wail of the air-raid siren shattered the early-morning calm at Barker Air Force Base. “Scramble! Scramble!” the base loudspeakers blared. “Radar reports large unidentified aircraft inbound at two-three-seven degrees, altitude fifty-two thousand!”

The air base’s ready alert pilots dashed out of their Quonset hut to the adjacent taxiway, where five sleek, silver F-86 Sabre fighter jets stood revving their engines. The ground crews helped the pilots clamber up their ladders and don their oxygen masks, then hopped down as the pilots slid their canopies shut. When the ground crews pulled the chocks from under his wheels, the lead pilot made a circling motion with his right hand and released the brakes. The other planes surged down the taxiway behind him. Then they turned and rocketed into the air in a tight V formation, leaving trails of black smoke behind them.

“Blue Dog Leader to tower,” the lead pilot called as he lowered his shaded visor. “Climbing to intercept.” The planes pitched steeply upwards as they turned on course.

“Roger, Blue Dog Leader,” responded the controller as he stood behind the radar operator in the control tower. “Object is maintaining course and speed. Altitude still five-two-thousand.”

“Blue Dog Leader to tower, I have a visual,” the pilot called again after a few tense seconds. “Object is above and ahead. Appears to be a silver saucer-shaped vehicle. Continuing to climb.”

“Roger,” the tower operator responded, looking nervously at the general and other senior officers who had gathered around the radar scope. Together they watched in silence as the five tightly-grouped dots moved closer to the single large dot near the edge of the screen. With every sweep of the radar line around the scope, the blips drew nearer.

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The Terror from the Other Dimension! – Part Two

By the second Scotch, the reporter’s nerves had begun to settle. His typing began to fall back into the easy staccato rhythm of a veteran, punctuated ever more quickly by the ding! zzzip sound of another line’s end.

The next morning, he typed, the local police found the two abandoned cars out by Kelley Swamp and called in the scientists. What had at first seemed like an ordinary crime scene soon became much more interesting — and ominous.

* * *

Police Chief Creighton removed his visored cap and scratched his head as he stared down at the charred holes in the ground between the abandoned police cruiser and the Plymouth sedan belonging to Carl Peterson, the pharmacist. He bent down and touched the chunks of fused glass that lay at the center of one of them. They were still warm to the touch, which caused Creighton to stand up in alarm.

“These things are still hot, Hank!” he yelled to the burly crime scene photographer, who paused and lowered his Ensign Commando folding camera. “Did you get a shot of these?”

“Not yet, Chief,” said Hank. “I’m still getting shots of the car.” He turned back to the Plymouth and started focusing his camera. A junior police officer, wearing a cap two sizes too large, moved out of the way of the shot, and walked over to Chief Creighton.

“What do you make of it, Chief?”

“Darndest thing I’ve ever seen. Looks like residue from a lightning bolt, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky last night.”

“Gosh, do you think maybe it has something to do with those reports of glowing lights over Kelley Swamp last night? That’s what Johnson and Smith were doing out here, after all.”

“Could be,” the Chief said, putting his cap back on his bald head. “But until we find Johnson and Smith, or Carl Peterson, I guess we won’t know for sure, will we? Why don’t you take your cruiser over to the swamp and see if there’s anything there. Then go back to the McKenna farm.” Creighton jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “See if they saw anything last night. Then I want you to interview everyone who called in a report of the glowing lights. Donaldson back at the station logged all the names.”

“Right chief.” The patrolman saluted clumsily and scooted back to his car.

“Hank, I want you to get these burn marks from every angle,” Creighton called to the photographer.

“Right, Chief.”

As the patrolman’s car turned around and drove off, it passed a black station wagon driving toward the crime scene. MONTEREY COAST ATOMIC RESEARCH LABORATORY was stenciled in white letters along the driver’s side door. The car pulled up behind the Chief’s car.

“Oh, good, it’s the scientists from the atomic lab,” Creighton said as he walked over with another patrolman. The driver door opened and a tall, stern-looking woman with streaks of gray in her shoulder-length black hair got out. She wore a white lab coat over a black suit.

“Professor Madeleine Abbot,” she said, extending her hand to Chief Creighton, who shook it. “I’m glad you called us. Perhaps you can give my assistant a hand?”

Creighton gestured to the patrolman. “Help the professor’s assistant, Wilson.”

Wilson nodded and scurried over to the passenger-side door just as it opened. Wilson came to a sudden stop as two long, elegant legs swung out of the wagon.

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The Terror from the Other Dimension! – Part One

The reporter lit another cigarette with his trembling hands as he stared at the blank sheet of paper he’d scrolled into his battered Remington. He pushed his fedora back to wipe the perspiration from his forehead and took a long drag on the cigarette before stabbing it out alongside the five others he had abandoned. Then with a new sense of resolve, he finally began to type.

