If I have nothing to say, I try to say it in as few words as possible.
Eggsperiment
Do you know what happens when you microwave a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg at full power for five seconds?
Not much. It barely gets warm.
Do you know what happens when you microwave a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg at full power for ten seconds?
It gets a little warmer.
Do you know what happens when you microwave a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg at full power for 15 seconds?
It gets warmer yet.
Do you know what happens when you microwave a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg at full power for 22 seconds?
It gets hot.
Do you know what happens when you microwave a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg at full power for 28 seconds?
It explodes.
Do you know how long it takes to clean a microwave in which you have exploded a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg?
Fifteen minutes.
You might ask, why would you microwave a peeled, nearly hard boiled egg? Because it was nearly hard boiled. There was kind of a divot in it after I peeled it, and I could see a bit of the yolk, and it didn’t look quite cooked.
I looked at the nearly hardboiled egg, and I thought, aha! I can fix this! I’ll just microwave it! Not too long, though, or it might explode.
So I started microwaving the nearly hard boiled egg, a couple seconds at a time. Due to phase change, the temperature curve may not have been a linear response to linear input, though.
I felt like Scotty when I did it.
Captain Kirk: More power, Scotty!
Me: She’ll nae take it, Captain! She’s going to blow!
It did.
Or it was like Chris Knight in Real Genius. All I had to do is synthesize the excited bromide in its frozen state in an argon matrix, and then apply a field to radiatively couple it to the ground state to yield a gigajoule of energy output per liter!
Or, in this case, a completely cooked egg yolk.
No, seriously! There was phase change when the yolk went from semi-liquid to solid. It must have been. The egg didn’t explode because I was stupid and this was the predictable result of microwaving the egg!
Right?
In my defense, it does appear that the egg yolk was, in fact, completely cooked at the time it exploded.
AARP Guns
I am working on the script for AARP GUNS, the 25 years later sequel to YOUNG GUNS, which was released August 12, 1988.
There’s always room for a new Sherlock Holmes story
Movies these days have commercial tie-ins, so I am working on the script for THE HOUND OF THE BASKIN-ROBBINS, a new Sherlock Holmes story.
The Fast and the Frumious
I am working on the action adventure script adaptation of Jabberwocky, under the title The Fast and the Frumious.
I am picturing Benedict Cumberbatch cast as the frumious bandersnatch.
Don’t turn yourself into a goofy animal
Say a Holy Yes
A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp’s half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer’s task to say, ‘It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home.’ Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are.
~ Natalie Goldberg
He wishes for a better ear for prose – but fails to specify the shape.
I am now working on a writer’s version of Pinocchio, where a writer with wooden prose hopes to become a real writer someday.
Celebrations of spring
I celebrate the first crocus, the first robin of spring. Someone else can celebrate the first blackfly.
Life lessons
Never try to drink a Muse under the table.