THE STUPID 365 PROJECT, DAY 37: Everett’s Challenge
November 6th, 2010
This is what Everett said:
“Ask for ONE word from each person who cares to provide one in a comment. Then pick THREE of those words (your choice) and do a Google search on them. Pick one of the first 10 listings and bring up that web page, and THAT is the subject (or inspiration) for your “challenge blog.”
Should you decide to accept this glove across the face, my word is: pasties.”
He then went on to suggest (in advance, no less) that I would cheat. So here’s the deal, spelled out so even Everett can follow it. 1. I took his word, “pasties.” 2. I took the word “roadblocks” from Larissa’s response to the same post. 3. I took the word “naked” from Laren. 4. I finished off with Gary’s word, “humbled.”
5. I went to Google and entered the string “pasties roadblock naked humbled.” feeling like a total idiot, and hit enter.
I got swill, garbage, the floating plastic gyre of the Internet. Except for the third URL The Goog fetched up: http://david-mcmahon.blogspot.com/2007/09/naked-ambition.html
I’ve bookmarked it. David McMahon is a Melbourne-based journalist, born in India, and the author of two (clearly India-set) novels, Vegemite Vindaloo and Muskoka Maharani, both of them titles I deeply covet. Muskoka Maharani was published by Penguin
Vegemite Vindaloo tells the story of Clive, an Aussie sailor who in 1848, through a terrible trick of fate, is mistaken for a convict escapee from the penal colony at Sydney Cove. Escapees were dealt with brutally, and Clive is clapped into irons and thrown aboard HMS Manomuerto, an ancient hulk of a scow originally built for the Spanish Inquisition and known far and wide as a bad-luck ship (Aaarrrggghhhh), to be transported to Norfolk Island, where he will labor for life beneath the sting of the lash.
But a fierce storm arises and HMS Manomuerto is blown wildly off-course, some, ummm, 8,000 miles off course, threading perilously through the clashing rocks between Sri Lanka and the tip of India before becoming becalmed in the Arabian Sea. For weeks the vessel is dead in the water, adrift in the merciless sun. The captain ties groups of prisoners to ropes and tries to force them to pull the ship forward by swimming, but shark attacks bloody the waters and soon the prisoners prefer the cat o’nine tails to the jaws of the sharks. Aaaaarrrggghhhhh.
And then, under the unremitting heat of the sun, the ship’s flea population explodes, and with it comes the grimmest fate of all: plague. One by one, the sailors and their prisoners sicken and die, until only Clive survives, alone and gibbering in the merciless sunlight, hallucinating green shorelines and cool surf and beautiful brown –
Blimey. It’s no hallucination. HMS Manomuerto runs aground on the inhospitable coast of Goa.
Moments after the ship hits a sand bar, dozens of dark-skinned people clamber aboard, and Clive finds himself bound hand and foot and dangling head-down from the ship’s deck. Meanwhile, the, uh, indigenous population strips the ship of every piece of iron she possesses. They’re prying out the long four-penny nails that hold the hull together when the ship begins to shudder and slowly, with a strange and cumbersome grace, to disintegrate. With a terrible crrreeeaaak and a sudden whump, the deck plank from which Clive dangles, bent in position since Torquemada himself drove the silver spike that was the ship’s final touch, straightens with the pent-up energy of centuries, and Clive is flung outward as though by a catapault.
He arcs over the cool green shimmer of the water, heading toward a massive palm tree that he knows will snap his spine like the wishbone of a Cornish game hen, but the rope around his ankle stops him suddenly and then breaks, and he’s tumbling head over heels across hot white sand until he strikes an obstacle and looks up into the most beautiful pair of brown eyes he has ever seen, the deep, reassuring brown of really good coffee, drunk the way it’s supposed to be — black, without any of that frappe crap — fringed by tropically luxuriant lashes of the purest midnight.
She blinks.
And screams. Instantly, a blade is at Clive’s throat.
The vision stumbles back from him, hands upraised in terror. But Clive can see, in the depths of those pools of darkness (her eyes, okay?) the tiny spark that he first saw when he was twelve and a buxom chambermaid led him up the . . . .
Okay, obviously, I can’t tell you the whole book, but it’s a firecracker. See, they’re going to stake him out and skin him alive and then cut him into strips and let the sun cure him into jerky, but they don’t have anything to spread on it — Clive knows this because he’s a dab hand with languages, and because Princess Leia, no not Leia, Princess Looomia, whispers it to him, or rather mouths it from across the beach since she wouldn’t be close enough to whisper in his ear, and Clive is a dab hand with lip-reading, and he offers to bring them something to eat him with, so they tie long green vines to his ankles and he battles his way through the surf to the ship and dives down to retrieve four jars of Vegemite, which the ship was carrying to the torturers on whatever island that was back at the beginning of this thing, and he swims back and emerges from the sea, a very god with diamonds of water sparkling on his chest and offers them the Marmite and the chief opens it and tastes it and makes a terrible face and beats Clive over the head with the jar and when he comes to they’re heaping burning coals over him as punishment for attempting to poison the chief, and that’s why no one in India eats Vegemite. That plus the fact that it tastes the way cat piss smells.