Looking back on it now, he began, who could have foreseen that the world-shattering events of the past three weeks would have begun in such a seemingly ordinary way, with two cars found abandoned on a deserted country road in the dead of night?

* * *

“Car Twenty-two Bravo, Car Twenty-two Bravo, come in, over, please.”

Patrolman Johnson picked up the heavy silver microphone from the dashboard of the police cruiser and pushed the transmit button. “Car Twenty-two Bravo here, over.”

“Report your position please, over.”

“Car Twenty-two Bravo, roger. We are on Highway Thirty, just past the old McKenna farm, over.”

“Roger, car Twenty-two Bravo. Investigate report of strange glowing lights in the air over Kelley Swamp, over.”

Patrolman Smith, behind the wheel of the cruiser, groaned. “Fifteen minutes to the end of the night shift. We almost made it home on time tonight. For once.”

Patrolman Johnson chuckled and shrugged. “You know how these farmers are. One of those Air Force jet jobs flies over, and they think they’re seeing monsters from Mars.” He keyed the microphone. “Car Twenty-two Bravo, roger. Will investigate and report. Over and out.”

The patrol car’s headlights picked out twin pools of light on the empty highway until a few seconds later they caught a wooden sign with crudely painted letters. “KELLEY SWAMP.” An arrow pointed to the right.

Johnson pointed. “Turn right here.” Smith turned the wheel and the patrol car bounced onto a rough dirt road.

“I haven’t been out this way since I was a kid,” Smith said as he leaned forward to get a better view of the rutted trail.

“Hey, what’s that?” Johnson pointed to a shiny object glinting at the edge of the headlights.

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Launch (i)Pad

As I’ve said before, when I bought my PowerBook way back in mumble mumble, I was so impressed with how much of a leap it was over my previous iBook, I predicted that the next time I bought a Mac, it wouldn’t have a (physical) keyboard.

Well, it took longer than I wished, but damned if it wasn’t worth the wait. The iPad just absolutely bullseyes my hopes and expectations. And for about $50 less than I was expecting to pay too.

During today’s rollout I kept refreshing between Engaget (Winner of the Best Blog Coverage award), Macworld, CNET (Winner of the Best AV Coverage award for Buzz Out Loud), and a few others. Ars Technica I couldn’t even get to, so heavily was it being hammered. How many times did Twitter lock up? About two seconds after the name was announced, it felt like the whole web crashed. It was so cool.

And it looks like I’ll even be able to get it in time for my long-awaited “2010 Moment.” More on that later.

UPDATE: Wow. I mean, I know that haters gonna hate and all, but still, a lot the carping in the wake of the iPad debut — over a product, need I remind, that hasn’t even yet shipped and for which developers have yet to write anything to play to its strengths or expose its weaknesses — is just downright surreal:

  • People who have concluded that, even though no single device can save publishing as we know it, it isn’t going to single-handedly save Publishing As We Know It . Therefore it will fail.
  • People who have concluded that, even though the iPad isn’t aimed at them, they’re not going to buy one. Therefore it will fail.
  • People who have concluded that, even though the iPad isn’t a computer, it’s not a computer. Therefore it will fail.
  • People who have concluded that, even though the App Store has been a bottomless gold rush, no one wants DRM content. Therefore it will fail.
  • People who have concluded that, even though Apple invents products that define new markets, it doesn’t fit into a defined market. Therefore it will fail.
  • People who have concluded that, because they can’t imagine how they would use it, no one will imagine how to use it. Therefore it will fail.

But I think that my favorite reaction is this one: people who are disappointed because the iPad meets their expectations.

That’s me walking out of the room, just shaking my head.

UPDATE II: Just realized that the iPad will be debuting almost to the year after the Kindle 2, the “non-starter” that has managed to non-start its way to record profits for Amazon. Here’s hoping that the iPad is as big a failure for Apple.

My comment in that post, about how people often react to shiny new gizmos, is apropos here. The iPad, too, is like the moon — some people just feel compelled to howl at it, pray to it, or blame stuff on it. Whaddya gonna do.


The Good, the Perfect, and the Ugly

That does it. I’ve finally had it up to here with the perfect is the enemy of the good as an excuse for crappy writing.

If it is true that the perfect is the enemy of the good, then I declare my allegiance to the perfect, and take the good for my enemy as well. Let me stand shoulder to shoulder with the perfect as it does battle with the good. Let me steal into the tent of the good late at night and slay it where it sleeps.

For while the good might be an easy friend to make, it is an unreliable ally, for it will always melt away at the first sign of challenge. The perfect is surely harder to befriend, but it will prove to be not only a steadfastly loyal partner but also an enlightened teacher, always encouraging friends and students to overcome obstacles, seek creative options, and respond, not simply react, to circumstances.

