Bear Scare

I spent most of June in and around Ouray, Colorado. I was there in 2008, also for almost a month, and thought it was far too short. This time, I had to devote a fair amount of time to work, and so the sense that I left Colorado too soon is even stronger now. How I’d love just one more day to hike, or see one more cousin I didn’t get to see, or ride the gondola in Telluride, or soak in the local hot springs, or just veg in a pristine mountain paradise for another day.

Or see some bears-a great experience, now that it's over. Last time, I showed a picture of the Taylor job bear. This bold black bear showed up a tone of my dad’s jobs. You can see pictures of him in my October 2008 entry. The bear caused many construction workers severe psychological trauma, preventing them from working for the rest of the day. Apparently, the trauma was such that they required immediate and proactive destressing, which is one possible explanation for why Dad found them a few hours later in the town pub.

It’s a cute story. I could sour it with the ending. Just like the backstory to the writing of Clapton’s „Wonderful Tonight“ ruins the song, so too would the above story be ruined by two facts. First, that bear already had 2 eartags, meaning he was a „bad bear.“ This is indeed the official technical term for a bear who unlearned fear of humans, and poked around someone’s house or otherwise scared a human enough to call the appropriate authorities. The first time, they stun the bear, put a tag on his ear, then move him somewhere else. Same thing the second time. As long as he does not already have 2 eartags, he gets another chance. Otherwise, like 99% of disagreements between bears and men, the lack of lawyers within the bear community leads to a resolution most bears would find biased.

Of course, that bear was in human territory. It could be a different encounter entirely. If, for example, your neck is in their neck of the woods. So it was as I was hiking up Hayden Trail on a sunny morning, armed only with Wally the Walking stick, alone. I knew to look for bears and mountain lions, and usually did, although all I ever saw before were signs left by their paws and anuses. Unfortunately, I was at just that moment dreaming happily about a brilliant and beautiful woman at UCSD who I thought (quite mistakenly) was keen on me. It would have been a magnificently ironic time to get mauled by a bear, and fittingly enough, there was suddenly one about 40 feet away. Adult black bear. So this snapped me out of the clouds right quick, and I started backing up slowly, trying to avoid eye contact, which is difficult because IT IS A REAL FUCKING LIVE BEAR and the dew on the adjacent aspen was somewhat less absorbing than it was a minute ago. I briefly reviewed my combat options and most likely outcomes. It was a very different experience when tussling with, say, a duck or badger.

Bare hands: Perhaps throw cell phone for distraction. Try to gouge eye. Offending arm bitten off, then swatted with nearest paw, breaking my other arm that I tried to use as a shield. Try to ignore pain from bloody stumps and develop new options for unarmed combat until swipe from other paw splinters rib cage through internal organs.

With walking stick, Baseball bat style swat: Swing stick in wide arc to my right side, aiming for head. Miss because bear is lunging forward to position teeth to stomach. As bear's momentum is greater, fall backward, jiggling the section of my torso in his mouth.

With walking stick, impaling thrust: Try for direct thrust to eye. Maybe also try to impale paw or neck. (Bonus feature: holding the stick makes it much harder for him to bite my arm off.) Move in for the thrust. Offending arm badly raked, causing stick droppage. Subsequent rake from bear’s other paw hits ear and greatly expands Sylvan fissure.

Improvise new weapon: No rocks; sticks inferior to my walking stick; trees too big. While trying to uproot tree anyway, bear tackles from behind and bites through head before hitting the ground.

Climb tree: If unlucky, fail to climb high enough to escape jaws. Feel jaws biting through nearest leg and pulling me down for face eating. If lucky, get high enough that paws are needed to pull me down for the same outcome.

Flee: Would bear's first swipe tear off leg completely below the knee, or leave some tissue attached through knee skin? This might slightly affect my height when jaws avulse medulla.

Call in support: Remove cellphone from pocket. Open it. Dial the 9 of 911 before bear bites through offending hand and cellphone. Wave bloody stump in the air and yell, and/or try to spell „help“ in blood on the ground. While jumping, bear disembowels with mighty swipe. Land in own intestines.

