Words From The Road

It’s mostly the travel that I hate in my job. I’d much rather be at home, able to pursue projects at home and volunteering with the library and literacy program, instead of mouldering in a hotel room in such fortresses of culture as Modesto or Riverside.

But there are some good parts to the job; [...]

The FBI Is Following Me to Sacramento!

Some very important mollusks end up on public assistance; they’ll tell you themselves. Often at great length, if you let them.

Yesterday, we had a woman come in who didn’t speak a word of English, and whose Spanish was so fast and slurred I couldn’t understand her at all. My Spanish is good enough [...]

Trans-Specific Chicken

We were all eating lunch — a feast from Taco Bell delivered to the training site by one of our team — when M., one of my fellow mollusk trainers, made an important discovery.

“Hey!” she said, outraged. “This isn’t chicken in my taco. It’s steak!”

“Impossible,” said N., with a look of [...]

The Thing Is…

..that I’m not any more convinced now than I ever was that Saddam Hussein and Iraq pose any serious threat at all to the United States or our interests. Oh, yes, it’s always nice to rid the world of a dictator or two, but there are plenty of maniacal dictators in the world that we’re [...]

At Atwater

This week, I’m in the town of Atwater, California, where mollusk training is proceeding just fine. Although the adventures I’ve been having are nowhere near as interesting as the adventures that Jennifer has been having in San Francisco, we have had our share of fun.

Atwater itself intrigues me. The sign just outside the town [...]