What a book.
My apologies to David McMahon. Blame Everett, David.
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23 Responses to “THE STUPID 365 PROJECT, DAY 37: Everett’s Challenge” -
Gary Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
This post leaves me completely speechless.
So I won’t say anything.
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Bonnie Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 12:02 am
This should have a soundtrack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYt2HlBuyI
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Sylvia Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 6:47 am
Sometimes you scare me!
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Bonnie Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 7:14 am
On further reflection, with only 49,001 more words you can win Nanowrimo. I, on the other hand, have 49,750 or so to go. Yikes.
And, inevitably, when you type in that string now, it is your blog post that comes up first in Google.
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EverettK Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 8:01 am
What was the deal with this blog again???
By the way, I’m sure you’ll be tickled pink and chartreuse to know that NOW when you do a Google search on “pasties roadblock naked humbled” YOUR name is the first entry that comes up!
Bwaaaahahahahahaa-ha!
Oh, and by the way, I’ve now picked myself up off of the floor. It’s a pain in the ass trying to read your blog from that position, but it’s easier than trying to stay still in my chair while doing so.
I just hope that David McMahon has a sense of humor… 
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Boy, you guys got up early (those of you who aren’t upside-down on the bottom of the world, anyway).
I’m shocked that Gary, who is, after all, an Aussie, hasn’t leapt to the defense of Vegemite. It seems to me that we may have actually discussed Vegemite face-to-face across a table in Phnom Penh, although I may have Gary mixed up with another Aussie, since they’re so much alike. (Except you, David McMahon!)
Sylvia, do I scare you in a gooooooooood way or a baaaaaaaad way? (He wrings his fingers together obsessively.)
Bonnie, I figure I’m actually about 3700 words in, so far, this November. It’s kind of depressing they’re not all in a book somewhere, but I’m having too much fun to quit. And I love the Ravel, although I think the action scenes call for something a little jumpier — Clive is, or rather was, before they baked him, pre-eminently a man of action. What a guy, huh? A dab hand, no two ways about it.
Everett, you suckered me. Why didn’t I foresee that? How can I get some use out of it? I suppose I could retitle CRASHED as PASTIES ROADBLOCK NAKED HUMBLED, and that way the tens of thousands of people who accidentally load that search string every day will be directed to my new book. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 11:36 am
I was too busy laughing to realize how-um- game you are, Tim. What a hoot-with apologies to David McMahon-but this was sooo antic. And then I listen to the Pearl Fishers, Bonny, which immediately sobered me up, and brought tears to my eyes. It is so damn beautiful. Then I read the rest of the replies, and laughed out loud again. All this on a gray Sunday morning. Could any one ask for more? Yeah, I know-lots, but it was great!
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Gary Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
I HATE Vegemite.
If I had ever discussed it with you – what was your name again? – I would certainly have told you that.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Hi,Lil — Glad you thought it was funny. I did, too, but I never know. I thought the memo to President Bush was funny, but everyone acted like it was the real thing. I AM sorry for any inadvertent offense I might have given David McMahon — I tried to buy his books today as an apology but couldn’t find them on Amazon, and “Vegemite Vindaloo” is out of stock at Book Depository UK.
Also loved the “Pearl Fishers.” Bizet, of course; don’t know what I was thinking when I said Ravel way up above.
Great to have you reading the blog and commenting — thanks a lot.
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Bonnie Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Funny, since Bizet wrote so much dreck, that he managed to come up with what is arguably the most beautiful male duet of all time. Goose bump/tears territory, like the part of Florestan’s solo when his voice is chasing the oboe and he sees Leonora in a vision. Boy, I miss the days when I could just go down to the Vienna opera on a whim and grab a standing room place for–what was it then, a buck and a half?
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Bonnie-the third act of Carmen is better than the others, but I think the other stuff is way overplayed. Were you actually in Vienna? How incredible. My parents were raised in Vienna and later left due to You know who, But they gave me the gift of music, and, of course, books. Sorry to take your blog space,Tim. I didn’t know how else to reply. I told you, I’ve become a groupie.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Gary, my man. So glad to know you hate Vegemite — although, if you’d defended it I was going to blog about it tomorrow, and now I’ll have to do something else. This project is a bit wearing at times.
Bonnie, you’re right — in fact, the music of “The Pearl Fishers” in general is much closer to sublime than I usually associate with Bizet — probably why I called him Ravel above. Speaking of opera, there’s a wonderful book about Bach’s cello suites that makes the point that Bach was relatively unknown in his life because he never was in a position to write an opera, and the only celebrity composers were in opera. (I had thought he was a little early for that, but I was wrong yet again.)