Blogmock: Warn bear of damage done to ducks, badgers, monkeys, and other (smaller) beasts by mockery in previous blog entries. Promise a great story if he simply runs away. Bear charges, tackles, then goes for the throat. Die musing about bear eating my neck in his neck of the woods. Wit left unwritten. Bear unsympathetic.

Drop to knees and pray to Jesus: I am proud to say, quite honestly, I never seriously considered this one. Ironically, since one response to a bear is to play dead, this might be a good tactic. Other men might have had their lives changed, thanking Him forever for His mercy.

So there was my brief burst of high speed cognition, a phenomenon that continues to fascinate me more and more. It sure does seem that you think more quickly, decisively, thoroughly, and memorably in crisis. And this is hard to study, since you cannot really deliberately inflict real stress on research subjects. But there it was, a lot of thinking in well under a second. It was not enough time to really react emotionally to possibly imminent death, just enough to try to avoid it through that particular mechanism. I had said many times, before hiking, that getting mauled by a bear would be a great way to go. I since became a renewed fan of dying asleep in a bed.

And that outcome may happen, cause the bear had a different encounter strategy. He saw me, looked at me for a very long fraction of a second, and ran away loudly. I wondered what the flight or flight surge was like for him. Judging by the outcome, he had it all wrong. Why run from me? I’m not the same as the guy that blew away his brother. I had no real weapon, no protective SUV, no possibility of help, not even an attack chopper. Now don’t get me wrong, I thought that very quietly at the time. I’ll go with a bluff even if I didn’t plan it. I scared away a black bear. Don’t fuck with me.

After that, I stood there and pondered my next move. Unfortunately, the bear ran ahead. So, if I continued on the trail, I might run in to him. I eventually figured, he seemed really eager to avoid me before, and it’s too early in the hike to turn around. So I plugged on. There I had another experience in cognition. I walked up the path for a while, felt tired, and stopped. Went again, and stopped way too early. It genuinely confused me. I knew what kind of hiking shape I was in and how much I would take. Then I realized, my heartbeat was throwing off my own evaluation of fatigue. My heart wasn’t beating cuz I needed a rest. Ignore it. Three hours later, I was well above the treeline being hailed on, and thought that I should have turned around. And then, a couple hours after that, I got the following picture of Red Mountain reflected in Crystal Lake.




I put my other hiking pictures on my Facebook page, but this one is not only pretty, but has a story to go with it.

Only a week later, I was hiking the Weehauken trail with my parents. I was in front, and spotted a bear about 80 feet away. While genetically a black bear, this one was brown. And the same thing as before; I spotted him before he saw me, and once he saw me, he ran away. Dad saw him too. Mom did not, and asked if the three of us could have beaten him. No, we said. But we have sticks, she said. No, we said.

A bottle in front of me

Been a busy few weeks. 2 weeks ago, I was hiking the eastern Alps. We hiked the mountain that separates the main part of Graz from the village where our governator was born. As I mentioned, Ahnold was hugely popular in Graz after he became California governor. They renamed the local stadium Scwarzenegger stadium and got a stamp with him on it. Then, he did not commute the death penalty in Cali, so his mug graces so stamps, and the stadium is now called UPC Arena. I mentioned this fact to my buddies in San Diego, and the fact that Grazers seem to think that Californians also care about that. No. Grazers can rest assured that their homeboy is unpopular among my homies, with approval ratings in the 30s. But it's primarily because of the budget. "All politics is local."

While seeing my friends in SD was exciting, the most suspenseful part was opening my suitcase to see how many bottles made it. All of them! So pumpkinseed oil, schnapps, and other bottled goods made it in to the gift baskets that I gave David and Adrienne at their wedding, which was a highly successful event.







The only real problem with the wedding is that the ol' gang was only together for a few days. Would have been great to see them more, and we probably won't get together again until the next wedding. As you can see in two of the above photos, we tried to get Eli drunk so maybe he would hit on Carl (this is legal in some states, though not California). Instead, he got all silly with the groom. I shoulda got Carl drunk too, and somehow got them in the same room. Maybe some soft music.