And if I shall fall while fighting alongside the perfect, let them never dare say that I fought for a lost cause. Let them instead know that I fought for the noblest cause of all — the drive to improve, the impulse to reach higher, the fundamental urge to aspire.

Those who would fain invoke one’s inevitable failure to achieve perfection as an excuse for never trying to attain it, I say unto you, o band of brothers, that such men shall never truly drink richly from the fountain of life.

And that’s just from reading blogs. Don’t get me started on discussion forums.


The Last Restaurant Review

This shall be my last Year in Review article for Restaurant World, as the magazine stops its presses forever. With the closing of the last restaurant in the world — a small mom-and-pop pizza joint in Newark — there’s no need for restaurant reviewers anymore. Oh, sure, we could have broadened our appeal to cover Dumpster Diving, but there’s no integrity in that. So rather than compromise, we’re selling off the assets to buy one last homemade gourmet meal for the crew, and then all go our separate ways, remembering the glory days with warm nostalgic brandy glaze of fondness.

Looking back on The Decade That Was with 20/20 hindsight, it seems so self-evident now that the demise of brick-and-mortar restaurants was foredoomed by the arrival of the soup kitchens. The restaurants initially sneered at these small, slick fly-by-night operations that sprang up everywhere in the wake of the economic meltdown; after all, homeless people didn’t even know how to make reservations. What possible threat could they be to well-established five-star houses of epicure? If only we had realized that we were looking at a revolution.

For as unemployment rose, the soup kitchens rebranded themselves to appeal to the young hip crowd. Ambient music and free wifi complemented the traditional free-food offerings, and suddenly a generation of young people were taking to the streets chanting “Food Wants to Be Free” and extolling the unstoppable power of the handout economy. The chill that went through the restaurant boardrooms could have congealed a mint jelly. Overnight, restaurants — with their large staffs of professional cooks, knowledgeable wait staff, and polite cloakroom attendants — looked like doddering dinosaurs from a bygone era.

Trying desperately to capitalize on the soup kitchen trend in order to recoup some of its plunging revenue, the restaurant industry opened up its own line of soup kitchens around the country, in direct competition with the upstarts. And how people did flock to them! Publications like Restaurant World declared a new Golden Era of Restaurants as the number of visits rose to all-time highs. All the quality food and service of expensive restaurants and none of the costs? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, of course the idea was that, once people got a taste of all that delicious free food at the soup kitchen, they’d be willing to pay for it by going to the restaurants down the street. And advertisers promised them even more money by offering to install donation boxes in restaurant foyers, so that patrons could drop in a dime or a quarter and get a free advertisement to read while they were waiting to be seated.

The strategy smacked of genius and the restaurant owners awaited the gold rush, as the lines outside the restaurants’ soup kitchens stretched for blocks and the so-called “charity” soup kitchens (and their uncouth clientele) disappeared forever. The bean counters were delighted with these numbers, and predicted that the next quarter would finally turn a profit.

But for some reason, that promised next quarter never came. In order to meet the demand for free quality food, the restaurants shipped ever more of their prime rib, their lobsters thermidor, and their caviar to the soup kitchens, but gradually ran out of money to buy more. World-class chefs were no longer willing to work for soup-kitchen stock (the paper variety at first, then eventually the broth), especially after their pensions were raided by the restaurants in order to — yes — buy more food.

Desperate to find out what had gone wrong, the restaurant industry commissioned polls, surveys, and focus groups to plumb the mystery of the consumer mind. They were stunned by the results. Almost everyone surveyed, it turned out, preferred not to pay for food if they didn’t have to. Food, the restaurants finally had to admit, really did want to be free.

From then on, Restaurant World magazine read like a death watch on the industry — hundreds, then thousands, of restaurant closures a week, shutting down their once-popular soup kitchens in their wake. Some of the laid-off waiters tried to keep their old employers’ soup kitchens open, but they quickly exhausted the stockpiles of ramen and rice that they had hoped would tide them over while waiting on foundation grants so they could once again buy steak and Chilean sea bass.

In the meantime, desperate to find new sources of free food to replace those that had disappeared, city people turned to ever more home-grown methods. Many fled to farms and ranches in search of free meals, only to learn that making food is a long, complicated, and dirt-prone process. The photo of the gaunt young hipster following a cow around with a fork and knife still haunts us all — worthy of a Pulitzer, if they were still giving out Pulitzers.

So finally, overwhelmed by the gloom of the Last Decade of Restaurants, and plagued by a growling stomach, I must close out my last column in this final issue of this esteemed publication. I take with me nothing but fond memories, and this drum of newsprint, which I can probably boil down into a nice stew.