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Bonnie Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Lil, As a long-time figure-skating fan, I would have voted to ban just about every aria from Carmen from the airwaves for about a decade. I went to Vienna on a “junior year abroad” when I was 19 and didn’t come back until I was 34, so I used to know the city well. I miss a lot of things about it, no least of which is talking down-and-dirty Wernerisch.
Tim, one of my boyfriends there worked for a music publishing company, and he knew some good stories. But I guess it was from him I learned that until fairly recently musicians operated pretty much in a historical vacuum; there was apparently little awareness of those who had gone before, so to speak. Seems strange to me, for sure, as I’m just as likely to be in the mood for Anonymous 4 as for Miles Davis or just about anything in between except 12-tone stuff.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Lil and Bonnie — I actually enter this conversation reluctantly because you guys are really raising the tone here. I could listen to the two of you talk about Vienna forever. It’s one of only about five cities in the world I haven’t visited that I want to visit. The whole ambiance, which is probably nothing like I imagine it, is totally seductive. Glad to hear, Bonnie, that your junior year lasted fifteen — that’s the approach to life I appreciate most because it’s the way I write: have a plan and be always ready to abandon it if something better comes along.
Really happy the two of you are here.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Bonnie-I totally commiserate with you about hearing way too much Carmen as a figure skating fan. Weinerish is funny-although I didn’t learn the down and dirty, I speak a German that is not understood in Frankfurt, or heaven help us, Switzerland. I tried but I was told that it wasn’t “high” enough. I think Vienna is lovely, and just shouts culture. I haven’t been there, but I have been to Innsbruck, and attended a piano concert in a 17th century church. Just lovely, living history. Tim, when I first read Poke, i wrote a really gushy letter about the landscape and how you captured a place I knew very little about. That is very much part of the pleasure in your books.
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Laren Bright Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Naked?! I wrote millions of words and you picked naked?
Good man. I would’ve picked it, too. Or I might have picked Clomat express, which are my reCAPTCHA words for today. I think
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Bonnie Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Lil, you might find that your German is too high, rather than too low. Contrary to what a lot of Germans think, “high”in a historical context applies more to the language used in Austria, and as you go north, the more “low” (and the more similar to English) it gets. An example is the word Pfeife (pipe), which loses its f as you go north, and changes from what we would call a long I to a long E in the stressed syllable.
As for Swiss, well: the Alemanic dialects (spoken also in Vorarlberg, Swabia, and northern Italy) are unintelligible to all other German speakers, I think. The Swiss should be grateful for television; otherwise, they’d not understand each other at all from Canton to Canton.
[Tim, if this is getting too off-topic even for this blog, feel free to ask Lil and me to take it öff-list, so to speak]
Tim and Lil, you do owe yourselves a visit to this intriguing city. Of course it’s changed a lot–when I was first there in 1972 you couldn’t even buy peanut butter. And as the “grantige” old folks die off the character will change. Its combination of sensuality and morbidness is certainly unique. A great writer who can give you a flavor of the Kaiserliche und Königliche period was Joseph Roth. I doubt a lot of his stuff has been translated into English, but I’m pretty sure you can still find Kapuzinergruft (Capuchine tomb?) and Radetzkymarsch in English.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 11:14 am
There’s nothing too off-topic for this blog unless it’s a prolonged bout of geek-speak about italics and boldface. Actually, I’m enjoying reading along with you, and every word just makes me more determined to get to Vienna. And that’s saying something because the continent at the center of my heart is Asia.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 11:17 am
BTW, Laren, Clomat Express leads via Google to a Chevrolet model. Thank God that’s not the search string I was working with yesterday.
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Larissa Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Holy Crap. I leave for three days and I come back and there’s…yet more geniusly funny and clever posts to read…even if Everett did sort of sucker you into one of them.
I love it! (c:
You=awesome.
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Bonnie Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Tim said: “because the continent at the center of my heart is Asia.” Guess you are in good company with your “yellow heart.” Not only all those Somerset Maugham characters, supposedly before he married his second wife and became a father, Tony Bourdain’s most serious ambition was to move to Vietnam.
This reminds me to ask whether you’ve read Ann Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. When I say it’s about a Hmong girl with seizures and her interactions with the medical community in the southern Central Valley of California, you may think, “Oh, yeah, right, that sounds sexy.” But trust me, 50 pages in you will not want to put this book down. And given your a-foot-in-both-worlds life, if you’ve not read it yet you will get a lot more out of it than most people.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
You can’t leave, Riss — we move mercilessly on, at least until I run out of gas. Everett did indeed sucker me, but I’m working out a retaliation that will cunning and merciless.
Bonnie, I keep thinking I’ll run into Anthony Bourdain, and would I ever like to. He’s made me laugh as frequently as anyone who’s writing now. I have actually read SPIRIT (nice italics, by the way) and loved it. Loved it.
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Sylvia Says:
November 9th, 2010 at 11:06 am
In a crazy way!
And I want to second Bonnie’s recommendation for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. It’s an amazing book.
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