A few days later, I was preparing to fly back to Austria for June. I tried, hard, many times, to get permission to stay in the states between the wedding and my summer class, but no luck. And this is not unreasonable of my bosses; if employed by TU Graz, it's fair enough to expect me to actually be in Graz. I was ready to go back. I had a plane ticket and apartment ready in Graz. Then, unexpectedly, one of my bosses said I could stay in the US. Very nice of her, and will not be forgotten.

And so it is quite a surprise that I am now here in Ouray, Colorado, in the western slope of the Rockies, looking out the window at Twin Peaks, a towering 10,800 foot team that I hiked last time I was here and soon will again, along with other good hiking trails:

http://ouraytrails.org/

I still have a lot of work to do too, but that can be done in evenings. I finished a paper on Monday and am working on a few more, which will keep my busy, but nothing over my head. I also hit the Ouray Hot Springs, which is as relaxing as always, and saw most of the family at Panny's Pizza yesterday. Good trip so far. Next week, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic play with Rusted Root in Telluride, which I will see. I saw Rusted Root in San Diego once; worth it. The Telluride Bluegrass Festival will be the weekend of June 18, which should be fun. Sure was a hoot last time.

Sam the cat seems delighted to have a new human to pet him and periodically give him cream. I still owe Sam for his assist last time he was here, since I think he played a critical role in my adventure hand-feeding a buck, so his last few days have been rich with cream and ground beef and facials. I TA'd a massage class at UCSD for 2 years; cats and dogs like pretty much the same moves. However, Sam is training me a bit too well. I do not mind being outsmarted by pussy, this is de rigeur for the heterosexual male. But Sam has me on such a simple routine: rub against me, meow, and then move expectantly toward the fridge. He fails to grasp a humorous side effect, which is that this operant conditioning has ultimately confused him with a classical conditioning side effect. Now, whenever I open the fridge, he expects cream just like a salivating dog. So when I went there for yogurt, then closed the door, he looked betrayed. I told him that I was not teasing him, but he doesn't speak the same language. I realized a parallel to another situation I am currently in. You would think this could be easily resolved, since we both speak English, but of course this leads to the dangerous illusion that men and women speak the same language. There was thus no way to convey to Sam that he was misinterpreting cues, aside from what psychologists call extinction, meaning if he gets denied long enough, he'll move on. The parallel fails in that Sam has no other source of cream, but he has reasonable alternatives, since he thinks that mice and small birds taste good. This is also different from me, and indeed most non-French humans.

"The British and Americans are a people separated by a common language."
-- paraphrasing GB Shaw, paraphrasing Wilde, who himself was loosely paraphrasing Shakespeare. The quote was used in identical or similar form by Dylan Thomas, Winston Churchill, and George S. Patton

"Men and women are a people separated by a common language."
--Me, paraphrasing the above. (translation for other species and genders not available)

Grand New Party

There has been a lot of buzz about the death of the Republican party. Yesterday, CNN had an interview with Carville titled:

GOP's effort to save itself
Can it happen in less than 40 years?

The story stemmed from Carville's book about the topic. To some extent, the CNN liberal exhuberance can be forgiven given the interviewee. But still, this is just too much. The Poe pendulum swings back and forth. The Dems looked like they were dying in 1980 and 2000 right after the Reagan and Bush elections, with all the same hallmarks, including defecting congressmen. It is too bad the same sensationalism keeps working.

Another Grand New Party will begin in only a couple days, over 7000 miles away, that being the bachelor party of my old friend David Leland. As best man, I had to organize it, which was good fun. It's a telling reflection of gender differences that grooms only choose one special friend, while women have a whole gaggle of bridesmaids.

My travel adventure, which begins at 6 AM (less than 6 hours away), is also new in that it is a record for the most bottles full of liquid I ever tried to transport. I have about 15 bottles full of pumpkinseed oil and schnapps - none in the same bottle, mind you, though it would make a potent salad dressing or a unique cocktail. I have only one suitcase. So it was a unique packing adventure; I have almost no clothes that do not surround bottles and are then encased in plastic bags for extra protection. We find out tomorrow evening (CA time) whether I pushed too far.

