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2000 VarleyYarn Index © 1999,2000,2001 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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March 10, 2000 - Asparagus for Breakfast WORLD FAMOUS SCIENCE FICTION WRITER MOVING TO A TRAILER… |
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March 14, 2000 - You ask why I live here… Woke up this morning, went to the shower, and found I was sharing it with a tiny green tree frog. I captured him in the soap dish so he wouldn’t get parboiled by the hot water, took him outside, and set him free. And you ask why I live here … |
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March 27, 2000 - Blue Light Special K-Mart, like most big retailers, has this thing for "point-of-sale," which means the way to the registers is lined with hundreds of notional items: batteries, razors, candy, etc. It makes about a 6-foot cattle chute hardly wide enough to turn around in. |
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March 29, 2000 - Cogito ergo bum The man is a force of nature. Slam into him with a two-ton van, and he'll start writing in intensive care, after the first operation. (Actually, he said he thought he might have been blocked there ... for a few days. I hate him.) |
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April 11, 2000 - The Robin Who Fell in Love with a Buick …or maybe Went to War With a Buick. |
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April 15, 2000 - The Trailer At Sauvies Corner When I was very young one of my favorite books had a map on the inside cover. It was probably the first map I ever looked at. It was of the Hundred Aker Wood, and it had place names like Owl’s House, Pooh’s Hunny Tree, Where the Woozle Wasn’t, and Trespassers W, where Piglet lived. |
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May 2, 2000 - Bob This story came to me third hand. Lee got it from Darlene, a bartender at the old Monte Carlo, and she got it from an accountant. I can't vouch for all the details and there are a thousand more things I'd like to know and probably never will, and probably never SHOULD know … but the broad strokes of the story are reliable. |
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May 4, 2000 - Laissez les bon temps rouler! Nine P.M., still some light in the sky at the end of an overcast day, and I hear what sounds like a modern armored division coming down Reeder Road, just on the other side of the wall of trees and brush that hides us from the street. |
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June 1, 2000 - Road Kill The only way for me to estimate the furry inhabitants of the island is to tally the ones that weren’t fast enough. Understand, not all these identifications are 100% reliable, as due to the nature of the count, not all specimens were in great condition … |
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July 21, 2000 - Part 1: 3499.9 Miles in Ten Days We figured six, maybe seven states before the trip was over: Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah!, Nevada, California, and maybe Wyoming if we took a little jog to the east through Yellowstone. |
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July 21, 2000 - Part 2: The Loneliest Place in America Returning after dinner, we paused in the small park in the center of town. There was a pioneer cabin, the town library, and a small stone monument. |
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August 28, 2000 - Two Things That Pissed Me Off Last Week Those wonderful "Meat is Murder " people are at it again. PETA (which apparently stands for Puerile Ethics, Tasteless Advertising), put up a billboard in New York showing "Rude Rudy" Giuliani with a milk mustache and the words "GOT PROSTATE CANCER?" Since the Rudester is a PLWPC (Person Living With Prostate Cancer), some people thought this was a bit insensitive, to say the least. |
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August 31, 2000 - How to Sing the Blues Many people think you have to be an old black man with at least some experience at picking cotton or working on a road gang to sing the blues. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone can get the blues, and that’s the only spiritual requirement to sing the blues. But you will need a few things, plus a few basic rules. |
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September 16, 2000 - Notes from the 13th Floor A few months ago Lee’s Mom, Helen, told us she’d like to take us to Hawaii again, as she did three years ago. That time we went to Maui, this time it would be Oahu and Kauai. I knew nothing about Kauai, but Oahu … |
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October 24, 2000 - Bickleton So we pulled into the little town of Bickleton, Washington, in mid-afternoon and decided to go into the one bar in town and ask directions. And who should be in there but the lousy cop who gave me a speeding ticket half an hour before. |
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October 27, 2000 - Of Geese and Ghosts We're currently battening down to weather a wet winter out here on the island. Yesterday we wrapped the outside water hose that brings fresh water into the trailer with something called "heat tape," which is not tape at all, as it is neither flat nor sticky. If I'd known that we could have saved a week of looking for the damn stuff. Now I'll plug it in and see if it melts the hose, as the box warned it might. |
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December 25, 2000 - A Christmas Story On a December trip to Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, Ferdinand Feghoot was summoned to the local college, Wossamotta U. by Inspector Fenwick, the Chief of Police. There he was confronted with an appalling scene. Bullwinkle, the town’s leading citizen, had been smashed flatter than a kippered herring by a falling safe. |
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December 28, 2000 - The Mathematics of Risibility I see this dude sitting in a chair and his head is all wired up to machines. The door opens and in walks … John Cleese! |
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