We all know the usual rules for gift selection. Gifts should be of high quality (or very convincing fakes), well suited to the recipient, unique or at least hard to find, and not a gift you already received, unless you can lie and avoid contact between the receiver and the original giver. It seems good to give something that lasts forever, but then, it has to be really useful or pretty or it's clogging your host's space, and then ends up in the trash or buried in storage, and thus doesn't really last that long at all. My 250 euros of gifts reflect two high priorities: novelty and transportability. Pumpkinseed oil is highly unique in California. Even my parents, who went to 76 countries, never had it. It is appealing to many recipients, although not permanent and not especially easy to transport. I am not sufficiently expert to tell for sure what is good, but relied heavily on my labmates' advice. Indeed, their recommendations were much more expensive than store-bought pumpkinseed oil. This could mean a lot of things, including I've been too obnoxious around the lab, or they get kickbacks, or they are also easily fooled by pretty bottles at obscure farmers' markets. Indeed, one of them farmer-salesmen sure did look a lot like Clemens. I'll move on. Austrian schnapps is technically also highly unique, but it probably not so different from an American equivalent, so I got fewer bottles. Mainly, I thought it more appropriate for the bachelor party, since shots of pumpkinseed oil don't get you drunk. Although I'm sure Gerv has tried. Then I got a bunch of different types of Austrian chocolate. Again, easy to find a comparable product in the US, but very easy to transport, and everyone loves them. And come to think of it, I never saw anything quite like the Mozart balls in America, which makes sense; he never traveled to the US, and he could only grow another pair so often. And I got a few other gifts to offset any drunken faux pas I might commit.

But for now, it's Bedtime for Bonzo, one of the more entertaining Reagan movies that (unlike my last blog entry) justified the claim that chimp fights get thousands of viewers.

Blogging for Squalor

I spent part of last week in Barcelona doing as little as possible. This took some adjusting. At first, I assiduously checked email and tried to keep up on work. Fortunately, I went to Barcelona largely to meet up with a couple American friends, and Bill quickly pointed out that I don't actually have to work when I am vacationing.

I also had to readjust to the comical rudeness of most Spaniards. Austrians are extremely formal and polite, and act as if people in the street are pedestrians with right of way. Spaniards absolutely never say please or thank you (even in their native language) and view streetwalkers as invisible. I walked into a crosswalk, after looking both ways and making eye contact with the driver, and almost lost my right knee.

One of the few drawbacks of doing nothing is: it doesn't make for good blog entries. And hence, this one is dedicated to Alex Beam, whose Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune on May 6 got me going. I spent most of my post-Barcelona time writing articles and editing other scientists' book chapters, which always makes me yearn for some blogspirational material. I'd love to talk about work details. I think the work we're doing will trigger the first Kuhnian paradigm shift in BCI research, and the book chapters are so good I'd love to post most of them right here and now. But blogging about unpublished work, especially from other authors, is unwise for very many reasons.

Hence I'm Beaming about this op-ed article, "Blogging for dollars," which talked about making money from your blog. This requires increasing readership (currently at estimated at 5, a major increase due to a recent controversy about my blog). Beam quoted Walter Olsen, who said: "So far as I can tell, every post on chimpanzee attacks over the years has drawn thousands of new visitors."

Hey! Thanks!

So, um, just last night, a chimp attacked me!! I was sitting in my office, innocently pondering my Society for Neuroscience abstract, and heard some commotion outside. There was a chimp trying to break in to Clemens Brunner's office! He was doing a lousy job (the chimp, I mean). What do you expect? Chimps *do* have an inferior motor system, after all, and he kept dropping his glass cutter. I told him to quit monkeying around or I would call the cops. He ignored me. Now, don't try that old trick on me, I said! It may work on morons, but I happen to have seen several Disney movies. You understand English just fine. So he called my bluff by pointing out that nobody would believe me, and also that I could not translate "breaking in" or "glass cutter" or "chimp" to German. Well, he was pretty smart for a chimp. I heard that, he said, and then I remembered that chimps could understand telepathy too.

I then threatened to blogmock him. I told him he was not familiar with the power of a true blogmocking. I explained that the last victim of my online wrath was the Bremen duck population, and since then, not a single duck has found employment driving streetcars anywhere in Bremen. He said, well, then, how about you let me read it? OK, fine then! I'll just let you in and load it on Clemens' computer. So there! Fortunately, his office is a floor above mine, which gave me time to realize I was almost outsmarted by a chimp.

It was time to get nasty. I pointed out that I'm in contact with quite a few people with the technology and werewithal to drill holes in his skull for invasive BCI research. The chimp motor system is not *that* different. They could just stick a few depth electrodes in your primary, supplementary, and pre- motor cortices, and we can tell when you plan to fling poo even before you realize it. This was a mistake. Now he had an idea for a ranged attack, and I had no shield of any kind. I warned him that this was rather self defeating against an opponent who is bigger and eats more, and hence is far better armed. No luck. I had to go cower in my office to avoid getting hit, and probably getting swine flu from chimp poo.

See? I wrote that story in less than 10 minutes. If you thousands of new readers send me just 5 dollars (each), then I'll tell you the rest of the story. I will also accept payment to not post any more. If you think the monkeying around pun was bad, how 'bout this?

They said that pigs would fly before America elects a black president. And 100 days later, swine flew!

Just pay me, and I'll stop. I'll also accept payment in the form of a free trip to Mexico, where I imagine hotels are quite cheap nowadays. The media have once again succeeded in making a story out of nothing. Swine flu, while indeed bad for pigs, has terrified humans into wearing moron masks and avoiding travel. 100 people died from swine flu. More die each day driving to work, and far more die of regular flu.

OK, so, I just checked my bank account, and see no deposits for my blog. Oh wait, I have to click "publish post!" Then I shall retire.

Fed

I can't remember who (Asimov?), but some esteemed sci fi author once wrote that a good book reviewer keeps focused on the book, rather than promoting himself, his perspective, or his own perceived wit. Fortunately, I never claimed to be a book reviewer, especially not a good one. Blogs are canvasses for artists great and small eager to bask without the light of substantive peer review. Blogs are Echoes for Narcissus, symphonies of solipsism, metaphors mellifluous to mediocre to meandering to marmotpoo.

I just finished Feed by MT Anderson. It did lag in the middle, but picked up and ended quite well. Anderson and many others in this cyberpunk genre wield what I dub "punctuated shallowness." You almost put the book down because the characters and plot have less depth than the pages they crowd. You are then taken aback by lines like, "You're the only one of them that uses metaphor." Violet was responding to the simile, "It's like a squid in love with the sky," which is also evocative only in context. The speaker grew up with and is totally dependent on an invasive BCI, and is describing dead vines seen from a hospital on the moon. Moreover, they're painting a flat world, James' "buzzing, booming confusion" where depth, dissent, novelty, and individuality are rare and punished exceptions amidst the languid bci fi future that some authors deem an inevitable result of consumerism and technology. Unfortunately, we scientists are inevitably portrayed as naively unconcerned with, or cacklingly delighted about, our contribution to this phlegmatic Orwellian dystopia. That is fiction. We BCI researchers discuss ethical issues all the time, and cyberpunk never mentions BCIs to help severely disabled people communicate. Mr. Hoban, I am not Mr. Clever.


Anderson's modern allegories are painfully prescient. Check out this website:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080522145455AAxvKjo

"Emily" asks if someone can summarize Feed. She says that she "knows Violet died at the end." It is ironic that "Emily" will never read the book and realize how ironic her post is.
The best answer, chosen by voters, is: "I think it ends badly, or so I've heard."

Gawd!!
Put down the fucking Playstation and READ!!! Emily obviously is trying to skate through her English class, and I hope she flunks. Then she'll m-chat her friends that School (TM) is sooooo meg weak. Cyberpunk does this well: cutting off word halves because they waste precious deciseconds. Also a lot of f-bombs, sometimes a hallmark of ineloquent writing, but also a great way to portray characters who can't think of anything else to say.

"You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole!"
"How very interesting. You are a true vulgarian, aren't you?
"You're the vulgarian, you fuck!!!"

John Cleese and Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda

Gender stereotyping is also quite rampant in Feed, a common vexor in cyberpunk, blamable largely on Gibson and perpetrated by Effinger and others. Men are generally the ones most ensnared by technology, the perpetrators and (at least financial) beneficiaries of the spiralling, consuming misery society becomes. Women are either sex workers or snuffed Athenas, crucified Cassandras, prophetic Pandoras whose message of not just hope but reason, objectivity, and depth cannot compete with the latest trends and products screaming through some lunk's thalamus. But this can also be blamed on the source. Cyberpunk authors tend to be male, and probably didn't tend to get out quite as much during their formative years. Write what you know.

On that note, we just submitted my new BCI paper. This is my first paper from my new lab here in Graz, and we are all quite proud of it. It was a team effort, only possible from the symphony of signal processing, psychology, engineering, cognitive neuroscience, and English scientific writing that TU Graz now possesses. It fate now rests with faceless journal editors and reviewers. This is the upside of peer review. Anyone can toot his own horn, and further abuse musical metaphors, but convincing often crabby, overburdened, and biased reviewers is tough. One of my professors at UCSD, Ed Hutchins, once told me "there's a lot of noise in the grading process," and this is also true of the reviewing process. It's true of reviewing papers, grants, and presumably science fiction.

Black Traveling

Spring has sprung on Graz like Tigger on a particularly blue Eeyore. All the trees and bushes suddenly got green in less than a week. This improves the view from both my office and apartment, and makes the walk home even more pleasant. Along with blue skies and enough sun for tanning, it's quite relaxing.

Streetcar riding is not relaxing at all, but that's the point.

I arrived on 13 Feb and bought a week ticket for the streetcar for 10 euros. You are supposed to stick tickets in the ticket-stamping-and-beeping machine, which I couldn't translate into German with a dictionary and infinity monkeys. This prevents bastards like me from continuing to use the ticket after a week. My goal was 2 months, and I succeeded.

There are three other components to Graz's anti-streetcar-deadbeat-leeching-program. The first component is classic Germanspeaker obedience. Just like the natives NEVER cross the street against a red light or without a crosswalk handy, they just don't think of traveling with no ticket. The second component, and by far the most fun, is the ticket police. They had these in Bremen too, and they were much, much better.

In Bremen, I had a valid ticket the whole time. Nonetheless, it was fun to try to spot the ticket police. They are undercover, of course, and I never saw a uniformed cop on a streetcar. They attacked in packs of 4-6, so that at least one could enter each streetcar door, preventing scofflaws from simply exiting at the next stop. This also made them quite easy to spot. People trying to get the optimal spacing look as innocuous as an elk hunter with wolf scent spray and a 30 foot rifle with an air horn. They always board at one stop, pounce, then leave at the next. They could instead board a streetcar, wait in ambush for a few stops, and nail people like 3 legged zebras. They were really, really stupid and transparent. And, being Germanspeakers, they had to follow the rules at all times, meaning they were on duty and could never be doing anything that might be inappropriate while working.

They are never:
young
old
disabled or unhealthy
not of native German stock
well dressed
badly dressed
unkempt
drunk
happy, angry, sad, or otherwise emotional
carrying anything. This includes holding a streetcar ticket or money (with which people invariably buy a ticket upon boarding, cause why else would you hold money at a streetcar stop?)
using a cell phone
listening to music
running to catch the streetcar
eating anything
reading a newspaper, magazine, or anything else.
engaged with anyone else, except for maybe officious discussion or devious eye contact. Anyone talking with any animation, making out, arguing, etc is not going to ask for your ticket.

As mentioned, I didn't care about them much in Bremen, because I had the ticket. As first, train(cop)spotting provided some entertainment on a boring commute, but it got so easy I stopped. The cops would board and yell "Fahrkarten, bitte!" and reach into their wallets to pull out their credentials with smug anticipation. They were twice disappointed to see that I had my wallet out before them. I was on a first name basis with four of them by the time I left. God, they were lousy.

I am still, technically, in his employ right now. This annoyed me enough that I decided to get no ticket, which elevated copdetection from a lark to a motivated endeavor. There's a 60 euro fine for riding with no ticket. Correction: for getting caught riding with no ticket.

I figured the week card would give me some hope of talking my way out of it. I would just say that I didn't realize I had to stamp it. I would do so in my best impersonation of an American with a bad accent, which requires as much acting effort as the ticket cops.

This was fun for a while. Every time I arrived at a new stop, I would look for the characteristic pattern of people entering at each door. If I saw it, I would scan for suspicious signs (people at each door exhibiting none of any of the above giveaways) and disembark immediately. Except I never did so. After a month, to my terrific disappointment, I started to think they have no ticket cops here, even though my labmates said otherwise. I let my guard down.

2 weeks ago, I was riding home after about 34 consecutive hours finishing a grant proposal that would send me to Korea if funded. I scanned a streetcar stop with a practiced eye that was open from sheer force of will. I didn't care much at the time, and figured I looked bad enough that I could talk my way out of anything. But, only one person boarded the streetcar, so I ignored her. The doors shut and the streetcar moved on. "Fahrkarten, bitte!" The fine City of Graz found a brilliant way to thwart my cop detection plan: only send one ticketcop, instead of sending them through every door. Brilliant. I had the troubling sense I was missing something, and started to sweat as the woman slowly worked her way to the back, checking tickets all the way.

I checked my week ticket. No fucking way it would pass for one week old. Its edges were frayed like my nerves. I started preparing a new speech in German, figuring out the correct declinations when possible and then botching them. But I came to accept that I was probably out 60 euros, and it wasn't such a loss; the month ticket I didn't buy cost 34 euros, so I almost broke even. She was about 20 feet away. I vaguely heard the automatic ding announcing the next stop. Wait a second. That's why the Bremeners don't board one cop at a time. I hit the button, the doors opened, and I left.

Adding further to the fun: it was my stop anyway.

I was tired and worried enough that I would have missed my stop, failed my pathetic backpedaling, paid the 60 euro fine, left the streetcar, realized my mistake, walked back (being too pissed off to buy a valid ticket at that point), then been angry and confused, then blogmocked the ticketcop, city of Graz, and the entire system, and then probably tried to claim the fine as a tax write-off.

So that was that. No harm, no foul, no fine, no proof except this blog entry, which is of course entirely hypothetical.

Except-I mentioned a third component to the Graz deterrence plan. They have signs inside the streetcars to make people like me feel guilty. They are fantastic. The refer to us as "schwartzfahrer," or "black traveler." Oooooooooh. Shows how guilty they think I should feel for violating the system. My soul is blacker than both my soles. It seems vaguely racist, too. Black people are not allowed to ride the streetcar? Now come on!!! Although, it does preempt Rosa Parks. If you make people sit in the back, then they could rebel and walk the whole way. Pretty soon, everyone wants to be treated equally. It could trigger a whole civil rights movement. They learned something from this embarrassing black mark in American history, and just cut right to outlawing black travelers altogether. And I see very few black people in Graz. Maybe they were driven away by the signs attacking Nigger Traveling. How undiplomatic. Our president is not welcome on your streetcar? But he's not all black! What if he hangs half his body out the window? If you caught him, would it be a 30 euro fine?

But the signs do not mention a penalty. American signs certainly would; moreover, the mass transit in the US does not even allow the possibility of fare evasion. We know better than to trust us. On buses, you have to confirm your ticket with the driver. On subways, you have to pay to walk through turnstiles that have metro transit police stationed between them. Austrians just have signs to make you feel guilty.

One says: Schwartzfahren loest starkes aus Schwitzen. Black traveling releases strong sweat. The sign that finally got me was: Schwartzfahren fuehrt zu verspannungen. Black traveling leads to something. What? Shame? An eloquent blogmocking? Horsewhipping? The Pillory? Sent to the Eastern Front? Scrotum opened, salted, spritzed with lime, and dipped in a bowl of underfed piranha? I enjoyed the mystery of ignorance. I knew spannung was exciting, so it seemed redundant. Of course it's exciting! That's why I do it!

I made the mistake of getting it properly translated by two former Graz residents, and "verspannungen" means "tension." Again, they play on that mentality. No need for effective ticketcops. Just remind people they are disappointing the Fatherland. That took the fun out of it. There's no valid reason why the other Graz streetcar users should pay for me. I deserve to feel guilty for taking advantage of such a quaint and innocent people, portrayed so accurately in The Sound of Music. I bought a month ticket last week.

And I will even stamp it. Eventually.

Eurodining VII

I organized and cooked a Mexican feast for the lab today. I made chicken enchiladas and refried beans. My homey Teo made quesadillas, salsa, and guac. We also had peas, lettuce, tomato, and radish. About 15 people showed up, and the feast was quite successful. Everything was ready on time and turned out well. I managed to deflower two labbies with Pop Rocks. Teo (who is from Mexico city) considered my designation of my food as "Mexican" to be quite a stretch. And he is right; as I told him, it is more Cali-Mex, and the last time I was even near Mexico City, I was four. But it was still good. My only other minor mistake is that, instead of buying sour cream, I got some other kind of thick cream, but it actually went quite well with the food.

I forgot to mention a slightly bigger faux pas with my Canary Island feast last month. I was buying butter, and saw some interesting looking brown butter. I could not read it, but it was in the butter section, and I thought it might go well with the bread rolls. Well, sort of. It was already in the bread rolls, and would not have gone well on top of them. It was yeast.

In a butter (or worse) gaffe, I tried to order a turkey sandwich with cheese from the local supermarket, Billa, last week. I asked for turkey and cheese. I successfully conveyed everything, except that turkey sounds quite a lot like butter in German. So I got a butter and cheese sandwich. Not bad, and it entertained my labbies. I am sure many turkeys supported the change as well. But, fuck 'em, they do not have lawyers and so I will eat more of them out of vengeance. I now ask for turkey breast, since butter does not have tits.

I also mastered getting tap water at restaurants without paying for it. There is a secret: learning the proper word. It is normally served without ice, and if you ask for ice, you get one ice cube. I also learned how to ask for many ice cubes, but this confuses them more than asking for a Big Mac without the center bun, so I just accept tepid water. Still free.

And untaxed. This remains a huge advantage of the EU dining system. All tax is included. When you ask for the check, the waiter asks: together or separate? The normative response is the latter (or, if you are dining alone, fuck you, I am not that fat!!!). The waiter then easily figures out how much everyone has to pay. You typically round up to the nearest Euro to get the tip.

Despite the simplicity, I still think the American tipping system is better. TIP means To Insure Promptness and does so. It also gets you drink refills, which do not exist in the EU outside of fast food joints, and bigger portions and smiles. One of my labbies, Gernot, complained about going to New York and leaving a 10% tip, after which the waiter whined loudly. Is that America, he asked? No, that's Manhattan. He also said that the service was poor. I explained that, in such situations, the trick is to leave a one penny tip. That really makes the point. And I am sure the waiters are very grateful for this, and recommit themselves to improved waiting.

There are a few Mongolian BBQs in town. They do not call themselves that; they claim to be Japanese. But the same idea. You fill a plate with veggies, noodles, and raw meats, and give it to an Asian man who cooks it and then gives it to an Asian woman who brings it to your table. Pretty good. The best one is called Graz Tokyo by Hauptplatz. They use so much MSG that you have to pause in the middle of eating so your heart can slow down. Mmmmmmm.

Europeans put fried eggs on a wider variety of foods. The Spaniards put it on many sandwiches. One of the ubiquitous Irish Pubs here, Molly Malone's, serves a burger with 2 fried eggs that is quite good. There is a Gasthaus nearby that serves fried egg over ham. "Gasthaus" is a common term for a friendly little restaurant, and I am flattered to be invited, except you are not supposed to make guests pay for food.

Bio products are even more prevalent here than in the US. Whenever a store sells fruit or meat, they have a bio version that costs 50% more and looks about the same, but is supposedly free of whatever nastiness is in non-bio food.

Many labs here have Nespresso, Nestle's espresso drink hawked by George Clooney. Of course, since he is so handsome and has a perfect soul, it must not be a pancreas-eating addictive stimulant. It is now my daily caffeine shot of choice, since it's quite hard to find fresh iced tea out here. Another interesting drink is blueberry juice, which is tasty even though the main fruit juice manufacturer is named "Smoke" in German.

In an observation totally unrelated to dining, the toilet in the lab, like many out here, has a very stupid design. There is no real toilet bowl. There is instead a flat porcelain plate, parallel to the ground, over which you sit. The conventional toilet, in which you bomb water even with no aiming effort, is much smarter. The lab toilet is a three stage process: finish your meal, flush, get the toilet brush. Instead of dropping your kids off at the pool, you are just dumping them on the diving board.